The genuineness is incontrovertibly testified by the close; and it is only by a naturalistic tendency that it can be denied. With the announcement of the deliverance from Babel is first, in chap. xiv. 24, 25, connected an announcement of deliverance from Asshur; and then follows in ver. 26 and 27, the close of the whole prophecy from chap. xiii. 1, onward. Vers. 26 and 27, which speak of the whole earth and of all the nations, refer to chap. xiii., where the Prophet had spoken of an universal judgment, comp. ver. 5, 9, 10, &c.; while, in the verses immediately preceding, one single people, the Assyrians only, were spoken of It is thereby rendered impossible to separate chap. xiv. 24, 27 from the whole. Behind the world's power of the present--the Assyrian--the Prophet beholds a new one springing up--the Babylonish. Those who have asserted that the prophecy against Babel is altogether without foundation as soon as Isaiah is supposed to have composed it, are utterly mistaken. Although the prophecy was by no means destined for the contemporaries only, as prophecy is generally destined for all times of the Church, yet, even for the Prophet's contemporaries, every letter was of consequence. If Israel's principal enemies belonged to the future, how very little was to be feared from the present ones; and especially if Israel should and must rise from even the [Pg 136] deepest abasement, how should God not then deliver them from the lower distress and need? But just because weak faith does not like to draw such _inferences_, the Prophet at the close expressly adverts to the present affliction, and gives to the weak faith a distinct and sure word of God, by which it may support itself, and take encouragement in that affliction. The points of connection must not be overlooked which the prophecy in chap. xi. offers for the prophecy before us. We already met there the total decay of the royal house of David, the carrying away of Judah into exile, and their dispersion into all lands. It is on this foundation that the prophecy before us takes its stand: it points to the power by which these conditions are to be brought about. Farther--There, as well as here, the conditions of the future are not expressly _announced_ as such, but _supposed_: the Prophet takes his stand in the future. There, as well as here, the Prophet draws consolation in the sufferings of the present from a salvation to be bestowed in a far distant future only.