The earlier prophecies of Isaiah, whether directed against Israel and its allies or against Judah, are unsparing in their condemnation of the political and social evils of the time, and predict the imminent and irremediable ruin of both nations. This is revealed to Isaiah in the vision which made him a prophet, in terms so drastic that the closing words were piously erased by some late editor (so in the Greek Bible), and a meaningless phrase put in their place in the curtailed sentence by a still later hand (our Hebrew text). With this the tenor of his utterances in cc. ii. 5-iii. 26; v. 1-30; ix. 8-x. 4, wholly agrees. These unrelieved forebodings of doom led in later times not only to excisions such as we have noted in vi. 13, but to interpolations; hopeful pendants were attached to the prophet's gloomy pictures, sometimes written for the purpose--a particularly instructive example is iv. 2-6, after iii. 16-iv. 1--sometimes borrowed from other prophetic contexts. To the latter class belongs the famous messianic oracle, ix. 1-7, which is very imperfectly connected (by changes in viii. 22) with the preceding climactic denunciation of doom, the end of which is missing. If Isa. ix. 1-7 is a prophecy by Isaiah, it can only belong to his latest years. One other feature of Isaiah's message must be signalized. His God indignantly rejects the sacrifices and all the pompous worship which are offered him in his temple in Jerusalem (Isa. i. 10-17). Men think they can thus gain the favour of God and persuade him to overlook or condone their sins against their fellows! Such worship is an insult to God. So Amos a few years before had condemned the worship at Bethel (Amos v. 21-25). So their successors repeat in no uncertain terms (see Mic. vi. 6-8; Jer. 7, especially vss. 21-23). It is the fundamental doctrine of prophecy: the will of God is wholly moral. For worship he cares nothing at all; for justice, fairness, and goodness between man and man he cares everything. Such a God is capable of destroying the nation for the wrongs men do their fellow men; he is not capable of being bribed by offerings, or flattered with psalms, or wheedled with prayers. He will listen to no intercession (Jer. xv. 1 ff., after c. 14); nothing but complete reformation and reparation will he call repentance--and there comes a pass where repentance is impossible.