It was in this state of political danger and a general decline in morals, with a tendency to idolatry, that Isaiah—­preacher, statesman, historian, poet, and prophet—­was born.

Less is said of the personal history of this great man than of Moses or David, of Daniel or Elisha, and it is only in his writings that we see the solemn grandeur of his character.  We infer that he was allied with the royal family of David; he certainly held a high position in the courts of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.  He was a man of great dignity, experience, and wisdom, but ascetic in his habits and dress.  Although he associated with the great in courts and palaces, a cell was his delight.  He was a retiring, contemplative, rapt, austere man, severe on passing follies, and not sparing in his rebukes of sin in high places,—­something like Savonarola at Florence, both as preacher and prophet,—­and exercising a commanding influence on political affairs and on the people directly, especially during the reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah.  He denounced woes and calamities, yet escaped persecution from the grandeur of his character and the importance of his utterances.  He was a favorite of King Hezekiah, and was contemporary with the prophets Hosea, Amos, and Jonah.  He lived in Jerusalem, not far from the Temple, and had a wife and two sons.  He wrote the life of Uzziah, and died at the age of eighty-four, in the reign of Manasseh.  It is generally supposed that although Isaiah had lived in honor during the reigns of four kings, he suffered martyrdom at last.  It is the fate of prophets to be stoned when they are in antagonism with men in power, or with popular sentiments.  His prophetic ministry extended over a period of about fifty years, and he was continually consulted by the reigning monarchs.

The great outward events that took place during Isaiah’s public career were the invasion of Judah by the combined forces of Israel and Syria in the reign of Ahaz, and the great Assyrian invasion in the reign of Hezekiah.

In regard to the first, it was disastrous to Judah.  The weak king, the twelfth from David, was inclined to the idolatries of the surrounding nations, but was not signally bad like Ahab.  Yet he was no match for Pekah, who reigned at Samaria, or for Rezin, who reigned at Damascus.  Their combined armies slew in one day one hundred and twenty thousand of the subjects of Ahaz, and carried away into captivity two hundred thousand women and children, with immense spoil.  The conqueror then advanced to the siege of Jerusalem.  In his distress Ahaz invoked the aid of Pul, or Tiglath-pileser II., one of the most warlike of the Assyrian kings, whose kingdom stretched from the Armenian mountains on the north to Bagdad on the south, and from the Zagros chain on the east to the Euphrates on the west.  Earnestly did the prophet-statesman expostulate with Ahaz, telling him that the king of Assyria would prove “a razor to shave but too clean his desolate land.”  The inspired advice was rejected; and the result of the alliance was that Judah, like Israel, fell to the rank of a subject nation, and became tributary to Assyria, and Ahaz, a mere vassal of Tiglath-pileser.  The whole of Palestine became the border-land of the Assyrian empire, easy to be invaded and liable to be conquered.