The mystical language used by Isaiah in the fourteenth verse of the seventh chapter, which has been the cause of so much speculation and false interpretation, springs from the poetic element of the Hebrew mind. Had Isaiah lived in our day, his sublime genius would have produced a Paradise Lost; but in his own country, and in his own times, his imagination dwelt upon ideas and thoughts which had their root in the hearts of the Jewish people. The Hebrew poets found subjects within the history of their own nation best suited to arouse their genius, and move the hearts of the people. The sorrows and afflictions brought on the nation by her enemies, and her final deliverance by the hand of the Lord, are favorite themes, and inspire her poets with thoughts full of tenderness, and with denunciations which are sublime and often terrific. The harp of Zion in the hands of the daughters of Judah, as they weep by the waters of Babylon, gives forth no sounds but those of sorrow; but the genius of her prophets, inspired by a consciousness that a time of deliverance will come, deals out thunderbolts on the heads of their oppressors. What are called the prophecies of Isaiah are nothing more, many of them, than so many epic poems, like the Iliad of Homer, to celebrate scenes and real occurrences in Jewish history. The war upon Ahaz, king of Judah, by Rezin and Pekah, kings of Israel and Syria, took place during the life of Isaiah: and the poet undertakes to commemorate the history of the times, in the form of a Jewish epic. He speaks of the past, and not of things to come. The Jews were taught to believe that their nation was the favorite people of God, and from the time of Moses to the last of her prophets, her poets did not hesitate to introduce the Lord, and cause him to take part in a Jewish epic, any more than Homer hesitated to introduce Jupiter and all the heathen gods into the story of the Iliad. The meeting of the Lord and Ahaz at the "end of conduit of the upper field," and what afterwards takes place, is the poetic license of the poet, as he undertakes to narrate a portion of the history of his own time. CHAPTER XXI. Bethlehem the birthplace of Christ, as foretold by the prophets.--Cyrus, the deliverer and ruler referred to by Micah the prophet.--The Lamentations of Jeremiah spoken of by Matthew (Chap. ii. 18), refers to the Jews, and not to the massacre of the infants by Herod. When Herod inquired of the wise men where Christ should be born, they said unto him, "In Bethlehem of Judea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel." (_Matt_. ii. 5, 6.)