Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 79:315 (Jul 1922)
Article: Shear-Jashub: Or The Remnant Sections In Isaiah.
Author: Theophlus J. Gaehr

BSac 79:315 (July 1922) p. 363

Shear-Jashub: Or The Remnant Sections In Isaiah.

Theophilus J. Gaehr, Ph.D.

A class of twenty-six passages, some of them sections of considerable length, form the object of the present study and discussion.

Shear-Jashub, which signifies, “A remnant shall return,” was Isaiah’s first son. The LXX renders it: Ho Cataleiphtheis Iasoub. Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible has only this brief remark on the name and on this class of passages: “A symbolical name given to a son of Isaiah to signify the return of the remnant to God after the punishment at the hand of the Assyrians.”

1. Our first task will be a statement, exhibition, and brief exegetical examination of the passages in question.

Isaiah 1:8–9. In the translation of Isaac Leeser, which I prize very highly and which I desire to recommend to every student of the Old Testament, this passage is rendered thus: “And left is the daughter of Zion as a hut in a vineyard, as a lodge in a cucumber-field, as a besieged city. Unless the LORD of hosts had left unto us a remnant ever so small, like Sodom should we have been, unto Gomorrah should we have been compared.” (The A. V. has “cottage,” instead of “booth.”) The important Hebrew words here are hothir and notherah.

We next refer to 4:2–3:”In that day shall the growth of the Lord be beautiful and glorious.”1 This passage represents three new Hebrew words (peleytath, hannish’ar, hannothar). Leeser: “On that day shall the

BSac 79:315 (July 1922) p. 364

sprout of the Lord be for ornament and for honour.”) Dr. G. Campbell Morgan analyzes and summarizes the passage as follows: “Material prosperity, moral purity, and mighty protection.”

Isaiah 6:13, which has been translated quite differently: “As an oak, whose stock remaineth, when they cast their leaves.”

We now come to a cluster of most important verses bearing still more directly upon our theme: viz. 7:3; 10:14. The prophet meets Ahaz, the only one of the four kings of Isaiah’s time who did not that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah his God, like his father David, and offers to him the divine sign of Immanuel (“God with us”). Isaiah 8:1–3 is closely connected with this: “Take thee a great table, and write upon it in common script . . . Maher-shalal-hash-baz, i.e., t...