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Title: The Expositor's Bible; The Book of the Twelve Prophets, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Author: Smith, George Adam
Language: English
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Kevin Cathcart, Emeritus Professor of Near Eastern
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Transcriber’s notes
This e-text includes Greek characters, Hebrew characters, uncommon
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also need to change the default font.
A small number of obvious typos have been corrected.
The spelling and punctuation of the book have not been changed.
The footnotes have been renumbered from 1 to 1,560. Each footnote can
be found at the end of the chapter in which it is flagged.
It is clear from the context that some Hebrew letters are missing from
Section 2 of Chapter VI of the book. These letters, enclosed in square
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An expression such as A^{B} is used in this text to represent A
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE EXPOSITOR’S BIBLE
EDITED BY THE REV.
W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
_Editor of “The Expositor”_
THE BOOK OF THE TWELVE PROPHETS
VOL. II.—ZEPHANIAH, NAHUM, HABAKKUK, OBADIAH,
HAGGAI, ZECHARIAH I.—VIII., “MALACHI,” JOEL,
“ZECHARIAH” IX.—XIV. AND JONAH
BY
GEORGE ADAM SMITH, D.D., LL.D.
NEW YORK
A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON
51 EAST TENTH STREET
1898
THE EXPOSITOR’S BIBLE.
_Crown 8vo, cloth, price $1.50 each vol._
FIRST SERIES, 1887-8.
Colossians.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D.
St. Mark.
By Very Rev. the Bishop of Derry.
Genesis.
By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
1 Samuel.
By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
2 Samuel.
By the same Author.
Hebrews.
By Principal T. C. EDWARDS, D.D.
SECOND SERIES, 1888-9.
Galatians.
By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
The Pastoral Epistles.
By Rev A. PLUMMER, D.D.
Isaiah I.—XXXIX.
By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. I.
The Book of Revelation.
By Prof. W. MILLIGAN, D.D.
1 Corinthians
By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
The Epistles of St. John.
By Most Rev. the Archbishop of Armagh.
THIRD SERIES, 1889-90.
Judges and Ruth.
By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
Jeremiah.
By Rev. C. J. BALL, M.A.
Isaiah XL.—LXVI.
By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. II.
St. Matthew.
By Rev. J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D.
Exodus.
By Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.
St. Luke.
By Rev. H. BURTON, M.A.
FOURTH SERIES, 1890-91.
Ecclesiastes.
By Rev. SAMUEL COX, D.D.
St. James and St. Jude.
By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
Proverbs.
By Rev. R. F. HORTON, D.D.
Leviticus.
By Rev. S. H. KELLOGG, D.D.
The Gospel of St. John.
By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. I.
The Acts of the Apostles.
By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. I.
FIFTH SERIES, 1891-2.
The Psalms.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. I.
1 and 2 Thessalonians.
By JAMES DENNEY, D.D.
The Book of Job.
By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
Ephesians.
By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
The Gospel of St. John.
By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. II.
The Acts of the Apostles.
By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. II.
SIXTH SERIES, 1892-3.
1 Kings.
By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
Philippians.
By Principal RAINY, D.D.
Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.
By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
Joshua.
By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
The Psalms.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. II.
The Epistles of St. Peter.
By Prof. RAWSON LUMBY, D.D.
SEVENTH SERIES, 1893-4.
2 Kings.
By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
Romans.
By H. C. G. MOULE, M.A., D.D.
The Books of Chronicles.
By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A.
2 Corinthians.
By JAMES DENNEY, D.D.
Numbers.
By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
The Psalms.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. III.
EIGHTH SERIES, 1895-6.
Daniel.
By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
The Book of Jeremiah.
By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A.
Deuteronomy.
By Prof. ANDREW HARPER, B.D.
The Song of Solomon and Lamentations.
By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
Ezekiel.
By Prof. JOHN SKINNER, M.A.
The Book of the Twelve Prophets.
By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Two Vols
THE BOOK
OF
THE TWELVE PROPHETS
COMMONLY CALLED THE MINOR
BY
GEORGE ADAM SMITH, D.D., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF HEBREW AND OLD TESTAMENT EXEGESIS
FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW
_IN TWO VOLUMES_
VOL. II.—ZEPHANIAH, NAHUM, HABAKKUK, OBADIAH,
HAGGAI, ZECHARIAH I.—VIII., “MALACHI,” JOEL,
“ZECHARIAH” IX.—XIV. AND JONAH
_WITH HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL INTRODUCTIONS_
NEW YORK
A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON
51 EAST TENTH STREET
1898
PREFACE
The first volume on the Twelve Prophets dealt with the three who
belonged to the Eighth Century: Amos, Hosea and Micah. This second
volume includes the other nine books arranged in chronological order:
Zephaniah, Nahum and Habakkuk, of the Seventh Century; Obadiah, of the
Exile; Haggai, Zechariah i.—viii., “Malachi” and Joel, of the Persian
Period, 538—331; “Zechariah” ix.—xiv. and the Book of Jonah, of the
Greek Period, which began in 332, the date of Alexander’s Syrian
campaign.
The same plan has been followed as in Volume I. A historical
introduction is offered to each period. To each prophet are given,
first a chapter of critical introduction, and then one or more chapters
of exposition. A complete translation has been furnished, with critical
and explanatory notes. All questions of date and of text, and nearly
all of interpretation, have been confined to the introductions and
the notes, so that those who consult the volume only for expository
purposes will find the exposition unencumbered by the discussion of
technical points.
The necessity of including within one volume so many prophets,
scattered over more than three centuries, and each of them requiring
a separate introduction, has reduced the space available for the
practical application of their teaching to modern life. But this is the
less to be regretted, that the contents of the nine books before us
are not so applicable to our own day, as we have found their greater
predecessors to be. On the other hand, however, they form a more varied
introduction to Old Testament Criticism, while, by the long range of
time which they cover, and the many stages of religion to which they
belong, they afford a wider view of the development of prophecy. Let us
look for a little at these two points.
1. To Old Testament Criticism these books furnish valuable
introduction—some of them, like Obadiah, Joel and “Zechariah” ix.—xiv.,
by the great variety of opinion that has prevailed as to their dates
or their relation to other prophets with whom they have passages in
common; some, like Zechariah and “Malachi,” by their relation to the
Law, in the light of modern theories of the origin of the latter; and
some, like Joel and Jonah, by the question whether we are to read them
as history, or as allegories of history, or as apocalypse. That is to
say, these nine books raise, besides the usual questions of genuineness
and integrity, every other possible problem of Old Testament
Criticism. It has, therefore, been necessary to make the critical
introductions full and detailed. The enormous differences of opinion
as to the dates of some must start the suspicion of arbitrariness,
unless there be included in each case a history of the development of
criticism, so as to exhibit to the English reader the principles and
the evidence of fact upon which that criticism is based. I am convinced
that what is chiefly required just now by the devout student of the
Bible is the opportunity to judge for himself how far Old Testament
Criticism is an adult science; with what amount of reasonableness it
has been prosecuted; how gradually its conclusions have been reached,
how jealously they have been contested; and how far, amid the many
varieties of opinion which must always exist with reference to facts
so ancient and questions so obscure, there has been progress towards
agreement upon the leading problems. But, besides the accounts of past
criticism given in this volume, the reader will find in each case an
independent attempt to arrive at a conclusion. This has not always
been successful. A number of points have been left in doubt; and even
where results have been stated with some degree of positiveness, the
reader need scarcely be warned (after what was said in the Preface to
Vol. I.) that many of these must necessarily be provisional. But, in
looking back from the close of this work upon the discussions which
it contains, I am more than ever convinced of the extreme probability
of most of the conclusions. Among these are the following: that the
correct interpretation of Habakkuk is to be found in the direction of
the position to which Budde’s ingenious proposal has been carried on
pages 123 ff. with reference to Egypt; that the most of Obadiah is to
be dated from the sixth century; that “Malachi” is an anonymous work
from the eve of Ezra’s reforms; that Joel follows “Malachi”; and that
“Zechariah” ix.—xiv. has been rightly assigned by Stade to the early
years of the Greek Period. I have ventured to contest Kosters’ theory
that there was no return of Jewish exiles under Cyrus, and am the more
disposed to believe his strong argument inconclusive, not only upon a
review of the reasons I have stated in Chap. XVI., but on this ground
also, that many of its chief adherents in this country and Germany have
so modified it as virtually to give up its main contention. I think,
too, there can be little doubt as to the substantial authenticity of
Zephaniah ii. (except the verses on Moab and Ammon) and iii. 1-13, of
Habakkuk ii. 5 ff., and of the whole of Haggai; or as to the ungenuine
character of the lyric piece in Zechariah ii. and the intrusion of
“Malachi” ii. 11-13_a_. On these and smaller points the reader will
find full discussion at the proper places.
[I may here add a word or two upon some of the critical conclusions
reached in Vol. I., which have been recently contested. The student
will find strong grounds offered by Canon Driver in his _Joel and
Amos_[1] for the authenticity of those passages in Amos which,
following other critics, I regarded or suspected as not authentic.
It makes one diffident in one’s opinions when Canon Driver supports
Professors Kuenen and Robertson Smith on the other side. But on a
survey of the case I am unable to feel that even they have removed
what they admit to be “forcible” objections to the authorship by Amos
of the passages in question. They seem to me to have established not
more than a possibility that the passages are authentic; and on the
whole I still feel that the probability is in the other direction. If
I am right, then I think that the date of the apostrophes to Jehovah’s
creative power which occur in the Book of Amos, and the reference to
astral deities in chap. v. 27, may be that which I have suggested
on pages 8 and 9 of this volume. Some critics have charged me with
inconsistency in denying the authenticity of the epilogue to Amos while
defending that of the epilogue to Hosea. The two cases, as my arguments
proved, are entirely different. Nor do I see any reason to change
the conclusions of Vol. I. upon the questions of the authenticity of
various parts of Micah.]
The text of the nine prophets treated in this volume has presented even
more difficulties than that of the three treated in Vol. I. And these
difficulties must be my apology for the delay of this volume.
2. But the critical and textual value of our nine books is far exceeded
by the historical. Each exhibits a development of Hebrew prophecy of
the greatest interest. From this point of view, indeed, the volume
might be entitled “The Passing of the Prophet.” For throughout our nine
books we see the spirit and the style of the classic prophecy of Israel
gradually dissolving into other forms of religious thought and feeling.
The clear start from the facts of the prophet’s day, the ancient truths
about Jehovah and Israel, and the direct appeal to the conscience of
the prophet’s contemporaries, are not always given, or when given
are mingled, coloured and warped by other religious interests, both
present and future, which are even powerful enough to shake the
ethical absolutism of the older prophets. With Nahum and Obadiah the
ethical is entirely missed in the presence of the claims—and we cannot
deny that they were natural claims—of the long-suffering nation’s
hour of revenge upon her heathen tyrants. With Zephaniah prophecy,
still austerely ethical, passes under the shadow of apocalypse; and
the future is solved, not upon purely historical lines, but by the
intervention of “supernatural” elements. With Habakkuk the ideals of
the older prophets encounter the shock of the facts of experience: we
have the prophet as sceptic. Upon the other margin of the Exile, Haggai
and Zechariah (i.—viii.), although they are as practical as any of
their predecessors, exhibit the influence of the exilic developments
of ritual, angelology and apocalypse. God appears further off from
Zechariah than from the prophets of the eighth century, and in need
of mediators, human and superhuman. With Zechariah the priest has
displaced the prophet, and it is very remarkable that no place is
found for the latter beside _the two sons of oil_, the political and
priestly heads of the community, who, according to the Fifth Vision,
stand in the presence of God and between them feed the religious life
of Israel. Nearly sixty years later “Malachi” exhibits the working of
Prophecy within the Law, and begins to employ the didactic style of
the later Rabbinism. Joel starts, like any older prophet, from the
facts of his own day, but these hurry him at once into apocalypse; he
calls, as thoroughly as any of his predecessors, to repentance, but
under the imminence of the Day of the Lord, with its “supernatural”
terrors, he mentions no special sin and enforces no single virtue. The
civic and personal ethics of the earlier prophets are absent. In the
Greek Period, the oracles now numbered from the ninth to the fourteenth
chapters of the Book of Zechariah repeat to aggravation the exulting
revenge of Nahum and Obadiah, without the strong style or the hold upon
history which the former exhibits, and show us prophecy still further
enwrapped in apocalypse. But in the Book of Jonah, though it is parable
and not history, we see a great recovery and expansion of the best
elements of prophecy. God’s character and Israel’s true mission to the
world are revealed in the spirit of Hosea and of the Seer of the Exile,
with much of the tenderness, the insight, the analysis of character and
even the humour of classic prophecy. These qualities raise the Book of
Jonah, though it is probably the latest of our Twelve, to the highest
rank among them. No book is more worthy to stand by the side of Isaiah
xl.—lv.; none is nearer in spirit to the New Testament.
All this gives unity to the study of prophets so far separate in time,
and so very distinct in character, from each other. From Zephaniah
to Jonah, or over a period of three centuries, they illustrate the
dissolution of Prophecy and its passage into other forms of religion.
The scholars, to whom every worker in this field is indebted, are named
throughout the volume. I regret that Nowack’s recent commentary on the
Minor Prophets (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht) reached me too late
for use (except in footnotes) upon the earlier of the nine prophets.
GEORGE ADAM SMITH.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cambridge Bible for Schools, 1897
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
PAGE
PREFACE v
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES _Facing p. 1_ in Volume I
_INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETS OF
THE SEVENTH CENTURY_
CHAP.
I. THE SEVENTH CENTURY BEFORE CHRIST 3
1. REACTION UNDER MANASSEH AND AMON (695?—639).
2. THE EARLY YEARS OF JOSIAH (639—625): JEREMIAH
AND ZEPHANIAH.
3. THE REST OF THE CENTURY (625—586): THE
FALL OF NINIVEH; NAHUM AND HABAKKUK.
_ZEPHANIAH_
II. THE BOOK OF ZEPHANIAH 35
III. THE PROPHET AND THE REFORMERS 46
ZEPHANIAH i.—ii. 3.
IV. NINIVE DELENDA 61
ZEPHANIAH ii. 4-15.
V. SO AS BY FIRE 67
ZEPHANIAH iii.
_NAHUM_
VI. THE BOOK OF NAHUM 77
1. THE POSITION OF ELḲÔSH.
2. THE AUTHENTICITY OF CHAP. i.
3. THE DATE OF CHAPS. ii. AND iii.
VII. THE VENGEANCE OF THE LORD 90
NAHUM i.
VIII. THE SIEGE AND FALL OF NINIVEH 96
NAHUM ii. AND iii.
_HABAḲḲUḲ_
IX. THE BOOK OF HABAKKUK 115
1. CHAP. i. 2—ii. 4 (OR 8).
2. CHAP. ii. 5-20.
3. CHAP. iii.
X. THE PROPHET AS SCEPTIC 129
HABAKKUK i.—ii. 4.
XI. TYRANNY IS SUICIDE 143
HABAKKUK ii. 5-20.
XII. “IN THE MIDST OF THE YEARS” 149
HABAKKUK iii.
_OBADIAH_
XIII. THE BOOK OF OBADIAH 163
XIV. EDOM AND ISRAEL 177
OBADIAH 1-21.
_INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETS OF
THE PERSIAN PERIOD_
(539—331 B.C.)
XV. ISRAEL UNDER THE PERSIANS 187
XVI. FROM THE RETURN FROM BABYLON TO THE
BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE (536—516 B.C.) 198
WITH A DISCUSSION OF PROFESSOR KOSTERS’ THEORY.
_HAGGAI_
XVII. THE BOOK OF HAGGAI 225
XVIII. HAGGAI AND THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE 234
Haggai i., ii.
1. THE CALL TO BUILD (CHAP. i.).
2. COURAGE, ZERUBBABEL! COURAGE, JEHOSHUA AND
ALL THE PEOPLE! (CHAP. ii. 1-9).
3. THE POWER OF THE UNCLEAN (CHAP. ii. 10-19).
4. THE REINVESTMENT OF ISRAEL’S HOPE (CHAP. ii.
20-23).
_ZECHARIAH_
(_I.—VIII._)
XIX. THE BOOK OF ZECHARIAH (I.—VIII.) 255
XX. ZECHARIAH THE PROPHET 264
ZECHARIAH i. 1-6, ETC.; EZRA v. 1, vi. 14.
XXI. THE VISIONS OF ZECHARIAH 273
ZECHARIAH i. 7—vi.
1. THE INFLUENCES WHICH MOULDED THE VISIONS.
2. GENERAL FEATURES OF THE VISIONS.
3. EXPOSITION OF THE SEVERAL VISIONS:
THE FIRST: THE ANGEL-HORSEMEN (i. 7-17).
THE SECOND: THE FOUR HORNS AND THE FOUR
SMITHS (i. 18-21 ENG.).
THE THIRD: THE CITY OF PEACE (ii. 1-5 ENG.).
THE FOURTH: THE HIGH PRIEST AND THE SATAN (iii.).
THE FIFTH: THE TEMPLE CANDLESTICK AND THE
TWO OLIVE-TREES (iv.).
THE SIXTH: THE WINGED VOLUME (v. 1-4).
THE SEVENTH: THE WOMAN IN THE BARREL (v. 5-11).
THE EIGHTH: THE CHARIOTS OF THE FOUR WINDS (vi. 1-8).
THE RESULT OF THE VISIONS (vi. 9-15).
XXII. THE ANGELS OF THE VISIONS 310
ZECHARIAH i. 7—vi. 8.
XXIII. “THE SEED OF PEACE” 320
ZECHARIAH vii., viii.
“_MALACHI_”
XXIV. THE BOOK OF “MALACHI” 331
XXV. FROM ZECHARIAH TO “MALACHI” 341
XXVI. PROPHECY WITHIN THE LAW 348
“MALACHI” i.—iv. (ENG.).
1. GOD’S LOVE FOR ISRAEL AND HATRED OF EDOM (i. 2-5).
2. “HONOUR THY FATHER” (i. 6-14).
3. THE PRIESTHOOD OF KNOWLEDGE (ii. 1-9).
4. THE CRUELTY OF DIVORCE (ii. 10-16).
5. “WHERE IS THE GOD OF JUDGMENT?” (ii. 17—iii. 5).
6. REPENTANCE BY TITHES (iii. 6-12).
7. THE JUDGMENT TO COME (iii. 13—iv. 2 ENG.).
8. THE RETURN OF ELIJAH (iv. 3-5 ENG.).
_JOEL_
XXVII. THE BOOK OF JOEL 375
1. THE DATE OF THE BOOK.
2. THE INTERPRETATION OF THE BOOK.
3. STATE OF THE TEXT AND THE STYLE OF THE BOOK.
XXVIII. THE LOCUSTS AND THE DAY OF THE LORD 398
JOEL i.—ii. 17.
XXIX. PROSPERITY AND THE SPIRIT 418
JOEL ii. 18-32 (ENG.).
1. THE RETURN OF PROSPERITY (ii. 19-27).
2. THE OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRIT (ii. 28-32).
XXX. THE JUDGMENT OF THE HEATHEN 431
JOEL iii. (ENG.).
_INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETS OF
THE GRECIAN PERIOD_
(FROM 331 ONWARDS)
XXXI. ISRAEL AND THE GREEKS 439
“_ZECHARIAH_”
(_IX.—XIV._)
XXXII. “ZECHARIAH” IX.—XIV. 449
XXXIII. THE CONTENTS OF “ZECHARIAH” IX.—XIV. 463
1. THE COMING OF THE GREEKS (ix. 1-8).
2. THE PRINCE OF PEACE (ix. 9-12).
3. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE GREEKS (ix. 13-17).
4. AGAINST THE TERAPHIM AND SORCERERS (x. 1, 2).
5. AGAINST EVIL SHEPHERDS (x. 3-12).
6. WAR UPON THE SYRIAN TYRANTS (xi. 1-3).
7. THE REJECTION AND MURDER OF THE GOOD
SHEPHERD (xi. 4-17, xiii. 7-9).
8. JUDAH _versus_ JERUSALEM (xii. 1-7).
9. FOUR RESULTS OF JERUSALEM’S DELIVERANCE
(xii. 8—xiii. 6).
10. JUDGMENT OF THE HEATHEN AND SANCTIFICATION
OF JERUSALEM (xiv.).
_JONAH_
XXXIV. THE BOOK OF JONAH 493
1. THE DATE OF THE BOOK.
2. THE CHARACTER OF THE BOOK.
3. THE PURPOSE OF THE BOOK.
4. OUR LORD’S USE OF THE BOOK.
5. THE UNITY OF THE BOOK.
XXXV. THE GREAT REFUSAL 514
JONAH i.
XXXVI. THE GREAT FISH AND WHAT IT MEANS—THE PSALM 523
JONAH ii.
XXXVII. THE REPENTANCE OF THE CITY 529
JONAH iii.
XXXVIII. ISRAEL’S JEALOUSY OF JEHOVAH 536
JONAH iv.
INDEX OF PROPHETS 543
_INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY_
CHAPTER I
_THE SEVENTH CENTURY BEFORE CHRIST_
The three prophets who were treated in the first volume of this work
belonged to the eighth century before Christ: if Micah lived into the
seventh his labours were over by 675. The next group of our twelve,
also three in number, Zephaniah, Nahum and Habakkuk, did not appear
till after 630. To make our study continuous[2] we must now sketch the
course of Israel’s history between.
In another volume of this series,[3] some account was given of the
religious progress of Israel from Isaiah and the Deliverance of
Jerusalem in 701 to Jeremiah and the Fall of Jerusalem in 587. Isaiah’s
strength was bent upon establishing the inviolableness of Zion. Zion,
he said, should not be taken, and the people, though cut to their
roots, should remain planted in their own land, the stock of a noble
nation in the latter days. But Jeremiah predicted the ruin both of City
and Temple, summoned Jerusalem’s enemies against her in the name of
Jehovah, and counselled his people to submit to them. This reversal
of the prophetic ideal had a twofold reason. In the first place the
moral condition of Israel was worse in 600 B.C. than it had been in
700; another century had shown how much the nation needed the penalty
and purgation of exile. But secondly, however the inviolableness of
Jerusalem had been required in the interests of pure religion in 701,
religion had now to show that it was independent even of Zion and of
Israel’s political survival. Our three prophets of the eighth century
(as well as Isaiah himself) had indeed preached a gospel which implied
this, but it was reserved to Jeremiah to prove that the existence of
state and temple was not indispensable to faith in God, and to explain
the ruin of Jerusalem, not merely as a well-merited penance, but as
the condition of a more spiritual intercourse between Jehovah and His
people.
It is our duty to trace the course of events through the seventh
century, which led to this change of the standpoint of prophecy, and
which moulded the messages especially of Jeremiah’s contemporaries,
Zephaniah, Nahum and Habakkuk. We may divide the century into three
periods: _First_, that of the Reaction and Persecution under Manasseh
and Amon, from 695 or 690 to 639, during which prophecy was silent or
anonymous; _Second_, that of the Early Years of Josiah, 639 to 625,
near the end of which we meet with the young Jeremiah and Zephaniah;
_Third_, the Rest of the Century, 625 to 600, covering the Decline and
Fall of Niniveh, and the prophets Nahum and Habakkuk, with an addition
carrying on the history to the Fall of Jerusalem in 587—6.
1. REACTION UNDER MANASSEH AND AMON (695?—639).
Jerusalem was delivered in 701, and the Assyrians kept away from
Palestine for twenty-three years.[4]
Judah had peace, and Hezekiah was free to devote his latter days
to the work of purifying the worship of his people. What he exactly
achieved is uncertain. The historian imputes to him the removal of the
high places, the destruction of all Maççeboth and Asheras, and of the
brazen serpent.[5] That his measures were drastic is probable from
the opinions of Isaiah, who was their inspiration, and proved by the
reaction which they provoked when Hezekiah died. The _removal_ of the
high places and the concentration of the national worship within the
Temple would be the more easy that the provincial sanctuaries had been
devastated by the Assyrian invasion, and that the shrine of Jehovah was
glorified by the raising of the siege of 701.
While the first of Isaiah’s great postulates for the future, the
inviolableness of Zion, had been fulfilled, the second, the reign of a
righteous prince in Israel, seemed doomed to disappointment. Hezekiah
died early in the seventh century,[6] and was succeeded by his son
Manasseh, a boy of twelve, who appears to have been captured by the
party whom his father had opposed. The few years’ peace—peace in
Israel was always dangerous to the health of the higher religion—the
interests of those who had suffered from the reforms, the inevitable
reaction which a rigorous puritanism provokes—these swiftly reversed
the religious fortunes of Israel. Isaiah’s and Micah’s predictions of
the final overthrow of Assyria seemed falsified, when in 681 the more
vigorous Asarhaddon succeeded Sennacherib, and in 678 swept the long
absent armies back upon Syria.
Sidon was destroyed, and twenty-two princes of Palestine immediately
yielded their tribute to the conqueror. Manasseh was one of them, and
his political homage may have brought him, as it brought Ahaz, within
the infection of foreign idolatries.[7] Everything, in short, worked
for the revival of that eclectic paganism which Hezekiah had striven to
stamp out. The high places were rebuilt; altars were erected to Baal,
with the sacred pole of Asherah, as in the time of Ahab;[8] shrines to
the _host of heaven_ defiled the courts of Jehovah’s house; there was a
recrudescence of soothsaying, divination and traffic with the dead.
But it was all very different from the secure and sunny temper which
Amos had encountered in Northern Israel.[9] The terrible Assyrian
invasions had come between. Life could never again feel so stable.
Still more destructive had been the social poisons which our prophets
described as sapping the constitution of Israel for nearly three
generations. The rural simplicity was corrupted by those economic
changes which Micah bewails. With the ousting of the old families from
the soil, a thousand traditions, memories and habits must have been
broken, which had preserved the people’s presence of mind in days of
sudden disaster, and had carried them, for instance, through so long
a trial as the Syrian wars. Nor could the blood of Israel have run so
pure after the luxury and licentiousness described by Hosea and Isaiah.
The novel obligations of commerce, the greed to be rich, the increasing
distress among the poor, had strained the joyous temper of that nation
of peasants’ sons, whom we met with Amos, and shattered the nerves of
their rulers. There is no word of fighting in Manasseh’s days, no word
of revolt against the tyrant. Perhaps also the intervening puritanism,
which had failed to give the people a permanent faith, had at least
awakened within them a new conscience.
At all events there is now no more _ease in Zion_, but a restless fear,
driving the people to excesses of religious zeal. We do not read of the
happy country festivals of the previous century, nor of the careless
pride of that sudden wealth which built vast palaces and loaded the
altar of Jehovah with hecatombs. The full-blooded patriotism, which at
least kept ritual in touch with clean national issues, has vanished.
The popular religion is sullen and exasperated. It takes the form of
sacrifices of frenzied cruelty and lust. Children are passed through
the fire to Moloch, and the Temple is defiled by the orgies of those
who abuse their bodies to propitiate a foreign and a brutal god.[10]
But the most certain consequence of a religion whose nerves are on
edge is persecution, and this raged all the earlier years of Manasseh.
The adherents of the purer faith were slaughtered, and Jerusalem
drenched[11] with innocent blood. Her _own sword_, says Jeremiah,
_devoured the prophets like a destroying lion_.[12]
It is significant that all that has come down to us from this
“killing time” is anonymous;[13] we do not meet with our next group
of public prophets till Manasseh and his like-minded son have passed
away. Yet prophecy was not wholly stifled. Voices were raised to
predict the exile and destruction of the nation. _Jehovah spake by
His servants_;[14] while others wove into the prophecies of an Amos,
a Hosea or an Isaiah some application of the old principles to the
new circumstances. It is probable, for instance, that the extremely
doubtful passage in the Book of Amos, v. 26 f., which imputes to
Israel as a whole the worship of astral deities from Assyria, is to be
assigned to the reign of Manasseh. In its present position it looks
very like an intrusion: nowhere else does Amos charge his generation
with serving foreign gods; and certainly in all the history of Israel
we could not find a more suitable period for so specific a charge
than the days when into the central sanctuary of the national worship
images were introduced of the host of heaven, and the nation was, in
consequence, threatened with exile.[15]
In times of persecution the documents of the suffering faith have
ever been reverenced and guarded with especial zeal. It is not
improbable that the prophets, driven from public life, gave themselves
to the arrangement of the national scriptures; and some critics date
from Manasseh’s reign the weaving of the two earliest documents of
the Pentateuch into one continuous book of history.[16] The Book of
Deuteronomy forms a problem by itself. The legislation which composes
the bulk of it[17] appears to have been found among the Temple archives
at the end of our period, and presented to Josiah as an old and
forgotten work.[18] There is no reason to charge with fraud those who
made the presentation by affirming that they really invented the book.
They were priests of Jerusalem, but the book is written by members of
the prophetic party, and ostensibly in the interests of the priests
of the country. It betrays no tremor of the awful persecutions of
Manasseh’s reign; it does not hint at the distinction, then for the
first time apparent, between a false and a true Israel. But it does
draw another distinction, familiar to the eighth century, between the
true and the false prophets. The political and spiritual premisses of
the doctrine of the book were all present by the end of the reign of
Hezekiah, and it is extremely improbable that his reforms, which were
in the main those of Deuteronomy, were not accompanied by some code, or
by some appeal to the fountain of all law in Israel.
But whether the Book of Deuteronomy now existed or not, there were
those in the nation who through all the dark days between Hezekiah and
Josiah laid up its truth in their hearts and were ready to assist the
latter monarch in his public enforcement of it.
While these things happened within Judah, very great events were taking
place beyond her borders. Asarhaddon of Assyria (681—668) was a monarch
of long purposes and thorough plans. Before he invaded Egypt, he spent
a year (675) in subduing the restless tribes of Northern Arabia, and
another (674) in conquering the peninsula of Sinai, an ancient appanage
of Egypt. Tyre upon her island baffled his assaults, but the rest of
Palestine remained subject to him. He received his reward in carrying
the Assyrian arms farther into Egypt than any of his predecessors,
and about 670 took Memphis from the Ethiopian Pharaoh Taharka. Then
he died. Assurbanipal, who succeeded, lost Egypt for a few years, but
about 665, with the help of his tributaries in Palestine, he overthrew
Taharka, took Thebes, and established along the Nile a series of vassal
states. He quelled a revolt there in 663 and overthrew Memphis for a
second time. The fall of the Egyptian capital resounds through the
rest of the century; we shall hear its echoes in Nahum. Tyre fell at
last with Arvad in 662. But the Assyrian empire had grown too vast for
human hands to grasp, and in 652 a general revolt took place in Egypt,
Arabia, Palestine, Elam, Babylon and Asia Minor. In 649 Assurbanipal
reduced Elam and Babylon; and by two further campaigns (647 and 645)
Hauran, Edom, Ammon, Moab, Nabatea and all the northern Arabs. On his
return from these he crossed Western Palestine to the sea and punished
Usu and Akko. It is very remarkable that, while Assurbanipal, who thus
fought the neighbours of Judah, makes no mention of her, nor numbers
Manasseh among the rebels whom he chastised, the Book of Chronicles
should contain the statement that _Jehovah sent upon Manasseh the
captains of the host of the king of Assyria, who bound him with fetters
and carried him to Babylon_.[19] What grounds the Chronicler had for
such a statement are quite unknown to us. He introduces Manasseh’s
captivity as the consequence of idolatry, and asserts that on his
restoration Manasseh abolished in Judah all worship save that of
Jehovah, but if this happened (and the Book of Kings has no trace
of it) it was without result. Amon, son of Manasseh, continued to
sacrifice to all the images which his father had introduced.
2. THE EARLY YEARS OF JOSIAH (639—625):
JEREMIAH AND ZEPHANIAH.
Amon had not reigned for two years when _his servants conspired against
him, and he was slain in his own house_.[20] But the _people of the
land_ rose against the court, slew the conspirators, and secured the
throne for Amon’s son, Josiah, a child of eight. It is difficult to
know what we ought to understand by these movements. Amon, who was
slain, was an idolater; the popular party, who slew his slayers,
put his son on the throne, and that son, unlike both his father and
grandfather, bore a name compounded with the name of Jehovah. Was Amon
then slain for personal reasons? Did the people, in their rising, have
a zeal for Jehovah? Was the crisis purely political, but usurped by
some school or party of Jehovah who had been gathering strength through
the later years of Manasseh, and waiting for some such unsettlement of
affairs as now occurred? The meagre records of the Bible give us no
help, and for suggestions towards an answer we must turn to the wider
politics of the time.
Assurbanipal’s campaigns of 647 and 645 were the last appearances of
Assyria in Palestine. He had not attempted to reconquer Egypt,[21]
and her king, Psamtik I., began to push his arms northward. Progress
must have been slow, for the siege of Ashdod, which Psamtik probably
began after 645, is said to have occupied him twenty-nine years.
Still, he must have made his influence to be felt in Palestine, and
in all probability there was once more, as in the days of Isaiah, an
Egyptian party in Jerusalem. As the power of Assyria receded over the
northern horizon, the fascination of her idolatries, which Manasseh had
established in Judah, must have waned. The priests of Jehovah’s house,
jostled by their pagan rivals, would be inclined to make common cause
with the prophets under a persecution which both had suffered. With the
loosening of the Assyrian yoke the national spirit would revive, and
it is easy to imagine prophets, priests and people working together in
the movement which placed the child Josiah on the throne. At his tender
age, he must have been wholly in the care of the women of the royal
house; and among these the influence of the prophets may have found
adherents more readily than among the counsellors of an adult prince.
Not only did the new monarch carry the name of Jehovah in his own;
this was the case also with his mother’s father.[22] In the revolt,
therefore, which raised this unconscious child to the throne and in
the circumstances which moulded his character, we may infer that there
already existed the germs of the great work of reform which his manhood
achieved.
For some time little change would be possible, but from the first facts
were working for great issues. The Book of Kings, which places the
destruction of the idols after the discovery of the law-book in the
eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, records a previous cleansing and
restoration of the house of Jehovah.[23] This points to the growing
ascendency of the prophetic party during the first fifteen years of
Josiah’s reign. Of the first ten years we know nothing, except that the
prestige of Assyria was waning; but this fact, along with the preaching
of the prophets, who had neither a native tyrant nor the exigencies of
a foreign alliance to silence them, must have weaned the people from
the worship of the Assyrian idols. Unless these had been discredited,
the repair of Jehovah’s house could hardly have been attempted; and
that this progressed means that part of Josiah’s destruction of the
heathen images took place before the discovery of the Book of the Law,
which happened in consequence of the cleansing of the Temple.
But just as under the good Hezekiah the social condition of the people,
and especially the behaviour of the upper classes, continued to be bad,
so it was again in the early years of Josiah. There was a _remnant of
Baal_[24] in the land. The shrines of _the host of heaven_ might have
been swept from the Temple, but they were still worshipped from the
housetops.[25] Men swore by the Queen of Heaven, and by Moloch, the
King. Some turned back from Jehovah; some, grown up in idolatry, had
not yet sought Him. Idolatry may have been disestablished from the
national sanctuary: its practices still lingered (how intelligibly to
us!) in social and commercial life. Foreign fashions were affected
by the court and nobility; trade, as always, was combined with the
acknowledgment of foreign gods.[26] Moreover, the rich were fraudulent
and cruel. The ministers of justice, and the great in the land, ravened
among the poor. Jerusalem was full of oppression. These were the same
disorders as Amos and Hosea exposed in Northern Israel, and as Micah
exposed in Jerusalem. But one new trait of evil was added. In the
eighth century, with all their ignorance of Jehovah’s true character,
men had yet believed in Him, gloried in His energy, and expected Him
to act—were it only in accordance with their low ideals. They had been
alive and bubbling with religion. But now they _had thickened on their
lees_. They had grown sceptical, dull, indifferent; they said in their
hearts, _Jehovah will not do good, neither will He do evil_!
Now, just as in the eighth century there had risen, contemporaneous
with Israel’s social corruption, a cloud in the north, black and
pregnant with destruction, so was it once more. But the cloud was
not Assyria. From the hidden world beyond her, from the regions over
Caucasus, vast, nameless hordes of men arose, and, sweeping past her
unchecked, poured upon Palestine. This was the great Scythian invasion
recorded by Herodotus.[27] We have almost no other report than his
few paragraphs, but we can realise the event from our knowledge of
the Mongol and Tartar invasions which in later centuries pursued
the same path southwards. Living in the saddle, and (it would seem)
with no infantry nor chariots to delay them, these Centaurs swept on
with a speed of invasion hitherto unknown. In 630 they had crossed
the Caucasus, by 626 they were on the borders of Egypt. Psamtik I.
succeeded in purchasing their retreat,[28] and they swept back again
as swiftly as they came. They must have followed the old Assyrian
war-paths of the eighth century, and, without foot-soldiers, had
probably kept even more closely to the plains. In Palestine their
way would lie, like Assyria’s, across Hauran, through the plain of
Esdraelon, and down the Philistine coast, and in fact it is only on
this line that there exists any possible trace of them.[29] But they
shook the whole of Palestine into consternation. Though Judah among her
hills escaped them, as she escaped the earlier campaigns of Assyria,
they showed her the penal resources of her offended God. Once again the
dark, sacred North was seen to be full of the possibilities of doom.
Behold, therefore, exactly the two conditions, ethical and political,
which, as we saw, called forth the sudden prophets of the eighth
century, and made them so sure of their message of judgment: on the
one side Judah, her sins calling aloud for punishment; on the other
side the forces of punishment swiftly drawing on. It was precisely at
this juncture that prophecy again arose, and as Amos, Hosea, Micah and
Isaiah appeared in the end of the eighth century, Zephaniah, Habakkuk,
Nahum and Jeremiah appeared in the end of the seventh. The coincidence
is exact, and a remarkable confirmation of the truth which we deduced
from the experience of Amos, that the assurance of the prophet in
Israel arose from the coincidence of his conscience with his political
observation. The justice of Jehovah demands His people’s chastisement,
but see—the forces of chastisement are already upon the horizon.
Zephaniah uses the same phrase as Amos: _the Day of Jehovah_, he says,
_is drawing near_.
We are now in touch with Zephaniah, the first of our prophets, but,
before listening to him, it will be well to complete our survey of
those remaining years of the century in which he and his immediate
successors laboured.
3. THE REST OF THE CENTURY (625—586): THE
FALL OF NINIVEH; NAHUM AND HABAKKUK.
Although the Scythians had vanished from the horizon of Palestine and
the Assyrians came over it no more, the fateful North still lowered
dark and turbulent. Yet the keen eyes of the watchmen in Palestine
perceived that, for a time at least, the storm must break where it had
gathered. It is upon Niniveh, not upon Jerusalem, that the prophetic
passion of Nahum and Habakkuk is concentrated; the new day of the Lord
is filled with the fate, not of Israel, but of Assyria.
For nearly two centuries Niniveh had been the capital and cynosure of
Western Asia; for more than one she had set the fashions, the art, and
even, to some extent, the religion of all the Semitic nations. Of late
years, too, she had drawn to herself the world’s trade. Great roads
from Egypt, from Persia and from the Ægean converged upon her, till
like Imperial Rome she was filled with a vast motley of peoples, and
men went forth from her to the ends of the earth. Under Assurbanipal
travel and research had increased, and the city acquired renown as
the centre of the world’s wisdom. Thus her size and glory, with all
her details of rampart and tower, street, palace and temple, grew
everywhere familiar. But the peoples gazed at her as those who had
been bled to build her. The most remote of them had seen face to face
on their own fields, trampling, stripping, burning, the warriors who
manned her walls. She had dashed their little ones against the rocks.
Their kings had been dragged from them and hung in cages about her
gates. Their gods had lined the temples of her gods. Year by year they
sent her their heavy tribute, and the bearers came back with fresh
tales of her rapacious insolence. So she stood, bitterly clear to
all men, in her glory and her cruelty! Their hate haunted her every
pinnacle; and at last, when about 625 the news came that her frontier
fortresses had fallen and the great city herself was being besieged,
we can understand how her victims gloated on each possible stage of
her fall, and saw her yield to one after another of the cruelties of
battle, siege and storm, which for two hundred years she had inflicted
on themselves. To such a vision the prophet Nahum gives voice, not on
behalf of Israel alone, but of all the nations whom Niniveh had crushed.
It was obvious that the vengeance which Western Asia thus hailed upon
Assyria must come from one or other of two groups of peoples, standing
respectively to the north and to the south of her.
To the north, or north-east, between Mesopotamia and the Caspian, there
were gathered a congeries of restless tribes known to the Assyrians as
the Madai or Matai, the Medes. They are mentioned first by Shalmaneser
II. in 840, and few of his successors do not record campaigns against
them. The earliest notice of them in the Old Testament is in connection
with the captives of Samaria, some of whom in 720 were settled among
them.[30] These Medes were probably of Turanian stock, but by the end
of the eighth century, if we are to judge from the names of some of
their chiefs,[31] their most easterly tribes had already fallen under
Aryan influence, spreading westward from Persia.[32] So led, they
became united and formidable to Assyria. Herodotus relates that their
King Phraortes, or Fravartis, actually attempted the siege of Niniveh,
probably on the death of Assurbanipal in 625, but was slain.[33]
His son Kyaxares, Kastarit or Uvakshathra, was forced by a Scythian
invasion of his own country to withdraw his troops from Assyria; but
having either bought off or assimilated the Scythian invaders, he
returned in 608, with forces sufficient to overthrow the northern
Assyrian fortresses and to invest Niniveh herself.
The other and southern group of peoples which threatened Assyria were
Semitic. At their head were the Kasdim or Chaldeans.[34] This name
appears for the first time in the Assyrian annals a little earlier
than that of the Medes,[35] and from the middle of the ninth century
onwards the people designated by it frequently engage the Assyrian
arms. They were, to begin with, a few half-savage tribes to the
south of Babylon, in the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf; but they
proved their vigour by the repeated lordship of all Babylonia and by
inveterate rebellion against the monarchs of Niniveh. Before the end of
the seventh century we find their names used by the prophets for the
Babylonians as a whole. Assurbanipal, who was a patron of Babylonian
culture, kept the country quiet during the last years of his reign, but
his son Asshur-itil-ilani, upon his accession in 625, had to grant the
viceroyalty to Nabopolassar the Chaldean with a considerable degree
of independence. Asshur-itil-ilani was succeeded in a few years[36]
by Sinsuriskin, the Sarakos of the Greeks, who preserved at least a
nominal sovereignty over Babylon,[37] but Nabopolassar must already
have cherished ambitions of succeeding the Assyrian in the empire of
the world. He enjoyed sufficient freedom to organise his forces to that
end.
These were the two powers which from north and south watched with
impatience the decay of Assyria. That they made no attempt upon her
between 625 and 608 was probably due to several causes: their jealousy
of each other, the Medes’ trouble with the Scythians, Nabopolassar’s
genius for waiting till his forces were ready, and above all the still
considerable vigour of the Assyrian himself. The Lion, though old,[38]
was not broken. His power may have relaxed in the distant provinces of
his empire, though, if Budde be right about the date of Habakkuk,[39]
the peoples of Syria still groaned under the thought of it; but his
own land—his _lair_, as the prophets call it—was still terrible. It
is true that, as Nahum perceives, the capital was no longer native
and patriotic as it had been; the trade fostered by Assurbanipal had
filled Niniveh with a vast and mercenary population, ready to break
and disperse at the first breach in her walls. Yet Assyria proper was
covered with fortresses, and the tradition had long fastened upon the
peoples that Niniveh was impregnable. Hence the tension of those years.
The peoples of Western Asia looked eagerly for their revenge; but the
two powers which alone could accomplish this stood waiting—afraid of
each other perhaps, but more afraid of the object of their common
ambition.
It is said that Kyaxares and Nabopolassar at last came to an
agreement;[40] but more probably the crisis was hastened by the
appearance of another claimant for the coveted spoil. In 608 Pharaoh
Necho _went up against the king of Assyria towards the river
Euphrates_.[41] This Egyptian advance may have forced the hand of
Kyaxares, who appears to have begun his investment of Niniveh a little
after Necho defeated Josiah at Megiddo.[42] The siege is said to
have lasted two years. Whether this included the delays necessary
for the reduction of fortresses upon the great roads of approach to
the Assyrian capital we do not know; but Niniveh’s own position,
fortifications and resources may well account for the whole of the
time. Colonel Billerbeck, a military expert, has suggested[43] that
the Medes found it possible to invest the city only upon the northern
and eastern sides. Down the west flows the Tigris, and across this the
besieged may have been able to bring in supplies and reinforcements
from the fertile country beyond. Herodotus affirms that the Medes
effected the capture of Niniveh by themselves,[44] and for this some
recent evidence has been found,[45] so that another tradition that
the Chaldeans were also actively engaged,[46] which has nothing to
support it, may be regarded as false. Nabopolassar may still have been
in name an Assyrian viceroy; yet, as Colonel Billerbeck points out, he
had it in his power to make Kyaxares’ victory possible by holding the
southern roads to Niniveh, detaching other viceroys of her provinces
and so shutting her up to her own resources. But among other reasons
which kept him away from the siege may have been the necessity of
guarding against Egyptian designs on the moribund empire. Pharaoh
Necho, as we know, was making for the Euphrates as early as 608. Now if
Nabopolassar and Kyaxares had arranged to divide Assyria between them,
then it is likely that they agreed also to share the work of making
their inheritance sure, so that while Kyaxares overthrew Niniveh,
Nabopolassar, or rather his son Nebuchadrezzar,[47] waited for and
overthrew Pharaoh by Carchemish on the Euphrates. Consequently Assyria
was divided between the Medes and the Chaldeans; the latter as her
heirs in the south took over her title to Syria and Palestine.
The two prophets with whom we have to deal at this time are almost
entirely engrossed with the fall of Assyria. Nahum exults in the
destruction of Niniveh; Habakkuk sees in the Chaldeans nothing but the
avengers of the peoples whom Assyria[48] had oppressed. For both these
events are the close of an epoch: neither prophet looks beyond this.
Nahum (not on behalf of Israel alone) gives expression to the epoch’s
long thirst for vengeance on the tyrant; Habakkuk (if Budde’s reading
of him be right[49]) states the problems with which its victorious
cruelties had filled the pious mind—states the problem and beholds the
solution in the Chaldeans. And, surely, the vengeance was so just and
so ample, the solution so drastic and for the time complete, that we
can well understand how two prophets should exhaust their office in
describing such things, and feel no motive to look either deep into
the moral condition of Israel, or far out into the future which God
was preparing for His people. It might, of course, be said that the
prophets’ silence on the latter subjects was due to their positions
immediately after the great Reform of 621, when the nation, having
been roused to an honest striving after righteousness, did not require
prophetic rebuke, and when the success of so godly a prince as Josiah
left no spiritual ambitions unsatisfied. But this (even if the dates
of the two prophets were certain) is hardly probable; and the other
explanation is sufficient. Who can doubt this who has realised the long
epoch which then reached a crisis, or has been thrilled by the crash of
the crisis itself? The fall of Niniveh was deafening enough to drown
for the moment, as it does in Nahum, even a Hebrew’s clamant conscience
of his country’s sin. The problems, which the long success of Assyrian
cruelty had started, were old and formidable enough to demand statement
and answer before either the hopes or the responsibilities of the
future could find voice. The past also requires its prophets. Feeling
has to be satisfied, and experience balanced, before the heart is
willing to turn the leaf and read the page of the future.
Yet, through all this time of Assyria’s decline, Israel had her own
sins, fears and convictions of judgment to come. The disappearance of
the Scythians did not leave Zephaniah’s predictions of doom without
means of fulfilment; nor did the great Reform of 621 remove the
necessity of that doom. In the deepest hearts the assurance that Israel
must be punished was by these things only confirmed. The prophetess
Huldah, the first to speak in the name of the Lord after the Book of
the Law was discovered, emphasised not the reforms which it enjoined
but the judgments which it predicted. Josiah’s righteousness could at
most ensure for himself a peaceful death: his people were incorrigible
and doomed.[50] The reforms indeed proceeded, there was public and
widespread penitence, idolatry was abolished. But those were only
shallow pedants who put their trust in the possession of a revealed
Law and purged Temple,[51] and who boasted that therefore Israel
was secure. Jeremiah repeated the gloomy forecasts of Zephaniah and
Huldah, and even before the wickedness of Jehoiakim’s reign proved the
obduracy of Israel’s heart, he affirmed _the imminence of the evil out
of the north and the great destruction_.[52] Of our three prophets in
this period Zephaniah, though the earliest, had therefore the last word.
While Nahum and Habakkuk were almost wholly absorbed with the epoch
that is closing, he had a vision of the future. Is this why his book
has been ranged among our Twelve after those of his slightly later
contemporaries?
The precise course of events in Israel was this—and we must follow
them, for among them we have to seek exact dates for Nahum and
Habakkuk. In 621 the Book of the Law was discovered, and Josiah applied
himself with thoroughness to the reforms which he had already begun.
For thirteen years he seems to have had peace to carry them through.
The heathen altars were thrown down, with all the high places in Judah
and even some in Samaria. Images were abolished. The heathen priests
were exterminated, with the wizards and soothsayers. The Levites,
except the sons of Zadok, who alone were allowed to minister in the
Temple, henceforth the only place of sacrifice, were debarred from
priestly duties. A great passover was celebrated.[53] The king did
justice and was the friend of the poor;[54] it went well with him
and the people.[55] He extended his influence into Samaria; it is
probable that he ventured to carry out the injunctions of Deuteronomy
with regard to the neighbouring heathen.[56] Literature flourished:
though critics have not combined upon the works to be assigned to this
reign, they agree that a great many were produced in it. Wealth must
have accumulated: certainly the nation entered the troubles of the
next reign with an arrogant confidence that argues under Josiah the
rapid growth of prosperity in every direction. Then of a sudden came
the fatal year of 608. Pharaoh Necho appeared in Palestine[57] with
an army destined for the Euphrates, and Josiah went up to meet him at
Megiddo. His tactics are plain—it is the first strait on the land-road
from Egypt to the Euphrates—but his motives are obscure. Assyria can
hardly have been strong enough at this time to fling him as her vassal
across the path of her ancient foe. He must have gone of himself. “His
dream was probably to bring back the scattered remains of the northern
kingdom to a pure worship, and to unite the whole people of Israel
under the sceptre of the house of David; and he was not inclined to
allow Egypt to cross his aspirations, and rob him of the inheritance
which was falling to him from the dead hand of Assyria.”[58]
Josiah fell, and with him not only the liberty of his people, but the
chief support of their faith. That the righteous king was cut down in
the midst of his days and in defence of the Holy Land—what could this
mean? Was it, then, vain to serve the Lord? Could He not defend His
own? With some the disaster was a cause of sore complaint, and with
others, perhaps, of open desertion from Jehovah.
But the extraordinary thing is, how little effect Josiah’s death seems
to have had upon the people’s self-confidence at large, or upon their
adherence to Jehovah. They immediately placed Josiah’s second son on
the throne; but Necho, having got him by some means to his camp at
Riblah between the Lebanons, sent him in fetters to Egypt, where he
died, and established in his place Eliakim, his elder brother. On his
accession Eliakim changed his name to Jehoiakim, a proof that Jehovah
was still regarded as the sufficient patron of Israel; and the same
blind belief that, for the sake of His Temple and of His Law, Jehovah
would keep His people in security, continued to persevere in spite
of Megiddo. It was a most immoral ease, and filled with injustice.
Necho subjected the land to a fine. This was not heavy, but Jehoiakim,
instead of paying it out of the royal treasures, exacted it from _the
people of the land_,[59] and then employed the peace which it purchased
in erecting a costly palace for himself by the forced labour of his
subjects.[60] He was covetous, unjust and violently cruel. Like prince
like people: social oppression prevailed, and there was a recrudescence
of the idolatries of Manasseh’s time,[61] especially (it may be
inferred) after Necho’s defeat at Carchemish in 605. That all this
should exist along with a fanatic trust in Jehovah need not surprise us
who remember the very similar state of the public mind in North Israel
under Amos and Hosea. Jeremiah attacked it as they had done. Though
Assyria was fallen, and Egypt was promising protection, Jeremiah
predicted destruction from the north on Egypt and Israel alike. When
at last the Egyptian defeat at Carchemish stirred some vague fears
in the people’s hearts, Jeremiah’s conviction broke out into clear
flame. For three-and-twenty years he had brought God’s word in vain to
his countrymen. Now God Himself would act: Nebuchadrezzar was but His
servant to lead Israel into captivity.[62]
The same year, 605 or 604, Jeremiah wrote all these things in a
volume;[63] and a few months later, at a national fast, occasioned
perhaps by the fear of the Chaldeans, Baruch, his secretary, read them
in the house of the Lord, in the ears of all the people. The king was
informed, the roll was brought to him, and as it was read, with his
own hands he cut it up and burned it, three or four columns at a time.
Jeremiah answered by calling down on Jehoiakim an ignominious death,
and repeated the doom already uttered on the land. Another prophet,
Urijah, had recently been executed for the same truth; but Jeremiah and
Baruch escaped into hiding.
This was probably in 603, and for a little time Jehoiakim and the
populace were restored to their false security by the delay of the
Chaldeans to come south. Nebuchadrezzar was occupied in Babylon,
securing his succession to his father. At last, either in 602 or more
probably in 600, he marched into Syria, and Jehoiakim _became his
servant for three years_.[64] In such a condition the Jewish state
might have survived for at least another generation,[65] but in 599 or
597 Jehoiakim, with the madness of the doomed, held back his tribute.
The revolt was probably instigated by Egypt, which, however, did not
dare to support it. As in Isaiah’s time against Assyria, so now against
Babylon, Egypt was a blusterer _who blustered and sat still_. She still
_helped in vain and to no purpose_.[66] Nor could Judah count on the
help of the other states of Palestine. They had joined Hezekiah against
Sennacherib, but remembering perhaps how Manasseh had failed to help
them against Assurbanipal, and that Josiah had carried things with a
high hand towards them,[67] they obeyed Nebuchadrezzar’s command and
raided Judah till he himself should have time to arrive.[68] Amid these
raids the senseless Jehoiakim seems to have perished,[69] for when
Nebuchadrezzar appeared before Jerusalem in 597, his son Jehoiachin,
a youth of eighteen, had succeeded to the throne. The innocent reaped
the harvest sown by the guilty. In the attempt (it would appear)
to save his people from destruction,[70] Jehoiachin capitulated.
But Nebuchadrezzar was not content with the person of the king: he
deported to Babylon the court, a large number of influential persons,
_the mighty men of the land_ or what must have been nearly all the
fighting men, with the necessary military artificers and swordsmiths.
Priests also went, Ezekiel among them, and probably representatives
of other classes not mentioned by the annalist. All these were the
flower of the nation. Over what was left Nebuchadrezzar placed a son
of Josiah on the throne who took the name of Zedekiah. Again with
a little common-sense, the state might have survived; but it was a
short respite. The new court began intrigues with Egypt, and Zedekiah,
with the Ammonites and Tyre, ventured a revolt in 589. Jeremiah and
Ezekiel knew it was in vain. Nebuchadrezzar marched on Jerusalem,
and though for a time he had to raise the siege in order to defeat a
force sent by Pharaoh Hophra, the Chaldean armies closed in again upon
the doomed city. Her defence was stubborn; but famine and pestilence
sapped it, and numbers fell away to the enemy. About the eighteenth
month, the besiegers took the northern suburb and stormed the middle
gate. Zedekiah and the army broke their lines only to be captured at
Jericho. In a few weeks more the city was taken and given over to fire.
Zedekiah was blinded, and with a large number of his people carried to
Babylon. It was the end, for although a small community of Jews was
left at Mizpeh under a Jewish viceroy and with Jeremiah to guide them,
they were soon broken up and fled to Egypt. Judah had perished. Her
savage neighbours, who had gathered with glee to the day of Jerusalem’s
calamity, assisted the Chaldeans in capturing the fugitives, and
Edomites came up from the south on the desolate land.
* * * * *
It has been necessary to follow so far the course of events, because
of our prophets Zephaniah is placed in each of the three sections
of Josiah’s reign, and by some even in Jehoiakim’s; Nahum has been
assigned to different points between the eve of the first and the
eve of the second siege of Niniveh; and Habakkuk has been placed
by different critics in almost every year from 621 to the reign of
Jehoiachin; while Obadiah, whom we shall find reasons for dating during
the Exile, describes the behaviour of Edom at the final siege of
Jerusalem. The next of the Twelve, Haggai, may have been born before
the Exile, but did not prophesy till 520. Zechariah appeared the same
year, Malachi not for half a century after. These three are prophets
of the Persian period. With the approach of the Greeks Joel appears,
then comes the prophecy which we find in the end of Zechariah’s book,
and last of all the Book of Jonah. To all these post-exilic prophets we
shall provide later on the necessary historical introductions.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] See Vol. I., p. viii.
[3] Expositor’s Bible, _Isaiah xl.—lxvi._, Chap. II.
[4] It is uncertain whether Hezekiah was an Assyrian vassal during
these years, as his successor Manasseh is recorded to have been in 676.
[5] 2 Kings xviii. 4.
[6] The exact date is quite uncertain; 695 is suggested on the
chronological table prefixed to this volume, but it may have been 690
or 685.
[7] Cf. McCurdy, _History, Prophecy and the Monuments_, § 799.
[8] Stade (_Gesch. des Volkes Israel_, I., pp. 627 f.) denies to
Manasseh the reconstruction of the high places, the Baal altars and
the Asheras, for he does not believe that Hezekiah had succeeded in
destroying these. He takes 2 Kings xxi. 3, which describes these
reconstructions, as a late interpolation rendered necessary to
reconcile the tradition that Hezekiah’s reforms had been quite in the
spirit of Deuteronomy, with the fact that there were still high places
in the land when Josiah began his reforms. Further, Stade takes the
rest of 2 Kings xxi. 2_b_-7 as also an interpolation, but unlike verse
3 an accurate account of Manasseh’s idolatrous institutions, because
it is corroborated by the account of Josiah’s reforms, 2 Kings xxiii.
Stade also discusses this passage in _Z.A.T.W._, 1886, pp. 186 ff.
[9] See Vol. I., p. 41. In addition to the reasons of the change given
above, we must remember that we are now treating, not of Northern
Israel, but of the more stern and sullen Judæans.
[10] 2 Kings xxi., xxiii.
[11] _Filled from mouth to mouth_ (2 Kings xxi. 16).
[12] Jer. ii. 30.
[13] We have already seen that there is no reason for that theory of so
many critics which assigns to this period Micah. See Vol. I., p. 370.
[14] 2 Kings xxi. 10 ff.
[15] Whether the parenthetical apostrophes to Jehovah as Maker of
the heavens, their hosts and all the powers of nature (Amos iv. 13,
v. 8, 9, ix. 5, 6), are also to be attributed to Manasseh’s reign is
more doubtful. Yet the following facts are to be observed: that these
passages are also (though to a less degree than v. 26 f.) parenthetic;
that their language seems of a later cast than that of the time of Amos
(see Vol. I., pp. 204, 205: though here evidence is adduced to show
that the late features are probably post-exilic); and that Jehovah
is expressly named as the _Maker_ of certain of the stars. Similarly
when Mohammed seeks to condemn the worship of the heavenly bodies, he
insists that God is their Maker. Koran, Sur. 41, 37: “To the signs of
His Omnipotence belong night and day, sun and moon; but do not pray to
sun or moon, for God hath created them.” Sur. 53, 50: “Because He is
the Lord of Sirius.” On the other side see Driver’s _Joel and Amos_
(Cambridge Bible for Schools Series), 1897, pp. 118 f., 189.
How deeply Manasseh had planted in Israel the worship of the heavenly
host may be seen from the survival of the latter through all the
reforms of Josiah and the destruction of Jerusalem (Jer. vii. 18,
viii., xliv.; Ezek. viii. Cf. Stade, _Gesch. des V. Israel_, I., pp.
629 ff.).
[16] The Jehovist and Elohist into the closely mortised JE. Stade
indeed assigns to the period of Manasseh Israel’s first acquaintance
with the Babylonian cosmogonies and myths which led to that
reconstruction of them in the spirit of her own religion which we find
in the Jehovistic portions of the beginning of Genesis (_Gesch. des V.
Isr._, I., pp. 630 ff.). But it may well be doubted (1) whether the
reign of Manasseh affords time for this assimilation, and (2) whether
it was likely that Assyrian and Babylonian theology could make so deep
and lasting impression upon the purer faith of Israel at a time when
the latter stood in such sharp hostility to all foreign influences and
was so bitterly persecuted by the parties in Israel who had succumbed
to these influences.
[17] Chaps. v.—xxvi., xxviii.
[18] 621 B.C.
[19] 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11 ff.
[20] 2 Kings xxi. 23.
[21] But in his conquests of Hauran, Northern Arabia and the eastern
neighbours of Judah, he had evidently sought to imitate the policy of
Asarhaddon in 675 f., and secure firm ground in Palestine and Arabia
for a subsequent attack upon Egypt. That this never came shows more
than anything else could Assyria’s consciousness of growing weakness.
[22] The name of Josiah’s (יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ) mother was Jedidah (יְדִידָה),
daughter of Adaiah (עֲדָיָה) of Boṣḳath in the Shephelah of Judah.
[23] 2 Kings xxii., xxiii.
[24] Zeph. i. 4: the LXX. reads _names of Baal_. See below, p. 40, n. 87.
[25] _Ibid._, 5.
[26] _Ibid._, 8-12.
[27] I. 102 ff.
[28] Herod., I. 105.
[29] The new name of Bethshan in the mouth of Esdraelon, viz.
Scythopolis, is said to be derived from them (but see _Hist. Geog. of
the Holy Land_, pp. 363 f.); they conquered Askalon (Herod., I. 105).
[30] 2 Kings xvii. 6: _and in the cities_ (LXX. _mountains_) _of the
Medes_. The Heb. is מָדָי, Madai.
[31] Mentioned by Sargon.
[32] Sayce, _Empires of the East_, 239: cf. McCurdy, § 823 f.
[33] Herod., I. 103.
[34] Heb. Kasdim, כַּשְׂדִים; LXX. Χαλδαῖοι; Assyr. Kaldâa, Kaldu. The
Hebrew form with _s_ is regarded by many authorities as the original,
from the Assyrian root _kashadu_, to conquer, and the Assyrian form
with _l_ to have arisen by the common change of _sh_ through _r_ into
_l_. The form with _s_ does not occur, however, in Assyrian, which also
possesses the root _kaladu_, with the same meaning as _kashadu_. See
Mr. Pinches’ articles on Chaldea and the Chaldeans in the new edition
of Vol. I. of Smith’s _Bible Dictionary_.
[35] About 880 B.C. in the annals of Assurnatsirpal. See Chronological
Table to Vol. I.
[36] No inscriptions of Asshur-itil-ilani have been found later than
the first two years of his reign.
[37] Billerbeck-Jeremias, “Der Untergang Niniveh’s,” in Delitzsch and
Haupt’s _Beiträge zur Assyriologie_, III., p. 113.
[38] Nahum ii.
[39] See below, p. 120.
[40] Abydenus (apud Euseb., _Chron._, I. 9) reports a marriage between
Nebuchadrezzar, Nabopolassar’s son, and the daughter of the Median king.
[41] 2 Kings xxiii. 29. The history is here very obscure. Necho, met
at Megiddo by Josiah, and having slain him, appears to have spent a
year or two in subjugating, and arranging for the government of, Syria
(_ibid._, verses 33-35), and only reached the Euphrates in 605, when
Nebuchadrezzar defeated him.
[42] The reverse view is taken by Wellhausen, who says (_Israel u. Jüd.
Gesch._, pp. 97 f.): “Der Pharaoh scheint ausgezogen zu sein um sich
seinen Teil an der Erbschaft Ninives vorwegzunehmen, während die Meder
und Chaldäer die Stadt belagerten.”
[43] See above, p. 20, n. 37.
[44] I. 106.
[45] A stele of Nabonidus discovered at Hilleh and now in the museum
at Constantinople relates that in his third year, 553, the king
restored at Harran the temple of Sin, the moon-god, which the Medes had
destroyed fifty-four years before, _i.e._ 607. Whether the Medes did
this before, during or after the siege of Niniveh is uncertain, but the
approximate date of the siege, 608—606, is thus marvellously confirmed.
The stele affirms that the Medes alone took Niniveh, but that they
were called in by Marduk, the Babylonian god, to assist Nabopolassar
and avenge the deportation of his image by Sennacherib to Niniveh.
Messerschmidt (_Mittheilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft_, I.
1896) argues that the Medes were summoned by the Babylonians while the
latter were being sore pressed by the Assyrians. Winckler had already
(_Untersuch._, pp. 124 ff., 1889) urged that the Babylonians would
refrain from taking an active part in the overthrow of Niniveh, in fear
of incurring the guilt of sacrilege. Neither Messerschmidt’s paper,
nor Scheil’s (who describes the stele in the _Recueil des Travaux_,
XVIII. 1896), being accessible to me, I have written this note on the
information supplied by Rev. C. H. W. Johns, of Cambridge, in the
_Expository Times_, 1896, and by Prof. A. B. Davidson in App. I. to
_Nah., Hab. and Zeph._
[46] Berosus and Abydenus in Eusebius.
[47] This spelling (Jer. xlix. 28) is nearer the original than the
alternative Hebrew Nebuchad_n_ezzar. But the LXX. Ναβουχοδονόσορ, and
the Ναβουκοδρόσορος of Abydenus and Megasthenes and Ναβοκοδρόσορος of
Strabo, have preserved the more correct vocalisation; for the original
is Nabu-kudurri-uṣur = Nebo, defend the crown!
[48] But see below, pp. 123 f.
[49] Below, pp. 121 ff.
[50] 2 Kings xxii. 11-20. The genuineness of this passage is proved (as
against Stade, _Gesch. des Volkes Israel_, I.) by the promise which
it gives to Josiah of a peaceful death. Had it been written after
the battle of Megiddo, in which Josiah was slain, it could not have
contained such a promise.
[51] Jer. vii. 4, viii. 8.
[52] vi. 1.
[53] All these reforms in 2 Kings xxiii.
[54] Jer. xxii. 15 f.
[55] _Ibid._, ver. 16.
[56] We have no record of this, but a prince who so rashly flung
himself in the way of Egypt would not hesitate to claim authority over
Moab and Ammon.
[57] 2 Kings xxiii. 24. The question whether Necho came by land from
Egypt or brought his troops in his fleet to Acre is hardly answered by
the fact that Josiah went to Megiddo to meet him. But Megiddo on the
whole tells more for the land than the sea. It is not on the path from
Acre to the Euphrates; it is the key of the land-road from Egypt to the
Euphrates. Josiah could have no hope of stopping Pharaoh on the broad
levels of Philistia; but at Megiddo there was a narrow pass, and the
only chance of arresting so large an army as it moved in detachments.
Josiah’s tactics were therefore analogous to those of Saul, who also
left his own territory and marched north to Esdraelon, to meet his
foe—and death.
[58] A. B. Davidson, _The Exile and the Restoration_, p. 8 (Bible Class
Primers, ed. by Salmond; Edin., T. & T. Clark, 1897).
[59] 2 Kings xxiii. 33-35.
[60] Jer. xxii. 13-15.
[61] Jer. xi.
[62] xxv. 1 ff.
[63] xxxvi.
[64] 2 Kings xxiv. 1. In the chronological table appended to Kautzsch’s
_Bibel_ this verse and Jehoiakim’s submission are assigned to 602. But
this allows too little time for Nebuchadrezzar to confirm his throne
in Babylon and march to Palestine, and it is not corroborated by the
record in the Book of Jeremiah of events in Judah in 604—602.
[65] Nebuchadrezzar did not die till 562.
[66] See _Isaiah i.—xxxix._ (Expositor’s Bible), pp. 223 f.
[67] See above, p. 26, n. 56.
[68] 2 Kings xxiv. 2.
[69] Jer. xxxvii. 30, but see 2 Kings xxiv. 6.
[70] So Josephus puts it (X. _Antiq._, vii. 1). Jehoiachin was
unusually bewailed (Lam. iv. 20; Ezek. xvii. 22 ff.). He survived
in captivity till the death of Nebuchadrezzar, whose successor
Evil-Merodach in 561 took him from prison and gave him a place in his
palace (2 Kings xxv. 27 ff.).
_ZEPHANIAH_
_Dies Iræ, Dies Illa!_—ZEPH. i. 15.
“His book is the first tinging of prophecy with apocalypse: that is the
moment which it supplies in the history of Israel’s religion.”
CHAPTER II
_THE BOOK OF ZEPHANIAH_
The Book of Zephaniah is one of the most difficult in the prophetic
canon. The title is very generally accepted; the period from which
chap. i. dates is recognised by practically all critics to be the reign
of Josiah, or at least the last third of the seventh century. But after
that doubts start, and we find present nearly every other problem of
introduction.
To begin with, the text is very damaged. In some passages we may be
quite sure that we have not the true text;[71] in others we cannot be
sure that we have it,[72] and there are several glosses.[73] The bulk
of the second chapter was written in the Qinah, or elegiac measure, but
as it now stands the rhythm is very much broken. It is difficult to
say whether this is due to the dilapidation of the original text or to
wilful insertion of glosses and other later passages. The Greek version
of Zephaniah possesses the same general features as that of other
difficult prophets. Occasionally it enables us to correct the text;
but by the time it was made the text must already have contained the
same corruptions which we encounter, and the translators were ignorant
besides of the meaning of some phrases which to us are plain.[74]
The difficulties of textual criticism as well as of translation are
aggravated by the large number of words, grammatical forms and phrases
which either happen very seldom in the Old Testament,[75] or nowhere
else in it at all.[76] Of the rare words and phrases, a very few (as
will be seen from the appended notes) are found in earlier writings.
Indeed all that are found are from the authentic prophecies of Isaiah,
with whose style and doctrine Zephaniah’s own exhibit most affinity.
All the other rarities of vocabulary and grammar are shared only by
_later_ writers; and as a whole the language of Zephaniah exhibits
symptoms which separate it by many years from the language of the
prophets of the eighth century, and range it with that of Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, the Second Isaiah and still later literature. It may be useful
to the student to collect in a note the most striking of these symptoms
of the comparative lateness of Zephaniah’s dialect.[77]
We now come to the question of date, and we take, to begin with, the
First Chapter. It was said above that critics agree as to the general
period—between 639, when Josiah began to reign, and 600. But this
period was divided into three very different sections, and each of
these has received considerable support from modern criticism. The
great majority of critics place the chapter in the early years of
Josiah, before the enforcement of Deuteronomy and the great Reform in
621.[78] Others have argued for the later years of Josiah, 621—608, on
the ground that the chapter implies that the great Reform has already
taken place, and otherwise shows knowledge of Deuteronomy;[79] while
some prefer the days of reaction under Jehoiakim, 608 ff.,[80] and
assume that the phrase in the title, _in the days of Josiah_, is a late
and erroneous inference from i. 4.
The evidence for the argument consists of the title and the condition
of Judah reflected in the body of the chapter. The latter is a definite
piece of oratory. Under the alarm of an immediate and general war,
Zephaniah proclaims a vast destruction upon the earth. Judah must fall
beneath it: the worshippers of Baal, of the host of heaven and of
Milcom, the apostates from Jehovah, the princes and house of the king,
the imitators of foreign fashions, and the forceful and fraudulent,
shall be cut off in a great slaughter. Those who have grown sceptical
and indifferent to Jehovah shall be unsettled by invasion and war. This
shall be the Day of Jehovah, near and immediate, a day of battle and
disaster on the whole land.
The conditions reflected are thus twofold—the idolatrous and sceptical
state of the people, and an impending invasion. But these suit,
more or less exactly, each of the three sections of our period. For
Jeremiah distinctly states that he had to attack idolatry in Judah for
twenty-three years, 627 to 604;[81] he inveighs against the falseness
and impurity of the people alike before the great Reform, and after it
while Josiah was still alive, and still more fiercely under Jehoiakim.
And, while before 621 the great Scythian invasion was sweeping upon
Palestine from the north, after 621, and especially after 604, the
Babylonians from the same quarter were visibly threatening the land.
But when looked at more closely, the chapter shows several features
which suit the second section of our period less than they do the
other two. The worship of the host of heaven, probably introduced
under Manasseh, was put down by Josiah in 621; it revived under
Jehoiakim,[82] but during the latter years of Josiah it cannot possibly
have been so public as Zephaniah describes.[83]
Other reasons which have been given for those years are
inconclusive[84]—the chapter, for instance, makes no indubitable
reference to Deuteronomy or the Covenant of 621—and on the whole we
may leave the end of Josiah’s reign out of account. Turning to the
third section, Jehoiakim’s reign, we find one feature of the prophecy
which suits it admirably. The temper described in ver. 12—_men who are
settled on their lees, who say in their heart, Jehovah doeth neither
good nor evil_—is the kind of temper likely to have been produced
among the less earnest adherents of Jehovah by the failure of the
great Reform in 621 to effect either the purity or the prosperity of
the nation. But this is more than counterbalanced by the significant
exception of the king from the condemnation which ver. 8 passes on
the _princes and the sons of the king_. Such an exception could not
have been made when Jehoiakim was on the throne; it points almost
conclusively to the reign of the good Josiah. And with this agrees the
title of the chapter—_in the days of Josiah_.[85] We are, therefore,
driven back to the years of Josiah before 621. In these we find no
discrepancy either with the chapter itself, or with its title. The
southward march of the Scythians,[86] between 630 and 625, accounts for
Zephaniah’s alarm of a general war, including the invasion of Judah;
the idolatrous practices which he describes may well have been those
surviving from the days of Manasseh,[87] and not yet reached by the
drastic measures of 621; the temper of scepticism and hopelessness
condemned by ver. 12 was possible among those adherents of Jehovah who
had hoped greater things from the overthrow of Amon than the slow and
small reforms of the first fifteen years of Josiah’s reign. Nor is a
date before 621 made at all difficult by the genealogy of Zephaniah
in the title. If, as is probable,[88] the Hezekiah given as his
great-great-grandfather be Hezekiah the king, and if he died about 695,
and Manasseh, his successor, who was then twelve, was his eldest son,
then by 630 Zephaniah cannot have been much more than twenty years of
age, and not more than twenty-five by the time the Scythian invasion
had passed away.[89] It is therefore by no means impossible to suppose
that he prophesied before 625; and besides, the data of the genealogy
in the title are too precarious to make them valid, as against an
inference from the contents of the chapter itself.
The date, therefore, of the first chapter of Zephaniah may be given as
about 625 B.C., and probably rather before than after that year, as the
tide of Scythian invasion has apparently not yet ebbed.
The other two chapters have within recent years been almost wholly
denied to Zephaniah. Kuenen doubted chap. iii. 9-20. Stade makes all
chap. iii. post-exilic, and suspects ii. 1-3, 11. A very thorough
examination of them has led Schwally[90] to assign to exilic or
post-exilic times the whole of the little sections comprising them,
with the possible exception of chap. iii. 1-7, which “may be”
Zephaniah’s. His essay has been subjected to a searching and generally
hostile criticism by a number of leading scholars;[91] and he has
admitted the inconclusiveness of some of his reasons.[92]
Chap. ii. 1-4 is assigned by Schwally to a date later than Zephaniah’s,
principally because of the term _meekness_ (ver. 3), which is a
favourite one with post-exilic writers. He has been sufficiently
answered;[93] and the close connection of vv. 1-3 with chap. i. has
been clearly proved.[94] Chap. ii. 4-15 is the passage in elegiac
measure but broken, an argument for the theory that insertions have
been made in it. The subject is a series of foreign nations—Philistia
(5-7), Moab and Ammon (8-10), Egypt (11) and Assyria (13-15). The
passage has given rise to many doubts; every one must admit the
difficulty of coming to a conclusion as to its authenticity. On the
one hand, the destruction just predicted is so universal that, as
Professor Davidson says, we should expect Zephaniah to mention other
nations than Judah.[95] The concluding oracle on Niniveh must have
been published before 608, and even Schwally admits that it may be
Zephaniah’s own. But if this be so, then we may infer that the first
of the oracles on Philistia is also Zephaniah’s, for both it and the
oracle on Assyria are in the elegiac measure, a fact which makes it
probable that the whole passage, however broken and intruded upon, was
originally a unity. Nor is there anything in the oracle on Philistia
incompatible with Zephaniah’s date. Philistia lay on the path of the
Scythian invasion; the phrase in ver. 7, _shall turn their captivity_,
is not necessarily exilic. As Cornill, too, points out, the expression
in ver. 13, _He will stretch out His hand to the north_, implies that
the prophecy has already looked in other directions. There remains the
passage between the oracles on Philistia and Assyria. This is not in
the elegiac measure. Its subject is Moab and Ammon, who were not on the
line of the Scythian invasion, and Wellhausen further objects to it,
because the attitude to Israel of the two peoples whom it describes
is that which is attributed to them only just before the Exile and
surprises us in Josiah’s reign. Dr. Davidson meets this objection by
pointing out that, just as in Deuteronomy, so here, Moab and Ammon are
denounced, while Edom, which in Deuteronomy is spoken of with kindness,
is here not denounced at all. A stronger objection to the passage is
that ver. 11 predicts the conversion of the nations, while ver. 12
makes them the prey of Jehovah’s sword, and in this ver. 12 follows
on naturally to ver. 7. On this ground as well as on the absence of
the elegiac measure the oracle on Moab and Ammon is strongly to be
suspected.
On the whole, then, the most probable conclusion is that chap. ii.
4-15 was originally an authentic oracle of Zephaniah’s in the elegiac
metre, uttered at the same date as chap. i.—ii. 3, the period of the
Scythian invasion, though from a different standpoint; and that it has
suffered considerable dilapidation (witness especially vv. 6 and 14),
and probably one great intrusion, vv. 8-10.
There remains the Third Chapter. The authenticity has been denied by
Schwally, who transfers the whole till after the Exile. But the chapter
is not a unity.[96]
In the first place, it falls into two sections, vv. 1-13 and 14-20.
There is no reason to take away the bulk of the first section from
Zephaniah. As Schwally admits, the argument here is parallel to that
of chap. i.—ii. 3. It could hardly have been applied to Jerusalem
during or after the Exile, but suits her conditions before her fall.
Schwally’s linguistic objections to a pre-exilic date have been
answered by Budde.[97] He holds ver. 6 to be out of place and puts
it after ver. 8, and this may be. But as it stands it appeals to the
impenitent Jews of ver. 5 with the picture of the judgment God has
already completed upon the nations, and contrasts with ver. 7, in which
God says that He trusts Israel will repent. Vv. 9 and 10 are, we shall
see, obviously an intrusion, as Budde maintains and Davidson admits to
be possible.[98]
We reach more certainty when we come to the second section of the
chapter, vv. 14-20. Since Kuenen it has been recognised by the majority
of critics that we have here a prophecy from the end of the Exile or
after the Return. The temper has changed. Instead of the austere and
sombre outlook of chap. i.—ii. 3 and chap. iii. 1-13, in which the
sinful Israel is to be saved indeed, but only as by fire, we have a
triumphant prophecy of her recovery from all affliction (nothing is
said of her sin) and of her glory among the nations of the world. To
put it otherwise, while the genuine prophecies of Zephaniah almost
grudgingly allow a door of escape to a few righteous and humble
Israelites from a judgment which is to fall alike on Israel and the
Gentiles, chap. iii. 14-20 predicts Israel’s deliverance from her
Gentile oppressors, her return from captivity and the establishment
of her renown over the earth. The language, too, has many resemblances
to that of Second Isaiah.[99] Obviously therefore we have here, added
to the severe prophecies of Zephaniah, such a more hopeful, peaceful
epilogue as we saw was added, during the Exile or immediately after it,
to the despairing prophecies of Amos.
FOOTNOTES:
[71] i. 3_b_, 5_b_; ii. 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 last word, 14_b_; iii. 18, 19_a_,
20.
[72] i. 14_b_; ii. 1, 3; iii. 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 15, 17.
[73] i. 3_b_, 5_b_; ii. 2, 6; iii. 5 (?).
[74] For details see translation below.
[75] i. 3, מַכְשֵׁלוֹת, only in Isa. iii. 6; 15, משואה, only in Job
xxx. 3, xxxviii. 27—cf. Psalms lxxiii. 18, lxxiv. 3; ii. 8, גדפים, Isa.
xliii. 28—cf. li. 7; 9, חרול, Prov. xxiv. 31, Job xxx. 7; 15, עליזה,
Isa. xxii. 2, xxiii. 7, xxxii. 13—cf. xiii. 3, xxiv. 8; iii. 1, נגאלה,
see next note but one; 3, זאבי ערב, Hab. i. 8; 11, עליזי גאותך, Isa.
xiii. 3; 18, נוגי, Lam. i. 4, נוגות.
[76] i. 11, המכתש as the name of a part of Jerusalem, otherwise only
Jer. xv. 19; נטילי כסף; 12, קפא in pt. Qal, and otherwise only Exod.
xv. 8, Zech. xiv. 6, Job x. 10; 14, מַהֵר (adj.), but the pointing
may be wrong—cf. Maher-shalal-hash-baz, Isa. viii. 1, 3; צרח in Qal,
elsewhere only once in Hi. Isa. xlii. 13; 17, לחום in sense of flesh,
cf. Job xx. 23; 18, נבהלה if a noun (?); ii. 1, קשש in Qal and Hithpo,
elsewhere only in Polel; 9, מכרה ,ממשק; 11, רזה, to make lean,
otherwise only in Isa. xvii. 4, to be lean; 14, ארזה (?); iii. 1,
מראה, pt. of יונה ;מרה, pt. Qal, in Jer. xlvi. 16, l. 16, it may
be a noun; 4, אנשי בגדות; 6, נצדו; 9, שכם אחד; 10, עתרי
בת־פוצי (?); 15, פנה in sense to _turn away_; 18, ממך היו (?).
[77] i. 8, etc., פקד על, followed by person, but not by thing—cf. Jer.
ix. 24, xxiii. 34, etc., Job xxxvi. 23, 2 Chron. xxxvi. 23, Ezek. i.
2; 13, משׁסה, only in Hab. ii. 7, Isa. xlii., Jer. xxx. 16, 2 Kings
xxi. 14; 17, הֵצֵר, Hi. of צרר, only in 1 Kings viii. 37, and Deut.,
2 Chron., Jer., Neh.; ii. 3, ענוה; 8, גדופים, Isa. xliii. 28, li. 7
(fem. pl.); 9, חרול, Prov. xxiv. 31, Job xxx. 7; iii. 1, נגאלה, Ni, pt.
= impure, Isa. lix. 3, Lam. iv. 14; יונה, a pt. in Jer. xlvi. 16, l.
16; 3, זאבי ערב, Hab. i. 8—cf. Jer. v. 6, זאב ערבות; 9, ברור, Isa.
xlix. 2, ברר, Ezek. xx. 38, 1 Chron. vii. 40, ix. 22, xvi. 41, Neh. v.
18, Job xxxiii. 3, Eccles. iii. 18, ix. 1; 11, עליזי גאוה, Isa. xiii.
3; 18, נוּגֵי, Lam. i. 4 has נוּגות.
[78] So Hitzig, Ewald, Pusey, Kuenen, Robertson Smith (_Encyc. Brit._),
Driver, Wellhausen, Kirkpatrick, Budde, von Orelli, Cornill, Schwally,
Davidson.
[79] So Delitzsch, Kleinert, and Schulz (_Commentar über den Proph.
Zeph._, 1892, p. 7, quoted by König).
[80] So König.
[81] Jer. xxv.
[82] Jer. vii. 18.
[83] i. 3.
[84] Kleinert in his Commentary in Lange’s _Bibelwerk_, and Delitzsch
in his article in Herzog’s _Real-Encyclopädie_², both offer a number
of inconclusive arguments. These are drawn from the position of
Zephaniah after Habakkuk, but, as we have seen, the order of the Twelve
is not always chronological; from the supposition that Zephaniah i.
7, _Silence before the Lord Jehovah_, quotes Habakkuk ii. 20, _Keep
silence before Him, all the earth_, but the phrase common to both is
too general to be decisive, and if borrowed by one or other may just as
well have been Zephaniah’s originally as Habakkuk’s; from the phrase
_remnant of Baal_ (i. 4), as if this were appropriate only after the
Reform of 621, but it was quite as appropriate after the beginnings
of reform six years earlier; from the condemnation of _the sons of
the king_ (i. 8), whom Delitzsch takes as Josiah’s sons, who before
the great Reform were too young to be condemned, while later their
characters did develop badly and judgment fell upon all of them, but
_sons of the king_, even if that be the correct reading (LXX. _house of
the king_), does not necessarily mean the reigning monarch’s children;
and from the assertion that Deuteronomy is quoted in the first chapter
of Zephaniah, and “so quoted as to show that the prophet needs only to
put the people in mind of it as something supposed to be known,” but
the verses cited in support of this (viz. 13, 15, 17: cf. Deut. xxviii.
30 and 29) are too general in their character to prove the assertion.
See translation below.
[85] König has to deny the authenticity of this in order to make his
case for the reign of Jehoiakim. But nearly all critics take the phrase
as genuine.
[86] See above, p. 15. For inconclusive reasons Schwally, _Z.A.T.W._,
1890, pp. 215—217, prefers the Egyptians under Psamtik. See in answer
Davidson, p. 98.
[87] Not much stress can be laid upon the phrase _I will cut off the
remnant of Baal_, ver. 4, for, if the reading be correct, it may only
mean the destruction of Baal-worship, and not the uprooting of what has
been left over.
[88] See below, p. 47, n. 105.
[89] If 695 be the date of the accession of Manasseh, being then
twelve, Amariah, Zephaniah’s great-grandfather, cannot have been more
than ten, that is, born in 705. His son Gedaliah was probably not
born before 689, his son Kushi probably not before 672, and his son
Zephaniah probably not before 650.
[90] _Z.A.T.W._, 1890, Heft 1.
[91] Bacher, _Z.A.T.W._, 1891, 186; Cornill, _Einleitung_, 1891; Budde,
_Theol. Stud. u. Krit._, 1893, 393 ff.; Davidson, _Nah., Hab. and
Zeph._, 100 ff.
[92] _Z.A.T.W._, 1891, Heft 2.
[93] By especially Bacher, Cornill and Budde as above.
[94] See Budde and Davidson.
[95] The ideal of chap. i.—ii. 3, of the final security of a poor
and lowly remnant of Israel, “necessarily implies that they shall no
longer be threatened by hostility from without, and this condition
is satisfied by the prophet’s view of the impending judgment on the
ancient enemies of his nation,” _i.e._ those mentioned in ii. 4-15
(Robertson Smith, _Encyc. Brit._, art. “Zephaniah”).
[96] See, however, Davidson for some linguistic reasons for taking the
two sections as one. Robertson Smith, also in 1888 (_Encyc. Brit._,
art. “Zephaniah”), assumed (though not without pointing out the
possibility of the addition of other pieces to the genuine prophecies
of Zephaniah) that “a single leading motive runs through the whole”
book, and “the first two chapters would be incomplete without the
third, which moreover is certainly pre-exilic (vv. 1-4) and presents
specific points of contact with what precedes, as well as a general
agreement in style and idea.”
[97] Schwally (234) thinks that the epithet צדיק (ver. 5) was first
applied to Jehovah by the Second Isaiah (xlv. 21, lxiv. 2, xlii. 21),
and became frequent from his time on. In disproof Budde (3398) quotes
Exod. ix. 27, Jer. xii. 1, Lam. i. 18. Schwally also points to נצדו as
borrowed from Aramaic.
[98] Budde, p. 395; Davidson, 103. Schwally (230 ff.) seeks to prove
the unity of 9 and 10 with the context, but he has apparently mistaken
the meaning of ver. 8 (231). That surely does not mean that the nations
are gathered in order to punish the godlessness of the Jews, but that
they may themselves be punished.
[99] See Davidson, 103.
CHAPTER III
_THE PROPHET AND THE REFORMERS_
ZEPHANIAH i.—ii. 3
Towards the year 625, when King Josiah had passed out of his
minority,[100] and was making his first efforts at religious reform,
prophecy, long slumbering, awoke again in Israel.
Like the king himself, its first heralds were men in their early
youth. In 627 Jeremiah calls himself but a boy, and Zephaniah can
hardly have been out of his teens.[101] For the sudden outbreak of
these young lives there must have been a large reservoir of patience
and hope gathered in the generation behind them. So Scripture itself
testifies. To Jeremiah it was said: _Before I formed thee in the belly
I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I consecrated
thee._[102] In an age when names were bestowed only because of their
significance,[103] both prophets bore that of Jehovah in their own. So
did Jeremiah’s father, who was of the priests of Anathoth. Zephaniah’s
“forbears” are given for four generations, and with one exception
they also are called after Jehovah: _The Word of Jehovah which came
to Ṣephanyah, son of Kushi, son of Gedhalyah, son of Amaryah, son of
Hizḳiyah, in the days of Joshiyahu,[104] Amon’s son, king of Judah._
Zephaniah’s great-great-grandfather Hezekiah was in all probability the
king.[105] His father’s name Kushi, or _Ethiop_, is curious. If we are
right, that Zephaniah was a young man towards 625, then Kushi must have
been born towards 663, about the time of the conflicts between Assyria
and Egypt, and it is possible that, as Manasseh and the predominant
party in Judah so closely hung upon and imitated Assyria, the adherents
of Jehovah put their hope in Egypt, whereof, it may be, this name
Kushi is a token.[106] The name Zephaniah itself, meaning _Jehovah
hath hidden_, suggests the prophet’s birth in the “killing-time” of
Manasseh. There was at least one other contemporary of the same name—a
priest executed by Nebuchadrezzar.[107]
Of the adherents of Jehovah, then, and probably of royal descent,
Zephaniah lived in Jerusalem. We descry him against her, almost
as clearly as we descry Isaiah. In the glare and smoke of the
conflagration which his vision sweeps across the world, only her
features stand out definite and particular: the flat roofs with men
and women bowing in the twilight to the host of heaven, the crowds of
priests, the nobles and their foreign fashions; the _Fishgate_, the New
or _Second_ Town, where the rich lived, the _Heights_ to which building
had at last spread, and between them the hollow _Mortar_, with its
markets, Phœnician merchants and money-dealers. In the first few verses
of Zephaniah we see almost as much of Jerusalem as in the whole book
either of Isaiah or Jeremiah.
For so young a man the vision of Zephaniah may seem strangely dark
and final. Yet not otherwise was Isaiah’s inaugural vision, and as a
rule it is the young and not the old whose indignation is ardent and
unsparing. Zephaniah carries this temper to the extreme. There is no
great hope in his book, hardly any tenderness and never a glimpse of
beauty. A townsman, Zephaniah has no eye for nature; not only is no
fair prospect described by him, he has not even a single metaphor
drawn from nature’s loveliness or peace. He is pitilessly true to his
great keynotes: _I will sweep, sweep from the face of the ground; He
will burn_, burn up everything. No hotter book lies in all the Old
Testament. Neither dew nor grass nor tree nor any blossom lives in it,
but it is everywhere fire, smoke and darkness, drifting chaff, ruins,
nettles, saltpits, and owls and ravens looking from the windows of
desolate palaces. Nor does Zephaniah foretell the restoration of nature
in the end of the days. There is no prospect of a redeemed and fruitful
land, but only of a group of battered and hardly saved characters: a
few meek and righteous are hidden from the fire and creep forth when it
is over. Israel is left _a poor and humble folk_. No prophet is more
true to the doctrine of the remnant, or more resolutely refuses to
modify it. Perhaps he died young.
The full truth, however, is that Zephaniah, though he found his
material in the events of his own day, tears himself loose from
history altogether. To the earlier prophets the Day of the Lord, the
crisis of the world, is a definite point in history: full of terrible,
divine events, yet “natural” ones—battle, siege, famine, massacre and
captivity. After it history is still to flow on, common days come back
and Israel pursue their way as a nation. But to Zephaniah the Day of
the Lord begins to assume what we call the “supernatural.” The grim
colours are still woven of war and siege, but mixed with vague and
solemn terrors from another sphere, by which history appears to be
swallowed up, and it is only with an effort that the prophet thinks of
a rally of Israel beyond. In short, with Zephaniah the Day of the Lord
tends to become the Last Day. His book is the first tinging of prophecy
with apocalypse: that is the moment which it supplies in the history of
Israel’s religion. And, therefore, it was with a true instinct that the
great Christian singer of the Last Day took from Zephaniah his keynote.
The “Dies Iræ, Dies Illa” of Thomas of Celano is but the Vulgate
translation of Zephaniah’s _A day of wrath is that day_.[108]
Nevertheless, though the first of apocalyptic writers, Zephaniah does
not allow himself the license of apocalypse. As he refuses to imagine
great glory for the righteous, so he does not dwell on the terrors
of the wicked. He is sober and restrained, a matter-of-fact man, yet
with power of imagination, who, amidst the vague horrors he summons,
delights in giving a sharp realistic impression. The Day of the Lord,
he says, what is it? _A strong man—there!—crying bitterly._[109]
It is to the fierce ardour, and to the elemental interests of the
book, that we owe the absence of two features of prophecy which are
so constant in the prophets of the eighth century. Firstly, Zephaniah
betrays no interest in the practical reforms which (if we are right
about the date) the young king, his contemporary, had already
started.[110] There was a party of reform, the party had a programme,
the programme was drawn from the main principles of prophecy and was
designed to put these into practice. And Zephaniah was a prophet—and
ignored them. This forms the dramatic interest of his book. Here was a
man of the same faith which kings, priests and statesmen were striving
to realise in public life, in the assured hope—as is plain from the
temper of Deuteronomy—that the nation as a whole would be reformed
and become a very great nation, righteous and victorious. All this
he ignored, and gave his own vision of the future: Israel is a brand
plucked from the burning; a very few meek and righteous are saved from
the conflagration of a whole world. Why? Because for Zephaniah the
elements were loose, and when the elements were loose what was the
use of talking about reforms? The Scythians were sweeping down upon
Palestine, with enough of God’s wrath in them to destroy a people still
so full of idolatry as Israel was; and if not the Scythians, then some
other power in that dark, rumbling North which had ever been so full
of doom. Let Josiah try to reform Israel, but it was neither Josiah’s
nor Israel’s day that was falling. It was the Day of the Lord, and when
He came it was neither to reform nor to build up Israel, but to make
visitation and to punish in His wrath for the unbelief and wickedness
of which the nation was still full.
An analogy to this dramatic opposition between prophet and reformer may
be found in our own century. At its crisis, in 1848, there were many
righteous men rich in hope and energy. The political institutions of
Europe were being rebuilt. In our own land there were great measures
for the relief of labouring children and women, the organisation of
labour and the just distribution of wealth. But Carlyle that year held
apart from them all, and, though a personal friend of many of the
reformers, counted their work hopeless: society was too corrupt, the
rudest forces were loose, “Niagara” was near. Carlyle was proved wrong
and the reformers right, but in the analogous situation of Israel the
reformers were wrong and the prophet right. Josiah’s hope and daring
were overthrown at Megiddo, and, though the Scythians passed away,
Zephaniah’s conviction of the sin and doom of Israel was fulfilled, not
forty years later, in the fall of Jerusalem and the great Exile.
Again, to the same elemental interests, as we may call them, is due the
absence from Zephaniah’s pages of all the social and individual studies
which form the charm of other prophets. With one exception, there is
no analysis of character, no portrait, no satire. But the exception is
worth dwelling upon: it describes the temper equally abhorred by both
prophet and reformer—that of the indifferent and stagnant man. Here we
have a subtle and memorable picture of character, which is not without
its warnings for our own time.
Zephaniah heard God say: _And it shall be at that time that I will
search out Jerusalem with lights, and I will make visitation upon the
men who are become stagnant upon their lees, who say in their hearts,
Jehovah doeth no good and doeth no evil._[111] The metaphor is clear.
New wine was left upon its lees only long enough to fix its colour
and body.[112] If not then drawn off it grew thick and syrupy—sweeter
indeed than the strained wine, and to the taste of some more pleasant,
but feeble and ready to decay. “To settle upon one’s lees” became a
proverb for sloth, indifference and the muddy mind. _Moab hath been at
ease from his youth and hath settled upon his lees, and hath not been
emptied from vessel to vessel; therefore his taste stands in him and
his scent is not changed._[113] The characters stigmatised by Zephaniah
are also obvious. They were a precipitate from the ferment of fifteen
years back. Through the cruel days of Manasseh and Amon hope had been
stirred and strained, emptied from vessel to vessel, and so had sprung
sparkling and keen into the new days of Josiah. But no miracle came,
only ten years of waiting for the king’s majority and five more of
small, tentative reforms. Nothing divine happened. There were but
the ambiguous successes of a small party who had secured the king
for their principles. The court was still full of foreign fashions,
and idolatry was rank upon the housetops. Of course disappointment
ensued—disappointment and listlessness. The new security of life became
a temptation; persecution ceased, and religious men lived again at
ease. So numbers of eager and sparkling souls, who had been in the
front of the movement, fell away into a selfish and idle obscurity. The
prophet hears God say, _I must search Jerusalem with lights_ in order
to find them. They had “fallen from the van and the freemen”; they had
“sunk to the rear and the slaves,” where they wallowed in the excuse
that _Jehovah_ Himself _would do nothing—neither good_, therefore it
is useless to attempt reform like Josiah and his party, _nor evil_,
therefore Zephaniah’s prophecy of destruction is also vain. Exactly
the same temper was encountered by Mazzini in the second stage of
his career. Many of those, who with him had eagerly dreamt of a free
Italy, fell away when the first revolt failed—fell away not merely into
weariness and fear, but, as he emphasises, into the very two tempers
which are described by Zephaniah, scepticism and self-indulgence.
All this starts questions for ourselves. Here is evidently the same
public temper, which at all periods provokes alike the despair of the
reformer and the indignation of the prophet: the criminal apathy of the
well-to-do classes sunk in ease and religious indifference. We have
to-day the same mass of obscure, nameless persons, who oppose their
almost unconquerable inertia to every movement of reform, and are the
drag upon all vital and progressive religion. The great causes of God
and Humanity are not defeated by the hot assaults of the Devil, but
by the slow, crushing, glacier-like mass of thousands and thousands
of indifferent nobodies. God’s causes are never destroyed by being
blown up, but by being sat upon. It is not the violent and anarchical
whom we have to fear in the war for human progress, but the slow,
the staid, the respectable. And the danger of these does not lie in
their stupidity. Notwithstanding all their religious profession, it
lies in their real scepticism. Respectability may be the precipitate
of unbelief. Nay, it is that, however religious its mask, wherever
it is mere comfort, decorousness and conventionality; where, though
it would abhor articulately confessing that God does nothing, it
virtually means so—_says_ so (as Zephaniah puts it) _in its heart_, by
refusing to share manifest opportunities of serving Him, and covers
its sloth and its fear by sneering that God is not with the great
crusades for freedom and purity to which it is summoned. In these ways,
Respectability is the precipitate which unbelief naturally forms in
the selfish ease and stillness of so much of our middle-class life.
And that is what makes mere respectability so dangerous. Like the
unshaken, unstrained wine to which the prophet compares its obscure
and muddy comfort, it tends to decay. To some extent our respectable
classes are just the dregs and lees of our national life; like all
dregs, they are subject to corruption. A great sermon could be
preached on the putrescence of respectability—how the ignoble comfort
of our respectable classes and their indifference to holy causes
lead to sensuality, and poison the very institutions of the Home and
the Family, on which they pride themselves. A large amount of the
licentiousness of the present day is not that of outlaw and disordered
lives, but is bred from the settled ease and indifference of many of
our middle-class families.
It is perhaps the chief part of the sin of the obscure units, which
form these great masses of indifference, that they think they escape
notice and cover their individual responsibility. At all times many
have sought obscurity, not because they are humble, but because they
are slothful, cowardly or indifferent. Obviously it is this temper
which is met by the words, _I will search out Jerusalem with lights_.
None of us shall escape because we have said, “I will go with the
crowd,” or “I am a common man and have no right to thrust myself
forward.” We shall be followed and judged, each of us for his and her
personal attitude to the great movements of our time. These things are
not too high for us: they are _our_ duty; and we cannot escape our duty
by slinking into the shadow.
For all this wickedness and indifference Zephaniah sees prepared the
Day of the Lord—near, hastening and very terrible. It sweeps at first
in vague desolation and ruin of all things, but then takes the outlines
of a solemn slaughter-feast for which Jehovah has consecrated the
guests, the dim unnamed armies from the north. Judah shall be invaded,
and they that are at ease, who say _Jehovah does nothing_, shall be
unsettled and routed. One vivid trait comes in like a screech upon the
hearts of a people unaccustomed for years to war. _Hark, Jehovah’s
Day!_ cries the prophet. _A strong man—there!—crying bitterly._ From
this flash upon the concrete, he returns to a great vague terror,
in which earthly armies merge in heavenly; battle, siege, storm and
darkness are mingled, and destruction is spread abroad upon the whole
earth. The first shades of Apocalypse are upon us.
We may now take the full text of this strong and significant prophecy.
We have already given the title. Textual emendations and other points
are explained in footnotes.
* * * * *
_I will sweep, sweep away everything from the face of the ground—oracle
of Jehovah—sweep man and beast, sweep the fowl of the heaven and the
fish of the sea, and I will bring to ruin[114] the wicked and cut off
the men of wickedness from the ground—oracle of Jehovah. And I will
stretch forth My hand upon Judah, and upon all the inhabitants of
Jerusalem; and I will cut off from this place the remnant[115] of the
Baal,[116] the names[117] of the priestlings with the priests, and
them who upon the housetops bow themselves to the host of heaven, and
them who...[118] swear by their Melech,[119] and them who have turned
from following Jehovah, and who do not seek Jehovah nor have inquired
of Him._
_Silence for the Lord Jehovah! For near is Jehovah’s Day. Jehovah has
prepared a[120] slaughter, He has consecrated His guests._
_And it shall be in Jehovah’s day of slaughter that I will make
visitation upon the princes and the house[121] of the king, and upon
all who array themselves in foreign raiment; and I will make visitation
upon all who leap over the threshold[122] on that day, who fill their
lord’s house full of violence and fraud._
_And on that day—oracle of Jehovah—there shall be a noise of crying
from the Fishgate, and wailing from the Mishneh,[123] and great havoc
on the Heights. Howl,_ _O dwellers in the Mortar,[124] for undone are
all the merchant folk,[125] cut off are all the money-dealers.[126]_
_And in that time it shall be, that I will search Jerusalem with
lanterns, and make visitation upon the men who are become stagnant
upon their lees, who in their hearts say, Jehovah doeth no good and
doeth no evil.[127] Their substance shall be for spoil, and their
houses for wasting...._[128]
_Near is the great Day of Jehovah, near and very speedy.[129] Hark, the
Day of Jehovah! A strong man—there!—crying bitterly!_
_A day of wrath is that Day![130] Day of siege and blockade, day of
stress and distress,[131] day of darkness and murk, day of cloud and
heavy mist, day of the war-horn and battle-roar, up against the fenced
cities and against the highest turrets! And I will beleaguer men, and
they shall walk like the blind, for they have sinned against Jehovah;
and poured out shall their blood be like dust, and the flesh of them
like dung. Even their silver, even their gold shall not avail to save
them in the day of Jehovah’s wrath,[132] and in the fire of His zeal
shall all the earth be devoured, for destruction, yea,[133] sudden
collapse shall He make of all the inhabitants of the earth._
Upon this vision of absolute doom there follows[134] a qualification
for the few meek and righteous. They may be hidden on the day of the
Lord’s anger; but even for them escape is only a possibility. Note the
absence of all mention of the Divine mercy as the cause of deliverance.
Zephaniah has no gospel of that kind. The conditions of escape are
sternly ethical—meekness, the doing of justice and righteousness. So
austere is our prophet.
...,[135] _O people unabashed![136] before that ye become as the
drifting chaff, before the anger of Jehovah come upon you,[137] before
there come upon you the day of Jehovah’s wrath;[138] seek Jehovah, all
ye meek of the land who do His ordinance,[139] seek righteousness, seek
meekness, peradventure ye may hide yourselves in the day of Jehovah’s
wrath._
FOOTNOTES:
[100] Josiah, born _c._ 648, succeeded _c._ 639, was about eighteen in
630, and then appears to have begun his reforms.
[101] See above, pp. 40 f., n. 85.
[102] Jer. i. 5.
[103] See G. B. Gray, _Hebrew Proper Names_.
[104] Josiah.
[105] It is not usual in the O.T. to carry a man’s genealogy beyond his
grandfather, except for some special purpose, or in order to include
some ancestor of note. Also the name Hezekiah is very rare apart from
the king. The number of names compounded with Jah or Jehovah is another
proof that the line is a royal one. The omission of the phrase _king
of Judah_ after Hezekiah’s name proves nothing; it may have been of
purpose because the phrase has to occur immediately again.
[106] It was not till 652 that a league was made between the Palestine
princes and Psamtik I. against Assyria. This certainly would have been
the most natural year for a child to be named Kushi. But that would set
the birth of Zephaniah as late as 632, and his prophecy towards the end
of Josiah’s reign, which we have seen to be improbable on other grounds.
[107] Jer. xxi. 1, xxix. 25, 29, xxxvii. 3, lii. 24 ff.; 2 Kings xxv.
18. The analogous Phœnician name צפנבעל, Saphan-ba’al = “Baal protects
or hides,” is found in No. 207 of the Phœnician inscriptions in the
_Corpus Inscr. Semiticarum_.
[108] Chap. i. 15. With the above paragraph cf. Robertson Smith,
_Encyc. Brit._, art. “Zephaniah.”
[109] Chap. i. 14_b_.
[110] In fact this forms one difficulty about the conclusion which we
have reached as to the date. We saw that one reason against putting
the Book of Zephaniah after the great Reforms of 621 was that it
betrayed no sign of their effects. But it might justly be answered
that, if Zephaniah prophesied before 621, his book ought to betray some
sign of the approach of reform. Still the explanation given above is
satisfactory.
[111] Chap. i. 12.
[112] So _wine upon the lees_ is a generous wine according to
Isa. xxv. 6.
[113] Jer. xlviii. 11.
[114] The text reads _the ruins_ (מַכְשֵׁלוֹת, unless we prefer with
Wellhausen מִכְשֹׁלים, _the stumbling-blocks_, i.e. _idols_) _with the
wicked, and I will cut off man_ (LXX. _the lawless_) _from off the face
of the ground._ Some think the clause partly too redundant, partly too
specific, to be original. But suppose we read וְהִכְשַׁלְתִּי (cf. Mal. ii. 8,
Lam. i. 14 and _passim_: this is more probable than Schwally’s כִּשַׁלְתִּי,
_op. cit._, p. 169), and for אדם the reading which probably the LXX.
had before them, אדם רשע (Job xx. 29, xxvii. 13, Prov. xi. 7: cf. אדם
בליעל Prov. vi. 12) or אדם עַוָּל (cf. iii. 5), we get the rendering
adopted in the translation above. Some think the whole passage an
intrusion, yet it is surely probable that the earnest moral spirit of
Zephaniah would aim at the wicked from the very outset of his prophecy.
[115] LXX. _names_, held by some to be the original reading (Schwally,
etc.). In that case the phrase might have some allusion to the
well-known promise in Deut., _the place where I shall set My name_.
This is more natural than a reference to Hosea ii. 19, which is quoted
by some.
[116] Some Greek codd. take Baal as fem., others as plur..
[117] So LXX.
[118] Heb. reads _and them who bow themselves, who swear, by Jehovah_.
So LXX. B with _and_ before _who swear_. But LXX. A omits _and_. LXX. Q
omits _them who bow themselves_. Wellhausen keeps the clause with the
exception of _who swear_, and so reads (to the end of verse) _them who
bow themselves to Jehovah and swear by Milcom_.
[119] Or Molech = king. LXX. _by their king_. Other Greek versions:
Moloch and Melchom. Vulg. Melchom.
[120] LXX. _His._
[121] So LXX. Heb. _sons_.
[122] Is this some superstitious rite of the idol-worshippers as
described in the case of Dagon, 1 Sam. v. 5? Or is it a phrase for
breaking into a house, and so parallel to the second clause of the
verse? Most interpreters prefer the latter. The idolatrous rites have
been left behind. Schwally suggests the original order may have been:
_princes and sons of the king, who fill their lord’s house full of
violence and deceit; and I will visit upon every one that leapeth over
the threshold on that day, and upon all that wear foreign raiment_.
[123] The _Second_ or New Town: cf. 2 Kings xxii. 14, 2 Chron. xxxiv.
22, which state that the prophetess Huldah lived there. Cf. Neh. iii.
9, 12, xi. 9.
[124] The hollow probably between the western and eastern hills, or the
upper part of the Tyropœan (Orelli).
[125] Heb. _people of Canaan_.
[126] נטיל, found only here, from נטל, to lift up, and in Isa. xl.
15 to weigh. Still it may have a wider meaning, _all they that carry
money_ (Davidson).
[127] See above, p. 52.
[128] The Hebrew text and versions here add: _And they shall build
houses and not inhabit_ (Greek _in them_), _and plant vineyards and not
drink the wine thereof._ But the phrase is a common one (Deut. xxviii.
30; Amos v. 11: cf. Micah vi. 15), and while likely to have been
inserted by a later hand, is here superfluous, and mars the firmness
and edge of Zephaniah’s threat.
[129] For מהר Wellhausen reads ממהר, pt. Pi; but מהר may be a verbal
adj.; compare the phrase מהר שלל, Isa. viii. 1.
[130] Dies Iræ, Dies Illa!
[131] Heb. sho’ah u-mesho’ah. Lit. ruin (or devastation) and
destruction.
[132] Some take this first clause of ver. 18 as a gloss. See Schwally
_in loco_.
[133] Read אף for אך. So LXX., Syr., Wellhausen, Schwally.
[134] In vv. 1-3 of chap. ii., wrongly separated from chap. i.: see
Davidson.
[135] Heb. הִתְקוֹשְׁשׁוּ וָקשּׁוּ. A.V. _Gather yourselves together, yea,
gather together_ (קוֹשֵׁשׁ is _to gather straw or sticks_—cf. Arab.
_ḳash_, to sweep up—and Nithp. of the Aram. is to assemble). Orelli:
_Crowd and crouch down_. Ewald compares Aram. _ḳash_, late Heb. קְשַׁשׁ,
_to grow old_, which he believes originally meant _to be
withered, grey_. Budde suggests בשו התבששו, but, as Davidson remarks,
it is not easy to see how this, if once extant, was altered to the
present reading.
[136] נִכְסָף is usually thought to have as its root meaning _to be
pale_ or _colourless_, _i.e._ either white or black (_Journal of
Phil._, 14, 125), whence כֶּסֶף, _silver_ or _the pale metal_: hence in
the Qal to long for, Job xiv. 15, Ps. xvii. 12; so Ni, Gen. xxxi. 30,
Ps. lxxxiv. 3; and here _to be ashamed_. But the derivation of the name
for silver is quite imaginary, and the colour of shame is red rather
than white: cf. the mod. Arab. saying, “They are a people that cannot
blush; they have no blood in their faces,” _i.e._ shameless. Indeed
Schwally says (_in loco_), “Die Bedeutung fahl, blass ist
unerweislich.” Hence (in spite of the meanings of the Aram. כסף both to
lose colour and to be ashamed) a derivation for the Hebrew is more
probably to be found in the root _kasaf_, to cut off. The Arab. کﺴف,
which in the classic tongue means to cut a thread or eclipse the sun,
is in colloquial Arabic to give a rebuff, refuse a favour, disappoint,
shame. In the forms _inkasaf_ and _itkasaf_ it means to receive a
rebuff, be disappointed, then shy or timid, and _kasûf_ means shame,
shyness (as well as eclipse of the sun). See Spiro’s _Arabic-English
Vocabulary_. In Ps. lxxxiv. נכסף is evidently used of unsatisfied
longing (but see Cheyne), which is also the proper meaning of the
parallel כלה (cf. other passages where כלה is used of still unfulfilled
or rebuffed hopes: Job xix. 27, Ps. lxix. 4, cxix. 81, cxliii. 7). So
in Ps. xvii. 4 כסף is used of a lion who is longing for, _i.e._ still
disappointed in, his prey, and so in Job xiv. 15.
[137] LXX. πρὸ γένεσθαι ὑμᾶς ὡς ἄνθος (here in error reading נץ for מץ)
παραπορευόμενον, πρὸ τοῦ ἐπελθεῖν ἐφ’ ὑμᾶς ὀργὴν κυρίου (last clause
omitted by א^{c.b}). According to this the Hebrew text, which is
obviously disarranged, may be restored to בְּטֶרֶם לאֹ־תִהיוּ כַמֹּץ עֹבֵר בְּטֶרֶם
לאֹ־יָבֹא עֲלֵיכֶם חֲרוֹן יהו.
[138] This clause Wellhausen deletes. Cf. Hexaplar Syriac translation.
[139] LXX. take this also as imperative, _do judgment_, and so
co-ordinate to the other clauses.
CHAPTER IV
_NINIVE DELENDA_
ZEPHANIAH ii. 4-15
There now come a series of oracles on foreign nations, connected with
the previous prophecy by the conjunction _for_, and detailing the
worldwide judgment which it had proclaimed. But though dated from the
same period as that prophecy, _circa_ 626, these oracles are best
treated by themselves.[140]
These oracles originally formed one passage in the well-known Qinah
or elegiac measure; but this has suffered sadly both by dilapidation
and rebuilding. How mangled the text is may be seen especially from
vv. 6 and 14, where the Greek gives us some help in restoring it. The
verses (8-11) upon Moab and Ammon cannot be reduced to the metre which
both precedes and follows them. Probably, therefore, they are a later
addition: nor did Moab and Ammon lie upon the way of the Scythians, who
are presumably the invaders pictured by the prophet.[141]
The poem begins with Philistia and the sea-coast, the very path of the
Scythian raid.[142] Evidently the latter is imminent, the Philistine
cities are shortly to be taken and the whole land reduced to grass.
Across the emptied strip the long hope of Israel springs sea-ward;
but—mark!—not yet with a vision of the isles beyond. The prophet is
satisfied with reaching the edge of the Promised Land: _by the sea
shall they feed_[143] their flocks.
_For Gaza forsaken shall be,
Ashḳ’lôn a desert.
Ashdod—by noon shall they rout her,
And Eḳron be torn up!_[144]
_Ah! woe, dwellers of the sea-shore,
Folk of Kerēthim.
The word of Jehovah against thee, Kĕna‘an,[145]
Land of the Philistines!_
_And I destroy thee to the last inhabitant,[146]
And Kereth shall become shepherds’ cots,[147]
And folds for flocks.
And the coast[148] for the remnant of Judah’s house;
By the sea[149] shall they feed.
In Ashḳelon’s houses at even shall they couch;
. . . . . .[150]
For Jehovah their God shall visit them,
And turn their captivity.[151]_
There comes now an oracle upon Moab and Ammon (vv. 8-11). As already
said, it is not in the elegiac measure which precedes and follows it,
while other features cast a doubt upon its authenticity. Like other
oracles on the same peoples, this denounces the loud-mouthed arrogance
of the sons of Moab and Ammon.
_I have heard[152] the reviling of Moab and the insults of the sons
of Ammon, who have reviled My people and vaunted themselves upon
their[153] border. Wherefore as I live, saith Jehovah of Hosts, God of
Israel, Moab shall become as Sodom, and Ammon’s sons as Gomorrah—the
possession[154] of nettles, and saltpits,[155] and a desolation for
ever; the remnant of My people shall spoil them, and the rest of My
nation possess them. This to them for their arrogance, because they
reviled, and vaunted themselves against, the people of[156] Jehovah of
Hosts. Jehovah showeth Himself terrible[157] against them, for He hath
made lean[158] all gods of earth, that all the coasts of the nations
may worship Him, every man from his own place.[159]_
* * * * *
The next oracle is a very short one (ver. 12) upon Egypt, which after
its long subjection to Ethiopic dynasties is called, not Miṣraim, but
Kush, or Ethiopia. The verse follows on naturally to ver. 7, but is not
reducible to the elegiac measure.
_Also ye, O Kushites, are the slain of My sword.[160]_
The elegiac measure is now renewed[161] in an oracle against Assyria,
the climax and front of heathendom (vv. 13-15). It must have been
written before 608: there is no reason to doubt that it is Zephaniah’s.
_And may He stretch out His hand against the North,
And destroy Asshur;
And may He turn Niniveh to desolation,
Dry as the desert.
And herds shall couch in her midst.
Every beast of....[162]
Yea, pelican and bittern[163] shall roost on the capitals;
The owl shall hoot in the window,
The raven on the doorstep._
. . . . .[164]
_Such is the City, the Jubilant,
She that sitteth at ease,
She that saith in her heart, I am
And there is none else!
How hath she become desolation!
A lair of beasts.
Every one passing by her hisses,
Shakes his hand._
The essence of these oracles is their clear confidence in the
fall of Niniveh. From 652, when Egypt revolted from Assyria, and,
Assurbanipal notwithstanding, began to push northward, men must
have felt, throughout all Western Asia, that the great empire upon
the Tigris was beginning to totter. This feeling was strengthened
by the Scythian invasion, and after 625 it became a moral certainty
that Niniveh would fall[165]—which happened in 607—6. These are the
feelings, 625 to 608, which Zephaniah’s oracles reflect. We can hardly
over-estimate what they meant. Not a man was then alive who had ever
known anything else than the greatness and the glory of Assyria. It was
two hundred and thirty years since Israel first felt the weight of her
arms.[166] It was more than a hundred since her hosts had swept through
Palestine,[167] and for at least fifty her supremacy had been accepted
by Judah. Now the colossus began to totter. As she had menaced, so she
was menaced. The ruins with which for nigh three centuries she had
strewn Western Asia—to these were to be reduced her own impregnable and
ancient glory. It was the close of an epoch.
FOOTNOTES:
[140] See above, pp. 41 ff.
[141] Some, however, think the prophet is speaking in prospect of the
Chaldean invasion of a few years later. This is not so likely, because
he pictures the overthrow of Niniveh as subsequent to the invasion
of Philistia, while the Chaldeans accomplished the latter only after
Niniveh had fallen.
[142] According to Herodotus.
[143] Ver. 7, LXX.
[144] The measure, as said above, is elegiac: alternate lines long
with a rising, and short with a falling, cadence. There is a play
upon the names, at least on the first and last—“Gazzah” or “‘Azzah
‘Azubah”—which in English we might reproduce by the use of Spenser’s
word for “dreary”: _For Gaza ghastful shall be._ “‘Eḳron te’aḳer.”
LXX. Ἀκκαρων ἐκριζωθήσεταὶ (B), ἐκριφήσεται (A). In the second line
we have a slighter assonance, ‘Ashkĕlōn lishĕmamah. In the third the
verb is יְגָרְשׁוּהָ; Bacher (_Z.A.T.W._, 1891, 185 ff.) points out
that גֵּרַשׁ is not used of cities, but of their populations or of
individual men, and suggests (from Abulwalid) יירשוה, _shall possess
her_, as “a plausible emendation.” Schwally (_ibid._, 260) prefers to
alter to יְשָׁרְשׁוּהָ, with the remark that this is not only a good
parallel to תעקר, but suits the LXX. ἐκριφήσεται.—On the expression _by
noon_ see Davidson, _N. H. and Z._, Appendix, Note 2, where he quotes a
parallel expression, in the Senjerli inscription, of Asarhaddon: that
he took Memphis by midday or in half a day (Schrader). This suits the
use of the phrase in Jer. xv. 8, where it is parallel to _suddenly_.
[145] Canaan omitted by Wellhausen, who reads עליך for עליכם. But as
the metre requires a larger number of syllables in the first line
of each couplet than in the second, Kĕna’an should probably remain.
The difficulty is the use of Canaan as synonymous with _Land of the
Philistines_. Nowhere else in the Old Testament is it expressly applied
to the coast south of Carmel, though it is so used in the Egyptian
inscriptions, and even in the Old Testament in a sense which covers
this as well as other lowlying parts of Palestine.
[146] An odd long line, either the remains of two, or perhaps we should
take the two previous lines as one, omitting Canaan.
[147] So LXX.: Hebrew text _and the sea-coast shall become dwellings,
cots_ (כְּרֹת) _of shepherds_. But the pointing and meaning of כרת are
both conjectural, and the _sea-coast_ has probably fallen by mistake
into this verse from the next. On Kereth and Kerethim as names for
Philistia and the Philistines see _Hist. Geog._, p. 171.
[148] LXX. adds _of the sea_. So Wellhausen, but unnecessarily and
improbably for phonetic reasons, as sea has to be read in the next line.
[149] So Wellhausen, reading for עַל־הַיָּם עֲליהֶם.
[150] Some words must have fallen out, for _first_ a short line is
required here by the metre, and _second_ the LXX. have some additional
words, which, however, give us no help to what the lost line was: ἀπὸ
προσώπου υἱῶν Ἰούδα.
[151] As stated above, there is no conclusive reason against the
pre-exilic date of this expression.
[152] Cf. Isa. xvi. 6.
[153] LXX. _My._
[154] Doubtful word, not occurring elsewhere.
[155] Heb. singular.
[156] LXX. omits _the people of_.
[157] LXX. _maketh Himself manifest_, נראה for נורא.
[158] ἅπαξ λεγόμενον. The passive of the verb means _to grow lean_
(Isa. xvii. 4).
[159] מקום has probably here the sense which it has in a few other
passages of the Old Testament, and in Arabic, of _sacred place_.
Many will share Schwally’s doubts (p. 192) about the authenticity of
ver. 11; nor, as Wellhausen points out, does its prediction of the
conversion of the heathen agree with ver. 12, which devotes them to
destruction. Ver. 12 follows naturally on to ver. 7.
[160] Wellhausen reads _His sword_, to agree with the next verse.
Perhaps חרבי is an abbreviation for חרב יהוה.
[161] See Budde, _Z.A.T.W._, 1882, 25.
[162] Heb. reads _a nation_, and Wellhausen translates _ein buntes
Gemisch von Volk_. LXX. _beasts of the earth_.
[163] קאת, a water-bird according to Deut. xiv. 17, Lev. xi. 18, mostly
taken as _pelican_; so R.V. A.V. _cormorant_. קִפֹּד has usually been
taken from קפד, to draw together, therefore _hedgehog_ or _porcupine_.
But the other animals mentioned here are birds, and it is birds
which would naturally roost on capitals. Therefore _bittern_ is the
better rendering (Hitzig, Cheyne). The name is onomatopœic. Cf. Eng.
butter-dump. LXX. translates _chameleons and hedgehogs_.
[164] Heb.: _a voice shall sing in the window, desolation on the
threshold, for He shall uncover the cedar-work_. LXX. καὶ θηρία φωνήσει
ἐν τοῖς διορύγμασιν αὐτῆς, κόρακες ἐν τοῖς πυλῶσιν αὐτῆς, διότι κέδρος
τὸ ἀνάστημα αὐτῆς: Wild beasts shall sound in her excavations, ravens
in her porches, because (the) cedar is her height. For קול, _voice_,
Wellhausen reads כוס, _owl_, and with the LXX. ערב, _raven_, for חרב,
_desolation_. The last two words are left untranslated above. אַרְזָה
occurs only here and is usually taken to mean cedar-work; but it
might be pointed _her_ cedar. ערה, _he_, or _one, has stripped the
cedar-work_.
[165] See above, pp. 17, 18.
[166] At the battle of Karkar, 854.
[167] Under Tiglath-Pileser in 734.
CHAPTER V
_SO AS BY FIRE_
Zephaniah iii.
The third chapter of the Book of Zephaniah consists[168] of two
sections, of which only the first, vv. 1-13, is a genuine work of the
prophet; while the second, vv. 14-20, is a later epilogue such as we
found added to the genuine prophecies of Amos. It is written in the
large hope and brilliant temper of the Second Isaiah, saying no word of
Judah’s sin or judgment, but predicting her triumphant deliverance out
of all her afflictions.
In a second address to his City (vv. 1-13) Zephaniah strikes the same
notes as he did in his first. He spares the king, but denounces the
ruling and teaching classes. Jerusalem’s princes are lions, her judges
wolves, her prophets braggarts, her priests pervert the law, her wicked
have no shame. He repeats the proclamation of a universal doom. But
the time is perhaps later. Judah has disregarded the many threats. She
will not accept the Lord’s discipline; and while in chap. i.—ii. 3
Zephaniah had said that the meek and righteous might escape the doom,
he now emphatically affirms that all proud and impenitent men shall be
removed from Jerusalem, and a humble people be left to her, righteous
and secure. There is the same moral earnestness as before, the same
absence of all other elements of prophecy than the ethical. Before we
ask the reason and emphasise the beauty of this austere gospel, let us
see the exact words of the address. There are the usual marks of poetic
diction in it—elliptic phrases, the frequent absence of the definite
article, archaic forms and an order of the syntax different from that
which obtains in prose. But the measure is difficult to determine, and
must be printed as prose. The echo of the elegiac rhythm in the opening
is more apparent than real: it is not sustained beyond the first verse.
Verses 9 and 10 are relegated to a footnote, as very probably an
intrusion, and disturbance of the argument.
_Woe, rebel and unclean, city of oppression![169] She listens to no
voice, she accepts no discipline, in Jehovah she trusts not, nor has
drawn near to her God._
_Her princes in her midst are roaring lions; her judges evening
wolves,[170] they ...[171] not till morning; her prophets are braggarts
and traitors; her priests have profaned what is holy and done violence
to the Law.[172] Jehovah is righteous in the midst of her, He does no
wrong. Morning by morning He brings His judgment to light: He does not
let Himself fail[173]—but the wicked man knows no shame. I have cut
off nations, their turrets are ruined; I have laid waste their broad
streets, till no one passes upon them; destroyed are their cities,
without a man, without a dweller.[174] I said, Surely she will fear
Me, she will accept punishment,[175] and all that I have visited upon
her[176] shall never vanish from her eyes.[177] But only the more
zealously have they corrupted all their doings.[178]_
_Wherefore wait ye for Me—oracle of Jehovah—_wait_ for the day of My
rising to testify, for ’tis My fixed purpose[179] to sweep nations
together, to collect kingdoms, to pour upon them ...[180] all the heat
of My wrath—yea, with the fire of My jealousy shall the whole earth
be consumed.[181]_
_In that day thou shalt not be ashamed[182] of all thy deeds, by which
thou hast rebelled against Me: for then will I turn out of the midst of
thee all who exult with that arrogance of thine,[183] and thou wilt not
again vaunt thyself upon the Mount of My Holiness. But I will leave in
thy midst a people humble and poor, and they shall trust in the name of
Jehovah. The Remnant of Israel shall do no evil, and shall not speak
falsehood, and no fraud shall be found in their mouth, but they shall
pasture and they shall couch, with none to make them afraid._
Such is the simple and austere gospel of Zephaniah. It is not to be
overlooked amid the lavish and gorgeous promises which other prophets
have poured around it, and by ourselves, too, it is needed in our often
unscrupulous enjoyment of the riches of grace that are in Christ Jesus.
A thorough purgation, the removal of the wicked, the sparing of the
honest and the meek; insistence only upon the rudiments of morality and
religion; faith in its simplest form of trust in a righteous God, and
character in its basal elements of meekness and truth,—these and these
alone survive the judgment. Why does Zephaniah never talk of the Love
of God, of the Divine Patience, of the Grace that has spared and will
spare wicked hearts if only it can touch them to penitence? Why has he
no call to repent, no appeal to the wicked to turn from the evil of
their ways? We have already seen part of the answer. Zephaniah stands
too near to judgment and the last things. Character is fixed, the time
for pleading is past; there remains only the separation of bad men
from good. It is the same standpoint (at least ethically) as that of
Christ’s visions of the Judgment. Perhaps also an austere gospel was
required by the fashionable temper of the day. The generation was loud
and arrogant; it gilded the future to excess, and knew no shame.[184]
The true prophet was forced to reticence; he must make his age feel the
desperate earnestness of life, and that salvation is by fire. For the
gorgeous future of its unsanctified hopes he must give it this severe,
almost mean, picture of a poor and humble folk, hardly saved but at
last at peace.
The permanent value of such a message is proved by the thirst which
we feel even to-day for the clear, cold water of its simple promises.
Where a glaring optimism prevails, and the future is preached with a
loud assurance, where many find their only religious enthusiasm in the
resurrection of mediæval ritual or the singing of stirring and gorgeous
hymns of second-hand imagery, how needful to be recalled to the
earnestness and severity of life, to the simplicity of the conditions
of salvation, and to their ethical, not emotional, character! Where
sensationalism has so invaded religion, how good to hear the sober
insistence upon God’s daily commonplaces—_morning by morning He
bringeth forth His judgment to light_—and to know that the acceptance
of discipline is what prevails with Him. Where national reform is
vaunted and the progress of education, how well to go back to a prophet
who ignored all the great reforms of his day that he might impress
his people with the indispensableness of humility and faith. Where
Churches have such large ambitions for themselves, how necessary to
hear that the future is destined for _a poor folk_, the meek and the
honest. Where men boast that their religion—Bible, Creed or Church—has
undertaken to save them, _vaunting themselves on the Mount of My
Holiness_, how needful to hear salvation placed upon character and a
very simple trust in God.
But, on the other hand, is any one in despair at the darkness and
cruelty of this life, let him hear how Zephaniah proclaims that, though
all else be fraud, _the Lord is righteous in the midst_ of us, _He doth
not let Himself fail_, that the resigned heart and the humble, the just
and the pure heart, is imperishable, and in the end there is at least
peace.
EPILOGUE.
VERSES 14-20.
Zephaniah’s prophecy was fulfilled. The Day of the Lord came, and
the people met their judgment. The Remnant survived—_a folk poor and
humble_. To them, in the new estate and temper of their life, came a
new song from God—perhaps it was nearly a hundred years after Zephaniah
had spoken—and they added it to his prophecies. It came in with
wonderful fitness, for it was the song of the redeemed, whom he had
foreseen, and it tuned his book, severe and simple, to the full harmony
of prophecy, so that his book might take a place in the great choir of
Israel—the diapason of that full salvation which no one man, but only
the experience of centuries, could achieve.
_Sing out, O daughter of Zion! shout aloud, O Israel! Rejoice and be
jubilant with all thy[185] heart, daughter of Jerusalem! Jehovah hath
set aside thy judgments,[186] He hath turned thy foes. King of Israel,
Jehovah is in thy midst; thou shalt not see[187] evil any more._
_In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear not. O Zion, let not
thy hands droop! Jehovah, thy God, in the midst of thee is mighty;[188]
He will save, He will rejoice over thee with joy, He will make new[189]
His love, He will exult over thee with singing._
_The scattered of thy congregation[190] have I gathered—thine[191] are
they, ...[192] reproach upon her. Behold, I am about to do all for thy
sake at that time,[193] and I will rescue the lame and the outcast will
I bring in,[194] and I will make them for renown and fame whose shame
is in the whole earth.[195] In that time I will bring you in,[196]
even in the time that I gather you.[197] For I will set you for fame
and renown among all the peoples of the earth, when I turn again your
captivity before your eyes, saith Jehovah.[198]_
FOOTNOTES:
[168] See above, pp. 43-45.
[169] Heb. _the city the oppressor_. The two participles in the first
clause are not predicates to the noun and adjective of the second
(Schwally), but vocatives, though without the article, after הוֹי.
[170] LXX. _wolves of Arabia_.
[171] The verb left untranslated, גרמו, is quite uncertain in meaning.
גרם is a root common to the Semitic languages and seems to mean
originally _to cut off_, while the noun גרם is _a bone_. In Num. xxiv.
8 the Piel of the verb used with another word for bone means _to gnaw_,
_munch_. (The only other passage where it is used, Ezek. xxiii. 34, is
corrupt.) So some take it here: _they do not gnaw bones till morning_,
_i.e._ devour all at once; but this is awkward, and Schwally (198)
has proposed to omit the negative, _they do gnaw bones till morning_,
yet in that case surely the impf. and not the perf. tense would have
been used. The LXX. render _they do not leave over_, and it has been
attempted, though inconclusively, to derive this meaning from that of
_cutting off_, i.e. _laying aside_ (the Arabic Form II. means, however,
_to leave behind_). Another line of meaning perhaps promises more. In
Aram. the verb means _to be the cause of anything, to bring about_,
and perhaps contains the idea of _deciding_ (Levy _sub voce_ compares
κρίνω, _cerno_); in Arab. it means, among other things, _to commit
a crime, be guilty_, but in mod. Arabic _to fine_. Now it is to be
noticed that here the expression is used of _judges_, and it may be
there is an intentional play upon the double possibility of meaning in
the root.
[172] Ezek. xxii. 26: _Her priests have done violence to My Law and
have profaned My holy things; they have put no difference between the
holy and profane, between the clean and the unclean._ Cf. Jer. ii. 8.
[173] Schwally by altering the accents: _morning by morning He giveth
forth His judgment: no day does He fail_.
[174] On this ver. 6 see above, p. 44. It is doubtful.
[175] Or _discipline_.
[176] Wellhausen: _that which I have commanded her_. Cf. Job xxxvi. 23;
2 Chron. xxxvi. 23; Ezra i. 2.
[177] So LXX., reading מֵעֵינֶיהָ for the Heb. מְעוֹנָהּ, _her
dwelling_.
[178] A frequent phrase of Jeremiah’s.
[179] משפטי, decree, ordinance, decision.
[180] Heb. _My anger._ LXX. omits.
[181] That is to say, the prophet returns to that general judgment
of the whole earth, with which in his first discourse he had already
threatened Judah. He threatens her with it again in this eighth verse,
because, as he has said in the preceding ones, all other warnings have
failed. The eighth verse therefore follows naturally upon the seventh,
just as naturally as in Amos iv. ver. 12, introduced by the same לֵָכן
as here, follows its predecessors. The next two verses of the text,
however, describe an opposite result: instead of the destruction of the
heathen, they picture their conversion, and it is only in the eleventh
verse that we return to the main subject of the passage, Judah herself,
who is represented (in harmony with the close of Zephaniah’s first
discourse) as reduced to a righteous and pious remnant. Vv. 9 and 10
are therefore obviously a later insertion, and we pass to the eleventh
verse. Vv. 9 and 10: _For then_ (this has no meaning after ver. 8)
_will I give to the peoples a pure lip_ (elliptic phrase: _turn to the
peoples a pure lip_—i.e. _turn their_ evil lip into _a pure lip_: pure
= _picked out_, _select_, _excellent_, cf. Isa. xlix. 2), _that they
may all of them call upon the name of the Lord, that they may serve
Him with one consent_ (Heb. _shoulder_, LXX. _yoke_). _From beyond
the rivers of Ethiopia_—there follows a very obscure phrase, עֲתָרַי
בַּת־פּוּצַי, _suppliants (?) of the daughter of My dispersed_, but
Ewald _of the daughter of Phut—they shall bring Mine offering_.
[182] Wellhausen _despair_.
[183] Heb. _the jubilant ones of thine arrogance_.
[184] See vv. 4, 5, 11.
[185] Heb. _the_.
[186] מִשְׁפָּטַיִךְ. But Wellhausen reads מְשׁוֹפְטַיִךְ, thine
adversaries: cf. Job ix. 15.
[187] Reading תִּרְאִי (with LXX., Wellhausen and Schwally) for
תִּירָאִי of the Hebrew text, _fear_.
[188] Lit. _hero_, _mighty man_.
[189] Heb. _will be silent in_, יַחֲרִישׁ, but not in harmony with the
next clause. LXX. and Syr. render _will make new_, which translates
יַחֲדִישׁ, a form that does not elsewhere occur, though that is no
objection to finding it in Zephaniah, or יְחַדֵּשׁ. Hitzig: _He makes
new things in His love_. Buhl: _He renews His love_. Schwally suggests
יחדה, _He rejoices in His love_.
[190] LXX. _In the days of thy festival_, which it takes with the
previous verse. The Heb. construction is ungrammatical, though not
unprecedented—the construct state before a preposition. Besides נוגי is
obscure in meaning. It is a Ni. pt. for נוגה from יגה, _to be sad_: cf.
the Pi. in Lam. iii. 33. But the Hiphil הוגה in 2 Sam. xx. 13, followed
(as here) by מן, means _to thrust away from_, and that is probably the
sense here.
[191] LXX. _thine oppressed_ in acc. governed by the preceding verb,
which in LXX. begins the verse.
[192] The Heb., מַשְׂאֵת, _burden of_, is unintelligible. Wellhausen
proposes מִשְׂאֵת עֲלֵיהֶ.
[193] This rendering is only a venture in the almost impossible task of
restoring the text of the clause. As it stands the Heb. runs, _Behold,
I am about to do_, or _deal, with thine oppressors_ (which Hitzig and
Ewald accept). Schwally points מְעַנַּיִךְ (active) as a passive, מְעֻנַּיִךְ,
_thine oppressed_. LXX. has ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ποιῶ ἐν σοὶ ἕνεκεν
σοῦ, _i.e._ it read אִתֵּךְ לְמַעֲנֵךְ. Following its suggestion we
might read אֶת־כֹּל לְמַעֲנֵךְ, and so get the above translation.
[194] Micah iv. 6.
[195] This rendering (Ewald’s) is doubtful. The verse concludes with
_in the whole earth their shame_. But בָּשְׁתָּם may be a gloss. LXX.
take it as a verb with the next verse.
[196] LXX. _do good to you_; perhaps אטיב for אביא.
[197] So Heb. literally, but the construction is very awkward. Perhaps
we should read _in that time I will gather you_.
[198] _Before your eyes_, _i.e._ in your lifetime. It is doubtful
whether ver. 20 is original to the passage. For it is simply a
variation on ver. 19, and it has more than one impossible reading: see
previous note, and for שבותיכם read שבותכם.
_NAHUM_
_Woe to the City of Blood,
All of her guile, robbery-full, ceaseless rapine!_
_Hark the whip,
And the rumbling of wheels!
Horses at the gallop,
And the rattling dance of the chariot!
Cavalry at the charge,
Flash of sabres, and lightning of lances!_
CHAPTER VI
_THE BOOK OF NAHUM_
The Book of Nahum consists of a double title and three odes. The title
runs _Oracle of Niniveh: Book of the Vision of Nahum the Elḳôshite_.
The three odes, eager and passionate pieces, are all of them apparently
vibrant to the impending fall of Assyria. The first, chap. i. with the
possible inclusion of chap. ii. 2,[199] is general and theological,
affirming God’s power of vengeance and the certainty of the overthrow
of His enemies. The second, chap. ii. with the omission of ver. 2,[200]
and the third, chap, iii., can hardly be disjoined; they both present a
vivid picture of the siege, the storm and the spoiling of Niniveh.
The introductory questions, which title and contents start, are in the
main three: 1. The position of Elḳôsh, to which the title assigns the
prophet; 2. The authenticity of chap. i.; 3. The date of chaps, ii.,
iii.: to which siege of Niniveh do they refer?
1. THE POSITION OF ELḲÔSH.
The title calls Nahum the Elḳôshite—that is, native or citizen of
Elḳôsh.[201] Three positions have been claimed for this place, which is
not mentioned elsewhere in the Bible.
The first we take is the modern Al-Ḳûsh, a town still flourishing
about twenty-four miles to the north of the site of Niniveh,[202]
with “no fragments of antiquity” about it, but possessing a “simple
plaster box,” which Jews, Christians and Mohammedans alike reverence as
the tomb of Nahum.[203] There is no evidence that Al-Ḳûsh, a name of
Arabic form, is older than the Arab period, while the tradition which
locates the tomb there is not found before the sixteenth century of
our era, but on the contrary Nahum’s grave was pointed out to Benjamin
of Tudela in 1165 at ‘Ain Japhata, on the south of Babylon.[204] The
tradition that the prophet lived and died at Al-Ḳûsh is therefore due
to the similarity of the name to that of Nahum’s Elḳôsh, as well as
to the fact that Niniveh was the subject of his prophesying.[205] In
his book there is no trace of proof for the assertion that Nahum was a
descendant of the ten tribes exiled in 721 to the region to the north
of Al-Ḳûsh. He prophesies for Judah alone. Nor does he show any more
knowledge of Niniveh than her ancient fame must have scattered to the
limits of the world.[206] We might as well argue from chap. iii. 8-10
that Nahum had visited Thebes of Egypt.
The second tradition of the position of Elḳôsh is older. In his
commentary on Nahum Jerome says that in his day it still existed,
a petty village of Galilee, under the name of Helkesei,[207] or
Elkese, and apparently with an established reputation as the
town of Nahum.[208] But the book itself bears no symptom of its
author’s connection with Galilee, and although it was quite possible
for a prophet of that period to have lived there, it is not very
probable.[209]
A third tradition places Elḳôsh in the south of Judah. A Syriac version
of the accounts of the prophets, which are ascribed to Epiphanius,[210]
describes Nahum as “of Elḳôsh beyond Bêt Gabrê, of the tribe of
Simeon”;[211] and it may be noted that Cyril of Alexandria says[212]
that Elkese was a village in the country of the Jews. This tradition
is superior to the first in that there is no apparent motive for its
fabrication, and to the second in so far as Judah was at the time
of Nahum a much more probable home for a prophet than Galilee; nor
does the book give any references except such as might be made by a
Judæan.[213] No modern place-name, however, can be suggested with any
certainty as the echo of Elḳôsh. Umm Lâḳis, which has been proved not
to be Lachish, contains the same radicals, and some six and a quarter
miles east from Beit-Jibrin at the upper end of the Wady es Sur there
is an ancient well with the name Bir el Ḳûs.[214]
2. THE AUTHENTICITY OF CHAP. I.
Till recently no one doubted that the three chapters formed a unity.
“Nahum’s prophecy,” said Kuenen in 1889, “is a whole.” In 1891[215]
Cornill affirmed that no questions of authenticity arose in regard
to the book; and in 1892 Wellhausen saw in chap. i. an introduction
leading “in no awkward way to the proper subject of the prophecy.”
Meantime, however, Bickell,[216] discovering what he thought to be
the remains of an alphabetic Psalm in chap. i. 1-7, attempted to
reconstruct throughout chap. i.—ii. 3 twenty-two verses, each beginning
with a successive letter of the alphabet. And, following this, Gunkel
in 1893 produced a more full and plausible reconstruction of the same
scheme.[217] By radical emendations of the text, by excision of what he
believes to be glosses and by altering the order of many of the verses,
Gunkel seeks to produce twenty-three distichs, twenty of which begin
with the successive letters of the alphabet, two are wanting, while in
the first three letters of the twenty-third, [שׁבי], he finds very
probable the name of the author, Shobai or Shobi.[218] He takes this
ode, therefore, to be an eschatological Psalm of the later Judaism,
which from its theological bearing has been thought suitable as an
introduction to Nahum’s genuine prophecies.
The text of chap. i.—ii. 4 has been badly mauled and is clamant for
reconstruction of some kind. As it lies, there are traces of an
alphabetical arrangement as far as the beginning of ver. 9,[219]
and so far Gunkel’s changes are comparatively simple. Many of his
emendations are in themselves and apart from the alphabetic scheme
desirable. They get rid of difficulties and improve the poetry of the
passage.[220] His reconstruction is always clever and as a whole forms
a wonderfully spirited poem. But to have produced good or poetical
Hebrew is not conclusive proof of having recovered the original, and
there are obvious objections to the process. Several of the proposed
changes are unnatural in themselves and unsupported by anything
except the exigencies of the scheme; for example, 2_b_ and 3_a_ are
dismissed as a gloss only because, if they be retained, the _Aleph_
verse is two bars too long. The gloss, Gunkel thinks, was introduced
to mitigate the absoluteness of the declaration that Jehovah is a God
of wrath and vengeance; but this is not obvious and would hardly have
been alleged apart from the needs of the alphabetic scheme. In order
to find a _Daleth_, it is quite arbitrary to say that the first אמלל
in 4_b_ is redundant in face of the second, and that a word beginning
with _Daleth_ originally filled its place, but was removed because
it was a rare or difficult word! The re-arrangement of 7 and 8_a_ is
very clever, and reads as if it were right; but the next effort, to
get a verse beginning with _Lamed_, is of the kind by which anything
might be proved. These, however, are nothing to the difficulties which
vv. 9-14 and chap. ii. 1, 3, present to an alphabetic scheme, or to
the means which Gunkel takes to surmount them. He has to re-arrange
the order of the verses,[221] and of the words within the verses. The
distichs beginning with _Nun_ and _Ḳoph_ are wanting, or at least
undecipherable. To provide one with initial _Resh_ the interjection
has to be removed from the opening of chap. ii. 1, and the verse made
to begin with רגלי and to run thus: _the feet of him that bringeth
good news on the mountains; behold him that publisheth peace_. Other
unlikely changes will be noticed when we come to the translation. Here
we may ask the question: if the passage was originally alphabetic, that
is, furnished with so fixed and easily recognised a frame, why has it
so fallen to pieces? And again, if it has so fallen to pieces, is it
possible that it can be restored? The many arbitrarinesses of Gunkel’s
able essay would seem to imply that it is not. Dr. Davidson says: “Even
if it should be assumed that an alphabetical poem lurks under chap. i.,
the attempt to restore it, just as in Psalm x., can never be more than
an academic exercise.”
Little is to be learned from the language. Wellhausen, who makes no
objection to the genuineness of the passage, thinks that about ver. 7
we begin to catch the familiar dialect of the Psalms. Gunkel finds
a want of originality in the language, with many touches that betray
connection not only with the Psalms but with late eschatological
literature. But when we take one by one the clauses of chap, i.,
we discover very few parallels with the Psalms, which are not at
the same time parallels with Jeremiah’s or some earlier writings.
That the prophecy is vague, and with much of the air of the later
eschatology about it, is no reason for removing it from an age in
which we have already seen prophecy beginning to show the same
apocalyptic temper.[222] Gunkel denies any reference in ver. 9_b_ to
the approaching fall of Niniveh, although that is seen by Kuenen,
Wellhausen, König and others, and he omits ver. 11_a_, in which most
read an allusion to Sennacherib.
Therefore, while it is possible that a later poem has been prefixed to
the genuine prophecies of Nahum, and the first chapter supplies many
provocations to belief in such a theory, this has not been proved,
and the able essays of proof have much against them. The question is
open.[223]
3. THE DATE OF CHAPS. II. AND III.
We turn now to the date of the Book apart from this prologue. It was
written after a great overthrow of the Egyptian Thebes[224] and when
the overthrow of Niniveh was imminent. Now Thebes had been devastated
by Assurbanipal about 664 (we know of no later overthrow), and Niniveh
fell finally about 607. Nahum flourished, then, somewhere between 664
and 607.[225] Some critics, feeling in his description of the fall of
Thebes the force of a recent impression, have placed his prophesying
immediately after that, or about 660.[226] But this is too far away
from the fall of Niniveh. In 660 the power of Assyria was unthreatened.
Nor is 652, the year of the revolt of Babylon, Egypt and the princes
of Palestine, a more likely date.[227] For although in that year
Assyrian supremacy ebbed from Egypt never to return, Assurbanipal
quickly reduced Elam, Babylon and all Syria. Nahum, on the other hand,
represents the very centre of the empire as threatened. The land of
Assyria is apparently already invaded (iii. 13, etc.). Niniveh, if
not invested, must immediately be so, and that by forces too great
for resistance. Her mixed populace already show signs of breaking up.
Within, as without, her doom is sealed. All this implies not only the
advance of an enormous force upon Niniveh, but the reduction of her
people to the last stage of hopelessness. Now, as we have seen,[228]
Assyria proper was thrice overrun. The Scythians poured across her
about 626, but there is no proof that they threatened Niniveh.[229]
A little after Assurbanipal’s death in 625, the Medes under King
Phraortes invaded Assyria, but Phraortes was slain and his son Kyaxares
called away by an invasion of his own country. Herodotus says that
this was after he had defeated the Assyrians in a battle and had begun
the siege of Niniveh,[230] but before he had succeeded in reducing
the city. After a time he subdued or assimilated the Medes, and then
investing Niniveh once more, about 607, in two years he took and
destroyed her.
To which of these two sieges by Kyaxares are we to assign the Book
of Nahum? Hitzig, Kuenen, Cornill and others incline to the first on
the ground that Nahum speaks of the yoke of Assyria as still heavy on
Judah, though about to be lifted. They argue that by 608, when King
Josiah had already felt himself free enough to extend his reforms
into Northern Israel, and dared to dispute Necho’s passage across
Esdraelon, the Jews must have been conscious that they had nothing
more to fear from Assyria, and Nahum could hardly have written as he
does in i. 13, _I will break his yoke from off thee and burst thy
bonds in sunder_.[231] But this is not conclusive, for _first_, as we
have seen, it is not certain that i. 13 is from Nahum himself, and
_second_, if it be from himself, he might as well have written it about
608 as about 625, for he speaks not from the feelings of any single
year, but with the impression upon him of the whole epoch of Assyrian
servitude then drawing to a close. The eve of the later siege as a
date for the book is, as Davidson remarks,[232] “well within the verge
of possibility,” and some critics prefer it because in their opinion
Nahum’s descriptions thereby acquire greater reality and naturalness.
But this is not convincing, for if Kyaxares actually began the siege
of Niniveh about 625, Nahum’s sense of the imminence of her fall is
perfectly natural. Wellhausen indeed denies that earlier siege. “Apart
from Herodotus,” he says, “it would never have occurred to anybody to
doubt that Nahum’s prophecy coincided with the fall of Niniveh.”[233]
This is true, for it is to Herodotus alone that we owe the tradition of
the earlier siege. But what if we believe Herodotus? In that case, it
is impossible to come to a decision as between the two sieges. With our
present scanty knowledge of both, the prophecy of Nahum suits either
equally well.[234]
Fortunately it is not necessary to come to a decision. Nahum, we
cannot too often insist, expresses the feelings neither of this nor
of that decade in the reign of Josiah, but the whole volume of hope,
wrath and just passion of vengeance which had been gathering for more
than a century and which at last broke into exultation when it became
certain that Niniveh was falling. That suits the eve of either siege by
Kyaxares. Till we learn a little more about the first siege and how far
it proceeded towards a successful result, perhaps we ought to prefer
the second. And of course those who feel that Nahum writes not in the
future but the present tense of the details of Niniveh’s overthrow,
must prefer the second.
* * * * *
That the form as well as the spirit of the Book of Nahum is poetical is
proved by the familiar marks of poetic measure—the unusual syntax, the
frequent absence of the article and particles, the presence of elliptic
forms and archaic and sonorous ones. In the two chapters on the siege
of Niniveh the lines are short and quick, in harmony with the dashing
action they echo.
As we have seen, the text of chap. i. is very uncertain. The subject
of the other two chapters involves the use of a number of technical
and some foreign terms, of the meaning of most of which we are
ignorant.[235] There are apparently some glosses; here and there the
text is obviously disordered. We get the usual help, and find the usual
faults, in the Septuagint; they will be noticed in the course of the
translation.
FOOTNOTES:
[199] In the English version, but in the Hebrew chap. ii. vv. 1 and
3; for the Hebrew text divides chap. i. from chap. ii. differently
from the English, which follows the Greek. The Hebrew begins chap. ii.
with what in the English and Greek is the fifteenth verse of chap. i.:
_Behold, upon the mountains_, etc.
[200] In the English text, but in the Hebrew with the omission of vv. 1
and 3: see previous note.
[201] Other meanings have been suggested, but are impossible.
[202] So it lies on Billerbeck’s map in Delitzsch and Haupt’s _Beiträge
zur Assyr._, III. Smith’s _Bible Dictionary_ puts it at only 2 m. N. of
Mosul.
[203] Layard, _Niniveh and its Remains_, I. 233, 3rd ed., 1849.
[204] Bohn’s _Early Travels in Palestine_, p. 102.
[205] Just as they show Jonah’s tomb at Niniveh itself.
[206] See above, p. 18.
[207] Just as in Micah’s case Jerome calls his birthplace Moresheth
by the adjective Morasthi, so with equal carelessness he calls Elḳosh
by the adjective with the article Ha-elḳoshi, the Elḳoshite. Jerome’s
words are: “Quum Elcese usque hodie in Galilea viculus sit, parvus
quidem et vix ruinis veterum ædificiorum indicans vestigia, sed tamen
notus Judæis et mihi quoque a circumducente monstratus” (in _Prol. ad
Prophetiam Nachumi_). In the _Onomasticon_ Jerome gives the name as
Elcese, Eusebius as Ἐλκεσέ, but without defining the position.
[208] This Elkese has been identified, though not conclusively, with
the modern El Kauze near Ramieh, some seven miles W. of Tibnin.
[209] Cf. Kuenen, § 75, n. 5; Davidson, p. 12 (2).
Capernaum, which the Textus Receptus gives as Καπερναούμ, but most
authorities as Καφαρναούμ and the Peshitto as Kaphar Nahum, obviously
means Village of Nahum, and both Hitzig and Knobel looked for Elḳôsh in
it. See _Hist. Geog._, p. 456.
Against the Galilean origin of Nahum it is usual to appeal to John vii.
52: _Search and see that out of Galilee ariseth no prophet_; but this
is not decisive, for Jonah came out of Galilee.
[210] Though perhaps falsely.
[211] This occurs in the Syriac translation of the Old Testament by
Paul of Tella, 617 A.D., in which the notices of Epiphanius (Bishop
of Constantia in Cyprus A.D. 367) or Pseudepiphanius are attached to
their respective prophets. It was first communicated to the _Z.D.P.V._,
I. 122 ff., by Dr. Nestle: cf. _Hist. Geog._, p. 231, n. 1. The
previously known readings of the passage were either geographically
impossible, as “He came from Elkesei beyond Jordan, towards Begabar of
the tribe of Simeon” (so in Paris edition, 1622, of the works of St.
Epiphanius, Vol. II., p. 147: cf. Migne, _Patr. Gr._, XLIII. 409); or
based on a misreading of the title of the book: “Nahum son of Elkesaios
was of Jesbe of the tribe of Simeon”; or indefinable: “Nahum was of
Elkesem beyond Betabarem of the tribe of Simeon”; these last two from
recensions of Epiphanius published in 1855 by Tischendorf (quoted
by Davidson, p. 13). In the Στιχηρὸν τῶν ΙΒ´ Προφητῶν καὶ Ἰσαιοῦ,
attributed to Hesychius, Presbyter of Jerusalem, who died 428 of 433
(Migne, _Patrologia Gr._, XCIII. 1357), it is said that Nahum was ἀπὸ
Ἑλκεσεὶν (Helcesin) πέραν τοῦ τηνβαρεὶν ἐκ φυλῆς Συμεών; to which has
been added a note from Theophylact, Ἑλκασαΐ πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου εἰς
Βιγαβρὶ.
[212] Ad Nahum i. I (Migne, _Patr. Gr._, LXXI. 780): Κώμη δὲ αὕτη
πάντως ποῦ τῆς Ἰουδαίων χώρας.
[213] The selection Bashan, Carmel and Lebanon (i. 4), does not prove
northern authorship.
[214] אֶלְקוֹשׁ may be (1) a theophoric name = Ḳosh is God; and
Ḳosh might then be the Edomite deity קוֹס whose name is spelt with
a Shin on the Assyrian monuments (Baethgen, _Beiträge z. Semit.
Religionsgeschichte_, p. 11; Schrader, _K.A.T._², pp. 150, 613), and
who is probably the same as the Arab deity Ḳais (Baethgen, _id._, p.
108); and this would suit a position in the south of Judah, in which
region we find the majority of place-names compounded with אל. Or else
(2) the א is prosthetic, as in the place-names אכזיב on the Phœnician
coast, אכשׁף in Southern Canaan, אשדוד, etc. In this case we might
find its equivalent in the form לְקוֹש (cf. כזיב אכזיב); but no such
form is now extant or recorded at any previous period. The form Lâḳis
would not suit. On Bir el Ḳûs see Robinson, _B.R._, III., p. 14, and
Guérin, _Judée_, III., p. 341. Bir el Ḳûs means Well of the Bow, or,
according to Guérin, of the Arch, from ruins that stand by it. The
position, _east_ of Beit-Jibrin, is unsuitable; for the early Christian
texts quoted in the previous note fix it _beyond_, presumably south or
south-west of Beit-Jibrin, and in the tribe of Simeon. The error “tribe
of Simeon” does not matter, for the same fathers place Bethzecharias,
the alleged birthplace of Habakkuk, there.
[215] _Einleitung_, 1st ed.
[216] Who seems to have owed the hint to a quotation by Delitzsch on
Psalm ix. from G. Frohnmeyer to the effect that there were traces of
“alphabetic” verses in chap, i., at least in vv. 3-7. See Bickell’s
_Beiträge zur Semit. Metrik_, Separatabdruck, Wien, 1894.
[217] _Z.A.T.W._, 1893, pp. 223 ff.
[218] Cf. Ezra ii. 42; Neh. vii. 45; 2 Sam. xvii. 27.
[219] Ver. 1 is title; 2 begins with א; then ב is found in בסופה, 3_b_;
ג in גוער, ver. 4; ד is wanting—Bickell proposes to substitute a
New-Hebrew word דצק, Gunkel דאב, for אמלל, ver. 4_b_; ה in הרים,
5_a_; ו in ותשא, 5_b_; ז by removing לפני of ver. 6_a_ to the end
of the clause (and reading it there לפניו), and so leaving זעמו as the
first word; ח in חמתו in 6_b_; ט in טוב, 7_a_; י by eliding ו
from וידע, 7_b_; כ in כלה, 8; ל is wanting, though Gunkel
seeks to supply it by taking 9_c_, beginning לא, with 9_b_,
before 9_a_; מ begins 9_a_.
[220] See below in the translation.
[221] As thus: 9_a_, 11_b_, 12 (but unintelligible), 10, 13, 14, ii. 1,
3.
[222] See above on Zephaniah, pp. 49 ff.
[223] Cornill, in the 2nd ed. of his _Einleitung_, has accepted
Gunkel’s and Bickell’s main contentions.
[224] iii. 8-10.
[225] The description of the fall of No-Amon precludes the older
view almost universally held before the discovery of Assurbanipal’s
destruction of Thebes, viz. that Nahum prophesied in the days of
Hezekiah or in the earlier years of Manasseh (Lightfoot, Pusey,
Nägelsbach, etc.).
[226] So Schrader, Volck in Herz. _Real. Enc._, and others.
[227] It is favoured by Winckler, _A.T. Untersuch._, pp. 127 f.
[228] Above, pp. 15 f.; 19, 22 ff.
[229] This in answer to Jeremias in Delitzsch’s and Haupt’s _Beiträge
zur Assyriologie_, III. 96.
[230] I. 103.
[231] Hitzig’s other reason, that the besiegers of Niniveh are
described by Nahum in ii. 3 ff. as single, which was true of the siege
in 625 _c._, but not of that of 607—6, when the Chaldeans joined the
Medes, is disposed of by the proof on p. 22 above, that even in 607—6
the Medes carried on the siege alone.
[232] Page 17.
[233] In commenting on chap. i. 9; p. 156 of _Kleine Propheten_.
[234] The phrase which is so often appealed to by both sides, i. 9,
_Jehovah maketh a complete end, not twice shall trouble arise_, is
really inconclusive. Hitzig maintains that if Nahum had written this
after the first and before the second siege of Niniveh he would have
had to say, “not thrice _shall trouble arise_.” This is not conclusive:
the prophet is looking only at the future and thinking of it—_not
twice_ again _shall trouble arise_; and if there were really two sieges
of Niniveh, would the words _not twice_ have been suffered to remain,
if they had been a confident prediction _before_ the first siege?
Besides, the meaning of the phrase is not certain; it may be only a
general statement corresponding to what seems a general statement in
the first clause of the verse. Kuenen and others refer the _trouble_
not to that which is about to afflict Assyria, but to the long slavery
and slaughter which Judah has suffered at Assyria’s hands. Davidson
leaves it ambiguous.
[235] Technical military terms: ii. 2, מצורה; 4, פלדת (?); 4, הרעלו;
6, הסכך; iii. 3, מעלה (?). Probably foreign terms: ii. 8, הצב;
iii. 17, מנזריך. Certainly foreign: iii. 17, טפסריך.
CHAPTER VII
_THE VENGEANCE OF THE LORD_
NAHUM i
The prophet Nahum, as we have seen,[236] arose probably in Judah, if
not about the same time as Zephaniah and Jeremiah, then a few years
later. Whether he prophesied before or after the great Reform of 621 we
have no means of deciding. His book does not reflect the inner history,
character or merits of his generation. His sole interest is the fate
of Niniveh. Zephaniah had also doomed the Assyrian capital, yet he
was much more concerned with Israel’s unworthiness of the opportunity
presented to them. The yoke of Asshur, he saw, was to be broken, but
the same cloud which was bursting from the north upon Niniveh must
overwhelm the incorrigible people of Jehovah. For this Nahum has no
thought. His heart, for all its bigness, holds room only for the bitter
memories, the baffled hopes, the unappeased hatreds of a hundred
years. And that is why we need not be anxious to fix his date upon one
or other of the shifting phases of Israel’s history during that last
quarter of the seventh century. For he represents no single movement of
his fickle people’s progress, but the passion of the whole epoch then
drawing to a close. Nahum’s book is one great At Last!
And, therefore, while Nahum is a worse prophet than Zephaniah, with
less conscience and less insight, he is a greater poet, pouring forth
the exultation of a people long enslaved, who see their tyrant ready
for destruction. His language is strong and brilliant; his rhythm
rumbles and rolls, leaps and flashes, like the horsemen and chariots
he describes. It is a great pity the text is so corrupt. If the
original lay before us, and that full knowledge of the times which the
excavation of ancient Assyria may still yield to us, we might judge
Nahum to be an even greater poet than we do.
We have seen that there are some reasons for doubting whether he wrote
the first chapter of the book,[237] but no one questions its fitness as
an introduction to the exultation over Niniveh’s fall in chapters ii.
and iii. The chapter is theological, affirming those general principles
of Divine Providence, by which the overthrow of the tyrant is certain
and God’s own people are assured of deliverance. Let us place ourselves
among the people, who for so long a time had been thwarted, crushed and
demoralised by the most brutal empire which was ever suffered to roll
its force across the world, and we shall sympathise with the author,
who for the moment will feel nothing about his God, save that He is a
God of vengeance. Like the grief of a bereaved man, the vengeance of an
enslaved people has hours sacred to itself. And this people had such a
God! Jehovah must punish the tyrant, else were He untrue. He had been
patient, and patient, as a verse seems to hint,[238] just because He
was omnipotent, but in the end He must rise to judgment. He was God of
heaven and earth, and it is the old physical proofs of His power, so
often appealed to by the peoples of the East, for they feel them as we
cannot, which this hymn calls up as Jehovah sweeps to the overthrow of
the oppressor. _Before such power of wrath who may stand? What think ye
of Jehovah?_ The God who works with such ruthless, absolute force in
nature will not relax in the fate He is preparing for Niniveh. _He is
one who maketh utter destruction_, not needing to raise up His forces
a second time, and as stubble before fire so His foes go down before
Him. No half-measures are His, Whose are the storm, the drought and the
earthquake.
Such is the sheer religion of the Proem to the Book of Nahum—thoroughly
Oriental in its sense of God’s method and resources of destruction;
very Jewish, and very natural to that age of Jewish history, in the
bursting of its long pent hopes of revenge. We of the West might
express these hopes differently. We should not attribute so much
personal passion to the Avenger. With our keener sense of law, we
should emphasise the slowness of the process, and select for its
illustration the forces of decay rather than those of sudden ruin. But
we must remember the crashing times in which the Jews lived. The world
was breaking up. The elements were loose, and all that God’s own people
could hope for was the bursting of their yoke, with a little shelter in
the day of trouble. The elements were loose, but amidst the blind crash
the little people knew that Jehovah knew them.
_A God jealous and avenging is Jehovah;
Jehovah is avenger and lord of wrath;
Vengeful is Jehovah towards His enemies,
And implacable He to His foes._
_Jehovah is long-suffering and great in might,[239]
Yet He will not absolve.
Jehovah! His way is in storm and in hurricane,
And clouds are the dust of His feet.[240]
He curbeth the sea, and drieth it up;
All the streams hath He parched.
Withered[241] be Bashan and Carmel;
The bloom of Lebānon is withered.
Mountains have quaked before Him,
And the hills have rolled down.
Earth heaved at His presence,
The world and all its inhabitants.
Before His rage who may stand,
Or who abide in the glow of His anger?
His wrath pours forth like fire,
And rocks are rent before Him._
_Good is Jehovah to them that wait upon Him in the day of trouble,[242]
And He knoweth them that trust Him.
With an overwhelming flood He makes an end of His rebels,
And His foes He comes down on[243] with darkness._
_What think ye of Jehovah?
He is one that makes utter destruction;
Not twice need trouble arise.
For though they be like plaited thorns,
And sodden as ...,[244]
They shall be consumed like dry stubble._
_Came there not[245] out of thee one to plan evil against Jehovah,
A counsellor of mischief?[246]_
_Thus saith Jehovah, ... many waters,[247] yet shall they be cut off
and pass away, and I will so humble thee that I need humble thee[248]
no more;[249] and Jehovah hath ordered concerning thee, that no more of
thy seed be sown: from the house of thy God, I will cut off graven and
molten image. I will make thy sepulchre_ ...[250]
Disentangled from the above verses are three which plainly refer not
to Assyria but to Judah. How they came to be woven among the others we
cannot tell. Some of them appear applicable to the days of Josiah after
the great Reform.
_And now will I break his yoke from upon thee,
And burst thy bonds asunder.
Lo, upon the mountains the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings,
That publisheth peace!
Keep thy feasts, O Judah,
Fulfil thy vows:
For no more shall the wicked attempt to pass through thee;
Cut off is the whole of him.[251]
For Jehovah hath turned the pride of Jacob,
Like to the pride of Isrāel:[252]
For the plunderers plundered them,
And destroyed their vine branches._
FOOTNOTES:
[236] Above, pp. 78 ff., 85 ff.
[237] See above, pp. 81 ff.
[238] Ver. 3, if the reading be correct.
[239] Gunkel amends to _in mercy_ to make the parallel exact. But see
above, p. 82.
[240] Gunkel’s emendation is quite unnecessary here.
[241] See above, p. 83.
[242] So LXX. Heb. = _for a stronghold in the day of trouble_.
[243] _Thrusts into_, Wellhausen, reading ינדף or ידף for ירדף. LXX.
_darkness shall pursue_.
[244] Heb. and R.V. _drenched as with their drink_. LXX. _like a
tangled yew_. The text is corrupt.
[245] The superfluous word מלא at the end of ver. 10 Wellhausen reads
as הלא at the beginning of ver. 11.
[246] Usually taken as Sennacherib.
[247] The Hebrew is given by the R.V. _though they be in full strength
and likewise many_. LXX. _Thus saith Jehovah ruling over many waters_,
reading משל מים רבים and omitting the first וכן. Similarly Syr.
_Thus saith Jehovah of the heads of many waters_, על משלי מים רבים.
Wellhausen, substituting מים for the first וכן, translates, _Let the
great waters be ever so full, they will yet all_ ...? (misprint here)
_and vanish_. For עבר read עברו with LXX., borrowing ו from next word.
[248] Lit. _and I will afflict thee, I will not afflict thee again_.
This rendering implies that Niniveh is the object. The A.V., _though I
have afflicted thee I will afflict thee no more_, refers to Israel.
[249] Omit ver. 13 and run 14 on to 12. For the curious alternation
now occurs: Assyria in one verse, Judah in the other. Assyria: i. 12,
14, ii. 2 (Heb.; Eng. ii. 1), 4 ff. Judah: i. 13, ii. 1 (Heb.; Eng. i.
15), 3 (Heb.; Eng. 2). Remove these latter, as Wellhausen does, and the
verses on Assyria remain a connected and orderly whole. So in the text
above.
[250] Syr. _make it thy sepulchre_. The Hebrew left untranslated above
might be rendered _for thou art vile_. Bickell amends into _dunghills_.
Lightfoot, _Chron. Temp. et Ord. Text V.T._ in Collected Works, I. 109,
takes this as a prediction of Sennacherib’s murder in the temple, an
interpretation which demands a date for Nahum under either Hezekiah or
Manasseh. So Pusey also, p. 357.
[251] LXX. _destruction_ כָּלָה, for כֻּלה.
[252] Davidson: _restoreth the excellency of Jacob, as the excellency
of Israel_, but when was the latter restored?
CHAPTER VIII
_THE SIEGE AND FALL OF NINIVEH_
NAHUM ii., iii
The scene now changes from the presence and awful arsenal of the
Almighty to the historical consummation of His vengeance. Nahum
foresees the siege of Niniveh. Probably the Medes have already overrun
Assyria.[253] The _Old Lion_ has withdrawn to his inner den, and is
making his last stand. The suburbs are full of the enemy, and the great
walls which made the inner city one vast fortress are invested. Nahum
describes the details of the assault. Let us try, before we follow him
through them, to form some picture of Assyria and her capital at this
time.[254]
As we have seen,[255] the Assyrian Empire began about 625 to shrink
to the limits of Assyria proper, or Upper Mesopotamia, within the
Euphrates on the south-west, the mountain-range of Kurdistan on the
north-east, the river Chabor on the north-west and the Lesser Zab
on the south-east.[256] This is a territory of nearly a hundred and
fifty miles from north to south, and rather more than two hundred and
fifty from east to west. To the south of it the Viceroy of Babylon,
Nabopolassar, held practically independent sway over Lower Mesopotamia,
if he did not command as well a large part of the Upper Euphrates
Valley. On the north the Medes were urgent, holding at least the
farther ends of the passes through the Kurdish mountains, if they had
not already penetrated these to their southern issues.
The kernel of the Assyrian territory was the triangle, two of whose
sides are represented by the Tigris and the Greater Zab, the third
by the foot of the Kurdistan mountains. It is a fertile plain, with
some low hills. To-day the level parts of it are covered by a large
number of villages and well-cultivated fields. The more frequent
mounds of ruin attest in ancient times a still greater population.
At the period of which we are treating, the plains must have been
covered by an almost continuous series of towns. At either end lay a
group of fortresses. The southern was the ancient capital of Assyria,
Kalchu, now Nimrud, about six miles to the north of the confluence of
the Greater Zab and the Tigris. The northern, close by the present
town of Khorsabad, was the great fortress and palace of Sargon,
Dur-Sargina:[257] it covered the roads upon Niniveh from the north,
and standing upon the upper reaches of the Choser protected Niniveh’s
water supply. But besides these there were scattered upon all the main
roads and round the frontiers of the territory a number of other forts,
towers and posts, the ruins of many of which are still considerable,
but others have perished without leaving any visible traces. The roads
thus protected drew in upon Niniveh from all directions. The chief
of those, along which the Medes and their allies would advance from
the east and north, crossed the Greater Zab, or came down through
the Kurdistan mountains upon the citadel of Sargon. Two of them were
distant enough from the latter to relieve the invaders from the
necessity of taking it, and Kalchu lay far to the south of all of them.
The brunt of the first defence of the land would therefore fall upon
the smaller fortresses.
Niniveh itself lay upon the Tigris between Kalchu and Sargon’s city,
just where the Tigris is met by the Choser. Low hills descend from
the north upon the very site of the fortress, and then curve east and
south, bow-shaped, to draw west again upon the Tigris at the south end
of the city. To the east of the latter they leave a level plain, some
two and a half miles by one and a half. These hills appear to have
been covered by several forts. The city itself was four-sided, lying
lengthwise to the Tigris and cut across its breadth by the Choser. The
circumference was about seven and a half miles, enclosing the largest
fortified space in Western Asia, and capable of holding a population of
three hundred thousand. The western wall, rather over two and a half
miles long, touched the Tigris at either end, but between there lay a
broad, bow-shaped stretch of land, probably in ancient times, as now,
free of buildings. The north-western wall ran up from the Tigris for
a mile and a quarter to the low ridge which entered the city at its
northern corner. From this the eastern wall, with a curve upon it, ran
down in face of the eastern plain for a little more than three miles,
and was joined to the western by the short southern wall of not quite
half a mile. The ruins of the western wall stand from ten to twenty,
those of the others from twenty-five to sixty, feet above the natural
surface, with here and there the still higher remains of towers. There
were several gates, of which the chief were one in the northern and two
in the eastern wall. Round all the walls except the western ran moats
about a hundred and fifty feet broad—not close up to the foot of the
walls, but at a distance of some sixty feet. Water was supplied by the
Choser to all the moats south of it; those to the north were fed from
a canal which entered the city near its northern corner. At these and
other points one can still trace the remains of huge dams, batardeaux
and sluices; and the moats might be emptied by opening at either end
of the western wall other dams, which kept back the waters from the
bed of the Tigris. Beyond its moat, the eastern wall was protected
north of the Choser by a large outwork covering its gate, and south of
the Choser by another outwork, in shape the segment of a circle, and
consisting of a double line of fortification more than five hundred
yards long, of which the inner wall was almost as high as the great
wall itself, but the outer considerably lower. Again, in front of this
and in face of the eastern plain was a third line of fortification,
consisting of a low inner wall and a colossal outer wall still rising
to a height of fifty feet, with a moat one hundred and fifty feet
broad between them. On the south this third line was closed by a large
fortress.
Upon the trebly fortified city the Medes drew in from east and north,
far away from Kalchu and able to avoid even Dur-Sargina. The other
fortresses on the frontier and the approaches fell into their hands,
says Nahum, like _ripe fruit_.[258] He cries to Niniveh to prepare
for the siege.[259] Military authorities[260] suppose that the Medes
directed their main attack upon the northern corner of the city.
Here they would be upon a level with its highest point, and would
command the waterworks by which most of the moats were fed. Their
flank, too, would be protected by the ravines of the Choser. Nahum
describes fighting in the suburbs before the assault of the walls, and
it was just here, according to some authorities,[261] that the famous
suburbs of Niniveh lay, out upon the canal and the road to Khorsabad.
All the open fighting which Nahum foresees would take place in these
_outplaces_ and _broad streets_[262]—the mustering of the _red_
ranks,[263] the _prancing horses_[264] and _rattling chariots_[265] and
_cavalry at the charge_.[266] Beaten there the Assyrians would retire
to the great walls, and the waterworks would fall into the hands of
the besiegers. They would not immediately destroy these, but in order
to bring their engines and battering-rams against the walls they would
have to lay strong dams across the moats; the eastern moat has actually
been found filled with rubbish in face of a great breach at the north
end of its wall. This breach may have been effected not only by the
rams but by directing upon the wall the waters of the canal; or farther
south the Choser itself, in its spring floods, may have been confined
by the besiegers and swept in upon the sluices which regulate its
passage through the eastern wall into the city. To this means tradition
has assigned the capture of Niniveh,[267] and Nahum perhaps foresees
the possibility of it: _the gates of the rivers are opened, the palace
is dissolved_.[268]
Now of all this probable progress of the siege Nahum, of course, does
not give us a narrative, for he is writing upon the eve of it, and
probably, as we have seen, in Judah, with only such knowledge of the
position and strength of Niniveh as her fame had scattered across the
world. The military details, the muster, the fighting in the open, the
investment, the assault, he did not need to go to Assyria or to wait
for the fall of Niniveh to describe as he has done. Assyria herself
(and herein lies much of the pathos of the poem) had made all Western
Asia familiar with their horrors for the last two centuries. As we
learn from the prophets and now still more from herself, Assyria was
the great Besieger of Men. It is siege, siege, siege, which Amos, Hosea
and Isaiah tell their people they shall feel: _siege and blockade,
and that right round the land!_ It is siege, irresistible and full of
cruelty, which Assyria records as her own glory. Miles of sculpture
are covered with masses of troops marching upon some Syrian or Median
fortress. Scaling ladders and enormous engines are pushed forward to
the walls under cover of a shower of arrows. There are assaults and
breaches, panic-stricken and suppliant defenders. Streets and places
are strewn with corpses, men are impaled, women led away weeping,
children dashed against the stones. The Jews had seen, had felt these
horrors for a hundred years, and it is out of their experience of them
that Nahum weaves his exultant predictions. The Besieger of the world
is at last besieged; every cruelty he has inflicted upon men is now
to be turned upon himself. Again and again does Nahum return to the
vivid details,—he hears the very whips crack beneath the walls, and the
rattle of the leaping chariots; the end is slaughter, dispersion and a
dead waste.[269]
Two other points remain to be emphasised.
There is a striking absence from both chapters of any reference
to Israel.[270] Jehovah of Hosts is mentioned twice in the same
formula,[271] but otherwise the author does not obtrude his
nationality. It is not in Judah’s name he exults, but in that of
all the peoples of Western Asia. Niniveh has sold _peoples_ by her
harlotries and _races_ by her witchcraft; it is _peoples_ that shall
gaze upon her nakedness and _kingdoms_ upon her shame. Nahum gives
voice to no national passions, but to the outraged conscience of
mankind. We see here another proof, not only of the large, human heart
of prophecy, but of that which in the introduction to these Twelve
Prophets we ventured to assign as one of its causes. By crushing all
peoples to a common level of despair, by the universal pity which her
cruelties excited, Assyria contributed to the development in Israel of
the idea of a common humanity.[272]
The other thing to be noticed is Nahum’s feeling of the incoherence and
mercenariness of the vast population of Niniveh. Niniveh’s command of
the world had turned her into a great trading power. Under Assurbanipal
the lines of ancient commerce had been diverted so as to pass through
her. The immediate result was an enormous increase of population, such
as the world had never before seen within the limits of one city. But
this had come out of all races and was held together only by the greed
of gain. What had once been a firm and vigorous nation of warriors,
irresistible in their united impact upon the world, was now a loose
aggregate of many peoples, without patriotism, discipline or sense of
honour. Nahum likens it to a reservoir of waters,[273] which as soon as
it is breached must scatter, and leave the city bare. The Second Isaiah
said the same of Babylon, to which the bulk of Niniveh’s mercenary
populace must have fled:—
_Thus are they grown to thee, they who did weary thee,
Traders of thine from thy youth up;
Each as he could escape have they fled;
None is thy helper._[274]
The prophets saw the truth about both cities. Their vastness and their
splendour were artificial. Neither of them, and Niniveh still less
than Babylon, was a natural centre for the world’s commerce. When
their political power fell, the great lines of trade, which had been
twisted to their feet, drew back to more natural courses, and Niniveh
in especial became deserted. This is the explanation of the absolute
collapse of that mighty city. Nahum’s foresight, and the very metaphor
in which he expressed it, were thoroughly sound. The population
vanished like water. The site bears little trace of any disturbance
since the ruin by the Medes, except such as has been inflicted
by the weather and the wandering tribes around. Mosul, Niniveh’s
representative to-day, is not built upon it, and is but a provincial
town. The district was never meant for anything else.
The swift decay of these ancient empires from the climax of their
commercial glory is often employed as a warning to ourselves. But
the parallel, as the previous paragraphs suggest, is very far from
exact. If we can lay aside for the moment the greatest difference of
all, in religion and morals, there remain others almost of cardinal
importance. Assyria and Babylonia were not filled, like Great Britain,
with reproductive races, able to colonise distant lands, and carry
everywhere the spirit which had made them strong at home. Still
more, they did not continue at home to be homogeneous. Their native
forces were exhausted by long and unceasing wars. Their populations,
especially in their capitals, were very largely alien and distraught,
with nothing to hold them together save their commercial interests.
They were bound to break up at the first disaster. It is true that
we are not without some risks of their peril. No patriot among us
can observe without misgiving the large and growing proportion of
foreigners in that department of our life from which the strength of
our defence is largely drawn—our merchant navy. But such a fact is
very far from bringing our empire and its chief cities into the fatal
condition of Niniveh and Babylon. Our capitals, our commerce, our life
as a whole are still British to the core. If we only be true to our
ideals of righteousness and religion, if our patriotism continue moral
and sincere, we shall have the power to absorb the foreign elements
that throng to us in commerce, and stamp them with our own spirit.
We are now ready to follow Nahum’s two great poems delivered on the
eve of the Fall of Niniveh. Probably, as we have said, the first of
them has lost its original opening. It wants some notice at the outset
of the object to which it is addressed: this is indicated only by
the second personal pronoun. Other needful comments will be given in
footnotes.
1.
_The Hammer[275] is come up to thy face!
Hold the rampart![276]Keep watch on the way!
Brace the loins![277] Pull thyself firmly together![278]
The shields[279] of his heroes are red,
The warriors are in scarlet;[280]
Like[281] fire are the ...[282]of the chariots in the day
of his muster,
And the horsemen[283] are prancing.
Through the markets rage chariots,
They tear across the squares;[284]
The look of them is like torches,
Like lightnings they dart to and fro.[285]
He musters his nobles....[286]
They rush to the wall and the mantlet[287] is fixed!
The river-gates[288] burst open, the palace dissolves.[289]
And Huṣṣab[290] is stripped, is brought forth,
With her maids sobbing like doves,
Beating their breasts.
And Niniveh! she was like a reservoir of waters,
Her waters ...[291]
And now they flee. “Stand, stand!” but there is
none to rally.
Plunder silver, plunder gold!
Infinite treasures, mass of all precious things!
Void and devoid and desolate[292] is she.
Melting hearts and shaking knees,
And anguish in all loins,
And nothing but faces full of black fear._[293]
_Where is the Lion’s den,
And the young lions’ feeding ground[294]?
Whither the Lion retreated,[295]
The whelps of the Lion, with none to affray:
The Lion, who tore enough for his whelps,
And strangled for his lionesses.
And he filled his pits with prey,
And his dens with rapine._
_Lo, I am at thee (oracle of Jehovah of Hosts):
I will put up thy ...[296] in flames,
The sword shall devour thy young lions;
I will cut off from the earth thy rapine,
And the noise of thine envoys shall no more be heard._
2.
_Woe to the City of Blood,
All of her guile, robbery-full, ceaseless rapine!_
_Hark the whip,
And the rumbling of the wheel,
And horses galloping,
And the rattling dance of the chariot![297]
Cavalry at the charge,[298] and flash of sabres,
And lightning of lances,
Mass of slain and weight of corpses,
Endless dead bodies—
They stumble on their dead!
—For the manifold harlotries of the Harlot,
The well-favoured, mistress of charms,
She who sold nations with her harlotries
And races by her witchcrafts!_
_Lo, I am at thee (oracle of Jehovah of Hosts):
I will uncover thy skirts to thy face;[299]
Give nations to look on thy nakedness,
And kingdoms upon thy shame;
Will have thee pelted with filth, and disgrace thee,
And set thee for a gazingstock;
So that every one seeing thee shall shrink from thee and say,
“Shattered is Niniveh—who will pity her?
Whence shall I seek for comforters to thee?”_
_Shalt thou be better than No-Amon,[300]
Which sat upon the Nile streams[301]—waters were round her—
Whose rampart was the sea,[302] and waters her wall?[303]
Kush was her strength and Miṣraim without end;
Phut and the Lybians were there to assist her.[304]
Even she was for exile, she went to captivity:
Even her children were dashed on every street corner;
For her nobles they cast lots,
And all her great men were fastened with fetters._
_Thou too shalt stagger,[305] shalt grow faint;
Thou too shalt seek help from[306] the foe!
All thy fortresses are fig-trees with figs early-ripe:
Be they shaken they fall on the mouth of the eater.
Lo, thy folk are but women in thy midst:[307]
To thy foes the gates of thy land fly open;
Fire has devoured thy bars._
_Draw thee water for siege, strengthen thy forts!
Get thee down to the mud, and tramp in the clay!
Grip fast the brick-mould!
There fire consumes thee, the sword cuts thee off.[308]
Make thyself many as a locust swarm,
Many as grasshoppers,
Multiply thy traders more than heaven’s stars,
—The locusts break off[309] and fly away.
Thy ...[310] are as locusts and thy ... as grasshoppers,
That hive in the hedges in the cold of the day:[311]
The sun is risen, they are fled,
And one knows not the place where they be._
_Asleep are thy shepherds, O king of Assyria,
Thy nobles do slumber;[312]
Thy people are strewn on the mountains,
Without any to gather.
There is no healing of thy wreck,
Fatal thy wound!
All who hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hand at thee,
For upon whom hath not thy cruelty passed without ceasing?_
FOOTNOTES:
[253] See above, pp. 22 ff.
[254] The authorities are very full. First there is M. Botta’s huge
work _Monument de Ninive_, Paris, 5 vols., 1845. Then must be mentioned
the work of which we availed ourselves in describing Babylon in _Isaiah
xl.—lxvi._, Expositor’s Bible, pp. 52 ff.: “Memoirs by Commander
James Felix Jones, I.N.,” in _Selections from the Records of the
Bombay Government_, No. XLIII., New Series, 1857. It is good to find
that the careful and able observations of Commander Jones, too much
neglected in his own country, have had justice done them by the German
Colonel Billerbeck in the work about to be cited. Then there is the
invaluable _Niniveh and its Remains_, by Layard. There are also the
works of Rawlinson and George Smith. And recently Colonel Billerbeck,
founding on these and other works, has published an admirable monograph
(lavishly illustrated by maps and pictures), not only upon the military
state of Assyria proper and of Niniveh at this period, but upon the
whole subject of Assyrian fortification and art of besieging, as well
as upon the course of the Median invasions. It forms the larger part of
an article to which Dr. Alfred Jeremias contributes an introduction,
and reconstruction with notes of chaps. ii. and iii. of the Book of
Nahum: “Der Untergang Niniveh’s und die Weissagungschrift des Nahum von
Elḳosh,” in Vol. III. of _Beiträge zur Assyriologie und Semitischen
Sprachwissenschaft_, edited by Friedrich Delitzsch and Paul Haupt, with
the support of Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, U.S.A.: Leipzig,
1895.
[255] Pages 20 f.
[256] Colonel Billerbeck (p. 115) thinks that the south-east frontier
at this time lay more to the north, near the Greater Zab.
[257] First excavated by M. Botta, 1842-1845. See also George Smith,
_Assyr. Disc._, pp. 98 f.
[258] iii. 12.
[259] iii. 14.
[260] See Jones and Billerbeck.
[261] Delitzsch places the עיר רחבות of Gen. x. 11, the “ribit Nina” of
the inscriptions, on the north-east of Niniveh.
[262] ii. 4 Eng., 5 Heb.
[263] ii. 3 Eng., 4 Heb.
[264] _Ibid._ LXX.
[265] iii. 2.
[266] iii. 3.
[267] It is the waters of the Tigris that the tradition avers to have
broken the wall; but the Tigris itself runs in a bed too low for this:
it can only have been the Choser. See both Jones and Billerbeck.
[268] ii. 6.
[269] If the above conception of chaps. ii. and iii. be correct, then
there is no need for such a re-arrangement of these verses as has been
proposed by Jeremias and Billerbeck. In order to produce a continuous
narrative of the progress of the siege, they bring forward iii. 12-15
(describing the fall of the fortresses and gates of the land and the
call to the defence of the city), and place it immediately after ii.
2, 4 (the description of the invader) and ii. 5-11 (the appearance of
chariots in the suburbs of the city, the opening of the floodgates,
the flight and the spoiling of the city). But if they believe that the
original gave an orderly account of the progress of the siege, why do
they not bring forward also iii. 2 f., which describe the arrival of
the foe under the city walls? The truth appears to be as stated above.
We have really two poems against Niniveh, chap. ii. and chap. iii.
They do not give an orderly description of the siege, but exult over
Niniveh’s imminent downfall, with gleams scattered here and there of
how this is to happen. Of these “impressions” of the coming siege there
are three, and in the order in which we now have them they occur very
naturally: ii. 5 ff., iii. 2 f., and iii. 12 ff.
[270] ii. 2 goes with the previous chapter. See above, pp. 94 f.
[271] ii. 13, iii. 5.
[272] See above, Vol. I., Chap. IV., especially pp. 54 ff.
[273] ii. 8.
[274] _Isaiah xl.—lxvi._ (Expositor’s Bible), pp. 197 ff.
[275] Read מַפֵּץ with Wellhausen (cf. Siegfried-Stade’s _Wörterbuch_,
sub פּוּץ) for מֵפִיץ, _Breaker in pieces_. In Jer. li. 20 Babylon is
also called by Jehovah His מַפֵּץ, _Hammer_ or _Maul_.
[276] _Keep watch_, Wellhausen.
[277] This may be a military call to attention, the converse of “Stand
at ease!”
[278] Heb. literally: _brace up thy power exceedingly_.
[279] Heb. singular.
[280] Rev. ix. 17. Purple or red was the favourite colour of the Medes.
The Assyrians also loved red.
[281] Read כאשׁ for באשׁ.
[282] פלדות, the word omitted, is doubtful; it does not occur
elsewhere. LXX. ἡνίαι; Vulg. _habenæ_. Some have thought that it means
_scythes_—cf. the Arabic _falad_, “to cut”—but the earliest notice of
chariots armed with scythes is at the battle of Cunaxa, and in Jewish
literature they do not appear before 2 Macc. xiii. 2. Cf. Jeremias,
_op. cit._, p. 97, where Billerbeck suggests that the words of Nahum
are applicable to the covered siege-engines, pictured on the Assyrian
monuments, from which the besiegers flung torches on the walls: cf.
_ibid._, p. 167, n. ***. But from the parallelism of the verse it is
more probable that ordinary chariots are meant. The leading chariots
were covered with plates of metal (Billerbeck, p. 167).
[283] So LXX., reading פרשים for ברשים of Heb. text, that means
_fir-trees_. If the latter be correct, then we should need to suppose
with Billerbeck that either the long lances of the Aryan Medes were
meant, or the great, heavy spears which were thrust against the walls
by engines. We are not, however, among these yet; it appears to be the
cavalry and chariots in the open that are here described.
[284] Or _broad places_ or _suburbs_. See above, pp. 100 f.
[285] See above, p. 106, end of n. 282.
[286] Heb. _They stumble in their goings._ Davidson holds this is
more probably of the defenders. Wellhausen takes the verse as of the
besiegers. See next note.
[287] הסֹּכֵךְ. Partic. of the verb _to cover_, hence covering thing:
whether _mantlet_ (on the side of the besiegers) or _bulwark_ (on
the side of the besieged: cf. מָסָךְ, Isa. xxii. 8) is uncertain.
Billerbeck says, if it be an article of defence, we can read ver. 5
as illustrating the vanity of the hurried defence, when the elements
themselves break in vv. 6 and 7 (p. 101: cf. p. 176, n. *).
[288] _Sluices_ (Jeremias) or _bridge-gates_ (Wellhausen)?
[289] Or _breaks into motion_, i.e. _flight_.
[290] הֻצּב, if a Hebrew word, might be Hophal of נצב and has been
taken to mean _it is determined, she_ (Niniveh) _is taken captive_.
Volck (in Herzog), Kleinert, Orelli: _it is settled_. LXX. ὑπόστασις =
מצב. Vulg. _miles_ (as if some form of צבא?). Hitzig points it הַצָּב,
_the lizard_, Wellhausen _the toad_. But this noun is masculine (Lev.
xi. 29) and the verbs feminine. Davidson suggests the other הַצָּב,
fem., the _litter_ or _palanquin_ (Isa. lxvi. 20): “in lieu of anything
better one might be tempted to think that the litter might mean the
woman or lady, just as in Arab. ḍḥa’inah means a woman’s litter and
then a woman.” One is also tempted to think of הַצְּבי, _the beauty_.
The Targ. has מלכתא, _the queen_. From as early as at least 1527
(_Latina Interpretatio_ Xantis Pagnini Lucensis revised and edited
for the Plantin Bible, 1615) the word has been taken by a series of
scholars as a proper name, Huṣṣab. So Ewald and others. It may be an
Assyrian word, like some others in Nahum. Perhaps, again, the text is
corrupt.
Mr. Paul Ruben (_Academy_, March 7th, 1896) has proposed instead of
העלתה, _is brought forth_, to read העתלה, and to translate it by
analogy of the Assyrian “etellu,” fem. “etellitu” = great or exalted,
_The Lady_. The line would then run _Huṣṣab, the lady, is stripped_.
(With העתלה Cheyne, _Academy_, June 21st, 1896, compares עתליה, which,
he suggests, is “Yahwe is great” or “is lord.”)
[291] Heb. מֵימֵי הִיא for מימי אשר היא, _from days she was_. A.V. _is
of old_. R.V. _hath been of old_, and Marg. _from the days that she
hath been_. LXX. _her waters_, מֵימֶיהָ. On waters fleeing, cf. Ps.
civ. 7.
[292] Buḳah, umebuḳah, umebullāḳah. Ewald: _desert and desolation and
devastation_. The adj. are feminine.
[293] Literally: _and the faces of all them gather lividness_.
[294] For מרעה Wellhausen reads מערה, _cave_ or _hold_.
[295] LXX., reading לבוא for לביא.
[296] Heb. _her chariots_. LXX. and Syr. suggest _thy mass_ or
_multitude_, רבכה. Davidson suggests _thy lair_, רבצכה.
[297] Literally _and the chariot dancing_, but the word, merakedah, has
a rattle in it.
[298] Doubtful, מַעֲלֶה. LXX. ἀναβαίνοντος.
[299] Jeremias (104) shows how the Assyrians did this to female
captives.
[300] Jer. xlvi. 25: _I will punish Amon at No_. Ezek. xxx. 14-16:
_... judgments in No.... I will cut off No-Amon_ (Heb. and A.V.
_multitude of No_, reading המון; so also LXX. τὸ πλῆθος for אמון)
_... and No shall be broken up_. It is Thebes, the Egyptian name of
which was Nu-Amen. The god Amen had his temple there: Herod. I. 182,
II. 42. Nahum refers to Assurbanipal’s account of the fall of Thebes.
See above, p. 11.
[301] היארים. Pl. of the word for Nile.
[302] Arabs still call the Nile the sea.
[303] So LXX., reading מַיִם for Heb. מִיָּם.
[304] So LXX.; Heb. _thee_.
[305] Heb. _be drunken_.
[306] I.e. _against_, _because of_.
[307] Jer. l. 37, li. 30.
[308] Heb. and LXX. add _devour thee like the locust_, probably a gloss.
[309] Cf. Jer. ix. 33. Some take it of the locusts stripping the skin
which confines their wings: Davidson.
[310] מנזריך. A.V. _thy crowned ones_; but perhaps like its
neighbour an Assyrian word, meaning we know not what. Wellhausen reads
ממזרך, LXX. ὁ συμμικτός σοῦ (applied in Deut. xxiii. 3 and Zech. ix. 6
to the offspring of a mixed marriage between an Israelite and a
Gentile), deine Mischlinge: a term of contempt for the floating foreign
or semi-foreign population which filled Niniveh and was ready to fly at
sight of danger. Similarly Wellhausen takes the second term, טפסר.
This, which occurs also in Jer. li. 27, appears to be some kind of
official. In Assyrian _dupsar_ is scribe, which may, like Heb. שׁטר,
have been applied to any high official. See Schrader, _K.A.T._, Eng.
Tr., I. 141, II. 118. See also Fried. Delitzsch, _Wo lag Parad._, p.
142. The name and office were ancient. Such Babylonian officials are
mentioned in the Tell el Amarna letters as present at the Egyptian
court.
[311] Heb. _day of cold_.
[312] ישכנו, _dwell_, is the Heb. reading. But LXX. ישנו,
ἐκοίμισεν. Sleep must be taken in the sense of death: cf. Jer. li. 39,
57; Isa. xiv. 18.
_HABAKKUK_
_Upon my watch-tower will I stand,
And take up my post on the rampart.
I will watch to see what He will say to me,
And what answer I get back to my plea._
* * * * *
_The righteous shall live by his faithfulness._
“The beginning of speculation in Israel.”
CHAPTER IX
_THE BOOK OF HABAKKUK_
As it has reached us, the Book of Habakkuk, under the title _The Oracle
which Habakkuk the prophet received by vision_, consists of three
chapters, which fall into three sections. _First:_ chap. i. 2—ii. 4
(or 8), a piece in dramatic form; the prophet lifts his voice to God
against the wrong and violence of which his whole horizon is full, and
God sends him answer. _Second:_ chap. ii. 5 (or 9)-20, a taunt-song
in a series of Woes upon the wrong-doer. _Third:_ chap. iii., part
psalm, part prayer, descriptive of a Theophany and expressive of
Israel’s faith in their God. Of these three sections no one doubts the
authenticity of the _first_; opinion is divided about the _second_;
about the _third_ there is a growing agreement that it is not a genuine
work of Habakkuk, but a poem from a period after the Exile.
1. CHAP. I. 2—II. 4 (OR 8).
Yet it is the first piece which raises the most difficult questions.
All[313] admit that it is to be dated somewhere along the line of
Jeremiah’s long career, _c._ 627—586. There is no doubt about the
general trend of the argument: it is a plaint to God on the sufferings
of the righteous under tyranny, with God’s answer. But the order and
connection of the paragraphs of the argument are not clear. There is
also difference of opinion as to who the tyrant is—native, Assyrian or
Chaldee; and this leads to a difference, of course, about the date,
which ranges from the early years of Josiah to the end of Jehoiakim’s
reign, or from about 630 to 597.
As the verses lie, their argument is this. In chap. i. 2-4 Habakkuk
asks the Lord how long the wicked are to oppress the righteous, to
the paralysing of the Torah, or Revelation of His Law, and the making
futile of judgment. For answer the Lord tells him, vv. 5-11, to look
round among the heathen: He is about to raise up the Chaldees to do His
work, a people swift, self-reliant, irresistible. Upon which Habakkuk
resumes his question, vv. 12-17, how long will God suffer a tyrant
who sweeps up the peoples into his net like fish? Is he to go on with
this for ever? In ii. 1 Habakkuk prepares for an answer, which comes
in ii. 2, 3, 4: let the prophet wait for the vision though it tarries;
the proud oppressor cannot last, but the righteous shall live by his
constancy, or faithfulness.
The difficulties are these. Who are the wicked oppressors in chap. i.
2-4? Are they Jews, or some heathen nation? And what is the connection
between vv. 1-4 and vv. 5-11? Are the Chaldees, who are described in
the latter, raised up to punish the tyrant complained against in the
former? To these questions three different sets of answers have been
given.
_First:_ the great majority of critics take the wrong complained
of in vv. 2-4 to be wrong done by unjust and cruel Jews to their
countrymen, that is, civic disorder and violence, and believe that
in vv. 5-11 Jehovah is represented as raising up the Chaldees to
punish the sin of Judah—a message which is pretty much the same as
Jeremiah’s. But Habakkuk goes further: the Chaldees themselves with
their cruelties aggravate his problem, how God can suffer wrong, and
he appeals again to God, vv. 12-17. Are the Chaldees to be allowed to
devastate for ever? The answer is given, as above, in chap. ii. 1-4.
Such is practically the view of Pusey, Delitzsch, Kleinert, Kuenen,
Sinker,[314] Driver, Orelli, Kirkpatrick, Wildeboer and Davidson, a
formidable league, and Davidson says “this is the most natural sense of
the verses and of the words used in them.” But these scholars differ
as to the date. Pusey, Delitzsch and Volck take the whole passage from
i. 5 as prediction, and date it from before the rise of the Chaldee
power in 625, attributing the internal wrongs of Judah described in
vv. 2-4 to Manasseh’s reign or the early years of Josiah.[315] But
the rest, on the grounds that the prophet shows some experience of
the Chaldean methods of warfare, and that the account of the internal
disorder in Judah does not suit Josiah’s reign, bring the passage down
to the reign of Jehoiakim, 608—598, or of Jehoiachin, 597. Kleinert and
Von Orelli date it before the battle of Carchemish, 506, in which the
Chaldean Nebuchadrezzar wrested from Egypt the Empire of the Western
Asia, on the ground that after that Habakkuk could not have called
a Chaldean invasion of Judah incredible (i. 5). But Kuenen, Driver,
Kirkpatrick, Wildeboer and Davidson date it after Carchemish. To Driver
it must be immediately after, and before Judah became alarmed at the
consequences to herself. To Davidson the description of the Chaldeans
“is scarcely conceivable before the battle,” “hardly one would think
before the deportation of the people under Jehoiachin.”[316] This also
is Kuenen’s view, who thinks that Judah must have suffered at least the
first Chaldean raids, and he explains the use of an undoubted future in
chap. i. 5, _Lo, I am about to raise up the Chaldeans_, as due to the
prophet’s predilection for a dramatic style. “He sets himself in the
past, and represents the already experienced chastisement [of Judah]
as having been then announced by Jehovah. His contemporaries could not
have mistaken his meaning.”
_Second:_ others, however, deny that chap. i. 2-4 refers to the
internal disorder of Judah, except as the effect of foreign tyranny.
The _righteous_ mentioned there are Israel as a whole, _the wicked_
their heathen oppressors. So Hitzig, Ewald, König and practically
Smend. Ewald is so clear that Habakkuk ascribes no sin to Judah, that
he says we might be led by this to assign the prophecy to the reign of
the righteous Josiah; but he prefers, because of the vivid sense which
the prophet betrays of actual experience of the Chaldees, to date the
passage from the reign of Jehoiakim, and to explain Habakkuk’s silence
about his people’s sinfulness as due to his overwhelming impression of
Chaldean cruelty. König[317] takes vv. 2-4 as a general complaint of
the violence that fills the prophet’s day, and vv. 5-11 as a detailed
description of the Chaldeans, the instruments of this violence.
Vv. 5-11, therefore, give not the judgment upon the wrongs described in
vv. 2-4, but the explanation of them. Lebanon is already wasted by the
Chaldeans (ii. 17); therefore the whole prophecy must be assigned to
the days of Jehoiakim. Giesebrecht[318] and Wellhausen adhere to the
view that no sins of Judah are mentioned, but that the _righteous_ and
_wicked_ of chap. i. 4 are the same as in ver. 13, viz. Israel and a
heathen tyrant. But this leads them to dispute that the present order
of the paragraphs of the prophecy is the right one. In chap. i. 5 the
Chaldeans are represented as about to be raised up for the first time,
although their violence has already been described in vv. 1-4, and in
vv. 12-17 these are already in full career. Moreover ver. 12 follows on
naturally to ver. 4. Accordingly these critics would remove the section
vv. 5-11. Giesebrecht prefixes it to ver. 1, and dates the whole
passage from the Exile. Wellhausen calls 5-11 an older passage than the
rest of the prophecy, and removes it altogether as not Habakkuk’s. To
the latter he assigns what remains, i. 1-4, 12-17, ii. 1-5, and dates
it from the reign of Jehoiakim.[319]
_Third:_ from each of these groups of critics Budde of Strasburg
borrows something, but so as to construct an arrangement of the verses,
and to reach a date, for the whole, from which both differ.[320] With
Hitzig, Ewald, König, Smend, Giesebrecht and Wellhausen he agrees that
the violence complained of in i. 2-4 is that inflicted by a heathen
oppressor, _the wicked_, on the Jewish nation, the _righteous_. But
with Kuenen and others he holds that the Chaldeans are raised up,
according to i. 5-11, to punish the violence complained of in i. 2-4
and again in i. 12-17. In these verses it is the ravages of another
heathen power than the Chaldeans which Budde descries. The Chaldeans
are still to come, and cannot be the same as the devastator whose long
continued tyranny is described in i. 12-17. They are rather the power
which is to punish him. He can only be the Assyrian. But if that be so,
the proper place for the passage, i. 5-11, which describes the rise of
the Chaldeans must be after the description of the Assyrian ravages in
i. 12-17, and in the body of God’s answer to the prophet which we find
in ii. 2 ff. Budde, therefore, places i. 5-11 after ii. 2-4. But if the
Chaldeans are still to come, and Budde thinks that they are described
vaguely and with a good deal of imagination, the prophecy thus arranged
must fall somewhere between 625, when Nabopolassar the Chaldean made
himself independent of Assyria and King of Babylon, and 607, when
Assyria fell. That the prophet calls Judah _righteous_ is proof that he
wrote after the great Reform of 621; hence, too, his reference to Torah
and Mishpat (i. 4), and his complaint of the obstacles which Assyrian
supremacy presented to their free course. As the Assyrian yoke appears
not to have been felt anywhere in Judah by 608, Budde would fix the
exact date of Habakkuk’s prophecy about 615. To these conclusions of
Budde Cornill, who in 1891 had very confidently assigned the prophecy
of Habakkuk to the reign of Jehoiakim, gave his adherence in 1896.[321]
Budde’s very able and ingenious argument has been subjected to a
searching criticism by Professor Davidson, who emphasises first the
difficulty of accounting for the transposition of chap. i. 5-11 from
what Budde alleges to have been its original place after ii. 4 to
its present position in chap. i.[322] He points out that if chap. i.
2-4 and 12-17 and ii. 5 ff. refer to the Assyrian, it is strange the
latter is not once mentioned. Again, by 615 we may infer (though we
know little of Assyrian history at this time) that the Assyrian’s hold
on Judah was already too relaxed for the prophet to impute to him
power to hinder the Law, especially as Josiah had begun to carry his
reforms into the northern kingdom; and the knowledge of the Chaldeans
displayed in i. 5-11 is too fresh and detailed[323] to suit so early a
date: it was possible only after the battle of Carchemish. And again,
it is improbable that we have two different nations, as Budde thinks,
described by the very similar phrases in i. 11, _his own power becomes
his god_, and in i. 16, _he sacrifices to his net_. Again, chap. i.
5-11 would not read quite naturally after chap. ii. 4. And in the woes
pronounced on the oppressor it is not one nation, the Chaldeans, which
are to spoil him, but all the remnant of the peoples (ii. 7, 8).
These objections are not inconsiderable. But are they conclusive? And
if not, is any of the other theories of the prophecy less beset with
difficulties?
The objections are scarcely conclusive. We have no proof that the power
of Assyria was altogether removed from Judah by 615; on the contrary,
even in 608 Assyria was still the power with which Egypt went forth
to contend for the empire of the world. Seven years earlier her hand
may well have been strong upon Palestine. Again, by 615 the Chaldeans,
a people famous in Western Asia for a long time, had been ten years
independent: men in Palestine may have been familiar with their methods
of warfare; at least it is impossible to say they were not.[324] There
is more weight in the objection drawn from the absence of the name of
Assyria from all of the passages which Budde alleges describe it; nor
do we get over all difficulties of text by inserting i. 5-11 between
ii. 4 and 5. Besides, how does Budde explain i. 12_b_ on the theory
that it means Assyria? Is the clause not premature at that point? Does
he propose to elide it, like Wellhausen? And in any case an erroneous
transposition of the original is impossible to prove and difficult to
account for.[325]
But have not the other theories of the Book of Habakkuk equally great
difficulties? Surely, we cannot say that the _righteous_ and the
_wicked_ in i. 4 mean something different from what they do in i. 13?
But if this is impossible the construction of the book supported
by the great majority of critics[326] falls to the ground. Professor
Davidson justly says that it has “something artificial in it” and “puts
a strain on the natural sense.”[327] How can the Chaldeans be described
in i. 5 as _just about to be raised up_, and in 14-17 as already for
a long time the devastators of earth? Ewald’s, Hitzig’s and König’s
views[328] are equally beset by these difficulties; König’s exposition
also “strains the natural sense.” Everything, in fact, points to i. 5-11
being out of its proper place; it is no wonder that Giesebrecht,
Wellhausen and Budde independently arrived at this conclusion.[329]
Whether Budde be right in inserting i. 5-11 after ii. 4, there can be
little doubt of the correctness of his views that i. 12-17 describe a
heathen oppressor who is not the Chaldeans. Budde says this oppressor
is Assyria. Can he be any one else? From 608 to 605 Judah was sorely
beset by Egypt, who had overrun all Syria up to the Euphrates. The
Egyptians killed Josiah, deposed his successor, and put their own
vassal under a very heavy tribute; _gold and silver were exacted of the
people of the land_: the picture of distress in i. 1-4 might easily
be that of Judah in these three terrible years. And if we assigned
the prophecy to them, we should certainly give it a date at which the
knowledge of the Chaldeans expressed in i. 5-11 was more probable than
at Budde’s date of 615. But then does the description in chap, i. 14-17
suit Egypt so well as it does Assyria? We can hardly affirm this, until
we know more of what Egypt did in those days, but it is very probable.
Therefore, the theory supported by the majority of critics being
unnatural, we are, with our present meagre knowledge of the time, flung
back upon Budde’s interpretation that the prophet in i. 2—ii. 4 appeals
from oppression by a heathen power, which is not the Chaldean, but upon
which the Chaldean shall bring the just vengeance of God. The tyrant is
either Assyria up to about 615 or Egypt from 608 to 605, and there is
not a little to be said for the latter date.
In arriving at so uncertain a conclusion about i.—ii. 4, we have but
these consolations, that no other is possible in our present knowledge,
and that the uncertainty will not hamper us much in our appreciation of
Habakkuk’s spiritual attitude and poetic gifts.[330]
2. CHAP. II. 5-20.
The dramatic piece i. 2—ii. 4 is succeeded by a series of fine
taunt-songs, starting after an introduction from 6_b_, then 9, 11, 15
and (18) 19, and each opening with _Woe!_ Their subject is, if we take
Budde’s interpretation of the dramatic piece, the Assyrian and not the
Chaldean[331] tyrant. The text, as we shall see when we come to it,
is corrupt. Some words are manifestly wrong, and the rhythm must have
suffered beyond restoration. In all probability these fine lyric Woes,
or at least as many of them as are authentic—for there is doubt about
one or two—were of equal length. Whether they all originally had the
refrain now attached to two is more doubtful.
Hitzig suspected the authenticity of some parts of this series of
songs. Stade[332] and Kuenen have gone further and denied the
genuineness of vv. 9-20. But this is with little reason. As Budde says,
a series of Woes was to be expected here by a prophet who follows so
much the example of Isaiah.[333] In spite of Kuenen’s objection, vv.
9-11 would not be strange of the Chaldean, but they suit the Assyrian
better. Vv. 12-14 are doubtful: 12 recalls Micah iii. 10; 13 is a
repetition of Jer. li. 58; 14 is a variant of Isa. xi. 9. Very likely
Jer. li. 58, a late passage, is borrowed from this passage; yet the
addition used here, _Are not these things[334] from the Lord of Hosts?_
looks as if it noted a citation. Vv. 15-17 are very suitable to the
Assyrian; there is no reason to take them from Habakkuk.[335] The final
song, vv. 18 and 19, has its Woe at the beginning of its second verse,
and closely resembles the language of later prophets.[336] Moreover the
refrain forms a suitable close at the end of ver. 17. Ver. 20 is a
quotation from Zephaniah,[337] perhaps another sign of the composite
character of the end of this chapter. Some take it to have been
inserted as an introduction to the theophany in chap. iii.
Smend has drawn up a defence[338] of the whole passage, ii. 9-20, which
he deems not only to stand in a natural relation to vv. 4-8, but to be
indispensable to them. That the passage quotes from other prophets, he
holds to be no proof against its authenticity. If we break off with
ver. 8, he thinks that we must impute to Habakkuk the opinion that the
wrongs of the world are chiefly avenged by human means—a conclusion
which is not to be expected after chap. i.—ii. 1 ff.
3. CHAP. III.
The third chapter, an Ode or Rhapsody, is ascribed to Habakkuk by
its title. This, however, does not prove its authenticity: the title
is too like those assigned to the Psalms in the period of the Second
Temple.[339] On the contrary, the title itself, the occurrence of the
musical sign Selah in the contents, and the colophon suggest for the
chapter a liturgical origin after the Exile.[340] That this is more
probable than the alternative opinion, that, being a genuine work of
Habakkuk, the chapter was afterwards arranged as a Psalm for public
worship, is confirmed by the fact that no other work of the prophets
has been treated in the same way. Nor do the contents support the
authorship by Habakkuk. They reflect no definite historical situation
like the preceding chapters. The style and temper are different. While
in them the prophet speaks for himself, here it is the nation or
congregation of Israel that addresses God. The language is not, as some
have maintained, late;[341] but the designation of the people as _Thine
anointed_, a term which before the Exile was applied to the king,
undoubtedly points to a post-exilic date. The figures, the theophany
itself, are not necessarily archaic, but are more probably moulded on
archaic models. There are many affinities with Psalms of a late date.
At the same time a number of critics[342] maintain the genuineness of
the chapter, and they have some grounds for this. Habakkuk was, as we
can see from chaps. i. and ii., a real poet. There was no need why
a man of his temper should be bound down to reflecting only his own
day. If so practical a prophet as Hosea, and one who has so closely
identified himself with his times, was wont to escape from them to a
retrospect of the dealings of God with Israel from of old, why should
not the same be natural for a prophet who was much less practical and
more literary and artistic? There are also many phrases in the Psalm
which may be interpreted as reflecting the same situation as chaps. i.,
ii. All this, however, only proves possibility.
The Psalm has been adapted in Psalm lxxvii. 17-20.
FURTHER NOTE ON CHAP. I.—II. 4.
Since this chapter was in print Nowack’s _Die Kleinen Propheten_
in the “Handkommentar z. A. T.” has been published. He recognises
emphatically that the disputed passage about the Chaldeans, chap.
i. 5-11, is out of place where it lies (this against Kuenen and the
other authorities cited above, p. 117), and admits that it follows on,
with a natural connection, to chap. ii. 4, to which Budde proposes to
attach it. Nevertheless, for other reasons, which he does not state,
he regards Budde’s proposal as untenable; and reckons the disputed
passage to be by another hand than Habakkuk’s, and intruded into
the latter’s argument. Habakkuk’s argument he assigns to after 605;
perhaps 590. The tyrant complained against would therefore be the
Chaldean.—Driver in the 6th ed. of his _Introduction_ (1897) deems
Budde’s argument “too ingenious,” and holds by the older and most
numerously supported argument (above, pp. 116 ff.).—On a review of
the case in the light of these two discussions, the present writer
holds to his opinion that Budde’s rearrangement, which he has adopted,
offers the fewest difficulties.
FOOTNOTES:
[313] Except one or two critics who place it in Manasseh’s reign. See
below.
[314] See next note.
[315] So Pusey. Delitzsch in his commentary on Habakkuk, 1843,
preferred Josiah’s reign, but in his _O. T. Hist. of Redemption_, 1881,
p. 226, Manasseh’s. Volck (in Herzog, _Real Encyc._,² art. “Habakkuk,”
1879), assuming that Habakkuk is quoted both by Zephaniah (see above,
p. 39, n.) and Jeremiah, places him before these. Sinker (_The Psalm
of Habakkuk_: see below, p. 127, n. 2) deems “the prophecy, taken as a
whole,” to bring “before us the threat of the Chaldean invasion, the
horrors that follow in its train,” etc., with a vision of the day “when
the Chaldean host itself, its work done, falls beneath a mightier foe.”
He fixes the date either in the concluding years of Manasseh’s reign,
or the opening years of that of Josiah (Preface, 1-4).
[316] Pages 53, 49. Kirkpatrick (Smith’s _Dict. of the Bible_,² art.
“Habakkuk,” 1893) puts it not later than the sixth year of Jehoiakim.
[317] _Einl. in das A. T._
[318] _Beiträge zur Jesaiakritik_, 1890, pp. 197 f.
[319] See Further Note on p. 128.
[320] _Studien u. Kritiken_ for 1893.
[321] Cf. the opening of § 30 in the first edition of his _Einleitung_
with that of § 34 in the third and fourth editions.
[322] Budde’s explanation of this is, that to the later editors of the
book, long after the Babylonian destruction of Jews, it was incredible
that the Chaldean should be represented as the deliverer of Israel, and
so the account of him was placed where, while his call to punish Israel
for her sins was not emphasised, he should be pictured as destined to
doom; and so the prophecy originally referring to the Assyrian was read
of him. “This is possible,” says Davidson, “if it be true criticism is
not without its romance.”
[323] This in opposition to Budde’s statement that the description of
the Chaldeans in i. 5-11 “ist eine phantastische Schilderung” (p. 387).
[324] It is, however, a serious question whether it would be possible
in 615 to describe the Chaldeans as _a nation that traversed the
breadth of the earth to occupy dwelling-places that were not his own_
(i. 6). This suits better after the battle of Carchemish.
[325] See above, p. 121, n. 322.
[326] See above, pp. 114 ff.
[327] Pages 49 and 50.
[328] See above, pp. 118 f.
[329] Wellhausen in 1873 (see p. 661); Giesebrecht in 1890; Budde in
1892, before he had seen the opinions of either of the others (see
_Stud. und Krit._, 1893, p. 386, n. 2).
[330] Cornill quotes a rearrangement of chaps, i., ii., by Rothstein,
who takes i. 2-4, 12 _a_, 13, ii. 1-3, 4, 5 _a_, i. 6-10, 14, 15 _a_,
ii. 6 _b_, 7, 9, 10 _a_ _b_ β, 11, 15, 16, 19, 18, as an oracle against
Jehoiakim and the godless in Israel about 605, which during the Exile
was worked up into the present oracle against Babylon. Cornill esteems
it “too complicated.” Budde (_Expositor_, 1895, pp. 372 ff.) and Nowack
hold it untenable.
[331] As of course was universally supposed according to either of the
other two interpretations given above.
[332] _Z.A.T.W._, 1884, p. 154.
[333] Cf. Isa. v. 8 ff. (x. 1-4), etc.
[334] So LXX.
[335] Cf. Davidson, p. 56, and Budde, p. 391, who allows 9-11 and 15-17.
[336] _E.g._ Isa. xl. 18 ff., xliv. 9 ff., xlvi. 5 ff., etc. On this
ground it is condemned by Stade, Kuenen and Budde. Davidson finds this
not a serious difficulty, for, he points out, Habakkuk anticipates
several later lines of thought.
[337] See above, p. 39, n.
[338] _A. T. Religionsgeschichte_, p. 229, n. 2.
[339] Cf. the ascription by the LXX. of Psalms cxlvi.-cl. to the
prophets Haggai and Zechariah.
[340] Cf. Kuenen, who conceives it to have been taken from a
post-exilic collection of Psalms. See also Cheyne, _The Origin of the
Psalter_: “exilic or more probably post-exilic” (p. 125). “The most
natural position for it is in the Persian period. It was doubtless
appended to Habakkuk, for the same reason for which Isa. lxiii. 7—lxiv.
was attached to the great prophecy of Restoration, viz. that the
earlier national troubles seemed to the Jewish Church to be typical
of its own sore troubles after the Return.... The lovely closing
verses of Hab. iii. are also in a tone congenial to the later religion”
(p. 156). Much less certain is the assertion that the language is
imitative and artificial (_ibid._); while the statement that in ver.
3—cf. with Deut. xxxiii. 2—we have an instance of the effort to avoid
the personal name of the Deity (p. 287) is disproved by the use of the
latter in ver. 2 and other verses.
[341] ישע את, ver. 13, cannot be taken as a proof of lateness;
read probably הושיע את.
[342] Pusey, Ewald, König, Sinker (_The Psalm of Habakkuk_, Cambridge,
1890), Kirkpatrick (Smith’s _Bible Dict._, art. “Habakkuk”), Von Orelli.
CHAPTER X
_THE PROPHET AS SCEPTIC_
HABAKKUK i.—ii. 4
Of the prophet Habakkuk we know nothing that is personal save his
name—to our ears his somewhat odd name. It is the intensive form of a
root which means to caress or embrace. More probably it was given to
him as a child, than afterwards assumed as a symbol of his clinging to
God.[343]
Tradition says that Habakkuk was a priest, the son of Joshua, of the
tribe of Levi, but this is only an inference from the late liturgical
notes to the Psalm which has been appended to his prophecy.[344] All
that we know for certain is that he was a contemporary of Jeremiah,
with a sensitiveness under wrong and impulses to question God which
remind us of Jeremiah; but with a literary power which is quite his
own. We may emphasise the latter, even though we recognise upon his
writing the influence of Isaiah’s.
Habakkuk’s originality, however, is deeper than style. He is the
earliest who is known to us of a new school of religion in Israel. He
is called _prophet_, but at first he does not adopt the attitude which
is characteristic of the prophets. His face is set in an opposite
direction to theirs. They address the nation Israel, on behalf of God:
he rather speaks to God on behalf of Israel. Their task was Israel’s
sin, the proclamation of God’s doom and the offer of His grace to their
penitence. Habakkuk’s task is God Himself, the effort to find out
what He means by permitting tyranny and wrong. They attack the sins,
he is the first to state the problems, of life. To him the prophetic
revelation, the Torah, is complete: it has been codified in Deuteronomy
and enforced by Josiah. Habakkuk’s business is not to add to it but
to ask why it does not work. Why does God suffer wrong to triumph,
so that the Torah is paralysed, and Mishpat, the prophetic _justice_
or _judgment_, comes to nought? The prophets travailed for Israel’s
character—to get the people to love justice till justice prevailed
among them: Habakkuk feels justice cannot prevail in Israel, because of
the great disorder which God permits to fill the world. It is true that
he arrives at a prophetic attitude, and before the end authoritatively
declares God’s will; but he begins by searching for the latter, with
an appreciation of the great obscurity cast over it by the facts of
life. He complains to God, asks questions and expostulates. This is
the beginning of speculation in Israel. It does not go far: it is
satisfied with stating questions _to_ God; it does not, directly at
least, state questions _against_ Him. But Habakkuk at least feels that
revelation is baffled by experience, that the facts of life bewilder a
man who believes in the God whom the prophets have declared to Israel.
As in Zephaniah prophecy begins to exhibit traces of apocalypse, so in
Habakkuk we find it developing the first impulses of speculation.
We have seen that the course of events which troubles Habakkuk
and renders the Torah ineffectual is somewhat obscure. On one
interpretation of these two chapters, that which takes the present
order of their verses as the original, Habakkuk asks why God is silent
in face of the injustice which fills the whole horizon (chap. i. 1-4),
is told to look round among the heathen and see how God is raising up
the Chaldeans (i. 5-11), presumably to punish this injustice (if it be
Israel’s own) or to overthrow it (if vv. 1-4 mean that it is inflicted
on Israel by a foreign power). But the Chaldeans only aggravate the
prophet’s problem; they themselves are a wicked and oppressive people:
how can God suffer them? (i. 12-17). Then come the prophet’s waiting
for an answer (ii. 1) and the answer itself (ii. 2 ff.). Another
interpretation takes the passage about the Chaldeans (i. 5-11) to be
out of place where it now lies, removes it to after chap. ii. 4 as a
part of God’s answer to the prophet’s problem, and leaves the remainder
of chap. i. as the description of the Assyrian oppression of Israel,
baffling the Torah and perplexing the prophet’s faith in a Holy and
Just God.[345] Of these two views the former is, we have seen, somewhat
artificial, and though the latter is by no means proved, the arguments
for it are sufficient to justify us in re-arranging the verses chap.
i.—ii. 4 in accordance with its proposals.
_The Oracle which Habakkuk the Prophet
Received by Vision._[346]
_How long, O Jehovah, have I called and Thou hearest not?
I cry to Thee, Wrong! and Thou sendest no help.
Why make me look upon sorrow,
And fill mine eyes with trouble?
Violence and wrong are before me,
Strife comes and quarrel arises.[347]
So the Law is benumbed, and judgment never gets forth:[348]
For the wicked beleaguers the righteous,
So judgment comes forth perverted._[349]
* * * * *
_Art not Thou of old, Jehovah, my God, my Holy One?...[350]
Purer of eyes than to behold evil,
And that canst not gaze upon trouble!
Why gazest Thou upon traitors,[351]
Art dumb when the wicked swallows him that is
more righteous than he?[352]
Thou hast let men be made[353] like fish of the sea,
Like worms that have no ruler![354]
He lifts the whole of it with his angle;
Draws it in with his net, sweeps it in his drag-net:
So rejoices and exults.
So he sacrifices to his net, and offers incense to his drag-net;
For by them is his portion fat, and his food rich.
Shall he for ever draw his sword,[355]
And ceaselessly, ruthlessly massacre nations?[356]_
_Upon my watch-tower I will stand,
And take my post on the rampart.[357]
I will watch to see what He will say to me,
And what answer I[358] get back to my plea._
_And Jehovah answered me and said:
Write the vision, and make it plain upon tablets,
That he may run who reads it.
For[359] the vision is for a time yet to be fixed,
Yet it hurries[360] to the end, and shall not fail:
Though it linger, wait thou for it;
Coming it shall come, and shall not be behind.[361]
Lo! swollen,[362] not level is his[363] soul within him;
But the righteous shall live by his faithfulness.[364]_
* * * * *
_Look[365] round among the heathen, and look well,
Shudder and be shocked;[366]
For I am[367] about to do a work in your days,
Ye shall not believe it when told.
For, lo, I am about to raise up the Kasdim,[368]
A people the most bitter and the most hasty,
That traverse the breadths of the earth,
To possess dwelling-places not their own.
Awful and terrible are they;
From themselves[369] start their purpose and rising.
Fleeter than leopards their steeds,
Swifter than night-wolves.
Their horsemen leap[370] from afar;
They swoop like the eagle a-haste to devour.
All for wrong do they[371] come;
The set of their faces is forward,[372]
And they sweep up captives like sand.
They—at kings do they scoff,
And princes are sport to them.
They—they laugh at each fortress,
Heap dust up and take it!
Then the wind shifts,[373] and they pass!
But doomed are those whose own strength is their god![374]_
The difficulty of deciding between the various arrangements of the
two chapters of Habakkuk does not, fortunately, prevent us from
appreciating his argument. What he feels throughout (this is obvious,
however you arrange his verses) is the tyranny of a great heathen
power,[375] be it Assyrian, Egyptian or Chaldean. The prophet’s horizon
is filled with wrong:[376] Israel thrown into disorder, revelation
paralysed, justice perverted.[377] But, like Nahum, Habakkuk feels not
for Israel alone. The Tyrant has outraged humanity.[378] He _sweeps
peoples into his net_, and as soon as he empties this, he fills it
again _ceaselessly_, as if there were no just God above. He exults in
his vast cruelty, and has success so unbroken that he worships the very
means of it. In itself such impiety is gross enough, but to a heart
that believes in God it is a problem of exquisite pain. Habakkuk’s is
the burden of the finest faith. He illustrates the great commonplace of
religious doubt, that problems arise and become rigorous in proportion
to the purity and tenderness of a man’s conception of God. It is
not the coarsest but the finest temperaments which are exposed to
scepticism. Every advance in assurance of God or in appreciation of His
character develops new perplexities in face of the facts of experience,
and faith becomes her own most cruel troubler. Habakkuk’s questions
are not due to any cooling of the religious temper in Israel, but are
begotten of the very heat and ardour of prophecy in its encounter with
experience. His tremulousness, for instance, is impossible without the
high knowledge of God’s purity and faithfulness, which older prophets
had achieved in Israel:—
_Art not Thou of old, O LORD, my God, my Holy One,
Purer of eyes than to behold evil,
And incapable of looking upon wrong?_
His despair is that which comes only from eager and persevering habits
of prayer:—
_How long, O LORD, have I called and Thou hearest not!
I cry to Thee of wrong and Thou givest no help!_
His questions, too, are bold with that sense of God’s absolute power,
which flashed so bright in Israel as to blind men’s eyes to all
secondary and intermediate causes. _Thou_, he says,—
_Thou hast made men like fishes of the sea,
Like worms that have no ruler_,
boldly charging the Almighty, in almost the temper of Job himself,
with being the cause of the cruelty inflicted by the unchecked tyrant
upon the nations; _for shall evil happen, and Jehovah not have done
it_?[379] Thus all through we perceive that Habakkuk’s trouble springs
from the central founts of prophecy. This scepticism—if we may venture
to give the name to the first motions in Israel’s mind of that temper
which undoubtedly became scepticism—this scepticism was the inevitable
heritage of prophecy: the stress and pain to which prophecy was forced
by its own strong convictions in face of the facts of experience.
Habakkuk, _the prophet_, as he is called, stood in the direct line of
his order, but just because of that he was the father also of Israel’s
religious doubt.
But a discontent springing from sources so pure was surely the
preparation of its own healing. In a verse of exquisite beauty the
prophet describes the temper in which he trusted for an answer to all
his doubts:—
_On my watch-tower will I stand,
And take up my post on the rampart;
I will watch to see what He says to me,
And what answer I get back to my plea._
This verse is not to be passed over, as if its metaphors were merely
of literary effect. They express rather the moral temper in which
the prophet carries his doubt, or, to use New Testament language,
_the good conscience, which some having put away, concerning faith
have made shipwreck_. Nor is this temper patience only and a certain
elevation of mind, nor only a fixed attention and sincere willingness
to be answered. Through the chosen words there breathes a noble
sense of responsibility. The prophet feels he has a post to hold, a
rampart to guard. He knows the heritage of truth, won by the great
minds of the past; and in a world seething with disorder, he will
take his stand upon that and see what more his God will send him. At
the very least, he will not indolently drift, but feel that he has a
standpoint, however narrow, and bravely hold it. Such has ever been the
attitude of the greatest sceptics—not only, let us repeat, earnestness
and sincerity, but the recognition of duty towards the truth: the
conviction that even the most tossed and troubled minds have somewhere
a ποῦ στῶ appointed of God, and upon it interests human and divine to
defend. Without such a conscience, scepticism, however intellectually
gifted, will avail nothing. Men who drift never discover, never grasp
aught. They are only dazzled by shifting gleams of the truth, only
fretted and broken by experience.
Taking then his stand within the patient temper, but especially
upon the conscience of his great order, the prophet waits for his
answer and the healing of his trouble. The answer comes to him in the
promise of _a Vision_, which, though it seem to linger, will not be
later than the time fixed by God. _A Vision_ is something realised,
experienced—something that will be as actual and present to the
waiting prophet as the cruelty which now fills his sight. Obviously
some series of historical events is meant, by which, in the course of
time, the unjust oppressor of the nations shall be overthrown and the
righteous vindicated. Upon the re-arrangement of the text proposed by
Budde,[380] this series of events is the rise of the Chaldeans, and it
is an argument in favour of his proposal that the promise of _a Vision_
requires some such historical picture to follow it as we find in the
description of the Chaldeans—chap. i. 5-11. This, too, is explicitly
introduced by terms of vision: _See among the nations and look
round.... Yea, behold I am about to raise up the Kasdim._ But before
this Vision is given,[381] and for the uncertain interval of waiting
ere the facts come to pass, the Lord enforces upon His watching servant
the great moral principle that arrogance and tyranny cannot, from the
nature of them, last, and that if the righteous be only patient he will
survive them:—
_Lo, swollen, not level, is his soul within him;
But the righteous shall live by his faithfulness._
We have already seen[382] that the text of the first line of this
couplet is uncertain. Yet the meaning is obvious, partly in the words
themselves, and partly by their implied contrast with the second
line. The soul of the wicked is a radically morbid thing: _inflated_,
_swollen_ (unless we should read _perverted_, which more plainly means
the same thing[383]), not _level_, not natural and normal. In the
nature of things it cannot endure. _But the righteous shall live by
his faithfulness._ This word, wrongly translated _faith_ by the Greek
and other versions, is concentrated by Paul in his repeated quotation
from the Greek[384] upon that single act of faith by which the sinner
secures forgiveness and justification. With Habakkuk it is a wider
term. _’Emunah_,[385] from a verb meaning originally to be firm, is
used in the Old Testament in the physical sense of steadfastness.
So it is applied to the arms of Moses held up by Aaron and Hur over
the battle with Amalek: _they were steadiness till the going down of
the sun_.[386] It is also used of the faithful discharge of public
office,[387] and of fidelity as between man and wife.[388] It is also
faithful testimony,[389] equity in judgment,[390] truth in speech,[391]
and sincerity or honest dealing.[392] Of course it has faith in God
as its secret—the verb from which it is derived is the regular Hebrew
term to believe—but it is rather the temper which faith produces of
endurance, steadfastness, integrity. Let the righteous, however baffled
his faith be by experience, hold on in loyalty to God and duty, and he
shall live. Though St. Paul, as we have said, used the Greek rendering
of _faith_ for the enforcement of trust in God’s mercy through
Jesus Christ as the secret of forgiveness and life, it is rather to
Habakkuk’s wider intention of patience and fidelity that the author
of the Epistle to the Hebrews returns in his fuller quotation of the
verse: _For yet a little while and He that shall come will come and
will not tarry; now the just shall live by faith, but if he draw back
My soul shall have no pleasure in him._[393]
Such then is the tenor of the passage. In face of experience that
baffles faith, the duty of Israel is patience in loyalty to God.
In this the nascent scepticism of Israel received its first great
commandment, and this it never forsook. Intellectual questions arose,
of which Habakkuk’s were but the faintest foreboding—questions
concerning not only the mission and destiny of the nation, but the
very foundation of justice and the character of God Himself. Yet
did no sceptic, however bold and however provoked, forsake his
_faithfulness_. Even Job, when most audaciously arraigning the God of
his experience, turned from Him to God as in his heart of hearts he
believed He must be, experience notwithstanding. Even the Preacher,
amid the aimless flux and drift which he finds in the universe, holds
to the conclusion of the whole matter in a command, which better
than any other defines the contents of the _faithfulness_ enforced
by Habakkuk: _Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the
whole of man._ It has been the same with the great mass of the race.
Repeatedly disappointed of their hopes, and crushed for ages beneath
an intolerable tyranny, have they not exhibited the same heroic temper
with which their first great questioner was endowed? Endurance—this
above all others has been the quality of Israel: _though He slay me,
yet will I trust Him_. And, therefore, as Paul’s adaptation, _The just
shall live by faith_, has become the motto of evangelical Christianity,
so we may say that Habakkuk’s original of it has been the motto and the
fame of Judaism: _The righteous shall live by his faithfulness._
FOOTNOTES:
[343] חֲבַקּוּק (the Greek Ἁμβακουμ, LXX. version of the title of this
book, and again the inscription to _Bel and the Dragon_, suggests the
pointing חַבַּקוּק; Epiph., _De Vitis Proph._—see next note—spells it
Ἁββακουμ), from חבק, _to embrace_. Jerome: “He is called ‘embrace’
either because of his love to the Lord, or because he wrestles with
God.” Luther: “Habakkuk means one who comforts and holds up his people
as one embraces a weeping person.”
[344] See above, pp. 126 ff. The title to the Greek version of _Bel
and the Dragon_ bears that the latter was taken from the prophecy of
Hambakoum, son of Jesus, of the tribe of Levi. Further details are
offered in the _De Vitis Prophetarum_ of (Pseud-) Epiphanius, _Epiph.
Opera_, ed. Paris, 1622, Vol. II., p. 147, according to which Habakkuk
belonged to Βεθζοχηρ, which is probably Βεθζαχαριας of 1 Macc. vi. 32,
the modern Beit-Zakaryeh, a little to the north of Hebron, and placed
by this notice, as Nahum’s Elkosh is placed, in the tribe of Simeon.
His grave was shown in the neighbouring Keilah. The notice further
alleges that when Nebuchadrezzar came up to Jerusalem Habakkuk fled to
Ostracine, where he travelled in the country of the Ishmaelites; but he
returned after the fall of Jerusalem, and died in 538, two years before
the return of the exiles. _Bel and the Dragon_ tells an extraordinary
story of his miraculous carriage of food to Daniel in the lions’ den
soon after Cyrus had taken Babylon.
[345] See above, pp. 119 ff.
[346] Heb. _saw_.
[347] Text uncertain. Perhaps we should read, _Why make me look upon
sorrow and trouble? why fill mine eyes with violence and wrong? Strife
is come before me, and quarrel arises_.
[348] _Never gets away_, to use a colloquial expression.
[349] Here vv. 5-11 come in the original.
[350] Ver. 12_b_: _We shall not die_ (many Jewish authorities read
_Thou shalt not die_). _O Jehovah, for judgment hast Thou set him, and,
O my Rock, for punishment hast Thou appointed him._
[351] Wellhausen: _on the robbery of robbers_.
[352] LXX. _devoureth the righteous_.
[353] Literally _Thou hast made men_.
[354] Wellhausen: cf. Jer. xviii. 1, xix. 1.
[355] So Giesebrecht (see above, p. 119, n. 318), reading העולם יריק
חרבו for העל־כן יריק חרמו, _shall he therefore empty his net?_
[356] Wellhausen, reading יהרג for להרג: _should he therefore be
emptying his net continually, and slaughtering the nations without
pity?_
[357] מצור. But Wellhausen takes it as from נצר and = _ward_ or
_watch-tower_. So Nowack.
[358] So Heb. and LXX.; but Syr. _he_: so Wellhausen, _what answer He
returns to my plea_.
[359] Bredenkamp (_Stud. u. Krit._, 1889, pp. 161 ff.) suggests that
the writing on the tablets begins here and goes on to ver. 5_a_. Budde
(_Z.A.T.W._, 1889, pp. 155 f.) takes the כי which opens it as simply
equivalent to the Greek ὅτι, introducing, like our marks of quotation,
the writing itself.
[360] וְיָפֵחַ: cf. Psalm xxvii. 12. Bredenkamp emends to וְיִפְרַח.
[361] _Not be late_, or past its fixed time.
[362] So literally the Heb. עֻפְּלָה, i.e. _arrogant_, _false_: cf.
the colloquial expression _swollen-head_ = conceit, as opposed to
level-headed. Bredenkamp, _Stud. u. Krit._, 1889, 121, reads הַנֶעֱלָף
for הִנֵּה עֻפְּלָה. Wellhausen suggests הִנֵּה הֶעַוָל, _Lo, the
sinner_, in contrast to צדיק of next clause. Nowack prefers this.
[363] LXX. wrongly _my_.
[364] LXX. πίδτις, _faith_, and so in N. T.
[365] Chap. i. 5-11.
[366] So to bring out the assonance, reading הִתְמַהְמְהוּ וּתִמָהוּ.
[367] So LXX.
[368] Or Chaldeans; on the name and people see above, p. 19.
[369] Heb. singular.
[370] Omit ופרשיו (evidently a dittography) and the lame יבאו which
is omitted by LXX. and was probably inserted to afford a verb for the
second פרשיו.
[371] Heb. sing., and so in all the clauses here except the next.
[372] A problematical rendering. מגמה is found only here, and probably
means _direction_. Hitzig translates _desire_, _effort_, _striving_.
קדימה, _towards the front_ or _forward_; but elsewhere it means only
_eastward_: קדים, _the east wind_. Cf. Judg. v. 21, נחל קדומים נחל
קישון, _a river of spates or rushes is the river Kishon_ (_Hist.
Geog._, p. 395). Perhaps we should change פניהים to a singular suffix,
as in the clauses before and after, and this would leave מ to form with
קדימה a participle from הקדים (cf. Amos ix. 10).
[373] Or _their spirit changes_, or _they change like the wind_
(Wellhausen suggests כרוח). Grätz reads כֺּחַ and יַחֲלִיף, _he renews
his strength_.
[374] Von Orelli. For אשׁם Wellhausen proposes וְיָשִׂם, _and sets_.
[375] _The wicked_ of chap. i. 4 must, as we have seen, be the same as
_the wicked_ of chap. i. 13—a heathen oppressor of _the righteous_,
_i.e._ the people of God.
[376] i. 3.
[377] i. 4.
[378] i. 13-17.
[379] Amos iii. 6. See Vol. I., p. 90.
[380] See above, pp. 119 ff.
[381] Its proper place in Budde’s re-arrangement is after chap. ii. 4.
[382] Above, p. 134, n. 362.
[383] עֻקְּלָה instead of עֻפְּלָה.
[384] Rom. i. 17; Gal. iii. 11.
[385] אֱמוּנָה.
[386] Exod. xvii. 12.
[387] 2 Chron. xix. 9.
[388] Hosea ii. 22 (Heb.).
[389] Prov. xiv. 5.
[390] Isa. xi. 5.
[391] Prov. xii. 17: cf. Jer. ix. 2.
[392] Prov. xii. 22, xxviii. 30.
[393] Heb. x. 37, 38.
CHAPTER XI
_TYRANNY IS SUICIDE_
HABAKKUK ii. 5-20
In the style of his master Isaiah, Habakkuk follows up his _Vision_
with a series of lyrics on the same subject: chap. ii. 5-20. They are
taunt-songs, the most of them beginning with _Woe unto_, addressed to
the heathen oppressor. Perhaps they were all at first of equal length,
and it has been suggested that the striking refrain in which two of
them close—
_For men’s blood, and earth’s waste,
Cities and their inhabitants_—
was once attached to each of the others as well. But the text has been
too much altered, besides suffering several interpolations,[394] to
permit of its restoration, and we can only reproduce these taunts as
they now run in the Hebrew text. There are several quotations (not
necessarily an argument against Habakkuk’s authorship); but, as a
whole, the expression is original, and there are some lines of especial
force and freshness. Verses 5-6_a_ are properly an introduction, the
first Woe commencing with 6_b_.
The belief which inspires these songs is very simple. Tyranny is
intolerable. In the nature of things it cannot endure, but works
out its own penalties. By oppressing so many nations, the tyrant is
preparing the instruments of his own destruction. As he treats them,
so in time shall they treat him. He is like a debtor who increases the
number of his creditors. Some day they shall rise up and exact from him
the last penny. So that in cutting off others he is _but forfeiting his
own life_. The very violence done to nature, the deforesting of Lebanon
for instance, and the vast hunting of wild beasts, shall recoil on
him. This line of thought is exceedingly interesting. We have already
seen in prophecy, and especially in Isaiah, the beginnings of Hebrew
Wisdom—the attempt to uncover the moral processes of life and express
a philosophy of history. But hardly anywhere have we found so complete
an absence of all reference to the direct interference of God Himself
in the punishment of the tyrant; for _the cup of Jehovah’s right
hand_ in ver. 16 is simply the survival of an ancient metaphor. These
_proverbs_ or _taunt-songs_, in conformity with the proverbs of the
later Wisdom, dwell only upon the inherent tendency to decay of all
injustice. Tyranny, they assert, and history ever since has affirmed
their truthfulness—tyranny is suicide.
The last of the taunt-songs, which treats of the different subject of
idolatry, is probably, as we have seen, not from Habakkuk’s hand, but
of a later date.[395]
INTRODUCTION TO THE TAUNT-SONGS (ii. 5-6_a_).
_For ...[396] treacherous,
An arrogant fellow, and is not ...[397]
Who opens his desire wide as Sheol;
He is like death, unsatisfied;
And hath swept to himself all the nations,
And gathered to him all peoples.
Shall not these, all of them, take up a proverb upon him,
And a taunt-song against him? and say:—_
FIRST TAUNT-SONG (ii. 6_b_-8).
_Woe unto him who multiplies what is not his own,
—How long?—
And loads him with debts![398]
Shall not thy creditors[399] rise up,
And thy troublers awake,
And thou be for spoil[400] to them?
Because thou hast spoiled many nations,
All the rest of the peoples shall spoil thee.
For men’s blood, and earth’s waste,
Cities and all their inhabitants._[401]
SECOND TAUNT-SONG (ii. 9-11).
_Woe unto him that gains evil gain for his house,[402]
To set high his nest, to save him from the grasp of calamity!
Thou hast planned shame for thy house;
Thou hast cut off[403] many people,
While forfeiting thine own life.[404]
For the stone shall cry out from the wall,
And the lath[405] from the timber answer it._
THIRD TAUNT-SONG (ii. 12-14).
_Woe unto him that builds a city in blood,[406]
And stablishes a town in iniquity![407]
Lo, is it not from Jehovah of hosts,
That the nations shall toil for smoke,[408]
And the peoples wear themselves out for nought?
But earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the
glory of Jehovah,[409]
Like the waters that cover the sea._
FOURTH TAUNT-SONG (ii. 15-17).
_Woe unto him that gives his neighbour to drink,
From the cup of his wrath[410] till he be drunken,
That he may gloat on his[411] nakedness!
Thou art sated with shame—not with glory;
Drink also thou, and stagger.[412]
Comes round to thee the cup of Jehovah’s right hand,
And foul shame[413] on thy glory.
For the violence to Lebānon shall cover thee,
The destruction of the beasts shall affray thee.[414]
For men’s blood, and earth’s waste,
Cities and all their inhabitants.[415]_
FIFTH TAUNT-SONG (ii. 18-20).
_What boots an image, when its artist has graven it,
A cast-image and lie-oracle, that its moulder has trusted upon it,
Making dumb idols?
Woe to him that saith to a block, Awake!
To a dumb stone, Arise!
Can it teach?
Lo, it ...[416] with gold and silver;
There is no breath at all in the heart of it.
But Jehovah is in His Holy Temple:
Silence before Him, all the earth!_
FOOTNOTES:
[394] See above, pp. 125 f.
[395] See above, pp. 125 f. Nowack (1897) agrees that Cornill’s and
others’ conclusion that vv. 9-20 are not Habakkuk’s is too sweeping. He
takes the first, second and fourth of the taunt-songs as authentic, but
assigns the third (vv. 12-14) and the fifth (18-20) to another hand. He
deems the refrain, 8_b_ and 17_b_, to be a gloss, and puts 19 before
18. Driver, _Introd._, 6th ed., holds to the authenticity of all the
verses.
[396] The text reads, _For also wine is treacherous_, under which
we might be tempted to suspect some such original as, _As wine is
treacherous, so_ (next line) _the proud fellow_, etc. (or, as Davidson
suggests, _Like wine is the treacherous dealer_), were it not that the
word _wine_ appears neither in the Greek nor in the Syrian version.
Wellhausen suggests that היין, _wine_, is a corruption of הוי, with
which the verse, like vv. 6_b_, 9, 12, 15, 19, may have originally
begun, but according to 6_a_ the taunt-songs, opening with הוי, start
first in 6_b_. Bredenkamp proposes וְאֶפֶס כְּאַיִן.
[397] The text is ינוה, a verb not elsewhere found in the Old
Testament, and conjectured by our translators to mean _keepeth
at home_, because the noun allied to it means _homestead_ or
_resting-place_. The Syriac gives _is not satisfied_, and Wellhausen
proposes to read ירוה with that sense. See Davidson’s note on the verse.
[398] A.V. _thick clay_, which is reached by breaking up the word
עבטיט, _pledge_ or _debt_, into עב, _thick cloud_, and טיט, _clay_.
[399] Literally _thy biters_, נשכיך, but נשך, _biting_, is _interest_
or _usury_, and the Hiphil of נשך is _to exact interest_.
[400] LXX. sing., Heb. pl.
[401] These words occur again in ver. 17. Wellhausen thinks they suit
neither here nor there. But they suit all the taunt-songs, and some
suppose that they formed the refrain to each of these.
[402] Dynasty or people?
[403] So LXX.; Heb. _cutting off_.
[404] The grammatical construction is obscure, if the text be correct.
There is no mistaking the meaning.
[405]Heb. כפיס, not elsewhere found in the O.T., is in Rabbinic Hebrew
both _cross-beam_ and _lath_.
[406] Micah iii. 10.
[407] Jer. xxii. 13.
[408] Literally _fire_.
[409] Jer. li. 58: which original?
[410] After Wellhausen’s suggestion to read מסף חמתו instead of the
text מספח חמתך, _adding_, or _mixing_, _thy wrath_.
[411] So LXX. Q.; Heb. _their_.
[412] Read הרעל (cf. Nahum ii. 4; Zech. xii. 2). The text is הערל,
not found elsewhere, which has been conjectured to mean _uncover the
foreskin_. And there is some ground for this, as parallel to _his
nakedness_ in the previous clause. Wellhausen also removes the first
clause to the end of the verse: _Drink also thou and reel; there comes
to thee the cup in Jehovah’s right hand, and thou wilt glut thyself
with shame instead of honour._
[413] So R.V. for קיקלון, which A.V. has taken as two words—קי for
which cf. Jer. xxv. 27, where however the text is probably corrupt, and
קלון. With this confusion cf. above, ver. 6, עבטיט.
[414] Read with LXX. יחתך for יחיתן of the text.
[415] See above, ver. 8.
[416] תָּפוּשׂ?
CHAPTER XII
“_IN THE MIDST OF THE YEARS_”
HABAKKUK iii.
We have seen the impossibility of deciding the age of the ode which is
attributed to Habakkuk in the third chapter of his book.[417] But this
is only one of the many problems raised by that brilliant poem. Much of
its text is corrupt, and the meaning of many single words is uncertain.
As in most Hebrew poems of description, the tenses of the verbs puzzle
us; we cannot always determine whether the poet is singing of that
which is past or present or future, and this difficulty is increased
by his subject, a revelation of God in nature for the deliverance
of Israel. Is this the deliverance from Egypt, with the terrible
tempests which accompanied it? Or have the features of the Exodus been
borrowed to describe some other deliverance, or to sum up the constant
manifestation of Jehovah for His people’s help?
The introduction, in ver. 2, is clear. The singer has heard what is
to be heard of Jehovah, and His great deeds in the past. He prays for
a revival of these _in the midst of the years_. The times are full
of trouble and turmoil. Would that God, in the present confusion of
baffled hopes and broken issues, made Himself manifest by power and
brilliance, as of old! _In turmoil remember mercy!_ To render _turmoil_
by _wrath_, as if it were God’s anger against which the singer’s heart
appealed, is not true to the original word itself,[418] affords no
parallel to _the midst of the years_, and misses the situation. Israel
cries from a state of life in which the obscure years are huddled
together and full of turmoil. We need not wish to fix the date more
precisely than the writer himself does, but may leave it with him _in
the midst of the years_.
There follows the description of the Great Theophany, of which, in his
own poor times, the singer has heard. It is probable that he has in
his memory the events of the Exodus and Sinai. On this point his few
geographical allusions agree with his descriptions of nature. He draws
all the latter from the desert, or Arabian, side of Israel’s history.
He introduces none of the sea-monsters, or imputations of arrogance
and rebellion to the sea itself, which the influence of Babylonian
mythology so thickly scattered through the later sea-poetry of the
Hebrews. The Theophany takes place in a violent tempest of thunder
and rain, the only process of nature upon which the desert poets of
Arabia dwell with any detail. In harmony with this, God appears from
the southern desert, from Teman and Paran, as in the theophanies in
Deuteronomy xxxiii. and in the Song of Deborah;[419] a few lines recall
the Song of the Exodus,[420] and there are many resemblances to the
phraseology of the Sixty-Eighth Psalm. The poet sees under trouble
the tents of Kushan and of Midian, tribes of Sinai. And though the
Theophany is with floods of rain and lightning, and foaming of great
waters, it is not with hills, rivers or sea that God is angry, but with
the _nations_, the oppressors of His poor people, and in order that He
may deliver the latter. All this, taken with the fact that no mention
is made of Egypt, proves that, while the singer draws chiefly upon
the marvellous events of the Exodus and Sinai for his description, he
celebrates not them alone but all the ancient triumphs of God over the
heathen oppressors of Israel. Compare the obscure line—these be _His
goings of old_.
The report of it all fills the poet with trembling (ver. 16 returns
upon ver. 26), and although his language is too obscure to permit us to
follow with certainty the course of his feeling, he appears to await in
confidence the issue of Israel’s present troubles. His argument seems
to be, that such a God may be trusted still, in face of approaching
invasion (ver. 16). The next verse, however, does not express the
experience of trouble from human foes; but figuring the extreme
affliction of drought, barrenness and poverty, the poet speaking in the
name of Israel declares that, in spite of them, he will still rejoice
in the God of their salvation (ver. 17). So sudden is this change from
human foes to natural plagues, that some scholars have here felt a
passage to another poem describing a different situation. But the last
lines with their confidence in the _God of salvation_, a term always
used of deliverance from enemies, and the boast, borrowed from the
Eighteenth Psalm, _He maketh my feet like to hinds’ feet, and gives me
to march on my heights_, reflect the same circumstances as the bulk of
the Psalm, and offer no grounds to doubt the unity of the whole.[421]
PSALM[422] OF HABAKKUK THE PROPHET.
_LORD, I have heard the report of Thee;
I stand in awe![423]
LORD, revive Thy work in the midst of the years,
In the midst of the years make Thee known;[424]
In turmoil[425] remember mercy!_
_God comes from Teman,[426]
The Holy from Mount Paran.[427]
He covers the heavens with His glory,
And filled with His praise is the earth.
The flash is like lightning;
He has rays from each hand of Him,
Therein[428] is the ambush of His might._
_Pestilence travels before Him,
The plague-fire breaks forth at His feet.
He stands and earth shakes,[429]
He looks and drives nations asunder;
And the ancient mountains are cloven,
The hills everlasting sink down._
These be _His ways from of old_.[430]
_Under trouble I see the tents of Kûshān,[431]
The curtains of Midian’s land are quivering.
Is it with hills[432] Jehovah is wroth?
Is Thine anger with rivers?
Or against the sea is Thy wrath,
That Thou ridest it with horses,
Thy chariots of victory?
Thy bow is stripped bare;[433]
Thou gluttest (?) Thy shafts.[434]
Into rivers Thou cleavest the earth;[435]
Mountains see Thee and writhe;
The rainstorm sweeps on:[436]
The Deep utters his voice,
He lifts up his roar upon high.[437]
Sun and moon stand still in their dwelling,
At the flash of Thy shafts as they speed,
At the sheen of the lightning, Thy lance.
In wrath Thou stridest the earth,
In anger Thou threshest the nations!
Thou art forth to the help of Thy people,
To save Thine anointed.[438]
Thou hast shattered the head from the house of the wicked,
Laying bare from ...[439] to the neck.
Thou hast pierced with Thy spears the head of his princes.[440]
They stormed forth to crush me;
Their triumph was as to devour the poor in secret.[441]
Thou hast marched on the sea with Thy horses;
Foamed[442] the great waters._
_I have heard, and my heart[443] shakes;
At the sound my lips tremble,[444]
Rottenness enters my bones,[445]
My steps shake under me.[446]
I will ...[447] for the day of trouble
That pours in on the people.[448]_
_Though the fig-tree do not blossom,[449]
And no fruit be on the vines,
Fail the produce of the olive,
And the fields yield no meat,
Cut off[450] be the flock from the fold,
And no cattle in the stalls,
Yet in the LORD will I exult,
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
Jehovah, the Lord, is my might;
He hath made my feet like the hinds’,
And on my heights He gives me to march._
This Psalm, whose musical signs prove it to have been employed in the
liturgy of the Jewish Temple, has also largely entered into the use
of the Christian Church. The vivid style, the sweep of vision, the
exultation in the extreme of adversity with which it closes, have
made it a frequent theme of preachers and of poets. St. Augustine’s
exposition of the Septuagint version spiritualises almost every clause
into a description of the first and second advents of Christ.[451]
Calvin’s more sober and accurate learning interpreted it of God’s
guidance of Israel from the time of the Egyptian plagues to the days
of Joshua and Gideon, and made it enforce the lesson that He who so
wonderfully delivered His people in their youth will not forsake them
in the midway of their career.[452] The closing verses have been torn
from the rest to form the essence of a large number of hymns in many
languages.
For ourselves it is perhaps most useful to fasten upon the poet’s
description of his own position in the midst of the years, and like
him to take heart, amid our very similar circumstances, from the
glorious story of God’s ancient revelation, in the faith that He is
still the same in might and in purpose of grace to His people. We, too,
live among the nameless years. We feel them about us, undistinguished
by the manifest workings of God, slow and petty, or, at the most,
full of inarticulate turmoil. At this very moment we suffer from the
frustration of a great cause, on which believing men had set their
hearts as God’s cause; Christendom has received from the infidel no
greater reverse since the days of the Crusades. Or, lifting our eyes
to a larger horizon, we are tempted to see about us a wide, flat waste
of years. It is nearly nineteen centuries since the great revelation
of God in Christ, the redemption of mankind, and all the wonders of
the Early Church. We are far, far away from that, and unstirred by the
expectation of any crisis in the near future. We stand _in the midst
of the years_, equally distant from beginning and from end. It is the
situation which Jesus Himself likened to the long double watch in the
middle of the night—_if he come in the second watch or in the third
watch_—against whose dulness He warned His disciples. How much need is
there at such a time to recall, like this poet, what God has done—how
often He has shaken the world and overturned the nations, for the sake
of His people and the Divine causes they represent. _His ways are
everlasting._ As He then worked, so He will work now for the same ends
of redemption. Our prayer for _a revival of His work_ will be answered
before it is spoken.
It is probable that much of our sense of the staleness of the years
comes from their prosperity. The dull feeling that time is mere routine
is fastened upon our hearts by nothing more firmly than by the constant
round of fruitful seasons—that fortification of comfort, that
regularity of material supplies, which modern life assures to so many.
Adversity would brace us to a new expectation of the near and strong
action of our God. This is perhaps the meaning of the sudden mention of
natural plagues in the seventeenth verse of our Psalm. Not in spite of
the extremes of misfortune, but just because of them, should we exult
in _the God of our salvation_; and realise that it is by discipline He
makes His Church to feel that she is not marching over the dreary
levels of nameless years, but _on our high places He makes us to
march_.
“Grant, Almighty God, as the dulness and hardness of our flesh is so
great that it is needful for us to be in various ways afflicted—oh
grant that we patiently bear Thy chastisement, and under a deep
feeling of sorrow flee to Thy mercy displayed to us in Christ, so that
we depend not on the earthly blessings of this perishable life, but
relying on Thy word go forward in the course of our calling, until at
length we be gathered to that blessed rest which is laid up for us in
heaven, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”[453]
FOOTNOTES:
[417] Above, pp. 126 ff.
[418] רגז nowhere in the Old Testament means _wrath_, but either
roar and noise of thunder (Job xxxvii. 2) and of horsehoofs (xxxix.
24), or the raging of the wicked (iii. 17) or the commotion of fear
(iii. 26; Isa. xiv. 3).
[419]
_Jehovah from Sinai hath come,
And risen from Se‘ir upon them;
He shone from Mount Paran,
And broke from Meribah of Ḳadesh:
From the South fire ... to them._
Deut. xxxiii. 2, slightly altered after the LXX. _South_: some form
of ימין must be read to bring the line into parallel with the others;
תימן, Teman, is from the same root.
_Jehovah, in Thy going forth from Se’ir,
In Thy marching from Edom’s field,
Earth shook, yea, heaven dropped,
Yea, the clouds dropped water.
Mountains flowed down before Jehovah,
Yon Sinai at the face of the God of Israel._
Judges v. 4, 5.
[420] Exod. xv.
[421] In this case ver. 17 would be the only one that offered any
reason for suspicion that it was an intrusion.
[422] תפלה, lit. Prayer, but used for Psalm: cf. Psalm cii. 1.
[423] Sinker takes with this the first two words of next line: _I have
trembled, O LORD, at Thy work_.
[424] תודע, Imp. Niph., after LXX. γνωσθήσῃ. The Hebrew has תּוֹדִיעַ,
Hi., _make known_. The LXX. had a text of these verses which
reduplicated them, and it has translated them very badly.
[425] רֹגֶז, _turmoil_, _noise_, as in Job: a meaning that offers a
better parallel to _in the midst of the years_ than _wrath_, which
the word also means. Davidson, however, thinks it more natural to
understand the _wrath_ manifest at the coming of Jehovah to judgment.
So Sinker.
[426] Vulg. _ab Austro_, _from the South_.
[427] LXX. adds κατασκίον δασέος, which seems the translation of a
clause, perhaps a gloss, containing the name of Mount Se‘ir, as in the
parallel descriptions of a theophany, Deut. xxiii. 2, Judg. v. 4. See
Sinker, p. 45.
[428] Wellhausen, reading שׂם for שׁם, translates _He made them_, etc.
[429] So LXX. Heb. _and measures the earth_.
[430] This is the only way of rendering the verse so as not to make it
seem superfluous: so rendered it sums up and clenches the theophany
from ver. 3 onwards; and a new strophe now begins. There is therefore
no need to omit the verse, as Wellhausen does.
[431] LXX. Ἀίθιοπες; but these are Kush, and the parallelism requires
a tribe in Arabia. Calvin rejects the meaning _Ethiopian_ on the same
ground, but takes the reference as to King Kushan in Judg. iii. 8, 10,
on account of the parallelism with Midian. The Midianite wife whom
Moses married is called the Kushite (Num. xii. 1). Hommel (_Anc. Hebrew
Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments_, p. 315 and n. 1) appears to
take Zerah the Kushite of 2 Chron. xiv. 9 ff. as a prince of Kush in
Central Arabia. But the narrative which makes him deliver his invasion
of Judah at Mareshah surely confirms the usual opinion that he and his
host were Ethiopians coming up from Egypt.
[432] For הבנהרים, _is it with streams_, read הבהרים, _is it with
hills_: because hills have already been mentioned, and rivers occur in
the next clause, and are separated by the same disjunctive particle,
אִם, which separates _the sea_ in the third clause from them. The
whole phrase might be rendered, _Is it with hills_ Thou art _angry, O
Jehovah_?
[433] Questionable: the verb תֵּעוֹר, Ni. of a supposed עוּר, does
not elsewhere occur, and is only conjectured from the noun עֶרְוָה,
_nakedness_, and עֶרְיָה, _stripping_. LXX. has ἐντείνων ἐνέτεινας,
and Wellhausen reads, after 2 Sam. xxiii. 18, עוֹרֵר תְּעוֹרֵר, _Thou
bringest into action Thy bow_.
[434] שְׁבֻעוֹת מַטּוֹת אֹמֶר, literally _sworn are staves_ or _rods of
speech_. A.V.: according _to the oaths of the tribes_, even Thy _word_.
LXX. (omitting שְׁבֻעוֹת and adding יהוה) ἐπὶ σκῆπτρα, λέγει κύριος.
These words “form a riddle which all the ingenuity of scholars has not
been able to solve. Delitzsch calculates that a hundred translations
of them have been offered” (Davidson). In parallel to previous
clause about a _bow_, we ought to expect מטות, _staves_, though it
is not elsewhere used for _shafts_ or _arrows_. שׁבעות may have been
שַׂבֵּעְתָּ, _Thou satest_. The Cod. Barb. reads: ἐχόρτασας βολίδας τῆς
φαρέτρης αὐτοῦ, _Thou hast satiated the shafts of his quiver_. Sinker:
_sworn are the punishments of the solemn decree_, and relevantly
compares Isa. xi. 4, _the rod of His mouth_; xxx. 32, _rod of doom_.
Ewald: _sevenfold shafts of war_. But cf. Psalm cxviii. 12.
[435] Uncertain, but a more natural result of cleaving than _the rivers
Thou cleavest into dry land_ (Davidson and Wellhausen).
[436] But Ewald takes this as of the Red Sea floods sweeping on the
Egyptians.
[437] רום ידיהו נשא = _he lifts up his hands on high_. But the LXX.
read מריהו, φαντασίας αὐτῆς, and took נשא with the next verse. The
reading מריהו (for מראיהו) is indeed nonsense, but suggests an
emendation to מרזחו, _his shout or wail_: cf. Amos vi. 7, Jer. xvi. 5.
[438] Reading for הושיע ישע, required by the acc. following. _Thine
anointed_, lit. _Thy Messiah_, according to Isa. xl. ff. the whole
people.
[439] Heb. יסוד, _foundation_. LXX. _bonds_. Some suggest laying bare
from the foundation to the neck, but this is mixed unless _neck_
happened to be a technical name for a part of a building: cf. Isa.
viii. 8, xxx. 28.
[440] Heb. _his spears_ or _staves_; _his own_ (Von Orelli). LXX.
ἐν ἐκστάσει: see Sinker, pp. 56 ff. _Princes_: פְרָזָו only here.
Hitzig: _his brave ones_. Ewald, Wellhausen, Davidson: _his princes_.
Delitzsch: _his hosts_. LXX. κεφαλὰς δυναστῶν.
[441] So Heb. literally. A very difficult line. On LXX. see Sinker, pp.
60 f.
[442] For חֹמֶר, _heap_ (so A.V.), read some part of חמר, _to foam_.
LXX. ταράσσοντας: cf. Psalm xlvi. 4.
[443] So LXX. א (some codd.), softening the original _belly_.
[444] Or _my lips quiver aloud_—לקול, _vocally_ (Von Orelli).
[445] By the Hebrew the bones were felt, as a modern man feels his
nerves: Psalms xxxii., li.; Job.
[446] For אשר, for which LXX. gives ἡ ἔξις μου, read אשרי, _my steps_;
and for ארגז, LXX. ἑταράχθη, ירגזו.
[447] אָנוּחַ. LXX. ἀναπαύσομαι, _I will rest_. A.V.: _that I might
rest in the day of trouble_. Others: _I will wait for_. Wellhausen
suggests אִנָּחֵם (Isa. l. 24), _I will take comfort_. Sinker takes
אשר as the simple relative: _I who will wait patiently for the day of
doom_. Von Orelli takes it as the conjunction _because_.
[448] יְגֻדֶנּוּ, _it invades_, _brings up troops on them_, only in
Gen. xlix. 19 and here. Wellhausen: _which invades us_. Sinker: _for
the coming up against the people of him who shall assail it_.
[449] תפרח; but LXX. תפרה, οὐ καρποφορήσει, _bear no fruit_.
[450] For גזר Wellhausen reads נִגזר. LXX. ἐξελιπεν.
[451] _De Civitate Dei_, XVIII. 32.
[452] So he paraphrases _in the midst of the years_.
[453] From the prayer with which Calvin concludes his exposition of
Habakkuk.
_OBADIAH_
_And Saviours shall come up on Mount Zion to judge Mount Esau, and the
kingdom shall be Jehovah’s._
CHAPTER XIII
_THE BOOK OF OBADIAH_
The Book of Obadiah is the smallest among the prophets, and the
smallest in all the Old Testament. Yet there is none which better
illustrates many of the main problems of Old Testament criticism. It
raises, indeed, no doctrinal issue nor any question of historical
accuracy. All that it claims to be is _The Vision of Obadiah_;[454] and
this vague name, with no date or dwelling-place to challenge comparison
with the contents of the book, introduces us without prejudice to
the criticism of the latter. Nor is the book involved in the central
controversy of Old Testament scholarship, the date of the Law. It has
no reference to the Law. Nor is it made use of in the New Testament.
The more freely, therefore, may we study the literary and historical
questions started by the twenty-one verses which compose the book.
Their brief course is broken by differences of style, and by sudden
changes of outlook from the past to the future. Some of them present
a close parallel to another passage of prophecy, a feature which when
present offers a difficult problem to the critic. Hardly any of the
historical allusions are free from ambiguity, for although the book
refers throughout to a single nation—and so vividly that even if Edom
were not named we might still discern the character and crimes of that
bitter brother of Israel—yet the conflict of Israel and Edom was so
prolonged and so monotonous in its cruelties, that there are few of
its many centuries to which some scholar has not felt himself able to
assign, in part or whole, Obadiah’s indignant oration. The little book
has been tossed out of one century into another by successive critics,
till there exists in their estimates of its date a difference of nearly
six hundred years.[455] Such a fact seems, at first sight, to convict
criticism either of arbitrariness or helplessness;[456] yet a little
consideration of details is enough to lead us to an appreciation of the
reasonable methods of Old Testament criticism, and of its indubitable
progress towards certainty, in spite of our ignorance of large
stretches of the history of Israel. To the student of the Old Testament
nothing could be more profitable than to master the historical and
literary questions raised by the Book of Obadiah, before following them
out among the more complicated problems which are started by other
prophetical books in their relation to the Law of Israel, or to their
own titles, or to claims made for them in the New Testament.
* * * * *
The Book of Obadiah contains a number of verbal parallels to another
prophecy against Edom which appears in Jeremiah xlix. 7-22. Most
critics have regarded this prophecy of Jeremiah as genuine, and have
assigned it to the year 604 B.C. The question is whether Obadiah or
Jeremiah is the earlier. Hitzig and Vatke[457] answered in favour of
Jeremiah; and as the Book of Obadiah also contains a description of
Edom’s conduct in the day of Jerusalem’s overthrow by Nebuchadrezzar,
in 586, they brought the whole book down to post-exilic times.
Very forcible arguments, however, have been offered for Obadiah’s
priority.[458] Upon this priority, as well as on the facts that Joel,
whom they take to be early, quotes from Obadiah, and that Obadiah’s
book occurs among the first six—presumably the pre-exilic members—of
the Twelve, a number of scholars have assigned all of it to an early
period in Israel’s history. Some fix upon the reign of Jehoshaphat,
when Judah was invaded by Edom and his allies Moab and Ammon, but saved
from disaster through Moab and Ammon turning upon the Edomites and
slaughtering them.[459] To this they refer the phrase in Obadiah 9,
_the men of thy covenant have betrayed thee_. Others place the whole
book in the reign of Joram of Judah (849—842 B.C.), when, according to
the Chronicles,[460] Judah was invaded and Jerusalem partly sacked by
Philistines and Arabs.[461] But in the story of this invasion, there
is no mention of Edomites, and the argument which is drawn from Joel’s
quotation of Obadiah fails if Joel, as we shall see, be of late date.
With greater prudence Pusey declines to fix a period.
The supporters of a pre-exilic origin for the _whole_ Book of Obadiah
have to explain vv. 11-14, which appear to reflect Edom’s conduct at
the sack of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar in 586, and they do so in two
ways. Pusey takes the verses as predictive of Nebuchadrezzar’s siege.
Orelli and others believe that they suit better the conquest and
plunder of the city in the time of Jehoram. But, as Calvin has said,
“they seem to be mistaken who think that Obadiah lived before the time
of Isaiah.”
The question, however, very early arose, whether it was possible to
take Obadiah as a unity. Vv. 1-9 are more vigorous and firm than vv.
10-21. In vv. 1-9 Edom is destroyed by nations who are its allies; in
vv. 10-21 it is still to fall along with other Gentiles in the general
judgment of the Lord.[462] Vv. 10-21 admittedly describe the conduct
of the Edomites at the overthrow of Jerusalem in 586; but vv. 1-9
probably reflect earlier events; and it is significant that in them
alone occur the parallels to Jeremiah’s prophecy against Edom in 604.
On some of these grounds Ewald regarded the little book as consisting
of two pieces, both of which refer to Edom, but the first of which was
written before Jeremiah, and the second is post-exilic. As Jeremiah’s
prophecy has some features more original than Obadiah’s,[463] he traced
both prophecies to an original oracle against Edom, of which Obadiah on
the whole renders an exact version. He fixed the date of this oracle in
the earlier days of Isaiah, when Rezin of Syria enabled Edom to assert
again its independence of Judah, and Edom won back Elath, which Uzziah
had taken.[464] Driver, Wildeboer and Cornill[465] adopt this theory,
with the exception of the period to which Ewald refers the original
oracle. According to them, the Book of Obadiah consists of two pieces,
vv. 1-9 pre-exilic, and vv. 10-21 post-exilic and descriptive in 11-14
of Nebuchadrezzar’s sack of Jerusalem.
This latter point need not be contested.[466] But is it clear that
1-9 are so different from 10-21 that they must be assigned to another
period? Are they necessarily pre-exilic? Wellhausen thinks not, and has
constructed still another theory of the origin of the book, which, like
Vatke’s, brings it all down to the period after the Exile.
There is no mention in the book either of Assyria or of Babylonia.[467]
The allies who have betrayed Edom (ver. 7) are therefore probably
those Arabian tribes who surrounded it and were its frequent
confederates.[468] They are described as _sending_ Edom _to the border_
(_ib._). Wellhausen thinks that this can only refer to the great
northward movement of Arabs which began to press upon the fertile
lands to the south-east of Israel during the time of the Captivity.
Ezekiel[469] prophesies that Ammon and Moab will disappear before
the Arabs, and we know that by the year 312 the latter were firmly
settled in the territories of Edom.[470] Shortly before this the
Hagarenes appear in Chronicles, and Se’ir is called by the Arabic name
Gebal,[471] while as early as the fifth century “Malachi”[472] records
the desolation of Edom’s territory by the _jackals of the wilderness_,
and the expulsion of the Edomites, who will not return. The Edomites
were pushed up into the Negeb of Israel, and occupied the territory
round, and to the south of, Hebron till their conquest by John Hyrcanus
about 130; even after that it was called Idumæa.[473] Wellhausen would
assign Obadiah 1-7 to the same stage of this movement as is reflected
in “Malachi” i. 1-5; and, apart from certain parentheses, would
therefore take the whole of Obadiah as a unity from the end of the
fifth century before Christ. In that case Giesebrecht argues that the
parallel prophecy, Jeremiah xlix. 7-22, must be reckoned as one of the
passages of the Book of Jeremiah in which post-exilic additions have
been inserted.[474]
Our criticism of this theory may start from the seventh verse of
Obadiah: _To the border they have sent thee, all the men of thy
covenant have betrayed thee, they have overpowered thee, the men of
thy peace._ On our present knowledge of the history of Edom it is
impossible to assign the first of these clauses to any period before
the Exile. No doubt in earlier days Edom was more than once subjected
to Arab _razzias_. But up to the Jewish Exile the Edomites were still
in possession of their own land. So the Deuteronomist[475] implies,
and so Ezekiel[476] and perhaps the author of Lamentations.[477]
Wellhausen’s claim, therefore, that the seventh verse of Obadiah refers
to the expulsion of Edomites by Arabs in the sixth or fifth century
B.C. may be granted.[478] But does this mean that verses 1-6 belong,
as he maintains, to the same period? A negative answer seems required
by the following facts. To begin with, the seventh verse is not found
in the parallel prophecy in Jeremiah. There is no reason why it should
not have been used there, if that prophecy had been compiled at a
time when the expulsion of the Edomites was already an accomplished
fact. But both by this omission and by all its other features, that
prophecy suits the time of Jeremiah, and we may leave it, therefore,
where it was left till the appearance of Wellhausen’s theory—namely,
with Jeremiah himself.[479] Moreover Jeremiah xlix. 9 seems to have
been adapted in Obadiah 5 in order to suit verse 6. But again, Obadiah
1-6, which contains so many parallels to Jeremiah’s prophecy, also
seems to imply that the Edomites are still in possession of their
land. _The nations_ (we may understand by this the Arab tribes) are
risen against Edom, and Edom is already despicable in face of them
(vv. 1, 2); but he has not yet fallen, any more than, to the writer of
Isaiah xlv.—xlvii., who uses analogous language, Babylon is already
fallen. Edom is weak and cannot resist the Arab _razzias_. But he
still makes his eyrie on high and says: _Who will bring me down?_ To
which challenge Jehovah replies, not ‘I have brought thee down,’ but
_I will bring thee down_. The post-exilic portion of Obadiah, then, I
take to begin with verse 7; and the author of this prophecy has begun
by incorporating in vv. 1-6 a pre-exilic prophecy against Edom, which
had been already, and with more freedom, used by Jeremiah. Verses
8-9 form a difficulty. They return to the future tense, as if the
Edomites were still to be cut off from Mount Esau. But verse 10, as
Wellhausen points out, follows on naturally to verse 7, and, with its
successors, clearly points to a period subsequent to Nebuchadrezzar’s
overthrow of Jerusalem. The change from the past tense in vv. 10-11
to the imperatives of 12-14 need cause, in spite of what Pusey says,
no difficulty, but may be accounted for by the excited feelings of
the prophet. The suggestion has been made, and it is plausible, that
Obadiah speaks as an eye-witness of that awful time. Certainly there
is nothing in the rest of the prophecy (vv. 15-21) to lead us to bring
it further down than the years following the destruction of Jerusalem.
Everything points to the Jews being still in exile. The verbs which
describe the inviolateness of Jerusalem (17), and the reinstatement of
Israel in their heritage (17, 19), and their conquest of Edom (18), are
all in the future. The prophet himself appears to write in exile (20).
The captivity of Jerusalem is in Sepharad (_ib._) and the _saviours_
have to _come up_ to Mount Zion; that is to say, they are still beyond
the Holy Land (21).[480]
The one difficulty in assigning this date to the prophecy is that
nothing is said in the Hebrew of ver. 19 about the re-occupation of
the hill-country of Judæa itself, but here the Greek may help us.[481]
Certainly every other feature suits the early days of the Exile.
The result of our inquiry is that the Book of Obadiah was written at
that time by a prophet in exile, who was filled by the same hatred of
Edom as filled another exile, who in Babylon wrote Psalm cxxxvii.; and
that, like so many of the exilic writers, he started from an earlier
prophecy against Edom, already used by Jeremiah.[482] [Nowack (_Comm._,
1897) takes vv. 1-14 (with additions in vv. 1, 5, 6, 8f. and 12) to
be from a date not long after the Fall of Jerusalem, alluded to in
vv. 11-14; and vv. 15-21 to belong to a later period, which it is
impossible to fix exactly.]
There is nothing in the language of the book to disturb this
conclusion. The Hebrew of Obadiah is pure; unlike its neighbour, the
Book of Jonah, it contains neither Aramaisms nor other symptoms of
decadence. The text is very sound. The Septuagint Version enables us to
correct vv. 7 and 17, offers the true division between vv. 9 and 10,
but makes an omission which leaves no sense in ver. 17.[483] It will be
best to give all the twenty-one verses together before commenting on
their spirit.
THE VISION OF OBADIAH.
_Thus hath the Lord Jehovah spoken concerning Edom._[484]
“_A report have we heard from Jehovah, and a messenger has been sent
through the nations, ‘Up and let us rise against her to battle.’ Lo,
I have made thee small among the nations, thou art very despised! The
arrogance of thy heart hath misled thee, dweller in clefts of the
Rock[485]; the height is his dwelling, that saith in his heart ‘Who
shall bring me down to earth!’ Though thou build high as the eagle,
though between the stars thou set thy nest, thence will I bring thee
down—oracle of Jehovah. If thieves had come into thee by night (how
art thou humbled!),[486] would they not steal _just_ what they wanted?
If vine-croppers had come into thee, would they not leave_ some
_gleanings? (How searched out is Esau, how rifled his treasures!)_”
But now _to_ thy very _border have they sent thee, all the men of thy
covenant[487] have betrayed thee, the men of thy peace have overpowered
thee[488]; they kept setting traps for thee—there is no understanding
in him! “[489]Shall it not be in that day—oracle of Jehovah—that I
will cause the wise men to perish from Edom, and understanding from
Mount Esau? And thy heroes, O Teman, shall be dismayed, till[490]
every man be cut off from Mount Esau.” For the slaughter,[491] for the
outraging of thy brother Jacob, shame doth cover thee, and thou art
cut off for ever. In the day of thy standing aloof,[492] in the day
when strangers took captive his substance, and aliens came into his
gates,[493] and they cast lots on Jerusalem, even thou wert as one of
them!_ Ah, _gloat not[494] upon the day of thy brother,[495] the day
of his misfortune[496]; exult not over the sons of Judah in the day
of their destruction, and make not thy mouth large[497] in the day of
distress. Come not up into the gate of My people in the day of their
disaster. Gloat not thou, yea thou, upon his ills, in the day of his
disaster, nor put forth thy hand to his substance in the day of his
disaster, nor stand at the parting[498]_ of the ways (?) _to cut off
his fugitives; nor arrest his escaped ones in the day of distress_.
_For near is the day of Jehovah, upon all the nation as thou hast done,
so shall it be done to thee: thy deed shall come back on thine own
head.[499]_
_For as ye[500] have drunk on my holy mount, all the nations shall
drink continuously, drink and reel, and be as though they had not
been.[501] But on Mount Zion shall be refuge, and it shall be
inviolate, and the house of Jacob shall inherit those who have
disinherited them.[502] For the house of Jacob shall be fire, and the
house of Joseph a flame, but the house of Esau shall become stubble,
and they shall kindle upon them and devour them, and there shall not
one escape of the house of Esau—for Jehovah hath spoken._
_And the Negeb shall possess Mount Esau, and the Shephelah the
Philistines,[503] and the Mountain[504] shall possess Ephraim and the
field of Samaria,[505] and Benjamin shall possess Gilead. And the
exiles of this host[506] of the children of Israel shall possess(?) the
land[507] of the Canaanites unto Sarephath, and the exiles of Jerusalem
who are in Sepharad[508] shall inherit the cities of the Negeb. And
saviours shall come up on Mount Zion to judge Mount Esau, and the
kingdom shall be Jehovah’s._
FOOTNOTES:
[454] עֹבַדְיָה, ‘Obadyah, the later form of עֹבַדְיָהוּ, ‘Obadyahu (a name
occurring thrice before the Exile: Ahab’s steward who hid the prophets
of the Lord, 1 Kings xviii. 3-7, 16; of a man in David’s house, 1
Chron. xxvii. 19; a Levite in Josiah’s reign, 2 Chron. xxxiv. 12), is
the name of several of the Jews who returned from exile: Ezra viii. 9,
the son of Jehi’el (in 1 Esdras viii. Ἀβαδιας); Neh. x. 6, a priest,
probably the same as the Obadiah in xii. 25, a porter, and the עַבְדָּא,
the singer, in xi. 17, who is called עֹבַדְיָה in 1 Chron. ix. 16. Another
‘Obadyah is given in the eleventh generation from Saul, 1 Chron. viii.
38, ix. 44; another in the royal line in the time of the Exile, iii.
21; a man of Issachar, vii. 3; a Gadite under David, xii. 9; a _prince_
under Jehoshaphat sent _to teach in the cities of Judah_, 2 Chron.
xvii. 7. With the Massoretic points עֹבַדְיָה means worshipper of Jehovah:
cf. Obed-Edom, and so in the Greek form, Ὀβδειου, of Cod. B. But other
Codd., A, θ and א, give Ἀβδιου or Ἀβδειου, and this, with the
alternative Hebrew form אַבְדָּא of Neh. xi. 17, suggests rather עֶבֶד יָה,
_servant of Jehovah_. The name as given in the title is probably
intended to be that of an historical individual, as in the titles of
all the other books; but which, or if any, of the above mentioned it is
impossible to say. Note, however, that it is the later post-exilic form
of the name that is used, in spite of the book occurring among the
pre-exilic prophets. Some, less probably, take the name Obadyah to be
symbolic of the prophetic character of the writer.
[455] 889 B.C. Hofmann, Keil, etc.; and soon after 312, Hitzig.
[456] Cf. the extraordinary tirade of Pusey in his Introd. to Obadiah.
[457] The first in his Commentary on _Die Zwölf Kleine Propheten_; the
other in his _Einleitung_.
[458] Caspari (_Der Proph. Ob. ausgelegt_ 1842), Ewald, Graf, Pusey,
Driver, Giesebrecht, Wildeboer and König. Cf. Jer. xlix. 9 with Ob. 5;
Jer. xlix. 14 ff. with Ob. 1-4. The opening of Ob. 1 ff. is held to
be more in its place than where it occurs in the middle of Jeremiah’s
passage. The language of Obadiah is “terser and more forcible. Jeremiah
seems to expand Obadiah, and parts of Jeremiah which have no parallel
in Obadiah are like Obadiah’s own style” (Driver). This strong argument
is enforced in detail by Pusey: “Out of the sixteen verses of which
the prophecy of Jeremiah against Edom consists, four are identical
with those of Obadiah; a fifth embodies a verse of Obadiah’s; of the
eleven which remain ten have some turns of expression or idioms, more
or fewer, which occur in Jeremiah, either in these prophecies against
foreign nations, or in his prophecies generally. Now it would be wholly
improbable that a prophet, selecting verses out of the prophecy of
Jeremiah, should have selected precisely those which contain none of
Jeremiah’s characteristic expressions; whereas it perfectly fits in
with the supposition that Jeremiah interwove verses of Obadiah with his
own prophecy, that in verses so interwoven there is not one expression
which occurs elsewhere in Jeremiah.” Similarly Nowack, _Comm._, 1897.
[459] 2 Chron. xx.
[460] 2 Chron. xxi. 14-17.
[461] So Delitzsch, Keil, Volck in Herzog’s _Real. Ency._ II., Orelli
and Kirkpatrick. Delitzsch indeed suggests that the prophet may have
been _Obadiah the prince_ appointed by Jehoshaphat _to teach in the
cities of Judah_. See above, p. 163, n. 454.
[462] Driver, _Introd._
[463] Jer. xlix. 9 and 16 appear to be more original than Ob. 3 and 2b.
Notice the presence in Jer. xlix. 16 of תפלצתך which Obadiah omits.
[464] 2 Kings xiv. 22; xvi. 6, Revised Version margin.
[465] _Einl._³ pp. 185 f.: “In any case Obadiah 1-9 are older than the
fourth year of Jehoiakim.”
[466] “That the verses Obadiah 10 ff. refer to this event [the sack of
Jerusalem] will always remain the most natural supposition, for the
description which they give so completely suits that time that it is
not possible to take any other explanation into consideration.”
[467] Edom paid tribute to Sennacherib in 701, and to Asarhaddon
(681—669). According to 2 Kings xxiv. 2 Nebuchadrezzar sent Ammonites,
Moabites and Edomites [for ארם read אדם] against Jehoiakim, who had
broken his oath to Babylonia.
[468] For Edom’s alliances with Arab tribes cf. Gen. xxv. 13 with
xxxvi. 3, 12, etc.
[469] Ezek. xxv. 4, 5, 10.
[470] Diod. Sic. XIX. 94. A little earlier they are described as in
possession of Iturea, on the south-east slopes of Anti-Lebanon (Arrian
II. 20, 4).
[471] Psalm lxxxiii. 8.
[472] i. 1-5.
[473] _E.g._ in the New Testament: Mark iii. 8.
[474] So too Nowack, 1897.
[475] Deut. ii. 5, 8, 12.
[476] Ezek. xxxv., esp. 2 and 15.
[477] iv. 21: yet _Uz_ fails in LXX., and some take ארץ to refer to the
Holy Land itself. Buhl, _Gesch. der Edomiter_, 73.
[478] It can hardly be supposed that Edom’s treacherous allies were
Assyrians or Babylonians, for even if the phrase “men of thy covenant”
could be applied to those to whom Edom was tributary, the Assyrian or
Babylonian method of dealing with conquered peoples is described by
saying that they took them off into captivity, not that they _sent them
to the border_.
[479] So even Cornill, _Einl._³
[480] This in answer to Wellhausen on the verse.
[481] See below, p. 175, n. 6.
[482] Calvin, while refusing in his introduction to Obadiah to fix a
date (except in so far as he thinks it impossible for the book to be
earlier than Isaiah), implies throughout his commentary on the book
that it was addressed to Edom while the Jews were in exile. See his
remarks on vv. 18-20.
[483] There is a mistranslation in ver. 18: שׂריד is rendered by
πυρόφορος.
[484] This is no doubt from the later writer, who before he gives the
new word of Jehovah with regard to Edom, quotes the earlier prophecy,
marked above by quotation marks. In no other way can we explain the
immediate following of the words “Thus hath the Lord spoken” with “_We_
have heard a report,” etc.
[485] ‘Sela,’ the name of the Edomite capital, Petra.
[486] The parenthesis is not in Jer. xlix. 9; Nowack omits it. _If
spoilers_ occurs in Heb. before _by night_: delete.
[487] Antithetic to _thieves_ and _spoilers by night_, as the sending
of the people to their border is antithetic to the thieves taking only
what they wanted.
[488] לחמך, _thy bread_, which here follows, is not found in the LXX.,
and is probably an error due to a mechanical repetition of the letters
of the previous word.
[489] Again perhaps a quotation from an earlier prophecy: Nowack counts
it from another hand. Mark the sudden change to the future.
[490] Heb. _so that_.
[491] With LXX. transfer this expression from the end of the ninth to
the beginning of the tenth verse.
[492] “When thou didst stand on the opposite side.”—Calvin.
[493] Plural; LXX. and Qeri.
[494] Sudden change to imperative. The English versions render, _Thou
shouldest not have looked on_, etc.
[495] Cf. Ps. cxxxvii. 7, _the day of Jerusalem_.
[496] The day of his strangeness = _aliena fortuna_.
[497] With laughter. Wellhausen and Nowack suspect ver. 13 as an
intrusion.
[498] פֶּרֶק does not elsewhere occur. It means cleaving, and the LXX.
render it by διεκβολή, _i.e._ pass between mountains. The Arabic forms
from the same root suggest the sense of a band of men standing apart
from the main body on the watch for stragglers (cf. נגד, in ver. 11).
Calvin, “the going forth”; Grätz פרץ, _breach_, but see Nowack.
[499] Wellhausen proposes to put the last two clauses immediately after
ver. 14.
[500] The prophet seems here to turn to address his own countrymen: the
drinking will therefore take the meaning of suffering God’s chastising
wrath. Others, like Calvin, take it in the opposite sense, and apply it
to Edom: “as ye have exulted,” etc.
[501] _Reel_—for לעוּ we ought (with Wellhausen) probably to read
נעוּ: cf. Lam. iv. 2. Some codd. of LXX. omit _all the nations ...
continuously, drink and reel_. But א^{Ca} A and Q have _all the
nations shall drink wine_.
[502] So LXX. Heb. _their heritages_.
[503] That is the reverse of the conditions after the Jews went into
exile, for then the Edomites came up on the Negeb and the Philistines
on the Shephelah.
[504] _I.e._ of Judah, the rest of the country outside the Negeb and
Shephelah. The reading is after the LXX.
[505] Whereas the pagan inhabitants of these places came upon the
hill-country of Judæa during the Exile.
[506] An unusual form of the word. Ewald would read _coast_. The verse
is obscure.
[507] So LXX.
[508] The Jews themselves thought this to be Spain: so Onkelos, who
translates ספרד by אַסְפַּמְיָא = Hispania. Hence the origin of the
name Sephardim Jews. The supposition that it is Sparta need hardly
be noticed. Our decision must lie between two other regions—the one
in Asia Minor, the other in S.W. Media. _First_, in the ancient
Persian inscriptions there thrice occurs (great Behistun inscription,
I. 15; inscription of Darius, II. 12, 13; and inscription of Darius
from Naḳsh-i-Rustam) Çparda. It is connected with Janua or Ionia and
Katapatuka or Cappadocia (Schrader, _Cun. Inscr. and O. T._, Germ. ed.,
p. 446; Eng., Vol. II., p. 145); and Sayce shows that, called Shaparda
on a late cuneiform inscription of 275 B.C., it must have lain in
Bithynia or Galatia (_Higher Criticism and Monuments_, p. 483). Darius
made it a satrapy. It is clear, as Cheyne says (_Founders of O. T.
Criticism_, p. 312), that those who on other grounds are convinced of
the post-exilic origin of this part of Obadiah, of its origin in the
Persian period, will identify Sepharad with this Çparda, which both he
and Sayce do. But to those of us who hold that this part of Obadiah
is from the time of the Babylonian exile, as we have sought to prove
above on pp. 171 f., then Sepharad cannot be Çparda, for Nebuchadrezzar
did not subdue Asia Minor and cannot have transported Jews there. Are
we then forced to give up our theory of the date of Obadiah 10-21 in
the Babylonian exile? By no means. For, _second_, the inscriptions of
Sargon, king of Assyria (721—705 B.C.), mention a Shaparda, in S.W.
Media towards Babylonia, a name phonetically correspondent to ספרד
(Schrader, _l.c._), and the identification of the two is regarded as
“exceedingly probable” by Fried. Delitzsch (_Wo lag das Paradies?_ p.
249). But even if this should be shown to be impossible, and if the
identification Sepharad = Çparda be proved, that would not oblige us to
alter our opinion as to the date of the whole of Obadiah 10-21, for it
is possible that later additions, including Sepharad, have been made to
the passage.
CHAPTER XIV
_EDOM AND ISRAEL_
OBADIAH 1-21
If the Book of Obadiah presents us with some of the most difficult
questions of criticism, it raises besides one of the hardest ethical
problems in all the vexed history of Israel.
Israel’s fate has been to work out their calling in the world through
antipathies rather than by sympathies, but of all the antipathies which
the nation experienced none was more bitter and more constant than that
towards Edom. The rest of Israel’s enemies rose and fell like waves:
Canaanites were succeeded by Philistines, Philistines by Syrians,
Syrians by Greeks. Tyrant relinquished his grasp of God’s people to
tyrant: Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian; the Seleucids, the
Ptolemies. But Edom was always there, _and fretted his anger for
ever_.[509] From that far back day when their ancestors wrestled in the
womb of Rebekah to the very eve of the Christian era, when a Jewish
king[510] dragged the Idumeans beneath the yoke of the Law, the two
peoples scorned, hated and scourged each other, with a relentlessness
that finds no analogy, between kindred and neighbour nations, anywhere
else in history. About 1030 David, about 130 the Hasmoneans, were
equally at war with Edom; and few are the prophets between those
distant dates who do not cry for vengeance against him or exult in his
overthrow. The Book of Obadiah is singular in this, that it contains
nothing else than such feelings and such cries. It brings no spiritual
message. It speaks no word of sin, or of righteousness, or of mercy,
but only doom upon Edom in bitter resentment at his cruelties, and in
exultation that, as he has helped to disinherit Israel, Israel shall
disinherit him. Such a book among the prophets surprises us. It seems
but a dark surge staining the stream of revelation, as if to exhibit
through what a muddy channel these sacred waters have been poured upon
the world. Is the book only an outbreak of Israel’s selfish patriotism?
This is the question we have to discuss in the present chapter.
Reasons for the hostility of Edom and Israel are not far to seek. The
two nations were neighbours with bitter memories and rival interests.
Each of them was possessed by a strong sense of distinction from
the rest of mankind, which goes far to justify the story of their
common descent. But while in Israel this pride was chiefly due to the
consciousness of a peculiar destiny not yet realised—a pride painful
and hungry—in Edom it took the complacent form of satisfaction in a
territory of remarkable isolation and self-sufficiency, in large
stores of wealth, and in a reputation for worldly wisdom—a fulness that
recked little of the future, and felt no need of the Divine.
The purple mountains, into which the wild sons of Esau clambered,
run out from Syria upon the desert, some hundred miles by twenty of
porphyry and red sandstone. They are said to be the finest rock scenery
in the world. “Salvator Rosa never conceived so savage and so suitable
a haunt for banditti.”[511] From Mount Hor, which is their summit, you
look down upon a maze of mountains, cliffs, chasms, rocky shelves and
strips of valley. On the east the range is but the crested edge of
a high, cold plateau, covered for the most part by stones, but with
stretches of corn land and scattered woods. The western walls, on the
contrary, spring steep and bare, black and red, from the yellow of the
desert ‘Arabah. The interior is reached by defiles, so narrow that two
horsemen may scarcely ride abreast, and the sun is shut out by the
overhanging rocks. Eagles, hawks and other mountain birds fly screaming
round the traveller. Little else than wild-fowls’ nests are the
villages; human eyries perched on high shelves or hidden away in caves
at the ends of the deep gorges. There is abundance of water. The gorges
are filled with tamarisks, oleanders and wild figs. Besides the wheat
lands on the eastern plateau, the wider defiles hold fertile fields
and terraces for the vine. Mount Esau is, therefore, no mere citadel
with supplies for a limited siege, but a well-stocked, well-watered
country, full of food and lusty men, yet lifted so high, and locked
so fast by precipice and slippery mountain, that it calls for little
trouble of defence. _Dweller in the clefts of the rock, the height is
his habitation, that saith in his heart: Who shall bring me down to
earth?_[512]
On this rich fortress-land the Edomites enjoyed a civilisation far
above that of the tribes who swarmed upon the surrounding deserts;
and at the same time they were cut off from the lands of those Syrian
nations who were their equals in culture and descent. When Edom looked
out of himself, he looked _down_ and _across_—down upon the Arabs, whom
his position enabled him to rule with a loose, rough hand, and across
at his brothers in Palestine, forced by their more open territories
to make alliances with and against each other, from all of which he
could afford to hold himself free. That alone was bound to exasperate
them. In Edom himself it appears to have bred a want of sympathy, a
habit of keeping to himself and ignoring the claims both of pity and of
kinship—with which he is charged by all the prophets. _He corrupted his
natural feelings, and watched his passion for ever.[513] Thou stoodest
aloof!_[514]
This self-sufficiency was aggravated by the position of the country
among several of the main routes of ancient trade. The masters of Mount
Se’ir held the harbours of ‘Akaba, into which the gold ships came from
Ophir. They intercepted the Arabian caravans and cut the roads to Gaza
and Damascus. Petra, in the very heart of Edom, was in later times
the capital of the Nabatean kingdom, whose commerce rivalled that of
Phœnicia, scattering its inscriptions from Teyma in Central Arabia up
to the very gates of Rome.[515] The earlier Edomites were also traders,
middlemen between Arabia and the Phœnicians; and they filled their
caverns with the wealth both of East and West.[516] There can be little
doubt that it was this which first drew the envious hand of Israel upon
a land so cut off from their own and so difficult of invasion. Hear the
exultation of the ancient prophet whose words Obadiah has borrowed:
_How searched out is Esau, and his hidden treasures rifled!_[517] But
the same is clear from the history. Solomon, Jehoshaphat, Amaziah,
Uzziah and other Jewish invaders of Edom were all ambitious to command
the Eastern trade through Elath and Ezion-geber. For this it was
necessary to subdue Edom; and the frequent reduction of the country
to a vassal state, with the revolts in which it broke free, were
accompanied by terrible cruelties upon both sides.[518] Every century
increased the tale of bitter memories between the brothers, and added
the horrors of a war of revenge to those of a war for gold.
The deepest springs of their hate, however, bubbled in their blood. In
genius, temper and ambition, the two peoples were of opposite extremes.
It is very singular that we never hear in the Old Testament of the
Edomite gods. Israel fell under the fascination of every neighbouring
idolatry, but does not even mention that Edom had a religion. Such a
silence cannot be accidental, and the inference which it suggests is
confirmed by the picture drawn of Esau himself. Esau is a _profane
person_[519]; with no conscience of a birthright, no faith in the
future, no capacity for visions; dead to the unseen, and clamouring
only for the satisfaction of his appetites. The same was probably the
character of his descendants; who had, of course, their own gods, like
every other people in that Semitic world,[520] but were essentially
irreligious, living for food, spoil and vengeance, with no national
conscience or ideals—a kind of people who deserved even more than the
Philistines to have their name descend to our times as a symbol of
hardness and obscurantism. It is no contradiction to all this that the
one intellectual quality imputed to the Edomites should be that of
shrewdness and a wisdom which was obviously worldly. _The wise men of
Edom, the cleverness of Mount Esau_[521] were notorious. It is the race
which has given to history only the Herods—clever, scheming, ruthless
statesmen, as able as they were false and bitter, as shrewd in policy
as they were destitute of ideals. _That fox_, cried Christ, and crying
stamped the race.
But of such a national character Israel was in all points, save that
of cunning, essentially the reverse. Who had such a passion for the
ideal? Who such a hunger for the future, such hopes or such visions?
Never more than in the day of their prostration, when Jerusalem and the
sanctuary fell in ruins, did they feel and hate the hardness of the
brother, who _stood aloof_ and _made large his mouth_.[522]
It is, therefore, no mere passion for revenge, which inspires these
few, hot verses of Obadiah. No doubt, bitter memories rankle in his
heart. He eagerly repeats[523] the voices of a day when Israel matched
Edom in cruelty and was cruel for the sake of gold, when Judah’s kings
coveted Esau’s treasures and were foiled. No doubt there is exultation
in the news he hears, that these treasures have been rifled by others;
that all the cleverness of this proud people has not availed against
its treacherous allies; and that it has been sent packing to its
borders.[524] But beneath such savage tempers, there beats the heart
which has fought and suffered for the highest things, and now in its
martyrdom sees them baffled and mocked by a people without vision and
without feeling. Justice, mercy and truth; the education of humanity in
the law of God, the establishment of His will upon earth—these things,
it is true, are not mentioned in the Book of Obadiah, but it is for the
sake of some dim instinct of them that its wrath is poured upon foes
whose treachery and malice seek to make them impossible by destroying
the one people on earth who then believed and lived for them. Consider
the situation. It was the darkest hour of Israel’s history. City and
Temple had fallen, the people had been carried away. Up over the empty
land the waves of mocking heathen had flowed, there was none to beat
them back. A Jew who had lived through these things, who had seen[525]
the day of Jerusalem’s fall and passed from her ruins under the mocking
of her foes, dared to cry back into the large mouths they made: Our day
is not spent; we shall return with the things we live for; the land
shall yet be ours, and the kingdom our God’s.
Brave, hot heart! It shall be as thou sayest; it shall be for a brief
season. But in exile thy people and thou have first to learn many more
things about the heathen than you can now feel. Mix with them on that
far-off coast, from which thou criest. Learn what the world is, and
that more beautiful and more possible than the narrow rule which thou
hast promised to Israel over her neighbours shall be that worldwide
service of man, of which, in fifty years, all the best of thy people
shall be dreaming.
The Book of Obadiah at the beginning of the Exile, and the great
prophecy of the Servant at the end of it—how true was his word who
said: _He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall
doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him._
* * * * *
The subsequent history of Israel and Edom may be quickly traced. When
the Jews returned from exile they found the Edomites in possession of
all the Negeb, and of the Mountain of Judah far north of Hebron. The
old warfare was resumed, and not till 130 B.C. (as has been already
said) did a Jewish king bring the old enemies of his people beneath
the Law of Jehovah. The Jewish scribes transferred the name of Edom
to Rome, as if it were the perpetual symbol of that hostility of the
heathen world, against which Israel had to work out her calling as
the peculiar people of God. Yet Israel had not done with the Edomites
themselves. Never did she encounter foes more dangerous to her higher
interests than in her Idumean dynasty of the Herods; while the savage
relentlessness of certain Edomites in the last struggles against Rome
proved that the fire which had scorched her borders for a thousand
years, now burned a still more fatal flame within her. More than
anything else, this Edomite fanaticism provoked the splendid suicide of
Israel, which beginning in Galilee was consummated upon the rocks of
Masada, half-way between Jerusalem and Mount Esau.
FOOTNOTES:
[509] Amos i. 11. See Vol. I., p. 129.
[510] John Hyrcanus, about 130 B.C.
[511] Irby and Mangles’ _Travels_: cf. Burckhardt’s _Travels in Syria_,
and Doughty, _Arabia Deserta_, I.
[512] Obadiah 3.
[513] Amos i.: cf. Ezek. xxxv. 5.
[514] Obadiah 10.
[515] _C. I. S._, II. i. 183 ff.
[516] Obadiah 6.
[517] Verse 6.
[518] See the details in Vol. I., pp. 129 f.
[519] Heb. xii. 16.
[520] We even know the names of some of these deities from the
theophorous names of Edomites: _e.g._ Baal-chanan (Gen. xxxvi. 38),
Hadad (_ib._ 35; 1 Kings xi. 14 ff.); Malikram, Ḳausmalaka, Ḳausgabri
(on Assyrian inscriptions: Schrader, _K.A.T._² 150, 613); Κοσαδαρος,
Κοσβανος, Κοσγηρος, Κοσνατανος (_Rev. archéol._ 1870, I. pp. 109 ff.,
170 ff.), Κοστοβαρος (Jos., XV. _Ant._ vii. 9). See Baethgen, _Beiträge
zur Semit. Rel. Gesch._, pp. 10 ff.
[521] Obadiah 8: cf. Jer. xlix. 7.
[522] Obadiah 11, 12: cf. Ezek. xxxv. 12 f.
[523] 1-5 or 6. See above, pp. 167, 171 f.
[524] Verse 7.
[525] See above, p. 171.
_INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETS OF THE PERSIAN PERIOD_
(539—331 B.C.)
“The exiles returned from Babylon to found not a kingdom but a church.”
KIRKPATRICK.
“Israel is no longer a kingdom, but a colony” (p. 189).
CHAPTER XV
_ISRAEL UNDER THE PERSIANS_ (539—331 B.C.)
The next group of the Twelve Prophets—Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi and
perhaps Joel—fall within the period of the Persian Empire. The Persian
Empire was founded on the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 B.C.,
and it fell in the defeat of Darius III. by Alexander the Great at the
battle of Gaugamela, or Arbela, in 331. The period is thus one of a
little more than two centuries.
During all this time Israel were the subjects of the Persian monarchs,
and bound to them and their civilisation by the closest of ties. They
owed them their liberty and revival as a separate community upon its
own land. The Jewish State—if we may give that title to what is perhaps
more truly described as a Congregation or Commune—was part of an empire
which stretched from the Ægean to the Indus, and the provinces of
which were held in close intercourse by the first system of roads and
posts that ever brought different races together. Jews were scattered
almost everywhere across this empire. A vast number still remained in
Babylon, and there were many at Susa and Ecbatana, two of the royal
capitals. Most of these were subject to the full influence of Aryan
manners and religion; some were even members of the Persian Court and
had access to the Royal Presence. In the Delta of Egypt there were
Jewish settlements, and Jews were found also throughout Syria and
along the coasts, at least, of Asia Minor. Here they touched another
civilisation, destined to impress them in the future even more deeply
than the Persian. It is the period of the struggle between Asia
and Europe, between Persia and Greece: the period of Marathon and
Thermopylæ, of Salamis and Platæa, of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand.
Greek fleets occupied Cyprus and visited the Delta. Greek armies—in the
pay of Persia—trod for the first time the soil of Syria.[526]
In such a world, dominated for the first time by the Aryan, Jews
returned from exile, rebuilt their Temple and resumed its ritual,
revived Prophecy and codified the Law: in short, restored and organised
Israel as the people of God, and developed their religion to those
ultimate forms in which it has accomplished its supreme service to the
world.
In this period Prophecy does not maintain that lofty position which
it has hitherto held in the life of Israel, and the reasons for its
decline are obvious. To begin with, the national life, from which it
springs, is of a far poorer quality. Israel is no longer a kingdom,
but a colony. The state is not independent: there is virtually no
state. The community is poor and feeble, cut off from all the habit
and prestige of their past, and beginning the rudiments of life
again in hard struggle with nature and hostile tribes. To this level
Prophecy has to descend, and occupy itself with these rudiments.
We miss the civic atmosphere, the great spaces of public life, the
large ethical issues. Instead we have tearful questions, raised by
a grudging soil and bad seasons, with all the petty selfishness of
hunger-bitten peasants. The religious duties of the colony are mainly
ecclesiastical: the building of a temple, the arrangement of ritual,
and the ceremonial discipline of the people in separation from their
heathen neighbours. We miss, too, the clear outlook of the earlier
prophets upon the history of the world, and their calm, rational grasp
of its forces. The world is still seen, and even to further distances
than before. The people abate no whit of their ideal to be the teachers
of mankind. But it is all through another medium. The lurid air of
Apocalypse envelops the future, and in their weakness to grapple either
politically or philosophically with the problems which history offers,
the prophets resort to the expectation of physical catastrophes and
of the intervention of supernatural armies. Such an atmosphere is not
the native air of Prophecy, and Prophecy yields its supreme office
in Israel to other forms of religious development. On one side the
ecclesiastic comes to the front—the legalist, the organiser of ritual,
the priest; on another, the teacher, the moralist, the thinker and the
speculator. At the same time personal religion is perhaps more deeply
cultivated than at any other stage of the people’s history. A large
number of lyrical pieces bear proof to the existence of a very genuine
and beautiful piety throughout the period.
* * * * *
Unfortunately the Jewish records for this time are both fragmentary
and confused; they touch the general history of the world only at
intervals, and give rise to a number of difficult questions, some
of which are insoluble. The clearest and only consecutive line of
data through the period is the list of the Persian monarchs. The
Persian Empire, 539—331, was sustained through eleven reigns and two
usurpations, of which the following is a chronological table:—
Cyrus (Kurush) the Great 539—529
Cambyses (Kambujiya) 529—522
Pseudo-Smerdis, or Baradis 522
Darius (Darayahush) I., Hystaspis 521—485
Xerxes (Kshayarsha) I. 485—464
Artaxerxes (Artakshathra) I., Longimanus 464—424
Xerxes II. 424—423
Sogdianus 423
Darius II., Nothus 423—404
Artaxerxes II., Mnemon 404—358
Artaxerxes III., Ochus 358—338
Arses 338—335
Darius III., Codomanus 335—331
Of these royal names, Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes (Ahasuerus) and Artaxerxes
are given among the Biblical data; but the fact that there are three
Darius’, two Xerxes’ and three Artaxerxes’ makes possible more than
one set of identifications, and has suggested different chronological
schemes of Jewish history during this period. The simplest and most
generally accepted identification of the Darius, Xerxes (Ahasuerus)
and Artaxerxes of the Biblical history,[527] is that they were the
first Persian monarchs of these names; and after needful rearrangement
of the somewhat confused order of events in the narrative of the Book
of Ezra, it was held as settled that, while the exiles returned under
Cyrus about 537, Haggai and Zechariah prophesied and the Temple was
built under Darius I. between the second and the sixth year of his
reign, or from 520 to 516; that attempts were made to build the walls
of Jerusalem under Xerxes I. (485—464), but especially under Artaxerxes
I. (464—424), under whom first Ezra in 458 and then Nehemiah in 445
arrived at Jerusalem, promulgated the Law and reorganised Israel.
But this has by no means satisfied all modern critics. Some in the
interests of the authenticity and correct order of the Book of Ezra,
and some for other reasons, argue that the Darius under whom the Temple
was built was Darius II., or Nothus, 423—404, and thus bring down
the building of the Temple and the prophets Haggai and Zechariah a
whole century later than the accepted theory;[528] and that therefore
the Artaxerxes, under whom Ezra and Nehemiah laboured, was not the
first Artaxerxes, or Longimanus (464—424), but the second, or Mnemon
(404—358).[529] This arrangement of the history finds some support
in the data, and especially in the _order_ of the data, furnished by
the Book of Ezra, which describes the building of the Temple under
Darius _after_ its record of events under Xerxes I. (Ahasuerus) and
Artaxerxes I.[530] But, as we shall see in the next chapter, the
Compiler of the Book of Ezra has seen fit, for some reason, to violate
the chronological order of the data at his disposal, and nothing
reliable can be built upon his arrangement. Unravel his somewhat
confused history, take the contemporary data supplied in Haggai and
Zechariah, add to them the historical probabilities of the time, and
you will find, as the three Dutch scholars Kuenen, Van Hoonacker and
Kosters have done,[531] that the rebuilding of the Temple cannot
possibly be dated so late as the reign of the second Darius (423—404),
but must be left, according to the usual acceptation, under Darius I.
(521—485). Haggai, for instance, plainly implies that among those who
saw the Temple rising were men who had seen its predecessor destroyed
in 586,[532] and Zechariah declares that God’s wrath on Jerusalem has
just lasted seventy years.[533] Nor (however much his confusion may
give grounds to the contrary) can the Compiler of the Book of Ezra
have meant any other reign for the building of the Temple than that
of Darius I. He mentions that nothing was done to the Temple _all the
days of Cyrus and up to the reign of Darius_:[534] by this he cannot
intend to pass over the first Darius and leap on three more reigns, or
a century, to Darius II. He mentions Zerubbabel and Jeshua both as at
the head of the exiles who returned under Cyrus, and as presiding at
the building of the Temple under Darius.[535] If alive in 536, they may
well have been alive in 521, but cannot have survived till 423.[536]
These data are fully supported by the historical probabilities. It is
inconceivable that the Jews should have delayed the building of the
Temple for more than a century from the time of Cyrus. That the Temple
was built by Zerubbabel and Jeshua in the beginning of the reign of
Darius I. may be considered as one of the unquestionable data of our
period.
But if this be so, then there falls away a great part of the argument
for placing the building of the walls of Jerusalem and the labours of
Ezra and Nehemiah under Artaxerxes II. (404—358) instead of Artaxerxes
I. It is true that some who accept the building of the Temple under
Darius I. nevertheless put Ezra and Nehemiah under Artaxerxes II.
The weakness of their case, however, has been clearly exposed by
Kuenen,[537] who proves that Nehemiah’s mission to Jerusalem must have
fallen in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes I., or 445.[538] “On this
fact there can be no further difference of opinion.”[539]
These two dates then are fixed: the beginning of the Temple in 520 by
Zerubbabel and Jeshua, and the arrival of Nehemiah at Jerusalem in
445. Other points are more difficult to establish, and in particular
there rests a great obscurity on the date of the two visits of Ezra to
Jerusalem. According to the Book of Ezra,[540] he went there first in
the seventh year of Artaxerxes I., or 458 B.C., thirteen years before
the arrival of Nehemiah. He found many Jews married to heathen wives,
laid it to heart, and called a general assembly of the people to drive
the latter out of the community. Then we hear no more of him: neither
in the negotiations with Artaxerxes about the building of the walls,
nor upon the arrival of Nehemiah, nor in Nehemiah’s treatment of the
mixed marriages. He is absent from everything, till suddenly he appears
again at the dedication of the walls by Nehemiah and at the reading of
the Law.[541] This “eclipse of Ezra,” as Kuenen well calls it, taken
with the mixed character of all the records left of him, has moved some
to deny to him and his reforms and his promulgation of the Law any
historical reality whatever;[542] while others, with a more sober and
rational criticism, have sought to solve the difficulties by another
arrangement of the events than that usually accepted. Van Hoonacker
makes Ezra’s _first_ appearance in Jerusalem to be at the dedication of
the walls and promulgation of the Law in 445, and refers his arrival
described in Ezra vii. and his attempts to abolish the mixed marriages
to a second visit to Jerusalem in the twentieth year, not of Artaxerxes
I., but of Artaxerxes II., or 398 B.C. Kuenen has exposed the extreme
unlikelihood, if not impossibility, of so late a date for Ezra, and
in this Kosters holds with him.[543] But Kosters agrees with Van
Hoonacker in placing Ezra’s activity subsequent to Nehemiah’s and to
the dedication of the walls.
These questions about Ezra have little bearing on our present study
of the prophets, and it is not our duty to discuss them. But Kuenen,
in answer to Van Hoonacker, has shown very strong reasons[544] for
holding in the main to the generally accepted theory of Ezra’s arrival
in Jerusalem in 458, the seventh year of Artaxerxes I.; and though
there are great difficulties about the narrative which follows, and
especially about Ezra’s sudden disappearance from the scene till after
Nehemiah’s arrival, reasons may be found for this.[545]
We are therefore justified in holding, in the meantime, to the
traditional arrangement of the great events in Israel in the fifth
century before Christ. We may divide the whole Persian period by the
two points we have found to be certain, the beginning of the Temple
under Darius I. in 520 and the mission of Nehemiah to Jerusalem in 445,
and by the other that we have found to be probable, Ezra’s arrival in
458.
On these data the Persian period may be arranged under the following
four sections, among which we place those prophets who respectively
belong to them:—
1. From the Taking of Babylon by Cyrus to the Completion of the Temple
in the sixth year of Darius I., 538—516: Haggai and Zechariah in 520 ff.
2. From the Completion of the Temple under Darius I. to the arrival of
Ezra in the seventh year of Artaxerxes I., 516—458: sometimes called
the period of silence, but probably yielding the Book of “Malachi.”
3. The Work of Ezra and Nehemiah under Artaxerxes I., Longimanus,
458—425.
4. The Rest of the Period, Xerxes II. to Darius III., 425—331: the
prophet Joel and perhaps several other anonymous fragments of prophecy.
* * * * *
Of these four sections we must now examine the first, for it forms
the necessary introduction to our study of Haggai and Zechariah, and
above all it raises a question almost greater than any of those we
have just been discussing. The fact recorded by the Book of Ezra, and
till a few years ago accepted without doubt by tradition and modern
criticism, the first Return of Exiles from Babylon under Cyrus, has
lately been altogether denied; and the builders of the Temple in 520
have been asserted to be, not returned exiles, but the remnant of Jews
left in Judah by Nebuchadrezzar in 586. The importance of this for our
interpretation of Haggai and Zechariah, who instigated the building of
the Temple, is obvious: we must discuss the question in detail.
FOOTNOTES:
[526] The chief authorities for this period are as follows:—A. Ancient:
the inscriptions of Nabonidus, last native King of Babylon, Cyrus and
Darius I.; the Hebrew writings which were composed in, or record the
history of, the period; the Greek historians Herodotus, fragments of
Ctesias in Diodorus Sic. etc., of Abydenus in Eusebius, Berosus. B.
Modern: Meyer’s and Duncker’s Histories of Antiquity; art. “Ancient
Persia” in _Encycl. Brit._, by Nöldeke and Gutschmid; Sayce, _Anc.
Empires_; the works of Kuenen, Van Hoonacker and Kosters given on p.
192; recent histories of Israel, _e.g._ Stade’s, Wellhausen’s and
Klostermann’s; P. Hay Hunter, _After the Exile, a Hundred Years of
Jewish History and Literature_, 2 Vols., Edin. 1890; W. Fairweather,
_From the Exile to the Advent_, Edin. 1895. On Ezra and Nehemiah see
especially Ryle’s _Commentary_ in the _Cambridge Bible for Schools_,
and Bertheau-Ryssel’s in _Kurzgefasstes Exegetisches Handbuch_: cf.
also Charles C. Torrey, _The Composition and Historical Value of
Ezra-Nehemiah_, in the _Beihefte zur Z.A.T.W._, II., 1896.
[527] Ezra iv. 5-7, etc., vi. 1-14, etc.
[528] Havet, _Revue des Deux Mondes_, XCIV. 799 ff. (art. _La Modernité
des Prophètes_); Imbert (in defence of the historical character of
the Book of Ezra), _Le Temple Reconstruit par Zorobabel_, extrait du
_Muséon_, 1888-9 (this I have not seen); Sir Henry Howorth in the
_Academy_ for 1893—see especially pp. 320 ff.
[529] Another French writer, Bellangé, in the _Muséon_ for 1890, quoted
by Kuenen (_Ges. Abhandl._, p. 213), goes further, and places Ezra and
Nehemiah under the _third_ Artaxerxes, Ochus (358—338).
[530] Ezra iv. 6—v.
[531] Kuenen, _De Chronologie van het Perzische Tijdvak der Joodsche
Geschiedenis_, 1890, translated by Budde in Kuenen’s _Gesammelte
Abhandlungen_, pp. 212 ff.; Van Hoonacker, _Zorobabel et le Second
Temple_ (1892); Kosters, _Het Herstel van Israel_, in _Het Perzische
Tijdvak_, 1894, translated by Basedow, _Die Wiederherstellung Israels
im Persischen Zeitalter_, 1896.
[532] Hag. ii. 3.
[533] Zech. i. 12.
[534] Ezra iv. 5.
[535] Ezra ii. 2, iv. 1 ff., v. 2.
[536] As Kuenen shows, p. 226, nothing can be deduced from Ezra vi. 14.
[537] P. 227; in answer to De Saulcy, _Étude Chronologique des Livres
d’Esdras et de Néhémie_ (1868), _Sept Siècles de l’Histoire Judaïque_
(1874). De Saulcy’s case rests on the account of Josephus (XI. _Ant._
vii. 2-8: cf. ix. 1), the untrustworthy character of which and its
confusion of two distant eras Kuenen has no difficulty in showing.
[538] When Nehemiah came to Jerusalem Eliyashib was high priest, and
he was grandson of Jeshua, who was high priest in 520, or seventy-five
years before; but between 520 and the twentieth year of Artaxerxes II.
lie one hundred and thirty-six years. And again, the Artaxerxes of
Ezra iv. 8-23, under whom the walls of Jerusalem were begun, was the
immediate follower of Xerxes (Ahasuerus), and therefore Artaxerxes I.,
and Van Hoonacker has shown that he must be the same as the Artaxerxes
of Nehemiah.
[539] Kosters, p. 43.
[540] vii. 1-8.
[541] Neh. xii. 36, viii., x.
[542] Vernes, _Précis d’Histoire Juive depuis les Origines jusqu’à
l’Époque Persane_ (1889), pp. 579 ff. (not seen); more recently also
Charles C. Torrey of Andover, _The Composition and Historical Value of
Ezra-Nehemiah_, in the _Beihefte zur Z.A.T.W._, II., 1896.
[543] Pages 113 ff.
[544] Page 237.
[545] The failure of his too hasty and impetuous attempts at so
wholesale a measure as the banishment of the heathen wives; or his
return to Babylon, having accomplished his end. See Ryle, _Ezra and
Nehemiah_, in the _Cambridge Bible for Schools_, Introd., pp. xl. f.
CHAPTER XVI
_FROM THE RETURN FROM BABYLON TO THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE_
(536—516 B. C.)
Cyrus the Great took Babylon and the Babylonian Empire in 539. Upon the
eve of his conquest the Second Isaiah had hailed him as the Liberator
of the people of God and the builder of their Temple. The Return of
the Exiles and the Restoration both of Temple and City were predicted
by the Second Isaiah for the immediate future; and a Jewish historian,
the Compiler of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, who lived about 300
B.C., has taken up the story of how these events came to pass from
the very first year of Cyrus onward. Before discussing the dates and
proper order of these events, it will be well to have this Chronicler’s
narrative before us. It lies in the first and following chapters of
our Book of Ezra.
According to this, Cyrus, soon after his conquest of Babylon, gave
permission to the Jewish exiles to return to Palestine, and between
forty and fifty thousand[546] did so return, bearing the vessels of
Jehovah’s house which the Chaldeans had taken away in 586. These Cyrus
delivered _to Sheshbazzar, prince of Judah_[547] (who is further
described in an Aramaic document incorporated by the Compiler of the
Book of Ezra as “Peḥah,” or _provincial governor_,[548] and as laying
the foundation of the Temple[549]), and there is also mentioned in
command of the people a Tirshatha, probably the Persian Tarsâta,[550]
which also means _provincial governor_. Upon their arrival at
Jerusalem, the date of which will be immediately discussed, the
people are said to be under Jeshu’a ben Jōṣadak[551] and Zerubbabel
ben She’altî’el,[552] who had already been mentioned as the head of
the returning exiles,[553] and who is called by his contemporary
Haggai Peḥah, or _governor, of Judah_.[554] Are we to understand by
Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel one and the same person? Most critics have
answered in the affirmative, believing that Sheshbazzar is but the
Babylonian or Persian name by which the Jew Zerubbabel was known at
court;[555] and this view is supported by the facts that Zerubbabel
was of the house of David and is called Peḥah by Haggai, and by the
argument that the command given by the Tirshatha to the Jews to abstain
from _eating the most holy things_[556] could only have been given
by a native Jew.[557] But others, arguing that Ezra v. 1, compared
with vv. 14 and 16, implies that Zerubbabel and Sheshbazzar were two
different persons, take the former to have been the most prominent of
the Jews themselves, but the latter an official, Persian or Babylonian,
appointed by Cyrus to carry out such business in connection with the
Return as could only be discharged by an imperial officer.[558] This
is, on the whole, the more probable theory.
If it is right, Sheshbazzar, who superintended the Return, had
disappeared from Jerusalem by 521, when Haggai commenced to prophesy,
and had been succeeded as Peḥah, or governor, by Zerubbabel. But in
that case the Compiler has been in error in calling Sheshbazzar _a
prince of Judah_.[559]
The next point to fix is what the Compiler considers to have been the
date of the Return. He names no year, but he recounts that the same
people, whom he has just described as receiving the command of Cyrus
to return, did immediately leave Babylon,[560] and he says that they
arrived at Jerusalem in _the seventh month_, but again without stating
a year.[561] In any case, he obviously intends to imply that the Return
followed immediately on reception of the permission to return, and
that this was given by Cyrus very soon after his occupation of Babylon
in 539—8. We may take it that the Compiler understood the year to be
that we know as 537 B.C. He adds that, on the arrival of the caravans
from Babylon, the Jews set up the altar on its old site and restored
the morning and evening sacrifices; that they kept also the Feast of
Tabernacles, and thereafter all the rest of the _feasts of Jehovah_;
and further, that they engaged masons and carpenters for building the
Temple, and Phœnicians to bring them cedar-wood from Lebanon.[562]
Another section from the Compiler’s hand states that the returned Jews
set to work upon the Temple _in the second month of the second year_
of their Return, presumably 536 B.C., laying the foundation-stone with
due pomp, and amid the excitement of the whole people.[563] Whereupon
certain _adversaries_, by whom the Compiler means Samaritans, demanded
a share in the building of the Temple, and when Jeshua and Zerubbabel
refused this, _the people of the land_ frustrated the building of the
Temple even until the reign of Darius, 521 ff.
This—the second year of Darius—is the point to which contemporary
documents, the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah, assign the
beginning of new measures to build the Temple. Of these the Compiler
of the Book of Ezra says in the meantime nothing, but after barely
mentioning the reign of Darius leaps at once[564] to further Samaritan
obstructions—though not of the building of the Temple (be it noted),
but of the building of the city walls—in the reigns of Ahasuerus, that
is Xerxes, presumably Xerxes I., the successor of Darius, 485—464,
and of his successor Artaxerxes I., 464—424;[565] the account of the
latter of which he gives not in his own language but in that of an
Aramaic document, Ezra iv. 8 ff. And this document, after recounting
how Artaxerxes empowered the Samaritans to stop the building of the
walls of Jerusalem, records[566] that the building ceased _till the
second year of the reign of Darius_, when the prophets Haggai and
Zechariah stirred up Zerubbabel and Jeshua to rebuild, not the city
walls, be it observed, but the Temple, and with the permission of
Darius this building was at last completed in his sixth year.[567] That
is to say, this Aramaic document brings us back, with _the frustrated
building of the walls_ under Xerxes I. and Artaxerxes I. (485—424),
to the same date under their predecessor Darius I., viz. 520, to
which the Compiler had brought down _the frustrated building of the
Temple_! The most reasonable explanation of this confusion, not only of
chronology, but of two distinct processes—the erection of the Temple
and the fortification of the city—is that the Compiler was misled by
his desire to give as strong an impression as possible of the Samaritan
obstructions by placing them all together. Attempts to harmonise the
order of his narrative with the ascertained sequence of the Persian
reigns have failed.[568]
Such then is the character of the compilation known to us as the Book
of Ezra. If we add that in its present form it cannot be of earlier
date than 300 B.C., or two hundred and thirty-six years after the
Return, and that the Aramaic document which it incorporates is probably
not earlier than 430, or one hundred years after the Return, while the
List of Exiles which it gives (in chap. ii.) also contains elements
that cannot be earlier than 430, we shall not wonder that grave doubts
should have been raised concerning its trustworthiness as a narrative.
These doubts affect, with one exception, all the great facts which
it professes to record. The exception is the building of the Temple
between the second and sixth years of Darius I., 520—516, which we
have already seen to be past doubt.[569] But all that the Book of
Ezra relates before this has been called in question, and it has been
successively alleged: (1) that there was no such attempt as the book
describes to build the Temple before 520, (2) that there was no Return
of Exiles at all under Cyrus, and that the Temple was not built by Jews
who had come from Babylon, but by Jews who had never left Judah.
These conclusions, if justified, would have the most important bearing
upon our interpretation of Haggai and Zechariah. It is therefore
necessary to examine them with care. They were reached by critics in
the order just stated, but as the second is the more sweeping and to
some extent involves the other, we may take it first.
1. Is the Book of Ezra, then, right or wrong in asserting that there
was a great return of Jews, headed by Zerubbabel and Jeshua, about the
year 536, and that it was they who in 520—516 rebuilt the Temple?
The argument that in recounting these events the Book of Ezra is
unhistorical has been fully stated by Professor Kosters of Leiden.[570]
He reaches his conclusion along three lines of evidence: the Books of
Haggai and Zechariah, the sources from which he believes the Aramaic
narrative Ezra v. 1—vi. 18 to have been compiled, and the list of names
in Ezra ii. In the Books of Haggai and Zechariah, he points out that
the inhabitants of Jerusalem whom the prophets summon to build the
Temple are not called by any name which implies that they are returned
exiles; that nothing in the description of them would lead us to
suppose this; that God’s anger against Israel is represented as still
unbroken; that neither prophet speaks of a Return as past, but that
Zechariah seems to look for it as still to come.[571] The second line
of evidence is an analysis of the Aramaic document, Ezra v. 6 ff., into
two sources, neither of which implies a Return under Cyrus. But these
two lines of proof cannot avail against the List of Returned Exiles
offered us in Ezra ii. and Nehemiah vii., if the latter be genuine.
On his third line of evidence, Dr. Kosters, therefore, disputes the
genuineness of this List, and further denies that it even gives itself
out as a List of Exiles returned under Cyrus. So he arrives at the
conclusion that there was no Return from Babylon under Cyrus, nor any
before the Temple was built in 520 ff., but that the builders were
_people of the land_, Jews who had never gone into exile.
The evidence which Dr. Kosters draws from the Book of Ezra least
concerns us. Both because of this and because it is the weakest part of
his case, we may take it first.
Dr. Kosters analyses the bulk of the Aramaic document, Ezra v.—vi. 18,
into two constituents. His arguments for this are very precarious.[572]
The first document, which he takes to consist of chap. v. 1-5 and 10,
with perhaps vi. 6-15 (except a few phrases), relates that Thathnai,
Satrap of the West of the Euphrates, asked Darius whether he might
allow the Jews to proceed with the building of the Temple, and received
command not only to allow but to help them, on the ground that Cyrus
had already given them permission. The second, chap. v. 11-17, vi.
1-3, affirms that the building had actually begun under Cyrus, who
had sent Sheshbazzar, the Satrap, to see it carried out. Neither of
these documents says a word about any order from Cyrus to the Jews to
return; and the implication of the second, that the building had gone
on uninterruptedly from the time of Cyrus’ order to the second year
of Darius,[573] is not in harmony with the evidence of the Compiler
of the Book of Ezra, who, as we have seen,[574] states that Samaritan
obstruction stayed the building till the second year of Darius.
But suppose we accept Kosters’ premisses and agree that these two
documents really exist within Ezra v.—vi. 18. Their evidence is not
irreconcilable. Both imply that Cyrus gave command to rebuild the
Temple: if they were originally independent that would but strengthen
the tradition of such a command, and render a little weaker Dr.
Kosters’ contention that the tradition arose merely from a desire to
find a fulfilment of the Second Isaiah’s predictions[575] that Cyrus
would be the Temple’s builder. That neither of the supposed documents
mentions the Return itself is very natural, because both are concerned
with the building of the Temple. For the Compiler of the Book of Ezra,
who on Kosters’ argument put them together, the interest of the Return
is over; he has already sufficiently dealt with it. But more—Kosters’
second document, which ascribes the building of the Temple to Cyrus,
surely by that very statement implies a Return of Exiles during his
reign. For is it at all probable that Cyrus would have committed the
rebuilding of the Temple to a Persian magnate like Sheshbazzar, without
sending with him a large number of those Babylonian Jews who must have
instigated the king to give his order for rebuilding? We may conclude
then that Ezra v.—vi. 18, whatever be its value and its date, contains
no evidence, positive or negative, against a Return of the Jews under
Cyrus, but, on the contrary, takes this for granted.
We turn now to Dr. Kosters’ treatment of the so-called List of the
Returned Exiles. He holds this List to have been, not only borrowed for
its place in Ezra ii. from Nehemiah vii.,[576] but even interpolated in
the latter. His reasons for this latter conclusion are very improbable,
as will be seen from the appended note, and really weaken his otherwise
strong case.[577] As to the contents of the List, there are, it is
true, many elements which date from Nehemiah’s own time and even later.
But these are not sufficient to prove that the List was not originally
a List of Exiles returned under Cyrus. The verses in which this is
asserted—Ezra ii. 1, 2; Nehemiah vii. 6, 7—plainly intimate that those
Jews who came up out of the Exile were the same who built the Temple
under Darius. Dr. Kosters endeavours to destroy the force of this
statement (if true so destructive of his theory) by pointing to the
number of the leaders which the List assigns to the returning exiles.
In fixing this number as twelve, the author, Kosters maintains,
intended to make the leaders representative of the twelve tribes and
the body of returned exiles as equivalent to All-Israel. But, he
argues, neither Haggai nor Zechariah considers the builders of the
Temple to be equivalent to All-Israel, nor was this conception realised
in Judah till after the arrival of Ezra with his bands. The force of
this argument is greatly weakened by remembering how natural it would
have been for men, who felt the Return under Cyrus, however small, to
be the fulfilment of the Second Isaiah’s glorious predictions of a
restoration of All-Israel, to appoint twelve leaders, and so make them
representative of the nation as a whole. Kosters’ argument against the
naturalness of such an appointment in 537, and therefore against the
truth of the statement of the List about it, falls to the ground.
But in the Books of Haggai and Zechariah Dr. Kosters finds much more
formidable witnesses for his thesis that there was no Return of exiles
from Babylon before the building of the Temple under Darius. These
books nowhere speak of a Return under Cyrus, nor do they call the
community who built the Temple by the names of Gôlah or B’ne ha-Gôlah,
_Captivity_ or _Sons of the Captivity_, which are given after the
Return of Ezra’s bands; but they simply name them _this people_[578] or
_remnant of the people_,[579] _people of the land_,[580] _Judah_ or
_House of Judah_,[581] names perfectly suitable to Jews who had never
left the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Even if we except from this list
the phrase _the remnant of the people_, as intended by Haggai and
Zechariah in the numerical sense of _the rest_ or _all the
others_,[582] we have still to deal with the other titles, with the
absence from them of any symptom descriptive of return from exile, and
with the whole silence of our two prophets concerning such a return.
These are very striking phenomena, and they undoubtedly afford
considerable evidence for Dr. Kosters’ thesis.[583] But it cannot
escape notice that the evidence they afford is mainly negative, and
this raises two questions: (1) Can the phenomena in Haggai and
Zechariah be accounted for? and (2) whether accounted for or not, can
they be held to prevail against the mass of positive evidence in favour
of a Return under Cyrus?
An explanation of the absence of all allusion in Haggai and Zechariah
to the Return is certainly possible.
No one can fail to be struck with the spirituality of the teaching of
Haggai and Zechariah. Their one ambition is to put courage from God
into the poor hearts before them, that these out of their own resources
may rebuild their Temple. As Zechariah puts it, _Not by might, nor by
power, but by My Spirit, saith Jehovah of Hosts_.[584] It is obvious
why men of this temper should refrain from appealing to the Return, or
to the royal power of Persia by which it had been achieved. We can
understand why, while the annals employed in the Book of Ezra record
the appeal of the political leaders of the Jews to Darius upon the
strength of the edict of Cyrus, the prophets, in their effort to
encourage the people to make the most of what they themselves were and
to enforce the omnipotence of God’s Spirit apart from all human aids,
should be silent about the latter. We must also remember that Haggai
and Zechariah were addressing a people to whom (whatever view we take
of the transactions under Cyrus) the favour of Cyrus had been one vast
disillusion in the light of the predictions of Second Isaiah.[585] The
Persian magnate Sheshbazzar himself, invested with full power, had been
unable to build the Temple for them, and had apparently disappeared
from Judah, leaving his powers as Peḥah, or governor, to Zerubbabel.
Was it not, then, as suitable to these circumstances, as it was
essential to the prophets’ own religious temper, that Haggai and
Zechariah should refrain from alluding to any of the political
advantages, to which their countrymen had hitherto trusted in
vain?[586]
Another fact should be marked. If Haggai is silent about any return
from exile in the past, he is equally silent about any in the future.
If for him no return had yet taken place, would he not have been likely
to predict it as certain to happen?[587] At least his silence on the
subject proves how absolutely he confined his thoughts to the
circumstances before him, and to the needs of his people at the moment
he addressed them. Kosters, indeed, alleges that Zechariah describes
the Return from Exile as still future—viz. in the lyric piece appended
to his Third Vision.[588] But, as we shall see when we come to it, this
lyric piece is most probably an intrusion among the Visions, and is not
to be assigned to Zechariah himself. Even, however, if it were from the
same date and author as the Visions, it would not prove that no return
from Babylon had taken place, but only that numbers of Jews still
remained in Babylon.
But we may now take a further step. If there were these natural reasons
for the silence of Haggai and Zechariah about a return of exiles under
Cyrus, can that silence be allowed to prevail against the mass of
testimony which we have that such a return took place? It is true that,
while the Books of Haggai and Zechariah are contemporary with the
period in question, some of the evidence for the Return, Ezra i. and
iii.—iv. 7, is at least two centuries later, and upon the date of the
rest, the List in Ezra ii. and the Aramaic document in Ezra iv. 8 ff.,
we have no certain information. But that the List is from a date very
soon after Cyrus is allowed by a large number of the most advanced
critics,[589] and even if we ignore it, we still have the Aramaic
document, which agrees with Haggai and Zechariah in assigning the real,
effectual beginning of the Temple-building to the second year of Darius
and to the leadership of Zerubbabel and Jeshua at the instigation of
the two prophets. May we not trust the same document in its relation of
the main facts concerning Cyrus? Again, in his memoirs Ezra[590] speaks
of the transgressions of the Gôlah or B’ne ha-Gôlah in effecting
marriages with the mixed people of the land, in a way which shows that
he means by the name, not the Jews who had just come up with himself
from Babylon, but the older community whom he found in Judah, and who
had had time, as his own bands had not, to scatter over the land and
enter into social relations with the heathen.
But, as Kuenen points out,[591] we have yet further evidence for the
probability of a Return under Cyrus, in the explicit predictions of the
Second Isaiah that Cyrus would be the builder of Jerusalem and the
Temple. “If they express the expectation, nourished by the prophet and
his contemporaries, then it is clear from their preservation for future
generations that Cyrus did not disappoint the hope of the exiles, from
whose midst this voice pealed forth to him.” And this leads to other
considerations. Whether was it more probable for the poverty-stricken
_people of the land_, the dregs which Nebuchadrezzar had left behind,
or for the body and flower of Israel in Babylon, to rebuild the Temple?
Surely for the latter.[592] Among them had risen, as Cyrus drew near to
Babylon, the hopes and the motives, nay, the glorious assurance of the
Return and the Rebuilding; and with them was all the material for the
latter. Is it credible that they took no advantage of their opportunity
under Cyrus? Is it credible that they waited nearly a century before
seeking to return to Jerusalem, and that the building of the Temple was
left to people who were half-heathen, and, in the eyes of the exiles,
despicable and unholy? This would be credible only upon one condition,
that Cyrus and his immediate successors disappointed the predictions of
the Second Isaiah and refused to allow the exiles to leave Babylon. But
the little we know of these Persian monarchs points all the other way:
nothing is more probable, for nothing is more in harmony with Persian
policy, than that Cyrus should permit the captives of the Babylon which
he conquered to return to their own lands.[593]
Moreover, we have another, and to the mind of the present writer an
almost conclusive argument, that the Jews addressed by Haggai and
Zechariah were Jews returned from Babylon. Neither prophet ever charges
his people with idolatry; neither prophet so much as mentions idols.
This is natural if the congregation addressed was composed of such
pious and ardent adherents of Jehovah, as His word had brought back
to Judah, when His servant Cyrus opened the way. But had Haggai and
Zechariah been addressing _the people of the land_, who had never left
the land, they could not have helped speaking of idolatry.
Such considerations may very justly be used against an argument which
seeks to prove that the narratives of a Return under Cyrus were due to
the pious invention of a Jewish writer who wished to record that the
predictions of the Second Isaiah were fulfilled by Cyrus, their
designated trustee.[594] They certainly possess a far higher degree of
probability than that argument does.
Finally there is this consideration. If there was no return from
Babylon under Cyrus, and the Temple, as Dr. Kosters alleges, was built
by the poor people of the land, is it likely that the latter should
have been regarded with such contempt as they were by the exiles who
returned under Ezra and Nehemiah? Theirs would then have been the glory
of reconstituting Israel, and their position very different from what
we find it.
On all these grounds, therefore, we must hold that the attempt to
discredit the tradition of an important return of exiles under Cyrus
has not been successful; that such a return remains the more probable
solution of an obscure and difficult problem; and that therefore the
Jews who with Zerubbabel and Jeshua are represented in Haggai and
Zechariah as building the Temple in the second year of Darius, 520,
had come up from Babylon about 537.[595] Such a conclusion, of course,
need not commit us to the various data offered by the Chronicler in
his story of the Return, such as the Edict of Cyrus, nor to all of his
details.
2. Many, however, who grant the correctness of the tradition that a
large number of Jewish exiles returned under Cyrus to Jerusalem, deny
the statement of the Compiler of the Book of Ezra that the returned
exiles immediately prepared to build the Temple and laid the
foundation-stone with solemn festival, but were hindered from
proceeding with the building till the second year of Darius.[596] They
maintain that this late narrative is contradicted by the contemporary
statements of Haggai and Zechariah, who, according to them, imply that
no foundation-stone was laid till 520 B.C.[597] For the interpretation
of our prophets this is not a question of cardinal importance. But for
clearness’ sake we do well to lay it open.
We may at once concede that in Haggai and Zechariah there is nothing
which necessarily implies that the Jews had made any beginning to build
the Temple before the start recorded by Haggai in the year 520. The one
passage, Haggai ii. 18, which is cited to prove this[598] is at the
best ambiguous, and many scholars claim it as a fixture of that date
for the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month of 520.[599] At the same
time, and even granting that the latter interpretation of Haggai ii. 18
is correct, there is nothing in either Haggai or Zechariah to make it
impossible that a foundation-stone had been laid some years before, but
abandoned in consequence of the Samaritan obstruction, as alleged in
Ezra iii. 8-11. If we keep in mind Haggai’s and Zechariah’s silence
about the Return from Babylon, and their very natural concentration
upon their own circumstances,[600] we shall not be able to reckon their
silence about previous attempts to build the Temple as a conclusive
proof that these attempts never took place. Moreover the Aramaic
document, which agrees with our two prophets in assigning the only
effective start of the work on the Temple to 520,[601] does not deem it
inconsistent with this to record that the Persian Satrap of the West of
the Euphrates[602] reported to Darius that, when he asked the Jews why
they were rebuilding the Temple, they replied not only that a decree of
Cyrus had granted them permission,[603] but that his legate Sheshbazzar
had actually laid the foundation-stone upon his arrival at Jerusalem,
and that the building had gone on without interruption from that time
to 520.[604] This last assertion, which of course was false, may have
been due either to a misunderstanding of the Jewish elders by the
reporting Satrap, or else to the Jews themselves, anxious to make their
case as strong as possible. The latter is the more probable
alternative. As even Stade admits, it was a very natural assertion for
the Jews to make, and so conceal that their effort of 520 was due to
the instigation of their own prophets. But in any case the Aramaic
document corroborates the statement of the Compiler that there was a
foundation-stone laid in the early years of Cyrus, and does not
conceive this to be inconsistent with its own narrative of a stone
being laid in 520, and an effective start at last made upon the Temple
works. So much does Stade feel the force of this, that he concedes not
only that Sheshbazzar may have started some preparation for building
the Temple, but that he may even have laid the stone with
ceremony.[605]
And indeed, is it not in itself very probable that some early attempt
was made by the exiles returned under Cyrus to rebuild the house of
Jehovah? Cyrus had been predicted by the Second Isaiah not only as the
redeemer of God’s people, but with equal explicitness as the builder
of the Temple; and all the argument which Kuenen draws from the Second
Isaiah for the fact of the Return from Babylon[606] tells with almost
equal force for the fact of some efforts to raise the fallen sanctuary
of Israel immediately after the Return. Among the returned were many
priests, and many no doubt of the most sanguine spirits in Israel.
They came straight from the heart of Jewry, though that heart was
in Babylon; they came with the impetus and obligation of the great
Deliverance upon them; they were the representatives of a community
which we know to have been comparatively wealthy. Is it credible that
they should not have begun the Temple at the earliest possible moment?
Nor is the story of their frustration by the Samaritans any less
natural.[607] It is true that there were not any adversaries likely to
dispute with the colonists the land in the immediate neighbourhood of
Jerusalem. The Edomites had overrun the fruitful country about Hebron,
and part of the Shephelah. The Samaritans held the rich valleys of
Ephraim, and probably the plain of Ajalon. But if any peasants
struggled with the stony plateaus of Benjamin and Northern Judah, such
must have been of the remnants of the Jewish population who were left
behind by Nebuchadrezzar, and who clung to the sacred soil from habit
or from motives of religion. Jerusalem was never a site to attract men,
either for agriculture, or, now that its shrine was desolate and its
population scattered, for the command of trade.[608] The returned
exiles must have been at first undisturbed by the envy of their
neighbours. The tale is, therefore, probable which attributes the
hostility of the latter to purely religious causes—the refusal of the
Jews to allow the half-heathen Samaritans to share in the construction
of the Temple.[609] Now the Samaritans could prevent the building.
While stones were to be had by the builders in profusion from the ruins
of the city and the great quarry to the north of it, ordinary timber
did not grow in their neighbourhood, and though the story be true that
a contract was already made with Phœnicians to bring cedar to Joppa, it
had to be carried thence for thirty-six miles. Here, then, was the
opportunity of the Samaritans. They could obstruct the carriage both of
the ordinary timber and of the cedar. To this state of affairs the
present writer found an analogy in 1891 among the Circassian colonies
settled by the Turkish Government a few years earlier in the vicinity
of Gerasa and Rabbath-Ammon. The colonists had built their houses from
the numerous ruins of these cities, but at Rabbath-Ammon they said
their great difficulty had been about timber. And we could well
understand how the Beduin, who resented the settlement of Circassians
on lands they had used for ages, and with whom the Circassians were
nearly always at variance,[610] did what they could to make the
carriage of timber impossible. Similarly with the Jews and their
Samaritan adversaries. The site might be cleared and the stone of the
Temple laid, but if the timber was stopped there was little use in
raising the walls, and the Jews, further discouraged by the failure of
their impetuous hopes of what the Return would bring them, found cause
for desisting from their efforts. Bad seasons followed, the labours for
their own sustenance exhausted their strength, and in the sordid toil
their hearts grew hard to higher interests. Cyrus died in 529, and his
legate Sheshbazzar, having done nothing but lay the stone, appears to
have left Judæa.[611] Cambyses marched more than once through
Palestine, and his army garrisoned Gaza, but he was not a monarch to
have any consideration for Jewish ambitions. Therefore—although
Samaritan opposition ceased on the stoppage of the Temple works and the
Jews procured timber enough for their private dwellings[612]—is it
wonderful that the site of the Temple should be neglected and the stone
laid by Sheshbazzar forgotten, or that the disappointed Jews should
seek to explain the disillusions of the Return, by arguing that God’s
time for the restoration of His house had not yet come?
The death of a cruel monarch is always in the East an occasion for
the revival of shattered hopes, and the events which accompanied
the suicide of Cambyses in 522 were particularly fraught with the
possibilities of political change. Cambyses’ throne had been usurped by
one Gaumata, who pretended to be Smerdis or Barada, a son of Cyrus. In
a few months Gaumata was slain by a conspiracy of seven Persian nobles,
of whom Darius, the son of Hystaspes, both by virtue of his royal
descent and by his own great ability, was raised to the throne in 521.
The empire had been too profoundly shocked by the revolt of Gaumata to
settle at once under the new king, and Darius found himself engaged by
insurrections in all his provinces except Syria and Asia Minor.[613]
The colonists in Jerusalem, like all their Syrian neighbours, remained
loyal to the new king; so loyal that their Peḥah or Satrap was allowed
to be one of themselves—Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el,[614] a son of
their royal house. Yet though they were quiet, the nations were rising
against each other and the world was shaken. It was just such a crisis
as had often before in Israel rewakened prophecy. Nor did it fail
now; and when prophecy was roused what duty lay more clamant for its
inspiration than the duty of building the Temple?
We are in touch with the first of our post-exilic prophets, Haggai and
Zechariah.
FOOTNOTES:
[546] 42,360, _besides their servants_, is the total sum given in Ezra
ii. 64; but the detailed figures in Ezra amount only to 29,818, those
in Nehemiah to 31,089, and those in 1 Esdras to 30,143 (other MSS.
30,678). See Ryle on Ezra ii. 64.
[547] Ezra i. 8.
[548] Ezra v. 14.
[549] _Ib._ 16.
[550] Ezra ii. 63.
[551] יֵשׁוּעַ בֶּן־יוֹצָדק: Ezra iii. 2, like Ezra i. 1-8, from the
Compiler of Ezra-Nehemiah.
[552] זְרֻבָּבֶל בֶּן־שְׁאַלְתִּיאֵל.
[553] Ezra ii. 2.
[554] Hag. i. 14, ii. 2, 21, and perhaps by Nehemiah (vii. 65-70).
Nehemiah himself is styled both Peḥah (xiv. 20) and Tirshatha (viii. 9,
x. 1).
[555] As Daniel and his three friends had also Babylonian names.
[556] Ezra ii. 63.
[557] Cf. Ryle, xxxi ff.; and on Ezra i. 8, ii. 63.
[558] Stade, _Gesch. des Volkes Israel_, II. 98 ff.: cf. Kuenen,
_Gesammelte Abhandl._, 220.
[559] Ezra i. 8.
[560] Ezra i. compared with ii. 1.
[561] Some think to find this in 1 Esdras v. 1-6, where it is said that
Darius, a name they take to be an error for that of Cyrus, brought up
the exiles with an escort of a thousand cavalry, starting in the first
month of the second year of the king’s reign. This passage, however,
is not beyond suspicion as a gloss (see Ryle on Ezra i. 11), and even
if genuine may be intended to describe a second contingent of exiles
despatched by Darius I. in his second year, 520. The names given
include that of Jesua, son of Josedec, and instead of Zerubbabel’s,
that of his son Joacim.
[562] Ezra iii. 3-7.
[563] _Ib._ 8-13.
[564] Ezra iv. 7.
[565] See above, p. 193.
[566] iv. 24.
[567] Ezra iv. 24—vi. 15.
[568] There are in the main two classes of such attempts. (_a_) Some
have suggested that the Ahasuerus (Xerxes) and Artaxerxes mentioned in
Ezra iv. 6 and 7 ff. are not the successors of Darius I. who bore these
names, but titles of his predecessors Cambyses and the Pseudo-Smerdis
(see above, p. 190). This view has been disposed of by Kuenen, _Ges.
Abhandl._, pp. 224 ff., and by Ryle, pp. 65 ff. (_b_) The attempt to
prove that the Darius under whom the Temple was built was not Darius I.
(521—485), the predecessor of Xerxes I. and Artaxerxes I. (485—424),
but their successor once removed, Darius II., Nothus (423—404). So, in
defence of the Book of Ezra, Imbert. For his theory and the answer to
it see above, pp. 191 f.
[569] See above, pp. 192 ff.
[570] For his work see above, p. 192, n. 531. I regret that neither
Wellhausen’s answer to it, nor Kosters’ reply to Wellhausen, was
accessible to me in preparing this chapter. Nor did I read Mr. Torrey’s
_resume_ of Wellhausen’s answer, or Wellhausen’s notes to the second
edition of his _Isr. u. Jüd. Geschichte_, till the chapter was written.
Previous to Kosters, the Return under Cyrus had been called in question
only by the very arbitrary French scholar M. Vernes in 1889-90.
[571] ii. 6 ff. Eng., 10 ff. Heb.
[572] His chief grounds for this analysis are (1) that in v. 1-5 the
Jews are said to have _begun_ to build the Temple in the second year
of Darius, while in v. 16 the foundation-stone is said to have been
laid under Cyrus; (2) the frequent want of connection throughout the
passage; (3) an alleged doublet: in v. 17—vi. 1 search is said to have
been made for the edict of Cyrus _in Babylon_, while in vi. 2 the edict
is said to have been found _in Ecbatana_. But (1) and (3) are capable
of very obvious explanations, and (2) is far from conclusive.—The
remainder of the Aramaic text, iv. 8-24, Kosters seeks to prove is by
the Chronicler or Compiler himself. As Torrey (_op. cit._, p. 11) has
shown, this “is as unlikely as possible.” At the most he may have made
additions to the Aramaic document.
[573] Ezra v. 16.
[574] Above, pp. 201 f.
[575] Isa. xliv. 28, xlv. 1. According to Kosters, the statement of
the Aramaic document about the rebuilding of the Temple is therefore a
pious invention of a literal fulfilment of prophecy. To this opinion
Cheyne adheres (_Introd. to the Book of Isaiah_, 1895, p. xxxviii),
and adds the further assumption that the Chronicler, being “shocked at
the ascription to Cyrus (for the Judæan builders have no credit given
them) of what must, he thought, have been at least equally due to the
zeal of the exiles,” invented his story in the earlier chapters of Ezra
as to the part the exiles themselves took in the rebuilding. It will
be noticed that these assumptions have precisely the value of such.
They are merely the imputation of motives, more or less probable to
the writers of certain statements, and may therefore be fairly met by
probabilities from the other side. But of this more later on.
[576] This is the usual opinion of critics, who yet hold it to be
genuine—_e.g._ Ryle.
[577] He seeks to argue that a List of Exiles returned under Cyrus
in 536 could be of no use for Nehemiah’s purpose to obtain in 445 a
census of the inhabitants of Jerusalem; but surely, if in his efforts
to make a census Nehemiah discovered the existence of such a List, it
was natural for him to give it as the basis of his inquiry, or (because
the List—see above, p. 203—contains elements from Nehemiah’s own
time) to enlarge it and bring it down to date. But Dr. Kosters thinks
also that, as Nehemiah would never have broken the connection of his
memoirs with such a List, the latter must have been inserted by the
Compiler, who at this point grew weary of the discursiveness of the
memoirs, broke from them, and then—inserted this lengthy List! This is
simply incredible—that he should seek to atone for the diffuseness of
Nehemiah’s memoirs by the intrusion of a very long catalogue which had
no relevance to the point at which he broke them off.
[578] Hag. i. 2, 12; ii. 14.
[579] Hag. i. 12, 14; ii. 2; Zech. viii. 6, 11, 12.
[580] Hag. ii. 4; Zech. vii. 5.
[581] Zech. ii. 16; viii. 13, 15.
[582] It is used in Hag. i. 12, 14, ii. 2, only after the mention of
the leaders; see, however, Pusey’s note 9 to Hag. i. 12; while in Zech.
viii. 6, 11, 18, it might be argued that it was employed in such a way
as to cover not only Jews who had never left their land, but all Jews
as well who were left of ancient Israel.
[583] Compare Cheyne, _Introduction to the Book of Isaiah_, 1895, xxxv.
ff., who says that in the main points Kosters’ conclusions “appear
so inevitable” that he has “constantly presupposed them” in dealing
with chaps. lvi.—lxvi. of Isaiah; and Torrey, _op. cit._, 1896, p. 53:
“Kosters has demonstrated, from the testimony of Haggai and Zechariah,
that Zerubbabel and Jeshua were not returned exiles; and furthermore,
that the prophets Haggai and Zechariah knew nothing of an important
return of exiles from Babylonia.” Cf. also Wildeboer, _Litteratur des
A. T._, pp. 291 ff.
[584] iv. 4.
[585] Of course it is always possible that, if there had been no great
Return from Babylon under Cyrus, the community at Jerusalem in 520 had
not heard of the prophecies of the Second Isaiah.
[586] This argument, it is true, does not fully account for the curious
fact that Haggai and Zechariah never call the Jewish community at
Jerusalem by a name significant of their return from exile. But in
reference to this it ought to be noted that even the Aramaic document
in the Book of Ezra which records the Return under Cyrus does not call
the builders of the Temple by any name which implies that they have
come up from exile, but styles them simply _the Jews who were in Judah
and Jerusalem_ (Ezra v. 1), in contrast to the Jews who were in foreign
lands.
[587] Indeed, why does he ignore the whole Exile itself if no return
from it has taken place?
[588] Zech. ii. 10-17 Heb., 6-13 Eng.
[589] _E.g._ Stade, Kuenen (_op. cit._, p. 216). So, too, Klostermann,
_Gesch. des Volkes Israel_, München, 1896. Wellhausen, in the second
edition of his _Gesch._, does not admit that the List is one of exiles
returned under Cyrus (p. 155, n.).
[590] ix. 4; x. 6, 7.
[591] _Op. cit._, p. 216, where he also quotes the testimony of the
Book of Daniel (ix. 25).
[592] Since writing the above I have seen the relevant notes to
the second edition of Wellhausen’s _Gesch._, pp. 155 and 160. “The
refounding of Jerusalem and the Temple cannot have started from the
Jews left behind in Palestine.” “The remnant left in the land would
have restored the old popular cultus of the high places. Instead of
that we find even before Ezra the legitimate cultus and the hierocracy
in Jerusalem: in the Temple-service proper Ezra discovers nothing to
reform. Without the leaven of the Gôlah the Judaism of Palestine is in
its origin incomprehensible.”
[593] The inscription of Cyrus is sometimes quoted to this effect:
cf. P. Hay Hunter, _op. cit._, I. 35. But it would seem that the
statement of Cyrus is limited to the restoration of Assyrian idols and
their worshippers to Assur and Akkad. Still, what he did in this case
furnishes a strong argument for the probability of his having done the
same in the case of the Jews.
[594] See above, p. 206, and especially n. 575.
[595] Even Cheyne, after accepting Kosters’ conclusions as in the main
points inevitable (_op. cit._, p. xxxv), considers (p. xxxviii) that
“the earnestness of Haggai and Zechariah (who cannot have stood alone)
implies the existence of a higher religious element at Jerusalem long
before 432 B.C. Whence came this higher element but from its natural
home among the more cultured Jews in Babylonia?”
[596] Ezra iii. 8-13.
[597] Schrader, “Ueber die Dauer des Tempelbaues,” in _Stud. u. Krit._,
1879, 460 ff.; Stade, _Gesch. des Volkes Israel_, II. 115 ff.; Kuenen,
_op. cit._, p. 222; Kosters, _op. cit._, Chap. I., § 1. To this
opinion others have adhered: König (_Einleit. in das A. T._), Ryssel
(_op. cit._) and Marti (2nd edition of Kayser’s _Theol. des A. T._,
p. 200). Schrader (p. 563) argues that Ezra iii. 8-13 was not founded
on a historical document, but is an imitation of Neh. vii. 73—viii.;
and Stade that the Aramaic document in Ezra which ascribes the laying
of the foundation-stone to Sheshbazzar, the legate of Cyrus, was not
earlier than 430.
[598] Ryle, _op. cit._, p. xxx.
[599] Stade, Wellhausen, etc. See below, Chap. XVIII. on Hag. ii. 18.
[600] See above, pp. 210 f.
[601] Ezra iv. 24, v. 1.
[602] Ezra v. 6.
[603] _Ib._ 13.
[604] _Ib._ 16.
[605] _Gesch._, II., p. 123.
[606] See above, p. 213.
[607] Ezra iv. 1-4. “That the relation of Ezra iv. 1-4 is historical
seems to be established against objections which have been taken to it
by the reference to Esarhaddon, which A. v. Gutschmid has vindicated
by an ingenious historical combination with the aid of the Assyrian
monuments (_Neue Beiträge_, p. 145).”—Robertson Smith, art. “Haggai,”
_Encyc. Brit._
[608] Cf. _Hist. Geog._, pp. 317 ff.
[609] Ezra iv.
[610] There was a sharp skirmish at Rabbath-Ammon the night we spent
there, and at least one Circassian was shot.
[611] “Sheshbazzar presumably having taken up his task with the
usual conscientiousness of an Oriental governor, that is having done
nothing though the work was nominally in hand all along (Ezra v.
16).”—Robertson Smith, art. “Haggai,” _Encyc. Brit._
[612] See below, Chap. XVIII.
[613] Herod., I. 130, III. 127.
[614] 1 Chron. iii. 19 makes him a son of Pedaiah, brother of
She’altî’el, son of Jehoiachin, the king who was carried away by
Nebuchadrezzar in 597 and remained captive till 561, when King
Evil-Merodach set him in honour. It has been supposed that, She’altî’el
dying childless, Pedaiah by levirate marriage with his widow became
father of Zerubbabel.
_HAGGAI_
_Go up into the mountain, and fetch wood, and build the House._
CHAPTER XVII
_THE BOOK OF HAGGAI_
The Book of Haggai contains thirty-eight verses, which have been
divided between two chapters.[615] The text is, for the prophets,
a comparatively sound one. The Greek version affords a number of
corrections, but has also the usual amount of misunderstandings,
and, as in the case of other prophets, a few additions to the Hebrew
text.[616] These and the variations in the other ancient versions will
be noted in the translation below.[617]
The book consists of four sections, each recounting a message from
Jehovah to the Jews in Jerusalem in 520 B.C., _the second year of
Darius_ (Hystaspis), _by the hand of the prophet Haggai_.
The _first_, chap. i., dated the first day of the sixth month, during
our September, reproves the Jews for building their own _cieled
houses_, while they say that _the time for building Jehovah’s house has
not yet come_; affirms that this is the reason of their poverty and of
a great drought which has afflicted them. A piece of narrative is added
recounting how Zerubbabel and Jeshua, the heads of the community, were
stirred by this word to lead the people to begin work on the Temple, on
the twenty-fourth day of the same month.
The _second_ section, chap. ii. 1-9, contains a message, dated the
twenty-first day of the seventh month, during our October, in which the
builders are encouraged for their work. Jehovah is about to shake all
nations, these shall contribute of their wealth, and the latter glory
of the Temple be greater than the former.
The _third_ section, chap. ii. 10-19, contains a word of Jehovah which
came to Haggai on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, during our
December. It is in the form of a parable based on certain ceremonial
laws, according to which the touch of a holy thing does not sanctify so
much as the touch of an unholy pollutes. Thus is the people polluted,
and thus every work of their hands. Their sacrifices avail nought, and
adversity has persisted: small increase of fruits, blasting, mildew and
hail. But from this day God will bless.
The _fourth_ section, chap. ii. 20-23, is a second word from the
Lord to Haggai on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. It is
for Zerubbabel, and declares that God will overthrow the thrones of
kingdoms and destroy the forces of many of the Gentiles by war. In that
day Zerubbabel, the Lord’s elect servant, shall be as a signet to the
Lord.
The authenticity of all these four sections was doubted by no one,[618]
till ten years ago W. Böhme, besides pointing out some useless
repetitions of single words and phrases, cast suspicion on chap. i. 13,
and questioned the whole of the _fourth_ section, chap. ii. 20-23.[619]
With regard to chap. i. 13, it is indeed curious that Haggai should be
described as _the messenger of Jehovah_; while the message itself, _I
am with you_, seems superfluous here, and if the verse be omitted, ver.
14 runs on naturally to ver. 12.[620] Böhme’s reasons for disputing the
authenticity of chap. ii. 20-23 are much less sufficient. He thinks he
sees the hand of an editor in the phrase _for a second time_ in ver.
20; notes the omission of the title “prophet”[621] after Haggai’s name,
and the difference of the formula _the word came to Haggai_ from that
employed in the previous sections, _by the hand of Haggai_, and the
repetition of ver. 6_b_ in ver. 21; and otherwise concludes that the
section is an insertion from a later hand. But the formula _the word
came to Haggai_ occurs also in ii. 10:[622] the other points are
trivial, and while it was most natural for Haggai the contemporary of
Zerubbabel to entertain of the latter such hopes as the passage
expresses, it is inconceivable that a later writer, who knew how they
had not been fulfilled in Zerubbabel, should have invented them.[623]
Recently M. Tony Andrée, _privat-docent_ in the University of Geneva,
has issued a large work on Haggai,[624] in which he has sought to prove
that the _third_ section of the book, chap. ii. (10) 11-19, is from the
hand of another writer than the rest. He admits[625] that in neither
form, nor style, nor language is there anything to prove this
distinction, and that the ideas of all the sections suit perfectly the
condition of the Jews in the time soon after the Return. But he
considers that chap. ii. (10) 11-19 interrupts the connection between
the sections upon either side of it; that the author is a legalist or
casuist, while the author of the other sections is a man whose only
ecclesiastical interest is the rebuilding of the Temple; that there are
obvious contradictions between chap. ii. (10) 11-19 and the rest of the
book; and that there is a difference of vocabulary. Let us consider
each of these reasons.
The first, that chap. ii. (10) 11-19 interrupts the connection between
the sections on either side of it, is true only in so far as it has a
different subject from that which the latter have more or less in
common. But the second of the latter, chap. ii. 20-23, treats only of a
corollary of the first, chap. ii. 1-9, and that corollary may well have
formed the subject of a separate oracle. Besides, as we shall see,
chap. ii. 10-19 is a natural development of chap. i.[626] The
contradictions alleged by M. Andrée are two. He points out that while
chap. i. speaks only of a _drought_,[627] chap. ii. (10) 11-19
mentions[628] as the plagues on the crops shiddāphôn and yērākôn,
generally rendered _blasting_ and _mildew_ in our English Bible, and
bārād, or _hail_; and these he reckons to be plagues due not to drought
but to excessive moisture. But shiddāphôn and yērākôn, which are always
connected in the Old Testament and are words of doubtful meaning, are
not referred to damp in any of the passages in which they occur, but,
on the contrary, appear to be the consequences of drought.[629] The
other contradiction alleged refers to the ambiguous verse ii. 18, on
which we have already seen it difficult to base any conclusion, and
which will be treated when we come to it in the course of
translation.[630] Finally, the differences in language which M. Andrée
cites are largely imaginary, and it is hard to understand how a
responsible critic has come to cite, far more to emphasise them, as he
has done. We may relegate the discussion of them to a note,[631] and
need here only remark that there is among them but one of any
significance: while the rest of the book calls the Temple _the House_
or _the House of Jehovah_ (or _of Jehovah of Hosts_), chap. ii. (10)
11-19 styles it _palace_, or temple, of Jehovah.[632] On such a
difference between two comparatively brief passages it would be
unreasonable to decide for a distinction of authorship.
There is, therefore, no reason to disagree with the consensus of all
other critics in the integrity of the Book of Haggai. The four sections
are either from himself or from a contemporary of his. They probably
represent,[633] not the full addresses given by him on the occasions
stated, but abstracts or summaries of these. “It is never an easy task
to persuade a whole population to make pecuniary sacrifices, or to
postpone private to public interests; and the probability is, that in
these brief remains of the prophet Haggai we have but one or two
specimens of a ceaseless diligence and persistent determination,
which upheld and animated the whole people till the work was
accomplished.”[634] At the same time it must be noticed that the style
of the book is not wholly of the bare, jejune prose which it is
sometimes described to be. The passages of Haggai’s own exhortation are
in the well-known parallel rhythm of prophetic discourse: see
especially chap. i., ver. 6.
The only other matter of Introduction to the prophet Haggai is his
name. The precise form[635] is not elsewhere found in the Old
Testament; but one of the clans of the tribe of Gad is called
Haggi,[636] and the letters H G I occur as the consonants of a name on
a Phœnician inscription.[637] Some[638] have taken Haggai to be a
contraction of Haggiyah, the name of a Levitical family,[639] but
although the final _yod_ of some proper names stands for Jehovah, we
cannot certainly conclude that it is so in this case. Others[640] see
in Haggai a probable contraction for Hagariah,[641] as Zaccai, the
original of Zacchæus, is a contraction of Zechariah.[642] A more
general opinion[643] takes the termination as adjectival,[644] and the
root to be “hag,” _feast_ or _festival_.[645] In that case Haggai would
mean _festal_, and it has been supposed that the name would be given to
him from his birth on the day of some feast. It is impossible to decide
with certainty among these alternatives. M. Andrée,[646] who accepts
the meaning _festal_, ventures the hypothesis that, like “Malachi,”
Haggai is a symbolic title given by a later hand to the anonymous
writer of the book, because of the coincidence of his various
prophecies with solemn festivals.[647] But the name is too often and
too naturally introduced into the book to present any analogy to that
of “Malachi”; and the hypothesis may be dismissed as improbable and
unnatural.
Nothing more is known of Haggai than his name and the facts given in
his book. But as with the other prophets whom we have treated, so with
this one, Jewish and Christian legends have been very busy. Other
functions have been ascribed to him; a sketch of his biography has been
invented. According to the Rabbis he was one of the men of the Great
Synagogue, and with Zechariah and “Malachi” transmitted to that
mythical body the tradition of the older prophets.[648] He was the
author of several ceremonial regulations, and with Zechariah and
“Malachi” introduced into the alphabet the terminal forms of the five
elongated letters.[649] The Christian Fathers narrate that he was of
the tribe of Levi,[650] that with Zechariah he prophesied in exile of
the Return,[651] and was still young when he arrived in Jerusalem,[652]
where he died and was buried. A strange legend, founded on the doubtful
verse which styles him _the messenger of Jehovah_, gave out that
Haggai, as well as for similar reasons “Malachi” and John the Baptist,
were not men, but angels in human shape.[653] With Zechariah Haggai
appears on the titles of Psalms cxxxvii., cxlv.-cxlviii. in the
Septuagint; cxi., cxlv., cxlvi. in the Vulgate; and cxxv., cxxvi. and
cxlv.-cxlviii. in the Peshitto.[654] “In the Temple at Jerusalem he was
the first who chanted the Hallelujah, ... wherefore we say: Hallelujah,
which is the hymn of Haggai and Zechariah.”[655] All these testimonies
are, of course, devoid of value.
Finally, the modern inference from chap. ii. 3, that Haggai in his
youth had seen the former Temple, had gone into exile, and was now
returned a very old man,[656] may be probable, but is not certain. We
are quite ignorant of his age at the time the word of Jehovah came to
him.
FOOTNOTES:
[615] In the English Bible the division corresponds to that of the
Hebrew, which gives fifteen verses to chap. i. The LXX. takes the
fifteenth verse along with ver. 1 of chap. ii.
[616] ii. 9, 14: see on these passages, pp. 243, n. 685, 246, n. 700.
[617] Besides the general works on the text of the Twelve Prophets,
already cited, M. Tony Andrée has published _État Critique du Texte
d’Aggée: Quatre Tableaux Comparatifs_ (Paris, 1893), which is also
included in his general introduction and commentary on the prophet,
quoted below.
[618] Robertson Smith (_Encyc. Brit._, art. “Haggai,” 1880) does
not even mention authenticity. “Without doubt from Haggai himself”
(Kuenen). “The Book of Haggai is without doubt to be dated, according
to its whole extant contents, from the prophet Haggai, whose work fell
in the year 520” (König). So Driver, Kirkpatrick, Cornill, etc.
[619] _Z.A.T.W._, 1887, 215 f.
[620] So also Wellhausen.
[621] Which occurs only in the LXX.
[622] See note on that verse, n. 694
[623] Cf. Wildeboer, _Litter. des A. T._, 294.
[624] _Le Prophète Aggée, Introduction Critique et Commentaire._ Paris,
Fischbacher, 1893.
[625] Page 151.
[626] Below, p. 249.
[627] i. 10, 11.
[628] ii. 17.
[629] They follow drought in Amos iv. 9; and in the other passages
where they occur—Deut. xxviii. 22; 1 Kings viii. 37; 2 Chron. vi.
28—they are mentioned in a list of possible plagues after famine, or
pestilence, or fevers, all of which, with the doubtful exception of
fevers, followed drought.
[630] Above, p. 216; below, p. 248, n. 708.
[631] Some of M. Andrée’s alleged differences need not be discussed at
all, _e.g._ that between מפני and לפני. But here are the others. He
asserts that while chap. i. calls _oil and wine_ “yiṣhar and tîrôsh,”
chap. ii. (10) 11-19 calls them “yayin and shemen.” But he overlooks
the fact that the former pair of names, meaning the newly pressed oil
and wine, suit their connection, in which the fruits of the earth are
being catalogued, i. 11, while the latter pair, meaning the finished
wine and oil, equally suit their connection, in which articles of food
are being catalogued, ii. 12. Equally futile is the distinction drawn
between i. 9, which speaks of bringing the crops _to the house_, or as
we should say _home_, and ii. 19, which speaks of seed being _in the
barn_. Again, what is to be said of a critic who adduces in evidence of
distinction of authorship the fact that i. 6 employs the verb labhash,
_to clothe_, while ii. 12 uses beged for _garment_, and who actually
puts in brackets the root bagad, as if it anywhere in the Old Testament
meant _to clothe_! Again, Andrée remarks that while ii. (10) 11-19 does
not employ the epithet _Jehovah of Hosts_, but only _Jehovah_, the rest
of the book frequently uses the former; but he omits to observe that
the rest of the book, besides using _Jehovah of Hosts_, often uses
the name Jehovah alone [the phrase in ii. (10) 11-19 is נאם יהוה, and
occurs twice ii. 14, 17; but the rest of the book has also נאם יהוה,
ii. 4; and besides דבר יהוה, i. 1, ii. 1, ii. 20; אמר יהוה, i. 8; and
יהוה אלהים and מפני יהוה, i. 12]. Again, Andrée observes that while the
rest of the book designates Israel always by עם and the heathen by גוי,
chap. ii. (10) 11-19, in ver. 14, uses both terms of Israel. Yet in
this latter case גוי is used only in parallel to עם, as frequently in
other parts of the Old Testament. Again, that while in the rest of the
book Haggai is called the prophet (the doubtful i. 13 may be omitted),
he is simply named in ii. (10) 11-19, means nothing, for the name here
occurs only in introducing his contribution to a conversation, in
recording which it was natural to omit titles. Similarly insignificant
is the fact that while the rest of the book mentions only _the High
Priest_, chap. ii. (10) 11-19 talks only of _the priests_: because here
again each is suitable to the connection.—Two or three of Andrée’s
alleged grounds (such as that from the names for wine and oil and that
from labhash and beged) are enough to discredit his whole case.
[632] ii. 15, 18.
[633] In this opinion, stated first by Eichhorn, most critics agree.
[634] Marcus Dods, _Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi_, 1879, in Handbooks
for Bible Classes: Edin., T. & T. Clark.
[635] חַגַּי Greek Ἀγγαῖος.
[636] חַגִּי, Gen. xlvi. 16, Num. xxvi. 15; Greek Ἁγγει, Ἁγγεις. The
feminine חַגִּית, Haggith, was the name of one of David’s wives: 2 Sam.
iii. 4.
[637] No. 67 of the Phœnician inscriptions in _C. I. S._
[638] Hiller, _Onom. Sacrum_, Tüb., 1706 (quoted by Andrée), and Pusey.
[639] חַגִּיָּה, see 1 Chron. vi. 15; Greek Ἁγγια, Lu. Ἀναια.
[640] Köhler, _Nachexil. Proph._, I. 2; Wellhausen in fourth edition of
Bleek’s _Einleitung_; Robertson Smith, _Encyc. Brit._, art. “Haggai.”
[641] חגריה = _Jehovah hath girded_.
[642] Derenbourg, _Hist. de la Palestine_, pp. 95, 150.
[643] Jerome, Gesenius, and most moderns.
[644] As in the names קַלַּי ,כְּלוּבַי ,בַּרְזִלַּי, etc.
[645] The radical double _g_ of which appears in composition.
[646] _Op. cit._, p. 8.
[647] i. 1, the new moon; ii. 1, the seventh day of the Feast of
Tabernacles; ii. 18, the foundation of the Temple (?).
[648] Baba-bathra, 15_a_, etc.
[649] Megilla, 2_b_.
[650] Hesychius: see above, p. 80, n.
[651] Augustine, _Enarratio in Psalm cxlvii._
[652] Pseud-Epiphanius, _De Vitis Prophetarum_.
[653] Jerome on Hag. i. 13.
[654] Eusebius did not find these titles in the Hexaplar Septuagint.
See Field’s _Hexaplar_ on Psalm cxlv. 1. The titles are of course
wholly without authority.
[655] Pseud-Epiphanius, as above.
[656] So Ewald, Wildeboer (p. 295) and others.
CHAPTER XVIII
_HAGGAI AND THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE_
HAGGAI i., ii.
We have seen that the most probable solution of the problems presented
to us by the inadequate and confused records of the time is that a
considerable number of Jewish exiles returned from Jerusalem to Babylon
about 537, upon the permission of Cyrus, and that the Satrap whom he
sent with them not only allowed them to raise the altar on its ancient
site, but himself laid for them the foundation-stone of the Temple.[657]
We have seen, too, why this attempt led to nothing, and we have
followed the Samaritan obstructions, the failure of the Persian
patronage, the drought and bad harvests, and all the disillusion of the
fifteen years which succeeded the Return.[658] The hostility of the
Samaritans was entirely due to the refusal of the Jews to give them a
share in the construction of the Temple, and its virulence, probably
shown by preventing the Jews from procuring timber, seems to have
ceased when the Temple works were stopped. At least we find no mention
of it in our prophets; and the Jews are furnished with enough of timber
to panel and ciel their own houses.[659] But the Jews must have feared
a renewal of Samaritan attacks if they resumed work on the Temple, and
for the rest they were too sodden with adversity, and too weighted with
the care of their own sustenance, to spring at higher interests. What
immediately precedes our prophets is a miserable story of barren
seasons and little income, money leaking fast away, and every man’s
sordid heart engrossed with his own household. Little wonder that
critics have been led to deny the great Return of sixteen years back,
with its grand ambitions for the Temple and glorious future of Israel.
But the like collapse has often been experienced in history when bands
of religious men, going forth, as they thought, to freedom and the
immediate erection of a holy commonwealth, have found their unity
wrecked and their enthusiasm dissipated by a few inclement seasons on a
barren and a hostile shore. Nature and their barbarous fellow-men have
frustrated what God had promised. Themselves, accustomed from a high
stage of civilisation to plan still higher social structures, are
suddenly reduced to the primitive necessities of tillage and defence
against a savage foe. Statesmen, poets and idealists of sorts have to
hoe the ground, quarry stones and stay up of nights to watch as
sentinels. Destitute of the comforts and resources with which they have
grown up, they live in constant battle with their bare and
unsympathetic environs. It is a familiar tale in history, and we read
it with ease in the case of Israel. The Jews enjoyed this advantage,
that they came not to a strange land, but to one crowded with inspiring
memories, and they had behind them the most glorious impetus of
prophecy which ever sent a people forward to the future. Yet the very
ardours of this hurried them past a due appreciation of the
difficulties they would have to encounter, and when they found
themselves on the stony soil of Judah, which they had been idealising
for fifty years, and were further afflicted by barren seasons, their
hearts must have suffered an even more bitter disillusion than has so
frequently fallen to the lot of religious emigrants to an absolutely
new coast.
1. THE CALL TO BUILD (Chap. i.).
It was to this situation, upon an autumn day, when the colonists felt
another year of beggarly effort behind them and their wretched harvest
had been brought home, that the prophet Haggai addressed himself.
With rare sense he confined his efforts to the practical needs of
the moment. The sneers of modern writers have not been spared upon a
style that is crabbed and jejune, and they have esteemed this to be
a collapse of the prophetic spirit, in which Haggai ignored all the
achievements of prophecy and interpreted the word of God as only a call
to hew wood and lay stone upon stone. But the man felt what the moment
needed, and that is the supreme mark of the prophet. Set a prophet
there, and what else could a prophet have done? It would have been
futile to rewaken those most splendid voices of the past, which had in
part been the reason of the people’s disappointment, and equally futile
to interpret the mission of the great world powers towards God’s
people. What God’s people themselves could do for themselves—that was
what needed telling at the moment; and if Haggai told it with a meagre
and starved style, this also was in harmony with the occasion. One does
not expect it otherwise when hungry men speak to each other of their
duty.
Nor does Haggai deserve blame that he interpreted the duty as the
material building of the Temple. This was no mere ecclesiastical
function. Without the Temple the continuity of Israel’s religion could
not be maintained. An independent state, with the full courses of civic
life, was then impossible. The ethical spirit, the regard for each
other and God, could prevail over their material interests in no other
way than by common devotion to the worship of the God of their fathers.
In urging them to build the Temple from their own unaided resources, in
abstaining from all hopes of imperial patronage, in making the business
one, not of sentiment nor of comfortable assurance derived from the
past promises of God, but of plain and hard duty—Haggai illustrated at
once the sanity and the spiritual essence of prophecy in Israel.
Professor Robertson Smith has contrasted the central importance which
Haggai attached to the Temple with the attitude of Isaiah and Jeremiah,
to whom “the religion of Israel and the holiness of Jerusalem have
little to do with the edifice of the Temple. The city is holy because
it is the seat of Jehovah’s sovereignty on earth, exerted in His
dealings with and for the state of Judah and the kingdom of
David.”[660] At the same time it ought to be pointed out that even to
Isaiah the Temple was the dwelling-place of Jehovah, and if it had been
lying in ruins at his feet, as it was at Haggai’s, there is little
doubt he would have been as earnest as Haggai in urging its
reconstruction. Nor did the Second Isaiah, who has as lofty an idea of
the spiritual destiny of the people as any other prophet, lay less
emphasis upon the cardinal importance of the Temple to their life, and
upon the certainty of its future glory.
_In the second year of Darius[661] the king, in the sixth month and
the first day of the month_—that is, on the feast of the new moon—_the
word of Jehovah came by[662] Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel, son
of She’altî’el,[663] Satrap of Judah, and to Jehoshua‘, son of
Jehoṣadaḳ,[664] the high priest_—the civil and religious heads of the
community—_as follows_[665]:—
_Thus hath Jehovah of Hosts spoken, saying: This people have said, Not
yet[666] is come the time for the building of Jehovah’s House.
Therefore Jehovah’s word is come by Haggai the prophet, saying: Is it a
time for you—you[667]—to be dwelling in houses cieled with planks,[668]
while this House is waste? And now thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: Lay to
heart how things have gone with you.[669] Ye sowed much but had little
income, ate and were not satisfied, drank and were not full, put on
clothing and there was no warmth, while he that earned wages has earned
them into a bag with holes._
_Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts:[670] Go up into the mountain_—the
hill-country of Judah—_and bring in timber, and build the House, that
I may take pleasure in it, and show My glory, saith Jehovah. Ye looked
for much and it has turned out little,[671] and what ye brought home I
puffed at. On account of what?—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts—on account
of My House which is waste, while ye are hurrying every man after his
own house. Therefore[672] hath heaven shut off the dew,[673] and earth
shut off her increase. And I have called drought upon the earth, both
upon the mountains,[674] and upon the corn, and upon the wine, and upon
the oil, and upon what the ground brings forth, and upon man, and upon
beast, and upon all the labour of the hands._
For ourselves, Haggai’s appeal to the barren seasons and poverty of the
people as proof of God’s anger with their selfishness must raise
questions. But we have already seen, not only that natural calamities
were by the ancient world interpreted as the penal instruments of the
Deity, but that all through history they have had a wonderful influence
on the spirits of men, forcing them to search their own hearts and to
believe that Providence is conducted for other ends than those of our
physical prosperity. “Have not those who have believed as Amos believed
ever been the strong spirits of our race, making the very disasters
which crushed them to the earth the tokens that God has great views
about them?”[675] Haggai, therefore, takes no sordid view of Providence
when he interprets the seasons, from which his countrymen had suffered,
as God’s anger upon their selfishness and delay in building His House.
The straight appeal to the conscience of the Jews had an immediate
effect. Within three weeks they began work on the Temple.
_And Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el, and Jehoshua‘, son of Jehoṣadaḳ,
the high priest, and all the rest of the people, hearkened to the
voice of Jehovah their God, and to the words of Haggai the prophet, as
Jehovah their God had sent him; and the people feared before the face
of Jehovah. [And Haggai, the messenger of Jehovah, in Jehovah’s mission
to the people, spake, saying, I am with you—oracle of Jehovah.][676]
And Jehovah stirred the spirit of Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el,
Satrap of Judah, and the spirit of Jehoshua‘, son of Jehoṣadaḳ, the
high priest, and the spirit of all the rest of the people; and they
went and did work in the House of Jehovah of Hosts, their God, on the
twenty-fourth day of the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the
king._[677]
Note how the narrative emphasises that the new energy was, as it could
not but be from Haggai’s unflattering words, a purely spiritual result.
It was the _spirit_ of Zerubbabel, and the _spirit_ of Jehoshua, and
the _spirit_ of all the rest of the people, which was stirred—their
conscience and radical force of character. Not in vain had the people
suffered their great disillusion under Cyrus, if now their history was
to start again from sources so inward and so pure.
2. COURAGE, ZERUBBABEL! COURAGE, JEHOSHUA AND
ALL THE PEOPLE! (Chap. ii. 1-9).
The second occasion on which Haggai spoke to the people was another
feast the same autumn, the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles,[678]
the twenty-first of the seventh month. For nearly four weeks the work
on the Temple had proceeded. Some progress must have been made, for
comparisons became possible between the old Temple and the state of
this one. Probably the outline and size of the building were visible.
In any case it was enough to discourage the builders with their efforts
and the means at their disposal. Haggai’s new word is a very simple one
of encouragement. The people’s conscience had been stirred by his
first; they needed now some hope. Consequently he appeals to what he
had ignored before, the political possibilities which the present state
of the world afforded—always a source of prophetic promise. But again
he makes his former call upon their own courage and resources. The
Hebrew text contains a reference to the Exodus which would be
appropriate to a discourse delivered during the Feast of Tabernacles,
but it is not found in the Septuagint, and is so impossible to construe
that it has been justly suspected as a gloss, inserted by some later
hand, only because the passage had to do with the Feast of Tabernacles.
_In the seventh_ month, _on the twenty-first day of the month, the word
of Jehovah came by[679] Haggai the prophet, saying_:—
_Speak now to Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el, Satrap of Judah, and to
Jehoshua‘, son of Jehoṣadaḳ, the high priest, and to the rest of the
people, saying: Who among you is left that saw this House in its former
glory, and how do ye see it now? Is it not as nothing in your
eyes?[680] And now courage,[681] O Zerubbabel—oracle of Jehovah—and
courage, Jehoshua‘, son of Jehoṣadaḳ, O high priest;[682] and courage,
all people of the land!—oracle of Jehovah; and get to work, for I am
with you—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts[683]—and My Spirit is standing in
your midst. Fear not! For thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: It is but a
little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth and the sea
and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the costly
things[684] of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this House
with glory, saith Jehovah of Hosts. Mine is the silver and Mine the
gold—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts. Greater shall the latter glory of this
House be than the former, saith Jehovah of Hosts, and in this place
will I give peace[685]—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts._
From the earliest times this passage, by the majority of the Christian
Church, has been interpreted of the coming of Christ. The Vulgate
renders ver. 7_b_, _Et veniet Desideratus cunctis gentibus_, and so a
large number of the Latin Fathers, who are followed by Luther, _Der
Trost aller Heiden_, and by our own Authorised Version, _And the Desire
of all nations shall come_. This was not contrary to Jewish tradition,
for Rabbi Akiba had defined the clause of the Messiah, and Jerome
received the interpretation from his Jewish instructors. In itself the
noun, as pointed in the Massoretic text, means _longing_ or _object of
longing_.[686] But the verb which goes with it is in the plural, and by
a change of points the noun itself may be read as a plural.[687] That
this was the original reading is made extremely probable by the fact
that it lay before the translators of the Septuagint, who render: _the
picked_, or _chosen, things of the nations_.[688] So the old Italic
version: _Et venient omnia electa gentium_.[689] Moreover this meaning
suits the context, as the other does not. The next verse mentions
silver and gold. “We may understand what he says,” writes Calvin, “of
Christ; we indeed know that Christ was the expectation of the whole
world; ... but as it immediately follows, _Mine is the silver and Mine
is the gold_, the more simple meaning is that which I first stated:
that the nations would come, bringing with them all their riches, that
they might offer themselves and all their possessions a sacrifice to
God.”[690]
3. THE POWER OF THE UNCLEAN (Chap. ii. 10-19).
Haggai’s third address to the people is based on a deliverance which he
seeks from the priests. The Book of Deuteronomy had provided that, in
all difficult cases not settled by its own code, the people shall seek
a _deliverance_ or _Torah_ from the priests, _and shall observe to do
according to the deliverance which the priests deliver to thee_.[691]
Both noun and verb, which may be thus literally translated, are also
used for the completed and canonical Law in Israel, and they signify
that in the time of the composition of the Book of Deuteronomy that Law
was still regarded as in process of growth. So it is also in the time
of Haggai: he does not consult a code of laws, nor asks the priests
what the canon says, as, for instance, our Lord does with the question,
_how readest thou_? But he begs them to give him _a_ Torah or
_deliverance_,[692] based of course upon existing custom, but not yet
committed to writing.[693] For the history of the Law in Israel this
is, therefore, a passage of great interest.
_On the twenty-fourth of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius,
the word of Jehovah came to[694] Haggai the prophet, saying: Thus saith
Jehovah of Hosts, Ask, I pray, of the priests a deliverance,[695]
saying:—_
_If a man be carrying flesh that is holy in the skirt of his robe, and
with his skirt touch bread or pottage or wine or oil or any food, shall
_the latter_ become holy? And the priests gave answer and said, No! And
Haggai said, If one unclean by a corpse[696] touch any of these, shall
_the latter_ become unclean? And the priests gave answer and said, It
shall._ That is to say, holiness which passed from the source to an
object immediately in touch with the latter did not spread further; but
pollution infected not only the person who came into contact with it,
but whatever he touched.[697] “The flesh of the sacrifice hallowed
whatever it should touch, but not further;[698] but the human being who
was defiled by touching a dead body, defiled all he might touch.”[699]
_And Haggai answered and said: So is this people, and so is this nation
before Me—oracle of Jehovah—and so is all the work of their hands, and
what they offer there_—at the altar erected on its old site—_is
unclean_.[700] That is to say, while the Jews had expected their
restored ritual to make them holy to the Lord, this had not been
effective, while, on the contrary, their contact with sources of
pollution had thoroughly polluted both themselves and their labour and
their sacrifices. What these sources of pollution are is not explicitly
stated, but Haggai, from his other messages, can only mean, either the
people’s want of energy in building the Temple, or the unbuilt Temple
itself. Andrée goes so far as to compare the latter with the corpse,
whose touch, according to the priests, spreads infection through more
than one degree. In any case Haggai means to illustrate and enforce the
building of the Temple without delay; and meantime he takes one
instance of the effect he has already spoken of, _the work of their
hands_, and shows how it has been spoilt by their neglect and delay.
_And now, I pray, set your hearts backward from to-day,[701] before
stone was laid upon stone in the Temple of Jehovah: ...[702] when one
came to a heap of grain of twenty measures, and it had become ten, or
went to the winevat to draw fifty measures,[703] and it had become
twenty. I smote you with blasting and with withering,[704] and with
hail all the work of your hands, and ...[705]—oracle of Jehovah. Lay
now your hearts _on the time_ before to-day[706] (the twenty-fourth day
of the ninth month[707]), before the day of the foundation of the
Temple of Jehovah[708]—lay your hearts_ to that time! _Is there yet_
any _seed in the barn[709]? And as yet[710] the vine, the fig-tree, the
pomegranate and the olive have not borne_ fruit. _From this day I will
bless thee._
This then is the substance of the whole message. On the twenty-fourth
day of the ninth month, somewhere in our December, the Jews had been
discouraged that their attempts to build the Temple, begun three months
before,[711] had not turned the tide of their misfortunes and produced
prosperity in their agriculture. Haggai tells them, there is not yet
time for the change to work. If contact with a holy thing has only a
slight effect, but contact with an unclean thing has a much greater
effect (verses 11-13), then their attempts to build the Temple must
have less good influence upon their condition than the bad influence
of all their past devotion to themselves and their secular labours.
That is why adversity still continues, but courage! from this day on
God will bless. The whole message is, therefore, opportune to the date
at which it was delivered, and comes naturally on the back of Haggai’s
previous oracles. Andrée’s reason for assigning it to another writer,
on the ground of its breaking the connection, does not exist.[712]
These poor colonists, in their hope deferred, were learning the old
lesson, which humanity finds so hard to understand, that repentance and
new-born zeal do not immediately work a change upon our material
condition; but the natural consequences of sin often outweigh the
influence of conversion, and though devoted to God and very industrious
we may still be punished for a sinful past. Evil has an infectious
power greater than that of holiness. Its effects are more extensive and
lasting.[713] It was no bit of casuistry which Haggai sought to
illustrate by his appeal to the priests on the ceremonial law, but an
ethical truth deeply embedded in human experience.
4. THE REINVESTMENT OF ISRAEL’S HOPE (Chap. ii. 20-23).
On the same day Haggai published another oracle, in which he put the
climax to his own message by re-investing in Zerubbabel the ancient
hopes of his people. When the monarchy fell the Messianic hopes were
naturally no longer concentrated in the person of a king; and the
great evangelist of the Exile found the elect and anointed Servant of
Jehovah in the people as a whole, or in at least the pious part of
them, with functions not of political government but of moral influence
and instruction towards all the peoples of the earth. Yet in the Exile
Ezekiel still predicted an individual Messiah, a son of the house of
David; only it is significant that, in his latest prophecies delivered
after the overthrow of Jerusalem, Ezekiel calls him not _king_[714] any
more, but _prince_.[715]
After the return of Sheshbazzar to Babylon this position was virtually
filled by Zerubbabel, a grandson of Jehoiakin, the second last king
of Judah, and appointed by the Persian king Peḥah or Satrap of Judah.
Him Haggai now formally names the elect servant of Jehovah. In that
overturning of the kingdoms of the world which Haggai had predicted two
months before, and which he now explains as their mutual destruction by
war, Jehovah of Hosts will make Zerubbabel His signet-ring, inseparable
from Himself and the symbol of His authority.
_And the word of Jehovah came a second time to[716] Haggai on the
twenty-fourth day of the_ ninth _month, saying: Speak to Zerubbabel,
Satrap of Judah, saying: I am about to shake the heavens and the
earth,[717] and I will overturn the thrones[718] of kingdoms, and will
shatter the power of the kingdoms of the Gentiles, and will overturn
chariots[719] and their riders, and horses and their riders will
come down, every man by the sword of his brother. In that day—oracle
of Jehovah of Hosts—I will take Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el, My
servant—oracle of Jehovah—and will make him like a signet-ring; for
thee have I chosen—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts._
The wars and mutual destruction of the Gentiles, of which Haggai
speaks, are doubtless those revolts of races and provinces, which
threatened to disrupt the Persian Empire upon the accession of Darius
in 521. Persians, Babylonians, Medes, Armenians, the Sacæ and others
rose together or in succession. In four years Darius quelled them all,
and reorganised his empire before the Jews finished their Temple. Like
all the Syrian governors, Zerubbabel remained his poor lieutenant and
submissive tributary. History rolled westward into Europe. Greek and
Persian began their struggle for the control of its future, and the
Jews fell into an obscurity and oblivion unbroken for centuries. The
_signet-ring of Jehovah_ was not acknowledged by the world—does not
seem even to have challenged its briefest attention. But Haggai had at
least succeeded in asserting the Messianic hope of Israel, always
baffled, never quenched, in this re-opening of her life. He had
delivered the ancient heritage of Israel to the care of the new
Judaism.
* * * * *
Haggai’s place in the succession of prophecy ought now to be clear
to us. The meagreness of his words and their crabbed style, his
occupation with the construction of the Temple, his unfulfilled hope in
Zerubbabel, his silence on the great inheritance of truth delivered by
his predecessors, and the absence from his prophesying of all visions
of God’s character and all emphasis upon the ethical elements of
religion—these have moved some to depress his value as a prophet almost
to the vanishing point. Nothing could be more unjust. In his opening
message Haggai evinced the first indispensable power of the prophet: to
speak to the situation of the moment, and to succeed in getting men to
take up the duty at their feet; in another message he announced a great
ethical principle; in his last he conserved the Messianic traditions
of his religion, and though not less disappointed than Isaiah in the
personality to whom he looked for their fulfilment, he succeeded in
passing on their hope undiminished to future ages.
FOOTNOTES:
[657] See above, pp. 210-18, and emphasise specially the facts that
the most pronounced adherents of Kosters’ theory seek to qualify his
absolute negation of a Return under Cyrus, by the admission that
some Jews did return; and that even Stade, who agrees in the main
with Schrader that no attempt was made by the Jews to begin building
the Temple till 520, admits the probability of a stone being laid by
Sheshbazzar about 536.
[658] See above, pp. 218 ff.
[659] Hag. i. 4.
[660] Art. “Haggai,” _Encyc. Brit._
[661] Heb. Daryavesh.
[662] Heb. _by the hand of_.
[663] See above, pp. 199 f. and 221.
[664] See below, pp. 258, 279, 292 ff.
[665] Heb. _saying_.
[666] For לאֹ עֶת־בֹּא = _not the time of coming_ read with Hitzig and
Wellhausen לאֹ עַתָּ בָא, _not now is come_; for עַתָּ cf. Ezek. xxiii.
4, Psalm lxxiv. 6.
[667] The emphasis may be due only to the awkward grammatical
construction.
[668] ספונים, from ספן, _to cover_ with planks of cedar, 2 Kings
vi. 9: cf. iii. 7.
[669] Heb. _set your hearts_ (see Vol. I., pp. 258, 275, 321, 323)
_upon your ways_; but _your ways_ cannot mean here, as elsewhere, _your
conduct_, but obviously from what follows _the ways_ you have been
led, _the way_ things have gone with you—the barren seasons and little
income.
[670] The Hebrew and Versions here insert _set your hearts upon your
ways_, obviously a mere clerical repetition from ver. 5.
[671] For והנה למעט read with the LXX. והיה למעט or ויהי.
[672] The עליכם here inserted in the Hebrew text is unparsable, not
found in the LXX. and probably a clerical error by dittography from the
preceding על־כן.
[673] Heb. _heavens are shut from dew_. But perhaps the מ of מטל should
be deleted. So Wellhausen. There is no instance of an intransitive Qal
of כלא.
[674] Query?
[675] Vol. I., pp. 162 ff.
[676] See above, p. 227.
[677] The LXX. wrongly takes this last verse of chap. i. as the first
half of the first verse of chap. ii.
[678] Lev. xxiii. 34, 36, 40-42.
[679] _By the hand of._
[680] הֲלאֹ כָמֹהוּ כְאַיִן בְּעֵינֵיכֶם. Literally, _is not the like
of it as nothing in your eyes_? But that can hardly be the meaning.
It might be equivalent to _is it not, as it stands, as nothing in
your eyes?_ But the fact is that in Hebrew construction of a simple,
unemphasised comparison, the comparing particle כ stands before _both_
objects compared: as, for instance, in the phrase (Gen. xliv. 18)
כִּי כָמוֹךָ כְּפַרְעֹה, _thou art as Pharaoh_.
[681] Literally: _be strong_.
[682] It is difficult to say whether _high priest_ belongs to the text
or not.
[683] Here occurs the anacolouthic clause, introduced by an acc.
without a verb, which is not found in the LXX. and is probably a gloss
(see above, p. 241): _The promise which I made with you in your going
forth from Egypt_.
[684] Hebrew has singular, _costly thing_ or _desirableness_, חֶמְדַּת
(fem, for neut.), but the verb _shall come_ is in the plural, and the
LXX. has τα ἐκλεκτά, _the choice things_. See below, next page.
[685] The LXX. add a parallel clause καὶ εἰρήνην φυχῆς εἰς περιποίησιν
παντὶ τῷ κτίζοντι τοῦ ἀναστῆσαι τὸν ναὸν τοῦτον, which would read in
Hebrew וְשַׁלְוַת נֶפֶשׁ לְחַיּוֹת כָּל־הַיֹֹּסֵד לְקוֹמֵם הַהֵיכָל
הַזֶּה. On חיות Wellhausen cites 1 Chron. xi. 8, = _restore_ or
_revive_.
[686] = חֶמְדַּת _longing_, 2 Chron. xxi. 2, and _object of longing_,
Dan. xi. 37. It is the feminine or neuter, and might be rendered as a
collective, _desirable things_. Pusey cites Cicero’s address to his
wife: _Valete, mea desideria, valete_ (_Ep. ad Famil._, xiv. 2 fin.).
[687] חֲמֻדֹת plural feminine of pass. part., as in Gen. xxvii. 15,
where it is an adjective, but used as a noun = _precious things_, Dan.
xi. 38, 43, which use meets the objection of Pusey, _in loco_, where he
wrongly maintains that _precious things_, if intended, must have been
expressed by מַחֲמַדֵּי.
[688] ἥξει τὰ ἐκλεκτὰ πάντων τῶν ἐθνῶν. Theodore of Mopsuestia takes it
as _elect persons of all nations_, to which a few moderns adhere.
[689] Augustini _Contra Donatistas post Collationem_, cap. xx. 30
(Migne, _Latin Patrology_, XLIII., p. 671).
[690] Calvin, _Comm. in Haggai_, ii. 6-9.
[691] Deut. xvii. 8 ff.: עַל־פּי הַתּוֹרָה אֲשֶׁר יוֹרוּךָ. Compare the
expression כּוֹהֵן מוֹרֶה, in 2 Chron. xv. 3, and the duties of the
teaching priests assigned by the Chronicler (2 Chron. xvii. 7-9) to the
days of Jehoshaphat.
[692] Note that it is not _the Torah_, but _a Torah_.
[693] The nearest passage to the _deliverance_ of the priests to Haggai
is Lev. vi. 20, 21 (Heb.), 27, 28 (Eng.). This is part of the Priestly
Code not promulgated till 445 B.C., but based, of course, on long
extant custom, some of it very ancient. _Everything that touches the
flesh_ (of the sin-offering, which is holy) _shall be holy_—יִקְדַּשׁ,
the verb used by the priests in their answer to Haggai—_and when any
of its blood has been sprinkled on a garment, that whereon it was
sprinkled shall be washed in a holy place. The earthen vessel wherein
it has been boiled shall be broken, and if it has been boiled in a
brazen vessel, this shall be scoured and rinsed with water._
[694] So several old edd. and many codd., and adopted by Baer (see his
note _in loco_) in his text. But most of the edd. of the Massoretic
text read ביד after Cod. Hill. For the importance of the question see
above, p. 227.
[695] Torah.
[696] תְּמֵא נֶפֶשׁ.
[697] There does not appear to be the contrast between indirect contact
with a holy thing and direct contact with a polluted which Wellhausen
says there is. In either case the articles whose character is in
question stand second from the source of holiness and pollution—the
holy flesh and the corpse.
[698] See above, p. 245, n. 693.
[699] Pusey, _in loco_.
[700] The LXX. have here found inserted three other clauses: ἕνεκεν τὼν
λημμάτων αὐτῶν τῶν ὀρθρινῶν, ὀδυνηθήσονται ἀπὸ προσώπου πόνων αὐτῶν,
καὶ ἐμισεῖτε ἐν πύλαις ἐλέγχοντας. The first clause is a misreading
(Wellhausen), יַעַן לִקְחֹתָם שַׁחַר for יַעַן לְקַחְתֶּם שֹׁחַד,
_because ye take a bribe_, and goes well with the third clause,
modified from Amos v. 10: שָׂנְאוּ בַשַּׁעַר מוֹכִיחַ, _they hate him
who reproves in the gate_. These may have been inserted into the Hebrew
text by some one puzzled to know what the source of the people’s
pollution was, and who absurdly found it in sins which in Haggai’s time
it was impossible to impute to them. The middle clause, יִתְעַנּוּ
מִפְּנֵי עַצְבֵיהֶם, _they vex themselves with their labours_, is
suitable to the sense of the Hebrew text of the verse, as Wellhausen
points out, but besides gives a connection with what follows.
[701] From this day and onward.
[702] Heb. literally _since they were_. A.V. _since those days were_.
[703] Winevat, יֶקֶב, is distinguished from winepress, גת, in Josh.
ix. 13, and is translated by the Greek ὑπολήνιον Mark xii. I, ληνόν
Matt. xxi. 33, _dug a pit for the winepress_; but the name is applied
sometimes to the whole winepress—Hosea ix. 2 etc., Job xxiv. 11, _to
tread the winepress_. The word translated _measures_, as in LXX.
μετρητάς, is פּוּרָה, and that is properly the vat in which the grapes
were trodden (Isa. lxiii. 3), but here it can scarcely mean fifty
_vatfuls_, but must refer to some smaller measure—cask?
[704] See above, pp. 228 f., n. 625.
[705] The words omitted cannot be construed in the Hebrew,
וְאֵין־אֶתְכֶם אֵלַי, literally _and not you_ (acc.) _to Me_. Hitzig,
etc., propose to read אִתְּכם and render _there was none with you_ who
turned _to Me_. Others propose אֵינְכֶם, _as if none of you_ turned _to
Me_. Others retain אֶתְכֶם and render _as for you_. The versions LXX.
Syr., Vulg. _ye will not return_ or _did not return to Me_, reading
perhaps for לאֹ שָׁבְתֶּם ,אֵין אֶתְכֶם, which is found in Amos iv. 9,
of which the rest of the verse is an echo. Wellhausen deletes the whole
verse as a gloss. It is certainly suspicious, and remarkable in that
the LXX. text has already introduced two citations from Amos. See above
on ver. 14.
[706] Heb. _from this day backwards_.
[707] The date Wellhausen thinks was added by a later hand.
[708] This is the ambiguous clause on different interpretations
of which so much has been founded: לְמִן־הַיּוֹם אֲשֶׁר־יֻסַּד
הֵיכַל־יְהוָֹה. Does this clause, in simple parallel to the previous
one, describe the day on which the prophet was speaking, _the
twenty-fourth day of the ninth month_, the _terminus a quo_ of the
people’s retrospect? In that case Haggai regards the foundation-stone
of the Temple as laid on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month 520
B.C., and does not know, or at least ignores, any previous laying
of a foundation-stone. So Kuenen, Kosters, Andrée, etc. Or does למן
signify _up to the time the foundation-stone was laid_, and state a
_terminus ad quem_ for the people’s retrospect? So Ewald and others,
who therefore find in the verse a proof that Haggai knew of an earlier
laying of the foundation-stone. But that למן is ever used for ועד
cannot be proved, and indeed is disproved by Jer. vii. 7, where it
occurs in contrast to ועד. Van Hoonacker finds the same, but in a more
subtle translation of מן .למן, he says, is never used except of a
date distant from the speaker or writer of it; למן (if I understand
him aright) refers therefore to a date previous to Haggai to which
the people’s thoughts are directed by the ל and then brought back
from it to the date at which he was speaking by means of the מן: “la
préposition ל signifie la direction de l’esprit vers une époque du passé
d’où il est ramené par la préposition מן.” But surely מן can be used
(as indeed Haggai has just used it) to signify extension backwards from
the standpoint of the speaker; and although in the passages cited by
Van Hoonacker of the use of למן it always refers to a past date—Deut.
ix. 7, Judg. xix. 30, 2 Sam. vi. 11, Jer. vii. 7 and 25—still, as it
is there nothing but a pleonastic form for מן, it surely might be
employed as מן is sometimes employed for departure from the present
backwards. Nor in any case is it used to express what Van Hoonacker
seeks to draw from it here, the idea of direction of the mind to a
past event and then an immediate return from that. Had Haggai wished
to express that idea he would have phrased it thus: למן היום אשר יסד
היכל יהוה ועד היום הזה (as Kosters remarks). Besides, as Kosters has
pointed out (pp. 7 ff. of the Germ. trans. of _Het Herstel_, etc.),
even if Van Hoonacker’s translation of למן were correct, the context
would show that it might refer only to a laying of the foundation-stone
since Haggai’s first address to the people, and therefore the question
of an earlier foundation-stone under Cyrus would remain unsolved.
Consequently Haggai ii. 18 cannot be quoted as a proof of the latter.
See above, p. 216.
[709] Meaning _there is none_.
[710] ועוד or וְעֹד for וְעַד, after LXX. καὶ εἰ ἔτι.
[711] The twenty-fourth day of the sixth month, according to chap. i.
15.
[712] See above, p. 228.
[713]
“For I believe the devil’s voice
Sinks deeper in our ear,
Than any whisper sent from heaven,
However sweet and clear.”
[714] Only in xxxiv. 24, xxxvii. 22, 24.
[715] נשׂיא: cf. Skinner, _Ezekiel_ (Expositor’s Bible Series), pp.
447 ff., who, however, attributes the diminution of the importance of
the civil head in Israel, not to the feeling that he would henceforth
always be subject to a foreign emperor, but to the conviction that in
the future he will be “overshadowed by the personal presence of Jehovah
in the midst of His people.”
[716] See above, p. 227.
[717] LXX. enlarges: _and the sea and the dry land_.
[718] Heb. sing. collect. LXX. plural.
[719] Again a sing. coll.
_ZECHARIAH_
(_I.-VIII._)
_Not by might, and not by force, but by My Spirit, saith Jehovah of
Hosts._
_Be not afraid, strengthen your hands! Speak truth, every man to his
neighbour; truth and wholesome judgment judge ye in your gates, and in
your hearts plan no evil for each other, nor take pleasure in false
swearing, for all these things do I hate—oracle of Jehovah._
CHAPTER XIX
_THE BOOK OF ZECHARIAH (I.-VIII.)_
The Book of Zechariah, consisting of fourteen chapters, falls clearly
into two divisions: _First_, chaps. i.—viii., ascribed to Zechariah
himself and full of evidence for their authenticity; _Second_, chaps.
ix.—xiv., which are not ascribed to Zechariah, and deal with conditions
different from those upon which he worked. The full discussion of the
date and character of this second section we shall reserve till we
reach the period at which we believe it to have been written. Here an
introduction is necessary only to chaps. i.—viii.
These chapters may be divided into five sections.
I. Chap. i. 1-6.—A Word of Jehovah which came to Zechariah in the
eighth month of the second year of Darius, that is in November 520
B.C., or between the second and the third oracles of Haggai.[720] In
this the prophet’s place is affirmed in the succession of the prophets
of Israel. The ancient prophets are gone, but their predictions have
been fulfilled in the calamities of the Exile, and God’s Word abides
for ever.
II. Chap. i. 7—vi. 9.—A Word of Jehovah which came to Zechariah on the
twenty-fourth of the eleventh month of the same year, that is January
or February 519, and which he reproduces in the form of eight Visions
by night. (1) The Vision of the Four Horsemen: God’s new mercies to
Jerusalem (chap. i. 7-17). (2) The Vision of the Four Horns, or Powers
of the World, and the Four Smiths, who smite them down (ii. 1-4 Heb.,
but in the Septuagint and in the English Version i. 18-21). (3) The
Vision of the Man with the Measuring Rope: Jerusalem shall be rebuilt,
no longer as a narrow fortress, but spread abroad for the multitude of
her population (chap. ii. 5-9 Heb., ii. 1-5 LXX. and Eng.). To this
Vision is appended a lyric piece of probably older date calling upon
the Jews in Babylon to return, and celebrating the joining of many
peoples to Jehovah, now that He takes up again His habitation in
Jerusalem (chap. ii. 10-17 Heb., ii. 6-13 LXX. and Eng.). (4) The
Vision of Joshua, the High Priest, and the Satan or Accuser: the Satan
is rebuked, and Joshua is cleansed from his foul garments and clothed
with a new turban and festal apparel; the land is purged and secure
(chap. iii.). (5) The Vision of the Seven-Branched Lamp and the Two
Olive-Trees (chap. iv. 1-6_a_, 10_b_-14): into the centre of this has
been inserted a Word of Jehovah to Zerubbabel (vv. 6_b_-10_a_), which
interrupts the Vision and ought probably to come at the close of it.
(6) The Vision of the Flying Book: it is the curse of the land, which
is being removed, but after destroying the houses of the wicked (chap.
v. 1-4). (7) The Vision of the Bushel and the Woman: that is the guilt
of the land and its wickedness; they are carried off and planted in
the land of Shin‘ar (v. 5-11). (8) The Vision of the Four Chariots:
they go forth from the Lord of all the earth, to traverse the earth
and bring His Spirit, or anger, to bear on the North country (chap.
vi. 1-8).
III. Chap. vi. 9-15.—A Word of Jehovah, undated (unless it is to be
taken as of the same date as the Visions to which it is attached),
giving directions as to the gifts sent to the community at Jerusalem
from the Babylonian Jews. A crown is to be made from the silver and
gold, and, according to the text, placed upon the head of Joshua. But,
as we shall see,[721] the text gives evident signs of having been
altered in the interest of the High Priest; and probably the crown
was meant for Zerubbabel, at whose right hand the priest is to stand,
and there shall be a counsel of peace between the two of them. The
far-away shall come and assist at the building of the Temple. This
section breaks off in the middle of a sentence.
IV. Chap. vii.—The Word of Jehovah which came to Zechariah on the
fourth of the ninth month of the fourth year of Darius, that is nearly
two years after the date of the Visions. The Temple was approaching
completion; and an inquiry was addressed to the priests who were in it
and to the prophets concerning the Fasts, which had been maintained
during the Exile, while the Temple lay desolate (chap. vii. 1-3). This
inquiry drew from Zechariah a historical explanation of how the Fasts
arose (chap. vii. 4-14).
V. Chap. viii.—Ten short undated oracles, each introduced by the same
formula, _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts_, and summarising all
Zechariah’s teaching since before the Temple began up to the question
of the cessation of the Fasts upon its completion—with promises for
the future. (1) A Word affirming Jehovah’s new zeal for Jerusalem and
His Return to her (vv. 1, 2). (2) Another of the same (ver. 3). (3) A
Word promising fulness of old folk and children in her streets (vv. 4,
5). (4) A Word affirming that nothing is too wonderful for Jehovah
(ver. 6). (5) A Word promising the return of the people from east and
west (vv. 7, 8). (6 and 7) Two Words contrasting, in terms similar to
Haggai i., the poverty of the people before the foundation of the
Temple with their new prosperity: from a curse Israel shall become a
blessing. This is due to God’s anger having changed into a purpose of
grace to Jerusalem. But the people themselves must do truth and
justice, ceasing from perjury and thoughts of evil against each other
(vv. 9-17). (8) A Word which recurs to the question of Fasting, and
commands that the four great Fasts, instituted to commemorate the
siege and overthrow of Jerusalem, and the murder of Gedaliah, be
changed to joy and gladness (vv. 18, 19). (9) A Word predicting the
coming of the Gentiles to the worship of Jehovah at Jerusalem (vv.
20-22). (10) Another of the same (ver. 23).
There can be little doubt that, apart from the few interpolations
noted, these eight chapters are genuine prophecies of Zechariah, who is
mentioned in the Book of Ezra as the colleague of Haggai, and
contemporary of Zerubbabel and Joshua at the time of the rebuilding of
the Temple.[722] Like the oracles of Haggai, these prophecies are dated
according to the years of Darius the king, from his second year to his
fourth. Although they may contain some of the exhortations to build the
Temple, which the Book of Ezra informs us that Zechariah made along
with Haggai, the most of them presuppose progress in the work, and seek
to assist it by historical retrospect and by glowing hopes of the
Messianic effects of its completion. Their allusions suit exactly the
years to which they are assigned. Darius is king. The Exile has lasted
about seventy years.[723] Numbers of Jews remain in Babylon,[724] and
are scattered over the rest of the world.[725] The community at
Jerusalem is small and weak: it is the mere colony of young men and men
in middle life who came to it from Babylon; there are few children and
old folk.[726] Joshua and Zerubbabel are the heads of the community,
and the pledges for its future.[727] The exact conditions are recalled
as recent which Haggai spoke of a few years before.[728] Moreover,
there is a steady and orderly progress throughout the prophecies, in
harmony with the successive dates at which they were delivered. In
November 520 they begin with a cry to repentance and lessons drawn from
the past of prophecy.[729] In January 519 Temple and City are still to
be built.[730] Zerubbabel has laid the foundation; the completion is
yet future.[731] The prophet’s duty is to quiet the people’s
apprehensions about the state of the world,[732] to provoke their
zeal,[733] give them confidence in their great men,[734] and, above
all, assure them that God is returned to them[735] and their sin
pardoned.[736] But in December 518 the Temple is so far built that the
priests are said to belong to it;[737] there is no occasion for
continuing the fasts of the Exile,[738] the future has opened and the
horizon is bright with the Messianic hopes.[739] Most of all, it is
felt that the hard struggle with the forces of nature is over, and the
people are exhorted to the virtues of the civic life.[740] They have
time to lift their eyes from their work and see the nations coming from
afar to Jerusalem.[741]
These features leave no room for doubt that the great bulk of the first
eight chapters of the Book of Zechariah are by the prophet himself, and
from the years to which he assigns them, November 520 to December 518.
The point requires no argument.
There are, however, three passages which provoke further
examination—two of them because of the signs they bear of an earlier
date, and one because of the alteration it has suffered in the
interests of a later day in Israel’s history.
The lyric passage which is appended to the Second Vision (chap. ii
10-17 Heb., 6-13 LXX. and Eng.) suggests questions by its singularity:
there is no other such among the Visions. But in addition to this it
speaks not only of the Return from Babylon as still future[742]—this
might still be said after the First Return of the exiles in
536[743]—but it differs from the language of all the Visions proper in
describing the return of Jehovah Himself to Zion as still future. The
whole, too, has the ring of the great odes in Isaiah xl.—lv., and seems
to reflect the same situation, upon the eve of Cyrus’ conquest of
Babylon. There can be little doubt that we have here inserted in
Zechariah’s Visions a song of twenty years earlier, but we must confess
inability to decide whether it was adopted by Zechariah himself or
added by a later hand.[744]
Again, there are the two passages called the Word of Jehovah to
Zerubbabel, chap. iv. 6_b_-10_a_; and the Word of Jehovah concerning
the gifts which came to Jerusalem from the Jews in Babylon, chap. vi.
9-15. The first, as Wellhausen has shown,[745] is clearly out of place;
it disturbs the narrative of the Vision, and is to be put at the end
of the latter. The second is undated, and separate from the Visions.
The second plainly affirms that the building of the Temple is still
future. The man whose name is Branch or Shoot is designated: _and he
shall build the Temple of Jehovah_. The first is in the same temper
as the first two oracles of Haggai. It is possible then that these
two passages are not, like the Visions with which they are taken, to
be dated from 519, but represent that still earlier prophesying of
Zechariah with which we are told he assisted Haggai in instigating the
people to begin to build the Temple.
* * * * *
The style of the prophet Zechariah betrays special features almost only
in the narrative of the Visions. Outside these his language is simple,
direct and pure, as it could not but be, considering how much of it is
drawn from, or modelled upon, the older prophets,[746] and chiefly
Hosea and Jeremiah. Only one or two lapses into a careless and
degenerate dialect show us how the prophet might have written, had he
not been sustained by the music of the classical periods of the
language.[747]
This directness and pith is not shared by the language in which the
Visions are narrated.[748] Here the style is involved and redundant.
The syntax is loose; there is a frequent omission of the copula, and of
other means by which, in better Hebrew, connection and conciseness are
sustained. The formulas, _thus saith_ and _saying_, are repeated to
weariness. At the same time it is fair to ask, how much of this
redundancy was due to Zechariah himself? Take the Septuagint version.
The Hebrew text, which it followed, not only included a number of
repetitions of the formulas, and of the designations of the personages
introduced into the Visions, which do not occur in the Massoretic
text,[749] but omitted some which are found in the Massoretic
text.[750] These two sets of phenomena prove that from an early date
the copiers of the original text of Zechariah must have been busy in
increasing its redundancies. Further, there are still earlier
intrusions and expansions, for these are shared by both the Hebrew and
the Greek texts: some of them very natural efforts to clear up the
personages and conversations recorded in the dreams,[751] some of them
stupid mistakes in understanding the drift of the argument.[752] There
must of course have been a certain amount of redundancy in the original
to provoke such aggravations of it, and of obscurity or tortuousness of
style to cause them to be deemed necessary. But it would be very unjust
to charge all the faults of our present text to Zechariah himself,
especially when we find such force and simplicity in the passages
outside the Visions. Of course the involved and misty subjects of the
latter naturally forced upon the description of them a laboriousness of
art, to which there was no provocation in directly exhorting the people
to a pure life, or in straightforward predictions of the Messianic era.
Beyond the corruptions due to these causes, the text of Zechariah
i.—viii. has not suffered more than that of our other prophets. There
are one or two clerical errors;[753] an occasional preposition or
person of a verb needs to be amended. Here and there the text has been
disarranged;[754] and as already noticed, there has been one serious
alteration of the original.[755]
From the foregoing paragraphs it must be apparent what help and
hindrance in the reconstruction of the text is furnished by the
Septuagint. A list of its variant readings and of its mistranslations
is appended.[756]
FOOTNOTES:
[720] See above, pp. 225 ff.
[721] Below, p. 308.
[722] Ezra v. 1, vi. 14.
[723] i. 12, vii. 5: reckoning in round numbers from 590, midway
between the two Exiles of 597 and 586, that brings us to about 520, the
second year of Darius.
[724] ii. 6 (Eng., Heb. 10). On the question whether the Book of
Zechariah gives no evidence of a previous Return from Babylon see
above, pp. 208 ff.
[725] viii. 7, etc.
[726] viii. 4, 5.
[727] iii. 1-10, iv. 6-10, vi. 11 ff.
[728] viii. 9, 10.
[729] i. 1-6.
[730] i. 7-17.
[731] iv. 6-10.
[732] i. 7-21 (Eng., Heb. i. 7—ii. 4).
[733] iv. 6 ff.
[734] iii., iv.
[735] i. 16.
[736] v.
[737] vii. 3.
[738] vii. 1-7, viii. 18, 19.
[739] viii. 20-23.
[740] viii. 16, 17.
[741] viii. 20-23.
[742] ii. 10 f. Heb., 6 f. LXX. and Eng.
[743] Though the expression _I have scattered you to the four winds of
heaven_ seems to imply the Exile before any return.
[744] For the bearing of this on Kosters’ theory of the Return see pp.
211 f.
[745] See below, p. 300.
[746] Outside the Visions the prophecies contain these echoes or
repetitions of earlier writers: chap. i. 1-6 quotes the constant
refrain of prophetic preaching before the Exile, and in chap. vii. 7-14
(ver. 8 must be deleted) is given a summary of that preaching; in chap.
viii. ver. 3 echoes Isa. i. 21, 26, _city of troth_, and Jer. xxxi. 23,
_mountain of holiness_ (there is really no connection, as Kuenen holds,
between ver. 4 and Isa. lxv. 20; it would create more interesting
questions as to the date of the latter if there were); ver. 8 is based
on Hosea ii. 15 Heb., 19 Eng., and Jer. xxxi. 33; ver. 12 is based on
Hosea ii. 21 f. (Heb. 23 f.); with ver. 13 compare Jer. xlii. 18, _a
curse_; vv. 21 ff. with Isa. ii. 3 and Micah iv. 2.
[747] _E.g._ vii. 5, צַמְתֻּנִי אָנִי for צַמְתֶּם לִי: cf. Ewald,
_Syntax_, § 315_b_. The curious use of the acc. in the following verse
is perhaps only apparent; part of the text may have fallen out.
[748] Though there are not wanting, of course, echoes here as in the
other prophecies of older writings, _e.g._ i. 12, 17.
[749] לאמר, _saying_, ii. 8 (Gr. ii. 4); iv. 5, _And the angel who
spoke with me said_; i. 17, cf. vi. 5. _All_ is inserted in i. 11, iii.
9; _lord_ in ii. 2; _of hosts_ (after _Jehovah_) viii. 17; and there
are other instances of palpable expansion, _e.g._ i. 6, 8, ii. 4 bis,
6, viii. 19.
[750] _E.g._ ii. 2, iv. 2, 13, v. 9, vi. 12 bis, vii. 8: cf. also vi.
13.
[751] i. 8 ff., iii. 4 ff.: cf. also vi. 3 with vv. 6 f.
[752] _E.g._ (but this is outside the Visions) the very flagrant
misunderstanding to which the insertion of vii. 8 is due.
[753] v. 6, עינם for עונם as in LXX., and the last words of v. 11;
perhaps vi. 10; and almost certainly vii. 2_a_.
[754] Chap. iv. On 6_a_, 10_b_-14 should immediately follow, and
6_b_-10_a_ come after 14.
[755] vi. 11 ff. See below, pp. 308 f.
[756] Chief variants: i. 8, 10; ii. 15; iii. 4; iv. 7, 12; v. 1, 3, 4,
9; vi. 10, 13; vii. 3; viii. 8, 9, 12, 20. Obvious mistranslations or
misreadings: ii. 9, 10, 15, 17; iii. 4; iv. 7, 10; v. 1, 4, 9; vi. 10,
cf. 14; vii. 3.
CHAPTER XX
_ZECHARIAH THE PROPHET_
ZECHARIAH i. 1-6, etc.; EZRA v. 1, vi. 14
Zechariah is one of the prophets whose personality as distinguished
from their message exerts some degree of fascination on the student.
This is not due, however, as in the case of Hosea or Jeremiah, to
the facts of his life, for of these we know extremely little; but to
certain conflicting symptoms of character which appear through his
prophecies.
His name was a very common one in Israel, Zekher-Yah, _Jehovah
remembers_.[757] In his own book he is described as _the son of
Berekh-Yah, the son of Iddo_,[758] and in the Aramaic document of the
Book of Ezra as _the son of Iddo_.[759] Some have explained this
difference by supposing that Berekhyah was the actual father of the
prophet, but that either he died early, leaving Zechariah to the care
of the grandfather, or else that he was a man of no note, and Iddo was
more naturally mentioned as the head of the family. There are several
instances in the Old Testament of men being called the sons of their
grandfathers:[760] as in these cases the grandfather was the reputed
founder of the house, so in that of Zechariah Iddo was the head of his
family when it came out of Babylon and was anew planted in Jerusalem.
Others, however, have contested the genuineness of the words _son of
Berekh-Yah_, and have traced their insertion to a confusion of the
prophet with Zechariah son of Yĕbherekh-Yahu, the contemporary of
Isaiah.[761] This is precarious, while the other hypothesis is a very
natural one.[762] Whichever be correct, the prophet Zechariah was a
member of the priestly family of Iddo, that came up to Jerusalem from
Babylon under Cyrus.[763] The Book of Nehemiah adds that in the
high-priesthood of Yoyakim, the son of Joshua, the head of the house of
Iddo was a Zechariah.[764] If this be our prophet, then he was probably
a young man in 520,[765] and had come up as a child in the caravans
from Babylon. The Aramaic document of the Book of Ezra[766] assigns to
Zechariah a share with Haggai in the work of instigating Zerubbabel and
Jeshua to begin the Temple. None of his oracles is dated previous to
the beginning of the work in August 520, but we have seen[767] that
among those undated there are one or two which by referring to the
building of the Temple as still future may contain some relics of that
first stage of his ministry. From November 520 we have the first of his
dated oracles; his Visions followed in January 519, and his last
recorded prophesying in December 518.[768]
These are all the certain events of Zechariah’s history. But in the
well-attested prophecies he has left we discover, besides some obvious
traits of character, certain problems of style and expression which
suggest a personality of more than usual interest. Loyalty to the great
voices of old, the temper which appeals to the experience, rather than
to the dogmas, of the past, the gift of plain speech to his own times,
a wistful anxiety about his reception as a prophet[769] combined with
the absence of all ambition to be original or anything but the clear
voice of the lessons of the past and of the conscience of to-day—these
are the qualities which characterise Zechariah’s orations to the
people. But how to reconcile them with the strained art and obscure
truths of the Visions—it is this which invests with interest the study
of his personality. We have proved that the obscurity and redundancy of
the Visions cannot all have been due to himself. Later hands have
exaggerated the repetitions and ravelled the processes of the original.
But these gradual blemishes have not grown from nothing: the original
style must have been sufficiently involved to provoke the
interpolations of the scribes, and it certainly contained all the weird
and shifting apparitions which we find so hard to make clear to
ourselves. The problem, therefore, remains—how one who had gift of
speech, so straight and clear, came to torture and tangle his style;
how one who presented with all plainness the main issues of his
people’s history found it laid upon him to invent, for the further
expression of these, symbols so laboured and intricate.
We begin with the oracle, which opens his book and illustrates those
simple characteristics of the man that contrast so sharply with the
temper of his Visions.
_In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of Jehovah
came to the prophet Zechariah, son of Berekhyah, son of Iddo,[770]
saying: Jehovah was very wroth[771] with your fathers. And thou shalt
say unto them: Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: Turn ye to Me—oracle of
Jehovah of Hosts—that I may turn to you, saith Jehovah of Hosts! Be not
like your fathers, to whom the former prophets preached, saying: “Thus
saith Jehovah of Hosts, Turn now from your evil ways and from[772] your
evil deeds,” but they hearkened not, and paid no attention to Me—oracle
of Jehovah. Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they
live for ever? But[773] My words and My statutes, with which I charged
My servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers? till
these turned and said, As Jehovah of Hosts did purpose to do unto us,
according to our deeds and according to our ways, so hath He dealt with
us._
It is a sign of the new age which we have reached, that its prophet
should appeal to the older prophets with as much solemnity as they
did to Moses himself. The history which led to the Exile has become
to Israel as classic and sacred as her great days of deliverance from
Egypt and of conquest in Canaan. But still more significant is what
Zechariah seeks from that past; this we must carefully discover, if we
would appreciate with exactness his rank as a prophet.
The development of religion may be said to consist of a struggle
between two tempers, both of which indeed appeal to the past, but from
very opposite motives. The one proves its devotion to the older
prophets by adopting the exact formulas of their doctrine, counts these
sacred to the letter, and would enforce them in detail upon the minds
and circumstances of the new generation. It conceives that truth has
been promulgated once for all in forms as enduring as the principles
they contain. It fences ancient rites, cherishes old customs and
institutions, and when these are questioned it becomes alarmed and even
savage. The other temper is no whit behind this one in its devotion to
the past, but it seeks the ancient prophets not so much for what they
have said as for what they have been, not for what they enforced but
for what they encountered, suffered and confessed. It asks not for
dogmas but for experience and testimony. He who can thus read the past
and interpret it to his own day—he is the prophet. In his reading he
finds nothing so clear, nothing so tragic, nothing so convincing as the
working of the Word of God. He beholds how this came to men, haunted
them and was entreated by them. He sees that it was their great
opportunity, which being rejected became their judgment. He finds
abused justice vindicated, proud wrong punished, and all God’s
neglected commonplaces achieving in time their triumph. He reads how
men came to see this, and to confess their guilt. He is haunted by the
remorse of generations who know how they might have obeyed the Divine
call, but wilfully did not. And though they have perished, and the
prophets have died and their formulas are no more applicable, the
victorious Word itself still lives and cries to men with the terrible
emphasis of their fathers’ experience. All this is the vision of the
true prophet, and it was the vision of Zechariah.
His generation was one whose chief temptation was to adopt towards
the past the other attitude we have described. In their feebleness
what could the poor remnant of Israel do but cling servilely to the
former greatness? The vindication of the Exile had stamped the Divine
authority of the earlier prophets. The habits, which the life in
Babylon had perfected, of arranging and codifying the literature of
the past, and of employing it, in place of altar and ritual, in the
stated service of God, had canonised Scripture and provoked men to
the worship of its very letter. Had the real prophet not again been
raised, these habits might have too early produced the belief that the
Word of God was exhausted, and must have fastened upon the feeble life
of Israel that mass of stiff and stark dogmas, the literal application
of which Christ afterwards found crushing the liberty and the force of
religion. Zechariah prevented this—for a time. He himself was mighty
in the Scriptures of the past: no man in Israel makes larger use of
them. But he employs them as witnesses, not as dogmas; he finds in them
not authority, but experience.[774] He reads their testimony to the
ever-living presence of God’s Word with men. And seeing that, though
the old forms and figures have perished with the hearts which shaped
them, the Word itself in its bare truth has vindicated its life by
fulfilment in history, he knows that it lives still, and hurls it upon
his people, not in the forms published by this or that prophet of long
ago, but in its essence and direct from God Himself, as His Word for
to-day and now. _The fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they
live for ever? But My words and My statutes, with which I charged My
servants the prophets, have they not overtaken your fathers? Thus saith
Jehovah of Hosts, Be ye not like your fathers, but turn ye to Me that I
may turn to you._
The argument of this oracle might very naturally have been narrowed
into a credential for the prophet himself as sent from God. About his
reception as Jehovah’s messenger Zechariah shows a repeated anxiety.
Four times he concludes a prediction with the words, _And ye shall know
that Jehovah hath sent me_,[775] as if after his first utterances he
had encountered that suspicion and unbelief which a prophet never
failed to suffer from his contemporaries. But in this oracle there is
no trace of such personal anxiety. The oracle is pervaded only with the
desire to prove the ancient Word of God as still alive, and to drive it
home in its own sheer force. Like the greatest of his order, Zechariah
appears with the call to repent: _Turn ye to Me—oracle of Jehovah of
Hosts—that I may turn to you_. This is the pivot on which history has
turned, the one condition on which God has been able to help men.
Wherever it is read as the conclusion of all the past, wherever it is
proclaimed as the conscience of the present, there the true prophet is
found and the Word of God has been spoken.
The same possession by the ethical spirit reappears, as we shall see,
in Zechariah’s orations to the people after the anxieties of building
are over and the completion of the Temple is in sight. In these he
affirms again that the whole essence of God’s Word by the older
prophets has been moral—to judge true judgment, to practise mercy, to
defend the widow and orphan, the stranger and poor, and to think no
evil of one another. For the sad fasts of the Exile Zechariah enjoins
gladness, with the duty of truth and the hope of peace. Again and again
he enforces sincerity and the love without dissimulation. His ideals
for Jerusalem are very high, including the conversion of the nations to
her God. But warlike ambitions have vanished from them, and
his pictures of her future condition are homely and practical.
Jerusalem shall be no more a fortress, but spread village-wise without
walls.[776] Full families, unlike the present colony with its few
children and its men worn out in middle life by harassing warfare with
enemies and a sullen nature; streets rife with children playing and
old folk sitting in the sun; the return of the exiles; happy harvests
and springtimes of peace; solid gain of labour for every man, with no
raiding neighbours to harass, nor the mutual envies of peasants in
their selfish struggle with famine.
It is a simple, hearty, practical man whom such prophesying reveals,
the spirit of him bent on justice and love, and yearning for the
unharassed labour of the field and for happy homes. No prophet has more
beautiful sympathies, a more direct word of righteousness, or a braver
heart. _Fast not, but love truth and peace. Truth and wholesome justice
set ye up in your gates. Be not afraid; strengthen your hands! Old men
and women shall yet sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in
hand for the fulness of their years; the city’s streets shall be rife
with boys and girls at play._
FOOTNOTES:
[757] זֶכֶרְיָה; LXX. Ζαχαρίας.
[758] i. 1: בֶּן־בֶרֶכְיָה בֶּן־עִדּוֹ. In i. 7: בֶּרֶכְיָהוּ
בֶּן־עִדּוֹא.
[759] Ezra v. 1, vi. 14: בַּר־עִדּוֹא.
[760] Gen. xxiv. 47, cf. xxix. 5; 1 Kings xix. 16, cf. 2 Kings ix. 14,
20.
[761] Isa. viii. 2: בֶּן־יְבֶרֶכְיָהוּ. This confusion, which existed
in early Jewish and Christian times, Knobel, Von Ortenberg, Bleek,
Wellhausen and others take to be due to the effort to find a second
Zechariah for the authorship of chaps. ix. ff.
[762] So Vatke, König and many others. Marti prefers it (_Der Prophet
Sacharja_, p. 58). See also Ryle on Ezra v. 1.
[763] Neh. xii. 4.
[764] _Ib._ 16.
[765] This is not proved, as Pusey, König (_Einl._, p. 364) and others
think, by נַעַר, or young man, of the Third Vision (ii. 8 Heb., ii. 4
LXX. and Eng.). Cf. Wright, _Zechariah and his Prophecies_, p. xvi.
[766] v. 1, vi. 14.
[767] Above, p. 260.
[768] More than this we do not know of Zechariah. The Jewish and
Christian traditions of him are as unfounded as those of other
prophets. According to the Jews he was, of course, a member of the
mythical Great Synagogue. See above on Haggai, pp. 232 f. As in the
case of the prophets we have already treated, the Christian traditions
of Zechariah are found in (Pseud-)Epiphanius, _De Vitis Prophetarum_,
Dorotheus, and Hesychius, as quoted above, p. 80. They amount to this,
that Zechariah, after predicting in Babylon the birth of Zerubbabel,
and to Cyrus his victory over Crœsus and his treatment of the Jews,
came in his old age to Jerusalem, prophesied, died and was buried near
Beit-Jibrin—another instance of the curious relegation by Christian
tradition of the birth and burial places of so many of the prophets to
that neighbourhood. Compare Beit-Zakharya, 12 miles from Beit-Jibrin.
Hesychius says he was born in Gilead. Dorotheus confuses him, as the
Jews did, with Zechariah of Isa. viii. 1. See above, p. 265, n. 1.
Zechariah was certainly not the Zechariah whom our Lord describes as
slain between the Temple and the Altar (Matt. xxiii. 35; Luke xi.
51). In the former passage alone is this Zechariah called the son of
Barachiah. In the _Evang. Nazar._ Jerome read _the son of Yehoyada_.
Both readings may be insertions. According to 2 Chron. xxiv. 21, in the
reign of Joash, Zechariah, the son of Yehoyada the priest, was stoned
in the court of the Temple, and according to Josephus (IV. _Wars_, v.
4), in the year 68 A.D. Zechariah son of Baruch was assassinated in the
Temple by two zealots. The latter murder may, as Marti remarks (pp. 58
f.), have led to the insertion of Barachiah into Matt. xxiii. 35.
[769] ii. 13, 15; iv. 9; vi. 15.
[770] LXX. Ἀδδω. See above, p. 264.
[771] Heb. _angered with anger_; Gr. _with great anger_.
[772] As in LXX.
[773] LXX. has misunderstood and expanded this verse.
[774] It is to be noticed that Zechariah appeals to the Torah of the
prophets, and does not mention any Torah of the priests. Cf. Smend, _A.
T. Rel. Gesch._, pp. 176 f.
[775] Page 267, n. 769.
[776] This picture is given in one of the Visions: the Third.
CHAPTER XXI
_THE VISIONS OF ZECHARIAH_
ZECHARIAH i. 7—vi.
The Visions of Zechariah do not lack those large and simple views
of religion which we have just seen to be the charm of his other
prophecies. Indeed it is among the Visions that we find the most
spiritual of all his utterances:[777] _Not by might, and not by force,
but by My Spirit, saith Jehovah of Hosts_. The Visions express the need
of the Divine forgiveness, emphasise the reality of sin, as a principle
deeper than the civic crimes in which it is manifested, and declare the
power of God to banish it from His people. The Visions also contain
the remarkable prospect of Jerusalem as the City of Peace, her only
wall the Lord Himself.[778] The overthrow of the heathen empires is
predicted by the Lord’s own hand, and from all the Visions there are
absent both the turmoil and the glory of war.
We must also be struck by the absence of another element, which is a
cause of complexity in the writings of many prophets—the polemic
against idolatry. Zechariah nowhere mentions the idols. We have already
seen what proof this silence bears for the fact that the community to
which he spoke was not that half-heathen remnant of Israel which had
remained in the land, but was composed of worshippers of Jehovah who at
His word had returned from Babylon.[779] Here we have only to do with
the bearing of the fact upon Zechariah’s style. That bewildering
confusion of the heathen pantheon and its rites, which forms so much of
our difficulty in interpreting some of the prophecies of Ezekiel and
the closing chapters of the Book of Isaiah, is not to blame for any of
the complexity of Zechariah’s Visions.
Nor can we attribute the latter to the fact that the Visions are
dreams, and therefore bound to be more involved and obscure than the
words of Jehovah which came to Zechariah in the open daylight of his
people’s public life. In chaps. i. 7—vi. we have not the narrative of
actual dreams, but a series of conscious and artistic allegories—the
deliberate translation into a carefully constructed symbolism of the
Divine truths with which the prophet was entrusted by his God. Yet this
only increases our problem—why a man with such gifts of direct speech,
and such clear views of his people’s character and history, should
choose to express the latter by an imagery so artificial and involved?
In his orations Zechariah is very like the prophets whom we have known
before the Exile, thoroughly ethical and intent upon the public
conscience of his time. He appreciates what they were, feels himself
standing in their succession, and is endowed both with their spirit and
their style. But none of them constructs the elaborate allegories which
he does, or insists upon the religious symbolism which he enforces as
indispensable to the standing of Israel with God. Not only are their
visions few and simple, but they look down upon the visionary temper as
a rude stage of prophecy and inferior to their own, in which the Word
of God is received by personal communion with Himself, and conveyed to
His people by straight and plain words. Some of the earlier prophets
even condemn all priesthood and ritual; none of them regards these as
indispensable to Israel’s right relations with Jehovah; and none
employs those superhuman mediators of the Divine truth, by whom
Zechariah is instructed in his Visions.
1. THE INFLUENCES WHICH MOULDED THE VISIONS.
The explanation of this change that has come over prophecy must be
sought for in certain habits which the people formed in exile. During
the Exile several causes conspired to develop among Hebrew writers
the tempers both of symbolism and apocalypse. The chief of these was
their separation from the realities of civic life, with the opportunity
their political leisure afforded them of brooding and dreaming.
Facts and Divine promises, which had previously to be dealt with
by the conscience of the moment, were left to be worked out by the
imagination. The exiles were not responsible citizens or statesmen,
but dreamers. They were inspired by mighty hopes for the future, and
not fettered by the practical necessities of a definite historical
situation upon which these hopes had to be immediately realised. They
had a far-off horizon to build upon, and they occupied the whole
breadth of it. They had a long time to build, and they elaborated the
minutest details of their architecture. Consequently their construction
of the future of Israel, and their description of the processes by
which it was to be reached, became colossal, ornate and lavishly
symbolic. Nor could the exiles fail to receive stimulus for all this
from the rich imagery of Babylonian art by which they were surrounded.
Under these influences there were three strong developments in Israel.
One was that development of Apocalypse the first beginnings of which we
traced in Zephaniah—the representation of God’s providence of the world
and of His people, not by the ordinary political and military processes
of history, but by awful convulsions and catastrophes, both in nature
and in politics, in which God Himself appeared, either alone in sudden
glory or by the mediation of heavenly armies. The second—and it was but
a part of the first—was the development of a belief in Angels:
superhuman beings who had not only a part to play in the apocalyptic
wars and revolutions; but, in the growing sense, which characterises
the period, of God’s distance and awfulness, were believed to act as
His agents in the communication of His Word to men. And, thirdly, there
was the development of the Ritual. To some minds this may appear the
strangest of all the effects of the Exile. The fall of the Temple, its
hierarchy and sacrifices, might be supposed to enforce more spiritual
conceptions of God and of His communion with His people. And no doubt
it did. The impossibility of the legal sacrifices in exile opened the
mind of Israel to the belief that God was satisfied with the sacrifices
of the broken heart, and drew near, without mediation, to all who were
humble and pure of heart. But no one in Israel therefore understood
that these sacrifices were for ever abolished. Their interruption was
regarded as merely temporary even by the most spiritual of Jewish
writers. The Fifty-First Psalm, for instance, which declares that _the
sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O
Lord, Thou wilt not despise_, immediately follows this declaration by
the assurance that _when God builds again the walls of Jerusalem_, He
will once more take delight in _the legal sacrifices: burnt offering
and whole burnt offering, the oblation of bullocks upon Thine
altar_.[780] For men of such views the ruin of the Temple was not its
abolition with the whole dispensation which it represented, but rather
the occasion for its reconstruction upon wider lines and a more
detailed system, for the planning of which the nation’s exile afforded
the leisure and the carefulness of art described above. The ancient
liturgy, too, was insufficient for the stronger convictions of guilt
and need of purgation, which sore punishment had impressed upon the
people. Then, scattered among the heathen as they were, they learned to
require stricter laws and more drastic ceremonies to restore and
preserve their holiness. Their ritual, therefore, had to be expanded
and detailed to a degree far beyond what we find in Israel’s earlier
systems of worship. With the fall of the monarchy and the absence of
civic life the importance of the priesthood was proportionately
enhanced; and the growing sense of God’s aloofness from the world,
already alluded to, made the more indispensable human, as well as
superhuman, mediators between Himself and His people. Consider these
things, and it will be clear why prophecy, which with Amos had begun a
war against all ritual, and with Jeremiah had achieved a religion
absolutely independent of priesthood and Temple, should reappear after
the Exile, insistent upon the building of the Temple, enforcing the
need both of priesthood and sacrifice, and while it proclaimed the
Messianic King and the High Priest as the great feeders of the national
life and worship, finding no place beside them for the Prophet
himself.[781]
The force of these developments of Apocalypse, Angelology and the
Ritual appears both in Ezekiel and in the exilic codification of the
ritual which forms so large a part of the Pentateuch. Ezekiel carries
Apocalypse far beyond the beginnings started by Zephaniah. He
introduces, though not under the name of angels, superhuman mediators
between himself and God. The Priestly Code does not mention angels, and
has no Apocalypse; but like Ezekiel it develops, to an extraordinary
degree, the ritual of Israel. Both its author and Ezekiel base on the
older forms, but build as men who are not confined by the lines of an
actually existing system. The changes they make, the innovations they
introduce, are too numerous to mention here. To illustrate their
influence upon Zechariah, it is enough to emphasise the large place
they give in the ritual to the processes of propitiation and cleansing
from sin, and the increased authority with which they invest the
priesthood. In Ezekiel Israel has still a Prince, though he is not
called King. He arranges the cultus,[782] and sacrifices are offered
for him and the people,[783] but the priests teach and judge the
people.[784] In the Priestly Code[785] the priesthood is more
rigorously fenced than by Ezekiel from the laity, and more regularly
graded. At its head appears a High Priest (as he does not in Ezekiel),
and by his side the civil rulers are portrayed in lesser dignity and
power. Sacrifices are made, no longer as with Ezekiel for Prince and
People, but for Aaron and the Congregation; and throughout the
narrative of ancient history, into the form of which this Code projects
its legislation, the High Priest stands above the captain of the host,
even when the latter is Joshua himself. God’s enemies are defeated not
so much by the wisdom and valour of the secular powers, as by the
miracles of Jehovah Himself, mediated through the priesthood. Ezekiel
and the Priestly Code both elaborate the sacrifices of atonement and
sanctification beyond all the earlier uses.
2. GENERAL FEATURES OF THE VISIONS.
It was beneath these influences that Zechariah grew up, and to them we
may trace, not only numerous details of his Visions, but the whole of
their involved symbolism. He was himself a priest and the son of a
priest, born and bred in the very order to which we owe the
codification of the ritual, and the development of those ideas of guilt
and uncleanness that led to its expansion and specialisation. The
Visions in which he deals with these are the Third to the Seventh. As
with Haggai there is a High Priest, in advance upon Ezekiel and in
agreement with the Priestly Code. As in the latter the High Priest
represents the people, and carries their guilt before God.[786] He and
his colleagues are pledges and portents of the coming Messiah. But the
civil power is not yet diminished before the sacerdotal, as in the
Priestly Code. We shall find indeed that a remarkable attempt has been
made to alter the original text of a prophecy appended to the
Visions,[787] in order to divert to the High Priest the coronation and
Messianic rank there described. But any one who reads the passage
carefully can see for himself that the crown (a single crown, as the
verb which it governs proves[788]) which Zechariah was ordered to make
was designed for Another than the priest, that the priest was but to
stand at this Other’s right hand, and that there was to be concord
between the two of them. This Other can only have been the Messianic
King, Zerubbabel, as was already proclaimed by Haggai.[789] The altered
text is due to a later period, when the High Priest became the civil as
well as the religious head of the community. To Zechariah he was still
only the right hand of the monarch in government; but, as we have seen,
the religious life of the people was already gathered up and
concentrated in him. It is the priests, too, who by their perpetual
service and holy life bring on the Messianic era.[790] Men come to the
Temple to propitiate Jehovah, for which Zechariah uses the
anthropomorphic expression _to make smooth_ or _placid His face_.[791]
No more than this is made of the sacrificial system, which was not in
full course when the Visions were announced. But the symbolism of the
Fourth Vision is drawn from the furniture of the Temple. It is
interesting that the great candelabrum seen by the prophet should be
like, not the ten lights of the old Temple of Solomon, but the
seven-branched candlestick described in the Priestly Code. In the Sixth
and Seventh Visions, the strong convictions of guilt and uncleanness,
which were engendered in Israel by the Exile, are not removed by the
sacrificial means enforced in the Priestly Code, but by symbolic
processes in the style of the visions of Ezekiel.
The Visions in which Zechariah treats of the outer history of the world
are the first two and the last, and in these we notice the influence of
the Apocalypse developed during the Exile. In Zechariah’s day Israel
had no stage for their history save the site of Jerusalem and its
immediate neighbourhood. So long as he keeps to this Zechariah is as
practical and matter-of-fact as any of the prophets, but when he has to
go beyond it to describe the general overthrow of the heathen, he is
unable to project that, as Amos or Isaiah did, in terms of historic
battle, and has to call in the apocalyptic. A people such as that poor
colony of exiles, with no issue upon history, is forced to take refuge
in Apocalypse, and carries with it even those of its prophets whose
conscience, like Zechariah’s, is most strongly bent upon the practical
present. Consequently these three historical Visions are the most vague
of the eight. They reveal the whole earth under the care of Jehovah and
the patrol of His angels. They definitely predict the overthrow of the
heathen empires. But, unlike Amos or Isaiah, the prophet does not see
by what political movements this is to be effected. The world _is_
still _quiet and at peace_.[792] The time is hidden in the Divine
counsels; the means, though clearly symbolised in _four smiths_ who
come forward to smite the horns of the heathen,[793] and in a chariot
which carries God’s wrath to the North,[794] are obscure. The prophet
appears to have intended, not any definite individuals or political
movements of the immediate future, but God’s own supernatural forces.
In other words, the Smiths and Chariots are not an allegory of history,
but powers apocalyptic. The forms of the symbols were derived by
Zechariah from different sources. Perhaps that of the _smiths_ who
destroy the horns in the Second Vision was suggested by the _smiths of
destruction_ threatened upon Ammon by Ezekiel.[795] In the horsemen of
the First Vision and the chariots of the Eighth, Ewald sees a
reflection of the couriers and posts which Darius organised throughout
the empire; they are more probably, as we shall see, a reflection of
the military bands and patrols of the Persians. But from whatever
quarter Zechariah derived the exact aspect of these Divine messengers,
he found many precedents for them in the native beliefs of Israel. They
are, in short, angels, incarnate as Hebrew angels always were, and in
fashion like men. But this brings up the whole subject of the angels,
whom he also sees employed as the mediators of God’s Word to him; and
that is large enough to be left to a chapter by itself.[796]
We have now before us all the influences which led Zechariah to the
main form and chief features of his Visions.
3. EXPOSITION OF THE SEVERAL VISIONS.
For all the Visions there is one date, _in the twenty-fourth day of the
eleventh month, the month Shebat, in the second year of Darius_, that
is January or February 519; and one Divine impulse, _the Word of
Jehovah came to the prophet Zekharyah, son of Berekhyahu, son of Iddo,
as follows_.
THE FIRST VISION: THE ANGEL-HORSEMEN (i. 7-17).
The seventy years which Jeremiah had fixed for the duration of the
Babylonian servitude were drawing to a close. Four months had elapsed
since Haggai promised that in a little while God would shake all
nations.[797] But the world was not shaken: there was no political
movement which promised to restore her glory to Jerusalem. A very
natural disappointment must have been the result among the Jews.
In this situation of affairs the Word came to Zechariah, and both
situation and Word he expressed by his First Vision.
It was one of the myrtle-covered glens in the neighbourhood of
Jerusalem:[798] Zechariah calls it _the_ Glen or Valley-Bottom, either
because it was known under that name to the Jews, or because he was
himself wont to frequent it for prayer. He discovers in it what seems
to be a rendezvous of Persian cavalry-scouts,[799] the leader of the
troop in front, and the rest behind him, having just come in with their
reports. Soon, however, he is made aware that they are angels, and with
that quick, dissolving change both of function and figure, which marks
all angelic apparitions,[800] they explain to him their mission. Now it
is an angel-interpreter at his side who speaks, and now the angel on
the front horse. They are scouts of God come in from their survey of
the whole earth. The world lies quiet. Whereupon _the angel of Jehovah_
asks Him how long His anger must rest on Jerusalem and nothing be done
to restore her; and the prophet hears a kind and comforting answer. The
nations have done more evil to Israel than God empowered them to do.
Their aggravations have changed His wrath against her to pity, and in
pity He is come back to her. She shall soon be rebuilt and overflow
with prosperity. The only perplexity in all this is the angels’ report
that the whole earth lies quiet. How this could have been in 519 is
difficult to understand. The great revolts against Darius were then in
active progress, the result was uncertain and he took at least three
more years to put them all down. They were confined, it is true, to the
east and north-east of the empire, but some of them threatened Babylon,
and we can hardly ascribe the report of the angels to such a limitation
of the Jews’ horizon at this time as shut out Mesopotamia or the lands
to the north of her. There remain two alternatives. Either these
far-away revolts made only more impressive the stagnancy of the tribes
of the rest of the empire, and the helplessness of the Jews and their
Syrian neighbours was convincingly shown by their inability to take
advantage even of the desperate straits to which Darius was reduced; or
else in that month of vision Darius had quelled one of the rebellions
against him, and for the moment there was quiet in the world.
_By night I had a vision, and behold! a man riding a brown horse,[801]
and he was standing between the myrtles that are in the Glen;[802] and
behind him horses brown, bay[803] and white. And I said, What are
these, my lord? And the angel who talked with me said, I will show you
what these are. And the man who was standing among the myrtles answered
and said, These are they whom Jehovah hath sent to go to and fro
through the earth. And they answered the angel of Jehovah who stood
among the myrtles,[804] and said, We have gone up and down through the
earth, and lo! the whole earth is still and at peace.[805] And the
angel of Jehovah answered and said, Jehovah of Hosts, how long hast
Thou no pity for Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with which[806]
Thou hast been wroth these seventy years? And Jehovah answered the
angel who talked with me,[807] kind words and comforting. And the angel
who talked with me said to me, Proclaim now as follows: Thus saith
Jehovah of Hosts, I am zealous for Jerusalem and for Zion, with a great
zeal; but with great wrath am I wroth against the arrogant Gentiles.
For I was but a little angry_ with Israel, _but they aggravated the
evil.[808] Therefore thus saith Jehovah, I am returned to Jerusalem
with mercies. My house shall be built in her—oracle of Jehovah of
Hosts—and the measuring line shall be drawn over Jerusalem. Proclaim
yet again, saying: Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts, My cities shall yet
overflow with prosperity, and Jehovah shall again comfort Zion, and
again make choice of Jerusalem._.
Two things are to be noted in this oracle. No political movement is
indicated as the means of Jerusalem’s restoration: this is to be the
effect of God’s free grace in returning to dwell in Jerusalem, which is
the reward of the building of the Temple. And there is an interesting
explanation of the motive for God’s new grace: in executing His
sentence upon Israel, the heathen had far exceeded their commission,
and now themselves deserved punishment. That is to say, the restoration
of Jerusalem and the resumption of the worship are not enough for the
future of Israel. The heathen must be chastised. But Zechariah does not
predict any overthrow of the world’s power, either by earthly or by
heavenly forces. This is entirely in harmony with the insistence upon
peace which distinguishes him from other prophets.
THE SECOND VISION: THE FOUR HORNS AND THE
FOUR SMITHS (ii. 1-4 Heb., i. 18-21 Eng.).
The Second Vision supplies what is lacking in the First, the
destruction of the tyrants who have oppressed Israel. The prophet sees
four horns, which, he is told by his interpreting angel, are the powers
that have scattered Judah. The many attempts to identify these with
four heathen nations are ingenious but futile. “_Four_ horns were seen
as representing the totality of Israel’s enemies—her enemies from all
quarters.”[809] And to destroy these horns four smiths appear. Because
in the Vision the horns are of iron, in Israel an old symbol of power,
the first verb used of the action can hardly be, as in the Hebrew text,
to terrify. The Greek reads _sharpen_, and probably some verb meaning
_to cut_ or _chisel_ stood in the original.[810]
_And I lifted mine eyes and looked, and lo! four horns. And I said to
the angel who spoke with me, What are these? And he said to me, These
are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel and Jerusalem.[811]
And Jehovah showed me four smiths. And I said, What are these coming to
do? And He spake, saying, These are the horns which scattered Judah, so
that none lifted up his head;[812] and these are come to ...[813] them,
to strike down the horns of the nations, that lifted the horn against
the land of Judah to scatter it._
THE THIRD VISION: THE CITY OF PEACE (ii. 5-9 Heb., ii. 1-5 Eng.).
Like the Second Vision, the Third follows from the First, another, but
a still more significant, supplement. The First had promised the
rebuilding of Jerusalem, and now the prophet beholds _a young man_—by
this term he probably means _a servant_ or _apprentice_—who is
attempting to define the limits of the new city. In the light of what
this attempt encounters, there can be little doubt that the prophet
means to symbolise by it the intention of building the walls upon the
old lines, so as to make Jerusalem again the mountain fortress she had
previously been. Some have considered that the young man goes forth
only to see, or to show, the extent of the city in the approaching
future. But if this had been his motive, there would have been no
reason in interrupting him with other orders. The point is, that he has
narrow ideas of what the city should be, and is prepared to define it
upon its old lines of a fortress. For the interpreting angel who _comes
forward_[814] is told by another angel to run and tell the young man
that in the future Jerusalem shall be a large unwalled town, and this,
not only because of the multitude of its population, for even then it
might still have been fortified like Niniveh, but because Jehovah
Himself shall be its wall. The young man is prevented, not merely from
making it small, but from making it a citadel. And this is in
conformity with all the singular absence of war from Zechariah’s
Visions, both of the future deliverance of Jehovah’s people and of
their future duties before Him. It is indeed remarkable how Zechariah
not only develops none of the warlike elements of earlier Messianic
prophecies, but tells us here of how God Himself actually prevented
their repetition, and insists again and again only on those elements of
ancient prediction which had filled the future of Israel with peace.
_And I lifted mine eyes and looked, and lo! a man with a measuring rope
in his hand. So I said, Whither art thou going? And he said to me, To
measure Jerusalem: to see how much its breadth and how much its length
should be. And lo! the angel who talked with me came forward,[815] and
another angel came forward to meet him. And he said to him, Run and
speak to yonder young man thus:_ Like _a number of open villages shall
Jerusalem remain, because of the multitude of men and cattle in the
midst of her. And I Myself will be to her—oracle of Jehovah—a wall of
fire round about, and for glory will I be in her midst._
In this Vision Zechariah gives us, with his prophecy, a lesson in the
interpretation of prophecy. His contemporaries believed God’s promise
to rebuild Jerusalem, but they defined its limits by the conditions of
an older and a narrower day. They brought forth their measuring rods,
to measure the future by the sacred attainments of the past. Such
literal fulfilment of His Word God prevented by that ministry of angels
which Zechariah beheld. He would not be bound by those forms which His
Word had assumed in suitableness to the needs of ruder generations. The
ideal of many of the returned exiles must have been that frowning
citadel, those gates of everlastingness,[816] which some of them
celebrated in Psalms, and from which the hosts of Sennacherib had been
broken and swept back as the angry sea is swept from the fixed line of
Canaan’s coast.[817] What had been enough for David and Isaiah was
enough for them, especially as so many prophets of the Lord had
foretold a Messianic Jerusalem that should be a counterpart of the
historical. But God breaks the letter of His Word to give its spirit a
more glorious fulfilment. Jerusalem shall not _be builded as a city
that is compact together_,[818] but open and spread abroad village-wise
upon her high mountains, and God Himself her only wall.
The interest of this Vision is therefore not only historical. For
ourselves it has an abiding doctrinal value. It is a lesson in the
method of applying prophecy to the future. How much it is needed
we must feel as we remember the readiness of men among ourselves
to construct the Church of God upon the lines His own hand drew
for our fathers, and to raise again the bulwarks behind which they
sufficiently sheltered His shrine. Whether these ancient and sacred
defences be dogmas or institutions, we have no right, God tells us, to
cramp behind them His powers for the future. And the great men whom
He raises to remind us of this, and to prevent by their ministry the
timid measurements of the zealous but servile spirits who would confine
everything to the exact letter of ancient Scripture—are they any less
His angels to us than those ministering spirits whom Zechariah beheld
preventing the narrow measures of the poor apprentice of his dream?
To the Third Vision there has been appended the only lyrical piece
which breaks the prose narrative of the Visions. We have already seen
that it is a piece of earlier date. Israel is addressed as still
scattered to the four winds of heaven, and still inhabiting Babylon.
While in Zechariah’s own oracles and visions Jehovah has returned to
Jerusalem, His return according to this piece is still future. There
is nothing about the Temple: God’s holy dwelling from which He has
roused Himself is Heaven. The piece was probably inserted by Zechariah
himself: its lines are broken by what seems to be a piece of prose,
in which the prophet asserts his mission, in words he twice uses
elsewhere. But this is uncertain.
_Ho, ho! Flee from the Land of the North (oracle of Jehovah);
For as the four winds have I spread you abroad[819] (oracle
of Jehovah).
Ho! to Zion escape, thou inhabitress of Babel._[820]
_For thus saith Jehovah of Hosts[821] to the nations that plunder you
(for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of His eye), that, lo! I
am about to wave My hand over them, and they shall be plunder to their
own servants, and ye shall know that Jehovah of Hosts hath sent me._
_Sing out and rejoice, O daughter of Zion;
For, lo! I come, and will dwell in thy midst (oracle
of Jehovah).
And many nations shall join themselves to Jehovah in that day,
And shall be to Him[822] a people.
And I will dwell in thy midst
(And thou shalt know that Jehovah of Hosts hath sent me to thee).
And Jehovah will make Judah His heritage,
His portion shall be upon holy soil,
And make choice once more of Jerusalem.
Silence, all flesh, before Jehovah;[823]
For He hath roused Himself up from His holy dwelling._
THE FOURTH VISION: THE HIGH PRIEST AND THE
SATAN (Chap. iii.).
The next Visions deal with the moral condition of Israel and their
standing before God. The Fourth is a judgment scene. The Angel of
Jehovah, who is not to be distinguished from Jehovah Himself,[824]
stands for judgment, and there appear before him Joshua the High Priest
and the Satan or Adversary who has come to accuse him. Now those who
are accused by the Satan—see next chapter of this volume upon the
Angels of the Visions—are, according to Jewish belief, those who have
been overtaken by misfortune. The people who are standing at God’s bar
in the person of their High Priest still suffer from the adversity in
which Haggai found them, and the continuance of which so disheartened
them after the Temple had begun. The evil seasons and poor harvests
tormented their hearts with the thought that the Satan still slandered
them in the court of God. But Zechariah comforts them with the vision
of the Satan rebuked. Israel has indeed been sorely beset by calamity,
a brand much burned, but now of God’s grace plucked from the fire. The
Satan’s role is closed, and he disappears from the Vision.[825] Yet
something remains: Israel is rescued, but not sanctified. The nation’s
troubles are over: their uncleanness has still to be removed. Zechariah
sees that the High Priest is clothed in filthy garments, while he
stands before the Angel of Judgment. The Angel orders his servants,
those _that stand before him_,[826] to give him clean festal robes. And
the prophet, breaking out in sympathy with what he sees, for the first
time takes part in the Visions. _Then I said, Let them also put a clean
turban on his head_—the turban being the headdress, in Ezekiel of the
Prince of Israel, and in the Priestly Code of the High Priest.[827]
This is done, and the national effect of his cleansing is explained to
the High Priest. If he remains loyal to the law of Jehovah, he, the
representative of Israel, shall have right of entry to Jehovah’s
presence among the angels who stand there. But more, he and his
colleagues the priests are a portent of the coming of the Messiah—_the
Servant of Jehovah, the Branch_, as he has been called by many
prophets.[828] A stone has already been set before Joshua, with seven
eyes upon it. God will engrave it with inscriptions, and on the same
day take away the guilt of the land. Then shall be the peace upon which
Zechariah loves to dwell.
_And he showed me Joshua, the high priest, standing before the Angel of
Jehovah, and the Satan[829] standing at his right hand to accuse
him.[830] And Jehovah[831] said to the Satan: Jehovah rebuke thee, O
Satan! Jehovah who makes choice of Jerusalem rebuke thee! Is not this a
brand saved from the fire? But Joshua was clothed in foul garments
while he stood before the Angel. And he_—the Angel—_answered and said
to those who stood in his presence, Take the foul garments from off him
(and he said to him, See, I have made thy guilt to pass away from
thee),[832] and clothe him[833] in fresh clothing. And I said,[834] Let
them put a clean turban[835] on his head. And they put the clean turban
upon his head, and clothed him with garments, the Angel of Jehovah
standing up_ the while.[836] _And the Angel of Jehovah certified unto
Joshua, saying: Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts, If in My ways thou
walkest, and if My charges thou keepest in charge, then thou also shall
judge My house, and have charge of My courts, and I will give thee
entry[837] among these who stand in My presence. Hearken now, O Joshua,
high priest, thou and thy fellows who sit before thee are men of omen,
that, lo! I am about to bring My servant, Branch. For see the stone
which I have set before Joshua, one stone with seven eyes.[838] Lo, I
will etch the engraving upon it (oracle of Jehovah), and I will wash
away the guilt of that land in one day. In that day (oracle of Jehovah
of Hosts) ye will invite one another in under vine and under fig-tree._
The theological significance of the Vision is as clear as its
consequences in the subsequent theology and symbolism of Judaism. The
uncleanness of Israel which infests their representative before God is
not defined. Some[839] hold that it includes the guilt of Israel’s
idolatry. But they have to go back to Ezekiel for this, and we have
seen that Zechariah nowhere mentions or feels the presence of idols
among his people. The Vision itself supplies a better explanation.
Joshua’s filthy garments are replaced by festal and official robes. He
is warned to walk in the whole law of the Lord, ruling the Temple and
guarding Jehovah’s court. The uncleanness was the opposite of all this.
It was not ethical failure: covetousness, greed, immorality. It was, as
Haggai protested, the neglect of the Temple, and of the whole worship
of Jehovah. If this be now removed, in all fidelity to the law, the
High Priest shall have access to God, and the Messiah will come. The
High Priest himself shall not be the Messiah—this dogma is left to a
later age to frame. But before God he will be as one of the angels, and
himself and his faithful priesthood omens of the Messiah. We need not
linger on the significance of this for the place of the priesthood in
later Judaism. Note how the High Priest is already the religious
representative of his people: their uncleanness is his; when he is
pardoned and cleansed, _the uncleanness of the land_ is purged away. In
such a High Priest Christian theology has seen the prototype of Christ.
The stone is very difficult to explain. Some have thought of it as the
foundation-stone of the Temple, which had already been employed as a
symbol of the Messiah and which played so important a part in later
Jewish symbolism.[840] Others prefer the top-stone of the Temple,
mentioned in chap. iv. 7,[841] and others an altar or substitute for
the ark.[842] Again, some take it to be a jewel, either on the
breastplate of the High Priest,[843] or upon the crown afterwards
prepared for Zerubbabel.[844] To all of these there are objections. It
is difficult to connect with the foundation-stone an engraving still to
be made; neither the top-stone of the Temple, nor a jewel on the
breastplate of the priest, nor a jewel on the king’s crown, could
properly be said to be set _before_ the High Priest. We must rather
suppose that the stone is symbolic of the finished Temple.[845] The
Temple is the full expression of God’s providence and care—His _seven
eyes_. Upon it shall His will be engraved, and by its sacrifices the
uncleanness of the land shall be taken away.
THE FIFTH VISION: THE TEMPLE CANDLESTICK AND
THE TWO OLIVE-TREES (Chap. iv.).
As the Fourth Vision unfolded the dignity and significance of the High
Priest, so in the Fifth we find discovered the joint glory of himself
and Zerubbabel, the civil head of Israel. And to this is appended a
Word for Zerubbabel himself. In our present text this Word has become
inserted in the middle of the Vision, vv. 6_b_-10_a_; in the
translation which follows it has been removed to the end of the
Vision, and the reasons for this will be found in the notes.
The Vision is of the great golden lamp which stood in the Temple. In
the former Temple, light was supplied by ten several candlesticks.[846]
But the Levitical Code ordained one seven-branched lamp, and such
appears to have stood in the Temple built while Zechariah was
prophesying.[847] The lamp Zechariah sees has also seven branches, but
differs in other respects, and especially in some curious fantastic
details only possible in dream and symbol. Its seven lights were fed by
seven pipes from a bowl or reservoir of oil which stood higher than
themselves, and this was fed, either directly from two olive-trees
which stood to the right and left of it, or, if ver. 12 be genuine, by
two tubes which brought the oil from the trees. The seven lights are
the seven eyes of Jehovah—if, as we ought, we run the second half of
ver. 10 on to the first half of ver. 6. The pipes and reservoir are
given no symbolic force; but the olive-trees which feed them are called
_the two sons of oil which stand before the Lord of all the earth_.
These can only be the two anointed heads of the community—Zerubbabel,
the civil head, and Joshua, the religious head. Theirs was the equal
and co-ordinate duty of sustaining the Temple, figured by the whole
candelabrum, and ensuring the brightness of the sevenfold revelation.
The Temple, that is to say, is nothing without the monarchy and the
priesthood behind it; and these stand in the immediate presence of God.
Therefore this Vision, which to the superficial eye might seem to be a
glorification of the mere machinery of the Temple and its ritual, is
rather to prove that the latter derive all their power from the
national institutions which are behind them, from the two
representatives of the people who in their turn stand before God
Himself. The Temple so near completion will not of itself reveal God:
let not the Jews put their trust in it, but in the life behind it. And
for ourselves the lesson of the Vision is that which Christian theology
has been so slow to learn, that God’s revelation under the old covenant
shone not directly through the material framework, but was mediated by
the national life, whose chief men stood and grew fruitful in His
presence.
One thing is very remarkable. The two sources of revelation are the
King and the Priest. The Prophet is not mentioned beside them. Nothing
could prove more emphatically the sense in Israel that prophecy was
exhausted.
The appointment of so responsible a position for Zerubbabel demanded
for him a special promise of grace. And therefore, as Joshua had his
promise in the Fourth Vision, we find Zerubbabel’s appended to the
Fifth. It is one of the great sayings of the Old Testament: there is
none more spiritual and more comforting. Zerubbabel shall complete the
Temple, and those who scoffed at its small beginnings in the day of
small things shall frankly rejoice when they see him set the top-stone
by plummet in its place. As the moral obstacles to the future were
removed in the Fourth Vision by the vindication of Joshua and by his
cleansing, so the political obstacles, all the hindrances described by
the Book of Ezra in the building of the Temple, shall disappear.
_Before Zerubbabel the great mountain shall become a plain._ And this,
because he shall not work by his own strength, but the Spirit of
Jehovah of Hosts shall do everything. Again we find that absence of
expectation in human means, and that full trust in God’s own direct
action, which characterise all the prophesying of Zechariah.
_Then the angel who talked with me returned and roused me like a man
roused out of his sleep. And he said to me, What seest thou? And I
said, I see, and lo! a candlestick all of gold, and its bowl upon the
top of it, and its seven lamps on it, and seven[848] pipes to the lamps
which are upon it. And two olive-trees stood over against it, one on
the right of the bowl,[849] and one on the left. And I began[850] and
said to the angel who talked with me,[851] What be these, my lord? And
the angel who talked with me answered and said, Knowest thou not what
these be? And I said, No, my lord! And he answered and said to me,[852]
These seven are the eyes of Jehovah, which sweep through the whole
earth. And I asked and said to him, What are these two olive-trees on
the right of the candlestick and on its left? And again I asked and
said to him, What are the two olive-branches which are beside the two
golden tubes that pour forth the oil[853] from them?[854] And he said
to me, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my lord! And he
said, These are the two sons of oil which stand before the Lord of all
the earth._
_This is Jehovah’s Word to Zerubbabel, and it says:[855] Not by might,
and not by force, but by My Spirit, saith Jehovah of Hosts. What art
thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel be thou level! And he[856]
shall bring forth the top-stone with shoutings, Grace, grace to
it![857] And the Word of Jehovah came to me, saying, The hands of
Zerubbabel have founded this house, and his hands shall complete it,
and thou shall know that Jehovah of Hosts hath sent me to you. For
whoever hath despised the day of small things, they shall rejoice when
they see the plummet[858] in the hand of Zerubbabel._
THE SIXTH VISION: THE WINGED VOLUME (Chap. v. 1-4).
The religious and political obstacles being now removed from the future
of Israel, Zechariah in the next two Visions beholds the land purged of
its crime and wickedness. These Visions are very simple, if somewhat
after the ponderous fashion of Ezekiel.
The first of them is the Vision of the removal of the curse brought
upon the land by its civic criminals, especially thieves and
perjurers—the two forms which crime takes in a poor and rude community
like the colony of the returned exiles. The prophet tells us he beheld
a roll flying. He uses the ordinary Hebrew name for the rolls of skin
or parchment upon which writing was set down. But the proportions of
its colossal size—twenty cubits by ten—prove that it was not a
cylindrical but an oblong shape which he saw. It consisted, therefore,
of sheets laid on each other like our books, and as our word “volume,”
which originally meant, like his own term, a roll, means now an oblong
article, we may use this in our translation. The volume is the record
of the crime of the land, and Zechariah sees it flying from the land.
But it is also the curse upon this crime, and so again he beholds it
entering every thief’s and perjurer’s house and destroying it. Smend
gives a possible explanation of this: “It appears that in ancient times
curses were written on pieces of paper and sent down the wind into the
houses”[859] of those against whom they were directed. But the figure
seems rather to be of birds of prey.
_And I turned and lifted my eyes and looked, and lo! a volume[860]
flying. And he said unto me, What dost thou see? And I said, I see a
volume flying, its length twenty cubits and its breadth ten. And he
said unto me, This is the curse that is going out upon the face of all
the land. For every thief is hereby purged away from hence,[861] and
every perjurer is hereby purged away from hence. I have sent it
forth—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts—and it shall enter the thief’s house,
and the house of him that hath sworn falsely by My name, and it shall
roost[862] in the midst of his house and consume it, with its beams and
its stones._[863]
THE SEVENTH VISION: THE WOMAN IN THE BARREL
(Chap. v. 5-11).
It is not enough that the curse fly from the land after destroying
every criminal. The living principle of sin, the power of temptation,
must be covered up and removed. This is the subject of the Seventh
Vision.
The prophet sees an ephah, the largest vessel in use among the Jews,
of more than seven gallons capacity, and round[864] like a barrel.
Presently the leaden top is lifted, and the prophet sees a woman
inside. This is Wickedness, feminine because she figures the power
of temptation. She is thrust back into the barrel, the leaden lid is
pushed down, and the whole carried off by two other female figures,
winged like the strong, far-flying stork, into the land of Shin‘ar,
“which at that time had the general significance of the counterpart of
the Holy Land,”[865] and was the proper home of all that was evil.
_And the angel of Jehovah who spake with me came forward[866] and said
to me, Lift now thine eyes and see what this is that comes forth. And I
said, What is it? And he said, This is a bushel coming forth. And he
said, This is their transgression[867] in all the land.[868] And
behold! the round leaden _top_ was lifted up, and lo![869] a woman
sitting inside the bushel. And he said, This is the Wickedness, and he
thrust her back into the bushel, and thrust the leaden disc upon the
mouth of it. And I lifted mine eyes and looked, and lo! two women came
forth with the wind in their wings, for they had wings like storks’
wings, and they bore the bushel betwixt earth and heaven. And I said to
the angel that talked with me, Whither do they carry the bushel? And he
said to me, To build it a house in the land of Shin‘ar, that it may be
fixed and brought to rest there on a place of its own._[870]
We must not allow this curious imagery to hide from us its very
spiritual teaching. If Zechariah is weighted in these Visions by the
ponderous fashion of Ezekiel, he has also that prophet’s truly moral
spirit. He is not contented with the ritual atonement for sin, nor with
the legal punishment of crime. The living power of sin must be banished
from Israel; and this cannot be done by any efforts of men themselves,
but by God’s action only, which is thorough and effectual. If the
figures by which this is illustrated appear to us grotesque and heavy,
let us remember how they would suit the imagination of the prophet’s
own day. Let us lay to heart their eternally valid doctrine, that sin
is not a formal curse, nor only expressed in certain social crimes, nor
exhausted by the punishment of these, but, as a power of attraction and
temptation to all men, it must be banished from the heart, and can be
banished only by God.
THE EIGHTH VISION: THE CHARIOTS OF THE FOUR WINDS
(Chap. vi. 1-8).
As the series of Visions opened with one of the universal providence
of God, so they close with another of the same. The First Vision had
postponed God’s overthrow of the nations till His own time, and this
the Last Vision now describes as begun, the religious and moral needs
of Israel having meanwhile been met by the Visions which come between,
and every obstacle to God’s action for the deliverance of His people
being removed.
The prophet sees four chariots, with horses of different colour in
each, coming out from between two mountains of brass. The horsemen of
the First Vision were bringing in reports: these chariots are coming
forth with their commissions from the presence of the Lord of all the
earth. They are the four winds of heaven, servants of Him who maketh
the winds His angels. They are destined for different quarters of the
world. The prophet has not been admitted to the Presence, and does not
know what exactly they have been commissioned to do; that is to say,
Zechariah is ignorant of the actual political processes by which the
nations are to be overthrown and Israel glorified before them. But his
Angel-interpreter tells him that the black horses go north, the white
west, and the dappled south, while the horses of the fourth chariot,
impatient because no direction is assigned to them, are ordered to roam
up and down through the earth. It is striking that none are sent
eastward.[871] This appears to mean that, in Zechariah’s day, no power
oppressed or threatened Israel from that direction; but in the north
there was the centre of the Persian Empire, to the south Egypt, still a
possible master of the world, and to the west the new forces of Europe
that in less than a generation were to prove themselves a match for
Persia. The horses of the fourth chariot are therefore given the charge
to exercise supervision upon the whole earth—unless in ver. 7 we should
translate, not _earth_, but _land_, and understand a commission to
patrol the land of Israel. The centre of the world’s power is in the
north, and therefore the black horses, which are dispatched in that
direction, are explicitly described as charged to bring God’s spirit,
that is His anger or His power, to bear on that quarter of the world.
_And once more[872] I lifted mine eyes and looked, and lo! four
chariots coming forward from between two mountains, and the mountains
were mountains of brass. In the first chariot were brown horses, and in
the second chariot black horses, and in the third chariot white horses,
and in the fourth chariot dappled ...[873] horses. And I broke in and
said to the angel who talked with me, What are these, my lord? And the
angel answered and said to me, These be the four winds of heaven that
come forth from presenting themselves before the Lord of all the
earth._[874] That _with the black horses goes forth to the land of the
north, while the white go out west_[875] (?), _and the dappled go to
the land of the south. And the ...[876] go forth and seek to go, to
march up and down on the earth. And he said, Go, march up and down on
the earth; and they marched up and down on the earth. And he called me
and spake to me, saying, See they that go forth to the land of the
north have brought my spirit to bear[877] on the land of the north._
THE RESULT OF THE VISIONS: THE CROWNING OF THE
KING OF ISRAEL (Chap. vi. 9-15).
The heathen being overthrown, Israel is free, and may have her king
again. Therefore Zechariah is ordered—it would appear on the same day
as that on which he received the Visions—to visit a certain deputation
from the captivity in Babylon, Heldai, Tobiyah and Yedayah, at the
house of Josiah the son of Zephaniah, where they have just arrived; and
to select from the gifts they have brought enough silver and gold to
make circlets for a crown. The present text assigns this crown to
Joshua, the high priest, but as we have already remarked, and will
presently prove in the notes to the translation, the original text
assigned it to Zerubbabel, the civil head of the community, and gave
Joshua, the priest, a place at his right hand—the two to act in perfect
concord with each other. The text has suffered some other injuries,
which it is easy to amend; and the end of it has been broken off in the
middle of a sentence.
_And the Word of Jehovah came to me, saying: Take from the Gôlah,[878]
from Heldai[879] and from Tobiyah and from Yeda‛yah; and do thou go on
the same day, yea, go thou to the house of Yosiyahu, son of Ṣephanyah,
whither they have arrived from Babylon.[880] And thou shall take silver
and gold, and make a crown, and set it on the head of....[881] And say
to him: Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts, Lo! a man called Branch; from his
roots shall a branch come, and he shall build the Temple of Jehovah.
Yea, he shall build Jehovah’s Temple,[882] and he shall wear the royal
majesty and sit and rule upon his throne, and Joshua[883] shall be
priest on his right hand,[884] and there will be a counsel of peace
between the two of them.[885] And the crown shall be for Heldai[886]
and Tobiyah and Yeda‛yah, and for the courtesy[887] of the son of
Ṣephanyah, for a memorial in the Temple of Jehovah. And the far-away
shall come and build at the Temple of Jehovah, and ye shall know that
Jehovah of Hosts hath sent me to you; and it shall be if ye hearken lo
the voice of Jehovah your God...._[888]
FOOTNOTES:
[777] iv. 6. Unless this be taken as an earlier prophecy. See above, p.
260.
[778] ii. 9, 10 Heb., 5, 6 LXX. and Eng.
[779] See above, p. 214, where this is stated as an argument against
Kosters’ theory that there was no Return from Babylon in the reign of
Cyrus.
[780] Vv. 17 and 19.
[781] See Zechariah’s Fifth Vision.
[782] xliv. 1 ff.
[783] xlv. 22.
[784] xliv. 23, 24.
[785] Its origin was the Exile, whether its date be before or after the
First Return under Cyrus in 537 B.C.
[786] Fourth Vision, chap. iii.
[787] vi. 9-15.
[788] See ver. 11.
[789] ii. 20-23.
[790] iii. 8.
[791] חִלָּה אֶת־פְּנֵי יהוה. The verb (Piel) originally means _to make
weak_ or _flaccid_ (the Kal means _to be sick_), and so _to soften_ or
_weaken by flattery_. 1 Sam. xiii. 12; 1 Kings xiii. 6, etc.
[792] First Vision, chap. i. 11.
[793] Second Vision, ii. 1-4 Heb., i. 18-21 LXX. and Eng.
[794] Eighth Vision, chap. vi. 1-8.
[795] xxi. 36 Heb., 31 Eng.: _skilful to destroy_.
[796] See next chapter.
[797] Jer. xxv. 12; Hag. ii. 7.
[798] Myrtles were once common in the Holy Land, and have been recently
found (Hasselquist, _Travels_). For their prevalence near Jerusalem see
Neh. viii. 15. They do not appear to have any symbolic value in the
Vision.
[799] For a less probable explanation see above, p. 282.
[800] See pp. 311, 313, etc.
[801] Ewald omits _riding a brown horse_, as “marring the lucidity of
the description, and added from a misconception by an early hand.” But
we must not expect lucidity in a phantasmagoria like this.
[802] מְצֻלָה, Meṣullah, either _shadow_ from צלל, or for מְצוּלָה,
_ravine_, or else a proper name. The LXX., which uniformly for
הֲדַסִּים, _myrtles_, reads הרים, _mountains_, renders אשר במצלה by τῶν
κατασκίων. Ewald and Hitzig read מְצִלָּה, Arab, mizhallah, _shadowing_
or _tent_.
[803] Heb. שרקים, only here. For this LXX. gives two kinds, καὶ ψαροὶ
καὶ ποικίλοι, _and dappled and piebald_. Wright gives a full treatment
of the question, pp. 531 ff. He points out that the cognate word in
Arabic means sorrel, or yellowish red.
[804] _Who stood among the myrtles_ omitted by Nowack.
[805] Isa. xxxvii. 29; Jer. xlviii. 11; Psalm cxxiii. 4; Zeph. i. 12.
[806] Or _for_.
[807] _Who talked with me_ omitted by Nowack.
[808] Heb. _helped for evil_, or _till it became a calamity_.
[809] Marcus Dods, _Hag., Zech. and Mal._, p. 71. Orelli: “In
distinction from Daniel, Zechariah is fond of a simultaneous survey,
not the presenting of a succession.”
[810] For the symbolism of iron horns see Micah iv. 13, and compare
Orelli’s note, in which it is pointed out that the destroyers must
be smiths as in Isa. xliv. 12, _workmen of iron_, and not as in LXX.
_carpenters_.
[811] Wellhausen and Nowack delete _Israel and Jerusalem_; the latter
does not occur in Codd. A, Q, of Septuagint.
[812] Wellhausen reads, after Mal. ii. 9, כפי אשר, _so that it lifted
not its head_; but in that case we should not find ראׁׁשׁוֹ, but
ראׁׁשָׁהּ.
[813] החריד, but LXX. read החדיד, and either that or some verb of
cutting must be read.
[814] The Hebrew, literally _comes forth_, is the technical term
throughout the Visions for the entrance of the figures upon the stage
of vision.
[815] LXX. ἵστηκει, _stood up_: adopted by Nowack.
[816] Psalm xxiv.
[817] Isa. xvii. 12-14.
[818] Psalm cxxii. 3.
[819] Some codd. read _with the four winds_. LXX. _from the four winds
will I gather you_ (σὺνάξω ὑμᾶς), and this is adopted by Wellhausen and
Nowack. But it is probably a later change intended to adapt the poem to
its new context.
[820] _Dweller of the daughter of Babel._ But בת, _daughter_, is mere
dittography of the termination of the preceding word.
[821] A curious phrase here occurs in the Heb. and versions, _After
glory hath He sent me_, which we are probably right in omitting. In any
case it is a parenthesis, and ought to go not with _sent me_ but with
_saith Jehovah of Hosts_.
[822] So LXX. Heb. _to me_.
[823] Cf. Zeph. i. 7; Hab. ii. 20. “Among the Arabians, after the
slaughter of the sacrificial victim, the participants stood for some
time in silence about the altar. That was the moment in which the Deity
approached in order to take His share in the sacrifice.” (Smend, _A. T.
Rel. Gesch._, p. 124).
[824] Cf. vv. 1 and 2.
[825] See below, p. 318.
[826] In this Vision the verb _to stand before_ is used in two
technical senses: (_a_) of the appearance of plaintiff and defendant
before their judge (vv. 1 and 3); (_b_) of servants before their
masters (vv. 4 and 7).
[827] See below, p. 294, n. 835.
[828] Isa. iv. 2, xi. 1; Jer. xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15; Isa. liii. 2.
Stade (_Gesch. des Volkes Isr._, II. 125), followed by Marti (_Der
Proph. Sach._, 85 n.), suspects the clause _I will bring in My Servant
the Branch_ as a later interpolation, entangling the construction and
finding in this section no further justification.
[829] Or _Adversary_; see p. 317.
[830] _To Satan him_: _slander_, or _accuse, him_.
[831] That is _the Angel of Jehovah_, which Wellhausen and Nowack read;
but see below, p. 314.
[832] This clause interrupts the Angel’s speech to the servants. Wellh.
and Nowack omit it. העביר cf. 2 Sam. xii. 13; Job vii. 21.
[833] So LXX. Heb. has a degraded grammatical form, _clothe thyself_
which has obviously been made to suit the intrusion of the previous
clause, and is therefore an argument against the authenticity of the
latter.
[834] LXX. omits _I said_ and reads _Let them put_ as another
imperative, _Do ye put_, following on the two of the previous verse.
Wellhausen adopts this (reading שימו for ישימו). Though it is difficult
to see how ואמר dropped out of the text if once there, it is equally so
to understand why if not original it was inserted. The whole passage
has been tampered with. If we accept the Massoretic text, then we have
a sympathetic interference in the vision of the dreamer himself which
is very natural; and he speaks, as is proper, not in the direct, but
indirect, imperative, _Let them put_.
[835] צָנִיף, the headdress of rich women (Isa. iii. 23), as of
eminent men (Job xxix. 14), means something wound round and round the
head (cf. the use of צנף to form like a ball in Isa. xxii. 18, and the
use of חבשׁ (to wind) to express the putting on of the headdress (Ezek.
xvi. 10, etc.)). Hence _turban_ seems to be the proper rendering.
Another form from the same root, מצנפת, is the name of the headdress of
the Prince of Israel (Ezek. xxi. 31); and in the Priestly Codex of the
Pentateuch the headdress of the high priest (Exod. xxviii. 37, etc.).
[836] Wellhausen takes the last words of ver. 5 with ver. 6, reads
עָמַד and renders _And the Angel of Jehovah stood up or stepped
forward_. But even if עָמַד be read, the order of the words would
require translation in the pluperfect, which would come to the same as
the original text. And if Wellhausen’s proposal were correct the words
_Angel of Jehovah_ in ver. 6 would be superfluous.
[837] Read מַהֲלָכִים (Smend, _A. T. Rel. Gesch._, p. 324, n. 2).
[838] Or _facets_.
[839] _E.g._ Marti, _Der Prophet Sacharja_, p. 83.
[840] Hitzig, Wright and many others. On the place of this stone in the
legends of Judaism see Wright, pp. 75 f.
[841] Ewald, Marcus Dods.
[842] Von Orelli, Volck.
[843] Bredenkamp.
[844] Wellhausen, _in loco_, and Smend, _A. T. Rel. Gesch._, 345.
[845] So Marti, p. 88.
[846] 1 Kings vii. 49.
[847] 1 Macc. i. 21; iv. 49, 50. Josephus, XIV. _Ant._ iv. 4.
[848] LXX. Heb. has _seven sevens_ of pipes.
[849] Wellhausen reads _its right_ and deletes _the bowl_.
[850] ואען. ענה is not only _to answer_, but to take part in a
conversation, whether by starting or continuing it. LXX. rightly
ἐπηρώτησα.
[851] Heb. _saying_.
[852] In the Hebrew text, followed by the ancient and modern versions,
including the English Bible, there here follows 6_b_-10_a_, the Word
to Zerubbabel. They obviously disturb the narrative of the Vision, and
Wellhausen has rightly transferred them to the end of it, where they
come in as naturally as the word of hope to Joshua comes in at the end
of the preceding Vision. Take them away, and, as can be seen above,
ver. 10_b_ follows quite naturally upon 6_a_.
[853] Heb. _gold_. So LXX.
[854] Wellhausen omits the whole of this second question (ver. 12) as
intruded and unnecessary. So also Smend as a doublet on ver. 11 (_A. T.
Rel. Gesch._, 343 n.). So also Nowack.
[855] Heb. _saying_.
[856] LXX. _I_.
[857] Or _Fair, fair is it!_ Nowack.
[858] _The stone, the leaden_. Marti, _St. u. Kr._, 1892, p. 213 n.,
takes _the leaden_ for a gloss, and reads simply _the stone_, _i.e._
the top-stone; but the plummet is the last thing laid to the building
to test the straightness of the top-stone.
[859] _A. T. Rel. Gesch._, 312 n.
[860] מגלה _roll_ or _volume_. LXX. δρέπανον, _sickle_, מַגָּל.
[861] A group of difficult expressions. The verb נִקָּה is Ni. of a
root which originally had the physical meaning to _clean out of a
place_, and this Ni. is so used of a plundered town in Isa. iii. 26.
But its more usual meaning is to be spoken free from guilt (Psalm
xix. 14, etc.). Most commentators take it here in the physical sense,
Hitzig quoting the use of καθαρίζω in Mark vii. 19. מִזֶה כָמוֹהָ are
variously rendered. מזה is mostly understood as locative, _hence_,
_i.e._ from the land just mentioned, but some take it with _steal_
(Hitzig), some with _cleaned out_ (Ewald, Orelli, etc.). כָמוֹהָ is
rendered _like it_—the flying roll (Ewald, Orelli), which cannot be,
since the roll flies upon the face of the land, and the sinner is to be
purged out of it; or in accordance with the roll or its curse (Jerome,
Köhler). But Wellhausen reads מִזֶה כַמֶּה, and takes נִקָּה in its
usual meaning and in the past tense, and renders _Every thief has for
long remained unpunished_; and so in the next clause. So, too, Nowack.
LXX. _Every thief shall be condemned to death_, ἕως θανάτου ἐκδιθήσεται.
[862] Heb. _lodge_, _pass the night_: cf. Zeph. ii. 14 (above, p. 65),
_pelican and bittern shall roost upon the capitals_.
[863] Smend sees a continuation of Ezekiel’s idea of the guilt of man
overtaking him (iii. 20, xxxiv.). Here God’s curse does all.
[864] This follows from the shape of the disc that fits into it. Seven
gallons are seven-eighths of the English bushel: that in use in Canada
and the United States is somewhat smaller.
[865] Ewald.
[866] Upon the stage of vision.
[867] For Heb. עֵינָם read עוֹנָם with LXX.
[868] By inserting איפה after מה in ver. 5, and deleting
ויאמר ... היוצאת in ver. 6, Wellhausen secures the more concise
text: _And see what this bushel is that comes forth. And I said, What is
it? And he said, That is the evil of the people in the whole land_. But
to reduce the redundancies of the Visions is to delete the most
characteristic feature of their style. Besides, Wellhausen’s result
gives no sense. The prophet would not be asked to see what a bushel is:
the angel is there to tell him this. So Wellhausen in his translation
has to omit the מה of ver. 5, while telling us in his note to replace
האיפה after it. His emendation is, therefore, to be rejected. Nowack,
however, accepts it.
[869] LXX. Heb. _this_.
[870] In the last clause the verbal forms are obscure if not corrupt.
LXX. καὶ ἕτοιμασαι καὶ θήσουσιν αὐτο ἐκεῖ = לְהָכִין וַהֲנִיחֻהָ שָׁם; but see
Ewald, _Syntax_, 131 _d_.
[871] Wellhausen suggests that in the direction assigned to the white
horses, אחריהם (ver. 6), which we have rendered _westward_, we might
read ארץ הקדם, _land of the east_; and that from ver. 7 _the west_ has
probably fallen out after _they go forth_.
[872] Heb. _I turned again and_.
[873] Hebrew reads אֲמֻּצִּים, _strong_; LXX. ψαροί, _dappled_, and for the
previous בְּרֻדּים, _spotted_ or _dappled_, it reads ποικίλοι, _piebald_.
Perhaps we should read חמצים (cf. Isa. lxiii. 1), _dark red_ or
_sorrel_, with _grey spots_. So Ewald and Orelli. Wright keeps
_strong_.
[874] Wellhausen, supplying ל before ארבע, renders _These go forth to
the four winds of heaven after they have presented themselves_, etc.
[875] Heb. _behind them_.
[876] אמצים, the second epithet of the horses of the fourth
chariot, ver. 3. See note there.
[877] Or _anger to bear_, Heb. _rest_.
[878] The collective name for the Jews in exile.
[879] LXX. παρὰ τῶν ἀρχόντων, מִחֹרִים; but since an accusative
is wanted to express the articles taken, Hitzig proposes to read
מַחֲמַדַּי, _My precious things_. The LXX. reads the other two names
καὶ παρὰ τῶν χρησίμων αὐτῆς καὶ παρὰ τῶν ἐπεγνωκότων αὐτήν.
[880] The construction of ver. 10 is very clumsy; above it is rendered
literally. Wellhausen proposes to delete _and do thou go ... to the
house of_, and take Yosiyahu’s name as simply a fourth with the others,
reading the last clause _who have come from Babylon_. This is to cut,
not disentangle, the knot.
[881] The Hebrew text here has _Joshua son of Jehosadak, the high
priest_, but there is good reason to suppose that the crown was meant
for Zerubbabel, but that the name of Joshua was inserted instead in a
later age, when the high priest was also the king—see below, note. For
these reasons Ewald had previously supposed that the whole verse was
genuine, but that there had fallen out of it the words _and on the head
of Zerubbabel_. Ewald found a proof of this in the plural form עטרות,
which he rendered _crowns_. (So also Wildeboer, _A. T._ _Litteratur_,
p. 297.) But עטרות is to be rendered _crown_; see ver. 11, where it is
followed by a singular verb. The plural form refers to the several
circlets of which it was woven.
[882] Some critics omit the repetition.
[883] So Wellhausen proposes to insert. The name was at least
understood in the original text.
[884] So LXX. Heb. _on his throne_.
[885] With this phrase, vouched for by both the Heb. and the Sept.,
the rest of the received text cannot be harmonised. There were two:
one is the priest just mentioned who is to be at the right hand of the
crowned. The received text makes this crowned one to be the high priest
Joshua. But if there are two and the priest is only secondary, the
crowned one must be Zerubbabel, whom Haggai has already designated as
Messiah. Nor is it difficult to see why, in a later age, when the high
priest was sovereign in Israel, Joshua’s name should have been inserted
in place of Zerubbabel’s, and at the same time the phrase _priest at
his right hand_, to which the LXX. testifies in harmony with _the two
of them_, should have been altered to the reading of the received text,
_priest upon his throne_. With the above agree Smend, _A. T. Rel.
Gesch._, 343 n., and Nowack.
[886] Heb. חֵלֶם, Hēlem, but the reading Heldai, חלדי, is proved by
the previous occurrence of the name and by the LXX. reading here, τοῖς
ὑπομένουσιν, _i.e._ from root חלד, _to last_.
[887] חן, but Wellhausen and others take it as abbreviation or
misreading for the name of Yosiyahu (see ver. 10).
[888] Here the verse and paragraph break suddenly off in the middle of
a sentence. On the passage see Smend, 343 and 345.
CHAPTER XXII
_THE ANGELS OF THE VISIONS_
ZECHARIAH i. 7—vi. 8
Among the influences of the Exile which contributed the material of
Zechariah’s Visions we included a considerable development of Israel’s
belief in Angels. The general subject is in itself so large, and the
Angels play so many parts in the Visions, that it is necessary to
devote to them a separate chapter.
From the earliest times the Hebrews had conceived their Divine King to
be surrounded by a court of ministers, who besides celebrating His
glory went forth from His presence to execute His will upon earth. In
this latter capacity they were called Messengers, Male’akim, which the
Greeks translated Angeloi, and so gave us our Angels. The origin of
this conception is wrapt in obscurity. It may have been partly due to a
belief, shared by all early peoples, in the existence of superhuman
beings inferior to the gods,[889] but even without this it must have
sprung up in the natural tendency to provide the royal deity of a
people with a court, an army and servants. In the pious minds of early
Israel there must have been a kind of necessity to believe and develop
this—a necessity imposed _firstly_ by the belief in Jehovah’s residence
as confined to one spot, Sinai or Jerusalem, from which He Himself went
forth only upon great occasions to the deliverance of His people as a
whole; and _secondly_ by the unwillingness to conceive of His personal
appearance in missions of a menial nature, or to represent Him in the
human form in which, according to primitive ideas, He could alone hold
converse with men.
It can easily be understood how a religion, which was above all a
religion of revelation, should accept such popular conceptions in its
constant record of the appearance of God and His Word in human life.
Accordingly, in the earliest documents of the Hebrews, we find angels
who bring to Israel the blessings, curses and commands of Jehovah.[890]
Apart from this duty and their human appearance, these beings are not
conceived to be endowed either with character or, if we may judge by
their namelessness,[891] with individuality. They are the Word of God
personified. Acting as God’s mouthpiece, they are merged in Him, and so
completely that they often speak of themselves by the Divine _I_.[892]
“The _function_ of an Angel so overshadows his _personality_ that the
Old Testament does not ask who or what this Angel is, but what he does.
And the answer to the last question is, that he represents God to man
so directly and fully that when he speaks or acts God Himself is felt
to speak or act.”[893] Besides the carriage of the Divine Word, angels
bring back to their Lord report of all that happens: kings are said, in
popular language, to be _as wise as the wisdom of an angel of God, to
know all the things that are in the earth_.[894] They are also employed
in the deliverance and discipline of His people.[895] By them come the
pestilence,[896] and the restraint of those who set themselves against
God’s will.[897]
Now the prophets before the Exile had so spiritual a conception of God,
worked so immediately from His presence, and above all were so
convinced of His personal and practical interest in the affairs of His
people, that they felt no room for Angels between Him and their hearts,
and they do not employ Angels, except when Isaiah in his inaugural
vision penetrates to the heavenly palace and court of the Most
High.[898] Even when Amos sees a plummet laid to the walls of
Jerusalem, it is by the hands of Jehovah Himself,[899] and we have not
encountered an Angel in the mediation of the Word to any of the
prophets whom we have already studied. But Angels reappear, though not
under the name, in the visions of Ezekiel, the first prophet of the
Exile. They are in human form, and he calls them _Men_. Some execute
God’s wrath upon Jerusalem,[900] and one, whose appearance is as the
appearance of brass, acts as the interpreter of God’s will to the
prophet, and instructs him in the details of the building of City and
Temple.[901] When the glory of Jehovah appears and Jehovah Himself
speaks to the prophet out of the Temple, this _Man_ stands by the
prophet,[902] distinct from the Deity, and afterwards continues his
work of explanation. “Therefore,” as Dr. Davidson remarks, “it is not
the sense of distance to which God is removed that causes Ezekiel to
create these intermediaries.” The necessity for them rather arises from
the same natural feeling, which we have suggested as giving rise to the
earliest conceptions of Angels: the unwillingness, namely, to engage
the Person of God Himself in the subordinate task of explaining the
details of the Temple. Note, too, how the Divine Voice, which speaks to
Ezekiel out of the Temple, blends and becomes one with the _Man_
standing at his side. Ezekiel’s Angel-interpreter is simply one
function of the Word of God.
Many of the features of Ezekiel’s Angels appear in those of Zechariah.
_The four smiths_ or smiters of the four horns recall the six
executioners of the wicked in Jerusalem.[903] Like Ezekiel’s
Interpreter, they are called _Men_,[904] and like him one appears as
Zechariah’s instructor and guide: _he who talked with me_.[905] But
while Zechariah calls these beings Men, he also gives them the ancient
name, which Ezekiel had not used, of Male’akim, _messengers_, _angels_.
The Instructor is _the Angel who talked with me_. In the First Vision,
_the Man riding the brown horse, the Man that stood among the myrtles_,
is _the Angel of Jehovah that stood among the myrtles_.[906] The
Interpreter is also called _the Angel of Jehovah_, and if our text of
the First Vision be correct, the two of them are curiously mingled, as
if both were functions of the same Word of God, and in personality not
to be distinguished from each other. The Reporting Angel among the
myrtles takes up the duty of the Interpreting Angel and explains the
Vision to the prophet. In the Fourth Vision this dissolving view is
carried further, and the Angel of Jehovah is interchangeable with
Jehovah Himself;[907] just as in the Vision of Ezekiel the Divine Voice
from the Glory and the Man standing beside the prophet are curiously
mingled. Again in the Fourth Vision we hear of those _who stand in the
presence of Jehovah_,[908] and in the Eighth of executant angels coming
out from His presence with commissions upon the whole earth.[909]
In the Visions of Zechariah, then, as in the earlier books, we see the
Lord of all the earth, surrounded by a court of angels, whom He sends
forth in human form to interpret His Word and execute His will, and in
their doing of this there is the same indistinctness of individuality,
the same predominance of function over personality. As with Ezekiel,
one stands out more clearly than the rest, to be the prophet’s
interpreter, whom, as in the earlier visions of angels, Zechariah calls
_my lord_,[910] but even he melts into the figures of the rest. These
are the old and borrowed elements in Zechariah’s doctrine of Angels.
But he has added to them in several important particulars, which make
his Visions an intermediate stage between the Book of Ezekiel and the
very intricate angelology of later Judaism.
In the first place, Zechariah is the earliest prophet who introduces
orders and ranks among the angels. In his Fourth Vision the Angel of
Jehovah is the Divine Judge _before whom_[911] Joshua appears with the
Adversary. He also has others standing _before him_[912] to execute his
sentences. In the Third Vision, again, the Interpreting Angel does not
communicate directly with Jehovah, but receives his words from another
Angel who has come forth.[913] All these are symptoms, that even with a
prophet, who so keenly felt as Zechariah did the ethical directness of
God’s word and its pervasiveness through public life, there had yet
begun to increase those feelings of God’s sublimity and awfulness,
which in the later thought of Israel lifted Him to so far a distance
from men, and created so complex a host of intermediaries, human and
superhuman, between the worshipping heart and the Throne of Grace. We
can best estimate the difference in this respect between Zechariah and
the earlier prophets whom we have studied by remarking that his
characteristic phrase _talked with me_, literally _spake in_ or _by
me_, which he uses of the Interpreting Angel, is used by Habakkuk of
God Himself.[914] To the same awful impressions of the Godhead is
perhaps due the first appearance of the Angel as intercessor. Amos,
Isaiah and Jeremiah themselves directly interceded with God for the
people; but with Zechariah it is the Interpreting Angel who intercedes,
and who in return receives the Divine comfort.[915] In this angelic
function, the first of its kind in Scripture, we see the small and
explicable beginnings of a belief destined to assume enormous
dimensions in the development of the Church’s worship. The supplication
of Angels, the faith in their intercession and in the prevailing
prayers of the righteous dead, which has been so egregiously multiplied
in certain sections of Christendom, may be traced to the same
increasing sense of the distance and awfulness of God, but is to be
corrected by the faith Christ has taught us of the nearness of our
Father in Heaven, and of His immediate care of His every human child.
The intercession of the Angel in the First Vision is also a step
towards that identification of special Angels with different peoples
which we find in the Book of Daniel. This tells us of heavenly
princes not only for Israel—_Michael, your prince, the great prince
which standeth up for the children of thy people_[916]—but for the
heathen nations, a conception the first beginnings of which we see in
a prophecy that was perhaps not far from being contemporaneous with
Zechariah.[917] Zechariah’s Vision of a hierarchy among the angels was
also destined to further development. The head of the patrol among
the myrtles, and the Judge-Angel before whom Joshua appears, are the
first Archangels. We know how these were further specialised, and had
even personalities and names given them by both Jewish and Christian
writers.[918]
Among the Angels described in the Old Testament, we have seen some
charged with powers of hindrance and destruction—_a troop of angels of
evil_.[919] They too are the servants of God, who is the author of all
evil as well as good,[920] and the instruments of His wrath. But the
temptation of men is also part of His Providence. Where wilful souls
have to be misled, the _spirit_ who does so, as in Ahab’s case, comes
from Jehovah’s presence.[921] All these spirits are just as devoid of
character and personality as the rest of the angelic host. They work
evil as mere instruments: neither malice nor falseness is attributed to
themselves. They are not rebel nor fallen angels, but obedient to
Jehovah. Nay, like Ezekiel’s and Zechariah’s Angels of the Word, the
Angel who tempts David to number the people is interchangeable with God
Himself.[922] Kindred to the duty of tempting men is that of
discipline, in its forms both of restraining or accusing the guilty,
and of vexing the righteous in order to test them. For both of these
the same verb is used, “to satan,”[923] in the general sense of
_withstanding_, or antagonising. The Angel of Jehovah stood in Balaam’s
way _to satan him_.[924] The noun, _the Satan_, is used repeatedly of a
human foe.[925] But in two passages, of which Zechariah’s Fourth Vision
is one, and the other the Prologue to Job,[926] the name is given to an
Angel, one of _the sons of Elohim_, or Divine powers who receive their
commission from Jehovah. The noun is not yet, what it afterwards
became,[927] a proper name; but has the definite article, _the
Adversary_ or _Accuser_—that is, the Angel to whom that function was
assigned. With Zechariah his business is the official one of prosecutor
in the supreme court of Jehovah, and when his work is done he
disappears. Yet, before he does so, we see for the first time in
connection with any angel a gleam of character. This is revealed by the
Lord’s rebuke of him. There is something blameworthy in the accusation
of Joshua: not indeed false witness, for Israel’s guilt is patent in
the foul garments of their High Priest, but hardness or malice, that
would seek to prevent the Divine grace. In the Book of Job _the Satan_
is also a function, even here not a fallen or rebel angel, but one of
God’s court,[928] the instrument of discipline or chastisement. Yet, in
that he himself suggests his cruelties and is represented as forward
and officious in their infliction, a character is imputed to him even
more clearly than in Zechariah’s Vision. But the Satan still shares
that identification with his function which we have seen to
characterise all the angels of the Old Testament, and therefore he
disappears from the drama so soon as his place in its high argument is
over.[929]
In this description of the development of Israel’s doctrine of Angels,
and of Zechariah’s contributions to it, we have not touched upon the
question whether the development was assisted by Israel’s contact with
the Persian religion and with the system of Angels which the latter
contains. For several reasons the question is a difficult one. But so
far as present evidence goes, it makes for a negative answer. Scholars,
who are in no way prejudiced against the theory of a large Persian
influence upon Israel, declare that the religion of Persia affected the
Jewish doctrine of Angels “only in secondary points,” such as their
“number and personality, and the existence of demons and evil
spirits.”[930] Our own discussion has shown us that Zechariah’s Angels,
in spite of the new features they introduce, are in substance one with
the Angels of pre-exilic Israel. Even the Satan is primarily a
function, and one of the servants of God. If he has developed an
immoral character, this cannot be attributed to the influence of
Persian belief in a Spirit of evil opposed to the Spirit of good in the
universe, but may be explained by the native, or selfish, resentment of
Israel against their prosecutor before the bar of Jehovah. Nor can we
fail to remark that this character of evil appears in the Satan, not,
as in the Persian religion, in general opposition to goodness, but as
thwarting that saving grace which was so peculiarly Jehovah’s own. And
Jehovah said to the Satan, _Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan, yea, Jehovah
who hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee! Is not this a brand plucked from
the burning?_
FOOTNOTES:
[889] So Robertson Smith, art. “Angels” in the _Encyc. Brit._, 9th ed.
[890] So already in Deborah’s Song, Judg. v. 23, and throughout both J
and E.
[891] Cf. especially Gen. xxxii. 29.
[892] Judg. vi. 12 ff.
[893] Robertson Smith, as above.
[894] 2 Sam. xiv. 20.
[895] Exod. xiv. 19 (?), xxiii. 20, etc.; Josh. v. 13.
[896] 2 Sam. xxiv. 16, 17; 2 Kings xix. 35; Exod. xii. 23. In Eccles.
v. 6 this destroying angel is the minister of God: cf. Psalm lxxviii.
49_b_, _hurtful angels_—Cheyne, _Origin of Psalter_, p. 157.
[897] Balaam: Num. xxii. 23, 31.
[898] vi. 2-6.
[899] Vol. I., p. 114.
[900] ix.
[901] xl. 3 ff.
[902] xliii. 6.
[903] Zech. i. 18 ff.; Ezek. ix. 1 ff.
[904] Zech. i. 8: so even in the Book of Daniel we have _the man_
Gabriel—ix. 21.
[905] i. 9, 19; ii. 3; iv. 1, 4, 5; v. 5, 10; vi. 4. But see above, pp.
261 f.
[906] i. 8, 10, 11.
[907] iii. 1 compared with 2.
[908] iii. 6, 7.
[909] vi. 5.
[910] i. 9, etc.
[911] iii. 1. _Stand before_ is here used forensically: cf. the N.T.
phrases to _stand before God_, Rev. xx. 12; _before the judgment-seat
of Christ_, Rom. xiv. 10; and _be acquitted_, Luke xxi. 36.
[912] iii. 4. Here the phrase is used domestically of servants in the
presence of their master. See above, p. 293, n. 826.
[913] ii. 3, 4.
[914] Hab. ii. 1: cf. also Num. xii. 6-9.
[915] First Vision, i. 12.
[916] x. 21, xii. 1.
[917] Isa. xxiv. 21.
[918] Book of Daniel x., xii.; Tobit xii. 15; Book of Enoch _passim_;
Jude 9; Rev. viii. 2, etc.
[919] Psalm lxxviii. 49. See above, p. 312, n. 896.
[920] Amos iii. 6.
[921] 1 Kings xxii. 20 ff.
[922] 2 Sam. xxiv. 1; 1 Chron. xxi. 1. Though here difference of age
between the two documents may have caused the difference of view.
[923] There are two forms of the verb, שׂטן, satan, and שׂטם, satam,
the latter apparently the older.
[924] Num. xxii. 22, 32.
[925] 1 Sam. xxix. 4; 2 Sam. xix. 23 Heb., 22 Eng.; 1 Kings v. 18, xi.
14, etc.
[926] Zech. iii. 1 ff.; Job i. 6 ff.
[927] 1 Chron. xxi. 1.
[928] i. 6_b_.
[929] See Davidson in _Cambridge Bible for Schools_ on Job i. 6-12,
especially on ver. 9: “The Satan of this book may show the beginnings
of a personal malevolence against man, but he is still rigidly
subordinated to Heaven, and in all he does subserves its interests. His
function is as the minister of God to try the sincerity of man; hence
when his work of trial is over he is no more found, and no place is
given him among the _dramatis personæ_ of the poem.”
[930] Cheyne, _The Origin of the Psalter_, p. 272. Read carefully on
this point the very important remarks on pp. 270 ff. and 281 f.
CHAPTER XXIII
“_THE SEED OF PEACE_”
ZECHARIAH vii., viii.
The Visions have revealed the removal of the guilt of the land, the
restoration of Israel to their standing before God, the revival of the
great national institutions, and God’s will to destroy the heathen
forces of the world. With the Temple built, Israel should be again in
the position which she enjoyed before the Exile. Zechariah, therefore,
proceeds to exhort his people to put away the fasts which the Exile had
made necessary, and address themselves, as of old, to the virtues and
duties of the civic life. And he introduces his orations to this end by
a natural appeal to the experience of the former days.
The occasion came to him when the Temple had been building for two
years, and when some of its services were probably resumed.[931] A
deputation of Jews appeared in Jerusalem and raised the question of the
continuance of the great Fasts of the Exile. Who the deputation were is
not certain: probably we ought to delete _Bethel_ from the second
verse, and read either _El-sar’eser sent Regem-Melekh and his men to
the house of Jehovah to propitiate Jehovah_, or else _the house of
El-sar’eser sent Regem-Melekh and his men to propitiate Jehovah_. It
has been thought that they came from the Jews in Babylon: this would
agree with their arrival in the ninth month to inquire about a fast in
the fifth month. But Zechariah’s answer is addressed to Jews in Judæa.
The deputation limited their inquiry to the fast of the fifth month,
which commemorated the burning of the Temple and the City, now
practically restored. But with a breadth of view which reveals the
prophet rather than the priest, Zechariah replies, in the following
chapter, upon all the fasts by which Israel for seventy years had
bewailed her ruin and exile. He instances two, that of the fifth month,
and that of the seventh month, the date of the murder of Gedaliah, when
the last poor remnant of a Jewish state was swept away.[932] With a
boldness which recalls Amos to the very letter, Zechariah asks his
people whether in those fasts they fasted at all to their God. Jehovah
had not charged them, and in fasting they had fasted for themselves,
just as in eating and drinking they had eaten and drunken to
themselves. They should rather hearken to the words He really sent
them. In a passage, the meaning of which has been perverted by the
intrusion of the eighth verse, that therefore ought to be deleted,
Zechariah recalls what those words of Jehovah had been in the former
times when the land was inhabited and the national life in full course.
They were not ceremonial; they were ethical: they commanded justice,
kindness, and the care of the helpless and the poor. And it was in
consequence of the people’s disobedience to those words that all the
ruin came upon them for which they now annually mourned. The moral is
obvious if unexpressed. Let them drop their fasts, and practise the
virtues the neglect of which had made their fasts a necessity. It is a
sane and practical word, and makes us feel how much Zechariah has
inherited of the temper of Amos and Isaiah. He rests, as before, upon
the letter of the ancient oracles, but only so as to bring out their
spirit. With such an example of the use of ancient Scripture, it is
deplorable that so many men, both among the Jews and the Christians,
should have devoted themselves to the letter at the expense of the
spirit.
_And it came to pass in the fourth year of Darius the king, that the
Word of Jehovah came to Zechariah on the fourth of the ninth month,
Kislev. For there sent to _the_ house _of Jehovah,_ El-sar’eser and
Regem-Melekh and his men,[933] to propitiate[934] Jehovah, to ask of
the priests which were in the house of Jehovah of Hosts and of the
prophets as follows: Shall I weep in the fifth month with fasting as I
have now done so many years? And the Word of Jehovah of Hosts came to
me: Speak now to all the people of the land, and to the priests,
saying: When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh
month,[935] and this for seventy years, did ye fast at all to Me? And
when ye eat and when ye drink, are not ye the eaters and ye the
drinkers? Are not these[936] the words which Jehovah proclaimed by the
hand of the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and at peace,
with her cities round about her, and the Negeb and the Shephelah were
inhabited?_
[937]_Thus spake Jehovah of Hosts: Judge true judgment, and practise
towards each other kindness and mercy; oppress neither widow nor
orphan, stranger nor poor, and think not evil in your hearts towards
one another. But they refused to hearken, and turned a rebellious
shoulder,[938] and their ears they dulled from listening. And their
heart they made adamant, so as not to hear the Torah and the words
which Jehovah of Hosts sent through His Spirit by the hand of the
former prophets; and there was great wrath from Jehovah of Hosts. And
it came to pass that, as He had called and they heard not, so they
shall call and I will not hear, said Jehovah of Hosts, but I will
whirl[939] them away among nations whom they know not. And the land was
laid waste behind them, without any to pass to and fro, and they made
the pleasant land desolate._
There follow upon this deliverance ten other short oracles: chap. viii.
Whether all of this decalogue are to be dated from the same time as the
answer to the deputation about the fasts is uncertain. Some of them
appear rather to belong to an earlier date, for they reflect the
situation, and even the words, of Haggai’s oracles, and represent the
advent of Jehovah to Jerusalem as still future. But they return to the
question of the fasts, treating it still more comprehensively than
before, and they close with a promise, fitly spoken as the Temple grew
to completion, of the coming of the heathen to worship at Jerusalem.
We have already noticed the tender charm and strong simplicity of these
prophecies,[940] and there is little now to add except the translation
of them. As with the older prophets, and especially the great
Evangelist of the Exile, they start from the glowing love of Jehovah
for His people, to which nothing is impossible;[941] they promise a
complete return of the scattered Jews to their land, and are not
content except with the assurance of a world converted to the faith of
their God. With Haggai Zechariah promises the speedy end of the poverty
of the little colony; and he adds his own characteristic notes of a
reign of peace to be used for hearty labour, bringing forth a great
prosperity. Only let men be true and just and kind, thinking no evil of
each other, as in those hard days when hunger and the fierce rivalry
for sustenance made every one’s neighbour his enemy, and the petty
life, devoid of large interests for the commonweal, filled their hearts
with envy and malice. For ourselves the chief profit of these beautiful
oracles is their lesson that the remedy for the sordid tempers and
cruel hatreds, engendered by the fierce struggle for existence, is
found in civic and religious hopes, in a noble ideal for the national
life, and in the assurance that God’s Love is at the back of all, with
nothing impossible to it. Amid these glories, however, the heart will
probably thank Zechariah most for his immortal picture of the streets
of the new Jerusalem: old men and women sitting in the sun, boys and
girls playing in all the open places. The motive of it, as we have
seen, was found in the circumstances of his own day. Like many another
emigration, for religion’s sake, from the heart of civilisation to a
barren coast, the poor colony of Jerusalem consisted chiefly of men,
young and in middle life. The barren years gave no encouragement to
marriage. The constant warfare with neighbouring tribes allowed few to
reach grey hairs. It was a rough and a hard society, unblessed by the
two great benedictions of life, childhood and old age. But this should
all be changed, and Jerusalem filled with placid old men and women, and
with joyous boys and girls. The oracle, we say, had its motive in
Zechariah’s day. But what an oracle for these times of ours! Whether in
the large cities of the old world, where so few of the workers may hope
for a quiet old age, sitting in the sun, and the children’s days of
play are shortened by premature toil and knowledge of evil; or in the
newest fringes of the new world, where men’s hardness and coarseness
are, in the struggle for gold, unawed by reverence for age and
unsoftened by the fellowship of childhood,—Zechariah’s great promise is
equally needed. Even there shall it be fulfilled if men will remember
his conditions—that the first regard of a community, however straitened
in means, be the provision of religion, that truth and whole-hearted
justice abound in the gates, with love and loyalty in every heart
towards every other.
_And the Word of Jehovah of Hosts came, saying:—_
1. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: I am jealous for Zion with a great
jealousy, and with great anger am I jealous for her._
2. _Thus saith Jehovah: I am returned to Zion, and I dwell in the midst
of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem shall be called the City of Troth,[942]
and the mountain of Jehovah of Hosts the Holy Mountain._
3. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: Old men and old women shall yet sit in
the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand, for fulness of days;
and the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in
her streets._
4. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: Because it seems too wonderful to the
remnant of this people in those days, shall it also seem too wonderful
to Me?—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts._
5. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: Lo! I am about to save My people out
of the land of the rising and out of the land of the setting of the
sun; and I will bring them home, and they shall dwell in the midst of
Jerusalem, and they shall be to Me for a people,[943] and I will be to
them for God, in troth and in righteousness._
6. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: Strengthen your hands, O ye who have
heard in such days such words from the mouth of the prophets,
since[944] the day when the House of Jehovah of Hosts was founded: the
sanctuary was to be built! For before those days there was no gain for
man,[945] and none to be made by cattle; and neither for him that went
out nor for him that came in was there any peace from the adversary,
and I set every man’s hand against his neighbour. But not now as in the
past days am I towards the remnant of this people—oracle of Jehovah of
Hosts. For I am sowing the seed of peace.[946] The vine shall yield her
fruit, and the land yield her increase, and the heavens yield their
dew, and I will give them all for a heritage to the remnant of this
people. And it shall come to pass, that as ye have been a curse among
the nations, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so will I save you
and ye shall be a blessing! Be not afraid, strengthen your hands!_
7. _For thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: As I have planned to do evil to
you, for the provocation your fathers gave Me, saith Jehovah of Hosts,
and did not relent, so have I turned and planned in these days to do
good to Jerusalem and the house of Judah. Be not afraid! These are
the things which ye shall do: Speak truth to one another; truth and
wholesome judgment decree ye in your gates; and plan no evil to each
other in your hearts, nor take pleasure in false swearing: for it is
all these that I hate—oracle of Jehovah._
_And the Word of Jehovah of Hosts came to me, saying:—_
8. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: The fast of the fourth month, and the
fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the
tenth, shall become to the house of Judah joy and gladness and happy
feasts.[947] But love ye truth and peace._
9. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: There shall yet come peoples and
citizens of great cities; and the citizens of one city[948] will go to
another city, saying: “Let us go to propitiate Jehovah, and to seek
Jehovah of Hosts!” “I will go too!” And many peoples and strong nations
shall come to seek Jehovah of Hosts in Jerusalem and to propitiate
Jehovah._
10. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: In those days ten men, of all
languages of the nations, shall take hold of the skirt of a Jew and
say, We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you._
FOOTNOTES:
[931] Cf. chap. vii. 3: _the priests which were of the house of
Jehovah_.
[932] Jer. xli. 2; 2 Kings xxv. 25.
[933] The Hebrew text is difficult if not impossible to construe: _For
Bethel sent Sar’eser_ (without sign of accusative) _and Regem-Melekh
and his men_. Wellhausen points out that Sar’eser is a defective name,
requiring the name or title of deity in front of it, and Marti proposes
to find this in the last syllable of Bethel, and to read ’El-sar’eser.
It is tempting to find in the first syllable of Bethel the remnant of
the phrase _to the house of Jehovah_.
[934] To stroke the face of.
[935] The fifth month Jerusalem fell, the seventh month Gedaliah was
murdered: Jer. lii. 12 f.; 2 Kings xxv. 8 f., 25.
[936] So LXX. Heb. has acc. sign before _words_, perhaps implying _Is
it not rather necessary to do the words?_ etc.
[937] Omit here ver. 8, _And the Word of Jehovah came to Zechariah,
saying_. It is obviously a gloss by a scribe who did not notice that
the כה אמר of ver. 9 is God’s statement by the former prophets.
[938] Cf. the phrase _with one shoulder_, _i.e._ unanimously.
[939] So Heb. and LXX.; but perhaps we ought to point _and I whirled
them away_, taking the clause with the next.
[940] See above, pp. 271 f.
[941] Cf. especially Isa. xl. ff.
[942] Isa. i. 26.
[943] Not merely _My people_ (Wellhausen), but their return shall
constitute them a people once more. The quotation is from Hosea ii. 25.
[944] So LXX.
[945] _But he that made wages made them to put them into a bag with
holes_, Haggai i. 6.
[946] Read כי אזרעה השלום for כי זרע השלום of the text, _for the seed
of peace_. The LXX. makes זרע a verb. Cf. Hosea ii. 23 ff., which the
next clauses show to be in the mind of our prophet. Klostermann and
Nowack prefer זַרְעָהּ שָׁלוֹם, _her_ (the remnant’s) _seed shall be
peace_.
[947] In the tenth month the siege of Jerusalem had begun (2 Kings
xxv. 1); on the ninth of the fourth month Jerusalem was taken (Jer.
xxxix. 2); on the seventh of the fifth City and Temple were burnt down
(2 Kings xxv. 8); in the seventh month Gedaliah was assassinated and
the poor relics of a Jewish state swept from the land (Jer. xli.). See
above, pp. 30 ff.
[948] LXX. _the citizens of five cities will go to one_.
“_MALACHI_”
_Have we not all One Father? Why then are we unfaithful to each other?_
_The lips of a Priest guard knowledge, and men seek instruction from
his mouth, for he is the Angel of Jehovah of Hosts._
CHAPTER XXIV
_THE BOOK OF “MALACHI”_
This book, the last in the arrangement of the prophetic canon, bears
the title: _Burden_ or _Oracle of the Word of Jehovah to Israel by the
hand of malĕ’akhi_. Since at least the second century of our era the
word has been understood as a proper name, Malachi or Malachias. But
there are strong objections to this, as well as to the genuineness of
the whole title, and critics now almost universally agree that the book
was originally anonymous.
It is true that neither in form nor in meaning is there any insuperable
obstacle to our understanding “malĕ’akhi” as the name of a person. If
so, however, it cannot have been, as some have suggested, an
abbreviation of Malĕ’akhiyah, for, according to the analogy of other
names of such formation, this could only express the impossible meaning
_Jehovah is Angel_.[949] But, as it stands, it might have meant _My
Angel_ or _Messenger_, or it may be taken as an adjective,
_Angelicus_.[950] Either of these meanings would form a natural name
for a Jewish child, and a very suitable one for a prophet. There is
evidence, however, that some of the earliest Jewish interpreters did
not think of the title as containing the name of a person. The
Septuagint read _by the hand of His messenger_,[951] “malĕ’akho”; and
the Targum of Jonathan, while retaining “malĕ’akhi,” rendered it _My
messenger_, adding that it was Ezra the Scribe who was thus
designated.[952] This opinion was adopted by Calvin.
Recent criticism has shown that, whether the word was originally
intended as a personal name or not, it was a purely artificial one
borrowed from chap. iii. 1, _Behold, I send My messenger_, “malĕ’akhi,”
for the title, which itself has been added by the editor of the Twelve
Prophets in the form in which we now have them. The peculiar words of
the title, _Burden_ or _Oracle of the Word of Jehovah_, occur nowhere
else than in the titles of the two prophecies which have been appended
to the Book of Zechariah, chap. ix. 1 and chap. xii. 1, and immediately
precede this Book of “Malachi.” In chap. ix. 1 _the Word of Jehovah_
belongs to the text; _Burden_ or _Oracle_ has been inserted before it
as a title; then the whole phrase has been inserted as a title in chap.
xii. 1. These two pieces are anonymous, and nothing is more likely than
that another anonymous prophecy should have received, when attached to
them, the same heading.[953] The argument is not final, but it is the
most probable explanation of the data, and agrees with the other facts.
The cumulative force of all that we have stated—the improbability of
malĕ’akhi being a personal name, the fact that the earliest versions do
not treat it as such, the obvious suggestion for its invention in the
malĕ’akhi of chap. iii. 1, the absence of a father’s name and place of
residence, and the character of the whole title—is enough for the
opinion rapidly spreading among critics that our book was, like so much
more in the Old Testament, originally anonymous.[954] The author
attacks the religious authorities of his day; he belongs to a pious
remnant of his people, who are overborne and perhaps oppressed by the
majority.[955] In these facts, which are all we know of his
personality, he found sufficient reason for not attaching his name to
his prophecy.
The book is also undated, but it reflects its period almost as clearly
as do the dated Books of Haggai and Zechariah. The conquest of Edom
by the Nabateans, which took place during the Exile,[956] is already
past.[957] The Jews are under a Persian viceroy.[958] They are in touch
with a heathen power, which does not tyrannise over them, for this
book is the first to predict no judgment upon the heathen, and the
first, moreover, to acknowledge that among the heathen the true God
is worshipped _from the rising to the setting of the sun_.[959] The
only judgment predicted is one upon the false and disobedient portion
of Israel, whose arrogance and success have cast true Israelites into
despair.[960] All this reveals a time when the Jews were favourably
treated by their Persian lords. The reign must be that of Artaxerxes
Longhand, 464—424.
The Temple has been finished,[961] and years enough have elapsed to
disappoint those fervid hopes with which about 518 Zechariah expected
its completion. The congregation has grown worldly and careless. In
particular the priests are corrupt and partial in the administration of
the Law.[962] There have been many marriages with the heathen women of
the land;[963] and the laity have failed to pay the tithes and other
dues to the Temple.[964] These are the evils against which we find
strenuous measures directed by Ezra, who returned from Babylon in
458,[965] and by Nehemiah, who visited Jerusalem as its governor for
the first time in 445 and for the second time in 433. Besides, “the
religious spirit of the book is that of the prayers of Ezra and
Nehemiah. A strong sense of the unique privileges of the children of
Jacob, the objects of electing love,[966] the children of the Divine
Father,[967] is combined with an equally strong assurance of Jehovah’s
righteousness amidst the many miseries that pressed on the unhappy
inhabitants of Judæa.... Obedience to the Law is the sure path to
blessedness.”[968] But the question still remains whether the Book of
“Malachi” prepared for, assisted or followed up the reforms of Ezra and
Nehemiah. An ancient tradition already alluded to[969] assigned the
authorship to Ezra himself.
Recent criticism has been divided among the years immediately before
Ezra’s arrival in 458, those immediately before Nehemiah’s first visit
in 445, those between his first government and his second, and those
after Nehemiah’s disappearance from Jerusalem. But the years in which
Nehemiah held office may be excluded, because the Jews are represented
as bringing gifts to the governor, which Nehemiah tells us he did not
allow to be brought to him.[970] The whole question depends upon what
Law was in practice in Israel when the book was written. In 445 Ezra
and Nehemiah, by solemn covenant between the people and Jehovah,
instituted the code which we now know as the Priestly Code of the
Pentateuch. Before that year the ritual and social life of the Jews
appear to have been directed by the Deuteronomic Code. Now the Book of
“Malachi” enforces a practice with regard to the tithes, which agrees
more closely with the Priestly Code than it does with Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy commands that every third year the whole tithe is to be
given to the Levites and the poor who reside _within the gates_ of the
giver, and is there to be eaten by them. “Malachi” commands that the
whole tithe be brought into the storehouse of the Temple for the
Levites in service there; and so does the Priestly Code.[971] On this
ground many date the Book of “Malachi” after 445.[972] But “Malachi’s”
divergence from Deuteronomy on this point may be explained by the fact
that in his time there were practically no Levites outside Jerusalem;
and it is to be noticed that he joins the tithe with the tĕrûmah or
heave-offering exactly as Deuteronomy does.[973] On other points of the
Law he agrees rather with Deuteronomy than with the Priestly Code. He
follows Deuteronomy in calling the priests _sons of Levi_,[974] while
the Priestly Code limits the priesthood to the sons of Aaron. He seems
to quote Deuteronomy when forbidding the oblation of blind, lame and
sick beasts;[975] appears to differ from the Priestly Code which allows
the sacrificial beast to be male or female, when he assumes that it is
a male;[976] follows the expressions of Deuteronomy and not those of
the Priestly Code in detailing the sins of the people;[977] and uses
the Deuteronomic phrases _the Law of Moses_, _My servant Moses_,
_statutes and judgments_, and _Horeb_ for the Mount of the Law.[978]
For the rest, he echoes or implies only Ezekiel and that part of the
Priestly Code[979] which is regarded as earlier than the rest, and
probably from the first years of exile. Moreover he describes the Torah
as not yet fully codified.[980] The priests still deliver it in a way
improbable after 445. The trouble of the heathen marriages with which
he deals (if indeed the verses on this subject be authentic and not a
later intrusion[981]) was that which engaged Ezra’s attention on his
arrival in 458, but Ezra found that it had already for some time been
vexing the heads of the community. While, therefore, we are obliged to
date the Book of “Malachi” before 445 B.C., it is uncertain whether it
preceded or followed Ezra’s attempts at reform in 458. Most critics now
think that it preceded them.[982]
The Book of “Malachi” is an argument with the prophet’s contemporaries,
not only with the wicked among them, who in forgetfulness of what
Jehovah is corrupt the ritual, fail to give the Temple its dues, abuse
justice, marry foreign wives,[983] divorce their own, and commit
various other sins; but also with the pious, who, equally forgetful
of God’s character, are driven by the arrogance of the wicked to
ask, whether He loves Israel, whether He is a God of justice, and
to murmur that it is vain to serve Him. To these two classes of his
contemporaries the prophet has the following answers. God does love
Israel. He is worshipped everywhere among the heathen. He is the Father
of all Israel. He will bless His people when they put away all abuses
from their midst and pay their religious dues; and His Day of Judgment
is coming, when the good shall be separated from the wicked. But before
it come, Elijah the prophet will be sent to attempt the conversion of
the wicked, or at least to call the nation to decide for Jehovah. This
argument is pursued in seven or perhaps eight paragraphs, which do not
show much consecutiveness, but are addressed, some to the wicked, and
some to the despairing adherents of Jehovah.
1. Chap. i. 2-5.—To those who ask how God loves Israel, the proof of
Jehovah’s election of Israel is shown in the fall of the Edomites.
2. Chap. i. 6-14.—Charge against the people of
dishonouring their God, whom even the heathen reverence.
3. Chap. ii. 1-9.—Charge against the priests, who have broken the
covenant God made of old with Levi, and debased their high office by
not reverencing Jehovah, by misleading the people and by perverting
justice. A curse is therefore fallen on them—they are contemptible in
the people’s eyes.
4. Chap. ii. 10-16.—A charge against the people for their treachery to
each other; instanced in the heathen marriages, if the two verses, 11
and 12, upon this be authentic, and in their divorce of their wives.
5. Chap. ii. 17—iii. 5 or 6.—Against those who in the midst of such
evils grow sceptical about Jehovah. His Angel, or Himself, will come
_first_ to purge the priesthood and ritual that there may be pure
sacrifices, and _second_ to rid the land of its criminals and sinners.
6. Chap. iii. 6 or 7-12.—A charge against the people of neglecting
tithes. Let these be paid, disasters shall cease and the land be
blessed.
7. Chap. iii. 13-21 Heb., Chap. iii. 13—iv. 2 LXX. and Eng.—Another
charge against the pious for saying it is vain to serve God. God will
rise to action and separate between the good and bad in the terrible
Day of His coming.
8. To this, Chap. iii. 22-24 Heb., Chap. iv. 3-5 Eng., adds a call to
keep the Law, and a promise that Elijah will be sent to see whether he
may not convert the people before the Day of the Lord comes upon them
with its curse.
The authenticity of no part of the book has been till now in serious
question. Böhme,[984] indeed, took the last three verses for a later
addition, on account of their Deuteronomic character, but, as Kuenen
points out, this is in agreement with other parts of the book.
Sufficient attention has not yet been paid to the question of the
integrity of the text. The Septuagint offers a few emendations.[985]
There are other passages obviously or probably corrupt.[986] The text
of the title, as we have seen, is uncertain, and probably a later
addition. Professor Robertson Smith has called attention to chap. ii.
16, where the Massoretic punctuation seems to have been determined with
the desire to support the rendering of the Targum “if thou hatest her
put her away,” and so pervert into a permission to divorce a passage
which forbids divorce almost as clearly as Christ Himself did. But in
truth the whole of this passage, chap. ii. 10-16, is in such a curious
state that we can hardly believe in its integrity. It opens with the
statement that God is the Father of all us Israelites, and with the
challenge, why then are we faithless to each other?—ver. 10. But vv. 11
and 12 do not give an instance of this: they describe the marriages
with the heathen women of the land, which is not a proof of
faithlessness between Israelites. Such a proof is furnished only by vv.
13-16, with their condemnation of those who divorce the wives of their
youth. The verses, therefore, cannot lie in their proper order, and vv.
13-16 ought to follow immediately upon ver. 10. This raises the
question of the authenticity of vv. 11 and 12, against the heathen
marriages. If they bear such plain marks of having been intruded into
their position, we can understand the possibility of such an intrusion
in subsequent days, when the question of the heathen marriages came to
the front with Ezra and Nehemiah. Besides, these verses 11 and 12 lack
the characteristic mark of all the other oracles of the book: they do
not state a general charge against the people, and then introduce the
people’s question as to the particulars of the charge. On the whole,
therefore, these verses are suspicious. If not a later intrusion, they
are at least out of place where they now lie. The peculiar remark in
ver. 13, _and this secondly ye do_, must have been added by the editor
to whom we owe the present arrangement.
FOOTNOTES:
[949] מלאכיה or מלאכיהו. To judge from the analogy of other cases
of the same formation (_e.g._ Abiyah = Jehovah is Father, and not
Father of Jehovah), this name, if ever extant, could not have borne the
meaning, which Robertson Smith, Cornill, Kirkpatrick, etc., suppose it
must have done, of _Angel of Jehovah_. These scholars, it should be
added, oppose, for various reasons, the theory that it is a proper
name.
[950] Cf. the suggested meaning of Haggai, Festus. Above, p. 231.
[951] And added the words, _lay_ it _to your hearts_: ἐν χειρὶ ἀγγέλοῦ
αὐτοῦ θέσθε δὴ ἐπὶ τὰς καρδίας ὑμῶν. Bachmann (_A. T. Untersuch._,
Berlin, 1894, pp. 109 ff.) takes this added clause as a translation of
וְשִׂימוּ בַלֵּב, and suggests that it may be a corruption of an original וּשְְׁמוֹ
כָלֵב, _and his name was Kaleb_. But the reading וְשִׂימוּ בַלֵּב is not the
exact equivalent of the Greek phrase.
[952] מַלְאֲכִי דְיִתְקְרֵי שְׁמֵיהּ עֶזְרָא סָפְרָא.
[953] See Stade, _Z.A.T.W._, 1881, p. 14; 1882, p. 308; Cornill,
_Einleitung_, 4th ed., pp. 207 f.
[954] So (besides Calvin, who takes it as a title) even Hengstenberg in
his _Christology of the O. T._, Ewald, Kuenen, Reuss, Stade, Rob.
Smith, Cornill, Wellhausen, Kirkpatrick (probably), Wildeboer, Nowack.
On the other side Hitzig, Vatke, Nägelsbach and Volck (in Herzog), Von
Orelli, Pusey and Robertson hold it to be a personal name—Pusey with
this qualification, “that the prophet may have framed it for himself,”
similarly Orelli. They support their opinion by the fact that even the
LXX. entitle the book Μαλαχιας; that the word was regarded as a proper
name in the early Church, and that it is a possible name for a Hebrew.
In opposition to the hypothesis that it was borrowed from chap. iii. 1,
Hitzig suggests the converse that in the latter the prophet plays upon
his own name. None of these critics, however, meets the objections to
the name drawn from the peculiar character of the title and its
relations to Zech. ix. 1, xii. 1. The supposed name of the prophet gave
rise to the legend supported by many of the Fathers that Malachi, like
Haggai and John the Baptist, was an incarnate angel. This is stated and
condemned by Jerome, _Comm. ad Hag._ i. 13, but held by Origen,
Tertullian and others. The existence of such an opinion is itself proof
for the impersonal character of the name. As in the case of the rest of
the prophets, Christian tradition furnishes the prophet with the
outline of a biography. See (Pseud-)Epiphanius and other writers quoted
above, p. 232.
[955] iii. 16 ff.
[956] See above on Obadiah, p. 169, and below on the passage itself.
[957] i. 2-5.
[958] i. 8.
[959] i. 11: the verbs here are to be taken in the present, not as in
A.V. in the future, tense.
[960] _Passim_: especially iii. 13 ff., 24.
[961] i. 10; iii. 1, 10.
[962] ii. 1-9.
[963] ii. 10-16.
[964] iii. 7-12.
[965] See above, pp. 195 f.
[966] i. 2.
[967] ii. 10.
[968] ii. 17—iii. 12; iii. 22 f., Eng. iv. The above sentences are from
Robertson Smith, art. “Malachi,” _Encyc. Brit._, 9th ed.
[969] Above, p. 332, n. 952.
[970] “Mal.” i. 8; Neh. v.
[971] Deut. xii. 11, xxvi. 12; “Mal.” iii. 8, 10; Num. xviii. 21 ff.
(P).
[972] Vatke (contemporaneous with Nehemiah), Schrader, Keil, Kuenen
(perhaps in second governorship of Nehemiah, but see above, p. 335, for
a decisive reason against this), Köhler, Driver, Von Orelli (between
Nehemiah’s first and second visit), Kirkpatrick, Robertson.
[973] Deut. xii. 11. In P tĕrûmah is a due paid to priests as distinct
from Levites.
[974] ii. 4-8: cf. Deut. xxxiii. 8.
[975] i. 8; Deut. xv. 21.
[976] i. 14; Lev. iii. 1, 6.
[977] iii. 5; Deut. v. 11 ff., xviii. 10, xxiv. 17 ff.; Lev. xix. 31,
33 f., xx. 6.
[978] iii. 22 Heb., iv. 4 Eng. _Law of Moses_ and _Moses My servant_
are found only in the Deuteronomistic portions of the Hexateuch and
historical books and here. In P Sinai is the Mount of the Law. To the
above may be added _segullah_, iii. 17, which is found in the
Pentateuch only outside P and in Psalm cxxxv. 4. All these resemblances
between “Malachi” and Deuteronomy and “Malachi’s” divergences from P
are given in Robertson Smith’s _Old Test. in the Jewish Church_, 2nd
ed., 425 ff.: cf. 444 ff.
[979] Lev. xvii.—xxvi. From this and Ezekiel he received the conception
of the profanation of the sanctuary by the sins of the people—ii. 11:
cf. also ii. 2, iii. 3, 4, for traces of Ezekiel’s influence.
[980] ii. 6 ff.
[981] See below, pp. 340, 363, 365.
[982] Herzfeld, Bleek, Stade, Kautzsch (probably), Wellhausen
(_Gesch._, p. 125), Nowack before the arrival of Ezra, Cornill either
soon before or soon after 458, Robertson Smith either before or soon
after 445. Hitzig at first put it before 458, but was afterwards
moved to date it after 358, as he took the overthrow of the Edomites
described in chap. i. 2-5 to be due to a campaign in that year by
Artaxerxes Ochus (cf. Euseb., _Chron._, II. 221).
[983] But see below, pp. 340, 365.
[984] _Z.A.T.W._, 1887, 210 ff.
[985] i. 11, for גדול δεδόξασται; perhaps ii. 12, עד for ער; perhaps
iii. 8 ff., for עקב קבע; 16, for או ταῦτα.
[986] i. 11 ff.; ii. 3, and perhaps 12, 15.
CHAPTER XXV
_FROM ZECHARIAH TO “MALACHI”_
Between the completion of the Temple in 516 and the arrival of Ezra in
458, we have almost no record of the little colony round Mount Zion.
The Jewish chronicles devote to the period but a few verses of
unsupported tradition.[987] After 517 we have nothing from Zechariah
himself; and if any other prophet appeared during the next
half-century, his words have not survived. We are left to infer what
was the true condition of affairs, not less from this ominous silence
than from the hints which are given to us in the writings of “Malachi,”
Ezra and Nehemiah after the period was over. Beyond a partial attempt
to rebuild the walls of the city in the reign of Artaxerxes I.,[988]
there seems to have been nothing to record. It was a period of
disillusion, disheartening and decay. The completion of the Temple did
not bring in the Messianic era. Zerubbabel, whom Haggai and Zechariah
had crowned as the promised King of Israel, died without reaching
higher rank than a minor satrapy in the Persian Empire, and even in
that he appears to have been succeeded by a Persian official.[989] The
re-migrations from Babylon and elsewhere, which Zechariah predicted,
did not take place. The small population of Jerusalem were still
harassed by the hostility, and their morale sapped by the
insidiousness, of their Samaritan neighbours: they were denied the
stimulus, the purgation, the glory of a great persecution. Their
Persian tyrants for the most part left them alone. The world left them
alone. Nothing stirred in Palestine except the Samaritan intrigues.
History rolled away westward, and destiny seemed to be settling on the
Greeks. In 490 Miltiades defeated the Persians at Marathon. In 480
Thermopylæ was fought and the Persian fleet broken at Salamis. In 479 a
Persian army was destroyed at Platæa, and Xerxes lost Europe and most
of the Ionian coast. In 460 Athens sent an expedition to Egypt to
assist the Egyptian revolt against Persia, and in 457 “her slain fell
in Cyprus, in Egypt, in Phœnicia, at Haliæ, in Ægina, and in Megara in
the same year.”
Thus severely left to themselves and to the petty hostilities of their
neighbours, the Jews appear to have sunk into a careless and sordid
manner of life. They entered the period, it is true, with some sense of
their distinction.[990] In exile they had suffered God’s anger,[991]
and had been purged by it. But out of discipline often springs pride,
and there is no subtler temptation of the human heart. The returned
Israel felt this to the quick, and it sorely unfitted them for
encountering the disappointment and hardship which followed upon the
completion of the Temple. The tide of hope, which rose to flood with
that consummation, ebbed rapidly away, and left God’s people
struggling, like any ordinary tribe of peasants, with bad seasons and
the cruelty of their envious neighbours. Their pride was set on edge,
and they fell, not as at other periods of disappointment into despair,
but into a bitter carelessness and a contempt of their duty to God.
This was a curious temper, and, so far as we know, new in Israel. It
led them to despise both His love and His holiness.[992] They neglected
their Temple dues, and impudently presented to their God polluted bread
and blemished beasts which they would not have dared to offer to their
Persian governor.[993] Like people like priest: the priesthood lost not
reverence only, but decency and all conscience of their office.[994]
They _despised the Table of the Lord_, ceased to instruct the people
and grew partial in judgment. As a consequence they became contemptible
in the eyes of the community. Immorality prevailed among all classes:
_every man dealt treacherously with his brother_.[995] Adultery,
perjury, fraud and the oppression of the poor were very rife.
One particular fashion, in which the people’s wounded pride spited
itself, was the custom of marriage which even the best families
contracted with the half-heathen _people of the land_. Across Judah
there were scattered the descendants of those Jews whom Nebuchadrezzar
had not deemed worth removing to Babylon. Whether regarded from a
social or a religious point of view, their fathers had been the dregs
of the old community. Their own religion, cut off as they were from the
main body of Israel and scattered among the old heathen shrines of the
land, must have deteriorated still further; but in all probability they
had secured for themselves the best portions of the vacant soil, and
now enjoyed a comfort and a stability of welfare far beyond that which
was yet attainable by the majority of the returned exiles. More
numerous than these dregs of ancient Jewry were the very mixed race of
the Samaritans. They possessed a rich land, which they had cultivated
long enough for many of their families to be settled in comparative
wealth. With all these half-pagan Jews and Samaritans, the families of
the true Israel, as they regarded themselves, did not hesitate to form
alliances, for in the precarious position of the colony, such alliances
were the surest way both to wealth and to political influence. How much
the Jews were mastered by their desire for them is seen from the fact
that, when the relatives of their half-heathen brides made it a
condition of the marriages that they should first put away their old
wives, they readily did so. Divorce became very frequent, and great
suffering was inflicted on the native Jewish women.[996]
So the religious condition of Israel declined for nearly two
generations, and then about 460 the Word of God, after long silence,
broke once more through a prophet’s lips.
We call this prophet “Malachi,” following the error of an editor of
his book, who, finding it nameless, inferred or invented that name
from its description of the priest as the “Malĕ’ach,” or _messenger,
of the Lord of Hosts_.[997] But the prophet gave himself no name.
Writing from the midst of a poor and persecuted group of the people,
and attacking the authorities both of church and state, he preferred to
publish his charge anonymously. His name was in _the Lord’s own book of
remembrance_.[998]
The unknown prophet addressed himself both to the sinners of his
people, and to those querulous adherents of Jehovah whom the success of
the sinners had tempted to despair in their service of God. His style
shares the practical directness of his predecessors among the returned
exiles. He takes up one point after another, and drives them home in a
series of strong, plain paragraphs of prose. But it is sixty years
since Haggai and Zechariah, and in the circumstances we have described,
a prophet could no longer come forward as a public inspirer of his
nation. Prophecy seems to have been driven from public life, from the
sudden enforcement of truth in the face of the people to the more
deliberate and ordered argument which marks the teacher who works in
private. In the Book of “Malachi” there are many of the principles and
much of the enthusiasm of the ancient Hebrew seer. But the discourse is
broken up into formal paragraphs, each upon the same academic model.
First a truth is pronounced, or a charge made against the people; then
with the words _but ye will say_ the prophet states some possible
objection of his hearers, proceeds to answer it by detailed evidence,
and only then drives home his truth, or his charge, in genuine
prophetic fashion. To the student of prophecy this peculiarity of the
book is of the greatest interest, for it is no merely personal
idiosyncrasy. We rather feel that prophecy is now assuming the temper
of the teacher. The method is the commencement of that which later on
becomes the prevailing habit in Jewish literature. Just as with
Zephaniah we saw prophecy passing into Apocalypse, and with Habakkuk
into the speculation of the schools of Wisdom, so now in “Malachi” we
perceive its transformation into the scholasticism of the Rabbis.
But the interest of this change of style must not prevent us from
appreciating the genuine prophetic spirit of our book. Far more fully
than, for instance, that of Haggai, to the style of which its practical
simplicity is so akin, it enumerates the prophetic principles: the
everlasting Love of Jehovah for Israel, the Fatherhood of Jehovah and
His Holiness, His ancient Ideals for Priesthood and People, the need of
a Repentance proved by deeds, the consequent Promise of Prosperity, the
Day of the Lord, and Judgment between the evil and the righteous. Upon
the last of these the book affords a striking proof of the delinquency
of the people during the last half-century, and in connection with it
the prophet introduces certain novel features. To Haggai and Zechariah
the great Tribulation had closed with the Exile and the rebuilding
of the Temple: Israel stood on the margin of the Messianic age. But
the Book of “Malachi” proclaims the need of another judgment as
emphatically as the older prophets had predicted the Babylonian doom.
“Malachi” repeats their name for it, _the great and terrible Day of
Jehovah_. But he does not foresee it, as they did, in the shape of
a historical process. His description of it is pure Apocalypse—_the
fire of the smelter and the fuller’s acid: the day that burns like
a furnace_, when all wickedness is as stubble, and all evil men are
devoured, but to the righteous _the Sun of Righteousness shall arise
with healing in His wings_, and they shall tread the wicked under
foot.[999] To this the prophet adds a novel promise. God is so much the
God of love,[1000] that before the Day comes He will give His people
an opportunity of conversion. He will send them Elijah the prophet to
change their hearts, that He may be prevented from striking the land
with His Ban.
In one other point the book is original, and that is in its attitude
towards the heathen. Among the heathen, it boldly says, Jehovah is
held in higher reverence than among His own people.[1001] In such a
statement we can hardly fail to feel the influence upon Israel of their
contact, often close and personal, with their wise and mild tyrants
the Persians. We may emphasise the verse as the first note of that
recognition of the real religiousness of the heathen, which we shall
find swelling to such fulness and tenderness in the Book of Jonah.
Such are in brief the style and the principles of the Book of
“Malachi,” whose separate prophecies we may now proceed to take up in
detail.
FOOTNOTES:
[987] Ezra iv. 6-23.
[988] This is recorded in the Aramean document which has been
incorporated in our Book of Ezra, and there is no reason to doubt its
reality. In that document we have already found, in spite of its
comparatively late date, much that is accurate history. See above, p.
212. And it is clear that, the Temple being finished, the Jews must
have drawn upon themselves the same religious envy of the Samaritans
which had previously delayed the construction of the Temple. To meet
it, what more natural than that the Jews should have attempted to raise
the walls of their city? It is almost impossible to believe that they
who had achieved the construction of the Temple in 516 should not, in
the next fifty years, make some effort to raise their fallen walls. And
indeed Nehemiah’s account of his own work almost necessarily implies
that they had done so, for what he did after 445 was not to build new
walls, but rather to repair shattered ones.
[989] See above, p. 335, n. 970, and below, p. 354, on “Mal.” i. 8.
[990] Cf. Stade, _Gesch. des Volkes Israel_, II., pp. 128-138, the best
account of this period.
[991] “Mal.” iii. 14.
[992] “Mal.” i. 2, 6; iii. 8 f.
[993] _Id._ i. 7 f., 12-14.
[994] _Id._ i. 6 f., ii.
[995] _Id._ ii, 10.
[996] “Mal.” ii. 10-16.
[997] For proof of this see above, pp. 331 f.
[998] “Mal.” iii. 16.
[999] iii. 2, 19 ff. Heb., iv. 1 ff. Eng.
[1000] iii. 6.
[1001] i. 11.
CHAPTER XXVI
_PROPHECY WITHIN THE LAW_
“MALACHI” i.—iv.
Beneath this title we may gather all the eight sections of the Book of
“Malachi.” They contain many things of perennial interest and validity:
their truth is applicable, their music is still musical, to ourselves.
But their chief significance is historical. They illustrate the
development of prophecy _within_ the Law. Not _under_ the Law, be it
observed. For if one thing be more clear than another about “Malachi’s”
teaching, it is that the spirit of prophecy is not yet crushed by the
legalism which finally killed it within Israel. “Malachi” observes and
enforces the demands of the Deuteronomic law under which his people
had lived since the Return from Exile. But he traces each of these
to some spiritual principle, to some essential of religion in the
character of Israel’s God, which is either doubted or neglected by his
contemporaries in their lax performance of the Law. That is why we may
entitle his book Prophecy within the Law.
* * * * *
The essential principles of the religion of Israel which had been
shaken or obscured by the delinquency of the people during the
half-century after the rebuilding of the Temple were three—the
distinctive Love of Jehovah for His people, His Holiness, and His
Righteousness. The Book of “Malachi” takes up each of these in turn,
and proves or enforces it according as the people have formally doubted
it or in their carelessness done it despite.
1. GOD’S LOVE FOR ISRAEL AND HATRED OF EDOM
(Chap. i. 2-5).
He begins with God’s Love, and in answer to the disappointed[1002]
people’s cry, _Wherein hast Thou loved us?_ he does not, as the older
prophets did, sweep the whole history of Israel, and gather proofs of
Jehovah’s grace and unfailing guidance in all the great events from the
deliverance from Egypt to the deliverance from Babylon. But he confines
himself to a comparison of Israel with the Gentile nation, which was
most akin to Israel according to the flesh, their own brother Edom. It
is possible, of course, to see in this a proof of our prophet’s
narrowness, as contrasted with Amos or Hosea or the great Evangelist of
the Exile. But we must remember that out of all the history of Israel
“Malachi” could not have chosen an instance which would more strongly
appeal to the heart of his contemporaries. We have seen from the Book
of Obadiah how ever since the beginning of the Exile Edom had come to
be regarded by Israel as their great antithesis.[1003] If we needed
further proof of this we should find it in many Psalms of the Exile,
which like the Book of Obadiah remember with bitterness the hostile
part that Edom played in the day of Israel’s calamity. The two nations
were utterly opposed in genius and character. Edom was a people of as
unspiritual and self-sufficient a temper as ever cursed any of God’s
human creatures. Like their ancestor they were _profane_,[1004] without
repentance, humility or ideals, and almost without religion. Apart,
therefore, from the long history of war between the two peoples, it was
a true instinct which led Israel to regard their brother as
representative of that heathendom against which they had to realise
their destiny in the world as God’s own nation. In choosing the
contrast of Edom’s fate to illustrate Jehovah’s love for Israel,
“Malachi” was not only choosing what would appeal to the passions of
his contemporaries, but what is the most striking and constant
antithesis in the whole history of Israel: the absolutely diverse
genius and destiny of these two Semitic nations who were nearest
neighbours and, according to their traditions, twin-brethren after the
flesh. If we keep this in mind we shall understand Paul’s use of the
antithesis in the passage in which he clenches it by a quotation from
“Malachi”: _as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I
hated_.[1005] In these words the doctrine of the Divine election of
individuals appears to be expressed as absolutely as possible. But it
would be unfair to read the passage except in the light of Israel’s
history. In the Old Testament it is a matter of fact that the doctrine
of the Divine preference of Israel to Esau appeared only after the
respective characters of the nations were manifested in history, and
that it grew more defined and absolute only as history discovered more
of the fundamental contrast between the two in genius and
destiny.[1006] In the Old Testament, therefore, the doctrine is the
result, not of an arbitrary belief in God’s bare fiat, but of
historical experience; although, of course, the distinction which
experience proves is traced back, with everything else of good or evil
that happens, to the sovereign will and purpose of God. Nor let us
forget that the Old Testament doctrine of election is of election to
service only. That is to say, the Divine intention in electing covers
not the elect individual or nation only, but the whole world and its
needs of God and His truth.
The event to which “Malachi” appeals as evidence for God’s rejection
of Edom is _the desolation_ of the latter’s ancient _heritage_, _and_
the abandonment of it to the _jackals of the desert_. Scholars used
to think that these vague phrases referred to some act of the Persian
kings: some removal of the Edomites from the lands of the Jews in
order to make room for the returned exiles.[1007] But “Malachi” says
expressly that it was Edom’s own _heritage_ which was laid desolate.
This can only be Mount Esau or Se’ir, and the statement that it was
delivered _to the jackals of the desert_ proves that the reference is
to that same expulsion of Edom from their territory by the Nabatean
Arabs which we have already seen the Book of Obadiah relate about the
beginning of the Exile.[1008]
But it is now time to give in full the opening passage of “Malachi,” in
which he appeals to this important event as proof of God’s distinctive
love for Israel, and, “Malachi” adds, of His power beyond Israel’s
border (“Mal.” chap. i. 2-5).
_I have loved you, saith Jehovah. But ye say, “Wherein hast Thou loved
us?” Is not Esau brother to Jacob?—oracle of Jehovah—and I have loved
Jacob and Esau have I hated. I have made his mountains desolate, and
given his heritage to the jackals of the desert. Should _the people
of_ Edom say,[1009] “We are destroyed, but we will rebuild the waste
places,” thus saith Jehovah of Hosts, They may build, but I will pull
down: men shall call them “The Border of Wickedness” and “The People
with whom Jehovah is wroth for ever.” And your eyes shall see it, and
yourselves shall say, “Great is Jehovah beyond Israel’s border.”_
2. “HONOUR THY FATHER” (Chap. i. 6-14).
From God’s Love, which Israel have doubted, the prophet passes to His
Majesty or Holiness, which they have wronged. Now it is very remarkable
that the relation of God to the Jews in which the prophet should see
His Majesty illustrated is not only His lordship over them but His
Fatherhood: _A son honours a father, and a servant his lord; but if I
be Father, where is My honour? and if I be Lord, where is there
reverence for Me? saith Jehovah of Hosts_.[1010] We are so accustomed
to associate with the Divine Fatherhood only ideas of love and pity
that the use of the relation to illustrate not love but Majesty, and
the setting of it in parallel to the Divine Kingship, may seem to us
strange. Yet this was very natural to Israel. In the old Semitic world,
even to the human parent, honour was due before love. _Honour thy
father and thy mother_, said the Fifth Commandment; and when, after
long shyness to do so, Israel at last ventured to claim Jehovah as the
Father of His people, it was at first rather with the view of
increasing their sense of His authority and their duty of reverencing
Him, than with the view of bringing Him near to their hearts and
assuring them of His tenderness. The latter elements, it is true, were
not absent from the conception. But even in the Psalter, in which we
find the most intimate and tender fellowship of the believer with God,
there is only one passage in which His love for His own is compared to
the love of a human father.[1011] And in the other very few passages of
the Old Testament where He is revealed or appealed to as the Father of
the nation, it is, with two exceptions,[1012] in order either to
emphasise His creation of Israel or His discipline. So in
Jeremiah,[1013] and in an anonymous prophet of the same period perhaps
as “Malachi.”[1014] This hesitation to ascribe to God the name of
Father, and this severe conception of what Fatherhood meant, was
perhaps needful for Israel in face of the sensuous ideas of the Divine
Fatherhood cherished by their heathen neighbours.[1015] But, however
this may be, the infrequency and austerity of Israel’s conception of
God’s Fatherhood, in contrast with that of Christianity, enables us to
understand why “Malachi” should employ the relation as proof, not of
the Love, but of the Majesty and Holiness of Jehovah.
This Majesty and this Holiness have been wronged, he says, by low
thoughts of God’s altar, and by offering upon it, with untroubled
conscience, cheap and blemished sacrifices. The people would have been
ashamed to present such to their Persian governor: how can God be
pleased with them? Better that sacrifice should cease than that such
offerings should be presented in such a spirit! _Is there no one_,
cries the prophet, _to close the doors_ of the Temple altogether, so
that _the altar_ smoke not _in vain_?
The passage shows us what a change has passed over the spirit of Israel
since prophecy first attacked the sacrificial ritual. We remember how
Amos would have swept it all away as an abomination to God.[1016] So,
too, Isaiah and Jeremiah. But their reason for this was very different
from “Malachi’s.” Their contemporaries were assiduous and lavish in
sacrificing, and were devoted to the Temple and the ritual with a
fanaticism which made them forget that Jehovah’s demands upon His
people were righteousness and the service of the weak. But “Malachi”
condemns his generation for depreciating the Temple, and for being
stingy and fraudulent in their offerings. Certainly the post-exilic
prophet assumes a different attitude to the ritual from that of his
predecessors in ancient Israel. They wished it all abolished, and
placed the chief duties of Israel towards God in civic justice and
mercy. But he emphasises it as the first duty of the people towards
God, and sees in their neglect the reason of their misfortunes and the
cause of their coming doom. In this change which has come over prophecy
we must admit the growing influence of the Law. From Ezekiel onwards
the prophets become more ecclesiastical and legal. And though at first
they do not become less ethical, yet the influence which was at work
upon them was of such a character as was bound in time to engross their
interest, and lead them to remit the ethical elements of their religion
to a place secondary to the ceremonial. We see symptoms of this even in
“Malachi,” we shall find more in Joel, and we know how aggravated these
symptoms afterwards became in all the leaders of Jewish religion. At
the same time we ought to remember that this change of emphasis, which
many will think to be for the worse, was largely rendered necessary by
the change of temper in the people to whom the prophets ministered.
“Malachi” found among his contemporaries a habit of religious
performance which was not only slovenly and indecent, but mean and
fraudulent, and it became his first practical duty to attack this.
Moreover the neglect of the Temple was not due to those spiritual
conceptions of Jehovah and those moral duties He demanded, in the
interests of which the older prophets had condemned the ritual. At
bottom the neglect of the Temple was due to the very same reasons as
the superstitious zeal and fanaticism in sacrificing which the older
prophets had attacked—false ideas, namely, of God Himself, and of what
was due to Him from His people. And on these grounds, therefore, we may
say that “Malachi” was performing for his generation as needful and as
Divine a work as Amos and Isaiah had performed for theirs. Only, be it
admitted, the direction of “Malachi’s” emphasis was more dangerous for
religion than that of the emphasis of Amos or Isaiah. How liable the
practice he inculcated was to exaggeration and abuse is sadly proved in
the later history of his people: it was against that exaggeration,
grown great and obdurate through three centuries, that Jesus delivered
His most unsparing words.
_A son honours a father, and a servant his lord. But if I am Father,
where is My honour? and if I am Lord, where is reverence for Me? saith
Jehovah of Hosts to you, O priests, who despise My Name. Ye say, “How
then have we despised Thy Name?” Ye are bringing polluted food to Mine
Altar. Ye say, “How have we polluted Thee?”[1017] By saying,[1018] “The
Table of Jehovah may be despised”; and when ye bring a blind _beast_ to
sacrifice, “No harm!” or when ye bring a lame or sick one, “No
harm!”[1019] Pray, take it to thy Satrap: will he be pleased with thee,
or accept thy person? saith Jehovah of Hosts. But now, propitiate[1020]
God, that He may be gracious to us. When _things_ like this come from
your hands, can He accept your persons? saith Jehovah of Hosts. Who is
there among you to close the doors_ of the Temple altogether, _that ye
kindle not Mine Altar in vain? I have no pleasure in you, saith Jehovah
of Hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hands. For from
the rising of the sun and to its setting My Name is glorified[1021]
among the nations; and in every sacred place[1022] incense is offered
to My Name, and a pure offering:[1023] for great is My Name among the
nations, saith Jehovah of Hosts. But ye are profaning it, in that ye
think[1024] that the Table of the Lord is polluted, and[1025] its food
contemptible. And ye say, What a weariness! and ye sniff at it,[1026]
saith Jehovah of Hosts. _When_ ye bring what has been plundered,[1027]
and the lame and the diseased, yea,_ when _ye_ so _bring an offering,
can I accept it with grace from your hands? saith Jehovah. Cursed be
the cheat in whose flock is a male_ beast _and he vows it,[1028] and
slays for the Lord a miserable beast.[1029] For a great King am I,
saith Jehovah of Hosts, and My Name is reverenced among the nations._
Before we pass from this passage we must notice in it one very
remarkable feature—perhaps the most original contribution which the
Book of “Malachi” makes to the development of prophecy. In contrast to
the irreverence of Israel and the wrong they do to Jehovah’s Holiness,
He Himself asserts that not only is _His Name great and glorified among
the heathen, from the rising to the setting of the sun_, but that _in
every sacred place incense and a pure offering are offered to His
Name_. This is so novel a statement, and, we may truly say, so
startling, that it is not wonderful that the attempt should have been
made to interpret it, not of the prophet’s own day, but of the
Messianic age and the kingdom of Christ. So, many of the Christian
Fathers, from Justin and Irenæus to Theodoret and Augustine;[1030] so,
our own Authorised Version, which boldly throws the verbs into the
future; and so, many modern interpreters like Pusey, who declares that
the style is “a vivid present such as is often used to describe the
future; but the things spoken of show it to be future.” All these take
the passage to be an anticipation of Christ’s parables declaring the
rejection of the Jews and ingathering of the Gentiles to the kingdom of
heaven, and of the argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that the
bleeding and defective offerings of the Jews were abrogated by the
sacrifice of the Cross. But such an exegesis is only possible by
perverting the text and misreading the whole argument of the prophet.
Not only are the verbs of the original in the present tense—so also in
the early versions—but the prophet is obviously contrasting the
contempt of God’s own people for Himself and His institutions with the
reverence paid to His Name among the heathen. It is not the mere
question of there being righteous people in every nation, well-pleasing
to Jehovah because of their lives. The very sacrifices of the heathen
are pure and acceptable to Him. Never have we had in prophecy, even the
most far-seeing and evangelical, a statement so generous and so
catholic as this. Why it should appear only now in the history of
prophecy is a question we are unable to answer with certainty. Many
have seen in it the result of Israel’s intercourse with their tolerant
and religious masters the Persians. None of the Persian kings had up to
this time persecuted the Jews, and numbers of pious and large-minded
Israelites must have had opportunity of acquaintance with the very pure
doctrines of the Persian religion, among which it is said that there
was already numbered the recognition of true piety in men of all
religions.[1031] If Paul derived from his Hellenic culture the
knowledge which made it possible for him to speak as he did in Athens
of the religiousness of the Gentiles, it was just as probable that Jews
who had come within the experience of a still purer Aryan faith should
utter an even more emphatic acknowledgment that the One True God had
those who served Him in spirit and in truth all over the world. But,
whatever foreign influences may have ripened such a faith in Israel, we
must not forget that its roots were struck deep in the native soil of
their religion. From the first they had known their God as a God of a
grace so infinite that it was impossible it should be exhausted on
themselves. If His righteousness, as Amos showed, was over all the
Syrian states, and His pity and His power to convert, as Isaiah showed,
covered even the cities of Phœnicia, the great Evangelist of the Exile
could declare that He quenched not the smoking wicks of the dim heathen
faiths.
As interesting, however, as the origin of “Malachi’s” attitude to
the heathen, are two other points about it. In the first place, it is
remarkable that it should occur, especially in the form of emphasising
the purity of heathen sacrifices, in a book which lays such heavy
stress upon the Jewish Temple and ritual. This is a warning to us not
to judge harshly the so-called legal age of Jewish religion, nor to
despise the prophets who have come under the influence of the Law. And
in the second place, we perceive in this statement a step towards the
fuller acknowledgment of Gentile religiousness which we find in the
Book of Jonah. It is strange that none of the post-exilic Psalms strike
the same note. They often predict the conversion of the heathen; but
they do not recognise their native reverence and piety. Perhaps the
reason is that in a body of song, collected for the national service,
such a feature would be out of place.
3. THE PRIESTHOOD OF KNOWLEDGE (Chap. ii. 1-9).
In the third section of his book “Malachi” addresses himself to the
priests. He charges them not only with irreverence and slovenliness in
their discharge of the Temple service—for this he appears to intend by
the phrase _filth of your feasts_—but with the neglect of their
intellectual duties to the people. _The lips of a priest guard
knowledge, and men seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the
Angel_—the revealing Angel—_of Jehovah of Hosts_. Once more, what a
remarkable saying to come from the legal age of Israel’s religion, and
from a writer who so emphasises the ceremonial law! In all the range of
prophecy there is not any more in harmony with the prophetic ideal. How
needed it is in our own age!—needed against those two extremes of
religion from which we suffer, the limitation of the ideal of
priesthood to the communication of a magic grace, and its evaporation
in a vague religiosity from which the intellect is excluded as if it
were perilous, worldly and devilish.[1032] “Surrender of the intellect”
indeed! This is the burial of the talent in the napkin, and, as in the
parable of Christ, it is still in our day preached and practised by the
men of one talent. Religion needs all the brains we poor mortals can
put into it. There is a priesthood of knowledge, a priesthood of the
intellect, says “Malachi,” and he makes this a large part of God’s
covenant with Levi. Every priest of God is a priest of truth; and it is
very largely by the Christian ministry’s neglect of their intellectual
duties that so much irreligion prevails. As in “Malachi’s” day, so now,
“the laity take hurt and hindrance by our negligence.”[1033] And just
as he points out, so with ourselves, the consequence is the growing
indifference with which large bodies of the Christian ministry are
regarded by the thoughtful portions both of our labouring and
professional classes. Were the ministers of all the Churches to awake
to their ideal in this matter, there would surely come a very great
revival of religion among us.
_And now this Charge for you, O priests: If ye hear not, and lay not to
heart to give glory to My Name, saith Jehovah of Hosts, I will send
upon you the curse, and will curse your blessings—yea, I have cursed
them[1034]—for none of you layeth it to heart. Behold, I ... you
...[1035] and I will scatter filth in your faces, the filth of your
feasts....[1036] And ye shall know that I have sent to you this Charge,
to be My covenant with Levi,[1037] saith Jehovah of Hosts. My covenant
was with him life and peace,[1038] and I gave them to him, fear and he
feared Me, and humbled himself before My Name.[1039] The revelation of
truth was in his mouth, and wickedness was not found upon his lips. In
whole-heartedness[1040] and integrity he walked with Me, and turned
many from iniquity. For the lips of a priest guard knowledge, and men
seek instruction[1041] from his mouth, for he is the Angel of Jehovah
of Hosts. But ye have turned from the way, ye have tripped up many by
the Torah, ye have spoiled the covenant of Levi, saith Jehovah of
Hosts. And I on My part[1042] have made you contemptible to all the
people, and abased in proportion as ye kept not My ways and had respect
of persons in_ delivering your _Torah_.
4. THE CRUELTY OF DIVORCE (Chap. ii. 10-17).
In his fourth section, upon his countrymen’s frequent divorce of their
native wives in order to marry into the influential families of their
half-heathen neighbours,[1043] “Malachi” makes another of those wide
and spiritual utterances which so distinguish his prophecy and redeem
his age from the charge of legalism that is so often brought against
it. To him the Fatherhood of God is not merely a relation of power
and authority, requiring reverence from the nation. It constitutes
the members of the nation one close brotherhood, and against this
divorce is a crime and unnatural cruelty. Jehovah makes the _wife of a
man’s youth his mate_ for life _and his wife by covenant_. He _hates
divorce_, and His altar is so wetted by the tears of the wronged women
of Israel that the gifts upon it are no more acceptable in His sight.
No higher word on marriage was spoken except by Christ Himself. It
breathes the spirit of our Lord’s utterance: if we were sure of the
text of ver. 15, we might almost say that it anticipated the letter.
Certain verses, 11-13_a_, which disturb the argument by bringing in the
marriages with heathen wives are omitted in the following translation,
and will be given separately.
_Have we not all One Father? Hath not One God created us? Why then are
we unfaithful to one another, profaning the covenant of our
fathers?...[1044] Ye cover with tears the altar of Jehovah, with
weeping and with groaning, because respect is no longer had to the
offering, and acceptable gifts are not taken from your hands. And ye
say, “Why?” Because Jehovah has been witness between thee and the wife
of thy youth, with whom thou hast broken faith, though she is thy
mate[1045] and thy wife by covenant. And ...[1046] And what is the one
seeking? A Divine Seed. Take heed, then, to your spirit, and be not
unfaithful to the wife of thy youth.[1047] For I hate divorce, saith
Jehovah, God of Israel, and that a man cover his clothing[1048] with
cruelty, saith Jehovah of Hosts. So take heed to your spirit, and deal
not faithlessly._
The verses omitted in the above translation treat of the foreign
marriages, which led to this frequent divorce by the Jews of their
native wives. So far, of course, they are relevant to the subject
of the passage. But they obviously disturb its argument, as already
pointed out.[1049] They have nothing to do with the principle from
which it starts that Jehovah is the Father of the whole of Israel.
Remove them and the awkward clause in ver. 13_a_, by which some editor
has tried to connect them with the rest of the paragraph, and the
latter runs smoothly. The motive of their later addition is apparent,
if not justifiable. Here they are by themselves:—
_Judah was faithless, and abomination was practised in Israel[1050],
and in Jerusalem, for Judah hath defiled the sanctuary of Jehovah,
which was dear to Him, and hath married the daughter of a strange
god. May Jehovah cut off from the man, who doeth this, witness and
champion[1051] from the tents of Jacob, and offerer of sacrifices to
Jehovah of Hosts._[1052]
5. “WHERE IS THE GOD OF JUDGMENT?”
(Chap. ii. 17—iii. 5).
In this section “Malachi” turns from the sinners of his people to those
who weary Jehovah with the complaint that sin is successful, or, as
they put it, _Every one that does evil is good in the eyes of Jehovah,
and He delighteth in them_; and again, _Where is the God of Judgment?_
The answer is, The Lord Himself shall come. His Angel shall prepare His
way before Him, and suddenly shall the Lord come to His Temple. His
coming shall be for judgment, terrible and searching. Its first object
(note the order) shall be the cleansing of the priesthood, that proper
sacrifices may be established, and its second the purging of the
immorality of the people. Mark that although the coming of the Angel is
said to precede that of Jehovah Himself, there is the same blending of
the two as we have seen in previous accounts of angels.[1053] It is
uncertain whether this section closes with ver. 5 or 6: the latter goes
equally well with it and with the following section.
_Ye have wearied Jehovah with your words; and ye say, “In what have we
wearied_ Him _?” In that ye say, “Every one that does evil is good in
the eyes of Jehovah, and He delighteth in them”; or else, “Where is the
God of Judgment?” Behold, I will send My Angel, to prepare the way
before Me, and suddenly shall come to His Temple the Lord whom ye seek
and the Angel of the Covenant whom ye desire. Behold, He comes! saith
Jehovah of Hosts. But who may bear the day of His coming, and who stand
when He appears? For He is like the fire of the smelter and the acid of
the fullers. He takes His seat to smelt and to purge;[1054] and He will
purge the sons of Levi, and wash them out like gold or silver, and they
shall be to Jehovah bringers of an offering in righteousness. And the
offering of Judah and Jerusalem shall be pleasing to Jehovah, as in the
days of old and as in long past years. And I will come near you to
judgment, and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and the
adulterers and the perjurers, and against those who wrong the hireling
in his wage, and the widow and the orphan, and oppress the stranger,
and fear not Me, saith Jehovah of Hosts._
6. REPENTANCE BY TITHES (Chap. iii. 6-12).
This section ought perhaps to follow on to the preceding. Those whom it
blames for not paying the Temple tithes may be the sceptics addressed
in the previous section, who have stopped their dues to Jehovah out of
sheer disappointment that He does nothing. And ver. 6, which goes well
with either section, may be the joint between the two. However this
be, the new section enforces the need of the people’s repentance and
return to God, if He is to return to them. And when they ask, how are
they to return, “Malachi” plainly answers, By the payment of the tithes
they have not paid. In withholding these they robbed God, and to this,
their crime, are due the locusts and bad seasons which have afflicted
them. In our temptation to see in this a purely legal spirit, let us
remember that the neglect to pay the tithes was due to a religious
cause, unbelief in Jehovah, and that the return to belief in Him could
not therefore be shown in a more practical way than by the payment of
tithes. This is not prophecy subject to the Law, but prophecy employing
the means and vehicles of grace with which the Law at that time
provided the people.
_For I Jehovah have not changed, but ye sons of Jacob have not done
with (?).[1055] In the days of your fathers ye turned from My statutes
and did not keep them. Return to Me, and I will return to you, saith
Jehovah of Hosts. But you say, “How then shall we return?” Can a man
rob[1056] God? yet ye are robbing Me. But ye say, “In what have we
robbed Thee?” In the tithe and the tribute.[1057] With the curse are ye
cursed, and yet Me ye are robbing, the whole people of you. Bring in
the whole tithe to the storehouse, that there may be provision[1058] in
My House, and pray, prove Me in this, saith Jehovah of Hosts—whether
I will not open to you the windows of heaven, and pour blessing
upon you till there is no more need. And I will check for you the
devourer,[1059] and he shall not destroy for you the fruit of the
ground, nor the vine in the field miscarry, saith Jehovah of Hosts. And
all nations shall call you happy, for ye shall be a land of delight,
saith Jehovah of Hosts._
7. THE JUDGMENT TO COME
(Chap. iii. 13-21 Heb., iii. 13—iv. 2 Eng.).
This is another charge to the doubters among the pious remnant of
Israel, who, seeing the success of the wicked, said it is vain to
serve God. Deuteronomy was their Canon, and Deuteronomy said that if
men sinned they decayed, if they were righteous they prospered. How
different were the facts of experience! The evil men succeeded: the
good won no gain by their goodness, nor did their mourning for the
sins of their people work any effect. Bitterest of all, they had to
congratulate wickedness in high places, and Jehovah Himself suffered
it to go unpunished. _Such things_, says “Malachi,” _spake they that
feared God to each other_—tempted thereto by the dogmatic form of their
religion, and forgetful of all that Jeremiah and the Evangelist of the
Exile had taught them of the value of righteous sufferings. Nor does
“Malachi” remind them of this. His message is that the Lord remembers
them, has their names written before Him, and when the day of His
action comes they shall be separated from the wicked and spared. This
is simply to transfer the fulfilment of the promise of Deuteronomy to
the future and to another dispensation. Prophecy still works within the
Law.
The Apocalypse of this last judgment is one of the grandest in all
Scripture. To the wicked it shall be a terrible fire, root and branch
shall they be burned out, but to the righteous a fair morning of God,
as when dawn comes to those who have been sick and sleepless through
the black night, and its beams bring healing, even as to the popular
belief of Israel it was the rays of the morning sun which distilled the
dew.[1060] They break into life and energy, like young calves leaping
from the dark pen into the early sunshine. To this morning landscape a
grim figure is added. They shall tread down the wicked and the arrogant
like ashes beneath their feet.
_Your words are hard upon Me, saith Jehovah. Ye say, “What have we
said against Thee?” Ye have said, “It is vain to serve God,” and “What
gain is it to us to have kept His charge, or to have walked in funeral
garb before Jehovah of Hosts? Even now we have got to congratulate the
arrogant; yea, the workers of wickedness are fortified; yea, they tempt
God and escape!” Such things[1061] spake they that fear Jehovah to each
other. But Jehovah gave ear and heard, and a book of remembrance[1062]
was written before Him about those who fear Jehovah, and those who keep
in mind[1063] His Name. And they shall be Mine own property, saith
Jehovah of Hosts, in the day when I rise to action,[1064] and I will
spare them even as a man spares his son that serves him. And ye shall
once more see_ the difference _between righteous and wicked, between
him that serves God and him that does not serve Him._
_For, lo! the day is coming that shall burn like a furnace, and all the
overweening and every one that works wickedness shall be as stubble,
and the day that is coming shall devour them, saith Jehovah of Hosts,
so that there be left them neither root nor branch. But to you that
fear My Name the Sun of Righteousness shall rise with healing in His
wings, and ye shall go forth and leap[1065] like calves of the
stall.[1066] And ye shall tread down the wicked, for they shall be as
ashes[1067] beneath the soles of your feet, in the day that I_ begin to
_do, saith Jehovah of Hosts._
8. THE RETURN OF ELIJAH
(Chap. iii. 22-24 Heb., iv. 3-5 Eng.).
With his last word the prophet significantly calls upon the people to
remember the Law. This is their one hope before the coming of the great
and terrible day of the Lord. But, in order that the Law may have full
effect, Prophecy will be sent to bring it home to the hearts of the
people—Prophecy in the person of her founder and most drastic
representative. Nothing could better gather up than this conjunction
does that mingling of Law and of Prophecy which we have seen to be so
characteristic of the work of “Malachi.” Only we must not overlook the
fact that “Malachi” expects this prophecy, which with the Law is to
work the conversion of the people, not in the continuance of the
prophetic succession by the appearance of original personalities,
developing further the great principles of their order, but in the
return of the first prophet Elijah. This is surely the confession of
Prophecy that the number of her servants is exhausted and her message
to Israel fulfilled. She can now do no more for the people than she has
done. But she will summon up her old energy and fire in the return of
her most powerful personality, and make one grand effort to convert the
nation before the Lord come and strike it with judgment.
_Remember the Torah of Moses, My servant, with which I charged him in
Horeb for all Israel: statutes and judgments. Lo! I am sending to you
Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and terrible day of
Jehovah. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the sons, and
the heart of the sons to their fathers, ere I come and strike the land
with the Ban._
* * * * *
“Malachi” makes this promise of the Law in the dialect of Deuteronomy:
_statutes and judgments with which Jehovah charged Moses for Israel_.
But the Law he enforces is not that which God delivered to Moses on the
plains of Shittim, but that which He gave him in Mount Horeb. And so
it came to pass. In a very few years after “Malachi” prophesied Ezra
the Scribe brought from Babylon the great Levitical Code, which appears
to have been arranged there, while the colony in Jerusalem were still
organising their life under the Deuteronomic legislation. In 444 B.C.
this Levitical Code, along with Deuteronomy, became by covenant between
the people and their God their Canon and Law. And in the next of our
prophets, Joel, we shall find its full influence at work.
FOOTNOTES:
[1002] See above, p. 343.
[1003] See above, Chapter XIV. on “Edom and Israel.”
[1004] Heb. xii. 16.
[1005] Romans ix. 13. The citation is from the LXX.: τὸν Ἰακὼβ ἠγάπησα,
τὸν δὲ Ἠσαῦ ἐμίσησα.
[1006] This was mainly _after_ the beginning of exile. Shortly before
that Deut. xxiii. 7 says: _Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, for he is
thy brother_.
[1007] So even so recently as 1888, Stade, _Gesch. des Volkes Israel_,
II., p. 112.
[1008] See above, p. 169. This interpretation is there said to be
Wellhausen’s; but Cheyne, in a note contributed to the _Z.A.T.W._,
1894, p. 142, points out that Grätz, in an article “Die Anfänge
der Nabatäer-Herrschaft” in the _Monatschrift für Wissenschaft u.
Geschichte des Judenthums_, 1875, pp. 60-66, had already explained
“Mal.” i. 1-5 as describing the conquest of Edom by the Nabateans. This
is adopted by Buhl in his _Gesch. der Edomiter_, p. 79.
[1009] The verb in the feminine indicates that the population of Edom
is meant.
[1010] i. 6.
[1011] Psalm ciii. 9. In Psalm lxxiii. 15 believers are called _His
children_; but elsewhere sonship is claimed only for the king—ii. 7,
lxxxix. 27 f.
[1012] Hosea xi. 1 ff. (though even here the idea of discipline is
present) and Isa. lxiii. 16.
[1013] iii. 4.
[1014] Isa. lxiv. 8, cf. Deut. xxxii. 11 where the discipline of
Israel by Jehovah, shaking them out of their desert circumstance
and tempting them to their great career in Palestine, is likened to
the father-eagle’s training of his new-fledged brood to fly: A.V.
mother-eagle.
[1015] Cf. Cheyne, _Origin of the Psalter_, p. 305, n. O.
[1016] Vol. I., Chap. IX.
[1017] Or used polluted things with respect to Thee. For similar
construction see Zech. vii. 5: צמתוני. This in answer to Wellhausen,
who, on the ground that the phrase gives גאל a wrong object and
destroys the connection, deletes it. Further he takes מגאל, not in the
sense of pollution, but as equivalent to נבזה, _despised_.
[1018] Obviously _in their hearts = thinking_.
[1019] LXX. _is there no harm?_
[1020] _Pacify the face of_, as in Zechariah.
[1021] So LXX. Heb. _is great_, but the phrase is probably written by
mistake from the instance further on: _is glorified_ could scarcely
have been used in the very literal version of the LXX. unless it had
been found in the original.
[1022] מקום, here to be taken in the sense it bears in Arabic of
_sacred place_. See on Zeph. ii. 11: above, p. 64, n. 159.
[1023] Wellhausen deletes מגש as a gloss on מקטר, and the vau before
מנחה.
[1024] Heb. _say_.
[1025] Heb. also has ניבו, found besides only in Keri of Isa. lvii. 19.
But Robertson Smith (_O.T.J.C._, 2, p. 444) is probably right in
considering this an error for נבזה, which has kept its place after the
correction was inserted.
[1026] This clause is obscure, and comes in awkwardly before that which
follows it. Wellhausen omits.
[1027] גָּזוּל. Wellhausen emends אֶת־הָעִוֵּר borrowing the first three
letters from the previous word. LXX. ἁρπάγματα.
[1028] LXX.
[1029] Cf. Lev. iii. 1, 6.
[1030] Quoted by Pusey, _in loco_.
[1031] See Cheyne, _Origin of the Psalter_, 292 and 305 f.
[1032] _Isaiah i.—xxxix._ (Expositor’s Bible), p. 188.
[1033] See most admirable remarks on this subject in Archdeacon
Wilson’s _Essays and Addresses_, No. III. “The Need of giving Higher
Biblical Teaching, and Instruction on the Fundamental Questions of
Religion and Christianity.” London: Macmillan, 1887.
[1034] Doubtful. LXX. adds καὶ διεσκεδάσω τῆν εὐλόγιαν ὑμῶν κὰι οὐκ
ἔσται ἐν ὑμῖν: obvious redundancy, if not mere dittography.
[1035] An obscure phrase, הִנְנִי גֹּדֵעַ לָכֶם אֶת־הַזֶרַע, _Behold, I rebuke you
the seed_. LXX. _Behold_, _I separate from you the arm_ or _shoulder_,
reading זְרֹעַ for זֶרַע and perhaps גֹּדֵעַ for גֹּעֵר, both of which readings
Wellhausen adopts, and Ewald the former. The reference may be to the
arm of the priest raised in blessing. Orelli reads _seed = posterity_.
It may mean the whole _seed_ or _class_ or _kind_ of the priests. The
next clause tempts one to suppose that את־הזרע contains the verb of
this one, as if scattering something.
[1036] Heb. וְנָשָָׂא אֶתְכֶם אֵלָיו, _and one shall bear you to it_.
Hitzig: filth shall be cast on them, and they on the filth.
[1037] Others would render _My covenant being with Levi_. Wellhausen:
_for My covenant was with Levi_. But this new Charge or covenant seems
contrasted with a former covenant in the next verse.
[1038] Num. xxv. 12.
[1039] This sentence is a literal translation of the Hebrew. With other
punctuation Wellhausen renders _My covenant was with him, life and
peace I gave them to him, fear..._
[1040] Or _peace_, שָׁלוֹם.
[1041] Or _revelation_, Torah.
[1042] וְנַם־אֲנִי: cf. Amos iv.
[1043] See above, p. 344.
[1044] Here occur the two verses and a clause, 11-13_a_, upon the
foreign marriages, which seem to be an intrusion.
[1045] See Vol. I., p. 259.
[1046] Heb. literally: _And not one did, and a remnant of spirit was
his_; which (1) A.V. renders: _And did not he make one? Yet he had the
residue of the spirit_, which Pusey accepts and applies to Adam and
Eve, interpreting the second clause as _the breath of life_, by which
Adam _became a living soul_ (Gen. ii. 7). In Gen. i. 27 Adam and Eve
are called one. In that case the meaning would be that the law of
marriage was prior to that of divorce, as in the words of our Lord,
Matt. xix. 4-6. (2) The Hebrew might be rendered, _Not one has done
this who had any spirit left in him_. So Hitzig and Orelli. In that
case the following clauses of the verse are referred to Abraham. _“But
what about the One?”_ (LXX. insert _ye say_ after _But_)—the one who
did put away his wife. Answer: _He was seeking a Divine seed_. The
objection to this interpretation is that Abraham did not cast off the
wife of his youth, Sarah, but the foreigner Hagar. (3) Ewald made a
very different proposal: _And has not One created them, and all the
Spirit_ (cf. Zeph. i. 4) _is His? And what doth the One seek? A Divine
seed._ So Reinke. Similarly Kirkpatrick (_Doct. of the Proph._, p.
502): _And did not One make_[you both]_? And why_ [did]_the One _[do
so]_? Seeking a goodly seed_. (4) Wellhausen goes further along the
same line. Reading הלא for ולא, and וישאר for ושאר, and לנו for לו, he
translates: _Hath not the same God created and sustained your (? our)
breath? And what does He desire? A seed of God._
[1047] Literally: _let none be unfaithful to the wife of thy youth_,
a curious instance of the Hebrew habit of mixing the pronominal
references. Wellhausen’s emendation is unnecessary.
[1048] See Gesenius and Ewald for Arabic analogies for the use of
clothing = wife.
[1049] See above, p. 340.
[1050] Wellhausen omits.
[1051] Heb. עֵר וְעֹנֶה, _caller and answerer_. But LXX. read עד,
_witness_ (see iii. 5), though it pointed it differently.
[1052] 13_a_, _But secondly ye do this_, is the obvious addition of the
editor in order to connect his intrusion with what follows.
[1053] See above, pp. 311, 313 f.
[1054] Delete _silver_: the longer LXX. text shows how easily it was
added.
[1055] _Made an end of_, reading the verb as Piel (Orelli). LXX.
_refrain from_. _Your sins_ are understood, the sins which have always
characterised the people. LXX. connects the opening of the next verse
with this, and with a different reading of the first word translates
_from the sins of your fathers_.
[1056] Heb. קבע, only here and Prov. xxii. 32. LXX. read עקב,
_supplant_, _cheat_, which Wellhausen adopts.
[1057] תְּרוּמָה, _the heave offering_, the tax or tribute given to
the sanctuary or priests and associates with the tithes, as here in
Deut. xii. 11, to be eaten by the offerer (_ib._ 17), but in Ezekiel by
the priests (xliv. 30); taken by the people and the Levites to the
Temple treasury for the priests (Neh. x. 38, xii. 44): corn, wine and
oil. In the Priestly Writing it signifies the part of each sacrifice
which was the priests’ due. Ezekiel also uses it of the part of the
Holy Land that fell to the prince and priests.
[1058] טֵרֶף in its later meaning: cf. Job xxiv. 5; Prov. xxxi. 15.
[1059] _I.e._ locust.
[1060] _A dew of lights._ See _Isaiah i.—xxxix._ (Expositor’s Bible),
pp. 448 f.
[1061] So LXX.; Heb. _then_.
[1062] Ezek. xiii. 9.
[1063] חשב, _to think_, _plan_, has much the same meaning as here
in Isa. xiii. 17, xxxiii. 8, liii. 3.
[1064] Heb. _when I am doing_; but in the sense in which the word is
used of Jehovah’s decisive and final doing, Psalms xx., xxxii., etc.
[1065] Hab. i. 8.
[1066] See note to Amos vi. 4: Vol. I., p. 174, n. 3.
[1067] Or _dust_.
_JOEL_
_The Day of Jehovah is great and very awful, and who may abide it?_
_But now the oracle of Jehovah—Turn ye to Me with all your heart, and
with fasting and with weeping and with mourning. And rend your hearts
and not your garments, and turn to Jehovah your God, for gracious and
merciful is He, long-suffering and abounding in love._
CHAPTER XXVII
_THE BOOK OF JOEL_
In the criticism of the Book of Joel there exist differences of
opinion—upon its date, the exact reference of its statements and its
relation to parallel passages in other prophets—as wide as even those
by which the Book of Obadiah has been assigned to every century between
the tenth and the fourth before Christ.[1068] As in the case of
Obadiah, the problem is not entangled with any doctrinal issue or
question of accuracy; but while we saw that Obadiah was not involved in
the central controversy of the Old Testament, the date of the Law, not
a little in Joel turns upon the latter. And, besides, certain
descriptions raise the large question between a literal and an
allegorical interpretation. Thus the Book of Joel carries the student
further into the problems of Old Testament Criticism, and forms an even
more excellent introduction to the latter, than does the Book of
Obadiah.
1. THE DATE OF THE BOOK.
In the history of prophecy the Book of Joel must be either very early
or very late, and with few exceptions the leading critics place it
either before 800 B.C. or after 500. So great a difference is due to
most substantial reasons. Unlike every other prophet, except Haggai,
“Malachi” and “Zechariah” ix.—xiv., Joel mentions neither Assyria,
which emerged upon the prophetic horizon about 760,[1069] nor the
Babylonian Empire, which had fallen by 537. The presumption is that he
wrote before 760 or after 537. Unlike all the prophets, too,[1070] Joel
does not charge his people with civic or national sins; nor does his
book bear any trace of the struggle between the righteous and
unrighteous in Israel, nor of that between the spiritual worshippers of
Jehovah and the idolaters. The book addresses an undivided nation, who
know no God but Jehovah; and again the presumption is that Joel wrote
before Amos and his successors had started the spiritual antagonisms
which rent Israel in twain, or after the Law had been accepted by the
whole people under Nehemiah.[1071] The same wide alternative is
suggested by the style and phraseology. Joel’s Hebrew is simple and
direct. Either he is an early writer, or imitates early writers. His
book contains a number of phrases and verses identical, or nearly
identical, with those of prophets from Amos to “Malachi.” Either they
all borrowed from Joel, or he borrowed from them.[1072]
Of this alternative modern criticism at first preferred the earlier
solution, and dated Joel before Amos. So Credner in his Commentary in
1831, and following him Hitzig, Bleek, Ewald, Delitzsch, Keil, Kuenen
(up to 1864),[1073] Pusey and others. So, too, at first some living
critics of the first rank, who, like Kuenen, have since changed their
opinion. And so, even still, Kirkpatrick (on the whole), Von Orelli,
Robertson,[1074] Stanley Leathes and Sinker.[1075] The reasons which
these scholars have given for the early date of Joel are roughly as
follows.[1076] His book occurs among the earliest of the Twelve: while
it is recognised that the order of these is not strictly chronological,
it is alleged that there is a division between the pre-exilic and
post-exilic prophets, and that Joel is found among the former. The
vagueness of his representations in general, and of his pictures of the
Day of Jehovah in particular, is attributed to the simplicity of the
earlier religion of Israel, and to the want of that analysis of its
leading conceptions which was the work of later prophets.[1077] His
horror of the interruption of the daily offerings in the Temple, caused
by the plague of locusts,[1078] is ascribed to a fear which pervaded
the primitive ages of all peoples.[1079] In Joel’s attitude towards
other nations, whom he condemns to judgment, Ewald saw “the old
unsubdued warlike spirit of the times of Deborah and David.” The
prophet’s absorption in the ravages of the locusts is held to reflect
the feeling of a purely agricultural community, such as Israel was
before the eighth century. The absence of the name of Assyria from the
book is assigned to the same unwillingness to give the name as we see
in Amos and the earlier prophecies of Isaiah, and it is thought by some
that, though not named, the Assyrians are symbolised by the locusts.
The absence of all mention of the Law is also held by some to prove an
early date: though other critics, who believe that the Levitical
legislation was extant in Israel from the earliest times, find proof of
this in Joel’s insistence upon the daily offering. The absence of all
mention of a king and the prominence given to the priests are explained
by assigning the prophecy to the minority of King Joash of Judah, when
Jehoyada the priest was regent;[1080] the charge against Egypt and Edom
of spilling innocent blood by Shishak’s invasion of Judah,[1081] and by
the revolt of the Edomites under Jehoram;[1082] the charge against the
Philistines and Phœnicians by the Chronicler’s account of Philistine
raids[1083] in the reign of Jehoram of Judah, and by the oracles of
Amos against both nations;[1084] and the mention of the Vale of
Jehoshaphat by that king’s defeat of Moab, Ammon and Edom in the Vale
of Berakhah.[1085] These allusions being recognised, it was deduced
from them that the parallels between Joel and Amos were due to Amos
having quoted from Joel.[1086]
These reasons are not all equally cogent,[1087] and even the strongest
of them do not prove more than the possibility of an early date for
Joel.[1088] Nor do they meet every historical difficulty. The minority
of Joash, upon which they converge, fell at a time when Aram was not
only prominent to the thoughts of Israel, but had already been felt to
be an enemy as powerful as the Philistines or Edomites. But the Book of
Joel does not mention Aram. It mentions the Greeks,[1089] and, although
we have no right to say that such a notice was impossible in Israel
in the ninth century, it was not only improbable, but no other Hebrew
document from before the Exile speaks of Greece, and in particular
Amos does not when describing the Phœnicians as slave-traders.[1090]
The argument that the Book of Joel must be early because it was placed
among the first six of the Twelve Prophets by the arrangers of the
Prophetic Canon, who could not have forgotten Joel’s date had he lived
after 450, loses all force from the fact that in the same group of
pre-exilic prophets we find the exilic Obadiah and the post-exilic
Jonah, both of them in precedence to Micah.
The argument for the early date of Joel is, therefore, not conclusive.
But there are besides serious objections to it, which make for the
other solution of the alternative we started from, and lead us to place
Joel after the establishment of the Law by Ezra and Nehemiah in 444 B.C.
A post-exilic date was first proposed by Vatke,[1091] and then
defended by Hilgenfeld,[1092] and by Duhm in 1875.[1093] From this
time the theory made rapid way, winning over many who had previously
held the early date of Joel, like Oort,[1094] Kuenen,[1095] A. B.
Davidson,[1096] Driver and Cheyne,[1097] perhaps also Wellhausen,[1098]
and finding acceptance and new proofs from a gradually increasing
majority of younger critics, Merx,[1099] Robertson Smith,[1100]
Stade,[1101] Matthes and Scholz,[1102] Holzinger,[1103] Farrar,[1104]
Kautzsch,[1105] Cornill,[1106] Wildeboer,[1107] G. B. Gray[1108] and
Nowack.[1109] The reasons which have led to this formidable change of
opinion in favour of the late date of the Book of Joel are as follows.
In the first place, the Exile of Judah appears in it as already past.
This is proved, not by the ambiguous phrase, _when I shall bring again
the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem_,[1110] but by the plain statement
that _the heathen have scattered Israel among the nations and divided
their land_.[1111] The plunder of the Temple seems also to be
implied.[1112] Moreover, no great world-power is pictured as either
threatening or actually persecuting God’s people; but Israel’s active
enemies and enslavers are represented as her own neighbours, Edomites,
Philistines and Phœnicians, and the last are represented as selling
Jewish captives to the Greeks. All this suits, if it does not
absolutely prove, the Persian age, before the reign of Artaxerxes
Ochus, who was the first Persian king to treat the Jews with
cruelty.[1113] The Greeks, Javan, do not appear in any Hebrew writer
before the Exile;[1114] the form in which their name is given by Joel,
B’ne ha-Jevanim, has admittedly a late sound about it,[1115] and we
know from other sources that it was in the fifth and fourth centuries
that Syrian slaves were in demand in Greece.[1116] Similarly with the
internal condition of the Jews as reflected in Joel. No king is
mentioned; but the priests are prominent, and the elders are introduced
at least once.[1117] It is an agricultural calamity, and that alone,
unmixed with any political alarm, which is the omen of the coming Day
of the Lord. All this suits the state of Jerusalem under the Persians.
Take again the religious temper and emphasis of the book. The latter is
laid, as we have seen, very remarkably upon the horror of the
interruption by the plague of locusts of the daily meal and drink
offerings, and in the later history of Israel the proofs are many of
the exceeding importance with which the regularity of this was
regarded.[1118] This, says Professor A. B. Davidson, “is very unlike
the way in which all other prophets down to Jeremiah speak of the
sacrificial service.” The priests, too, are called to take the
initiative; and the summons to a solemn and formal fast, without any
notice of the particular sins of the people or exhortations to distinct
virtues, contrasts with the attitude to fasts of the earlier prophets,
and with their insistence upon a change of life as the only acceptable
form of penitence.[1119] And another contrast with the earliest
prophets is seen in the general apocalyptic atmosphere and colouring of
the Book of Joel, as well as in some of the particular figures in which
this is expressed, and which are derived from later prophets like
Zephaniah and Ezekiel.[1120]
These evidences for a late date are supported, on the whole, by the
language of the book. Of this Merx furnishes many details, and by a
careful examination, which makes due allowance for the poetic form of
the book and for possible glosses, Holzinger has shown that there are
symptoms in vocabulary, grammar and syntax which at least are more
reconcilable with a late than with an early date.[1121] There are a
number of Aramaic words, of Hebrew words used in the sense in which
they are used by Aramaic, but by no other Hebrew, writers, and several
terms and constructions which appear only in the later books of the Old
Testament or very seldom in the early ones.[1122] It is true that these
do not stand in a large proportion to the rest of Joel’s vocabulary and
grammar, which is classic and suitable to an early period of the
literature; but this may be accounted for by the large use which the
prophet makes of the very words of earlier writers. Take this large use
into account, and the unmistakable Aramaisms of the book become even
more emphatic in their proof of a late date.
The literary parallels between Joel and other writers are unusually
many for so small a book. They number at least twenty in seventy-two
verses. The other books of the Old Testament in which they occur are
about twelve. Where one writer has parallels with many, we do not
necessarily conclude that he is the borrower, unless we find that some
of the phrases common to both are characteristic of the other writers,
or that, in his text of them, there are differences from theirs which
may reasonably be reckoned to be of a later origin. But that both of
these conditions are found in the parallels between Joel and other
prophets has been shown by Prof. Driver and Mr. G. B. Gray. “Several of
the parallels—either in their entirety or by virtue of certain words
which they contain—have their affinities solely or chiefly in the later
writings. But the significance [of this] is increased when the very
difference between a passage in Joel and its parallel in another book
consists in a word or phrase characteristic of the later centuries.
That a passage in a writer of the ninth century should differ from its
parallel in a subsequent writer by the presence of a word elsewhere
confined to the later literature would be strange; a single instance
would not, indeed, be inexplicable in view of the scantiness of
extant writings; but every additional instance—though itself not
very convincing—renders the strangeness greater.” And again, “the
variations in some of the parallels as found in Joel have other common
peculiarities. This also finds its natural explanation in the fact
that Joel quotes: for that the _same_ author even when quoting from
different sources should quote with variations of the same character
is natural, but that _different_ authors quoting from a common source
should follow the same method of quotation is improbable.”[1123] “While
in some of the parallels a comparison discloses indications that the
phrase in Joel is probably the later, in other cases, even though the
expression may in itself be met with earlier, it becomes frequent only
in a later age, and the use of it by Joel increases the presumption
that he stands by the side of the later writers.”[1124]
In face of so many converging lines of evidence, we shall not wonder
that there should have come about so great a change in the opinion of
the majority of critics on the date of Joel, and that it should now be
assigned by them to a post-exilic date. Some place it in the sixth
century before Christ,[1125] some in the first half of the fifth before
“Malachi” and Nehemiah,[1126] but the most after the full establishment
of the Law by Ezra and Nehemiah in 444 B.C.[1127] It is difficult,
perhaps impossible, to decide. Nothing certain can be deduced from the
mention of the _city wall_ in chap. ii. 9, from which Robertson Smith
and Cornill infer that Nehemiah’s walls were already built. Nor can we
be sure that Joel quotes the phrase, _before the great and terrible day
of Jehovah come_, from “Malachi,”[1128] although this is rendered
probable by the character of Joel’s other parallels. But the absence of
all reference to the prophets as a class, the promise of the rigorous
exclusion of foreigners from Jerusalem,[1129] the condemnation to
judgment of all the heathen, and the strong apocalyptic character of
the book, would incline us to place it after Ezra rather than before.
How far after, it is impossible to say, but the absence of feeling
against Persia requires a date before the cruelties inflicted by
Artaxerxes about 360.[1130]
One solution, which has lately been offered for the problems of date
presented by the Book of Joel, deserves some notice. In his German
translation of Driver’s _Introduction to the Old Testament_,[1131]
Rothstein questions the integrity of the prophecy, and alleges reasons
for dividing it into two sections. Chaps. i. and ii. (Heb.; i.—ii. 27
Eng.) he assigns to an early author, writing in the minority of King
Joash, but chaps. iii. and iv. (Heb.; ii. 28—iii. Eng.) to a date after
the Exile, while ii. 20, which, it will be remembered, Robertson Smith
takes as a gloss, he attributes to the editor who has joined the two
sections together. His reasons are that chaps. i. and ii. are entirely
taken up with the physical plague of locusts, and no troubles from
heathen are mentioned; while chaps. iii. and iv. say nothing of a
physical plague, but the evils they deplore for Israel are entirely
political, the assaults of enemies. Now it is quite within the bounds
of possibility that chaps. iii. and iv. are from another hand than
chaps. i. and ii.: we have nothing to disprove that. But, on the other
hand, there is nothing to prove it. On the contrary, the possibility of
all four chapters being from the same hand is very obvious. Joel
mentions no heathen in the first chapter, because he is engrossed with
the plague of locusts. But when this has passed, it is quite natural
that he should take up the standing problem of Israel’s history—their
relation to heathen peoples. There is no discrepancy between the two
different subjects, nor between the styles in which they are
respectively treated. Rothstein’s arguments for an early date for
chaps. i. and ii. have been already answered, and when we come to the
exposition of them we shall find still stronger reasons for assigning
them to the end of the fifth century before Christ. The assault on the
integrity of the prophecy may therefore be said to have failed, though
no one who remembers the composite character of the prophetical books
can deny that the question is still open.[1132]
2. THE INTERPRETATION OF THE BOOK: IS IT DESCRIPTION,
ALLEGORY OR APOCALYPSE?
Another question to which we must address ourselves before we can pass
to the exposition of Joel’s prophecies is of the attitude and intention
of the prophet. Does he describe or predict? Does he give history or
allegory?
Joel starts from a great plague of locusts, which he describes not only
in the ravages they commit upon the land, but in their ominous
foreshadowing of the Day of the Lord. They are the heralds of God’s
near judgment upon the nation. Let the latter repent instantly with a
day of fasting and prayer. Peradventure Jehovah will relent, and spare
His people. So far chap. i. 2—ii. 17. Then comes a break. An uncertain
interval appears to elapse; and in chap. ii. 18 we are told that
Jehovah’s zeal for Israel has been stirred, and He has had pity on His
folk. Promises follow, _first_, of deliverance from the plague and of
restoration of the harvests it has consumed, and _second_, of the
outpouring of the Spirit on all classes of the community: chap. ii.
17-32 (Eng.; ii. 17—iii. Heb.). Chap. iii. (Eng.; iv. Heb.) gives
another picture of the Day of Jehovah, this time described as a
judgment upon the heathen enemies of Israel. They shall be brought
together, condemned judicially by Him, and slain by His hosts, His
“supernatural” hosts. Jerusalem shall be freed from the feet of
strangers, and the fertility of the land restored.
These are the contents of the book. Do they describe an actual plague
of locusts, already experienced by the people? Or do they predict this
as still to come? And again, are the locusts which they describe real
locusts, or a symbol and allegory of the human foes of Israel? To these
two questions, which in a measure cross and involve each other, three
kinds of answer have been given.
A large and growing majority of critics of all schools[1133] hold that
Joel starts, like other prophets, from the facts of experience. His
locusts, though described with poetic hyperbole—for are they not the
vanguard of the awful Day of God’s judgment?—are real locusts; their
plague has just been felt by his contemporaries, whom he summons to
repent, and to whom, when they have repented, he brings promises of the
restoration of their ruined harvests, the outpouring of the Spirit, and
judgment upon their foes. Prediction is therefore found only in the
second half of the book (ii. 18 onwards): it rests upon a basis of
narrative and exhortation which fills the first half.
But a number of other critics have argued (and with great force)
that the prophet’s language about the locusts is too aggravated and
too ominous to be limited to the natural plague which these insects
periodically inflicted upon Palestine. Joel (they reason) would hardly
have connected so common an adversity with so singular and ultimate a
crisis as the Day of the Lord. Under the figure of locusts he must be
describing some more fateful agency of God’s wrath upon Israel. More
than one trait of his description appears to imply a human army. It can
only be one or other, or all, of those heathen powers whom at different
periods God raised up to chastise His delinquent people; and this
opinion is held to be supported by the facts that chap. ii. 20 speaks
of them as the Northern and chap. iii. (Eng.; iv. Heb.) deals with the
heathen. The locusts of chaps. i. and ii. are the same as the heathen
of chap. iii. In chaps. i. and ii. they are described as threatening
Israel, but on condition of Israel repenting (chap. ii. 18 ff.) the
Day of the Lord which they herald shall be their destruction and not
Israel’s (chap. iii.).[1134]
The supporters of this allegorical interpretation of Joel are, however,
divided among themselves as to whether the heathen powers symbolised by
the locusts are described as having already afflicted Israel or are
predicted as still to come. Hilgenfeld,[1135] for instance, says that
the prophet in chaps. i. and ii. speaks of their ravages as already
past. To him their fourfold plague described in chap. i. 4 symbolises
four Persian assaults upon Palestine, after the last of which in 358
the prophecy must therefore have been written.[1136] Others read them
as still to come. In our own country Pusey has been the strongest
supporter of this theory.[1137] To him the whole book, written before
Amos, is prediction. “It extends from the prophet’s own day to the end
of time.” Joel calls the scourge the Northern: he directs the priests
to pray for its removal, that _the heathen may not rule over God’s
heritage_;[1138] he describes the agent as a responsible one;[1139] his
imagery goes far beyond the effects of locusts, and threatens drought,
fire and plague,[1140] the assault of cities and the terrifying of
peoples.[1141] The scourge is to be destroyed in a way physically
inapplicable to locusts;[1142] and the promises of its removal include
the remedy of ravages which mere locusts could not inflict: the
captivity of Judah is to be turned, and the land recovered from
foreigners who are to be banished from it.[1143] Pusey thus reckons as
future the relenting of God, consequent upon the people’s penitence:
chap. ii. 18 ff. The past tenses in which it is related, he takes as
instances of the well-known prophetic perfect, according to which the
prophets express their assurance of things to come by describing them
as if they had already happened.
This is undoubtedly a strong case for the predictive and allegorical
character of the Book of Joel; but a little consideration will show
us that the facts on which it is grounded are capable of a different
explanation than that which it assumes, and that Pusey has overlooked
a number of other facts which force us to a literal interpretation of
the locusts as a plague already past, even though we feel they are
described in the language of poetical hyperbole.
For, in the first place, Pusey’s theory implies that the prophecy is
addressed to a future generation, who shall be alive when the predicted
invasions of heathen come upon the land. Whereas Joel obviously
addresses his own contemporaries. The prophet and his hearers are
one. _Before our eyes_, he says, _the food has been cut off_.[1144]
As obviously, he speaks of the plague of locusts as of something that
has just happened. His hearers can compare its effects with past
disasters, which it has far exceeded;[1145] and it is their duty to
hand down the story of it to future generations.[1146] Again, his
description is that of a physical, not of a political, plague. Fields
and gardens, vines and figs, are devastated by being stripped and
gnawed. Drought accompanies the locusts, the seed shrivels beneath the
clods, the trees languish, the cattle pant for want of water.[1147]
These are not the trail which an invading army leave behind them. In
support of his theory that human hosts are meant, Pusey points to
the verses which bid the people pray _that the heathen rule not over
them_, and which describe the invaders as attacking cities.[1148] But
the former phrase may be rendered with equal propriety, _that the
heathen make not satirical songs about them_;[1149] and as to the
latter, not only do locusts invade towns exactly as Joel describes,
but his words that the invader steals into houses like _a thief_ are
far more applicable to the insidious entrance of locusts than to the
bold and noisy assault of a storming party. Moreover Pusey and the
other allegorical interpreters of the book overlook the fact that Joel
never so much as hints at the invariable effects of a human invasion,
massacre and plunder. He describes no slaying and no looting; but when
he comes to the promise that Jehovah will restore the losses which have
been sustained by His people, he defines them as the years which His
army has _eaten_.[1150] But all this proof is clenched by the fact that
Joel compares the locusts to actual soldiers.[1151] They are _like_
horsemen, the sound of them is _like_ chariots, they run _like_ horses,
and _like_ men of war they leap upon the wall. Joel could never have
compared a real army to itself!
The allegorical interpretation is therefore untenable. But some
critics, while admitting this, are yet not disposed to take the first
part of the book for narrative. They admit that the prophet means
a plague of locusts, but they deny that he is speaking of a plague
already past, and hold that his locusts are still to come, that they
are as much a part of the future as the pouring out of the
Spirit[1152] and the judgment of the heathen in the Valley of
Jehoshaphat.[1153] All alike, they are signs or accompaniments of
the Day of Jehovah, and that Day has still to break. The prophet’s
scenery is apocalyptic; the locusts are “eschatological locusts,” not
historical ones. This interpretation of Joel has been elaborated by Dr.
Adalbert Merx, and the following is a summary of his opinions.[1154]
After examining the book along all the lines of exposition which have
been proposed, Merx finds himself unable to trace any plan or even
sign of a plan; and his only escape from perplexity is the belief that
no plan can ever have been meant by the author. Joel weaves in one
past, present and future, paints situations only to blot them out and
put others in their place, starts many processes but develops none.
His book shows no insight into God’s plan with Israel, but is purely
external; the bearing and the end of it is the material prosperity of
the little land of Judah. From this Merx concludes that the book is
not an original work, but a mere summary of passages from previous
prophets, that with a few reflections of the life of the Jews after
the Return lead us to assign it to that period of literary culture
which Nehemiah inaugurated by the collection of national writings and
which was favoured by the cessation of all political disturbance. Joel
gathered up the pictures of the Messianic age in the older prophets,
and welded them together in one long prayer by the fervid belief that
that age was near. But while the older prophets spoke upon the ground
of actual fact and rose from this to a majestic picture of the last
punishment, the still life of Joel’s time had nothing such to offer
him and he had to seek another basis for his prophetic flight. It is
probable that he sought this in the relation of Type and Antitype. The
Antitype he found in the liberation from Egypt, the darkness and the
locusts of which he transferred to his canvas from Exodus x. 4-6. The
locusts, therefore, are neither real nor symbolic, but ideal. This is
the method of the Midrash and Haggada in Jewish literature, which
constantly placed over against each other the deliverance from Egypt
and the last judgment. It is a method that is already found in such
portions of the Old Testament as Ezekiel xxxvii. and Psalm lxxviii.
Joel’s locusts are borrowed from the Egyptian plagues, but are
presented as the signs of the Last Day. They will bring it near to
Israel by famine, drought and the interruption of worship described in
chap. i. Chap. ii., which Merx keeps distinct from chap. i., is based
on a study of Ezekiel, from whom Joel has borrowed, among other
things, the expressions _the garden of Eden_ and _the Northerner_. The
two verses generally held to be historic, 18 and 19, Merx takes to be
the continuation of the prayer of the priests, pointing the verbs so
as to turn them from perfects into futures.[1155] The rest of the
book, Merx strives to show, is pieced together from many prophets,
chiefly Isaiah and Ezekiel, but without the tender spiritual feeling
of the one, or the colossal magnificence of the other. Special nations
are mentioned, but in this portion of the work we have to do not with
events already past, but with general views, and these not original,
but conditioned by the expressions of earlier writers. There is no
history in the book: it is all ideal, mystical, apocalyptic. That is
to say, according to Merx, there is no real prophet or prophetic fire,
only an old man warming his feeble hands over a few embers that he has
scraped together from the ashes of ancient fires, now nearly wholly
dead.
Merx has traced Joel’s relations to other prophets, and reflection of
a late date in Israel’s history, with care and ingenuity; but his
treatment of the text and exegesis of the prophet’s meaning are alike
forced and fanciful. In face of the support which the Massoretic
reading of the hinge of the book, chap. ii. 18 ff., receives from the
ancient versions, and of its inherent probability and harmony with the
context, Merx’s textual emendation is unnecessary, besides being in
itself unnatural.[1156] While the very same objections which we have
already found valid against the allegorical interpretation equally
dispose of this mystical one. Merx outrages the evident features of
the book almost as much as Hengstenberg and Pusey have done. He has
lifted out of time altogether that which plainly purports to be
historical. His literary criticism is as unsound as his textual. It is
only by ignoring the beautiful poetry of chap. i. that he transplants
it to the future. Joel’s figures are too vivid, too actual, to be
predictive or mystical. And the whole interpretation wrecks itself in
the same verse as the allegorical, the verse, viz., in which Joel
plainly speaks of himself as having suffered with his hearers the
plague he describes.[1157]
We may, therefore, with confidence conclude that the allegorical and
mystical interpretations of Joel are impossible; and that the only
reasonable view of our prophet is that which regards him as calling,
in chap. i. 2—ii. 17, upon his contemporaries to repent in face of
a plague of locusts, so unusually severe that he has felt it to be
ominous of even the Day of the Lord; and in the rest of his book,
as promising material, political and spiritual triumphs to Israel
in consequence of their repentance, either already consummated, or
anticipated by the prophet as certain.
It is true that the account of the locusts appears to bear features
which conflict with the literal interpretation. Some of these, however,
vanish upon a fuller knowledge of the awful degree which such a plague
has been testified to reach by competent observers within our own
era.[1158] Those that remain may be attributed partly to the poetic
hyperbole of Joel’s style, and partly to the fact that he sees in
the plague far more than itself. The locusts are signs of the Day of
Jehovah. Joel treats them as we found Zephaniah treating the Scythian
hordes of his day. They are as real as the latter, but on them as on
the latter the lurid glare of Apocalypse has fallen, magnifying them
and investing them with that air of ominousness which is the sole
justification of the allegorical and mystic interpretation of their
appearance.
To the same sense of their office as heralds of the last day, we owe
the description of the locusts as _the Northerner_.[1159] The North
is not the quarter from which locusts usually reach Palestine, nor
is there any reason to suppose that by naming the North Joel meant
only to emphasise the unusual character of these swarms. Rather he
takes a name employed in Israel since Jeremiah’s time to express the
instruments of Jehovah’s wrath in the day of His judgment of Israel.
The name is typical of Doom, and therefore Joel applies it to his
fateful locusts.
3. STATE OF THE TEXT AND THE STYLE OF THE BOOK.
Joel’s style is fluent and clear, both when he is describing the
locusts, in which part of his book he is most original, and when he
is predicting, in apocalyptic language largely borrowed from earlier
prophets, the Day of Jehovah. To the ease of understanding him we may
attribute the sound state of the text and its freedom from glosses. In
this, like most of the books of the post-exilic prophets, especially
the Books of Haggai, “Malachi” and Jonah, Joel’s book contrasts very
favourably with those of the older prophets; and that also, to some
degree, is proof of the lateness of his date. The Greek translators
have, on the whole, understood Joel easily and with little error.
In their version there are the usual differences of grammatical
construction, especially in the pronominal suffixes and verbs, and of
punctuation; but very few bits of expansion and no real additions.
These are all noted in the translation below.
FOOTNOTES:
[1068] See above, Chap. XIII.
[1069] See Vol. I. The Assyria of “Zech.” x. 11 is Syria. See below.
[1070] The two exceptions, Nahum and Habakkuk, are not relevant to this
question. Their dates are fixed by their references to Assyria and
Babylon.
[1071] See Rob. Smith, art. “Joel,” _Encyc. Brit._
[1072] So obvious is this alternative that all critics may be said to
grant it, except König (_Einl._), on whose reasons for placing Joel
in the end of the seventh century see below, p. 386, n. 1130. Kessner
(_Das Zeitalter der Proph. Joel_, 1888) deems the date unprovable.
[1073] See _The Religion of Israel_, Vol. I., pp. 86 f.
[1074] _The O.T. and its Contents_, p. 105.
[1075] _Lex Mosaica_, pp. 422, 450.
[1076] See especially Ewald on Joel in his _Prophets of the O.T._, and
Kirkpatrick’s very fair argument in _Doctrine of the Prophets_, pp. 57
ff.
[1077] On Joel’s picture of the Day of Jehovah Ewald says: “We have it
here in its first simple and clear form, nor has it become a subject of
ridicule as in Amos.”
[1078] i. 9, 13, 16, ii. 14.
[1079] So Ewald.
[1080] 2 Kings xi. 4-21.
[1081] 1 Kings xiv. 25 f.: cf. Joel iii. 17_b_, 19.
[1082] 2 Kings viii. 20-22: cf. Joel iii. 19.
[1083] 2 Chron. xxi. 16, 17, xxii. 1: cf. Joel iii. 4-6.
[1084] Amos i.: cf. Joel iii. 4-6.
[1085] 2 Chron. xx., especially 26: cf. Joel iii. 2.
[1086] Joel iii. (Eng.; iv. Heb.) 16; Amos i. 2. For a list of the
various periods to which Joel has been assigned by supporters of this
early date see Kuenen, § 68.
[1087] The reference of Egypt in iii. 19 to Shishak’s invasion appears
particularly weak.
[1088] Cf. Robertson, _O. T. and its Contents_, 105, and Kirkpatrick’s
cautious, though convinced, statement of the reasons for an early date.
[1089] iii. 6 (Heb. iv. 6).
[1090] Amos i. 9.
[1091] _Bibl. Theol._, I., p. 462; _Einl._, pp. 675 ff.
[1092] _Ztschr. f. wissensch. Theol._, X., Heft 4.
[1093] _Theol. der Proph._, pp. 275 ff.
[1094] _Theol. Tijd._, 1876, pp. 362 ff. (not seen).
[1095] _Onderz._, § 68.
[1096] _Expositor_, 1888, Jan.—June, pp. 198 ff.
[1097] See Cheyne, _Origin of Psalter_, xx.; Driver, _Introd._, in the
sixth edition of which, 1897, he supports the late date of Joel more
strongly than in the first edition, 1892.
[1098] Wellhausen allowed the theory of the early date of Joel to stand
in his edition of Bleek’s _Einleitung_, but adopts the late date in his
own _Kleine Propheten_.
[1099] _Die Prophetie des Joels u. ihre Ausleger_, 1879.
[1100] _Encyc. Brit._, art. “Joel,” 1881.
[1101] _Gesch._, II. 207.
[1102] _Theol. Tijdschr._, 1885, p. 151; _Comm._, 1885 (neither seen).
[1103] “Sprachcharakter u. Abfassungszeit des B. Joels” in _Z.A.T.W._,
1889, pp. 89 ff.
[1104] _Minor Prophets._
[1105] _Bibel._
[1106] _Einleit._
[1107] _Litteratur des A. T._
[1108] _Expositor_, September 1893.
[1109] _Comm._, 1897.
[1110] iv. (Heb.; iii. Eng.) 1. For this may only mean _turn again the
fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem_.
[1111] iv. (Heb.; iii. Eng.) 2. The supporters of a pre-exilic date
either passed this over or understood it of incursions by the heathen
into Israel’s territories in the ninth century. It is, however, too
universal to suit these.
[1112] iv. (Heb.; iii. Eng.) 5.
[1113] Kautzsch dates after Artaxerxes Ochus, and _c._ 350.
[1114] Ezekiel (xxvii. 13, 19) is the first to give the name Javan,
_i.e._ ΙαϜων, or Ionian (earlier writers name Egypt, Edom, Arabia
and Phœnicia as the great slave-markets: Amos i.; Isa. xi. 11; Deut.
xxviii. 68); and Greeks are also mentioned in Isa. lxvi. 19 (a
post-exilic passage); Zech. ix. 13; Dan. viii. 21, x. 20, xi. 2; 1
Chron. i. 5, 7, and Gen. x. 2. See below, Chap. XXXI.
[1115] בני היונים instead of בני יון, just as the Chronicler gives
בני הקרחים for בני קרח: see Wildeboer, p. 348, and Matthes, quoted by
Holzinger, p. 94.
[1116] Movers, _Phön. Alterthum._, II. 1, pp. 70 _sqq._: which
reference I owe to R. Smith’s art. in the _Encyc. Brit._
[1117] With these might be taken the use of קהל (ii. 16) in its sense of
a gathering for public worship. The word itself was old in Hebrew, but
as time went on it came more and more to mean the convocation of the
nation for worship or deliberation. Holzinger, pp. 105 f.
[1118] Cf. Neh. x. 33; Dan. viii. 11, xi. 31, xii. 11. Also Acts xxvi.
7: τὸ δωδεκάφυλον ἡμῶν ἐν ἐκτενεία νύκτα καὶ ἡμέραν λατρεύον. Also the
passages in Jos., XIV. _Ant._ iv. 3, xvi. 2, in which Josephus mentions
the horror caused by the interruption of the daily sacrifice by famine
in the last siege of Jerusalem, and adds that it had happened in no
previous siege of the city.
[1119] Cf. Jer. xiv. 12; Isa. lviii. 6; Zech. vii. 5, vi. 11, 19, with
Neh. i. 4, ix. 1; Ezra viii. 21; Jonah iii. 5, 7; Esther iv. 3, 16, ix.
31; Dan. ix. 3.
[1120] The gathering of the Gentiles to judgment, Zeph. iii. 8 (see
above, p. 69) and Ezek. xxxviii. 22; the stream issuing from the Temple
to fill the Wady ha-Shittim, Ezek. xlvii. 1 ff., cf. Zech. xiv. 8; the
outpouring of the Spirit, Ezek. xxxix. 29.
[1121] _Z.A.T.W._, 1889, pp. 89-136. Holzinger’s own conclusion is
stated more emphatically than above.
[1122] For an exhaustive list the reader must be referred to
Holzinger’s article (cf. Driver, _Introd._, sixth edition; _Joel and
Amos_, p. 24; G. B. Gray, _Expositor_, September 1893, p. 212). But the
following (a few of which are not given by Holzinger) are sufficient to
prove the conclusion come to above: i. 2, iv. 4, וְאִם ... הֲ— this
is the form of the disjunctive interrogative in later O. T. writings,
replacing the earlier אִם ... הֲ; i. 8, אלי only here in O. T., but
frequent in Aram.; 13, נמנע in Ni. only from Jeremiah onwards, Qal only
in two passages before Jeremiah and in a number after him; 18, נאנחה,
if the correct reading, occurs only in the latest O. T. writings, the
Qal only in these and Aram.; ii. 2, iv. (Heb.; iii. Eng.) 20, דור ודור
first in Deut. xxxii. 7, and then exilic and post-exilic frequently; 8,
שלח, a late word, only in Job xxxiii. 18, xxxvi. 12, 2 Chron. xxiii.
10, xxxii. 5, Neh. iii. 15, iv. 11, 17; 20, סוֹף, _end_, only in 2
Chron. xx. 16 and Eccles., Aram. of Daniel, and post Bibl. Aram. and
Heb.; iv. (Heb.; iii. Eng.) 4, נמל על, cf. 2 Chron. xx. 11; 10, רמח,
see below on this verse; 11, הנחת, Aram.; 13, בשׁל, in Hebrew to cook
(cf. Ezek. xxiv. 5), and in other forms always with that meaning down
to the Priestly Writing and “Zech.” ix.—xiv., is used here in the sense
of _ripen_, which is frequent in Aram., but does not occur elsewhere
in O. T. Besides, Joel uses for the first personal pronoun אני—ii. 27
(_bis_), iv. 10, 17—which is by far the most usual form with later
writers, and not אנכי, preferred by pre-exilic writers. (See below on
the language of Jonah.)
[1123] G. B. Gray, _Expositor_, September 1893, pp. 213 f. For
the above conclusions ample proof is given in Mr. Gray’s detailed
examination of the parallels: pp. 214 ff.
[1124] Driver, _Joel and Amos_, p. 27.
[1125] Scholz and Rosenzweig (not seen).
[1126] Hilgenfeld, Duhm, Oort. Driver puts it “most safely shortly
after Haggai and Zechariah i.—viii., _c._ 500 B.C.”
[1127] Vernes, Robertson Smith, Kuenen, Matthes, Cornill, Nowack, etc.
[1128] Joel iii. 4 (Heb.; Eng. ii. 31); “Mal.” iv. 5.
[1129] iii. (Eng.; iv. Heb.) 17.
[1130] Perhaps this is the most convenient place to refer to König’s
proposal to place Joel in the last years of Josiah. Some of his
arguments (_e.g._ that Joel is placed among the first of the Twelve)
we have already answered. He thinks that i. 17-20 suit the great
drought in Josiah’s reign (Jer. xiv. 2-6), that the name given to the
locusts, הצפוני, ii. 20, is due to Jeremiah’s enemy _from the north_,
and that the phrases _return with all your heart_, ii. 12, and _return
to Jehovah your God_, 13, imply a period of apostasy. None of these
conclusions is necessary. The absence of reference to the _high places_
finds an analogy in Isa. i. 13; the מנחה is mentioned in Isa. i. 13:
if Amos viii. 5 testifies to observance of the Sabbath, and Nahum ii.
1 to other festivals, who can say a pre-exilic prophet would not be
interested in the meal and drink offerings? But surely no pre-exilic
prophet would have so emphasised these as Joel has done. Nor is König’s
explanation of iv. 2 as of the Assyrian and Egyptian invasion of Judah
so probable as that which refers the verse to the Babylonian exile.
Nor are König’s objections to a date after “Malachi” convincing.
They are that a prophet near “Malachi’s” time must have specified as
“Malachi” did the reasons for the repentance to which he summoned the
people, while Joel gives none, but is quite general (ii. 13_a_). But
the change of attitude may be accounted for by the covenant and Law of
444. “Malachi” i. 11 speaks of the Gentiles worshipping Jehovah, but
not even in Jonah iii. 5 is any relation of the Gentiles to Jehovah
predicated. Again, the greater exclusiveness of Ezra and his Law may be
the cause. Joel, it is true, as König says, does not mention the Law,
while “Malachi” does (ii. 8, etc.); but this was not necessary if the
people had accepted it in 444. Professor Ryle (_Canon of O.T._, 106 n.)
leaves the question of Joel’s date open.
[1131] Pages 333 f. n.
[1132] Vernes, _Histoire des Idées Messianiques depuis Alexandre_,
pp. 13 ff., had already asserted that chaps. i. and ii. must be by
a different author from chaps. iii. and iv., because the former has
to do wholly with the writer’s present, with which the latter has
no connection whatever, but it is entirely eschatological. But in
his _Mélanges de Crit. Relig._, pp. 218 ff., Vernes allows that his
arguments are not conclusive, and that all four chapters may have come
from the same hand.
[1133] _I.e._ Hitzig, Vatke, Ewald, Robertson Smith, Kuenen,
Kirkpatrick, Driver, Davidson, Nowack, etc.
[1134] This allegorical interpretation was a favourite one with the
early Christian Fathers: cf. Jerome.
[1135] _Zeitschr. für wissensch. Theologie_, 1860, pp. 412 ff.
[1136] Cambyses 525, Xerxes 484, Artaxerxes Ochus 460 and 458.
[1137] In Germany, among other representatives of this opinion,
are Bertholdt (_Einl._) and Hengstenberg (_Christol._, III. 352
ff.), the latter of whom saw in the four kinds of locusts the
Assyrian-Babylonian, the Persian, the Greek and the Roman tyrants of
Israel.
[1138] ii. 17.
[1139] ii. 20.
[1140] i. 19, 20.
[1141] Plur. ii. 6.
[1142] ii. 20.
[1143] iii. (Heb. iv.) 1 f., 17.
[1144] i. 16.
[1145] i. 2 f.
[1146] i. 3.
[1147] i. 17 ff.
[1148] ii. 17, ii. 9 ff.
[1149] למשל בם
[1150] A. B. Davidson, _Expos._, 1888, pp. 200 f.
[1151] ii. 4 ff.
[1152] Eng. ii. 28 ff., Heb. iii.
[1153] Eng. iii., Heb. iv.
[1154] _Die Prophetie des Joel u. ihre Ausleger_, 1879. The following
summary and criticism of Merx’s views I take from an (unpublished)
review of his work which I wrote in 1881.
[1155] For וַיְקַנֵּא etc. he reads וִיקַנֵּא etc.
[1156] “The proposal of Merx, to change the pointing so as to transform
the perfects into futures, ... is an exegetical monstrosity.”—Robertson
Smith, art. “Joel,” _Encyc. Brit._
[1157] i. 16.
[1158] Even the comparison of the ravages of the locusts to burning
by fire. But probably also Joel means that they were accompanied by
drought and forest fires. See below.
[1159] ii. 20.
CHAPTER XXVIII
_THE LOCUSTS AND THE DAY OF THE LORD_
JOEL i.—ii. 17
Joel, as we have seen, found the motive of his prophecy in a recent
plague of locusts, the appearance of which and the havoc they worked
are described by him in full detail. Writing not only as a poet but
as a seer, who reads in the locusts signs of the great Day of the
Lord, Joel has necessarily put into his picture several features which
carry the imagination beyond the limits of experience. And yet, if
we ourselves had lived through such a plague, we should be able to
recognise how little license the poet has taken, and that the seer, so
far from unduly mixing with his facts the colours of Apocalypse, must
have experienced in the terrible plague itself enough to provoke all
the religious and monitory use which he makes of it.
The present writer has seen but one swarm of locusts, in which, though
it was small and soon swept away by the wind, he felt not only many of
the features that Joel describes, but even some degree of that singular
helplessness before a calamity of portent far beyond itself, something
of that supernatural edge and accent, which, by the confession of so
many observers, characterise the locust-plague and the earthquake above
all other physical disasters. One summer afternoon, upon the plain of
Hauran, a long bank of mist grew rapidly from the western horizon. The
day was dull, and as the mist rose athwart the sunbeams, struggling
through clouds, it gleamed cold and white, like the front of a distant
snow-storm. When it came near, it seemed to be more than a mile broad,
and was dense enough to turn the atmosphere raw and dirty, with a chill
as of a summer sea-fog, only that this was not due to any fall in the
temperature. Nor was there the silence of a mist. We were enveloped
by a noise, less like the whirring of wings than the rattle of hail
or the crackling of bush on fire. Myriads upon myriads of locusts
were about us, covering the ground, and shutting out the view in all
directions. Though they drifted before the wind, there was no confusion
in their ranks. They sailed in unbroken lines, sometimes straight,
sometimes wavy; and when they passed pushing through our caravan, they
left almost no stragglers, except from the last battalion, and only the
few dead which we had caught in our hands. After several minutes they
were again but a lustre on the air, and so melted away into some heavy
clouds in the east.
Modern travellers furnish us with terrible impressions of the
innumerable multitudes of a locust-plague, the succession of their
swarms through days and weeks, and the utter desolation they leave
behind them. Mr. Doughty writes:[1160] “There hopped before our feet a
minute brood of second locusts, of a leaden colour, with budding wings
like the spring leaves, and born of those gay swarms which a few weeks
before had passed over and despoiled the desert. After forty days these
also would fly as a pestilence, yet more hungry than the former, and
fill the atmosphere.” And later: “The clouds of the second locust brood
which the Arabs call ‘Am’dan, _pillars_, flew over us for some days,
invaded the booths and for blind hunger even bit our shins.”[1161] It
was “a storm of rustling wings.”[1162] “This year was remembered for
the locust swarms and great summer heat.”[1163] A traveller in South
Africa[1164] says: “For the space of ten miles on each side of the
Sea-Cow river and eighty or ninety miles in length, an area of sixteen
or eighteen hundred square miles, the whole surface might literally be
said to be covered with them.” In his recently published book on South
Africa, Mr. Bryce writes:—[1165]
“It is a strange sight, beautiful if you can forget the destruction it
brings with it. The whole air, to twelve or even eighteen feet above
the ground, is filled with the insects, reddish brown in body, with
bright, gauzy wings. When the sun’s rays catch them it is like the sea
sparkling with light. When you see them against a cloud they are like
the dense flakes of a driving snow-storm. You feel as if you had never
before realised immensity in number. Vast crowds of men gathered at a
festival, countless tree-tops rising along the slope of a forest ridge,
the chimneys of London houses from the top of St. Paul’s—all are as
nothing to the myriads of insects that blot out the sun above and cover
the ground beneath and fill the air whichever way one looks. The breeze
carries them swiftly past, but they come on in fresh clouds, a host of
which there is no end, each of them a harmless creature which you can
catch and crush in your hand, but appalling in their power of
collective devastation.”
And take three testimonies from Syria: “The quantity of these insects
is a thing incredible to any one who has not seen it himself; the
ground is covered by them for several leagues.”[1166] “The whole face
of the mountain[1167] was black with them. On they came like a living
deluge. We dug trenches and kindled fires, and beat and burnt to death
heaps upon heaps, but the effort was utterly useless. They rolled up
the mountain-side, and poured over rocks, walls, ditches and hedges,
those behind covering up and passing over the masses already killed.
For some days they continued to pass. The noise made by them in
marching and foraging was like that of a heavy shower falling upon a
distant forest.”[1168] “The roads were covered with them, all marching
and in regular lines, like armies of soldiers, with their leaders in
front; and all the opposition of man to resist their progress was in
vain.” Having consumed the plantations in the country, they entered the
towns and villages. “When they approached our garden all the farm
servants were employed to keep them off, but to no avail; though our
men broke their ranks for a moment, no sooner had they passed the men,
than they closed again, and marched forward through hedges and ditches
as before. Our garden finished, they continued their march toward the
town, devastating one garden after another. They have also penetrated
into most of our rooms: whatever one is doing one hears their noise
from without, like the noise of armed hosts, or the running of many
waters. When in an erect position their appearance at a little distance
is like that of a well-armed horseman.”[1169]
Locusts are notoriously adapted for a plague, “since to strength
incredible for so small a creature, they add saw-like teeth, admirably
calculated to eat up all the herbs in the land.”[1170] They are the
incarnation of hunger. No voracity is like theirs, the voracity of
little creatures, whose million separate appetites nothing is too
minute to escape. They devour first grass and leaves, fruit and
foliage, everything that is green and juicy. Then they attack the young
branches of trees, and then the hard bark of the trunks.[1171] “After
eating up the corn, they fell upon the vines, the pulse, the willows,
and even the hemp, notwithstanding its great bitterness.”[1172] “The
bark of figs, pomegranates and oranges, bitter, hard and corrosive,
escaped not their voracity.”[1173] “They are particularly injurious to
the palm-trees; these they strip of every leaf and green particle, the
trees remaining like skeletons with bare branches.”[1174] “For eighty
or ninety miles they devoured every green herb and every blade of
grass.”[1175] “The gardens outside Jaffa are now completely stripped,
even the bark of the young trees having been devoured, and look like a
birch-tree forest in winter.”[1176] “The bushes were eaten quite bare,
though the animals could not have been long on the spot. They sat by
hundreds on a bush gnawing the rind and the woody fibres.”[1177]
“Bamboo groves have been stripped of their leaves and left standing
like saplings after a rapid bush fire, and grass has been devoured so
that the bare ground appeared as if burned.”[1178] “The country did not
seem to be burnt, but to be much covered with snow through the
whiteness of the trees and the dryness of the herbs.”[1179] The fields
finished, they invade towns and houses, in search of stores. Victual of
all kinds, hay, straw, and even linen and woollen clothes and leather
bottles, they consume or tear in pieces.[1180] They flood through the
open, unglazed windows and lattices: nothing can keep them out.
These extracts prove to us what little need Joel had of hyperbole in
order to read his locusts as signs of the Day of Jehovah; especially if
we keep in mind that locusts are worst in very hot summers, and often
accompany an absolute drought along with its consequence of prairie and
forest fires. Some have thought that, in introducing the effects of
fire, Joel only means to paint the burnt look of a land after locusts
have ravaged it. But locusts do not drink up the streams, nor cause the
seed to shrivel in the earth.[1181] By these the prophet must mean
drought, and by _the flame that has burned all the trees of the
field_,[1182] the forest fire, finding an easy prey in the trees which
have been reduced to firewood by the locusts’ teeth.
Even in the great passage in which he passes from history to
Apocalypse, from the gloom and terror of the locusts to the lurid dawn
of Jehovah’s Day, Joel keeps within the actual facts of experience:—
_Day of darkness and murk,
Day of cloud and heavy mist,
Like dawn scattered on the mountains,
A people many and powerful._
No one who has seen a cloud of locusts can question the realism even
of this picture: the heavy gloom of the immeasurable mass of them,
shot by gleams of light where a few of the sun’s imprisoned beams have
broken through or across the storm of lustrous wings. This is like
dawn beaten down upon the hilltops, and crushed by rolling masses of
cloud, in conspiracy to prolong the night. No: the only point at which
Joel leaves absolute fact for the wilder combinations of Apocalypse is
at the very close of his description, chap. ii. 10 and 11, and just
before his call to repentance. Here we find, mixed with the locusts,
earthquake and thunderstorm; and Joel has borrowed these from the
classic pictures of the Day of the Lord, using some of the very phrases
of the latter:—
_Earth trembles before them,
Heaven quakes,
Sun and moon become black,
The stars withdraw their shining,
And Jehovah utters His voice before His army._
Joel, then, describes, and does not unduly enhance, the terrors of
an actual plague. At first his whole strength is so bent to make his
people feel these, that, though about to call to repentance, he does
not detail the national sins which require it. In his opening verses he
summons the drunkards,[1183] but that is merely to lend vividness to
his picture of facts, because men of such habits will be the first to
feel a plague of this kind. Nor does Joel yet ask his hearers what the
calamity portends. At first he only demands that they shall feel it, in
its uniqueness and its own sheer force.
Hence the peculiar style of the passage. Letter for letter, this is
one of the heaviest passages in prophecy. The proportion in Hebrew of
liquids to the other letters is not large; but here it is smaller than
ever. The explosives and dentals are very numerous. There are several
keywords, with hard consonants and long vowels, used again and again:
Shuddadh, ‘ābhlah, ‘umlal, hôbhîsh. The longer lines into which Hebrew
parallelism tends to run are replaced by a rapid series of short, heavy
phrases, falling like blows. Critics have called it rhetoric. But it
is rhetoric of a very high order and perfectly suited to the prophet’s
purpose. Look at chap. i. 10: Shuddadh sadheh, ‘ābhlah ‘adhamah,
shuddadh daghan, hôbhîsh tîrôsh, ‘umlal yiṣḥar.[1184] Joel loads his
clauses with the most leaden letters he can find, and drops them in
quick succession, repeating the same heavy word again and again, as if
he would stun the careless people into some sense of the bare, brutal
weight of the calamity which has befallen them.
Now Joel does this because he believes that, if his people feel the
plague in its proper violence, they must be convinced that it comes
from Jehovah. The keynote of this part of the prophecy is found in
chap. i. 15: “Keshôdh mishshaddhai,” _like violence from the
All-violent doth it come_. “If you feel this as it is, you will feel
Jehovah Himself in it. By these very blows, He and His Day are near. We
had been forgetting how near.” Joel mentions no crime, nor enforces any
virtue: how could he have done so in so strong a sense that “the Judge
was at the door”? To make men feel that they had forgotten they were in
reach of that Almighty Hand, which could strike so suddenly and so
hard—Joel had time only to make men feel that, and to call them to
repentance. In this we probably see some reflection of the age: an age
when men’s thoughts were thrusting the Deity further and further from
their life; when they put His Law and Temple between Him and
themselves; and when their religion, devoid of the sense of His
Presence, had become a set of formal observances, the rending of
garments and not of hearts. But He, whom His own ordinances had hidden
from His people, has burst forth through nature and in sheer force of
calamity. He has revealed Himself, El-Shaddhai, _God All-violent_, as
He was known to their fathers, who had no elaborate law or ritual to
put between their fearful hearts and His terrible strength, but cowered
before Him, helpless on the stripped soil, and naked beneath His
thunder. By just these means did Elijah and Amos bring God home to the
hearts of ancient Israel. In Joel we see the revival of the old
nature-religion, and the revenge that it was bound to take upon the
elaborate systems which had displaced it, but which by their formalism
and their artificial completeness had made men forget that near
presence and direct action of the Almighty which it is nature’s own
office to enforce upon the heart.
The thing is true, and permanently valid. Only the great natural
processes can break up the systems of dogma and ritual in which we make
ourselves comfortable and formal, and drive us out into God’s open air
of reality. In the crash of nature’s forces even our particular sins
are forgotten, and we feel, as in the immediate presence of God, our
whole, deep need of repentance. So far from blaming the absence of
special ethics in Joel’s sermon, we accept it as natural and proper to
the occasion.
Such, then, appears to be the explanation of the first part of the
prophecy, and its development towards the call to repentance, which
follows it. If we are correct, the assertion[1185] is false that
no plan was meant by the prophet. For not only is there a plan,
but the plan is most suitable to the requirements of Israel, after
their adoption of the whole Law in 445, and forms one of the most
necessary and interesting developments of all religion: the revival,
in an artificial period, of those primitive forces of religion which
nature alone supplies, and which are needed to correct formalism and
the forgetfulness of the near presence of the Almighty. We see in
this, too, the reason of Joel’s archaic style, both of conception and
expression: that likeness of his to early prophets which has led so
many to place him between Elijah and Amos.[1186] They are wrong. Joel’s
simplicity is that not of early prophecy, but of the austere forces of
this revived and applied to the artificiality of a later age.
One other proof of Joel’s conviction of the religious meaning of the
plague might also have been pled by the earlier prophets, but certainly
not in the terms in which Joel expresses it. Amos and Hosea had both
described the destruction of the country’s fertility in their day as
God’s displeasure on His people and (as Hosea puts it) His divorce of
His Bride from Himself.[1187] But by them the physical calamities were
not threatened alone: banishment from the land and from enjoyment of
its fruits was to follow upon drought, locusts and famine. In
threatening no captivity Joel differs entirely from the early prophets.
It is a mark of his late date. And he also describes the divorce
between Jehovah and Israel, through the interruption of the ritual by
the plague, in terms and with an accent which could hardly have been
employed in Israel before the Exile. After the rebuilding of the Temple
and restoration of the daily sacrifices morning and evening, the
regular performance of the latter was regarded by the Jews with a most
superstitious sense of its indispensableness to the national life.
Before the Exile, Jeremiah, for instance, attaches no importance to it,
in circumstances in which it would have been not unnatural for him,
priest as he was, to do so.[1188] But after the Exile, the greater
scrupulousness of the religious life, and its absorption in ritual,
laid extraordinary emphasis upon the daily offering, which increased to
a most painful degree of anxiety as the centuries went on.[1189] The
New Testament speaks of _the Twelve Tribes constantly serving God day
and night_;[1190] and Josephus, while declaring that in no siege of
Jerusalem before the last did the interruption ever take place in spite
of the stress of famine and war combined, records the awful impression
made alike on Jew and heathen by the giving up of the daily sacrifice
on the 17th of July, A.D. 70, during the investment of the city by
Titus.[1191] This disaster, which Judaism so painfully feared at every
crisis in its history, actually happened, Joel tells us, during the
famine caused by the locusts. _Cut off are the meal and the drink
offerings from the house of Jehovah.[1192] Is not food cut off from our
eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God?[1193] Perhaps He will
turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him, meal and drink
offering for Jehovah our God._[1194] The break “of the continual symbol
of gracious intercourse between Jehovah and His people, and the main
office of religion,” means divorce between Jehovah and Israel. _Wail
like a bride girt in sackcloth for the husband of her youth! Wail, O
ministers of the altar, O ministers of God!_[1195] This then was
another reason for reading in the plague of locusts more than a
physical meaning. This was another proof, only too intelligible to
scrupulous Jews, that the great and terrible Day of the Lord was at
hand.
Thus Joel reaches the climax of his argument. Jehovah is near, His Day
is about to break. From this it is impossible to escape on the narrow
path of disaster by which the prophet has led up to it. But beneath
that path the prophet passes the ground of a broad truth, and on that
truth, while judgment remains still as real, there is room for the
people to turn from it. If experience has shown that God is in the
present, near and inevitable, faith remembers that He is there not
willingly for judgment, but with all His ancient feeling for Israel and
His zeal to save her. If the people choose to turn, Jehovah, as their
God and as one who works for their sake, will save them. Of this God
assures them by His own word. For the first time in the prophecy He
speaks for Himself. Hitherto the prophet has been describing the plague
and summoning to penitence. _But now oracle of Jehovah of Hosts._[1196]
The great covenant name, _Jehovah your God_, is solemnly repeated as if
symbolic of the historic origin and age-long endurance of Jehovah’s
relation to Israel; and the very words of blessing are repeated which
were given when Israel was called at Sinai and the covenant ratified:—
_For He is gracious and merciful,
Long-suffering and plenteous in leal love,
And relents Him of the evil_
He has threatened upon you. Once more the nation is summoned to try Him
by prayer: the solemn prayer of all Israel, pleading that He should not
give His people to reproach.
_The Word of Jehovah
which came to Jo’el the son of Pethû’el._[1197]
_Hear this, ye old men,
And give ear, all inhabitants of the land!
Has the like been in your days,
Or in the days of your fathers?
Tell it to your children,
And your children to their children,
And their children to the generation that follows.
That which the Shearer left the Swarmer hath eaten,
And that which the Swarmer left the Lapper hath eaten.
And that which the Lapper left the Devourer hath eaten._
These are four different names for locusts, which it is best to
translate by their literal meaning. Some think that they represent
one swarm of locusts in four stages of development, but this cannot
be, because the same swarm never returns upon its path, to complete
the work of destruction which it had begun in an earlier stage of its
growth. Nor can the first-named be the adult brood from whose eggs the
others spring, as Doughty has described,[1198] for that would account
only for two of the four names. Joel rather describes successive swarms
of the insect, without reference to the stages of its growth, and he
does so as a poet, using, in order to bring out the full force of its
devastation, several of the Hebrew names, that were given to the locust
as epithets of various aspects of its destructive power. The names,
it is true, cannot be said to rise in climax, but at least the most
sinister is reserved to the last.[1199]
_Rouse ye, drunkards, and weep,
And wail, all ye bibbers of wine!
The new wine is cut off from your mouth!
For a nation is come up on My land,
Powerful and numberless;
His teeth are the teeth of the lion,
And the fangs[1200] of the lioness his.
My vine he has turned to waste,
And My fig-tree to splinters;
He hath peeled it and strawed it,
Bleached are its branches!_
_Wail as a bride girt in sackcloth for the spouse of her youth.
Cut off are the meal and drink offerings from the house of Jehovah!
In grief are the priests, the ministers of Jehovah.
The fields are blasted, the ground is in grief,
Blasted is the corn, abashed is the new wine, the oil pines away.
Be ye abashed, O ploughmen!
Wail, O vine-dressers,
For the wheat and the barley;
The harvest is lost from the field!
The vine is abashed, and the fig-tree is drooping;
Pomegranate, palm too and apple,
All trees of the field are dried up:
Yea, joy is abashed_ and _away from the children of men._
In this passage the same feeling is attributed to men and to the fruits
of the land: _In grief are the priests, the ground is in grief_. And it
is repeatedly said that all alike are _abashed_. By this heavy word we
have sought to render the effect of the similarly sounding “hôbhîsha,”
that our English version renders _ashamed_. It signifies to be
frustrated, and so _disheartened_, _put out_: _soured_ would be an
equivalent, applicable to the vine and to joy and to men’s hearts.
_Put on_ mourning _, O priests, beat the breast;
Wail, ye ministers of the altar;
Come, lie down in sackcloth, O ministers of my God:
For meal-offering and drink-offering are cut off
from the house of your God._
_Hallow a fast, summon an assembly,
Gather[1201] all the inhabitants of the land to the house
of your God;
And cry to Jehovah:
“Alas for the Day! At hand is the Day of Jehovah!
And as vehemence from the Vehement[1202] doth it come.”
Is not food cut off from before us,
Gladness and joy from the house of our God?
The grains shrivel under their hoes,[1203]
The garners are desolate, the barns broken down,
For the corn is withered—what shall we put in them?[1204]
The herds of cattle huddle together,[1205] for they have no pasture;
Yea, the flocks of sheep are forlorn.[1206]
To Thee, Jehovah, do I cry:
For fire has devoured the pastures of the steppes,[1207]
And the flame hath scorched all the trees of the field.
The wild beasts pant up to Thee:
For the watercourses are dry,
And fire has devoured the pastures of the steppes._
Here, with the close of chap. i., Joel’s discourse takes pause, and in
chap. ii. he begins a second with another call to repentance in face
of the same plague. But the plague has progressed. The locusts are
described now in their invasion not of the country but of the towns, to
which they pass after the country is stripped. For illustration of the
latter see above, p. 401. The _horn_ which is to be blown, ver. 1, is
an _alarm horn_,[1208] to warn the people of the approach of the Day
of the Lord, and not the Shophar which called the people to a general
assembly, as in ver. 15.
_Blow a horn in Zion,
Sound the alarm in My holy mountain!
Let all inhabitants of the land tremble,
For the Day of Jehovah comes—it is near!
Day of darkness and murk, day of cloud and heavy mist.[1209]
Like dawn scattered[1210] on the mountains,
A people many and powerful;
Its like has not been from of old,
And shall not again be for years of generation upon generation.
Before it the fire devours,[1211]
And behind the flame consumes.
Like the garden of Eden[1212] is the land in front,
And behind it a desolate desert;
Yea, it lets nothing escape.
Their visage is the visage of horses,
And like horsemen they run.
They rattle like chariots over the tops of the hills,
Like the crackle of flames devouring stubble,
Like a powerful people prepared for battle.
Peoples are writhing before them,
Every face gathers blackness._
_Like warriors they run,
Like fighting-men they come up the wall;
They march every man by himself,[1213]
And they ravel[1214] not their paths.
None jostles his comrade,
They march every man on his track,[1215]
And plunge through the missiles unbroken.[1216]
They scour the city, run upon the walls,
Climb into the houses, and enter the windows like a thief.
Earth trembles before them,
Heaven quakes,
Sun and moon become black,
The stars withdraw their shining.
And Jehovah utters His voice before His army:
For very great is His host;
Yea, powerful is He that performeth His word.
Great is the Day of Jehovah, and very awful:
Who may abide it?_[1217]
_But now_ hear _the oracle of Jehovah:
Turn ye to Me with all your heart,
And with fasting and weeping and mourning.
Rend ye your hearts and not your garments,
And turn to Jehovah your God:
For He is gracious and merciful,
Long-suffering and plenteous in love,
And relents of the evil.
Who knows but He will turn and relent,
And leave behind Him a blessing,
Meal-offering and drink-offering to Jehovah your God?_
_Blow a horn in Zion,
Hallow a fast, summon the assembly!
Gather the people, hallow the congregation,
Assemble the old men,[1218] gather the children, and
infants at the breast;
Let the bridegroom come forth from his chamber,
And the bride from her bower.[1219]
Let the priests, the ministers of Jehovah, weep
between porch and altar;
Let them say, Spare, O Jehovah, Thy people,
And give not Thine heritage to dishonour, for the
heathen to mock them:[1220]
Why should it be said among the nations, Where is
their God?_
FOOTNOTES:
[1160] _Arabia Deserta_, p. 307.
[1161] _Arabia Deserta_, p. 335.
[1162] _Id._, 396.
[1163] _Id._, 335.
[1164] Barrow, _South Africa_, p. 257, quoted by Pusey.
[1165] _Impressions of South Africa_, by James Bryce: Macmillans, 1897.
[1166] Volney, _Voyage en Syrie_, I. 277, quoted by Pusey.
[1167] Lebanon.
[1168] Abridged from Thomson’s _The Land and the Book_, ed. 1877,
Northern Palestine, pp. 416 ff.
[1169] From Driver’s abridgment (_Joel and Amos_, p. 90) of an account
in the _Journ. of Sacred Lit._, October 1865, pp. 235 f.
[1170] Morier, _A Second Journey through Persia_, p. 99, quoted by
Pusey, from whose notes and Driver’s excursus upon locusts in _Joel and
Amos_ the following quotations have been borrowed.
[1171] Shaw’s _Travels in Barbary_, 1738, pp. 236-8; Jackson’s _Travels
to Morocco_.
[1172] Adansson, _Voyage au Sénegal_, p. 88.
[1173] Chénier, _Recherches Historiques sur les Maures_, III., p. 496.
[1174] Burckhardt, _Notes_, II. 90.
[1175] Barrow, _South Africa_, p. 257.
[1176] _Journ. of Sac. Lit._, October 1865.
[1177] Lichtenstein, _Travels in South Africa_.
[1178] _Standard_, December 25th, 1896.
[1179] Fr. Alvarez.
[1180] Barheb., _Chron. Syr._, p. 784; Burckhardt, _Notes_, II. 90.
[1181] i. 20, 17.
[1182] i. 19.
[1183] i. 5.
[1184] Cf. i. 12, 13, and many verses in chap. ii.
[1185] Of Merx and others: see above, p. 394.
[1186] See above, p. 377.
[1187] See Vol. I., pp. 242, 245 f.
[1188] Jer. xiv.
[1189] Cf. Ezek. xlvi. 15 on the Thamid, and Neh. x. 33; Dan. viii. 11,
xi. 31, xii. 11: cf. p. 382.
[1190] Acts xxvi. 7.
[1191] XIV. _Antt._ iv. 3, xvi. 2; VI. _Wars_ ii. 1.
[1192] i. 9, 13.
[1193] i. 16.
[1194] ii. 14.
[1195] i. 8, 13.
[1196] ii. 12.
[1197] LXX. Βαθουήλ
[1198] See above, pp. 399 f.
[1199] חסיל from חסל, used in the O.T. only in Deut. xxviii. 38,
_to devour_; but in post-biblical Hebrew _to utterly destroy_, _bring
to an end_. _Talmud Jerus._: Taanith III. 66_d_, “Why is the locust
called חסיל? Because it brings everything to an end.”
[1200] A.V. _cheek-teeth_, R.V. _jaw-teeth_, or _eye-teeth_. “Possibly
(from the Arabic) _projectors_”: Driver.
[1201] Heb. text inserts _elders_, which may be taken as vocative, or
with the LXX. as accusative, but after the latter we should expect
_and_. Wellhausen suggests its deletion, and Nowack regards it as an
intrusion. For אספו Wellhausen reads האספו, _be ye gathered_.
[1202] Keshōdh mishshaddhai (Isa. xiii. 6); Driver, _as overpowering
from the Overpowerer_.
[1203] A.V. _clods_. מגרפותיהם: the meaning is doubtful, but the
corresponding Arabic word means _besom_ or _shovel_ or (_P.E.F.Q._,
1891, p. 111, with plate) _hoe_, and the Aram. _shovel_. See Driver’s
note.
[1204] Reading, after the LXX. τί ἀποθήσομεν ἑαυτοῖς (probably an error
for ἐν αὐτοῖς), מה נניחה בהם for the Massoretic מה נאנחה בהמה _How the
beasts sob!_ to which A.V. and Driver adhere.
[1205] Lit. _press themselves_ in perplexity.
[1206] Reading, with Wellhausen and Nowack (“perhaps rightly,” Driver)
נשמו for נאשמו, _are guilty_ or _punished_.
[1207] מדבר, usually rendered _wilderness_ or _desert_, but
literally _place where the sheep are driven_, land not cultivated. See
_Hist. Geog._, p. 656.
[1208] See on Amos iii. 6: Vol. I., p. 82.
[1209] Zeph. i. 15. See above, p. 58.
[1210] פרשׂ in Qal _to spread abroad_, but the passive is here to
be taken in the same sense as the Ni. in Ezek. xvii. 21, _dispersed_.
The figure is of dawn crushed by and struggling with a mass of cloud
and mist, and expresses the gleams of white which so often break
through a locust cloud. See above, p. 404.
[1211] So travellers have described the effect of locusts. See above,
p. 403.
[1212] Ezek. xxxvi. 35.
[1213] Heb. _in his own ways_.
[1214] יעבטון, an impossible metaphor, so that most read יעבתון, a
root found only in Micah vii. 3 (see Vol. I., p. 428), _to twist_ or
_tangle_; but Wellhausen reads יְעַוְּתוּן, _twist_, Eccles. vii. 13.
[1215] Heb. _highroad_, as if defined and heaped up for him alone.
[1216] See above, p. 401.
[1217] Zeph. i. 14; “Mal.” iii. 2.
[1218] So (and not _elders_) in contrast to children.
[1219] _Canopy_ or _pavilion_, bridal tent.
[1220] למשל בם, which may mean either _rule over them_ or _mock
them_, but the parallelism decides for the latter.
CHAPTER XXIX
_PROSPERITY AND THE SPIRIT_
JOEL ii. 18-32 (Eng.; ii. 18—iii. Heb.)
_Then did Jehovah become jealous for His land, and took pity upon His
people_—with these words Joel opens the second half of his book. Our
Authorised Version renders them in the future tense, as the
continuation of the prophet’s discourse, which had threatened the Day
of the Lord, urged the people to penitence, and now promises that their
penitence shall be followed by the Lord’s mercy. But such a rendering
forces the grammar;[1221] and the Revised English Version is right in
taking the verbs, as the vast majority of critics do, in the past.
Joel’s call to repentance has closed, and has been successful. The fast
has been hallowed, the prayers are heard. Probably an interval has
elapsed between vv. 17 and 18, but in any case, the people having
repented, nothing more is said of their need of doing so, and instead
we have from God Himself a series of promises, vv. 19-27, in answer to
their cry for mercy. These promises relate to the physical calamity
which has been suffered. God will destroy the locusts, still impending
on the land, and restore the years which His great army has eaten.
There follows in vv. 28-32 (Eng.; Heb. chap, iii.) the promise of a
great outpouring of the Spirit on all Israel, amid terrible
manifestations in heaven and earth.
1. THE RETURN OF PROSPERITY (ii. 19-27).
_And Jehovah answered and said to His people:
Lo, I will send you corn and wine and oil,
And your fill shall ye have of them;
And I will not again make you a reproach among the heathen.
And the Northern_ Foe[1222] _will I remove far from you;
And I will push him into a land barren and waste,
His van to the eastern sea and his rear to the western,[1223]
Till the stench of him rises,[1224]
Because he hath done greatly._
Locusts disappear with the same suddenness as they arrive. A wind
springs up and they are gone.[1225] Dead Sea and Mediterranean are at
the extremes of the compass, but there is no reason to suppose that
the prophet has abandoned the realism which has hitherto distinguished
his treatment of the locusts. The plague covered the whole land, on
whose high watershed the winds suddenly veer and change. The dispersion
of the locusts upon the deserts and the opposite seas was therefore
possible at one and the same time. Jerome vouches for an instance in
his own day. The other detail is also true to life. Jerome says that
the beaches of the two seas were strewn with putrifying locusts, and
Augustine[1226] quotes heathen writers in evidence of large masses
of locusts, driven from Africa upon the sea, and then cast up on the
shore, which gave rise to a pestilence. “The south and east winds,”
says Volney of Syria, “drive the clouds of locusts with violence
into the Mediterranean, and drown them in such quantities, that when
their dead are cast on the shore they infect the air to a great
distance.”[1227] The prophet continues, celebrating this destruction
of the locusts as if it were already realised—_the Lord hath done
greatly_, ver. 21. That among the blessings he mentions a full supply
of rain proves that we were right in interpreting him to have spoken of
drought as accompanying the locusts.[1228]
_Fear not, O Land! Rejoice and be glad,
For Jehovah hath done greatly.[1229]
Fear not, O beasts of the field!
For the pastures of the steppes are springing with new grass,
The trees bear their fruit,
Fig-tree and vine yield their substance.
O sons of Zion, be glad,
And rejoice in Jehovah your God:
For He hath given you the early rain in normal measure,[1230]
And poured[1231] on you winter rain[1232] and latter rain as
before.[1233]
And the threshing-floors shall be full of wheat,
And the vats stream over with new wine and oil.
And I will restore to you the years which the Swarmer has eaten,
The Lapper, the Devourer and the Shearer,
My great army whom I sent among you.
And ye shall eat your food and be full,
And praise the Name of Jehovah your God,
Who hath dealt so wondrously with you;
And My people shall be abashed nevermore.
Ye shall know I am in the midst of Israel,
That I am Jehovah your God and none else;
And nevermore shall My people be abashed._
2. THE OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRIT
(ii. 28-32 Eng.; iii. Heb.).
Upon these promises of physical blessing there follows another of the
pouring forth of the Spirit: the prophecy by which Joel became the
Prophet of Pentecost, and through which his book is best known among
Christians.
When fertility has been restored to the land, the seasons again run
their normal courses, and the people eat their food and be full—_It
shall come to pass after these things, I will pour out My Spirit upon
all flesh_. The order of events makes us pause to question: does Joel
mean to imply that physical prosperity must precede spiritual fulness?
It would be unfair to assert that he does, without remembering what he
understands by the physical blessings. To Joel these are the token that
God has returned to His people. The drought and the famine produced by
the locusts were signs of His anger and of His divorce of the land. The
proofs that He has relented, and taken Israel back into a spiritual
relation to Himself, can, therefore, from Joel’s point of view, only be
given by the healing of the people’s wounds. In plenteous rains and
full harvests God sets His seal to man’s penitence. Rain and harvest
are not merely physical benefits, but religious sacraments: signs that
God has returned to His people, and that His zeal is again stirred on
their behalf.[1234] This has to be made clear before there can be talk
of any higher blessing. God has to return to His people and to show His
love for them before He pours forth His Spirit upon them. That is what
Joel intends by the order he pursues, and not that a certain stage of
physical comfort is indispensable to a high degree of spiritual feeling
and experience. The early and latter rains, the fulness of corn, wine
and oil, are as purely religious to Joel, though not so highly
religious, as the phenomena of the Spirit in men.
But though that be an adequate answer to our question so far as Joel
himself is concerned, it does not exhaust the question with regard to
history in general. From Joel’s own standpoint physical blessings may
have been as religious as spiritual; but we must go further, and assert
that for Joel’s anticipation of the baptism of the Spirit by a return
of prosperity there is an ethical reason and one which is permanently
valid in history. A certain degree of prosperity, and even of comfort,
is an indispensable condition of that universal and lavish exercise of
the religious faculties, which Joel pictures under the pouring forth of
God’s Spirit.
The history of prophecy itself furnishes us with proofs of this. When
did prophecy most flourish in Israel? When had the Spirit of God most
freedom in developing the intellectual and moral nature of Israel? Not
when the nation was struggling with the conquest and settlement of the
land, not when it was engaged with the embarrassments and privations of
the Syrian wars; but an Amos, a Hosea, an Isaiah came forth at the end
of the long, peaceful and prosperous reigns of Jeroboam II. and Uzziah.
The intellectual strength and liberty of the great Prophet of the
Exile, his deep insight into God’s purposes and his large view of the
future, had not been possible without the security and comparative
prosperity of the Jews in Babylon, from among whom he wrote. In Haggai
and Zechariah, on the other hand, who worked in the hunger-bitten
colony of returned exiles, there was no such fulness of the Spirit.
Prophecy, we saw,[1235] was then starved by the poverty and meanness of
the national life from which it rose. All this is very explicable. When
men are stunned by such a calamity as Joel describes, or when they are
engrossed by the daily struggle with bitter enemies and a succession of
bad seasons, they may feel the need of penitence and be able to speak
with decision upon the practical duty of the moment, to a degree not
attainable in better days, but they lack the leisure, the freedom and
the resources amid which their various faculties of mind and soul can
alone respond to the Spirit’s influence.
Has it been otherwise in the history of Christianity? Our Lord Himself
found His first disciples, not in a hungry and ragged community, but
amid the prosperity and opulence of Galilee. They left all to follow
Him and achieved their ministry in poverty and persecution, but they
brought to that ministry the force of minds and bodies trained in a
very fertile land and by a prosperous commerce.[1236] Paul, in his
apostolate, sustained himself by the labour of his hands, but he was
the child of a rich civilisation and the citizen of a great empire. The
Reformation was preceded by the Renaissance, and on the Continent of
Europe drew its forces, not from the enslaved and impoverished
populations of Italy and Southern Austria, but from the large civic and
commercial centres of Germany. An acute historian, in his recent
lectures on the _Economic Interpretation of History_,[1237] observes
that every religious revival in England has happened upon a basis of
comparative prosperity. He has proved “the opulence of Norfolk during
the epoch of Lollardy,” and pointed out that “the Puritan movement was
essentially and originally one of the middle classes, of the traders in
towns and of the farmers in the country”; that the religious state of
the Church of England was never so low as among the servile and
beggarly clergy of the seventeenth and part of the eighteenth
centuries; that the Nonconformist bodies who kept religion alive during
this period were closely identified with the leading movements of trade
and finance;[1238] and that even Wesley’s great revival of religion
among the labouring classes of England took place at a time when prices
were far lower than in the previous century, wages had slightly risen
and “most labourers were small occupiers; there was therefore in the
comparative plenty of the time an opening for a religious movement
among the poor, and Wesley was equal to the occasion.” He might have
added that the great missionary movement of the nineteenth century is
contemporaneous with the enormous advance of our commerce and our
empire.
On the whole, then, the witness of history is uniform. Poverty and
persecution, _famine_, _nakedness_, _peril and sword_, put a keenness
upon the spirit of religion, while luxury rots its very fibres; but
a stable basis of prosperity is indispensable to every social and
religious reform, and God’s Spirit finds fullest course in communities
of a certain degree of civilisation and of freedom from sordidness.
We may draw from this an impressive lesson for our own day. Joel
predicts that, upon the new prosperity of his land, the lowest classes
of society shall be permeated by the spirit of prophecy. Is it not part
of the secret of the failure of Christianity to enlist large portions
of our population, that the basis of their life is so sordid and
insecure? Have we not yet to learn from the Hebrew prophets, that some
amount of freedom in a people and some amount of health are
indispensable to a revival of religion? Lives which are strained and
starved, lives which are passed in rank discomfort and under grinding
poverty, without the possibility of the independence of the individual
or of the sacredness of the home, cannot be religious except in the
most rudimentary sense of the word. For the revival of energetic
religion among such lives we must wait for a better distribution, not
of wealth, but of the bare means of comfort, leisure and security.
When, to our penitence and our striving, God restores the years which
the locust has eaten, when the social plagues of rich men’s selfishness
and the poverty of the very poor are lifted from us, then may we look
for the fulfilment of Joel’s prediction—_even upon all the slaves and
upon the handmaidens will I pour out My Spirit in those days_.
The economic problem, therefore, has also its place in the warfare for
the kingdom of God.
_And it shall be that after such things, I will pour out
My Spirit on all flesh;
And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your old men shall dream dreams,
Your young men shall see visions:
And even upon all the slaves and the handmaidens
in those days will I pour out My Spirit.
And I will set signs in heaven and on earth,
Blood and fire and pillars of smoke.
The sun shall be turned to darkness,
And the moon to blood,
Before the coming of the Day of Jehovah, the great and the awful.
And it shall be that every one who calls on the name
of Jehovah shall be saved:
For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be a remnant,
as Jehovah hath spoken,
And among the fugitives _those_ whom Jehovah calleth._
This prophecy divides into two parts—the outpouring of the Spirit, and
the appearance of the terrible Day of the Lord.
The Spirit of God is to be poured _on all flesh_, says the prophet.
By this term, which is sometimes applied to all things that breathe,
and sometimes to mankind as a whole,[1239] Joel means Israel only:
the heathen are to be destroyed.[1240] Nor did Peter, when he quoted
the passage at the Day of Pentecost, mean anything more. He spoke to
Jews and proselytes: _for the promise is to you and your children,
and to them that are afar off_: it was not till afterwards that he
discovered that the Holy Ghost was granted to the Gentiles, and then
he was unready for the revelation and surprised by it.[1241] But within
Joel’s Israel the operation of the Spirit was to be at once thorough
and universal. All classes would be affected, and affected so that the
simplest and rudest would become prophets.
The limitation was therefore not without its advantages. In the earlier
stages of all religions, it is impossible to be both extensive and
intensive. With a few exceptions, the Israel of Joel’s time was a
narrow and exclusive body, hating and hated by other peoples. Behind
the Law it kept itself strictly aloof. But without doing so, Israel
could hardly have survived or prepared itself at that time for its
influence on the world. Heathenism threatened it from all sides with
the most insidious of infections; and there awaited it in the near
future a still more subtle and powerful means of disintegration. In the
wake of Alexander’s expeditions, Hellenism poured across all the East.
There was not a community nor a religion, save Israel’s, which was not
Hellenised. That Israel remained Israel, in spite of Greek arms and the
Greek mind, was due to the legalism of Ezra and Nehemiah, and to what
we call the narrow enthusiasm of Joel. The hearts which kept their
passion so confined felt all the deeper for its limits. They would be
satisfied with nothing less than the inspiration of every Israelite,
the fulfilment of the prayer of Moses: _Would to God that all Jehovah’s
people were prophets!_ And of itself this carries Joel’s prediction to
a wider fulfilment. A nation of prophets is meant for the world. But
even the best of men do not see the full force of the truth God gives
to them, nor follow it even to its immediate consequences. Few of the
prophets did so, and at first none of the apostles. Joel does not
hesitate to say that the heathen shall be destroyed. He does not think
of Israel’s mission as foretold by the Second Isaiah; nor of
“Malachi’s” vision of the heathen waiting upon Jehovah. But in the near
future of Israel there was waiting another prophet to carry Joel’s
doctrine to its full effect upon the world, to rescue the gospel of
God’s grace from the narrowness of legalism and the awful pressure of
Apocalypse, and by the parable of Jonah, the type of the prophet
nation, to show to Israel that God had granted to the Gentiles also
repentance unto life.
That it was the lurid clouds of Apocalypse, which thus hemmed in our
prophet’s view, is clear from the next verses. They bring the terrible
manifestations of God’s wrath in nature very closely upon the lavish
outpouring of the Spirit: _the sun turned to darkness and the moon
to blood, the great and terrible Day of the Lord_. Apocalypse must
always paralyse the missionary energies of religion. Who can think of
converting the world, when the world is about to be convulsed? There is
only time for a remnant to be saved.
But when we get rid of Apocalypse, as the Book of Jonah does, then we
have time and space opened up again, and the essential forces of such
a prophecy of the Spirit as Joel has given us burst their national and
temporary confines, and are seen to be applicable to all mankind.
FOOTNOTES:
[1221] A.V., adhering to the Massoretic text, in which the verbs are
pointed for the past, has evidently understood them as instances of the
prophetic perfect. But “this is grammatically indefensible”: Driver,
_in loco_; see his _Heb. Tenses_, § 82, _Obs._ Calvin and others, who
take the verbs of ver. 18 as future, accept those of the next verse
as past and with it begin the narrative. But if God’s answer to His
people’s prayer be in the past, so must His jealousy and pity. All
these verbs are in the same sequence of time. Merx proposes to change
the vowel-points of the verbs and turn them into futures. But see
above, p. 395. Ver. 21 shows that Jehovah’s action is past, and Nowack
points out the very unusual character of the construction that would
follow from Merx’s emendation. Ewald, Hitzig, Kuenen, Robertson Smith,
Davidson, Robertson, Steiner, Wellhausen, Driver, Nowack, etc., all
take the verbs in the past.
[1222] This is scarcely a name for the locusts, who, though they
might reach Palestine from the N.E. under certain circumstances,
came generally from E. and S.E. But see above, p. 397: so Kuenen,
Wellhausen, Nowack. W. R. Smith suggests the whole verse as an
allegorising gloss. Hitzig thought of the locusts only, and rendered
הצפוני ὁ τυφωνικός, Acts xxvii. 14; but this is not proved.
[1223] _I.e._ the Dead Sea (Ezek. xlvii. 18; Zech. xiv. 8) and the
Mediterranean.
[1224] The construction shows that the clause preceding this, ועלה
באשו, is a gloss. So Driver. But Nowack gives the other clause as the
gloss.
[1225] Nah. iii. 17; Exod. x. 19.
[1226] _De Civitate Dei_, III. 31.
[1227] I. 278, quoted by Pusey.
[1228] i. 17-20: see above, p. 403.
[1229] Prophetic past: Driver.
[1230] Opinion is divided as to the meaning of this phrase: לצדקה
= _for righteousness_. A. There are those who take it as having a
_moral_ reference; and (1) this is so emphatic to some that they
render the word for _early rain_, מורה, which also means _teacher_ or
_revealer_, in the latter significance. So (some of them applying it
to the Messiah) Targum, Symmachus, the Vulgate, _doctorem justitiæ_,
some Jews, _e.g._ Rashi and Abarbanel, and some moderns, _e.g._ (at
opposite extremes) Pusey and Merx. But, as Calvin points out (this
is another instance of his sanity as an exegete, and refusal to be
led by theological presuppositions: he says, “I do not love strained
expositions”), this does not agree with the context, which speaks not
of spiritual but wholly of physical blessings. (2) Some, who take
מורה as _early rain_, give לצדקה the meaning _for righteousness_,
_ad justitiam_, either in the sense that God will give the rain as a
token of His own righteousness, or in order to restore or vindicate
the people’s righteousness (so Davidson, _Expositor_, 1888, I., p. 203
n.), in the frequent sense in which צדקה is employed in Isa. xl. ff.
(see _Isaiah xl.—lxvi._, Expositor’s Bible, pp. 219 ff.). Cf. Hosea
x. 13, צדק; above, Vol. I., p. 289, n. 2. This of course is possible,
especially in view of Israel having been made by their plagues a
reproach among the heathen. Still, if Joel had intended this meaning,
he would have applied the phrase, not to the _early rain_ only, but
to the whole series of blessings by which the people were restored to
their standing before God. B. It seems, therefore, right to take לצדקה
in a purely physical sense, of the measure or quality of the _early
rain_. So even Calvin, _rain according to what is just_ or _fit_;
A.V. _moderately_ (inexact); R.V. _in just measure_; Siegfried-Stade
_sufficient_. The root-meaning of צדק is probably _according to norm_
(cf. _Isaiah xl.—lxvi._, p. 215), and in that case the meaning would
be _rain of normal quantity_. This too suits the parallel in the next
clause: _as formerly_. In Himyaritic the word is applied to good
harvests. A man prays to God for אפקל ואתֹמר צדקם, _full_ or _good
harvests and fruits_: _Corp. Inscr. Sem._, Pars Quarta, Tomus I., No.
2, lin. 1-5; cf. the note.
[1231] Driver, _in loco_.
[1232] Heb. also repeats here _early rain_, but redundantly.
[1233] בראשון, _in the first_. A.V. adds _month_. But LXX. and Syr.
read כראשננה, which is probably the correct reading, _as before_ or
_formerly_.
[1234] i. 18.
[1235] Above, p. 189.
[1236] Cf. _Hist. Geog._, Chap. XXI., especially p. 463.
[1237] By Thorold Rogers, pp. 80 ff.
[1238] _E.g._ the Quakers and the Independents. The Independents of the
seventeenth century “were the founders of the Bank of England.”
[1239] All living things, Gen. vi. 17, 19, etc.; mankind, Isa. xl. 5,
xlix. 26. See Driver’s note.
[1240] Next chapter.
[1241] Acts x. 45.
CHAPTER XXX
_THE JUDGMENT OF THE HEATHEN_
JOEL iii. (Eng.; iv. Heb.)
Hitherto Joel has spoken no syllable of the heathen, except to pray
that God by His plagues will not give Israel to be mocked by them.
But in the last chapter of the Book we have Israel’s captivity to the
heathen taken for granted, a promise made that it will be removed and
their land set free from the foreigner. Certain nations are singled
out for judgment, which is described in the terms of Apocalypse; and
the Book closes with the vision, already familiar in prophecy, of a
supernatural fertility for the land.
It is quite another horizon and far different interests from those of
the preceding chapter. Here for the first time we may suspect the unity
of the Book, and listen to suggestions of another authorship than
Joel’s. But these can scarcely be regarded as conclusive. Every
prophet, however national his interests, feels it his duty to express
himself upon the subject of foreign peoples, and Joel may well have
done so. Only, in that case, his last chapter was delivered by him at
another time and in different circumstances from the rest of his
prophecies. Chaps. i.—ii. (Eng.; i.—iii. Heb.) are complete in
themselves. Chap. iii. (Eng.; iv. Heb.) opens without any connection of
time or subject with those that precede it.[1242]
The time of the prophecy is a time when Israel’s fortunes are at low
ebb,[1243] her sons scattered among the heathen, her land, in part at
least, held by foreigners. But it would appear (though this is not
expressly said, and must rather be inferred from the general proofs of
a post-exilic date) that Jerusalem is inhabited. Nothing is said to
imply that the city needs to be restored.[1244]
All the heathen nations are to be brought together for judgment into a
certain valley, which the prophet calls first the Vale of Jehoshaphat
and then the Vale of Decision. The second name leads us to infer that
the first, which means _Jehovah-judges_, is also symbolic. That is to
say, the prophet does not single out a definite valley already called
Jehoshaphat. In all probability, however, he has in his mind’s eye some
vale in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, for since Ezekiel[1245] the
judgment of the heathen in face of Jerusalem has been a standing
feature in Israel’s vision of the last things; and as no valley about
that city lends itself to the picture of judgment so well as the valley
of the Kedron with the slopes of Olivet, the name Jehoshaphat has
naturally been applied to it.[1246] Certain nations are singled out by
name. These are not Assyria and Babylon, which had long ago perished,
nor the Samaritans, Moab and Ammon, which harassed the Jews in the
early days of the Return from Babylon, but Tyre, Sidon, Philistia, Edom
and Egypt. The crime of the first three is the robbery of Jewish
treasures, not necessarily those of the Temple, and the selling into
slavery of many Jews. The crime of Edom and Egypt is that they have
shed the innocent blood of Jews. To what precise events these charges
refer we have no means of knowing in our present ignorance of Syrian
history after Nehemiah. That the chapter has no explicit reference to
the cruelties of Artaxerxes Ochus in 360 would seem to imply for it a
date earlier than that year. But it is possible that ver. 17 refers to
that, the prophet refraining from accusing the Persians for the very
good reason that Israel was still under their rule.
Another feature worthy of notice is that the Phœnicians are accused of
selling Jews to the sons of the Jevanîm, Ionians or Greeks.[1247] The
latter lie on the far horizon of the prophet,[1248] and we know from
classical writers that from the fifth century onwards numbers of Syrian
slaves were brought to Greece. The other features of the chapter are
borrowed from earlier prophets.
_For, behold, in those days and in that time,
When I bring again the captivity[1249] of Judah and Jerusalem,
I will also gather all the nations,
And bring them down to the Vale of Jehoshaphat;[1250]
And I will enter into judgment with them there,
For My people and for My heritage Israel,
Whom they have scattered among the heathen,
And My land have they divided.
And they have cast lots for My people:[1251]
They have given a boy for a harlot,[1252]
And a girl have they sold for wine and drunk it.
And again, what are ye to Me, Tyre and Sidon and
all circuits of Philistia?[1253]
Is it any deed of Mine ye are repaying?
Or are ye doing anything to Me?[1254]
Swiftly, speedily will I return your deed on your head,
Who have taken My silver and My gold,
And My goodly jewels ye have brought into your palaces.
The sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem have ye
sold to the sons of the Greeks,
In order that ye might set them as far _as possible_
from their own border.
Lo! I will stir them up from the place to which ye
have sold them,
And I will return your deed upon your head.
I will sell your sons and your daughters into the
hands of the sons of Judah,
And they shall sell them to the Shebans,[1255]
To a nation far off; for Jehovah hath spoken.
Proclaim this among the heathen, hallow a war.
Wake up the warriors, let all the fighting-men muster
and go up.[1256]
Beat your ploughshares into swords,
And your pruning-hooks into lances.
Let the weakling say, I am strong.
...[1257] and come, all ye nations round about,
And gather yourselves together.
Thither bring down Thy warriors, Jehovah.
Let the heathen be roused,
And come up to the Vale of Jehoshaphat,
For there will I sit to judge all the nations round about.
Put in the sickle,[1258] for ripe is the harvest.
Come, get you down; for the press is full,
The vats overflow, great is their wickedness.
Multitudes, multitudes in the Vale of Decision!
For near is Jehovah’s day in the Vale of Decision.
Sun and moon have turned black,
And the stars withdrawn their shining.
Jehovah thunders from Zion,
And from Jerusalem gives[1259] forth His voice:
Heaven and earth do quake.
But Jehovah is a refuge to His people,
And for a fortress to the sons of Israel.
And ye shall know that I am Jehovah your God,
Who dwell in Zion, the mount of My holiness;
And Jerusalem shall be holy,
Strangers shall not pass through her again.
And it shall be on that day
The mountains shall drop sweet wine,
And the hills be liquid with milk,
And all the channels of Judah flow with water;
A fountain shall spring from the house of Jehovah,
And shall water the Wady of Shittim.[1260]
Egypt shall be desolation,
And Edom desert-land,
For the outrage done to the children of Judah,
Because they shed innocent blood in their land.
Judah shall abide peopled for ever,
And Jerusalem for generation upon generation.
And I will declare innocent their blood,[1261] which I have
not declared innocent,
By[1262] Jehovah who dwelleth in Zion._
FOOTNOTES:
[1242] I am unable to feel Driver’s and Nowack’s arguments for a
connection conclusive. The only reason Davidson gives is (p. 204) that
the judgment of the heathen is an essential element in the Day of
Jehovah, a reason which does not make Joel’s authorship of the last
chapter certain, but only possible.
[1243] The phrase of ver. 1, _when I turn again the captivity of Judah
and Jerusalem_, may be rendered _when I restore the fortunes of Israel_.
[1244] See above, p. 386, especially n. 1130.
[1245] xxxviii.
[1246] Some have unnecessarily thought of the Vale of Berakhah, in
which Jehoshaphat defeated Moab, Ammon and Edom (2 Chron. xx.).
[1247] See above, p. 381, nn. 1114, 1115.
[1248] Ver. 6_b_.
[1249] Or _turn again the fortunes_.
[1250] _Jehovah-judges._ See above, p. 432.
[1251] See above, Obadiah 11 and Nahum iii. 10.
[1252] בזונה. Oort suggests במזון, _for food_.
[1253] Gelilôth, the plural feminine of Galilee—the _circuit_ (of the
Gentiles). _Hist. Geog._, p. 413.
[1254] Scil. _that I must repay_.
[1255] LXX. _they shall give them into captivity_.
[1256] Technical use of עלה, _to go up to war_.
[1257] עושו, not found elsewhere, but supposed to mean _gather_.
Cf. Zeph. ii. 1. Others read חושו, _hasten_ (Driver); Wellhausen עורו.
[1258] מגּל, only here and in Jer. l. 16: other Heb. word for
sickle ḥermesh (Deut. xvi. 9, xxiii. 26).
[1259] Driver, future.
[1260] Not the well-known scene of early Israel’s camp across Jordan,
but it must be some dry and desert valley near Jerusalem (so most
comm.). Nowack thinks of the Wadi el Sant on the way to Askalon, but
this did not need watering and is called the Vale of Elah.
[1261] Merx applies this to the Jews of the Messianic era. LXX. read
ἐκζητήσω = ונקמתי. So Syr. Cf. 2 Kings ix. 7.
Steiner: _Shall I leave their blood unpunished? I will not leave it
unpunished._ Nowack deems this to be unlikely, and suggests, _I will
avenge their blood; I will not leave unpunished_ the shedders of it.
[1262] Heb. construction is found also in Hosea xii. 5.
INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETS OF THE GRECIAN PERIOD
(331—— B.C.)
CHAPTER XXXI
_ISRAEL AND THE GREEKS_
Apart from the author of the tenth chapter of Genesis, who defines
Javan or Greece as the father of Elishah and Tarshish, of Kittim or
Cyprus and Rodanim or Rhodes,[1263] the first Hebrew writer who
mentions the Greeks is Ezekiel,[1264] _c._ 580 B.C. He describes them
as engaged in commerce with the Phœnicians, who bought slaves from
them. Even while Ezekiel wrote in Babylonia, the Babylonians were in
touch with the Ionian Greeks through the Lydians.[1265] The latter were
overthrown by Cyrus about 545, and by the beginning of the next century
the Persian lords of Israel were in close struggle with the Greeks for
the supremacy of the world, and had virtually been defeated so far as
concerned Europe, the west of Asia Minor, and the sovereignty of the
Mediterranean and Black Seas. In 460 Athens sent an expedition to Egypt
to assist a revolt against Persia, and even before that Greek fleets
had scoured the Levant and Greek soldiers, though in the pay of Persia,
had trodden the soil of Syria. Still Joel, writing towards 400 B.C.,
mentions Greece[1266] only as a market to which the Phœnicians carried
Jewish slaves; and in a prophecy which some take to be contemporary
with Joel, Isaiah lxvi., the coasts of Greece are among the most
distant of Gentile lands.[1267] In 401 the younger Cyrus brought to the
Euphrates to fight against Artaxerxes Mnemon the ten thousand Greeks
whom, after the battle of Cunaxa, Xenophon led north to the Black Sea.
For nearly seventy years thereafter Athenian trade slowly spread
eastward, but nothing was yet done by Greece to advertise her to the
peoples of Asia as a claimant for the world’s throne. Then suddenly in
334 Alexander of Macedon crossed the Hellespont, spent a year in the
conquest of Asia Minor, defeated Darius at Issus in 332, took Damascus,
Tyre and Gaza, overran the Delta and founded Alexandria. In 331 he
marched back over Syria, crossed the Euphrates, overthrew the Persian
Empire on the field of Arbela, and for the next seven years till his
death in 324 extended his conquests to the Oxus and the Indus. The
story, that on his second passage of Syria Alexander visited
Jerusalem,[1268] is probably false. But he must have encamped
repeatedly within forty miles of it, and he visited Samaria.[1269] It
is impossible that he received no embassy from a people who had not
known political independence for centuries and must have been only too
ready to come to terms with the new lord of the world. Alexander left
behind him colonies of his veterans, both to the east and west of the
Jordan, and in his wake there poured into all the cities of the Syrian
seaboard a considerable volume of Greek immigration.[1270] It is from
this time onward that we find in Greek writers the earliest mention of
the Jews by name. Theophrastus and Clearchus of Soli, disciples of
Aristotle, both speak of them; but while the former gives evidence of
some knowledge of their habits, the latter reports that in the
perspective of his great master they had been so distant and vague as
to be confounded with the Brahmins of India, a confusion which long
survived among the Greeks.[1271]
Alexander’s death delivered his empire to the ambitions of his
generals, of whom four contested for the mastery of Asia and
Egypt—Antigonus, Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Seleucus. Of these Ptolemy and
Seleucus emerged victorious, the one in possession of Egypt, the other
of Northern Syria and the rest of Asia. Palestine lay between them, and
both in the wars which led to the establishment of the two kingdoms and
in those which for centuries followed, Palestine became the
battle-field of the Greeks.
Ptolemy gained Egypt within two years of Alexander’s death, and from
its definite and strongly entrenched territory he had by 320 conquered
Syria and Cyprus. In 315 or 314 Syria was taken from him by Antigonus,
who also expelled Seleucus from Babylon. Seleucus fled to Egypt and
stirred up Ptolemy to the reconquest of Syria. In 312 Ptolemy defeated
Demetrius, the general of Antigonus, at Gaza, but the next year was
driven back into Egypt by Antigonus himself. Meanwhile Seleucus
regained Babylon.[1272] In 311 the three made peace with each other,
but Antigonus retained Syria. In 306 they assumed the title of kings,
and in the same year renewed their quarrel. After a naval battle
Antigonus wrested Cyprus from Ptolemy, but in 301 he was defeated and
slain by Seleucus and Lysimachus at the battle of Ipsus in Phrygia. His
son Demetrius retained Cyprus and part of the Phœnician coast till 287,
when he was forced to yield them to Seleucus, who had moved the centre
of his power from Babylon to the new Antioch on the Orontes, with a
seaport at Seleucia. Meanwhile in 301 Ptolemy had regained what the
Greeks then knew as Cœle-Syria, that is all Syria to the south of
Lebanon except the Phœnician coast.[1273] Damascus belonged to
Seleucus. But Ptolemy was not allowed to retain Palestine in peace, for
in 297 Demetrius appears to have invaded it, and Seleucus, especially
after his marriage with Stratonike, the daughter of Demetrius, never
wholly resigned his claims to it.[1274] Ptolemy, however, established a
hold upon the land, which continued practically unbroken for a century,
and yet during all that time had to be maintained by frequent wars, in
the course of which the land itself must have severely suffered
(264—248).
Therefore, as in the days of their earliest prophets, the people of
Israel once more lay between two rival empires. And as Hosea and Isaiah
pictured them in the eighth century, the possible prey either of Egypt
or Assyria, so now in these last years of the fourth they were tossed
between Ptolemy and Antigonus, and in the opening years of the third
were equally wooed by Ptolemy and Seleucus. Upon this new alternative
of tyranny the Jews appear to have bestowed the actual names of their
old oppressors. Ptolemy was Egypt to them; Seleucus, with one of his
capitals at Babylon, was still Assyria, from which came in time the
abbreviated Greek form of Syria.[1275] But, unlike the ancient empires,
these new rival lords were of one race. Whether the tyranny came from
Asia or Africa, its quality was Greek; and in the sons of Javan the
Jews saw the successors of those world-powers of Egypt, Assyria and
Babylonia, in which had been concentrated against themselves the whole
force of the heathen world. Our records of the times are fragmentary,
but though Alexander spared the Jews it appears that they had not long
to wait before feeling the force of Greek arms. Josephus quotes[1276]
from Agatharchides of Cnidos (180—145 B.C.) to the effect that Ptolemy
I. surprised Jerusalem on a Sabbath day and easily took it; and he adds
that at the same time he took a great many captives from the
hill-country of Judæa, from Jerusalem and from Samaria, and led them
into Egypt. Whether this was in 320 or 312 or 301[1277] we cannot tell.
It is possible that the Jews suffered in each of these Egyptian
invasions of Syria, as well as during the southward marches of
Demetrius and Antigonus. The later policy, both of the Ptolemies, who
were their lords, and of the Seleucids, was for a long time exceedingly
friendly to Israel. Their sufferings from the Greeks were therefore
probably over by 280, although they cannot have remained unscathed by
the wars between 264 and 248.
The Greek invasion, however, was not like the Assyrian and Babylonian,
of arms alone; but of a force of intellect and culture far surpassing
even the influences which the Persians had impressed upon the religion
and mental attitude of Israel. The ancient empires had transplanted the
nations of Palestine to Assyria and Babylonia. The Greeks did not need
to remove them to Greece; for they brought Greece to Palestine. “The
Orient,” says Wellhausen, “became their America.” They poured into
Syria, infecting, exploiting, assimilating its peoples. With dismay the
Jews must have seen themselves surrounded by new Greek colonies, and
still more by the old Palestinian cities Hellenised in polity and
religion. The Greek translator of Isaiah ix. 12 renders Philistines by
Hellenes. Israel were compassed and penetrated by influences as subtle
as the atmosphere: not as of old uprooted from their fatherland, but
with their fatherland itself infected and altered beyond all powers of
resistance. The full alarm of this, however, was not felt for many
years to come. It was at first the policy both of the Seleucids and the
Ptolemies to flatter and foster the Jews. They encouraged them to feel
that their religion had its own place beside the forces of Greece, and
was worth interpreting to the world. Seleucus I. gave to Jews the
rights of citizenship in Asia Minor and Northern Syria; and Ptolemy I.
atoned for his previous violence by granting them the same in
Alexandria. In the matter of the consequent tribute Seleucus respected
their religious scruples; and it was under Ptolemy Philadelphus
(283—247), if not at his instigation, that the Law was first translated
into Greek.
* * * * *
To prophecy, before it finally expired, there was granted the
opportunity to assert itself, upon at least the threshold of this new
era of Israel’s history.
We have from the first half-century of the era perhaps three or four,
but certainly two, prophetic pieces. By many critics Isaiah
xxiv.—xxvii. are assigned to the years immediately following
Alexander’s campaigns. Others assign Isaiah xix. 16-25 to the last
years of Ptolemy I.[1278] And of our Book of the Twelve Prophets, the
chapters attached to the genuine prophecies of Zechariah, or chaps,
ix.—xiv. of his book, most probably fall to be dated from the contests
of Syria and Egypt for the possession of Palestine; while somewhere
about 300 is the most likely date for the Book of Jonah.
In “Zech.” ix.—xiv. we see prophecy perhaps at its lowest ebb. The
clash with the new foes produces a really terrible thirst for the blood
of the heathen: there are schisms and intrigues within Israel which in
our ignorance of her history during this time it is not possible for
us to follow: the brighter gleams, which contrast so forcibly with the
rest, may be more ancient oracles that the writer has incorporated with
his own stern and dark Apocalypse.
In the Book of Jonah, on the other hand, we find a spirit and a style
in which prophecy may not unjustly be said to have given its highest
utterance. And this alone suffices, in our uncertainty as to the exact
date of the book, to take it last of all our Twelve. For “in this
book,” as Cornill has finely said, “the prophecy of Israel quits the
scene of battle as victor, and as victor in its severest struggle—that
against self.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1263] Gen. x. 2, 4. יון Javan, is Ιαϝων, or Ιαων, the older form of
the name of the Ionians, the first of the Greek race with whom Eastern
peoples came into contact. They are perhaps named on the Tell-el-Amarna
tablets as “Yivana,” serving “in the country of Tyre” (_c._ 1400 B.C.);
and on an inscription of Sargon (_c._ 709) Cyprus is called Yâvanu.
[1264] xxvii. 13.
[1265] _Isaiah xl.—lxvi._ (Expositor’s Bible), 108 f.
[1266] iii. 6 (Eng.; iv. 6 Heb.).
[1267] The sense of distance between the two peoples was mutual.
Writing in the middle of the fifth century B.C., Herodotus has heard of
the Jews only as a people that practise circumcision and were defeated
by Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo (II. 104, 159; on the latter passage see
_Hist. Geog._, p. 405 n.). He does not even know them by name. The
fragment of Chœrilos of Samos, from the end of the fifth century, which
Josephus cites (_Contra Apionem_, I. 22) as a reference to the Jews,
is probably of a people in Asia Minor. Even in the last half of the
fourth century and before Alexander’s campaigns, Aristotle knows of the
Dead Sea only by a vague report (_Meteor._, II. iii. 39). His pupil
Theophrastus (_d._ 287) names and describes the Jews (Porphyr. _de
Abstinentia_, II. 26; Eusebius, _Prepar. Evang._, IX. 2: cf. Josephus,
_C. Apion._, I. 22); and another pupil, Clearchus of Soli, records the
mention by Aristotle of a travelled Jew of Cœle-Syria, but “Greek in
soul as in tongue,” whom the great philosopher had met, and learned
from him that the Jews were descended from the philosophers of India
(quoted by Josephus, _C. Apion._, I. 22).
[1268] Jos., XI. _Antt._ iv. 5.
[1269] _Hist. Geog._, p. 347.
[1270] _Hist. Geog._, pp. 593 f.
[1271] See above, p. 440, n. 1267.
[1272] Hence the Seleucid era dates from 312.
[1273] _Hist. Geog._, 538.
[1274] Cf. Ewald, _Hist._ (Eng. Ed.), V. 226 f.
[1275] Asshur or Assyria fell in 607 (as we have seen), but her name
was transferred to her successor Babylon (2 Kings xxiii. 29; Jer. ii.
18; Lam. v. 6), and even to Babylon’s successor Persia (Ezra vi. 22).
When Seleucus secured what was virtually the old Assyrian Empire with
large extensions to Phrygia on the west and the Punjaub on the east,
the name would naturally be continued to his dominion, especially as
his first capital was Babylon, from his capture of which in 312 the
Seleucid era took its start. There is actual record of this. Brugsch
(_Gesch. Aeg._, p. 218) states that in the hieroglyphic inscriptions of
the Ptolemæan period the kingdom of the Seleucids is called Asharu (cf.
Stade, _Z.A.T.W._, 1882, p. 292, and Cheyne, _Book of Psalms_, p. 253,
and _Introd. to Book of Isaiah_, p. 107, n. 3). As the Seleucid kingdom
shrank to this side of the Euphrates, it drew the name Assyria with it.
But in Greek mouths this had long ago (cf. Herod.) been shortened to
Syria: Herodotus also appears to have applied it only to the west of
the Euphrates. Cf. _Hist. Geog._, pp. 3 f.
[1276] XII. _Antt._ i.: cf. _Con. Apion._, I. 22.
[1277] See above, p. 442. Eusebius, _Chron. Arm._, II. 225, assigns it
to 320.
[1278] Cheyne, _Introd. to Book of Isaiah_, p. 105.
“_ZECHARIAH_”
(_IX.—XIV._)
_Lo, thy King cometh to thee, vindicated and victorious, meek and
riding on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass._
_Up, Sword, against My Shepherd!... Smite the Shepherd, that the sheep
may be scattered!_
_And I will pour upon the house of David and upon all the inhabitants
of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplication, and they shall
look to Him whom they have pierced; and they shall lament for Him, as
with lamentation for an only son, and bitterly grieve for Him, as with
grief for a first-born._
CHAPTER XXXII
_CHAPTERS IX.—XIV. OF “ZECHARIAH”_
We saw that the first eight chapters of the Book of Zechariah were,
with the exception of a few verses, from the prophet himself. No one
has ever doubted this. No one could doubt it: they are obviously
from the years of the building of the Temple, 520—516 B.C. They hang
together with a consistency exhibited by few other groups of chapters
in the Old Testament.
But when we pass into chap. ix. we find ourselves in circumstances and
an atmosphere altogether different. Israel is upon a new situation of
history, and the words addressed to her breathe another spirit. There
is not the faintest allusion to the building of the Temple—the subject
from which all the first eight chapters depend. There is not a single
certain reflection of the Persian period, under the shadow of which the
first eight chapters were all evidently written. We have names of
heathen powers mentioned, which not only do not occur in the first
eight chapters, but of which it is not possible to think that they had
any interest whatever for Israel between 520 and 516: Damascus,
Hadrach, Hamath, Assyria, Egypt and Greece. The peace, and the love of
peace, in which Zechariah wrote, has disappeared.[1279] Nearly
everything breathes of war actual or imminent. The heathen are spoken
of with a ferocity which finds few parallels in the Old Testament.
There is a revelling in their blood, of which the student of the
authentic prophecies of Zechariah will at once perceive that gentle
lover of peace could not have been capable. And one passage figures the
imminence of a thorough judgment upon Jerusalem, very different from
Zechariah’s outlook upon his people’s future from the eve of the
completion of the Temple. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of
the earliest efforts of Old Testament criticism should have been to
prove another author than Zechariah for chaps. ix.—xiv. of the book
called by his name.
The very first attempt of this kind was made so far back as 1632 by the
Cambridge theologian Joseph Mede,[1280] who was moved thereto by the
desire to vindicate the correctness of St. Matthew’s ascription[1281]
of “Zech.” xi. 13 to the prophet Jeremiah. Mede’s effort was developed
by other English exegetes. Hammond assigned chaps. x.—xii., Bishop
Kidder[1282] and William Whiston, the translator of Josephus, chaps.
ix.—xiv., to Jeremiah. Archbishop Newcome[1283] divided them, and
sought to prove that while chaps. ix.—xi. must have been written before
721, or a century earlier than Jeremiah, because of the heathen powers
they name, and the divisions between Judah and Israel, chaps. xii.—xiv.
reflect the imminence of the Fall of Jerusalem. In 1784 Flügge[1284]
offered independent proof that chaps. ix.—xiv. were by Jeremiah; and in
1814 Bertholdt[1285] suggested that chaps. ix.—xi. might be by
Zechariah the contemporary of Isaiah,[1286] and on that account
attached to the prophecies of his younger namesake. These opinions gave
the trend to the main volume of criticism, which, till fifteen years
ago, deemed “Zech.” ix.—xiv. to be pre-exilic. So Hitzig, who at first
took the whole to be from one hand, but afterwards placed xii.—xiv. by
a different author under Manasseh. So Ewald, Bleek, Kuenen (at first),
Samuel Davidson, Schrader, Duhm (in 1875), and more recently König and
Orelli, who assign chaps. ix.—xi. to the reign of Ahaz, but xii.—xiv.
to the eve of the Fall of Jerusalem, or even a little later.
Some critics, however, remained unmoved by the evidence offered for a
pre-exilic date. They pointed out in particular that the geographical
references were equally suitable to the centuries after the Exile.
Damascus, Hadrach and Hamath,[1287] though politically obsolete by 720,
entered history again with the campaigns of Alexander the Great in
332—331, and the establishment of the Seleucid kingdom in Northern
Syria.[1288] Egypt and Assyria[1289] were names used after the Exile
for the kingdom of the Ptolemies, and for those powers which still
threatened Israel from the north, or Assyrian quarter. Judah and Joseph
or Ephraim[1290] were names still used after the Exile to express the
whole of God’s Israel; and in chaps. ix.—xiv. they are presented, not
divided as before 721, but united. None of the chapters give a hint of
any king in Jerusalem; and all of them, while representing the great
Exile of Judah as already begun, show a certain dependence in style and
even in language upon Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah xl.—lxvi. Moreover
the language is post-exilic, sprinkled with Aramaisms and with other
words and phrases used only, or mainly, by Hebrew writers from Jeremiah
onwards.
But though many critics judged these grounds to be sufficient to
prove the post-exilic origin of “Zech.” ix.—xiv., they differed as
to the author and exact date of these chapters. Conservatives like
Hengstenberg,[1291] Delitzsch, Keil, Köhler and Pusey used the evidence
to prove the authorship of Zechariah himself after 516, and interpreted
the references to the Greek period as pure prediction. Pusey says[1292]
that chaps. ix.—xi. extend from the completion of the Temple and its
deliverance during the invasion of Alexander, and from the victories of
the Maccabees, to the rejection of the true shepherd and the curse upon
the false; and chaps. xi.—xii. “from a future repentance for the death
of Christ to the final conversion of the Jews and Gentiles.”[1293]
But on the same grounds Eichhorn[1294] saw in the chapters not a
prediction but a reflection of the Greek period. He assigned chaps. ix.
and x. to an author in the time of Alexander the Great; xi.—xiii. 6 he
placed a little later, and brought down xiii. 7—xiv. to the Maccabean
period. Böttcher[1295] placed the whole in the wars of Ptolemy and
Seleucus after Alexander’s death; and Vatke, who had at first selected
a date in the reign of Artaxerxes Longhand, 464—425, finally decided
for the Maccabean period, 170 ff.[1296]
In recent times the most thorough examination of the chapters has
been that by Stade,[1297] and the conclusion he comes to is that
chaps. ix.—xiv. are all from one author, who must have written during
the early wars between the Ptolemies and Seleucids about 280 B.C.,
but employed, especially in chaps. ix., x., an earlier prophecy. A
criticism and modification of Stade’s theory is given by Kuenen.
He allows that the present form of chaps. ix.—xiv. must be of
post-exilic origin: this is obvious from the mention of the Greeks as
a world-power; the description of a siege of Jerusalem by _all_ the
heathen; the way in which (chaps. ix. 11 f., but especially x. 6-9)
the captivity is presupposed, if not of all Israel, yet of Ephraim;
the fact that the House of David are not represented as governing;
and the thoroughly priestly character of all the chapters. But Kuenen
holds that an ancient prophecy of the eighth century underlies
chaps. ix.—xi., xiii. 7-9, in which several actual phrases of it
survive;[1298] and that in their present form xii.—xiv. are older than
ix.—xi., and probably by a contemporary of Joel, about 400 B.C.
In the main Cheyne,[1299] Cornill,[1300] Wildeboer[1301] and
Staerk[1302] adhere to Stade’s conclusions. Cheyne proves the unity of
the six chapters and their date _before_ the Maccabean period. Staerk
brings down xi. 4-17 and xiii. 7-9 to 171 B.C. Wellhausen argues for
the unity, and assigns it to the Maccabean times. Driver judges
ix.—xi., with its natural continuation xiii. 7-9, as not earlier than
333; and the rest of xii.—xiv. as certainly post-exilic, and probably
from 432—300. Rubinkam[1303] places ix. 1-10 in Alexander’s time, the
rest in that of the Maccabees, but Zeydner[1304] all of it to the
latter. Kirkpatrick,[1305] after showing the post-exilic character of
all the chapters, favours assigning ix.—xi. to a different author from
xii.—xiv. Asserting that to the question of the exact date it is
impossible to give a definite answer, he thinks that the whole may be
with considerable probability assigned to the first sixty or seventy
years of the Exile, and is therefore in its proper place between
Zechariah and “Malachi.” The reference to the sons of Javan he takes to
be a gloss, probably added in Maccabean times.[1306]
It will be seen from this catalogue of conclusions that the prevailing
trend of recent criticism has been to assign “Zech.” ix.—xiv. to
post-exilic times, and to a different author from chaps. i.—viii.; and
that while a few critics maintain a date soon after the Return, the
bulk are divided between the years following Alexander’s campaigns and
the time of the Maccabean struggles.[1307]
There are, in fact, in recent years only two attempts to support the
conservative position of Pusey and Hengstenberg that the whole book is
a genuine work of Zechariah the son of Iddo. One of these is by C. H.
H. Wright in his Bampton Lectures. The other is by George L. Robinson,
now Professor at Toronto, in a reprint (1896) from the _American
Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures_, which offers a valuable
history of the discussion of the whole question from the days of Mede,
with a careful argument of all the evidence on both sides. The very
original conclusion is reached that the chapters reflect the history of
the years 518—516 B.C.
In discussing the question, for which our treatment of other prophets
has left us too little space, we need not open that part of it which
lies between a pre-exilic and a post-exilic date. Recent criticism of
all schools and at both extremes has tended to establish the latter
upon reasons which we have already stated,[1308] and for further
details of which the student may be referred to Stade’s and Eckardt’s
investigations in the _Zeitschrift für A. T. Wissenschaft_ and to
Kirkpatrick’s impartial summary. There remain the questions of the
unity of chaps. ix.—xiv.; their exact date or dates after the Exile,
and as a consequence of this their relation to the authentic prophecies
of Zechariah in chaps. i.—viii.
On the question of unity we take first chaps. ix.—xi., to which must be
added (as by most critics since Ewald) xiii. 7-9, which has got out of
its place as the natural continuation and conclusion of chap. xi.
Chap. ix. 1-8 predicts the overthrow of heathen neighbours of Israel,
their possession by Jehovah and His safeguard of Jerusalem. Vv. 9-12
follow with a prediction of the Messianic King as the Prince of Peace;
but then come vv. 13-17, with no mention of the King, but Jehovah
appears alone as the hero of His people against the Greeks, and there
is indeed sufficiency of war and blood. Chap. x. makes a new start: the
people are warned to seek their blessings from Jehovah, and not from
Teraphim and diviners, whom their false shepherds follow. Jehovah,
visiting His flock, shall punish these, give proper rulers, make the
people strong and gather in their exiles to fill Gilead and Lebanon.
Chap. xi. opens with a burst of war on Lebanon and Bashan and the
overthrow of the heathen (vv. 1-3), and follows with an allegory, in
which the prophet first takes charge from Jehovah of the people as
their shepherd, but is contemptuously treated by them (4-14), and then
taking the guise of an evil shepherd represents what they must suffer
from their next ruler (15-17). This tyrant, however, shall receive
punishment, two-thirds of the nation shall be scattered, but the rest,
further purified, shall be God’s own people (xiii. 7-9).
In the course of this prophesying there is no conclusive proof of a
double authorship. The only passage which offers strong evidence for
this is chap. ix. The verses predicting the peaceful coming of Messiah
(9-12) do not accord in spirit with those which follow predicting the
appearance of Jehovah with war and great shedding of blood. Nor is the
difference altogether explained, as Stade thinks, by the similar order
of events in chap. x., where Judah and Joseph are first represented as
saved and brought back in ver. 6, and then we have the process of their
redemption and return described in vv. 7 ff. Why did the same writer
give statements of such very different temper as chap. ix. 9-12 and
13-17? Or, if these be from different hands, why were they ever put
together? Otherwise there is no reason for breaking up chaps. ix.—xi.,
xiii. 7-9. Rubinkam, who separates ix. 1-10 by a hundred and fifty
years from the rest; Bleek, who divides ix. from x.; and Staerk, who
separates ix.—xi. 3 from the rest, have been answered by Robinson and
others.[1309] On the ground of language, grammar and syntax, Eckardt
has fully proved that ix.—xi. are from the same author of a late date,
who, however, may have occasionally followed earlier models and even
introduced their very phrases.[1310]
More supporters have been found for a division of authorship between
chaps. ix.—xi., xiii. 7-9, and chaps. xii.—xiv. (less xiii. 7-9). Chap.
xii. opens with a title of its own. A strange element is introduced
into the historical relation. Jerusalem is assaulted not by the heathen
only, but by Judah, who, however, turns on finding that Jehovah fights
for Jerusalem, and is saved by Jehovah before Jerusalem in order that
the latter may not boast over it (xii. 1-9). A spirit of grace and
supplication is poured upon the guilty city, a fountain opened for
uncleanness, idols abolished, and the prophets, who are put on a level
with them, abolished too, where they do not disown their profession
(xii. 10—xiii. 6). Another assault of the heathen on Jerusalem is
described, half of the people being taken captive. Jehovah appears, and
by a great earthquake saves the rest. The land is transformed. And then
the prophet goes back to the defeat of the heathen assault on the city,
in which Judah is again described as taking part; and the surviving
heathen are converted, or, if they refuse to be, punished by the
withholding of rain. Jerusalem is holy to the Lord (xiv.). In all this
there is more that differs from chaps. ix.—xi., xiii. 7-9, than the
strange opposition of Judah and Jerusalem. Ephraim, or Joseph, is not
mentioned, nor any return of exiles, nor punishment of the shepherds,
nor coming of the Messiah,[1311] the latter’s place being taken by
Jehovah. But in answer to this we may remember that the Messiah, after
being described in ix. 9-12, is immediately lost behind the warlike
coming of Jehovah. Both sections speak of idolatry, and of the heathen,
their punishment and conversion, and do so in the same apocalyptic
style. Nor does the language of the two differ in any decisive fashion.
On the contrary, as Eckardt[1312] and Kuiper have shown, the language
is on the whole an argument for unity of authorship.[1313] There is,
then, nothing conclusive against the position, which Stade so clearly
laid down and strongly fortified, that chaps. ix.—xiv. are from the
same hand, although, as he admits, this cannot be proved with absolute
certainty. So also Cheyne: “With perhaps one or two exceptions, chaps.
ix.—xi. and xii.—xiv. are so closely welded together that even analysis
is impossible.”[1314]
The next questions we have to decide are whether chaps. ix.—xiv. offer
any evidence of being by Zechariah, the author of chaps. i.—viii., and
if not to what other post-exilic date they may be assigned.
It must be admitted that in language and in style the two parts of the
Book of Zechariah have features in common. But that these have been
exaggerated by defenders of the unity there can be no doubt. We cannot
infer anything from the fact[1315] that both parts contain specimens of
clumsy diction, of the repetition of the same word, of phrases (not the
same phrases) unused by other writers;[1316] or that each is lavish in
vocatives; or that each is variable in his spelling. Resemblances of
that kind they share with other books: some of them are due to the fact
that both sections are post-exilic. On the other hand, as Eckardt has
clearly shown, there exists a still greater number of differences
between the two sections, both in language and in style.[1317] Not only
do characteristic words occur in each which are not found in the other,
not only do chaps. ix.—xiv. contain many more Aramaisms than chaps.
i.—viii., and therefore symptoms of a later date; but both parts use
the same words with more or less different meanings, and apply
different terms to the same objects. There are also differences of
grammar, of favourite formulas, and of other features of the
phraseology, which, if there be any need, complete the proof of a
distinction of dialect so great as to require to account for it
distinction of authorship.
The same impression is sustained by the contrast of the historical
circumstances reflected in each of the two sections. Zech. i.—viii.
were written during the building of the Temple. There is no echo of the
latter in “Zech.” ix.—xiv. Zech. i.—viii. picture the whole earth as at
peace, which was true at least of all Syria: they portend no danger to
Jerusalem from the heathen, but describe her peace and fruitful
expansion in terms most suitable to the circumstances imposed upon her
by the solid and clement policy of the earlier Persian kings. This is
all changed in “Zech.” ix.—xiv. The nations are restless; a siege of
Jerusalem is imminent, and her salvation is to be assured only by much
war and a terrible shedding of blood. We know exactly how Israel fared
and felt in the early sections of the Persian period: her interests in
the politics of the world, her feelings towards her governors and her
whole attitude to the heathen were not at that time those which are
reflected in “Zech.” ix.—xiv.
Nor is there any such resemblance between the religious principles
of the two sections of the Book of Zechariah as could prove identity
of origin. That both are spiritual, or that they have a similar
expectation of the ultimate position of Israel in the history of
the world, proves only that both were late offshoots from the same
religious development, and worked upon the same ancient models. Within
these outlines, there are not a few divergences. Zech. i.—viii. were
written before Ezra and Nehemiah had imposed the Levitical legislation
upon Israel; but Eckardt has shown the dependence on the latter of
“Zech.” ix.—xiv.
We may, therefore, adhere to Canon Driver’s assertion, that Zechariah
in chaps. i.—viii. “uses a different phraseology, evinces different
interests and moves in a different circle of ideas from those which
prevail in chaps. ix.—xiv.”[1318] Criticism has indeed been justified
in separating, by the vast and growing majority of its opinions, the
two sections from each other. This was one of the earliest results
which modern criticism achieved, and the latest researches have but
established it on a firmer basis.
If, then, chaps. ix.—xiv. be not Zechariah’s, to what date may we
assign them? We have already seen that they bear evidence of being
upon the whole later than Zechariah, though they appear to contain
fragments from an earlier period. Perhaps this is all we can with
certainty affirm. Yet something more definite is at least probable.
The mention of the Greeks, not as Joel mentions them about 400, the
most distant nation to which Jewish slaves could be carried, but as
the chief of the heathen powers, and a foe with whom the Jews are in
touch and must soon cross swords,[1319] appears to imply that the
Syrian campaign of Alexander is happening or has happened, or even
that the Greek kingdoms of Syria and Egypt are already contending for
the possession of Palestine. With this agrees the mention of Damascus,
Hadrach and Hamath, the localities where the Seleucids had their chief
seats.[1320] In that case Asshur would signify the Seleucids and Egypt
the Ptolemies:[1321] it is these, and not Greece itself, from whom the
Jewish exiles have still to be redeemed. All this makes probable the
date which Stade has proposed for the chapters, between 300 and 280
B.C. To bring them further down, to the time of the Maccabees, as some
have tried to do, would not be impossible so far as the historical
allusions are concerned; but had they been of so late a date as that,
viz. 170 or 160, we may assert that they could not have found a place
in the prophetic canon, which was closed by 200, but must have fallen
along with Daniel into the Hagiographa.
The appearance of these prophecies at the close of the Book of
Zechariah has been explained, not quite satisfactorily, as follows.
With the Book of “Malachi” they formed originally three anonymous
pieces,[1322] which because of their anonymity were set at the end of
the Book of the Twelve. The first of them begins with the very peculiar
construction “Massa’ Dĕbar Jehovah,” _oracle of the word of Jehovah_,
which, though partly belonging to the text, the editor read as a title,
and attached as a title to each of the others. It occurs nowhere else.
The Book of “Malachi” was too distinct in character to be attached to
another book, and soon came to have the supposed name of its author
added to its title.[1323] But the other two pieces fell, like all
anonymous works, to the nearest writing with an author’s name. Perhaps
the attachment was hastened by the desire to make the round number of
Twelve Prophets.
ADDENDA.
Whiston’s work (p. 450) is _An Essay towards restoring the True Text
of the O. T. and for vindicating the Citations made thence in the
N. T._, 1722, pp. 93 ff. (not seen). Besides those mentioned on p.
452 (see n. 1293) as supporting the unity of Zechariah there ought
to be named De Wette, Umbreit, von Hoffmann, Ebrard, etc. Kuiper’s
work (p. 458) is _Zacharia_ 9-14, Utrecht, 1894 (not seen). Nowack’s
conclusions are: ix.—xi. 3 date from the Greek period (we cannot
date them more exactly, unless ix. 8 refers to Ptolemy’s capture of
Jerusalem in 320); xi., xiii. 7-9, are post-exilic; xii.—xiii. 6 long
after Exile; xiv. long after Exile, later than “Malachi.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1279] Except in the passage ix. 10-12, which seems strangely out of
place in the rest of ix.—xiv.
[1280] _Works_, 4th ed. 1677, pp. 786 ff. (1632), 834. Mede died 1638.
[1281] Matt. xxvii. 9.
[1282] _Demonstration of the Messias_, 1700.
[1283] _An Attempt towards an Improved Version of the Twelve Minor
Prophets_, 1785 (not seen). See also Wright on Archbishop Seeker.
[1284] _Die Weissagungen, welche bei den Schriften des Proph. Sacharja
beygebogen sind, übersetzt_, etc., Hamburg (not seen).
[1285] _Einleitung in A. u. N. T._ (not seen).
[1286] Isa. viii. 2. See above, p. 265.
[1287] ix. 1.
[1288] See above, Chap. XXXI.
[1289] x. 10.
[1290] ix. 10, 13, etc.
[1291] _Dan. u. Sacharja._
[1292] Page 503.
[1293] See Addenda, p. 462.
[1294] _Einl._ in the beginning of the century.
[1295] _Neue Exeg. krit. Aehrenlese z. A. T._, 1864.
[1296] _Einl._, 1882, p. 709.
[1297] _Z.A.T.W._, 1881, 1882. See further proof of the late character
of language and style, and of the unity, by Eckardt, _Z.A.T.W._, 1893,
pp. 76 ff.
[1298] § 81, n. 3, 10. See p. 457, end of note 1310.
[1299] _Jewish Quart. Review_, 1889.
[1300] _Einl._⁴
[1301] _A. T. Litt._
[1302] _Untersuchung über die Komposition u. Abfassungszeit von Zach._
9-14, etc. Halle, 1891 (not seen).
[1303] 1892: quoted by Wildeboer.
[1304] 1893: quoted by Wildeboer.
[1305] _Doctrine of the Prophets_, 438 ff., in which the English reader
will find a singularly lucid and fair treatment of the question. See,
too, Wright.
[1306] Page 472, Note A.
[1307] Kautzsch—the Greek period.
[1308] Above, pp. 451 f.
[1309] Robinson, pp. 76 ff.
[1310] _Z.A.T.W._, 1893, 76 ff. See also the summaries of linguistic
evidence given by Robinson. Kuenen finds in ix.—xi. the following
pre-exilic elements: ix. 1-5, 8-10, 13_a_ (?); x. 1 f., 10 f.; xi. 4-14
or 17.
[1311] Kuenen.
[1312] See above, p. 453, n. 1297.
[1313] See also Robinson.
[1314] _Jewish Quarterly Review_, 1889, p. 81.
[1315] As Robinson, _e.g._, does.
[1316] E.g. _holy land_, ii. 16, and _Mount of Olives_, xiv. 4.
[1317] _Op. cit._, 103-109: cf. Driver, _Introd._⁶, 354.
[1318] _Introd._⁶, p. 354.
[1319] ix. 13.
[1320] ix. 1 f.
[1321] x. 11. See above, p. 451.
[1322] See above, pp. 331 ff., for proof of the original anonymity of
the Book of “Malachi.”
[1323] Above, p. 331.
CHAPTER XXXIII
_THE CONTENTS OF “ZECHARIAH” IX.—XIV._
From the number of conflicting opinions which prevail upon the subject,
we have seen how impossible it is to decide upon a scheme of division
for “Zech.” ix.—xiv. These chapters consist of a number of separate
oracles, which their language and general conceptions lead us on the
whole to believe were put together by one hand, and which, with the
possible exception of some older fragments, reflect the troubled times
in Palestine that followed on the invasion of Alexander the Great. But
though the most of them are probably due to one date and possibly come
from the same author, these oracles do not always exhibit a connection,
and indeed sometimes show no relevance to each other. It will therefore
be simplest to take them piece by piece, and, before giving the
translation of each, to explain the difficulties in it and indicate the
ruling ideas.
1. THE COMING OF THE GREEKS (ix. 1-8).
This passage runs exactly in the style of the early prophets. It
figures the progress of war from the north of Syria southwards by
the valley of the Orontes to Damascus, and then along the coasts of
Phœnicia and the Philistines. All these shall be devastated, but
Jehovah will camp about His own House and it shall be inviolate.
This is exactly how Amos or Isaiah might have pictured an Assyrian
campaign, or Zephaniah a Scythian. It is not surprising, therefore,
that even some of those who take the bulk of “Zech.” ix.—xiv. as
post-exilic should regard ix. 1-5 as earlier even than Amos, with
post-exilic additions only in vv. 6-8.[1324] This is possible. Vv. 6-8
are certainly post-exilic, because of their mention of the half-breeds,
and their intimation that Jehovah will take unclean food out of the
mouth of the heathen; but the allusions in vv. 1-5 suit an early date.
They equally suit, however, a date in the Greek period. The progress of
war from the Orontes valley by Damascus and thence down the coast of
Palestine follows the line of Alexander’s campaign in 332, which must
also have been the line of Demetrius in 315 and of Antigonus in 311.
The evidence of language is mostly in favour of a late date.[1325] If
Ptolemy I. took Jerusalem in 320,[1326] then the promise, no assailant
shall return (ver. 8), is probably later than that.
In face then of Alexander’s invasion of Palestine, or of another
campaign on the same line, this oracle repeats the ancient confidence
of Isaiah. God rules: His providence is awake alike for the heathen
and for Israel. _Jehovah hath an eye for mankind, and all the tribes
of Israel._[1327] The heathen shall be destroyed, but Jerusalem rest
secure; and the remnant of the heathen be converted, according to the
Levitical notion, by having unclean foods taken out of their mouths.
_Oracle._
_The Word of Jehovah is on the land of Hadrach, and Damascus is its
goal[1328]—for Jehovah hath an eye _upon_ the heathen,[1329] and all
the tribes of Israel—and on[1330] Hamath, _which_ borders upon it, Tyre
and Sidon, for they were very wise.[1331] And Tyre built her a
fortress, and heaped up silver like dust, and gold like the dirt of the
streets. Lo, the Lord will dispossess her, and strike her rampart[1332]
into the sea, and she shall be consumed in fire. Ashḳlon shall see and
shall fear, and Gaza writhe in anguish, and Ekron, for her
confidence[1333] is abashed, and the king shall perish from Gaza and
Ashḳlon lie uninhabited. Half-breeds[1334] shall dwell in Ashdod, and I
will cut down the pride of the Philistines. And I will take their blood
from their mouth and their abominations from between their teeth,[1335]
and even they shall be left for our God, and shall become like a clan
in Judah, and Ekron shall be as the Jebusite. And I shall encamp for a
guard[1336] to My House, so that none pass by or return, and no
assailant again pass upon them, for now do I regard it with Mine eyes._
2. THE PRINCE OF PEACE (ix. 9-12).
This beautiful picture, applied by the Evangelist with such fitness
to our Lord upon His entry to Jerusalem, must also be of post-exilic
date. It contrasts with the warlike portraits of the Messiah drawn in
pre-exilic times, for it clothes Him with humility and with peace. The
coming King of Israel has the attributes already imputed to the Servant
of Jehovah by the prophet of the Babylonian captivity. The next verses
also imply the Exile as already a fact. On the whole, too, the language
is of a late rather than of an early date.[1337] Nothing in the passage
betrays the exact point of its origin after the Exile.
The epithets applied to the Messiah are of very great interest. He does
not bring victory or salvation, but is the passive recipient of
it.[1338] This determines the meaning of the preceding adjective,
_righteous_, which has not the moral sense of _justice_, but rather
that of _vindication_, in which _righteousness_ and _righteous_ are so
frequently used in Isa. xl.—lv.[1339] He is _lowly_, like the Servant
of Jehovah; and comes riding not the horse, an animal for war, because
the next verse says that horses and chariots are to be removed from
Israel,[1340] but the ass, the animal not of lowliness, as some have
interpreted, but of peace. To this day in the East asses are used, as
they are represented in the Song of Deborah, by great officials, but
only when these are upon civil, and not upon military, duty.
It is possible that this oracle closes with ver. 10, and that we should
take vv. 11 and 12, on the deliverance from exile, with the next.
_Rejoice mightily, daughter of Zion! shout aloud, daughter of
Jerusalem! Lo, thy King cometh to thee, vindicated and victorious,[1341]
meek and riding on an ass,[1342] and on a colt the she-ass’ foal.[1343]
And I[1344] will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from
Jerusalem, and the war-bow shall be cut off, and He shall speak peace
to the nations, and His rule shall be from sea to sea and from the
river even to the ends of the earth. Thou, too,—by thy covenant-blood,
[1345] I have set free thy prisoners from the pit.[1346] Return to the
fortress, ye prisoners of hope; even to-day do I proclaim: Double will
I return to thee._[1347]
3. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE GREEKS (ix. 13-17).
The next oracle seems singularly out of keeping with the spirit of the
last, which declared the arrival of the Messianic peace, while this
represents Jehovah as using Israel for His weapons in the slaughter of
the Greeks and heathens, in whose blood they shall revel. But Stade has
pointed out how often in chaps. ix.—xiv. a result is first stated and
then the oracle goes on to describe the process by which it is
achieved. Accordingly we have no ground for affirming ix. 13-17 to be
by another hand than ix. 9-12. The apocalyptic character of the means
by which the heathen are to be overthrown, and the exultation displayed
in their slaughter, as in a great sacrifice (ver. 15), betray Israel in
a state of absolute political weakness, and therefore suit a date after
Alexander’s campaigns, which is also made sure by the reference to the
_sons of Javan_, as if Israel were now in immediate contact with them.
Kirkpatrick’s note should be read, in which he seeks to prove _the sons
of Javan_ a late gloss;[1348] but his reasons do not appear conclusive.
The language bears several traces of lateness.[1349]
_For I have drawn Judah for My bow, I have charged_ it _with Ephraim;
and I will urge thy sons, O Zion, against the sons of[1350] Javan, and
make thee like the sword of a hero. Then will Jehovah appear above
them, and His shaft shall go forth like lightning; and the Lord Jehovah
shall blow a blast on the trumpet, and travel in the storms of the
south.[1351] Jehovah will protect them, and they shall devour
_(?)_[1352] and trample ...;[1353] and they shall drink their
blood[1354] like wine, and be drenched with it, like a bowl and like
the corners of the altar. And Jehovah their God will give them victory
in that day....[1355] How good it[1356] is, and how beautiful! Corn
shall make the young men flourish and new wine the maidens._
4. AGAINST THE TERAPHIM AND SORCERERS (x. 1, 2).
This little piece is connected with the previous one only through the
latter’s conclusion upon the fertility of the land, while this opens
with rain, the requisite of fertility. It is connected with the piece
that follows only by its mention of the shepherdless state of the
people, the piece that follows being against the false shepherds. These
connections are extremely slight. Perhaps the piece is an independent
one. The subject of it gives no clue to the date. Sorcerers are
condemned both by the earlier prophets, and by the later.[1357] Stade
points out that this is the only passage of the Old Testament in which
the Teraphim are said to speak.[1358] The language has one symptom of a
late period.[1359]
After emphasising the futility of images, enchantments and dreams, this
little oracle says, therefore the people wander like sheep: they have
no shepherd. Shepherd in this connection cannot mean civil ruler, but
must be religious director.
_Ask from Jehovah rain in the time of the latter rain.[1360] Jehovah is
the maker of the lightning-flashes, and the winter rain He gives to
them—to every man herbage in the field. But the Teraphim speak
nothingness, and the sorcerers see lies, and dreams discourse vanity,
and they comfort in vain. Wherefore they wander (?)[1361] like a flock
of sheep, and flee about,[1362] for there is no shepherd._
5. AGAINST EVIL SHEPHERDS (x. 3-12).
The unity of this section is more apparent than its connection with the
preceding, which had spoken of the want of a shepherd, or religious
director, of Israel, while this is directed against their shepherds and
leaders, meaning their foreign tyrants.[1363] The figure is taken from
Jeremiah xxiii. 1 ff., where, besides, _to visit upon_[1364] is used in
a sense of punishment, but the simple _visit_[1365] in the sense of to
look after, just as within ver. 3 of this tenth chapter. Who these
foreign tyrants are is not explicitly stated, but the reference to
Egypt and Assyria as lands whence the Jewish captives shall be brought
home, while at the same time there is a Jewish nation in Judah, suits
only the Greek period, after Ptolemy had taken so many Jews to
Egypt,[1366] and there were numbers still scattered throughout the
other great empire in the north, to which, as we have already seen, the
Jews applied the name of Assyria. The reference can hardly suit the
years after Seleucus and Ptolemy granted to the Jews in their
territories the rights of citizens. The captive Jews are to be brought
back to Gilead and Lebanon. Why exactly these are mentioned, and
neither Samaria nor Galilee, forms a difficulty, to whatever age we
assign the chapter. The language of x. 3-12 has several late
features.[1367] Joseph or Ephraim, here and elsewhere in these
chapters, is used of the portion of Israel still in captivity, in
contrast to Judah, the returned community.
The passage predicts that Jehovah will change His poor leaderless
sheep, the Jews, into war-horses, and give them strong chiefs and
weapons of war. They shall overthrow the heathen, and Jehovah will
bring back His exiles. The passage is therefore one with chap. ix.
_My wrath is hot against the shepherds, and I will make visitation on
the he-goats:[1368] yea, Jehovah of Hosts will[1369] visit His flock,
the house of Judah, and will make them like His splendid war-horses.
From Him the corner-stone, from Him the stay,[1370] from Him the
war-bow, from Him the oppressor—shall go forth together. And in battle
shall they trample on heroes as on the dirt of the streets,[1371] and
fight, for Jehovah is with them, and the riders on horses shall be
abashed. And the house of Judah will I make strong and work salvation
for the house of Joseph, and bring them back,[1372] for I have pity
for them,[1373] and they shall be as though I had not put them
away,[1373] for I am Jehovah their God[1373] and I will hold converse
with them.[1373] And Ephraim shall be as heroes,[1374] and their heart
shall be glad as with wine, and their children shall behold and be
glad: their heart shall rejoice in Jehovah. I will whistle for them and
gather them in, for I have redeemed them, and they shall be as many as
they once were. I scattered them[1375] among the nations, but among the
far-away they think of Me, and they will bring up[1376] their children,
and come back. And I will fetch them home from the land of Miṣraim, and
from Asshur[1377] will I gather them, and to the land of Gilead and
Lebānon will I bring them in, though_ these _be not found_ sufficient
_for them. And they[1378] shall pass through the sea of Egypt,[1379]
and He shall smite the sea of breakers, and all the deeps of the Nile
shall be dried, and the pride of Assyria brought down, and the sceptre
of Egypt swept aside. And their strength[1380] shall be in Jehovah, and
in His Name shall they boast themselves[1381]—oracle of Jehovah._
6. WAR UPON THE SYRIAN TYRANTS (xi. 1-3).
This is taken by some with the previous chapter, by others with the
passage following. Either connection seems precarious. No conclusion as
to date can be drawn from the language. But the localities threatened
were on the southward front of the Seleucid kingdom. _Open, Lebānon,
thy doors_ suits the Egyptian invasions of that kingdom. To which of
these the passage refers cannot of course be determined. The shepherds
are the rulers.
_Open, Lebānon, thy doors, that the fire may devour in thy cedars.
Wail, O pine-tree, for the cedar is fallen;[1382] wail, O oaks of
Bashan, for fallen is the impenetrable[1383] wood. Hark to the wailing
of the shepherds! for their glory is destroyed. Hark how the lions
roar! for blasted is the pride[1384] of Jordan._
7. THE REJECTION AND MURDER OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD
(xi. 4-17, xiii. 7-9).
There follows now, in the rest of chap. xi., a longer oracle, to which
Ewald and most critics after him have suitably attached chap. xiii. 7-9.
This passage appears to rise from circumstances similar to those of the
preceding and from the same circle of ideas. Jehovah’s people are His
flock and have suffered. Their rulers are their shepherds; and the
rulers of other peoples are their shepherds. A true shepherd is sought
for Israel in place of the evil ones which have distressed them. The
language shows traces of a late date.[1385] No historical allusion is
obvious in the passage. The _buyers_ and _sellers_ of God’s sheep might
reflect the Seleucids and Ptolemies between whom Israel were exchanged
for many years, but probably mean their native leaders. The _three
shepherds cut off in a month_ were interpreted by the supporters of the
pre-exilic date of the chapters as Zechariah and Shallum (2 Kings xv.
8-13), and another whom these critics assume to have followed them to
death, but of him the history has no trace. The supporters of a
Maccabean date for the prophecy recall the quick succession of high
priests before the Maccabean rising. The _one month_ probably means
nothing more than a very short time.
The allegory which our passage unfolds is given, like so many more in
Hebrew prophecy, to the prophet himself to enact. It recalls the
pictures in Jeremiah and Ezekiel of the overthrow of the false
shepherds of Israel, and the appointment of a true shepherd.[1386]
Jehovah commissions the prophet to become shepherd to His sheep that
have been so cruelly abused by their guides and rulers. Like the
shepherds of Palestine, the prophet took two staves to herd his flock.
He called one _Grace_, the other _Union_. In a month he cut off three
shepherds—both _month_ and _three_ are probably formal terms. But he
did not get on well with his charge. They were wilful and quarrelsome.
So he broke his staff Grace, in token that his engagement was
dissolved. The dealers of the sheep saw that he acted for God. He asked
for his wage, if they cared to give it. They gave him thirty pieces of
silver, the price of an injured slave,[1387] which by God’s command he
cast into the treasury of the Temple, as if in token that it was God
Himself whom they paid with so wretched a sum. And then he broke his
other staff, to signify that the brotherhood between Judah and Israel
was broken. Then, to show the people that by their rejection of the
good shepherd they must fall a prey to an evil one, the prophet assumed
the character of the latter. But another judgment follows. In chap.
xiii. 7-9 the good shepherd is smitten and the flock dispersed.
The spiritual principles which underlie this allegory are obvious.
God’s own sheep, persecuted and helpless though they be, are yet
obstinate, and their obstinacy not only renders God’s good-will to them
futile, but causes the death of the one man who could have done them
good. The guilty sacrifice the innocent, but in this execute their own
doom. That is a summary of the history of Israel. But had the writer of
this allegory any special part of that history in view? Who were the
_dealers of the flock_?
_Thus saith Jehovah my God:[1388] Shepherd the flock of slaughter,
whose purchasers slaughter them impenitently, and whose sellers
say,[1389] Blessed be Jehovah, for I am rich!—and their shepherds do
not spare them. [For I will no more spare the inhabitants of the
land—oracle of Jehovah; but lo! I am about to give mankind[1390] over,
each into the hand of his shepherd,[1391] and into the hand of his
king; and they shall destroy the land, and I will not secure it from
their hands.[1392]] And I shepherded the flock of slaughter for the
sheep merchants,[1393] and I took to me two staves—the one I called
Grace, and the other I called Union[1394]—and so I shepherded the
sheep. And I destroyed the three shepherds in one month. Then was my
soul vexed with them, and they on their part were displeased with me.
And I said: I will not shepherd you: what is dead, let it die; and what
is destroyed, let it be destroyed; and those that survive, let them
devour one another’s flesh! And I took my staff Grace, and I brake it
so as to annul my covenant which I made with all the peoples.[1395] And
in that day it was annulled, and the dealers of the sheep,[1396] who
watched me, knew that it was Jehovah’s word. And I said to them, If it
be good in your sight, give me my wage, and if it be not good, let it
go! And they weighed out my wage, thirty pieces of silver. Then said
Jehovah to me, Throw it into the treasury[1397] (the precious wage at
which I[1398] had been valued of them). So I took the thirty pieces of
silver, and cast them to the House of Jehovah, to the treasury.[1399]
And I brake my second staff, Union, so as to dissolve the brotherhood
between Judah and Israel.[1400] And Jehovah said to me: Take again to
thee the implements of a worthless shepherd: for lo! I am about to
appoint a shepherd over the land; the destroyed he will not visit, the
...[1401] he will not seek out, the wounded he will not heal, the
...;[1402] he will not cherish, but he will devour the flesh of the fat
and....[1403] Woe to My worthless[1404] shepherd, that deserts the
flock! The sword be upon his arm and his right eye! May his arm wither,
and his right eye be blinded._
Upon this follows the section xiii. 7-9, which develops the tragedy of
the nation to its climax in the murder of the good shepherd.
_Up, Sword, against My shepherd and the man My compatriot[1405]—oracle
of Jehovah of Hosts. Smite[1406] the shepherd, that the sheep may be
scattered; and I will turn My hand against the little ones.[1407] And
it shall come to pass in all the land—oracle of Jehovah—that two-thirds
shall be cut off in it, and perish, but a third shall be left in it.
And I shall bring the third into the fire, and smelt it as _men_ smelt
silver and try it as _men_ try gold. It shall call upon My Name, and I
will answer it. And I will[1408] say, It is My people, and it will say,
Jehovah my God!_
8. JUDAH _versus_ JERUSALEM (xii. 1-7).
A title, though probably of later date than the text,[1409] introduces
with the beginning of chap. xii. an oracle plainly from circumstances
different from those of the preceding chapters. The nations, not
particularised as they have been, gather to the siege of Jerusalem,
and, very singularly, Judah is gathered with them against her own
capital. But God makes the city like one of those great boulders,
deeply embedded, which husbandmen try to pull up from their fields, but
it tears and wounds the hands of those who would remove it. Moreover
God strikes with panic all the besiegers, save only Judah, who, her
eyes being opened, perceives that God is with Jerusalem and turns to
her help. Jerusalem remains in her place; but the glory of the victory
is first Judah’s, so that the house of David may not have too much fame
nor boast over the country districts. The writer doubtless alludes to
some temporary schism between the capital and country caused by the
arrogance of the former. But we have no means of knowing when this took
place. It must often have been imminent in the days both before and
especially after the Exile, when Jerusalem had absorbed all the
religious privilege and influence of the nation. The language is
undoubtedly late.[1410]
The figure of Jerusalem as a boulder, deeply bedded in the soil, which
tears the hands that seek to remove it, is a most true and expressive
summary of the history of heathen assaults upon her. Till she herself
was rent by internal dissensions, and the Romans at last succeeded in
tearing her loose, she remained planted on her own site.[1411] This
was very true of all the Greek period. Seleucids and Ptolemies alike
wounded themselves upon her. But at what period did either of them
induce Judah to take part against her? Not in the Maccabean.
_Oracle of the Word of Jehovah upon Israel._
_Oracle of Jehovah, who stretched out the heavens and founded the
earth, and formed the spirit of man within him: Lo, I am about to make
Jerusalem a cup of reeling for all the surrounding peoples, and even
Judah[1412] shall be at the siege of Jerusalem. And it shall come to
pass in that day that I will make Jerusalem a stone to be lifted[1413]
by all the peoples—all who lift it do indeed wound[1414] themselves—and
there are gathered against it all nations of the earth. In that
day—oracle of Jehovah—I will smite every horse with panic, and their
riders with madness; but as for the house of Judah, I will open
its[1415] eyes, though every horse of the peoples I smite with
blindness. Then shall the chiefs[1416] of Judah say in their hearts,
...[1417] the inhabitants of Jerusalem through Jehovah of Hosts their
God. In that day will I make the districts of Judah like a pan of fire
among timber and like a torch among sheaves, so that they devour right
and left all the peoples round about, but Jerusalem shall still abide
on its own site.[1418] And Jehovah shall first give victory to the
tents[1419] of Judah, so that the fame of the house of David and the
fame of the inhabitants of Jerusalem be not too great in contrast to
Judah._
9. FOUR RESULTS OF JERUSALEM’S DELIVERANCE
(xii. 8—xiii. 6).
Upon the deliverance of Jerusalem, by the help of the converted Judah,
there follow four results, each introduced by the words that it
happened _in that day_ (xii. 8, 9, xiii. 1, 2). First, the people of
Jerusalem shall themselves be strengthened. Second, the hostile heathen
shall be destroyed, but on the house of David and all Jerusalem the
spirit of penitence shall be poured, and they will lament for the good
shepherd whom they slew. Third, a fountain for sin and uncleanness
shall be opened. Fourth, the idols, the unclean spirit, and prophecy,
now so degraded, shall all be abolished. The connection of these
oracles with the preceding is obvious, as well as with the oracle
describing the murder of the good shepherd (xiii. 7-9). When we see how
this is presupposed by xii. 9 ff., we feel more than ever that its
right place is between chaps. xi. and xii. There are no historical
allusions. But again the language gives evidence of a late date.[1420]
And throughout the passage there is a repetition of formal phrases
which recalls the Priestly Code and the general style of the
post-exilic age.[1421] Notice that no king is mentioned, although there
are several points at which, had he existed, he must have been
introduced.
1. The first of the four effects of Jerusalem’s deliverance from the
heathen is the promotion of her weaklings to the strength of her
heroes, and of her heroes to divine rank (xii. 8). _In that day Jehovah
will protect the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the lame among them
shall in that day be like David_ himself _, and the house of David like
God, like the Angel of Jehovah before them_.
2. The second paragraph of this series very remarkably emphasises that
upon her deliverance Jerusalem shall not give way to rejoicing, but to
penitent lamentation for the murder of him whom she has pierced—the
good shepherd whom her people have rejected and slain. This is one of
the few ethical strains which run through these apocalyptic chapters.
It forms their highest interest for us. Jerusalem’s mourning is
compared to that for _Hadad-Rimmon in the valley_ or _plain of
Megiddo_. This is the classic battle-field of the land, and the theatre
upon which Apocalypse has placed the last contest between the hosts of
God and the hosts of evil.[1422] In Israel’s history it had been the
ground not only of triumph but of tears. The greatest tragedy of that
history, the defeat and death of the righteous Josiah, took place
there;[1423] and since the earliest Jewish interpreters the _mourning
of Hadad-Rimmon in the valley of Megiddo_ has been referred to the
mourning for Josiah.[1424] Jerome identifies Hadad-Rimmon with
Rummâni,[1425] a village on the plain still extant, close to Megiddo.
But the lamentation for Josiah was at Jerusalem; and it cannot be
proved that Hadad-Rimmon is a place-name. It may rather be the name of
the object of the mourning, and as Hadad was a divine name among
Phœnicians and Arameans, and Rimmôn the pomegranate was a sacred tree,
a number of critics have supposed this to be a title of Adonis, and the
mourning like that excessive grief which Ezekiel tells us was yearly
celebrated for Tammuz.[1426] This, however, is not fully proved.[1427]
Observe, further, that while the reading Hadad-Rimmon is by no means
past doubt, the sanguine blossoms and fruit of the pomegranate,
“red-ripe at the heart,” would naturally lead to its association with
the slaughtered Adonis.
_And it shall come to pass in that day that I will seek to destroy all
the nations who have come in upon Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the
house of David and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of
grace and of supplication, and they shall look to him[1428] whom they
have pierced; and they shall lament for him, as with lamentation for an
only son, and bitterly grieve for him, as with grief for a first-born.
In that day lamentation shall be as great in Jerusalem as the
lamentation for Hadad-Rimmon[1429] in the valley of Megiddo. And the
land shall mourn, every family by itself: the family of the house of
David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house
of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the
house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of
Shime’i[1430] by itself, and their wives by themselves; all the
families who are left, every family by itself, and their wives by
themselves._
3. The third result of Jerusalem’s deliverance from the heathen
shall be the opening of a fountain of cleansing. This purging of
her sin follows fitly upon her penitence just described. _In that
day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David, and for the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness._[1431]
4. The fourth consequence is the removal of idolatry, of the unclean
spirit and of the degraded prophets from her midst. The last is
especially remarkable: for it is not merely false prophets, as
distinguished from true, who shall be removed; but prophecy in general.
It is singular that in almost its latest passage the prophecy of Israel
should return to the line of its earliest representative, Amos, who
refused to call himself prophet. As in his day, the prophets had become
mere professional and mercenary oracle-mongers, abjured to the point of
death by their own ashamed and wearied relatives.
_And it shall be in that day—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts—I will cut off
the names of the idols from the land, and they shall not be remembered
any more. And also the prophets and the unclean spirit will I expel
from the land. And it shall come to pass, if any man prophesy again,
then shall his father and mother who begat him say to him, Thou shall
not live, for thou speakest falsehood in the name of Jehovah; and his
father and mother who begat him shall stab him for his prophesying. And
it shall be in that day that the prophets shall be ashamed of their
visions when they prophesy, and shall not wear the leather cloak in
order to lie. And he will say, No prophet am I! A tiller of the ground
I am, for the ground is my possession[1432] from my youth up. And they
shall say to him, What are these wounds in[1433] thy hands? and he
shall say, What I was wounded with in the house of my lovers!_
10. JUDGMENT OF THE HEATHEN AND SANCTIFICATION
OF JERUSALEM (xiv.).
In another apocalyptic vision the prophet beholds Jerusalem again beset
by the heathen. But Jehovah Himself intervenes, appearing in person,
and an earthquake breaks out at His feet. The heathen are smitten, as
they stand, into mouldering corpses. The remnant of them shall be
converted to Jehovah and take part in the annual Feast of Booths. If
any refuse they shall be punished with drought. But Jerusalem shall
abide in security and holiness: every detail of her equipment shall be
consecrate. The passage has many resemblances to the preceding
oracles.[1434] The language is undoubtedly late, and the figures are
borrowed from other prophets, chiefly Ezekiel. It is a characteristic
specimen of the Jewish Apocalypse. The destruction of the heathen is
described in verses of terrible grimness: there is no tenderness nor
hope exhibited for them. And even in the picture of Jerusalem’s
holiness we have no really ethical elements, but the details are purely
ceremonial.
_Lo! a day is coming for Jehovah,[1435] when thy spoil will be divided
in thy midst. And I will gather all the nations to besiege Jerusalem,
and the city will be taken and the houses plundered and the women
ravished, and the half of the city shall go into captivity, but the
rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city. And Jehovah
shall go forth and do battle with those nations, as in the day when He
fought in the day of contest. And His feet shall stand in that day on
the Mount of Olives which is over against Jerusalem on the east, and
the Mount of Olives shall be split into halves from east to west by a
very great ravine, and half of the Mount will slide northwards and half
southwards. ...,[1436] for the ravine of mountains[1437] shall extend
to ‘Aṣal,[1438] and ye shall flee as ye fled from before the earthquake
in the days of Uzziah king of Judah,[1439] and Jehovah my God will come
and[1440] all the holy ones with Him.[1441] And in that day there shall
not be light, ... congeal.[1442] And it shall be one[1443] day—it is
known to Jehovah[1444]—neither day nor night; and it shall come to pass
that at evening time there shall be light._
_And it shall be in that day that living waters shall flow forth from
Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the
western sea:_ both _in summer and in winter shall it be. And Jehovah
shall be King over all the earth: in that day Jehovah will be One and
His Name One. All the land shall be changed to plain,[1445] from Geba
to Rimmon,[1446] south of Jerusalem; but she shall be high and abide in
her place[1447] from the Gate of Benjamin up to the place of the First
Gate, up to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hanan’el as far as
the King’s Winepresses. And they shall dwell in it, and there shall be
no more Ban,[1448] and Jerusalem shall abide in security. And this
shall be the stroke with which Jehovah will smite all the peoples who
have warred against Jerusalem: He will make their flesh moulder while
they still stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall moulder in their
sockets, and their tongue shall moulder in their mouth._
[_And it shall come to pass in that day, there shall be a great
confusion from Jehovah among them, and they shall grasp every man the
hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall be lifted against the hand
of his neighbour.[1449] And even Judah shall fight against Jerusalem,
and the wealth of all the nations round about shall be swept up, gold
and silver and garments, in a very great mass._ These two verses, 13
and 14, obviously disturb the connection, which ver. 15 as obviously
resumes with ver. 12. They are, therefore, generally regarded as an
intrusion.[1450] But why they have been inserted is not clear. Ver. 14
is a curious echo of the strife between Judah and Jerusalem described
in chap. xii. They may be not a mere intrusion, but simply out of their
proper place: yet, if so, where this proper place lies in these oracles
is impossible to determine.]
_And even so shall be the plague upon the horses, mules, camels and
asses, and all the beasts which are in those camps—just like this
plague. And it shall come to pass that all that survive of all the
nations who have come up against Jerusalem, shall come up from year to
year to do obeisance to King Jehovah of Hosts, and to keep the Feast of
Booths. And it shall come to pass that whosoever of all the races of
the earth will not come up to Jerusalem to do obeisance to King Jehovah
of Hosts, upon them there shall be no rain. And if the race of Egypt go
not up nor come in, upon them also shall[1451] come the plague, with
which Jehovah shall strike the nations that go not up to keep the Feast
of Booths. Such shall be the punishment[1] of Egypt, and the
punishment[1452] of all nations who do not come up to keep the Feast of
Booths._
The Feast of Booths was specially one of thanksgiving for the harvest;
that is why the neglect of it is punished by the withholding of the
rain which brings the harvest. But such a punishment for such a neglect
shows how completely prophecy has become subject to the Law. One is
tempted to think what Amos or Jeremiah or even “Malachi” would have
thought of this. Verily all the writers of the prophetical books do
not stand upon the same level of religion. The writer remembers that
the curse of no rain cannot affect the Egyptians, the fertility of
whose rainless land is secured by the annual floods of her river. So he
has to insert a special verse for Egypt. She also will be plagued by
Jehovah, yet he does not tell us in what fashion her plague will come.
The book closes with a little oracle of the most ceremonial
description, connected not only in temper but even by subject with what
has gone before. The very horses, which hitherto have been regarded as
too foreign,[1453] or—as even in this group of oracles[1454]—as too
warlike, to exist in Jerusalem, shall be consecrated to Jehovah. And so
vast shall be the multitudes who throng from all the earth to the
annual feasts and sacrifices at the Temple, that the pots of the latter
shall be as large as the great altar-bowls,[1455] and every pot in
Jerusalem and Judah shall be consecrated for use in the ritual. This
hallowing of the horses raises the question, whether the passage can be
from the same hand as wrote the prediction of the disappearance of all
horses from Jerusalem.[1456]
_In that day there shall be upon the bells of the horses, Holiness unto
Jehovah. And the_ very _pots in the House of Jehovah shall be as the
bowls before the altar. Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall
be holy to Jehovah of Hosts, and all who sacrifice shall come and take
of them and cook in them. And there shall be no more any pedlar[1457]
in the House of Jehovah of Hosts in that day._
FOOTNOTES:
[1324] So Staerk, who thinks Amos I. made use of vv. 1-5.
[1325] ix. 1, אדם, _mankind_, in contrast to the tribes of Israel; 3,
חרוץ, _gold_; 5, ישב as passive, cf. xii. 6; הוביש, Hi. of בּוּשׁ, in
passive sense only after Jeremiah (cf. above, p. 412, on Joel); in 2
Sam. xix. 6, Hosea ii. 7, it is active.
[1326] See p. 442.
[1327] ix. 1.
[1328] Heb. _resting-place_: cf. Zech. vi. 8, _bring Mine anger to
rest_. This meets the objection of Bredenkamp and others, that מנוחה is
otherwise used of Jehovah alone, in consequence of which they refer the
suffix to Him.
[1329] The expression _hath an eye_ is so unusual that Klostermann,
_Theo. Litt. Zeit._, 1879, 566 (quoted by Nowack), proposes to read for
עין ערי, _Jehovah’s are the cities of the heathen_. For אדם, _mankind_,
as = _heathen_ cf. Jer. xxxii. 20.
[1330] So LXX.: Heb. _also_.
[1331] So LXX.: Heb. has verb in sing.
[1332] Cf. Nahum iii. 8; Isa. xxvi. 1.
[1333] Read מִבְטָחָה.
[1334] Deut. xxiii. 3 (Heb., 2 Eng.).
[1335] The prepositions refer to the half-breeds. Ezekiel uses the term
_to eat upon the blood_, _i.e._ meat eaten without being ritually slain
and consecrated, for illegal sacrifices (xxxiii. 35: cf. 1 Sam. xiv. 32
f.; Lev. xix. 26, xvii. 11-14).
[1336] מִצַָּּבָה for מִן־צָבָא; but to be amended to מַצָּבָה, 1 Sam. xiv. 12,
_a military post_. Ewald reads מֻצָּבָה, _rampart_. LXX. ἀνάστημα = מַצֵּבָה.
[1337] ix. 10, מֹשֶׁל, cf. Dan. xi. 4; אפסי ארץ only in late writings
(unless Deut. xxxiii. 17 be early)—see Eckardt, p. 80; 12, בצּרון is
ἅπαξ λεγόμενον; the last clause of 12 is based on Isa. lxi. 7. If our
interpretation of צדיק and נושע be right, they are also symptoms of a
late date.
[1338] נושׁע (ver. 9): the passive participle.
[1339] Cf. _Isaiah xl.—lxvi._ (Expositor’s Bible), p. 219.
[1340] Why _chariot from Ephraim_ and _horse from Jerusalem_ is
explained in _Hist. Geog._, pp. 329-331.
[1341] See above.
[1342] Symbol of peace as the horse was of war.
[1343] Son of she-asses.
[1344] Mass.: LXX. _He_.
[1345] Heb. _blood of thy covenant_, but the suffix refers to the whole
phrase (Duhm, _Theol. der Proph._, p. 143). The covenant is Jehovah’s;
the blood, that which the people shed in sacrifice to ratify the
covenant.
[1346] Heb. adds _there is no water in it_, but this is either a gloss,
or perhaps an attempt to make sense out of a dittography of מבור, or a
corruption of _none shall be ashamed_.
[1347] Isa. lxi. 7.
[1348] _Doctrine of the Prophets_, Note A, p. 472.
[1349] 14, on תימן see Eckardt; 15, זויות, Aramaism; כבשׁ is late; 17,
התנוסס, only here and Psalm lx. 6; נוב, probably late.
[1350] So LXX.: Heb. reads, _thy sons, O Javan_.
[1351] LXX. ἐν σάλῳ τῆς ἀπειλῆς αὐτοῦ, _in the tossing of His threat_,
בשער גערו (?) or בשער העדו. It is natural to see here a reference to
the Theophanies of Hab. iii. 3, Deut. xxxiii. (see above, pp. 150 f.).
[1352] Perhaps וְיָכְלוּ, _overcome them_. LXX. καταναλώσουσιν.
[1353] Heb. _stones of a sling_, אבני קלע. Wellhausen and Nowack read
_sons_, בני, but what then is קלע?
[1354] Reading דמם for Heb. והמו, _and roar_.
[1355] Heb. _like a flock of sheep His people_, (but how is one to
construe this with the context?) _for (? like) stones of a diadem
lifting themselves up (? shimmering) over His land_. Wellhausen and
Nowack delete _for stones ... shimmering_ as a gloss. This would leave
_like a flock of sheep His people in His land_, to which it is proposed
to add _He will feed_. This gives good sense.
[1356] Wellhausen, reading טובה, fem. suffix for neuter. Ewald and
others _He_. Hitzig and others _they_, the people.
[1357] Of these cf. “Mal.” iii. 5; the late Jer. xliv. 8 ff.; Isa. lxv.
3-5; and, in the Priestly Law, Lev. xix. 31, xx. 6.
[1358] _Z.A.T.W._, I. 60. He compares this verse with 1 Sam. xv. 23. In
Ezek. xxi. 26 they give oracles.
[1359] חזיז, _lightning-flash_, only here and in Job xxviii. 26,
xxxviii. 25.
[1360] LXX. read: _in season early rain and latter rain_.
[1361] נסעו, used of a nomadic life in Jer. xxxi. 24 (23), and so
it is possible that in a later stage of the language it had come to
mean to wander or stray. But this is doubtful, and there may be a false
reading, as appears from LXX. ἐξηράνθησαν.
[1362] For יענו read וינעו. The LXX. ἐκακώθησαν read וירעו.
[1363] There can therefore be none of that connection between the two
pieces which Kirkpatrick assumes (p. 454 and note 2).
[1364] פקד על
[1365] פקד את
[1366] See above, p. 444.
[1367] x. 5, בוס, Eckardt, p. 82; 6, 12, גִּבֵּר, Pi., cf. Eccles. x.
10, where it alone occurs besides here; 5, 11, הבישו in passive sense.
[1368] As we should say, _bell-wethers_: cf. Isa. xiv. 9, also a late
meaning.
[1369] So LXX., reading כי־יפקד for כי־פקד.
[1370] _Corner-stone_ as name for a chief: cf. Judg. xx. 2; 1 Sam. xiv.
38; Isa. xix. 13. _Stay_ or _tent-pin_, Isa. xxii. 23. _From Him_,
others _from them_.
[1371] Read בַּגִּבֹּרִים and כְּטִיט (Wellhausen).
[1372] Read וַהֲשִׁבוֹתִים for the Mass. וְהוֹשְׁבוֹתִים, _and I will
make them to dwell_.
[1373] רחמתים and אלהיהם ,זנחתים and אענם, keywords of Hosea i.—iii.
[1374] LXX.; sing. Heb.
[1375] Changing the Heb. points which make the verb future. See
Nowack’s note.
[1376] With LXX. read וְחִיּוּ for Mass. וְחָיוּ.
[1377] See above, pp. 451, 471.
[1378] So LXX.; Mass. sing.
[1379] Heb. צרה, _narrow sea_: so LXX., but Wellhausen suggests מצרים,
which Nowack adopts.
[1380] גברתם for גברתים.
[1381] For יתהלכו read יתהללו, with LXX. and Syr.
[1382] Heb. adds here a difficult clause, _for nobles are wasted_.
Probably a gloss.
[1383] After the Ḳerî.
[1384] I.e. _rankness_; applied to the thick vegetation in the larger
bed of the stream: see _Hist. Geog._, p. 484.
[1385] xi. 5, וַאעְשִׁר, Hiph., but intransitive, _grow rich_; 6, ממציא; 7,
10, נעם (?); 8, בחל, Aram.; 13, יְקָר, Aram., Jer. xx. 5, Ezek. xxii. 25,
Job xxviii. 10; in Esther ten, in Daniel four times (Eckardt); xiii. 7,
עמית, one of the marks of the affinity of the language of “Zech.”
ix.—xiv. to that of the Priestly Code (cf. Lev. v. 21, xviii. 20,
etc.), but in P it is concrete, here abstract; צערים; 8, גוע, see
Eckardt, p. 85.
[1386] Jer. xxiii. 1-8; Ezek. xxxiv., xxxvii. 24 ff.: cf. Kirkpatrick
P. 462.
[1387] Exod. xxi. 32.
[1388] LXX. _God of Hosts_.
[1389] Read plural with LXX.
[1390] That is the late Hebrew name for the heathen: cf. ix. 1.
[1391] Heb. רֵעֵהוּ, _neighbour_; read רֹעֵהוּ.
[1392] Many take this verse as an intrusion. It certainly seems to add
nothing to the sense and to interrupt the connection, which is clear
when it is removed.
[1393] Heb. לָכֵן עֲנִיֵּי הַצֹּאן, _wherefore the miserable of the flock_,
which makes no sense. But LXX. read εἰς τήν Χαναάνιτην, and this
suggests the Heb. לכנעני, _to the Canaanites_, i.e. _merchants_, _of
the sheep_: so in ver. 11.
[1394] Lit. _Bands_.
[1395] The sense is here obscure. Is the text sound? In harmony with
the context עמים ought to mean _tribes of Israel_. But every passage in
the O.T. in which עמים might mean _tribes_ has been shown to have a
doubtful text: Deut. xxxii. 8, xxxiii. 3; Hosea x. 14; Micah i. 2.
[1396] See above, note 1393, on the same mis-read phrase in ver. 7.
[1397] Heb. הַיּוֹצֵר, _the potter_. LXX. χωνευτήριον _smelting
furnace_. Read הָאוֹצָר by change of א for י: the two are often
confounded; see n. 1399.
[1398] Wellhausen and Nowack read _thou hast been valued of them_. But
there is no need of this. The clause is a sarcastic parenthesis spoken
by the prophet himself.
[1399] Again Heb. _the potter_, LXX. _the smelting furnace_, as above
in ver. 13. The additional clause _House of God_ proves how right it is
to read _the treasury_, and disposes of the idea that _to throw to the
potter_ was a proverb for throwing away.
[1400] Two codd. read _Jerusalem_, which Wellhausen and Nowack adopt.
[1401] Heb. הַנַּעַר, _the scattered_. LXX. τὸν ἐσκορπίσμενον.
[1402] הַנִּצָּבָה, obscure: some translate _the sound_ or _stable_.
[1403] Heb. _and their hoofs he will tear_ (?).
[1404] For Heb. האליל read as in ver. 15 האוילי.
[1405] עמית: only in Lev. and here.
[1406] הך. Perhaps we should read אַכֶּה, _I smite_, with Matt. xxvi. 31.
[1407] Some take this as a promise: _turn My hand towards the little
ones_.
[1408] LXX. Heb. אמרתי, but the ו has fallen from the front of it.
[1409] See above, p. 462.
[1410] xii. 2, רַעַל, a noun not found elsewhere in O. T. We found the
verb in Nahum ii. 4 (see above, p. 106), and probably in Hab. ii. 16
for והערל (see above, p. 147, n. 412): it is common in Aramean; other
forms belong to later Hebrew (cf. Eckardt, p. 85). 3, שׂרט is used in
classic Heb. only of intentional cutting and tattooing of oneself; in
the sense of _wounding_ which it has here it is frequent in Aramean.
3 has besides אבן מעמסה, not found elsewhere. 4 has three nouns
terminating in ־ון, two of them—תמהון, _panic_, and עורון, judicial
_blindness_—in O. T. only found here and in Deut. xxviii. 28, the
former also in Aramean. 7 למען לא is also cited by Eckardt as used only
in Ezek. xix. 6, xxvi. 20, and four times in Psalms.
[1411] xii. 6, תחתיה.
[1412] The text reads _against_ Judah, as if it with Jerusalem suffered
the siege of the heathen. But (1) this makes an unconstruable clause,
and (2) the context shows that Judah was _against_ Jerusalem. Therefore
Geiger (_Urschrift_, p. 58) is right in deleting על, and restoring to
the clause both sense in itself and harmony with the context. It is
easy to see why על was afterwards introduced. LXX. καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἰουδαίᾳ.
[1413] Since Jerome, commentators have thought of a stone by throwing
or lifting which men try their strength, what we call a “putting
stone.” But is not the idea rather of one of the large stones
half-buried in the earth which it is the effort of the husbandman to
tear from its bed and carry out of his field before he ploughs it? Keil
and Wright think of a heavy stone for building. This is not so likely.
[1414] שׂרט, elsewhere only in Lev. xxi. 5, is there used of
intentional cutting of oneself as a sign of mourning. Nowack takes the
clause as a later intrusion; but there is no real reason for this.
[1415] Heb. _upon Judah will I keep My eyes open_ to protect him, and
this has analogies, Job xiv. 3, Jer. xxxii. 19. But the reading _its
eyes_, which is made by inserting a ו that might easily have dropped
out through confusion with the initial ו of the next word, has also
analogies (Isa. xlii. 7, etc.), and stands in better parallel to the
next clause, as well as to the clauses describing the panic of the
heathen.
[1416] Others read אַלְפֵי, _thousands_, i.e. _districts_.
[1417] Heb. _I will find me_; LXX. εὑρήσομεν ἑαυτοῖς.
[1418] Hebrew adds a gloss: _in Jerusalem_.
[1419] The population in time of war.
[1420] xii. 10, שׁפך רוח, not earlier than Ezek. xxxix. 29, Joel
iii. 1, 2 (Heb.); תחנונים, only in Job, Proverbs, Psalms and Daniel;
המר, an intrans. Hiph.; xiii. 1, מקור, _fountain_, before Jeremiah
only in Hosea xiii. 15 (perhaps a late intrusion), but several times
in post-exilic writings instead of pre-exilic באר (Eckardt); נִדָּה
only after Ezekiel; 3, cf. xii. 10, דקר, chiefly, but not only, in
post-exilic writings.
[1421] See especially xii. 12 ff., which is very suggestive of the
Priestly Code.
[1422] _Hist. Geog._, Chap. XIX. On the name _plain of Megiddo_ see
especially notes, p. 386.
[1423] 2 Chron. xxxv. 22 ff.
[1424] Another explanation offered by the Targum is the mourning for
“Ahab son of Omri, slain by Hadad-Rimmon son of Tab-Rimmon.”
[1425] LXX. gives for Hadad-Rimmon only the second part, ῥοῶν.
[1426] Ezek. viii. 14.
[1427] Baudissin, _Studien z. Sem. Rel. Gesch._, I. 295 ff.
[1428] Heb. _Me_; several codd. _him_: some read אֱלֵי _to_ (him) _whom
they have pierced_; but this would require the elision of the sign of
the acc. before _who_. Wellhausen and others think something has fallen
from the text.
[1429] See above, p. 482.
[1430] LXX. Συμεών.
[1431] Cf. Ezek. xxxvi. 25, xlvii. 1.
[1432] Read אֲדָמָה קִנְיָנִי for the Mass. אדם הקנני: so Wellhausen.
[1433] Heb. _between_.
[1434] But see below, p. 490.
[1435] ליהוה: or _belonging to Jehovah_; or like the _Lamed
auctoris_ or Lamed when construed with passive verbs (see Oxford
_Heb.-Eng. Dictionary_, pp. 513 and 514, col. 1), _from, by means of,
Jehovah_.
[1436] Heb.: _and ye shall flee, the ravine of My mountains_. The text
is obviously corrupt, but it is difficult to see how it should be
repaired. LXX., Targ. Symmachus and the Babylonian codd. (Baer, p. 84)
read וְנִסְתַּם, _shall be closed_, for וְנַסְתֶּם, _ye shall flee_, and this is
adopted by a number of critics (Bredenkamp, Wellhausen, Nowack). But it
is hardly possible before the next clause, which says the valley
extends to ’Aṣal.
[1437] Wellhausen suggests the ravine (גיא) of Hinnom.
[1438] אָצַל, place-name: cf. אָצֵל, name of a family of Benjamin,
viii. 37 f., ix. 43 f.; and בֵית הָאֵצֶל, Micah i. 11. Some would read אֵצֶלּ,
the adverb _near by_.
[1439] Amos i. 1.
[1440] LXX.
[1441] LXX.; Heb. _thee_.
[1442] Heb. Kethibh, יְקָרוֹת יִקְפָּאוּן, _jewels_ (? hardly stars
as some have sought to prove from Job xxxi. 26) _grow dead_ or
_congealed_. Heb. Ḳerê, _jewels and frost_, וְקִפָּאוֹן. LXX. καὶ ψύχη
καὶ πάγος, וְקָרוּת וְקִפָּאוֹן, _and cold and frost_. Founding on this
Wellhausen proposes to read חוֹם for אוֹר, and renders, _there shall be
neither heat nor cold nor frost_. So Nowack. But it is not easy to see
how חוֹם ever got changed to אוֹר.
[1443] _Unique_ or _the same_?
[1444] Taken as a gloss by Wellhausen and Nowack.
[1445] עֲרָבָה, the name for the Jordan Valley, the Ghôr (_Hist.
Geog._, pp. 482-484). It is employed, not because of its fertility, but
because of its level character. Cf. Josephus’ name for it, “the Great
Plain” (IV. _Wars_ viii. 2; IV. _Antt._ vi. 1): also 1 Macc. v. 52,
xvi. 11.
[1446] Geba “long the limit of Judah to the north, 2 Kings xxiii. 8”
(_Hist. Geog._, pp. 252, 291). Rimmon was on the southern border of
Palestine (Josh. xv. 32, xix. 7), the present Umm er Rummamin N. of
Beersheba (Rob., _B. R._).
[1447] Or _be inhabited as it stands_.
[1448] Cf. “Mal.” iii. 24 (Heb.).
[1449] Ezek. xxxviii. 21.
[1450] So Wellhausen and Nowack.
[1451] So LXX. and Syr. The Heb. text inserts a _not_.
[1452] חטאת, in classic Heb. _sin_; but as in Num. xxxii. 23 and
Isa. v. 18, _the punishment that sin brings down_.
[1453] Hosea xiv. 3.
[1454] ix. 10.
[1455] So Wellhausen.
[1456] ix. 10.
[1457] Heb. _Canaanite_. Cf. Christ’s action in cleansing the Temple of
all dealers (Matt. xxi. 12-14).
_JONAH_
“And this is the tragedy of the Book of Jonah, that a Book which is
made the means of one of the most sublime revelations of truth in the
Old Testament should be known to most only for its connection with a
whale.”
CHAPTER XXXIV
_THE BOOK OF JONAH_
The book of Jonah is cast throughout in the form of narrative—the
only one of our Twelve which is so. This fact, combined with the
extraordinary events which the narrative relates, starts questions not
raised by any of the rest. Besides treating, therefore, of the book’s
origin, unity, division and other commonplaces of introduction, we
must further seek in this chapter reasons for the appearance of such a
narrative among a collection of prophetic discourses. We have to ask
whether the narrative be intended as one of fact; and if not, why the
author was directed to the choice of such a form to enforce the truth
committed to him.
The appearance of a narrative among the Twelve Prophets is not, in
itself, so exceptional as it seems to be. Parts of the Books of Amos
and Hosea treat of the personal experience of their authors. The same
is true of the Books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in which the
prophet’s call and his attitude to it are regarded as elements of
his message to men. No: the peculiarity of the Book of Jonah is not
the presence of narrative, but the apparent absence of all prophetic
discourse.[1458]
Yet even this might be explained by reference to the first part of the
prophetic canon—Joshua to Second Kings.[1459] These Former Prophets, as
they are called, are wholly narrative—narrative in the prophetic spirit
and written to enforce a moral. Many of them begin as the Book of Jonah
does:[1460] they contain stories, for instance, of Elijah and Elisha,
who flourished immediately before Jonah and like him were sent with
commissions to foreign lands. It might therefore be argued that the
Book of Jonah, though narrative, is as much a prophetic book as they
are, and that the only reason why it has found a place, not with these
histories, but among the Later Prophets, is the exceedingly late date
of its composition.[1461]
This is a plausible, but not the real, answer to our question. Suppose
we were to find the latter by discovering that the Book of Jonah,
though in narrative form, is not real history at all, nor pretends to
be; but, from beginning to end, is as much a prophetic sermon as any of
the other Twelve Books, yet cast in the form of parable or allegory?
This would certainly explain the adoption of the book among the Twelve;
nor would its allegorical character appear without precedent to those
(and they are among the most conservative of critics) who maintain (as
the present writer does not) the allegorical character of the story of
Hosea’s wife.[1462]
It is, however, when we pass from the form to the substance of the book
that we perceive the full justification of its reception among the
prophets. The truth which we find in the Book of Jonah is as full and
fresh a revelation of God’s will as prophecy anywhere achieves. That
God has _granted to the Gentiles also repentance unto life_[1463] is
nowhere else in the Old Testament so vividly illustrated. It lifts the
teaching of the Book of Jonah to equal rank with the second part of
Isaiah, and nearest of all our Twelve to the New Testament. The very
form in which this truth is insinuated into the prophet’s reluctant
mind, by contrasting God’s pity for the dim population of Niniveh with
Jonah’s own pity for his perished gourd, suggests the methods of our
Lord’s teaching, and invests the book with the morning air of that high
day which shines upon the most evangelic of His parables.
One other remark is necessary. In our effort to appreciate this lofty
gospel we labour under a disadvantage. That is our sense of humour—our
modern sense of humour. Some of the figures in which our author conveys
his truth cannot but appear to us grotesque. How many have missed the
sublime spirit of the book in amusement or offence at its curious
details! Even in circles in which the acceptance of its literal
interpretation has been demanded as a condition of belief in its
inspiration, the story has too often served as a subject for humorous
remarks. This is almost inevitable if we take it as history. But we
shall find that one advantage of the theory, which treats the book as
parable, is that the features, which appear so grotesque to many, are
traced to the popular poetry of the writer’s own time and shown to be
natural. When we prove this, we shall be able to treat the scenery of
the book as we do that of some early Christian fresco, in which,
however rude it be or untrue to nature, we discover an earnestness and
a success in expressing the moral essence of a situation that are not
always present in works of art more skilful or more correct.
1. THE DATE OF THE BOOK.
Jonah ben-Amittai, from Gath-hepher[1464] in Galilee, came forward in
the beginning of the reign of Jeroboam II. to announce that the king
would regain the lost territories of Israel from the Pass of Hamath
to the Dead Sea.[1465] He flourished, therefore, about 780, and had
this book been by himself we should have had to place it first of all
the Twelve, and nearly a generation before that of Amos. But the book
neither claims to be by Jonah, nor gives any proof of coming from an
eye-witness of the adventures which it describes,[1466] nor even from
a contemporary of the prophet. On the contrary, one verse implies that
when it was written Niniveh had ceased to be a great city.[1467] Now
Niniveh fell, and was practically destroyed, in 606 B.C.[1468] In all
ancient history there was no collapse of an imperial city more sudden
or so complete.[1469] We must therefore date the Book of Jonah some
time after 606, when Niniveh’s greatness had become what it was to the
Greek writers, a matter of tradition.
A late date is also proved by the language of the book. This not only
contains Aramaic elements which have been cited to support the argument
for a northern origin in the time of Jonah himself,[1470] but a number
of words and grammatical constructions which we find in the Old
Testament, some of them in the later and some only in the very latest
writings.[1471] Scarcely less decisive are a number of apparent
quotations and echoes of passages in the Old Testament, mostly later
than the date of the historical Jonah, and some of them even later than
the Exile.[1472] If it could be proved that the Book of Jonah quotes
from Joel, that would indeed set it down to a very late date—probably
about 300 B.C., the period of the composition of Ezra-Nehemiah, with
the language of which its own shows most affinity.[1473] This would
leave time for its reception into the Canon of the Prophets, which was
closed by 200 B.C.[1474] Had the book been later it would undoubtedly
have fallen, like Daniel, within the Hagiographa.
2. THE CHARACTER OF THE BOOK.
Nor does this book, written so many centuries after Jonah had passed
away, claim to be real history. On the contrary, it offers to us all
the marks of the parable or allegory. We have, first of all, the
residence of Jonah for the conventional period of three days and three
nights in the belly of the great fish, a story not only very
extraordinary in itself and sufficient to provoke the suspicion of
allegory (we need not stop to argue this), but apparently woven, as we
shall see,[1475] from the materials of a myth well known to the
Hebrews. We have also the very general account of Niniveh’s conversion,
in which there is not even the attempt to describe any precise event.
The absence of precise data is indeed conspicuous throughout the book.
“The author neglects a multitude of things, which he would have been
obliged to mention had history been his principal aim. He says nothing
of the sins of which Niniveh was guilty,[1476] nor of the journey of
the prophet to Niniveh, nor does he mention the place where he was cast
out upon the land, nor the name of the Assyrian king. In any case, if
the narrative were intended to be historical, it would be incomplete by
the frequent fact, that circumstances which are necessary for the
connection of events are mentioned later than they happened, and only
where attention has to be directed to them as having already
happened.”[1477] We find, too, a number of trifling discrepancies, from
which some critics[1478] have attempted to prove the presence of more
than one story in the composition of the book, but which are simply due
to the license a writer allows himself when he is telling a tale and
not writing a history. Above all, there is the abrupt close to the
story at the very moment at which its moral is obvious.[1479] All these
things are symptoms of the parable—so obvious and so natural, that we
really sin against the intention of the author, and the purpose of the
Spirit which inspired him, when we wilfully interpret the book as real
history.[1480]
3. THE PURPOSE OF THE BOOK.
The general purpose of this parable is very clear. It is not, as some
have maintained,[1481] to explain why the judgments of God and the
predictions of His prophets were not always fulfilled—though this also
becomes clear by the way. The purpose of the parable, and it is patent
from first to last, is to illustrate the mission of prophecy to the
Gentiles, God’s care for them, and their susceptibility to His word.
More correctly, it is to enforce all this truth upon a prejudiced and
thrice-reluctant mind.[1482]
Whose was this reluctant mind? In Israel after the Exile there were
many different feelings with regard to the future and the great
obstacle which heathendom interposed between Israel and the future.
There was the feeling of outraged justice, with the intense conviction
that Jehovah’s kingdom could not be established save by the overthrow
of the cruel kingdoms of this world. We have seen that conviction
expressed in the Book of Obadiah. But the nation, which read and
cherished the visions of the Great Seer of the Exile,[1483] could not
help producing among her sons men with hopes about the heathen of a
very different kind—men who felt that Israel’s mission to the world was
not one of war, but of service in those high truths of God and of His
Grace which had been committed to herself. Between the two parties it
is certain there was much polemic, and we find this still bitter in the
time of our Lord. And some critics think that while Esther, Obadiah and
other writings of the centuries after the Return represent the one side
of this polemic, which demanded the overthrow of the heathen, the Book
of Jonah represents the other side, and in the vexed and reluctant
prophet pictures such Jews as were willing to proclaim the destruction
of the enemies of Israel, and yet like Jonah were not without the
lurking fear that God would disappoint their predictions and in His
patience leave the heathen room for repentance.[1484] Their dogmatism
could not resist the impression of how long God had actually spared the
oppressors of His people, and the author of the Book of Jonah cunningly
sought these joints in their armour to insinuate the points of his
doctrine of God’s real will for nations beyond the covenant. This is
ingenious and plausible. But in spite of the cleverness with which it
has been argued that the details of the story of Jonah are adapted to
the temper of the Jewish party who desired only vengeance on the
heathen, it is not at all necessary to suppose that the book was the
produce of mere polemic. The book is too simple and too grand for that.
And therefore those appear more right who conceive that the writer had
in view, not a Jewish party, but Israel as a whole in their national
reluctance to fulfil their Divine mission to the world.[1485] Of them
God had already said: _Who is blind but My servant, or deaf as My
messenger whom I have sent?... Who gave Jacob for a spoil and Israel to
the robbers? Did not Jehovah, He against whom we have sinned?—for they
would not walk in His ways, neither were they obedient to His
law._[1486] Of such a people Jonah is the type. Like them he flees from
the duty God has laid upon him. Like them he is, beyond his own land,
cast for a set period into a living death, and like them rescued again
only to exhibit once more upon his return an ill-will to believe that
God had any fate for the heathen except destruction. According to this
theory, then, Jonah’s disappearance in the sea and the great fish, and
his subsequent ejection upon dry land, symbolise the Exile of Israel
and their restoration to Palestine.
In proof of this view it has been pointed out that, while the prophets
frequently represent the heathen tyrants of Israel as the sea or the
sea-monster, one of them has actually described the nation’s exile as
its swallowing by a monster, whom God forces at last to disgorge his
living prey.[1487] The full illustration of this will be given in
Chapter XXXVI. on “The Great Fish and What it Means.” Here it is only
necessary to mention that the metaphor was borrowed, not, as has been
alleged by many, from some Greek, or other foreign, myth, which, like
that of Perseus and Andromeda, had its scene in the neighbourhood of
Joppa, but from a Semitic mythology which was well known to the
Hebrews, and the materials of which were employed very frequently by
other prophets and poets of the Old Testament.[1488]
Why, of all prophets, Jonah should have been selected as the type of
Israel, is a question hard but perhaps not impossible to answer. In
history Jonah appears only as concerned with Israel’s reconquest of her
lands from the heathen. Did the author of the book say: I will take
such a man, one to whom tradition attributes no outlook beyond Israel’s
own territories, for none could be so typical of Israel, narrow,
selfish and with no love for the world beyond herself? Or did the
author know some story about a journey of Jonah to Niniveh, or at least
some discourse by Jonah against the great city? Elijah went to Sarepta,
Elisha took God’s word to Damascus: may there not have been, though we
are ignorant of it, some connection between Niniveh and the labours of
Elisha’s successor? Thirty years after Jonah appeared, Amos proclaimed
the judgment of Jehovah upon foreign nations, with the destruction of
their capitals; about the year 755 he clearly enforced, as equal with
Israel’s own, the moral responsibility of the heathen to the God of
righteousness. May not Jonah, almost the contemporary of Amos, have
denounced Niniveh in the same way? Would not some tradition of this
serve as the nucleus of history, round which our author built his
allegory? It is possible that Jonah proclaimed doom upon Niniveh; yet
those who are familiar with the prophesying of Amos, Hosea, and, in his
younger days, Isaiah, will deem it hardly probable. For why do all
these prophets exhibit such reserve in even naming Assyria, if Israel
had already through Jonah entered into such articulate relations with
Niniveh? We must, therefore, admit our ignorance of the reasons which
led our author to choose Jonah as a type of Israel. We can only
conjecture that it may have been because Jonah was a prophet, whom
history identified only with Israel’s narrower interests. If, during
subsequent centuries, a tradition had risen of Jonah’s journey to
Niniveh or of his discourse against her, such a tradition has
probability against it.
* * * * *
A more definite origin for the book than any yet given has been
suggested by Professor Budde.[1489] The Second Book of Chronicles
refers to a _Midrash of the Book of the Kings_[1490] for further
particulars concerning King Joash. A _Midrash_[1491] was the expansion,
for doctrinal or homiletic purposes, of a passage of Scripture, and
very frequently took the form, so dear to Orientals, of parable or
invented story about the subject of the text. We have examples of
Midrashim among the Apocrypha, in the Books of Tobit and Susannah and
in the Prayer of Manasseh, the same as is probably referred to by the
Chronicler.[1492] That the Chronicler himself used the _Midrash of the
Book of the Kings_ as material for his own book is obvious from the
form of the latter and its adaptation of the historical narratives of
the Book of Kings.[1493] The Book of Daniel may also be reckoned among
the Midrashim, and Budde now proposes to add to their number the Book
of Jonah. It may be doubted whether this distinguished critic is right
in supposing that the book formed the Midrash to 2 Kings xiv. 25 ff.
(the author being desirous to add to the expression there of Jehovah’s
pity upon Israel some expression of His pity upon the heathen), or that
it was extracted just as it stands, in proof of which Budde points to
its abrupt beginning and end. We have seen another reason for the
latter;[1494] and it is very improbable that the Midrashim, so largely
the basis of the Books of Chronicles, shared that spirit of
universalism which inspires the Book of Jonah.[1495] But we may well
believe that it was in some Midrash of the Book of Kings that the
author of the Book of Jonah found the basis of the latter part of his
immortal work, which too clearly reflects the fortunes and conduct of
all Israel to have been wholly drawn from a Midrash upon the story of
the individual prophet Jonah.
4. OUR LORD’S USE OF THE BOOK.
We have seen, then, that the Book of Jonah is not actual history, but
the enforcement of a profound religious truth nearer to the level of
the New Testament than anything else in the Old, and cast in the form
of Christ’s own parables. The full proof of this can be made clear
only by the detailed exposition of the book. There is, however, one
other question, which is relevant to the argument. Christ Himself has
employed the story of Jonah. Does His use of it involve His authority
for the opinion that it is a story of real facts?
Two passages of the Gospels contain the words of our Lord upon Jonah:
Matt. xii. 39, 41, and Luke xi. 29, 30.[1496] _A generation, wicked and
adulterous, seeketh a sign, and sign shall not be given it, save the
sign of the prophet Jonah.... The men of Niniveh shall stand up in the
Judgment with this generation, and condemn it, for they repented at the
preaching of Jonah, and behold, a greater than Jonah is here. This
generation is an evil generation: it seeketh a sign; and sign shall not
be given it, except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to the
Ninivites, so also shall the Son of Man be to this generation._
These words, of course, are compatible with the opinion that the Book
of Jonah is a record of real fact. The only question is, are they also
compatible with the opinion that the Book of Jonah is a parable? Many
say No; and they allege that those of us who hold this opinion are
denying, or at least ignoring, the testimony of our Lord; or that we
are taking away the whole force of the parallel which He drew. This is
a question of interpretation, not of faith. We do not believe that our
Lord had any thought of confirming or not confirming the historic
character of the story. His purpose was purely one of exhortation, and
we feel the grounds of that exhortation to be just as strong, when we
have proven the Book of Jonah to be a parable. Christ is using an
illustration: it surely matters not whether that illustration be drawn
from the realms of fact or of poetry. Again and again in their
discourses to the people do men use illustrations and enforcements
drawn from traditions of the past. Do we, even when the historical
value of these traditions is _very_ ambiguous, give a single thought to
the question of their historical character? We never think of it. It is
enough for us that the tradition is popularly accepted and familiar.
And we cannot deny to our Lord that which we claim for ourselves.[1497]
Even conservative writers admit this. In his recent Introduction to
Jonah Orelli says expressly: “It is not, indeed, proved with conclusive
necessity that, if the resurrection of Jesus was a physical fact,
Jonah’s abode in the fish’s belly must also be just as historical.”[1498]
Upon the general question of our Lord’s authority in matters of
criticism, His own words with regard to personal questions may be
appositely quoted: _Man, who made Me a judge or divider over you? I
am come not to judge ... but to save._ Such matters our Lord surely
leaves to ourselves, and we have to decide them by our reason, our
common-sense and our loyalty to truth—of all of which He Himself is
the creator, and of which we shall have to render to Him an account
at the last. Let us remember this, and we shall use them with equal
liberty and reverence. _Bringing every thought into subjection to
Christ_ is surely just using our knowledge, our reason, and every other
intellectual gift which He has given us, with the accuracy and the
courage of His own Spirit.
5. THE UNITY OF THE BOOK.
The next question is that of the Unity of the Book. Several attempts
have been made to prove from discrepancies, some real and some alleged,
that the book is a compilation of stories from several different hands.
But these essays are too artificial to have obtained any adherence from
critics; and the few real discrepancies of narrative from which they
start are due, as we have seen, rather to the license of a writer of
parable than to any difference of authorship.[1499]
In the question of the Unity of the Book, the Prayer or Psalm in chap.
ii. offers a problem of its own, consisting as it does almost entirely
of passages parallel to others in the Psalter. Besides a number of
religious phrases, which are too general for us to say that one prayer
has borrowed them from another,[1500] there are several unmistakeable
repetitions of the Psalms.[1501]
And yet the Psalm of Jonah has strong features, which, so far as we
know, are original to it. The horror of the great deep has nowhere in
the Old Testament been described with such power or with such
conciseness. So far, then, the Psalm is not a mere string of
quotations, but a living unity. Did the author of the book himself
insert it where it stands? Against this it has been urged that the
Psalm is not the prayer of a man inside a fish, but of one who on dry
land celebrates a deliverance from drowning, and that if the author of
the narrative himself had inserted it, he would rather have done so
after ver. 11, which records the prophet’s escape from the fish.[1502]
And a usual theory of the origin of the Psalm is that a later editor,
having found the Psalm ready-made and in a collection where it was
perhaps attributed to Jonah,[1503] inserted it after ver. 2, which
records that Jonah did pray from the belly of the fish, and inserted it
there the more readily, because it seemed right for a book which had
found its place among the Twelve Prophets to contribute, as all the
others did, some actual discourse of the prophet whose name it
bore.[1504] This, however, is not probable. Whether the original author
found the Psalm ready to his hand or made it, there is a great deal to
be said for the opinion of the earlier critics,[1505] that he himself
inserted it, and just where it now stands. For, from the standpoint of
the writer, Jonah was already saved, when he was taken up by the
fish—saved from the deep into which he had been cast by the sailors,
and the dangers of which the Psalm so vividly describes. However
impossible it be for us to conceive of the compilation of a Psalm (even
though full of quotations) by a man in Jonah’s position,[1506] it was
consistent with the standpoint of a writer who had just affirmed that
the fish was expressly _appointed by Jehovah_, in order to save his
penitent servant from the sea. To argue that the Psalm is an intrusion
is therefore not only unnecessary, but it betrays failure to appreciate
the standpoint of the writer. Given the fish and the Divine purpose of
the fish, the Psalm is intelligible and appears at its proper place. It
were more reasonable indeed to argue that the fish itself is an
insertion. Besides, as we shall see, the spirit of the Psalm is
national; in conformity with the truth underlying the book, it is a
Psalm of Israel as a whole.
If this be correct, we have the Book of Jonah as it came from the hands
of its author. The text is in wonderfully good condition, due to the
ease of the narrative and its late date. The Greek version exhibits the
usual proportion of clerical errors and mistranslations,[1507]
omissions[1508] and amplifications,[1509] with some variant
readings[1510] and other changes that will be noted in the verses
themselves.
FOOTNOTES:
[1458] Unless the Psalm were counted as such. See below, p. 511.
[1459] _Minus_ Ruth of course.
[1460] Cf. with Jonah i. 1, וַיְהִי, Josh. i. 1, 1 Sam. i. 1, 2 Sam. i.
1. The corrupt state of the text of Ezek. i. 1 does not permit us to
adduce it also as a parallel.
[1461] See below, p. 496.
[1462] See above, Vol. I., p. 236.
[1463] Acts xi. 8.
[1464] Cf. Gittah-hepher, Josh. xix. 13, by some held to be El Meshhed,
three miles north-east of Nazareth. The tomb of Jonah is pointed out
there.
[1465] 2 Kings xiv. 25.
[1466] Cf. Kuenen, _Einl._, II. 417, 418.
[1467] iii. 3: היתה, _was_.
[1468] See above, pp. 21 ff., 96 ff.
[1469] Cf. George Smith, _Assyrian Discoveries_, p. 94; Sayce, _Ancient
Empires of the East_, p. 141. Cf. previous note.
[1470] As, _e.g._, by Volck, article “Jona” in Herzog’s _Real.
Encycl._²: the use of שֶׁל for אֲשֶׁר, as, _e.g._, in the very early
Song of Deborah. But the same occurs in many late passages: Eccles. i.
7, 11, ii. 21, 22, etc.; Psalms cxxii., cxxiv., cxxxv. 2, 8, cxxxvii.
8, cxlvi. 3.
[1471] A. Grammatical constructions:—i. 7, בְּשֶׁלְּמִי; 12, בְּשֶׁלִּי: that בשל
has not altogether displaced באשרל König (_Einl._, 378) thinks a proof
of the date of Jonah in the early Aramaic period. iv. 6, the use of לוֹ
for the accusative, cf. Jer. xl. 2, Ezra viii. 24: seldom in earlier
Hebrew, 1 Sam. xxiii. 10, 2 Sam. iii. 30, especially when the object
stands before the verb, Isa. xi. 9 (this may be late), 1 Sam. xxii. 7,
Job v. 2; but continually in Aramaic, Dan. ii. 10, 12, 14, 24, etc. The
first personal pronoun אני (five times) occurs oftener than אנכי
(twice), just as in all exilic and post-exilic writings. The numerals
ii. 1, iii. 3, precede the noun, as in earlier Hebrew.
B. Words:—מנה in Pi. is a favourite term of our author, ii. 1, iv.
6, 8; is elsewhere in O.T. Hebrew found only in Dan. i. 5, 10, 18, 1
Chron. ix. 29, Psalm lxi. 8; but in O.T. Aramaic מנא Pi. מנּי occurs
in Ezra vii. 25, Dan. ii. 24, 49, iii. 12, etc. ספינה, i. 5, is not
elsewhere found in O.T., but is common in later Hebrew and in Aramaic.
התעשת, i. 6, _to think_, for the Heb. חשב, cf. Psalm cxlvi. 4, but
Aram. cf. Dan. vi. 4 and Targums. טעם in the sense _to order or
command_, iii. 7, is found elsewhere in the O.T. only in the Aramaic
passages Dan. iii. 10, Ezra vi. 1, etc. רבּו, iv. 11, for the earlier
רבבה occurs only in later Hebrew, Ezra ii. 64, Neh. vii. 66, 72, 1
Chron. xxix. 7 (Hosea viii. 12, Kethibh is suspected). שתק, i. 11, 12,
occurs only in Psalm cvii. 30, Prov. xxvi. 20. עמל, iv. 10, instead of
the usual יגע. The expression _God of Heaven_, i. 9, occurs only in 2
Chron. xxxvi. 23, Psalm cxxxvi. 26, Dan. ii. 18, 19, 44, and frequently
in Ezra and Nehemiah.
[1472] In chap. iv. there are undoubted echoes of the story of Elijah’s
depression in 1 Kings xix., though the alleged parallel between Jonah’s
tree (iv. 8) and Elijah’s broom-bush seems to me forced, iv. 9 has been
thought, though not conclusively, to depend on Gen. iv. 6, and the
appearance of יהוה אלהים has been referred to its frequent use in Gen.
ii. f. More important are the parallels with Joel: iii. 9 with Joel ii.
14_a_, and the attributes of God in iv. 2 with Joel ii. 13. But which
of the two is the original?
[1473] Kleinert assigns the book to the Exile; Ewald to the fifth or
sixth century; Driver to the fifth century (_Introd._^6, 301); Orelli
to the last Chaldean or first Persian age; Vatke to the third century.
These assign generally to after the Exile: Cheyne (_Theol. Rev._, XIV.,
p. 218: cf. art. “Jonah” in the _Encycl. Brit._), König (_Einl._), Rob.
Smith, Kuenen, Wildeboer, Budde, Cornill, Farrar, etc. Hitzig brings it
down as far as the Maccabean age, which is impossible if the prophetic
canon closed in 200 B.C., and seeks for its origin in Egypt, “that land
of wonders,” on account of its fabulous character, and because of the
description of the east wind as חרישׁית (iv. 8), and the name of the
gourd, קיקיון, Egyptian _kiki_. But such a wind and such a plant were
found outside Egypt as well. Nowack dates the book after Joel.
[1474] See above, Vol. I., p. 5.
[1475] Below, pp. 523 ff.
[1476] Contrast the treatment of foreign states by Elisha, Amos and
Isaiah, etc.
[1477] Abridged from pp. 3 and 4 of Kleinert’s Introduction to the Book
of Jonah in Lange’s Series of Commentaries. Eng. ed., Vol. XVI.
[1478] Köhler, _Theol. Rev._, Vol. XVI.; Böhme, _Z.A.T.W._, 1887, pp.
224 ff.
[1479] Indeed throughout the book the truths it enforces are always
more pushed to the front than the facts.
[1480] Nearly all the critics who accept the late date of the book
interpret it as parabolic. See also a powerful article by the late Dr.
Dale in the _Expositor_, Fourth Series, Vol. VI., July 1892, pp. 1 ff.
Cf., too, C. H. H. Wright, _Biblical Essays_ (1886), pp. 34-98.
[1481] Marck (quoted by Kleinert) said: “Scriptum est magna parte
historicum sed ita ut in historia ipsa lateat maximi vaticinii
mysterium, atque ipse fatis suis, non minus quam effatis vatem se verum
demonstret.” Hitzig curiously thinks that this is the reason why it
has been placed in the Canon of the Prophets next to the unfulfilled
prophecy of God against Edom. But by the date which Hitzig assigns
to the book the prophecy against Edom was at least in a fair way to
fulfilment. Riehm (_Theol. Stud. u. Krit._, 1862, pp. 413 f.): “The
practical intention of the book is to afford instruction concerning
the proper attitude to prophetic warnings”; these, though genuine
words of God, may be averted by repentance. Volck (art. “Jona” in
Herzog’s _Real. Encycl._²) gives the following. Jonah’s experience is
characteristic of the whole prophetic profession. “We learn from it (1)
that the prophet must perform what God commands him, however unusual
it appears; (2) that even death cannot nullify his calling; (3) that
the prophet has no right to the fulfilment of his prediction, but must
place it in God’s hand.” Vatke (_Einl._, 688) maintains that the book
was written in an apologetic interest, when Jews expounded the prophets
and found this difficulty, that all their predictions had not been
fulfilled. “The author obviously teaches: (1) since the prophet cannot
withdraw from the Divine commission, he is also not responsible for the
contents of his predictions; (2) the prophet often announces Divine
purposes, which are not fulfilled, because God in His mercy takes back
the threat, when repentance follows; (3) the honour of a prophet is
not hurt when a threat is not fulfilled, and the inspiration remains
unquestioned, although many predictions are not carried out.”
To all of which there is a conclusive answer, in the fact that, had the
book been meant to explain or justify unfulfilled prophecy, the author
would certainly not have chosen as an instance a judgment against
Niniveh, because, by the time he wrote, all the early predictions of
Niniveh’s fall had been fulfilled, we might say, to the very letter.
[1482] So even Kimchi; and in modern times De Wette, Delitzsch, Bleek,
Reuss, Cheyne, Wright, König, Farrar, Orelli, etc. So virtually
also Nowack. Ewald’s view is a little different. He thinks that the
fundamental truth of the book is that “true fear and repentance bring
salvation from Jehovah.”
[1483] Isa. xl. ff.
[1484] So virtually Kuenen, _Einl._, II., p. 423; Smend, _Lehrbuch der
A. T. Religionsgeschichte_, pp. 408 f., and Nowack.
[1485] That the book is a historical allegory is a very old theory.
Hermann v. d. Hardt (_Ænigmata Prisci Orbis_, 1723: cf. _Jonas in_
_Carcharia, Israel in Carcathio_, 1718, quoted by Vatke, _Einl._, p.
686) found in the book a political allegory of the history of Manasseh
led into exile, and converted, while the last two chapters represent
the history of Josiah. That the book was symbolic in some way of the
conduct and fortunes of Israel was a view familiar in Great Britain
during the first half of this century: see the Preface to the English
translation of Calvin on Jonah (1847). Kleinert (in his commentary
on Jonah in Lange’s Series, Vol. XVI. English translation, 1874) was
one of the first to expound with details the symbolising of Israel in
the prophet Jonah. Then came the article in the _Theol. Review_ (XIV.
1877, pp. 214 ff.) by Cheyne, following Bloch’s _Studien z. Gesch. der
Sammlung der althebräischen Litteratur_ (Breslau, 1876); but adding the
explanation of _the great fish_ from Hebrew mythology (see below). Von
Orelli quotes Kleinert with approval in the main.
[1486] Isa. xlii. 19-24.
[1487] Jer. li. 34, 44 f.
[1488] That the Book of Jonah employs mythical elements is an opinion
that has prevailed since the beginning of this century. But before
Semitic mythology was so well known as it is now, these mythical
elements were thought to have been derived from the Greek mythology.
So Gesenius, De Wette, and even Knobel, but see especially F. C. Baur
in Ilgen’s _Zeitschrift_ for 1837, p. 201. Kuenen (_Einl._, 424) and
Cheyne (_Theol. Rev._, XIV.) rightly deny traces of any Greek influence
on Jonah, and their denial is generally agreed in.
Kleinert (_op. cit._, p. 10) points to the proper source in the native
mythology of the Hebrews: “The sea-monster is by no means an unusual
phenomenon in prophetic typology. It is the secular power appointed by
God for the scourge of Israel and of the earth (Isa. xxvii. 1)”; and
Cheyne (_Theol. Rev._, XIV., “Jonah: a Study in Jewish Folk-lore and
Religion”) points out how Jer. li. 34, 44 f., forms the connecting link
between the story of Jonah and the popular mythology.
[1489] _Z.A.T.W._, 1892, pp. 40 ff.
[1490] 2 Chron. xxiv. 27.
[1491] Cf. Driver, _Introduction_, I., p. 497.
[1492] 2 Chron. xxxiii. 18.
[1493] See Robertson Smith, Old Test. in the Jewish Church, pp. 140,
154.
[1494] See above, pp. 499 f.
[1495] Cf. Smend, _A. T. Religionsgeschichte_, p. 409, n. 1.
[1496] Matt. xii. 40—_For as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three
days and three nights, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of
the earth three days and three nights_—is not repeated in Luke xi.
29, 30, which confines the sign to the preaching of repentance, and
is suspected as an intrusion both for this and other reasons, e.g.
that ver. 40 is superfluous and does not fit in with ver. 41, which
gives the proper explanation of the sign; that Jonah, who came by his
burial in the fish through neglect of his duty and not by martyrdom,
could not therefore in this respect be a type of our Lord. On the
other hand, ver. 40 is not unlike another reference of our Lord to His
resurrection, John ii. 19 ff. Yet, even if ver. 40 be genuine, the
vagueness of the parallel drawn in it between Jonah and our Lord surely
makes for the opinion that in quoting Jonah our Lord was not concerned
about quoting facts, but simply gave an illustration from a well-known
tale. Matt. xvi. 4, where the sign of Jonah is again mentioned, does
not explain the sign.
[1497] Take a case. Suppose we tell slothful people that theirs will be
the fate of the man who buried his talent, is this to commit us to the
belief that the personages of Christ’s parables actually existed? Or
take the homiletic use of Shakespeare’s dramas—“as Macbeth did,” or “as
Hamlet said.” Does it commit us to the historical reality of Macbeth
or Hamlet? Any preacher among us would resent being bound by such an
inference. And if we resent this for ourselves, how chary we should be
about seeking to bind our Lord by it.
[1498] Eng. trans. of _The Twelve Minor Prophets_, p. 172. Consult also
Farrar’s judicious paragraphs on the subject: _Minor Prophets_, 234 f.
[1499] The two attempts which have been made to divide the Book of
Jonah are those by Köhler in the _Theol. Rev._, XVI. 139 ff., and by
Böhme in the _Z.A.T.W._, VII. 224 ff. Köhler first insists on traits
of an earlier age (rude conception of God, no sharp boundary drawn
between heathens and the Hebrews, etc.), and then finds traces of a
late revision: lacuna in i. 2; hesitation in iii. 1, in the giving of
the prophet’s commission, which is not pure Hebrew; change of three
days to forty (cf. LXX.); mention of unnamed king and his edict, which
is superfluous after the popular movement; beasts sharing in mourning;
also in i. 5, 8, 9, 14, ii. 2, דָּגָה, iii. 9, iv. 1-4, as disturbing
context; also the building of a booth is superfluous, and only invented
to account for Jonah remaining forty days instead of the original
three; iv. 6, להיות צל על ראשׁו for an original לְהַּצִּל לוֹ = to
offer him shade; 7, _the worm_, תולעת, due to a copyist’s change of
the following בעלות. Withdrawing these, Köhler gets an account of the
sparing of Niniveh on repentance following a sentence of doom, which,
he says, reflects the position of the city of God in Jeremiah’s time,
and was due to Jeremiah’s opponents, who said in answer to his sentence
of doom: If Niniveh could avert her fate, why not Jerusalem? Böhme’s
conclusion, starting from the alleged contradictions in the story, is
that no fewer than four hands have had to deal with it. A sufficient
answer is given by Kuenen (_Einl._, 426 ff.), who, after analysing the
dissection, says that its “improbability is immediately evident.” With
regard to the inconsistencies which Böhme alleges to exist in chap.
iii. between ver. 5 and vv. 6-9, Kuenen remarks that “all that is
needed for their explanation is a little good-will”—a phrase applicable
to many other difficulties raised with regard to other Old Testament
books by critical attempts even more rational than those of Böhme.
Cornill characterises Böhme’s hypothesis as absurd.
[1500] _To Thy holy temple_, vv. 5 and 8: cf. Psalm v. 8, etc. _The
waters have come round me to my very soul_, ver. 6: cf. Psalm lxix. 2.
_And Thou broughtest up my life_, ver. 7: cf. Psalm xxx. 4. _When my
soul fainted upon me_, ver. 8: cf. Psalm cxlii. 4, etc. _With the voice
of thanksgiving_, ver. 10: cf. Psalm xlii. 5. The reff. are to the Heb.
text.
[1501] Cf. ver. 3 with Psalm xviii. 7; ver. 4 with Psalm xlii. 8; ver.
5 with Psalm xxxi. 23; ver. 9 with Psalm xxxi. 7, and ver. 10 with
Psalm l. 14.
[1502] Budde, as above, p. 42.
[1503] De Wette, Knobel, Kuenen.
[1504] Budde.
[1505] _E.g._ Hitzig.
[1506] Luther says of Jonah’s prayer, that “he did not speak with these
exact words in the belly of the fish, nor placed them so orderly, but
he shows how he took courage, and what sort of thoughts his heart had,
when he stood in such a battle with death.” We recognise in this Psalm
“the recollection of the confidence with which Jonah hoped towards God,
that since he had been rescued in so wonderful a way from death in the
waves, He would also bring him out of the night of his grave into the
light of day.”
[1507] ii. 5, B has λαόν for ναόν; i. 9, for עברי it reads עבדי, and
takes the י to be abbreviation for יהוה; ii. 7, for בעדי it reads
בעלי and translates κάτοχοι; iv. 11, for ישׁ־בהּ it reads ישׁבו, and
translates κατοικοῦσι.
[1508] i. 4, גדולה, perhaps rightly omitted before following גדול;
i. 8, B omits the clause באשר to לנו, probably rightly, for it is
needless, though supplied by Codd. A, Q; iii. 9, one verb, μετανοήσει,
for ישוב ונחם, probably correctly, see below.
[1509] i. 2, ἡ κραυγὴ τῆς κακίας for רעתם; ii. 3, τὸν θεόν μου after
יהוה; ii. 10, in obedience to another reading; iii. 2, τὸ ἔμπροσθεν
after קראיה; iii. 8, לאמר.
[1510] iii. 4, 8.
CHAPTER XXXV
_THE GREAT REFUSAL_
JONAH i
We have now laid clear the lines upon which the Book of Jonah was
composed. Its purpose is to illustrate God’s grace to the heathen in
face of His people’s refusal to fulfil their mission to them. The
author was led to achieve this purpose by a parable, through which the
prophet Jonah moves as the symbol of his recusant, exiled, redeemed
and still hardened people. It is the Drama of Israel’s career, as the
Servant of God, in the most pathetic moments of that career. A nation
is stumbling on the highest road nation was ever called to tread.
_Who is blind but My servant,
Or deaf as My messenger whom I have sent?_
He that would read this Drama aright must remember what lies behind the
Great Refusal which forms its tragedy. The cause of Israel’s recusancy
was not only wilfulness or cowardly sloth, but the horror of a whole
world given over to idolatry, the paralysing sense of its irresistible
force, of its cruel persecutions endured for centuries, and of the long
famine of Heaven’s justice. These it was which had filled Israel’s
eyes too full of fever to see her duty. Only when we feel, as the
writer himself felt, all this tragic background to his story are we
able to appreciate the exquisite gleams which he flashes across it:
the generous magnanimity of the heathen sailors, the repentance of
the heathen city, and, lighting from above, God’s pity upon the dumb
heathen multitudes.
The parable or drama divides itself into three parts: The Prophet’s
Flight and Turning (chap. i.); The Great Fish and What it Means (chap.
ii.); and The Repentance of the City (chaps. iii. and iv.).
* * * * *
The chief figure of the story is Jonah, son of Amittai, from
Gath-hepher in Galilee, a prophet identified with that turn in Israel’s
fortunes, by which she began to defeat her Syrian oppressors, and win
back from them her own territories—a prophet, therefore, of revenge,
and from the most bitter of the heathen wars. _And the word of Jehovah
came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Up, go to Niniveh, the Great
City, and cry out against her, for her evil is come up before Me._ But
_he arose to flee_. It was not the length of the road, nor the danger
of declaring Niniveh’s sin to her face, which turned him, but the
instinct that God intended by him something else than Niniveh’s
destruction; and this instinct sprang from his knowledge of God
Himself. _Ah now, Jehovah, was not my word, while I was yet upon mine
own soil, at the time I made ready to flee to Tarshish, this—that I
knew that Thou art a God gracious and tender and long-suffering,
plenteous in love and relenting of evil?_[1511] Jonah interpreted the
Word which came to him by the Character which he knew to be behind the
Word. This is a significant hint upon the method of revelation.
It would be rash to say that, in imputing even to the historical Jonah
the fear of God’s grace upon the heathen, our author were guilty of an
anachronism.[1512] We have to do, however, with a greater than
Jonah—the nation herself. Though perhaps Israel little reflected upon
it, the instinct can never have been far away that some day the grace
of Jehovah might reach the heathen too. Such an instinct, of course,
must have been almost stifled by hatred born of heathen oppression, as
well as by the intellectual scorn which Israel came to feel for heathen
idolatries. But we may believe that it haunted even those dark periods
in which revenge upon the Gentiles seemed most just, and their
destruction the only means of establishing God’s kingdom in the world.
We know that it moved uneasily even beneath the rigour of Jewish
legalism. For its secret was that faith in the essential grace of God,
which Israel gained very early and never lost, and which was the spring
of every new conviction and every reform in her wonderful development.
With a subtle appreciation of all this, our author imputes the instinct
to Jonah from the outset. Jonah’s fear, that after all the heathen may
be spared, reflects the restless apprehension even of the most
exclusive of his people—an apprehension which by the time our book was
written seemed to be still more justified by God’s long delay of doom
upon the tyrants whom He had promised to overthrow.
But to the natural man in Israel the possibility of the heathen’s
repentance was still so abhorrent, that he turned his back upon it.
_Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the face of Jehovah._ In spite of
recent arguments to the contrary, the most probable location of
Tarshish is the generally accepted one, that it was a Phœnician colony
at the other end of the Mediterranean. In any case it was far from the
Holy Land; and by going there the prophet would put the sea between
himself and his God. To the Hebrew imagination there could not be a
flight more remote. Israel was essentially an inland people. They had
come up out of the desert, and they had practically never yet touched
the Mediterranean. They lived within sight of it, but from ten to
twenty miles of foreign soil intervened between their mountains and its
stormy coast. The Jews had no traffic upon the sea, nor (but for one
sublime instance[1513] to the contrary) had their poets ever employed
it except as a symbol of arrogance and restless rebellion against the
will of God.[1514] It was all this popular feeling of the distance and
strangeness of the sea which made our author choose it as the scene of
the prophet’s flight from the face of Israel’s God. Jonah had to pass,
too, through a foreign land to get to the coast: upon the sea he would
only be among heathen. This was to be part of his conversion. _He went
down to Yapho, and found a ship going to Tarshish, and paid the fare
thereof, and embarked on her to get away with_ her crew[1515] _to
Tarshish—away from the face of Jehovah_.
The scenes which follow are very vivid: the sudden wind sweeping down
from the very hills on which Jonah believed he had left his God; the
tempest; the behaviour of the ship, so alive with effort that the story
attributes to her the feelings of a living thing—_she thought she must
be broken_; the despair of the mariners, driven from the unity of their
common task to the hopeless diversity of their idolatry—_they cried
every man unto his own god_; the jettisoning of the tackle of the ship
to lighten her (as we should say, they let the masts go by the board);
the worn-out prophet in the hull of the ship, sleeping like a stowaway;
the group gathered on the heaving deck to cast the lot; the passenger’s
confession, and the new fear which fell upon the sailors from it; the
reverence with which these rude men ask the advice of him, in whose
guilt they feel not the offence to themselves, but the sacredness to
God; the awakening of the prophet’s better self by their generous
deference to him; how he counsels to them his own sacrifice; their
reluctance to yield to this, and their return to the oars with
increased perseverance for his sake. But neither their generosity nor
their efforts avail. The prophet again offers himself, and as their
sacrifice he is thrown into the sea.
_And Jehovah cast a wind[1516] on the sea, and there was a great
tempest,[1517] and the ship threatened[1518] to break up. And the
sailors were afraid, and cried every man unto his own god; and they
cast the tackle of the ship into the sea, to lighten it from upon them.
But Jonah had gone down to the bottom of the ship and lay fast asleep.
And the captain of the ship[1519] came to him, and said to him, What
art thou doing asleep? Up, call on thy God; peradventure the God will
be gracious to us, that we perish not. And they said every man to his
neighbour, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose sake
is this evil_ come _upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell on
Jonah. And they said to him, Tell us now,[1520] what is thy business,
and whence comest thou? what is thy land, and from what people art
thou? And he said to them, A Hebrew am I, and a worshipper of the God
of Heaven,[1521] who made the sea and the dry land. And the men feared
greatly, and said to him, What is this thou hast done? (for they knew
he was fleeing from the face of Jehovah, because he had told them). And
they said to him, What are we to do to thee that the sea cease_ raging
_against us? For the sea was surging higher and higher. And he said,
Take me and throw me into the sea; so shall the sea cease_ raging
_against you: for I am sure that it is on my account that this great
tempest is_ risen _upon you. And the men laboured[1522] with the oars
to bring the ship to land, and they could not, for the sea grew more
and more stormy against them. So they called on Jehovah and said,
Jehovah, let us not perish, we pray Thee, for the life of this man,
neither bring innocent blood upon us: for Thou art Jehovah, Thou doest
as Thou pleasest. Then they took up Jonah and cast him into the sea,
and the sea stilled from its raging. But the men were in great awe of
Jehovah, and sacrificed to Him and vowed vows._
How very real it is and how very noble! We see the storm, and then we
forget the storm in the joy of that generous contest between heathen
and Hebrew. But the glory of the passage is the change in Jonah
himself. It has been called his punishment and the conversion of the
heathen. Rather it is his own conversion. He meets again not only God,
but the truth from which he fled. He not only meets that truth, but he
offers his life for it.
The art is consummate. The writer will first reduce the prophet and the
heathen whom he abhors to the elements of their common humanity. As men
have sometimes seen upon a mass of wreckage or on an ice-floe a number
of wild animals, by nature foes to each other, reduced to peace through
their common danger, so we descry the prophet and his natural enemies
upon the strained and breaking ship. In the midst of the storm they are
equally helpless, and they cast for all the lot which has no respect
of persons. But from this the story passes quickly, to show how Jonah
feels not only the human kinship of these heathen with himself, but
their susceptibility to the knowledge of his God. They pray to Jehovah
as the God of the sea and the dry land; while we may be sure that the
prophet’s confession, and the story of his own relation to that God,
forms as powerful an exhortation to repentance as any he could have
preached in Niniveh. At least it produces the effects which he has
dreaded. In these sailors he sees heathen turned to the fear of the
Lord. All that he has fled to avoid happens there before his eyes and
through his own mediation.
The climax is reached, however, neither when Jonah feels his common
humanity with the heathen nor when he discovers their awe of his God,
but when in order to secure for them God’s sparing mercies he offers
his own life instead. _Take me up and cast me into the sea; so shall
the sea cease from_ raging _against you._ After their pity for him
has wrestled for a time with his honest entreaties, he becomes their
sacrifice.
* * * * *
In all this story perhaps the most instructive passages are those which
lay bare to us the method of God’s revelation. When we were children
this was shown to us in pictures of angels bending from heaven to guide
Isaiah’s pen, or to cry Jonah’s commission to him through a trumpet.
And when we grew older, although we learned to dispense with that
machinery, yet its infection remained, and our conception of the whole
process was mechanical still. We thought of the prophets as of another
order of things; we released them from our own laws of life and
thought, and we paid the penalty by losing all interest in them. But
the prophets were human, and their inspiration came through experience.
The source of it, as this story shows, was God. Partly from His
guidance of their nation, partly through close communion with Himself,
they received new convictions of His character. Yet they did not
receive these mechanically. They spake neither at the bidding of
angels, nor like heathen prophets in trance or ecstasy, but as _they
were moved by the Holy Ghost_. And the Spirit worked upon them first as
the influence of God’s character,[1523] and second through the
experience of life. God and life—these are all the postulates for
revelation.
At first Jonah fled from the truth, at last he laid down his life for
it. So God still forces us to the acceptance of new light and the
performance of strange duties. Men turn from these, because of sloth
or prejudice, but in the end they have to face them, and then at what
a cost! In youth they shirk a self-denial to which in some storm of
later life they have to bend with heavier, and often hopeless, hearts.
For their narrow prejudices and refusals, God punishes them by bringing
them into pain that stings, or into responsibility for others that
shames, these out of them. The drama of life is thus intensified in
interest and beauty; characters emerge heroic and sublime.
“But, oh the labour,
O prince, the pain!”
Sometimes the neglected duty is at last achieved only at the cost of
a man’s breath; and the truth, which might have been the bride of his
youth and his comrade through a long life, is recognised by him only in
the features of Death.
FOOTNOTES:
[1511] iv. 2.
[1512] For the grace of God had been the most formative influence in
the early religion of Israel (see Vol. I., p. 19), and Amos, only
thirty years after Jonah, emphasised the moral equality of Israel and
the Gentiles before the one God of righteousness. Given these two
premisses of God’s essential grace and the moral responsibility of the
heathen to Him, and the conclusion could never have been far away that
in the end His essential grace must reach the heathen too. Indeed in
sayings not later than the eighth century it is foretold that Israel
shall become a blessing to the whole world. Our author, then, may have
been guilty of no anachronism in imputing such a foreboding to Jonah.
[1513] Second Isaiah. See chap. lx.
[1514] See the author’s _Hist. Geog. of the Holy Land_, pp. 131-134.
[1515] Heb. _them_.
[1516] So LXX.: Heb. _a great wind_.
[1517] Heb. _on the sea_.
[1518] Lit. _reckoned_ or _thought_.
[1519] Heb. _ropes_.
[1520] The words _for whose sake is this evil_ come _upon us_ do not
occur in LXX. and are unnecessary.
[1521] Wellhausen suspects this form of the Divine title.
[1522] Heb. _dug_.
[1523] _I knew how Thou art a God gracious._
CHAPTER XXXVI
_THE GREAT FISH AND WHAT IT MEANS—THE PSALM_
JONAH ii
At this point in the tale appears the Great Fish. _And Jehovah prepared
a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish
three days and three nights._
After the very natural story which we have followed, this verse
obtrudes itself with a shock of unreality and grotesqueness. What an
anticlimax! say some; what a clumsy intrusion! So it is if Jonah be
taken as an individual. But if we keep in mind that he stands here, not
for himself, but for his nation, the difficulty and the grotesqueness
disappear. It is Israel’s ill-will to the heathen, Israel’s refusal
of her mission, Israel’s embarkation on the stormy sea of the world’s
politics, which we have had described as Jonah’s. Upon her flight
from God’s will there followed her Exile, and from her Exile, which
was for a set period, she came back to her own land, a people still,
and still God’s servant to the heathen. How was the author to express
this national death and resurrection? In conformity with the popular
language of his time, he had described Israel’s turning from God’s will
by her embarkation on a stormy sea, always the symbol of the prophets
for the tossing heathen world that was ready to engulf her; and now
to express her exile and return he sought metaphors in the same rich
poetry of the popular imagination.
To the Israelite who watched from his hills that stormy coast on which
the waves hardly ever cease to break in their impotent restlessness,
the sea was a symbol of arrogance and futile defiance to the will of
God. The popular mythology of the Semites had filled it with turbulent
monsters, snakes and dragons who wallowed like its own waves, helpless
against the bounds set to them, or rose to wage war against the gods
in heaven and the great lights which they had created; but a god slays
them and casts their carcases for meat and drink to the thirsty people
of the desert.[1524] It is a symbol of the perpetual war between light
and darkness; the dragons are the clouds, the slayer the sun. A
variant form, which approaches closely to that of Jonah’s great fish,
is still found in Palestine. In May 1891 I witnessed at Hasbeya, on the
western skirts of Hermon, an eclipse of the moon. When the shadow began
to creep across her disc, there rose from the village a hideous din of
drums, metal pots and planks of wood beaten together; guns were fired,
and there was much shouting. I was told that this was done to terrify
the great fish which was swallowing the moon, and to make him disgorge
her.
Now these purely natural myths were applied by the prophets and poets
of the Old Testament to the illustration, not only of Jehovah’s
sovereignty over the storm and the night, but of His conquest of the
heathen powers who had enslaved His people.[1525] Isaiah had heard
in the sea the confusion and rage of the peoples against the bulwark
which Jehovah set around Israel;[1526] but it is chiefly from the
time of the Exile onward that the myths themselves, with their cruel
monsters and the prey of these, are applied to the great heathen
powers and their captive, Israel. One prophet explicitly describes the
Exile of Israel as the swallowing of the nation by the monster, the
Babylonian tyrant, whom God forces at last to disgorge its prey. Israel
says:[1527] _Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured me[1528]
and crushed me,[1528] ... he hath swallowed me up like the Dragon,
filling his belly, from my delights he hath cast me out_. But Jehovah
replies:[1529] _I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring out of
his mouth that which he hath swallowed.... My people, go ye out of the
midst of her._
It has been justly remarked by Canon Cheyne that this passage may be
considered as the intervening link between the original form of the
myth and the application of it made in the story of Jonah.[1530] To
this the objection might be offered that in the story of Jonah the
_great fish_ is not actually represented as the means of the prophet’s
temporary destruction, like the monster in Jeremiah li., but rather as
the vessel of his deliverance.[1531] This is true, yet it only means
that our author has still further adapted the very plastic material
offered him by this much transformed myth. But we do not depend for our
proof upon the comparison of a single passage. Let the student of the
Book of Jonah read carefully the many passages of the Old Testament, in
which the sea or its monsters rage in vain against Jehovah, or are
harnessed and led about by Him; or still more those passages in which
His conquest of these monsters is made to figure His conquest of the
heathen powers,[1532]—and the conclusion will appear irresistible that
the story of the _great fish_ and of Jonah the type of Israel is drawn
from the same source. Such a solution of the problem has one great
advantage. It relieves us of the grotesqueness which attaches to the
literal conception of the story, and of the necessity of those painful
efforts for accounting for a miracle which have distorted the
common-sense and even the orthodoxy of so many commentators of the
book.[1533] We are dealing, let us remember, with poetry—a poetry
inspired by one of the most sublime truths of the Old Testament, but
whose figures are drawn from the legends and myths of the people to
whom it is addressed. To treat this as prose is not only to sin against
the common-sense which God has given us, but against the simple and
obvious intention of the author. It is blindness both to reason and to
Scripture.
These views are confirmed by an examination of the Psalm or Prayer
which is put into Jonah’s mouth while he is yet in the fish. We have
already seen what grounds there are for believing that the Psalm
belongs to the author’s own plan, and from the beginning appeared just
where it does now.[1534] But we may also point out how, in consistence
with its context, this is a Psalm, not of an individual Israelite,
but of the nation as a whole. It is largely drawn from the national
liturgy.[1535] It is full of cries which we know, though they are
expressed in the singular number, to have been used of the whole
people, or at least of that pious portion of them, who were Israel
indeed. True that in the original portion of the Psalm, and by far its
most beautiful verses, we seem to have the description of a drowning
man swept to the bottom of the sea. But even here, the colossal scenery
and the magnificent hyperbole of the language suit not the experience
of an individual, but the extremities of that vast gulf of exile into
which a whole nation was plunged. It is a nation’s carcase which rolls
upon those infernal tides that swirl among the roots of mountains and
behind the barred gates of earth. Finally, vv. 9 and 10 are obviously
a contrast, not between the individual prophet and the heathen, but
between the true Israel, who in exile preserve their loyalty to
Jehovah, and those Jews who, forsaking their _covenant-love_, lapse
to idolatry. We find many parallels to this in exilic and post-exilic
literature.
_And Jonah prayed to Jehovah his God from the belly of the fish, and
said:—_
_I cried out of my anguish to Jehovah, and He answered me;
From the belly of Inferno I sought help—Thou heardest my voice.
For Thou hadst[1536] cast me into the depth, to the heart
of the seas, and the flood rolled around me;
All Thy breakers and billows went over me.
Then I said, I am hurled from Thy sight:
How[1537] shall I ever again look towards Thy holy temple?
Waters enwrapped me to the soul; the Deep rolled around me;
The tangle was bound about my head.
I was gone down to the roots of the hills;
Earth _and_ her bars were behind me for ever.
But Thou broughtest my life up from destruction,
Jehovah my God!
When my soul fainted upon me, I remembered Jehovah,
And my prayer came in unto Thee, to Thy holy temple.
They that observe the idols of vanity,
They forsake their covenant-love.
But to the sound of praise I will sacrifice to Thee;
What I have vowed I will perform.
Salvation is Jehovah’s._
_And Jehovah spake to the fish, and it threw up Jonah on the dry land._
FOOTNOTES:
[1524] For the Babylonian myths see Sayce’s Hibbert Lectures; George
Smith’s _Assyrian Discoveries_; and Gunkel, _Schöpfung u. Chaos_.
[1525] Passages in which this class of myths are taken in a physical
sense are Job iii. 8, vii. 12, xxvi. 12, 13, etc., etc.; and passages
in which it is applied politically are Isa. xxvii. 1, li. 9; Jer. li.
34, 44; Psalm lxxiv., etc. See Gunkel, _Schöpfung u. Chaos_.
[1526] Chap. xvii. 12-14.
[1527] Jer. li. 34.
[1528] Heb. margin, LXX. and Syr.; Heb. text _us_.
[1529] Jer. li. 44, 45.
[1530] Cheyne, _Theol. Rev._, XIV. See above, p. 503.
[1531] See above, p. 511, on the Psalm of Jonah.
[1532] Above, p. 525, n. 1525.
[1533] It is very interesting to notice how many commentators (_e.g._
Pusey, and the English edition of Lange) who take the story in its
individual meaning, and therefore as miraculous, immediately try to
minimise the miracle by quoting stories of great fishes who have
swallowed men, and even men in armour, whole, and in one case at least
have vomited them up alive!
[1534] See above, pp. 511 f.
[1535] See above, p. 511, nn. 1500, 1501.
[1536] The grammar, which usually expresses result, more literally
runs, _And Thou didst cast me_; but after the preceding verse it must
be taken not as expressing consequence but cause.
[1537] Read אֵיךְ for אַךְ, and with the LXX. take the sentence
interrogatively.
CHAPTER XXXVII
_THE REPENTANCE OF THE CITY_
JONAH iii
Having learned, through suffering, his moral kinship with the heathen,
and having offered his life for some of them, Jonah receives a second
command to go to Niniveh. He obeys, but with his prejudice as strong
as though it had never been humbled, nor met by Gentile nobleness.
The first part of his story appears to have no consequences in the
second.[1538] But this is consistent with the writer’s purpose to treat
Jonah as if he were Israel. For, upon their return from Exile, and in
spite of all their new knowledge of themselves and the world, Israel
continued to cherish their old grudge against the Gentiles.
_And the word of Jehovah came to Jonah the second time, saying, Up, go
to Niniveh, the great city, and call unto her with the call which I
shall tell thee. And Jonah arose and went to Niniveh, as Jehovah said.
Now Niniveh was a city great before God, three days’ journey_ through
and through.[1539] _And Jonah began by going through the city one day’s
journey, and he cried and said, Forty[1540] days more and Niniveh shall
be overturned_.
Opposite to Mosul, the well-known emporium of trade on the right bank
of the Upper Tigris, two high artificial mounds now lift themselves
from the otherwise level plain. The more northerly takes the name of
Kujundschik, or “little lamb,” after the Turkish village which couches
pleasantly upon its north-eastern slope. The other is called in the
popular dialect Nebi Yunus, “Prophet Jonah,” after a mosque dedicated
to him, which used to be a Christian church; but the official name
is Niniveh. These two mounds are bound to each other on the west by
a broad brick wall, which extends beyond them both, and is connected
north and south by other walls, with a circumference in all of about
nine English miles. The interval, including the mounds, was covered
with buildings, whose ruins still enable us to form some idea of
what was for centuries the wonder of the world. Upon terraces and
substructions of enormous breadth rose storied palaces, arsenals,
barracks, libraries and temples. A lavish water system spread in all
directions from canals with massive embankments and sluices. Gardens
were lifted into mid-air, filled with rich plants and rare and
beautiful animals. Alabaster, silver, gold and precious stones relieved
the dull masses of brick and flashed sunlight from every frieze and
battlement. The surrounding walls were so broad that chariots could
roll abreast on them. The gates, and especially the river gates, were
very massive.[1541]
All this was Niniveh proper, whose glory the Hebrews envied and over
whose fall more than one of their prophets exult. But this was not the
Niniveh to which our author saw Jonah come. Beyond the walls were great
suburbs,[1542] and beyond the suburbs other towns, league upon league
of dwellings, so closely set upon the plain as to form one vast complex
of population, which is known to Scripture as _The Great City_.[1543]
To judge from the ruins which still cover the ground,[1544] the
circumference must have been about sixty miles, or three days’ journey.
It is these nameless leagues of common dwellings which roll before
us in the story. None of those glories of Niniveh are mentioned, of
which other prophets speak, but the only proofs offered to us of the
city’s greatness are its extent and its population.[1545] Jonah is sent
to three days, not of mighty buildings, but of homes and families, to
the Niniveh, not of kings and their glories, but of men, women and
children, _besides much cattle_. The palaces and temples he may pass in
an hour or two, but from sunrise to sunset he treads the dim drab mazes
where the people dwell.
When we open our hearts for heroic witness to the truth there rush upon
them glowing memories of Moses before Pharaoh, of Elijah before Ahab,
of Stephen before the Sanhedrim, of Paul upon Areopagus, of Galileo
before the Inquisition, of Luther at the Diet. But it takes a greater
heroism to face the people than a king, to convert a nation than to
persuade a senate. Princes and assemblies of the wise stimulate the
imagination; they drive to bay all the nobler passions of a solitary
man. But there is nothing to help the heart, and therefore its courage
is all the greater, which bears witness before those endless masses, in
monotone of life and colour, that now paralyse the imagination like
long stretches of sand when the sea is out, and again terrify it like
the resistless rush of the flood beneath a hopeless evening sky.
It is, then, with an art most fitted to his high purpose that our
author—unlike all other prophets, whose aim was different—presents
to us, not the description of a great military power: king, nobles
and armed battalions: but the vision of those monotonous millions. He
strips his country’s foes of everything foreign, everything provocative
of envy and hatred, and unfolds them to Israel only in their teeming
humanity.[1546]
His next step is still more grand. For this teeming humanity he claims
the universal human possibility of repentance—that and nothing more.
Under every form and character of human life, beneath all needs and all
habits, deeper than despair and more native to man than sin itself,
lies the power of the heart to turn. It was this and not hope that
remained at the bottom of Pandora’s Box when every other gift had fled.
For this is the indispensable secret of hope. It lies in every heart,
needing indeed some dream of Divine mercy, however far and vague, to
rouse it; but when roused, neither ignorance of God, nor pride, nor
long obduracy of evil may withstand it. It takes command of the whole
nature of a man, and speeds from heart to heart with a violence, that
like pain and death spares neither age nor rank nor degree of culture.
This primal human right is all our author claims for the men of
Niniveh. He has been blamed for telling us an impossible thing, that a
whole city should be converted at the call of a single stranger; and
others have started up in his defence and quoted cases in which large
Oriental populations have actually been stirred by the preaching of an
alien in race and religion; and then it has been replied, “Granted the
possibility, granted the fact in other cases, yet where in history have
we any trace of this alleged conversion of all Niniveh?” and some
scoff, “How could a Hebrew have made himself articulate in one day to
those Assyrian multitudes?”
How long, O Lord, must Thy poetry suffer from those who can only treat
it as prose? On whatever side they stand, sceptical or orthodox, they
are equally pedants, quenchers of the spiritual, creators of unbelief.
Our author, let us once for all understand, makes no attempt to record
an historical conversion of this vast heathen city. For its men he
claims only the primary human possibility of repentance; expressing
himself not in this general abstract way, but as Orientals, to whom an
illustration is ever a proof, love to have it done—by story or parable.
With magnificent reserve he has not gone further; but only told
into the prejudiced faces of his people, that out there, beyond the
Covenant, in the great world lying in darkness, there live, not beings
created for ignorance and hostility to God, elect for destruction, but
men with consciences and hearts, able to turn at His Word and to hope
in His Mercy—that to the farthest ends of the world, and even on the
high places of unrighteousness, Word and Mercy work just as they do
within the Covenant.
The fashion in which the repentance of Niniveh is described is natural
to the time of the writer. It is a national repentance, of course, and
though swelling upwards from the people, it is confirmed and organised
by the authorities: for we are still in the Old Dispensation, when
the picture of a complete and thorough repentance could hardly be
otherwise conceived. And the beasts are made to share its observance,
as in the Orient they always shared and still share in funeral pomp and
trappings.[1547] It may have been, in addition, a personal pleasure
to our writer to record the part of the animals in the movement. See
how, later on, he tells us that for their sake also God had pity upon
Niniveh.
_And the men of Niniveh believed upon God, and cried a fast, and from
the greatest of them to the least of them they put on sackcloth. And
word came to the king of Niniveh, and he rose off his throne, and cast
his mantle from upon him, and dressed in sackcloth and sat in the dust.
And he sent criers to say in Niniveh:—_
_By Order of the King and his Nobles, thus:—Man and Beast, Oxen and
Sheep, shall not taste anything, neither eat nor drink water. But let
them clothe themselves[1548] in sackcloth, both man and beast, and call
upon God with power, and turn every man from his evil way and from
every wrong which they have in hand. Who knoweth but that God may[1549]
relent and turn from the fierceness of His wrath, that we perish
not?_[1550]
_And God saw their doings, how they turned from their evil way; and God
relented of the evil which He said He would do to them, and did it
not._
FOOTNOTES:
[1538] Only in iii. 1, _second time_, and in iv. 2 are there any
references from the second to the first part of the book.
[1539] The diameter rather than the circumference seems intended by the
writer, if we can judge by his sending the prophet _one day’s journey
through the city_. Some, however, take the circumference as meant, and
this agrees with the computation of sixty English miles as the girth of
the greater Niniveh described below.
[1540] LXX. Codd. B, etc., read _three days_; other Codd. have the
_forty_ of the Heb. text.
[1541] For a more detailed description of Niniveh see above on the Book
of Nahum, pp. 98 ff.
[1542] רחבות עיר, Gen. x. 11.
[1543] Gen. x. 12, according to which the Great City included, besides
Niniveh, at least Resen and Kelach.
[1544] And taking the present Kujundschik, Nimrud, Khorsabad and
Balawat as the four corners of the district.
[1545] iii. 2, iv. 11.
[1546] Compare the Book of Jonah, for instance, with the Book of Nahum.
[1547] Cf. Herod. IX. 24; Joel i. 18; Virgil, _Eclogue_ V., _Æneid_ XI.
89 ff.; Plutarch, _Alex._ 72.
[1548] LXX.: _and they did clothe themselves in sackcloth_, and so on.
[1549] So LXX. Heb. text: _may turn and relent, and turn_.
[1550] The alleged discrepancies in this account have been already
noticed. As the text stands the fast and mourning are proclaimed and
actually begun before word reaches the king and his proclamation of
fast and mourning goes forth. The discrepancies might be removed by
transferring the words in ver. 6, _and they cried a fast, and from the
greatest of them, to the least they clothed themselves in sackcloth_,
to the end of ver. 8, with a לאמר or ויאמרו to introduce ver. 9. But,
as said above (pp. 499, 510, n. 1499), it is more probable that the
text as it stands was original, and that the inconsistencies in the
order of the narrative are due to its being a tale or parable.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
_ISRAEL’S JEALOUSY OF JEHOVAH_
JONAH iv
Having illustrated the truth, that the Gentiles are capable of
repentance unto life, the Book now describes the effect of their escape
upon Jonah, and closes by revealing God’s full heart upon the matter.
Jonah is very angry that Niniveh has been spared. Is this (as some say)
because his own word has not been fulfilled? In Israel there was an
accepted rule that a prophet should be judged by the issue of his
predictions: _If thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word
which Jehovah hath not spoken?—when a prophet speaketh in the name of
Jehovah, if the thing follow not nor come to pass, that is the thing
which Jehovah hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken
presumptuously, thou shalt have no reverence for him_.[1551] Was it
this that stung Jonah? Did he ask for death because men would say of
him that when he predicted Niniveh’s overthrow he was false and had not
God’s word? Of such fears there is no trace in the story. Jonah never
doubts that his word came from Jehovah, nor dreads that other men will
doubt. There is absolutely no hint of anxiety as to his professional
reputation. But, on the contrary, Jonah says that from the first he had
the foreboding, grounded upon his knowledge of God’s character, that
Niniveh would be spared, and that it was from this issue he shrank and
fled to go to Tarshish. In short he could not, either then or now,
master his conviction that the heathen should be destroyed. His grief,
though foolish, is not selfish. He is angry, not at the baffling of his
word, but at God’s forbearance with the foes and tyrants of Israel.
Now, as in all else, so in this, Jonah is the type of his people. If we
can judge from their literature after the Exile, they were not troubled
by the nonfulfilment of prophecy, except as one item of what was the
problem of their faith—the continued prosperity of the Gentiles.
And this was not, what it appears to be in some Psalms, only an
intellectual problem or an offence to their sense of justice. Nor could
they meet it always, as some of their prophets did, with a supreme
intellectual scorn of the heathen, and in the proud confidence that
they themselves were the favourites of God. For the knowledge that God
was infinitely gracious haunted their pride; and from the very heart of
their faith arose a jealous fear that He would show His grace to others
than themselves. To us it may be difficult to understand this temper.
We have not been trained to believe ourselves an elect people; nor
have we suffered at the hands of the heathen. Yet, at least, we have
contemporaries and fellow-Christians among whom we may find still alive
many of the feelings against which the Book of Jonah was written. Take
the Oriental Churches of to-day. Centuries of oppression have created
in them an awful hatred of the infidel, beneath whose power they are
hardly suffered to live. The barest justice calls for the overthrow of
their oppressors. That these share a common humanity with themselves is
a sense they have nearly lost. For centuries they have had no spiritual
intercourse with them; to try to convert a Mohammedan has been for
twelve hundred years a capital crime. It is not wonderful that Eastern
Christians should have long lost power to believe in the conversion of
infidels, and to feel that anything is due but their destruction. The
present writer once asked a cultured and devout layman of the Greek
Church, Why then did God create so many Mohammedans? The answer came
hot and fast: To fill up Hell! Analogous to this were the feelings of
the Jews towards the peoples who had conquered and oppressed them. But
the jealousy already alluded to aggravated these feelings to a rigour
no Christian can ever share. What right had God to extend to their
oppressors His love for a people who alone had witnessed and suffered
for Him, to whom He had bound Himself by so many exclusive promises,
whom He had called His Bride, His Darling, His Only One? And yet the
more Israel dwelt upon that Love the more they were afraid of it. God
had been so gracious and so long-suffering to themselves that they
could not trust Him not to show these mercies to others. In which case,
what was the use of their uniqueness and privilege? What worth was
their living any more? Israel might as well perish.
It is this subtle story of Israel’s jealousy of Jehovah, and Jehovah’s
gentle treatment of it, which we follow in the last chapter of the
book. The chapter starts from Jonah’s confession of a fear of the
results of God’s lovingkindness and from his persuasion that, as this
spread to the heathen, the life of His servant spent in opposition to
the heathen was a worthless life; and the chapter closes with God’s own
vindication of His Love to His jealous prophet.
_It was a great grief to Jonah, and he was angered; and he prayed
to Jehovah and said: Ah now, Jehovah, while I was still upon mine
own ground, at the time that I prepared to flee to Tarshish, was
not this my word, that I knew Thee to be a God gracious and tender,
long-suffering and plenteous in love, relenting of evil? And now,
Jehovah, take, I pray Thee, my life from me, for for me death is better
than life._
In this impatience of life as well as in some subsequent traits, the
story of Jonah reflects that of Elijah. But the difference between the
two prophets was this, that while Elijah was very jealous _for_
Jehovah, Jonah was very jealous _of_ Him. Jonah could not bear to see
the love promised to Israel alone, and cherished by her, bestowed
equally upon her heathen oppressors. And he behaved after the manner of
jealousy and of the heart that thinks itself insulted. He withdrew, and
sulked in solitude, and would take no responsibility nor further
interest in his work. Such men are best treated by a caustic
gentleness, a little humour, a little rallying, a leaving to nature,
and a taking unawares in their own confessed prejudices. All these—I
dare to think even the humour—are present in God’s treatment of Jonah.
This is very natural and very beautiful. Twice the Divine Voice speaks
with a soft sarcasm: _Art thou very angry?_[1552] Then Jonah’s
affections, turned from man and God, are allowed their course with a
bit of nature, the fresh and green companion of his solitude; and then
when all his pity for this has been roused by its destruction, that
very pity is employed to awaken his sympathy with God’s compassion for
the great city, and he is shown how he has denied to God the same
natural affection which he confesses to be so strong in himself. But
why try further to expound so clear and obvious an argument?
_But Jehovah said, Art thou_ so _very angry?_ Jonah would not
answer—how lifelike is his silence at this point!—_but went out from
the city and sat down before it,[1553] and made him there a booth and
dwelt beneath it in the shade, till he should see what happened in the
city. And Jehovah God prepared a gourd,[1554] and it grew up above
Jonah to be a shadow over his head....[1555] And Jonah rejoiced in the
gourd with a great joy. But as dawn came up the next day God prepared a
worm, and _this_[1556] wounded the gourd, that it perished. And it came
to pass, when the sun rose, that God prepared a dry east-wind,[1557]
and the sun smote on Jonah’s head, so that he was faint, and begged for
himself that he might die,[1558] saying, Better my dying than my
living! And God said unto Jonah, Art thou so very angry about the
gourd? And he said, I am very angry—even unto death! And Jehovah said:
Thou carest for a gourd for which thou hast not travailed, nor hast
thou brought it up, a thing that came in a night and in a night has
perished.[1559] And shall I not care for Niniveh, the Great City,[1560]
in which there are more than twelve times ten thousand human beings who
know not their right hand from their left, besides much cattle?_
God has vindicated His love to the jealousy of those who thought that
it was theirs alone. And we are left with this grand vague vision of
the immeasurable city, with its multitude of innocent children and
cattle, and God’s compassion brooding over all.
FOOTNOTES:
[1551] Deut. xviii. 21, 22.
[1552] The Hebrew may be translated either, first, _Doest thou well to
be angry?_ or second, _Art thou very angry?_ Our versions both prefer
the _first_, though they put the _second_ in the margin. The LXX. take
the _second_. That the second is the right one is not only proved by
its greater suitableness, but by Jonah’s answer to the question, _I am
very angry, yea, even unto death_.
[1553] Heb. _the city_.
[1554] קִיקָיון, the Egyptian kiki, the Ricinus or Palma Christi. See
above, p. 498, n. 1473.
[1555] Heb. adds _to save him from his evil_, perhaps a gloss.
[1556] Heb. _it_.
[1557] חֲרִישִׁית. The Targum implies a _quiet_, i.e. _sweltering_,
_east wind_. Hitzig thinks that the name is derived from the season of
ploughing and some modern proverbs appear to bear this out: _an autumn
east wind_. LXX. συγκαίων Siegfried-Stade: _a cutting east wind_, as if
from חרשׁ. Steiner emends to חריסית, as if from חֶרֶס = _the piercing_, a
poetic name of the sun; and Böhme, _Z.A.T.W._, VII. 256, to חרירית,
from חרר, _to glow_. Köhler (_Theol. Rev._, XVI., p. 143) compares חֶרֶשׁ,
_dried clay_.
[1558] Heb.: _begged his life, that he might die_.
[1559] Heb.: _which was the son of a night, and son of a night has
perished_.
[1560] Gen. x. 12.
INDEX OF PROPHETS
HABAKKUK, Introduction, 115;
Chaps. i.—ii. 4, 129;
ii. 5-20, 143;
iii., 149.
HAGGAI, Introduction, 225;
Chap. i., 236;
ii. 1-9, 241;
ii. 10-19, 244;
ii. 20-23, 250.
JOEL, Introduction, 375;
Chaps. i.—ii. 17, 398;
ii. 18-32, 418;
iii., 431.
JONAH, Introduction, 493;
Chap. i., 514;
ii., 523;
iii., 529;
iv., 536.
“MALACHI,” Introduction, 331;
Chap. i. 2-5, 349;
i. 6-14, 352;
ii. 1-9, 360;
ii. 10-16, 363;
ii. 17—iii. 5, 365;
iii. 6-12, 367;
iii. 13—iv. 2 (Eng.; iii. 13-21 Heb.), 369;
iv. 3-5 (Eng.; iii. 22-24 Heb.), 371.
NAHUM, Introduction, 77;
Chap. i., 90;
ii., iii., 96.
OBADIAH, Introduction, 163;
vv. 1-21, 173, 177.
ZECHARIAH (i.—viii.), Introduction, 255;
Chap. i. 1-6, 267;
i. 7-17, 283;
i. 18-21 (Eng.; ii. 1-4 Heb.), 286;
ii. 1-5 (Eng.; ii. 5-9 Heb.), 287;
iii., 292;
iv., 297;
v. 1-4, 301;
v. 5-11, 303;
vi. 1-8, 305;
vi. 9-15, 307;
vii., 320;
viii., 323.
“ZECHARIAH” (ix.—xiv.), Introduction, 449;
Chap. ix. 1-8, 463;
ix. 9-12, 466;
ix. 13-17, 467;
x. 1, 2, 469;
x. 3-12, 470;
xi. 1-3, 473;
xi. 4-17, 473;
xii. 1-7, 478;
xii. 8—xiii. 6, 481;
xiii. 7-9, 473, 477;
xiv., 485.
ZEPHANIAH, Introduction, 35;
Chaps. i.—ii. 3, 46;
ii. 4-15, 61;
iii. 1-13, 67;
iii. 14-20, 67, 73.
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