[50] Cf. with the fifth and sixth verses of chap. xxxii. the forcible passage in the introduction to Carlyle's _Cromwell's Letters_, beginning, "Sure enough, in the Heroic Century, as in the Unheroic, knaves and cowards ... were not wanting. But the question always remains, Did they lie chained?" etc. CHAPTER XVI. _ISAIAH TO WOMEN._ ISAIAH xxxii. 9-20 (DATE UNCERTAIN). The date of this prophecy, which has been appended to those spoken by Isaiah during the Egyptian intrigues (704-702), is not certain. It is addressed to women, and there is no reason why the prophet, when he was upbraiding the men of Judah for their false optimism, should not also have sought to awaken the conscience of their wives and daughters on what is the besetting sin rather of women than of men. The chief evidence for dissociating the prophecy from its immediate predecessors is that it predicts, or apparently predicts (vv. 13-14), the ruin of Jerusalem, whereas in these years Isaiah was careful to exempt the Holy City from the fate which he saw falling on the rest of the land. But otherwise the argument of the prophecy is almost exactly that of chaps. xxix.-xxx. By using the same words when he blames the women for _ease_ and _carelessness_ in vv. 9-11, as he does when he promises _confidence_ and _quiet resting-places_ in vv. 17, 18, Isaiah makes clear that his purpose is to contrast the false optimism of society during the postponement of the Assyrian invasion with that confidence and stability upon righteousness which the Spirit of God can alone create. The prophecy, too, has the usual three stages: sin in the present, judgement in the immediate future, and a state of blessedness in the latter days. The near date at which judgement is threatened--_days beyond a year_--ought to be compared with chap. xxix. 1: _Add ye a year to a year; let the feasts come round_. The new points are--that it is the women who are threatened, that Jerusalem itself is pictured in ruin, and that the pouring out of the Spirit is promised as the cause of the blessed future. I. THE CHARGE TO THE WOMEN (vv. 9-12) is especially interesting, not merely for its own terms, but because it is only part of a treatment of women which runs through the whole of Scripture.