HERALD

New translations of Isaiah 18, by Lowth, the Bishop of Rochester, and Boothroyd—Their translations, and that of the Common Version rejected—A new translation by the Editor—Annotations establishing its correctness—Britain addressed, and her Steam Marine alluded to by Isaiah—The Lord Jesus in Zion sends forth a proclamation to the nations during a suspension of judgment, and subsequently to the fall of the Russian Gog—Israel, when their work is done, brought back in Britain’s ships, and in all sorts of land conveyance, as a present to the King of the Jews in Zion.

Speaking of the prophecy contained in the eighteenth chapter, Dr. Robert Lowth, Bishop of London, at the close of the eighteenth century, who undertook “to give an exact and faithful representation of the words, and of the sense of the prophet,” remarks concerning it, “this is one of the most obscure prophecies in the whole book of Isaiah. The subject of it,” he continues, “the end and design of it, the people to whom it is addressed, the history to which it belongs, the person who sends the messengers, and the nations to whom the messengers are sent; are all obscure and doubtful.” Thus writes the Bishop; and we may add, in vindication of the prophet, “obscure and doubtful,” verily to him.

As Mr. Lowth was, perhaps, the most, or one of the most, profound scholars of his day, the reader will no doubt be gratified in presenting to him what the doctor considers an exact and faithful representation of the most obscure and doubtful portion of the sure prophetic word. In his work he performs the part of a critical translator, and frequently of an interpreter; by which he reveals how little competent he was, notwithstanding his great attainment in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues, to give “a close literal version” representative of the true sense of the prophecy. Yet he was profoundly skilled in “hermeneutics,” at least as much so as any “bible unionists” of our time, who are making so broad their phylacteries in new translationism, and the laws of exegesis! * We will, then, look at his translation first, and afterwards hear what he has to say of the subject of the chapter.

* “It is acknowledged by all Protestants,” writes the incarnation of the Bethanian divinity, “that in the bible alone we have the whole revelation of God to man, which his present condition requires, both with respect to the world that now is, and also to that which is to come. Its hermeneutics, or laws of interpretation, are now settled by such tribunals of literature and science as have the sanction of the educated world. No special tribunals are claimed—no new lawgivers are needed, to settle a single canon, or law of translation or interpretation. As other writings of the same age, language, and people, are interpreted, so the sacred writings of the Jewish age, and of the Christian age, are to be interpreted and understood. These are the decisions of all the literary tribunals of the age. We ask no more, and will concede no other canons to any one who seeks to unsettle Christian communities by private opinions or special pleadings for favoured hypothesis, or long-cherished idealities.” Millennium Harbinger Ser. iv. Vol. iii. No.1. —Thus decrees our magniloquent friend in the pride of his intellect and highmindedness. He is of course well-skilled in all the settled canons of translation and interpretation sanctioned by the Protestant educated world. So were Dr.Lowth, Dr. Boothroyd, the Bishop of Rochester, and their Protestant peers. But what has their skill resulted in? Just in leaving the true sense of the prophets and apostles in as much obscurity as before they began to work upon them with their hermeneutics. What feeblest ray of light has the President of Bethany College, shed upon a single obscurity of Moses and the prophets? Nay, what obscurity has he not deepened by his hermeneutics? Pshaw! What are “canons” worth that reduce the prophetic writings to a level with “an old Jewish almanac?” We pause for a reply.

Such is his close adhesion to the letter of the text, which as it stands in his translation is as “obscure and doubtful” as could be wished by any hermeneutist, desirous of showing his skill in resolving doubts by the settled canons of his craft. Dr. Lowth saw that his “close literal version” had not rendered the prophecy so plain as that he who runs may read: he has, therefore, favoured us with some notes upon the phrases of his version to help us in their interpretation. We quote the following:

“If, therefore,” continues he, “the words are rightly interpreted the winged cymbal, meaning the sistrum, Egypt must be the country to which the prophecy is addressed: and upon this hypothesis the version and explanation must proceed. I further suppose, that the prophecy was delivered before Sennacherib’s return from his Egyptian expedition, which took up three years; and that it was designed to give to the Jews, and, perhaps, likewise to the Egyptians, an intimation of God’ counsels in regard to the destruction of their great and powerful enemy.”

From these “hypotheses” and supposings, the reader will see that the prophecy is regarded by Dr. Lowth as long ago accomplished, and that consequently it retains no prophetic interest for us—that being fulfilled, it is just a remarkable memorandum of the past, on the old almanac of the Jewish nation. But to this I demur in toto, having satisfied myself that the key to the passage is not contained in the hypothesis out of which Dr. Lowth has extracted such a tinkling sound. We shall see in the sequel, that it is all in the future, and one of the most interesting and important prophecies in the book of God, Egypt being nowhere existent in the premises. But assuming that it is the country addressed, Dr. Lowth indicates the eastern branches of the Nile, the boundary of Egypt towards Arabia, or the parts of the upper Nile, towards the African Ethiopia, as the rivers of Cush. He says, it is not easy to determine which.

2. VESSELS OF PAPYRUS—viklai-gome. “This circumstance,” says he, “agrees perfectly well with Egypt. It is well known that the Egyptians commonly used on the Nile a light sort of ships, or boats, made of the reed papyrus. “Ex ipso quidem papyro navigia texunt”—Plin. Xiii. 11.

This is very learned; but though they might construct skiffs of porous papyrus reeds, it is a very remote inference that the land of the winged cymbal sent its ambassadors over the sea in such fragile barks, and that Egypt was that land, because the papyrus grew there.

3. Go, ye swift messengers. —“To this nation before mentioned, who, by the Nile, and by their numerous canals, have the means of spreading the report, in the most expeditious manner, through the whole country. By the swift messengers are meant the usual conveyers of news whatsoever, travellers, merchants, and the like, the instruments and agents of common fame: these are ordered to publish the declaration made by the prophet throughout Egypt, and to all the world; and to excite their attention to the promised visible interposition of God.”

4. Stretched out in length. —“The fruitful part of Egypt, exclusive of the deserts on each side, is one long vale, through the middle of which runs the Nile, bounded on each side to the east and west by a chain of mountains, 750 miles in length; in breadth, from one to two or three day’s journey; even at the widest part of the Delta, from Pelusium to Alexandria, not above 250 miles broad.”

5. Smoothed. —“Either relating to the practice of the Egyptian priests, who made their bodies smooth by shaving off their hair; or rather to the country’s being made smooth, perfectly plain and level, by the overflowing of the Nile.”

6. Trodden down. —“Supposed to allude to a peculiar method of tillage in use among the Egyptians.”

7. The rivers have nourished. —A learned friend suggested to Dr. Lowth, “nourished;” which, as it perfectly well suited his Nile theory, he adopted in preference to “spoiled,” remarking that “nothing can be more discordant than the idea of spoiling and plundering; for to the inundation of the Nile Egypt owed everything—the fertility of the soil, and the very soil itself. Besides, the overflowing of the Nile came on by gentle degrees, covering without laying waste the country.” What he says in this note he terms “hazarding a conjectural interpretation.” Conjectural, indeed, and truly ridiculous. The land of the winged cymbal is to send to another people whose land rivers have affected; but Dr. Lowth’s interpretation makes Egypt send swift messengers to itself. O, hermeneutics, is it thus thy canons explain the prophets!

8. A gift. —“The Egyptians were in alliance with the kingdom of Judah, and were fellow-sufferers with the Jews under the invasion of their common enemy, Sennacherib; and so were very nearly interested in the great and miraculous deliverance of that kingdom, by the destruction of the Assyrian army. Upon which wonderful event, it is said (2 Chronicles 32: 23), that ‘many brought gifts unto Jehovah to Jerusalem, and presents to Hezekiah, king of Judah, so that he was magnified of all nations from thenceforth.’ It is not to be doubted, that among these the Egyptians distinguished themselves in their acknowledgments on this occasion.”

On reading the above, few, I apprehend, will think much of Dr. Lowth as an interpreter of Isaiah. When we consider his pretensions, we are certainly justified in expecting better things. He styled himself (and his pretension to this was admitted by his contemporaries) “an ambassador of Jesus Christ,” a “successor of the apostles,” and “the right reverend father in God, Robert, Lord Bishop of London,” who, if he laid his hands upon the head of a candidate for “Holy Orders,” became the medium through which the Holy Spirit was transmitted into the aspirant’s soul, to qualify him for a priest in the house of God! Now, I say, from such a man we had a right to expect something better than learned nonsense, as the alleged true sense of a prophet. If an apostle were to give us such a specimen of hermeneutics with a grave face, it would be enough to set aside all his claims to infallibility in teaching. No one has any right to claim part in an apostolic successorship, who cannot hermeneuticise better than Dr. Lowth, and those who approve his exegesis. I am certain that Jehovah never would “send” such scholars to interpret his holy prophets. The foolishness of their interpretations is fatal to all their claims.

But here comes before us another of the Episcopal Bench, not so highly salaried, or proximate to the archbishopric of Canterbury as Dr. Lowth, but not behind him in scholarship, and in spiritual assumption in “the church.” The bishop of Rochester, who flourished some fifty years ago, did not approve of his learned brother’s translation, and therefore favoured his contemporaries with one of his own. Thus we have bishop against bishop, professedly working by the hermeneutics settled by the tribunals of literature and science, but bringing out of the original text a different version and interpretation! A talented writer of the period, speaking of the translations, says, “Dr. Lowth has, I think, very much mistaken the general meaning of this prophecy. But it is to the present Bishop of Rochester, that the lovers of biblical studies are indebted for the best translation and interpretation of this interesting chapter which is extant in our language, or perhaps in any other.” His translation was published in his Critical Disquisitions, addressed to Edward King, Esq., and reproduced from thence in a tract of the time, from which I now transfer it to these pages.

The bishop sets out with observing, “First, the prophecy indeed predicts some woeful judgment; but the principal matter of the prophecy is not judgment, but mercy; a gracious promise of the final restoration of the Israelites. Secondly, the prophecy has no respect to Egypt, or any of the contiguous countries. What has been applied to Egypt, is a description of some people or another, destined to be the principal instruments in the hand of Providence in the great work of the resettlement of the Jews in the Holy Land—a description of that people, by characters by which they will be evidently known when the time arrives. Thirdly, the time for the completion of the prophecy was very remote when it was delivered, and is yet future; being indeed the season of the Second Advent of the Lord.” All this is undoubtedly true; and being so admitted, reduces Dr. Lowth’s interpretation to childishness and folly. The following, then, is the

1. Ho! Land spreading wide the shadow of (thy) wings, which are beyond the rivers of Cush.

2. Accustomed to send messengers by sea, even in bulrush-vessels upon the surface of the waters! Go, swift messengers, unto a nation dragged away and plucked; unto a people wonderful from their beginning hitherto; a nation expecting, expecting, trampled under foot, whose land rivers have spoiled.

3. All the inhabitants of the world, and dwellers upon earth, shall see the lifting up, as it were, of a banner upon the mountains, and shall hear the sounding, as it were, of a trumpet.

4. For thus saith Jehovah unto me: I will sit still (but I will keep my eye upon my prepared habitation). As the parching heat just before lightning, as the dewy cloud in the heat of harvest.

5. For after the harvest, when the bud is coming to perfection, and the blossom is become a juicy berry, he will cut off the useless shoots with pruning-hooks, and the bill shall take away the luxuriant branches.

6. They shall be left together to the bird of prey of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth. And upon it shall the bird of prey summer, and all the beasts of the earth upon it shall winter.

7. At that season a present shall be led to Jehovah of hosts, a people dragged away and plucked; even of a people wonderful from the beginning hitherto; a nation, expecting, expecting, and trampled under foot, whose land rivers have spoiled, unto the place of Jehovah of hosts, Mount Zion.

This translation is a decided improvement on Dr. Lowth’s. “Land spreading wide the shadow of wings, which are beyond the rivers of Cush,” is to be preferred to the rendering, “land of the winged cymbal, which borders on the rivers of Cush.” Sending “messengers by sea in bulrush-vessels” is, however, no improvement on sending “ambassadors on the sea in vessels of papyrus.” Heaven help the messengers and ambassadors in such frail barks as these! The bishops, I apprehend, would have declined missions from their government, with all their honours and emoluments, if it provided them with no more substantial, safe, and swifter contrivances for transportation over the sea.

But the bishop of Rochester rejects the idea of the vessels being literally formed of bulrushes. “Sending by sea in bulrush-vessels,” says he, “is a figurative expression, descriptive of skill in navigation, and of the safety and expedition, with which the inhabitants of the land called to, are supposed to perform distant voyages.” By what hermeneutic canon a bulrush-vessel is figurative of skill, safety, and expedition in navigation is not so clear to us as to the bishop. He does not, however, appear very sure about this import of the figure; but he says, “navigable vessels are certainly meant; and if it could be proved, that Egypt is the country spoken to, these vessels of bulrushes might be understood literally of the light skiffs, made of that material, and used by the Egyptians upon the Nile. But if the country spoken to be distant from Egypt, ‘vessels of bulrush’ is only used as an apt image, on account of their levity, for quick sailing vessels of any material. The country, therefore, to which the prophet calls, is characterised as one which, in the days of the completion of the prophecy, shall be a great maritime and commercial power, forming remote alliances, making distant voyages to all parts of the world, with expedition and security, and in the habit of affording protection to their friends and allies. Where this country is to be found is not otherwise said, than that it will be remote from Judea, and with respect to that country beyond the Cushaean streams.”

Dr. Boothroyd’s is the latest translation of this remarkable portion of the word I have seen. He renders the first two verses by “Ho! To the land shadowing with wings, which borders on the rivers of Cush which sendeth ambassadors on the sea, and in floats of papyrus on the face of the waters. Go, O ye swift messengers, to a nation extended and fierce; to a people terrible from the first and hitherto; a nation that useth the line, and treadeth down, whose land the rivers have spoiled.” Though this translation is rather better than Lowth’s, he throws no light upon the subject of the prophecy. This is less excusable in him than in Lowth and Rochester, because, living in more recent times he has failed to avail himself of notable facts which are shining upon the prophecy, whose shadows only were preceding them in their day. The following remarks will prove to the reader that hermeneutics are as treacherous in Dr. Boothroyd’s case as in Dr. Lowth’s. “What land is meant,” he observes, “and why it is said to be shadowing with wings, has been much disputed. The chief part consider that the prophet intended to represent Egypt. The Jews fled under the wing of this country for protection. The prophet having predicted the destruction of these enemies, sends the news first to Egypt, and then exhorts the swift messengers of Egypt to send it to Nubia.”

Here then we have Dr. Lowth, the Bishop of Rochester, Dr. Boothroyd, and the numerous scholars appointed by King James I to make our authorised version, who have all tried their hands upon this portion of the prophetic word, but have signally failed in presenting the English reader with a translation capable of being understood. Want of classical competency was not the cause of their failure, for of Roman, Greek, and Oriental literature, they had enough, and to spare. They were great hermeneutical philologists, but they were not “wise;” they erred not understanding the scriptures, which can alone make learned and unlearned men, truly wise in “the things of the Spirit of God.” Dr. Johnson gives about seventy meanings to our word “make.” A scholar may remember them all, and yet not have wisdom to select aright the meaning suitable to the word in a certain place. “To make” is to do, perform, practise, as well as to create. Suppose the sentence is, “God makes evil.” A foreigner examines his lexicon under the word “make,” and finds the above to be among the meanings, he understands the idiom and peculiarities of the language but imperfectly, so that being uncertain which is the most appropriate, he guesses that “do, perform, or practise will bring out the idea of the sentence, and he renders it, “God does, performs, or practises, evil,” which he supposes comprehends sin. Such a translation as this would evince want of wisdom in the use of words, which no hermeneutics or laws of interpretation could supply. Now the learned translators of the Scriptures have been hitherto very much in this fix. They get hold of a Hebrew word having a plurality of senses, several different meanings, and the question arises among them, which is the right one for the place? This can only be determined by a correct understanding of the context. This is a law, or settled canon, of interpretation, which, however, is of no use to the translator who is ignorant of that context. He may know the canon or rule, but can make no use of it because of his doctrinal ignorance. A man may be profoundly skilled in hermeneutics, and yet profoundly incompetent to translate and interpret the Scriptures correctly. He is like one who can name his tools, but knows not how to use them. The learned men above-mentioned, together with our contemporaries, who are swelling so immensely about conferring upon us Anglo-Saxons a correct version of the Bible, are too ignorant of the doctrine of the prophets and apostles to accomplish the work. They are doctrinally incompetent, being without intelligence in “the word of the kingdom.” The Bishop of Rochester’s exegesis is the best, because he perceived that Christ Jesus is to reappear in Mount Zion in person, and that the twelve tribes of Israel are at that time to be restored in the midst of judgment: but as for sky kingdomers giving us an improvement of King James’s version, we should as soon expect one from old Socrates, or His Roman Holiness of the Papal throne.

This eighteenth chapter of Isaiah is part of a prophecy relating to that crisis in Israel’s history where “the judgment sits and the books are opened.” The beginning of the passage is Isaiah 17: 12, three verses, which should be included in the eighteenth chapter. It belongs to the time when “the nations are angry, and God’s wrath is come,” and “the men upon the face of the land shake at his presence”—Daniel 7: 10; Revelation 11: 18; Ezekiel 38: 20, —a time of tumult and uproar among the nations rushing against each other to battle; and “Jerusalem becomes a burdensome stone for all people that burden themselves with it,”—“a cup of trembling to all the people round about in the siege against Judah and Jerusalem”—Zechariah 12: 2-3, —“a day of grief and desperate sorrow”—terror’s evening time—the darkest hour of Jacob’s trouble that ere will be again. The rush of the roaring hosts of the nations is to Jerusalem under the King of the North, who at the time is lord of Syria and Damascus, holding all that country against his enemies. This is the last of the horns of the Gentiles that scatters Israel, and lays their country waste. It is the power styled “the Assyrian,” who by the voice of Jehovah shall be beaten down, and be no more, ere the dawn of the millennial day. The Lord of hosts shall rebuke him, and chase his roaring multitude like mountain chaff before the tempest, and stubble swept before its whirl. This is the portion of Gogue, and the destiny of all his host: and thus perishes “a blossom” while a sour grape is ripening on the vine.

This victory accomplished, a signal, or banner, is exalted on the mountains of Israel, and a trumpet proclamation sounded to the world. The root of Jesse then stands for an ensign to the people on Zion’s hill, to whom the outcasts of Israel shall be assembled, and the dispersed of Judah gathered. Of him shall “the Assyrian” and his princes be afraid, in his descent as birds flying to fight for Mount Zion and the hill thereof—Isaiah 11: 10, 12; 31: 4-5, 8-9. Having descended and taken possession of his dwelling-place, anciently known as “the city where David dwelt,” breathing time is granted to the world while the trumpet proclamation is sounding abroad among them. They hear and tremble. Jehovah-Jesus—he who bears the name of Jehovah—is in his dwelling-place “secure,” and waiting the effect of the trumpet. He awaits the time of action “as dry heat impending lightning, as a dewy cloud in the heat of harvest” soon to pass away.

During the stillness of this awful pause, not a gleam of sunshine for a moment penetrates the impending gloom; not a breath stirs; not a leaf wags; not a blade of grass is shaken; no rippling wave curls upon the sleeping surface of the waters; the black ponderous cloud, covering the whole sky, seems to hang fixed and motionless as an arch of stone. Nature seems benumbed in all her operations. Such is the condition of the torpid atmosphere before the bursting forth of a raging tempest, employed by the spirit to illustrate the trumpet interval before the terrible and sudden irruption of Jehovah’s fury against the nations; which, instead of fearing God and giving glory to him—Revelation 14: 6-7, assemble themselves together, to give battle against his king—Revelation 19: 19; 17: 14.

Christ’s proclamation from Zion, though general, is also especially addressed to a government, which Dr. Lowth styles, “the land of the winged-cymbal;” but the common version more correctly, “the land shadowing with wings.” This is a power of widely extended colonial dominion, remarkable for its steam marine. “Go, swiftly, ye fleet messengers! —Convey them in your steamers, O land!” This makes them “fleet messengers.” These messengers are of that “third part” of Judah not cut off by the King of the North when he invades the land of Israel. Concerning these Jehovah says, “I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the coasts afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory among the Gentiles.” Tarshish, the colonial power, accepts the invitation, and places its steamers at the disposal of Christ’s ambassadors; as it is written, “the coasts shall wait upon me, and ships of Tarshish among the first, to bring thy sons, O Zion, from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the Name of Jehovah thy God, even to the Holy One of Israel”—Isaiah 60: 9. In the words of the eighteenth chapter they are “brought as a present to Jehovah of armies, to the dwelling-place of the Name of Jehovah of armies, Mount Zion.”

With respect to the papal governments of Europe, the trumpet proclamation is despised by them, and they prepare for war. These are the powers termed by John, “the Beast and the False Prophet, and the kings of the earth with their armies.” Jesus styles them in Matthew 25, “the Goats,” and “the Devil and his angels.” The lightning of his wrath, shoots forth, and the thunder of his fury roars from Zion against them. The steamers of Tarshish being at the disposal of Israel’s king, they cannot invade his kingdoms; so that as Abraham is supposed to say in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, “between Israel and them is a great gulf fixed; so that they who would pass from Palestine to Papaldom cannot; neither can the goats and the exiled among them from the presence of the lord, pass to Palestine that would come from thence.” No. They are hemmed in within their own borders. There war, and pestilence, and famine, rage in all their horrors. The saints execute upon them the judgment written under the direction of their king, and in the presence of his messengers. Their country becomes “a Lake of Fire burning with brimstone,” which results in the destruction of the papal governments and system for ever.

This being the doctrine of the prophets and the apostles, and reflected from the seventeenth and eighteenth of Isaiah, it is clear that sky-kingdom speculators who believe nothing of the kind, must of necessity be confounded when they encounter such passages as that before us. No skill in hermeneutics is of any avail to an immortal-soul sky-kingdom-gospeller; and he that understands “the word of the kingdom” may discern the truth though scholastically ignorant of interpretation-laws, as a man may reason correctly though unacquainted with the logician’s rules. The learned foolishness published by proficients in hermeneutics is enough to fill all ingenuous minds with contempt at the tools by which they have elaborated their prosy disquisitions. Read Moses Stuart on Daniel if you desire to behold the light of darkness made as darkness itself! Yet this man was “great,” “a father in Israel,” a college professor, and a transformer of youths into guides of the blind! When we contemplate the universal failure of such people in their attempt to explain prophecy, we are led to enquire if the prophets were given to take the worldly-wise in their own craftiness, and to knock out their brains? For truly they might as well have none as use to them to so little purpose. The generality discourage the study of the prophets as dementing. It may be to those who are dyed in the wool of orthodoxy; and this may account for such translations as Lowth, Boothroyd, and Stuart’s, with many others of minor note.

Hopeless then of light from that quarter, I have essayed to help myself on the principle that God aids them who help themselves. Far inferior to them as a Hebraist, I freely admit; but this shall not discourage me from invading their province, and trying to perfect that wherein they have failed. David slew Goliath with a sling-stone in the name of Israel’s God. This was an earnest of victory to Israel’s host, which beholding the stripling’s easy conquest of the giant, dismissed their faint-heartedness, and contended earnestly against the foe. Encouraged by this example, I take a pebble from the brook, even this “most obscure of prophecies,” and, by an easy demonstration of its import, level the hermeneutists with the dust. May my readers animated by my almost dangerless passage at arms with the Goliaths, learn to feel valiant for the truth, and to contend earnestly for it with a true heart, and full assurance of faith. Let the weak say, “I am strong; I have no fear of the face of clay.”

HERALD

OF THE

JOHN THOMAS, Editor. NEW YORK, MAY, 1853—

Volume 3—No. 5