CHAPTER XX.
"NAKED AND BAREFOOT."
TAKE, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction and of patience" (Jas. v. 10). Isaiah is here before us as such an example, a man of sign to apostate Israel, walking naked and barefoot among them for three years, to indicate first the approaching fate of " Ethiopia their expectation, and Egypt their glory," upon whom they leaned for help against Assyria; and next, the fate of the nation that looked to them rather than to God, who had brought them out of Egypt at the beginning. Some ingenuity has been expended in the attempt to escape the roughness of the word just here. It has been said that " naked" means only partially unclothed. But the original word is that applied to Adam and Eve before the fall, and to the condition of a babe at birth, and the working out of the sign was to result in a procession of captives with *' buttocks uncovered " to their shame. Then again, it has been sought to evade the length of time, " three years," and the margin of the Revised Version bears traces of the effort. But it is beside the point. We might as well object to the account of Ezekiel's four hundred and thirty days prostration in his typical siege of Jerusalem (ch. iv.), or to Nebuchadnezzar's seven years' madness, or to Israel's forty years' wandering in the wilderness. It would be more straightforward for hostile critics simply to avow disbelief, than to attempt the wresting of the text of the Word for the purpose of avoiding sentimental troubles. What is flesh and blood to God ? The testimony is that "all nations before him are as nothing" (Isa. xl. 17); and this is reasonable. And when promoted to the immortal glory, honour, and rest of the coming Kingdom of God, how much will Isaiah trouble about past shame and suffering? Oh, but what an awful trial and disgrace! says the merely natural thinker. Yes, but that is only the human point of view. Consider God's. The nation was morally " naked " before Him—shamefully and disgracefully naked — and His purpose, yea, His kindness, required this holding up the mirror as it were, with warning of literal shame and disgrace that would come if the people went on in their wicked and idolatrous ways, and trusted to ;.n alliance with Egypt—one of the lands whose corrupt ways were spoiling them—for deliverance from the equally corrupt enemy, Assyria, on the other side. And so Isaiah "loosed the sackcloth from off his loins," put off his sandals, and " walked naked and barefoot." What a challenging testimony! Many would remember it when Egypt fell before Assyria, as it shortly did. When they heard of, and perhaps saw, Egyptian and Ethiopian " captives young and old naked and barefoot, even wnth their buttocks uncovered to the shame of Egypt," they would certainly think, as the prophet said they should, that their turn was likewise coming—which it was. This twentieth chapter supplies an interesting illustration of the authenticity of the Scriptures in comparison with the monumental records of the past. " In the year that Tartan came unto Ashdod (when Sargon the King of Assyria sent him), and fought against Ashdod and took it. At that time spake the Lord by Isaiah," thus and so (verse 1). This is the only occurrence of the name Sargon in the Scriptures, and not being in a historical book, and no trace of such a name having come down in history from that early day, it was for a long time supposed that there was no such person, or rather that the name was only another name for one of the kings whose names were well known. Some of the learned said that Sargon was Shalmaneser; others that he was Sennacherib; and others again that he was Esarhaddon. But in the nineteenth century Sargon, though dead, was providentially permitted to speak for himself, and those who had correctly placed his name between Shalmaneser and Sennacherib, were justified in their abiding by the words of the book of Isaiah. How Sargon comes to speak for himself is in this way. In the record chamber of Assur-bani-pal at Nineveh, there has been disinterred, among many other records, a broken cylinder of Sargon which speaks of the very expedition against Ashdod that is the subject of mention in Isaiah's prophecy. Not only does Sargon's name thus appear, but even his portrait, with that of his Tartan, or Commander-in-Chief, has been discovered on the walls of his palace at Khorsabad. From the cylinder it appears that " Azuri, king of Ashdod, had conspired with his neighbours to throw off the yoke of Assyria; and Sargon had deposed him, and made his brother Ahimiti king in his place. But the disaffected princes and peoples of Palestine would not recognise Sargon's vassal-king, and set Yamani on the throne of Ashdod. (Judah, Edom and Moab were in treasonable correspondence with * Pharaoh, King of Egypt, a prince who could not deliver them,' as Sargon himself says in language vividly reminding us of Isaiah xxx. 5-7.) Without waiting to muster his entire forces, Sargon at once marched against Ashdod. Apprised of his coming, Yamani fled to the South borders of Egypt, and ' appeared no more.1 Ashdod, Gath, and Ashdodim were besieged and taken, and Yamani's gods, wife, sons, daughters, treasures, and people became the victor's booty. Sargon repeopled the towns with foreigners from other conquered places, and appointed a governor. Afterwards the King of Ethiopia, overawed by the might of the Great King, sent Yamani in chains to Assyria " (Light from the East). This cylinder of Sargon is to be seen in the British Museum, and pictures of it are to be found in some of the most recent editions of the Oxford Bible. It is one of many such things by which the Bible has been confirmed in these last days of a sceptical age. Isaiah's brethren of the latter-days have not such an ordeal to face as he had ; but of their whole class, the sackcloth that he wore is the symbolic garb (Rev. xi. 3), until the day of his, and tbeir, justification shall come. Of Isaiah's times and disciples, a Jewish writer (Professor Graetz) speaks thus beautifully, though somewhat cloudily : " The members of the circle which he had collected around him were called the ' gentle ones,' or ' the sufferers of the land' (Anve Aretz, Anavlm). They were mostly of poor family, or they had become impoverished through the depredations of the nobles. They either called themselves, or were called by others, the " poor" (Dallim, Ebionim). From Isaiah they learnt to refrain from complaints against their sorrow and pain, and to trust in God, and submit to His will. These ' gentle ones' formed a special community; they were considered the kernel and support of the nation by the prophet Isaiah and his successors, and to them all hearts were turned. They were expected to improve and purify the entire people, and to serve as a pattern to the whole nation. The light shed by these great prophets cast beneficent rays around ; germs of thought which lay hidden in the teachings of Sinai, came to light, and the mental rule of the nation became established through them. Isaiah, therefore, became an important feature in the national history of the people of Israel, as Samuel, and in a lesser degree Elijah, had been before him. Isaiah's prophetic labours were not confined to his nation and country; they extended beyond the boundaries to the two great states of Egypt and Assyria, which, like great cloud masses, were casting lightning-flashes over Israel and Judah " (History of the Jeics). Isaiah's prophecies extend, of course, much further still; even to our own country and empire, and the era of regeneration for Israel that is now setting in. This allusion to the prophet and his circle, however, furnishes an interesting illustration of the scope and meaning of the language of Jesus in the " Sermon on the Mount." The " poor," the " meek," the " persecuted for righteousness sake," of his allusions, were Isaiah's brethren of that generation ; and were encouraged by Jesus with reference to the integrity of the prophets who had gone before. " Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you " (Matt. v. 12). The Sermon on the Mount is not obsolete by efflux of time, and wherever there may be in the land of the living, people of like faith and works with Isaiah, with the disciples of Jesus' day, there the words of God by the prophets and by the Lord Jesus, His Son, will be heard and acted on, as Jesus says, they shall be by "wise men."
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