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HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT

Hebrew Life and Thought
Being Interpretative Studies in the
Literature of Israel

Br
LOUISE SEYMOUR HOUGHTON
Author of Telling Bible Stories, Life ofthe Lord fesus, etc., etc.

Chicago
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
7906

CoPTBiaHT 1906 Bt
The Univeksitt of Chicago

Published June 1906

Composed and Priated by
Tfee Ualversity of Chicago Press
Oiicago, IlllBois, U. S. A.

TO
REV. GEORGE B. STEWART, D.D.
PRESIDENT OF AUBURN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, WHOSE
luminous life has made LIGHT TO ME
life's darkest MYSTERY, THIS BOOK
IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED

PREFACE
It is only fair to both readers and writer of
these studies to say that they were written, and
had been given in the form of lectures, before
any of the now large and daily increasing popu
lar literature of this subject had come into being.
In the nature of things, every repetition of these
lectures — and some of them have been given
more than thirty times — implied their careful
revision in whatever new light had been shed
upon the subject; and now, before receiving their
final form, they have been subjected to a very
thorough revision. But as they were first writ
ten, and as they now stand, they are far more
the fruit of a lifetime of Bible study than of any
recent reading. That study began at an age ear
lier than children of today are taught to read,
and has continued for more than the average
lifetime. Its results have passed into the fiber of
my mind, so that it would be impossible now, if
it were desirable, to give authorities for many of
the statements here made, or for the positions
here held ; or to say what, if anything, here is my
own contribution to the subject. Probably very
little, if anything, is original with me. The

viii HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
purpose of these papers was not, and is not,
to give forth original ideas, but to bring the
more or less cultured but unscientific Bible stu
dent into a hospitable attitude toward the new
light that scholarship has shed upon the sacred
page. It has long been my conviction that if
scientific scholarship had more generally availed
itself of the method of culture, it would not have
aroused that alarm and antagonism with which
it even yet has to reckon. These papers are my
efifort to allay both, so far as their influence
may reach, by putting into the language of cul
ture some of those conclusions which, when
clothed only in the language of scholarship, have
aroused hostility which appears to me as unneces
sary as it is unfortunate. My contribution to
this end, therefore, like that of most popular
writers, is more in the attitude of the mind which
receives and gives forth the thoughts of others,
than in anything new or original. It is, indeed,
quite possible that the few ideas which appear
to me to be mine, and which constitute the illu
mination which it seems to me that I have shed
upon the subject, may be found in the works of
other writers, though I am not aware of having
found them. To me they appear to be either
sudden flashes of insight, or the gradual develop
ment in my own mind of a seed-thought planted
many years ago by parents of unusual culture

PREFACE ix
and breadth of vision, or casually dropped there
by I know not what agency, but in any case
equally the gift of God.
My warm thanks are due to Mr. John M. P.
Smith, of the University of Chicago, for care
fully reading the manuscript of this book and
oflFering many valuable criticisms, which had
much weight in the very thorough revision which
the work received before going to the printer;
and especially to Professor Julius A. Bewer,
Ph.D., of Union Theological Seminary, for read
ing the book in proof, and making important
suggestions, by which I have been very glad to
profit.
L. S. H.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Day-Book of the Most High i
II. Folklore in the Old Testament . 26
III. The Poetry of the Old Testament 65
IV. Heroes and Heroism ... 94
V. Eastern Light on the Story of Elisha 115
VI. Love-Stories of Israel . . . 147
VII. A Parable of Divine Love . 183
VIII. Secular Faith .... ... . 212
IX. The Search for Spiritual Certainty . 256
X. The Hebrew Utopia  . 300
XI. The Law and Modern Society  328
Index . . . . • ,375

CHAPTER I
THE DAY-BOOK OF THE MOST HIGH
I
It was Heine who called the Old Testament
" Jehovah's diary." That sad, bewildered,
dauntless spirit was not able to find in it the
divine teaching which some of us discover; he
could not make that application of its utterances
to his own needs which to some of us is so pre
cious ; but he did see in it that which many of
us fail to see, that which is its most important
characteristic, making it the unique book of all
the world. He saw that the Old Testament was
the record of God's dealing with the entire hu
man race. Yet it is not a history nor a philoso
phy of history. Bit by bit, part by part, in
divers portions and in divers manners, as one
sets down the events of his life in his own diary,
now with ample detail, again in mere suggestion
which only he who has the clue can understand —
thus has God given us in this volume the revela
tion of a gracious purpose, the " inner history of
a converse of God with man." With deeper in
sight than we find in the sacred books of other

2 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
peoples, the Old Testament pictures the world
as ruled by the thought of God ; with a certainty
unknown to other ancient works, sacred or pro
fane, it unlocks the riddles of history with God
as the master-key; more completely than any
thing that has ever been written, in any time or
tongue, it shows the entire story of the human
race, past, present, and future, to be an organic
unity, event growing out of event by a natural
development, a process in which each step prophe
sies of the end — the " one far-off divine event
toward which the whole creation moves."
As the records of other ancient peoples are
unearthed, it becomes the more impressive a fact
that the Old Testament gives a more compre
hensive view of history than any other work of
ancient time. The first attempt to account for
the various races actually present at the dawn of
historic time, of which we have any record, is
that found in some early chapters of Genesis;
while large parts of Isaiah and some other proph
ets are given to a survey of the whole world as
then known, showing one nation after another
as it stood in relation to the divine thought for
the human race, then being worked out in the
history of the people Israel.
It is a mistake to think of the Jews as a sepa
rate people in a geographical sense, as if they
were isolated from the world in their mountain-

THE DAY-BOOK OF THE MOST HIGH 3
and desert-girt land; they were in constant com
munication with all the nations then existing. It
was a true instinct which led them to mark in
their temple inclosure the precise center of the
world. That circle of marble pavement surround
ing a low pillar ^ did mark it then. Palestine
was the geographical center of the world in a
perfectly true sense, and Israel is still its historic
center. The old rabbi who said, " Israel is among
the nations as the heart among the limbs," spoke
true. Israel was the vital organ of the world.
It is with the heart that one sees God, as our Lord
taught us,^ and this vision and faculty divine
were the heritage of the sons of Israel.
Nothing can be of profounder significance than
the fact that from the earliest times the Hebrew
idea of God was a moral idea. Not that Israel
was the only religious nation of antiquity; the
most important interests of all ancient peoples
were religious interests, and this was especially
the case with the Semitic peoples, to which great
family the Hebrews belonged. Nothing is more
striking than the revelation of this fact by the
lately discovered inscriptions of Assyria and
Babylonia, Moab and Phoenicia. All their wars
were religious wars; all good and evil came to
1 Christian zeal has removed it to the Greek chapel in the Church
of the Holy Sepulcher, where at the great feasts it is kissed by
thousands of devout pilgrims.
»Matt. 5:8.

4 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
them from the hand of their god, Chemosh or
Melkart or Bel; in these things they differed
not at all from Israel. Did David long to build
a house for the God who had " given him rest
from all his enemies round about " ? ^ Mesha,
king of Moab, the contemporary of Ahab, in
scribes on his monument, discovered hardly forty
years ago,* " I have made this high place to
Chemosh .... for he saved me from all
the kings." Did Samuel hew Agag in pieces be
fore Jehovah ? ^ "I slew all the inhabitants of the
city," says Mesha; "a delightful sight to Che
mosh." Did Jehovah say to Saul, " Go and
smite Amelek " ? ® The Moabite Stone tells how
" Chemosh said (to Mesha), ' Go and take Nebo
from Israel,' " and again, " Go and make war on
Horonaim," an Israelite city. It was not in be
ing religious that Israel differed from other na
tions, but in the character of his God. Bel and
Chemosh had no more moral character than
Apollo and Aphrodite, and Thor and Freya. But
Jehovah was good in the moral sense of the
word; he was a righteous God. What made
Israel different from other peoples was his pro
found belief that eternal righteousness ruled the
world. It was this, as Matthew Arnold says, that made
' 2 Sam. 7:2. ' I Sam. 15: 33.
•In 1868. » I Sam. 15: 3.

THE DAY-BOOK OF THE MOST HIGH 5
Abraham differ from the highly religious Chal
deans, from among whom he was called out : he
dared to demand jii,stice of his God. " Shall not
the Judge of all the earth do right f " ' If, as
Professor Toy says, " the religious system of a
people expresses its attempt to construe the world
in accordance with its highest instincts," what
must it have been to the world to have had,
through long ages, in the very center of its active
life, a people who construed the world as- related
in all its functions to a God of ever deeper and
more comprehensive moral character ! ^ The
thought lends interest to every clue we have to
Israel's relations with the nations. Great por
tions of the Bible, which had seemed obscure and
unimportant, spring up at once into high relief,
and take on living interest. The burden of Tyre,*
the burden of Nineveh,^" the burden of the desert
of the sea,^^ begin to mean something when we
find that these peoples and places have their part.
too, in the development of God's great thought
for the salvation of man.
The volume which, by a central idea like this,
'Gen. 18:23.
' " That Jehovah's relation to Israel is not natural but ethical
is the doctrine of the prophets, and is emphasized, in dependence
on their teaching, in the book of Deuteronomy. But ... the
idea has its foundation in pre-prophetic times; and indeed the
prophets, though they give it fresh and powerful application, plainly
do not regard the conception as an innovation." — W. Robertson
Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 319. note.
•Isa. 23:1. "Nah. 1:1. "Isa. 21:1.

6 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
brings into unity the story of the whole world's
life surely demands a larger study than the purely
devotional reading which is all that most of those
who read it at all give to it. For it is manifestly
more than a revelation of God to the individual
soul, more than a system of belief, more than a
law of life. It gives the key to human history,
showing its secret to be the converse of God with
man. Without question, the book which shows
this truth is a far larger book than most people
who read it have realized. And yet to most of
those who read the Bible daily it is gradually
becoming a smaller and smaller book. Not less
precious; far otherwise, no doubt. The light of
day was not less precious to the man of whom
we read in the tragic story of the " Iron Shroud,"
who day after day saw the walls of his prison
closing in upon him, and shutting out one by
one the windows that opened between him and
the sun. At first he did not notice the narrow
ing area of his chamber ; and perhaps my readers
are now reflecting for the first time that, as the
years go on, they read the same portions of the
Bible more frequently, going over and over again
their favorite psalms and chapters, making fewer
excursions into the unfamiliar fields of history
and prophecy and wisdom and law.
They are hardly better off who have learned
to see spiritual lessons applicable to themselves in

THE DAY-BOOK OF THE MOST HIGH 7
all parts of the Bible — in every record of God's
dealings with men in history, and in every psalm,
prophecy, and proverb. Reading the Bible in
this subjective way, with self as the center of
importance, they have so far gained as to have
been able to find that the driest and least profit
able passages may have their gleams of interest;
as when the story of Jabez flashes out like a pre
cious jewel from the midst of a dull genealogical
record. ^^ It is easy to make a personal application
of this exquisite little story, with its half-revela
tion of pathos and patience ; and where the reader
finds no such helps over hard places, he manages
to make his reading " profitable " by means of
the double sense, the figurative or typical appli
cation of it to his own inner history.
But granting that this is a legitimate use of
the Word of God, what a belittling of a volume
which brings to light the most sublime of all
truths, thus to whittle it down to fit individual
needs! A somewhat over-brilliant essayist of
recent years has said that, though we have ac
cepted the Copernican system of astronomy, yet
in our philosophy of life we are still Ptolemaic —
ourselves the center of our universe. This is cer
tainly the case with regard to the Bible study of
most people; and they miss more than they are
aware by thus making their own personality the
" I chron. 4: 9, 10,

8 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
center of the Bible, and listening merely for the
voice of God to their own souls. We cannot
learn to know God by discovering what he is to
ourselves alone; it is not until we learn some
thing of what he is to the world that we begin
to know him. To assume a double significance
for every passage of which the obvious meaning
has no application to oneself, seeking therein
for the cipher that tells one's own inner history, is
like the way certain people study Shakespeare,
finding in it the cipher in which Bacon wrote his
own story; only the loss of all that is large and
central and universal is incomparably greater.
It is true that we have the authority of the
church fathers for the allegorical interpretation.
They laid down the principle that everything in
Scripture which, taken in its natural sense, ap
pears unedifying, must be made edifying by
some method of typical or figurative application ;
and Origen carried this principle so far as to
teach that the literal sense of Scripture is often
designedly impossible, absurd, or immoral; lest,
cleaving to the letter alone, men should remain
at a distance from the dogmata, and learn nothing
worthy of God. But the Fathers lived in a day
when history had not become a science, when the
Hebrew language had not been revived from
the dead by comparative philology, and when the
comparative study of religions had not yet begun

THE DAY-BOOK OF THE MOST HIGH 9
to illumine the pages of the Bible. No Bible
reader of today would accept Origen's view in
this particular ; but all do not perceive with equal
clearness that, unless they accept some such prin
ciple as he lays down, they have only two alter
natives: either to find the greater half of the
Bible meaningless, or else to search for its mean
ing by the same methods by which men search
for the meaning of other written things.
When we come to think carefully on the sub
ject of biblical interpretation, we see that it is as
dishonoring to God to put a meaning into his
inspired Word which is not naturally there, as it
is impertinent to do what some eminent theolo
gians, and a great many less eminent people, are
continually doing — attempt to " reconcile "
statements that appear to be contradictory. It is
not faith, but presumption, which impels us to
explain away anything in the Bible, or try to fit
it to a standard not its own; even though that
standard be what we deem truth. For we know
only in part ; and yet even we know that truth is
something other than verbal accuracy. What we
need is the open mind, willing at whatever cost
to know the truth. Our first question must in
deed be simply: What does the Old Testament
say? And to this question the answer must be
found by the method by which we can ascertain
what any book says. When we have seen what

ID HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
it says, we are ready to ask: What does it
mean? We usually go to work the other way.
We think we know pretty well what it must
mean, and so we devote our -energies to making
what it says correspond with that.
II
The explanation of this mistake, which still
remains almost universal, notwithstanding many
recent efforts to correct it, is to be found in the
fact that people generally do not concern them
selves with the literary character of the Old Tes
tament. Not only at divers times but in divers
manners, divers literary forms — narrative, prov
erb, prophecy, psalm, parable, epistle — has God
spoken to the world. There is always a reason
for the form of every work of literature worthy
of the name. Thought creates its own form;
the thought of God for man, that revelation of
his gracious purpose, that inner history of his
converse with mankind, which we have in the
Old Testament, must, in the very nature of
thought, have revealed its various phases in vari
ous forms. To discern the force and meaning
of these forms, their relation to the idea, is a duty
pressing upon all devout Bible readers.
A large portion of the perplexities awakened
by reading the Old Testament, especially the sup
posed need of " reconciling " conflicting historic

THE DAY-BOOK OF THE MOST HIGH II
statements, vanish when one discovers the liter
ary class to which these statements belong, and
traces the relation of the form to the idea which
made it so. Nothing is more evident to any stu
dent of the books of the Bible which are called
historical than that fact as fact is everywhere of
minor importance to the writers. Let anyone
read straight through at a sitting the book of
Judges, for example. It is full of stirring inci
dents, of marvelous deeds ; but it is not these that
will stick in the memory as one closes the book,
but rather the ever-recurring words, resounding
in his ears like the ceaseless roll of the waves
upon the seashore : " The children of Israel did
evil in the sight of the Lord .... and the
Lord delivered them into the hands of their ene
mies .... then they cried unto the Lord
. . . . and he raised them up a Saviour." ^*
That is, the purpose of this book appears to be
what theologians call a pragmatic purpose — or
what, from the present point of view, may be
called an ideal purpose: to teach, not history, but
the nature of the dealings of God with Israel;
to bring to light, that is, by means oi a fragmen
tary record of events, such as one puts down in a
diary, the method of God's inner converse with
man. If the books which we call historic are not
" Judg. 2:11, 14, 16; 3: 7. 9; 4: 2. 3, 4 ff.. etc.

12 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
that in the ordinary sense of the word, what then
are they? The Jews call them prophecy. They
divide the Old Testament into the Law, the
Prophets, and the Sacred Writings, and all that
lies between the Pentateuch and Esther they in
clude in prophecy. Yet nothing is more evident
than the essential difference between the books
generally classed as history and those which are
known as prophecy. Precisely what is the differ
ence between them is a literary question of in
tense interest, to which I can here give only a
clue by pointing out that, however far-reaching
might be the meaning of prophecy, its first pur
pose must have been, in the nature of things, to
interpret passing events to the men who were ex
periencing them, so that they might see God in
them, and discern in some degree his gracious
purpose. With a self-consciousness which would
be almost sublime, were it not so pitifully blind
ing. Christian readers of the Old Testament have
long assumed that the prophecies were written
for themselves, to furnish them a proof of the
truth of revelation by the fact that the prophecies
have been fulfilled. But it is evident that this
could hardly have been the view of those to whom
the prophecies were given. They, the Hebrew
contemporaries of the prophets, must have sup
posed that these prophetic utterances concerned
themselves, and were intended as a revelation to

THE DAY-BOOK OF THE MOST HIGH 13
them of God's gracious purpose. The historic
books have in general the same purpose, but they
were written, not only or not always for the actors
in the events, but also for a later generation, and
with a view to historic record. Yet is their pur
pose none the less prophetic : to reveal God and
show him active in history; although from their
literary character prophetic significance is found
not so much in the interpretation of events as in
their general scope and trend.^*
Ill
If, then, the historical books of the Old Testa
ment are not prophecy, and yet, strictly speaking,
are not history in the ordinary acceptance of the
word, what are they ?
Thoughtful reading makes one fact increasing
ly evident, namely, that imagination had a part
in the writing of these books. The more we
study them, the more we feel that poetry is latent
all through them. This is not to say that there
is untruth in them. The proverbial antithesis be
tween truth and poetry is a mischievous mistake.
Imagination, poetry, is a necessary element of
truth. The antithesis does not He between truth
" These remarks do not apply to the books of Chronicles, Ezra,
and Nehemiah. They are practically one work, written, not from
the prophetic, but from the priestly standpoint, and cover the
history of Judah from Adam (in whom, from this pomt of view,
it potentially began) to the latest event recorded, 432 ». c

14 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
and poetry, but it often does lie between truth
and scientific statement, which fails of accuracy
precisely from lack of poetry. As Matthew Ar
nold pointed out, it is more accurate to describe
God as " the High and Holy One that inhabiteth
eternity " than to say that he is " the moral and
intelligent governor of the universe," though the
latter is a scientific statement of fact, and the
former is poetry. More than half the supposed
oppositions between the Bible and science arise
from the lack of poetic instinct in scientist and
theologian alike. .If the theologians of the Latin
church had been aware of the fact that certain
parts of the Old Testament were poetry, they
would probably not have condemned Galileo for
teaching that the world moves, in blasphemous
contradiction, as they supposed, to the biblical
statement that the Lord has set the world upon
pillars, ^^ and again that he has so established it
that it cannot be moved. ^®
When we look at the historical books of the
Old Testament from the true — that is, the poetic
— standpoint, we perceive in a moment that they
are not history in our modern understanding of
the word " history," but answer more nearly to
our idea of epic — the great world-epic of the
dealings of God with men. Let me define an epic
as an imaginative and poetic narrative of mem-
"i Sam. 2:8. "Ps. 96:10.

THE DAY-BOOK OF THE MOST HIGH 15
orable things, always with appeal to the religious
instinct, and it becomes clear that this precisely
describes the historical narratives of the Bible.
We shall learn more later about this epic method ;
but here we may properly pause to observe that,
just as the Iliad and the Odyssey give us that
sense of familiarity with Greek civilization which
makes the history of Greece potent as the inter
preter of human institutions and human thought,
so the Bible epic is of importance in giving a
large setting, a human environment, to spiritual
truth. We should take into consideration that
our only knowledge of the conditions under which
the divine revelation first came is from these so-
called historic books. When we come to New
Testament times, we have an immense back
ground and environment of secular history and
literature, and therefore the revelation of New
Testament truth is given in most condensed and
concrete form. It was not so in Old Testament
times; and it is a very suggestive fact that the
sacred history becomes less full, and finally ceases
altogether at about the time when profane history
and literature came in to supply its place as a
background — the time of Cyrus and the begin
ning of Greek supremacy.

l6 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
IV
Beginning, then, to study the Bible as litera
ture, the first question must be as to the way in
which it was written — the human element. We
are not studying the question of inspiration ; let
me here assure my readers that no one can study
the literature of the Bible without coming to the
profound conviction that it is inspired. But we
must remember that inspiration is not necessarily
given by means of a book. God can speak to the
human heart by any means. He spoke to men
long before ever a book was made, and we have
no means of knowing whether he spoke in words
or not; but we know that he speaks to us, and
that he does not speak in words. We may, if we
like, say that God could have made a panorama
of creation pass before Moses; though we have
no reason to suppose that he did so. But, how
ever Moses or anyone else received a divine reve
lation, he could pass the knowledge on only by
means of words, and could make it permanently
useful only by committing it to writing. Now,
not to speak of the fact that language is contin
ually growing and developing — is " fluid," as
Matthew Arnold says — fitting itself into any
mold, we must remember also that the art of lit
erary composition, like the arts of painting and
sculpture, has its mechanical side, and that its
methods have greatly improved since the Old

THE DAY-BOOK OF THE MOST HIGH 17
Testament was written. Punctuation, for exam
ple, is a device far more modern than the latest
Old Testament writer; so is the distinction be
tween capitals and small letters, and even the de
vice of spacing between words. Every great
library contains old manuscripts in which the let
ters are solid, the words following close upon
one another ; and if our English Bible were thus
printed, familiar as it is to most of us, we should
probably find some difficulty in getting at its
meaning. Practice enables scholars to read the
old manuscripts, notwithstanding their lack of
modern facilities, and there are very few errors
in translation due to wrong divisions between
words — though there are some due to wrong
divisions between sentences.
The absence of quotation marks is a more seri
ous difficulty, and it is certain that much of the
obscurity of the prophets and psalms is due to the
failure to perceive that certain passages are
quoted, as uttered by God or by some person not
the writer. In some cases this is evident, as in
the magnificent psalm sung at the triumphal en
try of the ark into the newly conquered city of
Jerusalem.^'' Here the alternation of voices is
plain — the priest approaching with the ark, cry
ing: " Ps. 24: 7, 10.

l8 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Lift up your heads, O ye gates !
Be lift up, ye doors of old,
That the King of Glory may come in!
and the warden answering from within:
Who is He, the King of Glory?
But there are other places where the proper set
ting of quotation marks throws a flood of light
upon the passage. This is very strikingly the
case in the Song of Solomon, and is of especial
importance in prophetic passages. One attempt
ing to read a copy of Shakespeare which made
no division between the speeches, gave no name
of speaker, no list even of the persons taking
part, would find himself in much the same pre
dicament as when reading the dramatic passages
of the Old Testament as they are generally
printed. The translators perceived this difficulty in the
case of the recapitulation of the work of the
Levites, in i Chron. 23 : 5, where " said David "
is inserted by them; and still more interestingly
in Ps. 27 : 8, where, in the midst of an importu
nate prayer to Jehovah, occur the words " Seek
ye my face," evidently spoken by God. The
translators have very properly prefaced them
with the words (not in the Hebrew) "When
thou saidst." But there are few such instances,^^
« See Lam. 2: 15; Job 9: 19 (R. V.).

THE DAY-BOOK OF THE MOST HIGH 19
and opportunities for some such treatment occur
on nearly every page.
Many of the perplexities of the Old Testament
arise from the want of such mechanical devices
as the parenthesis, the footnote, and the appendix,
none of which was known when the Old Testa
ment was written. In the story of the Shunam-
ite,^® Elisha and Gehazi appear to carry on in the
woman's presence a conversation which would
more courteously have been carried on in her ab
sence, and in fact was so, although the preceding
verse says the woman stood before Elisha. In
the verse that follows the conversation, indeed,
Gehazi is told to call her, which is absurd if she
was already there. If the writer had been famil
iar with the use of the parenthesis, this awkward
ness, which is purely in the form of the narrative,
would have been avoided; there is no real con
tradiction, but an interesting bit of evidence of
the difficulty with which so simple a literary de
vice as the parenthesis was wrought out. In 2
Kings 5 : 2 the explanation how the wife of Naa-
man, the Syrian, came to have a Hebrew maid
servant would have been put in a footnote, if
the methods of writing in that day had admitted
of such a device.
This question of structure is particularly im
portant in view of what are called discrepancies.
"2 Kings 4: 12—15.

20 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
For example, in the story of Jehu we have some
statements which seem almost fatally contradic
tory until we understand the difficulty of literary
mechanism in those times. In 2 Kings 10:30
Jehu is commended, although in the verses which
precede and follow (29, 31) he is severely con
demned: (Vs. 29) "Howbeit from the sins of
Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to
sin, Jehu departed not from after them; to wit
the golden calves that were in Bethel and that
were in Dan. (Vs. 30) And the Lord said unto
Jehu, Because thou hast done well in executing
that which is right in mine eyes and hast done
unto the house of Ahab according to all that was
in their heart, the children of the fourth genera
tion shall sit on the throne of Israel. (Vs. 31)
But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of
Jehovah God of Israel with all his heart, for he
departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, king of
Israel, which made Israel to sin."
The three verses read like a continuous state
ment, but, as a matter of fact, only one belongs
to the narrative ; the others are observations add
ed by the historian, long after Jehu's death, re
viewing his career as a whole. It was simply
impossible, with the existing facilities for book-
making, for him to put his own reflections in an
appendix at the end of the book, as a modern
historian would do.

THE DAY-BOOK OF THE MOST HIGH 21
Although the mechanical devices with which
we are so familiar were unknown to the Hebrew
writers, they also had their literary devices, which
are quite as important as a basis for interpreta
tion. Chief among them perhaps is parallelism,
which is a cardinal factor in poetic construction,
though it is not confined to poetry. It was in
the genius of Hebrew utterance to fall into paral
lelism in moments of deep feeling, when all lan-
¦guage takes on a semi-poetic form. Our Savior
often spoke in parallels : " I am come that they
might have life, and that they might have it more
abundantly." ^^ " They [the sheep] shall never
perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my
hand." *^ In parallelism the second line usually
does not state a new proposition, but amplifies
or extends or completes that of the first. Much
faulty exegesis is due to an oversight of this
principle; for example, a great deal of scorn has
been poured forth by scoffers, and much apology
used to be wasted by expositors, on the statement
that Christ entered Jerusalem riding on an ass
cmd a colt. ^2 Profane levity amused itself with
imaginary pictures of our Lord bestriding two
animals at once, and devout literature did its best
to blur over the picture. Nothing of the kind is
needed to those who understand the genius of
Hebrew literature (as we all may if we read our
™John io: 10. ^ijohn 10:28.

22 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
English Bible intelligently) ; for those who do,
know that the second line states more definitely
what was stated in the first : He rode on an ass ;
yes, it was a colt, an ass's foal ; a fact important
from the Hebrew point of view of the consecra
tion of unused things to divine purposes.
From parallelism we might go on to proverb,
and find that the Hebrew fondness for this form
of teaching often gives a new canon of interpre
tation; and so through all the literary forms —
parable, love song, sonnet, drama, philosophy.
But there is room here only to consider the enor
mous influence upon popular culture and refine
ment which this method of Bible study would
exert. The Authorized Version of the Bible is
the finest work of literature in the English lan
guage, and perhaps in any language. It includes
nearly every known literary form; it abounds in
passion and pathos, in humor, sarcasm, playful
ness, proverb, by-word ; it pictures early manners
and customs with a fidelity which admits of no
question ; its thoughts are incomparably noble, its
diction of a grand simplicity and naturalness, its
ruling idea an idea almost inconceivably great. A
nation that has the Bible in every hotel bedroom.
in the saloon of every steamer, ought to be the
most cultivated nation in the world.
All men of great literary achievement have
'^^Matt. 21 : s.

THE DAY-BOOK OF THE MOST HIGH 23
been students of the Bible. The free-thinking
Shelley's poetry and prose are full of it. One
short paragraph in his Defence of Poetry has no
less than seven biblical allusions. Shakespeare
and Raleigh, Burke and Southey, Newman and
Saintsbury, Longfellow and Browning, Thomas
Hardy and Stevenson, are fairly saturated with
the language, the thoughts, the tropes and figures
of the Bible. Ruskin attributes all the warmth
and color of his style to his having been obliged
in his boyhood to read aloud with his mother
once every year the entire Bible, and to commit
to memory many of its noblest chapters. The
statesman Bright made striking use of the death
of the first-bom of Egypt in a memorable speech
in the House of Commons during the Crimean
War. Southey makes fine use of Elijah's chariot
of fire in his passage on the death of Nelson.
And who can read without a thrill the use by
Dickens, at the death of Sydney Carton, of the
passage, " I am the resurrection and the life, saith
theLord"? The Bible has molded the style of all our great
est writers, and it is even yet the strongest coun
teracting force against the degenerating influence
upon English style of the rapid writing and
careless reading of the present day. One can
hardly take up a book or serious magazine
article without finding allusions to the Bible on

24 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
every page. An interesting article on the po
litical situation in England, written not by a
literary man, but by a professional statesman,
contained more than a dozen biblical allusions,
and the article owed its fine literary character
almost entirely to the writer's familiarity with
the Old Testament. The same discovery may be
made in almost any work of literature, if the
reader is sufficiently familiar with the Bible to
detect the allusions to it. But precisely here is
the difficulty. Few young people of today have
a verbal acquaintance with the Old Testament,
and it will soon become necessary to edit all our
greatest writers, even such novelists as Hardy
and Stevenson, with explanations of the biblical
allusions. We consider it a point of education to make
our children familiar with the mythology of
Greece and Rome, of the Norse folk and the old
Germans, chiefly that they may understand what
they read. We deem that man uncultured who
does not recognize quotations from the classics,
or is not able to make them at need. Here is the
greatest classic of all time. Let us study it as
we would study any classic, that we may be able
to wring from it its fullest meaning. Goethe
says: I am convinced that the Bible becomes ever more
beautiful the more one understands it; that is, the more

THE DAY-BOOK OF THE MOST HIGH 25
one gets insight to see that every word which we take gen
erally and make special application of to our own wants
has had, in connection with certain circumstances, with cer
tain relations of time and place, a peculiar direct individual
reference of its own.
And if, indeed, this classic is, as most of us
believe, inspired by God in a sense in which no
other book is inspired, if in it we find the history
of his converse with the sons of men in the forra
in which he has chosen to give it to us, then no
study is amiss which gives the clue to its half-
hints, which brings light to its obscurities, and
shows its true character, as the diary of the con
verse of heaven with earth, the day-book of the
Eternal God.

CHAPTER II
FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

In that impressive book, A Study of Deathj
the author strikingly points out the childlike
character of the Hebrew people. The most prom
inent characteristics of the " children of Israel "
were those of childhood. They had the intense
feeling, the spontaneity and absence of self-con
sciousness, which are so charming in childhood;
Hke children, they were acutely susceptible to the
delights of the senses ; they loved good food, per
fumes, the dance, and music; they delighted in
jewels and gorgeous apparel; the splendor of a
goodly Babylonish garment lured Achan to ruin,''
and with savory meat blind Isaac was beguiled.^
Jacob thought it a high blessing for Judah that
He hath washed in wine his raiment,
And in the blood of the grape his vesture.
Heavy in the eyes from wine
And white of teeth from milk ;*
1 Henry Mills Alden, A Study of Death (Harpers, 1895),
pp. 214—42 passim.
2 Josh. 7:21. *Gen. 49: n, 12.
'Gen. 27: 1-3, 6-14, 18-23. 26

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 27
and for Asher that
His bread is fat
And he yieldeth the dainties of a king,^
Yet with all this joy of sensation, sensuality
was no more a Hebrew vice than it is a vice of
childhood. As in all childlike natures, delight in
the sensible world was closely associated with
high spiritual exaltation, and it was because this
childhood was perennial, lasting on through gen
eration after generation, that the spiritual capa
city of this people became so deep. " Heaven lies
about us in our infancy ; " to the Hebrew it was
ever close at hand. It was no strange thing to
him that messengers of God came and went fa
miliarly between earth and that near sky in which
God dwelt, like the shepherd who guards his
sheep,® spreading out the heaven as a tent above
him.''^ The Hebrew had no more conception of
the orderly development of events than the child
has, and therefore he received the miraculous in
terventions of God in his daily life as a child
takes its father's gifts, not as evidence of his ex
istence and credibility, but as witness to his ten
der preoccupation in the well-being of his child.
The entire history of Israel, as Mr. Alden says,*
foreshadowed the principle which the life of Jesus
illustrated, and which he laid down as the cardi-
^ Gen. 49:20. ' Ps. 104:2.
'Judg. 6:11-16; 13:2-9. 'Op. eit., p. 237.

28 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
nal principle of his kingdom: that he who does
not become as a little child cannot enter therein.^
Perhaps it was because of this childlike artless-
ness that this people, living in the midst of na
tions each of which had its own supreme god,
and entirely ready to admit the reality of the
great gods of other nations and their power, on
their own territory, yet dared to set up the God
of their small and obscure nation as the one sov
ereign God, to whom sooner or later all the gods
of the nations must bow. Surely it was only by
the fearless faith of childhood that, surrounded
as they were by intellectual peoples that were
deeply perplexed with the problems of the world,
Israel was able, without deep intellectual pro
cesses, to live out, as has been said, a religion
"which not only undertook to explain the past,
but claimed the future as its own," and with the
artless daring of a child " was sublimely confi
dent that the greatest forces of the world were
working for its ends." This spirit of childhood
speaks in every page of the Old Testament. It
is full of folklore, which is at once the wisdom
and the recreation of children and immature peo
ples. Again and again this fact offers a clue to
a puzzling passage in the Bible.
[In the very nature of things, there must be
^folklore in the Old Testament. Before the in-
•Matt. iB: 3.

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 29
vention of writing, folklore was the only history
and the only literature, if we may use the word
for that which is not written. According to the
ancient tradition of the church, devoutly accepted
for hundreds of years, the narratives of Genesis
were handed down orally from Adam to Methu
selah, from Methuselah to Noah, from Noah to
Terah, from Terah to Abraham, from Abraham
to Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and so on down to Moses,
who, under divine inspiration, committed them
to writing; and though this view has necessarily
been modified as men have come to know more
about the growth of language, and the beginnings
of the art of writing, yet something of this kind
must have taken place.
And this is folklore — the narrative of events
passed along from lip to lip down through the
ages. Every nation in the world has it, and the
comparative study of folklore, carried on of late
years, shows that in fundamental ideas and in
some formal characteristics the folklores of all
peoples have much in common. But folklore is
the product, not of memory alone, but of memory
and imagination — that divine faculty of the
child and the childlike. Much of the folklore of
all peoples is cast in a more or less rude poetic
form ; not only because the imagination is pecul
iarly active among primitive and childlike peo
ples, but because even a rude recitative or ballad

30 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
aids the memory, and tends therefore to preserve
the story which has no hope of preservation ex
cept in the memory.^''
The discovery, made in comparatively recent
years, that much of the narrative part of the Old
Testament is poetry brings out as never before
the use the inspired writers have made of old
folklore. An illustration of it appears in the
Revised Version of Gen. 4 : 23, 24, the " Sword
Song," in which Lamech proudly boasts that,
whereas Cain had been fain to invoke the protec
tion of divine vengeance, the inventions of his
sons have put him above any such need, since
he has a sword and can avenge himself :
Adah and Zillah, hear my voice!
Wives of Lamech, listen to my speech !
I slay a man for wounding me,
A youth for inflicting a stripe.
Lo, Cain would be avenged twice seven-fold.
But Lamech seventy-seven-fold.
The parallelism of this little poem is highly fin
ished, and parallelism is one of the most obvious
marks of Hebrew poetry. This had not been
discovered when our Authorized Version was
made, and in consequence the translation of this
passage is obscure and confused; but the Revis
ers, recognizing that it was poetry, were able to
put the passage into intelligible English. The
" The Babel story (Gen. 11:1-9) is apparently based on an
old ballad, fragments of which appear in vss. 3, 4, 7.

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 3 1
poem is a fragment of a ballad, and it gives us
good reason to think that there were other bal
lads circulating among the people, recounting
the exploits of the great men of old in the forci
ble and simple diction of all ballads.
A few pages later, in the curse of Canaan,^^
we observe the deep displeasure of Noah finding
expression in the words, " And let Canaan be
servant to him," twice repeated like a refrain,
after having been made the motive of the poem.
This is precisely the ballad style.
The Revisers have not observed that the divine
promise to Noah after the flood ^^ is also a poem,
but it is, as Dr. Briggs pointed out ; ^^ and one
can readily understand how carefulness for the
preservation of the words of God would very
early have caused this story to fall into poetic
form ; how, when Jehovah smelled the " odors of
gratification," Noah's burnt-offering, Jehovah
said to his very soul:
I will not again any more curse
The ground for man's sake,
Though the structure of the heart of man be evil from
his youth.
And I will not again any more smite
All living things as I have done;
During all the days of the earth,
"Gen. 9: 25-27.
«Gen. 8: 21, 22.
^* Messianic Prophecy (Scribners, 1902), p. 78.

32 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer
and winter,
And day and night shall not cease.
We may with reasonable probability find in these
lines a fragment of an ancient ballad of the
deluge — an event almost certain to have been
handed down in poetic form.
It is strikingly evident, however, that the par
allelism of this ballad, unlike that of the " Sword
Song " of Lamech, is very slight. The poem is,
in fact, a rude recitative, such as we find among
our North American Indians and among all
primitive peoples — the earliest attempts to please
the ear and aid the memory by a rude balance of
clauses. There is much of this rude recitative in
the narrative books of the Old Testament, but
it was not recognized as poetry even so recently
as the time of the Revised Version.
The oracle concerning Rebekah's twin chil
dren, in the twenty-fifth chapter of Genesis, and
Isaac's blessings of Jacob and of Esau in the
twenty-seventh, are in poetry; and so is Isaac's
blessing of Jacob when he sent him away; al
though the Revisers did not perceive this passage
to be poetry :
May El Shadday bless thee,
And may he make thee fruitful, and may he multiply thee,
So that thou mayest become a congregation of people ;
And may he give to thee the blessing of Abraham,
To thee and to thy seed with thee,

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 33
To inherit the land of thy sojourning,
Which God gave to Abraham.^*
All along through the early books we find out-
croppings of this old ballad lore. Much of it
was gathered into written collections long before
the books of the Bible were written. At least
two of these works are mentioned in the books
of Moses, and must therefore be older than those
books : the Book of the Wars of Jehovah — that
is, of Israel — and the Book of Jasher.^^
The Book of the Wars of Jehovah must have
contained some very ancient poems. A fragment
of what was evidently a ballad of Israel's journey
in the region east of Canaan ^® is so ancient that
the first word, Waheh, has dropped out of the
Hebrew vocabulary. The ballad appears to be
giving a sort of itinerary of the journey, telling
of the places passed through by the Israelitish
caravan; among others
Waheb in Suphah [we passed]
And the valleys of Arnon
And the cliffs of the valleys
»Gen. 28: 3, 4.
" The Revised Version translates the latter " the Upright."
The meaning of the word is not certain, but, so far as the contents
of the book are known, it seems lo be concerned with the valiant
deeds of heroes, and it may perhaps be more adequately named
" The Book of the Valiant." The word " may be taken as hero
or heroes " (Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible). " The Book of
the Righteous (or possibly Brave) One " (Cheyne, Encyclopedia
Biblica). Both authorities refer to an Arabic anthology of similar
character, called Valor or Warlike Virtue.
'" Num. 21 : 14, 15.

34 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
That descend to the dwellings of Ar,
And lean on the shoulder of Moab.
It would seem probable that the entire story of
the wilderness journey and the conquest of the
district east of Jordan was preserved in a series
of ballads of this sort, perhaps for the same rea
son that the list of the kings of England has
been cast into the doggerel verse, " First William
the Norman," etc., and that Peter Parley taught
the children of two generations ago the early
history of this country in the rude ballad, " Co
lumbus Was a Sailor Brave " — simply that the
facts might be more easily remembered. The
writer of the narrative in Numbers naturally
made little use of such a poem, but this poetic
description of the impressive scenery he could not
leave out ; nor could he omit the song, also attrib
uted to the Book of the Wars of Jehovah, in
which the digging of the " well of the heroes,"
Beer-elim, was celebrated ; the strong contrast be
tween this arduous digging and the free up-
springing of the twelve fountains of Elim, and
the miraculous outflow of Horeb, being full in his
mind:
" Spring up, well ! " sing ye to it ! [but it did not spring up,
it had to be digged; and so]
Which the princes digged.
Which the nobles of the people delved.
With their scepters, with their staves.!^
" Num. 21 : 17, 18.

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 35
The importance of the recognition that pas
sages like these are poetry, not prose, ancient
folklore, not history, is very great, especially in
doing away with difficulties. For example, the
story of Joshua's victory at Beth-horon.^* That
noble record of a great victory presents difficul
ties to the most devout believer ; not more to him
who finds all miracles impossible than to him who
finds it a perfectly rational thing that God should
make special intervention, out of the ordinary
course of nature, in behalf of the race upon whom
the well-being of all humanity depended. What
ever the future may have to teach us, it is certain
that, in the present stage of scientific knowledge
— that is, of acquaintance with the methods in
which God reveals his rule over the physical uni
verse — the intelligent mind absolutely cannot
picture to itself such an event as the sun standing
still — that is to say, the earth ceasing its rota
tion — for a single moment of time. To ask any
thinking person to believe that it happened, on
the authority of the Bible, is to subject faith to
a very severe test; and therefore we find com
mentators putting all sorts of forced interpreta
tions on the words to explain away their obvious
meaning. We will not ask if it is honest to jug
gle with words in the Bible as we would certainly
not think of doing if we found them in any other
" Josh. 10: 10—14.

36 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
book, but will simply inquire whether the words
really do put this strain upon the believer's faith.
When we turn to the narrative in the Revised
Version, we perceive that the account of the
event is a fragment of poetry quoted from the
Book of Jasher, and probably a stanza from a
ballad recounting the valiant deeds of Joshua :
" Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon
And thou Moon in the valley Ajalon!"
So the sun stood still and the moon stayed
Until the people had avenged themselves upon their
enemies. 1'
Statements of this kind are perfectly legitimate
in poetry. The Old Testament furnishes many
analogous instances. Jeremiah tells us that the
invasion of the Scythians caused all the hills to
move to and fro.^^ A psalmist says that the
mountains skipped like rams and the little hills
like lambs,^^ but no one has ever thought that this
actually happened. The Song of Deborah says
that the stars in their courses fought against
Sisera,^^ but no one has ever taken this statement
literally; from the first it has been recognized as
poetic. How does it differ in literary character
from the statement in Joshua? The historic in
terpretation put upon it is, indeed, very differ
ent; but this, it seems to me, is because that has
1»VSS. 12, 13. «PS. 114: 4.
" Jer. 4 : 24. " Judg. 5 : 20.

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 37
been taken to be history which is in fact litera
ture. Turning again to the story in Joshua, we
observe that in the prose which follows the poetry
we read that the Lord hearkened to the prayer
of Joshua, and that he fought for Israel by a
hailstorm; 23 but we do not read that the sun
stood still ; simply that it did not go down until
after the victory; in other words, that Joshua's
prayer was answered by victory being achieved
before nightfall. Ill
f^uch of Old Testament folklore, however, is
not poetry, but proseT] Let us recall to mind the
various sorts of folklore with which we are fa
miliar — the dear old Perrault's fairy-tales, the
lovely Northern folklore that Grimm and Hans
Andersen have given us, and the Persian Tales
and the Arabian Nights. It is especially useful
for Bible students of the West to know the Aror-
bian Nights, for they are from the very country
and the very race from which we have our Old
Testament stories, and they give a more valuable
key to the Old Testament, the customs and modes
of thought of the Hebrew people, which underlie
its spiritual teachings, than any other work in
the EngHsh language. Professor Stowe, in his
celebrated Introduction to Bishop Lowth's great
work on prophecy, for a century the most au-
^Josh. 10:14, ct. vs. II.

-?

38 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
thoritative work on that subject in any language,
observes that, whatever are the deficiencies of
the book, they are all due to the author's igno
rance of oriental literature. As the readiest way
to avoid such deficiencies, a celebrated professor
of biblical theology advises his students to read
the Arabian Nights through once every year.**
Pit is hardly necessary to point out that the very
existence of folklore depends upon the memory
of the people who have it ; but a slight considera
tion of this fact brings out the reason for the
somewhat mechanical structure upon which the
prose folklore of every people is built. It is al
ways in the interest of accuracy, that the mem
ory may preserve what there is no paper and ink
to retain. We find a very zealous care for aiding
the memory in the lists of names which so often
occur in the Bible, and which are almost always
grouped in sevens or tens, or a multiple of seven
or ten. In the first chapter of Matthew we are
expressly told that there are fourteen generations
from Abraham to David, fourteen frora David
to the exile, and fourteen from the exile to Christ ;
—7
^* This, however, not in any of the recent translations, such as
that of Mr. Andrew Lang, which are exquisite works of English
literature, but hardly at all a key to oriental literature or thought.
The invaluable translation of Lane, in three octavo volumes, fully
illustrated and furnished with admirable notes, is by itself almost a
liberal education in oriental ideas and customs. Happy is the Bible
student whose daily and nightly companion in childhood Was this
important and fascinating work.

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 39
but reference to the Old Testament ^^ shows that
there are a good raany raore than this, and that
in Matthew a nuraber of naraes are left out. The
important thing in the writer's mind was to aid
the raeraory by using a common unit, not to pre
serve historic accuracy, which was little cared for
in those days. Just as we lately saw that historic
fact is held in the Bible as of sraall moment com
pared with the religious meaning of fact, so we
here see that it was held as of little moraent com
pared with accuracy in remerabering and trans
mitting the comraon heritage of knowledge.
This explains the raechanical structure of the
folklore of all peoples. Everything is in threes
or sevens : three sisters, three knights in armor,
three royal mendicants, Sindbad's seven voyages,
the barber's seven brothers; every stratagem is
thrice repeated, the heroine or the dragon or the
giant being nothing daunted by a first and second
failure; and every question is put three times
over, though the second and third answer carry
one no farther than the first. Southey made
charming use of this old folklore style in his
classic story of " Goldilocks and the Three
Bears": "Who's been eating my soup?"
"Who's been sitting in my chair?" "Who's
been sleeping in my bed?" repeated in turn by
" I chron., chaps. 2, 3.

40 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
the Great Big Bear and the Mother Bear and the
Tiny Little Bear.
When we read the Bible with stories like this
in mind, we becorae very much irapressed to find
how raany of its narratives are cast in the same
mold. Three times over Balaam has seven altars
built, and offers thereon seven bullocks and seven
rams; 2® Samson*^ performed seven prodigious
exploits; in one of them he destroys the Philis
tines' standing corn with three hundred foxes ; ^^
three times he gives Delilah a false answer to her
thrice-repeated question : " Tell rae, I pray thee,
wherewith thou mightest be bound ? " Three
tiraes she has liers-in-wait abiding in the inner
charaber, and challenges Samson in the selfsame
words : " The Philistines be upon thee, Sara-
son ! " This story has been grossly misappre
hended by nearly all commentators, for want of
appreciation of the literary form of the narrative.
It has been held to be a proof of Samson's brut
ish stupidity, and so the incomparably valuable
meaning of the Samson story has been over
clouded. The reason for the form of this episode
is the reason for the poetic form of the ballad,
the necessity not only for remembering, but for
accuracy. Where nothing was fixed in print, the
only way of insuring accuracy in a narrative was
" Num., chaps. 22—24. ^ Judg. 15:4.
"Judg., chaps, 14—16.

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 41
by casting it into a form which would be its own
safeguard against alteration. It was far raore
iraportant that the story should not be corrupted
by the additions or the interpretations of the
ignorant, as it was handed down frora genera
tion to generation, than that in its first telling
the minor details should literally accord with fact.
The clue to the Old Testament narratives that
we have here is really very iraportant; nowhere
more so perhaps than in the story of Elijah,
which bears every mark of being genuine folk
lore, and having been handed down by word of
mouth for generations. The inspired perspicacity
of the author, or, more properly, compiler, of
the book of Kings is nowhere more strikingly
shown than in his not choosing the materials for
the Elijah story from the annals of the kingdom,
to which he so often refers in the book of Kings ;
for from first to last Elijah was in opposition —
the " enemy," as King Ahab said,*® of the estab
lished order. Without a shadow of doubt, his
story was garbled in the royal annals. The writer
of the book of Kings recognized this, and went
for his material to the homes of the people, per
fectly sure that, however rauch it raight have been
idealized. in passing down from lip to lip through
" I Kings 21: 20.

42 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
nearly two hundred years, it had still, by that
very process, been kept essentially true.®°
Let us look at the chapter which tells of Eli
jah's translation.^! Three times he tells Elisha :
" Tarry here, I pray thee, for Jehovah hath sent
me to Bethel, to Jericho, to Jordan." Three
times Elisha answers: "As Jehovah liveth and
as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee." Twice
the sons of the prophets say : " Knowest thou
that Jehovah will take away thy master from
thy head today? " and twice he answers: " Yea,
I also know it, hold ye your peace." It is im
portant that we should recognize that Elijah's
story was for a long time a true folk-tale, told
among the people for generations before it was
included in the book of Kings, because to read it
thus is to find a siraple answer to raany questions
which coraraentators have found very perplex
ing. Let us take, for example, the nineteenth chap
ter of First Kings, observing that the framework
in the early part of the story is founded on twos
instead of threes, as indeed is often the case in
folklore. The note of folklore is struck at once
in the language of the opening verses, with the
^° Elijah's story might, indeed, have been committed to writing
by one of the prophets whom the compiler mentions .among his
authorities. The style, however, proves conclusively that this was
not the case. It is not prophetic, and it is precisely the style of
folklore. ^^ 2 Kings, chap. 2.

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 43
proverbial expressions, "slain all the prophets
with the sword; " " So let the gods do to me and
more also ; " "I am not better than my fathers."
Then follows the twice-repeated sleep, and the
twice-repeated call of the angel : " Arise and
eat." Next we find the prophet in a cave on
Horeb, the sacred mount, and the word of the
Lord comes to him : " What doest thou here,
Elijah?" And he answers: " I have been very
jealous for Jehovah, the God of Hosts, for the
children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant,
thrown down thine altars and slain thy prophets
with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and
they seek ray life to take it away." A second
tirae the same question is asked and the same
answer given, without the change of a syllable,
although under circumstances so dififerent that
commentators have been appalled to find the
prophet learning nothing by the tremendous ex
perience that has come to him between the first
and second putting of the question, and have shed
gallons of ink over rearas of paper in the vain
attempt to explain it. For between the two ques
tions Elijah has had a vision of God, and heard
a still sraall voice that would, we should say,
speak new wisdom to him who heard. But when
we study the description of this vision, the three
fold manifestation of the strong wind, the earth
quake, and the fire, in all of which Jehovah was

44 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
not, before the voice came in which he was, then
we understand that the preservation of this mar
velous story in the mechanical form of folklore
alone insured that not one syllable of its tremen
dous raeaning should ever be lost or altered. In
face of the new revelation of God's character and
watch over Israel which the story of this chapter
gives, it is of trifling importance what Elijah did
or did not say. The important thing was that the
revelation of God — an absolutely new addition
to the conception of Jehovah as it had been in
the Hebrew mind — should not have been cor
rupted or changed during the generations before
the story was imperishably fixed on the written
page. IV
The Protean forms which Hebrew folklore
takes on give striking witness to that artless
childlikeness of this people which we have before
observed. There is more of the spontaneity of
childhood in our Bible stories than in the folklore
of any other people. Folk-songs and tales and
heroic legends by no means exhaust its araazing
variety. There is the fable pure and siraple, with
a shrewd raeaning of its own, such as Jotham
told to the men of Shechem ^Z— the story how the
trees sought them a king, and could find none but
the useless bramble willing to take up so profit-
«2Judg. 9: 8-15.

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 45
less a calling ; there is the proverb, or by-word —
" As sure as Tabor is among the mountains and
Carmel by the sea ; " ^^ there is the riddle, such as
Samson gave to the Philistines,^* such as God
bade Ezekiel put to the exiled Israelites,^® such
as the queen of Sheba came to prove Solomon
with.^® We are not told that any of her riddles
have been preserved; but they must have been
of the same character as some in the book of
Proverbs, those interesting " number riddles "
which we do not recognize as riddles because, of
necessity, on committing them to writing, the
answers were immediately appended. The riddle
of " things not to be known," ^'^
There be three things which are too wonderful for me.
Yea, four which I know not;
the riddle of " things not to be borne," ^*
For three things the earth doth tremble
And for four which it cannot bear;
and that of " things never satisfied," ^^
There are three things that are never satisfied.
Yea, four that say not. Enough,
may have been first put by the queen of Sheba
to Solomon. It would need the wisdom of Solo-
^Jer. 46:18. ^^ I Kings lo: i. "s Prov. 30:21.
«*Judg. 14:14. "'Prov. 30:18. "Prov. 30:15.
35 Ezek. 17: 1-8.

46 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
mon to discover their meaning if the answers did
not imraediately follow thera.
As for proverbs and proverbial sayings, the
Old Testament fairly bristles with them. We
have found them already in the Elijah story.
Gideon appeased the Ephrairaites, displeased at
not having been earlier suraraoned to war against
Midian, by adapting one to their case : " Is not
the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better
than the vintage of Abi-ezer ? " *" Rehoboam
answered the assembly of Israel with a proverb:
" My little finger shall be thicker than ray father's
loins ; " *^ which rerainds us of our own proverb :
" He knows raore in his little finger than another
in his whole body." David quoted " the proverb
of the ancients " in his remonstrance with Saul.*^
Jephthah makes rauch use of proverbs and pro
verbial expressions : " I have opened ray mouth
unto the Lord ; " "I have taken my life in my
hand." *^ The prophets abound in them : " As
with the people so with the priest ; " ^* " The
fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's
teeth are set on edge ; " *® " As sure as Tabor is
among the mountains and Carmel by the sea."
We remember our Lord quoting the popular
proverb : " Physician, heal thyself." *® In fact,
"Judg. 8: 2. "Isa. 24:2.
"i Kings 12:10. "Jer. 31:29; Ezek. 18:2.
"i Sam. 24:13. "Luke 4:23.
*" Judg. 11: 35; 12: 3.

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 47
he quotes a number of proverbs as a careful
reading shows.
Proverbs of this kind are not at all to be con
founded with those sententious aphorisras and
moral epigrams which we find in the book of
Proverbs, embodying the worldly philosophy of
the Hebrews at a later time. Those here quoted
are genuine folklore, and a recognition of this
fact often furnishes a valuable canon of interpre
tation even in the New Testament.
V
A strong characteristic of Hebrew folklore,
throwing an interesting light upon Hebrew char
acter, is its sarcasm. Jotham's fable about the
trees is a fine bit of sarcasm ; and so, with all its
tenderness, is the fable the prophet Nathan told
David about the poor raan and his one ewe lamb.*''
There is a fine sarcasm in the reply of the father
of Gideon to those who charged his son with sac
rilege for throwing down the altar of Baal and
building one to Jehovah : " Will ye take upon
yourselves to plead Baal's cause ? Let Baal plead
for himself." ** If he is a god, he is his own wit
ness. Centuries later Elijah speaks in the same
sarcastic vein where he urges the priests of Baal
to " cry aloud — for he is a god : either he is
musing or he is gone aside or he is in a journey,
"2 Sam. 12:1-4. "Judg. 6:31.

48 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
or peradventure he sleepeth and must be
awaked." *® The satire is very biting where the
prophet Zechariah foretells the selling of our
Lord for thirty pieces of silver: "the glorious
price at which I was valued of them " °" — ¦ the
price of a maid-servant.^°
The classic expression of Hebrew sarcasm is
found in their " taunt-songs," such as the one
with which, after the death of Sihon, king of the
Amorites, Israel challenged him to come back
and rebuild his city, Heshbon.®^ This poem, we
are told, circulated widely araong " thera that
speak in proverbs," the Moshelim — a word
more correctly translated as " the reciters of sar
castic verses." These satirists appear to have
been as important a class among Israel as the
minstrels of ancient Britain or the improvisatori
of Italy.
This taunt-song to Sihon raockingly dares hira
to retake the capital he has lost :
Come ye to Heshbon !
Let the city of Sihon be built and set up again.
Sihon had been before able to conquer Moab;
is it possible that he cannot retake his own city?
So Psalra 126 tells how, when the Lord turned
again the captivity of Zion, the raouth of Israel
was filled with laughter — not of gayety, but of
"1 Kings 18:27-. =1 Num. 21: 27-30.
™Zech. 11: 13; Lev. 27:4.

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 49
scorn, " the laughter of Truth's scorn upon the
idols of their conquerors." And the study of the
prophets shows how effective a weapon against
the tendency of Israel to idolatry the prophets
found in satire. VI
The child-spirit of Israel is raost of all evident
in the huraor which, probably to the student's
great surprise, he will find shimmering over many
pages of the Old Testament, when once he be
gins to look for it. Samson, the Sunny, is full
of humor, with his riddles and his repartees, his
practical jokes and his puns. The humor of Gid
eon is somewhat grim, or perhaps of Gideon's
historian, where he tells ^^ how that hero " taught
the men of Succoth " better manners than to re
fuse him help in tirae of need, by thrashing them
with thorns and briars. The story of Micah, in
the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters of
Judges, is one of the most charmingly quaint and
artlessly humorous stories in all literature; and
a good deal raay be learned from it, not only of
the religious ideas and customs of the time of
the judges (this is evidently the reason why
the story is appended to the book), but as to the
mental attitude in which we should approach
the narratives of the Old Testament.
It is not easy for us to appreciate the puns of
52 Judg. 8: 16.

50 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
the Old Testament, as nothing more quickly loses
its flavor in translation than a pun, but there are
a surprising number of them. The pun appears
to have been as greatly relished by the Hebrews
of ancient days as it is by Arabic-speaking folk
today. There are a number of very satirical
plays upon names in the genealogical lists, as He
brew scholars are almost daily discovering, mak
ing these once dry chapters very amusing reading
to those who can detect these puns.
The jawbone episode in the story of Samson
shows the most artless delight in this form of
humor. The incident occurred at a place called
Lehi.®^ Now, lehi raeans " jaw ; " and the rap
ture of Samson in ringing the changes upon the
word is very evident, even to his calling the place
in the end "Mount Jawbone" {Raniath lehi).
The story tells how the hero thirsted, and God
miraculously provided a fountain for him, which
sprang up in a hollow — not of lehi, the jawbone,
but of Lehi the hill. The translators of King-
James's version, who, with all their gifts, were
entirely without the Hebrew sense of humor, and
who seemed always to think that the more difficult
a thing would be for them to do, the greater
the honor to God when he does it, preferred to
give the grotesque picture of a fountain peren
nially gushing out of a jawbone, though even
"^Judg. 15:9-14.

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 5 1
they had to leave it in Lehi the hill in the next
verse. The Revisers have raade the proper cor
rection, and we find nothing of this in their ver
sion. VII
We have seen how fearlessly the inspired writ
ers of the Old Testaraent books have used various
kinds of folklore. As we approach the vitally
iraportant subject of their treatraent of the raost
universal form of folklore, the myth, let us try to
be equally fearless, perfectly confident that we
have here a book inspired by God in a sense in
which no other book is inspired, and believing
that we honor God far raore by seeking for what
actually is in the Bible than by refusing to look
for it lest we find something there which does
not agree with what we have always thought the
Bible must be. It is above all ^things necessary
that we shall be disinterested as we study its
treatment of those ideas which, araong all other
ancient peoples, if not among the Hebrews, be
came mythology — ideas about deity, about the
origin of things, about the world and raan, and
about man's relations with deity. If we find any
thing in the Bible which we did not think was
there and should not have expected to find there,
let us not try to explain it away, or give the words
any other meaning than they honestly and ob
viously have; but, just because we believe that

52 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
the Bible is a work of divine inspiration, let us
look with frank simplicity for the meaning of the
things we do find there.
The early chapters of Genesis have been the
ground of so many conflicts that it is not singu
lar, perhaps, that we are soraewhat unduly sensi
tive on the subject of them.
We know that every people in the world has
its myths about creation. To attempt, however
superficially, to compare the scriptural account
with any of them would carry us into the domain
of comparative religions. It is enough to say
that, since the discovery and decipherment of a
series of Assyro-Babylonian tablets now in the
British Museum, we know that, so far as the bib
lical account is related to any other, it is most
closely related to the Assyro-Babylonian tradi
tion, which we find embodied in a great epic
poem of considerable poetic value, written on
these tablets. There is no reason to doubt of the
antiquity of the ideas which it embodies; the
poera was inscribed long before Abraham's day,
and it is certain that Abraham must have been
familiar with its ideas before his departure from
Chaldea. He probably copied the lines again
and again as a school exercise, as we now know
that boys did long before his day.
Is, then, the first chapter of Genesis simply the
Chaldean folklore of this great subject, brought

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 53
to Palestine by Abraham and by him handed
down to his descendants? A few extracts from
the creation tablets of Assyria will show their
points of likeness and unlikeness to the first chap
ter of Genesis. The first of the seven tablets
begins :
At that time the heaven above had not announced.
Or the earth beneath recorded, a name [a thing — that is,
before anything existed].
The unopened deep was their generator,
Mummu Tiamat [mother chaos] was the mother of them
all.
Their waters [of chaos] were embosomed as one, and
The cornfield was unharvested, the pasture was overgrown ;
At that time the gods had not appeared, any of them;
By name they were not recorded, no destiny had they fixed :
Then the great gods were created.
Here we find matter coming before divinity.
The gods are born of Mummu Tiamat
("Chaos") : "the great gods" first, the lesser
ones afterward. Conflict between them ensues.
The fourth tablet describes the overthrow of
Tiamat — that is, the bringing of order out of
chaos — and tells how Anu, the eldest of the
gods, prepared the seven mansions of the great
gods:He fixed the stars, even the twin stars, to correspond to
them.
He ordained the year, appointing the signs of the zodiac
over it.

54 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
For each of the twelve months he fixed three stars.
From the day when the year issues forth to the close ;
He founded the mansion of the god of the ferry-boat ^*
[the sun god], that they might know their bounds.
That they might not err [make the mistake of shining
when they ought not], that they might not go astray
in anything.
It is interesting to observe that the subject
which has given rise to more myths than any
other, provoking more effort to explain it, is the
daily miracle of sunrise and sunset. After fur
ther details, the account goes on :
He illuminated the Moon-god that he might watch over the
night.
And ordained for him the ending of the night that the day
might be known [to keep the sun in order; a perfect
system of checks and balances, it may be observed],
Saying : " Month by month, without break.
Keep watch in thy disc.
At the beginning of the month kindle the light [the new
moon].
Announcing thy horns that the heaven may know [that
it is the beginning of the month] ;
On the seventh day, filling thy disc.
Thou shalt open indeed its narrow contraction."
In all this we see a striking resemblance to the
Bible story of creation, and a no less striking
difference. The tablets, like Genesis, show crea
tion as divided into seven successive days (or
acts) ; in Genesis the seventh is sacred rest; in the
*•* The sun is the god of the ferry-boat, because it is always
crossing from one side of the horizon to the other.

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 55
tablets the act of creation still goes on. In both
accounts the world was preceded by a watery
chaos. The order of creation is so far the same
that light is created first, then the firmament of
heaven, and afterward comes the appointment of
the heavenly bodies " for signs and for seasons
and for days and for years." But there are far
greater points of difference. In the Assyro-Baby
lonian account light is not called into being by
a word of God, but is the result of a conflict be
tween a deity and chaos. In the Assyro-Baby
lonian account there is absolutely no religious
idea ; the gods, as well as men, have come out of
chaos, divine forces having triumphed over the
inherently evil forces of matter. In Genesis the
material universe is not self-existent, but is called
into being by God; it is not inherently evil or
inimical to man; on the contrary, it is all very
good. In Genesis the truth of the pre-existence
of God and his absolute independence of matter
is clearly taught; and when we see how impossi
ble either the strong-minded Assyrians or the
cultured Greeks found it to arrive at this idea,
it becomes marvelous that the childlike Hebrews
attained to it. Certainly they could have attained
it only by an inspiration differing in kind no less
than in degree from the inspiration of the poets
and men of genius of our own or any other age.
Yet if the first chapter of Genesis is not my-

56 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
thology, neither is it science. We have got far
beyond the time when it is even thinkable that the
world was made in six days ; and happily we have
come to the time when we begin to see that to
interpret the word " day " figuratively as " pe
riod " or "aeon" or anything else than "day,"
so long as we interpret literally all the rest of the
passage in which the word stands, is a dishonest
juggling with words. There can be no question
that the writer of this chapter meant by " day "
a period of twenty-four hours. The very fact
of a sabbath divinely ordained at this time is an
irrefutable witness against any other interpreta
tion, since it is based upon the assuraption that
the six days, as well as the seventh, were literal
days. Not being a scientific account of the origin of
things, all attempts to harmonize this chapter
with science are entirely gratuitous. For the
purpose for which it was written it makes no
difference whether or not this account teaches
that light was raade before the sun or vertebrate
aniraals before reptiles. For even a casual read
ing must show that, though we still have to in
quire the purpose of this account, we know that
it was certainly not to teach science.®*
^^ The *' scientific " element of the story of creation belongs to an
early chapter in the history of science; in fact, almost to the begin
ning. The truly Israelitish element, that which is essential —
namely, the fact that God created the world, and that he controls

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 57
But if neither myth nor science, what is this
description? It is poetry: an epic of creation,
cast in the same mold as the great Assyro-
Babylonian epic, though conceived in so different
a spirit. As a teaching of the relations between
the world and man — that is, science — it has
the childlike and imperfect character of all folk
lore; but as the literary vehicle for showing the
relation between man and God — that is, religion
— it is so marvelously adapted to its purpose as
to prove itself inspired. And how much grander
and more Godlike raust it be (using, as we must,
relative words for that which is absolute) to take
a story which is the coraraon property of all raen,
familiar to the Hebrew people, and to all peoples
to whom this word was to come, and, retaining
its shape and outline, so that none who heard it
should be confused by its novelty, so to transfig
ure its significance as to make it the revelation
of divine truth ; how much more like the training
of children by a father, than it would have been
to give them something entirely new and un
dreamed of by them before ! How easy for men
to apprehend the truth that comes to them by
the transfiguration of familiar ideas; how diffi
cult for any man to take in an entirely new set
of ideas ! ^®
it — is naturally expressed in the categories of the writer's time.
The distinctively Old Testament element is here also the permanent
element. " The phenomenal progress of Christian Science, compared

58 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
VIII
A comparison of the biblical treatment of all
that is set down in the early chapters of Genesis
with the folklore of other peoples makes plainer
than any definition can do the difference between
myth and poetry. True poetry has spiritual sig
nificance; myth, except as we find it in the Old
Testament, has none. Take the story of para
dise, for example. Nearly every nation — Hin
du, Assyrian, Greek, Norse — has its myth of
the Tree of Life. The Greek precisely inverts
the Hebrew idea : it is a virtue in Heracles to
triumph over the serpent that guards the golden
apples in the garden of Hesperides; the Hindus
guard their paradise by a dreadful dragon, and
raan has no interest in it whatever; the Assyrian
cedar and the Norse Yggdrasil are alike without
religious iraport ; only in the Bible does the story
of paradise show the very condition of life to
be coraraunion with God. So, though among
nearly all ancient peoples we find evidences of an
attempt to wrestle with the profound mystery of
evil, only in the story of the fall do we find the
truth that that which separates from God is sin,
and at the sarae tirae are given a hope that some-
with the dii^iculty with which the devout mind receives the con
clusions of scholarship, is an illustration of this statement. Chris
tian Science is a transfiguration (or a travesty) of familiar ideas,
and those to whom they appear to be a transfiguration receive them
with alacrity. The discoveries of scholarship are entirely new
ideas to the unscholarly, and it is with the greatest possible difficulty
that even fair-minded people who are not scholars can receive them.

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 59
how good shall be the final goal of ill; that man
shall eventually be victor over evil.
The commonest of all myths is the deification
of a human being. We find the influence of this
idea in the story of Enoch; but it is there made
to teach the marvelous religious truth that the
perfect life is a walk with God. So with the
flood traditions, which, though not universal, are
found in many parts of the world ; they have ab
solutely no moral significance; only the story in
Genesis teaches the irreparable disaster wrought
by sin, and gives promise of a new heaven and
a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
The more we study the myths of other nations,
the more we shall be impressed with the utter
absence of superstition in the Bible. At an age
when superstitious ideas prevailed the whole
world over, and in a state of civilization in
which at any period of history superstitions nat
urally cluster about everything — days, seasons,
periods of life, human relationships — it is sim
ply marvelous that we find nothing of the sort
in Israel. We have only to read Frazer's Golden
Bough; we have only to reflect on the supersti
tious " medicine " practices of primitive peoples,
to be appalled by the fact that instinctively all
human relationships, experiences, and functions,
diseases, purifications, festivals, are made a cen
ter of superstition, and to marvel at the simplicity

6o HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
and certainty with which in the Old Testaraent
all these are raised into the hygienic or the eth
ical sphere. Compared with the universal cus
toms of primitive peoples, the Mosaic law, which
we .deem so burdensome, is a light and raerciful
yoke. Still raore remarkable is it to find nothing su
perstitious, or even mythical, in the Hebrew idea
of God. Primitive and elementary the Hebrew
ideas often were. God walked in the Gar
den of Eden; he was obliged to come down to
see what was going on at Babel; for centuries
he was the one God from the point of view of
Israel only, and they quite believed that the gods
of other nations — Chemosh, Moloch, Baal —
were actual entities, though of no significance to
a nation whose god was Jehovah, a King above
all other gods. Even the first commandment
does not say there is no other God but Jehovah,
but merely that Israel raust acknowledge no
other ; and the reason why is stated : because he
brought Israel out of the house of bondage.
Yet there is never any confusion in the mind of
Israel as to the nature of Jehovah — that he is
spirit and not flesh ; or as to his character —
that he is just and wise and good. And it is
marvelous that the Hebrews, who were utterly
without metaphysics and well-nigh incapable of
abstraction, whose language indeed has no ab-

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 6l
Straet words, so that in all abstract matters they
are obliged to think in figures and in terms of
imagination, yet never had any myth about God.
It is raore impressive than we perhaps are able
to appreciate that the Hebrew language has no
word for " goddess," and that all the ideas con
nected with sex are absolutely foreign to the
early religion of Israel.*'^ The word " goddess "
appears twice in Kings,^* but in the Hebrew it is
a masculine form, simply because there was no
feminine form of the word; where other writers
speak of the goddesses of the nations, they use
the word " abomination."
The Hebrews neither identified God with na
ture, as in pantheism, nor deified the powers and
processes of nature, as in mythology. Nothing
is without God ; but all things are merely his min
isters. He was in the burning bush, but the bush
was not divine.*^ He makes the clouds his char
iot ; ^" but he is not Aurora, nor the Dawn, nor
Apollo. He comes swooping on the wings of
the wind,''^ but he is not ^olus nor Zephyrus.
Elijah commanded fire from heaven to burn the
messengers of Ahaziah,''^ but this was not a fire-
°^ It is a striking fact that the prophets in their century-long
warfare against strange gods never coin the feminine form, although
the worship of female divinities was undoubtedly practiced. For
such the word Astarte (plural Astartes), but in Hebrew Ashtaroth,
is used. The Hebrew singular, Ashtoreth, has the vocalization of
bosheth, " shame."
'* I Kings ii:s, 33. "^ Sam. 22:11; Ps. 104:3.
'"Ex. 3:2—4. °^ 2 Kings i: 10.
«»Ps. 104: 3.

62 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
god. Though Abrahara " carae out " from Har-
ran, the seat of the moon myth, and brought with
hira the " night religion " of the broad and burn
ing plains of Mesopotaraia, where the stars are
the chief objects of interest, astrology was no
part of the Hebrew religion. " The evening and
the raorning were the day " with Abrahara in
Chaldea, as with all who dwell in shadeless re
gions, where traveling is done by night; and
amid the shadowing hills and deep valleys of
Palestine, it was still to the stars ®* that he lifted
up his eyes to find a witness to the faithfulness
of him who promised; but he was not a star-
worshiper. Yet that there are genuine myths in the Old
Testaraent is certain, though all of them are used
in a thoroughly spiritual way. Mythical ani
mals play a larger part there than our English
translations permit us to recognize, though not
so large as in raost mythological systems. The
leviathan,®^ the dragon,*' the phoenix,*® the night
hag (Lillith),'^'^ the satyr,*® none of which ever
existed out of raythology, are all there, and all
"Gen. 15: 5.
"Job 41: i; Ps. 104: 26, etc.
« The dragon myth frequently occurs. In Job 3:8, " Let
those that ban the ocean (i. e., magicians) ban it (his day),
[those] who are appointed to rouse up the dragon." Amos 9: 3,
" the serpent " is properly translated " the dragon," and it is
Jehovah himself who is speaking. So Ps. 74: 13, 14; Isa. 27: i, etc.
"Job 29: 18. Cheyne, however, thinks that this unknown He
brew word must refer to a tree (see context and LXX). But
Hebrew tradition makes it " phoenix " (R. V., margin).
"Isa. 34:14 (R. v.). «8Isa. 13:21.

FOLKLORE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 63
are treated seriously. Even those birdlike or
beastlike creatures, the cherub *^ and the seraph,'^"
a^ppear to be mythical — not angels, but personi
fications of processes of nature; perhaps the pro
tean cloud, the zigzag lightning — the word
" seraph" appears to mean a flash of fire; what,
precisely, the word " cherub " means is not
known. In the book of Job,'^ Jehovah himself
is described as raaking reference to these myths
for purposes of instruction ; we generally say that
he is describing the crocodile and the hippopota
mus, though we know perfectly well that the de
scriptions are not at all those of these creatures
and that they precisely correspond to the dragon
and other mythical animals.
Allusions to nature-myths are not infrequent
in the prophets. Amos says that Jehovah mak
eth the dawn winged,"^^ and Joel speaks of the
dawn spreading out her wings over the moun
tains.'^^ The Psalmist pictures Jehovah coming
to his help riding upon a cherub.''* Isaiah makes
evident allusion to the old myth that the sun is
a bird which daily loses its power of flight and
falls into the sea, where its light is quenched:
" How art thou fallen from heaven, light-bringer,
son of the Dawn ! " ''' And Job accounts for
night and day by the very familiar old myth of

" Ex. 25 : 19, etc.

"Joel 2:2.

"Isa. 6:2.

"Ps. 18: 10.

"Job 41: 5; 41: I, eto.

"Isa. 14: 12.

"Amos 4: 13 (Heb.).

64 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
the dragon which swallowed the sun, and then is
pierced and overcome by a god (in this case Je
hovah), freeing the light again.''* Yet in all
these instances the supremacy of Jehovah over
these nature-processes, and their sole function as
ministers of his will, give to them, myths though
they are, a genuinely religious character. The
mythical character of these stories and concep
tions has ceased to be felt by the writers ; they
have become siraply the vehicles of religious
truth. This, indeed, is the witness to the divine char
acter of the Old Testaraent, that it does not part
company with all ideas which the best human
intellects had been able to work out, but that it
takes these ideas, the comraon property of all
men, and pours them full of religious truth.
The more familiar we are with the folklore
of all nations, the raore corapetent we become to
detect the folklore which is in the Bible, the
deeper and more impressive raust become our
apprehension of the divine inspiration of this
wonderful book.
"Job 26: 13 (R. v.).

CHAPTER III
THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

In the poetry of a nation the heart of a nation
is revealed. The poetry of the Bible shows the
heart of Israel — it is the utterance of friendship
between God and man ; and the poetry of Hebrew
prophet and psalmist remains to this day the best
expression of the emotions of the heart toward
God. Among all peoples the first expression, not
only of men's feeling, but of their thought, is
made in poetry. One reason for this we have
seen; verse aids the memory and guards against
change — a very important matter when the
memory is the only medium by which thought
can be preserved. A deeper reason is that poetry,
being the language both of emotion and of im
agination, is the natural vehicle of utterance in
the infancy of peoples as of individuals; for in
infancy the imagination is most vivid and the
emotions most clamorous for expression.^
^ " Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race." — J. G.
Hammon (1730—88), quoted in the Je-wish Encyclopedia, art. " Po
etry." 6S

66 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
From the very beginning, poetry was allied
with religion. It was so with the nations of the
East; it was not less so with the pagan nations
of Europe. As a brilliant French writer has
said. Paganism was the son of Poetry, and per
raitted his raother access to his ahars. But pa
gan altars are not her first home. Poetry was
holy before it was superstitious; that is, it was
first of all the genuine expression of the aspira
tion of the soul toward the best it knew. The
difference between Hebrew poetry and that of
all other peoples is that, while the latter degen
erated into superstition, and thus became the ex
pression of ignoble emotions, Hebrew poetry
never lost its early character. It was the child
of holiness, as Israel was the child of God. We
find no Lucretius or Sappho among the Hebrew
poets, nor in their poetry the utterance of a base
emotion. Not that it does not express hatred and re
venge. The denunciatory psalms are as terrible
as anything in literature. But they are genuine
ly religious, though so far from Christian. All
the foes of Israel are the foes of God, just as
the history of their wars was the Book of the
Wars of Jehovah. Hebrew poetry, knowing all
human interests — love of nature as in Deborah's
Ode and the Blessing of Moses, sorrow in many
a psalm and prophecy, friendship in David's

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 67
dirge over Saul and Jonathan, earthly love in
the Song of Soloraon — knows thera all as quick
ened with a spark of heaven. Religion belongs
to the poetry of Israel as light and heat to a ray
of sunlight.
This is not to say that there is no Hebrew
poetry except such as belongs to the religious
life, according to the current unhappy division
of life into two, the sacred and the secular. The
Hebrews knew no such division. Laraech's
" Sword Song " and the " Well Song," though
essentially secular frora the prevailing point of
view, are not so frora the point of view of Israel.
Not only the cereraonials of religion, but all as
pects of Hfe in Israel, were beautified with poetry,
just because all aspects of life were religious.
Maidens went out to the vineyards with songs
and dances, for the vintage festival was a re
ligious festival; and it was at a vintage festival,
in the turbulent " days when the judges ruled,"
that the men of Benjamin " caught " their wives
as the Romans carried off their Sabine wives a
thousand years later.* The harp and the lute,
the tabret and the pipe, " were in the feasts " of
Israel, with " the noise of songs " in the time
of Amos ® and Isaiah,* as well as in the early
days when the women went out with timbrels
2 Judg. 21:20-23. 'Isa. 5:12.
¦Am. 5: 23; 8: 10.

68 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
and instruments of music, singing and dancing,
to raeet the conquering David, with their
Saul has slain his thousands.
And David his ten thousands.'
It was one of the bitter woes of Jerusalera in
the time of siege, worthy of being named by the
writer of Lamentations with the last extreraity of
women's anguish and little children's suffering,
that " the young men ceased from their music ; ""
and the Psalmist, looking forward to the great
dedication festival of the new earth, expects, as
the Revised Version of the eighty-seventh psalm
shows us, that " they that sing as well as they
that dance " shall say, " All my fresh springs
are in thee." '' II
When, however, we speak of Hebrew poetry,
we do not speak of a metrical rhymed composi
tion like English or French or Italian poetry.
The poetry of the Bible is in general unrhymed,^
and though it appears to have raetre, yet its char
acteristics are so unlike classical metres that schol-
» I Sam. i8: 7.
¦ Lam. s : 14.
'Ps. 87: 7-
» With the better knowledge of Hebrew gained from study of
the cognate living languages, rhyme is found in various poetical
and proverbial passages, and probably will be found in others. E. g..
Job 11: 12: "Even a senseless man may be taught. And a wild
ass's colt may be caught." The assonance is as in the Hebrew.
Thc language forms lend themselves to assonance, and of this there
are many instances.

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 69
ars are of various minds as to its nature. In
general it may be said that, while classical metres
depend upon quantity, Hebrew metre appears to
depend upon accent. It is certainly more
definitely conditioned by the sense than most clas
sical or modern metres. The line uniformly cor
responds with a break in the sense, and the
symmetry of corresponding lines is rather in the
matter than in the form. Goethe very finely
adopted this raethod. Even in translation this
makes itself felt. It has been corapared with the
rhythm of the Nibelungenlied, and the popular
songs of Palestine today fall into the same
rhythm. We know that a great body of the poetry of
Israel is lost to us: three volumes are probably
mentioned in the Old Testament which are not
included in our Scriptures. One is a collection
of epic ballads describing the battles of Israel,
called the Book of the Wars of Jehovah ; * another
is the collection of lyrics called in the Authorized
¦Version the Book of Jasher and in the Revised
the Book of the Upright.^'' There seems also to
have been a purely lyrical collection of dirges —
a very favorite form of poetry among the He
brews, as is evident from many allusions.^ ^
" Num. 21 : 14.
^2 Sam. i: i8; see p. 33, n. 15.
''Am. 5:2; Jer. 48:36; Ezek. 19: i; 26: 17, etc.

70 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
" Jereraiah made a dirge upon Josiah," untimely
slain by Pharaoh in the battle of Megiddo.^^^
The Chronicler tells us that " all the singing men
and the singing women speak of Josiah in their
dirges to this day. So they made them a custora
in Israel and lo, they are written among the
Dirges." ^* We do not, however, find any such
poem referring to Josiah's death in the book
called in our English Bible the Lamentations of
Jeremiah, but in Hebrew not attributed to Jere
miah, and called simply by its first word,
" How ; " and it seems probable that some other
collection is referred to by the Chronicler. The
custom of poetical lamentation was, indeed, car
ried to such an extreme in Jeremiah's day that
he felt constrained to object to it, in this very
case of Josiah, showing that death was by no
means the worst evil that Israel had to appre
hend.-'^ Weep not for the dead [King Josiah] nor bemoan him.
But weeping weep for him that goeth away [the exiled
King Jehoahaz],
For he shall never come back nor see his own country.
The metre of the dirge is distinctly recogniza
ble. It consists of a long and a short line, in
the proportion of three accented syllables to two.
This appears to be a metre peculiarly appropriate
to elegiac poetry. " What is raore natural than
^2 Chron. 35:25. "Jer. 22:10.

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 71
that lamentation should begin with a long effu
sion, and suddenly be stifled in a sob? " ^* It
is, however, not confined tO' the dirge; we find
it in songs of joy and in prophetic passages.^"*
It appears to be a metre peculiarly natural to
Semitic peoples. Arab raothers of today sing
lullabies in this metre to their children; and I
have repeatedly observed it in the singing-games
of Syrian children.
Although, as we have seen, it is commonly
held that there is no true drama in the Bible,
there are many highly dramatic passages. Such
are Ps. 2, where the speakers are Jehovah, the
kings of the nations, and the psalmist ; the " para
ble " against the king of Babylon in Isa., chap.
47; and such is the beautiful prophecy of Zion
in Isa., chap. 63. The twenty-fifth psalm is very
dramatic. The first seven verses are a prayer of
David. Then the oracle answers in three verses.
David replies in one verse, and the oracle answers
in three (making another seven), and then David
prays in seven more verses. The scheme of
sevens here exemplified, though found in all early
literatures, is peculiarly characteristic of Hebrew
thought. " Kautsch, Die Poesie -und die poetischen Biicher, p. 12. Budde
(Dictionary of the Bible) calls it " a limping metre."
"It occurs in Isa. 40:1—3, and in the great "Taunt Song,"
Isa. 14: 4—23, as well as in such passages as Ps. 19: 8-10, in praise
of the law.

72 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
III
Though a very large portion of the Bible is
poetry, this fact was not discovered, or at least
was not felt to be a thing of moment, until less
than two hundred years ago. It was in 1710
that Bishop Lowth first pointed out to Bible stu
dents that " the Bible was a work of taste," and
should be studied frora that point of view, and
it was his discovery of the most striking charac
teristic of Hebrew poetry, parallelism, that en
abled him, not only to prove his point, but to
produce the most valuable work on prophecy
known for raany years. The Hebrew raanu-
scripts were written, as has already been ob
served, without punctuation or division of any
kind, and as rhyrae is not a usual characteristic
of Hebrew poetry, and its metre is not easily
recognizable, it is not strange that it needed long
study and a peculiar insight to make the discovery
that parallelism is its most obviously distinctive
feature.^* Now, the particularly interesting thing about
the parallelism of Hebrew poetry is that, like all
other characteristics of poetry, it grew directly
out of the movements of the dance. " The dance
is the symmetry and harmony of motion," and
parallelism is, as Herder says, the simplest form
"As has been seen (p. 32), parallelism, though an important,
is by no means the one essential, mark of poetry.

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 73
of syrametry in words. In all languages, paral
lelism is the natural expression of feeling. " So
soon as the heart gives way to its emotion, wave
follows wave, and this is parallelism," says Her
der. It is natural to everyone, natural to our
selves, to fall into parallelism in times of deep
emotion; all languages easily lend themselves to
it, and this is why the poetry of the Bible loses
so little by translation.^^
But there is no raonotony in this rhythmical
parallelism. It varies greatly, and students cora
raonly distinguish five general classes of it, in
each of which we can feel this swaying dance-
rhythm. The simplest form of parallelism is
synonymous, where the second line echoes, and
thus enforces, the thought of the first; as in Ps.
114:

When Israel went forth out of Egypt,

The house

of Jacob from a people of strange

language.

Judah

became his sanctuary.

Israel

[became] his dominion.

The sea

saw that and iled.

Jordan

was driven back;

and so all the way through.
In sorae cases the second line is not perfectly
equivalent to the first, though parallel to it; as
in Ps. 19: I :
" Parallelism is not distinctive of Hebrew poetry ; it charac
terizes that of nearly all the Semitic peoples.

74 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
The heavens declare the glory of God,
And the firmament showeth his handiwork.
Slightly involved is antithetic parallelism,
which confirras the statement of the first line by
a contrast in the second. Many instances occur
in Proverbs: A wise son maketh a glad father;
But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.^*
Every wise woman buildeth her house;
But the foolish plucketh it down with her hands.^^
The antithetic parallel is sometimes strength
ened by illustrative clauses. Thus in Cant. 1:5:
I am black but comely
[black] as the tents of Kedar
[comely] as the curtains of Solomon.
A third form of parallelism is called synthetic
or constructive. Here the second line (or two
or three following lines) carries out the idea of
the first in one way or another :
Yet I have set my King
Upon my holy hill of Zion.20
and The wicked are not so
But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.21
"Prov. 10:1. Kautsch, on such parallels, quotes from Alci
phron: "It is as if the father spoke to his son and the mother
repeated it" (.Die Poesie u. d. poetischen Biicher des A. T., p. 8).
" Prov. 14: I. »Ps. i: 4.
™Ps. 2:6.

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 75
Perhaps the most perfect illustration of syn
thetic parallelism is the last chapter of Eccle
siastes :
Remember also thy Creator in the day of thy youth.
Or ever the evil days come and the years draw nigh
when thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them.
While the sun or the light, etc.22
Here the first statement includes all that fol
lows; the second carries out the thought of the
first, describing (by contrast) the days of youth;
and the remainder of the section develops this
contrast, describing old age.
A very striking and effective form of paral
lelism has a sort of graduated rhythm; the sec
ond line takes up sorae words from the first, re
peats them, and completes the thought. This
gives a peculiar strength and beauty to the poem :
Till thy people pass over, O Lord ;
Till thy people pass over which thou hast purchased. ^3
Several instances of this noble form of poetry
occur in Deborah's Ode :
Until that I, Deborah, arose.
Until I arose a mother in Israel ; 2*
and Because they came not up to the help of the Lord,
To the help of the Lord against the mighty.^^
=^2 Eccl., chap. 12. "Judg. 5:7.
==Ex. 15: i6.
^ Judg. 5 : 23. This graduated rhythm may be observed in the
Syrian dance-song of today. I have heard children in their dance-

76 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
This kind of parallelism, usually called climac
tic, is peculiarly characteristic of the refrain, that
well-known feature of ballad verse. For exam
ple, David's dirge over Saul and Jonathan ^^ has
a climactic hero-refrain :
How are the heroes fallen.
How are the heroes fallen in the midst of
the battle
How are the heroes fallen and the weapons
of war perished.
Psalm 80 has a climactic refrain, especially
characterized by the accumulation of the naraes
of God:
Elohim, restore us,
And let thy face shine that we may be saved (vs. 3 ) ,
Elohim, Sabaoth, restore us.
And let thy face shine that we may be saved (vs. 7 ) ,
Elohim, Sabaoth, turn now, look from heaven.
See and visit this vine;
And protect that which thy right hand planted.
And be over the branch thou hast strengthened for thy
self (vs. 14).
Jehovah, Elohim, Sabaoth, restore us,
Let thy face shine that we may be saved (vs. 19).
The refrain, which is so striking a feature of
ballad lore, frequently occurs in the more studied
plays go through a great number of verses, each of which takes
up a word or phrase from that preceding, so that they hang to
gether like the links of a chain. Interesting examples, where the
recognition of this form is of great value for interpretation, occur
in Isa. 1:2, 9, 10, and 17, i8, 23, 27; Hos. 5: 14, 15; 6: i, and
other prophetic passages.
"2 Sam. i: 17 ff.

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 'J'J
poems of the Old Testament. Pss. 107 and 136
are important illustrations. In the latter, " for
his mercy endureth forever," recurs with every
verse. The refrain of Ps. 107 is the most elab
orate illustration of the refrain in all literature.
The refrain, " Why art thou cast down," etc.,
shows that Pss. 42 and 43 ("The Exile's La
ment" it is sometimes called) were originally
one, divided perhaps for liturgical purposes.
Am. 4: 6-1 1 is an impressive instance of the re
frain. It recurs like the tolling of a bell :
" Yet have ye not retumed unto me," saith the Lord.
IV
Another form of parallelism is a variant of the
antithetic parallel.
Jacob's explanation of his blessings of Jo
seph's two sons is an antithetic parallel com
posed of two synonymous parallels antithetic to
one another and forming a Tennysonian stanza :
He also shall become a people
And he also shall be great;
Howbeit his younger brother shall be greater than he
And his seed shall become a multitude of nations.^''
This form of the antithetic parallel is some
times called introverted. It occurs frequently in
both prose and verse.
Introverted parallelism appears, indeed, to be
"Gen. 48: 19.

78 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
peculiarly characteristic of the Hebrew mind —
one of its ways of thinking. For example, the
catalogue of " the generations of the sons of
Noah " given in Gen., chap. lo, follows this or
der. Noah's sons are first named:
Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Vs. i)
The sons of Japheth (vss. 2-S)
The sons of Ham (vss. 6-20)
The sons of Shem (vss. 21-31)
The sequence of these sections used to be held
to prove that Japheth was the eldest of Noah's
sons, Shem being first named because he was the
progenitor of the chosen people. In fact, it
proves nothing but that this is the way the He
brew mind worked. As Shem was first naraed
(being the eldest), his descendants were last to
be considered. Those who have lived in the
East have found that this way of thinking is
characteristic of the Semitic mind in general.
In it we find the explanation of the arrange
ment of clauses in such passages as the cata
logue of Abraham's riches in Gen. 12: 16. The
order of it seems strange to us, but is precisely
in accordance with the arrangement of ideas in
the Hebrew mind. For a reason which will
shortly appear, let me arrange the clauses thus,
reading from a to a' :

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 79
c aud men-servants and maid-servants c'
h and he-asses and she-asses h'
a And he had sheep and oxen and camels o'
The sequence of clauses in this passage has
from the earliest times been a puzzle to western
coraraentators. Why the men-servants and the
maid-servants should be wedged in between the
he-asses and the she-asses appears to be a riddle
without a solution. So thorough a scholar as
the late Professor Dillmann, of Berlin, in the
final edition of his work on Genesis (translated
in 1897), says that "the mention of the male
and female slaves between the mention of the
he-asses and the she-asses is inexplicable," though
he attempts to explain it by an ancient gloss or a
copyist's misplacement. Now, without doubt a
number of glosses have crept into the Old Testa
ment text, and there are sorae evident instances
of displacement of matter by copyists. But there
is, perhaps, too great a willingness to accept one
or other of these short and easy roads to a solu
tion of difficulties; and there ought to be some
other evidence of gloss or misplacement than the
mere fact that the raeaning of the passage is not
obvious. Returning to the diagram given above, let us
draw a line through it.
We know that the strongest part of the arch
is the keystone, that is, the center ; and though it
is entirely at variance with western ideas to put

8o HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
the strongest part of a statement anywhere but
at the end — so much so that we avoid nothing
so carefully as an anticlimax — yet we can hardly

call that a weak literary form which corresponds
with the strongest of all forms of material con
struction ; and this is precisely what this forra of
Hebrew literature appears to me to do. The
men-servants and the maid-servants, being the
most important part of Abraham's possessions,
were naturally put in the place which belongs to
the keystone of the arch.^*
Another illustration may be found in Gen.
13: lo, a passage the construction of which also
disturbs Professor Dillmann, though he thinks
that " the inverted climax " " may be tolerated
because the first comparison is pitched too high."
^ Budde speaks of Lam., chap. 3, as forming " a central
peak " between chaps, i, 2 and 4, 5 (art. " Poetry " in Hastings'
Dictionary of the Bible, p. 13). In the second part of Isaiah,
chaps. 49—57 form such a central peak divided from chaps, 40—47
and 58—66 by the refrain: " There is no peace saith Jehovah (my
God) to the wicked" (48:22; 57:27), This part of Isaiah is
doubtless to be attributed to various prophets and various periods;
nevertheless, someone gave the work its present form, and who
ever he was, his mind appears to have worked in the same way, on
a large scale, with other Hebrew minds in smaller matters. In
Isaiah the " central peak " is the most important part of the
prophecy, and it seems to rae that peculiar importance attaches to
Lam., chap. 3.

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 8l
The story tells of Lot's search for a new home,
since it is necessary for hira and his kinsman
Abram to part company by reason of the dis
sensions of their herdsmen on the question of
water for their flocks. Lot turns his eyes to the
Jordan district, and {a-b-c-c'-b'-a') :

c before Jehovah destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah like paradise c'
b behold it was well watered everywhere like the land of Egypt b'
a he beheld all the plain of Jordan as thou comest in to Zoar. a'
There is no anticlimax " like paradise, like
the land of Egypt," such as Professor Dillmann
supposes. This is how the mind of this Hebrew
author worked : ( a) the Jordan plain was like
the plain of Zoar in the Nile delta; (b) it was
watered (by Jordan) as the land of Egypt was
watered (by the Nile) ; (c) so beautiful and fer
tile was it at this tirae (before Jehovah destroyed
Sodom and Gomorrah) that it could be compared
only with paradise with its four life-giving
streams. The puzzling passage becoraes a lovely
prose-poera, full of exquisite illustrations. If
Lot saw half in the plain of Jordan that we see
in this little poem, it is no wonder that he chose
it for his abode.
A single strophe of Ps. 89 (vss. 28-37) is a
remarkable instance of introverted parallelism.
When we consider that no thought of this form

82 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
was in the minds of the translators, and that,
far from always rendering a given word by the
sarae English word, they raade it a principle to
seek for variety in rendering, it is simply amaz
ing that the parallelism has been so well pre
served. Reading a and a', then b and b', and so
on until we reach e and e^, we find an amazing
parallelism, till we come to the keystone of the
thought in the very center, vss. 32, 33 :
a) My mercy will I keep for him for evermore,
and my covenant shall stand fast with him. (vs. 28)
b) His seed also will I make to endure for ever,
and his throne as the days of heaven, (vs. 29)
c) If his children forsake my la-w,^^
And walk not in my judgments; (vs. 30)
d) If they break my statutes,
and keep not my commandments; (vs. 31)
e) Then will I visit their transgressions with the rod,
and their iniquity with stripes, (vs. 32)
e') Yet my mercy will I not utterly take from him,
nor prove false in my truth, (vs. 33)
d') My covenant will I not break,
nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.
(vs. 34)
c') Once have I sworn by my holiness;
unto David will I not lie. (vs. 35)
b') His seed shall endure for ever,
and his throne as the sun before me. (vs. 36)
a') It shall be established for evermore as the moon,
and the witness in the sky standeth fast. (vs. 37)
" The verbal parallelism fails in vss. 30, 35, but not the cor
respondence of thought, which here and in the following parallels
is antithetic. For a soul after covenanting with God to forsake
his statutes (vs. 30) is to lie (vs. 35); the judgments of God (vs.
30) and his holiness (vs. 35) are parallel.

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 83
This is a single strophe from a great prophetic
ode. A strophe is a group of several verses, all
of which belong to one idea. The ode of Deb
orah ^° contains three strophes of 3 X 3 verses,
each with an introductory and a concluding verse.
The magnificent ode of Moses ^^ consists of three
parts with four strophes in each part, each
strophe answered by an antistrophe. The forra
of the antistrophe is, of course, the antithetic
parallel. It reminds us of Greek lyric poetry, in
which the strophic evolutions of the dance were
reproduced in an opposite direction by the anti
strophe. ,V
We have already seen that, though parallelism
is the most obvious mark of Hebrew poetry, and
was the first to be detected, yet it is by no means
its only distinguishing characteristic.
The poetry of prophecy, as we raight expect,
is distinguished rather by rhythm than by par
allelism. Its rhythmical character has only of
late been established, and the translators of the
Revised Version have made no effort to repro
duce it — happily, for with all their scholarship
they are manifestly not poets. A number of
scholars have, however, undertaken to do so with
striking success.
Professor George Adam Smith, of Glasgow,
»°Judg., chap. 5. 'i Deut., chap. 32.

84 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
has translated Isa. 63 : 1-7 in very rhythmical
strain. That it is also draraatic will be clearly
perceived :
Who is this coming firom Edom,
Raw-red his garments from Bossrah !
This sweeping on in his raiment.
Swaying in the wealth of his strength?
I that do speak in righteousness.
Mighty to save !
Wherefore is red on thy raiment.
And thy garments like to a wine treader's?
A trough I have trodden alone.
Of the peoples no man was with me.
So I trod them down in my wrath.
And trampled them down in my fury;
Their life-blood sprinkled my garments,
And all my raiment I stained.
For the day of revenge in my heart;
And the year of my redeemed has come.
And I looked, and no helper,
I gazed, and none to uphold !
So my righteousness won me salvation ;
And my fury, it hath upheld me.
So I stamp on the peoples in my wrath.
And make them drunk with my fury.
And bring down to earth their life-blood.^^
The rhythra of the Hebrew is a natural
rhythm; unlike the Greek and the French, but
like the English, the emphatic syllable coincides
with the natural stress of the voice, and the
" " Isaiah " in the Expositor's Bible, Vol. II, p. 443 (Arm
strong & Co.).

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 85
length of the clause is closely related to the pulse
of the blood, the beat of the heart, the expiration
of the breath. In this it differs essentially from
Latin poetry and that of its daughter-languages.
The difference between prose and poetry in
any language is, however, made clearest, not by
rhythra or raetre or parallelisra, or by any struc
tural characteristic, but by iraagery. We use
figures in poetry which we may not use in prose.
The imagery of Hebrew poetry is very remarka
ble. In no other literature in the world is it so
daring, yet in no other is it so reverent. Forras
of speech are used with reference to God which
would seem irapious if found elsewhere, and it
is very significant that we do not find them im
pious here. What other poet could dare to say,
speaking of natural afflictions, pestilence, famine,
and such like:
O thou sword of Jehovah, how long will it be ere thou be
quiet ?
Gather thyself into thy scabbard ! rest, be still ! ^^
The simplicity of the imagery is no less im
pressive. Metaphors of the raost stupendous im
port are drawn from the common arts of life.
" Thou didst thresh the nations in anger," says
Habakkuk ; ^* and Joel cries : " Put ye in the
sickle, for the harvest is ripe: tread ye, for the
wine press is full, the vats overflow, for their
»3Jer. 47: 6. »*Hab. 3: 12.

86 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
wickedness is great." ^^ " O thou my threshing,
the corn of my floor," groans Isaiah, " that which
I have heard from the Lord of hosts, the God of
Israel, have I declared unto you." ^*
Many of the most significant illustrations are
drawn from such ecclesiastical things as priests'
ornaments and vestments. In Ps. 93: i, "The
Lord reigneth, he is appareled with majesty,"
the word " appareled " is the term specially ap
plied to the dress and ornaments of priests.
When the Psalmist says.
My frame was not hidden from thee.
When I was made in secret.
And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth,'^
the word " curiously wrought " is that used with
reference to the most subtle art of Phrygian
workraen, that of designing in needlework, an
art wholly devoted to the sanctuary and attrib
uted to supernatural guidance in the case of
Bezaleel, the chief worker on the tabernacle.
" Who covereth thyself with light as with a
garment," ^^ refers to the holy of holies.
All sorts of inanimate objects are personified :
" Let the earth hear ; " " Give ear, O ye heav
ens ; " " Let the hills hear thy voice ; " " Let the
sea roar, let the field exult, let the trees of the
wood sing for joy." ^®
""Joel 3: 13- ''Ps. 139: 15.
='Isa. 21: 10. ^ Ps. 104: 2.
^^ Isa. 34: i; Deut. 32: i; Mic. 6: 1; Ps. 96: ll. '2

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 87
Very majestic are such personifications as pic
ture Pestilence as marching before Jehovah.*"
Hades extending her throat and opening her in
satiable jaws,*^ thunder as " the clangor of Je
hovah." *^ Such personifications as these throw
some light upon what is called the anthropo
morphism of the Old Testament conception of
God : far more of it is pure imagery than is gen
erally supposed. Those who object to the bib
lical doctrine of God that he is there made " a
magnified and non-natural raan," do so with
out apprehending the poetic character of many
of the statements about him. They are figura
tive; and people of trained minds should have no
difficulty in discerning this. The Bible descrip
tions of God are figurative, partly because figures
give a raore nearly just idea of things than ab
stract statements can do, and partly because the
Hebrew language, like the vocabulary of a child,
had no words for abstract ideas.*^
VI
Nothing adds more to the vividness and beauty
of the Bible poetry than an understanding of the
« Hab. 3 : S-
" Isa. 5 : 14.
«Ps. 29: 3, 4. 5, 7, 8, 9.
" Human qualities are transferred to the personality of God
'* graphically as could not but happen when done by the vivacious,
poetical, powerful phantasy of the people of Israel.'* — Davidson.
Old Testament Theology, p. tog.

88 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
situation to which it refers. It has been said that
the reason why Browning's poetry is diflicult is
that he always takes for granted that his readers
know all that he knows. The range of Brown
ing's knowledge was amazing, and few readers
are equally at horae in all its realms. Those
who are so find his poetry as easy reading as
Tennyson's, and far easier than Wordsworth's.
So with the Bible: much of it is obscure from
our lack of knowledge of historic facts and of the
circurastances under which the passage was writ
ten. When we can ascertain these, the obscurity
vanishes. A knowledge of the historic setting,
furthermore, adds significance and makes the
passage raore telling. Ps. no, a messianic
psalm to us, must have referred, when it was
written, to soraething that the writer understood.
Let the reader turn to 2 Sara., chap. 7, trying to
realize the feelings of David. It was the time
when his wish to build a teraple was thwarted by
God, but with the check came also the assurance
of God's continued favor to him and his house,
the first overwhelming conviction that he was
founding a dynasty which should endure forever
in the face of all opposition. Let him try to
realize what this idea of an enduring dynasty
must have been to one who had never heard, in
all his people's history, of anything like heredi
tary rule.

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 89
Now turn to Ps. no. The poet sings exult
antly :
Jehovah saith unto my lord [David],
" Sit thou on my right hand (as Jehovah drives in his
war-chariot to overthrow David's enemies),
Until I make thine enemies thy footstool."
Then David sees hiraself grasping the scepter
of a great kingdora, " the scepter of power out
of Zion," and becoming a ruler in the midst of
his enemies; and then, still driving along in Je
hovah's war-chariot, he sees the Lord's armies
in the enthusiasm of their patriotism, their ser
ried ranks " in holy array " as dewdrops from
the womb of the raorning — as bright in their
shining arraor, as countless in number, as the
dewdrops that sparkle on the meadow in the ear
ly sunrise. Many of ray readers are aware that
this psalra is not now attributed to David by
raost scholars, and that this is a sore grievance
to many devout souls, because our Lord quotes
it as by David. I do not think that this will long
continue to be a grievance, as people come better
to understand the force of such expressions,
through literary study. Nevertheless, it is very
certain that the historic setting fits David's time;
and though I would not set my opinion above
that of trained scholars, I am inclined to think
that even some of them, men of more scholar
ship than culture, would revise some of their

90 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
views if their literary perceptions were more
acute. The Hebrew genius for the mechanical con
struction of poetry often found expression in
acrostic or alphabetic poems. The twenty-fifth
psalm is alphabetic. Ps. 119 is shown in our
Bible to be alphabetic — each group of eight
verses beginning with the same Hebrew letter.
Pss. 9 and 10 are acrostic, and this fact is further
interesting as proving by the initial letters in the
Hebrew that these two psalms were originally
one, for Ps. 9 has the first part of the alphabet,
and Ps. 10 the remaining letters, two verses be
ing given to a letter. Ps. in has half a verse
to each letter. Lamentations is largely alpha
betical. The Revised Version shows the third
chapter in strophes of three verses. In Hebrew
the verses in each strophe begin with the sarae
letter. VIII
In the Revised Version the Psalter is divided
into five books, each closing with a doxology
(Pss. 41:13; 72:18, 19; 89:52; 106:48; and
Ps. 150, which is a doxology). This is the divi
sion in the Hebrew Psalter. That these five
books are not all of the same age is evident by the
style and subjects, still more by the feeling of
the psalms they contain. That sorae of them
were independent psalm-books, before they were

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 91
united to form the Hebrew Psalter, is apparent
frora the fact that the same psalms, or parts of
psalras, reappear in several of them, as was inevi
table in a collection raade of several books be
fore the art of editing was invented. Ps. 60 : 6-8,
for example, is the same as Ps. 108 : 7-10, and
this Ps. 108 consists of Ps. 57: 7-11 prefixed to
the verses from Ps. 60. Ps. 40: 13-17 ap
pears alone as Ps. 70; Ps. 53 is the same as
Ps. 14. A psalm which is given in i Chron.
16:8-36 as having been sung at the dedication
of the tabernacle is largely made up of Ps.
96 and parts of Pss. 105 and 106. The great
" Dedication Ode," Ps. 68, contains quotations
from the Song of Deborah and other psalms.
These facts are instructive, for they serve to
show that inspiration is something different from
what we have mostly supposed it to be. Some
of the most unquestionably inspired passages in
the Bible — passages which speak to us with all
the force of a voice from God, or interpret our
own emotions as they can be interpreted only by
one inspired — have a structure so artificial, so
dependent upon numerical correspondences and
the balancing of figures, lines, and words, that
it is evident that the personality of the writer
had a large share in their production. Others
are so corapounded frora the works of former
writers that it is difficult to find in them any

92 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
other evidences of inspiration than that shown
by any compiler of taste and judgment. It is
at least very evident that the spirit of the proph
ets is subject to the prophets to a far greater
degree than we may have supposed.
It is good for us to discover these facts, if
only to show us that we may not dogmatize on
the subject of inspiration, may not say it must be
this or that. The genius of the Hebrew people,
as a people, is in their poetry to a degree almost
unknown in any other literature. Their child
like character is all there; in their most exalted
flights they have not broken away frora the
child-love of the swaying dance and the artless
play of setting opposites over against opposites,
and equals against equals, of balancing entrance
with exit, as Rabbi Akiba says. But is not this
the very reason why we raay feel sure of their
inspiration? It is in the child-heart that the
Spirit of (jod loves to dwell. And if, instead
of a raere dictation of something entirely foreign
to the raan inspired, a supernatural guidance to
sorae truth utterly out of the range of his ordi
nary experience, we find inspiration to have been
a perpetual indwelling, a life of God in the soul
of the man whose heart was as the heart of a
little child, a tabernacling of the Holy One with
a people who were in an especial sense the chil
dren of the Most High, so that their national

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 93
characteristics and methods of thought became,
not hindrances to be overcome, but vehicles for
the coramunication of divine truth — surely this
will not be to us loss, but gain. For then, the
Bible appearing to us more natural, we shall raore
easily perceive how rauch more than natural it is.
Speaking to every one of us, as the apostles at
Pentecost spoke to the Jews of the dispersion, to
everyone in the language in which he was born,
it brings us no bewildering message, but one
which, appealing to that which is most true in
ourselves, is its own witness that it is the very
truth of God.

CHAPTER IV
HEROES AND HEROISM

When a narrative of memorable events is such
as to touch the imagination, arouse the emotions,
awaken the faculty of constructive iraagery, and
kindle the religious instinct, we call the story an
epic. Large parts of the Bible narrative, though
written in prose, appear to be epic in their nature,
an appeal being raade, not only to the conscience
and the intelligence, but to the imagination and
the emotions of the reader, the recital being none
the less true for its poetic interpretation.
Now, the history of the epic is one, whether
we seek for it in Palestine or Persia, India or
Greece. It begins in folklore, myth or legend,
or story, in which are gathered up precious me
morials of events and personages of national in
terest. As these stories are handed down, they
pass through imaginative and poetic minds; yet
all the way along they are the property, not of
this or that minstrel or story-teller, but of the
people. The air is full of thera; mothers tell
them to their children, and old men relate them
94

HEROES AND HEROISM 95
to the young at the noonday rest or in the night
halt on the raarch. By and by coraes a true poet,
a raaker, and gathers up these stories of the peo
ple, this " epic stuff ; " fixing in forras of imper
ishable beauty these memorials which are the
coraraon property of all. He is not a prophet, a
seer; he does not ask for the raeaning of these
things ; he is a poet, a creator, who gives to raat
ter its inevitable forra. It is a question of no
moraent who this poet is ; for the importance lies
not in hira, but in his subject. It adds nothing
to the ageless beauty and priceless worth of the
Iliad or the Odyssey that Horaer wrote them;
for the beauty and worth were always latent in
the material, and he has only given it the form
that by right belonged to it, so that in studying
the Iliad it would aid us not one whit to know
all about Homer, nor hinder us one particle were
it conclusively proved that Homer was not its
author. There is another kind of epic, which literary
raen distinguish as intellectual and preraeditated.
Such are the ^neid and Paradise Lost, in both
of which the authorship is an important factor.
But it is very evident that nothing of this kind
is in the Old Testaraent. The old records of
heroes and heroisra which we find in the early
historic books are Horaeric, not Miltonic; the

96 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
property of a whole people, not the gift to them
of a single inspired mind.
The forrrt in which inspired minds cast this
coraraon heritage molded the national character
of the Hebrews, as epic narrative always tends
to do, and to a far higher degree than Greek epic,
for example, molded the national character of
Greece. Nothing is more plain all through the
Bible than that the minds of the whole people of
Israel were steeped in a knowledge of their early
history, precisely by this method. It is evident
in the way the old stories are referred to by the
prophets, to lend motive to their appeals to the
people. Even to the close of Old Testament
times copies of books must have been few, and
only a very small learned class knew how to use
them; yet the prophets always take for grant
ed that the whole people are perfectly familiar
with the heroic tales of their early history.
" Look unto the rock whence ye were hewn and
the hole of the pit whence ye were digged ; look
unto Abraham your father and unto Sarah that
bare you," ^ says the great prophet of the exile.
" Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob and the
mercy to Abraham which thou hast sworn unto
our fathers from the days of old," says the book
of Micah ; ^ and Hosea recalls to mind how " Ja
cob fled into the country of Syria and Israel
'Isa. 51:1, 2. 'Mic. 7:20.

HEROES AND HEROISM 97
served for a wife and for a wife he kept sheep." *
" O my people, remember now what Balak, king
of Moab, consulted and Balaam, the son of Beor,
answered him," says Micah again.'* Isaiah al
ludes to Joshua's great victory at Beth-horon;^
Malachi urges God's choice of Jacob before Esau
as the motive of a better allegiance.® The de
struction of Sodom and Gomorrah,'' the coming
up of Israel frora the " iron furnace " of Egypt,*
the slaughter of Midian and the death of the
king at the rock Oreb,^ are raentioned again and
again as things universally known. Hosea as
sumes that the whole of Jacob's story is familiar
— his singular birth, when " he took his brother
by the heel," and his manhood, when " he had
power with God; yea he had power over the
angel and prevailed." ^° He even takes for grant
ed a knowledge of some incidents not in Genesis :
he tells how at Bethel Jacob wept and made sup
plication unto the angel ; ^ ^ and Isaiah perhaps
refers to some other unrecorded incident, when,
prophesying of a happier future, he says : " Ja-
^ Hos. 12: 12.
* Mic. 6: 5.
° Isa. 28:21; cf. Hab. 3:11.
' Mai. 1 : 2.
'Isa. 1:9; 13:19, etc.; Jer. 23:14, etc.; Am. 4:11; Zeph.
2: 9. 'Jer. 11:4; cf. Deut. 4:20.
• Ps. 83: 11; Isa. 10: 26.
" Hos. 12: 3, 40.
'^ Hos. 12: 46.

98 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
cob shall not now be ashamed, neither shall his
face now wax pale.^^
That these allusions are to some well-known
epic story seems certain when we consider that
the prophets make few allusions to Israel's later
history — to Soloraon and his descendants, or to
the history of the northern kingdom, though both
are full of admirable illustrations of the truths
they teach. They cannot take for granted that
these are generally known. Nearly all the his
toric allusions of the prophets are to that period
in Israel's history which corresponds to the he
roic age of any people — the time before insti
tutions have become established, laws and con
stitutions and forras of government — and when
therefore the accidental superiority of an indi
vidual, his energy and physical force, make him
a leader and a doer of, deeds that leave a memory
and form the staple of conversation, and the
true education of a people who have not books.
The age of the judges was such an heroic time ;
Jephthah, Gideon, and all the others are veritable
heroes. The age of the patriarchs was such a
time, and in all the epic story of the world there
is no more epical figure than the Hebrew Ulysses,
Jacob, whose wanderings covered nearly all the
known world, from the Euphrates to the Nile.
The prophets know that they may safely assume
^' Isa. 29 : 22.

HEROES AND HEROISM 99
that all the people are perfectly farailiar with
these stories. II
What we have in the Old Testament is not,
indeed, a poem like the Homeric epics; it is
raainly prose, in which ballads and folklore are
irabedded. Whether or not it is based upon an
ancient poem, long lost to the world, and perhaps
never comraitted to writing, is a question that
would carry us too far ; but the difference between
the Hebrew epic, the records of Israel's heroes
and heroism, and any other epic, is not mainly
the difference between prose and poetry. Nor,
though it does materially differ frora other epics,
is that difference that it presents a different type
of raanhood ; the marvelous feature of all epic is
that, without knowing anything of psychology,
it shows human nature to be always and every
where the same, especially in being religious.
For the epic is always at the very foundation of
the religious life of a people, whether in India or
Scandinavia, Greece or Palestine. In these re
spects the Hebrew epic is like the epic of all na
tions; it differs from them in being spiritual, in
pouring a spiritual raeaning into the life of raan
with God. From the days of Abraham the He
brew religion was a spiritual religion, and its
poets were always to a certain degree seers.

IOO HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
III
This explains the difference between the hero
stories of the Old Testaraent and the epics of
other peoples. The stories of Abraham and
Jacob, of Joshua and Gideon and Jephthah and
David, are epic stories, as full of achievement
and wordless suffering, as sublirae in their pathos
and power, self-conquest, submission, as intense
in passion, as compelling in charra, as represen
tatively huraan in their love, longing, energy,
woe, as the stories of Hector or Agaraeranon, of
Ulysses or Priam. And yet there is a difference
between them which the writer of the epistle to
the Hebrews perceived, when he said that of the
heroes of Israel the world was not worthy. ^^
They had all the foibles, weaknesses, criraes of the
worthies of Greece and India and the Northland,
but the vision and faculty divine were also theirs ;
they alone of all the heroes of old were spiritually
aware of God.'* Their story is inspired, not be
cause inspired raen wrote it, but because they
theraselves were inspired with the consciousness
of a divine being who was also a raoral being.
" The other gods desired praises, homage, sacri
fice; their God desired goodness." ''
"Heb. 11:38.
" " The Hebrew thought of God," says Mr. Alden in the
work already referred to (p. 249), " was . . . the child's in
timate thought, and had in it a naive feeling not discernible in
early pagan thought.'*
^ H. P. Smith, Old Testament History, p. 103.

HEROES AND HEROISM IOI
The Greek epic had, indeed, its revelation for
the world — the revelation of the beautiful; but
the message of the Hebrew epics is that the beau
tiful is also the good and the true. To the Greek
these were three, as were the highest gods in his
pantheon. To the Hebrew they were one, and
could all be expressed by the one word " God."
It is this that raises the heroisra of the Hebrew
heroes so far above that of all others, whether
they be demigods or men. The Hebrews' vision
of the good might be as limited as their notions
of the true and beautiful were crude and bar
baric, and as their thought of God fell short of
his true character ; but the three were never sep
arated. There was no schism between the moral
and the physical and the intellectual; all found
their source and center in God. This is the ex
planation of that which has puzzled philosophers
— the fact that not to artistic Greece or philo
sophic India, but to the childlike and immature
Hebrew, first came the great idea of unity, the
pivotal idea of the universe, of religion, science,
art. In the highly developed fancy of the Greek
the divine light was refracted into a rainbow ; the
simple reverence of the Hebrew gathered all the
colors of the spectrum into white. To the Greek
the difference between evil and good was as that

I02 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
of one color from another ; to the Hebrew it was
as that of darkness from light.'®
Now, this deepest of all thoughts, unity, was
first taught, not in philosophic terms, but in the
universal form of epic. Take the story of Abra
ham,''' for example, which is in fact the story of
the first emergence of the monotheistic idea, the
first glimpse of the cosraical fact, unity. It is
epic pure and simple. The lovely pastoral life,
th© clustered tents under the terebinths of Mamre,
where the sheik from the far East, the father of
his clan, lived peaceful and honored among the
native peoples of a strange land — these are the
property of epic. The story tells us not a word
of the tremendous soul-struggle through which
Abraham assuredly raust have passed in his Chal
dean home, when the impulse took possession of
hira, iraperative as the voice of God, saying:
" Get thee out of thy country and frora thy kin
dred and from thy father's house ....
and in thee shall all families of the earth be
blessed." Only through Isaiah do we get a
glimpse of it in his " Thus saith Jehovah who
redeemed Abraham." '* Here in Genesis all is
simple, direct narrative — an utter absence of the
subjective. '" If memory serves, I owe this expression of my thoughts to
Miss Julia Wedgewood,
"Gen., chaps. 12—21. "Isa. 29:22.

HEROES AND HEROISM 103
The Iliad has nothing more artlessly objective
than the significant story of the coming of the
three strangers to the patriarch's tent, the simple
hospitality, the reverence just as siraple, when
Abrahara discovers the divine nature of his guest.
There is Greece and India and the Northland
over again in the episodes of Gerar and Egypt,
when the fatal beauty of the superficial and selfish
Sarah so nearly wrecked the hope of the world.
Then coraes the heroic incident of the rescue of
Lot : the sudden arming for war, when the news
was brought Abraham that his clansman had be
come the innocent victim of a conflict between
two great leagues of eastern potentates ; the swift
onrushing march at the head of his three hundred
and ten retainers; the noble refusal to profit by
the spoil of triumph. In the very spirit of the
epic is the weak subservience of the hero to his
womankind, in the household jealousies between
the true wife and the slave-mother of the first
born son ; the feminine disregard of consequences
in the banishment of the slave-mother and her
son, and the divine interposition, turning aside the
natural consequences of this freak of jealous
cruelty. Epic rises tO' its highest expression in
the joy over the birth of Isaac and the averted
tragedy of his sacrifice — but still it reads like
Homer, and the noblest poet of the human race
rises to no nobler flight than the twenty-second

104 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
chapter of Genesis. And it is in this epic story,
external, objective, without introspection or anal
ysis, that we find that revelation of unity, the
one God, the one race in whom all nations of the
earth were to be blessed, which lies at the basis
of all the conclusions of modern philosophy, of
all the half-grasped prophecies of modern science.
Still more of epic character has the story of
Jacob,'® with twice as much of religious charac
ter. The amazing truth of the power of man
with God emerges from his story of Jacob's in
triguing with his mother to secure his father's
blessing, his far wandering to the ancient seat of
his father's house, his beautiful love-story, his
flight frora Paddan-arara with all his flocks and
herds and children, his fear of his brother Esau,
his conflict with God. Nothing in the Iliad can
surpass it, especially as the dark shadows gather
over his later life. Read as plain history, there
is much in Jacob's story to perplex us ; that it has
not more deeply perplexed us only shows how
superficially and thoughtlessly we read the Old
Testament. But read as an epic, as a part, and
one of the raost iraportant parts, of the world's
heritage of noble thoughts, it is full of power.
Not that the story is not historical, but that it
is raore than historical; like Michael Angelo's
"Gen. 25:20 — chap. 49.

HEROES AND HEROISM 105
Moses, it is of heroic mold, and has the higher
truth of poetic inspiration.
The life of David ^" forms the connecting link
between epic and history, but no life of which
we have any knowledge is so eminently epical in
its features. Into the secluded life of the shep
herd boy of the Bethlehem hills breaks first the
raysterious event of the prophet Samuel's visit
and the anointing to sorae vague, unguessed-at
career. Then coraes the introduction to the court :
the king, they say, is troubled with an evil spirit
from Jehovah (it is always Jehovah who both
makes peace and creates evil), and nothing can
bring him quiet but such rausic as the shepherd
lad knows best how to raake. Then war breaks
out; the hosts of Israel and of Philistia, in
trenched on opposite heights alike impregnable,
dare raake no forward step on either side ; while
day by day the giant charapion struts proudly
across the narrow field that lies between, throw
ing his challenge to the people of the living God
— until down frora his hill pastures coraes the
young shepherd lad, and with the common weap
on of his craft, a sling and a stone frora the
brook, lays low the enemy of his people.
The turn that this event gives to young David's
fortunes is rather romantic than epical : the favor
of the king ; the love of the king's son Jonathan,
" 1 Sam. 16:1 — I Kings 2:11.

Io6 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
and the beginning of a friendship that has corae
down through history as passing the love of
women; the love of the king's daughter Michal,
and David's marriage with her as the reward of
deeds of prowess; the generalship of the king's
army; the enthusiastic admiration of the popu
lace; the secretly growing jealousy of the king,
leading to attempts at David's life; his repeated
escapes ; and finally his abandonment of the court
and his last parting with his friend — a scene
which for pathos and poetry is unmatched in all
literature. Then comes the wild outlaw life —
David and his band of hardy young condottiori
seeking adventures, now on the wild steppes of the
Devastation, now among the Philistines of the
plain, now across the Jordan among his kindred
of Moab, and again among the rocks and caverns
of the hill country of Judah. In this story epic
shades off into romance. IV
All the Hebrew epics at which we have glanced
are in prose. There is in the Old Testaraent no
verse epic, but there is one of mingled prose and
verse which is of matchless beauty — the story
of Balaam. The three chapters. Num., chaps. 22-
24, are a literary gem unsurpassed in the correct
ness and finish of both prose and poetry. They
forra a little book by themselves, and in a Hterary

HEROES AND HEROISM 107
Study may properly be so considered. The Ba
laam story is more elaborately told, and more
richly adorned with poetry, than any other of the
Bible stories. At the same time, we must observe
that the structure is erainently that of folklore,
with its numeric system of three and seven. The
purpose of the book is very striking; for at that
early period^' its meaning is the thoroughly
modern idea of the unity of all mankind; only it
is based, not on anthropology, but on God as its
basis and Israel the unifying element, as was
promised to Abraham : " In thee shall all fami
lies of the earth be blest."
Balaam hiraself is a grandly drawn figure, and
not at all the vulgar deceiver that nearly all ex
positors make him out to be; partly from a mis
understanding of the remark in Deuteronomy
that the children of Israel committed iniquity in
Baalpeor according to the " counsel " of Balaam
— a word which, in the fluid nature of language,
has lost the meaning " oracle, prophecy," which
it had when first used in this place.^^ Balaam is
^ Early in this connection, at whatever period the chapters
may be dated.
^ How fluid our English language is, how easily words take
on new meaning or lose their first significance, was strikingly
brought to my knowledge by a lawyer of much oratorical fame.
About twenty years ago, preparing a speech, he had occasion to
use the word " humanitarian," in the sense which of recent years
has become so familiar. To assure himself that he was justified
in using it in such a sense, he turned to the then latest edition
of a standard dictionary (Webster or Worcester, I forget which),
and found there as the only definition of the word: "A Uni
tarian; one who denies the divinity of Jesus Christ."

I08 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
a seer of such wide renown that his fame has
spread from his far-distant horae on the Euphra
tes to the wild tribes of the Midian desert and
the untutored agriculturists of Moab. He is a
diviner by profession, no doubt an astrologer, like
raany wise men of his country then and at a later
day, that being as far as the science of the stars
had yet been developed; but Balaam was no vul
gar fortune-teller. He practiced divination as the
highest of arts, and was by its raeans actually
brought into coramunication with the true God,
as the narrative explicitly informs us. It needs
no scholarship to see from his own oracles that
he was always faithful to the heavenly vision.
Though his will was not in harmony with the
will of God on this occasion, we observe that he
never for a raoment thought of resisting that will.
He did earnestly attempt by prayers and sacrifices
to change it, and he was severely reprimanded
by the angel for his predetermination to change
it if he could; but when at last he found it was
not to be changed, he abandoned the struggle, fell
in with the plan of God, and prophesied of Is
rael's future, the golden age of the chosen people,
with a clearness and fulness of detail never sur
passed by any later prophet.
The story, in its mechanical structure and fre
quent repetitions, gives evidence that this epic
writer took it very much as he found it in the

HEROES AND HEROISM 109
folklore which always lies at the foundation of
epic. The twice-repeated embassies of Balak,
king of Moab; the answers of Balaam, as much
alike as the progress of ideas admits; the three
fold warning as he set out; even the medium by
which one warning came — the ass — all have
the freshness and feeling of genuine folklore.
But the character of Balaam here drawn is not
traditional. The figure before us is the creation
of the epic writer, and an accurate reflection of
the national spirit in some period of Israel's pros
perity. Such a picture of a prophet out of Israel
shows a universality to which only the greatest
of Israel's prophets ever attained.
The prophetic poems show the national ideal :
Israel, the specially beloved of Jehovah, who
abides in his midst, and will cause the utter
extinction of all who oppose him, and in particu
lar of Moab, who at the time of the story was
seeking his destruction — all this in a highly dra
matic setting. The climbing of the steep ascent
to the " high places of Baal," to " the field of the
watchmen " on the top of Pisgah, to the peak of
Peor, which looked toward Jeshimon, the Dry
and Parched Land of the South Country of Ca
naan ; the building of seven altars ; the offering of
seven bullocks and seven rams; the withdrawal
of the seer away from altar and sacrifice to some
" bare height " where he could meet God alone —

no HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
these are but the background of the " parable,"
not of the seer's desire, but of God's will :
How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed?
And how shall I defy, whom Jehovah hath not defied ? ^s
And again the second time :
Behold, I have received commandment to bless:
And he hath blessed and I cannot reverse it.
He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob,
Neither has he seen perverseness in Israel :
Jehovah his God is with him.
And the shout of a king is among them.^*
And still a third tirae :
How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob,
Thy tabernacles, O Israel !
As valleys they are spread forth.
As gardens by the river side.
As lign-aloes which Jehovah hath planted.
As cedar trees beside the waters.^^
The displeasure of Balak is all the greater for
being coraplicated with superstitious fear. First
he would check this unsatisfactory seer. " Neith
er curse them at all nor bless them at all," he
exclaims ; and again with bitterness which he does
not try to conceal : " I thought to promote thee
to great honor, but lo, Jehovah [Israel's God]
hath held thee back from honor." But Balaam
is now past caring for the honor of man. He has
ceased to fight against God, and, yielding himself
'"Num. 23:8. 2' Num. 24:5, 6.
" Num. 23: 20, 21.

HEROES AND HEROISM III
to the heavenly impulse, he utters a series of sub
lirae prophecies, the far-reaching character of
which would surely never have been vouchsafed
to any prophet whose will was not in accord
with God's will:
I see him, but not now :
I behold him, but not nigh:
There shall come forth a star otit of Jacob,
And a sceptre shall rise out of Israel,
And shall smite through the corners of Moab,
And break down all the sons of tumult.^"
He saw that the time would come when the
surrounding nations — Moab, Edom, Amalek,
the Kenites — should be no more ; when Assyria,
his own nation, would carry them all away. And
then a vision rose before him which forced a cry
of horror from his lips : " Alas ! who shall live
when God doeth this! " ^'^ For Assyria, too, was
to be afflicted and come to destruction. No na
tion, no people, was to stand against that " one
out of Jacob " who " should have dominion."
And so at last, unanswered and unreproved,
Balaara, having uttered his message, goes back
to his own home, and disappears from our sight.
In another part of the book of Nurabers we catch
a glimpse of him which harmonizes little with
what we have seen of hira here; but with har-
raonizing Scripture we have not here to do. The
"'Num. 24:17. "Num. 24:23.

112 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
epic story is a unit, perfectly self-consistent, and
its meaning very clear — that Jehovah is the God,
not of Israel only, but of all nations ; and that in
every nation he raay speak for God whose will is
one with the will of God.
Is it necessary here to point out to the devout
Bible reader the value of recognizing the epic
character of these stories? Assuredly it sets at
rest those raoral doubts, and those questions of
physical possibility, which vex many earnest
souls who read these stories as history. And it
brings out, as they hardly have eyes to see who
read them as history, the unique character of that
inspiration which chose the poetry of epic to re
veal high spiritual truths to rainds too iraraature
to find thera in the literalness of history.

CHAPTER V
EASTERN LIGHT ON THE STORY OF ELISHA

A careful reading of chaps. 2-13 of 2 Kings
suggests that these chapters are not arranged in
chronological order. For example, in 5 : 23 we
read : " So the bands of the Syrians came no
more into the land of Israel." But in the very
next verse we read : " And it came to pass after
this that Ben-hadad, king of Syria, gathered all
his host and went up and besieged Samaria."
Evidently these two sentences cannot refer to the
same time or to two closely consecutive periods
of tirae.
So in 5 : 2"] we learn that the curse of perpetual
leprosy was pronounced upon Gehazi; but in the
eighth chapter we find hira conversing at length
with the king, although it is hardly probable that
a leper would be admitted to the presence of any
Israelitish king. Again we may observe that all
the remarkable deeds of Elisha appear to fall
under the reign of Jehoram, which lasted only
twelve years, although we know that Elisha lived
more than forty years longer, into the reign of
"3

114 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Joash. And if, indeed, his activity ceased thus
early in his life, it seems strange to find Joash in
chap. 13 bewailing Elisha's approaching death as
the loss of the strength of the nation, " the char
iot of Israel and the horsemen thereof." Surely
it would seem that a vigorous and valiant young
monarch need hardly be overwhelmed with dis
couragement at the death of a man of more than
eighty, who during forty very disturbed years
had taken no part in the public life of the nation.
These things, however, do not puzzle those who
know that ancient Hebrew literary methods differ
from those of raodern writers, and that a care for
historic sequence is not among them.
That the deeds of so remarkable a man as
Elisha should have been well known to all the
people, learned and unlearned, is just what we
should expect. In an age when only a sraall
learned class could read and write, the stories of
Elisha's wonderful deeds raust have circulated
widely from lip to lip. Hundreds of years before
the book of Kings was written — after the cap
tivity, as we know, since it narrates the captivity
— these stories had no doubt crystallized in much
the form in which we have them. They must
have been far more a part of common knowledge
than the stories of King Alfred and the cakes,
or George Washington and the cherry tree, are
with us; for they were a part, not only of the

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA 115
nation's history and literature, but of its spiritual
heritage. The writer of the book of Kings apparently
had something of the modern spirit, so far as the
search for authorities is concerned. He mentions
a number of them — the books of the seers Gad
and Iddo, the annals of the Kings, and others.
Naturally he would be careful to collect the folk-
stories about Elisha, as well as the incidents that
were set down in the annals, and he appears to
have been very religiously careful not to alter
these old stories in the least. It had long been
forgotten under which one of the six kings, whose
reigns Elisha saw, this or that incident took
place; and therefore, as will be observed, the
king is never mentioned by name in any of these
folk-stories : he is always simply " the king," and
thus we are quite at liberty to give him whatever
name a careful study shows us to fit the circum
stances best. II
Since scholars have found out how to decipher
the inscriptions found on monuments and tablets
and cylinders in the long-buried cities of the far
East, in Assyria and Babylonia and elsewhere,
we are beginning to find a very remarkable light
shed upon the history of the Hebrew people.
Two of these monuments, especially, bear upon
the period covered by Elisha's life, and from

Il6 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
them, with some help from other inscriptions, we
may gain such light as will enable us to rearrange
the story of Elisha in chronological order, and
merely by that rearrangement to bring out in a
striking way the remarkable services which this
great prophet and patriot rendered to his coun
try.' The two important monuments to which I al
lude are the Moabite Stone and the Black Obe
lisk. The former was discovered in 1868 A. D.
by a German missionary near the ancient city
Dibon (Dhiban) east of the Jordan. It is a stele
of black basalt, bearing an inscription in Phoeni-'
cian characters, in which Mesha, king of Moab,'
pays homage to Chemosh, his god, for victories
over his enemies. The Black Obelisk ^ is a mon
olith erected by Shalmaneser II of Assyria ( 860-
825 B. c.) at Kurkh, among the mountains of
Armenia. Upon it are recorded the many cam
paigns of this warlike and energetic monarch,
who reigned thirty-five years frora 860 B. c, that
is, frora the tirae of Ahab of Israel and Jehosa-
phat of Judah to the time of Jehu of Israel and
• Folklore is not history. Nevertheless a kernel of fact as
suredly exists in each of these folk-tales about Elisha. Without
assuming anything like historic accuracy for them, I have en
deavored to place in its proper setting each fact that they en
shrine. No reader can find it diflicult to distinguish between the
historic narrative which forms a part of these chapters and these
folk-tales. • 2 Kings 3 : 4.
' Now in the British Museum. A cast of it is in the Metro
politan Museum in New York,

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA I17
Joash of Judah, the period which begins in the
book of Kings at i Kings 18:29, and ends at
2 Kings, chap. 16, although, as we shall see, it by
no raeans covers all that is included in this sec
tion. Shalmaneser was one of the raost doughty
warriors of that warlike race which during this
period was building up the great world-erapire of
Assyria. The dates of all the events recorded on
his obelisk are now accurately fixed, for araong
the discoveries is a series of tablets containing
the eponym calendar of the Assyrians. The epo-
nyms were officials who held ofiice one at a time
for a single year, and all the events of Assyrian
history are entered in the cuneiform inscriptions
under the name of the eponym then in ofiice.
This eponym calendar extends over several
hundred years ; its place in chronology is fixed by
an eclipse which occurred under one of the epo-
nyms, and which is described with such accuracy
and fulness that astronomers recognize it as one
that took place in 763 b. c.
Ill
It was in the sixth year of Shalmaneser's reign
(855 B. c.)* that, having made wide conquests on
the eastward, the Assyrian king turned his steps
westward to southern Syria, and it is here that
he comes in contact with Hebrew history. North
* His reign was from 859 to 825 b. c.

Il8 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
and east of Israel's domain lay the new kingdom
of Syria founded on the ruins of the great Hittite
empire in Solomon's time by Rezon, an officer
of the king of Zobah," another small Hittite prin
cipality. Under the grandson of this Rezon,
Ben-hadad I, Syria grew in strength, and most
unwisely first Baasha of Israel, and afterward
Asa of Judah, invoked Ben-hadad's help against
each other.^ But they soon learned the mis
take of such a policy, for Ben-hadad not only
overran Israel and annexed all the territory on
the upper Jordan, and on the Sea of Chinneroth
(Galilee as we now call it), but even invaded
Judah and besieged Jerusalem. This we gather
from a careful comparison of the accounts in the
Revised Version of Kings and Chronicles with
certain recently discovered inscriptions.
The power of the Hebrew kingdoms being thus
reduced by Syria, Judah and Israel learned that
their true policy was to unite against this com
mon foe. Even this would not have saved them
but for the oncoming power of Assyria, which
had now reached the Mediterranean, though still
keeping to the north. An inscription of Asshur-
nasir-pal, the father of Shalmaneser II, in 871
B. c, shows that he was aware not only of the
existence of Damascus, the capital of Syria, but
of " Omri Land," as Israel was called from its
'i Kings 11:23, 24. °i Kings is: i8, 19.

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA II9
king, Omri, the father of Ahab; but it was not
until the year 854, the sixth of Shalmaneser II,
that an Assyrian army was led so far south as
Damascus. This is how the Black Obelisk de
scribes it :
In the eponymy of Dayan Asshur [854 b. c] in the
month Airu [May] on the fourteenth day, from Nineveh
I departed, crossed the Tigris, to the cities of Giammu
on the Balikh I approached. The fearfulness of my
lordship (and) the splendor of my powerful arms they
feared, and with their own arms they slew Giammu their
lord [and submitted to him]. Kitlala and Til-sha-apli-
akhi I entered, my gods I brought into his temples, I
made a feast in his palaces. The treasury I opened, I
saw his wealth ; his goods and his possessions I carried
away; to my city Asshur I brought (them). From Kit
lala I departed, to Kar-ShuIman-ashrid [a fort which he
had built on a former campaign] I approached. In boats
of sheepskin I crossed the Euphrates for a second time
at its flood.
Then he enumerates the kings who submitted
to him, and continues :
The tribute of the kings on that side of the Euphrates
. . silver, gold, lead, copper, (and) copper vessels, in
the city of Asshur-utir-asbat on that side of the Euphrates
which (is) on the river Sagur, which the Hittites call
Pitru, I received. From the Euphrates I departed, to
Khalman I approached. They feared my battle (and)
embraced my feet. Silver and gold I received as their
tribute. Sacrifices I offered before Adad, the god of
Khalman [modern Aleppo]. From Khalman I departed;
two cities of Irkhulina, the Hamathite, I approached.
Adenam, Mashga, Argana, his royal city, I captured ....

I20 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
From Argana I departed, to Qarqar I approached.
Qarqar, his royal city, I wasted, destroyed, burned with
fire.'' Then he enuraerates a long list of chariots,
cavalry, and soldiers brought by the various allies
of Dadda-idri (Ben-hadad II) ; among them
2,000 chariots, 10,000 soldiers of Ahab of Israel :
These twelve kings he [Ben-Hadad] took to his as
sistance; to make battle and war against me they came.
With the exalted power which Asshur, the lord, gave me,
with the powerful arms which Nergal [one of the great
gods of Assyria] who goes before me had granted me,
from Qarqar to Gilzan I accomplished their defeat. Four
teen thousand of their warriors I slew with arms ; like
Adad [the thunder-god] I rained a deluge upon them. I
strewed hither and yon their bodies, I filled the ruins
with their widespread soldiers, with arms I made their
blood flow.'
This is the epoch-making battle of Karkar,
which marked the beginning of the end of Syrian
independence, and the beginning of the world-
empire of Assyria. It took place in the year 854
B. c. Previous to this battle had occurred a war
between Israel and Damascus, which ended in a
disastrous defeat of Benhadad at Apek ( i Kings
20: 1-34,9 857 ( ?) B. c). A three-years' truce
was concluded between the two kings, and it was
' Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria (Eaton and Mains),
II. pp- 75f.
'Ibid., p 77.
• The figures in parentheses on this and the following pages
show what appears to be the chronology of the events and the bib
lical account of the life of Elisha.

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA 121
evidently during this truce that Ahab went as the
ally of Benhadad to fight Shalmaneser at Kar
kar. From the battle of Karkar we may approxi
mately calculate the date when Elisha was called
from his plow to the prophetic career by Elijah's
throwing his mantle over him (i Kings 19: 19,
855 (?) B. c). Ahab died the year after the
battle of Karkar, and his second son, Joram or
Jehorara, apparently exercised the regency during
the brief reign of his invalid brother Ahaziah.
The revolt of Mesha, king of Moab, broke out
iraraediately on Ahaziah's accession, and at the
time pf the campaign mentioned in 2 Kings,
chap. 3, Elisha had been long enough a disciple
of Elijah for the relation between thera to be
generally known.'" It seeras evident, therefore,
that his call must have occurred not much before
or after the battle of Karkar. At the time of hi§
call he must have been a very young man, for
he lived through the reigns of Ahaziah, Joram,
Jehu, and Jehoahaz, and into the reign of Joash,"
a period of at least sixty years. Elisha was a
true borderraan, like the Scottish borderers in
early EngHsh history. His home was Abel Me-
holah on the Jordan. Expert in camp Hfe, ara
bush, and scouting, deeply interested in the poli
tics of his country, his border life having brought
W2 Kings 3:11. "2 Kings 13:14.

122 . HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
home to him the difiiculties under which it la
bored by reason of the hostility of Syria, he was
a patriot from the beginning, and his boyhood
and young manhood were a true preparation for
his prophetic career.
The early years after Elisha's call were spent
in preparation of another kind. The last verse
of I Kings, chap. 19, tells us that on being called
by Elijah he at once went home with him and
rainistered to him, as Joshua to Moses, and
Gehazi in later years to Elisha himself, being dis
ciple and companion, as well as servant, of the
prophet. They dwelt in the rocky seclusion of
Mount Carmel, where the testing of Jehovah and
Baal had taken place. We gather that this was
Elijah's usual retreat, because he is bidden " go
down " to meet Ahab after the slaughter of Na
both ; '^ and when Ahab's son Ahaziah sends for
him,'^ it is to "the top of the hill;" EHsha, we
are told, " returned to Carmel " after Elijah's
translation,'* and he was still living there a good
while later when the Shunamite went to him after
her little son died."*
For several years the old prophet and his
young disciple apparently Hved together in strict
retireraent. Once and once only during this tirae
Elijah emerges from his retreat ; it is when Ahab
"i Kings 21:18. "2 Kings 2:25.
•' 2 Kings 1:9. ""2 Kings 4:25.

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA 123
robs Naboth of his inheritance, and the stern
prophet announces to him that for this act of in
justice his dynasty shall not continue (i Kings,
chap. 21).
Apparently Benhadad's defeat by Shalmaneser
at the battle of Karkar decided Ahab to break
the truce and undertake to wrest from him the
frontier post of Ramoth Gilead, so important all
through the history of Israel (i Kings
22:2-40, 853 B. c). The interesting question
arises how it came to pass that Ahab dared to
war against Benhadad instead of combining with
hira against Assyria. We learn the answer from
the Black Obelisk. It tells us that after the battle
of Karkar, for three years, from 854 to 851,
Shalmaneser II was occupied with an uprising
of the tribes on the northern Tigris and in Baby
lonia, and so Damascus and Israel were relieved
from fear of him and were at liberty to fight each
other. Ahab, having been mortally wounded at Ra
moth in 853 B. c, was succeeded by his son
Ahaziah, a man weak in body and apparently in
mind (i Kings 22:51). A comparison of
dates makes it appear that, as has been said, his
brother Joram was regent during Ahaziah's reign.
During this brief period Elijah again comes into
notice (2 Kings 1:1-17.). Ahaziah, having
sent to Baalzebub, a Philistine god, to inquire

124 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
whether he would recover from an illness, re
ceives a stern message of reproof from Elijah,
and in consequence he attempts to take him and
put hira to death. In all this Elijah's young
neophyte EHsha has no part.
Ahaziah reigned less than one year'^ (2
Kings 3:1, 853 B. c), and his brother
Jehoram or Joram ascended the throne. Both
Ahab and Joram were in firra alliance with Je
hoshaphat of Judah, who joined Joram in sub
duing the rebellion of Mesha, king of Moab.
Moab had been made tributary by David, had
rebelled, and had been subdued to the northern
kingdom by Omri, Ahab's father. Mesha, the
king, who was a man of large policy, had greatly
increased the wealth, and probably the extent, of
his kingdora, and he naturally took the occasion
of Ahaziah's accession to refuse to pay the enor
raous tribute of a hundred thousand fleeces and a
hundred thousand lambs which was annually ex
acted of him (2 Kings 3:4, 5). The detailed
account on the Moabite Stone shows that
during the long struggle which followed this re
bellion Mesha made several raids into Joram's
territory, at one time carrying off the " vessels of
Jehovah " (probably from the sanctuary at
Bethel), and offering them before Chemosh his
God. "The two years of i Kings 22:51 are parts of years, accord
ing to the invariable Jewish reckoning.

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA 125
In the fifth year of Jehoram's reign, 849 b. c,
Jehoshaphat of Judah died, and his son Joram
began to reign (2 Kings 8: 16-18). This
king was both weak and wicked. He married
Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel, Ahab's wife
and Jehoram's sister, and introduced Baal-wor
ship into Judah. The news that Judah had gone
over to Baal-worship came to the aged prophet
Elijah, who had spent his life in warring against
this very sin ; he roused himself to a last protest
and sent a letter to Joram of Judah, threatening
him with a " great stroke " in punishment — a
threat the fulfilment of which is narrated in the
verses which immediately follow, telling of a raid
of Philistines and the desert tribes, in which even
Jerusalem was entered and all the king's wives
and children carried away, except his youngest
son (2 Chron. 21 : 12-15, 16-19)."
This letter was the last ofificial act of Elijah,
and his translation probably followed soon after
(2 Kings 2:1-18). At this time EHsha re
ceived the special gift of prophetic power, and
at once gave evidence of it by healing the bitter
fountain near Jericho (2 Kings 2: 19-22).
" The question how Elijah could send this letter so long after
he was translated (this event having been narrated in 2 Kings,
chap. 2, and Joram's accession not until 2 Kings, chap. 8) has
long puzzled commentators. The various reasons given by the
Sunday-school writers on this passage are little less than insulting
to the intellect of any child. Whatever may have been the excuse
for it before the chronology of this book of Kings was established,
it exists no longer. The simple answer to the question is: Elijah
was still alive.

126 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
The translation of Elijah must have occurred
soraewhere between 849 b. c, when Joram of
Judah came to the throne, and 846 b. c. The
reason for fixing it before 846 is this: The
Black Obelisk shows that in 846 Shalmaneser
again invaded Syria — this time with even more
disastrous effect than before. Comparing this
with the dates of the Moabite Stone, we may be
pretty certain that Joram of Israel seized the
happy moment when his raost important foe,
Benhadad of Damascus, was thus occupied, to
raake a general levy of all Israel and to call in
his ally of Judah, with Judah's vassal Edom, to
raake a supreme atterapt to give to the rebellion
of Moab its deathblow (2 Kings 3:6-9).
On this occasion we gain the first glimpse of
the intense patriotism which animated Elisha
through the rest of his life (2 Kings 3:8-27).
Released from his attendance upon Elijah
by the translation of the aged prophet,
he accompanied the array on the long desert
raarch, evidently as self-appointed scout, for
which his early training had fitted hira, being
unknown to anyone in authority, until, in the
desperate straits of the three kings, someone re
raerabered having seen hira " pouring water on
the hands of Elijah " — that is, ministering to
that celebrated prophet. Being thus brought for
ward, Elisha's border experience no less than his

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA 127
prophetic wisdom secured to the allied powers
the victory over Moab. It is important to no
tice here that the attitude of Elisha toward Joram
of Israel was one of distrust and dislike. He
first refuses to have anything to do with him :
" Get thee to the prophets of thy father and thy
mother" (Baal prophets) ; and finally only con
sents to give counsel because of his respect for
the king of Judah. This is important because
the clue to Elisha's whole subsequent story is
found in the relations between hira and the reign
ing king, whoever he raay be.
Not long after the final conquest of Moab,
which, as has been seen, was a rauch longer
struggle than the condensed account in chap. 3
raight suggest, Elisha went to Damascus, to take
the next step in fulfilling the charge laid by
Jehovah upon Elijah in Horeb,'* the anointing
of Hazael to be king over Syria (2 Kings
8:7-15). It is evident that Elijah had be
queathed this duty to his disciple EHsha.
It will be observed that, to put this event in its
proper historic place, we are obliged to pass over
all that lies between chap. 3 and 8:7; that is,
nearly the entire account of Elisha's active Hfe.
It is a question of dates, as we find them by com
paring the Bible story with the Black Obelisk
and other inscriptions. The last defeat of the
" I Kings 19: 15, 16.

128 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
doughty old warrior Ben-hadad II at the hands
of Shalmaneser took place, we have seen, in 846
b. c. Ben-hadad raust have been very old by
this time, for he began to reign in Orari's time.
Now in 843, when Elisha came to Daraascus, he
was in failing health. Elisha's fame had pre
ceded him, as was natural after his signal serv
ices in the conquest of Moab, and this gave him
the opportunity to carry out his commission and
announce to Hazael, Ben-hadad's chief captain,
that he was to be king of Syria. We have, how
ever, no reason to suppose that he suggested the
hideous treachery by which Hazael proceeded to
fulfil the prophecy '* without waiting for the
aged Ben-hadad to die in the course of nature.
It was in 843 b. c. that the ferocious and cruel
Hazael murdered Ben-hadad and usurped his
throne, doubtless with the aid of the army.
Joram of Israel appears to have seized the oppor
tunity of the internal disturbance of Damascus to
attempt to recover some portion of Gilead, calling
on his brother-in-law of Judah to help him
(2 Kings 8 : 28) . In consequence of this, Hazael
threw predatory troops into the district to
weaken it by those atrocities which the prophet
Amos describes ^^ as " threshing Gilead with
threshing instruments of iron." Edom, Judah's
"2 Kings 8: 15. "Am. i: 3.

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA 129
ally, naturally seized this occasion to revolt
(2 Kings 8 : 20-22).
The great object of Joram's desire was that
fortress of Ramoth in Gilead which plays so im
portant a part in the history of Israel, the key to
the country east of the Jordan. He now, in the
early part of 842 b. c, sat down before it in a reg
ular siege, having with him his ally and nephew,
Ahaziah of Judah, who had succeeded his father
(2 Kings 8:28, 29). At Ramoth Joram of
Israel was dangerously wounded, and, leaving
the conduct of the siege in the hands of his chief
captain, Jehu,^' he returned to his capital Jezreel,
whither Ahaziah shortly followed him. At this
juncture Elisha executed the second commission
inherited from his master Elijah, sending a mem
ber of the prophetic guild to Ramoth Gilead to
anoint Jehu king (2 Kings 9: 1-14).
The story of the revolt of Jehu, the raurder of
Joram (2 Kings 9:15-37), and the utter
annihilation of Jezebel's descendants both in
Judah and Israel (with the one exception of the
infant Joash, who kept alive the Davidic line),
and the extirpation of Baal-worship (2 Kings
10: 1-31), is of present importance as show
ing that the relations of Elisha to King Jehu
were as friendly as those between him and Joram
had been the reverse — a point which is of conse-
21 Cf. 2 Kings 9: 25.

I30 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
quence in settling the dates of the various inci
dents. Elisha, with reason, had great hope in
Jehu at first, and naturally Jehu was grateful to
the prophet through whose influence had come
his exaltation. Elisha, whose interest was in
the extirpation of Baal-worship, and the revival
of true religion, as a matter of course lent all his
infiuence to Jehu, at least in the beginning of his
reign. It was not long, however, before it be
came evident that Jehu in many of his measures
went far beyond the intentions of the prophet,
committing such atrocities that Elisha could after
ward designate his son as the son of a raur
derer,^^ and that the prophet Hosea sixty years
later held him up to reprobation : " I will avenge
the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu." ^^
Nothing in the Bible account explains to us
why the warlike Hazael did not improve the op
portunity afforded by the disturbed state of Israel,
consequent on Jehu's revolt, to overrun Samaria
as well as Gilead ; but the monuments tell us of a
bit of statecraft on the part of Jehu which ex
plains it. In this very year, 842 b. c, Shalmane
ser II invaded Syria, and with such effect that
Hazael lost 16,000 men, 1,121 war chariots, 470
horses, and his carap equipage, and was left in
a particularly weak condition. The interesting
point in the inscription frora which we learn this
"2 Kings 6:32. "Hos. 1:4.

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA I31
is that Shalmaneser there mentions that he re
ceived tribute from Jehu, son of Omri. This is
related, not on the Black Obelisk, but on a frag
raent lately discovered ; it is, however, confirraed
by the Black Obelisk, on which is found a sculp
tured representation of ambassadors bearing
gifts to the Assyrian king, with an inscription:
" Tribute of Jehu, son of Omri." It was a nat
ural mistake to suppose that the rule of Israel
was still in. the hands of the Omri dynasty ; the
iraportant thing is that, as there is no hint either
in the Bible or on the raonuraents of any invasion
of Israel by Shalmaneser II, it is evident that this
tribute was not the enforced result of conquest
by the Assyrian king, but the voluntary act of the
astute military commander, at this time king of
Israel (Jehu), who must thus have invoked the
intervention of Assyria to save hira from an in
vasion by Hazael, which would have been fatal
to hira in this first year after he had usurped the
kingdom. Thanks to this policy, Hazael was kept busy
by Assyria. Thus the internal affairs of Israel
appear to have settled themselves promptly, and
the first years of Jehu's reign to have been
marked by doraestic quiet. It was during these
peaceful years, while Elisha was still living on
Carmel, that occurred one of the most beautiful

132 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
incidents of his life — that of his friendship with
the family of Shunem (2 Kings 4: 8-37).
The reasons for placing this incident here are
three, slight in themselves, but sufficient. The
prophet was living on Mount Carmel. It was
therefore either in the reign of Joram or the early
years of Jehu; for during Jehu's later years
Elisha removed to Samaria, apparently to be
nearer the king, who by that tirae needed the re
straining hand of the prophet. Elisha was not
only in friendly relations with the king (which
we know he was not with Jorara),^* but in a
position to ask a favor of hira for his friend the
Shunamite, ^^ which Jehu's indebtedness to Elisha
would warrant. The time is evidently a time of
peace — a child could go alone into the fields,*®
a woman could take a solitary ride across the
country with no fear of roving bands of soldiers,
either Israelite or Syrian.*'^ No period except
that between the successful close of Jehu's revolt
and Hazael's more aggressive hostilities meets
the case, and this period appears to meet it per
fectly. Three years after the Jehu revolution, in 839
B. c, while these events were going on, Shal
maneser again invaded Syria, and according to
his own inscriptions defeated Hazael. It was
"^^ Cf. 3:13, as already pointed out. "4:18.
«'4:i3- "4:22.

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA 133
probably, however, a drawn battle, for not only
did Assyria gain no territory, but no further in
vasion of Syria took place during the life of
Shalmaneser II, though he lived fifteen years
longer. This left Hazael free to begin a series of opera
tions against Israel, which kept that country in
continued distress, and brought Elisha into prom
inence as the first of patriots and the counselor
of the king (2 Kings 10: 32-33).
If by the tribute he paid Assyria in 842 Jehu
had expected to secure perraanent help from Shal
maneser II, he soon found hiraself mistaken.
Hazael's guerrillas not only overran Gilead, al
ways the scene of frontier warfare since the days
of Omri, but even made raids into Samaria.^®
These repeated raids were very disastrous to
Israel. In the destruction of growing crops and
personal property the country became very poor.
This is precisely the condition that we find
described in three stories of Elisha's life: that
of the ax-helve (2 Kings 6:1-7), which in
their poverty the sons of the prophets had bor
rowed to make them a booth to live in, which
fell into the water, and which Elisha made to
swira ; and the two incidents at the close of chap.
4 — the pottage made from poison weeds, which
Elisha rendered innocuous, and the multiplication
^Cf. 6:8, 13, 20.

134 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
of the first-fruits offered to the prophetic com
munity, making twenty barley loaves and some
ears of wheat sufifice for a hundred people (2
Kings 4 : 38-41 and 42-44) . The three incidents
appear to show an ever-deepening poverty in the
order here assigned to them.
Poverty caused by hostile raids is almost sure
to develop the incipient tendency of the rich to
oppress the poor, which by the time of the
prophet Amos had reached its culmination,*^ the
rich selling the righteous for silver and the poor
for a pair of shoes, and covetously panting for
the very dust of the earth on the heads of the
poor. And here appears to be the place for the
story of the prophet's widow, whose son would
have been sold for debt but for the raultiplication
of the oil in her cruse (2 Kings 4:1-7).
Meanwhile the inroads of Hazael were becoming
bolder, penetrating to the very heart of the coun
try, destroying crops and causing so bitter a
faraine that even the well-to-do Shunamite was
advised by Elisha to take refuge in Philistia (2
Kings 8:1, 2).
Shalmaneser II died in 825 b. c, and was suc
ceeded by his son Samsi-Adad. This prince was
fully occupied during the first seven years of his
reign in strengthening his rule over the wide
regions conquered by his father, and during the
2' Am. 2:6, 7.

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA 135
last five by the open rebellion of several of his
principal cities, including Nineveh. He never
went westward at all, and Hazael therefore had
it all his own way with Israel. And yet not
quite that (2 Kings 6 : 8-13). Again and again,
when Hazael had plotted to lay an ambush
against Jehu's troops,*" he found that someone
had warned the king, and the soldiers of
Israel had avoided the trap. The account of his
perplexity, his conversation with his servants, and
his discovery that his true enemy was the old
prophet EHsha,*' who had long ago announced to
him that he was to be king over Syria, is very
dramatic. The relations between Elisha and the
king of Israel as here shown, and the deep inter
est of the prophet in public affairs, all point to
the reign of Jehu. The conclusion of hostilities
between Syria and Israel was due to Elisha's
generosity (2 Kings 6: 14-23). At the siege
of Dothan, when Elisha showed his servant
Gehazi the mountains full of heavenly chariots
and horsemen, Elisha by a stratagem led the
Syrians directly into the hands of Jehu in Sama
ria. It was the generosity with which, at
Elisha's request, Jehu spared this band of invad
ers, that led to peace between Israel and Syria,
so that, as we are told in the twenty-third verse,
" The meaning of the word " camp " in vs. 8.
'1 Here again we find Elisha a self-appointed scout.

136 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
" the bands of Syria came no more into the land
of Israel." This must of course be understood as
applying only to the reign of Jehu, not to all fu
ture time.
It is this statement, made in vs. 23 of this
chap. 6, which, as will be reraerabered, appears
to be directly contradicted by vs. 24, saying:
" And it carae to pass after this, that Ben-hadad,
king of Syria, gathered all his host and went up
and besieged Saraaria." We shall corae to the
siege of Saraaria at a later point. The next
passage in the order of time after the peace of
6:23 comes in chap. 13.
The death of Jehu had occurred during this
peace, and he was succeeded by his son Jehoahaz
(2 Kings 13: 1-2). Jehoahaz proved to be a
bad king, but in the quiet time of his early
reign (the bands of the Syrians coraing no more
into the land of Israel), the Shunamite, who had
remained away seven years, returned to Israel
and found that her property had been seized by
some of those covetous rich who became so
numerous in the time of Amos (2 Kings
8 : 3-6) . With much of his father Jehu's valor,
Jehoahaz had none of his zeal for religion, and
Elisha appears to have retired entirely from the
court; for when the Shunamite came to beg for
the restoration of her property, the king was in
quiring of Gehazi, Elisha's servant, as to the

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA 137
great things that Elisha had done. This was a
fortunate coincidence for the Shunamite, since
Gehazi was able to substantiate her claim.
The peace between Syria and Israel did not last
very long beyond the death of Jehu, and the
reign of Jehoahaz was full of troubles. With all
his valor, mentioned in the suraraing up of his
career,** he was powerless to cope with Hazael,
who now resumed hostilities, and, having swept
over and annexed the entire eastern country as
far south as the Arnon, not only raided Israel,
carrying away many captives — among them a
little maid of whom we shall soon hear (2 Kings
5:2) — but made the plain of Jezreel itself the
base of his operations against both Philistia and
Judah. He actually invested Jerusalem, and was
bought off only by Joash of Judah giving him
the treasures of his own palace and of the temple
(2 Kings 12: 17, 18).
All this must have occurred in the early years
of Jehoahaz, because four years after his acces
sion, in 811 B. c, Adad-nirari III came to the
throne of Assyria and began that aggressive
moveraent which thenceforth hardly ceased until
the capture of Israel eighty-nine years later. In
the records, Adad-nirari III boasts of conquering
Tyre, Sidon, Orari-Land (Israel), Edora, and
Philistia. Before his aggressions have reached
'2 2 Kings 13: 8.

138 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
this point we may place the beautiful story of
Naaraan (2 Kings 5 : 1-27), who owed his cure
frora leprosy to the little captive maid of Israel.
The story in Kings is put early in Elisha's life,
but it belongs here by various tokens. Naaman
was chief captain of the king of Syria; but
he cannot have been the chief captain of Ben
hadad II, for Hazael was that. He must have
been Hazael's chief captain. The " deliverance "
which the Bible tehs us that he accomplished for
Syria must have occurred before his leprosy, and
there is no good reason to question that he was
the general in that drawn battle of 839 by which,
as we have already seen, more than twenty years
of amnesty frora Assyrian invasion had been
secured to Syria. The king to whora Naaman
was sent cannot have been Jehu, because, with all
his victories over Jehu, Hazael was never on
such terms with him as to be in a position to send
to him such peremptory orders, especially during
the last years of his reign, when, as we have seen,
the peace between them was the result, not of
Hazael's prowess, but of Jehu's generosity.**
Only one in the beaten condition of Jehoahaz**
could have been so terrified by the idea that the
Syrian king sought a quarrel with him.*^ Be
sides this, Jehu would have known at once that
Elisha was the prophet referred to, whereas we
" 6 : 20-23. " 13 : 3-7. ^5:7.

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA 139
have just seen how little Jehoahaz knew of
EHsha. Moreover, the leprosy of Gehazi, which
resulted from this incident, could hardly have
occurred before the reign of Jehoahaz, because,
if Gehazi had been a leper, he could hardly have
been talking with King Jehoahaz when the Shu
namite woman came in.*®
Hazael's reign had extended from 843 or 844
B. c, to nearly the close of the century, and the
last we hear of hira is his sending Naaman to
Israel, except that in a general way he oppressed
Israel all his life.*'' The next event in the his
tory is the siege of Samaria (2 Kings 6:24 —
7: 20). It occurred under Hazael's son Ben
hadad III,*® but during the reign of Jehoahaz,
which closed in 799 b. c. Jehoahaz, as we know,
had already lost several cities to Syria during
Hazael's reign. The loss of Samaria would have
been the destruction of Israel. The army was
demoralized to a marvelous degree; 2 Kings 13 : 7
tells us that Jehoahaz had only fifty horsemen and
ten chariots and 10,000 infantry — a striking con
trast to the 2,000 chariots Ahab had been able to
lend to the alliance with the second Ben-hadad.
We are concerned with the siege of Samaria
only as showing the unfriendly relations between
the king and Elisha, who, however, was still
3« 2 Kings 8:4. •' 13 : 22. =« Vs. 24.

140 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
living in Samaria,*® whither he had removed in
Jehu's time. They are indeed so unfriendly that
many scholars still think this siege must have
taken place under Joram, the son of Ahab. But,
bad as things were at that time, they were in
nothing like the condition here described, nor
does anything in Joram's time either in the Bible
or in the monuments go to explain the remark
able deliverance by which this siege was
raised. But the inscriptions of Adad-Nirari
III appear to explain it. We are told in 7 : 6
that in the last extremity, when faraine raade
surrender seem imminently necessary, the Syrians
heard a report that a body of horsemen and
chariots and a great host were coming against
thera, and were so terrified by it that they fled,
leaving all their camp and baggage behind. Now,
in chap. 13, which sums up the oppressions of
Syria under Jehoahaz, we are told ^^ that the
Lord gave Israel a savior, who was so efficient
in restoring peace that the warlike footing which
had been that of Israel during a long past was
entirely done away with. Who that savior was
has been questioned for two thousand years. The
best answer that could be found was Jeroboam II
(the answer still given by many very corapetent
authorities, and very clearly the opinion of the
writer of this history." But this answer is
"6; 32. "13: 5. " 14: 26, 27.

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA 14I
hardly satisfactory, as the reign of Joash (six
teen years) comes between Jehoahaz and this
king. The monuments appear to give a better
suggestion as to the identity of this savior. In
806 B.C., and again in 803, and finally in 799,
Adad-nirari III of Assyria came up against Syria,
and of all his many conquests it was his proudest
boast that at this time he utterly subdued Damas
cus. It was the intelligence of one of these im
portant invasions that made the forces of Ben
hadad III so precipitately raise the siege of
Samaria. In 799 Jehoahaz was succeeded by his son
Joash (2 Kings 13:10). Evidently the mem
ory of Elisha's intervention in the siege of
Samaria was yet fresh, for we find Joash regard
ing hira with reverent admiration. But Elisha
was now very old. He had been laboring for
Israel nearly sixty years, and the time of his
death had come (2 Kings 13:14-19). The
last incident in his story is the visit of King
Joash, coming to see him on his death-bed, and
crying in utter despair : " My father, my father,
the chariot of Israel and the horseraen thereof ! "
Elisha's patriotism was burning as brightly in
his death as ever in his life : his one thought in
this interview was for the victory of Israel over
their age-long foe. Syria had been put to tribute
by Assyria, but its power was not yet broken ; it

142 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
needed but a little perseverance on the part of
Joash to defeat it utterly. So far, indeed, was it
weakened that the Moabites, for a time under the
Syrian yoke, now undertook raids on their own
account (2 Kings 13:20). And so far as
the energy of Joash carried him he was vic
torious. Three tiraes he conquered Ben-hadad
and recovered the cities his father had lost.
There his operations ceased (2 Kings 13:25).
In 797 Assyria came once more and so corapleted
the conquest of Syria that it never again offered
hostilities to Israel. V
Thus rauch had Elisha accomplished by sixty
years of arduous service. He had kept hope and
energy alive under most disastrous circurastances,
until the tide of Israel's fortune's turned ( 2 Kings
14 : 25-28) . After the prosperous reign of Joash,
his son Jeroboam II carried the kingdom to a
state of power and prestige such as it had hardly
known even in Solomon's day. But the old
prophet's vision was clear after all. Joash blun
dered sadly in not himself completing the con
quest of Syria instead of letting it fall into the
hands of Assyria. So long as Syria stood be
tween Samaria and the all-encroaching world-
power Assyria, Israel's independence was secure,
but with Syria in the possession of the ruler of

EASTERN LIGHT ON STORY OF ELISHA 143
Nineveh, the captivity of Israel was only a ques
tion of time.
It is a very comraon opinion that Elisha was
greatly inferior to Elijah. Those who care little
for rairacles see in his story only a sort of fairy
tale, good to tell to children, but unworthy the
attention of raen. Elijah was sO' ardent, so sin
gle-hearted in his opposition to Baal-worship;
" this one thing I do " was so evidently his motto,
that he stands very high araong reforraers, though
not a raore lovable character than some other
reformers. EHsha was a raan of entirely differ
ent stamp, a very charming character, warm
hearted, genial, full of tact, delighting in the com
panionship of woraan, affectionate, grateful. He
was all this, but he was far raore than this. True
patriot, far-seeing statesman, loyal subject, his
career was one of incalculable benefit to his coun
try. He was the first patriot — I had almost said
Christian — the world knows of ; at least he
was the first whose patriotism was his religion
and his religion patriotism. Of all Old Testaraent
characters his life is a lesson for the present day,
and I cannot think that study raerely a bit of
ingenious problem-working which makes so clear
the sequence of his deeds as to show their con
nection with the great world-movement of his
time.

CHAPTER VI
LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL
I
The holiest thing we know is love. The re
lation between God and raan is a love-relation.
It is because of love that the law of the universe
is the law of vicarious sacrifice — the Lamb slain
from before the foundation of the world; all
things perpetually giving themselves that a better
thing raay be. Love is the foundation of the
righteousness of God, or, rather, love is its very
heart : in wrath he remembers mercy because his
wrath is mercy, since he is love.
But how shall God reveal himself to raan as
love? The human raind and heart, though ex
panded to their utraost capacity by an answering
love, cannot compass the knowledge of that
which needed a universe for its satisfaction and
an eternal sacrifice for its expression. Only in
part can such a revelation be given to man, and
also only in parts. If because of our finite under
standing it was necessary that God should at
divers times and in divers raanners give the reve
lation of himself to man in the various aspects
144

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 145
of his being and will, inconceivably more neces
sary is it that this revelation of that which epito
mizes thera all — love — should be given us, part
by part, aspect by aspect ; that, viewing it now on
this side, now on that, now in one relation, now
in another, we raay finally come tO' some appre
hension of the breadth and length and depth and
height of the love of God which passeth knowl
edge. Therefore the Old Testament is full of love-
stories ; and the stories are of all kinds — not
only of lover and lover, husband and wife, but
of father and daughter, mother and son, brother
and sister, friend and friend. In all these rela
tions love finds in the Old Testament of all litera
ture its best illustration, because of all literature
it is in the Old Testaraent siraplest and least
self-conscious. When we read its books with
this idea in mind, we find love flashing out from
many a page, and softly lambent in many a char
acter, where we have hardly been aware of it be
fore. Fierce or gentle, cruel or kind, selfish or
devoted, all the men and women of Israel are
lovers. Soraetiraes their love is so pure and
flawless as to seem almost worthy to be a type of
the divine reality ; sometimes it is but " broken
lights " of that reality, yet still the stories of these
loves suggest, and in their own way interpret,
that perfect love which is " raore than they."

146 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
We come to the study of the love-stories of
the Bible in a period, and frora the raidst of an
environment, most unsympathetic to such a study.
There are very few of us who have wholly es
caped the influence, on the one hand, of the erotic
novel, and on the other, of the materialistic
psychology and anthropology of our time. There
cannot but be an element of grave danger in the
scientific study of human relationships. How
ever important and however seriously made, it
tends to deaden the spiritual sense. The erotic
novel tends to brutalize it; and we need to be
careful in either line of reading lest we injure the
idealizing faculty which is the very nerve of the
soul. It is because this faculty is already more or
less weak that we do not feel at once the beauty
of the Bible love-stories, so sane and simple and
safe, making no appeal to our self-consciousness.
It takes a little time, and perhaps not a little
effort, for us to get into a frame of mind — or
of heart — where we can respond to their normal
and natural appeal. But when the scientific
study of ancient institutions and priraitive peoples
has raade us feel as if the original relations of
father and daughter, husband and wife, had been
only barter and sale, pursuit and capture, tyranny
and slavery ; or when the psychological novel has
shown us the divine law of love changed into the

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 147
cruel despotism of desire, and conscience a blind
and bewildered guide, it is clarifying and refresh
ing to turn to these pages, and read how, in the
early days of Hebrew story, Rebekah went of her
own free will to the unseen husband beyond the
desert and the river; how Jacob served seven
years for Rachel, and it seemed but a few days
for the love he bore her ; how Elkanah comforted
his childless wife with the tender question : " Am
not I better to thee than ten sons?" how the
young heathen girl was fain to leave country and
father's house for love of the woman whom her
dead husband had called mother; how Jonathan,
the single-hearted, kept faith with father and with
friend; how the fierce warrior Jephthah, tender
only to his idolized daughter, yet shrank not from
doing to her according to his vow, obeying with
true instinct, though with benighted heart, that
high law which bids man give the best he has to
the best he knows. And there is still no story of
today, however passionately true, no poem of our
own time, however noble its utterance of love, no
Sonnet from the Portuguese, no Guinevere or
Maud, that so meets the imperative demand of
the heart for self-expression as that " oldest and
sweetest love-song of the East," the " Song of
all Songs, which is of Solomon ; " where the fresh
breezes of the vineyard blow through halls of
oriental splendor; where the birds are always

148 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
singing and the time is always spring, while a
love strong as death is battling with fierce temp
tation and wins victory at last without a scar.
These love-stories of Israel, we remember, were
lived — or dreamed — in a period of the world's
civilization when the relations of men and women
were alraost everywhere relations of tyranny and
sensuality; their scene is that Orient where in
all ages love has been a thing of voluptuous self-
gratification. These love-stories are from the
East and from, an early Hterary period; but in
thera love is not a thing of the senses, nor is the
relation between husband and wife a property-
relation. The love they reveal is a true type,
however inadequate, of the love of God ; and the
relation of husband and wife is sO' truly a love-
relation that prophets could bring raessages of
reproof for Israel's wandering from God in fig
ures taken from the transgression of the raarriage
vow, and picture the divine favor in figures
drawn frora wedded love :
Thy Maker is thine husband, Jehovah of Hosts is his
name.i II
Love-stories so pure and natural as these Bible
love-stories are true idylls. There is always the
free breath of the open air, the underlying con
sciousness of hills and valleys, or of wide desert
»Isa. S4: 5.

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 149
sweeps and of the overarching sky. The tinkling
of sheep-bells blends with the song of the reapers
and the measured footfall of the vintage dance.
There is never any introspection, and the stories
are without the slightest shade of psychological
analysis ; but the feeling is intense. There is no
lack of passion in the love-stories of the Bible,
though from its very purity the flame is often
invisible. To the student or the maker of lit
erature these love-stories are particularly worthy
of study ; in how few words is the story told, and
yet how distinctly the characters stand out, each
as corapletely unlike the other as in the raost
carefully analyzed work of modern fiction.
And if no two lovers are alike in all these
Bible stories, still less is the love they represent
of any conventional type. If the inspired authors
had set themselves to show the manifold phases
of love, they could not have done it with more
consummate art. Isaac's love for Rebekah was
the natural outgrowth of the loneliness of the
idolized son, left desolate by the death of the
doting mother who had raade life easy and lovely
for hira; and the capable, energetic, not over-
emotional Rebekah was just the sort of wife
such a raan would like best. But Jacob and
Rachel were lovers of another sort. In them the
intense devotion of youth was strengthened by
long trial and nourished by bitter disappointment.

15° HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
The love of David and Michal was the true boy-
and-girl love, artless, spontaneous, not robust
enough to bear the test of untoward circura
stances, but beautiful while it lasted. When,
after years of rude experiences, David raet the
wise, self-poised, and tactful Abigail, raatured
but not embittered by the cruel lot of being
wedded to a fool, the story is of that deep affec
tion which without romance yet makes very much
of the dignity and worth of married life. And
then there is the love of Shelomith, the peasant
girl of the Song of Songs — the typical woman's
love; beginning, Hke Michal' s, in the artless un
consciousness of youth, and beautiful with the ex
uberance of girlish spirits, but, unlike hers, gain
ing strength by trial, and coming at last to self-
consciousness through a fiery ordeal that would
have shriveled to nothingness a less genuine pas
sion. It is marvelous art that can bring out all
these fine shades of difference, not only without
analysis, but alraost without conversation, which
is only a raore obvious method of analysis. A
two-volume novel of the realistic school is vague
and sketchy in comparison with these. With all
Mrs. Ward's power, we hardly know Marcella
as we know Rachel, and Ruth is a real person
where Diana of the Crossways is only a type.
Instead of analysis, the love-stories of the
Bible give us presentation ; instead of psychology.

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 151
the idyll — short, intense, with no self-conscious
ness, but with nature-consciousness always there.
For example, the story of Isaac and Rebekah ; *
it is no less evidently a love-story though the lover
himself hardly appears upon the scene. It is
natural enough that the raarriage is arranged by
an interraediary ; that is what we find in most
eastern stories; the difference is that in this case
the matchraaker's whole heart is in his business
— it is not a mere professional raatter. The
match-maker is the trusted slave, Eliezer of Da
mascus, born in Abraham's house, and in his
youth the presumptive heir of Abraham's wealth ;
and the keynote of love is struck at once when a
raan in his position feels it almost as rauch a mat
ter of importance as does the father that the son
of promise shall be suitably mated.
The idyllic features are present from first to
last; in hardly any work of modern times is the
nature-consciousness so strong. It makes a part
of the tenderness that enhaloes the scene of the
solemn oath, where Eliezer swears to seek for his
master's son a wife of that Mesopotamian kindred
whence long ago Abraham had corae out. It
has its share in the anxious affection which bur
dens the bondsman's heart during the long jour
ney eastward from the home at Hebron, where in
the cave of the field that mother lies buried to
' Gen., chap. 24.

IS2 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
whom the son Isaac was so dear! It mingles
with the almost mother-love that fills the heart
of the faithful slave as he leads his caravan, laden
with gifts for the unknown bride, along the high
ridges of Mount Judah, past the fortress and
shrine of Salem and under the ladder-like rocks
of Bethel, beyond Shechem and the oaks of
Moreh, through the green valley of Jezreel and
along the plain of Esdraelon, beneath the shadow
of Tabor's dome and beside Chinneroth's blue ex
panse, under Herraon's snowy height and across
the pathless desert, until at last it finds words in
the prayer offered beside the well of Harran.
Then coraes a scene of pure idyll. The group
of camels kneeling by the well ; the man bent for
ward in the eastern attitude of prayer; the girl
coraing over the rolling upland with her pitcher
on her shoulder — it is the poetry of all the ages,
and one may see it today in any eastern viHage.
Very eastern are the methods of Eliezer's ap
proach to the young girl's heart. Even the
prayer in which he arranges for his own guidance
from heaven by a sign has in it something of
eastern diplomacy, and still more so the produc
tion of gifts at the opportune raoraent — the
bracelets and the nose-ring brought out precisely
when he had said enough to excite, without in
the least gratifying, Rebekah's girlish curiosity as
to the object of his long journey. It is diplo-

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 153
macy not less than loyalty to his master that
makes him refuse to eat until he has told his er
rand. That was just the way to capture the heart
of the fearless Mesopotaraian girl, with her
readiness to take the initiative.
All this is eastern, but it is the East, not of
Persia or Arabia, but of Israel. Spirited and
stout-hearted as Rebekah was, there was more
in her quick decision, " I will go," than mere
independence. She knew the story of how Ab
raham had left this home in Harran in answer to
a mysterious call. She must have known some
thing of the promise on which he built his hope.
It was the choice of a high destiny that Rebekah
made when she went away with Eliezer to be
Isaac's wife and take her place in the line of
blessing to the world. And still she was a gen
uine girl through it all ; as we see when the day
came at last that she lifted up her eyes and saw
Isaac walking slowly toward her across the field,
plunged in " mournful meditation," thinking of
the dead mother who had left such a void in his
life, looking out, too, with an expectation half
timorous, half glad, for the wife who was to
comfort him for his mother's loss. All the girl
ish instinct spoke in Rebekah's quick veiling of
her face; but when she disraounted frora her
camel, and waited until Isaac should come and
lead her into his dead mother's tent, it was with

154 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
the dignity of the woman who submits to love
because it is her free choice. And so the little
idyll closes with a glimpse of that oldest and not
least worthy type of wifely love — the love that
is half maternal, half protecting and consoling —
in the brooding warmth of which Isaac was com
forted for his mother's death.
Jacob's love-story is very different from that
of his father Isaac* Not peaceful and comfort
ing, but stormy and intense, is the idyll of his
life. No intermediary seeks out a bride for him,
traveling on camels and laden with gifts. Alone
and on foot he makes the same journey that
Eliezer had taken long before; his heart, Hke
Eliezer's, is anxious, but it is not the anxiety of
love, but of a disturbed conscience — for he is
seeking, not a bride, but a refuge from the wrath
of an offended brother. Love visits him a sweet,
unbidden guest, when Rachel coraes leading her
father's flocks to water, over the field which that
other girl, her own father's sister, had crossed a
generation back, to meet a more prosperous, but
not a more blissful, fate.
The course of their love ran smooth enough at
first. The penniless youth must indeed buy his
wife with seven years of labor, but Rachel was
there, and every day was golden with the glory of
youthful love. Three times was that love victo-
' Gen. 28: 10 — 35: 20.

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 155
rious — over cruel deceit, over unjust treatment,
and over the blighting disappointment of child
lessness — more severe a test than any but an
oriental knows. Jacob's devotion never trans
ferred itself from Rachel to Leah. Though
Leah was a bright and patient woman, and the
mother of six sons, the love of Jacob for Rachel
is always in evidence. When danger threatened
from Esau's wrath, on the horaeward journey
from Mesopotaraia, and Jacob with deep anxiety
made his preparations to meet hira, Rachel and
her son were put last, in the place of greatest
security. Joseph, Rachel's late-born son, was
Jacob's best-beloved because his mother was the
beloved of his youth ; and Benjamin; the child
for whom she gave her life, was entwined with
his father's very heart-strings. There is all the
pathos of a deathless grief in the story how it
" came to pass as her soul was in departing (for
she died) that she called him ' the son of my sor
row ; ' but his father called hira ' the son of the
right hand.' "
No such stormy love was that of Ruth — her
story is rather pastoral than idyllic, so sweet and
peaceful and outward is it all.* Indeed, it is not
the love between Ruth and Boaz which is the sub
ject of the lovely story, still less the love of the
young Moabitish girl for the boy-husband so
' Ruth, passim.

IS6 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
early taken frora her. The story of Ruth is the
seldora-told story of the love and loyalty of two
woraen. That it should have found a place in
the Bible is very impressive when we consider
how small account would be made of the friend
ship of woraen araong any eastern people except
Israel, at any period of time ; and it is still more
impressive because the relationship between these
women — that of raother-in-law and daughter-
in-law — here so dignified and pathetic and mu
tually protective, is the relationship that at all
times and in all countries has been held up for
derision, suspicion, or scorn.
The story of Ruth was evidently written by
one who delighted in folklore and desired to pre
serve a raeraory of the old customs — the levirate
marriage, the plucking off the shoe, the important
functions of the elders sitting in the gate, the
primitive ways of wooing. The stratagem of
Naomi to secure a wealthy and influential hus
band for Ruth was very daring, but we raay be
sure that sorae such custom prevailed at that time.
It argues an entire lack of appreciation of the
character, not only of Naomi, but of Ruth, to
suppose, as many commentators have done, that
Naomi's purpose in sending Ruth to lie at the
feet of Boaz, as he slept upon the threshing-floor
after the joyous festival of the harvest home, was
so to compromise him that, being an honorable

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 1 57
raan, he would feel bound to offer marriage to
the unprotected girl. Such an explanation of a
puzzling situation is far too modern to be satis
factory, even if what we knew of Ruth did not
make it unthinkable. We must put ourselves far
away frora our late western civilization to the
distant East and the long past, and, realizing
Naorai's strong love for Ruth, and the imprac
ticability of single life for a young woman in
those turbulent " days when the judges ruled," ^
find it natural that she should take advantage
of a local custom to bring home to the conscious
ness of the prorainent citizen, who was her kins
man, and who already recognized the virtues of
Ruth, the fact of the young widow's unprotected
condition. It was on this sarae Mount Judah that another
love-story occurred, of which the hero was the
most brave, gallant, and fiery of all the sons of
Israel, and the heroine the raost dignified, wise,
and tactful of his daughters.® The story of how
the Hebrew Robin Hood, the outlaw David, won
his raaid Marian, is highly interesting for the
picture it gives of the manners of the time; but
chiefly and especially for the noble type of woman
hood it portrays. Abigail, wife of " the fool,"
Nabal, is such a fearless, self-possessed, gracious
woman as is not often met. Not in all the Old
= Ruth i: I. "i Sam., chap. 25.

158 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Testament, hardly in all eastern literature, is there
another recorded speech of woman so dignified,
appropriate, and winning as the words Abigail
addressed to David to restrain him from aveng
ing himself with his own hand. There is all the
loyalty of the wife who, though mated with a
clown, is yet true to hira. " Upon me, ray Lord,
upon me be the iniquity, for my husband is not
accountable, being Nabal — a fool." There is all
the fearlessness of the woman who, though in
danger, is mistress of the situation, able to remind
the freebooting chieftain how unworthy of him
it would be to avenge himself with his own hand.
There is all the discretion and tact of a woraan
entirely raistress of herself and perspicacious as
to the character of hira to whom her plea was
addressed, in her promise that when at last better
days should have dawned — David's soul " bound
in the bundle of life with Jehovah, and the souls
of his enemies slung out by God as from the
hollow of a sling " '' — then " this shall be no grief
unto thee, nor offense of heart unto my lord,
either that thou hast shed blood causeless or that
my lord hath avenged himself." Ill
These love-stories are idylls. The love-story
of Shelomith in the Canticles is a drama ; whether
' I Sam. 25 : 29. There is a delightful and most tactful refer
ence here to David's victory over Goliath.

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 159
founded on fact or a pure work of the iraagina
tion we have no other means of discovering than
the literary canons by which we decide upon the
character of other works of Hterature. But for
the purpose for which it was written it makes no
difference. The marvelous tragedy of Romeo
and Juliet does not owe its transcendent value to
the fact that the Montagus and Capulets actually
lived and were at enmity, but to the truth of its
revelation of love. So with the Song of Songs :
its raeaning is of the highest possible value, and
whether or not Sheloraith actually lived and was
wooed by Soloraon is not of so much importance
as the fact that in an age like that, in a part of
the world where to belong to the king's harem
was the highest aspiration of woman, the triumph
of true love over all the blandishments of a king
and his court could be sung by any poet, and an
ideal like this held up before the women of Israel.
Some of my readers are perhaps surprised to
hear that this is the meaning of the poem, which
they raay have held to be an allegory of the love
between Christ and his church. But we are not
here concerned with the raystical interpretation
or spiritual application of the Bible books, but
with their priraary meaning, as a thing to be dis
covered by a study of their literary form.
The literary form of the Song of Songs is not
by any means a raatter on which all students are

l6o HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
agreed. The more carefully I apply to it the
canons of Hebrew poetry, so far as I understand
thera, the raore certain does it appear to rae that
it is a draraa ; but I began this study sharing the
conviction of the majority, perhaps, of cora
raentators that this is not a drama at all, but a
coHection of amoebean lyrics, like Tennyson's
Maud, for instance, and with only the sHghtly
dramatic character of the changes of scene and of
states of feeling which we find in such a poera
as Maud. But careful study of the poem has
compelled a change in my opinion.*
Still it would be a mistake to compare the Song
of Songs with an English drama; still more of a
raistake perhaps to compare it with the Greek
draraa. None of my readers, probably, have
ever seen a performance in the Hebrew theater
in the Bowery, New York, or elsewhere, but they
may have heard something about it. In certain
important respects those performances are raore
like a Wagner opera, rainus the rausic, than like
a Shakespearean play — at least the interrainable
* Although the ancient Hebrews had no theater, their dramatic
instinct was very strong, and early developed. As Duhm points
out (Encyclopedia Biblica, art. " Poetry "), dramatic elements en
tered into their temple service (cf. Ps. 24) as well as their
mournings, and especially their wedding festivals. To this day
weddings in Palestine have a highly marked dramatic character.
This " Song of All Songs " may have been a favorite entertain
ment in Israel's palmy days, during the week-long (Gen. 29:8;
Judg. 14: 12, 17) marriage festivals of the great. Syrian school
girls today delight in nothing more than " playing wedding," which
they do in highly dramatic wise.

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL l6l
monologues, the lack of action,- are somewhat
Wagneresque. We know that classic drama
strictly observes the three unities — of time,
place, and action; the EngHsh drama gives small
heed to the unities. The action of a Greek
drama raust all be coraprised within a single day ;
one of Shakespeare's plays lasts over twenty
years. The Hebrew drama is like the Shake
spearean in disregarding the unity of time, but
it goes farther and disregards the sequence of
time. It is in the very genius of western litera
ture to raake events follow in order of time,
though even western literature makes one excep
tion — in the novel, where the past is often called
up by retrospect. Hebrew literature cares little
for the sequence of time;® the event that came
first is not necessarily related first. We find in the
prophets, and also in the histories, repeated illus
trations of this disregard of time sequence, and
the same disregard of time sequence rules the
Hebrew drama, modern no less than ancient. I
think it is from not keeping this fact in raind that
those who try to show that the Song of Songs is a
drama find so much difficulty in fitting the words
to the theory.
° The Hebrew verb has not at all the time implications which
we find in the verb-forms of modern (western) languages. Prop
erly speaking, it has no tenses; its present and imperfect signify
respectively complete and incomplete, conditional or in process,
whether in present, past, or future time. One of the difficulties
of Hebrew literature is that it is inevitably conditioned by this
absence of time-sense.

l62 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Turning to the Song of Songs in the Revised
Version, the first thing to be noticed is its stroph-
ical arrangement : the verses are grouped into
longer and shorter strophes, in which the chapter
divisions of 2, 3, and 8 are disregarded. Look
ing closely, we find that there are three refrains,
each occurring three tiraes, though not in the
same relative positions. One of these refrains is :
Until the day be cool and the shadows flee away.
Turn, my beloved, and be thou like a gazelle or a young
hart
Upon the mountains of spices. 1*
Another refrain is :
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
By the gazelles and by the hinds of the field,
That ye stir not up,
Nor awaken love
Until it please.ii
There is no pronoun — ^ " my " love — in the
Hebrew. It is the passion of love, not a person,
that is in question.
The third refrain is :
I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.
He feedeth his flock among the lilies.^^^
It would not be correct to say that these re
frains always mark changes of scene; they seem
"" This refrain is found, with certain differences, at the end of
chap. 2, at 4: 6, and at the close of the book.
"Found at 2:7; 3:5, and 8:4.
'^ Found, with some variations, at 2: 16; 6:3, and 7: 10.

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 163
rather to mark the recurrence of certain states of
feeling. The characters in this drama are Shelomith,
King Solomon, the ladies of his harem, called
" daughters of Jerusalem," and the shepherd lover
of Sheloraith, with certain citizens and shepherds.
The story appears to be as follows :
Shelomith, a beautiful peasant girl Hving in
the northern part of the kingdom, is the daughter
of a mother who has several sons by a former
marriage. These sons are not friendly to their
sister, perhaps because they are not pleased with
a shepherd wooer of hers, and they send her to
keep a vineyard at some distance frora her home.
But the shepherd lover follows her, and it seems
probable that they are secretly married. At any
rate, she is blissfully happy in her love, and one
day, when in the ecstasy of her rapture she is
dancing, all by herself in her vineyard, a rather
voluptuous dance called " of Mahanaim," she is
seen by King Solomon, who is making a progress
through his kingdom attended by a numerous
retinue. The beauty of the girl awakens desire
for her possession, and the king has her stolen
and spirited away to Jerusalem in one of his
chariots. There she is placed in charge of " the
daughters of Jerusalem," whose duty it is to pre
pare her mind for the honor that awaits her.
Desiring, for his own greater pleasure, to win her

l64 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
love before taking her for a wife. King Solomon
sets himself on his return to lay siege to her
heart, it being the duty and the policy of the
ladies of the harem to aid him in what both he
and they suppose will be a very easy conquest.
It is high promotion for a peasant girl, the sun-
browned keeper of a vineyard, to become one of
the wives of the king! How the attempt pros
pers will come out as we read.
The first scene '* shows the bewildered country
girl in the king's harem, surrounded by the ladies
of the palace. Terrified at her capture, and sore
of heart with separation frora her lover, she cora
forts herself with imagining that she is with him
as ill the happier days :
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.
The ladies interrupt her with praises of Solomon,
not understanding, or not wishing to understand,
that it is of her shepherd lover that she is speak
ing:
Better than wine are thy caresses.
Lovely the fragrance of thy vestments.
Thou whose name is Sweet Ointment [that is, Solomon] !
Therefore the maidens love thee!
But she calls upon her lover to rescue her :
Draw me after thee,
O let us run!
For the king has brought me into his chamber.
" Cant. 1 : 2-8.

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 165
Then the women:
He will frolic and rejoice in thee.
Will find thy caresses more grateful than wine.
[Aside, satirically] Rightly indeed do they love thee!
The persistence of the women in thus assuming
that everything she says refers to the king con
fuses the girl and interrupts her thoughts; she
sees contempt in their eyes, mocking surprise that
the king should care for this rustic beauty. The
spirit of Shelomith, who in fact is not lacking in
spirit, coraes to her aid. She justifies herself for
her sunburned skin; it is because her brothers
made her keep the vineyard. She may be
scorched with the sun, black as the goats'-hair
tents of the Beduins, but she knows herself for all
that to be beautiful as the gorgeous hangings in
Solomon's chamber. But the mention of the
vineyard reminds her of her capture — her own
vineyard she is now not able to keep; and then
her grief breaks forth in a passionate appeal to
her absent lover :
Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth.
Where feedest thou thy flocks — where
Makest them to rest at noon?
That I may not be like one quite forgotten
Among the flocks of the comrades!
The ladies answer her with sneers : " Are you
so witless, fairest woman, as to prefer your peas
ant lover to Solomon ? " And they mockingly

l66 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
bid her go search for her lover among the shep
herds' tents.
The second scene opens '* with the entrance of
Soloraon, who sets himself to win her heart with
studied compliments, which have all the " local
color " so much prized by raodern novelists. We
may recall to mind that Soloraon, by his marriage
with Pharaoh's daughter, had lately become the
proud possessor of horses :
To my steed in Pharaoh's chariot
Do I liken thee, my friend [he does not say " my love,''
as in our English Bible].
Lovely are thy cheeks with ringlets,
the only ornaments of the peasant girl. But he
knows the value of jewels and fine clothes in a
siege like this, and he tells her that she shall have
finer ornaments than her curls — strings of jew
els and studs of gold, and so on. The girl
answers him briefly, but, remerabering that he is
the king, with best corapliment she knows how to
make:
While the king sat at his table
My spikenard gave out its fragrance [her tribute of
homage] .
We may observe here that Solomon has the ori
ental fondness for perfume: his name is Sweet
Ointment. But Shelomith is perfectly well aware that he
" Cant. 1:9 — 2: "J.

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 167
purposes to lay siege to her heart, and she flies
to her only defense — the thought of her absent
lover, who is a bunch of myrrh to her — talking
to him in a stage aside, and matching each of
Solomon's pretty speeches with an irapassioned
application of it to the one whom her soul loves.
Thus when Soloraon says to her (vs. 15) :
Indeed thou art lovely, my friend.
Yes, lovely are thy dovelike eyes ;
she repeats in her passionate aside to her absent
shepherd (vss. 16, 17) :
Indeed thou art lovely, and delightful, my beloved.
Our house has beams of cedar.
Our rafters are of cypress.
In this rustic home of theirs she had been Hke
a crocus of the plain of Sharon or the brilliant
anemone of the upland vaheys (2 : i ) .
Solomon goes on with his blandishments :
As a lily among thorns
Is my friend among the maidens.
It only suggests to her another thought of her
absent lover :
As an apple among the trees of the wood
So is my beloved among the sons.
And she thinks longingly of the delight of being
under his shadow, with his love like a banner
above her. Her longing grows more intense :

l68 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Strengthen me with raisin cakes,
Comfort me with apples —
For I am sick with love.
His left arm under my head
And his right arm embracing me!
The thought of the king's purpose becomes in
tolerable, and she bursts forth with :
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,
By the gazelles, by the hinds of the field,
That ye stir not,
Awaken not.
Love until it please!
And so the scene closes; for though the poor,
tortured girl's appeal had been only to the ladies
of the harem, the king perceived from it that it
was useless for hira to try any longer at this time
to awaken love.
The third scene " opens with Shelomith in her
charaber, gazing frora her lattice — that lattice
window which raeans so rauch in the life of the
eastern harem — gazing northward, wholly ab
sorbed in thought of her lover :
Hark to my beloved ! see him coming
Leaping over mountains, springing over hills I
She imagines that he has followed her even to
the king's palace, that he will rescue her; she
fancies him calling:
"2:8-17.

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 169
Arise my friend.
My beauty, and come!
For see, the winter has passed.
The rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear in the land.
The time of singing is come
And the turtledove's murmur is heard in our land.
She sees the reddening figs, sraells the odor of
the blossoming vines, and hears him call again :
Arise, my friend.
My beauty, and come away!
All the longing of her soul bursts forth in her
answering song :
O my dove that art in the clefts of the rocks,
In the covert of the steep place.
Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice !
For sweet is thy voice and thy countenance lovely.
Is it possible that that is indeed his voice that
comes to her floating up from outside the palace ?
Has he indeed followed her from his far-away
home on the slopes of Lebanon, though he can by
no means gain entrance to the palace ? Ah, yes !
From the high lattice window the Shularnite sees
her lover Standing behind our wall.
Looking in at the windows.
Showing himself through the lattice.
It was not wholly imagination that she had heard
hira singing :

I70 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Arise, my love.
My beauty, and come away!
Like Blondin beneath the captive Lionheart's
prison, making his presence known with his Httle
song, so the shepherd lover gives his signal with
the refrain of a Httle song they had been used to
sing together while trimming their grapes :
Take us the foxes.
The little foxes that spoil the vineyards.
For our vineyards are in blossom.
In her deep joy she sings back the refrain :
My beloved is mine and I am his.
He feedeth among the lilies.
And her last appeal that soraehow he shall find
a way to rescue her :
Until the day grows cool, and the shadows flee —
Come to me, and soon, my beloved!
Like the gazelle or the young hind
Over the hills that part us !
IV
Some time has elapsed before the second act."
It seems to be early morning, and Shelomith is
telling the ladies of the harem of a painful dream
that she has had : How by night on her bed (that
is, in her dreams) she sought him whom her soul
loved and found him not ; and how in her dream
she arose and sought him through the city, but
I'Cant. 3: 1-4.

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 171
found him not. Of the watchman who found
her she asked where he was ; then suddenly, with
one of the abrupt changes of a dreara, she saw
him, held hira, and would not let him go, and
brought him home to her raother's house. Ah,
with that dreara in her raind shall the ladies dare
to go on with their senseless attempts to make
her love the king?
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,
By the gazelles, or by the hinds of the fields,
That ye stir not.
Awaken not.
Love until it will !
The second scene '^ opens in a new place. It
is one of the gates of Jerusalem, whither Shelo
raith has been led that she may be impressed by
the sight of Soloraon in his palanquin coming in
state from some country progress surrounded by
his bodyguard. Those who are familiar with
eastern story know how the first promise of an
approaching army or caravan is always great
clouds of dust rising Hke smoke. So now a voice
of one of the citizens cries out in adrairation :
Who is this coming out of the desert, like pillars of
smoke.
Perfumed with myrrh and frankincense? etc.
"3:6-11.

172 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Another answers:
Lo! it is Solomon's litter!
Fifty heroes around him —
Heroes of Israel ;
Their swords are girt to their hips
To prevent the nightly surprise.
And a third exclairas :
A gorgeous palanquin made Soloraon
Of wood from Lebanon.
And describes its beauties, ending :
Come forth and behold, you daughters of Zion,
Behold King Solomon,
And the crown wherewith his mother crowned him
On the day of his espousals —
The day of his gladness of heart!
In the third scene '* they have returned to the
palace, and Solomon enters to see what effect his
grand display has produced. He begins his com-
pliraents :
Indeed, thou art fair, O my friend;
Yes, fair thy doves' eyes, behind thy locks ;
cataloguing all her beauties in comparison with
everything lovely and iraposing: her lips like a
thread of scarlet, her neck Hke the tower of
David, and so on. Evidently the ladies had re
ported her little song of the day before, for with
what seems like a refinement of sarcasm he par
's 4: 1-7.

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 173
odies her refrains, comparing her breasts to two
young gazelles that feed among lilies; and then,
as she makes him no reply, he goes on with his
parody of her request of her lover :
Until the day grows cool and the shadows flee
I will get me to my mountains — of myrrh.
And to m-y hills — of frankincense.
In other words, he will retire and perfume him
self, leaving her with one parting compliraent to
meditate upon :
Thou art all fair, my friend.
Thou art altogether spotless !
In the fourth scene '^ Shelomith, being left
alone with the ladies, falls back upon her mem
ories — how in the happy days gone by her lover
had sung to her :
Come with me to Lebanon,
My bride, with me to Lebanon;
Look from the top of Amana,
From the top of Shenir and of Hermon.
Come from the dens of the lions
With me from the hills of the leopards [the wild
mountains that they know so well].
So the remembered song goes on :
Thou wakest my heart, sister-bride,
My heart with one of thine eyes.
With one chain of thy neck!
Sweet thy caress, sister-bride —
"4:8 — 5: I.

174 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Sweeter thy kisses than wine.
Thy perfumes sweeter than spice;
Thy lips drop honey, my bride —
Honey and milk from thy tongue —
And thy clothes like Lebanon's perfume.
The purity of the love she has known is in start
ling contrast to the love of the harem, but she is
probably too innocent to recognize this; she only
remembers that to her own true lover she was a
sister-bride, and that she was all for him, a gar
den walled round from all but him, the fountain
of her love sealed to all but her own beloved :
O ! walled-about garden, sister-bride,
Walled-about well, fountain sealed,
Shoots of a pomegranate garden
Filled with precious fruits !
Henna with spikenard,
Spikenard with saffron.
Calamus and cinnamon;
Trees of frankincense.
Myrrh and aloes,
With costliest spice;
Thou fount of the garden !
Thou living water-spring,
Rippling streams from Lebanon !
To him she had given herself with delicate
unreserve, calling to the winds to breathe upon
this garden that all its spices might flow out for
him. But the king has entered and heard her
loving soliloquy, and taking up her words he
answers :

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 175
I come to my garden, sister-bride,
I gather my myrrh with my spice,
I eat my honeycomb with my honey;
I drink my wine with my milk.
While the chorus of women breaks in with :
Eat, O friends.
Drink — yes, drink abundantly of love!
We may iraagine the girl turning away from
her royal lover ; for when the fifth scene ^° opens
it is still of her shepherd that she is thinking.
Another night has passed between these scenes,
and she is again telling her dreara to the court
ladies — either she drearaed that she was mar
ried to her beloved, or, as seems more probable,
in her dreara she lived over again their wedding-
day, but with all the cruel cross-purposes of a
dream. She had delayed for a moment to open
to him, and he had gone away — then when she
sought him through the city in the night, the
watchman had been unkind to her, mistaking her
character. As she tells the dream, her longing
for her shepherd grows intense, and the scene
closes with the refrain, altered to correspond
with this advance in her feeling :
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,
If you find my beloved — what will you tell him? —
That I am sick with love!
» 5:2-8.

176 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
In the sixth scene'*' the sarae persons are pres
ent ; the ladies ask her :
What is your beloved as a friend,
O fairest woman —
What is your beloved as a friend.
That you so adjure us?
And she answers, singing his praises in happiest
tones :
My beloved is white and red; the chiefest among' ten
thousand,
describing all his personal charms in detail —
his curly black locks, his lips Hke scarlet lilies,
his eyes like doves, and so on — proudly ending :
This is my beloved and this my friend,
Ye daughters of Jerusalem !
They mockingly ask her where this paragon
has gone, and she answers first with the figure
with which she before comforted herself (that
she is his garden), that he is gone to his garden
to gather lilies (that is, that he is thinking of
her), repeating the sarae idea in the refrain which
closes the scene :
I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine;
He feedeth his flock among the lilies.
Now the king coraes in,^^ but he is no longer
at ease, secure of conquering in the end, ready
"5:9 — 6:3. ^Seventh scene, 6:4 — 8:4.

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 1 77
with his flatteries. The constancy of this Httle
peasant girl to her absent lover, her utter disre
gard of the compliments and the gorgeous gifts
he has showered upon her, the steadfast loyalty
with which she has kept her mind upon her be
loved, as a defense against the king's blandish
ments — all this has made a tremendous impres
sion upon Solomon, used to seeing women easily
yield to him. He is half afraid of this simple
mountain girl — she is not so rauch Hke a gentle
doe feeding among the lilies as he had supposed ;
she is rather like a fortified city :
O my friend, beauteous as Tirzah,
Lovely as Jerusalem,
Terrible as an army with banners —
(Turn away thine eyes — they terrify me!)
She must look away if he is to go on with his
compliments about her hair and her teeth and her
temples. The thought of her steadfast devotion
and purity sickens him for the moraent of his
three-score queens and four-score concubines :
My dove, my queen is one,
The only one of her mother.
Even the queens and concubines must admire
her beauty and virtue :
The daughters saw her and called her blessed.
Yes, the queens and concubines praised her !

178 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
She has ceased to Hsten; against the subtle
danger that lurks in this apparent conversion of
the king to purity and single-hearted devotion she
will steel herself by thinking all the raore per
sistently of her absent loved one, persuading her
self that it is he, not the king, who thought her
terrible as an array with banners. She Hves over
again that dreadful hour when she was lost to
him: I went down into my nut garden.
To see how the trees sprouted ;
To see if the vine was budding
Or the pomegranates in bloom.
I knew not that my will had brought me
To the chariot of the noble —
(Solomon's emissaries). She had retreated at
sight of them, and they had recalled her :
Come back, O Shelomith —
Come back that we gaze upon thee 1
All unconscious of danger, she had turned
back to ask :
What will ye of Shelomith?
And they had answered :
The dance of the Mahanaim.
This was the fatal dance in which she had been
expressing her girlish joy in her love, her lover,
the beautiful spring weather, and the fact of liv
ing, when Solomon had seen her through the

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL 179
hedgerows and had sent his emissaries to seize
her. Now the name of the dance carries the
king back to that time, and he goes over it with
unction, recalling to raind all the concealed beau
ties of the artless girl, as they had been revealed
in the dance when she thought herself unseen.
This seems to me the best explanation of the
voluptuous description of the first nine verses of
the seventh chapter. It is unthinkable that Shel
omith was here over-persuaded into giving an
exhibition of herself in a dance which would be
indecent in the presence of the king, though en
tirely allowable in the supposed solitude of her
own garden.
His description of her beauties only makes her
the more insist that she is true to her absent one :
/ am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine.
She fancies her shepherd calling her :
Come, my beloved, let us forth to the field.
Let us lodge in the villages,
Let us early to the vineyards.
Let us see if the vines flourish.
If the vine blossoms have opened.
The pomegranates budded.
There will I give thee my loves ;
The marsh lilies are fragrant.
And about our gates are all rare fruits —
I have stored them for thee, my beloved.^'
" Professor George Adam Smith's translation in The Historical
Geography of the Holy Land.

. i^&iafe*: .

l8o HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Her heart goes out to him with a loud cry of
longing:
O wert thou my brother, nursed at my mother's breast,
That I might find thee without and kiss thee, and no one
despise me!
That I might lead thee to my mother's house;
Bring thee where thou mightest teach me;
Give thee to drink of spiced wine, of pomegranate juice!
She turns passionately with her last appeal :
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,
Oh, stir not.
Oh, waken not.
Love, until it will! V
Love and constancy have triumphed : the peas
ant girl has not only convinced the king of her
perfect loyalty and purity, she has won him to
her side. He has abandoned his atterapt to win
her and returned her to her home. The third
act ^* opens with the happy lovers restored to
one another, drawing near to a group of shep
herds in their northern country. The shepherds
cry amazed :
Who is this coming from the wilderness.
Leaning on her beloved?
Shelomith, all excitement, is telling her beloved
how she was brought back to hira as he was tak
ing his noon-tide rest:
"8:5-14.

LOVE-STORIES OF ISRAEL l8l
Under the apple tree I awaked thee.
Where thy mother bare thee —
Where she bare thee with sorrow.
The passion of love, born of those days of
anguish in Jerusalem, bursts forth :
Lay me like the seal ring on thine heart;
Like the seal ring on thine arm !
For strong as death is love ;
Cruel as the grave is jealousy.
Its flashes [jealousy] are fire flashes;
Its glow [love] the glow of God ! ^s
Then, as she realizes that she is safe with him,
she sighs blissfully:
Many waters cannot quench love.
And streams can never drown it.
If one [for instance, Solomon] offered all his household
goods for love,
One would simply scorn him !
Now Shelomith's brothers corae upon the scene ^'
and try to justify the negligence through which
their little sister was snatched away. They had
raade the common mistake of older brothers in
not perceiving that she was grown up; they had
no idea that anyone would want her. In future
they will guard her better; they will build a wall
about her and inclose her with boards of cedar.
Shelomith answers: She is a wall to herself;
has she not guarded her purity by the mighty
power of true love? Under the figure of a vine-
" An interesting instance of the introverted parallel.
=' Scene 2, vss. 8-14.

'-~it^sk5.£.x

l82 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
yard she contrasts the riches of Solomon with her
poverty ; she has her own vineyard now — is
once more in possession of herself — wants
nothing of the king.
The lover, thus far speechless with unhoped
for joy, now breaks in : No matter about Solo
raon, let her speak a word of love for himself :
O thou who dwellest in the garden.
The companions await thy voice.
Let me hear it!
And she answers with the refrain of her captive
days — its thought of separation left out:
Turn again, my beloved, and be
Like the gazelle or the young hinds
Upon the balsam hills.
It seems to me unnecessary to justify this view
of this exquisite drama : it justifies itself. What
ever raay be its raystic signification — and that
would be rather heightened than lessened by our
view — the obvious sense is one we can ill afford
to lose, especially in these days, when marriage
is coming to be more and more a matter of calcu
lation, a question of ways and means. So far
back as this in the world's life the chosen people
could cherish an ideal of love so pure, so strong,
so far beyond all possibility of being bought by
wealth or honor, as the love of this little vineyard
dresser of the North for her shepherd of Leb
anon.

CHAPTER VII
A PARABLE OF DIVINE LOVE
I
All the love-stories of Israel are in some de
gree parables of divine love. One after another,
as they pass before us, they leave with us some
elementary lesson of the great truth that the high
est of all relations is the love-relation, and that
this, therefore, must be the relation between God
and man.
Elementary lessons only: the huraan mind
needed long training to be made capable of re
ceiving a truth so marvelous as that God himself
is love. No other people of the world had it;
none of the gods of the nation were, in any eth
ical sense, loving. Just as from the first the
chief difference between Israel and other peoples
was that Israel put an ever-deepening raoral con
tent into the notion of the holiness of God, sO' at
last he came to differ from other peoples still
more widely by his recognition of love as the
essential characteristic of God. But this recog
nition did not come very early in his history ; and
when we discover the way in which at last it did
183

l84 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
come, and look back over the past up to that time,
we perceive that all through their early history
the people Israel were being prepared by human
love for the revelation of the love divine.
We have seen how early the Hebrew people
took high rank in their notion of the relations
of woman and man, and that, as a consequence,
the Hebrew women were frora the first reraark
ably independent, free, capable of initiative, and
correspondingly responsible. As the wealth and
luxury of the nation increased, we hear a great
deal about this responsibility. Prophets like Araos
and Isaiah address some of their raost scath
ing utterances to woraen, because of the large
part they had had in the deterioration of society ;
but the indictment against them was not so
much sexual immorality as thoughtlessness and
frivolity. " Because the daughters of Zion are
haughty " and extravagantly fond of dress, the
men of Jerusalera " shall fall by the sword," and
her "raighty in the war."' It is "the women
that are at ease," the " careless daughters," who
are warned that they are bringing trouble upon
the nation.^ No better witness to the dignified
position of women in Israel need be sought than
' Isa. 3: 16, 25.
'Isa. 32:9. The "kine of Bashan," against whom Amoa
vehemently inveighs (4: 1—3), are cruelly regardless of the rights
of the poor in their gross self-indulgence; but their immorality
appears not to be sexual.

A PARABLE OF DIVINE LOVE 185
prophecies such as these. Like the women of
America, their sins were those of freedom, not
of slavery.
But whatever advance Israel may have raade
upon the nations in apprehension of the relation
between woman and man, this is not to say that
the invariable, or even the general, notion of mar
riage was that of a love-relation. In general it
was rather that of protection of the weaker by
the stronger, with fidelity as the due return for
this protection. It would be evident to the raost
rudimentary ethical sense that the woman who
was absolutely dependent on the man for protec
tion owed to hira obedience and chastity. But
in Israel there was all along a high idea and in
tense realization of the tenderness of the bond
between raan and wife. The position of woman
in Israel was one of dignity, because she was not
only protected by her lord, but also beloved by
hira, and because he not only valued her fidelity,
but coveted an answering love from her. We
have seen this all through the love-stories of
Israel. From a very early time the covenant of God
with Israel was presented under the type of mar
riage — its breach by the people Israel as infi
delity to the raarriage vow.* " Jehovah, whose
' This idea was not peculiar to Israel. Nearly all Semitic
peoples had it; but their conception of the relation was physical
and became horribly degrading. Hosea raised this conception out

l86 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
name [that is, whose character] is Jealous, .is a
jealous God," says God to Moses ; " take heed,
therefore, lest thou make a covenant with the
inhabitants of the land, and go a-whoring after
their gods ; " * and in the last oracle given to
Moses before his death, Jehovah said : " Behold
this people will rise up and go a-whoring after
the strange gods of the land whither they go to
be araong thera, and will forsake me and break
my covenant which I have made with them." ^
The idea of the marriage-relation between God
and Israel was always present to the mind of
Israel ; but this is not to say that they recognized
it as a love-relation. It was that earlier and more
universal idea of fidelity which such expressions
as these suggested; Jehovah was a great king
above all other gods; he powerfully protected
Israel from all enemies as a husband protects his
wife; therefore Israel owed him the fidelity due
from wife to husband. To acknowledge that the
gods of other nations had any claira to Israel's
service was precisely such a sin as the breach of
the raarriage vow.
The earliest in order of the written prophets
was probably Araos, and in Amos the first ad-
of the natural to the moral sphere, and by that fact elevated and
purified not only the idea of the relation of man to God, but the
idea of marriage itself, showing its essential basis to be not phys
ical, but moral.
*Ex. 34:14. 15- "Deut. 31:16.

A PARABLE OF DIVINE LOVE 187
vance toward the idea of love is made in the
teaching that Jehovah is a God of mercy; but
Amos does not teach his love. Up to that time
Jehovah had been known as a God of justice, a
righteous God; having a right, therefore, to de
raand fidelity and to punish infidelity. Araos saw
that God could be and was raerciful, and this
prepared the way for the higher truth which is
the highest we are as yet able to conceive — the
truth of the love of God. II
As all through their history the people of Is
rael had been gradually prepared to receive this
truth by their own beautiful experience of human
love, so at last the revelation came in the same
way. Hosea followed Amos, and Hosea it was
who taught that this was the relation of the na
tion to its God — that he loved Israel, and de
sired a reciprocal love. Not sacrifice, but kind
ness,® Hosea says, is what God would have —
the kindness of a woman in the day of her
espousals ; ^ the first timid, but most beautiful,
response of the heart of wife to husband. From
this tirae the thought of Israel as the bride of
¦Hos. 6:6. Recent translators have made many attempts to
give adequate translation to the Hebrew word here used. Pro
fessor G. A. Smith has perhaps been most successful in trans
lating it (The Book of the T-welve Prophets) " leal love." But
though it does include the idea of loyalty, there is more in it than
that; there is also implied a gracious self -giving.
T Jer. 2 : 2.

l88 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Jehovah became a standing metaphor; the mar
velous truth that God loved Israel with an ever
lasting love was never absent from the prophetic
teaching. For raore than two thousand years
this truth has been the inspiration of all that is
noblest in the human race.
But it was not through the blissful experience
of a happy love that Hosea learned this truth of
truths. In the throes of a grief raore tragic than
coraraon raen can experience was the knowledge
of God's love born into the world. The love-
experience of Hosea was a parable of divine love,
because Hke it his love was ill requited, outraged,
wounded well-nigh unto death, and yet triumph
ant even unto salvation. The prophecy of Hosea
is the story of a passion second only to that by
which the world's redemption was won : the book
throbs with the agony of an indescribable woe;
its rhythm, as Cheyne says, is the rhythm of sobs
and sighs. It quivers Hke the pulse of a fever
patient, or like the air over a furnace of intoler
able heat. " Even the brief parallelism of He
brew poetry seems too long for the quick spasms
of the writer's heart," says one of the later
writers on this book, George Adam Smith.
Ill
It was not until after the tragedy of his life
was over that Hosea recognized that it had been

A PARABLE OP DIVINE LOVE 189
a God-inspired life. Looking back over the long
years of anguish and humiliation, conscious in his
own heart of a love which could endure through
the last outrage, and by sheer force of its own
inviolability win back its object to fidelity and
love, he saw that if this was possible between
human husband and wife, much more raust it
be true of Jehovah in his relations to unfaithful
Israel. Thus at last he came to see the raeaning
of his raartyrdora — that God had raade him the
mediator of a revelation which could by no other
means have been given to mankind. And so,
though he had no thought of this in the days of
his early manhood, when first he saw the fatal
beauty of Gomer, daughter of Diblaim, and lov
ing her raade her his wife, not dreaming that
she would ever prove unfaithful, yet when aH the
bitter experience was over, knowing that there
can be no evil in a city and Jehovah hath not
done it, it seemed to him as if, all unknown to
himself, God had impelled him tO' " Go, take a
wife who is a harlot and will bear children of
harlotry ; for the land is greatly playing the har
lot in departing from Jehovah." *
' Hos. 1 : 2. The view of the book here adopted, first set forth
in English by Robertson Smith, has found many adherents, al
though its difiiculties are so great as to have deterred many of
the best scholars from adopting it. These difficulties, however,
are rapidly yielding to sympathetic investigation. I cannot but
think that to distinguish the influence of that absence of time-
sense to which I have referred is to find some help in their
solution. — Let me take this opportunity to refer my readers to " The

I90 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Hosea loved and trusted the beautiful false girl.
How soon did the terrible distrust of her fidelity
begin to creep over him? When they laid his
first-born son in his arms, did the sickening doubt
whether it was really his own assail his soul?
" Jezreel " he named him — " God's sowing ; " and
afterward the name seeraed to hira an oraen ; for
sowing is scattering, and he perceived that God
had said : " I will visit the blood of Jezreel upon
the house of Jehu, I will break the bow of Israel
in the vale of Jezreel; " and he had yet to learn
that what God scatter eth raay be God's seed, the
seed of a new people with a new heart.^ It was
the brilliant reign of Jehu's great-grandson, the
second Jeroboam,^'' but the dynasty of Jehu was
already hurrying to its fall. Baal-worship and
luxury and sins of raany kinds had utterly cor
rupted the state ; the function of the prophet had
changed frora what it had been in the days of
Sarauel, frora what it was in the person of
Elisha. In those days of ignorance the prophet
had been the defense of the nation ; now he was
the nation's critic, setting its faults and sins open
ly before it. Israel had been unfaithful to God,
and it was Hosea's part to tell her that her pun
ishraent raust surely corae.
Story of Hosea's Marriage," by Professor Julius A. Bewer, printed
in the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures,
January, 1906, which came to my knowledge too late for me to make
the use of it which I should have liked to do.
»Hos. 1:3-5. '" 2 Kings 14:23-29.

A PARABLE OF DIVINE LOVE 191
If the young husband's heart was tremulous
with vague doubts when his first-born was
brought to hira, it was torn with a cruel certainty
when a few years later a baby girl was laid in his
arras. ^^ In the anguish of his soul he naraed her
" Lo-ruharaah" — " She that never knew a fath
er's love;"^* what room was there in his tor
tured heart for love of a base-born child? The
dark shadow of his woe was projected upon his
country — faithless to its God as his fair false
wife to hira. " I will no raore show a father's
love to the house of Israel," he seemed to hear
God say, " for I will entirely take thera away."
And yet, though the child was Lo-ruharaah, the
" not compassioned," the raeraory of those happy
days when he took his young wife horae forbade
him to send the mother away. A great yearning
to save her from herself took possession of him,
and he could no more cast her off than God could
cast off his people.
And so another son was born.^* Alas! " Lo-
ararai " — " Not-wy-people " — was the only name
he could give this child, to whom for its guilty
raother's sake he still gave the protection of his
" Hos. 1 : 6-7.
" The word is literally " not compassioned," but, as Professor
George Adam Smith has strikingly shown, the word in its context
includes the relation of fatherhood — " not compassioned by a
father." The quotations in this chapter are mainly from Professor
Smith's The Twelve Prophets.
" Hos. 1 : 8, 9.

192 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
home. It seemed to him as if God had named
the child, thus saying to guilty Israel : " For ye
are not ray people and I — I am not yours."
There was a long, dolorous way before Hosea
ere he could know the boundless forgiveness of
God. When in after-years he wrote this cruel story
as a lesson to unfaithful Israel, Hosea had come
to see farther into this mystery and to know the
unfailing hope that raay be based upon God's
love. And so, although he faithfully wrote down
the bitter meaning of the names he had given the
children, he hastened to add : " " Yet the num
ber of the children of Israel shall be as the sand
of the sea which cannot be measured nor counted,
and it shall be, in the place where it was said to
them, 'No people of raine are ye!' it shall be
said to thera, ' Sons of the living God ! ' And
the children of Judah and the children of Israel
shall be gathered together and they shall appoint
themselves one head, and shall go up from the
land, for great is the day of God's sowing (Jez
reel) ; therefore say unto your brethren ' Amrai '
(my-people) and to your sisters 'Ruhamah'
(she is compassioned)."
But this was long afterward; now Hosea's
tragedy deepens.^** Unfaithful wife, unloving
" Hos. 1 : 10 — 2: I.
" The second chapter of this prophecy is not a continuation
of Hosea's story; it is the application of his story to the case of
Israel; yet it seems impossible not to read, beneath the impas»

A PARABLE OF DIVINE LOVE 193
raother, Gomer abandons the husband whose no
ble loyalty has tried so long to save her from
herself, forsakes the children whora her husband
has protected, and enters upon a life of open
sharae. How her husband still watched over her,
thwarted her atterapts to allure other lovers to
her, secretly provided her with needful things,
so that she should not be impelled by want to
sin; how he even brought her children to her
in the vain hope that their baby pleadings would
awaken a sense of duty and a sharae of sin — all
this we may read between the lines of that im
passioned second chapter in which, long years
after, but his heart still quivering with the pain
and shame of his own experiences, Hosea uttered
the call of God to individual Israelites to strive
to rescue their mother, the nation, from her apos
tasy : Plead with your mother, plead.
sioned words which Hosea addressed to apostate Israel, the bitter
experiences that lay between the story of chap, i and that of
chap. 3. How, indeed, can it be otherwise? Something of what
is indicated in chap. 2 must have happened; else why the need
of buying back his wife? And is it thinkable that between these
two periods (his experience having the prophetic significance that
we knew it had) Hosea made no effort to save his erring wife
from herself? The marvelous reticence with which he keeps in
the background all that was not essential to his prophetic purpose
only makes the more evident the facts that must underlie this chap
ter. The prophecy is the direct outcome of long reflection, upon the
facts of an indescribably painful experience. The three chapters are
a unit, and the place of chap. 2, between chaps, i and 3, is par
ticularly appropriate, not simply because the story that may be
read between the lines belongs here in the sequence of events, but
because this chapter, which interprets both itself and the other two,
is the " central peak " between them, or, to change the figure, the
very keystone of the arch.

194 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
And as even this fails to raove her —
If she will not be my wife,
I will not be her husband.
Then let her remove her whoredoms from her face.
And her adulteries from between her breasts ;
Lest I strip her naked.
And set her as the day when she was born.
And make her as a wilderness.
And set her like a dry land.
And slay her with thirst;
And upon her children have no compassion ;
For they are the children of whoredom.i^
If her children's pleadings raove her not, nor
the threat of punishraent to her, will she not be
raoved by pity for the little ones, who wiH be
uncompassioned if she have not corapassion on
thera? Alas, no!
Verily their mother played the harlot :
She that conceived them acted shamefully when she said,
" I will go after my lovers,
The givers of my bread and my water,
My wool and my flax, mine oil and my drinks.''
All hope of raoving her by love or fear or pity
is gone; there is nothing for it but discipline:
Therefore, behold, I am going to hedge up her way with
thorns.
And build her a wall.
That she find not her paths.
When she would pursue after her lovers,
She shall not overtake them ;
When she would seek them, she shall not find.
" 2 : 2-4.

A PARABLE OF DIVINE LOVE 195
Then she will say, " Let me go
And return unto my first husband;
For it was better with me then than now."
It is all spoken of Israel and to Israel, a very
utterance of Jehovah by his prophet; yet how
should Hosea not remember that it was thus that
perverse Gomer had believed that her lovers
would give her all she needed, if only she could
find them; how bewildered she had sought after
them, not perceiving that it was her husband's
love which thwarted her, in the hope that at last,
in the desperation of baffled purpose, she would
determine to return to hira, if only because when
she was with him it had been better with her
than now. So blind was perverse Israel to all
Jehovah's benefits.
Indeed she did not know
That it was I who gave her
The corn, and the new wine, and the new oil.
And silver heaped upon her,
And gold — and they worked it up into a Baal ! i'
In those cruel days of his own experience Ho
sea had perceived that to take back his wife un
repentant would be no kindness to her. This
outraged husband, who had so loyally watched
over his erring wife in her open infidelity, still
longed to save her frora herself. She needed the
"2:8.

196 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
discipline of sorrow to soften her wanton heart.
Such discipline does Israel need.
Therefore I will turn and take away
My corn in its time and my new wine in its season,
And I will pluck away my wool and my flax,
That should have covered her nakedness;
And now I will reveal her shame
In the eyes of her lovers.
And no man shall rescue her from my hand;
And I will make an end of all her joyance.
Her pilgrimages, her new moons and her Sabbaths, and
all her festivals.^^
As Hosea delivers his raessage, syrapathy with
God takes hira out of hiraself. Jehovah and Is
rael occupy all his thought:
And I will lay waste her vines and her figs,
Of which she said,
" They are a gift, mine own.
Which my lovers gave me ; "
And I will turn them to jungle
And the wild beasts shall devour them.
And I will visit upon her the days of the Baalim,
When she used to offer incense to them.
When she decked herself with her nose-rings and her
jewels.
And went after her lovers;
And me she forgat! is the utterance of Jehovah.i*
In Spite of the walls with which Hosea had
hedged her up, perhaps even because of them,
Gomer had fallen into the last depth of vileness,
had sold herself into slavery. It was frora this
" 2: 9— ri. " 2: 12, 13.

A PARABLE OF DIVINE LOVE 197
iron prison of degradation that her desperate
appeal reached Hosea's ears. What husband
could take back a wife who had fallen so low?
How terrific the struggle raust have been we
need little knowledge of huraan nature to show
us; how it ended he tells. There carae a day
when it was to hira as if God spoke,^" telling
hira : "Go again, love this woraan beloved of a
paramour and an adulteress, according to the love
of Jehovah toward the children of Israel ; though
they are turning unto other gods and are lovers
of raisin cakes" (offered to Baal). And so he
bought her to him — oh, the bitterness of heart
with which the husband went to her owner and
bought back his own wife " for fifteen pieces of
silver and an homer and a half of barley " ! Vir
tue itself would have been outraged had he taken
her back to him unrepentant, blind to the heinous
nature of her past conduct. Hosea might indeed
say to her as the knightly Arthur to guilty Guine
vere : Lo, I forgive thee as the eternal God forgives;
but he must perforce add :
Do thou for thine own soul the rest.
But Gomer is not such a one as Guinevere, to
fight the bitter fight alone. She needs both disci
pline and help.^^ It was for both purposes that
"3: 1, 2. ^3:3.

198 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
her husband said to her : " Many days shalt thou
abide for me ; thou shalt not play the harlot, and
thou shalt not be for any husband." And — as
if his whole Hfe had not been proof of his fidelity
— he adds : " And I for my part also will be so
toward thee." It is the memory of this anxious
probation time that underlies his utterance for
God to Israel : ^^
Therefore I am going to woo her.
And I will bring her into the wilderness.
And speak home to her heart.
The day raust have corae, though we are not
told of it, when Hosea's heart began to quiver
with hope that a repentant love would be the
blissful outcorae of his long forgiveness and tire
less patience. The raeraory of it had becorae a
part of his Hfe when he prophesied to Israel : **
And from thence I will give her her vineyards,
And the vale of Akhor (trouble) for a doorway of hope;
And there she will respond to me as in the days of her
youth.
As in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.
And it shall be in that day, is the utterance of Jehovah,
Thou shalt call me " my husband,"
And thou shalt not call me any more '" my master "
(Baal),
For I will take away the names of the Baalim from her
mouth.
And they shall no more be remembered by name.
==2: 14. "2: 15-17.

A PARABLE OF DIVINE LOVE I99
And during these anxious wilderness days,
hardly daring to hope that the patience of his
love would ever be rewarded by a repentant, and
therefore worthy, love from Gomer, Hosea comes
into that deeper sympathy with God which makes
hira perceive that of necessity — in very love —
disaster must overtake the people who have wan
dered from God ; that during raany days the chil
dren of Israel raust abide without a king and
without a prince and without raeans of worship.
Perhaps it is because he can believe that for Is
rael the discipline will be potent, can see by faith
that " afterward the children of Israel will turn
and seek Jehovah their God and David their king
and corae trerabling unto Jehovah and unto his
goodness in the latter days," that he dares all
this time to hope that so " trembling," not with
terror, but in the thrill of love born of penitence,
and a new consciousness of her husband's love,
will Gomer come to him one day.
What manner of joy can a husband find even
in a repentant and thoroughly reformed wife,
after an experience like this? Ah, one must, in
deed, love alraost as God loves to be able tO' rise
above the sharae and anguish of the cruel ordeal.
Hosea's heart-strings quivered with remembered
pain all the days of his life. Yet that his forgive
ness was a reflection of God's forgiveness is as

200 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
certain as that his love had revealed to him the
love of God.
The hope of his own heart is a revelation of
God's heart : ^^
Verily, I will espouse thee to me forever ;
Verily, I will espouse thee to me in righteousness.
And in justice and in kindness, and in tender mercies;
Verily, I will espouse thee to me in faithfulness,
And thou shalt know Jehovah.
In the unfathomable joy of an infinite forgive
ness Hosea sees all nature responding when once
Israel shall have responded to the infinite love of
God : 25
And it shall come to pass in that day I will respond —
I will respond to the heavens, is the utterance of Je
hovah,
And they shall respond to the earth.
And the earth shall respond to the corn.
And the new wine and the new oil ;
And these shall respond to Jezreel [who had been scat
tered like seed across many lands] ;
And I will have a father's compassion on the Not-com-
passioned,
And to Not-my-people I will say " My people thou art ! "
And he shall say " My God ! "
The bitter story of Hosea's life's tragedy was
recorded only for Israel's sake, that apostate Is
rael might find in it an object-lesson of the love
of God ; and the rest of his book is occupied with
God's love alone; only under it all we can feel
"2:19, 20. "2:21—23.

A PARABLE OF DIVINE LOVE 20I
the throbbing of his human heart, giving back
beat for beat in sympathy with every heart-throb
of the love divine.
How shall I give thee up, Ephraim,
Let thee go, Israel?
Shall I make an Admah of thee?
Treat thee as Zeboim [the destroyed cities of the plain] ?
Mine heart is turned upon me.
My compassions begin to boil ;
I will not perform the fierceness of my anger,
I will not turn to destroy Ephraim,
For I am God, not man.
This is the undreamed secret of perfect love;
this the discovery Hosea raade in the blinding
darkness of his sharae.^* IV
The reraainder of the prophecy is entirely de
voted to interpreting to Israel its past, and espe
cially its present, history in the light of this new
revelation of the love of God. Hosea lived in
a dreadful time, the brilliant reign of the second
Jeroboam, under whom wealth and luxury in
creased at a startling rate. The rich were grow
ing richer and the poor poorer; the women were
careless and at ease, selfishly indifferent to the
trend of affairs; priest and prophet alike cor
rupt ; Baal-worship — the worship of the powers
of nature — taking the place of the worship of
="ii:8, 9-

202 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Jehovah, though it was he and not Baal who
gave Israel her corn and her wine.^''^ It was in
this brilliant, thoughtless tirae that Hosea sounded
the alarra : ^^
Blow ye the trumpet in Gibeah,
The clarion in Ramah,
Raise the slogan at Beth-aven,
"After thee, Benjamin! "20
Ephraim shall become desolation in the day of punish
ment ;
Among the tribes of Israel I have made known what is
certain.
After a tirae carae the fall of the dynasty;
Jeroboara's son Zechariah assassinated after a
six months' reign, and the usurper Shallura raur-
dered within another raonth, factions and rival
claimants disputing the throne.^" For a dozen
years or more Assyria was appealed to by one
party, Egypt by another; Jehovah forgotten by
both. It was in the early days of this tumultuous
time that Hosea, remerabering how it was only
in the last extremity that Gomer had turned to
him, exclaims for God : '^
I will go back into my place.
Until they feel their guilt and seek me.
When trouble comes they will soon seek for me,

=»5:8.^ Benjamin's left-handed slingers were always the vanguard.
'"2 Kings 15:8, 10, 13-16.
"Hos. 5: 15 — 6:1.

A PARABLE OF DIVINE LOVE 203
Saying', "Come, let us return unto Jehovah,
For he hath rent and he may heal us,
He hath wounded, so he may bind us up."
Then as things went on from bad to worse : ^^
O, Ephraim, what can I make of thee?
O, Judah, what can I make of thee?
Your love is like the morning cloud — like the dew it
early vanisheth !
Therefore I hew them by the prophets — by the words of
my mouth I slay them.
And my judgment goes forth like the lightning;
For I desire kindness, not sacrifice.^^
Time went on, and one king of Israel had be
come a vassal of Assyria, while Egypt was
intriguing to set another on the throne.^* Again
and again Hosea tried to draw his countrymen
to allegiance to Jehovah, by warnings, by en
treaties, by threats :
Ephraim is blasted ; their root is withered ; they bear no
fruit !
Yea, though they bring forth, I will slay their beloved
children !
My God hath cast them off, for they hearkened not unto
him!
Alas ! they shall become wanderers far among the na-
tions.35
It is the doom that comes upon any nation
through imraorality and national ill-faith. Hosea
=2 6 : 4-6.
" " The kindness of a woman in the day of her espousals."
"2 Kings 15:17-20; cf. Hos. 5:13; 7:11; 8:9; 12:1.
'° Hos. 9: 16, 17.

204 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
did not Hve to the exile, but he could foresee the
trend of events : ^®
He shall break the walls of their altars, he shall ruin their
pillars.
For already they are saying : " No king have we.
For we have not feared Jehovah, and the king — what
could he do for us ? "
In this extreraity of danger Hosea pleads with
passionate earnestness for a true repentance —
it is even yet not too late : ^'^
Sow unto yourselves in righteousness — then shall ye reap
according to God's kindness (leal love).
Break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek Jeho
vah
Until he come and rain righteousness upon you.
He appeals to the past history of Israel — to
the early days when Jehovah so wonderfully in
terposed in his destinies : ^*
When Israel was a child I loved him, and out of Egypt I
called him to be my son.^°
The more I called them the farther they went from me;
They kept sacrificing unto the Baalim, and b-urning incense
unto graven images.
Yet I, even I, taught Ephraim to walk — taking him by
the arms [as a father takes a little child] ;
But they knew not that it was I who healed them [when
the little child fell and hurt himself].
With the cords of a man I drew them, with the bands of
love [the leading-strings of a little child],
^'Hos. 10:2, 3. ''11:1—7.
"10:12. "Pendulum movement.

A PARABLE OF DIVINE LOVE 205
I was to them as they that take off the yoke, and gently
I gave them meat.^"
To Egypt he shall return — or the Assyrian shall he his

For to return unto me they have refused.
The sword shall rage against his cities and consume his
bars,
It shall devour them because of their own counsels.
And my people — they are bent on turning away from' me !
Though they were called up to God, not one would lift
himself !
Their stubbornness only makes more evident the
divine compassion : *^
How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? Let thee go, Israel?
At last — far off, perhaps, but at last they will
repent. Then he will take them to himself again :
They shall follow Jehovah : He shall roar like a man
[call to them with a loud voice so that they can
hear in the land of captivity] !
When he roars, the children shall come trembling from
the West,
They shall come fluttering, as a bird, out of Egypt,
As a dove, out of Assyria. And I will bring them to their
own houses.
Is the utterance of Jehovah.*^
The prophet reviews the long-past history of
his people,** culminating in apostasy so flagrant
as inevitably to induce, not only national destruc-
'° Metaphor changed ; the thought is still the rescue from
Egypt, where they had been as dumb driven cattle.
"Hos. 11:8. *3i2:2 — 13:3.
" II : 10, II.

206 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
tion, but raoral death." Yet the hope of Hosea
triuraphed over despair, for did not he know the
love of God, a love stronger than death? Yes,
stronger even than death : this last revelation of
the nature of God's love had corae to Hosea ; the
conviction that the love of God raust triuraph
even over the grave. Though the walls of Jeru
salera raight crurable, and the fairest of Israel's
warriors lie strewn upon the ruins, it could not
be that they whom God loved were finally sepa
rated frora him. So rose upon his raind the
vision of a personal imraortality — the first inti
mation of it in Israel's history : *^
I will ransom them from the power of Sheol : from death
I will redeem them.
O Death, where are thy plagues? O Sheol, where's thy
destroying power?
Change of purpose is hid from mine eyes.*^

"13: I, 3-
" 13: 14.
*• Scholarship has but one voice on this subject, and it refuses
to this passage any but a national significance. I have tried hard
to accept this conclusion, but I cannot, for to me it appears psy
chologically imperative that Hosea's experience, proving to him not
only the deathless nature of love, but its kinship with the divine
passion for man, must have given him some glimpse of its per
sistence beyond the grave. Unquestionably it was generations be
fore Israel in general reached a conception of personal immortality,
based upon the deathless nature of love, or any other foundation.
Nevertheless, the psychological law that there can be no repent
ance where there is no hope seems to me to require, with this
prophecy of the utter destruction of the nation demanded by the
depth and blackness of Israel's sin, precisely that glimmer of
eternal hope that shines through this fourteenth verse, and no
where else in early prophecy. Only this, it appears to me, makes
possible, from a psychological standpoint, that ultimate repentance
of Israel which is foreshadowed in the promises of chap. 14.

A PARABLE OF DIVINE LOVE 207
It was through this eternal hope that it be
came clear to Hosea that, though captivity was
now not to be averted, even yet there was hope
in repentance. This fair prophetic vision of the
final repentance and restoration of Israel came,
in his last days, to bless the heart of the man who
had so deeply loved, so perfectly forgiven. Out
of the furnace of his grief had come this suprerae
recorapense — the consciousness that his experi
ence had been, not a meaningless afiiiction, but a
parable of the divine love — the revelation that
the love of God was eternal, and could never be
shaken by his children's sin. The prophecy
closes with a beautiful draraatic lyric, in which
Israel, Jehovah, and the prophet give full expres
sion to this new revelation of the eternal love of
God.*^ [Prophet] Turn again, Israel, unto Jehovah thy God,
For thou hast fallen by thine own iniquity.
Take with you words and turn unto Jehovah;
Say unto him everything.
[Israel] Forgive iniquity and accept good things;
And we will render the fruit of our lips.
Assyria cannot save us.
Upon horses we will not ride [we will not appeal to Egypt],
And we will not say any more " our god "
To the work of our hands [will no longer be idolaters] ;
— Thou by whom the orphan receives compassion!
[Jehovah] I will heal their apostasy,
I will love them freely ;
For my anger hath turned from him.
" Hos., chap. 14.

2o8 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
I will be as the dew to Israel ;
He shall bloom as the wild flower.
And strike his roots like Lebanon,
His shoots shall grow.
And his majesty shall be as the olive.
And he shall have scent like Lebanon ;
Those who abide in his shadow shall return.
They shall quicken the corn.
And bloom like the vine.
And their memory shall be as the wine of Lebanon.
[Israel] What have I to do any more with idols?
[Jehovah] I have responded, and I shall regard him.
[Israel] I am like a green cypress [not a fruit-bearing
tree].
[Jehovah] Of me is thy fruit found.
[Prophet] Whoso is wise let him understand these things ;
Understanding, let him know them :
That the ways of Jehovah are upright.
And the righteous walk therein.
But transgressors stumble therein. ^^
V
We see now how the idea of the marriage re
lation between God and Israel — coramon, indeed,
in all Semitic religions, but raised into the ethi
cal sphere by the prophets of Israel alone — kept
the nation pure in heart, especially from this time
forward, when they were about to corae into close
relations with the gross sensuality of Assyria, the
subtle licentiousness of Egypt, the foul corrup
tion of Rorae. Sexual sin was not, and never
has been, an outstanding sin of Israel — its sig
nificance is too terrible for that. The very vehe-
*^ Professor Briggs's translation.

A PARABLE OP DIVINE LOVE 209
mence of prophetic denunciation goes to show
that the sin is something unusual — abnormal.
And for this reason the biblical writers can use a
plainness of speech irapossible to any others. We
all know that there are some startlingly frank
passages in the prophets. Not Maupassant or
Daudet, not the later novels of Meredith and
Hardy, have anything like the realism of certain
of their chapters; yet these we need not fear to
give to our sons and daughters to read, while we
rightly dread the influence of those upon the im
mature minds of the young, however good the
purpose with which they may have been written.
There is in all modern literature no more strik
ing lesson in sexual morality than Flaubert's
Madame B ovary. If ever a novel taught the
truth that the wages of sin is death, that novel
teaches it — teaches it without one gloss or thin
nest veil over the hideous naked truth; teaches it
without one touch of pity or pathos that might
allure a youth to try for himself and see if after
all things are as bad as they are painted. And
yet the French authorities did right in forbidding
the circulation of the book; for with all Flau
bert's honesty of purpose, his whole-hearted de
sire so to paint that sin to which his fellow-
countrymen are most addicted that it should
forevermore be loathsome in their eyes, he had
made a bad book; one that is corrupting by its

210 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
very fidelity, by the exquisite art and grace with
which he has known how to be true to the grue
some reality.
The prophets treat of the same subject, with a
realisra to which Flaubert's fidelity to truth seems
a thin veneer; yet they are safe reading; they
arouse not one false emotion, quicken no un
healthy susceptibility. What is the difference?
What can it be but this (for simply to say it is
inspired only begs the question), that Flaubert
has seen no roora for repentance? And to paint
sin without showing that it may be repented of
is immoral. And yet from the point of view of
raan there is no room for repentance of persistent
sin like this; it destroys the very faculty of re
pentance. Gomer could never have appreciated
the character of her husband's forgiving love.
But Jehovah is God, not man. In relations with
him repentance is forever possible, and so love,
having been multiplied into infinity, has been
raised to a higher power than it could else have
reached. All through these chapters it is the
relation of God to raan that is revealed in the
terms of the relation between man and woman;
and so the very words have been stripped of all
secondary significance, and the human relation
itself translated into terras of the divine. And
through this translation it came to pass that not
only under the old dispensation, and to the pure-

A PARABLE OF DIVINE LOVE 211
hearted Hebrew, God could reveal his love in a
parable of human experience, but that under the
new dispensation, and to sensuous Greeks and
sensual orientals, the inspired apostle — himself
probably unmarried — writing to the people of
Ephesus *' could picture the love of Christ for
his church in words which give the true meaning
of raarriage; words whose raeaning has not yet
been fathomed by Christian civilization, which
sees in man, not the savior, but the destroyer of
woman. For thousands of years the love of God has
been the blessed certainty of those who know
hira ; but it is not a raere happening that the reve
lation of it came by way of the experiences of
raarried life. The trouble with much of present-
day literature, and the darkest aspect of present-
day life, is that men and women forget this truth
of the typical sacredness of wedded love. When
this is generally realized, the world wiH be a
better place. It is a better place already for
those who know this sacred secret, discovered in
the agony of a passion in which love triuraphed
over wrong and shame. The world became a
holier and a more intelligible place, in the day
when its darkest mystery thus found its key.
*' Eph. 5 : 22-28(1.

CHAPTER VIII
SECULAR FAITH
I
In this individualistic age of ours it requires
sorae mental detachment to realize that until a
comparatively late period in the world's life the
individual was nothing; the family, the gens, the
clan, was everything. Nature, careless of the
single life, seeras to be imitated in the patriarchal
family of the East, the village community of
India, the gentile groups of Rorae, in which the
unit of society was found. So in the early rec
ords of Israel the tribe is the unit. We read in
the opening of the book of Judges how " Judah
said to Simeon his brother, ' Come up with me
into ray lot that we raay fight against the Ca
naanites, and I likewise will go with thee into thy
lot ! ' " 1 " Machir, the son of Manasseh," we are
told, " was the father of Gilead " '^ — the vast
grazing district east of Jordan. More distinctly,
perhaps, the family was the unit, and therefore
Achan's punishment * and the hanging of Saul's
'Judg. 1:3. 'Josh. 17:1. 'Josh. 7:24, 25.
212

SECULAR FAITH 213
descendants for his sin * gave no offense to the
moral sense of the coraraunity, but rather satisfied
it. The only immortality that the early Israelite
dreamed of was the perpetuity of Israel ; his high
est personal aspiration for the future that his
faraily raight never die out.
This indifference to the individual the Hebrews
shared with all peoples of that tirae; but it is
very interesting to discover that with Israel the
feeling was based upon the instinctive perception
of the iraportance of his race — that race in
which all nations of the earth were to be blessed ;
upon a religious idea, therefore. This becomes
strikingly clear when we perceive that, after all,
there was from a very early time among the
Hebrews what there was not among other peo
ples — a strong sense of individuality. In the
very heart of the coraraunity there was a class —
" the Wise," as they are called, " the Sages " —
whose infiuence was exceedingly strong, and al
ways tended to the development of the idea of
individuality. These sages were not for a long
time the writers of books. Their teachings re
mained in the folklore stage long after the early
prophets had begun to commit the annals of the
nation to writing; but they finally eraerged in
book forra * in a series of works called the " Wis
dom Literature," of which the Apocrypha give
*2 Sam. 21:1—9. * Probably after tlie captivity.

214 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
numerous examples, but of which in the canon
ical Scriptures Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes
are the most important. All these are decidedly
individualistic. Job is a philosophical work of
the very highest spiritual significance, and must
be studied by itself. Proverbs and Ecclesiastes,
which fall under our present title, are works of
practical philosophy, the thoughts of earnest and
observant men on the things of this life.
The book of Proverbs makes no attempt to
combine these thoughts into a system ; it remains
a series of disconnected observations. Yet one
thing is very striking: that at this relatively
early period the Hebrew sages had been vaguely
irapressed by that correlation of forces which
modern philosophers call " the conservation of
energy," but which to the crude minds of that
time was simply a suggestion of what we may
call " natural law." Not that they would have
so entitled it; the thought as thus formulated is
foreign to the concrete Hebrew mind.® They
made no attempt to analyze it, but they did per
sonify it under the name " Wisdom," personifi
cation being the only way in which, as we have
' Professor Toy speaks of the conception of the world as a
physical and moral cosmos or orderly arrangement, as found in
general in Gen., chap, i; Ps. 104, but far more distinctly in
Prov., chap. 8. Jastrow (Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p.
433) refers to the deluge story in Genesis, which " ends with the
promulgation of the fixed laws of the universe."

SECULAR FAITH 215
already seen, the Hebrew raind could deal with
abstract thought.
But though the writers of Proverbs dimly saw
the universe as a whole, they did not so see Hfe.
To the unphilosophic raind, as to the child, Hfe
reraains a raere series of events long after he has
corae to perceive the link between physical things.
Philosophically speaking, Ecclesiastes is a long
way in advance of Proverbs, because it reflects
on life as a whole, not as a series of experiences.
It atterapts to read the riddle of existence; and
it is a striking fact that this sura of forces, this
law of events, which we find the earlier writers
of the book of Proverbs calling " Wisdora," is
precisely the " All " which the later writer of
Ecclesiastes pronounces to be " Vanity." ^ And
this is entirely natural. When men begin to re-
fiect deeply on life, the natural first result is pes-
siraisra, as such poets as Tennyson and Brown-
' The view of natural law here expressed has been criticised
on the ground that the very suggestion of natural law is foreign
to the Hebrew mind. As a philosophic tenet, no doubt, but not as
a poetic or, more properly, religious interpretation of things. I
find my view at least suggested by such scholars as Wildbaer, who
finds Koheleth tormented with the question : Is law stronger than
God? as Bradley, who speaks of the law of order and recurrence
as leaving in Koheleth's mind no room for the development of
human character; as Davidson, who sees Koheleth oppressed by
the fixed and inexorable order of things, and who concludes that
his " Vanity " means that God has hemmed man in, that things
are inevitable. All this, to my mind, bears out my conviction that
Koheleth, like the writer of the Wisdom sonnet in Proverbs, had
a sense of natural law, but, unlike that writer, found it oppressive
and discouraging. Wright finds the uniformity of natural law
the uppermost fact in his mind.

2l6 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
ing make very clear. Proverbs is practical; it
asks : What is good — that is, right — for me?
Ecclesiastes is theoretical ; it asks : What is the
chief good? Both these questions, however, the
practical and the theoretical, are questions of
practical philosophy. Both deal with the problera
of daily Hfe. In other words, both are questions
of " secular faith."
This title fits the subject, however, only when
it is reraerabered that the distinction usually made
between the sacred and the secular was wholly
unknown tO' the sons of Israel. The distinction
which Israel raade was not between the sacred
and the secular, but between the national and the
individual. To prophets and poets, who occupied
theraselves with heavenly things, the nation was
the supreme concern, because — far more closely
than they dreamed — in the nation Israel was
bound up the hope of the world. To the Wise,
who occupied themselves with earthly things, the
individual was important, because earthly mat
ters are raatters of individual interest. But to
neither prophet nor sage would the thought have
occurred to divorce the earthly frora the heaven
ly. Human relationships and duties were to them
so closely based upon divine reality that their
worldly philosophy, Hke their coraraon Hfe, was
in the nature of things religious. God was with
them in their sowing and reaping, their sorrow

SECULAR FAITH 21 7
and joy. Their rules of husbandry were his
teaching, their harvest gladness was his feast,
the thunderstorm was his voice. The story of
Israel's wars was the Book of the Wars of Je
hovah, and as it was his armies that went forth
to battle, so it was his oracle that gave thera
their coraraon law.
All this was because God, being the source of
unity, was the foundation of all things. The
teachings of the Wise, their maxims of worldly
morality, stand on this basis of divine reality.
These teachings are the thought of raan dealing
with the concerns of man, but they are always
the thought of man who not only has his face
turned toward God, but to whora God is the raost
iraportant fact in life. The raost despairing ut
terances of the Preacher and the shrewdest max
ims of the book of Proverbs have alike this con
sciousness of divine reality; with them the
secular stands upon the sacred, as its basis, and
can have no other ground for being. Just as all
huraan relationships grow out of the fact of the
fatherhood of God, the higher unity in which all
things meet, so all human raorality, all human
duties and problems, find also their unity in the
relation all men bear to God.
Hebrew wisdom, then, had to do with practical
matters of conduct between man and man, with
the ordering of individual and social Hfe; but it

2l8 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
did not particularly concern itself with matters
between man and God. The book of Proverbs
has no concern with ceremonial worship, though
incidentally it takes it for granted ; * it utters no
warnings against the sin of idolatry, and it never
rests its dicta upon the solemn prophetic author
ity : " Thus saith the Lord." Proverbs is per
haps raost unlike prophecy in drawing no lessons
from the past. Neither the history of Israel nor
the Mosaic law is once mentioned, and there is
not the slightest reference to the prophetic teach
ings, although the iraportance of prophecy is dis
tinctly taught : " Where there is no vision the
people perish 1 " ®
In one striking respect the wisdora of the He
brews found a higher level than human wisdom
had elsewhere found : it had no place for agnos
ticism. To the Hebrew sage the search after
wisdom was sure to be rewarded with success;
it was possible for man to know : it was irapos
sible that the honest seeker should fail to find the
ultimate wisdom; that is, God. In the highest
sense, then, though not to the consciousness of
every wise man, wisdora was the divine philoso
phy. The Hebrew people were an inspired peo
ple; in a very true sense God was in all their
thoughts, and this fact has put an ineffaceable
seal upon all their secular — that is, their indi-
sProv. 7:14; 15:8; 21:27. "Prov. 29:18.

SECULAR FAITH 219
vidualistic, as well as their sacred — that is, their
national — writings. Ill
The secret of the Hebrew wisdom is given in
the motto which we find on the title-page of the
book of Proverbs :
The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge :
But the foolish despise wisdom and instruction.^"
This irapressive truth may first have been for
mulated by the writer of this passage; but it is
a universal truth. There has been no scientist
or philosopher of note, since science and philoso
phy were, of whom reverence has not been a
distinguishing — nay, a fundamental — charac
teristic. If " the undevout astronomer is mad,"
the irreverent scientist is an intellectual suicide.
It is this implicit sense of reverence that raises
above utilitarianism those precepts of the book
of Proverbs which appear to be most worldly
wise. The raoral value of this book is very great.
Its raorality is not very lofty, its raotives are
not the noblest ; they are mainly prudential. " Be
thou in the fear of Jehovah all the day long; for
surely there is a reward." ^^ But this is because
the book is distinctly meant to be a practical
work. It is utilitarian in contrast with the ideal-
i°Prov. 1:7. "23: 17, 18.

220 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
istic teachings of the prophets, but its utilitarian
ism is not self-centered. Its aira was to raise the
tone of national raorality. The only possible
appeal to the rank and file of the nation, at that
period (we may almost say, of any nation, at
any period) was to show by concrete examples
the wisdom of morality.
Without question this book teaches that good
ness is rewarded with worldly prosperity, and
wickedness punished in this world. This was the
firm belief of Israel, notwithstanding some facts
which tended to contradict it. These facts
caused great perplexity, but they did not suffice,
in the early days, to shake the general conviction.
When these proverbs first became current, this
was the comraon belief ; yet there is nothing igno
ble in the utilitarianism of Proverbs. Like our
own maxim, " Honesty is the best policy," it is
grounded in a high moral truth.
Implicitly, if not explicitly. Proverbs tests con
duct by the highest standards :
A false balance is an abomination to Jehovah,
But they that deal truly are his delight.i^
This implicit recognition of the only true ethi
cal standard gives this book great practical value.
Righteousness exalteth a nation.
But sin is a reproach to any people.^^
^- II : I. " 14: 34-

SECULAR FAITH 221
It has been said that one reason for the ster
ling if shrewd integrity for which the Scottish
people have long been faraous, is found in the fact
that for many generations the book of Proverbs
was the standard school reader.
The books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes suffer
more than any other parts of the Bible by our
present chapter and verse divisions, and by the
lack of titles. It is possible so to separate and
recombine the passages in both these books as to
bring out a surprising degree of harmony and
connection. The most obvious grouping is into
books, of which Proverbs has five. All except
the first have titles, but as these are printed right
along with what follows, they are not generally
noticed. The general title of the volume is very
elaborate, as has been shown in several recent
works. Perhaps the volume " Proverbs " in
Professor Moulton's Modern Readers' Bible is
the most readily accessible. The title is there
shown to bear strong resemblance to the titles of
many English books of the age of Milton or
Addison, or of some modern novels :
THE PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.
The Son of David, King of Israel.
To know Wisdora and Instruction :
To discern the Words of Understanding:
To receive instruction in Wise Dealing:

222 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
In Righteousness and Judgment and Equity:
To give Subtilty to the Simple:
To the Young Man Knowledge and Discretion:
That the Wise Man may hear and increase in Learning:
And that the Man of Understanding may attain unto
Sound Counsels :
To Understand a Proverb and a Figure :
The Words of the Wise
And their Dark Sayings.
The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Knowledge:
But the Foolish despise Wisdom and Instruction.^^
The first of the five books of which Proverbs
is formed, chaps. 1-9, is a little Book of Sonnets,
more elaborate in structure and raore advanced
in thought than any other part of the book of
Proverbs; and for these reasons it is believed to
have been written last. Its subject, the praise of
wisdom, is the obvious reason why it is placed
at the beginning of the first collection of Wisdom
books. Its contents are not sonnets in the Italian
or the English sense of a rhymed composition
of fourteen lines. Their structure is far more
free than that, as is evident from the fact that
chaps. 2 and 5 are single sonnets, while other
chapters contain three or four each. Yet they
are evidently sonnets, since each contains a single
scherae of thought, and this is the essential fact
in a sonnet. Some of the shorter sonnets are
exquisite in form; for instance, the one begin
ning, " Go to the ant, thou sluggard." All of

SECULAR FAITH 223
them are very elaborate, including all those forras
of parallelisra which characterize Hebrew poetry.
The description of Wisdom in chap. 8 is prob
ably the most daring and sublime personification
in all Hterature, and it is here that we find the
vague recognition of natural law already alluded
to. It speaks in the person of the heavenly Wis
dora : ^^
I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning.
Or ever the earth was.
When there were no depths, I was brought forth.
When there were no fountains abounding with water.
Before the mountains were settled.
Before the hills, was I brought into being ;
While as yet he (Jehovah) had not made the earth.
Nor the fields.
Nor the beginning of the dust of the world.
When he established the heavens, I was there ;
When he set a circle upon the face of the deep,!^
When he made the skies above,
When the fountains of the deep became strong:
When he gave to the sea its bound.
That the waters should not transgress his commandment:
When he marked out the foundations of the earth.
Then I was by him
As a master-workman,
1" Even a superficial reading shows how impossible it is that
this should have been a prophecy of Christ, as is generally taught.
Wisdom is here the creature, not the child, of God; "brought into
being," not begotten; anterior to creation and an instrument in
creation (vss. 29, 30).
'* The old cosmological idea that the earth was a flat disk,
the ocean surrounding the land, and being itself surrounded by a
circular rim to keep it from running off.

224 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
And I was daily his dehght;
Sporting always before him.
Sporting in his habitable earth ;
And my delight was with the sons of men.^^
The joy of the writer in this newly found
truth of natural law is as interesting as it is
naive. Chap. lo begins with the words " The Prov
erbs of Soloraon." Evidently this is a title, and
it shows that these chapters were once a separate
book. This Book II consists entirely of couplets as
simple in form as the sonnets of Book I are elab
orate, for which reason it is beHeved by some to
be the oldest part of the book of Proverbs. It is
largely composed of old folklore — popular prov
erbs and maxims, such as every nation has; not
given in their original form, however, but worked
over into poetic couplets, interspersed with the
Wise Man's own personal observations thrown
into the same form.
At 22 : 17—21 is found a new heading, showing
that here we have another collection, once issued
by itself. This heading is long and elaborate
like that of Book I. " The Words of the Wise,"
in vs. 17, may be taken as a summary of the
whole. Vs. 20', which is a part of the title, indi
cates that it may be considered as an epistle.
" Prov. 8: 23—31.

SECULAR FAITH 225
To this epistle someone has added a postscript
of twelve verses at 24 : 23, beginning with,
" These also are of the Wise." Both epistle and
postscript differ from the preceding book in con
sisting, not of simple couplet proverbs, but of
epigrams of four or raore lines interspersed with
a few couplet proverbs ; each part, epistle and
postscript, has one sonnet. In the epistle occurs
the well-known " Riddle Sonnet on Intemper
ance," " The Mirror for Drunkards," ^* be
ginning with a sarcastic and extremely realistic
imitation of the exclamations of the drunkard :
Who hath oi?
Who hath aboi?
Who hath contentions?
Who hath complainings ?
In the postscript is the very artistic sonnet on
the " Field of the Slothful." i^
A fourth book begins at chap. 25, of which the
first verse is evidently a title : " The Proverbs
of Soloraon Which the Men of Hezekiah Copied
Out." This gives itself out, then, as a later col
lection than Book II, but it resembles that much
more than it resembles any other of the five
books of Proverbs. Like that, it consists mainly
of two-lined proverbs, though these are inter
spersed with triplets and epigrams. The chief
difference between them is a most interesting
M 23: 29-35. "24:30-34

226 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
one from a Hterary point of view, for it shows
perhaps the earliest attempt at editing; many of
the proverbs of the second collection being in
clusters bearing on a single subject. For exam
ple, the first four proverbs ^° are on the charac
teristics of kings; in the next chapter is a group
of four on the sluggard.^ ^ There are seven on
social pests ; ^^ there is a cluster of nine proverbs
of various lengths on fools.^^ There is also an
exquisite Httle " Folk-Song of Good Husbandry,"
which in feeling for nature, though not in poetic
beauty, reminds us of the " Spring Song " in
Canticles.^* Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks,
And look well to thy herds;
For riches are not for ever ;
And doth the crown endure unto all generations?
The hay is carried.
And the tender grass sheweth itself
And the herbs of the mountains are gathered in.
The lambs are for thy clothing.
And the goats are the price of the field :
And there will be goat's milk enough for thy food.
For the food of thy household;
And maintenance for thy maidens.
But, in the main, this book, like the other,
consists of couplets — there are nearly ninety.
The fifth and last book includes a number of
'^"25: 1—7. ^^26: 1— 12.
=126: 13-16. "27: 23, 27.
''2$: 17-25.

SECULAR FAITH 227
titles, and is evidently a collection of miscellany;
nothing in this collection is attributed to- Solo
mon. There is a group of sonnets, epigrams,
and riddles, which, we are told, are the sayings
of Agur ; ^^ there is the " Oracle of Lemuel's
Mother," ^^ and there is the anonymous " Mirror
for Wives," ^'' which in the Hebrew is an acrostic
poem. It is interesting to note that the nearest ap
proach to agnosticism made in the Wisdora Ht
erature is found in the sayings of Agur, in a
poera on the " Unsearchableness of God." ^*
Its poetic structure is interesting; the first
strophe has three short lines followed by four
long ones, the second strophe reverses the order,
having four long lines followed by three short
ones: THE UNSEARCHABLENESS OF GOD
A Sonnet
I have wearied myself, O God,
I have wearied myself, O God,
And am consumed :
For I am more brutish than any man.
And have not the understanding of a man :
And I have not learned wisdom.
Neither have I the knowledge of the Holy One.
» Chap. 30.
""¦31: 1-9-
"31: 10-31.
''30: jb-4. The first three lines of the following sonnet follow
an amended reading of the second clause of vs. i.

228 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Who hath ascended up into heaven, and descended ? 29
Who hath gathered the wind in his fists?
Who hath bound the waters in his garment?
Who hath established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name.
And what is his son's name.
If thou knowest?
To this agnostic utterance, however, Agur re
pHes by an epigram that God may be found ex
perimentally : " He is a shield to those who trust
in hira." ^^ Agnosticisra never has the last word
in the Wisdom literature.
Though even a general classification like this
lends considerable Hterary interest to the book
of Proverbs, much of the book still appears frag
mentary and illogical, and the mind soon wearies
in reading it. This, indeed, is the case in reading
a succession of short pieces of any kind. It is
impossible for us to read very many even of the
most beautiful lyrics at a sitting. This, how
ever, appears to be a characteristic of the westem
mind. We find no reason to suppose that the
oriental mind feels the necessity of logical se
quence. Not merely the book of Proverbs, but
the greater portion of the Koran and whole vol
umes of Arabian lore, consist of short sentences
having no logical relation to one another. There
is a bond of unity, but it usually consists less in
the thought than in the form. A single word
^ Christ referred to this in his conversation with Nicodemus.
'"Vs. 5.

SECULAR FAITH 229
occurring in several sentences, like the group of
proverbs on the king or on the fool, in the twenty-
fifth chapter of Proverbs, is sufiicient reason for
their being placed together; or they are grouped
together simply because they begin with the same
letter, or with letters which follow in alphabetical
order, like the acrostic psalms, or the " Mirror
for Wives," in the last chapter of Proverbs.
Putting ourselves, so far as we are able, into
the raental attitude of the oriental, we find that
the book of Proverbs has a very true unity, and
that this unity is preserved in a very artistic way
under forras of great variety, and in a scope
which, though restricted tO' subjects of practical
interest, is enorraously wide. What that unity
is we have already seen — it is found in the ref
erence, tacit or open, of all raoral judgments to
God. The title-page of the whole book an
nounces that the fear of the Lord is the very
beginning, the basis, of wisdom.
This God-consciousness is always latent. It
is not always put into words. Yet there are
many places where it is frankly confessed:
The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life.
To depart from the snares of death.si
There is a firm and unalterable faith that the
world is governed justly:

230 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
The way of the Lord is a stronghold to the upright.
But it is a destruction to the workers of iniquity.32
There is a deep sense of the omnipotence of
God:
The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord as the water
courses.
He turneth it wheresoever he will.^'
Like the early prophets, the early Wise Men
saw the deep truth of the absolute sovereignty
of God, and prophets and sages were equally un
able to apprehend the free will of man.
The Lord hath made everything for its own end.
Yea, even the wicked for the day of evil,'*
is the proverbial form of the prophetic " I make
peace and create evil."
Social duty stands on a religious basis :
He that is slack in his work
But he that hath mercy on the needy honoreth him.^'
The duty of honest labor is strongly felt:
He that is slack in his work
Is brother to him that is a destroyer.^^
Here the economic importance of diligence ap
pears. The sense of relative duty in econoraic
affairs is often found :
^" 10: 29.
^^21:1. A figure drawn from the irrigation practiced in gar
den culture. Cf. Ps. 1:3; Jer. 31: 12.
»*Prov. 16: 4. ™ 18: 9.
">I4: 31.

SECULAR FAITH 23 1
" Bad, bad," saith the buyer,
But when he is gone his way then he boasteth.^'?
There is a profound insight into the difference
between false and true economy :
There is that maketh himself rich yet hath nothing:
There is that maketh himself poor yet hath great wealth;
and There is that scattereth and increaseth yet more.
There is that withholdeth more than is meet.
But it tendeth to want.^*
This, it will be remembered, was the basis of
old Honest's riddle in the Pilgrim's Progress:
There was a man, though some did count him mad.
The more he cast away the more he had.
To which Gains, the host, found the answer :
He that bestows his goods upon the poor.
Shall have as much again, and ten times more.
The high value set upon riches is chiefly be
cause they are a token of the peculiar favor of
God:
The blessing of the Lord it maketh rich.
And toil addeth knowledge thereto.'s
This view, that prosperity is the sure reward
of the righteous, is so firmly fixed that it is all
the more irapressive to find wealth so clearly sub
ordinated to right conduct:
"20: 14. '* 10: 22.
3= 13: 7; 11: 24.

232 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Treasures of riches profit nothing.
But righteousness delivereth from death,
and Better is the poor that walketh in his integrity.
Than he that is perverse in his way though he be rich.*"
This sentiraent occurs repeatedly.
These books give a very valuable insight into
the domestic Hfe of the time — the filial piety,
the sense of parental responsibility, the confi
dence between husband and wife, the relations of
confidence between raaster and slave, the rever
ence paid to old age :
The glory of young men is their strength.
And the beauty of old men is the hoary head."
The very first proverb in the earliest collection
brings out a clear view of faraily relationships:
A wise son maketh a glad father.
But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.*^
That the raother should be thus put on the
sarae plane with the father as concerned in the
conduct and character of the son is very impres
sive. The testimony of the book to the status
of woman is particularly important in view of
present-day theories of social evolution; the
raother is everywhere joined with the father as
"10: 2; 28: 6. «io: I.
" 20 : 29.

SECULAR FAITH 233
the equal claimant upon the reverence and esteem
of the child :
Let thy father and mother be glad.
And let her that bare thee rejoice.*'
As tO' the relations between husband and wife,
we find everywhere the highest possible testimony
to the exalted ideal prevalent:
Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing.
And obtaineth favor of the Lord.
House and riches are an inheritance from the fathers.
But a prudent wife is from the Lord.**
Yet it is true that there is much in this book
of the " strange woraan," of the contentious,
noisy, quarrelsorae woman; so much so as to
lead some to think that the standard of woman
hood in Israel must have been very low. But in
truth those warnings show a very high apprecia
tion of the influence of woman, and of the value
of goodness in woman ; they show that then, very
much as now, the issues of Hfe were felt to be
actually in her hands, that everything depended
on her being good and true. And not all the
proverbs about woraen take the warning tone;
the gracious woman who " retaineth honor," *'
the wise woman who " buildeth her house " *^ —
that is, who is the basis of her family's stability
— the good wife, are weh known and highly ap-
« 23: 25. *'^ II : 16.
» 18: 22; 19: 14. " 14: I.

234 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
preciated by the raakers of these proverbs. Most
of the religious systems of the world have suf
fered by overlooking woman, but the religious
system of Israel no raore than its moral code
made that raistake. The last chapter of Proverbs
gives a picture of an active, industrious, and very
capable wife, but her virtues are not raerely pru
dential. This woman is her husband's counselor,
in whom his heart trusteth, who always does him
good; she is far-sighted for opportunities, quick
in perception, and independent in action to a very
remarkable degree. She considereth a field and
buyeth it; she is no clinging vine, strength and
dignity are her clothing. And with all her stur
dy virtues and independence she is a gracious
woman, opening her mouth with wisdom and
having the law of kindness on her tongue.
No doubt the book of Proverbs treats of illicit
love, and perhaps some of us have gathered from
it that this was a prevalent sin. But the very
vigor of reprehension with which it is here treat
ed speaks volumes for the high standard of sex
ual purity in Israel; no peoples of the present
day take so high a stand as to what is practicable
in this matter, and what society has a right to
expect in this respect, as we find in the book of
Proverbs. The book of Proverbs holds to the triumph of
the good in the great world-controversy between

SECULAR FAITH 235
good an,d evil. The rewards and punishments
are indeed to be meted out in this world, through
prosperity or the reverse; yet this view of life
had at that time its great importance. The Wis
dora literature, and especially the book of Prov
erbs, had this weighty part to play : to bring the
minds of the people into sympathy with the
prophetic teaching. The most inspired prophecy
needs for full efficacy a prepared mind ; the Wise
Men of Israel did this work of preparation. It
was as true in Israel as it is today among our
colored people of the South, and as it is araong
all people everywhere, that no religion can be
permanently uplifting which does not stand on a
sound ethical basis. For the rank and file of the
people, the unt'.oughtful who make up the ma
jority of every community, those to whom prac
tical sanctions make the strongest appeal, the
Wise Men suppHed the basis upon which the
higher ethical teachings of the prophets could
build themselves.
The Wisdora literature was especially valuable,
on the other hand, in furnishing a link between
prophecy and the best moral and intellectual at
tainments of other nations. They, too, had their
wise men and their wisdom ; the wisdom of Israel
differed from them all in its firm ethical basis,
and in the individualism which sprang from that.
It furnished the bridge by which the best minds

236 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
of the gentiles could pass over to the high spir
ituality of Israel. We know that in the later
centuries before the Christian era so large a
proportion of the brightest minds of paganism
had passed over to Judaism that Jewish prose
lytes were found in large nurabers in every nation
under heaven, and afterward forraed the basis of
the Christian church in gentile nations. This
was largely due to the then widely read books
of Wisdom, canonical and apocryphal.

The most potent in this respect of all these
books was Ecclesiastes, or Koheleth,*'^ as it is
more properly called. While thoroughly Hebrew,
it forras a very important link with the philosoph
ical literature of other peoples.
The fundamental characteristic of Hebrew
philosophy, as we have seen in the book of Prov
erbs, is its religious basis : its very foundation is
God. In Proverbs God is the wise and good
Ruler of the world, the vague idea of law as his
raode of ruling, entrancing as it was, not having
yet, to the Hebrew raind, entered the raoral
sphere. " Wisdora," in which there appears to
*' The Hebrew word is Kohileth; it means, perhaps, " coun
selor; " it certainly does not mean ** preacher," as those who gave
the book the Greek name " Ecclesiastes " thought it did. Koheleth
is the proper name assumed by the writer. It is commonly held to
be a name for Solomon, and unquestionably was intended to be so
understood. But this is no more a testimony to the authorship ot
the book than the pronoun " I " of a modern novel.

SECULAR FAITH 237
be sorae dira adumbration of the notion of nat
ural law, was the delight of God, something
apart from him, lovely and beneficent, friendly to
man, irresponsible, but very good. God ruled the
world by its means, and because he ruled it right,
therefore the good always prospered. This con
viction, which was well-nigh universal in the He
brew mind in a certain stage of its development,
naturally resulted in the belief that affliction or a
want Oif prosperity must argue wickedness. This
doctrine was so firmly held that, as has been seen,
the Psalmist was greatly puzzled at the prosper
ity of the wicked; and we shall find that Job's
deepest suffering came from the prevalence of
-the same idea.
A confiict thus arose in thoughtful Hebrew
minds, and from the cheerful but superficial op
timism of Proverbs, convinced that all is for
the best in the best of all possible worlds, many
thinkers of Israel, gathering together the sum
of human; experiences as a basis for reflective
generalization, and perceiving that after all the
righteous did not always prosper, and that it
often went well with the wicked, passed into a
stage of pessimism, if we may use the word, not
in its raodern philosophic sense, but as a term for
profound discouragement which finds no key to
the enigma of life, yet does not utterly despair
of the future, nor lose all belief in God. This

238 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
state of raind is very strongly set forth in Eccle
siastes, and frora it, as we shall presently see, the
author at last escaped by the doctrine of provi
dence.^^ The book has a peculiar charm, especially to
the advanced in years. It is the only purely re
flective work in the Old Testaraent, and there is
a strange fascination in its pregnant sentences,
shrewd reflections on things, applicable for all
times, and utterances at least suggestive of pro
found spiritual truth. As a whole, however, it
has generally been held to be rather incoherent,
incapable of analysis, and without that single
thread of purpose which gives unity to a book.
Therefore this book has always been a puzzle to
expositors, and it is only in comparatively recent
years that anything Hke a satisfactory analysis
has been wrought out.*®
" It is possible that Koheleth may not have followed Proverbs
in the sequence of time. There are scholars who hold that it is ear
lier than the present form of Proverbs. But in the experience of
life this appears to be the order. The folklore which is the ma
terial of Proverbs was ancient.
** How difficult is the work of analysis may be seen by a com
parison of a few standard authors. Ginsberg and Cox make four
divisions with prologue and epilogue; Bradley makes eight; Plump-
tre, ten; Wildeboer, fourteen; Driver says that it contains no clearly
marked subdivisions, and Davidson (Encyclopedia Biblica) and
Peake (Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible) agree with him in at
tempting none. Wildeboer, however, points out that Koheleth re
peatedly returns to the thought: " It is better to enjoy life than
to philosophize over it." This thought, first brought to my notice
by a casual remark of President Stewart, of Auburn, I have taken
as the guiding principle in my analysis. Professor Genung includes
in his summary of '* the structural idea " of the book the thought
that " life . . . must be its own reward and blessedness, or
nothing; " but this thought does not govern his analysis.

SECULAR FAITH 239
With Proverbs and Job Ecclesiastes forms a
trilogy working out the spiritual problem of hu
manity ; not of Judaism only, but of all the ages.
Proverbs stands at the beginning of this pro
found, and imperatively needed, study, with its
question : What is good — that is, right — for
rae? Ecclesiastes lifts the subject to a far higher
plane, asking frora a wider spiritual horizon and
a deeper nature: What is the chief good for
raan ? And Job triumphantly crowns the process
by opening up the deep mystery of the absolute
good.^° Koheleth has been called, and in a sense he
has been correctly called, a pessimist; and from
failure to perceive the natural and important
place of pessimism in the developraent of thought,
in the attainment of a sound ethical basis for
religion, some devout scholars have deemed his
book far less worthy of a place in the canon than
that, in general, fine collection of proverbs and
reflections included in the apocryphal book Eccle-
siasticus.^'^ The Jews themselves thought Httle
of Ecclesiastes. It was never taught in their
™ This appears to me to be the thought sequence, entirely irre
spective of the question of the date of writing or final redaction of
any of these books. Job is doubtless earlier than the final redaction
of Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes is probably the latest of the three.
But it is nothing unusual in the history of human thought that one
man should come a generation or several centuries too soon. Job
was probably not more before his time than Bruno.
^'^ Koheleth takes a weighty place in the canons of the Old
Testament. It is a valuable document in the history of Israel's
unparalleled religion." — Wildeboer in Die fiinf Megillot, p. ng.

240 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
schools, nor read in the synagogues, and it is
nowhere directly referred to in the New Testa
ment, though there are clear evidences of its
influence in the writings of Paul and James. Its
purpose has been variously apprehended, but in
general the dictura, " Vanity of vanities, all is
vanity," has been held to be its keynote; it is
taken as the discouraged utterances of one who
had exhausted all forms of pleasure, worthy and
unworthy, and found all alike stale, flat, and un
profitable. I think that a search into the Hterary structure
of this book, with an apprehension of the writer's
understanding of the word " judgraent," will
show us that the author of Ecclesiastes, busy in
reflecting upon all the facts of a varied experi
ence to ascertain this summum. bomtm, this
" chief good," or, as he hiraself states it, the
" profit," ^^ the net result to be gained from
life's experiences, though a pessimist, is at least
not a coward; that, in fact, he is brave and de
termined, and though his experiences have been
for the raost part sad, in the end by virtue of his
courage he wins through to hope.^^ He sees
that things have their ups and downs; there is a
" " WJiat profit hath man in all his labors that he laboreth
under the sun?" (1:3). This is the key of the book. It is, in
fact, the search for the chief good.
"* " An earnest man who doubts much that others lightly be
lieve, but will not for that give up the faith of his childhood — that
is Koheleth." — Wildeboer, op. eit.

SECULAR FAITH 241
tirae for everything, for adversity and sorrow as
well as for prosperity and rairth. It is his evil
fortune to live, he thinks, in a bad time, but he
does not teach, with modern pessimists, that
everything is going on from bad to worse; on
the contrary, he cherishes a despairing hope that
things will take a turn some day, and that be
up which now is down. He is no doubt a dis
appointed man ; again and again he has failed in
his quest of the chief good, but he is too much in
earnest, too confident that it raay be found, to
give up the search. He has advanced beyond
the superficial optimisra of Proverbs, certain that
God always rewards the righteous with prosper
ity and sends afflictions upon the wicked. His
observation of life goes deeper than that : one
of the vanities that he has found done upon earth
is that " there be righteous men unto whom it
happeneth according to the work of the wicked :
again there be wicked men to whom it happeneth
according to the work of the righteous." It be
wilders hira, yet he does not hug his doubts ; his
fixed purpose is to scatter thera ; that there can be
any faith in " honest doubt " is to hira incon
ceivable. But to say that Ecclesiastes shows all this after
the raanner of a philosophic treatise, whether a
work of formal logic, such as our ancestors
wrote, or a work in which inquiry is pursued

242 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
under literary forms, as in thoughtful books of
today, is to say what is not the case; to expect
this of the book would be to misunderstand the
genius of the Wisdom literature, and, in fact, of
the oriental raind. Ecclesiastes is not a philo
sophical treatise, but a series of essays, somewhat
like those of Montaigne or Bacon or Emerson.
They have a thread of connection, but it is rather
that of a suite in music than that of a consecu
tive course of argument or reflection.^*
VI
Words of Koheleth
Son of David, King in Jerusalem
This first verse is the title of the book, which
consists of eight chapters, in which life is sur
veyed frora as raany points of view, with pro
logue and epilogue. The prologue, which in
cludes vss. I-I I of the first chapter, strikes the
keynote. Koheleth is profoundly, and very un
favorably, irapressed with the workings of that
natural law which the writer in Proverbs had
joyfully personified as Wisdom. His characteri
zation of it is the leading motive of the earlier
essays, and in a sense of the whole book : " Van
ity of vanities," saith Koheleth, " vanity of vani
ties — all is vanity."
^ It is interesting to note how often musical forms are a key
in Hebrew literature. This is especially the case in the prophets,
as there is no opportunity here to show.

SECULAR FAITH 243
The inexorable nature of law seems to him as
to the last degree discouraging, because by its
workings everything goes around in a circle, with
no progress, and therefore no hope. Generation
goeth and generation coraeth, and the earth abid
eth forever. The sun ariseth and the sun goeth
down and coraeth panting back^® to the place
where he ariseth. The wind bloweth toward the
south and turneth about unto the north; all the
streams run into the sea, yet the sea is not full;
unto the place whence the streams come, thither
they go again.
To this son of many generations who had
traced every event, evil as well as good, directly
to the hand of God, this first dawn of science,
this first faint recognition of the reign of law,
raust needs have been profoundly depressing and
bewildering. Is law stronger than God? It is
not surprising that to him " all things are full of
weariness ; man cannot utter it ; the eye is not
satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hear
ing." For all things seem to have become a
mere treadmill of profitless activity — " That
which hath been done is that which shall be done,
and there is no new thing under the sun." Yet
Koheleth does not suraraarily decide that this is
all: he deterrainately sets hiraself to search
"^ Professor Genung's literal and significant translation. " The
unwearied sun pants through his daily round," says Dean Bradley
(Lectures on Ecclesiastes).

244 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
whether or not it is so, hoping to find an escape
from this inexorable wheel of nature in a su
preme good — a Power, that is, which is above
law and can subordinate it to his own will; can
wring " profit," progress, from that which by its
very constitution yields none.
The first essay, which goes from i : 12 through
chap. 2, shows " good sought in experience." In
this essay, and probably through the book, the
writer assumes the personality of Solomon, the
ideal of wisdom and happiness, who might be
supposed to raake the search under the most
hopeful conditions. He would test everything
that men call good and find what profit it yields.
First, " wisdora " : "I applied my heart to sur
vey and search by wisdom into all that is done
under heaven  I acquired greater
wisdom than all who were in Jerusalem before
me " — but only to find that in much wisdom is
much sadness, and to multiply knowledge is to
multiply sorrow.
Then he tried mirth, but found it mad; and
pleasure, but found it vanity. He tried what
pomp of life would do; he builded houses and
made gardens and parks, gathered silver and gold
and all the delights of the sons of men; he kept
not his heart back from any joy, and behold, " all
was vanity and a chase after wind, and there was
no profit under the sun."

SECULAR FAITH 245
Then he turned to corapare wisdom and folly,
and though he finds that wisdom excels folly as
light excels darkness, yet " one event befalleth
them all." " A fate like that of the fool will be
fall me, even me : to what end then am I wiser ? "
So this, too, is vanity.
Again he seeks the chief good in labor, in the
production of wealth; but this, too, fails, for he
must leave it to the man who would come after
him, and who can tell whether he will be a wise
man or a fool ? Koheleth revolved all this until
it made his heart despair. " There is nothing
better for a man than to eat and drink; " yet he
perceives that even this is not in his own power,
it also is subject to law — " for who can eat and
who can enjoy himself apart from him?" Al
most unconsciously he has sounded the note that
is to ring ever clearer through all its quest:
"Life itself is good, since God is in it all! Be
glad ! " Yet for the raoment the thought of his
own impotence overwhelms hira ; " this also is
vanity and vexation of spirit."
The second essay, " The Philosophy of Tiraes
and Seasons," occupies chap. 3. Koheleth sets
himself to discover a justifying theory of the
universe, the iron law which so enthrals him.
Looking away from the narrow sphere of his
own experience, he considers the cosmic order.
It affords him no relief. What profit in a scheme

246 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
of things which fixes, not the raost fitting, the
raost suitable, but the inevitable tirae? Again,
is law stronger than God? Yet here he dimly
perceives an escape frora the wheel of law, be
cause " God has put eternity in raan's heart." ®^
He seems to be conscious of some realm in which
God is himself the Master of law, though that
consciousness is too^ vague to enable man " to
find out the work which God hath wrought
there." Yet it is enough to bring him again to
the conclusion, " Be glad ! " ^'^ God has given it
to men to rejoice and do good, to eat, drink, and
enjoy. Here is dimly adumbrated that confidence in
the judgraent of God which shines out effulgently
at the close of the book, and which is so essential
an element in the joy of the later Hebrew writers.
Koheleth has as yet found no place in the world
of time for this judgment, this divine criticism
of life ; the inexorable wheel of things grinds on ;
" that which is hath been long ago, God maketh
to return that which is past." The vanity of
things again rushes over him ; what profit is there
in a judgment the only outcome of which is that
men learn that by nature they are beasts ? " For
one hap befalleth them : as dieth the one so dieth
the other," and " all is vanity." Yet again, for
the second time in this essay,^® he returns to his
""s:!!. "3:12, 13. '^3:22; cf. vs. 13.

SECULAR FAITH 247
conclusion, " Be glad ! " This is man's portion,
it is the gift of God. He has not yet won through
to the true reason. His present conclusions may
be " the human soul's effort to anestheticize it
self," 59 but this is not the end.
This conclusion leads not unnaturally to a con
sideration of huraan nature; and the third essay
deals with " The Deceptions and Inconsistencies
of Men" (chaps. 4, 5). There are oppressions
on the part of some, and tears on the part of
others, and sorrowing ones have no comforter.
There are envyings between equals, and even the
successful raan has a dissatisfied heart. " For
whora," he saith, "do I labor?" What is the
good of it all? Some things, indeed, are better
than others : " two are better than one ; a poor
and wise child is better than an old and foolish
king ; " it is better to be careful in religious ob
servance than recklessly to make God angry ; the
lot of the underfed laborer is better than that of
the surfeited rich ; but the experience of all alike
is profitless, for " as man came naked into the
world, so altogether as he came he must go."
But just here comes another flash of that Hght
toward which Koheleth is groping. After all,
there is profit. There is joy in the fulfilment of
common duty. To rejoice in his labor comes not
from the working out of law ; this is the gift of
" Davidson in Encyclopedia Biblica.

248 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
God, something over and above. He has said it
before ; he understands it better now. God is not
bound by law, he can respond even to the mood
of raan, and raan " will not rauch reraeraber the
days of his life, when God respondeth to hira in
joy of heart." VII
The flash of light was only a flash, and in the
fourth essay (6:1 — 7:14) the inexorableness
of law reasserts itself in that fatalistic guise
which has such power over the eastern mind,
although by marvelous exception it was never a
Hebrew characteristic. Koheleth points out that
men raay have great possessions without enjoy
raent; man with the noblest purposes and the
most strenuous efforts cannot shake himself free
from the power of irresponsible law. He almost
reaches fatalism here.
Why should one care for an)rthing — weak and
impotent that he is? Whatever he is, his char
acter and destiny were fixed before he was born,
his name was given hira long ago, and it is
known that man is (merely) fnan; and " what
profit therefore to hira ? For who knoweth what
is good for raan in life, all the days of his vain
Hfe which he spendeth like a shadow ? "
Who knoweth? With characteristic bravery
Koheleth sets hiraself to find his way out of the
dark cloud of pessimism which has enwrapped

SECULAR FAITH 249
him, by seeking for the relatively better, even
though there be no absolutely good.
A good name is better than good nard
And the day of death better than the day of one's birth.
Wisdom is a shelter
And wealth is a shelter.
But the advantage of wisdom is [not that it enables one to
control events but]
That it fortifieth the heart of them that have it'"
With a heart thus fortified he can contemplate
the work of God, and though, in it he still finds
no roora for huraan initiative, since none " can
make straight that which he hath made crooked,"
yet again he can return to his conclusion : " Be
glad " in the day of prosperity, and in the day
of adversity still be glad, since wisdom, contem
plating the work of God, and perceiving that it
is he who puts one side by side with the other,
perceives that it is better that man should not
find out an)rthing after him,®^ but should trust
hiraself to God. Here at last is progress. Ko
heleth has reached something definite, something
which he grasps during all his further quest. In
the very existence of God is iraplied that guar
antee of good, that providence, which shall offset,
which may even overcome, the natural and other
wise inevitable workings of law.
" Good is wisdom " *^ was a conclusion of
™ 7: 1-12. "7: II.
"7: 13, 14-

250 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Koheleth in the fourth essay. In the fifth essay
(7:15 — 8:15) he returns to consider, " Where
in is wisdom good ? " On the whole, the reply
is disappointing. Nothing seems to go right;
righteous men perish through their very right
eousness, and wicked men prolong life through
their very evil-doing. It is not worth while to
be too righteous nor to rack one's brains too
much about the meaning of things. Yet it is
well to have something of both, for " he that
feareth God shall come forth frora them all."
There are many things that he cannot compre
hend ; wisdom is far from him ; he is perplexed
by the ways of men, and particularly embittered
by those of woraen. " God made man upright,"
but women (the pronoun is feminine) " have
sought out many inventions." Woman is un
questionably, to his mind, one of the chief foes,
not so much of goodness as of happiness ; yet in
a later hour and happier raood he shows a very
keen appreciation of the joys of wedded love.
There are benefits in wisdom, but they are doubt
ful. A wise man's heart knows time and judg
ment, yet he cannot know that which shall be.
Law is arbitrary and irresponsible ; but he has be
come convinced that God is stronger than law
and can bend it to his good will — the doctrine,
that is, of providence.
With this doctrine as a light he can consider

SECULAR FAITH 25 1
in the sixth essay ( 8 : 16 — 9 : 10) " The Futility
of Wisdom as a Key to the Riddles of Experi
ence." " Man cannot fathom the work that is
done under the sun. All things come alike to
all, one event happens to the righteous and to the
wicked." Koheleth seems to be very near the
abyss of fatalism here; he escapes from it by
the conclusion that everything is in the hand of
God, and that to be friends with him is to be on
the side of one who can, and sooner or later will,
intervene for his aid, subordinating law to his
own righteousness. Therefore he can return
with new emphasis to his old conclusion, " Be
glad!" "There is nothing better for man un
der the sun than to eat and drink and be glad," ®*
to enjoy the good that God has provided. What
though " man cannot fathom the work [of God]
that is wrought under the sun ? " What though
it is all inscrutable — and Koheleth gives many
instances of this — yet it is God's work, not the
work of blind and arbitrary law; and therefore
man may be glad. " Go thou, eat thy bread with
gladness and drink with merry heart thy wine,
for already hath God accepted thy works." ®*
In the seventh essay, " Tirae and Chance "
(9:11 — 11:8), Koheleth returns to the ques
tion of timeliness, which was the subject of the
second essay, and of fate (or chance), which
"8:15. "9; 7-

252 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
was the subject of the fourth. The essay con
tains several well-conceived little parables *' and
several probable allusions to events of Koheleth's
own time.®® It shows a deep personal acquaint
ance with life and human nature, often clothed in
pregnant aphorisms.®'^ This essay includes sev
eral very poetic passages, especially a quatrain
which in a sense sums up the philosophy of life
as Koheleth understands life. " In the morning
sow thy seed, and at eve slacken not thy hand,
for thou knowest not which shall prosper, this or
that, or whether both shall be alike good." ®*
It closes with a new call to " Be glad ! " based
upon the actual sweetness of life,®® yet with so
rauch progress in the thought as is found in the
rerainder that the best happiness is found where
life is in harraony with law.
VIII
Appropriately following this summing up, the
eighth essay (11:9 — 12:7) begins with the
call to be glad. This is now in its proper place,
for gladness has at last found its true basis in the
judgment of God. The essay proper is very
" 10: 14, 15.
" 10: 16, 17.
" A special interest attaches to 10:9 because of its close re
semblance to one of the Logia or " Sayings " of our Lord found
at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt several years ago.
<» 11:6.
"ii: 7, 8.

SECULAR FAITH 253
short, including only the last four verses of chap.
II, and being followed by a sonnet, which is un
doubtedly the most beautiful sonnet in the Bible.
In the essay Koheleth solves his dark problem by
finding the chief good in the certitude of judg
raent — that is, of a final setting right — by
which God will repair the errors due to the work
ings of natural law :
Rejoice, O young man in thy youth, and let thy heart
cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways
of thine heart and in that which thine eyes desire; and
know that for all these God will bring thee into judgment.
Banish therefore care from thy mind, and put away sad
ness from thy flesh, for childhood and youth are Vanity.
That is, they are what they are in accordance with
natural law.
No doubt raany have read the line about judg
ment as a threat, and considered the words " Re
joice, O young man," etc., as sarcastic. But this
is not Koheleth's attitude toward judgment. To
him, and to the devout Israelite of his tirae and
after, judgraent was an event hoped for, the
tirae that would compensate for all the sorrows
and pains of life. Israel was God's child : the
final reckoning must be one of joy. The psalms
are so full of this eager looking- forward to judg
ment that it is a wonder so few of us have recog
nized this :
Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad
Before Jehovah ; for he cometh.

254 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
For he cometh to judge the earth,
And the people with his truth.'"
And again:
Let the hills sing for joy together
Before Jehovah; for he cometh to judge the world.
With righteousness shall he judge the world.
And the people with equity.'^
Yes, though wisdora had failed to satisfy the
yearning of the raan who longed for the Chief
Good, though he had found pleasure vanity, and
toil and labor and love and beauty but vanity and
vexation of spirit, though he had learned that
Nor man nor nature satisfy
Whom only God created,
yet at last the quest is accoraplished, the sought
is found : in trust in God as the Chief Good.
With God his friend, raan raay well rejoice in
the pleasures which God gives his children, in
sweet household joys and in the gratification of
high purpose; for all are ennobled and made
sacred with the confidence that God watches over
all, and brings all acts to the pure and impartial
bar of his judgment. There the long-desired
Chief Good awaits man. And so the sonnet fol
lows, bidding raen reraeraber the Creator who
will also be the judge.
After this comes the epilogue (12:8-14),
summing up the result of all this travail of
™Ps. 96: II, 13. " 98: 8, 9.

SECULAR FAITH 255
thought. Having reached the point of rejoicing
in God's providence, it seems strange to find this
epilogue beginning : " All is vanity." But this
is only to lead up to the true thought : " Fear
God." But it is not for nothing that these two
thoughts appear here side by side. Together
they gather up in one the thoughts of the whole
book. Life without God, life, however fortunate,
subject merely to natural law, is but vanity;
life with him, however raysterious, is full of hope
and joy. Thus he suras up :
The conclusion of the whole matter is this :
That God taketh cognizance of all things.
Fear Him therefore [enter into allegiance with Him], and
keep His commandments.
For this it behooveth every man to do;
Since God will bring every deed to the judgment
Appointed for every secret thing.
Whether it be good or whether it be bad.
For the judgment of God, being just and right,
must be the joy and not the dread of hira who
desires not to disobey, and not to Hve apart from,
that God of the universe who can bend all things,
even universal law, to serve his righteous ends.

CHAPTER IX
THE SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY ^
I
The book of Job is the third ^ in a trilogy oc
cupied with the question of morals. The first,
Proverbs, is eminently practical, asking: What
is good — that is, right — for me? The second,
Ecclesiastes, advances to the theoretical, asking
the question which has occupied the philosophers
of all ages : What is the Supreme Good ? though
having this advantage over most other metaphys-
^ I take pleasure here in owning my debt to Professor Genung
for his translation of Job in The Epic of the Inner Life, which in
general I have used. I cannot agree with him in his statement of
the problem or motive of Job {ibid., p. 23). It seems to me that
that was Satan's problem, not Job's. Not the moral possibilities of
man, but the moral character of God, is the problem which tortures
Job. It appears to me to be a far deeper and more insistent prob
lem than can be formulated, as many others have formulated it, in
the words: "Why do the righteous suffer?" That is a part of
the question; or rather, the search for its answer opens up a far
deeper question.
To acknowledge all I owe to other writers, notably Davidson,
Ewald, and Cheyne, would be tedious, if it were not impossible.
Their teachings have passed into the fiber of my mind. I do not
know what of all I have written is theirs, or whether anything at
all is mine, unless it be that idea of law as the golden clue to this
trilogy. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, to which I have already alluded.
2 Third in the order of thought, not of time. It was probably
written two centuries or more before Ecclesiastes. But this is only
to say that in Israel, as among all peoples, there are men of genius
whose experience has confronted them with certain moral problems
before their time. 256

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 257
ical works, that it treats the question as one
of practical importance. The third volume of
the trilogy. Job, lifts the question into the domain
of the purely speculative, asking: What is the
Absolute Good? But Job has this superiority
over other works of speculative philosophy that
it finds its question still a practical question, the
solution of all problems of human experience de
pending upon its answer.
But the moral question is not the only special
characteristic of these books of Wisdom. They
appear to stand apart, not only from other Old
Testament Hterature, but from the sacred litera
ture of all ancient peoples, by their conception of
the physical universe in its relation to God. The
writer of the opening chapters of Proverbs ap
pears to have anticipated the thought of far later
centuries, by some dim perception of the stu
pendous fact that the physical world is ruled by
law. The discovery was to him one of ineffable
joy. The beauty of it, the magnificence of it,
took hold of him. Physical law was to him the
wisdom of God, the delight of God, the eternal
power by which he made the worlds, always be
neficent, always glad, sporting always before God,
sporting in his habitable earth, and her delight
with the sons of men.
This sublime and glad conception was amply
borne out, in that early time, by human experi-

258 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
ence. In the siraple days of Israel's early history
the righteous prospered. In that stage of social
evolution where men live by agriculture and cat
tle-raising, it is the diligent, sober, faithful man,
the raan who fears the Lord and walks in his
ways, who is blessed. The early sages of the
book of Proverbs perceived in this fact a funda
mental truth, which, however, they would not
have formulated in these terms, that the welfare
of man depends on his being in harmony with
universal law, that is, with the Heavenly Wis
dom. For generations this principle was the sec
ular faith of the Hebrew people. But as social
conditions became more complicated it often came
to pass that the wicked prospered. This fact, as
we saw in our study of Ecclesiastes, greatly per
plexed the thoughtful and religious raan. Its
tendency was to pessiraism. Law was indeed
there, but, far frora being delightful, it was inex
orable and cruel to man; it was not wisdom, but
vanity; and from pessimism Koheleth escaped
only by the doctrine of providence; that God is
stronger than law, and can bend it to his own
righteous purposes. This doctrine, with all its
difficulties, is still held by the majority of re
ligious persons, who, not being philosophers, do
not formulate, though they may feel, its diffi
culties. But as tirae went on, a darker problera than the

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 259
prosperity of the wicked assailed the thoughtful
sage. Not only did the wicked prosper, but the
righteous were often afflicted. To raany an Is
raelite this seeraed to open the door to atheism.
Dark thoughts of God began to arise: Was he,
after all, a good God? Was he just? Was he
doing right ? There were those who gave up the
problem and accepted the dreadful answer;
wearying God, as Malachi says, by affirming,
" Everyone that doeth evil is good in the sight of
Jehovah and he delighteth in them ;" and, " Where
is the God of judgment?"* That is, not that
there is no God — only the fool ever said that —
but there is no just God, no God of judgment.
It was in the awful dread of such a conclusion
that the psalmist cried importunately :
O God, Jehovah, to whom vengeance belongeth.
Thou God to whom vengeance belongeth,
Show thyself!
Arise, thou judge of the world.
And reward the proud after their deserving ! *
It was in this dark doubt of the character of
God that the book of Job was written. Hearts
tortured with the perplexity of mundane events
were asking : " On what may we rest our confi
dence that God is good? Can the Power that
rules the world be trusted to rule it right ? What
certainty of absolute goodness have we? "
' Mai. 2: 17. 'Ps. 94: I.

26o HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
This awful question perpetually returns to tor
ture those whose foundations have been broken
up by overwhelming afiiiction or by profound
and painful observation of events. The noblest
verse of Tennyson and Browning, the strongest
prose of Carlyle, are strenuous with the sarae
question : " Is there an absolute Good ? Is a
thing right simply because an all-powerful and
irresponsible Being has decreed it so? Or is
there a sure basis of goodness ? "
This is the problem of huraanity. Centuries
before Moses, a Chaldean king was praying " to
the lady of Nineveh, the lady of heaven and
earth, who receives prayers .... the mer
ciful goddess who loves justice," in almost the very
words of Job :
In what have I sinned against thee?
Why hast thou allotted me diseases — boils and pestilence ?
Is this thy just decree?
As one who did honor to thy divinity am I afflicted?
If I have not commited sin and evil
Why am I thus smitten?
With this question the poets of Greece travailed
as in the throes of birth, and never brought forth
an answer. Prometheus Bound is the tragedy of
tragedies, not because of the indescribable torture
to which the Titan is condemned, not even be
cause in the throes of an endless agony he reraains
true to himself, maintains his integrity, bates not

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 261
one jot of his contention that he has done weU in
giving the heavenly fire to man, but because in his
extremity of woe he has to do with an unmoral
god, who punishes as he rewards, from mere
caprice. No wonder that the world's greatest
poets, being Greeks, were tragic poets. The
world's history would be one long tragedy but
for the spiritual certainty to which that eastern
Prometheus, Job, did at last attain, at the price
of an agony not less terrible than that of the
Titan who lay chained to the rock on Caucasus,
with the vulture forever pecking at his vitals.^
II
The book in which the problem of the moral
character of God was first worked out to its very
last eleraent, this book of Job, goes far deeper in
its conception of the universe than the two which
precede it. In Job the mystery of law is seen to
be far more profound than had yet been recog
nized. It is not now a question of the relation
of man to universal law, but the relations of God
hiraself to this law. The solution which would
satisfy a Koheleth is manifestly inadequate to
bring peace to the tried and tortured Job. He
must gain a truer view of the character of God
' I have been, admonished in this place that the certainty which
Job sought was an ethical, not a spiritual, certainty, and that there
fore this study is misnamed. Without attempting to argue the
question, I would answer that it seems to me that ethical certainty
is possible only when it has a spiritual basis.

262 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
and his relations to the world, if he is to have any
God at all ; and it seems to me that the clue to the
entire process of Job's thought, the golden thread
by which he finds his way through all the mazes
of agonized questioning, is stiU the idea of law
in the conception of God as Judge — the sarae
view of the blessedness of judgment which is the
basis of Koheleth's doctrine of Providence. It
is by the help of this golden clue that Job does at
last emerge from his darkness into the full light
of spiritual certainty.
This book of Job raay or raay not be historic
in its setting. So far as its authority is con
cerned, this is no more a matter of iraportance
than that the Prodigal Son should have been a
historic character. The setting of Job is, how
ever, so true to life that the internal evidence of
the book raakes it more than probable that the
story is historic. The book does not profess to
be a work of history: nobody can suppose that
Job and his friends actually talked to one another
in long poems. It is a work of philosophy, cast
in precisely such a form as delights the Hebrew
mind, and based upon what was perhaps a historic
incident, not only because the incident was mar
velously adapted to serve the writer's purpose in
the development of his thought, but also frora
the difficulty which abstract thought always pre
sented to the Hebrew people.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 263
The literary structure of the book, though elab
orate, is simple; it is a dramatic poem set in a
framework of pure epic: the prologue of chaps.
I and 2, the epilogue in the closing verses of the
last chapter, and a few verses at the beginning of
the last act, 32 : 1-5.
Between the prologue and the epilogue lies the
drama in five acts.
The scene of the drama of Job is Hauran, the
lovely volcanic region east of the Jordan, called
in Genesis ® and Lamentations '' the Land of Uz.
The period of the story is the patriarchal age,
and it is to be observed that Job is not an Israel
ite, though all the personages are descendants of
Abraham through Ishraael, Esau, and the sons of
Keturah. Job is a true Arab sheik or emir, the
village judge, the priest of the household, very
wealthy, celebrated for wisdom and piety, with
a deep appreciation of sin and of parental respon
sibility, which made him offer sacrifices for any
possible transgressions of his children — a whole
hearted, that is, perfect, raan.
Ill
So far as the prologue * deals with the earthly
scene, it is clearly an ancient and well-known folk
tale; and the profound thinker and deeply in-
' Gen. 36:28. 'Job i — 2:10.
' Lam. 4: 21.

264 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
spired writer who made this ancient tale the
vehicle of a new revelation knew better than to
change the time-honored form which, by its fa
miliarity, would make all the more intehigible
the profound teachings he desired' to base upon
it. The symbolic numbers and the poetic struc
ture of the four announcements of woe are left
just as he found thera; but the scenes in heaven
are no part of the ancient story. They are the
result of the writer's search for the Absolute
Good through the dark mystery of the govern
ment of the world, and it appears to me that they
are intended to furnish the key to that dark
enigma, the sufferings of the righteous, which
impelled the writer to his deeper search. Inci
dentally in these scenes appears the unalterable
conviction of the Hebrew people that evil as well
as good comes from the hand of God. There is
no dualism in the Bible, no kingdom of evil per
petually at war with, and at times gaining victory
over, the will of God.
The first heavenly scene ^ opens with the as
serably of all the sons of God (beings created be
fore the present earthly order, ministers of his
to do his pleasure) in such a council or divan as
eastern monarchs hold. The Satan is among
them; he is not a devil, but one of the sons of
God, who appears to be in charge of this world
" i: 6-12.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 265
and comes to report at the heavenly divan what
he has learned from " hurrying to and fro on the
earth and pacing up and down on it ;" (the " Busy
One," as the Arabs call him ; the " Peripatetic,"
as he is in Peter's epistle). Frora the question
put to him by God, " Hast thou considered my
servant Job, that there is none Hke him in the
earth ? " it may be conjectured that it was his duty
to detect the sins and defects of men; and this
accords with the significance of the word
" Satan," which is not a name, but a title — the
" Adversary " of men.
The pride which God takes in his servant Job
is very striking. It arouses the Satan's passion
for detecting faults. " Does Job serve God for
naught ? " Does he not find his advantage in it
— is he not rich in flocks and herds and children ?
" Take these away and see if he will not renounce
thee to thy face." ^" We know the outcome of
the first trial, and how, bereft of all that makes
^" Godet, in his Etudes bibliques — a work to which, after
twenty years, Budde, who had just discovered it, pays tribute —
strikingly points out a fact which appears to have been hitherto
overlooked, namely, that the Satan's doubt of Job reflects upon
God himself. " For if the best of men cannot love God unself
ishly, it follows that he is incapable of making himself lovable."
The Satan's error touches the very heart of God. In accepting
his challenge to prove the disinterested love of Job, God is in fact
accepting a challenge to prove his own moral character. It is " a
solemn wager between God and Satan." This view, which Budde
adopts, appears to me to lend strong support to the view of the
problem here advanced. Budde's Das Buch Hiob appeared after
these chapters were written, and came to my knowledge only as I
was giving them their final revision. To him I owe the introduc
tion to the volume by Godet.

266 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
life valuable, Job was perfectly submissive to the
will of God :
Naked came I from my mother's womb
And I shall return thither naked.
" The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken,
Blessed be the name of the Lord." ^^
This is the groundwork of the drama. In the
beginning Job had no doubt of the moral char
acter of God. Though he had bereft him of all,
" Job did not impute wrong to God." ^^ It soon
became a question whether he must be forced to
do so.
Very pathetic is the appeal of Jehovah in
the next assembly of the heavenly divan. ^^ The
Satan had mockingly doubted that Job would
serve God " for naught." " Yet still he holdeth
fast his integrity," says God, " although thou
movedst me against him to afflict him for naught."
The Satan replies with an adage — " Satan's old
saw," Browning calls it — which we may render
freely, " Anything to save dear life," — the raean
est, lowest, most contemptible doctrine ever put
into the mouth of man or devil. Again God per
mits the Satan to test his servant. The Hving
death, elephantiasis, falls upon the whole-hearted
raan, driving hira from the home which else he
raight infect, to that refuge of the diseased, the
" 1 : 21. " 2: 1—6.
•^1:22; Davidson's translation.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 267
towering village ash-heap, built of the refuse of
centuries. Now at last his wife, until now
equally afflicted with himself and till now equally
patient, but unable to endure the suffering of one
so dear, urges him to escape from Hving death
by way of suicide; to " greet God and die." ^* In
this advice Job, to his utter surprise, finds his wife
speaking not Hke her wise self, but like the fool
ish woraan.^' But Job's allegiance is still whole
hearted :
Shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord
And shall we not receive evil?
" Not even with his lips," the record says, " did
Job sin." "
Now there is far raore in this prologue than
a raere stage-setting for the drama which follows.
" This word, translated so mistakenly " curse " in the Author
ized Version, is translated *' renounce " in the Revised Version and
in a number of independent translations. It is, in fact, the word
barak, " bless." The analogy of present usage, not only among
Semitic peoples, but others, appears to show that its meaning here
is simply " salute " or *' greet." The same word is used both for
meeting and for farewell, in many places besides Syria! The Pro
vencal peasants say adie-u on meeting as well as parting; those of
the Black Forest say GrUss Gott (precisely the word here) in the
same way. One is reminded of the Greek ;;^a^/)CTe, and even more
significantly of the Latin moritari salutamus, which is precisely the
meaning here. There is no necessary suggestion of renunciation
here, although in i : 5 there evidently is. When belief in personal
immortality is not held, to die is naturally to take farewell of God.
Laisse Id Dieu, et meurs, is Godet's translation.
" It seems not amiss here for a woman to say a word in de
fense of a much misunderstood woman. Job's wife must have suf
fered quite as much as Job in the loss of their children and little
less than he in the loss of their property. The only woe which
is to her intolerable is that in which she herself has no share.
i«Vs. 10.

268 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Its raeaning is one that has been lost sight of in
the interest of ah that follows; but it is of the
greatest importance. To whom was the disinter
ested love of Job to be proven, except to those
sons of God to whora in this ordeal, no less than
to Job, the raoral character of God was at
stake? " For the sake of the raoral lesson to the
sons of God, the Satan is perraitted to go on test
ing the raan of integrity to the very limit of his
mortal powers. Let us apply this key to the dark
riddles of our own afflictions, and what light
breaks in upon them from the throne of God !
IV
Job had probably sat for some raonths on his
ash-heap (raonths of vanity, he says, had been
made his heritage, and nights of weariness had
been allotted him), when he was joined by three
venerable friends, who had at last heard of his
affiiction by the slow methods of the tirae. As
the three erairs drew near the place where Job
sat on his ash-heap, they were appalled by the
shocking change in their friend. Hardly recog
nizing him in his sad disfigurement, they invol
untarily raade the custoraary signs of mourning
for the dead, and then, crouching down beside
" As Godet says, the author is far more concerned with thc
conduct of God than with that of man.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 269
him, for seven days, tbe period of raourning for
the dead, no one spoke a word.
Such syrapathy, all the more expressive and
touching that it was mute, brought home to Job
with a new vividness the horror of his situation.
Till this time he had been a model of patient sub
mission, but now, with a sudden revulsion of feel
ing which everyone who has suffered long will
understand, his calm resignation is changed to a
turault of wild despair. He breaks out into loud
cries, " the language of intolerable pain."
Here begins the first act of the drama.* ^ Job
opens his raouth and, Hke another Jereraiah,
curses his day. To the Hebrew a " day " was
almost an objective reality ; " the day of the
Lord " was the embodiment of hope, fear, wrath,
retribution; the day of one's birth was in a pe
cuHar sense a personal possession. To Job his
birthday was a malevolent entity, forcing exist
ence upon one who would better have been with
out it. He would have it blotted from the num
ber of days, that it might never recur with the
revolving year to make men wretched :
Let those who ban days (astrologers) ban it,
(Those) who are of skill to rouse the Dragon.^'
Let it long for light and see none.
Nor let it behold the eyelids of the dawn ;
^^ Job, chap. 3.
^' Which every evening swallowed up the sun.

2/0 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Because it shut not up the doors of the womb that bore me
And hid not trouble from mine eyes !
Then, pierced with the sharp sense of the in
justice of things : " Why does God force the
wretched to live on? Why does he, even now,
refuse rae the last privilege of death and nothing
ness ? "
Wherefore is light given to the wretched
And life to the bitter in soul?
Who long for death but it cometh not,
And search for it more than for hid treasure:
Who would be glad even to exulting
And blithe, when they find a grave.
Job's friends are shaken out of their kindly
silence by the terror of cries Hke these. Why,
this is not their idea of Job, that saintly man,
beloved of God ! How can such a man speak
words so unfitting? There must be sorae dark
reason, sorae secret sin, successfully concealed
frora raen, but known of God, so to change his
character. V
It is of course EHphaz, the man gifted with the
prophetic spirit, who speaks first.^" He begins
apologetically; his whole speech is raarked by
courtesy, though here and there he involuntarily
reveals his secret conviction that Job is a great
sinner. But this he does not mean to do. With
^^ Act II, Job, chaps. 4—14.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 271
gentlest words he utters his surprise that one who
has so often comforted others should forget the
very foundation principle of all comfort, that God
never forsakes the righteous nor leave 3 them to
perish under affliction. In a passage of unri
valed sublimity he tells how it has been revealed
to him that even the angels fall short of perfec
tion; how much less should a man, who is in
herently sinful, be surprised when he is called to
suffer the punishraent of his sin :
Now to myself came an oracle stealthily.
And mine ear caught the whisper thereof;
In play of thought, from nightly visions.
When deep sleep falls upon men,
A shudder came upon me and a trembling
And made all my bones to quake.
Then a wind swept over my face.
The hair of my body bristled up.
There It stood, but I could not discover. . . .
I gazed, but there was no form. . . .
Silence ! And I heard a murmuring voice :
" Can mortal man be righteous before God ?
Can man be pure before his Maker?
Behold, in his servants he trusts not.
And chargeth his angels with error." 21
Perhaps some sudden gesture of denial or de
spair on the part of Job interrupts and irritates
EHphaz here, for he goes on to dwell on the folly
of those who would protest against the dispen
sations of Providence. In words of proverbial
"4; 12—18.

272 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
wisdora h^ rerainds Job that trouble does not
corae of itself, nor by chance; and since it does
come, and must be deserved, he proceeds to ad
vise Job what he would do in his case. He
would admit God's goodness and justice in these
unparalleled afflictions (thus virtually confessing
to extraordinary sin), in hope that thus the pun
ishment might mercifully be remitted :
But / — I would seek unto God,
And to God would I make my appeal.22
" Only own up," he urges, " and then all bless
ings will follow ; faraine shall not visit you, war
shall not assail you, calumny shall not afflict you,
destruction shall not overwhelm you, wild beasts
shall not raenace you. Lo," he concludes, " we
have searched this matter to its depths, and it is
certainly as I have said, therefore give thou heed
to it." 23
It is the strongest witness to the marvelously
high moral and spiritual character of Job that
at this moraent of his dark despair he did not
yield to the persuasions of EHphaz, and give way
to one of the most subtle of all temptations for
a sensitive conscience — to confess to sin of
which conscience does not accuse one. But like
Prometheus on Caucasus, with his answer to

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 2^1
Hermes, who urged him to subrait to Zeus who
could afflict him raore:
I would not barter ....
My suffering for thy service,
SO Job yields not one jot of his claira to right
eousness. The short, intense questions with which he re
plies to the leisurely eloquence of his friend show
the anguish of his soul over the scarcely veiled
assuraption of EHphaz that he is secretly a great
sinner :
Doth the wild ass bray over the grass?
Or loweth the ox over his fodder?
Can it be eaten — the tasteless — unsalted ?
Or is there savor in the white of an egg? 2*
His afflictions are far too heavy, he reminds
his friends, to be accounted the punishment of
ordinary sins ; nay, so heavy are they that now he
is attacked by the awful dread that he raay by
their very heaviness be forced into sin.
O that I might have my request.
That God would grant my longing;
Even that God would please to crush me.
That he would loose his hand and cut me off;
Then should this still be my comfort
(I would leap amidst unsparing pain)
That I have not denied the words of the Holy One.^'
He trerables for his powers of endurance — is
his strength that of stone, or of brass, that he
"6: 5, 6. »6:8 ff.

274 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
should come out sinless from such an ordeal?
This, in the extremity of anguish, is what occu
pies him — the dread of sin. The intensity of
this dread wrings from him a cry of remonstrance
with God :
O remember that my life is but a breath.
That mine eye will never again see good ! ^^
God was his friend : he cannot believe that he
will not be again, but it will be too late ; " Thou
shalt seek me and I shall not be here." *'' He
cannot endure the thought :
So therefore I, I will not curb my mouth,
I will speak in the anguish of my spirit;
I will make my plaint in the bitterness of my soul.
Those who have gone to the bottom of the
dark pit of human anguish can find no stronger
consolation than the knowledge that God did not
impute sin to Job for his petulant cry :
Am I a sea or a monster of the deep.
That thou settest a watch over me ? ^s
or when, calling to mind that well-known psalm
in the words of which his humble soul had doubt
less often delighted to express its joy in God, he
exclaims in bitter irony : " What is raan that thou
shouldst raake so much over him," ^^ trying and
testing him day by day. " If I have sinned, what
'°7: 7. " 7: 12.
"7: 8. "7: 17, 20; cf. Ps. 8: 4.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 275
is that to thee, O thou Watcher of mankind?"
I so weak, so insignificant, the creature of a day ?
Of course, the friends are shocked, and Bildad
the Shuhite, the typical Wise Man, undertakes
to set hira right.^" There is no accent of sym
pathy, no shade of kindly apology, in the words
of proverbial wisdom which this sage utters. He
makes no appeal to revelation, like his prophetic
friend, EHphaz. All the world knows that God
never sends undeserved suffering : his glib de
scription of the short-lived prosperity of the
wicked may have, if Job pleases, a double mean
ing ; he may apply it to his own case, or may con
sider it a ground of hope that his troubles will
not last long.
Behold God will not spurn the perfect
Nor take evil doers by the hand;
When he shall fill thy mouth with laughter
And thy lips with song.
They that hate thee shall be clothed with shame.
And the tent of the wicked shall perish.
Job is goaded almost to desperation by Bil-
dad's platitudes. Not because he disputes them
— "of a truth I know it is thus;"^* but be
cause they confirm the awful dread of his soul
that the Almighty acts not according to moral
principles, but arbitrarily. How cope with one
so inscrutable and so mighty :
•»Chap. 8. "9:2.

276 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Have recourse to force? He is all powerful!
To justice? before whom shall I appear ?32
Here first appears that idea of law which is the
golden clue to the meaning of this book and to
its place in the great Wisdom trilogy. God is
not, in Job's raind, apart from law, nor is he the
strong Power that bends law to his wiH. He is
himself the Fountain of law. As in human expe
rience law in the last analysis is judge-made, so
God is himself the court of last appeal ; and the
horror of Job's position is that this Supreme
Court, this Fountain and Source of law, cannot
be relied upon for justice :
Though I am innocent, he will declare me guilty.^^
His consciousness of innocence asserts itself in
one wild cry of despair ^* : " Innocent ? / am.
Yet I care not for Hfe : I despise existence : what
raatters it, after all? For, I dare to say it, The
guiltless and the guilty he destroyeth alike."
Yet he cannot quite adrait that God is in fact
so different from what he has long believed him
to be. "If it be not he, who then is it?"^'
Can another be stronger than God? It is the
blinding mystery of pain put into words for the
first time in human experience. How often, how
often since then, have human hearts stumbled and
fallen in its darkness ! But this is not sin ; else
^ 9; 19. ^* 9: 21, 22.
^'^ 9 : 20. ^ 9 : 24c. '^

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 277
had the despairing cry on Golgotha never been
uttered. But to Job all is dark; against such a Being
as now with awful raisgivings he thinks he has
to do, he can bring no arguraent. God is indeed
the Judge ; but he is an irresponsible Judge, mak
ing law the instrument of his capricious will, like
many eastern judges of Job's acquaintance, only
with this difference :
He is not a man like me, whom I might answer.
That we might come together in judgment;
There is no arbiter between us, who can lay his hand upon
us both ;
Who would remove his rod from me.
So that the dread of him should not unman me.'^
A deep gulf has opened between Job and him
whom he once thought his friend; his only hope
is in a go-between, and he knows of none :
If I am wicked, woe unto me !
And if righteous, yet may I not lift up my head !
Sated with shame and seeing my misery;
For should I uplift it, thou wouldst hunt me like a lion
And show thyself mighty upon me.^^
Daring words these : Prometheus was not more
defiant; but it is his very consciousness of recti
tude that breaks hira down.
Oh, let him leave me, let him depart from me.
That I may breathe a little before I go hence
Never to return ! ^s
'"9:32-34. '"10:206, 210.
'f 10: 15 f.

278 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
There is no hope of immortality in this im
portunate entreaty, no expectation of a " world
that sets this right." To hira, God being what
he seems to be, there is nO' such world; his best
hope is Sheol :
The land of darkness and of the blackness of death,
A land of gloom, as the blackness of death.
Where there is no order and the shining is like midnight.^'
Zophar, the raan who always thinks jtist right,
is irritated by the wild boldness of his friend's
thoughts.*" He utters with no circumlocution
what the others have only hinted : Job must have
sinned. Zophar is a good man, and he honestly
seeks Job's good. One of the sublimest passages
in the book is his description of the perfect wis
dom of God :
Wouldst thou sound the depth of God?
Wouldest thou reach to the perfection of the Almighty?
Heights of heaven — what canst thou do ?
Deeper than Sheol — what canst thou know ?
Longer than the earth its measure.
And broader than the sea.^^
Like the others, Zophar brings up the argu
ment from expediency : " Direct thy heart
toward God, remove iniquity from thee," ^^ he
says, then your troubles will be over. The wish
for death which you have expressed can only be
felt by the wicked.
** 10:21b, 22. "11:7—9.
"Chap. II. «ii: ijff.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 279
The insinuation goads Job to satire :
Forsooth ye are [intelligent] folk.
With you wisdom dies out !
But I too have understanding like you.
My teaching is blameless, pure.*^
And he perceives that the facts do not fit their
theories :
The careless man despises God's time of doom.
At the appointed time his foot remains firm;
Prosperous are the toils of the destroyer.
And those who provoke God have security.**
While the just man, the man who had been
God's acknowledged friend, is unjustly permitted
to becorae a laughing-stock :
He who called on God a-nd he answered him.
The just, the innocent — a laughing-stock!*^
All that his friends have to say is taught in
nature and in human history, as well as in their
philosophy. But where in the logic of events is
there roora for his experience? And yet how
can he believe the witness of his own experience ?
How can God be other than just, if only he
knows all the facts ?
But I — to the Almighty would I speak.
I long to make my plea unto God.*^
His soul revolts from the untruths which lie
concealed at the bottom of his friend's pious rea-
^¦'12:2, 3, Cheyne's translation. *^i2:4.
" 12: 5, 6, Cheyne. *" 13: .1.

28o HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
sonings. " Will you say that which is not right
for God? Will you utter falsehood in his be
half?" Not even to justify God wiU Job so
stain his soul. He does not understand him.
God must be altogether other than that which
Job supposed, but he will speak the truth, come
what may. Job challenges God to convict him
of sin :
Come what may, I will take my flesh in my teeth
And will put my life in my hand;
Lo, he may slay me — I have ceased to hope!
Still let me defend my ways to his face.*'
" There is no worse to such a woe as mine,"
exclaims Heracles when his friend Nessus warns
him that blasphemy raay bring a worse woe upon
him. Job challenges God to convict him of sin; he
could acquit hiraself but for these terrors which
cow his courage, but change not aught of verity :
Only do thou two things unto me
And I will not hide myself from thy face.
Withhold thine hand from me
And let not thy terror unman me.
Then do thou accuse and I will answer;
Or let me speak and do thou respond.*'
But no answer comes, and Job sinks into de
spair; nothing is certain but "the sad finality of
death " :
*' 13: 14 f. *' 13: 20 ff.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 28l
Man, born of woman,
Scant of days and full of unrest,
Cometh up like a flower and withereth,
Fleeth like the shadow and abideth not.*"
Yet even with the thought of death comes a
gleam of hope :
Oh, if the man once dead could live again !
All the days of my service [in the grave] would I wait
[like the sentinel on duty]
Till my relief came.
[Then] thou wouldst call and I would answer thee.
Thou wouldst yearn toward the work of thine hands.'^"
But no:
Thou imaginest sins with which to charge me;
So thou destroyest the hope of man.^^
Thus the second act closes. It leaves Job in
hopeless darkness, for his theology, which is that
of his friends, has brought him no light, and he
knows nothing of what we know from the pro
logue. Yet in the depth of Job's despair he has
not " taken farewell of God." Though he has
broken out in passionate exclamations against
him, his heart still turns to God as a flower to the
sunlight. This God, against whom he has been
so vehemently, almost blasphemously, crying, is
indeed no real God. To the true God, the Abso
lute Good, he clings with the hold of very des
peration. « 14; iff. ™i4:i4ff. » 14: 16, 17.

282 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
VI
Again in the third act ^^ the friends rebuke Job
no longer with any attempt at gentleness. Stu
pidly mistaking his impassioned assertions of in
nocence for a claim of perfection, EHphaz ^^ ac
cuses hira of underraining the cardinal truth that
the governraent of the world is just and right.
In reply. Job turns from these " miserable com
forters " to the justice of the Judge of the whole
earth. Truth must prove itself before him who,
with all his doubts. Job feels in his innermost
heart, is true. So he appeals from the God he
thought he knew to the God who is. He cannot
but believe that soraehow righteousness will as
sert itself, that
The righteous shall hold on his way
And the clean of hands shall wax stronger and stronger.'*
" At last, far off," things will come right, but
not for hira :
My days are past.
My plans are broken off —
The treasures of my heart. 5'
Bildad's taunts ®® are very bitter, but Job in his
reply refuses to account to his comforters for his
conduct. The unutterable woe of his soul is that

"Chaps. 15-21.

'' 17: 11.

=»Chap. IS.

" Chap.

"17:9.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY

283

God, the Judge of the whole earth, is not treating
him justly :
Behold I cry out " Violence ! " and am not heard ;
I shriek for help, but there is no justice,
He hath fenced up my way and I cannot pass,
And over my path he hath set darkness.
He hath stripped me of mine honor
And taken the crown from my head.''
Yet is this possible? Does this sorrow come
from God? He cannot bring himself to believe
anything so contrary to all that he has hitherto
experienced. It cannot be that God is his perse
cutor ; nay, rather he will be his avenger :
For I know that my Avenger is alive,
And that last of all he will rise upon the earth.
When my skin has been destroyed he will rise up.
When I have no longer any flesh I shall see God ;
I shall see him and he nill be on my side.^^
The unimpeachable witness of his own soul
rises triuraphant above all the witness of facts :
God is not his enemy. There is a union between
God and his soul which no facts can break; it
will be manifest some day :
My soul within me faints with longing for this.^^
It is not the resurrection which Job here an
ticipates. He has here brought to Hght a truth
even more glorious — a truth of which the res
urrection is one illustration: that those who are
''i9:7ff. 'Sipzasf. "'19:27c.

284 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
bound to God by truth and love cannot, in the
nature of things, be separated frora him.
Zophar^'* could not understand such high
thoughts, and his biting sarcasm and jeering con
tempt had the natural effect; they dragged Job
down frora the serene height of truth which with
infinite suffering he had gained, and plunged him
once again into the abyss of doubt. Now he
openly questions the righteousness of God's gov
ernment of the world.®^ He rules ; of that there
can be no doubt; but does he rule justly? An
unjust God is no true God. Job abhors the
wicked: does God?
One dieth in his full strength
Wholly at ease and tranquil.
His loins are full of fat
And his bones are moist with marrow;
And another dieth with bitter soul.
And hath never tasted good;
Yet alike they lie down in the dust
And the worms cover them both.*^
In a long passage of unequaled vigor and
pathos Job shows with how little justice retribu
tion is meted out in this world. He challenges
Bildad to maintain the truth of his assertions :
How oft is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out? *^
"> Chap. 20. "= 21 : 23 ff.
'"2i:7ff. «'2i:i7ff; cf. 18: 5 ff.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 285
The third act ends with the cruel doubt to
resolve which Job was suffering all this pain : Is
God good ?
Yet, though Job seems to have made no prog
ress, he really has done so. He has had a fleeting
realization of the deathless bond which binds him
to God, and a clear, though transient, view of a
life with him beyond the grave.
VII
In the fourth act ** EHphaz speaks with words
of scarcely veiled contempt. He openly accuses
Job of sin, and once more advises him to confess
and make peace with God for the sake of the
good that will come of it. This unworthy
thought mars one of the most sublime passages
in the book :
Reconcile thyself with him now and be at peace.
Thereby shall good come to thee.
So shall the Almighty be thy precious ore
And as silver purchased with toil.^'
Job hardly hears EHphaz ; he is absorbed in the
dark mystery which surrounds hira. The im
possibility of establishing his innocence to his
friends' satisfaction throws him back upon that
conviction of God's justice which Zophar had so
ruthlessly shaken. He begins to have a true
conception of universal law ; it is no longer, like
"Chaps. 22-31. "»22:2iff.

286 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
the Heavenly Wisdom, a friendly power, outside
of God, nor, Hke the Vanity of Koheleth, an irre
sponsible power subordinate to God; dimly he
sees that law resides in God, in his very function
as Judge of the universe; and so he begins to
long for him with a new desire, such as those
righteous, prosperous friends of his have never
drearaed of:
Oh, that I knew where to find him!
I would press on even to his seat [the judge's bench in
court],
I would set out my case before him,
I would fill my mouth with arguments [the eastern
method of self-defense].*^
Job has no longer any doubt of that of which
a little while before he had felt but the dim hope.
If he could find God, he would find him just.
For a moment he had admitted the possibility
of unconscious guilt, but he knew in his heart
that this was not the case :
Then it would be an upright man pleading with him.
And I should be once for all acquitted by my Judge.'^
But where to find this Judge?
If I go eastward, he is not there ;
If I go to the west, I find him not.
Is he busy in the north? I cannot see him.
Is he hiding in the south? I cannot discover him.**
If God cannot attend to the cases of all men at
once, why at least does he not go on circuit, like
"23:3. "23:7. '»23:8f.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 287
other judges, appoint set times when the op
pressed can plead their cause before hira ?
Why are not times reserved by the Almighty,
And why do not they who know him see his days
[of assize] ? '*
All sorts of oppressions are going on in the
world, and he ought to look after thera. Those
in power rob the poor :
Naked, they slink away without clothes ;
Hungry, they must bear the sheaves ;
They tread the winevats — and thirst ;
Yet God heedeth not the wrong ! ¦"•
To this Bildad '' ^ repeats the general truth he
has before urged, that God is great, and all crea
tures are imperfect in his sight :
Dominion and dread are with him,
Author of Peace in his high places !
Behold even the moon, it doth not shine
And the stars are not pure — in his sight.
How much less that worm — a man.
And that creeping thing — the son of man!
The passage which has been added to Bildad's
speech, 26 : 5-14, carries on the thought of the
majesty of God as the Ruler of the universe, how
••24: 1 ff.
"Vss. 10 ff.
"Chaps. 25, 26: 5—14. I have adopted the view of some scholars
that a slight displacement has occurred in the material of Act IV,
that 26: 5—14 should be added to Bildad's speech and 27:7 — 28: 28
should be given to Zophar, who in the present arrangeraent has no
speech in this act.

288 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
He draweth a circle upon the face of the waters
To the bound where light touches darkness ; '^
how
By his power he agitates the sea
And he is of skill to smite its pride;
By his breath the heavens grow bright
And he woundeth the fleet serpent [the dragon that swal
lows the sun at night, the old sun myth].
Lo these are but the edges of his ways ;
And how slight a whisper hath been heard of him.
But the thunder of his power, who can understand?
To all this Job answers : ''^ Yes, he is great,
but that is not the question. Is he good? The
awful fear which is too deep to trouble his shal
low friends returns upon him. He will maintain
his own integrity :
I hold fast my righteousness and will. not let it go;
My heart shall not upbraid me so long as I live.'*
In Zophar' s third speech ''^ he returns to the
original contention that it is the wicked who get
punished; the obvious inference being that Job
belongs in this category. With a refinement of
cruelty, he brings in Job's afflictions to point his
moral :
This is the doom of the wicked man before God,
And this is the heritage of oppressors from the Almighty,
If his children be multiplied it is for the sword ;

" The figure that we saw in Wisdom's monologue.
"26: 1-4 ; 27: 1-6. "27:5f. "27:7 — 28:28

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 289
A whirlwind filcheth him away by night.
The east wind catcheth him up and he is gone.
According to this division of the speeches, it
is Zophar who gives the well-known and very
magnificent description of the search for wis
dom, under the figure of mining operations.
In answer to Zophar's accusations and exceed
ingly glittering generalities, Job sums up aU the
circumstances of his case, reviewing his past and
submitting all its evidence, point by point, to the
justice of God : ''*
O that I were as in months of old.
As in the days when God watched over me !
When his lamp shone over my head
And by his light I walked through darkness !
As I was in my autumn days
When the favor of God was upon my tent;
When the Almighty was yet with me
And my children round about me —
When I went through the city to the gate
And set up my seat [as judge] in its spacious arch;
The blessing of the perishing came upon me
And I made the widow's heart sing for joy.
I was eyes to the blind
And feet was I to the lame,
To the poor I was as a father.
And I searched out the cause of the stranger. [The por
trait of a good judge.]
'» 29 ; 2 ff.

290 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
In contrast, he recapitulates all the dishonors
that have been poured out upon him; how the
children mock him, and so on. But this is not
his grief; it is soraething quite different:
I cry to thee and thou answereth me not;
I stand up, and thou eyest me ;
Thou art changed and become my cruel foe
And dost press me hard with thy strong hand."
Again he passes his life in review ; it has been
pure and honest and kindly, its raotive always re
spect to the judgments of God. How could his
friends accuse him of secret sin? O, that there
were one ready to put him to a searching test:
Oh that I had one who would hear me !
Here is my signature [to his defense], let the Almighty
answer me I
Let my Adversary ¦mrite out his indictment!
I would put it on my shoulder [as kings their insignia of
royalty]
And bind it about me like a chaplet ;
I would tell him the number of my steps
I would draw near him like a prince ! '*
And with one last protestation of his inno
cence ''^ the tortured raan draws his robe over
his head and is silent. " The pleas of Job are
ended ! "
Thus closes the fourth act, with the three
friends silenced, though not convinced, and Job
still in the darkness, holding fast to his integrity,
"3o:2off. "31:35-37. "31:38-40.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 291
and yearning with unutterable desire for that God
who has so strangely shown hiraself to be his
adversary, yet whom he cannot but trust in spite
of all, since he is also his witness and knows the
truth. VIII
With the fifth act of the draraa of Job ^° a new
figure appears upon the scene ^^ — Elihu, a youth
ful Aramean of great ability, who, one of a grad
ually growing circle of hearers, has listened re
spectfully to all that has been said, though with
feelings of increasing displeasure. Silence hav
ing now fallen upon the assembly, he introduces
himself as one perfectly corapetent to set all this
trouble right. He begins with a long apology to
the three sages for intervening where they had
been put to silence, and offers himself as that
representative,*^ that Day's man, or arbiter, whora
Job has desired, to whom he raay speak freely.
He goes on to review Job's coraplaints : He
had said that God does not answer his cries.
Elihu replies ** that he does answer in many
ways, if Job will but listen. Job has insisted that
God has unjustly inflicted him, but it is impos
sible God should be unjust, and history proves it
so. He challenges Job to refute the line of argu
ment, and as Job makes no reply, he continues,
^ Chap. 32 — 42 : 6. '''33:6 ff-
"32:2ff. "33:i4ff.

292 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
addressing his remarks directly to the three sages,
but indirectly to Job.** To suppose that God can
do wrong is not only absurd, but impious.®^
Elihu again pauses for reply, but as Job makes
none, he goes on to set him right in his ideas of
God.*® Job has said that righteousness does not
profit a man ; but this is inconceivable ; ^'^ it must
profit someone; it cannot profit God, therefore it
must profit man. He goes on to deal with the
problem of pain ; ** afflictions are sent either for
discipline or as a warning. Next, as to the divine
nature ; it is incoraprehensible, and Job ought to
have known better than to try to understand it.*^
His eloquence is interrupted by the approach
of a wild eastern storm.®" He becomes incoher
ent, rallies his courage, and as the terapest be
coraes more terrible he breaks off :
The Almighty . . . we cannot find him out;
He is excellent in power.
In judgment he will not afflict."^
The terrified acknowledgraent bursts forth :
Men do therefore fear him!
and with one last hurailiated confession, this ma
so full of wisdom pauses in abject fright :
He regardeth not any that are wise of heart ! ^^
¦37: 18.

«34:i, 2.

"35:3 ff.

'"36:27

«i>34: 10 ff.

='36: isf.

"37:23.

s»Chap. 35-

8" 36: 26 f.

•^37:24.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 293
Out of this fearful whirlwind the Adversary
whora Job has so passionately invoked, for whose
appearance he has so intensely longed, believing,
in the face of facts, that he would prove to be
just if he could but be found — this Adversary,
God, speaks to Job. Not, however, with a cate
gorical reply to any one of the questions which
Job, in the wild ferment and fever of his soul, had
so veheraently, so importunately, asked. It is
not thus that God justifies hiraself. Instead, he
reveals himself. To know God is to have all
doubts and questions satisfied, and so Job was
satisfied now. Not that God revealed to him
any of those higher mysteries of his moral gov
ernraent which had so perplexed him ; he gave no
proof of his goodness except the fact of his
power. The keen irony in the questions of Je
hovah is for agnostics of all ages.** " Can you
spell out the mere alphabet of the material uni
verse? " he asks Job. " How then can you ex
pect to comprehend the deepest of all my mys
teries, the mysteries of my moral methods, the
mystery of pain ? "
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ?
Declare if thou hast understanding ....
Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days be
gan? ....
Have the gates of death been revealed to thee? ....
Where is the path to the abode of light?
""Chap. 38 — 40: 2.

294 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance
of waters may cover thee? . . .
Hast thou given the horse his might?
Hast thou clothed his neck with the quivering mane?
Doth the eagle soar aloft at thy command
And build his eyrie on high?
Is he who contendeth with the Almighty corrected?
Let him who disputeth with God reply.
Job's question has not been answered nor his
doubts met, except by the appeal to the wonders
of nature, which are so far beyond the power of
Job to comprehend. And yet " the unending
miracle that passes before our eyes every day,"
" the perpetual self-justifying course of a har
monious universe," ®* does answer the question,
does show that there is an irarautable basis of
goodness, because the harraonious universe is the
witness to God. And so Job answers God :
Lo, I am insignificant. What can I reply to thee?
I lay my hand on my mouth.
Once have I spoken . . . but I will not speak again
Twice .... but I will add no more.^^
Job takes back nothing that he has said, but he
cannot, after all, answer God as he had supposed
he could. He sees now that God is a Being
whose ways are past finding out by finite man.
Yet he has not reached the point where he can
rest satisfied in God without understanding him.
"Professor Genung, op. eit,, p. 185. "= 40:3-5.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 295
He has not yet come to a certainty of Absolute
Goodness, and certainly he must have. And so
God speaks again,*® to show Job that, even
though he should perfectly reveal himself, it
would be impossible for Job to comprehend him.
The argument is of the same character as in the
first remonstrance of God; it is an appeal frora
the mystery of his government of the physical
universe to the impossibility that man should un
derstand his moral rule, but now there is some
thing more. Why should Job separate his cause
frora God's ? The interests of God are the inter
ests of raan in a far truer sense than his own
private interest can be. At last Job sees the
truth : that alliance between God and his own
soul, which he had diraly perceived when he ex
pressed his conviction that he should eventually
see God, has become a reality ; nay more, the alli
ance is not only between God and man, but be
tween God and the universe. Though he may
not understand God fully, he can perceive that
absolute goodness must go with absolute power
— else the wreck of raatter and the crash of
worlds would come at once. And so he answers
God in humility which is no longer despairing :
I know that thou canst do all things.
And that nothing is too hard for thee.
»«4o:6ff.

2g6 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
(Thou saidst)
"Who is he that darkeneth counsel without knowledge?"
Yea, I have spoken of that which I understood not.
Of things too wonderful for me which I knew not,
(When I said)
" Hear me and I will speak
I will ask of thee and hear thou me ! "
I had heard of thee with the hearing of the ear:
But now mine eye seeth thee ;
Wherefore I retract, and repent
In dust and ashes.*^
Yes, in his ignorance of God he had been be
wildered ; but he has found certainty at last : for
God is no more a raere object of speculative faith,
of traditional belief; he has becorae to Job a re
ality, and that bond of union between thera which
he had dimly felt has come to be the most real
thing in all his experience; a bond which the
strain of trial, of sorrow, of pain, only draws
the closer and raakes more real. Through all
the buffetings of the fierce storm of his afflic
tions he had clung to the God whom he had dimly
apprehended; and now the ineffable vision is
vouchsafed hira. And the vision of God brings
with it a vision of hiraself. Till now he had
known neither God nor hiraself; now he knows
both. And without abating one jot of that claim
to integrity which he had so passionately main
tained, he recognizes that only by an earthly
standard can huraan righteousness be raeasured.
•^ 42 : 2-6.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 297
For merit lives from man to man.
But not from man, O God, to thee.
So closes the fifth act of this drama of divine
Wisdora. The epilogue makes no mention of the
effect produced upon the Satan and the heavenly
divan by this outcome. But we have already
seen that the sufferings of Job were not for his
sake alone, but for the sake of that great cloud of
witnesses, those sons of God, who with intensest
interest had been watching this awful drama of
pain. They knew that the character of God was
bound up in the outcome of his struggle in a sense
of which Job did not dream.^* In Job's trial —
and we may believe in all those trials of ours in
which we come off conquerors — the angels carae
to a new revelation of the Absolute Good.
IX
The double earthly gain which now was Job's
has been called a material, not a spiritual, re
ward of all his struggles, but this is a mistake.
God blessed Job, we are told, but we are not told
that he recompensed him for his sufferings. The
raaterial prosperity which he gave him was sira-
»8 *• xhere are cases where God inflicts suffering upon man, not
because of sins which he has to expiate, nor even in order to amel
iorate his moral character and prevent faults which he might com
mit, but in view of himself and his own honor. It is given to man
to play a noble part in the universe, that of avenging the outraged
honor of his Creator, and making his glory shine out in higher
spheres than that of humanity." — Godet, Etudes bibliques, Vol. I,
p. 271.

298 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
ply a token of the inestimable value which he
places upon such love and trust as that of Job.
That the material good was not intended simply
to raake up to him for what he had lost must be
evident to all who have lost children. Such as
may be later born are, indeed, as balm to the
bleeding heart, but they are not meant to take
the place of those still loved though lost.
There was yet more in the blessing which God
bestowed upon the man who had spoken sincere
ly ®* of hira. God set upon hira the seal of com
plete victory when he gave him the opportunity
to perform an act of sublime generosity toward
his three friends by offering a burnt-offering for
them. The meaning of this marvelous book, we now
see, is that it is possible for men to know that
there is an absolute standard of right, and that
that standard is God; that he, being All power
and All might, so in the nature of things is All
Good. Even when clouds and darkness are round
about him, even though in man's hour of urgent
need God appears to hide himself (and it is the
bitter drop in many a cup of anguish that he often
does hide himself frora the hearts that he afflicts),
even then, in the darkness and the agony, without
one ray of the joy that shines frora his presence
— even then, though one may not even cling to
»« Job 42: 8.

SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL CERTAINTY 299
hira, so empty is the world of his presence, it is
possible to feel sure that he is and that he is good.
And in that awful hour the appeal that he made
to Job is also his appeal to everyone. When all
else is taken from us, we cannot but know that
God reigns. And through that knowledge, soon
er or later, but surely, raost surely, we shall find
our way back to the certainty : God reigns in
righteousness and love.

CHAPTER X
THE HEBREW UTOPIA

Since the earliest dawn of civilization every
thoughtful people has had its dreams of the per
fect state. In the infancy of the race men looked
back to the Golden Age as something far behind
thera ; but no sooner did raen begin to think than
they began to hope, and to look forward to a fu
ture which should be better than anything that
ever yet had been. Sir Thoraas More's Utopia
and Plato's Republic were by no raeans the only
embodiments of these fair dreams. The minds of
raen have always been busy with plans of an ideal
state. Vergil in his fourth Eclogue gives a de
Hghtful picture of the last world-age, as a blissful
kingdom of peace. The Stoics imagined a future
coraraunity of huraanity, all nations being united
in one flock, ruled by the law of reason. Brah
mins and Buddhists, with a truer apprehension
of the case, wrestled hard with the problem of
redemption; but found in the end no brighter
hope for man than Nirvana. The Parsee, whose
view of life was nobler, saw in it a ceaseless con-
300

THE HEBREW UTOPIA 301
flict between good and evil ; yet no raore dared
look for the ultimate victory of the good than he
would admit the possible triumph of the evil^ and
could only hold his hope in suspense. All these
dreams of the future, however, were a matter of
pure speculation. There were few or none to
follow Plato and Sir Thomas More into the re
gion of the concrete until our own time, when a
horde of raodern theorists, set thinking by Mr.
Bellamy, have ventured on the same road.
Our studies have brought to light the impres
sive fact that the Hebrew people appear to have
had an intuitive perception of certain great ideas,
which, though they underlie all thought, usually
corae to human consciousness only as the result
of long and thorough culture.
We have seen that from an early day Israel
had a consciousness of the great cosmic idea,
unity, and of its true basis in God. We have
seen how the idea of law took possession of Ko
heleth; we now find two other universal ideas
emerging from the prophetic teachings : that of
progress — or, in present-day language, develop
ment — in the growth of ideas ; and the convic
tion that there is a meaning in human experience ;
that nothing walks with aimless feet; that all
events are significant. This idea of the meaning-
fulness of human experience shines out from the
first page of Genesis, where Adam gives names

302 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
to the creatures.i To the concrete-thinking He
brew to give a name was to fix the character;
and the naming of the brute creation by the first
man proved him lord over this creation, " a being
of free will and large responsibility," the repre
sentative of God on earth.
From the disaster of the fall a higher good was
wrought, a nobler destiny was given to raan: he
is no longer to rule simply over the lower crea
tion, but also in the moral realra — to trample
evil under his feet. The deep significance of the
narrative is that sin, suffering, death are not in
herent factors in human nature, but something ex
ternal, over which man is to be finally victorious.
Here, then, in the protevangelium,^ is potentially
the Hebrew Utopia, as the oak tree is potentially
in the acorn; and it is perfectly correct to say
that the entire function of prophecy was to de
velop the idea herein contained — the ideal of a
perfect humanity forever triumphant over evil.
This developraent was of course progressive, Httle
by little. The prophets entered gradually into the
deep significance of this early ideal, raaking it
more and more concrete, more and more definite,
and thus more and more a power in the national
Hfe. There was a profound moral purpose in these
visions of a perfect state; they were intended in
'Gen. 2: 19. "Gen. 3: 15.

THE HEBREW UTOPIA 303
a measure to bring about their own fulfilment,
not in spite of raan's free will, but by means of it,
their very beauty and desirability being calculated
to win that response and accord of man which
would gradually work out among the people the
ideal citizenship whose existence raakes possible
the perfect state. It is no doubt for this reason
that the dream of the Hebrew Utopia grew ever
brighter in the face of disappointment, that the
failure of prediction led, not to skepticism, but
to a more ardent hope. The high and beautiful
ideals held by the prophets of Israel embodied
precisely the same ideal as the promise given to
Eve — the ultimate triuraph of good over evil in
the person of raan ; and it was only by degrees
that they gave up the expectation that the victor
over evil would be all Israel, and looked for the
man who should traraple evil under his feet.
This was one ground of the striking eleraent of
Hebrew progress ; a noble unrest, a divine dissat
isfaction with their best ideals, had possession of
this people, a consciousness that soraething better
raust be in store for thera than even their noblest
dreams. There is, as Matthew Arnold says, pro
found significance in the fact, given by the writer
of the epistle to the Hebrews, that Abraham, not
contented with the wide pasturages of the land of
promise, still looked for a city — a higher type of

304 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
civilization ; ^ and that the " rest " which Joshua
conquered in Canaan for the wanderers of the
wilderness only raade thera more deeply yeam for
the sabbath rest still kept back for the people of
God.* It was always so with the Hebrew Utopia ;
each new color added to the beautiful picture only
raade them seek for a brighter pigment, a more
golden glory to spread upon the canvas ; the no
bler the type of manhood achieved by them, the
more they longed for a manhood noble beyond
their highest dreams ; and thus it became at last
possible that God, having through long centuries
spoken to Israel in the prophets, could in the end
of the days speak to them in a Son.^
In order to appreciate the raeaning of this, we
ought to begin by observing that the word " mes
sianic," which may be used interchangeably with
" Utopian " as applied to the hope of Israel, has
not in the Bible the invariable significance which
has been given to it since the coming of our Lord.
No doubt the Utopian hopes of Israel came more
and more to cluster around a person, as Israel
came more and more to realize the failure of the
nation to attain to ideal goodness; and unques
tionably the actual fulfilment of these hopes was
in him whora we know as the Christ. But the
Greek word " Christ " and the Hebrew word
" Messiah " have no raore restricted meaning than
* Heb. 11:10. *4:8,9. °i:r,2.

THE HEBREW UTOPIA 305
the English word " anointed," which properly
translates them; and in the Hebrew Bible the
terra " Messiah " is appHed to raany persons.
David says that Saul is Jehovah's Messiah,® giv
ing that as his reason why he refrained from
killing hira in the cave, and when he penetrated
to his tent. Aaron was called Jehovah's Messiah,
and in Leviticus ^ the same word refers to any
future high-priest. Even Cyrus, who released ex
iled Israel from captivity and sent thera back to
their land, is Jehovah's Messiah.* In other
words, the raessianic idea was a developraent,
like the other ideals of a perfect state.
We see this development most clearly in tracing
the application of the title " Servant of Jehovah,"
which is used in the Old Testament more fre
quently than the word " Messiah," and with the
sarae import. It becoraes very evident, as we
study prophecy, that this title was originally ap
pHed to the Jewish state, whose raerabers in a
collective capacity were expected to realize ideal
perfection, and thus serve Jehovah's purpose as
ministers of salvation to others. By degrees the
ideal grew so high that it could not possibly be
appHed to the whole coraraunity: its application
becarae liraited to the remncmt, the truly God
fearing and obedient few, to whora Isaiah looks
as the only hope of Israel — the only portion of
"I Sam. 24:6. 'Lev. 4:3. 'Isa. 45:1.

306 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
the community in which God's promises can be
made good. It is the remnant who are called the
Servant of Jehovah in some chapters of Isaiah
and elsewhere. At last the ideal had become so
transcendentally glorious that only a divine-hu
man Messiah could fulfil it and make it a reality.
For exaraple, when Moses foretells the advent
of the prophet whom God would raise up Hke
unto himself,^ his prophecy is no doubt capable of
being explained to refer to our Lord Jesus Christ ;
but the entire context shows what our knowledge
of the small degree of spiritual development of
Israel at that time would lead us to expect, that
the most the people could at that tirae understand,
or anticipate, was that, just as Moses had brought
the first clear revelation of the divine will in the
form of law, so in the Golden Age one would be
raised up who would be the mediator of a still
greater divine enlightenment, a more coraplete
revelation of the will of God.
Divine enlightenraent was from first to last the
central fact of the Hebrew Utopia. Isaiah gave
the watchword of the perfect state when he cried :
" O ye house of Israel, come ye, and let us walk
in the light of Jehovah ! " ^° This, as Matthew
Arnold says, sums up the whole ideal in one word :
to walk in the light of Jehovah is to have the
possibility of perfection.
•Deut. i8: 15. "Isa. 2: 5.

THE HEBREW UTOPIA 307
But much of what we call prophecy has no
reference to the Messiah in any capacity. It is
the kingdom of God which is in question, that to
which the name " the Hebrew Utopia " has been
given, an ideal of the perfect state whose supreme
ruler is God. II
This kingdora of God was to be, not in heaven,
but on earth. The children of Israel understood
the seat of their Utopia to be Palestine. The land
was as iraportant a part of the proraise to Abra
ham as the people. The hope of possession of
the Proraised Land inspires the whole patriarchal
history, and is the center of the Mosaic dispensa
tion as well as of the long struggles under the
judges and early kings. The possession of the
land was no doubt only a means to an end. The
purpose for which Abraham and his descendants
were separated from other nations was that Israel
might be a blessing to the world ; but the posses
sion of the land seemed a necessary means to this
end. The Utopian ideal was of " the holy nation
in possession of the Holy Land," and the land
was an essential factor in the ideal.
It was for this reason that Israel, being un
faithful, lost the land ; the very raeaning of their
national existence required this. An unfaithful
people in the land of proraise and blessing would
be an outrage to the moral sense; and of all the

3o8 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
words addressed to the exiled people none are
brighter, more inspiring, than those which de
scribe the restoration of the land to its part in
the purpose of blessing : ^^ "I ara returned to
Zion. I dwell in the raidst of Jerusalem." So
that Jerusalem shall be cafied " a city of fidelity,"
and the mountain of Jehovah Sabaoth, " the holy
mountain." The suraraing up of Joel's glorious
prophecy is that " Jehovah dwells in Zion." ^^
The name of Ezekiel's new Jerusalem was " Here
is God." ^^ It is very significant that the proph
ecy which for generations was believed to be
the earliest written book of prophecy — that of
Jonah — should have for its central thought the
earliest ideal of the Hebrew people, the promise
to Abraham that all nations of the earth should
be blessed in his seed. The book of Jonah stands
apart from all literature of the early tirae; yet it
is in the line of God's avowed purpose, showing
that he has as complete a care for heathen peoples
as for his own chosen nation. The closing verse
of that prophecy is the final sentiraent of all
prophecy : " Should not I have pity on Nineveh,
that great city, wherein are more than six score
thousand persons that cannot discern between
"Zech. 8:3.
"Joel 3: 21.
^ Ezek. 48 : 35, the last words of the book.

THE HEBREW UTOPIA 309
their right hand and their left hand: and also
much cattle?" " III
This, then, is the corner-stone of the Hebrew
Utopia — Israel a blessing to the world because
Israel knows God. Amos, the prophet who first
wrote of God's mercy, bases his dreams of the
Utopia quite as much upon his justice — that
" judgraent " so dear to the devout Hebrew soul.
It was religiously a very bad time when Amos
prophesied — the days of the second Jeroboam,
when, as we learned not long ago, great external
prosperity had corrupted the nation. That moral
necessity of exile from the land, already touched
upon, had become evident to the prophet's mind
as absolutely essential to bringing about the right
conditions for that utopia, the hope of which, as
we have seen, grew ever brighter in disappoint
ment. Israel must be sifted araong the nations;
not for loss, but salvation.
For lo, I am going to give charge
And sift the house of Israel among all nations
As grain is sifted in a sieve ;
And not a grain falls to the ground.^^
The early chapters of the prophecy of Araos
show the wide dominion of God by picturing the
'* Jon. 4:11.
'''Am. 9:9. I have borrowed in this study Professor Briggs's
translations in Messianic Prophecy and those of the Rev. Buchanan
Blake in How to Read the Prophets.

310 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
neighboring nations as subject to that " judg
ment " of God which was to Israel such a ground
of hope. Then follow a series of warnings and
a series of visions, and finally (after the promise
of sifting) comes a glorious picture of the Golden
Age: " In that day I will raise up the fallen hut of David,
And virall up its breaches, and raise up its ruins.
And build it as in days of old ;
In order that they may seek Jehovah,
The remnant of Edom, and all nations
Upon whom my name is called ; "
Is the utterance of Jehovah, doer of this.
" Lo, days are coming," is the utterance of Jehovah,
" When the ploughman will overtake the reaper.
And the treader of grapes, the sower of seed;
And the mountains will drip with new wine [fertility].
And all the hills will melt.
" And I will restore the prosperity of my people Israel,
And they will build waste cities, and inhabit them;
And plant vineyards, and drink their wine;
And make gardens, and eat their fruit;
And I will plant them upon their land.
And they shall not again be thrust out from their land
Which I have given them ; "
Jehovah thy God doth say.i*
Here the Promised Land is the abiding habita
tion of God's people; the heathen will seek the
Lord there; and nature will respond to the joy
of man, the mountains dropping sweet wine and
the hills melting with gladness.
'¦Am. 9: II— 15; Briggs.

THE HEBREW UTOPIA 311
We can imagine what would be the central
element in Hosea's Utopian dreara — the return
of wayward Israel to obedience and love. All
creation will have its part in the joy of such a
reforraation.^'' Till that time it will be travailing
and groaning in pain; but then it will find its re
demption in the redemption of the people of God.
Even to this day this glorious thought — the re
demption of nature — has found no place in the
most perfect Utopias outside of the Bible, and we
have not yet begun to appreciate its profound
significance. The earnest expectation of the creature (all created
things) waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God.
For the creature was made subject to vanity, not of its
own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope
that the creation itself shall also be delivered from the
bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the
children of God.^*
What did Paul raean in this passage? What
did the prophets mean when they described in
such glowing colors this truce of nature?
And the wolf will dwell with the lamb.
And the leopard lie down with the kid,
And the calf and young lion and falling together.
And a little child be leader over them.
And the cow and bear shall graze :
Together will their young lie down.
And the lion like the ox will eat straw :
And a suckling shall play over the hole of the asp,
"Hos., chap. 14. "Rom. 8: 19-21.

312 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
And over the light hole of the great viper
The weaned child will have stretched out his hand.
And they will not harm or destroy in all my holy moun
tain.
For the earth will have been filled with knowing Jehovah,
As the waters are covering the sea.^*
The visions of Isaiah with regard to the Gold
en Age are especially magnificent. In general,
Isaiah, who was just such a statesman and patriot
as Elisha, though under far different circum
stances, finds the Golden Age in the reign of an
anointed king and the willing subjection of the
people of God. Labor is hallowed; there shall
be no weak hands ; there shall be no feeble knees ;
nor shall there be deaf ears or blurred eyes;
divine things will be immediately apprehended.^"
Not that God will be nearer to his people than he
always has been, but that, like Elisha's servant,^^
men's eyes will be opened, and they shall see that
which though invisible is always near. In that
rhapsody of judgment and salvation, the section
of Isaiah's prophecy which includes chaps. 24-27,
the important part played by the land is brought
out. And it shall come to pass in that day, that Jehovah
shall beat out his corn, from the flood of the river
(Euphrates) unto the brook of Egypt, and ye shall be
garnered, one by one, O ye children of Israel.
And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great
trumpet shall be blown ; and they shall come which were
"Isa. 11:6-9. "Isa., chap. 35. ^2 Kings 6:17.

THE HEBREW UTOPIA 313
ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and they that
were outcasts shall worship Jehovah in the holy moun
tain of Jerusalem.22
No doubt, in the prophet's view, the utopia
would immediately begin when the exile of Israel
was ended. The times and seasons were not
known to God's spokesman at that time any more
than they were to the apostles or even to the Son
of God himself. Jeremiah had the same idea :
Again will they say this thing in the land of Judah and
in its cities, when I restore their prosperity :
" May Jehovah bless thee, habitation of righteousness,
mountain of holiness.
And let Judah and all his cities dwell together therein,
the husbandmen and those who tent about with
their flocks." 2s
Isaiah in the second chapter (which is the true
beginning of his prophecy, chap, i being an in
troduction) takes for his text an ancient oracle
telling of the part the heathen will have in the
future Utopia:
But in the latter day it shall come to pass that
The mountain of Jehovah's house shall be established, at
the head of mountains.
It shall be exalted above the hills : yea, peoples shall flow
unto it.
And many nations shall come, and say, " Come, let us
go up
To the mountain of Jehovah, and to the house of the God
of Jacob,
"Isa. 27:12, 13. ''Jer.3i:23, 24.

314 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
For he will teach us his ways and we will walk in his
paths."
For teaching shall go forth from Zion — the word of
Jehovah from Jerusalem.
This picture is very striking by reason of its
bold figures. The temple mount is to be miracu
lously drawn upward till it is exalted over the
tops of all the mountains, visible to the whole
world; and the beautiful picture is given of the
people of all nations strearaing upward to it from
every direction, like waters reversing their usual
course by an irresistible attraction. We shall find
in Ezekiel a companion figure of blessings flowing
down from Jerusalem upon the peoples. Then
will be realized the promise to Abraham, all na
tions blessed in his seed.
Isaiah, as a study of his book raakes clear, was
the first to be so irapressed by this ancient oracle,
which he and also Micah took for the text of their
prophecies, as actually to apply it to all the peo
ples of the world. Amos had seen that the neigh
boring people were concerned with Israel in God's
judgments; but Isaiah is the first writer in any
nation who conceived of the history of the world
as a whole. But after Isaiah this thought
was dear to the prophets of Israel; Jeremiah^*
tells how the nations " shall come and sing
in the light of Zion and flow unto the goodness
^ 31 : II, 12.

THE HEBREW UTOPIA 315
of Jehovah. And their soul shall become as a
watered garden, and they shall not sorrow any
more." IV
Another feature of the Hebrew utopia is peace.
Isaiah leads the prophetic chorus in declaring that
war shall be no more :
And he will judge [arbitrate] between the nations.
And admonish many peoples ;
And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares.
And their spears into pruning hooks;
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation.
And they shall not learn war any more.^^
We can grasp the large significance of Isaiah's
prophecy of peace (based, it will be noticed, upon
arbitration, the precise meaning of " judge be
tween ") as a witness to the development of the
Utopian ideal, only when we realize that in the
early days war was the business of nations, and
that it even yet appears to be their chief busi
ness. Perhaps the very first step toward the
realization of Isaiah's glorious vision of universal
peace was taken when the international arbitra
tion convention was founded at The Hague. For
the Anointed King for whose birth Isaiah was
eagerly looking would be not only W'onderful-
Counselor, Hero-CJod, Father-Everlasting, but
Prince of Peace. At his coming " all the armies
° Isa. 2 : 4 fif.

3l6 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
of the armed men in the turault and the garments
rolled in blood [all that speaks of war] shall be
even for fire and for fuel of fire " (no more need
ed).^® Under the rule of such a prince shall this
song be sung in the land of Judah :
Ours is a strong city ! For walls and outworks is salva
tion appointed.
Open ye the gates [defenses no longer needed]. Let a
righteous nation that keepeth faith enter in :
A purpose firmly fixed thou dost keep — Peace;
Perfect peace to those whose trust is in thee.^^
Then they can say to the nations :
Look upon Zion [Jerusalem] — the city of our feasts !
Thine eyes shall see
A peaceful habitation — an abiding tabernacle [not needing
to be removed for fear of the enemy] ;
Her stakes shall never be removed, nor her cords broken.
Jehovah shall there be our glory. In the place of broad
rivers and streams
No oared [war] galley shall go — no gallant ship [of war]
shall pass;
Jehovah is our judge: Jehovah is our law-giver; ^s
Jehovah is our king. He will save us.^"
It is no doubt in the enthusiasm of this new
idea of peace that the forty-sixth psalm was writ
ten: 9:5. o.
2'26: 1-3.
28 33 : 20—22.
^ The force of this exultation can best be appreciated when
it is remembered that Chaldea — that "place of broad rivers and
streams " — had about this period instituted her navy.

THE HEBREW UTOPIA 317
There is a river — its streams make glad the city of God,
The holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.
God is in her midst, she shall not be moved.
God hath helped her even in the morning dawn.
The nations raged. The kingdoms were moved.
He uttereth his voice, the earth melted !
Jehovah of Hosts is with us : the God of Jacob our refuge
sure.
Come, behold the works of Jehovah — what desolation in
the earth he makes.
He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth.
He breaketh the bow : he cutteth the spear in sunder.
He burneth the chariots in fire.
"Be still (he says) and know that I am God, high among
the nations, high in the earth."
Jehovah of Hosts is with us : the God of Jacob our refuge
sure.
Micah, Isaiah's contemporary, dwells with de
Hght on this new dream of peace.^'^ The ruler
who is to come
.... shall stand and feed in the strength of Jehovah
In the majesty of the name of Jehovah his God;
And they shall abide : for now shall he be great to the
ends of the earth.
Yea, this one shall be peace.
Micah lived in a very wicked time, but he saw
a great truth. Part of his fourth chapter, which
is sung in the Sistine Chapel every Good Friday
to music by Palestrina, is a word of forgiveness,
and all through his prophecy it is the thought of
forgiveness which lends cogency to his vigorous
"' Mic. 5 : 4, Sd.

3l8 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
efforts for a present reformation as well as to his
dream of the future perfect state :
In that day, saith Jehovah, I will assemble her that
halteth, and I will gather her that is driven out, and
her that I have afflicted. Yea, I will make her that
halteth a renmant, and her that was cast off a strong
nation, and the Lord himself shall reign over them in
Mount Zion ^^ from henceforth, even forever. And thou,
O tower of the flock, thou stronghold of the daughter
of Zion, unto thee shall the former kingdom come back:
the kingdom shall come back to the daughter of Jeru-
salem.s2 Micah also sees peace as a feature of the per
fect state :
Yea, he shall judge [arbitrate] among many peoples, and
rebuke strong nations afar off ;
And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, their
spears into pruning hooks.
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation : war they
learn no more.
But they shall sit every man under his vine and his fig
tree;
None shall make them afraid.
The mouth of Jehovah of Hosts hath spoken.^^
Nahum adds nothing to the picture of the per
fect state, his prophecy being entirely against
Nineveh, with a few words of encouragement to
Judah. " The Lord is good. He's a stronghold
in the day of trouble. Yea, he knoweth them that
^' It should be borne in mind that " Zion " in the prophetic
writings is seldom if ever a metaphor for the church; it means
simply " Jerusalem," where God was expected personally to reign.
'=4:6-8. '^ Mic. 4:3, 4.

THE HEBREW UTOPIA 319
trust in him." ^* But Zephaniah, who lived in
that dark period just before Josiah's reforraation,
and whose words are chiefly of warning, yet looks
forward to the time when the city shall be full
of holy joy because its sins are canceled and " the
king of Israel, even Jehovah, is in its midst,"
raaking Israel " a narae and a praise araong all
peoples of the earth."
During this period Habbakuk prophesied and
was troubled, as we reraeraber, because God's
people were spoiled by the wicked Assyrians. His
prophecy is among the most sublime poetry of
the Old Testament, but it adds nothing definite
to the hope of a perfect state.
Jeremiah prophesied in a dreadful time — the
period leading up to the fall of Jerusalem; and
most of his utterances are of warning and sorrow,
tears for the slain of the daughter of his people.
Yet some of the raost beautiful ideals of the per
fect state are his. He sees Israel as a docile fiock,
tended by the good shepherd :
He that gathered Israel will garner him. He will keep
him
As a shepherd doth his flock.
And they shall come and sing upon Mount Zion :
They shall flow to the good things of Jehovah, to the
wheat and wine.
To the oil, and to the young of the flock and the herd.
"Nah. 1:7. "Zeph. 3: I5. 20.

320 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Their soul shall be as a watered garden. They shall
languish no more.
Then shall the virgins rejoice in the dance, young men
and old together.
For I turn their mourning into joy, and comfort them,
I will make them rejoice after their sorrow.
Yea, my people shall be satisfied with my good things,
saith Jehovah.^"
The new covenant is a guarantee that this is
only the beginning of a period of endless obe
dience and joy:
And they shall be to me a people, and I will be their
God.
Yea, I will give them one heart, and one way evermore
to fear me.
That it may be well with them, and their children after
them.
I will make an everlasting covenant with them;
I will not turn away from them, that they may not depart
from me.
I will rejoice over them to do good. Yea, I will in truth
plant them
In this land, with my whole heart, and my whole soul.^^
Jerusalem shaH be a habitation of justice, a
mount of holiness, its name shall be " Jehovah is
our Righteousness," ^^ and every weary soul and
every fainting soul shall be satisfied.*®
Zechariah, too, sees the shepherd character of
the Messiah. " He feeds the flock exposed to
slaughter, even you, O poor ones of the fiock ; " **
s» Jer. 31: 10-14. ^23:6. "Zech. 11:7.
2^32: 38-41. '»3i: 23, 2$.

THE HEBREW UTOPIA 321
and guides them with his two staves. Delight, or
graciousness, and Union (bands) thus typifying
the union of Israel and Judah — now far apart.
Zechariah dwells with delight on the peaceful
character of the Messianic King :
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O daughter
of Jerusalem.
Behold, thy king cometh to thee, just and victorious.
Lowly, even riding upon an ass — upon a colt, an ass's
foal.
I am cutting off the chariot [of war] from Ephraim, the
horse [used only in war] from Jerusalem.
The battle shall be broken. He shall speak peace to the
nations.
His dominion — 'tis from sea to sea, from the river to the
ends of the earth.*^
This prophet gives a vigorous description of the
blessedness of the people under the Shepherd's
rule:
Yea, Jehovah their God shall save them, in that day —
the flock of his pasture.
For they shall be as jewels of a crown — as a standard
glittering over the land.
Oh, how great shall be their happiness ! How great their
splendor I
Corn shall make their young men glad; new wine their
maids.*2
But the crowning joy of the Hebrew utopia is
the actual presence of God; Jeremiah had seen
that the name of Jerusalem would be " Jehovah
«Zech. 9:9, 10. *"9:i6, 17.

322 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
is our Righteousness " — Ezekiel saw that it was
" Jehovah is here," ever-present. So Zechariah :
Thus saith Jehovah : " I have returned to Zion, I will
dwell in the midst of Jerusalem,
And Jerusalem shall be called the city of fidelity; and
the mountain of Jehovah Sabaoth the holy moun
tain.''
Thus saith Jehovah Sabaoth :
" Again old men and old women will dwell in the streets
of Jerusalem,
Each with his staff in his hand because of great age ;
And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and
girls playing in the streets thereof,"
Thus saith Jehovah Sabaoth :
" Lo, I am about to save my people from the land of the
sunrise and from the land of the sunset.
And bring them, and they shall dwell in the midst of
Jerusalem, and become my people.
And I will become their God in faithfulness and in right
eousness." *^
Then shall be fulfilled the promise of blessing
to the world :
Thus saith Jehovah Sabaoth :
" Yet it will be that peoples and inhabitants of great
cities will come.
And the inhabitants of the one will go unto another,
saying,
' Let us go on to court the face of Jehovah,
And seek the face of Jehovah Sabaoth.' ' Let me go also.'
And many peoples and strong nations will come
To seek Jehovah Sabaoth in Jerusalem, and to court the
face of Jehovah."
Thus saith Jehovah Sabaoth :
" In those days, when ten men of all tongues of the
"8: 3-8.

THE HEBREW UTOPIA 323
nations shall lay hold, they will lay hold of a Jewish
man, saying,
' Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is
with you.' " **
But Ezekiel, in his visions by the river Chebar,
saw the glorious future as none of his predeces
sors had done. In his far exile from the sacred
home of his fathers, he delighted himself with
constructing a plan of the New Jerusalem, down
to its minutest details. The new name of the city,
as we have seen, should be " Here is God." *°
Like Zephaniah he saw the character of the rule
to be that of a shepherd, but the shepherd is not
Jehovah himself, but his Anointed, the Messiah :
And I will set up one Shepherd over them, and he shall
feed them.
My servant David, he shall feed them.
I, Jehovah, have spoken.
I will make with them a covenant of peace ;
I will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land ;
And they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep
in the woods [because the wild beasts will be tame].
Yea, I will set them round my hill.
And I will cause the rain to come down in its season.
There shall be showers causing blessing:
The tree of the field shall yield its fruit; the earth her
increase.
And they shall be safe in the land, and know that I ara
Jehovah.**
"8:20-23. « Ezek. 48:35. "34:23-270.

324 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Like Isaiah, we see that Ezekiel looked for a
metaraorphosis of the natural world, whenever
the hearts of God's people should be in harmony
with his will. Ezekiel belonged to the priesthood,
and his Utopian dream was not that of a kingdom,
but of a thoroughly organized ecclesiastical state.
We remember how in the last nine chapters of his
book he gives a detailed account of his idea of the
perfect restoration of God's house, and of the
never-ceasing service that should go on therein,
and the river of life issuing from the temple to
water the whole world.
Joel sees the same river of life as one of the
blessed features of the kingdora of God. " A
fountain wiH issue frora the house of Jehovah and
water the acacia vale"*^ in the land of Moab,
crossing the Jordan to extend its life-giving in
fluence to the nations. This is the river the
writer of Revelation saw. Like Zephaniah and
Ezekiel, Joel saw the chief blessedness of the new
Jerusalera to be that " Jehovah is a dweller in
Zion." *8
But Joel raakes a glorious addition to the fair
Utopian vision : That aspiration breathed by
Moses, with no hope of its literal fulfilment —
" would God that all Jehovah's people were
prophets ; that Jehovah would put his Spirit upon
them " — is to be granted in the perfect state, as
"Joel 3: i8c. "3: 21b.

THE HEBREW UTOPIA 325
Joel foresees it. Everyone shall be filled with the
Spirit :
I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.
And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy;
Your old men shall dream dreams — your young men
shall see visions ;
Yea, also upon the men-servants and handmaids in those
days will I pour out my spirit.*'
Obadiah gives the highest ideal of humanity :
" Upon Mount Zion shah be a remnant, aitd it
shall be holiness; " ®° and reaches the final goal of
prophecy — "Jehovah's shall be the kingdom."
And a choir of psalmists in the days of Israel's
restoration break out into the same triumphant
song. In a group of psalms, the ninety-third to
the one hundredth, this is the central thought :
Jehovah doth reign, he is clothed with majesty.
Jehovah is magnificent.^^
And again :
Say among the nations that Jehovah doth reign.=2
And still again:
Jehovah doth reign, let the earth exult,
Let the many coasts be glad.
Jehovah doth reign, let the peoples tremble'^

and;

Know that Jehovah, he is God,
He made us, and we are his."*

«2:28, 29. MPs. 93:1. ¦''Pss. 97: i; 99: 1.
»»0b., vss. 170, 21b. "^Ps. 96:10. "Ps. 100:3.

326 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Thus we see all dreams of the perfect state
gathering around and culminating in the thought
of the literal, personal reign of God over a re
newed and purified earth — this world of ours —
inhabited by men realizing God's first ideal — a
people all holiness, endowed with his Spirit, final
victors over evil. The ninety-first psalm gives the
glorious picture of this ideal.
Nothing can be fairer, raore satisfying, than
this ideal, and if it had been possible for raankind
to realize it, the world would have been the He
brew Utopia ages ago. One prophet alone — per
haps two — saw the impossibility that this glori
ous dreara should becorae reality until a divine
raodel had been given to raan, one who did per
fectly realize the ideal. Malachi perhaps indi
cated this in his proraise ^° that the " Sun of
Righteousness should arise with healing in his
wings ; " and the last chapters of Isaiah ^® make
the whole thing clear — that the redemption of
Zion can only be through one suffering and per
fectly obedient Servant of God. A study of this
greatest of prophecies makes no change in this
view of the Hebrew utopia; but it does give a
sure ground of expectation that this glorious pic
ture, whose outlines we have now seen, will one
day become a reality. And raore than this, the
last chapters of Isaiah show that the perfect state
"Mai. 4:2. "^ Isa., chaps. 40-66.

THE HEBREW UTOPIA 327
will not be the final consummation of all things,
but the true beginning; that the utopia dreamed
of by Hebrew prophets will be, as has been lately
said, " not earth's closing epoch, but earth's glori
fied form," when the true normal state of things
shall come to exist and " Eden ( that blessed place
where God walks and talks with men) will be
restored."

CHAPTER XI
THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY

The abiding impression made by a study of
that body of laws and institutions which we call
Mosaic raust be one of surprise. At whatever
period given, whether at various times during the
forty years' wandering, or also at other critical
times in the national life, it was given to a people
by no means the most civilized, thoughtful, and
highly educated of their time, a people in many
respects immature. On general principles, it
might be expected that long before our own day
it would be antiquated and ready to vanish away,
like the Ten Tables of Solon and the Code of
Hammurabi.^ Most of us perhaps think that it
has vanished away, having been superseded when
our Lord carae. On the contrary, a careful study
of the Mosaic legislation shows that it is a mar-
^ The Code of Hammurabi was discovered and published long
after this chapter was written. I have thoroughly revised it, how
ever, with reference to that code (which is far older than Abraham
and must have been known to him), not only because its influence
upon the Mosaic institutions is clearly traceable, but also because
a comparison of the two brings into striking relief the marvelously
high ethical standard of the latter. In comparing the two I have
used Professor R. F. Harper's edition. 328

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 329
velously universal body of laws, with iraportant
elements of permanent value for the ordering of
human relations. In certain respects it appears
perfectly adapted to, and designed to bring about,
a higher social state than the world has yet seen,
having latent in itself much of the best legislation
of the present time as well as the glorious features
of that Golden Age, that perfect state, which the
prophets so marvelously pictured.
Even a mere outline study of this Torah sug
gests the thought that when our Lord said that
he came to fulfil this law, he meant something
which the world has yet to learn and be the better
for. Surely it can hardly be possible that in the
words, " I came not to destroy the law but to ful
fil it," he could have meant us to understand that
he proposed to abrogate the law. Certainly he
did not, so far as the Ten Commandments are
concerned. We call the Ten Commandraents the
moral law, and say that of course that stands
while all the rest has been done away with. But a
little study will serve to show that all the laws
given by God tO' the children of Israel were moral
laws. Some of these laws concern the individual,
some the family, some the nation ; sorae concern
the civil life, some the religious ; some are ceremo
nial, sorae civil, some juristic; and all of them
appear to stand on precisely the sarae plane of
obligation. Laws of ceremonial and laws of so-

330 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
cial life are interspersed among one another in
the same chapter. There is not the slightest hint
that one is of less ethical importance than an
other. This is not to say that law is not susceptible of
development; that the will of God might not be
progressively revealed. The very name by which
the children of Israel called their law — Torah,
or "instruction" — shows that it has this prop
erty, just as a parent's instruction of his children
goes through a process of development with the
child's advancing years and enlarging moral ca
pacity. It is a familiar fact that many of the
laws given in Exodus are repeated with impor
tant modifications in Deuteronomy, and a careful
study of the whole Torah shows a number of
longer and shorter codes which appear to have
been given at different times, and in which are
found occasional modifications of certain laws
previously given. One of the laws of-household
service, as will presently be seen, was so modified.
The forty years of the wilderness journey gave
tirae for something of this kind ; and it is a matter
of no consequence to our present study whether
or not those scholars are right who think that
this process of developing the Torah, this educa
tion of the Jews in huraan and divine relations,

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 331
continued for a very much longer period, even
into times after the exile.^
Although we cannot conceive of any of God's
laws being founded on anything but imrautable
ethical principles, yet we can conceive of them as
being so adapted to conditions as to be, not so
much a final statement of man's obligation, as a
preparation for such a statement, a shadow of
good things to come. Of this character are the
laws that we call ceremonial, most mistakenly
using the word as an antithesis to moral. The
ceremonial laws are profoundly ethical and were
of temporary obligation, not because they were
not ethical, but because they were adapted to con-

^ Scholars are now practically agreed that the laws found in
general in Ex., chaps. 20—34, represent such a growth as every
where takes place among a semi-civilized people, when the decisions
of judges, chieftains, kings, and priests pass into custom and be
come law. Ex. 18: 13—27 indicates something of this; and these
earliest laws are designed chiefly for the guidance of such judges.
They are attributed to the period from Moses to about 800 s. c,
or about the end of the reign of Joash. The deuteronomic code,
which, whenever written, was presented to the people and ratified
by them in the reign of Josiah (ca. 623 b. c; 2 Kings 23: 3), was
intended for the guidance, not of the judges, but of the whole
people. The Holiness Code (Lev., chap. 17-26) probably comes
next, and appears to be a collection of laws of which some are
as early as Moses, and most were enacted during the existence of
the first temple, but which were codified about the time of Ezekiel.
The remainder of Leviticus and the laws found in Numbers appear
to belong to the Priestly Code, brought from Babylon by Ezra,
but with many subsequent revisions and additions. The Ten Com
mandments, in their existing form (Ex. 20: 1-17). are supposed
to be a priestly revision of the " Ten Words " of the earliest code,
which are believed to have been brief commands, like the present
form of the sixth, seventh, and eighth commandments. Never
theless, as inspired leader, prophet, and judge Moses was, as Pro
fessor Kent says, in a very real sense the father of Israel's insti
tutions and laws.

332 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
ditions. They were intended, not to be simply
swept away at last as if they had not been, but to
expand into a raore intelligent and beautiful cere
monial. We have only to compare the ceremonial laws
of the Torah with the religious rites of the most
enlightened peoples that lived near Canaan, Ph(£-
nicia, Egypt, Syria, Moab, to see that the cere
monial laws of the Hebrews were an enormous
ethical advance on the ceremonial laws of other
nations, a marvelous advance beyond anything
Israel had ever seen or practiced before. At the
time when they were given, and for generations
after, the ceremonial laws may well have been far
more important to Israel, for ethical training as
well as for spiritual uplift, than the laws we now
distinguish as moral. It was not their typical
significance which made them important to the
Jews, however iraportant it raay raake them to us.
To them it was their deeply moral import that
made the ceremonial laws so valuable. But in the
nature of things, ceremonial is subject to change,
for it cannot but be adapted, not only to advanc
ing moral character, but to varying conditions.
The exiled Jews were unable to keep the ceremo
nial laws in Babylon, and yet it was the memory
of their ceremonial observances that kept alive
during this period the conviction that they were
the children of God.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 333
The importance of these ceremonial laws being,
therefore, so much more fundamental than is com
monly supposed, so intimately related to that de
velopment which fitted the Jewish nation to be
the matrix of Christianity, it is with reluctance
that I leave this important part of the Torah in
this place, without even a glance at its particulars.
II
It will be remembered that, when one of the
New England colonies was first settled, it was
agreed that " in the absence oi special laws the
rules of the Word of God [in the Torah] were
to be followed ; " and that another New England
colony in its articles of organization laid down the
fundamental principle that the community would
be ordered in civil as well as ecclesiastical affairs
by scriptural (that is. Mosaic) rules. Perhaps
these resolutions were due much less than is gen
erally supposed to the fact that these colonists
were Bible-loving Puritans, and far more than
is supposed to the fact that they were astute and
far-seeing legislators, better aware than most peo
ple have ever been of the admirable practicability
of the Mosaic laws and their fine adaptability to
a very high state of civilization.
Whether or not this is the case, one thing be
comes evident to those who study the Mosaic
legislation most deeply : that it contains all the

334 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
essential principles of liberty, and even of a repub
lican form of government. Not cMily is the Deca
logue the basis of every declaration of the rights
of man that has ever been made, but the analogy
between the form of government contemplated in
the Mosaic legislation and the general outlines of
our own federal union is startlingly close. But
no doubt to our Puritan ancestors the greatest
value of the Mosaic legislation lay in the intimate
association of the religious with the moral Hfe.
The Torah was the living link between the human
and the divine, and these exiles to a new country
knew how to value such a link. The history of
the development of the freedmen, whose religious
Hfe during slavery had been so intense, while in
the nature of things dissociated from moral disci
pline, makes clear the value of such a link.
Now, the closeness of this link, and its incalcu
lable value to Israel and to our Puritan ancestors,
as well as to all who can appreciate it, lies in
something quite dififerent from the fact that all
law is, in the nature of things, a revelation of
God. It lies in the particular character of the
Mosaic law, the nature of God's revelation to
Israel, and the ground on which he gave this
Torah to them. The ground on which God
claimed the obedience of Israel was distinctly not
that he was the only true God. The first com
mandment does not say that he is the only God,

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 335
but that Israel must worship none other than him.
This first commandment rests on the ground of
Israel's relation to Jehovah, not on the ground of
Jehovah's unique Godhead. Whenever during
the legislative period God claims Israel's alle
giance, it is always for no other reason than that
Israel stands in a relation of grace to Jehovah.
" Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians,
and how I bare you on eagles' wings and brought
you unto myself." * The preface to the Ten
Comraandments explicitly states this as the reason
why Israel shall have no other God : " I am Je
hovah thy God which have brought thee out of
the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have no other God before me." *
Children's children were always to be taught that
this was the ground on which their keeping of the
law was to be based :
When thy son asketh in time to come, saying. What
be the testimonies, the statutes and the judgments which
Jehovah our God hath commanded you? Then thou shalt
say unto thy son : We were Pharoah's bondsmen in
Egypt, and Jehovah brought out of Egypt with a mighty
hand, and .... Jehovah commanded us to do all these
statutes.^If affliction ever came upon a nation, it would be
" because they forsook the covenant of Jehovah,
the God of their fathers, which he made when he
'Ex. 19:4. * Ex. 20:2. "Deut. 6:20-24.

^3^ HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
brought them forth out of the land of Egypt." ^
In other words, the law was given because of the
gracious relation already existing between Jeho
vah and Israel, and all its morality is based on
piety. Jehovah was Israel's Savior, and for this
reason they ought to obey him : Redemption
through grace is the fundamental idea of the law.
The gospel is not a departure from the law nor
an abrogation of it, but the natural development
of the law, its perfected form.
This is why the law, being a gift of grace, was
by no means the irksome institution we commonly
think it to have been. It was the joy and pride
of Israel — a sovereign honor conferred by God.
For what great nation is there that hath a god so
nigh unto them, as Jehovah our God is whensoever we
call upon him? .... For ask now of the days that are
past, which were before thee, since the day that God
created man upon the earth, whether there hath been any
such- thing as this thing is ? ' [The giving of the Ten
Commandments.] Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound.^
The delight of the good man was in the law of
Jehovah. Such psalras as i, 19, 112, 119 express
the rapture of the true Israel in contemplating
the law.
Furthermore, it is not to be questioned that
the obedience of Israel to the rule of Jehovah
was a matter of free compact ; that they elected
•Deut. 29:25. 'Deut. 4:7, 32. » Ps. 89:15.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 337
him to be their sovereign before he gave them
the Ten Commandraents. " All that Jehovah
hath spoken will we do," was their answer to
Moses when first encamped at Sinai.^ And again
after receiving the first code of laws, which in
cluded the Ten Commandments, " all the people
answered with one voice and said. All the words
which Jehovah hath said will we do," ^" thus rati
fying their previous free choice of God to be their
ruler. A careful reading shows that the group of laws
which immediately follow the commandments ^^
are a code by themselves. This code is coramonly
caUed " The Book of the Covenant," because, as
the next chapter tells us, Moses wrote all these
words in the Book of the Covenant and read it to
the people. At this time they ratified their former
election of God, saying : " All that Jehovah hath
said will we do, and will be obedient ; " this cove
nant being sealed in the blood of the sacrifice that
had just been offered.^ ^
In the thirty-fourth chapter of Exodus we find
a short code comraonly called " The Little Book
of the Covenant," because, as we are told, " Jeho
vah said unto Moses, Write thou these words,
for after the tenor of the words I have made a
covenant with thee and Israel." The first and
•Ex. 19:8. "Ex. 20:20 — -23:33.
>»Ex. 24: 3, 7. i=Ex. 24: 5-8.

338 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
larger of these covenants ^^ forbids the making of
images for worship, describes the place of wor
ship (an altar of earth or unhewn stones), gives
laws about bond-servants, about capital offenses,
injury to the person and property, the principles
of loans and trusts, an important law about wom
en, rules for the administration of justice, the sab
bath law, the three great feasts, the elementary
rules about sacrifices, and a law of kindliness;
thus including civil, criminal, juristic, social, and
religious laws. The Little Book of the Covenant,
though shorter, is of much the same character.
Another code may easily be recognized; ^* it is
called the Holiness Code. It is a very interesting
collection of laws, based on the statement of God,
" I am Jehovah." This statement, with occasion
al additions, occurs forty-seven times in this code,
coraing in like a refrain and evidently with the
usual purpose of the refrain, to aid the raeraory.
This body of laws receives its name of Holiness
Code from the opening words of chap. 19 : "Ye
shall be holy, for I, Jehovah your God, am holy,"
all its statutes being based on God's holiness.
Next to the Book of the Covenant, this is the raost
important and interesting code until we come to
Deuteronomy. Before this, however, are several
other codes : in Exodus, a code of laws about the
tabernacle and the priesthood; i'^ in Leviticus, a
"Ex. 20:20 — 23:33. "Ex., chaps. 25-30.
" Lev., chaps. 17—26.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 339
code of laws of sacrifice, purification, and atone
ment; ^® a brief code at the close of that book re
lating to vows and tithes ; ^^ a short code in Num
bers relating to the priests and Levites, and to the
rite of purification,^* and another of five chap
ters ^* containing the law of inheritance of daugh
ters,^" the priestly calendar of public sacrifice, and
the law of vows. Ill
The question of the laboring classes — the re
lation of labor to capital, as we phrase it — has
become so importunate in this time in which we
live that it is almost startling to find a similar
question taking front rank in the Torah ; and
that one phase of it, the relation of employer and
employed, has the very first place after duty to
Jehovah, in the very first code given after the
Ten Comraandments — that Book of the Cove
nant which iraraediately follows the Decalogue.^ ^
Of course, araong agricultural people of that time,
not only the household servant but the farm labor
er, the chief employe, was a slave. Slavery was
the almost universal form of servitude in ancient
times, and Israel was like other nations in this
" Lev., chaps. 1—7.
" Lev., chap. 27.
" Num., chaps. 18, 19.
" Num., chaps. 27—31.
»> Modified 36: 8, 9 to meet a new contingency.
" Ex. 20: 20 — 23: 33.

340 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
respect. But the status of the slave was so differ
ent in Israel, and indeed in aU the East at that
time, from modern slavery, that the translators
of the Revised Version did perfectly right in
never using the word " slave " and substituting
for it the words " bondman " and " bondwoman."
The word " servant " in the Authorized Version,
does not give an accurate idea.
Slavery was so universal in ancient times that
we find so great a moralist and so wise a political
economist as Aristotle laying it down as a princi
ple that slavery was essential to the well-being
of the state, and we know that this was the alraost
universal belief. How striking it is then to find
that Israel's legislation ordained that no Hebrew
might be sold as a bondman under any circum
stances except that of being a thief unable to
make restitution for theft.^^ If he were bitterly
poor, he could sell himself,^^ but no one else could
sell hira as a poor raan.^* In no case could own
ership of a Hebrew by another last longer than
six years, whatever the cause of his servitude.^^
In the sabbatical year, which occurred once in
seven years, every Hebrew went free. It is
worthy of note that it was taken for granted that
^ Ex. 22: 3b.
^' Lev. 25:39, 47; cf. vss. 44, 46.
" Compare the farming out of paupers in some of our own
states. ^Ex. 21: 2.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 341
the economic condition of the self-enslaved poor
man would have so iraproved during his years of
bondage that he could go on as a free man after
that. And the bondman always, at any time dur
ing these six years, had the right to redeem him
self or to be redeemed by a relative.^* The only
exception to the sabbatical enfranchisement was
the case of the bondman who, during his servi
tude, might have raarried and had children, and
who for love of them preferred to remain with
his master.^'' But the later legislation of Leviti
cus brings this condition of servitude to an end in
the jubilee year.^*
It seems barbarous to sell a man for debt, but
this law, with its release in the seventh, or even
in the fiftieth year, was incomparably more hu
mane than laws of imprisonment for debt which
until very lately prevailed in England ; and it was
based on a better economic principle than impris
onment, not only in the case of the debtor, but
also in that of the thief; for instead of keeping
them in idleness at the public charge, the labor
of both was turned to the profit of those who had
lost by their means, or to that of the state. The
provision for the self-enslaveraent of the poor
raan, however shocking it may seem, is much
^° Lev. 25 : 48, 49.
"Ex. 21:4-6.
^ Lev. 25:39—41. The longer period of servitude carried with
it restoration to his possessions wben enfranchisement c.ime.

342 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
more truly humane, wise, and economic than the
system which fosters tramps, and ends in that
foul sink, pauperization, which is the disgrace of
all modern social systems. There was no " sub
merged tenth " in Israel, and the position of the
self-enslaved poor man was most delicately guard
ed. " Thou shalt not raake him to serve as a
bondman ; as a hired servant, and as a sojourner
(a guest) ^® he s'hall be with thee ....
(Hke the poor relations who are so often the bless
ing of our homes) for they are my servants, which
I brought out of Egypt ; they shall not be sold as
bondmen." ^** The entire law was based upon the
relation of Israel to Jehovah. Very careful pro
vision was made that the released bondman should
not at once fall again into poverty. A better pro
vision than raodern prison-gate raissions are able
to rnake Hes in the law that in the sabbatic year
the released bondman was not to be sent away
destitute :
Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock and
out of thy threshing floor, and out of thy wine press ; as
Jehovah, thy God, has blessed thee, thou shalt give unto
him.^i The personal rights of the bondman were care
fully guarded. His right to the weekly sabbath
rest was important enough to have a place in the
'" Lev. 25 : 39-45.
^ The general force of the word " sojourner " will be consid
ered later. Here it obviously means a guest.
^ Deut. 15: 12—14.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 343
Decalogue, emphasized in the deuteronomic ver
sion of the Ten Commandments ¦ — " that thy
bondman and bondwoman may rest as well as
thou." ^^ The infliction upon him by his master
of such an injury as the loss of an eye, or even a
tooth, gave him the immediate right to liberty.^^
If the owner punished his bondman with such
severity that he died under the rod, the owner
himself was to be punished.^* It is true the law
adds : " Nevertheless if he continue a day or two
he shall not be punished, for he is his money."
And this sounds cold-blooded ; but we raay recall
to raind that precisely this ground was taken un
der our own slave system : the money loss was
held to be the master's sufficient punishment for
having fatally injured his slave ; while to institute
inquiry whether the unfortunate creature died un
der his master's hand, or Hngered a day or two,
was not so rauch as thought of.
In Israel the oppressed slave always had the
refuge of flight. " Thou shalt not deliver unto
his raaster a servant which is escaped frora his
raaster unto thee. He shall dwell among -thee in
any of thy cities where it liketh him best. Thou

" Deut. 5 : 14.
™ Ex. 21 : 26, 27. The Hammurabi Code enacts that he who
caused the injury shall pay half the slave's price to the master,
who alone is supposed to be the injured party.
^* Ex. 21 : 20.

344 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
shalt not oppress him." ^^ Apologists for Ameri
can slavery always justified the systera on Bible
grounds; but this law was evidently overlooked
by the framers of that Fugitive Slave Law, whose
enactment occurred within the raeraory of some
now living,- impelling Mrs. Stowe to write Uncle
Tom's Cabin.^^ Man-stealing with a view to en
slavement was a capital crime : " that thief shall
die." "
All nations enslaved prisoners of war, and Is
rael did the same; the Torah permitted aliens to
be enslaved in perpetuity, and to be bequeathed
to children and children's children ; ^* but this
seems to be a provision of humanity, since under
the Hebrew institutions they could own no land ;
and the subsequent history of Israel gives so raany
instances of such slaves being merged in the fami
lies of those who' owned them and becoraing a
part of the great family of Israel, that it is evi
dent that they stood upon very rauch the same
high ground of privilege as other bondmen and
aliens not enslaved.
When we recall to mind that in nearly all lan-
"'Deut. 23: 15, 16.
^•^ The Hammurabi Code shows greater sympathy with our legis
lation than with that of Moses. It went farther, however, and
decreed the death penalty for him who did not produce the fugitive
" at the demand of the commandant " or who hid him in his house.
^ Deut. 24:7; Ex. 21: 16. The Hammurabi Code makes it a
capital crime to steal a slave, the interest being not in "human but
in property rights.
^ Lev. 25 : 45, 46.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 345
guages of the world the same word does duty for
" foreigner " and " enemy " — that being the case
in the primary meaning of the word in languages
so recent even as the Italian and the German —
the delicate consideration with which the foreign
er is treated in the Mosaic legislation is simply
amazing. It points directly 'to the perfect state,
and is the beginning of the fulfilment of the prom
ise to Abraham, the blessing of all men. I have
counted seventeen places where the stranger is
either made the subject of special legislation or
else is grouped with those objects of God's pecu
liar solicitude, the widow and the fatherless. And
as if to make doubly sure the assurance that the
special laws for the stranger shall be kept, they
are always based upon the pathetic memory of
Israel's own experience : ^® " Thou shalt not op
press a stranger — for ye know the heart of a
stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of
Egypt. Thou shalt love him as thyself, for ye
were strangers in the land of Egypt." The resi
dent foreigner was to have the same right as Is
rael to the protection of the cities of refuge, and
to public justice ; *" there was to be " one law for
the stranger and for him that was born in the
land." The resident foreigner had a right, with
the poor, the fatherless, and the widow, to the
"Ex. 22:21; 23:9; Lev. 19:33, 34> etc.
"Ex. 12:49; Num. 15:16.

346 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
gleanings of the fields and the vineyards, and
the spontaneous fruits of the sabbatical year.*^
Even to the sacred feasts he had access on con
dition of being circumcised.*^ Only in three
things was a difference to be made : A foreigner
raight never be king ; ** usury, that is interest,
might be asked of him ; ** and if a prisoner of war
he might be perpetually enslaved, under the raild
slave system of Israel. *° IV
One of the burning questions of today is the
ownership of land. The accumulation of large
tracts of land in the possession of individuals or
of syndicates is fast becoming a serious menace
to the prosperity of this country, as well as of
Great Britain. The natural, almost inevitable,
consequence of this state of things is the social
istic doctrine of the public ownership of land.
With marvelous wisdom the Mosaic legislation
keeps clear of both these evils — the excessive
individualism which perraits a single man to ac
cumulate vast possessions, and sociaHsm which
gives all the land to the state.
The principle of land-ownership is distinctly
laid down in Lev. 25 : 23 : " The land is mine."
The whole land of Canaan was God's and was by
"Ex. 23: 11; Lev. 19: 10; Deut. 14: 19-22.
« Ex. 12:44, 48. "Deut. 23:20.
«Deut. 17:15. «Lev. 25:45, 46.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 347
him given to the nation to be divided between the
600,000 families of Israel. Each father of a fam
ily had his own homestead, tilling his own land
and sitting under his own vine and fig tree; but
no one had an absolute right in this property of
God. In case of poverty a man might sell his
land, but not " forever " — that is, in perpetuity ;
he might not so impoverish his heirs.*" Nor could
the rich, however wealthy, accumulate large es
tates. Not only had the original owner of the
land the right of rederaption at any time, but his
next of kin might redeem it for hira. In any case
it returned to his family in the jubilee year.*''
The one exception was the land of the Levites,
which might in no case be sold.*'^
Far from such provisions having a socialistic
tendency, they were eminently calculated to
heighten a true individualism. It is doubtful if
any legislation has so effective a via media be
tween socialism and a selfish and unscrupulous in
dividualism in the matter of land-tenure.*^
With such a land system it is needless to say
** Lev. 25 : 23.
"Lev. 25: 25-31.
*" Lev. 25 : 34.
" The Hammurabi Code has little to say about land-ownership,
except that one in public service (an officer or a constable) may not
neglect the cultivation of his land, but must provide a substitute
for himself, wife, son, or another. There is an express prohibition
of the sale of the land of such a one. On the other hand, a mer
chant or a foreign sojourner is expressly permitted to sell his real
estate. There is much about the duties of lessees and metayers,
much about trespass; and irrigation laws are very strict.

348 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
that the law contemplates a separate house for
each family.^" Even in cities this is the case.
Such a systera of housing the poor as now curses
civiHzed peoples, reaching even into country vil
lages, was impossible in Palestine. Not only had
each family its separate house, but the laws both
as to construction and sanitation were explicit
and rigid. Sanitary inspectors tell us that the
description in Leviticus of the " leprosy of a
house " precisely describes conditions well known
to them in old buildings, and that the only known
remedies are those which are there prescribed.^^
The rules for the destruction of offal and refuse
were very strict ; there were no cesspools, no
kitchen-middens in Palestine, no such dung-hills
as in the early part of last century stood before
every cottage door in Scotland, no such ash-heap
as Job and his friends sat upon together.
All these regulations tended directly to pre
serve the sacredness of the family. The rights
of children as to inheritance were jealously guard-
ed.^^ The eldest son, upon whom would fall the
burden of the widows, unmarried daughters, and
poor members of the family, had a double portion.
"Implied in such passages as Num. 26:53, S4; 33^54; Deut.
40: 20. "Lev. 14:33-53.
^^ Num. 27:8—11; 36:8, 9; Deut. 31:16, 17. The Hammurabi
Code, with very evident desire for strict justice (§§ 167—71), yet
permits favoritism on the part of the father (§ 165) or the widowed
mother (§ 150).

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 349
The other sons all shared alike. It was rigidly
enacted that in case of raore than one wife the
son of the favorite raight not be preferred before
the son of the less beloved, if the latter were the
elder. V
No other system of jurisprudence in any coun
try at any period is marked with such humanity
with respect to the unfortunate. We have already
seen soraething of this with regard to the poor
man and the debtor. The widow and the father
less were always the peculiar care of God; the
severest penalties were pronounced against their
oppressors :
Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child.
If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry at all unto
me, I will surely hear their cry ; and my wrath shall wax
hot, and I will kill you with the sword ; and your wives
shall be widows, and your children be fatherless.^^
Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger,
nor of the fatherless; nor take the widow's raiment to
pledge.^* Three classes, the widow, the fatherless, and
the resident alien, were always to be remem-
"^ Ex. 22:22—24; Deut. 27: 19. The Hammurabi Code considers
only the dower rights of the widow and her duty to minor children.
She may not contract a second marriage without consent of the
judge, and the second husband must give bonds for the maintenance
of minor children. A poor widow does not enter the purview
of the Code. Nor do destitute children.
"Ex. 22:22—24; Deut. 24:17. Widows' raiment makes half
the assets of our pawn-shops.

350 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
bered when the harvest was carried horae ; ^^ the
corners of the fields were not to be reaped, nor
was the field or vineyard to be gleaned, and if by
accident a sheaf was left behind in the field, no
one was to go back for it. The olive trees were
not to be twice beaten nor the vineyard gone over
a second time; all that was left was for these
classes. With the widow and the fatherless are
thus always joined the poor and the stranger —
the resident alien.^®
Those who deal in scientific charity are wont to
say that if every poor person had a friendly vis
itor — a prosperous man or woman as a real
friend — the problera of poverty would be half
solved. This was precisely the case contemplated
by the Torah. Every householder was supposed
to be in immediate relations with the poor, not
only through these laws which we have just seen,
but by the law that made the poor sharers in the
joyful feasts of the prosperous. In the Harvest
Horae, the Feast of Ingathering :
Thou shalt rejoice before Jehovah, thy God, thou and
thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy
maidservant, and the Levite that is within thy gates, and
the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are
among you, in the place which Jehovah thy God hath
chosen to place his name there."*'
"Lev. 19: 9, 10; Deut. 24: 19-21.
" Deut. 24: 19.
"Deut. 16: II.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 351
Once in three years all the tithes, which other
wise went for the maintenance of the priesthood
and the house of God, were to be shared with the
sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. The
danger of pauperization by all these gifts was
carefully guarded against by three methods : by
the necessity of work for those who would bene
fit by the gleanings of field and vineyard and
orchard, by the sharing with their benefactors in
the joyful feasts (how unlike the dinners distrib
uted by our churches and benevolent societies at
Thanksgiving and Christmastide), and, in the
case of the tithe of the third year, by the deeply
religious character of the gift. It could be ac
cepted by the poor only at the close of a solemn
dedication which the giver said before Jehovah,
apparently in the presence of the beneficiary.'*
And the sacred character of the gift was en
hanced by the fact that the Levite had his portion
with the widow, the fatherless, and the stranger.
Under such laws the comraand, " There shall be
no poor with thee,"®® was not a promise but a
command : " Howbeit let there be no poor with
thee, for Jehovah will surely bless thee in the
land which Jehovah thy God giveth for an in
heritance to possess it : if only thou diligently
hearken unto the voice of Jehovah thy God," etc.
And so our Lord's remark, " The poor ye have
"^Deut. 26:13-15. "Deut. 15:4.

352 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
always with you," *" was not a prophecy, telling
his disciples all through time what they have a
right to expect, but the statement of a discredita
ble fact, actually prevailing at that time, and due
to the lapse of the laws from active functioning.
Poverty was understood to be merely an acci
dent, never a settled condition, and it was the
duty of every man to prevent it as far as possible
by a special care for any neighbor who seemed
to be " waxing poor." *^ Where it existed pov
erty was hedged about with raost delicate consid
eration. The creditor might not go into a poor
man's house to take the article pledged as securi
ty : he must stand outside till the owner brought
it to him.*^ The widow's raiment might never
thus be pledged, and if a poor man pledged his
garment, it must be returned to him before sun
down, that he raight not sleep cold.'* In no case
" John 12 : 8.
*i Lev. 25:35-38. The Hammurabi Code treats the poor man,
not as the subject of special consideration, but the reverse. If one
steals an animal from *' a god (temple) or a palace " (a priest or a
man of rank or wealth), he is to pay thirty-fold; if from poor
man, tenfold. The poor man, like the fugitive slave, must be given
up at the demand of justice (the creditor) under pain of death.
Whereas an injury to "a man's (i. e., gentleman's)" eye, limb, or
tooth must be dealt with by the lex talienis. the like injury to a
poor man may be condoned on payment of a fine. If a rich man
is killed by accident, the fine is a third more than in the case of
a poor man. These distinctions appear in part to rest on the theory
that a poor man values money more than honor. The fine of a poor
man for assault is a third of that of " a man (of gentle birth)."
There is no indication of the delicate consideration of the poor
everywhere shown in the Mosaic legislation.
"^ Deut. 24: 10, II.
"Deut. 24:17, 12, 13; Ex. 22:25-27.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 353
was interest to be taken from a brother-Israelite.®*
Modern laws concerning mortgage and other se
curity are all for the protection of the creditor;
in Israel they were for the protection of the
debtor. The dignified status of the poor man is
seen in the ordinance that the ransom money
which each individual paid to Jehovah was to be
an invariable sura — half a shekel, whatever the
ability of the payer : '^ the souls of poor and rich
are equally precious in the sight of God. With
all these delicate provisions for the poor, there
was to be no mawkish sentimentality. It is very
striking that the coramand is three times given,
" thou shalt not favor a poor man in his cause." **'
In one case it is added, " nor honor the person
of the mighty ; " neither sentimentality nor preju
dice, but justice, was the law.
VI
We have more than once had occasion to ob
serve the honorable status of woman in Israel.
A comparison of the Mosaic legislation for wom
en with the legislation of any modern state — the
most advanced — shows how far the best civiliza
tion, in matters truly essential, falls below the
*** Deut. 23:19, 20. The Hammurabi Code remits interest in
case of destruction of crops by storm or drought. In other cases
it permits distraint of household or other goods where crops do not
suffice to meet a man's indebtedness.
^ Ex. 30: 12-15.
"Ex. 23: 3; Lev. 19: 15; cf. Deut. i: 17.

354 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
pattern given in the Mount. We know that
women could not only inherit but buy property,
the latter with no other restrictions than entered
into the general system, the former with only
the restriction constitutionally necessary, that
they must marry within their own tribe.
Not only industrially, so far as we can see,'^
was the woman on a par with the man (wise-
hearted women working with Bezaleel in the
making of the tabernacle) ; but the intense in
terest of women in the politics of their country
shines out from every page. There were women
among the prophets and among the sages, and
one woman at least, Huldah the prophetess, was
a member of the privy council of the king.®*
One reason — the reason perhaps — why wom
an held so exalted a status in Israel, was the
conception of the functions of man in the state.
As a recent writer has remarked, the question at
the root of all political systems is whether man
is regarded as a member of a household, or only
as a citizen and soldier. If the latter, thai the
logical result is that women, being non-corabat
ants, raust stand on a lower plane than raen.
*^ Ex. 3:25, 26; cf. 36:6. There is no consideration of woman
as such in the Hammurabi Code. She is wife, widow, daughter,
or votary (devotee). It is interesting, in view of some of our own
problems, to note that the Hammurabi Code holds neither husband
nor wife liable for debts of the other contracted before marriage;
both are equally liable after marriage.
^ 2 Kings 22: 14 ff.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 355
But in Judea raen were not regarded as soldiers
and citizens first, but first as members of the
family. It is always as father, husband, son, or
brother that we know the biblical characters, and
the status of women is therefore wholly dififerent
frora what it was in Rorae, where household re
lationships were a rainor consideration, and where
the husband and father, being first of all soldier
or citizen, had alraost absolute power, not only
over his wife and daughter, but over his son as
well. All raodern civilization is based, not upon
the Hebrew, but upon the Roman system. May
it not be due to this fact that at least the theo
retical position of women is so unsatisfactory,
and that the advocates and opponents of reform
in this raatter are alike apt tO' be unwise and
unjust ?
Whether or not the economic position of wom
en among the Hebrews was all that would satisfy
the twentieth century, it is certain that in all
sexual relations women's interests were safe
guarded with a peculiar care utterly unknown
to modern legislation. Undoubtedly polygamy
and divorce were allowed. It cannot be said
that they were sanctioned; they existed every
where at that period, and it would not have been
in accordance with the law of moral development
if among the Hebrew people they had been sura
raarily forbidden. But neither were they en-

356 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
joined, and everything was done to regulate and
render them as little injurious as possible. In
fact, the marriage laws were very far in advance
of that time, and; in certain respects, of any time
up tO' the present.
The eighteenth chapter of Leviticus restricts
the possibilities of polygamy within very narrow
limits. Divorce was made difiicult by the neces
sity of a regular procedure — a thing unknown
in early times in other countries, where a man
raight put away his wife without ceremony.®^
In Israel he raust give her a written bill (liter
ally "a book") of divorcement.'^" This was a
very serious check upon divorce in an age when
only a learned class could write, and when there
fore it was nearly always necessary to resort to
some acknowledged authority, who would require
satisfactory reasons for this step before making
out the papers. A further check was given by the
law which made divorce irreparable — a man
raight not take back his divorced wife.''^ In two
cases, to be presently raentioned, the right of di
vorce was withheld. It will be observed that

™ Even in the Hammurabi Code this was the case, although
a man might not put away his wife portionless (§§ 137—40) except
for cause (§ 141). In the latter case investigation was required
(3 141, 142), evidently in the interests of the woman's property
rights, not to put any check upon divorce. I should like to call
the attention of our legislators to the provision for truant husbands
(§136). " Deut. 24: I.
¦'^ Deut. 24: 4.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 357
they are the very cases where a man would be
most likely to wish to put away his wife, having
already been unjust to her. We must bear in
raind that in a priraitive state of society every
woman must be married (for protection),''^ and
there is no reason, therefore, to suppose that a
motion for divorce would ever come from the
woraan. Though her husband were cruel, he
would be better than no husband at all.
Infidelity to the marriage vow was punished
by the death of both parties.^^ The seduction of
a concubine was an exception to this law : both
parties were to be punished, but not by death.
Apparently both were to be punished alike. If
a man dishonored a betrothed girl, both were to
be put to death, except in the case where the act
occurred in a lonely place; then the girl had the
benefit of the doubt, and the man only was put
to death.''* In case of seduction of a girl who
was not betrothed, marriage was obligatory, and
the man was bound to pay a large dowry to the
father. And this is one of the cases where no

" Unless, as the Hammurabi Code and the customs of many
peoples provided, she became a *' devotee," a condition unthinkable
to the pure-minded legislators of Israel, though not to the pre-
exilic practice.
"Lev. 20: 10; Deut. 22:22. The Hammurabi Code provides
the death penalty for those caught in Hagrante delictu, yet " if the
husband of the woman would save his wife or if the king would save
his male servant (he may)." The case of a concubine is not con
sidered. "Deut. 22:23—27. The Hammurabi Code is more lenient; in
either case the girl goes free, " the man shall be put to death."

3S8 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
divorce was allowed.''^ The other case where
divorce is forbidden is equally striking:
If a man take a wife, and afterward hate her, and
lay shameful things to her charge, and bring an evil name
upon her, and say, I took this woman, and found her
not to be a virgin; and it be tried, and it be false; then
the elders of that city shall take that man and scourge
him; and they shall amerce him in a hundred shekels
of silver, and give them to the father of the damsel, be
cause he hath brought an evil name upon a virgin of
Israel ; and she shall be his wife, whom he shall not put
away all his life.''^
Even in this stringent guarding of woman's
honor there is no sentimentality. Such a charge,
if proved true, brought the death penalty upon
the woman.
The law concerning female captives taken in
war is remarkable for its delicacy and the re
straint imposed upon the captor. We have only
to call to mind the treatraent of women in sacked
towns almost to the present day, the treatraent of
women in Armenia in our own day, to appre
ciate this:
If thou seest among the captives a beautiful woman,
and hast a desire for her, and wouldst take her to thee
"Deut. 22:28, 29; but cf. Ex. 22: 16, 17. The Hammurabi
Code considers incest and the seduction by a man of his betrothed
daughter-in-law. The penalties of the former vary from death to
exile. In the latter case the man pays a fine to the woman, and
she goes back to her father, free to marry " the man of her
choice." ^' Deut. 22:13-19. The summaries of the law arc from
Scriptures Hehre-w and Christian by E. T. Bartlett and John P.
Peters.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 359
to wife, thou shalt bring her to thine house; and she
shall shave her head, and pare her nails, and put off from
her the raiment of her captivity [that is, she shall have
the privilege of mourning] and dwell in thy house, and
bewail her father and mother a full month. Afterward,
thou shalt marry her, and she shall be thy wife. And if
thou find no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go
free. Thou shalt not sell her for money, tbou shalt not
deal with her as a chattel, because thou hast humbled
her." In case of a husband's jealousy the appeal to
the ordeal was allowed (the bitter water that
causeth the curse), and this is the only instance
of ordeal permitted by the Mosaic legislation.''*
It is not many hundred years since all sorts of
questions — of inheritance, of chastity, of ortho
doxy, accusations of witchcraft, etc. — were sub
mitted to the ordeal, so that the Mosaic legislation
is advanced indeed. It is evident that this one
appeal to ordeal is permitted that it may be strict
ly regulated, and not permitted in any other case,
thus counteracting the natural tendency of men
to seek this method of arriving at a decision.''*
From this slight survey it seems evident that
the Mosaic code is in advance of any system of
laws now in force so far as consideration for
" Deut. 21 : 10—14.
"Num. 5:12—28. The ordeal is permitted by the Hammurabi
Code in a like case, and also in the case of sorcery. In this case
the ordeal is that applied to witches in more modern tiraes, " sink
or swim." "A method still more frequently practiced than is generally
realized; for instance, in the tossing up of a cent, choosing right
or left hand, etc.

360 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
woraen is ccjncerned, as the struggle good women
are making in many states of our Union today
to get the " age of consent " raised above sixteen
years, fourteen, even ten years, will suffice
to indicate. The whole spirit of the Mosaic laws
is the protection of the weaker against the strong
er, of the girl against her betrayer, the debtor
against his creditor, the oppressed against the
oppressor. No other body of laws equals this
code in delicate thoughtfulness and beneficent hu
maneness.*" VII
The share that aniraals are to have in the per
fect state of the Hebrew prophets is reflected
frora the Torah, which includes thera in the pro
tection of the weak against the strong. The
fourth commandment provides for the rest of
cattle as well as servants. The strayed beast was
to be led home to its master, the overladen beast
to be relieved by anyone who came along.* ^ It
was forbidden to take the mother-bird from the
nest (perhaps in the case of taking birds for sac
rifice), for in that case the young would suffer.*^
Better to take the young and leave the mother to
raise another brood. The ox that trode the corn
was not to be muzzled, but permitted to eat as he
™ This may still be said, notwithstanding the remarkable jus
tice of many provisions of the Hammurabi Code.
"Ex. 23:4, 5; Deut. 22: 1-4.
"* Deut. 22: 6, 7.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 361
chose.*^ The self-grown fruits of the sabbatical
year were not only for the poor ; " What they
leave the beasts of the field shall eat." ** Entirely
in the spirit of a most refined humanity was the
prohibition to slaughter a ewe and her larab on
the same day, or to cook a kid in its mother's
milk.*^ These laws, which appear to be purely
sentiraental, show that sentiment also has its place
in the education of a nation.
The love for nature shown in the Torah very
strikingly prefigures the Utopia of the Hebrew
prophets. It is evident that the law-giver felt
in his deepest heart that the order of nature is an
expression of the mind of God. The divine
right of the soil to its period of rest is shown in
the institution of the sabbatical and jubilee years.
There was raore than a prudential motive in this
law, more than the mere attempt to prevent the
exhaustion of the soil. An ethical raotive lay at
the bottora of it, the feeling that nature has a
right to be set free from service and left to her
self — to enjoy her sabbaths. In the later years,
when people began to make haste to be rich,
the sabbatic and jubilee laws were not kept,** and
when the captivity came it was in part, we are
" Deut. 25 : 4.
•** Ex. 23: II. Cf. thc game laws of some civilized countries
today. ^^ Ex. 23: 19.
" Many scholars question if they ever were kept.

362 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
told, that the land might at last have her rights
¦and enjoy her sabbaths. VIII
The spirit of humanity is nowhere more ob
vious than in the criminal laws of the Hebrews.
I am aware that the contrary opinion prevails.
We must bear in mind the object of these laws:
" To form a horde of newly enfranchised slaves
into habits of perfect obedience, based on ethical
and religious grounds." We raust remember
that much more severe regulations are required
for waifs and child criminals in our refuges and
reformatories than for the children in a Christian
faraily. No doubt there is a great degree of
rigor in the Torah, but rigor is not a sign of
barbarisra, but of civilization. Intelligent par
ents are rauch more strict than ignorant parents.
Barbarism is lax, and severity is not necessarily
cruel. We raust reraeraber, too, that the entire
body of laws is based on the covenant idea.
In the Mosaic code there are five classes of
crirae punishable with death : *'' blasphemy,**
idolatry, including witchcraft,** cursing parents
or incorrigible disobedience,®" murder,*^ adul-
" In all eighteen capital crimes are named in the various
codes, but they may all be reduced under these five heads. Pro
fessor Kent makes seven.
^ Lev. 24: 16.
"Lev. 20:27; Deut. 17:3-6.
"* Lev. 20: 9.
"Lev. 24:17; Num. 35:30, 31.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 363
tery.®^ In England two hundred years ago there
were 148 crimes which incurred the death pen
alty. Of the five crimes punishable by death
under the Torah, the first two, blasphemy and
idolatry, were high treason in view of the cove
nant — the children of Israel's free election of
God to be their ruler. It must be noted, how
ever, that only the overt act of blasphemy, idol
atry, etc., was punished. There was no such
thing as suffering for opinion, no arrest on sus
picion, no heresy trials.
The third category of capital crime (cursing
parents or incorrigible disobedience) appears to
have come under the same head — treason —
since parents represent God, and rule by author
ity delegated by him. The laws concerning re
spect to parents were exceedingly strict. " He
that smiteth father or mother shall surely be put
to death " — a simple blow.*^ Parricide appears
to have been unthinkable. To strike a parent
was as bad as to kill another person. He that
set light by his father or his mother was to be
accursed.** Of the fourth and fifth capital crimes, murder
has always been punishable by death; adultery
never has been in any state but Palestine, though
^^ Lev. 20: 10.
''Ex. 21: 15. In the Hammurabi Code the penalty is cutting
off the hands.
"Deut. 27: 16.

364 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
popular opinion has never been severe upon the
injured husband who avenged himself. In this
country there are now, as in early Israel, five
capital crimes ; but a number of crimes are pun
ished with life-imprisonment, which is virtually
death. Among the Israelites there was no such
thing as imprisonraent, with all its associate evils
of expense to the law-abiding community, crim
inal contact, and idleness, and with its long train
of " problems of penology." Nor were there any
cruel punishments; torture was absolutely un
known; exile, banishment, confiscation, the rack,
wheel, knout, burying alive, dark cells, pillory,
stocks — all of them Christian punishments —
had no place in Hebrew legislation.
As to penalties, only four were known to
Hebrew crirainal law : forty stripes save one,®"
Hke for like,** restitution with compensation,*^
death.** Stoning, the usual form of the death
penalty, does indeed appear to be more cruel than
hanging, beheading, or shooting, but it is tender
mercy to some forms of the death penalty prac
ticed in England less than two centuries ago.
The law of Hke for like — the ju^ talionis,
"• Deut. 25 : 3.
""Ex. 21:23—25; Deut. 19:21. The Mosaic code appears to
have been much influenced in this respect by that of Hammurabi.
" Ex. 22 : 1—4. This also is prominent in the Hammurabi
Code. "Deut. 21:21; Num. 15:35.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 365
"eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand,
foot for foot, burning for burning, stripe for
stripe " — seems to speak of a barbarous age ;
perhaps it does. Its influence certainly meets that
demand for literal justice which expresses itself
in lynch law, and it is without question incom
parably better frora every point of view than
lynch law.**
Laws of retaliation are found in the best codes
of all ancient peoples — those of Rhadamanthus,
Solon, of the Ten Tables, and especially in the
Code of Hararaurabi, which evidently had rauch
influence upon the Mosaic legislation, especially
the earlier codes. They were assuredly needed in
that day to prevent raen taking the law into their
own hands. It was, indeed, expressly coramand
ed that men should not take vengeance, nor even
so much as bear a grudge against their neigh
bor.^*"' There is certainly poetic justice in that
part of this law which requires that the punish
ment shall fall upon a false witness which he
thought to have done unto his brother .^"^
No other ancient law made such provision for
the protection of the accused. Two witnesses at
least raust agree, and perjury was severely pun-
" I have been told by some mothers that there is one fault
of which "like for like" appears to be the only cure; that is,
the childish fault of biting. A biting child can be cured only by
being bitten.
»»Lev. 19: 18.
""Deut. 19:16-19; so the Hammurabi Code.

366 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
ished. ^*^ Yet here is no sentimentality. No law
makes such provision for the detection of crime.
Under no circurastances did raurder go unpun
ished. When the crirainal was not known, so
large a nuraber of the people were held responsible
that it was everybody's interest to find the cul-
prit.io^ In general, a high sense of honor was culti
vated by the fact that criraes which raight be
known only to God required for their forgiveness
by him open confession and the offering of a
costly sacrifice.^"* Many sins thus confessed in
volved heavy pecuniary loss, but they were con
fessed, and the loss was borne. The value of an
enlightened public opinion in such raatters was
alraost inconceivabfy great — inconceivable at
least by us who live under conditions in which
public opinion is all the other way — no man
being required, and hardly being permitted, to
incriminate himself.
Property laws were of a very high order.
Stolen goods were to be restored fivefold ; ^"" if
the thief was unable to make restitution, he was
to be sold for the debt — always regaining his
freedom in the sabbatic year. Carelessness in
leaving open uncovered pits, or in kindling fires,
or in the care of loaned or intrusted property,
i»2Num. 35:30; Deut. 17:6, 16, 19. The Hammurabi Code
inflicts death in case of capital crime.
'""Deut. 21:1-9. '«Num. 5:5-8. »» Ex. 22:1, 3.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 367
was strictly but fairly dealt with.^"* The most
beneficent of all institutions, far wiser than our
bankrupt laws, was the release of the jubilee
year,!"'' when debts, having been paid so far as
possible by the enforced service of the debtor,
were finally wiped out, slavery ceased, property
reverted to its original owner.
IX
I have not space so much as to touch upon the
sanitary laws, the admirable character of which
is daily vouched for by the longevity and good
health of the Hebrew people even under the most
adverse circurastances. Nor is there space for
more than a mere allusion to the military statutes,
which are very interesting. They are in a very
true sense the goal to which modern theory is
constantly tending, and a whole heaven in ad
vance of modern practice. No standing army
was kept; all the people were soldiers when the
tirae came, an ideal perhaps more nearly reached
by America than by any other nation. The list
of exemptions from railitary duty are very sig
nificant, showing a high degree of refined con-
sideration.!** A raan who had built, but had
not yet entered, a new house; who had planted a
vineyard, but not eaten of it; or who was
betrothed or newly raarried, was exempt. Still
«"Ex. 22:36, 7-15. "'Lev. 25:8-13. "«Deut. 20:5-9-

368 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
raore iraportant was the exemption of all who
were feeble and faint-hearted. The demoralizing
effect of such soldiers was very clearly recognized.
A very iraportant and very modern feature of
Hebrew warfare is that negotiations were always
tried before war was declared. Jephthah ad
dressed a long and earnest remonstrance to the
king of Aramon before accepting his challenge
to war,!** ^j.j(j ^]-,jg ^^g precisely in accordance
with the law. " When thou drawest nigh unto
a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto
it." !!* Moses tried negotiations with the king
of Edom,!!! and when these failed, he still de
clined to offer hira battle, though when negotia
tions afterward failed with the king of the Ara-
monites he attacked and subdued him. Evidently
both principle and practice were in this respect
in the direct line of preparation for the messianic
kingdom — for the arbitration for which all pub
lic-spirited people are working now.
X
A few words as to the constitution of the He
brew state — a subject which would reward de
tailed study. The governraent was, as has been
said, a remarkable instance of the purest form of
free republican government. It was neither pa
triarchal nor despotic. We raust not allow our-
™Judg. 11:12-28. ""Deut. 20:10. »" Num. 20:14.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 369
selves to be misled by Josephus' term " theoc
racy " — though it is in a raeasure correct. God
was the Sovereign of the state, but he was a
Sovereign freely elected by the whole people.!!^
One important result of this fact was that all
offenses were not only offenses against law, but
sin against God. The assent of the whole people
to the covenant gave thera a popular constitution,
and had a great raoral effect, giving to the law
the authority of comraon consent, binding thera
all, not only to God, but to one another. We are
told how Moses instituted the government in re
publican form. " Take you," he said to the peo
ple, " wise raen and understanding and known
among your tribes and I will make them heads
over you." !!*
Thus we find the judges (in a later tirae the
king, who was simply the judge of the whole
nation, not of a tribe or group of tribes) chosen
by popular suffrage. Their qualifications,!!*
" such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetous
ness," precisely meet Jefferson's test of official
capacity : " Is he just, is he honest, is he capa
ble ? " adding one more : " Does he fear God ? "
The government was practically a Unite4_
States. The tribal authority was great, though
subordinate to the central authority, the judge,
the king. At the head of governraent, under
^'^ See ante, pp. 336f. "= Deut. 1:13. "'Ex. 18:21.

370 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
Jehovah, were the king or the judge, the priests
and Levites, whose special political function it
was to preserve the union of the tribes, and guard
the letter and spirit of the fundamental law.
There were two legislative assemblies, an upper
and a lower house; !!^ there was a coraplete sys
tera of courts, upper and lower!!* — heads of
thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens — the sub
division of courts entirely doing away with the
law's delay. There was, when occasion required,
a generalissimo, whether judge or king, whose
function it was to have charge of the force di
rected against enemies; !!'' and, lastly, there was
the prophetic order, whose chief function was the
formation of public opinion. All these offices
were elective except that of the prophet, who was
cahed by God, those of priests and Levites, which
were hereditary, and later the generalissimo or
king (who, however, was elected in the first
instance: Judg. 8:22; i Sam. 11:12; 2 Sam.
5 : 1-3 ; I Kings 12 : 20). They constituted a re
markable system of checks and balances such as it
is the first necessity of every republican govern
ment to provide. The system was a raodel of pro-
'"¦' " The princes of the tribes" of Num. 7:2 passim and
"the elders of the people," Ex. 17; s. etc.; cf. Deut. 27: i.
"« Ex. 18:25, 26; Deut. 17:8-11.
'" In later times the king delegated this office to another
(Joab, etc.), very much as does the President of the United States,
who is commander-in-chief of the army.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 371
vincial, that is tribal, and raunicipal government.
All men were politically equal, and all had their
part in the government by their representatives,
who met in regularly constituted assemblies,!!*
not at stated times like our government, but when
ever a new law was to be framed.
As an illustration of the wise system of checks
and balances, I may instance the organization of
the Levites. They, being the representatives of
knowledge, the learned class, would have been a
menace to the state if they had also had property,
for the union of property with learning gives
unlimited political power. But it was specially
arranged that they should have no property.!!*
No part of the land was given to them, they were
collected in cities, where, in case of conspiracy,
they could be easily handled. Not Lycurgus,
Solon, or Numa was able to devise a system so
potent to prevent faction or so admirably self-
checking in all its parts. The Hebrew people
were not learned, but they were thoroughly edu
cated in the laws and history of their own coun
try, and no doubt reading and writing were more
widely disseminated among them than among
alraost any people. The three annual festivals of
the year were a bond of sympathy between the
"8 Deut. 5:1; 29:2; 31:1.
"° Num. 18:20, 21, 24; Deut. 10:9.

372 HEBREW LIFE AND THOUGHT
tribes and trained thera in the arts of social
Hfe.!='* It is coraraonly said that Moses owed much of
his legislation to the wisdom of the Egyptians,
in which he had been trained; but the more we
learn of Egypt at that tirae, the more we see
how little it infiuenced the Hebrews. Egypt
never began to be as civilized as the Torah. In
art and science, indeed, she went far beyond the
Hebrews, but the slaves who were making brick
for Egypt's treasure cities would not be brought
in contact with art and learning. The govern
ment of Egypt was monarchical, her religion was
idolatrous, and her civilization depraved to a de
gree never dreamed of in the worst days of Greece
or Rome. Not from Egypt did the Hebrews-
bring their civilization of high principles and of
right practice in the common relations and cus
toms of life. Since the Hammurabi Code was
discovered, it is said by raany, and with more of
justice, that Israel owes its remarkable legisla
tion to Assyrian influence. But I think even the
slight comparison possible in such a study as this
shows that in essential quality the Torah is as
far removed frora Assyria as frora Egypt. That
essential quality is inherent, " not in the forra,
but in the spirit and content of the individual in
stitutions." !^! However much the forra of the
i™Ex. 23: 14-17. 121 Kent, op. eit., p. 5.

THE LAW AND MODERN SOCIETY 373
Torah may have felt the influence of Assyria or
of any other people, its sanctions are such as were
utterly unknown to them : " The powerful in
fluences which made Israel's laws a guide and
inspiration for all later ages came from with
in." !22
From within? What was there in the heart
of Israel that set him so immeasurably apart from
other peoples? The question can have but one
answer. The laws of Israel are what they are,
they are ethically so far above those of Egypt
and Assyria, those by which modern society is
governed, because of the indwelling presence of
the Spirit of God in the heart of Israel. If in
any part of the Old Testament the diary of the
converse of heaven with earth is to be found, it
is surely — I had almost said supremely — to be
found in the Torah.
The laws of Israel came not from Egypt, nor
from Babylon, nor from any of the nations with
which Israel was brought in contact. It is im
possible to study them carefully, to compare them
with the laws and customs by which our modern
society is governed, and not to feel convinced
that they came direct frora God.
'¦^2 Ibid.

INDEX

Abraham: different from other
Chaldaeans, 5; his story pure
epic, 104.
Accuracy : aided by poetic
form, 31; folklore forms an
aid to, 40.
Accused; protection of, in
Torah, 365.
Acrostic poems, go.
Adad-Nirari III : aggressive
movements of, 137; his in
scription explains Old Testa
ment history, 140.
Agnosticism: no place for in
Hebrew Wisdom, 218; near
est approach to, zzj,
Ahab: ally of Benhadad at
Karkar, 121 ; breaks truce
with, 123.
Ahaziah: succeeds Ahab, 123;
" two years *' of narrative
parts . of years, 124.
Alien resident (" stranger ") :
his rights, 345; limitations,
346-
Allegorical interpretation, or
literary study of Old Testa
ment necessary alternatives, 9.
Animals: protected by Torah,
360.
Apek: battle of, 120.
Appendix: not practicable when
Old Testament was written,
20.
Arbitration: foreshadowed in
prophecy, 315; Hague Con
vention and Isaiah's prophecy,
ibid.
Arch: figure in Hebrew liter
ature, 80 ; explains construc
tion of language, ibid.
Army: standing, not kept in
Israel, 367; analogy with
United States, ibid.

Assyria : beginning of world-
empire of, 120; completes
conquest of Syria, 142.
Astrology: no part of Hebrew
religion, ^2.
Arabian Nights: their impor
tance in interpreting Old
Testament, 37.
Authorized Version: finest liter
ature in English language,
22 ; poetical passages not rec
ognized as such, 30.
Baal and Jehovah : the testing
on Carmel, 122.
Baalam story: a prose and
verse epic, 106; a literary
gem, ibid.; its construction
that of folklore, 107 ; story
unchanged by writer, ibid. ;
character of Balaam, io8.
Ballad lore: underlies much of
Genesis, 31, 33; poetic form
an aid to accuracy, 31, 34.
Benhadad II of Syria: alliance
with Ahab, I3i; murdered by
Hazael, 128.
Bible: its influence on style,
23.
Bildad: his lack of syrapathy,
275; bitter taunts of Job, 282;
platitudes as to God's great
ness, 287.
Black Obelisk : and Elisha
story, 116; and Shalmaneser,
117; inscription on, 119; com
pared with Moabite Stone,
126 ; other inscriptions and
Old Testament story fix dates
for Israel, 126, 127,
Bondm'an; status in Israel, 340;
rights, 342 ; injuries to, 343.
Book of the Wars of Jehovah,
33.
Bovary, Madame : striking les-

375

376

INDEX

son in sexual morality, 209;
properly condemned by French
authorities, ibid.
Canticles: its literary character,
158; various opinions con
cerning, 159; foundation of
fact not important, ibid.j its
ideal of love important, ibid.,
mystical significance not a lit
erary question, ibid. ; its re
frains, 162; characters in,
163: story outline, i63ff.;
analysis, 163—81; view justi
fied, 182.
Ceremonial laws; adapted to
conditions, 331; compared
with those of contemporary
nations, 332, ethical impor
tance of, ibid.
Certainty, spiritual: sought in
Job, 256; found, 296.
Chapter and verse divisions of
Old Testament faulty, 221.
Chief good in God himself, 254.
Children: rights of, 348.
Child spirit: cardinal principle
of Christ's kingdom, 28; per
vades Old Testament, 28; of
Israel, 49.
Chronology : not observed in
Elisha's story, 113; order of
story important, 114, 143 ;
anointing of Hazael, 127;
Shunamite, 132; Naaman,
138.
Codes of Torah: book of Cove
nant, 337; Little Book of,
ibid.; Holiness, 338; various
others, 338, 339.
Constitution of Hebrew state,
368; God its elected Sover
eign, 369; Judge or king
chosen by popular suffrage,
ibid.' tribal authority, ibid.;
two legislative assemblies, 370;
courts, 370 ; generalissimo,
ibid.; checks and balances, 371.
Conduct: tested by high stand
ard in Proverbs, 220.
Corruption, literary: guarded
against by folklore, 4 1 .
Cosmic idea : Tsrael*s conscious
ness of, found first in Gene
sis, 301; progressive through
out Old Testament, 302.
Couplet proverbs: folklore work
ed over, 224.

Covenant: Bo(Jk of a Mosaic
code, 337; Little Book of,
ibid.
Creation: myth, 52; story in
Genesis, chap, i ; is it mys
tical ? 52; is it Chaldaean
folklore? 32; compared with
Assyro - Babylonian creation-
tablets, 53ff. ; likeness and un
likeness, 54; neither myth nor
science, 54 ; essential differ
ences, 55; ei)ic poetry, 56;
differs in spirit from tablets,
57-
Creditor : not specially safe
guarded by Mosaic law, 353.
Crime: its punishment in Torah,
of four kinds, death, 362;
the others, 364.
Criminal laws of Torah: mar
velously humane, 362.
Culture: importance to scientific
study of Old Testament, vi.
Curse: significance of word in
Job, 267 note.

Dance: accompanied poetry, 68.
David: his story connecting link
between epic and history, 105;
partly romantic, ibid. ; and
Michal, 150 ; the Hebrew
Robin Hood and his Maid
Marian, 157.
Day: an objective reality to the
Hebrew, 269.
Death penalty: inflicted for five
classes of crime, 362.
Debt: in Mosaic code, 341; its
treatment, 341.
Debtor: laws made for his
protection, 353.
Deification of human being :
common in myth, never in
Old Testament, 58; Enoch an
example, 59.
Deutero-Isaiah : teaches the ne
cessity of a suffering and
obedient servant, 326.
Diligence: its economic impor
tance, 230.
Doxologies in Psalter, 90.
Dirge: favorite form of Hebrew
poetry, 69; book of, probably
lost, ibid.; metre recognizable,
70 ; nature among Semitic
people, ibid.

INDEX

377

Divorce: allowed, not enjoined,
355; made difficult, 356; ir
reparable, 356; in two cases
forbidden, 357, 358.
Domestic life; revealed by
Proverbs, 232.
Drama, Hebrew, 160; analogy
with Wagner opera, ibia.;
dramatic instinct of Hebrews,
1 60 ; differs from English and
Greek drama, ibid.; disregards
unity and sequence, 161.
Dramatic passages, many, 71.
Dragon: as Sun-myth, 63, 269
note.
Dynasty: idea foreign to David,
88.
Ecclesiastes : analysis of 242,
244, 245, 247, 248, 250, 251,
252, 253, 254; reflects on life
as a whole, 215; authorship
of, 236 ; immediate cause of,
237; charm of book, 238;
supposed incoherence of, ibid.;
relative date of, 238, note;
difficult of analysis, 238, note;
undervalued by Jews, 239;
compared with Ecclesiasticus,
ibid.; no reference to, in New
Testament, 240; literary
structure important, ibid.; a
search for the chief good,
ibid. ; not by methods of phi
losophy or logic, 241 ; sum
marized in epilogue, 255;
theoretical work, 256.
Economy: true and false, 231.
Editing: early attempt at, 226.
Edom : revolt of, 1 29.
Egypt: did its legislation influ
ence the Torah? 372.
Elihu : appears in Job, 291 ; his
character and apology, ibid. ;
offers himself as arbitrator
between God and Job, 291;
his argument broken off by
storm, 292.
Elijah : his story genuine folk
lore, 41; why, ibid.; his usual
retreat Carmel, 122; de
nounces Ahab, 123; 'letter to
Ahaziah, 124; letter to Joram
of Judah, 125; his translation,
ibid.; probable date of, 126.
Elkanah: his love for his wife,
147.
EHphaz: his view that God

never forsakes righteous, 271;
counsel from expediency, 272;
openly rebukes Job, 282 ; ar
gument frora expediency, ibid,
Elisha: his story not chrono
logical, 113; based on folk
lore, 114; light on story from
monuments, 115; and Gehazi,
119; his call, 121; length of
his service, 121; early prepa
ration, 121, 122; lived with
Elijah on Carmel, 122; re
ceives prophetic gift, 125;
intense patriotism, 126; value
of border experience, 127;
distrusts Joram of Judah, 127;
goes to Damascus, 127; sends
messenger to anoint king,
129; relations with kings of
Israel, 130; hope in Jehosha
phat, ibid. ; interest in extir
pation of Baal-worship, 130 ;
friendship with Shunamite
family, 132; generosity with
enemies, 135 ; lives in Sa
maria, 140 ; receives visit
from Joash, 141 ; connection
with world-movements, 143 ;
result of his service, 143; his
character, ibid.
Enlightenment, divine: central
fact of Hebrew utopia, 306.
Epic : definition, 14 ; importance
of method in Old Testament
history, 15 ; its history one,
94 ; two kinds of, 95 ; Old
Testament epic not a poem,
99 ; molded Hebrew national
character, 96; prophetic allu
sions to, 98; how differs from
other epics, 99; distinguishing
characteristic of Hebrew he
roes, ioi; message of, ibid.;
one prose and verse epic, 106;
national ideal shown in its
poems, 109 ; value of recog
nizing Old Testament epic,
112.
Epigrams : in Proverbs, 225.
Eponym calendar, 117.
Experience : Koheleth's search
for chief good through, 244.
Ezekiel: his utopia the contin
ual presence of God, 323 ;
metamorphosis of natural
world, 324.
Fable : in Old Testament, 44 ;
Jotham's, 45.

378

INDEX

Fact: of minor importance than
religious significance, ii> 39.
Family relationships, 232; sa
credness of, fostered by
Torah, 348.
Fatalism: not a Hebrew char
acteristic, 248; Koheleth nears
it, 251.
Fearlessness of Old Testament
writers, 51.
Festivals: a bond of sympathy
between classes, 371.
Figurative statements legitimate
in poetry, 36.
Folklore ; presence of, in Old
Testament, 28; product of
memory and imagination, 29;
much Old Testament narrative
folklore, 37f. ; mold of many
Old Testament stories, 40;
Balaam, Samson, ibid. ; its
¦forms a S"'^eguard against lit
erary corruption, 41 ; story
of Elijah, 42; its importance
in, 44; its protean forms in
Old Testament, 44; value as
a medium of high truth, 57.
Folk-song: in Proverbs, 226.
Footnote: impracticable in an
cient MSS., 19; illustrated by
Naaman story, ibid.
Forgiveness of God boundless,
192.
Fugitive slaves : their status,
343-
Gehazi: Elisha's servant, 156.
Gladness: justified by God's ex
istence, 245 ; because he is
master of law, 246; the gift
of God, 247, 248 ; found in
trust in God, 249 ; based on
sweetness of life, 252; and
on judgment of God, ibid.
God: Earliest Hebrew idea of
moral, 3; how different from
that of other peoples, 4; of
Hebrews supreme over all
gods, 28; nothing mythical in
Hebrew idea of, 60; in all
acts of Israel, 216; because
the foundation of all things,
217; his government just, 229;
his absolute sovereignty, 230;
problem of his character in
Job, 259; the problem of hu

manity, 260; his conduct chief
interest of author of Job,
268; must be just, since he
knows all, 279; the Judge of
the universe, 286; appeals to
Job by revealing himself, 293;
irony of his appeal, ibid;
the mystery of his govern
ment inexplicable to man,
294; hence also his charac
ter, 295; appeals for alliance
of Job, 295.
Goddess: no Hebrew word for,
61 and note.
Goethe : his view of Bible
study, 24.
Gomer: wife of Hosea, 189; a
type of Israel, i93ff.
Good : ultimately triumphant,
235.
Goodness: what certainty of,
259-
Government of Israel practically
a United States, 369.
Hammurabi Code: compared
with Torah, 328-373 passim;
influence upon, 372.
Harmonizing Genesis, chap, i,
and science gratuitous, 56.
Hazael: throws predatory troops
into^ Gilead, 128; raids Sa
maria, 133; consequent pov
erty of Israel, 134; plots frus
trated by Elisha, 135.
Heathen nations: have part in
Hebrew Utopia, 313.
Hebrew ideas of God: often
primitive, never superstitious,
60, no pantheism in, 61.
Hebrew MSS.: how written, 72;
their limitations, 17, 19.
Hebrew people: childlike char
acter of, 26; unscientific at
titude of, 27; an inspired
people, 218; degree of learn
ing of, 371.
Hebrew poetry : difference be
tween, and that of other peo
ples, 66; always religious,
though not always Christian,
ibid.; striking imagery of, 85.
Historical books: their true
character, 13, 14.
History and prophecy : differ-

INDEX

379

ence between, 12; epical char
acter of historic books, 14.
Hittite empire : Syria founded
on its ruins, ii5.
Honor; high sense of, cultivated
by Torah, 366.
Hosea: his life-tragedy historic,
188; its prophetic meaning,
1 89 ; his fidelity to his wife,
i93ff; brings him into deeper
sympathy with God, 199;
why his life-tragedy recorded,
200; his prophecy interprets
Israel's history in light of
God's love, 201 ; glimpse of
resurrection hope, 206 note;
his Utopian dream the return
of Israel to love and obedi
ence, 3nf.
Humanity: shown in Torah, 362.
Human nature : considered by
Koheleth, 247.
Humor: indicative of Israel's
child-spirit, 49; Samson, Gid
eon's historian, Micah story,
49.
Imagery distinguishes poetry
from prose, 85; very striking
in Hebrew poetry, ibid.; sim-
plicity_ of, ibid.; drawn from
ecclesiastical things, 86, and
arts of life, ibid. ; inanimate
objects, 86 ; personifications,
87.
Imagination: its place in his
toric books, 13.
Immortality: early idea of, not
personal, 213; no hope of in
Job's entreaty, 278.
Individual : unimportant until
late period, 212; and national,
distinction between, 216; rela
tionships and duties based
upon divine reality, ibid.
Individuality : strong sense of,
in Israel, 213; based on per-
ception of importance of race,
ibid.
Infidelity to marriage vow:
legislation concerning, 357-
Inscriptions: shed light on
Elisha story, 11 S-
Inspiration: self-evident in Old
Testament, 1 6 ; comes not
necessarily through medium of
words, ibirf.; of Old Testament

unique, 25; becomes more evi
dent through literary study,
62 ; not what commonly
thought, 91 ; impossible to
dogmatize concerning, 92; dis
covery of true character of,
great gain, 93.
Inspired : the Hebrew people,
218.
Interest: never to be taken from
brother-Hebrew, 353.
Isaac and Rebekah: their love-
story 147—9; idyllic features
of 151.
Isaiah: statesman and patriot,
his Utopian ideal, 312; con
ceived of world-history as a
whole, 314.
Israel: importance of his rela
tions witn nations, 5; and
Syria, peace between, 137;
his captivity inevitable after
defeat of Syria, 143; exiled,
not for loss, but blessing, 309.
Jacob: his story epical, 104;
and Rachel, their love-idyll,
147, 149, 154; life-long devo
tion, 155.
Jasher, Book of, 33.
Jehoahaz : succeeds Jehu, 136;
no zeal for religion, ibid. ;
troubles of his reign, 137; his
diminished array, 139; un
friendly relations with Elisha,
ibid,
Jehovah : God of Israel, his
character, 4 ; no confusion in
Hebrew raind as to his na
ture, 60; no myth about, ibid.;
and Baal, the testing on Car
mel, 1 22 ; his relation to
Israel typified by marriage,
186; the elected sovereign of
Israel, 337.
Jehu: anointed king of Israel,
129; his revolt, ibid.; rela
tions with Elisha, ibid.; state
craft, 131; its failure, 133 ;
his death, 136.
Jephthah: obedience to high
est impulse, 147.
Jeremiah: his large Utopian
ideal, 314; character of Israel
in, 320 ; the new covenant,
ibid.
Jeroboam II : was he the

38o

INDEX

"savior" of 2 Kings 13: 5?
140.
Jews: not geographically a sep
arate people, 2.
Jezebel ; annihilation of her de
scendants save one, 129.
Jezreel: prophetic significance
of narae, 190.
Joash: succeeds Jehoahaz, 141 ;
visits Elisha, ibid.; fails to
persevere against Syria, 142 ;
consequences, ibid.
Job, book of: speculative, 257 ;
its problera, 256 note, 259;
analysis of, 263, 269, 270,
282, 285, 291, 297; deep con
ception of the universe, 261 ;
is it historic? 262; prologue
in part a folk-tale, 264;
heavenly scenes the writer's,
ibid.; its deep significance,
269.
Job, the man : begins with no
doubt of God's moral char
acter, 266; maintains his
integrity, 273; anguish at im
putation of sin, ibid.; dread
of sin, 274; remonstrance with
God, ibid. ; awful fear that
God is not just, 275; asser
tion of innocence, 276 ; be
wilderment about God, ibid.;
no arguing with such a be
ing, 277 ; longs for a go-be
tween ibid.; challenges God
to convict him of sin, 280;
death a thought of hope, 281;
appeals to the God who is,
282; who is not his enemy,
283; recurrence of doubt, 284;
sees in God the fountain of
law, 286; confident of his
justice, ibid.; reasserts his in
nocence, ibid., 288; reviews his
case, 289 ; asks for search
ing test, 290 ; unable to an
swer God, 294 ; recognizes
alliance between God and
man, God and the universe,
29s; finds certainty in the
ineffable vision, 296 ; purpose
of his sufferings, 297 and
note; his victory sealed, 298;
significance of book, 298f.
Job's friends: their sympathy,
268; their secret conviction,
270.
Job's wife: a misunderstood
woman, 267 note.

Joel: his world-wide Utopian
dream, 324; universal inspira
tion, 325.
Joram of Israel: succeeds Aha
ziah, 125; death of, 129 ; re
lations with Elisha, 130.
Joram of Judah: Elijah's letter
to, 125.
Judge: function as generalis
simo 370.
Judges: pragmatic purpose of,
11; age of a heroic time, 98;
of Israel, their qualifications,
369.
Judgraent : iraportance in Eccle
siastes, 240; Hebrew delight
in, 246; an event hoped for,
-53; prevalence of idea in
Psalms, ibid.; a joy, 255.
Karkar: battle of, 120; Ahab
ally of Syria at, 121.
Kingdora of God: its seat the
earth, 307; see Utopia.
King: not ih place of God, the
generalissirao, 3 70.
Kings: author of, his search
for authorities, 115.
Koheleth: Hebrew name of Ec
clesiastes, 236; its meaning,
ibid., note ; _ authorship of,
236; not a philosophical pessi
mist, 239 ; his true attitude,
240 ; deep observation of life,
241 ; his pessimism, 248.
Labor: search for chief good
in, 245; and capital, Mosaic
legislation on, 339.
Land-ownership: principle of,
346; laws concerning, 347;
sabbatical and jubilee laws,
361; perhaps never kept, ibid.,
note.
Lamentation, poetical : carried
to extreme, 70.
Lamentations: central peak of,
80, note.
Language: fluid, 16. 107.
Law: joyful discovery of, in
nature, 224, 257; God the
fountain of, 276.
Law, natural: personified as
Wisdom, 214; joyful discov
ery of, 224; its inexorable
character discouraging, 243;

INDEX

381

is it stronger than God? ibid.;
afterward deemed cruel, 258;
its mystery, 261.
Laws : Mosaic, their permanent
value, 329 ; all classes of
moral, ibid.
Levites; portion with widow,
fatherless, and stranger, 351;
organization of, peculiarly
wise, 371.
Life: in itself good because God
in it, 245.
Lists of names: their character
of folklore, 38.
Literary: achievement and Bible
study, 23 ; composition, diffi
culties of, in early days, i6f. ;
in part mechanical, 16; im
proved raethods, ibid.; punctu
ation, 17; parenthesis, 19;
footnote, ibid.; appendix, 20;
parallelism, 21.
Literary: study of Old Testa
raent : influence of, upon pop
ular culture and refinement,
22.
Literature : early, mechanical
structure of, an aid to mem
ory, 38; Old Testament, hu
man element in, 16.
Lo-ammi: significance of name,
191.
Lo-ruhamah: significance of
name, igi; literal meaning of,
ibid., note.
Love: relation between God and
man, 146.
Love, divine: revealed in parts
by Old Testament love-stories,
145—183 ; human love a clue
to, 1 84 ; inspiration of all
that is best in humanity, 188;
unfailing hope that may be
based upon, 192; revealed
through huraan experience,
211.
Love relation: that between
God and man, 148; because
highest of all relations, 183;
long training necessary for
apprehension of this truth,
ibid.
Love-stories of Old Testament :
present tirae and _ circum
stances unsympathetic with
their study, 146 ; their sim

plicity and sanity, ibid. ; far
above their period, 148; pure
idylls, ibid.; no two alike, nor
lovers of sarae type, 149;
fine character presentation,
150.
Lowth: on prophecy, 39; dis
covered Old Testament paral
lelism, 72.
Malachi: his utopia requires a
divine model, 326; not con
summation, but true begin
ning of things, 327.
Man: his function in Hebrew
state, 354.
Manuscripts, Old Testament :
how written, 17.
Marital relations: high standard
of, 233.
Marriage relation: originally one
of protection and fidelity,
185; this the covenant idea,
ibid.; ideal raised by Hosea,
186; standing raetaphor of re
lation between Jehovah and'
Israel, r88; a symbolic rela
tion, 208 ; its influence upon
character of Israel, ibid.
Messiah: unrestricted meaning
of. 305.
Messianic idea: a development,
305.
Micah: his prophecy of peace,
318.
Military statutes of Torah, 367.
Mining operations; analogy with
search for wisdom, 289.
Miracle at Bethhoron, 35.
Mirth: Search for chief good
in, 244.
Moab: king of, tributary to
Ahab, 1 24 ; rebels against Is
rael, ibid.
Moabite Stone: and Elisha story,
116.
llonotheistic idea: first emerges
in epic story of Abraham,
102,
Monuments: light of, on Elisha
story, 115.
Morality: human, basis found in
relation to God. 217; national,
tone of, raisea by Proverbs,
220, 221.

382

INDEX

Mosaic law: and customs of
primitive peoples, 55; norm
of early laws of American
colonies, 333; contain all es
sential principles of liberty,
334 ; intimate association of
religions with moral \iie,ibid.;
basis, Israel's relation to Je
hovah, ibid.; not Jehovah's
unique godhead, 335 ; in ad
vance of any present system
of laws for women, 359.
Mosaic laws: all on same plane
of obligation, 330; progres
sive development of, ibid. ;
dates of various codes, 331
note ; crirainal laws a great
ethical advance on those of
other nations, 532; not irk-
sorae, 336; the ]oy and pride
of Israel, ibid.; obedience a
matter of free compact, ibid.
Mother: exalted position of,
232.
Mother-in-law: dignified charac
ter of relation, 156.
Musical forms; a clue to He
brew literature, 242 and note,
Myth: how treat it if found in
Old Testaraent, s^J sun-
myths, 54; moon-myth, its
seat, 61; difference between
it and poetry, 58; spiritual
treatraent of, in Old Testa
raent, 62.
Mythical animals, 62.
Naaman: cured of leprosy, 138;
whose general, 138.
Narrative, Old Testament: much
folklore, 30.
Nations : part of in Hebrew
Utopia, 313.
Natural law : dimly recognized
in Proverbs, 215 note; person
ified as Wisdom, 214; deemed
" vanity " by writer of Eccle
siastes, 215 ; its inexorable
character, 243, 248, is it
stronger than God ? ibid. ;
search for justifying theory
of, 245; does not bind God,
248.
Nature: myths in prophetic
books, 63 ; powers and proc
esses of, never deified, 61 ;
supremacy of Jehovah over,
64; its part in Hebrew utopia.

311; love of, shown in Torah,
361.
Negotiations : attempted before
war declared, 368.
Obadiah: his Utopian ideal, 325.
Obscurity of Old Testament ;
arises from lack of knowledge
of circumstances, 88; illus
trated by Ps. no, 89.
Ode of Deborah, 83.
Old Testament: called by Hume
" Jehovah's Diary," : ; what
it records, ibid.; its history an
organic unity, 2 ; demands
more than devotional read
ing, 6, or figurative interpre
tation, 7; allegorical interpre
tation a patristic principle, 8;
its Hterary character, 10; im
portance of literary study of,
ibid.- historic books in a sense
prophetic, 12.
Old Testament study: its gen
erally Ptolemaic character, 7;
method of figurative interpre
tation one of loss, 8; illumi
nated by comparative philology
and religions, ibid.; "reconcil
ing " statements a false meth
od, 9; no need of, when lit
erary character is understood,
I o ; important for enj oyment
of literature, 24.
Ordeal: why appeal to allowed
in one case, 359.
Oriental literature ; illustrative
of Old Testament, 38.
Orphans: laws concerning, 349.
Pain: its mystery first put into
words, 276.
Palestine: historic center of the
world, 3 ; essential factor in
promise to Abraham, 307; its
possession a means to Utopian
end. ibid.; logically lost when
Israel unfaithful, ibid.; its
restoration essential, 308, 310.
Pantheism: absent from Hebrew
idea of God, 61.
Parables: in Ecclesiastes, 252.
Paradise story: among various
peoples, 58; significant only in
Genesis, ibid.
Parallelism; a literary device of

INDEX

383

Hebrew writers, 21; cardinal
factor in poetic construction,
ibid.; its significance, ibid. ;
most obvious mark of Hebrew
poetry, 30 ; grew out of
movements of dance, 72;
simplest form of |syrametry
in words, 73; natural expres
sion of feeling, ibid.; no mo
notony in, ibid; six varieties,
73~77'f the last peculiarly
characteristic of Hebrew
raind, 78; explains puzzling
passages, 78, 79.
Parenthesis ; not understood
when Old Testament was
written, 19.
Pauperism : guarded against in
Torah, 352.
Peace; a feature of Hebrew
Utopia, 315; Micah's prophecy,
317.
Penalties of crime: four only,
362.
Perfect state: see Utopia.
Personifications; explain appar
ent anthropomorphic concep
tion of God, 87.
Pessimism of Koheleth not that
of modern philosophy, 237.
Poetic, raore likely to be true
than scientific, statement, 14,
Poetry : important to distin
guish between prose and, 35 ;
compared with myth, 58; rev
elation of national heart, 65;
first expression of thought,
ibid,; earliest form of litera
ture, ibid.; allied with reli
gion, 66; beautified all aspects
of Hebrew life, 67; much of
Bible in, 72 ; not discovered
till late, ibid. ; distinguished
from prose by imagery, 85.
Poetry, Hebrew: not like Euro
pean, 65; generally unrhymed,
ibid.; metre not yet fully
understood, 69 ; much of it
lost, ibid.; iraportant to under
stand circumstances of, 87 ;
enshrines genius of Hebrew
people, 92.
Polygamy: allowed, not sanc
tioned, 355 ; carefully regu
lated, 356.
Poor: relations of, presupposed

in Torah, 350; ransom money
of, same as that of rich, 353.
Poverty: never a settled condi
tion, 352.
Prediction: why its failure fos
tered hope, 303.
Prisoners of war, 344.
Profit : the key to Ecclesiastes,
240; attempt to find it in nat
ural law, 244; none in cosmic
order, 245; found in fulfil
ment of duty, 247.
Property laws in Torah, 366.
Prophecy: its primary purpose,
12 ; rauch of it refers not to
Messiah, but to kingdora of
God, 307.
Prophet: changed function of,
190; Hke unto Moses, original
significance, 306.
Prose folklore : in Old Testa
ment, 37; mechanical struc
ture of, 38.
Prosperity: a token of God's
approval, 231.
Protean forms of Hebrew folk
lore, 44.
Proverb: a Hterary form, 22; a
forra of folklore, 45—6; not
to be confounded with aphor
isms and epigrams of Prov
erbs, 47.
Proverbs : a book of wisdom,
214; vague emergence of idea
of natural law, ibid. ; writers
saw life as a series of events,
215; a practical search for
good, 216; takes ceremonial
worship for granted without
mentioning, 218; recognizes,
but does not rest upon, proph
ecy, ibid.; its utilitarianism
exalted by reverence, 219; its
moral value, ibid. ; , practical
value, ibid.; high ethical stand
ard, 220; analysis, 221, 222;
joy of writer in thought of
natural law, 224; appears
fragmentary, 228 ; no diffi
culty to oriental mind, ibid;
unity of, 229; God conscious
ness always latent, ibid. ; its
view of domestic life, 232 ;
practical, 256.
Providence: the escape from

384

INDEX

natural law, 238; doctrine of,
still held, 258.
Psalms: Utopian ideal of, 325.
Psalter: analysis of, 90.
Ptolemaic character of most
Old Testament sfudy, 3.
Punctuation; more modern than
Old Testament, 17.
Puns: numerous in Old Testa
ment, 50; generally, but not
always, lost in translation,
ibid.
Quotation marks: absence of,
in Old Testament, 17; at
tempts of translators to make
good, 18.
Ramoth in Gilead; siege of, 129.
Ransom money of poor and
rich the same, 353,
Reality, divine: pervading con
sciousness of, 216, 217.
Rebekah: fearless and stout
hearted, 153 ; understood
something of her high calling,
ibid.
Recitative: much in Old Testa
ment narrative, 32.
Refrain : characterizes ballad
verse, 76.
Religion; chief interest of all
peoples, 3 ; essential character
istic of Hebrew poetry, 67.
Religions comparative ; illumines
Old Testament, 8, g.
Religious system of a people:
what it is, 5.
Remnant ; the hope of Israel,
305. 306.
Renounce; significance of word
in Job, 277 note.
Repentance; hope in, 207; for
ever possible in relation to
God, 210.
Restitution in Torah, 364.
Retaliation in Torah, 365.
Reverence: an essential of sci
ence and philosophy, 219.
Resurrection: an illustration of
a higher truth, 283, 284.
Rhythm: distinguishes prophetic
poetry, 83; Hebrew, natural,
84.

Riches; a token of God's favor,
231; yet subordinated to right
conduct, ibid.
Riddles; in Old Testament, 43;
in Proverbs, 227.
Ruth: a pastoral love-story, 155;
author's interest in folklore,
156.
Sacred; not divided from secu
lar in Old Testament, 67,
216.
Samsi-Adad : succeeds Shalman
eser II, 134; never went
westward, 135.
Sanitary laws, 367.
Sarcasm; Jotham's, 45; father of
Gideon's, ibid.; Elijah's, ibid.;
characteristic of Hebrew folk
lore, 47; of book of Job, 279.
Satan : his character in Job,
264 ; his function, 265 ; his
doubt of Job a reflection upon
God, 265 note.
Servant of Jehovah: equivalent
to Messiah, 305; the remnant,
306; suffering and perfectly
obedient the ideal, 326.
Sevens: scherae of, characteris
tic of Hebrew modes of
thought, 71.
Sexual morality: treated by
modern authors, 209 ; by
prophets of Israel, 210.
Sexual immorality: not preva
lent in Israel, 234.
Shalmaneser: and Black Obe
lisk, 117; in contact with He
brew history, ibid.; inscription
on Black ObeHsk, 119; last
invasion of Syria, 132; dies,
134-
Shelley: his biblical quotations,
Shelomith: her love-story a
draraa, 158.
Slavery: in Mosaic legislation,
339.
Social duty on religious basis,
230.
Solomon: in Canticles, 166-80;
personality assumed by writer
of Ecclesiastes, 244.
Song of Solomon: see Canticles,
Song of Songs: most perfectly

INDEX

385

meets demand of heart for
self-expression, 147.
Sonnet; structure of Hebrew,
222.
Sonnets: first book of Proverbs
a collection of, 222; riddle
225.
Strophe and antistrophe, 83.
Sun: standing still, 35, 37.
Sun myths : ferry-boat, 54 ;
dragon, 63.
Superstition: in practices of
primitive peoples, 59; absent
in Old Testament, ibid.
Syrian kingdom : founded on
ruins of Hittite erapire, 118;
help of, invoked alternately
by Israel and Judah, ibid;
Judah and Israel combine
against, ibid.
Taunt-songs: classic expression
of Hebrew sarcasm, 48.
Theocracy: in a sense a correct
term, 369,
Tithes: their destination, 351.
Torah : the Mosaic laws, 328,
329 ; its rigorous character,
362; an inspired body of
laws, 373,
Tribe; the social unit in Israel,
212.
Trilogy; working out spiritual
problem of humanity, 239 and
note.
Truth; and poetry not anti
thetic, 13; and scientific state
ment may be, 14.
Unfortunate classes : humane
legislation for, 349.
Unity : idea first came ^ to He
brews, loi; taught In epic,
102; God its source, 217.
Universe, harmonious: a^ wit
ness to immutable basis of
goodness, 294.
Unrest, moral: characteristic of
Hebrew progress, 303-
Utilitarianism of Proverbs en
nobled by reverence, 219.
Utopia, Hebrew: moral purpose
01, 303 ; equivalent to mes
sianic kingdom, 304 1 always

progressive idea, ibid. ; hope
of, centered first in nation,
later in a person, ibid.; the
remnant, 305; divine enlight
enment its central fact, 306;
ideal of perfect state, 307;
Palestine its seat, ibid.; a
blessing to the world, 309; de
velopment of idea, Amos,
309*. ; Hosea, 311; Isaiah,
312 ; Jeremiah, 313; Zepha
niah, 319; Ezekiel, 323; Joel,
324; Obadiah, 325; Psalmists,
325.
Vanity: Koheleth's view of nat
ural law, 242.
Wars of Jehovah, book of, 33.
Widows: laws concerning, 349.
Wisdom: concerned with rela
tions of man with man, 217;
no room for agnosticism, 218;
its secret, 219; daring and
sublime personification, 223 ;
wherein it is good, 250; its fu
tility, 251.
Wisdom literature: a late prod
uct, 213; much of in Apocry
pha, 213; canonical books of,
214; a link between Hebrew
and other literatures, 235;
the bridge between paganism
and Judaism, 236; unique in
conception of relation of
physical universe to God,
257-
Wise, the : influential from
early days, 213; these not
writers, ibid. ; their utter
ances collected at a late pe
riod, ibid.
Woman: her high status in
Israel, 232, 233; religious
system did not suffer by over
looking, 234 ; advanced char
acter of Mosaic legislation
concerning, 353; industrially
and politically on level with
raan, 3 54 ; reason for, ibid. ;
interests in sexual relations
pecuHarly safeguarded, 355 ;
no sentiraentallty in this, 358;
Mosaic code in advance of
any present system, 359.
Women: high rank in Israel,
147 ; shown in prophetic in
vective, 184 ; responsibility

386

INDEX

of, ibid.; their sins those of
freedom, 185; captives in
war, humane legislation for,
358.
Zechariah : pictures Messiah as
man of peace, 320 ; in shep
herd character, 321 ; his Uto
pia, ibid.
Zephaniah ; feature of his Uto

pia the blotting out of sins,
319.
Zophar, friend of Job; a pattern
man, 278; accuses Job of sin,
ibid. ; his counsel of expe
diency, ibid.; his contemptuous
sarcasm, 284 ; contends that
only wicked are punished,
288 ; search for wisdom un
der analogy of mining, 289.

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