_Ho! Ari-El, Ari-El! City David beleaguered! Add a year to a year, let the feasts run their round, then will I bring straitness upon Ari-El, and there shall be moaning and bemoaning,[44] and yet she shall be unto Me as an Ari-El._ [44] Cheyne. The general bearing of this enigma became plain enough after the sore siege and sudden deliverance of Jerusalem in 701. But we are unable to make out one or two of its points. _Ari-El_ may mean either _The Lion of God_ (2 Sam. xxiii. 20), or _The Hearth of God_ (Ezek. xliii. 15, 16). If the same sense is to be given to the four utterances of the name, then _God's-Lion_ suits better the description of ver. 4; but _God's-Hearth_ seems suggested by the feminine pronoun in ver. 1, and is a conception to which Isaiah returns in this same group of prophecies (xxxi. 9). It is possible that this ambiguity was part of the prophet's design; but if he uses the name in both senses, some of the force of his enigma is lost to us. In any case, however, we get a picturesque form for a plain meaning. In a year after the present year is out, says Isaiah, God Himself will straiten the city, whose inhabitants are now so careless, and she shall be full of mourning and lamentation. Nevertheless in the end she shall be a true Ari-El: be it a true _God's-Lion_, victor and hero; or a true _God's-Hearth_, His own inviolate shrine and sanctuary. The next few verses (3-8) expand this warning. In plain words, Jerusalem is to undergo a siege. God Himself shall _encamp against thee--round about_ reads our English version, but more probably, as with the change of a letter, the Septuagint reads it--_like David_. If we take this second reading, the reference to David in the enigma itself (ver. 1) becomes clear. The prophet has a very startling message to deliver: that God will besiege His own city, the city of David! Before God can make her in truth His own, make her verify her name, He will have to beleaguer and reduce her. For so novel and startling an intimation the prophet pleads a precedent: "_City which David_ himself _beleaguered_! Once before in thy history, ere the first time thou wast made God's own hearth, thou hadst to be besieged. As then, so now. Before thou canst again be a true Ari-El I must _beleaguer thee like David_." This reading and interpretation gives to the enigma a reason and a force which it does not otherwise possess.