It is very difficult to know, who are meant by this warning. An old and almost forgotten interpretation is, that the prophet meant those exiles who played with the fires of political revolution, instead of abiding the deliverance of the Lord. But there is now current among exegetes the more general interpretation that these incendiaries are the revilers and abusers of the Servant within Israel: for so the Psalms speak of the slingers of burning words at the righteous. We must notice, however, that the metaphor stands over against those in Israel who _walk in dark places and have no light_. In contrast to that kind of life, this may be the kind that coruscates with vanity, flashes with pride, or burns and scorches with its evil passions. We have a similar name for such a life. We call it a display of fireworks. The prophet tells them, who depend on nothing but their own false fires, how transient these are, how quickly quenched.
But is it not weird, that on our prophet's stage, however brilliantly its centre shines with figures of heroes and deeds of salvation, there should always be this dark, lurid background of evil and accursed men?
[187] This, of course, goes against Prof. Briggs's theory of the composition of Isa. xl.-lxvi. out of two poems (see p. 18).
[189] This is as the text is written; but the Massoretic reading gives, _that Israel to Him may be gathered_.
[190] So it seems best to give the sense of this difficult line, but most translators render _despised of soul_, or _thoroughly despised_, _abhorred by peoples_, or _by a people_, etc. The word for _despised_ is used elsewhere only in ch. liii. 3.
[191] Prof. A. B. Davidson, _Expositor_, Second Series, viii., 441.
[193] So George Eliot wrote of her own writings shortly before her death. See _Life_, iii., 245.
[194] Lady Ponsonby, to whom George Eliot wrote the letter quoted above, confessed that, with the disappearance of religious faith from her soul, there vanished also the power of interest in, and of pity for, her kind.
[198] How all their meanness, how all the sense of shame from which He suffered, breaks forth in these words: _Are ye come out as against a robber?_
[199] Literally, _lord of my cause_; my adversary or opponent at law.