Second Section: Chaps. III.-VI. Israel's Crimes and Doom.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Smith, George Adam and Nicoll, W. Robertson (William Robertson), Sir
A series of various oracles of denunciation, which have no further logical connection than is supplied by a general sameness of subject, and a perceptible increase of detail and articulateness from beginning to end of the section. They are usually grouped according to the recurrence of the formula Hear this word, which stands at the head of our present chaps. iii., iv. and v.; and by the two cries of Woe at v. 18 and vi. 1. But even more obvious than these commencements are the various climaxes to which they lead up. These are all threats of judgment, and each is more strenuous or explicit than the one that has preceded it. They close with iii. 15, iv. 3, iv. 12, v. 17, v. 27 and vi. 14; and according to them the oracles may be conveniently divided into six groups.
1. III. 1-15. After the main theme of judgment is stated in 1, 2, we have in 3-8 a parenthesis on the prophet's right to threaten doom; after which 9-15, following directly on 2, emphasise the social disorder, threaten the land with invasion, the people with extinction and the overthrow of their civilisation.
2. IV. 1-3, beginning with the formula Hear this word, is directed against women and describes the siege of the capital and their captivity.
3. IV. 4-12, with no opening formula, contrasts the people's vain propitiation of God by ritual with His treatment of them by various physical chastisements—drought, blight and locusts, pestilence, earthquake—and summons them to prepare for another, unnamed, visitation. Jehovah God of Hosts is His Name.
4. V. 1-17, beginning with the formula Hear this word, and a dirge over a vision of the nation's defeat, attacks, like the previous group, the lavish ritual, sets in contrast to it Jehovah's demands for justice and civic purity; and, offering a reprieve if Israel will repent, closes with the prospect of an universal mourning (vv. 16, 17), which, though introduced by a therefore, has no logical connection with what precedes it.
5. V. 18-26 is the first of the two groups that open with Woe. Affirming that the eagerly expected Day of Jehovah will be darkness and disaster on disaster inevitable (18-20), it again emphasises Jehovah's desire for righteousness rather than worship (21-26), and closes with the threat of captivity beyond Damascus. Jehovah God of Hosts is His Name, as at the close of 3.
6. VI. 1-14. The second Woe, on them that are at ease in Zion (1, 2): a satire on the luxuries of the rich and their indifference to the national suffering (3-6): captivity must come, with the desolation of the land (9, 10); and in a peroration the prophet reiterates a general downfall of the nation because of its perversity. A Nation—needless to name it!—will oppress Israel from Hamath to the River of the Arabah.