i8 7 o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 179 



influence on the future was extraordinary, and the history 

 of the kingdom of Judah stands here at its third turning- 

 point.&quot; i 



In our sketch of these events we have inserted no 

 trait on which the latest historians are not agreed. If 

 Hitzig does not enter so warmly as Ewald into the spirit 

 of the narrative, he concedes as completely the extra 

 ordinary effects of Isaiah s prophetic faith and prophetic 

 word ; and Kuenen admits fully the unwavering con 

 fidence, based on religious faith, with which Isaiah foretold 

 the wondrous deliverance. 2 Even the distinctest pre 

 diction of the trial and deliverance (chap. xxix. 1-8) to 

 which Bleek 3 appeals, as perhaps the most striking proof 

 of the real predictive gifts of the prophets, he unhesitat 

 ingly places before the event ; but with these general 

 admissions he seeks by one or two touches to give the 

 whole narrative a far less striking colour than it possesses 

 in the German histories. Without venturing direct 

 affirmation, he hints that the account of the final disaster 

 is vague and incomplete, suggests that Isaiah was really 

 encouraging the people to endurance, in the hope that 

 Tirhakah s army would divert Sennacherib from the 

 siege an attitude not very consistent with the answer 

 made by the prophet to the Ethiopian ambassadors, nor, 

 indeed, psychologically reconcilable with the whole tone 

 of his utterances and insinuates that to no small extent 

 the deliverance was the natural consequence of this 

 policy. It is clear, however, that these ingenuous sugges 

 tions derive their whole force from the hypothesis, nowhere 

 directly stated, but in the Godsdienst plainly hinted at, 

 that it was really a campaign with Tirhakah that broke 

 the Assyrian force. Unluckily the accounts preserved by 

 Herodotus, in which the defeat of Sennacherib is associated 

 with the field-mouse a recognised symbol of pestilence 

 by no means favour this view. 4 



1 Geschichte (ed. 2), iii. 636. 



2 Onderzoek, ii. 92, 96. Godsdienst, 39. 3 Einl. ins A.T., 437. 

 4 Cf. Hitzig, Geschichte Israels, p. 125 (1869). 



