, accordingly, are closely related to those in Mic. iv. 5:
"For all the people shall walk, every one in the name of his god, and
we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever:"
_i.e._, the fate of the people in the heathen world corresponds to the
nature of their gods; because these are nothing, they too shall sink
down into nothingness, while Israel shall partake in the glory of his
God. There is the same thought, and in essentially the same dress, both
in Isaiah and Micah,--only that the words which in Micah embody a pure
promise, are transformed by Isaiah into an exhortation that Israel
should not, by their own fault, forfeit this preference over the
heathen nations, that they should not wantonly wander away into dark
solitudes, from the path of light which the Lord had opened up before
them. This transformation in Isaiah, however, may be accounted for by
the consideration, that he was anxious to prepare the way for the
reproofs which now follow from ver. 6; whilst Micah, who had already
premised them, could continue in the promise. It is also in favour of
the originality of the passage in Micah, that the text which, in
Isaiah, appears as a variation, appears as original in Micah; so that
both cannot be equally dependent upon a third writer. 3. There now
remains only the view of _Kleinert_, according to which the prophecy of
Micah, in chap. iii.-v., was first uttered under the reign of Hezekiah;
and, under the reign of the same king, but somewhat later, the
prophecy, in chap. ii.-iv. of Isaiah, who avails himself of it. But,
upon a closer examination, this view also proves untenable. Isaiah's
description of the condition of the people in a moral point of view,
the general spread of idolatry [Pg 421] and vice, exclude every other
period in the reign of Hezekiah except the first beginning of it, when
the effect and influence of the time of Ahaz were still felt; so that
even _Kleinert_ (p. 364) is obliged to assume, that not only the
prophecy of Micah, but also that of Isaiah, were uttered in the first
months of the reign of this king. But other difficulties--and these
altogether insuperable--stand in the way of this assumption. In the
whole section of Isaiah, the nation appears as rich, flourishing, and
powerful. This is most strongly expressed in chap. ii. 7: "His land is
full of silver and gold, there is no end to his treasure; his land is
full of horses, and there is no end to his chariots." To this m