Isaiah 31:3

men, and not God … flesh, and not spirit In these antitheses Isaiah formulates his religious conception of history. The present crisis has not been brought about by the mere collision of earthly forces (Egypt, Assyria, Judah); faith discerns in it the operation of a spiritual principle, and knows that that principle must be victorious. "Spirit" is the energetic indestructible element in the universe, by which all life is sustained; and that which is distinctive of the teaching of Isaiah and the prophets generally is (1) the identification of this principle with the moral purpose of Jehovah, and (2) the assertion of the supremacy of the spiritual, thus ethically conceived, over the material. That men could not stand against God, or flesh against spirit, Isaiah's contemporaries did not need to be taught; what separated him from his hearers was the conviction that there is but one Divine Person, and one spiritual power in the universe, viz.: Jehovah and His moral government as revealed in the consciousness of the prophet. Hence he continues: And Jehovah shall stretch out his hand, and the helper (Egypt) shall stumble and the holpen (Judah) shall fall; and together they shall all of them perish.