11, 12. These different recensions of the original text attest the
wide popularity of the book; an Aramaic gloss in x. 11 shows the
liberties which transcribers took with the text, the integrity of
which suffered much from its very popularity. The interest of the
later scribes was rather in homiletics than in history, and very
probably most of the writing that seems tedious and diffuse in the
book of Jeremiah is to be set down to the count of these teaching
scribes. Jeremiah was a very gifted poet, with unusual powers of
emotional expression, and it is greatly to be regretted that his own
message has been so inextricably involved in the inferior work of a
later age.

EZEKIEL

To a modern taste, Ezekiel does not appeal anything like so
powerfully as Isaiah or Jeremiah. He has neither the majesty of the
one nor the tenderness and passion of the other. There is much in
him that is fantastic, and much that is ritualistic. His
imaginations border sometimes on the grotesque and sometimes on the
mechanical. Yet he is a historical figure of the first importance;
it was very largely from him that Judaism received the
ecclesiastical impulse by which for centuries it was powerfully
dominated.

Corrupt as the text is in many places, we have in Ezekiel the rare
satisfaction of studying a carefully elaborated prophecy whose
authenticity is practically undisputed and indisputable. It is not
impossible that there are, as Kraetzschmar maintains, occasional
doublets, e.g. ii. 3-7 and in. 4-9; but these in any case are very
few and hardly affect the question of authenticity. The order and
precision of the priestly mind are reflected in the unusually
systematic arrangement of the book. Its general theme might be
broadly described as the destruction and the reconstitution of the
state, the destruction occupying exactly the first half of the book
(i.-xxiv.) and the reconstitution the second half (xxv.-xlviii.).

The following is a sketch of the book. After five years of residence
in the land of exile, Ezekiel, through an ecstatic vision in which
he beholds a mysterious chariot with God enthroned above it,
receives his prophetic call to the "rebellious" exiles (i., ii.),
and is equipped for his task with the divine inspiration; that task
is partly to reprove, partly to warn (iii.). At once the prophet
addresses himself thereto, announcing the siege of Jerusalem and the
captivity of Judah--Israel has already been languishing in exile for
a century and a half (iv.).[1] The threefold fate of the inhabitants
is described (v.), and a stern and speedy fate is foretold for the
mountain land of Israel (vi.) and for the people (vii.). How
deserved that fate is becomes too pathetically plain in the
descriptions of the idolatrous worship with which the temple is
desecrated (viii.) and in chastisement for which the inhabitants are
slain (ix.) and their city burned (x.). Jehovah solemnly departs
from His desecrated temple (xi.).
[Footnote 1: For 390 in iv. 5 the Septuagint correctly reads 190,
and this includes the forty years of Judah's captivity.]

This general theme of the sin and fate of the city is continued with
variations throughout the rest of the first half of the book. The
horrors of the siege and exile are symbolically indicated, xii. 1-20,
and the false prophets and prophetesses, xiii. 17, are reproved and
denounced for encouraging, by their shallow optimism, the unbelief
of the people, xii. 21-xiv. 11. For the judgment will assuredly come
and no intercession will avail, xiv. 12-23. Israel, in her misery,
is like the wood of the vine, unprofitable to begin with, and now,
besides, scarred and burnt (xv.); her whole career has been one of
consistent infidelity--Israel and Judah alike (xvi.). And her kings
are as perfidious as her people-witness Zedekiah's treachery to the
king of Babylon (xvii.). But contrary to prevalent opinion, the present
generation is not atoning for the sins of the past; every man is free
and responsible and is dealt with precisely as he deserves--the soul
that sinneth, _it_ shall die (xviii.). Then follows a beautiful
elegy over the princes of Judah--Jehoahaz taken captive to Egypt, and
Jehoiachin to Babylon (xix.).

The third cycle (xx.-xxiv.) is, in the main, a repetition of the
second. From the very day of her election, Israel has been
unfaithful, giving herself over to idolatry, immorality, and the
profanation of the Sabbath (xx.). But the devouring fire will
consume, and the sharp sword of Nebuchadrezzar will be drawn, first
against Jerusalem, and then against Ammon (xxi.). The corruption of
Jerusalem is utter and absolute--princes, priests, prophets, and
people (xxii.); and this corruption has characterized her from the
very beginning--Samaria and Jerusalem, the northern and southern
kingdoms alike (xxiii.). So the end has come: the filth and rust of
the empty caldron--symbolic of Jerusalem after the first deportation
in 597 B.C.--will be purged away by a yet fiercer fire. The besieged
city is at length captured, and, like the prophet's wife, it
perishes unmourned (xxiv.).

The ministry of judgment, so far as it concerns Jerusalem, is now
over, and Ezekiel is free to turn to the more congenial task of
consolation and promise. But a negative condition of the restoration
of Israel is the removal of impediments to her welfare, and next to
her own sins her enemies are the greatest obstacle to her
restoration; it is with them, therefore, that the following
prophecies are concerned.

The seven oracles in chs. xxv.-xxxii. (587-586 B.C., cf. xxvi. 1,
except xxix. 17-21 in 570 B.C.) are directed against Ammon, Moab,
Edom, Philistia (xxv.), Tyre, xxvi. 1-xxviii. 19, Sidon, xxviii. 20-26,
and Egypt (xxix.-xxxii.). Tyre and Egypt receive elaborate attention;
the other peoples are dismissed with comparatively brief notice. The
general reason assigned for the destruction of the smaller peoples in
xxv. is their vengeful attitude to Israel. Ammon in particular is
singled out for her malicious joy over the destruction of the temple
and her mockery of the captive Jews. The destruction of these people
is no doubt to be brought about indirectly, if not directly, as in the
case of Tyre, xxvi. 7, and Egypt, xxix. 19, by Nebuchadrezzar. The
oracle against Tyre is one of Ezekiel's most brilliant compositions. The
glorious city is to be stormed and destroyed by Nebuchadrezzar (xxvi.),
and her  fall is celebrated in a splendid dirge, in which she is
compared to a noble merchant ship wrecked by a furious storm upon the
high seas (xxvii.); her proud prince will be humbled to the ground
(xxviii.). Egypt is similarly threatened with a desolating invasion
at the hands of Nebuchadrezzar; the conquest of that country is to be
his recompense for his failure, contrary to Ezekiel's expectations, to
capture Tyre (xxix.). The day of Jehovah draws nigh upon Egypt (xxx.);
like a proud cedar she will be felled by the hand of Nebuchadrezzar
(xxxi.), and her fall is celebrated in two dirges--one in which Pharaoh
is compared to a crocodile; the other, weird and striking, describes
the arrival of the slain Egyptians in the world below (xxxii.).

With the disappearance of Israel's enemies, one of the great
obstacles to her restoration has been removed; but the greatest
obstacle is in Israel herself. She has been stiff-necked and
rebellious: now that the prophet's words have proved true,[1] each
individual for himself must give heed to his warning voice, not
merely consulting him, but obeying him (xxxiii.). Then Jehovah will
manifest His grace in many ways. He will send them an ideal king,
unlike the mercenary rulers of the past, who had plundered the flock
(xxxiv.). He will destroy the unbrotherly Edomites (xxxv.) and bless
His people Israel with the peaceful possession of a fruitful land,
and with the better blessing of the new heart (xxxvi.). Finally, He
will wake the people, who are now as good as dead, to a new life,
and unite the long sundered Israel and Judah under one sceptre for
ever (xxxvii.). In the final assault which will be made against His
people by the mysterious hordes of Gog from the north, He will
preserve them from danger, and multitudes of the assailants will
fall and be buried in the land of Israel (xxxviii., xxxix.).
[Footnote: In xxxiii. 21 the _twelfth_ year should be the
eleventh (cf. xxvi. 1). The news of the fall of Jerusalem would not
take over a year to travel to Babylon.]

Probably the book originally ended here: but from Ezekiel's point of
view, the remaining chapters (xl.-xlviii.) are thoroughly integral
to it, if indeed they be not its climax. The people are now redeemed
and restored to their own land: the problem is, how shall they
maintain the proper relations between themselves and their God? The
unorganized community must become a church, and an elaborate
organization is provided for it. The temple, with its buildings, is
therefore first minutely described, as that is to be the earthly
residence of the people's God; then the rights and duties of the
priests are strictly regulated: and lastly the holy land is so
redistributed among the tribes that the temple is practically in the
centre.

Chs. xl.-xliii. embrace the description and measurement of the
temple, with its courts, gateways, chambers, decorations, priests'
rooms and altar. When all is ready, Jehovah solemnly enters, xliii.
1-12, by the gate from which Ezekiel had in vision seen Him leave
almost nineteen years before, x. 19. The sanctity of the temple
where Jehovah is henceforth to dwell must be scrupulously
maintained, and this is secured by the regulations in xliv.-xlvi.
The menial services of the sanctuary, which were formerly performed
by foreigners, are to be henceforth performed by Levites. Then
follow regulations determining the duties and revenues of the
priests, the territory to be occupied by them, also by the Levites,
the city and the prince; the religious duties of the prince, and the
rite of atonement for the temple. The whole description is a
striking counterpart to the earlier vision of the desecration of the
temple (viii.). The last section (xlvii., xlviii.) deals with the
land which in these latter days is to share the redemption of the
people. The barren ground near the Dead Sea is to be made fertile,
and the waters of that sea sweet, by a stream issuing from
underneath the temple. The land will be redistributed, seven tribes
north and five south of the temple, and the city will bear the name
"Jehovah is there"--symbolic of the abiding presence of the people's
God.

Whatever be the precise meaning of the much disputed "thirtieth
year" in i. 1, Ezekiel was born probably about or not long before
the time Jeremiah began his ministry in 626 B.C. As a young man, he
must have heard Jeremiah preach, and this, coupled with the fact
that some of Jeremiah's prophecies were in circulation about eight
years before Ezekiel went into exile (605-597) explains the profound
influence which the older prophet plainly exercised upon the
younger. With Jehoiachin and the aristocracy, Ezekiel was taken in
597 to Babylon, where he lived with his wife, xxiv. 16, among the
Jewish colony on the banks of the Chebar, one of the canals
tributary to the Euphrates, i. 3.

Never had a prophet been more necessary. The people left behind in
the land were thoroughly depraved, xxxiii. 25ff., the exiles were
not much better, xiv. 3ff.--they are a rebellious house, ii. 6; and
even worse than they are the exiles who came with the second
deportation in 586, xiv. 22. Idolatry of many kinds had been
practised (viii.); and now that the penalty was being paid in exile,
the people were helpless, xxxvii. 11. For six years and a half--till
the city fell--Ezekiel's ministry was one of reproof; after that, of
consolation. The prophet becomes a pastor. His ministry lasted at
least twenty-two years, the last dated prophecy being in 570 (xxix.
17); for thirteen years before the writing of chs. xl.-xlviii. in
572 B.C. there is no dated prophecy, xxxii. 1, 17, so that this
sketch of ecclesiastical organization, pathetic as embodying an old
man's hope for the future, stands among his most mature and
deliberate work. His absolute candour is strikingly shown by his
refusal to cancel his original prophecy of the capture of Tyre by
Nebuchadrezzar, xxvi. 7, 8, which had not been fulfilled; he simply
appends another oracle and allows the two to stand side by side,
xxix. 17-20.

It is obvious that in Ezekiel prophecy has travelled far from the
methods, expressions and hopes that had characterized it in the days
of Amos and Isaiah, or even of Ezekiel's immediate predecessor and
contemporary, Jeremiah. In these books there are visions, such as
those of Amos, vii. 1, viii. 1, ix. 1, and symbolic acts like that
of Isaiah, xx. 2, walking barefoot; but there such things are only
occasional, here they abound. Their interpretation, too, is beset by
much uncertainty. Some maintain that the symbolic actions, unless
when they are obviously impossible, were really performed; others
regard them simply as part of the imaginative mechanism of the book.
The dumbness, e.g., with which Ezekiel was afflicted for a period,
iii. 26, xxiv. 27, xxxiii. 22, and which has been interpreted as "a
sense of restraint and defeat," may very well have been real, and
connected, as has been recently supposed, with certain pathological
conditions; but it is hardly to be believed that he lay on one side
for 190 days[1] (iv. 5). Again, though the curious action
representing the threefold fate of the inhabitants of the city in
ch. v. is somewhat grotesque, it is not absolutely impossible; but
it is difficult to see how the command to eat bread and drink water
"with trembling" can be taken literally, xii. 18. As the first
symbolic action in the book--the eating of the roll, iii. 1-3--must
be interpreted figuratively, it would seem not unfair to apply this
principle to all such actions. It is even applied by Reuss to the
very circumstantial story of the death of the prophet's wife, xxiv.
15ff., which he characterizes as an "easily deciphered hieroglyph."
[Footnote 1: So the Septuagint.]

Again, in spite of their highly elaborated detail, the visions
appeal, and are intended to appeal, rather to the mind than to the
eye. Such a vision as that of the divine chariot in ch. i. could not
be transferred to canvas; and if it could, the effect would be
anything but impressive. Regarded, however, as a creation of the
intellectual imagination, suggesting as it does certain attributes
of God, and clothing them with a mysterious and indefinable majesty,
it is not without an impressiveness of its own.

A similar sense of unreality has been held to pervade the speeches.
It has been asserted that they are simply artificial compositions,
never addressed and not capable of being addressed to any audience
of living men. Certainly one can hardly conceive of the last
chapters, with their minute description of the temple buildings,
officers and ceremonies, as forming part of a public address; and
some even of the earlier chapters, e.g. xvi., xxiii., do not suggest
that living contact with an audience which invests the earlier
prophets with their perennial dramatic interest. At the same time,
to regard him simply as an author and in no sense as a public man
would undoubtedly be to do him less than justice, cf. xi. 25. He was
in any case a pastor--a new office in Israel, to which he was led by
his overwhelming sense of the indefeasible importance of the
individual (iii. 18ff., xviii., xxxiii.). But--especially in his
earlier ministry, till the fall of the city--he was prophet as well
as pastor, with a public message of condemnation very much like that
of his predecessors. His reputation as a prophet naturally rose with
the corroboration which his words had received from the fall of the
city, xxxiii. 30, but even before this it must have been high, as we
find him frequently consulted, viii. 1, xiv. 1, xx. 1; and though
behind the real audience he addresses, we often cannot help feeling
that his words have in view that larger Israel of which the exiles
form a part (cf. vi.), the chapters, as they now stand, are no doubt
in most cases expansions of actual addresses. This view is
strengthened by the precision of the numerous chronological notices,
cf. viii. 1.

There is another important aspect in which the contrast between
Ezekiel and the pre-exilic prophets is very great: viz. in his
attitude to ritual. Every one of them had expressed in emphatic
language the relative, if not the absolute, indifference of ritual
to true religion (Amos v. 25, Hos. vi. 6, Isa. i. 11ff., Mic. vi. 6-8).
No one had expressed himself in language more strong and unmistakable
than Ezekiel's contemporary, Jeremiah. Yet Ezekiel himself devotes no
less than nine chapters to a detailed programme for the ecclesiastical
organization of the state after the return from exile (xl.-xlviii.).
With some justice Lucien Gautier has called him the "clerical" prophet,
and Duhm goes so far as to say that he annihilated spontaneous and
ethical religion. This, as we shall see, is a grave exaggeration; but
there can be no doubt that in Ezekiel the centre of gravity of prophecy
has shifted. He threw ritual into a prominence which, in prophecy, it
had never had before, and which, from his day on, it successfully
maintained (cf. Hag., Zech., Mal.).

It is difficult to estimate justly the importance to Hebrew religion
of the new turn given to it by Ezekiel: it seems to be, and in
reality it is, a descent from the more purely spiritual and ethical
conception of the earlier prophets. But two things have to be
remembered (1) that, for the situation contemplated by Ezekiel, such
a programme as that which he drew up was a practical religious
necessity. The spiritual atmosphere in which Jeremiah drew his
breath so freely was too rare for the average Israelite. Religious
conceptions had to be expressed in material symbols. The land and
the temple had been profaned by sin (viii.); after the return, their
holiness must be secured and guaranteed, and Ezekiel's legislation
makes the necessary provision by translating that idea into specific
and concrete applications.

But (2) though ritual interests are very prominent towards the close
of the book, they do not by any means exhaust the religious
interests of Ezekiel. If not very frequently, at any rate very
deliberately and emphatically, he asserts the ethical elements that
are inseparable from true religion and the moral responsibility of
the individual (iii., xviii., xxxiii.). Indeed, the background of
xl.-xlviii. is a people redeemed from their sin. The worshippers are
the redeemed; and even in this almost exclusively ritual section
ethical interests are not forgotten, xlv. 9ff. In interpreting the
mind of the man who sketched this priestly legislation, it is surely
unfair to ignore those profound and noble utterances touching the
necessity of the new heart, xviii. 31, xxxvi. 26, and the new
spirit, xi. 19, utterances which have the ring of some of the
greatest words of Jeremiah.

It must be admitted, however, that Ezekiel did not fully realize the
implications of these profound words: he at once proceeds to apply
them in a somewhat mechanical way, which suggests that his religion
is a thing of "statutes and judgments," if it is also a thing of the
spirit, xxxvi. 27 (cf. xx. 11, 13), and this tendency to a
mechanical view of things is characteristic of the prophet. Even in
the great chapter asserting the responsibility of the individual
(xviii.) something of this tendency appears in the isolation of the
various periods of the individual life from each other. It shows
itself again in his description of the river that issues from under
the threshold of the temple, xlvii. 3-6. His imagination, which was
considerably influenced by Babylonian art, is undisciplined. Images
are worked out with a detail artistically unnecessary, and
aesthetically sometimes offensive (xvi., xxiii.). On the other hand
the book is not destitute of noble and chastened imaginations. The
weird fate of Egypt in the underworld, xxxii. 17-32, the glory of
Tyre and the horror which her fate elicits (xxvii.) are described
with great power. Nothing could be more impressive than the vision
of the valley of dry bones--the fearful solitude and the mysterious
resurrection (xxxvii.). Ezekiel's imaginative power perhaps reaches
its climax in his vision of the destruction of Jerusalem and her
idolatrous people. On the judgment day we see the corpses of the
sinners, slain by supernatural executioners, lying silently in the
temple court, the prophet prostrate and sorrowful, and the angel
departing with glowing coals to set fire to the guilty city, ix. i-x. 7.

The two chief elements in later Judaism practically owe their origin
to Ezekiel, viz. apocalypse and legalism. The former finds
expression in chs. xxxviii, xxxix., where, preliminary to Israel's
restoration, Gog of the land of Magog--an ideal, rather than, like
the Assyrians or Babylonians, an historical enemy of Israel--is to
be destroyed. We have already seen how prominent the legalistic
interest is in xl.-xlviii., but it is also apparent elsewhere.
Ezekiel, e.g., lays unusual stress upon the institution of the
Sabbath, and counts its profanation one of the gravest of the
national sins, xx. 12, xxii. 8, xxiii. 38. The priestly interests of
Ezekiel are easily explained by his early environment. He belonged
by birth to the Jerusalem priesthood, i. 3, xliv. 15, and he
received his early training under the prophetico-priestly impulse of
the Deuteronomic reformation.

From the critical standpoint, the book of Ezekiel is of the highest
importance. Chs. xl.-xlviii. fall midway between the simpler
legislation of Deuteronomy, and the very elaborate legislation of
the priestly parts of the Pentateuch. This is especially plain in
the laws affecting the priests and the Levites.

In Deuteronomy no distinction is made between them; there the phrase
is, "the priests the Levites" (Deut. xviii. 1); in the priestly code
(cf. Num. iii., iv., v.) they are very sharply distinguished, the
Levites being reserved for the more menial work of the sanctuary.
Now the origin of this distinction can be traced to Ezekiel,
according to whom the Levites were the priests who had been degraded
from their priestly office, because they had ministered in
idolatrous worship at the high places, xliv. 6ff., whereas the
priests were the Zadokites who had ministered only at Jerusalem. The
natural inference is that, at least in this respect, the priestly
legislation of the Pentateuch is later than Ezekiel. A close study
of chs. xl.-xlviii. enables us to extend this inference. Between
Ezekiel and that legislation there are serious differences (cf.
xlvi. 13, Exod. xxix. 38, Num. xxviii. 4), which, as early as the
beginning of the Christian era, gave much perplexity to Jewish
scholars. "According to the traditional view," as Reuss has said,
"Ezekiel would be reforming, not Israel, but Moses, the man of God,
and the mouth of Jehovah Himself." We have no alternative, then, but
to suppose that Ezekiel is earlier than the priestly legislation of
the Pentateuch, and that this sketch in xl.-xlviii. prepared the way
for it.

In Ezekiel the older prophetic conception of God has undergone a
change. It has become more transcendental, with the result that the
love of God is overshadowed by His holiness. It is of His grace, no
doubt, that the people are ultimately saved; but, according to
Ezekiel, He is prompted to His redemptive work not so much out of
pity for the fallen people, xxxvi. 22, but rather "for His name's
sake," xx. 44--that name which has been profaned by Israel in the
sight of the heathen, xx. 14. The goal of history is, in Ezekiel's
ever-recurring phrase, that men may "know that I am Jehovah."
Corresponding to this transcendental view of God is his view of man
as frail and weak--over and over again Ezekiel is addressed as
"child of man"--and history has only too faithfully exhibited that
inherent and all but ineradicable weakness. While other prophets,
like Hosea and Jeremiah, had seen in the earlier years of Israel's
history, a dawn which bore the promise of a beautiful day, to
Ezekiel that history has from the very beginning been one unbroken
record of apostasy (xvi., xxiii.). On the other hand, Ezekiel laid a
wholesome, if perhaps exaggerated, emphasis on the possibility of
human freedom. A man's destiny, he maintained, was not irretrievably
determined either by hereditary influences, xviii. 2ff., or by his
own past, xxxiii. 10f. Further, Jeremiah had felt, if he had not
said, that the individual, not the nation, is the real unit in
religion: to Ezekiel belongs the merit of supplementing this
conception by that other, that religion implies fellowship, and that
individuals find their truest religious life only when united in the
kingdom of God (xl.-xlviii.).

HOSEA

The book of Hosea divides naturally into two parts: i.-iii. and iv.-xiv.,
the former relatively clear and connected, the latter unusually
disjointed and obscure. The difference is so unmistakable that i.-iii.
have usually been assigned to the period before the death of Jeroboam II,
and iv.-xiv. to the anarchic period which succeeded. Certainly Hosea's
prophetic career began before the end of Jeroboam's reign, as he predicts
the fall of the reigning dynasty, i. 4, which practically ended with
Jeroboam's death.[1] But i.-iii. seem to be the result of long and
agonized meditation on the meaning of his wedded life: it was not at
once that he discovered
Gomer to be an unfaithful wife, i. 2, and it must have been later
still that he learned to interpret the impulse which led him to her
and threw such sorrow about his life, as a word of the Lord, i. 2.
These chapters were probably therefore written late, though the
experiences they record were early.
[Footnote 1: Zechariah his son reigned for only six months.]

Of the date, generally speaking, of iv.-xiv. there can be no doubt:
they reflect but too faithfully the confusion of the times that
followed Jeroboam's death. It is a period of hopeless anarchy. Moral
law is set at defiance, and society, from one end to the other, is
in confusion, iv. 1, 2, vii. 1. The court is corrupt, conspiracies
are rife, kings are assassinated, vii. 3-7, x. 15. We are
irresistibly reminded of the rapid succession of kings that followed
Jeroboam--Zechariah his son, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, Pekah.
Gilead, however, is still part of the northern kingdom, vi. 8, xii.
11, so that the deportation effected by Tiglath Pileser in 734 B.C.
has not yet taken place (2 Kings xv. 29). Further, there is no
mention of the combination of Israel and Aram against Judah; and, as
Hosea was a very close observer of the political situation, his
silence on this point may be assumed to imply that his prophecies
fall earlier than 735. The date of his prophetic career may safely
be set about 743-736 B.C. In chs. i. and iii. Hosea reads the
experiences of his wedded life as a symbol of Jehovah's experience
with Israel. Gomer bore him three children, to whom he gave names
symbolic of the impending fate[1] of Israel, i. 1-9. The faithless
Gomer abandons Hosea for a paramour, but he is moved by his love for
her to buy her out of the degradation into which she has fallen, and
takes earnest measures to wean her to a better mind. All this Hosea
learns to interpret as symbolic of the divine love for Israel, which
refuses to be defeated, but will seek to recover the people, though
it be through the stern discipline of exile (iii.). Ch. ii. elaborates
the idea, suggested by these chapters, of Israel's adultery, i.e. of
her unfaithfulness to Jehovah, of the fate to which it will bring her,
and of her redemption from that fate by the love of her God.[2]
[Footnote 1: Chs. i. 10-ii. 1 interrupts the stern context with an
outlook on the Messianic days, considers Judah as well as Israel,
presupposes the exile of Judah, and anticipates ii. 21-23. It can
hardly therefore be Hosea's; nor can i. 7, which is quite irrelevant
and appears to be an allusion to the deliverance of Jerusalem from
Sennacherib in 701 B.C.]
[Footnote 2: It is much more satisfactory to interpret i., iii. as a
real experience of Hosea, and not simply as an allegory. If it be
objected, on the one hand, that the names of the last two children
are not probable names, it may be urged, on the other, that Gomer
seems to be an actual name, for which no plausible allegorical
meaning has been suggested.]

It is quite impossible even to attempt a summary of iv.-xiv., partly
because of the hopeless corruption of the text in very many
passages, partly from the brevity and apparently disjointed nature
of the individual sections. Possibly this is due, in large measure,
to later redactors of the book, or to the fragmentary reports of the
prophet's addresses; perhaps, however, it also expresses something
of the abrupt passion of his speeches, which, as Kautzsch says, were
"more sob than speech." The general theme of this division appears
in its opening words, "There is no fidelity or love or knowledge of
God in the land," iv. 1.

That knowledge of God is in part innate and universal: it is
knowledge of _God_, and not specifically of Jehovah--not
knowledge of a code, but fidelity to the demands of conscience. It
was, however, the peculiar business of the priests to proclaim and
develop that knowledge; and for the deplorable perversity of Israel,
they are largely held responsible, iv. 6. The worship of Jehovah,
which ought to be a moral service, vi. 6, is indistinguishable from
Baal worship (ii.) and idolatry. Upon the calf, the symbol under
which Jehovah was worshipped, and upon those who worship Him thus,
Hosea pours indignant and sarcastic scorn, viii. 5, 6, x. 5, xiii.
2. Ignorance of the true nature of God is at the root of the moral
and political confusion. It is this that leads the one party to
coquet with Egypt and the other with Assyria, vii. II, viii, 9, xi.
5, xii. 1, and the price paid for Assyrian intervention was a heavy
one (2 Kings xv. 19, 20, cf. Hosea v. 13). The native kings, too,
are as impotent to heal Israel's wounds as the foreigners, vii. 7,
x. 7; and though it might be too much to say that Hosea condemns the
monarchy as an institution, viii. 4, the impotence of the kings to
stem the tide of disaster is too painfully clear to him, x, 7, 15.

Whether Hosea ever alludes to Judah in his genuine prophecies is
very doubtful. Some of the references are obvious interpolations
(cf. i. 7), and for one reason or another, nearly all of them are
suspicious: in vi. 4, e.g., the parallelism (cf. _v_. 10)
suggests that _Israel_ should be read instead of _Judah_.
But there can be no doubt that the message of Hosea is addressed in
the main, if not exclusively, to northern Israel. It is her land
that is _the_ land, i. 2, cf. 4, her king that is "our king,"
vii. 5, the worship of her sanctuaries that he exposes, and her
politics that he deplores.

If Amos is the St. James of the Old Testament, Hosea is the St.
John. It is indeed possible to draw the contrast too sharply between
Amos and Hosea, as is done when it is asserted that Amos is the
champion of morality and Hosea of religion. Amos is not, however, a
mere moralist; he no less than Hosea demands a return to Jehovah,
iv. 6, 8, v. 6, but he undoubtedly lays the emphasis on the moral
expression of the religious impulse, while Hosea is more concerned
with religion at its roots and in its essence. Thus Hosea's work,
besides being supplementary to that of Amos, emphasizing the love of
God where Amos had emphasised His righteousness, is also more
fundamental than his. There is something of the mystic, too, in
Hosea: in all experience he finds something typical. The character
of the patriarch Jacob is an adumbration of that of his descendants
(xii.), and his own love for his unfaithful wife is a shadow of
Jehovah's love for Israel (i.-iii.).

His message to Israel was a stern one, probably even sterner than it
now reads in the received text of many passages, e.g., xi. 8, 9. He
represents Jehovah as saying to Israel: "Shall I set thee free from
the hand of Sheol? Shall I redeem thee from death? Hither with thy
plagues, O death! Hither with thy pestilence, O Sheol! Repentance is
hidden from mine eyes," xiii. 14. But it is too much to say with
some scholars that the sternness is unqualified and to deny to the
prophet the hope so beautifully expressed in the last chapter. There
were elements in Hosea's experience of his own heart which suggested
that the love of Jehovah was a love which would not let His people
go, and ch. xiv. (except _v_. 9) may well be retained, almost
in its entirety, for Hosea. His passion, though not robust, like
that of Amos, is tender and intense, xi. 3, 4: as Amos pleads for
righteousness, he pleads for love (Hos. vi. 6), _hesed_, a word
strangely enough never used by Amos; and it is no accident that the
great utterance of Hosea--"I will have love and not sacrifice," vi.
6--had a special attraction for Jesus (Matt. ix. 13, xii. 7).

JOEL

The book of Joel admirably illustrates the intimate connection which
subsisted for the prophetic mind between the sorrows and disasters
of the present and the coming day of Jehovah: the one is the
immediate harbinger of the other. In an unusually devastating plague
of locusts, which, like an army of the Lord,[1] has stripped the
land bare and brought misery alike upon city and country, man and
beast--"for the beasts of the field look up sighing unto Thee," i.
20--the prophet sees the forerunner of such an impending day of
Jehovah, bids the priests summon a solemn assembly, and calls upon
the people to fast and mourn and turn in penitence to God. Their
penitence is met by the divine pity and rewarded by the promise not
only of material restoration but of an outpouring of the spirit upon
all Judah,[2] which is to be accompanied by marvellous signs in the
natural world. The restoration of Judah has as its correlative the
destruction of Judah's enemies, who are represented as gathered
together in the valley of Jehoshaphat--i.e. the valley where
"Jehovah judges"--and there the divine judgment is to be executed
upon them.
[Footnote 1: Some regard the locusts as an allegorical designation
for an invading army. But without reason: in ii. 7 they are
_compared_ to warriors, and the effect of their devastations is
described in terms inapplicable to an army.]
[Footnote 2: The sequel, in which the nations are the objects of
divine wrath, shows that the "all flesh," ii. 28, must be confined
to Judah.]

The theological value of the book of Joel lies chiefly in its clear
contribution to the conception of the day of Jehovah. As Marti says,
"The book does not present one side of the picture only, but
combines all the chief traits of the eschatological hope in an
instructive compendium"--the effusion of the spirit, the salvation
of Jerusalem, the judgment of the heathen, the fruitfulness of the
land, the permanent abode of Jehovah upon Zion. These features of
the Messianic hope are, in the main, characteristic of post-exilic
prophecy; and now, with very great unanimity, the book is assigned,
in spite of its position near the beginning of the minor prophets,
to post-exilic times.

A variety of considerations appears to support this date. Judah is
the exclusive object of interest. Israel has no independent
existence, and, where the name is mentioned, it is synonymous with
Judah, ii. 27, iii. 2, 16. Further, the people are scattered among
the nations, iii. 2, and strangers are not to pass through the
"holy" Jerusalem any more, iii. 17. The exile and the destruction of
Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar in 586 B.C. appear therefore to be
presupposed. But the temple has been rebuilt; there are numerous
allusions to priests and to meal and drink offerings, i. 9, 13, ii.
14,17, and an assembly is summoned to "the house of Jehovah your
God," i. 14: the reference to the city wall, ii. 9, would bring the
date as late as Nehemiah in the fifth century. Other arguments,
though more precarious, are not without weight, e.g., the ease and
smoothness of the language, the allusion to the Greeks, in. 6, the
absence of any reference to the sin of Judah,[1] the apparent
citations from or allusions to other prophetic books.[2]
[Footnote 1: Though it may be implied in ii. 12f ]
[Footnote 2: Obad. _v_. 17, Jo. ii. 32; Amos i. 2, Jo. iii. 16;
Amos ix. 13, Jo. iii. 18; Ezek. xlvii. 1ff., Jo. iii. 18.]

The effect of this cumulative argument has been supposed to be
overwhelming in favour of a post-exilic date. Recently, however,
Baudissin, in a very careful discussion, has ably argued for at
least the possibility of a pre-exilic date. Precisely in the manner
of Joel, Amos iv. 6-9 links together locusts and drought as already
experienced calamities. Both alike complain of the Philistine and
Phoenician slave-trade. The enemies--Edom, Phoenicia, Philistia,
iii. 4, l9--fit the earlier period better than the Persian or Greek.
In the ninth century, Judah was invaded by the Philistines and
Arabians according to the Chronicler (2 Chron. xxi. 16ff.), whose
statements in such a matter there is no reason for doubting, and
Jerusalem may then have suffered: in any case, we know that the
treasures of temple and palace were plundered as early as Rehoboam's
time (1 Kings xiv. 25ff.), and this might be enough to satisfy the
allusion in Joel iii. 17. Again, if Joel is smooth, Amos is not much
less so; and linguistic peculiarities that seem to be late might be
due to dialect or personal idiosyncrasy. With regard to the argument
from citations, it would be possible to maintain that Joel's simple
and natural picture of the stream from the temple watering the
acacia valley, iii. 18, was not borrowed from, but rather suggested
the more elaborate imagery of Ezekiel, xlvii. For these and other
reasons Baudissin suggests with hesitation that a date slightly
before Amos is by no means impossible.[1]
[Footnote 1: It is interesting to note that Vernes, Rothstein and
Strack have independently reached the conclusion that chs. i., ii.
have a different origin from iii., iv. In the former, the state
still exists, and the calamity is a plague of locusts; in the
latter, no account is taken of the locusts--it is a time of national
disaster. The reasons, however, are hardly adequate for denying the
unity of the book.]

The question is much more than an academic one, for on the answer to it
will depend our whole conception of the development of Hebrew prophecy.
Sacerdotal interests, e.g., here receive a prominence in prophecy which
we are accustomed to associate only with the period after the exile.
Here again, the promises are for Judah, the threats for her enemies--an
attitude also characteristic of post-exilic prophecy: it is customary
to deny to the pre-exilic prophets any word of promise or consolation
to their own people. Obviously if the priest and the element of promise
have already so assured a place in the earliest of the prophets, the
ordinary view of the course of prophecy will have to be seriously
modified. The lack of emphasis displayed by Joel on the ethical aspect
of religion, which has been made to tell in favour of a late date,
might tell equally well in favour of a very early one. Indeed, the
book is either very early or very late; and, if early, it represents
what we might call the pre-prophetic type of Israel's religion, and
especially the non-moral aspirations of those who, in Amos's time,
longed for the day of Jehovah, and did not know that for them it meant
thick darkness, without a streak of light across it (Amos v. 18). On
the whole, however, the balance leans to a post-exilic date. The Jewish
dispersion seems to be implied, iii. 2. The strange visitation of
locusts suggests to the prophet the mysterious army from the north,
ii. 20, which had haunted the pages of Ezekiel (xxxviii., xxxix.);
and in this book, prophecy (i., ii.) merges into apocalyptic (iii.,
iv.).

AMOS

Amos, the first of the literary prophets, is also one of the
greatest. Hosea may be more tender, Isaiah more serenely majestic,
Jeremiah more passionately human; but Amos has a certain Titanic
strength and rugged grandeur all his own. He was a shepherd, i. 1,
vii. 15, and the simplicity and sternness of nature are written deep
upon his soul. He is familiar with lions and bears, iii. 8, v. 19,
and the terrors of the wilderness hover over all his message. He had
observed with acuteness and sympathy the great natural laws which
the experiences of his shepherd life so amply illustrated, iii. 15.,
and his simple moral sense is provoked by the cities, with the
immoral civilization for which they stand. With a lofty scorn this
desert man looks upon the palaces, i. 4, etc., the winter and the
summer houses, iii. 15, in which the luxurious and rapacious
grandees of the time indulged, and contemplates their ruin with
stern satisfaction.

Those were the days of Jeroboam II, i. 1, and, as the period is
marked by an easy self-assurance, and the ancient boundaries of
Israel are restored, vi. 14 (cf. 2 Kings xiv. 25, 28), Amos belongs,
no doubt, to the latter half of his reign, probably as late as 750
B.C., for he knows, though he does not name, the Assyrians, vi. 14,
and he finds in their irresistible progress westwards an answer to
the moral demands of his heart, Israel's exhausting wars with the
Arameans were now over. Aram herself had been weakened by the
repeated assaults of Assyria, and Israel was enjoying the dangerous
fruits of peace. Extravagance was common, and drunkenness, no less
among the women than the men, iv. 1. The grossest immorality is
associated even with public worship, ii. 7, and religion is being
eaten away by the canker of commercialism, viii. 5. The poor are
driven to the wall, and justice is set at defiance by those
appointed to administer it, ii. 6, v. 7. Such was the society,
brilliant without and corrupt within, into which Amos hurled his
startling message that the God who had chosen them, iii. 2, guided
their history, ii. 9, and sent them prophets to interpret His will,
ii. 11, would punish them for their iniquities, iii. 2.

It is not certain whether the unusually skilful disposition of the
book of Amos is due to himself or to a much later hand.[1] It has
three great divisions: (_a_) the judgment (i., ii.), (_b_)
the grounds of the judgment (iii.-vi.), (_c_) visions of judgment,
with an outlook on the Messianic days (vii.-ix.). In chs. i., ii., with
his sense of an impartial and universal moral law, Amos sees the
judgment sweep across seven countries in the west--Aram, Philistia,
Phoenicia, Edom, Ammon, Moab and Israel.[2] The sins denounced are,
e.g., the barbarities of warfare and the cruelties of the slave trade;
but Amos dwells with special emphasis and detail on the sins of Israel,
as that is the country to which, though a Judean, he has been specially
sent, vii. 10, 15.
[Footnote 1: Note the refrains in i., ii., cf. i. 3, 6; iii.-vi. are
held together by three "hears," iii. 1, iv. 1, v. 1, and apparently
by three "woes," v. 7 (emended text), v. 18, vi. 1; so the visions
in vii.-ix. are introduced by "Thus hath (the Lord Jehovah) shown
me."]
[Footnote 2: It is difficult to believe that the colourless oracle
against Judah, ii. 4, 5, couched in perfectly general terms, is
original. Doubts that are not unreasonable have also been raised
regarding the oracle against Edom, i. 11, 12.]

In the next section (_b_) he begins by asserting that Israel's
religious prerogative will only the more certainly ensure her
destruction, and justifies his threat of doom by his irrepressible
assurance of having heard the divine voice, iii. 1-8. The doom is
deserved because of the rapacity, luxury, iii. 9-15, and
drunkenness, iv. 1-3, nor will their sumptuous worship save them,
iv. 4, 5. Warnings enough they have had already, but as they have
all been disregarded, God will come in some more terrible way, iv.
6-13. Then follows a lament, v. 1-3, and an appeal to hate the evil
and seek God and the good, v. 4-15; otherwise He will come in
judgment and the "day of Jehovah," for which the people long, will
be a day of storm and utter darkness, v. 16-20. To-day, as in the
time of the Exodus, Jehovah's demands are not ritual but moral, and
the neglect of them will end in captivity, v. 21-27. The luxury and
self-assurance of the people are again scornfully denounced, and the
doom of exile foretold (vi.).

(_c_) Then follow visions of destruction from locusts and
drought, vii. 1-6, the vision of the plumbline, symbolical of the
straightness to which Israel has failed to conform, vii. 7-9, the
vision of the summer fruit, which, by a play upon words, portended
the end, viii. 1-3, and the vision of the ruined temple, ix. 1-7.
These visions are interrupted by the exceedingly interesting and
instructive story of the encounter of the prophet with the
supercilious courtier-priest of Bethel, and Amos's fearless
reiteration of his message, vii. 10-17; and also by the section
viii. 4-14, with its exposition of the evils and its threats of
judgment--a section more akin to iii.-vi. than to vii.-ix. The book
concludes with an outlook on the redemption and prosperity which
will follow in the Messianic age, ix. 8-15. It is hardly possible
that this outlook can be Amos's own. In one whose interest in
morality was so overwhelming, it would be strange, though perhaps
not impossible, that the golden age should be described in terms so
exclusively material; but the historical implications of the passage
are not those of Amos's time. It is further an express contradiction
of the immediately preceding words, ix. 2-5, in which, with dreadful
earnestness, the prophet has expressed the thought of an inexorable
and inevitable judgment from which there is no escape. Besides,
while Amos addresses Israel, this passage deals with Judah,
presupposes the fall[1] of the dynasty (cf. _v_. 11) and the
advent of the exile (ix. 14, 15).[2]
[Footnote 1: Even if only the decay were pre-supposed, the words
would be quite inapplicable to the long and prosperous reign of
Uzziah, i. 1.]
[Footnote: The authenticity of a few other passages, cf. viii. 11,
12, has been doubted for reasons that are not always convincing.
Most doubt attaches to the great doxologies, iv. 13, v. 8, 9, ix. 5,
6. The utmost that can be said with safety is that these passages
are in no case necessary to the context, while v. 8, 9 is a distinct
interruption, but that the conception of God suggested by them, as
omnipotent and omnipresent, is not at all beyond the theological
reach of Amos.]

Amos must have had predecessors, ii. 11; but even so the range and
boldness of his thought are astonishing. History, reflection and
revelation have convinced him that Israel has had unique religious
privileges, iii. 2; nevertheless she stands under the moral laws by
which all the world is bound, and which even the heathen
acknowledge, iii. 9--Amos has nothing to say of any written law
specially given to Israel--and by these laws she will be condemned
to destruction, if she is unfaithful, just as surely as the
Philistines and Phoenicians (i.). Indeed, so sternly impartial is
Amos that he at times even seems to challenge the prerogative of
Israel. The Philistines and Arameans had their God-guided exodus no
less than Israel, and she is no more to Jehovah than the swarthy
peoples of Africa, ix. 7. The universal and inexorable claims of the
moral law have never had a more relentless exponent than Amos; and,
though there is in him a soul of pity, vii. 2, 5, it was his
peculiar task, not to proclaim the divine love, but to plead for
social justice. God is just and man must be so too. Perhaps Amos's
message is all the more daring and refreshing that he was not a
professional prophet, vii. 14. His culture, though not formal, is of
the profoundest. He is familiar with distant peoples, ix. 7, he has
thought long and deeply about the past, he knows the influences that
are moulding the present. The religion for which he pleaded was not
a thing of rites and ceremonies, but an ideal of social justice--a
justice which would not be checked at every step by avarice and
cruelty, but would flow on and on like the waves of the sea, v. 24.

OBADIAH

The book of Obadiah--shortest of all the prophetic books--is
occupied, in the main, as the superscription suggests, with the fate
of Edom. Her people have been humbled, the high and rocky fastnesses
in which they trusted have not been able to save them. Neighbouring
Arab tribes have successfully attacked them and driven them from
their home (_vv_, 1-7).[1] This is the divine penalty for their
cruel and unbrotherly treatment of the Jews after the siege of
Jerusalem, _vv_. 10-14, 15_b_. Nay, a day of divine
vengeance is coming upon all the heathen, when Judah will utterly
destroy Edom, and once again possess all the land, north, south,
east and west, that was formerly theirs, and the kingdom shall be
Jehovah's, _vv_. 15_a_, 16-21.
[Footnote 1: Verses 8, 9, which imply that the catastrophe is yet to
come, and speak of Edom in the third person, appear to be later than
the context. For "thy mighty men, O Teman," in _v_. 9_a_,
probably we should read, "the mighty men of Teman."]

The date of the prophecy seems to be fixed by the unmistakable
allusion in _vv_. 11-14 to the capture of Jerusalem by
Nebuchadrezzar in 586 B.C.--an occasion on which the Edomites
abetted the Babylonians (Ezek. xxxv.; Lam. iv. 21 ff.; Ps. cxxxvii.
7). But the case is gravely complicated by the similarity, which is
much too close to be accidental, between Obadiah 1-9 and the oracle
against Edom in Jeremiah, xlix. 7-22 (especially _vv_. 14-16,
9, 10, 7, 22); and, though in one or two places the text of Obadiah
is superior (cf. Ob. 2, 3; Jer. xlix. 15, 16), the resemblance is
such that the passage in Jeremiah must be dependent on Obadiah. Now
the date assigned to Jeremiah's oracle is 605 B.C. (xlvi. 2); but
obviously Jeremiah could not adopt in 605 a prophecy which was not
written till 586. A way out of this difficulty has usually been
sought in the assumption that both prophets have made use, in
different ways, of an older oracle against Edom, _vv_. 1-9 or
10. But there is no adequate reason for separating _vv_. 11-14,
which must refer to the capture of Jerusalem in 586, from _vv_.
1-7. The assumption just mentioned becomes quite unnecessary when we
remember that Jeremiah xlix. 7-22, as we have already seen, is
probably, at least in its present form, from a period very much
later than Jeremiah. The priority therefore rests with Obadiah,
whose prophecy has been utilized in Jeremiah xlix.

In _vv_. 1-7 the catastrophe is not predicted for Edom, it has
already fallen: it was probably an earlier stage of the Bedawin
assaults, whose desolating effect upon Edom is described in Malachi
i. 1-5, and must therefore be relegated to a period about the middle
of the fifth century. We are probably not far from the truth in
dating Obadiah 1-14 about 500 B.C. The memory of Edom's cruelty
would still rankle a generation after the return.

But in _vv_. 15_a_, 16-21 the literary and religious
colouring is different; _vv_. 1-14 is marked by a certain
graphic vigour, _vv_. 15-21 is diffuse. The judgment of Edom in
_vv_. 1-14 is in _vv_. 15-21 made only an episode in a
great world-judgment. Above all, in _v_. 1 the nations are to
execute this judgment, in _v_. 15 they are to be the victims of
it. Further, _vv_. 19, 20 seem to imply an extensive dispersion
of the Jews. Probably, therefore, this passage expresses the bold
eschatological hopes of a later time, when Judah was to be finally
redeemed and the heathen annihilated. The section may be later than
the oracle in Jeremiah xlix, as no use is made of it there.

JONAH

The book of Jonah is, in some ways, the greatest in the Old
Testament: there is no other which so bravely claims the whole world
for the love of God, or presents its noble lessons with so winning
or subtle an art. Jonah, a Hebrew prophet, is divinely commanded to
preach to Nineveh, the capital of the great Assyrian empire of his
day. To escape the unwelcome task of preaching to a heathen people,
he takes ship for the distant west, only to be overtaken by a storm,
and thrown into the sea, when, by the lot, it is discovered that he
is the cause of the storm. He is immediately swallowed by a fish, in
the belly of which he remains three days and nights (i.). Then
follows a prayer: after which the prophet is thrown up by the fish
upon the land (ii.). This time he obeys the divine command, and his
preaching is followed by a general repentance, which causes God to
spare the wicked city (iii.), whereat Jonah is greatly displeased;
but, by a new and miraculous experience, he is taught the shame and
folly of his anger, and the infinite greatness of the divine love
(iv.).

On the face of it, the narrative is not meant to be strictly
historical. Its place among the prophetic books shows that its
importance lies, not in its facts, but in the truths for which it
pleads. Much detail is wanting which we should expect to find were
the narrative pure history, e.g. the name of the Assyrian king, the
results of Jonah's mission, etc. Other circumstances stamp it as
unhistorical: considering the poor success the Hebrew prophets had
in their own land, such a wholesale conversion of a foreign city,
even if such a visit as Jonah's were likely, must be regarded as
extremely improbable, to say nothing of the impossibility of the
animals fasting and wearing sackcloth, iii. 7, 8. The miraculous
fish and the miraculous tree which grew up in a single night forbid
us to look for history in the book. Nineveh's fame is a thing of the
past, iii. 3; the book is written after, probably long after, its
fall in 606 B.C. The lateness of the book and its remoteness from
the events it records, are proved in other ways. Its language has
the Aramaic flavour of the later books, and such a phrase as "the
God of heaven," i. 9, only occurs in post-exilic literature. It
contains several reminiscences of late books[1] (e.g. Joel?), and
its ideas are most intelligible as the product of post-exilic times,
especially if it be regarded as a protest against a loveless and
narrow-hearted type of Judaism. All the conditions point to a date
not much, if at all, earlier than 300 B.C.
[Footnote 1: There are many points of contact between the prayer in
Jonah ii. and the Psalter; but the prayer must be later than the
original book of Jonah. It is in reality not a prayer but a psalm of
gratitude, and is quite inappropriate to Jonah's horrible situation
in the belly of the fish. Even if the metaphors from the sea were
interpreted literally, they would not be applicable to Jonah's case;
e.g., "the weeds were wrapped about my head," _v_. 5. The
Psalm, which is partly, but not altogether, a compilation, must have
been inserted here by a later hand, hardly by the author of the
book, who would have noticed the impropriety of it.]

Jonah is himself a historical character; there is no reason to doubt
that the prophet, in whose time Nineveh is standing, i. 2, is
contemporary with the Jonah mentioned in 2 Kings xiv. 25 as living
in the reign of Jeroboam II, and prophesying the restoration of
Israel to its ancient boundaries. It may have been as the
representative of an intense and exclusive nationalism that he was
chosen as the hero of this book. Here and there the story trenches
on Babylonian and Greek legend, but the spirit, if not also the
form, is altogether the author's own.

The book abounds in religious suggestion; even its incidental
touches are illuminating. It suggests that man cannot escape his
divinely appointed destiny, and that God's will must be done. It
suggests that prophecy is conditional; a threatened destruction can
be averted by repentance. It is peculiarly interesting to find so
generous an attitude towards the religious susceptibilities and
capacities of foreigners: in this we are reminded of Jesus' parable
of the good Samaritan. The foreign sailors cry, in their perplexity,
to their gods, and end by acknowledging the God of Israel; the
people of Nineveh repent at the prophet's preaching. All this forms
a splendid foil to the smallness and obstinacy of Jonah. With his
mean views of God, he would not only exclude the heathen from the
divine mercy, but rejoice in their destruction. In this the prophet
is typical of later Judaism, with its longing for the annihilation
of the nations as the obverse of the redemption of Zion. This
attitude was greatly encouraged by the rigorous legislation of Ezra;
and Jonah, like Ruth, may be a protest against it, or at least
against the bigotry which it engendered. If Israel is, in any sense,
an elect people, she is but elected to carry the message of
repentance to the heathen; and the book of Jonah is indirectly,
though not perhaps in the intention of the author, a plea for
foreign missions.

The greatest lesson of the book is skilfully reserved to the end,
iv, 2, 10, 11. It is that God is patient and merciful, that He loves
all the world which He created, that His love stretches not only
beyond the Jews and away to distant Nineveh, but even down to the
animal creation. He hears the prayer of the foreign sailors, He
delights in the repentance of Nineveh, He cares for the cattle, iv.
11. This book is the Old Testament counterpart to "God so loved the
world."

MICAH

Micah must have been a very striking personality. Like Amos, he was
a native of the country--somewhere in the neighbourhood of Gath; and
he denounces with fiery earnestness the sins of the capital cities,
Samaria in the northern kingdom, and Jerusalem in the southern. To
him these cities seem to incarnate the sins of their respective
kingdoms, i. 5; and for both ruin and desolation are predicted, i.
6, iii. 12. Micah expresses with peculiar distinctness the sense of
his inspiration and the object for which it is given; he is
conscious of being filled with the spirit of Jehovah to declare unto
Jacob his transgression and unto Israel his sin, iii. 8. In his
ringing sincerity, he must have formed a strange contrast to the
prophets who regulated their message by their income, iii. 5, and
preached to a people whose conscience was slumbering, a welcome
gospel of materialism, ii. 11.

The words of Micah must have burned themselves into the memories, if
not the consciences, of his generation; for more than a hundred
years after--though doubtless by this time the prophecy was written--we
find his unfulfilled prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem
alluded to by the elders who pled for the life of Jeremiah, xxvi.
17ff. It is certain from this reference that he prophesied during
the reign of Hezekiah; whether also under Jotham and Ahaz (Mic. i.
1) is not so certain, and depends upon whether his prophecy of the
destruction of Samaria, i. 6, was made before, or as seems equally
possible, after the capture of that city in 721 B.C. At any rate his
message was addressed to Judah, and must have fallen (at least i.-iii.)
before 701 B.C.--the year in which the city was saved beyond all
 expectation from an attack by Sennacherib, iii. 12.

Micah begins by describing the coming of Jehovah. He is coming in
judgment upon Samaria and Jerusalem, the wicked capitals of wicked
kingdoms, i. 1-9; and in the difficult verses, i. 10-16, the
devastating march of the enemy through Judah is allusively described.
The judgment is thoroughly justified--it is due to the violent and
grasping spirit of the wealthy, who do not scruple to crush the poor
and defenceless, ii. 1-11. The prophet then[1] brings his charge in
detail against the leaders of the people--officials, judges, priests,
prophets--accuses them of being mercenary and time-serving, and ends
with the terrible threat that the holy hill will one day be made a
 desolation (iii.).
[Footnote 1: Ch. ii. 12, 13, which interrupt the stern address of
the prophet, ii. 11, iii. 1 with a promise which implies that Israel
is scattered, are probably exilic; they can hardly be Micah's.]

These chapters are assigned almost unanimously to Micah. But serious
critical difficulties are raised in connection with the rest of the
book. Chs. iv. and v. constitute a section by themselves, and may be
considered separately. Their general theme is the certainty of
salvation, but it is quite clear that they do not form an original
unity; iv. 1-4, e.g., with its generous attitude to the foreign
nations, is inconsistent with iv. 11-13, which predicts their
destruction. Again, iv. 10 describes a siege of Jerusalem, which is
to issue in exile, iv. 11-13, a siege which is to end in the
annihilation of the besiegers. Similar difficulties characterize ch.
v; in _vv_. 7-9, 15 the enemies are to be destroyed.

No consecutive outline of the chapters is possible in their present
disconnected form. Ch. iv. 1-5 describes the Messianic age, in which
the nations will come to Jerusalem to have their cases peacefully
arbitrated, iv. 6-8 promise that those scattered (in exile) will be
gathered again, and the kingdom of Judah restored. Siege of
Jerusalem, exile, and redemption, iv. 9, 10. Unsuccessful siege of
Jerusalem and annihilation of the enemy, iv. 11-13. Another siege:
Israel's suffering, v. 1. Promise of a victorious king, v. 2-4.
Judah's victory over Assyria, v. 5, 6 and all her enemies, v. 7-9.
All the apparatus of war and idolatry will be removed from the land,
v. 10-14, and vengeance taken on the enemy, v. 15.

The summary shows how disjointed the chapters are. They may not
impossibly contain reminiscences or even utterances of Micah; e.g.
the prediction of the fatal siege, v. 1, or of the overthrow of
idolatry, v. 10-14. But many elements could not possibly be Micah's:
e.g. iv. 8 implies that the kingdom of Judah is already a thing of
the past. iv. 6 postulates the exile,[1] and the prophecy of exile
to Babylon, iv. 10, would be unnatural in Micah's time, when Assyria
was the dominant power.[2]  Again it is exceedingly improbable that
Micah would have blunted the edge of his terrible threat in iii. 12
by following it up with so brilliant a promise as iv. 1-4,
especially as not a word is said about the need of repentance. The
story in Jeremiah xxvi. 17ff. raises the legitimate doubt whether
Micah's prophecy, which was certainly one of threatening, iii. 12,
also contained elements of promise. On the whole it seems best to
assume that the fine picture of the glory and importance of Zion in
the latter days, iv. 1-4, was set by some later writer as a foil to
the stern threat with which the original prophecy closed, cf. Isaiah
ii. 1-4. Chs. iv. and v. may be regarded as a collection of
prophecies emphasizing the certainty of salvation and intended to
supplement i.-iii.
[Footnote 1: This might conceivably, though not very naturally,
refer to the deportation of _Israel_ in 721.]
[Footnote 2: Some retain iv. 9, 10 for Micah, and assume either that
the Babylon clause is a later interpolation, or that Babylon has
displaced another proper name.]

Chs. vi. and vii. take us again into another atmosphere, more like
Micah's own. The people, who attempt to defend themselves against
Jehovah's charge of ingratitude on the plea that they are ignorant
of His demands, are reminded that those demands are ancient and
simple: justice, love as between man and man, and a humble walk with
God, vi. 1-8. But instead, dishonesty and injustice are rampant
everywhere, and the judgment of God is inevitable, vi. 9-16. The
prophet laments the utter and universal degradation of the people,
which has corrupted even the intimacies of family life, vii. 1-6. In
the rest of the chapter the blow predicted has already fallen; in
their sorrow the people await the fulfilment of Jehovah's purpose in
patience and faith, pray to Him to restore the land which once was
theirs on the east of the Jordan, and thus to compel from the
heathen an acknowledgment of His power. He is the incomparable God
who can forgive and restore, vii. 7-20.

The accusations and laments of these two chapters come very strangely
after the repeated promises of chs. iv. and v.; and if the whole book
had been by Micah, it is hardly possible that this order should have
been original. Probably these chapters were appended to Micah's book
because of several features which they have in common with i.-iii.:
notice, e.g., the prominence of the word "hear," i. 2, iii. 1, 9,
vi. 1, 9, Most scholars agree with Ewald in supposing that these
chapters--at any rate vi. i-vii. 6--come from the reign of Manasseh.
The situation is that of i.-iii., only aggravated: the reference to
Ahab, vi. 16, with whom Manasseh is compared in 2 Kings xxi. 3, points
in the same direction. Even if written in this reign, Micah may still
have been the author; but the general manner of the chapters and the
individuality they reveal appear to be different from his. But,
considering their noble insistence upon the moral elements in religion
(esp. vi. 6-8) they are, if not his, yet not inappropriately appended
to his book. The concluding section, however, vii. 7-20, is almost
certainly post-exilic. The punishment has come, therefore the exile is
the earliest possible date. But there are exiles not only in Babylon,
but scattered far and wide throughout the world, vii. 12, and there is
the expectation that the walls of Jerusalem will be rebuilt, vii. 11.
As this took place under Nehemiah, the section will fall before his
time (500-450 B.C.). This passage of promise and consolation is a foil
to vi. 1-vii. 6, intended to sustain the same relation to that section
as iv., v. to i.-iii.

Thus many hands appear to have contributed to the little book of
Micah, and the voices of two or three centuries may be heard in it:
earlier words of threatening and judgment are answered by later
words of hope and consolation. But wherever else the true Micah is
to be found--and his spirit at any rate is certainly in vi. 6-8--he
is undoubtedly present in i.-iii. It is a peculiar piece of good
fortune that we should possess the words of two contemporary
prophets who differed so strikingly as Micah the peasant and Isaiah
the statesman. Unlike Isaiah, Micah has nothing to say about foreign
politics and their bearing upon religion; he confines himself
severely to its moral aspects, and like Amos, that other prophet of
the country, hurls his accusations and makes his high ethical
demands, with an almost fierce power, iii. 2, 3. His prophecy
justifies his claim to speak in the power and inspiration of his
God, iii. 8.

NAHUM

Poetically the little book of Nahum is one of the finest in the Old
Testament. Its descriptions are vivid and impetuous: they set us before
the walls of the beleaguered Nineveh, and show us the war-chariots of
her enemies darting to and fro like lightning, ii. 4, the prancing
steeds, the flashing swords, the glittering spears, iii. 2,3. The
poetry glows with passionate joy as it contemplates the ruin of cruel
and victorious Assyria.

In the opening chapter, i., ii. 2, Jehovah is represented as coming
in might and anger to take vengeance upon the enemies of Judah, whom
He is to destroy so completely that not a trace of them will be
left; and Judah, now delivered, will be free to worship her God in
peace. In ch. ii. the enemy, through whom Assyria's destruction is
to be wrought, is at the gates of Nineveh, _v_. 8, in all the
fierce pomp of war. The city is doomed, the defenders flee,
everywhere is desolation and ruin, the ravenous Assyrian lion is
slain by the sword. It is because of her sins that this utter ruin
is coming upon her, iii. 1-7, nor need she think to escape; for the
populous and all but impregnable Thebes (No-Amon) was taken, and
Nineveh's fate will be the same. Already the people are quaking for
fear, some of the strongholds of Assyria are taken; it is time to
prepare to defend the capital. But there is no hope, her doom is
already sealed, iii. 8-19.

From the historical implications of the prophecy, which belongs, as
we shall see, to the seventh century, and also from definite
allusions (cf. i. 15), Nahum must have been a Judean; and, of the
three traditions concerning Elkosh his birthplace, which place it
respectively in Mesopotamia, in Galilee, and near Eleutheropolis in
southern Judah, the last must be held to be very much the most
probable. Within certain limits, the date is easy to fix. Ch. iii.
8-10, which are historically the most concrete verses in the
prophecy, imply the capture of Thebes, which we now know to have
been taken by the Assyrians in 663 B.C. On the other hand, Nineveh
has not yet fallen: the theme of the prophecy is just the certainty
of its fall. It was taken by the Medians under Kyaxares, leagued
with Nabopolassar of Babylon in 606 B.C. The prophecy therefore
falls between 663 and 606.

The fixing of the precise date depends on two considerations: (1)
whether the allusion to Thebes in iii. 8-10 implies that its capture
was very recent, and (2) whether we must suppose that the prophecy
was inspired by a definite historical situation. It is usually felt
that the reference to Thebes implies that the memory of its capture
is fresh, and that the prophecy must stand very near it--not later
perhaps than 650; and just about this time there was a Babylonian
rebellion against Assyria. This date must be regarded as by no means
impossible. On the whole, however, a later date appears to be
distinctly more probable The last few verses, iii. 12f., 18f., imply
the thorough weakness, disorganization and impending dissolution of
the Assyrian empire, and so early a date as 650 hardly meets the
case. We must apparently come down to the time when the fate of
Nineveh was obviously inevitable and her conqueror was on the way,
ii. 1. Probably Marti is not far from the truth in suggesting 610
B.C. The reference to Thebes is intelligible even at this later
date, when we remember that the capture of so strong a city, already
famous in Homer's time, must have left an indelible impression on
the mind of Western Asia. It is no doubt abstractly possible that
the prophecy is not intimately connected with any historical
situation, and therefore might be much earlier; but to say nothing
of the concreteness of the detail, such a supposition would be
altogether contrary to the analogy of Hebrew prophecy. When Jehovah
reveals His secret to the prophets, it is because He is about to do
something (Amos iii. 7).

The concreteness of detail just alluded to is characteristic only of
the second and third chapters. Ch. i., however, is confessedly
vague, and moves for the most part along the familiar lines of
theophanic descriptions. It is not plain in i. (cf. ii. 8) who are
the enemies to be destroyed, as i. 1 is probably a later addition.
Further, as far as _v_. 10 the prophecy is alphabetic: this
circumstance has given rise to the view that i., ii. 2 originally
formed a complete alphabetic psalm whose second half has either been
worked over, or displaced by i. 11-15, ii. 2, the object of the
psalm being to present a general picture of the judgment into which
the particular doom of Nineveh is fitted, and to give the prophecy a
theological complexion which it appeared to need. The acknowledged
vagueness of the chapter and the demonstrably alphabetic nature of
at least part of it, certainly render its authenticity very
doubtful.

The theological interest of Nahum is great. It is the first prophecy
dealing exclusively with the enemies of Judah. There is a hint of
the sin of Nineveh, but little more than a hint, iii. 1, 4; she is
the enemy and oppressor of Judah, and that is enough to justify her
doom. Whether we accept the earlier or the later date for the
prophecy, the reign of Manasseh or that of Josiah, the moral
condition of Judah herself was deplorable enough, and so clear-eyed
a prophet as Jeremiah saw that her doom was inevitable. Nahum
probably represents the sentiment of narrowly patriotic party, which
regarded Jerusalem as inviolable, and Jehovah as a jealous God ready
to take vengeance upon the enemies of Judah.

HABAKKUK

The precise interpretation of the book of Habakkuk presents unusual
difficulties; but, brief and difficult as it is, it is clear that
Habakkuk was a great prophet, of earnest, candid soul, and he has
left us one of the noblest and most penetrating words in the history
of religion, ii. 4_b_. The prophecy may be placed about the
year 600 B.C. The Assyrian empire had fallen, and by the battle of
Carchemish in 605 B.C., Babylonian supremacy was practically
established over Western Asia. Josiah's reformation, whose effects
had been transient and superficial, lay more than twenty years
behind. The reckless Jehoiakim was upon the throne of Judah, a king
who regarded neither the claims of justice (Jer. xxii. 13-19) nor
the words of the prophet (Jer. xxxvi. 23), and his rebellion drew
upon him and his land the terrible vengeance of Babylon, first in
601 B.C., then in 597.

The prophet begins by asking his God how long the lamentable
disorder and wrong are to continue, i. 1-4. For answer, he is
assured that the Chaldeans are to be raised up in chastisement, who,
with their terrible army, will mockingly defy every attempt to check
their advance, i. 5-11, But in i. 12-17 the prophet appears to be
confounded by their impiety; they have been guilty of barbarous
cruelty--how can Jehovah reconcile this with His own holiness and
purity? The prophet finds the answer to his question when he climbs
his tower of faith; there he learns that the proud shall perish and
the righteous live. The solution may be long delayed, but faith sees
and grasps it already: "The just shall live by his faithfulness,"
ii. 1-4. Then follows a series of woes, ii. 5-20, which expand the
thought of ii. 4_a_--the sure destruction of the proud. Woes
are denounced upon the cruel rapacity of the conquerors, their
unjust accumulation of treasure, their futile ambitions, their
unfeeling treatment of the land, beasts and people, and finally
their idolatry. In contrast to the stupid and impotent gods
worshipped by the oppressor is the great God of Israel, whose temple
is in the heavens, and before whom the earth is summoned to silence,
ii. 20. For He is on His way to take vengeance upon the enemies of
His people, as He did in the ancient days of the exodus, when He
came in the terrors of the storm and overthrew the Egyptians. His
coming is described in terms of older theophanies (Jud. v., Deut.
xxxiii.); and this "prayer," as it is called in the superscription,
concludes with an expression of unbounded confidence and joy in
Jehovah, even when all customary and visible signs of His love fail
(iii.).

Simple and coherent as this sequence seems to be, it is, in reality,
on closer inspection, very perplexing. Ch. i. 1-4 reveals a picture
of confusion within Judah, but it is impossible to say whether it is
foreigners who are oppressing Judah as a whole, or powerful classes
within Judah itself that are oppressing the poor. Perhaps the latter
is the more natural interpretation. In that case, the Chaldeans are
raised up to chastise the native oppressor, i. 5-11. This section,
however, has fresh difficulties of its own; _vv_. 5, 6 suggest
that the Chaldeans are not yet known to be a formidable power, they
are only about to be raised up, _v_. 6, and what they will do
is as yet incredible, _v_. 5. The minute description which
follows, however, looks as if their military appearance and methods
were thoroughly familiar. Assuming that i. 12-17 is the continuation
of i. 5-ll--and the descriptions are very similar--the Chaldeans,
whose coming was the answer to the prophet's prayer, now constitute
a fresh problem; they swallow up those who are more righteous than
themselves, _v_. 13, i.e. Judah. It cannot be denied that such
a characterization of Judah sounds strange after the charge levelled
at her in i. 1-4, unless we assume an interval of time between the
sections, or at least that in i. 12-17, Judah is regarded as
relatively righteous, i.e. in comparison with the Chaldeans.

The situation is further complicated by the very close resemblance
that prevails between i. 1-4 and i. 12-17. The very same words for
_righteous_ and _wicked_ occur in i. 13 as in i. 4; do they
or do they not designate the same persons? If they do, then, as in
i. 12-17, the wicked oppressor is almost certainly the Chaldean and
the righteous is Judah, and we shall have to interpret the confusion
pictured in i. 2-4 as due to the Chaldean suzerainty, and perhaps to
assign the section to a period after the first capture of Jerusalem
in 597 B.C. In that case, as it is obvious that the Chaldeans could
not be raised up to execute divine judgment upon themselves, the
section, i. 5-11, would have to be regarded as an independent piece,
whether Habakkuk's or not, announcing the rise of the Chaldeans, and
not inappropriately placed here, considering that the sections on both
sides of it have the Chaldeans for their theme. On the other hand,
however, it may be urged that the identification of the righteous and
wicked in i. 13 with i. 4, though natural,[1] is not necessary; and by
denying it the prophecy becomes distinctly more coherent. The wrong done
by Judah, i. 1-4, is avenged by the coming of the Chaldeans, i. 5-11;
they, however, having overstepped the limits of their divine commission,
only aggravate the prophet's problem, i. 12-17, and he finally finds the
solution on his watch-tower, in the assurance that somehow, despite all
 seeming delay, the purpose of God is hastening on to its fulfilment, and
that the moral constitution of the world is such as to spell the ultimate
ruin of cruelty and pride and the ultimate triumph of righteousness,
ii. 1-4. His faith was historically justified by the fall of the
Babylonian empire in 538 B.C.
[Footnote 1: Some scholars feel so strongly that the historical
background of i. 1-4 and i. 12-17 is the same, that they regard the
latter section as the direct continuation of the former. Budde,
followed by Cornill, ingeniously supposes that the oppressor in
these two sections is the Assyrian (about 615 B.C.), and it is this
power that the Chaldeans, i. 5-11, are raised up to chastise. These
scholars put i. 5-11 after ii. 4 as a historical amplification of
its moral and more indefinite statement. But the strength of
Habakkuk rather seems to lie in this, that he abandons the immediate
historical solution, i. 5, and is content with the moral one, ii. 4,
though no doubt he believes that the moral solution will realize
itself in history.]

The authenticity[1] of some of the woes in ch. ii. may be contested,
e.g. _vv._ 12-14, which appears to be a partial reproduction of
Jer. li. 58, Isa. xi. 9. It is very improbable that ch. iii. is
Habakkuk's: it is not even certain that the poem is a unity. The
situation in _vv._ 17-19 (especially _v._ 17) seems
different from that in the rest of the chapter: there an enemy was
feared, here rather infertility. Again the general temper of the ode
is hardly that of ii. 3, 4. There the vision was to be delayed, here
the interposition seems to be impatiently awaited and expected soon.
If "thine anointed" in iii. 13 refers to the people--and the
parallelism makes this almost certain--then the days of the monarchy
are over and the poem cannot be earlier than the exile. Probably, as
the superscription, subscription, and threefold _Selah_
suggest, we have here a post-exilic psalm. The psalm, however, is
fittingly enough associated with the prophecy of Habakkuk. Its
belief in the accomplishment of the divine purpose and its emphasis
on a faith independent of the things of sight, are akin in spirit,
though not in form to ii. 4.
[Footnote 1: Marti explains the book thus: (_a_) i. 2-4,
12_a_, 13, ii. 1-4, a psalm, belonging to the fifth or perhaps
the second century, giving the divine answer to the plaint that
judgment is delayed; (_b_) i. 5-11, 12_b_, 14-17, a
prophecy about 605 B.C. dealing with the effect of the battle of
Carchemish; (_c_) ii. 5-19, the woes: about 540, when the
Chaldean empire is nearing its end; (_d_) iii., a post-exilic
psalm.]

Patience and faith are the watch-words of Habakkuk, ii. 3, 4. There
was a time when he had expected an adequate historical solution to
his doubts in his own day, i. 5; but, as he contemplates the immoral
progress of the Chaldeans, he recognizes his difficulty to be only
aggravated by this solution, and he is content to commit the future
to God. He is comforted and strengthened by a larger vision of the
divine purpose and its inevitable triumph--if not now, then
hereafter. "Though it tarry, wait for it, for it is sure to come, it
will not lag behind." That purpose wills the triumph of justice, and
though the righteous may seem to perish, in reality he lives, and
shall continue to live, by his faithfulness.

ZEPHANIAH

If the Hezekiah who was Zephaniah's great-great-grandfather, i. 1,
was, as is probable, the king of that name, then Zephaniah was a
prince as well as a prophet, and this may lend some point to his
denunciation of the princes who imitated foreign customs, i. 8. He
prophesied in the reign of Josiah, i. 1, and the fact that he censures
not the king but the king's children, i. 8, points to the period when
Josiah was still a minor (about or before 626 B.C.). With this
coincides his description of the moral and religious condition of
Judah, which necessitates a date prior to the reformation in 621.
Idolatry, star-worship and impure Jehovah-worship are rampant,
i. 4, 5, 9. The rich are easy-going and indifferent to religion,
supposing that God will leave the world to itself, i. 12. The people
of Jerusalem are incorrigible, iii. 2, reckless of the lessons that
God has written in nature and history, iii. 5ff.; their leaders--princes,
prophets, priests--are immoral or incompetent. The prophecy may be
placed between 630 and 626, and the prophet must have been a young man.

To this idolatrous and indifferent people he announces the speedy
coming of the day of Jehovah, whose terrors he describes with a
certain solemn grandeur (i.). The judgment is practically
inevitable, i. 18, but it may perhaps yet be averted by an earnest
quest of Jehovah, ii, 1-3. That judgment will sweep along the coast
through the Philistine country, ii. 4-7, and on to Egypt, and
afterwards turn northwards and utterly destroy Assyria with her
great capital Nineveh, ii. 12-15. Again the prophet turns to
Jerusalem, and for the sins of her people and their leaders
proclaims a general day of judgment, from which, however, the humble
will be saved, iii. 1-13 (except _vv_. 9, 10.). The book ends
with a fine vision of the latter days, when the dispersed of Judah
will be restored to their own land, and rejoice in the omnipotent
love of their God, iii. 14-20.

The prophecy presents a very impressive picture of the day of Jehovah,
but it cannot all be from the pen of Zephaniah. Besides adopting a
very different attitude towards Jerusalem from the rest of the prophecy,
iii. 14-20 clearly presupposes the exile, _v_. 19, towards the end
of which it was probably written. Ch. ii. 11, iii. 9, 10, containing
ideas which are hardly earlier than Deutero-Isaiah, are also probably
exilic or post-exilic. The oracle against Moab and Ammon, ii. 8-10,
countries which lay off the line of the Scythian march southwards from
Philistia, _v_. 7, to Egypt, _v_. 12, are for linguistic,
contextual, and other reasons, also probably late.

Prophecy has practically always an historical occasion, and the
thought of the black and terrible day of Jehovah was no doubt
suggested to Zephaniah by the formidable bands of roving Scythians
which scoured Western Asia about this time, sweeping all before them
(Hdt. i. 105). They do not seem to have touched Judah; but it is not
surprising that men like Jeremiah and Zephaniah should have regarded
them as divinely ordained ministers of vengeance upon Jehovah's
degenerate people.

HAGGAI

The post-exilic age sharply distinguished itself from the pre-exilic
(Zech. i. 4), and nowhere is the difference more obvious than in
prophecy. Post-exilic prophecy has little of the literary or moral
power of earlier prophecy, but it would be very easy to do less than
justice to Haggai. His prophecy is very short; into two chapters is
condensed a summary, probably not even in his own words, of no less
than four addresses. Meagre as they may seem to us, they produced a
great effect on those who heard them.

The addresses were delivered between September and December in the
year 520 B.C. The people were suffering from a drought, and in the
first address, i. 1-11, Haggai interprets this as a penalty for
their indifference to religion--in particular, for their neglect to
build the temple. The effect of the appeal was that three weeks
afterwards a beginning was made upon the building, i. 12-15. The
people, however, seem to be discouraged by the scantiness of their
resources, and a month afterwards Haggai has to appeal to them
again, reminding them that with the silver and the gold, which are
His, Jehovah will soon make the new temple more glorious than the
old, ii. 1-9. Two months later the prophet again reminds them that,
as their former unholy indifference had infected all their life with
failure, so loyal devotion to the work now would ensure success and
blessing, ii. 10-19; and on the same day Haggai assures Zerubbabel a
unique place in the Messianic kingdom which is soon to be ushered
in, ii. 20-23.

The appeals of Haggai and Zechariah were successful (Ezra v. 1, vi.
14), and within four years the temple was rebuilt (Ezra vi. 15). It
was now the centre of national life, and therefore also of prophetic
interest. Haggai was probably not himself a priest, but in so short
a prophecy his elaborate allusion to ritual is very significant, ii.
11ff. This prophecy, like pre-exilic prophecy, was no doubt
conditioned by the historical situation. The allusion to the shaking
of the world in ii. 7, 22, appears to be a reflection of the
insurrections which broke out all over the Persian empire on the
accession of Darius to the throne in 521 B.C.; and probably the Jews
were encouraged by the general commotion to make a bold bid for the
re-establishment of an independent national life. That they
cherished the ambition of being once more a political as well as a
religious force, seems to be suggested by the frequency with which
Haggai links the name of Zerubbabel, of the royal line of Judah,
with that of Joshua the high priest; and, in particular, by the
extraordinary language applied to him--in ii. 23 he is the elect of
Jehovah, His servant and signet. Clearly he is to be king in the
Messianic kingdom which is to issue out of the convulsion of the
world.

It cannot be safely inferred from ii. 3 that Haggai was among those
who had seen the temple of Solomon and was therefore a very old man.
Simple as are his words, his faith is strong and his hope very bold.
Considering the meagre resources of the post-exilic community, it is
touching to note the confidence with which he assures the people
that Jehovah will bring together the treasures of the world to make
His temple glorious.

ZECHARIAH

CHAPTERS I-VIII

Two months after Haggai had delivered his first address to the
people in 520 B.C., and a little over a month after the building of
the temple had begun (Hag. i. 15), Zechariah appeared with another
message of encouragement. How much it was needed we see from the
popular despondency reflected in Hag. ii. 3, Jerusalem is still
disconsolate (Zech. i. 17), there has been fasting and mourning,
vii. 5, the city is without walls, ii. 5, the population scanty, ii.
4, and most of the people are middle-aged, few old or young, viii.
4, 5. The message they need is one of consolation and encouragement,
and that is precisely the message that Zechariah brings: "I have
determined in these days to do good to Jerusalem and to the house of
Judah; fear not," viii. 15.

The message of Zechariah comes in the peculiar form of visions, some
of them resting apparently on Babylonian art, and not always easy to
interpret. After an earnest call to repentance, i. 1-6, the visions
begin, i. 7-vi. 8. In the first vision, i. 7-17, the earth, which
has been troubled, is at rest; the advent of the Messianic age may
therefore be expected soon. The divine promise is given that
Jerusalem shall be graciously dealt with and the temple rebuilt. The
second is a vision, i. 18-21, of the annihilation of the heathen
world represented by four horns. The third vision (ii.)--that of a
young man with a measuring-rod--announces that Jerusalem will be
wide and populous, the exiles will return to it, and Jehovah will
make His abode there.

These first three visions have to do, in the main, with the city and
the people; the next two deal more specifically with the leaders of
the restored community on its civil and religious side, Zerubbabel
the prince and Joshua the priest. In the fourth vision (iii.) Joshua
is accused by the Adversary and the accuser is rebuked--symbolic
picture of the misery of the community and its imminent redemption.
Joshua is to have full charge of the temple, and he and his priests
are the guarantee that the Branch, i.e. the Messianic king (Jer.
xxiii. 5, xxxiii, 15), no doubt Zerubbabel (Zech, iii. 8, vi. 12;
Hag. ii. 23), is coming. In the fifth vision (iv.)[1] the prophet
sees a lampstand with seven lamps and an olive tree on either side,
the trees representing the two anointed leaders, Zerubbabel and
Joshua, enjoying the divine protection.
[Footnote 1: Except vv. 6b-10a, which appears to be a special
assurance, hardly here in place, that Zerubbabel would finish the
temple which he had begun.]

The next two visions elaborate the promise of iii. 9: "I will remove
the iniquity of that land,"--and indicate the removal of all that
taints the land of Judah, alike sin and sinners. The flying roll of
the sixth vision, v. 1-4, carries the curse that will fall upon
thieves and perjurers; and in the somewhat grotesque figure of the
seventh vision, v. 5-11, Sin is personified as a woman and borne
away in a closed cask by two women with wings like storks, to the
land of Shinar, i.e. Babylon, there to work upon the enemy of Judah
the ruin she has worked for Judah herself. In the last vision, vi.
1-8, which is correlate with the first--four chariots issuing from
between two mountains of brass--the divine judgment is represented
as being executed upon the north country, i.e. the country opposed
to God, and particularly Babylonia.

The cumulative effect of the visions is very great. All that hinders
the coming of the Messianic days is to be removed, whether it be the
great alien world powers or the sinners within Jerusalem itself. The
purified city will be blessed with prosperity of every kind, and
over her civil and religious affairs will be two leaders, who enjoy
a unique measure of the divine favour. In an appendix to the visions
vi. 9-15, Zechariah is divinely commissioned to make a crown for
Zerubbabel (or for him and Joshua)[1] out of the gold and silver
brought by emissaries of the Babylonian Jews, and the hope is
expressed that peace will prevail between the leaders--a hope
through which we may perhaps read a growing rivalry.
[Footnote 1: It seems practically certain that the original prophecy
in _v_. 11 has been subsequently modified, doubtless because it
was not fulfilled. The last clause of _v_. 13--"the counsel of
peace shall be between them _both"_--shows that two persons
have just been mentioned. The preceding clause must therefore be
translated, not as in A. V. and R. V., "and _he_ shall be a
priest upon his throne," as if the office of king and priest were to
be combined in a single person, but "and _there_ shall be" (or,
as Wellhausen suggests, "and _Joshua_ shall be") "a priest upon
his throne," (or no doubt more correctly, with the Septuagint, "a
priest _at his right hand_"). As two persons are involved, and
the word "crowns" in v. 11 is in the plural, it has been supposed
that the verse originally read, "set the crowns _upon the head of
Zerubbabel and_ upon the head of Joshua." On the other hand, in
_v_. 14 the word "crown" must be read in the singular, and
should probably also be so read in _v_. 11 (though even the
plural could refer to one crown). In that case, if there be but one
crown, who wears it? Undoubtedly Zerubbabel: he is the Branch, iii.
8, and the Branch is the Davidic king (Jer. xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15).
The building of the temple here assigned to the Branch, vi. 12, is
elsewhere expressly assigned to Zerubbabel, iv. 9. It is, therefore,
he who is crowned: in other words, v. 11, may have originally read,
"set it _upon the head of Zerubbabel._" Whether we accept this
solution or the other, it seems certain that the original prophecy
contemplated the crowning of Zerubbabel. As the hopes that centred
upon Zerubbabel were never fulfilled, the passage was subsequently
modified to its present form.]

The concluding chapters of the prophecy (vii., viii.), delivered two
years later than the rest of the book, vii. 1, are occupied with the
ethical conditions of the impending Messianic kingdom. To the
question whether the fast-days which commemorated the destruction of
Jerusalem are still to be observed, Zechariah answers that the
ancient demands of Jehovah had nothing to do with fasting, but with
justice and mercy. As former disobedience had been followed by a
divine judgment, so would obedience now be rewarded with blessing,
fast-days would be turned into days of joy and gladness, and the
blessing would be so great that representatives of every nation
would be attracted to Jerusalem, to worship the God of the Jews.

In Zechariah even more than in Haggai it is clear that prophecy has
entered upon a new stage.[1] There is the same concentration of
interest upon the temple, the same faith in the unique importance of
Zerubbabel. But the apocalyptic element, though not quite a new
thing, is present on a scale altogether new to prophecy. Again, the
transcendence of God is acutely felt--the visions have to be
interpreted by an angel. We see, too, in the book the rise of the
idea of Satan (iii.) and of the conception of sin as an independent
force, v. 5-11. The yearning for the annihilation of the kingdoms
opposed to Judah, i. 18-21, has a fine counterpart in the closing
vision, viii. 22, 23, of the nations flocking to Jerusalem because
they have heard that God is there. The book is of great historical
value, affording as it does contemporary evidence of the drooping
hopes of the early post-exilic community, and of the new manner in
which this disappointment was met by prophecy. But, though Zechariah's
message was largely concerned with the building of the temple, and
was delivered for the most part in terms of vision and apocalyptic,
the ethical elements on which the "former prophets" had laid the
supreme emphasis, were by no means forgotten, viii. 16, 17.
[Footnote 1: Zechariah himself is conscious of the distinction, which
is more than a temporal one, between himself and the pre-exilic
prophets: notice the manner of his allusion to the "former prophets,"
i. 4, vii. 7, 12.]

CHAPTERS IX.-XIV.

Practically all the distinctive features of the first eight chapters
disappear in ix.-xiv. The style and the historical presuppositions
are altogether different. There are two new superscriptions, ix. 1,
xii. 1, but there is no reference to Zerubbabel, Joshua, or the
situation of their time. There the immediate problem was the
building of the temple; here, more than once, Jerusalem is
represented as in a state of siege. A sketch of the contents will
show how unlike the one situation is to the other.

The general theme of ix. 1-xi. 3 is the destruction of the world-powers
and the establishment of the kingdom of God. Judgment is declared at
the outset upon Damascus, Phoenicia and Philistia, while Jerusalem is
to enjoy the divine protection and to be the seat of the Messianic King,
ix. 1-9. Greece, the great enemy, will be overcome by Judah and Ephraim,
who are but weapons in Jehovah's hand, ix. 10-17. Then follows[1] a
passage in which "the shepherds" are threatened with a dire fate. Judah
receives a promise of victory, and Ephraim is assured that her exiles
will be gathered and brought home from Egypt and Assyria to Gilead and
Lebanon; the cedars of Lebanon and the oaks of Bashan--types perhaps of
foreign rulers--will be laid low, x. 3-xi. 3.
[Footnote 1: Ch. x. 1, 2 appears to stand by itself. It is an
injunction to bring the request for rain to Jehovah and to put no
faith in teraphim and diviners.]

The next section is of a different kind. In it the prophet is
divinely commissioned to tend the flock which has been neglected and
impoverished by other shepherds. To this end he takes two staves,
named Favour and Unity, to indicate respectively the favour enjoyed
by Judah in her relations with her neighbours, and the unity
subsisting between her and Israel (or Jerusalem, according to two
codices); and thus invested with the instruments of the pastoral
office he destroyed three shepherds in a short time. But the flock
grew tired of him, and, in consequence he broke the staves, i.e. the
relations of favour and unity were ruptured. A foolish and careless
shepherd is then raised up, who abuses the flock, and over him a woe
is pronounced, xi. 4-17, more minutely defined in xiii. 7-9, which
appears to have been misplaced. Jehovah will slay the shepherd and
scatter the sheep; a third of the flock after being purified by fire
will constitute the people of Jehovah.

The next section, xii. 1-xiii. 6, introduces us to a siege of
Jerusalem by the heathen, abetted by Judah. Suddenly, however, Judah
changes sides; by the help of Jehovah they destroy the heathen, and
Jerusalem is saved, xii. 1-8. Then the people and their leaders are
moved by the outpouring of the spirit to confess and entreat
forgiveness for some judicial murder which they have committed and
which they publicly and bitterly lament, xii. 9-14. The prayer is
answered; people and leaders are cleansed in a fountain opened, with
the result that idolatry and prophecy of the ancient public type are
abjured, xiii. 1-6.

The theme of the last section also (xiv.) is a heathen attack upon
Jerusalem, but this time the city is destroyed and half the
inhabitants exiled. Then Jehovah intervenes, and by a miracle upon
the Mount of Olives the rest of the people effect their escape, and
Jehovah Fights with all His angels against the heathen. Those
glorious Messianic days, when Jehovah will be King over all the
earth, will know no heat or cold, or change from light to darkness.
Jerusalem will be secure and the land about her level and fruitful,
watered east and west by a living stream. Those who have made war
against her will waste away, while the rest of the world will make
pilgrimages to the holy city to worship Jehovah and celebrate the
feast of booths. Then the mighty war-horses, once the object of His
hatred, will be consecrated to His service, and the number of
pilgrims will be so great that every pot in the city and in the
province of Judah will be needed for ceremonial purposes.

Few problems in the Old Testament are more perplexing than that of the
origin and relation of the sections composing, ix.-xiv. to one another.
The utmost that can be said with comparative certainty is that the
prophecy, in its present form, is post-exilic, while certain elements
in it, especially in ix.-xi., are, if not pre-exilic, at any rate
imitations or reminiscences of pre-exilic prophecy. Many scholars even
deny that ix.-xiv. is a unity and assign it to at least two authors.
Though the superscription in xii. 1, which seems to justify this
distinction, was probably added, like Malachi i. i, by a later hand,
the presence of certain broad distinctions between ix.-xi. and
xii.-xiv. can hardly be denied. In the former section, Ephraim is
occasionally mentioned in combination with Judah, cf. ix. 13; in the
latter, Judah alone is mentioned, and partly, on the strength of this,
the former section is assigned to a period between Tiglath Pileser's
invasion of the north of Palestine in 734 (xi. 1-3) and the fall of the
northern kingdom in 721, while the latter is assigned to a period between
the death of Josiah in 609, to which the mourning in Megiddo is supposed
to allude, xii. 11, and the fall of the southern kingdom in 586.

Even within these sections there are differences which are held to
be incompatible with the unity of each section. The most notable
difference is perhaps that affecting the siege of Jerusalem. In ch.
xii. the heathen are destroyed before Jerusalem, while the city
itself remains secure; in ch. xiv. the houses are rifled, the women
ravished, and half of the people go into captivity before Jehovah
intervenes to protect the remainder. These and other differences are
unmistakable, yet it may be questioned whether they are so serious
as to be fatal to the unity of the whole section, ix.-xiv. It is not
impossible that they may be due to the eclectic spirit of an author
who gathered from many quarters material for his eschatological
pictures. Besides, the sections which have been by some scholars
relegated to different authors, occasionally seem to imply each
other. The general assault on Jerusalem in ch. xii., e.g., is the
natural result of the breaking of the staves, Favour and Unity, in
ch. xi. But, even if ix.-xiv. be a unity, it is well to remember, as
Cornill reminds us, that there is "much in these chapters which will
ever remain obscure and unintelligible, because our knowledge of the
whole post-exilic and especially of the early Hellenic period is
extremely deficient."

This leads to the question of date. The last section (xii.-xiv.) at
any rate is obviously post-exilic. The idea of the general assault
on Jerusalem is undoubtedly suggested by Ezekiel xxxviii.; the
curiously condemnatory attitude to prophecy in xiii. 2-6 would have
been impossible in pre-exilic times; the phrase, "Uzziah _king of
Judah_," xiv. 5, rather implies that the dynasty is past, and the
reference to the earthquake in his reign has the flavour of a
learned reminiscence.[1] These and other circumstances practically
necessitate a post-exilic date, and the objection based upon xii. 11
falls to the ground, as that verse alludes, in all probability, not
to lamentations for the death of Josiah, which would no doubt have
taken place in Jerusalem, but to laments which accompanied the
worship of the Semitic Adonis. Nor can any objection be grounded
upon the allusion to idolatry in xiii. 2, as idolatry persisted into
post-exilic times.[2]
[Footnote 1: Even if the earliest possible date (about 600) for this
section be accepted, the earthquake had taken place a century and a
half before.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. Job xxxi. 2eff. and perhaps also Ps. xvi.]

If ix.-xiv. be a unity, a definite _terminus a quo_ is provided
in ix. 13 by the mention of the Greeks, whose sons are opposed to
the sons of Zion. Such a relation of Jews to Greeks is not
conceivable before the time of Alexander the Great, and this fact
alone would throw the prophecy, at the earliest, into the fourth
century B.C. But there are other facts which seem to some to make
for a pre-exilic date: e.g. the mention of Judah and Ephraim
together, ix. 13 (cf. ix. 10), seems to presuppose the existence of
both kingdoms, and Egypt and Assyria are placed side by side, x. 10,
11, precisely in the manner of Hosea (ix. 3, xi. 5). But these
facts, significant as they may seem, are by no means decisive in
favour of a pre-exilic date. Assyria was the first great world power
with which Israel came into hostile contact, and the name was not
unnaturally transferred by later ages to the hostile powers of their
own day--to Babylon in Lam. v. 6, to Persia in Ezra vi. 22, and
possibly to Syria in Isaiah xxvii. 13. Consequently, in a context
which assigns the passage, at the earliest, to the Greek period,
Assyria and Egypt would very naturally designate the Seleucid and
Ptolemaic kingdoms respectively, and the prophecy might be safely
relegated to the third century, B.C.[1] The allusion to Ephraim is
not incompatible with this date, for the prophecy presupposes a
general dispersion, x. 9, which must be later than the fall of Judah
in 586, considering that residence in Egypt, x. 10, is implied (cf.
Jer. xlii.-xliv.). Nothing more need be implied by the allusion to
Ephraim than that there will be a general restoration of all the
tribes that were once driven into exile and are now scattered
throughout the world.
[Footnote 1: Marti puts it as late as 160. One of the most important
clues would be furnished by xi. 8--"I cut off the three shepherds in
one month"--if the reference were not so cryptic. Advocates of a
pre-exilic date find in the words an allusion to three successors of
Jeroboam II. of Israel--Zechariah, Shallum and some unknown
pretender (about 740); others, to the rapid succession of high
priests before the Maccabean wars (about 170). One month probably
signifies generally a brief time.]

If chs. ix.-xiv. belong to the third century B.C., they give us an
interesting glimpse into the aspirations and defects of later Judaism.
They reveal an unbounded faith in the importance of Jerusalem, and in
the certainty of its triumph over the assaults of heathenism; on the
other hand, they are inspired by a fine universalism, xiv. 16ff. But
this universalism has a distinctly Levitical and legalistic colouring,
xiv. 21. Membership in the kingdom of God involves abstinence from
food proscribed by the Levitical law, ix. 7; and even for the heathen
the worship of Jehovah takes the form of the celebration of the feast
of booths, xiv. 16. There is in the prophecy a noble appreciation of the
world-wide destiny of the true religion, but hardly of its essentially
spiritual nature.

MALACHI

It is not inappropriate that Malachi,[1] though not the latest of
the prophets, should close the prophetic collection. The concluding
words of this book, which predict the coming of the great prophet
Elijah, iv. 5f, and the apocalyptic tone of Malachi, show that
prophecy feels itself unable to cope adequately with the moral
situation and is conscious of its own decline. Here, as in Haggai,
interest gathers round ritual rather than moral obligation, though
the latter is not neglected, iii. 5, and the religion for which
Malachi pleads is far from being exhausted by ritual. He takes a
lofty view, approaching to Jesus' own, of the obligations of the
marriage relation, ii. 16; and perfunctory ritual he abhors, chiefly
because it expresses a deep-seated indifference to God and His
claims, iii. 8. The clergy or the laity who offer God their lame or
blemished beasts are guilty of an offence that goes deeper than
ritual. Their whole ideal of religion and service is insulting; they
have forgotten that Jehovah is "a great King," i. 14.
[Footnote 1: Ch. i. 1 is late, modelled, like Zech. xii. 1 on Zech.
ix. 1. The word Malachi has no doubt been suggested by
_Malachi_ in iii. i (= my messenger). The prophecy is really
anonymous.]

The prophecy of Malachi is closely knit together. Addressing a people
who doubt the love of their God, he begins by pointing-strangely
enough from the Christian standpoint, but intelligibly enough from
that of early post-exilic Judaism--to the desolation of Edom, Judah's
enemy (cf. Obadiah) in poof of that love, i. 2-5; and asks how Judah
has responded to it. The priests present inferior offerings, thus
forming, in their insulting indifference, a strange contrast to the
untutored heathen hearts all the world over, which offer God pure
service; they have put to shame the ancient ideals, i. 6-ii. 9. The
people, too, are as guilty as the priests; for they had divorced
their faithful Jewish wives who had borne them children, and married
foreign women who were a menace to the purity of the national religion,
ii. 10-16. Those who are beginning to doubt the moral order because
Jehovah does not manifestly interpose as the God of justice, are
assured by the prophet that the Lord, preceded by a messenger, is on
His way; and He will punish, first the unfaithful priests, and then
the unfaithful people, ii. 17-iii. 5. His apparent indifference to the
people is due to their real indifference to Him; if they bring in the
tithes, the blessing will come, iii. 6-12. As before, ii. 17ff., the
despondent are assured that Jehovah has not forgotten them; He is
writing their names in a book, and when He comes in judgment, the
faithful will be spared, and then the difference between the destinies
of the good and the bad will be plain for all to see. The wicked shall
be trampled under foot, and upon the dark world in which the upright
mourn shall arise the sun, from whose gentle rays will stream healing
for bruised minds and hearts, iii. 13-iv. 4. Before that day Elijah
will come to heal the dissensions of the home, iv. 5, 6. (cf. ii. 14).

The atmosphere of the book of Malachi is very much like that of
Ezra-Nehemiah. The same problems emerge in both--foreign marriages,
neglect of payment of tithes, etc. But the allusion to the presents
given the governor, i. 8, shows that the book was not written during
the governorship of Nehemiah, who claims to have accepted no
presents (Neh. v. 14-18). On the other hand, the state of affairs
presented by the book is inconceivable after the measures adopted by
Ezra and Nehemiah; therefore, Malachi must precede them. Probably
however, not by much; it was Malachi and others like-minded who
prepared the way for the reformation, and his date may be roughly
fixed at 460-450 B.C. Consistently with this, the priests are
designated Levites, ii. 4, iii. 3, as in Deuteronomy; the book must
therefore precede the priestly code which sharply distinguishes
priests and Levites.

There is an unusual proportion of dialogue in Malachi. Good men are
perplexed by the anomalies of the moral order, and they are not
afraid to debate them. Malachi's solution is largely, though not
exclusively, iii. 8-12, apocalyptic; and though in this, as in his
emphasis on the cult, iii. 4, and his attitude to Edom, i. 2ff., he
stands upon the level of ordinary Judaism, in other respects he
rises far above it. Coming from one to whom correct ritual meant so
much, his utterance touching heathen worship is not only
refreshingly, but astonishingly bold. In all the Old Testament,
there is no more generous outlook upon the foreign world than that
of i. 11. Though the priests of the temple at Jerusalem insult the
name of Jehovah and are wearied with His service, yet "from sunrise
to sunset My name is great among the (heathen) nations, and in every
place pure offerings are offered to My name; for great is My name
among the heathen, saith Jehovah of hosts."

PSALMS

The piety of the Old Testament Church is reflected with more
clearness and variety in the Psalter than in any other book of the
Old Testament. It constitutes the response of the Church to the
divine demands of prophecy, and, in a less degree, of law; or,
rather, it expresses those emotions and aspirations of the universal
heart which lie deeper than any formal demand. It is the speech of
the soul face to face with God. Its words are as simple and
unaffected as human words can be, for it is the genius of Hebrew
poetry to lay little stress upon artifices of rhyme and rhythm. By
its simple device of parallelism, it suggests a rhythm profounder
than the sound of any words--the response of thought to thought, the
calling of deep to deep, the solemn harmonies that run throughout
the universe. Whether the second thought of a verse is co-ordinate
with the first, as--

  Let us break their bands asunder,
  And cast away their cords from us, ii 3.

or contrasted with it, as--

  Jehovah knows the way of the righteous,
  But the way of the ungodly shall perish, i. 6,

the resulting parallelism is essentially simple, and the Hebrew poet
can express his profoundest thoughts and feelings with lucidity and
freedom. It is the depth and sincerity of its emotion, coupled with
this unrivalled simplicity of expression that has given the Psalter
its abiding-place in the religious history of humanity.

With the partial exception of Psalm xlv., which is a marriage song,
the songs of the Psalter are exclusively religious. Indeed most of
the poetry of the Old Testament is religious; the Song of Deborah,
e.g. (Jud. v.), or the Psalm of Hezekiah (Isa. xxxviii.). But, from
scattered hints it is abundantly plain that, especially before the
exile, Hebrew poetry must have ranged over a wide variety of themes.
So far as we know, the Hebrews never had an epic; and though a
certain epic power is occasionally suggested by the extant
literature, it may be doubted whether the Hebrew genius, which was
essentially lyrical, would have been capable of the long sustained
effort demanded by a great epic. But the lyrical genius of the
Hebrew found abundant opportunity in life's common joys, sorrows and
activities. Victories in battle were celebrated in ballads, which
made the blood leap, love songs were sung at weddings, and dirges
were chanted over the dead. The labour of drawing water, of reaping
the fields or gathering the vintage, was relieved by snatches of
song. There was all this and more, but it has nearly all perished,
leaving little more than an echo, because the men who compiled and
edited the Old Testament were dominated by an exclusively religious
interest.

But if the interest of the Psalter be exclusively religious, we have
no reason to complain of its variety. From the deepest despair to
the highest exaltation, every mood of the soul is uttered there.
Many a classification of the Psalter has been attempted, e.g. into
(_a_) psalms of gladness, such as thanksgiving (xlvi.),
adoration (viii.); (_b_) psalms of sadness, such as lamentation
(lxxiv.), confession (li.), supplication (cii.); (_c_) psalms
of reflection, such as the occasional didactic poetry (cxix.), or
discussions of the moral order (lxxiii.). But in the nature of the
case, no classification can ever hope to be completely satisfactory,
if for no other reason than that the psalms, being for the most part
lyrics, are often marked by subtle and rapid changes of feeling,
passing sometimes, as in Psalm xxii., from the most touching laments
to the most daring expressions of hope and gladness. The following
classification, though exposed, as all such classifications must be,
to the charge of cross-division, will afford a working basis for the
study of the Psalter:--

(1) Psalms of Adoration, including (_a_) adoration of God for
His revelation in nature, viii., xix. 1-6, xxix., civ.; (_b_)
adoration of Him for His love to His people, xxxiii., ciii., cxi.,
cxiii., cxv., cxvii., cxlvii.; (_c_) praise of His glorious
kingdom, cxlv., cxlvi., ending with the call to universal praise,
cxlviii., cl.

(2) Psalms of Reflection (_a_) upon the moral order of the
world, ix., x., xi., xiv., xxxvi., xxxvii., xxxix., xlix., lii.,
lxii., lxxiii., lxxv., lxxxii., xc., xcii., xciv.; (_b_) upon
Divine Providence, xvi., xxiii., xxxiv., xci., cxii., cxxi., cxxv.,
cxxvii., cxxviii., cxxxiii., cxxxix., cxliv. 12-15; (_c_) on
the value of Scripture, i., xix. 7-14, cxix.; (_d_) on the
nature of the ideal man, xv., xxiv. 1-6, l.

(3) Psalms of Thanksgiving, most of them for historical
deliverances, e.g. from the exile, or from the Syrians in the second
century B.C., xxx., xl., xlvi., xlviii., lxv., lxvi., lxvii.,
lxviii., lxxvi., cxvi., cxviii., cxxiv., cxxvi., cxxix., cxxxviii.,
cxliv. 1-11, cxlix.

(4) Psalms in Celebration of Worship, v., xxiv., 7-10, xxvi.,
xxvii., xlii.-xliii., lxxxiv., cxxii., cxxxiv.

(5) Historical Psalms (_a_) emphasizing the unfaithfulness of
the people, lxxviii., lxxxi., cvi.; (_b_) emphasizing the love
or power of God, cv., cxiv., cxxxv., cxxxvi.

(6) Imprecatory Psalms, lviii, lix., lxix., lxxxiii., cix., cxxxvii.

(7) Penitential Psalms, vi., xxxii., xxxviii., li., cii., cxxx.,
cxliii.

(8) Psalms of Petition (_a_) prayers for deliverance,
preservation or restoration, iii., iv., vii., xii., xiii., xvii.,
xxv., xxxi., xxxv., xli., xliv., liv., lv., lx., lxiv., lxxi.,
lxxiv., lxxvii., lxxix., lxxx., lxxxv., lxxxvi., lxxxviii., cxx.,
cxxiii., cxxxi., cxl., cxli., cxlii; (_b_) answered prayers,
xxii., xxviii., lvi., lvii.

(9) Royal Psalms (_a_) king's coronation, xxi.; (_b_)
marriage, xlv.; (_c_) prayers for his welfare and success, xx.,
lxi, lxiii.; (_d_) his character, lxxii., ci.; (_e_)
dominion, ii., xviii., cx.; (_f_) yearning for the Messianic
King, lxxxix., cxxxii.

(10) Psalms concerning the universal reign of Jehovah, i.e.
Messianic psalms in the largest sense of the word, xlvii., lxxxvii.,
xciii., xcv., xcvi., xcvii., xcviii., xcix., c.

The Psalter has plainly had a long history. In its present form it
obviously rests upon groups, which in turn rest upon individual
psalms, that are no doubt often far older than the groups in which
they stand. Like the Pentateuch, and perhaps in imitation of it, the
Psalter is divided into five books, whose close is indicated, in
each case, by a doxology (xli., lxxii., lxxxix., cvi.), except in
the case of the last psalm, which is itself a doxology (cl.). This
division appears to have been artificially effected. Psalm cvii.,
which starts the last book, goes naturally with cv. and cvi., which
close the fourth book; and the circumstance that the number of
psalms in the fourth book corresponds exactly with that of the
third, raises a strong suspicion that the break was deliberately
made at Psalm cvi. It is very probable, too, that the doxology at
the close of Psalm cvi. (cf. 1 Chron. xvi. 36), which differs
somewhat from the other doxologies, was originally intended as a
doxology to that psalm only, and not to indicate the close of the
book. In any case, the contents of books 4 and 5, which are very
largely liturgical, are so similar that they may be practically
considered as one book.

Books 2 and 3 may also be similarly regarded; for whereas in books
1, 4 and 5 the name of the divine Being is predominantly Jehovah, in
books 2 and 3 it is predominantly Elohim (God), and there can be no
doubt that these two books, at least as far as Ps. lxxxiii., have
been submitted to an Elohistic redaction. Psalm xiv., _e.g._,
reappears in the 2nd book as Psalm liii. in a form practically
identical, except for the name of God, which is Jehovah in the one
(xiv.) and Elohim in the other (liii.); the change is, therefore,
undoubtedly deliberate. This is also made plain by the presence of
such impossible phrases as "God, thy God," xlv. 7, 1. 7, instead of
the natural and familiar "Jehovah, thy God." Whatever the motive for
the choice of this divine name (Elohim) may be, it is so thoroughly
characteristic of books 2 and 3 that they may not unfairly be held
to constitute a group by themselves. In this way the Psalter falls
into three great groups--book I (i.-xli.), which is Jehovistic,
books 2 and 3 (xlii.-lxxxix.), which are Elohistic, and books 4 and
5 (xc.-cl.), which are Jehovistic..

These greater groups rest, however, upon other smaller ones, some formally
acknowledged, e.g. the so-called Psalms of Ascent or Pilgrim psalms
(cxx.-cxxxiv.), the Psalms of David, Psalms of the Korahites (xlii.-xlix.,
etc.), Psalms of Asaph (lxxiii.-lxxxiii., etc.), and others not so obvious
in a translation, e.g. the Hallelujah Psalms, cxi.-cxiii., cxlvi.-cl.
These groups must often have enjoyed an independent reputation as
groups, and even been invested with a certain canonical authority, for
occasionally the same psalm appears in two different groups (xiv.=liii.,
xl. 13-17=lxx., cviii.=lvii. 7-11 +lx. 6-12). Such repetition proves that
the final editors did not consider themselves at liberty to make any
change within the groups. The principle of the arrangement of individual
psalms within the group was probably not a scientific one: e.g. xxxiv.
and xxxv. seem to be placed together for no other reason than that both
refer to "the angel of Jehovah," xxxiv. 7, xxxv. 5. Sometimes a psalm
has been wrongly divided into two (cf. xlii., xliii., originally one
psalm) and occasionally two psalms have been united, usually for
reasons that are transparent (so perhaps xix., the revelation in the
heavens and the revelation in the Scriptures, and xxiv., the entrance
of Jehovah into His temple, and the essential conditions for the
entrance of man).

The original order of the groups themselves appears to have been
dislocated. Whoever added the subscription to Psalm lxxii. can hardly
have been aware of the eighteen psalms which, in the subsequent books
of the Psalter, are ascribed to David; nor is it natural to suppose
that the Asaphic (l.) and Korahitic psalms (xlii.-xlix.) stood in the
second book when that subscription was written. It is not improbable
that Psalms xlii.-l. originally belonged to the third book, along
with the Asaphic group, lxxiii.-lxxxiii., and that lxxii. 20, "The
prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended," was intended as the
subscription of all the Davidic psalms that had then been collected
(Book I, except Pss. i., ii., x., xxxiii., and book 2, Pss. li.-lxx.).[1]
The first two books originally represented a Davidic hymn-book; they
probably represent, as a whole, the oldest part of the Psalter.
[Footnote 1: Psalms i. and ii. were placed at the beginning as
prefatory to the whole Psalter. They deal with the two cardinal
points of Judaism--the law and the Messianic hope. Psalms ix. and x.
originally constituted _one_ alphabetic psalm, and xxxiii. is
ascribed to David in the Septuagint.]

The problem of the authorship of the Psalms is one of the thorniest
in the Old Testament. One hundred psalms are ascribed to definite
authors: one is ascribed to Moses (xc.), seventy-three to David, two
to Solomon (lxxvii., cxxvii.); and yet there are not a few scholars
who maintain that, so far from any psalm being Mosaic, or even
Davidic, there is not a single pre-exilic psalm in the Psalter, and
the less radical critics do not allow more than thirty or forty. The
question must be settled entirely upon internal evidence, as the
superscriptions, definite as they often are, are never demonstrably
reliable, while some of them are plainly impossible. To begin with,
doubt attaches to the meaning of the Hebrew preposition in the
phrase, "Psalm _of_ David." It is the same preposition as that
rendered by _for_ in the phrase, "For the chief musician," and
as in this phrase authorship is out of the question, it may be
seriously doubted whether it is implied in the phrase rendered
"Psalm of David." This doubt is corroborated by the phrase, "Psalms
of the sons of Korah." Plainly all the Korahites did not cooperate
in the composition of the psalms so superscribed; and the most
natural inference is that the phrase does not here designate
authorship, but that the psalm is one of a collection in some sense
belonging to or destined for the Korahitic guild of temple-singers.
[1] In that case the phrase would have a liturgical sense, and the
parallel phrase "of (or for) David," might have to be similarly
explained. It must be confessed, however, that whatever the actual
origin of the superscription, "of (or for) David," it certainly came
to be regarded as implying authorship--the many historical notices
in the superscriptions of Psalms li.-lx. are proof enough of that;
and no other explanation is possible of the superscription "of
Moses" in Psalm, xc (cf. Is. xxxviii. 9, the writing of Hezekiah).
[Footnote 1: It is not absolutely impossible that the phrase might
point to a collection composed by this guild, cf. "Moravian
brethren." But the other supposition is more likely.]

In later times, then, authorship was plainly intended by the
superscriptions. But it is quite certain that the superscriptions
themselves are no original and integral parts of the psalms. In the
Septuagint they occasionally differ from the Hebrew, assigning
psalms that are anonymous in the Hebrew (xcv., cxxxvii.) to David,
or to other authors (e.g., cxlvi.-cxlviii. to Haggai and Zechariah.)
The ease with which psalms were, without warrant, ascribed to David
may be seen from the Greek superscription to Psalm xcvi. "When the
house [i.e. the temple] was being built after the captivity; a song
of David": in other words, an admittedly post-exilic psalm is
ascribed to David. The superscriptions were added probably long
after the psalms, and there is no reason to suppose that the Hebrews
were exempt from the uncritical methods and ideas which
characterized the Greek translators. That they shared them is
abundantly proved by the historical superscriptions. One at least
(Ps. xxxiv.) in substituting the name of Abimelech (Gen. xx.) for
Achish (1 Sam. xxi.) shows either ignorance or carelessness, and
casts a very lurid light on the reliability of the superscriptions.
The contents of other psalms are manifestly irreconcilable with the
assumed authorship: Asaph, e.g., whom the Chronicles regards as a
contemporary of David (1 Chron. xvi 7), laments in Psalms lxxiv.,
lxxix. the devastation of the temple, which was not at that time in
existence. The principles on which the superscriptions were added
were altogether superficial and uncritical. Psalm cxxvii. is
ascribed to Solomon, chiefly because its opening verse speaks of the
building of the house, which was understood to be the temple. So
Psalm lxiii. is described as "a psalm of David when he was in the
wilderness of Judah," simply on the strength of the words, "My soul
thirsteth for thee in a dry and weary land where no water is"--words
which are taken literally, though they were undoubtedly intended
metaphorically. A parallel case is that of the psalm inserted in
Jonah ii., obviously a church psalm whose figurative language has
been too literally pressed.

Enough has been said to show that the superscriptions are later than
the psalms themselves, and often, if not always, unreliable; we are
therefore wholly dependent upon internal evidence, and the criteria
for Davidic authorship must be sought outside the Psalter. The only
absolutely undisputed poems of David's are the elegy over Saul and
Jonathan in 2 Samuel i. and the lament over Abner (2 Sam. iii. 33,
34). There is no means of proving that 2 Samuel xxii. (=Ps. xviii.)
and 2 Samuel xxiii. 1-7 are David's, as they are interpolated in a
section of Samuel which is itself an interpolation (xxi.-xxiv.),
interrupting as it does the continuity of 2 Samuel xx. and I Kings
i. The data offered by the elegy are much too slender to enable us
to decide whether any particular psalm is David's or not. Some have
ventured to ascribe a dozen psalms or so to him on the strength of
their peculiar vigour and originality, but obviously all such
decisions must be altogether subjective. What is certain is that
David was an accomplished musician (1 Sam. xvi. 18) and a great poet
(2 Sam. i.), a man of the most varied experience, rich emotional
nature and profound religious feeling, a devoted worshipper of
Jehovah, and eager to build Him a temple; and it is not impossible
that such a man may have written religious songs, but in the nature
of the case it can never be proved that he wrote any of the songs in
the Psalter. Psalm xviii. has been by many assigned to him with
considerable confidence because of the support it is thought to
receive from its appearance in a historical book; but besides the
fact that this support, as we have seen, is slender, the psalm can
hardly, at least in its present form, have come from David. The
superscription assigns it to a later period in his life when he had