Such a purpose and style trust little to method, and it would be useless to search for any strict division of strophes in the passage.[44] The following, however, is a manifest division of subject, according to the two tempers to which the prophet had to appeal. Verses 12 to 25, and perhaps 26, are addressed to the idolatrous Jews. But in 26 there is a transition to the despair of the nobler hearts in Israel, who, though they continued to believe in the One True God, imagined that He had abandoned them; and to such vv. 27 to 31 are undoubtedly addressed. The different treatment accorded to the two classes is striking. The former of these the prophet does not call by any title of the people of God; with the latter he pleads by a dear double name that he may win them through every recollection of their gracious past, _Jacob_ and _Israel_ (ver. 27). Challenge and sarcasm are his style with the idolaters, his language clashing out in bursts too loud and rapid sometimes for the grammar, as in ver. 24; but with the despondent his way is gentle persuasiveness, with music that swells and brightens steadily, passing without a break from the minor key of pleading to the major of glorious promise. 1. AGAINST THE IDOLATERS. A couple of sarcastic sentences upon idols and their manufacture (vv. 19, 20) stand between two majestic declarations of God's glory in nature and in history (vv. 12-17 and 21-24). It is an appeal from the worshippers' images to their imagination. _Who hath measured in his hollow hand the waters, and heaven ruled off with a span? Or caught in a tierce the dust of the earth, and weighed in scales mountains, and hills in a balance? Who hath directed the spirit of Jehovah, and as man of His counsel hath helped Him to know? With whom took He counsel, that such an one informed Him and taught Him in the orthodox path, and taught Him knowledge and helped Him to know the way of intelligence?_ The term translated _orthodox path_ is literally _path of ordinance or judgement, the regular path_, and is doubtless to be taken along with its parallel, _way of intelligence_, as a conventional phrase of education, which the prophet employed to make his sarcasm the stronger. _Lo nations! as a drop from a bucket, and like dust in a balance, are they reckoned. Lo the Isles!_[45] _as a trifle He lifteth. And Lebanon is by no means enough for burning, nor its brute-life enough for an offering. All the nations are as nothing before Him, as spent and as waste are they reckoned for Him._ When he has thus soared enough, as on an archangel's wings, he swoops with one rapid question down from the height of his imagination upon the images. _To whom then will ye liken God, and what likeness will ye range by Him?_ _The image! A smith cast it, and a smelter plates it with gold, and smelts silver chains. He that is straitened for an offering--he chooseth a tree that does not rot, seeks to him a cunning carver to set up an image that will not totter._[46]