Chapter XL: Section VII: The Old Testament (3)

Feelings like those that inspired the Jewish chroniclers are still more clearly visible in the history of Thibet than in that of China. Here the orthodox compilers frequently inform us that the reign of a king who observed the law and honored the clergy was distinguished in a peculiarly high degree by the prosperity of the land and the happiness of its people. Of one, for instance, who "entered the portals of religion" at thirty-eight years of age, it is noted that "he founded the constitution of the whole great nation on order, and furthered its welfare and peace" (G. O. M., p. 201). His son made the whole great nation happy by promoting religion and the laws (Ibid., p. 203). Another monarch receives a still higher panegyric. "By the unbounded honor he showed towards the clergy, he exalted religion, so that by the religious care which he bestowed on the inhabitants of the snow-kingdom, the welfare of the people of Thibet equaled that of the Tegri" (gods or spirits). A painful contrast is presented by his successor on the throne, Lang-Dharma, who belonged to the heretical "black religion," who destroyed the temples of Buddhism, persecuted its adherents, burnt its books, and degraded its ministers. So impious was he, that the very names of the three gems and of the four orders of clergy ceased to be mentioned in the land. He met, however, with his well-deserved punishment at the hands of a faithful Buddhist, who assassinated him with a bow and arrow, at the same time using words to the effect that, as Buddha overcame the unbelievers, so he had killed the wicked king (Ibid., p. 49). Another king "showed respect to the hidden sanctuaries, whereby his power and the welfare of the land increased" (Ibid., p. 321). Comparable to Josiah in his piety and reverence for the true religion was a king whose reign is described in glowing language by his admiring historians. "This powerful ruler," they say, "who regarded the religion of Buddha as the most precious gem, gave great freedoms and privileges to the clergy." He honored temples and respected the pious endowments of his ancestors. Not only did he punish thieves, robbers, and similar criminals, but if any man, of high or low position, was inimical or ill-disposed towards the faith he was deprived of his property and reduced to the greatest distress. Some of those whose heresy was visited with this severe chastisement were so unreasonable as to grumble, and pointed out that it was only the clergy who were fattening on their misery and oppression. In saying this they pointed at the spiritual men who passed by; whereupon the faithful king issued a decree, saying, "It is strictly prohibited to look contemptuously at my clergy and to point at them with the finger;" whoever dared to do so was to have his eyes put out and his finger cut off. Unfortunately "these orders of the pious king" led to the formation of a party of malcontents, by two of whom he was strangled in his sleep. The lamentations of the historian at this untoward event are unmeasured. The power and strength of the Thibetan kingdom ran away like the stream of spring waters; the happiness and welfare of the people were extinguished like a lamp whose oil is exhausted; the royal power and majesty vanished like the colors of the rainbow; the black religion began to prevail like a destructive tempest; the inclination to good dispositions and good deeds was forgotten like a dream. Moreover, the translation of religious writings remained unfinished—for this king had also resembled Josiah in his interest in sacred books;—and those great men who adhered to the true religion could only weep over its decline and fall (G. O. M., p. 361).

Not less pitiable was the fate of Judea under the irreligious monarchs who followed upon Josiah. One was taken prisoner by the king of Egypt; two others were carried off to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar; under the fourth, the national independence was finally extinguished, and the people reduced to a condition of captivity in a foreign land. This calamity is distinctly ascribed to their neglect of the true religion, and their contempt for the messengers of God (2 Chron. xxxvi. 14-17).

Strictly speaking, the history of the Jewish nation ends with the Captivity. But there are still three books of a historical character in the Old Testament, Ezra and Nehemiah, relating the fortunes of a small number of Jews who returned to the land of their forefathers, when a change of policy in their rulers rendered this return possible; and Esther, containing the account of the reception of a Jewish woman into the harem of a heathen king, and showing how ably she contrived to use her influence in favor of the interests of her race.

SUBDIVISION 2.—_Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes._

The Book of Job, the Psalms attributed to David, and the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes attributed to Solomon, resemble one another in teaching religion and morality by the method of short sentences or maxims. They do not, like the books we have just examined, convey their moral by means of historical narrative; nor do they, like the prophets, impress it in flowing and continuous rhetoric. Between the sober and even course of the history, and the impassioned emotional torrents poured out by the prophets, they occupy a medium position. They are more introspective, more occupied with feelings and reflections, than the first; more heedful of external nature, more able to contemplate facts, apart from their peculiar construction of those facts, than the last.

Job is the story of a wealthy land-owner, concerning whom God and Satan enter into a sort of wager; God, in the first instance, challenging Satan to consider his piety and general good character, and Satan replying that, if only his prosperity were destroyed, he would curse God to his face. God then gives Satan leave to put his theory to the test by attacks directed against Job's property, desiring at the same time that his person may be spared. Job bears the loss of his wealth with resignation; but at a second colloquy Satan insinuates that his virtue would give way if his misfortunes extended to his person. Hereupon God gives Satan leave to attack him in every respect so long as he spares his life. Poor Job is accordingly covered with boils from head to foot, and his patience, proof against poverty, breaks down under this terrible infliction. He loudly curses the day of his birth, and wishes he had died from the womb. After this introduction, which, in its familiar conversations between Jehovah and the devil, resembles the grotesque legends of the middle ages, the bulk of the book is occupied with the complaints of Job, the discourses of his three friends who come to comfort him, the reproaches directed against his self-righteousness by a person named Elihu, and, finally, a long address—containing as it were the moral of the tale—from the Almighty himself. At the close of the book Job expresses his abhorrence of himself and his profound repentance, and his former prosperity is then not only restored but amplified to a high degree. He has seven sons and three beautiful daughters, and dies one hundred and forty years after the events narrated, having seen four generations of his descendants. What was the effect on the mind of Satan of this result, whether he considered himself defeated, or whether he was confirmed in his malicious opinion that Job did not "fear God for nought," is nowhere stated. But one of the most curious features of this book is the picture it gives of that person, as a being not altogether bad, though fond of mischief, taking a somewhat cynical view of the motives of human conduct, and anxious, in the interests of his theory, to try experiments upon a subject selected for him by his antagonist, and therefore peculiarly likely to disappoint his expectations. It does not appear that he had any desire to hurt Job further than was necessary for his purpose, nor is there a trace of the bad character he subsequently obtained as a mere devil, longing to involve men's souls in eternal destruction.

In the Psalms we have a series of religious songs of varying character—praising, blessing, supplicating, complaining, lamenting, invoking good or evil upon others, according to the mood of the several writers, or of the same writer at different seasons. Some of them are of considerable beauty, and express much depth of religious feeling. Others, again, are inspired by sentiments of malevolence, and merely appeal to God in support of national or private animosities. As examples of the latter class, take the 110th Psalm, supposed to have been addressed to David, where it is predicted that "the Lord at the right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath," and that "he shall fill the places with the dead bodies; he shall wound the heads over many countries." In the immediately preceding Psalm, the 109th, the writer is still more vindictive, and his enemy is more exclusively his own. He begins by calling him "wicked," and says he has spoken against him with a lying tongue. Premising that he is altogether in the act of prayer, he prays against the adversary in somewhat emphatic language:—

"Set thou a wicked man over him, and let the accuser stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let him be found guilty, and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few, and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children wander about and beg, and seek food far from their desolate places. Let the creditor catch all that he hath, and strangers rob the fruit of his industry. Let there be none to extend mercy to him, and let none be merciful to his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off, and in the following generation let their name be blotted out. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord, and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. Let them be before the Lord continually, and let him cut off the memory of them from the earth" (Psalms cix. 1-15).

In the following verse the enemy is declared to have persecuted the poor and needy, and this is put forward as the excuse for imprecations evidently inspired by personal ill-will. In another of these Psalms, Jehovah is entreated to persecute the enemies of Israel with storm and tempest, as fires burn up woods and flames set mountains on fire (Psalms lxxxiii. 14, 15). Elsewhere the king is said to trust in the Lord, and he therefore hopes that the Lord will find out his enemies, and will make them as a fiery oven in the time of his anger; that the fire will devour them; and that he will destroy their fruit from the earth and their seed from among the children of men (Ps. xxi. 8-10).

Parallels to these Psalms of cursing may be met with in the Veda, just as the Psalms in general are more nearly paralleled by the Vedic hymns than by those of any other sacred book. One poet writes as follows:—

"Blinded shall ye be, O enemies, like headless snakes, and thus plagued by Agni, may Indra always kill the best of you. Whatever relation troubles us, whatever stranger wishes to kill us, him may all the gods destroy; prayer is my powerful protection, my refuge and powerful protection" (S. V., p. 297.—Sâma Veda, 2. 9. 3. 8).

Remarkably close is the similarity between the assertion of the Hindu Rishi that prayer is his powerful protection, and that of the Hebrew Psalmist that he is, or gives himself to, prayer. In another hymn the aid of a goddess Apvā (said to mean "disease or fear") is invoked against the enemies of the singer:—

"Bewildering the hearts of our enemies, O Apvā, take possession of their limbs and pass onwards; come near, burn them with fires in their hearts; may our enemies fall into blind darkness (O. S. T., vol. v. p. 110).... Attack, ye heroes, and conquer; may Indra grant you protection; may our arm be productive of terror, that ye may be unconquerable. Arrow-goddess, sharpened by prayer; fly past as when shot off; reach the enemies; penetrate into them; let not even one escape thee" (S. V., p. 297.—Sâma Veda, 2. 9. 3. 5).

But these expressions of hostility, directed apparently against enemies who were engaged in actual war with the friends of the writer, make no approach in the bitterness of their curses to the language of the Psalmist when dealing with his personal foes. A parallel to this more private enmity may be found in the Atharva-Veda, where the god Kama is invoked to bring down the severest evils upon the objects of the imprecation:—

"With oblations of butter I worship Kama, the mighty slayer of enemies. Do thou, when lauded, beat down my foes by thy great might. The sleeplessness which is displeasing to my mind and eye, which harasses and does not delight me, that sleeplessness I let loose upon my enemy. Having praised Kama, may I rend him. Kama, do thou, a fierce lord, let loose sleeplessness, misfortune, childlessness, homelessness, and want upon him who designs us evil.... May breath, cattle, life, forsake them.... Indra, Agni, and Kama, mounted on the same chariot, hurl ye down my foes; when they have fallen into the nethermost darkness, do thou, Agni, burn up their dwellings. Kama, slay my enemies; cast them down into thick [literally, blind] darkness. Let them all become destitute of power and vigor, and not live a single day.... Let them (my enemies) float downwards like a boat severed from its moorings.... Do thou, Kama, drive my enemies from this world by that [same weapon or amulet] wherewith the gods repelled the Asuras, and Indra hurled the Dasyus into the nethermost darkness" (O. S. T., vol. v. p. 404).

As corresponding to the many expressions to be found in the Psalms of trust in God, of pious belief in his protection, and of sensibility to his all-embracing knowledge, we may quote the language of a Chinese monarch in one of the Odes of the She King. The first six lines are, it appears, held by the current interpretation in China to contain the admonition addressed by the ministers to the king, and the last six the king's reply. But we may more reasonably suppose, with Dr. Legge, that the whole Ode is spoken by the king himself:—

"Let me be reverent, let me be reverent [in attending to my duties];
[The way of] Heaven is evident,
And its appointment is not easily [preserved].
Let me not say that It is high aloft above me.
It ascends and descends about our doings;
It daily inspects us wherever we are.

I am [but as] a little child,
Without intelligence to be reverently [attentive to my duties];
But by daily progress and monthly advance,
I will learn to hold fast the gleams [of knowledge], till I arrive at
bright intelligence.
Assist me to bear the burden [of my position],
And show me how to display a virtuous conduct."[94]

We may fairly place this simple expression of the author's desire to do his duty, and of his reverential consciousness that Heaven is ever about us and "inspects us wherever we are," beside the words attributed to David:—

"O Jehovah, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou winnowest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways" (Psalm cxxxix. 1-3).

We need not dwell upon the Proverbs, traditionally ascribed to Solomon, but scarcely worthy of the renowned wisdom of that monarch. Some of them are indeed shrewd and well expressed; others are commonplace; and others again display more worldly wisdom than religion or virtue. Such is the recommendation of bribery: "A gift in secret pacifieth anger, and a reward in the bosom strong wrath" (Prov. xxi. 14); which, if written by a king and dispenser of justice, would be a tolerably broad hint to his loving subjects. It is noteworthy that Christ had studied this book, and that it had sunk deep into his mind (_e. g._, Prov. xxv. 21, 22, and xxvii. 1). The two concluding chapters are not by the same author, at least if we may believe in their superscriptions. In the last of all, a king named Lemuel repeats for the benefit of posterity the advice given him by his mother, and no doubt by many mothers to many sons both before and after him, to be careful about women and not to drink wine or spirituous liquors.

Ecclesiastes, or Koheleth, composed (according to Ewald) in the latter end of the Persian dominion, is the work of a cynic who has had much experience of the world, and has found it hollow and unsatisfactory. He is not a man of very devout mind, and can find no comfort in the ordinary commonplaces about the goodness of God, or the manner in which misfortunes are sent as punishments for sin. There is much good sense mixed with his lamentations over the vanity of life. He has seen all the works done under the sun, and all are in his opinion "vanity and vexation of spirit."

"Wisdom and knowledge do but bring more grief. Koheleth tried various kinds of pleasure and found them vain too. He built, he planted, he made pools of water. He procured men-servants and maid-servants, and (as a natural consequence) had servants born in his house. All was equally fruitless. But whatever a man does, he has nothing but sorrow and grief. Even wisdom is of little use, for a dolt may inherit the fruit of the wise man's labors. Men are no better than animals; they all die equally; all return to the dust. Who can say that man's spirit goes upwards, and the animal's downwards? Just men are often rewarded like wicked men, and wicked men like just ones; this is one of the many vanities on earth. So then the best thing a man can do is to eat, drink, and enjoy life with an agreeable wife; for this life is all he has. Once dead, there is no further consciousness, or participation in anything that is going on. Whatever a man's hand finds to do, let him do it with all his might; for there is neither action nor knowledge in the grave. It is well to remember God in youth before the evil days come. Words of the wise are as goads, but book-making and preaching are both of them a bore." Lastly, Koheleth concludes with the pious advice to the young man whom he is addressing, to fear God and keep his commandments, for that God will judge every action, be it good or be it bad.

SUBDIVISION 3.—_The Song of Solomon._[95]

It is a singularly fortunate circumstance that the Song of Songs, a little work of an altogether secular nature and wholly unlike any other portion of the Hebrew Scriptures, should have been admitted into the Canon. Whatever may have been the delusion, whether its reputed Solomonian authorship or some other theory about it, under which it obtained this privilege, we owe it to this mistake that the solitary example of the Jewish drama in existence should have been preserved for the instruction of modern readers. I say modern readers, because it is not until quite recently that the dramatic character of this piece has been ascertained and established beyond reasonable doubt. Thanks to the scholarship of Germany and France, we are now able to read the Song in the light of common sense. The stern theology of Judaism is for once laid aside, and we have before us a common love-story such as might happen among any Gentile and unbelieving race. A young girl, called a Sulamite, who is attached to a young man of her own rank in life, has been carried off to the harem of Solomon against her will. She is indifferent to the splendor of the royal palace, and resists the amorous advances of the king. Thus she succeeds in "keeping her vineyard;" and is rewarded by rejoining her shepherd lover in her native village. The play is not without beauty, although it evinces a somewhat primitive condition of the drama at the time of its composition.

SUBDIVISION 4.—_The Prophets._

We have in the prophetical books a class of writings altogether peculiar to the Hebrew Scriptures. The prophets were men who during the whole course of the Hebrew monarchy, and even long after its close, acted as the inspired organs of the Almighty; admonishing, reproving, warning, or counseling in his name. At first the method by which the revelations they received were made known by them, was oral communication. Writing was not employed by them as an instrument of prophetic discourse until after the earliest and most flourishing stage of the monarchy was past. Perhaps they were the most powerful of the prophets who addressed their exhortations directly to those for whom they were intended in eloquent discourse or timely parable. Such prophets were Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, and Elisha, at the courts of the several kings in whose days they lived. Prophecy had declined a little in its influence on the people when its representatives betook themselves to the calmer method of written composition. Nevertheless, some of the prophets who have left us their works in writing continued at the same time to employ the older instrument of spoken addresses. Isaiah and Jeremiah are conspicuous instances of this employment of the two organs of communication downwards. During this same period there were many prophets who trusted exclusively to writing; while in the latest stage of prophetical inspiration, oral instruction was altogether dropped, and literary means alone were employed to make known the mind of Jehovah to his chosen people.

The constant theme of all the prophets whose works have come down to us is the future greatness of the Hebrew race; their complete triumph over all their enemies; the glory of their ultimate condition, and the confusion or destruction of those who have opposed their march to this final victory. The human agent by whom this great revolution is to be effected is the Messiah. He is the destined weapon in the hand of God by whom Jewish religion, Jewish institutions, and Jewish rulers are to attain that supremacy over heathen religion, heathen institutions, and heathen rulers which is their natural birthright. Continual disappointment had no effect upon these sanguine expectations. The Messiah _must_ come, Israel _must_ be victorious over every other nation that came in the way: this was the word of God, and it could not fail to be fulfilled. Troubles of many kinds might beset the people in the meantime; but of the attainment of the goal at last there could be no doubt.

Of course this ever-recurring burden of the prophetic song is varied by many strains on subordinate or outlying topics. The prophets constantly refer to the events of the day, and use them for their own purposes. They reprove the sins of kings and people, endeavoring to show that these bring upon them the misfortunes from which they suffer and which postpone the day of their triumph over the Gentiles. They connect special calamities with special offenses. They indicate the conduct which under existing circumstances ought to be pursued. They draw eloquent and beautiful pictures of the state of their own and of foreign countries. And they endeavor to raise the popular conceptions of the majesty of God, of his character, and his requirements, to the level they have themselves attained.

Turning now to the individual books which have come down to us in the Canon, and which must by no means be taken as comprehending all the works of the prophets who wrote their prophecies, we find that the oldest of these is that of Joel, the son of Pethuel.[96] Joel is supposed by the highest authority to have lived in the time of King Jehoash, or Joash, who is praised for his devout obedience to Jehoiada, the priest (2 Kings, xii). His prophecy was occasioned by a devastation of locusts. Locusts had wasted the land for some years, and there had been drought at the same time. On the occasion of a long drought Joel feared a fresh invasion of locusts, and therefore summoned his people to a festival of repentance at the temple. This festival occurred, and rain soon followed (P. A. B., vol. i. p. 87 ff.). Here the old notion of a direct connection between the attention paid by the people to Jehovah and his care for them is almost grotesquely manifested. Locusts are to be averted by fasting; rain obtained by rather more than usual devotion to God. On the other hand, the more spiritual view of religion to which the prophets generally tend, is shown in the order to the people to rend their hearts and not their garments. After thus attending to immediate necessities, Joel in stirring language exhorts the people to war, hoping that they would thus get rid of the foreign oppressors who had broken into the sunken kingdom of David. He bids them beat their plough-shares into swords, and their pruning-hooks into spears, and desires the weak to say that they are strong. He promises his people revenge over their enemies, and holds out the cheering prospect of a time when, instead of their sons and daughters being sold as slaves to strangers, they will themselves make slaves of the sons and daughters of the heathen.

Some short passages subsequently embodied by Isaiah in his works are considered by Ewald to belong to the same early age as Joel. The next complete prophet, however, in order of time, was Amos, whose revelations applied to the northern kingdom and threatened it with invasion by the Assyrians. Amos in fact utters a series of threatening predictions against various peoples, and his tone is mainly that of reproof. While, however, he foretells the captivity of Israel, and holds out nothing but the most depressing prospects of ruin and misery throughout the bulk of his book, he falls at the end into the accustomed strain of hopeful exultation. "The tabernacle of David" is to be raised up; Israel is to be supreme over the heathen; and the Israelites are not to be disturbed again from the land which God has given them, where exuberant prosperity is to be their lot. Incidentally, Amos tells us a little of his personal history, which is not without interest. He attributes his consecration to the prophetic office to the direct intervention of Jehovah. He had originally no connection with other prophets, but was a simple herdsman, and was employed to gather sycamore fruit. But Jehovah took him while he was following the flock, and said, "Go, prophecy unto my people Israel." His is thus a typical case of the belief in immediate inspiration, and he is an example of the kind of character which led to the existence among the Israelites of the peculiar and powerful class who were holy, but not consecrated. Amos also tells us of a quarrel he had had with Amaziah, a priest at the court of Jeroboam. This priest had complained of his dismal predictions to the king, and had bidden him go to Judah and prophecy there. In return for this evidence of hostility Amos informs the priest that his wife is to become a prostitute in the town, that his sons and his daughters are to fall by the sword, that his land is to be divided by lot, and that he himself is to die on polluted soil (Amos vii. 10-17). Such were the courtesies that passed between rival teachers of religion at the court of Jeroboam.

Hosea also tells us something of his personal affairs, more especially of his matrimonial relations, in which he was far from fortunate. We feel, in his opening chapters, the soreness of a husband whose wife has contemned his company and sought the amusement of a troop of lovers. Gomer, in fact, was shockingly unfaithful, and Hosea uses her as a type of the infidelity of Israel to Jehovah. At length she deserted him altogether, and went to another house, but he brought her back as a slave and put her under strict conjugal discipline. In like manner is Israel to return to her God, whom she has deserted for a time, and under the influence of God's love, freely bestowed after his anger has passed away, is to enjoy a period of great prosperity. Hosea, it will be observed, belonged to the northern kingdom, and his book is preëminently the Ephraimitic book of prophecy. But he wrote it in Judah. He worked in the north at two distinct epochs, first towards the close of Jeroboam II.'s reign, afterwards in the time of Zachariah, Shallum, and Menahem (P. A. B., vol. i. p. 171 ff.).

An anonymous prophet, contemporary with Isaiah, stands next in order of time. He is the author of Zechariah ix.-xi. inclusive, and of Zechariah chap. xiii. ver. 7-9 (P. A. B., vol i. p. 247 ff.). These chapters contain the first distinct announcement of the advent of the Messiah, who is described in the famous prediction of a King coming to Jerusalem on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass. Here too we find the curious allegory of the two staves, Beauty and Bands, whereof one was broken by the prophet in token of the breach of his covenant with all the nations; the other, in token of the rupture of fraternal relations between Israel and Judah. In the course of this allegory, the prophet demands his price, thirty pieces of silver, and throws it into the temple treasure; a passage which, by an accidental obscurity in the Hebrew, has been mistranslated as referring, not to the treasure, but to "the potter in the house of Lord," and then misapplied to the betrayal of Christ and the purchase of the potter's field.

In the concluding words of this prophet it is announced that two-thirds of the people will perish, but that the remaining third will, after refining and trial, be accepted by God as his own people.

We enter now upon the consideration of a prophet who stands in the foremost rank of those distinguished leaders of opinion whose works have been included in the Canon. There is no greater name among the prophets of Israel than that of Isaiah. But in speaking of Isaiah we must not fall into the confusion of including under his writings the compositions of a prophet of far later date, which have been mistakenly bound up with his. Isaiah himself cannot receive credit for all that is published in his name. But that which he has actually left us is enough to entitle him to admiration as a master of rhetoric.

Isaiah lived in the reign of Hezekiah, and enjoyed a position of high public consideration. Some of his prophetic sayings he wrote down soon after he had uttered them; others not till long after. He had begun to come forward as a prophet in the last year of the reign of Uzziah. When he had labored a long time in his vocation of teacher, he determined to collect his sayings in a book. His oldest work was written about the year 740 B. C., just after the accession of the young and weak Ahaz at Jerusalem, when the Assyrians had rendered the northern kingdom tributary but had not yet come to Judea. His second was written apparently in the reign of Hezekiah, in 724; and his third in the days of the same king, when the service of Jehovah had been restored. Such at least are the conclusions of the highest living authority on the literature of the Hebrew race (P. A. B., vol. i. p. 271 ff.).

The earliest stratum discernible (according to that authority) in the Book of Isaiah is from chap. ii. 2 to chap. v. inclusive, and chap ix. 7-x. 4. The last five verses of chap. v. should not be taken along with the rest of the chapter, but should follow upon chap. x. 4 (Ibid., vol. i. p. 286 ff.). These passages begin with a beautiful description of the happiness of the Israelites in the days of their coming glory, when the mountain of the Lord's house will be established on the top of the mountains, and exalted above the hills; and when all nations will flow to it, to worship and to learn the true faith. It is remarkable as evidence of the wide distinction between the view of Joel and that of Isaiah, that Isaiah exactly reverses the image of his predecessor, declaring that swords will be beaten into plough-shares and spears into pruning-hooks. Joel was looking to the necessities of the immediate present; Isaiah to the prospects of the future. These chapters also contain an amusing ironical account of the finery of the Jerusalem ladies, which might apply with slight alterations to the rich women of all ages and countries. No doubt it was very offensive to Isaiah that they should go about with necks erect and wanton eyes, walking with a mincing gait; but a prophet who should threaten the women of London or Paris with scab on the head and the exposure of their persons on account of sins like these, would certainly bring more reprobation on himself than on them. But manners in Isaiah's days were not so delicate. A time is predicted when Jehovah will wash away the filth of Zion's daughters, and when all in Jerusalem shall be called holy.

In the second part of his book (chap. vi. 1, chap. ix. 6, and chap. xvii. 1-11) Isaiah gives an interesting, though only figurative, account of his consecration to the prophetic office. In the year of King Uzziah's death he says he saw the Lord sitting on his throne with a train so long as to fill the temple. When he cried out that he was undone, for that he, a man of unclean lips, had seen the King, the Lord of hosts, a seraph flew up to him with a live coal in a pair of tongs, laid the coal on his mouth, and told him that his iniquity was now taken away and his sin purged. After this the voice of the Lord was heard inquiring whom he should send, and Isaiah offered to take the post of his ambassador: "Here am I, send me." The proposal was accepted, and he at once received his instructions from headquarters. The prophet began to preach in the manner desired, and among much discouraging matter he uttered the magnificent description of the Messiah, which is familiar to all:—

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."

Isaiah's third work (composed in the reign of Hezekiah) begins at the first chapter of the canonical book. It opens with a pathetic lamentation over the infidelity of the children of Israel to their God, and proceeds at chap. xiv. 28 to recount a "burden" which came in the death-year of King Ahaz. A prophecy by which a much older prophet (belonging, as is supposed, to the time of Joel) is embodied in "the burden of Moab," and extends through chap. xv. and chap. xvi. 7-12, after which Isaiah, having mentioned that this was formerly the word of the Lord about Moab, proceeds to say that his present word is that within three years the glory of Moab shall be contemned. The latter part of chap. xxi. (ver. 11-17), dealing with Dumah and Arabia, also belongs to this period.

Further divisions are distinguishable in the writings of Isaiah after these three parts have been separated from the rest. Thus, we have a fourth division consisting of the 22d and 23d chapters, and containing a personal attack on Shebna and a prediction of the fall of Tyre. A fifth division, from chap. xxviii. to xxxii. inclusive, ends with a beautiful description of the happier time that is to come, when the fruit of justice will be peace, and the result of justice quietness and security, when the people will dwell in sure habitations and untroubled abodes. There is another writing, the sixth in order, which begins at chap. x. 5, and extends, in the first instance, to the end of chap. xii. This prophecy is remarkable, even in this eloquent book, for the marvelous eloquence with which, in his visions of future glory, the inspired seer depicts the government of the "rod out of the stem of Jesse," the "Branch" that is to "grow out of his roots," in whose reign the wild beasts will no longer persecute their prey, nor Ephraim and Judah keep up the memory of their ancient feud; who will cause his beloved people to put the Philistines to flight, to conquer Edom and Moab, and reduce the children of Ammon to submission. Prophecies directed against Ethiopia and Egypt (chap. xvii. 12-xviii. 7, and chap. xx.) belong to the same portion of Isaiah's collected works. Threats against the Assyrians are contained in additional chapters, namely, chap. xxxiii. and chap. xxxvii. 22-35. Lastly, a seventh portion of Isaiah consists of chap. xix., which, after holding out the prospect of great misfortunes to Egypt, ends in a somewhat unusual strain by admitting both Egyptians and Assyrians to be equal sharers with the Israelites in the ultimate prosperity of the earth, and declaring that the Lord himself will bless them all, saying, "Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance."

It should be noted that, if Ewald's supposition be correct, the first four sections of the work, thus decomposed into its several constituents, were edited by Isaiah himself, while the fifth, sixth, and seventh were added by subsequent compilers to the collection he had left behind (P. A. B., vol. i. p. 488).

A very short prophecy called by Obadiah's name follows upon the genuine writings of Isaiah in chronological order. It is in fact anonymous. In its present form it belongs to the time of the Captivity. The object of the unknown prophet was to reprove the Idumeans for rejoicing in and profiting by the destruction of Jerusalem. In his writing he embodied an older prophecy by the actual Obadiah, referring to a calamity that had befallen Edom, when a part of its territory had been surprised and completely plundered by a people with whom it had just been in alliance. The same old piece was used by Jeremiah (chap. xlix. 7) in his prophecy upon Edom (Ib., vol. i. p. 489 ff.).

Micah, the next prophet, was a younger contemporary of Isaiah, but lived in the country. When he wrote the northern kingdom was approaching its end, and he threatens Judah with chastisement and destruction. He foresaw the fulfillment of Messianic hopes as arising only from the ruin of the existing order of things. No more than the first five chapters are by Micah himself (Ib., vol. i. p. 498 ff.). His book is remarkable for the extremely warlike description he gives of Messianic happiness. Many other prophets conceive it as an important element in that happiness that the Israelites shall be victorious over their enemies; but few, if any, have come up to Micah in the fervor with which he foretells the desolation, the carnage, the utter suppression of rival nations, which will accompany that age. The author of the scenes of blood will be the ruler who is to come from Bethlehem-Ephratah. The prophet who has added the last two chapters also looks forward to an age when Jehovah will at length perform his promises to Abraham and Jacob, to the terror of the unbelieving nations.

Next after Micah stands Nahum. The occasion of his prophecy was a hostile attack directed against Nineveh. He must have seen the danger with his own eyes, and he was therefore a descendant of one of the Israelites who had been carried off to Assyria. He evidently lived far from Palestine, and was familiar with Assyrian affairs. Elkosh, where the inscription places his residence, was a little town on the Tigris. His book may refer to the siege of Nineveh by the Median king Phraortes about six hundred and thirty-six (P. A. B., vol. ii. p. 1). The interest of Nahum's prophecy is merely local; he does not rise beyond the politics of the hour, and we need not therefore stop to examine his utterances in detail. It may be noted, however, that an expression which has become famous through its adoption by a much later prophet, "Behold, upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace," is first found in Nahum.

Zephaniah's prophecy arose out of a great movement of nations. He lived in the reign of Josiah, but wrote before the reformation effected by that monarch. The movement alluded to by him must have been the great irruption of the Scythians mentioned by Herodotus as having interrupted the siege of Nineveh by Kyaxares, King of the Medes (Herod., i. 103). These last days of the Assyrian kingdom gave rise to long disturbances in which the Chaldeans became conquerors (P. A. B., vol. ii. p. 14). After various threatenings against divers people, the prophecy of Zephaniah ends with a beautiful vision of the age to come, when the suppliants of Jehovah will come from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia; and when a virtuous and happy remnant will be left in Israel.

When Habakkuk, the next prophet, wrote his thoughts, and composed the public prayer or psalm which forms his concluding chapter, the Chaldeans were already in the land. This "bitter and hasty nation" was quite a new phenomenon there. Habakkuk lived after the reformation of Josiah, and therefore in the reign of Jehoiakim (Ib., vol. ii. p. 29). He seems to have written to plead with the Almighty for deliverance, and to express unabated confidence in him; and he hoped that his words, set to music and sung in public worship, would induce him to abate his anger as manifested in the Chaldean scourge.

An anonymous prophet (Ib., vol. ii. p. 52) (Zechariah xiii. 1-xiii. 6, and xiv.) predicts the siege and capture of Jerusalem, with all the miserable incidents of conquest: the rifling of her houses, the ravishing of her women, the condemnation to captivity of half her inhabitants. Like other prophets, however, he looks forward in sanguine anticipation to a day when the heathen nations who now make war upon Jerusalem will regularly go up there every year to worship Jehovah, and keep the feast of tabernacles. At least if any of them do not, they will have no rain. In that glorious age the very pots in the Lord's house will be like the bowls for offerings; nay, every pot in Judah and Jerusalem will be holy to the Lord of hosts.

We pass now to the consideration of a prophet who stands second in eminence only to Isaiah, and to the unknown author of the later work which in the Canon is included in the Book of Isaiah. Jeremiah began to prophesy in the thirteenth year of Josiah, and continued to do so during the reigns of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah. His active life, like that of Isaiah, extended over a period of half a century (P. A. B., vol. ii. p. 63 ff.). It is noteworthy that Jeremiah was a priest, and therefore combined in his person the double qualification of consecration and of exceptional holiness: that is, he was consecrated to Jehovah, and also appointed expressly by Jehovah. The manner of his appointment to be a holy person resembles the manner of the appointment of Isaiah. The word of the Lord came to him, saying, that before God had formed him in the belly he had known him, and before he had come forth from the womb he had sanctified him, and ordained him a prophet unto the nations. Jeremiah objected that he was but a child. But Jehovah told him not to say he was a child, for that he was to go where he was sent, and speak what he was commanded. He was not to be afraid of men's faces, for he, the Lord, would deliver him. Then he touched Jeremiah's mouth with his hand, and said: "Behold, I put my words in thy mouth. See, I appoint thee this day over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build and to plant." After this solemn dedication to his duties Jeremiah was certainly endowed with the fullest qualifications for the prophetic office. He immediately began to see images; namely, a rod of an almond-tree and a seething pot, and it continued afterwards to be one of his characteristics to employ material imagery of this nature for the purpose of illustrating the truths he had to communicate.

After this introduction, we have a long section of the work, namely, from the second chapter to the twenty-fourth, beginning with the prophecies of the thirteenth year of Josiah. Among other things this portion includes Jeremiah's bitter imprecation upon his personal enemies, the "men of Anathoth," on whom he begs to be permitted to witness the vengeance of God, and concerning whom he receives the consoling assurance that their young men will die by the sword, and their sons and daughters by famine, and that there will not be a remnant left. This section contains also the terrible prayer against those who "devised devices" against Jeremiah, in other words, did not believe in his predictions. In its intense intolerance, in its unblushing disclosure of private malignity, in its unscrupulous enumeration of the ills desired for these opponents of the prophet, it is perhaps unrivaled in theological literature. To do Jeremiah justice it ought to be quoted at length:—

"Give heed to me, O Jehovah, and listen to the voice of my opponents. Shall evil be recompensed for good, that they dig a pit for my life? Remember how I stood before thee, to speak a good word for them, to turn away thy wrath from them. Therefore give their sons to famine, and deliver them into the power of the sword; and let their wives be bereaved of their children and widowed, and let their men be put to death; let their young men be slain by the sword in battle. Let a cry be heard from their houses, when thou suddenly bringest troops upon them; for they have digged a pit to take me, and hid snares for my feet. Yet thou, Jehovah, knowest all their counsel against me to slay me; and blot not out their sin from thy sight, and let them be overthrown before thee; deal with them in the time of thine anger" (Jer. xviii. 19-23).

In another chapter there is a curious account of an incident with Pashur, superintendent of the Temple, who had caused Jeremiah to be put in stocks for a day. Jeremiah complains bitterly of the treatment he meets with on account of his prophesying, and wishes to resign the office, but the impulse proves too strong for him. He consoles himself with a pious hope that Jehovah will let him see his vengeance on his enemies (Jer. xx. 1-12). He continues to predict misfortunes, but intermingles with his gloomier forebodings a fine vision of the time when God shall gather together the remnant of his flock from the countries to which he has driven them, and raise up "a righteous Branch" of the house of David, who will reign and prosper, who will execute justice and equity, in whose days Judah will be saved, and Israel dwell secure (Jer. xxiii. 2-6).

In a third section of his work (chap. xlvi. 1-12, and chap. xlvii. 49) Jeremiah deals with foreign nations, and then (in chap. xxv.) declares that he has been prophesying a long time without being able to get the Jews to listen to him, foretells their subjugation by Nebuchadnezzar, and (rather unfortunately for his own and Jehovah's reputation for correct foresight) commits himself to the definite term of seventy years as the duration of the coming captivity. A wise prophet would have kept within the safe region of vagueness, where he could not come into collision with awkward dates nor drive orthodox interpreters into such pitiable straits as those in which Ewald, for example, finds himself, when he is compelled to say that seventy years is a perfectly general indication of a future that cannot be more precisely fixed, and that it merely refers to the third generation from the writer (P. A. B., vol. ii. p. 230). The remainder of this section (chap. xxvi.-xxix.) relates certain encounters with other prophets whose predictions had turned out false, and one of whom, as Jeremiah exultingly relates, died during the year, exactly as Jeremiah had declared he would. Interesting evidence is supplied by these chapters of the existence of numerous prophets who differed from each other, and between whose claims only the event could decide.

In the fourth section (chap. xxx.-xxxv.) Jeremiah prophesies the restoration of Israel, and tells his readers how he bought a field from his cousin on the strength of his hopes that the captivity would have an end. A fifth part (chaps. xxxvi., xlv.) relates to Baruch, Jeremiah's secretary; and an appendix (chap. xxxvii.-xliv., and chap. xlvi. 13-28) contains historical matter, and predictions about Egypt, but concludes with the usual promise of the ultimate return of the Jewish nation to its ancestral home.

The last chapter of Jeremiah is purely historical, and, like the historical portions of Isaiah, need not be considered under the prophets; but it must be noted that chaps. l. and li. are not by Jeremiah, being the work of a much later writer, who lived in Palestine, and who composed them to show that the words of the genuine Jeremiah were fulfilled in the destruction of Babylon by the Medes, which was taking place at this time (P. A. B., vol. iii. p. 140 ff.). The small Book of Lamentations over the unhappy fate of Jerusalem, ascribed to Jeremiah, is an artistic attempt to embody the grief of the writer in a song of which each verse begins with a new letter, in alphabetical order.

We pass now to the prophet Ezekiel, a Jew who was taken into captivity with Jehoiachin, and lived at a small town of Mesopotamia. He felt the first prophetic impulses in the fifth year of the Captivity (Ib., vol. ii. p. 322 ff.). At this time the heavens were opened; he saw visions, and the word of the Lord came expressly to him. Such was the nature of his consecration. The first section of Ezekiel extends from chap. i. to xxiv., and contains utterances about Israel before the destruction of Jerusalem. The second section (chap. xxv.-xxxii.) deals with foreign nations, and the third (chap. xxxiii.-xlviii.) holds out promises of restoration.

Ezekiel is very inferior to his great predecessors, Isaiah and Jeremiah. He has neither the fervid, manly oratory of the first nor the pathetic, though rather soft and feminine flow of the second. He takes pleasure in rather coarse images, such as that of the bread baked with human dung (Ezek. iv), that of Jehovah with his two concubines, who bore him sons and vexed him with their licentious conduct (Ezek. xxiii), or that of the child whose navel was not cut, who grew up into a woman, over whom Jehovah spread his skirt and covered her nakedness (Ezek. xvi. 8). And in general, Ezekiel is particularly prone to teaching by means of similes and illustrations. Sometimes he sees visions in which God explains his meaning; at other times he acts in a manner which is designed to be typical of coming events. Thus, on one occasion, he openly brings out his furniture for removal, as a sign to the rebellious house of Israel (Ezek. xii. 1-7).