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It should also have occurred to them, that as he wrote, if he did
write, the book of Ecclesiastes, long after these songs, and in which
he exclaims that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, that he
included those songs in that description. This is the more probable,
because he says, or somebody for him, Ecclesiastes ii. 8, I got me
men-singers, and women-singers (most probably to sing those songs],
and musical instruments of all sores; and behold (Ver. ii), "all was
vanity and vexation of spirit." The compilers however have done their
work but by halves; for as they have given us the songs they should
have given us the tunes, that we might sing them.
The books called the books of the Prophets fill up all the remaining
part of the Bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning with Isaiah
and ending with Malachi, of which I have given a list in the
observations upon Chronicles. Of these sixteen prophets, all of whom
except the last three lived within the time the books of Kings and
Chronicles were written, two only, Isaiah and Jeremiah, are mentioned
in the history of those books. I shall begin with those two,
reserving, what I have to say on the general character of the men
called prophets to another part of the work.
Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to Isaiah,
will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions ever
put together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and, except
a short historical part, and a few sketches of history in the first
two or three chapters, is one continued incoherent, bombastical rant,
full of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of
meaning; a school-boy would scarcely have been excusable for writing
such stuff; it is (at least in translation) that kind of composition
and false taste that is properly called prose run mad.
The historical part begins at chapter xxxvi., and is continued to the
end of chapter xxxix. It relates some matters that are said to have
passed during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, at which time
Isaiah lived. This fragment of history begins and ends abruptly; it
has not the least connection with the chapter that precedes it, nor
with that which follows it, nor with any other in the book. It is
probable that Isaiah wrote this fragment himself, because he was an
actor in the circumstances it treats of; but except this part there
are scarcely two chapters that have any connection with each other.
One is entitled, at the beginning of the first verse, the burden of
Babylon; another, the burden of Moab; another, the burden of
Damascus; another, the burden of Egypt; another, the burden of the
Desert of the Sea; another, the burden of the Valley of Vision: as
you would say the story of the Knight of the Burning Mountain, the
story of Cinderella, or the glassen slipper, the story of the
Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, etc., etc.
I have already shown, in the instance of the last two verses of 2
Chronicles, and the first three in Ezra, that the compilers of the
Bible mixed and confounded the writings of different authors with
each other; which alone, were there no other cause, is sufficient to
destroy the authenticity of an compilation, because it is more than
presumptive evidence that the compilers are ignorant who the authors
were. A very glaring instance of this occurs in the book ascribed to
Isaiah: the latter part of the 44th chapter, and the beginning of the
45th, so far from having been written by Isaiah, could only have been
written by some person who lived at least an hundred and fifty years
after Isaiah was dead.
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