tablets of the Assyrians. But the Book of Isaiah and other books of the Scriptures have been read by millions during many centuries in hundreds of languages. Is the way in which Isaiah expressed himself obscure? It is a kind of collective psychological blind spot which prevents the understanding of the clearly revealed and scores-of-times-repeated description of astronomical, geological, and meteorological phenomena. The description was thought to be a peculiar kind of poetic metaphor, a flowery manner of expression.
Even a modest attempt to review the various commentaries on Isaiah would burst the frame of a book larger than this one. Therefore it should satisfy the orthodox and the liberal reader alike if the opinions presented by two great authorities in the world of thought are given here, and the thousands of commentators not quoted at all.
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Moses ben Maimon, called Rambam, also Maimonides (1135-1204), in his The Guide for the Perplexed,1 expressed the opinion that a belief in the Creation is a fundamental principle of Jewish religion, "but we do not consider it a principle of our faith that the Universe will again be reduced to nothing"; "it depends on His will," and "it is therefore possible that He will preserve the Universe for ever"; "the belief in the destruction is not necessarily implied in the belief in the Creation." "We agree with Aristotle in one half of his theory. . . . The opinion of Aristotle is that the Universe being permanent and indestructible, is also eternal and without beginning."
With this theophilosophic approach to the problem at large, Maimonides was averse to finding any word or sentence in the Prophets or elsewhere in the Bible that would suggest a destruction of the world or even a change in its order.2 Each and every such expression he explained as a poetical substitute for an exposition of political ideas and acts.
Maimonides says: " 'The stars have fallen,' 'The heavens are overthrown,' 'The sun is darkened,'
'The earth is waste and trembles,'
1 English translation by M. Friedlander (1928).
2 Maimonides apparently follows Philo, the Greek-writing Jewish philosopher of the first century, who in his The Eternity of the World was of the opinion that the world was created but that it is indestructible; however, Philo admitted changes in nature caused by periodic floods and conflagrations on a large scale and of cosmic origin.
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and similar metaphors" are "frequently employed by Isaiah, and less frequently by other prophets, when they describe the ruin of a kingdom." In these phrases the term "mankind" is used occasionally; this is also a metaphor, says Maimonides. "Sometimes the prophets use the term 'mankind' instead of 'the people of a certain place,' whose destruction they predict; e.g., Isaiah, speaking of the destruction of Israel, says: 'And the Lord will remove man far away' (6 : 12). So also Zephaniah (1 : 3-4), 'And I will cut off man from off the earth.'"
He maintains that Isaiah and other seers of Israel, when examined by the realistic method of Aristotelianism, were persons inclined to exaggerated forms of speech, and instead of saying,
"Babylon will fall," or "fell," they spoke in terms of some fantastic perturbation in the cosmos above and beneath.
"When Isaiah received the divine mission to prophesy the destruction of the Babylonian empire, the death of Sennacherib and that of Nebuchadnezzar, who rose after the overthrow of Sennacherib,3 he commences in the following manner to describe their fall . . . : 'For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof, shall not give their light' (13 : 10); again, 'Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger' (13 : 13). I do not think that any person is so foolish and blind, and so much in favour of the literal sense of figurative and oratorical phrases, as to assume that at the fall of the Babylonian kingdom a change took place in the nature of the stars of heaven, or in the light of the sun and moon, or that the earth moved away from its center. For all this is merely the description of a country that has been defeated; the inhabitants undoubtedly find all light dark, and all sweet things bitter: the whole earth appears too narrow for them, and the heavens are changed in their eyes."
"He speaks in a similar manner when he describes . . . the loss of the entire land of Israel when it came into the possession of Sennacherib. He says (24 : 18-20): '. . . for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake. The earth is
3 Nebuchadnezzar lived a century after Sennacherib.
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utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly. The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard.'"
The subjugation of Judah by Assyria was joyless, but what was so bad, from Isaiah's point of view, in the destruction of Babylon that the stars should not give their light?
A reading of the literature indicates that no exegete has ever been "so foolish and blind" as to read sky for sky, stars for stars, brimstone for brimstone, fire for fire, blast for blast.4 Referring robin-bobin
to the quoted verses—Isaiah 34 : 4-5—Maimonides writes: "Will any person who has eyes to see find in these verses any expression that is obscure, or that might lead him to think that they contain an account of what will befall the heavens? . . . The prophet means to say that the individuals, who were like stars as regards their permanent, high, and undisturbed position, will quickly come down."
Maimonides quotes Ezekiel, Joel, Amos, Micah, Haggai, Habak-kuk, and Psalms, and in verses similar to those cited from Isaiah, he finds incidentally a description of "a multitude of locusts,"
or a speech appropriate for the destruction of Samaria or the "destruction of Medes and Persians," spoken "in metaphors which are intelligible to those who understand the context."
In a settled world nothing alters the given order. To sustain this doctrine, the prophecies were translated into metaphors, for, in the opinion of Maimonides, if the world does not change its regimented harmony, true prophets would not declare that it does. "Our opinion, in support of which we have quoted these passages," writes Maimonides, "is clearly established, namely, that no prophet or sage has ever announced the destruction of the Universe, or a change of its present condition, or a permanent change of any of its properties." This standpoint of Maimonides, as far as a change of conditions in the Universe is concerned, is a deduction, not from the texts he interprets, but from a philosophical a priori approach. Prophets might err
4 But for what they were taken may be illustrated by the exegesis of Augustine. He writes: "Hail and coals of fire (Psalm 18): Reproofs are figured, whereby as by hail, the hard hearts are bruised." To the words, "And He sent out His arrows, and scattered them (Psalm 15)," Augustine writes: "And He sent out Evangelists traversing straight paths on the wines of strength." St.
Augustine, Expositions on the Book of Psalms, ed. Ph. Schaff (1905).
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in their prophecies, but it could hardly be that in saying "stars" they meant "persons." The reading of subsequent chapters in Isaiah (36-39) and parallel chapters in Kings and Chronicles, as well as the Talmudic and Midrashic fragments (concerning the time of Sennacherib's invasion), makes it apparent that this time the prophets did not err, and that a change in harmonious conditions did occur in the lifetime of these very prophets, in the days of Hezekiah.
Maimonides asserts that Joel's prophecies referred to Sennacherib, but he is puzzled: "You may perhaps object—how can the day of the fall of Sennacherib, according to our explanation, be called 'the great and the terrible day of the Lord'?"
In the following pages it will be shown that on the very day which preceded the night when Sennacherib's army was destroyed, the order of nature was upset. The speeches of the seers must be interpreted not apart from, but in the light of, the description of these changes as they are preserved in the Scriptures and in the Talmud. There was keener insight during the times prior to Maimonides, and to these more ancient interpreters he referred when he wrote: