/2>S5 V- •i.^- J '^*S*M',, 'I BIBLICAL AND LITERARY ESSAYS By the late A. B. DAVIDSON D.D., LL.D., Litt.D. Professor of Hebrew^ New College^ Edinburgh Edited by his successor PROFESSOR J. A. PATERSON D.D. NEW YORK A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 3 and 5 WEST EIGHTEENTH STREET 1902 if? tfMoic*— (J^jJi^jLAs Butler £r> Tanner The Selwood Printing Works Frame and London PREFACE ^ I ^HE loss sustained by Biblical Scholarship through the death of Professor Andrew Bruce Davidson in the opening month of this year has been acknow- ledged and lamented in every quarter of the globe. Generous tributes have been paid to his memory by the best-known scholars of all the churches ; and the hope has been earnestly expressed that no time would be lost in giving to the world some of the treasures which this gifted but modest teacher had, during life, unveiled only to his students. Dr. Davidson's long-promised work on Old Testa- ment Theology will certainly be published as soon as possible, and will be followed by another on Old iv PREFACE Testament Prophecy, and, in all probability, also by a commentary on Isaiah. But books like these appeal only to a comparatively limited number of professional scholars. It is fortunate, therefore, that it has been found possible to publish at once a volume of essays likely to interest a much wider circle of readers. Of the thirteen essays now published eight see the light for the first time. The remaining five, viz. " The Wisdom of the Hebrews," " Hosea," "Amos," " Modern Religion and Old Testament Immortality," and " The Uses of the Old Testament for Edification " have already appeared in The Expositor, a magazine to which Dr. Davidson was, during the long period from 1878 to 1900, a frequent contributor. In the circumstances indicated, however, the range of selection from his numerous articles in The Expositor was considerably restricted ; for to have taken any of those PREFACE v dealing with Old Testament theology, or with prophecy in general, or with the theology of Isaiah in par- ticular, would have been to use prematurely some of the material that may be required for the works just mentioned. This volume should have a special interest for the many ingenious persons who delight to trace in an author's writings the development of his mind, for it opens with the inaugural lecture with which, in October, 1863, Professor Davidson began his life-long career in New College, and it closes with the last introductory lecture which he delivered to the students of that College in October, 1899. No attempt, however, has been made to arrange the other essays in chronological order. This is due to the fact that there is no date on any of the manuscripts, a fact that is greatly to be regretted. Hence the date of the several essays can only be inferred from interna] vi PREFACE indications, such as the incidental allusions that are occasionally made to passing events, or the particular scholars to whose opinions special prominence is given. Such data, however, are manifestly too vague to warrant very definite conclusions. Consequently no inference as to the relative time of their composition is to be drawn from the order in which the essays are printed, except, as has been stated, in the case of the first and the last. Their selection was, to a large extent, determined by the marked variety of their subjects and by the consequent variety of treatment. The titles are so definite as to render a separate description of each essay unnecessary. Suffice it to say that in this single volume the reader will be able to see how this great teacher was accustomed to deal with the Wisdom-literature of the Hebrews, with individual books of prophecy, and with Messianic psalms. The PREFACE vii non-Biblical essays, those on Mohammed and Islam, and on Arabic poetry, based as they are on first-hand knowledge of these wide and difficult themes, are yet written in so popular a style as to be thoroughly intelligible and interesting to persons wholly ignorant of Arabic. This variety of subject will enable the attentive reader to understand the secret of Dr. Davidson's power as a Professor. He was not only a specially gifted linguist, as his Hebrew Grammar, now in its seventeenth edition, and his more recently published Hebrew Syntax, as well as his commentaries on several books of the Bible conclusively prove. This quality of refined scholarship is signally illustrated in the essay on " The English Bible and its Revision." That essay makes it perfectly clear that he foresaw and indeed foretold, even before its publication, the fate that has already overtaken the Revised Version. Had viii PREFACE the principles which he enunciates in this essay been more fully carried out by the New Testament Company of Revisers, the faults so apparent in the Revised Version of the New Testament would have been avoided ; and, in that case, the Revised Version of the Old Testament would very probably have won for itself the public recognition which that part of the Revisers' work certainly deserves. To the accuracy and taste of a finished linguist, Professor Davidson added the deep insight of a philo- sophic thinker and the spiritual intensity of a large- hearted Christian. These characteristics are parti- cularly marked in such essays as the first and the twelfth of the present volume. But he had also an- other gift, rarely found in combination with the faculty of abstract thinking. He had a poet's eye and a poet's power of expression, as will be acknow- ledged by any one who reads with care his brief survey PREFACE ix of Arabic poetry. It was the union of these gifts that gave him the unique influence he wielded for well-nigh forty years over the students who came under the spell of his personality at the very time when their minds were most impressible and plastic. May the thoughts which proved so quick and powerful when spoken exert a like effect when read. Then the judgment of those who gratefully cherish the memory of their honoured teacher will be con- firmed by a long succession of interested readers. J. A. Paterson. New College, Edinbubgh, December, 1902. CONTENTS PAGE I Biblical Theology i II The Wisdom of the Hebrews 23 III The Prophet Hosea 82 IV The Prophet Amos 105 V The Second Psalm I3 o xii CONTENTS PAGE VI Psalm LXXII . . 157 VII Psalm CX 176 VIII The English Bible and its Revision . . . .194 IX Mohammed and Islam 222 X Arabic Poetry 254 XI Modern Religion and Old Testament Immor- tality 277 XII The Rationale of a Preacher 291 XIII The Uses of the Old Testament for Edification. 302 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY BIBLICAL Theology is a complex expression and idea — first Theology, then Biblical. Theology is the science of religion. Religion may be said to be the consciousness of God in the human soul, or the consciousness in the human soul of standing in a certain relation to God. Now this religious or God- ward side of human nature is an essential aspect of it. Religiousness is as much native to man as reason. You do not implant reason in him by education, but you unfold it ; you do not implant the religious faculty by revelation or any other means : you merely evoke and educate it. The fall has not abolished it any more than any other element of human nature : it has merely impaired it. And there is no side of human nature so utterly ruined but that truth may naturally be reached on that side. These three things must be said of man's nature in general, and of his religious nature as well, though perhaps not as much as of his rational nature : — First : the soul has a bent in the direction of truth ; it loves it, longs for it, strives after it, is straitened till it find it. Second : it loves and seeks truth truly. Its instinct that there is truth, and that it may be reached, is a true instinct and no delusion ; and, moreover, its mode of seeking, its mechanical or or- ganic operations in the search, are true and not false. In other words, this inborn presupposition of the soul b.e. 1 2 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY that there is truth, and that it can be attained, is a true supposition ; and its spontaneous action and manner of working in the pursuit of truth is the true manner, and will lead it to truth. Third : the soul, having an instinctive desire for truth, and an in- stinctively true mode of seeking to reach it, has an instinctive feeling of possessing it. Truth is its own highest evidence. These are general principles true of men and truth in the gross ; but of course neither true of all men nor of all truth — true of one side of human nature as well as of another, though perhaps not equally true of all sides of human nature. Perhaps the evolution of the religious side is some- thing like this. First, there is in the mind a certain vague unresolved feeling and consciousness of God ; second, this resolves itself and breaks up into separate individual sentiments, passing over into ideas, opinions, convictions, beliefs. This is the sphere of Religion. Third, this mass of individually distinct beliefs is again bound, by passing some principle through them, into a new unity. And this is Theology. The prin- ciple of order that unites the individual beliefs to- gether gives character and name to the Theology. Thus, we speak of a natural theology, when nature is the source of the religious convictions, and furnishes the scientific principle that connects them. And so of a Biblical Theology, when the Bible supplies the religious elements, and is the principle that unites them together. The religious faculty, like the reason- ing, may be called into operation and supplied with materials in many ways : by external nature, by the example and teaching of parents or fellows, by the workings of itself, by the Bible, or by all. That which awakes it into life, also supplies it with nourishment — with sentiments and with truths. When it is awak- BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 3 ened or supplied with its contents immediately by the Bible, or immediately through those who derive from the Bible, the religion is called a Biblical religion ; and when the individual truths, thus gathered from the Bible, are elevated to an organic unity, the con- necting principle of which is the Bible — not any par- ticular truth in the Bible, such as justification by faith alone, or the doctrine of predestination, or that of complete human depravity — but the Bible itself, i.e., the conception, " the Bible," we name it Biblical Theology. Biblical Theology is the scien- tific presentation of the religion contained in the Bible, having the Bible for its scientific principle — in a word, Biblical Theology is the religion of the Bible presented Biblically. What, then, is " Biblical," in its contents and in its conception ? It has been supposed that the writers of the Old Testament possessed themselves, and imparted to favourite disciples, an esoteric faith, deeper and more Catholic than that which they gave to the mass of their countrymen in writing. With that, even if true, we do not meddle. No traces of such a thing appear in Scripture. This esoteric faith, be it a thing of fancy or not, is not Biblical. As little have we to attend to external traditions, said to be concurrent and to some extent coincident with the written Scriptures, and for which is claimed the power of aiding, and to some extent controlling, the inter- pretation of these. Such traditions may exist, and may be useful ; but, again, they are not Biblical. In like manner we exclude the Old Testament Apo- crypha. It is not Biblical. It has no historic place in the Jewish Canon. Certainly in these days it has a tremendous interest. It comes to us as the only utterances out of that dark night which came down 4 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY upon the Jewish Church when it slept for four hundred years, and awoke, and arose, and found itself Christian. Even the dreams of such a time, the troubled moan- ings of such a weary trance, we may turn aside to look upon with a fearful interest. And, when on that uneasy swoon the Lord of Life enters, saying, " She is not dead, but sleepeth," and at His word the rosy current begins to circle in the lip and flush the cheek, it will enhance the miracle, that we knew well the pale emaciated form before. But these years were a time of deep and inward development. When the Jewish Church sealed her Canon, it was a time of impatience and sharp remonstrance with the Most High ; the Church deemed she had not got her due from heaven. " Your words have been stout against Me, saith the Lord ; yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against Thee ? " andMalachi ends with dim words of an impending curse. Four hundred years of outer righting and inner fear had altered this : " I have waited for Thy salvation. Behold the handmaid of the Lord ; be it unto me according to Thy word." There was now both a submission to, and a receptivity for, the Divine. In God's procedure there come no sudden starts. Impeifection orbs slowly into perfection. Inner circles widen silently into outer. Both within Palestine and in the Greek-speaking countries about, there were swellings of thought and need rising up from the deeps of men's hearts, and toiling inward towards the centre where Christ should be born. Judaism came laden with its positive hope ; the Gentiles came bearing their consciousness of emptiness. The New Testament has affinities both of thought and expression with the Palestinian exegesis on the one side, and the Alex- andrian on the other. This is not to be denied, rather BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 5 to be expected. It is but the premonitory heavings, as it comes to the surface, of " the mystery that has been hid from ages and from generations, but is now made manifest to the saints." And in these days, when our ears are vexed with " origins " and " antecedents " of Christianity, and we are beckoned into this cloudy region, and bidden behold Christianity gathering itself into life within it, the creature of the moral and social forces of the time, we cannot refuse to enter and to examine, that we may know how to distinguish between the preparation for a manifesta- tion of God, and that manifestation itself ; and if we would be fit to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints, all this region must be explored to the foundation, and the names of the Apocrypha and Neo-Platonism, of Philo and Josephus, become familiar as household words. " Biblical," then, in extent is confined within the limits of our Protestant Canon, so far as the Old Testament is concerned. What, now, is " Biblical " in conception ? Is the Old Testament a finality ? Such is not the thought it cherishes of itself. It is continually overshooting itself, and reaching forth to what it cannot yet grasp. At its very birth the Jewish Church is conscious of a higher destiny than Judaism. " In thee shall all the families of the earth be blest." And though it be yet a child under tutors and governors, it yearns for the larger life, and is shaken by impulses that project it far into the future years. Indeed, at first it sometimes scarcely seem3 to realize its mission, and speaks harshly and some- what mechanically, and grasps tenaciously at forms, and proscribes sternly other tendencies of thought ; yet all this is but the reserve of minority, but the conserving of its strength and the formation of its 6 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY character, lest, by too early intercourse with a world which it has to subdue and fashion, it should be over- borne, and slide insensibly into the common degradation. Butitflings off these restrictions by and by, and becomes softened ; and the idea of a humanity rises before it, and a God of humanity, and it chants hymns of a " mountain of the Lord to which all nations shall flow " ; and the idea of a universal fatherhood and brotherhood seizes it, and Egypt shares in its love and Assyria in its God, and the day comes when " Israel shall be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, and the Lord of Hosts shall bless them, saying : Blessed be Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel Mine inheritance." With such music on her lips the Old Testament Church expires, entering into night, full of dreams of the distant but approaching morn. And the New Testament Church emerges into day, conscious of a personal identity with the Old, and claims to have the same consciousness, but now higher and better informed. And it utters such words as these : " God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son." God has been speaking, and through all the ages. It is a historic process : to the fathers, bit by bit, and in many ways, and mediately by the prophets : to us, immediately by a Son, and in the fulness and finality of truth. " Ye search the Scriptures, and they are they which testify of Me." "And beginning at Moses and the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." Hints, at least^ of Christ — pro- jected shadows of Him — lie along the whole line of the Old Testament Scriptures. He, who is the fulness of the New, runs in an unbroken vein from end to end BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 7 of the Old. " Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." "The promise which God made unto the fathers, He hath fulfilled unto the children in that He hath raised up Jesus." The law, the prophets, and the promise — He is not an element in them : He is the fulness and concentration of them all. " If ye are Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs accord- ing to the promise " — heirs in the sense of the promise. The theocratic life culminates, too, in the life of Christ. Thus, then, all the divine speech and energy, and guidance and consolation — in a word, the grace, the divine condescension- and self-approach to man, from the first even until now, bursting up from the abyss of brightness in rays of light upon our horizon, drawing to it the eyes of the fathers, and their hearts — all are but vanward glories of the sun of righteousness fully risen. And all the longing and travailing in pain, and hope half realized, and upward struggling of the Church, are but prophetic of its fulness of life in Chris- tianity. Here, then, are materials for defining Biblical Theology. It is historical, reaching down through all the ages till Christ. It is genetic, i.e. progressive ; its parts have not the connexion merely of successive- ness, but form a development from less to more, through a series of ascending imperfect forms, each unfolding out of the other, up to the perfect form ; and we have it all presented to us in genesi, in the very act of evolution. It is formed of two parallel lines — a gradual revealing of the fulness of God's face, till there shines out the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of His person ; and a gradual compre- hension of this by man and his transformation by it, till he is like God, seeing; Him as He is. 8 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY Biblical Theology is the historical presentation of the realization of the theocracy, the kingdom of God on earth, the communion of God and man in and through the person of Christ, the God-man. That Christ was announced in many ways from of old, is one of the first lines of our theology ; and this is now not denied anywhere, though the fact is very differently conceived — neither could it well be denied. For if Christ, as in some sense all admit, be the realization of all the religious strivings of the race, whether the ideal in them or the real out of them, the perfect flower of humanity, conceiving and speaking out, or say, embodying the clearest thoughts of God, is it not to be expected that there will be imperfect adumbrations of such a thing, that holy men who spake as they were moved — moved pantheistically or moved naturally — would be moved to speak, even if in muffled words, even if in tears of hope and cries of emptiness for Him ? Humanity, surely, is prophetic of its own destiny. Nature cannot but be predictive of her own emancipation. Will not the whole creation, that groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, moving through such nameless cycles of distress, have uttered many a time from the deeps her awful need and her sublime hope ? Is she all unconscious of her goal, unable to know the divine germ which she has ■ conceived, and is slowly nurturing into life ? Render the Incarnation into such formulas as these, and should we not, even then, expect an Annunciation ? And if, on the supposition that the advance of humanity be but a " motion toiling in the gloom," we should anticipate premonitions, how much more, if the Incarnation be the voluntary and conscious deed of Him " who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 9 last times for you ? " God's manifestations are not sudden. Premonitions are heard or seen. " I send My messenger before My face. Prepare ye the way of the Lord." Outposts and skirmishers precede the array of the Lord of Hosts. No great creative act is isolated. It is typified ; it realizes itself in a lower form. It projects dim shapes of itself. It exhibits a struggle towards complete embodiment, rising through hin- drances into imperfect forms, till by succession and inward strife it reaches perfection. What then is this event which is being prepared for, and the progressive preparation for which is, at the same time, a progressive realization of it ? It is the communion, through Jesus Christ, of God and His creatures. This takes place in Christ. But Christ is the realization of two converging lines — the self- communication of God, and the assimilation of this by man, and his consequent progressive elevation. Both are historic processes. For, that there may be communion with God, there must be knowledge of Him ; and thus there commences a self-unveiling of God. But as this is an ethical revelation, it can take place only in ethical relations, in social life, in political organization — in a word, in human history. The living God must condescend to be an historic person- age, to mix Himself with life, that human eyes may see Him in relation, since human thoughts are unable to grasp Him absolutely. This has been done both in the Old Testament and the New. And as the light from God's face, like that from some distant star, needs ages to pierce from rim to rim of society, it no less needs ages for society to be penetrated by it. This knowledge of God must be realized again in life, must be achieved in successive generations, each leaving some legacy of its attain- 10 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY ments as an inheritance to the next. To be taught morality, monotheism, and the Messianic hope, was no mean achievement even for two thousand years. And the lesson could only be learned in a supernatural history. In a history, for you cannot mechanically or magically pour truth or knowledge into man. It is a moral process, and must be accomplished through the working of his moral nature in all the phases of life and action ; and that it is supernatural is implied in the idea of a remedial scheme. The economy of creation was one fitted merely for the development of innocent beings, which implies a certain economical self-restriction of God. It did not contain within it powers to deal with the possible fall from innocence. It contained, indeed, so much elasticity that it did not, on the entrance of sin, fall into dissolution, even as the human body subsists under a condition of disease. But it naturally con- tained no powers able to eject the evil. Sin is a thing supernatural, or, if you like, infranatural ; and the natural economy of creation is helpless to overbear it. There must be induced upon the economy of crea- tion a higher economy — that of grace — and thus grace is supernatural. And it is here that our theology comes into conflict with the thinking of the age. That thinking rejects our conception of the economy of nature and the unnaturalness of sin, and so the super- naturalness of grace. To it sin is not sinful ; and there- fore morality is not the good, and the Creator is not the living God ; He is but an indifferent, unconscious pulse, throbbing out successive tides of existence at the centre of the Universe. Thus, then, as Jewish history makes its revolutions, there fly off from it, if we may say so, scales, rinds, thin shells, a series of abstractions, which the spirit BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 11 of prophecy projects forward, and looks through and idealizes, till each transforms itself into Christ and His Kingdom. This can only be because the history is so divinely disposed that, at each separate evolution, such a type does appear. It might be explained, indeed, on the ground that Christ is the Archetype of man, and that as man develops from less to more, he successively evolves and throws off types of Christ, as nature rises by successive stages into man. This may be, to some extent, true, and may explain the vague Christology of heathenism ; but the typology of the Bible is conscious, and not blind. As Biblical theologians, therefore, we have to sink ourselves into this history, and mark and estimate its parts as they roll past, drawing attention to every new truth as it emerges along the line of development, interpreting and stating the significance of every man who was an organ in the hand of God in bringing on the scheme, and estimating the character and force of each new momentum along the whole line of motion. Obviously, we shall be overpowered and confused, if we attempt to do this in the mass. We must break up the history into sections ; and, happily, the Canon itself supplies us with the division. 1. The Era of the Law. There was here a certain realization of communion between God and man, inasmuch as there lay at the foundation of the law a covenant, and inasmuch as the ceremonial ordin- ances prefigured, and so to some extent conferred, the blessings of the reality. We must beware of speaking of the law as a dispensation or economy of salvation. The distinction between the old and the new dispensations is not that of law and gospel, but that of promise of the gospel— in itself essentially a gospel — and the gospel. Subjectively, the two dis- 12 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY pensations are one ; they differ, mainly, in the amount and clearness of objective truth enjoyed. 2. The Era of Prophecy. Prophecy came not except there came a falling away first. The memory of the law died out, and Samuel arose ; the efflorescence of piety and poetry under David and the early mon- archy faded into philosophy under his successor ; and speculation died into defection and idolatry. Then prophecy came with a new divine message. The office of the prophets was very much interpretative of the law and of the history. It was their business to take the nation down with them into the midst of the historic stream, to make it conscious of the currents and tendencies of the time, to interpret to it the forces that were wrestling together, and so acting out its history ; and thus to impress deep re- ligious convictions upon the hearts of the people, and awaken a strong consciousness in them of a present God in the midst of them, and a deeper longing for fuller manifestations of the Messianic redemption. And the prophet, abiding thus in the very presence of Jehovah, was himself a standing symbol and pro- phecy, to men, of the time when God's spirit should be poured out on all flesh, as He was now on him. 3. The Writings. This does not form a distinct era, but marks an effect co-ordinate with the two former. Jehovah utters commands from heaven ; the prophet preaches lessons of hope, or trust, or words of warning ; and these writings give the re- sponse that rises from the hearts of the great congre- gation. This response runs through all the scale of human feeling, in ready sympathy with the aspect of God. " The Lord hath triumphed gloriously." " My God, why hast Thou forsaken me ?" " We will return unto the Lord, for He will be gracious." And is it BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 13 not finely fitting that many of these utterances should be anonymous, these sobs by the rivers of Babylon, these long, low, mournful monologues over the un- atoned contradictions of man's destiny, that meet us in Job ? We know not whence they are ; they come upon us as you have heard some deep voice, quivering with pathos, raise from the bosom of a congregation its cry for mercy or of hope. It thrills us all the more, that its origin is hidden. This, then, is the Bible ; but to form a Biblical Theology, we must interpret it ; and for that we must find a law of interpretation. The steps of progress are these. First, Grammatical analysis, busied about the government of words, and the connexion and sub- ordination of clauses. Second, Exegesis, which, assum- ing the results of analysis, combines the propositions into a whole, presenting the ideas in their connexion and scope. Furthermore, Exegesis has a right to combine such paragraphs of sense into one great section, consisting of one or more chapters ; and these again into a book or treatise. It is, likewise, the part of Exegesis not only to find and combine ideas, but to define them historically — to shine around them, and set them in the light of the mental tendencies and social currents of the time, to bring them within the sweep of the great tides of progress, and civili- zation, and thinking, and to make out their integral and organic relation to these and all other forces of the time — particularly to gauge mentally the writer, and exhibit how his age influences him generally, and his present circumstances in particular. Exegesis must interpret both historically and psychologically. Biblical Theology assumes all these separate links to be already forged by grammatical analysis, all these several pieces of chain to be made by an en- 14 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY lightened Exegesis ; and its function is to take these pieces, and bind them all into an organic and progressive unity. This theology, as I have denned it, is the only theology that can lay claim to be strictly Biblical. It imports nothing into the Bible, it merely examines and finds. It levels no obstacles, bridges no chasms — it only finds. And often the chasms are, theo- logically, deeply communicative. If we had not mys- tery, we should die of inertia. The mystery without, the mystery of impulse within to enter it, keeps us living. And it makes the Bible its principle of unity — not merely any one truth of it, as is the doctrine of Justification by faith, in Protestant dogmatics. In seeking to find a law of interpretation, the student is opposed by a term which seems to debate with him the possibility of crossing the very threshold of the temple of truth — the term inspiration. " All Scrip- ture is given by inspiration of God " ; and the in- terpreter begins his task, paralyzed by the vague awful sense which he forms to himself of this quality ; and his progress is cramped and halting. Now Scrip- ture nowhere defines this term ; and I think we do but wrong the Bible, and wrong ourselves, when we proceed to interpret Scripture with any a priori con- ception of what this quality must contain or preclude. By " inspired " we mean that, by the divine influence upon the writers, Scripture is what it is. But what it is we can only learn from itself, from what it says and what it seems. The only thing the term postu- lates is the divinity of its production ; but what that involves or excludes, examination only can determine. The true law of interpreting the Bible is to interpret biblically. This law is common to it and all other books. You interpret Homer homerically. There is so much of every author plain, so much expressive BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 15 of his spirit and manner, that you speedily catch them up, and under their guidance you resolve the passages that are obscure. The whole is before any of its parts. And so you interpret the Bible biblically. But, again, what is Biblical ? We start from this that the Bible is not Doketic — that what seems human in it, is human — that what in any other place I should call human genius, and passion, and pathos, and strong crying and tears, and blank despondency, and ecstasy of hope, and all the symbols of intensest human life, are to be called by the same names in the Bible. On the other hand, the Bible does not pre- tend ; what calls itself divine, is divine. These are deeps to which human spirits do not now sink ; and these are heights of ecstasy and insight to which human spirits do not now soar. These human spirits indeed went down thus far, and rose thus high ; but they were dragged down and borne up by a mighty influence from without. " The hand of the Lord was upon me." " Thou, Lord, Who, by the mouth of Thy servant David, hast said, Why do the heathen rage ? " Thus the Bible exhibits two elements as conspiring to produce Scripture ; and to interpret biblically we must admit them both. Yet the effect is not twofold, but singular ; the two elements com- bined to produce the effect, and their combination preceded its production. What then is the relation of speech to thought ? Is it not that speech varies as thought — that to think clearly is to speak clearly, to think dimly is to speak dimly — in a word, that speech is, by an invariable psychological law, the necessary expression and body of thought ? Thus there is no such thing as an in- spiration of thoughts and mental states, of which the words are the necessary expression ; and, on the 16 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY other hand, there is no inspiration of mental states which is not at the same time, by the necessary psychological law, the inspiration of the words that necessarily express them. Thus the infinite condescen- sion of God consisted neither in making use of human words — that would be a species of Doketism, akin to giving Christ a phantasmical body — nor yet in making use of men as the medium through whom to utter words or thoughts — that would be a species of Ebioni- tism. It consisted in this, that His Spirit begot His own thoughts in man's breast, whence, being conceived, they came forth clothed in perfect human flesh, as the Word of Life came ; and that holy thing, thus begotten and thus born, is the Word of God. We have, therefore, a fixed basis for interpretation. We have not two senses to look for, one of the writer and another of the Spirit, but one sense common to both, begotten of one in the bosom of the other. This is the Biblical sense ; and we shall find it, if we seek it biblically. Again biblically ? Is there aught still recondite ? Is this one sense not exhaustive ? Was Adam ex- haustive of " man" — crowned with honour and with glory ? Was Abel, or Enoch, or any child of man, exhaustive of " the seed of the woman " ? Was the burnt-offering exhaustive of " sacrifice," or the Sab- bath of Sabbatism ? Was Solomon exhaustive of the " Son of David " ? " He shall be to Me a Son, and I will be to him a Father " ; or any king of Israel of the second Psalm, " I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion " ? Was Aaron exhaustive of the " High Priest," or Isaiah of the " Prophet," or Israel of the " Kingdom of God," or the Tabernacle and Shekinah of Him who " tabernacled " among us, or the Theo- phanies of the Incarnation ? Were they not all BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 17 empty, of vast capacity, but as yet of miserably small contents, and was not that which was yet future, the filling full of them ? All were but symbols, yet symbols that were themselves partial realizations. Here it is that we must remember our definition of " Biblical " — a current, a tendency, a promise, a prophecy, the spirit of the years to come rising up and imprinting His stamp and signature on all things, the Spirit of Christ, of Revelation, and of the Church, symbolizing and realizing, producing fact without and word within, manifestation in the world, in- spiration in the Church, both still imperfect, yet true, and bearing in their imperfection the germ and pro- mise of perfection. In a development such as that contained in our conception of " Biblical," every step of the development has a double identity with the end and issue — a subjective identity, that of con- sciousness ; and an objective identity, that of the essential elements of nature common to both and all. To a great extent the writers of Scripture were conscious, though amid some haze and cloud, of the nature of their dispensation, of the nature of its issue, and to some extent even of their own particular whereabouts in the great stream of Evolution. But it is not in their consciousness, but in that of the Spirit who conspired with them, that the full idea of the development in all its stages was reflected. The Spirit of Christ, who was leading on all manifestations to fulfil themselves in Christ, saw in each step the end. Hence New Testament writers, having this same Spirit of Christ, speak in the same way. Looking now back, as the Old looked forward, over a common road, and with the issue full before them, they de- scribe each step, not quite as it may have appeared to the Old Testament writer, whose consciousness B.E. 2 18 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY was but dim, but quite as it appeared to the great Divine Spirit ; and with singular accuracy they ascribe the view, not to the writer, but to the Spirit. The objective identity consists in this, that in any evolution from a germ, the elements in each step are essentially the same, only on a greater scale succes- sively. Hence the language which describes the smaller is the same that describes the larger onward even to completion ; and hence there is no need to say even with Bengel, " divina intentio sic formavit orationem ut magis proprie deinceps ea conveniret in tempora Messiae." Thus to interpret biblically is to interpret always in the light of the end. It is to interpret, as a great modern theologian (Beck of Tubingen) says, pneu- Tnatically, that is, by elevating ourselves into the region and consciousness of the inspiring Spirit. And this is a double thing ; it is, first, a personal, spiritual preparation ; and; then, it is diligently to search for and gather up all the indications everywhere, especially in the New Testament, bearing on our passage, that we may see if possible how it stands related to the end, how far the end is realized and mirrored in it. And remember that the end is not Christ merely, but Christianity, a kingdom of God, domestic, social, political, intellectual — in a word, a human communion of love with God. Thus, unnumbered currents of development and progress run into the Christian sea ; and not express references to Christ merely, but even things of this kind, we are justified in naming Christo- logical. Once more we must interpret biblically, not in the sense of reconciling and squaring Scripture with Scripture — that we must no doubt do — but in the sense of refusing to square or force a reconciliation, BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 19 where it does not seem possible. I speak not of his- torical statements, but of doctrines, especially of those where some conception of the Deity is involved. I believe that no duty is so imperatively incumbent on the interpreter of the present day as that of bring- ing out fully the antinomies — the apparently irrecon- cilable propositions — in the Bible with regard both to God and man, and of refusing to subordinate or ex- plain away anything, in order to give fuller swing and scope to something else. These opposite proposi- tions in Scripture are usually also akin to opposite principles in the human mind and in Providence, and our moral nature often demands their full state- ment ; and when, in a system, one is raised to pre- dominance at the expense of depressing the other, we instinctively feel the falsehood of the system : and much of the revolt against religion and the Bible is, I think, a revolt, not so much against them, were they rightly known, as against undue theological subordinating of one part of them to another. Every express statement of Scripture must be con- sidered a principle which no other principle has a right to overbear, or even modify. You cannot modify principles ; you can only refuse to carry them out, when they come in conflict with others. We cannot comprehend truth or God in their synthesis, only in their analysis ; and, to gather up the truth fully, all fragments of the analysis must be accepted. The mind demands principles ; but all experience proves that falsehood is chiefly generated by carrying them out too far, and especially in religion, where such mysteries are presented to us. And beware of reason- ing on Scripture statements, for logic in theology can effect anything. Its utter inapplicability is shown from this, that we must frequently believe, in religion. 20 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY what, on admitted premises, we can logically dis- prove ; and, on the other hand, refuse to believe what, on admitted premises, we can logically prove. The mind is not a logic — truth streams into it through a thousand channels. And it is no proof in religion that you are in the wrong -way, if you see a precipice before you — you will be in the wrong way, if you go over it. Reflect that even in the economy of Provi- dence no principles are carried to their full appli- cation, but there is an equipoise of forces. And this suggests, finally, an allusion to the bearing of Biblical Theology on the human mind, particularly in its state of almost feverish activity in this age. The mind cannot be satisfied with results which others have reached ; it must have processes, and reach results itself. Truth cannot be communicated ; it must be learned. It is in vain to bid the human mind rest and be still, on the ground that truth has already been won for it ; to gather all the works of Philosophy or all the symbolical books of Christendom together, and, flinging them before it, to say, " Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years ; take thine ease ; eat, drink, and be merry ! " The outer must become the inner, and by processes within ; there is in the spirit a principle of restlessness, of personal craving. You may as well " go, bid the main flood bate his usual height," as tell the spirit to content itself with the truth already gained. The tide will not listen, nor the spirit. From afar impulses rise within it, which it cannot repress ; strange pressures from be- hind, out of the great deeps of past human life, and mysterious drawings from above, lifting it up and leading it on, and a restless mobility within. Every higher spirit feels it, and every age feels it. And I think a Biblical Theology is the salvation of the Church, BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 21 both as an outlet for her activity, and as a fresh — I do not say new — a fresh form for her consciousness. The Church is an organism, like the body ; and I think it should, like the body, repair its wastes, and preserve its outer form. It would be an awkward thing for the human body to throw off its skin like the serpent. Nevertheless it is continually changing and repairing. And just as the body circulates the strength of its nourishment in vigorous blood from within outwards, even to its outmost integument, keeping it thus fresh and healthy and conformable to its inner advance- ment, so the Church, having taken the Book of Life and eaten it, must be ever, out of this, renewing its outer form, thus preserving it flexible enough for the easy movements of its inner life, and sensitive and sympathetic enough with all contact without. And I believe that the reason why we are both the most orthodox and the most sympathetic of Churches is that we are mainly Biblical theologians ; that every Sunday, by the process which we call " Lecturing," our pastors and our people sink them- selves within the current of the great Divine Revela- tion and historic stream of salvation, and are carried on with it, and drink its healing waters fresh from the fountain of truth. And what we want is this, that escaping from all abstractions regarding God, which we vainly think truer than the concrete, whereas abstract is but unfamiliar concrete — I say, making our escape from all this, what we want is, that this blessed process of meeting God at first hand in history and in thought, as He has presented Himself to our race, on that arena and in those conditions where He chose, so to speak, to live out His divine life on earth that we might behold His glory full of grace and truth — that this should be more common, that all our teach- 22 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY ers should be imbued with the principles of a sound Biblical Theology ; and not our teachers merely, but our people, for we sympathize with the marvellous liberality of the man of God four thousand years ago, " Would that all the Lord's people were prophets ! " THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS THE Book of Proverbs and other parts of the Old Testament Scriptures often refer to what is called Wisdom, and that not as a mere possession or attribute of an individual, but rather as the property of a class, and as the name given to a pursuit or tendency of the national mind. Certain sections of Proverbs are headed, " These also belong to the Wise " (chap. xxiv. 23), i.e., are the fruit of their reflection, or have been uttered by them. It is the purpose which the author or editor of the Proverbs sets before himself, " to give subtlety to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion, . . . that he may understand a proverb and the interpretation ; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings " (chap. i. 4 foil.). The party in the State in the days of Jere- miah, who opposed that prophet, supported themselves by falling back upon distinguished men and classes in the State who agreed with them in their view of the political situation, and of the course that was best to be pursued. They said, " Come, and let us devise de- vices against Jeremiah ; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words " (Jer. xviii. 18). The term Wisdom thus appears to describe a distinct direction of the Hebrew mind, a direction marked and powerful, deserving to 33 24 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS be ranked along with the most remarkable character- istic of Israel, its prophecy. The direction, indeed, was not peculiar to the mind of Israel. It was one that manifested itself among the neighbouring peoples as well. In 1 Kings iv. 30 it is said that " Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men ; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol " ; and in Obadiah, verse 8, we read, " Shall I not in that day destroy the wise out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau 1 " with which may be compared Jeremiah xlix. 7 : "Is wisdom no more in Teman ? is counsel perished from the pru- dent ? is their wisdom vanished ? " This Wisdom of the Hebrews and other Oriental nations has been compared, by those who have examined its operations and results, to the philosophy of other nations. The strongest things have been said on both sides of the question, Whether the Hebrews possessed a philosophy ? The difference of opinion has partly arisen, as in many similar cases of dispute, from attach- ing different senses to the term philosophy. C. B. Michaelis says, when passing in his exposition from the Psalter to the Proverbs, " We step out of the closet of David into the porch of Solomon — to admire the son of the great theologian as the great philosopher. " Oetinger lectured on the Proverbs under the title, " Philosophia sacra et applicata." Even De Wette speaks of the " speculative and practical philosophy " of the Hebrews ; and Ewald considers that, like the Greeks before Socrates, the Hebrews had attained at least to the beginnings of a wisdom and science which, under favourable external circumstances, might have developed into an independent philosophy. On the THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 25 other hand, many writers, e.g., Hitter, give a strong verdict to an opposite effect. That the Hebrews possessed among them something of the nature of a Philosophy, whether any remains of it have come down to us or not, is to be deemed probable on various considerations — such, for instance, as the natural tendency of the human mind to seek satisfying knowledge ; the example presented by other nations who have attained to any degree of civilization ; and, in particular, the keen intellectual character of this people, and its lively sensibility to moral conditions. The mind of man, so soon as it rises above being engrossed by mere animal desires and the struggle for life, begins to exhibit a craving to compre- hend the things around it. And it is not satisfied with such a knowledge as will suffice merely to ensure personal safety, and advance material well-being. The operations of the mind are not utilitarian except in this sense, that ignorance and mystery are painful, and that there is keen pleasure both in the pursuit and in the attainment of knowledge. But no knowledge satisfies which is not universal, which does not compre- hend all within it, and afford the means of explaining each detail in the complicated whole. The pursuit of knowledge of this kind is Philosophy. And it would be surprising if there had been no instances of it among a people so richly endowed, and whose literary history extended over so long a period. Perhaps it would be equally surprising if all traces of this direction of mind had been excluded from the Holy Scriptures. For though the Bible be a practical book, and cannot be supposed to shew any interest in mere speculations that have no bearing on life, it busies itself more than any other book about principles that contain in them the germs of conduct, and about 26 THE WISDOM OP THE HEBREWS high generalizations that have folded up in them the details of human well-being and the true relations of men to God. Scripture certainly does not satisfy itself with merely giving rules according to which, if a man live, it will be well with him, and he will perform the part due from him in promoting the welfare of others ; it offers the grounds on which these rules are based. But these grounds and principles are just what the reflecting mind labours to reach, in order that, put- ting them together, it may grasp that which is the ground of all. Whether we consider the manner or the purpose of revelation, we should expect to find in Scripture traces of this particular direction of the mind of man. For as the purpose of revelation was not to educate a one- sided man, but to train him up on all sides of his mind, till he should attain the fulness of the stature of the perfect man, so it was its manner to lay hold of every part of him, presenting itself to that side of his nature, which was open and fitted to receive it. For the re- vealing Spirit was, in a certain sense, an indwelling Spirit, uniting Himself intimately with all the highest affections and noblest aspirations of the men whose minds He illuminated. And these men were not persons who stood as mere objective instruments to the people whom they addressed ; they were of the people ; the life of the people, that flowed through the general mass, only reached its flood-tide in them. Every feeling of the people, every movement of life at its very lowest stratum, sent its impulse up to them ; every hope or fear was reflected in their heart : and with all these movements and these reflected emotions, shared with so true and quick a sensibility, the Spirit of revelation, which was not a Spirit of knowledge merely, but of life, sympathized and, if the word can be THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 27 used, coalesced ; and, by that ineffable mode in which He unites with men's minds, used them as channels through which advancing, knowledge and deeper rest were communicated. The people of Israel, as the Church of God, lived a profound life ; in its outstanding men, that life was at its profoundest and broadest ; and as, at the first, the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters that covered the earth, so He moved upon that unquiet sea of the Church's mind, agitated with emotions, with presentiments, with fears, with specula- tions ; and out of them all brought forth more perfect forms of truth, and a fuller religious life. Why that which we are accustomed to consider not the least noble capacity of the human mind, the capacity of speculation upon the mysteries of the world and the soul, should be excluded as an organ of revelation, when other high capacities, such as that of intuition, are included, would be hard to guess. There is no doubt an irreverent speculation, an impious pressing upon the threshold of the unrevealed, which touches too nearly the Majesty of Heaven, and which, like the desire of the wicked, the Lord will thrust back (Prov. x. 3) ; but that reverent following upon the tracks of His feet, or that listening with eagerness, though in awe, to the far-off thunder of His power, with an irrepressible longing to come unto His place, and be satisfied with His likeness — this cannot be displeasing to Him, nor be too much tainted with human pride to be serviceable as a channel of revelation. And if we consider another point in the manner of revelation and the condition of the Church under it, namely, the gradual and broken way in which it was communicated, we shall see that the effect must have been to stimulate the reflective and speculative side of the mind. God spake at sundry times and in divers 28 THE WISDOM OP THE HEBREWS manners. Only a fragment, not the whole round of a truth, was given at once. Light was thrown only on one side of a situation ; the other sides were left en- veloped in darkness. Even if light enough was shed for the immediate need, higher needs speedily arose, and men went straining their eyes into the darkness that still remained. There is yet even to ourselves, who possess the whole body of revealed truth, many a ques- tion over which obscurity continues to hang. There must have been, too, in Israel, to some ex- tent, that condition and direction of mind which has been such a striking phenomenon in the history of the Christian Church, especially in the Middle Ages, but in some measure at all times— the dogmatic direction of mind, the tendency to seize upon external and posi- tive truth like that given in revelation, and not only to systematize it, but to bring it into connexion with the general principles of thinking of the human mind. This tendency was probably less observable among the Hebrews than it is among peoples of the Western world. And the comparative want of it was one thing which particularly fitted this people to have committed to them the oracles of God. They were content to preserve and retain them in a more purely objective form than more speculative nations might have done. But the direction of mind referred to cannot have been altogether wanting. The mind cannot be kept from exercising itself upon outward and positive truth. It seeks to reconcile the data of this kind of truth with itself, and with principles of which it is already in pos- session. The truths which it receives on external authority it endeavours to verify by combining them with other truths, or forcing them up under general forms which it has already constructed or constructs instinctively. This process is quite compatible with THE WISDOM OP THE HEBREWS 29 faith in the external authority, although a strong faith may keep it in the background. But in times of perplexity, of which there were many in the history of the ancient Church, when problems of Providence pressed hard upon the heart, and faith wavered or declined, this instinctive tendency of the mind would reassert itself. It is always interesting to observe how faith and knowledge adjust themselves here, where so much is unknown. When that which is in part shall be done away, and we shall know even as we are known, this instinctive desire of the mind for self- verifying know- ledge may have full satisfaction, and the only link that binds us to God will be love. But this legitimate ten- dency which has exercised itself in so remarkable a manner in the Christian Church, in connexion with a completed revelation, must have shown itself in some degree in the ancient Church ; and, operating in the midst of a revelation not complete, but only in process of being communicated, it is not unnatural to suppose that it may have exerted an influence on the form of some parts of Divine truth. From the foregoing allusions a general idea may be gathered of what elements of a philosophic direction of mind probably existed among the people of Israel ; and it may also appear from them in what sense we are to accept the contradictory statements of those who assign and those who deny to the Hebrews the posses- sion of a Philosophy. The Hebrew Wisdom differed from the Greek or any other secular philosophy in two important particulars : first, in the point from which it set out ; and consequently, second, in its method. Greek philosophy was the operation, or the result of the operation, of the reason of man upon the sum of things. It threw the entire universe into its crucible at once. It had to operate upon the unre- 30 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS solved, unanalyzed whole. Its problem was : Given the complex whole of existence, to frame such a con- ception of it as shall be satisfying to the mind, and contain an explanation within it. Its object was to observe the streams of tendency, and, by following them up against the current, to reach the one source which sent them all forth. Thus to name God was its latest achievement. Philosophy has to reach, to create, God for itself ; or, at least, to discover and set Him apart from the involutions and flux of the uni- verse. It has mostly failed in this, being unable to effect the analysis ; and the residuum of its efforts has been, either a world without a God, or rather, a world the order in which reflects itself in the human mind in an image or idea called God ; or else, a God without a world, or rather, a God who is the world, and is con- scious of Himself in the human mind. But the problem of the Hebrew Wisdom was quite different. It started with this analysis already effected, effected so long ago, and with such a firmness and decisiveness, that the two elements, God and the world, stood apart with a force of contrariety so direct that even the imagina- tion could not induce them to commingle or become confused. Hebrew thought was at the source, to begin with ; and, instead of following the currents upwards, it had the easier task of descending to them, and see- ing how they subdivided and ramified, till they flowed under all things. Thus the efforts of the Wise Man were not directed towards the discovery of God, whom he did not know ; what occupied him everywhere was the recognition of God, whom he knew. As he looked upon the world with its changing phenomena, or ob- served life and society with their varying aspects, he recognized the power within, which threw up all these changes upon the surface of things, to be a present THE WISDOM OP THE HEBREWS 31 God. Very fascinating it must have been to a religious mind, starting with the knowledge of God and the great principles of moral order which revelation gave him, thus to trace God and the operation of these prin- ciples everywhere ; to feel the pulses of His will throb- bing in everything ; to observe His purpose effectuating itself with a silent irreversible energy, lifting up all things upon its bosom like a rising tide, and bearing them in towards a shore which, however thick the mists that hung over it at present might be, would be clearly seen and reached at last. The Hebrew philo- sopher never ascended from nature or life to God ; he always came down from God upon life : and his wisdom consisted in detecting and observing the verification of his principles of religion or morals in the world and the life of men. Hence the Proverbs of Solomon or others of the Wise are not popular sayings, as proverbs are with us, shrewd or lively condensations of human wisdom in the mere region of secular life ; they are, for the most part, embodiments of some truth of reli- gion or morals, statements of how such truths may be observed verifying themselves in life and society. But this essential difference between the Wisdom of Israel and secular philosophy, the latter being a process of discovery, while the Wisdom was one of recognition, had, of course, an effect upon the method. The Wis- dom had strictly no method. As a principle already known was observed verifying itself in some form or other, that form was seized, and set apart in a single gnome or proverb. No doubt in the oldest form of the Wisdom, the Proverbs of Solomon, especially those from the tenth chapter onwards, there is such a multi- plicity of these distinct and separate photographs that they might now be classified almost into a system. In that quiet and happy time when the nation had peace 32 THE WISDOM OP THE HEBREWS without, and society and life had free scope to display their characteristics both in religion and the arts of peace at home, and in commerce abroad, the reflective mind of the Wise Man had under its eye the most abundant materials for the widest and most varied generalizations. And these opportunities were not neglected. In these most ancient proverbs there is a nearer approach to reflective observation in a methodical way, and for the mere pleasure of the thoughtful religious mind, than we find anywhere else. But the train of reflection, being religious and prac- tical, was usually set in motion only by something per- sonal. Some crisis in the religious life occurred, some point of God's dealing was covered with obscurity ; and the Wise Man's mind threw itself upon the prob- lem with an energy and a passion which only a matter of life and death could inspire. Hence the Hebrew Wisdom is characterized by a personal in- terest in the questions debated, very different from the objective coldness of ordinary speculation, and by an earnestness which has nothing in it of the gaiety of the Socratic banter. The nature of the Hebrew Wisdom will now be apparent. It is not a view of the Universe distinct from God, much less a view of God distinct from the Universe ; it is a view of the Universe with God in- dwelling in it. The term Wisdom, however, is used in various ways, to express modifications of this general idea. First, the world, and every phenomenon and oc- currence in it, may be considered in an objective way, out of all relation to the mind of man as comprehend- ing it, or taking up any moral position in regard to it. Every separate thing that is, or that occurs, may be considered as an expression of God, as a manifestation THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 33 of His will or purpose or efficiency, or, in short, of Himself. Man, and the human reason, and the moral order of social life, and the rewards or punishments of conduct in prosperity or misfortune, every individual thing, in short, whether in the physical world or in the conscious life of man, may be regarded as a pheno- menon behind which lies a reality, which is God. " The ear which hears, and the eye which sees, God made them both." " The poor and the money-lender meet, the creator of them both is the Lord." " The blessing of the Lord maketh rich, and labour addeth nothing therewith." The highest generalization of this conception is contained in such expressions as these : " The Lord hath made all things answering to their end " (Prov. xvi. 4) ; " He hath made everything beautiful in its time " (Eccles. iii. 11) ; and the state- ment which, in the mouth of the Preacher, has a slight tone of fatalism in it : "To everything there is a season, and a time to every matter under the heaven" (Eccles. iii. 1 foil.) For, here, the fact that human life is conscious or voluntary does not come into consideration. It is a phenomenon among other phenomena ; and, behind it, or beneath it, the efficient reality is God. But of course it is not in separate occurrences or in individual phenomena merely that God exhibits Himself. His manifestations taken to- gether form a unity. The world, as an orderly whole, is the expression of God's mind ; it embodies and ex- presses God, His character, His thought, and His method. The world with God immanent in it, con- sidered in itself as an objective thing, is Wisdom. This is the Divine Wisdom. Further, the world being a unity, animated by Divine principles, of which all its phenomena are embodi- ments, these principles may be regarded as an arti- b.e. 3 34 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS culated organized whole, outside of God Himself, the expression of His mind, but having an existence of its own alongside of God. The unity of thought and efficiency that animates and operates the world may be abstracted from God, the actual living Operator. Thus there arises the conception of an idea of the Universe or world-plan, which however is not a mere thought or purpose, but an efficiency as well. On account of the powerful efficiency of God, this plan or organism of principles, which is the expression of God's mind- and power, may be idealized, and regarded as animated and active, and have consciousness attributed to it ; and, being a thing of which God Himself is conscious, seeing He does not work blindly, but sets before His own mind what He does, it may become the Fellow of God : and on account of the free irresistible way in which it realizes itself in creation, and particularly in the economy of man, it may be described as " playing " before God, in the joyous consciousness of power and capacity, and having its delights with the children of men. This is the Divine Wisdom as it appears in Proverbs (chaps, i.-ix.) ; and this remarkable con- ception is the contribution which the literature of the Wisdom furnishes to the Christology of the Old Testa- ment. But, second : though this universal plan of God effectuates itself in all things, and in man no less than in other things, it was not meant to lie outside of man's mind or effectuate itself in him unconsciously, as it does in other things. His peculiarity is that he is capable of understanding it, and can by the free exercise of his will throw himself into its current, and thereby realize it in himself voluntarily. His relation to it is a relation on two sides — one intellectual, and one religious. He can comprehend it, and he can THE WISDOM OP THE HEBREWS 35 accept it, and harmonize his will and conduct with it. This is man's wisdom. It has both a theoretical and a practical side. But these two are rarely kept apart ; for it is a fundamental position that the theoretical comprehension of God's purpose is only possible to those who morally are in harmony with it : " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," which means both that to have the fear of the Lord is a necessary equipment to enable one to enter upon the speculative study of His ways (for to be in harmony with Him is surely necessary in order to understand Him), and also that the fear of the Lord is the first step in practical wisdom. Hence the singular fact that, in the Hebrew Wisdom, one set of terms does service to express both the intellectual and the moral wisdom. The " wise " man means the righteous man ; the "fool" is one who is godless. Intellectual terms that describe know- ledge are also moral terms describing life. Only on rare occasions is a distinction drawn between the theoret- ical and the practical wisdom. When the Hebrew Sage found himself completely baffled before some myste- rious Providence, as Job did, then he despaired of a speculative wisdom ; and, renouncing the task of understanding God's ways, fell back upon the sure and immovable first principle of practical wisdom : "Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they fine it ; iron is taken out of the earth, and brass molten out of the stone ; man setteth an end to darkness, and searcheth out all perfection ; . . . but where shall wisdom be found ? and where is the place of understanding ? The Depth saith, It is not in me, and the Sea saith, It is not with me. . . . Abaddon and Death say, We have heard the report thereof with our ears. God understandeth the way thereto, and He knoweth the place thereof. . . . But 36 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS unto man He hath said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom ; and to depart from evil is understand- ing " (Job xxviii.) This practical side may be called the Human Wis- dom ; but it is difficult to say what department of modern thought this Wisdom most nearly resembles. Still it can readily be seen that the Wisdom, starting with certain conceptions of God, and His character and purposes, and His relations to the world and man, sup- plied by revelation, came practically to be a doctrine of Providence in an universal sense. What the Wise Man observed or recognized in the world, and in the life of men, was God, fulfilling Himself in many ways. But his ideas of God, and of His plan, were not discovered by him in the world ; they were given in the Law, and were a priori principles with which he came down upon the world and life ; which he saw realized there, or which, after a time, he failed to see realized ; and in his success or failure to see them realized is found the principle, according to which the phases of the Human Wisdom may be classified. 1. In the first form in which the Wisdom appears (for example, in Proverbs, chap. x. foil.), there is a complete harmony between principles and manifesta- tion. The Wise Man has a certain conception of God, of His method of government, of His relations to men, and of their life ; and he beholds these principles everywhere receiving perfect illustration. The current of principle realizes itself in all circumstances ; it flows on, smooth and straight, unruffled and uncircuitous. The history of events and of the life of man shews a perfect equation between occurrence and principle. External providence and God, as conceived, are in complete accord. Naturally, in an universalistic view of the world, the question of evil and its conse- THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 37 quences, and its relations to God, conceived as just in operation as well as in mind, occupies a large place. So, too, does the question of human prudence, of sense and intelligence. Now, in this stage of the Wisdom, that always happens to men which the principle demands should happen. Exceptions do not occur : — " Behold, the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth : much more the wicked and the sinner " (Prov. xi. 31). " The fear of the Lord addeth length of days : but the years of the wicked shall be shortened " (chap. x. 27). " Riches profit not in the day of wrath : but righteous- ness delivereth from death " (chap. xi. 4). " The Lord hath made all things answering their end." " He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good : and whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he " (chap. xvi. 4, 20). The Wise Man goes about among men, putting his finger everywhere down upon reality — on that, whatever it be, great or small, which has come from God — and shows how in life it fulfils itself. 2. The second form in which the Wisdom appears offers a great contrast to this former one. This is the era of principles ; exceptions do not occur, or are un- heeded. Now commences a deadly struggle between the mind filled with principles, and phenomena in Pro- vidence which seem to contradict them. And here the Wisdom contracts itself, and becomes a philosophy of Providence in the narrower sense ; that is, a theodicy. It moves now, almost exclusively, on the line of the question of the Divine retributive righteousness in its two sides. God's external providence was found to be out of harmony with the necessary conception of God. Now the Oriental thinker had not that convenient tertium quid which we have learned to intercalate between ourselves and God, and to which we give the vague name of Providence, meaning by that 38 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS a great universal scheme, pursuing vast ends on general principles, in the midst of whose gigantic march towards the securing of its broad purposes, smaller infractions of law, and a certain neglect of the individual, or a treatment of him in the interests of the whole, are to be expected. To the Eastern mind God and history, God and occurrences, were in immediate connexion. God did all that was done, and did it immediately. Accordingly the Wise Man, amidst his other observa- tions, began to take note of two points which greatly disquieted him : he saw the wicked prosperous, and he saw the righteous begging their bread. Or, on a wider scale, he saw the gigantic idolatries of the heathen world triumphing over God's people, and treading them in the dust. It was a mote that troubled his mind's eye ; and he made desperate efforts to cast it out. And it is a most interesting study to move along the portions of Scripture containing a record of these efforts, and observe how pious men were enabled to accommodate themselves to the mystery : what old principle they fell back upon ; or what new insight into God's provi- dence was granted to them, when they went into the sanctuaries of God ; or how, sometimes, the speculative darkness remained impenetrable, and they sought to realize to themselves the consciousness of God's pre- sence in spite of it : " Nevertheless I am continually with thee " (Psa. lxxiii. 23). What adds so much to the pathos of the complaints and the demeanour of the pious Wise Man amidst these problems is just this, that, being accustomed, from the nature of his dispen- sation, to see his principles verify themselves in life externally, when a calamity befell him, it not only created a speculative difficulty, but it reacted upon his personal relations to God, and threw a cloud over them . The various considerations through which THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 39 the Wise Man, in presence of the prosperity of the wicked, or the calamity of the just, was enabled to reach peace, will come up for discussion afterwards. They were in the main practical, and scarcely touched the principle. The Wise Men moved the difficulty onward from stage to stage, till at length they pushed it across the borders of this life altogether ; and then the Wisdom expanded into an Eschatology. The parts of Scripture where this second form of the Wisdom appears are such Psalms as xxxvii., xxxix., xlix., lxxiii., and the Book of Job. 3. The third form of the Wisdom is that which appears in Ecclesiastes. It is not meant to be implied, apart from discussion, by this classification that these three forms follow one another historically. There is always a certain precariousness in arguing, from the degree of development of a truth in Scripture, as to the era in history at which it appeared. Where there are so many writers concerned, much may depend upon the power and idiosyncrasy of the writer ; and in that kind of truth with which the Wisdom is occupied, namely, generalizing on Providence, the subjective feelings of the author are very influential, because they colour what is outside with the gloomy or sunny hues of the mind itself. A great deal also is dependent upon the particular crisis in the people's history, on which the writer was commissioned to shed light. And from the nature of Scripture, we must always be ready to recognize an element in it, which refuses to accommodate itself to what we might consider before- hand would be the way in which truth would develop itself. The classification here given, therefore, does not forestall the question of the age of Ecclesiastes, but leaves it open, as well as the question of the age of Job and the Psalms referred to. 40 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS It is enough, however, to indicate in a general way the relation of Ecclesiastes to the two phases of the Wisdom already mentioned. The condition of things in that Book seems to be this. All the principles of the Wisdom as they appear in Proverbs are still maintained. Again, all the problems of the second phase of the Wisdom are still present, and in what seems an aggravated form. But the attitude of the author towards these problems is quite different. He no more launches himself against the difficulties, de- termined to remove them and equate occurrences with principles. The difficulties are not to be re- moved ; and he sets himself to utilize them. These problems are no more regarded as intruders, ob- stacles to the clear and far perspective of the Wise Man's eye, which he resents and must level at all costs ; they are permanent elements of the landscape. And the writer heaps consideration upon consideration partly to turn them to account positively, and partly to ease the pressure which they exerted on his heart or on the hearts of others. There is, of course, a deeper element in Ecclesiastes — a tone of mind out of which all these efforts raise themselves, or into which they again fall back. This tone is not scepticism so much as weariness and a paralyzing sense of human power- lessness. This temperament must have been natural to the author, though it was aggravated by the evil con- dition of the world in his day. But his temper found nourishment both in the principles of the Wisdom, and in its problems ; and he was nearly carried away, on the one hand, by a sense of dependence upon God and His overpowering efficiency, which was abject ; and, on the other, by a sense of the crushing evils and mass of the world, which was overwhelming : and, between the two, human prostration was complete. THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 41 There are in this way three aspects of the Human Wisdom. First, the period of principles, without exceptions. Such a period was needful to begin with, in order that positive general truths regarding God's government and human life should be well lodged in the minds of the people. Second, the period of difficulties and exceptions. Here the principles are still so powerful that the ex- ceptions are felt to be intolerable, and are flung, in general with a certain violence, out of the way. But the principles begin to raise questions, and in conse- quence to suffer modification through a more extended observation of actual life. Third, the period of comparative quiescence in the presence of difficulties, which are themselves drawn into the general scheme, and shewn, as parts of it, to have their own utility. The first period we find best illustrated in the Proverbs of Solomon, particularly in the chapters from the tenth onwards. The moral maxims and generalizings on life and Providence contained in these proverbs are, in all probability, the earliest examples which remain to us of the efforts and activity of the Wisdom. There is no valid reason to doubt that many at least of these proverbs belong to Solomon, and others to his age. The renown for wisdom which this king had among his own people, and even, although in a distorted and fantastic form, among the other peoples of the East, must have rested on some real foundation of fact. No doubt reputations grow, and veneration enlarges its hero sometimes in proportion to the indistinctness of its real knowledge of him ; and objects, seen in the broad blaze of day, are very insignificant compared with the bulk they assume, 42 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS when seen between us and the light, still lingering on the horizon, of a day that has gone down. But making allowance for the exaggerations of later and less happy times thirsting for the wells of an ancient Wisdom now run dry, we should leave tradition and history altogether unexplained, if we disallowed the claim of Solomon to be the first and greatest of the Wise, and refused to accept some considerable portion at least of the Proverbs that pass under his name as really his. Our present Book of Proverbs is a miscellaneous collection. It is an Anthology of the words of the Wise, just as the Psalter has gathered into one the Hymnology of Israel, the product of every age and the reflection of every feeling of the people's life. But there is no more reason to doubt that Solomon was a Wise Man than there is to doubt that David was a poet. The breaks in the Book of Proverbs, that reveal its composite character, are quite visible. After the general heading : The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel, in the beginning of the Book, we are surprised to come upon another : The proverbs of Solomon, in the beginning of the tenth chapter. The first heading is probably due to a general editor, although how much more is due to him may be diffi- cult to say. It is not improbable that chapters i.-ix. may be also from his pen. These chapters are wholly unlike the rest of the Book, consisting of connected moral pieces, and are less expositions or expressions of Wisdom herself than exhortations to a diligent seeking after her. There is that kind of difference between chapter x. foil, and these chapters, that we are familiar with as the difference between productivity and criti- cism. In the middle chapters the Wisdom is creative ; and, absorbed in the fascination of her own activity, THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 43 and in the delight of expressing and revealing herself, she has no place in her own thoughts herself ; in these nine early chapters she is become self-conscious ; she is fascinated by her own beauty ; she invites men to behold her, and to love her. It must have taken some time before a pursuit, followed at first instinctively and without even consciousness, out of the mere religious and mental delight which it afforded, was drawn under the eye of reflection, and became, as an operation of the mind or a posture of the whole nature, a subject of contemplation and discussion. On this internal ground alone, we must assume that these nine chapters are considerably later than those in the middle of the Book. It is of little consequence whom we suppose to have been the writer of them, whether an author working independently, or the editor of a collection of Solomonic proverbs at an earlier time, or the general editor at last. Their relation to the body of the Book is the main thing, as exhibiting a later development of the Wisdom, when she had ceased to be creative, and had become self-conscious and the subject of her own contemplation. There is no reason to doubt the genuineness of the superscription in chapter x. It marks an early collec- tion of Solomonic proverbs. It is not necessary to suppose that every one of these proverbs is Solomon's. Words of other Wise Men may have become mixed with his. The same or similar sentiments may have been uttered by others ; and in a kind of literature much in the popular mouth, and liable to alteration, as cir- cumstances a propos of which quotations were made altered, occasional substitutions may have occurred, and found their way into MSS., as happened with the sayings in the Gospels. We are without materials for judging how far this may have been the case, for we 44 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS have no knowledge of the condition of the MSS., or of the means taken to preserve them, or of the date at which this collection was made. We may fairly assume that the contents of the middle chapters cor- respond in the main to the heading. The presence of other small collections is marked by headings more or less distinct. The great collection beginning with chapter x. ends with chapter xxii. 16. Then com- mences a new section with the words, " Bow down thine ear, and hear the words of the wise." This section continues to chapter xxiv. 22, and is followed by a small collection beginning, " These also belong to the wise." Then follows a further collection of Solo- monic proverbs " which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out," i.e., probably, edited from vari- ous sources. This collection extends to the end of chapter xxix., and is followed by several other small collections, which bring the Book to a close. It is not easy to say, in a word, how this kind of literature differs from other kinds represented in the Old Testament. The point of view of the Wise is general, while in other writings of the Old Testa- ment it is particularistic ; it is here human, whilst else- where it is national. There are certain terms and ideas characteristic of the other writings in the Old Testament, which are absent from the literature of the Wisdom ; and, perhaps, a better idea of its nature can be got from this negative peculiarity than from its positive contents. For example, though sacrifice is once or twice referred to, the ritual system which occupies so large a place in the Pentateuch is com- pletely ignored. The mass of positive enactments of the ceremonial law, the complicated arrangements of the Tabernacle and Temple service, the priesthood and the hierarchy, do not seem honoured even with an THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 45 allusion. The Wise Man is occupied with the thought of God and man, with the relations of men to God and to one another ; but it is only what is moral in all this, what touches mind and conduct, that interests him : the external exercises of worship are passed by with- out mention. Again, the Wise Man differs as much from the Prophet as from the Lawgiver. All those ideas around which prophecy revolves, such as the idea of a Kingdom of God, of a chosen people, of a Messiah, and the like, are, if not unknown, without significance to the Wise. The distinction between " Israel " and " the Gentiles " has no place in his mind. The darling phraseology of the prophets, such as "Judah," " Israel," "Jacob," "Zion," " My people," " the latter day," and the whole terminology of par- ticularism, nowhere occurs in the Wisdom. The uni- versalistic idea of God has created an idea of mankind equally large. From these peculiarities of the Wisdom conclusions have been drawn which, though natural, are hasty. From the meagre allusions to ceremonial, it has been inferred that, in the age of the Wise, the ritual was much less developed than it became at a later period. It may be true that the ritual was scanty and less imposing in early times ; but such a conclusion cannot be drawn from the Proverbs, for other portions of the literature of the Wisdom, such as Ecclesiastes, usually considered a very late book, are marked by the same want of ritual allusions. And, unquestionably, the prophetic age ran parallel in great part to the age of the Wisdom ; but the whole circle of prophetic ideas is foreign to the Wise. Again, it has been inferred, from the universalistic point of view of the Wisdom, that the Wise were men who found themselves outside the circle of beliefs 46 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS cherished by their countrymen, which they repudiated or sought to reduce to a naturalistic basis. But this view confounds the Wise with their direct opponents, the letsim, or scorners. The latter were a class of sophists or sceptics, the deadliest enemies of the Wise, who being "wicked " and sinners" (Ps. i. 1) had gone the length of finding a speculative justification for their wickedness and unbelief. Looking back from the distance at which we ourselves live to the times of Revelation, we are apt to fancy that it came in a man- ner which made all denial of it or opposition to it impossible. But this was far from being the case. The evidence which authenticates Revelation is never demonstrative, but always moral. The contents of Revelation have always been the largest part of the evidence for its truth. But moral evidence is strong or weak according to the kind of mind to which it appeals. And thus there has always been opportunity for opposing, and, in point of fact, the same opposition to, Revelation. The prophets were disbelieved and persecuted. They were confronted by other prophets whom they called false, and who were so ; but all of whom were not consciously false. There were the same confusions and the same difficulties in the path of faith, at the time when Revelation was given, that exist now, when it is complete. The essence of faith lies deeper than intellectual judgment ; and, consequently, external evidence is never of more than negative and secondary value. That "scorners," or sceptics, should exist alongside of Revelation, and be found like waifs in the pools and eddies down its whole course, was to be expected. How far they combined into societies, or formed a pro- paganda, is not easy to say. From allusions in the Proverbs, it is evident that they strove assiduously to THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 47 gain possession of the youthful mind of the country ; and in this attempt they were met by the Wise, who put forth efforts equally strenuous to draw the rising thought of the land to their side. The aim of the Wise Man who gathered the Proverbs together was " to give subtilty to the simple [i.e., the undeveloped mind], to the young man knowledge and discretion " (chap. i. 4). And most of the exhortations of the Wisdom are directed to youth ; for the hearer before the ancient sage is always his " son," that is, youthful scholar and friend. But, however peculiar and dis- tinctive may be the direction which the Wisdom takes, the Wise Men stand on the common foun- dations of the faith of their people, and pursue the same ends as the other teachers in the nation. The best known and best loved of the Wise is the author of the Proverbs chapters x.-xxii. Among these proverbs there are a few which seem to want any very deep moral purpose, and are little else than the re- marks of a keen insight into the ways and motives of men, all of which to a thoughtful mind are full of interest, and the observation of them conducive to a lively though quiet enjoyment. Most of them, how- ever, have a visible connexion with higher principles, and are designed to exhibit God realizing Himself in life and providence. Of whatever kind they be, the observations are always good-natured, and never betray irritation or dislike on the part of the Philosopher to his fellow men. He walks through the bazaars, and observes the peculiarities of Oriental marketing : " It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer : but when he is gone his way, then he boasteth " (chap. xx. 14). Or he remarks how our natural selfishness cuts into us somewhat deeper, and describes it with a certain caustic though even still kindly cynicism : " All the 48 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS brothers of the poor man do hate him ; how much more will his neighbours go far from him " (chap. xix. 7). The difficulty of one's poor relations existed already in those days. Sometimes his expressions are so pointed as to border on humour, as when he represents the slothful man expressing his deadly dread of labour by saying, " There is a lion in the road " ; or as too lazy to lift his hand from the dish to his mouth, or to roast what he had taken in hunting ; or when he describes the poor man whose domestic relations have been unfor- tunate as preferring to squeeze himself into a corner of the house-top rather than dwell with a brawling woman in a wide house (chap. xxv. 24) ; or when he ridicules the over-tenderness of the paternal heart : " Withhold not correction from the child : if thou beatest him with the rod, he will not die " (chap, xxiii. 13). But usually he shews a broad sym- pathy and a grave kindly tenderness for all the natural feelings and the instinctive desires of every sentient creature, embracing even the lower creation in his benevolent regard : "A righteous man regards the natural desires (nephesh) of his beast " (chap. xii. 10). That philosophy which annihilates the individual, which recognizes mankind but not men, to which humanity is an ever renewing, ever growing tree, from which the separate leaves drop off exhausted, where " the individual withers, and the race is more and more " — this philosophy is unknown to him. The whole endures, because each part endures ; and he knows an antidote to the individual's fall : " Righteous- ness delivereth from death " (chap. x. 2). Hence to him every emotion and natural desire of the individual is of worth, and he regards it with sympathy, whether it be sorrow or its opposite, joy : " Sorrow in the heart THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 49 of a man bears him down " (chap. xii. 25) ; and on the other hand, " A merry heart doeth good like a medi- cine " (chap. xvii. 22). And his perception is delicate enough to see that, however grateful ordinarily the fellow feeling of other men is to us, there are times when we must be left alone with our feelings ; and that in every human soul there is an inmost core so sensitive that it shrinks from all external condolence or sym- pathy as something too rude : " The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddle th not with its joy " (chap. xiv. 10). Yet, on the other hand, we live in one another, we stretch out our hands to the future; and sometimes we are divided, and the "half of our soul " embarks upon the sea, or wanders in distant lands, and we long to know how he fares : " Hope de- ferred maketh the heart sick : but the desire accom- plished is sweet to the soul " (chap. xiii. 12, 19) ; " The light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart : and a good report maketh the bones fat " (chap. xv. 30) ; and, " As cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far coun- try " (chap. xxv. 25). Nothing human is alien to the Wise Man ; he is philanthropic in the literal sense ; every way of man and every expression of his mind or nature has a charm for him. Again, when we pass from the individual in itself to those broad distinctions which characterize it, as man and woman, father and child, youth and old man, it is singular to observe with what pleasure the Wise Man dwells on them as all beautiful in their place ; and how he seizes on that in each, which is becoming to it, and constitutes its charm : " A gracious woman attains to honour ; and strong (or laborious) men attain to wealth " (chap. xi. 16). That indescribable delicacy in woman, whether you call it tact, or taste, or sensibility, or grace, which is the complement of the strength or B.E. 4 50 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS force of man, and gives her her power, and secures her her place as surely as these secure him his, the Wise Man's eye fastens upon at once ; and he is almost rude when he describes the opposite of this, that which we call vulgarity or coarseness, and which he calls want of " discretion," which even beauty is so far from hiding, that it throws it into relief : "As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is beauty in a woman who is without discretion " (chap. xi. 22). Similar is his judgment on other classes : " The glory of young men is their strength : the glory of old men is the grey head " (chap. xx. 29). It is not nature alone, but moral conduct, that makes the young man strong (chap. xxxi. 3, 4) ; and why the glory of old men is the grey head is explained in the following proverb : " The hoary head is a crown of glory, it is found in the way of righteousness " (chap. xvi. 31). The English Version spoils this by translating " if it be found," misapprehending entirely the Hebrew point of view, which is that " The fear of the Lord prolongeth days : but the years of the wicked shall be shortened " (chap. x. 27). To the Hebrew this life in the body was the nor- mal life. He had no doctrine of the immortality of the soul as distinct from the man. Neither had he any doctrine of a transcendent place of blessedness different from this earth, where the principles of God's government, impeded in their flow here by many obstacles, should roll on in their majestic course smooth and straight. He saw all those principles realized here. "Life " to him was what we ordinarily call by that name, and as lived in the body ; and im- mortality was the continuance of this life, and was conferred by righteousness. The blessedness of the just, arising from the fellowship of God, was en- THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 51 joyed here. This, at least, is the point of view of these proverbs and of the early lyrics. The fact of death was ignored. In the lyrics death is absorbed in the higher feeling of life and in the ecstasy of conscious blessedness. And in the deep flow of principles in the proverbs it is submerged. To us Westerns, our meta- physical ideas about the " soul " and its natural immor- tality, and the ideas, naturally accompanying these, of the imperfection of matter and the body, and its being a clog upon the spirit and its prison-house, have sug- gested a different train of thought. " They whom the gods love die soon." The good die first, And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the socket. There is scarcely a trace of such an idea in Scrip- ture : " In the way of righteousness is life ; and the pathway thereof is immortality " (chap. xii. 28), Per- haps the other idea might be suggested by the events recorded regarding Enoch ; but it was an idea foreign to the whole strain of Hebrew conception, which regarded this life as fully expressing the principles of Divine government, in which therefore the destiny of man was to be conclusively worked out, whether the destiny of the individual or the race. Such passages as Isaiah lvii. 1. " The righteous is taken away from the evil to come," are misinterpreted ; the meaning being that the righteous is swept away and destroyed before the advancing tide of evil. If now, before passing on to the individual's rela- tion to that which is without him, we inquire how he should bear himself, what conditions and habits of mind he should cherish, and what activities he should pursue, we enter into the region of duty ; and that brings up the great fixed idea on which all is built, 52 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS viz. j the idea of Jehovah. The prevailing feeling in the mind should be the fear of the Lord, the sense of the all-present God, and that awe which this sense carries with it. Out of this will grow those conditions of mind that are becoming. One of the first of these will be humility, which, in a world where God is all, must be the way to all conduct that has in it suc- cess : " The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom; and before honour is humility" (chap. xv. 33): " By humihty and the fear of the Lord are riches, and honour, and life " (chap. xxii. 4) : " When pride cometh, then cometh shame " (chap. xi. 2). This humility is not merely a temperament, or a social or ethical condition of mind ; it is a religious attitude ; it is the broad general sense of what a man is in the presence of God ; hence one of its expressions is this : " Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin % " (chap. xx. 9). But this abiding awe of God will reveal itself in the whole life, in a general gravity of deportment befitting him that is Wise, in equanimity of mind, in self-restraint and patience of temper, in thoughtful consideration in the presence of men, or on matters of importance, in slowness to speak, and even in a dignified manner of utterance, in opposition to the levity and want of consideration and the unthinking haste of the fool ; and in general in a cautious and discreet course of con- duct : " He that is soon angry dealeth foolishly " (chap, xiv. 17) ; " An equal temper is the life of the flesh ; but keenness of mind is the rottenness of the bones " (chap. xiv. 30) ; " He that is slow to anger is greater than a hero ; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city " (chap. xvi. 32) ; " The heart of the righteous meditates in order to answer : but the mouth of the wicked bubbleth over with evil things " (chap. THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 53 xv. 28) ; " The tongue of the righteous gracefully uttereth knowledge : but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness " (chap. xv. 2) ; " He that spareth words hath knowledge. Wise men reserve knowledge: but the mouth of the fool is an imminent downfall " (chap. x. 14) ; "A fool's chagrin is presently known: but a prudent man covereth an affront " (chap. xii. 16). Many more proverbs to the same effect might be cited ; they culminate in that which is the highest encomium of reticence : " Even a fool, when he holds his peace, is accounted a wise man " (chap. xvii. 28). There is an exquisite polish in these proverbs in the original, which a translation cannot convey ; a delicate balance and opposition of clause to clause, and word to word, which betrays acute thinking and great elabo- ration. The proverbs chapter xv. 2 and chapter x. 14, are good examples ; in the latter, the caution and reserve with which the Wise Man speaks, and the knowledge which at last he expresses, are balanced against the readiness of the fool, which is like a toppling ruin, and his utterance, which is like the clatter and confusion of the ruin when it falls. These proverbs, describing how the individual ex- presses himself, already form a passage over to his general activity and relations to men. However pro- found the sense of Jehovah's power and efficiency was in the mind of the Wise, it never paralyzed the man, or led to a fatalistic and inert quiescence. Rather it stimulated him. For this Jehovah, whose spirit per- vaded all, was not a Being unsympathetic with man or inaccessible to him, much less an insensible stream of force, deaf to appeal. Rather there was in man, or man himself was, a spirit similar ; perhaps even it was the same spirit that was in man : " The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward 54 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS parts of the breast " (chap. xx. 27). This spirit of man which goes through his breast like a lighted candle, bringing to view all that is there, being both a consciousness and a conscience, has been kindled by- Jehovah, and He has lighted it at His own flame (Job xxxii. 8). Man is but a dimmer God ; his capacities and motives and aims are the same, though feebler and more contracted. The nearness to him, therefore, of the great primal light will not be to obscure his own, but to make it burn the brighter. It will arouse him to activity, and to an activity in harmony with God Himself. In these proverbs there is no trace of the strong sense of God driving men either to a pantheistic slug- gishness and quietude, or to the despondency of a hopeless individualism. In this early time of the nation's strength and high fortune, the spirit was too fresh and strong to feel overpowered. Rather it was quickened, and the sense of harmony with Jehovah made it feel almost omnipotent. Later, when the nation sank beneath its accumulated misfortunes, and the individual lay prostrate under a heap of miseries which he could do nothing to shake off, there did begin to lie on the breast the nightmare of a destiny almost fatalistic ; and the best advice Coheleth has to give is to accommodate one's self to it with what skill one may, in fear and reverence, and to snatch at the same time what enjoyment the senses or the sunshine will afford. But there is, at no time, any trace of that annihilation of effort seen in other Oriental religions, where " the life of the All is but the course of nature, where there is no history with a spiritual goal to be attained by moral activity . . . where there is no ideal yet to be reached . . . where the stream of world-history flows on of itself without the co-operation of man, man THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 55 having simply to yield himself to it, to adapt himself unresistingly to the eternally unvarying order of the world, to join himself as a passively revolved wheel into the constantly uniform moving clockwork." l Man is free as God is, if not so powerful ; and his task is to use his freedom to fall into harmony of thought and conduct with Jehovah, the righteous Lord who loveth righteousness. Hence the encomiums passed upon diligence, and the severe reprobation of sloth : " The hand of the diligent maketh rich " (chap, x. 4) ; " Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty " (chap. xx. 13) ; " In all labour there is gain " (chap, xiv. 23). But of course it is in intercourse with men that this activity can be best displayed, and the dispositions that should accompany and animate it can best be seen. This disposition, to state it in a single word, is charity, philanthropy in the widest sense. The grave, con- siderate kindliness of the Wise Man is one of his most attractive traits. Looking abroad upon the classes of men, his eye alights upon the poor, whom we have always with us, and he compassionates the dreary monotony of their condition : " All the days of the poor are evil " (chap. xv. 15) ; and he puts in a plea for their kindly treatment : " He that despiseth his neighbour sinneth ; but he that hath mercy on the poor, happy is he " (chap. xiv. 21). Nay, regarding the various orders of society as the will and creation of Jehovah, he who disdains any of them seems to him to slight Jehovah Himself : " He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker " (chap. xiv. 31) ; but on the other hand, " He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord ; and that which he hath given will He pay him again " (chap. xix. 17). 1 Wuttke, Ethics, vol. i. p. 45. 56 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS But the bearing of the Wise among all classes is the expression of a wide human goodness. In the presence of men in general he is courteous : "A soft answer turneth away wrath " ; he esteems others highly : " He who despiseth his neighbour is a fool " (chap. xi. 12) ; and should evil rumours regarding others reach his ear, he will give them no further currency : " He that divulges a slander is a fool " (chap. x. 18). Tale- bearing and slander are alluded to in the Old Testament in language of particular virulence. It seems to have been conducted of old, as a kind of private warfare, with great ferocity. In Psalm ci., which has been called " The Bang's Mirror," the royal author ex- presses his detestation of it, and his resolution to pro- scribe it in his court ; and in Psalm xv. it is treated almost as a cardinal sin. In our day the number of sins has greatly di- minished, and it is only particular classes that can fall into them. A clergyman may still be guilty of several ; a trader, perhaps, of one ; but an independent man of wealth or station cannot sin. To the Hebrew mind backbiting was an odious vice. But civilization has softened our verdicts regarding many things ; it has also taught us discrimination in applying our judgments. Perhaps in those days, from want of the means of public speech, slander was the weapon of strong men ; it has now very much fallen into the hands of the weak things of the world, such as controversial writers on Scripture, and we mind it less. Christianity, too, the finest evidence for the truth of which is not miracles, nor its moral contents and the answer which it evokes in our own heart, but that it has raised woman to her true place, has perhaps con- tributed to the same result. By the softening in- fluence of women on this species of warfare, its horrors THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 57 have been greatly mitigated. — In a word (to return to the Wise), the feeling of the Wise Man towards his neighbours is love, which thinketh no evil : " Hatred stirreth up strife ; but love covereth all sins " (chap, x. 12) ; so that, so far from seeking to revenge evil, he hideth it : " He that covereth an offence seeketh love " (chap. xvii. 9). Of course, coupled with this, there was the practice of the severer virtues of justice, and par- ticularly truthfulness, no vice being stigmatized so often as lying, and especially that form of it which is . injurious to others, the bearing of false witness. The foregoing pages, though containing little more than a number of passages from the Proverbs, may have given some distant and partial glimpses of the benevolent countenance and stately demeanour of the Wise Man. It remains to allude to the question, To what does this conduct, inculcated by the Wise Man, and followed by him, lead ? The answer to this question, though here put last, is in truth the presupposition of the Wisdom, which is not a mere ethic, but an outcome of religion. The reward of such conduct as the Wise Man incul- cates might seem already attained in the satisfaction of doing good. But this mode of thinking was little in the way of the Hebrew mind. Both in speculation and in temperament the Jew was sensuous. As the body entered into his anthropology and his conception of life as an essential factor, the material world entered also as an essential element into his conception of the universe and its government. He was as far as possible from being an idealist. He demanded that his moral principles should be realized in the external world, and he believed that he saw his demand complied with. It was needless to raise the question whether virtue was its own reward,. It had its external reward in the 58 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS necessary principles of God's government : " Many a one scatters, and yet it increases " (chap. xi. 24) ; " The liberal soul is made fat ; in the good of the righteous the city rejoices " (chap. x. 13). There is a moral order in the world without, and in the heart of man ; and it pursues its end with an irreversible certainty. It is here that the explanation is to be found of what has been thought extremely puzzling — the absence of a formal doctrine of immortality from the Old Testament Scriptures — and not in any intentional avoiding of such a topic by the Lawgiver or Revelation, for the purpose of inculcating the principles of the present moral life, or for any other purpose. That style of 'speaking of Revela- tion, common half a century ago, which told us that it was constructed so as, by its difficulties, to try our faith ; and that prophecy was given in such a way that it should not be understood till it was fulfilled, and that its obscurity was necessary, lest infidels might say it had been fulfilled by men of set purpose — this style of thinking, which represented the Author of Revelation as stooping to subtleties and quirks for the purpose, of all others, of tripping up infidels, is happily disappearing. " I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth ... I, the Lord, speak righteousness, I declare things that are right " (Isa. xlv. 19). Scripture speaks simply and without passion, and it says to infidels as to all others: "Whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear." Instead of looking for an explana- tion of the form of Scripture to an intention having respect to the future, we are turning more to seek a reasonable and sufficient cause in the conditions of the present. The theory that the doctrine of immortality was kept hid from Israel, in order that the attention of the people might be fastened on the conditions of a THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 59 moral life here, introduces Western ideas into Scrip- ture, makes two things out of one, and puts the cause for the effect. A moral life here was immortality. To what purpose present, in early or later Scripture, an ex- plicit doctrine of immortality, when the doctrine was already given in the very conception of the universe current among the people ? when it was held that life was that existence of the whole man in the body, which we ordinarily so call ; that this life was had in fellow- ship with God, or in its coordinate human righteousness ; and that it was indissoluble, because the conditions of the universe were normal, fully representing the cha- racter of God and His relations to men ? Of course all this was, in some respects, ideal ; and facts, such as death, were opposed to it. But the Hebrew doctrine of immortality was given in the idea and in the con- sciousness of the living saint ; and the task of after revelation was to move out of the way the obstacles that stood before it. To us, on the contrary, the obstacles bulk so largely that we begin with them ; and we are scarcely able to conceive a condition of mind that could give death a secondary place, or sweep it away in the rush of great principles regarding God and the universe, or sublime it in the intense ecstasy of conscious life in fellowship with God. We have now to look at some of the particular problems of the Wisdom, and, after this, to advert shortly to that highest generalization of it which appears in Proverbs (chap, viii.), where, being ab- stracted from its empirical manifestation in the laws of life and providence, it was elevated into the region of transcendence, and acquired a subsistence of its own, being personified as the counterpart of the Divine mind, and Fellow of Jehovah, As the Wisdom aimed at detecting and exhibiting 60 THE WISDOM OP THE HEBREWS the operation of fixed principles in the world and life, it became practically a doctrine of Providence in a wide sense. In no nation were the principles and conditions of well-being and misfortune so clearly dis- tinguished as among the Hebrews. The Lawgiver set out by laying before the people " blessing and cursing." Though the Theocracy was administered, as to its principles, in no way different from God's government of other nations, there was a difference in the swiftness with which these principles manifested themselves. When the nation sinned, defeat and subjection fol- lowed close upon the sin ; when other nations sinned, or when they still sin, subjection follows with equal certainty, though not with the same rapidity. When an individual offended, there was immediately, in the ceremonial disability that ensued, a punishment of his offence. Thus, that fundamental connexion of evil and suffering, being extremely prominent in the Hebrew commonwealth, took possession of men's minds with a very firm hold. And no doubt this was intended. The Law was a ministration of death. Its purpose was to educate the people in the knowledge of sin and of re- tribution. In the theology of St. Paul the law stands not on the side of the " remedy," but on the side of the disease. It came in to aggravate the malady — that the offence might abound. It had other uses, and this" view of it is not meant to be exhaustive. But as an intermediate institution, coming in between the pro- mise and actual redemption, this was one of its effects and purposes. It augmented the disease both in fact and in the consciousness of the mind struggling with its demands. It revealed both sin and its conse- quences : " By the law is the knowledge of sin ; when the commandment came, sin revived and I died." And the supernaturalness of God's conduct of the Theo- THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 61 cracy, under the covenant of Sinai merely, or mainly, brought out very plainly the principles of all moral government. God governs all States as He governed the Jewish State ; the laws of His natural government do not differ from the laws of His supernatural government ; but in the latter, their operation, being immediate, was very perceptible, while in His natural government, as they operate slowly, they often elude observation. It was natural in this way, especially for a member of the Hebrew State, to apply the principle of retribu- tive justice very stringently and universally. All evil he knew to be for sin ; any evil, he concluded, must be for some sin. Where there was an evil, there must have been a sin to bring it forth. Evil was not an accident, nor was it a necessary outcome of the nature of things ; it was an ever present parasite, fastening upon the trunk of the tree of human life, and bred by the condition of that tree : " Affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground ; but man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward " (Job v. 6). This stringent application of the Law was more natural in a state of society like that existing in the East than it would be with us. There, society is simple ; and its elements are detached from one another. The tribes live apart. They draw their subsistence from the soil in the most direct way. One class does not depend on another ; there is no complex and intricate interweaving of relations, as in modern society. Hence the incidence of a calamity was generally direct ; it did not pass through several strata, affecting the lowest most severely, though it might be caused by the highest. The movements of life were all simultaneous, and a calamity was seen to fall generally where it was deserved. In this way, not 62 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS in Israel only, but throughout the East, the principle of retributive righteousness was held very firmly : with the man who doeth well, it is well ; with the sinner, it is ill. And all evil is the direct effect of God's anger for sin. It is probable that this general principle was one common to the Shemitic races, before one of them, viz., Israel, became " the people of the Book." Reve- lation adopted the principle, and sanctioned it at first in its generality ; by and by individuals and the whole people were led into circumstances, and passed through struggles, that suggested the necessary modifications upon it. The moral ideas of the primitive Shemitic races afford a very attractive subject of investigation. Unfortunately the materials on which a judgment must be formed are very scanty. It is becoming apparent, however, that Israel had much in common with the other tribes surrounding her, and that they remained behind at stages of moral condition and opinion which she abandoned for others far in advance. Even in such an approach towards organized society as was made on the settlement in Canaan, this simple faith must have received rude shocks. In the happy days of the early monarchy, indeed, when the kingdom of God was everywhere prosperous, and heathen States on all sides bowed before it, the principle was re- ceiving splendid illustration. But in later times, when great heathen monarchies rose in the East, and trampled the little State under their heel, the principle could not but come into danger of question. At first the deeper sense of sin might afford an expla- nation to reflecting minds ; these calamities befel them because they had forsaken the Lord their King. But in the long run, even repentance failed to secure restoration. The kingdom, which was still the king- THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 63 dom of God, was hopelessly trodden down by the heathen oppressors. The Psalms and Prophets are filled with the complaints and the astonishment of pious men over this anomaly. In the fate that over- took the different classes of the people, the failure of the principle was most signally manifested. It was the very cream of the nation that suffered the severest calamities. The lax and ethnicizing party, agreeing with their conquerors, or at least submitting to them, escaped suffering ; while the true theocratic-hearted men, whether those left at home, such as Jeremiah, or those carried into exile, like Daniel, were the victims of extreme hardships and indignity, both at the hands of their enemies and from their false brethren. It is probable that many of the Psalms,which express com- plaints of the prosperous wicked, and suggest question- ings as to the righteousness of Providence, belong to the era when the State was falling into decline. In the Book of Job, too, which is the Epic of the Wisdom, there are passages which show traces of great suffer- ings on the part of some classes of the people ; but, as the scene of the poem is laid among the tribes lying east of Palestine, the pictures of social misery may represent the condition of the subjugated races there ; although, the author being a genuine Hebrew, it is probable that something more than mere speculative interest or a personal experience moved him to his great undertaking, and that his colours are partly borrowed from the national sorrows of his own day. The principle of retributive justice is the funda- mental principle of moral government. The assertion of it was therefore natural at all times, whether late or early in the history of the people. It is asserted with perfect roundness in the First Psalm, probably a late composition. Doubts regarding the principle would 64 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS only be expressed when circumstances suggested them with such a force that they could not be repressed. When, therefore, we find a lengthy composition, like the middle chapters of the Proverbs, asserting the principle without restriction, we infer that the compo- sition is early, and reflects a period of settled prosperity and reign of law. On the other hand, when we observe a great literary work, like the Book of Job, formally devoted to the treatment of moral anomalies in Provi- dence, we may conclude that the body of the State was beginning to be covered with sores, and that the com- position is considerably later. It is less easy to deter- mine the date of smaller pieces like the Psalms, in which such questions are mooted. Some of these pieces are emotional and lyrical rather than didactic, and might be occasioned by any grave failure of the principle, though operating within a small area. Others, such as Psalm xlix., open with expressing a formal in- tention of treating the problem, and indicate that the difficulty was one which had begun to press on many minds. The general principle, that it was well with the righteous and ill with the sinner, was seen to be broken in upon, on two sides. The wicked were many times observed to be prosperous ; and, on the other hand, the righteous were plagued every day. The first side of the difficulty is treated in such Psalms as xvii., xxxvii., xlix., lxxiii. and others ; the second side, in the Book of Job. The simplest resolution of the problem is, perhaps, that seen in Psalm xxxvii. There the condition of the perplexed mind is not very aggravated, and the relief administered is simple. The difficulty was felt ; it seems, was pretty widely felt. But the difficulty was simply a practical sore : it had not yet so lodged itself THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 65 in the mind as to become a speculative trouble. The condition of society was such that many wicked men were rich and prosperous, and there were righteous men in distress. This state of things led to envy, to irritation on the part of the just ; and the Psalm is directed towards calming the ruffled feelings of the pious. Relief is administered in the form of an advice oft repeated, backed up by a statement of the method of moral government. The advice is : " Fret not thy- self because of evil doers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity ; cease from anger, and be not wrathful ; fret not thyself in any wise to do evil." The consideration urged in support of the advice is that the prosperity of the wicked is brief ; it is an introduction to the general scope of things, speedily overcome by them, and the current flows on in its accustomed channels — " Fret not thyself because of evil doers, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass." " The wicked plotteth against the just ; but the Lord laugheth at him, for He seeth that his day is coming." And on the other hand : " Trust in the Lord and do good; and thou shalt inherit the earth." The Psalmist satisfies himself and others with affirm- ing the general principle, and by saying that the exception to it is of short duration. It is a practical solution, sufficient when the evil has gone no further than to breed discontent. The difficulty that there is exception at all, does not bulk largely in presence of the acknowledged brevity of its duration. There is no stretching out of the hand to grope after any prin- ciple, whether in God's general administration, or in His particular treatment of the wicked ; nor even in that direction in which peace was sometimes found — a profounder conception of what true felicity and prosperity was. The Psalmist does indeed refer to the b.e. 5 66 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS joy that accompanies faith, but this joy is not held up as true felicity, in contrast with the happiness of out- ward prosperity. It is rather touched on incidentally, in course of an exhortation to keep the faith even amidst present confusions, because out of these the old moral order will speedily arise — " Delight thyself also in the Lord ; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart." " A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked ; for the arms of the wicked shall be broken." All turns upon the speed with which the current, hemmed or turned aside for a moment, sweeps away the obstacles, and returns to fill again the old channels. The doctrine of Psalm xxxvii. is that the triumphing of the wicked is for a moment : " Yet a little while, and they shall not be." But the righteous shall be fed, shall dwell in the land, and inherit the earth. " Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days." Calamity comes upon the wicked man in the midst of his life. The Psalmist does not pursue his fate further, nor does he emphasize particularly the manner of his death. Now this solution is, of course, true in par- ticular cases. It is many times applicable. But it is obviously incapable of being made a general principle, to explain and satisfy the mind on all cases. The friends of Job urged it as a universal principle against him. Job has hardly words to express his scorn of the infatuated self -hardening of the dogmatic mind against obvious facts, and his sense of the melancholy contrast which facts presented to traditional theories — " When I remember I am afraid, and trembling taketh hold on my flesh. Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, wax mighty in power ? " Obviously the observation of new facts demanded new explanations and further modifications of the THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 67 theory. Wicked men might be seen who had grown hoary in their wickedness. Relief from such a spec- tacle was sought by dwelling on the manner of the wicked man's death. It was said that however long the ungodly might live, he would not depart from this world in peace, his end would be amidst terrible mani- festations of the Divine displeasure. This is the posi- tion held in Psalm lxxiii. This Psalm forms an ad- vance on xxxvii. in various ways. The Psalmist's mind is in a condition greatly more inflamed. The problem has passed out of the region of mere feeling, and become a real speculative difficulty, what the writer calls an "amal, a trouble so great as to threaten to confound the boundary lines of good and evil : " As for me, my feet were almost gone. . . . Behold, these are the ungodly who prosper in the world. . . . Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain . . . for all the day long have I been plagued." The moral equilibrium of the Psalmist had been disturbed by the spectacles that life presented, and he rocked to and fro between faith and disbelief. At last his mind returned to steadiness ; and, in the Psalm, he surveys the path by which he had reached it. In the " sanctuaries of God " a light was shed upon the end of the wicked ; and, on his own side, the con- sciousness of God's presence with him without change upheld him : " Surely Thou didst set them in slippery places . . . How are they brought to destruction, as in a moment ! . . . I am continually with Thee. Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterwards take me to glory." The " sanctuaries " or holy places of God do not appear to be material localities ; they are the innermost circles, the furthest back principles of God's holy providence. The Psalmist was enabled to look through the confusions of a life, however long, and behind the brilliancy of a prosperity , "however great ; 68 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS and behold the terrors of God's displeasure gathering round the wicked man at last. This is a solution far in advance of that in Psalm xxxvii. It shifts the problem from this life to the edge of the grave. Psalm xxxvii. brought the wicked to destruction in the midtime of his days, and left the godly inheriting the earth. Death, except as an event that cleared the ground of the wicked, did not enter into the question. In Psalm lxxiii. all turns upon death and its accompaniments, in the destiny both of the righteous and the ungodly. We must dismiss from our mind those inveterate ideas of death and the world beyond, which are now ingrained into our habits of thinking, partly from heathen and partly from Christian sources, if we would understand the Old Testament mode of viewing such a subject. To the philosophic Greek death was a relief ; the soul escaped from her prison, and spread her wings, to soar unhindered in the sublimest regions. To the Christian to depart is to be with Christ, which is far better. To the Old Testament saint to die was to remain dead, not non-existent, but dead. To be dead was to be insensible to the fellowship of the living, whether man or God : " In Sheol who shall give Thee thanks ? " A change in Sheol was not to be conceived, for Sheol was the realm of changeless silence, where the departed subsisted, but did not live. There were not two worlds, one here, and another beyond ; the one a howling wilderness and vale of tears, the other a happy land where bliss immortal reigns. Something like the op- posite of this was the conception that prevailed ; the bliss and life were here, the gloom and apathy there. The afflicted suppliant in Psalm xxxix. begs for a brief respite, ere he departed, of happiness and light ; for these would soon be no more possible : "0 spare me, THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 69 that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more ; for I am a stranger with Thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were." Life was a brief but happy visit and sojourn with God ; soon it came to an end, and joy died with it. It is true that this is not to be called the doctrine of Scripture. Sheol is no creation of Revelation. Such views were rather national sentiments which Revelation found and raised its own fabric upon. Sheol was a creation of the religious imagination of the people, based on the sense of sin ; and its dark and huge proportions were but projections of a haunted fancy working on the sights and circumstances of natural death. But Revelation waged no war against the fancy. It left Sheol yawning and dark, and gave relief to trembling faith in another way. It brought both just and wicked to the brink ; but the just it transported across the abyss to God. If there were two worlds, the one was not here and the other beyond ; both were here, and what was beyond was but a pro- longation of that which existed here, and which could be observed here ; if not always in life, at least in the circumstances of death. This world was not one where merely tendencies could be detected, where there was an excess or preponderance in one direction, but so much which was adverse that principles struggled vainly to attain their goal. The tendencies reached results. The crisis or judgment worked itself out. Men's destinies were matured. And in the article of death they manifested themselves. The wicked were brought to destruction as in a moment ; and a veil of darkness is let fall upon their further destiny. The righteous is brought also to the brink of a Sheol where a gracious hand is held out to " take " him, and Sheol is overleapt. The fellowship with God is not broken 70 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS in death, but continued. The phrase " afterward wilt take me to glory " might seem to imply more, that the fellowship was not only prolonged, but perfected. This is possible. But the idea, that the blessedness of the saint was greater after death than here, would be a very remarkable one in the midst of other Old Testament ideas. If the translation to glory be adopted, the term " glory " probably refers to God Himself, and not to any new condition of the saint. The words might be rendered, in glory, or even, " after glory thou wilt take me," in which case the reference would be to the manner of the death or life of the just, in opposition to that of the wicked. And this would make the antithesis in the Psalm more exact. The solution in Psalm lxxiii. is almost complete, and embraces all the elements. No doubt, it has no expla- nation to offer of the fact that the ungodly may enjoy a lifetime's prosperity. But, in the deeper analysis of life which the Psalmist is enabled to effect, a great step towards this is made. And he is enabled, in the in- terests of the righteous at least, to dispose of death. Death is always, in the Old Testament, a secondary thing ; it is an obstacle, a mystery, a cloud that hangs on the horizon and darkens the outflow of principles. The light of faith pierces and dissolves it, and the stream of life with God on this side flows on visible and unchecked beyond. The solution in Psalm xlix. is identical, although the lines drawn in lxxiii. are laid down there in deeper colours. Psalm lxxiii. pursues mainly the destiny of the just ; Psalm xlix. hangs, with an awful interest, over the fate of the ungodly. But there is no real advance : " God will redeem my soul out of the hand of Sheol : for He will take me." But of the wicked it is said : " Like sheep they are set in Sheol ; Death shepherds them." The life of the THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 71 righteous with God is prolonged, and Sheol is over- leapt. The wicked sink into Sheol ; they remain dead ; but death, though not life, is still subsistence. There is one point in the solution of Psalm lxxiii. which left room for further complications. The un- godly are represented as being delivered over to death amidst terrible external manifestations of God's anger ; even on this side their destiny was declared. This was a solution, no doubt, true in many cases. It was a solution, too, in advance of former ones ; and it came to be regarded as a finality. The traditional mind found rest in it, and shut its eyes. It was very hard, in Old Testament times, to detach the spiritual relation to God from its material illustration, to hold fast to a spiritual truth which found no verification in the visible events of life. It was the very axiom of- the Wisdom that principles and phenomena were in correspondence. And in laying down this axiom it was but expressing the grand principle of the Old Dispensation. In that Dispensation the general law was that all truths were embodied ; they had also a material expression. But one of the tasks of the old economy was to drill holes in itself, to begin making breaches along the whole circumference of the material wall that bounded it — by the Law to die to the Law. And none were busier agents in these operations than the Wise. A psalm here and there, the complaint of a prophet like Habakkuk, are all the evidence that remains to us of processes of mind, that must have been going on ex- tensively among reflecting men. The author of the Book of Job uncovers fires that had been smouldering long in many hearts, and rakes them together, heaping piles of fuel of his own upon the mass. The condition of Job differs from that of the Psalmists. Their problem 72 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS was the prosperity of the wicked ; or, if it was their own affliction, they either knew the cause of it, or it had not gone so far as to interrupt their fellow- ship with Heaven. Job's problem was the affliction of the just, an affliction unexplained by anything in his life ; and as he saw in it proof of the anger of God, and believed, as his malady was mortal, that this anger would pursue him to the grave, this threw the solution of his problem out of this world altogether, and into the realm beyond. It was there that he knew he would see God. But here he came into collision with the principle of Psalm lxxiii., in which his immortal friends sought refuge against him. Step by step, Job's mind reached to some apprehension of the meaning of his history. At least he threw to the winds, one after another, traditional solutions of it which satisfied his friends, and which, if the case had not been his own, would probably have satisfied him. Stripped and naked, tortured by disease, with not a shred of material verification to hang by, God even repudiating, as it seemed, his friendship, he planted his foot upon his own consciousness of fellowship with God, and stood unmoved ; for he knew that his fellowship with God was also, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, God's fellowship with him. And when his friends pointed to his frame dissolving amidst the awful tokens of God's anger (which he admitted), and said it was ever so with the wicked, he called it false — false on both its sides ; false that he, though so plagued, was wicked, and false that the wicked were at all times so plagued. The death of the wicked could be seen many times to be peaceful, and his memory cherished among men ; " They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment (i.e., in peace) go down to the grave. . . . He is borne away to the grave, and men keep watch over his THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 73 tomb. The clods of the valley are sweet unto him, and all men draw after him, as there were innumerable before him. How then comfort ye me in vain, seeing in your answers there remaineth falsehood." Job chased his adversaries, one after another s out of the ancient strongholds. His results, however, as given in the body of the Book, are wholly negative. He destroys, in every one of its forms, the absoluteness of the prin- ciple of retributive justice. But the general principle itself is still conserved in the Epilogue, and the positive contribution to the question is given in the Prologue. The principle is re-affirmed in Job's renewed prosperity, as it could not but be, if the equilibrium of doubts and certainties was to be preserved, and the centre of gravity of human life not shifted from faith to scepti- cism ; and an advance on the former doctrine, equal almost to a revolution, is made in the revelations of the heavenly Cabinet, where suffering is seen to be abstracted from the merits of the sufferer altogether, and raised to the place of a general force in the con- stitution of the Universe, wielded by God for general ends like other forces, and affecting individuals not in their own cause, but in the interests of the whole. In Proverbs x. and following chapters, Wisdom unveils her face to men without any thought of herself. The Wise Man, in whom her spirit had taken up its abode, pours it out with no formal thought of what he is doing. In the happy early times of the common- wealth, when peace and good order prevailed, and the moral life of the people was yet rigid and severe, Wisdom was silently giving effect to herself in all her principles ; and every effort of her power was reflected in the heart of the Wise, and his lips expressed it, all consciousness of what he was doing being repressed in 74 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS the fascination of his task. But in later days, when, amidst repeated revolutions, external authority was relaxed, and social morality debauched ; when brigand Murder stalked through the land, or lurked in the thickets ; and Adultery, in the shape of the strange woman, with lubricity in her looks, and the harlot's attire upon her back, flitted 'about the streets, decoying the youth to her haunts, these hideous shapes, imper- sonations of Folly, threw up by contrast before the Wise Man's eye another figure, chaste and beautiful, with the serenity of order on her face, and truth and religion in her eyes, the figure of Wisdom. The traits of this exquisite picture are borrowed from a hundred sources, from the political conditions of the time, from the usages of the religious teachers of the day, from all the ways of public life in the city, and the manners of the men and women of the age, good and bad ; yet not from these as superficial phenomena, playing before men's eyes like unsubstantial shadows that come and go, but all of them, in their true meaning, fragments and expressions of a hidden whole, the moral framework of the human economy, image of the mind of God, whose Agent and Fellow it is. This is the Wisdom of chapters i.-ix., an abstract idealism of surprising depth and beauty. These nine chapters are all from one hand, though possibly, as some think, they may contain in some parts later amplifications ; and the figure of Wisdom is the same throughout. The eighth chapter, however, gathers all the scattered traits together ; and an outline of this chapter, with a few additional remarks, is all that need be offered here. First, in Verses 1-3, Wisdom is introduced as a public teacher, and the places are described where she takes her stand and speaks ; THE WISDOM OP THE HEBREWS 75 Doth not Wisdom cry? And Understanding put forth her voice ? She standeth in the top of high places, by the way, In the meeting-places of the paths ; Beside the gates, at the entry of the city, At the coming in at the doors, she crieth. The high places, on the top of which Wisdom takes her stand, are supposed to be the heights about the Temple, from which the crowds of worshippers could be addressed as they passed — a favourite position of the prophets in their public office. The crossways or meeting-places of the streets were naturally the throngest parts of the city ; and the gates, where justice was dispensed^ and the public life and thought of men expressed themselves, were ever crowded with masses of people passing out and in at their narrow openings. There, where the people most did congregate, Wisdom takes her place, and appeals to men. Second, verses 4^11, Wisdom herself speaks ; she names those whom she desires to hear her, men in general, and particularly the unformed minds among them, and descants upon the rectitude andpreciousness of that which she brings before them. Unto you, men, I call ; And my voice is to the sons of men. ye simple, understand wisdom ; And, ye fools, be of an understanding heart. Hear, for I will speak of excellent things ; And the opening of my lips shall be right things. For my mouth shall speak truth ; And wickedness is an abomination to my lips. Receive my instruction, and not silver ; And knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; For all the things that may be desired are not to be compared unto her. What Wisdom offers to men is Wisdom herself, true 76 THE WISDOM OP THE HEBREWS and precious. And this being the case, she passes on to a delineation of herself, the forms in which she appears, the good she procures ; and ends with a history of her origin, and her work from the beginning. I Wisdom indwell in prudence, And find out knowledge of witty inventions. Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom : I am understanding; I have power. In me kings rule, And princes decree justice. In me princes are princes, And nobles, all the judges of the earth. It is not said that Wisdom gives prudence, that she supplies counsel and power, that the king who has her rules well, but something much more than that. She indwells in prudence or subtilty of the loftier kind ; it is a form in which she expresses herself. She is the soul of which it is the body. She is understanding, kingship, judgment. The forms of intelligence express her. That society is organized, that intelligence and rule are exercised, that there are offices and officers dispensing right — these things are embodiments of her. Like a subtle element underlying all, Wisdom deter- mines to a point in intelligence and mind ; she polarizes herself in kingship and social order ; she scintillates off in understanding and counsel and administration. She is the substratum of intelligence, and, of course, also of godliness ; for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom, and all that is opposed to piety is the negation of her : " Pride and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate " (verse 13). Then, having said that she was not prudish or hard to win, as might be feared of one so beautiful, but ready to give herself to him who would embrace her — THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 77 " I love them that love me " — and having spoken of the splendid dowry that she brings with her : " Riches and honour are with me ; yea, durable riches and righteousness " ; her own image seems to fill her mind wholly ; she forgets the crowds around her, and, in a reverie, soliloquizes on her past, when she was alone with God, the first of His works, or ever the earth was ; and when she was His workman in creation, all of which was but herself taking shape in the magical play of her power (verses 22-31) ; till at last, opening her eyes, she again addresses the astonished throng : " Now therefore, hearken unto me, ye children : for blessed are they that keep my ways " (verse 32). The Lord possessed me as the beginning of His way, The first of His works long agone. I was set up from of old, from the beginning, Or ever the earth was. When there were no deeps, I was brought forth, When there were no fountains laden with water. Before the mountains were sunk, Before the hills was I brought forth : While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, Nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When He set up the heavens, I was there, When He drew a circle upon the face of the deep : When He made firm the skies above, As the fountains of the (upper) deep gushed wildly forth : When He gave to the sea His decree, That the waters should not pass His commandment : When He marked out the foundations of the earth ; Then was I with Him, as His workman, And'day by day was I (full of) delights, Playing before Him a£ all times ; Playing in His habitable earth, And my delights were with the sons of men. The first half of this passage, verses 22-26, states that Wisdom was with God from the beginning ; she was brought forth before the hills, or ever the earth was. 78 THE WISDOM OP THE HEBREWS God possessed her, or gave her being, as the beginning of His way, i.e., of His activity. The first movement of the Godhead outward was the giving subsistence to the Wisdom. The second half states that Wisdom was present at creation, and that, not as a spectator, but as a workman ; that the work was an intoxicating joy, that the self-realization of Wisdom in all the forms of creation was with the ease and conscious power of one playing before Jehovah ; and that in His habitable earth and among the sons of men the play was most brilliant and the delight keenest. The details of this most singular passage may be summed up in one or two final remarks. 1. Wisdom appears as a public teacher. This picture of Wisdom, as occupying all the prominent places by the ways, as taking her place in the crowded thoroughfares and at the thronging gates, and making her appeal to men, forcing herself on their attention, as she brings her own beautiful form before their eyes, and greets them with her musical words, and offers herself to them to be loved, is very charming. The picture could have been drawn only by combining many materials together, such as the public teaching of the prophets, the more private conversational instruc- tion of the Wise, the judicial procedure of the public law at the gates, and the many lessons of the social order and well-being which the thronging thoroughfares pre- sented. These are the things that swell the voice of Wisdom ; and the halo of beauty that surrounds her person, the serenity and the purity, the truth and good- will to men, are in contrast to the disorder and the vice and the wretchedness that follow them, and from which she would hold men back. She is the personification of everything that had a voice to speak to men, and impress upon them the principles of Divine order in THE WISDOM OP THE HEBREWS 79 the world. Her voice gathers into itself the many voices continually sounding in men's ears, the voice of public life, of a well-ordered society, of revelation, or, in a word, of the whole course of things. Distinctions might be drawn between these at other times, but, to the universalistic view of the Wise Man, they are all but elements of one whole. 2. If the picture of Wisdom, the Teacher, embraces all this, that which she teaches will be equally broad. The theme of Wisdom, the Teacher, is Wisdom her- self — Wisdom the thing. There is such a thing. Within the sphere of life and the world, there is a fixed order. In men's minds there are principles of thought and judgment. The order without and the principles in the mind correspond. Together, they form one system, one framework upon which the world is built.' Fragments of these inner principles, corresponding to forms of the external order, are called prudence and counsel : " I, Wisdom, indwell in prudence." Other fragments are called rule, kingship, judicial function : " In me kings are kings." And still other, and the highest, are the fear of the Lord and the hating of evil. But it is obvious that these things, though capable of being considered separately, make up together a unity which embraces the principles of ethics and religion and even of intelligence. And this, which is Wisdom, the objective thing, is the theme of Wisdom, the Preacher. In a word, the principles of the economy of the human race and the earth on which it is placed, form a well-ordered organism, an immaterial frame- work ; but, though immaterial, it is not latent ; it speaks with a thousand tongues of revelation and of life ; and what it speaks of in the ears of men is itself. 3. One more step remains to be taken. This Wisdom, this organic frame of principles now realized 80 THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS in the human economy, had its origin in God ; and the organism existed with Him, before it was realized in the actual creation. It was from the beginning. The first movement of the Divine Mind outward gave it birth. It was not so much a Divine conception as a scheme articulated and pliant, with a power inhering in it of effectuating itself, projected out of the Divine Mind. Hence it is idealized as having subsistence of its own beside Jehovah ; and His purpose to realize it is regarded as a faculty of its own, a capacity within it to effectuate itself, which it does in creation. It is Jehovah's Artificer in creation. In this work it plays before Him in the intoxication of delight. Its play is creation. As it moves in grace and power before Him, its exquisitely articulated limbs and frame bearing themselves with a Divine harmony, every movement embodies itself in some creative work. And where the Divine beauty and power of its movements were most conspicuous and its delight deepest, was in the habitable earth, and with the children of men. It would be strange if that portion of the Old Testa- ment known as the literature of the Wisdom offered no contribution to the Christology of Scripture. Every portion of Scripture makes a contribution to this, suit- able to itself. The prophets, who are statesmen, furnish the idea of the kingdom of God and the Messiah, the Anointed, who is its King. The Psalms, which are private utterances of the believer, consecrate the idea of the Saint or Holy One, often afflicted, but staying himself on God, and delivered from death through his godly fear. The contribution which the Wisdom will make will partake of its own character, and consist of some idea universalistic or cosmical. And this idea we have in the Wisdom of Proverbs. There can be no doubt that the conceptions of Wisdom, just THE WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS 81 referred to, entered into the Messianic consciousness of Israel, and enriched it ; and they are reproduced in the New Testament in connection with the Son. " The Word was with God." " All things were made by Him." " In Him do all things subsist." B.K. THE PROPHET HOSEA THERE are several points of interest in the person and work of Hosea. First, he was a prophet of the northern kingdom : we may say , the only prophet of the northern kingdom who has left any written prophecy. The great prophets of Israel, Elijah and Elisha, lived before written prophecy began. Unless we accept the theory of Hitzig and some other critics, that the two chapters numbered xv. and xvi. in our present book of Isaiah form a fragment of the pro- phecies of Jonah, who was a prophet of the North, we possess nothing of his ; for the book that goes by his name is not prophecy but narrative, and makes no pre- tension to be written by him ; and is, to all appearance, a very great deal later than his day. Amos, though his prophetic career, so far as we know it, was confined to the North, was a native of Judsea ; and he looked on the conditions of human life in the North with a stranger's eye, and estimated them from a stranger's point of view. Perhaps the pictures which he draws are all the sharper in their outlines on this account, and the figures bolder and more energetic, and the colours laid on with a more vigorous and determined hand. At least his sketches of the magnates of Israel and of the women of Samaria are by no friendly pencil. The artist is one of the people, and his sub- ject is an effeminate and dissolute aristocracy ; and we may be sure no pains was taken to tone down the pic- ture or throw any shade over its hideousness. But THE PROPHET HOSEA 83 Hosea was a native of that evil northern land himself. He had grown up familiar with all the forms of its life : however evil they might seem to him, they could not strike him as strange. And as even the forms of wickedness which mark a people's history spring from characteristics of the people's mind and position which are not evil, these must have been shared by the pro- phet ; and if he could not sympathize with the evil wrought by his countrymen, he could see whence it arose, and judge it more leniently, and condemn it less severely . It is cause for special thankfulness that Scripture has preserved to us this book, the product of a northern mind, the testimony borne to itself by the northern kingdom. The books of Kings and Chronicles are late, and pass lightly over the affairs of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes : their view is general ; and, as was right, condemnatory. And we are apt, in our hasty and superficial manner, to conclude that, because this kingdom is condemned as upon the whole bad, therefore it was wholly bad, and to forget that moral uniformity is nowhere seen ; that there is a struggle everywhere between the good and the evil, and that only after a conflict of many generations is the one or the other victorious. The designs of Providence in the erection of this kingdom form a very profound problem. Favoured in its origin by prophets, Ahijah and Shemaiah ; fostered and purified by the greatest prophetic geniuses of the Hebrew people, Elijah and Elisha ; preached to by Amos, a direct messenger from God, and its sins condemned, but with only a condem- nation by inference for itself ; at last assailed by Hosea, one of its own children, and the chiefest and first of its sins declared to be the sin of its ever having come into existence — these things form a riddle difficult to solve. 84 THE PROPHET HOSEA Had Providence, in permitting its rise, other designs ? and the prophets, in promoting the secession, other hopes ? And might the kingdom have had a great destiny, and played a great part in the history of salva- tion, if Jeroboam the son of Nebat had understood the principles of God's kingdom ? We see the possibilities of things only when these are possibilities no more. When our life is spent, or irrevocably lowered, we see the meaning of living, and exclaim, What this life of ours might have been ! By the time Hosea came upon the scene, the energies of Israel were exhausted ; his youthful powers had been wasted ; there was no destiny awaiting him now ; he was prematurely old : " Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not : yea, grey hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth it not" (chap. vii. 9). Not in years, but in vital power, he was old ; and, like others in that state, he could not be made to feel it. Yet we cannot help a certain sympathy for that northern kingdom. It embodied in its origin a pro- test, strong and strange for that time and that Eastern land, against political despotism, even if we should not go the length of regarding the movement as a protest against religious innovation and centralization, and an appeal to the conservative spirit to return to old forms — a view certainly not that of Hosea. No doubt the break occurred where there had always been a weak- ness. A crack in the political unity ran across the country, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, be- tween the boundaries of Ephraim and Benjamin. In the Song of Deborah we observe all the northern tribes acting together, both east and west of the Jor- dan ; but no allusion is made to any of the tribes south of Ephraim. The secession of the northern confeder- ation was, however, none the less a bold and decisive THE PROPHET HOSEA 85 stroke in behalf of freedom and popular rights. Per- haps, like a political neighbour of our own,, its instinct for freedom was much in excess of its capacity for self- government ; and the frequent use which it made of the weapon of revolution brought no lasting liberty or tranquillity to itself. It shook off one despot only to come under the yoke of another. The great number of different tribes formed an obstacle to close coher- ence, although it was favourable to the love of freedom ; and the kingdom was rarely united except when some stern soldier grasped the reins of power. The three greatest rulers of the North were Omri, Jeroboam II., and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, all of them military despots, but men of ability, obeyed at home and feared abroad. The northern kingdom embraced the happiest re- gions of the country : the most fertile, as the plains of Sharon and Jezreel ; the most splendidly wooded, as Ephraim, Carmel, and Lebanon ; and the best watered. The streams of Naphtali and Gilead never ran dry ; and the cool breezes from Lebanon perpetually invi- gorated the dwellers in the great plain at its foot. Nature was kinder, and her moods more variously genial, than in the South. Hence the life of the people was perhaps more joyous, and their love for nature deeper ; and, as they were far from the centre of Jehovah- worship, their religious feelings and thoughts were freer. Both what is good and bad in their his- tory may be partly accounted for in this way. There are allusions in the Song of Solomon which seem to imply a later age than that of Solomon. If this ex- quisite pastoral be not by him, it owes its origin to the northern kingdom, nature's varying moods in which it perfectly reflects. Again, if the afflicted righteous of Job be not merely the righteous man, but the righteous 86 THE PROPHET HOSEA nation and people trodden down under the foot of professed idolaters, it was in all likelihood the suffer- ings of Ephraim that drove one of his children thus to express his sorrow and his perplexity over his country's fate and the inexplicable ways of God. Such freedom in criticizing God's ways, such boldness of despair in the face of the problems of Providence, seem foreign to the devouter minds of the South. They might have been found in the desert ; but the book is certainly a production of the Hebrew mind, and per- haps the conditions of its production are easiest to be conceived in the northern kingdom. If we owe to the North the Song of Songs, the book of Job, and the Prophet Hosea, to say nothing of the Song of Deborah and much else in the historical books, our obligations are of such a kind as to make us regard, with a perplexed wonder, the profound capabilities and the perverse destiny of this people. But, on the other hand, the evil in Israel may to some extent be ex- plained in the same way. This profounder love of nature and this less deep awe of God might readily increase each other, and grow into excess ; and so it seems to have been. The charms of nature alto- gether overpowered the people, and her sweet influ- ences became divine. The nation fell into the worship of the many powers of physical life under the name of Baal ; and this enfeebling worship crushed out all the moral energy from their heart, and led to the grossest dissoluteness of manners. In the South the moral temper was sterner. No prophet of Judah draws such pictures of immorality as Amos does, or even Hosea : "Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the understanding " (chap. iv. 11). Micah and Isaiah both chastise the THE PROPHET HOSEA 87 people of the South for the oppression of the poor by the rich, for their avarice, and judicial corrup- tion, and drunkenness ; but neither of them alludes to licentiousness. But in Israel this vice, with its usual accompaniments of violence and bloodshed, had deeply penetrated all classes, even those whose purity is most closely watched : "I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your betrothed when they commit adultery : for ye yourselves go aside with whores, and ye sacrifice with harlots " (chap, iv. 14); "False swearing, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood " (chap. iv. 2) : i.e., one bloody deed follows immediately on the heels of another. It would be to carry the theory of the influence of circumstance in the formation of mind and character too far, to explain the peculiarities of this prophet's disposition and writings from his northern origin. And with the life of Elijah before us, we could hardly deny that there were minds with strong enough fibre in this kingdom, Yet it is singular that the author of Isaiah xv. xvi. so completely resembles Hosea in the tender- ness and sorrow of his tone. Hosea surpasses him only because it is his brethren, and not strangers, whose fate he laments and strives to avert. His voice, when addressing his countrymen, is always choked with emotion. His speech is little else than a succession of sobs. He behaves, before the wickedness and inevit- able doom of his countrymen, with the extravagance of a distracted mourner in the presence of his dead. He clings to them, and calls to them, and will not believe that hope is past ; and, rising up to a height of ecstasy which is almost frenzy, he apostrophizes death with the threat, in Jehovah's name, " death, I will be thy plagues ! " His grief over his countrymen is pure, 88 THE PROPHET HOSEA without one element of anger. He has none of the scorn which Amos cannot conceal for the luxury and effeminacy of the magnates of Israel. And corre- sponding to his own character is his conception of God. The Divine Heart is but his own with Divine deep- ness. Jehovah also is at His wit's end with His people : " Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee ? for thy good- ness is as a morning cloud " (chap. vi. 4). He too is distracted between love and grief : " How shall I give thee up, Ephraim ? " (chap. xi. 8). Hosea, first of all the prophets, rises to the sublime height of calling the affection with which Jehovah regards His people, love. No prophet had named such a word before. In Joel, God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil " (chap. ii. 13). In Amos, He is good and beneficent, the great outstanding example of His goodness being His redemption of His people from Egypt, and His planting them in Canaan : " Also I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and led you forty years through the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite " (chap. ii. 9, 10) ; and His relation to Israel is expressed by the profound term know : " You only have I known of all the families of the earth " (chap. iii. 2). But no prophet before Hosea ventures to name the love of God : " When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt " (chap. xi. 1) ; "I will heal their backslidings, I will love them freely " (chap. xiv. 4). This idea is the most remarkable thing in Hosea's prophecy, and perhaps is almost the only theological idea in it — the various forms in which it is presented, the figures in which it is set, and the various deductions from it, virtually making up the prophecy. The main contents of Hosea's prophecy are these : THE PROPHET HOSEA 89 1 . His lamentations over the immorality and the vio- lence everywhere prevailing among the people. This immorality he calls whoredom and adultery: "They are all adulterers ; they are as an oven heated by the baker." (Chap. vii. 4. Compare the passages already cited.) Coupled with this is the riot and excess in wine indulged in by the highest in the land on great State occasions—" On the day of our king the princes made themselves sick with a fever of wine " (chap. vii. 5) — and the treacherous revolutionary spirit that burned in the hearts of the nobles, breaking out in deeds of bloodshed, and manifesting itself, as it de- scended through all classes, in robbery and violence, in which even the priests engaged : " They have made ready their heart like an oven, whiles they lie in wait : . . . they are all hot as an oven, and devour their judges ; all their kings are fallen (chap. vii. 6 ff.) ; " Gilead is a city tracked with blood, and as robbers lie in wait, so is the company of priests ; they murder in the way towards Shechem." (Chap. vi. 8, ff. Comp. chap. vii. 1.) In addition to this there was the secular spirit and devotion to material well-being that had taken possession of every mind : " Canaan ! in his hand are balances of deceit : he loveth to oppress. Ephraim saith, Surely I am become rich : I have found me wealth " (chap. xii. 7). The picture which this prophet exhibits of the in- ternal condition of the northern kingdom in his day is a terrible one. He lived during, perhaps, the most un- quiet and turbulent times which the country had ever passed through. His prophecies extend over a con- siderable period of its history. Some of them, perhaps, belong to the time anterior to the death of Jeroboam II., but others fall in the time of the long interregnum that followed his death. After this interregnum of eleven 90 THE PROPHET HOSEA years, Zechariah, son of Jeroboam, succeeded in mount- ing the throne, on which he sat only a few months, and then was assassinated by Shallum. It is in the midst of this unquiet time that Hosea addresses his countrymen. The firm rule of Jeroboam had just ended. The forces of revolution were newly broken out, and were acting in all their strength. Under the last king's long and successful reign the country had advanced greatly in material prosperity. There were ample resources in the land to nourish the various fac- tions, and they struggled against each other with a fury that was fresh and unexhausted. The Prophet can compare this destructive fury to nothing but the raging heat of an oven, although the figure contains the darker trait of a long-sighted, scheming policy, that suppressed and nursed the fire, till the time came to let it blaze out. In Amos's day, who prophesied under Jeroboam, society was dissolute ; but in Hosea's day it was dis- solved. The former prophet assails the great, the upper classes, for their immorality and drunkenness, calling the women " kine of Bashan," full-fed, luxu- rious, and gross, saying to their lords, " Bring, and let us drink " ; and for their pitiless treatment of the poor, whom they sold for a pair of shoes, whose pledged gar- ments they retained overnight, and to whom they sold the refuse of the grain. But oppression of the poor and injustice are usual occurrences in the East, and only prove that a government is bad, not that it is un- stable. In Hosea's days, however, every class seemed flung against another ; and the furious passions, whether revolutionary or immoral, of the people consumed all about them. In these circumstances, it hardly needed a prophet to see that the end of the State was at hand. And, what was worst of all, no hold could be got of the people, from their superficial fickleness and moral shal- THE PROPHET HOSEA 91 lowness. Sometimes they seemed resolved to abide by their idolatry, with a resolute insensibility to better things : " Ephraim is joined to idols : let him alone." Sometimes, again, the feeling of their true relations to Jehovah seemed as if it would come back, and soften their hearts : " My God, we know Thee, we Israel " (chap. viii. 2) ; " Come, and let us return unto the Lord : . . . He hath smitten, and He will bind us up " (chap. vi. 1). But their superficiality and change- ableness threw even the Divine Mind into despair : " O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee ? ... for your goodness is as a morning cloud " (chap. vi. 4). 2. The religious declension and false worship of the people, in its two forms of Baal or nature- worship, and Jehovah-worship under the figure of a calf or young bull, forms the largest element in Hosea's book. The prophet calls this also, whoredom and adultery : " Plead with your mother, plead; for she is not My wife, neither am I her Husband : and let her put away her whoredoms from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts." (Chap. ii. 2. Comp. ver. 5, 7, 12, 13 ; iv. 13 ff. ; v. 3, etc.) The name of whore- dom, given to this false worship, might be the natural corollary of the conception, first expressed by this pro- phet, and but a figure for his main idea of the Love- relation of Jehovah to His people, that the Lord is the Husband of the Church. But it is probable that the name arose in another way. The Baal-worship was ac- companied by shameful prostitution, in which, indeed, it partly consisted ; and it is likely that these practices first brought down upon the Baal-religion this general name, although the idea fitted perfectly into the great conception of Jehovah's relation of Husband to Israel, and in this connection received much elaboration and extension from successive prophets. 92 THE PROPHET HOSEA It is remarkable that Hosea joins the calf-worship with the worship of Baal in the sweep of a single con- demnation. The calf -worship is also idolatry : " He hath cast off thy calf, Samaria : ... for from Israel is it also : the workman made it, and it is no God." (Chap. viii. 5. Comp. x. 5 ff. ; xiii. 2 ff.) This looks like an advance in logical clearness and stringency over the Prophet's predecessors. To Amos the calf- worship was reprehensible, but he had not called it idolatry. And when we read the history of Elijah, we discover that, while he fought against the Baal-wor- ship as a matter of life and death to Israel, he has no word of condemnation for the worship of the calf. The conclusion has been drawn that in these facts we may trace the advance, step by step, of the popular religion of Israel, from nature-worship first to a worship of Jehovah which was still sensuous ; and then, by a further clarification of the Divine idea, to a worship of Him which was purely spiritual, and that the leaders in this advance were the prophets. That this advance was involved in the conflict which the prophets waged, no one will deny. But what will be denied is, that the spiritual worship of Jehovah is a novelty, and the result of the conflict. The prophets fought, according to their own representation at least, not in order to gain this, but lest it should be lost. They are not inno- vators ; they call men back to the old paths. The storm-cloud of judgment which, in the vision of Amos, sweeps round the whole horizon, discharges its fury on Judah " because they have despised the law of the Lord, and have not kept His commandments, and their lies have caused them to err " (Amos ii. 4) ; and Hosea threatens the priests in these terms : " My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge : because thou hast THE PROPHET HOSEA 93 rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to Me : seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children " (chap. iv. 6). The spiritual worship of Jehovah, without material form, had prevailed from the time of Moses, for it is not supposed that any image existed in the Tabernacle. But that this worship was sometimes in danger of being overwhelmed by the tide of idolatry is certain, and is a thing quite natural. For the Israelites were surrounded on all sides by these idolatrous tendencies, and their kings sought alliances with the nations where they prevailed. And the reli- gious condition even within Palestine must have been a very mixed one. For a " mixed multitude " came up with Israel out of Egypt. Tribes here and there attached themselves to the host in the wilderness. The native populations of Canaan, among whom the grossest forms of nature-worship prevailed, were not exterminated, but absorbed into the nation, becoming with it practically, with the rarest exceptions, one people. Such a mass could not be penetrated in a day with pure conceptions of deity. On the contrary, the pure light of Jehovah could only illuminate the fringes of this illimitable darkness, which threatened ever to swallow it up. Too much weight is given to the pre- sumed silence of Elijah regarding the calf worship. The history of Elijah which we possess is later than his day ; and it was no doubt the design of the author of it, to confine his work to tracing the glorious cam- paign of his hero against the infamous priests of Baal • — a campaign the full fruits of which were reaped only in the sweeping revolution of Jehu, that shortly after involved the house of Omri in the ruin of the supersti- tion which it had upheld. 94 THE PROPHET HOSEA And then, as to the difference between Hosea and Amos, we must, in judging their statements, observe their type of mind, and the natural light in which they view things. Amos is the prophet of morality, of natural right, of the ethical order in human life — upheld, no doubt, by Jehovah, and referrible to Him at last. 1 Hosea is a prophet of religion. Jehovah is the starting point from which he begins, the centre of his whole view. The light that covers all things is a light that falls on them from Jehovah. In that light he sees sharply the bearings of all practices in the nation's life ; and the incongruity of the calf worship with the true idea of Jehovah at once strikes his eye. The prophets of the second half of the ninth and of the eighth century are of immense value in enabling us to conceive the condition of men's minds in their day. But they do more than this : they enable us to overshoot their day, and behold what is indefinitely anterior to it. The most significant contri- bution which they make is the attitude which they take up. They are not leaders of the people in a path that shall conduct them to new truths — truths never known before. On the contrary, their movement is retro- grade. They desire to preserve for the people what they are losing. They call them back to old attain- ments in knowledge and sanctity ; they tell them that they have " forgotten " and " corrupted themselves." (Comp. chap. viii. 1 ; xiii. 4, where, for " shalt know," read " knowest.") But the picture of religious confusion which the Pro- phet draws is even more extraordinary than his pictures of social and political anarchy. He justly complains that there is " no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God 1 Duhm, Theology of the Prophets. THE PROPHET HOSEA 95 in the land" (chap. iv. 1), and that the "people are destroyed for lack of knowledge " (chap. iv. 6). All true conceptions of deity had gone from their minds. A vague sense of some power " not themselves " in nature seemed the utmost they could reach. There was no want of sacrifice and incense and feasts ; and these were offered too, to the name of Jehovah, but with no perception of His character: "I desire . . . the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings " (chap. vi. 6). The Baal-worship and Jehovah-worship had run into one. The existing syncretism was the confluence of two streams : a worship of Jehovah, al- though, among the mass of the people, with somewhat clouded conceptions of His spirituality and ethical nature — conceptions which the calf-worship tended to darken still further— and a nature- worship, under the name of Baal, which, running always as a feeble stream among the people, as their history in the wilderness shews (chap. ix. 10 ; xi. 1 ff.), had been reinforced and in- creased to a flood by the inbreak of Phoenician idol- atry. Even when the revolution of Jehu put an end to this worship as a public institution, its spirit remained, and served itself of the various forms of Jehovah- worship, and lived on. The confusion was deepened by the fact that in Israel the name Baal, which means " lord," had naturally been in use as a designation of Jehovah — a fact which can hardly be doubted, when we remember the many proper names compounded with Baal, such as Ishbaal. Afterwards, when the name fell into disrepute, and, from its dangerous character, was proscribed, these names were transformed ; and the popular abhorrence substituted bosheth (" shame ") for the primary element of the compound. Hosea (chap, ii. 16 ff.) looks forward to the happy time when this 96 THE PROPHET HOSEA name shall no more be used : " In that day thou shalt call Me Ishi (my Husband) ; thou shalt no more call Me Baali (my Baal, lord)." But a change of name could do little to clarify the people's conceptions of God. Sterner measures were demanded. As sin has so in- fected our natural bodies that they must die and be dissolved, and atom be separated from atom, till sin has nought to which to attach itself, and thus really we shall " die unto sin " ; so every institution which the Baal-spirit had infected in Israel, from the rites of reli- gion down to the husbandry of the ground, shall perish and cease, and the remnant of Baal shall be cut off, and Jehovah alone shall be exalted. " The corn, and the wine, and the oil, of which the people said, These are my hire that the Baalim have given me, the Lord will take back in the time thereof " (chap. ii. passim) — and the institutions of religion, which Baal had invaded and filled with his unclean spirit, shall be abolished, till a purer worship arise ; and the kingdom shall be broken up, and the people go into captivity : " The children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and with- out a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim." (Chap. iii. 4. Comp ii. 13 ff. ; viii. 11 ff. ; ix. 1 ff., etc.) 3. Another considerable element in Hosea's pro- phecy is the opposition to the foolish politics of his country, the alternate coquetting with Assyria and Egypt. He gives the same name of whoredom and " hiring loves " to this policy : " They are gone up to Assyria, like a wild ass alone by himself : Ephraim hireth loves " (chap. viii. 9) ; " Then Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, and Ephraim went to Assyria, and sent to king Jareb : but he is not able to heaKyou " (chap. v. 13). The name THE PROPHET HOSEA 97 of whoredom may have been given to the foreign policy of the nation, either because the foreign nations whose aid was sought were idolatrous, and their over- whelming influence tended to a reciprocity of religion, and to the flooding of the land of Israel with their thought and the forms of their civilization, as Isaiah says of his countrymen, " They are filled from the East" and contrasts the happy time coming, when the people shall return to what is native, and when the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful, . . . and the fruit of the land a pride and a glory (Isa. ii. 6 ; iv. 2) ; or the name may have sprung immediately from the Prophet's con- ception of Jehovah as the Husband of Israel. This leaning on foreign nations and trust in them indicated alienation from Jehovah and mistrust of Him ; the Hus- band felt He did not possess the whole-hearted affec- tion which He claimed. This changeable policy, not unnatural to a small State situated between two great empires, in the collision of which it was ever liable to be crushed, was dangerous even on principles of ordinary State- craft. It was like the unstable fluttering, from place to place, of a foolish bird : " Ephraim is like a silly dove, without understanding : they call to Egypt, they go to Assyria " (chap. vii. 11). In the nature of things such a policy must prove disastrous. Both empires resented, and felt free to revenge, what they could call disloyalty. But, in the Prophet's view, the disloyalty was of a deeper kind; it was against Jehovah : and the chastisement of it came direct from Him : " When they go, I will spread My net upon them " (chap. vii. 12). Here and everywhere in the Prophets, the Nemesis of the evil deed is wrapped up within it ; men fall by their own counsels (chap. xi. 6) ; the reed on which they lean goes up into their hand : " Ephraim B.E. 7 98 THE PROPHET HOSEA shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean food in Assyria " (chap. ix. 3). 1 4. The last thing which Hosea blames in Israel is its rebellion and defection from the house of David, which, truly considered, was defection from Jehovah also. This is its primary offence, and the root of all other offences (chap. viii. 4; xiii. 11, 16). Hence in their regeneration they shall undo their past rebellion, " and seek Jehovah their God, and David their king" (chap. hi. 5). 5. The great truth which Hosea has to teach is the love of Jehovah to Israel. It was in love that He redeemed them from Egypt (chap. xi. 1); His relations to them, all through their history, have been those of love (chap. xi. 4) ; even His chastisements have been inflicted in love (chap. ii. 14 and chap. iii. passim) ; 1 The expression " unclean " used here indicates that, in the view of the Prophet and those of his time, the land of Israel was sacred, and all other lands profane ; that only in that land could Jehovah be worshipped by sacrifice and aright ; and that food, not sanctified by the preliminary rite of sacrifice to Jehovah, was unclean (chap. ix. 4 ff.). This is one of a class of references in the early Prophets of extreme value in the present condition of Old Testament criticism, when investigators into the antiquity and order of succes- sion of the Hebrew records have turned away from the literary characteristics of the books, as offering no basis for anything except the most general conclusions, to pursue inquiries into the archseo- logical contents of the books, the ideas prevailing in them, the relations of law to law, and codes of law to one another, and the like, and thus trace the progress of thought and institution, and construct a history of Israel from within. Hosea is particularly rich in allu- sions to matters now in controversy. Compare, on the appliances of worship, chapter iii. 4 ; on the written law, viii. 12 ; the multi- plicity of altars, xii. 11 ; viii. 11 ; x. 1 ; iv. 13 ; the novelty of the Baal- worship, xiii. 1, 4 ; xi. 2 ; ix. 8"; vii. 13 ; historical allusions, i. 4 ; iii. 5 ; vi. 7, if we read " like Adam " ; x. 9, 14 ; xi. 8 ; xii. 3 ff„ 12 ff. THE PROPHET HOSEA 99 and, finally, their restoration and everlasting peace shall come about through Jehovah's love (chap. v. 4 ff.). This relation of love Hosea expresses by call- ing Jehovah the Father and, especially, the Husband of Israel. The idea of the latter relation runs through the whole prophecy, and is the more fertile idea of the two ; or, at least, is truer to the primary conception of the Old Testament religion, which is that of a covenant (chap. vi. 7), and not that of generation by Jehovah; although the latter idea, really the more profound, is touched upon by Hosea, and more fully developed by later prophets. Throughout the Prophets, who are statesmen in the kingdom of God, the person or subject, with whom Jehovah enters into relations, is always the community of Israel. Individual Israel- ites only share the blessings of this fellowship, in a secondary way, as members of the community. No doubt, side by side with this view, there runs another. The claims of the individual spirit ever thrust themselves forward, and become more press- ing ; and the fruit of this strife of the individual to attain and express his true relations to Jehovah, we observe in the Psalms and in such books as Job. To this strife we owe the full development of such doctrines as that of immortality . But the Prophets deal with the kingdom of God and its destinies ; all their activities are directed toward the well-being and perfection of the community. And the idea of the marriage relation between Jehovah and the community, when once struck, opened up the way both to the extension and the deepening of former conceptions of the covenant relation. The somewhat hard and merely civil notions of fidelity to a paction, and offence at the breach of it, have the glow of human relations thrown over them. Affection, and faithful- 100 THE PROPHET HOSEA ness, and the keen emotions of wounded love, and hasty anger (Isa. liv. 8), and putting away, and an over- whelming regret that longs for reunion, and much else (chap. ii. 19 if.), are all sides of one great truth, proofs of profound efforts to approach what can never be reached, the idea of the love of God " that passeth knowledge." How strong a hold this idea had taken of the prophet Hosea, we may see from the extra- ordinary use which he makes of the circumstances of his own married life, in the first three chapters of his book. In this connection an interesting question arises, viz., What is the relation to one another of the ideas which have been referred to above in particulars 1 to 5 ? Which of them is primary, and in what order did they rise ? In seeking an answer to such a question, we must distinguish between the way in which these ideas arose historically in the Prophet's mind, as the forms of the national life and the ten- dencies of his country presented themselves to him, and the way in which we perceive them to lie in his mind, when, towards the end of his career perhaps, he sat down to write his book. By this time his scheme of ideas had crystallized ; and the order of thought in his own mind, although he does not follow this order strictly in his book, is the order which reading his book at once suggests to our minds. The idea of the Divine Love and the marriage relation is first ; and all the other ideas are but deductions from it. That this idea had already become primary when he wrote, is evident from his placing, at the head of his work, the history or allegory of his own married life. What follows, not only in chapter ii., but on to the end, is but exposition of the one thought. But the thought is grasped with extraordinary clearness, and followed out with great consistency. THE PROPHET HOSEA 101 First, the love of Jehovah elevates the object of it into a personality, and gives it a unity of feeling, giving it also the sense of benefit, and of responsibility. But from this unity follows the sin of the schism of the nation under Jeroboam. This divided the object on which God's love was fixed ; it both made that love, which cannot be divided, impossible ; and, particularly, it made impossible the reciprocal duties. Whether we might not find here an argument even for a more perfect superficial unity than exists among Christian Churches may be left a suggestion. Again, it seems carrying out the idea of the married relation with even a greater stringency and inwardness, when the Prophet condemns the national policy. It was not merely that seeking the help of Assyria and Egypt shewed distrust of Jehovah : this might be momentary, and due to the perilous exigencies of the situation. The Prophet, with a certain subtlety, seizes the condition of mind of the community, and the direc- tion of the nation's heart, which indicated profound alienation of feeling, and dissatisfaction with the whole range of affections and duties that her relation to Jehovah imposed. What he detected in her policy was the desire to rank as one of the nations (chap. vii. 8), to become a military power and ride upon horses (chap. xiv. 3), and affect the pomp of a secular State by build- ing " palaces " and " fenced cities " (chap. viii. 14). It was this secular feeling and entire misconception of her true meaning that prompted the community to demand a king at first, and led men like Samuel, who saw clearly the meaning of it, to resist the demand. Even in this early age Hosea and other prophets un- derstood clearly what Christ stated in words : " My kingdom is not of this world." And, once more, if the breaking up of the kingdom, 102 THE PROPHET HOSEA and mixing among the nations (chap. vii. 8), were held by the Prophet to be a disruption of the one con- sciousness of the object beloved, and a confusion fatal to the continuance of Jehovah's affection, and to the right performance of duties to Him, the setting up of Baal- worship or even calf-worship was much more an offence against His love. .This not only shewed alienation of feeling ; it was downright infidelity. And the Prophet exposes, with a grave severity unmixed with any feel- ing of its absurdity, the feminine vanity and love of attire that characterized the community even when pursuing her grosser pleasures — when "she decked herself with her ear-rings and her jewels, and went after her lovers " (chap. ii. 13). The order of the Prophet's book shews that, when he wrote it, the primary idea in his mind was the love-relation of Jehovah to Israel, and that his other thoughts follow from it as corollaries. It is possible, however, that he did not start on his prophetic career with any such scheme in his mind, but was led to it in attacking, one by one, and independently, the practical mischiefs he encountered among the people. There are some indications, however, which would lead us to infer that the idea of the marriage-relation of Jehovah to Israel was one with which the Prophet began his career of public preaching ; and, if this be so, we are perhaps put upon the track of the way in which this great primary idea came to take possession of him. The prophecy commences : "In the beginning, when the Lord spake by Hosea, the Lord said unto Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms " (chap. i. 2). There seems this much at least of history here, that the idea of Israel's infidelity, and consequently the idea of her married relation to Jehovah, was a primary one in the Prophet's mind from the moment of his public THE PROPHET HOSEA 103 action, however much his long activity may have given it clearness. Consequently we are thrown into a period anterior to this, to find the circumstances that gave the idea such force to him. These circumstances are no doubt those which he narrates in his own personal history. To suppose that Jehovah would have com- manded his prophet to ally himself to a woman already known as of impure life is absurd and monstrous. On the other hand, the supposition that the story told in chapters i. to iii. of the Prophet's married life is pure allegory, with no element of history in it, is superficial, and does no justice to the severe realism of the Pro- phet's character and words. Some such miserable his- tory as he narrates had no doubt been his own. His wife had gone astray from him, sharing the deep cor- ruption of the time. What had happened to him had happened to others. Nay, it was not a corruption of individuals only ; it was universal. Israel was corrupt ; and the thought flashed on him that his history was but a type of the history of Jehovah and His people. And, when he looked into it still more deeply, the ad- ditional conviction forced itself on his mind that it was not an accident, or a misfortune, that had brought him through such painful experiences. It was God's provi- dential way of making a prophet of him, and giving him His prophetic word. Henceforth he comes forward as a prophet, and speaks with the energy and pathos of one who has experienced in life what he speaks, whose ex- periences have been his school for his work, and who feels that the Lord designed them to be so, and had through them lifted him up into a fellowship with Himself. Of course, when he came to write his pro- phecies, long after, he extended the bare outline of facts, and added to it much ideal ornamentation, in order the better to body out the great divine truth 104 THE PROPHET HOSEA which both his life and revelation had so profoundly impressed upon him. 1 Nothing more than a brief allusion need be made to the brilliant anticipations of the Prophet in regard to the future of his people, founded on the unchange- able love of Jehovah. These anticipations prove that Hosea felt certain of Israel's restoration to God's favour (chap. i. 10 ; xiv. 3 S.) ; of the reunion of the disrupted kingdom, in the Messiah's days, under " one head " (chap. i. 11) ; of the reconstruction of the dismembered tribes, set forth as a resurrection (chap. vi. 2), an idea elaborated into such splendid proportions by Ezekiel (chap, xxxvii.), and applied, apparently, in a literal way to deceased individuals of the house of Israel in Isaiah xxvi. ; of the destruction of Death and Hell (chap. xiii. 14) ; and the final settlement of the people of God in holy beauty and unchanging power, when they " shall grow as the lily, and cast forth their roots like Lebanon " (chap. xiv. 5). THE PROPHET AMOS THERE are many of opinion that the oldest written prophecy which we possess is that of the prophet Joel, which is assigned, by those who consider it very early, to the first quarter of the ninth century, in the be- ginning of the reign of Joash. The balance of modern opinion, however, inclines towards assigning a much later date to this prophet. The prophet Jonah lived and prophesied during the earlier part of the reign of Jeroboam II. ; but beyond the prophecy referred to in 2 Kings xiv. 25, which was fulfilled by the warlike operations of Jeroboam, nothing of his has come down to us ; for our present Book of Jonah is not a pro- phecy, but an historical episode. Some scholars, in- deed, assign to him the two chapters xv. and xvi. in the Book of Isaiah, but this is only a conjecture. Consequently the earliest prophetic writing of which we can speak with certainty is the Book of the prophet Amos. The heading to the prophecies of Amos states that he prophesied " in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake." The chronology of the kings of Israel and Judah is confessedly obscure. Jeroboam probably did not outlive the middle of the eighth century, though some place his death in the first quarter of the century. Uzziah or Azariah is supposed to be mentioned in the Assyrian records as late as 740, 105 106 THE PROPHET AMOS though the reference is disputed. The precise date, " two years before the earthquake," suggests that the prophetic career of Amos in northern Israel was of short duration, and that he fulfilled his course when Jeroboam and Uzziah were both upon the throne. The Book supplies evidence that he prophesied in the reign of Jeroboam (chap. vii. 10 seq.)\ and a later prophet (Zech. xiv. 5) informs us that the earthquake referred to occurred in the reign of Uzziah, though we have no means of fixing its date more exactly. The prophetic work of Amos may therefore be assigned to the first half of the eighth century, before 750. Little more is known of the prophet than that he be- longed to the district of Tekoa, and was a shepherd. Tekoa, whence the wise woman came whom Joab employed to turn the heart of David again towards his banished son (2 Sam. xiv.), was a place twelve miles south of Jerusalem, almost the farthest village in that direction, all beyond it running into pasture and dipping into the desert, so that the district was well adapted for flocks, and the valleys for the cultivation of the syco- more fig. The place has been identified from ruins still remaining. Here Amos was one of the herdmen. The term noked, rendered herdmen, is not conclusive as to the prophet's social position. He might have borne such a name though the owner of flocks, for Mesha, king of Moab, is so called (2 Kings iii. 4), though the word is there rendered " sheepmaster." Amos, however, fur- ther says of himself that the Lord took him from behind the flocks (chap. vii. 14), which seems to imply that he kept the flocks, though perhaps it does not ex- clude his being the owner of some of them. He adds that he was a cultivator of sycomore fruit, a kind of food said to be used by the poorer class of people. He was thus a man of the lower ranks of life, unlike the three THE PROPHET AMOS 107 other great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, all of whom belonged to the higher or to the priestly class ; and his history illustrates the freedom of the grace that called to the prophetic office. Of the manner, of the prophet's life before his call to prophesy, beyond what we can imagine from his occupa- tion, we know nothing ; nor of the causes, if any secon- dary causes there were, that induced him to cross the border, and testify against the northern kingdom. Though a shepherd, he was learned in the things of God. He shows such familiarity with the history of his people that we are justified in inferring that some historical work was in his hands. He cannot, one would fancy, be a specimen of the men of whom his class in the king- dom of Judah was composed. It could hardly happen that such knowledge of history, and such power to generalize upon the principles of God's government of the world and men, as he everywhere shows, could have been common among the herdmen of his day. And yet the spirit of God does not usually teach mere facts capable of being otherwise learned. And we may infer, from the case of this prophet, that the nation's his- tory was known in its great turning points even among the common people, and that even those whose occupa- tion was the meanest, and whose life was passed farthest from the centres of religious influence and what we should call civilization, were able to rise to lofty thoughts of God, and to generalize very broadly on His ways. The prophet's history, indeed, compels us to be more careful than is usual, in regard to the inferences which we draw from his own language in his prophecies. Read- ing him, or indeed any of the prophets, we are ready to conclude that the prophet stood on one side, and the nation en masse upon the other ; that besides him there was none righteous, no, not one. The idea suggested to 108 THE PROPHET AMOS us by the prophets of each successive age is the idea to which Elijah gave expression when he said, " I only am left alone." Yet we know how greatly he was mis- taken ; and it is certain that we must be on our guard against drawing too sweeping conclusions from similar language in other prophets. The prophet's function was that of a corrector morum ; he was " full of power by the Spirit of the Lord, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin " (Mic. hi. 8), and it was the blots on the face of society, and its per- versities, that attracted his eye. Those evils to which he applied his scourge .undoubtedly existed ; probably they were practised by the majority of the nation, but there was, at all times, a minority likeminded with the prophet ; and how large the minority was cannot be inferred from his words, which are those of despondency or indignation. The existence of such a right-minded minority may be inferred, not only from the principle laid down by St. Paul, as applicable both to his own times and those of Elijah, that there was a " remnant according to the election of grace," but from many other circumstances. Too often, no doubt, the minority wanted courage ; or they were scattered, and unable to make their power felt against the ruling classes when opposed to them; or special circumstances prevented them from acting in the way to be expected of them. For example, the permission to return granted by Cyrus to the exiles, was not taken advantage of by nearly all who remained true to the religion of their fathers, for a second colony returned nearly a hundred years later under Nehemiah. The exiles, acting on the advice of Jeremiah in his letter to them (chap, xxix.), had probably formed connexions which could not easily be severed ; and they might not feel assured that the Lord's THE PROPHET AMOS 109 set time to favour Zion was fully come. Men's actions are often not those which we should have expected from their position in history, because circumstances of which we are ignorant influenced their conduct. The great proof, however, of the presence of this right-minded minority in the nation at all times is just the fact of the existence of the prophets. We cannot account for the appearance of a succession of such men otherwise than on the supposition that they arose out of a society, in the main, likeminded with themselves, and fitted to give them birth — that they were the efflores- cence, season after season, of a tree whose roots always stood in the soil. Something immediately extraordi- nary in the case of each individual prophet being fully admitted, something which is not to be quite explained by the operation of the mind upon truth already com- mitted to it under the influences of Providence and life, still this operation is a thing on which the strongest em- phasis must be laid. For this operation is but another name for religious life ; and the history of Israel is a his- tory of religious life, and not a history of successive external Divine interpositions merely, which never succeeded in translating themselves into conditions of the human mind. Each prophet is the child of a past stretching back indefinitely behind him ; and, if so, this past must have put forth its power in the forces and religious life of the society which gave the. prophet birth. Several well known modern writers on prophecy, using as argument the strong language of the prophets just referred to, have concluded that such a prophet as Amos stood virtually alone in the nation ; that there was a great gulf fixed, on one side of which stood the prophet, and on the other, the people in a mass ; and that what the prophet did was nothing less than to 110 THE PROPHET AMOS enunciate and introduce a new religion, which had almost nothing in common with that hitherto professed by the people beyond the name Jehovah, employed by both. This theory is not only opposed to all the representa- tions of the prophets themselves, and the universal tradition among the writers of Israel, but it entirely fails to account for the prophet. The old view, according to which each prophet was a simple isolated miracle, out of all connexion with the life and thought of his time, really offered an explanation, if the view could be accepted ; and if the choice lay between the two theories, we should be driven to accept the old theory as necessary to the satisfaction of our understanding. The fact, however, that the prophet Amos himself arose out of the lowest ranks of the people, is sufficient evi- dence that there existed no such gulf between the pro- phets and the universal mass of the nation, as the modern writers referred to represent. Returning to the prophet, we. find him familiar with the history of his people. From a single word, " his brother," we infer that he was acquainted with the story of Jacob and Esau (chap. i. 11). From another expression, " Moab shall die with tumult " (chap. ii. 2), we perceive that the prophecies of Balaam were familiar to him (Num. xxiv. 17). The prohibitions of the law are insisted upon, when he is denouncing the sins of the people, such as retaining pledged garments over night : " They lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar" (chap. ii. 8) — in defiance of the law (Exod. xxii. 26). These laws were, no doubt, in his hands in a written form. He knows of the forty years' journeying in the wilderness, and the traditions about the gigantic bulk of the Amorites (chap. ii. 10). He is acquainted with the history of David, and knows that he was a poet and musician (chap. vi. 5). Besides THE PROPHET AMOS 111 all this, he is familiar with the history of the nations around Israel, and even of those far off, such as Calneh, Kir, and Hamath (chap. vi. 2) ; his eye is attracted by the movements among the nations, and their migra- tions from one land to another, on which he bases broad religious generalizations, seeing in them the directing hand of the God of Israel, " who brought the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir, and Israel from Egypt " (chap. ix. 7). Though the earliest of the canonical prophets, his view of the world is perhaps broader than that of any of them, just as his definitions of religion, surpass in incisiveness and clearness those of the majority of his successors. It is not quite easy to give any outline of the pro- phet's Book or sketch of its contents, because the same general ideas occur very frequently. These general ideas are in the main : the injustice done to the poor of the people and the oppression of them by the great, in for- getfulness of the law of Jehovah, and of His goodness to them in bringing them up out of Egypt and destroy- ing the nations before them, and in raising up prophets and spiritual guides among them ; then threats of judgment and the downfall of the State because of these sins ; then warnings against such hopes as they cherished regarding Jehovah's relation to them as His people, whom He could not cast off. Such hopes were vain : the anger of Jehovah could not be appeased by sacrifice and offering, nor was He one to be bribed by the fat of fed beasts. He sought righteousness. And their longing for His appearance at the day of the Lord was a delusive desire. He would appear, but for their destruction, not their salvation : " Wherefore will ye have the day of the Lord ? the day of the Lord is dark- ness, and not light ; as if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him " (chap. v. 18). Jehovah was their God, 112 THE PROPHET AMOS but this was no mere national relation ; as a nation, they were no more to Him than other nations : " Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto Me, house of Israel ? " (chap. ix. 7) ; only as a righteous nation could He be their God, and it was not their need of deliverance, but their sins, that would draw Him forth from His place, to chastise them : " Prepare to meet thy God, Israel " (chap. iv. 12). Yet He could not cease to be their God, and in the far-off future, when judg- ment had done its work, and He had sifted them among all nations, He would return and build again the taber- nacle of David that had fallen down, and plant the people on their own land, from which they should no more be plucked up (chap. ix. 11). The prophecy may be divided into five general sec- tions, each containing a principal idea, though not to the exclusion of the conceptions found in the other divisions. Chap, i.-ii. A universal view of the sin of the nations and the judgment of Jehovah. Jehovah shall roar out of Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem ; and the breath of His anger shall wither up Carmel and the pastures of the shepherds. The lion's lair is Mount Zion, and his roar is that with which he springs upon his prey (chap. iii. 4). The judgment is universal, upon all the nations of the world as it lay under the eye of the prophet ; and each nation is judged for its particular sin. The cloud laden with disaster trails round the whole horizon, discharging itself upon the nations in succes- sion, Syria, Edom, Ammon, Moab, the Philistines, and Phoenicia, Judah included, till it settles at last over Israel. The judgment comes from Jehovah, who dwells in Zion ; it falls on all the nations, and it falls on them for their sin. This sin is regarded chiefly as in- humanity or injustice, though to this, on Israel's part, THE PROPHET AMOS 113 are added ingratitude and forgetfulness of Jehovah's will. Chapter iii.-iv. 3. The second section contains threats of judgment upon the people because of their injustice to one another, and because of the oppression of the poor by the privileged classes. This oppression is such a flagrant breach of the natural law of mankind that even the heathen would shudder at it : " Publish ye in the palaces of Ashdod, and in the palaces of the land of Egypt, and say, Assemble yourselves upon the mountains of Samaria, and behold what great tumults are therein, and what great oppressions are in the midst of her " (chap. iii. 9). The spirit of cruelty and oppression has taken possession not of the men only, but of the women, who are indifferent to the sufferings of others, if they can but gratify their own voluptuous desires : " Hear, ye kine of Bashan, in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say unto their lords, Bring, and let us drink " (chap. iv. 1). Therefore destruction shall be on men and women alike — on men : " Thus saith the Lord, An adversary shall there be even round about the land ; and he shall bring down thy strength from thee, and thy palaces shall be spoiled " (chap. iii. 11) ; and on women : " The Lord God hath sworn by His holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that they shall take you away with hooks, and your offspring with fish-hooks. And ye shall go out at the breaches, every one straight before her " (chap. iv. 3). Chap. iv. 4-v. Threats of judgment because of the false worship of the people, and their misconception of the nature of Jehovah and the true meaning of His relation] to Israel. The passage is probably an answer to a thought which, the prophet felt, might rise in the people's mind b.e. 8 114 THE PROPHET AMOS to obviate the force of his former threats. They deemed that they could avert the anger of Jehovah by increasing the richness of His sacrifices and the splendour of His service (chap. v. 22). The same delusion on the peo- ple's part is met by Hosea with similar words : " With their flocks and their herds shall they go to seek Jehovah ; but they shall not find Him : He hath withdrawn Him- self from them " (chap. v. 6). The prophet ironically invites the worshippers to redoubled assiduity in their ritual service of Jehovah : " Go to Bethel, and trans- gress ; to Gilgal, and multiply transgression ; bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes every three days ; proclaim freewill offerings and publish them : for so it liketh you, ye children of Israel " (chap. iv. 4) ; and then, suddenly turning round, he bids them judge what Jehovah thought of such service : " And I on My part have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places : . . . I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest : . . . I have smitten you with blasting and mildew : . . . I have sent among 3^ou the pestilence after the manner of Egypt." This assiduous ritual service of their God was in truth nothing but so much sinning ; and Jehovah appeals to the people to cease from it, and seek Him. Chap. vi. A threat of destruction because of the luxury of the ruling classes, their self-confidence and national pride, and their blindness to the signs of the times and to the operations of Jehovah, which, though in a far-off region as yet, were alarming enough to all who had eyes. " Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, and that feel secure on the mountain of Samaria ; that lie on beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches ; that eat lambs out of the flock, and sing idle songs to the THE PROPHET AMOS 115 sound of the viol ; that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments, but are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph ; who rejoice in a thing of nought (their national power), and say, Have we not taken to us horns ? Therefore shall they go captive with the first that go captive." Chap, vii.-ix. The last three chapters contain the same idea of the destruction of the nation, but con- veyed in a variety of symbols seen in vision. In chap- ter vii. there are three of these symbolical visions, the locusts, the fire, and the plumbline. The Lord's resol- ution to destroy His people and His compassion are represented as struggling with one another. The pro- phet intercedes twice for the people : " O Lord God, spare, I beseech thee : how shall Jacob stand ? for he is small ! " and twice the judgment is deferred : " The Lord repenteth, saying, It shall not be." At last the plumbline, the line of rectitude, must be applied to Israel : " I will not pass by them any more." In chapter viii. there is a single symbol, that of the ripe summer fruit {halts), suggesting by a play of sound that the end (kets) is come upon the nation ; it is ripe for destruction and the harvest of Jehovah's wrath. And chapter ix. consists of a still more graphic symbol with its interpretation : the false worshippers are represented as gathered together in the temple at Bethel, and Jehovah commands to smite the pillars, that the fabric may fall upon the heads of all of them — they are buried in the ruins of their false religion. And, if any escape, the sword of the Lord shall pursue them, that not one shall save himself, and all the sinners of the people shall be cut off. Then follows the bright picture of the restitution : the tabernacle of David that is fallen down shall be raised up ; the kingdom shall assume its old boundaries from the sea unto the river ; nature shall 116 THE PROPHET AMOS be transfigured ; and the people shall dwell in the land given them by their God for ever. In the prophets, the two subjects that meet us are the people and Jehovah their God. The prophetic teaching is not abstract, but consists always of concrete statements regarding these two great subjects, and their relations to one another. We cannot, therefore, begin by asking, What is the prophet's doctrine of God ? We must in- quire what his doctrine in regard to Jehovah, the God of Israel, is. When that is seen, we may inquire what his doctrine of Jehovah implies, or amounts to, as a doctrine of God. 1 . It does not need to be said that, to the prophet, Jehovah is a self-conscious Person : He swears by Him- self (chap. vi. 8), or by His " holiness," that is, by His Godhead, or by Himself being God (chap. iv. 2). His name is God, or Jehovah, or the Lord (Adonai), mean- ing the Sovereign (chap. iii. 7), or the Lord Jehovah (chap. viii. 3). Another name which the prophet fre- quently uses is Jehovah the God of hosts (chap. iv. 3 ; v. 16 ; vi. 8, 14), or Jehovah whose name is the God of hosts (chap. v. 27), or the Lord Jehovah the God of hosts (chap. iii. 13), or finally, the Lord Jehovah of hosts (chap. ix. 5). It is not quite certain how the name God or Lord of hosts took its rise, whether it was from the idea that the Lord led the armies or hosts of Israel, or from the idea that He commanded the hosts of heaven. At all events in later usage the name re- ferred principally, if not exclusively, to the hosts of heaven. These hosts, to the eye, were the stars ; but the stars were idealized as living, and were, or at least symbolized, the armies in heaven. To command and move these armies required omnipotent power, and suggested it ; hence Isaiah says, " Lift up your eyes and behold, Who created these things ? who bringeth forth THE PROPHET AMOS 117 their host by number, arid calleth them all by their names ; by the greatness of His might, for that He is strong in power, not one faileth " (chap. xl. 26). The name God or Lord of hosts is equivalent to the Almighty or Omnipotent, as the Septuagint, according to its tra- dition, rightly rendered it (-TravTOKpaTwp). The term hosts, Sabaoth, appears to have been considered sometimes a proper name. It is remarkable that Amos never calls Jehovah the God of Israel ; the nearest ap- proach he makes to this is when he says, " Prepare to meet thy God, Israel " (iv. 12). 2. Further, Jehovah not only possesses all power, He constantly uses it. First, in nature : He is the creator of all that exists, of the most gigantic masses in the Uni- verse, as well as its most subtle influences : He made Orion and the Pleiades (chap. iv. 8), He formed the mountains, and createth the wind (chap. iv. 13) ; He is the mover in all the movements which we observe : He turneth the darkness into morning, and maketh the day dark with night ; He calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth (chap. v. 8, iv. 13, ix. 5) ; His angry breath withers up Carmel (chap. i. 2); He withholds rain, sends locusts, mildew, pestilence, and overthrow (chap, iv.) ; He touches the earth, and it melts, and rises up, and sinks (in the oscillations of the earthquake) like the river of Egypt (chap. ix. 5). Secondly, He puts forth His power equally in the rule of the nations, moving them upon the face of the earth and according to His will, like pawns upon a board, bringing Israel from Egypt, the Philis- tines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir (chap. ix. 7). And as He brought the Syrians from Kir, He sends them back whence they came (chap. i. 5), and Israel He causes to go into captivity beyond Damascus (chap, v. 27). It is at His command that the Assyrian 118 THE PROPHET AMOS comes up, and overflows the land like a river ; it is He that breaks for him the bar of Damascus, and launches him upon the sinful kingdom of Samaria, causing him to afflict it from Hamath unto the river of the wilder- ness, the border of Edom (chap. vi. 14). And the omnipresence of His power is expressed in chapters i.-ii., where He smites one nation after another — all the peoples of the known world — and in such passages as chapter ix. 8 : " Behold, the eyes of the Lord Jehovah are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth " ; and particularly in the terrible passage (chap. ix. 4 seq.), where His wrath is represented as pursuing the sinners of the people, and plucking them out of every refuge, heaven, hell, the top of Carmel, the bottom of the sea, captivity among the nations ; for He sets His eye upon them for evil, and not for good. And His glance penetrates equally into the spirit of men, for " He declareth unto man what is his thought " (chap. iv. 13). 3. These passages contain the expression of what is called personality in Jehovah, that He is creator, that He is ruler over all, that He has all power, is omniscient and omnipresent. Some of them also suggest what the essence of His personality is, and what the spring is which moves and guides His power and rule : it is His ethical Being. It is because of three transgressions, and of four, that He will overthrow nation after nation around Israel. It is because they sell the righteous for money, and turn aside the meek from his right within Israel, that He will press them down, as a cart presses that is full of sheaves (chap. ii. 13). It is because of the oppressions in the midst of Samaria, and because they know not to do right, that the Assyrian enemy shall encamp on the land, and bring down their palaces to the ground (chap. hi. 11). It is because they turn justice THE PROPHET AMOS 119 to wormwood, and fling righteousness to the ground (chap. v. 7) ; because they turn eternal principles up- side down, acting as madly as if men were to drive horses upon the rock, or plough the sea with oxen (chap. vi. 12), that Jehovah is raising up a nation that will afflict them from Hamath unto Edom. There are almost no positive statements made as to what Jehovah is ; we must infer what He is from what He does and what He desires : " I hate, I despise your feasts ; take away from Me the noise of thy viols : but let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness like an ever- flowing stream " (chap. v. 21). " Seek ye Me, and ye shall live : and seek not unto Bethel. Seek good ; and so Jehovah, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye say. Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish justice in the gate " (the court of justice, chap. v. 5, 14). What "good" is, will appear immediately. "What Jehovah demands is righteousness, nothing more and nothing less ; what He hates is injustice. Sin or offence to the Deity is a thing of purely moral charac- ter. Morality is that for the sake of which all other things exist, it is the alone essential thing in the world. It is no postulate, no idea, but at once a necessity and a fact ; the most intensely living of personal powers — Jehovah the God of Israel." x Like all the prophets, Amos is first of all a theologian and then a moralist. His doctrine of God, or rather, of Jehovah, the God of Israel, is the primary thing ; his doctrine of men or of the people is secondary, and but a reflection of his doctrine of Jehovah, or a deduction from it. The people must be what their God is, or they can be no people of His. The relation between them is that of mind to mind, nature to nature. Hence, while he speaks abundantly of Jehovah, and of what He 1 Wellhausen : Hist,, p. 472. 120 THE PROPHET AMOS is and requires, he never takes occasion to contrast Him with other deities ; and while he reprobates severely the worship of the people, it is the spirit of it, the wrong state of mind which it manifests, rather than particular practices, that he dwells upon. He differs from his successor Hosea in this respect ; and hence it has been supposed that, because he does not expressly condemn the golden calves, he found nothing offensive in them. This view has been repeated so often that it may be called traditional. " Amos expresses no dread of the religious symbolism prevalent in northern Israel ; like Elijah and Elisha, he lets the ' golden calves ' pass without a word of protest." 1 It is questionable if this representation be true, even in the letter. Several passages are hard to reconcile with it, as this : " When I visit the transgressions of Israel upon him, I will also visit the altars of Bethel : and the horns of the altar shall be cut off, and fall to the ground " (chap. iii. 14) ; or the ironical invitation, " Go to Bethel, and transgress " (chap. iv. 4) ; or this : " They that swear by the sin of Samaria (probably the calf of Bethel), and that swear, As . thy god, Dan, liveth, shall fall, and never rise up again " (chap. viii. 14) ; or the graphic pic- ture of the worshippers gathered together in the temple at Bethel, which Jehovah smites and brings down upon their heads. These passages appear to carry in them a formal repudiation of the calves. Minds may differ, but if the prophet's language be not a verbal protest against the calf worship, it is because it is a great deal more ; it is a protest which goes much deeper than the calves, and is directed to something behind them. The calves, and the whole ritual service as it was prac- tised, were but symptoms of that which gave offence 1 Cheyne': Hosea. p. xxxi. Comp. Stade : Hist, p. 579. THE PROPHET AMOS 121 to the prophet, which was the spirit of the worship, the mind of the worshippers, the conception of Deity which they had in worshipping, and to which they offered their worship. Jehovah distinguishes between this service and the worship of Him : " Seek Me, and seek not to Bethel." Jehovah as He knows Himself, and Jehovah as He sees the people worship Him, are not one but two. They possibly thought Him their na- tional god, to whom they were in a sense as necessary as He was to them, whose prestige and credit were in- volved in their preservation and prosperity ; or they judged Him a sharer in their own sensuous being, and therefore one that smelled with satisfaction the smoke of their sacrifices, and who could always be called back, when offended, by more abundant offerings, which were what He sought, and what was felt to be due ; while in truth He was a purely spiritual Being, to whom sacrifices of flesh were inappreciable, whose sole desire was righteousness, being Himself, as might be said, the very ethical conception impersonated. Therefore He says, " Seek good, and the Lord shall be with you, as ye say." The term " good " is used in other prophets, just as in Amos, to describe moral in contrast with ritual service, as by Micah : "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thou- sands of rivers of oil ? . . . He hath showed thee, O man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " (chap. vi. 7). The truth appears to be, that the difficulty does not lie where it has been laid, namely, in Amos's failure to protest against the calves, as if he stood on a lower platform than his successor Hosea, who does protest against them ; the difficulty lies in an opposite quarter : the prophet doth protest too much. His stringent y 122 THE PROPHET AMOS doctrine of the moral Being of Jehovah appears to lead him to discard all ritual service as worthless, or even false. The service which Jehovah desires is a just and humane life among one's fellow men, and humility before Himself (chap. vi.). The prophet has already transcended his own economy, and stands by the side of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews : " But to do good and to communicate forget not : for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." To us, with our views of the central place of sacrifice in the old economy, this is rather perplexing ; not, of course, that he should speak thus, but that he should speak only thus. The explana- tion possibly is, that he had in view merely the people's abuse of the idea of sacrifice ; what its just uses were it did not fall to him to state. If, however, it were ob- jected to him that he sets too great store by good works, he would probably reply with the apostle, Forgive me this wrong. When we observe two ideas expressed by a writer, one of which might be a deduction from the other, the temptation is great to regard the ideas as so related. The prophet's universalistic conception of Jehovah, his view that He is God over all, might be the natural con- clusion from Jehovah's purely ethical Being. For it is not easy to see how a purely moral being can have any relations but those which are moral, and therefore uni- versal — unless, indeed, the other relations be of a tem- porary kind, and existing for the purpose of realizing the universal relation. And there are some signs in the prophet's Book that his general conception of Jeho- vah put his faith in Jehovah's special relation to Israel under a certain strain. His principles would have led him to ask with St. Paul, " Is God the God of the Jews only ? Is He not also of the Gentiles ? " And, in point of fact, he does put a similar question : " Are THE PROPHET AMOS 123 ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto Me, O house of Israel ? saith the Lord." The remark has been made in regard to Hosea that " as a rule, like Amos, he speaks of Jehovah as the national God of the Hebrews." 1 The re- mark needs modification, or at least interpretation, in regard to both the prophets. The term " national " carries an ambiguity in it. All the prophets and Old Testament writers operate with nations or peoples. The nation is, to their minds, the unit of organization and life. Even the new covenant of Jeremiah is made with the people ; though it operates first upon individuals, it is in order to gather them into a people. This is partly a mode of thought, and need not have any religious significance at all. The religious differentia lies entirely in the nature of the relation be- tween the god and the nation. In the heathen Shemitic religions, this relation is natural or even physical ; in both the prophets referred to, it is moral or spiritual. The prophet Amos does not even make use of the ex- pression "Jehovah, God of Israel," he employs the term God of hosts, which expresses his broad concep- tion of Jehovah. The first two chapters of the Book are of par- ticular value in regard to this point. There Jehovah chastises all the nations because of their breach of the natural law of humanity and mercy written on men's hearts, of which law He is the guardian, because He is the impersonation of it. His relation to the heathen nations is not mediate, but direct ; He does not punish them as God of Israel, and because they have offended against His people. Even when their cruelties have been committed on Israel, this is not the point that calls forth the judgment ; it is the inhuman 1 Cheyne : Hosea, as above, 124 THE PROPHET AMOS cruelty itself, the breach of a law known to all men. But it is not only offences against Israel that He resents ; He watches the conduct of the heathen nations to one another, such as Moab and Edom, and upholds among them the law of the human mind, throwing His shield of protection even over those feelings of men which, though sacred, might seem in some sort sentimental : He destroys Moab, because they burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime. 1 The question of the relation of God to the people Israel is a difficult one, on which men even now differ. Our Lord teaches that salvation is of the Jews, as the prophets taught before Him (Isa. ii., xlii., etc.). And we might suppose that, the Saviour of mankind having come forth from Israel, the purpose of God in its election had been fulfilled ; and that Jew and Gentile now stood on a level, as common sharers of God's love to " the world." There are many devout Christians who think differently, believing that God's relation to Israel is still in some sense " national," and that the results of it are not yet exhausted. At all events, when Amos, though upholding the special relation of Jehovah to Israel, speaks to the people in the name of the Lord, " You only have I known of all the nations of the earth, therefore will I visit your transgressions upon you " ; and when He teaches that Jehovah will sift out all the sinners of the people, that at last He may be God of a righteous nation, he introduces an element which modifies the idea of " national " to such an ex- tent as almost to reverse it, and which makes the use 1 The passage 2 Kings iii. 27 is probably to the same effect, and is even more remarkable, inasmuch as the " indignation " was against Israel, who had pressed their ruthless warfare so far as to drive the king of Moab to the inhuman act of immolating his son. THE PROPHET AMOS 125 of such a term, to describe the prophet's conception of the relation of Jehovah to Israel, very misleading. Very probably the prophet did not make the use of his conceptions that we think he might have done. His picture of the final condition of the world looks con- tracted. It is certainly a miniature ; but, possibly, it suggests as many thoughts as if it had filled more canvas. — The broken fragments of the people shall be restored, and the house of David shall rule over a united Israel ; the people shall be all righteous, and nature transfigured shall be supernaturally kind ; the kingdom of Jehovah shall regain its widest boundaries, from the sea to the river, and embrace all the nations on which Jehovah's name had ever been named. — This extent of the kingdom of the Lord may seem petty ; yet it was virtually the world, as Amos knew it. His successors, who saw the vast empires of Assyria and Babylon, have a larger idea of the world, but not another idea. Their wider view of the world might en- large their thoughts of Jehovah, but this prophet's con- ception of the relation of Jehovah to the " world " does not differ from their conception of it. The prophet's doctrine of Jehovah was thus a very elevated one. Jehovah was a self-conscious Person, for He sware by Himself ; He was all-powerful, His name being not the God of Israel, but the Lord of hosts ; He not only possessed all power, but wielded it. Further, He not only commanded the material forces of the universe, He ruled equally among the nations of the earth. It is, however, upon the ethical or spiritual nature of Jehovah that the pro- phet chiefly insists. Jehovah upholds the law of righteousness and humanity, which is common to Himself and to men. To this is due that He must chastise the nations and Israel also, the latter doubly. 126 THE PROPHET AMOS And for the same reason all service of Him, to be ac- ceptable, must be spiritual, that is, mental. Sacrifices of flesh are inappreciable to Him ; He and they are incommensurable. It is interesting to know for certain that this teaching is as old as the first half of the eighth century. It is not uncommon teaching in the Old Testament, being found in the Psalms as well as in the Prophets (Ps. xl. and 1.) ; but the date of any psalm can hardly ever be fixed. Historical tradition lifts the doctrine into a much greater an- tiquity, putting it into the mouth of Samuel : " Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacri- fices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord ? " (1 Sam. xv. 22.) Though Amos insists most on the idea of the Divine righteousness, and on a righteous life as true service of Him — " I will not smell in your solemn assemblies, but let righteousness run down your streets like water," — it would be a mistake to suppose that Jehovah is a mere impersonated justice, or that righteousness among men is but a cold giving to every man his due. Jehovah is also good, for He brought up Israel from Egypt, and He raised up among the people prophets and Nazarites. He is not only good to Israel, He is compassionate : twice, in other words, many times, He repented Him of the evil He thought to do to Israel, and averted His judgment, moved by the consideration that Jacob was small (chap, vii.) ; and it is His pity for the poor of His people, that sees so great an offence in the oppression of them by the rich. Neither is righteousness among men a mere cold .civil or judicial rectitude of conduct. It em- braces consideration for the poverty of the poor, for the sorrow of the wretched, for the human feelings of mankind in all their compass. THE PROPHET AMOS 127 It is no doubt interesting to observe the leading conceptions of particular prophets, what strikes them as the great attribute or characteristic of Jehovah's Being, and corresponding to this, what should be the great feature of men's service of Him ; yet we are in danger, when generalizing in this way, of making particular prophets the expo- nents of merely a single conception, and of fail- ing to observe the many other conceptions, which, though less prominent, are present, either expressed or suggested. It is the manner of one writer to teach or suggest by examples, while another expresses his idea explicitly ; but it may not always be a just in- ference that the second makes an advance upon the first. Amos says in Jehovah's name : " Also I brought you up out of Egypt, and led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite " (ii. 10), leaving the action to appeal to men's minds and suggest the affection in the mind of the Lord which prompted it ; while Hosea speaks explicitly : " When Israel was a child, I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt" (xi. 1). Amos denounces those who sell the poor for money, leaving the denunciation to suggest to those who heard him that humanity should characterize their treatment of one another ; but Hosea has the word that expresses the positive idea : " There is no truth nor mercy (hesed), humanity or goodness, in the land." Again Amos says : " I hate, I despise your feasts ; go to Bethel, and transgress," leaving it to be inferred that Jehovah was altogether another from the people's conception of Him ; while Hosea says plainly, " There is no knowledge of God in the land ; I desire goodness and not sacrifices." The task of biblical theology is an exceedingly delicate one. The passion of the human mind is for dis- 128 THE PROPHET AMOS tinctions and classification. Broad distinctions are rare in the Old Testament. The course of revelation is like a river, which cannot be cut up into sections. The springs, at least, of all prophecy can be seen in the two prophets of northern Israel ; but the rains which fed those fountains fell in the often unrecorded past. Corresponding to the idea of Jehovah is the idea of the People. It is the god that makes the people ; its unity lies in its having a god. The two conceptions are correlative ; but in Israel, at least, the idea of God is the formative idea. Its God is not a reflection of its national spirit ; on the contrary, its consciousness is expressed in the favourite figure of the clay and the potter (Jer. xviii.). Jehovah is the framer of Israel, and the mould in which He casts it is that of His own nature ; the image He impresses on it is His own. Historical investigators are never weary asking where or when or how Israel came by its conception of Jehovah ; but they fail to elicit an answer from his- tory. They construe the history of Israel with the view of showing how its various turns must have suggested to the people the ideas which they had of their God. In this, however, they directly traverse the conscious- ness of the people as reflected in their Scriptures ; for this consciousness persistently inverts the order of the evolutionists, and always explains events by the conception of Jehovah already possessed. And this is as true of the exodus as it is of the exile. t-. The history of Israel ran a course very much like the histories of other peoples. The nation began as a con- federacy of tribes, consolidated into a monarchy, split into divisions, and fell a natural prey to the great eastern empires. Other States did the same. The institutions of Israel, such as the monarchy or the priesthood, were just the institutions of the neighbouring peoples. THE PROPHET AMOS 129 The people was a Shemitic people, amidst others of the same family. How came Israel to entertain such exalted notions of its monarchy, as we find in Isaiah vii.-xi., or of itself as a people in opposition to other peoples, as we find in Isaiah xlii., xlix. ? What is the differentia in its consciousness from the mind of other nations ? It cannot be doubted that it is the conception of Jehovah, its God. This is the source of the whole of that imperishable ideal element which Israel contributed to Christianity and to the perfect religion of mankind. Its institutions had little in them peculiar ; what gave them meaning was something anterior to them, something which already lay in the mind of the nation, and which it brought to the insti- tutions, or to the events, and which transfigured them. The kingship in Israel had nothing in it, of itself, to awaken such thoughts as we find connected with it, any more than the kingship in Moab. It was the preliminary thought that Jehovah was the people's King, and the human king His representative, on whom lay His glory, that gave the monarchy its ele- vation, and struck an ideal which found no satisfying limit short of making the representative king in some way an embodiment of Jehovah Himself — " God with us." And what made the people, or the prophets speaking for them, put forward the extraordinary pretensions above other peoples which they made, was the consciousness that they were the people of Jehovah. It is always difficult to argue about God or gods, unless we assume more than we are entitled in argument to assume. When we speak of God or gods, we mean the conception of God entertained by the people. Israel's thoughts of Jehovah their God were such that the fact of their being His people raised them, to their own minds, above all the nations of the world, and b.e. 9 130 THE PROPHET AMOS gave them a place in the history of the human mind that was unique. Jehovah's Word, incarnated in the flesh of the seed of Abraham, was the Servant of the Lord, who should bring forth judgment to the nations. The self-consciousness of the religion of Israel is a phenomenon almost more singular than the religion itself. And this self-consciousness is reflected more vividly already in the prophecies of Balaam (of what- ever age they may be) than even in the second half of Isaiah ; for Isaiah has still to argue with heathenism, but Balaam, the prophet of heathenism itself, acknow- ledges the uniqueness of Israel and its God. The prophet Amos appeared at Bethel some time in the reign of Jeroboam II., before the middle of the eighth century. The northern kingdom reached its highest splendour under the second Jeroboam. His long reign gave his great talents scope, and afforded time for his enterprises to consolidate. Along with great energy and military ability, he appears also to have had self-control. In matters of ritual the usual verdict is passed on him, that he " did evil in the sight of the Lord." But men of great talents are not usually altogether destitute of reverence for the truth ; and, whatever his motives were, he does not seem to have allowed himself to be drawn, by the representations of his priest at Bethel, to take any measures against the prophet. At an earlier period, the preaching of Amos would have been a more dangerous thing than it appeared now. The history of Israel contained many examples of the power of the prophets to overthrow dynasties ; and the priest of Bethel craftily recalled this fact, when he said, " Amos has conspired against thee." But prophecy had undergone a change ; the two last prophets of Israel no more use political weapons, but rely altogether on the power of the word THE PROPHET AMOS 131 of God. Whether the king perceived this or not, so far as he was concerned, the prophet appears to have been unmolested. The time was one of great outward prosperity. The arms of Jeroboam had been successful everywhere ; the old enemies of Israel had been defeated, and the old boundaries of the kingdom restored. Peace reigned, and with peace, security. Men were at ease in Zion, and confident on the mountain of Samaria. Distant rumours of a mighty power operating on the Euphrates, and coming into collision with Syria, were too vague to cause alarm ; the politicians were too glass-eyed to perceive that, the barrier of the Syrian kingdom once broken by the Assyrian, nothing lay between them and that irresistible power. The prophet alone per- ceived it, and foretold that the kingdom of the North would speedily fall before the Assyrian invader. Two or three things which the prophet refers to, give us some insight into the religious condition of the country ; and certain other things mentioned by him cast light on its civil and social state. The worship of the North was not pure worship of Jehovah, but it was not strictly idolatry. It was worship of Jehovah under sensuous forms, mixed no doubt with many Canaanitish impurities, especially at the rural high places, and. too often with conceptions of Jehovah, which were proper rather to Baal than to Him. It is not quite certain how the calf- worship originated, whether it had its origin in Egypt, or was an old pre-mosaic superstition revived, or had been borrowed from the Canaanites. Nor is it quite certain whether the calf or young bull was considered a repre- sentation of Jehovah in His whole nature, or only a symbol of some of His attributes. Such a worship, though impure, was different from formal Baal-wor- 132 THE PROPHET AMOS ship ; though corrupt, it was not absolutely false. And one can imagine, from the example of the Christian Church in many ages, that there may have been real virtue and piety in spite of it in many hearts in the northern kingdom. Although religious opinions be the food on which religious life is supported, the latter has, like the natural life, the power of assimilating what is healthy, and rejecting what is hurtful. On many the corrupt doctrines of the Church in the middle ages exerted but little deteriorating influence ; the religious taste instinctively put aside what was noxious. It is possible that to some minds in Israel the symbol of the calf had little significance ; that, just as real corruptions, like saint worship, lose their meaning, and pass in process of time into mere aesthetic repre- sentation or adornment on sacred edifices, to many the images of the calves had little more meaning than the brazen bulls in Solomon's temple. Among the mass, however, this would by no means be the case ; and in process of time the evil, as its manner is, over- mastered the counteracting good. As Amos represents the national mind of his day, it was very religious. The worship at the high places, and particularly at the national temple at Bethel, was sedulously practised with much outward impressive- ness and eagerness on the part of the worshippers. Men were ready with freewill offerings in addition to those prescribed by law or custom. The stated feasts were carefully kept. Tithes were paid every three years, and sabbaths and new moons observed. As at Jerusalem, the service was accompanied with sacred music : " Take away from Me the noise of thy songs ; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols " (ver. 23). Men thought they were worshipping Jehovah. And there may have been true worshippers among them. THE PROPHET AMOS 133 Some pious hands may have helped to rear those altars, and some devout hearts may have bowed before them. It is always difficult to say what amount of corruption is needed to invalidate religious service. Corruptions that are hereditary, and practised without anything better being known, do not at least hurt the conscience like those into which men have of themselves declined. Nevertheless sin, even when unconscious, is sin. The sore at the heart of the people could not but affect all parts of the body. The sun that holds in equipoise the moral system of human life is God. As St. Paul teaches, the fountain of all evils is ungodliness. When men corrupt the image of God in their hearts, they forthwith proceed to the debasing of themselves, and then to such enmity and strife that the bonds of society are wholly broken. The law is illustrated in the history of northern Israel, though perhaps it was not till Hosea's days that full evidence of it appeared. Some other conceptions of the people are referred to by the prophet which throw light upon their religious condition. He represents them as trusting to the fact that they were the people of Jehovah, and therefore as desiring the coming of the day of the Lord. The " day of the Lord " is one of the most prominent pro- phetic conceptions. Some prophetic books, as that of Zephaniah, are little else than an expansion of the idea. In others it occupies a less prominent place, though it appears in very many. This day was the day of Jehovah's interference, when He would manifest Himself as that which He truly was, when He would grasp the reins of rule, and bring to manifestation His purposes. At many times He seemed a God that hid Himself ; on the day of the Lord men would behold His full revelation, and He would perform His work — His strange work. 134 THE PROPHET AMOS Some writers make the representation that the day of the Lord denotes any great calamity or judgment, and they speak of " a day of the Lord." This is, no doubt, a misinterpretation of prophecy. To the prophets the day of the Lord was an a priori religious presentiment, a moral necessity and certainty. They do not identify it with any calamity or judgment, or any particular and actual event. These calamities are, at most, the tokens and signals of its nearness, as no doubt such judgments sometimes accompany it. The day of the Lord is something universal and final, and never a mere crisis that may pass over. At one time the moral situation is such that the interference of Jehovah and the day of the Lord seem a necessity (Isa. ii.-iii.) ; at another time the judgments that afflict the community, or the great convulsions that shake society, suggest the presence of Jehovah : men seem to hear the sound of His goings through history, and the presentiment of His perfect revelation of Himself as at hand fills their minds (Joel ii., Isa. xiii.). Of course, the world passes through the storm ; and the day of the Lord is deferred. But this does not entitle us to denude the idea of its true significance, and reduce the day of the Lord to any merely tem- porary crisis, or to imagine that any prophet ever used the phrase in this attenuated sense. In the prophet Amos, we meet with the idea of the day of the Lord for the first time ; but the idea was not new in his days. It was already a popular conception. Such a profound moral conception can hardly have originated in the mind of the Hebrew populace, else that populace was very different from modern repre- sentations of it. The prophet treats the popular notion of that " day " as a delusion : " Wherefore will ye have the day of the Lord ? The day of the THE PROPHET AMOS 135 Lord is evil, and not good ; darkness, and not light. It is as if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him." He treats as equally a delusion the people's con- fidence in Jehovah's protection, because they are His people. Other prophets have to meet the same delusion : " They shall cry unto Me, My God, we Israel know Thee " ; to which the Lord responds, with scornful accentuation of the term Israel : " Israel hath cast off good ; let the foe pursue him " (Hos. viii.). The usual explanation of such ideas on the part of Israel is, that they are nothing but the expression of the natural confidence of a people in its national god, who, being its god, was naturally thought better and stronger than other gods. The explanation is hardly satisfactory. There seem reminiscences and echoes in this language of the people, superficial as it was in their mouths, of meanings more profound. The phrases they use are not their own ; they have been taught them, or have inherited them ; and those who first gave them currency used them in a deeper sense, and with a better knowledge of what Jehovah was. The information which the prophet affords regard- ing the social condition of the people is remarkable. The sin which he reprobates most severely is the in- justice of one class to another, and the oppression of the poor by those above them. " They sell the right- eous for money ; . . . they pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor." It is not quite easy to understand the laws relating to land and debt in Israel, nor how it was that oppression was so rife. According to the Law, each tribe and each family or clan had its own possession. The land was the Lord's, and was held of Him ; it was the portion given by Him to those who held it, and was inalienable. 136 THE PROPHET AMOS If, for any temporary reason, it passed out of the hand of the proper owner, it was always redeemable for money ; and at the year of jubilee it returned free. Such temporary transfers of land probably occurred frequently, and mainly on account of debt. The debtor in Israel appears to have been legally defence- less, though many exhortations are given to the people to use mildness and show brotherly feeling in their treatment of the poor. The chief want in Israel, as in the East generally, was probably not so much the want of laws or customs as the want of an upright executive to put them in operation. Micah complains that "the prince asketh money, and the judge asketh for a bribe; and the great man uttereth his mis- chievous desire : and so they pervert it " (vii. 3). When Amos prophesied at Bethel, the country had long been scourged by expensive and exhausting wars. The protracted feuds with the Syrians had drained into the army the smaller yeomen in great numbers ; their fields and vineyards probably re- mained without due cultivation ; if they returned, they were impoverished, and fell into the hands of creditors. The prophet mentions some other things that must have been disastrous to the agricultual population, as droughts : " I have withholden the rain from you, when it was yet three months to harvest " (iv. 7) ; and failure of crops : " I have smitten you with blasting and mildew." The land probably in many cases changed hands. From being owners, multitudes became hirelings. The law of restitution at the fiftieth year was a good law ; but those who were entrusted with its administration were not good. The tenacity with which men clung to their paternal inheritance is illustrated in the case of Naboth, who THE PROPHET AMOS 137 refused an excambion even to the king ; but the nefarious stratagem, which the latter permitted him- self to employ in order to dispossess him, shows the length which men might go to compass their ends : and when such things were done by the king, the fountain of justice, the powerful upper classes would not be restrained by ordinary scruples. The laws in Israel were customs rather than statutes, based on equity more than enactment. And when society lost the sense of justice and brotherhood, the " law was slacked, and judgment did never go forth " (Hab. i. 4). It is the air of a society in this condition, that Amos feels he is breathing ; both in religion, and in things civil, it is the spirit of the people that he reprobates. Whatever genuine religion there may have been in Israel, the national worship probably contained too fundamental a falsehood to retain influence over the people as a whole. The salt eventually lost its savour ; society became secularized in its spirit ; there was an overmastering devotion to trade, and fraudulence in the prosecution of it : " When will the new moon be over, that we may sell corn ? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat ? making the ephah small, and the shekel great ; . . . that we may buy the poor for silver, and sell the refuse of the wheat ? " (viii. 5, 6.) Even in a more decided way the spirit of ungodliness revealed itself in revelry and illegality at the religious shrines : " That drink wine out of sacrificial bowls, and lay themselves on pledged gar- ments beside every altar, and drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their God " (ii. 8). But they went further : they were not only wicked, they became calculating in their wickedness ; they went about beforehand to remove obstacles to it : " Ye made the Nazarites drink wine ; and the prophets ye 138 THE PROPHET AMOS commanded, saying, Prophesy not " (ii. 12). They stopped the mouths of the prophets, not being able to corrupt them; and the Nazarites they seduced, that they might silence the reproof of their temperance and self-restraint. Greed of gain, luxury, oppression of one another ; such irreverence, that it sinned even in the holy place ; such impenitent hardihood, that it strove to befool and silence the voice of God among them — these were the sins of the time. And this stern shepherd from the South was the man chosen of God to denounce them, and foreshow His certain judgments upon them. No fitter instru- ment could have been found; the disease needed a desperate remedy, if any remedy now availed ; these corrupt members must be hewed by the prophets, if any part of the body was to be saved. And to the soft livers in the northern capital, the wild tragic shepherd from the wilderness must have been as wonderful and disquieting, as they were odious to him. In the language of Amaziah, the land was not able to bear all his words. THE SECOND PSALM WITHOUT any introduction, and with no pre- liminary statements indicating the previous line either of his thought or feeling, the Psalmist utters a startled cry : Why do the heathen rage ? It seems as if, while meditating on other things, on his own high functions or on the lofty destiny of the Messiah's King- dom, or absorbed in thoughts proper to the fellowship which he had with God, there had suddenly fallen on his ear the sound of assembled nations, and he ex- claims >Why do the nations rage ? The question might be one of astonishment, as if he did not know the meaning of their tumultuous outcry. But the next clause " and the peoples meditate a vain thing ? " seems rather to imply that the question is one of dislike and repudia- tion : Why will the nations rage ? These world powers, these untheocratic forces, are even opposing Jehovah, even attempting something in opposition to Him, something which is an " empty thing " — vain in its nature, and vain in its issue, an impiety, and an impiety that can never be successful. Verse 2 further explains the question by describing to whom it refers. When the Psalmist turns his eye to where the tumult is heard, a council of the powers of the world lies under view. In the centre are kings leaguing together : " The kings of the earth set them- selves " — minor princes standing around aiding them with counsel : " And the rulers take counsel together." 139 140 THE SECOND PSALM In a wider circle are the masses of the people. The chiefs are framing a league against the. Lord and His Messiah ; the people give their countenance and tumultuous assent. We may suppose that the sound which first fell on the ear of the speaker in verse 1 was inarticulate ; it was the shout of the peoples, the distant noise of assembled nations borne upon the wind— or it might be that the sound was the mere inarticulate voice of rage giving itself out in cries, unable from its very violence to put itself forth in words. At last (ver. 3) their deliberations find expression ; the plan of action has been resolved upon. The blind and inarticulate fury, which came out in cries before, has so far calmed down at the prospect of active re- sistance, that it can express itself in words. " Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us," though such scorn and hatred have they of those against whom they rebel that they will not take their names in their mouth, but speak of Jehovah and His Anointed as they— let us break their bands asunder. 2. Verses 4-6. Such is the demeanour of those re- belling — the nations ; now is described the demeanour of Jehovah and His Anointed against whom they rebel. The scene in heaven is sublime indeed. The con- trast between earth and heaven is extreme. He who sits there is one ; while, below, there are kings and princes and a countless host of followers. Below, all is fury and blind rage working itself into fits of wrath, and uttering wild cries of rebellion. Unmoved, placid, calm, even indifferent, He that sits in heaven laughs, the Lord has them in derision. He smiles in scorn at their resistance. But the smile goes off His face, and THE SECOND PSALM 141 anger gathers : " then shall He speak to them in His wrath." Verse 6 contains what Jehovah says to these foes ; He holds up before them His irreversible pur- pose : Will ye seek to cast off the bands of My Anointed, to rid yourselves of his authority ? Then know this — / have established him My king, king in My stead, on Zion My holy hill. 3. Verses 7-9. The Anointed himself, introduced in this way, now comes forward and takes up the words of Jehovah, " I will declare the decree." The decree is that alluded to in the preceding verse, viz. : — of Jehovah's appointment of him king on Zion ; and the words he recites are those spoken by Jehovah to him when He constituted him king, and are also words interpreting the act of constituting him king, or ex- pounding the principles on which he is constituted king. The king who comes forward has already been con- stituted king ; the rebellion is against him, being already king, not against his being made king, for it is said : I have set My king on My holy hill of Zion. Jehovah leads him to the throne, and by His spirit anoints him, as He had anointed him with the symbolical oil through the prophet. Entering into his new office, he assumes a new relation to Jehovah ; and Jehovah, whose spirit had fallen on him, and who had then created him king for Him, in His stead, pronounces the words explicative of the change of position, and of the new relation and dignity : " Thou art My son, I have to- day begotten thee." The begetting is not strictly, perhaps, making him king, if that had been done without bestowal of the spirit — nor is it bestowal of the spirit, distinct from the official change which was the consequence of it — begetting is rather both the be- stowal of' the spirit and the official change in relation which was its consequence ; it is both the endowment 142 THE SECOND PSALM with fitness to be king, and the actual making king. And the day of begetting was, of course, the day on which this Anointed was made king — who, being so endowed and appointed, was henceforth son of Jehovah who had begotten him. Further, the idea of " son " suggests the idea of in- heritance ; the son of Jehovah shall receive the in- heritance of Jehovah, "Ask of Me, that I may make the heathen thine inheritance" ; the people who now rebel against the Anointed, Jehovah has already destined for his heritage. These purposes of Jehovah the Anointed speaks in the ears of the heathen ; it may be, they will cease from their madness, and trust in the Lord. 4. And, finally (w. 10-12) an exhortation is added in view of these firm resolutions of the Lord, to the kings and princes of the earth, to be wise and submit to Jehovah : — Be wise now, ye kings, Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. And the two elements of wisdom consist, first, in serving the Lord, " Serve Jehovah with fear " (ver. 11) ; and second, in submitting to the son, the Anointed : Kiss the son (ver. 12) for otherwise, Jehovah shall be angry, for His anger will soon kindle : and the whole winds up with a blessing on those who trust in Jehovah : — Blessed are all they who put their trust in Him. Now there are two questions that require to be answered here : Who is the author of the Psalm ? And who is the subject of whom it is spoken ? Or is the author of the Psalm also the subject of it ? Is the Anointed who is referred to in verse 2, " they take THE SECOND PSALM 143 counsel against the Lord and against His Anointed," and who says in verse 7 " I will declare the decree — The Lord said of me, Thou art My son " — is this Anointed the same as the speaker in verse 10 who exhorts the kings : " Be wise now, therefore, ye kings," and who appears to be the author of the poem ? Or, to put the question otherwise, is the poem a lyric in which the author speaks of himself ? Or is it a short dramatic poem, in which the author introduces a variety of speakers, he himself looking at them merely from the outside ? There seems no evidence sufficiently strong on either side to enable us to decide this question with cer- tainty. The Psalm is anonymous, and though it is cited in the New Testament under the name of David, it may be doubtful how far this method of citation can be pressed ; for the whole Psalter went under the name of David, and even Delitzsch argues that the expression, " Who by the mouth of Thy servant David hast said, Why do the heathen rage ? " cannot be in- terpreted to mean more than " Who in the Psalm or who by the Psalmist hast said, Why do the heathen rage ? " We are therefore left to any induction that the nature and terms of the Psalm itself may enable us to make. The Psalm cannot have been written before David, nor before the time when David removed the seat of his government to Jerusalem. For the expression, " I have set My king on My holy hill of Zion " must imply, at least, that the kingdom had already its seat there, and that the king ruled from there. It might seem to imply more, viz. : — that this king had sat down on a throne already placed on Zion — had been made king on Zion. If this inference were correct, then the hymn could neither be by David, nor refer to him, but 144 THE SECOND PSALM must have been sung concerning some of his successors. Such an inference is, certainly, very probable ; for the act of appointing king on Zion is, in all probability, contemporaneous with the act of begetting a son : and the latter could be spoken of correctly only in reference to the original appointment of the king. Such an ex- pression seems inaccurate, if said regarding the mere transference of the seat of the kingdom of one already king, and not likely to be used of this. These argu- ments, then, go a certain way to show that the Psalm refers, not to David, but to some successor of his. Further, the use of certain terms such as the word " son " leads to the same conclusion. For an explana- tion of this term, we must go to the promise given to David by Nathan, which is the source of almost all the ideas in the cycle of Messianic prophecies belonging to this time. That promise runs thus : "I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build an house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be My son : if he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men. But My mercy shall not depart away from him, as I took it away from Saul, and thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee : thy throne shall be established for ever" (2 Sam. vii. 12-16). Several things are evident at first sight, without the necessity of going meantime far into the pro- phecy. First, the promises are made, not to David, but to his seed after him which shall proceed out of his bowels. And it is to his seed, not to his son, that they are made. Seed here is not to be interpreted of one individual, but of each of a line of individuals. The first of these individuals making up THE SECOND PSALM 145 the seed was Solomon ; but the things said pertain to the whole family of Davidic kings — not, however, to the whole members of David's house, but to such of them only as filled the throne. Second, the thing promised to this seed is that God shall be his Father, and he shall be God's son. And the thing threatened this seed is that, if they sin, God shall chasten them with the rod of men— although, even should they sin, His mercy would not depart from them, as it did from Saul — for the house of David and his kingdom shall be established for ever. But this contingency, here provided for, of the seed's sinning and the chastisement determined, indicates that the seed, though son of God, and never to be wholly cast off, is yet the general royal family of David. Third, the expression just quoted, " thine house and thy kingdom shall be es- tablished for ever," and others in the passage, imply perpetual connexion of the house of David with the Kingdom of God. As long as God's Kingdom endures, the house of David shall rule over it ; the two are from this time inseparably bound together. Now, though these promises were made to David's seed, they were not made to David himself. In Psalm xviii. among the terms which David applies to God, Father is not included. Compare also 2 Samuel xxiii. We might infer that, his seed being called son, the name would be suitable and applicable to David, but we must abide by what indications Scripture affords us ; and to us now, looking back from amidst the light of this dispensation, it does not seem without meaning that it is not David, but David's seed, that is called Son of God. Now this is an important position to gain in the interpretation of the Psalm. The subject of it is not David, neither is it therefore at all likely that he is its author. The subject of it is David's seed ; but B.E. 10 146 THE SECOND PSALM it seems very difficult to make any closer definition. We might suppose his seed as such the subject, i.e. the whole house of David, and regard the poem as a dynastic ode, occasioned probably by some attempt to dethrone the reigning family, such as was made by Syria and Ephraim, in the reign of Ahaz, when they meditated setting up the son of Tabeel as king — and the prophet Isaiah gave to the house of David the promise of the Virgin and her son — implying that the house should stand till that extreme wonder occurred. And Delitzsch in his early commentaries considered this to be the real historical position of the Psalm, which he regarded as the poetical echo of Isaiah (chap, vii.-xii.). And, in truth, this rather abstract subject is much less suitable for poetry than for prophecy, as the former deals more with personal feelings and cir- cumstances, the latter with public affairs and the Kingdom of God in itself. It seems, therefore, only left us to consider some one individual of David's seed the subject ; and being utterly without materials for determining which in- dividual, except such as we may find in the Psalm itself, we shall probably be obliged to leave the matter rather indefinite. The only length we can go is to determine, with some degree of probability, whether the Psalm be a directly Messianic or a typically Mes- sianic composition — i.e. whether the author, in his own mind, fixed his thoughts on the Messiah, or whether he had in view some Old Testament king of his own days. To us the distinction between the Messiah and any Old Testament king is decided and great ; but it was less to an Old Testament writer who fancied, as they all did, that the Messiah would come in the con- ditions of the Church and world existing in their own time ; and that He would be a theocratic King, such THE SECOND PSALM 147 as, though greater than, the theocratic kings they were familiar with. Now, in the Old Testament, there are passages cer- tainly spoken by their authors of Old Testament characters, of which some parts might be applied to corresponding characters in the New, and some might not. And the reason of the inapplicability of these parts is that they applied to the Old Testament cha- racters in their private rather than their representative position. David for example was king— kinghood is that kind of thing called a type — it is a combination of relations, essential to the Kingdom of God, appear- ing therefore in all forms of that kingdom both im- perfect and final. But this kinghood did not exhaust David, nor did all the typical characters which he sustained exhaust him. Many things might be said of him privately in a Psalm, i.e. in relations peculiar to him personally — some of them even alongside of things said of him typically, i.e. in relations essential to the Kingdom of God ; and while the latter class of things might be applied to Christ in the New Testa- ment, the former could not. The present Psalm is not a passage of this kind. There is nothing here that seems inapplicable to the New Testament king. The names, Messiah, son, are most applicable ; the extent of his destined heritage, " the ends of the earth " ; the manner in which this destined heritage shall become his, by his asking, and by the gift of God, " Ask of Me and I will give thee " —these and all other things perfectly suit the New Testament theocratic king. Some critics indeed con- sider the expression, " thou shalt break them with a rod of iron " inapplicable, the Messiah's reign being one of peace. But, if one may say so, these critics are too Christian in their sentiments. Scripture speaks 148 THE SECOND PSALM also of the wrath of the Lamb. The author of the Apocalypse applies these disputed words to the man- child caught up into heaven, " he shall rule all nations with a rod of iron." Christ Himself, when on earth, habitually used the severest language regarding the enemies of His Kingdom: "But these Mine enemies which would not that I should reign over them, bring them hither and slay them before Me" (Lukexix. 27). We may therefore conclude that the Psalm is not a partially typical Psalm. Again, there are some passages certainly spoken by their authors with Old Testament characters in view, in which the things said are quite applicable literally to the Old Testament character, though they may be also applicable to the corresponding New Testament character. For example, the words used of Himself by Christ : " The zeal of thine house hath eaten Me up," were those used by an Old Testament character of himself ; and the words used by Matthew of Christ, " Out of Egypt have I called My son," were employed literally by Hosea of Israel. Now, though most of the things said here about the king, such as that he is Messiah, the Anointed, that he has his seat on Zion the holy hill, that he is son of God, that he is God's king, and the like, are things competently said of every Davidic king, there are some things in the Psalm that exceed greatly what any theocratic king, except the last, ever realized. No doubt every Jewish king was more than king of the Jewish nation. That nation was the Church of God, in the form in which it was then found ; the surrounding nations were the world. The separa- tion of the Church from the world was symbolized and embodied by the nation being bounded, in a limited locality, by seas and rivers, as its redemp- THE SECOND PSALM 149 tion from the world had been symbolized by actual deliverance from a powerful idolatrous nation. The Lord was Himself the real King of that nation which was His Church ; but He delegated His authority to a king from among themselves. Jehovah, as King, had His seat on Zion Hill, for there was His palace and place of abode, the Tabernacle ; and the delegated king sat beside Him on his throne. All this was true of any king of the Jewish people. There were realized and shewn in the Jewish people and their surroundings, in their king and his relations, such things as these : the Church, the world, their separation, their enmity, God in the midst of His Church, not ruling directly but by means of a mediatorial king — all this, in a real though material form. And, consequently, to the king and his rule very much the same terms might be ap- plied as to Christ and His rule, because though the form differed, the thing, viz. the kingdom and the king, was identical. But it is quite evident at least that the things said in this Psalm, if said of any Israelitish king then existing, are said of him, not according as he then was, but ideally, according to the principles and concep- tions involved in the theocratic kingdom. The writer does not speak of a king of Israel ; it is of God's king and God's Anointed. He does not speak of countries and peoples ; it is of the heathen, the Goyim — those outside the kingdom and covenant of God — and of the kings of the earth. He does not conceive the theo- cratic king to have an extensive sway merely ; his sway is universal, to the ends of the earth, and par- ticularly it is the Goyim that he shall receive for his inheritance. The Anointed and Jehovah have not dis- tinct interests, nor is it merely that Jehovah aids the Anointed ; the cause is primarily Jehovah's o\fcn. It 150 THE SECOND PSALM is against Jehovah and against His Anointed that the kings of the earth set themselves ; it is Jehovah that they are exhorted to serve with fear ; it is Jehovah's anger that will burn speedily ; it is those who trust Jehovah that find blessedness. There is nothing political in the Psalm ; all is re- ligious. Particularism has quite vanished, and things have expanded into the universal. The only remnant of particularism seems to be this, that Zion Hill is still considered to be the seat of the kingdom. But this is a thing necessarily remaining in that material dispensation. Of course the kingdom, though considered to be universal, is also still con- ceived as an earthly monarchy, such as then existed. I think it altogether false to assume that any Old Testament writer had reached the thought that the seat of the kingdom of God would cease to be Zion, or that the kingdom would cease to be material. And consequently the expression Zion Hill is to be taken literally, when we are seeking to discover the view of the Old Testament writer. Now when we have got thus far, and found that the Psalm may be classed among the Messianic passages described as ideally typical — that is, passages in which the Old Testament king and kingdom are spoken of ac- cording to the true conceptions of the King and King- dom of God, that is, at least, according to many of the true conceptions of it, it will probably seem of no great importance, except as a not uninteresting critical question, to discuss whether the Psalm be not directly Messianic — that is, spoken consciously by the writer of the Messiah — though he was not able to view Him quite distinctly apart from the relations of the Old Testa- ment dispensation. There do not seem to me materials for settling that question. If the Psalm could be sup- THE SECOND PSALM 151 posed as late as the age of Isaiah or later, then I think it might well be directly Messianic — and perhaps the want of a Title is some evidence that it is not quite early. If however this is an early Psalm, as it seems to be, it is certainly greatly earlier than Psalm lxxxix. which imitates it, and combines in one picture the things said of the Anointed here, and the things said by David of himself in Psalm xviii. 2 : "He shall cry unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. Also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth" (Ps. lxxxix. 26,27) — if this is an early Psalm, it seems to me probable that it is Lyrical, that it is said by the author of it with respect to himself. In that case the Anointed is, also, the writer ; and he speaks of himself and his kingdom in the light of the prophecy given to Nathan. The thoughts of the Psalm are so fresh and bold, and the poetical elevation so great, that the thoughts here seem to have for the first time taken hold of the writer, who is one whom they directly concern. Some young king, entering upon the rule of God's Kingdom, has borne in upon his mind, from his very position, those strange and unprecedented and but lately uttered words of Nathan — words of inexhaustible meaning, and yet quite fresh from their novelty — and entering into their spirit as, to a pure and thoughtful mind, they opened up regions of contemplation interminable in extent and full of wonders, and combining them per- haps with some shew of opposition to his rule at home, or some threatened defection from his authority by tribes abroad, who took the opportunity of a new ruler's ap- pearance to assert their independence, — the young king cast his thoughts and aspirations into this hymn. y^And what young monarch was in such a condition except Solomon ? Every one of the conditions of the 152 THE SECOND PSALM problem suits this prince. He was the seed of David, and, therefore, the son of God. He was appointed king on Zion Hill. His rule tended to universality ; and his aspirations, being those of a profound intellect, and, at this time, of an uncorrupted youth, must have aimed at conferring on all peoples the blessings of God's Kingdom. It is so strange to us as almost to be in- conceivable that a man should so speak of himself, as is done in this Psalm. If we could realize to ourselves the thoughts and emotions of these early Davidic kings — standing, as all of them did, to Jehovah as His Anointed, bearing all of them the title of His son, and pointed forward to such a heritage, even all peoples ; and yet so surrounded with darkness, and having but such imperfect instruments in their hands where- with to realize their ideal, and so circumscribed on every side — what aspirations must have filled their hearts, as they stood thus before so high a destiny ! And yet, as all things seemed to make it impossible for them to reach it, what perplexities must have tor- mented them, till, wearied out by the riddles of their position, some of them turned wilfully aside from the true path ! But if we can ill fathom the thoughts of these great creative minds, such as David's and Solo- mon's of the eleventh century before Christ, how much less can we fathom the thoughts of the true theocratic King, the true Messiah and Son of God, when entering upon His Kingdom, and standing at its threshold with all the possibilities of it clear before Him, and the way needful to be trod to reach it also clear ! We know that He was sometimes troubled in spirit, and some- times rejoiced greatly, alternating between a gloom more dark than falls on any son of man and a bright- ness more luminous than created light. But with full view of His work He entered on it, and with full THE SECOND PSALM 153 view of the glory He prosecuted it to the end ; for the joy that was set before Him He endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Now if we consider the conditions of things exhibited in the Psalm, we find it to be the following : The people of God are not now for the first time coming into existence ; they already exist. The covenant has been formed, the kingdom is constituted. God is its true King ; but He appoints another to rule for Him. He sets a son of David down on Zion Hill to be His king. He enters into very close relations with this king. These relations are all embraced under the name of Sonship — Thou art My son. It is not easy to fill up the outline of Son with its just contents. It implies, on the part of the Son, obedience and trust, and on the part of the father, protection and upholding with the divine power. But there is room for a similarity of nature, a closeness of fellowship, an identity of aim, a unity of honour, and much more which may justly be embraced under the name. The Sonship is not identical with the Kingship ; but the one comes to manifestation through the other. The Son- ship operates through the Kingship ; its operation is the realization of the Kingship in its fulness. What is due to the son, and what the relations of son operate to produce, is heirship, " Ask of Me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance." The Son who is King is destined for this inheritance, but he has not yet attained it. This is the picture as painted on the ground of the Old Testament theocracy. What is there that corresponds to it in the region of things themselves ? Surely only one connexion of thing's, viz. this : — when the new covenant had been consecrated by the blood of the better sacrifice, when 154 THE SECOND PSALM the New Testament community had thus come into existence, when the kingdom was constituted, and when the King, Son of David and Son of God, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, appointed heir of all things, waiting till his enemies be put under his feet, crowned with glory, and yet not glorifying himself but Him that said to him : Thou art My Son ; to-day have I begotten thee. The parallelism is complete. Both in the Psalm, and in the application of it in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Sonship referred to is the Messianic Sonship ; and k to-day ' in both cases refers to the moment when this came -to full manifestation and perfection, and was operative for its great purpose, viz., the heirship of the world. And this is the way in which the second Psalm is used everywhere in the Pauline Epistles and preaching as well as in Hebrews. For instance, in his sermon at Antioch in Pisidia, recorded in Acts xiii. 29-33, Paul says of Christ : " When they had fulfilled all that was written of Him, they took Him down from the tree and laid Him in a sepulchre. But God raised Him from the dead . . . and we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God has fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that He raised up Jesus again ; as it is written in the second Psalm : Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten thee." To Paul the resurrection of Christ is every- thing. It was this risen Christ that appeared to him, and caused the great crisis in his life. The resurrec- tion was evidence to him that Christ was the Messiah, the Son of God. Hence he always speaks of the Resurrection, including under it, of course, the Ascen- sion t which was involved in it. In Hebrews, again, the present position of the Messiah as officiating High Priest is the prominent idea ; and hence the THE SECOND PSALM 155 Ascension and sitting at God's right hand is made prominent, which however implies the Resurrection. But both agree in referring the Psalm to the same general event. This is even more clear in the remarkable passage in Romans i. 3, 4 : " Concerning His Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh ; and determined (or instituted) to be the Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness, by (or from) the resurrection of the dead." As to His flesh, Jesus is seed of David. As to the other side of His nature, the background or real substratum of it, the spirit of holiness, i.e., not the Holy Spirit as third person, but His own eternal, spiritual, holy Being — what is called in Hebrews the eternal spirit by which He made atonement— according to this He was insti- tuted Son of God in power, from the resurrection of the dead. What the words say is that, as regards the spirit of holiness (in virtue of which He was already from the first potentially the Son of God) He was insti- tuted or destined to be the Son of God in power from the time of His resurrection from the dead ; that is to say, that what He already was from the beginning in Himself, but in inward, fashion only, not in outward manifestation, that He became in the complete actuality of an existence in power, on His resurrection and ascension. The Psalm, if a typical Psalm in the mind of its human author, referred to the installation of the theo- cratic King on Zion, who took God's place over His Kingdom, and stood to Him in all the endearing rela- tions expressed by the name of Son. The writer to the Hebrews finds in it the statement of the manifesta- tion of the true Theocratic King and Son in power from His resurrection and ascension ; and his principle 156 THE SECOND PSALM of interpretation is just. The one was a rehearsal of the other. All this Old Testament machinery, and this calling one who was king by the name Son, and the like, would never have been but for the other ; it was only in order to suggest the other, and prepare for it. It was a prophecy of the other. It contained the same ideas. And its having been imperfect, as it was, im- plied that the other — that which was perfect — should also be. Only, that which the Old Testament writer had not yet foreseen had now taken place : the material embodiment of the ideas of the kingdom had passed away, and all things had become spiritual in Christ. PSALM LXXII THE heading of the Psalm some would render ' for Solomon, 5 holding the Psalm to be a prayer on his behalf, the author of which perhaps was David. The Hebrew preposition here used, when found else- where before a name in the heading of a composition, is the sign of the dative of authorship, i.e., the dative after the passive verb understood, and it means " composed by" It is therefore unfair syn- tactically to translate for Solomon. Evidently the person who prefixed this heading considered Solomon the author. We may doubt the correctness of this person's opinion ; but we must not allow our doubts to lead us into a perversion of the idioms of the language. This question of authorship will, however, be discussed with more advantage after we have briefly reviewed the contents of the Psalm. This Psalm is a prayer for a king and his kingdom. Of course the king is an Israelitish king, and no foreign ruler ; and the kingdom is no other than the Israelitish kingdom, in the form which it had in Old Testament times. The Psalm does not allude to any divisions in the kingdom ; there is no prayer for union of discordant elements ; and, for all that appears, the composition belongs to the time anterior to the disruption of the Monarchy, though of course it may belong to a time when Judah alone existed 157 158 PSALM LXXII as a kingdom. There is no indication of time what- ever, further than that the king is also styled " the son of the king " — an expression which, even suppos- ing it used inaccurately, and as a mere title of honour, would hardly have been applied to any king prior to Solomon. The king has newly mounted the throne ; how he is to rule has not yet appeared, nor on what principles he is to conduct his government. And the Psalmist prays that God would give him His righteousness and His judgments. Thy judgments give to the king, God, Thy righteousness to the son of the king, That he may judge Thy people in righteousness, And Thy poor with just judgment. The petition of the speaker is singular both for the things wished for, and for the measure or quality of them. The things are righteousness and judgment; the measure or quality of them is divine — Thy judg- ments, God. The thing wished for to the king is profound views of right, a keen sense of justice and equity ; and this not as a mere theory of right, which he is too apathetic or too feeble to turn into a reality, as if the currents of injustice were too strong for him to stem, and the petty wrongs done among men too numerous and hidden to detect or redress ; or as if, with all his fine sense of abstract right and his love for it, he were yet lacking in that practical tact and skill which can unravel all the intricacies of an individual case. What is wished is that his righteousness shall also be accompanied by just judgments. But the measure both of his righteousness and his judgments is the Divine. The whole sphere of things PSALM LXXII 159 spoken of belongs to God. The people to be judged are God's people ; the poor are God's poor. The king is no doubt also God's king, though he is not so named. But it is needful that God's people should be ruled by a king who dispenses God's judgments. The wish of the Psalmist is, not that God in person should rule His people and poor, but that the king who rules should so rule that his government should perfectly coincide with God's, and perfectly express God's. The kingdom of course is the earthly, Israel- itish kingdom ; the king, some one of the house of David. And the prayer is that this king and kingdom should rule, and be ruled, on principles and in practice, altogether as God Himself would rule. It is not quite easy to trace the order of thought in the Psalm ; at least it is not easy to draw divisions in the line of thought, so as to mark off the Psalm into strophes. Nor is it quite easy to know whether to translate the Imperfects, which run through the Psalm, as strict Optatives, or as dependent tenses all hanging upon the first prayer for righteousness. There are at least three or four main ideas in the Psalm. First, the kingdom prayed for is a righteous kingdom. Second, this righteousness of the kingdom develops as by inward necessity, first, into peace : The mountains shall bring forth peace to the people ; second, into perpetuity : They shall fear thee through- out all generations ; and third, into universality : All nations shall serve him. Finally, the earth itself shall participate in the blessedness of the time, and contribute to the felicity of men : let there be plenty of corn in the land, even on the tops of the mountains. The natural consequence of a righteous rule is peace. The abundance of peace is described under the figure of a crop, which the earth bears so richly, that even the 160 PSALM LXXII hills and lofty mountains are covered with it. And another natural consequence of righteousness in the ruler is the similar fear of God among the ruled ; and, therefore, the perpetuity of the kingdom established on such principles. He that doeth the will of God endureth for ever. The expression " let him descend like rain upon the mown grass " seems to have reference to the his- tory of the time. The word translated " mown grass " need not indeed refer to grass actually cut, but to grass that is used to being cut. Yet the frequent refer- ences to peace seem to indicate a background of unquiet. Behind the people of God lay their past experience and history, a time of hardship and tumult, a time of drought and scorching trouble, when the mower cut them close, and the hot heavens beat upon them and burnt them up. This king shall descend like rain upon them. In his days the righteous shall sprout. Their Divine longings, not plucked up, but shorn to the root, their holier instincts, not dead, but scorched and shrunk beneath the surface, shall be quickened, and again spring up ; all those energies, that make up spiritual life, shall begin to move. This background of drought and trouble may be the unquiet times of the early Monarchy, when tribe warred against tribe, and angry passions burned ; and human feeling and even the religious emotions seemed to the poet, who had lived through at least part of it, to have been consumed in the fiery jealousies and bloodthirstiness of the time : and all was like the dreary monotony of the parched waste. But this reign of righteousness and peace fell upon the people like the thick shower ; and their whole religious life, that had fallen off them like withered buds, came out into blossom, and promised to ripen into a fruit that PSALM LXXII 161 should never fail. So shall they fear thee while the sun endures. There is thus a natural break in the Psalm at verse 7 ; and there seems to be another at v. 15, where there is a transition from the description of the state of men to that of the condition of external nature. Thus the first strophe (vv. 1-7) lays down the fundamental character of the kingdom — its righteousness ; and de- scribes the effects of this on the kingdom as it was then. It becomes a reign of peace, and perpetual. So far as appears, however, it is still confined to the limits of the Jewish people. But the next strophe (w. 8-15) describes it as expanding over the world, embracing all peoples within it : " May he rule from sea to sea." And the last strophe (vv. 16-17) describes the con- dition of the world at such a time — the peaceful earth yielding her increase in prodigal fulness — " Let there be corn in plenty on the tops of the mountains." The way in which the kingdom becomes universal is not by means of wars, but through the attractiveness of its principles and its king, who draws all men after him — Yea, all kings snail fall down before him : All nations shall serve him : For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth : And the poor, that hath no helper. It is not needful to go more largely into the Psalm itself — which is quite simple. There are two ques- tions of more interest that need to be considered a little, viz., By whom was the Psalm written and of whom does it speak ? I. By whom was the Psalm written ? Regarding the date and authorship of the Psalm complete certainty cannot be reached. Some scholars, b.e. 11 162 PSALM LXXII such as Hitzig, consider the composition destitute of all poetical worth ; and this writer regards the subject of it to be Ptolemy Philadelphus. Two things are very conspicuous in Hitzig's criticism of the Psalms, his singular skill in the Hebrew language and accurate knowledge of its Syntax, and his equally singular in- capacity as a historical critic. No other writer of any eminence has imagined that the king spoken of here is a foreign prince. Hitzig, as is known, dates the com- position of the majority of the Psalms in the Mac- cabean age. But Ewald with right protests against the idea that any but a true Theocratic king could be so spoken of in Scripture. Hupfeld agrees with Hitzig in his estimate of the worth of the Psalm, which he considers the product of a late age, consisting, to a great extent, of imitations of more powerful pieces. And even Ewald, who when rightly understood is really one of the most conservative and even orthodox of critics, says, " The poet has certainly not for the first time given expression to such hopes as the Psalm contains. The road was already opened up ; and, long before, great prophets had in their own way uttered similar things. The Davidic kingdom was now greatly reduced, impoverished, and deeply fallen ; the rule of the world was lost, and must be won back again by other means. All this leads to the con- clusion that Solomon is not the king here, but a later descendant of David, perhaps Isaiah, or rather, if possible, one still later. For the language and mode of presentation is, for an early poet, too light and flowing, too artificially smooth and elaborate ; and not seldom older thoughts and images are more fully expressed or simply repeated." These views of Ewald's have at least this amount of truth in them, that we cannot ascribe this Psalm to PSALM LXXII 163 David. Neither the language nor the thoughts in the least resemble his. David's language is always rather jagged, very terse and condensed, bordering sometimes on the enigmatical. Further, his thoughts run always on life, not on nature, except when he feels that nature only clothes God. The 15th or 101st Psalm, describ- ing what in his view the king of the Theocracy should be, differs entirely from the description here given. Passion characterizes his poetry. We know the character of Solomon's mind from the Proverbs, many of which are undoubtedly his. In him passion had given way to reflection, as the active and adventurous spirit of the father had given way to love of ease and luxuriousness. That feeling of nature which, in David, was purely lyric and sub- jective — according to which nature herself has no place except as reflecting the emotions of the poet, or as the garment through which is seen the form of God, — quite alters in the son to a feeling of nature itself, of its beauty and harmonies. In the former case the subject is all, and the world takes its bias from him ; in the latter, the object is all, the subject himself being at most a part of it. Now there is some ground for discovering the author- ship of Solomon in the JPsalm on account of the presence of such peculiarities. The poetry is not that of passion but of nature — it is objective. The sun and the east- ern moon, and the rain grateful to the parched and shorn grass, all the images of peace and beauty, fresh- ness and health, are taken from the external world. Then the colouring of the piece agrees with Solo- mon's reign, and, perhaps, with its commencement. His father's reign had been one of blood : the land longed for peace. Solomon's rule extended to the Euphrates. Foreign kings such as Hiram sent him 164 PSALM LXXII presents. He was in alliance with Pharaoh, who gave him his daughter, and as a dower subdued to him the cities of the Philistines. He traded with ships to Tarshish, and had gold of Ophir. Sheba's queen came to hear his wisdom. And though all this took place somewhat later, yet the young king's aspirations were the same from the beginning. And perhaps the poem might not have been written till he had, at least, pro- jected those great enterprises which have made his name famous. And finally, the prayer at the com- mencement is very much that recorded of Solomon — that he desired wisdom more than riches. If all these arguments come short of proving that Solomon is the author of this Psalm, they will at least explain how he came to be regarded as its author, and furnish an account of the heading : by Solomon. But whoever the author was, the Psalm itself must be looked upon as the lyrical expression of thoughts, that run through all the prophets, concerning the Kingdom of God. If we ascribe it to Solomon, then it must be the source whence the prophets borrow many of their thoughts. If we bring it down later, making it contemporary with these prophets, it be- comes a Lyrical Compend of thoughts taken from them, or common to its author with them. In any case it is a Prophetical Ode, and should be read as a summary of prophetic hopes regarding the Theocratic King and Kingdom. II. Of whom does the Psalm speak ? This is not a question that ought ever to be put as a primary question, without very fully considering ^what the ideas of the Psalm are, and to what at least there must be reference in it. Now the main ideas of the Psalm are, as we have shown, the thought of a righteous king, one ruling in righteousness in such a PSALM LXXII 165 way that the righteousness of God comes to mani- festation in his rule. His judgments, his decisions and deeds are such not only as God approves, or as God helps him to, but are such as God, were He ruling this kingdom immediately, would give. Give the king Thy judgments, God, And Thy righteousness unt) the king's son. Secondly, such a rule leads to peace. The mountains shall bring peace to the people, And the little hills by righteousness. Then a righteous kingdom becomes, from its nature, eternal. They shall fear Thee while the sun endureth, And before the moon, throughout all generations. Also, it will speedily be, through its attractiveness to men, and the cohesive strength which righteousness gives it, universal. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, And from the River uuto the ends of the earth. This logical sequence of thought resembles almost a deduction of western reasoning. Now these are the thoughts of the Psalm. They are at least the wishes, whether hopes or anticipations or not, of the writer. He ventures to pray for such a destiny for some king or other, some Jewish king. He does not regard it as a thing impossible that a Jewish king may possess God's righteousness, and utter God's judgments, and rule over a monarchy embracing man- kind. Whether the Psalm be held to be throughout a prayer, or be considered to pass into strict prediction, is of no importance. Give the thoughts any name you 166 PSALM LXXII choose — presentiments, momentary upbursts of desire that it might be as he said, mere conceptions of pos- sibilities — the thing to be attended to is that such thoughts really arose in the heart of some Jewish writer, that he gave them shape and expression, and that he was not dreaming, or uttering mere vacant hyperboles or empty formalities on the occasion of the enthronement of some new monarch of an Oriental State. He is speaking of the Jewish kingdom and the Jewish king ; and in all sobriety he dares express the wish that the king may be just, that such a king shall reign in righteousness, that his time shall be one of peace, that his reign may be over all the earth, and that it may be eternal. It is not of consequence even if they are incon- sistencies between one element of the representation and another. What the writer expresses may be mere fits of hope that do not abide, gleams of distant glory that pass away. If that were true, while a certain dis- harmony might thus be found in the whole, the sepa- rate thoughts would not be affected — especially the main thought, which is the foundation of all the others, the righteousness of the king, the appear- ance in him of the Divine rectitude. The kingdom is not considered here as a mere polity. It is a religious organisation. The kingdom wished for is a righteous kingdom, a kingdom really of God. It is not merely a good constitutional monarchy that is desired. It is the realization of that kingdom of God among men, of which He himself spake, when He said to Israel : " Ye shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and an holy nation." It is not identical with God's government of the world, the kingdom of Him that ruleth over all, because He is creator; it is not identical with this, nor a part of it, but a kingdom of another PSALM LXXII 167 kind ; for God hath not dealt so with any nation as with the people of Israel. Now having got thus far, so far as to see that the writer speaks of the kingdom of God, that is, of the Jewish State, and of the Theocratic King, we must face the question, What Theocratic King had the writer in his mind ? Was it a present king or one future ? Was it Solomon or some king contemporary with the writer ? Or was it that future king of whom the Old Testament writers often speak, the flower of the king- hood of Israel, the perfect realization of all the ideas involved in the Davidic King — He whom we name the Messiah ? This does not seem to me a very important question. The really important thing is to feel that the writer is speaking of the Jewish State or Kingdom of God, and of the Theocratic King of it. On the one side it may be argued that these aspirations of the writer might be connected with Solomon. High hopes were enter- tained of him. His name meant prince of peace ; God said of him to his father : "I will give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days." He himself sought wisdom to govern rather than riches. He raised the kingdom of Israel into an empire. His name and power were known in Europe and in Africa and in the distant Indies. There were on all sides, connected with his reign and himself, tendencies which, if they never went so far as to realize the hopes here expressed, may at least have suggested them. And, however it is to be explained, Hebrew prophets did look for the perfection of the kingdom of God, many times, to all appearance, even in their own day. Both in judgment and in blessing they link together the present judgment and the last, the present blessing and the final. But when we realize that, whether spoken of the future expected 168 PSALM LXXII king or of some present king, it is spoken of him as king of the kingdom of God, then any other interest which we have in the passage is critical rather than theological. It may seem a truism that the Jewish State was the kingdom of God. My impression is that it is not so. It is usually said that the Jewish State was a type of the Christian Church ; and that the prophets, in such Psalms as this, are describing the Christian Church in colours borrowed from their own State, which was not a kingdom of God, but only a shadow of it, only a certain machinery of relations, the working of which taught certain ideas that could be transferred to the sphere of the church and religion. The Jewish State was the kingdom of God ; and all its machinery and institutions were institutions expressing some side or phase or idea of the kingdom of God. And the pro- phets speak of this as it was. The question whether what they say of it, and the hopes they express of it, shall be realized in the form stated, is a question that concerns the interpretation of the whole Old Testa- ment. But what I wish to insist upon is that they themselves had no such duality before them as we now are apt to conceive, viz., a Jewish State, which was a mere State among other States, and a Kingdom of God or Church, which could be described in colours drawn from this other, and by analogy. It is possible that sometimes such an idea may have risen in the prophets' minds ; at least this idea may have arisen that the present form would greatly change ; but there was always an identity in their conception between the form and the thing. That being so, the whole question of the Old Testament is, Has what the prophets say formal, as well as substantial, truth ? This is the same as to ask, Is this form of the kingdom a perma- PSALM LXXII 169 nent, or only a temporary form ? — a question that exercises a pervasive influence on the meaning of the whole Old Testament. Now as to the fulfilment of the wishes of this Psalm. We believe they will be fulfilled in Christianity. Christ is the righteous King. His kingdom shall be one of peace ; it shall be universal ; it shall be eternal. But this which we call Christianity or Christendom is not another thing from the Jewish Theocracy but the same thing, though in another form. And even the form of Christianity may yet greatly vary, and is not now, at least, in that form in which it shall be eternal. If we start from the idea that the theocracy was the kingdom of God, it may not be difficult to trace the progress of Revelation as expressed through the prophetic mind, in reference both to the kingdom and the king. First : when the people suggested the idea of a human monarchy to Samuel, he instinctively opposed it. He felt, and indeed the people did not conceal the thought that lay in their minds, that the proposal sprang from the mere natural, national sentiment of the people, and their desire to assimilate themselves to the nations round about, and take their place as one of them. They said : "Give us a king to judge us like all the nations." But this was just to propose to renounce the theocratic idea, to descend from the position of being a kingdom of Jehovah to being a kingdom of this world. The proposal betrayed, on the part of those who made it, misconception or neglect of the true nature of the Hebrew Commonwealth. Detecting this, the prophet offered the strongest re- sistance to the people's wishes. And Jehovah recog- nized what feeling in the people's minds prompted their request, when He said to the prophet : "They 170 PSALM LXXII have not rejected thee, but they have rejected Me that I should not reign over them." It is the same insight into the secular spirit that always more or less deter- mined the popular movements, that dictates the consistent policy of the prophets, which they are never weary of inculcating upon the people, their home and their foreign policy being that the nation should culti- vate peace and not affect to be a military power, riding on horses and building fenced cities ; but that it should trust for defence to Jehovah alone, and abstain from foreign alliances which drew it into the circle of heathen influence. While insisting on these general principles, the prophets do not otherwise mix themselves greatly up with political movements. They generally accom- modate themselves to the form of government that exists. They interfere only when the principles of the Theocracy are flagrantly transgressed, as when the house of Ahab sought to introduce Baal worship, or when Saul threatened to become a mere autocrat, and a rival to Jehovah. Second : the fear that laid hold of the mind of Samuel, and which was to a large extent verified in the reign of Saul, that the human kingship would come into collision with the Kingship of Jehovah was dispelled on the accession of David. He was a man according to Jehovah's own heart, who did all His will. He under- stood the principles of the Theocratic kingdom, and made it his aim to realize them. His first act was to recognize the supreme rule of Jehovah, by removing the ark which was His throne, to Jerusalem, the seat of his own authority. The seats of the heavenly and the earthly kings were side by side. The earthly king was indeed Jehovah's king, whom He had set on His holy hill of Zion. .Now, from this point, there commences a process PSALM LXXII 171 which must be regarded as a not unnatural one, al- though it is one that threw off, as it advanced, very profound ideas, a process in the prophetic mind to- wards assimilating the earthly kingdom and king to the heavenly ones ; towards idealizing the earthly, and clothing them in the spiritual attributes of the heavenly, till at last they were identified, or at least epithets proper to the one were bestowed on the other. The king on Zion was son of Jehovah. He shared in His love and enjoyed His fellowship ; he reigned in His spirit ; and the more perfectly he did all this, the more truly was he a theocratic king. The kingdom was a redemptive kingdom, not a natural one ; although a redemptive kingdom in those days had a distinct material side, and was obliged to maintain its exist- ence against the world in the shape of foreign nations with armies at their back. But this was not the case for centuries of the existence of the kingdom. Only during the last century of its existence had Judah any grave trouble from abroad. And it was, therefore, the internal condition of the people to which the pro- phets mainly directed their attention, and the redemp- tive attributes of Jehovah as affecting these that they brought into prominence. The nearer the earthly king and kingdom were to the Divine King and His rule, the more perfect they were. They would be altogether perfect when they were entirely similar, when they were identified and became one. And thus com- menced and advanced a process towards this identi- fication. Now it was probable that the prophet would not venture to array the theocratic king, to begin with, in all the attributes of Jehovah, the Redeemer King. Circumstances always called forth the revelation, which came through exercise of the prophetic mind. Now 172 PSALM LXXII a particular crisis would demand a particular inter- ference of Jehovah, the revelation of a particular deed or attribute of His redemptive character. But Jehovah manifested Himself, as in word through the prophets, in deeds, in rule and in judicial function, through the king. Thus the king came to be clothed with some single attribute of Jehovah. Jehovah was present with the king, was in the king in that redemp- tive attribute. So the prophetic author of this Psalm prays that Jehovah's righteousness and His judgments may be given to the king, i.e., that the king may realize, in his rule and in judging the people, the very ideal of the Divine Kingdom. Another operation of Jehovah, the natural effect, indeed, of His own righteousness, was to make His people righteous. One prophet says : In Jehovah have we righteousness and strength. Another names the Messiah, the Lord our righteousness. Jehovah is in him, making His people righteous — calling them righteous, and making them correspond to the designation. Another saving attribute of Jehovah was His might. One of the standing designations of God in the Prophets is Jehovah of hosts. The name probably arose from the idea that He was Israel's warrior king, who led her armies. But if the name arose in this way, it certainly extended so as to embrace under it the idea that Jehovah had at His command heavenly hosts. This idea appears already in Joel : * ' Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together " (i.e., to the valley of Jehoshaphat) : " thither cause Thy mighty ones to come down, Lord " (iv. 11). " The Lord is a man of war, the Lord is His name." But this at- tribute of Jehovah, His saving power, the prophet assigns to the theocratic king when he calls him : God-heroic. PSALM LXXII 173 It is not merely that he is clothed with this attribute ; but Jehovah is in him in the fulness of this attribute. It might be some time before the prophetic mind rose to the height of identifying the theocratic king and Jeho- vah altogether, or of saying that God, in all His attri- butes or absolutely, was in the king, or that the king was God. And we might fancy that we should be able to trace the progress towards this, through the assigning of attribute after attribute, till Jehovah was repre- sented as dwelling in the theocratic king wholly. But it is doubtful how far such a progress can be traced ; and my impression is that, although we may be right in making the general assumption of the gradual develop- ment of all the great redemptive ideas in Scripture, it is not always possible to verify the assumption. It is certainly not the case that later prophets always make an advance on earlier ones. Much depends on the idiosyncrasy and power of the prophet or individual writer ; much upon the particular crisis during which he lived, and to which he had to minister light. And we must recognize an element in Revelation which will not accommodate itself to what we might, beforehand, con- ceive would be the order followed. And where there are so many writers as in the Old Testament, it is a very precarious undertaking to attempt to classify them historically or assign dates to them, according to the principle of the mere development of ideas that we find in them. Isaiah in one passage calls the Messiah by a name El Gibbor signifying : God in His might ; but in a passage which is certainly earlier, he calls Him abso- lutely God with us ; and in yet another, which is cer- tainly later, he appears to descend from this high posi- tion, and represents the Messiah as endowed with the Spirit of God, whiclr is in him a spirit of counsel, and a spirit of might. On the other hand, a Psalm, which is 174 PSALM LXXII probably much earlier than Isaiah, applies the ordinary name of God to the theocratic king : "Thy throne, God, is for ever and ever." In all these very extra- ordinary designations which the prophets, particularly Isaiah, give to the Messiah as perfect Theocratic King, we observe evidence of an effort made to rise to the con- ception of a complete unity between this king and Jeho- vah — an effort to lift the Messiah, the Anointed of Jeho- vah, into a superhuman being, while He remains most human. The name Wonderful Counsellor is a term used elsewhere of what is Divine. The Angel that ap- peared to Manoah said : " Why askest thou thus after my name seeing it is Wonderful " % And the passage in Isaiah further says of the Messiah that He is Father of His people for ever, and Prince of Peace ; the Hebrew word having a much deeper meaning than our word " peace." It is that quiescent harmony which reigns between God and those saved, as it is said : " The chastisement that led to our peace was upon him." Now no doubt the question suggests itself, How did the prophets conceive this unity of Jehovah and His Anointed % Was it an ethical unity merely, or an essen- tial oneness ? was God united to him merely, or was he God ? This union of Jehovah and His king was certainly not merely ethical — it was redemptive. Jehovah, the Redeemer of Israel and his king, was present in all His redemptive attributes in His Messiah. But it was per- haps the case that the prophets had not risen to that particular conception of oneness which we express by saying that God " became " man. They approached the idea of unity rather from a different side. They began to move first on the lines of official unity ; and it is pos- sible that the idea of incarnation in the truest sense was not realized by them. Now, in the view of Scrip- ture itself and the writers of Scripture, the whole of PSALM LXXII 175 Scripture, including both the Old Testament and the New, is a unity. This unity it derives from its being the expression of a single mind, the mind of God ; and consequently an allusion to any particular truth in early Scripture was, nevertheless, the introduction to that whole truth. Each particular statement of Scrip- ture derives a certain additional meaning from its being part of a whole system of truth. And therefore in estimating the meaning of these particular words ap- plied to the Messiah in Isaiah, chapter ix., you must have regard to the revelation in its complete state. Another principle, however, needs also to be attended to, viz., that the writers of Scripture always wrote intelligently, and understood the particular revelation made to them ; but they might have imperfect understanding of the whole scheme of which the particular truth was a part ; and therefore, though always intelligent, they might not be enabled to rise up to the full meaning of the language they used. And perhaps the prophets, when calling the Messiah God, had not themselves that pre- cise view which a clearer revelation has given to us — yet it must have been a very singular feeling that they had. To us such truths are old, and have lost their novelty ; and it is hard to give them vitality in our minds. And we might sometimes long for that freshness of feeling which a prophet like Isaiah had, when he wrote that exquisite hymn in chapter ix.,and when the thought came upon his mind that in the theocratic king, the king of Israel, God should be really present to the people, in all His saving power, and that His presence would bring righteousness and peace to mankind. PSALM CX PSALM ex. belongs, no doubt, to the circle of Psalms which embraces Psalms ii., xx., and xxi., and others that speak of the theocratic monarchy and king. Although its terms are very lofty, they are not more inapplicable to the theocratic king than those employed in Psalm xlv. or Psalm lxxii., which never- theless seem only mediately Messianic. The circum- stances of the home-bringing of the Ark, and the placing of it on Zion Hill, and the demeanour of the king on that occasion, the role he played and the place he assumed in relation to the people, and the conscious- ness which all these acts expressed of his own relations to Jehovah, the true Theocratic King, furnish an ex- planation of the imagery employed, and the language used. Even if we should regard the Psalm as directly Messianic, we must conclude that the author had not risen to the conception of the perfect spirituality of the Messiah's Kingdom, but still regarded it as having a local seat on Mount Zion, when he says : " The Lord shall stretch thy strong sceptre out from Zion " ; and that he had in his mind not Jehovah's throne in heaven, but His Theocratic throne in Jerusalem, when he speaks of the king as taking his seat on the throne at the Lord's right hand. But in interpreting any single Scripture of the Old Testament, you must always bring to bear upon the interpretation of it a general conception of the whole 176 PSALM CX 177 Old Testament, according to which its spiritual truths are to be considered as having been clothed for a time in a material embodiment, which at a certain period dis- appears, and leaves the spiritual truth in its naked absoluteness. The truth that the theocratic king sits at Jehovah's right hand, was expressed to men's eyes in his being seated on God's throne in Jerusalem. But God's throne in Jerusalem was itself but a material embodiment, for a time, of the spiritual truth that He is King of Saints. And when the time appointed of the Father came, both His own visible throne and the human theocratic king's sitting down upon it dis- appeared from the circle of material things, and were sublimed into the spiritual things represented by them. But while the Psalm might be very well regarded as an indirect Messianic passage, like the other Psalms belonging in general to the same circle, so far as its language is concerned, when we inquire into the authorship of it, and find it ascribed to David — an ascription with which all the circumstances which must have given it rise, the warlike character of its lan- guage, and the method adopted of presenting the truth under the form of divine oracles, completely accord — there seems no alternative left us but to assume that it is a directly Messianic Psalm. It may be so in two ways. It might be what may be termed an abstractly Messianic Psalm, the figure presented being that of the theocratic king in his essential characteristics, without reference to any particular person in whom they should be realized. In other words, it would not be a real theocratic king such as David himself, pre- sented ideally, nor yet that distinct theocratic king who was destined to realize the ideal, to whom Isaiah refers, but the mere ideal character itself. b.e. 12 178 PSALM CX Out of the strange scenes of that day, what he was and what he had done, the kingly dignity which had been long his, and the priestly which he had, under he could hardly tell what impulses, assumed, there might rise up before the Psalmist's mind the con- ception of the theocratic king in his true perfection as a King and a Priest. The effect of this mode of re- garding the Psalm is not different from the effect . produced by the more natural supposition, that the writer had in view the distinct future King who should embody, in himself, such characteristics as are here described. This seems the way in which this Psalm is regarded in the New Testament. And if I say a word more on the subject, it is not because I think this view of the Psalm doubtful. In our bearing toward such difficulties as the pre- sent one, there are two things which we should keep before us : (1) to maintain a position of reverence toward Scripture ; and (2) to allow the utmost freedom, consistent with this, to criticism and individual opinion, meaning by the last, freedom to differ not only on matters on which, as to themselves, difference may be allowable, but also on the bearing which differences have on things held in common, and on which differ- ence is not allowed. For instance, you must permit a man not only to say ' ' I disagree with you on this point," but also to add, " My divergence on this point does not, to my mind, affect the other doctrine which you think must be affected by it." In a community, the low- est foundation of which is conscience, you must allow great weight to a conscientious statement by any one of a position, even although you may not be able to comprehend it. Critics have not been unanimous in accepting the Pavidic authorship of the Psalm ; and when I mention PSALM CX 179 Meyer and Neander as taking the other view, every one will perceive what havoc on Christian fellowship would be made by an ill-advised pressing of one view of the question. There seem to be two questions raised by this matter, which it is well to keep apart. One is the question of the limitation of Christ's knowledge ; and the other is the question of the validity of Christ's argument with the Pharisees. With regard to the first, the Mediator is the Son in human nature. The subject is the Son ; but He is, as incarnate, subjected to the limitations of the nature which He has assumed. The Son, in His human nature, is not impassible nor immortal, neither is He omniscient. As He may suffer and die, so without sin He may have imperfect knowledge. He grew in wisdom as in stature. Predications of opposite kinds are made regarding His knowledge. It is said, on the one hand, that He knew all things ; and on the other, " Of that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels in heaven nor the Son, but the Father." It is plain here that the negative statement must overrule the positive, because a single case of nescience is conclusive against any number of cases of knowledge. It is admitted that He had super- natural knowledge ; but it appears that this super- natural knowledge was not universal, and was not, therefore, the immediate necessary result of the con- stitution of His person, but was administered to Him in His human nature on some economic principle. It was as teacher and prophet of the Church that He re- ceived the supernatural knowledge which He exhi- bited. Now then we are at the point whence views may diverge. All will agree that, in His human nature, His knowledge was finite. Again, all will agree that, as perfect teacher, He can have been allowed to say nothing that was of error ; that whatever He said, in 180 PSALM CX this capacity, was true, and the sum of what He said, sufficient. But must we hold that everything that He said, He spoke as prophet ; and that no utterances of His are recorded, which belong to a personal sphere, or to the region of things indifferent ? All men will not be found to answer this question in the way of affirmation. But if such a class of utterances be admitted, there will naturally be diversity of opinion as to what particular statements belong to it. Some will argue that, as Christ used the language of His time regarding the motions of the heavens, and spoke of the sun rising, there is no reason to doubt that on indifferent critical questions, such as the authorship of a Psalm, He adopted the com- mon phraseology also ; while others, although they may have difficulty in maintaining that they are con- sistent, will feel averse from making such an acknow- ledgement. On this supposition, no conclusion as to His own opinion could be drawn from His language. But some will go further, and say that as Christ's knowledge was limited except as prophet and in matters concerning Salvation, in other matters such as Natural Science and Criticism He may have re- mained unilluminated, these having no bearing on Salvation or on the truth necessary to it ; and that, in order to be tried in all points like as we are, He must have possessed limited knowledge, seeing that our severest trials often arise from our ignorance. At the same time a distinction is to be drawn between the possession of imperfect knowledge and the utterance of any statement expressing it. Perowne expressed the feeling that, for his part, reverence would prevent him finding any statement in Scripture that contained an expression of limited knowledge on the part of our Lord. That is a very good rule for one's own guid- PSALM CX 181 ance, and a rule that may be recommended, perhaps, to everyone ; but it is not a rule that you can impose on any one. The other question whether our Lord's argument with the Pharisees, in order to be valid, does not require the Davidic authorship, is a less interesting question. It is Perowne's opinion that it does. It perhaps requires, in order to validity, that David should call Christ Lord. But perhaps he might be re- garded as doing so, without being the author of the Psalm. The hymn might be a voice from the bosom of the congregation, the address of all saints to their King. And among saints David was included ; for that royal dignity which he held was but an imper- fect acting, for a brief time, of the part of another ; it really gave him no privileges over other sinners. Jesus was his Lord, although He was also his Son. By some such round-about argument as this, David might be brought in, though not the author of the Psalm. But the question remains, Is this the way in which our Lord argues ? Not many will say that it is. There is only one remark more which need be made. It is the opinion of many critics that our Lord is here arguing with the Pharisees e concessis — on their own principles. They understood David to be the author of the Psalm ; and He employs their convictions, with- out of necessity committing Himself to them, to lead them to a higher truth regarding the Messiah than that, which they were willing to profess. The truth itself of course is independent of the Psalm, and might have been proved otherwise ; but the language of the Psalm readily lent itself to express it, and therefore it was turned to that service. If anyone should argue so, you will undoubtedly have to bear with him.. In this case Christ's argument 182 PSALM CX was useful for the time and purpose for which He then employed it. With our greater knowledge it may not be serviceable to us. But the truth in question, happily, is not dependent on this argument alone for its support. My impression is that Christ nowhere argues in this way. In His keenest encounters with His adversaries, He never fought for mere victory. He never con- tented Himself with thrusting His foes into a corner, or fixing them on a dilemma, by reasoning on their own principles ; nor does He ever seem to have used false premises, or premises not His own, from which to draw conclusions that He desired to uphold. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, having in chapter v. 1-10 stated the two great characteristics of a Priest, viz., that, being taken from among men, and appointed for men, he is able to bear gently with the ignorant and erring ; and that he taketh not the honour unto himself, but is called to it by God, as was Aaron : and having shown how these characteristics were illustrated in Christ, called of God an high priest after the order of Melchizedek, inserts, before pro- ceeding to define the nature of the Melchizedek priest- hood, another warning more solemn than any that precede, against falling away from the religion that has such a priest. What the author says of the Priest- hood, is contained in the first ten verses of the seventh chapter, the remaining part of that chapter containing some inferences from it as to the Old Testament economy. Psalm ex. speaks of a priest arising after the order of Melchizedek. This Psalm must be regarded as a prophecy. Such a priest is not a mere conception ; he must really appear. He has appeared in Christ. But the appearance of a new priest has pervasive conse- quences for the whole dispensation. For under the PSALM CX 183 Levitical priesthood, i.e., on the basis of this priesthood, the people received the law. The constitution rested on this priesthood ; and, the priesthood being changed, there is of necessity a change also of the law. The Old Testament law goes with the Old Testament priesthood. At least with a new priesthood a new principle is introduced. The principle of the Old Testament priesthood was that of a carnal commandment. It was first a mere matter of positive command ; and second, this positive command referred merely to flesh. Being positive, it had in itself no principle of permanence, no essential abiding element ; and being a matter of flesh, i.e., descent from a particular family, and referring to washings and bodily purifications only, it possessed no power. But the Melchizedek priesthood is after the power of an indissoluble fife. Its principle is life in- dissoluble, which means not only life that cannot now be dissolved, but life that never could be dissolved, that death could not destroy. And with this principle there goes power. The principle of the New Testament priesthood is life ; and this introduces into the whole dispensation a new law. The author of Hebrews summarises Genesis xiv. thus : '* For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of God most High, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him: to whom also Abraham divided a tenth part of all." These are the facts about Melchizedek, as recorded in Genesis. This narrative the author goes on to para- phrase thus : " Being first, by interpretation, King of righteousness, and then also King of Salem, which is, King of peace ; without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God, abideth a priest 184 PSALM CX continually." Now of this Melchizedek these things are here said. First, that he is a king ; and that two characteristics describe his kingdom or rule, righteous- ness and peace. He is a righteous king, or a king whose very realm is righteousness, this conception being ex- pressed in the king's own name ; and his rule is also peace, this being expressed in the name of the place, which is the seat of his kingdom. He is king of Salem. Second, of course, he is a priest, and not of any inferior shrine, but of God most High. He is a royal priest : he unites in himself priesthood and kinghood : and righteousness and peace characterize his rule. I need not point out how prominent these two characteristics are in the Messianic prophecies of the king. But the author does not dwell on these Messianic commonplaces. He comes immediately to the essence of the Melchizedek priesthood. Its essential charac- teristics are : first, Melchizedek, in the Scripture, is without father, without mother, without genealogy ; and second, in the narrative, he has neither beginning of days nor end of life, but is made like unto the Son of God. These then are the two characteristics to which attention has to be directed in the expression, " after the order of Melchizedek." Melchizedek was a priest whose priesthood was wholly independent of who was his father, or who was his mother, or of what family he came. Fleshly descent from Aaron, or Levi, or from any Israelitish tribe whatever, does not come into con- sideration in his case ; his priesthood is not limited by any external conditions of this kind ; it reposes on quali- ties and powers that belong to his own person alone. Again he is a priest whose life is without the limita- tions common to the life of men. " having neither be- ginning of days nor end of life " ; a priest who is not the successor of another, and to whom no one else PSALM CX 185 succeeds ; who is no member of a course of priests following one another, because not suffered to continue by reason of death : but individual, and unique, and abiding a priest for ever. The phrase " made like unto the Son of God " appears not to be a phrase charac- terizing Melchizedek generally, but to belong to the last phrase only : having neither beginning of days nor end of life. The expression means that Melchizedek, as represented in Scripture, was designed to be a type or prehminary illustration of the Son of God ; and it is only as a priest that he comes before us, not in any way as a man. Having thus expressed the essential characteristics of the Melchizedek priesthood, the author draws atten- tion to the greatness of Melchizedek, and his pre- eminence over theLevitical priests, saying : " Consider how great He was." Both the A.V. and theR.V. by translating " Consider how great this man was," rather suggest that it is Melchizedek as a man that is held great ; whereas it seems to be only as a priest that the author regards him. As a priest he takes tithes ; and as a priest he blesses. And these are all the actions we know of in connexion with him. " Now consider how great He was to whom Abraham the patriarch gave a tenth out of the chief spoils." This greatness above the Levitical priest consists in three particulars, of which the first is expressed thus : "And they indeed of the sons of Levi that receive the priest's office have commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is, of their brethren, though these have come out of the loins of Abraham : but he whose gene- alogy is not counted from them hath taken tithes of Abraham, and hath blessed him that hath the pro- mises. But without any dispute, the less is blessed by the better." The Levitical priests have a pre-eminence, 186 PSALM CX conferred on them on the one hand by their descent, and on the other by the Law, empowering them to tithe their brethren, although they are all alike descendants of Abraham. But here is one of no Levitical descent, who tithed, not Abraham's descendants, but Abraham himself, and not by any mere legal arrangement creating a factitious superiority ; but in virtue of possessing a real superiority, as his blessing Abraham shows, for beyond dispute the less is blessed by the better. The second point of superiority is expressed thus : "And here men that die receive tithes : but there one, of whom it is witnessed that he liveth." The Levitical priests are men that die. They not only share their privileges with others, but they cannot permanently retain them. The Melchizedek priest has all his privi- leges in virtue of his life. It is witnessed of him that he liveth, that is, as introduced in Genesis xiv., he is living, and no end is recorded of his life ; and in Psalm ex. he is said to be a priest for ever. This life of his makes him alone participant in his priesthood ; he has received it from none, and he hands it down to none. And the third point of pre-eminence is this : " And so to say, through Abraham even Levi, who receiveth tithes, hath paid tithes ; for he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchizedek met him." To bring the pre-eminence to Levi closer home to him, he who takes tithes of his brethren may be said to have, in a way, paid tithes to Melchizedek ; for, in paying tithes, Abra- ham may be considered to have represented him ; or he may be considered to have done, in Abraham, what Abraham did. This is an outline of the exposition by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, of the priesthood of Melchizedek. Opinions somewhat extravagant have prevailed regarding this personage. It has been held PSALM CX 187 that he was an angel, or the Holy Ghost, or the Son of God Himself, temporarily clothing himself in flesh ; or some saint or patriarch of former times, like Shem, come to life again. All these speculations are needless. The Melchizedek of the Epistle to the Hebrews is just the picture which is drawn in Genesis, chapter xiv. The features there given, and the things on which in- formation is craved, but which the narrative passes over in silence, combine to form the typical subject. The author regards the narrative as so constructed that a designed picture of Christ is presented by antici- pation. But all investigations into who Melchizedek really was, or what he may have been in descent, and length of days, and manner of death, are wholly without relevancy. What is said in Genesis xiv. and what is not said, the positive lines that are drawn, and the empty parts that are not filled in, equally unite to form the picture. What is said of him is that he was King of Righteous- ness, and King of Peace, and Priest of God most High. He is King and Priest. What is not said of him has reference to his origin, his father and mother and descent. Nothing of this is alluded to. He is without them all. Further, no notice is taken of his birth or of his death. Neither is attributed to him, or forms an element in his history : he has neither beginning of days nor end of life. Nothing of all this is recorded of him. He appears, and he alone. He passes over the stage, a king, a priest, living. That sight of him is all that we ever get. This is what Scripture shows us. This is the preliminary picture ; and on this, apart from all other thoughts or questions, we must fasten our eyes. He is like a portrait, having always the same qualities, presenting always the same aspect, looking down on us always with the same eyes which 188 PSALM CX turn and follow us, wherever we may stand — always royal, always priestly, always living, always individual, and neither receiving nor imparting what he is, but being all in virtue of himself. A question of some interest in connexion with this has been very keenly discussed, viz., the question, When did Christ become a high priest % The traditional view was that Christ was a high priest while on earth, as well as now, when in heaven. Faustus Socinus gave a new momentum to the exposition of the Epistle by denying that Christ was a high priest during His life upon the earth, and maintaining that He became a high priest in consequence of His exaltation to God's right hand. This view became the prevailing one among the Socinians, but was very strongly opposed by writers on the other side. The Socinian view would not have excited much op- position, perhaps, if it had merely denied that Christ, while dying on the cross, was performing Himself a priestly act ; and had affirmed that the act of the priest commenced, only when he presented His blood before the Father in the heavenly sanctuary. But, under cover of denying that Christ's death was a priestly act, it was felt that the Socinians desired to deny that His death was a sacrifice. They regarded it as a mere inauguration of His present life in heaven ; that is, they regarded His death merely as a door which He had to pass through, in order to enter upon His high priesthood, or, at most, as a thing the endurance of which fitted Him to be a high priest ; and they limited His high-priestly service in heaven to intercession. As soon as the haze thrown around the question was dispelled, and the essential point brought into prominence, whether the death of Christ was a sacrificial death or not, the discussion about the priest- PSALM CX 189 hood was understood to be of less moment. Hence Michaelis declared himself of the opinion that, if it was admitted that Christ's death was a sacrifice, the other question, whether he was Himself performing a priestly act in dying, was of secondary interest. The question, however, is worth some consideration. The arguments in favour of the opinion that the priesthood commenced with the Ascension are such as these. First, the archaeological argument that, in the Hebrew ceremonial, the slaying of the animal was no priestly function. The offerer or person, on whose behalf the sacrifice was made, brought his victim to the sanctuary, placed his hand on its head, and him- self slew it. The duty of the priest commenced with the receiving of the blood, and consisted mainly in sprink- ling it on the altar, and presenting it in other ways before God. Second, there are many passages in the Epistle which seem to represent the high-priestly office as assumed only at the Ascension. Particularly strong seems such a passage as that in chap. viii. 4 : "if then He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, seeing there are those who offer the gifts according to the law." Other passages seem not less explicit, e.g., ii. 17 : " Wherefore it behoved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people." And even more clearly, v. 5 : " So Christ also glorified not Himself to be made a high priest ; but He that spake unto Him — Thou art My Son, This day have I begotten Thee; as he saith also in another place — 190 PSALM CX Thou art a priest for ever After the order of Melchizedek ; and also verse 9 : " And having been made perfect, He became unto all them that obey Him the author of eternal salvation ; named of God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek." And only to refer to one more passage, vii. 28 : "For the law appointeth men priests having infirmity ; but the word of the oath, which was after the law, appointed the Son, perfected for ever- more." Comp. vii. 26 ; ix. 11 ; x, 12, 13, 21, etc. On the other hand, against this view it may be urged that the strong hortatory purpose of the author induced him to draw his readers' attention particularly to what Christ is now, to the functions He exercises in the heavenly sanctuary, to the feelings He cherishes, the capacities He has acquired, and the power to which He has attained, Confessedly, He was once weak and imperfect ; and it is to His present condition of perfec- tion, in contrast to the weakness of His earthly life, that the writer with such iteration and impressiveness turns their minds. Then, although the passages just cited seem very strong, there are others of a different tendency, which seem to regard Christ's offering up of Himself as part of His priestly action. For example, vii. 27 : " Who needeth not daily like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins, and then for the sins of the people : for this He did once for all, when He offered up Himself. So ix. 26 : " Nov/ once at the end of the ages hath He been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment ; so Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time, apart from sin, to them that wait for Him, unto salvation." These passages seem to refer to His act PSALM CX 191 of dying on earth. But they must be coupled with others which undoubtedly speak of His offering of Himself in heaven. For instance, viii. 3, 4 : " For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacri- fices : wherefore it is necessary that this high priest also have somewhat to offer. Now if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all." And even in the passage : "Nor yet that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood not his own" (ix. 25), the reference seems to be to His ministration in the sanc- tuary on high. But the passage, x. 12, seems un- doubtedly to allude to what He did on earth, when it says : " But He, when He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God." These passages, taken together, suggest the right view. The question whether Christ offered Himself, in His capacity of a priest, would never have been raised, had the connexion of the death of the sacrificial animal and the presentation of the blood been rightly con- ceived. But when the death was regarded as the atoning act, and the offering of the blood held to repre- sent the dedication of the now sinless spirit and life of the offerer to God, there was great temptation to sepa- rate the two actions from one another. But, without doubt, the true view of the sacrificial proceeding is to regard the death and the presentation of the blood as one act. The meaning of the whole is the offering up of the life. You cannot offer the life of a living crea- ture. The life is in the blood. And the offering of the blood is the offering of the life, which takes place through death. So, in Christ's offering, His death and His presentation of His blood in the heavenly holy place are but one action. 192 PSALM CX Still, as this action is a complex one, some part of it might be His own, and some part of it belong to others, as in the ordinary ceremony of sacrifice of Israel. But here another point has to be considered. The author of the Epistle, regarding the sacrifice of Christ as of the broadest significance, compares it, not to an ordinary burnt offering or sin offering, but to the sin offering presented on the great day of atonement. Now all the ceremonial of this sacrifice was performed by the high priest in person. He brought the victim and slew it. He entered into the Holiest with its blood. It seems therefore to be a fair inference that the author of Hebrews regarded Christ's sacrifice of Himself as a high-priestly action, as well as His presentation of Himself in the heavens and His ministration there. In his view, the Messiah was a high priest even on earth. There appears, however, to be a residuum left from several passages which suggest the question, Though a priest and a high priest on earth, was the Messiah a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, before enter- ing into the heavenly state ? Now the same kind of reasoning may be applied here as is applicable to the Sonship. He was Son on earth, though the Sonship was only manifested in power in heaven ; and on this account he was then addressed — Thou art My Son, This day have I begotten Thee. He might be a priest after the order of Melchizedek, al- though the order of His priesthood did not become fully manifest till His Ascension. Then only He at- tained to possession of His throne, although a king from the beginning. Then only He reached perfection, being crowned with glory 'and^honour. , But the ques- tion is, Whether it is not just this actual attainment, PSALM CX 193 that constitutes the differentia of the Melchizedek priesthood. Whether Christ's life on earth be re- garded as a personal life, having issues of its own that concerned Himself only, or as a public official life entered upon at the command of God, though voluntarily on His part, and rewarded with glory for its successful conduct ; or whether these two be regarded not as two distinct things, but as only sides of the same thing, as they truly should be re- garded, it is certainly taught in the Epistle that Christ, through His life on earth, attained, on His Ascension, to glory and honour. And this element seems to be what the author refers to, when he speaks of Christ attaining to the Melchizedek Priesthood ; and perhaps we should not be wrong in concluding that it is his opinion that Christ, though a priest and a high priest on earth, at- tained to be a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, only on His entry into heaven and sitting down at the right hand of the Majesty on High. b.e. 13 THE ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS REVISION WHAT is the English Bible ? The English Bible, which we use under the name of the Authorized Version, belongs to the year 1611. This is the date of the first printed edition. It is a revised edition of a Bible already existing. The revision was under- taken chiefly at the instance of King James, who felt and expressed extreme dislike to some versions current among his subjects ; and especially to notes with which these versions were provided. His dislike was greatest to the Geneva Bible and its annotations, in which he says he found " some notes very partial, untrue, seditious, and savouring too much of dangerous and traitorous conceits." The revision was entrusted to six committees,. two of which sat at Westminster, two at Oxford, and two at Cambridge. In the title-page, with which we are all familiar, the book is said to be " newly translated out of the Original Tongues ; and with the former translations diligently compared and revised by His Majesty's special command " ; and further, that it is " appointed to be read in churches." It has been found impossible to verify the last state- ment, " for no evidence has yet been produced to show that the version was ever publicly sanctioned by Convocation or by Parliament, or by the Privy Coun- cil, or by the King." 1 The expression "Authorized 1 Westcott, History of the English Bible, p. 158 ; cf. Lightfoot, On a Fresh Revision of the New Testament, p. 11. 194 THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION 195 Version " is therefore not based on anything historical ; it was authorized by no authority further than that the work was undertaken by the king's authority. " It gained its currency partly, it may have been, by the weight of the king's name, partly by the personal authority of the prelates and scholars who had been engaged upon it, but still more by its own intrinsic superiority over its rivals." The title says " with the former translations dili- gently compared." The " former translations " here mentioned are other English versions already in use. Of these there were many ; not all of them independent, but founded one on another. For the history of the English Bible is a history of revisions. It has been often gone over ; and pious hands have weeded out everything that seemed an error at the time. The first English New Testament, translated from the Greek, appeared in 1525. Ten or twelve years later the whole Bible was printed in English. And in the three quarters of a century that followed, no fewer than five revisions, that of King James being included, succeeded one another. For nearly two centuries and three quarters no further revision was attempted. The basis of our present Bible is the translation of William Tyndale. More than a century before Tyn- dale's birth, the Bible had been translated into English by Wickliffe, and re-issued by his followers. But WicklifiVs translations were not from the original Greek and Hebrew, but from the Vulgate, that is, the Latin translation in use since the time of Jerome in the beginning of the fifth century. Tyndale was the first to translate from the original languages. Tyndale's translations, too, were the first that had the advantage of the printing press. WicklifiVs were disseminated in manuscript. Many of these manu- 196 THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION scripts remain ; and some of them are of extreme interest from the fame of the persons to whom they belonged. One belonged to Edward VI. ; and another was a birthday present to Queen Elizabeth from her chaplain. Another one belonged to the unfortunate Henry VI., who gave it to the Charterhouse. Another seems to have been the property of a person of whom history does not present a picture altogether becoming the Gospel. Shakespeare represents the Duke of Buckingham as giving the following advice to Richard of Gloster, in order to secure the assent of the citizens to his seizure of the throne — And look you get a prayer-book in your hand, And stand between two churchmen, good my lord; For on that ground I'll make a holy descant. When the deputation of citizens visits him, he is found within with two Right Reverend fathers. Divinity bent to Meditation. Whereupon Buckingham exclaims to the Mayor — Ah ha ! my lord, this prince is not an Edward ! He is Dot lolling on a lewd day-bed. But on his knees at meditation ; Not dallying with a brace of courtezans. But meditating with two deep divines ; Not sleeping, to engross his idle body, But praying, to enrich his watchful soul. It is possible that this representation rests on some tradition as to the character and habits of Gloster. At any rate, he is the person to whom belonged one of the remaining copies of the Wickliffe Bible. The real basis then of our English Bible is the translation of William Tyndale. His New Testament appeared in 1525, having been printed abroad and smuggled into England. It is strange to think that THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION 197 we are still reading his words. Many portions of the New Testament, in spite of all the revisions it has undergone, are almost Tyndale's very words. In some of the shorter books, it has been calculated that nine-tenths are his ; while even in longer epistles, like the Hebrews , fi ve-sixths remain unchanged . The exquisite grace and melody of the language has been a matter of surprise to those who are familiar with Tyndale's other writings, which have no qualities that raise them above the ordinary level of the time. But Tyndale set before him the translation of the Bible as his life's work ; he threw into it all his feeling, and the unwearied labour of twenty years. Tyndale never published more than the New Testa- ment. But he had translated the Pentateuch, and the Old Testament as far as Chronicles. Two years after his martyrdom, his friend Matthew published a Revision of his New Testament and his translation of the Old as far as he had executed it, the remainder of the Old being taken from Coverdale's Bible which had appeared shortly before, and was a translation based on the Latin and the German. Matthew's Bible may be called the first Revision. Its circulation was sanctioned by the king ; and it may be called the first Authorized version. Again two years after this, in 1539, another revision was undertaken at the instance of Crumwell. This Bible was printed in Paris in a large form, and is often called the Great Bible — sometimes Crumwell's Bible, and even Cranmer's Bible — from the parties who furthered the various editions of it. This likewise was author- ized, and may be called the second Revision. It was also appointed to be read in churches, a copy being ordered to be put in every church, that the common people might read it. Contemporary writers give 198 THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION lively pictures of the scenes that followed in the churches, of the crowds that gathered around the great Book, from which one read while the rest listened, and of the discussions, and even tumults, that ensued among the partisans of the Pope and of the new learning. Bishop Bonner complains that the Bible had become more attractive than the Service. " Divers wilful and unlearned persons inconsiderately and indiscreetly read the same, especially and chiefly at the time of divine service, yea in the time of the sermon ; " and he threatened to have the Bible removed. After this a period of inaction in the history of the English Bible follows. Great political events occurred which diverted men's minds to other channels. Henry's death was followed by the short reign of Edward VI. Then came the persecutions under Mary, which scat- tered the Reforming party to various parts of Europe. These disasters at home, however, brought the Eng- lish Bible under a wave of influence which it might not otherwise have felt. When divisions occurred among the exiles at Frankfort, the Puritan section of them betook themselves to Geneva. There they came under the influence of Calvin and Beza. One of them, WhiUingham, who had married Calvin's sister, put out a Revision of the New Testament in 1557. This was followed by the whole Bible in 1560, the year of our Scottish Reformation. This is the Geneva Bible, which soon became the household Bible in England ; and, next to the present version, has done most to mould the mind, and form the opinions, of English Christians. It was a great favourite among the English people, particularly on account of its notes, which are strongly Calvinistic and liberal, and consequently excited the hatred of King James. Its form was convenient ; and for a long time THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION 199 it held its place even against our present version. This is the Bible popularly known as the " Breeches " Bible from its translation of the passage in the history of the Fall : " Adam and his wife sewed fig leaves together and made themselves breeches." A history of the peculiarities of Bibles would be amusing. One edition is known as the " Vinegar " Bible, from a misprint that occurs in the heading of the Parable of the Vineyard, Luke xx., which reads " The Parable of the Vinegar." Another edition has received the name of the " Wicked " Bible. It has anticipated the proposal to take the " not " out of the Commandments and put it in the Creed, and it sets about the work of reformation with boldness, reading the seventh Commandment — " Thou shalt commit adultery." The Geneva Bible maybe named the third Revision. It was never sanctioned by authority, nor used in churches ; but the people eagerly fed on its vigorous text, and the lucid, sturdy notes. Eight years after, in the tenth of Elizabeth, the need for another edition of a public Bible was felt, and the work was commended to the prelates, who issued what is known as the Bishops' Bible in 1568.. This was the fourth Revision. Finally came our present version about forty years later. The succession then is : first, Tyndale, 1525 ; second, Matthew, 1537 ; third, the Great Bible, called also CrumwelTs or Cranmer's, 1539 ; fourth, the Geneva, 1560 ; fifth, the Bishops', 1568 ; and sixth, the present unauthorized Version, 1611. Coverdale's, in point of fact the second, hardly stands in the direct line, being a translation from the Latin and the German ; and the Rheims and Douai or Catholic Bible, though it was made considerable use of by the Revisers in King 200 THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION James's time, and though many of the felicities of our present version are owing to it, is also a secondary version. The version that has influenced our present more than any other is the Geneva. It appears from this history that the excellencies of our present Version are mainly due to the frequent and careful revisions it has undergone. Now there exists, in the minds of very many persons, especially of persons who are serious, but have not had occasion to acquaint themselves with history, a very great prejudice against meddling with the text of our present Scriptures. This prejudice is very natural ; and would, in the case of the English Bible, if anywhere, be ex- cusable. Out of it, they have first heard the words of eternal life. And its touching simplicity, and the exquisite flow of its rhythm, as well as the dignified and somewhat archaic march of its style, removing it out of the commonplace manner of the language of or- dinary life, all combine to leave upon the unlearned reader the impression that its words are the very words that dropped from the lips of Divine wisdom itself. And to make alterations upon it is not only felt to offend the ear and taste, like changes on some old familiar music, but to be a kind of sacrilege and im- piety. Yet these feelings, however natural, and how- ever much entitled to respect, ought not to be allowed to hinder attempts at improvement. The English Bible does not contain the very words of inspiration, but only a recast of them into another tongue, beautiful, it is true, f and, for the age, wonderful in its accuracy, yet far from perfect. And even the excellence which it possesses has been attained through many successive revisions. The revisers of 1611, to whom we owe the Authorized Version, write thus in reply to objections similar to those which I have THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION 201 alluded to : "To whom ever was it imputed for a fail- ing (by such as were wise) to go over that which he had done, and to amend it where he saw cause ? . . . Truly, good Christian reader, we never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make a bad one a good one, . . . but to make a good one better . . . that hath been our endeavour, that our mark." Let me then, first, adduce a few reasons which show the necessity for a Revision of our present English Version ; and, secondly, say something of the manner in which the Revision must be effected. Our present English Version was made from a text which, with our present knowledge, we cannot maintain to have been a true copy of the words of Scripture, as it came from the pens of the original writers. The Revisers of 1611 used two current editions. One was the fourth edition of Erasmus. What then is the history of this Erasmian text ? and what its critical value ? Its history is short. In the year 1516, Erasmus, after not much more than six months' labour, published at Basle an edition of the Greek text, and so got the start of the splendid Complutensian Edition of Cardinal Ximenes. Erasmus honestly says that his work was a " precipitated one." It really was so. Erasmus was not insensible to the value of ancient testimony, and if he had allowed himself time, would have probably given a much better text to the world than that which is connected with his name. But the excusable, though unfortunate, desire to anticipate the lingering volume of the Complutensian Edition marred the great work ; and the evil effects of that half-year of hurry last to this hour. The MS. originally used by Erasmus was defec- tive in Revelation ; and he himself supplied the 202 THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION defects by translating the Latin of the Vulgate into Greek. This famous MS. was found not long ago. It is a very late MS. of the sixteenth century, of no critical value, and can be identified with certainty ; for the Basle printer used it in setting up the edition, and his marks remain upon it to this day. Not one of the great Uncial MSS. seems to have been consulted by Erasmus ; and even some cursives which he had at hand he refrained from using* because they fur- nished a text different from that with which he was familiar. We now know it was different, because it was better, that is, more ancient. It was, indeed, a very corrupt text from which our English Version was made. For example, the verse 1 John v. 7 — " There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost," is admitted on all hands to be an interpolation. It is without any authority. The history of its origin can even be traced. It is very modern, and not due even to pious fraud. It was not interpolated for the purpose of upholding the doctrine of the Trinity ; for it arose after this doctrine was settled. And its place in the text of Scripture is not due to intention, but to accident. It is found sometimes before and sometimes after the other verse : " there are three that bear witness on earth : the Spirit, the water and the blood ; " and it was no doubt originally a gloss on this verse which some Theologian put on the margin of his MS., and which found its way at last into the text. But it stands in our Bible as a suborned witness to the Trinity, whose mouth ought to be shut. Were there nothing else in our Bibles to find fault with but this verse, they ought to be revised to the extent of expunging it. But this verse is not the only thing which a candid criticism will have to remove. There are other ex- THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION 203 crcscences to which the knife must be unsparingly applied. A careful comparison of the most ancient testimonies with the more modern, which our version chiefly follows, will show here and there clauses or passages due to a mistaken piety, or to an exaggerated love of the supernatural, or to a morbid craving for the horrible in human suffering, or to Christian tra- dition, or to many other causes. Examples of the first may be seen in Luke ii. 33, where, after nar- rating the prophecy of the aged Simeon that Christ should be " a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel," the Evangelist adds : " And His father and His mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of Him" ; but these words seemed to a later reader too bold, or likely to lead to misappre- hension ; and he altered them to "Joseph and His mother marvelled," as is read in our Bibles, The same sensitiveness betrays itself in verse 43, where the Evangelist, without fear, wrote — " The child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem, and His parents knew it not " ; but a later age changed this into " Joseph mid His mother knew it not." Perhaps the same kind of feeling, working however in an opposite direction, shows itself in John i. 18, if the Evangelist really wrote, though it is hard to believe he did : " No man hath seen God at any time ; God only begotten, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." For " God only begotten," our Bible reads " the only begotten Son." As an instance of a corruption arising from an exaggerated love of the miraculous, may be cited John v. 3, where it is probable that the original nar- rative ran as follows : " Now there is in Jerusalem by thejsheep-gate a pool, winch is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay 204 THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION a multitude of sick folk, of blind, halt, withered. And a certain man was there, which had been thirty and eight years in his infirmity." There is nothing here about the moving of the water, nor of the angel who troubled it. The very singular verses which are found at the end of Mark's Gospel may possibly be due to the same cause : " They shall take up serpents ; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them ; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." But this is more doubtful ; and these verses may belong to the original draft of the Gospel. One would hardly like to say that the awful statement regarding the Agony in Luke xxii. 44 : " His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground," was due to a morbid feeling. Yet the statement is found only in Luke ; and in many of the ancient MSS. it does not occur even there. Such omissions open up perplexing questions. The text of Scripture requires delicate and reverent hand- ling. If this passage be not indeed due to Luke, it perhaps reflects an authentic tradition. And the same may be the case with the beautiful story of the woman taken in adultery in John viii., which has all the marks of truth about it, though it perhaps cannot lay claim to be an original element of John's narrative. The nearer we approach to the era of Christ and the apostles, the more do the MSS. gain in simplicity, and in a certain stately coldness of narration free from all extravagance and exaggeration, whether of sentiment or dogma ; and the original writer seems little more than a transparent medium through which the rays of truth pass, unrefracted and uncoloured ; and he narrates the most pathetic occurrences with no appar- ent emotion, and utters the profoundest truths as if quite unconscious of their profundity. This strange THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION 205 neutrality perplexed a later time ; and so it threw in, here and there, what appeared to it the appropriate sentiment, and impressed what was considered to be the needful emphasis. Now the present revisers have, in the New Testa- ment, a double task before them. First, out of the great mass of existing MSS. most of them if not unknown to, at least unused by, former revisers, they have to form a text of the Greek Text. They have, by com- paring MSS. and ancient Versions, and quotations in ancient writers, to decide what, upon the whole, seems nearest to the original words of Scripture. Of course the original MSS., as they came from Apostolic hands, are no longer extant. We have only copies. And these do not go higher than the fourth century. We have, however, citations going much higher, and translations considerably higher. The New Testa- ment Revisers, on a view of the whole, form to them- selves a Text ; they read what seems to them most probably the original, or what, on all the evidence at hand, appears to come nearest to the original. They do not adopt any critical text put out by other scholars, such as Lachmann, or Tischendorf, or Tregelles. They decide as they proceed ; and perhaps a company will more successfully solve such a problem than a single critic. But their principles are understood to be the same as those of the critics I have mentioned. They assume that the oldest MSS. come nearest the true Apostolic words ; and, accordingly, they give these a predominating authority. Then, secondly, having formed this text, the Revisers proceed to translate it. I need not say that the most startling changes in the New Version will arise from the new readings adopted in the Greek. An extreme example may be found in the passage already referred to, John i. 18, where 206 THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION many very ancient authorities read " God only be- gotten." It has been computed that, on an average, such a critical change may occur in every four or five verses. And, as may be supposed, these changes will be most numerous in the Gospels, and, of course, in the Apocalypse. With the text of the Old Testament the case is different. There the problem is even more perplexing — so perplexing, indeed, that no solution of it can be hoped for. There is only one Text of the Old Testa- ment, viz., that in our Hebrew Bibles. No MS. that has been discovered offers any important variety of reading ; and there is not much hope of any light from new MSS. But what the worth of our Hebrew Text is, is a question difficult to decide. The Text is certainly due to the scholars of Palestine. It had been settled with a unanimity which excluded all rivals, probably, before the time of our Lord. But its history is alto- gether unknown ; and consequently, except from conjecture and probability, its worth. But this we know, it was not the only text current at the time of its adoption. It is, in its own way, a critical edition as much as the New Testament of Lachmann or Tischendorf is ; or as that of the present body of Revisers will be. A different Recension or, at least, Codices with very different readings, were in favour elsewhere, as in Egypt. The Septuagint, or Greek translation, which was current in the time of our Lord, and much in use in the Oriental Churches for many centuries, could not have been made from our existing Hebrew text. It is absolutely certain that, in several Books of the Old Testament, the Septuagint exhibits readings greatly superior to those of our Hebrew Bibles. But from its hopelessly confused condition, arising partly perhaps THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION 207 from wilful corruption, but mainly from the mixing up of several Recensions, and even of other Greek Versions, the Septuagint cannot be adopted, as a concurrent witness along with the Hebrew, to the original words of the Old Testament. It must be prac- tically neglected. The most one can venture to do is to set its readings in the margin. And this is the pro- cedure adopted by the present Revisers. While the New Testament Revisers construct for themselves, from all existing authorities, a Greek text, which they then translate — and many of their most startling changes will be due to the adoption of new readings of the original— the Old Testament Revisers are obliged to confine themselves to the Massoretic text, setting anything which they conceive to be of value, appear- ing in the Septuagint or elsewhere, in no more promi- nent place than the margin. Thus it appears that, even if our present Authorized Bible were a perfectly faultless version of the text from which it was made, there would still be the most urgent need for revision. But who can indulge in so wild a flight of fancy as to imagine tfiat all the principles of interpretation adopted by the Revisers of 1611, and by their predecessors, were correct, and that no holes can be picked in their grammar, or in their expression ? Even Greek learning has made gigantic advances since then ; and much more, Hebrew. And who can doubt that, with every determination on the part of the translators to be honest, the prevailing faults of that age, such, for example, as an over-leaning to scientific expression in Theology, must be more or less reflected in the version ? The present age may have its own faults — I could name one which, I fear, may in some degree disfigure the new version, and, unless guarded against, make it nearly unreadable, viz., a critical bent, 208 THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION determined to express the agreements and differences in the various books, which are of significance in ques- tions of authenticity, the great quest of our day — the present age may have its own faults, but it is well able to see and to remove those of ages preceding. And the traces which it leaves of its own imperfections will furnish work for subsequent revisers in the times to come. No one who has compared our version with the originals, particularly with the Greek, can doubt that the aim of all engaged upon it, from William Tyndale downwards to King James's Committee of 1611, was the same, viz., to present the Scripture in simple idiomatic English. Even a century and a half before Tyndale, this was recognized by Wickliffe and his follower Purvey to be the task of a translator. All classical constructions and Greek or Latin forms of the sentence were to be avoided. Purvey about 1388 writes thus : " First . . . the best translating is to translate after the sentence, and not only after the words, so that the sentence be as open in English as in Latin. ... In translating into English, many resolutions moun (may) make the sentence open . . . thus, where Dominum formidabunt adversarii ejus, should be Englished thus by the letter : the Lord His adversaries should dread, I English it thus by resolu- tion : the adversaries of the Lord should dread Him. This principle was, if possible, conceived even more clearly by Tyndale, the real father of our present New Testament, and the father, I will venture to add, of the English New Testament, as long as the English lan- guage shall last. Tyndale informs us that he " per- ceived by experience, how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION 209 mother tongue — -this thing only moved me to trans- late the New Testament." When still a youth, and tutor in a country family, during a heated debate with some of the neighbouring priests at his em- ployer's table, he one day passionately exclaimed that " if God spared him life, ere many years he would cause a boy that driveth a plough to know more of the Scriptures than the Pope did." l Tyndale's aim was steadily kept in view by all suc- ceeding revisers. The object was to present the meaning of Scripture plainly in good English. But it was no part of the reviser's design to preserve any uniformity of rendering of the same word in the original or even of the same phrase. " Vengeance is Mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord," was an idiomatic and true rendering of an expression in the original ; but no less idiomatic and true was another rendering : " Vengeance belongeth unto Me ; I will recompence, saith the Lord " ; and both renderings occur. Indeed, the Revisers of 1611 formally announce one of their principles to be variety of rendering : " Another thing we think good to admonish thee of (gentle reader) that we have not tied ourselves to an uniformity of phrasing, or to an identity of words, as some peradventure would wish that we had done, . . . that we should express the same notion in the same particular word, as for example, if we translate the Hebrew or Greek word once by purpose, never to call it intent ; if one where journeying, never travelling ; if one where think, never suppose ; if one where pain, never ache ; if one where joy, never gladness, etc., thus to mince the matter we thought to savour more of curiosity than wisdom, and that rather it would breed scorn in the Atheist than 1 Westcott, History of the English Bible, p. 32. B.E. 14 210 THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION bring profit to the godly reader. For is the Kingdom of God become words or syllables ? Why should we be in bondage to them, if we may be free, use one precisely when we may use another no less fit, as commodiously. . . . We might also be charged (by scoffers) with some unequal dealing towards a great number of good English words. For as it is written of a certain philosopher that he should say that those logs were happy that were made images to be wor- shipped, for their fellows as good as they lay for blocks behind the fire ; so if we should say as it were to cer- tain words, ' Stand up higher, have a place in the Bible always, 5 and to others of like quality : * Get ye hence, be banished for ever,' we might be taxed perad- venture with St. James's words, viz., to be partial in ourselves and judges of evil thoughts." There is no doubt that this resolution of the Re- visers, somewhat whimsically defended here, has greatly contributed to make the English Bible what it is, and to give it much of the hold on men's imaginations which it has. Its pathos and music and charming variety are largely due to this ; its beauty, in a word, is greatly owing to it. And religion very willingly allies itself with what is beautiful, and uses it for its own furtherance. And any change here will, without doubt, be a loss to religion. And how great a loss it will also be to the cause of literature, and the interests of the English tongue ! The English Bible has been to us what the Qoran has been to the dweller in the desert, the source both of our intellectual and religious life, and the instrument for expressing our highest thought. Yet we must admit that it may be questioned how far this Canon of Interpretation, adopted by the Re- visers, was a just one. If it was just, they certainly THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION 211 abused it. For example, there are passages identical in the three Evangelists which, in our version, look comparatively unlike. It is scarcely fair to an Apostle who uses the term Xoylfy if not in a technical, at least, in a special sense, to obscure his use of the one word by giving it four different renderings, saying sometimes count for righteousness, sometimes account, sometimes reckon, and again impute. This seems excessive variety ; although to a reader with common intelligence no loss could be occasioned. There is cer- tainly now rising, and indeed running very strongly, a current of opposition to this method of rendering — a current, I fear, which will be found to work as much havoc as the opposite one. The maxim of this new method is to render the same Greek or Hebrew word always by the same English one. Under this new principle, all variety will disappear. We shall no more read : Shouldst not thou have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee ? ; nor, He shall separate them from one another, as a shepherd- divideth his sheep from the goats ; nor, the chief seats in the synagogues and the uppermost rooms at feasts ; nor, in the beginning of Hebrews, God who spake at sundry times and in divers manners. To Festus' exclamation : Paul, thou art beside thyself, the apostle will no longer reply : I am not mad, most noble Festus. The same apostle will no more be allowed to say : As touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the Church. No more will that most graphic passage of James be allowed to retain its gay variety : If there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment ; and ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing. 212 THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION It may be argued that this variety is not in the original, and ought not to be in the translation. But, howev.er plausible the argument be that the same Greek or Hebrew word should always be rendered by the same English word, it may be met with the well known fact that the genius of one language differs from that of another ; that sameness and exactness characterize the Greek, variety and looseness the English ; that the Hebrew language is poor in its vocabulary, while the English is copious ; that even where a word corre- sponds in general to another, the addition of an epithet may destroy the correspondence, and render the use of another term necessary ; that not only meaning, but rhythm, flow, and sound make up language. It may be fully admitted that the principle adopted by the Revisers of 1611 is liable to abuse, and was abused by them ; but, if the opposite principle be adopted, it should be exercised with great liberality, and variety admitted, whenever idiom or rhythm or even vigorous expression requires it. What is to be dreaded in the present revision or any revision nowadays, is the making the Bible a learned book — debasing it from its high place as a book that appeals to the heart, and making it a field for intel- lectual exercise. Perhaps the demands of this scep- tical time must be had respect to, and translation in some way adapted to it ; but while something will be gained by this, something will s be lost. We may no longer tolerate such variety as this : " These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal ; " but whatever we substitute for it, the rhythm of the verse will inevitably be ruined. I have alluded to a canon of interpretation, the abuse of which renders a revision necessary, particu- larly in doctrinal passages, where it is essential that THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION 213 the same term should always appear with the same rendering. When we turn to grammar, it is natural that considerable defects should appear. The defects are the same both in the Old Testament and the New ; and are chiefly of two kinds — defects in understanding the use of the Article, and defects in knowledge of the use of the tenses. Faults in lexicography are not numer- ous, though of course in Hebrew some very glaring ones are to be met with. In Job xvii. 6 our version makes Job complain : " He hath made me also a by- word of the people ; and aforetime I was as a tabret." The word translated " tabret " has been derived from a root meaning " to beat the drum," whereas it really comes from quite a different root, meaning " to spit " and the passage should read : " And I am one to be publicly spit upon," or, one to be spit upon in the face ! A passage even more peculiar occurs in the same book, chapter xxii. 29 and 30 : "He shall save the humble person, He shall deliver the island of the innocent." Now the word translated island usually has that meaning ; but here it is the archaic negative, as in I-chabod, in-glorious. So the passage means : He shall deliver the not-innocent, i.e., the sinful. Occa- sionally even in Greek the exact force of a word is lost. In Matthew xiv. 8 : " And she (i.e. the daughter of Herodias) being before instructed of her mother, said : Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger." The expression translated before instructed means rather 'put forward, urged on, She being pushed forward by her mother. " We may conceive," says Arch- bishop Trench, " the unhappy girl, with all her vanity and levity, yet shrinking from the petition of blood which her mother would put into her lips, and needing to be urged on, or pushed forward, before she could be induced to make it." Again in the singular passage in 214 THE BIBLE AND ITS REVISION Colossians ii. 15 a , w€K§v