The Story of Balaam Reconsidered

Abstract

DECEMBER 6. THE SINFUL NATION, ISA. I., 1-18. The Book of Isaiah is composed of two parts. The first part consists of the first 39 chapters, and is made up of three groups of short discourses, followed by a historical sketch of the deliverance from Sennacherib, the latter being simply another copy of the account given in 2 Kings. The first verse of the book is the title, either of the first 39 chapters, or of the whole book. The remainder of the chapter is the first prophetic discourse of the book. It is in the form of a public address, perhaps a condensation of a longer address, impassioned, full of imagery, highly poetical in form, rather than itself a poem. We naturally expect this first discourse to be either the earliest discourse in the book, or else an introduction, and therefore nearly the latest written part of it. Perhaps we can determine this question from the state of things described in it, which is likely to have been that which existed when it was written. It is a state of things in which the whole country is stricken throughout, verses 5, 6; devastated by foreign invaders, verse 7; until the daughter of Sion is reduced to the condition of a watch-hut in a vineyard, verse 8; a condition of things in which is prevalent the idolatry of oaks and gardens, verses 21, 29, 30; along with oppression, bribery and corruption, verses 17, 23. It is characterized by murders, verses 21 and 15 b; but also by the outward maintenance of the worship of Jehovah, verses 11 to 15 a. These marks fit the reign of Manasseh, and indicate that the book of the discourses of Isaiah was put together at that date, and this introductory discourse then written. We do not need, however, to know the situation accurately, as preliminary to a profitable use of the chapter itself. Its great value consists in the moral and spiritual principles it enunciates; its doctrines of human sinfulness, of evils resulting therefrom, and of God's eagerness to pardon the repentant. These principles apply directly to our conduct, as they did to the conduct of Israel in Isaiah's time. We need not go a roundabout way through history, to get at them. We have a right to take them directly to ourselves.