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1 

1 

LIBRA-RY                  ] 

Theo 

logical    Seminary. 

PRINCETON,    N.  J. 

Udsc 

Division ..li^..'^..  ..[.. 

Shelf      ■ 

Section. ...n...(.jO..(c>... 

Book 

No, X.«..w. 

THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOE. 


THE 


BIBLE   EDUCATOE. 


Edited  by  the 


REV.    E.    H.    PLUMPTRE,    M.A., 


TICAB   OP  BICKLET,    PBEBENDABT   OP   ST.   PAUL'S,   AND   PROFESSOR  OF  EXEGESIS   OF  THE    NEW  TESTAMENT,    KINQ'f 

COLLEQE,    LONDON. 


Vol.  II. 


CaSSELL,     PeTTER    &    GrALPIN: 

London,   Paris   l^-  New    York. 


LIST    OF    CONTEIBUTOES    TO    THIS    VOLUME. 


Eev.  A.  S.  AGLEN,  M.A.,  Inctimbent  of  St.  Ninian's, 
Alyth. 

Eev.  W.  BENHAM,  B.D.,  Vicar  of  Margate. 

GEOEGE  C.  M.  EIEDWOOD,  M.D.  Edin.,  India 
Mnsenm. 

W.  CAEEUTHEES,  F.E.S.,  Keeper  of  the  Botanical 
Department,  British  Mnseum. 

F.  E.  CONDEE,  C.E. 

Eev.  SAMUEL  COX,  Nottingham. 

Eev.  G.  DEANE,  B.A.,  D.Sc,  F.G.S.,  Professor  of 
Old  Testament  Exegesis  and  Natural  Science  in 
Spring  Hill  College,  Birmingham. 

Eev.  Canon  ELLIOTT,  M.A.,  Vicar  of  Winkfield, 
Berks. 

Eev.  CHEISTLAN  D.  GINSBUEG,  LL.D. 

Eev.  J.  B.  HEAED,  M.A.,  Cains  College,  Cambridge. 

Eev.  WILLIAM  HOUGHTON,  M.A.,  F.L.S.,  Eeotor 
of  Preston,  Salop. 

Eev.  STANLEY  LEATHES,  M.A.,  Vicar  of  St. 
Philip's,  Eegent  Street,  and  Professor  of 
Hebrew,  King's  College,  London. 

Eev.  WILLIAM  LEE,  D.D.,  Eoxburgh. 

Eev.  G.  F.  MACLEAE,  D.D.,  Head  Master  of  King's 
College  School. 


Eev.  W.  MTLLIGAN,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Divinity 
and  Biblical  Criticism  in  the  University  of 
Aberdeen. 

Eev.  W.  F.  MOULTON,  M.A.,  Professor  of  Classics, 
.     Wesleyan  College,  Eichmond. 

Eev.  H.  W.  PHILLOTT,  M.A.,  Eeotor  of  Staunton- 
on-Wye,  and  Prselector  of  Hereford  Cathedral. 

Eev.  E.  H.  PLUMPTEE,  M.A.,  Vicar  of  Bickley, 
and  Professor  of  Exegesis  of  the  New  Testament, 
King's  College,  London. 

Eev.  GEOEGE  EAWLINSON,  M.A.,  Camden  Pro- 
fessor of  Ancient  History  in  the  University  of 
Oxford,  and  Canon  of  Canterbury 

Eev.  T.  TEIGNMOUTH  SHOEE,  M.A.,  Incumbent 
of  Berkeley  Chapel,  Mayfair. 

Very  Eev.  E.  PAYNE  SMITH,  D.D.,  Dean  of 
Canterbury. 

Eev.  H.  DONALD  M.  SPENCE,  M.A.,  Eeotor  of 
St.  Mary  de  Cryi)t,  Gloucester,  and  Examining 
Chaplain  to  the  Lord  Bishop  of  Gloucester  and 
Bristol. 

JOHN  STAINES,  M.A.,  Mus.  D.  Oxon,  Organist  of 
St.  Paul's  Cathedral. 

Eev.  EDMUND  VENABLES,  M.A.,  Canon  Eesi- 
dentiary,  and  Precentor  of  Lincoln  Cathedral. 

Major  WILSON,  E.E. 

Ven.  HENEY  WOOLCOMBE,  M.A.,  Archdeacon  of 
Barnstaple,  and  Canon  of  Exeter. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

ANIMALS  OF  THE  BIBLE,   THE. 

WOd  Cattle .24 

Sheep 45 

Goats,  Wild  Goats 98 

Chamois .     106 

Hart  and  Hind 134 

Antelopes 135,  167 

Elephant 1C8,  198 

Coney 201 

EiKDS 244 

The  Vulture 247 

The  Bearded  Vulture 294 

Falconidse 294 

Nocturnal  Birds  of  Prey       ....     314,  360 

Sparrow 362 

Swallow 362 

Hoopoe 303 

Cuckoo 363 

ARK  OF  THE  COVENANT,  THE    .   .    .144 

BETWEEN  THE  BOOKS. 

Introduction         .......     203 

The  Jews  under  the  Persian  Monarchs  .  .  203 
The  Jews  under  the  Kings  of  Egypt  .  .  .  205 
The  Jews  under  the  Kings  of  Syria      .         .     233,  234 

BIBLICAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

The  Psychology  of  Scripture  Progressive  .  .       10 

The  Psychology  of  the  Old  Testament  .  .     126 

The  Psychology  of  the  New  Testament  .  162,  191 

BOOKS   OF   THE   OLD   TESTAMENT,   THE. 

Judges,  The  Book  jf 13 

Isaiah .........      32 


BOOKS   OP   THE    OLD   TESTAMENT  {continwid). 

Joel 52,  65,  92,  108,  140,  156 

Jeremiah 74,  96 

Ezekiel 195 

Zephaniah    ....      223,  251,  287,  3J6,  354 

Samuel,  The  Books  of 316 

Daniel 369 

COINCIDENCES  OP  SCEIPTtrRE,   THE. 

The  Herodian  Family  ....          29,  82,  145 
Christ,  and  St.  Peter  and  St.  John  at  the  Sanhe- 
drim   250 

The  Local  Colouring  of  St.  Paul's  Epistles  .     271,  376 

CONTEASTS    OF   SCEIPTUEE. 

The  Gospels  of  St.  Matthew  and  St.  Luke    .         .     257 

DIFFICULT   PASSAGES   EXPLAINED. 

The  Catholic  Epistles  : — 

St.  John  {continued)      ....       81,  116,  333 
The  First  Epistle  to  the  Thessalouians         .         .     297 

The  Gospels  : — 

St.  Matthew    .         .  22,  38,  63,  131,  209,  285,  382 

easteen  geogeaphy  of  the  bible. 

Babylon 55,  87,  177 

Palestine 211 

Nineveh 280,  330 

ethnology  of  the  bible,  the. 

Palestine  (2) :  Origin  of  Israel     .         .      206,  236,  303 

HISTOEY  OF  the  ENGLISH  BIBLE,   THE    19,  122, 

260,  300,  306 


viii                                                                       CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

FACE 

IDOLS  OP  MOAB,   THK 138 

PEEFUMES  OF 

THE  BIBLE,   THE   {continued). 

Saffron 

152 

ULUSTEATIONS    FEOM    EASTEEN  MAKNEES 
AND  CUSTOMS. 

Spikenard    . 
Stacte 

152 

153 

Early  Attendance  at  tlie  Sanctuary       .         .     119,  263 

PLANTS   OF   THE   BIBLE,   THE. 

ELLUSTEATIONS  OF  HOLT  SCRIPTUEE  FEOM 

Order  VIII. 

Eesedaces 40 

COINS,  MEDALS,  AND  INSCEIPTIONS     .      85,  155, 

IX. 

Cistinesa 

41 

190,217 

X. 

ViolaceEB 

42 

MEASUEES,    WEIGHTS,   AND  COINS    OF    THE 

XI. 

PolygalacesB    . 

42 

BIBLE. 

,       XII. 

CaryophylleEB  . 

106 

Linear  Measnres 278 

,    xin. 

FraukeniaccEe 

107 

Hebrew  Measures  of  Area 380 

,      XIV. 
,       XV. 

Paronychiaceas 
Molluginese     . 

107 
107 

MTNEEALS  OF  THE  BIBLE,   THE. 

,      XVI. 

TamariscineEB 

173 

Precious  Stones 347 

,     XVII. 

Elatineaa 

326 

MUSIC  OF  THE  BIBLE,  THE. 

,  XVIIL 
,      XIX. 

Hyperioinea3   . 
Malvaceae 

326 
326 

Wind  Instruments        ...            6,  70,  183,  229 

XX. 

Tiliaceee 

327 

Instruments  of  Percussion 310 

,      XXI. 

Linear     . 

327 

OLD  TESTAMENT  FULFILLED  IN  THE  NEW,  THE. 

POETET  OP  THE  BIBLE,  THE. 

Sacred  Seasons  {contimi.ed)  .         42,  112,  170,  179,  273 

Outlines  of  the  History  of  Biblical  Poetry    .         58,  77, 

322,  365 

159,  219 

PEEFUMES  OP  THE  BIBLE,   THE. 

Structure  of  the  Verse          ....     269,  339 

Galbanum 151 

SCEIPTUEE  BIOGEAPHIES. 

Myrrh 151 

Joshua 

1,  17,  149,  165,  187 

Onyclia 152 

Sa 

muel 

. 

.     226,  242 

THE 


BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


SCEIPTUEE    BIOGEAPHIES. 

JOSHUA. 

BT    THE    EEV.    EDMUND   VENABLES,    M.A.,    CANON    KESIDENTIARY    AND    PKECENTOK   OF   LINCOLN. 


THE  character  of  Joshua,  Moses'  minister  and 
sHCcessor,  the  leader  of  Israel  in  their  conquest 
of  Canaan,  is,  confessedly,  one  of  the  ^andest 
and  most  spotless  in  the  whole  Bible.  The 
greatness  of  the  man  is  indeed  to  some  extent  over- 
shadowed by  the  greatness  of  the  events  through 
which  he  moved :  we  know  him  more  as  a  conqueror 
than  as  a  man.  But  so  far  as  we  do  know  him,  he  is 
almost  absolutely  faultless.  He  is  one  of  the  verj'  few 
jiorsonages  of  holy  writ  of  whom  no  evil  is  recorded. 
Free  from  all  desire  of  self-aggrandisement  or  lust  of 
gain,  no  taint  of  selfishness  mars  the  simple  nobility  of 
Joshua's  character.  In  whatever  circumstances  we  find 
him  placed,  liis  one  desire  is  to  know  what  the  will  of 
God  is,  and  his  one  resolve  to  do  it,  at  all  costs.  Of 
him,  as  of  his  true  heart-brother  Caleb,  the  unerring 
verdict  of  the  Word  of  Truth  is,  "  He  wholly  followed  the 
Lord  "  (Numb,  xxxii.  12).  Who,  then,  was  more  worthy 
to  be  the  first  bearer  of  that  "  Name  wliich  is  above 
cvei-y  name,"  which  in  fulness  of  time  was  to  be  the 
hiunan  designation  of  Him  who  was  "  holy,  harmless, 
midefiled,  and  separate  from  sinners,"  Jesus,  the 
Captain  of  His  people's  salvation  in  their  conflict  for 
the  heavenly  Canaan  ? 

It  is  as  a  wan-ior  that  Joshua  is  first  presented  to  us, 
and  this  is  the  character  he  chiefly  maintains  throughont 
the  Scripture  record.  His  gifts  and  virtues  are  those 
of  the  warrior.  Dauntless  courage,  indomitable  per- 
severance, cheerful  confidence  in  the  face  of  difficulties 
(Numb.  xiv.  7 — 9  ;  Exod.  xvii.  lO),  promptitude  of  action 
(Josh.  iii.  1;  x.  9;  xi.  7),  high  honour  {x\.  25  ;  ix.  26), 
unselfish  disregard  of  his  own  interests  (xix.  49,  50), 
unswerving  rectitude  (vii.  25 ;  ix.  23 ;  xviii.  10),  care 
for  the  interests  of  those  committed  to  liim — all  built 
upon  and  based  in  faith  in  the  Living  God.  Joshua, 
faultless  and  dauntless,  without  fear  and  without  re- 
proach, is  a  tyiie  of  the  liigh-minded,  God-fearing 
soldier  :  the  forerunner  of  the  Napiers,  Lawrences,  and 
Havelocks  of  our  own  days. 

But  it  is  not  only  as  a  soldier  that  Joshua's  eminence 
is  displayed.  He  was  one  who  had  learnt  how  to  com- 
mand by  having  first  learnt  how  to  obey.  We  see  in 
the  earlier  part  of  his  histoiy  faithful  sei-vice  to  his 
master;  zeal  for  his  honour  (Numb.  xi.  28);  a  simple, 

VOL.    II. 


sti-aightforward  discharge  of  duty ;  moral  courage 
strengtliening  him  to  stand  fii-m  wlien  others  faltered, 
and  to  declare  unwelcome  truths  in  the  face  of  peril 
to  life  (Numb.  xiv.  6 — 10) — qualities  which  sealed  his 
fitness  for  the  difficult  post  of  the  leadership  of  stiff- 
necked  Israel,  even  before  he  had  been  designated 
as  Moses'  successor  by  the  voice  of  the  Most  High. 
And  when  his  duties  as  a  general  and  a  soldier  wore 
over,  and  he  had  been  called  to  enter  on  the  less 
exciting  task  of  settling  the  tribes  in  their  new  home, 
and  allotting  to  each  his  portion  of  the  conquered  terri- 
tory, his  statesmanlike  qualities  became  equally  con- 
spicuous. We  see  him  diligently  and  lalioriously  dis- 
triljutiug  the  land  among  its  new  occupants,  and,  while 
with  complete  unselfishness  he  defers  his  o\fTi  claim  to 
a  share  of  the  fruits  of  victory  until  all  other  claims 
had  been  satisfied,  exliibiting  the  most  scrupulous  equity 
in  his  assignment  of  their  portions  to  the  several  tribes. 
We  watch  him  appeasing  jealousies,  calming  rising 
feuds,  checking  arrogance,  moderating  overweening  pre- 
tensions (.losh.  x™.  14 — 18),  and,  with  the  magnanimity 
of  real  greatness  and  the  calmness  of  conscious  strength, 
executing  in  all  its  details  the  difficult  task  devolved 
upon  him.  And  wlien  the  work  of  his  life  is  done,  and 
in  extreme  old  age  he  gathers  together  the  tribes,  those 
whose  fathers  he  had  so  often  led  to  -victory,  to  receive 
his  parting  commission,  how  full  of  dignity  is  the  reti- 
cence he  observes  with  regard  to  liimseH  and  his  own 
exploits  (Josh,  xxiiii.,  xxiv.).  Natural  as  it  would  have 
been  to  have  reminded  them  of  what  they  owed  to  him  as 
the  leader  and  captain  who  had  put  them  in  possession 
of  the  goodly  land  which  they  were  enjoying,  pardonable 
as  we  should  consider  such  a  reference  to  liis  military 
prowess,  all  he  had  done  is  omitted,  and  the  wliole  of  the 
brilliant  past  is  gathered  up  in  one  sentence.  In  which 
the  entire  glory  is  attributed  to  God  :  "  Jehovah,  your 
God,  is  he  that  hath  fought  for  you ; "'  and  the  human 
agent  does  not  apjjcar  .-it  all.  Let  his  people,  for  whom 
he  had  laboured  and  fought,  only  be  tnie  to  tlieir 
covenant  with  their  God,  and  Joshua  would  be  content 
to  be  forgotten. 

The  life  of  Jo.shua  naturally  divides  itself  into  four 
sections.  (1.)  His  youth  and  early  manhood  in  Egypt, 
of  which  wo  have  no  record  in  Scripture,    (2.)  The  forty  , 

25    ^ 


THE  BIBLE  EDUOATOS. 


years  interveniag  between  the  Exodus  and  the  death  of 
Moses,  in  which  he  appears  as  Moses'  attendant,  and 
entrusted  by  liini  with  important  commissions,  ciril  and 
military.  (3.)  The  period  between  the  crossing  of  Jordan 
and  the  complete  subjugation  of  Canaan,  in  which 
period  Joshua  comes  before  us  as  the  Divinely  appointed 
captain  and  governor  of  Israel,  including  [a)  the  con- 
quest and  (6)  the  settlement  of  the  laud.  (4)  His  calm 
and  honom-ed  old  age,  passed  at  Timnath-serah,  of  wliich 
ao  events  are  recorded,  except  his  closiug  address  of 
warning  and  counsel  to  the  assembled  tribes  and  theii- 
elders. 

I.— LIFE    IN    EGYPT. 

According  to  a  Hebrew  tradition,  in  which  there  is 
nothiug  improbable,  Joshua  was  bom  B.C.  1537,  and 
was,  therefore,  forty-six  years  old  at  the  time  of  the 
exodus.  According  to  this  chronology,  his  bu-th  must 
have  taken  place  about  the  time  of  Moses'  flight  into 
the  land  of  Midian.  His  father,  named  Nun,  was  a 
member  of  the  gi'cat  tribe  of  Eplu'aim.  Wo  may  feel 
sure  that  the  father  of  the  future  leader  of  God's  people 
was  not  one  of  those  who  "  defiled  themselves  with  the 
idols  of  Egypt "  (Ezek.  xx.  8),  but  at  a  time  when  God 
seemed  to  have  forgotten  his  people,  and  to  have  given 
them  over  into  the  hands  of  their  oppressors,  main- 
t-ained  his  faith  in  the  promises  made  to  his  fathers,  and 
trained  up  his  son  to  expect  their  fulfilment  in  God's 
appointed  time.  The  name  given  by  Nun  to  his  sou 
seems  to  embody  his  trust  that  deliverance  would  come, 
and  almost  to  indicate  a  hope  that  his  offspring  might 
be  its  destined  instrument.  The  name  Hoshea,  or 
Oshea,  the  same  borne  by  the  last  king  of  Israel  and 
the  fii'st  minor  prophet,  signifies  deliverance,  or  salva- 
tion. To  this  name  the  sacred  syllable  expressive  of 
the  self-existent  One,  the  Jah,  the  "  I  am  that  I  am," 
was  prefixed  by  Moses  (Numb.  xiii.  8, 16)  :  "  And  Moses 
called  Oshea,  the  sou  of  Nun,  Jchoshua,"  i.e.,  Jehovah's 
salvation,  or  Jehovah  is  salvation,  thus  iutimating  tliat 
Israel's  deliverance  was  to  come  from  Jehovah,  by  the 
hand  of  him  who  bore  the  designation.  But  this  deliver- 
ance was  not  to  come  yet.  Many  a  weaiy  year  it  had  to 
be  waited  for.  If  not  a  slave  liimseK,  yet  sm-rounded  by 
those  who  wore  tasting  all  the  miseries  of  slavery  in  its 
harshest  foi-m,  the  young  Joshua  would  have  grown  up 
through  boyhood  and  youth  to  manhood,  witnessing  the 
bondage  of  his  down-trodden  race  growing  harder  and 
more  crashing.  The  "  sorriee  with  rigom-  in  mortar  and 
brick,"  the  ton  of  the  brick-kiln,  and  of  the  field  beneath 
the  scorching  Egyirtian  sun,  the  burdens,  the  bastinado 
of  the  taskmaster,  must  all  have  been  matters  of  daily 
familiarity  with  hun,  if  not  of  personal  Experience. 
The  "groaning"  of  his  bretlu-en  "by  reason  of  the 
bondage  "  must  have  been  an  accustomed  sound  from  his 
earliest  childhood,  if  his  own  voice  had  not  swelled  it. 

As  a  man  of  forty,  Joshua  would  have  had  his  faith 
in  the  God  of  his  fathers  revived,  and  his  hopes  of  de- 
liverance awakened,  by  the  intervention  of  Moses  in 
behalf  of  his  enslaved  countiymen.  He  must  have  ^vit- 
ncssed  the  assertion  of  the  outraged  majesty  of  God 
in  the  plagues  of  Egypt,  and  have  been  prepared,  by 


their  gi'owiug  intensity,  for  the  final  and  glorious 
triumph  over  the  obstinate  and  besotted  Pharaoh. 
Though  the  Scriptural  record  is  silent,  we  cannot 
doubt  that  one  who  so  immediately  after  the  exodus 
was  selected  by  Moses  to  lead  the  Israelites  against 
Amalek,  must  have  taken  a  prominent  part  in  that 
mighty  transaction,  and  have  been  employed  by  Moses 
as  one  of  his  chief  suljordinates  iu  carrying  out  the 
arrangements  of  that  vast  migration,  tho  real  signifi- 
cance and  immense  difficulty  of  which  we  are  apt  to 
overlook,  from  the  calmness  and  even  flow  of  the 
Scrii^tural  narrative.  He  must  have  stood  by  his 
great  master's  side  on  the  shores  of  tho  Red  Sea  on 
that  memorable  night  when  "  the  Lord  fought  for 
Israel,  and  they  held  their  peace ;"  he  must  have 
seen  the  waters  divide  before  the  outstretched  rod; 
have  helped  to  marshal  the  hosts  as  they  crossed  the 
ch-ied  bed  of  the  Bed  Sea;  and  have  swelled  the  song 
of  triumph  which  rose  from  the  emancipated  nation 
when  they  beheld  "  the  Egyptians  dead  on  the  sea- 
shore," and  at  last  felt  themselves  free.  If  the  work 
for  which  Joslraa  was  destined  was  one  calling  for 
dauntless  courage  and  unshaken  faith  iu  God,  in  the 
face  of  apparently  insurmountable  obstacles,  ho  could 
not  have  had  a  better  preparation  for  it  than  amid 
the  marvels  of  the  Exodus. 

II. — LIFE    IN   THE   WILDEKNESS. 

With  the  exodus  from  Egypt  begins  our  personal 
acqxiaintance  with  Joshua,  as  by  anticipation  we  may 
be  allowed  for  clearness  to  call  him.  With  that  direct- 
ness so  characteristic  of  the  sacred  writings,  and  so 
indicative  of  truth,  he  is  at  once  introduced  by  name. 
A  few  days  only  had  elapsed  since  the  passage  of  the 
Red  Sea,  and  the  mighty  host  had  reached  its  fu-st  great 
halting  place,  Rephidim,  "the  places  of  rest"  (Exod. 
xvii.  1).  Here,  their  tliirst  being  abundantly  supplied  by 
tho  water  miraculously  called  forth  by  Moses  at  God's 
command  from  the  rock,  the  wearied  multitude  reposed 
for  a  few  days  to  collect  strength  for  their  onward  mai'ch 
to  Sinai  (ver.  6).  But  their  repose  was  of  short  duration. 
The  spectacle  of  the  enormous  herds  of  cattle  and  flocks 
of  sheep  which  accompanied  them  had  already  awakened 
the  cupidity  of  the  native  tribes  of  the  desert,  to  whom 
then,  as  now.  cattle-lifters  by  pi-ofession,  the  temptation 
was  irresistible.  Besides,  when  the  precarious  pasturage 
of  those  parched  valleys  had  beeu  "  licked  up "  by  the 
flocks  of  the  invaders,  what  would  be  loft  for  theii" 
own  cattle  ?  The  attack  was  made  by  the  Amalckites ; 
those  bitter,  implacable  enemies  of  Israel,  now  appear- 
ing for  the  first  time  on  the  sacred  page.  As  the  host 
slowly  wound  its  way  beneath  the  granite  precipices  of 
the  desert  of  Sinai,  "faint  and  weary"  with  their  toil- 
some march,  they  made  a  treacherous  assault — dashing 
down,  perhaps,  from  an  ambush  in  a  side  ravine — on  the 
feeble  rear,  the  loose,  disorganised  fringe  of  the  main 
body,  "  tho  hindmost  of  thee,  even  all  that  were  feeble 
behind  thee  "  (Deut.  xxv.  18).  The  success  of  this 
dastardly  surprise  was  such  as  to  encourage  a  second 
and  more  decided  attack  on  the  host,  after  they  had  en- 


JOSHUA. 


camped  in  Kephidiiii :  "  Theu  camo  Anialek,  and  fought 
with  Israel  in  Rei^hitlim"  (Exod.  x-idi.  8).  Accord- 
ing to  Josephus,  the  king  of  Amalek  had  summoned 
all  the  forces  of  the  distant  tribes,  from  Petra  to  the 
Mediterranean,  to  crush  the  unwelcome  intruders.  The 
emergency  was  a  grave  one.  It  was  the  first  battle 
fought  by  a  nation  of  slaves,  unaccustomed  to  the  use 
of  arms,  and  entire  strangers  to  the  tactics  and  ma- 
nceuvres  on  which  mihtary  success  so  greatly  depends. 
Under  such  circumstances,  nearly  everything  would 
depend  on  the  skill  and  prowess  of  the  commanding- 
officer.  And  this  post  of  ilifficulty  and  danger  is  as- 
signed to  the  hitherto  unmentioned  warrior  of  Ephraim, 
Joshua  the  son  of  Nim.  Confident  not  only  in  his 
corn-age  and  martial  prowess,  but  also  in  his  good  judg- 
ment and  j)0W3r  of  discrimiuatiou,  Moses  bids  him 
select  the  troops  to  face  the  enemy.  "  And  Moses  said 
unto  Joshua,  Choose  us  out  men,  and  go  out  and  fight 
with  Amalek  "  (ver.  9).  Few  scenes  are  more  familiar  to 
us  than  that  which  followed,  when,  on  the  next  morning, 
the  inexperienced  commander  led  forth  his  imtried 
troops  to  battle ;  while  Mosos,  with  his  wonder-working 
rod,  plants  himseK  ou  the  top  of  the  hill,  in  the  double 
character  of  a  general  directing  the  movements  of  the 
army,  and  of  a  mediator  interceding  with  "  the  Lord  of 
hosts,"  "  the  God  of  battles,"  for  the  success  of  their 
arms.  The  circumstances  are  too  well  knoivu  to  all  our 
readers  to  need  repetition.  Our  mind  at  once  recalls 
the  image  of  the  aged  lawgiver  standing  aloft  on  the 
cliff's  edge,  stretching  out  "  the  rod  of  God  "■ — that 
emblem  of  the  cross,  the  sole  pledge  and  instrument 
of  the  si^iritual  victories  of  Christ's  true  Israel — con- 
spicuously visible  to  all  the  host  as  a  token  of  the 
power  and  presence  of  God ;  and  beside  him,  staying 
up  his  hands  as  they  fail  from  weariness,  his  brother 
Aaron,  and  Hur.  And  we  are  equally  familiar  \vith  the 
issue,  as  described  by  our  Christian  poet : — 

"  When  Moses  stood  ivitll  arms  spread  wide. 
Success  was  found  on  Israel's  side  ; 
But  when  through  weariness  they  failed, 
That  moment  Amalek  prevailed." 

The  battle  was  evidently  protracted  and  trying.  Be- 
ginning in  the  morning,  it  lasted  to  "  the  going  down 
of  the  sun"  (ver.  12).  The  struggle  was  fierce  and 
obstinate,  marked  with  vicissitudes  of  success  and  dis- 
comfiture. Amalek,  "that  first  of  the  nations"  (Numb. 
xxiv.  20),  was  no  enemy  to  be  vanquished  in  a  skirmish. 
But  in  the  end  victory  was  gained :  "  Joshua  discomfited 
Amalek  and  his  people  witli  tho  edge  of  the  sword  " 
(Exod.  xvii.  13).  The  memory  of  so  signal  an  event 
was  not  to  be  allowed  to  die  out.  An  altar  was  built  by 
Moses,  probably  on  the  spot  on  the  siunmit  of  the  hill 
where  he  had  stood,  inscribed  with  the  words,  "  Jehovah- 
nissi,"  "  the  Lord  is  my  banner  "  (ver.  1.51  He  was  also 
expressly  commanded  by  God  to  ■write  an  account  of  this 
battle  in  tlie  book  ho  was  instructed  to  draw  up,  as  a 
record  of  God's  dealings  with  his  people,  and  "  rehearse 
it  in  tho  ears  of  Joshua,"  together  with  tho  command, 
to  be  transmitted  through  him  to  after  ages,  for  the 
complete  extermination  of  the  Amalekites.     "  Because 


the  Loi'd  hath  sworn  that  the  Lord  will  have  war  with 
Amalek  from  generation  to  generation  "  (ver.  16).  Thus 
early  was  the  intimation  given  that  Joshua  was  to  be  the 
successor  of  Moses,  and  carry  on  tho  work  that  ho  had 
begun. 

The  Pentateuch  records  no  more  of  Joshua's  deeds 
as  a  warrior.     For  a  long  period  he  only  appears  in  the 
luimble,  imostentatious  character  of  "  Moses'  minister," 
the   constant  attendant   on  the  leader   of   his  peoijle. 
Tliis  is   the  first  example  of  that  connection  between 
a  prophet  or  teacher,  and  a  yoimger  companion,  often, 
as    in  this    case,   destined  to   succeed  him,  of  which 
the  relation  of   Elisha   to   Elijah   (1   Kings   xix.  19), 
of  Bariich  to  Jeremiah  (Jer.   xxxvi.  4,  &c.),  of  John 
Mark  to  Paul  and   Barnabas  (Acts  xiii.  5),  and  sub- 
sequently,  according  to  ecclesiastical  tradition,  of  the 
same  evangeUst   to   Peter    (cf.    1    Peter    v.    13),   are 
familiar  instances.     The  occasion  on  which  this  relation 
of  Joshua  to  Moses  is  first  definitely  stated  in  Scripture 
is  one  of  the  greatest  solenmity  (Exod.  xxiv.  13).     It 
was  when  the  Ten  Commandments  had  just  been  given 
from  Moimt  Sinai,  amid  accompaniments  of  such  awful 
majesty,  and  the  lawgiver  was  proceeding  to  obey  the 
Divine  call  that  summoned  him  again  to  meet  the  Most 
High  on  the  smnmit  of  tho  mountain,  and  receive  from 
his  hands   the   tables   of  the  law,  that  we  first  find 
Joshua  in  attendance  ou  Moses.     "  And  the  Lord  said 
to  Moses,  Come  up  to  me  into  the  moimt,  and  l)e  there : 
and  I  "will  give  thee  tables  of  stone.  .  .  .  And  Moses 
rose  up,  and  his  minister  Joshua  :  and  Moses  went  up 
into  the  mount  of  God  "  (Exod.  xxiv.  12,  13).     Though 
not  expressly  stated,  it  is  evident  that  he  accompanied 
his  master  to   the  summit   of   the  mountain.     Moses' 
command  to  the  elders,  who  had  partaken  with  him  of 
the  covenant  feast,  and  beheld  witli  him  the  manifesta- 
tion of  tho  most  high  God  (vs.  9 — 11),  when  he  parts 
from  them  on  the  liiUsido,  is,  "  Tarry  ye  here  for  us, 
until  we  come  again  unto  you."     We  cannot  suppose  that 
ho  entered  with  Moses  "  into  the  thick  darkness  where 
God  was."    Joshua  woidd  remain,  dming  the  forty  days 
he  was  in  the  mount,  outside  the  immediate  Presence, 
ready,  when  God  "  had  made  an  end  of  communing 
with  him,"  to  accompany  Moses  once  more  to  the  camp. 
Tho  circumstances  of  that  descent,  the  startUng  con- 
trast between  the  holy  stUlness  of  the  mountain  of  God 
and  tho  shouts  of  idolatrous  revoliy  which  assail  then- 
ears  as  Moses  and  his  minister  draw  near  tlie  host,  are 
familiar  to  us.     To  the  soldier's  oar,  quick  to  receive 
tho  sound  of  tho  battle-field,  the  clamom-  is  full  of 
alarm      "  He  said  unto  Moses,  There  is  a  noise  of  war 
in  the'camp  "  (Exod.  xxxii.  17).     "  Had  the  Amalekites 
taken  advantage  of  the  absence  of  tho  leader  of  the 
host,  and  the  -captain  of   the  army,  to   make  another 
attempt  on  Israel?     If  so,  it  was  time  they  should  bo 
there."    The  keener  and  more  chastened  car-  of  Moses 
discerns  the  true  nature  of  the  wild  uproar.    As  he  had 
bi.en  already  apprised  on  tho  momit,  "the  people  ho  had 
brought  out  of  Egyi)t  had  corrupted  themselves,"  had 
"  made  a  molten  calf,"  had  "  worshipped  it  and  sacrificed 
thereunto."    The  din  was  not  that  of  combatants,  but 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


of  revellers.  "  It  is  not  the  Toiee  of  them  that  shout 
for  mastery,  neither  is  it  the  voice  of  them  that  cry  for 
being  overcome ;  bnt  the  noise  of  them  that  sing  do  I 
hear"  (Exod.  xxxii.  18).  Wo  well  remember  the  holy 
indignation  with  which  the  lawgiver  dashed  to  the 
gronud  and  broke  in  fragments  the  tables  of  the  law 
when  he  lieheld  the  people  so  lately  taken  into  covenant 
with  God  as  "  a  holy  nation."  "  His  peculiar  treasm-e 
above  all  people"  (Exod.  xix.  5,  6),  circling  with  licen- 
tious dance  and  song,  "  njiked  to  then-  shame  "  (xxxii.  2.5 ), 
the  calf  of  gold  ;  and  the  signal  punishment — iu  which 
the  wan-ior  Joshua  may  well  have  taken  part — with 
which  their  crime  was  visited,  when  the  sword  of  the 
tribe  of  Levi  laid  3,000  of  the  guilty  ones  dead  on 
the  ground.  Another  mark  of  the  Divine  displeasure 
follows,  in  connection  with  which  we  see  Joshua  once 
more  acting  as  Moses'  attendant.  The  tabernacle  or 
tent  already  set  up  witliin  the  precincts  of  the  camp,  as 
the  meeting-place  between  Jehovah  and  the  representa- 
tives of  the  nation,  was  removed  from  the  polluted 
neighbourhood,  .and  placed  at  a  distance.  "  Moses  took 
the  tabernacle  "  (it  ^viU  be  remembered  that  the  "  taber- 
nacle," properly  so  called,  had  not  yet  been  constructed), 
'•  and  pitched  it  without  the  camp,  afar  oif  from  the 
camp"  (Exod.  xxxiii.  7).  Thus  the  nation  was  made  to 
feel  that  they  had  forfeited  the  Di^-ine  presence,  which 
was  only  restored  to  them  on  the  intercession  of  their 
mediator.  To  this  tent,  Moses,  attended  by  Joshua,  goes 
forth,  all  eyes  eagerly  watching  him,  "  every  man  at  his 
tent  door  "  (ver.  8),  in  aAvful  suspense  as  to  the  issue ; 
■and  within  it,  when  it  has  once  more  been  hallowed  by 
the  descent  of  the  cloudy  pillar,  Joshua  is  left  to  guard 
the  consecrated  spot,  when  Moses  retunied  after  his 
intercourse  with  God.  "  And  the  Lord  spake  imto 
Moses  face  to  face,  as  a  man  speaketh  imto  his  friend. 
sAtid  he  turned  again  into  the  camp :  but  his  sei-vant 
Joshua,  the  son  of  Nun,  a  young  man,  departed  not  out 
of  the  tabernacle  "  (ver.  11). 

The  zeal  of  the  servant  for  his  master's  honour  re- 
ceived a  striking  exemplification  m  an  iucident  occurring 
shortly  after  the  host  had  quitted  the  wilderness  of  Sinai, 
narrated  in  Numb.  xi.  At  a  place  known  af  tei-wards 
by  the  ill-omened  name  of  Kibroth-hattaavah,  "the 
graves  of  lust,"  "  because  there  they  buried  the  people 
that  lu,eted,"  the  mutinous  conduct  of  the  people,  weary 
of  the  insipidity  of  the  manna  which  formed  their  daily 
food,  and  recalling  with  keen  relish  the  juicy  and  high- 
flavoured  \'iands  of  plentiful  Egypt,  "  the  fish,  and  the 
cucumbers,  and  the  melons,  and  the  leeks,  and  the  onions, 
and  the  garlic,  which  we  did  cat  freely,"  had  driven 
Moses  to  passionate  remonstrances,  and  complaints  of 
the  intolerable  burden  God  had  laid  on  him  in  the 
leadership  of  such  a  rebellious,  stiff-necked  nation  (vs. 
10 — 15).  To  relieve  the  overweighted  ruler,  the  Didne 
sanction  was  given  to  the  appointment  of  a  permanent 
council  of  seventy  elders.  To  qualify  them  for  the  exe- 
cution of  their  office,  the  gift  of  Divine  illumination  was 
promised  them :  "  I  will  take  of  the  spirit  that  is  upon 
thee,  and  will  put  it  upon  them  "  (ver.  17).  This  gift  was 
followed  by  outward  signs.    "  And  it  came  to  pass,  that, 


when  the  spirit  rested  upon  them,  they  prophesied." 
It  happened  that,  for  some  unstated  reason,  two  who 
had  been  enrolled  in  this  body — Eldad  and  Medad,  by 
name — had  failed  to  accompany  their  brethren  to  the 
door  of  the  tabernacle,  where  their  office  had  been 
solemnly  recognised,  and  the  spiritual  gift  imparted. 
But,  as  subsequently,  when  Cornelius  and  his  companions 
received  spiritual  gifts  without  laymg  on  of  hands,  and 
even  before  baptism,  to  show  that  God  is  not  restricted 
to  the  use  of  the  means  He  has  been  pleased  to  ordain, 
but  "divideth  to  every  man  severally  as  He  wUl," 
the  gift  granted  to  the  others  was  exercised  by  them. 
"  The  spirit  rested  upon  them,  .  .  .  and  they  pro- 
phesied in  the  camp  "  (ver.  26).  Surprise  was  at  once 
awakened.  Men  are  over  slow  to  believe  that  God  can 
be  larger  in  his  dealings  than  their  own  naiTow  minds. 
"  There  ran  a  young  man.  and  told  Moses,  Eldad  and 
Medad  do  prophesy  in  the  camp."  The  indignation  of 
the  loyal-heiirted  Joshua  immediately  blazes  foi-th.  This 
imauthorised  "  liberty  of  prophesying  "  seemed  to  him 
an  infringement  on  his  master's  juidsdiction.  All  due 
subordin.ation  was  at  an  end  if  this  independent  action 
were  permitted.  "  My  lord  Moses,"  he  cries,  "  forbid 
them."  '•  En™st  thou  for  my  sake  ?"  is  the  mild  rebuke 
of  Moses,  not  unconscious.  perhai)s,  of  the  personal  pique 
veiling  itself  under  a  regard  for  his  master's  honour. 
"  Art  thou  displeased  to  behold  the  gifts  hitherto  peculiar 
to  thy  master  dispersed  so  widely  ?  Not  such  is  my 
temper.  I  rejoice  to  witness  others  sh.aring  in  my 
powers."  "  Woidd  God  that  all  the  Lord's  i)eople  were 
prophets,  and  that  the  Lord  would  put  his  spirit  upon 
them  "  (vs.  28,  29). 

A  few  stations  from  Kibroth-hattaavah  brought  the 
children  of  Israel  to  Kadesh-bamea,  on  the  borders  of 
the  Promised  Land.  A  wise  precaution,  suggested  by 
the  people  themselves  (Deut.  i.  22),  and  avquiesced  in 
by  Moses,  dictated  the  sending  forth  spies  to  search  out 
the  land,  and  bring  back  a  report  of  it,  and  its  inh.abi- 
tants.  Of  these,  one  was  selected  from  each  of  the 
twelve  tribes ;  "  every  one  a  ruler  "  in  his  tribe,  the 
"head"  of  a  family.  Joshua  was  the  representative 
of  the  tribe  of  Ephraim  (Numb.  xiii.  2,  8,  16).  The 
report  presented  by  the  spies  on  their  return  to  the 
camp  was  of  a  twofold  character.  As  regarded  the  land 
itself,  nothing  coidd  be  more  satisfactoi-y.  Its  fertility 
even  exceeded  the  report  of  it.  The  sample  they 
brought — a  huge  cluster  of  gi'apes,  as  much  as  two  men 
could  can-y,  with  figs  and  pomegranates,  the  fruits  of 
the  land— confirmed  their  words.  But  the  picture  had 
another  and  less  cheering  side.  "Nevertheless  the 
people  be  strong  that  dwell  in  the  land ;  and  the  cities 
are  waUed,  and  very  great :  moreover,  we  saw  the  children 
of  Anak  there  "  (ver.  28),  the  di-eaded  descendants  of  the 
traditionary  giants,  whose  very  name  inspired  terror. 
The  report  filled  the  people  with  dismay.  A  nation  only 
just  emancipated  from  a  degrading  slavery,  which  had 
crushed  out  aU  moral  courage  and  patriotic  feeling,  and 
physically  enfeebled  them,  they  shrank  from  the  pros- 
pect of  having  to  contend  with  such  formidable  adver- 
saries.    "  If  the  goodly  land  were  to  be  gained  without  a 


JOSHUA. 


struggle,  or  after  just  so  much  resistance  as  would 
euhauce  tlio  pleasure  of  possession,  they  would  be  glad 
enough  to  go  up  and  possess  it.  But  to  have  to  fight 
for  it,  inch  by  inch,  against  such  tremendous  odds ;  to 
stand  up  against  giants ;  to  meet  in  battle  tribes  ac- 
customed to  war  from  their  youth  ;  to  scale  the  walls 
of  fortified  cities ;— for  this  they  had  no  mind."  Not- 
withstanding all  the  proofs  of  the  Divine  protection 
they  received,  they  were  utterly  destitute  of  any  real 
faith  in  God.  "  Back  to  Egj-pt,"  is  their  cry.  "  Moses, 
the  deceiver,  is  to  be  deposed ;  another  captain  to  be 
chosen  in  his  room ;  and  they  will  return  to  the  land  of 
their  bondage.  If  they  had  to  labour  hard  there,  they 
had  at  lea.st  an  abundance  of  rich  and  varied  food,  and 
were  in  no  danger  of  losing  their  lives  in  battle." 
The  attempt  of  Caleb  to  calm  the  people's  fears  and  in- 
spire com'age,  fails  utterly.  The  disaffection  increases, 
and  swells  into  a  \aolent  insurrection.  Again  the 
noble-hearted  Caleb,  and  Joshua,  who  is  now  associated 
with  him  by  name,  throw  themselves  into  the  breach. 
Regardless  of  theii-  own  personal  danger,  for  "  all  the 
congregation  bade  stone  them  with  stones "  (Numb. 
xiv.  10),  they  boldly  assert  the  truth,  and  use  all  their 
efforts  to  rouse  the  panic-stricken  crowd  from  their 
despondency.  "  The  land,  which  we  passed  through 
to  seai'ch  it,  is  an  exceeding  good  land.  K  the  Lord 
dehght  in  us,  then  he  will  bring  us  into  this  land,  and 
give  it  us.  .  .  .  Only  rebel  not  ye  against  the  Lord, 
neither  fear  ye  the  people  of  the  land;  for  they  are 
bread  for  us  :  their  defence  is  departed  from  them,  and 
the  Lord  is  with  us :  fear  them  not "  (vs.  7 — 9).  In- 
censed beyond  endm'ance  by  this  attempt  to  thwart 
their  rash  resolve,  the  people  are  proceeding  to  open 
violence,  when  a  Di^nne  intei-positiou  saves  Joshua  iuid 
Caleb  from  death.  "  The  glory  of  the  Lord  appeared 
in  the  tabernacle  of  the  congregation  before  all  the 
children  of  Israel  "  (ver.  10).  Immediately  the  Divine 
sentence  is  pronounced  agaiust  the  rebellious  nation. 
only  spared  once  more  from  utter  extermination  by  the 
intercession  of  Moses.  They  are  condemned  to  atone  for 
their  rebellion,  by  a  forty  yeai's'  wandering  in  the  desert, 
until  all  who  had  "  thought  scorn  of  that  pleasant  land," 
and  refused  to  give  "  credence  unto  his  word  "  (Ps.  cvi. 
24),  "  from  twenty  years  old  and  upward  "  (Numb.  xiv. 
29),  should  have  died.  Two,  and  two  only,  are  exempted 
from  the  general  doom,  "Caleb,  the  son  of  Jej>huuneh,  and 
Joshua,  the  son  of  Nun ;  for  they  have  wholly  foUowed 
the  Lord  "  (Numb,  sxxii.  12).  A  more  sudden  sentence 
carries  off  their  ten  companions,  whose  want  of  faith  in 
God's  protection  and  help  had  been  the  original  cause 
of  the  rebellion.  "Those  men  that  did  biing  up  the 
evil  report  upon  the  land,  died  by  the  plague  before  the 
Lord ;  but  Joshua  and  Caleb  lived  still  "  (Numb.  xiv. 
37,  38) ;  monuments  of  the  Lord's  just  severity,  and  of 
his  discriminating  goodness. 

Absolute  silence  envelops  Joshua  during  the  fox-ty 
years  of  wandering  in  the  desert.  He  does  not  I'e- 
appear  till  the  close  of  that  period  when,  on  Moses 
entreating  that  after  he  should  have  been  gathered  to 
his  people,    God   would  not  leave  the    congregation 


without  a  ruler  and  a  guide,  he  is,  by  God's  command, 
solemnly  set  apart,  by  lajnng  on  of  Moses'  hands,  as 
his  successor.  "  The  Lord  said  unto  Mosos,  Take  thee 
Joshua,  the  son  of  Nun,  a  man  in  whom  is  the  spirit, 
and  lay  thine  hand  upon  him;  and  set  him  before 
Eleazar  the  priest,  and  before  all  the  congregation ;  aiul 
give  him  a  charge  in  their  sight "  (Numb,  xxvii.  18, 
19).  But  though  thus  recognised  as  Moses'  successor, 
divinely  commissioned  to  bring  the  children  of  Israel 
into  the  Promised  Land,  he  was  not  to  be  Moses' 
equal.  It  was  only  "  some"  of  his  "houom-  "  that  he 
Wiis  to  put  upon  hun  (ver.  20).  There  was  one  point 
in  which  his  inferiority  was  very  strongly  marked- 
Moses  enjoyed  unrestricted  personal  intercourse  with 
God,  "  face  to  face."  This  iirivilege  was  denied  to 
Joshua.  Eleazar,  the  high  priest,  was  to  be  his  medium 
of  commimication  with  God.  Joshua  was  to  bring  his 
matters  to  the  priest,  and  he  was  to  inquire  of  God 
for  him,  through  the  ordinary  means  of  obtaining  the 
knowledge  of  God's  will.  "  He  shall  stand  before 
Eleazar  the  priest,  who  shall  ask  counsel  for  him  after 
the  judgment  of  Uriin  before  the  Lord"  (ver.  21). 
Even  unrestrained  independence  of  action  was  not 
allowed  him.  "  At  his  (Eleazar's)  word  shall  they  go 
out,  and  at  his  word  they  shall  come  hi,  both  lie,  and 
all  the  childi-en  of  Israel  with  him."  In  all  other 
respects  Joshua  was  to  be  what  Moses  had  been  to  the 
children  of  Israel :  "  accoi-ding  as  they  had  hearkened 
unto  Moses  in  all  things,  so  were  they  to  hearken  unto 
him,  and  to  fear  him  as  they  feared  Moses  all  the 
days  of  his  life "  (Josh.^  i.  17 ;  iv.  14).  Moses  next 
delivers  his  charge  to  his  successor — warning  him, 
with  an  emphasis  which  shows  how  much  there  was  in 
the  prospect  to  damit  the  spirit  of  the  boldest,  to  "  be 
strong,  and  of  a  good  courage  ;"  "  Fear  not,  neither  be 
dismayed;"  and  encouraging  him  with  the  repeated 
assurance  that  "  the  Lord  would  bo  with  him,"  that  "  he 
would  not  fail  or  forsake  him  "  (Deut.  i.  38  ;  iii.  22 ;  xxxi. 
7,  8).  And  then,  in  order  that  a  visible  Dirine  recog- 
nition might  not  be  wanting,  Joshua  and  Moses  are  told 
to  present  themselves  at  the  door  of  the  tabernacle  of  the 
congi-egation,  "  and  the  Lord  said  imto  Moses,  Behold, 
thy  days  approach  that  thou  must  die  :  call  Joshua,  and 
present  yourselves  in  the  tabernacle  of  the  congregation, 
that  I  may  give  him  a  charge  "  (Deut.  xxxi.  14).  There, 
in  the  sight  of  the  assembled  tliousands  of  Isriu^l,  the 
Lord  appears  in  the  well-known  sign,  the  pUlar  of  cloud 
standing  over  the  door  of  the  sacred  tent,  and  J(]slma  is 
solemnly  inaugurated  into  his  office  (Dent.  xxxi.  14.  15). 
He  unites  with  Moses  in  rehearsing  his  parting  song— 
those  swanlike  utterances  of  warnuig  and  encouragement 
which  close  his  ministi-y— in  the  ears  of  tlie  people,  and 
teaching  it  to  them  that  it  might  \)o  "a witness  for  God 
against  them  "  of  the  benefits  they  had  received  from  him, 
and  their  own  duties  and  responsibilities  (Deut.  xxxi.  19; 
xxxii.  44).  This  is  the  last  act  of  a  forty  years'  service. 
Moses  ascends  to  the  top  of  Pisgah  to  behold  the  land  lie 
is  forbidden  to  cuter,  and  to  die.  But  lie  ascends  without, 
Iiuman  oompanionship.  Joshua  is  h-ft  below  to  I'ontiuue 
his  master's  work,  and  to  continue  it  aluue. 


THE   BIBLE   EDTJCATOR. 


MUSIC   OF    THE   BIBLE. 


ET    JOHN    STAINER,    M.A.,    MUS.    D.,     MAGDALEN    COLLEGE,    OXFOED  ;    ORGANIST   OF    ST.    PAUL'S    CATHEDP.AL. 

WIND   INSTEUMENTS. 


CHALIL   OB    HALIL    (THE    PIPE). 

^^^^^HE  iiniversal  usage  of  musical  instru- 
ments of  tliis  class  renders  it  difficult  to 
reduce  an  account  of  them  to  reasonable 
limits.  It  will  he  well  to  state  at  once 
that  in  all  prohahility  the  word  pipe — the  i.v\6s  of 
the  Greeks,  the  tibia  of  the  Romans — included  two 
important  divisions  of  modern  instruments  :  namely, 
reed  instruments,  such  as  the  ohoe  or  clarinet ;  or  simple 
flue  pipes,  such  as  the  flute.  That  this  must  have  been 
the  case  is  evident  from  the  fact,  that  while  there  is 


clarinet  is,  that  the  former  has  a  double  tongue  which 
vibrates,  the  latter  a  single  tongue. 

The  derivations  of  some  of  the  ancient  names  of  flutes 
are  very  interesting :  chalil  or  haliil,  from  a  root  signi- 
fying "pierced"  or  "bored;"  tibia  (Lat.),  from  the  fact 
that  it  was  often  made  of  a  shin-bone ;  •  atdos  (au\os),  from 
the  root  Siu,  avc,  "to  blow,"  exactly  cori'esi)onding  to  our 
flute,  from  the  Lat.  flo,  "  to  blow,"  as  also  flageolet,  from 
flatus ;  calamus  (k6.Auij.os),  clialumeau,  from  the  material, 
just  as  the  Ai-abian  flute  is  called  nay,  "a,  reed,"  of 
which  the  Arabs  have  as  many  as  ten  varieties ;  there 


■-^^s^;^.^^ 


Fig.  46. 


rig.  47. 


Fig.  48. 


unquestionable  o\adenco  that  many  ancient  instruments 
had  reeds,  no  special  name  is  set  apai't  for  tliem 
as  opposed  to  open  tubes  mthout  reeds.  The  very 
existence  of  the  word  yAasaaoKaiiitov  (tongue-box)  shows 
that  the  player  was  accustomed  to  carry  his  tongues 
or  reeds  separately  from  his  instrument,  just  as  our 
modern  oboists  and  clarinettists  do.  It  must  also  bo 
borne  in  mind  that  both  oboe  and  cki-lnet  are  children 
of  one  parent,  and  did  not  become  distinct  classes  until 
the  early  part  of  the  last  century,  the  parent  name  being 
chalmiieau,  from  the  Latin  calamus,  Greek  KiXafnos,  a 
cane  or  rood.  But  wlien  clialumeau  is  translated  "  a 
reed-pipe,"  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  term  is 
applied  to  the  material  of  which  the  pipe  is  made 
(a  cane),  and  not,  as  we  always  apply  the  term  now,  to 
a  pipe  containing  a  reed  or  tongue.  Hence  it  will  be 
seen  that  we  are  no  nearer  the  discovery  of  distinctive 
names  for  these  two  classes  of  instruments,  even  when 
then-  parent  stock  is  found.  It  may  be  worth  men- 
tioning that  the  real  difference  between  an  oboe  and  a 


was  also  a  small  Phoenician  flute  called  gingra  {ylyypa), 
which  is  probably  connected  with  Sanskrit  gri,  "to 
sound."  To  which  of  these  two  classes  did  chalil 
belong  ?  Probably  to  the  former.  There  is  evidence 
from  many  sources  that  the  Hebrews  had  oboes  (see 
Lightfoot.  who  speaks,  in  his  Temple  Service,  of  oboes 
being  used  once  in  each  month),  and  there  seems  to  be 
no  good  reason  for  beHe^'ing  that  they  had  a  distinctive 
term  for  them.  Jalin  thinks  it  prob.ible  that  they  were 
j  very  similar  to  the  znmr  of  the  Arabs,  of  which  there 
are  three  kinds,  not  differing  essentially  from  each 
other,  but  only  in  size  and  pitch,  the  largest  being 
called  an.mr-al-kebyr ;  the  middle  sized,  as  being  most 
commonly  used,  zamr;  and  the  smallest  zamr-el-soghayr. 
Fig.  46  .shows  two  of  these. 

It  is  probably  known  to  the  reader  that  large  and 
small  oboes  have  .always  existed,  .and  are  in  use  at  the 
present  day.  Two  sorts  are  used  in  the  score  of  Bach's 
Passion  Music  (according  to  St.  M.atthew),  called  re- 
spectively oboe  d'amor  (the  love-oboe,)  and  oboe  di  caccia 


MUSIC   OF  THE  BIBLE. 


(liimtmg-oboe) ;  the  part  of  tho  former,  the  smaller  of 
the  two,  cau  be,  and  always  is,  played  on  the  commou 
oboe ;  that  of  tlie  latter  on  the  tenor  oboe  or  tenoroou, 
commonly,  but  very  improperly,  termed  corno-inglese, 
or  the  English  horn.  This  last  instrument  does  not 
terminate  iu  a  direct  bell  ov  pavilion,  like  those  shown 
in  Fig.  46,  but  has  an  upward  turn,  a  form  which, 
curiously  enough,  is  found  depicted  on  monuments  two 
thousand  years  old. 

Of  the  pipes  without  reeds,  like  oiu'  flutes,  there 
always  have  been  two  kinds  :  one  played  by  blowing  in 
one  end,  hence  held  straight  in  front  of  the  performer  ; 
the  other  played  by  blowing  in  a  hole  in  the  side,  hence 
held  sideways.  The  former  was  called  the  fiute  a  bee, 
that  is,  the  flute  with  a  beak;  the  latter,  flaiito  traverso, 
that  is,  the  oblique  flute,  or  flute  played  crossways. 
Fig.  47  is  an  illustration  of  a  flaie  a  bee  in  possession 
of  tho  author,  wliich  was  ^brought  from  Egypt  by 
a  musical  frioud.  It  was  in  the  possession  of  a 
Mahometan  pilgrim,  who  vowed  that  he  valued  it  more 
than  auytliiug  he  owned,  but  who  was  very  willing  to 
part  vnth  it  at  the  sight  of  a  small  siun  of  money.  It 
is  of  cane,  and  is  rudely  ornamented  with  simple 
patterns.  It  seems  closely  aUied  to  tlie  souffarah  of 
the  Arabs.  The  next  illustration  (Fig.  48)  shows  an 
ancient  Egyptian  flauto  traverso  or  piffera  di  canna 
(reed-flute),  as  it  is  described,  in  the  museum  at 
Florence. 

These  instruments  seem,  judging  from  the  specimens 
found  in  Egyptian  sculpture  or  frescoes,  to  have  been 
of  various  lengths,  sometimes  far  exceeding  tho  size  of 
the  flute  commonly  used  in  our  orchestras.  This  goes  to 
prove  that  this  nation  was  wise  enough  to  make  use  of  a 
family  of  flutes,  just  as  we  use  a  family  of  viols.  And 
there  are  many  musicians  who  think  that  we  lose  much 
by  thus  excluding  flutes  of  deep  sonority.  Witliin  the 
last  few  years  an  attempt  has  been  made  to  revive  these 
instnmieuts,  a  concert  lla^^ng  been  given  in  London  at 
which  a  quartett  was  played  by  four  flutes,  treble,  alto, 
tenor,  and  bass. 


Tig.  49. 

Fig:  49  represents  an  Egyptian  playing  on  one  of 
these  oblique  flutes.  The  attitude  will  not  strike  a 
modem  flautist  as  being  either  comfortable  or  con- 
venient, but  there  is  no  accounting  for  the  convention- 
alities of  art.  One  thing  the  ancients  lacked  which 
has  been  of  inestimable  benefit  to  us,  the  use  of  keys, 
ihat  is,  a  simple  system  of  leverage  by  which  holes  in 
the  instrument,  quite  out  of  reach  of  the  length  of  the 
ordinary  human  five  fingers,  can  bo  brouglit  completely 


imder  control,  and  can  bo  closed  or  opened  without 
any  great  disturbance  of  the  position  of  the  hand.  Tho 
thumb,  which  could  not  possibly  close  a  hole  at  the  top 
of  the  instrument  in  former  times,  is  now  able  to  do 
so.  Thus  both  the  compass  of  tho  instrument  and  the 
ease  with  which  it  can  lie  manipulated  have  been  largely 
increased.  It  must  not  be  supposed  that  such  improve- 
ments have  been  rapidly  created.  They  are  of  om-  oivn 
time,  invented  by  Gordon,  perfected  by  the  ingenious 
Bochm.  It  is  strange  that  tliis  oblique  flute  should 
have  been  of  comijaratively  late  revival  iu  Europe.  All 
who  have  seen  copies  of  the  music  of  the  last  century 
must  have  observed  how  jjarticular  ^Titers  were  to  call 
it  tho  German  flute,  as  if  forsooth  it  had  not  been  one 
of  tho  chief  elements  of  sweet  music  many  thousand 
years  previously !     So  often  does  it  happen  that  mau- 


Fig.  50. 

kind  strives  unwittingly  after  a  supposed  novelty,  un- 
aware that  the  same  steps  have  been  trod  before,  the 
same  results  a  long  time  ago  achieved. 

Two  ancient  Greek  flutes,  found  in  a  tomb,  are  pre- 
sei-ved  in  the  British  Museum.  Tlieir  great  age  renders 
the  wood  from  wliich  they  were  made  extremely  frail, 
and  any  rough  visage  would  probably  reduce  them  to 
dust.  (Fig.  50.)  It  is  remarkable  that  flutes  of  the 
exact  shape  of  these  are  not  to  be  found  on  any  known 
monument.  Is  it  possible  that  artists  were  tempted 
to  mould,  if  not  an  ideal  form  of  instrument,  one  not 
of  tho  commonest  kind  ? 

But  bo  this  as  it  may,  the  cmwed  form  of  such  in- 
struments was  very  common  in  tlie  Middle  Ages.  Tlie 
cornetto  curvo  of  the  Italians  seems  to  have  been  used 
in  all  European  countries  under  different  names.  Two 
very  beautiful  instruments  of  this  kind  and  shape  were 
discovered  in  the  cathedral  of  Christ  Cliurch,  Oxford, 
when  the  mnuiment-room  was  being  removed  for  the 
purposes  of  restoration.  They  were  probably  in  use  in 
the  sixteenth  or  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
Like  most  cornetti  cvrvi,  they  are  made  of  wood, 
covered  with  black  leather,  but  so  admirable  is  the 
workmanship  that  a  casual  glanco  would  lead  any  one  to 
believe  them  to  be  of  black  wood.  They  have  the  usual 
number  of  holes,  six  above  and  one  below,  and  are 
elegantly  mounted  in  silver,  on  which  is  engraved  tho 
arms  of  the  college.  Tliey  doubtless  were  the  chief 
support  of  the  treble  part,  at  funerals  or  any  ceremonies 
where  it  was  necessary  to  have  a  musical  procession. 
In  Germany  (says  Engol)  they  were  still  employed  in 
tho  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  (under  the 
name  zinhen).  when  the  town  b.ands  played  chorales,  on 
cortaiu  occasions,  from  the  tower  of  their  parish  church. 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


They  were  played  witli  reeds,  probably  of  the  oboe  or 
double  kiud.  So,  too,  were  these  ancient  Greek  flutes 
(Pig.  50)  reed  iustruments,  but  Fctis  is  of  opinion  that 
they  had  single  tongues,  hko  our  clarinet,  only  he  is 
ineUued  to  think  that  the  tongue  was  of  metal,  not  of 
wood,  because  iu  a  certain  account  given  of  a  trial  of 
musical  skill,  one  player  was  luiable  to  compete  because 
the  reed  of  his  instrument  was  lent.  But  it  is  probably 
assuming  too  much  to  say  that  such  an  accident  could  not 
have  happened  to  a  wooden  tongue,  and  that,  therefore, 
brass  was  the  material  of  which  it  was  made.  One 
tiling,  however,  is  certain,  and  that  is,  that  in  the  earliest 
forms  of  calamus,  the  reed  woidd  naturally  be  of  cane, 
because  it  would  be  simply  formed  by  an  incision  in  the 
surface  of  the  cane  itself,  similar  to  that  made  by  boys 
in  a  piece  of  straw,  when  constructing  that  toy  instru- 
ment dignified  by  pastoral  poets  by  the  name  of 
"  oaten  pipe."  It  is  remarkable  that  the  fiauto  fraverso, 
or  oblique  flute,  as   shown  in  the  Egyptian  di-awing 


night  when  a  holy  solemnity  is  kept ;  and  gladness  of 
heart,  as  when  one  goeth  with  a  pipe  (chalil)  to  come 
into  the  mountain  of  the  Lord,  to  the  mighty  One  of 
Israel "  (I.sa.  xxx.  29).  The  joy  of  the  people  when  the 
cry  "God  savo  king  Solomon!"  promised  a  peaceful 
and  prosperous  reign,  was  shown  by  their  music  ;  "  the 
people  piped  with  pipes,  and  rejoiced  with  great  joy, 
so  that  the  earth  rent  with  the  sound  of  them  "  (1  Kings 
i.  40).  The  chalil  is  not  so  often  mentioned  in  con- 
nection with  the  outpouring  of  prophetic  gifts  as  in- 
struments of  the  harp  class ;  but  yet  when  Samuel  was 
describing  to  Saul  how  he  shoidd  meet  a  company  of 
prophets  ou  his  way  to  Gilgal,  he  described  them  as 
"  coming  down  from  the  high  place  with  a  psaltery 
(nebel),  with  a  tabret  (toph),  and  a  pijje  (chalil),  and  a 
harp  (kinnor)  before  them  "  (1  Sam.  x.  5).  But  these  in- 
struments were  elsewhere  to  be  met  with  than  at  the 
solemn  processions  of  holy  men,  for  the  prophet  Isaiah, 
in  denouncing  the  drunkards  who  "  rise  up  early  in  the 


I'JS.  61. 


,,;;.™w>,,.,»w^i«;v,\V«!.»N.-"";saViW.;»*V."""' 


Fig.  52 


(Kg.  49),  is  not  to  be  found  on  any  Assyrian  or  Chaldean 
monuments.  If  then  the  Jews  used  it,  they  must  have 
adopted  it  from  Egypt,  which  is  also  acknowledged 
to  be  the  source  from  whence  the  Greeks  obtained  it. 
The  chalil  seems  to  have  been  used  by  the  Jews  on 
very  similar  occasions  to  those  at  which  our  ancient 
oboes  played  an  important  part,  most  oft«n  during 
seasons  of  pleasure,  but  sometimes  also  at  funerals. 
Two  pipes  at  least  had  to  be  played  at  the  death  of  a 
wife.  The  pipers,  it  wiU  be  remembered,  were  bidden 
to  "give  place"  by  our  Lord,  when  he  said,  "The  maid 
is  not  dead,  but  sleepeth  "  (Matt.  ix.  24).  One  common 
use  of  the  chalil  was  as  an  amusement  and  recreation 
when  walking  or  travelling.  The  sohtaiy  shepherd 
woidd  cheerily  pipe  as  ho  traced  out  his  long  hUl-side 
walks,  and  the  ijath  of  the  caravan  could  be  traced 
by  the  shrill  echoes  ever  aud  anon  tossed  from  side  to 
side  as,  at  each  new  turn  in  its  many  windings,  f  rownuig 
rocks  beat  back  the  piercing  sounds.  Especially  such 
was  the  case  wheu  thousands  of  persons  were  making 
those  periodical  jouriieys  to  Jerusalem,  so  rigidly  pre- 
scribed by  the  law  :  "  To  shall  have  a  song,  as  iu  the 


morning  to  follow  strong  di-ink,"  describes  then-  wine 
feasts  as  being  enlivened  by  the  sounds  of  the  nebel, 
Hnnor,  toph,  and  chalil  (Isa.  v.  12).  The  prophet 
Jeremiiih,  iu  showing  the  utter  desolation  and  destruc- 
tion of  Moab,  is  inspu'ed  to  say,  "  I  will  cause  to  cease 
in  Moab,  saith  the  Lord,  him  that  ofEereth  in  the  high 
places,  and  him  that  burneth  incense  to  his  gods. 
Therefore  mine  heart  shall  sound  for  Moab  like  pipes, 
aud  mine  heart  shall  sound  like  pipes  for  the  men  of 
Kir-heres.  .  .  .  Tliere  shall  be  lamentation  generally 
upon  all  the  house-tops  of  Moab,  and  in  the  streets 
thereof :  for  I  have  broken  Moab  like  a  vessel  wherein 
is  no  pleasure,  saith  the  Lord."  Could  any  words 
describe  more  touchingly  than  these  the  degi-adation  and 
loss  of  moral  life  which  should  overtake  Moab  H  that  it 
shoidd  be  wept  over  as  one  dead,  piped  over  as  a 
corpse ! 

There  is  no  dii'cct  evidence  as  to  whether  the  Hebrews 
used  the  double  flute.  It  is  quite  cert^iin  they  must 
have  been  aware  of  its  existence,  because  it  was  kno^vn 
to  Phcenicians,  Assyrians,  Egyptians,  and  Chaldees 
before  it  found  its  way  into  Greece.      So  common  is  it 


MUS-IO    OF    THE    BIBLE. 


9 


iu  Romau  aud  Greek  sculpture  and  pottery,  that  all  are 
iamiliar  with  its  form.  The  word  nechiloth  is  under- 
Btood  by  JiJm  aud  Saalchiitz  to  meau  the  double-flute, 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  many  others  consider  iiechiloth 
to  be  the  collective  term  for  wind  instruments.  Some 
consider  that  nekeb,  which  is  derived  from  a  root  sigui- 


easily  have  given  rise  to  the  comparison  implied  between 
the  two  names. 

Such  double-pipes  are  actually  in  use  among  the 
present  inhabitants  of  Egypt.  Two  specimens,  in  the 
possession  of  the  writer,  are  shown  in  Figs.  51  and  52. 
That  iu  the  latter  illustratiou  has  tlu-ee  loose  pieces. 


Fig.  53. 


,-- <-\      -^=v 


Fis.  54. 


Fig.  55. 


Fig.   56. 


fjing  "  to  perforate,"  stands  for  tiie  double-flute  ;  but  as 
this  word  is  rendered  fistula  by  Gesenius,  it  is  not  im- 
probable that  it  may  be  a  syrinx.  The  two  tubes 
forming  the  double-flute  were  called  oddly  enough  male 
and  female,  but  more  commonly  right  aud  left  (dextra 
and  sinistra).  The  former  appeUatiou.  no  doubt,  refers 
to  the  fact  that  one  tube  produces  a  deep  note,  which 
served  as  a  drone  or  bourdon,  while  on  the  other  was 
played  the  tune.     The   difference  in  the  pitch  might 


which  may  be  added  at  pleasure  to  the  "  drone  "  tube  of 
the  instrument  for  the  purpose  of  adjustiug  it  to  the 
key  of  the  tune  to  be  played.  That  iu  the  former  has  two 
similarly  constructed  pipes,  so  that  a  simple  melody 
may  be  performed  iu  two  parts,  much  in  the  same  way 
as  on  the  double-flageolet,  which  at  one  time  was  some- 
what popidar  iu  England,  but  is  now  rarely  seen  or  heard. 
Both  these  examples  are  of  the  simplest  construction. 
The  material  of  which  they  are  made  (mcluding  the 


10 


THE   BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


mouth-pieces  and  tongues)  is  of  river  reed,  cut  uito 
leno-ths,  wliicli  have  to  be  inserted  into  each  other  before 
use.  To  prevent  accidental  loss,  the  separate  parts  are 
connected  by  common  waxed  cord.  These  instruments 
are  called  argJwol,  and  have  distinguishing  titles, 
according  to  tho  length  of  the  drone-tube. 

In  rig.  53  tho  iuequality  in  tho  length  of  tho  two 
pipes  is  very  apparent.  Fig.  .54  shows  that  they  were 
sometimes  used  in  Egyptian  processions  of  a  solemn 
character.  In  Eig.  5.5  is  shown  the  c(qnstnim,  which 
Greeks  and  Romans  wore  to  give  sujiport  to  muscles 
of  tho  cheeks  and  face  whilst  blowing.  In  modern 
orchestras  we  are  perfectly  content  with  tho  quantity 
of  tone  produced  from  our  tube-instruments  without 
the  assistance  of  these  head-bandages. 

An  Assyrian  is  shown  playing  upon  the  double-flute 
in  Fig.  56.  It  is  much  to  bo  regretted  that  no  details 
as  to  the  construction  of  these  instriunents  can  be 
gleaned  from  the  ancient  bas-reliefs.  No  attempt 
seems  to  have  been  made  to  mai'k  even  the  position  of 
the  holes. 

Tho  use  of  the  double- flute  by  nations  with  whom 
the  Jews  had  constant  intercourse  having  been  shown, 
nothinqr  more  can  be  said.     The  reader  must  form  his 


own  opinion  as  to  the  probabUity  of  its  being  rightly 
enrolled  amongst  Hebrew  musical  instruments.  The 
quaUty  of  tone  produced  by  the  reed-pipes  was,  probably, 
very  coarse  and  shrill.  Particular  pains  have  been 
taken  by  modern  instrument-makers  to  produce  delicate- 
sounding  oboes,  clarinets,  &c.  And  with  regard  to  the 
open  pipes,  or  flutes,  of  the  ancients,  it  should  be  borne 
in  mind  that  it  must  have  been  most  difficult  to  produce 
a  series  of  sounds,  either  similar  in  timbre,  or  perfectly 
true  in  pitch,  without  the  aid  of  keys.  Up  to  the  last 
century  certain  holes  in  tho  then  existing  flutes  had  to 
be  only  partially  covered  in  order  to  produce  certain 
notes  in,  tune.  We  must  learn  from  this,  not  to  place 
much  confidence  in  conclusions  drawn  from  actual  ex- 
periments on  old  pipes.  Suppose,  for  instance,  it  were 
attempted  to  discover  the  series  of  scale-soimds  of  such 
an  instrument  by  jilacing  it  in  the  hands  of  a  modern 
performer,  it  would  be  impossible  to  say  whether  any 
noticeable  variations  from  known  forms  ought  to  be 
atti'ibuted  to  the  intentional  design  of  tho  instrument 
itself,  or  to  our  loss  of  those  traditions  which  influenced 
its  use.  But  we  may  have  to  say  something  about  the 
musical  scales  of  the  ancients  when  speaking  further  on 
of  the  vocal  music  of  the  Hebrews. 


BIBLICAL    PSYCHOLOGY. 

ET  THE  EEV.    J.   B.   HEARD,   M.A.,   CAIUS   COLLEGE,   CAMBEIDGE. 


THE    PSYCHOLOGY   OF    SCRIPTURE    PROGRESSIVE. 

^j|^^«gHE  law  of  progress  rims  through  RevoLition 
as  well  as  through  Natui-e.  It  is  always  up- 
ward, from  the  germ  to  tho  bud,  from  the 
blossom  to  tho  fruit.  We  are  not  to  look 
for  the  same  teachings  of  psychology  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment as  in  the  New.  Tho  New  Testament,  as  Augus- 
tine very  well  says,  lies  hid  in  the  Old — the  Old  is  un- 
folded in  the  New.  The  germ  is  in  the  one,  and  the  f  uli 
fruit  in  the  other.  Revelation,  moreover,  is  not  only  pro- 
gressive as  a  whole  ;  it  is  also  harmonious  in  its  parts. 
There  is  a  proportion  or  analogy  of  tho  faith.  Truths 
are  disclosed  gradually  as  the  need  of  them  occurs,  and 
ono  truth  waits  upon  another.  The  relation  between 
difierent  truths  is  so  intimate  that  it  would  be  useless 
to  disclose  one  wlulo  the  other  is  held  back.  As  the 
work  of  tho  Father  prepared  the  way  for  that  of  the 
Son,  and  that  of  the  Son  again  for  the  work  of  the 
Spurit,  so  equally  there  is  the  same  succession  of  truths 
concerning  man  and  his  nature.  As  in  tlieology  wo 
apeak  of  tho  subordination  of  tho  Persons  of  the  Blessed 
Trinity,  so  in  connection  witli  anthropology  there  is 
somethmg  liko  a  corresponding  subordination  of  truths. 
Man's  relation  to  God  as  his  creature  is  the  first  truth— 
his  redemption  is  the  second— and  his  full  adoption  and 
restitution  in  tho  Dirine  image  tho  third.  It  would  only 
make  us  proud  and  high-minded  to  know  of  our  adoption 
imtil  we  have  first  received  tho  redemption,  or  again  to 
know  of  redemption  untU  wo  have   felt  our  fall  and 


ruin.  This  order  must  always  be  attended  to :  "  How- 
beit  that  was  not  first  that  was  pneumatical.  but  that 
which  was  psychical ;  and  afterward  that  which  is  pneu- 
matical "  (1  Cor.  XV.  46).  As  the  first  Adam  was  eartlily, 
and  the  second  Adam  heavenly ;  so  of  the  order  in 
human  nature :  we  first  bear  tho  image  of  the  earthly, 
and  afterwards  the  image  of  the  heavenly. 

This  being  the  order  of  revelation  from  the  lower  to 
the  higher,  we  are  to  expect  this  contrast  between  the 
psychology  of  tho  Old  Testament  and  that  of  the  New. 
Creation,  redemption,  regeneration  are  tho  three  great 
truths  of  anthropology  corresponding  to  tho  three  theo- 
logical truths  of  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost. 
Theology  and  anthropology  advance  step  by  step  in 
Scripture  and  side  by  side.  It  would  be  contrary  to  the 
analogy  of  the  faith  to  find  an  intimation  of  the  spiri- 
tual faculty  in  man  in  anticipation  of  the  work  of  that 
Blessed  Person  of  the  Trinity  whoso  special  ofiice  it  is 
to  discover  man  to  himself  as  well  as  to  reveal  to  him 
the  deep  things  of  God.  Our  Lord  himself  glances  at 
this  thought  in  tho  words,  "  I  have  yet  many  things  to 
say  unto  you,  but  ye  cannot  bear  them  now.  Howbeit 
when  Ho.  tho  Spirit  of  truth,  is  come.  He  will  guide  j'ou 
into  all  tho  truth."  Full  truth  {-Kaaav  ttjv  a.\iiB(iav).  the 
whole  truth  with  regard  to  ourselves  or  with  regard  to 
God,  is  to  bo  communicated  by  the  Holy  Ghost.  If  wo 
reflect  on  tho  relation  of  the  human  to  the  Divine 
Pneuma,  we  shall  see  from  the  nature  of  the  case  that 
the  knowledge  of  the  one  waits  on  that  of  the  other. 


BIBLICAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 


11 


What  is  inspiration  without  the  sense  of  One  to  inspire 
and  breathe  into  us  thoughts  deeper  and  more  divine 
than  any  we  coukl  come  by  of  ourselves  ?  So  it  is  that 
the  spiritual  in  man  waits  for  the  f  uU  dispensation  of  the 
Spirit,  and  it  is  vain  to  seek  for  it  before  its  time  in  the 
order  of  revelation. 

There  is,  moreover,  a  certain  correspondence  between 
the  manifestation  of  the  pneumatical  element  in  man 
in  the  Old  Testament  and  iho  action  of  tho  Divine 
Spirit.  In  both  cases  it  was  occasional,  not  continuous. 
He  is  not  as  yet  the  abiding  Comforter,  such  as  is  pro- 
mised to  be  with  the  people  of  Christ,  to  compensate 
them  for  liis  bodily  absence  and  to  fill  them  with  a 
sense  of  his  spiritual  presence.  The  Spirit  in  the  Old 
Testament  comes  like  angels'  visits,  few  and  far  between. 
The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  descends  and  acts  mightily  on  a 
Samson,  on  a  Saul,  on  an  Elijah.  While  they  are  imdor 
this  spiritual  afflatus  their  strength  is  as  that  of  ten 
men ;  they  run  with  horses,  as  Elijah,  to  the  entering  in 
of  the  gate  of  Jezreel,  and  are  not  weary  ;  they  are  found 
among  the  prophets,  as  Saul ;  and  under  the  sudden  im- 
pulse of  a  new  and  divine  hfe,  they  manifest  powers  not 
only  beyond  but  out  of  the  range  of  their  natural  capa- 
cities. The  most  striking  instance  of  this  action  of  the 
Divine  Spirit  not  only  elevating  tho  human  si^irit.  but 
actually  guiiling  it  and  carrying  it  whither  it  would  not, 
is  the  case  of  Balaam.  Balaam  not  only  utters  words 
boyoud  liis  consciousness,  as  all  tho  holy  men  of  old  did ; 
but  this  unholy  man,  probably  as  a  pimishment  for  his 
taking  tlie  wages  of  iniquity,  is  made  to  utter  words 
against  his  will — he  is  made  to  bless  those  whom  ho  was 
bribed  to  curse,  and  to  curse  those  whom  he  wanted  to 
bless.  The  miracle  of  the  dumb  ass  speaking  with 
man's  voice  is  here  a  sign  of  what  the  Divine  Spirit  can 
do  when  the  humao  spirit,  like  an  untuned  pipe,-  was 
about  to  give  an  imcertaiu  sound.  Tho  dumb  ass  re- 
buked the  madness  of  the  prophet.  There  was  tho 
deepest  irony  in  this  sign  from  heaven.  The  unmelodious 
bray  of  the  ass  was  replaced  by  the  utterance  of  articu- 
late sounds,  or  an  impression  equivalent  to  it,  produced 
on  the  prophet's  mind,  teaching  him.  as  a  Last  warning 
on  his  way  to  oppose  God's  wUl.  that  the  human  pneuma 
is  only  the  pipe  of  the  DiWne  Pneuma,  and  that  so 
mighty  and  powerful  is  that  wind  of  God  that  it  can 
breathe  through  the  most  reluctant  instruments.  It  can 
make  the  wi-ath  of  men  to  praise  Him.  and  then  tho  re- 
mainder of  that  wrath  He  will  restrain.  Balaam's  case 
is  a  solemn  lesson  as  to  the  dependence  of  man  for 
inspiration  from  on  high.  This  inspiration,  it  is  true, 
does  not  change  character.  Ho  that  is  holy  will  ho 
holy  still,  and  lie  that  is  filthy  wiU  bo  filthy  still.  As  a 
general  rule,  it  is  only  holy  men  who  are  the  subjects  of 
heavenly  inspiration,  as  it  is  the  deliberately  wicked  in 
the  other  extreme  who  become  devU-inspired  (Sai/iomiiSris) 
(James  iv.  15).  But  Balaam's  is  an  apparent  exception, 
intended,  perhaps,  to  impress  us  the  more  as  an  exception. 
The  warning  was  needed,  perhaps,  when  prophecy  was 
in  its  infancy,  and  men  were  tempted  to  seek  inspiration 
from  other  sources  than  the  pure  fountain  of  truth. 
By  one  striking  example  men  were  taught  that  the 


human  spirit  was  dependent  on  the  Divine  Spirit.  As 
with  the  lower  so  with  tho  higher  lifo  in  man — "  Thou 
takestaway  their  breath,  and  they  die,  and  thou  renewost 
tho  face  of  the  earth."  It  was  a  true  conception  of  the 
old  heathen  world  that  all  inspiration  was  from  God. 
The  god  of  day  was  also  the  god  of  prophecy,  of 
medicine. 

*'  I  am  the  eye  by  which  the  universe 
Beholds  itself  and  knows  itself  divine. 
All  harmony  of  instrument  or  verse, 

All  prophecy,  all  medicine,  are  mine  : 
All  light  of  art  or  nature  to  my  song, 
Victory  and  praise  by  their  own  right  belong." 

There  is  a  Pantheistic  turn  in  these  lines  of  Shelley, 
foreign  to  the  simplicity  of  the  ancient  world.  Still 
there  is  a  substantial  truth  in  tho  thought  th.at  the  God 
of  natural  life  is  also  tho  God  of  intellectual  and  spiri- 
tual lifo  as  well.  In  Him,  from  first  to  last,  we  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being. 

It  is  instructive  to  trace  tho  connection  between  the 
pneumatical  in  man  and  the  action  of  the  Divine  Pneuma. 
Man  is  everywhere  dependent  for  inspiration  from  on 
high.  Even  Bezaleel  and  Aholiab  only  excel  in  what 
wo  should  call  the  mechanical  arts  by  some  suggestion 
from  the  fountain  of  wisdom.  Mere  cleverness,  that 
Intellectual  idol  of  our  age,  would  be  foreign  to  the  sim- 
plicity of  the  Hebrew  mind.  Wliether  wo  are  really 
gainers  for  having  dropped  those  theological  concep- 
tions of  the  source  of  genius  as  something  impersonal 
and  inspired,  wo  should  be  slow  to  decide.  Certain  it 
is  that  in  the  reaction  from  tho  lUiiminism,  or  worship 
of  tlie  dry  intellect  in  fashion  last  century,  men  have 
returned  to  something  like  tho  old  world  theory  of  the 
dependence  of  tho  human  on  the  Di'vine  Spu-it.  Not  to 
speak  of  supematui'alists  and  mystics  like  Lavater  and 
Jung  Stilling,  we  find  Goethe,  whose  mind,  to  use  a  cant 
phrase,  we  should  describe  as  of  the  Hellenist,  not  the 
Hebraic  cast  of  intellect,  taking  a  view  of  genius  which 
is  on  the  borders  of  the  religious  theory.  He  tells 
us  in  his  autoliiography  that  while  his  mind  was  wan- 
dering about  in  seai-ch  of  a  religious  system,  and  thus 
passing  over  intermediate  areas  between  various  regions 
of  theological  belief,  he  met  with  a  certain  class  of 
phenomena  which  seemed  to  belong  to  none  of  them,  and 
which  he  used  therefore  to  call  demonic  influence.  It 
was  not  divine,  for  it  seemed  tmintellectual;  nor  human, 
for  it  was  no  result  of  understanding ;  nor  diabolic, 
for  it  was  of  beneficent  tendency ;  nor  angelic,  for  you 
could  often  notice  in  it  a  certain  mischiovousness.  It 
resembled  chance  inasmuch  as  it  demonstrated  nothing, 
but  was  like  Providence  inasmuch  as  it  showed  symp- 
toms of  continuity.  Everything  which  fetters  human 
agency  seemed  to  yield  before  it,  and  it  seemed  to  dispose 
arbitrarily  of  the  necessary  elements  of  existence. 

This  magnetic  influence,  which  Goethe  is  at  a  loss 
to  account  for,  and  which  ho  is  not  content  to  define 
.simply  as  genius,  throws  light  on  one  of  the  profoundest 
questions  in  life — ^nz.,  the  relation  of  the  human  to  the 
Divine  will,  and  our  continual  dependenco  on  God,  the 
siiggestio  continna  of  Malebr.anche.  God  may  not  be 
in  all  our  thoughts  consciously,  and  yet   noverthelesa 


12 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


every  deep  and  true  thought  is  a  thought  of  God :  the 
formative  impulse  comes  from  Him ;  it  is  shaped  by 
ourselves,  and  as  it  passes  into  consciousness  we  so  far 
forget  ourselves  as  to  forget  that  all  things  are  of  God  ; 
we  take  the  shaping  of  the  thought  which  is  the  human 
element  for  its  original  suggestion  which  is  divine.  The 
dialectical  faculty,  the  mere  understanding,  thus  de- 
presses the  pure  reason  or  intuition.  We  set  up  to  Ite 
thinkers,  give  ourselves  au:s  as  "  original,"  talk  of  genius 
as  self -inspired,  or  use  a  phrase  like  this  of  Goethe's 
about  a  demonic  influence  which  is  neither  human, 
divine,  nor  diabolic,  but  a  strange  medley  of  all  three. 
Thus  when  we  become  wise  in  our  own  conceits  it  is  the 
same  as  the  poet  says  of  the  hardening  effect  of  \-ice  :— 

"  Ob  misery  on't.     The  wise  gods  seal  our  eyes 
In  our  own  filtli,  drop  our  clear  judgments,  make  us 
Adore  our  errors,  laugh  at  us  as  we  strut 
To  our  confusion.'' 

It  is  something  in  favour  of  our  ago  that  our  wiser 
minds  have  caught  a  glimmer  of  the  great  truth  that  all 
genius  is  inspiration.  We  are  not  prepared  to  admit  in 
the  same  unqualified  way  the  converse,  that  aU  inspira- 
tion IS  genius.  The  Hebrew  and  the  Hellenic  minds 
are  not  varieties  of  the  same  stock,  as  if  human  culture 
took  the  religious  direction  in  one  race,  the  artistic  in 
another,  in  each  case  by  a  native  impulse  of  its  own. 
The  Hebrews  were  by  no  means  heaven-bom  rehgionists, 
as  the  Hellenists  were  heaven-born  artists.  So  far  from 
this,  they  were  stiff-necked  and  rebellious,  ever  starting 
back  into  idolatry;  Mosaism  and  monotheism  were  ideas 
iu  advance  of,  not  merely  abreast  of,  the  Hebrew  mind. 
The  intuitional  school  have  thus  caught  a  glimpse  of  a 
great  truth,  but  distorted  it.  The  true  -v-iew  of  the  case 
is  that  all  things  are  of  God,  and  that  God  has  not  left 
himself  without  a  witness  in  the  heathen  world,  educating 
the  human  race,  or  rather  prepariag  them  under  peda- 
gogues for  the  true  educator,  which  is  Christ.  K  the 
Jaw  given  at  the  dispensation  of  angels  was  only  a  peda- 
gogue (Gal.  iii.  24),  much  more  that  '"  Moses  Atticising," 
as  Plato  is  called  by  Clement  of  Alexandria. 

Thus  all  genius  is  a  kind  of  inspiration,  but  it  is  a  dis- 
tortion of  the  truth  to  assert  the  converse,  that  all  inspi- 
ration is  only  a  mode  of  genius.  To  hold  the  balance  on 
this  question  evenly  between  naturalism  which  con- 
founds the  two,  and  supematuralism  which  too  sharj>ly 
distinguishes  them,  is  not  easy.  Nearly  aU  our  errors 
in  theology  spring  from  not  being  able  to  trace  the 
dividing  line  where  nature  passes  into  grace  and  the 
natural  merges  into  the  supernatural.  These  errors  of 
theology  have  their  root  in  a  defective  psychology.  Su: 
W.  Hamilton's  dictum,  that  no  question  emerges  in  theo- 
logy which  has  not  previously  emerged  in  philosophy,  is 
undeniable.  Perhaps  we  should  add  this  qualification, 
that  these  defective  views  in  philosophy  (or  to  define 
our  meaning  more  exactly,  in  p.sychology)  enter  into  and 
confuse  our  theology.  Tlie  popular  psychology,  which 
is  dichotomist,  has  no  place  iu  it  for  the  religious  in- 
stinct or  the  pueuma.  This  defective  draft  of  human 
nature  leaves  a  whole  class  of  emotions  and  experiences 
which  we  call   spiritual  unaccounted  for.      There  are 


those  three  convictions  concerning  sin,  righteousness,  and 
judgijient  to  come  which  it  is  the  proper  office  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  to  convince  the  world  of  (John  xvi.  8).  But 
the  world  only  judges  by  sense-experience,  and  cannot 
receive  Him  because  it  knoweth  Hiin  not,  neither  seetli 
Him.  It  should  be  the  duty  then  of  theology  to  recon- 
siruct  psychology  on  a  Christian,  i.e.  a  spiritual  basis, 
and  thus  to  lead  the  woi-ld  on  from  its  ovni  spiritual 
intuitions  and  the  light  of  an  awakened  conscience  to 
the  deeper  teaching  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  thus  comparing 
spiritual  things  with  spiritual.  This  the  Church,  on 
account  of  its  meagre  and  defective  p.sychology  founded 
on  a  dichotomy  of  man  which  omits  the  spiritual  ele- 
ment altogether,  to  a  great  extent  has  failed  to  do. 
Through  the  prevalence  of  Augustinianism  in  the  West, 
with  its  harsh  line  of  separation  between  nature  and 
grace,  and  with  its  Tertidlian-like  rejection  of  aU  rela- 
tion between  God  and  the  heathen  world,  and  its  quid 
philosojjMis  ac  Christianus  cry,  we  have  lost  the  link  of 
connection  between  nature  and  grace  in  the  spiritual 
faculties  of  man.  The  conscience  of  St.  Paul's  Epistles 
is  the  link  between  the  two,  the  bridge  across  which  the 
philosophy  of  Greece  was  to  pass  over  to  the  rehgiou  of 
Palestine.  The  Alexandrian  school,  as  we  may  expect 
from  their  position  midway  between  the  two,  saw  this  ■ 
connection,  and  held  to  it  till  theology  lost  itself  in 
subtleties  and  word-quibbles  such  as  the  monophysite 
and  monothelite  controversies.  In  better  times  the  cate- 
chetical school  of  Alexandria,  led  by  a  Clement  and  an 
Origen,  might  have  built  up  a  true  theology  on  the  foun- 
dations of  a  true  psychology.  But  the  Platonic  was  too 
strong  for  the  Pauline  element.  Losing  themselves  in 
confusions  between  the  Impersonal  and  Personal  Logos, 
the  A070S  o-irep/nariicbs  and  Trpo(pof,tKbs,  they  opened  the  door 
to  the  ApoUinarian  error  (it  is  hard  to  describe  it  as  a 
heresy),  that  the  Divine  Pneuma  in  Christ  replaced  the 
human,  thus  mutilating  the  conception  of  his  entire 
himianity  as  perfect  man,  body,  soul,  and  spirit.  The 
denial  of  his  humanity  as  it  was  called,  and  which  has 
been  thought  parallel  to  the  Arian  denial  of  his  true  and 
proper  divinity,  led  to  a  reaction.  The  true  trichotomy 
of  man  into  body,  sold,  and  spirit  fell  into  disfavour 
particularly  in  the  West,  where,  under  Augustine'-s  in- 
fluence, it  was  so  completely  lost  sight  of  that  we  find 
a  Western  creed  (the  creed  very  erroneously  named  after 
Athanasius)  actually  founding  an  argument  for  the  co- 
existence of  two  natures  in  one  person  in  Christ  on 
the  dichotomy  of  the  reasonable  soid  and  human  flesh. 
"  Nam  sicut  anima  rationalis  et  caro  unus  est  homo  ;  ita 
Deus  et  homo  unus  est  Christus."  The  phrase  is  almost 
identical  with  an  expression  of  Augiistiue,  from  whose 
writings  it  was  probably  taken  verbaOy  :  "  Sicut  enim 
unus  est  homo  anima  rationalis  et  caro,  sic  unus  est 
Christus  Deuset  homo."  (For  as  the  reasonable  soul  and 
flesh  is  one  man,  so  God  and  man  is  one  Christ.)  (Aug. 
in  Job.  Evang.  xiv.,  Tract  lxx\-iii.).  Hilary  of  Aries,  to 
whom  this  creed  is  attributed  by  Waterland.  has  the 
same  argument :  "  Sicut  per  naturam  constitutam  nobis 
a  Deo  originis  nostrie  prineipe  corporis  atque  animse 
homo  nascitur :  ita  Jesus  Christus  per  virtutem  suam 


JUDGES. 


13 


carnis  atque  animDe  homo  ac  Deus  esset  liabens  in  se  et 
totnm  verumque  quod  homo  est  et  totum  verumque 
quod  Deus  est."  (As  by  the  nature  giveu  us  by  God, 
who  is  the  author  of  our  being,  man  is  formed  both  of 
body  and  mind  ;  so  Jesus  Christ,  iu  virtue  of  his  being 
constituted  both  in  body  and  mind  man  as  well  as  God, 
having  in  himself  as  well  that  which  makes  him  entirely 
and  truly  man,  and  also  and  entirely  and  truly  God.) 

Now,  however  orthodox  this  theology,  it  is  founded 
on  a  psychology  which  Athanasius  would  have  been  the 
first  to  repudiate.  The  true  conception  of  the  conti-ast 
between  psyche  and  pneuma  was  lost  in  the  West  from 
the  times  of  Augustine  almost  down  to  the  present  day, 
and  the  loss  has  been  one  which  has  reacted  on  theology 
in  all  its  branches.  For  want  of  a  true  psychology 
several  theological  truths  are  obscured  or  rendered 
almost  meaningless.  What,  for  instance,  is  the  meaning 
of  original  sin  unless  we  can  point  out  tliat  part  in 
man's  nature  where  the  defect  lies  ?  It  is  not  iu  the 
sensitive  or  natural  part  of  his  nature  that  the  vitimn 
originis  lies,  unless  we  hold  a  Mauicheau  theory  of 
God  being  the  author  of  evil.  The  defect  is  privative, 
not  positive.  It  is  the  defect  of  the  pneimia  which 
accounts  for  that  otherwise  strange  and  repulsive  doc- 
trine that  man  is  born  in  sin.  So,  again,  regeneration 
is  another  cardinal  truth  of  the  Christian  scheme;  but 
what  do  we  mean  by  it  ?  Neither  body  nor  mind  can  be 
regenerate  unless  a  man  shoidd,  as  Nicrd'nius  asked, 
enter  a  second  time  into  his  mother's  womb  a  id  be  born. 
To  be  born  of  the  Spirit  must  mean  that  the  dormant 
pneuma  l)ecomes  quickened  by  the  DiWue  Pnouma. 
Like  produces  like  :  "that  whicli  is  born  of  the  flesh  is 
flesh,  and  that  which  is  born  of  the  Spirit  is  spii-it." 


So,  again,  the  relation  of  spirit  to  sotd  tlirows  hght 
on  the  intermediate  state  which  otherwise  would  be 
inconceivable.  Again,  the  resuiTection  of  the  body 
is  intelligible  on  no  other  ground  than  this,  that  the 
animating  principle  of  the  body,  which  is  now  psychical, 
will  then  be  pneumatical.  These  are  some  of  the  many 
theological  truths  on  which  a  Christian  psychology  may 
be  expected  to  tlirow  light.  Wliat  wo  contend  for 
here  is  that  the  revelation  of  Scripture  is  progressive 
on  this  as  on  other  subjects.  Light  is  let  in  on  the 
nature  of  man  iu  proportion  as  deeper  discoveries  are 
made  of  the  character  of  God.  Thus  the  theology  and 
the  p.sychology  of  the  word  of  God  are  perfectly  pro- 
portioned and  harmonious.  The  fault  lies  in  ourselves 
tliat  we  do  not  see  them  iu  their  true  perspective.  If 
we  put  ourselves  at  the  right  point  of  view,  we  shall  see 
that  in  Scripture  an  "  increasing  purpose  runs."  From 
the  simplest  account  of  God  as  the  great  El  or  Creator, 
who  has  made  man  a  living  soul  by  breatliing  into  the 
dust  the  breath  of  life,  we  rise  by  regular  stages  of  ad- 
vance to  the  Jehovist  doctrine  of  a  Covenant  God,  the 
Redeemer  from  sin.  The  law  and  the  prophets  in  their 
turn  lead  on  to  that  full  revelation  of  grace  and  trutli 
I  by  Jesus  Christ  bj'  whicli  man  is  brought  back  into 
'  fellowship  with  God  in  and  through  the  communion 
i  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  Tlius  God  the  Creator,  the 
Redeemer,  and  the  Sanctifier  are  the  three  theological 
stages  corresponding  to  which  are  the  psychological  facta 
of  body,  soul,  and  spirit.  Wlien  man  is  thus  sanctified 
wholly  and  entirely  (5A.oT€\e?y  kol  6\6kKt]poi,  1  Thess. 
V.  23),  body,  soul,  and  sijirit.  then  tlie  revelation  is 
I  complete  :  God  is  glorified  in  us,  and  we  are  made 
'  perfect  m  Him. 


THE    BOOKS   OF    THE    OLD    TESTAMENT. 

THE  BOOK  OF  JUDGES. 

BY    THE    REV.    STANLEY    LEATHES,    M.A.,    PROFESSOR   OF    HEBREW    IN    KING'S    COLLEGE,    LONDON. 


Joshua. 


^  HE  Book  of  Judges  takes  up  the  thread  of 
Israelitish  history  from  the  point  at  which 
the  Book  of  Joshua  drops  it,  carrying  on 
the  narrative  of  events  after  the  death  of 
In  doing  this,  however,  there  is  reason  to 
believe  that,  by  way  of  general  introduction,  it  briefly 
reviews  the  condition  of  the  people  for  a  short  time 
before ;  and  it  is  not  improbalile  that  the  \-isit  of  tlie 
angel  to  Bocliim  (ii.  1)  had  taken  place  during  the  life- 
time of  the  conqueror.  This  appears  to  bo  suggested 
by  what  is  said  (ii.  61,  "  And  when  Joshua  liad  let  the 
people  go."  The  book  is  named  from  the  judges  of 
Israel  whose  actions  it  records ;  and  in  Hebrew  the  desig- 
nation of  these  rulers,  Shofeiim,  is  the  name  also  of  the 
book.  The  first  chapter  depicts  the  actual  condition  of 
the  people  at  the  time  when  the  history  opens,  and  is 
quite  consistent  with  those  statements  in  Joshua  which 
represent  the  whole  land  as  being  in  possession  of  the 
Israelites,  and  j-et  large  portions  of  it  as  unsubdued. 
Tlie  second  chapter  describes  what  was  the  persistent 


condition  of  the  people  during  the  whole  period  of  the 
history  of  the  judges.  The  third  chapter  commences 
with  an  enumeration  of  the  unsubdued  races ;  and  at 
ver.  8  the  detailed  history,  properly  speaking,  begins. 
After  this  introductory  portion  the  book  naturally 
divides  itself  into  two  parts — the  first  extending  to  the 
end  of  chap,  xvi.,  and  the  second  consisting  of  the  last 
five  chapters.  This  second  part  has  the  character  of 
an  appendix  to  the  i-est ;  and  instead  of  carrying  on  tlio 
history,  appears  rather  to  relate  episodes  which  must 
have  occurred  in  tlie  earlier  period  of  it.  The  space  of 
time  covered  by  Judges  is  that  which  elapsed  between 
tlie  death  of  Joshua  and  the  death  of  Samson ;  lower 
than  this  the  history  does  not  carry  us.  The  book  is 
connected  on  the  one  side  with  Joshua  and  the  events 
immediately  succeeding  the  occupation  of  Canaan  and 
the  exodus,  and  on  the  other  with  the  First  Book  of 
Samuel,  which  opens  with  a  state  of  things  similar  to 
that  which  is  still  in  existence  when  Judges  ends.  The 
author's  point  of  yieyf  is  very  clearly  indicated  in  chap. 


14 


THE  BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


ii.  11 — 23.  This  is  wortliy  of  study,  not  only  as  showrug 
us  what  he  did  not  propose  to  do,  but  also  what  he 
aimed  at  doing  and  professed  to  do.  For  example,  he 
did  not  propose  to  give  a  connected  history  of  the 
nation  for  a  definite  period,  or  a  picture  of  society,  or 
a  clear  and  fuU  notion  of  the  mode  of  government,  or  the 
like.  All  these  subjects  would  have  been  deeply  iute- 
restkig  to  the  j)hilosopher,  the  sfcitesmau,  the  historian ; 
but  they  are  almost  entirely  disregarded ;  and,  on  the 
contrary,  the  -writer  has  undertaken  to  record  the 
history  of  his  nation  from  a  point  of  view  in  which  he 
claimed  to  bo  conversant  with  the  Divine  purposes  and 
the  Divine  judgment  passed  upon  the  conduct  of  the 
people.  All  that  he  relates  is  to  illustrate  this.  And 
so  the  appendix  records  a  gross  instanpe  of  idolatry,  and 
gives  the  narrative  of  a  brutal  crime,  perhaps  arising 
out  of  the  prevalence  of  such  idolatiy,  together  \vith  the 
distinctive  punishment  that  overtook  the  nation  in  con- 
sequence. It  is  the  more  important  to  notice  this, 
because  of  its  bearing  upon  what  the  Bible  itself  claims 
to  be — namely,  an  account  of  national  and  human  alf au's 
as  they  present  themselves  to  the  Divine  mind.  If 
there  is  reaUy  no  relation  between  the  view  thus  given 
and  that  actually  assumed  in  the  Diidne  judgment,  it  is 
impossible  to  acquit  the  writer  of  a  pernicious  and  mis- 
guiding tendency.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  had  any 
authority  for  the  view  he  took,  then  his  narrative  is 
worthy  of  the  utmost  deference.  The  difference  of 
style  between  the  two  portions  of  Judges  is  probably  as 
great,  if  not  greater,  than  that  wliich  exists  between 
any  other  portions  of  single  books ;  the  ordinary  and 
familiar  use  of  the  consecutive  and  being  substituted 
by  the  use  of  the  past  tense  and  the  subject  abruptly 
without  and,  (see,  e.g.,  xviii.  17,  22;  six.  11,  22;  xx. 
43,  &£.'].  This  is  more  CTOlent  in  the  Hebrew  than  it  is 
in  the  English,  though  it  is  quite  perceptible  even  there. 
The  chronological  indications  also  vary — e.g.,  in  chap. 
x^.-ii.  6 ;  xviii.  1 ;  xix.  1 ;  xxi.  2-5,  we  ha.ve  a  frequently 
reciu'ring  formula,  which  never  occurs  once  in  the 
former  part,  though  wo  might  have  had,  "  In  the  days 
of  the  judges,"  &o.,  as  at  Ruth  i.  I. 

Regarded  natm-ally  as  a  chapter  only  in  the  national 
history,  the  Book  of  Judges  rcpresouts  the  efforts  made 
by  the  people  in  the  development  of  what  afterwards 
became  the  monarchy.  Moses  and  Joshua  had  been 
kings  ui  everything  but  the  name ;  Abimelech  endea- 
voured, but  with  only  partial  success,  to  convert  the 
judgeship  of  his  father  Gideon  iuto  an  hereditary 
monarchy,  and  the  book  which  carries  on  the  histoiy  of 
the  judges  shows  us  how  the  kingdom  of  Saul  found  its 
root  iu  the  supremo  judicial  power  of  Samuel.  Tlie 
period  of  the  judges  was  naturally  a  transition  period 
in  which  the  real  kingly  power  of  Moses  and  Joshua 
was  moulding  and  developing  itself  into  the  hereditary 
monarchy  of  David  and  Jeroboam.  In  tracing,  liow- 
ever,  this  process  of  development,  it  is  very  difficult  to 
eliminate  altogether  any  agency  which  is  not  something 
more  than  merely  human  or  natural.  In  a  succession 
of  twelve  or  fourteen  deliverers  who  continually  rose 
up  at  a  period  of  great  national  depression  and  calamity 


to  rescue  the  nation  and  retrieve  its  fortunes,  the 
people  may  certainly  be  pardoned  for  seeing  the  finger 
of  God  rather  than  the  operation  of  chance  or  the 
unassisted  agency  of  man.  It  is  in  defiance  of  the  whole 
spiiit  of  the  Book  of  Judges  if  we  do  not  acknowledge 
this,  but  still  it  may  be  well  and  instructive  to  note  the 
human  features  and  characteristics  of  which  the  deUver- 
ance  was  from  time  to  time  marked.  For  instance,  the 
first  judge  was  Othniel,  the  nephew  of  Caleb,  the  im- 
mediate companion  of  Joshua,  and  besides  hun  the  only 
Israelite  who  had  survived  the  exodus  and  the  wander- 
ings. He  was  raised  up  in  his  capacity  of  dehverer  in 
answer  to  prayer,  and  was  prepared  for  his  office  of 
judge  by  the  Si^u-it  of  the  Lord  comiug  upon  him.  It 
is  remarkable  also  that  Israel's  fu-st  enemies  after  the 
occupation  of  Canaan  arose  in  the  same  quarter  as  those 
who  overthrew  the  monarchy — viz.,  iu  the  land  of  the 
north-east,  in  the  country  washed  by  the  Tigris  and 
Ein)hrates.  Othniel,  moreover,  was  of  the  tribe  of 
Judah,  and  thus  his  exploits  served  to  keep  in  memory 
the  blessing  of  Jacob  upon  Judah,  as  well  as  to  illus- 
trate the  Di^Tno  injimction  which  had  before  beea 
given,  "  Judah  shall  go  up  first." 

The  next  enemy  that  arose  was  Moab,  and  from  that 
yoke  Ehud  the  Beujamite  saved  his  nation  by  slaying 
Eglon,  the  king  of  Moab.  After  him  we  hear  of  Sham- 
gar,  the  son  of  Anath,  who  delivered  Israel  from  the 
Philistiues.  The  extent  to  which  the  unsubdued 
aboriginal  inhabitants  had  been  suffered  to  increase  is 
shown  very  clearly  in  the  next  oppression  of  Israel.  A 
powerful  foe  arose  in  the  extreme  north  in  the  person 
of  Jabin,  who  is  called  king  of  Canaan,  and  was  master 
of  900  chariots  of  iron.  For  twenty  years  he  mightily 
oppressed  the  children  of  Israel,  imtO  he  was  subdued 
by  Barak,  and  skiin  by  the  treachery  of  Jael,  the  ivife 
of  Heber  the  Kenite.  The  other  judges  mentioned  by 
name  are  Gideon;  Abimelech,  the  son  of  his  concubine, 
who  attempted  to  make  liimseK  king  by  slaying  all  his 
brethren  with  the  exception  of  Jotham  who  escaped; 
Tola,  a  man  of  Issachar ;  Jair,  a  Gileadite ;  Jephthah, 
Ibzan,  Elou,  Abdon,  and  Samson.  Of  these  it  is  only 
Ehud,  Deborah,  Gideon,  Abimelech,  Jephthah,  and 
Samson  whoso  doings  are  related  at  all  in  full. 
The  time  thus  covered  according  to  the  history  is 
as  follows : — 

Tears. 

o 

In  tbp  time  of  Cbuslian-rishatliaim      .         .         * 

„  Othniel 40 

„  Eplon 18 

Ehiul 80 

,,  Jabiu  .         .         ,  .         .         ,20 

,,  Deborah 40 

—206 

Then  we  have  under  Midian,  Anialek,  and  the 
children  of  the  east      .  ....     7 

Under  Gideon 40 

,,        Abimelech         ......     3 

Tola 23 

Jair 22 

—  95 

Again,  there  was  a  servitude  under  the  Philistines 
and  Ammonites    ,         .         ,         .         .         .18 

Frotii  which  the  nation  was  delivered hy  Jephthah, 
who  judged  Israel 6 


JUDGES. 


15 


Then  there  were —  Years. 

Under  Ibzau        .......     7 

„       Elon 10 

„       Abdon 8 

Under  the  Philistines  a  servitude  for  .         .         .40 
And    iinally   the  judgeship    of    Samson,   which 

lasted 20 

—109 


Making  the  complete  total  of 


4,10 


which,  together  with  the  forty  years  of  Eli,  brings  the 
entire  period  of  the  judges  to  "about  the  space  of  450 
years,  till  Samuel  the  prophet,"  assigned  to  it  by  St. 
Paul  at  Autioeh  (Acts  xiii.  20). 

There  is  iu  Judg.  xi.  26  an  independent  mark  of  the 
general  correctness  of  a  large  portion  of  this  period,  for 
we  are  told  that  from  the  occujiation  of  Heshbon  till  the 
time  of  Jephthah  was  300  years,  and  the  numbers  given 
in  the  Book  of  Judges,  from  the  invasion  of  Chushan- 
rishathaim  till  that  of  the  Ammonites,  make  301  years, 
so  that  the  natural  inference  is  that  they  are  substantially 
accurate.  It  is  to  be  observed,  however,  that  we  do  not 
know  the  interval  between  the  death  of  Joshua  and  the 
first  invasion  of  the  land  by  Chushan-rishathaim,  nor 
the  time  that  Shamgar  was  judge  (clearly  for  some 
time,  chap.  v.  6),  nor  the  period  that  elapsed  between 
the  death  of  Samson  and  the  high-priesthood  of  Eli. 

The  time  at  which  the  earlier  pox-tion  of  the  book  was 
written  is  partly  fixed  by  i.  21,  which  says  "  the  Jebusites 
dwell  with  the  children  of  Benjamin  in  Jerusalem  unto 
this  day."  Now  we  know  from  2  Sam.  v.  6 — 9,  that  it 
was  the  expulsion  of  these  Jebusites  from  the  citadel  of 
Jerusalem  which  made  Zion  the  city  of  David,  and  con- 
sequently the  statement  in  Judges  must  have  been 
written  before  the  eighth  year  of  David  when  this  took 
place,  for  at  that  time  the  state  of  things  described  as  con- 
tinuing "unto  this  day  "  ceased.  If  the  writer  had  lived 
under  David,  it  is  fair  to  assume  that  he  woidd  have 
related  the  capture  of  Jerusalem.  He  must  have  written 
before  David's  reign,  and  under,  if  not  before,  the  time 
of  Saul.  The  omission  also  of  the  histoiT-  of  Eli  pro- 
bably shows  either  that  the  writer  lived  in  his  time,  or 
else  considered  it  so  well  known  as  to  need  no  record 
from  him.  But  as  tho  history  of  Eli  embraced  a  j)oriod 
of  foiiy  years,  and  was  followed  by  tho  era  of  Samuel, 
the  latter  alternative  appears  improbaljle.  Tho  internal 
evidence,  therefore,  of  tho  book  itself  gives  us  no  more 
than  an  indication  of  tho  time  after  wliich  the  book 
could  not  liave  been  written.  There  is  an  expression 
used  in  Judg.  viii.  14  which  shows  that  a  young  man 
accidentally  taken  by  Gideon  on  his  march  home,  was 
able  to  write  down  the  names  of  tho  elders  of  Succoth. 
This  is  a  clear  proof,  at  that  early  date,  of  tho  preva- 
lence of  a  fair  amount  of  education  among  the  people, 
and  it  is  surely  not  too  much  to  assume,  iu  the  presence 
of  such  evidence,  that  in  the  time  of  the  author  of 
the  Book  of  Judges  there  were  sufficient  contemporary 
memoranda  of  the  cMef  public  events  ready  at  hand  to 
make  use  of.  As  to  the  time  wlien  tho  appendix  (x\Ti. — 
xxi.)  was  written,  nothing  is  known  or  very  clearly  dis- 
coverable. A  king  may  be  presumed  to  have  been 
reigning  in  Israel  from  tho  recurrence  of  the  phrase 


already  referred  to,  but  not  iu  Israel  as  distinct  from 
Judah.  Supposing  the  two  portions  of  the  book  were 
written  by  one  and  the  same  author,  this  would  leavo 
us  free  to  conjecture  the  reign  of  Saul  as  a  possible 
time  for  its  composition.  We  have  seen  that  it  could 
not  be  later.  The  difference  in  stylo  between  the  former 
and  latter  portions  of  the  book  may  be  easily  explained 
on  the  supposition  that  contemporary  documents  of  some 
kind  existed  and  were  freely  used  by  the  I'esponsible 
compiler,  whoever  ho  was.  The  tone  of  regret  which 
tho  words  "at  that  time  there  was  no  king  in  Israel," 
seem  to  express  at  the  contrast  of  what  had  been  with 
what  was  the  condition  of  the  people  is,  perhaps,  hardly 
consistent  with  the  idea  which  would  otherwise  readily 
occur  to  us,  that  Samuel,  who  had  strenuously  opposed 
the  desire  for  a  king,  was  the  compiler  of  the  book. 
And  yet  during  that  period  there  is  no  one  else  to  whom 
we  can  with  more  appearance  of  reason  assign  it. 

It  appears  from  xviii.  31  that  when  the  second  part 
was  wi-itten  the  house  of  God  was  no  longer  in  Shiloh. 
It  was  David  who  brought  the  ark  to  Jerusalem.  Some 
have  supposed  that  the  omission  of  the  name  of  the 
LeiHtc  in  chap.  xix.  is  in  consequence  of  the  lapse  of 
time.  This,  however,  is  improbable.  We  have  a  some- 
what uncertain  guide  to  tho  time  at  which  the  events 
related  in  the  second  part  happened  from  two  circum- 
stances :  in  Judg.  xviii.  30  it  is  stated  that  Jonathan  tho 
son  of  Gershom,  the  son  of  Manasseh,  was  the  fii-st  priest 
of  the  graven  imago  sot  up  by  the  tribo  of  Dau.  Now 
Gershom  was  the  son  of  Moses,  and  in  Hebrew  the  two 
names,  Moses  and  Manasseh,  when  read  without  the 
vowels,  are  tho  same  but  for  tho  insertion  of  an  n. 
Moreover,  the  word  Manasseh  is  a  various  reading,  tho 
original  word  undoubtedly  being  Moses.  There  was, 
however,  a  strong  prejudice  against  tho  idea  that  the 
gi-andson  of  the  great  lawgiver  should  have  been  tho 
man  to  commence  an  idolatrous  schism,  and  so  tho 
alternative  name  was  suggested ;  but  so  great  was  tho 
reverence  for  tho  traditional  text  that  a  note  was 
added  to  tho  effect  that  tho  n  was  to  be  suspended, 
and  so  to  this  day  it  appears  iu  the  best  Hebrew 
Bibles  printed  in  accordance  with  this  du-ection  "  above 
the  line  : "  thus,  nf  ?p  Now,  if  tho  settiug  up  of 
the  graven  image  by  tho  tribe  of  Dan  occirrred  in 
the  second  generation  after  Moses,  it  is  plain  this 
nan-ative  refers  not  to  a  time  corresponding  to  its 
position  in  the  Book  of  Judges,  but  to  a  period  con- 
temporaneous with  tho  very  earhest  events  recorded 
iu  that  book;  and  this,  indeed,  is  probably  the  case. 
Again,  the  second  episode  recorded  in  chaps,  xix. — xxi. 
appears,  from  xx.  28,  to  have  occurred  iu  the  time  of 
Phiuehas,  the  son  of  Eleazar,  which  is  also  iu  tho  second 
generation  after  Moses  and  Aaron.  Tho  natural  infer- 
ence, therefore,  is  that  both  these  events  recorded  iu 
the  second  jwrtion  of  the  book  are  to  be  referred  in 
point  of  tune  to  the  earlier  chapters  of  the  first  portion. 
They  show  us  veiy  plainly  that  after  the  death  of  Moses 
and  Joshua  there  was  a  great  relapse  in  the  moral  life 
of  the  nation.  Tho  flow  of  the  spiritual  tide  had  risen 
to  its  height,  and  it  was  now  retu-iug.    The  Book  of 


16 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


Judges  is  itself  a  record  of  the  strivings  of  God's  Spirit 
to  redeem  and  re-establish  the  nation.  This  was  only 
effected  by  partial  and  spasmodic  efforts  recun-Lag 
through  a  period  of  many  centuries  till  the  rise  of 
"Samuel  the  prophet."  But  it  is  impossible  to  watch 
those  efforts,  and  not  see  that  they  were  effected  on  a 
plan  and  with  a  definite  purpose.  Wo  cannot  even, 
by  divesting  them  of  all  their  supernatural  accidents, 
reduce  them  to  the  dimensions  of  the  merely  ordinai-y 
and  common-place ;  and  there  are  certain  features  in 
tho  narrative  of  them  which  are  hardly  less  significant. 
For  example,  the  judges  are  termed  "  saviours,"  and  the 
Lord  is  said  to  have  "  raised  them  up  "  (ii.  16,  18 ;  iii. 
9,  15  ;  vii.  7  ;  &c.).  Four  times  we  have  the  mysterious 
manifestation  of  a  Divine  angel,  who  reproves  the  people 
or  raises  up  the  deliverer — e.g.,  ii.  1 — 5  ;  vi.  7,  &c. ;  x. 
10 — 16  ;  xiii.  3 — 23.  And  in  like  manner  the  Divine 
Spirit  is  four  times  said  to  have  come  upon  his  chosen 
agents  (iii.  10 ;  vi.  34 ;  xi.  29 ;  xiii.  24,  25).  It  has 
been  observed,  moreover,  that  these  periods  of  revival 
diminished  in  intensity,  tho  deliverance  of  Othniel  and 
Ehud  being  more  effectual  in  its  duration  than  that  of 
Gideon,  and  that  of  Gideon  more  so  than  Jephthah's, 
and  Jephthah's  more  than  Samson's,  the  last  being 
altogether  of  a  lower  and  less  .spiritual  type,  and  effec- 
tual in  the  death  rather  than  the  life  of  its  agent.  On 
any  interjiretation  the  history  of  the  Book  of  Judges 
shows  us  the  manifold  grace  of  God  condescending  to 
employ  manifold  and  diverse  agencies  to  accomplish  tho 
.salvation  and  regeneration  of  his  people,  and  ever  with 
the  same  recurring  combination  of  success  and  failure  : 
success  as  far  as  regards  the  deliverance  achieved,  but 
failure  as  regai'ds  the  meradieable  tendency  of  the  people 
to  relapse  and  fall  away. 

Another  indication  of  the  date  of  the  composition  of 
the  book  requires  to  be  noticed.  lu  xviii.  30  Jonathan 
and  his  sons  are  stated  to  have  been  "  priests  to  the  tribe 
of  Dan  until  tho  day  of  the  captivity  of  the  land."  At 
first  .sight  this  looks  like  a  reference  to  the  captivity  of 
Shahnaneser,  or  Esarhaddon,  if  not  of  Nebuchadnezzar, 
in  which  case,  of  course,  a  very  late  period  of  compo- 
sition might  be  assigned  to  Judges.  But  it  is,  to  say 
the  least,  extremely  douljtful  wliether  this  is  the  most 
natural  meaning  of  the  phrase.  For  instance,  the  very 
next  verse  gives  another  note  of  time  which,  how- 
ever, can  hardly  be  other  than  synchronous  with  the 
former  one,  and  this  is  "  all  the  time  the  house  of  God 
was  in  Shiloh."  In  Jer.  xxvi.  6  Shiloh  is  used  as  a 
proverbial  example  of  desolation,  and  from  the  way  in 
which  the  captm'e  of  the  ark  is  spoken  of  (1  Sam.  iv. 
22;  vii.  2)  it  is  most  likely  that  tho  captivity  of  the 
land,  which  involved  the  capture  of  the  ark  and  the 
desolation  of  the  tabernacle  at  Shiloh,  is  the  capti-vdty 
here  intended.  (Comp.  also  Ps.  Ixxviii.  60,  &c.,  and 
1  Chrou.  xvi.  34,  35.)  Indeed,  it  is  hardly  jiossible  to 
imagine  that  a  centre  of  idolatrous  worship  such  as  this 
in  the  tribe  of  Dan  should  have  been  permitted,  though 
at  tlic  northern  confines  of  the  country,  all  the  time  of 
David  and  Solomon,  not  to  s.ay  of  Hezekiah,  and  the 
other  reforming  kings.     Wo  conclude,  thurefors,  that 


there  is  no  proof  in  this  expression  of  a  later  origin 
than  the  proximate  one  already  assigned  to  the  Book  of 
Judges.  The  Speaker's  Commentary,  however,  takes  a 
different  view  both  of  this  matter  and  of  the  date  of 
the  book. 

That  the  writer,  whoever  he  was,  had  access  to 
original  docimients  of  some  kind  is  proved  by  his  in- 
sertion of  the  song  of  Deborah :  and  the  faitlif ulness 
^vith  which  he  made  use  of  his  materials  is  shown  by 
the  phrase  x.  4 ;  xii.  14,  which  is  original  in  the  song  of 
Deborah  (v.  10.)  Several  of  the  statements  in  Judges 
also  are  confirmed  in  other  books  {e.g.,  Judg.  iv.  2,  vi. 
14,  X.  1,  in  1  Sam.  xii.  9—12 ;  Judg.  ix.  53  in  2  Sam. 
xi.  21).  Tho  Psalms  not  only  allude  to  Judges  (cf. 
Ps.  Ixxxiii.  11  and  Judg.  vii.  25),  but  copy  from  it  entire 
portions,  as  Ps.  kviii.  8,  9,  and  Ps.  xcvii.  5,  which  are 
borrowed  from  Judg.  v.  4,  5.  Philo  and  Josephus 
knew  the  book  and  made  use  of  it,  and  the  New  Testa- 
ment alludes  to  it  in  several  passages  (cf.,  e.g..  Matt.  ii. 
13 — 23  with  Judg.  xiii.  5;  xvi.  17  :  so  also  Acts  xiii.  20 ; 
Heb.  xi.  32).  This  recognition  is  otir  warrant  for  its 
position  in  the  canon.  The  intonial  proofs  of  its  veracity 
are  also  numerous.  After  the  death  of  Joshua,  the 
Hebrew  nation  had,  by  their  repeated  victories,  gained 
courage,  and  the  natural  consequence  of  their  position 
was  security.  Instead  of  exterminating  their  enemies, 
as  they  had  been  commanded,  they  put  them  under 
tribute,  and  turned  their  thoughts  to  agriculture  and 
tho  cultivation  of  the  land.  The  natural  result  of  this 
was  the  development  of  an  unwarlike  disposition,  and 
efforts  on  the  part  of  their  enemies  to  throw  off  the 
yoke  of  conquest.  In  iii.  27  it  is  the  hardy  inhabi- 
tants of  Mount  Ephraim  only  who  rise  to  the  caU  of 
Ehud,  and  many  abode  quietly  with  their  herds  when 
Barak  ("the  Hghtning-flash ")  called  to  arms  against 
Sisera  (v.  14,  15,  17,  23).  Gideon  could  use,  or  was 
allowed  to  use,  only  300  out  of  32,000.  No  writer  at 
that  early  age  could  have  taken  off  the  characteristic 
features  of  tho  people  in  this  way  so  strictly  according 
to  fact,  and  therefore  we  conclude  the  book  is,  as  it 
professes  to  be,  a  veritable  history. 

Certain  passages  in  Judges  are  almost  identical  with 
others  in  Joshua — e.g.,  the  grant  to  Caleb  (Judg.  i.  10 
—15,  20,  21)  is  repeated  from  Josh.  xv.  14—19,  13,  63. 
So  Judg.  i.  27,  29  corresponds  to  Josh.  xvii.  12,  xvi.  10 ; 
Judg.  ii.  7 — 9  to  Josh.  xxiv.  29 — 31.  The  conquest  of 
Laish,  related  in  Judg.  xviii.,  is  referred  to  in  Josh, 
xix.  47,  where,  however,  it  is  eaDed  Leshem.  The 
more  differences  of  these  passages,  perhaps,  show  that 
they  are  independent  records,  or  that  they  are  borrowed 
iudepeudently  from  the  same  record.  It  is  vain  to  specu- 
late ujion  the  actual  case,  and  equally  vain  to  dogmatise 
upon  it  as  men  have  done.  It  is,  however,  to  be  observed 
that  as  the  liistory  of  Judges  claims  to  have  occurred 
after  tho  time  of  Joshua,  so  tho  composition  of  the  work 
presupposes  that  of  Joshua  (cf .,  e.g.,  Judg.  ii.  20,  21  with 
Josh,  xxiii.  16,  13 ;  Judg.  v.  17  with  Josh.  xiii.  29 — 31, 
xix.  20, 31 ;  Judg.  v.  20  with  Josh.  x.  11,  &c.  It  is  not  pos- 
sible to  conceive  that  the  Book  of  Judges  being  written, 
tho  Book  of  Joshua  was  compiled  subsequently,  to  supply 


JOSHUA. 


17 


the  gap  iu  the  history.  But  even  more  evident  is  it 
that  the  entire  history  of  the  Pentateuch  must  have 
existed  in  substance  as  we  now  have  it  at  the  time  when 
Judges  was  written,  not  to  say  at  the  time  when  the 
events  recorded  iu  Judges  occm-red.  For  example,  the 
history  and  existence  of  the  Pentateuch  is  involved  iu 
the  first  two  chapters  of  Judges.  Whether  we  regard 
these  as  a  preface  to  the  rest  of  the  book,  and  written 
subsequently  to  it  or  not,  matters  not.  It  is  inconceiv- 
able that  the  writer  of  these  chapters  shoidd  not  have 
had  the  history  of  the  Pentateuch,  aud  probably  that  of 
the  Book  of  Joshua,  bcfo:;e  him.  (Cf.  Numb.  xiv.  2-i  ; 
Deut.  i.  36 ;  Josh.  xiv.  9 — 14,  for  tlie  antecedents  of 
Caleb,  vriih  Judg.  i.  20.  Cf.  Deut.  vii.  2;  xii.  3,  with 
Judg.  ii.  3.  Cf.  Deut.  vii.  16—26  ;  Exod.  xxiii.  33.) 
The  whole  of  the  second  chapter  of  Judges  implies  the 
written  law,  and  Judg.  iii.  4  exjjlicitly  refers  to  it.  With 
Judg.  V.  4, 3  cf .  Deut.  xxxiii.  2 ;  xxxii.  1, 3.  The  whole  of 
Deborah's  song  is  on  the  model  of  Gen.  xlix.  and  Deut. 
xxxiii.,  and,  if  so  recognised,  is  a  proof  of  the  existence 
of,  aud  acquaintance  with,  those  highly  poetical  compo- 
sitions iu  her  time  if  the  song  is  acknowledged  as  hers, 
or  as  coutomporaueous  with  her.  Jndg.  vi.  8  is  a  brief 
summary  of  the  history  of  Exodus  aud  that  of  Joshua. 
Judg.  xi.  13  refers  expressly  to  events  recorded  m  Numb. 
xxi.  2-i,  25,  26;  Judg.  xi.  17  to  Numb.  xx.  17;  Judg.  xi.  19 
to  Numb.  xxi.  21,  and  Deut.  ii.  26.  The  whole  of  this 
message  of  Jephthah  is  thick  with  references  to  the 
Pentateuchal  history,  aud  if  it  is  genuine,  as  there  is  no 
reason  to  doubt,  it  implies  a  knowledge  of  the  facts  in 


the  king  of  Ammon  also.  But  Judg.  xi.  35  refers  to  the 
legal  enactments  of  Numb.  xxx.  2,  and  Judg.  xiii.  5 
implies  the  habitual  practice  of,  and  therefore  a  long 
acquaintance  with,  the  law  of  the  Nazarite  in  Numb.  vi.  2. 
It  seems  very  difficult  to  set  aside  the  bond  fide  inde- 
pendent evidence  that  is  involved  here.  Unless  we 
reject  the  natural  incidents  of  the  story  of  Samson,  we 
have  proof  that  the  enactments  of  the  Pentateuch  were 
in  force  then,  were  consequently  iu  existence  then,  and 
were  then  of  sufficient  antiquity  to  claim  observance,  in 
virtue  of  their  association  with  the  name  of  Moses,  and 
the  authority  they  derived  from  him,  which  would  liave 
attached  to  no  one  else.  It  is  needful  to  observe  that, 
contrary  to  the  view  here  taken,  wldch  is  corroborated  by 
St.  Paul's  sermon  at  Antioch,  the  history  of  the  Judges, 
in  the  opinion  of  some  critics,  comprises  a  much  shorter 
period  of  little  more  than  150  years.  In  this  case  it  is 
understood  that  the  various  periods  of  rest  and  servitude 
which  are  specified  were  not  consecutive  but  contemi)o- 
raneous,  that  they  concerned  different  portions  of  the 
same  countiy  at  the  same  time,  aud  that  different  judges 
were  ruliug  iu  different  parts  aud  districts  at  the  same 
time.  The  wliole  question  of  Biblical  chronology  is  one 
of  the  most  involved,  aud  it  would  be  out  of  place  to 
enter  into  it  here.  The  expression  of  St.  Paul  probably 
represented  the  then  traditional  view,  and  the  several 
difficulties  arising- from  genealogies  and  other  dates 
given  in  Scripture,  the  long  period  of  time  involved,  and 
the  like,  were,  doubtless,  not  less  obvious  to  him  and 
his  instructors  than  they  are  to  ourselves  now. 


SCRIPTURE    BIOGRAPHIES. 

JOSHUA  (coniinued). 

EY   THE    KEV.    EDMUND    VENABLES,    SI.A.,    CANON    BESIDENTIAKT    AND    PKECENTOK   OF    LINCOLN. 


III. — CONQTTEST    AND    SETTLEMENT    OF    CANAAN. 

)EVER,  to  quote  an  eloqneBt  writer  of  our 
own  time,  who  has  done  more  than  any 
living  man — almost  more  than  any  mau 
of  any  age — to  make  Scrii)ture  history  a 
living,  breathing  reality' — "never,  in  the 
history  of  the  chosen  people,  could  there  have  been  such 
a  blank  as  that  when  they  became  conscious  that  '  Moses, 
the  servant  of  the  Lord,  was  dead.'  He  who  had  been 
their  leader,  their  lawgiver,  their  oracle,  as  far  back  as 
their  memory  could  reach,  was  taken  from  them  at  the 
very  moment  when  they  seemed  most  to  need  him.  It 
was  to  fill  up  this  blank  that  Joshua  was  called."  "  The 
lawgiver  had  done  his  part  ;  the  warrior  succeeded  to 
the  admmistration  of  aifairs,  and  to  the  directing  inter- 
course with  God."-  He  steps  forward  with  cheerful 
courage  as  the  mau  of  hope— the  man  of  action.  AU 
lurking  diffidence  is  immediately  dispelled  by  the  assu- 
rance of  God :  "  As  I  was  with  Moses,  so  I  wiU  be  with 
thee :  I  will  not  fail  thee,  nor  forsake  thee."     He  at 

^  Stanley,  Lectures  on  the  Jeieish  Church,  vol.  i.,  p.  225. 
*  Dean  Milman,  Eistortj  of  the  Jews,  bk.  v, 

26 — VOL.  II. 


once  assumes  t!ie  command,  and  issues  his  orders,  an  \ 
his  position  is  recognised  without  hesitation.  "All 
that  thou  commandest  us  we  will  do,  and  whithersoever 
thou  sendest  us,  will  we  go  "  (.losh.  i.  16). 

Tlie  host  of  Israel  was  still  on  the  eastern  side  of 
Jordan.  Tlie  first  step  in  the  fulfihnont  of  Joshua's 
commission  was  to  carry  the  people  over  that  river: 
"  Arise,"  is  God's  first  word  to  him,  "  go  over  this 
Jordan,  thou,  and  all  this  people,  unto  the  laud  which  I 
do  give  to  them  "  (Josh.  i.  21.  The  command  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  accompanied  with  any  intimation  of 
the  manner  in  which  the  river,  then  at  its  full,  was  to 
bo  crossed.  But  Joshua  had  long  since  learnt  that 
whatever  God  enjoins  he  renders  possible  to  those  who 
in  simple  faith  seek  to  obey.  If  Ho  bade  Israel  go  over 
the  river,  the  way  to  do  so  would  be  opened  when  they 
set  themselves  to  do  his  bidding. 

But  there  was  something  to  be  done  before  Joshua 
took  Israel  over  the  river.  The  crossing  of  Jordan, 
though  in  one  sense  an  end,  in  another  sense  was  only 
a  beginning.  It  was  the  end  of  their  forty  years'  wan- 
dei'ing  in  the  wilderness,  but  it  was  the  beginning  of 


18 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


the  conflict  whicli  was  to  put  them  in  possession  of 
Canaan  ;  and  this  conflict  was  likely  to  be  a  severe  one. 
The  Lord  had  promised  to  fight  for  them ;  but  they 
would  none  the  less  have  to  fight.  The  fulfilment  of 
God's  promise  was  coudition.al  on  their  own  jierform- 
ances.  Jericho,  the  key  of  Western  Palestine,  would 
opiDOse  the  first  obstacle  to  the  onward  march  of  Israel. 
Future  success  or  failure  would  mainly  depend  on  the 
result  of  their  operations  there.  As  a  wise,  far-sighted 
general,  therefore,  does  Joshua,  as  a  first  step,  send  two 
spies  to  reconnoitre  the  strength  of  this  city.  They, 
like  the  lion-faced  Gadites  in  David's  days  (1  Chron. 
xii.  8,  15),  swam  the  swollen  river,  at  the  fords,  and 
entered,  not  unobserved,  the  doomed  city.  Concealed, 
at  the  peril  of  her  life,  by  the  faithfid  harlot,  they 
returned  to  the  camp  with  tidings  full  of  encoiu'age- 
ment.  "So  the  two  men  returned,  and  passed  over, 
and  came  to  Joshua  the  son  of  Nun,  and  told  him  aU 
things  that  befell  them:  and  they  said  unto  Joshua, 
Truly  the  Lord  hath  delivered  iuto  our  hands  all  the 
land ;  for  even  aU  the  inhabitants  of  the  country  do 
faint  because  of  us"  (Josh.  ii.  23,  24). 

A  demoralised  enemy  is  a  more  than  half-conquered 
enemy.  The  report  of  the  spies  decided  Joshua  to  delay 
no  longer,  but  to  profit  at  once  by  the  existing  panic  : 
and  ho  issued  his  orders  for  the  immediate  crossing  of 
the  river.  The  enormous  host,  amounting  to  more 
than  two  millions — 601,730  was  the  nimi'ber  of  adult 
males  retm-ncd  at  the  census  in  the  plains  of  Moab 
(Kumb.  xxvi.  51) — descends  from  Shittini,  the  acacia 
groves  which  line  the  upper  terraces  of  the  vaUey  on 
either  side  of  the  river,  to  the  bank  of  the  surging 
stream  (iii.  1).  Arrived  there,  a  delay  of  three  days 
intervenes — an  interval  none  too  long  for  the  com- 
pletion of  the  necessary  preparations,  now  that  they 
were  about  to  quit  the  comparative  security  of  the 
wildcrnei^s,  and  enter  on  a  hostile  territory. 

Wo  can  well  picture  to  ourselves  the  wonder,  not 
unmixed  with  dismay,  with  which  the  Israelites  must 
have  looked  across  the  flooded  river,  filling  the  whole 
of  the  lower  trough,  and  overflowing  tho  dense  jimgle 
of  tamarisks  and  willows  wliich  clothes  the  inferior 
terrace — "  tho  sweUilig  of  Jordan "  of  tho  prophet 
Jeremiah  ( Jer.  xii.  5 ;  xlLx.  19 ;  1.  44) — to  the  green 
terraces  fringing  the  yellow  desert  plains  beyond,  and 
have  asked  how  the  passage  was  to  be  effected- 

"  Sweet  fields  beyonfl  tlio  swelling  flood 
Stand  dressed  in  living  grreen  j 
So  to  the  Jews  old  Canaan  stood. 
While  Jordau  rolled  between." 

At  the  end  of  these  three  days  of  suspense  Joshua  sent 
officers  through  the  host  to  communicate  his  instruc- 
tioiLS.  Tho  passage  was  to  be  distinctly  miraculous. 
"  To-morrow  the  Lord  wUl  do  wonders  among  you " 
(iii.  5).  The  visible  agency  was  to  be  that  of  "  the  ark 
of  the  covenant;" — that  was  to  lead  tho  van.  The 
removal  of  the  ark  w.as  to  bo  the  signal  for  tho  breaking 
np  of  the  encampment.  Wlien  they  saw  that  token  of 
Jeliovah's  presence,  borne  aloft  on  the  shoulders  of  tho 
Levites,  quit  its  place  of  greatest  security  in  tho  centre 


of  the  camp  and  advance  towards  the  river,  they  were 
to  "  remove  from  their  pLace,  and  go  after  it"  (iii.  3). 

An  order  of  deep  significance  was  to  be  first  obeyed : 
"  Sanctify  yourselves,  for  to-morrow  the  Lord  will  do 
wonders  among  you."  Tho  entrance  of  God's  peculiar 
peoiJe  into  the  Land  of  Promise  must  be  prepared  for 
by  ceremonial  purification.  All  outward  pollution  must 
bo  put  away.  How  forcibly  does  this  recall  warnings 
relating  to  that  "  better  eoimtry,  even  a  heavenly  one," 
of  which  the  earthly  Canaan  was  but  the  type.  How 
does  tho  external  purity  enjoined  by  Joshua,  before 
the  chUdi-en  of  Israel  could  be  permitted  to  enter 
their  earthly  inheritance,  remind  us  that  "  without 
holiness  no  man  shall  see  the  Lord ;"  and  that  into  the 
heavenly  city  "  there  shall  in  no  wise  enter  anytMng- 
that  defileth"  (Heb.  xii.  14;  Rev.  xxi.  27). 

The  circumstances  of  the  passage  are  too  solemn,  too 
instructive,  to  be  hurried  over.  In  all,  Joshua,  the 
type  of  Jesus,  "the  Captain  of  oui-  salvation,"  appears 
as  the  leader  and  commander  of  the  people.  His  is  the 
directing  mind^his  the  authoritative  voice. 

The  ark  of  the  covenant — that  symbol  of  the  presence 
of  Jehovah  with  his  covenant  people,  that  type  of  Jesus, 
the  propitiation  of  a  "  better  covenant " ' — preceded  the 
host,  borne  on  the  shoulders  of  the  Legates.  The 
people  remained  behind,  high  up  on  the  banks,  nearly  a 
mile  in  tho  rear,  following  with  eager  eyes  the  sacred 
coffer,  as  its  bearers  descended  into  the  ravine  and  ap- 
proached the  rushing  waters  of  the  Jordan.  Suddenly, 
as  the  feet  of  the  Lovites  "  were  dipped  in  the  brim 
of  the  water,"  the  whole  river-bed  was  laid  dry.  "  The 
waters  which  came  down  from  above,"  held  back  in  their 
rapid  descent  from  the  Lake  of  Galilee,  and  piled  up 
by  the  almighty  hand  of  God,  "stood  and  rose  up  upon  a 
heap."  The  waters  that  were  going  down  to  the  J  )ead 
Sea  "  failed  and  were  cut  off  "  from  the  source  that 
supplied  them,  lea^-ing  bare  the  whole  channel,  above 
and  below,  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach.  Down  the 
green  teiraces,  across  the  oozy  channel,  among  the  huge 
stones  that  strewed  its  bed— some  of  which,  at  Joshua's 
command,  were  afterwards  erected  into  a  monumental 
cairn  at  Gilgal ;  others  forming  a  similar  memorial  on 
the  spot  where  the  priests'  feet  first  touched  the  water  . 
— the  mighty  host  pass  in  safety,  yet  not  without  a 
natural  fear.  "  The  people  h.asted  and  passed  over," 
(iv.  10),  each,  as  he  was  nearest  to  tho  stream,  hurrjnng 
doivn  the  sloping  banks,  and  rtishing  across  to  tho  other 
side,  lest  he  should  be  surprised  by  tho  returning  waters. 
Tlien,  when  tho  whole  multitude  had  passed  over,  tho 
ark,  which  had  hitherto  stood  motionless  on  the  eastenx 
bank,  on  the  Levites'  shoulders,  descends  into  the  bed 
and  mounts  the  other  side  of  the  ravine.  As  soon 
as  it  has  reached  a  i^lace  of  perfect  security,  and  "  tho 
soles  of  the  priests'  feet  were  lifted  up  imto  the  dry 
land  " — the  miracle  ceasing  the  instant  the  necessity 
for  it  ce.ased — the  imprisoned  waters  set  free  from 
the  restraining    Hand,    "returned  unto  their    place, 

^  The  word  t\ao-T,/pu)v,  siffaifyingr  "  the  mercy-seat,"  and  so 
translated  in  Heb.  is. 5,  is  rendered  "  propitiation"  when  referring: 
to  the  sacrifice  of  Jesus  (Rom.  iii.  25). 


THE    HISTORY    OP    THE    ENGLISH    BIBLE. 


19 


and  flowed  over  all  his  banks,  as  ihoj  did  before  " 
(chap.  iv.  18). 

The  importance  of  this  miracle  can  liardly  be  over- 
estimated. The  people  were  now  about  to  cuter  ou  a 
fresh  stage  of  their  national  existence,  and  that  under 
a  new  leader.  On  the  issue  of  the  next  few  days  or 
weeks  would  depend  whether  they  should  become  the 
masters  of  that  goodly  land,  "flowing  with  milk  and 
honey,"  which  had  been  the  earliest  dream  of  their 
childhood,  or  be  crushed  by  its  warlike  inhabitants ; 
either  reduced  to  slavery,  or  utterly  destroyed,  so  that 
they  should  "  be  no  more  a  people,  and  the  name  of 
Israel  should  be  no  more  in  remembrance."  "  Would 
the  Lord  be  with  them  indeed  ?  Woidd  he  fight 
for  them  as  of  old  ?  Would  ho  work  wonders  for 
thorn  by  the  hand  of  Joshua,  as  ho  had  done  by  the 
hand  of  Moses?"  The  assm-anco  of  the  continued 
pi-esence  and  protection  of  Jehovah,  afforded  by  the 
drying  up  of  Jordan,  was  exactly  what  was  needed  to 
encourage  their  fainting  hearts,  and  secure  for  Joshua, 
accredited  by  so  mighty  a  sign,  the  loyal  allegiance  of 
the  people.  This  is  the  light  in  which  this  miracle  is 
set  before  us  in  the  words  of  God  to  Joshua.  "  This  day 
will  I  begin  to  magnify  thee  in  the  sight  of  all  Israel, 
that  they  may  know  that,  as  I  was  with  Moses,  so  I  will 
be  with  thee  "  (iii.  7) ;  and  the  result  tallied  with  it. 
"  On  that  day  the  Lord  magnified  Joshua  in  the  sight  of 
all  Israel ;  and  they  feared  him,  as  they  feared  Moses, 
all  the  days  of  his  life  "  (iv.  14).  Another  purpose  to 
be  answered  by  this  exercise  of  the  Divine  power  in 
behalf  of  Israel,  was  to  deepen  the  feeling  of  discourage- 
ment already,  as  we  have  seen,  existing  in  the  minds  of 
the  Canaauites,  and  thus  prepare  for  then'  easier  and 
complete  overthrow.  Tliat  this  was  the  effect  of  this 
miracle  is  plainly  stated  by  the  sacred  liistorian.  "And 
it  came  to  pass,  when  all  the  kings  of  the  Amoritos, 
which  were  on  the  side  of  Jordan  westward,  and  aU  tho 
kings  of  tho  Canaauites,  which  were  by  the  sea,  heard 
that  the  Lord  had  dried  up  the  waters  of  Jordan  from 
before  tho  children  of  Israel,  until  we  were  passed  over, 
that  their  hearts  melted,  neither  was  there  spirit  in 
them  any  more,  because  of  the  children  of  Israel." 
That  was  no  idle  or  gratuitous  display  of  power,  which 
afforded  to  the  Canaauites,  to  Israel,  and  to  Joshua 
himself,  such  unmistakable  evidence  that  "  the  living 
God,  the  Lord  of  all  the  earth," — no  dead  idol,  or  mere 
local  deity — was  among  them,  "  and  that  he  would  not 
fail  nor  forsake  them  "  (iii.  10,  11 ;  i.  5). 


The  first  two  acts  of  Joshua  ou  his  entrance  as  the 
leader  of  Israel  ou  the  Land  of  Promise  wei-e  of  deep 
significance  ;  they  intimate  a  distinct  recognition  of  the 
new  position  of  tho  people.  Hitherto,  since  their  rebel- 
lion at  Kadesh-barnea,  they  had  been  under  a  ban.  By 
their  hnpious  resolve  to  return  to  Egypt  rather  than 
face  the  dangers  of  Canaan,  they  had  rejected  God,  and 
thorefoFo  God  had,  temporarily,  rejected  them.  As  a 
token  that  they  were  no  longer  regarded  by  him  as  his 
covenant  people,  the  symbol  of  the  covenant,  the  rite  of 
circumcision,  was  suspended  ;  while,  as  an  indication  of 
displeasure  at  their  determination  to  go  back  to  tho  land 
of  slavery,  the  ordinance  of  the  passover,  the  memorial 
of  their  deliverance  from  that  heavy  bondage,  was  dis- 
continued. But  tho  years  of  rejection  were  now  at  an 
end,  and  the  ban  was  removed.  Entered  on  tho  Laud  of 
Promise,  God  once  more  regarded  them  as  his  own  cove- 
nant people,  and  therefore  the  sign  of  the  covenant  was 
renewed.  At  tho  frontier  fortress  of  Gilgal,  entrenched 
by  Joshua  on  the  rising  ground  overlooking  Jericho, 
about  five  miles  from  the  banks  of  Jordan,  Israel  "cast 
off  the  slough  of  their  wandering  fife,"  and  "  roUed  away 
the  reproach  of  Egypt "  (v.  9),  by  submitting  once  more, 
at  the  Divine  command,  to  the  distinguishing  ordinance 
of  circumcision.  Knives  of  flint,'  reserved  in  other 
countries  for  this  and  other  religious  rites,  were  used 
for  the  ceremony  by  which  Joshua,  "  tho  type  of  Him 
who  alone  gives  the  new  circumcision  " — the  circum- 
cision of  the  heart  "  made  without  hands  "  (Col.  ii.  11), 
readmitted  Abraham's  descendants  to  the  covenant  mado 
with  their  great  ancestor.  Thi-ee  days  after  this  national 
reconciliation  of  Israel,  on  tho  1-lth  of  Nisan  (v.  10),  the 
jiassover  was  celebrated.  Never  since  its  first  institu- 
tion had  its  import  been  more  powerfidly  sho^vn.  They 
were  delivered  from  Egypt  in  order  that  they  might 
hold  possession  of  Canaan  ;  and  now  at  last  Canaan  was 
reached.  Tho  memorial  of  what  Jehovah  had  done  for 
their  fathers  would  quicken  their  faith,  and  fill  them 
with  confidence  as  to  the  issue  of  the  conflict  that  lay 
before  them.  For  though  reached,  Canaan  was  not 
conquered ;  from  the  fortified  camp  at  Gilgal,  tho 
walls  and  towers  of  Jericho,  "great  and  fenced  up  to 
heaven,"  would  bo  a  stem  but  salutary  reminder  of  tho 
nature  of  the  struggle  on  which  they  were  about  to 
enter,  and  of  the  need  of  a  strength  not  their  own  to 
secure  a  successful  issue. 

^  Chap.  V,  2,  margin. 


THE    HISTOEY    OF    THE    ENGLISH    BIBLE. 

BT   THE   KEV.    W.    F.    MOULTON,    JI.A.,    PROFESSOK    OF    CLASSICS,    WESLETAN    COLLEGE,    KICHMOND. 

TTNDALE,     "  tho     faithful  1  other  liberal  arts,  as  especially  in  the  knowledge  of  the 


ILLIAM 

minister  and  constant  martyr  of  Christ, 
was  bom  about  the  borders  of  Wales,  and 
brought  up  from  a  child  in  the  University 
of  Oxford,  where  he,  by  long  continn.ance,  grow  up  and 
increased  as  well  in  the  knowledge   of  tongues   and 


Scriptures,  whereunto  his  mind  was  singularly  addicted. 
Insomuch  that  he,  lying  then  at  Magdalen  Hall,  read 
privily  to  certain  students  and  fellows  of  Magdalen 
College  somo  parcel  of  divinity,  instructing  them  in 
the  kuowledgo  and  truth  of  the  Scriptures.     Whose 


2C 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


mannors  also  and  conversation,  being  correspondent  to 
the  same,  were  sncli  that  all  they  whicli  knew  him 
reputed  and  esteemed  him  to  be  a  man  of  most  \li'tuou3 
disposition  and  of  life  unspotted.  Thus  he,  in  the 
University  of  Oxford,  increasing  more  and  more  in 
learning  and  proceeding  in  degrees  of  the  schools,  sjiy- 
ing  his  time,  removed  from  tlience  to  the  University  of 
Cambridge,  where  after  he  had  likewise  made  his  abode 


that  in  which  Luther  was  born ;  the  place  was  cither 
North  Nibley  or  (more  probaljly)  Slymbridge,"  near 
Berkeley,  in  Gloucestershire.  As  little  known  are  the 
details  of  his  university  career.  We  can  hardly  sup- 
pose that  he  would  proceed  ta  Oxford  earlier  than 
1503.  At  that  time,  and  for  two  years  later,  Colet  was 
stUl  delivering  lectures  on  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul; 
and  we  cannot  doubt  that  Tyndale  was   one   of  the 


WILLIAM    TYNDALE. 


S  certain  spare,  being  now  further  ripened  in  the  know- 
ledge of  God's  word,  leaving  that  university  also  ho 
resorted  to  one  Master  Welch,  a  knight  of  Gloucester- 
shire." 

Such  is  the  brief  account  which  John  Foxe  gives'  of 
a  period  comprising  more  than  two-thii-ds  of  Tjaidale's 
life.  Unhappily  we  can  add  very  little  to  fill  up  the 
outline  here  given.  Even  the  lime  and  place  of  Tyn- 
dale's  birth  are  not  known  with  certainty.  The  most 
probable  date  appears  to  be  1484,  the  year  following 

'  Acts  and  Monuments,  vol.  v.,  p.  lit. 


many  eager  listeners  to  these  fresh  and  ^^\■id  exposi- 
tions. The  reasons  which  induced  T)Ti<lale  to  leave 
Oxford  for  Cambridge  we  can  only  conjecture.  On 
the  one  hand,  he  may  veiy  probably  have  been  attracted 
by  the  teaching  of  Erasmus ;  on  the  other,  he  may 
have  seen  the  necessity  of  avoiding  a  threatened  storm. 
Colet  huuself  was  suspected  of  lieresy ;  and  liis  disciple, 
who  occupied  himself  in  reading  "  to  students  and 
fellows  some  parcel  of  divinity,"  would  naturally  be 
looked  upon  with  distmst.     The  account  of  Tyndale's 

-  See  the  biography  of  Tyndale  by  the  Rev.  K.  Demaus,  pp.  5,  6. 


THE    HISTORY    OF    THE    ENGLISH    BIBLE. 


21 


residence  in  the  family  of  Sir  John  Walsh,  of  Little 
Sodbury  (a  villago  in  South  Gloucestershire),  we  take 
from  the  first  edition  of  Foxe's  Acts  and  Monuments, 
since  the  narrative  as  there  given'  bears  marks  of 
being  immediately  derived  from  one  of  Tyudalo's 
friends. 

"  Master  Tyndale  being  in  service  witli  one  Master 
Welch,  a  knight  who  married  a  daughter  of  Sir 
Robert  Points,  a  knight  dwelling  in  Gloucestershire, 
the  said  Tyndale  being  schoolmaster  to  the  said  Master 
Welch's  children,  and  being  in  good  favour  with  his 
master,  sat  most  commonly  at  liis  own  table,  which 
kept  a  good  ordinary,  having  resort  to  him  many  times 
divers  great  beneficed  men,  as  abbots,  deans,  arch- 
deacons, and  other  divers  doctors  and  learned '  men. 
Amongst  whom  commonly  was  talk  of  leai'uiug,  as 
well  of  Luther  and  Erasmus  Roterodamns,  as  of 
opinions  in  the  Scripture.  The  said  Master  Tyndale, 
being  learned,  and  which  had  been  a  student  of  divinity 
in  Cambridge,  and  had  therein  taken  degree  of  school, 
did  many  times  therein  show  his  mind  and  learning, 
wherein  as  those  men  and  Tyndale  did  vary  in  opinions 
and  judgments,  then  Master  Tyndale  would  show  them 
on  the  book  the  places,  by  open  and  manifest  Scripture. 
The  which  continued  for  a  certain  season  divers  and 
sundry  times,  until  in  the  continuance  thereof  these 
great  beneficed  doctors  waxed  weaiy,  and  bare  a  secret 
grudge  in  their  hearts  against  Master  Tyndale.  .  .  . 
Then  did  he  translate  into  English  a  book  called,  as  I 
remember.  Enchiridion  Miliiis  Ghristiani?  The  which 
being  translated  he  delivered  to  his  master  and  lady. 
And  after  they  had  read  that  book,  those  great  prelates 
were  no  more  so  often  called  to  the  house,  nor  when 
they  came  had  the  cheer  nor  countenance  as  they  were 
wont  to  have,  the  which  they  did  well  perceive,  and 
that  it  was  by  the  means  and  incensing  of  Master  Tyn- 
dale, and  at  the  last  came  no  more  there.  After  that, 
when  there  was  a  sitting  of  the  bishop's  commissary 
or  chancellor,  and  warning  was  given  to  the  priests  to 
appear.  Master  Tyndale  was  also  warned  to  bo  there. 
And  whether  he  had  knowledge  ))y  their  threatening, 
or  that  he  did  suspect  that  thoy  would  lay  to  his  charge, 
it  is  not  now  perfectly  in  my  mind ;  but  thus  he  told 
me,  that  lie  doubted  their  examinations,  so  that  he  in 
his  going  thitherwards  prayed  in  his  mind  heartily  to 
God  to  strengthen  him  to  stand  fast  in  the  truth  of  His 
word;  so  he  being  there  before  them,  the)'  laid  sore 
to  his  charge,  saying  ho  was  a  heretic  in  sophistry,  a 
heretic  in  logic,  a  heretic  in  his  divinity,  and  so  con- 
tinueth.  But  they  said  tmto  him,  '  You  bear  yourself 
boldly  of  the  gentlemen  here  in  tliis  country,  but  you 
shall  bo  otherwise  talked  with.'  Then  Master  Tyndale 
answered  them :  '  I  am  content  that  you  bring  me  where 
you  will  into  any  country  within  England,  giving  me  ten 
pounds'  a  year  to  live  with,  so  you  bind  me  to  nothing 

1  Reprinted  by  Arber  in  the  Preface  to  liis  Fac-simile  of  the 
Grenville  Fmfjmmt,  pp.  8—10.  Mr.  Demaus  (p.  44)  is  convinced 
that  Foxfe'a  informant  was  Richard  Webb,  afterwards  a  servunt  of 
Latimer. 

2  "Written  by  Erasmus  in  1501. 

3  Eiiual  to  £120  or  £130  at  the  present  day. 


but  to  teach  children  and  preach.'  Then  had  they 
notliing  more  to  say  to  him,  and  thus  he  departed  and 
went  homo  to  Ids  master  again. 

■'  There  dwelt  not  far  ott'  an  old  doctor  tliat  had  been 
arch-ch:mcellor  to  a  bishop,  the  which  was  of  old 
familiar  acquaintance  with  Master  TjTidiile,  who  also 
favoured  him  well,  to  whom  Master  Tyndale  went 
and  opened  his  mind  upon  divers  questions  of  the 
Scriptures,  for  he  durst  boldly  open  to  him  his 
mind.  That  ancient  doctor  said,  '  Do  you  not  know 
that  the  Pope  is  the  very  antichrist  which  the  Scrip- 
ture speaketh  of  ?  but  beware  what  ye  say,  for  if  you 
shall  be  perceived  to  be  of  that  opinion  it  will  cost  you 
yom-  life;'  and  said,  '  I  have  been  an  officer  of  his,  but. 
I  have  given  it  up,  and  defy  him  and  all  his  woi'ks.' 
And  soon  after  Master  TjTidalo  happened  to  be  iu  the 
company  of  a  learned  man,  and  in  communing  and 
disjiuting  with  Mm  drove  him  to  that  issue  that  tho 
learned  man  said,  '  We  were  better  bo  without  God's 
law  than  the  Pope's.'  Master  Tyndale  hearing  that 
answered  him,  '  I  defy  the  Pope  and  all  his  laws;'  and 
said,  '  K  God  spare  my  life,  ere  many  years  I  will 
cause  a  boy  that  driveth  the  plough  shall  know  more  of 
the  Scripture  than  thou  doest.' " 

It  is  very  interesting  to  mark  the  dawn  of  Tynclalo's 
great  purpose  of  translating  the  Scriptures  into  the 
language  of  the  people.  The  words  last  quoted  may 
have  been  suggested  by  a  striking  passage  in  the  "Ex- 
hortation "  prefixed  by  Erasmus  to  his  edition  of  the- 
Greek  Testament.''  "  I  would,"  says  the  great  scholar 
of  tho  Reformation  age,  "that  all  private  women  should 
read  tho  Gospel  and  Paul's  Epistles.  And  I  wish  that 
they  were  translated  into  all  languages,  tluit  they  may 
be  read  and  known,  not  only  by  the  Scotch  and  Irish, 
but  also  by  the  Tm-ks  and  Saracens.  Let  it  be  that 
many  would  smile,  yet  some  would  receive  it.  I  would 
that  the  husbandman  at  the  plough  should  sing  some- 
thing from  hence,  that  the  weaver  at  his  loom  should 
sing  something  from  hence,  that  the  trcveller  might 
beguile  the  weariness  of  his  journey  by  narrations  of 
this  kind."  But  even  before  ho  listened  to  Erasmus 
this  subject  had  been  in  Tyndale's  thoughts.  It  is 
remarkable  that  almost  the  only  reminiscence  of  his 
childhood  is  connected  with  tlie  Labour  of  his  life.  In 
his  work  on  the  Ohedieiwe  of  a  Christian  Man,'  m 
the  course  of  an  argument  that  with  special  propriety 
may  the  Bible  be  translated  into  English,  because  the 
Greek  and  Hebrew  tongues  agree  so  much  more  with 
English  than  with  Latin,  he  says:  "  Yea,  and  except 
my  memory  fad  me,  and  that  I  have  forgotten  what  I 
read  when  I  was  a  child,  thou  shalt  find  in  the  English 
chronicle  how  that  king  Adelstone  (Athelstane)  caused 
tho  Holy  Scripture  to  bo  translated  into  the  tongue 
that  then  was  in  England,  and  how  the  prelates  ex 
horted  him  thereto." 

It  soon  became  evident   to  Tyndale   that   his  work 
could  not  be  accomplished  at  Sodbury.     "  When  I  was 


■t  mstoricnl  AccOMiit  (in  the  English  Hexaplaf,  pp.  ■13,  44. 
5  Tyndale's   Doctrinal  Treatises   (Parker  Society),  p,   149.     Bee 
also  Demaus,  p.  11. 


22 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


so  turmoiled,"  he  says,'  "  in  the  country  where  I  was, 
that  I  coxilcl  no  longer  there  dwell,  I  this  wise  thought 
in  myself:  This  I  suffer  because  the  jiriests  of  the 
country  be  unlearned.  ...  As  I  this  thought,  the 
Bishop  of  London  =  came  to  my  remembrance,  whom 
Erasmus  .  .  .  praiseth  exceedingly  for  his  gi-eat 
learning.  Then  thought  I,  if  I  might  come  to  this  man's 
service  I  were  happy.  And  so  I  gat  me  to  London, 
and  through  the  acquaintance  of  my  master  came  to 
Sir  Harry  Gilford,  the  king's  grace's  controller,  and 
brought  him  an  oration  of  Isocrates  which  I  had  trans- 
lated out  of  Greek  into  English,  and  desired  him  to 
speak  unto  my  lord  of  London  for  me,  which  he  also 
did,  as  he  shewed  me,  and  willed  me  to  write  an  epistle  to 
my  lord,  and  to  go  to  him  myself,  which  I  also  did.    .    . 

1  In  the  Preface  to  the  Book  o£  Genesis  (1531).     Sea  Arber 
Facsimile,  pp.  16,  17. 

-  Tunstal,  who  succeeded  to  the  see  of  London  iu  1523. 


Whereupon  my  lord  answered  mo,  his  house  was  fuU, 
he  had  more  than  he  could  well  find;  and  advised  me 
to  seek  iu  London,  where  he  said  I  could  not  lack  a 
service.  And  so  hi  London  I  abode  almost  one  year, 
.  .  .  and  understood  at  the  last,  not  only  that  there 
was  no  room  iu  my  lord  of  London's  palace  to  translate 
the  New  Testament,  but  also  that  there  was  no  place  to 
do  it  in  all  England." 

It  was  probably  in  1523  that  Tyndale  came  to 
London.  Duriug  the  year  of  anxious  waitiug  he 
found  a  home  in  the  house  of  Humphry  Monmouth, 
a  cloth  merchant  of  Loudon,  who  proved  himself 
now  aud  in  after  years  Tyndale's  zealous  and  loving 
friend.  Wlieu  at  last  compelled  to  renoimce  the  hope 
of  trau.slating  the  New  Testament  iu  England,  Tyndale 
did  not  hesitate  to  give  up  his  country  La  favour  of 
his  work;  but  in  May,  152i',  left  England,  never 
I  to  return. 


DIFFICULT    PASSAGES     EXPLAINED. 

ST.    MATTHEW.— THE  MESSIANIC   PEOPHECIES   OF   THE   EAELY   CHAPTERS. 

BT    THE    r.EV.    C.    J.    ELLIOTT,    M.A.,     ViCAE    OF    WINKPIELD,    BEEKS. 


"  Then  was  fulfilled  that  which  was  spoken  by  Jeremy  the  prophet, 
saying.  In  Bama  was  there  a  voice  heard,  lamentation,  aud  weeping, 
and  great  mourning,  Eaohel  weeping  for  her  children,  aud  would 
not  be  comforted,  because  they  are  not."— Matt.  ii.  17, 18. 

G^^|jf]TggHIS  quotation  from  Jer.  xxxi.  15  agrees 
more  closely  with  the  Hebrew  than  with 
the  version  of  the  LXX.  According  to 
the  reading  now  generally  received,  the 

wo^ds  of  the  Evangelist  may  bo  thus  compared  with 

those  of  the  prophet : — 


'*  A  voice  was  heard  in  Eama, 
wailing,  and  much  lamentation 
(weeping  of  bitterness),  Eachel 
bewaihng  her  children,  aud  would 
not  be  comforted,  because  they 
are  not."— Matt.  ii.  13. 


"  A  voice  was  heard  in  Rama, 
wailing,  bitter  weeping  (ht.  weep- 
ing of  bitterness)  ;  Eachel  weep- 
ing over  her  children,  refused  (or 
refusing)  to  bo  comforted  for  her 
children,  for  they  are  not." — Jer. 
TV-gi    15. 


The  primary  reference  of  these  words,  as  originally 
spoken  by  the  prophet,  will  scarcely  admit  of  doubt.' 
Previously  to  the  removal  of  a  number  of  Jewish  cap- 
tives, of  the  tribes  of  Judah  and  Benjamin,  into  Baby- 
lon, they  were  assembled,  as  it  should  appear  from  Jer. 
xl.  1,  in  chains,  at  Ramali.  If  this  Ramah  be  the 
same  as  that  mentioned  in  Ezra  ii.  26  and  Neh.  vii.  30, 
many  of  its  inhabitants,  in  accordance  with  the  language 
of  Jer.  xxxi.  17,  "  came  again  to  their  border,"  i.e.,  re- 
turned to  Judah  together  with  Zerubbabel.  It  is 
possible  (as  Mr.  Grove,  iu  his  article  on  "  Ramah,"'  in 
Smith's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  has  suggested)  that 
some  may  have  perished  at  Ramah,  by  the  hands  of 
their  captors,  as  we  know  that  some  wore  put  to  death 

1  In  addition  to  the  fact  that  the  chief  deportations  of  the  ten 
tribes  were  already  past,  the  position  of  Ramah  within  the  tribe 
of  Benjamin,  and  the  prospect  of  a  return  to  their  own  land  (ver. 
17),  seem  to  determine  the  primary  reference  of  the  prophecy  to 
the  captivity  of  the  tribes  of  Judah  and  Benjamin. 


at  Riblah  (Jer.  lii.  27),  and  that  it  was  in  this  way  that 
Ramah  became  the  scene  of  the  wailing  described  iu 
Jer.  xxxi.  15.  There  does  not,  however,  appear  to  be 
any  proof  of  such  a  massacre  as  that  which  Mr.  Grove 
suggests,  nor  do  the  words  of  the  prophet,  when 
understood  as  referring  to  the  Babylonian  captives, 
necessarily  require  such  a  supposition  :  for  though  the 
Hebrew  word  rendered  "  they  are  not,"  or,  as  it  is 
literally  rendered,  "  he  is  not "  (i.e.,  not  one  of  them), 
commonly  denotes  the  death  of  the  person  to  whom  it 
relates  (as  e.g.,  in  Gen.  xxxvii.  30 ;  xlii.  13,  32,  30  [of 
Josej>h]  ;  Job  vii.  8,  21  ;  Ps.  xxxvii.  30),  it  does  not, 
of  necessity,  imply  a  state  of  non-existence,  but  may 
imply  only  the  absence  or  change  of  place  of  the  person 
with  regard  to  whom  it  is  used,  as  e.g.,  in  Gen.  v.  24, 
where  it  is  used  of  the  translation  of  Enoch ;  in  Gen. 
xlii.  36,  in  reference  to  Simeon;  and,  yet  more  deci- 
sively, in  1  Kings  xx.  40,  where  it  simply  denotes 
escape  out  of  custody." 

Hence,  in  the  primary  reference  of  the  words,  the 
prophecy  may  reasonably  be  supposed  to  have  received 
its  fulfilment  in  the  event  to  which  allusion  has  already 
been  made,  as  it  is  related  in  Jer.  si.  1.  viz.,  the  deporta- 
tion of  a  portion  of  the  tribes  of  Judah  and  Benjamin 
into  the  land  of  Babylon. 

There  were  several  places  bearing,  either  in  the 
same,  or  in  a  slightly  modified  form,  the  name  of 
Ramah,  a  word  which  (like  Aram)  points  to  an  elevated 
position.'      This  name    is    said  to  have  been  found 

2  The  Chaldee  paraphrast  explains  the  word  "because  they  have 
gone  into  captivity." 

3  This  signification  of  the  word  suggests  another  explanation  of  the 
passage  which  has  approved  itself  to  some  commentators — viz.,  that 
"  Eamah"  here  points  not  to  any  one  particular  place,  but  to  one 

1  of  those  *'high  places"  which  seem  to  have  been  chosen  by  the 


DIFFICULT  PASSAGES  EXPLAINED. 


23 


attached  to  the  spot  close  to  that  in  which  Rachel  is 
supposed  to  have  been  buried  (Gen.  sxxv.  18,  19) ;  but 
the  place  moro  commonly  known  by  tliat  name  was 
about  five  miles  to  the  north  of  Jerusalem,  within  the 
limits  of  the  tribe  of  Benjamin.  In  either  case,  the 
distance  from  Rachel's  sepulchi'e  was  not  great;  and 
the  prophet,  by  tho  use  of  a  striking  and  highly  poetical 
figure,  represents  tho  mother  of  Benjamin,  whose  eager 
desire  of  offspring  is  distiuctly  recorded  in  Gen.  xsx. 
I,  and  whose  death,  at  the  birth  of  "the  son  of  her 
sorrow,"  is  so  pathetically  described  in  Gen.  xxxv.  18,  as 
personifying  tho  land,  or  as  representing  its  bereaved 
mothers,  when  the  Chaldeans  burned  the  houses  of  the 
people,  and  Nebuzar-adan,  the  captain  of  the  guard, 
carried  away  captive  a  number  of  tho  inhabitants  of 
Jerusalem  and  of  Judah  (i.e.,  of  tho  two  tribes  of  Judah 
and  Benjamin)  into  tho  land  of  Babylon  (Jer.  xxxix.  8, 
9 ;  xl.  1). 

It  was  thus  that  the  primary  fulfilment  of  the  pro- 
phecy took  place  in  the  days  of  the  prophet  who  had 
delivered  it ;  and  a  striking  testimony  was  given  by 
Nebuzar-adah  himself,  who  was  the  executioner  of  the 
Divine  vengeance,  to  the  truth  of  the  inspired  predic- 
tions respecting  tho  doom  of  the  rebellious  people, 
when  in  "  looking  well  "  to  Jeremiah,  as  Nebuchad- 
nezzar had  commanded  him,  and  giving  him  permission 
to  go  or  stay  in  the  land,  as  the  proi^het  might  him- 
self desire,  he  added,  "The  Lord  thy  God  hath  pro- 
nounced this  evil  upon  this  place.  Now  the  Lord  hath 
brought  it,  and  done  accordiag  as  ho  hath  said  "  (Jer. 
3d.  2,  3). 

Much  has  been  said  about  the  sense  in  which  it  is 
afl5rmed  by  St.  Matthew,  "that  that  which  was  spoken 
by  Jeremy  the  prophet"  vr&s  fulfilled  in  the  slaughter  of 
the  babes  of  Bethlehem  and  the  "coasts  thereof,"  i.e., 
the  surrounding  country.  A  different  formula  is  hero 
used  by  the  EvangeHst  from  that  which  occurs  in  vs.  15 
and  23,  and  it  has  been  argued,  and  perhaps  not  unrea- 
sonably, that  all  that  tho  words  necessarily  imply  is  that 
tho  language  of  the  prophet  might  well  be  applied,  by 
way  of  accommodation,  to  tho  event  related  in  the  pre- 
ceding verse.  This  explanation,  however,  will  scarcely 
be  deemed  satisfactory  to  those  who  are  accustomed  to 
have  regard,  not  so  much  to  the  design  of  tho  human 
writer,  or  to  his  perception  of  tho  moaning  of  his  own 
words,  as  to  tho  mind  of  the  inspiring  Spirit.  Nor  is 
it  unrea-souablo  to  suppose  that  just  as  the  prophecy 
quoted  in  ver.  1.5  looked  back  to  the  exodus  of  the  typical 
Israel,  and  foi-ward  to  tho  return  from  Egypt  of  the 
true  Israel,  so  tho  words  of  Jeremiah  may  have  had 
their  primary  and,  so  to  speak,  typical  fulfilment  in  the 


IsraeliteB  for  special  "  weeping  and  supplications  "  (see  Jer.  iii.  21  ; 
Tii.  29  ;  in  both  of  which  places,  however,  a  different  word  is  used 
for  "  high  places").  This  signification  is  supportedby  the  Chaldee 
paraphrast,  in  the  Latin  version,  thus  :  "  Vox  in  excelso  mundi 
audita  est,  domus  Israel  flentis  et  gementis,  post  Jeremiam  Pro- 
phetam,  postquam  misit  eum  Nebuzar-adan  princeps  occidentium  a 
Kama."  (A  voice  was  heard,  on  a  high  place  of  the  world,  of  the 
house  of  Israel  weeping  and  groaning  after  Jeremiah  the  Prophet, 
after  that  Nebuzar-adan,  the  chief  of  the  executioners,  dismissed 
liim  from  Eamah.) 


deportation  into  Babylon,  and  their  ultimate  fulfilment 
in  tho  ovont  recorded  by  St.  Matthew. 

In  some  respects  the  latter  of  these  two  events  seems 
moro  fully  to  satisfy  tho  terms  of  the  prophecy  than 
the  former.  The  mourning  for  the  slaughter  of  the 
babes  at  Bethlehem  may  bo  well  conceived  to  have 
been  more  bitter  than  that  for  tho  deportation  into 
Babylon,  inasmuch  as  the  one  was  inflictod  by  an 
avowed  enemy,  whilst  the  other  was  inflicted  by  Israel's 
nominal  king  ;  iuasmuch  as  in  the  one  there  was  "  hope 
that  tho  children  should  come  again  to  their  own 
border,"  whilst  in  tho  other  they  were  utterly  destroyed ; 
and  iuasmuch,  lastly,  as  tho  flight  into  Egypt  must 
have  remained  unknown  to  many,  and  those  who  had 
hailed  with  joy  tho  bl.'th  of  the  promised  Deliverer  may 
well  have  "  refused  to  bo  comforted,"  in  the  belief  that 
"He  was  not." 

This  personification  in  the  person  of  Rachel  of  those 
who  were  "looking  for  the  consolation  of  Israel," 
derives  additional  force  and  beauty  from  tho  fact  that  in 
Ruth  iv.  11  Rachel  and  Leah  are  represented  as  the 
common  mothers  of  tho  people  of  God ;  and  although 
Rachel  was  the  mother  of  two  only  of  tho  sons  of 
Jacob,  she,  as  well  as  Leah,  is  described  as  "  biuldiug 
the  house  of  Israel." 

Again,  although  the  word  used  by  the  prophet,  which 
is  translated  "  they  were  not,"  does  not  invariably  imply 
the  death  of  the  person  to  whom  it  is  applied,  it  more 
frequently  bears  that  signification  than  any  other. 

Once  moro,  it  must  not  bo  forgotten  that  tho  whole 
of  the  context  in  which  tho  prophecy  is  found  is,  in  the 
strictest  and  fullest  sense  of  the  words,  a  prophecy  of 
the  latter  days,  a  jjrojjhecy  including  ui  its  wide  embrace 
the  entire  compass  of  tho  Christian  dispensation,  be- 
ginning (if  wo  may  assume  tho  Messianic  reference  of 
ver.  22)  with  tho  mu-aculous  conception  of  our  Lord, 
and  ending  with  that  glorious  consummation  which  is 
described  in  the  Epistle  to  tho  Hebrews,  with  express 
reference  to  tho  same  chapter  of  the  prophecies  of 
Jeremiah  as  that  from  which  St.  Matthew  quotes  the 
words  imder  consideration,  when  "  they  shall  not  teach 
every  man  his  neighbour,  and  every  man  his  brother, 
saying,  Know  the  Lord :  for  all  shall  know  mo,  from 
the  least  to  the  greatest.  For  I  itxU  be  mercifid  to 
their  unrighteousness,  and  their  sins  and  their  iniquities 
will  I  remember  no  moro  "  (Hob.  viii.  11,  12,  cit«d  from 
Jer.  xxxi.  34). 

On  these  then,  as  well  on  other  grounds  which  might 
be  urged,  it  seems  reasonable  to  infer  that  the  prophetic 
personification  of  Rachel,  mourning  over  hor  lost  or 
slain  children,  had  a  direct  reference,  in  the  mind  of  the 
inspiring  Spirit,  to  the  slaughter,  in  the  days  of  Horod,  of 
the  babes  of  Bethlehem,  and  of  the  adjoining  confines 
of  Judah  and  of  Benjamin ;  and  that  in  the  lamentation 
of  the  bereaved  mothers  of  those  districts  the  words  of 
Jeremiah  received  a  yet  fuller  aceompfishmont  than  in 
the  mourning  at  the  deportation  into  Babylon  :  "  A 
voice  was  heard  in  Ram.ah,  lamentation,  and  bitter 
weeping  ;  Rahel  weeping  for  her  children  refused  to  be 
comforted  for  her  chUdreu,  because  they  were  not." 


21- 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


ANIMALS    OF    THE    BIBLE. 

BY   THE    BEV.    W.    HOUGHTON,    M.A.,    F.  L.S.,    RECTOR    OF    PKESTON,    SALOP. 


WILD    CATTLE. 

[EAVING  the  domestic  cattle,  we  come  to 
the  wild  cattle  of  Palestine  that  appear 
to  have  roamed  among  the  forests  and 
hills  of  the  country  in  Biblical  times. 
In  the  English  yersion  we  meet  with  two  passages 
(Deut.  xiv.  5,  and  Isa.  li.  20)  where  the  Hebrew  words 


lope  (Oryx  leucoryx)  of  North  Africa,  Syria,  &e. ;  that 
the  horus  seen  in  profile  appear  as  one,  and  hence  the 
mistake  of  regarding  it  as  a  one-homed  animal ;  others 
have  no  hesitation  in  referring  the  unicorn  to  the  one- 
horned  rhinoceros  {R.  unicornis)  of  Asia.  This  is  the 
opinion  generally  entertained  at  this  day.  Now  all 
attempts  to  discover   a   one-horned  animal  that  shall 


OETX   LEUCORTX. 


ieo  or  to  are  represented  by  "  wild  ox  "  and  "  wild  bull  " 
respectively  ;  but  it  is  probable  that  the  animal  denoted 
by  the  original  word  is  rather  some  species  of  antelope 
tlian  a  bovine  animal ;  this  question  we  shall  consider 
at  another  time.  There  is  another  Hebrew  word  of 
frequent  occurrence  in  the  Bible — viz.,  reem,  reeim,  or 
reim,  which  our  translators  always  translate  "  unicorn," 
but  which  there  can  lie  no  doubt  means  "  wild  buU," 
as  we  shewed  ten  years  ago  ;  see  the  Annals  and  Maga- 
zine of  Natural  History,  Nov.,  1862,  in  a  paper  on  the 
"Unicorn  of  the  Ancients;  "  the  Quarterly  Review,  on 
the  "  Natural  History  of  the  Bible."  No.  227,  &c.  We 
here  reproduce  our  remarks  from  the  first  mentioned : — 
"  And  first  of  aU  there  is  the  unicorn  of  the  Bible. 
Pages  upon  pages  have  been  written  on  this  subject. 
Some  have  said  the  animal  must  have  been  the  ante- 


represent  the  unicorn  of  our  English  Bible  are  beyond 
the  mark  entirely,  and  for  this  simple  reason  :  the 
so-called  unicorn  is  no  unicorn  at  all;  tho  Hebrew 
word  (reem)  denotes  a  two-homed  animal  beyond  the 
shadow  of  doubt.  The  '  unicorn '  of  our  English 
Bible  owes  its  origin  to  the  Septuagint  and  Vulgate 
versions.'  In  Deut.  xxxiii.  17,  which  contains  a  por- 
tion of  Joseph's  blessing,  it  is  said,  '  His  horns  are 
like  tJie  horns  of  a  reem.'  Our  translators,  seeing 
the  contradiction  involved  in  the  expression,  'horns 
of  the  Mjiicorn,'  have  rendered  the  Hebrew  singular 
noun  as  if  it  were  a  plural  form  in  the  text,  though 
they  give  the  correct  translation  in  the  margin.    Tho 


1  MovoKeptat  in  all  the  passages  but  one,   where  the  Septuagiat 
has  uipoi.     The  Vulgate  has  wiicornis,  aud  sometimes  rhinoceros. 


ANIMALS   OF    THE    BIBLE. 


25 


two  horns  of  the  reem  are  '  the  ten  thousands  of 
Jliphraim  and  the  thousands  of  Manasseh,'  and  repre- 
sent the  two  tribes  which  sprang  from  one  (viz.,  Joseph), 
just  as  two  horns  spring  from  one  head.  Tlie  unicorn 
of  the  Bible,  therefore,  may  be  tlismissed  at  once,  as 
being  a  very  unhappy  translation  of  the  Hebrew  two- 
horned  reem,  the  animal  denoted  being,  there  cannot 
be  much  doubt,  some  species  of  '  wild  ox,'  as  appears 


Palestine  and  Syria  in  Biblical  times,  as  is  clear  frsm 
the  numerous  allusions  to  them  in  Holy  Writ ;  and  it  is 
interesting  to  note,  as  an  additional  pioof,  that  the  late 
Dr.  Rotii  discovered  bones  of  the  lion  in  gravel  near  the 
Jordan.  It  is  therefore  quite  probable  that  future  in- 
vestigations in  Palestine  may  result  in  the  discovery  of 
the  bones  of  Bos  primigenius,  or  Bison  priscus,  or  some 
other  formidable  ox.     All  readers  will  remember  the 


BISON  B0NASSU3. 


pretty  evident  from  a  comparison  of  the  different  pas- 
sages where  the  word  occurs  in  Holy  Scripture.  The 
reem  was  two-horned ;  it  is  almost  always  mentioned 
with  bovine  animals ;  it  is  said  to  push  with  its  horns  ; 
it  must  have  been  frequently  seen  roaming  on  the  hiUs 
of  Palestine,  or  in  the  woods  of  the  Jordan  valley,  as 
is  evident  from  the  numerous  allusions  to  it.  It  is  true 
there  is  no  wild  ox  at  present  known  to  exist  in  Pales- 
tine ;  but  this  is  no  reason  why,  in  early  times,  some 
mighty  species,  allied  perhaps  to  the  urns  which  Caesar 
saw  in  the  Hercynian  forest,  should  not  have  existed  in 
that  country.     Lions  were  certainly  not  uncommon  in 


beautiful  description  of  the  reem  in  the  Book  of  Job. 
Now  let  us  compare  with  it  the  accoimt  Caesar  gives  of 
the  fierce  urus  which  in  his  time  frequented  the  great 
Hercynian  forest ;  '  These  uri  are  scarcely  less  than 
elephants  in  size,  but  in  their  nature,  colour,  and  forms 
are  bulls.  Great  is  tlieir  strength  and  great  their  sjiccd 
nor  do  they  spare  man  or  beast  when  they  owce  have 
caught  sight  of  him.  The  hunters  ai-e  most  careful  to 
kill  those  which  they  take  in  pitfalls,  wliUe  the  young 
men  exercise  themselves  by  this  sort  of  hunting,  and 
grow  hardened  by  the  toil ;  those  of  them  who  kill 
most  receive  great  praise  when  they  exhibit  in  publio 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR, 


the  homs  as  tropaies  of  their  success.  These  uri,  how- 
ever, even  when  they  are  young,  cannot  be  habituated 
to  man  and  made  tractable.  The  size  and  shape  of 
their  horns  are  very  different  from  those  of  our 
oxen." 

The  indomitable  nature  ascribed  to  these  wild  iiri 
exactly  agrees  with  the  description  of  the  reem  as 
given  in  chap,  xxxix.  of  the  Book  of  Job ;  and  the  ap- 
parently imphed  contrast  whieli  is  made  between  the 
domestic  ox  and  the  wild  urus  finds  an  analogue  in 
the  above  extract  from  Caesar.  The  same  remark  may 
he  made  with  respect  to  the  great  size  and  strength 
of  the  Scriptural  reeni  when  contrasted  with  the  do- 
mestic oxen  of  Palestine,  the  ancient  inhabitants  of 
which  land  would  naturally  draw  the  same  comparison 
between  their  domestic  cattle  and  the  mighty  reem,  as 
Caesar's  legions  did  between  then-  cattle  (-Bos  longifrons) 
and  the  great  Hercynian  wild  bidls  (Bos  primigenius), 
whose  bones  are  now  occasionally  found,  together  with 
those  of  the  elephant,  hyaena,  &c.,  in  the  Tertiary 
deposits  of  tliis  country. 

Mention  of  the  reeni  is  made  iu  the  following  pas- 
sages :— 

"God  brought  them  out  of  Ejypt;  lie  hatb,  as  it  were,  the 
strength  of  a  ream  "  (Numb,  sxiii.  23 ;  xxiv.  8). 

"  His  glory  is  like  the  firstling  of  his  hullock^ 
And  his  horns  are  like  the  horns  of  a  rccm; 
With  them  shall  he  push  the  people  together 
To  the  ends  of  the  earth  j 

And  they  (the  two  horns)  are  the  ten  thousanas  of  Ephraim, 
And  they  are  the  thousands  of  Mauasseh  "  (Deut.  sxiiii.  17). 

We  liave  already  explained  this  passage ;  which,  in- 
deed, written  in  full,  explains  itself :  we  only  now  call 
attention  to  the  parallelism : — 

i";  -an  iniii)  liin 

T:"1P        D.V^        ^'2^^)^' 

Bel:6r  sh6r6  hiiddf  lo, 
Vekarnei  r'em  limiiaiv. 

The  multitudes  of  the  tribe  of  Ephraim  are  represented 

by  the  one  horn,  and  tlie  multitudes  of  the  tribe  of 

Manasseh  by  the  other  horn,  of  a  bullock  or  wUd  bull. 

The  Hebrew  word  occurs  three  times  in  the  Psalms  : — 

"  Save  me  from  the  hon's  mouth,  for  thou  hast  heard  me  from 
the  horns  of  the  recms*'  (ssii.  21). 

"He  maketh  them  to  skip  like  a  calf: 
Lebanon  and  Sii-ion  like  a  young  recni  " 

(rrix.  6),  where  the  paralleMsm  is  again  to  bo  noted. 

*'  My  horn  shalt  thou  esalt  like  the  horn  of  a  reem  " 

(xcii.  10).  The  animal  is  also  mentioned  iu  Isaiah 
(xxxiv.  6,  7),  where  the  parallelism  of  the  whole  passage 
is  very  striking : — 

"  The  sword  of  Jehovah  is  filled  with  blood  ; 
It  is  made  fat  with  fatuess ; 
With  the  blood  of  Iambs  and  poats, 
With  the  fat  of  the  kidneys  of  rams  ; 
Jehovah  hatli  a  sacrifice  iu  Bozr.ih, 
And  a  great  slaughter  in  the  land  of  Edom  ; 
And  the  reems  shall  come  doivu  ivith  them. 
The  o.rea  and  the  strong}  hulls." 

Under  the  imago  of  a  great  sacrifice  of  cattle  to 
Jehovah,  the  prophet  describes  a  terrible  destruction 
that  is  to  take  place  among  Israel's  enemies,  especially 


the  Edomites.  The  lambs  and  goats  and  rams,  it  is 
very  probable,  denote  the  people,  while  the  reems,  oxen, 
and  strong  bulls  represent  the  chiefs  and  princes. 

A  f  idler  description  of  the  reem  is  given  in  the  Book 
of  Job  :— 

**  Will  the  reem  be  willing  to  serve  thee, 

Or  will  he  abide  by  thy  crib  ? 

Canst  thou  bind  the  veem  by  his  baud  iu  his  furrow  ? 

Or  will  he  harrow  the  valleys  after  thee  ? 

Wilt  thou  trust  him,  because  his  strength  is  great  ? 

Or  wilt  thou  leave  thy  labour  to  him  ? 

Wilt  thou  believe  him,  tliat  he  will  bring  home  thy  seed, 

And  gather  it  into  thy  barn  ?" 

(xxxix.  9 — 12.)  AU  this  exactly  suits  some  fierce  un- 
tamable urus  or  wild  buU,  but  is  inax>plicable  to  the 
buffalo,  a  common  beast  of  burden  in  many  countries ; 
besides,  we  have  shown  above  that  the  btiffalo  was 
certainly  not  known  in  Palestine  in  Biblical  times,  being 
comparatively  a  recent  introduction  from  India. 

It  may  bo  remembered  that  we  stated  our  belief, 
some  years  ago,  in  the  probability  of  future  investiga- 
tions resulting  in  the  discovery  of  the  remains  of  some 
species  of  wild  Bos  or  Bison.  Our  remarks  appeared 
in  the  Quarterly  Revieiv  (ccxxvii.,  p.  53),  as  weU  as 
in  the  Annals  and  Magazine  of  Natural  History. 
Shortly  aftei'wards  Dr.  Tristram  ^dsited  Palestine,  and 
discovered  in  bone  breccia  in  the  Lebanon  five  teeth, 
which  were  submitted  to  examination  by  a  high 
authority  iu  such  matters,  Mr.  W.  Boyd  Dawkins,  who 
said  that  four  of  the  teeth  belonged  to  some  ox  which 
cannot  be  distinguished  from  the  aurochs  (Bos  primi- 
genius), and  the  other  tooth  probably  to  a  bison.  Dr. 
Tiistram,  commenting  on  our  prediction  expressed  in 
the  Quarterly,  says :  "  We  may  now  congratulate  him 
on  the  speedy  verification  of  his  anticipation,  and  on 
the  further  elucidation  of  an  obscure  Scriptural  refer- 
ence "  (The  Land  of  Israel,  p.  1'2). 

The  sagacity  of  Mr.  Layard  some  years  ago  led  liim 
to  think,  from  the  occurrence  of  wild  bulls  on  the 
Assyrian  monuments,  that  the  Hebrew  reem  was  one  of 
these  animals.  "  I  was  at  one  time  inclined  to  think," 
he  writes,  "  that  the  bull  of  the  sculptures  might  repre- 
sent the  unicorn,  or  raim.  so  often  alluded  to  in  the 
Scriptures,  as  an  animal  renowned  for  its  strength 
and  ferocity,  and  typical  of  power  and  might  "  (Niiieveh 
and  its  Remains,  vol.  ii..  p.  429).  Prom  all  that  has 
been  said  above,  it  would  seem  almost  certain  that  the 
Hebrew  reenb  denotes  some  fierce  wild  bidl,  once  not 
uncommon  in  Palestine,  though  long  since  extinct  in 
that  country. 

We  are  now  going  to  furnish  the  reader  with 
what  we  regard  conclusive  e\-idonce  to  prove  that  the 
Hebrew  name  reem  not  only  signifies  a  wild  buU,  but 
that  wild  bulls  actually  did  exist  in  Palestine  aljout  800 
years  before  Christ.  The  cuneiform  inscriptions  shall 
supply  tliis  e^'idenee. 

Figures  of  wild  bulls  of  great  size  and  strength 
occur  iu  the  old  monuments  of  Nimrud;  the  accom- 
panying woodcut  (page  27),  taken  from  a  marble  slab 
iu  the  British  Museum,  represents  an  AssyriiUi  monarch, 
Assur-natsir-pal  ("  Asshur  protects  his  son  "),  himtiug 
wild  bulls,  about  B.C.  884.    The  ideogi-am  for  a  wild 


AJSnUALS   OF  THE   BIBLE. 


27 


bull,  i^^jA  (forming  the  syllabk  am),  is  of  frequent 
occui'rence  on  the  sculptures.  Assyrian  scholars  read 
the  sign  phonetically  as  rhn  or  rimu  ;  and  that  this  is 
correct  appears  from  the  fact  that  sometimes  the  animal 
is  expressed  by  syllables,  thus,  ri-i-mu  or  ri-mu.  They 
interpret  the  word  to  mean  "  a  wild  ox." 

The  following  are  passages  where  the  rimti,  or  wild 
buE,  is  spoken  of: — 

1.  "  Mat-su  kima  alpi  am  (rtmi),  a-dis"  {i.e,  "his 
country  like  oxen  [wild  bulls]  I  trod  down  ")  (Non-is, 
Assyrian  Diet.,  i.,  p.  21).  The  word  alpi  is  the  ordinary 
Assyrian  word  for  "cattle."  It  is  clearly  the  Hebrew 
eleph  (pi.  aldphim);  its  being  followed  by  the  ideogram 
given  above  helps  to  determine  the  meaning  of  rimu. 

2.  ''As-ru  ru-su-qu,  i-na  niri  ya  ri-ma-nis  at-ta-hiz" 
(p.  55)  ("A  difficult  place  on  my  feet  like  a  wild  bull 


the  Hittites  and  at  the  foot  of  Lebanon  he  killed "). 
Thus  it  appears  nothing-  is  wanting  to  show  that  the 
meaning  of  the  Hebrew  word  reem  is  a  wild  boll,  and 
that  these  animals  existed  in  Palestine  in  historical 
times  about  800  years  before  Christ. 

Wo  ask  the  reader  to  pay  attention  to  the  form  and 
size  of  the  horns  in  the  woodcuts  of  the  domestic  cattle 
of  the  Assyrians,  and  to  compare  them  with  the  horns 
of  the  wUd  bidl  or  reem.  These  last  are  much  stronger 
and  larger  than  those  of  the  domestic  animals.  We 
might  expect  some  reference  to  these  large  and  power- 
ful horns  in  the  Assyrian  monuments ;  and  this,  too, 
we  absolutely  find.  The  reem  is  not  unfrequeutly 
expressed  on  the  monuments  as  am'si,  i.e.  "  the  horned 
reem;"  'si  being  used  ideographically  for  Jearnu,  "a 
horn,"  the  Hebrew  keren. 


Ml  '    I    r-— r      ^n,^^ 


-a. 


r?a 


'\\t\  V-- 


•n 


ilii    '"'     'i'Vlfuf, 


ud^^^^ 


_UilJliL_..^l    _,  J 


ASSUR-KATSIE-PAl,   KING  OF  ASSYRIA,   HUNTING  WILD   BULLS,       (ASSYBIAN.> 


T  encountered").  The  word  ri-ma-nis  is  an  adverb 
formed  from  the  old  plural  of  rimu  in  aii(it),  like  tulanis, 
"in  heaps.'" 

3.  IV.  hiichal  rimi  dan-nu-fe  su-iu-ru-te  na  -pis-ta 
su-iiu  ii-sak-ti  ("  Pour  wild  bulls,  full-grown  and  fine, 
their  lives  I  cut  ofp  ")  (p.  81). 

The  monuments  also  show  that  these  rimi  were 
hunted  in  Palestine.  On  the  Broken  Obelisk,  pro- 
bably of  Assur-natsir-pal,  these  words  occur : — 

"  Rimi sa  pa-an  Cha-at-te  va  in  nir  Lib-na-a- 

ni  i-duh"   ("WUd  bulls  which  oj^posite  the  land  of 


In  the  annals  of  Tiglath-pileser  I.  the  following 
words  occur:  "X.  am-' si  bu-cha-U  .  .  .  In  a-duk" 
(i.e.,  "  ten  full-grown  horned  wOd  bulls  I  kiUed  "  (see 
Norris,  Assyr.  Diet.,  i.,  p.  81).  Again,  on  the  Broken 
Obelisk  of  Assur-natsu--pal :  "  Ani-'si  ina  iz-bam. 
(mitpanu)  ra-san-Ut"  (i.e,  "horned  wild  bulls  with 
his  bow  he  brought  down")  (Norris,  i.,  p.  311).  Thus 
these  wild  cattle  or  mi  are  spoken  of,  being  especially 
characterised  by  the  strength  and  size  of  their  horns. 

Since  much  of  the  above  was  written  we  have  received 
a  letter  from  Mr.  A.  H.  Sayee,  to  whom  we  are  much 
indebted  for  kind  help  in  Assyrian  and  Accadian  words, 
and  who  thus  writes  to  us  on  this  matter  : — "  It  seems 
to  me  that  you  are  right  in  thiukmg  that  the  evidence 
is  complete,  that  reem  means  a  wild  bidl,  and  that  we 
have  historical  evidence  of  its  former  existence  in 
Palestine." 

Both  the  urns  and  the  bison  had  a  vride  geo- 
graphical range.  They  were  to  bo  found  from  the 
Rhine  to  China,  in  Thrace,  and  Asia  Minor ;  while  they 
or  allied  species   are   still  found  in   Siberia  and  the 


28 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


forests  both  of  Northern  and  Southern  Persia ;  while 
tho  gigantic  Oaur  (Bibos  fjanr)  (of  which  animal  we 
possess  a  magnificent  jjair  of  horns),  and  several  con- 
goners,  are  spread  over  aU  the  mountain  wildernesses  of 
India,  and  the  Sheriffi-al-Wady ;  and  a  further  colossal 
species  roams,  with  other  wild  bulls,  in  the  valleys  of 
Atlas  (Hamilton  Smith,  in  Kitto's  Cyclop.  Bib.  Lit). 

Gigantic  oxen  belonging  to  the  genera  Bison  and 
Bos  once  roamed  at  large  in  our  own  country,  but  we 
have  no  historical  record  of  their  existence.  Skulls  and 
horn-coros,  and  a  few  bones,  chiefly  metatarsal  and 
metacarpal,  whicli  have  been  found  in  some  places  in 
-England  and  Scotland,  sliow  the  existence  of  a  large 
taurine  race  which  was  probably  entii'ely  destroyed  by 
the  old  inhabitants  before  the  invasion  of  Britain  by 
Jnhus  Csesar.  Wlien  the  Roman  armies  penetrated  the 
forests  of  Belgium  and  Germany,  they  found  two  large 
species  of  wild  cattle,  the  Urus  and  the  Bison.  Of  the 
urus,  which  was  distinguished  by  the  great  length  of 
the  liorns,  we  have  already  spoken;  the  bison  was  dis- 
tiuguislied  by  its  shaggy  coat.  "Germany,"  says 
Pliny  (Nat.  Hist.  viii.  15),  "though  it  has  not  very 
many  animals,  has  some  fine  kinds  of  wild  oxen,  bisons 
with  long  manes,  and  uri  of  remarkable  strength  and 
speed"  (Jiibatos  bisontes,  excellentiqiie  vi  et  velocitate 
uros).  Seneca  briefly  and  characteristically  describes 
these  two  species : — 

"  Tibi  cJant  variEe  pectora  tigrea. 
Tibi  villosi  terga  bisontes 
Latisqne  feri  coruibus  uri "  (Hipp.  vi.  3). 

Tlio  lu-us,  which  Professor  Owen  identifies  ^vith  the 
Bos  priniigenius,  whose  remains  liave  been  found  in  the 
allu\'ial  beds  of  rivers  and  the  newer  Tertiaiy  deposits 
of  tliis  country,  in  marlpits  in  Scotland,  in  drift  sand 
overlying  the  Loudon  clay,  iu  a  tumulus  of  the  Wilt-' 
shire  downs,  &c.,  has  long  become  extinct,  though  it 
seems  to  have  existed  at  later  periods  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  and  to  liavo  been  occasionally,  together  with 
the  bison,  captured  and  exhibited  alive  in  the  shows  of 
the  amphitheatre.  The  genus  Bos  differs  from  the  genus 
Bison  in  these  particulars  : — "  The  forehead  of  the  ox 
(bos)  is  flat,  and  even  slightly  concave ;  that  of  the 
auroclis  (bison)  is  convex,  though  somewhat  less  so 
than  the  buffalo ;  it  is  quadrate  in  the  ox ;  its  lieight, 
taking  the  base  between  the  orbits,  being  equal  to  its 
breadth  ;  in  the  aurochs,  measured  at  the  same  place, 
the  breadth  greatly  exceeds  the  height,  in  the  propor- 
tion of  3  to  2.  The  horns  are  attached  in  the  ox  to 
the  extremity  of  the  highest  salient  line  of  the  head, 
that  which  separates  the  forehead  from  the  occiput; 
in  the  aurochs  this  lino  is  two  inches  behind  the  root  of 
tlio  liorns.  The  plane  of  the  occiput  forms  an  acute 
angle  with  the  forelioad  in  tlio  ox ;  the  angle  is  obtuse 
in  tho  aurochs.  FmaUy,  that  plane  of  the  occiput  is 
quadrangular  in  the  ox,  but  semicircular  in  the  aurochs  "' 
(Menagerie  da  Mas.  (VHist.  Nat.,  quoted  from  Owen). 
"  Tho  ribs  never  exceed  in  number  thirteen  pairs  in  any 
species  of  Bos  pi-oper ;  the  European  Bison  or  aurochs 
has  fourteen,  and  the  American  Bison  fifteen  pairs  of 
ribs"  (British  Fossil  Mammals  and  Birds,  pp.  492, 493). 


From  the  recent  character  of  the  osseous  subst-ances 
of  the  skulls  obtained  from  marlpits  in  Scotland,  Pro- 
fessor Owen  concludes  that  the  Bos  primiijeniiis  main- 
tained its  ground  longest  in  Scotland.  There  may  be 
found  here  aud  there  in  history  marks  of  the  occui'rence 
of  the  uri  in  Germany  subsequent  to  the  time  of  Ccesar, 
Seneca,  and  Phny.  It  is  related  of  Charlemagne  that 
he  used  to  hunt  bisons  and  uri  when  in  the  humour. 
"  Cum  ecce  quietis  et  otii  impatientissimns  Carolus  ad 
venatum  bisoutium  vel  urorum  in  nemus  ire,  et  Persa- 
rum  nuntios  secum  parat  educere  "  (Sangall,  lib.  ii.  Be 
Carolo  M.,  c  ii.,  quoted  from  Du  Gauge's  Gloas.,  a.  v. 
"  Urus  ")  Professor  Owen  writes,  "  It  is  remarkable 
that  tho  two  kinds  of  gi-eat  wild  oxen  recorded  in  the 
Niebelunrjen  Lied  of  the  twelfth  century  as  ha\'ing 
been  slain  with  other  beasts  of  chase  in  the  great  hunt 
of  the  Forest  of  Worms,  are  mentioned  imder  the  same 
names  which  they  received  from  the  Romans  : — 

'  Dar  nacli  scbluch  er  scbiere  einen  Wlsent  und  einen  Elch, 
Starcher  l/rc  vier,  und  einen  griiumen  Scbelch.' 

(*  After  this  be  straightway  slew  a  Bison  and  an  Elk, 
Of  tbo  strong  Un  four,  and  a  single  fierce  Scbelch. 'J 

TliG  image  of  the  great  urus  in  the  full  vigour  of 
life  is  powerfully  depicted  in  a  later  poem,  destined 
perhaps  to  be  as  immortal  as  the  Niehelungen  : — 

*  Mightiest  of  all  the  beasts  of  chase 

That  roam  in  woody  Caledon, 
Crashing  the  forest  in  bis  race, 

The  mountain  bull  comes  thundering  on.' 

But  the  following  stanza  shows  that  Scott  drew  his 
picture  from  the  Chillingham  wild  cattle : — 

*  Fierce,  on  the  hunter's  quiver'd  band, 

He  rolls  his  eyes  of  swarthy  glow ; 
Spurns  with  black  hoof  and  horn  the  sand. 
And  tosses  high  his  mane  of  snow  ' 

(Scott,  Ballai  of  Cadyow  Castle)." 

We  do  not  think  Sir  Walter  Scott  was  thinking  of 
the  Chillingham  wild  cattle ;  he  doubtless  had  in  view 
a  passage  from  the  Scotia;  Descriptio  of  Lesley  (p.  13), 
where  a  huge  fierce  wild  bull  is  mentioned,  very  white 
in  colour,  with  a  mane  like  a  Hon. 

The  Bison  has  continued  down  to  this  day ;  it  is  .still 
to  be  found  in  the  forests  of  Litluiania,  Moldavia,  and 
the  Caucasus.  It  lias  never  Ijeen  domesticated,  but 
herds  are  protected,  to  the  number  of  about  800,  in 
the  forest  of  Bialowieza,  under  the  direction  of  the 
Emperor  of  Russia.  There  is  a  very  fine  stuffed 
specimen  of  this  aurochs  in  the  British  Museum,  which 
was  presented  some  years  ago  by  the  Emperor  of 
Russia.  Cffisar  aud  Pliny  say  that  the  large  horns  of 
the  urus  were  anxiojisly  sought  after  for  making  into 
cups  to  be  used  at  splendid  entertainments,  or  for 
ornaments,  the  tips  being  bound  with  silver.  The 
ancient  monarchs  of  Assyria  also  prized  the  horns  of 
wild  cattle  for  ornaments ;  such  sentences  as  tho  fol- 
lowing occur  on  the  monuments :  "  Silver,  gold,  lead, 
copper,  iron,  horns  of  wild  oxen  (ka  am-si)  without 
number  I  received  them."  "  Their  skins,  their  horns 
(hai  sunu),  with  wild  oxen  alive  to  my  city  Assur,  I 
carried  "  (Norris,  Ass^jr.  Diet,  ii.,  p.  502).     The  figures 


THE   COINCIDElSrCES  OF  SCRIPTURE. 


29 


of  the  wild  bulls  whicli  occur  on  the  As.;yriau  mouu- 
ments  exhibit  strong  animals  ■svith  loug  powerful  horns, 
and  would  indicate  that  they  belonged  to  the  genus 
Bos,  and  not  to  the  genus  Bison. 


Note.— The  European  Bison— the  Bos  Bison  of  Liunseus,  the 
Bhoii  Bonassus  of  Gray,  the  Bison  priscit^  of  Oweu,  the  Urochs, 
Auer-ochs,  Wald-ochse,  &c.,  of  Germau  writers— is  no  doubt  iden- 
tical Kith  the  fossil  Aurochs,  these  being  the  ancestors  of  tha 
animals  now  living  in  the  forests  cf  Lithuania. 


THE    COINCIDENCES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 

THE   HEEODIAN   FAMILY. 

BY    THE    EDITOK. 


St  does  not  come  within  the  scope  of  this 
paper  to  give  a  complete  account  of  the 
rise  and  fall  of  this  dynasty,  and  of  the 
influence  which  it  exercised  for  good  or 
evil — mostly,  it  must  be  confessed,  for  evil — on  the 
fortunes  and  character  of  Judaism.  That  account  will 
come  in  its  natural  place,  as  part  of  the  series  of  papers 
to  which  we  have  given  the  title  of  "  Between  the 
Books,"  and  which  will  include  the  period  that  in- 
tervenes from  the  retm-n  of  the  Jews  from  Babylon 
to  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem.  There  are,  however, 
many  points  of  interest  to  the  general  student  of  the 
Gospels  in  which  the  narrative  of  Josephus  or  other 
Jewish  writers  presents  coincidences  that  at  once  illus- 
trate and  confirm  the  records  of  the  New  Testament. 
They  show  that  where  those  records  come  into  contact 
with  the  history  of  the  outside  world,  as  forming  the 
stage  on  which  the  Divine  drama  was  being  played  out 
to  its  great  issues,  they  breathe  the  very  spirit  of  the 
time  to  which  they  purport  to  belong,  and  are  accurate 
with  an  unconstrained  accuracy  which  was  not  likely  to 
be  met  with  in  documents  that  were  the  mythical  after- 
growth of  a  later  age.  So  far,  then,  the  coincidences 
which  will  bo  noticed  here  will  have  something,  at 
least,  of  an  evidential  value.  In  not  a  few  instances, 
it  is  believed,  they  will  serve  to  throw  a  fresh  light 
on  passages  the  full  significance  of  which  is,  for  want 
of  adequate  knowledge,  but  half  perceived  by  many 
readers.  It  will  bo  convenient  to  arrange  the  coinci- 
dences more  or  less  chronologically. 

I.    HEEOD    THE    GREAT. 

(1.)  "  Then  said  the  Jews,  Forty  and  six  years  was 
this  temple  in  building,  and  wilt  thou  rear  it  up  in 
three  days  P"  (John  ii.  20.)  "  And  as  some  spake  of  the 
temple,  how  it  was  adorned  with  goodly  stones  and 
gifts"  (Luke  xxi.  .5).  "As  He  went  out  of  the  temple, 
one  of  his  disciples  saith  unto  Him,  Master,  see  what 
manner  of  stones  and  what  buildings  are  here  "  (Mark 
xiii.  1). 

It  was  part  of  the  policy  of  Herod,  after  ho  had  ob- 
tained the  title  and  power  of  king  of  Judea  through 
the  murder  of  John  Hyreanus,  the  last  representative  of 
the  priestly  Maccabaean  dynasty,  and  the  favour  of  the 
Emperor  Augustus,  to  win  the  good-will  of  his  subjects 
and  the  praise  of  other  nations  by  works  of  a  dazzling 
magnificence.  Among  these,  which  included  a  temple 
dedicated  to  Augustus  at  Paneas,  near  the  sources  of 
the  Jordan,  a  theatre  for  gladiatorial  games  and  chariot 


races  at  Caesarea,  a  temple  of  Apollo  at  Rhodes,  public 
buildings  at  Kicopolis  and  at  Antioch,  and  (strange 
combination!)  the  revival,  in  something  of  their  old 
splendour,  of  the  Olympic  games,  that  which  fixed 
itself  most  on  the  minds  of  the  inhabitants  of  Palestine 
was  the  reconstruction  of  the  Temple  (B.C.  20).  Ten 
thousand  workmen  were  pressed  into  the  service,  a  thou- 
sand priestly  garments  provided  for  the  more  solemn 
celebration  of  sacrifices  and  daily  psalmody,  the  priests 
themselves  trained  to  be  overlookers  of  the  works.  The 
foundations  were  relaid  on  those  of  the  older  Temple  in 
large  white  stones ;  the  Temple  was  surrounded  ivith 
cloisters ;  a  golden  vine  covered  the  gateway  with  its 
branches  and  its  clusters.  The  inauguration  of  the  sanc- 
tuary took  place  a  year  and  a  half  after  the  work  had  been 
begun,  but  the  cloisters  were  not  finished  for  eight  years 
(Joseph.,  Ant.  xv.  II).  The  bounty  of  the  king,  however, 
did  not  end  here.  During  the  remainder  of  his  life, 
from  time  to  time,  he  adorned  it  -with  costly  gifts,  in- 
cluding, in  one  memorable  instance,  a  golden  eagle,  dedi- 
cated, we  may  well  believe,  in  honour  of  the  master  of 
the  Roman  legions,  which  roused  the  zeal  of  the  Jews, 
as  bringing  with  it  the  pollution  of  the  holy  place  by 
the  worship  of  a  graven  image  (Joseph.,  Ant.  xvii.  6). 
His  example  was  doubtless  followed  by  the  wealthier 
priests  and  citizens,  by  pilgrims  who  came  from  distant 
countries  ;  and  from  the  date  when  the  restoration  was 
begun,  B.C.  20,  to  that  when  our  Lord  began  his  ministry, 
A.D.  26  (a  period  of  exactly  forty-six  years),'  the  work 
probably  never  entirely  ceased.  The  multitude  at  Jeru- 
salem were  strictly  withru  the  letter  when  they  described 
the  building  as  having  gone  on  for  that  period.  It  was 
upon  the  "goodly  stones  and  gifts  "  thus  brought  together 
that  the  Galilean  disciples  gazed  with  admiration. 

(2).  It  was  probably  to  the  reign  of  this  Herod  that 
we  have  to  ascribe  the  growth  of  the  party  or  sect  known 
as  the  Herodians.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  only  men- 
tion of  them  by  tliat  name  in  the  New  Testament  occurs 
in  the  Gospels  of  St.  Matthew  (xxii.  16)  and  St.  Mark 
(iii.  6  ;  xii.  1.3),  and  that  they  are  not  mentioned  at  all 
by  Josephus  or  any  other  writer.  The  name  was  in  its 
form,  like  Mariani,  Pompeiani,  and,  we  may  add,  Cliris- 
tiani  (the  followers  of  Marius,  Pompeius,  Christus), 
essentially  Latin  in  its  form,  and  implied  that  it  was 

'  Our  Lord  was  *'  about  thirty  years  of  age  "  at  the  time  of  his 
baptism  (Luke  iii.  23).  The  actual  date  of  the  Nativity  must 
be  placed,  however  (the  Christian  era  having  been  inaccurately 
reckoned  when  it  first  came  to  be  emplo.ved),  at  B.C.  4,  and  tha 
commencement  of  his  ministry  coincides,  therefore,  uot  with  A.D. 
30,  but  with  A.D.  26. 


30 


TKE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


given  after  Roman  influences  liad  begun  to  tell  upon  the 
nation.     The  Herodians  are  obviously  something  more 
than  a  political  piirty,  something  less  than  a  religious 
sect.     They  differ  from  the  Pharisees  on  the  question 
whether  it  was  lawful  to  pay  tribute  to  Ceesar,  as  Herod 
and  his  sons  had  compelled  their  subjects  to  do  (Matt. 
xxii.  16,  17).     They  coalesce  with  them,  sometimes,  as 
in  the  instance  just  referred  to,  under  the  guise  of  a 
simulated  opposition,  sometimes  in  open  union  against 
the  Teacher  in  whom  they  saw  a  common  enemy.     The 
origin  of  the  party  as  such  is  not  very  definitely  marked. 
A  movement  which  for  a  time  threatened  to  break  up 
the  unity  of  the  Pharisee  party  may,  however,  with  some 
probability,  bo  regarded  as  its  starting-point.     The  great 
Rabbi  Hillel  had  at  one  time  as  his  colleague  a  certain 
Menahem,  identical  probably  with  Manaen  the  Essone, 
of  whom  more  hereafter.    The  former  continued  stedfast 
to  the  milder,  wider  forms  of  Pharisee  tratlition,  such 
as  that  of  which  Gamaliel  was  afterwards  the  repre- 
sentative, and  watched  with  jealousy  and  disfavour  the 
Hellenising,  heathenising  poUcy  of  the  son  of  the  Idu- 
mean  Antipater.     The  latter,  attracted  by  the  hopes  of 
advancement  and  the  rising  power  of  Herod,   seceded 
from  his  party,  and  was  followed  by  not  less  than  eighty 
of  his  adherents  among  the  Scribes.      They  adopted,  as 
the  outward  badge  of  their  new  position,  the  luxurious 
habits  and  the  gorgeous  dress,  glittering  with  gold  em- 
broidery,  in   which    the   Herodian    dynasty   delighted 
(comp.  Acts  xii.  21).     Such  a  body  would  obviously  be 
regarded  by  the  zealous  Pharisees  much  in  the  same  way 
as  those  among  the  high  Anglican  party  who  took  the 
oath  of  allegiance  to  William  and  Mary  were  regarded 
by  the  Non-jurors,  and  yet  would  still  retain  points  of 
contact  with  them,  leading  sometimes  to  actual  co-opera- 
tion.    The  fact  just  mentioned  throws  anew  light  upon 
the  words   spoken    by  our    Lord  to  the  disciples   of 
John  the  Baptist,  "  What  went  ye  out  into  the  wilder- 
ness to  see?     A  reed  shaken  with  the  wind?"     The 
preacher  of  repentance  was  not  like  those  Scribes  of 
shifty  and  supple  nature,  who  veered  about  as  the  wind 
of  court  favour  blew  from  this  or  that  point  of  the  com- 
pass. "  But  what  went  ye  out  for  to  see  ?    A  man  clothed 
in  soft    raiment?     Behold,  they  that   are   gorgeously 
apparelled,   and  live  delicately,  are  in  king's  houses" 
(Matt.  xi.  7,  8  ;  Luke  vii.  24,  25).     The  Baptist  was  not 
like  those  renegade  teachers  who   had   sunk   into  the 
liveried  parasites  of  a  court.     Both  descriptions  fit  in 
with  admirable  precision  to  the  character  of  the  Hero- 
dians, to  the  followers  of  Menahem,  and  they  do  not  fit 
in  to  any  other  party  or  set  of  teachers  who  could  bo 
contrasted  with  the  Baptist.     And  the  probability  of 
their  being  thus  referred  is  strengthened,  we  may  .add, 
by  the  fact,  which  we  learn  from  a  comparison  of  Luke 
vi.  11  with  Mark  iii.  6,  that  the  coalition   between  the 
Herodians  (whom  St.  Luke  does  not  mention)  and  the 
Pharisees  had  all  but  immediately  preceded  the  words  of 
indignant  scorn  which  St.  Mark  does  not  record.     The 
coincidence  in  this  case  is  one  of  that  most  interesting 
kind,  ia  which  a  fact  mentioned  altogether  incidentally 
by  one  writer  supplies  the   key   to  the   right   under- 


standing of  words  recorded  by  another.  May  we  not 
believe  that  the  studied  mockery  with  which,  when  our 
Lord  was  brought  before  the  Totrarch,  he  and  his  men 
of  war  "  arrayed  him  in  a  gorgeous  robe,"  was  an  act  of 
vindictive  maUce,  seeking  to  revenge  the  scorn  which 
the  supporters  of  Herod  had  felt  so  keenly  ?  We  know 
from  Matt.  xxii.  16  that  the  Herodians  were  at  Jerusa- 
lem at  the  time,  and  we  should  naturally  look  for  them 
among  the  prominent  persons  at  their  prince's  court. 

(3.)  The  name  of  Menahem  just  mentioned  connects 
itself  with  another  set  of  facts  in  the  histoiy  of  Herod 
the  Great.  In  the  chililhood  of  that  king  an  Essene 
■  who  bore  that  name,  and  whose  austerity  of  life  had 
won  for  him  the  reputation  of  a  prophet,  had  gi-eeted 
him,  as  by  a  divine  impulse,  as  the  fiiture  king  of  the 
Jews,  had  warned  hiin  against  his  besetting  vices,  and 
predicted  the  punishment  that  would  fall  upon  him  if 
ho  yielded  to  them.  When  the  prophecy  was  half  ful- 
fiUod.  and  Herod  had  gained  the  kingly  title,  he  sent  for 
the  Essene  prophet,  and  inquired  how  long  he  was  to 
retaia  possession  of  his  power.  The  -eager  question  was 
not  definitely  answered,  but  as  he  held  out  a  hope  of 
twenty  or  thirty  years  at  least,  Herod  dismissed  him  with, 
honour,  and  continued  to  favour  the  Essenes.  Josephus, 
who  records  tlie  story  {Aiitiq.  xv.  11,  §  5),  had  at  one  time 
attached  himself  to  the  Essene  communities,  and  his  in- 
formation probably  rested  on  what  he  had  heard  as  ono 
of  the  traditions  of  the  sect.  It  is  obviously  all  but 
impossible  to  avoid  connecting  this  narrative  with  the 
facts  that  there  was  a  foster-brother  of  Herod  the 
tetrarch,  who  bore  the  name  of  Manaen  or  Menahem 
(Acts  xiii.  1),  and  that  one  of  the  same  name  was  the 
loader  of  the  seceding  scribes  who  formed  the  nucleus 
of  the  Herodian  party  described  in  the  last  section. 
In  some  way  or  other,  we  may  believe,  Herod  sought  to 
show  honour  to  the  prophet  by  bringing  up  his  son  or 
grandson  as  a  child  of  the  palace,  among  his  own  sons. 
The  influence  which  such  an  association  may  have  had 
on  the  totrarch's  character,  and  the  other  coincidences 
which  connect  themselves  with  it,  will  be  noticed 
more  fully  below.'  It  is  remarkable  that  at  a  later 
date,  when  Archelaus  was  summoned  to  Rome,  and 
had  a  strange  mysterious  vision  that  perplexed  him, 
ho  too  consulted  a  diviner  of  the  sect  of  the  Essenes, 
who  was  held  in  respect  as  an  interjireter  of  dreams 
{Antiq.  xvii.  11). 

(4.)  Moro  striking  still,  as  illustrating  what  we  are 
told  in  Matt.  ii.  of  the  suspicious  temper  and  relentless 
cruelty  of  the  king,  is  the  picture  drawn  by  Josephus  of 
the  old  ago  of  Herod.  Ono  by  one,  all  whom  he  sus- 
pected among  his  own  children  had  fallen  %-ictims  to  hia 
jealousy.  But  two  years  before  the  birth  of  Christ  the 
sons  of  Mariamno,  his  best  loved  wife,  Alexander  and 
Aristobulus,  were  strangled  at  Sebasto  in  Samaria.  A 
little  later,  in  the  wretchedness  of  an  old  age  which  re- 
minds us  in  its  utter  misery  of  that  of  Tiberius,  his 
body  devoured  by  ulcerous  sores,  his  soul  tormented  by 
its  remorse,  after  a  haK-accomplished  attempt  at  suicide, 

'  Compare  also  tho  writer's  Biblical  Studios,  Essay  on  Manaeo. 


THE   COINCIDENCES  OF  SCRIPTURE. 


31 


he  gave  orders  that  Autipater,  another  son,  should  also 
bo  put  to  death.  Even  the  Emperor,  who  had  long 
supported  him,  was  weary  of  the  ceaseless  complaints 
brought  by  the  tyrant  against  his  o^vu  chililren,  and  said, 
in  the  bitterness  of  his  scorn,  that  it  was  better  to  be  a 
swine  of  Herod's  than  a  son.  What  was  more  likely 
than  that  all  the  suspicions  of  such  a  man  should  be 
roused  by  the  tidings  that  men  had  como  fi-om  the  East 
asking,  "Where  is  he  that  is  born  king  of  the  Jews  ?"'  that, 
with  the  usual  craft  of  his  nature,  he  should  dissemble 
his  jealousy,  and  feign  a  desii-e  to  do  homage  to  the 
king  whom  his  people  were  expecting  P  Wo  must  not 
forget  too  that  in  the  interval  between  the  Nativity  and 
the  arrival  of  the  Magi  there  had  occurred  the  presenta- 
tion in  the  Temple,  and  that  it  must  already  have  been 
whispered  in  secret  among  those  who  "  looked  for  re- 
demption iu  Israel  "  that  from  the  house  and  lineage  of 
David,  and  the  stir  and  throng  of  the  first  census  of 
Quirinus  (Cyrenius),  One  had  been  bom  who  should  be 
"  a  light  to  lighten  the  Gentiles,  and  the  glory  of  his 
people  Israel."' 

(5.)  The  imperial  bon  mot  just  mentioned  connects 
itself  with  another  fact  in  the  Gospel  history.  The 
history  of  the  Gadareno  demoniacs  shows  that,  at  least 
in  Galilee,  it  was  not  uncommon,  though  iu  ilagraut 
violation  of  the  Mosaic  law,  for  large  herds  of  swine  to 
be  kept,  in  order,  we  may  believe,  to  supply  the  wants  of 
the  Roman  soldiers  into  whose  diet  swine's  iJesh,  iu  some 
form  or  other,  entered  so  largely.  How  long  that  traffic 
had  existed,  or  whether  there  was  any  demand  for  the 
forbidden  flesh  among  the  older  inhabitants — remnants 
of  the  old  Canaanite  races  and  the  like — of  Galilee,  wo 
cannot  say.  But  the  saying  now  before  us  shows  that 
Herod  at  all  events  had  sanctioned  and  extended  it,  and 
though  not  eating  swine's  flesh  himself  (his  defiance  of 
the  religious  scruples  of  his  people  docs  not  seem  to 
have  gone  as  far  as  that),  to  have  sanctioned  what  he 
might  make  a  source  of  profit,  and  to  have  compelled 
or  persuaded  his  subjects  to  become  herdsmen  of  the 
unclean  beast.  After  the  death  of  Archelaus,  Jerusalem, 
with  only  occasional  visits  from  the  Procurator,  became 
moro  intensely  Jewish ;  Galilee,  under  Antipas,  more 
thoroughly  Romanised.  The  eastern  shores  of  the  Sea 
of  Galilee  were  so  in  a  pre-eminent  degree,  and  it  is 
in  tliat  region  that  we  meet  with  a  form  of  the  peasant's 
life  which  in  Judea  would  have  been  looked  on  with 
abhorrence,  and  which  was  taken,  as  iu  the  parable  of 
the  Prodigal  Son,  as  the  type  of  extremest  degradation. 

II.  ARCHELAUS. 
(1.)  The  position  of  Archelaus  in  the  narrative  of  the 
Gospels  is  entirely  a  subordinate  one.  He  is  mentioned 
but  once.  When  Joseph,' after  hearing  in  Egypt  of  the 
death  of  Herod,  rose  and  took  the  young  child  and  his 
mother,  and  came  into  the  land  of  Israel,  ho  "  hoard  that 
Archelaus  did  reign  in  JudKa  in  the  room  of  his  father 
Herod,  and   was   afraid  to  go  thither"  (Matt.  ii.  22). 

'  The  chronology  of  the  events  connected  with  the  Nativity  is 
not  without  difficulty.  Wieseler,  the  most  thorough  and  accu- 
rate of  harmonists,  places  the  an-ival  of  the  Magi  immediately 
after  the  presentation  in  the  Temple 


Two  things  are  noticeable  in  this  statement,  (a)  The 
fact  of  Archelaus  being  the  successor  of  his  father 
seems  to  have  come  upon  Joseph  as  something  unex- 
pected ;  so,  indeed,  it  might  well  do.  The  right  of  suc- 
cession in  an  Eastern  monarchy  like  that  which  Herod 
had  founded  was  somewhat  unsettled,  and,  like  that  of 
tho  Roman  imjierium,  was  practically  made  to  depend 
on  the  testamentary  disposition  of  the  present  owner. 
It  was  characteristic  of  the  i-apidly  changing  jealousies 
and  suspicions  of  the  later  years  of  Herod's  reign  that  no 
less  than  three  such  mils  were  made  one  after  another ; 
the  first  aijpointiug  Antipater,  who  was  aftei-wards 
executed ;  tho  second  Herod  Antipas,  afterwards  the 
Tetrarch ;  and  lastly,  one  made  just  before  his  death,  de- 
signating Archelaus.  It  may  well  have  been,  therefore, 
that  one  who  had  left  Judaea  before  Herod's  death  would 
bo  more  sui-prised  to  find  that  prince  ^vielding  the 
sceptre.  (6)  The  narrative  imx^hes  that  Joseph  thought 
there  would  be  greater  safety  imdcr  Herod  Antipas 
iu  Galilee  than  there  was  under  Archelaus  iu  Judaea. 
This  also  would  be  in  perfect  accordance  with  the 
facts  of  the  case.  The  evil  nature  of  Antipas  had  not 
as  yet  fully  shown  itself.  That  of  Archelaus  rivalled, 
withiu  a  few  months  of  his  accession,  the  cruelty  of 
his  father.  The  Passover  camo,  and  the  streets  of  the 
city  were  crowded  with  pilgrims.  An  enthusiastic 
wish  to  do  honour  to  the  memory  of  two  leaders, 
Judas  and  Matthias,  who  had  died  what  was  looked 
upon  as  a  martyi'"s  death  against  the  heathenising  en- 
croachments of  Herod,  took  possession  of  the  mul- 
titudes, and  wrought  them  to  a  feverish  excitement 
Archelaus  gi-ew  alarmed,  sent  in  his  horsemen  to  dis- 
perse them,  and  on  meeting  with  resistance  attacked 
them  and  slew  not  less  than  three  thousand  men.  The 
remembrance  of  this  massacre  must  have  been  fresh  in 
the  minds  of  men  when  Joseph  found  himself  on  his 
way  back  from  Egypt,  and  may  well  have  led  him  to 
seek  a  refuge  in  the  sheltered  home  at  Nazareth  rather 
than  in  David's  city,  in  which,  as  belonging  to  the 
house  and  liueage  of  D.avid,  he  probably  possessed 
some  patrimony.  It  may  have  helped  to  determine  his 
course  of  action  that  while  Archelaus  was  at  that  time 
actually  governing  in  Jerusalem,  Antipas  had  taken  his 
departure  for  Rome  iu  the  hope  of  obtaining,  through 
the  Emperor's  favour,  the  confirmation  of  his  father's 
second  will  which  had  assigned  him  the  kingdom 
(Joseph.,  Aniiq.  xvii.  2,  §§  6,  8,  9). 

(2).  It  is  a  remarkable  feature  in  the  parable  of 
the  Pounds,  as  recorded  by  St.  liuko  (xix.  13),  that  it 
begins  with  tho  statement,  "  A  certain  nobleman  went 
into  a  far  country  to  receive  for  himself  a  kingdom,  and 
to  return,"  that  after  what  we  may  call  tho  substance  of 
the  parable,  which  it  has  iu  common  with  St.  Matthew's 
parable  of  the  Talents,  it  adds  what  that  does  not  give 
us,  the  incident  that  his  citizens  hated  him,  and  sent 
a  message  after  him,  saying,  "  We  will  not  have  this 
man  to  reign  over  us ;"  that  on  his  return  in  power  he 
takes  vengeance  on  his  subjects,  "  Those  mine  enemies, 
which  would  not  that  I  should  reign  over  them,  bring 
hither,  and  slay  them  before  mo."     In  any  other  period 


32 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


of  Eastern  rule,  in  any  other  state  of  society,  such  a 
picture,  a  nobleman  gaining  a  kingdom  as  the  result  of 
a  distant  journey,  would  have  been  wanting  in  dramatic 
truthfulness.  It  was  precisely  the  kind  of  imaginary 
history  which  the  actual  events  of  the  reign  of  Arche- 
laus  were  likely  to  suggest.  Immediately  after  the 
massacre  above  referred  to,  Autipas  started  for  Rome 
to  urge  his  claim  to  the  throne  ;  Archelaus  followed  him, 
and  scenes  of  accusation  and  recrimination  followed.  The 
Emperor  reserved  his  decision,  and  during  the  interval 
a  delegation  of  fifty  envoys  representing  eight  thousand 
citizens  arrived,  poui-ing  out  their  complaints  against 
Ai'chelaus  and  his  father,  and  above  all  imploring  that 
they  might  be  delivered  for  the  future  from  all  kingly 
rule,  especially  from  that  of  one  so  cruel  and  barbarous 
as  Archelaus.  The  Emperor,  true  to  the  balancing 
policy  of  Roman  rulers,  took  a  midtUe  course,  gave 
Archelaus  the  actual  government  of  Judaea  with  the 
title  of  ethnarch,  and  the  promise  of  the  higher  name 
if  he  merited  it  by  his  allegiance  to  the  Empire,  and 
appointed  Antipas  to  the  tetrarchy  of  Galilee.  Arche- 
laus returned  to  Palestine,  revenged  himself  on  the 
"  enemies  who  would  not  that  he  should  reign  over 
them,"  and  ruled  with  greater  cruelty  than  ever.  A 
second  complaint  addressed  to  the  Emperor  soon 
followed  ;  Archelaus  was  summoned  to  Rome  to  defend 
himseK,  condemned,  deposed,  and  banished  to  Vienne 
in  Gaul  (Joseph.,  Antiq.  xvii.  9,  §  11). 


(3).  One  more  fact  in  the  life  of  this  king  is  not 
without  its  interest  as  bearing  on  the  Gospel  history. 
He  too  married  his  brother's  wife  (Glaphyra,  the 
widow  of  Alexander,  by  whom  he  had  three  children), 
in  direct  defiance  of  the  law,  which,  while  it  prescribed 
that  marriage  where  there  was  no  issue,  forbade  it  in  all 
other  cases.  It  shocked  the  feelings  of  the  better  and 
more  devout  Jews.  The  youth  of  the  Baptist  must  have 
been  impressed  with  the  horror  which  that  unLawfid 
union  had  caused  in  the  minds  of  Pharisees  and  priests. 
There  is,  however,  no  record  of  any  protest  having  been 
made  agaiust  it.  The  old  indignation  must  have  been 
rekindled  when  a  like  crime,  aggravated  by  the  fact 
that  in  this  instance  the  husband  was  stiU  living,  was 
pei-petrated  by  Antipas  in  the  marriage  of  his  brother 
Philip's  wife.  The  witness  which  the  preacher  of  repen- 
tance bore  against  the  sin  was  the  utterance  of  a  very 
widely  spread  feeling  against  this  breaking  down  of  even 
one  of  the  baniers  which  the  Jews,  with  all  their  faults, 
looked  on  with  reverence  as  safeguards  of  the  purity  of 
home.  It  may  be  worth  wMle  noting,  for  some  readers, 
that  the  Philip  who  was  thus  wronged  was  not  the 
tetrarch,  but  another  son  of  Herod,  who  lived  on  liis 
own  property  near  Jerusalem,  and  that  Herodias,  who 
thus  passed  from  one  brother  to  another,  was  herself 
the  daughter  of  Aristobulus,  and  therefore  niece  to 
both  her  husbands,  so  that  the  marriage  was  doubly 
unlawful  (Joseph.,  Antiq.  xvii.  11 ;  xviii.  5). 


BOOKS     OF    THE     OLD     TESTAMENT. 

ISAIAH. 

BY    THE   VEKY    EET.    E.    PAYNE    SMITH,    D.D.,    DEAN    OF    CANTERBnEY. 


jHE  prophet  Isaiah  is  by  general  consent  the 
greatest  of  all  Hebrew  writers,  and  the 
foremost  of  the  long  list  of  seers  who 
form  so  reniarkiible  an  element  in  the 
history  of  the  Jewish  race.  And  yet  we  know  hut  little 
of  his  personal  history.  His  wiitings  are  Iiis  great 
memorial,  and  these  so  fully  describe  the  person  and 
offices  of  the  Messiah,  that  from  the  time  of  St.  Jerome 
downward  he  has  been  known  as  the  Evangelical 
Prophet.  We  cannot,  however,  understand  his  position 
without  a  cursory  glance,  first,  at  the  state  of  prophecy 
in  his  days  :  and  secondly,  at  that  of  Hebrew  literature. 
At  first,  then,  the  prophets  were  the  great  orators  of 
the  Jews.  Standing  apart  alike  from  the  government 
and  the  priesthood,  they  were  an  irregular  power,  freely 
criticising  and  interfering  both  ^vith  cluu-ch  and  state, 
originating  and  controlling  the  chief  popular  move- 
ments, and  intervening  in  all  the  great  crises  of  affairs 
with  wonderful  energy  and  success,  but  depending  for 
their  influence  mainly  upon  the  effect  of  their  words. 
Tai  the  time  of  Samuel  we  hear  but  little  of  them,  and 
we  may  be  right  in  gathering  from  the  circiunstauces 
connected  with  the  ^isit  of  Saul  to  Samuel,  to  inquire 
about  hia  lost  asses  (1  Sam.  ix.),  that  as  a  class  the  seers 


did  not  then  stand  very  high  in  popular  estimation  or 
possess  political  power.  Samuel's  own  position  was 
very  different.  He  was  Eli's  successor  in  the  priest- 
hood, and  it  was  p.art  of  the  duties  of  the  high  priest  to 
consult  God  b}'  Urim  and  Thummim.  Moreover,  his 
personal  qualities  had  led  to  his  being  acknowledged, 
from  the  day  of  the  battle  of  Ebenezer  (1  Sam.  vii. 
13 — 15),  as  the  judge,  or  temporal  ruler,  of  Israel.  The 
addition  to  such  a  man  of  high  prophetic  power  both 
largely  influenced  the  people  in  their  choice  of  him  as 
their  ruler,  and  ensured  him  their  obedience.  But 
among  the  measures  taken  by  him  for  the  restoration 
of  Israel  from  the  decay  into  which  it  had  fallen,  one, 
fraught  with  great  results,  was  the  introduction  of  the 
rudiments  of  education.  Till  his  days  probably  none  but 
priests  of  the  noblest  class  could  read  or  write ;  but  in 
the  fields  round  his  own  house  at  Ramah  he  gathered  a 
few  young  men  of  promise,  whom  he  trained  for  em- 
ployment in  church  and  state.  Soon  similar  schools 
sprang  up  in  several  of  the  larger  tovms,  at  Bethel 
for  instance,  and  Jericho,  and  Gilg.al ;  and  as  these  were 
presided  over  by  prophets,  we  find  then-  pupils  both 
bearing  the  same  name  and  growing  into  a  numerous 
class,  whose  learning  stood  in  such  high  esteem,  that  as 


ISAIAH. 


33 


cai-ly  as  David's  time  they  Lad  become  the  historians 
and  chroniclers  of  the  court.  Unlike  the  priesthood, 
the  propliofie  olBoo  was  open  to  aU ;  it  d32iended  neither 
upon  birth  nor  station ;  oven  education  and  training  in 
the  proplielic  schools  was  no  certain  stepping-stone  to 
it.  No  d.iubt  there  were  vast  numbers  of  man  who 
were  prophets  simply  by  education.  Four  hundred 
s-acli  were  found  in  Samaria,  even  after  Jezebel's  perse- 
cution, and  prophesied  in  tlio  name  of  Jehovah  jjefore 
Ahab  and  Jehoshaphat  (1  Kings  xxii.  6).  Even  these 
belonged  to  no  special  caste,  but  were  recruited  from  all 
ranks  alike ;  but  above  these,  from  time  to  time,  there 
stood  forth  men  instinct  with  Divine  power — few  in 
number,  but  vast  in  might  and  tlignity ;  men  who  spake 
for  God,  and  who  were  felt  to  be  invested  with  sui^er- 
human  awf  ulness. 

It  was  in  the  northern  kingdom  that  prophecy  first 
rose  to  this  colossal  grandeur.  The  Mosaic  institutions 
had  fallen  there  into  decay.  Jeroboam  had  engrafted 
upon  them  the  worship  of  the  sim,  as  s^inbolised  by 
the  Egyi)tian  bull  Apis;  Ahab  and  Jezebel  tried  to 
•crush  them,  and  set  up  instead  the  worship  also  of  the 
sun,  as  represented  by  the  Sidouiau  Baal.  Were  the 
powers  of  the  state  to  be  permitted  thus  to  overthrow 
Jehovah's  worship  ?  No !  God  always  grants  his 
people  a  choice.  The  acceptance  or  rejection  of  his 
•worship  must  bo  done  by  them,  not  for  them ;  and  the 
prophets  were  his  appeal  to  tlie  national  conscience. 
Elijah  and  Elisha  stepped  forth,  therefore,  in  propor- 
tions as  vast  as  the  evil  with  which  they  had  to  struggle. 
But  in  vain.  They  delayed  Israel's  fall ;  wrought  a 
reformation  among  large  masses  of  the  people ;  saved 
multitudes  of  souls;  but  idolatry  gradually  prevailed, 
end  Israel  was  carried  away  into  a  captivity  which  to 
this  day  has  been  followed  by  no  restoration. 

In  Judcea  the  prophets  never  attained  to  so  grand  an 
elevation  as  in  Israel.  They  always  wi-ought  within 
a  narrower  circle,  and  more  as  a  literary  tliau  as  a 
popular  power.  In  the  books  of  Chronicles  we  find  the 
names  of  a  largo  number  who  compiled  histories  of  the 
kings  who  reigned  at  Jerusalem;  and  while  writing 
does  not  appear  to  have  been  an  art  much  iiractised 
in  Israel — though  we  find  it  mentioned  in  the  days  of 
Ahab — it  is  reasonably  certain  that  from  the  time  of 
David  there  was  a  large  literary  class  at  Jerusalem. 
The  historians  mentioned  in  Chronicles  were  the  suc- 
cessors of  Dan  and  Gad,  who  kept  the  records  of 
David's  court.  In  the  palmy  .days  of  the  learned  and 
versatile  Solomon,  the  number  of  writers  must  have 
largely  increased.  Of  this  educated  class,  the  priests 
and  prophets  formed  the  chief  proportion ;  and  the 
many  Psalms  written  in  these  two  reigns,  and  the  per- 
fection of  style  attained  to  in  them,  prove  that  the 
standard  of  literary  excellence,  even  at  this  early  period, 
was  a  very  high  one. 

But  after  the  days  of  Solomon  literature  for  a  while 
decayed.  The  rupture  of  the  two  kingdoms,  the  loss  of 
national  power  and  glory,  tho  disastrous  invasion  of 
Shishak,  and  tho  tyrannical  nature  of  Rehoboam's 
government,  all  conspired  to  lower  the  national  tone, 
27    VOL.   II. 


and  turn  its  abOity  into  inferior  channels.  Still  wo 
find  Shemaiah  and  Iddo  writing  books  (2  Ghron.  xii.  16), 
but  it  was  not  till  the  time  (jf  Hczekiah  that  learning 
again  attained  to  something  like  its  ancient  .proportions, 
or  indeed  surpassed  them. 

During  this  intermediate  time  there  was  nothinn-  to 
call  forth  great  energy  on  tho  part  of  the  prophets. 
The  kings  were  in  general  good,  if  often  feeble,  men. 
The  nation  was  slowly  ripening  for  its  high  purpose, 
and  the  revolt  of  the  ten  tribes  had  removed  the  two 
dangers  of  a  despotic  court  at  home,  and  a  military 
policy  abroad.  First  under  Jchosliaphat,  and  then  under 
Uzziah  and  Jotham,  Judaja  enjoyed  great  prosperity; 
and  though  the  sixteen  years'  reign  of  the  foolish  Aliaz 
brought  with  it  a  bitter  reverse  of  fortune,  yet  it  was 
not  enough  to  undo  the  effects  of  the  able  govemment 
of  the  kings  who  had  preceded  Mm  ;  and  in  Kezekiah's 
reign  Jewish  literature  reached  its  Augustan  at'e. 

It  was  a  reign  of  very  chequered  events  in  political 
matters.  The  dark  cloud  long  gathering  on  the  Tigris 
burst  with  tremendous  force  upon  the  mountains  of 
Judaea.  The  great  AssjTian  warrior  Sennacherib,  tho 
pictorial  record  of  whoso  numberless  conquests  has 
been  so  strangely  diseutomlu'd  for  us  within  the  last 
few  years,  that  we  are  as  familiar  with  his  features  as 
with  those  of  Napoleon  or  Wellington,  laid  his  heavy- 
hand  upon  Hezekiah's  dominions ;  but  after  many  a 
severe  struggle,  there  were  still  tranquil  years  in  store 
for  Judsa  and  hor  king.  And  of  this  period  many 
literary  monuments  remain.  Many  psalms,  less  vigorous 
and  forcible,  but  more  calmly  beautiful,  were  ivritten, 
inscribed  to  Asaph  and  others  of  the  minstrels  of  the 
Temple.  A  supplementary  collection  of  the  psalms  of 
David  was  made,  of  which  Ps.  Ixxii.  20  is  a  record. 
Search  was  made  for  proverbs  by  Solomon  (Prov.  xxv. 
1) ;  Micah  and  other  prophets  flourished;  but  alwve  all 
Isaiah  wrote  liis  matchless  poetry. 

Apparently  he  held  a  high  rank  in  the  city,  for 
Hezekiah,  when  sending  a  deputation  to  him,  chose 
his  highest  officers  and  the  elders  of  the  priests  (2  Kmgs 
xix.  2).  Many  of  the  Rabbins  assert  that  he  was  of 
royal  lineage,  and  brother  of  King  Araaziah  ;  but  of 
this  there  is  no  proof.  Still  more  unfounded  is  the  idea 
of  Clement  of  Alexandria,  that  he  was  son  of  the 
prophet  Amos  ;  for  his  father's  name  is  in  the  Hebrew 
quite  diSi.'rent,  though  the  same  in  Greek  and  English. 
Really  wo  know  nothing  of  his  parentage,  but  lus 
dwelling,  we  find,  was  not  in  tho  city  of  Ziou,  or  in 
the  Temple  buddings,  but  in  the  lower  town ;  for  such 
in  the  Hebrew  is  tho  me.nning  of  the  words  translated 
in  our  version,  "  Afore  Isaiah  was  gone  out  into  the 
middle  court "  (2  Kings  xx.  4).  It  is  exceedingly  pro- 
bable that  he  was  the  head  and  chief  of  tho  prophetic 
order,  holding  in  Jerusalem  tho  same  rank  which  Elisha 
had  held  in  the  prophetic  schools  in  Israel.  To  such 
a  position  his  great  talents  as  well  as  his  high  gift 
of  prophecy  would  justly  entitle  him.  And  those  gifts 
seem  to  have  developed  themselves  at  an  early  ago ;  for 
ho  was  appointed  to  write  tho  annals  of  the  great  King 
Uzziah  wlion  scarcely  more  than  a  boy  (2  Clu-on.  xxvi. 


34 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


22).  For  as  liis  life  was  pro-ouged  cei'tamly  till  towards 
the  close  of  the  reign  of  King  Hezekiah,  whose  death  is 
separated  from  that  of  Uzziah  by  a  iieriod  of  no  less 
than  sixty  years,  at  the  utmost  ho  could  have  been  but  a 
young  man  when  appointed  to  this  task,  and  yet  already 
in  the  year  in  which  King  TJzziah  died  ho  had  been 
called  to  the  offico  of  prophet  by  a  vision  of  sui-passing 
magnificence. 

The  Rabbins  have  indeed  a  tradition  that  ho  survived 
Hezokiah,  and  having  provoked  the  anger  of  Manasseh 
by  his  opposition  to  his  idolatries,  was  by  his  order 
enclosed  in  a  hollow  tree  and  sawn  asunder.  To  this 
martyrdom  of  Isaiah  the  words  in  Heb.  xi.  37  are  often 
supposed  to  refer ;  but  really  there  is  no  authority  for 
this  legend,  and  it  is  scarcely  probable  that  Isaiah  could 
have  lived  to  so  great  an  age.  There  is  no  difficulty, 
howover,  in  supposing  that  Isaiah  had  but  just  arrived 
at  manhood  when  he  was  appointed  a  prophet;  for 
equally  the  call  came  to  Jeremiah  when  still  but  a  youth, 
or  as  less  correctly  rendered  in  our  version,  "  a  child  " 
( Jer.  i.  6).  But  no  more  glorious  vision  is  recorded  in 
the  Bible  than  that  by  which  ho  was  inaugurated  to  his 
office.  He  saw  in  the  Temple  the  Deity  sitting  enthroned 
among  the  seraiihim,  and  adored  with  thrice  repeated 
cries  of  "  Holy  is  Jehovah  of  hosts  !  "  Shrinking  with 
natiu'al  timidity  from  so  heavy  a  responsibility,  he  is 
nevertheless  solemnly  dedicated  to  Jehovah's  service  by 
his  lips  being  touched  with  a  live  coal  from  the  altar, 
while  withal  he  is  warned  that  his  mission  would  be 
apparently  in  vain.  In  the  very  acme  of  Uzziah's  pros- 
perity the  prophetic  vision  saw  Judah  wasted  without 
inhabitant,  the  houses  empty,  the  land  desolate.  Yet  she 
could  not  perish.  The  Jew  then  as  now  bore  a  charmed 
existence.  In  Isaiah's  days  tho  great  piu'pose  for 
which  God  had  formed  the  nation  was  still  altogether 
unaccomplished :  even  now  there  is  part  of  the  work 
as  yet  not  done  (Rom.  xi.  15).  And  so  the  call 
of  Isaiah  ended  in  tho  repetition  of  the  old  promise. 
The  ty[)e  of  fallen  Isi-ael  is  the  oak  in  winter,  stripped 
of  the  luxmuance  of  its  summer  foliage,  but  not  dead. 
Its  substance  is  yet  in  it,  and  in  duo  time  it  shall  revive 
(Isa.  vi.  13). 

So  wonderful  a  picture  of  life  in  death,  representing 
EG  truly  the  intense  vitality  of  the  Jews  under  so  long 
a  series  of  national  reverses,  was  a  strange  vision  to 
greet  the  eye  of  the  child-soor,  called  so  yoimg  and  with 
such  high  gifts  to  his  office ;  aud  it  was  the  moro  re- 
markable, as  Isaiah  was  born  and  educated  at  a  time  of 
great  and  long-continued  national  XJrosxJerity.  But  ho 
lived  to  see  tho  beginning  of  those  troubles  which, 
coming  from  Nineveh  aud  Babylon  and  Rome,  have 
literally  fulfilled  the  vision's  boding  words. 

For  a  long  time,  as  was  natui'ally  to  be  expected,  tho 
youthful  prophet  does  not  seem  to  have  taken  much  part 
in  national  affairs.  His  earliest  prophecy  is  that  cou- 
tained  in  cliaps.  ii.,  iii.,  iv.,  thougii  we  must  not  suppose 
that  his  writings  give  us  the  record  of  the  whole  activity 
of  his  life.  Even  of  this,  his  first  prophecy,  the  date  is 
uncertain  ;  but  he  describes  the  country  as  enjoying  tho 
utmost  prosperity  (ii.  7),  while  the  long  list  of  articles 


of  feminino  adornment  enumerated  in  chap.  iii.  shows 
how  great  was  the  luxury  then  prevalent,  while  the 
things  themselves  are  as  difficult  to  understand  as  would 
be  a  similar  list  of  the  toilet  requisites  of  a  West-end 
lady  of  the  present  day.  But  such  luxury  is  just  the 
theme  which  a  youthful  poet  would  lash  with  his  satire, 
only  Isaiah's  indignation  rises  to  nobler  proportions 
than  that  of  Juvenal,  or  of  even  those  famous  sermons 
of  St.  Chrysostom,  launched  against  the  foibles  of  the 
women  of  his  days. 

A  far  more  interesting  question  is  tho  relation  o£ 
Isaiah  to  the  prophet  Micah ;  for  the  prediction  begins 
with  three  verses  quoted  vci'batun  from  Micah  iv.  1 — 3, 
not  omitting  tho  "  and  "  at  tho  beginning  (rendered  in 
Micah,  in  our  version,  "but").  Now  in  Jer.  xx\'i.  18, 
wo  read  that  Micah  uttered  this  prophecy  in  tho  days  of 
Hezokiah,  and  that  it  made  a  very  great  impression  upon 
both  king  and  people.  Thus  there  is  no  little  difficulty 
in  harmonising  the  matter ;  for  we  are  distinctly  told  in 
Jeremiah  that  the  prophecy  is  Micah's,  and  not  Isaiah's. 
Next,  the  manner  of  quotation  drives  us  to  the  same 
conclusion ;  while,  nevertheless,  the  general  date  of 
these  three  chapters  cannot  well  be  later  than  the  days 
of  Jotham.  My  own  o^jinion  is  that  they  were  pre- 
fixed to  this  prophecy  at  the  time  when  Isaiah  wroto 
chap,  i.,  and  placed  it  as  a  sort  of  preface  to  a  collection 
of  his  works,  published  probably  about  710  B.C.,  and 
containing  chaps,  i. — xxxv.,  with  an  historical  appendix 
consisting  of  four  chapters  more.  The  quotation  hangs 
loosely  upon  Isaiah's  prophecy,  whUo  it  is  the  very 
centre  and  core  of  Micah's,  as  subsequently  it  gives 
the  key-note  to  some  of  Isaiah's  own  writings,  as,  for 
instance,  to  chap.  xxv.  Nothing  was  more  natural 
than  that  Isaiah,  when  editing,  as  we  should  say,  a 
collection  of  his  prophecies  in  Hczekiah's  days,  should 
prefix  to  them  words  ^vith  which  all  Jerusalem  was  then 
ringing,  and  should  thus  both  himself  solemnly  reaffirm 
the  appalling  vision  of  Micah,  and  also  add  weight  to 
his  own  warniugs  by  quotiug  words  so  famous  and  so 
fear-inspiriug. 

Commentators  constantly  forget  that  the  date  of  a 
prophecy  as  contained  in  the  Scriptures  is  not  merely 
that  of  the  time  at  which  the  events  referred  to  in  it 
happened,  but  also  that  of  the  period  when  the  author 
finally  published  it  in  a  ^viitteu  form.  Most  prophecies 
were,  I  imagine,  published  immediately  in  some  form  or 
other ;  but  when  the  author  made  a  collection  of  such 
as  had  a  lasting  and  permanent  significancy,  he  would 
probably  both  omit  what  had  served  its  purpose,  and 
add,  under  the  guidance  of  the  Spirit,  whatever  would 
increase  their  usefulness.  Such  an  addition  seems  to 
be  this  quotation  from  Micah  prefixed  to  an  older  pi'o- 
phecy  of  Isaiah,  at  the  time  when  the  first  chapter  was 
written. 

lu  that  chapter  wo  have  first  a  general  title  to  tho 
works  of  Isaiah,  in  which  they  are  called  his  A''isiou, 
with  direct  reference,  doubtless,  to  the  marvellous  sight 
by  which  he  was  inaugurated  to  lus  office  (chap.  vi.). 
We  have,  further,  tho  date  given  of  Isaiah's  labours, 
extending  through  the  rcigus  of  Uzziah,  Jotham,  Ahaz, 


ISAIAH. 


35 


and  Hezekiah.  The  last  name  fixes  generally  the  date 
when  the  volume  was  put  forth  in  its  written  form  ;  it 
must  have  been  at  some  time  in  Hezokiah's  reign,  and 
probably  was  about  the  middle  of  it,  when  Isaiah  would 
be  about  sixty-five  years  of  ago.- 

Its  whole  matter  is  prefatory,  a  sermon  rather  than 
a  prediction,  sharply  rebuking  princes  and  people  for 
their  sins,  warning  them  that  no  amount  of  attendance 
upon  Temple  services,  so  magnificently  restored  by 
Hezokiah,  would  avail  without  personal  repentance  and 
holiness.  But  what  decidedly  fixes  the  date  is  the 
account  of  the  Assyrian  iuvasious.  The  whole  country 
desolate,  the  fenced  cities  all  captiu'ed,  bauds  of 
marauders  roving  without  check  far  and  wide  over  the 
land,  Zion  alone  uncouquered,  but  even  it  shorn  of  its 
glory,  and  comi^ared  to  a  booth  of  boughs  put  up  for  the 
temporary  lodging  of  the  keepers  of  a  melon  garden. 
But  all  this  is  past :  a  remnaut  is  left ;  the  Temple  once 
again  resounds  with  the  tramp  of  worshippers ;  sacri- 
fices of  fed  beasts  tell  of  the  restoration  of  agricultm-e. 
There  has  been  time  to  recover  from  the  worst  effects 
of  the  invasions  of  Sennachei-ib.  Now  as  the  historical 
appendix  ends  with  the  account  of  the  embassy  from 
Merodach-baladan,  itself  a  proof  of  the  falliug  power 
of  Niueveh,  and  of  Hezekiah's  growing  prosperity,  and 
as  this  restoration  of  national  weal  is  not  obscurely 
indicated  ia  chap,  i.,  it  is  not  without  grounds  that  we 
consider  that  this  portion  of  Isaiah's  works  was  collected 
by  the  prophet  himself,  arranged  in  order,  and  published 
about  three  or  four  years  after  the  destruction  of  the 
Assyrian  host.  Isaiah  may  well  have  given  new  force 
to  his  former  predictions  by  putting  at  their  head  the 
startling  words  with  which  Micah  had  alarmed  all  Jeru- 
salem ;  and  retm-uing  power  and  prosperity  may  have 
made  the  warning  more  than  ever  necessary. 

It  was  probably  their  similarity  in  subject  to  the 
preface  in  chap^  i.  that  made  Isaiah  place  the  pro- 
phecy contained  in  chaps,  ii.,  iii.,  iv.,  and  that  of  the 
unfruitful  vineyard  (chap,  v.),  before  the  account  of  his 
inauguration  to  his  office.  Thus  far  all  is  general.  It 
is  the  usual  lesson  of  the  preachei-— iind  the  prophets 
were  Israel's  preachers — Repent :  for  man  is  corrupt ; 
but  God  merciful.  But  the  vision  of  the  Almighty  on 
his  throne  ushers  in  one  of  the  most  remarkable  of  all 
Isaiah's  predictions — that  contaiued  in  chaps,  vii.,  viii., 
and  ix.  1 — 7 ;  and  the  importance  of  this  prophecy  was 
apparently  the  reason  why  Isaiah  placed  in  front  of  it 
his  own  solemn  call. 

Ahaz  had  probably  been  upon  the  throne  of  Judisa 
for  two  or  three  years  when  a  powerful  confederacy 
was  formed  against  him  by  Pekah,  king  of  Samaria, 
and  Rezin,  king  of  Damascus.  And  the  league  was  at 
first  only  too  successful.  In  one  day  there  fell  in  battle 
120,000  valiant  warriors  of  Judah,  and  200,000  women 
and  children  wore  taken  prisoners  (2  Chron.  xsviii.  6,  8). 
No  wonder  that,  as  the  confederate  kings  marched  upon 
Jerusalem  with  the  avowed  intention  of  utterly  destroying 
it,  "  the  heart  of  the  people  was  moved  as  the  trees  of 
the  wood  are  moved  with  the  wind."  With  some  show, 
nevertheless,  of  courage,  the  young  king  took  measiu-es 


for  the  coming  siege,  and  while  visiting  the  works  on  the 
nortli-easteru  side  of  the  city,  by  which  Jerusalem  was 
supplied  with  water,  and  whore,  too,  an  assaidt  would 
probably  be  made  upon  the  walls,  the  prophet  went  forth 
to  meet  him. 

His  son  was  specially  ordered  to  go  with  him,  and  we 
may  notice  how  the  names  of  the  prophet's  family 
contain  the  substance  of  his  predictions.  His  own 
name  means  the  "  salvation  of  Jah,"  or  Jehovah : 
Shear-jashub  is  "  a  remnant  shall  return."  Chastise- 
ment there  is  to  be,  and  national  ruin,  and  dispersion, 
and  captivity ;  but  never  a  total  destruction.  The  other 
son  has  a  name  of  less  .significance,  portending  only  the 
speedy  fall  and  spoiling'  of  Samaria.  Accompanied 
then  by  his  elder  son,  Isaiah  meets  the  idolatrous  king, 
assures  him  of  deliverance,  and  offers  him  a  sign  in 
proof  thereof.  But  Ahaz  had  cast  off  his  aUegiauce  to 
Jehovah,  and  with  a  certain  show  of  consistency  wdl 
accept  no  sign  from  a  Deity  whom  he  no  longer  serves. 

But  Judah  is  still  Jehovah's  people,  and  he  grants 
them  the  sign  rejected  by  the  royal  house.  And  hero 
we  must  notice  that  the  word  "  sign "  is  oui"  word 
"  miracle."  In  St.  John's  Gospel  the  word  rendered 
"  mu'acle "  in  our  version  is  constantly  in  the  Greek 
"sign:"  and  thus  what  Isaiah  offered  was  a  miracle, 
that  is,  a  sign  of  God's  pi'eseuce,  not  in  the  ordinary 
workings  of  nature,  but  in  some  special  and  super- 
natm-al  way.  Ahaz  wUl  have  no  mn-acle :  Isaiah  gives 
him  the  miracle  of  the  ^-ii-gin's  child,  the  Immanuel.  A 
mere  ordinary  event  is  not  in  Biblical  language  a  sign. 

Tet  tliis  sign  has  an  ordinary  side  to  it.  As  far  as 
Ahaz  and  unbelievers  generally  were  concerned,  there 
was  nothing  more  than  a  plain  promise,  though  couched 
in  an  obscure  form,  that  within  about  two  years  all 
danger  from  the  confederacy  would  have  passed  away. 
Who  or  what  was  the  alniah,  or  vu-gin ;  who  or  what 
the  chUd ;  and  why  the  name  "  God  with  us  : "  with 
all  this  Ahaz  had  nothing  to  do.  It  was  one  of  the 
dark  sayings  which  Hebrew  seers  loved  so  well.  But 
that  the  two  kings  woidd  in  two  years  bo  swept  away, 
of  that  the  promise  was  clear. 

There  was  the  clear  threatening,  too,  of  long  and 
desolating  invasions.  By  the  eating-  of  cui'ds  and  honey 
is  signified  the  cessation  of  all  the  ordinary  processes  of 
agricidture.  There  is  no  corn,  no  vintage,  no  olives, 
but  such  produce  only  as  grows  of  itself.  On  the 
sloping  hiU-sides,  where  there  were  wont  to  be  vino- 
yards  with  a  thousand  vines,  each  worth  a  piece  of 
silver,  the  scanty  popuLition  will  come  with  bows  and 
arrows  to  shoot  the  game  which  has  fouud  there  an 
undisturbed  covei-t,  or  to  pasture  the  heifer,  or  two  or 
three  sheep,  which  are  all  they  have  managed  to  save 
from  the  invading  foe  (vii.  21 — 24). 

In  the  main  this  incture  is  ideal.  The  kind  was  not 
so  wasted  in  the  days  of  Ahaz,  nor  even  when  iu  the 
tune  of  Hezekiah  the  hea^aer  hand  of  Sennacherib  lay 
upon  the  country.  We  must  cany  on  oiu-  minds  to  tho 
days  when  the  Jews  had  gone  into  captivity  at  Babylon. 
Then  agriculture  did  thus  utterly  cease,  and  the  land 
enjoyed  a  sabbath-faUow  for  seventy  yearSf 


36 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


But  the  moaning  is  probably  quite  general.  For 
Ahaz  there  is  the  special  prediction  that  -within  two 
years  the  confederacy  of  Pekah  and  Bezin  shall  be 
utterly  broken  up.  There  is  then  a  picture  of  deep 
and  entire  ruin ;  of  the  land  bare  as  if  shorn  by  a  hired 
razor ;  of  invading  armies  passing  over  it  like  a  flood 
reaching  to  the  very  neck  ;  of  the  inhabitants  "  hardly 
bestead  and  hungry,"  and  in  desperation  cursing  alike 
their  king  on  earth  and  God  in  heaven ;  of  troulilo  and 
gloom,  and  "  driven  to  darkness  "  of  desolation.  All  tliis 
completely  transcends  the  state  of  things  in  the  time  of 
Ahaz;  nor  when  that  king  had  refused  to  ask  for  a  sign 
can  we  imagine  the  prophet  doing  more  for  him  than 
granting  the  assurance  that  the  danger  which  so  bowed 
the  heart  of  him  and  his  people  would  pass  away.  Most 
certainly,  then,  da  these  considerations  point  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  promise  of  the  ahnalis  Child,  of 
the  Son  on  whose  shoulder  is  the  key  of  government, 
and  whose  aivful  names  are  Wonderful,  Counsellor,  the 
Mighty  God,  the  Father  of  Eternity,  the  Prince  of 
Peace,  cannot  bo  tied  down  to  the  times  of  Ahaz ;  it 
rises  to  too  grand  proportions,  is  surrounded  by  repre- 
sentations of  things  with  which  Ahaz  had  nought  to 
do,  is  a  jewel  set  altogether  in  too  ideal  a  framework, 
for  any  just-thinking  commentator  not  to  see  in  it  the 
portraiture  of  Judah's  ideal  king,  the  Messiah,  and  of 
the  light  of  the  Gospel  sliiuing  forth  ujjon  man  dwelling 
in  the  land  of  the  shadow  of  death,  and  walking  amid 
the  deep  darkness  of  sin. 

After  a  very  interesting  prophecy  addressed  to 
Samaria  (is.  8 — x.  4),  remarkable  for  being  arranged 
in  regular  strophes,  we  next  have  a  magnificent  poem 
belonging  to  the  time  of  Hezekiah  (x.  5 — xii.  6).  After 
a  description  of  the  pi-ide  of  Assyria,  there  is  a  wonder- 
fully vivid  description  of  the  march  of  Sennacherib  on 
Jerusalem ;  but  just  as  he  has  reached  tlio  mountains 
that  gird  her  round,  and  shakes  liis  hand  against  her  in 
haughty  exultation  as  if  sure  of  victory,  God  smites  him 
down.  Like  a  cedar  of  Lebanon  cut  down  mightily 
he  falls,  and  the  prophet  without  pause  or  break,  so 
miserably  caused  in  our  version  by  the  division  into 
chapters,  contrasts  with  him  a  feeble  sucker  that  shall 
grow  out  of  another  hewn-down  ti'ee.  Tes,  Judah  is 
to  fall  too ;  but  not  by  Sennacherib.  Hezekiah 's  royal 
house  is  to  fade  away ;  but  from  the  stem  of  Jesse,  not 
from  Hezekiah 's  descendants,  but  going  back  to  the 
time  when  his  ancestry  were  simple  farmers  at  Be(h- 
lehem,  there  is  to  spring  forth  one  in  whom  not  David's 
kingdom,  but  an  era  of  universal  peace  and  happiness, 
is  to  revive.  Again  wo  say  that  Isaiah's  words  cannot 
bo  tied  do^vn  to  the  temporal  fortunes  of  Juda3a.  For 
Hezekiah  there  was  nothing  more  than  the  assurance 
that  Sennacherib  would  not  capture  Jerusalem.  The 
very  march  is  ideal,  for  Isaiah  tells  us  that  Sennacherib 
did  not  approacli  the  city  (I93.  xxxvii.  33),  and  appa- 
rently it  was  at  Pelusiura,  far  enough  from  Jerusalem, 
that  the  Assyrian  army  was  destroyed.  There  then 
follows,  though  in  dim  outline,  a  picture  of  Judah's 
dispersion,  of  the  fall  of  her  kings,  to  bo  followed  by  an 
empire  of  peace,  under  a  righteous  king,  on  whom  rests 


the  Spirit  of  Jehovah,  and  who  is  Israel's  Messiah, 
Christ  our  Lord. 

And  now  to  the  end  of  the  twenty -fourth  chapter  we 
have  a  series  of  burdens,  or  rather  sentences,  decrees 
of  God,  against  Babylon,  in  which,  in  chap,  xiv.,  the  pro- 
phet surpasses  even  himself  in  the  magnificence  of  his 
jioetry;  against  Moab,V[ia,Ao  doubly  interesting  by  the 
discovery  of  the  Moabite  stone  ;  against  the  whole  Nile- 
land,  and  specially  Egypt ;  against  the  Arabian  penin- 
sula, called  "  the  desert  of  the  sea ; "  a  gainst  Jerusalem, 
called  "the  valley  of  vision;"  and  against  Tyre.  In 
the  next  four  chapters  (chaps,  xxiv. — xsvii.l,  we  havo  a 
general  picture  of  Messiah's  kingdom,  of  the  gathering 
back  of  the  dispersed  of  Judah  to  worship  in  the  holy 
mount,  and  of  the  resurrection  of  the  dead.  Then 
foUow  looes  (chaps,  xxviii. — xxxiii.)  :  woe  on  Samaria ; 
woo  on  Ariel,  that  is,  Jerusalem ;  woe  on  those  who 
looked  to  Egypt  for  deliverance ;  woe  on  those  who 
trusted  not  in  God ;  woe  on  the  Assyrian  spoilers. 
Then  upon  these  follow  the  judgment  of  the  heathen; 
and  finally  the  establishment  of  Christ's  kingdom  and 
the  happiness  of  Gospel  times  (chaps,  xxxiv.,  xxxv.). 
In  this,  which  forms  the  conclusion  of  the  earlier  col- 
lection of  Isaiah's  prophecies,  as  previously  in  chap, 
xxxii.,  in  the  midst  of  the  woes  addressed  to  apostate 
Judah,  we  have  the  same  phenomenon  as  has  been  twico 
before  mentioned.  Isaiah,  borne  aloft  by  the  spirit  of 
prophecy,  breaks  away  entirely  from  the  present;  ho 
leaves  Hezekiah  and  his  fortunes  far  behind,  and  mounts 
into  an  ideal  region.  But  that  region,  ideal  then,  was 
the  representation  of  Christ's  kingdom.  And  that 
kingdom  is  in  part  ideal  stiU.  The  prophet's  vision 
describes  what  Christ  really  is,  and  what  his  kingdom 
ought  to  be.  But  his  Church  has  only  in  part  answered 
to  Isaiah's  glowing  picture  :  too  often  only  in  small 
part.  "  We  havo  this  treasure  in  earthen  vessels,"  and 
church  history  shows  us  more  of  the  vessels  than  of 
the  treasure  that  is  within. 

Attached  to  the  book  of  prophecies,  and  probably 
published  at  the  same  time,  is  the  history  of  the  invasion 
of  JudiEa  by  Sennacherib,  the  account  of  Hezcki.ih's 
sickness,  a  hymn  of  thanksgiving  composed  by  that 
monarch  himself,  and,  finally,  the  visit  of  Merodach- 
baladan's  ambassadors,  and  the  reproof  that  followed 
of  Hezekiah's  pride,  with  the  terrible  denunciation  that 
liis  seed  should  servo  as  eunuchs  in  the  court  of  Baby- 
lon, a  prediction  painfully  fulfilled  in  Daniel  and  others. 
Excepting  Hezekiah's  hymn,  the  rest  is  contaiued  iu  the 
Book  of  Kings,  Isaiah  having  been  restored  in  Heze- 
kiah's time  to  the  office  of  chronicler,  of  which  he  had 
been  depi-ived  by  Ahaz. 

And  now  we  come  to  Isaiah's  final  prophecy,  pub- 
lished by  him  some  years  afterwards,  probably  towards 
the  end  of  the  lives  of  both  Hezekiah  and  himself.  In 
it,  leaving  the  temporal  fortunes  of  Judah  far  behind, 
he  soars  onward  and  upward  to  Chi'ist  and  his  kingdom. 
The  criticism  of  these  twenty-seven  chapters  has  been  the 
crux  and  opprobrium  of  modern  schohirship.  It  started 
with  the  fuUest  belief  in  the  unity  of  this  wonderful 
work,  a  unity  evident  to  the  judgment  of  every  attentive 


ISAIAH. 


37 


reader ;  but  with  equal  confidence  asserted  that  it  was 
wi-itteu  by  some  second  Isaiah  at  the  close  of  the  Baby- 
lonian captivity,  when  the  growing  power  of  Cyrus  justi- 
fied the  use  of  his  name  in  chap,  xlv.,  as  the  probable 
conqueror  of  Babylon.  But  a  close  comparison  between 
the  words  and  plu-ases  used  in  the  fii'st  thirty-nine  and 
the  last  twenty-seven  chapters  showed  a  very  extra- 
ordinary amount  of  resemblance.  The  language  of  tlio 
two  portions  is  even  ia  minute  particulars  the  same  ;  so, 
too,  are  the  ideas.  If  this  second  part  described  Judtca 
as  desolate,  such  was  the  most  common  picture  m  the 
first :  if  it  represented  Zion  as  a  wilderness,  and  God's 
holy  and  beautiful  house  as  burned  with  fire  (chaj).  Ixiv. 
10, 11),  though  within  a  few  versos  it  speaks  of  city  and 
Temple  as  if  still  standing  (Ixvi.  6),  as  just  before  it  had 
described  the  watchman  standing  upon  the  walls  of 
Jerusalem,  so  had  the  prophet  sfcirted  with  a  quotation 
from  Micah,  part  of  which  was  tliat  Jerusalem  was  to 
become  heaps  of  ruins,  and  the  Temple  site  a  desolate 
mountain-top.  But  in  fact  all  is  ideal,  and  the  desola- 
tion of  the  city  and  the  burning  of  the  Temple  refer 
rather  to  the  times  of  the  Romans,  when  the  lineal 
Israel  was  removed  that  the  spiritual  Israel  might  take 
.  its  place,  than  to  the  capture  of  the  city  by  Nebuchad- 
nezzar. 

In  fact,  in  reading  it  through  as  modem  critics  have 
done  to  discover  by  internal  evidence  proofs  of  the 
period  when  it  was  wi-itten,  only  two  certain  facts 
ajjpear — the  first,  the  mention  of  Cyrus ;  the  second 
that  the  prophecy  was  written  in  Judaea ;  and  that  the 
people  at  the  time  when  it  was  written  were  given  to 
Molocli  worship.  This  second  fact  is  proved  by  chap. 
Ivii.  5,  C.  The  Jews  are  there  represented  as  sacrificing 
their  children  to  Moloch  in  dried-up  water-courses,  the 
beds  of  what  in  the  rainy  season  were  rushing  streams; 
for  such  is  the  meaning  of  the  word  tliere  rendered 
"  valleys."  Now  there  were  no  such  valleys  in  Bal)y- 
lonia,  and  no  stones  worn  smooth  by  torrents,  such 
as  are  common  in  Palestine ;  for  the  whole  region  is 
alluvial,  and  watered  by  canals  from  the  Euphrates. 
Nor  is  there  the  slightest  proof,  but  the  contrary,  that 
the  horrible  fanaticism  which  drove  the  people  to  sacri- 
fice their  offspring  to  Moloch  in  the  days  of  Hezekiah 
and  his  successors,  ever  existed  among  the  exiles  at 
Babylon. 

Criticism  has  therefore  changed  its  front,  and  instead 
of  two  portions  of  Isaiah,  one  a  collection  of  the  most 
remarkable  predictions  of  his  younger  days,  the  other 
the  calm  outpouring  of  his  later  years,  written  at  a  time 
when  ho  had  retired  from  active  life,  and  was  bowed 
down  beneath  the  load  of  nearly  eighty  winters,  it  now 
dismembers  all  Isaiah,  and  distributes  his  mangled 
limbs  among  a  host  of  prophets  laiown  and  unknown, 
extending  from  Isaiah  down  to  Maccjibajaa  times. 
Manasseh  did  but  saw  him  asunder,  and  this  was  iho 
sole  feat  attempted  by  modem  critics  at  first.  Haviiio;' 
found  this  simple  process  impossible,  they  now  hack 
him  into  small  pieces. 

Into  this  criticism  we  decline  to  follow  them ;  for 
it  involves   a   detailed  consideration  of   almost  every 


chapter ;  nor  is  there  any  agreement  among  the  oritics 
themselves,  who,  for  reasons  so  shadowy  often  that  it 
is  scarcely  possible  to  underst^ind  tliom,  ascribe  the 
same  prophecy  to  men  very  miliko  one  another,  and 
who  lived  at  very  different  times.  One  tiling,  however, 
we  may  notice,  that  they  restore  much  of  those  last 
twenty-seven  chapters  to  Isaiah,  or  to  a  prophet  who 
did  not  live  later  than  Manasseh's  days.' 

Let  me  say,  in  conclusion,  a  few  words  upon  the 
contents  of  these  marvellous  clmpters  themselves.  They 
begin  with  Jehovah's  controversy  mth  idols.  Now 
this  was  the  great  question  in  Hezekiah's  days.  The 
nation  was  making  its  choice  whether  it  would  serve  a 
spiritual,  unseen  Deity,  Jehovah,  or  the  idols  which  ap- 
pealed to  their  senses,  and  whose  worship  were  irai)ure 
orgies,  which  threw  the  cloak  of  religion  over  licentious 
pleasures.  Vigorously  Isaiah  contrasts  the  powerless- 
ncss  of  idols,  made,  perhaps,  out  of  the  remnant  of  a 
log,  of  which  the  rest  had  been  burnt  as  firewood,  and 
which  had  to  be  carried  on  men's  shoulders  because 
they  could  not  walk,  and  to  bo  nailed  in  their  place  ft>^ 
fear  they  should  fall;  vigorously  he  contrasts  these  with 
the  God  who  measures  the  waters  in  the  hollow  of  his 
hand,  and  metes  out  heaven  with  the  span,  and  compre- 
hends the  dust  of  the  earth  in  a  measure. 

But  Isaiah  is  not  content  with  this.  Ho  appeals  not 
only  to  God's  works  in  Nature,  but  also  to  his  fore- 
knowledge (xli.  22,  23),  and  thus  the  specific  prophecy 
of  the  fall  of  Babylon  by  the  hand  of  Cyi'us  forms  an 
integral  part  of  the  pi-oof.  If  this  appeal  was  made 
after  the  fact,  the  whole  prophecy  is  a  sham,  and 
the  claim  that  Jehovah  fnistrates  the  pretensions  of 
diviners  and  of  the  wise  men  of  the  earth,  while  He  con- 
firms the  words  of  his  own  messengers  (xliv.  26)  is 
manifestly  dislionest,  and  to  be  rejected  with  scorn. 

We  find,  however,  from  this  time  frequent  allusions 
to  Isaiah's  arguments.  Jeremi;vh,  the  least  original  of 
all  the  prophets,  reproduces  tliem  in  chap.  x.  They  are 
reproduced  also  in  Ps.  cxv.,  where  also,  in  vcr.  17,  there 
is  an  unmistakable  allusion  to  Hezekiah's  prayer,  sug- 
gesting to  us  that  the  writer  had  both  that  prayer  and 
the  second  part  of  Isaiah  before  him.  And,  in  short, 
they  were  the  strong  armoury  whence  arguments  against 
idokitry  were  di-awn;  and  at  Babylon  they  prevailed. 
There  was  henceforth  no  controversy  among  the  Jews 
between  Jehovah  and  idols  :  the  nation  utterly  rejected 
tliem,  and  chose  instead  Pharisaism  as  its  sin. 

The  twenty-seven  chapters  are  divided  into  three 
portions  of  nine  chapters  each  by  a  refrain  occurring  at 
the  ends  of  chaps,  xlviii.  and  Ivii.  In  the  second  part 
Isaiah  leaves  behind  the  controversy  with  idols  and  all 
allusion  to  Babylon,  and  whereas  before  ho  had  spoken 
of  Israel  as  being  Jehovah's  servant,  ho  now  describes 
the  person  and  offices  and  sufferings  of  Christ,  to  whom 


1  For  a  more  full  discussion  of  this  question,  .see  my  Bnmpton 
Lectures,  Pro)t}iccy  a  Preparation  for  ChrUt.  ed.  sec,  p.  2Dt;  and 
Professor  Stnnley  Leathes'  It'itiiesic  of  the  OUl  Testament  to  Christ, 
p.  25-4.  Also  iny  Messianic  Inlcrjwelation,  of  tin:  Projihec:es  of  Jsainh, 
p.  90;  for  the  Almah,  ib.  301  ;  and  on  the  iiioiition  of  Cjriis  by 
name,  ib,  101. 


38 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


tlio  title  really  belongs.      For  the  name  "  servant  of  i 
Jeliovali,"  in  Oriental  phrase,  means  the  vicegerent  or  i 
representative  of  Jehovah  on  earth,  and  hence  is  but  ; 
rarely  bestowed.      It  was  the   title  of    Moses    (Dent.  ! 
xxxiv.  6),  becanso  lie  represented  God  to  the  Israelites ;  I 
it  was  the  title  of  the  Israelites  (Isa.  xliv.  I),  because 
they  represented    God  to  the  heathen  nations  round; 
it  is  especially  Christ's  title  (Isa.  lii.  13),  because  he 
represents  God  to  all  mankind  (John  i.  18 ;  xiv.  9). 

Starting,  then,  with  I'eferences  to  Israel,  to  their 
coming  capti\'ity  and  deliverance,  to  the  great  ques- 
tion then  debated  among  them,  whether  they  should 


servo  God  or  idols,  the  prophet  goes  on  to  descriljo  their 
duties  as  the  depositaries  of  God's  true  doctrine  ;  and 
then,  warming  with  his  subject,  ho  dwells  upon  Christ's 
work  for  man,  and  the  founding  of  his  Church.  With 
many  a  lesson  for  the  long-waiting  time  before  Christ 
came,  vfith  fuUer  warnings  and  riclier  hopes  for  us, 
there  is  still  in  it  a  glorious  -vision  not  yet  fulfilled, 
when  the  religion  of  the  Gospel  shall  fill  all  hearts  with 
love,  when  the  voice  of  weeping  shall  no  longer  be 
heard  on  earth,  nor  the  voice  of  crying,  but  aU  be 
gentleness,  and  happiness,  and  peace;  because  Christ 
has  seen  of  the  travail  of  his  soul  and  been  satisfied. 


DIFFICULT     PASSAGES     EXPLAINED. 

THE  GOSPELS  :-ST.  MATTHEW. 

BT   THE    EEV.    C.    J.    ELLIOTT,    M.A.,    VICAR    01?    WINKPIELD,  BEEKS. 


**  Then  cometh  Jesus  from  Galilee  to  Jord.an  unto  John,  to  be 
taptized  of  him.  But  John  forbad  him,  saying,  I  have  need  to  be 
baptized  of  thee,  and  comest  tliou  to  me  ?  And  Jesus  ansv;eriug 
said  uuto  him,  Suffer  it  to  be  so  now  :  for  thus  it  hecooieth  us  to 
fulfil  all  i-ighteousuesa.     Then  he  suffered  him."— Matt.  iii.  13 — 15. 

^^3  r^^^s  HE  difficulties  connected  with  the  baptism 

fl  I's)''  ?  "-^  John,  and  more  particularly  with  our 
dM^  Lord's  baptism  at  his  hands,  are  not 
sBc?^  inconsiderable,  either  in  their  nature  or 
in  their  number. 

Amongst  these  the  following  naturally  suggest  them- 
selves : — Was  tlie  rite  of  baptism  commonly  observed 
in  the  reception  of  Jewish  proselytes  .''  or  was  it  some- 
thing hitherto  imknown  ?  In  what  sense  are  we  to 
imderstaud  the  distinction  drawn  by  John  the  Baptist 
between  his  own  baptism  and  that  of  Christ  ?  and  in 
what  resiJccts,  if  any,  does  the  sacrament  of  baptism, 
as  afterwards  instituted  by  Christ,  correspond  wit]i  or 
differ  from  the  baptism  of  John?  How  are  we  to 
reconcile  John's  unwUHugness  to  baptise  our  Lord,  on 
account  of  liis  own  unworthiuess,  and  of  the  dignity  of 
Christ,  with  his  repeated  assertion  in  John  i.  31,  33, 
with  reference  to  this  very  time  and  event,  that  he  did 
not  know  Him  ?  In  what  sense  are  we  to  interpret  the 
words,  "us,"  "now,"  and  "righteousness,"  in  our  Lord's 
reply  ?  And  lastly,  what  was  the  nature  and  design  of 
the  miraculous  attestation  to  Christ  which  immediately 
followed  upon  his  baptism  ? 

Now,  it  is  obvious,  as  well  from  the  special  design  of 
the  ministry  of  the  Baptist,  as  from  the  naiTatives  of 
the  Evangelists,  that  the  baptism  of  John  immediately 
preceded  the  beginning  of  the  public  ministry  of  Christ : 
and  inasmuch  as  our  Lord  was  "  about  tliirty  ye.irs  of 
age"  (Luke  iii.  23)  at  the  time  of  his  baptism,  we  may 
reasonably  conclude,  independently  of  other  chrono- 
logical indications,  that  the  baptism  of  John,  who  was 
six  months  older  than  our  Lord,  began  at  the  time  at 
which  he  had  attained  the  age  prescribed  in  Numb.  iv. 
3,  23,  47,  for  the  Levites  to  enter  upon  "  the  service  of 
the  ministry."     Much  has  been  advanced  on  both  sides 


of  the  controversT  respecting  the  initiation  of  proselytes 
into  the  Jewish  Church  ))y  means  of  bai^tism.  Those 
who  are  acquainted  with  the  extreme  difficulty  of  acquir- 
ing reliable  information  from  Jewish  sources  respecting 
any  rites  or  observances  practised  amongst  them  pre- 
viously to  the  formation  of  the  Christian  Church,  will 
best  appreciate  the  degree  of  value  to  be  assigned  to 
later  testimony  on  this  su])ject.  Such  testimony,  how- 
ever, is  so  abimdant,  and  so  explicit,  not  only  in  the 
wiitings  of  Maimonides,  and  other  earlier  and  later 
rabbins,  but  also  in  the  Jerusalem  and  Babylonian 
Talmud,  that  it  seems  unreasonable  to  suppose  that  it 
was  altogether  an  invention  of  a  later  period.  This 
presumption  is  confirmed  by  the  consentient  (as  we 
believe)  Jewish  opinion  that  Israel  was  sanctified  to  the 
Lord  by  means  of  circumcision,  baptism,'  and  sacrifice  ; 
and  that  as  the  same  rites  were  requisite  in  the  admis- 
sion of  proselytes,  so  long  as  the  Temple  stood,  and  wUI 
bo  necessary  again,  when  the  Temple  shall  be  rebuilt, 
so,  during  the  intermission  of  sacrifice,  baptism,  as  well 
as  circumcision,  is  the  proper  method  of  initiation  into 
Judaism. 

It  must  not  be  overlooked,  however,  that  the  same 
Jewish  authorities  which  prescribe  the  necessity  of 
baptism  as  a  rite  of  initiation  for  proselytes  deny  the 
necessity  of  its  obsen-ance  in  the  case  of  the  children  of 
those  who  have  been  fully  initiated;  holding  that,  in 
like  manner  as  the  original  lustration  of  the  entire 
nation  superseded  the  necessity  of  its  rejjetition  in  the 
case  of  the  descendants  of  the  Israehtes  themselves,  so 
the  baptism  of  the  parents  or  ancestors,  iu  the  case  of 
the  admission  of  proselytes  to  Judaism,  rendered  un- 
necessary the  i-enewal  of  the  same  rite  in  the  case  of 
their  children.  Whilst,  then,  the  observance  of  the  ordi- 


'  The  washing  cf  the  clothes  enjoined  upon  the  Israelites  pre- 
viously to  the  promulijation  of  the  law  from  Mount  Sinai  (£xod. 
sis.  11)  is  interpreted  here,  as  elsewhere,  as  esteudinjr  to  the 
lusti'ation  of  the  entire  person.  The  whole  nation,  moreover,  had 
already  been  "  baptised  unto  Moses  in  the  cloud  and  in  the  sea" 
(1  Cor.  X.  B). 


DIFFICULT  PASSAGES  EXPLAUvTED. 


39 


nance  of  baptism,  in  the  reception  of  proselytes  amongst 
the  Jews,  might  servo  to  account  for  the  absence  of  all 
expression  of  surprise  at  its  adojitiou  by  Jolm  tho 
Baptist  in  the  case  of  proselytes  from  tho  heathen,  it 
will  scarcely  suffice,  of  itself,  to  account  for  the  general 
concourse  to  the  Jordan  of  "  Jerusalem  and  all  Judea," 
including  "  many  of  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees"  them- 
selves. If,  then,  we  would  seek  for  any  other  explanation 
of  tho  fact  beyond  the  general  expectation  which  un- 
doubtedly prevailed  at  this  period  of  tho  advent  of 
some  great  prophet,  and  the  pro\'idential  preparation 
of  men's  minds  for  his  reception,  we  must  seek  it,  as 
it  appears  to  us,  in  those  numerous  pro2)hecies  of  tlio 
Old  Testament  Scriptures  which  describe  the  blessings 
of  the  new  covenant  under  the  figure  of  sprinkling, 
or  washing  with  pure  water  (Isa.  xliv.  3 ;  Ezek.  xxx'S'i. 
25  ;  Zech.  xiii.  1),  and  in  the  fact  of  which  we  have  un- 
questionable evidence,  both  as  regards  tho  doctrine  and 
practice,  of  the  existence  of  "divers  wasliLugs"  (or  b.ap- 
tisms,  Heb.  vi.  2;  ix.  10)  amongst  the  Jews,  rather 
than  in  any  formal  adoption  by  the  Baptist  of  their 
traditional  rites  and  ceremonies. 

With  regard  to  the  next  point  which  suggests  itself 
for  discussion,  it  is  obvious  th.it  it  is  an  easier  matter 
to  assert  in  general  terms — what  few  will  be  disposed 
to  deny — the  inferiority  of  the  baptism  of  John  to  the 
sacrament  of  Christian  baptism,  as  administered  upon, 
-and  subsequently  to  the  day  of  Pentecost,  than  it  is  to 
lay  down  in  precise  terms  the  nature  and  extent  of  tlie 
difference  between  the  two. 

That  the  primary  distinction  to  which  the  Baptist 
refers  when  he  contrasts  his  own  baptism  "  with  water  " 
with  Christ's  baptism  "  with  fire  and  the  Holy  Ghost," 
is  not  a  distinction  between  two  kinds  of  water  baptism, 
seems  to  follow  from  the  following  facts  :  (1)  that  our 
Lord  did  not  baptise  in  his  own  person  (John  iv.  2) ; 
and  (2)  that  the  prophecy  received  its  litei-al  and  un- 
questionable accomplishment,  as  foretold  by  our  Lord 
himself  (Acts  i.  5),  in  the  miraculous  descent  of  tho 
Holy  Spirit  on  the  day  of  Pentecost.  This  inference 
appears  to  be  supported  by  the  fact,  that  whilst,  on  the 
one  hand,  we  read  in  Acts  xix.  3  of  the  administration 
of  Christian  baptism  at  Ephesus  to  some  who  had  already 
received  the  baptism  of  Jolm,  we  read  of  no  general 
command  to  the  same  effect ;  nor  is  there  any  reason  to 
suppose  that,  in  the  ease  of  the  apostles  themselves, 
the  baptism  with  water,  received  at  the  hands  of  John, 
was  repeated,  after  the  reception  of  tho  higher  baptism 
"  with  the  Holy  Ghost." 

It  was  whilst  the  Baptist  was  discharging  his  ap- 
pointed office  as  Christ's  forerimner,  an  office  the  design 
of  which  was  the  manifestation  of  the  Messiah  (John 
i.  31),  that  He,  whose  hour  for  that  manifestation 
had  now  come,  presented  himself  at  the  banks  of  tho 
Jordan,  to  be  baptised  of  John.  "  But  John  forbad 
him,'  saying,  I  have  need  to  be  baptised  of  thee,  and 
comest  thou  to  me?"     These  words,  at  first  sight,  un- 

^  The  word  employerl,  dt€Ka<\v€i',  js  a  very  stronjj  oue,  deuotini?, 
probably,  as  Deaa  Alford  suggests,  a  preventing  by  gesture, 
hand,  or  voica. 


doubtedly  appear  to  be  inconsistent  with  the  twice- 
repeated  assertion  of  tlie  Baptist  (John  i.  31,33),  "And 
I  knew  him  not."  The  diiiiculty,  when  ■i'iewed  only  in 
reference  to  the  relationsliip  of  our  Lord  to  tho  Baptist, 
might  be  overcome,  as  has  been  suggested,  by  the  con- 
sideration of  the  remoteness  of  the  -wilderness  of  Judeea 
from  Nazareth.  It  is  obvious,  however,  that  this  con- 
sideration does  not  meet  the  real  clifficulty,  wliich  con- 
sists in  reconeUiug  the  knowledge  of  our  Lord's  person 
involved  in  the  words,  "  And  John  forbad  him,"  with 
the  express  and  repeated  assertion,  "  And  I  knew  him 
not." 

It  would  be  possible,  indeed,  to  explain  the  apparent 
inconsistency  by  the  supposition  that  the  revelatioli  of 
the  Messiah  was  made  to  John,  not  before,  but  at  the 
veiy  time  of  His  baptism.  And,  to  a  certain  extent, 
this  appears  to  be  the  true  interpretation,  inasmuch 
as  whilst  the  reluctance  of  the  Baptist  to  impart  to 
One  from  whom  he  needed  rather  to  receive,  implies  a 
certain  amount  of  knowledge  of  the  person  and  claims 
of  Christ,  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  the  visible  descent 
of  the  Spu'it  upon  our  Lord  (John  i.  33)  which  was  the 
pledge  and  assurance  given  to  him  that  Jesus  was  "  tho 
Son  of  God,"  and  which  imparted  to  liim  a  fuller  know- 
ledge than  any  wliich  he  had  heretofore  possessed  of 
the  real  natiu-e  of  tho  person  and  work  of  Christ.  Nor 
is  it  hard  to  adduce  both  from  the  Gospel  of  St.  John, 
and  also  from  tlie  Apocalypse,  abundant  evidence  that 
the  words  "I  knewhun  not"  are  fairly  capable  of  being 
thus  interpreted.  Thus,  e.g.,  in  John  vii.  2S,  our  Lord 
told  the  Jews  that  they  "both  knew  Him,"  and  that 
"  they  knew  whence  He  was ;"  whereas  in  -STii.  19,  He 
assures  them  plainly  that  they  "  neither  knew  Him  nor 
his  Father."  Again,  whereas  in  chap.  vii.  27  the  Jews 
declare,  "We  know  this  man  whence  he  is,"  we  find 
them  in  chap.  ix.  29  declaring,  as  expressly,  "  As  for 
this  fellow,  we  know  not  from  whence  he  is."  And,  in 
like  manner,  we  find  St.  John  (Rev.  xix.  12)  testifj-ing 
concerning  the  name  which  lie  had  seen  written  (pro- 
bably upon  the  brow  of  the  Son  of  God),  that  "  no  man 
knew  (it)  but  He  himself ;"  where  (as  in  Exod.  xi.  3)  it 
seems  absolutely  essential  to  understand  the  knowledge 
to  which  reference  is  made,  as  involving  something 
beyond  the  seeing  with  the  eye,  or  the  hearing  with  the 
ear.  If  this  intei-pretation  of  the  words  "  I  knew  him 
not "  be  accepted,  the  narratives  of  St.  Matthew  and  of 
St.  John  appear  to  be  in  entire  accordance.  Whether  ' 
personally  known  or  unknown  to  tho  Baptist  heretofore, 
it  was  not  until  the  begiuniug  of  our  Lord's  public 
ministry  that  the  true  natm-e  and  dignity  of  His  person 
was  revealed  to  him.  When  first  our  Lord  approached 
the  Jordan  there  was  a  recognition  by  the  Baptist  of 
His  majesty,  like  that  which,  thirty  years  previously,  had 
accompanied  the  salutation  of  the  Virgin  (Luke  i.  44) — 
something  which  convinced  St.  John  of  liis  own  im- 
worthiness,  and  which  led  him  to  shrink  from  baptising 
with  water  Oue  who  liad  come  to  baptise  with  the  Holy 
Ghost ;  but  it  was  not  until  after  the  baptism  in  tho 
Jordan  that  the  crowning  .attestation  was  given  of  the 
Messiahship,  and  that  the  Biiptist  was  not  only  led 


40 


THE   BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


to  acknowledge  Jesus  of  Nazareth  as  tho  Son  of  the 
living  God,  but  also  to  point  his  disciples  to  Him  as 
"  the  Lamb  of  God  which  taketh  away  the  sin  of  tho 
world  "  (John  i.  29).' 

The  fii'st  official  woi'ds  of  Christ,  "  Suffer  it  to  bo  so 
now,  for  thus  it  becomoth  us  to  fulfil  all  righteousness," 
are  words  the  full  import  of  which  a  volume  could  not 
explain,  aud  wliich  eternity  a  loue  cau  uufold.  Its  full 
temporal  meaniug  must  bo  given  to  the  adverb  "  now," 
as  denoting  that  John's  acknowledgment  of  inferiority 
was  well  grounded,  aud  that  Christ's  superiority  would 
afterwards  be  displayed. 

Nor  must  the  plural  pronoun  "  us  "  be  overlooked ; 
inasmuch  as  it  is  the  key  to  the  whole  of  our  Lord's 
coming  both  "  by  water  and  blood,"  not  only  "  in  the 
likeness  of  sinful  flesh,"  but  as  One  who  condescended 
to  be  "  made  sin  for  us." 

And  inasmuch  as  the  baptism  of  John  was  indeed 
"  from  heaven,"  aud  nut  "  of  men,"  therefore  it  behoved  j 
Him  who  came  to  bring  in  an  everlasting  righteousness  i 
for  men,   and  to  fulfil  all   righteousness  in  His  own  i 
person,  in  order  "  that  we  might  be  made  the  righteous- 
ness of  God  in  Him,"  to  submit  himself  to  the  baptism 
of  water,  who  was  about  to  baptise  us  with  the  baptism 
of  the  Spirit — not  that  He  might  obtain  cleansing  from 

1  The  exact  correspondence  of  the  history,  as  thus  understood, 
with  the  Jewish  tradition,  as  expounded  in  the  "  Dialogue  of 
Justin  Martyr  witli  Trypho,"  is  too  remarkable  to  be  overlooked. 
"Christ"  (says  Trypho)  "  is  unknown,  nor  does  he  as  yet  know 
hioiself  .  .  .  until  Elias  comius  shall  have  anointed  him,  and 
made  him  manifest  to  all"  (c.  vili.). 


it,  but  that  Ho  might  impart  cleansing  to  us.  "  Ipse 
Dominus  noster  Jesus  Christus  non  tarn  mundatus 
est  in  lavacro,  quam  lavaoro  suo  universas  atj^uas  mun- 
darit."  - 

The  time  .appointed  by  the  Father  for  the  manifes- 
tation of  the  Son  had  now  come,  and  He  who  was  ever 
well  pleased  in  his  beloved  Son  {evoonricra.),  proclaimed 
that  good  pleasure  iu  a  voice  from  heaven,  which  voice 
was  heard  by  the  Baptist,  and  of  which  he  bare  record  to 
his  disciples. 

In  a  visible  form  the  Holy  Spirit  then  descended 
upon  Jesus  of  Nazareth ;  the  dove,  as  the  emblem  of 
purity  (aud,  like  the  lamb,  having  a  sacrificial  import), 
being  the  outward  form  selected  to  denote  tho  anointing 
of  the  Redeemer  for  his  appointed  work. 

It  was  thus  that  the  resemblance  between  the  appoint- 
ment and  consecration  of  the  typical  and  of  the  true 
Israel  was  sustained ;  and  as  the  one  was  "  baptised 
unto  Moses "  in  the  Rod  Sea,  sanctified  in  the  wUder- 
uess  of  Sinai,  aud,  in  the  person  of  their  representatives, 
the  priests  (after  they  had,  as  a  nation,  renounced  the 
priestly  chax-acter),  anointed  for  their  high  office,  so  the 
Other  was  baptised  iu  the  Jordan,  visibly  "  anointed 
with  the  Holy  Ghost  and  with  power;"  and  finally, 
"  not  by  water  only,  but  by  water  and  blood,"  con- 
secrated to  His  eternal  priesthood,  for  the  discharge  of 
which  He  entered  in  once, "  by  his  own  blood,"  into  tho 
true  holy  of  holies,  "  having  obtained  eternal  redemp- 
tion for  us." 


S.  Uieron.  advcrsus  Lwci/frianoe,  torn,  iii.,  fol.  62.     1516. 


THE    PLANTS    OF    THE    BIBLE. 


BY    W.    OAKRUTHSKS,    F.R.S.,    KEEPER    OF     THE     BOTANICAL    DEPARTMENT,    BRITISH    MOSEUM. 
ORDERS   VIII. — XI. — RESEDACE«,    CISTINE^S:,    VIOLACE^,    AND    POLTGALACE^. 


HE  Mignonette  famUy  consists  of  a  small 
and  unimportant  group  of  plants,  con- 
fined to  the  Old  World,  and  chiefly  to 
the  Mediterranean  region,  though  two 
species  are  indigenous  to  Britain — vi-A.,  Reseda  htteola, 
Linn.,  .and  B.  lutea,  Luin.  The  fii-st  is  the  dyer's 
weed,  which  was  at  one  time  extensively  cultivated 
as  a  dye  stuff,  supplying,  according  to  the  different 
mordaunt  employed,  a  gTcen,  yellow,  or  blue  colour. 
Both  species  are  without  odom*.  and  in  this  respect 
they  are  in  striking  contrast  to  B.  odorata,  Linn.,  the 
remarkable  fragrance  of  which  has  given  it  a  fore- 
most place  in  our  gardens  for  more  than  a  century. 
This  plant  is  cultivated  everj^vhere  in  Palestine  as 
with  us ;  and,  though  met  vfith  as  an  outcast  from 
gardens,  has  not  been  observed  in  a  mid  state.  It 
is  said  to  be  a  native  of  Egypt.  Eour  other  species 
occur  in  Palestine,  one  of  which,  B.  lutca,  Linn., 
is  a  British  species,  and  another,  B.  alba,  Linn.,  is 
naturalised  in  maritime  localities  in  England.  Several 
other  species  of   this  family,  belonging  to  the   sub- 


tropical flora  of  the  soutli.  creep  up  from  Arabia  and 
Egypt  to  tlio    desert  borders  of   Palestine,    and  ono 
with  a  berry  fruit  {Ochradetms  haccaius,  Del.)  is  foimd 
as  far   nortli   as  Jericho,  as  well  as  in  the   localities- ■ 
around  the  Dead  Sea. 

The  plants  of  the  Rock-rose  family  are  most  .abun- 
dant in  the  countries  arouud  tlie  Mediterranean ;  a  few 
species  cccm*  iu  North  Am'-rica.  They  are  smaU 
shrubs,  witli  simple  leaves,  and  largo  briglitly-coloured 
flowers,  wliich  open  only  once,  and  then  perish.  They 
consequently  never  last  longer  than  a  day.  expanding 
under  the  influence  of  the  bright  srm  in  the  morning, 
and  perishing  with  tho  sotting  sun  of  the  evening. 
They  do  not  open  in  dull  we.athei-,  when  there  is  no 
sunshine.  Tlie  largest  gi'iius  iu  the  family  receives  its 
name,  Hcliaiitliomum  (sitn-jlovjer),  from  this  obvious 
characteristic.  Tlieir  large  pink  or  yellow  flowers  make 
many  of  the  species  favourites  in  our  gardens ;  but  as 
they  are  southern  plants,  they  are  not  quite  hardy,  and 
require  protection  in  the  winter.  The  iudigeuous  flora 
of  Britain  contains  four  speeio=.  all   belonging  to  tho 


THE   PLANTS   OF   THE   BIBLE. 


41 


genus  Helianthomum.  Three  of  these  aro  rare  and  local 
plimts,  but  the  fourth  adorns  our  dry  pastures  with  its 
bright  yellow  flowers  all  through  the  summer  months. 
Ten  species  aro  mot  with  in  Palestine  ;  tho  large  and 
beautiful  flowers  of  several  of  them  supply  a  more 
striking  feature  to  the  landscape  than  their  humbler 
representatives  at  home.  The  largo  pink  flowers  of 
Cistus  villosus,  Liuu..  are  said  to  give  a  glow  to  Moimt 
Carmel  in  April  whicli  is  not  inferior  to  that  produced 
by  the  heather  on  tho  moimtains  of  Scotland.  And  tho 
yellow  flowers  of  C.  salvimf alius,  Linn.,  are  often 
massed  together  in 
the  landscape.  Tho 
leaves  and  branches 
of  these  two  plants 
produce  a  fragrant 
resinous  gum,  which 
was  formerly  iu 
great  repute  for  its 
supposed  medieiual 
qualities.  It  was 
employed  as  a 
stimulant,  then  it 
was  licld  to  bo  a 
valuable  expecto- 
rant, and  now  it  is 
collected  almost  en- 
tirely for  its  use  by 
the  Tm'ks  as  a  con- 
stituent of  some  of 
theu-  perfumes. 
This  gimi  is  a  black 
homogeneous  and 
tenacious  substance, 
yielding  to  the 
pressure  of  the 
fingers.  It  is  called 
Gum  Ladaniuu ; 
sometimes  incor- 
rectly written  Lab- 
danum. 

Although  the 
Rock-roses  aro  not 
referred  to  in  tho 
Bible,  it  is  gencr.ally 
believed  that  this 
odoriferous  product 

is  the  substance  referred  to  under  the  name  -ih  {lot), 
rendered  "myrrh"  in  our  Authorised  Version.  The 
word  occurs  only  twice  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  both 
times  in  tho  Book  of  Genesis.  In  the  one  passage  we 
are  told  that  tho  Ishmaelite  merchants,  to  whom  Joseph 
was  sold  by  his  brethren,  were  on  their  way  from 
Gilead,  "  with  their  camels  bearing  spicory  and  balm 
and  myrrh,  going  to  carry  it  down  to  Egypt "  (chap, 
xxxvii.  25).  Tho  other  uso  of  tho  word  occurs  in 
the  narrative  where,  under  tho  pressure  of  a  terrible 
famine,  Jacob  permitted  his  sons  to  return  to  Egyjjt  for 
com,  and  to  take  Benjamin  with  them ;  and  in  order  to 
secure  the  favour  of  the  Egyptian  ruler,  he  sent  with 


Cistus  vd.'ktsjLs,  Linn.,  anJ  C.  salvi(2folius,  Linn.     H:i]f  the  natural  size, 
which  yield  the  myrrh  referred  to  in  Gen.  xsxvii.  2j. 


them,  as  "  a  present,  a  little  balm,  and  a  little  honey, 
spices,  and  myrrh,  nuts,  and  almonds  "  (chap,  xliii.  11). 
The  substances  mentioned  in  these  passages  were  evi- 
dently products  of  Palestine,  and  the  plants  producing 
them  must  be  sought  for  among  those  which  constitute 
tho  indigenous  flora  of  that  country.  There  have  been, 
as  in  regard  to  most  other  Bible  plants,  no  lack  of 
suggestions  as  to  the  plant  intended.  The  resemblance 
in  sound  between  the  Hebrew  word  and  the  name  of 
the  lotus  lily  has  led  some  authors  to  suppose  that  it 
is  meant.     But  no  explanation  has  been  offered  wliy 

such  a  plant  should 
have  been  included 
among  these  pre- 
sents. Besides,  the 
lotus  was  well 
known  in  Egyjit, 
while  it  is  not  at 
present  found  in 
Palestine,  and  there 
is  no  reason  for  be- 
lieving that  it  ever 
grew  there.  Chest- 
nuts and  pistachio- 
nuts,  as  well  as 
different  kinds  of 
spices,  have  also 
been  suggested,  but 
modern  writers 
generally  agree  in 
identifying  it  with 
the  resinous  gum  of 
the  cistus.  Tho 
Greek  words, 
AoSoi'oi',  for  the  gum, 
and  A^Sos,  for  tho 
plant,  aro  derived 
from  the  Arabic 
ladun,  and  tliis  has 
{ho  same  root  as  tho 
Hebrew  lot.  Ac- 
cording to  Hero- 
dotus, this  gum  was 
originally  obtained 
from  Arabia,  and 
was  first  got  by  the- 
shepherds  from  the 
beards  of  the  goats,  whish  browsed  on  tho  cistus.  Rakes 
with  leathern  thongs,  made  in  imitation  of  the  goat's 
beard,  were  then  used  for  collecting  it.  The  coUoctors 
shortly  after  sunrise  beat  the  bushes  until  the  thongs 
were  coated  with  tho  gum.  The  morning  was  selected, 
because  the  gum  was  then  free  from  the  dust  and  sand 
ivitli  which  the  winds  were  likely  in  tho  course  of  tho 
day  to  coat  it.  Tho  largo  amount  of  sand  and  other 
impurities  mixed  with  it  has  considerably  influenced 
its  disuse,  and  the  name  has  been  transferred  to  tho 
tincture  of  opium,  which  has  similar  but  more  powerful 
medical  properties  than  the  gum  of  the  cistus. 

Few  plants  are  greater  favourites  in  the  garden  or 


The  plants 


42 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


the  field  tlian  the  Violets.  Our  native  flora  contains 
eiflit  species,  the  best  known  of  which  is  the  sweet 
violet,  that  in  early  spring  scents  the  hedge-banks  of 
the  east  of  England,  and  finds  a  corner  in  almost  every 
garden.  This  species  extends  through  Europe  to  Asia 
Minor,  but  has  not  yet  been  seen  nearer  to  Palestiuo 
than  Aleppo.  Four  species  are,  however,  included  in 
the  indigenous  vegetation  of  the  Holy  Land,  but  they 
■belong  to  that  iiorthem  flora  wHch  finds  its  southern 
limits  in  the  mountain  regions  of  the  country.  They 
are  small  plants,  and  are  only  met  ^vith  on  the  Lebanon 


and  anti-Lebanon  ranges,  and  there  high  up  among  the 
cedars. 

The  Milkworts  belong  also  to  the  same  northern  type 
of  floi-a  as  the  Violets.  They  are  i-epresented  in  Britain 
by  three  small  plants,  one  of  wliich  {Polygala  vulgaris, 
Linn.)  oi-naments  our  heaths  and  grassy  banks  through- 
out the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land,  with  its  blue, 
white,  or  pink  blossoms.  In  Palestine  there  are  two 
similar  species,  which  occur  in  Lebanon,  coming  farther 
down  the  mountain-sides  than  the  'violets,  and  almost 
reaching  the  shore  at  Sidon. 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    FULFILLED    IN    THE    NEW. 

I.  SACKED  SEASONS  {continued). 

BT  THE   KEV.   WILLIAM    MILLIQAN,   D.D.,   PKOFESSOK   OF   DIVINITT    AND    BIBLICAL    CRITICISM   IN    THE    UNFVEESITT  OP 

ABERDEEN. 


'HE  second  of  the  three  annual  Jewish 
feasts  was  that  of  Pentecost,  known 
also  by  the  name  of  the  "  Feast  of  Har- 
vest "  (Exod.  xxiii.  16),  and  the  "  Feast 
of  Weeks"  (Exod.  xxxiv.  22).  It  received  the  name 
of  the  "  Feast  of  Weeks,"  and  in  later  times  of  "Pen- 
tecost" (the  fiftieth  day),  from  the  manner  in  which  the 
period  of  its  obser\-ance  was  fixed;  while  the  name 
"  Feast  of  Harvest "  was  assigned  to  it  from  the  rela- 
tion in  which  it  stood  to  the  then  completed  gi-aiu- 
iarvest  of  the  year.  Seven  fuU  weeks  were  reckoned 
from  the  presenting  of  the  first  sheaf  of  barley  upon 
the  second  day  of  the  Feast  of  Unleavened  Bread ;  and 
the  day  following,  the  fiftieth  day,  was  the  Feast  of 
Pentecost.  The  day  was  one  of  "holy  convocation" — 
in  this  respect  resembling  the  first  and  last  days  of  the 
Feasts  of  Unleavened  Bread  and  Tabernacles ;  and  the 
distinguishing  feature  of  its  ser\'ices  was  the  presenting 
to  the  Almighty  of  two  loaves  of  fine  flour  baked  with 
leaven.  These  loaves  wore  not  laid  upon  the  altar,  but 
■were  waved  before  the  Lord  in  token  of  dedication  to 
his  service,  and  were  then  given  to  the  priests  to  eat. 
Like  the  first  sheaf  of  barley,  they  were  a  national,  and 
not  an  individual  or  a  family  offering.  They  might 
probably  be  taken  for  the  purpose  from  one  family  one 
year,  and  from  another  family  the  next.  But,  whatever 
might  be  the  arrangement  upon  this  point,  it  is  of  im- 
portance to  observe  that  two  loaves  only  were  offered, 
and  that,  not  for  the  family  out  of  which  they  were 
brought,  but  for  all  the  families  of  Israel  considered  as 
one  wliole.  With  ■  tliese  loaves  were  associated  as  a 
part  of  the  same  festal  offering  seven  lambs  without 
blemish  of  the  first  year,  one  young  bullock,  and  two 
rams  for  a  burnt-offering,  with  their  appropriate  meat 
and  drink  offerings,  one  kid  of  the  goats  for  a  sin- 
offering,  and  two  lambs  of  the  first  year  for  a  sacrifice 
of  peace-offerings  (Lev.  xxiii.  17 — 19).  Other  offerings 
also  were  presented,  upon  wliich  it  is  unnecessary  to 
dwell.  As  in  the  case  of  the  other  gi-eat  feasts,  the 
Feast  of  Pentecost  was  attended  by  innumerable  crowds. 


"  An  immense  multitude,"  says  the  Jewish  historian, 
speaking  of  it  on  one  occasion,  "  ran  together  out  of 
Galilee  and  Idumea,  and  Jericho,  and  Perea  that  was 
beyond  Jordan." '  The  mention  of  the  multitudes 
assembled  at  the  Pentecost,  spoken  of  in  the  second 
chapter  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  is  familiar  to  all. 
Finally,  it  may  bo  noted  as  an  important  point  of  dis- 
tinction between  this  feast  and  the  two  other  great 
festival  seasons  of  the  Jewish  year,  that  it  lasted  only 
for  a  single  day. 

In  inquu'ing  into  the  meaning  of  the  Feast  of  Pen- 
tecost, the  first  thing  to  be  observed  regarding  it  is 
its  independent  character.  That  it  was  not,  as  often 
imagined,  merely  tlie  closing  service  of  the  Easter  feast 
delayed  for  fifty  days,  in  order  to  embrace  the  con- 
clusion of  a  harvest  whose  opening  had  been  already  cele- 
brated, is  ob^-ious  from  the  simple  cu-cumstance  that  it 
is  described  as  one  of  the  tln-ee  feasts  at  which  all  the 
males  of  Israel  were  annually  to  appear.  It  is  thus 
ranked  as  parallel  to  the  two  others,  and  not  as  subor- 
dinate to  one  of  them.  Further,  the  last  day  of  the 
Feast  of  Unleavened  Bread  had  been  a  day  of  "  holy 
convocation."  With  it,  the~ef ore,  that  festival  had  been 
closed  in,  and  the  "  holy  convocation  "  of  Pentecost 
points  immistakably  to  another  and  a  separate  feast. 
The  services  of  the  day,  too,  were  characterised  by  such 
marked  peculiarities  that  it  is  unpossible  to  regard  them 
as  a  simple  continuation  of  services  previously  begun. 

While,  however,  thus  independent,  we  have  next  to 
ask  as  to  the  relation  which  Pentecost  actually  occupied 
to  the  earlier  festival  of  the  year.  If  such  relation 
existed,  it  is  ob\"ious  that  the  point  of  connection  is  to  be 
found  in  the  presenting  of  the  first  sheaf  of  barley,  for 
it  was  from  tlie  day  upon  which  this  was  done  that  the 
fifty  days  to  Pentecost  were  reckoned.  Was  it,  then, 
the  feast  of  the  closing,  as  the  second  day  of  Unleavened 
'  Bread  was  that  of  the  opening,  harvest  F  And  were  the 
two  loaves  now  waved  before  the  Lord  to  be  regarded 

I  1  Josephus,  Jewish  Wars,  ii.  3,  §  1. 


SACRED   SEASONS. 


43 


as  the  first-fniits  of  the  later,  as  the  barley  sheaf  had 
been  the  first-fruits  of  the  earlier  grain  ?  To  these 
questions  we  must  answer,  No.  For  in  that  case  no 
reason  can  be  imagined  why  the  offering  of  the  time 
should  have  Ijoen  loaves.  The  harmonious  symbolism 
of  tlie  Old  Testament  would  have  required  that  it 
should  have  taken  the  shape  of  two  sheaves  or  omers  of 
■wheat.  Nor  is  this  all ;  for,  just  as  the  week  of  Un- 
leavened Bread  was  the  fii-st-f  ruits  of  all  the  weeks  of 
the  year,  so  the  first  sheaf  of  the  crop  then  offered  was  the 
first-fruits  of  the  whole  crop,  and  not  merely  of  a  part 
of  it.  It  is  true  that  by  the  time  Pentecost  arrived  all 
the  gi'ain  had  rijiened  and  been  gathered  in,  while,  fifty 
days  before,  only  the  barley  was  rijie.  But  the  first 
sheaf  of  barley  was  not  on  that  account  the  first-fruits 
of  tlie  bai'ley  alone.  It  was  a  part  of  the  whole,  and, 
as  such,  an  acknowledgment  when  presented  in  God's 
house  that  the  whole  was  his.  There  was  no  room, 
therefore,  for  a  fresh  offering  of  fii-st-fruits  of  the  grain. 
The  same  conclusion  is  forced  upon  us  when  we  re- 
member that  the  offering  at  Pentecost  is  itself  called 
an  offering  of  first-fruits,  "  the  first-fruits  of  thy 
labours  wliich  thou  hast  sown  in  the  field  "  (Exod.  xxiii. 
16),  and  that  the  day  was  known  as  the  "  day  of  the 
first-fruits"  (Numb,  xxviii.  26).  Now,  according  to  the 
ideas  embodied  in  the  Mosaic  economy,  an  offering  of 
first-fruits  was  not  so  much  a  thanksgiving  for  past 
mercies,  as  a  dedication  to  God  of  all  the  blessings  of 
which  the  first-fruits  were  a  part.  The  waving  of  the 
two  loaves,  therefore,  before  the  Lord  must  have  had  a 
■prospective  rather  than  a  retrospective  reference.  It 
must  have  been  a  dedication  to  God,  not  of  the  harvest 
in  itself,  but  of  the  fruits  of  harvest  regarded  under 
some  other  point  of  view.  The  in-esistible  proof,  how- 
ever, that  the  Feast  of  Pentecost,  strictly  considered, 
had  relation  to  something  altogether  different  from  the 
harvest  alone  is  to  be  found  in  the  provision  tliat  the 
offering  of  that  day  was  to  be  one  of  leavened  loaves  ; 
that  is,  it  was  to  be  an  offering  of  the  fi-uits  of  the 
ground,  not  in  the  shape  in  which  they  had  just  been 
gathered  in,  but  in  the  shape  which  they  assumed 
•when  prepared  as  food  for  man.  Hence  also  the 
injunction  that  these  loaves  should  be  "  brought  out 
of  their  habitations"  (Lev.  xxiii.  17).  The  barley  sheaf 
had  been  taken  from  the  field  where  it  gi-ew,  because 
it  represented  the  grain.  The  loaves  were  taken  from 
the  houses  where  they  had  been  baked  for  family  use, 
because  they  represented  the  means  of  family  support. 
Here,  then,  lay  the  main  point  of  distinction  between 
the  second  day  of  Unleavened  Bread  and  Pentecost. 
In  the  one  we  have  the  dedication  of  harvest  con- 
sidered simply  as  harvest ;  in  the  other  we  have  the 
dedication  of  harvest  as  actually  applied  to  the  pur- 
pose for  which  it  was  intended — the  sustenance  of  the 
people.  We  have  reached,  therefore,  a  higher  stage 
than  that  at  which  we  previously  stood.  The  Feast 
of  Pentecost  is  an  advance  upon  that  second  day  of 
the  first  festival  of  the  year,  by  a  reference  to  which 
the  time  of  its  occurrence  has  been  determined.  It 
takes  note  of  the  fruits  of  the  ground  in  a  still  nearer 


relation  to  man  than  when  they  existed  only  as  grain. 
It  is  concerned  with  them  as  the  expression  of  a  still 
higlier  degree  of  that  protection  and  care  and  favour 
which  Israel  enjoys  at  the  hands  of  God. 

The  other  special  features  of  the  feast  bear  out  and 
con-espond  ivith  this  account  of  it.  It  will  be  re- 
membered that  ou  the  day  of  first-fruits  immediately 
f  oUowiug  the  Passover,  the  quantity  of  barley  presented 
was  an  omer  (Exod.  xvi.  36),  and  that  this  quantity  was 
waved  as  a  single  sheaf  or  measm'o.  Now,  however, 
the  quantity  was  doubled.  Instead  of  the  single  sheaf, 
we  have  two  loaves,  and  the  express  provision  that  these 
loaves  shall  be  baked  of  two  omers  instead  of  one  (Lev. 
xxiii.  17).  In  the  symbolism  of  the  Hebrews,  however, 
a  higher  gradation  was  always  expressed  by  doubling,' 
and  the  greater  imiiortance  and  solemnity  of  the  latter 
offering  were  thus  brought  into  -s-iew.  Further,  with 
the  barley-sheaf  there  had  been  connected  as  a  bumt- 
offering  only  the  oft'ering  of  a  single  lamb,  together 
with  its  meat  and  drink-offerings.  With  the  two  loaves 
of  Pentecost  was  connected  the  much  larger  number 
of  offerings  of  which  mention  has  been  ah-eady  made. 
This  increase  alone  would  mark  out  the  latter  solemnity 
as  the  higher ;  but  the  point  of  increase  most  especially 
worthy  of  our  notice  is,  that,  while  only  a  burnt- off eiTng 
accompanied  the  sheaf  of  barley,  a  peace-offering  also 
accompanied  the  loaves.  We  know,  however,  that  the  ' 
peace-oft'erings  were  the  highest  in  the  ritual  of  sacrifice, 
that  they  were  expressive  of  the  closest  possible  relation 
between  the  offerer  and  God,  that  they  sjinbolised  the 
offerer's  participation  in  all  the  blessings  of  a  Divine 
communion.  If,  therefore,  the  burnt-oft'ering  of  the 
earlier  festival  set  forth  Israel's  dedication  to  Him  who 
had  redeemed  it,  the  peace-offering  of  the  later  set  forth 
the  blessed  fruits  of  the  dedication  made.  Here  was 
something  more  than  the  fact  that  the  people  had  offered 
themselves.  The  offering  had  been  accepted,  and  a 
spiritual  intercourse  had  been  established  between  God 
and  them. 

With  what  has  now  been  said  it  may  seem  diSicult  to 
reconcile  the  fact  that  the  Feast  of  Pentecost  lasted 
only  one  day,  whOe  that  of  Unleavened  Bread  lasted 
seven  days.  But  the  gi-ound  of  this  is  to  be  sought  in 
the  consideration  that  Pentecost  commemorated  no  great 
era  in  Israel's  religious  fife.  Efforts  have  indeed  been 
made  to  connect  it  with  the  ratification  of  the  covenant 
at  Sinai,  and  the  later  Jews  certainly  adopted  this  idea. 
There  is,  however,  no  trace  in  Scripture  of  any  such 
connection.  And,  in  truth,  the  Feast  of  Pentecost 
was  not  the  following  up  and  advancing  of  the  whole 
Easter  feast;  it  was  the  following  up  and  advancing 
only  of  its  second  day.  The  ideas  of  Unleavened  Bread 
as  a  whole  stretched  forward  not  to  Pentecost  only,  but 
over  aU  the  year  thus  begun ;  and  expressing  as  they 
did  a  religious  revolution  in  Israel,  the  new  spirit  of  the 
covenant  life,  they  were  fitly  embodied  in  the  sacred 
number  of  seven  days,  and  did  not  uocd  to  be  repeated 
until  a  new  year  began.     It  is  only  mth  the  second  day 

1  Kurz,  SacHJicvll  Wonhip  of  the  Old  Testament.  Clai-k's  Traiis- 
IttUon,  p.  378. 


44 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


of  Unleavened  Bread  that  Pentecost  must  be  brought 
into  comparison,  and  in  tliat  comparison  the  festival  is 
obviously  a  heightened  one. 
j  What,  then,  are  the  ti-uths  of  the  New  Testament 
dispensation,  or  of  the  Christian  life  in  which  the  Feast 
of  Pentecost  is  fulfilled  ?  In  answering  this  question 
our  main  guide  must  be  the  narrative  in  the  second 
chapter  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  where  we  learn 
that  on  the  day  of  Pentecost  there  took  place  that  great 
outpouring  of  the  Spirit  for  which  the  apostles  had  been 
instructed  to  wait  iu  Jerusalem.  It  was  not,  we  may 
well  believe,  without  a  special  purpose  that  that  day  in 
particular  had  been  fixed  on.  Nor  can  we  doubt  that 
the  reason  of  the  choice  must  have  lain  in  ideas 
connected  with  the  time  itself,  and  not  in  the  mere  fact 
that  there  would  then  be  gathered  together  in  the  holy 
city  "  devout  men  out  of  every  nation  under  heaven  " 
(Acts  ii.  5).  Such  a  correspondence  was  already  to 
be  found  in  the  two  great  events,  the  crucifixion  and 
resurrection  of  our  Lord.  On  the  very  day  whose 
opening  evening  had  seen  the  Paschal  lambs  slain,  and 
the  Jews  engaged  in  celebrating  their  Paschal  supper, 
Jesus,  the  spotless  Lamb  of  God,  had  died  upon  the 
cross  of  Calvary,  the  purchaser  of  a  still  more  glorious 
redemption  thau  that  which  lived  in  the  grateful  recol- 
lections of  Israel.  On  the  very  day  when  the  first  sheaf 
of  harvest  was  presented  in  the  Temple,  He  who  was 
"  the  first-fruits  of  them  that  sleep,"  "  the  first-begotten 
of  the  dead,"  had  burst  the  bonds  of  death,  and  come 
forth  from  the  grave,  not  alone,  but  as  the  first  sheaf  of 
a  ripened  harvest,  embracing  all  the  members  of  His 
body.  Should  the  selection  of  Pentecost  for  the  next 
act  of  the  triumphal  drama  have  been  without  a  special 
meaning  ?  Must  there  not  have  been  something  iu  that 
festival  which  rendered  it  a  time  peculiarly  appropriate 
for  the  Lord  again  to  work  ?  Such  questions,  we  imagine, 
can  only  be  answered  iu  the  affirmative.  A  connection 
between  the  events  there  must  have  been,  whether 
enough  has  been  revealed  to  enable  us  to  discover  it  or 
not.  Keeping,  however,  by  the  two  points  already  g.ained, 
first,  that  the  offering  of  the  first-fruits  of  the  Di\'ine 
bounty,  appropriated  and  used  for  food,  is  the  special 
Pentecostal  idea  to  which  the  Mosaic  ritual  refers  us ; 
secondly,  that  on  the  day  of  Pentecost  the  Spirit  was 
poured  out  upon  the  Chiu-ch,  the  Christian  fulfilment  of 
Pentecost  seems  to  rise  to  view. 

It  is  in  the  gift  of  the  Spirit  that  it  is  to  bo  found ; 
but  not  so  much  iu  the  mere  giving  on  the  part  of  God, 
as  in  the  reception,  the  appropriation  of  the  gift  by  those 
on  whom  it  is  bestowed ;  aud  first  of  all,  by  tlie  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  our  Sa\'iour  himself.  For  not  only  did  God  bestow 
upon  Him  the  Spirit  "  \vithout  measure,"'  but  the  Spirit 
was  recjeived  by  Him  with  all  the  openness  of  a  filial 
lieart  that  offered  no  hindrance  to  its  Father's  dealing 
with  it.  It  was  appropriated  by  Him  in  all  its  fulness, 
every  power  of  the  mind  aud  faculty  of  the  sold  and 
affection  of  the  heart  being  presented  liy  Him  as  an  open 
channel  to  the  Father,  through  which  the  streams  of 
Divine  grace  might  be  poured  in  all  their  quickening  aud 
life-giving  influences.     The  highest  and  noblest  gift  of 


the  Divine  love,  that  in  which  not  the  New  Testament 
only,  but  the   Old,  sees  the   realisation   of    the   most 
precious  blessings  of  Messianic  times,  was  ever  in  the 
soul  of  Jesus,  inspirmg  his  words,  regukting  his  actions, 
filling  liim  with  holy  joy  amidst  the  dark  jiroblems  that 
met  Htm  in  his  errand  of  mercy  to  mankind  (John  iii. 
3-1;  Luke  iv.  14;  Matt.  xi.  25.    Comp.  Luke  x.  21).   His 
was  a  constant  Pentecost,  the  Spirit  not  merely  offered, 
but  accepted,  and  presented  again  by  Him  to  the  God 
fi'om  whom  it  came,  so  that  He  coidd  say,  "  I  do  always 
the  things  that  please  him;"  "I  and  my  Father  are  one." 
Again,  however,  we  cauuot  rest  here.     What  belongs 
to  the  Head  belongs  also  to  the  members.     The  sap  that 
rises  in  the  stem  circidates  through  every  twig  and  leaf 
and  blossom  and  grape  of  the  vine.      Clu'istians,  there- 
fore, have   also  their  Pentecost,  when   their  eyes  are 
opeued  to  their  position,  and  they  are  endeavouring  to 
realise  it  as  they  ought.     They  have  it  in  the   same 
manner  as  their  Lord.     It  is  not  the  offer  of  the  Spirit 
only  that  constitutes  the  privilege  which  they  enjoy; 
nor  is  it  in  magnifying  this  fact,  or  in  praising  God  for 
it,  that  they  walk  worthy  of  the  festival  privileges  of 
Israel  now  fulfilled  to  them.     It  is  in  the  appropriation 
of  the  Spirit  that  they  do  so,   in  the  taking  of  the 
Spirit  into  their  hearts  in  such  a  way  that  it  becomes 
the  ruling  principle,  the  leavening  power,  the  regulating 
influence  of  their  new  and   better  life.     "  For  by  ono 
offering  he  hath  perfected  for  ever  them  that  are  sanc- 
tified. Whereof  the  Holy  Ghost  also  is  a  witness  to  us  : 
for  after  that  he  had  said  before,  This  is  tlie  covenant  that 
I  will  make  with  them  after  those  days,  saith  the  Lord> 
I  will  jjut  my  laws  into  their  hearts,  and  in  their  minds 
will  I  vrrite  them  "  (Hcb.  x.  14 — 16) :  and  again,  "  For- 
asmuch as  ye  are  manifestly  declared  to  be  the  epistle 
of  Christ  ministered  by  us,  written  not  with  ink,  but 
with  the  Spirit  of  the  living  God  ;  not  in  tables  of  stone, 
but  in  fleshy  tables  of  the  heart "  (2  Cor.  iii.  3).     And 
once  more,  even  iu  Old  Testament  prophecy,  this  part 
of  the  dispensation  of  the  SiJirit  had  been  plainly  set 
forth  :  "  And  I  will  give  them  one  heart,  and  I  will 
put  a  new  spirit  within  you  ;  and  I  will  take  the  stony 
heart  out  of  their  flesh,  and  will  give  fhcm  an  heart  of 
flesh  :  that  they  may  walk  iu  my  statutes,  and  keep 
mine  ordinances,  and  do  them  :  and  they  shall  be  my 
people,  and  I  will  be  their  God"  (Ezck.  xi.  19,  20). 
Here  then,  we    imagine,  is  the   "fulfilment"    in   the 
Christian  system  of  the  idea  of  Pentecost  to  be  found, 
not  iu  the  fulness  of  the  Di\'ino  bounty  only,  but  in  the 
conscious  reception  and  application  to  its  proper  pur- 
pose of  that  bounty  on  the  part  of  man.     The  harvest 
is  indeed  now  complete.     The  gifts  of  God,  summed  up 
in  the  gift  of  the  Spirit,  ai-o  now  bestowed.     But  fhcy 
are  not  only  bestowed  by   him,  they    are  also  appro- 
priated by  his  people.     They  have  been  taken  home  by 
believers   to   their   hearts   and   houses,   and   they   aro 
made  the  strength  and  nourishment  of  their  whole  cha- 
racter and  daily  life.     All  their  future  course  is  to  bo 
run  in  the  power  thus  conveyed  to  them.     As  they  aro 
redeemed  by  grace,  they  five  through  gi-ace.     A  Divine 
communion  between  them  and  the  Father  of  their  spirits 


ANIMALS    OF   THE    BIBLE. 


45 


is  not  only  rendered  possible,  but  is  actually  consum- 
mated. "  Tlioir  f  eUowslup  is  with  the  Father,  and  with 
Ills  Son  Jesus  Christ ;"  and  just  as  bread  digested 
and  assimilated  is  the  staff  of  the  natural  life,  so  the 
Spirit  of  God  received,  assimilated,  introduced  into 
every  faculty  of  the  miud  and  affection  of  the  heart, 
is  the  stafE  of  that  higher  life  which  they  lead  in  Jesus. 
Redeemed  by  the  blood  of  the  Lamb,  they  have  dedi- 
cated themselves  and  their  possessions  to  the  Almighty 
as  their  first  stop,  and  in  the  first  week  of  their  spiri- 
tual year.  That  was  their  spiritual  Passover,  together 
with  their  spiritual  feast  of  Unleavened  Bread.  Tlioir 
next  step  is  their  spiritual  Pentecost,  when,  as  members 
of  Christ's  body,  they  ai-e  made  fuU  partakers  of  his 
Spirit,  and  are  sent  forth  to  theu-  Christian  work  and 
race,  endued  with  "  power  from  on  high." 

On  one  point  further  it  seems  desirable  to  say  a 
single  word  before  we  close.  It  has  boon  alre-idy 
stated  that  Pentecost  in  Israel  was  a  national  festival. 
It  had  reference  to  all  the  families  of  the  people. 
All  were  liable  to  its  duties ;  aU  yiere  interested  in 
its  privileges.  It  was  associated  with  no  favoured 
order,  with  no  chosen  few.  Ai-e  the  events  of  the 
Christian  Pentecost  to  be  regarded  as  giving  the  key 
to  the  fulfilment  of  Israel's  Pentecost  in  the  Christian 
Church  ? — then  surely,  reading  the  antitype  in  the  type, 
we  are  led  to  the  conclusion  that  the  gift  of  the 
Spirit  tlaat  day  bestowed  belongs  not  to  apostles  only, 
but  equally  to  the  whole  Church  of  God.  It  appears, 
indeed,  almost  upon  the  face  of  the  narrative,  that  it 


was  so,  for  it  is  hardly  possible  to  think  that  the  "  all " 
of  Acts  ii.  1  can  refer  to  the  apostles  alone.  It  must 
refer  to  the  company  of  "  disciples "  spoken  of  in 
Acts  i.  15,  of  whom  it  is  .said  that  "  the  number  of  the 
names  together  were  about  an  hundred  and  twenty." 
If  so,  then  the  tongues  of  fire  sat  upon  "  each,"  not 
only  of  the  twelve,  but  of  the  whole  company,  and  the 
words  of  ver.  4  apply  to  every  member  of  the  latter, 
as  well  as  of  the  former :  "  And  they  were  all  filled 
with  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  began  to  speak  with  other 
tongues,  as  the  Spirit  gave  them  utterance."  No  two 
lines  of  duty  or  privilege  come  before  us  here,  one 
belonging  especially  to  apostles,  the  other  to  members 
of  the  Church.  One  line  alone  appears,  that  pertain- 
ing to  Christ's  body  as  a  whole,  in  the  ideal  con- 
ception of  which,  as  there  is  neither  Jew  nor  Greek, 
neither  male  nor  female,  so  also  there  is  neither 
.apostle,  nor  bishop,  nor  minister,  nor  elder;  all  are 
one  in  Christ  Jesus.  The  same  consecration  belongs  to 
the  humblest  believer  in  Jesus  that  belongs  to  the  mo.st 
exalted  dignitary  in  his  church.  To  none  can  more  bo 
given  than  that  he  be  "  filled  with  the  Holy  Ghost." 
There  are  differences  of  function,  there  are  distinctions 
of  order,  but  the  gi-ace  of  Pentecost  does  not  make 
these.  It  finds  them  existing  in  the  nature  of  things, 
requii'ed  by  the  necessities  of  the  case,  and  it  hallows 
them  ;  the  gi-aee  itself  is  the  same  to  all.  The  Christian 
Pentecost  knows  of  but  one  gift  of  the  Spirit,  although 
the  gift  may  fill  many  different  agencies  ;  and  although 
the  members  are  many,  the  body  is  one. 


ANIMALS    OF    THE    BIBLE. 

BY  THE    EEV.    W.    HOUGHTON,    M.A.,    KECTOK    OF    PRESTON,    SALOP. 


SHEEP. 

^HE  following  Hebrew  words  occur  as  the 
names  of  this  useful  animal:— r^v';);, 
a  collective  noun  to  express  "a  flock  of 
sheep  or  goats ;  "  seh,  "  a  single  sheep  or 
"  a  ram,"  so  called  from  its  strength, 
according  to  some  authorities  (others  connect  the  word 
witli  a  root  having  the  sense  of  twldiiig  or  rolling,  in 
allusion  to  the  twisted  horns  of  the  ram) ;  rdch'l,  "  a 
ewo  ;"  hebes  or  hibsali,  "  a  lamb,"  "  yearling  sheep," 
or  "one  from  the  first  to  the  third  year;"  tukh,  '"a 
young  lamb "  [compare  1  Sam.  vii.  9,  teleh  chdh'ib,  "a 
sucking  lamb ;"  in  Arabic  the  word  means  .any  young 
animal,  especially  "  a  yoimg  gazelle  ;"  tala,  in  Ethiopic, 
means  "a  kid" — the  Syriac  taleetha,  "  a  young  girl;" 
hence  our  Lord's  words  to  the  daughter  of  Jairus, 
TalUha  cumi,  "Young  girl,  arise!"  (Mark  v.  41)] 
Another  word,  kar  {kdrim  pi.)  occurs  several  times ;  it 
appears  to  denote  "  a  sheep  fattened  in  the  pastures." 

We  give  the  following  principal  Biblical  allusions  to 
these  well-known  domestic  animals  which  from  the 
e,ai-liest  periods  of  ci\'ilisation  have  contributed  so 
abundantly  to  the  wants  of  mankind.     Next  in  value 


and  importance  to  cattle  came  sheep  in  the  estimation 
of  the  ancient  Hebrews ;  the  ram,  being  the  type  of 
strength  and  boldness,  was  held  in  especial  honour  in 
the  sacrifices.  "  It  was  presented  as  a  holocaust  or  a 
thank-offering  by  the  whole  people  (Lev.  ix.  4,  18  ;  wi. 
5 ;  Numb,  xxviii.  11 — 14)  or  its  chiefs  (Numb.  vi.  14, 
17  ;  vii.  15,  21,  27,  &c.) ;  by  the  high  priest  or  an  ordi- 
nary priest  (Lev.  viii.  18,  22  ;  ix.  2  ;  xvi.  3),  and  by  the 
God-devoted  Nazarite  (Numb.  vi.  14),  but  never  by  a 
common  Hebrew ;  and  as  it  was  primitively  employed 
for  a  medium  of  exchange  and  barter  it  was  the  ordinary 
.aiumal  for  the  trespass-offering  instituted  to  expiate 
eolation  of  the  rights  of  property  (Lev.  v.  15,  18 ; 
xix.  21 ;  Numb.  v.  8).  Tlio  lamb  (kehes),  the  usual 
animal  food  of  Eastern  tribes,  was  regularly  employed 
for  the  daily  piMic  holocausts  (Exod.  xxix.  38 — 12; 
Numb,  xxviii.  3 — 8),  presented  on  festivals  in  increased 
numbers,  and  accompanied  by  bullocks  and  rams 
(Numb,  xxviii.  11,  19,  27) ;  and  very  often  for  private 
burnt  and  thank-offerings,  for  sin,  trespass,  and  purifi- 
cation offerings  (Lev.  i.  10 ;  iii.  7 ;  iv.  32 ;  v.  6 ;  xii. 
6 — 8;  xiv.  10;  Numb.  vi.  12,  14).  The  gradation  in 
the  choice  of  the  victims  is  plainly  manifest  from  the 


46 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


precepts  as  to  sin-oSeiungs :  the  high  priest  of  the 
whole  commimity  required  a  bullock ;  a  chief  of  the 
people  a  male  kid  of  the  goats  ;  aud  a  common  Israelite 
a  female  kid  of  the  goats  or  a  female  lamb  "  (Kalisch's 
Commentary  on  Leviticus,  part  i.,  pp.  83,  84).  A  very 
youQg  lamb  was  not  allowed  to  be  sacrificed  until  it  was 
eight  days  old ;  the  same  prohibitioa  applied  to  cattle 
and  goats  (see  Lev.  xxii.  27) ;  neither  was  it  lawful  to 
kill  cow  and  calf  or  ewe  aud  lamb  together  in  one  day 
(ver.  28). 

Sheep  and  lambs  were  used  as  food  by  the  ancient 
Hebrews,  but  not  as  with  us  in  Western  Em-ope,  where 
mutton  or  lamb  is  daily  eaten  by  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  consumers.  Sheep  as  food  were  usually  .slaughtered 
only  on  great  occasions  and  special  festivities,  and  the 
Jews  did  not  indulge  in  flesh  meat  at  their  ordinary 
meals,  but,  as  Dr.  Tristram  tells  us,  like  the  Orientals 
at  the  present  day,  they  always  welcomed  a  friend  or  a 
stranger  as  guest  with  the  kid  or  the  lamb.  There  are 
not  many  allusions  to  sheep  as  used  for  food ;  but  com- 
pare 1  Sam.  XXV.  18 ;  1  Kings  i.  19 ;  iv.  23 ;  Ps.  xliv. 
11 ;  2  Sam.  xii.  4  ;  Amos  vi.  4. 

The  milk  was  considered  perhaps  the  most  usefid 
produce  of  the  sheep,  and  was  daUy  consumed.  In  its 
fresh  state  it  was  called  chdldb,  in  a  sour  or  coagulated 
one  it  was  called  chemdh.  In  Deut.  xxxii.  14,  we  i-ead 
of  chemath  bdkdr  vachaleb  tson,  i.e.,  "  curdled  milk  of 
cattle,  and  fresh  milk  of  sheep."  St.  Paul  asks,  "  Who 
f  eedoth  a  flock,  aud  eateth  not  of  the  milk  of  the  flock .'' " 
(1  Cor.  ix.  7.)  "  Ewes'  milk,"  Dr.  Tristram  teUs  us, 
"  is  held  in  higher  esteem  than  that  of  cows  in  the  East, 
and  is  considered  peculiarly  rich  for  leben,  or  soui-ed 
curds.  For  butter  goats'  milk  is  pi-eferred,  but  ordi- 
narily the  sheep  and  goats  are  milked  indiscriminately, 
the  lambs  and  kids  being  penned  up  from  them  in  the 
night  that  their  owners  may  get  the  first  share  of  the 
milk.  We  found  it  considered  highly  tlishonourable 
among  the  Bedouins  to  sell  milk.  A  draught  from  the 
flock  was  spontaneously  offered  to  the  passing  stranger, 
but  payment  was  j)romptly  refused  by  men  who  just 
before  had  been  begging  from  us,  aud  who  would  take 
the  first  opportunity  of  robbing  us  "  {Nat.  Hist.  Bib., 
p.  136). 

The  wool  of  the  sheep  is  another  most  important 
product  of  the  animal,  and  was  much  prized  by  the 
Hebrews.  "  Woollen  garments  "  are  mentioned  in  Lev. 
xiii.  47  ;  see  also  Deut.  xxii.  11,  whore  it  is  ordered  that 
no  garment  made  of  wool  and  linen  should  be  worn. 
Job  appeals  to  liis  kindness  in  having  constantly  clothed 
the  poor  in  distress :  "  If  I  have  seen  any  perish  for 
want  of  clothing,  or  any  poor  without  covering ;  if  his 
ioins  have  not  blessed  me,  and  if  he  were  not  warmed 
with  the  fleece  of  my  sheep ;  then  let  mine  arm  fall," 
&c.  (Job  xxxi.  19,  20,  22).  lu  the  Proverbs  we  read, 
"  Be  thou  diligent  to   know  the   state  of  thy  flocks, 

and   look  well  to   thy   herds The    sheep 

[A.  v.,  'lambs,'  chebdsini,']  are  for  thy  clothing"  (xxvii. 
23,  26).  The  wtuous  woman  '■  seeketh  wool  and 
flax,  and  worketh  willingly  with  her  hands  "  (xxxi.  13). 
Mosha,  king  of  Moab  (whoso  record  of  his  own  exploits 


was  a  few  years  ago  discovei-ed  in  that  land),  was 
a  great  slieep-master,  and  had  been  in  the  habit  of 
paying  a  large  tribute  of  sheep  and  "  rams  with  the 
wool"  (eylim  tsdmer)  to  some  of  the  kings  of  Israel 
(2  Kings  iii.  4).  The  mention  of  the  wool  with  the 
animals  shows  the  importance  of  that  commodity. 
Damascus  was  noted  for  the  excoUenee  of  its  white 
wool,  and  supplied  Tyre  therewith.  "  Damascus  was 
thy  merchant  in  the  multitude  of  the  wares  of  thy 
making  .  .  .  aud  in  white  wool "  (Ezek.  xxvii.  18). 
"  At  present  the  quality  of  the  Syrian  wools  varies  as 
widely  as  do  those  of  the  merino  aud  of  the  black-faced 
Highland  breeds.  There  is  a  very  fine  soft  wool  grown, 
in  the  Belka  and  in  Moab,  and  the  fleeces  of  some  of 
the  short-wooled  Lebanon  sheep  are  choice,  while  the 
middle  districts  of  Palestine  produce  a  long-woolod  but 
rather  coarse  fleece."  The  art  of  dyeing  wool  and 
other  materials  was  understood  by  the  Hebrews.  The 
Tyi'ians  were  celebrated  throughout  the  world  for  their 
purple  and  scarlet  dyes.  "  Rams'  skins  dyed  red " 
wore  used  as  one  of  the  coverings  for  the  tabernacle 
(Exod.  XXV.  5). 

There  ai-e  several  references  in  the  Bible  to  sheep- 
shearing.  Dr.  Tristram  well  remarks :  "  What  the 
harvest  was  to  an  agricultui-al,  that  the  sheep-shearmg 
was  to  a  pastoral  people  :  celebrated  by  a  festival 
corresponding  to  our  harvest  home,  marked  often  by 
the  same  reveh-y  and  merry-making."  It  was  when 
Laban  was  occupied  with  liis  sheep-shearing  that  Jacob 
took  the  opportunity  of  going  off  with  his  wives,  cattle, 
and  provisions.  Judah,  after  the  death  of  his  wife, 
"  was  comforted,  and  went  up  unto  his  sheep-shearers 
to  Timnath,  he  and  his  friend  Hirah  the  Adullamite " 
(Gen.  xxxviii.  12).  The  stoiy  of  Nabal  the  chuid  is  told 
in  1  Sam.  xxv.,  how  he  had  three  thousand  sheep  in 
Carmel,  gathered  thither  from  the  southern  wilderness 
for  the  shearing ;  and  how  when  David  and  his  men, 
wlw  had  been  a  wall  to  them  both  by  night  and  day 
when  encamped  in  the  wilderness,  applied  to  share  in 
the  festivities,  Nabal  replied,  "  Shall  I  then  take  my 
bread  and  my  water,  and  my  flesh  that  I  have  killed  for 
my  shearers,  and  give  it  imto  men  whom  I  know  not 
whence  they  be  ?"  (1  Sam.  xxv.  11.)  And  Nabal  "  held 
a  feast  in  his  house  like  the  feast  of  a  king,  and  Nabal's 
heart  was  merry  within  him,  for  ho  was  very  drunken  " 
(ver.  36).  Amnon  was  killed  by  the  order  of  his 
brother  Absalom  at  a  feast  held  after  sheep-shearing, 
when  his  heart  was  "  men-y  with  wine  "  (2  Sam.  xiii.  28). 
In  Joshua  (vi.4)  we  read  of  "  rams'  horns  "  being  used 
as  trumpets.  There  seems  good  reason  for  believiug 
that  the  Hebrew  words  shvpheruth  hayyobelim  do  not 
denote  "  trumpets  of  rams'  homs,"  but  "  trumpets  of 
prolonged  soimdings ;"  in  ver.  5  we  have,  as  synony- 
mous, Iceren  hayyobel,  "  horn  of  long  soundings."  The 
etymology  of  'Jjv  is  uncertain ;  the  Talmud  refers  it 
to  an  Arabic  word;  Eiirst,  of  modern  authorities, 
agrees  with  this  view;  but  Gesenius  and  others,  with 
greater  probability,  think  that  ''?i'  (yobil)  coincides 
with  ^Tf  (yubal),  "  jubilee,"  and  that  it  is  the  trumpet 
with  which  originally  the  year  of  jubilee  and  subse- 


ANIMALS    OF    THE    BIBLE. 


47 


quently  other  festivals  or  natioual  convocations  were 
proclaimed.  The  author  of  the  Commentary  on 
Joshua  in  the  Speaker's  Bible,  while  adopting  this  ex- 
planation, observes  that  "  the  horn  of  the  ram  is  solid, 
and  not  at  aU  suitable  for  being  used  as  a  cornet." 
But  surely  the  ram  is  one  of  the  hollow-horned  rumi- 
nants. Rams'  horns  were  probably  used  for  carrying 
the  anointing  oil.  "  Then  Samuel  took  the  hom  of  oU, 
and  anointed  him  [David]  iu  the  midst  of  his  brethren  " 
(1  Sam.  xvi.  13) ;  see  also  1  Kings  i.  39 — "  Zadok  the 
priest  took  an  hom  of  oU  out  of  the  tabernacle,  and 
anointed  Solomon."  Such  horns  were  no  doubt  used 
for  vai'ious  other  pm'poses,  amongst  others  as  a  kind  of 
lady's  toUet-bottle,  for  holding  heuua  paint,  &c.,  for  the 
eyebrows  and  eyelashes.  This  seems  to  bo  imphed  in 
the  name  of  Job's  tliird  daughter,  Keren-hwppuch,  i.e., 
"  horn  for  jiaint."  Jarchi  expressly  says  that  this  name 
was  given  her  "  from  the  name  of  the  horn  in  which 
they  put  paint  and  soap,"  stibium  et  sniegina  (Jarchi, 
Comment,  in  Hiobum,  xlii.  14,  ed.  Breithaupt).  Rams' 
horns,  Dr.  Tristram  tells  us,  are  still  iu  constant  use 
as  flasks  amongst  Ai-abs,  especially  for  gunpowder. 
Unta,nned  sheep-skins  are  worn  by  the  shepherds  of 
Palestine,  both  in  the  south  country  of  Judea  and  in 
the  Lebanon ;  some  such  a  rude  covering,  perhaps,  was 
used  by  Elijah  and  John  the  Baptist,  and  the  perse- 
cuted saints  of  old,  who  "  wandered  about  in  sheep- 
skins and  goat-skins  "  (Heb.  xi.  37). 

Immense  numbers  of  sheep  were  reared  in  Palestine 
in  Biblical  times,  as  is  the  case  to  this  day  in  some 
portions  of  the  countiy.  The  patriarchs  were  very  rich 
in  cattle  and  sheep ;  Job  possessed  7,000  before  and 
14,000  after  his  troubles.  The  Reubenites  conquered 
the  Hagarites,  and  took  from  them  250,000  sheep  (see 
1  Chron.  V.  21).  Mesha,  king  of  Moab,  a  coimtry  emi- 
nently adapted  for  sheep  pasturing,  possessed  100,000 
sheep  of  the  pasture  Ckdrim)  and  100,000  "  rams  with  the 
wool "  (see  2  Kings  iii.  4).  Dr.  Tristram  sat  under  the 
tent  of  a  Beni  Sakk'r  sheikh,  who  pastured  his  sheep 
in  the  ancient  plains  of  Moab,  and  boasted  of  counting 
30,000  m  his  flocks. 

In  the  time  of  Asa  the  people  gathered  themselves 
together  at  Jerusalem  to  a  great  sacrifice,  at  which 
7,000  sheep  were  offered  at  ouo  time  (2  Chron.  xv.  11). 
"  Hczekiah  king  of  Judah  did  give  to  the  congregation 
a  thousand  bullocks  and  seven  thousand  sheep,  and  the 
princes  gave  to  the  congregation  a  thousand  bullocks 
and  ten  thousand  sheep  "  (2  Chron.  xxx.  24).  Solomon's 
consumption  of  sheep  for  the  royal  household  is  said  to 
have  been  one  himdred  daily,  besides  numbers  of  other 
animals  (1  Kings  iv.  23) ;  whUo  at  the  feast  of  the 
dedication  of  the  Temple  sheep  and  oxen  were  sacrificed 
"  that  could  not  be  told  nor  numbered  for  midtitude  " 
(1  Kings  viii.  5).  Especial  mention  is  made  of  the 
sheep  of  Bozrah,  in  the  land  of  Edom,  and  Bashan  and 
GUead;  and  largo  parts  of  these  districts  are  at  the 
present  time  "at  the  proper  seasons  alive  ■svith  coimtless 
flocks  "  (Dr.  Thomson.  The  Land  and  the  Booh.  p.  205). 
Dr.  Tristram  speaks  of  the  immense  number  of  sheep 
his  party  saw  on  the  east  of  Jordan.     "  No  coimtry," 


he  says,  "  could  be  conceived  more  adapted  by  natm-e 
for  flocks  than  the  rich  plateaux  where  the  feeders  of 
the  Jabbok  rise  in  the  ancient  Ammou.  Tlie  land  is 
almost  treeless,  and  well  watered  everywhere.  Never 
did  I  see  such  a  display  of  pastoral  wealth  as  met  our 
eyes  in  the  neighbourhood  of  desolate  Rabbah.  It  was 
the  early  spring,  when  the  grass  was  shooting  forth  in 
its  first  freshness.  The  sheep  of  the  great  tribes  of  the 
Adwan  and  Beni  Sakk'r  had  gathered  hero  from  far 
and  near,  and  mile  after  mde  we  rode  through  flocks 
countless  as  the  sand,  while  winding  up  the  gently- 
sloping  valley,  at  the  head  of  wliich  stand  the  magnifi- 
cent but  lovely  ruins  of  the  great  city.  To  the  open 
spaces  among  the  temples  the  sheep  and  goats  were 
driven  at  night,  and  thou-  bleating  was  almost  deafen- 
mg"  {Nat.  Hist.  Bib.,  p.  135). 

We  read  in  Ezekiel  that  sheep  and  goats  were  im- 
ported into  Tyre  from  Arabia.  "  Arabia,  and  aU  the 
princes  of  Kedar,  they  occupied  [traded]  with  thee  in 
sheep  of  the  pastures  (kdrim),  rams  and  he-goats" 
(xx^-ii.  21).  The  projihet  Isaiah  mentions  sheep  of 
Arabia,  which  in  some  parts  abomided  in  sheep  and 
cattle :  "  All  the  flocks  of  Kedar  shall  bo  gathered 
together  imto  thee,  the  rams  of  Nebaioth  shall  minister 
unto  thee "  (Ix.  7).  In  2  Chron.  xvii.  11,  we  read 
that  the  Arabians  brought  Jehoshaijhat  presents  of 
flocks  of  sheep,  "  seven  thousand  and  seven  hundred 
rams,  and  seven  thousand  and  seven  himdred  he-goats." 
Kedar  and  Nebaioth  are  mentioned  as  two  sons  of 
Ishmael,  that  settled  in  Arabia  (Gen.  xxv.  13) ;  in  Isaiah 
they  will  represent  two  nomad  pastoral  tribes.  The 
word  hSdar  means  "having  a  black  skin;"  compare 
with  this  etymology  Cant.  i.  5 — "  I  am  black,  but 
comely,  O  ye  daughters  of  Jerusalem,  as  the  tents  of 
Kedar,"  alluding  to  the  dark  goat  or  camel-skin  tents 
of  the  Ai-abians,  like  those  of  the  modem  Bedawee. 
Hence  benei  kedar,  "  children  of  Kedar,"  denote  a 
nomad  tribe  which,  like  tliat  of  Nebaioth,  dwelt  in 
Northern  Arabia,  and  possessed  abundant  flocks.  The 
Assyrian  monuments  also  testify  to  the  enormous 
numbers  of  sheep  possessed  by  the  Arabians.  In  the 
account  of  Assur-bani-pal's  expedition  against  Arabia,  to 
punish  Vaiteh  the  king,  who  had  rebelled  against  the 
Assyrian  monarch,  express  mention  is  made  of  the 
numbers  of  sheep  and  other  cattle  which  were  captured. 
"  Nisi,  imiri,  gammali,  va  tseni,  chubus  sunu  ina  la 
mini  achbuta"  ("  men,  asses,  camels,  and  sheei^,  their 
plunder  without  number  I  carried  off")  (Smith's  Assur- 
bani-pal,  p.  270).  The  flocks  were  protected  from  wild 
beasts — wolves  being  the  especial  enemies — by  shepherd- 
dogs  at  night ;  but  these  dogs  of  Syria  are  not  like  tho 
intelligent  colleys  of  our  country;  they  are  "usually 
kept  iu  some  numbers,  not  less  than  six  together ;  they 
lie  outside  the  fold,  and  raise  their  defiant  bark  when- 
ever the  jackal's  howl  is  heard.  Notwithstanding  their 
use,  they  are  hardly  treated,  kicked,  and  half-starved  ; 
yet  their  fidehty  is  unswervmg  "  (Nat.  Hist.  Bih.,  p.  141). 
From  a  passage  iu  Job,  as  well  as  from  the  general  way 
in  which  the  dog  is  spoken  of  in  Scripture,  it  would 
appear  the  poor  animal  was  always  treated  with  con- 


43 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


tempt :  "  But  now  the7  that  are  younger  than  I  have 
me  in  derision,  -vrhoso  fathers  I  would  have  disdained  to 
have  set  with  tho  dogs  of  my  flock  "  (Job  xxx.  1). 

Shepherds  in  Palestine  and  other  parts  of  the  East 
do  not  drive  their  sheep,  but  always  lead  them,  without 
the  aid  of  a  dog ;  they  also  gave  names  to  their  sheep, 
just  as  in  this  country  we  do  to  our  cattle.  This  illus- 
trates our  Lord's  parable  of  the  good  shepherd:  "He 
that  cntereth  not  by  tho  door  into  the  sheepfold,  but 
climboth  up  some  other  way,  the  same  is  a  thief  and  a 
robber ;  but  ho  that  entereth  in  by  tho  door  is  the  shep- 
herd of  the  sheep.  To  him  the  porter  openeth,  and  the 
sheep  hoar  his  voice ;  and  he  calleth  Ms  own  sheep  by 


rounded  him ;  then  to  climb  the  rocks — the  goats  pursued 
him  ;  aud  finally,  all  the  flock  formed  in  a  circle,  gam- 
bolling around  him"  {Nat.  Hist.  Bib.,  p.  140). 

To  tho  same  effect  Dr.  Thomson  writes  :  "  I  never  ride 
over  these  hills,  clothed  with  flocks,  without  meditating 
upon  this  delightful  theme  of  the  good  shepherd.  Our 
Saviour  says  that  the  good  shepherd  when  ho  putteth 
forth  his  own  sheep  gocth  before  them,  and  they  follow. 
This  is  true  to  the  letter.  They  are  so  tame  and  so  trained 
that  they  folloio  their  keeper  with  the  utmost  docility. 
He  leads  them  forth  from  the  fold,  or  from  their  houses 
in  the  villages,  just  where  he  pleases.  As  there  are  many 
flocks  in  such  a  x^lace  as  this,  each  one  takes  a  different 


I      U      < 


r' 


'"^      ' 


//C 


f?™ 


& 


A  W-^o 


■^  'ft 


'''i*   Ws*i- 


DOMESTIC    GOATS    AND    BKOAD-TAILED    SHEEP.       (iSSTEIAN.) 


name,  and  Icadeth  them  out.  And  when  he  putteth 
forth  his  own  shcop,  he  goeth  before  them,  and  tho 
sheep  follow  him:  for  they  know  his  voice.  Aud  a 
stranger  will  they  not  follow,  but  will  floe  from  liim ; 
for  they  know  not  the  voice  of  strangers  "  (John  x.  1 — 5). 
The  old  r.-ims  are  often  decorated  with  Ijclls,  and  share 
the  shepherd's  confidence  in  a  special  degree.  "  On  tho 
hill-side  he  searches  out  the  choicest  morsels  of  herbage, 
and  calls  Uie  sheei>  to  partake  of  them.'  They  have 
tho  attachment  of  a  dog  to  their  master.  Wo  once 
observed  a  shepherd  phxying  with  his  flock.  He  pre- 
tended to  run  away — ^the  sheep  ran  after  him  aud  sur- 


1  We  may  add  that  tlie  attachment  of  the  Eastern  shepherd  to 
his  flock  is  exhibited  in  the  Hebrew  word  for  shepherd,  viz., 
roc/i,  or  ru't,  from  the  root  ni'tili,  "to  look  with  pleasure  on," 
"to  delight  iu,"  especially  "to  feed;"  hence  in  Ps.  xxiii,  1, 
Ycliiimh  lo'i  lo  triisrir  ("Jehovah  is  my  shepherd  [feeder],  I  shall 
not  puffer  want").  Conipari  also  tho  Greek  iroi/ivi-,  from  io.>, 
"grass,"  aud  Laliu  pnslor,  from  jiasco,  "  I  feed." 


path,  aud  it  is  his  business  to  find  pasture  for  them. 
It  is  necessary,  therefore,  that  they  should  bo  taught  to 
follow,  and  not  to  stray  away  into  the  uuf eueed  fields  of 
corn  which  lie  so  temptingly  on  cither  side.  Any  one 
that  thus  wanders  is  sure  to  get  into  trouble.  The 
shepherd  calls  sharply  from  time  to  time,  to  remind 
them  of  his  presence.  They  know  his  voice  and  follow 
on ;  but  if  a  stranger  calls  they  stop  short,  lift  up  their 
heads  hi  alarm,  aud  if  it  is  repeated  they  turn  and  flee, 
because  tliey  know  not  tho  voice  of  a  stranger.  This  is 
not  the  fiinclful  costume  of  a  parable,  it  is  sunple  fact. 
I  have  made  the  experiment  repeatedly.  Tho  shepherd 
goes  before,  not  merely  to  point  out  the  way,  but  to  see 
that  it  is  practicable  aud  safe.  Ho  is  aruu-d  iu  order  to 
defend  his  charge,  and  in  this  ho  is  very  courageous. 

Many  adventures  with  wild  beasts  occur 

They  not  unfrcqucntly  attack  tho  flock  in  the  very 
presence  of  the  shepherd,  and  ho  must  be  ready  to  do 


THE   ANIMALS   OF   THE   BIBLE. 


49 


battle  at  a  moment's  warning And  wlien 

tho  tliiof  and  tho  robber  come  (and  come  they  do),  the 
faithful  shepherd  has  often  to  put  his  lifo  in  his  hand 
to  defend  his  flock.  I  have  known  more  tlian  one  case 
in  which  ho  had  literally  to  lay  it  down  in  the  contest. 
A  poor  faitliful  follow,  last  spring,  between  Tiberias 
and  Tabor,  instead  of  fleeing,  actually  fought  three 
Bedawin  robbers  until  he  was  hacked  to  pieces  with  their 
khaujars,  and  died  among  the  sheep  he  was  defending  " 
{The  Land  and  the  Book,  202,  203).  All  this  very 
beautifully  and  very  strikingly  illustrates  tho  Biblical 
allusions  :  '"  Thou  leddost  thy  people  like  a  flock  by  tho 
baud  of  Moses  and  Aaron."  "  Give  ear,  O  Shepherd  of 
Israel,  thou  that  leadest  Joseph  like  a  flock  "  (.Ps.  Ixxvii. 


names  to  their  sheep.  In  an  idyl  of  Theocritus,  which 
Virgil  in  his  third  Eclogue  has  partly  imitated,  a  goat- 
herd and  a  shepherd  are  singing  for  a  wager,  reclining 
on  the  grass  where  their  flocks  are  grazing ;  some  of  tho 
sheep  approach  too  near  io  tho  young  olive-trees,  and 
are  addi'cssed  by  name  by  the  shepherds. 

COMATAS. 

*'  From  the  wild  olive,  bleatera  !     Feed  at  will 
"Where  grow  the  tamarisks,  ou  the  sloping  hill. 

Lacon. 
Off  from  that  oak,  Cycffitha  and  Conarus  ! 
Feed  eastward — yonder  where  you  see  Phalaros." 

(Chapman's  Greek  Pastoral  Poetry,  47,  48.) 

Of  the  manner  of  tending  sheep  'm  Palestine,  and  of 


THE  MOUFFLON  (CapTovis  Muiir.wn). 


20,  and  Ixxx.  1).  '■  I  am  the  good  Shepherd,  and  know 
my  sheep,  and  am  known  of  mine  "  (John  x.  14).  "  The 
thief  Cometh  not,  but  for  to  steal,  and  to  kUl,  and  to 
destroy"  (ver.  10).  "I  am  the  good  Shepherd:  tho 
good  Shepherd  giveth  his  lifo  for  the  sheep  "  (ver.  11). 

Not  only  in  Palestine  was  it  the  custom  to  give  names 
to  the  slieep,  it  was  also  usual  in  Greece.  "  Passing  Ijy 
a  flock  of  sheep,  I  asked  the  shepherd  to  caU  one  of  his 
sheep.  He  did  so,  and  it  instantly  left  its  pasturage 
and  companions,  and  ran  up  to  the  hand  of  tho  shepherd 
with  signs  of  pleasure  and  with  a  prompt  obedience 
which  I  had  never  before  observed  in  any  other  animal. 
The  shepherd  told  me  that  many  of  his  sheep  are  still 
wild,  tliat  fliey  had  not  yet  learned  their  names,  but 
that  by  teaching  thoy  would  all  learn  them.  The  others 
which  knew  their  names  he  called  tame "  (Hartley's 
Researches  in  Greece  and  the  Levant). 

Tho  ancient  Greeks,   as  well  as   tho  modern,  gave 

28 — VOL.    It 


an  Eastern  shepherd's   life.  Dr.  Tristram   gives  us  a 

graphic  account.     "  The  sheep  districts  consist  of  wide 

ojien  wolds  or  downs,   reft   here   and   there   by  deep 

I  ravines,  in  whose  sides  lurk  many  a  wild  beast,  tho 

I  enemy  of  the  flocks.     During  the  day  the  slieep  roam 

i  at  will  over  a  wide  extent  of  common  pasture,  only  kept 

I  from  encroaching  on  tho  territory  of  another  tribe.     In 

the  evening  they  are  gathered  into  folds.     These  folds 

are  in  most  parts  of  the  coimtry  the  natural  caves  or 

old  dwellings  of  tho  Horites,  adapted  for  tho  purpose, 

with  a  low  wall  buUt  outside  them,  as  may  bo  seen  in 

Mount  Quarantania,  near  Jericho,   in  tho   glens   near 

the  Lake  of  Galilee,  and  in  the  hill  country  of  Jud;ili. 

Elsewhere  a  simple  boimdary  wall,  with  an  entrance,  is 

built  in  tho  open  ground.     Owing  to  the  multitudo  of 

jackals  and  wolves,  the  shepherds  are  obliged  to  keep 

watch  over  their  flocks  by  night.     Thus  tho  sliepherds 

of  Bethlehem  were  '  abiding  in  tho  field,  keeping  watch 


50 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


over  their  flock  by  night '  when  the  angel  of  the  Lord 
came  and  announced  to  them  the  '  good  tidings  of  great 
joy  to  all  people '  (Luke  ii.  8,  &e.)-  The  same  practice 
contiaues  to  this  day.  Even  on  the  highest  ridges  of 
Lebanon,  far  above  human  habitations,  are  found  little 
depressions  where  the  shepherds  had  contrived  sleeping 
places  for  themselves,  inside  of  which  rushes  were  col- 
lected for  bedding.  These  simple  beds  were  arranged 
in  a  circle,  and  sticks  and  roots  were  collected  in  the 
centre  for  a  fire ;  .a  few  pots  or  pans  stood  by  them,  and 
the  sheep-skins  and  old  rugs  were  left  in  their  places 
under  the  guardianship  of  three  or  four  faithful  watch- 
dogs, whose  vigilance  was  sufficient  protection  whUo 
their  masters  wandered  during  the  day  with  their  flocks. 
We  often  met  the  shepherds  nules  away  from  their 
stations.  It  is  their  ordinary  summer  habit  to  live  thus 
in  the  open  air,  as  they  do  in  the  soutli  throughout  the 
year.  In  the  open  district  east  of  Jordan  there  ai-e  no 
caves,  and  so  the  children  of  Reuben  said  to  Moses, 
'  "We  will  build  slieepfolds  here  for  our  cattle '  (Numb. 
xxxii.  16).  To  these  sheepfolds  Reuben  still  continued 
devoted,  and  forgot  the  troubles  of  his  brethren.  'Why 
abodest  thou  among  the  sheepfolds,  to  hear  the  bleatings 
of  the  flocks  ?  For  the  divisions  [in  the  divisions, 
i.e.,  family  tlinsions,  tribes]  of  Reuben  there  were  gi'eat 
searchiugs  of  heart ' '  ( Judg.  v.  16).  But  in  the  hill 
country  of  Judah  the  folds  were  in  caves.  Thus  Saul, 
when  in  search  for  David,  '  came  to  the  sheepcotes  by 
the  way  where  was  a  cave'  (1  Sam.  xsiv.  3).  In  such 
folds  Da\-id  had  passed  his  youth.  '  I  took  thee  from 
the  sheepcote,  from  following  the  sheep,  to  be  rider 
over  my  people,  over  Israel '  (2  Sam.  vii.  8 ;  Ps.  Ixxviii. 
701.  And  as  the  traveller  passes  over  the  Philistian 
plains,  and  sees  the  ruined  cities,  with  rxido  hovels  and 
slieepfolds  built  of  their  fragments,  who  can  forget  the 
denunciation  of  the  prophet :  '  The  sea-coast  shall  be 
dwellings  and  cottages  for  shepherds,  and  folds  for 
flocks  ?''  (Zeph.  ii.  6)."  (Nat.  Hist.  Bib.,  pp.  138,  139.) 

In  our  own  country  sheep  do  net  as  a  general  rule 
require  water  to  drink,  the  succident  natiu-e  of  their 
food  being  sufficient  to  prevent  thirst;  still  in  droughty 
seasons,  when  the  herbage  is  scorched  from  great  and 
prolonged  heat,  sheep  will  di'ink  with  avidity.  But 
what  is  the  exception  in  England  is  the  rule  in  the  East, 
where  watering  the  flocks  is  a  necessary  and  common 
operation.  When  Jacob  met  his  cousin  Rachel  for  the 
first  time  in  his  eventful  history  it  was  at  the  well-side. 

1  There  is  a  sarcastic  irony  in  Deborah's  rebuke  of  Eeuben  which 
it  is  uot  very  easy  to  express.  *'  In  the  divisions,  or,  amon^r  the 
brooks"  {as  some  translate  tlie  Hebrew  word)  *' o£  Keuben,  there 
were  deep  deliberatious,  solemn  thoughts  as  to  helping  their 
brethren.  "Why  then  did  Reuben  abide  anion;;:  the  sheepfolds, 
lazily  listcninpc  to  shepherds  piping  on  their  reeds,  instead  of 
eugagin-^  in  brave  fight  and  clamour  of  war  ?  Oh  !  yes,  there 
must  have  been  great  deliberations  indeed."  There  can  bo  no 
doubt  that  the  Hebrew  words  s/tcri/ioth  aMrhn  refer  to  s/ieplu-rds 
VihisiVmg  on  their  jn'jifs,  and  not  to  the  bleatings  of  the  sheep. 
Shdrali  means  "  to  whistle  on  a  pipe,"  "  to  hiss  and  make  a  shrill 
noise."  The  word,  like  our  English  "hiss,"  is  probably  onomato- 
poetic,  and  would  be  :u  the  highest  degree  inappropriate  to  cs]>ress 
the  bleatings  of  sheep.  So  interpret  Gesenius,  Eoscnmilller,  and 
Turst;  the  latter  adding  that  111?  {t-'Ur),  "a  flock,"  here  =  111*  li*\^ 
{ish  ddey),  man  of  the  Hock,  i.e.,  "  shepherd."  So  too  lieil  and 
Belitzsch,  '*  the  pipings  of  the  flocks." 


Jacob  looked,  "  and  behold  a  well  in  the  field,  and,  lo, 
there  were  three  flocks  of  sheep  lying  by  it ;  for  out  of 
that  well  they  watered  the  flocks  :  and  a  great  stone  was 
upon  the  well's  mouth.  And  thither  were  all  the  flocks 
gathered :  and  they  rolled  the  stone  from  the  well's 
mouth,  and  watered  the  sheep,  and  put  the  stone  again 
upon  the  well's  mouth  in  his  place  "  (Gen.  xxix.  2,  3). 
When  Moses  fled  from  Egypt  into  Midian,  he  sat  down 
by  a  well  there.  "  Now  the  priest  of  Midian  had  seven 
daughters :  and  they  came  and  di-ew  watei',  and  filled 
the  troughs  to  water  then-  father's  flock.  And  the 
sheplierds  came  and  drove  them  away :  but  Moses  stood 
up  and  helped  them,  and  watered  their  flock.  And 
when  tliey  came  to  Reuel  their  father,  he  said.  How 
is  it  that  ye  are  come  so  soon  to-day  ? "  (Exod.  ii.  16 
— 19.)  The  operation  must  have  taken  some  time, 
for  the  water  was  drawn  out  by  means  of  rope  and 
bucket,  and  poured  into  the  troughs  or  reservoirs,  which 
were  generally  of  stone,  that  were  round  the  margin  of 
the  Eastern  wells.  Hence  there  was  time  for  a  little 
chattering  and  gossiping,  and  not  imfrequently  a  little 
love-making;  indeed,  the  well  seems  to  have  been  a 
recognised  place  where  to  seek  a  wife.  Thus  Abraham's 
servant  went  to  Mesopotamia,  to  the  city  of  Nalior,  to 
find  a  wife  for  Isaac  amongst  the  daughters  of  the 
land  who  came  out  of  the  city  to  draw  water  from  tho 
well.  The  steward  sat  down,  and  the  camels,  thirsty 
from  their  long  jouraey,  rested ;  a  maiden  approaches, 
nnVeUed,  very  beautiful,  with  the  bloom  of  innocence  on 
her  countenance,  altogether  enchanting;  her  name  is 
Rebekah,  or  Eihlcah,  that  is,  "the  girl  who  ensnares 
men  l)y  her  beauty,"  from  the  Arabic  word  ribkali,  "  a 
rope  having  a  noose."  She  draws  water  for  her  own 
camels,  and  then  the  active  obliging  gu'l  di"aws  water 
for  the  camels  of  Abraham's  steward.  The  result  is 
well  known ;  Rel)ekah  became  Isaac's  wife,  "  and  ho 
loved  her,  and  Isaac  was  comforted  after  his  mother's 
death."  It  was  at  the  weU-side  where  Jacob,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  first  met  Rachel,  who  afterwards 
became  his  wife. 

The  old  scenes  are  repeated  to  this  day,  as  Dr. 
Tristram  tells  us  : — "  And  .still  the  '  places  of  di-awing" 
water,'  when  tho  land  is  free  from  the  '  noise  of  archers,' 
are  the  spots  where  the  youth  and  girls  of  Bedouin  life 
congregate  ;  and  at  the  wells  alone  is  Oriental  courtship 
carried  on  to  this  day.  The  Syi-ian  girl,  especially  if  a 
Druse  or  Christian,  unlike  the  secluded  diiughterof  tho 
towns,  is  frequently  entnisted,  like  Rachel  or  Zipporah, 
with  the  care  of  her  father's  flock.  The  well — the  most 
precious  of  possessions — is  carefully  closed  with  a  heavy 
slab  until  aU  whose  flocks  are  entitled  to  share  its  water 
have  gathered.  The  time  is  noon.  The  first  comers 
gather,  and  report  the  gossip  of  the  tribe.  The  story  of 
Gen.  xxix.  is,  in  its  most  minute  details,  a  transcript  of 
the  Ai-ab  life  of  to-day.  '  It  is  yet  high  day,  neither  is 
it  time  that  the  cattle  shoidd  be  gathered  together  [i.e„ 
to  be  folded  for  the  night]  :  water  ye  the  sheep,  and  go 
and  feed  them.  And  they  said.  We  cannot  until  all  tho 
flocks  be  gathered  together,  and  tiU  they  roU  the  stone 
from  the  well's  mouth ;  then  we  water  the  sheep '  (vs. 


THE  ANIMALS  OF  TKE  BIBLE. 


51 


7,  8).  Then  follow  the  arrival  of  Rachel,  the  ekim  of 
relationship,  and  the  brotherly  kiss,  with  the  homo 
found  in  Laban's  house.  Though  Mohammedanism  has 
sadly  degraded  woman,  and  restricted  her  freedom,  yet 
the  daughters  of  the  desert  can  still  choose  indu-ectly 
for  themselves  among  their  comrades  at  the  well ;  and 
they  are  always  eager  to  offer  the  stranger,  though  no 
Mohammcd:xn,  a  draught  of  milk"  {Nat.  Hist.  Bib., 
pp.  142,  143). 

There  appear  to  be  two  breeds  of  sheep  in  Palestine, 
each  of  them  merely  a  variety  of  the  common  sheep 
of  this  country,  Ovis  aries ;  one  wliich  occurs  in  the 
northern  hills  is  said  to  be  "not  unlike  tho  merino, 
with  short.,  fine  wool,  well  shaped,  short  and  flue  legs." 
This  would  seem  to  be  a  variety  of  the  Ovis  Hispanicus 
of  LinnffiuS;  Sheep  are  subject  to  almost  endless  varia- 
tions. Dr.  Gardiner,  in  his  jommey  from  Pernambuco 
to  Crato,  passed  through  a  flock  of  several  hundred 
sheep.  "  Tho  excessive  heat  of  the  climate  liad  vprought 
a  remarkable  change  in  their  appearance,  their  skin 
being  totally  destitute  of  wool,  and  replaced  by  a  short 
hah-  not  unUke  that  of  a  cow"  {Trav.,  p.  163).  Again, 
in  the  form  and  even  in  the  nimiber  of  the  hoims,  as 
well  as  in  the  texture  of  their  clothing,  sheej)  offer 
many  varieties.  Sheep  may  have  four  horns,  or  even 
eight  in  nimiber;  they  may  have  a  pair,  or  none  at 
all.  The  ordinai-y  sheep  of  Palestine,  which  is  tho 
sheep  of  the  southern  parts  of  the  country,  and  which 
probably  was  the  sheep  of  the  land  in  Biblical  times,  is 
the  fat-tailed  sheep  of  the  East,  the  Ovis  laticaudata 
of  Erxleben,  the  Ovis  laticanda  platyceros  s.  Arabica  of 
Linnffius,  the  Ovis  orientalis  of  LudoK,  who  iu  his 
History  of  Ethiopia  (Bk.  i.,  cap.  x.,  pi.  14),  has  figured 
this  sheep  drawing  his  long  fat  tail  iu  a  cart  ("  caudam 
adiposam  XL.  et  ampHus  libramm  in  plosteUo  trahens  "). 
In  the  same  plate  Ludolf  figures  another  sheep,  with  a 
tail  not  so  long,  but  excessively  broad  and  fat.  There 
are  several  forms  of  this  fat-tailed  variety  known  to 
naturalists,  but  we  need  not  take  any  notice  of  them. 
This  variety  was  known  both  to  Aristotle  and  Hero- 
dotus ;  tho  former  speaks  of  Syrian  sheep  with  tails  a 
cubit  long ;  and  Herodotus  meutions  a  similar  kind 
found  in  Arabia.  The  story  of  sheep  drawing  their 
large  tails  behind  them,  in  a  little  carriage,  first  men- 
tioned by  Herodotus  (iii.  113),  repeated  by  Leo  Africa- 
nus  iu  tho  fifteenth  century,  and  again  by  Ludolf  in 
the  seventeenth,  has  sometimes  been  ridiculed  as  a  mere 
traveller's  tale.  "When  this  story  is  applied  to  the 
sheep  near  Aleppo,"  Dr.  Russell  .says,  "  it  may  certainly 
be  ascribed  to  exaggeration ;  for  thougli  increase  of  size 
might  expose  the  tail  to  be  injiu-ed  by  tho  thistles  or 
bushes,  and  render  the  expedient  of  the  board  neces- 
sary, where  wheels  could  be  of  little  sendee,  no  increase 
of  bulk  could  well  bi-ing  it  to  trail  on  the  groimd.  But 
the  necessity  of  carriages  for  the  tails  of  the  African 
sheep,  mentioned  by  Herodotus,  Ludolphus,  and  other 
writers,  is  real.  Tho  tail  of  that  anim.al  when  fat 
actually  trails,  not  being  tucked  up  like  that  of  tho 
Syrian  sheep.  I  have  seen  some  at  Aleppo  brought 
from  Egypt,   and  kept  as   curiosities,   which  agreed 


exactly  with  tho  figure  given  by  Ludolplius  "  {History 
of  Aleppo,  ii.,  p.  149). 

At  present  these  enormous  tails,  a  mere  mass  of 
fat,  are  used  for  grease,  lamps,  and  for  cooking.  Dr. 
Tristram  does  not  speak  highly  of  their  flavour.  The 
Arabs  fry  them  in  slices,  and  consider  them  delicacies, 
but  he  compares  the  flavom-  to  that  of  fried  tallow. 
He  adds :  "  The  enormous  development  of  the  tail 
apxiears  to  abstract  both  flesh  and  fat  from  the  rest  of 
the  body.  Though  the  carcase  does  not  weigh  more 
than  fifty  or  sixty  pounds,  the  tail  will  average  ten 
pounds,  and  I  have  kno^vn  it  fourteen  pounds." 

The  fat  tail  of  the  Ovis  laticaudata  was  part  of 
'  tho  sacrifice  of  the  peace-offering  made  by  fire  unto 
Jehovah  "  (Lev.  iii.  9) ;  "  the  fat  thereof,  and  the  whole 
fat  tail,  it  shall  he  take  off  hard  by  the  backbone  .  . 
.  .  and  the  priest  shall  bum  it  upon  the  altar."  The 
ordinary  Hebrew  word  for  an  aninial's  fail  is  IJJ  {zdndb) ; 
but  in  those  passages  which  refer  to  tho  fat  tail  of  the 
Syrian  sheep  another  word,  n'bN  [ahjdh),  is  used  from 
the  root  dldli,  "  to  ))e  round  "  or  "  thick,"  "  to  have  a 
fat  tail."  The  ordinary  colour  of  the  sheep  is  white, 
"  white  as  wool "  (Isa.  i.  18) ;  "  Jehovah  giveth  snow  like 
wool  "  (Ps.  cxlvii.  16) ;  "-the  hair  of  his  head  like  wool " 
(Dan.  vii.  9 ;  Rev.  i.  14) ;  but  black  and  white,  spotted, 
and  black  or  dark  brown  sometimes  occurred,  as  com- 
monly now,  amongst  (Iifferent  breeds  of  sheep. 

Sheep  have  been  domesticated  from  a  very  remote 
period,  and  it  is  impossible  to  say  from  what  original 
animal  the  numerous  breeds  have  proceeded.  They 
existed  in  tho  Stone  jieriod,  for  M.  Riitimeyer  found 
then-  remains  in  the  Swiss  hake-dwellings,  of  small  size, 
fine  legs,  short  and  goat-like  horns,  resembling  in  some 
particulars  northern  and  mountain  varieties  of  the 
present  day,  as  those  of  the  Shetlands,  Orkneys,  Welsh 
Mils,  and  parts  of  the  Alps.  In  one  place  M.  Riiti- 
meyer found  traces  of  a  sheep  with  largo  horns.  There 
is  a  wild  sheep,  called  Aovdnd  or  Kcbsch,  occun-ing  in 
North  Africa,  and  also  in  Sinai,  Ethiopia,  and  Abyssinia, 
whose  figm-e  occurs  on  the  Egyptian  monuments.  "  The 
sheep  was  sacred  in  Upper  Egypt,  particularly  in  the 
vicinity  of  Thebes  and  Elephantine.  The  Lycopolites, 
however,  sacrificed  and  ate  this  animal,  '  because  the 
wolf  did  so,  whom  they  revered  as  a  god ; '  and  the 
same  was  done  by  the  people  of  the  Mcndesian  nome  ; 
though  Strabo  would  seem  to  couflno  the  sacrifice  of 
sheep  to  the  nome  of  Nitriotis.  In  tho  Thebaid  it 
was  considered  not  merely  as  an  emblem,  but  I'anked 
among  the  most  sacred  of  all  animals.  It  was  dedi- 
cated to  Neph,  one  of  tho  greatest  deities  of  tho 
Thebaid,  who  was  represented  with  the  head  of  a  ram, 
.  .  .  and  the  inhaldtants  of  th.at  district  deemed  it 
unlawful  to  eat  its  flesh  or  to  sacrifice  it  on  their  altars. 
According  to  Herodotus,  they  sacrificed  a  ram  once  a 
year  at  Thebes,  on  the  festival  of  Jupiter,  the  only 
occasion  on  which  it  was  permitted  to  kill  this  sacred 
animal ;  and  after  having  clad  tho  statue  of  the  god  in 
the  skin,  the  people  made  a  solemn  lamentation,  striking 
themselves  as  they  walked  around  the  temple.  They 
afterwards  buried  the  body  in  a  sacred   coffin.     Tho 


52 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


saorod  boats  or  arks  of  Neph  were  oruamonted  with  the 
head  of  a  ram,  aud  brouzo  figures  of  this  animal  were 
made  by  tlie  Thebaus,  to  be  worn  as  amulets,  or  kept 
as  guardians  of  the  house,  to  which  tlioy  probably  paid 
thoir  adorations  in  private,  invoking  them  as  inter- 
cessors for  the  aid  of  tlie  deity  they  represented  '' 
{Ancient  Egyptians,  v.,  p.  191).  Numerous  mummies 
of  sheep  are  found  at  Thebes,  where  largo  flocks  wore 
kept ;  for  though  tliey  wore  neither  eaten  nor  sacrificed, 
their  wool  was  of  the  highest  importance  to  the  people. 
Diodorus  ascribes  the  high  honour  in  which  the  sheep 
was  held  to  the  benefits  which  mankind  derive  from  it. 
The  woodcut  (p.  49)  represents  the  moufilou  {Caprovis 


Musimon),  the  Capra  Ammon  of  Linnaeus,  the  wild 
sheep  of  Sardinia,  Corsica,  aud  Crete,  where  it  is  now 
only  found.  It  is  said  to  have  been  formerly  common  in 
Spain  and  the  Greek  mountains,  and  to  have  extended 
across  Circassia  to  Persia ;  aud  probably  at  one  time 
was  found  in  the  Lebanon.  Tlie  moufflon  appears  to 
differ  only  in  size  and  in  the  smallness  of  the  horns  of 
the  female  from  the  great  argali  (Caprovis  Argali)  of 
Siberia  and  the  snowy  barriers  of  liigh  Asia,  an  animal 
which  attains  the  stature  of  a  fallow  deer.  Some  have 
supposed  that  the  innumerable  breeds  of  our  domestic 
sheep  have  been  derived  from  the  moufflon  or  argali, 
but  this  is  very  doubtful. 


BOOKS  OF  THE   OLD   TESTAMENT. 

JOEL. 

BT  THE    KEV.    SAMUEL    COX,    NOTTINGHAM. 


the  names. 


INTEODrrCTION. 
'ANY  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  are  rather 
voices  to  us  than  men — voices  crying  in 
the  past,  and  saying,  "Repent."  Of 
the  men  themselves  we  know  nothing  but 
At  times  we  can  fix  neitlier  their  date  nor 
place.  They  live,  and  tell  upon  the  world,  simply  in 
virtue  of  the  words  they  wore  moved  to  speak.  Possi- 
bly their  words  take  an  added  power  from  the  dark- 
ness from  which  they  sound  forth,  voices  in  the  dark 
being  commonly  impressive,  and  easily  stirring  us  to 
■wonder  and  awe.  And  as  wo  stand  peering  into  the 
gloom  of  antiquity,  and  hear  voice  after  voice  take  up  a 
strain  of  mingled  warning  and  promise,  each  confirming 
aud  expounding  the  one  Divine  message  which  all  pro- 
claim, we  may  be  the  more  moved  by  them  because  we 
can  see  no  form,  because  the  very  darkness  itself  seems 
to  have  become  vocal.  Indeed,  it  is  characteristic  of 
Revelation  throughout  that  it  is,  to  a  wonderful  extent, 
independent  of  person  aud  time  and  place.  Even  of 
our  Lord  himself,  although  wo  have  four  memoirs  of 
him,  we  cannot  be  sure  in  what  year  he  was  born,  or 
even  in  what  season  of  the  year ;  nay,  the  very  day  of 
his  death  is  still  in  dispute.  Eternal  truths  do  not 
depend  on  scene  and  date  for  their  value  or  for  their 
effect.  That  God  is  angry  with  the  wicked ;  that  He 
forgives  and  restores  tlie  penitent ;  that  He  blesses  the 
righteous  and  exalts  the  humble  ;  that  He  is  over  seek- 
ing to  win  the  sinful  to  contrition  aud  the  disobedient 
to  the  wisdom  of  the  just;  that  his  judgments  are 
forms  of  mercy,  aud  are  designed  to  bring  in  a  golden 
age  of  righteousness  and  peace ; — these  are  spiritual 
facts  which  are  true  in  all  ages  and  in  all  lands  ;  and 
these  are  the  sum  and  substance  of  the  prophetic 
message  :  this  is  the  single  tlieuie  which  the  prophetic 
choir  pursue  through  endless  variations,  and  enrich  with 
harmonies  ever  now.  And  this  music  may  touch  us 
all  the  more  profoundly  because  we  stand,  as  it  were, 


outside  the  antique  temple  in  which  they  worship,  and 
cannot  soo  the  men  who  sing. 

Of  Joel,  for  example,  we  know  absolutely  nothing  but 
what  may  bo  gathered  from  his  prophecy ;  and  that  teUs 
us  neither  when  nor  where  ho  flourished,  save  by  hints 
and  implications  which  are  still  %'ariously  read.  That 
ho  lived  iu  Judah,  probably  in  Jerusalem,  wo  may  infer 
from  the  facts  that  ho  never  mentions  the  northern 
kingdom  of  Israel,  and  that  he  shows  himself  familiar 
with  the  Temple,  the  priests,  the  ordinances  of  worship  : 
he  moves  tlirough  the  sacred  city  and  the  temple  of  the 
Lord  as  one  who  is  at  homo  iu  them,  as  one  who  is 
native  and  to  the  manner  born.  On  this  point  the 
commentators  are  pretty  well  agreed ;  but  no  sooner 
do  we  ask,  "  When  did  Joel  five  and  prophesy  ? "'  than 
we  receive  the  most  diverse  and  contradictory  replies. 
He  has  been  moved  along  the  chronological  lines  of  at 
least  two  centuries,  and  fixed  now  here,  now  there,  at 
almost  every  point.  For  myself,  I  prefer,  on  the  whole, 
the  theory  whieli  holds  him  to  have  been  the  earliest  of 
the  prophets  whoso  writings  have  come  down  to  us. 
There  are  hints  in  his  poem,  or  prophecy,  which  indicate, 
I  think,  that  it  must  have  been  written  in  the  ninth 
century  before  Christ  (circa  870 — 860),  more  than  a 
hundred  years  before  Isaiah  "  saw  the  Lord  sitting 
on  his  throne,  high  and  lifted  up,"  and  some  fifty 
years  after  EUjah  was  carried  "  by  a  whirlwind  into 
heaven." 

Tradition  has  always  assigned  Joel  an  early  date, 
although  his  place  in  the  Old  Testament  canon  might 
seem  to  indicate  a  different  conclusion.  That  place, 
however,  was  determined,  not  by  any  doubt  of  his 
having  lived  before  Isaiah  aud  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel, 
Daniel,  and  Hosea,  but  simply  by  the  fact  that  his  scrip- 
ture is  shorter  than  theirs.  The  arrangement  of  the 
prophetical  books  is  not  chronological,  but  an  arrange- 
ment of  convenience.  First  come  tho  major  or  longer 
prophets ;    then  the  minor  or  shorter    prophets ;   and 


JOEL. 


53 


even  these  minor  prophets  do  not  succeed  each  other 
strictly  according  to  their  dates  :  indeed,  it  is  not  easy 
to  discover  on  what  principle  they  are  aiTanged. 

In  reading  the  Old  Testament  we  need  constantly 
to  bear  in  mind  that  the  order  in  which  the  books  are 
found  is  no  index  to  the  order  in  which  they  were 
written.  Job,  one  of  the  most  ancient  scriptures, 
comes  after  Esther,  one  of  the  latest  scriptures ;  and 
Joel,  one  of  the  most  ancient  prophets,  comes  after 
Daniel,  one  of  the  latest. 

With  some  confidence  we  may  place  Joil  first  on  the 
list  of  written  prophecies  ;  but  if  we  try  to  define  its 
date  more  exactly,  we  shall  have  to  trust  to  the  uncer- 
tain guidance  of  very  slight,  though  pregnant  hints.  The 
only  enemies  of  the  chosen  race  meutioued  by  the  prophet 
Joel  are  the  Phceuicians,  the  Philistines,  the  Edomites, 
the  Egyptians  :  he  does  not  once  mention  the  Assyrian, 
or  even  the  Aramajau  invasions.  Now  had  ho  lived  sub- 
sequently to  these  invasions,  the  probability  is  that,  like 
the  prophets  who  came  after  him,  he  woidd  have  re- 
ferred to  them  and  to  the  judgments  they  executed  in 
the  land.  It  seems  incredible,  for  instance,  that  we 
should  have  had  no  allusion  to  it,  had  he  lived  after  that 
fatal  Aramaean  war  which,  in  the  later  years  of  his 
reign,  cost  King  Joash  not  only  the  treasures  of  the 
Temple  and  his  palace,  but  his  very  life,  and  in  which 
many  fair  cities  were  captiu-ed,  and  "  a  very  great  host," 
and  "  all  the  pi-inces  of  the  people,"  were  destroyed. 
Had  so  great  a  catastrophe  recently  occurred,  Joel 
would  surely  have  used  it  to  point  the  warning,  to  illus- 
trate the  judgment  lie  was  sent  to  denounce.  But  if 
from  his  silence  respecting  the  Aramaean  invasion  we 
may  infer  that  he  lived  before  it,  that  wiU  kind  him  at 
least  as  far  back  as  the  early  years  of  Joash,  king  of 
Judah,  some  870  years  before  Christ.  Tliis  inference  is 
confirmed  by  his  style,  which  belongs  to  the  earlier  period 
of  the  prophetic  activity.  A  singular  and  significant 
cliange  passed  on  the  style  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  in  the 
eighth  and  seventh  centuries  before  Christ.  As  their 
spirit  grew  more  catholic,  and  they  set  themselves  to 
appeal  aud  persuade  rather  than  to  judge,  the  ancient 
strictness,  terseness,  and  vigour  of  their  style  relaxed  : 
if  it  grew  more  picturesque  and  elaborate,  it  also  grew 
more  diffuse. 

Joel's  style  is  that  of  the  earlier  age.  So  marked, 
indeed,  is  "  the  antique  vigour  and  imperativeness  of 
his  language,"  that  pm-ely  on  this  ground,  Ewald,  whose 
fine  critical  instinct  deserves  a  respect  which  his  dog- 
matism often  averts,  places  him  without  a  doubt  first  in 
the  rank  of  the  earlier  prophets,  and  makes  him  the 
contemporary  of  Joash. 

The  inference  is  still  further  confirmed  by  the  pro- 
vailing  tone  aud  spirit  of  his  prophecy,  in  which  he 
differs  greatly  from  "  the  goodly  fellowship  "  to  which 
he  belongs.  He  does  not  once  refer  to  the  idolatrous 
rites  and  customs  which  they  perpetually  rebuke. 
Though  the  Hebrews  are  a  siufid  nation,  and  by  their 
guilt  have  provoked  Divine  judgment,  yet,  in  the  pages 
of  Joel,  Jehovah  is  still  recognised  as  their  God  and 
King ;  the  simple  but  stately  worship  of  the  Temple  is 


maintained,  priests  and  people  keep  the  feasts  and  ob- 
sei-ve  the  ordinances  to  do  them.  Now,  curiously 
enough,  this  exceptional  state  of  general  conformity  to 
the  law  and  ritual  of  Moses  obtained  in  the  years  which 
preceded  the  Aramaean  invasion,  the  earlier  years  of 
Joash's  reign,  aud  in  hardly  any  other  period  to  which 
Joel  has  been  assigned.  So  that  the  absence  of  allusion 
to  foreign  wars  and  invasions,  the  antique  severity  of  his 
style,  aud  the  rehgious  condition  reflected  from  his  pages, 
combine  to  indicate  the  earlier  half  of  King  Joash's 
reign  as  the  period  of  Joel's  projjhetic  activity.  Yet  it 
would  not  be  wise  to  lay  too  much  stress  on  any  one  of 
these  arguments,  or  on  all  combined.  Joel  may  have 
been  one  of  the  earlier  prophets,  as  his  style  indicates, 
and  yet  not  have  been  cotemporaiy  with  Joash.  The 
Aramaeans,  at  least  in  their  assault  on  Judah,  may,  as 
Ewald  suggests,  have  appeared  simply  as  auxiliaries  of 
the  Philistines  ;  aud  Joel  does  mention  the  Philistines. 
Aud  many  of  the  religions  conditions  of  the  time  are 
not  reflected  in  Joel's  pages.  The  reform  initiated  by 
Joash,  though  general,  was  by  no  means  profound.  Of 
a  weak  impidsive  character,  taking  his  tone  from  the 
advisers  who  had  his  ear,  Joash  "  did  that  which  was 
right  in  the  sight  of  the  Lord  all  the  days  wherein 
Jehoiada  instructed  him ; "  but  no  sooner  was  the 
high  priest  gone,  than  he  fell  into  the  hands  of  evil 
counsellors,  and  "  served  groves  and  idols."  Of  so  little 
weight  in  the  state,  that  even  the  priests  neglected  his 
ordinance  to  repair  the  house  of  the  Lord,  till  Jehoiada 
endorsed  it  (2  Kings  xii.),  the  reformation  ho  set  on  foot 
was  but  superficial,  and  broke  down  the  moment  the 
good  priest  who  had  made  a  covenant  "between  all  tho 
people  and  between  the  king,  that  they  should  be  the 
Lord^s,"  was  taken  to  his  rest.  Such  a  condition  as  this 
outward  conformity,  undermined  by  inward  indifference 
to  the  ser-idce  of  Jehovah,  was,  one  should  have  thought, 
the  very  condition  to  provoke  pungent  rebuke  from 
a  prophet  of  the  Lord.  And  it  is  by  no  means  easy 
to  say  why,  if  Joel  laboured  during  the  first  threo- 
and-twenty  years  of  Joash's  reign,  we  do  not  find  tho 
religious  conditions  of  the  time  more  clearly  reflected 
in  his  words. 

We  must  not  dogmatise,  then.  AH  we  can  say  is,  that 
in  all  probability  the  son  of  Pethuel  lived  in  Jerusalem 
during  the  reign  of  Joash  ;  that  ho  aided  Jehoiada,  the 
high  priest,  in  urging  the  citizens  to  repair  the  Temple 
and  to  recur  to  the  service  of  Jehovah ;  aud  that  his 
prophecy  is  the  oldest  in  our  hands,  and  was  written  in 
that  comparatively  calm  and  pure  interval  in  which 
Jerusalem  was  free  from  the  bloody  rites  aud  licen- 
tious orgies  of  the  Baalim  worship. 

That  the  prophet  was  an  accomplished  and  gifted 
man  is  proved  by  his  work.  His  style  is  pure,  severe, 
animated,  finished,  full  of  happy  rhythms  and  easy 
graceful  turns.  "  He  has  no  abrupt  transitions,  is  every- 
where connected,  and  finishes  whatever  he  takes  up. 
In  description  he  is  graphic  and  perspicuous,  in  arrange- 
ment lucid;  in  imagery  original,  copious  and  varied." 
Even  in  this  early  poem  we  find  some  instances  of  the 
tender  refrains  and  recurring  "  burdens  "  which    cha- 


5i 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


racteriso  mucii  of  the  later  Hebrew  poetry.'  lu  short, 
there  are  marks  Ijotli  of  the  scholar  and  of  the  artist 
in  his  stj'lc,  which  distinguish  him  very  clearly  from 
Amos  the  shepherd  aud  Haggai  the  exile.  It  is  ahnost 
beyoud  a  doubt  that  he  was  a  practised  author,  of  whose 
many  poems  and  discourses  only  one  has  come  down  to 
us.  EwalJ  does  not  hesitate  to  say  of  him  that  "  he 
was  in  early  times  the  highest  model "  of  literary  com- 
position iu  the  prophetic  fellowship ;  so  that  his  suc- 
cessors all  followed  his  elevated  precedent. 

The  prophecy  itself  is,  beyond  all  others,  independent 
of  local  circumstances ;  it  is  singularly  free  from  his- 
torical, iiolitical,  geographical  allusions,  and  interprets 
itself.  It  dirides  itself  easily  and  naturally  into  two 
IJarts.  In  the  first  part  (chap.  i.  2 — ii.  17),  wo  have 
Joel's  description  of  a  terrible  judgment  which  fell  on 
ihe  land — viz.,  a  plague  of  locusts,  accompanied  by  years 
of  di'ought.  In  this  judgment  the  prophet  sees  the 
dawn  or  harbinger  of  the  great  day  of  doom,  and  sum- 
mons men  to  repent  that  the  judgment  may  be  averted. 
In  the  second  part  (chap.  ii.  18  to  chap.  iii.  21),  we 
have  the  promise  that  if,  or  Iiiecause,  men  repent,  the 
Lord  wiU  have  mercy  on  them,  deliver  them  from  judg- 
ment .ind  through  judgment,  and  bring  in  an  era  of 
universal  righteousness  and  peace.  For  the  most  part, 
this  simple  series  of  thoughts  is  presented  in  forms  so 
simplfe  and  general  that  the  prophecy  might  hai-e  been 
uttered  in  any  ago  and  of  any  Oriental  race.  AU  that 
localises  it  in  time  and  space  are  the  few  allusions  to 
the  Temple,  to  the  covenant,  to  the  special  enemies  of 
tho  Helirow  people.  And,  so  far  as  I  know,  there  is 
only  one  disputed  cpiestion  in  the  whole  book,  though  it 
must  be  admitted  that  this  question  is  a  sufficiently  im- 
portant one.  AU  the  commentators  are  agreed  that  the 
earlier  half  of  tho  prophecy  contains  the  most  graphic 
and  "  fearsome  "  description  of  a  plague  of  locusts  ever 
penned.  So  terrible  is  the  description  that  till  quite 
recently  it  was  held  to  be  too  terrible  for  a  mere  plague 
of  locusts ;  it  was  maintained  that  the  image  of  a  locijst- 
plague  was  used  to  set  forth  an  invasion  by  some  mighty 
host  of  armed  men.  Nay,  so  ingenious  were  the  com- 
mentators, that  iu  the  four  kinds  of  locust  mentioned 
by  Joel — "  the  gnawer,  the  multiplier,  the  licker,  and 
the  dovoiu'or '' — ^they  saw  four  successive  invasions  by 
the  Assyrians,  or  even  four  successive  periods  in  the 
history  of  the  people  of  God — tho  Babylonian,  the  Mace- 
donian, the  Roman,  and  the  Antichristian.  But  now 
that  travellers  and  naturalists  have  made  us  better 
acquaiutcd  with  the  phenomena  which  attoud  a  flight  of 
locusts  and  tho  horrible  ruin  they  leave  behind  them, 
it  is  generally  admitted  that  Joel's  description  is  no 
whit  exaggerated;  that  we  need  not  invent  or  supply 
armies  and  invasions  to  accoimt  for  the  terror  aud  misery 
which  his  language  breathes.  "VSTiere  tho  locust  swarms 
descend,  all  vegetation  instantly  vanishes ;  they  spare 
neither  bark  nor  root,  much  less  le.af  and  flower.  They 
darken  the  air,  so  that  the  sun,  and  even  men  at  a  little 


1  Examples  of  the  tis2  of  sncli  refrains  will  bo  found  iu  chap. 
i.  10  ami  chap.  iii.  15,  aud  iu  vs.  2d  aud  27  of  chap,  ii 


distance,  become  invisible.  They  advance  iu  a  close 
military  array,  which  yields  to  no  o))staolo  of  stream  or 
fire.  As  they  advance  a  pecidiar  roaring  noise  is  heard, 
like  that  of  a  torrent  or  a  waterfall.  No  sooner  do  they 
settle  to  eat,  than,  as  Volney  puts  it,  the  gratmg  sound 
of  their  mandibles  reminds  one  of  "the  foraging  of  an 
invisible  army."  Indeed,  no  army  of  men  could  well 
work  a  devastation  so  complete  as  that  wrought  by  an 
interminable  flight  of  locusts,  such  as  visits  the  lands  of 
the  far  East,  and  even  Algeria,  to  this  day.  And  as 
the  locusts  are  an  adequate  explanation  of  even  the 
strongest  phrases  of  Joel,  we  need  seek  no  other. 

Indeed,  we  shall  do  well  to  remember  that  the  prophets 
of  Israel  and  Judah  were  patriots  aud   statesmen  to 
whom  uothiug  that  afl:ected  the  national  welfare  was 
alien  or   indifferent.      If   any  great  dearth  were  to 
afflict  England,  if  any  of  our  food-crops  were  suddenly 
to  fail,  how  many  speeches  would  our  public  men  make 
upon  it,  how  many  pamphlets  woidd  they  publish  on 
its  origin,  on  its  probable,  recurrence,  and  on  the  best 
methods  of  meeting  it  aud  guarding  against  it.     The 
Hebrew  projjhets  were  the  jiublic  men,  the  oi-ators  and 
councillors,  "  the  tribunes  "  of  the  Hebrew  people.  When 
any  calamity  befell,  when   any  danger  threatened,  it 
was  their  part  to  point  out  its  cause,  to  bid  men  repent 
and  renoimce  the  sins  which  had  provoked  it,  to  assure 
them  that  God  was  merciful  even  when  He  judged,  and 
sent  his  judgments  only  to  bring  them  to  a  better  mind, 
to  a  purer  and  happier  life.     Nor  were  tho  prophets 
only  patriots,  statesmen,  poets.     They  had  a  far  liigher 
inspiration  than  that  of  character  and  genius.     Their 
hearts  were  moved,  their  eyes  opened,  their  tongues  set 
on  fii-e  by  the  Divine  Spirit ;  so  that  they  could  see  the 
set  and  flow  of  present  events  more  clearly  than  their 
fellows,  and  the  issues  in  which  they  would  result  in  the 
future.     Holding  in  their  heart  of  hearts  the  great 
moral  prineijjles  of  the  Divine  law,  holding  them  as 
ruling  personal  convictions,  belieilng  that  the  lives  and 
fortunes  of  men  were  really  controlled  and  shaped  by 
these  principles,  they  were  immoved  by  the  temporaiy 
success  of  triumphant  wickedness,  or  tho  passing  mis- 
fortunes of  the  righteous  and  the  good.     They  saw  and- 
foresaw  that,  in  the  end.  tho  latent  miseries  of  wicked- 
ness must  break  out  like  a  consuming  fire;  that  the 
peace  and  joy  latent  in  all  good  actions  and  customs 
must,  at  last,  bring  forth  their  pleasant  fruit.     Basing 
themselves  on  those  convictions,  the  veils  of  human 
life  grow  luminous  to  them  ;  they  could  see  men  as  they 
wore,  and  as  they  would  be — tho  men  themselves,  and 
not  tho  "  vain  shows  "  in  which  they  walked.     Faithful 
students  of  tho  past,  they  could  project  themselves  into 
the  future  ;  and  as  they  stood  peering  into  tho  years  to 
be,  what  they  needed  to  see  was  shown  them  by  the 
Inhabitant  of  Eternity,  to  whom  all  the  years  of  time 
are  present.     Taught  by  Him,  they  taught  aud  warned 
then-  brethren,  often  speaking  woi'ds  that  wore  wiser, 
than  they  knew,   often   "searching   what,   and   what 
manner  of  time  the    Spirit   that  was    in    them   did 
signify." 
Two  mistakes,  as  it  seems  to  me,  are  current  about 


EASTERN  GEOGRAPHY   OF  THE   BIBLE. 


55 


the  Hebrew  prophets,  against  wliicli  we  need  to  be  on 
our  guard.  The  one  is,  that  they  were  for  ever  pre- 
dicting wliat  form  and  fashion  the  futui'e  would  take ; 
ihe  other  is,  that  they  never  preilicted  the  things  that 
were  to  come  to  pass  :  and  for  us,  probably,  the  former 
of  those  mistakes  is  the  more  dangerous  of  the  two. 
The  truth  the  prophets  spake  was  emphatically  what 
St.  Peter  calls  ''  the  present  truth,"  the  truth  which 
the  men  of  their  time  most  needed  to  hear.  Perhaps 
wo  most  truly  conceive  them  when  we  tliink  of  them  as 
religious  statesmen — men  who,  vmder  the  inspiration  of 
the  Almighty,  honestly  and  reverently  applied  the  broad 
moral  i^rinciples  of  the  Law  to  all  the  public  questions 
of  then'  day,  and  passionately  besought  the  people  to 
carry  a  religious  spirit  into  all  their  actions,  public  and 
domestic.  This  was  their  common  work,  their  main 
work,  as  wo  may  see  for  ourselves,  as  I  hope  wo  shall 
seo.    But  we  ought  also  to  see  that  these  holy  men 


were  at  times  raised  above  themselves ;  that,  in  the 
stillness  of  profound  meditation,  or  in  the  ecstacy  of  a 
faith  that  grew  to  vision,  their  spirits  took  a  forward  or 
an  upward  flight ;  that,  carried  by  the  Spirit  of  God  to 
some  pinnacle  of  the  Eternal  Temple,  they  beheld  from 
it  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world,  all  the  years  of  time, 
seeing  them  dimly  perhaps,  not  able  to  utter  in  gross 
human  words  the  half  of  what  tlity  saw;  but  stiU 
having  a  true  vision  of  the  future,  and  speaking  words 
concerning  it  which  after  centmies  fulfilled  and  will 
yet  fulfil. 

In  this  double  character,  as  mainly  a  teacher  of 
righteousness  to  his  own  generation,  but  also  as  a 
seer,  catching  at  times  glimpses  of  a  larger  and  more 
heavenly  kingdom  than  that  of  Judali,  and  of  a  happier 
and  more  gracious  time  than  the  world  has  ever  yet 
seen,  Joel  comes  before  us,  and  speaks  to  us  across  a 
gulf  of  nearly  three  thousand  years. 


EASTEEN  GEOGRAPHY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 

BY   THE    EEV.    H.    W.    PHILLOTT,    3I.A.,    KECTOR    Or    STAUNTON- ON-WTE,    AND    PKJILECTOK    OF    HEKEFOKD    CATHEDEAL. 


BABYLON. 

A.VING  pointed  out  the  sites,  so  far  as 
they  can  at  present  be  ascertained,  ©f  the 
Hll  t?  plftPPs  in  the  land  ef  Shinar  in  which 
l^B^  the  kingdom  of  Nimrod  is  said  to  have 
liad  its  beginning,  Erech,  Accad,  and  Calueh,  together 
with  Ur  and  EUasar,  we  proceed  now  to  investigate  the 
site  and  indicate  the  remains  of  the  city  of  Babylon, 
ihe  greatest  of  them  all.  We  may  remark  in  the  outset 
that,  with  the  exception  of  ISTineveh,  no  ancient  city  that 
we  know  of  has  ever  approached  Babylon  in  size,  and 
very  few  places  have  done  so  iu  what  we  may  call  Bilj- 
lical  importance  ;  but  that  it  has  met  with  a  destruction 
even  more  complete  than  that  of  Nineveh,  partly  from  a 
cause  which  will  appear  in  the  course  of  our  survey. 

After  speaking  of  the  beginning  of  Nimrod's  king- 
•dom,  the  Scripture  naiTative  proceeds  to  mention  the 
city  and  tower  whose  building  was  interrupted  by  Divine 
visitation,  and  to  which  the  name  Babel  ("confusion") 
was  given,  in  consequence  of  the  confusion,  or  rather 
the  dispersion  of  languages,  which  took  place  at  the 
same  time  (Gen.  xi.  9).  From  this  time,  with  three 
exceptions,  we  have  no  mention  of  Babylon  until  the 
time  of  the  captivity  of  the  ten  tribes  of  Israel.  These 
exceptions,  which  in  themselves  contain  the  elements  of 
a  good  deal  of  history  indicated  though  not  described 
at  length,  are  (1)  the  invasion  of  Canaan  by  the  king  of 
Shinar  (Gen.  xiv.  1) ;  (2)  the  mention  of  the  "  Babylonish 
garment,"  about  1580  B.C.  (Josh.  vii.  21 ;  see  Vol.  I., 
p.  263) ;  (3)  the  subjection  of  Israel  to  Chushan-risha- 
thaim,  king  of  Mesopotamia,  but  not  necessarily  of  Baby- 
lon, about  1558  B.C.  (Judg.  iii.  8).  At  the  time  of  that 
eaptii'ity  Babylon  was  subject  to  Assyi-ia,  for  wo  read 
that  the  king  of  Assyria,  probably  Esarhaddon,  brought 
peojilo  from  Babylon  and  other  places  in  the  neighbour- 
hood to  settle  in  Samaria  (2  Kings  xvii.  24).     From  this 


time,  for  about  170  years,  700—530  B.C.,  Babylon  occu- 
pies a  large  share  in  the  history  of  Scripture,  both 
narrative  and  prophetical,  and  not  only  is  the  greatness 
of  its  power  durisg  the  time  of  its  prosperity  described, 
as  well  as  the  rapidity  and  severity  of  its  downfall,  but 
we  may  add  that  both  of  these  features  are  taken  as  the 
groundwork  of  figurative  description  applied  to  other 
objects  so  late  as  the  Book  of  Revelation  in  the  first 
century  A.D.  (See  2  Kings  xx. — xxv. ;  2  Clu-on.  xxxvi. ; 
Isa.  xiii.,  xiv. ;  Jer.  1.,  li. ;  Rev.  xiv.  8 ;  xviii.  2,  10,  21.) 
"Wliat  then  do  we  know  about  Babylon,  and  what 
information  do  the  existing  featm'es  and  monuments  of 
the  counti-y  f m-nish  us  concerning  its  former  greatness  ? 
From  what  we  have  already  seen  concerning  Chaldsean 
cities  it  is  clear  that  at  an  early  period  some  veiy  impor- 
tant architectural  worts  were  bcgim,  if  not  completed, 
in  Babylonia:  have  we  any  remains  of  them?  Now 
if,  speaking  in  a  general  sense,'  it  bo  true  that  there  is 
no  place  of  which  we  know  whereabouts  it  stood  more 
certainly  than  Babylon,  there  is,  perhaps,  none  whose 
ruin  has  more  completely  effaced  the  definite  form  and 
character  of  its  plan  and  structure.  The  prophecies  of 
Isaiah  and  Jeremiah  have  been  verified  to  the  letter, 
and  thus  the  task  of  identification,  though  in  a  general 
view  most  easy,  is  in  details  full  of  difficulty.  To 
begin  then  with  the  gi-eat  ruin,  which  by  many  travellers 
has  for  many  years  been  regarded  as  the  most  probable 
representative,  if  not  the  ruin  of  tho  tower  itself,  of 
Babel.  There  is,  perhaps,  no  ancient  building  of  which 
oiu-  childish  imiiginafion  has  formed  a  more  dcfiuite 
idea.  We  all  remember  the  picture  in  tho  old  Bible 
dictionaries  so  familiar  from  childhood,  of  the  fcipering 
but  ti-uncat«d  tower,  pierced  with  numberless  openings 
and  girdled  with  ascending  causeways  ;  and  in  all  times 
the  marvellous  nature  of  its  history  has  no  doubt  led 
people  eagerly  to  appropriate  its  name  to  more  than  ono 


56 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


existing  ruin  within  the  Babylonian  region.  One,  how- 
ever, among  them  has  usually  been  selected  as  possessing 
most  exteraal  claim  to  attention.  Our  description  of  it 
is  gathered  from  various  authors,  whom,  for  convenience' 
sake,  we  quote  freely  without  special  distinction.  In 
our  sketch  map  in  Vol.  I.,  page  96,  the  town  of  Hillah 
will  be  seen  marked,  a  town  of  some  10,000  inhabitants, 
about  216  miles  from  Korna,  built  on  both  sides  of  the 
river  Euphrates,  and  having  its  two  portions  connected 
by  a  crazy  bridge  of  boats.  The  river  is  there  about 
200  yards  wide  and  fifteen  feet  deep,  a  noble  stream 


through  one-third  of  its  height.  The  mound  is  of  an 
oblong  form,  762  yards  in  circumference,  and  rising  at 
the  western  end  to  the  height  of  198  feet,  which  with  tho 
height  of  the  tower  makes  a  total  of  235  feet.  "  The 
diy  nitrous  earth  of  the  parched  plain,"  wo  are  now 
quoting  Mr.  Layard,  "  driven  before  the  furious  soutli 
wind,  has  thro^vn  over  the  huge  mass  a  thin  covering  of 
sou  in  which  no  herb  or  green  thing  cajj  find  nourish- 
ment or  take  root.  Thus,  unlike  the  grass-clothed 
mounds  of  the  more  fertile  districts  of  Assyria,  the 
Birs  Nimroud  is  ever  a  bare  and  yellow  heap.     Neither 


^  IftElL 


THE   liESOPOTAMIAN   PLAIN,  V7ITH    DISTANT  VIEW   OP   EIBS   NIMrOUD. 


with  a  gentle  current,  well  fitted  for  steam  !i.avigation. 
Such  was  the  river  which  flowed  through  Babylon,  for 
it  is  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Hillah  that  the  traces  of 
Babylon  are  to  bo  found  in  greater  or  less  abundance 
and  magnitude.  About  six  miles  south-west  of  Hillah 
on  tho  west  side  of  the  river,  and  on  the  edge  of  the 
great  marsh  formed  by  the  overflowing  waste  of  the 
Hindiyeh  canal  already  described,  is  a  gigantic  mound 
or  mass  of  ruin,  visible  many  miles  off  on  the  treeless 
plain  like  a  conical  mountain.  The  mound  at  its  eastern 
end  is  cloven  by  a  deep  furrow,  but  at  the  west  it  rises 
into  a  sort  of  tower  of  brickwork  thirty-seven  feet  high 
and  twenty-eight  broad,  diminishing  in  thickness  to  the 
top,  which  is  broken  and  rent  l)y  a  fissure  extending 


the  original  form  nor  object  of  the  edifice,  of  \vhich  it  is 
the  ruin,  have  hitherto  been  determined.  .  .  .  It  is 
pierced  by  square  holes,  apparently  made  to  admit  air 
through  tho  compact  structure."  The  tower  on  the 
top  is  built  of  fine  burnt  bricks  laid  so  firmly  in  mortar 
that  it  is  almost  impossible  to  extract  oue  of  them 
whole.  The  other  parts  of  the  mound  are  occupied  by 
immense  fragments  of  brickwork  lying  like  blocks  of 
granite  on  tho  summit,  fused  into  \'itrified  masses  as 
if  from  the  action  of  fire.  The  buildiug  is  supposed, 
when  entire,  to  have  been  erected  in  stages ;  it  bears 
the  name,  as  we  have  seen  of  Bies  Nimeoud— a  ijhraso 
which  is  explained  to  mean  "the  palace  or  prison  of 
Nimrod,"'  for  the  word  Birs  has  no  definite  meaning  in 


EASTERN   GEOGRAPHY   OF  THE   BIBLE. 


57 


Arabic — and  for  many  years  it  was  regarded  as  the  ruin 
of  the  true  Tower  of  Babel.  A  short  distance  from  it 
ou  the  east  side  is  another  mound,  of  inferior  dimen- 
sions, said  in  popular  tradition  to  be  the  place  at  which, 
as  already  mentioned,  Abraham  was  cast  into  the  fire 
by  Nimrod  (see  Vol.  I.,  page  75). 


grove  of  palm-trees  twelve  miles  distant,  overshadowing 
the  supposed  tomb  of  the  prophet  Ezekiel,  to  which  the 
Jews  of  Baghdad,  Hillah,  and  other  towns  of  Chaldisa 
still  annually  make  pilgrimage,  as  they  did  in  the  days 
of  Rabbi  Benjamin.  It  was  said  to  have  been  erected 
by  Jechoniah,  king  of  Judah,  and  the  35,000  Jews  who 


BIRS    NIMKOUD. 


The  Birs  Nimroud  is  described  by  the  Jewish  traveller, 
Benjamin  of  Tudcla,  in  the  twelfth  century,  as  the  tower 
built  by  "  the  dispersed  generation."  The  heavenly  fire 
which  struck  the  tower  split  it  to  its  very  founda- 
tions. From  the  summit,  he  says,  there  is  a  prospect 
of  twenty  miles.  Among  the  objects  thus  visible, 
which  consist  chiefly  of  Arab  huts  just  raised  above  the 
surrounding  marshes,  a  scene  of  intense  desolation,  is  a 


went  along  with  him,  when  Evil-merodach  released  him: 
from  his  prison.  The  noble  Mohammedans  also  resort 
thither  to  pray,  because  they  hold  the  prophet  Ezekiel 
in  great  veneration,  and  they  call  this  Dar  Meliclia, 
"  the  affreeable  abode ;"  the  sepulchre  is  also  visited  by 
all  devout  Arabs.  Within  b.alf  a  mile  of  the  synagogue 
are  the  sepulchres  of  Hananiah,  Mishael,  and  Azariah. 
Even  in  times  of  war  p.cither  Jew  nor  Mohammedan 


58 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


ventures  to  despoil  and  profane  the  sepulelire  of  Ezekiel. 
Yv''e  have  given  tliis  accoiiut  to  show  the  beliuf  prevalent 
in  Rabbi  Benjamin's  day,  which  has  lasted  in  full  force 
even  to  our  own.  The  reader  may  form  his  own 
opinion  as  to  tho  degree  of  credence  to  be  attached  to  it, 
but  the  tomb  seems  in  any  ca.se  to  be  a  feature  in  the 
Babylonian  landscape,  and  in  the  history  of  the  country, 
too  striking  and  too  closely  conuectmg  tho  pi'esent  with 
the  past  to  be  omitted  in  our  description. 

To  return  to  the  Birs  Nimroud.  "  Its  appearance," 
says  Sir  B.  Porter,  "  is  sublime  even  in  its  ruins."  Its 
recesses  are  inhabited  by  lions  ;  three  were  quietly 
basking  on  its  heights  when  he  approached  it,  and 
scarcely  intimidated  by  tlie  cries  of  the  Arabs,  gradually 
and  slowly  descended  into  ilie  plain.  Thus  the  wo;:ds 
of  the  prophet  have  been  iulfilled  :  "  Wild  beasts  of  the 
desert  shall  lie  there ;  owls  shall  fill  their  houses, 
ostriches  shall  dwell  there,  and  satyrs  shall  dance  there- 
Jackals  shall  howl  in  their  i^aLices,  and  wild  hounds  in 
theu'  pleasant  places."  But  although  this  mass  of  ruin 
may  veiy  possibly  stand  on  the  same  ground  as  tho 
original  Tower  of  Confusion,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
in  its  present  form  it  belongs  to  the  age  of  the  great 


building  monarch  Nebuchadnezzar,  for  every  brick  that 
has  yet  been  examined  is  inscribed  with  his  name.  It 
is  now  generally  thought  to  stand  ou  the  site  of  the 
town  called  Borsippa,  to  which  Berosus  tells  us  that 
Nabonnedus,  king  of  Babylon,  or  rather  the  survivor 
of  the  two  kings  reigning  at  the  time  of  the  siege  of 
that  city  by  Cyrus,  retu-ed  after  its  capture.  We  are 
also  informed  that  when  Alexander  the  Great  was 
warned  by  the  Chaldsean  soothsayers  of  the  danger 
which  they  said  awaited  liim  when  he  entered  Babylon, 
he  took  up  his  residence  at  Borsippa.  The  name  Bor- 
sijjpa  is  a  Greek  adaptation  of  a  Chaldrean  name  Borsip, 
which,  according  to  the  Talmud,  was  the  name  of  a  place 
near  the  tower.  The  building  itseU  appears  to  have 
been  a  temple  dedicated  to  the  heavenly  bodies.  It  wag 
erected  in  eight  stages,  of  which  each  one  of  the  first 
seven  was  approjjriated,  and  coloured  accordingly,  to  a 
planet;  and  the  eighth,  at  the  top,  was  a  dweUing  for 
the  priests.  Cuneiform  inscriptions  upon  the  cylinders, 
found  according  to  custom  built  into  the  corners  of  each 
stage,  record  that  Nebuchadnezzar  repaired,  or  rather 
rebuilt  the  edifice,  which  had  fallen  into  decay  after  its 
original  erection  by  Tiglath-pileser,  king  of  Assyria. 


THE  POETEY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


BY     THE     KEV.     A.     S.     AGLEIf,     M.A.,     INCDMEEMT     OP 


ninian's,    ALTTH,    N.B. 


OUTLINES   OF  THE  EISTOET  OF  BIBLICAL  POETEY. 


§   1. — PBIMITIVB    TIMES. 

'he  oldest  literary  compositions  which  have 
come  down  to  us  are  poetical.  This  might 
have  been  expected  from  the  nature  of 
tilings.  For  tho  earliest  eiiorts  to  give 
expression  to  thought  and  feeling  naturally  take  some 
form  of  verse,  which  flows  spontaneously  from  the 
attempt  to  make  language  coiTespond  to  the  emotion  of 
the  moment.  In  the  same  manner  every  impulse  of  the 
mind  lias  a  certain  tone  of  voice,  and  a  certain  gesture 
of  the  body  adapted  to  it,  so  that  the  sister  arts  of 
music,  d.ancing,  and  song  are  in  early  stages  intimately 
connected.  The  rhythm  of  verse,  the  time  of  music, 
and  the  movement  of  the  dauce,  were  born  together 
and  from  the  same  affections  of  the  mind. 

The  preservation  of  ancient  fragments  of  song,  where 
every  other  record  of  primitive  life  has  perished,  indi- 
cates another  reason  for  the  early  appearance  of  poetry. 
Verse  not  only  lends  itself  with  charming  effect  to  the 
expressions  of  passionate  thought,  but  gives  it  perma- 
nence as  well.  It  is  easily  retained  in  the  memory, 
and,  by  the  fixed  form  imposed  by  its  rules,  it  defies 
tho  corruptions  of  accident  or  design,  as  well  as  those 
of  time.'     A  ballad  or  popidar  song  wiU  often  preserve 

1  So  fiiitllfiil  a  preserver  of  truth  is  metre,  that  wliat  is  liable  to 
be  chauged,  augmeuted,  or  violated  almost  daily  in  prose,  may 
coutiuue  for  ages  in  verse,  without  variatiou,  without  even  a 
change  iu  tho  obaolete  phraseology.  (Michaehs,  Note  in  Lowtb, 
Lect,  iv.) 


the  correct  features  of  an  event  which  tradition  has 
distorted  or  allowed  altogether  to  pass  into  oblivion. 
From  a  sense  of  its  usefidness  as  a  vehicle  of  jiublicity 
and  preservation,  the  ancients  employed  verse  for  all 
the  most  important  purxioses  of  religion  and  politics. 
The  Grecian  oracles  were  delivered  iu  hexameter  verse. 
"  Tho  laws  themselves  were  metrical,  and  adaptt.'d  to 
certain  musical  notes ;  such  were  the  laws  of  Charondas, 
which  were  sung  to  the  banquets  of  the  Athenians; 
such  were  those  whicli  were  delivered  by  the  Cretans  . 
to  the  ingenuous  youth  to  learn  by  rote,  with  accom- 
paniments of  musical  melody,  iu  order  that,  by  the  en- 
chantment of  harmony,  the  sentiments  might  bo  more 
forcibly  impressed  upon  their  memories."-  Tlie  early 
history  of  many  other  nations  oif  crs  instances  of  a  like 
kind.  Some  scholars  have  traced  among  tho  enact- 
ments of  the  Mosaic  code  specimens  of  metrical  laws. 
But  we  do  not  need  this  e\'idence  to  the  fact  of  the 
antiquity  of  poetic  composition  amid  the  Semitic  tribes, 
for  tho  Book  of  Genesis  cont.ains  fragments  of  song 
wliich  have  sumved  from  a  time,  compared  with  which 
even  tho  Exodus  seems  recent.  Tlie  present  seems  the 
proper  place  for  speakmg  of  these  .ancient  relics,  for 
while  they  can  hardly  be  said  to  belong  to  Hebrew 
poetry,  being  only  a  rude  .and  imperfect  prelude  to  it, 
they  yet  exhibit  in  so  remarkable  a  manner  the  germ 

-  Lowtb,  Lect.  iv. 


THE    POETRY    OF    THE    BIBLE. 


59 


of  tho  pecidiar  features  of  its  versification  that  tliey 
cannot  be  passed  altogether  by. 

The  earliest  of  these,  probably  the  most  ancient 
poetical  composition  extant,  a  solitary  specimen  of 
antediluvian  poetry,  is  the  address  of  Lamech  to  his 
Tvives,  contained  in  the  fourth  chapter  of  Genesis.  It 
came  do\vu,  perhaps,  as,  a  popidar  song,  preserved  by  its 
form  amid  the  traditions  of  the  patriarchal  times,  and 
Tras  at  length  inserted  in  the  written  history.  Short  as 
the  fragment  is,  it  contains  expressions  of  great  obscu- 
rity, and  has  never  been  quite  satisfactorily  explained. 
The  version  given  hero  is  taken  from  Smith's  Dictionary 
of  the  Bible,  Art.  "  Lamech :" — 

"  Ad.ih  and  Zillah  !  hear  my  voice, 

Ye  wives  of  Lauiech,  give  ear  unto  my  speecb  ; 

For  D  man  had  I  slain  for  smiting  me, 
And  a  youth  for  wounding  me  : 

Surely  sevenfold  shall  Cain  he  avenged. 
But  Lamech  seventy  and  seven." 

There  are  two  main  lines  of  interpretation,  according 
as  the  words  of  Lamech  are  understood  to  relate  an 
{ictual  fact,  or  only  to  utter  a  threat  of  vengeance  if 
injury  should  be  offered  him.  In  the  former  case  the 
explanations  differ  cousidei-ably.  Some  sujipose  Lamech 
to  be  a  murderer  driven  to  make  this  confession  of 
his  guilt  to  ease  his  conscience  ;  others,  that  the  .appeal 
is  that  of  a  man  who  has  innocently  shed  blood,  and 
therefore  deserves  a  still  greater  protection  tlian  was 
promised  Cain.  There  is  a  tradition  that  Cain  himself 
was  the  victim.  Lamech,  it  is  said,  was  blind,  and  was 
led  about  by  his  son  Tubal-caiu.  who,  seeing  in  a  thicket 
what  he  supposed  to  be  a  wild  beast,  directed  his  father 
to  shoot  an  arrow,  which  killed  Cain.  In  alarm  and  in- 
dignation Lamech  killed  his  own  son,  and  hence  his 
wives  refused  to  associate  with  him.  Ho  therefore  ex- 
cuses himself  to  them  as  having  acted  without  a  vengeful 
or  murderous  ptirposo.  The  tradition  must  have  been 
formed  on  the  voi'ses,  and  in  ignorance  of  tlie  prmciple 
of  then-  construction.  The  student  should  notice  that 
the  composition  consists  of  thi-ee  pairs  of  short  lines, 
each  line  constituting  a  sentence  in  itself,  and  the  second 
ropeatiug  the  first  \nih  some  addition  or  alteration,  or 
resembling  it  in  form  and  sound.  This  construction  has 
received  from  Bishop  Lowth  the  name  of  paralleUsm, 
and  wlU  be  shown  to  belong  essentially,  in  some  of  its 
forms,  to  the  genius  of  Hebrew  poetry.  Attention  to 
it  in  the  present  case  shows  us  that  only  one  death  is 
mentioned.  The  line, "  And  a  youth  for  wounding  me," 
repeats  the  statement  of  tlie  fii'st  member  of  the  distich, 
"Eor  a  man  had  I  slain  for  smiting  mo,"  inth  tho 
additional  information  that  tho  man  was  voung.' 

But  the  other  mode  of  interpretation  seems  on  the 
whole  preferable.  It  is  due  to  Herder,-  who  connects 
the  song  with  the  invention  of  metals  by  Tubal-eain.  just 
as  we  have  already  seen  it  may  be  connected  with  tho 
invention  of  musical  instruments  by  Jubal.  According 
to  this  suggestion  the  words  of  Lamech  form  a  threat, 
and  have  a  future  sense,  and  the  whole  composition  is 


*  Ydcd,  primarily,  "  a  newly-bom  child"  (see  Vol.  I.,  page  29). 
-  GcUt  iJUr  EhraisdiCH  Pocsio. 


a  song  of  exultation  at  the  possession  of  a  new  weapon, 
and  the  power  which  it  confers.  Thus  .an  ai-t  which 
was  afterwards  to  bo  conseci-ated  to  such  high  and  lioly 
uses  had  for  its  earliest  associations  vengeance  and 
war,  and  the  first  song  of  the  Bible  was  "  the  song  of 
the  sword."  But  we  shaU  find  a  martial  strain  running 
through  nearly  all  Hebrew  poetry,  and  we  may  not  im- 
properly compare  with  Lamech's  primitive  song  tho 
words  of  Israel's  greatest  lyric  poet  (Ps.  xviii.  34) : 
"  He  teacheth  mine  hands  to  fight. 
And  mine  arms  shall  break  even  a  bow  of  steel." 

Some  importance  attaches  to  this  ancient  fragment  of 
poetry  from  the  bearing  it  has  on  the  literary  relations 
of  Israel  with  Egy[)t.  Vfhen  the  essential  element  of 
Hebrew  versification  is  found  in  a  piece  of  such  un- 
doubted pre-Mosaic  origin,  it  can  scarcely  be  maintained 
that  the  art  of  poetic  composition  was  unknown  to 
tho  Semitic  race  before  the  Egyptian  period.  Even  i£ 
2Kirallelism  can  be  shown  to  be  common  to  Hebrew 
poetry  and  that  of  Egypt,  Lamech's  song  throws  back 
the  period  at  which  it  passed  from  the  one  race  to  tho 
other  to  a  time  long  anterior  to  Moses. 

One  other  very  early  fragment  is  extant,  which,  though 
it  f. alls  rather  ''into  the  rhythmical  and  alliterative  form 
into  which  the  more  solemn  utterances  of  antiquity 
commonly  fell "  than  into  poetry,  should  be  mentioned 
here  because  it  is  the  first  instance  of  that  patriarchal 
prediction  which  in  the  blessings  of  Jacob  and  Moses 
rose  to  such  a  sublime  height.  "  And  Noah  awoke 
from  his  wine,  and  knew  what  his  younger  sou  had  done 
unto  him :  and  he  said — 

•  Cursed  be  Canaan, 
A  slave  of  slaves  shall  be  be  to  bis  brethren.* 

And  he  said — 

'Blessed  be  Jehovah,  God  of  Shem, 
And  let  Canaan  be  their  slave  ! 
May  God  enlarge  Japhet, 
And  let  him  dwell  in  the  tents  of  Shem, 
And  Idt  Canaan  be  their  slave  !'  "     (Gen.  is.  25—27.) 

The  benedictions  of  Isaac  (Gen.  xxvii.  27 — 30)  are 
far  more  x'oetical  examples  of  the  same  kind  of  com- 
position. The  parallelism  is  distinctly  marked,  and 
there  breathes  throvigh  the  lines  that  keen,  glad  sense 
of  tho  beauty  and  freshness  of  Nature  which  is  one  of 
the  most  dehghtful  features  of  the  poetry  of  this  race, 
carrying  us  otit  with  them  to  drink  "  the  dew  of  heaven," 
and  rejoice  in  the  "  fatness  of  the  earth  "  and  the  "  smell 
of  the  field  which  God  hath  blessed." 

The  patriarchal  benedictions  may,  perhaps,  owe  the 
form  in  which  they  have  been  preserved  to  later  hands. 
But  the  substance  of  them,  the  thought  and  feeling, 
belong  to  the  age  of  the  fathers  themselves.  It  was  an 
age  pei-vaded  with  a  poetic  spirit,-*  as  the  traditions  ui 
which  this  primitive  history  is  embodied  amply  testify. 
"We  learn,  too,  that  occasions  of  family  rejoicing  were 
celebrated  with  music  and  song,  for  Laban  complains 
that  Jacob  had  stolen  away,  instead  of  being  sent 
from  his  house  "  with  mu'th  and  with  songs,  and  with 

3  Speaking  of  these  times.  Herder  says,  "  The  whole  relation  is 
now  au  idyll,  now  a  kind  of  heroic  saying."  {Gciit  dtr  Ebr, 
Poisie.) 


60 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


tabret  and  -with  hai-p  "  (G«n.  xxii.  27).  That  we  have 
no  specimens  of  this  domestic  minstrelsy  slioukl  make 
us  prize  more  highly  those  precious  fragments  which 
have  preserved  some,  at  least,  of  the  features  of  the 
poetry  of  those  distant  times. 

The  history  of  Hebrew  poetry  proper  falls  con- 
veniently into  three  well-marked  periods,  occupying 
altogether  about  ten  centuries.  The  first  of  tliese 
periods  extends  from  Moses  to  David,  including  both 
those  great  names.  Taking  the  common  chronology, 
vre  may  reckon  this  period  at  450  years  from  the  middle 
of  the  fifteenth  century  to  B.C.  1000,  about  the  time  of 
the  completion  of  the  Temple  of  Solomon.  The  second 
period  extends  from  Solomon  to  the  death  of  Hezekiah 
(B.C.  697),  covering  about  300  years,  and  ending  with 
the  fall  of  the  northern  kingdom,  and  close  of  the 
eighth  century.  From  tliis  date,  250  years  carry  us 
over  the  decline  of  Judah,  the  overthrow  of  Jerusalem, 
the  exile  and  restoration,  down  to  B.C.  -159,  when  Ezra 
was  collecting  the  Jewish  Scriptures,  and  beginning  the 
formation  of  the  canon.'  A  glance  away  from  Hebrew 
history  to  the  fortunes  of  other  nations  shows  that 
in  4S0  B.C..  when  .lEschylus,  who  had  already  several 
times  gained  the  prize  for  tragedy  at  Athens,  was  in 
the  zenith  of  his  fame.  Euripides  was  born  ;  that  Pindar 
was  celebrating  the  deeds  of  victors  in  the  sacred 
g,ames  of  Greece,  in  odes  which  remain  unrivalled,  till 
they  are  compared  with  the  lyric  triumphs  of  Deborah 
and  Da-sad;  while  Rome  was  only  just  beginning  to 
feel  her  strength  in  battle  with  the  rival  cities  of 
Latium  and  Etruria,  and  had  to  wait  two  long  centuries 
for  the  dawn  of  her  literature. 

§   2. — THE    MOSAIC   AGE. 

The  birth  of  Israel  as  a  nation,  and  of  the  national 
lyric  song,  dates  from  Moses.  We  trace  his  influence 
throughout  the  whole  history  and  literature  of  the 
people  which  he  formed,  especially  in  the  hymns  which 
they  sang  to  Jehovah  in  times  of  victory  and  national 
rejoicing.  Herder  finds  three  signs  of  tliis  influence  : 
one  in  the  great  events  of  which,  as  lawgiver  and  leader, 
Moses  was  the  spirit ;  another,  in  the  impulse  which  he 
gave  to  prophecy ;  and  the  third  in  his  own  poetry  and 
song.  The  first  of  these  will  meet  us  at  every  step  in 
our  studies ;  but  it  will  be  brought  into  more  prominent 
notice  when  we  iaquire  into  the  chief  sources  from 
which  Hebrew  poetry  drew  its  inspiration.  Prophetic 
poetry  will  also  claim  a  treatment  by  itself.  The  actual 
poetic  remains  of  the  Mosaic  age  and  the  half  century 
following  the  Exodus  may  be  briefly  considered  here. 

First  both  in  order  a.id  importance  is  the  triumphal 
ode,  called  the  Song  of  Moses  and  Miriam,  which  cele- 
brates the  overthrow  of  Pharaoh  and  his  host  in  the 
Red  Sea  (Exod.  xv.  1 — 21).  It  is  the  earliest  specimen 
of  purely  lyrical  poetry  which  we  possess,  and  is.  both 
in  form  and  spirit,  worthy  to  rank  with  the  highest 

1  This  reckoning  takes  no  ncconnt  of  the  psnlms  which  were 
(possibly)  composed  during  the  Maccahean  period,  nor  of  the 
apocryphal  writings  and  the  es.auiples  of  lyrical  poetry  in  the  New 
Testament. 


efforts  which  human  geu;us  has  made  in  this  direction. 
It  is  the  oldest  Hebrew  hymn,  and  re-echoes  throi^gh 
all  hymns  of  the  following  ages,  and  also  through  the 
PiSalter."  Ewald  thinks  it  formed  a  Paschal  hymn, 
which  during  hundreds  of  years  must  have  been  sung 
at  the  yearly  festival,  and  thus  became  the  pattern 
for  all  later  songs  of  rejoicing.  The  arrangement 
in  stro2]hes  or  stanzas  which  completed  the  artistic 
development  of  this  kind  of  composition,  and  which  we 
see  alreiidy  approximating  its  perfection  in  Deborah's 
song,  is  indeed  almost  wanting  in  the  Mosaic  poetiy. 
But  in  aU  other  respects  this  ode  may  be  studied  with 
advantage,  as  combining  the  chief  excellences  of  tho 
lyi'ical  poetry  of  the  Bible.  "  Every  part  of  it  breathes 
the  spirit  of  nature  and  passion ;  joy,  admiration,  and 
love,  united  with  piety  and  devotion,  burst  forth  spon- 
taneously in  their  native  colours."^  The  images  are  in 
the  truest  sense  sublime,  and  flash  upon  us  with  a 
sudden  a;  d  ^^vid  reality  which  only  Hebrew  poetry 
can  produce.  We  see  the  right  hand  of  Jehovah 
stretched  out,  the  blast  of  the  breath  of  his  nostrils 
sounds  in  our  ears,  and  we  feel  it  sweeping  by  to  heap 
up  tho  waters,  and  congeal  them  in  the  depths  of  tho 
sea.  With  the  same  di'amatic  power  are  delineated  the 
pride  and  pomp  of  the  pursuing  enemy,  and  their  sudden 
overthrow,  and  the  consternation  of  the  surrounding 
tribes,  as  in  a  moment  Egyjjt's  power  is  swept  away, 
and  Israel  stands  safe,  triumphant,  and  exulting  on  tho 
shore.  These  circumstances  are  all  expressed  in. 
language  suitable  to  the  emotions  produced,  abrupt, 
fervid,  concise,  animated,  dramatic,  with  the  frequent 
repetition  of  the  same  impassioned  burst  of  thanks- 
giving which  forms  the  chorus  of  the  song — 

"  I  will  sing  unto  Jehovah,  for  he  hath  triumphed  gloriously; 
The  horse  and  his  i-ider  hath  he  thrown  into  the  sea." 

The  Authorised  Version  has  so  well  kept  the  spirit  ef 
tho  ode,  and  exhibits  the  parallelism  so  distinctly,  that 
it  will  be  enough  to  refer  the  reader  to  Exod.  xv.  It 
cannot  be  better  dismissed  than  with  tho  following 
.admirable  remarks  from  Professor  Perowne's  Essay  on 
the  Lyi-ic  Poetry  of  the  Hebrews : — "  It  is  the  grandest 
ode  to  liberty  that  was  ever  sung;  and  it  is  this, 
because  its  homage  is  rendered,  not  to  some  ideal  spirit 
of  liberty,  deified  by  a  people  in  tho  moment  of  that 
passionate  and  frantic  joy  which  follows  the  success- 
ful assertion  of  their  independence,  but  because  it  is 
a  thanksgiving  to  Him  who  is  tho  one  only  Giver 
of  victory  and  freedom.  Both  in  form  and  spirit 
it  possesses  the  same  characteristics  which  stamp  all 
later  Hebrew  poetry.  Although  \vithout  any  regular 
strophical  division,  it  has  the  chorus,  'Sing  ye  to 
Jehovah,'  &c. ;  it  was  sung  evidently  in  antiphonal 
measure,  chorus  answering  to  chorus,  and  voice  to  voise  ; 
it  was  sung  accompanied  by  dancing,  and  to  the  mtisic 
of  the  maidens  playing  upon  the  timbrels.  Such  is  its 
form.    In  its  spirit,  it  is  like  all  the  national  songs  of 

-  Of.  especially  ver.  2  with  Ps.  cxviii.  14,  and  the  whole  ode  with 
the  historical  portions  of  Ps.  Ixsvii.  and  I.tsviii.  ;  cf.  also  the 
hymn  of  Hahakkiilc  (chap.  ii.). 

3  Lowth,  Led.,  )j7. 


THE    POETRY    OF    THE    BIBLE. 


61 


the  people,  a  hymn  simg  to  the  glory  of  Jehovah.  No 
word  celebrates  the  prowes;-;  of  the  armies  of  Israel  or  of 
their  leadoi-s :  '  Thy  right  hand,  O  Jehovah,  is  become 
glorious  iu  power :  thy  right  hand,  O  Jehovah,  hath 
dashed  in  pieces  the  enemy.'  Thus  it  commemorates 
that  wonderful  victory,  and  thus  it  became  the  pattern 
after  which  all  later  odes  of  victory  were  written."' 

There  are  two  words  used  in  Exod.  sv.,  which  are 
both  translated  "  song."  One  of  them  is  shir  (fem. 
shirah),  the  most  common  term  of  the  kind,  and  em- 
bracing all  forms  of  lyrical  poetry;  the  other,  zimrah, 
which  under  its  other  form  of  inizmor  forms  the  title 
of  many  psalms.  At  the  licad  of  some  psalms  the  two 
words  occur  together,  and  arc  apparently  interchangeable, 
since  sometimes  one  appears  first  in  the  combination, 
sometimes  the  other  (see  Ps.  xxx.,  Ixvii.,  xlviii.,  Ixvi.,  &c.). 
The  Authorised  Version  usually  employs  "  song  "  for  slur, 
"  psalm"  for  mizmor.  The  LXX.  employ  ij>5^  for  shir,  the 
Vulgate  canticum,  keeping  "  psalm  "  for  mizmor.  All 
forms  of  lyric  song,  religious  and  warlike,  national  songs 
of  rejoicing,  and  hymns  expressing  individual  feelings, 
whether  of  sorrow  and  repentance,  or  thanksgiring  and 
joy,  are  embraced  under  these  terms.-  But  there  are 
other  names  used,  which  have  regard  either  to  the  subject 
of  the  poem  or  to  the  nature  of  the  musical  accompani- 
ment. These  will  be  noticed  in  connection  with  the 
Psalter.  One  of  them,  Tehillah,  or  "  praise,"  which  is 
a  title  given  to  tlie  whole  book  of  Psalms,  is  more 
especially  applicable  to  festival  odes  which  embody  a 
nation's  sense  of  gratitude  to  God  their  Redeemer,  such 
as  the  songs  of  Moses  and  Deborah.  Perhaps  the  best 
English  term  to  express  them  is  the  word  "  ode  "  adopted 
from  the  Greek,  for  while  it  originally  included  any 
lyrical  piece  adapted  to  music,  it  has  by  long  use  appro- 
priated a  style  of  its  own.  In  modem  poetry  the  ode 
is  distinguished  from  a  song  by  a  more  complicated  and 
apparently  irregular  construction,^  as  well  as  by  its 
loftier  conceptions,  and  more  intense  and  passionate 
emotions.  "  The  form  of  the  ode  is  by  no  means  con- 
fined to  any  certain  rule  for  the  exact  and  accurate  dis- 
tribution of  the  parts.  It  is  lively  and  unconstrained ; 
when  the  subject  is  sublime  it  is  impetuous,  bold,  and 
sometimes  might  almost  deserve  the  epithet  licentious, 
as  to  symmetry  and  method."*  There  is  usually  an 
exordium,  or  proem,  which  strikes  the  key-note  of  the 
whole,  and  sometimes  forms  the  chorus  or  refrain.  The 
after  arrangement  depends  on  the  subject  of  the  poem 
and  the  nature  of  the  passions  delineated,  and  the  highest 
art  of  the  poet  is  displayed  in  keeping  this  motive  steadily 
in  view  through  imagery  and  illustration,  which  cannot 
be  too  gi-and,  copious,  and  varied.  The  language  of  tlie 
ode  is  abrupt,  concise,  and  energetic,  and  the  metres  and 
cadences  often  change  with  the  varying  thoughts  and 
emotions.     If  it  is  added  that  the  ode  is  a  form  of 

1  Perowne,  Psalnis,  vol.  i.,  Introduction. 

"  Shir  is  used  even  for  such  a  composition  as  the  parable  in  Isa.  v. 

•^  This  is  not  uuiversiil.  Some  of  tlie  finest  English  odes,  as 
Milton's  Kijvin  on  the  Naiiv'd'j,  Shelley'.s  Skylarlc,  "Wordsworth's 
Ode  to  Duty,  consist  of  regular  stanzas.  Horace's  Odes  were  also 
regular. 

*  Lowth,  Lect, 


composition  in  which  the  poet  conceives  of  all  Nature 
as  animated,  and  instead  of  speaking  about  tilings  and 
persons,  calls  them  iuto  his  presence  and  addresses 
them,  wo  shall  see  the  fitness  of  the  name  to  designate 
those  magnificent  hymns  in  which  the  Hebrews  pour 
out,  as  at  the  very  throne  of  God,  their  gladness  and 
sorrow,  their  feelings  of  gratitude,  hope,  and  praise. 

The  best  English  odes  are  all  too  long  for  quotation. 
Tli?y  are,  however,  well  kno'wn,  and  should  be  read  for 
the  purpose  of  comparison  with  the  odes  of  tlie  Bible. 
Dryden's  Alexander's  Feast,  CoUins's  OJe  to  Liberty, 
Gray's  Bard,  Coleridge's  Ode  to  the  Departing  Year, 
Wordsworth's  great  ode  on  Immortality,  would  supply 
ample  material  for  this  comparison.  But  nothing  will 
be  found  in  t'ae  best  examples,  ancient  or  modem,  to 
surpass  the  Song  of  Deborah,  at  whose  great  design, 
combining  dignity,  fire,  and  pathos,  and  making  it,  with 
its  well-ordered  and  beautiful  execution,  a  pattern  of 
triumphal  song,  we  may  well  wonder,  remembering 
the  epoch  which  produced  it,  800  years  before  Pindar. 
Although  it  is  anticipating  the  history,  it  is  inserted 
hero,  that  it  may  follow  the  Song  of  Moses. 

the  song  of  deboeah.'' 
Prelude. 
"  For  the  leading  of  the  leaders  in  Israel, 
For  the  free  self-offering  of  the  people. 

Praise  Jehovah  ! 
Hear,  O  kings ;  give  ear,  O  princes; 
I  to  Jehovah,  even  I  will  sing. 
Will  sound  the  harp  to  Jehovah,  the  God  of  Israel. 

The  Exodus. 
"0  Jehovah,  when  thou  weutest  out  of  Seir, 
When  thou  marchedst  out  of  the  field  of  Edom, 
The  earth  trembled,  the  skies  also  dropped. 
The  clouds  also  dropped  water. 

The  mountains  melted  from  before  the  face  of  Jehovah, 
Sinai  itself  from  before  the  face  of  Jehovah,  the  God  of  Israel. 

The  Dismay. 
"  In  the  daj-s  of  Shamgar,  the  son  of  Anath, 
In  the  days  of  Jael,  ceased  the  roads  ; 
And  they  that  walked  on  highways,  walked  on  crooked  reads. 

There  ceased  to  be  heads  in  Israel,  ceased  to  be. 
Till  I,  Deborah,  arose  ; 
Till  I  arose,  a  mother  in  Israel. 

The  Change. 
"  They  chose  gods  that  were  new. 
Then  there  was  war  in  the  gates ; 
Shield  was  there  none,  or  spear. 
In  forty  thousand  of  Israel. 

My  heart  is  towards  the  lawgivers  of  Israel, 
"Who  offered  themselves  willingly  for  the  people. 
Praise  Jehovah  ! 

Te  that  ride  on  white  dappled  she-asses. 
Ye  that  sit  on  rich  carpets, 
Ye  that  ride  iu  the  way. 
Meditate  the  song  ! 

From  amidst  the  shouting  of  the  dividers  of  spoils. 
Between  the  water-troughs, 

There  let  them  rehearse  the  righteous  acts  of  Jehovah, 
The  righteous  acts  of  his  headship  iu  Israel  ; 
Then  went  down  to  the  gates  the  people  of  Jehovah. 
Awnke,  awake,  Deborah  ! 

Awake,  awake,  utter  a  song  ! 
Arise,  Barak  !   and  lead  captive  thy  captives. 
Thou  son  of  Abiuoam. 

s  This    translation  and    arrangement  is  taken  from    Stanley's 
Lectures  on  Jeu'ish  History,  vol.  ii.,  p.  332,  v.here  see  note. 


62 


THE   BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


The  Gathering. 
**  Then  came  down  a  remnant  of  the  nobles  of  the  people. 
Jehovah  came  down  to  me  among  the  heroes. 
Out  of  Ephraim  came  those  whose  root  is  in  Amalefc, 

After  thee,  O  Benjamin,  in  thy  people ; 
Out  of  Machir  came  down  lawgivers. 
And  out  of  Zebnlun  they  that    handle  the  staff  of  those 
that  number  the  host ; 
And  the  princes  of  Issachar  with    Deborah,  and  Issachar  as 
Barak, 
Into  the  valley  he  was  sent  on  his  feet. 

The  Recreants. 
"  By  the  streams  of  Eeuhen  great  are  the  divisions  of  heart. 
"Why  sittest  thou  between  the  sheepfolds. 
To  hear  the  piping  of  the  flocks  ? 
At  the  streams  of  Reuben  great  are  the  searchings  of  heart. 

Gilead  beyond  the  Jordan  dwells. 
And  Dan  why  sojourns  he  in  ships  ? 
Asber  sits  at  the  shore  of  the  sea. 
And  on  his  harbours  dwells. 

The  Battle  and  the  Flight. 
"  Zebnlun  is  a  people  throwing  away  its  soul  to  death. 
And  Naphtali  on  the  high  places  of  the  field. 

There  came  kings  and  fought ; 

Then  fought  kings  of  Canaan  ; 
At  Taanach,  on  the  waters  of  Megiddo; 

Gain  of  silver  took  they  not ; 
From  heaven  they  fought, 
The  stars  from  their  courses 

Fought  with  Sisera. 
The  torrent  of  Kishon  swept  them  away. 

The  anoient  torrent,  the  torrent  Kishon. 
Trample  down,  O  my  soul,  their  strength. 
Then  stamped  the  hoofs  of  the  horses, 
From  the  plungings  and  pluugings  of  the  mighty  ones. 

The  Flight. 

"  Curse  ye  Meroz,  said  the  messenger  of  Jehova  h ; 

Curse  ye  with  a  curse  the  inhabitants  thereof ; 

Because  they  came  not  to  the  help  of  Jehovah, 

To  the  help  of  Jehovah  with  the  heroes. 

The  Destroyer. 
"  Blessed  above  women  be  Jael, 
The  wife  of  Heber  the  Kenite, 
Above  women  in  the  tent,  blessed  ! 
Water  he  asked,  milk  she  gave  ; 
In  a  dish  of  the  nobles  she  offered  him  curds. 
Her  hand  she  stretched  out  to  the  tent-pin. 
And  her  right  hand  to  the  hammer  of  the  w  orkmen ; 
And  hammered  Sisera,  and  smote  his  head. 
And  beat  and  struck  through  his  temples. 
Between  her  feet  he  bowed,  he  fell,  he  lay. 
Between  her  feet  he  bowed,  he  fell ; 
Where  he  bowed  there  he  fell  down  slaughtered. 

The  Mother. 
**  Through  the  window  stretched  forth  and  lamented 
The  mother  of  Sisera  through  the  lattice  : 

*  Wherefore  delays  his  car  to  come  ? 
Wherefore  tarry  the  wheels  of  his  chariots  ?' 

The  wise  ones  of  her  princesses  answer  her. 
Tea,  she  repeats  their  answer  to  herself : 

*  Surely  they  are  finding,  are  dividing  the  prey, 
One  damsel,  two  damsels  for  the  head  of  each  hero. 
Prey  of  divers  colours  for  Sisera, 

Prey  of  divers  colours,  of  embroidery, 

One  of  divers  colours,  two  of  embroidery  for  the  neck  (of 
the  prey).'^ 

The  Triumph. 
"  So  perish  all  thy  enemies,  O  Jehovah  ; 
But  they  that  love  thee  are  as  the  sun  when  he  goes  forth  like 
a  giant." 

These  wonderful  songs,  preserced  from  saich  an  early 

I  SlicIIal,  "  prey,"  is  the  reading  of  the  Eeceived  Test,  for  which 
Ew.ald  proposes  to  substitute  sJiojal  (the  queen).  Otherwise  the 
connection  of  the  word  "prey"  must  be  supplied.  (Stanley's 
note.) 


period,  are  evidence  of  the  high  state  of  culture  attained 
by  Israel  even  at  the  time  of  the  Exodus.  Hebrew 
scholars  say  the  language  of  them  has  the  rigidity  and 
hardness  to  be  expected  in  compositions  so  ancient, 
that  they  are  iu  many  points  of  expression  and  artistic 
esceUcnco  surpassed  by  later  models.-  As  war-songs, 
however,  they  remain  imequalled.  and  sliow  how  won- 
derful an  inspiration  the  leaders  of  the  nation  caught 
from  faith  iu  an  .Mmighty  King,  ever  ready  to  take 
command  of  his  hosts,  and  lead  them  to  -s^ctory. 

Some  fragments  contained  iu  the  Book  of  Numbers 
let  us  see  the  more  imperfect  forms  in  which  the  same 
spirit  manifested  itself.  We  can  trace  some  of  the 
stages  through  which  the  high  culture  was  reached. 
Two  of  these  (Exod.  xvii.  16 ;  xxxii.  18),  the  one  a  frag- 
ment of  a  war-song,  the  other  a  spontaneous  burst  of 
lyric  indignation,  are  from  Moses  himself.  The  others 
(Numb.  xxi.  14,  15 ;  27 — 30)  derive  additional  interest 
from  the  happy  chance  that  the  compiler  of  the  history 
has  named  the  sources  of  his  information.  The  fii-st  of 
them  is  cited  from  a  book  called  the  "  Book  of  the 
Wars  of  Jehovah."  which,  it  has  been  conjectured,  was 
a  collection  of  ballads  and  war-songs,  composed  on  dif- 
ferent occasions  by  the  watch-fires  of  the  camp,  and 
commemorating  for  the  most  part,  though  not  perhaps 
exclusively,  the  victories  of  the  IsraeKtes  over  their 
enemies.^  Its  title  confii'ins  the  impression  of  the  deep 
religious  feeling  of  the  Hebrews  in  the  conduct  of  their 
wars,  wliich  is  given  by  the  whole  history.  The  second 
fragment  is  derived  from  another  source.  It  refers  to 
certain  people  who  spoke  "in  proverbs"  {hamoshelan). 
But  the  word,  as  will  be  seen  hereafter,  has  a  fiu-  more 
extended  meaning  than  our  word  "proverb."  It  is 
applied  to  many  kinds  of  poetry,  and  may  perliaps  not 
improperly  be  translated  "  IjaUad- singers."  It  is  doubt  - 
ful  if  the  verses  in  question  are  an  original  Hebrew 
composition.  Some  interpreters  consider  them  to  be 
a  translation  of  an  old  Amorito  ballad.  If,  however,  it 
has  a  Hebrew  origin,  the  song  affords  the  first  instance 
of  that  mocking  or  taunting  .speech  (melitsah)*  which 
some  of  the  prophets  use  with  such  tremendous  effect. 
Ewald  thinks  this  is  even  implied  in  the  reference  to 
"  they  that  speak  in  proverbs,"  sLuco  such  people  may' 
easily  become  satirists.*  A  strong  vein  of  satire  cer- 
tainly runs  through  much  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs.*' 
According  to  this  interpretation  the  victors  sing  in  a 
mocking  tone — 

"  Come  home  to  Heshhon  ! 
Let  the  city  of  Sion  he  built  up  and  restored !" 

"Rebuild  if  you  can  the  city  we  have  destroyed." 
A  second  voice  then  takes  up  the  strain.  "  Tet  surely 
this  is  the  same  city  of  Heshbon  out  of  which  onco 
bm-st  forth  the  devouring  flame  of  battle  against  Moab," 
&c.  At  the  conclusion  the  general  result  of  the  victory- 
is  announced : — 

=  Ewald,  Dklttcr  dcs  A.  B. 

3  Smith's  DicS.oiiorj;  o/  tho  BMc,  art.  "  Numbers."' 

•1  Micah  ii.  4;  Hali.  ii.  6;  I.-ia.  siv.  4;  Pa.  xhv.  14. 

5  Histoni  of  Isrnd,  vol.  i.  200. 

''  Prov.  i.  23,  27  J  xxvi.,  &c. 


DIFFICULT  PASSAGES  EXPLAHSTED. 


63 


"  We  liave  burned  them — Hesbbon  bas  perished  uuto  Dibon ; 
'     And  laid  tbem  waste  even  uuto  Nophab, 
With  fire  unto  Medeba." 

Tlio  otlier  relic  contained  in  this  precious  21st  chapter 
of  Niunbors  is  of  a  totally  different  kind.  It  is  the 
"Song  of  the  Well"  (vs.  17,  18),  first  sung  at  the 
digging  of  it,  and  afterwards  used,  no  doubt,  to  beguile 
the  labours  of  the  maidens  who  came  to  draw  watei'. 
The  little  carol  is  bright,  fresh,  and  sparkling  as  the 
water  of  the  well  itself,  and  has  a  peculiar  charm  from 
the  insight  it  gives  us  into  the  happy  relations  of  the 
leaders  of  the  young  community  with  the  people.  This 
confidence  in  the  sympathy  and  help  of  their  rulers 
gave  promise  of  the  grand  futm-e  of  Israel,  and  the 
lively  little  verse  in  which  the  feeling  is  enshrined  is  a 
perfect  type  of  the  true  "people's  song"  {volksUed) : — 

"  Spring  up,  O  well !  sing  to  it : 
Well  which  the  princes  dug. 
Which  the  nobles  of  the  people  bored 
With  sceptre  of  office,  with  their  staves." 

One  other  phase  of  the  early  poetic  spirit  of  the 
Hebrews  survives  from  the  desert  wanderings.  It 
contains  the  germ  of  the  future  magnificent  Temple 
poetry.  Ali'eady  the  art  which  David  was  afterwards 
to  bring  to  such  elaborate  perfection,  and  consecrate  to 
the  service  of  the  sanctuary,  was  called  in  to  adorn  the 
primitive  worship  of  the  tabernacle.  When  the  ark  set 
forwai'd  in  the  morning,  Moses  said — 

"  Eise  up,  Jehovah,  and  let  thine  enemies  be  scattered."! 

And  in  the  evening  when  it  rested,  he  said — 

"  Return,  O  Jehovah,  unto  the  ten  thousand  thousands  of 
Israel." 

The  priestly  blessing  (Numb.  vi.  24 — 26),  also  falls 
into  the  form  of  verse.  It  is  a  triplet,  and.  according 
to  Jewish  belief,  was  pronounced  witli  a  corresponding- 
triple  division  of  the  fingers  of  the  upraised  hand." 
It  was  chanted  with  the  hand  lifted  above  the  head ; 

1  Cf.  Ps.  Ixviii.  1,  2 ;  CMxii.  8. 

2  Stanley,  Lectures  on  Jcxnish  Clmrch,  ii.  419.  The  ancient 
melody  of  the  chant  is  supposed  to  be  preserved  in  Spanish  and 
Portugese  synagogues.     {Ibid.) 


or,  if  the  high  priest  performed  the  ceremony,  above 
the  shoulders,  and  the  word  "  Jehovah,"  which  in 
later  days  was  elsewhere  altered  to  "Adonai,"  in  this 
solemn  act  was  retained  unchanged,  as  if  in  a  sacred 
charm  : — 

"  Jehovah  bless  thee  and  keep  thee  ; 
Jehovah  make  bis  face  to  shine  upon  thee,  and  be  gracious 

uuto  thee ; 
Jehovah  lift  up  his   countenance  upon  thee,  and  give,  thee 
peace." 

From  these  originals  the  national  and  religious  poetry 
of  the  Hebrews  was  developed.  But  there  are  stiU  be- 
longing to  the  time  of  tlie  Exodus  two  great  compo- 
sitions wliich  can  only  be  mentioned  here  (Ps.  xc.  and 
Deut.  sxxii.).  Both  are  ascribed  to  Moses,  and  even 
those  scholars  who  refer  them  to  a  later  date  confess 
that  in  their  spirit,  and  the  truth  with  which  they  re- 
flect the  circumstances  of  the  desert  wanderings,  they 
are  truly  Mosaic.  These  complete  the  principal  types 
of  the  psahn  form — the  hymnic,  the  elegiac,  and  tho 
prophetico-didactic. 

The  stormy  period  which  followed  the  first  occupation 
of  Canaan  was  favourable  only  to  one  species  of  poetry, 
which  we  have  already  seen  developed  to  a  truly  grand 
height  in  the  song  of  Deborah.  Tlie  Book  of  Jasher, 
or  "  the  upright,"  which  was  i^rob.ably  a  collection  of 
poems  celebrating  the  deeds  of  heroes,  from  which 
Joshua's  address  to  the  sun  and  moon  is  quoted,  may 
have  contained  odes  and  "wai'-songs  of  equal  power. 
One  only  has  been  preserved  from  it — a  poem  of  rare 
beauty  and  pathos — the  elegy  or  lament  of  David  over 
Saul  and  Jonathan  (2  Sam.  i.  19 — 27). 

Samuel,  however,  must  have  given  an  impulse  to  the 
more  peaceful  and  religious  side  of  lyi-ic  poetry  in  tho 
schools  which  lie  estalilished  for  tr,iining-  young  men  in 
tho  prophetic  office,  where  song  and  music  formed  a 
great  part  of  the  course  of  instruction  (1  Sam.  x.  5). 
The  results  of  this  are  seen  in  David,  with  whom  begins 
the  great  era  of  2'sahnody,  by  which  name  wo  desig- 
nate that  kind  of  lyric  song  which  now  put  forth  its 
utmost  strength  and  .attained  to  a  truly  Divine  height  of 
splendour  and  power. 


DIFFICULT    PASSAGES    EXPLAINED. 

THE  GOSPELS:— ST.  MATTHEW:  THE  SEEMON  ON  THE  MOUNT. 

BY    KEV.    C.  J.  ELLIOTT,    M.A.,    VICAE    OF    WINKPIELD,  EEKKS. 


^HERE  is  enough  of  general  agreement 
in  the  circumstances  under  which  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  as  recorded  by  St. 
Matthew,  and  the  discourse  contained  in 
St.  Luke  vi.  20 — 19,  were  delivered,  to  warrant  the  con- 
clusion that  the  occasion  was  one  and  the  same,  and 
that  the  origin  of  the  differences  obseiTablo  in  the  two 
accounts  must  be  sought  in  the  objects  respectively 
proposed  by  tho  two  Evangelists. 

Our  Lord,  having  descended  from  that  higher  part 
of  the  hill-coimtry  (ri  opo9)  whither  He  had  retired  for 


meditation  and  prayer  before  the  selection  of  the  twelve, 
by  whom  He  was  then  accompanied  (St.  Luke  vi.  17), 
took  up  his  jiosition  on  some  level  spot  in  that  district 
(eV!  ToTTov  TreSiuov),^  where  tho  multitude  whieli  had 
thronged  iiround  Him,  not  only  "  from  all  Judaea  and 
Jerusalem."  but  also  "from  the  sea-coast  of  Tyre  and 
Sidon,"  could  more  conveniently  listen  to  His  words. 

'  It  de-^erves  notice,  as  pointed  out  by  Bishop  Wordsworth,  that 
the  Septuapint  version  of  Isa.  siii.  2  contains  an  csact  description 
of  the  spot  selected  by  our  Lord  for  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount, 
combining,  as  it  does,  the  descriptions  given  of  it  by  the  two 
Evangelists,  en    opouc  Tredtvov, 


64 


THE  BIBLE  EDCJCATOR. 


St.  Matthew,  in  conformity  with  the  general  design 
and  character  of  his  gospel,  dwells  with  particular 
prominence  upon  those  portions  of  the  discoui'se  which 
vindicate  the  precepts  of  the  Leritical  law  from  the 
false  and  pernicious  glosses  of  its  appointed  interpreters ; 
whUst  St.  Luke,  in  conformity  with  the  general  scope 
of  his  gospel,  omits  those  parts  of  the  discourse  which 
correct  the  current  misconceptions  of  the  meaning  of 
the  Jewish  law,  and  records  only  those  portions  which 
enforce  the  distinctive  principles  and  precepts  of  the 
law  of  Christ. 

The  difficulties  which  exist  in  St.  Matthew's  account 
of  this  discourse  are  of  two  kinds.  The  one  class  of 
difficulties  consists  in  allusions  to  Jewish  customs,  and 
in  the  adoption  of  forms  of  sijeoch  current  amongst  the 
Jews,  which  were  familiar  to  those  whom  our  Lord 
addressed,  but  which,  without  explanation,  ai-e  almost  un- 
intelligible amongst  ourselves.  The  second  class  con- 
sists in  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  contrast  drawn  by 
our  Lord  between  the  Jewish  and  the  Christian  law  ;  and 
more  p?.rticularly  in  determining  how  far  the  maxims 
and  traditions  then  prevalent  among  the  Jews  are  to  be 
regarded  in  the  light  of  just  expositions  of  the  Mosaic 
law,  or  in  that  of  false  glosses,  and  of  unauthorised 
additions.  Wo  propose  to  deal,  in  the  first  instance, 
vnih  the  former  of  these  difficulties. 

The  first  passage  which  seems  to  call  for  explanation 
is  found  in  v.  21,  22,  and  it  is  as  follows  : — "  Te  Iiave 
he.ird  [or,  "  Te  heard," '  HKotjaare]  that  it  was  said  by 
[or  rather,  as  the  marginal  readiug  is,  to]  them  of  old 
time.  Thou  slialt  not  kill ;  and  whosoever  shall  kill  shall 
be  in  danger  of  the  judgment ;  but  I  say  imto  you.  That 
whosoever  is  angry  with  his  brother  without  a  cause 
shall  bo  in  danger  of  the  judgment ;  and  whosoever  shall 
say  to  his  brother,  Raca,  shall  be  in  danger  of  the 
council :  but  whosoever  shall  say.  Thou  fool,  shall  be  in 
danger  of  lieU  fire." 

It  is  possible,  as  has  been  suggested,  that  our  Lord 
refers,  in  these  words,  to  the  recently  delivered  discourse 
of  some  Jewish  rabbi,  in  which  case  the  words  follow- 
ing the  sixth  commandment  might  bo  regarded  as  the 
addition  of  the  speaker.  Inasmuch,  however,  as  these 
words  are  nothing  more  than  a  summaiy  of  Jewish 
law  respecting  the  murderer;  and  further,  inasmuch 
as  in  vs.  27,  33,  and  38  a  similar  reference  is  made 
cither  to  the  precise  words  of  the  law  or  their  near 
equivalents,  it  seems  more  reasonable  to  suppose  that 
our  Lord  here  refers  directly  to  the  Mosaic  law  itself 
tban  to  any  recent  rabbinical  exposition  of  its  require- 
ments. 

Our  Lord  then  proceeds,  not  by  way  of  disparage- 
-  mcnt  of  the  Jewish  law,  but  by  an  exposition  of  its 
latent  and  spiritual  meaning,  to  enforce  the  higher  code 
of  the  Gospel,  as  reaching  not  only  to  the  outward  acts, 
but  also  to  tlie  intents  of  tlie  heart,  and  to  the  utter- 
ance of  the  lips. 

In  language  more  intelligible  to  tliose  to  wliom  it 
was  immediately  atldressed  than  it  is  to  us,  our  Lord 
describes  the  guilt  and  the  coudo;nnation  incurred  by 
tlioso  wlio  cherish  in  their  hearts  tlio  emotions  of  sinful 


anger.  There  is,  indeed,  an  anger,  i.e.,  a  holy  indigna- 
tion against  sin,  wliich  om-  Lord  himself  experienced 
(St.  Mark  iii.  5),  and  which  His  apostle  St.  Paul  repre- 
sents as  capable  of  being  indulged  without  gmlt  (Ei>h. 
iv.  26).  But  the  anger  which  is  here  forbidden  is  the 
anger  of  unruly  passion,  stirred  by  animosity,  and 
prompting  to  revenge.  He  who  thus  sins  against  his 
"brother"  (for  it  is  at  this  early  period  in  our  Lord's 
ministry  that  the  true  "  fraternity  "  of  the  Gospel  began 
to  be  incidcated)  is  represented  by  our  Lord  as  ren- 
dei-ing  himself  obnoxious  to  the  same  jurisdiction  to 
which,  in  accordance  with  Jewish  law,  murderers  wore 
amenable. 

The  second  case  adduced  by  our  Lord  is  the  applica- 
tion to  a  "  brother  "  of  the  word  Baca.  This  word  is  de- 
rived from  one  which  means  "  empty."  It  is  of  common 
occurrence  amongst  the  Talmudists.  Its  meaning  was 
explained  to  St.  Augustine,  by  a  Jew  of  whom  he  made 
inquiry,  as  "  merely  expressing  the  emotion  of  an  angry 
mind."  It  is  explained  by  Buxtorf  as  equivalent  to  the 
German  der  BiJsewicht — i.e.,  yilluiu. 

The  expression  employed  by  our  Lord  in  describing 
the  third  exhibition  of  anger  is  of  more  doubtful  signi- 
fication. It  may  be  a  Greek  word,  in  which  case  it 
is  correctly  rendered,  "  Thou  fool ;  "  or  it  may  be  the 
Hebrew  word  used  by  Moses  and  Aaron  at  Kadesh, 
"  Hear  now,  ye  rebels,"  when  they  incurred  the  penalty 
of  exclusion  from  the  Laud  of  Promise  (Numb.  xx.  10). 

The  obvious  import  of  the  verse  is  that  a  gr.adation 
is  denoted  both  of  sin  and  of  punishment,  which  will 
appear  more  cleai-ly  from  a  brief  consideration  of  the 
meaning  of  the  words  "  judgment,"  "  council,"  and 
"  Gehenna,"  or  "  heU  fire." 

The  first  of  these  three  words  seems  designed  to 
denote  those  ordinaiy  courts  of  justice  established  in 
every  town  or  village  which  had  not  less  than  120 
representative  men,  and  which  consisted  of  23  members 
appointed  by  the  great  Sanhedrim.  Against  the  decision 
of  these  inferior  courts  there  seems  to  have  been  no 
right  of  appeal ;  and  it  appears  to  have  been  only  when 
a  division  of  opinion  existed  on  the  part  of  the  judges, 
or  when,  in  the  opinion  of  those  judges,  the  magnitude 
of  the  case  so  required,  that  it  was  relegated  to  the 
higher  court,  which  we  shall  now  describe.' 

The  "  council,"  or  amiiptov — i.e.,  the  great  Sanhe- 
drim, or  supreme  court  of  justice — consisted  of  seventy 
members,  chosen  from  three  classes  of  the  people — 
viz.,  the  priests,  the  elders,  and  the  scribes,  or  lawyers. 
In  accordance  with  the  requirement  of  Dent.  xvii.  8,  it 
was  held  in  Jerusalem,  and,  in  all  probability,  in  some 
place  nearly  adjoining  the  Temple.  This  assembly  pos- 
sessed and  exercised  both  legislative  and  admmistrative 


1  The  words  of  the  Jewa  recorded  iu  St.  John  iviii.  31,  "  It  is  not 
lawful  for  us  to  put  nuy  man  to  death,"  ore  in  exuct  accordance 
with  the  statement  of  the  Jerusalem  Talmud  (Saiilictirin,  1,  be- 
einnirs;:  \-n.  21.  thnt  "forty  years  before  the  destruction  of  the 
Temple,  the  power  of  iunictius  capital  punishment  was  taken  away 
from  Israel ;  "  but  it  is  the  opinion  of  Dr.  Ginsbursj  (iu  the  article 
"Sanhedrim"  in  Kitto's  Diciionarii)  that  the  moaning  of  both 
these  statements  is  that  the  sentence  of  the  Sanhedrim  required  the 
couiirmation  of  the  Roaiau  procurator. 


JOEL. 


65 


functions,  and  by  it  tlie  highest  and  most  momeutous 
questions  respecting  the  interpretation  and  the  execu- 
tion of  the  law  were  determined. 

The  third  degree  of  punishment  to  which  our  Lord 
refers  is  described  as  the  "Gehenna  of  fire."  The 
word  Gehenna  is  the  Greek  form  of  tlio  two  Hebrew 
words  njTP:  (Ge-liinnom),  i.e.,  the  valley  of  Hinnom. 
Li  this  valley,  which  lay  to  the  south-east  of  the  city 
of  Jerusalem,  the  idolatrous  Jews  used  to  burn  their 
children,  in  honour  of  the  god  Molech.  The  pious 
king  Josiah  polluted  the  vaUoy,'  and  it  became  a  place 
for  the  Ijuruing  of  offal,  and  for  the  corpses  of  cri- 
miuals.  Isaiah  speaks  of  this  valley  under  its  name 
of  "  Tophot,"  as  ■•  ordained  of  old."  "  The  pile  thereof," 
he  writes,  "  is  fii-e  and  much  wood ;  the  breath  of  the 
Lord,  like  a  stream  of  brimstone,  doth  kindle  it."- 
And  in  reference,  as  it  would  seem,  to  the  same  valley, 
he  writes  thus  in  chap.  Ixvi.  24 :  "  And  they  shall  go 
forth,  and  look  upon  the  carcases  of  the  men  that  have 
transgressed  against  me  :  for  their  worm  shall  not  die, 
neither  shall  their  fire  be  quenched."  It  was  not,  then, 
without  cause  that  the  Jews  used  the  name  of  this 
"vaUey  to  denote  the  place  of  future  torment. 

It  can  scarcely  admit  of  doubt  that  our  Lord  in 
these  verses  describes,  in  language  adapted,  in  accord- 


2  Kings  xxiii.  10. 


2  laa. 


i.  33. 


ance  with  Oriental  usage,  to  the  capacities  and  modes 
of  thought  of  His  hearers,  the  criminal  nature,  and  the 
fatal  results  of  the  indulgence  of  feelings  of  hatred 
and  revenge.  The  simple  consideration  that  our  Lord 
himself  uses  the  word  rendered  "  fools  "  in  His  twice- 
repeated  address  to  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  "Ye 
fools  (A'topol)  and  blind,"  of  which  He  condemns  the 
use  when  spoken  under  emotions  of  hatred  and  re- 
venge, furnishes  a  sufficient  clue  to  the  general  di'ift 
of  His  meaning.  That  meaning  is  to  be  extracted  by 
a  due  consideration  of  the  spirit,  rather  than  of  the 
lettei',  of  His  words.  There  may  be,  iudeod,  and  there 
probably  is,  a  designed  gradation  to  bo  traced,  alike  in 
the  guilt  which  He  describes  and  in  the  punishment 
which  He  threatens.  But  the  fact  to  which  allusion 
has  just  been  made,  that  our  Lord  himself  employs, 
in  reference  to  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  the  very 
word  which  He  here  represents  as  exposing  liim  who 
uses  it  to  the  highest  degree  of  punishment,  is,  of  itself, 
a  conclusive  proof  that  in  the  interpretation  of  these, 
as  of  all  other  words  which  jjroceeded  from  His  lips, 
we  must  ever  bear  in  mind  the  fundamental  canon  of 
interpretation  furnished  by  Himself  when  He  said, 
"  The  words  that  I  speak  unto  you,  they  are  spirit,  and 
they  are  life"  (John  vi.  63),  a  canon  of  interpretation 
which  is  thus  exi^lained  and  enforced  by  St.  Paul,  "  The 
letter  killeth,  but  the  spirit  giveth  hfo  "  (2  Cor.  iii.  6). 


THE    BOOKS    OF    THE    OLD    TESTAMENT. 


JOEL    (contiiiueil). 


BY   THE    KEV.    SAMUEL    COX,    NOTTINGHAM. 


PntST   PART. 
THE   JUDGMENT   (CHAP.    I.   2 — II.    17). 

?HE  prophecy  opens  with  a  lamentation 
over  the  land  laid  waste  and  bare  by  suc- 
cessive swarms  of  locusts — a  lamentation 
in  which  Joel  describes  this  terrible  cala- 
mity in  the  most  graphic  terms,  urging  the  nation  to 
lay  it  to  heart,  and  finally  breaks  into  a  pathetic  prayer 
for  deliverance  (chap.  i.  2 — 20),  so  that  the  openi»g 
verses  of  this  inspired  poem  take  an  elegiac  form.  In 
studying  the  elegy  we  commence  at  the  second,  verse, 
since  that  which  stands  as  the  first  verso  in  our  Autho- 
rised Version  is,  obviously,  the  general  title  prefixed  to 
the  whole  prophecy. 

We  need  not  linger  over  this  title,  save  to  make  a 
single  remark  on  the  meaning  of  the  proper  names. 
Joel,  or  Yoel,  is  compounded  of  the  two  sacred  names 
most  commonly  used  in  the  Old  Testament — of  a  con- 
tracted form  of  Jehovah,  such  as  Jah,  and  of  El :  it 
moans  either  "  Jehovah  is  God,"  or  "  whose  God  is 
Jehovah."  Joel  is  "  the  son  of  Pethuel,"  but  who 
Pethuel  was  we  do  not  know ;  his  name,  which  means 
"the  openheartedness  or  sincerity  of  God,"  may  be 
added  simply  in  accordance  with  the  Oriental  usage 
which  demands  that  a  man  should  be  described  as  the 
29 — VOL.  II. 


son  of  So-and-so,  or  to  mark  off  the   prophet   from 
cotemporaries  who  bore  the  same  name. 

Verses  2 — i  contain  an  animated  introduction  to  the 
theme  of  the  elegy.  The  prophet  calls  on  the  old 
men  taught  by  long  experience,  accustomed  to  take 
note  of  what  seems  contrary  to  the  usual  course  of 
nature ;  nay,  he  calls  on  all  the  inhabitants  of  Judah, 
whatever  the  district  they  occupy,  and  whatever  the 
calamities  they  have  witnessed,  to  say  whether,  in  tlieir 
own  days  or  the  days  of  their  fathers,  there  had  ever 
befallen  a  calamity  so  terriUe  as  tliat  which  had  re- 
cently swept  over  the  land.  The  motive  of  his  appeal 
is,  that  he  may  suggest  to  tkem  his  conviction  that  a 
calamity  so  imheard  of,  so  unparaUeled,  must  be  a 
visitation  of  God,  a  judgment  from  offended  Heaven  ; 
for  then,  as  now,  men  were  wont  to  find  God  in  the 
exceptional  rather  than  in  the  ordinary  events  of  life 
— in  the  marvel  or  mh-aclo  rather  than  in  the  law. 
He  commands  them  to  tell  their  sons  of  this  terrible 
plague,  to  recount  the  story  of  it  through  three  gene- 
rations ;  not  as  supposing  that  there  is  any  need  for 
the  command,  for  the  memory  of  so  unparalleled  a 
disaster  was  sure  to  live  in  the  mouths  of  men  as 
long  as  that ;  but  in  order  to  impress  on  his  readers  a 
sense  of  the  vastness  and  terror  of  a  disaster  which 


66 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


woTild  darken    tlio  national   memory   for  so   long    a 
period. 

The  four  names  by  wliich  (in  ver.  4)  the  prophet 
designates  the  locusts  which  had  wrought  so  fearful  a 
devastation  in  the  land,  have  been  variously  interpreted  ; 
but  there  is  now  no  doubt  that  they  denote  various 
species  of  grylli,  various  kinds  of  locusts,  although  our 
Authorised  Version  renders  three  of  them  by  "  pahner- 
worm,  cankerworm,  and  caterpillar."  It  has  been 
proposed  to  render  them  by  "  young  locTist,  old  locust, 
fledged  locust,  flying  locust,"  and  indeed  in  many  other 
ways.  On  the  whole,  it  seems  better  to  fall  back  on  the 
etymology  of  the  four  names,  gdzdm,  'arheh,  yeleq,  and 
chdzil.  Now  gdzam  is  from  a  verb  that  means  to  "  cut 
or  bite  off ;"  'arhch  is  from  a  verb  which  means  "  to  be 
or  to  become  many ;"  yeleq  is  from  a  verb  which  means 
"to  lick  "or  "to  lick  off;"  and  chdzil  is  from  a  verb 
which  means  "  to  eat  up,"  "  to  consume,"  "  to  devovir." 
To  preserve  the  etymological  meanings  of  these  names, 
we  must  render  ver.  4 — 

"  what  was  left  by  the  gnawer  the  multiplier  ate  ; 
And  what  was  left  by  the  multiplier  the  licker  ate  ; 
And  what  was  left  by  the  licker  the  devourer  ate  j" 

for  thus  wo  get  as  nearly  as  possible  English  equiva- 
lents for  the  Hebrew  names  of  the  locust.  There  is 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  Joel  used  them  in  any 
exact  scientific  sense,  as  distinguishing  one  species  from 
another,  or  in  any  exact  historical  sense,  as  moaning 
that  the  order  in  which  he  names  them  was  the  chrono- 
logical order  in  which  they  darkened  over  the  land.  All 
he  means  is,  I  suppose,  to  affirm  that  successive  swarms 
of  the  locust  brood  fell  on  the  land,  and  that  among 
them  they  consiuned  every  green  thing.  Some  critics 
will  have  it  that  four  is  the  sign  of  universahty ;  and 
that  the  prophet  mentions  four  swarms  and  no  more, 
to  indicate  tliat  the  judgment  swept  in  all  directions 
over  the  whole  coimtry.  The  thought  is  not  so  absurd 
or  far-fetched  as  at  first  it  might  seem  to  be ;  since^ 
throughout  the  Bible,  beyond  all  question  numbers  are 
used  in  a  symbolical  or  mystical  sense. 

And  now,  having  annoimeed  his  theme,  instead  of 
narrating  the  several  kinds  of  ruin  -wrought  by  the 
locusts,  tlie  prophet,  like  a  true  poet,  throws  verve, 
fire,  dramatic  force  into  his  description  by  a  series  of 
appeals,  each  of  which  is  a  little  picture  in  itself,  to 
the  various  classes  of  Judah — to  the  lovers  of  tlie 
wine-cup,  to  the  vine-dressers  and  husbandmen,  to  the 
priests  and  ministers  of  the  altar,  and  to  the  personified 
nation. 

The  series  commences  with  an  appeal  to  the  bons 
vivants,  to  the  lovers  of  good  wine  (vs.  5 — 7). 

Even  the  wine-bibbers,  wrapped  in  careless  self-in- 
dulgence, arc  to  wake  up  to  a  recognition  of  the  hand 
of  God.  The  last,  if  left  to  themselves,  to  discern  and 
trouble  themselves  about  national  calamities,  they  are 
the  first  to  whom  the  prophet  addresses  himself.  Tliey 
are  to  "  weep  and  wail,''  for  indeed  the  judgment  has 
come  homo  to  them ;  it  has  touched  what  they  most 
love.  They  are  "  drinkers  of  wine ; "  and  the  term 
here  used  for  "  wine  "  includes  the  intoxicating  drinks 


that  were  expressed  from  barley  and  honey,  from  figs 
and  dates,  as  well  as  the  juice  of  the  grape  :  and  "  the 
new  wine,"  the  juice  of  the  grape  or  other  fruit,  which 
when  first  pressed  out  is  remarkable  for  its  sweetness 
and  strength,  has  been  "  cut  off  from  their  mouth."  It 
has  boon  cut  off  by  an  invading  "  nation,"  "  strong  and 
iunumcrable,"  with  teeth  like  "  lions'  teeth."  Each  of 
these  epithets  is  admirably  chosen. 

The  locusts  are  strong,  for  nothing  can  stop  them. 
They  are  innumerable,  succeeding  each  other  in  "  infi- 
nite swarms  "  flying  "  millions  thick,"  and  have  been 
known  to  cover  an  area  of  "two  thousand  EiUes." 
And  their  teeth  are  like  the  teeth  of  a  lion,  not  simply 
because  of  the  terrible  devastation  they  effect,  but  also 
because  "the  denticulated  jaw  of  the  locust  re.sembles, 
to  the  naturalist's  eye,  the  type  of  the  lion."  These 
are  the  hostile  and  warlike  nation  which  have  "  come 
up  over  my  land,"  "kid  waste  my  vine,  and  broken 
down  my  fig-tree." 

In  King  Solomon's  time,  we  are  told,  "every  man 
sat  under  liis  vine  and  imder  his  fig-tree,  none  daring 
to  make  him  afraid "' — a  plirase  which  impKes  how  com- 
mon these  two  trees  were,  how  much  the  people  prized 
them.  It  was  natural,  therefore,  that  Joel,  some  two 
centuries  after  Solomon,  shoidd  select  these  as  in  some 
sense  the  trees  of  Judaea,  and  lament  their  destruction. 
The  vino  is  marked  as  the  chief  of  the  two  in  a  way 
many  readers  wUl  omit  to  note.  Observe,  then,  that 
having  said  of  the  locust  nation, 

"  It  hath  laid  waste  my  vine, 
And  broken  down  my  fig-tree," 

the  prophet  does  not  continue,  "  it  hath  utterly  peeled 
them,  their  branches  have  grown  white ;"  but, 

"  It  hath  utterly  peeled  Tier  and  cast  it  away. 
So  that  her  branches  have  grown  white." 

So  to  speak,  he  drops  the  fig-tree  out  of  his  verse,  and 
retains  only  the  vine,  as  the  more  characteristic  and 
precious  of  the  two.  And  though  the  fig,  which  is  in- 
tligenous  to  Palestine  and  gi'ows  there  in  great  luxuri- 
ance, yields  a  food  of  the  sweetness  and  value  of  which 
we,  who  eat  only  the  dried  fig,  can  have  no  conception ; 
yet  the  ^ono  is  both  a  nobler  and  more  valuable  tree. 
JFi-om  time  immemorial  it  has  flourished  in  Palestine, 
often  attaining  a  marvellous  size  and  fruitfulness.  It 
has  been  known  to  tlirow  a  stom,  nearly  five  feet  in 
circumference,  to  a  height  of  thii-ty  feet,  and  to  spread 
branches  over  a  circle  of  ninety  or  a  lumdred  feet.  Its 
clusters  often  weigh  ten  or  twelve  pounds,  and  its  single 
gi-apes  are  at  times  as  large  as  our  damsons.  To  have 
these  noble  trees  destroyed  was  nothing  short  of  a 
public  calamity  to  a  nation  whose  common  di-iuk  was 
wine.  And  with  a  poet's  quick  eye  for  grai^hic  touches, 
Joel  describes  tlio  locusts  as  peeling  the  \'ine,  by  gnaw- 
ing off  its  bark,  so  that  the  branches  grow  white— smelj 
a  very  picturesque  verse.  It  is  as  accurate  as  it  is 
picturesque  ;  for,  tough  as  is  the  fibre  of  the  vine-bark, 
the  locusts  eat  clean  through  it,  and  thus  injure  tlie  tree 
for  more  than  a  single  yoair,  sometimes  destroying  its 
very  life. 


JOEL. 


67 


This  is  oiu"  first  tiny  picture,  then.  A  company  of 
wine-bibbers,  witli  the  wiue-cup  dashed  from  their  lips, 
weeping'  and  wailing  as  they  look  out  on  the  drooping 
vines,  with  their  whitening  trunks  and  leafless  branches. 

The  second  appeal  is  to  the  impersonated  nation 
(vs.  8 — 10).  Judiea,  Judoea  desolata,  is  to  lament  like 
"a  virgin  girded  with  sackcloth''  over  "  the  husband," 
the  lord,  the  beloved  "  of  her  youth,"  whom  that  "  chiu'l 
Death  "  has  rapt  from  her  side.  She  is  to  lament  ■with 
the  utter  passion,  abandonment,  despau-  of  a  young  girl 
who  sees  her  life  bhghted,  and  the  desire  of  her  eyes 
taken  away  at  a  sti-oke,  who  clothes  her  tender  limbs 
in  rough  sackcloth,  and  casts  lierself  weeping  on  the 
ground.  And  for  what  is  Judaea  to  abandon  herself  to 
this  passion  of  woe  ?  Because  the  Temple  mourns ; 
because  "  the  priests,  the  ministers  of  Jehovah,  mourn ; " 
because  "offering  and  Hbation  have  perished  from  the 
hoiise  of  the  Lord,"  now  that  the  locusts  have  eaten  up 
the  vine,  the  olivo,  the  wheat,  and  there  is  no  longer 
meal,  oil,  wine,  incense  for  the  altar  of  Jehovah,  and 
the  service  of  his  House ;  because  the  land  mourns  as 
well  as  the  Temple — Nature  sympathising  in  the  woe 
of  man ;  because  "  the  field,''  the  open  uniuclosod 
country,  "  is  laid  waste,"  and  "  the  ground,"  the  rich  red 
soil  fenced  for  culture,  "lameutoth"  over  "the  corn" 
that  has  perished  from  its  bosom,  and  over  "the  new 
wine  "  dried  up  in  the  very  veins  of  the  vine,  and  over 
"the  oil"  that  has  "  sickened"  or  "languished"  in  the 
nngathered  olive.  A  ravaged  land  and  an  abandoned 
Temple — for  Grod  was  supposed  to  have  left  the  Temple 
when  his  altar-table  was  not  duly  furnished  forth;  a 
land  smitten  with  judgments  by  the  God  who  had 
forsaken  his  sanctuai-y — it  was  for  this  that  Judsea 
was  to  lament  hko  a  virgin  over  the  bridegroom  of  her 
youth. 

This,  then,  is  om-  second  picture.  The  daughter  of 
Zion,  clothed  in  sackcloth,  weeping  in  passionate  aban- 
donment, as  a  virgin  for  the  "  lord  "  of  her  youth,  as  a 
bride  awakening  to  widowhood,  over  a  land  despoiled,  a 
temple  forsaken  by  God  and  man — by  God,  because  he 
is  incensed  against  the  nation ;  by  man,  bec<ause  he  has 
BO  longer  any  offering  or  libation  to  bring  before  the 
Lord. 

The  third  appeal  is  to  the  husbandmen  and  vine- 
dressers (vs.  11, 12).  Joel  bids  the  husbandmen  "  turn 
pale  "  with  disappointed  hope  "  over  the  wheat  and  over 
the  barley "  destroyed  before  their  eyes,  and  the  vino- 
dressers  to  "  wail"  or  "howl"  over  the  sickening  vine 
and  the  choice  frint-troes,  such  as  the  fig,  the  pome- 
granate, the  date-palm,  and  the  apple-tree,  which  often 
grew  in  their  vineyards,  and  from  whose  fruit  they 
distilled  "  strong  drmk."  Of  the  vine  and  fig  I  have 
already  spoken  :  a  word  or  two  must  be  added  on  each 
of  the  trees  newly  mentioned.  The  pomegranate,  or 
rimmon,  is  one  of  the  noblest  trees  indigenous  to  Syria. 
It  grows  to  the  height  of  twenty  feet,  lias  a  straight 
stem,  spreading  branches,  lancet-shaped  leaves;  the 
fohage  is  dark-green  ;  the  flowers,  which  are  large  and 
beautiful,  are  of  a  deep  crimson  hue ;  the  fruit  is  of  the 
size  of  an  orange,  of  a  red  hue  when  ripe,  and  yields  a 


cooling  and  deUcious  juice.  The  daie-palm,  or  tdmdr, 
is  renuirkable  for  its  upright  growth  and  crown  of 
splendid  leaves ;  it  sometimes  reaches  the  height  of  a 
hundi-od  feet ;  the  dates,  which  grow  in  clusters  under 
the  long  lai'ge  leaves,  are  a  valuable  food,  and  yield  a 
liquor  which,  when  fermented,  tastes  something  like 
champagne.  Both  Tacitus  and  Pliny  select  the  pabn  as 
the  characteristic  tree  of  Palestine.  It  is  evec.  used  as 
the  symbol  of  Judsea  on  the  coin  of  Vespasian.  And 
this  pre-eminence  of  the  palm  is  marked  by  Joel ;  for 
he  prefixes  an  intensive  particle  before  the  word  tdmdr 
(ver.  12),  "  gam-tam.kv,"  the  force  of  which  I  have  tried 
to  retain  by  rendering  the  verse  : — 

"  The  vine  is  dried  up, 
And  the  fig-tree  sickeueth  ; 
The  pomegranate,  the  palm-tree  even,  and  the  apple-tree, — 
All  the  trees  of  the  field  are  withered ; 
For  joy  is  withered  from  the  children  of  men." 

The  familiar  ajjple-tree  needs  no  description ;  but  it  is 
worth  whde,  perhajis,  to  notice  the  force  of  the  graphic 
Hebrew  name  for  it,  tappuach.  This  noun  is  from  a 
verb  which  means  "  to  breathe,"  and  Gesenius  conjec- 
tui-es  the  tree  to  have  been  thus  named  because  of  its 
fragrant  breath  or  scent.  Nor  must  we  omit  to  note 
the  fine  touch  in  which  Joel  once  more  asserts  the  sym- 
pathy of  Nature  with  man  : — 

"  All  the  trees  of  the  field  are  withered. 
Fur  joy  is  withered  from  the  children  of  men  ;" 

as  though  it  were  impossible  for  the  natural  world  to 
rejoice  in  beauty  and  frmtfulness  while  the  hearts  of 
men  were  oppressed  with  sadness.  That  one  life  beats 
thi'oughout  the  imiverse,  revealing  itself  in  subtle  and 
manifold  mterchanges  of  sympathy ;  that,  therefore. 
Nature  feels  with  her  foster-chUd,  man.  rejoicing  when 
he  rejoices,  weeping  when  he  weejis — this  is  a  dominant 
conception  with  Joel,  as  indeed  it  is  with  the  poets  of 
aU  ages. 

Our  thii'd  little  picture,  then,  presents  us  with  a 
group  of  husbandmen  and  \'ine-dressers,  pale,  and  sick 
at  heart  with  wasted  toils  and  defeated  hope,  as  they 
glance  round  on  fields  from  which  the  harvest  has 
perished,  and  on  vineyards  and  orchards  in  wliich  idne 
and  fig-tree,  the  luscious  pomegranate,  the  stately  pabn. 
the  fragrant  apple-tree,  wither  and  die — Natm-e  sicken- 
ing as  they  sicken,  and  weeping  because  they  weep. 

The  fom-th  appeal  is  to  the  priests  of  the  Temple 
(vs.  13, 14).  They  are  to  gird  themselves  with  sackcloth 
night  and  day ;  to  wail  and  lament  night  and  day  ;  to 
cry  imto  the  Lord  niglit  and  day ;  and  not  only  they, 
but  the  elders — nay,  all  the  people.  And  to  this  end, 
the  priests  are  to  "sanctify  a  fast" — that  is,  to  hallow, 
or  set  apart  certain  days  for  fasting ;  to  "  proclaim  a 
restraint" — that  is,  a  period  during  which,  restrained 
from  manual  toil,  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  land  were  to 
repair  to  the  Temple,  and  devote  themselves  to  humilia- 
tion, confession,  aud  prayer.  No  formal  and  customary 
supplication  will  suffice ;  they  are  to  break  from  the 
routine  of  life  and  worship,  and  "  to  cry "  with  im- 
passioned fervour,  with  tearful  and  importunate  repeti- 
tions on  Him  who  alone  was  able  to  succour  them. 


68 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


So  that  oui-  last  pictiu'e  carries  us  from  field  and 
TOeyard  to  the  precincts  of  the  sanctuary.  A  train 
of  priests  clothed  in  sackcloth,  worn  ■with  vigils,  stands 
between  the  porch  and  the  altar,  weeping  and  making 
supplication  to  God  ;  an  orderly  multitude,  led  by  their 
elders,  gathers  round  thorn,  and  chants,  with  one  voice 
and  one  heart,  a  passionate  supplication  for  mercy  and 
the  succours  of  heavenly  grace. 

With  many  pieturesquo  touches  Joel  has  set  before 
us  the  terrible  effects  of  the  Divine  judgment  in  city 
and  field,  in  Temple  and  vineyard.  He  now  hints  at  the 
omen  latent  in  the  plague  of  locusts,  proceeds  to  add 
now  touches  to  his  description,  and  passes  into  an  im- 
passioned prayer  for  relief  (vs.  15 — 20). 

He  cries,  "  Alas  ! "  or  "  Alack !  "  "  for  the  day !"  Oh, 
ill-omened  and  most  miserable  time !  It  is  most 
miserable,  not  simply  because  of  the  evils  it  has  brought, 
but  also,  and  stiU  more,  because  of  the  e\'ils  it  predicts. 
There  is  a  portent  in  it,  a  portent  of  woe.  To  the  fore- 
casting spirit  of  the  prophet  it  is  the  harbinger  of  "  the 
day  of  Jehovah."  What  was  this  "day"  that  the  mere 
prospect  of  it  should  fill  the  hearts  of  men  with  ruth 
and  fear?     Let  Isaiah  reply  (Isa.  ii.  12 — 17) : — 

"Jehovah  of  Hosts  hath  a  day  over  all  that  is  proud  and  lofty, 
And  over  all  that  esalteth  itself,  and  it  shall  be  brought  low  ; 
As  upon  all  the  cedars  of  Lebanon,  the  lofty  and  exalted. 
So  upon  all  the  oaks  of  Bashan  ; 

As  upon  all  the  mouutaius,  the  lofty  ones. 

So  upon  all  the  hills,  the  exalted  ones ; 

As  upon  every  high  tower. 

So  upon  every  fortified  wall  ; 

As  upon  all  the  ships  of  Tarshish, 

So  upon  all  that  is  fair  to  see  : 
And  the  lofty  look^  of  the  people  shall  be  bowed  down, 
Aud  the  pride  of  their  great  ones  humbled, 
And  Jehovah,  He  alone,  shall  be  exalted  in  that  day." 

As  the  inspired  Hebrew  seers  studied  the  vicissitudes 
of  human  life,  as  they  saw  the  good  suffer  while  the 
evil  revelled  in  prosperity  and  mirth,  the  humble 
trodden  under  foot  and  the  proud  exalted,  they  early 
came  to  the  conclusion,  which  after  ages  only  con- 
firmed, that  there  would  be,  that  there  must  be,  a  day 
of  tho  Lord,  to  which  all  the  days  of  time  were  con- 
ducting men — a  day  on  which  all  wrongs  would  be 
righted,  and  every  deed  done  in  the  body  receive  its 
due  recompense  of  reward.  This  day  they  called  yom 
Yehovah,  "  the  day  of  the  Lord."  It  was  to  bo  a  day 
of  judgment  over  all  that  was  evil  and  ungodly;  a  day 
in  which  the  Almighty  Ruler  of  the  world  would  bring 
down  whatever  had  exalted  itself  against  Him.  Every 
intermediate  calamity  was,  in  some  sense,  both  a  part, 
and  a  portent,  of  that  great  day.  The  whole  history 
of  man  was  a  Divine  judgment,  though  often  veiled 
and  unsearchable  to  human  eyes;  and  this  constant, 
though  often  secret,  judgment  was  to  culminate  and 
to  become  manifest  in  the  end,  when,  whatever  had 
been  carried  by  the  ever-flowing  stream  of  time  into 
eternity  unassorted  and  unjudged,  was  to  bo  judged 
aud  adjusted  to  its  duo  place  once  for  all,  and  all 
things  were  to  round  to  their  final  go.al.  This  was 
"  tho  day  of  Jehovah,"  for  which  even  Joel,  the  earliest 
of  tho  prophets,  looked;   the  day  which  drew  nearer 


and  nearer  with  every  successive  act  of  judgment 
executed  among  men  ;  the  day  of  which  every  calamity 
spoke  as  it  fell;  tho  day  of  which  some  faint  imagel 
might  be  seen  even  in  that  plague  of  locusts  under 
which  the  land  now  mourned.  "  Alas,  for  to-day  ! " 
he  cries,  "  Alas,  for  to-day !  for  even  this  day  of 
lamentation  and  woo  shows  that  tho  final  doom  di'aws 
nigh — the  day  that  will  come  like  a  destruction  from 
the  Almighty,  that  will  smite  evil  and  all  who  cling  to 
it  ivith  an  eternal  death." 

It  was  this  great  and  final  day  of  the  Lord,  ever 
present  to  the  prophetic  eye,  which  threw  deep  and 
ominous  shadows  on  every  intervening  day  of  judg- 
ment. That  the  land  should  be  inarched  by  drought 
and  consumed  by  locusts  was  in  itself  a  terrible  cala- 
mity; but  this  calamity  clothed  itself  in  new  terroi's 
when  it  was  regarded  as  a  portent  of  the  last  judg- 
ment. And  it  vvas  in  this  portentous  light  that  Joel 
regarded  it,  and  would  have  the  people  regai'd  it. 
They  would  miss  "  the  sweet  uses "  of  this  adversity, 
unless  they  permitted  it  to  quicken  within  them  a 
profound  sense  of  the  moral  government  of  God — the 
government  which  is  to  reach  its  climax  at  that  final 
session  in  which  every  man  will  receive  according  to 
his  deeds,  whether  they  be  good  or  whether  they  be 
bad.  And  at  least  one  feature  of  that  great  day  was 
clearly  jirefigured  in  the  present  judgment.  The  day 
of  Jehovah  would  como  "  like  a  destruction  from  the 
Almighty ; "  a  destruction  on  all  that  was  evU,  nay,  a 
destruction  of  much  that  in  itself  was  good,  in  order  that 
evil  might  be  punished  and  extirpated;  for  was  not  the 
fair  teeming  earth  to  bo  swept  with  fire  ?  were  not  the 
gracious  heavens  to  be  folded  like  a  scroll,  and  the  ser- 
viceable elements  to  be  consumed  as  in  a  furnace,  that 
tho  ^vickedness  of  the  wicked  might  be  brought  to  an 
end  ?  Tluit  aspect  of  the  last  day,  if  no  other,  was 
illustrated  by  what  was  now  passing  before  their  eyes ; 
for  even  now  the  fair  face  of  Nature  was  blackened  and 
deformed  as  by  fire ;  the  innocent  creatures,  the  flocks 
and  herds,  roamed  disconsolate  over  wasted  pastures, 
or  stood  beivilderod  by  water-courses  that  were  dried 
up.  Food  was  cut  off  ;  joy  aud  gladness  were  banished 
from  the  House  of  God.  And  all  for  what  ?  AU  for- 
"  the  guilt "  of  man ;  all  that  men  might  repent  their 
guilt,  and  return  to  Him  from  whom  their  hearts  had 
gone  astray  (vs.  15 — 20). 

By  this  easy  aud  natural  transition,  the  prophet — 
after  having  robed  the  present  calamity  in  new  teirors 
by  making  it  a  portent  of  judgments  still  more  sweeping 
— falls  back  on  tho  calamity  which  was  now  rentling 
all  hearts,  aud  adds  now  pathetic  touches  to  his  descrip- 
tion. At  first  we  might  think  that  in  vs.  16 — 20  he 
was  simply  desctibiug  tho  effects  of  that  plague  of 
locusts  which  ho  has  ab-eady  descriljed ;  for  theij  cut  off 
food,  they  consumed  pasture  and  field,  and,  in  the  leaf- 
loss  blackened  stems  of  orchard  and  vineyard,  they  loft 
beliiud  thorn  a  trail  as  of  fire.  But  there  is  one  touch, 
in  ver.  20,  which  shows  that  to  the  plague  of  locusts 
there  had  been  added  a  plague  of  drought,  aud  that 
both  were  now  in  tho  prophet's  mind.     "  The  water- 


JOEL. 


69 


courses,"  so  abundant  in  tliat  land  of  lulls,  so  welcome 
and  indispensable  in  that  fendd  climate,  "were  dried 
up  ; "  and  this  cotdd  not  be  the  work  of  the  locusts ;  it 
could  only  be  the  efEect  of  that  di'ought  which  so  often 
brings  dearth  to  Eastern  lands,  and  which,  in  all  lands, 
is  commonly  accompanied  by  blight  and  insect  pests. 

Between  them,  the  drought  and  the  locusts  had 
converted  a  land  like  the  Garden  of  Eden  into  a 
barren  desert.  "  Is  not  the  food  cut  oil  before  our 
eyes — joy  and  gladness  from  the  house  of  our  God  ?  " 
cries  Joel.  The  lomist  had  anticipated  the  reaper, 
as  Jerome  epigi-ammaticaUy  puts  it;  and  with  the 
harvest  the  offerings  for  the  Temple  had  perished — 
the  sheaves,  the  meal,  the  fruit,  the  oil,  the  wine,  the 
fragrant  spices  that  were  laid  on  the  table  of  the  Lord. 
On  these  offerings  the  priests  and  Levites,  with  their 
families,  subsisted.  When  these  ceased,  joy  and  glad- 
ness would  cease  from  the  chambers  of  the  Temple, 
in  which  they  dwelt.  Nay,  more,  the  holidays  of  the 
people  were  spent  in  the  Temple  and  its  courts.  Their 
harvest-home,  for  example,  was  the  feast  of  Pentecost. 
Of  tlieir  sacrifices  and  offerings  only  a  part  was  con- 
simied  on  the  altar ;  the  flesh  of  their  sacrificed  lambs 
and  bullocks,  the  meal,  the  wine,  the  fruit  they  pre- 
sented before  the  Lord,  furnished  forth  a  table  at 
which  they  ate  and  drank  and  were  merry.  All  their 
great  annual  services  and  feasts  were  merry-makings — 
holidays  as  woU  as  holy  days ;  and,  now,  all  these  had 
ceased  perforce.  Pinched  by  famine,  they  could  no 
longer  know  the  "  joy  and  gladness  "  of  their  national 
festivals — a  joy  all  the  deeper  because  it  was  "  the  j<iy 
of  the  Lord,"  a  gladness  all  the  more  pure  and  sweet 
because  it  was  gladness  in  the  house  of  their  God. 

This  is  the  first  new  stroke  of  pathos  which  the  poet 
adds  to  his  previous  description ;  but  mark  how  he 
multiplies  stroke  on  stroke.  As  though  it  were  not 
enough  to  lose  all  mirth  in  the  passing  day,  the  heart  of 
the  peo2ile  is  torn  ^vith  apprehension  for  the  future. 
The  very  gi\ain  in  tlie  earth  has  "rotted  under  the 
clods,"  so  that  there  is  no  prospect  of  a  crop  in  tlie 
coming  year  to  compensate  for  the  loss  of  this  year's 
hai-vest.  Smitten  by  the  burning  rays  of  the  sun, 
denied  the  vivifying  touch  of  dew  or  ram,  the  germ  has 
withered  in  the  seed.  The  husbandmen,  hopeless  of 
any  reward  for  their  toils,  fold  their  hands  in  indolent 
despair;  they  suffer  their  garners  to  moulder  away, 
their  "  barns  "  to  fall.  Wliy  should  they  repair  bam 
and  storehouse,  when  "  the  com  is  withered,"  even  the 
seed  corn  ? 

From  the  homestead,  with  its  mouldering  bams  and 
garners,  the  poet  passes  into  the  parched  and  bliickened 
fields.  Not  only  do  guilty  men  suffer,  but  also  tlie 
innocent  dependants  on  their  care. 

"  How  the  cattle  groan  !"  he  cries,  as  if  the  bleating 
of  the  slieep  and  the  lowmg  of  the  oxen  rent  his  very 
heart.  With  that  fine  and  tender  hmnanity  charac- 
teristic of  the  Hebrew  prophets  and  bards,  he  suffers 
with  the  suffering  beasts  of  the  field,  and  attributes 
human  emotions  to  them.  The  herds  of  oxen  are  "  be- 
wildered," because  the  plains,  they  have  often  cropped 


yield  no  pasture  for  them.  The  flocks  of  sheep,  in  their 
vague  wanderings  and  pitiful  iterations,  seem  to  him  to 
be  "  mourning  the  guilt "'  of  men.  His  heart  is  torn 
with  a  passion  of  sympathy  wluch  compels  him,  for  the 
first  time,  to  address  himself  directly  to  God. 

"  To  thee,  0  Jehovah,  do  I  cry»" 

for  these  innocent  sufferers,  whose  pastm'cs  the  fire  of 
drought  has  turned  black ;  nay,  even  they  themselves, 
"the  very  beasts  of  the  field,  cry  unto  thee,"  lifting  up 
their  heads  in  dnmb  yet  eloquent  appeal,  and  groaning 
out  their  misery  before  Thee. 

Let  us  here  recall  the  fact,  that  it  is  the  Spii-it  of  God 
who  speaks  by  the  mouth  of  the  prophet ;  for  it  is  to 
be  feared  that  we  do  not  make  enough  of  the  humanity 
of  God,  of  His  intense  delight  in  trees  and  flowers,  in 
herds  and  flocks,  of  His  himiane  care  for  them,  of  His 
tender  sympathy  with  them.  The  psalms  and  prophecies 
are  full  of  this  Divine  humanity— no  prophecy  fuller, 
perhajjs,  than  that  of  Joel ;  and  in  no  passage  of  Joel's 
is  that  tender  intense  humanity  more  beautifidly  and 
pathetically  exi)ressed  than  in  the  verses  (18 — 20)  we 
have  just  considered. 

The  one  imperative  and  supreme  question  for  the  in- 
habitants of  a  land  so  cruelly  afflicted  is,  "  What  can 
we  do  ?  How  may  these  plagues  be  averted  ?"  And 
to  this  question  we  are  now,  in  chapter  ii.,  to  hear 
a  reply.  Joel,  who  had  abeady  addressed  himself  to 
the  nation  and  to  its  various  classes,  was  at  last  stung, 
by  his  intolerable  sympathy  with  the  dumb,  innocent 
victims  of  man's  guilt,  to  appeal  directly  to  Jehovah. 
And  now  Jehovah  i-espouds  to  that  appeal. 

Beyond  a  doubt,  it  is  God  who  is  represented  as 
speaking  from  the  12th  verse  of  this  chapter  onward, 
and  probably  we  are  to  take  Him  as  the  speaker  from 
the  first  verse.  But,  whether  Jehovah  in  person  or 
Jehovah  tlu'ough  the  prophet  be  the  speaker,  the  lesson 
is  the  same,  viz. ,  that  the  onfe  hope  of  cure  for  the  iUs 
which  afilict  the  State  lies  m  repentance,  humiliation, 
and  amendment.  A  solemn  assembly  is  to  be  con- 
vened, in  which  the  people  are  to  humble  themselves 
under  the  mighty  hand  of  God,  and  to  entreat  the 
succom-s  of  Divine  mercy.  The  formal  summons  to 
this  assembly  is  given  in  ver.  1,  and  repeated  with  em- 
phasis in  vs.  12 — 17.  And  between  tliese  two  com- 
mands, as  a  reason  for  obedience  to  them,  we  have  stUl 
another  graphic  description  of  the  greater  plague  of 
the  time,  that  of  the  locusts  and  of  its  terrible  results 
(cliap.  ii.  2—11). 

The  priests  are  to  blow  their  silver  trumpets  from 
Zion,  to  soimd  a  note  of  alarm  on  the  holy  moimtain, 
the  hiU  consecrated  by  the  Temple ;  and  as  the  clear 
imperative  tones  ring  through  the  narrow  streets  of 
the  city,  "  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  land "  are  to 
'•tremble,"  i.e.,  as  the  Hebrew  verb  implies,  they  are 
to  start  up  from  the  sullen  indifference,  the  hopeless 
apathy  of  despair:  they  are  to  recognise  the  spiritual 
omens  that  are  abroad,  to  read  in  the  troubles  of  tho 
time  portents  of  the  approacliiug  "  day  of  Jehovah,"  to 
know  that  it  was  near ;  nay,  as  aU  judgments  are  part 


70 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


of  that  divmo  Day  of  Judgment,  to  kuow  that  it  has 
already  begun.     It  is — 

•*  A  day  of  darkness  and  gloom, 
A  day  of  clouds,  and  of  cloudy  night." 

This  phrase  we  often  meet  again  in  later  Scriptures. 
Indeed,  it  became  "  a  standing  form  "  with  the  prophets, 
and  was  used  in  most  of  their  descriptions  of  the  Day 
of  Judgment.  And,  therefore,  it  is  weU  to  note  that 
it  was  suggested  to  Joel  by  the  natiu-al  phenomena 
which  filled  his  thoughts  as  he  wi-oto.  It  had  its 
origin  in  the  darkness  wluch  obscured  the  land,  as  the 
fliglits  of  locusts  moved  over  it,  intercepting  the  light 
of  the  sun ;  and  it  was  commended  by  its  native  pro- 
priety to  the  prophets  who  came  after  him.  For  the 
phrase,  brief  as  it  is,  contains  four  words,  almost 
synonymous,  expressive  of  darkness,  and  thus  gives  a 
very  strong  expression  to  the  obscurity  wliich  encom- 
passes all  Divine  judgments  to  moi'tal  eyes.  We  know 
that  even  now  we  are  being  tried  and  judged;  that,  as 


St.  Paul  phrases  it,'  wo  are  "  ah-eady  made  manifest 
unto  God."  Wo  know  that  .all  the  great  calamities  and 
all  the  great  blessiugs  which  befall  men  are,  iu  some 
sort.  Divine  judgments.  Wo  believe  that  "we  must 
all  be  made  manifest  before  the  judgment-seat  of 
Christ;''-  that  a  day  is  coming  in  which  "wo  shall 
each  receive  the  things  done  in  the  body,  according  to 
that  ho  did,  whether  good  or  bad."  But  whether  we 
consider  the  judgment  through  which  we  pass  now,  or 
the  judgment  we  must  meet  when  we  leave  the  body, 
it  is  alike  ivi'apjjed  in  a  mystery  we  cannot  penetrate. 
We  may  hold  fast  to  the  rule  that,  in  the  end,  good 
will  come  to  tlie  good,  and  evil  to  the  eril ;  but  how 
that  rule  is  worked  out  and  axjpliod,  either  iu  time  or 
in  eternity,  this  is  beyond  our  reach.  To  us,  as  to 
Joel,  the  judgment  of  God  is  a  profound  mystery,  the 
Day  of  the  Lord  is  "  a  day  of  darkness  and  obscurity, 
a  day  of  clouds  and  of  cloudy  night." 


>2Cor.v.  11. 


2  Ibid.  V.  10. 


MUSIC    OF   THE    BIBLE. 

ET   JOHN   STAINEB,   II.A.,   MUS.   D.,    MAGDALEN   COLLEGE,   OXPOED ;   ORGANIST   OP  ST.   PAUL'S   CATHEDRAL. 

WIND   ENSTEUMENTS   {cmtinued). 


MACHOL,   OB   MAHHOL. 

,HIS  word  is  found  in  several  passages 
of  Holy  Scriptiu-e  associated  with  the 
tqph  or  timbrel.  In  the  Authorised 
Version  it  is  almost  always  rendered 
by  "  dances  "  or  "dancing:  " — "And  Miriam  the  pro- 
phetess, the  sister  of  Aaron,  took  a  timbrel  in  her 
hand;  and  all  the  women  went  out  after  her  with 
timbrels  and  with  dances "'  (Exod.  xv.  20) ;  and  again, 
"  Jephthah  came  to  Mizpeh  unto  his  house,  and,  behold, 
his  daugliter  came  out  to  meet  him  with  timbrels 
and  with  dances."  In  thus  rendering  machol,  our 
translators  have  simply  followed  the  Septuagint,  in 
which  the  corresponding  expression  is  in  Tufi-ravois  icai 
xopoh ;  the  same  too  iu  the  Vulgate,  "  cum  tympauis  ot 
choris."  The  German,  like  our  own  version,  foUowstho 
Septuiigint — "  mit  Pauken  uud  Beigen,"  that  is,  with 
"  drums  and  chain-dauees,''  dances  ivith  linked  hands. 
Although  in  modern  German  orchestral  scores  pauken 
signifies  "  kettledrums,"  it  must  not  be  supposed  that 
more  is  here  meant  than  a  common  timbrel.  That 
dances  took  place  on  these  and  many  other  occasions  in 
which  timbrels  were  used  there  can  be  no  doubt.  But 
may  not  machol  signify  a  small  flute  ?  If  so,  the  ex- 
pression with  toph  and  machol  would  exactly  correspond 
to  om-  old  English  pipe  and  tahor,  to  the  sounds  of 
which  instruments  many  a  rustic  dance  was  merrily 
footed.  They  are  stdl  the  conunon  accompaniment  of 
village  festivities  in  many  parts  of  Em-ope.  In  some  of 
thePyrenean  districts  may  be  seen  gathered  on  the  grceu, 
roimd  which  their  homesteads  are  clustered,  the  gaily 
attired  villagers  dancmg  to  the  sounds  of  a  pipe  wliich 
the  seated  musician  plays  with  his  left  hand,  while  with 


his  right  hand  he  beats  a  sort  of  tambour,  consisting  of 
six  strings  stretched  across  a  resonance-box,  which  rests 
on  his  knees. 

The  arguments  in  favour  of  the  theory  that  machol 
is  a  flute,  are  founded  on  the  fact  that  many  authors, 
amongst  them  Pfeifer,  consider  the  word  itscM  to  be 
derived  from  the  same  root  as  chalil,  signifying,  as 
before  mentioned,  "bored  through;"  and  also,  that  in 
the  Syi'iac  version  the  word  is  translated  by  rephaah, 
which  is  the  name  of  a  flute  still  to  be  found  in  Syi-ia. 
On  the  other  hand,  some  authors  have  traced  chalil  to 
a  root  hhalal,  "  to  dance ;  "  and,  of  course,  if  this  be  a 
correct  derivation,  machol  would  more  naturally  signify 
a  dance  than  a  flute.  Saalchiitz  is  of  opinion  that  it 
implies  a  combination  of  music,  poetry,  and  dancing, 
and  is  not  the  name  of  any  special  musical  instrument. 
Much  can  be  said  in  favour  of  this  view.  We  have 
words  in  our  own  language  which  have  a  very  simiUr 
meaning  :  for  instance,  roundelay,  which  may  be  taken 
as  a  song,  a  danco,  or  a  piece  of  poetry.  But  there 
seems  to  be  but  little  necessity  for  forcing  such  a  mixed 
meaning  from  the  word  machol.  To  say  that  on  a 
joyous  occasion  men  or  women  went  forth  with  "  pipe 
and  tabret,"  is  enough  to  imply  that  they  danced ;  and 
therefore,  if  our  translators  would  have  more  properly 
rendered  machol  by  a  "pipe,"  they  have  none  the  less 
conveyed  the  real  sense  of  the  context  by  rendering  it 
"  dancing."  But  by  assimiing  the  former  of  these  in- 
terpretations much  force  is  given  to  that  beautiful 
passage  iu  the  Book  of  Lamentations  (v.  15) :  "  The 
joy  of  our  heart  is  ceased  ;  our  pipe  is  turned  into 
mourning;"  as  if  the  prophet  had  said,  "The  meriy  pipe 
which  once  did  lead  the  dance,  has  now  given  place  to 


MUSIC   OP  THE  BIBLE. 


71 


that  whose  plaintive  notes  recall  our  saddest  griefs." 
As  the  Psalmist  in  his  joy  uses  just  the  converse  of  this 
expression,  in  Ps.  xxx.  11,  "  Thou  hast  turned  for  me 
my  mourning  iuto  dancing  (machol)  :  thou  hast  put  off 
my  sackcloth,  and  girded  mo  with  gladness,"  so  does 
the  prophet  himself,  joying  over  the  restoration  of 
Israel  (,Jer.  xxxi.  4  and  13).  The  only  other  passage 
in  which  the  Psalmist  uses  the  word  is  in  Ps.  cl.  4, 
"  Praise  him  with  the  timbrel  and  dance."  It  was  the 
noise  of  the  pipe  and  tabrot  which  Moses  heard  as  he 
descended  the  holy  mount  to  find  the  people,  whom 
Jehovah  had  but  just  highly  honoiu-od  by  the  gi\Ting  of 
the  Law,  dancing  round  a  golden  calf.  We  may,  then, 
for  two  reasons,  believe  the  machol  to  have  been  a  flute 
used  specially  for  dancing,  first,  because  it  is  higlily 
probable  that  an  instrument  was  used  in  conjunction 
with  the  tabret ;  and  next,  because  such  a  supposition 
does  not  exclude  the  idea  of  dancing,  and  in  no  case 
seems  to  do  violence  to  the  text. 

MAHALATH,  OK  MACHALATH. 
A  word  allied  both  to  chalil  and  machol  occurs  in 
the  title  of  two  Psalms  (liii.  and  Ixxxviii.),  the  former 
being  inscribed  to  the  "  chief  musician  upon  Mahalath," 
the  latter  to  the  "  chief  musician  upon  Mahalath 
Leannoth."  Each  of  these  is  called  also  a  "  MaschU," 
a.  title  generally  thought  to  designate  a  poem  of  a 
moral  or  typical  import.  "  Sing  ye  a  maschil  with 
the  understanding,"  sings  the  Psalmist  in  Ps.  xlvii.  7. 
Many  learned  writers  trace  mahalath  to  the  same 
root  as  chalil  ("  perforated,"  "  bored  ").  If  a  musical 
direction  then,  this  word  clearly  points  out  the  class  of 
instruments  which  is  to  accompany  the  singers  of  the 
psahn — namely,  chalil.  The  addition  leannoth,  from 
the  fact  that  it  means  "  to  answer,"  most  probably  is 
a  special  order  for  an  antiphonal  treatment.  Some 
authors  have,  in  the  case  of  these  two  psalms,  as 
with  regard  to  many  others,  considered  these  and  other 
titular  words  as  the  names  of  special  tunes.  Gesenius 
considers  mahalath  to  mean  a  "  lute."  If  this  be  so,  it 
would  stUl  be  a  musical  direction,  but  would  refer  to 
stringed  instead  of  wind  instruments. 

HTIGGAB,   OITGAB  OK   UGAB. 

Having  spoken  of  the  pipe,  and  of  the  possibility 
that  the  Hebrews  knew  of  the  double  jiipe,  we  natu- 
rally come  to  those  instruments  which  place  a  number 
of  pipes  under  the  control  of  the  performer.  And 
first  it  shoidd  bo  remarked  that  there  is  an  essential 
difference  between  the  flute  a  bee,  or  flute  ivith  a 
beak,  and  the  flauto  traverse,  which  it  was  unnecessary 
to  point  out  when  these  instruments  were  previously 
mentioned.  It  is  this.  In  the  former  class,  the  per- 
former has  only  to  blow  into  the  end,  and  the  soimd  is 
produced  by  the  air  being  led  by  the  form  of  the  in- 
terior against  the  sharp  edge  termed  the  upper  lip.  In 
the_/JftM<o  tra.verso  (now  the  common  flute),  the  player 
has  himself,  by  adjusting  the  form  of  his  lips,  to  force 
the  air  against  the  edge  of  one  of  the  holes,  which  he 
thus  temporarily  makes  iuto  an  upper  lip.  By  com- 
paring a  penny  whistle  with  a  common  bandsman's-fife, 


this  difference  of  their  construction  will  be  voiy  ap- 
parent. In  the  former,  a  piece  of  wood  placed  in  the 
mouth-piece  guides  the  column  of  air  to  the  opening, 
where  it  is  compelled  to  pass  the  under  lip  (the  lower 
edge  of  the  opening),  so  as  to  strike  against  the 
upper  lip ;  but  in  the  latter  nothing  of  the  sort  is 
provided,  the  player  making  his  mouth  the  under  lip, 
and,  as  Ix^foro  said,  the  side  of  the  hole  the  upper  lip. 
It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  two  classes  of  "manifold- 
l^ipes  "  can  exist,  the  one  corresponding  to  a  collec- 
tion of  flauti  traversi,  the  other  to  a  collection  of 
flutes  d  hec. 

Now,  if  we  take  any  piece  of  a  tube  open  at  both 
ends,  and  blow  against  the  sliarp  edge  imtil  a  musical 
sound  is  produced,  we  are  acting  exactly  on  the  same 
principles  as  does  the  player  ou  the  flauto  traverso. 
And  if  now  we  place  our  hand  so  as  to  close  the  other 
end  of  the  tube,  the  pitch  wiU  immediately  fall  to  an. 
octave  lower  than  it  was  before,  for  physical  reasons 
which  need  not  be  entered  into  here.  In  both  cases, 
whether  the  tube  is  open  or  closed,  we  are  blowing  and 
producing  the  sound  on  the  same  principles. 

A  collection  of  tubes  of  different  sizes  stopped  at 
one  end,  and  blown  into  at  the  other  as  above  described, 
forms  the  musical  instrument  known  as  Pan's-pipes,  in 
the  Greek  syrinx  (irOpiyl,),  Lat.  fistula.  Whereas  a  col- 
lection of  flutes  a  hec  of  different  sizes  placed  in  a 
series  of  holes  in  a  box,  tlu-ough  which  the  air  can  be 
mechanically  forced,  constitutes  what  has  for  centuries 
been  distinctively  called  the  organ.  This  difference 
between  these  two  instruments — namely,  that  the  syrinx 
is  blown  on  the  same  principle  as  the  flauto  traverso, 
while  the  organ-pipes  are  made  to  speak,  by  their  being 
constructed  like  flutes  a  bee — is  of  the  more  importance, 
because  it  is  a  commonly  received  notion  that  the  syrinx 
is  the  parent  of  the  organ.  Unquestionalily,  as  regards 
antiquity,  the  former  instrument  must  bo  aUowod  to 
have  priority,  but  this  does  not  necessarily  prove  any 
connection  between  the  two. 

From  what  has  been  said,  it  will  be  easily  imagined 
that  a  Pan's-pipe  blown  by  mechanical  means  would 
really  be  a  very  scientific  instrument ;  but  on  the  other 
hand,  when  flutes  a  bee  were  once  commonly  used,  it 
would  not  require  any  special  ingenuity  or  invention  to 
suggest  that  several  should  bo  placed  in  a  row  over  a 
box,  and  be  blown  ono  after  another  from  the  same 
supply  of  wind.  Of  course,  as  each  organ-pipe  was 
only  required  to  give  ono  sound,  there  would  be  no 
necessity  for  finger-holes  being  made  in  it.  Again,  it 
must  have  been  very  easily  discovered  that  pipes  con- 
taining reeds  c  ould  bo  as  easily  made  to  speak  over  a 
wind-box  as  flue-pipes.  The  universahty  of  the  Pan's- 
pipe  is  as  remarkable  as  its  antiquity.  To  find  a  nation 
where  it  is  not  in  use  is  to  find  a  remarkable  exception. 
In  an  ancient  Peni'vian  tomb  a  syrinx  was  discovered 
and  procured  by  General  Paroissen.  A  plaster  cast  of 
this  interesting  relic  was  lent  for  esliibition  at  South 
Kensington  Museum  in  1872,  by  Professor  Oakeley  of 
Eduiburgh,  by  whose  kind  permission  tho  engraving 
(Fig.  57)  is  given. 


72 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


The  description  of  the  original,  as  given  in  the  cata- 
logue, is  as  follows  : — "  It  is  made  of  a  greenish  stone, 
which  is  a  species  of  talc.  Four  of  its  tubes  have 
small  lateral  finger-holes,  which,  when  closed,  lower  the 
pitch  a  semitone."  The  Inca  Peruvians  caUed  the 
eyi'inx  Imayra-puhura.  The  British  Museum  possesses 
one  of  these,  consisting  of  fourteen  pipes.  The 
example  shown  in  Fig.  58  has 
heen  selected  in  order  to  show 
how  httle  even  .savage  nations 
have  departed  from  the  earUest 
known  classical  form  of  the  in- 
strument. It  represents  the 
syrinx  from  the  island  of  Tanna. 
New  Hebrides.  All  must  be  so 
familiar  with  the  many  repre- 
sentations of  Pan  playing  his 
river-reed  pipes,  that  it  is  quite 
unnecessary  to  give  an  ilhistra- 
tion  of  one  of  them.  It  should 
be  said,  however,  that  the  com- 
monest number  of  reeds  used 
among  the  ancients  was  seven, 


Him  with  the  minnim  and  ugab."  Its  mention  here 
in  antithesis  to  a  coUectivo  name  for  stringed  instru- 
ments surely  points  to  the  fact  of  its  being  a  more  im- 
portant instrument  than  a  few  river  reeds  fixed  together 
with  wax !  Let  us  not  forget  that  we  have  but  one 
and  the  same  name  for  the  single  row  of  about  fifty 
pipes,  placed,  perhaps,  in  a  little  room,  and  the  mighty 
instrument  of  5,000  pipes,  occu- 
pying as  much  space  as  an 
ordinary  dwelling  -  house,  and. 
requiring  the  daily  attention  of 
a  quahfied  workman  to  keep  its 
marvellous-  complications  pro- 
perly adjusted.  Each  is  an 
organ.  May  it  not  have  been 
the  case  that  the  ugab,  which 
in  Gen.  iv.  21  is  mentioned  as 
the  simply  -  constructed  toind- 
instrument,  in  contrast  to  the 
simple  sfraijrcd-instrument,  the 
hinnor,  was  a  greatly  inferior 
instrument  to  that  which  in  Ps. 
cl.    (before   quoted)   is  thought 


Fig.  58. 


«=> 


Fig.  60. 

hut  eight  or  nine  or  even  more  are  occasionally  found. 
Was  the  ugab  a  syrinx  or  an  organ  ?  As  the  former 
seems  to  have  been  the  more  ancient  of  the  two,  and  as 
ugah  is  mcluded  in  the  very  first  allusion  to  musical 
instnmients  in  the  Bible,  it  would  seem  reasonable  to 
say  at  once  that  it  was  a  syrinx,  especially  as  this 
instnmieut  was,  and  is  to  this  day,  commonly  met  with 
in  various  parts  of  Asia.  Yet  it  would  indeed  bo 
strange  i£  such  im  instrument  were  selected  for  use 
in  Divine  worship;  and  that  the  ugab  was  so  used  is 
proved  beyond  a  doubt  by  its  mention  in  Ps.  cl.,  "  Praise 


Fig.  61. 

I  worthy  of  mention  by  the  side  of  a  term  for  the  whole 
string-power  of  Divine  worship  ? 

Even  if  it  be  msisted  that  the  first-mentioned  ugah 

'  was  nothing  more  than   a   syrinx,  are    we,   therefore, 

^  forbidden  to  believe  that  the  mere  name  might  have 

I  been  retained  while  the  instrument  itself  was  gradually 

undergoing  such  alterations   and   improvements   as  to 

render  it  in  time  a  veritable  organ  ?    That  men's  minds 

have  from  the  earliest  time  striven  to  find  out  iu  what 

I  way  many  pipes  could  be  brought  under  the  control  of 

!  a  single  player,  there  are  indubitable  x>roofs.  Acassagein 


MUSIC    OF    THE    BIBLE. 


73 


the  Talmud,  describing  an  instnunent  called  a  magrepha, 
which  was  Siiid  to  be  used  in  the  Temple,  is  exceedingly 
interesting.  This  oi^an,  for  it  is  entitled  to  the  name, 
had  a  wind-chest  containing  ten  holes,  each  communi- 
cating with  ten  pipes;    it    therefore   was   capable   of 


Let  us  now  trace  the  various  stages  through  which  the 
organ  has  passed,  while  developing  from  what  wo  should 
now  consider  a  toy,  to  that  noble  instrument  wliich 
makes  our  beautiful  cathedrals  and  churches  ring  again 
with  sweet  sounds,  and  whose  duty  it  is  to  guide  and 


Tig.  62. 


producing  100  sounds.  These  were  brought  under  the 
control  of  the  player  by  means  of  a  clavier,  or  key- 
board. Its  tones  were  said  to  be  audible  at  a  very 
great  distance. 

Supposing  that  the  whole  of  this  account  is  apocryphal, 
it  still  shows  that  in  the  second  centuiy  such  an  instru- 
ment was  not  only  considered  possible,  but  believed, 
rightly  or  wrongly,  to  have  actually  existed  at  some 
previous  period. 


support  the  combined  voices  of  many  hundreds,  or  it 
may  be,  thousands  of  hearty  hymn-singers. 

Assuming  that  a  series  of  wood  or  metjil  jhdes  a  bee 
had  been  constructed  so  as  to  give  in  succession  the 
notes  of  a  scale,  and  also  that  the  wind-chest  was 
pierced  -with  liolcs  to  receive  them,  the  first  thing  re- 
quired by  the  player  would  be  a  contrivance  for  allow- 
ing him  to  make  any  one  he  wished  speak  separately. 
As  might  bo  supposed,  the  simplest  method  of  doing 


74 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


this  is  to  place  little  slips  of  wood  in  such  a  positioa  that 
they  can  cither  be  pushed  under  the  foot  of  the  pipe,  and 
so  stop  the  current  of  air  from  passing  into  it,  or  be 
palled  out  so  as  to  admit  the  air. 

Fig.  59  exhibits  this  most  simple  piece  of  mechanism, 
and  very  possibly  shows  what  the  ugah  might  have  been 
at  some  period  of  its  existence.  A  pipe  at  the  side  of 
the  wind-chest  points  out  the  fact  that  the  commonest 
bellows  of  tho  period  was  thought  capable  of  supplying 
the  required  current  of  air.  The  whole  construction  is 
in  a  more  advanced  state  in  the  instrument  depicted  in 
Fig.  (jO.  Not  only  are  its  pipes  more  numerous,  but 
it  has  bellows  specially  adapted  to  its  requirements. 
While  one  bellows  is  being  replenished,  the  other  is 
stiU  able  to  support  the  sounds,  so  there  is  no  awkward 
pause  while  the  instrument  is  taking  breath. 

In  the  next  illustration  (Fig.  61),  which  is  from  a 
MS.  Psalter  of  Eadwine,  in  the  library  of  Trinity 
CoUego,  Cambridge,  tho  organ  has  begun  to  assume  a 
more  dignified  form.  There  is  an  attempt  at  an  orna- 
mental case,  and  judging  from  the  number  of  blowers 


required,  the  music  must  have  beenrapid, or  the  sounds 
powerful. 

As  soon  as  these  instruments  became  large  and  not 
easily  movable,  tho  terms  positive  and  portative  oi-gan 
came  into  existence ;  the  former  being  an  instrument 
which,  owing  to  its  size,  had  to  remain  stationary ; 
the  latter  one  that  could  be  carried  about.  In  the  six- 
teenth century,  these  portable  organs  were  called  regals, 
the  exact  derivation  of  which  is  somewhat  uncertain. 
They  formed  a  very  important  element  in  ecclesiastical 
processions,  as  their  cases  were  frequently  elegantly 
decorated.  Fig.  62  is  an  illustration  of  a  German 
organ  positive  of  the  sixteenth  century,  tho  shutters  of 
which  are  also  elaborately  painted.  This  instniment 
has  iron  handles,  by  which  it  can  be  moved,  but  it  is 
too  large  to  have  been  of  tho  portative  class.  The 
bellows,  which  are  behind  it,  and  so  not  seen  in  tho 
figure,  are  very  similar  both  in  position  and  shape  to 
those  seen  in  Fig.  60. 

Some  further  remarks  on  ancient  organs  must  bo 
reserved  for  our  next  chapter. 


THE    BOOKS    OF    THE    OLD    TESTAMENT. 

JEEE  MIAH. 

BY    THE    VBBT    KEY.    K.    PAYNE    SMITH,    D.D.,    DEAN    OF    OANTEKBURY. 


;HB  character  of  Jeremiah  is  in  many 
respects  the  exact  opposite  of  that  of 
Isaiah.  Possessed  of  no  great  literary 
power,  writing  in  a  timid,  hesitating  style, 
yet  often  with  a  plaintive  sweetness ;  borrowing  con- 
stantly the  thoughts  and  even  the  very  words  of  others, 
as  if  glad  to  have  their  authority  in  his  support ;  melan- 
choly in  temperament,  brooding  constantly  on  the  diffi- 
culties in  his  path,  till  ho  even  cursed  the  hour  of  his 
birth,  he  yet  in  his  moral  qualities  rises  to  the  veiy 
highest  elevation,  and  is  not  unworthy  of  the  place  he 
held  in  tho  estimation  of  tho  Jews,  who  regarded  him 
as  tho  chief  of  all  the  prophets. 

There  is  even  in  his  call  to  his  office  this  same  mix- 
ture of  strength  and  weakness.  There  is  no  glorious 
vision  as  in  Isaiah's  case :  notliing  of  that  awful  and 
superhuman  grandeur  which  characterises  Ezekiel's 
summons  to  the  prophetic  dignity.  The  images  are 
tame  and  simple ;  but  there  is  a  strength  of  purpose 
indicated  by  tliem  and  a  decisiveness  in  action,  which 
were  tlie  real  secret  of  Jeremiah's  strength.  In  ago 
but  a  lad,  probably  jnst  arrived  at  raanliood — for  forty 
years  of  active  labour  were  before  him,  and  finally, 
as  is  too  probable,  a  martyr's  death — called  tlius  in  tho 
early  beauty  of  youth,  he  sees  first  a  branch  of  an 
almond-tree  (cliap.  i.  11),  and  next  a  pot  boiling  upon  a 
fire  of  thorns,  and  just  ready  to  overturn  from  the  un- 
equal consumption  of  tho  blazing  fuel.  But  the  words 
that  accompany  these  ordinary  images  are  of  startling 
strength.  Jeremiah  is  set  over  kingdoms  and  nations 
as  God's  deputy  on  earth,  with  authority  to  "  root  out. 


and  to  pidl  down,  and  to  destroy,  and  to  throw  down, 
and  to  Iniild,  and  to  plant  "  (chap.  i.  10)  :  and  because  in 
tho  execution  of  these  awful  powers  he  would  have  to 
confront  the  whole  land,  with  its  king,  its  princes  and 
people,  God  promises  to  make  him  fii-m  and  defiant  as 
a  defenced  city,  and  an  iron  pOIar,  and  brazen  walls. 
Young  in  years,  shy  in  character,  despondent  in -temper, 
God  yet  gives  him  a  commission  of  wider  and  fuller 
authority  than  any  ever  conferred  before,  except  it  be 
that  of  Moses.  But  even  to  Moses  the  commission 
was  to  build  up  and  form  the  Jewish  nation :  Jeremiah's 
is  one  chiefly  of  condemnation  and  destruction.  Four 
verbs  of  ruin  come  fu-st  in  his  instructions,  and  then 
two  only  of  restoration.  For  such  a  commission  no- 
thing less  seems  necessary  than  the  energy  and  self- 
devotion  of  a  Paul ;  but  Jeremiah  proved  not  unworthy 
of  it.  No  man  ever  felt  diificidtios  more :  no  man  ever 
faced  them  with  braver  resolution,  or  more  unflinchingly 
did  his  duty. 

We  have  in  tho  15th  chapter  a  deeply  interesting 
picture  of  Jeremiah's  mental  state.  He  tells  us  thero 
that  when  first  appointed  prophet,  he  received  his  com- 
mission with  joy  :  "  Thy  words  were  found,  and  I  did  eat 
them  ;  and  thy  word  was  unto  me  tho  joy  and  rejoicing 
of  mine  heart:  for  thy  name  is  called  upon  me,  0  Jeho- 
vah, God  of  hosts."  There  was  nothing  in  his  commis- 
sion to  warn  him  that  all  his  efforts  would  apparently 
be  in  vain,  as  had  been  the  case  with  tho  more  sauguino 
Isaiah.  For  Jeremiah  there  was  a  struggle,  hard  and 
fierce,  Init  ^vith  the  promise  that  his  enemies  should  not 
prevail.     And  so  he  entered  with  fii'm   hopo  on  his 


JEREMIAH. 


75 


duties,  and  readily  gave  wp,  as  was  a  prophet's  duty,  the 
ordinary  pleasures  of  life.  "  I  sat  uot  in  the  assembly 
of  the  meriy-makers,  nor  rejoiced  ;  I  sat  alone  because 
of  thy  hand :  for  thou  hast  filled  mo  with  indignation." 
A  righteous  zeal  for  God  had  taken  full  possession  of 
him,  and  Ids  one  thought  was  to  vindicate  Jehovah's 
honour  agaiust  tho  sinful  generation  among  whom  he 
had  been  placed.  This  state  of  feeling  may  have  lasted 
more  or  less  duiing  the  eighteen  years  of  his  prophetic 
career  under  Josiah;  and  then  followed  the  severer 
struggle  and  sharper  contest  under  the  tyrant  Jehoiakim, 
and  with  it  disappointment.  He  laboured,  and  none 
heeded  him.  In  spite  of  all  his  efforts  tilings  grew 
worse  and  worse:  opposition  he  could  have  endured, 
but  there  Was  something  far  harder  to  boar — derision 
and  contempt ;  and  bitterly  he  accuses  God  of  betray- 
ing him.  '•  Why  is  my  pain  perpetual,  and  my  wound 
incurable,  which  rofuseth  to  be  healed  ?  wilt  thou  bo 
altosrether  as  a  Uar  unto  me,  and  as  waters  that 
fail  ?  "  Tho  Divine  word  seemed  to  him  as  the  mirage  of 
the  desert,  over  promising  cool  refreshment,  ever  en- 
couraging to  new  exertions,  ever  at  last  making  only 
tenfold  more  cruel  the  agonies  of  thirst. 

Wicked  as  was  such  accusation  of  God,  it  yet  brought 
no  condemnation.  It  was  the  struggle  of  a  strong  but 
melancholy  nature,  trying  to  cast  oif  the  Divine  yoke, 
and  yet  doing  so  with  entire  and  real  trust  and  devotion 
to  God.  There  was  nothing  of  disobedience  in  it :  in 
spite  of  others,  and  what  was  far  harder,  in  spite  of 
himself,  Jeremiah  was  determined  to  do  his  duty.  And 
so  his  loving  Master  sought  rather  to  abate  the  agony 
of  his  feelings,  and  calm  down  the  tempest  of  his  soul, 
by  again  promising  liim  that  he  should  have  strength 
to  bear  all  that  was  laid  upon  him :  "  I  will  make  thee 
unto  this  people  a  fenced  brazen  waU :  and  they  shall 
fight  against  thee,  but  they  sliall  not  prevail  against 
thee  "  (chap.  xv.  20). 

And  so  again  when  Pashur,  the  deputy  high-priest, 
scourged  the  prophet,  and  put  him  into  the  stocks,  tho 
same  tempest  of  excited  feelings  overpowers  him.  The 
burden  of  his  cry  again  is,  that  God  has  deceived  him 
(chap.  XX.  7).  There  has  been  no  fruit  of  his  labours.  Ho 
speaks,  but  only  to  bo  mocked  and  derided.  All  around 
him  he  saw  nothing  but  contempt  joined  to  fierce  anger 
at  the  poUtical  course  he  was  taking.  The  word  con- 
stantly in  his  mouth — his  motto  as  it  were — was  Magor- 
missabib,  "  fear  on  every  side."  And  again  God  comforts 
him ;  but  tliough  ho  pi-aises  Jehovah  for  his  deliverance, 
nevertheless  tho  chapter  ends  with  bitter  execrations 
on  the  day  wherein  ho  was  bonx  (taken  from  Job  iii.). 
He  wishes  that  he  had  been  slain  at  his  birth,  or  that 
his  mother  had  been  his  grave.  "  Wherefore,"  he  asks 
indignantly,  "came  I  forth  out  of  the  womb  to  see 
labour  and  sorrow,  that  my  days  should  be  consumed 
with  shame?" 

Now  what  was  there  to  justify  these  excited  feelings? 
Or,  as  no  doubt  thoy  were  sinful,  what  was  there  to  call 
them  forth  and  explain  their  intensity  p 

Pkiuly  Jeremiah  was  placed  in  a  position  of  extra- 
ordinary difficulty.     His  office  was  to  condemn  in  the 


most  emphatic  manner  the  whole  public  policy  of  his 
country.  When  Isaiah  had  to  oppose  Ahaz,  it  was  the  . 
king's  personal  conduct  which  called  forth  reproof, 
while  as  regarded  the  struggle  against  tho  two  con- 
federate kings,  Isaiah  was  entii-ely  on  his  side,  and  could 
promise  him  deliverance.  But  no  sooner  was  good  King 
Josiah  dead,  than  Jeremiah's  real  work  began.  Till 
that  time  he  had  been  but  preparing  for  his  office ;  but 
no  sooner  was  Jehoiakim  on  the  thi'one,  than  he  had  to 
denounce,  and  struggle  against,  and  seek  in  every  way 
to  render  void  the  whole  policy  of  the  king  and  of  tho 
largo  mass  of  the  nobles  and  people.  The  personal 
character  of  the  king  he  does  not  spare.  He  represents 
him  as  a  tyrant  and  oppressor ;  as  one  who,  indifferent 
to  the  misery  of  the  jieople,  in  the  midst  of  the  general 
rmn,  had  the  heart  to  build  for  himself  magnificent 
palaces  by  forced  labour  ;  with  earnest  indignation  ho 
contrasts  the  equity  and  justice  of  his  father's  reign 
with  his  iniquity.  "  Thine  eyes  and  thine  heart  are 
not  but  for  thy  covetousnoss,  and  for  to  shed  innocent 
blood,  and  for  oppression,  and  for  violence,  to  do  it." 
And  therefore  he  predicts  the  utter  failure  and  extinc- 
tion of  his  seed,  and  that  he  should  die  a  dishonourable 
death,  and  his  body  be  cast  into  a  ditch  without  burial 
in  the  fields  about  Jerusalem  (chap.  xxii.  13 — 19).  It 
was  no  slight  matter  thus  to  speak  of  a  monarch  who 
was  as  fierce  and  despotic  as  he  was  bad,  and  one  of 
whose  first  acts  had  been  to  send  men  to  Egypt  to 
arrest  there  the  prophet  Urijah,  and  bring  him  to  Jeru- 
salem, and  put  him  to  death  (chap.  xxvi.  20 — 23). 

But  it  was  not  the  fear  of  death  which  preyed  so 
heavily  on  Jeremiah's  mind ;  it  was  the  general  indig- 
nation felt  against  him  by  the  great  mass  of  the  people. 
A  small  party  among  the  princes,  headed  by  Aliikam, 
the  son  of  Shaphan,  approved  of  his  conduct,  but  all 
the  rest  condemned  it  bitterly.  It  was  unpatriotic, 
mean,  degrading  to  his  country.  Prophets  before  had 
even  urged  the  people  to  resistance.  They  had  said, 
"  Trust  in  Jehovah,  and  he  will  deliver  you  from  your 
enemies."  But  Jeremiah  wanted  king  and  people  to 
remain  quiet  under  the  Babylonian  yoke  ;  while  they 
were  entirely  for  rebellion,  and  looked  to  an  alliance 
with  Egypt  as  the  panacea  for  all  their  troubles. 

Now  let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  the  political  state  of 
things  when  Jeremiah  gave  this  advice.  Babylon  and 
Egypt  were  the  two  gi-eat  world-powers  at  that  time,  and 
Judffia,  situated  midway  between  them,  oscillated  back- 
wards and  forwards,  inclining  now  to  the  one,  and  then 
to  tho  other,  as  occasion  served.  In  Josiah's  time  the 
struggle  was  undecided,  and  Pharaoh-necho  was  on  his 
march  agaiust  Babylon,  when  Josiah  met  him  as  a  true 
vassal  of  the  Chaldees,  and  in  the  unequal  encounter 
was  defeated  and  slain.  Upon  this  Necho  turned 
aside  from  his  march,  and  having  removed  Jehoahaz, 
who  had  been  put  upon  the  throne  by  the  party  who 
held  Jeremiah's  ^iews,  substituted  for  him  Jehoiakim, 
anotlier  son  of  Josiah,  but  one  opposed  to  his  father's 
policy ;  and  weakened  probably  by  the  losses  sustained 
in  the  battle  of  Megiddo,  withdrew  to  Egyi)t  and  aban- 
doned for  the  present  tho  war  with  Babylon. 


76 


THE  BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


It  was  in  the  fourtli  year  of  the  new  king's  reign 
that  Baruch  wrote,  at  Jeremiah's  mouth,  the  famous  roll 
(chap,  xxxvi.),  in  wliich  the  prophet  showed  how  consis- 
tently the  word  of  Jehovah  had  declared,  even  from  the 
days  of  Josiah,  that  the  king  of  Babylon  would  destroy 
the  land,  and  make  man  and  beast— the  cattle,  that  is, 
used  in  agriculture — to  cease  from  it.  Egypt  could 
not  help ;  if  they  repented  of  their  sins,  Jehovah  could 
and  would  still  save  them;  but  they  must  remain  in 
true  allegiance  to  Babylon  till  the  storm  was  overpast. 
Already  thus  early  Jeremiah's  life  was  in  danger.  "  I 
am  shut  up,"  he  says,  "and  cannot  go  into  the  house  of 
Jehovah ; "  but  the  roll  was  to  be  read  iu  the  audience 
of  all  the  people  coming  to  the  Temple  upon  the  fasting 
day.  The  fame  of  it  reached  Jehoiakim's  ears,  and  the 
roll  was  brought  before  him;  but  when  only  a  small 
part  of  it  had  been  read,  he  cut  it  in  angry  contempt 
into  pieces,  and  burnt  it  in  the  fire.  And  the  roll  would 
have  cost  the  prophet  and  his  scribe  Baruch  theu-  lives, 
had  they  not  hastily  gone  into  a  place  of  hiding  before 
it  was  taken  into  the  king's  presence. 

In  what  way  Jeremiah  regarded  Nebuchadnezzar, 
we  learn  in  chap.  xxv.  He  was  Jehovah's  servant,  his 
viee-gerent  (s<!0  page  38),  to  execute  a  commission  of 
punishment  upon  many  n-ations  for  their  sins.  This 
commission  to  Babylon  was  to  last  for  a  fixed  and 
definite  time,  and  then  Babylon  was  also  to  have  its 
meed  of  chastisement.  Whether  or  not  Judah  would 
be  included  iu  this  commission  depended  upon  the 
people  themselves  ;  by  repentance  they  might  avert  the 
danger,  though  the  prophet  too  well  saw  that  they 
would  not.  But  as  'Egypt  certainly  was  to  be  punished, 
and  as  Nebuchadnezzar  was  executing  Jehovah's  will,  it 
was  in  the  prophet's  view  rebellion  against  God  to 
resist  him,  and  political  madness  to  make  alliance  with 
doomed  Egypt. 

Not  that  the  prophet  loved  Babylon,  or  was  imcon- 
scious  of  the  wickedness  of  the  sanguinary  wars  of 
conquest  which  it  waged.  To  him  as  iso  Habakkuk  it 
was  a  city  buUt  with  blood  (Hab.  ii.  12).  Wliat  he 
wished  was  that  Judah  shoiild  see  that  Nebuchadnezzar 
was  an  instrument  in  God's  hand  to  execute  pimish- 
mont,  and  so  should  yield  to  Jehovah's  will.  As  for 
Babylon,  he  concludes  his  enunciation  of  the  nations  to 
bo  punished  with  her  name.  There  is  a  wine-cup  of 
fury  placed  in  the  prophet's  hand,  and  one  after  another 
he  names  the  long  roll  of  nations  who  must  drink  of  it ; 
and  then  come  the  words,  "  The  king  of  Sheshach  shall 
drink  after  them"  (chap.  xxv.  26). 

Now  we  have  here  a  doubly  interesting  phenomenon. 
First  of  all,  it  is  the  oldest  specimen  of  writing  in 
cipher.  If  the  Hebrew  alphabet  be  written  out  in 
order,  and  then  under  it  you  place  the  letters  in  reverse 
way,  Sheshach  becomes  Babel,  that  is,  Babylon.  No 
doubt  the  word  soon  became  known  to  Jeremiah's 
friends;  for  wo  find  it  again  iu  chap.  li.  41,  iu  a  letter 
donouncing  final  pimishment  on  Babylon,  sent  to  the 
exiles  there  by  the  hand  of  Seraiah,  brother  of  the 
faithful  Baruch,  who  had  to  accompany  Zedekiah  iu  a 
journey  to  Babylon,  in  the  fourth  year  of  his  reign. 


when  he  was  required  to  do  homage  to  Nebuchadnezzar, 
and  Seraiah  had  charge  of  his  accommodation  by  night 
(curiously  rendered  in  oiir  version,  "  Seraiah  was  a 
quiet  prince  ").  This  letter  was  then  to  be  fastened 
to  a  stone,  and  cast  into  the  Euphrates,  that  it  might 
not,  as  a  treasonable  document,  endanger  any  of  the 
exiles,  should  it  be  found  upon  them.  Nevertheless, 
what  we  possess  is  apparently  a  copy  given  to  Baruch 
by  Seraiah,  after  Jeremiah's  death. 

The  cipher  used  by  Jeremiah  is  called  atbash,  a 
name  formed  from  the  two  first  letters  of  the  Hebrew 
alphabet,  and  the  two  Last  placed  in  reverse  order. 
Another  instance  of  it  occurs  in  chap.  li.  1,  where  the 
strange  expression  occurs,  "  those  that  inhabit  the  heart 
of  my  standers  up."  Read,  however,  by  this  cipher, 
the  words  mean  "  those  that  inliabit  Chaldaa."  And 
this  brings  us  to  the  second  pouit.  How  strange  was 
the  position  of  Jeremiah !  Regarded  by  his  own 
countrymen  as  a  traitor,  because  he  steadily  resisted  all 
attempts  at  an  alliance  with  Egypt,  and  bade  them 
submit  tamely,  and  basely  as  they  deemed  it,  to  the 
Chaldaeans ;  and  yet  really  regarding  th,ese  Chaldaeans 
as  the  enemies  of  his  country,  and  prophesying  their 
downfall ;  and  so  left  without  friends,  and  obliged  to 
use  a  cipher,  in  order  to  conceal  from  those  with  whom 
he  had  to  work  the  meaning  of  his  own  words ! 

In  the  fourth  year  of  Jehoiakim,  the  year  famous  for 
Jeremiah's  roU,  the  fearful  drama  of  Divine  chastise- 
ment began  to  nnroU  itself.  Though  temporarily  de- 
layed by  the  battle  of  Megiddo,  yet  the  struggle  be- 
tween the  two  great  powers  was  inevitable,  and  Egypt 
marched  to  its  doom,  seeking  probably  the  encounter 
because  it  saw  how  rapidly  the  power  of  Babylon  was 
growing  under  the  enterprising  hand  of  the  youthful 
Nebuchadnezzar,  and  anxious  that  the  contest  should 
not  take  place  within  its  own  dominions.  The  Eu- 
phrates was  the  limit  of  the  two  realms,  and  at  its 
famous  ford  of  Oircesium,  or  Carchemish,  Pharaoh-necho 
crossed  it,  but  on  the  other  bank  met  with  a  severe 
defeat.  For  the  moment  Nebuchadnezzar  was  in  no 
position  to  follow  up  his  victory ;  for  the  news  reached 
him  of  the  death  of  Nabopolassar  his  father,  and  he 
hun-ied  home  across  the  desert,  with  a  few  light  armed 
troojis,  to  secure  the  vacant  throne.  And  thus  Jud^a 
had  a  breathing  time,  and  Jehoiakim  was  compelled  per- 
force to  adopt  for  the  present  the  policy  of  Jeremiah. 

But  this  brought  no  alleviation  to  the  prophet.  On 
the  contraiy,  the  king  was  so  determined  upon  his 
death,  that  he  had  to  be  in  continual  hiding,  or  in 
exile,  so  that  we  find  no  record  of  any  further  activity 
on  his  part  during  tlie  rest  of  Jehoiakim's  reign.  Ap- 
parently he  fled  to  Babylon,  and  to  this  period  we  may 
therefore  assign  the  prophecy  of  the  linen  girdle  hixlden 
by  the  Euphrates  (chap.  xiii.).  Certainly  we  find  him 
afterwards  kindly  treated  by  the  Babylonians,  who  re- 
garded him,  no  doubt,  as  one  who  had  suffered  for 
their  cause,  and  by  many  of  whom  apparently  he  was 
personally  known. 

But  though  compelled  by  the  defeat  of  the  Egyp- 
tians at  Carchemish  to  become  a  vassal  to  Babylon,  yet 


THE    POETRY    OF    THE    BIBLE. 


77 


Jehoiakim  seems  to  have  spent  liis  time  in  continual 
plots,  and  finally  reboDed;  hoping,  perhaps,  as  Nebu- 
chadnezzar was  engaged  in  distant  wars,  to  attain  to 
indepondonee.  But  the  Chaldean  king,  besides  troops 
of  his  own  soldieiy,  sent  against  him  bauds  of  Sjriiins, 
and  Moabites,  and  Ammonites,  who  were  now  all  of 
them,  on  the  result  of  the  battle  of  Cireesium,  incoii)o- 
rated  into  his  cmpu'o  (2  Kings  xxiv.  1,  2,  7).  To  add 
to  liis  distress,  tlie  land  was  desolated  by  the  teiTi))le 
dearth  descrilied  in  Jer.  xiv. ;  and  at  length,  in  the 
eleventh  year  of  his  reign,  a  regular  army  advanced  upon 
Jerusalem.  But  before  it  reached  the  city,  whether 
by  a  conspiracy  or  sudden  violeuco,  Jehoiakim,  by  the 
usual  fate  of  tyi-iints,  feU  ;  and  so  hated  was  he,  that  his 
body  was  refused  burial,  and  cast  out  upon  the  open 
ground  around  the  city,  to  be  a  prey  to  dogs  and  birds. 
His  death  seems  to  have  rendered  all  resistance  to 
the  Ghalda3ans  impossible,  and  Nebuchadnezzar,  having 
joined  the  army,  took  possession  of  the  city  three 
mouths  and  ten  days  after  Jehoiakim's  death.  His  son, 
the  young  king  Jecouiah,  a^jparently  but  eight  years 
old  (2  Chron.  xxxvi.  9),  though  elsewhere,  by  a  less  pro- 


bable reading,  described  as  aged  eighteen  (2  Kings  xxiv. 
8),  was  carried  captive  to  Babylon  with  the  queen- 
mother  Nehushta,  aud  a  large  number  of  the  princes 
and  chief  people  of  the  land.  The  foolish  prophecies 
of  Hanauiah,  described  in  Jer.  xxviii.,  indicate  too  pro- 
bably the  existence  of  plots  among  the  exiles  for  his 
restoration,  aud  so  account  for  the  barbarous  treatment 
he  met  with  from  his  conqueror.  For  thirty-seven  years 
he  was  kept  in  prison  in  actual  dui'ance,  and  had  to 
wear  prison  garments.  Well  may  he  be  called  Jeconiah- 
assir,  "  Jeconiah  tlie  prisoner,"  in  1  Chron.  iii.  17.  Son 
he  had  none,  and  Salathiel,  his  representative,  was  de- 
scended from  David,  not  thi-ough  the  line  of  Solomon 
aud  th«  kings,  but  through  Nathan.  After  this  weary 
captivity  Evil-merodach  set  him  free,  treated  him  as  a 
friend,  and  made  him  eat  at  his  table.  '  But  after  two 
years  Evil-merodach  was  murdered  by  his  brother-in- 
law,  Neriglissar,  and  probably  Jeconiah  perished  with 
his  benefactor.  The  tales  iu  the  Apoci-ypha  of  his 
living  as  a  wealthy  noble  at  Babylon  with  his  wife 
Susannah  (Sus.  i.  4 ;  Baruch  i.  3)  are  mere  legends  un- 
worthy of  serious  account. 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 

BY  THE  REV.  A.  S.  AGLEN,  M.A.,  INCUMBENT  OF  ST.  NINIAN'S,  ALYTH,  N.B. 

OUTLINES   OP   THE   HISTORY   OF   BIBLICAL   POETET   (coniinued). 


§    3. — DAVID. 

!  r  is  with  David  that  the  great  era  of 
lyric  poetry  begins.  Its  germ,  as  we  have 
scon,  may  be  discovered  in  the  records 
of  the  patriarchal  times.  In  the  Mosaic 
and  succeediug  age  it  was  growing  wildly  and  luxu- 
riantly, displaying  sometimes  a  \-igorous  fidness  aud 
creative  power  of  thought,  and  giving,  in  one  direction, 
grand  and  noble  utterance  to  the  deep  religious  feelings 
of  the  community.  But  it  showed  itself  still  only  in 
occasional  and  fitful  bursts  of  splendour.  It  flashed 
out  in  the  great  battle  odes  of  Moses  and  Deborah, 
but  its  right  place  had  not  yet  been  found  in  the 
national  worship  and  in  the  civil  life.  It  was  but  a 
wild  flower,  till  David  planted  it,  a  kingly  blossom,  on 
Mount  Zion,  and  cultivated  it  with  ailectionate  care.' 
There,  under  one  who  was  at  once  the  greatest  king 
and  the  greatest  poet  of  Israel,  poetry  itself  Ijecame 
truly  great,  continuing  still  to  cherish  with  amazing 
power  the  virtues  of  valour  and  patriotism,  but  lending 
itself  also  to  the  encouragement  of  every  sentiment  of 
religion  and  morality  on  which  individual  and  national 
Tiappiuess  depends. 

David  himself  supplied  the  chief  element  of  this 
greatness.  In  his  Psalms  he  has  stamped  himself 
indelibly  on  the  thought  and  feeling  of  the  world. 
But  like  every  groat  poet  he  owed  .something  to  the 
times  in  which  he  lived,  aud  it  is  in  studying  David's 
relation  to   his   age   that   we  come  to   appreciate   the 

'  See  Herder,  Octsf  der  S.  B.,  ii. 


healtiy  influence  of  Samuel's  great  work,  and  to  under- 
stand how  his  efforts  prepared  the  way  for  the  appear- 
ance on  the  throne  of  Israel  of  one  endowed  with  that 
great  originality  and  spiritual  power  which  we  see  re- 
flected in  the  Psahns.  The  song  of  Deborah  is  a 
glorious  witness  to  the  martial  spirit  of  the  Hebrews. 
But  it  allows  us  to  see  also  how  easily  the  aspirations 
of  the  nation  might  have  turned  altogether  to  the  glory 
of  conquest  and  empire,  and  how  much  some  gentler 
influence  was  needed  to  coimteract  the  wild  spirit  of 
revenge  wliich  was  fostered  in  those  times  of  bloodshed 
and  disorder.  The  schools  of  the  prophets  afforded 
scope  for  the  exercise  of  this  gentleness.  In  them 
Samuel  laboured  unweariedly,  up  to  the  close  of  his 
life,  as  a  teacher  of  youth,  taming  the  wild  spirit  by 
the  peaceful  arts  of  the  muses.-  The  poetry  of  David 
shows  the  result  of  these  efforts,  not  only  in  the  milder 
tones  which  temper  the  warlike  feelings  breathmg 
through  them,  but  in  the  attempt,  made  now  for  the 
first  time,  to  express  in  song  all  the  sweeter  and 
gentler  emotions  of  the  licart.  and  to  penetrate  to  the 
sources  of  all  moral  strength.  In  the  success  with 
wliich  the  "  strange  musical  world  of  the  East — with  its 
gongs  and  horns,  and  pipes,  and  harps  "  ^^was  called 
into  the  service  of  religion  by  David,  and  tempered  and 
chastened  till  it  became  a  fitting  instrument  to  carry 
to  the  ear  of  God,  not  only  exultant  praise  for  aid  in 
battle,  but  the  sighs  of  helpless  sorrow,  and  the  vows 


2  Ewald,  History  of  Isnul,  vol.  iii. 

•^  Stanley,  Lectures  on  Jewish  EUt<fry,  vol,  ii. 


78 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR 


of  penitence,  we  have  an  apt  illustration  of  the  moral 
and  iutelleetual  refinement  effected  for  Israel  by  the 
successive  efforts  of  Samuel  and  the  son  of  Jesse. 
Similar  testimony  is  borne  by  the  hymn  of  Hannah, 
which,  though  it  must,  in  its  present  form,  belong  mi- 
doubtcdly  to  a  later  date,  yet  justifies  its  reference 
to  the  mother  of  Samuel,  by  the  expression  it  gives 
of  the  tendencies  towards  a  nobler  and  ^jurer  religious 
feeling  which  it  was  his  glory  and  privilege  to  develop, 
imtU  they  could  produce  iu  David's  hands  the  perfect 
Psahn  of  Israel.' 

But  his  own  pre-eminence  is  so  supreme  that  we 
readily  identify  David  with  all  the  greatness  of  his 
time,  and  refer  to  his  original  genius  all  the  grand 
results  obtained  in  empire  and  in  song.  His  position 
was  imderstood  by  posterity  to  bo  that  of  the  foimder 
of  the  Jewish  monarchy.  "  In  this  sense  liis  name  is 
repeated  in  every  possible  form.  '  The  city  of  David,' 
'  the  seed  of  David,'  '  the  house  of  David,'  '  the  key 
of  Da\id,'  'the  oath  sworn  imto  David,'  are  expres- 
sions which  pervade  the  whole  history  and  poetry  of  the 
Old  Testament,  and  much  of  the  figurative  language 
of  the  New.""  In  the  same  way  he  was  regarded  as 
the  founder  of  Jewish  jjoetry.  The  whole  Psalter  was 
ascribed  to  him,  an  opinion  which  has  prevailed  down 
to  Christian  times.  To  "  chant  to  the  soimd  of  the  viol, 
and  invent  to  themselves  instruments  of  music  like 
David,"  was  one  of  the  occupations  of  the  court  iu  the 
time  of  the  prophet  Amos  (Amos  vi.  5).  Known  as  "  the 
man  who  was  raised  up  on  high,"  and  "  the  anointed 
of  the  God  of  Jacob,"  he  was  also  remembered  with 
equal  affection  and  constancy  as  "  the  sweet  psalmist  of 
Israel  "  (2  Sam.  xxiii.  1 ;  Ut.,  "  pleasant  of  songs  "). 

This  individual  influence  was  various  as  his  many- 
sided  character,  and  as  the  vicissitudes  of  his  strongly 
chequered  career.  David's  poetry  is  the  mirror  of  his 
life.  We  see  in  it  that  wonderful  versatility  which  is 
so  forcibly  described  in  thp  "  °"ig  to  David  "  written 
by  the  half-crazed  poet,  Christopher  Smart,  on  the  walls 
of  his  mad-house.    We  see  him 

"  Great,  valiant,  pious,  ^ood,  and  clean, 
Sublime,  contemplative,  serene. 

Strong,  constant,  pleasant,  wise." 

Shepherd,  courtier,  outlaw,  king,  poet,  musician,  warrior, 
saint,  "  priest,  champion,  sage,  and  boy,"  David  was  all 
these — he  is  all  these  in  his  Psalms.  The  harp,  which 
from  his  boyhood,  when  he  kept  his  father's  sheep  on 
the  hills  of  Bethlehem,  was  his  inseparable  companion, 
was  tuned  to  every  kind  of  song.  Tliere  is  a  tradition 
that  it  hung  always  above  his  bed,  and  that  at  mid- 
night the  north  wind  swept  music  from  its  strings.' 
The  lofty  spirit  of  song  which  possessed  lihn,  did 
indeed,  with  sweet  and  magic  power,  give  expression 
to  every  innermost  feeling,  lajing  bare  the  deepest 
and  most  secret  recesses  of  his  mind  and  heart. 

This  is  peculiarly  true  of  his  religious  feehngs.     The 

1  Cf.  with  1  Sam.  ii.  1—4,  8,  &o.;  Ps.  ix.  14;  Ixxxvi.  8;  xoiv.  4; 
XJUvii.  15 ;  cxiii.  7,  8,  &c. 
•  Stanley,  as  above. 
3  Smith's  HicliojKHi/  </f  the  Bibh,  art.  "  Harp." 


foimdation  of  his  character  was  laid  in  a  firm  and 
imshaken  trust  in  God.  His  faith  was  simple  and 
pm-e,  his  piety  real.  His  wayward  passionate  nature 
led  him  into  great  sia.  But  he  could  return  to  God 
all  the  more  loyally,  and  with  the  siucercst  repentance, 
after  his  fall.  The  notices  of  him  in  the  historical 
books  leave  us  in  no  doubt  as  to  the  strength  of  his 
faith  and  the  reality  of  his  repentance.  But  the 
Psalms  show  us  into  the  recesses  of  his  heart  while 
tlie  struggle  was  going  on.  We  see  the  depth  of  his 
humiliation,  the  completeness  of  the  peace  to  which  he 
was  restored.  The  32ud  and  the  51st  Psalms  are 
the  records  of  his  confessions,  his  prayers,  his  vows,  his 
thanksgiving  for  the  mercy  of  God.  When  they  were 
composed  they  were  entu'ely  new  to  literature.  Other 
Hebrew  poets  afterwards  produced  hymns  of  a  like 
kind  But  David's  Psalms  have  ever  remained,  and 
tvill  remain,  of  all  recorded  human  words,  dearest  to  the 
penitent  and  renewed  soul,  because  they  best  express 
the  feelings  which  it  longs  to  pour  out  in  utterance  at 
the  feet  of  God. 

But  these  devotional  hymns,  imlike  so  many  of  the 
modern  attempts  to  imitate  them,  bear  the  stamp  of 
true  poetry.  They  are  not  composed  of  sighs  and 
groans  strung  together  iu  unmolodious  verse.  Even 
that  variety  of  psahn  which  dates  entirely  from  this 
period,  and  in  which  we  catch  the  prevalence  of  mourn- 
ful sentiment,  displays  the  grace  and  charm  which 
flows  from  genuine  poetic  genius.  How  powerful  and 
vivid  are  the  touches  with  which  Ps.  xxxii.  opens  : — 

"  Blessed  is  the  man  to  whom  Jehovah  doth  not  reckon  iniquity. 
And  in  whose  spirit  there  is  no  guile. 
For  while  I  kept  silence,  my  bones  waxed  old 

Through  my  roaring  all  the  day  long. 
For  day  and  night  thy  hand  was  heavy  upon  me ; 

My  moisture  was  turned  into  the  drought  of  summer." 

What  a  sense  of  security  and  contented  rest  in  the 
Divine  protection  is  conveyed  by  the  threefold  metaphor 
of  the  same  Psalm  : — 

"For  this  cause  let  every  godly  man  pray  to  thee 

In  a  time  when  thou  mayest  be  found  ; 
(So)  surely  when  the  great  waters  overflow, 

They  shall  not  reach  him. 
Thou  art  my  hiding  place  ; 

Thou  wilt  preserve  me  from  trouble ; 
Thou  wilt  compass  me  about  with  songs  of  deliverance.** 

In  these  "  songs  of  deliverance  "  wo  are  not  only 
brought  into  contact  with  a  profoimd  and  original 
mind,  but  we  see  also,  through  the  experience  of  an 
individual  heart,  how  the  ancient  national  religion  was 
advancing  iato  purer  and  nobler  forms.  There  had 
always  been  in  Israel  faith  ia  an  invisible  Power  who 
would  redeem  him  from  danger,  and  give  him  victory 
in  war.  In  David  we  see  this  faith  deepened  and 
purified.  Ho  took  the  brightest  and  most  spiritual 
views  of  the  creation  and  government  of  the  world. 
We  feel,  as  we  read  his  poetry,  that  the  ancient  fear  of 
God  is  passing,  for  the  first  time,  into  love  of  God.* 
The  deep  tenderness  which  had  its  root  in  the  centre 
of  his  being,  irradiates  his  religion.     The  love  which 

*  Stanley,  as  above. 


THE    POETRY    OP   THE    BIBLE. 


79 


made  liim  the  most  dutiful  son,  the  fondest  husband, 
the  truest  friend,  the  most  tender  father — the  tenderness 
of  personal  aft'eetiou  which  penetrated  his  public  life, 
and  made  him  "  love  his  people  witli  a  pathetic  com- 
passion, beyond  even  that  of  Moses  " — was  not  ex. 
chided  from  his  thought  of  the  Divine  gi'eatuess  and 
power,  but  drew  him  close  to  God,  with  a  truly  child- 
like confidence,  even  when  he  was  conscious  of  error 
and  transgression.  No  words  could  express  more 
beautifuUy  the  feeling  about  him  with  which  David's 
poetry  inspires  us,  than  the  sentence  of  the  Book  of 
Ecclesiasticus  :  "  With  his  whole  heart  he  simg  songs, 
and  loved  Him  that  made  liim  "  (Ecclus.  xlvii.  8). 
Recall  some  of  those  grand  metaphors  of  the  protecting 
and  restoring  love  of  the  Most  High,  which  have  now 
passed  into  poetical  commonplaces,  but  were  in  David's 
mouth  fresli  and  real  with  the  memory  of  moving 
escapes  and  mk-aculous  deliverances.  One  single  verse 
of  the  grand  hymn  of  praise,  the  18th  Psalm,  is  a 
brief  but  vivid  record  of  the  changing  vicissitudes  of 
his  life ; — 

"  I  will  love  thee,  O  Lord,  my  strength. 

The  Lord  is  my  stronghold,  and  my  fortress,  and  my  deUverer. 

My  God  is  my  rock  in  whom  I  find  refuge ; 

My  buckler,  and  the  horn  of  my  salvation,  my  high  tower." 

In  that  one  verse  is  the  wildei'uess  with  its  chffis  and 
caves,  and  Said  huntuig  the  fugitive  to  death  ;  there  is 
Keilah  and  its  strong  walls ;  the  waiTior  band  with 
their  shields  and  spears,  who  had  so  often  shared  theu- 
leader's  dangers  and  triumphs ;  the  high  towers  which 
he  had  scaled,  or  whicli  his  victorious  hands  had  built ; 
and.  through  all,  the  sense  of  complete  trust  in  One  who 
had  in  past  troubles  provided  these  places  of  refuge,  and 
in  whose  love  was  amjjle  room  for  confidence  under 
every  trial  to  which  soul  or  body  could  bo  exposed. 
But  there  is  one  short  poem  of  exquisite  sweetness, 
which  is  vivid  with  the  memory  of  the  serene  and 
quiet  days  of  the  old  shepherd  life,  and  of  some  deadly 
peril  just  escaped,  but  from  which  the  psalmist  emerges 
with  a  trust  so  calm,  a  peace  so  profound,  that  not  even 
the  shadow  of  death  can  disturb  it.  "  It  is  the  most 
complete  picture  of  happiness  that  over  was  or  can  be 
drawn.  It  represents  that  state  of  mind  for  which  all 
alike  sigh,  and  the  want  of  which  makes  life  a  failui-e 
to  most.  It  represents  that  heaven  which  is  every- 
where if  we  could  but  enter  it,  and  yet  almost  nowhere 
because  so  few  of  us  can."  It  is  the  23rd  Psabn, 
which  was  referred  by  Michaelis,  and  with  great  pro- 
bability, to  the  time,  in  the  flight  from  Absalom,  when 
David  and  his  party  were  refreshed  at  Mahanaim  by 
the  kindness  of  Barzillai. 

"  Jehovah  is  my  Shepherd,  I  shall  not  want. 
In  pastures  of  tender  grass  he  maketh  me  to  lie  down ; 
Beside  waters  of  quietness  he  leadeth  me ; 

Ho  restoreth  my  soul ; 
He  leadeth  me  in  right  paths, 
For  his  name's  sake. 

Tea,  though  I  walk  through  tlie  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death, 
I  will  fear  no  evil,  for  thou  art  with  me, 
Thy  rod  and  tliy  staff  they  comfort  me. 
Thou   prejiitrL'St   a   table   before  me    in   the    presence   of   my 

eneaiies ; 
Thou  anointest  my  head  with  oil, 


My  cup  runneth  over. 

Surely  goodness  and  mercy  shall  follow  me  all  the  days  of  my 

hfe, 
And  I  will  dwell  in  the  house  of  Jehovah  for  length  of  days." 

Seldom  has  poetry  ia  so  short  a  compass  struck  so 
truly  those  two  opposite  chords  of  feeling  which  Nature, 
iu  her  dift'ercut  mood.s,  has  power  to  awaken,  the  sense 
of  gladness  and  content  in  her  beauty  and  fulness,  and 
that  undefined  horror — a  shudder  as  at  the  "  shadow 
of  death  " — which  her  more  gloomy  and  terrible  aspects 
can  create.  Never  certainly  was  the  one  great  spu'itual 
fact  imderlying  them  both,  and  of  which  each,  to  innocent 
trustful  hearts,  is  a  symbol,  expressed,  as  it  is  expressed 
by  Israel's  greatest  poet,  in  this  short,  sweet  song.  He 
feels  both  the  strength  and  the  tenderness  of  God ;  he 
would  follow  the  Shepherd  as  fearlessly  in  darkness  as 
ill  simshiuc;  he  discerns  the  "Hand  that  giddes,"  and 
the  Pro\'idenco  which  sustains,  as  much  within  the 
rocky  sides  of  the  dark  and  dismal  valley,  as  in  the 
green  pastm-es  and  beside  the  still  waters.  The  con- 
trast only  deepens  our  conception  of  the  trust,  and 
.adds  force  to  the  triumphant  joy  with  which  the  psalm 
concludes. 

It  is  difficult  to  seize  on  any  charactei'istics  of  David's 
poetry,  by  wliich  to  distinguish  it  from  that  of  other 
Hebrew  poets.  There  is  no  certainty  as  to  the  number 
of  psalms  which  his  hand  contributed  to  the  Psalter. 
The  iuscriptious  allot  seventy-three  to  him.'  Ewald's 
criticism  allows  him  only  fifteen.  It  is  not  therefor© 
strange  that  wliUe  some  regard  David's  peculiar  manner 
to  be  plaintive,  soft,  and  xiathotic,  others  think  his 
poetry  distinguished  by  vehemence  and  sublimity  of 
passion.  If  we  start  only  from  those  examples  pre- 
served in  the  Second  Book  of  Samuel  (2  Sam.  i.  17 — 27  ; 
xxii.,  xxiii.  1 — 7,  and  the  fragment  in  iii.  33,  34),  one  of 
which  appears  with  some  variations,  as  Ps.  x^dii.,  we 
find  even  iu  tliis  small  compass  of  song  almost  every 
clement  which  makes  the  charm  and  the  greatness  of 
lyric  poetry.  There  is  the  sudden  rush  of  feeling,  "as  if 
ho  were  speaking  after  long  repression  ;"  there  are  the 
transitions  so  rapid  and  iustantaneous  that  they  make 
us  feel  we  are  listeniug  to  spontaneous  song  ;  there  is 
imagery  drawn  from  every  variety  of  experience,  and 
ranging  through  evei^  degree  of  grandeur  and  sublimity, 
or  of  simplicity  and  plainness;  and  all  presented  as 
rising  naturally  out  of  the  poet's  experience,  so  vivid  are 
the  touches,  and  so  true  and  profound  is  the  feeling  for 
nature.  There  is  also,  even  if  we  confine  ourselves  to 
these  poems,  enough  to  show  us  the  most  strikmg  points 
in  his  many-sided  character.  Of  his  kst  psalm  alone 
(2  Sam.  xxiii.)  it  has  been  truly  said  "  it  is  a  true  picture 
of  the  chequered  life  of  David,  and  of  the  chequered 
fortunes  of  the  ruler  among  men." 
I. 

"  If  a  man  ruleth  over  men  justly,  ruling  in  the  fear  of  God, 
It  is  as  when  a  morning  is  bright  and  the  sun  riseth, 

A  morning  and  no  clouds ; 
After  sunshine,  after  rain  the  tender  grass  springeth  from  the 
earth. 


1  The  LXS.  assign  eleven  others  beside  those  so  assigned  in  the 
Hebrew  titles. 


80 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


**  For  is  not  my  house  so  with  God  that  He  made  with  me   an 
everlasting  covenant, 
Ordered  in  all  things  and  sure? 
For  all  my  salvation  and  all  my  desire- 
Tea,  should  he  not  make  it  to  grow  ? 
III. 
"But  wicked  men  are  all  of  them  as  abominable  thorns, 
That  cannot  be  grasped  with  the  hand  : 
And  whoso  cometh  near  them  is  fenced  with  iron  and  the  staff 
of  spears  ; 
And  they  are  forthwith  utterly  burnt  with  fire."' 

It  -would  be  rash,  therefore,  to  try  to  fix  definitely  on 
the  distinguishing  features  of  David's  poetry.  "  His 
harp  was  full-stringed,  and  every  angel  of  joy  and 
sorrow  swept  over  the  chords  as  he  passed.  For  the 
hearts  of  a  hundred  men  strove  and  struggled  together 
within  the  narrow  continent  of  his  single  heart."  The 
variety,  even  if  we  take  the  fewest  assigned  to  him.  of 
the  psalms  belonging  to  David,  shows  a  mind  riclily 
endowed.  "  The  royal  singer  excels  in  the  hymn,  the 
poem,  the  elegy,  the  didactic  ode.  The  diction  too  is 
varied,  both  difficult  and  easy,  soft,  diffuse,  tender." 
There  are  many  scholars  who  ascribe  to  him  a  tendency 
to  sweetness  and  pathos,  rather  than  to  grandeur  and 
power.  Yet  the  description  of  the  storm  in  Ps.  xxix. 
(one  of  the  few  allowed  by  Ewald  to  be  Davidic 
psalms)  shows  a  sympathy  with  Nature  in  her  wildest 
mood.  It  is  certain  that  no  other  psalmist  can  com- 
pare with  David  in  general  merit  or  range  of  inspi- 
ration. The  following  summary  of  the  excellence  of 
David's  poetry  is  by  one  well  qualified  to  judge  the 
merits  of  lyric  song,  the  poet  Campbell ; — "  His  traits 
of  inspiration  are  lovely  and  touching,  rather  than 
daring  and  astonishing.  His  voice,  as  a  worshipper, 
has  a  penetrating  accent  of  human  sensibility,  varying 
from  plaintive  melancholy  to  luxuriant  gladness,  and 
■even  rising  to  ecstatic  rapture.  In  grief  his  heart  is 
melted  like  wax,  and  deep  answers  to  deep,  while  the 
waters  of  affliction  pass  over  him ;  or  his  soul  is  led  to 
the  green  pastures  by  the  quiet  waters,  or  his  religious 
confidence  pours  forth  the  metaphor  of  a  warrior  in 
rich  and  exulting  succession.  Some  of  the  sacred 
writers  may  excite  the  imagination  more  powerfully 
than  David,  but  none  of  them  appeal  more  interestingly 
to  the  heart.  Nor  is  it  in  tragic  so  much  as  in  joyous 
expression,  that  I  conceive  the  power  of  his  genius  to 
consist.  Its  most  inspired  aspect  appears  to  present 
itself  when  he  looks  abroad  upon  the  universe  with  the 
eye  of  a  poet,  and  with  the  breast  of  a  glad  and  grateful 
worshipper.  When  he  looks  up  to  the  starry  firma- 
ment, his  soul  assimilates  to  the  splendour  and  serenity 
which  he  contemplates."- 

There  is  a  prominent  feature  of  David's  song  which 
demands  a  passing  notice.  It  has  been  remarked  how 
truthf  idly  his  character  is  reflected  in  his  poetry.  That 
character,  like  that  of  all  truly  great  men,  combined 
the  opposite  qualities,  strength  and  tenderness.  "  He 
was  strong  with  all  the  strength  of  man,  and  tender 
with  all  the  tenderness  of  woman."     He  could  hate  as 

-  2  Sam.  xxiii.   4—7.     Psalms  ChvonoUgkaUy  Arranged,  by  Four 
Friends. 
2  Quoted  by  Davidaon,  in  bis  Ir^roiwtim  (o  ths  Old  Teslanumt. 


well  as  love,  and  when  stung  with  a  sense  of  meanness, 
wrong,  or  injustice,  he  could  flash  out  into  strong  words 
and  strong  deeds.  "  For  evil  men  and  evil  things  he 
found  no  abhorrence  too  deep,  scarcely  any  impre- 
cations too  strong."  His  poems  reflect  this  twofold 
character.  Luther  called  them  a  garden  in  which  the 
fairest  and  sweetest  flowers  bloom,  but  over  which  can 
blow  the  most  tempestuous  winds.  One  psalm  shows 
this  contrast  in  a  sticking  way.  It  is  the  63rd.  It 
exhibits  in  the  opening  verses  the  same  depth  of  feeling, 
the  same  tenderness  of  natural  affection  which  breathes 
through  the  elegy  on  Jonathan.  Here  it  is  chastened 
and  elevated  by  the  attitude  of  prayer  in  which  the 
jjoet  pours  out  his  sOul  to  God.  The  close  of  the 
psalm  shows  the  other  side.  "  It  is  almost  startling 
in  the  abruptness  of  its  contrast,  yet  strikingly  true  and 
natural.  It  breathes  the  sternness,  almost  the  fierceness 
of  the  ancient  warrior."  The  poem  which  begins  in  a 
strain  of  lofty  musing,  ends  with  a  cry  for  vengeance 
on  his  treacherous  enemies.^ 

Even  within  the  compass  of  those  psalms  which  can 
safely  be  ascribed  to  David,  there  are  enough  to  show 
what  efforts  lyric  poetry  was  making  to  strike  out  new 
paths,  and  occupy  new  fields  of  feeling  and  thought. 
Many  efforts  have  been  made  to  divide  the  Psalms  ac- 
cording to  their  character  and  contents,  Init  the  clianges 
of  feeling  and  expression  in  individual  iioems  are  too 
rapid  to  allow  of  an  easy  division.  The  inscriptions 
show  an  attempt  to  distinguish  the  various  kinds  of 
song.  Besides  the  shir  and  mizmor,  there  are  these 
among  other  names.  Michiam,  translated  by  the  LXX. 
TTTiKoypafla,  i.e.,  "an  inscription  on  a  tablet;"  by  the 
Vulgate,  tituli  inscriptio.  It  has  latterly  been  derived 
from  a  root  meaning  "  gold,"  but  there  seems  no  parti- 
cular reason,  from  the  character  of  the  tliree  poems  so 
inscribed,  to  call  them  golden  songs  (Ps.  xvi.,  hn.,  Ix.). 
Maschil  occurs  in  the  titles  of  eleven  psalms,  and  in 
the  text  of  Ps.  xlv.  The  LXX.  translate  it  o-uj-fVeois 
or  6is  cxuvtaiv,  the  Vidgate  intellectus,  or  ad  intellectum, 
from  which  some  modern  scholars,  as  Gesenius,  explain 
it  to  mean  "  didactic  poem."  Ewald  prefers  to  interpret 
it  "  a  skilful  and  highly- finished  ode." 

ShiggaloH  (Ps.  vii.)  is  also  variously  explained. 
Ewald  takes  it  for  a  name  signifying  "  an  irregular  or 
dithyrambic  ode."  The  dithyramb  was  a  name  given 
by  the  Greeks  to  a  lyric  measure  of  a  wild  euthusiastic 
kind.  But  there  is  nothing  in  the  7th  Psahn  to 
distinguish  it  in  this  direction  from  many  others. 
Shiggaion  is  therefore  most  probably  one  of  those 
musical  directions  which  ai'e  prefixed  to  so  many  of  the 
Psabns,  and  about  which  very  little  certain  is  known. 

These  titles  do  not  give  any  effective  help  to  a 
division  of  the  contents  of  the  Psalter  according  to 
subject  and  style.  Nor  is  the  chronological  an'ange- 
ment.  of  wliich  traces  can  be  discerned  in  the  five  books, 
satisfactory  or  complete.  It  will  be  shown  how  this 
division  probably  arose  in  treating  in  the  next  paper  of 
the  history  of  lyric  poetry  after  David. 

^  Perowne,  Psalms,  Introduction.  Mr.  Perowne's  trauslatioa 
has  been  followed  in  the  above  quotations  from  the  Psalms. 


DIFFICULT    PASSAGES    EXPLAINED. 


81 


DIFFICULT      PASSAGES      EXPLAINED. 

THE  CATHOLIC   EPISTLES  :— ST.   JOHN  II.  18  (conHmi.ed). 

BY    THE    EEV.    H.    D.    M.    SPENCE,    M.A.,    KECTOB    OP    ST.    MAKY    DE    CRYPT,    QLOUCKSTEE,    AND    ESAMININQ    CHAPLAIN 
TO    THE    LOKD    BISHOP    OF    GLOUCESTER   AND    BRISTOL. 


EXCUESSS    "a"    on    ST.    MATT.  XXIY. — THE    BASIS   OP 

ST.   John's    teaching  respecting    the    "  last 

TIME."' 

5HE  24th  chapter  of  St.  Matthow  appears 
to  be  a  general  prophetic  picture  of  suf- 
fering and  danger  incident  to  the  "  last 
time  " — a  period,  we  have  shown  in  our 
last  paper,  reaching  from  the  days  of  Messiah  to 
the  day  of  the  final  judgment  of  the  world.  In  the 
course  of  the  prophecy  our  Lord  makes  plain  and  un- 
mistakable allusions  to  that  great  and  solemn  judgment 
day,  the  consummation  of  all  things,  notably  in  vs. 
14,  29,  30,  31,  36. 

In  the  foreground,  however,  of  the  groat  general 
picture  is  delineated,  with  a  few  sharp,  rough  touches, 
some  terrible  calamity  which  is  powerfully  to  affect 
the  course  of  the  world's  history,  and  in  a  degree 
seems  a  foreshadowing  of  the  great  judgment.  This 
lesser  judgment,  from  the  Messiah's  own  memorable 
words,  was  e\-idently  near  at  hand ;  nor  could  those 
that  listened  to  him  have  failed  to  perceive  that  some, 
at  least,  of  those  present  would  certainly  live  to  behold 
it,  and  to  share  in  it.  Not  quite  forty  years  after 
the  words  were  spoken  came  the  fall  of  Jerusalem  and 
the  final  destiTiction  of  the  Temple.  This  first  judg- 
ment swept  away  all  the  old  Jewish  landmarks,  and  laft 
an  open  field  for  the  development  of  Gentile,  universal 
Christianity.  While  the  chosen  race  existed  as  a  dis- 
tinct and  powerful  nationahty,  while  the  Holy  City  and 
Temple  stood,  Christianity  could  never  have  been  taken 
out  of  its  original  Jewish  setting — could  never  have 
liecome  the  religion  of  the  world.  This  catastrophe 
clo.°ed  the  first  act  of  the  world's  drama  of  the  "  last 
time."  In  the  great  prophetic  picture  of  our  Lord  it 
is  the  only  one  of  the  lesser  judgments  specially  painted 
by  him. 

But  we  may  look  on  the  violent  break-up  of  the 
Roman  Empire  under  the  assaults  of  the  Teuton  tribes 
— a  long  period  of  untold  bitter  sufferings — as  the  close 
of  the  second  act.  All  this  weary,  terrible  misery,  how- 
ever, cleared  away  the  old  pagan  landmarks,  customs, 
and  life,  and  allowed  tho  spirit  of  Christianity  to  re- 
model, in  a  great  measure,  public  thought  and  public 
opinion. 

Tho  groat  Reformation  of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries  closed  the  third  period  in  the  history  of  the 
"  last  time,"  and  prepared  tho  way  for  free  generous 
thought  and  action,  tearing  down,  boldly,  fearlessly. 
all  those  parasitic  growths  which  had  been  suffered 
to  come  up  and  twine  about  the  walls  and  towers,  and 

1  See  Vol.  I.,  paje  383. 
30 — VOL.   H. 


which  threatened  tho  safety  of  the  very  foundations  of 
the  city  of  God  on  oarth. 

Whether  the  termination  of  the  temporal  power  of 
the  Bishops  of  Rome  and  the  rise  of  the  great  Pro- 
testant Teuton  Empire  bo  the  close  of  the  fourth  act 
and  the  opening  scene  of  the  fifth  act  of  the  great 
world  drama,  is  a  question  another  generation  will  have 
to  answer. 


EXCXJESUS    "B,"   ON    "  L'ANTECHEIST  "   OP    M.  EENAN. 

The  fourth  part  of  M.  Renau's  work,  Histoire  des 
Origines  du  Christianisme,  tells  the  story  of  the 
Cliristian  Church  from  M.  Renan's  own  peculiar  point 
of  view,  from  the  time  of  St.  Paul's  arrival  at  Rome, 
A.D.  61,  to  the  close  of  the  Jewish  revolt,  A.D.  73. 
The  central  figure  of  this  eventful  period,  round  whom 
other  personages  are  grouped  with  more  or  less  dis- 
tinctness, is  the  gloomy  and  eccentric  figure  of  the 
Emperor  Nero,  in  whom  the  French  writer  sees  the 
Antichrist  of  St.  John — the  "  beast "  (t!)  Bripiov)  who 
occupies  so  prominent  a  place  in  the  Revelation.  M. 
Renan  places  the  writing  of  the  Revelation  A.D.  69. 
He  lays  great  stress  on  that  only  half-espressed,  but  still 
wide-spread  expectation  of  Nero's  return ;  that  partial 
di.sbelief  in  the  tyrant's  death  which  existed  in  many 
parts  of  the  Roman  Empire  for  a  long  period  af t«r  the 
emperor's  self-murder  at  the  hands  of  his  freedman, 
Epaphroditus ;  '^  and  pictures,  with  a  strange,  fantastic 
power  pecidiarly  his  own,  the  vmter  of  the  Revelation 
looking  back  with  awful  horror  on  the  scenes  of  blood 
and  cruelty  which  he  had  himself  witnessed  during  the 
persecution  of  the  Christians  at  Rome  by  Nero,  A.D.  64, 
and  from  which  he  had  hardly  escaped.  He  repre- 
sents St.  John  contemplating  Nero,  his  life  and  work ; 
the  centre  of  that  wicked,  selfish,  luxurious  Roman 
world  ;  the  cruel  persecutor,  the  hcentious,  degraded 
prince,  whom,  in  common  with  many  others  at  that  tim?, 
he  imagined  not  dead,  but  in  hiding  temporarUy  among 
the  Parthians,  or  elsewhere,  and  about  to  re-appear 
again,  with  greater  power,  with  more  unbridled  licence 
than  before.  In  this  monster,  in  this  deadly  enemy 
to  the  Christian  sect,  in  this  curse  of  the  world,  St.  John 
(according  to  M.  Renan)  saw  "  the  Beast,"  tho  enemy  of 
Christ,  the  Antichrist,  who,  after  being  let  loose  for 
another  season  of  crime  and  bloodshed,  was  eventually 
to  be  cast  into  the  Lake  of  Fire  for  ever  and  ever. 

M.  Renan,  in  support  of  his  hypothesis,  gives  an 
elaborate   explanation   of   the  Apocalyptic   symbolism, 

■  Eenan,  concerning  the  expected  return  of  Nero,  quotes  Tacit., 
Hist.  i.  2;  ii.  8;  Suet.,  Nero,  57;  Dion.  Chrys.,  Orat.  xsi.  10,  &o. 
See  pnge  319  and  note  {"  TAntechrist "). 


82 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


with  a  confession  in  one  place,  perhaps,  of  some  con- 
fusion (see  his  note  on  page  4'14).  "  The  head  wounded 
to  death,  whose  deadly  wound  was  healed  "  (Rev.  siii. 
3,  12),  he  considers  a  plain  reference  to  the  current 
notion  (fu'uily  held,  as  he  assumes,  by  the  wi-iter  of  the 
vision)  of  the  dothi-onemont  and  only  attempted  suicide 
of  the  Emperor  Nero,  and  of  the  tyi-aat's  wonderful 
preserration  from  death.      The  famous   number  666 


points,  in  his  opinion,  to  the  same  conclusion  — 
that  '■  the  Beast,"  the  Antichrist  of  the  early  Church, 
was  Nero.' 

1  M..  Benan,  in  a  note  to  pp.  415,  416,  explains  how  the  numerical 
values  of  the  Hebrew  characters  which  represent  the  Greek  form 
of  Nero  Caesar,  when  added  together,  give  the  mystic  number  of 
the  "  Beast,"  666  (Rev.  siii.  IS),  Ntpwi-  KaTiap,  "lOp  7113.  Thus  :— 
(  3=  50)  +  (t  =  200)  +  (i  =  6J  +  (j  =  50)  +  (p  =  lUOJ  +  (D  =  60) 
+  O  =  200)  =  666.     {L'Antechrist,  pp.  415,  416.) 


THE    COINCIDENCES    OF    SCEIPTUEE. 

THE    HEEODIAN   FAMILY  {contimied). 


BY  THE  EDITOB. 


III.    HEEOD   ANTIPAS. 


^WE  fact  (1.)  previously  referred  to  that 
Mauaen,  probably  an  Essene  by  descent 
and  ti'aining,  had  been  brought  up  as 
tho  foster-brother  of  Herod  the  totrareh, 
presents  not  a  few  points  of  contact  with  the  Gospel 
narrative,  (a)  It  helps  to  explain  the  inconsistencies 
of  his  character.  He  comes  before  us  alike  in  the 
Gospels  and  in  Josej)hus,  as  ambitious,  licentious,  un- 
scrupulous. And  yet  he  is  obviously,  at  the  commence- 
ment of  our  Lord's  ministry,  one  whose  conscience  has 
not  yet  been  seared.  When  he  is  reproved  by  the 
Baptist  in  sharp  unsparing  words,  his  first  impulse  is 
not  one  of  scorn  or  anger,  but  of  reverential  attention : 
"Ho  feared  John,  knowing  that  he  was  a  just  man  and 
an  holy,  and  observed  him ;  and  ho  did  many  things,  and 
heard  him  gladly"  (Mark  \i.  '20).  This  respect  for  one 
who  presented  a  pattern  of  holiness,  which  he  admired 
as  from  a  distance,  is  just  what  would  be  natural  in 
one  whose  youth  had  been  passed  in  close  contact  with 
one  of  this  sect  who  was  true  to  the  principles  and  prac- 
tices of  an  Essene,  and  whose  life  would  therefore  bo 
framed  after  the  same  model  of  Nazarite  and  Rechabito 
austerity  as  that  of  the  Baptist. 

(6)  The  fact  that  the  name  of  Manaen  appears  among 
the  prophets  and  teachers  at  Antioch  is,  as  I  have 
pointed  out  elsewhere,'  suggestive  of  the  fact  that  in 
him  there  was  one  in  whom  the  seed  of  the  Divine 
word  fell  on  the  soil  of  an  honest  and  good  heart,  and 
brought  forth  fruit  abundantly.  If  we  assume,  as  is 
probable,  that  he  continued  to  bo  on  terms  of  greater 
or  less  intimacy  with  the  prmce  with  whom  he  had 
been  so  closely  connected  dui-iug  his  youth,  we  may 
think  of  liis  influence  as  having,  for  a  time  at  least, 
counteracted  that  of  the  ambitious  and  vindictive 
Herodias.  When  the  weaker  mind  of  the  tetrarch  was 
led  on  to  the  irrevocable  act  which  marked  him  as  the 
murderer,  even  then  the  unwUling  murderer,  of  the 
forerunner  of  Chi'ist,  the  Essene  must  have  made  his 
choice,  and  joined  himself  to  the  company  of  those 
disciples  in  whose  aims  and  rules  of  conduct  ho  found 
60  much  that  was  in  harmony  mth  those  of  the  brother- 

I  Biblical  SiudicSf  "  Manaen,"  p.  386. 


hood  with  whom  he  had  tiU  then  been  associated.^ 
There  are  signs,  at  any  rate,  in  the  Gospel  history 
that  some  such  influence  as  that  which  such  a  man 
was  likely  to  exercise  was  at  work  amongst  the  officers 
and  attendants  of  the  tetrarch.  The  nobleman  at 
Capernaum  who  sent  to  our  Lord  beseeching  him  to 
come  down  and  heal  his  son  (John  iv.  46, 47 )  was,  as  his 
name  indicates  ($a<n\tKiis,  an  attenilant  of  the  king's), 
attached  to  the  court  of  Herod,  and  olmously  believed 
in  the  supernatm'al,  divine  power  of  Christ,  even  at 
that  early  stage  in  his  ministry.  Joanna,  the  wife  of 
Chuza,  the  steward  or  guardian  of  Herod's  property, 
took  her  place  among  the  devout  women  who  followed 
om-  Lord,  and  ministered  to  Him  of  their  substance. 
The  presence  among  the  early  believers  at  Rome  of 
one  bearing  a  name  (Herodion),  which  marked  him 
out  as  connected  with  the  dynasty,  points  in  the  same 
direction  (Rom.  x\i.  11).  The  fact  that  Herod,  when 
"  he  heard  of  the  fame  of  Jesus,  said  unto  Ms  servants. 
This  is  John  the  Baptist,  he  is  risen  from  the  dead," 
gains  a  fresh  iuterest  (as  Professor  Blunt  points  out  in 
liis  Sci-ijjtural  Coincidences)  when  we  connect  it  with 
the  notices  which  show  that  those  servants  must  have 
included  some  at  least  who  were  in  heart  followers  of 
the  Baptist  and  disciples  of  the  Christ. 

(c)  We  may  add,  that  the  ready  acceptance  Herod  gave 
to  the  strange  belief  which  these  words  imply,   was 


-  An  interesting  article  on  the  Talmud,  in  the  July  fl873) 
number  of  the  Edinhur>jh  Review,  starts,  or  rather  revives  the 
hypothesis  that  the  Esseues  were  in  fact  Christians,  and  supports 
the  conjecture  by  a  considerable  number  of  superficial  resemblances 
— their  purity,  abstemiousness,  voluntai-y  poverty,  aversion  to  the 
use  of  oaths,  and  the  like.  What  has  been  mentioned  in  these 
papers  shows,  I  need  scarcely  say,  that  the  theory  is  untenable.  The 
resemblances  are  only  such  as  are  to  be  found  in  all  communities 
which  aim  at  a  devout,  contemplative,  yet  industrial  life.  And 
there  is  the  one  insuperable  difficulty  that  the  Esseues  are  men- 
tioued  by  Josephus,  as  in  the  case  of  the  elder  Monaen,  as  existing^ 
even  in  the  childhood  of  Herod  the  Great,  sixty  years  or  so 
before  the  birth  of  Christ ;  that  the  fuU  account  of  their  mode  of 
life  is  given  by  him  as  belonging  to  the  time  of  Judas  of  Galilee  j 
and  that  the  historian  himself  joined  the  sect  when  he  was  about 
sixteen  years  of  age,  and  therefore  some  years  before  there  was  a 
body  of  Christian  disciples.  It  is  probable  enough,  of  course,  that 
many  of  the  order  followed  the  example  of  Mauaen,  and  that  they 
formed  an  important  element  in  the  Jewish  Christian  Church; 
but  the  assumption  that  the  Esseues,  as  such,  were  Christians,  is 
simply  an  anachronism. 


THE    COINCrOElSrCES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 


83 


precisely  what  might  be  expected  from  one  who  had  been 
more  or  less  imdor  influences  like  that  of  the  Essones. 
Commentators,  assuming  that,  like  most  of  the  wealthy 
and  powerful,  ho  belonged  to  the  Sadducees,  or  at  least 
held  their  tenets,  have,  for  the  most  part,  seen  in  these 
words  either  the  irony  of  a  mocking  scorn,  or  else  the 
reaction  of  a  superstition  which  he  could  not  shake  off, 
against  the  scepticism  of  a  sect  wliich  denied  that 
there  was  any  resurrection  or  spirit.  The  view  which 
has  been  here  taken  presents,  it  is  believed,  a  much 
more  natural  explanation.  The  Essenes  taught,  as  the 
Pharisees  did,  that  the  soul  was  immortal,  and  that 
when  released  from  the  burden  of  the  flesh,  it  gained  a 
new  power  and  blessedness.  Though  they  do  not  seem 
to  have  held,  as  the  Pharisees  did,  a  distinct  doctrine 
of  transmigration  (Josephus,  Wars  of  the  Jews,  ii.  8), 
yet  the  two  beliefs  were  so  closely  linked  together,  that 
Ln  the  mind  of  the  conscience-stricken  tetrareh,  the  one 
would  naturally  suggest  the  other.  ^  The  old  Essene 
belief  would  fill  his  mind  with  vague  fears  and  fore- 
bodings. It  was  in  no  mood  of  scoru,  but  of  real  per- 
plexity, that  he  accepted  the  popular  solution  of  the 
fact  that  mighty  works  were  wi-ought  by  One  who 
seemed  to  him  to  bo  doing  the  same  work,  with  yet 
more  mighty  signs  of  power,  as  had  been  done  by  the 
Baptist. 

2.  The  glimpses  whicli  wo  get  in  the  Gospel  history 
of  the  character  of  Herodias  point  to  her  as  having  a 
stronger  will  for  evil  than  her  husband.  She  is  to  him 
as  Jezebel  was  to  Ahab,  as  Lady  Macbeth,  in  Shake- 
speare's teiTible  creation,  is  to  the  Scottish  thane. 
What  we  read  of  her  in  other  records  brings  this  cha- 
racteristic into  yet  greater  prominence.  Even  in  the 
marriage,  which  stamps  the  name  of  the  tetrareh  with 
such  an  eternal  infamy,  she  appears  to  have  been  as 
much  the  temptress  as  the  tempted.  She  agreed  to  leave 
cue  uncle-husband  for  another  in  the  hope  of  gaining 
greater  power  and  a  higher  title ;  stipulated  that  the 
tetrareh,  as  the  condition  of  the  incestuous  adultery, 
should  put  away  his  former  wifo,  the  daughter  of 
Aretas,  an  Arabian  chief ;  and  then  urged  on  her  new 
husband  in  the  path  of  ambition  which  she  had  marked 
out  for  him  (Joseph.,  Antiq.  xviii.  .51.  The  career  of 
crime  was  marked  at  every  step  by  now  disasters.  The 
death  of  John  the  Baptist,  imprisoned  as  he  had  been 
at  Machajrus,  shocked  the  feelings  of  the  groat  body 
of  his  subjects,  who  had  acquiesced,  though  with  sup- 
pressed indignation,  in  the  man-iage  itself,  and  involved 
Herod  in  a  war  with  the  father  of  the  wife  whom  he 
had,  without  any  ostensible  cause,  so  insolently  repu- 
diated. Traces  of  that  war,  which  ended  in  the  disas- 
trous defeat  of  Herod's  troops,  are  to  be  found  in  two 
memorable  passages  of  the  Gospel  history.  (1.)  "We 
read  in  St.  Luke's  account  of  the  Baptist's  ministry 
that  among  those  who  flocked  to  his  preaching,  seeking 
a  aew  rule  of  hfo,  were  "  soldiers,"  whom  he  counselled 
to  "  do  violence  to  no  man,  to  accuse  no  man  falsely, 
and  to  bo  content  with  their  wages"  (Luke  iii.  14).  The 
word  so  translated,  however  [aTparfvo/ieyoL),  means  more 
than  soldiers  by  profession.    They  were  men  actually 


on  service,  marching  (for  we  know  of  no  other  warfare 
in  which  Herod  was  engaged  at  the  time)  against 
Aretas,  the  father  of  the  injured  princess.  It  is  a 
noteworthy  featm-e  in  the  teaching  of  the  Baptist,  that 
IJreaching  to  such  men  at  such  a  time,  ho  forebore  to 
speak  to  them  of  the  gmlt  of  the  master  whom  they 
served,  and  contented  himself  with  teUing  them  what 
was  their  plain  and  simple  duty.  It  was  not  theu-s  to 
decide  on  the  causes  of  the  war.  Each  was  simply  to 
do  his  duty  even  to  such  a  master,  and  to  keep  his  own 
hands  and  heart  clear  from  the  sins  to  which  warfare 
tempted  him.  (2.)  We  find,  if  I  mistake  not,  an  allu- 
sion to  the  same  campaign  in  our  Lord's  illustration  of 
spiritual  truths,  in  Luke  xiv.  31, 32  :  "  Wliat  king,  going 
to  make  war  against  another  king,  sitteth  not  doivn  first, 
and  consulteth  whether  he  be  able  with  ten  thousand 
to  meet  him  that  cometh  against  him  with  twenty 
thousand  ?  Or  else,  whUo  the  other  is  yet  a  great  way 
off,  ho  sendeth  an  ambassage,  and  desireth  conditions  of 
peace."  The  words  of  the  Teacher,  who  adapted  his 
instructions  always  to  the  thoughts  and  experience  of 
those  wlio  heard  Him,  may  well  be  thought  of  as  point- 
ing tlie  lesson  in  this  case  from  the  history  which  was 
so  recent.  Herod  Antipas  had  not  calculated  his  re- 
sources, had  been  ignominiously  defeated,  and  had  been 
compelled  to  appeal  to  Tiberius,  and  solicit  his  armed 
intervention. 

The  ambition  of  Herodias,  however,  was  not  yet 
satisfied.  When  her  brother  Agi-ippa  (of  whom  more 
hereafter)  had  obtained,  through  the  favour  of  Caligula, 
for  whom  ho  had  helped  to  secure  the  succession  to  the 
empire,  the  title  of  king,  she  was  indignant  to  find  her 
husband  in  a  position  of  inferiority.  Again  the  stronger 
ynH  overpowered  the  weaker.  She  urged  him  to  go  to 
the  imperial  city,  as  Agrippa  had  done,  and  gain  the 
emperor's  favour.  "  Let  us  go  to  Rome,  and  spare  no 
pains  or  expense  either  in  gold  or  sUver,  since  they 
cannot  be  kept  for  any  better  use  than  for  the  attain- 
ment of  a  kingdom."  At  fii-st  (to  quote  the  words  of 
Josephus)  the  tetrareh  "  opposed  her  request,  out  of  the 
love  of  ease,  and  having  a  suspicion  of  the  trouble  ho 
shoidd  have  at  Rome.  But  the  more  she  saw  him 
draw  back,  tho  more  she  pressed  him  to  it,  and  desired 
him  to  leave  no  stoue  unturned  in  order  to  be  king." 
And  at  last  her  importunity  prevailed.  They  started 
on  their  journey  to  Rome  with  a  magnificent  retinue. 
But  their  rival  was  beforehand  with  them.  Agrippa 
sent  a  messenger  with  a  letter  accusing  Antipas  of 
treason,  and  in  particular  for  ha'S'ing  stored  up  arms  for 
seventy  thousand  men.  Tho  tetrareh,  who  had,  after  his 
fashion,  acted  this  time  on  the  counsel  implied  in  our 
Lord's  words,  was  compelled  to  admit  the  fact :  and  the 
emperor,  not  satisfied  with  his  explanations,  deprived 
him  of  his  tetrarchy,  and  banished  him  to  the  same 
province  as  that  in  which  Archelaus  was  diMggiug  on 
his  life  of  exile.  It  is  the  one  redeeming  feature  in 
the  character  of  the  \ricked  woman  who  was  the  author 
of  his  fall,  that  when  the  emperor  offered  to  pardon 
her  for  the  sake  of  her  brother,  she  refused  the  in- 
dulgence which  would  have   separated  her  from  her 


THE   BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


husband,  and  preferred  to  share  his  misfortunes  as  she 
had  before  shared  his  prosperity  (Joseph,  tbid.). 

3.  St.  Luke,  here  as  elsewhere,  obviously  having  had 
access  to  information  connected  with  the  Herods  which 
the  other  Evangelists  did  not  possess,  reports  two  facts 
which  brought  the  tetrarch  into  contact  with  Pontius 
Pilate,  the  procurator  of  Judaja.  "There  were  present 
at  that  season  some  that  told  him  (our  Lord)  of  the 
GaUleans,  whose  blood  Pilate  had  mingled  with  their 
sacrifices"  (xiii.  1).  The  history  of  Josephus,  though  it 
does  not  record  a  massacre  of  Galileans  as  such,  relates 
an  incident  with  which  the  event  mentioned  in  St.  Luke 
was  probably  identical.  Pilate,  with  a  Roman's  instinct 
for  material  improvements,  undertook  the  construction 
of  an  aqueduct  for  the  water-supply  of  Jerusalem,  and 
for  this  purpose,  with  the  assent  or  acquiescence  of 
the  priests,  made  use  of  the  "corban,"  or  consecrated 
treasure  of  the  Temple,  in  which  the  gifts  of  pilgrims 
of  all  nations  were  accumulated.  The  people,  however, 
looked  on  this  as  an  act  of  sacrilege  :  it  came  into  col- 
lision with  the  teaching  of  the  Pharisees  as  to  the  sin 
of  applying  any  dedicated  gift  (Mark  rii.  11 — 13), 
and  the  multitude  clamoured  vehemently  against  it. 
Thousands  were  gathered  together,  and  Pilate  thought 
it  necessary  to  send  in  a  large  number  of  his  troops,  in 
the  common  dress  of  the  country,  and  with  their  arms 
concealed,  and  a  large  number  of  the  defenceless  crowd 
were  slaughtered  (Joseph.,  Aniiq.  x\'iii.  3).  It  will  be 
observed  that  there  is  no  mention  of  the  Galileans  here. 
On  the  other  hand,  from  the  days  of  Judas  of  Galilee 
onwards,  the  people  of  that  province  were  always  the 
most  excitable  on  questions  which  aifected  their  religion 
(of.  Antiq.  xvii.  10,  §  2),  and  they  were  not  likely  to 
be  passive  on  such  an  occasion  as  this.  The  assump- 
tion that  one  of  the  incidents  of  the  uproar  was  the 
slaughter  of  some  of  Herod's  subjects  is  at  least  pro- 
bable, and  it  seems  to  explain  the  "  enmity  "  which  for 
some  time  before  the  crucifixion  had  existed  between 
the  procurator  and  the  tetrarch.  What  greater  com- 
pliment could  the  Roman  magistrate  pay  to  the  offended 
prince  than  scrupulously  to  recognise  his  jurisdiction 
in  any  case  where  a  Galilean  wore  concerned  ?  (Luke 
xxiii.  6,  7.) 

4.  Three  other  coincidences  connect  themselves,  with 
more  or  less  probability,  with  the  same  series  of  events. 
(1.)  The  fall  of  the  tower  of  SUoam  (Luke  xiii.  i)  was 
manifestly  spoken  of  as  a  Divine  judgment  for  some 
supposed  Clime.  If,  as  is  probable,  it  stood  near  the 
pool  or  conduit  of  that  name,  it  may  have  been  con- 
nected with  the  structure  of  the  aqueduct  just  referred 
to.  Assuming  this,  wo  can  easily  understand  how  the 
excited  feeling  of  the  multitude  woidd  see  in  its  fall  a 
proof  of  the  Divine  displeasure,  and  how  naturally  the 
mention  of  a  catastrophe  on  one  side  would  suggest  a 
reference  to  an  equal  disaster  on  the  other.  The  words 
of  the  Teacher  gain  a  new  force  if  we  think  of  them  as 
dealing  with  two  cases,  each  of  which  was  referred  to 
by  opposite  parties,  the  one  iuvoh-iug  the  death  of  those 
who  opposed,  the  other  of  those  who  took  part  in,  the 
construction  of  the  tower,  and  proclaiming  that  in  the 


order  of  God's  government  these  things  came  alike  uj)on 
the  just  and  the  unjust. 

(2.)  We  have  seen  reason  to  connect  our  Lord's  re- 
ference to  the  folly  of  the  king  who  plunges  into  a 
war  for  which  he  is  unprepared,  with  the  local  histoi-y 
of  the  time.  I  venture  to  suggest  that  the  parallel  in- 
stance may  have  a  like  reference.  Pilate  was  obliged 
to  abandon  his  enterprise  when  the  resoui'ces  on  which 
he  rehed  were  cut  off,  and  the  unfinished  portions  of 
towers  and  arches  must  have  been  the  object  of  a  some- 
what derisive  scorn  to  all  the  Jews  who  gazed  on  them. 
What  more  likely  to  become  a  bye-word  and  a  proverb  ? 
May  we  not  think  of  this  as  the  substratum  of  the 
parable :  "  Which  of  you,  iatending  to  build  a  tower, 
sitteth  not  dowu  first,  and  coimteth  the  cost,  whether 
he  have  sufficient  to  finish  it  ?  Lest  haply,  after  he 
hath  laid  the  foundation,  and  is  not  able  to  finish  it,  all 
that  behold  it  begin  to  mock  him,  saying,  This  man  began 
to  buUd,  and  is  not  able  to  finish  "  (Luke  xiv.  28 — 30). 

(3.)  The  incident  referred  to  also  affords  an  explana- 
tion (I  follow  Ewald,  the  great  historian  of  Israel,  in 
this  conjecture)  of  the  strange  popukrity  of  Barabbas. 
It  was  no  common  robber,  like  the  two  who  were  led 
forth  to  crucifixion,  that  thus  attracted  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  people.  His  very  name,  looked  at  as  being  a 
patronymic,  like  Bartimisus  or  Barjonah,  implies  that 
he  was  looked  on  as  the  son  of  one  who  was  re- 
garded as  a  "  father  in  Israel,"  priest,  it  may  be,  or 
scribe ;  and  if  we  receive  the  reading  of  some  of  the 
most  ancient  MSS.,  his  own  name  was  identical  with 
that  of  our  Lord.  The  multitude  had  to  make  their 
choice  between  Jesus  of  Nazareth  and  Jesus  Barabbas, 
between  the  son  of  the  carpenter  and  the  son  of  some 
man  of  mark  at  Jerusalem.  And  we  are  not  without  a 
clue  to  the  motives  that  determined  their  choice.  Their 
favourite  was  a  "  notable  "  i.e..  an  illustrious  prisoner  ; 
he  had  been  cast  into  prison  "  for  a  certain  sedition  made 
in  the  city,  and  for  murder"  (Luke  xxiii.  19).  He  "  lay 
bound  with  them  that  had  made  insurrection  with  him, 
who  liad  committed  murder  in  the  insurrection  "  (Mark 
XV.  7).  So  far  as  the  history  of  Josephus  guides  us,  there 
had  been  no  insurrection  at  Jerusalem  of  any  moment 
since  that  the  story  of  which  has  been  told  above. 
The  supposition  that  Barabbas  had  been  a  conspicuous 
leader  in  that  tumult,  that  he  had  tlius  made  himself 
the  representative  of  the  excited  feelings  of  the  multi- 
tude, the  Pharisees,  and  the  larger  portion  of  the 
priests,  affords  the  most  natural  explau.ation  possible  of 
the  choice  made  by  the  midtitude,  whether  of  Jerusalem 
or  Galilee,  when  they  cried  out,  "  Not  this  man,  but 
Barabbas  " — not  he  who  bids  us  render  to  CiEsar  the 
things  that  be  CiEsar's,  but  he  who  has  suffered  bravely 
in  the  cause  we  hold  so  sacred. 

5.  Ouo  or  two  points  remain  to  be  noticed  in  con- 
nection ivith  the  tetrarch 's  administration.  It  was  his 
policy,  we  have  seen,  as  it  had  been  that  of  his  father,  to 
court  the  favour  of  the  emperor,  aud  no  form  of  flattery 
was  found  more  efficacious  than  that  of  founding  or  re- 
buUdiug  a  city  in  honour  of  the  emperor  himself,  or  of 
some  member  of  his  family.     So  a  change  of  nomen- 


ILLUSTRATIONS   OF  HOLY   SCRIPTURE  PROM   COINS,  MEDALS,  ETC. 


85 


claturo  passed  over  the  country  precisely  at  the  period 
with  which  the  Gospel  history  brings  us  into  contact. 
What  had  been  the  Sea  of  Gemicsaret  became  the  Sea 
of  Tiberias,  from  the  city  of  that  name  which  Antipas 
built  on  its  western  shore,  and  of  which  we  still  hear 
the  echo  in  the  modem  name  of  the  lake,  as  Bahr 
Tubariyeh.  So  one  of  the  two  Beth-saidas  ("  House 
of  Fish,"  "  Fish-town "  as  we  might  caU  it),  that  at 
the  north-eastern  extremity  of  the  lake,  received  in 
addition  the  name  of  Jidias,  in  honour  of  the  daughter 
of  Augustus.  Philip,  the  tetrarch  of  Ituraa,  not  to  bo 
behind  his  brother,  rebuilt  the  city  near  the  source  of 
the  Jordan,  wliich  had  first  been  known  as  Laish  ;  then, 
when  conquered  by  a  portion  of  that  tribe,  as  Dan 
(Judg.  xviii.  29) ;  then,  after  the  legends  of  Greek  my- 
thology had  overspread  the  land,  as  Paneas,  from  the 
grotto  dedicated  to  Pan,'  near  which  Herod  the  Great 
had  built  a  marble  temple  to  Augustus,  and  gave  it  the 
new  name  of  Ceesarea,  to  which,  in  order  to  distinguish 
it  from  the  city  built  by  his  father  on  the  coast,  he 
added  the  epithet  PhUippi. 

Seme  traces  of  this  Romanising  influence  on  the 
customs  and  speech  of  the  Galilean  peasants  have 
been  already  pointed  out.  The  denarius,  the  as,  the 
quadrans  are  the  common  coins  by  which  the  people 
reckon  the  wages  of  a  day's  labour,  and  the  price  of 
sparrows  in  the  market.  "Centurion"  becomes  a 
familiar  word.  Even  the  demoniac  sees  in  the  "  legion" 
the  embodiment  of  resistless  force.     The  napkin  that 

1  It  is  right  to  add  tliat  this  identification  is  disputed  by  Bean 
Howson  and  other  eminent  geographers. 


goes  round  the  neck  or  loins  is  known  as  the  sudarium. 
Yet  more  strikingly  is  that  influence  seen  in  the  nar- 
rative of  the  tetrarch's  great  crime.  It  was  not  the 
custom  of  the  Jews  to  keej)  royal  birthdays.  Festivals. 
from  their  point  of  view,  wore  to  be  in  honour  of  God 
only,  and  they  grouped  such  feasts  as  that  which  Herod 
held,  with  the  Saturnalia  and  other  heathen  abomina- 
tions. Herod,  however,  followed  the  Roman  fashion. 
The  accession  and  the  birthday  of  the  emperor  wore 
feast  days  in  the  Roman  calendar.  The  feast  itself 
was  therefore  an  offence  against  the  religious  feeling 
of  the  people.  The  dance  of  Salome,  the  daughter  of 
Herodias,  was  yet  more  so.  To  the  Hebrews,  dancing 
was  a  solemn  as  well  as  a  joyful  thing,  the  expression 
in  rhythmic  motion  of  tho  feelings  which  found  utterance 
also  in  melody  and  song.  So  David  and  the  priests  and 
Levitos  had  danced  before  the  ark  ;  so  Miriam  had  led 
the  women  of  Israel  with  timbrels  and  dances ;  so,  in 
a  later  age,  those  women  had  welcomed  Said  and  David 
on  their  return  from  conquest.  Men  and  women  danced 
apai't ;  and  the  imion  of  both  in  the  same  dance  wotUd 
have  been  an  outrage  on  the  Jew's  sense  of  decency. 
But  it  was  yet  more  so,  that  a  princely  maiden  should 
come  by  herself,  and  dance  with  more  or  less  lascivious 
pantomime  (as  girls  did  at  the  Capraean  banquets  of 
Tiberius)  before  the  gaze  of  revellers  flushed  with  wine, 
and  thus  stimulate  the  voluptuousness  which  craved  for 
ever-new  excitement.  It  was  perhaps  the  very  novelty 
of  the  stimulus  that  made  the  sensual  prince  willing  to 
reward  this  iuventress  of  a  fresh  pleasure  with  even  tho 
half  of  his  kingdom,  or  the  head  of  a  righteous  victim. 


ILLUSTEATIONS   OF   HOLY   SCRIPTUEE   FROM   COINS,   MEDALS, 

AND    INSCRIPTIONS. 

ET  THE   BEV.   CANON   EAWLINSON,    M.A.,    CAMDEN    PBOrESSOB   OF   ANCIENT   HISTOET  IN   THE    UNIVEESITT   OF  OXFORD. 

is  the  God"  (hti  ha-Elohim)  in  ver.  3.  The  mono- 
theism is  apparently  complete.  It  is  not  like  that  of 
Nebuchadnezzar,  who  combines  a  special  devotion  to  one 
God  (who  is  "  his  god  ")  with  a  worship  of  many  other 
powers,  equal  or  not  much  inferior — who  calls  Daniel's 
God  "  a  God  of  gods,"  and  holds  that  "  there  is  none 
other  god  that  can  deliver  after  this  sort "  (Dan.  iii.  29). 
It  is  a  monotheism  in  which  the  One  God  stands  at  an 
inconceivable  distance  from  all  other  beings,  same  of 
whom  may  perhaps  bo  called  "  gods,"  but  who  are  at 
the  best  angelic  intoUigenees  set  by  the  Supreme  Being 
over  different  portions  of  his  creation.  Now,  tho  in- 
scriptions of  the  early  Persian  monarchs  show  them 
distinctly  to  have  been  monotheists,  and  not  only  so, 
but  monotheists  of  exactly  this  sort.  Tho  monarchs 
term  the  Supreme  Being  Ahura-mazda  (Ormazd),  "  the 
much-giving  "  or  "  much-knowing  Spirit.'"'  Tho  usual 
mode  in  which  they  speak  of  him  is  the  following : — 

'  See  BrockLi\us,  Teniidad-Saiic,  pp.  3t7  and  385.  The  verb  da 
in  old  Persian  had  the  two  meanings  of  "  to  know  "  and  "  to 
give."     Compare  the  Greek  iuuj,  and  iiiw/si  (Lat.  iltir«J. 


I N  the  last  chapter  of  the  Second  Book  of 
Chronicles  (ver.  23),  we  have  a  part  ef 
a  decree,  and  in  the  first  chapter  of 
Ezra  (vs.  2 — i),  we  have  the  whole  of  a 
decree  of  Cyrus  the  Great,  king  of  Persia,  which  re- 
ceives a  good  deal  of  illustration  from  the  inscriptions 
set  up  at  Behistun,  Persepolis,  and  elsewhere,  by  some 
of  this  monarch's  early  successors.  The  decree  is  very 
remarkable,  first,  from  its  monotheistic  character ; 
secondly,  from  the  fact  that  it  identifies  the  grea,t  god 
of  tho  Persians  with  Jehovah,  the  God  of  the  Jews ; 
and,  thirdly,  from  its  claiming  for  Cyrus  that  ho  has  a 
di^dne  mission  to  re-establish  the  Jews  in  their  country 
and  to  rebuild  their  Temple  at  Jerusalem.  There  are 
also  particular  expressions  in  it  which  arc  unusu.al,  and 
which  wUl  be  found  to  resemble  expressions  in  the  early 
Persian  inscriptions. 

I.  Tho  monotheistic  character  of  the  decree  appears 
in  the  phrases,  "  The  Lord  God  of  heaven  "  (or  literally, 
"Jehovah,  the  God  of  heaven"),  in  ver.  2;  and  "He 


86 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


"  A  great  god  is  Ahura-mazda.  He  it  is  that  gave  (i.e., 
made)  tlus  earth,  that  gave  that  heaven,  that  gave  man- 
Hud,  that  gave  life  (?)  to  mankind,  that  made  .  .  . 
king,  both  the  king  of  the  people  and  the  lawgiver  of 
the  people."'  Ahiira-mazda  alone  they  invoke;  to 
Ahura-mazda  alone  tliey  ascribe  their  victories  and 
successes.  "WTulo  they  mention  him  perpetually  in  all 
their  inscriptions,  it  is  only  hero  and  there  that  they 
admit  the  existence  of  any  other  divine  being.  Occa- 
sionally such  beings  are  glanced  at.  Ormazd  is  "  the 
greatest  of  the  gods"  {mathista  haganam)?  He  is 
coupled  sometimes  with  the  deities  that  protect  the 
royal  honse.^  Ho  is  united  in  one  instance  with  the 
sun-god,  Mithra.''  But,  excepting  in  haJf-a-dozen  ]5as- 
sages,  he  reigns  supreme  and  alone,  the  god  to  whom 
each  monarch  addresses  his  prayers,  to  whom  he 
attributes  his  past  prosperity,  from  whom  he  expects 
future  favours,  whom  he  invokes  alike  in  prayers  and 
in  imprecations,  whom  he  is  never  weary  of  acknow- 
ledging. So  near  an  approach  to  pure  monotheism  is 
very  unusual  among  the  nations  of  antiquity ;  and  it  is 
strongly  indicative  of  the  accui-acy  of  the  sacred  wiiters 
that  they  ascribe  such  views  to  exactly  the  nation 
which  appears  by  its  own  records  to  have  cherished 
them.* 

II.  The  identification  of  Ahura-mazda  with  Jehovah, 
the  God  of  the  Jews,  is  very  remarkable.  In  general 
the  Persians  felt  the  utmost  contempt  towards  the  gods 
of  alien  nations.  Then*  wars  were  in  a  great  measure 
rchgious  wars  f  it  was  thou-  great  object  to  show  that 
Ahura-mazda  alone  was  the  tnie  God,  and  that  he  was 
infinitely  superior  to  the  divinities  worshipped  by  other 
races.  They  usually  insidted  the  religion  of  each  con- 
quered nation,  and  strove  to  cover  it  with  ridicule. 
But  the  decree  of  Cyrus,  and  the  other  Hebrew  records 
of  the  relations  between  the  Jews  and  the  Persians, 
distinctly  prove  that  towards  the  Jews  thoir  conduct 
was  whoUy  diiforont.  In  this  single  instance  they 
showed  respect  for  an  alien  religion,  approved  it,  sym- 
pathised with  it,  and  went  so  far  as  to  accept  its  God 
as  identical  with  their  own,  and  to  regard  Jehovah 
as  another  name  for  Oi-mazd.  Here  the  inscriptions 
do  not  directly  confirm  the  sacred  narrative,  since 
they  contain  no  mention  of  Jehovah  or  of  tho  Jews ; 
but  they  are  in  complete  harmony  with  the  Biblical 
accounts,  and  so  indirectly  confirm  them.  The  cha- 
racter of  tho  Persian  religion,  as  represented  upon  the 
momiments,  is  such  that  we  can  readily  understand  the 
nation  sympathisrug  with  tho  Jews.  If  the  Persian 
conception  of  Ahura-mazda  is  not,  as  it  is  not,  "per- 
fectly identical  with  the  notion  of  Eloliim,  or  Jehovah, 
which  we  find  m  +he  books  of  the  Old  Testament,"?  it 

1  Seo  Sir  H.  Eawlinsou's  Porsia.i  Cuneiform  InscrMions,  vol.  i., 
rp.  285,  291,  3in,  33:5,  4o. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  273,  319,  aud  331. 

>  Ibid.,  p.  275.     Compare  p.  321. 

•"  Ibid.,  p.  342. 

5  Soo  further,  ou  this  subject,  tho  autlior'a  Ancient  STonoroIiies, 
VDl.  iii.,  pp.  96—98. 

«  Ibid.,  vol.  iv.,  pp.  339,  390,  452,  &c. 

7  This  is  the  positiou  maintained  by  Dr.  Martin  Hnug  {Bssaus 
on  (he  Sacrci  Languaije,  IFritinss,  aiiij  lietijion  ci  the  Parsees,  p. 


is,  at  any  rate,  so  near  to  it  that,  when  the  two  peoples 
came  to  understand  each  other's  views,  the  resemUance 
coidd  not  but  have  been  recognised,  and  a  sympathy 
could  not  but  have  arisen.  Thus  the  Scriptural  nar- 
rative of  what  actually  happened  is  the  natural  out- 
come of  the  quasi-identity  of  religious  belief  which  the 
inscriptions,  compared  with  tho  Jewish  Scriptures, 
indicate. 

in.  The  determination  of  Cyrus  to  rebuild  the 
Temple  at  Jerusalem,  and  especially  his  declaration  that 
"  Jehovah,  the  God  of  heaven,  had  cliarged  him  to  buUd 
the  house  "  (Ezra  i.  2),  have  been  thought  surprising, 
owing  to  the  statement  of  Herodotus  and  others  that 
"  the  Persians  had  no  images  of  tho  gods,  no  temples 
nor  altars,  and  considered  the  use  of  them  a  sign  of 
f  ony."**  It  is,  indeed,  admitted  that  the  later  Persians 
had  temples ;'  but  their  use  is  supposed  to  be  an 
innovation,  the  produce  of  corrupt  times,  and  a  de- 
parture from  the  purer  practice  of  antiquity.  Hero 
the  inscriptions  come  in,  and  completely  remove  the 
supposed  dilficulty  by  showing  us  that  tho  Greeks  wero 
mistaken  on  tho  point,  and  that  the  Persians  of  tho 
purest  times  worshipped  Ormazd  in  temples,  and  re- 
garded them  as  rightful,  if  not  necessary,  buildiugs. 
Darius  Hystasjiis,  tho  restorer  of  pure  Zoroastrianism, 
tells  us  that  when  he  had  dethroned  Gomates,  tho 
Magian,  it  was  his  first  care  to  "  rebuild  the  temples," 
which  that  usurper  had  destroyed,'"  and  which,  con- 
sequently, must  have  existed  under  Cambyses,  and 
almost  certainly  had  existed  under  Cyrus.  With  regard 
to  tho  special  mission  of  Cyrus  to  rebuild  the  Jewish 
temple,  we  cannot  explain  it  from  the  inscriptions ;  but 
it  would  seem  to  bo  not  improbable  that,  on  his  capture 
of  Babylon,  his  attention  was  called  to  the  prophecy  of 
Isaiah  (xliv.  28 — "That  saith  of  Cyrus,  He  is  my 
shepherd,  and  shall  perform  all  my  pleasure :  even 
saying  to  Jerusalem,  Thou  shalt  be  built ;  and  to  tho 
temple.  Thy  foundations  shaU  be  laid"),  and  that  he 
accepted  this  prophecy  as  a  Divine  command,  which  it 
was  his  duty  to  obey. 

IV.  The  expression,  "the  God  of  heaven,"  which 
occurs  both  in  2  Clu'on.  xxxvi.  23  and  in  Ezra  i.  2,  is 
one  almost  absent  from  the  earlier  Scriptures,  and,  with 
one  exception,"  may  perhaps  be  said  to  bo  first  brought 
before  us  by  the  edict  of  Cyrus.  It  should,  therefore, 
be  a  Persian  phrase.  Now,  thougli  tho  inscriptions  do 
not  absolutely  contain  it,  they  throw  light  on  it.  They 
show  us  that  the  formula  usitata  with  respect  to 
Ormazd — occurring  in  the  inscriptions  of  almost  evoiy 
king — put  prominently  fonvard  the  idea  that  ho  was 

257),  It  has  been  combated  by  Professor  Pusey  {Xfaiiiel  the 
Proplu't.  pp.  530—532). 

9  Herod,  i.  131.     Compare  Strab.  xv.  p.  733. 

^  Creuzer,    Symbol.,  vol.  i.,  p.   651 ;    Bahr  ad  Herod,  i.  131. 
Compare  Polyb.  v.  10,  §  8  ;  x.  27,  §  12,  &o. 

'^  Behist.  Inscrip.,  col.  i.,  par.  14,  §  5.  See  Spiegel's  comment 
on  the  word  amdana  in  his  KeiUnscliriflen,  p.  83 ;  and  note  that 
In  the  Babylonian  transcript  of  the  inscription  tho  expression 
used  is  hiti  sa  ihii,  "the  houses  of  the  goda"  (Journal  of  Asiatic 
Socieiy,  vol.  xiv.,  p.  Ixxvi.). 

11  The  one  clear  exception  is  Jonah  i.  9.  Daniel  also  uses  the 
phrase  lii.  18,  19,  37,  44) ;  but  it  is  not  certain  that  this  chapter 
was  written  before  the  decree  of  Cyrus. 


EASTERN    GEOGRAPHY  OP    THE    BIBLE. 


87 


the  "  maker  of  heaven."   The  formula  has  been  already 
^ven  (see  page  86). 

It  is  usual  for  a  Persian  monarch  to  commence  a 
doeiimont  ■mth.  an  acknowledgment  that  he  derives  his 
royal  authority  from  Ormazd.  The  opening  clause  of 
the  edict  of  Cyrus,  "  The  Lord  God  of  heaven  hath 
given  mo  all  the  kingdoms  of  tho  earth,"  rims  parallel 
with  such  an  initial  sentence  as  tho  following,  "  The 
great  god  Ormazd,  who  is  tho  chief  of  the  gods,  ho 
established  Darius  as  kmg ;  lie  granted  him  tho  empire ; 
by  the  gi'aco  of  Ormazd  is  Darius  king."'     It  may  be 

1  See  Sir  H.  Eawlinsou's  Cunflt/orm,  Itiscriptioiis,  vol.  i.,  p.  273. 


objected  that  in  this  formula,  and  others  similar  to 
it,  no  such  ^aolent  exaggeration  is  used  as  that  of 
the  edict,  "  The  Lord  God  hath  given  me  all  the 
Tcingdoms  of  the  earth."  Darius,  however,  and  Xerxes 
continually  speak  of  themselves  as  "  supporters  of  this 
great  world,"-  and  both  Artaxerxes  Mnomon  and 
Artaxerxes  Ochus  call  themselves  expressly  "kings 
of  this  earth."  ^  Thus  the  exaggeration,  which  is  quite 
in  tho  Oriental  style,  is  one  not  unknown  to  Persian 
monarehs. 

-  Ibid.,  pp.  287,  292,  320,  324,  &e. 

^  Ibid.,  p.  3-i2j  Loftus,  ClialdiEa  and  Susiajifi,  p.  372, 


EASTERN  GEOGEAPHY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 

BT    THE   REV.    H.   W.    PHILLOTT,    M.A.,    BECTOK   OP    STAT7NT0N-0N-WTE,    AND    PE^LECTOK   OF    HEEErOED    CATHEDEAL, 


BABYLON  (continued). 
?UT  it  is  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  river, 
a  short  distance  above  Hillah,  that  tho 
principal  remains  of  tho  great  city  are 
apparent.  Most  travellers  who  havo  do- 
scribed  the  ruins  have  ajiproachod  them  from  Baghdad, 
on  the  Tigris,  which  place  lies  between  fifty  and  sixty 
miles  to  tho  north-east  of  the  city  wliich  it  may  be 
said  to  havo  succeeded,  if  not  in  maguitudo,  yet  in 
comparative  importance.  Tho  space  between  the  rivers 
is  naturally  a  level  plain,  intersected  by  numerous 
canals,  most  of  them  now  dry,  but  attesting  by  their 
remains  tho  skill  and  industry  of  past  generations 
and  tho  neglect  of  those  who  havo  como  after.  It  is 
strewn,  also,  in  evei-y  direction  with  moimds  and  heaps 
of  chifted  soU,  covering  tho  walls  and  foundations  of 
ruined  buildings. 

Near  tho  vUlage  of  Mahowill,  about  ten  miles  north 
of  HUlah,  a  canal  is  crossed  which  still  conveys  water 
to  distant  gardens,  and  on  its  southern  bank  is  a  line 
of  earthen  ramparts  believed  to  be  the  most  northern 
remains  of  Babylon.  Five  mUes  further  to  the  south, 
rising  squarely  above  the  plain,  about  950  yards 
from  tho  Euphrates,  which  here  winds  its  course  for 
some  mUes  between  fringes  of  palm-trees,  is  a  huge 
mound,  in  form  and  size  resembling  a  natural  hill 
rather  than  tho  work  of  men's  hands;  but  on  nearer 
approach  its  table-like  though  imeven  top  and  perpen- 
dicular sides,  rising  abruptly  from  the  jilain,  reveal  its 
artificial  construction.  This  is  the  Miijelihe,  i.e.,  "  the 
overturned,"  or,  as  the  Arabs  call  it,  Babil.  for  the 
former  of  these  terms  is  applied  to  more  than  one  of 
the  ruined  heaps  of  Babylon.  It  is  the  most  imposing 
of  the  thi-eo  great  masses  of  ruin  which  lie  in  succession 
from  north  to  south,  between  Mahowill  and  HiUah,  and 
is  marked  A  upon  plan  No.  1  fpago  90).  The  Mujelibe 
is  about  200  yards  long  on  the  north  side,  about  218  on 
tho  south,  182  on  the  east,  and  136  on  the  west.  It  is 
about  141  feet  in  height,  and  is  composed  of  sun-dried 
bricks  inscribed  with  Nebuchadnezzar's  name;  it  has 
tho  appearance  of  a  platform  on  wlaeh  other  buildings 


once  stood,  and  from  it  the  best  view  of  the  other  ruins 
is  obtained.  Tho  interior  is  full  of  holes  and  ravines, 
the  haunt  of  wild  animals,  the  '"satyrs"  and  "  dragons" 
of  wliich  prophecy  had  said  that  after  its  destruction 
the  houses  and  "pleasant  palaces"  of  Babylon  should 
1)6  full  (Isa.  xiii.  21,  22;  Jer.  1.  39).  Many  coffins  also 
have  been  foimd  there,  and  many  remains  of  glass  and 
earthenware  vessels,  but  none  of  very  ancient  date. 
The  angles  of  the  structure,  as  was  observed  by  Pietro 
deUa  VaUe,  point  nearly  to  the  principal  quarters  of  the 
compass.  The  bricks  are  firmly  cemented  together,  and 
tho  reeds  laid  between  the  coiu'ses  so  strong  and  fresh 
as  to  offer  a  firm  resistance  to  force  when  used  to 
detach  them.  Though  Babil  stands  pre-eminent  above 
the  plain,  on  all  sides  shapeless  heaps  of  rubbish  bestrew 
its  surface,  and  masses  of  marble,  fragments  of  pottery 
and  glass  are  miugled  with  that  peculiar  nitrous  and 
blanched  soU,  which,  bred  from  the  remains  of  ancient 
habitations,  checks  or  destroys  vegetation,  and  renders 
the  site  of  Babylon  a  naked  and  hideous  waste.  Besides 
the  jackals  and  other  "  doleful  creatures "  mentioned 
above,  owls,  sometimes  in  flocks  of  one  hundred  in 
number,  are  seen  to  start  from  the  low  shrubs  and 
scanty  thickets  among  the  ruins. 

Southward  of  Babil,  for  nearly  three  miles,  extends 
an  almost  iminterruptcd  line  of  mounds,  the  juins  of 
vast  edifices,  enclosed  by  earthen  ramparts,  the  remains 
of  a  line  of  walls  which  stretched  inwards,  as  seen  in  the 
l)lan  (page  90),  to  a  distance  of  about  two  mUes  from  the 
bed  of  tho  Euphrates,  and  there  nearly  converging  from 
the  apex  of  a  sort  of  triangle  of  which  the  river  itself  is 
tho  base.  That  base  may  bo  estimated  at  about  2  miles 
200  yards  in  length,  while  the  perpendicular,  so  to  call 
it,  of  the  triangle  is  about  2  mUes  600  yards  long. 

About  half  a  mile  to  the  south  of  Babil,  close  to 
the  river,  is  the  second  mass  of  ruin  called  by  the 
Arabs  El-Kasr,  "the  palace,"  marked  b  on  tho  jilan. 
Tills  also  is  sometimes  called  Mujelibe :  it  consists 
of  a  square  of  about  700  yards  each  way,  and  its 
structure  is  much  more  elaborate  than  that  of  any  of 
the  other  buildings.    Tlie  bricks  are  of  tho  finest  kind. 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


THE    MUJELIBE. 


baked,  not  in  the  Bnn  but  in  the  firo,  each  bearing  on 
its  lower  ride  an  inscription  of  the  name  Nebuchad- 
nezzar. The  principal  part  of  the  mound  consists  of 
loose  bricks,  tiles,  and  fragments  of  stone,  but  nearly 
in  the  centre  is  a  solid  mass  of  masonry,  still  entire, 
and  retaining  traces  of  architectural  ornament.  Piers, 
buttresses,  and  pilasters  may  bo  traced,  but  the  work  i 
of  destru«tion  is  too  complete  to  decide  whether  they 
belonged  to  the  interior  or  the  exterior  of  a  palace. 
This  wonderful  piece  of  masonry  is  so  perfect  and  fresh 
in  colour,  that,  notwithstanding  its  great  antiquity,  and 
the  rude  treatment  it  has  received,  it  seems  but  the 
work  of  yesterday.  Many  of  the  bricks  are  coloured  in 
red,  yellow,  blue,  white,  and  black  hues,  and  covered 
with  a  thick  enamel  or  glaze,  on  which  the  traces  of 
figures  and  ornaments  are  clearly  visible,  a  cu-eumstance 
which  agrees  with  the  statements  of  ancient  writers, 
that  the  walls  of  ancient  Babylon  were  painted  with 
figures  of  men  and  animals.  Amid  the  ruins  is  the 
sculptured  figure  of  a  lion  standing  over  a  man,  roughly 
executed  in  black  basalt,  nine  feet  long  and  six  in 
height.  The  mound  on  which  the  Kasr  stands  is  full 
of  holes,  which,  as  elsewhere  in  this  land  of  ruins,  are 
haunted  by  jackals.  A  single  tree,  of  the  tamarisk 
kind,  stands  on  the  northern  edge,  dying,  if  not  now 
dead,  which,  tradition  says,  was  saved  at  the  destruc- 


tion of  the  city  from  the  famous  hanging  gardens  by 
divine  interposition,  in  order  that  Ali,  the  fourth  caliph, 
might  tie  his  horse  to  it  after  the  destruction  of  his 
enemies  in  the  great  battle  of  Hillah.  Some  shoots 
from  this  tree  have  been  planted  in  the  garden  of  the 
British  Resident  at  Baghdad,  and  also  in  the  British 
cemetery  there.  From  the  ruins  Mr.  Layard  was  able 
to  excavate  a  fragment  of  limestone  on  which  were 
portions  of  two  figures,  of  a  character  resembling  that 
of  the  Assyrian  so  familiar  to  us  in  the  monuments  of 
Nineveh. 

About  half  a  mile  south  of  the  Kasr  is  the  third  of 
the  three  great  masses  of  ruin  (marked  c  in  the  plan, 
page  90).  which  goes  by  the  name  of  the  TeU-Amram, 
or  Hill  of  Amriim,  so  called  from  the  name  of  a  Moham- 
medan saint  whose  tomb  stands  upon  it.  It  is  of  a 
triangular  form,  about  100  feet  high,  and  Larger  than 
the  Kasr,  but,  except  the  modern  tomb  just  mentioned, 
has  no  distinct  building  upon  it.  It  is  a  shapeless  mass 
of  bricks,  mortar,  and  cement,  broken  into  deep  ravines 
and  long  winding  furrows.  Within  it  were  discovered 
by  Mr.  Layard  some  interesting  remains  relating  to  the 
Jewish  Captivity,  bearing  inscriptions  in  the  Chaldee 
langu.age  which  were  evidently  intended  to  be  charms 
against  evil  spirits,  and  whose  use  recalls  to  our  mind 
some  of  the  machinery  of  the  Book  of  Tobit.     They 


EASTERN    GEOGRAPHY   OF    THE    BIBLE. 


THE   KASE. 


arc  noiv  in  the  British  Mnsenm,  but  the  description  of 
thom  (loos  not  belong  to  our  present  subject. 

The  three  masses  of  ruin  which  we  have  described 
are  the  principal  ones  of  the  Babylonian  remains  which 
appear  to  represent  definite  structures  witliin  the  city, 
but  besides  there  are  some  very  remarkable  ridges  or 
mounds,  of  which  mention  has  already  been  made,  and 
which  may  wcU  be  supposed  to  have  formed  part  of  its 
original  defences,  exterior  and  interior.  Besides  the 
lines  which  seem  to  represent  external  walls  are  two 
parallel  ridges  running  north  and  south,  of  which  the 
one  nearest  to  the  river  is  broken  by  an  opening.  They 
have  been  thought  to  be  the  walls  of  a  great  reservoir 
of  water,  perhaps  the  one  which  Semiramis  is  said  to 
have  made.  Outside  the  triangular  space  of  which  we 
have  spoken  another  line  runs  in  a  somewhat  curved 
shape,  about  two  and  a  half  miles  in  length.  There  are 
also  detached  mounds,  most  of  them,  though  not  all,  on 
the  eastern  side  of  the  river,  which  belong  to  the  general 
mass  of  ruins,  but  which  it  is  not  necessary  to  describe 
separately. 

Such  are  the  existing  remains,  concerning  which  little 
or  no  doubt  can  be  entertained  that  they  belonged  to 
the  city  of  Babylon.  Tliey  represent  to  us  a  city  of 
great  size  and  importance,  and  if  we  had  no  records  of 
Babylon  except  those  wliich  Holy  Scripture   has  left 


us,  both  in  history  and  prophecy,  we  might  be  content, 
after  due  allowance  made  for  the  processes  of  destruc- 
tion and  of  natural  decay,  to  believe  that  they  represent 
to  us  all  that  those  records  comprehend.  But  when  we 
compare  them  with  the  accounts  of  the  city  given  by 
other  writers,  a  dif&culty  arises  which  it  is  not  easy 
to  resolve.  Let  us  see  in  what  it  consists.  We  possess 
four  accounts  which,  in  some  sense  at  least,  may  be 
called  contemporary,  though  they  have  not  aU  come 
down  to  us  in  their  original  form ;  and  besides  them, 
a  few  words  from  Aristotle,  which,  though  they  tell  us 
little,  derive  importance  from  his  great  authority  and 
our  knowledge  of  the  sources  of  his  information. 

1.  The  first  is  the  Greek  historian  Herodotus,  who 
is  generally  thought  to  have  himself  visited  Babylon, 
though  the  writer  of  this  article  is  inclined  to  have  con- 
siderable doubt  upon  this  point.  If  so.  ho  probably 
saw  the  city  about  eighty  years  after  its  capture  by 
Cyrus,  i.e.,  about  B.C.  460,  and  he  describes  it  and  its 
situation  minutely.  It  was,  he  says,  in  the  form  of  a 
square,  each  of  whose  sides  was  120  stadia,'  or  rather 
more  than  131  miles  in  length,  and  whose  circumference 
consequently  amounted  to  480  stadia,  or  nearly  56  miles. 
A  ditch  full  of  water  ran  all  round,  and  within  the  ditch 


1  A  stadium  was  606  feet  9  iuches. 


90 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


an  outer  wall  200  royal  cubits'  high  aud  50  cubits 
wide,  made  of  bricks  dug  out  of  the  ditch  and  baked  in 
kilns.  Bitumen,  which  came  from  Is,  now  Hit,  on  the 
Eu]5hrates,  was  used  for  mortar,  aud  at  certain  intervals 
the  courses  of  bricks  were  bonded  together  with  reeds. 
On  each  of  the  edges  of  the  summit  of  the  walls  there 
was  a  line  of  single-roomed  houses,  and  in  the  space 
between  them  there  was  room  for  a  four-horse  chariot 
to  tiu-n.  The  river  was  crossed  by  a  bridge,  and  lined 
on  each  side  by  quays,  aud  the  city  was  laid  out  in 
streets  crossing  each  other  at  right  angles,  which  were 
closed  at  the  river- side  by  gates.  Within  the  outer 
wall  was  another,  not  so  wide  as  the  first  one,  and  in 
each  of  the  two  portions  of  the  city  there  was  a  forti- 
fied space,  in  one  of  which  spaces  was  a  royal  palace, 
and  in  the  other  a  temple  to  Belus,  which  existed  in  the 


2.  Next  comes  Ctesias,  a  Greek  physician  of  Cnidus, 
who  was  attached  to  the  court  of  the  Persian  king, 
Artaxerxes  Mnemon,  and  was  with  him  in  the  battle 
of  Cunaxa,  B.C.  401 ;  Cimaxa  was  about  forty  miles 
north  of  Babylon,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
Ctesias  knew  the  city  itself  well.  Unfortunately,  how- 
ever, our  knowledge  of  his  work  is  derived  only  from 
statements  founded  upon  it  which  are  given  by  Diodorus 
the  Sicilian,  who  wrote  in  the  first  century  A.D.  On 
his  authority  Diodorus  toUs  us  that  Semiramis,  having 
collected  2,000,000  men  for  her  work,  built  a  city  360 
stadia  in  circumference,  and  that  its  walls  were  50 
fathoms  (300  feet)  in  height.  Diodorus,  however,  adds 
that  in  his  opinion  this  height  was  incredible,  and  that 
some  later  writers  gave  it  as  50  cubits,  and  broad 
enough  at  the  top  to  allow  two  chariots  to  pass  each 


NO.    1.' — PLAN    OF    KDINS    OF    BABYLON. 

Eefkkences  to  Plan.— a.  MujeliW.     B.  Kasr.     C.  Tel-Amram. 


time  of  Herodotus,  square  in  form  and  two  stadia  in 
circumference.  It  was  biult  in  eight  stages,  and  was 
ascended  from  without.  The  buildiags  of  Babylon  were 
due  to  two  queens,  Semiramis  (about  7-47  B.C.)  and 
Nitoeris  (about  580  B.C.).  He  tells  us  further  that  the 
Babylonian  country  was  intersected  by  canals,  and  that 
one  connecting  the  Euphrates  with  the  Tigris  was 
navigable  for  ships.  He  mentions  the  wonderfid  fer- 
tility of  the  soil,  the  reed  boats  covered  with  skins  used 
to  convoy  goods  to  Babylon,  and  tells  us  how  the  city 
was  taken  by  stratagem  during  a  festival,  and  that 
owing  to  its  great  size  the  people  at  one  end  know  not 
that  the  other  was  in  possession  of  the  enemy.  This 
point  is  noticed  by  Aristotle,  who  says  that  for  throe 
days  the  inhabitants  of  one  part  of  the  city  wore  not 
aware  of  the  capture  of  the  other  parts.  (Herod,  i. 
178—195  ;  Arist.,  Pol.  iii.  3,  5.    Jer.  1.  24 ;  li.  31.) 

I  The  lengtli  of  the  cubit  will  be  discussed  elsewhere. 


other.  Between  the  outer  walls  and  the  houses  there 
was  a  space  of  200  feet.  She  also  built  a  bridge,  and 
quays,  and  two  palaces,  one  on  each  side  of  the  river, 
and  excavated  a  lake  to  receive  the  waters  of  inunda- 
tions, whoso  flood-gates  remained  tUl  the  time  of  the 
Persian  dominion.  She  also  built  a  temple  to  Bolus, 
which  had  since  fallen  down.  Near  the  citadel  were 
the  hanging  gardens,  not  the  work  of  Semiramis,  but 
of  later  date.     (Died.  ii.  7.) 

3.  Our  next  authority  is  Berosus,  whoso  statements 
we  know  only  through  the  medium  of  Josephus.  He 
attributes  a  great  part  of  the  fortification  of  Babylon 
to  Nebuchadnezzar,  who  employed  for  that  purpose 
the  spoils  of  Egyjjt  and  Palestine.  He  constructed 
the  famous  gardens  for  the  pleasure  of  his  wife,  who  was 
a  Median  princess.  Berosus  says  also  that  the  river 
defences  were  biult  by  Nabonnedus,  the  thml  sovereign 
from  Nebuchadnezzar,  and  that  in  his  time  Cyrus  took 
Babylon.     Nabonnedus  retired  to  Borsippa,  but  sur- 


EASTERN    GEOGRAPHY  OF    THE    BIBLE. 


91 


rendered  to  Cyrus,  and  was  removed  by  him  to  Oar- 
mania.    (Beros.,  p.  66 ;  Joseph.,  Ant.  x.  11,  §  1.) 

4.  Lastly,  we  liave  Xenophon  the  Athenian,  who 
served  in  the  army  of  the  younger  Cyrus,  and  who, 
like  Ctesias,  was  present  at  the  battle  of  Ounaxa.  So 
far  as  we  know,  he  never  saw  Babylon,  but  in  his 
work,  the  Expedition  of  Cyrus,  he  describes  many  of  the 
f eatiircs  of  the  country ;  among  others  the  great  canal 
which  stm  exists,  and  is  called  Nahr  malcha,  or  royal 


broad,  buUt  of  bricks,  near  which  was  a  stone  pyramid, 
and  also  to  a  city  called  Mespila,  18  mUes  iu  circum- 
ference, having  walls  160  feet  high  and  50  feet  wide. 
(Xen.,  Anab.  i.  7 ;  iii.  4,  10 ;  Cyrop.  vii.  5,  32 ;  viii. 
6,  22.) 

Besides  those  writers,  who  may  bo  presumed  to  have 
pos.sessed  direct,  or  at  least  contemporaneous  informa- 
tion on  the  subject,  we  have  later  accounts  based  more 
or  loss  on  their  statements.     Of  these  Quintus  Cm-tius, 


120  stadia  (Berosus). 


120  stadia. 

NO.  2. — PLAN    SHOWING    THE    EXTENT    OP    BABYLON   ACCORDING   TO    HEEODOTUS    AND    CTESIAS. 


river,  probably  the  "  river  of  Chebar  "  of  the  prophet 
Ezekiol.  In  another  work,  entitled  the  Education  of 
Cyrus,  ho  describes  the  capture  of  Babylon  diuing  a 
festival,  and  tells  us  that  the  impious  king,  whose 
name  he  does  not  give,  was  killed  iu  the  affray.  He 
also  says  that  after  the  capture  it  was  Cyrus'  custom  to 
reside  seven  months  of  every  year  at  Babylon.  We 
may  add  here  that  in  his  Expedition  he  mentions  that 
the  Greek  army,  during  their  march  of  retreat  after  the 
battle  of  Cunaxa,  came  to  a  deserted  city  on  the  Tigris 
called  Larissa,  which  had  walls  100  feet  high  and  25 


a  Roman  writer  of  the  first  ccntm-y  A.D.,  says  that 
Babylon  was  founded  by  Belus,  whose  palace  is  still 
shown;  that  the  city  wall  was  of  baked  brick,  100 
cubits  high  and  32  feet  vride,  so  that  two  chariots  could 
pass  each  other.  The  city  was  365  stadia  in  circum- 
ference, but  the  buildings  were  not  close  to  tho  walls, 
but  an  acre  dist-jut  from  them ;  nor  was  the  area  f uU  of 
buildings,  but  that  only  about  80  stadia  wore  inhabited, 
and  the  rest  cultivated  for  food  during  a  siege.  He 
also  mentions  the  citadel  and  the  hanging  gardens. 
(Curt.  V.  1,  26.) 


92 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


ANCIENT   BABYLON. 


Strabo,  also  of  the  first  century  A.D.,  says  that 
Nineveh  was  much  larger  than  Babylon  ;  that  Babylon 
had  a  circuit  of  385  stadia,  with  walls  32  feet  thick, 
wide  enough  for  two  chariots  to  pass  each  other.  He 
mentions  the  temple  of  Belus  which  Xerxes  overthrew, 
but  which  Alexander  intended  to  rebuild.  After  his 
death  the  city  went  to  decay,  chiefly  through  the  neglect 
of  the  Macedonians,  who  built  Seleucia  on  the  Tigris, 
which  is  now,  he  says,  larger  than  Babylon.  (Strabo, 
xvi.  7G4.) 


Pliny,  at  the  end  of  the  first  century  A.D.,  speaks 
of  Babylon  as  60  mUes  in  circumference,  having  walls 
200  feet  high  and  50  feet  wide,  each  foot  being  three 
fingers  longer  than  the  Roman  foot.  He  says  the 
temple  of  Belus  still  exists.    (Plin.,  E.  N.,  vi.  26.) 

Lastly  AiTian,  iu  the  second  century  A.T).,  who  had 
access  to  the  works  of  writers  cotemporary  with  Alex- 
ander, speaks  of  the  temple  of  Belus  which  Xerxes  had 
thrown  down,  as  built  of  baked  brick  cemented  with 
bitumen.     (Arr.,  Exp.  Alex.,  vii.) 


BOOKS    OF    THE    OLD    TESTAMENT. 

JOEL    (continued). 

BY    THE    KET.    SAMUEL    COX,    NOTTINGHAM. 


FIRST  PART  (concluded). 
jROM  judgment  in  general,  the  poet  passes 
to  the  special  judgment  of  the  time, 
and  enters  on  a  second  description  of  the 
locust  swarms.  He  calls  them  "  a  great 
people  and  a  strong;"  just  as  in  chap.  i.  6  he  had 
previously  called  them  "  a  nation  Strong  and  innu- 
merable ;"  and  he  compwas  their  advent  to  "the  dawn 
spread  upon  the  mountaius."    At  fii-st,  we  are  tempted 


to  pronounce  that  a  singularly  unhappy  comparison, 
since  again  and  again  he  tells  us  that  the  locusts  ob- 
scure the  whole  heaven,  insomuch  that  "  the  sun  turns 
dark,  and  the  stars  refuse  to  shine."  How.  then,  can 
they  resemble  the  bright  dawn  of  day?  Does  the 
prophet  simply  mean  that  they  spread  over  the  land 
as  swiftly  as  the  dawn  sweeps  down  the  mountain 
slopes  ?  No,  he  means  much  more  than  that ;  and  _ 
the  comparison,  which  looks  so  inexact,  is  really  a  very 


JOEL. 


93 


close  and  happy  one.  For  the  sun's  rays  reflected 
from  the  wings  and  wing-cases  of  the  locusts  produce 
a  yellow  glimmering  lustre  which  may  fairly  be  com- 
pared to  the  "unearthly"  light  of  dawn.  So  marked 
and  characteristic  a  feature  is  this  lustre  that  travellers 
have  dwelt  upon  it  with  much  emphasis.  Thus,  for 
example,  Francis  Alvarez,  in  his  Journey  through 
Abyssinia,  writes  :  "  The  day  before  the  an-ival  of  the 
locusts  we  could  infer  that  they  were  coming,  from  a 
yeUow  reflection  in  the  sky,  proceeding  from  their  yellow 
wings.  As  soon  as  this  light  appeared,  no  one  had  the 
slightest  doubt  that  an  enormous  swarm  of  locusts  was 
approaching."  More  than  once  he  saw  this  "dawn" 
upon  the  Abyssinian  moimtaius,  this  "  light "  heralding 
the  locusts'  approach.  So  that  Joel's  comparison  is  fully 
vindicated.  The  locusts,  with  this  yellow  iU-omened 
lustre  preceding  them,  do  come  like  the  dawn  which 
sweeps  down  the  mountains,  announcing  the  advent 
of  day. 

But  are  we  to  take  the  closing  phrases  of  this  verse 
as  literally  true  ? 

"  There  hath  not  been  its  lite  from  all  eternity, 
Nor  shall  be  after  it  for  eoer  and  ever," 

"We  are  accustomed,  as  we  meet  with  such  words  in 
the  prophetic  or  other  books  of  Scripture,  to  construe 
them  with  a  litei-al  precision,  as  if  the  inspiration  of  the 
book  in  which  they  are  found  would  be  imperilled  by 
any  modification  of  their  meaning.  We  may,  however, 
perhaps  be  permitted  to  remember  that  Joel  was  a 
poet,  and  tliat,  like  most  poets,  when  strongly  moved, 
he  used  strong  words — words  that  conveyed  his  thought 
indeed,  but  which  we  must  not  take  as  literally  as 
though  he  were  a  logician  arg^uing  the  problems  of  an 
exact  science.  It  will  bo  weU,  too.  I  venture  to  submit, 
if,  from  this  poetic  use  of  the  terms  "  eternity"  and  "  for 
ever  and  ever,"  we  learn  a  lesson  of  caution  in  inter- 
preting them  wherever  they  occur  in  the  poetical  books 
of  the  Bible,  and  refuse  to  push  them  toO  far  or  too 
hard.  All  Joel  means  by  them  here  is,  evidently,  that 
the  plague  was  unparalleled  in  his  experience ;  that  he 
had  never  seen  or  heard,  and  never  expected  to  see  or 
hear,  of  locust  swarms  so  numerous  and  so  destructive. 

So  numerous  and  destructive  were  they,  that  the 
goodly  land,  "  flowing  with  milk  and  honey,"  the  land 
of  pasture  and  wood,  fau'  and  prolific  as  the  Garden  of 
Eden,  was  turned  into  "  a  desolate  wilderness ;"  swarm 
followed  swarm,  so  that  "  even  that  which  "  seemed  to 
have  "  escaped  them,  did  not  escape  ;"  wliat  the  gnawer 
left,  the  multiplier  ate — what  the  multiplier  left,  the 
licker  ate — what  the  licker  left,  the  devourer  ate ;  the 
land  blackened  as  they  passed,  as  though  a  devouring- 
flame  had  swept  over  it  (ver.  3). 

As  the  poet  strives  to  depict  them,  all  warlike  images 
rise  before  his  mind.  And,  first,  he  seizes  on  a  point 
of  physical  resemblance.  Theodoret  and  Jerome  long 
since  pointed  out  the  resomblanco  of  a  locust's  head  to 
that  of  the  horse.  The  resemblance  is  very  close,  .as  wo 
see  the  moment  we  look  at  the  head  of  the  grasshopjier, 
our  English  locust.  To  this  day  the  Germans  call 
these  insects  heupferde  (hay-horses),  and  the  Italians 


cavaletti  (little  horses).  Joel  says  (ver.  4),  "  Their 
aspect  is  as  the  aspect  of  horses,  and  they  rush  like 
chargers."' 

The  noise  of  their  wings  and  legs  when  they  leap 
resembles  tluit  of  the  ancient  war-chariots  bountliug 
over  tlie  rough  hill-roads ;  it  is  like  the  crackling  of 
the  flame  as  it  sweeps  over  a  field  in  stubble ;  it  is  like 
the  clashing  of  arms  with  which,  in  antique  times, 
military  hosts  used  to  fire  themselves  for  battle  (ver.  5). 
They  inspire  a  terror  as  universal,  as  ahject,  as  that  felt 
before  a  conquering  aJid  invading  army;  "  before  them 
the  nations  tremble ;  all  faces  go  pale  "  (ver.  6).  That 
holds  good  to  this  day ;  it  is  with  a  paralysiag  agony  -of 
despair  that  an  Oriental  people  awaits  their  approach. 
At  this  point,  indeed,  tho  comparison  of  tho  locusts 
to  an  invading  host  grows  marvellously  graphic  and 
minute.  "They  charge  like  heroes"  assailing  a  forti- 
fied city,  with  a  courage  that  nothing  can  daunt.  In 
unbroken  military  array  "they  scale  the  wall,"  "each 
going  forward  in  his  own  line."  Like  David's  army, 
"they  know  how  to  keep  rank."  They  do  not  diverge 
to  the  right  hand  or  tho  left,  and  therefore  they  do 
not  "  thrust  each  other,"  or  impede  each  other  in  the 
advance.  "  The  locusts  have  no  king,"  says  Agur,  "  yet 
they  go  forth  in  orderly  bands."  And  Jerome,  who 
spent  many  yeai-s  in  Palestine,  says,  "  When  the  swarms 
of  locusts  come  and  fill  the  whole  atmosphere  between 
earih  and  sky,  they  fly  in  such  order  .  .  .  that  they 
preserve  an  exact  shape,  just  like  the  squares  drawn  on 
a  tesselated  pave7nent,  not  diverging  on  either  side  by, 
so  to  speak,  so  much  as  a  finger's  breadth."  They  close 
up  as  their  comrades  fall,  not  breaking  rank,  whatever 
havoc  tho  weapons  may  make  among  them  (vs.  7,  8). 
And  having  surmounted  the  exterior  fortifications, 
"  they  rush  through  tho  city,  run  up  the  wall,  climb  up 
the  houses,  creep  through  the  windows,"  storming  and 
sacking  the  place  (ver.  9).  Of  course,  there  is  a  military 
image  in  these  verses ;  nevertheless,  they  are  true  to 
nature.  In  plain  prose  Theodoret  says  pretty  imich 
what  Joel  says  in  poetic  verse;  "Tou  may  see  the 
locusts,  like  a  hostile  army,  ascending  the  walls,  and 
advancing  along  the  streets,  not  suffering  any  difficulty 
to  disperse  them,  but  steadily  moving  forward,  as  if 
according  to  some  concerted  plan  :  ...  by  creeping 
along  the  walls  [they]  pass  thi-ough  the  windows  into 
the  houses  themselves."  All  this  he  affirms  that  he 
himself  h.ad  frequently  seen. 

The  10th  verse  looks  difficult ;  for  one  does  not  see 

how  "  the  earth  should  quake  aud  the  heavens  tremble" 

before  the  locusts,   except  in  the  imagination  of   the 

appalled  sufferers ;  although 

"  Sun  and  moon  turn  dark, 
And  the  stars  refuse  to  shine," 

might  be  only  a  poetical  description  of  the  obscuiity 
caused  by  swarms  of  locusts  filling  the  whole  atmo- 
sphere.    But  the  difficulty  disappears  if  we  connect  it. 


1  The  Hebrew  word  pirdsMm  means  "  steeds,"  riding  horses  in 
general ;  but  here  Joel  probably  had  chargers,  or  cavalry  horses, 
in  his  mind. 


S4r 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


as  we  sliould,  with  ver.  11.  For  there  we  have  indica- 
tions that  Jehovah,  riding  on  a  storm,  comes  to  lead 
his  "great  army;"  and  under  the  storm  the  heavens 
may  well  tremble  and  the  earth  quake.  The  Ai-abs 
say  that  the  tiny  cross-lines  on  the  wings  of  the  locust 
form  letters,  and  comi^ose  the  legend,  "  We  are  the  anny 
of  the  livinp'  God  !"  "Lord  of  the  Locusts,"  is  one  of 
the  Divine  names  in  the  Mohammedan  literature.  And, 
in  the  same  spu-it,  Joel  calls  the  locusts  the  "  army " 
and  the  "  camp  "  of  God ;  and  affirms  that — 

"  Jehovah  thundereth  before  his  army," 
uttering  his  commands  in  thunder,  because  "  his  camp 
is  very  large,"  because  he  intends  this  day  of  judgment 
to  be   so   "  great "  and  "  terrible  "  as  that  none  "  can 
abide  it "  unmoved. 

It  is  with  this  vivid  and  tragic  conception  in  his  mind 
— Jehovah  riding  on  a  tempest,  beneath  which  the 
eternal  heavens  tremble  and  the  solid  earth  quakes,  and 
utteiing  his  commands  to  an  innumerable  and  irresistible 
host  which  delights  to  do  his  will — that  the  prophet  falls 
back  on  that  summons  to  repentance  and  supplication 
which  we  have  already  heard  (chap.  ii.  1,  and  chap.  i.  14). 
Now  ho  blends  and  expands  the  two  previous  calls, 
teaching  the  guilty  aiilicted  nation  more  exactly  what  it 
is  the  Lord  their  God  requires  of  them ;  and  to  give 
his  smumong  gi'eater  weight,  he  speaks  in  the  name  of 
Jehovah  himself  (vs.  12 — 17).  The  real-  meaning  of 
judgment  is  mercy.  The  locusts  have  come,  inflicting 
60  much  misery,  suggesting  portents  of  such  ten-or,  only 
that  men  may  turn  unto  the  Lord  with  all  their  hearts, 
sincerely  repenting  them  of  the  sins  because  of  which 
the  judgment  has  come.  This  penitence  is  to  be  shown 
in  fasting,  in  tears,  in  mouraing,  in  amendment.  Lest 
they  should  content  themselves  "with  the  outward  signs 
and  trappings  of  woe,  the  words — 

"  Eend  your  hearts,  and  not  your  garments," 

remind  them  that  God  requires  the  inward  grace  of 

spiritual  contrition — reqmi-es  "  that  within  which  passeth 

show."      To  induce  this  spiritual  and  godly  sorrow,  to 

suggest  its  power  with  God,  the  prophet  recalls  the  most 

solemn  proclamation  of  the  Divine  nature  and  mercy 

ever  made  to  their  fathers.     On  Moimt  Sinai  the  Lord 

God  had  descended   in   cloud  and   storm,   through   a 

trembling  heaven  to  a  quaking  earth,  that  he  might  pass 

before  Moses,  proclaiming  his  name,  "  Jehovah,  Jehovah 

El,  mei'ci/M.J  and  gracious,  long-svffering,  and  abundant 

in  goodness  and  truth,   keeping  mercy  for  thousands, 

forgiving  iniquity  and  transgression  and  sin,  but  who 

will  by  no  means  always  leave  unpunished."  '■     It  is  an 

echo  of  that  voice  from  Sinai  which  sounds  in  ver.  13 : — 

**  For  he  is  gracious  and  merciful, 
Slow  to  an^er,  and  of  great  kindness. 
And  repenteth  him  of  the  evil." 

If  they  return  to  Him  with  genuine  contrition,  may  they 
not  hope  that  He,  whose  very  name  suggests  a  long- 
suffering  grace  and  mercy,  wiU  show  his  great  kindness 
and  forgive  their  sin.  If  Ho  repents  of  the  evils  they 
have  compelled  Him  to  inflict,  may  not  they  well  repent 

1  Exod.  Kxsiv.  6,  7. 


of  the  evils  by  which  they  have  compelled  Him  to  judge 
and  punish  .►"  Eor  himself  the  prophet  has  little  doubt — 
no  doubt,  I  suspect,  though  he  will  not  be  too  eonfldeut, 
lest  they  shoidd  grow  careless.  "  Who  knowcth  ?"  he 
asks,  and  the  que.stion  is  equivalent  to  "  perad venture." 
"  Who  knoweth  ?  He  may  return  and  repent,  and  leave 
behind  him  a  blessing,"  even  on  tliis  visit  of  judgment; 
and  such  a  blessing,  such  ample  stores  of  corn  and 
wine  and  oU,  that  once  more  there  will  be  "  offering  and 
libation,"  joy  and  gladness,  solemn  services  and  meiTy 
feasts,  in  the  house  of  the  Lord. 

Once  more,  therefore,  he  demands  that  a  time  be  sanc- 
tified (set  apart)  for  a  public  fast,  that  "  a  restraint " 
from  labour  bo  proclaimed,  that  the  whole  congregation 
assemble  in  the  Temple.  Before,  he  had  been  content  to 
say  (chap.  i.  14),  "  Gather  the  elders — all  the  inhabitants 
of  the  land."  .^/b^o,  he  is  more  precise,  more  full.  None 
are  to  be  exempted.  The  "children,"  the  very  "suck- 
lings," ai'o  to  come,  as  well  as  the  men  and  the  "  elders." 
Even  "the  bride  "  and  the  "bridegroom,"  in  the  first 
rapture  of  love,  are  to  cease  from  then-  delights,  to 
array  themselves  in  moiu-ning,  to  fast  and  weep,  to  rend 
their  hearts  over  the  sins  and  miseries  of  the  time ;  and 
when  all  without  distinction  are  gathered  in  the  court  of 
the  Lord's  House,  the  ministers  and  representatives  of 
the  people  are  to  "  stand  between  the  porch  and  the 
altar  " — i.e.,  immediately  in  front  of  the  holy  place  in 
which  Jehovah  was  enshrined,  and  with  tears  of  peni- 
tence are  to  pour  forth  the  national  sorrow,  and  to  utter 
the  supplication  of  the  people.  For  this  solemn  occasion 
the  prophet  adds  a  new  form  to  the  Hebrew  litiu-gy, 
prescribing  the  very  words  the  priests  were  to  utter  in 
the  presence  and  on  behalf  of  the  congregation : — 

**  Spare  thy  people,  O  Jehovah, 
And  deliver  not  thy  heritage  to  reproach. 
That  the  nations  should  scoif  at  them. 
"Wherefore  should  men  say  among  the  nations, 
"Where  is  their  God  ?  " 

There  are  those  to  whom  even  the  Lord's  Prayer  is 
wanting  in  sphitual  fervour  and  evangelical  sentiment ; 
and  to  these,  probably,  Joel's  prayer  "will  not  seem  a 
very  spu-itual  outpouring  of  contrition  and  desu-e.  But- 
Ho  who  reads  our  hearts  in  our  woi-ds,  and  rather  than 
oiu-  words,  surely  pledged  himself  to  listen  to  the  prayer 
which  He  himself  inspired.  And,  after  all,  this  one  cry, 
"  Spare  thy  people,  0  Lord,"  coming  from  the  broken 
heart  of  a  people  con"riueod  of  sin  by  judgment,  may 
mean  much.  "  Spare  us,  not  because  of  our  sorrow, 
nor  because  we  have  deserved  mercy,  but  because,  despite 
our  sins,  we  are  thy  people ;  because  the  nations  know 
that  Thou  hast  chosen  us  for  thyself ;  because  if  they 
should  see  our  bairen  fields  and  wasted  pastm-es,  our 
ravaged  "vineyards  and  sickening  orchards,  our  moulder- 
uig  garners  and  falling- barns,  they  will  scoff  at  Thee  as 
well  as  at  us,  deeming  Tliee  to  be  as  one  of  the  gods 
whose  eyes  see  not,  and  whose  ears  hear  not,  in  whose 
hand  is  no  succour,  in  whose  heart  no  grace.  For  thy 
name's  sake,  spare  us,  O  Lord,  even  us  unworthy ! " 

That  I  take  to  be  the  gist  of  the  prayer  with  which 
the  fii-st  part  of  this  inspired  poem  comes  to  a  close. 


JEREMIAH. 


95 


BOOKS      OF      THE      OLD      TESTAMENT. 

JEREMIAH    (continued}. 

BY  THE  VERY  KBV.  E.  PAYNE  SMITH,  D.D.,  DEAN  OF  CANTEREDBY. 


)  PON  Jehoiakim's  death  Jeremiah  returned 
to  Jerusalem,  and  renewed  his  patriotic 
attempts  at  saving  his  countiy.     Nebu- 
chadnezzar had  placed  upon  the   throne 
another  son  of   Josiah,  and   changed  his  name  from 
Mattaniah  to  Zedekiah.     He  was  half-brothor  to  Jehoi- 
akim,  hut  fuU  brother  to  tho  Jehoahaz  who  had  been 
made   khig  upon   Josiah's   death,  and  thus  probably 
belonged  to  the  Chaldaean  party.     But  as  he  was  but 
tweuty-ono  years  old  when  the  crown  was  placed  upon 
his  head,  ho  coidd  have  been  but  sUghtly  iufluonced  by 
personal   remembrances   of   his  father.      He  was    an 
amiable  and  weU-meaniug  man,  but  weak  and  irresolute, 
and  so  all  his  time  vacillated  between  Jeremiah,  who 
urged   hiui  to   be   true   to   Nebuchadnezzar,   and   the 
restless  princes  who  were  eager  for  an  alliance  with 
Egypt,  and  a  combiued   attempt  at  throwing  off  the 
Chaldiean  yoke.      Early  in  Zedekiah's  reign  we  find 
ambassadors  at  Jerusalem  from  Edom,  Moab,  Ammon, 
Zidon,  and  Tyre  (chap,  xxvii.  3),  met  probably  for  ihe 
purpose  of    forming    a    general    confederacy  against 
Babylon,  nor  did  there  want  prophets  who  m-ged  this 
upon  king  and  people  as  a  rehgious  duty  (chap,  xxviii.), 
and  whom   Jeremiah  stoutly  resisted.     Wo  can,  how- 
ever, easily  imagine  that  to  a  nation  used  to  the  idea 
that  they  were  Jehovah's  chosen  people,  and  that  he 
woidd  interfere  miraculously  in  their  behalf,  the  words 
of  these  false  prophets  were   more  pleasing  than  the 
truthful   denunciation  of   their   conduct    by  one   who 
really  had  the  Divine  command  to  speak  in  Jehovah's 
name.     But  the  death  of  Hananiah,  in  accordance  with 
Jeremiah's  prediction,  for  tho  pi-esent  confirmed   the 
feeble  king  in  his  obedience  to  the  right,  though  pro- 
bably it  had  but  slight  effect  on  the  zealots  who  formed 
the  mass  of  the  people ;  but  apparently  in  his  eighth 
year  the  zealots  prevailed,  and  Zedekiah  entered  into  a 
treaty  of  alHanco  with  Egypt.     To  punish  this  act  of 
overt  i-ebeUion,  the  Chaldaean  army  moved  upon  Judaea, 
and  rapidly  made  themselves   masters  of   the  whole 
country.     And  now  the  prophet  records  an  act  which 
shows  the  almost  incredible  baseness  of  the  Jewish 
nobility.      When  all   the   towns   except   Lachish   and 
Azekah,  two  fortresses  in  the  country  on  the  west  of  the 
city,  had  been  captured,  Jeremiah  urged  upon  the  king 
the  wickedness  of  tho  people  in  keeping  their  brethren 
in  slavery.     His  words  for  the  time  prevailed  ;  a  solemn 
covenant  was   made  with   Jehovah,-  and   a  crowd   of 
Hebrews,  male  and  female,  were  set  free.     But  soon 
afterwards  the  news  arrived  that  an  Egyptian  army  was 
moving    onwards   to  the   rescue  of   Jerusalem.      Tho 
threatened  siege  for  the  time  was  raised,  and  the  one 
use  which  these   wretched  princes  and  wealthy  men 
made  of  tho  respite  gi-anted  them  was  to  force  all  these 
unhappy  persons,  whom  lately  they  had  set    free,  to 


return  to  slavery.  When  one  reads  in  Lamentations 
(iv.  5), "  They  that  did  feed  delicately  are  desolate  in  the 
streets  :  they  that  were  brought  up  in  scarlet  embrace 
dunghills,"  hoping  to  find  there  some  garbage  with 
which  to  maintain  life,  one's  pity  is  checked  by  the 
thought  of  the  baseness  with  which  they  had  treated 
the  jjoor  wretches  whom  poverty  had  compelled  to 
become  their  slaves. 

Armies  in  those  days  moved  but  slowly,  and  probably 
many  months  were  occupied  by  the  Ohaldajans  in  their 
march  upon  the  plain  of  Philistia,  where  Josephus  tells 
us  they  utterly  defeated  the  Egyptian  host.  Surely, 
however,  if  slowly,  they  moved  again  ui>on  Jerusalem ; 
on  tho  tenth  day  of  the  tenth  month  of  Zedekiah's 
ninth  year — about  the  middle  of  July — its  walls  were 
again  invested,  and  for  sixteen  months  tho  unhappy 
people  had  to  endure  tho  horrors  of  a  blockade.  During 
this  time  the  position  of  Jeremiah  was  wretched  in  tho 
extreme.  His  counsel  was  to  discontinue  all  resistance, 
which  ho  asserted  would  bo  in  vain ;  to  accept  what- 
ever terms  Nebuchadnezzar  offered,  and  which  even  to 
the  last  would  have  saved  tho  city  from  destruction : 
and  all  this  tho  princes  regarded  as  rank  treason  (chap. 
xxxviii,  4),  and  therefore  throw  the  prophet  into  prison, 
and  even  tried  to  put  him  to  a  miserable  death,  from 
which  he  was  rescued  only  by  the  intervention  of  a 
negi-o  eunuch  of  the  king  (chap,  xxxviii.  7 — 13). 

At  length  the  catastrophe  came.  On  tho  ninth  day 
of  the  fourth  month  tho  Chaldasans  effected  a  breach 
in  the  strong  walls  of  the  city.  The  moon,  nine  days 
old,  had  simk,  as  Josephus  tells  us,  behind  the  western 
hUls,  when  the  besiegers,  silently  entering  the  sleeping 
city  in  the  darkness,  seized  the  Temple  and  posted  them- 
selves there  on  the  high  vantage-ground.  And  quickly 
the  alarm  spread  far  and  wide,  and  Zedekiah,  with  the 
poor  remains  of  his  army,  fled  through  the  op2>osite 
gate  towards  Jericho,  hoping  to  find  safety  on  the  other 
side  of  tho  Jordan.  But  deserters  brought  tidings  of 
his  ihght  to  the  Chaldceans,  and  though  he  had  several 
hours'  start,  they  overtook  him  before  he  had  reached 
the  town,  though  not  twenty  miles  from  Jerusalem,  and 
carried  him  to  Nebuchadnezzar  at  Biblah,  a  place  in  the 
Lebanon  thirty-five  miles  beyond  Baalbec,  and  about 
ten  days'  march  from  Jerusalem;  and  there,  with  a 
refinement  of  cruelty,  Nebuchadaszzar  fu-st  slew  his 
sons  before  his  face,  and  then  put  out  the  eyes  of  the 
imhappy  father,  loaded  him  with  fetters  of  brass,  and 
sent  him  prisoner  to  Babylon  (chap,  xxxix.  (i,  7). 

During  these  miserable  eleven  years  of  Zedekiah's 
reign,  the  prophet  had  consistently  declared  that  not 
the"  kmg  and  the  nobles  and  people  of  Jerusalem  were 
God's  true  Israel,  but  the  exiles  carried  captive  to 
Babylon  with  Jcconiah.  In  chap.  xxiv.  he  compares 
these  to  a  basket  of  very  good  figs,  like  those  first  ripe, 


96 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


while  Zedekiah  and  his  people  wore  but  the  refuse, 
"  very  naughty  figs,  which  could  not  be  eaten,  they  were 
80  bad."  I  need  not  say  how  irritating  such  a  method 
of  treatment  would  be  to  both  king  and  nobles ;  but  at 
Babylon  it  had  a  different  effect.  Jeremiah,  though 
not  without  opposition  (chap.  sxix.  20 — 32),  became  the 
great  authority  there.  He  wrote  the  exiles  also  a  letter 
(chap,  xxix.),  directing  them  to  settle  quietly  at  Babylon, 
and  build  houses,  and  plant  gardens,  and  take  wives, 
and  in  all  things  prepare  for  a  lengthened  sojourn  of 
seventy  years.  They  were  even  "  to  seek  the  peace  of 
Babylon,"  and  settle  down  as  loyal  and  industrious 
citizens.  And  then  God  would  grant  them  a  return  to 
their  land ;  in  them  the  fortunes  of  Israel  would  revive ; 
for  they  were  Jehovah's  people,  the  possessors  of-the 
promise,  and  not  Zedekiah  and  his  court,  and  the 
dwellers  at  Jerusalem,  for  whom  Jeremiah  predicts 
nothing  but  evil  and  misery,  and  again  contemptuously 
calls  them  "  vile  figs,  too  bad  to  be  eaten "  (chap. 
xxix.  17). 

As  time  roUed  on,  and  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem 
confirmed  the  truth  of  the  prophet's  words,  his  predic- 
tion of  a  restoration  after  seventy  years  became  the 
great  solace  of  the  oxilos.  They  read  with  pleasure 
how  God  had  chosen  them  as  the  depositories  of  the 
promise,  even  whdo  Jerusalem  was  still  standing ;  they 
saw  that  that  promise  was  not  bound  up  so  much  with 
places  and  things  as  with  true  and  believing  hearts. 
And  gradually  a  change  passed  over  them.  No  doubt 
among  the  exiles  wore  many  men  whose  characters  had 
been  formed  by  Jeremiah,  and  who  wrought  heartily 
for  the  same  ends.  The  children  of  the  men  who  had 
stood  by  Josiah  in  his  reforms  wore  those  who  were 
dominant  at  Babylon.  And  thore  they  prevailed. 
Instead  of  the  old  longing  for  idolatry,  a  passionate 
devotion  to  the  one  true  spiritual  God  became  in- 
wrought deeply  into  their  hearts.  And  Jeremiah  they 
felt  to  bo,  as  in  truth  he  was,  the  deliverer  of  their 
nation.  The  man  who  in  life  had  been  branded  as  a 
traitor  and  falsehearted,  became  the  object  of  their 
fervent  love.  Legend  even  surrounded  him  with  a  halo 
of  romance.  When  Jerusalem  was  burnt,  he  had  hid, 
they  said,  tabernacle  and  ark  in  a  cave  (2  Mace.  ii.  1 — 8). 
He  was  not  dead,  but  resting  somewhere  iu  a  trance, 
and  at  the  appointed  time  would  waken  up,  to  restore 
temple  and  kingdom  to  their  old  magnificence.  Even 
in  their  dreams  they  saw  him  as  a  "man  with  gray 
hairs,  and  exceeding  glorious,  who  was  of  a  wonderful 
and  excellent  majesty,"  and  who  gave  uuto  Judas 
Maccabeus  a  sword  of  gold,  by  which  he  wrought  his 
victories  (2  Mace.  xv.  13 — 16). 

Far  difPerent  in  real  life  were  the  actual  fortunes 
of  the  prophet.  To  the  last  it  was  his  lot  to  speak 
the  words  of  truth,  only  to  be  disbelieved.  When 
the  Chaldasans  had  destroyed  the  city,  and  carried 
the  miserable  remnants  of  the  people  into  captivity, 
Nebucliadnezzar  appointed  Gedaliah  governor  over  the 
depopulated  land.  Ho  was  son  of  Jeremiah's  old  pro- 
tector Ahikam,  and  belonged  to  a  family  famous  for  its 
fidelity  to  Jehovah,  and  consistent  in  its  opposition  to 


the  Egyptian  pohcy  of  those  who,  even  from  the  days  of 
Isaiah  (Isa.  xxx.  1 — 3),  had  looked  for  national  safety, 
not  in  abiding  firmly  by  the  principles  of  the  theocracy, 
but  in  political  aUiances.  Recognised  at  Ramah  by 
Nebuzar-adan  among  the  captives,  he  had  been  freed 
from  his  chains,  and  the  choice  given  him  either  to 
dwell  in  honour  at  Babylon,  or  to  remain  with  Gedaliah. 
Nobly  he  chose  the  latter,  tliat  he  might  stiU  labour  for 
his  country's  good. 

Gradually  the  people  gathered  round  Gedaliah,  and 
a  sense  of  security  now  began  to  return.  Many  of  the 
captains,  too,  and  men  of  war  gave  in  then'  allegiance 
to  him;  but  danger  was  at  hand.  Islimael,  a  member 
of  the  royal  family,  who  had  taken  refuge  at  the  court 
of  Baalis,  king  of  tho  Ammonites,  was  bent  upon  his 
murder.  He  grudged,  probably,  to  see  one  not  of  the 
seed  royal  sot  as  governor  over  the  land,  and  with  the 
king's  daughters  given  into  his  charge.  As  one,  too, 
who  had  always  opposed  tho  Egyptian  alliance,  and 
advised  submission  to  tho  Chaldees,  ho  counted  him  as 
a  traitor ;  and,  intlifferent  to  tlie  ruin  he  was  bringing 
upon  the  land,  set  out  with  ten  men  to  slay  him.  In 
vain  had  Gedaliah  been  warned.  Johanan,  one  of  his 
captains,  cognisant  of  Ishmael's  intentions,  had  pro- 
posed to  put  him  quietly  out  of  the  way,  but  Gedaliah 
was  too  honourable  to  consent  to  such  a  purpose.  And 
even  when  this  base  conspirator  came  to  him  at  Mizpeh, 
ho  took  no  precautions  for  his  safety,  and  Ishmael  foully 
murdered  him,  and  all  tho  men  of  war  with  him,  and 
carried  the  residue  away  with  him  as  captives,  and 
among  them  probably  Jeremiah  himself. 

When  the  evil  news  got  abroad,  tho  captains  pursued 
after  Ishmael  and  recovered  the  prisoners,  but  the 
murderer  himself  escaped.  And  now  they  were  in 
great  fear.  A  nation  so  cruel  as  the  Chaldees  would, 
they  thought,  ruthlessly  avenge  the  murder  of  tho 
governor  whom  they  had  appointed  over  the  land. 
And  so  at  a  hospice  or  caravanserai  for  travellers 
(chap.  xli.  17)  erected  near  Bethlehem  by  Chimham, 
sou  of  tho  aged  BarzUlai,  who  so  hospitably  entertained 
David,  they  took  counsel  as  to  their  future  course. 
Should  they  seek  a  refuge  in  Egyi)t,  or  should  they 
remain  iu  Judsea  ? 

Solemnly  they  asked  Jeremiah's  counsel,  and  after 
ten  days,  spent  probably  in  prayer,  the  word  of  Jehovah 
came  to  him.  They  were  not  to  go  down  to  Egypt ;  if 
they  did,  the  sword  and  famine  and  pestilence  would 
follow  them  thither.  It  would  bo  Nebuchadnezzar's 
next  conquest,  and  they  would  only  be  mixing  them- 
selves up  in  new  miseries  ;  whereas  if  they  abode  in  tho 
land,  they  would  have  peace  and  prosperity.  Gedaliah's 
murder  would  not  bo  nsited  upon  them ;  and  they 
would  be  doing  good  service  in  maintaining  some  sort 
of  order  and  show  of  government  among  tho  scanty 
remnant  of  the  people  who  still  survived.  The  one 
chance  for  Judaea  was  their  remaining  in  it:  wliafc 
made  it  so  miserable  a  waste  till  the  exiles  returned 
from  Babylon  was  this  general  flight  into  Egypt. 

But  Johanan  and  tho  captains  did  as  men  usually  do. 
They  asked  for  advice  with  a  great  show  of  deference ; 


JEREMIAH. 


07 


if  tlio  advioe  had  agreed  with  their  own  wishes,  they 
would  have  received  it  graciously.  It  was  the  reverse, 
and  they  rejected  it,  saying  that  it  was  not  really  the 
word  of  Jehovah,  but  the  evil  suggestion  of  Baruch, 
who  had  made  Jeremiah  his  tool. 

And  so  they  went  down  into  Egypt,  in  spite  of 
Jeremiah's  warnings ;  and  there  we  have  one  last  record 
of  his  eventful  life.  At  Tahpanhes,  the  Daphnse  of 
Herodotus,  a  town  on  the  eastern  border  of  Egypt, 
great  numbers  of  Jews  were  settled,  having  been 
kindly  received  by  Pharaoh-hophra,  their  aUy.  But 
chastisement  had  taught  them  nothing.  Unlike  the 
exiles  at  Babylon,  they  were  rank  idolaters.  As  of 
old  at  Jerusalem  (chap.  vii.  18),  so  now,  they  burnt 
incense  to  the  queen  of  heaven,  the  moon-goddess, 
answering  to  the  Roman  Diana,  and  ascribed  to  her 
whatever  prosperity  they  enjoyed.  In  vain  Jeremiah 
rebuked  them  for  their  sin.  In  vain  he  took  stones, 
and  in  the  sight  of  the  men  of  Judah  hid  them  in  the 
clay  of  the  brick-kiln  close  by  the  palace  of  Pharaoh- 
hophra,  at  Tahpanhes,  and  predicted  that  upon  them 
Nebuchadnezzar  would  set  up  his  throne  as  the  con- 
queror of  Egypt,  and  hold  solemn  inquest  there, 
delivering  such  as  were  for  death  to  death,  and  such 
as  were  for  captivity  to  captivity.  Small  mercy  would 
there  be  then  for  fugitive  Jews,  whom  the  king  would 
count  as  implacable  enemies,  whose  resistance  nothing 
could  tame. 

And  now  Jeremiah's  histoi-y  suddenly  ceases.  What 
was  his  end  we  know  not,  but  an  old  tradition,  recorded 
by  Tortullian  and  Jerome,  avers  that  the  exiles  at 
Tahpanhes  finally  stoned  him  in  a  sudden  outburst 
of  fury  at  his  constant  rebukes.  V/o  can  quite  under- 
.stand  that  the  Jews  would  carefully  conceal  a  fact  so 
discreditable  to  them,  especially  when  so  shortly  after- 
wards Jeremiah  became  the  chief  of  the  prophets  in 
their  eyes.  Still  there  is  no  actual  evidence  for  it ;  but 
nothing  is  more  probable  than  that  he  did  end  his 
troubled  days  about  this  time  liy  a  violent  death,  with- 
out ever  enjoying  a  period  of  repose  :  and  certainly  his 
whole  life  was  one  worthy  of  the  martyr's  crown. 

What  makes  such  an  end  probable  is  the  utter  con- 
fusion in  which  Jeremiah's  works  have  come  down  to 
us.  Unlike  those  of  Isaiah,  so  arranged  as  that  first 
there  come  general  subjects,  then  the  great  prophecies 
called  out  by  the  invasions  of  Pekah  and  Sennacherib, 
then  "  burdens,"  then  "  woes,"  and  so  on ;  unlike  those 
of  Ezekiel,  which  follow  one  another  in  strict  chrono- 
logical order,  Jeremiah's  works  are  mixed  up  in  hopeless 
disarray,  and  with  the  headings  sometimes  manifestly 
wrong,  as  where,  for  instance,  in  cliap.  xx^ni.  the  first 
year  of  Jehoiakim  is  put  for  the  first  year  of  Zedokiah. 
And  yet  the  title  (chap.  i.  1 — i)  shows  that  some  sort 
of  arrangement  had  once  been  attempted,  as  far  at  least 
as  regards  the  eai'ly  prophecies ;  and  then  when  verse  3 
was  inserted — for  the  title  is  one  that  plainly  has  been 
altered  and  added  to — no  doubt  it  was  intended  to  pub- 
lish a  collection  of  all  that  the  prophet  had  spoken,  down 
to  the  capture  of  the  city.  Of  the  first  collection  dis- 
tinct ti-aces  may  be  recognised,  but  none  of  the  second. 

31 — VOL.    II. 


Probably  the  design  was  never  carried  out ;  for  though 
several  prophecies  were  written  in  tho  early  part  of  the 
siege,  yet,  as  time  wore  on,  Jeremiah  was  in  no  position 
to  attend  to  literary  matters.  When  simply  in  prison, 
Baruch  may  have  received  many  instructions  at  his 
mouth,  but  things  grew  from  bad  to  worse,  and  at  last 
he  was  in  constant  danger  of  death.  And  when  Jeru- 
salem fell,  wo  find  him  at  Ramah,  included  in  a  gang 
of  captives  cliained  to  one  another  to  prevent  the  pos- 
sibility of  escape.  Under  such  circumstances  it  is  im- 
possible to  suppose  that  ho  could  have  had  any  personal 
baggage  with  him.  But  being  at  length  recognised 
and  set  free,  doubtless  he  returned  to  Jerusalem,  which 
was  but  five  miles  distant,  and  made  search  for  all 
such  property  and  documents  as  in  the  pillage  of  the 
city  had  been  spared.  Or  it  is  even  possible  that 
Baruch,  his  scribe,  who  accompanied  him  into  Egypt 
(chap,  xliii.  6),  may  have  been  tho  means  of  sa^dng  these 
precious  memorials. 

While  under  Gedaliah's  protection,  Jeremiah  may 
have  made  preparations  for  publishing  his  prophecies, 
and  for  this  purpose  have  written  the  narrative  of  tho 
events  which  oc<;urred  in  Zedekiah's  later  years  (chaps. 
xxx™. — xxxix.),  and  also  liave  altered  tho  title  to  suit 
his  present  purpose.  But  then  came  the  murder  of 
Gedaliah,  and  the  forced  march  into  Egypt,  and  the 
struggle  with  the  Jews  at  Talipanhes,  and  soon  after- 
wards his  death.  Then  possiljly  Baruch,  his  faitliful 
companion,  gathered  all  his  writings  together,  but  ap- 
parently did  not  venture  to  alter  the  order  in  which 
ho  found  them.  Possibly  he  never  exactly  published 
them,  but  copies  of  the  documents  in  his  possession 
were  made  as  occasion  required,  and  no  arrangement 
attempted,  and  so  tho  order  is  an  accidental  one. 
Curiously  enough,  but  confirmatory  of  this  view,  we 
find  placed  last  of  all  (chap,  li.)  the  letter  sent  by  tho 
hands  of  Baruch's  ovra.  brother  Seraiah  to  the  exiles  at 
Babylon  in  the  fourth  year  of  Zedekiah,  and  of  which 
he  probably  obtained  the  copy  from  Seraiah  himself. 
At  the  end  of  it  some  later  hand  has  added  the  note, 
'•  Thus  far  are  the  words  of  Jeremiah."  It  is  an  in- 
stance of  the  pervcrseness  of  commentators  that  many, 
nevertheless,  ascribe  chap.  Hi.  to  the  prophet,  though  it 
brings  down  the  history  to  a  time  when  Jeremiah  would 
have  been  nearly  a  hundred  years  of  age.  Probably 
this  chapter  was  added  as  an  historical  appendix  by 
Ezra  and  the  men  of  tho  Great  Synagogue,  who  care- 
fully, however,  warned  the  reader  that  tho  words  were 
no  longer  Jeremiah's  words. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  Septuagint  translation  was 
evidently  nuido  from  a  text  different  from  that  in  our 
Bibles,  both  in  many  details,  and  after  chap.  xxv.  in 
substituting  a  completely  dissimilar  arrangement.  And 
this,  again,  is  in  accordance  with  what  has  gone  before. 
Had  Jeremiah  himself  arranged  and  published  his  own 
prophecies,  no  person  would  have  dared  to  interfere  with 
it.  But  even  our  text,  though  probably  put  forth  by 
Baruch,  shows  no  signs  of  any  attempt  at  a  systematic 
arrangement  on  his  part.  As  the  prophet's  scribe,  tho 
manuscripts  were  in   his  keeping,  and  as   Jeremiah's 


98 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


reputation  grew,  copies  of  them  would  be  made  and 
multiplied  for  the  exiles  at  Babylon,  and  so  what  at 
first  was  merely  accidental  became  their  fixed  order. 
In  Egypt  his  fame  also  grew,  though  more  slowly,  and 
copies  were  doubtless  made  of  such  of  his  prophecies 
as  were  found  there,  wliUe  the  rest  were  brought  piece- 
meal, perhaps,  from  Babylon  and  elsewhere,  and  so,  at 
length,  an  Egyptian  edition  grew  into  shape,  and, 
naturally,  tlio  translators  of  the  Septuagint,  working 
at  AJexandi'ia,  made  their  version  from  the  text  current 
among  themselves.  This  twofold  edition  has  a  most 
important  bearing  upon  Biblical  criticism,  and  gives 
us  fii'm  standing-ground  for  the  defence,  not  merely 
of  the  genuineness  of  the  wi-itiugs  of  Jeremiah,  but  of 
the  whole  collection  of  prophetical  books. 

A  few  words  must  be  added  about  Barueh.  The 
office  of  servant  to  a  prophet  was  a  high  one,  and  often, 
as  in  the  case  of  Elisha,  led  to  his  being  invested  with 
prophetic  powers.  To  such  an  elevation  Barueh  pro- 
bably looked  forward,  especially  as  he  was  a  man  of  high 
birth  and  dignity,  his  grandfather,  Maaseiah,  having 
been  governor  of  the  city  in  Josiah's  time  (2  Ohrou. 
xxxiv.  8),  and  his  brother,  Seraiah,  King  Zcdekiah's 
chamberlain.  But  disappointment  was  to  be  his  lot, 
and  Jeremiah,  in  a  prophecy  (chap,  xlv.)  addressed  to 
him  in  the  fourth  year  of  Jehoiakim,  warned  liim  of  it, 
bidding  him  not  to  "  seek  liigh  tilings  for  himself,"  but 
comforting  him  under  this  tiial,  and  giving  him  the 
promise  of  personal  safety  in  the  coming  storm.  It  is 
curious  that  many  Oriental  legends  represent  Barueh  as 
80  vexed  at  this  disappointment  that  he  apostatised,  they 
say,  from  the  faith,  and,  under  the  name  of  Zoi-oaster, 
introduced  the  Magian  religion.  How  little  truth  there 
is  in  these  stories  we  gather  from  the  Bible  narrative, 
which  tolls  us  that  he  was  with  Jeremiah  in  Egypt, 
faithful  and  devoted  as  ever,  nineteen  or  twenty  years 
after  the  date  of  the  prophecy  addressed  to  him. 
But  that  he  had  hoped  to  be  invested  with  prophetical 


powers,  and  was  greatly  distressed  when  he  f  oimd  that 
such  was  not  to  be  the  case,  is  the  most  probable  ex- 
planation of  the  expression,  "  Seekest  thou  high  things 
for  thyself  ?  "  in  chap.  xlv.  5. 

It  remains  only  to  say  that  Jeremiah  was  by  birth  a 
priest,  and  that  many  suppose  that  his  father,  Hilkiah, 
was  the  good  high  priest  of  that  name  in  Josiah's  days. 
His  home  was  at  Anathoth,  a  priestly  city  in  the  tribe  of 
Benjamin,  where,  too,  he  had  lauded  property.  In  the 
early  years  of  liis  office  he  dwelt  there,  but  the  people 
fully  shared  the  general  indignation  at  his  seeming  want 
of  patriotism,  and  tried  to  mm'der  liim  (chap.  xi.  21).  He 
then  moved  to  Jerusalem,  and  when,  years  afterwards, 
he  was  shut  up  in  prison,  he  bought  his  uncle's  estate 
at  Anathoth,  just  as  the  Romans  bought  and  sold  the 
land  on  which  Hannibal's  camp  was  pitched,  in  token 
that  "  houses  and  lands  and  vineyards  should  be  pos- 
sessed again  in  the  land  "  (chap,  xxxii.  15). 

On  cahuly  reviewing  the  life  of  Jeremiah,  we  cannot 
wonder  that  many  of  the  Fathers  saw  in  him  a  type  of 
Christ.  His  bodily  and  mental  agonies;  his  entire 
subjection  to  the  wiU  of  God,  though  the  prophet  had 
to  overpower  the  revoltings  of  his  human  will ;  his 
lamentations  over  the  coming  troubles  of  his  country, 
the  general  opposition  to  his  teaching,  and  the  union  of 
priest  and  people  in  seeking  his  death,  all  form  an 
interesting  parallel ;  and  the  idea  was  naturally  sug- 
gested by  his  describmg  himself  as  "a  lamb  or  an  ox 
that  is  brought  to  the  slaughter"  (chap.  xi.  19).  No 
doubt  he  was  emphatically  "  a  man  of  sorrows."  But 
the  comparison  must  not  be  pressed  too  far.  Still, 
this  we  may  say,  that  of  all  the  prophets,  none  rises  to 
a  higher  or  more  spiritual  elevation  than  Jeremiah,  and 
none  is  more  worthy  of  such  a  comparison;  and  yet 
even  more  true  would  it  be  to  say  thjit  he  is  an  exem- 
plification of  the  Gospel  principle  that  "  God's  grace  is 
sufficient "  for  a  man,  because  God's  "  strength  is  made 
perfect  in  weakness  "  (2  Cor.  xii.  9). 


AJTIMALS    OF    THE    BIBLE. 

ET  THE    BEV.    W.    HOUGHTON,    M.A.,    F.  L.S.,    KECTOR    OF    PRESTON,    SALOP. 


GOATS,  WILD  GOATS. 

'EXT  in  importance  and  value  to  oxen  and 
sheep  come  goats,  in  the  estimation  of  the 
ancient  Hebrews.  Numerous  are  the  allu- 
sions in  the  Bible  to  the  domestic  animal, 
whQo  references  to  tho  wild  goat,  as  inh.abiting  the 
rocks  and  the  high  hills  of  P.alestine,  occasionally  occur. 
As  several  Hebrew  words  for  the  goat,  expressing 
either  sex  or  age,  are  found  in  the  Bible,  it  will  be  well 
to  notice  briefly  these  names  at  once.  They  are  as 
follow: — ez,  'attnd,  tsdphir,  siVir,  tayish,  and  gedi. 

Ez  (w)  occurs  several  times,  and  generally,  if  not 
.-ilw.ays,  me'ans  "  a  she-goat ; "  the  name  is  distinguished 
from  gedi  (na),  "a  kid."  being  applied  to  an  animal 
from  one  to  three  years  old ;  compare  Gen.  xv.  9, "  Take 


me  a  she-goat  (ez)  of  three  years  old ;"  and  Numb.  xv. 
27,  "a  she-goat  {ez)  of  the  first  year."  The  word  is  pro- 
Ijably  derived  from  cizaz,  "  to  become  strong,"  denoting 
an  animal  that  has  already  acquired  some  strength,  in 
contradistinction  to  a  yoimg  kid  not  long  born  or  "  cast 
out "  (gdddh)  of  the  body.  In  Exod.  xxxv.  26,  'izzini 
(lit.,  "goats")  is  used  for  goats'-hair,  of  which  coverings 
for  cushions  or  bolsters  wore  made ;  see  1  Sam.  xix. 
13 — 16,  in  which  passage  occurs  a  very  cm-ious  ren- 
dering by  the  Septuagint.  In  om*  version,  which  is 
correctly  ti-ansl.ated,  we  read  (vor.  13),  "And  Michal 
took  an  image,  .and  laid  it  in  the  bed,  and  put  a  pillow 
of  goats' hair  for  his  bolster  (Heb.  7neraasluitdiv ;  lit., 
'  at  his  head  '),  and  covered  it  with  a  cloth,"  where  in 
the  LXX.  we  read,  "And  Melchol  took  images  and  laid 


ANIMALS   OF  THE   BIBLE. 


99 


them  on  tbe  bed,  and  she  put  the  liver  of  a  goat  by  his 
head,  and  covered  them  with  clothes."  Josephus  {Antiq. 
vi.  11,  §  41,  who  also  reads  "  liver,"  tells  us  of  its  uso  on 
this  occasion.  When  Saul,  Michal's  father,  sent  mes- 
sengers to  seize  David,  his  wife  "  showed  them  the  bed 
covered,  and  made  them  believe,  by  the  leaping  of  the 
liver,  which  caused  the  bed-clothes  to  move  also,  tliat 
David  breathed  hke  one  that  was  asthmatic  "  (!) — iho 
Hebrew  word  7ve6iV  (i"33),  "a  covering,"  or  "pillow," 
being  read  as  153  (kdbkl),  "the  liver." 

'AttAd  (iin»)  denotes  a  "he-goat,"  from  a  root  mean- 
ing "to  make  ready,"  "prepare,"  from  the  idea  of  a 
he-goat  taking  the  lead  of  the  flock  ready  for  action. 
"  Remove  out  of  the  midst  of  Babylon,  and  go  forth 
out  of  the  laud  of  the  Chaldeans,  and  bo  as  the  ho- 
goats  before  the  flocks  "  (Jer.  1.  8).  The  word  occurs 
in  a  figurative  sense  in  Zech.  x.  3.  as  princes  leadiug 
the  people—"  Mine  anger  was  kindled  aguinst  tlie 
shepherds,  and  I  punished  the  he-goats ;"  and  in  Isa. 
siv.  9,  "  It  stirreth  up  the  dead  for  thee,  even  all  tho 
chief  ones  (lit.,  '  he-goats')  of  the  earth." 

Ts{'q}hir  (">'?s),  "  a  he-goat,"  is  a  word  of  uncertain 
origin  ;  it  appears  to  be  a  late  Hebrew  or  Chaldaic  form 
of  tho  word  sd'ir,  "  a  rough  one  "  or  "  he-goat  "  (a  term 
of  constant  occurrence  in  Leviticus),  though  tsdphir 
occurs  with  sd'ir  in  Dan.  vni.  21 :  "And  the  goat,  the 
rough  one,  is  the  king  of  Javau  "  (A.  V.,  "  Grecia  "). 

Sd'ir  (TS'ii?)  literally  means  "rough"  or  "hairy,"  and 
is  tlio  word  which  Jacob  applied  to  his  brother  Esau  : 
"  Behold,  my  brother  is  an  hairy  man  "  {isli  sd'ir) ;  hence 
the  term  was  used  of  "  a  goat,"  especially  of  "  a  he- 
goat;"  precisely  similar  is  the  Latin  hircus,  "a  he- 
goat,"  from  kirtus  or  hirsutus,  ''  hairy.  The  word  sd'ir 
occurs  frequently  in  the  books  of  Numbers  and  Leviticus 
as  the  goat  of  the  sin-oileriug.  "  Take  yo  a  kid  of  tho 
goats  f  or  a  siu-oii'eruig  "  (Lev.  ix.  3, 1.5  ;  x.  16  ;  see  also 
Numb.  XT.  24,  27  ;  xxix.  11,  &c.).  The  Hebrew  name 
occurs  in  Isaiah  to  denote  some  kind  of  mythological 
creatures,  goat-like  in  form,  supposed  to  inhabit  deso- 
late places  in  company  with  liUth.  tho  night  fau-y,  that 
was  supposed  to  lay  wait  for  children.  Lilifh  will  be 
considered  mulcr  the  article  "  Owl."  Tlie  prophet, 
speaking  of  Babylon  says,  "  It  shall  never  bo  inhabited, 
neither  shall  it  be  dwelt  in  from  generation  to  generation. 
.  .  .  But  wild  beasts  of  the  desert  shall  lie  there  ; 
and  then-  houses  shall  be  full  of  doleful  creatures  ;  and 
owls  shall  dwell  there,  and  satyi-s  (se'irrm)  shall  dance 
there  "  (Isa.  xiii.  21).  "  As  Rich  heard  in  Bagdad,  the 
ruins  [of  Babylon]  aro  stiU  regarded  as  a  rendezvous 
for  ghosts:  Sit'iV  when  contrasted  with  ''attful  signifies 
the  full-grown  shaggy  buck-goat;  but  here  (Isa.  xiii. 
21)  se'irim  is  applied  to  demons  in  the  shape  of  goats, 
as  in  chap,  xxxiv.  14.  According  to  the  Scriptures, 
the  desert  is  the  abode  of  unclean  spirits,  and  such 
unclean  spirits  as  the  popular  belief  or  mythology 
pictured  to  itself  were  se'irim.  Virgil,  like  Isaiah,  calls 
them  saltantes  satyros.  It  is  remarkable  that  Wolf. 
the  traveller  or  missionary  to  Bokhara,  saw  pilgrims 
of  the  sect  of  TeziiUs  (or  de\-il- worshippers)  upon  the 
ruins  of  Babylon,  who  performed  strange  and  horrid 


rites  by  moonlight,  and  danced  extraordinary  dances 
with  singular  gestures  and  sounds.  On  seeing  these 
ghost-like,  howling,  moonhglit  pilgrims  he  very  naturally 
recalled  to  mind  tho  daucing  se'irim  of  pi-ophecy" 
(Dclitzsch's  Isaiah).  A  similar  pictm'O  of  desolation 
is  di'awn  by  the  same  prophet  concerning  Edom. 
"  Thorns  shall  come  up  in  her  palaces,  nettles  and 
brambles  in  the  fortresses  thereof  :  and  it  shall  bo  an 
habitation  of  dragons  (jackals),  and  a  coui-t  for  owls. 
The  wild  beasts  of  the  desert  shall  also  meet  with  the 
wild  beasts  of  the  island,  and  the  .satyr  shall  cry  to  his 
fellow,  lilith  also  shall  rest  there,  and  find  for  herself 
a  place  of  rest "  (xxxiv.  13,  14).  That  the  word  desig- 
nates some  demon  of  goat-like  form,  and  is  rightly 
translated  "  satyrs  "  in  om-  version,  is  evident  from  the 
fact  that  the  Israelites  had  been  in  tho  habit  of  wor- 
shipping such  demons.  "  And  they  shall  no  more  offer 
their  sacrifices  imto  de^als "  (se'irim)  (Lev.  xvii.  7). 
"  They  provoked  him  to  jealousy  with  strange  gods, 
with  abominations  provoked  they  him  to  anger.  They 
sacrificed  unto  destroying  demons  [A.  V.,  '  devils,' 
shedhn],  that  were  not  God;  to  gods  whom  they  knew 
not,  to  new  gods  that  came  newly  up,  whom  your  fathers 
feared  not"  (Deut.  xxxii.  16,  17).  "  They  served  their 
idols,  which  were  a  snare  unto  them  ;  yea,  they  sacrificed 
their  sons  and  their  daughters  uuto  devils  "  (shedim) 
(seePs.  evi.  37).  It  seems  very  probable  that  the  shedim 
in  these  two  last  passages  denote  tho  se'irim  of  Levi- 
ticus in  the  passage  quoted.  That  some  malignant 
demon  is  intended  by  shedim  appears  from  Ps.  xci. 
6,  where  pestilence  is  spoken  of  as  "  causing  destruc- 
tion "  {shiid  =  shddad,  "  to  be  violent,"  "  to  destroy  ") ; 
but  in  2  Chron.  xi.  15,  tho  seirim  are  again  definitely 
spoken  of  as  idols.  Jeroboam  "  ordained  him  priests  for 
the  high  places,  and  for  the  de\'ils  (se'irim, '  goat  idols '), 
and  for  the  calves  which  he  had  made."  From  this  it 
would  appear  that  the  king  of  the  revolting  tribes  set 
up  images  of  the  goat  as  wefl  as  of  the  calf.  The  super- 
stition of  worshipping  a  goat,  a  sort  of  Pan  with  a, 
goat's  head  and  feet,  was  probably  a  relic  of  Egyjjtian 
idolatiy.  Those  who  maintain  tliat  tho  Book  of  Levi- 
ticus does  not  date  earlier  than  the  PersLau  period,  are 
of  opinion  that  in  this  goat-worship  we  have  a  combi- 
nation of  both  Persian  aud  Egyptian  ideas.  "  There 
can  bo  no  doubt,"  says  Kaliseh,  "  that  after  their  return 
from  Babylon,  the  Jews  of  Palestine  maintained  an 
active  intereoiu-se  with  the  Eastern  Empire  aud  with 
Egypt,  and  were  familiar  vrith  the  institutions  of  both ; 
thus  notions  borrowed  from  the  Persian  creed  were  com- 
bined with  Egyptian  conceptions.  Of  this  amalgamation 
we  li.ave  a  remarkable  instauee  in  the  Book  of  Job,  which 
was  wi-itten  about  the  same  period,  and  which  on  the 
one  hand  introduces  the  Persian  Sat.au  and  councU  of 
angels,  and  on  tho  other  descrilies  the  hippopotamus 
and  the  crocodile  in  a  manner  as  they  can  ouly  bo  de- 
scribed by  one  who  personally  observed  them  in  their 
native  Egypt.  Therefore,  while  we  believe  that  tho 
'  he-goats  '  of  our  text,  like  Azazel,  who  periodically 
received  a  sbi-laden  goat,  are  chiefly  meant  for  Persian 
demons  or  satyrs,  wildly  daucing  and  yelling  in  deserts 


lOO 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


and  on  ruins,  they  also  include  the  goats  which  were 
held  sacred  among  the  Egyptians,  and  which  were  by 
the  Hebrews  understood  as  pagan  symbols  "  (Comment, 
on  Levit.  xvii.).  Some  writers  have  thojight  that  the 
se'irim  of  Isaiah  siguify  some  kind  of  monkpy,  Macactis 
.or  Cynoccphalus.  Dr.  Tristram  lias  figured  the  Cyno- 
cephalus  mormon,  the  raaudriU,  an  animal  found  only  in 
Guinea,  West  Africa,  as  the  C.  hamadryas  of  Arabia  and 
Abyssinia.  According  to  the  old  versions  and  nearly 
all  the  commentators,  the  se'irim  denote  demons  of 
•desert  places,  half  men,  haK  goats ;  and  our  Authorised 
Version  of  "  satyrs  "  must  retain  its  place.  Not  so,  how- 
•cvor,  with  the  'azazel  (see  margin)  of  Lev.  xvi.  8,  10, 
26,  wrongly  i-cndercd  by  "scaps-goat"  in  our  version. 


sent  away  into  the  wilderness,  and  which  in  the  Hebrew 
language  is  named  Azazel,  was  none  other  than  this," 
i.e.,  "  the  destroying  angel,  the  Aovil  "  (see  Origon,  Con- 
tra Cels.,  vi.  cap.  43).  This  view  is  generally  adopted 
by  modern  scholars.  The  author  of  the  notes  iu  the 
SjJeahcrs  Commentary  makes  the  following  remarks, 
which  are  well  worthy  of  our  attention  ; — "  Taking  then 
Azazel  as  the  evil  one,  the  important  question  remains, 
in  what  capacity  was  the  goat  dismissed  to  him  ?  Was 
he  sent  as  a  sacrifice  to  bribe  or  mollify  him  ?  (Spencer, 
Gesenius,  Rosenmiiller,  &c.)  Against  this  it  is  justly 
argued  that  the  two  goats  formed  together  one  sin- 
offering,  and,  as  such,  had  been  presented  to  Jehovah  : 
and  also  tliat  anything  like  the  worship  and  sacrifice  of 


yj^-' 


.  ■-[-,SMfeSigi^@<i#^fe3^'g 


HUNTINO    WILD    QOATS.       (ASSTEIAN.) 


The  Hebrew  word  'ayAz'sl  ("'i-'^';?)  occurs  only  in  the  pas- 
sages in  Leviticus  referred  to  above.  "  Aarou  shall  cast 
lots  upon  the  two  goats  {al-shenei  hasserim-);  one  lot  for 
Jehovah,  and  one  lot  for  Azazel "  (ver.  8).  "  But  the  goat 
{hassd'ir)  on  which  Azazel's  lot  fell  shjvU  be  presented 
alive  before  Jehovah,  to  make  an  atonement  for  it,  and 
to  send  it  to  Azazel  into  the  wUdernoss "  {leshallach 
otho  la  azazel  hammidhdrdh,  ver.  10).  "  And  he  that 
takes  away  the  goat  for  Azazel  shall  wash  his  clothes  and 
bathe  liis  body"  (ver.  26).  There  cannot  be  the  slightest 
doubt  that  Azazel  is  a  personal  being — an  evil  demon 
in  direct  opposition  with  Jehoyah,  the  God  of  goodness. 
Some  of  the  Rabbins  identified  Azazel  with  Sammael, 
the  angel  of  death,  chief  of  devils ;  and  early  Christian 
writers,  as  Origen,  considered  Azazel  to  bo  the  devil. 
-"  Moreover,  the  goat  which  in  the  Book  of  Leviticus  is 


an  evil  spirit  was  forbidden  by  the  whole  spirit  of  flio 
Law.  Or  is  the  strange  notion  to  bo  entertained  that 
the  goat  was  sent  out  with  his  symbolical  burden  of  sin 
as  if  to  vex  the  devil,  to  deride  and  to  triumph  over  him 
in  his  own  dominion  ?  (Witsius,  Hengstenberg,  Kurtz.) 
May  not  the  matter  be  rather  put  in  tliis  way  ?  .  .  . 
It  is  evident  that  the  goat  sent  away  cmdd  not  stand  in 
the  same  relation  to  Azazel  as  the  other  did  to  Jehovah. 
Ha\-ing  been  presented  to  Jehovah  before  the  lots  wore 
cast,  each  goat  stood  in  a  sacrificial  relation  to  Him. 
The  casting  of  lots  was  an  appeal  to  the  decision  of 
Jehovah  (cf .  Josh.  \-ii.  16,  17  ;  xiv.  2 ;  Prov.  xvi.  33 ; 
Acts  i.  26.  &c.) ;  it  was  therefore  His  act  to  choose  one 
of  the  goats  for  His  ser^dco  in  the  way  of  ordin.ary 
sacrifice,  the  other  for  His  service  in  carrying  off  the 
sins  to  Azazel.     The  idea  to  bo  set  before  the  Israelites 


ANIMALS  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


101 


was  the  absolute  annihilation  by  the  atoning  sacrifice  of 
sin  as  a  separation  between  Jehovah  and  liis  people ; 
the  complete  setting  free  of  their  consciences.  This  was 
expressed  in  later  times  by  the  Psalmist :  '  As  far  as 
the  east  is  from  the  west,  so  far  hatli  lie  removed  our 
transgressions  from  us'  (ciii.  12);  and  by  the  prophet, 
'  Ho  will  subdue  our  iniquities ;  and  thou  wilt  cast  all 
their  sins  into  the  depths  of  the  sea'  (Micah  vii.  19). 
By  this  expressive  outward  sign  the  sins  were  sent  back 
to  the  author  of  sin  itself,  '  the  entirely  separate  one,' 
who  was  banished  from  the  realm  of  grace."  There  is 
considerable  force  in  these  remarks ;  we  wiU  only  add 
that  evil  demons  were  generally  supposed  to  dwell  in 
desolate  regions,  in  company  with  howling  jackals  and 
screeching  owls ;  hence  Jesus  went  into  the  wilderness 
to  be  tempted  of  the  devil,  and  "was  with  the  \vild 
beasts"  (Mark  i.  13);  that  the  "waste  howling  wilder- 
ness" woidd  be  supposed  to  be  the  proper  place  to 
baui.sh  all  offences  which  marred  the  beauty  of  holiness. 

As  to  the  etymology  of  Azazel,  various  conjectures 
have  been  made.  It  has  been  derived  from  dzal,  "  to 
remove,"  and  is  supposed  to  be  a  kind  of  reduplicated 
form,  implying  great  remoteness,  the  demon  who  dwel- 
leth  afar  off  in  the  wUderness.  The  root  occurs  in 
Arabic,  but  not  in  Hebrew.  Freytag,  in  liis  Lexicon, 
merely  explains  'azazel  by  "  antiquum  nomeu  diaboli." 
In  the  apocryphal  Book  of  Enoch,  Azazel  is  enu- 
merated as  one  of  the  cliiefs  of  the  two  hundred 
angels,  the  sons  of  heaven,  who  became  enamoured 
with  the  beautiful  daughters  of  men  (see  Gen.  vi.  1, 
"the  sons  of  God  and  the  daughters  of  men"),  and 
descended  upon  the  top  of  Mount  Armon,  and  co- 
habiting with  the  women  became  the  parents  of  giants 
(Gen.  vi.  4),  three  hundred  cubits  high,  which  devoured 
aU  that  men  produced,  when,  other  food  failing,  they 
began  to  devour  men.  Azazel,  however,  seems  to  have 
been  of  some  use,  for  ho  taught  men  to  make  swords, 
knives,  shields,  breastplates,  and  how  to  be  able  to  see 
behind  them  (mirrors),  workmanship  of  bracelets  and 
ornaments,  the  use  of  paint,  <fcc.  &«.  According  to  the 
story  in  the  Book  of  Enoch,  Azazel  was  bound  hand  and 
foot  by  Raphael,  at  the  command  of  the  Lord,  and  cast 
into  the  desert,  which  is  Dudael,  there  to  remain  tiU  the 
great  day  of  judgment,  when  he  was  to  be  cast  into  the 
firo  (see  Laurence's  Boole  of  Enoch  the  Prophet,  chaps, 
vii.  and  x.,  pp.  G,  7). 

Tayish  (®'n),  probably  from  idsh,  "to  push  with  the 
horns,"  "  to  butt,"  occurs  only  in  Gen.  xxx.  .35 ;  xxxii. 
14 ;  Prov.  xxx.  31 ;  2  Chron.  x™.  11,  where  it  denotes 
"  a  he-goat."  In  Proverbs  the  tayish  is  mentioned  as 
one  of  the  four  thmgs  wliich  "  are  comely  in  going,"  in 
allusion  probably  to  the  stately  march  of  the  leader  of 
the  flock,  whicli  was  always  associated  in  the  minds  of 
the  Hebrews  with  the  notion  of  dignity.  Compare  the 
expression  in  Isa.  xiv.  9,  "  all  the  chief  ones  (margin, 
'great  goats  ')  of  the  earth."  Gedi  ( n?  )  is  used  for 
a  young  "  kid,"  and  is  often  joined  to  'izzim,  "  kid  of 
the  goats;"  it  gave  the  name  to  Eu-gedi,  a  town  on  tlie 
western  shore  of  the  Dead  Sea,  signifying  "  the  fountain 
of  the  kid."      Tayish  appears  in  the  modem  Arabic 


tays,  the  ordinary  name  for  the  he-goat.  "  The  stately 
march  of  the  he-goat  before  the  herd,  and  his  haughty 
bearing,  as  well  as  the  dauntless  stare  with  which  ho 
scrutuiises  a  stranger,  are  well  kno^vn  by  all  familiar 
with  the  East ;  and  the  he-goat  is  still  commonly  ap- 
plied by  the  Araljs  as  a  similo  for  dignity  of  manner 
and  bearing  "  (Nat.  Hist.  Bib.,  p.  88). 

Goats  were  used  as  offerings  in  the  sacrifices ;  their 
milk  was,  and  is  still,  an  important  item  of  food  :  "  Thou 
shalt  have  goats'  milk  enough  for  thy  food,  for  tho 
food  of  thy  household,  and  for  the  maintenance  of  thy 
maidens  "  (Prov.  xxvii.  27).  The  milk  is  used  both  in 
a  fresh  and  curdled  state,  and  is  made  into  butter  and 
cheese.  Goats'  hair  was  employed  as  a  woven  material 
for  tho  curtains  of  the  tabernacle  (Exod.  xxvi.  7  ;  xxxvi. 
14),  and,  as  we  havo  seen,  for  a  covering  for  a  bolster, 
or,  as  some  tliink,  for  a  countcriiano.  Their  flesh, 
especially  that  of  tho  kid,  was  highly  prized  as  food. 
"  Go  now  to  tho  flock,''  Rebekali  said  to  Jacob,  "  and 
fetch  mo  from  thence  two  good  kids  of  the  goats, 
and  I  wiU  make  tliem  savoury  meat  for  thy  father,  such 
as  ho  loveth  "  (Gen.  xxvii.  9).  "  Gideon  went  in  and 
made  ready  a  kid,"  on  tho  occasion  of  an  angel's  visit 
( Judg.  vi.  19) ;  and  Mauoali  said  to  tho  angel  that  ap- 
peared to  him,  "  I  pray  thee,  let  us  detain  thee  until  wo 
shall  have  made  ready  a  kid  for  thee  "  (xiii.  15).  A  kid 
is  still  common  food  in  Palestine.  "  Whenever,"  says 
Dr.  Tristram,  "in  tlie  wilder  parts  of  Palestine,  the 
traveller  halts  at  an  Arab  camp,  or  pays  his  visit  to  a 
village  sheikh,  he  is  pressed  to  stay  until  tho  kid  can  bo 
killed  and  made  ready ;  and  he  has  an  opportunity  of 
seeing  in  front  of  tho  tent  the  kid  caught  and  prepared 
for  the  cooking,  which  is  carried  on  by  the  women  out 
of  sight  in  the  inner  compartment.  Unless  he  is  pressed 
by  a  necessity  which  the  host  cannot  refuse  to  accept 
as  a  reasonable  excuse,  ho  must  wait,  if  he  regards  his 
reputation  for  good  manners,  until  tho  feast  is  prepared. 
The  f  rcshly-kiUed  kid  is  extremely  tender  and  good,  as 
is  all  meat  if  cooked  as  soon  as  .slaughtered,  and  the 
most  fastidious  palate  cannot  detect  the  difference 
between  kid  and  lamb."  The  older  goats,  wo  are  told, 
do  not  fui-nish  as  good  meat,  though  eaten  for  mutton 
in  most  parts  of  Palestine.  Lambs  are  not  so  often 
killed  for  food  as  kids;  they  are  kept  for  the  sake  of  tho 
wool,  whUo  calves  were  considered  too  expensive  a  luxury 
except  on  some  festive  occasion.  Hence  we  see  the  full 
force  of  tho  complaint  which  the  prodigal's  elder  brother 
made  to  his  father  ;  "  Thou  never  gavost  me  (oven)  a  Jcid, 
th.at  1  might  make  merry  with  my  friends :  but  as  soon  as 
this  thy  son  was  come  ....  thou  hast  killed  for  him 
the  fatted  calf"  (Luke  xv.  29,  30).  Tho  ancient  Jews 
kept  large  quantities  of  goats  as  well  as  sheep,  and  the 
present  inhabitants  of  Palestine  still  rear  a  great  niunber 
in  some  districts.  "  Goats  are  only  adapted  for  hilly 
countries  or  pastures  where  there  is  much  brushwood ; 
and  in  such  districts  thoy  supersede  in  Palestine  tho 
horned  cattle  of  tho  plains.  For  tho  downs  and  short 
herbage  of  Arabia  they  are  not  so  well  adapted  as 
sheep  ;  but  on  reaching  tho  southern  wilderness,  where 
many  dwarf  shrubs  vary  the  herbage,  goats  are  to  be 


102 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


seen  in  large  flocks.  To  tlie  tliii-sty  plateaux  of  Ai-abia 
they  are  imsuited,  and  are  not  mentioned  among  the 
possessions  of  Job.  In  the  rich  maritime  plains  the 
herbage  is  too  succulent  for  their  taste.  The  hilly  dis- 
trict which  extends  from  Hebron,  up  the  centre  of 
Western  Palestine  to  the  Lebanon,  is  of  all  others  that 
most  adapted  for  goats  ;  and  in  this  country  they  have 
been  largely  reared  from  the  earliest  times.  The 
sheep  and  goats  are  here  always  seen  together  under 
the  same  shepherd  and  in  company,  yet  they  uerer 
trespass  on  the  domain  of  each  other.  The  sheep  as 
they  traverse  the  hill- side  graze  closely  the  tender 
herbage  and  the  grass  whicli  carpets  the  soil ;  the  goats 
generally  fUing  in  long  lines  a  little  above  them,  skip 
from  rock  to  rock,  and  browse  the  tender  twigs  and  tho 
foliage  of  tho  thymes  and  dwarf  shrubs.  .  .  .  Yet 
though  tlie  goats  thus  mingle  mth  tho  sheep  there  is  no 
disposition  on  either  side  for  more  intimate  acquaintance ; 
when  folded  together  at  night  they  may  always  bo  seen 
gathered  in  distinct  groups,  and  so  round  the  wells  they 
appear  instinctively  to  classify  themselves  apart,  as  they 
wait  for  the  troughs  to  be  filled  "  [Nat.  Hist.  Bib.,  p. 
88).  The  goat  of  Syria  is  a  well-marked  variety  of  the 
common  Hircus  wgagrus,  with  long  thick  pendent  ears, 
often  a  foot  long.  The  prophet  Amos  (iii.  12)  speaks  of  a 
shepherd  "  taking  out  of  the  mouth  of  the  lion  two  legs,  or 
a  piece  of  an  ear."  It  has  been  supposed  by  some — by 
Harmer,  in  his  interesting  Observations,  nearly  100 
years  ago,  for  instance — that  Amos  is  here  speaking  of 
this  long-eared  goat.  Tho  Syrian  goat  (Capra  Main- 
brica,  Linn.)  is  larger  than  the  common  goat,  and  has 
long  black  hair,  thick  recurved  horns ;  biit  there  is 
another  variety,  which  is  seen  only  in  the  north  of 
Palestine,  tho  mohair  goat  (Capra  Angorensis,  Linn.), 
which  has  long  sUky  hair.  Tlie  vai'ieties  of  the  breeds 
of  goats  are  perhaps  as  numerous  as  those  of  sheep,  and 
may  be  almost  infinitely  multiplied  by  selection  in 
crossing. 

The  skin  of  the  goat  supplies  material  out  of  which, 
in  the  East,  bottles,  or  vessels  for  carrying  water,  mUk, 
or  other  fluid,  are  made.  These  skins  were  similarly 
employed  by  the  ancient  Hebrews,  who  had  various 
names  for  these  .skin  bottles,  such  as  6b  (3iN),  from  a 
root  meaning  "  to  be  hollow ;  "  bakbiik  (P«P3),  so  called 
from  tho  sounds  it  makes  when  being  emptied,  an 
onomatopoetic  word,  like  our  English  bubble,  accord- 
ing to  Geseuius,  from  bdkak,  "  to  pour  out ;"  but  Fiirst 
derives  it  from  a  root,  buk,  to  which  lie  gives  the  sense 
of  "being  hollow;"  chemeth  (npn),  probably  from  root 
meaning  "  to  enclose ;"  nod  (im),  from  the  idea  of 
being  "hollow."  There  is  another  word,  nebel  (%7). 
sometimes  used  for  skin-bottles,  which  is  also  apjilied 
to  any  vessels  made  of  earthenware ;  see  Isa.  xxx.  14  : 
"  He  shall  break  it  as  tho  breaking  of  a  potter's  pitcher 
that  is  broken  in  pieces." 

These  goat-skin  or  sheep-skin  bottles  vriU  help  us  to 
understand  such  Biljfical  expressions  as  the  following : 
"  I  am  become  like  a  bottle  in  tho  smoke  "  [kenud 
bekitor),  "yet  do  I  not  forget  thy  commandments;" 
i.e.,  "  I  am   become   like  a  shrivelled  old  wine-skin. 


black  and  dirty;"  a  very  apt  figure  to  denote  the 
Psalmist's  affliction.  It  is  often  said  that  it  was  the 
custom  of  the  ancient  Jews  to  hang  up  in  the  smoke 
their  goat-skins  for  keeping  wine  (see  Geseuius  and 
Fiirst,  s.  V.  ^^<3  nud) ;  but  they  would  hardly  have  done 
this  purposely,  for  the  skins  would  not  thereby  be  im- 
proved. Probably  the  old  wine-skin  refers  to  one  that  had 
been  carelessly  left  about,  and  had  become  wrinkled  and 
black  from  smoke  and  dirt.  RosenmiiUer  (Pa.  cxix.  83) 
refers  to  the  custom  among  the  Greeks  and  Romans  of 
hanging  wine-skins  fuU  of  new  wine  in  the  smoke,  in 
order  to  mature  the  wine,  but  there  is  no  proof  that  the 
Hebrews  did  so.  Mr.  Perowne  says,  "  In  this  case  the 
figure  would  denote  the  mellowing  and  ripening  of  the 
character  by  afiliction,"  which  seems  a  strained  notion. 
Moreover,  Rosenmiiller  ends  his  note  with  these  words  : 
"  Cum  tali  igitur  utro  plane  exsiccate  vates  Hebrseus 
sose  comparans  hoc  (licit  :  etiamsi  maximis  conficiar 
miseriis,  tamen  non  desinent  mihi  curae  esse  prajcepta 
tua."  (Tlie  Hebrew  poet,  then,  comparing  himself  with 
such  a  dried-up  wine-skin,  says,  "  Even  if  I  am  worn 
out  by  the  greatest  troubles,  stiU  thy  commandments 
shall  never  cease  to  bo  my  care.")  Rosenmiiller,  there- 
fore, it  appears,  supposed  that  the  Hebrews  mellowed 
their  wine  in  the  smoke,  and  sometimes  left  the  empty 
bottles  tliere.  The  blackness  which  the  skin-bottle 
woidd  contract  from  tho  smoke  and  dust  is  an  apt 
illustration  of  the  yloominess  of  tho  Ps;ilmist's  mind. 
Blackness  is  an  emblem  of  sorrow,  trouble,  and  despair ; 
whiteness,  of  joy  and  prosperity.  Hence  we  can  under- 
stand the  verse  in  the  68tli  Psalm — 

"  When  the  Almighty  scatters  kings. 
It  is  the  same  as  when  there  is  suow  in  (dark)  Zalmon." 

When  Jehovah  scatters  our  kingly  enemies,  the  bright- 
ness of  prosperity  ilhuuines  the  darkened  land,  just 
as  blaci  Zalmon  becomes  wliito  when  covered  with 
snow. 

Wo  read  in  Joshua  (ix.  4)  how  that  the  Gibeonitea 
"  went  and  made  as  if  they  had  been  ambassadors,  and 
took  old  sacks  upon  their  asses,  and  wino-bottlos,  old, 
and  rent,  and  bound  up;"  these  last,  of  course,  would 
be  tho  same  goat-skins  of  which  we  have  been  speaking ; 
and  Dr.  Tristram  tells  us  that  they  are  "frequently 
patched  and  mended  with  skin  and  pitch."  The  expres- 
sion of  our  Lord  about  "  now  wine  bursting  old  bottles  " 
is  thus  readily  iuteUigiblo,  for  the  fermentation  of  the 
new  wine  would  burst  old  skins.  There  is  ono  more 
passage  where  the  goat-skin  bottle  is  mentioned,  which 
requires  a  few  words  of  comment.  The  Psalmist  (Ps. 
Ivi.  8)  complains  to  Jehovah,  "  Thou  knowest  my  rest- 
less wanderings:  put  thou  my  tears  into  thy  bottle." 
Some  have  supposed  that  reference  is  here  made  to 
lachrymatories,  like  the  small  glass  or  earthen  plmils, 
with  a  long  neck,  found  iu  the  sepulchres  of  tho  ancient 
Romans.  These  vessels  were  supposed  to  have  con- 
tained tears  shed  by  the  survi^ang  friends  of  the  de- 
ceased, and  to  have  been  placed  in  the  sepulchres  as 
memorials  of  affection.  This  idea  was  first  held  by 
Chifflet,  a  French  physician  who  lived  in  the  early  part 


ANIMALS  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


103 


of  the  seventeenth  centmy,  and  adopted  by  several 
antiquai'ies.  At  last  it  was  combated  by  Schoepflin,  a 
German  professor  at  Strasbiirg,  who  died  there  in  1771. 
Ho  maintained  that  these  vessels  were  not  intended  for 
tears,  but  for  perfiunes  and  balms,  destined  t«  moisten 
the  funeral  pile  or  the  ashes  of  the  dead.  It  must  be 
confessed  that  Chifflet's  idea  was  pure  conjecture,  there 
being'  no  trace  of  such  a  custom  in  ancient  records  or  on 
monuments.  The  word  lachnjmatorium  does  not  exist 
at  all  in  classical  Latin,  or  in  medieval  Latin,  with 
such  a  signification.  The  Roman  urna  into  which  the 
biu-nt  ashes  of  the  deceased  were  placed  sometimes  had 
a  small  holo  at  the  top,  which  by  some  has  been  sup- 
posed to  be  for  the  admittance  of  tear-drops,  but  there 
is  no  proof  that  it  was  so  used.  The  expression, 
therefore,  made  use  of  by  the  Psalmist,  "  Put  thou  my 
tears  into  thy  bottle,"  simply  means,  "  Be  miudfid  of 
my  calamities  ;  coUect  all  the  tears  I  have  shed ;  treasure 
them,  as  it  were,  in  thy  bottle." 

Dr.  Tristram  witnessed  the  manufacture  of  these 
goat-skin  bottles,  which,  he  says,  is  very  simple.  "  The 
animal  is  skinned  from  the  neck,  by  simply  cutting  off 
the  head  and  legs,  and  then  drawing  the  skin  back, 
without  making  any  slit  in  the  belly.  The  apertures  for 
the  legs  and  tail  are  at  once  sewn  and  tied  very  tightly 
up,  and  the  skin  in  this  state,  with  the  hair  on,  is  steeped 
in  tannin,  and  filled  with  a  decoction  of  bark  for  a  few 
weeks.  There  are  large  tanneries  in  different  towns, 
where  the  process  is  carried  on  on  an  extensive  scale, 
especially  at  Hebron,  where  bottle-making,  both  of  glass 
and  leather,  is  the  staple  of  the  place.  The  skins  are 
there  partially  tanned,  then  sewn  up  at  the  neck  and 
filled  with  water,  the  sutures  being  carefully  pitched. 
They  are  then  exposed  to  the  sim  on  the  groimd  for 
several  days,  covered  with  a  strong  decoction  of  tannin 
and  water  pumped  into  them  from  time  to  time  to  keep 
them  on  the  stretch  till  sufficiently  saturated "  {Nat. 
Hist.  Bib.,  p.  92). 

We  have  before  us,  as  wo  write,  a  representation  of  a 
fishing  scone,  taken  from  one  of  the  slabs  in  the  Assyi-ian 
department  of  the  British  Museum.  Here  are  to  be  seen 
two  men  riding  cross-legged  on  these  inflated  prepared 
skins,  in  the  form  of  the  animal  itself,  without  head, 
tail,  and  a  portion  of  the  legs,  exactly  answering  to 
Dr.  Tristram's  description  of  the  mode  of  stripping  the 
goat  of  its  skin  as  seen  by  him  in  Palestine.  The  men 
are  riding  those  inflated  skins  quite  at  ease,  and  drawing 
fishing  lines  with  fish  that  have  just  liooked  themselves. 
We  hope  to  give  this  interesting  illustration  when  we 
come  to  treat  of  "  Fish  and  Fishing." 

According  to  tlie  Levitical  law  it  was  deemed  an 
offence  "  to  seethe  a  kid  ia  his  mother's  milk."  Three 
times  is  this  command  given,  iu  Bxod.  xxiii.  19; 
xxxiv.  26 ;  and  in  Dout.  xiv.  21.  Various  explanations 
have  been  given  as  to  the  reason  for  tho  prohibition. 
The  Jewish  doctors  considered  it  as  one  of  those  recon- 
dite "statutes"  or  "  mysteries,"  which,  like  the  law  of 
the  red  heifer  (Numb.  xix.  2)  and  of  Azazel's  goat, 
shoiUd  not  be  submitted  to  human  investigation ;  it  will 
be  revealed  and  explained  by  God  himself  when  the 


Messiah  comes.    The  precept  occurs  in  connection  with 
tho  produce  of  the  land,  in  the  two  passages  in  Exodus, 
"  The  first  of   tho  first-f  i-uits  of  thy  laud  thou  shalt 
bring  into  the  house  of  the  Lord  thy  God.     Thou  shalt 
not  seethe  a  kid  in  his  mother's  mUk;"  but  in  Deu- 
teronomy the  precept  stands  in   no  such  connection ; 
there  it  simply  forms  a  part  of  a  series  of  commands  on 
lawful  and  unla\vful  food.     "  Ye  shall  not  eat  of  any- 
thing that  dieth  of  itself :  thou  shalt  give  it  unto  the 
stranger  that  is  in  thy  gates,  that  ho  may  eat  it ;   or 
thou  mayest  sell  it  unto  an  alien .-  for  thou  art  an  holy 
people  unto  the  Lord  thy  God.    Thou  shalt  not  seethe  a 
kid  in  his  mother's  milk."     Does  the  precept  relate  to 
diet  sunply  or  to  humane  feelings  ?  or,  as  in  the  case  of 
tho  prohibition  to  eat  swine's  flesh,  was  it  designed  to 
wean  the  Israelites  from  any  heathen  superstitions  ? 
This  Lxst-named  opinion  has  met  with  some  support, 
being   held   by   Abarbanel,    Bochart,    John    Gregory, 
Grotius,  Knobol,  &c.     Indeed,  it  is  partly  sanctioned 
by  the  Samaritan  text,  which  in  Exod.  xxiii.  19  has  the 
following  gloss :  "  For  whosoever  doeth  this  is  as  ono 
who  sacrifices  an  abomination  [or  y\>B, '  a  reptUo  '],  and 
this  is  an  insult  to  tho  God  of  Jacob  "'  (see  Dr.  David- 
son's Hebrew  Text  Revised,  p.  17).     A  similar  addition 
is  found  in  some  copies  of  the  Septuagint : — "  For  ho 
who  does  tliis  acts  as  if  he  sacrificed  a  lizard,   which 
is  a  poUutiou  to  the  God  of  Jacob."      There  is  evidence 
for  tho  existence  of  a  certain  heathen  custom  of  boiling 
a  young  kid  in  its  mother's  milk,  and  sprinkling  the 
broth  over  fields,  fruit-trees,  and  gardens,  as  a  charm 
to  secure   plentiful   crops  in  the  ensuing  year.     This 
operation,  which  was  done  after  harvest,  is  spoken  of 
by  Abarbanel  and  by  Cudworth  (Ore  the  Trite  Notion 
of  the  Lord's  Siqyper,  p.  36).     The  latter  quotes  fi-om 
an  anonymous  manuscript  work  of  a  Karaite  Jew,  who 
mentions  this  magical  practice  (see  Kalisch's  Gomm.  on 
Levit.,  part  ii.,  p.  29,  note).      "  Can  it  be  sm-prising, 
then,"  asks  Dr.  Kalisch,  "  that  the  Hebrew  \vi-iter,  who 
taught  that  fruitfulnoss  and  sterility  are  in  the  hands 
of  God  alone,  and  that  he  sends  the  one  and  the  other 
according  to  his  decrees  and  the  deserts  of  men,  should 
have  looked  with  severe  disapproval  upon  a  heathen 
usage  that  attributed  reality  and  effect  to  vain  super- 
stitions ?  "     This  is  all  quite  true,  and  a  very  probable 
explanation  of  the  prohibition ;  but   we  entirely  agree 
with  Kalisch,  when  he  says,  the  "  aspect  of  the  ques- 
tion is  totally   altered   if  wo   consider   the  context  in 
which  tho  precept  is  introduced  for  the  third  time  in 
Deuteronomy.     .     .     .     Hero  it  is  obviously  treated  as 
a  law  of  diet."     We  believe  that  the  precept  originated 
from  humane  feelings,  and  that  characteristic  seutunent 
amongst  the  Jews  as  to  the  peculiar  fitness  and  pro- 
priety of  tilings  :  thus  they  did  not  like  the  idea  of,  and 
forbade  by  a  positive  enactment,  the  killing  of  a  cow 
and  its  calf,  of  a  ewe  and  a  lamb,  the  samo  day  ;  they 
might  take  birds'  nests,  but  not  the  old  bu-d  \nih  the 
young.     "  If  a  bu-d's  nest  chance   to  be   before  thee 
in  the  way  in    any  tree,  or  on   tho  ground,  whether 
they  be  young  ones,  or  eggs,  and  the  chim  sitting  upon 
the  young,  or  upon  the  eggs,  thou  shalt  not  take  the 


104 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


dam  with  the  young :  but  thou  shalt  in  any  wise  let  the 
dam  go,  and  take  the  young  to  thee  ;  tliat  it  may  be  well 
with  thee,  and  that  thou  mayest  prolong  thy  days" 
(Dout.  xxii.  6,  7).  They  might  not  plough  with  an  ox 
and  an  ass  yoked  together :  such  thiugs  savoured  of 
cruelty,  of  opposition  to  the  unity  and  harmony  of 
nature,  "  as  a  perversion  of  the  eternal  order  of  things, 
and  as  a  culpable  contempt  of  'the  relation  that  God 
ordained  to  exist  between  the  mother  and  her  yoimg." 
That  tliis  sentiment  w;us  firmly  grounded  in  the  Jewish 
mind  is  evident,  not  only  from  the  various  enactments 
relating  to  kind  treatment  of  animals,  but  from  the 
especial  words  of  Philo  on  this  very  subject  (see  PhUo, 
De  Humanitate,  cap.  xviii.). 


by  the  Arabs,  who  say  proverbially  of  a  beautiful 
woman,  "  She  is  more  lovely  than  an  ibex."  It  is  the 
Capra  Ibex  (Baedon)  of  Forskal,  Capra  Nuhiana  of 
F.  Cuvier,  the  Capra  Sinaitica  of  Ehrenborg. 

The  ibex  is  common  in  Arabia  Peti-sea.  The  Rev. 
F.  W.  Holland  writes  :  "  They  are  frequently  shot  by 
the  Bedouins,  who  charge  about  6s.  for  a  full-grown 
one,  and  from  Is.  6d.  to  2s.  for  a  live  young  one ;  but 
they  are  very  difficult  to  rear.  I  had  three,  but  thoy 
all  died,  and  one  of  the  monks  told  me  that  the  year 
before  he  had  twenty,  but  had  lost  them  all.  The 
Beden,  being  very  shy  and  wary,  keeping  to  the  moun- 
tiiins,  and  also  from  their  colour  very  difficult  to  be 
seen,  are   not  often  detected  by  travellers,  and  have 


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WILD   GOATS    AND    YOUNG.       (ASSYKIAN.) 


We  have  only  space  to  give  a  short  account  of  the 
wild  goats  mentioned  in  three  places  in  the  Bible. 
Saul  and  three  thousand  men  "  went  to  seek  David  and 
liis  men  upon  the  rocks  of  the  wild  goats "  {tsurei 
hayye'clim)  (see  1  Sam.  xxiv.  2) ;  "  Knowest  thou 
where  the  wild  goats  bring  forth  ?  "  (Job  xxxix.  1) ; 
"  The  high  hills  are  a  refuge  for  the  wild  goats,  and  the 
rocks  for  the  conies  {hyrax)"  (Ps.  civ.  18).  It  will  be 
noticed  that  the  animal  in  question  is  always  associated 
with  rocks  and  hills.  Tlio  Hebrew  word  (yd'el,  plural 
ye'elim)  is  derived  from  a  root  meaning  "to  climb," 
"to  ascend,"  and  fitly  describes  tlie  ibex,  or  wild 
goat,  which  is  found  in  the  Peninsula  of  Sinai  and 
in  Palestine.  This  animal,  which  is  a  relative  of  the 
Swiss  ibex  or  stoinbock,  is  now  called  the  Beden,  or 
Jaela  ;  the  former  being  the  specific  Arabic  name,  the 
latter  the  Hebrew,  though  the  latter  word  is  also  used 


therefore  been  supposed  to  be  much  more  scarce  thau 
tliey  really  are.  The  kids,  before  they  are  able  to 
accompany  the  old  ones,  are  concealed  by  the  mother 
under  some  rock,  and  apparently  are  only  visited  at 
night.  I  once  caught  a  little  one  which  ran  out  from 
under  a  rock  as  I  was  climbing  a  mountain.  The  poor 
little  creature  had  evidently  heard  me  coming,  and  ran 
out  thinking  I  was  its  mother.  The  Arab  who  was  with 
me  was  very  anxious  to  wait  near  it  tiU  evening  to  shoot 
the  old  one,  and  ho  said  there  must  be  another  kid  close 
by,  as  two  were  always  dropped  at  a  birth,  but  we  faUed 
to  find  a  second.  Their  warning  cry  is  a  shrill  kind  of 
whistle." 

According  to  Dr.  Tristram,  the  Beden  is  not  so  rare 
in  Palestine  as  has  been  supposed.  "  In  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Engedi,  while  encamped  by  the  Dead  Sea 
shore,   wo   obtained  several  fine  specimens,   and  very 


ANIMALS    OF    THE    BIBLE. 


ASSYRIAN    DEITT    HOLDING    A   GOAT    AND   AN    EAK   OF    COKN.       (nOBTH-WESTEEN    PALACE    OF    NIMEOUD.) 


interesting  it  was  to  find  tliis  graceful  creature  by  the 
veiy  fountain  to  which  it  gave  name  (Engedi,  i.e., 
'  fountain  of  the  kid  '),  and  in  the  spot  where  it  roamed 
of  old,  while  Darid  wandered  to  escape  the  persecutions 


of  Saul When  clambering  on  the  heights 

above  Engedi  I  often,  by  the  help  of  my  glass,  saw  the 
ibes  at  a  distance,  and  once,  when  near  Marsaba,  only  a 
few  miles  from  Jerusalem,  started  one  at  a  distance  of 


106 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


400  yards.  At  the  south  end  of  the  Dead  Sea  they  were 
common,  and  I  have  picked  up  a  hom  both  near  Jericho 
on  the  hills,  and  also  on  the  hills  of  Moab  on  the  eastern 
side.  At  Jericho,  too,  I  obtained  a  young  one,  which  I 
hoped  to  rear,  but  which  died  after  I  had  had  it  for  ten 
days,  owing,  I  believe,  to  the  milk  with  which  it  was  fed 
being  sour.  Further  north  and  west  we  did  not  find  it, 
thouo-h  I  have  reason  to  believe  that  a  few  linger  on 
the  mountains  between  Samaria  and  the  Jordan,  and 
perhaps  also  on  some  of  the  spurs  of  Lebanon.  "Wo 
found  its  teeth  in  the  breccia  of  bone  caverns  in  the 
Lebanon,  proving  its  former  abundance  there.  The 
wild  goat  has  one,  or  more  generally  two,  yoimg  at  a 
birth,  and  the  horns  of  the  female  are  much  smaller 
than  those  of  the  male,  which  in  fine  specimens  are 
three  feet  long,  with  large  round  lings  or  ridges  on  tho 
front  face.  The  flesh  of  tho  Beden  is  excellent  venison, 
far  superior  to  the  dry  meat  of  the  gazelle,  and  is  pro- 
bably the  venison  which  Esau  went  to  hunt  for  his 
father  in  tho  wilderness  of  Judffia.'  The  horus  of  the 
ibex  are  in  much  request  at  Jerusalem  for  knife-handles 
and  other  manufactures  "  [Nat.  Hist.  Bib.,  pp.  96,  97). 
Another  Hebrew  word,  aTchu,  occurs  in  Deut.  xiv.  5,  as 
one  of  the  animals  allowed  for  food ;  it  is  rendered 
"wild  goat"  in  our  version,  but  what  this  name  denotes 
is  i)ure  conjecture. 

Figures  of  the  ibex  are  common  on  the  Assyrian 
monuments,  where  they  are  represented  as  being  hunted 
and  shot  with  bows  and  arrows,  and  sometimes  in  the 
hands  of  some  Assyrian  deity. 

In  the  inscription  of  the  broken  obeUsk,  which  gives 
an  account  of  the  wild  animals  hunted  (killed  or  cap- 


1  This  is  extremely  uncertain ;  the  Hebrew  word  tsayid  or 
tseydah  denotes  "what  is  taken  in  hunting,"  "game  of  any  kind," 
'*  food."  We  suspect  the  gazelle  would  have  been  more  easily 
killed  than  the  ibes,  which  is  one  of  the  most  wary  of  all  animals. 


tured  afive)  by  Assur-natsir-pal,  mention  is  made  of 
armi,  turdchi,  ndli,  and  yaeli.  What  the  three  first- 
named  animals  denote  is  matter  of  conjecture,  but  the 
Assyrian  word  ya-e-li  closely  resembles  the  Hebrew, 
and  very  probably  denotes  "  ibexes "  (see  Rawlinson's 
West  Asia  Inscriptions,  vol.  i.,  pi.  28,  line  20 ;  and 
Norris's  Assyrian  Dictionary,  vol.  ii.,  p.  453). 

CHAMOIS. 

The  rendering  of  the  Hebrew  zenier  occurs  only  in 
the  list  of  animals  allowed  for  food  (Deut.  xiv.  5).  The 
Septuagint  and  the  Vulgate  give  "  camel-leopard  "  as  the 
animal  intended.  It  certainly  is  not  tho  camel-leopard, 
an  animal  of  South  and  Central  Africa,  for  though 
representations  of  the  giraffe  occur  in  the  Egyptian 
monuments,  as  tribute  from  Ethiopia,  it  is  not  possible 
that  it  shoidd  have  been  named  as  lawful  food  for 
the  Israelites,  whether  in  Palestine  or  the  Sinaitic 
peninsula. 

Tlie  word  is  derived  from  a  root  meaning  "  to  spring," 
"  to  jump,"  and  this  is  the  only  clue,  which,  as  it 
would  apply  to  wUd  goats,  sheep,  deer,  or  antelopes,  is 
obviously  too  vague  even  to  form  a  conjecture  from. 
It  is  probably  not  the  chamois,  which  does  not  now 
occur  in  Palestine ;  it  may  have  occurred  at  one  time, 
though  there  is  no  o^-idence  of  its  former  existence  in 
that  country.  Tlie  chamois  is  said  to  be  found  in  all 
the  high  mountain  chains  of  Western  Asia.  Zemer  has 
been  supposed  by  some  to  denote  the  aoudad  or  kebsch 
(Ammotragus  tragelaplms,  Gray)  of  North  Africa  and 
Arabia  Petrsea.  This  goat- like  animal  is  really  a  wild 
sheeiJ,  very  active,  an  inhabitant  of  high  and  inacces- 
sible places,  with  strong  horns  of  groat  size  curving 
backwards.  Its  figure  occurs  on  the  Egyptian  monu- 
ments, and  it  is  quite  j)ossiblo  the  animal  itself  was 
known  to  the  ancient  Jews ;  but  it  is  impossible  to  do 
more  than  form  conjectures. 


THE   PLANTS   OF   THE  BIBLE. 

OEDEES    XII.— XIV.     CAETOPHTLLEa:,    FEANKENIACE^,    PAEONYCHIACE^,    AND    MOLLUGINE.S;. 

ET    W.    CAEKUTHEES,    F.E.S.,  KEEPEE    OF   THE    BOTANICAL    DEPAETMENT,    BRITISH    MUSEUM. 


j\HE  plants  of  the  four  orders  here  grouped 
together,  while  they  exhibit  mauy  im- 
portant points  of  difference,  are  yet  re- 
lated to  each  other  by  so  many  essential 
characters,  that  they  naturally  arrange  themselves  in 
one  great  family.  Tlio  position  of  the  stamens,  and  the 
presence  or  absence  of  the  corolla,  which  genei-aUy  supply 
valuable  characters  for  classification,  are  of  importance 
hero  only  in  relation  to  the  minor  groups  in  which  the 
plants  are  arranged. 

Tho  Pink  family  {CaryophyllecB)  consist  of  rather 
more  than  a  thousand  species  of,  for  tho  most  part, 
inconspicuous  annual  or  perennial  herbs,  found  in  tho 
temperate  and  frigid  regions  of  the  world,  chiefly  in  tho 
northern  hemisphere.     Dianthus  caryophyllus  (Linn.) 


is  the  source  of  the  innumerable  varieties  of  cloves  and 
carnations  found  in  our  gardens.  Many  species  of 
Dianthus  and  Silcne  have  handsome  flowers,  and  the 
abundant  star-like  blossoms  of  some  stitch- worts  whiten 
our  hedge-banks  in  early  summer;  but  the  majority  of 
the  plants  of  the  order  are  small,  and  have  incon- 
spicuous flowers. 

The  British  flora  contains  nearly  sixty  species,  some 
being  the  most  common  weeds  in  cultivated  grounds  and 
waste  places,  and  by  the  waysides,  such  as  the  chick- 
weeds,  catch-flies,  spurrys,  and  stitch-worts.  Boissier 
records  eighty-five  species  from  Palestine,  the  principal 
portion  of  which  are  found  only  on  the  high  mountains 
of  the  north;  a  few  are  desert  weeds  which  occur  in 
the  Dead  Sea  region,  and  the  remainder  are  mot  with 


THE  PLANTS  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


107 


in  stouy  places  and  cultivated  fields  over  Palestiuo. 
Among  these  common  plants  are  many  that  are  familiar 
to  us  in  Britain,  such  as  tho  common  chickweed  {Stel- 
laria  media,  Linn.),  mouse-ear  {Cerastium  glomeratmn, 
ThuU.),  and  soapwort  {Saponaria  officinalis,  Linn.). 

The  translators  of  the  Authorised  Version  have 
introduced  into  the  text  the  name  of  a  plant  belonging 
to  the  Pink  faraOy — the  cockle — as  their  interpretation 
of  the  Hebrew  new?  (hacshah)  in  Job  xxxi.  40 :  "  Lot 
thistles  grow  instead  of  wheat,  and  cockle  instead  of 
barley."  Various  attempts  have  been  made  to  connect 
this  word  with  a  special  plant.  The  Seventy  in  their 
translation  rendered  it  by  Baros,  the  "  bramble  bush ;" 
the  Vulgate,  Syriac,  and  some  other  early  versions  have 
translated  it  vaguely  as  "  thorn."  Celsius  considers  it  to 
be  the  aconite,  while  the  hemlock  and  the  nightshade 
have  each  been  advocated  by  others.  Lady  Callcott  sees 
no  reason  for  giving  up  the  authorised  translation,  and 
consequently  considers  that  our  pink-flowered  cockle,  a 
veiy  troublesome  weed  to  English  farmers,  or  one  of  its 
varieties,  is  the  plant  intended.  Our  British  plant  is 
indeed  found  within  the  Palestine  area,  but  only  as 
an  advanced  member  of  the  northern  flora,  and  it  is  not 
met  with  further  south  than  the  mountain  ranges  of 
Lebanon  and  Anti-Lebanon,  and  consequently  not  m 
the  eorn-fields  of  the  country. 

The  Hebrew  word  is  durived  from  a  root  meaning 
"  fetid "  or  "  bad,"  and  this  has  induced  Tristram  to 
recognise  in  it  a  plant  not  only  useless  or  hurtful,  but 
one  that  is  also  offensive  to  the  smell.  He  accordingly 
suggests  that  a  diseased  condition  of  the  barley  itself 
may  bo  meant,  in  which  tho  starch  of  the  grain  is  re- 
Jilaced  by  a  minute  black  dust,  consis*  ig  of  the  ■.  yoros 
of  a  fungus  {Tilletia  caries,  Tul.),  that  have  n.  very 
offensive  odour,  like  that  of  decayed  fish.  The  stinking 
Arums  which  are  not  infrequent  in  Palestine  might  also, 
he  thinks,  suit  the  derivation  of  the  word. 

It  seems,  however,  more  probable  that  "  noisome 
weeds,"  the  marginal  reading  in  our  English  Bible,  is  as 
precise  an  interpretation  as  can  be  given  to  this  woi-d. 
And  this  is  confirmed  by  the  use  of  what  is  generally 
considered  to  be  the  plural  form  cil\>j3  (heuMin)  in 
Isa.  V.  2  and  4,  where  it  is  translated  "  wild  graj  r:;  ' 
"My  well-beloved  hath  a  vineyard  in  a  very  fruitful 
hiU:  and  he  fenced  it,  and  gathered  out  the  stones 
thereof,  and  planted  it  with  tho  choicest  vine,  and 
built  a  tower  in  the  midst  of  it,  and  also  made  a  wine- 
press therein :  and  ho  looked  that  it  should  bring  forth 
grapes,  and  it  brought  forth  loild  qrapes." 

Hasselqx;ist  believed  that  the  prophet  here  referred 
to  the  hoary  nightshade  (Solanum  sanctum,  Linn.), 
which  he  found  to  be  a  common  plant  in  Egypt,  Pales- 
tine, and  the  East.  It  may  be  said  to  resemble  the 
vine  in  haiing  a  shrubby  stem,  and  received  the  Arabian 
name  of  Aneb-el-dil,  or  "  wolf's  grapes,"  no  doubt  from 
its  bunches  of  tempting  luscious-looking,  but  really 
poisonous  berries  that  are  not  unlike  in  general  appear- 


ance a  cluster  of  grapes.  He  found  this  pernicious 
plant  springing  up  as  a  noxious  weed  in  the  vineyards, 
and  saw  in  it  a  singular  fitness  for  the  figure  in  the 
prophet's  parable.  Jerome  rendered  it  labruscoe,  the 
small  dark-red  grapes  of  the  wild  ■tine  (not  the  Vitis 
labrusca,  Linn.,  which  is  a  North  American  plant), 
which  are  very  sour  and  useless.  In  this  he  was 
followed  by  the  translators  of  our  Authorised  Version, 
by  Rosenmiillor  and  others. 

It  wiU  be  observed,  however,  that  tho  narrative  of  the 
parable  requires  not  the  fruit  of  an  intruding  pernicious 
or  worthless  plant,  but  the  obnoxious  fruit  borne  by  a 
carefully  selected  and  precious  vino.  The  vineyard  is 
planted  with  the  vine  of  Sorek,  a  famous  variety,  and 
it  is  well  cared  for  by  the  husbandman.  To  its  lord, 
however,  it  yields  not  the  fruit  which  the  quality  of 
the  plant  led  him  to  expect,  but  worthless  and  obnoxious 
grapes.  So  the  lord  threatens  to  throw  do^vn  the  walls, 
and  only  when  thus  unprotected  do  the  briers  and  thorns 
spring  up  where  only  precious  vines  were  found  before. 
With  this  agi'ees  also  the  exposition  ot  the  parable 
as  given  in  a  succeeding  verso  :  "  The  vineyard  of  the 
Lord  of  hosts  is  the  house  of  Israel,  and  tho  men  of 
Judah  his  pleasant  plant :  and  he  looked  for  judgment, 
but  behold  oppression ;  for  righteousness,  but  behold 
a  cry." 

It  accords  then  better  with  the  context,  in  both 
passages  where  the  word  is  used,  to  consider  it  as  an 
adjective,  with  its  substantive  understood  :  in  the  one 
passage  tho  singular  feminine  expresses  a  worthless 
weed  in  opposition  to  tho  nutritious  barley;  in  the 
rther,  the  plural  mascidine  expresses  the  obnoxious 
grapes  instead  of  the  grapes  of  Sorek. 

The  Sea-heath  family  (Franheniacece)  contains  some 
thirty  species  of  small  plants  chiefly  found  on  the  coasts 
<  f  temperate  or  warm  countries.  They  probably  belong 
to  a  single  genus.  In  our  British  flora  tho  family  is 
represented  by  one  species,  a  small  plant  spreading  close 
on  the  groimd,  with  wiry  stems,  numerous  tutted  leaves 
and  inconspicuous  rose-coloured  flowers,  found  chiefly 
in  the  salt  marshes  on  tho  south-eastern  coast  of  England. 
Two  species  of  similar-looking  plants  are  toimd  in 
Palestine,  on  the  shores  of  the  Levant. 

The  Whitlow-worts  (Paronychiacew)  ai'o  a  larger 
family,  consisting  of  somewhat  over  one  hundred  species 
of  humble  tufted  plants  with  small  leaves  and  miimte 
flowers,  occurring  generally  in  sandy  places.  Six  species 
are  f(nmd  in  Britain,  and  about  the  same  number  in  the 
sandy  fields  of  Palestine.  Tho  tamUy  is  more  numer- 
ously represented  m  the  Sinai  region,  and  in  tho  deserts 
to  the  south  of  the  Holy  Land. 

Tlio  Caqjet-weeds  (Molluginece)  aro  a  similar  group 
of  small  inconspicuous  weeds  found  in  tho  warmer 
regions  of  the  world,  -svithout  a  representative  in  Britain, 
and  having  but  one  species  in  Palestine — a  glaucous  i 
plant,  with  small  white  flowers,  found  in  the  northern 
parts  of  tho  country. 


108 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


BOOKS   OF   THE   OLD   TESTAMENT. 

JOEL  (continued). 

BY   THE    KEV.    SAMUEL    COX,    NOTTINGHAM. 


\ 


SECOND  PART. 
CHAP.    II.    18-III.    21. 
OT  in  vain  did  Joel  plead  with  the  alarmed 
and   conscience-stricken    people   of   Jeru- 
Sv^\  Icf    salem   and  Judaea.     They  listened  to  liis 
5  S^<^    voice ;  they  accepted  correction  ;  they  put 
thoir  trust  in  Jehovah ;  they  drew  near  to  their  God. 
At  the  prophet's  command  they  turned  unto  tJie  Lord  j 
with  fastiug,  and  with  mourning,  and  with  weeping,  j 
A  fast  was  sanctified,  a  restraint  proclaimed ;  all  the 
inhabitants  of  the  land,  from  the  elder  to  the  suckling, 
were  assembled  in  the  Temple  ;  bride  and  bridegroom  I 
exchanged  their  festive  garments   for  sackcloth,  their 
joy  for  mourning ;   and  the  priests,  standing  between 
the  porch  and  the  altar,  wept  out  the  prayer, 
"  Spare  tby  people,  O  Jehovali  ;'* 

and,  as  the  prophet  had  foretold,  the  Lord  hearkened 
and  heard,  and  repented  Him  of  the  evil,  and  returned 
and  left  beloind  Him  a  blessing.  Jealous  for  their  fair 
repute  among  the  nations  (chap.  ii.  18),  "  He  had 
compassion  on  liis  people,"  and  answered  their  prayer ; 
promising  that  they  should  no  more  be  a  "  reproach 
among  the  nations,"  who  were  so  ready  to  "  scoff  at " 
them ;  that  men  should  not  a.sk  in  derision,  "  Where 
is  their  God  ? "  since  the  land  should  once  more  bo 
covered  with  a  waving  wealth  of  corn,  and  He  would 
send  them  bread  and  wino  and  oil  tOl  they  were  satis- 
fied therewith.  In  short,  the  answer  of  vor.  19  is  a 
simple  and  exact  response  to  the  prayer  of  ver.  17. 

And  in  the  succeeding  verses  of  the  chapter  this 
promise  of  good  is  defined  and  expanded.  The  Di\'iuo 
Voice  lingers  on  the  details  of  the  coming  benediction, 
as  though  in  his  mercy  God  were  patiently  seeking  to 
comfort  the  weary  and  despondent  heai-ts  of  his  people, 
to  meet  and  remove  every  suggestion  of  despair,  to 
recover  them  to  the  strength  of  hope.  First  of  all.  He 
promises  to  deliver  them  from  that  pest  of  locusts,  that 
great  army  before  which  aU  faces  had  gone  pale.  But 
the  promise  is  couched  in  terms  which  have  given  rise 
to  much  controversy  (ver.  20). 

*'  I  send  the  northerner  far  away  from  you, 

And  drive  him  into  the  land  of  drought  and  desert. 

His  van  toward  the  Eastern  Sea, 
And  his  rear  toward  the  Western  Sea  ; 

An^  his  stench  shall  rise  up. 

And  his  ill  savour  ascend." 

Who  is  this  "northerner?"  The  locusts,  as  Jerome 
and  all  the  commentators  tell  us,  commonly  came  from 
the  south,  not  from  the  north  of  Judea ;  whereas  the 
Assyrian  was  frequently  designated  "  the  Northerner," 
or  •'  him  of  tlie  north,"  by  the  Hebrew  prophets.  Must 
not  Joel  have  been  thinking  of  the  Assyrian  army  when 
hu  wrote  this  verse,  and  not  of  a  flight  of  locusts  ?  It 
is  uat  safe  to  dogmatise  on  the  question ;  but  on  the 


whole,  the  probabilities  are,  I  think,  that  it  was  the 
locusts  he  had  in  liis  mind,  not  the  Assyrians. 

There  are  at  least  four  reasons  for  this  conclusion. 
(1.)  AU  other  indications  of  time  point,  as  we  have  seen, 
to  the  reign  of  Joash  as  the  data  of  Joel's  prophetic 
activity,  and  the  Assyrians  did  sot  begin  their  career 
of  conquest  tUl  after  Joash  had  been  long  gathered  to 
his  fathers.  To  permit  those  other  indications,  some  of 
which  are  tolerably  plain,  to  bo  overruled  by  a  single 
hint,  and  this  hint  so  obscure  as  that  suggested  by  the 
verse  before  us,  would  be  to  violate  one  of  the  simplest 
and  most  reasonable  canons  of  interpretation.  (2.)  The 
entire  prophecy  seems  to  be  a  description  of  the  con- 
sequences, physical  and  moral,  of  a  plague  of  locusts  un- 
paralleled in  the  history  of  man  :  it  dues  not  contain  a 
solitary  clear  aUusion  to  an  invasion  by  the  Assyrians 
or  by  any  other  hostile  race.  (3.)  Even  to  this  verse 
the  Assyrian  hypothesis  is  a  lamentably  iusuificient  key. 
It  explains  only  the  first  line,  and  makes  mere  nonsense 
of  the  lines  that  follow.  Eor  when  was  the  main  body 
of  an  Assyrian  army  driven  —  i.e.  blown  —  into  the 
Arabian  desert,  its  van  into  the  Dead  Sea,  and  its  rear 
into  the  Mediterranean,  and  left  to  rot  till  its  stench 
went  up  and  its  Ul  savour  ascended  to  poison  the  air  ? 
And  (4.)  the  fact  that,  as  Jerome  says,  "  the  swarms  of 
locusts  are  more  generally  brought  by  the  south  winds 
than  the  north,"  implies  that  they  did  sometimes  come 
from  the  north.  And,  indeed,  more  recent  travellers 
assure  us  that  in  Palestine  "  locusts  come  and  go  with 
all  winds,"  and  that  swarms  of  them  are  often  found  in 
the  Syrian  desert  on  the  north  of  Galilee.  On  all  these 
grounds  we  .shall  do  well,  I  think,  to  conclude  that  "  the 
northerner  "  is  hero  a  prophetic  designation  of  locust 
swarms  that  fell  on  Judaja  from  the  northern  deserts, 
and  that  the  comparative  infroqueney  of  such  an  event 
lent  a  new  accent  of  terror  to  the  tones  in  which  men 
spoke  of  it,  and  led  them  to  recognise  it  more  clearly 
as  a  judgment  from  Heaven. 

That  which  came  from  the  north  is  to  be  driven  away 
by  the  north  wind,  or  rather,  by  a  wind  which  veers 
through  all  the  northern  jjoints  of  the  compass — north, 
north-west,  and  north-cast ;  so  tkat  while  the  main  body 
of  locusts  are  blown  into  the  southern  deserts  of  Arabia 
to  perish  in  the  arid  burning  wastes,  their  van  is  to  be 
blown  into  the  Salt  or  Dead  Sea  on  the  east,  and  then- 
rear  into  the  blue  waters  of  the  Mediterranean  on  the 
west.  Commenting  on  this  verse,  St.  Jerome  says, 
"  Even  in  our  own  time  wo  have  seen  the  land  of  Juda;a 
covered  by  swarms  of  locusts,  which,  so  soon  as  the  whid 
rose,  were  precipitated  into"  the  Dead  Sea  and  the 
Mediterranean.  "  And  when  tho  shores  of  both  were 
filled  with  heaps  of  dead  locusts,  which  the  waters  had 
thrown  up,  their  corruption  and  stench  became  so 
noxious,  that  even  the  atmosphere  was  polluted,  and 


JOEL. 


109 


both  men  and  beasts  suffered  from  the  consequent  pesti- 
lence." 

In  the  last  line  of  this  verse,  Joel  assigns  as  a  reason 
for  the  doom  on  the  locust  flight,  "  He  doeth  great 
things."  It  is  worth  while  to  mark  this  phrase,  and  to 
compare  it  with  the  closing  line  of  the  next  verse  (ver. 
21),  "  for  Jehovah  doeth  great  things,"  since  we  thus 
get  a  capital  instance  of  the  necessity  of  reading  pro- 
phecy as  poetry,  and  of  mixing  a  little  imagination  with 
common  sense  as  wo  read  it.  A  very  prosaic  person,  if 
he  deigned  to  notice  tlie  identity  of  phrase  in  these  two 
lines,  could  not  fail  to  be  puzzled  by  it.  He  would  say, 
"  The  locusts  have  done  great  things,  and  therefore  they 
are  doomed  to  destruction;  Jehovah  has  done  great 
things,  and  therefore  the  Jews  are  to  trust  and  praise 
Him!  Can  a  fountain  send  out  of  the  same  jet  sweet 
water  and  bitter  ?  How  can  it  be  both  wrong  and  right 
to  do  gi-eat  things  ?  How  can  it  both  provoke  doom 
and  deserve  praise  ?  "  But  if,  remembering  that  Joel 
was  a  poet,  wo  put  a  little  imagination  at  his  service — 
and  so  much  wo  are  bound  to  do  for  every  poet — wo 
shall  easUy  understand  that,  to  the  poet's  eye,  the 
eagerness  with  which  the  locusts  pounced  on  every  green 
thing  would  seem  like  a  cruel  exultation  in  the  ruin  they 
wrough^,  as  if  they  were  boasting  themselves  in  their 
might ;  and  that  mth  a  somewhat  rueful  irony  he 
would  say  of  tliem,  "  They  do  great  things  !  A  miglity 
achievement  this  of  theirs ! "  We  shall  easily  under- 
stand that  when,  with  a  sudden  revulsion  of  mood,  ho 
turned  to  contemplate  the  Divine  deliverance,  and  saw 
the  land  rejoicing  in  its  recovered  beauty  and  fruitful- 
ness,  he  would  use  the  very  same  words  to  express  his 
pride  in  the  power  and  mercy  of  God,  and  say, "  Jehovah 
in  very  deed  doeth  great  things !  Ho  breathes  on  the 
locTists,  and  they  are  gone  !  He  smiles  on  the  wasted 
blackened  land ;  and,  lo  !  the  pastures  are  green  with 
springing  verdure,  the  fields  yellow  with  corn,  the  hill- 
sides purple  with  loaded  vines." 

"  Jehovah  was  jealous  for  his  land,"  we  are  told  (ver. 
18),  "  and  had  compassion  on  his  ixople ; "  and  now  He 
addresses  words  of  encouragement  to  the  land,  and  to 
the  beasts  that  roamed  over  it,  and  to  the  men  who 
tilled  it.  The  whole  land  had  "lamented"  under  its 
wasted  fields  and  withered  harvest  and  sickening 
orchards,  under  crumbling  garners  and  barns  falling 
to  decay  (chap.  i.  10 — 12,  17) ;  and  now,  to  the  mourning 
land,  there  comes  tho  message — 

*'  Fear  not,  0  lanl,  rejoice  and  be  glad." 

The  cattle  liad  "  groaned,"  the  herds  of  oxen  had  been 
"  bewildered,"  because  they  could  find  no  pastures,  and 
because  the  water-courses  were  dried  up  ;  the  flocks  of 
sheep  had  "  mourned  tho  guilt "  whicli  had  provoked  a 
judgment  80  terrible  (chap.  i.  12) ;  and  to  them  there 
now  comes  the  message — 

"Fear  not,  yo  leastsof  the  field. 
For  the  pastures  of  the  wildemesa  grow  greeu. 
For  the  tree  beareth  its  fruit, 
Fig-treo  and  vine  do  yield  their  Ftren^th." 

AU  the  inhabitants  of  the  hnd  had  trembled ;  tho  hus- 
bandmen had  "  blenched,"  the  vine-dressers  "  wailed," 


the  ministers  of  tho  altar  kid  "  wejit  "  (chap.  i.  11 — 

13) ;  and  to  them  now  comes  the  message — ■ 

"  And  ye,  yo  sons  of  Zion,  rejoice  and  be  glad  in  Jehovah  your 
God." 

The  blessing  is  to  be  as  wide  as  the  judgment  had  been, 
tho  joy  as  the  sorrow  :  as  land  and  beasts  and  men  had 
lamented  and  cried  unto  tho  Lord,  so  land  and  beasts 
and  men  wore  to  be  glad  and  to  rejoice  in  Him  (chap. 
ii.  21—23). 

Tho  Divine  blessing  was  to  assume  two  forms.  There 
was  to  be  a  down-pour  of  rain  ;  there  was  also  to  be  an 
outpouring  of  the  Spirit :  happier  times  were  coming, 
so  also  was  a  character  more  pure,  and  lofty,  and  spiritual 
in  its  tone  (vs.  23 — 32).  "  Drought  never  yet  brouglit 
dearth  to  England ;"  but  under  the  fervid  sun  of  tho 
East,  dearth  is  almost  always  a  consequence  of  drought. 
If  the  early  rain — that  is,  the  autumn  rain,  the  rain  of 
sowing-time — is  withheld,  or  the  latter  rain — that  is,  the 
spring  rain,  which  fills  the  ears  before  harvest — tho  com 
is  commonly  burned  up  from  the  roots,  the  pastures 
turn  brovra,  man  and  beast  are  exposed  to  famine  ;  and 
only  too  frequently  tho  famine  is  made  moro  deadly  Ijy 
pestUenco.  Tho  plague  of  locusts  had  been  accompanied 
by  a  plague  of  drought,  and  between  them  they  had  re- 
duced the  land,  goodly  and  fertile  as  "  the  garden  of 
Eden,"  to  a  desolate  wilderness.  The  only  hope  of  re- 
covery lay  in  copious  and  abundant  rain.  And  in  the 
East  the  effects  of  rain  are  as  rapid  and  marvellous  as 
tho  effects  of  drought.  In  a  few  days  the  streaming 
showers  transform  the  face  of  the  land  as  by  enchant- 
ment ;  tho  bare  parched  earth  clothes  itself  in  robes  of 
living  green ;  the  trees  rustle  with  foliage ;  the  lovely 
wild  flowers  clothe  tho  grass  with  beauty  and  fill  the 
air  with  fragrance ;  and  tho  despondent  husbandmen 
and  vine-dressera  glow  with  renewed  activity  and  hope. 
Such  a  transformation  was  now  to  pass  over  tho  land 
which  tho  drought  had  parched  and  tho  locusts  stripped. 
Bain  is  promised,  with  an  iteration  which  would  be 
most  grateful  to  an  Oriental  ear. 

"  Te  Bona  of  Zion,  rejoice  and  be  glad  in  year  God, 
For  He  giveth  you  the  early  rain  when  it  is  due,' 
And  causeth  copious  rains  to  come  down  on  you, 
Early  and  latter  rain — this,  first  of  all." 

>  By  a  little  violence  done  to  the  Hebrew,  the  phrase  rendered 
"  Ho  giveth  you  the  eavly  rain  irlien  it  is  due,"  may  be  rendered, 
"  He  giveth  you  the  teacher  of  righteousness"  Some  of  the  com- 
mentators prefer  the  latter  rendering,  although  they  differ  widely 
in  their  interpretations  of  it.  Abarbanel  explains  "  the  teacher  of 
righteousness"  thus  :  *'  He  is  the  King  Messiah,  who  should  teach 
them  the  way  in  which  they  should  walk,  and  the  works  that  they 
should  do."  Others  understand  Joel  to  be  *'  tho  teacher  ;"  others 
find  in  this  title  "  the  ideal  teacher,  or  the  collective  body  of  mes- 
sengers from  God."  Delitzsch  even  includes  all  these  explanations 
in  his  interpretation  of  the  term.  But  not  to  insist  on  the  diffi- 
culties of  such  a  construction  of  the  Hebrew,  it  seems  to  me  that 
two  reasons  are  f.atal  to  this  rcuderiug.  (1)  The  word  morch, 
which  does  at  times  mean  "  teacher,"  is  used  twice  in  the  verse  ; 
and  on  tho  second  occasion,  as  all  scholars  are  agreed,  it  means 
"  rain."  Unless  there  were  very  strong  reasons  to  the  contrary,  it 
would  not  be  wise,  if  it  were  lawful,  to  read  the  same  word  in  the  same 
sentence  and  construction  in  two  widely  different  senses.  And  (2) 
there  is  surely  a  strong  reason  for  taking  it  in  the  sense  of  *'  rain." 
Tho  whole  tone  of  the  passage  implies  that  Joel  is  about  to  set  forth 
one  blessing /irst  (mark  the  force  of  "  this,  first  of  all,"  in  ver.  23,  as 
compared  with  "  afterward,"  in  ver,  28)  ;  and  that  afterward  he  is 
about  to  describe  a  second  blessing— viz.,  the  outpouriug  of  the 
Spirit  and  the  consequent  exaltation  of  the  national  cliaracter.     To 


110 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


So  seasonable  and  so  abundant  are  the  rains  to  be  that 
the  laud  is  to  take  fertility  again,  "the  bams"  are  to 
"grow  full  of  grain,  "  tlia  vats  "  are  to  "  run  over  with 
new  wine  and  with  oil ;"  "  the  years  which  the  locust 
hath  eaten  " — a  fine  and  boldly  picturesque  figure  for 
the  produce  of  tlio  years — are  to  be  "  made  good,"  and 
every  trace  of  the  groat  ruin  wrought  by  the  great 
"  camp  "  of  God  is  to  disappear  (vs.  23 — 25). 

This  is  the  first  blessing — the  blessing  of  happier  out- 
ward conditions.  But  there  is  a  second,  and  far  greater, 
blessing  to  come.  The  showers  of  rain  are  but  a  pre- 
lude to  the  outpouring  of  the  Spirit,  and  the  recovered 
beauty  and  fertility  of  the  land  are  but  a  type  of  tho 
heightened  spiritual  character,  vigour,  and  f  ruitf  nlness 
of  the  redeemed  people.  Tho  description  of  this  second 
benediction  commences  in  verse  28,  but  in  verses  26,  27 
we  have  an  artistic  and  most  graceful  transition  from 
the  lower  to  the  higher  theme,  from  the  first  to  the 
second  blessing.  It  is  just  one  of  these  touches  whicli 
wo  should  admire  in  any  but  an  inspired  poet.  Why 
should  we  not  also  admire  it  in  a  poet  inspired  from 
above  ?  The  first  blessing,  seasonable  and  copious  rain, 
is  to  bring  an  abundance  of  grain,  oil,  and  wine ;  and  tho 
people  are  to  eat  their  food  with  gladness  and  simplicity 
of  heart,  praising  and  blessing  God.  It  was  to  induce 
this  devout  and  thankful  recognition  of  the  Divine 
presence  that  tho  judgment  had  been  sent.  Dulled  by 
routine,  blinded  by  uso  and  wont,  the  Jews  had  como 
to  regard  the  succession  of  tho  seasons  and  the  bounty 
of  the  year  in  a  hard  mechanical  way,  as  though  Nature 
were  a  mere  engine  or  machine — a  vast  mill,  grinding 
out  cortain  very  convenient  supplies,  but  with  no  Divine 
power  in  it,  no  Divine  Person  to  control  and  regulate  it. 
Harvests  were  a  matter  of  course.  Tou  sowed  so  much 
seed;  the  rains  fell,  tho  sun  shone,  "and  there  you 
were."  It  was  all  a  question  of  human  toil  and  natural 
law.  God  might  indeed  have  mado  men  and  ordained 
laws  iiges  ago;  but  He  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  re- 
sults of  these  laws  as  manipulated  by  human  skill  and 
labour  month  by  month  and  year  by  year.  It  was  to 
convince  them  of  a  Divine  Presence  immanent  in  Nature, 
to  make  them  pure  and  strong  and  happy  by  drawing 
their  hearts  to  Himself,  that  God  interrupted  tho  usual 
sequence  of  events — first,  by  disasters  over  which  tlicy 
had  no  control ;  hy  plagues  (literally.  "  blows  "),  which 
they  understood  as  judgments;  and  then,  by  acts  of 
grace  and  goodwill,  which  they  understood  as  signs  of 
His  returning  favour.  This  gracious  design,  we  are  now 
told,  was,  or  was  to  be,  accomplished.  Terrified  by  dis- 
asters over  which  they  had  no  power,  attracted  by  bless- 
ings which  they  could  not  secure,  which  at  least  seemed  to 
them  to  be  answers  to  repentance  and  supplication,  as 
they  "  ate  and  were  satisfied,"  tho  people  "praised  the 
name  of  Jehovah  their  God,  who  had  dealt  wondrously 
with  them ; "  they  felt,  they  acknowledged,  that "  He  was 
in  the  midst  of  them,"  in  their  fields  and  in  their  vine- 


read  "  teacher  of  righteousness  "  in  ver.  23,  therefore,  where  ivo 
inny  read  "  early  raiu  wheu  it  is  due,"  appears  to  bo  a  sin  against 
the  tone  and  order  of  the  propliet'a  thought,  tho  gratuitous  intro- 
duction of  an  obscurity  into  a  passage  which  in  itself  is  clear. 


yards  as  well  as  in  tho  Temple,  and  that  He, "  Jehovah,  was 
their  God  and  none  else,"  since  only  He  could  send  them 
rain  and  f  ruitf  id  seasons  and  fill  their  hearts  \vith  gladness. 

By  this  natural  and  graceful  transition,  Joel  rises 
from  the  temporal  to  tho  spu-itual  blessing,  from  the 
showers  of  rain  to  the  descent  of  tho  Spirit.  He  had 
seen  in  the  plague  an  emphatic  call  to  repentance ;  and 
he  had  taught  the  people  to  see  and  to  obey  it.  In  the 
restored  fertility  of  the  land  ho  sees  a  proof  that  corn 
and  oil  and  wine  are  the  immediate  gifts  of  God ;  and 
ho  teaches  the  people  to  see  this  also,  and  to  give  God 
thanks  for  his  bounty.  Redeemed  from  the  chain  of 
custom,  awakened  from  their  dull  reliance  on  use  and 
wont  to  a  vivid  recognition  of  the  Divino  presence  and 
activity,  they  are  in  just  that  condition,  in  that  mood  of 
the  soul,  in  which  they  can  receive  larger  spiritual  gifts 
and  bo  raised  to  a  higher  spiritual  level.  Joel  foresees 
and  predicts  this  crisis  in  the  sjjiritual  history  of  the 
nation.  Ho  afiirms  that  there  is  to  be  an  effusion  of 
spiritual  energy,  an  outpouring  of  spiritual  influence, 
such  as  had  never  been  known  before,  as  unparalleled 
as  the  plague  wluch  preceded  it ;  and  that  even  this 
groat  blessing  would  be  a  judgment,  a  test,  by  which 
tho  spii-its  of  men  would  bo  tried — fuU  of  terror  for 
those  who  set  themselves  against  the  new  tide  of  in- 
fluence, full  of  life  and  promiso  for  those  who  took  it  at 
tho  flood,  sailing  with  it  and  welcoming  it. 

But  if  we  would  clearly  imderstand  verses  28 — 32,  in 
which  tho  second  and  greater  blessing  is  foretold,  we 
must  a  little  consider  some  of  the  torms  which  the  pro- 
phet employs,  and  the  suggestions  they  would  carry  to 
the  ears  of  an  Hebi-ew  audience.  For  instance,  under 
the  Mosaic  dispensation,  the  leading  and  most  authorita- 
tive form  of  Divine  revelation  was  the  prophetic  form  ; 
tho  power  of  seeing  and  speaking  forth  the  truths  of 
God  as  they  bore  on  the  facts  of  human  life,  whether 
in  the  past,  the  present,  or  tho  future. 

Prom  the  days  of  Moses  until  Joel,  the  prophet  was 

the  highest   spiritual  authority,  tho  man  most  directly 

and  obviously  inspired  of  God.     If,  therefore,  there  was 

to  bo  a  notable  and  unparallolod  outpouring  of  Divine 

energy,  Joel  woidd  natui-ally  anticipate  that  this  energy 

would  como  in  its  highest  known  form,  that  is,  in  the 

prophetic  form.     This  prophetic  gift  or  power,  again, 

had  two  leading  phases  or  aspects — -idsions  and  dreams. 

"  If  there  is  a  prophet  of  Jehovah  among  you,  I  make 

myself  known  to  him  in  a  vision,  I  speak  to  him  in  a 

dream."^     So  that  we  can  easily  apprehend  why,  when 

foretelling  an  unexampled  effusion  of  tho  Divdno  Spirit, 

Joel  would  say — 

"  Your  sons  and  your  daughters  will  propUcsy, 
Your  old  meu  will  dream  dreams. 
Your  young  men  will  sea  visions," 

Moreover,  up  to  this  period  the  Divino  gift  had  been 
limited  to  a  select  few,  to  tho  more  finely  uatured  and 
eminent  men  through  whom  God  spake  to  the  nation  at 
large.  But  a  time  was  now  approaching  in  which  the 
Spirit  of  Jehovah  would  como  down  like  a  copious  rain- 
fall, sweeping  over  all  barriers,  quickening  tho  vivid 
1  Numb.  xii.  6. 


JOEL. 


Ill 


energies  of  life  in  all  classes — in  children  and  old  men, 
in  yonng  men  and  maidens.  No  slave  had  as  yet  re- 
ceived the  proi^hetic  impulse  and  gift ;  but  in  the  new 
time  that  was  coming,  "  even  the  bondsmen  and  the 
bondswomen,"  as  the  prophet  marks  with  natural  sur- 
prise, are  to  share  in  the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 
Nay,  the  Spirit  is  not  to  be  confined  to  one  race,  it  is  to 
extend  to  all  races ;  it  is  not  to  bo  confined  to  the  pious 
and  devout,  it  is  to  seize  upon  those  who  had  hitherto 
been  deemed  incapable  of  spiritual  life.     The  words 

'*  I  will  pour  out  my  Spirit  on  all  flesli  " 
have  a  history.  They  point  us  back  oven  to  the  times 
before  the  Flood.  Then,  when  men  liad  become  "  evil, 
only  evil,  and  that  continually,"  God  had  said,  "  My 
spii'it  shall  not  rule  in  the  human  race  {hdaddm),  be- 
cause it  has  become /es7i  {bdsdr)."^  Now  Ho  says,  "  My 
Spirit  shall  be  poured  out  on  all  flesh"  (Jcol  bdsdr). 
This  word  "flesh"  (bdsdr),  as  contrasted  with  "the 
Spirit,"  denotes  human  nature  so  sunk  in  bondage  to  its 
lower  elements  as  to  bo  incapable  of  spiritual  life.  But, 
according  to  Joel,  even  this  impenetrable  "  flesh  "  is  to 
be  penetrated  by  the  DiWne  Spirit;  even  the  "  natural 
man "  is  to  be  ti-ansformod  into  a  "  spiritual  man ;" 
even  the  incorrigible  are  to  be  recovered  to  obedience. 
When  God  thus  descends  in  the  fulness  of  his  power, 
shall  there  not  be  wonders  in  the  heavens  above  and  in 
the  earth  beneath?  Joel  foresees  that  there  will  be 
wonders  like  those  which  of  old  attended  his  steps  when 
He  came  to  redeem  Israel  from  the  bondage  of  Egypt, 
and  when  He  gave  them  the  law  on  Sinai ;  on  the  earth, 
"  blood  and  fire,  and  columns  of  smoke  ;"  in  the  heavens, 
a  darkened  sun,  a  bloody  and  portentous  moon ;  such 
wonders,  in  short,  as  men  have  always  held  to  be  omens 
and  heralds  of  approaching  change. 

These  prodigies,  however,  will  have  no  terror  for 
those  who  "  invoke  the  name  of  Jehovah,"  who  make 
Him  their  sanctuary,  who  find  in  Him  the  sacred  and 
august  reality  of  which  "Mount  Zion"was  a  type  to 
the  Jew ;  and  even  among  those  who  had  not  yet  taken 
sanctuary  in  Hun  "  there  would  bo  those  whom  Jehovah 
will  call  "  from  their  sins  to  find  security  and  peace  in 
Him.  So  largo  a  promise  naturally  awakens  inquiry. 
We  ask,  "When  was  it,  or  wiU  it  bo  fulfilled?"  Joel 
expected,  and  I  suppose  saw,  a  fulfilment  of  it  in  his  day. 
Peter  saw  a  fulfilment  of  it  on  the  Day  of  Pentecost. 
We  are  still  straining  forward  through  the  ages,  and 
looking  for  a  distant  day  of  judgment  and  redemption  on 
which  the  promise  will  be  finally  and  exhaustively  ful- 
filled. If  any  ask,  "  To  which  of  these  f  uLfilraents  does 
Joel,  or  the  Spirit  which  spake  by  Joel,  refer  ?  "  we  reply, 
"  Why  should  He  not  refer  to  all  these  days,  and  to 
many  more?"  Every  true  prophecy  m7is<  liave  many 
fulfilments.  For  what  is  a  prophecy  ?  It  is  a  Dirine 
reading  of  human  facts ;  it  is  a  declaration  of  the  results 
which  the  DiWne  laws  are  sure  to  work  out  from  any 
given  set  of  conditions,  any  sequence  of  events.  Here 
is  a  man,  or  a  race,  in  certain  circumstances,  of  a  certain 
moral  temper,  with  this  or  that  sin  heavily  pressing  upon 


1  Gen.  vi.  3. 


them.  And  the  prophet  says,  "  In  your  circumstances, 
with  your  character,  the  Divine  laws  will  infallibly  pro- 
duce such  and  such  results  from  your  repeutance  and 
amendment."  As  the  Divine  laws  ai-o  eternal  and 
know  no  change,  whenever  the  same  facts  recur  in  tho 
life  of  a  man  or  of  a  race,  the  same  results  are  sure  to 
follow ;  whenever  similar  facts  recur,  similar  results  vrill 
follow.  And  sincG  men  walk  very  much  in  a  narrow 
round  of  custom  and  action,  tho  facts  and  conditions  of 
human  life  must  constantly  repeat  themselves;  and 
every  prophecy,  therefore,  must  have  many  fulfilments. 

In  Joel's  time  the  Hebrew  people  went  uj)  to  the 
Temple  to  worship,  but  they  had  forgotten  what  their 
worship  meant :  they  gave  their  first-fruits  to  God,  but 
not  tho  harvest ;  they  saw  Him  in  tho  Sanctuary  and  the 
ordinances  of  the  Sanctuary,  but  not  in  the  fields  and  in 
the  laws  of  Nature.  And  therefore  tho  regular  order, 
tho  beneficent  order  of  Nature  was  broken,  or  seemed 
to  them  to  be  broken,  by  unexpected  calamities,  by  ad- 
verse forces  before  which  they  were  helpless.  This  in- 
terruption of  the  usual  sequence  of  events  they  took  as 
a  judgment  on  their  sins,  as  a  caUto  repentance.  They 
did  repent,  they  learned  that  God  was  "  in  tho  midst  of 
them ;"  for  a  time  they  lived  in  a  constant  and  thankful 
recognition  of  His  presence,  His  bounty.  Their  hearts 
were  cjuickened  to  a  new  life ;  there  was  what  we  call 
"  a  reformation  of  religion."  It  is  at  such  periods  that 
the  Spii-it  of  God  descends  on  men  with  unaccustomed 
power,  when,  viz.,  their  hearts  are  quick  and  tender. 
And  as  a  rule,  it  is  the  humble  and  meek  to  whom,  at 
such  times,  there  is  given  "  greater  insight  into  the  past, 
greater  foresight  of  that  which  is  to  come,"  the  power 
to  SCO  visions,  and  dream  dreams,  and  declare  the  will 
of  the  Lord.  To  the  proud  and  disobedient  snc-h  times 
are  times  of  testing  and  judgment;  they  oppose  them- 
selves to  the  new  movement  of  thought,  to  the  better 
spirit  of  the  age  ;  they  adjudge  themselves  unwoi-thy  of 
the  life  which  has  been  quickened  in  the  hearts  of  their 
neighbours. 

This  was  the  sequence  of  results  which  Joel  saw  and 
forcsiiid  ;  this  was  how  he  read  the  facts  of  his  time,  and 
the  bearing  of  the  Divine  laws  upon  them.  Were  not 
the  same  conditions  repeated  in  St.  Peter's  time  with 
the  like  results  ?  Was  there  not,  therefore,  good  ground 
for  his  finding  in  tho  Pentecostal  facts  a  fulfilment  of 
Joel's  prophecy  ?  Then,  once  more,  the  Jewish  people 
came  up  to  the  Temple  to  worship,  but  failed  to  recog- 
nise the  God,  and  the  duty  to  God,  to  which  their  wor- 
ship bore  witness.  Wlien  "  God  made  manifest  in  the 
flesh"  stood  before  them,  they  did  not  recognise  Him 
as  God,  neither  were  thankful.  Judgment  came  upon 
them.  They  were  permitted  to  lay  "  lawless  hands  "  on 
Him  who  was  both  their  Lord  and  Christ.  They  awoke 
to  tho  consciousness  of  their  sin  when  they  saw  tho 
humble  Galileans  quickened  to  now  life  and  power. 
They  repented  and  turned  unto  the  Lord.  And  the 
Spirit  came  upon  them.  They  too  saw  visions,  and 
dreamed  di-eams,  and  prophesied  in  the  name  of  tho 
Lord.  And  this  new  accession  of  spiritual  life  was  a 
judgment  to  the  men  of  that  imtoward  generation — 


112 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


trying  what  manner  of  spirit  tliey  were  of,  revealing 
how  e\^l  was  the  spirit  by  which  they  were  animated 
who  still  opposed  themselves  to  the  power  and  grace  of 
God. 

St.  Peter  might  well  say,  "This  is  that  which  is 
spoken  by  the  prophet  Joel.'"  And  none  the  less  may 
we  say  it  at  every  new  crisis  of  the  religious  life,  whether 


1  Acta  ii.  16—21. 


in  a  man,  or  in  a  race,  or  in  the  world.  In  all  ages  the 
same  sequence  recurs — sin,  judgment, repentance, anew 
spirit,  and  in  this  new  spirit  a  new  test  and  criterion  to 
which  men  are  brought,  and  by  which  they  are  either 
approved  or  condemned.  But  the  genesis  and  signifi- 
cance of  this  prediction  of  Joel's  will  bo  still  further 
developed  in  a  brief  excursus  which  it  now  becomes  de- 
sirable and  even  necessary  to  make  on  "  What  Joel 
learned  from  Moses." 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    FULFILLED    IN    THE    NEW. 

I.  SACRED  SEASONS  (continued). 

BY   THE    KEV.    WILLIAM    HILLIOAN,    D.D.,    PR0FE330E    OF    DIVINITY    AND     BIBLICAL    CKITICISM    IN    THE    UNIVEBSITY    OF 

ABEEDEEN. 

interesting.  "  Te  shall  take  you,"  it  is  said,  "  on  the 
first  day  the  fruit  of  beautiful  trees,  branches  of  palm- 
trees,  and  the  boughs  of  thick  trees,  and  willows  of  the 
brook.  Te  shall  dwoU  in  booths  seven  days ;  all  that 
are  Israelites  bora  shall  dwell  in  booths"  (Lev.  xxiii. 
40 — 42).  These  booths  were  very  different  from  what  is 
generally  understood  to  be  meant  by  tabernacles  or  tents. 
They  were  constructed  not  with  skins  or  cloths  of  goats' 
hair  like  the  latter,  but  with  branches  of  trees,  and  were 
of  the  most  temporary  and  fragile  character ;  so  frail 
and  open  that  Jonah,  when  he  made  him  a  booth  over 
against  Nineveh,  and  sat  under  it  in  the  shadow,  was 
yet  exceeding  glad  of  the  gourd  which  God  prepared, 
because  it  afforded  him  a  shelter  that  the  booth  itself 
was  unable  to  supply  (Jonah  iv.  6,  6).  Such  booths 
were,  during  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  to  be  the  habita- 
tions of  Israel.  On  all  the  open  places  of  the  city — in 
the  courts,  in  the  streets,  in  the  squares,  on  the  flat  roofs 
of  the  houses,  in  the  fore-court,  of  the  Temple  itself  they 
were  erected;  and  there,  in  that  warm  and  genial  clime, 
before  the  autumn  rains  or  the  cold  of  winter  had 
begim,  under  leafy  boughs  and  branches  of  fruit-trees 
from  which  the  fruit  yet  hung,  the  people  took  up  their 
abode. 

But  it  was  not  only  the  dwelling  in  such  booths  that 
marked  the  feast  Ijefore  us.  Tho  sacrifices  of  the  time 
also  merit  our  attention.  We  have  already  seen  what 
these  were  at  the  earlier  festivals  of  tho  year.  At  the 
Feast  of  Tabernacles  they  were  greatly  increased  in 
number.  On  each  of  the  fij'st  sev(  n  days  there  were 
offered  two  rams  and  fourteen  lambs  of  the  first  year, 
with  their  appropriate  meat  and  drink  offerings  for  a 
burnt-offering,  and  in  addition  throughout  the  seven 
days,  seventy  bullocks  in  all.  The  bullocks,  indeed, 
were  not  like  the  r.ims  and  the  lambs,  equally  distri- 
buted over  tho  several  days  of  tho  feast,  ten  to  each 
day.  The  remarkable  provision  existed,  th.at  on  the  first 
day  there  should  be  offered  thirteen,  on  the  second 
twelve,  on  tho  third  eleven,  and  so  on,  diminishing 
each  day  one  until  the  seventh  day,  when  there  were 
offered  only  seven.  But  the  number  seventy  in  all,  ten 
multiplied  by  tho  sacred  number  seven,  was  thus  made 
up.     Tliat,  in  addition  to  these,  peace-offerings  wore 


5^ra|HE    third   and  kst   of  tho  great    Jewish 
■h\\l  ,fS»  ■    -pg|jgj.g  ^yjjg  ^jjgj.  of  Tabernacles,  or,  as  it 

should  rather  be  called,  of  booths ;  wliile 
in  various  passages  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment it  receives  tho  name  also  of  the  Feast  of  In- 
gathering at  the  year's  end  (Exod.  xxxiv.  22  ;  xxiii.  16). 
It  was  celebrated  in  the  seventh  month,  corresponding 
with  the  end  of  September  and  beginning  of  October 
in  this  country,  when  all  the  labours  of  the  field  for  the 
year  had  closed,  when  the  harvest — not  of  grain  only, 
but  of  fruits  and  oil  and  wine — had  been  gathered  in. 
and  when  the  toils  of  agriculture  in  providing  for  the 
next  season's  crop  had  not  yet  begun.  Again,  as  in  tho 
month  Nisan,  the  first  days  of  Tisri,  the  seventh  month, 
were  the  days  of  the  crescent  moon.  Again,  as  at  both 
the  previous  festivals  of  which  we  have  already  spoken, 
groups  of  pilgrims  gathered  to  Jerusalem,  often,  per- 
iiaps,  t.aking  advantage  of  tho  increasing  moonlight  to 
wend  their  way,  by  night  as  well  as  day,  over  tho  hills 
and  tlu-ough  the  valleys  of  Palestine  to  the  holy  city. 
And  again,  when  they  arrived  there  at  the  beginning  of 
the  feast,  and  had,  owing  to  tho  overcrowding  of  the 
city,  to  pitch  their  tents  without  the  walls,  they  could 
do  so  beneath  tho  briUianco  of  an  Eastern  full  moon. 
For,  on  the  fifteenth  day  of  tho  month,  the  moon  would 
be  at  the  full,  and  on  that  day  the  festival  began. 

Seven  days  (in  this  respect  it  corresponded  with  the 
feast  of  Unleavened  Broad)  wore  allotted  to  its  more 
peculiar  services  (Lev.  xxiii.  41).  Of  these  the  first 
was  a  day  of  "  holy  convocation,"  when  religious  meet- 
ings were  held  and  no  servile  work  might  be  done. 
But  it  was  a  peculiarity  of  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles 
that  to  the  seven  days  an  eighth  was  added,  which  was 
once  more  a  day  of  "  holy  convocation,"  and  which,  at 
least  in  later  times,  came  to  bo  considered  "  tlio  great 
day  of  tho  fe.ist "  ( Jolm  vii.  37).  AU,  however,  that 
was  peculiarly  distinctive  of  tho  festival  had  ceased  tho 
day  before,  and  tho  eighth  day  was  probably  added 
simply  that,  in  its  holy  rest  and  convocation,  it  might 
form  a  solemn  close  to  tho  whole  festival  season  of  the 
year,  and  a  point  of  transition  to  the  more  ordinary 
period  now  to  begin.  The  arrangements  connected 
with  the  seven  days  were  in  a  high  degree  marked  and 


SACRED  SEASONS. 


113 


ako  presented  can  hardly  admit  of  doubt.  No  express 
mention,  indeed,  seems  to  be  made  of  them  in  the  law, 
but  the  words  of  Deut.  xvi.  14,  15,  compared  with  xii. 
18,  "  And  thou  shalt  rejoice  in  thy  feast,  thou,  and  thy 
son,  and  thy  daughter,  and  thy  man-servant,  and  thy 
maid-servant,  and  the  Lovito,  the  stranger,  and  the 
fatherless,  and  the  widow,  that  are  within  thy  gates. 
Seven  days  shalt  thou  keep  a  solemn  feast  unto  the  Lord 
thy  God  in  the  place  where  he  shall  choose,"  must  be 
understood  to  have  reference  to  the  sacrificial  meal  which 
was  connected  with  them  alone.  At  the  same  time,  if, 
as  seems  almost  certain  from  a  comparison  of  1  Kings 
viii.  2  and  2  Chron.  vii.  8 — 10,  the  dedication  of  the 
Temple  took  place  at  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  peace- 
offerings  in  extraordinary  profusion  are  spoken  of  in 
connection  with  jthat  event  (1  Kings  viii.  63).  It  is 
somewhat  singular  that  wa  find  in  the  law  no  distinct 
provision,  such  as  existed  in  connection  with  the  second 
day  of  Unleavened  Bread  and  Pentecost,  for  the  offering 
of  first-fruits  at  this  feast.  Yet  we  may  certainly  con- 
clude that  they  would  bo  offered,  because  we  know  that 
the  feast  was  one  of  "  ingathering  at  the  end  of  the 
year,"  and  that  it  was,  amongst  its  other  characteristics, 
a  thanksgiving  for  a  completed  harvest.  The  absence 
of  any  specific  regulations  upon  the  point  must,  how- 
ever, be  regarded  as  a  proof  that  this  aspect  of  the 
feast  was  subordinate  to  that  under  which  it  either 
commemorated  Israel's  i^ast  or  shadowed  forth  its 
future. 

Such  were  the  provisions  of  tho  Mosaic  law  with 
regard  to  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  but  various  other 
ceremonies  were  added  by  the  Jews  of  later  times,  and, 
as  two  of  these  appear  to  be  recognised  Lu  the  New 
Testament,  it  wiU  be  well  to  notice  them.  They  are 
clssely  associated  with  that  fulfilment  of  the  feast  of 
which  we  are  more  particularly  in  search.  The  first 
was  the  ceremony  witli  the  water  of  Siloam.  On  each 
o-f  the  seven  days  of  the  feast  it  was  the  practice  to 
repair  to  the  Temple  at  the  time  of  the  morning  sacri- 
fice, when  all  who  could  be  admitted  within  its  court 
marched  in  procession  round  the  altar  of  burnt-offering, 
carrying  garlands  of  the  palm,  the  myrtle,  and  the 
willow,  known  by  the  name  of  lulahs,  in  their  hands. 
Prayers  and  singing  accompanied  the  act,  and  whenever 
the  word  Hosannah  occurred  the  people  shook  their 
lulahs.  At  the  same  time  a  pi-iest  descended  to  tho 
pool  of  Siloam  in  the  vicinity  of  the  Temple,  drew 
water  in  a  golden  urn,  and  entering  again  by  the  water- 
gate,  which  seems  to  have  received  its  name  from  this 
circumstance,  brought  it  amidst  incense  and  the  sound 
of  trumpets  into  the  court.  It  was  there  received  by 
another  priest  singing  with  loud  voice,  in  which  the 
assembled  multitude  joined,  the  words  of  Isa.  xii.  3  : 
"  With  joy  shall  ye  draw  water  out  of  wells  of  salva- 
tion." The  priest  last  spoken  of  then  bore  the  water 
to  the  altar,  which  ho  passed  round  from  left  to  right ; 
poured  a  small  portion  of  it  into  the  wine  destined  for 
the  drink-offering ;  then  mixed  the  whole  together  in  a 
silver  basin ;  and  finally  discharged  it  by  a  pipe  which, 
communicating  with  the  altar,  carried  it  down  to  the 
32 — VOL.  II. 


Kidron.  During  the  whole  ceremony  the  great  Hallel,  ' 
Ps.  cxiii. — cxviii.,  was  simg.  On  the  seventh  day  the 
ceremony  was  heightened.  It  was  the  culminating 
point  of  the  festival.  All  tho  glories  of  their  past,  all 
the  expectations  of  their  future,  swelled  the  breasts  of  . 
Israel  at  that  moment ;  and  the  burst  of  praise  and 
prayer  went  up  to  heaven  in  one  loud  acclaim  :  "  O  give 
thanks  unto  the  Lord,  for  he  is  good,  because  his  mercy 
cndm'eth  for  ever ;  "  "  Save  now,  I  beseech  thee,  O  Lord; 
O  Lord,  I  beseech  thee,  send  now  prosperity ;  "  "  O 
give  thanks  unto  the  Lord,  for  he  is  good,  for  his 
mercy  endureth  for  ever."  On  the  eighth  day  it  seems 
most  probable,  although  there  is  some  doubt  upon  the 
point,  that  this  bringing  of  water  from  Siloam  did  not 
take  place. 

The  second  ceremeny  we  have  alluded  to  took  place 
at  night.  At  the  close  of  the  first  day  of  the  feast, 
golden  candlesticks  of  great  height,  or  candelabra  with 
golden  arms,  were  set  up  in  the  court  of  the  women,  and 
were  lighted  by  four  sons  of  priests.  The  illumination 
was  repeated  each  night  of  the  festival,  and  it  was  the 
boast  of  the  Jews  that  a  light  was  thrown  over  the  city 
as  clear  as  that  of  day. 

It  is  vain  to  inquire  whence  these  arrangements 
proceeded,  or  at  what  particular  time  they  took  their 
rise.  They  had  become,  like  many  additions  to  the 
Passover,  constituent  parts  of  the  festival  in  the  days 
of  Christ,  and  they  were  referred  to  by  him  as  points 
of  connection  for  truths  he  had  come  to  unfold,  if  not 
as  actvially  symbolical  of  his  mission.  It  remains 
for  us  to  inquire  into  the  meaning  and  fulfilment  of 
them  all. 

First,  as  to  the  commemoration  of  historical  circum- 
stances in  the  life  of  Israel,  it  was  not  so  much  the  trials 
of  the  wilderness  that  the  feast  brought  to  view  as  the 
covenant  care  of  God  for  his  people  amidst  these  trials, 
the  time  when  their  "shoes"  were  "  iron  and  brass,"  and 
when  their  strength  was  made  equal  to  their  day  (Deut. 
xxxiii.  25).  That  journeying  in  the  wilderness  had  not 
been  a  season  of  affliction  only.  It  had  rather  been 
one  of  triumph  over  affliction,  when  the  people  were 
"persecuted  but  not  forsaken,  cast  down  but  not  de- 
stroyed." God  himself  was  in  the  midst  of  them.  His 
tabernacle  was  in  their  camp.  The  pillar  of  cloud  went 
before  them  by  day,  and  the  pLUar  of  fire  by  night. 
The  free  air  of  the  desert  blew  around  them.  Liberty, 
not  bondage,  was  their  portion.  Their  old  enemies  had 
been  desti-oyed  in  the  Red  Sea ;  they  had  beheld  them 
sink  as  "  les-d  in  the  mighty  waters."  There  was  no 
time  in  all  their  history  when  the  Almighty  showed 
more  clearly  that  his  favour  compassed  them  as  a  shield. 
The  feast,  therefore,  commemorated  not  burdens  alone, 
but  bui'dens  borne  away ;  net  want,  but  want  replaced 
by  marvellous  supplies ;  not  sorrow,  but  sorrow  turned  ^ 
into  joy.  If  the  iirst  of  the  three  annual  feasts  was  a 
proclamation  on  the  part  of  Israel's  King,  "  Te  shall 
1)0  my  people,"  the  last  of  tho  three  proclaimed  not  less 
loudly,  "  I  will  be  your  God." 

With  this  the  second  aspect  of  the  feast  before  us,  as 
a  thanksgiving  festival  for  a  completed  harvest,  beauti- 


114 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


f  iiUy  harmonised.  Wo  have  ah-eady  seen  that  Unleavened 
Bread  and  Pentecost  had  such  a  reference,  and  with  a 
similar  reference  Tabernacles  now  camo  into  the  festal 
scale.     The  fii-st  was  a  thanksgiving  for  the  corn  as 
com ;  the  second  for  that  corn  as  turned  into  bread  and 
applied  to  the  sustenance  of  life  ;  the  tliird  for  fruits, 
and  oil,  and  wine,  the  last  productions  of  the  year.    The 
last,  yet  not  only  the  last  but  also  the  most  joyful :  "  oil 
to  make  man's  face  to  shine,"  "  wine  that  strengtheneth 
man's  heart,"  the  two  growths  of  the  soil  which  are 
always  in   Scriiitiire  the  symbols   of   God's  best  and 
highest  gifts,  not  only  supporting  but  brightening  our 
existence.      Theii-   first-fruits  must   therefore   bo   also 
laid  upon  the  altar.     Hence  also,  in  all  probability,  the 
reason  why  the  sacrifices  were  so  greatly  multiplied  at 
the  Feast  of  Tabernacles.     The  year  was  crowned  with 
God's  goodness.     His  paths  di'ojiped  fatness.     All  the 
promises  of   his   covenant  were   sealed.     A  far  larger 
than  ordinary  profusion  of  gifts  became  the  time.     In 
the  same  liglit,  if  our  remarks  upon  the  peace-offerings 
of  this  season  were  correct,  we  see  the   groimd  upon 
which  they  were  presented  as  they  were.  At  Unleavened 
Bread  there  eeems  to  have  been  no  peace-offering.     At 
Pentecost   there  was,   but  the  two   lambs  then   thus 
offered  fell  wholly  to  the  priests,  and  there  was   no 
sacrificial  meal  on  the  part  of  the  offerer  and  his  friends. 
At  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  however,  the  whole  cere- 
monial of  peace-offerings  appears  to  have  been  com- 
pleted, and  Israel  rejoiced  before  the  Lord,  he  and  his 
son,   and  his  daughter,  and  Ms  maidservant,  and  the 
Levite  that  was  within  his  gates,  and  tlie  stranger,  and 
the  fatherless,  and  the  widow  (Deut.  xvi.  13,  1-1).     The 
gifts   of   God   were  not    only  bestowed  by  Him  and 
appropriated  by  His  people ;  they    were   also  distri- 
buted by  them  to  others. 

Still  further,  there  is  a  third  aspect  of  this  feast, 
in  its  prospective  rather  than  its  retrospective  reference, 
which  has  for  it  the  clear  authority  of  the  Word  of 
God.  In  two  parts  of  its  ceremonial  it  was  tyjiical  of 
the  work  of  Christ.  The  first  of  these  is  set  before  us 
by  St.  John  when  he  says,  "  In  the  last  day,  that  great 
day  of  the  feast,  Jesus  stood  and  cried,  saying.  If  any 
man  thirst,  let  him  come  unto  me  and  drink.  He  that 
believe th  on  me,  as  the  Scripture  hath  said,  out  of  his 
belly  shall  flow  rivers  of  living  water.  But  this  spake 
he  of  the  Spirit,  which  they  that  believe  on  him  should 
receive :  for  tlie  Holy  Ghost  was  not  yet  given,  because 
that  Jesus  was  not  yet  glorified  "  (John  vii.  37 — 39). 
It  is  true  that  on  the  eighth  day  of  the  feast  the  pouring 
out  of  the  water  from  Siloam  docs  not  appear  to  have 
taken  place,  but  the  moment  was  thereby  rendered  only 
the  more  appropriate  for  the  Saviour's  words.  For 
seven  days  previous  the  multitude  had  collected  in  the 
Temple  to  witness  the  ceremony,  and  on  the  last  day 
they  were  gathered  once  more  together,  excited  by  the 
high  soleumities  throngli  which  they  had  been  passing, 
and  longing,  as  their  whole  ritual  taught  them  to  long, 
for  tho  fulness  that  had  been  only  shadowed  fortli. 
They  wore  gathered  together,  but  there  was  no  water 
di-awn,  no  sounding  of  tho  trumpets,  no  singing  of  tlie 


HaUel.  The  peculiar  services  of  the  time  were  over. 
The  festal  booths  had  been  taken  down.  "Where," 
we  can  imagine  the  assembled  multitude  looking  each 
other  anxiously  in  the  face  and  saying,  "  where  is  the 
fulness  that  we  have  been  looking  for,  where  the  sub- 
stance that  these  rites  have  been  teaching  us  to  expect  ?" 
At  that  instant  Jesus  stood  in  tho  Temple  and  cried, 
"  If  any  man  thirst,  let  him  come  imto  Me  and  drink ; 
ho  that  Ijelieveth  on  Me,  as  the  Scriptm-e  hath  said, 
out  of  his  belly  shall  flow  rivers  of  living  water." 
And  then  tho  Evangelist  adds  in  explanation,  "  This 
spake  he  of  tho  Spirit,  which  they  that  believe  on  him 
should  receive."  Assuming,  as  with  every  commen- 
tator on  the  passage  we  are  entitled  to  assume,  that  in 
these  words  of  our  Lord  there  is  a  reference  to  the 
ceremony  with  the  waters  of  Siloam,  we  have  in  them 
a  distinct  allusion  to  a  gift  of  the  Spirit  which  these 
waters  typified.  The  allusion,  too,  was  natural  and 
intelligible.  It  is  found  in  the  Old  Testament  when 
the  prophet  says,  "  I  will  pour  water  upon  him  that 
is  thu'sty,  and  floods  upon  the  dry  groimd :  I  will 
pour  my  spirit  upon  thy  seed,  and  my  blessing  upon 
thine  offspring "  (Isa.  xliv.  3)  ;  and  Lightf oot  tells  us 
that  "  in  the  Jerusalem  Talmud  it  is  expounded  that 
they  di-aw  the  Holy  Spirit,  for  a  divine  breathing  is 
upon  the  man  through  joy"  (on  John  vii.  38).  With 
this  idea  then  the  Saviour  connected  his  invitation  and 
promise  ;  and,  bidding  as  it  were  the  assembled  Israefites 
mark  how  quickly  the  waters  di-awn  for  them  for  seven 
days  in  succession  had  disappeared,  he  calls  them  to 
•'  come  "  to  him.  With  him  were  the  true  streams  of 
refreshing,  streams  of  living  water,  not  flowing  only 
in  a  trifling  riU,  but  in  rivers,  the  fulness  of  the  Spirit 
and  of  spiritual  blessings  bestowed  along  with  it.  Tet 
we  are  carefully  to  observe  that  it  is  not  the  appropria- 
tion, it  is  tho  diffusion  of  the  Spirit  that  is  here  referred 
to,  "  out  of  his  belly  shall  flow  rivers  of  living  water." 
A  second  part  of  tho  ceremonial  was  also  typical ;  for 
it  is  almost  impossible  not  to  interpret  in  this  manner 
the  words  of  Jesus  iu  John  viii.  12,  "  I  am  the  light  of 
tho  woi'ld :  he  that  f  oUoweth  me  shall  not  walk  in 
darkness,  but  shall  have  the  liglit  of  life."  The  words 
were  spoken  when  the  minds  of  the  people  were  still 
full  of  the  proud  and  joyful  recollections  of  the  si^lendour 
of  that  iUumiuatiou  which  each  night  of  the  feast  had 
witnessed,  and  when  they  were  perhaps  dwelling  mourn- 
fully on  the  thought  that  it  was  over.  No  brillianfc 
radiance  from  tho  Temple  height  shoidd  again  at  that 
time  send  its  rays  over  Jerusalem.  Tho  moon,  too,  was 
upon  tho  wane ;  and  with  sunset  a  darkness  which  none 
of  the  last  eight  days  had  seen  would  settle  upon  tho 
holy  city.  But  just  as  Jesus  had  promised  rivers  of 
living  water  to  those  who  were  looking  in  vain  for 
tho  waters  of  Siloam,  so  now  he  promises  the  light 
of  life  to  those  who  wore  thinking  sadly  of  the  coming 
gloom. 

Thus,  then,  we  are  prepared  to  mark  the  fulfilment 
of  tho  Feast  of  Tabernacles.  Like  the  Feasts  of  Un- 
leavened Bread  and  Pentecost,  it  is  fulfilled  first  of  all 
in  Christ  himself.     His  was  a  life  upheld  amidst  all  its 


SACRED  SEASONS. 


115 


sufferings  by  his  Heavenly  Father's  care.     Ho  dwelt  m 
God  and  God  in  him.     Ho  conquered  the  sorrows  of 
the  world,  and  death,  and  heU.     Ho  left  nothing  that 
He  had  imdedicated  to  hia  Father's  glory,  and,  notwith- 
standing his  trials.  He  could  so  speak  of  "  my  peace," 
"my  joy,"  as  to  show  that  his  path,  even  in  this  wilder- 
ness, was  a  path  of  triumph.     With  Him,  too,  was  the 
residue  of  the  Spirit,  and  He  was,  and  is,  the  Light  of 
life.     Nor  are  the  Spirit  and  the  light  his  only  that 
He  may  himself  enjoy  them.     They  are  his  for  the  good 
of  man.     To  bestow  the  Spirit,  to  shod  light  into  a  dark 
world,  was  the  great  purpose  of  his  mission,  and  is  now 
his  reward,  "  Therefore  being    by  the  right'  hand  of 
God  exalted,  and  having  received  of  the  Father  the 
promise  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  He  hath  shed  forth  this, 
which  ye  see  and  hear ;"  and  again,  "  Wherefore  He 
saith,  Wlien  he  ascended  up  on  high,  he  led  captivity 
captive,  and  gave  gifts  unto  men ; "  and  once  more,  "  To 
as  many  as  received  Him,  to  them  gave  He  power  to 
become  the  sons  of  God "  (Acts  ii.  33 ;    Eph.  iv.  8 ; 
John  i.  12). 

But  the  feasi  is  fulfilled  also  in  his  people,  in  that 
Church  which  is  "his  body,  the  fulness  of  Him  that 
filleth  all  in  all."  For,  whatever  be  the  Church's  trials 
in  the  wilderness,  she  is  "  more  than  conqueror  through 
Him  that  loved  her."  As  she  has  dedicated  herself 
wholly  to  Him,  so  He  has  accepted  the  dedication,  and 
has  betrothed  her  to  himself  in  righteousness.  He 
makes  "his  grace  sufficient"  for  her,  He  makes  his 
"  strength  perfect  in  weakness,  so  that  she  rather  glories 
in  her  infirmities,  that  tlie  power  of  Christ  may  rest  upon 
her.  Therefore  she  takes  pleasure  in  infirmities,  in 
reproaches,  in  necessities,  in  persecutions,  in  distresses 
for  Christ's  sake;  for  when  she  is  weak  then  she  is 
strong  "  (2  Cor.  xii.  9,  10).  "  The  tabernaclo  of  the 
Lord,"  too,  "  is  again  with  her,"  and  the  Lord  has  created 
"  upon  every  dwelling-place  of  Mount  Zion,  and  upon 
all  her  assemblies,  a  cloud  and  smoke  by  day,  and  the 
shiniug  of  a  flauung  fii'e  by  night,"  so  that  her  path 
is  made  straight  before  her,  and  she  rejoices  even  in 
sorrow. 

Nor  is  even  this  all.  For,  as  in  her  Pentecost  she  re- 
ceives the  Spirit,  so  in  her  Tabernacles  she  diffuses  it. 
The  Spirit  is  given  her,  not  only  to  quench  her  own 
thirst,  to  relieve  her  own  wants,  but  to  flow  forth  from 
her  to  others.  The  Church  is  the  temple  of  the  Lord, 
every  believer  is  a  lively  stone  in  it;  and  from  the 
temple  as  a  whole,  from  each  lively  stone  in  part,  flows 
forth  that  water  which,  instead  of  disappearing  in  a 
moment  like  the  water  brought  from  SUoam  in  the  urn, 
proves  a  living  and  everywhere  life-giving  river.  The 
picture  will  bo  still  more  complete  if,  as  seems  not  im- 
probable, we  may  connect  the  Churcli's  diffusion  of  the 


Spirit  with  one  of  the  most  stiiking  visions  of  Ezekiel. 
"  Afterward,"  says  the  prophet,  "  ho  brought  me  again 
unto  the  door  of  the  house  ;  and,  behold,  waters  issued 
out  from  under  the  threshold  of  the   house  eastward : 
for  the  forefront  of  the  house  stood  toward  the  east,  and 
the  waters  came  down  from  under  from  the  right  side  of 
the  house,  at  the  south  side  of  the  altar.    Then  brought 
he  me  out  of  the  way  of  the  gate  northward,  and  led  mo 
aboiit  tho  way  without  imto  the  utter  gate  by  the  way 
tliat  looketh  eastward ;  and,  behold,  there  ran  out  waters 
on  the  right  side.     And  when  the  man  that  had  the  line 
in  his  hand  wont  forth  eastward,  he  measured  a  thousand 
cubits,  and   he   brought  mo  through  the  waters;  the 
waters  were  to  the  ankles.     Again  he  measured  a  thou- 
sand, and  brought  me  through  the  waters ;  the  waters 
were   to  the  knees.     Again  ho  measured  a  thousand, 
and  brought  me  through  ;  the  waters  were  to  the  loins. 
Afterward  he  measured  a  thousand,  and  it  was  a  river 
that  I  could  not  pass  over :  for  the  waters  were  risen, 
waters  to  swim  in,  a  river  that  could  not  be  passed  over  " 
(Ezek.  xlvii.  1—5).    Wliat  waters  are  these  thus  issuing 
from  under  the  threshold  of  the  house  eastward,  coming 
down  from  the  right  side  of  the  house  at  the  south  side 
of  the  altar  H     To  none  can  they  be  with  so  much  pro- 
bability referred  as  to  the  waters  poiu-ed  out  beside   the 
altar  at  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles.     If  so,  not  only  is 
that  river  of  the  water  of  life  which  flows  in  the  Church 
living  and  life-giv-ing;  it  is  also  a  constantly  increasing 
river.     It  spreads  from  individual  to  individual,  from 
family  to  family,  from  one  people  to  another;  not  losing 
itself  in  the  desert,  but  deepening,  wideuuig  as  it  flows, 
causing  the  wilderness  to  rejoice,  and  making  the  valley, 
whose  salt  and  brimstone  soil  was  the  emblem  of  the 
curse  of   God,  send  up  ti-eos  "  whose   leaf   shall    not 
fade,  neither  shall  the  fruit  thereof  be  consumed,  but 
the  fruit  thereof  shall  be  for  meat,  and  the  leaf  thereof 
for  medicine"  (Ezek.  xlvii.  12).     How  beautiful   the 
picture  of  the  influences  of  God's  Holy  Spirit  when,  not 
only  appropriated   but  sent  forth  by  a   living  Church 
over  the  world,  they  everywhere  awaken  sijiritual  life  in 
its  vigour  and  beauty,  supply  aU  wants,  heal  all  dis- 
orders, change  barrenness  into  fruitfulness,  and  death 
itself  into  life.     That   is  the  fidness  for  which  Israel 
waited  in  its  Feast  of  Tabernacles. 

Finally,  the  Church  of  Christ,  hke  her  Lord,  ought 
to  be,  and  when  faithful  is,  the  Mglit  of  the  world.  In 
communion  and  fellowship  with  Jesus  that  light  which 
He  has  is  kiudled  in  liis  people.  They  "  have  the  lio-lit 
of  life."  They  themselves  illuminate,  themselves  are 
a  source  of  light  to  others.  Christ  in  them  and  they  in 
Him,  there  is  an  abiding  iUumiuation  upon  the  Temple 
mount,  and  never  again,  either  by  day  or  night,  shall 
there  be  darkness  in  Christ's  New  Jerusalem. 


116 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


DIFFICULT    PASSAGES    EXPLAINED. 

THE  CATHOLIC   EPISTLES  :-ST.  JOHN. 

BZ   THE    EEV.    H.    D.    M.    SPENCE,    M.A.,    BECTOR   OF    ST.    MART    DE    CRYPT,    GLOUCESTER,    AND    EXAMINING    CHAPLAIN   TO 

THE    LORD    BISHOP    OP    GLOUCESTER   AND   BRISTOL. 


THE    THREEFOLD   WITNESS. 


TEiT   OF   ATJTHORISED   VERSION 
REVISED. 

6.  Tins  is  he  that  came  by 
water  and  blood,  fiten  Jesua 
Christ ;  not  in  the  water  only, 
but  in  the  water  and  in  the 
blood  :  and  it  is  the  Spirit  that 
is  bearing  witness,  because  the 
Spirit  is  the  truth. 

7.  "For  there  are  three  who 
are  bearing  witness, 

8.  The  spirit,  and  the  water, 
and  the  blood  :  and  these  three 
agree  in  one. — 1  Jokn  v.  6,  7,  8. 


TEXT   OF   AUTHORISED   VERSION. 

6.  This  is  he  that  came  by 
water  and  blood,  even  Jesus 
Christ ;  not  by  water  only,  but 
by  water  and  blood.  And  it  is 
the  Spirit  that  beareth  witness, 
because  the  Spirit  is  truth. 

7.  For  there  are  three  that 
bear  record  {_in  heaven,  the 
Father,  the  Word,  and  the  Holy 
Ghost :  and  these  three  are  one. 

8.  And  there  are  three  that 
bear  witness  in  earth'},  the  spirit, 
and  the  water,  and  the  blood : 
and  these  three  agree  in  one.— 
1  JoHX  V.  6,  7,6. 

,BOUT  a  century  and  a  half  ago  that 
leaiTiod  and  devout  commentator,  Bcngel, 
rehietant  to  pivo  up  what  he  deemed  a 
powerful  and  weighty  testimony  to  a  great 
-truth,  defended  with  groat  ingenuity  the  famous  state- 
ment contained  iu  the  7tli  verse  of  the  received  text  of 
the  passage  wo  are  about  to  discuss^the  alleged  testi- 
mony of  the  heavenly  witnesses — "  the  throe  that  bear 
record  in  heaven,  the  Father,  the  Word,  and  tbe  Holy 
Ghost."  As  a  critical  scholar,  it  is  clear  Bengel  felt 
that  the  words  must  bo  expunged,  but  he  surmounted 
the  difficulty  by  indulging  in  tlie  hope  that  as  critical 
investigation  into  the  text  of  the  New  Testament — then, 
comparatively  speaking,  in  its  infancy — proceeded,  fresh 
•evidence  for  the  disputed  words  in  question  might  be 
discovered.  Since  tlio  great  expositor  wrote,  a  vast 
amoimt  of  materials  towards  the  restoration  of  tlie  true 
text  of  the  Greek  (New)  Testament  has  been  brought  to 
Mght,  and  investigated  by  the  patient  unwearied  labours 
of  a  few  groat  scholars.  But  Bongel's  hope  as  regards 
this  particular  verso  has  been  vain.' 

As  yet  the  testimony  in  favour  of  the  passage  relating 
to  the  "  heavenly  witnesses "  has  been  found  in  no 
ancient  Greek  MS.  No  Greek  father  has  been  fairly 
proved  to  have  cited  it.  It  evidently  exists  in  some  of 
the  Latin  versions ;  but  oven  hero  some  of  the  best  and 
most  trustworthy  omit  it. 

The  words  in  question  were,  no  doubt,  originally 
written  at  a  very  eai-ly  date  on  the  margin  of  some  of 
the  Latin  translations  of  the  New  Testament,  probably 
in  North  Africa,  in  some  great  centre,  such  as  Carthage, 
and  from  the  fourth  century  downwiirds  forced  their 
way  gradually  into  the  original  text  of  St.  John. 

The  verso  iu  all  ages  has  been  considered  by  many 
theologians  as  a  most  weighty  and  com]>endiou3  state- 
ment of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  and  this  has,  no 


'  A  brief  summary  of  the  evidence  for  and  against  the  integrity 
of  this  passage  will  be  found  at  the  end  of  this  paper. 


doubt,  favoured  its  later  adoption  as  an  integi'al  J>art  of 
the  text  of  the  chapter  in  which  it  appears,  although,  as 
we  hope  to  show  in  our  exposition  of  the  whole  passage, 
the  ilisputed  words  literally  destroy  the  sense,  while 
they  give  to  the  whole  argument  a  colouring  of  unreality. 
Having  cleared  the  way  by  exijunging  words  which, 
though  true  in  themselves,  have  no  place  whatever  in  the 
argument  of  St.  John,  we  proceed  to  inquu'e  what  we 
are  to  understand  by  the  apparently  strange  statement 
that  Jesiis  Christ  came  by  water  and  by  blood. 

Now  the  very  many  interpretations  which  theologians 
of  difforeut  ages  have  given  to  the  "water"  and  the 
"  blood"  may  bo  divided  roughly  into  two  schools: — 

The  first,  which  looks  upon  these  expressions  as 
purely  symbolical ; 

The  second,  which  refers  the  "  water  and  the  blood  " 
primarily  to  circumstances  in  the  life  of  Christ  wliich 
are  still  bearing  testimony  to  his  "  Messiahsliip." 

And,  first,  those  expositors  who  urge  the  purely  sym- 
bolical reference,  explain  water  as  representing  "  purity," 
"  innocence."  So  Grotius  understood  the  most  pure 
life  of  Jesus  as  signified  (comp.  Ezok.  xxxvi.  25); 
others,  such  as  Clement  of  Alexandria,  tell  us  that  under 
the  figure  of  water  regeneration  and  faith  are  signified. 
The  "  blood  "  is  rightly  explained  by  tho  m.ajority  of 
divines  of  both  schools  by  a  reference  to  the  death  of 
Christ ;  but  the  symbolical  school  of  expositors  even 
here  understand  the  blood  as  simply  equivalent  to 
"expiation"  or  "redemption."  Many  see  tho  enduring 
testimony  of  the  water  under  tho  sacrament  of  baptism, 
the  testimony  of  the  blood  imder  the  sacrament  of  tho 
Lord's  Supper. 

But  this  school  of  interpretation,  which  only  can  see  a 
symbolical  reference  in  the  water  and  tho  blood,  never 
gives,  after  all,  a  satisfactory  sense  to  this  great  passage 
of  St.  John.  Wliile  by  no  means  entirely  denying 
tho  symbolical  reference,  we  must  primarily  refer  the 
water  and  the  blood,  by  which  Jesus  Christ  came,  to 
circumstances  recorded  to  have  taken  place  during  our 
Lord's  life  on  eai-fh.  which  circumstances,  in  some  way 
or  other,  as  we  shall  presently  see  in  verses  7  and  8, 
must  still  bo  witnessing  among  us  to  the  truth  of  the 
Messiahship  of  Jesus.  "Without  hesitation,  then.  w6 
explain  "  water  "  as  signifying  baptism,  which  our  Lord 
not  only  instituted,  and  carried  out  during  his  earthly 
ministiy  (John  iv.  1,  2),  but  commanded  to  be  con- 
tinned  among  all  nations  after  the  resurrection  (Matt. 
xxviii.  19).  The  pr.actice  of  the  Lord  has  been  followed, 
and  tho  command  obeyed;  for  during  the  eighteen 
Christian  centuries  it  has  always  been,  and  still  is,  the 
distinguishing  mark  iu  all  nations  of  admission  into 
the  Christian  community.     The   "blood"  points  un- 


DIFFICULT  PASSAGES  EXPLAINED. 


]17 


mistakably  to  tho  death  of  Ckrist — ^the  life-blood 
poured  out  on  tho  cross  :  it  is  the  "  blood  of  sprinkling  " 
(Heb.  xii.  21). 

The  argument  tlieu  runs  ; — This  is  ho — Jesus  the 
Messiah — whoso  cUstinguishing  signs  then,  as  now,  were 
the  water  of  haptism,  and  tho  blood  poured  oat  on  tho 
cross ;  and  here,  with  all  the  awful  mystic  signification 
of  the  latter  (the  blood)  pressing  upon  him,  the  apostlo 
ts,  "  not  ^vith  water  only  " — for  the  memory  of  tho 


Baptist,  and  perhaps  of  other  servants  of  the  Most 
High  before  him,  whose  distinguishing  sign  had  been 
the  water  of  baptism — "  not  with  water  only,"  he  repeats, 
but  with  water  and  blood,  thus  urging  that  tho  sign 
of  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus  was  not  only  that  sacred 
purifying  water  of  baptism,  Imt  his  having  imdergono 
that  cross-death  when  ho  poured  out  his  life-blood 
for  us. 

The  concluding  sentence  of  tho  verse  proceeds  to  teU 
us  how  the  Si)u'it  (that  is,  the  Holy  Ghost)  is  ever 
bearing  witness. 

Now  the  Spii-it  which  bears  witness  here  undoubtedly 
is  the  Holy  Ghost.  Two  questions,  however,  naturally 
present  themselves : — 

1.  To  what  is  tho  Spirit  bearing  witness  ? 

2.  The  uatm-e  of  the  witness  which  proceeds  from  the 
Spirit  ? 

The  first  is  easy  to  answer.  Witness  is  being  borne 
to  the  fact  that  he  that  came  by  water  and  by  blood  is 
Jesits  tlie  Christ,  or  Messiah  (ver.  6),  the  Son  of  God 
(ver.  9).  The  second  is  harder  at  first  sight.  What  is 
the  nature  of  tlio  witness  emanating  from  the  Spmt  ? 

This  witness  is  of  two  kinds — (a)  an  outward  witness  ; 
(6)  an  inner  witness. 

(a)  The  outward  witness  consists  in  those  manifesta- 
tions of  tho  Spirit  related  to  us  in  the  sacred  wi'itings  : 
for  example,  the  descent  of  the  Spirit  on  the  Day 
of  Pentecost,  when,  after  the  Spirit  had  descended  on 
the  disciples  in  the  form  of  cloven  tongues  of  fire,  they 
on  whom  the  gift  liad  been  bestowed  bore  their  witness 
in  various  languages  to  the  crucified  Saviour  (see  Acts 
ii.  4) ;  and  the  descent  of  tho  Spirit  on  Cornelius  and 
his  companions  (Acts  x.  44,  4.5 ;  xi.  15,  16).  Compare 
also,  as  an  instance  of  an  outward  historical  manifesta- 
tion of  the  Spirit,  St.  Matt.  iii.  16,  where  tho  Holy 
Spunt  was  visibly  present  at  the  Lord's  baptism  in 
Jordan. 

(6)  An  inner  witness.  Here  the  Spirit  guides  men 
into  all  truth,  leads  them  to  Christ,  creates  in  them  a 
longing  for,  and  then  gives  them  the  power  to  lead  a 
holy  life,  teaclimg  them  that  the  holy  life  can  only  be 
found  in  Christ,  by  those  who  walk  in  light,  as  He  is  in 
the  light.  It  is  in  this  work,  carried  on  in  the  heart  of 
every  faithful  seeker  after  Christ,  that  the  Spirit  is 
bearing  its  perpetual,  its  daily  witness ;  and  St.  John 
adds  as  tho  reason  why  tho  Spirit  is  ever  bearing  this 
mighty  outer  and  inner  witness,  "  because  the  Spirit  is 
the  truth : "  "  the  truth,''  since,  as  Estius  well  says, 
"  the  Spirit  is  God,  who  can  neither  deceive  or  be  de- 
ceived" (quum  sit  Deus  adeoque  nee  faUi  possit  nee 
faUere). 


So  far  "the  water"  and  "the  blood"  have  come 
before  us  as  the  distinguishing  characteristics  in  St. 
John's  mind  of  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus,  and  "the 
Spu'it "  has  been  specified  as  tho  ivituess  to  this  great 
truth.  Now,  as  ijerpetually  witnessing  to  the  Messiah- 
ship  of  Jesus  in  verso  7,  "  the  water  "  and  "  the  blood  " 
are  associated  in  their  testimony  with  the  Holy  Spirit, 
and  the  three  are  set  forth  as  the  united  witness  of  God 
concerning  his  Son  Jesus  (see  ver.  10). 

The  argument,  then,  of  verses  7  and  8  is  as  follows  : 
Not  only  is  the  Spirit  (the  Holy  Ghost)  bearing  its 
everlasting  witness,  for  (on)  three  are  bearing  their 
testimony — viz.,  that  Spu-it  of  which  wo  have  already 
spoken  of  above  as  "ivitnessing,  and  that  blood  and  water 
of  which  we  liave  written  as  elements  in  that  conception 
of  tho  Messiah  which  is  placed  before  us  in  these 
Epistles.  That  blood  and  water,  wo  declare,  are  ever 
witnessing  to  the  same  eternal  truth. 

The  Spu'it  naturally  occupies  the  first  place  in  this 
triad  of  witnesses.  Without  it  neither  the  water  nor 
tho  blood  could  in  any  real  sense  be  understood  as 
witnesses.  Wo  have  discussed  above  the  manner  of 
the  Spirit's  Avitness,  and  have  still  to  speak  very 
shortly  of  tho  witness  of  the  other  two — the  water 
and  tlie  blood.  The  water  of  holy  baptism  is  the 
outward  tyjio  of  the  sinner  being  born  again,  becoming 
tlie  heir  of  eternal  life  and  the  inheritor  of  Christ's 
kingdom.  Water  is  the  witness  to  every  Christiaa 
man  and  Vfoman  that  Jesus  Christ  is  the  king  of  the 
realm  of  grace — the  kingly,  triumphing  Messiah  of  the 
prophecies  of  the  Old  Testament.  By  tho  blood  tho 
believer  daily  washes  away  his  sins,  daily  purges  out 
the  stains  and  defilements  he  ever  and  again  contracts 
in  liis  life's  journey.  Tho  blood  is  his  witness,  telling 
liim  that  Jesus  is  Christ,  tho  Lamb  of  God  and  his 
Redeemer. 

And  in  the  two  sacraments,  baptism  and  tho  Lord's 
Supper,  wliich  the  Lord  ordained,  and  in  which  all  true 
believers  love  to  share,  John  the  divine  saw  then,  as 
we  see  now,  the  perpetual  witnesses  among  men  to  the 
Sonship  and  Messiahship  of  Jesus ;  while  the  Holy 
Spirit,  sanctifying  the  waters  of  baptism  to  the  mystical 
washing  away  of  sin — sanctifying,  too,  the  eucharistic 
elements  in  tho  heart  of  tho  faitliful  recipient — com- 
pletes the  triad  of  witnesses,  whoso  witness,  varied 
though  it  be,  unites  in  the  establishment  of  the  OBff 
eternal  truth — Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God. 

Tho  considerations  wliich  belong  to  tho  omission  of 
tho  famous  passage  relating  to  tho  "  three  heavenly 
witnesses  "  in  verse  7  may  be  roughly  divided  into — 

a.  Exegesis.  ^ 

6.  Verbal  peculiarities, 
c.  Textual  criticism. 

a.  Exegesis. — Where,  now,  in  tho  groat  argument 
discussed  above  is  there  room  for  the  testimony  of  tho 
heavenly  witnesses  ?  In  tho  revised  text  printed  at  the- 
head  of  this  paper,  tho  argument,  as  wo  have  shown, 
flows  on  clear  and  uniuterrapted. 

First,  "  the  water  and  tlio  blood  "  are  set  forward  as 
distinguishing  characteristics  of  tho  Messiahship  and 


118 


THE    BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


Sonship  of  Jesus,  and  the  Spirit  is  set  before  us  as 
testifying  to  the  truth  of  -that  Messialiship.  Secondly, 
we  are  tokl  "the  Spirit"  is  not  the  only  witness,  for 
"  the  water  and  the  blood."  too,  associated  in  the  same 
glorious  testimony  with  "the  Spirit,"  are  ever  bearing 
to  men  on  earth  their  weighty  witness. 

Now,  to  insert  the  words  of  verse  7  which  appear  in 
the  received  text  would  interrupt  this  chain  of  statement 
and  argument,  and  would  introduce  a  new  and  here 
totally  irrelevant  element — viz.,  the  testimony  of  the 
Trinity  in  heaven  to  the  Messialiship  of  Jesus ;  and  the 
new  element  thus  introduced,  besides,  would  iuten-upt 
the  two  steps  of  tho  argument.'  Bengel  (compare 
Alford's  note)  and  certain  MSS.  of  the  Vulgate,  to 
avoid  this  break,  place  verso  8  before  verse  7. 

6.  Verbal  Peculiarities. — St.  John  in  his  writings 
never  combines  the  exjiressions  "  the  Eathcr  "  and  "  the 
Word,"  should  he  have  occasion  to  use  the  title  Logos, 
"Word,"  in  relation  to  Christ;  we  find  it  combined 
with  6  Qe'os,  "  God,'  as  in  the  Gospel  of  St.  John  i.  1  and 
following  verses,  "  In  the  beginning  was  tlie  Word,  and 
the  Word  was  with  God ; '"  and  Rev.  xix.  13,  "  His 
name  is  called  the  Word  of  God." 

Again,  "  the  Holy  Ghost"  (Spirit),  rh  ayiov  Xlvivfia.,  is 
not  an  expression  found  in  the  Epistle.  Wo  find 
here  "the  Spirit"  simply ^vithout  the  predicate  "  Holy," 
as,  for  instance,  chap.  iii.  24,  iv.  13,  and  here  in  verses 

6  and  8. 

Lastly,  the  very  difficult  and  complicated  question 
suggests  itself.  Is  the  Spirit  (-KVivixa)  bearing  witness  on 
earth  with  the  water  and  the  blood  (vs.  6 — 8)  identical 
with  the  Holy  Ghost  or  Spirit  (rh  ayiov  nyevfia)  of  verse 

7  bearing  witness  in  heaven  with  the  Father  and  the 
Son? 

c.  Textual  Criticism. — The  omitted  words  of  verse  7 
are  not  met  with  in  any  of  the  extant  uncial  Greek 
MSS.  Of  the  versions,  neither  the  Syriac  (the  Peshito 
or  Philoxenian),  or  the  Thebaic,  Memphitic,  Ethiopic, 
or  Arabic  contain  the  disputed  clause.  No  Greek 
father  has  been  proved  to  have  cited  it  in  any  form 
whatever. 

It  rests  alone  on  certain  Latin  authorities.  It  is 
found  in  most  (but  not  in  tho  best)  MSS.  of  the 
Vulgate,  and  in  one  MS.  of  the  old  Latin,  containing 
extracts  from  the  New  Testament.  Tliis  MS.  is  of  the 
sixth  or  seventh  century,  and  is  a  "  Speculum  "  ascribed 
to  St.  Augustine,  and  is  in  the  monasteiy  of  Santa 
Croce  at  Rome.  Attention  was  called  to  it  by  Dr. 
Wiseman  in  his  famous  "  Two  Letters  "  defending  1  John 
V.  7.  The  African  fathers,  Vigilius  of  Thapsus  and 
Fulgontius  of  Ruspte,  quote  the  disputed  words  as  a 
genuine  portion  of  St.  John's  first  Epistle.  It  was  also 
used  in  a  confession  of  faith  drawn  up  by  Eugenius, 
Bishop  of  Carthage,  at  tho  end  of  the  fifth  century. 
But,  what  is  of  greater  importance  than  any  of  these, 
there  is  little  doubt  that  Cyprian,  before  the  middle  of 

'  In  the  received  test,  verso  8  takes  up  the  sequence  of  thousht 
mterrupted  by  the  testimony  of  the  Trinity,  and  completes  th»^ 
statement  begun  iu  verse  6  of  the  witness  of  the  Spirit,  the  water, 
and  the  blood. 


the  third  century,  knew  of  the  passage  and  quoted  it 
as  the  genuine  words  of  St.  John.  From  the  com- 
mencoment  of  the  sixth  century  the  testimony  of  the 
heavenly  witnesses  was  generally  received  in  the  Latin 
Church. 

Erasmus  excluded  the  passage  from  his  first  two 
editions,  but  inserted  it  in  his  thu'd  edition  in  con- 
sequence of  a  declaration  he  had  made  to  certain 
persons  who  had  objected  to  his  having  omitted  it 
from  his  early  editions.  He  undertook,  if  the  famous 
clause,  1  John  v.  7,  could  be  found  in  aiiy  Greek  MS., 
he  would  insert  it  in  his  Greek  Testament.  A  curious 
MS.  of  the  fifteenth  century  was  brought  forward  con- 
taining tho  words.  Erasmus  has  described  it  as 
"Codex  Britannicus  apud  Anglos  repertus."  There  is 
now  little  doubt  that  the  MS.  in  question  is  identical 
with  the  Cod.  Mimfortianus  in  tho  library  of  Trinity 
College,  Dublin.  Upon  the  fifth  edition  of  Erasmus, 
which  contains  the  words  in  dispute,  R.  Stephens  seems 
in  great  measure  to  have  based  bis  third  edition  (A.D. 
1.550)  of  tho  New  Testament.-  This  third  edition  of 
Stephens  is  the  standard  of  the  received  text  iu  England 
(compare  Scrivener's  Introduction,  and  Liieke,  Diister- 
dieck,  and  Alford's  Commentaries  on  the  1st  Epistle 
of  St.  John).  The  interpolated  words  were  pro- 
bably, as  suggested  above,  originally  written  by  some 
early  writer  of  the  North  African  Church  iu  the 
m.argin  of  his  MS.  containing  the  1st  Epistle  of  St. 
John  opposite  the  passage  which  treats  of  "  the  Spu-it, 
and  the  water,  and  the  blood."  In  the  three  bearing 
their  perpetual  witness,  agreeing  in  one,  he  saw  a 
symbol  which  required  no  great  effort  of  the  imagi- 
nation to  be  construed  as  a  symbol  of  the  ever-blessed 
Trinity.  That  the  Latin  Church  of  North  Africa 
loved  to  trace  such  symbolism,  and  to  see  these  alle- 
gorical allusions,  we  have  fair  proof  in  such  writings 
as  Tertullian's  treatise  against  Praxeas  and  in  his  tract 
De  Ptidicitid.  From  the  margin  the  words  gradually 
found  their  way  into  the  text,  and  evidently  began  to 
be  well  known  iu  the  thu-d  century. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  some  devout  reverent  minds 
may,  perhaps,  shrink  from  the  deliberate  rejection  of 
this  famous  text,  which  has  been  so  often  quoted  in 
support  of  a  great  doctrine  of  Christianity.  Surely, 
though,  such  fears  are  groimdless,  for  the  great 
doctrines  of  our  faith  rest  on  foundations  too  massive 
to  be  shaken  by  the  rejection  of  any  single  text,  how- 
ever weighty  and  conclusive.  The  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  set  forward  in  this  most  ancient  but  clearly 
interpolated  passage  rests  on  no  sohtary  statement  of 
apostle  or  prophet  or  evangelist,  but  on  evidence  col- 
lected from  the  whole  canon  of  Scripture — evidence,  too, 
interpreted  M-ith  one  mind  by  the  Catholic  Church  in 
all  lands  for  well  nigh  eighteen  centuries. 

-  K.  Stephens  made  also  great  use  of  the  Ccmplutensiau 
Polygrlott  of  Cardinal  Xiraenes,  published  at  Alcala,  in  Spain, 
A.D.  1514 — 1520.  The  famous  verse  in  this  great  edition  was 
actually  acknowledged  to  have  been  translated  from  the  X^atin, 
and  not  derived  from  any  Greek  MS.  Stephens  also  collated, 
with  more  or  less  care,  fifteen  IdSS. ;  but  it  has  never  been  shown 
with  the  least  probability  that  he  found  the  disputed  verse  iu  any 
Greek  uncial  MS. 


ILLUSTRATIONS  TROM   EASTERN  MANNERS  AND   CUSTOMS. 


119 


TABLE  SHOWING  THE  MORE  IMPOETANT  CEITICAL  EVIDENCE  FOE  AND  AGAINST  THE  DISPUTED  WOEDS 

IN  1  JOHN  V.   7. 


The    words    are    omitted  iu 
the  undermeutioned  uncialMSS. 

CENT. 


N 

Codes  Sinaiticus 

IV. 

B 

„      Vaticauus 

IV. 

G  orL 

„      Angelicus") 

or       [ 

IX. 

PassioneiJ 

K 

„      Mosquensis 

IX, 

Omitted  in  188  cursives  which 
have  been  collated,  besides  some 
60  Lectionaries. 

(Comp.  Scrivener,  Introduction, 
and  Alf.,  Apparatus  Criticus  to 
Vol  IV.,  Partii.) 


The  words  are  pound  in  no 
uncial,  and  only  in  a  very  fuw 
cursive  MSS.  of  late  date. 


They    are    contained   in   the 
following  cursives : — 

CENT. 

Codes  Monfortiauus      XVI. 
j  Vaticanus 
*'    \  Ottobouiauus       XV. 


Omitted  in  all  ancient  versions 
except  those  mentioned      ^&' 


They  are  contained  in  1  MS. 
of  the  old  Latiti,  the  Speculum 
of  St.  Ang-.  spoken  of  above,  and 
in  most  though  not  in  the  best 
MSS.  of  the  Vulgate. 


FATHERS. 


No  Greelc  Father  has  everliCL-u 
shown  to  have  quoted  the  dis- 
puted text. 


Certain     Latin    fathers 
quoted  the  words. 

CENT. 

Cyprian 
Vigilius  of  "1 

Thapsus  J 
Eugeuius,    Bp.  )     _ 

of  Carthage  J 
Fulgentiua     1 

of  Ruspse  ) 


have 

III. 

V.   (end  of) 

(     ..     ) 


VI.    ( 


) 


It  will  be  seen  from  this  table  that  the  evidence  for  the 
text  in  question  is  extremely  scanty,  and  entirely  from 


the  Latin  Chui-eh.     It  is  found  only  in  a  few  cursive 
MSS.  of  lato  date,  and  is  quoted  only  by  Latin  fathers. 


ILLUSTEATIONS   FEOM   EASTEEN  MANNEES   AND   CUSTOMS. 

BY   THE    KEV.    C.    D.    GINSBUBG,    LL.D. 
III. — EARLY  ATTENDANCE   AT   THE   SANCTUARY  BOTH    MORNING  AND   EVENING. 


rE   have  already  seen   that  at  the  ago   of 
thirteen  the  Hebrew  youth  is  inducted  as 
a  member  of  the  congfregation  of  Israel. 
The  early  attendance,  therefore,  at  a  place 
of    worship,  both  morning  and  evening,  which  consti- 
tutes the  third  of  the  decade  of  duties,  was  considered 
of    paramoimt   importance,   inasmuch    as    thereby   he 
openly  professed  Ids  faith  in  tlie  God  of  his  fathers, 
and  acknowledged  his  responsibility   to  keep   up  the 
organised  religious  and  social  life  which  was  to  a  great 
extent   regulated  by  the  synagogue.     Now,  among  all 
the  Jewish  institutions,  there  is  none  which  fui-nishes 
so  many  interesting  illustrations  of  different  passages 
of  the   New   Testament  as  the  synagogue.     Not  only 
was  the  synagogue  the   scene  where   Christ   first   ap- 
peared in  public  as  a  teacher   (Matt.  iv.   23;   Mark 
i.  21 ;   Luke  iv.  15) ;  but  he  continued  frequenting  it 
and  preaching  in  it,  on  the  Sabbath  day  (Matt.  ix.  35  ; 
xiii.  54;  Mark  vi.  2  ;  Luke  iv.  44;  ri.  6;  xiii.  10 ;  John 
vi.  59;  viii.  20),  healing  the  sick  (Matt.  xii.  9,  &c. ;  Mark 
i.  23 ;   iii.  1 ;    Luke  vi.  6),  and   rebuking  the  abuses 
practised  in  it,  both  at  prayer  and  in  the  administration 
of  charity  (Matt.  vi.  2,  5).     Ho  refers  to  the  chief  seats 
coveted  by  those  who  seek  after  distinction  (Matt,  sxiii. 
6 ;  Mark  xii.  39 ;   Luke  xi.  43 ;  xx.  46),  and  teUs  his 
disciples  that  for  his  sake  they  shall  bo  brought  before 
and  scom-ged  in  the  synagogue  (Matt.  x.  17  ;    xxiii.  34  ; 
Mark  xiii.  9;    Luke  xii.  11;    xxi.  12).      The  apostles, 
too,  delivered  many  of  their  discourses  and  performed 
many  of  their  deeds  in  the  synagogues.     It  was  to  the 
synagogue  of  Damascus  that  Said  obtained  letters  from 
the  high  priest  at  Jerusalem  to  persecute  "  the  disciples 
of  the  Lord  "  (Acts  ix.  1),  and  it  was  in  these  very 
synagogues  that  St.  Paul  preached   his  first  sennons 
(ibid.  ver.  20).     Hence,  to  understand  the  fuU  force  of 


many  of  these  allusions,  we  must  examine  the  origin, 
structure,  and  internal  arrangement  of  the  synagogue. 

Tradition,  which  is  never  at  a  loss  to  account  for  any- 
thing, solemnly  assures  us  that  Shem,  the  son  of  Noah, 
and  the  progenitor  of  that  branch  of  the  Noachic  family 
from   whom    the  Hebrews   descended,   founded    these 
houses  for  contemplation  and  prayer.     It  is  only  when 
we  bear  this  tradition  in  mind  that  we  can  understand 
why  the  passage,  "  God  .shaU  enlarge  Japheth,  and  he 
shall  dwell  in  the  tents  of  Shem "  (Gen.  ix.  27),  has 
been  paraphrased  in  the  so-called  Jerusalem  Targum, 
"  God  vriU  make  beautiful  the  territory  of  Japheth,  and 
his  sons  shall  become  proselytes,  and  abide  in  the  houses 
of  contemplation  of  Shem;"  and  why  the  words  "and 
she  (Rebekah)  went  to  inquire  of  the  Lord  "  (Gen.  xxv. 
22).  are  translated  in  the  same  Targum,  "  and  she  went 
to  the  house  of  contemplation  of    Shem,  the  cider,  to 
pray  for  mercy  from  liofore  the  Lord."     It  was  but 
natural  that  if  Shorn,  who  was  simply  the  remote  head 
of   that   branch  of    the   family  from  wliich  the   Jews 
came,  was  most  obviously  for  this  reason  made  to  build 
synagogues,  Moses,  who  gave  them  the  very  law,  the 
symbol  of  the  Divine  manifestation,  around  which  the 
worshipping  Israelites  congregated,  should  pre-eminently 
be   constituted  tho  father   of   synagogues    in    'Egypt. 
Hence  Josephus   tolls   us   that   Moses   had   tho  Jews 
"assembled  together  for  the  hearing  of  the  law  and 
learning  it  exactly,  and  this  not  once  or  twice  or  oftener, 
but  every  week  "  {Af/ainst  Ajtion,  ii.  18).    We  are  there- 
fore not  surprised  to  find  Benjamin  of  Tudola,  whose 
pilgriniiigo  extended  from  A.D.  1159  to  1173,  assure  us 
that  "in "the  outskirts  of  the  city  [near  tho  pyramid.s]  is 
the  very  ancient  synagogue  of  our  great  master  Moses.''' 


1  Compare  The  liinerarii   o/   Rabbi  Benjamin  of  Tudela,  vol. 
p.  153,  ed,  Asher,  London,  ly-tO. 


120 


THE   BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


Tins  celebrated  traveller  also  tells  us  that  ho  saw  the 
synagogues  built  by  David,  Obadiah,  Nahum,  and  Ezra. 
Without  attaching  any  more  importance  to  the  state- 
ment of  Benjamin  of  Tudela  that  the  synagogue,  which 
stUl  existed  in  the  Middle  Ages,  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Cairo,  was  the  edifice  which  Moses  erected  for  Divine 
worship,  than  to  the  solemn  assurance  that  the  skeleton 
of  the  enormous  fish,  and  the  house  exhibited  at  Jaffa, 
are  the  remains  of  the  veritable  whale  that  swallowed 
Jonah,  and  of  the  abode  of  Simon  the  tanner,  still  the 
fact  that  the  tradition  about  the  founding  of  places  of 
worship  and  instruction  by  the  great  lawgiver  existed 
before  the  time  of  Christ,  explains  the  remark  of  St. 
James,  "  Moses  of  old  time  hath  in  every  city  them 
that  preach  him,  being  read  in  the  synagogues  every 
Sabbath  day  "  (Acts  xv.  21). 

Whatever  may  be  the  obscurity  about  the  precise  date 
as  to  when  synagogues  were  first  established,  there  are 
undoubted  traces  that,  as  far  back  as  the  days  of  Elisha, 
the  devout  Jews  were  in  the  habit  of  assembling  in 
the  abodes  of  prophets  and  men  of  God  for  instruc- 
tion and  meditation.  This  is  clearly  indicated  in  the 
question  which  the  husband  asked  the  Shunammite,  who 
wanted  a  servant  and  an  ass  to  take  her  to  the  man  of 
God.  "  Wherefore,"  inquired  her  husband,  "  wilt  thou 
go  to  him  to-day  ?  It  is  neither  new  moon  nor  Sabbath  " 
(2  Kings  iv.  23).  This  unquestionably  shows  that  on 
Sabbath  days  and  new  moons  it  was  customary  for  both 
men  and  women  to  resort  to  the  houses  of  acknowledged 
authorities  for  religious  exercises.  The  cause  of  their 
assembling  at  the  house  of  the  prophet  rather  than  con- 
aresiatinsr  amonsr  themselves,  is  to  be  sought  in  the  fact 
that  the  reading  and  the  exposition  of  the  law  consti- 
tuted the  principal  part  of  the  service.  A  copy  of  the 
law,  however,  at  that  time  was  of  the  greatest  rarity. 
The  possession  of  such  a  codex  was  a  fortune,  and  could 
only  be  acquired  by  the  very  wealthiest  of  the  nation, 
and  by  the  monarchs.  Hence  when  Jehoshaphat  ordered 
the  Levites  to  go  through  the  different  cities  of  Judea, 
to  instruct  the  people  in  the  law  of  God,  these  teachera 
were  obliged  to  take  a  copy  with  them  (2  Cliron.  xvii. 
9),  whilst  Hilkiah  could  only  find  one  in  the  Temple 
(2  Kings  xxii.  8 ;  2  Cliron.  xxxiv.  14).  As  the  men  of 
God  who  had  acquired  a  national  reputation  were  those 
who  knew  the  law  by  heart,  the  devout  Jews,  who  on 
these  occasions  wanted  to  hear  the  law  recited  and  ex- 
plained, had,  therefore,  to  assemble  around  the  reputed 
depository  of  the  law.  Hence  the  private  house  or  a 
secluded  spot  in  the  open  air  belonging  to  the  possessor 
of  the  law,  either  actually  or  orally,  was  originally  the 
place  of  assembly  or  the  synagogue. 

It  must  not,  however,  be  supposed  that  the  Jews, 
prior  to  the  Babylonish  captivity,  assembled  tliemselves 
every  Sabbath  or  new  moon,  at  a  particular  place  set 
apart  for  religious  worsliip.  Besides  tho  obligation  to 
appear  throe  times  a  year  in  tho  sanctuary  at  Jerusalem, 
the  Old  Testament  does  not  enjoin  meeting  together  in 
any  other  place.  It  left  the  matter  quite  optional.  If 
the  people  felt  that  they  ought  to  meet  together  in  any 
locality  where   the   kw  could  bo   recited,  rather  than 


worship  God  at  home  at  the  head  of  their  respective 
families,  tho  Old  Testament  did  not  forbid  it.  The  in- 
crease of  places  of  meeting,  therefore,  was  gradual,  and 
kept  pace  with  the  increased  demand  on  the  part  of  the 
Jews  to  become  more  intimately  acquainted  with  the 
contents  of  the  law,  and  to  hear  words  of  comfort  and 
consolation  from  those  who  possessed  the  gift  of  pro- 
jjhecy.  Hence  it  was  only  in  later  times,  when  the 
grinding  oppression  of  foreign  powers  began  to  be  felt 
by  the  Hebrews,  that  they  met  more  frequently  to  listen 
to  the  recital  of  those  cheering  promises  made  to  their 
fathers,  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob,  and  to  learn  more- 
accurately  the  precepts  of  the  law,  the  neglect  of  which 
had  brought  these  sufferings  upon  them.  It  is  for  this 
reason  that  systematic  meetings  on  days  of  humiliation 
and  for  instruction  became  prevalent  during  the  exUe, 
when  the  Temple  worship  was  in  abeyance  (Zoch.  vii.  3, 
5  ;  viii.  19 ;  Ezra  x.  1 — 9  ;  Neh.  viii.  1 — 3 ;  ix.  1 — 3  ;  xiii. 
1 — 3 1.  These  "assemblies  of  God,"  as  the  Old  Testa- 
ment calls  them,  or  "  houses  of  assembly,"  as  they  are 
called  in  post-Biblical  Hebrew,  in  the  course  of  time 
became  both  very  popular  and  numerous.  Heuce  the 
Psalmist,  who  mourns  over  the  rejection  of  his  people 
by  God,  and  the  general  devastation  of  the  country  by 
tho  onemy,  at  the  time  of  the  Maceabeans,  enumerates,, 
amongst  other  dire  calamities,  that  they  have  burnt  "  all 
tho  assemblies  of  God  "  (Ps.  Ixxiv.  8).  The  Authorised 
Version,  therefore,  which  foUows  the  Geneva  Bible 
(1560),  has  rightly  appreciated  the  import  of  this  phrase 
by  translating  it  "  the  synagogues  of  God."  It  is,  how- 
ever, to  be  borne  in  mind  that  this  is  the  only  instance- 
in  which  "  synagogue  "  occurs  in  King  James's  version 
of  the  Old  Testiiment,  and,  indeed,  the  only  passage  in 
which  it  could  be  justified  in  the  technicjil  sense  of 
the  word.  Tho  earliest  date  which  we  possess  of  the 
building  of  such  a  house  of  prayer  is  circa  217 — 215  B.C., 
when  we  are  told  that  the  Alexandrkn  Jews  built  on& 
at  Ptolemais  to  commemorate  their  deliverance  from 
the  contemplated  massacre  of  their  people  decreed  by 
Ptolemy  IV.  (PhUopator)  (3  Mace.  vii.  20). 

When  synagogues  became  a  permanent  institution,  and 
multiplied  wherever  the  Jews  resided,  l)efore  and  at  tlie 
time  of  Christ,  tho  spiritual  guides  of  the  nation  found  it 
necessary  to  enact  certain  laws  to  regulate  tho  eligibility 
of  a  site,  the  structure  of  the  building,  and  the  internal 
arrangements.  As  it  was  ordained  that  wherever  ten 
Jews  resided  who  were  of  that  age  when  they  became 
responsible  members  of  the  congregation  of  Israel,  they 
were  boimd  to  constitute  themselves  a  worshipping  body 
or  an  ecclesia  in  the  technical  sense  {Berachoth,  21  6); 
it  stands  to  reason  that  their  place  of  assembly  or 
synagogue  was  of  a  very  humble  character.  An  upper 
chamber  in  the  house  of  one  of  tho  members  where 
they  assembled  .themselves  was  the  legal  synagoguff, 
just  as  it  is  to  this  day,  whenever  ten  Jews  happen 
to  sojourn  in  any  town,  one  of  them  gives  up  one  of 
his  rooms  for  tho  meeting.  It  was  in  such  an  upper 
cliamber  in  a  private  house  that  the  eleven  disciples,  just 
one  above  tlie  minimum  number  legally  required  to  con- 
stitute a  worshipping  congregation,  assembled  together 


ILLUSTRATIONS  FROM  EASTERN  MANNERS  AND  CUSTOMS. 


121 


INTEBIOB   or    A    MODERN    STNAGUUUE. 


for  prayer  (Acts  i.  13,  14).  Outside  the  city,  however, 
it  was  deemed  more  desirable  to  have  tlio  hoiiso  of 
prayer  by  the  river-side,  because  the  worshippers  could 
have  the  use  of  the  wafer  for  immersions,  and  because 
they  could  more  easily  engage  in  the  Divine  service  with- 
out distraction.  Hence  in  the  decree  of  the  Halicamas- 
seans  the  Jews  were  allowed  to  "  make  their  proseucha; 
[houses  of  prayer]  at  the  sea-side,  according  to  the 
custom  of  their  fathers  "  ( Josephus,  Antiq.  xiv.  10,  §  23). 
This  explains  the  remark  that  St.  Paul  and  his  fellow- 
labourer,  when  at  Philippi,  "  went  on  the  Sabbath  out  of 
the  city  by  a  river-side,  where  prayer  was  wont  to  be 
made ;  and  we  sat  down  and  spoke  to  the  women  which 
resorted  thither  "  (Acts  x\-i.  13) ;  or  as  it  ought  to  be 
translated,  "  where,  according  to  custom,  was  a  place  of 


prayer."  Like  the  Temple,  these  houses  of  prayer  or 
synagogues  were  frequently  without  a  roof,  which,  of 
coiu-se,  obtained  in  those  countries  whore  the  rain  rarely 
falls  and  is  confined  to  certain  seasons  of  the  year. 
Hence  the  remark  of  Epiplianius,  "  There  were  anciently 
places  of  prayer  without  the  city,  both  among  the  Jews 
and  the  Samaritans.  .  .  .  There  was  a  place  of  prayer 
at  Sichem,  now  called  Neapolis,  without  the  city,  in  the 
fields,  in  the  form  of  a  theatre,  open  to  the  air,  and 
without  covering,  built  by  the  Samaritans,  who  in  all 
things  imitated  the  Jews  "  (Contr.  Hceres.  iii. ;  Hercs.  80). 
In  the  towns,  however,  where  the  Jews  wore  both 
numerous  and  wealthy,  the  synagognes  were  massive 
and  imposing  edifices,  and  were  built  iu  accordance  with 
the  canons  laid  down  by  the  spiritual  authorities.     They 


122 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


were  generally  erected  on  an  elevated  place  or  on  a 
summit,  since  the  Temple  was  so  situate,  and  because, 
according  to  the  traditional  explanation,  Prov.  i.  21  says 
that  Divine  wisdom  "  crieth  on  high  places,"  and  Ezra 
ix.  9  declares  that  God  "  hath  extended  mercy  unto  us  in 
the  sight  of  the  kings  of  Persia,  to  give  us  a  re^-iving, 
to  set  up  [on  high]  the  house  of  our  God."  Takuig 
the  Mosaic  tabernacle  and  the  Solomonic  Temple  as  the 
prototype,  the  door  of  the  synagogue  was  on  the  east, 
aiid  tiie  ark  containing  the  scrolls  of  the  law  and  the 
windows  were  in  the  western  wall,  so  that  on  entering 
the  Israelites  might  at  once  face  the  front.  Hence  the 
people  praying  in  the  synagogue,  Uko  the  worshippers 
in  the  tabernacle  and  in  the  Temple,  stood  with  their 
faces  to  the  west.  The  position  of  the  ark  at  the  west, 
and  the  turning  of  the  face  at  prayer  in  that  direction, 
we  are  told,  were  in  opposition  to  those  nations  who 
worshipped  the  sun.  These  had  the  entrance  into  their 
temples  at  the  west,  and  turned  their  faces  to  the  east 
where  the  sun  rises.'  Hence  to  tui'n  one's  face  to  the 
east,  and  thus  to  turn  one's  back  to  the  Temple,  became 
in  the  Bible  a  description  of  those  who  forsook  the 
worship  of  the  true  God.  Thus  Hezekiah,  iu  describing 
the  idolatrous  worship  of  the  Jews,  says  that  "  they 
had  done  e\il  iu  the  eyes  of  the  Lord  our  God,  and  have 
turned  their  faces  from  the  habitation  of  the  Lord,  and 
turned  their  backs  to  it  "  (2  Chron.  xxix.  6).  Still  more 
strikingly  and  explicitly  is  this  practice  described  by 
the  prophet  Ezekiel  (viii.  16),  "Behold, .at  the  door  of 
the  temple  of  the  Lord,  between  the  porch  and  the 
altar,  were  about  five  and  twenty  men,  with  their  backs 
toward  the  temple  of  the  Lord,  and  their  faces  toward 
the  east;    and   they  worshipped  the  sun  toward  the 

1  Comp.  Maimonides,  More  Nchnclutn,  iii.  iS. 


east."  This  practice  gave  rise  to  the  phrases  "  They 
have  txirned  their  back  to  me  and  not  their  face  "  (Jer. 
ii.  27 ;  xxxii.  33),  "  They  have  cast  me  behind  their  back  " 
(Ezek.  xxiii.  3.5),  to  describe  gi^'ing  up  allegiance  to  the 
God  of  their  fathers. 

It  is,  however,  to  be  remarked  that  those  syna- 
gogues only  which  were  buUt  in  the  localities  east  of 
Jerusalem  had  the  entrances  in  the  east  wall.  The 
canon  laid  down  for  those  who  dwell  in  other  parts  of 
the  world  is  that  "all  the  wor.shippers  in  Israel  are 
to  have  their  faces  turned  to  that  part  of  the  world 
whore  Jei-usalem,  the  Temple  and  the  Holy  of  Holies 
are"  {Berachoth,  30  a).  Hence  those  Jews  who  reside 
in  Europe  place  the  door  in  the  west,  and  have  the  ark 
and  the  windows  in  the  east  wall,  whither  they  turn 
then-  faces  during  prayer. 

The  practice  of  the  wor-shippers  turning  their  faces 
in  all  parts  of  the  world  to  the  central  sanctuary  is  of 
extreme  antiquity.  The  Psalmist,  already,  when  pray- 
ing, "  lifted  up  his  hands  towards  the  Holy  of  Holies  " 
(Ps.  ixviii.  2).  In  the  dedication  prayer  of  the  Temple, 
Solomon  asks  God  to  hear  his  people  in  time  of  calamity 
whenever  "  they  spread  forth  their  hands  towards  the 
sanctuary  "  (1  Kings  viii.  38).  Daniel  prayed  with  his 
face  to  Jerusalem  (Dan.  x\.  10).  Any  one  who  enters 
an  orthodox  Jewish  house  in  the  present  day  wiU  see 
a  picture  with  the  name  Mizrach  on  it  hung  on  the 
eastern  wall,  to  which  every  member  of  the  family 
turns  his  face  when  reciting  the  daily  morning  and 
evening  prayer.  Mohammed,  who  has  borrowed  so 
much  from  the  Jews,  has  also  ordained  that  the  faith- 
fid  should  turn  their  faces  to  the  temple  at  Mecca 
(Koran,  Stira  ii.),  which  is  called  Kibia,  that  is,  f,urning 
the  face,  imitating  the  very  sound  of  the  word  used  in 
Daniel  (I'kabel  Jemshalayim). 


THE  HISTOKY    OF    THE   ENGLISH    BIBLE. 

BT   THE    REV.    W.    F.    MOULTON,    M.A.,    PROFESSOR   OP    CLASSICS,    WESLEYAN    COLLEGE,    RICHMOND. 


Ii  F  Tyndale's  movements  dm-ing  the  first 
year  of  his  Continental  life  wo  have  very 
scanty  information.  It  appears  certain 
that  he  arrived  in  Hamburg  in  May,  1524 ; 
that  he  was  in  the  same  city  in  the  early  spring  of 
the  following  year ;  and  that  a  few  months  later  he 
was  superintending  the  printing  of  his  New  Testament 
at  Cologne.  It  is  very  possible  that  Tyndalo  remained 
in  Hamburg  for  a  year,  engaged  in  tlie  preparation  of 
his  translation :  the  fact  that  Hamburg  did  not  then 
possess  a  printing  press'  can  hardly  be  regarded  as 
conclusive  against  this  view.  On  the  other  li.and,  we 
have  contemporaiy  evidence  that  Tyndalo  visited  Luther 
about  this  time.  Sir  Thomas  More  assei-ts  that  "Tyn- 
dalo, as  soon  as  he  got  him  hence,  got  him  to  Luther 
straight;"  that  at  the  time  of  his  translation  of  the 
Now  Testament  ho  was  with  Luther  at  Wittcmberg ; 

'  Demaus,  Life  of  Tyndale,  p.  92. 


and  that  the  confederacy  between  him  and  Luther  was  a 
thing  well  known.  Tyndalo,  in  reply,  simply  denies  tlie 
last  charge,  that  he  w.as  confederate  ivith  Luther.  It 
is  needless  to  C|Uoto  other  statements  to  the  same  effect. 
Clear  and  definite  as  they  appear  to  be,  they  may 
perhaps  be  explained  away,  as  suggested  by  the  pre- 
vailing tendency  to  associate  all  work  similar  to  Luther's 
with  this  Reformer  himself.  On  the  whole,  however, 
it  is  safer  to  accept  the  evidence  of  contemporaries,  and 
to  assume  that  either  in  1-524  or  in  1525  Tyndale  spent 

I  some  time  at  Wittemberg.  Another  question  wliich  has 
been  much  discussed  is  of  considerable  interest.  W.as 
any  portion  of  the  New  Testament  published  in  the 
course  of  this  year  ?  There  is  some  reason  to  beliovo 
that  Tyndale  gave  to  the  world  his  translation  of  the 
first  two  Gospels  before  the  middle  of  1525 ;   but  tho 

j  evidence  adduced  is  somewhat  uncertain,  and  the  verdict 

I  must  be  "  not  proven." 


THE   HISTORY    OF   THE    ENGLISH    BIBLE. 


123 


We  reach  firm  groimd  in  the  autumn  of  1525.  Our 
information  is  deriyed  from  an  enemy,  who  triumphantly 
records  liis  success  in  embarrassing  and  partially  frus- 
tratmg  Tj-ndale's  work.  In  1525,  John  Dobcnek,  better 
known  as  Cochlseus,  was  living  in.  exile  at  Cologne, 
engaged  in  literary  labours.  Becoming  intimate  with 
the  printers  of  Cologne,  he  heard  them  boast  at  times,  in 
their  cujis,  that  England  would  soon  become  Lutheran. 
He  heard,  moreover,  that  in  Cologne  were  lurking  two 
Eno-lishmen,  learned  and  eloquent  men,  well  skilled  in 
languages ;  but  aU  his  efforts  to  gain  a  sight  of  these 
strangers  were  without  avail.  At  last,  plying  one  of 
the  printers  with  wine,  Cochlseus  drew  from  him  the 
secret  of  the  Lutheran  design  on  England.  The  two 
Englishmen  were  apostates'  who  had  learnt  the  German 
language  at  Wittomberg,  and  had  rendered  Luther's 
Testament  into  English.  This  English  Testament  they 
had  brought  to  Cologne,  that  it  might  be  multiplied  by 
the  printers  into  many  thousands,  and,  concealed  among 
other  merchandise,  might  find  a  way  into  England.  So 
great  was  their  confidence  that  they  had  sought  to  have 
6,000  copies  printed ;  but  through  the  timidity  of  the 
printers  only  3,000  were  issued  from  the  press.  These 
copies,  in  quarto,  had  already  heen  priuted  as  far  as  tlio 
letter  K  (that  is,  as  far  as  the  tenth  sheet,  probably  a 
little  beyond  the  end  of  St.  Matthew's  Gospel).  The 
expense  was  met  by  English  merchants,  who  had  also 
engaged  to  convey  the  work  secretly  into  England,  and 
to  diffuse  it  widely  in  that  country.  On  receiving  this 
information,  Cochlajus  lost  no  time  in  revealing  the  plot 
to  Hermann  Rinck,  a  nobleman  of  Cologne,  well  known 
to  Henry  VIII.  and  to  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  Having 
convinced  himself  of  the  correctness  of  the  account 
received,  Rinck  went  to  the  senate,  and  obtained  an 
interdict  of  the  work.  On  this  the  two  Englishmen, 
carrying  off  the  printed  sheets,  fled  hastily  from 
Cologne,  and  went  up  the  Rhine  to  Worms.  Their 
enemies  could  do  no  more  than  send  letters  to  Henry, 
Wolsey,  and  Fisher,  warning  them  of  the  danger  at 
hand." 

Worms  was  a  city  in  every  way  suitable  for  Tyndale's 
purpose.  Cologne  was  devoted  to  the  Romish  faith 
Worms  was  all  Lutheran :  both  cities  enjoyed  consider- 
able intercourse  with  England.  In  comparative  quiet 
Tyndale  now  pursued  and  completed  his  work,  carrying 
it  farther  than  he  had  at  first  designed.  The  edition 
commenced  by  Quentel,  the  Cologne  printer,  was  in 
quarto :  at  Worms  Tyndale  not  only  completed  this 
edition,  but  also  brought  out  an  edition  in  octavo.^  Of 
each  of  these  editions,  which  will  be  described  in  detail 
hereafter,  3,000  copies  were  printed.  No  copy  that 
we  possess   contains  the  title-page,  but  we  know  on 


1  The  second  apostate  was  'Williain  Eoye,  who  for  some  tirao 
acted  as  Tyudale*s  amnmieusis. 

-  The  letters  of  CocblEeus  in  the  original  Latin,  with  a  transla- 
tion by  Mr,  Anderson,  are  given  by  Arher,  Facsimile,  pp.  18 — 24. 

3  See  Westcott's  Hisforj;  of  the  English  Bihle^  pp.  32,  33 ;  Arber, 
pp.  26,  27,  65,  G6.  It  may  now  be  considered  certain  that  the 
Worms  printer  was  P.  Schoeffer,  son  of  the  great  printer  of  tliat 
name,  who  was  in  partuerslup  with  Fust. 


Tyndale's   own  atithority*  that  the  work   was   issued 
without  the  translator's  name. 

The  Testaments  reached  England  probably  in  the 
spring  of  1526.  Cochlaeus  was  not  the  only  one  who 
gave  notice  of  their  coming.  Leo,  the  king's  ahnoner 
(afterwards  Archbishop  of  York),  wrote  t«  Henry  in 
December,  1525,  that,  according  to  certain  information 
received  by  him  while  passing  through  France,  "  an 
Englishman,  at  the  solicitation  and  instance  of  Luther, 
with  whom  he  is,  hath  translated  tho  New  Testament 
into  English,  and  within  few  days  inteudeth  to  arrive 
with  the  same  imprinted  in  England."  There  was  no 
lack  of  willingness  on  the  part  of  tho  authorities  to  take 
this  warning,  but  we  have  no  record  of  any  public  action 
until  the  autumn  of  1526.  Wo  hear  then  of  a  meeting 
of  bishops  to  deliberate  on  the  measm-es  to  bo  adopted. 
Our  account  is  taken  from  a  poem  by  Roye,  Tyndale's 
former  companion,  which  contains  "  A  brefo  Dialoge 
betwene  two  prestes  servauntes,  named  Watkyn  and 
Jeffraye^:" — 

"  Jif.  But  uowe  of  Standisshe''  accusaciou 
Erefly  to  malie  declaracion, 

Thus  to  the  Cardiuall  he  spake: 
*  Pleaseth  youre  honourable  Grace, 
Here  is  chaunsed  a  pitious  cace. 

And  to  the  Churche  a  grett  lacke. 
The  Gospell  in  cure  Englisshe  tonge. 
Of'  laye  men  to  be  red  and  songe, 

Is  nowe  bidder  come  to  remayne. 
Which  many  heretykes  shall  make, 
Except  youre  Grace  some  waye  take 

By  youre  authorite  bym  to  rostrayue.' 

Wat,  But  what  sayde  the  Cardiuall  hero  at? 
Jof.    He  spake  the  wordes  of  Pilat, 

Sayinge,  '  I  fynde  no  fault  therin.' 
Howe  be  it,  the  bisshops  assembled, 
Amonge  theym  he  examened, 

What  was  best  to  determyu  ? 
Then  answered  bisshop  Cayphas,^ 
That  a  grett  parte  better  it  was 

The  Gospell  to  be  condemned  ; 
Lest  their  vices  manyfolde 
Shulde  be  knowen  of  yougo  and  olde, 

Their  estate  to  be  contenipned. 
The  Cardiuall  then  incontinent-' 
Agayust  the  Gospell  gave  judgement, 

Sayiuge  to  breune  he  deserved. 
Wherto  all  the  bisshoppis  cryed, 
Answerynge,  '  It  cannot  be  deuyed 

He  is  worthy  so  to  be  served.' 

Jef.  They  sett  nott  by  the  Gospell  a  flye  : 
Diddest  thou  nott  heare  whatt  villany 
They  did  vnto  the  Gospell  ? 
Wiii.  Why,  did  they  as^aynst  liym  couspyre? 
Jqf.  By  my  trothe  they  sett  bym  a  fyre 
Openly  in  London  cite. 
Tr^t.  Who  caused  it  so  to  be  done  ? 
.7('/.  In  sothe  the  Bisshoppe  of  London, 
With  the  Cardinallis  authorite: 
Which  at  Paulis  crosse  eruestly 
Denounced  it  to  be  heresy 

That  the  Gospell  shuld  come  to  lyght ; 


'*  See  his  Parable  of  tfie  Wielded  Mammon,  in  his  TToW.-s,  vol.  i., 
p.  "7  (Parker  Society). 

■J  Which  *'  represents  at  least  the  popular  opinion  as  to  the  parts 
played  by  the  several  actors.''    (Westcott,  p.  36.) 

■•  Standish,  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph. 

'  By. 

'^  Tnnstall,  Bishop  of  London. 

3  Immediately. 


124 


THE  BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


Callynge  them  heretikes  execrable 
Whiohe  caused  the  Gospell  venerable 

To  come  vnto  laye  mens  syght. 
He  declared  ther-?  iu  his  furiousnes, 
That  be  fownde  erroures  more  and  les 

Above  thre  thousaude  in  the  translacion. 
Howe  be  it,  when  all  cam  to  i)cs, 
I  dare  saye  vnable  he  was 

Of  one  erroure  to  make  probacion."! 

The  utmost  efforts  were  used  to  prevent  the  intro- 
duction of  the  forbidden  books  into  England,  and  to 
discover  and  destroy  the  copies  which  were  already  iu 
circulation.  Miuiy  copies  were  bought  up  for  largo 
Slims  of  money,  which  afforded  means  for  reprints  and 
new  editions :  accordingly  as  many  as  three  editions 
were  issued  by  Antwerp  printers  iu  1526  and  the  two 
following  years.  The  detailed  narratives  of  search  and 
persecution  are  fidl  of  interest,  but  they  lie  beyond  the 
limits  of  our  .space." 

lu  the  midst  of  tliis  turmoil  Tyndale  quietly  pursued 
his  labours.  At  first  he  was  not  recognised  in  England 
as  the  author  of  tho  obnoxious  translation,  which  bore 
no  name  on  the  title-page.  The  secret,  however,  coidd 
not  long  be  kept.  Wolsey,  connecting  Tyndale  with 
the  satiro  published  (by  Roye)  against  hhnseK,'  used 
vigorous  efforts  to  get  him  into  his  power.  Tyndale 
now  found  it  necessary  to  leave  Worms.  In  1527, 
probably,  ho  removed  to  Marburg  in  Hesse  Cassel, 
wliere  ho  spent  tho  greater  part  of  the  four  years 
following,  leaving  Marburg  for  Antwerp  early  in  1531. 
At  Marburg  his  principal  doctrmal  and  controversi;d 
works  were  printed,  at  the  press  of  Hans  Luf t ;  as  his 
Parable  of  the  Wicked  Mammon  (1528),  his  Treatise  07i 
the  Obedience  of  a  Christian  Man  (1528),  the  Practice 
of  Prelates  (1530).  The  work  of  translation,  however, 
was  not  neglected.  After  the  New  Testament,  Tyndale 
devoted  himself  to  tho  Old,  commencing  with  the  Pen- 
tateuch. Eoxe's  statement  is  as  follows :  "  At  what 
time  Tyndale  had  translated  the  fifth  book  of  Moses, 
called  Deuteronomy,  minding  to  print  the  same  iu 
Hamburg,  he  sadcd  tliitherward ;  where  by  the  way, 
upon  tho  coast  of  Holland,  he  suffered  shipwreck,  by 
which  he  lost  all  his  books,  -ivritiugs,  and  copies,  and  so 
was  compelled  to  begin  all  again  anew,  to  his  hindrance 
and  doubling  of  his  labours.  Thus,  having  lost  by  that 
ship  both  money,  his  copies,  and  his  time,  he  came  in 
another  ship  to  Hamburg,  where,  at  his  appointment. 
Master  Coverdale  tarried  for  him,  and  helped  him  in  tho 
translating  of  the  whole  five  Books  of  Moses,  from 
Easter  tUl  December,  in  tho  house  of  a  worshipful 
widow.  Mistress  Margaret  Van  Emmerson,  A.D.  1529  ; 
a  great  sweating  sickness  being  at  the  same  time  in  tho 
town.  So,  having  dispatched  liis  business  at  Hamburg, 
he  returned  afterwards  to  Antwerp  again."^  It  is  hard 
to  reconcile  evoi-y  particular  of  this  narrative  with  what 
we  loai-n  f  rom  other  sources,  and  from  Poxe  himself; 

1  Nearly  300  lines  of  this  satire  are  given  by  Arber,  pp.  ^9 — 32. 

-  One  narrative  especially  we  exclude  with  regret,  as  too  lengthy 
for  quotation.  This  is  the  *'  Story  of  Thomas  Garret,  and  things 
done  in  Oxford,  reported  by  Antony  Delaber :  "  see  Fose,  vol.  v., 
pp.  421 — 127;  Arber,  pp.  57 — (13. 

■*  Demaus,  p.  IGO. 

*  Foxe,  vol.  v.,  p.  130.     Compare  Demaus,  pp,  22D,  230. 


but  there  is  little  doubt  that  it  is  in  tho  main  correct- 
The  Pentateuch  appears  to  have  been  published  at  Mar- 
burg in  1530  or  1531 :  a  second  edition  was  issued  in 
1534.  The  Pentateuch  was  foUcf^ved,  in  1531,  by  tho 
Book  of  Jonah,  probably  printed  at  an  Antwerp  press. 
At  this  period  Tyndale  was  involved  in  active  con- 
troversy ^vith  Sir  T.  More,  who  had  violently  attacked 
his  translation  of  the  New  Testament  and  his  other 
writings.  The  only  part  of  the  controversy  with  which 
we  are  here  concerned  is  that  which  relates  to  Tyndale's 
accuracy  as  a  translator:  More's  strictures  will  be 
noticed  presently.  The  year  1534  is  especially  memor- 
able for  tlie  publication  of  Tyndale's  revised  translation 
of  the  New  Testament,  "  imprinted  at  Antwerp  by 
Marten  Emperowr."  The  title  runs  thus  :  "  The  newe 
Testament  dylygently  corrected  and  compared  with  the 
Greke  by  WiUyam  Tindale,  and  fynesshed  in  tho  yero 
of  ouro  Lorde  God  a.m.d.  &  xxsiill.  in  the  moneth  of 
Nouember."  Besides  the  New  Testament,  this  volume 
contained  a  translation  of  "  the  Epistles  taken  out  of 
the  Old  Testament,  which  are  read  in  the  Church  after 
the  use  of  Salisbury  upon  certain  days  of  the  year." 
These  "  Epistles "  include  78  verses  from  the  Penta- 
teuch ;  51  from  1  Kings,  Proverbs,  and  the  Song  of 
Solomon;  147  from  tho  Prophetical  Books  (chiefly 
from  Isaiah) ;  and  43  from  the  Apocryjdia  (chiefly  from. 
Ecclesiasticus).^  The  work  of  revision  and  translation 
occupied  Tyndale's  attention  to  the  last.  Very  shortly 
before  (or  perhaps  even  after)  his  arrest  appeared  a 
third  edition  of  his  New  Testament,  bearing  marks  of 
assiduous  labour.  In  a  recently  discovered  letter 
written  during  his  Imprisonment,  Tyndale  begs  that 
he  may  be  allowed  the  use  of  his  Hebrew  books,  Bible, 
grammar,  and  dictionary.  There  is  good  reason  for 
believing  that  he  left  behind  him  in  manuscript  a 
translation  of  the  Books  of  the  Old  Testament  from 
Joshua  to  2  Chronicles  inclusive. 

The  touching  details  of  Tyndale's  treacherous  betrayal, 
while  residing  in  the  house  of  his  warm  and  true  friend 
Thomas  Poyntz,  of  Antwerp,  cannot  be  given  here. 
In  May,  1535,  he  was  committed  to  tho  castle  of 
Vilvorde,  near  Brussels.  Notwithstanding  all  tho 
efforts  of  his  friends  in  England  and  In  tho  Low 
Countries  to  procure  for  him  protection,  ho  was  con- 
demned to  death.  On  Friday,  October  6th,  1636,  he 
was  strangled  at  tho  stake,  and  his  body  burnt  to  ashes. 
His  last  words  were,  "  Lord  !  open  the  king  of  England's 
eyes." 

"  And  here  to  end  and  coucludo  this  history  with  a 
few  notes  touching  his  private  behaviour  in  diet,  study, 
and  especially  his  charitable  zeal  and  tender  relieving  of 
the  poor :  First,  he  was  a  man  very  frugal  and  spare  of 
body,  a  great  student,  and  earnest  labourer,  namely 
[especlidly]  iu  the  setting  forth  of  the  Scriptures  of 
God.  He  reserved  or  hallowed  to  himself  two  days  in 
the  week,  which  he  named  his  days  of  pastime,  and 
those  days  were  Monday  the  first  day  in  the  week  and 
Saturday  the  last  day  in  the  week.     On  the  Monday  he 

5  Westcott,  p.  48. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  BIBLE. 


125 


visited  all  such  poor  men  and  women  as  were  fled  out 
of  England  by  reason  of  persecution  into  Antwerp; 
and  those,  well  understanding  their  good  exercises  and 
qualities,  ho  did  very  liberally  comfort  and  relieve ;  and 
in  like  manner  pro^aded  for  the  sick  and  diseased 
persons.  On  the  Saturday  he  walked  round  about  the 
town  in  Antwerp,  seeking  out  every  corner  and  hole 
whoro  he  suspected  any  poor  person  to  dwell  (as  God 
knoweth  there  are  many);  and  where  he  found  any  to  be 
well  occupied,  and  yet  overburdened  with  children,  or 


fruitfully,  sweetly,  and  gently  from  him  (much  like  to 
the  writing  of  St.  John  the  Evangelist),  that  it  was  a 
heavenly  comfort  and  joy  to  the  audience  to  heai'  him 
read  the  Scriptures  :  and  in  like  wise  after  dinner  he 
spent  an  hour  in  the  aforesaid  manner.  Ho  was  a  man 
without  any  spot  or  blemish  of  rancour  or  malice,  full 
of  mercy  and  compassion,  so  that  no  man  living  was 
able  to  reprove  him  of  any  kind  of  sin  or  crime  ;  albeit 
his  righteousness  and  justification  depended  not  there- 
upon before  God,  but  only  upon  the  blood  of  Christ  and 


TC  tlje  woibc  of  0(06 
is  vtiberftobc  /  the^ 
re  hit  m\)ttiplicrfi7 
maWtlj  t\}i  poepU 
better,  \9bcre  hit  is 
.mot  T>i6eTftobe/th» 
«at4  Ijit  bscrfiftfiil} 
Tmakxth  tbepocple 


cutcft|)el)ouffe/anbratttytb«rccr))^t/atitm05  "  ■' 
d)epe(iple  rcfortc"!)  vnito  l)im/fo  Sretlj)  tlpQt  1)4  xoit 
anb  fatiit  a  f  ^jjppf/anV)  all  l^j  pcof  Ic  ftobeontlje 
'|)»re.2(nbb2  fpatc waiiy  tt);ngf  t»ll)«nT  infimiHtuW/fa* 
Vinge:  bcl)olbe./tlt)8-fown»ciil  fortl)  toforcc/ant)  a5l)<ifo> 
tocb/  foTdfc  fell  by  t\)i  roap^  f))be/2  i\)t  foxsllf  ca/anb  bevou? 
TebUuppe.  0'cmcfellapoti  f>oii)igro«nbetDbereitl)abnott 
jiiocl)eeTtl)/anb  atronit  ffrottgcnppc/tcfatife  it  Vo  noSe^ 
pl)t  C)fertl;):<J"b  tobentlje  fon  was  tppe  /{jitcaut^  l){et  /anb 
for  late  ofrot^nge  w;jbi>veb  a.v>a'^i,Qi)mt  [fill  amoiigc  tboV^ 
ms  /  at)b  t^«  t^omcs  arofc  /aTibcl}ciffFebit.  parte  (ell  in 
gcobcgrotitibe/atib  broQljt  foritjscob  frutr.  foTncaii|)Via'' 
breb  folb/fome  f$ftf  folb/fom«  tl)5>rt)'  folbe,tX)l)oro?t)cr  f)atl) 
cor«5  to  b?are/lct pint  i)ec.Ye» 

ir2(tTbbV'5 bifciplcB  cam  /ajib  fft>b«  to  \^m t  Q?[)x)  fpeafcft 
tbovt  tot^eminpaTO-bles:  b?anft»er€bc<.Tifefaibei»titot()«ini 
J^it  is  gcvcn  vnto  -jou  to  f  no  rot  tl)e  fecratf  of  tb^  ^^SbOi 
Ynt  of  bcvcn/but  to  tbcm  it  is  tott  gtvim.  for  t»l)ofomcver 
l)aU)/tD  bim  ft)  all  bit  be^cven :  anb  be  [ball  bave  abounban--    *''"' 
nee:   But  toijofoever  batt)  nott:  from  bim  fbalbe  td^na. 
xoa.^i  ^-'e  tbat  fame  tbat  bftbatb.Sberforefpeaft  3  to  tbem 
infimibtub-f ;  j'or l^ongbtbev  fe/tbcy  fonott:  anb  bearvngc 
tbejJbcaTenotmctbcrvtibetftonbe.^nbititbcm^^s  fijlfylkb  efa.vi. 
tbf  propbcfy  ofcfav/isbicbpropb^fi  fo.j'tb :  witb  voorccarcs 
y^fboU  bMre/anb  f  ball  not  onb  erf  lobe/  anb  toitl)  yoaniyt& 
j)ef ball fe/anbf ball  notp^rceave  Jottljis  peoples  berths 


FAC-SIMILE    OF    ST.    MATT,    XIII.    1 — 15    IN    TTNDALK's    FIKST    TESTAMENT  (OCTAVO    EDITION). 


else  were  aged  or  weak,  those  also  he  plentifully  relieved. 
And  thus  he  spent  his  two  days  of  pastime,  as  he  called 
them.  And  truly  his  almose  [alms]  was  very  large  and 
great ;  and  so  it  might  well  bo,  for  his  exhibition  that 
he  had  yearly  of  the  English  merchants  was  very  much; 
and  that  for  the  most  part  ho  bestowed  upon  the  poor, 
as  aforesaid.  The  rest  of  the  days  in  the  week  he  gave 
him  wholly  to  his  book,  wherein  most  diligently  he 
travailed.  When  the  Sunday  came,  then  went  he  to 
some  one  merchant's  chamber  or  other,  whither  came 
many  other  merchants ;  and  unto  them  would  ho  road 
some  one  parcel  of  Scripture,  either  out  of  the  Old 
Testament  or  out  of  the  New ;  the  which  proceeded  so 


his  faith  upon  the  same,  in  which  faith  constantly  he 
died,  as  is  said  at  VUvordo,  and  now  resteth  with  the 
glorious  company  of  Christ's  martyrs  blessedly  in  the 
Lord,  who  be  blessed  in  all  his  saints.     Amen.'"' 

Some  recent  writers  have  endeavoured  to  place  his 
character  in  a  very  diilerout  light.  It  may  bo  acknow- 
ledged that  in  controversy  Tyndale  frequently  used 
Language  which  cannot  be  defended,  especially  when 
(with  or  without  sufficient  reason)  he  suspected  an 
adversasry  to  be  actuated  by  corrupt  motives  ;  but  those 
who  best  know  the  eharacter  of  the  times  in  which  ho 


1  Fose'a  Ii/e  of  ryndnlc.     See  Arber,  pp.  17,  13. 


126 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


lived  will  judge  most  leniently  of  this  excess.  Certainly 
it  is  not  possible  to  condemn  Tyndale  on  this  charge 
and  absolve  his  opponents.  His  fervent  zeal  for  tho 
truth  may  have  led  liini  into  extremes,  but  it  was  free 
from  any  taint  of  selfish  considerations.  "  I  assui-e 
you,"  he  says'  (at  a  time  when  overtures  were  made  to 
him  to  retiu-n  to  England),  "  if  it  would  stand  with  the 
king's  most  gracious  pleasure  to  grant  only  a  bare  text 
of  the  Scripture  to  be  put  forth  among  his  people,  like 
as  is  put  forth  among  tho  subjects  of  the  emperor  in 
these  parts,  and  of  other  Christian  princes,  be  it  of 
the  translation  of  what  person  soever  shall  please  his 

1  Demaus,  p.  308, 


Majesty,  I  shall  immediately  make  faithful  promise 
never  to  write  more,  nor  abide  two  days  in  these  parts 
after  the  same ;  but  immediately  to  repair  into  his 
realm,  and  there  most  humbly  submit  myself  at  the 
feet  of  his  Royal  Majesty,  oifering  my  body  to  suffer 
what  pain  or  torture,  yea,  what  death  his  Grace  will,  so 
that  this  be  obtained."  Of  the  value  of  his  work  we 
shall  speak  hereafter  when  we  examine  it  in  detail. 
Whether  we  look  at  his  work  or  at  his  life,  it  is  impos- 
sible not  to  admire  and  reverence  "  the  worthy  vii'tues 
and  doings  of  this  blessed  martyr,  who,  for  his  painful 
travails  and  singular  zeal  to  his  country,  may  be  called 
an  apostle  of  Eugland."- 

-  Foxe,  Acii  and  Monuments^  vol,  v.,  p.  139. 


BIBLICAL    PSYCHOLOaT. 

BT    THE    KEV.    J.    B.    HEABD,    M.A.,    CAIUS     COLLEGE,    CAMBBIDQE. 

THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF   THE   OLD   TESTAMENT. 


'  E  have  already  remarked  on  the  progress  of 
doctrine  in  Scripture,  and  that  its  psycho- 
logy is  always  abreast  of  its  theology. 
With  a  clear  grasp  of  these  two  thoughts 
— first,  that  inspiration  is  an  organic,  not  a  me- 
chanical whole,  with  the  principle  of  gi-owt,h  in  it ; 
and,  secondly,  that  in  this  growth  there  is  always  a 
perfect  proportion  of  parts — we  shall  easily  see  the  con- 
trast between  the  psychology  of  the  Old  and  the  New 
Testaments.  On  this  subject  we  have  one  decisive  text : 
"  Howbeit  that  was  not  &st  which  was  pneumatical 
[A.  v.,  spu-itual],  but  that  which  was  psychical  [A.  V., 
natural],  and  afterward  that  wliich  was  pneumatical" 
(1  Cor.  XV.  46).  As  redemption  truths  are  founded  ou 
those  of  creation,  so  a  basis  must  be  laid  for  the  higher 
theology  of  man's  becoming  partaker  of  the  Divine  nature 
in  the  elementary  facts  of  his  being  part  of  God's  handi- 
work— the  last  and  noblest  of  all  his  creatures.  In  tho 
same  way  the  higher  psychology  of  the  indwelling  of  the 
Divine  Pneuma  in  the  human,  a  mystery  corresponding 
as  it  does  and  growing  out  of  that  of  the  incarnation, 
must  be  preceded  by  those  humbler  conceptions  of  man 
as  clay,  animated  by  a  breath  indeed  of  the  DivJne 
Spirit,  but  that  only  resulting  in  a  nephesli  chayah,  or 
"living  soul"  (Gen.  ii.  7),  such  as  animates  all  other 
creatui-es  of  God. 

Sound  views  of  creationism  must  thus  precede  those 
spiritualist  conceptions  of  God's  relation  to  man  which 
we  find  in  the  Now  Testament.  It  is  a  mistake  to  press 
on  to  the  higher  till  wo  have  been  well  grounded  in  tho 
lower  forms  of  truth.  This  is  a  mistake  of  our  age. 
Much  of  what  is  caUod  tho  higher  Pantheism  is  only 
spiritual  theology  erected  ou  an  insufficient  basis  of 
creationism.  As  the  Elohist  precedes  the  Jehovist  dis- 
pensation, so  the  knowledge  of  God  in  Nature  (to  use 
the  language  of  the  old  school)  must  go  before  the 
knowledge  of  God  in  grace.  The  intuitional  school  in 
philosophy  leans  to  a  Pantheistic  conception  of  the  rela- 
tion of  God  to  the  universe.     God  is  in  eveiything,  antl 


I  everything  Hves  only  in  God.     It  is  almost  as  much  a 
mistake  to  speak  of  "  matter,"  as  to  speak  of  "  mind." 
Language  itself  must  be  reconstructed  to  accommodate 
'  itself  to  this  new  school  of  deep  thinkers.      The  old 
dualistic  conceptions  of  object  and  subject,  thought  and 
things,  mind  and  matter,  must  ch.sappear  in  one  higher 
generalisation,  call  it  matter,  call  it  mind.    There  is  but 
one  substance,  and  that  is  God  ;  light  is  his  nature,  the 
sun  and  moon  his  eyes,  and  the  stars  the  dust  of  his 
chariot-wheels.    We  unconsciously  thus  pass  into  Orien- 
talisms to  express  a  mode  of  thought  which  is  Oriental, 
and  which  is  only  naturahsed  in  the  West,  as  exotics  are, 
with  care  and  cidture.     Tins  new  school  of  spiritualism, 
as  it  works  out  a  theology  of  its  own,  so  its  psychology 
is  equally  advanced.    The  incarnation  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  so  far  from  being  a  unique,  and,  as  we  should 
say,  a  supernatural  fact,  is  from  their  point-of  view  only 
the  highest  instance  of  tho  continued  Indwelling  of  the 
Divine  in  the  human.     Instead  of  the  Word  being  made 
flesh,  they  teach  that  flesh  became  the  Word.     In  direct 
contradiction  to  the  teaching  of  St.  John,  that  "  no  man 
liath  ascended  up  to  heaven,  but  He  that  came  down  from 
heaven,  oven  the  Son  of  man  wliich  was  in  heaven,"  the 
new    school   approach    tho   subject   from   an    inverted 
order.     They  begin  where  they  shoidd  end,  and  their 
conception  of  Christ  is  that  of  a  Man-God,  not  that  of 
a  God-man.     The  distinction  is  not  a  verbal  one,  as  it 
seems  at  first  sight.      Scldeiermacher  and  Rotho,  for 
instance,  seem  to  lay  great  stress  on  the  incarnation ; 
but  tested    by   the  uneniug   standard  of  trutli,    the 
teaching  of  John  the  tlivine,  their  teaching  is  seen  to 
bo  humanitarian,  however  disguised  in  phrases  wliich 
conceal  the  real  departure  from  "  the  faith  once  delivered 
to  the  saints."     An  incarnation  which  is  not  unique,  and 
therefore  supernatural,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word, 
is  not  the  doctrine  of  the  New  Testament  with  regard 
to  the  person  of  our  Lord.     On  this  subject  we  cannot 
be  too  thankful  that  no  phase  of  opinion  can  jiossibly 
arise  wliich  has  not  arisen  and  been  condemned  by  the 


BIBLICAL   PYSCHOLOGY. 


127 


early  Church.  The  Christian  consciousness  (to  use 
Neaader's  phrase)  has  worked  itself  clear  of  those 
turbid  couceptions,  which,  like  the  glacier  water  of  the 
upper  Rhone,  must  flow  on  for  some  space  before  it 
recovers  its  original  pmity.  The  stream  is  purest  either 
at  the  foimtaiu-head  or  after  it  has  passed  thi-ough  the 
Lake  of  Geneva,  and  there  deposited  its  detritus  from 
the  glacier.  In  the  same  way  \vith  Christology :  the 
cathohc  conception  of  Chi-ist  is  also  the  truest,  and  is 
the  most  primitive.  The  Gnostic — of  which  modern 
spirituahsm  is  only  a  new  phase — is  like  that  turbid 
interval  between  the  soiuxe  of  the  Rhone  in  the  Alps 
and  its  true  starting-point  as  a  river  after  it  leaves  the 
Lake  of  Geneva. 

The  tap-root  of  Gnosticism  in  the  early  Church  was 
contempt  of  the  Old  Testament  and  a  misconception  of 
its  teaching  as  introductory  to  the  New.  The  God  of  the 
Old  Testament,  the  Demiurge  of  Marcion  and  others,  was 
degraded,  as  if  by  liis  contact  with  matter  he  had  soiled 
the  original  spuutuality  of  his  being.  He  was  a  kind  of 
intermediate  between  thought  and  things,  and  some  of 
the  baseness  supposed  to  inhere  in  matter  was  reflected 
in  him.  The  remedy  for  this  false  spiritualism  is  a 
return  to  the  true  Old  Testament  conception  of  God  and 
of  his  relation  to  the  world.  That  relation  is  transcen- 
dental, not  immanent,  as  the  modern  school  teach.  There 
is  no  disguising  the  fact  that  the  Deistic  account  of  the 
relation  of  God  to  the  world,  and  not  the  Pantheistic,  is 
that  of  the  Old  Testament.  Hence  the  disjjai-aging  view 
of  the  Old  Testament  taken  by  these  modern  Gnostics. 
We  may  take  it  or  leave  it,  but  we  cannot  alter  or  twist 
it  into  a  meaning  to  suit  our  preconceptions.  If  our 
philosophy  does  not  square  with  our  theology,  and  one 
of  the  two  must  give  way,  it  is  both  more  modest  and 
reverent  to  suppose  that  the  error  is  with  us  rather 
than  with  a  Book  wliich  bears  many  infaUible  proofs  of 
being  from  God.  Such  being  the  case,  we  tm-u  to  that 
Book  to  learn  how  it  approaches  the  subject  of  man,  and 
we  find,  as  wo  might  expect,  its  psychology  in  admirable 
harmony  with  its  theology.  It  is  creationist  fii'st,  and 
spiritualist  only  afterwards.  The  Deistic  or  transcen- 
dent conception  of  God  prepares  the  way  for  the  mys- 
tical or  immanent.  It  is  the  same  with  its  psychology. 
In  Genesis,  and  through  the  Old  Testament  generally, 
it  speaks  of  man  from  the  dichotomist  point  of  view 
corresponding  to  its  creationism.  Man  is  body  and 
soul,  vnttx  spiritual  capacities,  however,  as  yet  generally 
undeveloped ;  as  such  ho  is  God's  creature,  often  his  ser- 
vant ;  once  or  twice,  as  Abraham,  the  friend  of  God ;  or 
as  David,  the  man  after  his  own  heart ;  or  as  Moses,  the 
one  who  speaks  face  to  face  with  God ;  or  as  Isaiah,  who 
sees  a  vision  of  Jehovah ;  but  ho  is  nowhere  as  yet  the  son 
of  God.  The  expression  was  too  august  to  be  lightly 
used  of  any  individual  man,  however  favom-ed.  Israel 
collectively  might  be  a  dear  son,  a  pleasant  eluld,  but 
this  is  only  the  language  of  metaphor — a  variation  of 
that  other  metaphor  of  marriage  between  Jehovah  and 
his  redeemed  people. 

Thus  creationism  is  the  key  to  the  theology  of  the 
Old  Testament  and  equally  to  its  psychology.     In  ac- 


cordance with  this  view,  when  we  turn  to  the  earliest 
record  of  all,  we  find  an  Elohist  and  a  Jehovist  account  of 
the  creation  of  man  side  by  side,  or  in  close  conjimction. 
The  Elohist  account  seems  the  most  dignified  of  the 
two,  the  one  which  favours  most  those  later  and  higher 
intimations  of  man's  destiny  as  a  partaker  of  the  Divine 
natm'e.  It  perplexes  us  at  first  to  find  the  Jehovist 
record,  which  we  might  anticipate  would  be  trichotomist, 
bearing  apparently  the  other  way.  Man  is  clay,  and  the 
breath  of  God,  or  the  union  point  of  this,  is  the  nepliesh 
or  "  soul "  (psyche).  Thus  the  psychical  life  is  the  pro- 
minent fact  in  the  Jehovist  record ;  whereas  the  Elohist, 
which  is  not  a  covenant  but  a  creationist  record,  is  of  the 
two  the  most  spiritual.  It  implies  a  council  in  the  mind 
of  the  Deity,  "  let  us  make,"  and  the  result  of  that  eouncU 
in  the  fact  that  man  appears  stamped  with  the  Divine 
image  and  likeness.  Tliis  is  fairly  pei-jjlexing  :  to  find 
spirituahsm  where  we  might  have  looked  only  for  the 
creationist  account  of  man  as  the  last  and  noblest  of 
God's  works ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  to  find  creationism 
in  that  other  record  where  the  covenant  name  of  God 
impUes  his  covenant  relationship  to  man. 

This  is  perplexing  at  first  sight,  but  the  difficulty  dis- 
appears when  we  look  at  it  more  closely.  Rightly 
regarded,  the  contrast  between  these  two  records  melts 
away,  and  we  see  unity  underlying  their  variety.  In 
the  Elohist  record  man  is  spoken  of,  as  in  the  8th 
Psalm,  not  so  much  as  he  is  in  himself  as  in  liis  official 
position  to  the  universe.  He  is  a  creature,  it  is  true — 
the  work  of  the  sixth  day,  and  has  that  in  common  with 
the  higher  mammalia,  which  are  the  work  of  the  forenoon 
as  he  is  of  the  afternoon  of  the  day  which  precedes  the 
Sabbath.  But  as  God  is  about  to  enter  on  his  rest  he 
ajipoints  a  viceroy  and  representative  on  earth.  To  lend 
dignity  to  that  viceroy,  he  invests  him  with  some  of  his 
own  attributes ;  he  stamps  liis  image  and  superscription 
on  liim.  As  Joseph  was  given  Pharaoh's  chain  and 
made  to  ride  in  Pharaoh's  chariot,  and  thus  shown  to 
Egypt  as  the  next  to  the  king  in  all  the  land,  his  deputy 
and  mouthpiece,  so  with  man.  This  is  the  meaning  of 
the  Elohist  record,  and  explains  why  it  ajiparenviy  goes 
out  of  its  way  to  speak  of  man's  dignity  rather  than  of 
his  dependent  nature.  Though  the  last  of  the  mammalia, 
he  is  here  made  a  little  lower  than  the  angels,  and  crowned 
with  glory  and  honour,  all  the  works  of  God  being  made 
subject  to  him.  But  when  we  turn  to  the  Jehovist  record, 
as  its  purpose  is  different,  so  its  way  of  introducing 
the  creation  of  man  is  also  different.  The  Jeho-vdst 
record  takes  up  the  ethical  side  of  man  as  the  Elohist 
does  the  external.  It  has  to  deal  \vith  the  problem  of 
death  and  sin,  grace  and  redemption ;  it  must  give  an 
account,  therefore,  of  mau  in  himself,  not  merely  of  Ids 
official  relation  to  the  rest  of  God's  creatui-es.  As  the 
pm'pose  differs,  so  the  mode  of  accounting  for  man's 
beginning  must  also  sUghtly  differ.  It  is  only  the  same 
difference  without  disagreement  wliich  we  see  in  the 
Gospels.  The  Synoptists  (the  fii-st  three)  begin  with  the 
human,  John  the  divine  with  the  pre-existent  glory  of 
Christ.  Tliis  is  why,  of  the  two  records,  the  Jehovist, 
which  is  redemptive,  gives  the  most  strictly  creational 


128 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


account  of  the  origin  of  the  race.  Man  is  dust  of  the 
earth,  which  prepares  us  for  the  sentence  that,  should 
he  disobey,  "dust  to  dust"  must  be  his  punishment. 
This  is  highly  consistent  with  the  covenant  account 
of  God's  deaUngs  with  man.  Any  other,  such  as  a 
pure  spiritualist,  would  be  out  of  place  here.  Let  us 
imagine  the  two  narratives  displaced,  and  we  shall  see 
what  misconcojjtions  would  arise.  Were  the  Elohist,  or 
creationist,  account  of  man  capped  with  the  narrative  of 
the  kneading  of  dust  and  breath  into  a  "  living  soul," 
wo  might  fairly  ask.  Is  this  all  ?  is  man  only  the  last 
link  of  a  long  chain  ?  In  that  case  could  we  say  that 
the  Sabbath  drew  on  P  On  the  other  hand,  suppose  the 
Elohist  account  of  man  in  the  image  and  likeness  of 
God  had  sUpped  out  of  its  place  into  the  Jehovist 
record,  and  how  perplexed  we  shoidd  be ;  we  might 
then  say  with  Longfellow,  that  "  '  dust  to  dust '  was  not 
spoken  of  the  soul."  Thus  tho  apparent  paradox  that 
the  spiritualist  side  of  man  appears  in  the  creationist 
record,  and  the  creationist  in  the  spiritualist,  is  liighly 
consistent  if  we  look  at  each  from  the  point  of  view  from 
wliich  it  was  written. 

Passing  over,  then,  the  Elohist  record  of  Gen.  i. — not 
as  unimportant,  but  as  irrelevant  to  psychology  proper — 
we  turn  to  the  Jehovist  record  of  Gen.  ii.  Here  we  find 
the  true  psychology  of  man,  and  that  from  a  creationist 
point  of  view.  Our  key  to  understand  it  is  the  word  of 
tho  Apostle,  that  the  psychical  is  first,  and  afterward 
that  which  is  "spiritual."  Following  that  order,  and 
remembering  that  tho  Old  Testament  keeps  to  tho 
psychical,  though  it  flashes  with  intimations  of  a  future 
spiritual  stage,  aU  is  consistent  and  of  a  piece.  In 
no  language  of  metaphor,  but  in  strict  and  sober  truth, 
man  is  said  to  be  of  the  dust.  God  took  and  kneaded 
clay.  The  Hebrew  word  used  implies  that  the  work- 
manship is  of  pre-existent  materials.  Man's  bodily 
organism  is  of  matter,  which  comes  from  the  inorganic 
world  and  returns  to  it  again.  Made  up  in  equal  pro- 
portions of  gases  and  eartlis,  his  flesh  and  fibres,  bones 
and  blood,  are  all,  as  that  of  the  lower  animals,  of  "  the 
earth,  earthy."  Such  is  the  first  Adam.  His  very 
name,  so  called  from  red  earth,  with  reference,  as  some 
etymologists  think,  to  the  redness  of  the  blood,  Adam, 
from  dam,  "  blood,"  or,  as  others,  from  the  ruddiness 
of  the  skin,  as  the  Chinese  represent  man  to  be  kneaded 
of  yeUow  earth,  and  the  red  Indians  speak  of  his  being 
made  of  red  clay — his  very  name  indicates  liim  as  "  dust 
of  tlie  earth."  The  derivation  of  Adam,  as  if  from  the 
Hebrew  demuih,  "  the  image  or  likeness  of  God,"  is 
plainly  fanciful ;  the  attempt  to  import  into  the  Jehovist 
record  the  Eloliist  account  of  man  as  the  lord  of 
creation  and  the  viceroy  of  Heaven's  eternal  King  is 
plainly  inconsistent  and  out  of  place.  The  intention 
of  the  second  narrative  is  to  describe  man  as  he  is  in 
himself,  not  in  his  official  relation  to  the  universe  in 
general.  Hence  we  may  pass  by  the  first,  and  con- 
fine ourselves  almost  exclusively  to  the  second.  Tho 
Elohist  account  of  man  is  theological,  the  Jehovist 
psychological.  By  that  wo  mean,  that  if  we  \nsh  to 
determine  man's  place  in  relation  to  God  and  Ms  werks, 


we  may  turn  to  Gen.  i. ;  if  we  wish  to  determine  what 
man  is  in  himself,  and  the  purposes  which  God  has  in 
regard  to  him,  we  must  study  Gen.  ii.  Tho  first  is  the 
ideal  man,  the  second  the  actual.  The  structure  of  tho 
narrative  itself  coniirms  that  vievr.  The  singidar  form 
of  expression,  "we  will  make  man,"  not  "  let  us  make 
man,"  as  if  the  Deity  were  rousing  himself  to  an  effort, 
whatever  it  means — whether  a  covert  reference  to  the 
Trinity,  as  the  fathers  and  schoolmen  hold,  or  an 
address  to  Nature  as  Maimonidos  thought — "  God 
directly  and  sovereignly.  Nature  mediately  and  obediently 
througli  the  Divine  Word  combining  in  the  formation 
of  man  " — in  either  case  wo  have  man  regarded  on  the 
ideal  side.  It  confirms  that  view  to  find  that  tho 
creation  of  woman  is  implied,  not  assorted.  "  Male  and 
female  created  he  them."  If  wo  had  the  Elohist  record 
only  to  go  by,  wo  should  know  nothing  of  the  unity  of 
the  human  race,  of  the  propagation  of  mankind  from  a 
single  pair,  and  we  should  at  once  be  relieved  of  many 
difficulties  which  science  throws  in  the  path  of  theology, 
while  at  the  same  time  we  shoidd  lose  that  grand  har- 
mony which  runs  throughout  Revelation,  and  which  is 
brought  out  by  St.  Paul  in  his  doctrine  of  the  first  and 
second  Adam,  Rom.  v. ;  1  Cor.  xv.,  and  elsewhere. 

It  is  clear,  then,  that  the  creationist  narrative  of  Gen. 
i.  is  not  so  much  the  foundation  of  Scripture  psycho- 
logy as  the  Jehovist  or  redemptive  record  of  Gen.  ii. 
Turning  to  that  we  find  two  factors  in  human  nature 
meeting  in  the  "  living  soul,"  the  punchim  indifferens 
of  two  lives,  one  from  above,  another  from  beneath. 
The  Hebrew  verb  is  rightly  rendered  "  became,"  not 
"  was."  The  German  wcrden,  "  to  become,"  exactly 
catches  the  sense  of  that  meeting-point  between  being 
and  non-being  at  which  the  human  soul  is  placed — "  Und 
also  ward  der  Mensch  eine  lebendige  Secle."  Luther, 
who  is  always  vigorous,  and  who,  if  he  sometimes 
misses  the  exact  sense,  seldom  fails  to  catch  the  general 
sph-it,  throws  in  also.  "  Consequently  in  this  order  and 
manner  man  became  a  living  sold."  Otherivise  the 
contrast  between  tho  "living  soul"  in  man  and  in 
other  animals  would  be  lost.  Tho  differentia  between 
him  and  them  is  this  Di\'ine  breath;  it  is  right  to 
mark,  then,  by  an  emphatic  word  that  man  became  a 
living  soul  only  by  the  breath  of  God  entering  his 
nostrils  in  a  special  way,  such  as  is  said  of  no  other 
li^dng  creature.  The  expression  "  dust  of  the  earth," 
suggests  its  own  meaning:  man  is  xoi'""  (1  Cor.  xv. 47), 
"  of  the  earth,  earthy,"  as  homo  is  derived  from  hiimus. 
And  as  h^lmas  is  not  so  much  earth  in  general  as  the  earth 
soil  when  adapted  for  cultivation,  so  Adam  is  from 
adamah,  the  soil  of  cultivation  in  its  paradisiacal  state 
— not  the  mere  earth  (aretz),  which  is  a  distinct  word. 
With  regard  to  his  body,  man  is  flesh  (hasar) ;  he  has 
this  in  common  with  the  animal  world.  "  AU  flesh  "  is 
a  common  Hebraism  for  the  whole  world  in  its  mere 
animal  side.  When  used  in  reference  to  man  there  is  a 
covert  reproach  in  it ;  we  are  reminded  by  it  of  our  sin 
and  shame.  Flesh  and  spirit  are  contrasted  as  in  that 
passage  :  "  The  Egyptians  are  men,  and  not  God ;  and 
their  horses  flesh,  and  not  spirit "  (Isa.  xxxi.  3).  To  depend 


BIBLICAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 


129 


on  man,  or  to  put  trust  in  liim,  is  to  depend  on  an  arm  of 
flesh.  Basar,  in  this  ethical  connection,  is  always  used 
as  a  term  of  reproach.  It  is  exactly  equivalent  to  our 
contrast  between  sense  and  spirit.  It  is  no  reproach  to  a 
man  to  judge  by  means  of  sense-perecptions,  for  these 
are  the  data  on  which  mind  must  work ;  but  to  leave  off 
■with  these  is  a  reproach.  The  two  adjectives  "  sensual " 
and  "sensuous"  exactly  mark  these  distinctions.  Art 
is  sensuous ;  it  raises  impressions  tlu-ough  the  senses ; 
and  according  as  these  impressions  are  degrading  or 
elevating,  is  it  sensual  or  spiritual.  So  unconsciously 
do  ethical  conceptions  glide  in  and  mingle  themselves 
■with  iBsthetieal,  that  the  question  has  been  raised  whether 
art  should  have  anything  to  say  to  morals  or  not.  The 
answer  is  obvious — consciously,  no ;  but  unconsciously, 
yes.  What  we  mean  is  that  art  is  not  to  teach  pro- 
fessedly— its  end  and  aim  is  to  delight  and  refine.  But 
in  that  aim  there  must  be  hidden  a  moral  purpose  of  one 
kind  or  tlie  other — hidden  as  Cleopatra's  adder  in  the 
basket  of  fruit ;  and  it  is  the  duty  of  the  moralist  to 
question  art  as  it  crosses  the  threshold,  and  to  refuse 
admission  to  it  if  the  serpent  be  foiind  lurking  among  its 
fruits  and  flowers.  In  Scripture,  where  the  ethical  import 
is  predominant,  the  bodily  side  of  man's  nature  is  generally 
referred  to  as  the  fames  peccati,  the  fuel  of  the  fire  of 
sin.  The  tongue  in  St.  James,  the  eye  in  St.  John,  the 
feet  swift  to  shed  blood  of  the  Psalmist,  the  hands  and 
the  heart  frequently  elsewhere  are  spoken  of  as  the 
instruments  of  sin.  The  body  is  thus,  to  refer  to  a  well- 
known  Rabbinic  fable,  the  partner  with  the  soul  in  sin, 
and  must  bo  raised  up  for  this  reason  to  receive  its 
separate  punishment.  It  is  foreign  to  the  simplicity  of 
the  Hebrew  mind  to  dwell  on  the  soul  as  the  exclusive 
source  of  good  and  evil.  Luther,  in  one  of  his  sermons 
on  Gen.  ii.,  rightly  remarks  that  by  "  living  soul "  we  are 
to  understand  living  body ;  and  Tertullian,  in  the  same 
way,  in  his  treatise  De  Anima  (cap.  vii.l,  lays  stress  on 
the  essential  corporeity  of  the  soul.  Man  in  Scripture 
psychology  is  not  a  soul  in  a  body.  Tliis  is  the  school 
dichotomy  which  has  entered  into  our  popular  theology 
and  somewhat  distorted  our  conceptions  of  man's  place 
and  duty  here  and  hereafter.  Man  in  Scripture  is  a 
body  or  organism  which  has  two  poles,  sarx  and  pnemna, 
flesh  and  spirit.  According  as  he  inclines  to  the  one 
pole  or  the  other  is  he  carnal  or  spiritual.  In  his  fallen 
state,  and  as  the  consequence  of  the  fall,  he  is  carnal, 
sold  under  sin.  What  enhances  his  misery  is  that 
he  knows  it.  He  is  a  "reed  who  thinks,"  as  Pascal 
puts  it ;  let  us  add,  a  reed  who  quivers  with  a  sense 
of  his  own  misery.  The  purpose  of  redemption  is  to 
remove  him  from  the  one  xiole  of  sense  to  the  other  pole 
of  sjjirit.  That  redemption  is  begun  now,  but  is  mcom- 
plete  until  his  full  adoption,  to  wit,  the  redemption  of 
the  body.  When  the  body  itself,  which  is  now  psycliical 
at  best,  i.e.,  with  the  animal  and  appetitive  elements 
predominant,  shall  become  pneumatical,  i.e.,  with  the 
organs  of  assimOation  and  reproduction  at  rest,  .and 
those  of  apprehension  and  action  elevated  and  intensified 
(of  which  the  transformation  of  insects  furnishes  a 
wonderful  analogy),  then  shall  be  brought  to  pass  the 
33— voi,.  II. 


saying  that  is  written,  "Death  is  swallowed  up  in 
victory." 

Thus  the  psychology  of  the  Old  Testament  is  of  a 
piece  with  that  of  the  New,  the  only  difference  being 
that,  as  the  plan  of  redemption  unfolds  itself,  the 
psychical  element  becomes  more  pneumatical,  and  the 
sarx,  or  flesh,  sinks  into  the  background  as  the  part 
to  be  mortified  or  subdued.  Man  begins  in  the  flesh, 
rises  to  psychical  conceptions,  and  is  only  redeemed  and 
regenerated  when  the  psyche  becomes  subservient  to  the 
pneuma,  as  the  sarx  is  to  the  psyche.  Psyche  is  the 
centre  point  where  the  conflict  goes  on.  In  every  man 
there  is  a  choice  of  Hercules,  between  soul  and  flesh. 
But  in  the  case  of  the  regenerate  and  redeemed  there 
is  a  stUl  higher  conflict  and  a  yet  more  decisive  choice. 
They  are  called  on  to  subdue  the  desires  of  the  mind 
as  well  as  of  the  flesh — to  yield  their  wills  and  affec- 
tions up  to  God  as  they  yield  the  members  of  the  body 
up  to  the  guidance  of  reason.  This  higher  stage  of  dis- 
cipline lies  out  of  the  range  of  mere  "culture."  The 
morahst  as  such  knows  nothing  of  it,  for  it  lies  within 
the  spiritual  world,  and  this  hes  outside  Ms  ken  and 
cognisance.  He  can  only  guess  at  it,  as  Goethe  in  his 
conjectures  about  a  demonic  influence,  which  is  not 
genius  or  God,  but  something  between  the  two. 

When  we  speak,  then,  of  the  trichotomy  of  Scripture, 
and  particularly  of  the  Old  Testament,  we  do  not  mean 
that  man  is  of  three  natm-es  joined  in  one,  much  less 
tliat,  after  the  analogy  of  the  Trinity,  there  are  three 
substances  in  one  person,  instead  of  three  Persons  in 
one  substance.  The  homo  imago  Trinitatis  of  Augus- 
tine is  a  misleading  metaphor,  and,  what  is  worse  still, 
it  "  djirkens  counsel  by  words  without  knowledge."  Man 
is  not  body  and  soul  and  spirit  as  the  Godhead  is 
Father  and  Son  and  Holy  Ghost.  Man  is  strictly  only 
au  organism  with  two  tendencies,  and  in  this  sense  it 
is  as  correct  to  speak  of  the  dichotomy  as  the  trichotomy. 
These  tendencies  are  flesh  and  spirit,  and  hence  the 
account  in  Gen.  ii.  is  so  accurate  when  the  dust  of  the 
earth  and  the  breath  of  lives  met  in  the  living  soul  of 
man  as  their  imiting  point.  These  tendencies  of  flesh 
and  spirit  were  marked  in  no  other  creature  in  the  same 
way.  In  the  animal  there  is  the  one  factor — the  dust  of 
the  earth,  animated,  it  is  true,  by  a  certain  breath  of 
God,  for  He  is  the  Life  of  life,  as  He  is  the  God  of  gods 
and  Light  of  lights.  But  the  spiritual  factor  is  not 
there  :  in  man  alone  do  flesh  and  spirit  join.  The  i>syche 
is  the  synthesis  of  which  body  and  spirit  are  .the  thesis 
and  antithesis  respectively.  In  this  point  of  ^-iew  it  is 
as  incorrect  to  speak  of  man  as  made  up  of  three  parts, 
as  to  speak  of  water  as  made  up  of  oxygen,  hydrogen, 
and  a  fluid  called  water,  seeing  tluit  water  is  only  the 
result  of  the  gases  uniting  in  certain  definite  propor- 
tions. Both  terms,  "  dichotomy  "  and  "  trichotomy,"  are 
therefore,  strictly  spealriug,  incorrect,  although,  in  order, 
to  guard  ourselves  againsttho  phrases  "  body"  and  "soiil," 
growing  out  of  the  old  duahsm  of  miud  and  matter,  we 
speak  of  man  as  a  hving  soul  with  two  natures,  an  animal 
and  a  spiritual.  It  is  in  tliis  sense  only  that  man  is  in 
the  trichotomist  phrase  made  of  spirit,  soul,  and  body, 


130 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


tliougli  it  -would  be  equally  correct  to  speak  of  Mm  as 
made  up  of  an  animal  frame  united  to  a  psyche-prietima. 
Indeed,  as  in  the  earlier  stage  of  infancy  body  and  soul 
exist  togctlier  with  a  dormant  or  undeveloped  spirit,  so, 
during  the  intermediate  state,  we  iind  conversely  the 
psyche-pnetima  existing  out  of  the  body. 

Further,  with  regard  to  the  psychology  of  the  Old 
Testament,  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  the  language  is 
popular  and  accommodated  to  the  unscientific  conceptions 
then  current.  In  modern  language  we  speak  of  the 
head  as  the  seat  of  intelligence,  and  the  heart  as  that  of 
the  feelings  and  aifections.  It  is  the  head  tliat  thinks, 
the  heart  that  bleeds,  or  weeps,  or  rej<iices.  Tliis  arises 
from  our  more  accurate  notions  of  physiology.  The 
three  great  discoveries  of  modern  anatomy  are  the  circu- 
lation of  the  blood,  the  function  of  the  brain  as  the 
organ  of  thought,  and  of  the  nervous  system  as  the 
special  organ  of  feeling  and  motion.  There  is  no  trace 
of  any  one  of  these  three  fixed  truths  of  modem  phy- 
siology to  be  found  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  The  truth, 
so  obvious  to  us,  that  the  brain,  not  the  heart,  is  the  centre 
of  sentient  and  rational  life,  was  not  suspected  until 
the  time  of  the  Ptolemies.  Pythagoras,  it  is  true,  sup- 
posed that  the  pais  {nous,  or  "  mind "')  was  seated  in  the 
brain,  but  this  was  only  a  guess,  unsupported  by  any 
anatomical  observation.  Plato,  reasoning  in  his  fanci- 
ful way  from  certain  properties  of  numbers,  supposed 
that  the  four  elements  united  in  man  to  f onn  a  quint- 
essence, wliich  he  called  the  soul,  and  which  was  seated 
in  the  spinal  marrow.  He  considers  the  spinal  maiTow 
to  be  the  part  first  formed,  and  that  the  marrow  covers 
itseK  with  bones,  and  these  bones  with  flesli.  Aristotle, 
however,  returned  to  the  old  conception  that  the  brain 
is  a  mere  excrescence  of  the  spinal  marrow,  adapted  by 
its  usual  coldness  and  moisture  to  allay  the  fii-e  at  the 
heart.  This  was  the  reigning  opinion  until  the  Alexan- 
drian physicians,  Erasistratus  and  Hierophilus,  by  dis- 
secting the  bodies  of  erimiuals  given  for  examination 
in  the  medical  schools,  overturned  the  old  theory  that 
the  heart  was  the  seat  of  intelligence,  as  the  bowels  or 
reins  were  of  the  affections  and  passions.  Old  Testa- 
ment psychology  falls  in  with  these  prevailing  notions. 
It  was  only  so  late  as  the  Book  of  Daniel  that  we  find 
any  intimations  of  the  head  as  the  seat  of  thought. 
Delitzsch  rightly  remarks  that  Dan.  ii.  28 ;  vii.  1,  15, 
are  the  earliest  passages  in  which  the  head  is  spoken  of 
as  the  seat  of  visions,  the  centre  to  wliich  sph-itual, 
psychical  events  are  to  be  referred.  In  all  other  places 
the  heart  is  spoken  of  as  the  seat  of  understanding,  as 
the  reins  and  bowels  are  of  emotion.  Inattention  to 
tins  distinction  has  led  to  many  uncritical  comments  on 
Scripture  language.  For  instance,  on  the  expression, 
"  With  the  heart  man  believeth  to  righteousness.'' 
preachers  and  pojiular  divines  have  founded  the  remark 
that  we  have  here  the  distinction  between  head-know- 
ledge and  heart-knowledge  pointed  out.  The  only 
saving  belief  was  that  of  the  heart,  i.e.,  of  the  affections, 
not  of  the  head  merely,  i.e.,  of  the  diy  intellect.  If  the 
Apostle  had  tliis  distinction  then  on  his  mind  (a  good 
one  in  its  place,  but  inapplicable  here),  ho  would  have 


phrased  it  differently :  "  With  the  feelings  man  believeth 
unto  righteousness." 

We  must  bear  this  in  mind,  or  wo  shall  fall  into  mis- 
takes continually  on  meeting  with  the  Scripture  phrase 
' '  the  heart."  Wlien  we  should  speak  of  sluggish  intellects, 
the  Hebrews  would  have  said,  "  slow  of  heart."  "  O  fools, 
and  slow  of  heart  to  understand,"  &c.  When  wo  should 
speak  of  a  man  taking  a  thing  into  his  head,  they  spoke 
of  "laying  it  to  heart."  It  is  worthy  of  notice  that  while 
there  are  hundi-eds  of  passages  in  which  the  heart  ia 
spoken  of  as  the  seat  of  certain  mental  acts — of  thought 
and  feeling — we  have  not  been  able  to  find  a  single  in- 
stance of  the  head  being  regarded  in  Scriptm'o  as  more 
than  the  summit  of  the  body  in  the  external  sense  only. 
Eichhorn,  as  quoted  by  Delitzsch,  rightly  remarks  on  the 
distinction  between  the  use  of  the  head  and  the  heai-t 
in  the  Old  Testament.  "The  head  is  to  the  external 
appeai-ance  what  the  heart  is  to  the  internal  agency  of 
the  soul,  and  only  on  this  \'iew  is  a  prominent  position 
given  to  it  in  the  Bibhcal  point  of  view."  The  Scriptiu-e 
contrasts  the  head  with  the  feet,  but  not  with  the  heart. 
From  the  crown  of  the  head  to  the  sole  of  the  foot  the 
whole  body  is  diseased,  according  to  Isiiiah,  but  the 
f oimtain  of  the  disease  is  in  the  heart,  from  whence,  as 
our  Lord  teaches,  proceed  evil  thoughts.  Blessings  rest, 
it  is  true,  upon  the  head  of  the  just,  but  this  isTsecause 
the  blessings  come  down  from  above  and  fall  fii'st  on 
the  head.  The  inference,  so  obvious  to  us,  that  as  the 
chief  senses — sight,  hearing,  smoU,  taste — are  all  clus- 
tered round  the  brain,  and  in  close  communication  ivith 
it,  the  brain,  and  not  the  heart,  must  be  the  chief  organ 
of  thought,  does  not  seem  to  have  occiuTed  to  the 
ancients.  Misled  by  a  false  analogy  between  warmth 
and  intelligence,  they  assumed  that  the  cold  white  and 
grey  matter  of  the  brain  could  not  be  the  instrument  of 
thought,  and  they  therefore  placed  the  seat  of  the  soul 
and  the  centre  of  the  nervous  system  in  the  heart,  at  the 
fountain-head  of  the  blood.  The  blood  was  the  life,  and 
where  the  blood  was  warmest  there  the  seat  of  the  soul 
must  be. 

But  while  Hebrew  psychology  en-ed  in  placing  the 
seat  of  intelligence  in  the  heart  instead  of  the  brain,  we 
must  not  sujjpose  that  they  materialised  the  soul  as  tha 
modern  phrenological  school  do.  Tho  soul  inhabited  the 
heart  as  the  centre  and  citadel  of  the  body,  but  it  was 
not  a  mere  function  of  the  heart,  as  thought  and  feeling 
are  functions  of  tho  brain  among  physiologists  whoso 
views  incline  to  materialism.  The  inhabitant  of  the 
house  was  not  confoimded  with  the  house  itself.  It 
woidd  be  more  correct  to  say  that  they  held  a  doctrine 
of  correspondence — the  soul  inhabited  the  whole  body, 
and  was  diffused  through  eveiy  part :  one  class  of 
mental  states  corresponded  with  one  class  of  physical 
organs,  another  with  another.  Speakiiig  ronglily,  wo 
shoidd  say  that  the  diaphragm  was  tho  di^-iding  wall 
between  the  intellect  and  the  emotions.  Tho  phrase 
"bowels  of  mercies"  is  too  well  known  to  need  any 
comment.  But  it  is  further  remarkable  that  the  reins 
rather  than  the  heart  is  the  seat  of  wliat  we  should  call 
conscience.     God  tries  the   reins,  cha.stons   the  rclus. 


DIFFICULT  PASSAGES  EXPLAIISTED. 


131 


sends  his  arrows  of  convictiou  into  the  reins.  To  sum 
up,  we  should  say  that  the  Hebrews  probably  inclined  to 
the  opinion  of  the  old  dogmatists,  that  the  whole  soul 
was  in  the  whole  body,  and  also  wholly  in  each  of  the 
parts.  "  Aniuia  in  toto  corpore  tota  et  in  singidis  simul 
coi-poris  partibus  tota."  Their  ^-iew  was  proljably  not 
unlike  that  of  some  of  the  fathers,  notably  TertuUian, 
that  soul  and  body  are  related  as  form  and  essence,  and 
that  even  out  of  the  body  the  soul  still  rotaiued  a  filmy, 
shadowy  form,  corresponding  to  that  with  wliioh  it 
■was  clothed  upon  when  in  the  body.  In  this  point  of 
Tiew  the  soul  was  the  formative  principle  of  the  body 
— an  opinion  which  the  younger  Fichto  has  revived, 
and  to  which  Swedonborg  also  iucluied.  Bacon  and 
Cudworth  too  inclined  to  the  view  that  the  soul  is  a 
kind  of  ethereal  body.  The  lines  of  Spenser  express 
the  same  thought : — 

"  For  of  the  soul  the  body  form  doth  take, 
For  soul  is  form,  and  doth  the  body  make." 

This  doctrine  of  correspondence  may  not  be  the  whole 
truth  on  a  subject  confessedly  mysterious  and  beyond 
our  grasp  at  present,  but  it,  at  least,  does  not  contradict 
any  higher  ti-uth.  It  was  a  good  provisional  stand-point 
for  psychology  in  a  revelation  of  which  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  body  formed  no  part-.  If  it  was  not  the 
whole  truth,  it  at  least  gave  no  countenance  to  the  two 
false  and  one-sided  tendencies  to  which  the  human  mind 
inclines  on  this  subject — materialism  and  spiritualism. 
Like  Paul  on  Mars'  Hill,  between  Stoics  and  Epicureans, 
the  Old  Testament  is  equally  removed  from  those  who 
say  that  mind  is  a  function  of  the  body,  and  so  perishes 
with  the  body,  and  from  those  on  the  other  extreme  who 
teach  that  mind  is  au  entity  in  itself,  indi\'isible,  and 
therefore  imperishable.  It  has  not  one  syllable  for  or 
against  the  immortality  of  the  soul  iu  the  sense  that  the 


question  is  argued  in  tlie  PhcEdrus  of  Plato.  The  end 
of  Revelation  being  practical,  not  speculative,  it  left  the 
mourner  at  the  door  of  the  sepulchre :  it  did  not  roU 
away  the  stone,  which  was  very  great.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  would  not  let  him  quench  the  lamp  of  hope,  or 
allow  that  death  was  a  perpetual  sleep.  As  in  other 
respects,  so  iu  regard  to  psychology,  the  law  made 
uotliing  perfect.  It  only  set  the  iuqiurer  on  the  right 
track,  and  there  left  him  to  wait  for  the  dayspring  from 
on  high.  It  is  worthy  thus  of  God,  who  teaches  notliiug 
hastily,  or  beyond  the  measiu'e  and  analogy  of  the  faith. 
Wlien  the  better  covenant  was  brought  in,  then  the 
higher  teaching  of  tho2>»-e'"'if«  and  the  resurrection  of 
the  body  was  given.  But  tlie  preparation  was  complete. 
A  Jew,  who  knew  his  own  Scriptures  and  nothing  else, 
might  have  much  to  learn,  but  happily  nothing  to  un- 
learn. If  he  had  not  mixed  up  these  conceptions  of  truth 
with  the  philosophies  of  the  East,  or  of  Greece,  he  might 
pass  at  once,  as  the  discii)les  did,  from  John  to  Jesus, 
without  a  struggle  or  a  pang.  LTnfortunately,  however> 
this  was  seldom  the  case.  What  with  Oriental  and 
CabaUstic  notions  ou  the  one  hand,  and  Alexandiian  and 
Platonist  fancies  on  the  other,  the  transition  was  seldom 
so  simple.  Philosophical  theoi-ies  of  the  soul,  its  con- 
nection with  matter,  and  its  eternity  a  parte  ante  or 
post,  mixed  themselves  up  ■n-itli  the  simple  narrative  of 
God's  deahngs  with  man ;  the  specidative  overbore  the 
practical.  But,  nevertheless,  the  Word  of  God  could 
not  be  broken.  A  higher  truth  superseded  one  more 
elementary,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  but  it  did  not  con- 
tradict it — nay,  it  confirmed  it.  There  was  progression 
throughout — calm,  orderly,  and  according  to  a  plan: 
first  the  eai'thly  Adam,  then  the  heavenly;  this  is  the 
theological  stage  of  j)rogross :  first  the  psychical,  and 
afteiTvards  the  pneumatical ;  this  is  the  psychological 
order  corresponding  to  it. 


DIFFICTILT    PASSAGES     EXPLAINED. 

THE   GOSPELS:— ST.    MATTHEW. 

BY   THE    EEV.    C.    J.    ELLIOTT,    M.A.,     VICAK    OF    WINKFIELD,    EEKKS. 


'•  It  hath  been  said,  Whosoever  shall  put  away  his  wife,  let  him 
give  her  a  bill  of  divorcement:  but  I  say  unto  you,  That  whoso- 
ever shall  put  away  his  wife,  saving  for  the  cause  of  fornication, 
causeth  her  to  commit  adultery  :  and  whosoever  shall  marry  her 
that  is  divorced  oommitteth  adultery."— St.  Matt.  v.  31,  32. 

^^HE  proper  rendering  of  the  first  clause 
of  these  verses,  according  to  the  best 
MSS.,  is,  "  But  it  was  said.  Whosoever 
shall  put  away  his  wife,"  &c.  The  words 
thus  rendered  must  clearly  be  understood  in  connection 
with  something  which  has  gone  before,  aud  are  sugges- 
tive, as  Lightfoot  has  obsen'ed,  of  "  a  silent  objection." 
In  verses  27,  28,  our  Lord  reliearses  the  letter,  and 
expounds  the  meaning  of  the  seventh  commandment : 
"  To  liave  heard,"  He  says,  "that  it  was  said  "  {i.e.,  by 
the  mouth  of  Moses;  for  the  words  "  by"  or  "to  them 
of  old  time"  are  not  found  in  the  best  MSS.),  "Thou 


shalt  not  commit  adultery.''  By  the  Jewish  system  of 
divorce — a  system  tolerated  under  their  law,  by  reason 
of  the  hardness  of  the  hearts  of  the  people — the  true 
import  of  this  command  was  evaded,  and  in  vii-tue  of 
that  system,  as  explained  by  many  of  their  most  dis- 
tinguished teachers,  a  door  was  opened  for  the  indul- 
gence of  then-  unbridled  lusts  and  passions. 

Our  Lord,  contrasting  his  own  teaching,  not,  as  some 
would  represent,  with  that  of  the  Mosaic  kw,  but  with 
the  unauthorised  expositions  of  that  law  then  current 
amongst  a  large  section  of  the  Jews,  takes  occasion  to 
enforce  the  nature  aud  obligations  of  the  primeval  law 
of  marriage,  as  instituted  in  Eden,  and  as  renewed  in 
the  Decalogue.  He  meets  the  objections  which  arose 
within  the  miuds  of  liis  hearers,  though  utterance  may 
not  have  been  given  to  them  by  th^-  lip?,  by  not  only 


132 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


admitting  but  affirming  the  existeuce  of  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  salvation,  and  by  asserting,  in  figurative  but 
most  expressive  language  (deriving  much  of  its  force 
from  cui-rent  forms  of  Jewish  phraseology,'  and  from 
the  local  allusion  to  the  Valley  of  Hinnom),  the  abso- 
lute necessity  of  incurring  any  risk,  of  enduiing  any 
suffering,  of  submitting  to  any  saci-ifice,  rather  than  by 
the  indulgence  of  sensual  passions  to  become  liable  to 
eternal  perdition.  "  It  is  better  for  thee,"  He  says  to 
his  hearers  (i.e.,  it  is  more  to  your  true  and  enduring 
interests),  "that  one  of  thy  members  should  perish,  and 
not  that  thy  whole  body  shoidd  be  cast  into  hell." 

Those  who  are  aware  of  the  manner  iu  which  tlie 
subject  of  divorce  has  been  treated  in  the  Talmud  will 
readily  understand  how  many  and  how  subtle  were  those 
evasions  of  the  seventh  commandment  whicli  would 
natm-ally  suggest  themselves  to  the  minds  of  tliose  wlio 
listened  to  these  words  ;  and  it  is  to  these  that  our  Lord 
seems  to  make  tacit  allusion  in  the  verses  now  under 
consideration  :  "  But  it  has  been  said,  Whosoever  shall 
put  away  his  wife,  let  him  give  her  a  writing  of  divorce- 
ment." 

It  has  been  inferred  from  these  words,  and  still 
more  from  those  which  occur  in  Matt.  xix.  7,  "  Why 
did  Moses  then  command  to  give  a  writing  of  divorce- 
ment, and  to  put  her  away  ? "  that  the  Jews,  iu  the 
days  of  our  Lord,  misunderstood  or  perverted  the 
nature  and  the  design  of  the  Levitical  law,  as  recorded 
in  Dent.  xxiv.  I — i,  to  which  allusion  is  here  made." 
These  words  may  be  translated  as  follows:  "If  a  man 
shall  take  a  wife  and  marry  her,  it  shall  come  to  pass 
if  she  find  not  favour  in  his  eyes  because  he  has  found 
iu  her  some  uncleanness,  then  let  him  write  her  [or,  as 
some  render  the  words,  '  and  he  write  her ']  a  bill 
of  divorcement,  and  put  [it]  iu  her  hand,  and  send  her 
away  from  his  house ;  and  when  she  is  departed  out  of 
his  house  she  may  go  and  be  another  man's  wife  ;  and 
if  [or,  and  she  depart  from  liis  house,  and  go  and 
become  the  wife  of  another ;  and]  the  latter  husband  hate 
her,  and  write  her  a  bill  of  divorcement,  and  put  [it]  in 
her  hand,  and  send  her  away  from  his  house ;  or  if  the 
latter  husband  who  has  taken  her  to  him  to  wife,  die ; 
[then]  her  former  husband  who  sent  her  away  shall  not 
bo  able  to  take  her  again  to  be  his  wife,  after  that  she 
has  been  defiled,  for  that  is  abomination  before  the 
Lord."-' 

This  precept,  so  far  from  being  designed  to  cujoiu, 
or  oven  to  encourage  divorce,  was  evidently  framed  with 
a  direct  -^-iew  to  its  restraint.  Whatever  may  be  the 
meaning  of  the  disputed  phrase  which  is  rendered  in 

>  See  Lightfoofs  Heh.  and  Tiiliiiud.  Exercitaliom  upon  St.  Matthai:, 
vol.  xi.,  p.  115.     1823. 

2  It  must  be  observed,  however,  that  in  Mark  x.  i  the  word  used 
is  JirtTpe^ev,  not  e>tTti.\uTo,  i.e.,  " jvei-mitted,"  not  "commanded." 

•  There  w.as  no  command  given  by  Moses  to  divorce  the  wife.  The 
command  was  that  the  divorce  should,  in  every  case,  he  made  in 
accordance  with  a  duly  prescribed  form. 

3  If  the  apodosis  begins,  as  in  the  A,  V.,  with  the  words  "  then  let 
him  write  her  a  bill  of  divorcemeut,"  it  becomes  necessary  to  trans- 
late the  words  which  follow,  as  in  the  A.V.,  "  she  may  go  out/'  &c. 
If,  on  the  contrary,  the  apodosis  begins  at  verse  4,  there  is  no  occa- 
sion for  such  a  departure  from  the  uniformity  of  the  translation. 


the  Authorised  Version  "  some  uncleanness,"  the  per- 
mission of  divorce  is  restricted  to  that  sLuglo  case. 
The  necessity,  moreover,  of  placing  in  the  hands  of  the 
rejected  wife  a  written  instrument^  woidd,  for  the  most 
part,  involve  recourse  to  the  priests  or  Le^-ites,  and 
thus  involve  delay,  and  check  action  upon  sudden  im- 
pulse. The  absolute  prohibition,  also,  of  a  return  to  the 
first  husband,  after  the  contraction  of  a  second  maiTiage, 
would,  of  itself,  operate  as  a  powerfid  motive  against 
yielding  to  the  influence  of  momentaiy  passion  or  pre- 
judice. Nor  must  the  ground  of  that  prohibition  be 
overlooked.  It  is  made  to  consist  in  the  defilement 
contracted  by  the  second  marriage ;  and  it  should  be 
obser\'ed  that  the  verb  employed  is  the  same  which  is 
used  to  denote  the  pollution  or  defilement  of  adultery 
and  of  idolatry  (e.g.  Ezek.  xxxiii.  26;  xxxvi.  18). 

But  notwithstanding  the  check  tlms  interposed  upon 
the  multiplication  of  divorces,  they  had  become  of  such 
common  occurrence  in  the  time  of  our  Lord,  and  they 
were  given  upon  such  slight  and  insufficient  gi-ounds, 
that  wo  find  it  maintained  by  tlie  school  of  HUlol,  a 
celebrated  rabbi  who  died  shortly  after  the  Christian  era, 
that  if  the  wife  cook  her  husband's  food  batUy,  she  was 
to  bo  put  away;'  whilst  Rabbi  Akibah  taught  that  "if 
any  sees  a  woman  handsomer  than  his  wife,  he  may  put 
her  away;  because  it  is  said,  "  K  she  find  not  favour  in 
his  eyes.''^  Another  school,  however,  that  of  Shammai, 
the  colleague  of  Hillol,  maintained  tliat  the  only  ground 
of  divorce  under  the  Jewish  law  was  that  which  our 
Lord  himself  distinctly  recognises  iu  the  words  under 
consideration — viz.,  that  of  iucoutiuence. 

It  may  be  urged,  indeed,  in  opposition  to  this  view, 
that  by  the  law  prescribed  iu  Dent.  xxii.  22,  the 
adulteress  was  to  be  punished  by  death,  and  conse- 
quently that  there  was  no  place  left  for  divorce.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  has  been  thought  that  pro^-isiou  was 
thus  made  for  a  mitigation  of  the  severity  of  the  law 
respecting  adultery,  so  that  that  crime,  though  punish- 
able with  death,  if  established,  need  not  necessarily  be 
thus  visited,  whilst,  at  the  same  time,  provision  was 
made  for  the  i-elief  of  the  injui-ed  husband  by  the  legal 
severance  of  the  nuptial  bond.'' 

Important  as  the  correct  determination  of  the  mean- 
iug  of  these  words  is  in  their  bearing  upon  tlie  question 
of  the  re-marriage  of  the  guilty  person,  it  is  one  which 
probably  does  not  admit  of  determination  with  any 
absolute  amount  of  certainty. 

And  now,  I'eturniug  to  the  direct  consideration  of  the 
words  of  our  Lord,  it  deserves  notice  that  these  words 

■1  The  copy  of  a  hill  of  divorce  will  be  found  in  Lightfoofs  Works, 
vol.  xi.,  p.  123.    1823. 

5  Gittin,  c.  ix. 

6  3ft,s/t7ia,  ult.  in  Gittin,  c.  ix. 

7  It  is  deserving  of  observation  that  although  under  the 
Jewish  law  the  betrothed  virgin  was  regarded  as  the  wife  of  him 
to  whom  she  was  betrothed,  and  the  punishment  of  incontinence 
was  the  same  as  in  the  case  of  a  married  woman  ( Dcut.  xxii. 
23.  21),  it  was  the  intention  of  Joseph  to  put  away  his  betrothed 
wife  privily,  and  not  to  jirocced  against  her  criminally.  It  must 
be  remembered,  however,  that  the  Jews,  at  the  time  in  question, 
were  undoubtedly  subject  to  the  supremacy  of  Roman  law;  and  it 
is  a  question  of  extreme  difficulty  to  determine  to  what  extent  that 
supremacy  interfered  with  the  execution  of  the  Levitical  law. 


DIFFICULT  PASSAGES  EXPLAINED. 


133 


are  repeated,  -witli  some  verbal  alterations,  in  the  19th 
chapter  of  this  Gospel ;  again  in  Mark  x.  11,12;  and  oueo 
more  in  Luke  x-\-i.  18.  The  variations  in  tliese  several 
places  are  of  sulficient  importance  to  make  a  literal 
translation  of  the  four  passages  desirable,  \\Hth  a  view  to 
the  coiTect  apprehension  of  the  law  enforced  in  all. 

The  following  is,  it  is  believed,  a  correct  rendering  of 
these  four  passages,  according  to  the  reading  of  the 
bestMSS.:— 

(1.)  "Every  man  who  puttoth  away  his  wife,  saving 
for  the  cause  of  fornication,  causes  her  to  become  an 
adulteress  (/noixeu9i>ai'),  and  whosoever  shall  marry  (one) 
put  away,  commits  adultery."     (Matt.  v.  32.) 

(2.)  "  Whosoever  shall  put  away  his  wife,  saving  for 
fornication,  and  shall  marry  another,  committeth 
adidtory,  [and  he  who  marrieth  (one)  put  away  com- 
mitteth adultery]."'     (Matt.  xix.  9.) 

(3.)  '•  Whosoever  shall  put  away  his  wife  and  marry 
another,  committeth  adultery  against  her;  and  if  she 
put  away  her  husband  and  marry  another,  she  com- 
mitteth adidtery."     (Mark  x.  11,  12.) 

(4.)  "  Whosoever  putteth  away  his  wife  and  man-ieth 
another,  committeth  adultery ;  and  he  who  marfieth  (one) 
put  away  from  (her)  husband,  committeth  adultery." 
(Luke  xvi.  18.) 

The  following  ai-o  some  of  the  points  which  seem  to 
call  for  observation  in  the  comparison  of  these  passages  : 

I.  Whereas  in  two  of  the  passages  cited,  the  one 
and  only  ground  of  la\vful  divorce  is  mentioned— viz., 
that  of  iueoutinence — in  the  two  last  it  is  omitted.  It 
has  been  inferred  from  this  omission  tliat  divorce,  under 
any  circumstances,  is  only  permitted,  never  enjoined. 
Wliether  this  inference  be  or  bo  not  fairly  drawn  from 
the  omission  in  question,  it  can  scarcely  admit  of  doubt 
(1)  that  the  words  supplied  in  the  two  places  of  St. 
Matthew's  Gospel  must  be  understood  as  implied  iu  the 
parallel  places  of  St.  Mark  and  St.  Luke  ;-  (2)  that  those 
early  writers  were  in  error  who  held  that  the  putting 
away  of  a  wife,  even  in  the  case  of  adultery,  was 
obligatory ;  and  (3)  that  those  who  in  early  and  later 
times  have  maintained  that  marriage  is  in  all  cases 
indissoluble,  are  still  further  removed  from  a  right 
apprehension  of  the  law  of  Christ  resiiecting  it. 

II.  Wliereas  it  was  needless,  in  the  case  of  the  Jews, 
to  lay  down  any  regulation  respecting  tlie  divorce  of 
a  husliaud  by  a  wife,  a  necessity  arose  for  prescribing 
the  duty  of  the  wife  as  well  as  of  the  husband,  in  the 
case  of  laws  pertaining  aUke  to  all  nations.  Moreover, 
in  the  law  prescribed  in  Mark  x.  11,  12,  the  wife 
appears  to  be  jjlaced,  in  regard  to  the  right  of  divorce, 
upon  the  same  footing  as  the  husband ;  and  inasmuch  as 

I  Tliis  clause  is  omitted  in  many  MSS. 

'  It  is  somcwlmt  remarkable  that  Augustine,  in  bis  interpretation 
of  this  passage,  reverses  the  sound  canon  which  be  has  elsewhere 
laid  down — viz.,  that  the  shorter  and  more  incomplete  passage  is 
to  receive  its  interpretation  from  the  longer  and  fuller  ;  and  finds 
in  the  parallel  passages  of  St,  Mark  and  St.  Luke  a  limitation  of 
the  fuller  record  of  our  Lord's  words,  as  contained  in  the  Gospel 
of  St.  Matthew.  In  his  "  Retractations,"  however,  he  confesses 
his  dissatisfaction  with  what  he  had  previously  written,  and  records 
bis  conviction  that  he  had  not  aiTived  at  a  satisfactory  solution  of 
the  difficulty. 


the  clause  of  permission  of  divorce  and  of  re-marriage 
which  is  expressed  in  Matt.  v.  32,  and  xix.  9,  with  regard 
to  the  husband,  in  the  case  of  adultery,  must  necessarily 
be  understood  in  Mark  x.  11,  and  iu  Luke  xvi.  18, 
every  sound  canon  of  interpretation  seems  to  demand 
that  the  same  permission  must  be  regarded  as  conceded 
to  the  wife  which  the  passages  above  cited  concede  to 
the  husband. 

III.  We  have  reseiwed  to  the  last  the  discussion  of 
the  important  question,  whether  the  prohibition  of  the 
re-marriage  of  a  divorced  woman  is  alisolute  and  uni- 
versal, or  whether  that  prohibition  is  restricted  to  the 
case  of  one  divorced  on  insufficient  grounds. 

In  support  of  the  former  of  these  interpretations 
appeal  is  made,  and  perhaps  not  altogether  without 
reason,  to  the  absence  of  the  article  in  Matt.  v.  32, 
xix.  9,  and  Luke  xvi.  18,  before  the  word  arro\e\vfi.evriv 
i.e.,  "put  away,"  or  "divorced;"  and  it  is  argued  that 
the  prohibition  applies  not  only  to  the  woman  who  has 
been  divorced  on  insufficient  grounds,  but  also  to  any 
woman  who  has  been  put  away,  wliether  lawfully  or 
unlawfully,  from  her  husband. 

It  has  been  argued,  further,  that  the  word  airoAeXu^teVi)!/ 
must  be  understood  as  ha\'iug  primary  reference  not  to 
a  woman  imlawfully  separated  from  her  husband,  but 
to  one  in  whose  case  the  vinculmn  matrimonii — i.e.,  the 
marriage  bond — has  been  absolutely  broken ;  and,  inas- 
much as  this  bond  can  bo  broken  only  by  the  act  of 
adultery,  that  the  reference  must  be  primarily  to  the 
case  of  one  who  has  been  separated  on  this  ground 
from  her  husband. 

To  this  latter  argument  it  seems  sufficient  to  reply 
that  the  same  word  cannot  be  so  interpreted  in  the 
former  claiise  of  the  verses  in  question;  and,  conse- 
quently, tliat  as  the  primary  subject  of  the  discourse 
is  the  putting  away  of  a  wife  on  insufficient  grounds, 
the  same  word  in  the  latter  clause  of  the  verse  must,  of 
necessity,  be  interpreted  as  susceptible  of  that  meaning 
wliich  it  undoubtedly  bears  in  the  former. 

It  seems,  moreover,  but  reasonable  to  suppose  that 
this  is  the  primary  sense  in  which  the  word  anoKeKv- 
IJiivriv  ought  to  be  understood  iu  this  place.  For,  inde- 
pendently of  the  consideration  already  noticed,  that 
divorces  on  insufficient  grounds  f(3rm  the  primary  subject 
of  discourse,  and  consequently  that  it  is  but  reasonable 
to  presume  tliat  such  divorces  must  be  regarded  as 
primarily  contemplated  throughout  it,  there  are  other 
grounds  for  the  belief  that  the  re-marriage  of  a  woman 
divorced  on  the  ground  of  adultery  is  not  the  cas<j 
immediately  contemplated  by  our  Lord  in  these  pas- 
sages. 

In  the  first  place,  tlie  adulteress,  under  the  Jewish 
law.  was  exposed  to  the  punishment  of  death  by  stoning, 
as  has  been  already  observed;  and,  conscquenfly,  it 
appears  improbable  that  her  re-marriage  sliould  bo  the 
subject  of  a  discourse  addressed  primarily  to  the  Jews. 
Again,  in  that  Gospel  in  which  the  law  of  re-man-iage 
is  applied  generally  to  other  nations — viz.,  that  of  St. 
Mark,  and  consequently,  in  which  tlie  re-marrii\ge  of  the 
divorced  woman  would  be  more  likely  to  be  contcm- 


134 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


plated — the  proliibitory  clause  in  question  does  not  occur. 
And,  once  more,  when  the  ivords  under  consideration  are 
viewed  prospectively  in  their  reference  to  the  Christian 
Church  of  all  ages,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  sin  of 
adultery  would  justly  expose  the  offender  to  exclusion 
from  the  pale  of  her  communion ;  and,  consequently, 
that  it  is  scarcely  reasonable  to  expect  directions  iu  such 
a  code  of  laws  as  is  contained  ui  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  for  the  guidance  and   direction  of  those  who 


should  bring  themselves,  by  ivilful  transgi'essiou,  into 
the  condition  of  "  heathen  men  and  publicans." 

On  these  grounds,  then,  whilst  abstaining  from  the 
expression  of  any  opinion  on  the  lawfulness  or  unlaw- 
fulness of  the  re-marriage  of  one  who  has  been  divorced 
on  aecomit  of  adultery,  it  seems  reasonable  to  conclude 
tliat  it  formed  no  part  of  our  blessed  Lord's  design, 
in  the  words  imder  consideration,  to  decide  this  ques- 
tion either  afiii-matively  or  negatively. 


ANIMALS   OF   THE   BIBLE. 

BY    THE    BEV.    W.    HOUGHTON,    M.A.,    KECTOK    OF    PKESTON,    SALOP. 


HAET    AND    HIND. 

[HE    follomng  are  the    Scriptural  allusions 
to  deer,  for  which  the  Hebrew  word   is 
ayydl,  masc.   "hart,"  and  ayydldh,  fem. 
"  hind."      They  were   allowed    for   food. 
"  As  the  roebuck  and  the  hart  is  eaten "  (Deut.  xii. 
22) ;  "  These  are  the  beasts  which  ye  shall  eat,  .     .     . 
the  hart  and  the  roebuck"  (Deut.  xiv.  4,  5).      Harts 
are  mentioned  amongst  the  fat  oxen,  sheep,  and  other 
animals  which  were  daily  consumed  by  those  who  fed 
at  King  Solomon's  royal   board  (see  1  Kings  iv.  23). 
In   Ps.   xlii.    1   we   have  a  picture  of  a   deer  panting  \ 
for  thirst  during  a  season  of  drought :  "  As  the  hart  i 
pantcth  after  the    water-brooks,    so    panteth  my  soul  j 
after  thee,  O  God."     Though  tlie  authorship  and  date  i 
of  this  pathetic  psalm  are  uncertain,  there  can  be  no  I 
doubt  as  to  the  place  where  it  was  written — namely,  i 
the  Trans-Jordanic  hUls,  which,  as  Dean  Stanley  says, 
always  behold,  as  they  are  always  beheld  from,  Western  j 
Palestine.      "  As    before   the   eyes    of    the    exile,   the  '■ 
'  gazelle '  (hart)   of  the  forests  of  Gdead  panted  after  l 
the  fresh   streams   of  water   wliich  there   descend  to  [ 
the  Jordan,  so  his  soul  panted  after  God,  from  whose 
outward  presence  he  was  shut  out.     The  river  with  its 
winding   rapids,   'deep  eaUing  to   deep,'   lay  between 
him   and  his  home"  {Sinai   and   Palestine,   p.    330). 
"  My  beloved  is  like  a  roe  (gazelle)  or  a  young  hart. " 
(Cant.  ii.  9) ;  "  Be  thou  like  a  roe    or  a  young   hart 
upon  the  mountains  of  Bether"  (ver.  17);  "Then  shaU 
the  lame  man  leap  as  an  hart.  "  (Isa.  xxxv.  6) ;  "  From 
the  daughter  of  Ziou  all  her  beauty  is  departed ;  her 
princes  are  become  like  harts  that  find  no  pasture,  and 
they   are  gone  without  strengtli  before  the  pursuer" 
(Lam.  i.  6).     The  image  of  a  hart  or  hind  in  a  season 
of  drought  was  often  before  the  minds  of  the  sacred 
writers  (Jer.   xiv.  2—5).      Other   Bible  references  to 
deer  allude  chiefly  to  their  actii-ity  and  sure-footedness. 
"  Ho  maketh  my  feet  like  hinds'  feet,  and  setteth  me 
upon  my  high  places"  (2  Sam.  xxii.  34;  see   also  Ps. 
x\-iii.    33,   .".nd    Hab.   iii.   19).      The    gentleness    and 
affectionate  tlisposition   of  the  deor   is   alluded   to    in 
ProY.  V.  19,  where  the  hind  is  compared  to  a  tender 
mic :  "  Let   her  be  as  the   loving  liind   and  pleasant 
roe."     The  doer  tribe,  or  Cervidce,  often  conceal  their 
iawna  after  birth  for  a  time.     This  has  been  noticed 


frequently  in  our  own  country;  both  the  fallow  deer 
and  the  red  deer  conceal  their  young,  the  latter  more 
carefully  than  the  former.  This  habit  appears  to  be 
referred  to  in  Job  xxxix.  1 :  "  Canst  thou  mark  when 
the  hinds  do  calve  ?  ...  or  knowest  thou  the 
beaiing  time  of  the  binds?"  The  timidity  of  the 
deer  iu  a  thunder-storm  is  mentioned  in  Ps.  xxix., 
wliieh  contains  a  magnificent  description  of  a  storm, 
jioetically  called  "  Jehovah's  Voice "  {Eiil  Yehovali) : 
' '  The  voice  of  Jehovah  causeth  the  hinds  to  bo  in 
travail  pains."  All  these  allusions  are  simple,  and 
require  no  explanation ;  but  the  passage  in  Genesis 
(xlix.  21),  "Naphtali  is  a  hind  let  loose,  ho  giveth 
goodly  words,"  is  not  so  clear,  and  has  been  com- 
mented ujjon  in  various  ways.  The  Septuagint,  sup- 
posing other  vowel  points,  reads,  "Naphtali  is  a 
spreading  tree  which  giveth  beautiful  fruit."  This 
renderiug  has  been  followed  by  Bochart,  Lowth,  De 
Wette,  Ewald,  and  others.  Some  other  versions  and 
paraphrases  give,  '■  Naphtali  is  a  quick  messenger,  and 
like  a  hind  on  the  mountains  hastens  to  brLug  good 
tidings,"  which  the  Targums  say  refer  to  Naphtali 
h.a^ang  first  declared  to  Jacob  that  Joseph  was  alive. 
The  literal  rendermg  of  the  words  gives  us — 


Or  perhaps — 


*'  NapTitali  is  a  hind  let  loose. 
He  utteretb  words  of  beauty." 

'  Naphtali  is  a  graceful  hind, 
He  iittereth  words  of  beauty." 


The  word  shehwhdh  may  denote  "let  loose,"  "un- 
fettered," and  refer  to  a  hind  swiftly  bounding ;  but  it 
may  also  mean  "elegant,"  "graceful"  (outstretched, 
tall),  and  as  it  corresponds  with  shaplier.  "  beauty," 
the  parallelism  is  on  tho  side  of  this  latter  trans- 
lation. Let  us  now  see  liow  the  words  are  applicable 
to  Naphtali. 

The  tribe  of  Naphtali  distinguished  itself  in  a 
wonderful  manner  under  Barak  and  Deborah,  when 
Israel  was  delivered  from  the  iron  yoke  of  Jabin,  king 
of  Canaan — Naphtali  and  Zebuhm  "  jeopjirdisiug  their 
lives  unto  the  doatli  in  tho  high  places  of  the  field." 
Deborah  and  Barak  were  tho  poets  of  the  tribe :  "  Then 
sang  Deborah  and  Barak  tho  son  of  Abinoam "  that 
spirited  song  of  triumpli  over  Sisora  to  which  the  lattor 
imrt   of    the   verso   refers,   "  who  uttereth  words   of 


ANIMALS    or    THE    BIBLE. 


135 


beauty."  If  we  interpret  the  words  mjydldh  sheluchdh 
to  uicau  "  a  liind  let  loose,"  wo  must  refer  them  to  the 
martial  activity  and  prowess  of  Naphtali,  so  euccess- 
fuUy  displayed  at  the  river  Kishon  (Judg.  iv.  7  ;  v.  21), 
it  being  a  common  simile  iu  Hebrew  poetry  to  compare 
achievements  of  strength  and  endurance  with  the 
swiftness  of  the  stag  or  antelope.  Thus  of  the  three 
sons  of  Zeruiah,  Asahel  was  "  as  liglit  of  foot  as  a 
wild  roe "  (2  Sam.  ii.  18) ;  see  also  1  Chrou.  xii.  8, 
which  is  even  more  to  the  point :  the  Gadites  had 
faces  "like  the  faces  of  lions,  and  were  as  swift  as 
the  roes  upon  the  mountains."  We  prefer,  however,  for 
the  reason  wo  have  given,  the  translation  of  "  graceful 
hiud,"  alluding  to  the  beauty  and  fertility  of  the  terri- 
tory of  Naphtali,  expressly  mentioned  in  the  benedic- 
tion of  Moses,  ■■  Naphtali  is  satisfied  with  favour,  and 
full  with  the  blessing  of  the  Lord "  (Deut.  xxsiii.  23) ; 
while  the  words  "  He  giveth  forth  words  of  beauty" 
refer  to  the  poetical  genius  of  the  tribe  as  specially 
displayed  in  Deborah  and  Barak's  triumphal  song. 
This  explanation  is  adojjted  by  Maurer,  and,  amongst 
English  authorities,  by  Kalisch,  and  C.  H.  Hamilton 
Wright  in  his  excellent  notes  to  his  Book  of  Genesis 
(p.  128). 

The  Hebrew  word  ayydl,  "  a  stag,"  is  evidently  con- 
nected with  ayil,  "a  ram"  (from  a  root  signifying  "to 
be  strong "),  of  which  it  appears  to  be  intensive,  "  the 
great  ram,"  as  it  were ;  the  Jews  classifying  largo 
animals,  whether  sheep,  deer,  or  antelojjes,  in  one  group. 
The  stag  gave  name  to  places  in  Palestine,  just  as  it 
did  in  our  o^vu  country.  The  valley  of  Ajalon  (Ayydloii), 
or  "place  of  stags,"  on  the  frontier  of  the  two  king- 
doms— the  scene  of  Joshua's  celebrated  battle  with  the 
five  Canaanite  kings  (Josh.  x.  12) — and  Aijalon  in 
the  countiy  of  Zebulun,  where  Elon  was  buried  (Judg. 
xii.  12),  received  their  names  from  the  stag.  No 
other  Biblical  allusion,  with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of 
the  Aijeleth  Shahar  ("hind  of  the  morning"),  which 
occurs  only  iu  tho  inscription  of  Psabn  xxii.,  requires 
notice.^ 

Both  the  red  deer  {Cervus  elaphus),  or  rather  per- 
haps the  Cervus  barbarus,  which  is  only  the  southern 
representative  of  tho  European  stag,  and  the  fallow 
deer  (Dama  vulgaris),  were  probably  common  in  Pales- 
tine, though  at  the  present  time  the  latter  is  veiy  seldom 
seen,  and  the  former  is  quite  extinct.  Tho  fallow  deer 
was  seen  by  Hasselquist  in  Mount  Tabor  in  1751,  and 
Dr.  Tristram  was  told  it  was  still  to  be  found  there  as 
well  as  iu  the  woods  between  that  mountain  and  the 
gorge  of  the  Litany  river ;  he  only  met  with  one  single 
animal  in  an  open  glade  about  ten  miles  west  of  the 
Sea  of  Galilee.  Teeth  of  the  Dama  vulgaris  have  been 
found  in  bone  breccia  iu  the  Lebanon,  where  now  it 
does  not  exist. 

Teeth  of  the  red  deer,  or  some  closely  allied  species, 
were  also  foimd  by  Dr.  Tristram  iu  bone  breccia  of 
caverns  in  the  Lebanon ;  but  as  they  were  mixed  with 
fossil  teeth  of  the  reindeer,  as  was  thought,  they  pro- 

1  For  this  see  Vol.  I.,  page  299. 


bably  belonged  to  a  "  period  anterior  to  the  advent  of 
man  into  the  country."  Figures  of  tho  stag  occur  on 
the  Egyptian  monuments,  as  at  Beni  Hassan ;  but, 
according  to  gir  G.  Wilkinson,  the  animal  is  unknown 
in  the  valley  of  the  NUe,  but  is  still  seen  in  the  vicinity 
of  tho  Natron  lakes,  tliough  not  a  native  of  the  desert 
between  the  river  aud  tho  Red  Sea.  Dr.  Tristram, 
however,  says  that  no  I'cd  deer  is  now  found  iu  Egy[)t, 
but  that  a  race  very  slightly  differing  from  our  own 
still  lives  in  Morocco,  Algeria,  and  Tunis,  where  he  had 
several  times  obtained  it. 

HorapoUo  tells  us  that  when  the  Egyptians  wished  to 
symbolise  anything  of  long  duration  (iroAi/xpoVior)  they 
represented  a  stag,  because  it  shoots  its  horns  every  year 
(Hieroghj^jh.  ii.  21).  Inverted  stags'  heads  alternating 
with  hieroglyphics  are  depicted  in  judgment  scones ;  it 
is  probable  they  have  something  to  do  with  the  idea  of 
eternity:  when  they  would  denote  a  man  imprudently 
quick  in  his  movements,  they  portray  a  stag  and  a  viper, 
for  the  stag  flees  at  tho  sight  of  the  viper  (Hieroglyph. 
ii.  87).  The  Coptic  word  for  stag  is  eioul,  which 
appears  to  be  the  same  as  the  Hebrew  ayyal.  Mr.  A.  H. 
Sayce  informs  us  that  the  Assyrian  word  for  deer  is 
dlu,  but  that  ho  only  knows  the  word  as  occurring  in 
the  Syllabaries ;  it  seems  to  bo  related  to  the  Hebrew 
name. 

ANTELOPES. 

It  remains  for  us  to  consider  the  Biblical  allusions  to 
tho  AnteloiJes,  the  last  family  of  the  Pecora  division  of 
even- toed  Ungulates.  Of  this  group  four  distinct  species 
at  present  occiu'  either  in  Palestine  or  on  the  borders 
of  the  land;  they  are  tho  Gazelle  (Oazella  dorcas), 
Oryx  [Oryx  leucoryx),  the  Addas  (Addax  nasomacu- 
latiis),  and  the  Bubale  [Alcephalus  biibalis).  The  fol- 
lowing names  of  animals,  all  of  which,  it  is  probable, 
denote  antelopes,  occur  in  the  Hebrew  Bible  : — Tsebi, 
translated  in  our  version  always  by  "  roe  "  or  "  roe- 
buck ; "  tu  or  led,  occurring  only  twice,  and  trans- 
lated "  wild  ox  "  or  "  wUd  bull ;  "  dishon,  translated 
"pygarg"  in  Deut.  xiv.  5,  where  alone  it  is  named 
as  a  clean  animal  fit  for  food;  and  yachmur,  ren- 
dered "fallow  deer"  in  the  only  two  places  in  which 
it  occurs,  viz.,  in  Deut.  xiv.  5,  and  1  Kings  iv.  23, 
where  the  animal  is  mentioned  as  oue  fit  for  food, 
and  as  part  of  the  pro^^sion  supphed  to  King  Solomon's 
table. 

We  will  consider  these  various  names  in  tho  order 
in  which  we  have  enumerated  them ;  aud  first  we 
notice  the  tsebi.  There  is  no  doubt,  we  thmk,  that  the 
animal  denoted  is  the  beautiful  little  gazelle  (Gazella 
dorcas  or  G.  Arabica),  and  not  the  capreoUne  deer,  the 
roebuck  (which  our  translators  have  identified  with  the 
tsebi),  an  animal  which  at  present  at  least  is  strictly 
oonfined  to  Europe.  The  little  antelope  is  several  times 
mentioned  in  the  Bible ;  it  was  allowed  as  food  :  "  The 
unclean  and  the  cleau  may  eat  thereof,  as  of  the  gazelle 
(A.  Y.,  'roebuck '),  and  as  of  tho  hart  "  (Deut.  xii.  15, 
22 ;  XV.  22) ;  see  also  1  Kings  iv.  23,  where  it  is  named 
as  ono  of  tho  animals  pro\'ided  for  Solomon's  table — 
"  Harts  and  gazelles  (A.  V., '  roebucks ')  aud  fallow  deer 


13d 

and  fatted  fowl."  The  swiftness  of  the  gazelle  is 
alluded  to  in  2  Sam.  ii.  18— Asaliel,  one  of  Zeruiah's 
eons,  was  "  as  light  of  foot  as  a  gazelle  "  (A.  V.,  "  wild 
roe");  and  again  in  1  Chron.  xii.  8.^  So  in  the 
Canticles,  "  Make  haste,  my  beloved,  and*  be  thou  like 
to  a  gazeUe  (A.  V.,  '  roe ';  or  to  a  young  hart  upon 
the  mountains  of  spices"  (viii.  14;  ii.  8).  Allusion  to 
its  being  hunted  is  made  in  Isa.  xiii.  14 ;  Prov.  vi.  5. 
The  loveliness  of  the  gazeUe  rendered  it  a  favoui'ite 
term  of  endearment;  this  appears  all  through  the 
Canticles ;  indeed,  its  beauty  is  implied  in  its  Hebrew 
name,  which  signifies  '•  beauty,"  "glory;"  thus  we  have 
Mount  Zion  spoken  of  as  "  the  mountain  of  holy  beauty" 
(Dan.  xi.  45).  The  Jews,  like  the  Arabs,  compared 
beautiful  women  to  gazelles ;  the  mother  of  King  Joash 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


the  desert  and  the  plains,  the  gazeUe  appears  at  homo 
everywhere.  It  shares  the  rocks  of  Engedi  with  the 
wild  goats ;  it  dashes  over  the  wild  expanse  of  the 
desert  beyond  Beer-sheba ;  it  canters  hi  siugle  file  under 
the  monastery  of  Marsaba.  We  found  it  in  the  glades 
of  Carmel,  and  it  often  springs  from  its  leafy  covert  on 
the  back  of  Tabor,  and  screens  itself  under  the  thorn- 
bushes  of  Geuuesaret.  Among  the  grey  hills  of  Galilee 
it  is  stLU  '  the  roe  upon  the  mountains  of  Bether ; ' 
and  I  have  seen  a  little  troop  of  gazelles  feeding  on 
the  Mount  of  Olives,  close  to  Jerusalem  itself.  While 
in  the  open  grounds  of  the  south  it  is  the  wildest  of 
game,  and  can  only  bo  approached,  unless  by  chance, 
at  its  accustomed  di-inking-places,  and  that  before  the 
dawn  of  morning,  in  the  glades  of  Galilee  it  is  very 


THE  GAZELLE  {Goeella  dorcas). 


was  called  after  a  gazelle :  her  name  was  Tsibynh 
(Authorised  Version,  "  Zibiah  ")  (2  Kings  xii.  1),  i.e.. 
"  a  female  gazelle."  See  also  Acts  ix.  35,  Tabitha  or 
Dorcas,  i.e.,  "a  gazelle."  Arabian  poets  compare 
beautiful  women's  eyes  to  the  fuU  black  eyes  of  the 
gazeUo.     Thus  Byron — 

"  Her  eye's  dark  charm  'twere  vain  to  tell ; 
But  gaze  on  tli.it  of  the  gazelle, 
It  will  assist  thy  fancy  well." 

"  The  gazelle,"  Dr.  Tristram  informs  us,  "  is  by  far  the 
most  abundant  of  all  tho  large  game  in  Palestine ; 
indeed,  it  is  the  only  wild  animal  of  the  chase  which  an 
ordinary  traveller  has  any  chance  of  seeing.  Small 
herds  of  gazelles  are  to  be  found  in  every  part  of  the 
country,  and  in  tho  south  they  congregate  in  herds  of 
near  100  together.  One  such  herd  I  met  with  at  the 
southern  end  of  the  Joliel  Usdum,  or  Salt  Mountam, 
south  of  the  Dead  Sea,  where  they  had  congregated  to 
di'ink  of  tho  only  sweet  spring  witliin  several  miles, 
Ain  Beida.     Though  generally  considered  an  animal  of 


easily  surprised,  and  trusts  to  the  concealment  of  its 
covert  for  safety.  I  have  repeatedly  startled  the  gazelle 
fi'om  a  brake  only  a  few  yards  in  front  of  me ;  and 
once,  when  ensconced  out  of  sight  in  a  storax  bush, 
I  watched  a  pair  of  gazelles  with  their  kid,  which  the 
dam  was  suckling.  Ever  and  anon  both  tho  soft-eyed 
parents  would  gambol  with  it  as  though  fawns  them- 
selves "  {Natural  History  of  the  Bible,  p.  129).  The  gazelle 
of  which  Dr.  Tristram  gives  this  interesting  account  is 
the  Gazella  dorcas  of  OgUby  and  Gray,  the  Antilope 
dorcas  of  Pallas.  There  is  another  gazelle  (probably 
only  a  variety  of  the  former  species)  which  in  some 
parts  of  Palestine,  as  in  Gilead  and  m  the  forest  dis- 
tricts especially  east  and  west  of  Jebel  Ajlun,  is 
extremely  abundant.  This  is  the  Antilope  Arahica  of 
Hemprich  and  Ehrenberg,  the  A.  gazella  cora  of 
Hamilton  Smith,  the  A.  dorcas  var.  of  Riippel.  Dr. 
Tristram's  party  frequently  put  up  small  troops  of  this 
animal,  which  is  even  more  beautiful  and  elegant  than 
the  common  gazelle.     The  colouring  is  pretty  mxich  the 


ANIMALS  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


137 


same  in  both  these  gazelles,  but  the  back  of  the  Arabian 
animal  is  a  darker  fawn  colour,  and  ths  dark  mark 
along  the  flanks  is  deeper  and  blacker.  Gazelles  are 
killed  by  the  Arabs,  who  lay  in  wait  for  them  at  their 
well-known  watering  places,  or  in  the  defiles  in  the 
rocky  districts.  "  A  more  wholesale  mode  is  practised 
in  the  Haurau  by  driving  a  herd  into  a  decoy  enclosure 
with  a  pitfall  on  the  other  side,  where  they  are  easily 
taken."  Dr.  Tristram  has  witnessed  the  chase  of  the 
gazelle  witli  falcon  and  hound.  "  The  birds  are  first 
swung  off  at  the  gazeUe,  and  make  rejjeated  swoops, 
while  the  greyhound  gauis  upon  it  and  seizes  it.  With 
a  well-trained  bird  the  poor  beast  can  rarely  escape  in 
this  chase,  unless  ho  have  a  long  start  of  the  hunter" 
(Nat.  Hist.  Bib.,  pp.  129,  131). 


We  now  proceed  to  consider  what  antelope  is  pro- 
bably denoted  by  the  Hebrew  word  to.  Mention  of  tho 
to  or  teo  occurs  twice  only — in  Deut.  xiv.  5,  where  it  is 
enumerated  in  the  list  of  clean  animals,  and  is  trans- 
lated "  wild  ox ; "  and  in  Isa.  li.  20,  "  Thy  sons  havo 
fainted,  they  lie  at  the  head  of  aU  tho  streets,  as  a  to 
['  wild  bull,'  A.  v.]  in  a  net :  they  are  full  of  the  fury 
of  the  Lord,  the  rebuke  of  thy  God."  Prom  this  latter 
passage  it  is  seen  that  the  to  was  some  wild  animal 
which  was  occasionally  caught  in  a  net.  We  have 
already  shown  that  tho  wild  buU  is  denoted  by  tho 
Hebrew  word  reem.  Several  of  the  old  versions  think 
that  the  antelope  {Oryx  leucoryx)  is  the  to  of  the 
Hebrew  Bible ;  and  though  there  is  nothing  to  provo 
this,  it  is  very  probable.     We  have  seen  that  there  are 


THE  ADDAX  {Addax  nasomacxdatus) 


The  flesh  is  considered  inferior  to  wild  goat,  dry, 
lean,  and  insipid.  Tho  Gazella  dorcas  is  found  over  all 
North  Africa  and  upper  parts  of  Arabia ;  the  Gazella 
Arabica,  or  ariel  gazelle,  extends  eastwards  from  Syiua 
across  Persia  to  India. 

The  number  of  antelope.s  is  very  great,  Africa  con- 
taining about  five -sixths  of  the  whole ;  after  Africa  tho 
Indian  district  has  most  species.  The  iamiiy  Antilo^JCCE 
is  divided  by  Dr.  Gray  into  two  large  groups — (1)  the 
antelapes  of  the  fields,  and  (2)  the  antelopes  of  the 
desert,  tho  latter  having  a  covering  of  flhick  bristles  in 
the  insido  nosti-ils,  the  other  di%'isiou  being  free  from 
these  intro-nasal  hairs.  These  are  again  subdi^ded 
into  other  groups. 

The  four  antelopes  which  are  now  either  in  Palestine 
or  in  the  liorders  of  the  land  are,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
Gazella,  Oryx,  Addax,  and  Alcephalus,  tho  first  three 
belonging  to  the  antelopes  of  the  field,  the  last  to  those 
of  the  desert.  The  first  is  one  of  the  true  antelopes, 
tlie  second  and  third  belong  to  the  cervine  groiip,  the 
last  to  the  bo^-ine  di\-ision  of  the  desert  antelopes. 


four  species  of  antelopes  in  Palestine  or  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood;  of  these  the  gazelle  represents   the   tsebi, 
\  the  bubalo  tho  yachmur,  and  possibly  the   addax  the 
dislion. 

As  the  oryx  was  probably  not  uncommon  in  Pales- 
tine in  Biblical  times,  and  as  we  know  it  was  and  is 
now  common  in  North  Africa,  and  is  frequently  repre- 
sented on  tho  Egyptian  monuments,  there  does  not 
seem  to  be  any  other  animal  that  has  an  equal  claiui 
to  represent  the  Hebrew  word  in  c^ucstion.  The  name 
appears  to  be  connected  with  tho  verb  tdah,  having 
the  signification  of  tho  Arabic  word  "  to  outrun,"  "  to 
be  swift."  This  antelope  was  hunted  by  the  ancient 
Egyi^tians,  by  whom  it  was  sometimes  tamed,  and 
was  therefore  probably  often  taken  alive  and  unhurt 
in  a  net.  The  oryx  was  tlu3  only  one  chosen  as  au 
emblem  by  the  people  of  ancient  Egypt;  but  Sir  G. 
Wilkinson  tells  us  it  was  not  sacred,  and  that  the 
same  city  on  v,-hose  monuments  it  was  represented  in 
sacred  subjects  was  in  the  habit  of  killing  it  for 
tho  table. 


138 


THE  BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


THE    IDOLS    OF   MOAB. 

BY    F.    R.    CONDEK,    C.E. 


HE  most  frequently-repeated  precepts  of 
tlie  written  law  are  tliose  wliieh  condemn 
idolatry.  The  first  two  of  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments relate  to  this  subject.  Five 
out  of  the  248  positive  precepts  contained  in  the  Pen- 
tateuch, and  51  out  of  the  365  negative  precepts,  pre- 
scribe duties  opposed  to  idolatry.  It  is  true  that  only 
one.  out  of  the  68  tracts  of  which  the  Mishna  (or  oral  law) 
consists,  is  expressly  devoted  to  the  subject,  which  thus 
occupies  nearly  a  tenth  part  of  the  prescriptive  teaching 
of  the  five  books  of  Moses.  This  tract,  which"  is 
named  the  Aboda  Sara,  or  "foreign  worship,"  applies 
the  same  detailed  explanation  to  the  written  words  of 
the  great  legislator,  regarding  idolatry,  that  the  re- 
maining 67  tracts  afford  as  to  other  portions  of  tlie 
Law.  But  the  unusual  fulness  of  the  books  of  Leviticus 
and  Deuteronomy  on  the  subject  of  idolatry  is  such 
as  to  leave  little  room  for  the  oral  supplement.  So 
much  was  written,  once  and  for  all,  that  but  little 
supplemental  precept  was  reqiured. 

Closely  connected  with  an  irrevocable  condemnation 
of  every  form  of  idolatry,  that  was  thus  intertwined 
with  the  very  heartstrings  of  the  Divine  law,  was  the 
special  character  of  the  legislation  that  dealt  with  the 
seven  nations  or  tribes  inhabiting  Palestine  at  the  time 
of  the  Exodus,  and  with  those  people  who  dwelt  on  its 
borders,  allies  iu  blood  to  the  Israelites,  as  being  the  de- 
scendants of  the  father  of  Abraham,  in  two  cases,  and  of 
Isaac  himself  in  the  tliird — namely,  the  Ammonites,  the 
Moabites,  and  the  Edomites.  Whether  the  chief  danger 
of  being  seduced  to  join  in  the  worship  of  these  peoijle 
lay  in  the  vicinity  of  their  dwelling-places,  or  in  the 
BymD|thy  of  kindred  blood,  it  was  warded  off  by  the 
most  inflexible  barriers. 

Certain  grades  of  difference  were  prescribed,  with 
reference  to  these  different  tribes.  With  regard  to  the 
seven  peoples  of  Canaan,'  the  command  was  absolute 
to  leave  not  a  soul  alive.  The  residence  of  any  idolater 
on  the  soil  of  the  Holy  Land  was  forbidden.^  No 
marriages  were  to  be  made  with  idolaters.^  No  daughter 
of  Israel  was  to  be  given  to  an  Ammonite  or  a  Moabito 
for  ever.^  But  the  descendant  of  an  Idumean,*  in  the 
third  generation,  was  not  to  be  held  in  abomination. 
The  blood  of  tlio  Egyptians "  was  regarded  in  the  same 
light  as  that  of  the  descendants  of  Edom ;  for  Israel 
had  been  a  sojourner  in  the  land  of  Egypt.  As  all 
that  was  not  positively  forbidden  by  distinct  precept 
was  held  to  be  permitted,  the  native  of  any  country, 
with  the  exception  of  those  above  named,  might,  on  the 


1  Negative  precept  49  (Doiit.  xx.  16). 

2  Negative  precept  51  (Exod.  xxiii.  33). 

3  Negative  precept  .^2  (Deut.  vii.  3). 

4  Negative  precept  53  (Deut.  ssiii.  3). 

6  Negative  precept  ^i  (Deut.  xxiii.  7,  8). 
fi  Negative  precept  55  (Deut.  xxiii.  7). 


1  enunciation  of  idolatry,  be  admitted,  as  a  proselyte,  to 
the  iiri^dleges  of  Israel.  But  against  the  seductive  in- 
fluences of  the  neighbouring  idolaters  the  door  was  thus 
altogether  closed,  so  long  as  the  law  of  God  was  obeyed 
either  by  the  people  or  by  the  great  council  of  the 
Sanhedrim.  For  the  law  was  not  a  mere  idle  threat ; 
it  was  a  rule  of  life,  to  be  enforced  by  the  sword,  the 
stake,  the  cord,  and  the  stone,  for  wilful  breach ;  by 
stripes  and  by  the  pecuniary  mulct  of  the  sin-offeiing 
for  inadvertent  trespass. 

It  is  only  within  the  past  few  months  that  this  tone 
and  temper  of  the  Pentateuch  have  been  made  clearly 
intelligible,  by  the  discoveiy  of  what  the  gods  of  Ammon 
and  of  Moab  actually  were. 

Into  a  full  and  minute  description  of  the  various  idols 
which  are  now  in  course  of  almost  daily  discoveiy  in  the 
soil  of  Eastern  Syria  we  cannot,  for  ob\'ious  reasons, 
fully  enter.  Prom  the  time  when  Israel  abode  in 
Shittim  (Numb.  xxv.  1),  the  rites  of  the  sen-ice  of 
Baal-peor  have  been  of  a  directly  licentious  character ; 
and  the  idols  before  which  they  were  performed  are 
thus  of  a  type  and  natui-e  which  modesty  forbids  us  to 
delineate,  or  more  distinctly  to  describe.  For  those 
who  are  bound  to  study  this  portion  of  the  subject,  and 
who  are  aware  of  the  illustrations  to  be  drawn  from 
Greek  gems,  Roman  medals,  Egyptian  and  Indian 
sculptures,  and  the  terra-cotta  of  Cyjirus,  it  is  enough 
to  say  that,  while  presenting  totally  new  types,  this 
group  of  the  idols  of  Moab  is  much  what  might  be 
anticipated.  The  other  principal  aspect  of  the  idola- 
trous worship  is  astrological,  and  into  that  it  may  be 
interesting  to  enter  with  some  degree  of  detail. 

It  is  pretty  generally  known,  amongst  those  who  take 
interest  in  the  Holy  Land,  that  the  district  east  of  the 
deep  valley  of  the  Jordan  and  the  chasm  filled  by  the 
Dead  Sea  has  been  hitherto  an  almost  inaccessible 
country.  It  is  the  home  of  fierce  wild  tribes,  among 
whom  life  is  far  from  safe.  But  wifhm  the  last  few 
years  one  traveller  after  another  has  contrived  to  pass 
the  Ghor,  or  Jordan  valley,  and  to  return  to  tell  the  tale. 
Chief  among  these  must  be  named  Canon  Tristram, 
whose  charming  book.  The  Land  of  Moab,  published  in 
the  spring  of  the  present  year,  throws  a  light  on  this 
primitive  country  by  which  much  is  to  Ijo  learnt.  Nor 
was  Dr.  Tristram  able  to  pass  without  menace,  and 
something  that  might  have  been  worse.  He  was  made 
a  prisoner  in  his  own  camp,  witliin  the  walls  of  Kerae ; 
and  he  was  met,  on  crossing  the  frontier,  by  au  armed 
and  hostile  force  of  Aralis,  stripped,  as  is  their  savage 
custom,  totally,  for  fight. 

From  this  wild  and  dangerous  country,  in  August, 
1868,  came  tidings  of  the  discovery  of  a  block  of 
basalt,  bearing  .an  inscription  in  very  ancient  letters. 
This  is  now  commonly  known  as  the  Moabite  Stone. 

The  rums  of  Diban,  a  gi-eat  waste  of  black  basaltic 


THE   IDOLS  OP  MOAB. 


139 


stones  (resembling  some  of  the  pre-historic  ruins  in  our 
own  country,  such  as  the  Grey  Wethers,  near  Ayebury, 
in  all  but  colour),  may  hereafter  yield  much  to  the  in- 
vestigator. The  existence  of  one  stele,  or  monumental 
inscription  (a  discovery  referred  to  the  effect  of  an 
earthquiike),  shows  that  the  ancient  people  had  the 
habit  of  iuscriljiug  historic  accounts,  which  the  nature 
of  the  stone  employed,  and  the  character  of  the  climate, 
have  preserved  to  our  time.  But  a  thorough  explora- 
tion of  Diljau  woidd  be  a  costly  work.  The  attention 
which  was  awakened  by  the  discovery  of  a  basalt 
monument  has  led  to  the  discovery  of  relics  of  very 
much  greater  importance,  from  their  variety  and 
number,  althougli  formed  of  the  humbler  material  of 
teiTa-cotta,  or  baked  clay. 

Wariness  is,  unfortimately,  needed  with  regard  to 
asserted  discoveries  of  antiqiie  objects.  The  subject 
offers  a  i-eady  field  for  the  skill  of  the  forger.  In  our 
own  country  the  flint  implements  of  the  drift  wei-e 
supplied  iu  any  requh-ed  number  by  the  uotoi-ious 
"  Flint  Jack."  At  Thebes  there  is  a  regular  manufac- 
tory of  forged  Egyptian  relics ;  at  Naples  there  is  a 
manufactory  of  lamps  and  amulets,  said  to  be  discovered 
at  Pompeii  and  Herculaneum  ;  and  no  traveller,  who  is 
only  an  ordinary  collector,  comes  home  from  Palestine 
without  finding  that  he  has  purchased  fictitious  coins  or 
forged  gems,  inscribed  with  Hebrew  or  Greek  letters, 
the  industry  of  Nablous  or  of  Gaza. 

In  the  case  of  the  Moabite  idols,  while  every  object 
requires  to  be  tested,  there  is  ample  proof  of  the  genuine 
character  of  the  collection  as  a  whole.  The  Emperor  of 
Germany  has  given  a  thousand  pounds  for  the  fii'st 
series,  which  consisted  of  960  pieces,  purchased,  one  at 
a  time,  by  Mr.  Shapu'a  of  Jerusalem,  from  the  Arabs. 
The  chaplain  to  the  Prussian  Considate  at  Jerusalem, 
accompanied  by  Mr.  Diiisberg,  a  German  resident  in 
that  city,  visited  Moab,  and  they  themselves  dug  up,  at 
Medoba,  pieces  of  pottery  bearing  Phcenician  lettei-s. 
Tlie  attention  of  the  Oriental  Society  of  Berlin  was 
called  to  the  matter.  Pastor  Weser  was  elected  an 
honorary  member  of  the  society  in  recognition  of  this 
service.  The  Emperor,  as  we  before  said,  gave  £1,000 
for  the  collection  as  it  then  stood ;  and  the  highly- 
respected  names  of  Hitzig  and  Rodiger  show  that  men 
who  rank  among  the  leaders  of  thought  in  Germany 
are  engaged  in  the  study  of  this  new  chapter  of  ancient 
history. 

The  teiTa-cotta,  or  burnt  clay,  of  which  the  objects 
are  formed,  differs  according  to  locality.  Some  is  hard, 
red,  and  in  good  preservation;  some  is  grey  and 
crumbling,  bearing  hardly  legible  letters ;  some  is  red 
on  the  outside,  but  grey  and  porous  within,  showing 
that  ashes  were  mixed  with  the  clay,  and  that  they  were 
only  burned  to  a  ceriain  depth  from  the  surface ;  some 
are  actually  black ;  some,  wliich  appear  fresh  and  sharp 
when  dug  up,  begin  to  exude  moisture  after  a  few 
hours,  and  show  disposition  to  decay,  unless  due  care  is 
taken.  Greater  variety,  as  well  as  greater  rudeness, 
than  characterise  the  Assyrian  terra-cottas  in  the  British 
Museum,  mark  the  fossil  idolatry  of  Moab. 


Out  of  Tipwards  of  1,100  specimens,  collected  up  to 
April,  1S73,  no  two  exactly  resemble  one  another.  The 
differences,  though  slight,  are  often  so  subtle,  that  each 
object  throws  light  on  the  other.  To  give  some  idea  of 
so  largo  a  coUectiou,  it  may  be  well  to  divide  the  terra- 
cottas, provisionally,  into  twelve  gi-oups  or  classes. 

First  among  them  is  the  group  which  demands  the 
most  learned  study,  both  to  verify  the  authenticity  of 
each  object,  and  to  exhaust  the  ijiformatiou  that  may 
be  derived  from  it.  It  consists  of  vases,  jars,  and 
lamps,  -ndth  incised  or  projecting  letters.  It  may  be 
remarked,  in  passing,  that  the  inscriptions,  whatever 
they  may  be,  must  necessarily  have  been  made  before 
the  vessel  was  fired.  No  false  inserijjtion  can  bo  placed 
on  an  old  terra-cotta  so  as  to  escape  detection. 

There  is,  next,  a  great  vai-iety  of  bu-d-headed  figures, 
whicli,  no  doubt,  bear  some  relation  to  the  hawk-headed 
and  ibis-headed  genii  to  be  found  in  the  tombs  and 
on  the  papyri  of  Egyjit. 

Calf-headed  figures,  and  calves,  with  symbolical 
mai'ks  and  planetary  s3Tiibols — the  number  seven  being 
indicated  either  by  punctures  or  by  giving  prominence 
to  certain  features — are  connected  with  the  earliest  period 
of  sacred  history.  Many  of  thorn  are  inscribed  with 
letters  of  the  sacred  name  of  God.  Some  bear  the 
Phoenician  vowels  that  coi-respond  to  the  alpha  and 
omega  of  the  Greeks.  There  is  eveiy  reason  to  suppose 
that  many  of  these  figures  are  idolatrous  representations 
of  the  God  of  Israel. 

Figures  with  hoUows  below,  or  in  the  abdomen,  are 
connected  with  sacrificial  rites,  or  with  the  burning  of 
incense,  and  are  referred  to  the  idol  Moloch. 

A  fifth  gi'oup  consists  of  figures  with  cup-shaped 
protuberances  on  different  parts  of  the  body.  These 
are  thought  to  be  amulets,  or  idols  made  for  local  appli- 
cation to  the  human  body,  in  order  to  charm  away  or 
cure  localised  disease. 

A  large  figure,  with  a  taU  and  homs  and  broken 
goat's  legs,  resembles  the  Greek  Pan. 

Terminal  figures  abound,  somewhat  like  the  Greek 
and  Roman  termiai.  Some  of  these  have  homs,  one  of 
them  as  many  as  nine.  They  are  called  teraphim  by 
the  German  archa3ologists. 

Figures  seated  on  tripods,  and  usually  with  ojien 
mouths,  were  probably  regarded  as  oracles. 

Female  goddesses,  of  various  sizes,  are  generally  in- 
sei'ibed. 

Male  gods,  or  parts  of  gods,  including  heads  with 
protruding  tongues,  refer  to  the  worship  of  Baal-peor. 

Lastly  are  to  be  mentioned  bullce,  or  balls  of 
terra-cotta,  pierced  with  seven  holes,  which  wore  pro- 
bably worn  as  amulets ;  and  masks,  hands,  or  liuibs, 
which  have  not  been  broken  from  entire  figures,  but 
separately  formed  and  burnt,  as  distinct  objects  of 
veneration. 

To  tliis  last  class  of  objects  we  find  a  distinct  re- 
ference in  the  Talmud.  In  the  tract  above  mentioned, 
called  Aboda  Sard,  or  De  CiiUti  Peregrino,  it  is  wi'itten 
(cap.  iii..  mis.  2),  "  If  any  one  finds  fragments  of  images, 
which  the  Goim  (or  idolaters)  worship,  it  is  lawful  to 


140 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


make  use  of  them  (for  firewood,  for  examiilo).  But  if 
any  one  finds  the  image  of  a  hand  or  a  foot,  this  is 
forbidden ;  for  such  objects  are  made  (for  offering  or 
consecration  in  idol  t«imples)."  Both  Maimonides  and 
Bartonora  explain  this  precept  by  saying  that  there  may 
be  a  doubt  as  to  a  broken  Umb  having  been  a  portion  of 
an  idol,  but  that  the  part  which  was  made  as  a  single 
object  could  only  have  been  formed  for  idolatrous  use. 
One  of  these  objects,  now  at  Jerusalem,  is  a  rude  mask, 
in  which,  in  the  place  of  a  mouth,  are  to  be  foimd  seven 
round  holes,  arranged  in  a  curve.  Professor  Max 
Miillor  speaks  of  a  PhcenicLan  inscription  that  refers  to 
the  goddess  Taanith,  or  the  face  of  Baal,  which  is  re- 
markably illustrated  by  these  masks.  Tlio  import  of 
the  seven  holes  is  distinctly  astrological.  The  planets, 
which  wore  believed  to  rule  human  fortunes,  are  thus 
indicated  as  being  the  utterance,  or  voice,  of  God.  Tlie 
first  class  of  objects  which  wo  described  are  referred  to 
in  the  f  ollo'sving  Mishna :  "  If  any  one  finds  vessels  on 
which  are  sculptured  the  form  of  the  sun,  or  the  moon, 
or  the  dragon,  let  him  cast  them  into  the  salt  sea." 

The  limits  of  this  paper  will  not  allow  of  further 
extracts  from  one  of  the  most  curious  and  instructive 
portions  of  tlio  literature  of  the  Hebrew  race.  But  in 
the  citations,  now  for  the  fii'st  time  illustrated  by  actual 
discovery,  may  be  traced  the  full  appreciation,  by  the 
doctors  of  the  Mishua,  of  some  of  those  particulars  of 
the  idolatry  of  Moab  which  are  among  the  most  novel 
to  our  minds. 


It  is  very  true  that  in  many  Roman  Catholic  churches 
in  the  south  of  Europe,  and  notably  in  those  to  which 
pilgrimages  are  now  made  from  great  distances  (such 
as  the  Cathedral  of  St.  Nicolas  at  Bari),  are  to  be  seen 
hands,  feet,  or  other  parts  of  the  body,  made  of  wax, 
suspended  as  votive  oft'eiings.  These  generally  com- 
memorate some  cure,  made  at  the  supposed  inter- 
cession of  the  saint  to  whom  they  are  offered.  But 
their  material,  wax,  is  one  of  those  which  are  constantly 
brought  as  offerings.  They  may  bo  made  of  wood,  in 
some  instances,  as  more  durable ;  but  their  fabrication 
in  terra-cotta  is,  so  far  as  we  are  aware,  unknown  in 
modem  times.  It  would  seem  from  this,  and  from  the 
words  of  the  Mishna,  that  the  Moab  hands  and  limbs 
are  not  memorials,  but  objects  of  worship. 

It  is  to  be  remarked  that,  hitherto,  the  type  of  the  fish- 
god,  Dagon,  which  is  so  curiously  illustrated  by  the  Assy- 
rian teiTa-cottas  in  the  British  Museum,  as  well  as  that 
of  the  fish-goddess,  Dcrceto,  worshipped  in  the  mountain 
districts  of  Syria,  .are  absent  from  the  Pantheon  of  these 
inland  people.  Neither  have  we  recognised  any  symbol 
of  the  deity  of  thimder,  Jupiter  Siunmanus,  or  Thor.  On 
one  shapeless  idol  are  found  letters  tliat  seem  to  identify 
it  ■with  the  name  of  the  moimtain  Tabor.  It  is  very 
probable  that  the  ancient  geography  of  the  district  may 
be  illustrated  liy  the  name  of  the  genii  locormli,  and 
we  may  soon  hope  for  .some  light  being  thro\vn  on  the 
interesting  questions  that  regard  the  name  of  the  Phoeni- 
cian deity  IlUnus  or  Elyon. 


BOOKS    OF    THE    OLD    TESTAMENT. 

JOEL    (continued). 

BY   THE    REV.    SAMUEL   COX,    NOTTINGHAjI. 


WHAT   JOEL  LEAENED 


FEOM   MOSES. 

^HE  prophetic  poem  of  Joel  consists  of  two 
parts  :  the  first,  on  tl)e  Divine  judgment 
and  the  call  to  repentance  ;  the  second, 
on  the  redemption  from  judgment,  and 
the  promise  of  blessing.  The  Jews  had  forgotten 
God.  Ho  was  not  in  any  of  their  thoughts.  As  they 
went  about  their  toils  of  husbandry,  they  tnisted  to 
the  order  and  laws  of  Nature ;  they  sowed  their  seed, 
looked  for  rain  and  sunshine,  and  reajjed  their  harvest 
without  any  sense  of  a  Divine  presence  and  their  depen- 
dence on  a  Divine  boimty.  Even  when  they  went  up 
to  tho  Temple,  they  failed  to  reverence  the  Presence 
which  alone  hallowed  it — to  say  their  prayers,  sing  their 
psalms,  oifer  their  sacrifices  with  the  devout  emotions 
which  alone  could  give  them  worth.  Their  worship  was 
as  hard  and  mecha:iical,  as  mere  a  routine,  as  their  work. 
To  rouse  them  from  this  fatal  indifference,  God  broke 
in  upon  the  xisual  course  of  Natm-e  and  worship.  Ho 
sent  them  plagues  of  locusts  and  drought  under  which 
their  fields  withered,  tho  crops  were  consumed,  sheep 
and  oxen  Lamented,  joy  dep.arted  from  tho  sons  of  men. 
Ho  proclaimed  a  fast,  at  which  from  tho  suckling  to  tho 


elder,  from  the  slave  to  the  priest,  they  were  to  come 
before  the  Lord,  to  turn  unto  Him  with  all  their  hearts, 
with  weeping  and  with  mounnng,  to  cry  unto  Him,  to 
weep  and  say,  "  Sparc  thy  people,  O  Lord,  and  deliver 
not  thine  heritage  to  reproach."  The  bounty  of  Nature 
destroyed  by  plagues,  tho  order  of  worship  broken  by  a 
fast  in  which  hearts  had  to  be  rent  instead  of  garments, 
they  were  compelled  to  remember  God  and  to  wait  on 
his  wUI. 

The  judgment  camo  in  mercy,  therefore  ;  for  it  camo 
to  revive  that  consciousness  of  the  Divine  presence  and 
care  and  goodness,  to  give  that  sacred  licauty  to  life,  and 
that  impressive  reality  to  worship,  without  which  no 
niition  can  be  strong  and  happy  and  free.  And  so  soon 
as  the  merciful  purpose  of  tho  judgment  was  reached 
they  were  redeemed  from  judgment ;  as  they  returned 
to  Him,  God  returned  to  them.  Tho  locusts  were 
driven  into  tho  desert  and  the  sea ;  copious  rains  reple- 
nished the  fountains  and  caused  tho  water-courses  to 
overflow;  the  pastures  grew  green  ;  the  fields  laughed 
with  corn;  fig-tree  aud  \'ino  yielded  their  strength  ;  tho 
bams  grew  full  of  gi-ain,  the  vats  ran  over  with  oil  and 
wine ;  and  joy,  a  pm-e  devout  joy,  returned  to  the  sons 


JOEL. 


141 


of  men.  Nay,  more ;  while  their  hearts  were  quick  and 
tender,  new  and  larger  sinritual  blessiugs  were  vouch- 
safod  to  them.  The  downfall  of  rain  was  but  a  prelude 
to  the  outpouring  of  the  Spirit,  the  recovered  fertility 
and  beauty  of  tlie  land  were  but  a  type  of  the  height- 
ened vigour  and  fruitfulnoss  of  that  loftier  phase  of 
spirituiil  life  to  wliich  they  were  to  bo  raised :  with 
their  liappier  conditions  there  was  to  come  a  ha^ipier 
character,  new  energies,  purer  affections. 

But  even  this  blessing,  even  this  extraordinary  effusion 
of  the  Divine  Spirit,  this  power  to  see  visions  and  dream 
dreams,  became  a  now  test,  a  new  judgment.  For  when 
God  descends  to  earth,  even  though  Ho  come  to  reveal 
his  grace,  wonders  and  prodigies  attend  liis  steps.  His 
advent  is  terrible  even  to  tho  good,  for,  as  He  draws 
near,  they  grow  more  j^rof  oimdly  sensible  of  their  weak- 
ness and  guilt.  It  is  still  more  terrible  to  tho  wicked 
and  impenitent ;  for,  so  often  as  the  Divine  energy  re- 
veals itself  iu  now  and  growing  forms,  there  is  a  day  of 
doom  for  them ;  even  if  the  evil  tliat  is  in  them  flee 
before  that  Sacred  Presence,  it  torments  them  before  it 
flees  and  leaves  them  haK  dead ;  while,  too  often,  tho 
energy  of  goodness  calls  forth  in  them  a  corresponding 
energy  of  evil,  and  drives  them  into  a  more  profoimd 
and  treasonable  rebellion  against  the  saving  will  of 
God.  When  He  comes  clothed  in  light  and  majesty, 
before  that  intolerable  sjileudour  ow  heaven  grows 
dark,  and  the  earth  trembles  beneath  "  the  steps  of  his 
strength."  Tlio  day  of  the  Lord  is  always  "  a  great  and 
a  terrible  day,"  even  though  it  be  a  day  of  grace  and 
salvation. 

Willi  this  thought,  tliat  oven  the  Divine  blessings  are 
Divine  judgments;  that  the  outpouring  of  tho  Holy 
Ghost  is  a  supreme  test  and  criterion  of  human  character, 
the  second  cliaptor  of  Joel  closes.  It  is  the  main  theme 
of  the  third  chapter ;  and  we  have  now  to  mark  how  it 
is  expanded.  But  even  yet  we  cannot  commence  our 
examination  of  the  third  chapter  with  advantage.  Wo 
can  understand,  indeed,  how,  when  men  are  moved  to 
prophesy  in  tho  name  of  the  Lord,  much  depends  on 
whether  their  fellows  "  receive  tho  prophet  in  the  name 
of  a  prophet,"  or  reject  him  because  they  hate  tho 
message  that  rebukes  their  sins ;  and,  therefore,  we  can 
understand  how  times  of  special  benediction  must  also 
be  times  of  special  judgment.  But  Joel  gave  this 
general  pi-inciple  a  peculiar  Hebrew  fonn,  and  before 
we  can  follow  him  in  this  Hebrew  application  of  it,  wo 
must  approach  it  in  another  way,  from  another  point 
of  view. 

Science  is  teachkig  us  to  see  orderly  progress,  gradual 
development,  both  in  the  natural  world  and  iu  the  his- 
tory of  man,  and  in  this  respect  at  least  the  Bible  is  in 
fuU  accord  with  modern  science.  Notliing  is  more 
striking  in  tlie  Old  Testament  Scriptures,  for  instance, 
than  tho  unity  that  pervades  them.  As  we  read  them 
in  their  historical  succession,  we  find  that  each  foimds 
itseH  on  those  which  went  Ijefore  it,  and  carries  their 
contents,  the  principles  and  truths  they  enimciate,a  little 
further  onward.  There  are  no  cataclysms,  no  sudden 
•breaks  and  now  beginnings,  in  the  Bible  ;  tho  traces  of 


a  gradual  and  orderly  development  may  be  found  on 
every  page.  And  hero  is  an  illustiatiou  and  a  proof — 
Joel  founds  himself  on  Moses?  Tlie  earliest  of  tho 
written  prophets  simply  develops  germs  of  thought 
planted  by  the  first  and  greatest  of  the  prophets,  inso- 
much that  wo  cannot  comprehend  Joel  save  as  we  first 
study  Moses.  For  both  in  describing  the  outpouring 
of  the  Spirit  (in  chap,  ii.),  and  in  foretelling  tho  judg- 
ment which  tluit  is  to  be  and  to  involve  for  Israel  and 
for  all  the  world  (in  chap,  iii.),  Joel  obviously  passes 
beyond  the  limits  of  his  own  age,  though  he  also  speaks 
of  that  which  took  place  in  his  own  age.  He  sees  pre- 
sent or  proximate  events  indeed,  but,  in  these  events^ 
he  also  sees  outlines  and  foreshadow ings  of  far  greater 
events  in  the  remote  future.  And  if  we  attribute  this 
insight  and  foresight  simply  to  his  personal  inspiration, 
we  shall  be  gravely  mistaken,  wo  shall  commit  what 
science  pronoimces  "  the  impardonable  sin ;"  for  wo 
shall  assume  a  break  in  the  unity  of  national  life,  in  the 
orderly  development  of  human  thought ;  wo  shall  affirm 
a  wholly  imnecessary  and  irrational  miracle,  which  is 
the  ono  kind  of  miracle  God  never  works. 

Let  me  not  be  misunderstood,  as  though  I  demurred 
to  Joel's  inspii'ation.  He  was  most  truly  inspired  of 
God  ;  but  ho  was  inspired  to  interpret  and  apply,  to  ex- 
pand and  develop  principles  which  had  long  since  been 
given  by  God  to  Moses,  tho  man  of  God,  and  not  to  dis- 
close princililes  which  had  no  place  in  Hebrew  thought 
before  he  spoke.  It  was  "  no  now  commandment "  which 
he  brought  to  the  men  of  his  generation,  "  but  an  old 
commandment  "  which  they  had  had  from  the  begin- 
ning. And  again,  it  teas  a  new  commandment,  for  the 
threatenmgs  and  promises  of  the  old  commandment  took 
new  force  and  meaning  from  his  Ups,  and  from  the 
events  which  illustrated  them  afresh  and  brought  them 
home  to  every  man's  door.  And  it  wUI  help  us,  not 
only  in  our  study  of  Joel,  but  in  studjTng  any  or  all  of 
tho  prophets — it  may  even  give  us  some  glimpses  into 
a  modus  02)erandi  of  inspiration,  if  we  mark  a  little  in 
detail  what  materials  Joel  di'aws  from  the  teaching  of 
Moses,  and  how  ho  handles  these  materials  and  weaves 
them  into  new  forms. 

Til  his  Ch'cimmar  of  Assent  Dr.  Newman  has  im- 
pressively reminded  us  that,  fifteen  centuries  before  it 
took  place,  Moses  foretold  the  rejection  of  the  chosen 
people.  Toward  tho  close  of  his  career,  the  "  man  of 
God,"  pondering  the  futiu-e  of  tho  race  ho  loved  so 
wisely  and  so  well,  saw  a  clear  alternative  rise  before 
his  mind.  Many  paths  would  open  before  the  children 
of  Abraham,  but  they  all  resolved  themselves  ultimately 
into  two :  the  path  of  obedience  and  the  path  of  dis- 
obedience to  the  Divine  commands — tho  ono  bathed  in 
the  light  of  heaven,  the  other  darkening  into  ever  deeper 
shadows  of  death.  Which  of  these  two  paths  would 
they  choose  ?     Moses  seoms  to  have  foreseen  that  they 

1  Another  illustration  will  be  found  in  the  comment  on  chap, 
iii.  13,  17—21]  where  it  will  be  seen  that  just  as  Joel  founds 
himself  on  Moses,  so  St.  John  founds  himself  on  Joel.  If  tho 
two  be  combined,  they  yield  a  very  striking  instance  of  tho  unity 
of  the  Holy  Soriptures  and  of  "  the  law  of  development "  which 
pervades  them. 


142 


TKE   BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


would  take  both ;  that,  for  a  tune,  they  would  walk  iu 
the  commaudments  of  God,  or  sufficiently  near  to  them, 
to  seciu'e  many  blessings;  and  that,  then,  they  would 
graduiilly  exchange  obedience  for  disobedience,  and  come 
Tinder  a  growing  curse,  till  they  were  rejected  and  de- 
stroyed :  but  that,  oven  ia  the  darkest  times,  there  would 
be  a  faithful "  remnant "  to  whom  God  would  be  faithful ; 
that,  if  the  tree  were  cut  down,  a  root  would  bo  left, 
from  which  it  would  afterward  spring  up  in  nobler  pro- 
portions ;  that  it  would  at  last  grow  Luto  the  greatest  of 
all  trees,  sheltering  the  whole  world  under  its  branches, 
with  healing  for  aU  nations  in  its  leaves.  Tliis  train  of 
thought  is  expressed  in  two  of  the  noblest  passages  in 
the  Pentateuch,  of  which  only  the  bare  outHnes  need  be 
quoted  here  and  a  few  illustrative  phrases. 

In  Leviticus  (chap,  xxvi.)  Jehovah,  speaking  by 
Moses,  assures  the  chUdi-en  of  Israel  that  if  they  keep 
the  path  of  obedience,  it  shall  grow  thick  with  flowers, 
lead  them  tlu-ough  fields  bounteous  with  harvest,  beside 
a  stream  of  living  waters.  "  If  ye  walk  in  my  statutes, 
do  my  commandments,  keep  my  sabbaths,  reverence  my 
sanctuary,  then  I  will  give  you  raiu  Lu  due  season  ;  the 
laud  sliall  yield  her  increase,  the  trees  of  the  field  their 
fruit.  Tour  threshing  shall  reach  to  the  vintage,  and 
the  vintage  to  the  sowing ;  and  ye  shall  eat  bread  to 
tho  fidl,  and  dwell  in  your  land  in  safety.  And  I 
will  give  peace  iu  the  land,  and  ye  shall  lie  down, 
and  none  shall  make  you  afraid.  And  I  will  set 
my  tabernacle  among  you,  .  .  .  and  I  wiU  walk 
among  yon,  and  wiU  bo  your  God,  and  yo  shaU  be  my 
people." 

"  But  if  ye  will  not  hearken  unto  me,  and  wiU  not 
keep  my  commandments,  ...  I  will  send  judg- 
ment upon  you.  Ye  shall  sow  your  seed  in  vain,  .  . 
.  be  slain  before  your  enemies,  .  .  .  flee  when 
no  man  xaursueth.  I  will  make  your  heaven  as  iron,  and 
your  earth  as  brass.  Tour  land  shall  not  yield  her  in- 
crease, nor  tlie  trees  their  fruit.  I  will  scatter  you 
among  the  heathen,  and  will  draw  a  sword  after  you. 
.  .  The  soimd  of  a  driven  leaf  shall  chase  you. 
Te  shall  perish  among  the  heathen,  and  the  land  of  your 
enemies  shall  eat  you  up.  ...  To  shall  pine  away 
in  your  iniquities."  "  But  if  they  that  are  left  of  you 
confess  your  iuiquity,  ...  if  their  uncircumcised 
hearts  be  humbled,  and  they  accept  their  punishment,  I 
will  i-emember  my  covenant  with  Jacob,  with  Isaac,  and 
with  Abraham  ;  and  I  will  rememlier  the  land.  I  will 
not  cast  theni  away  when  they  be  m  the  land  of  their 
enemies,  neilhor  mil  I  abhor  them,  to  destroy  them 
utterly." 

This  passage  covers  tho  whole  train  and  circle  of 
thought  of  which  I  spoke.  It  sets  forth  the  blessings 
of  obedience,  the  judgments  of  disobedience,  and  tho 
merciful  purpose  of  these  judgments,  God's  intention  to 
redeem  the  pcuitent  .and  faitliful  remnant  of  his  people 
by  the  very  calamities  poured  out  on  tho  nation  at  large. 
And  this  circle  of  thought  is  re-traversed  iu  the  closing 
chapters  of  Deuteronomy,  from  which,  however,  oidy  a 
few  verses  need  be  cited  ifroui  chap.  xx\-iii.),  in  which 
tho  judgments  of  the  disobedient  are  set  forth  iu  some 


of  tho  stateliest  and  most  musical  phi'asos  our  language 
contains. 

"It  shall  come  to  pass,  that  thou  wilt  not  hearken 
to  the  voice  of  tho  Lord  thy  God,  to  observe  and  do  all 
his  commandments  and  statutes,     .     .     .     cm-sed  shalt 
thou  be  in  city  and  field,  cursed  in  basket  and  store^ 
cm-sed  in  the  fruit  of  thy  body  and  in  tho  fruit  of  thy 
land.     .     .     .     Thou  shalt  carry  much  seed  out  into  the 
field,  and  gather  hut  little  in ;  for  the  locust  shall  con- 
sume ii.     Thou  shall  plant  vineyards  and  dress  them, 
but  thou  shalt  neither  drink  of  the  ivine  nor  rjather  the 
grapes.     Thou  shalt  have  olive-trees  in  all  thy  borders, 
bid  thou  shalt  not  anoint  thyself  with  oil.     Thou  shalt 
beget   sons   and   daughters,  but  thou  shalt  not  enjoy 
them.     All  the  trees  and  fruit  of  thy  land  shall  the 
locust  consume.     Because  thou  servedst  not  the  Lord 
thy  God  Avith  joyfulness,  and  with  gladness  of  heart,  for 
all  thine  abundance,  thou  shalt  servo  thine  enemies  in 
hunger,  and  iu  thirst,  and  iu  nakedness,  and  iu  want 
of  all  thiugs.     .     .     .     The  Lord  shall  briug  upon  thee 
a  nation  from  far,  a  nation  of  fierce  coimtenauce,  which 
shall  not  respect  tho  person  of  the  old,  nor  show  favom- 
to  the  young.     Ho  shall  eat  tho  fi-uit  of  thy  cattle  and 
the  fruit  of  thy  land,  until  thou  be  desti-oyed;  neither 
shall  he  leave  theo  corn,  or  wine,  or  oil,  or  the  increase 
of  thy  kiue  or  of  thy  sheep.     .     .     .     And  he  shall  be- 
siege all  thy  gates,  and  break  down  all  the  high  fenced 
walls  in  which  thou  hast  put  thy  trust.     .     .     .     And  it 
shall  come  to  pass,  that  as  the  Lord  rejoiced  over  you  to 
do  you  good  and  to  multiply  you,  so  the  Lord  will  rejoice 
over  you  to  destroy  you,  and  to  biing  you  to  nought ; 
and  yo  shall  be  plucked  out  of  the  land.     .     .     .     And 
tho  Lord  shall  scatter  thee  among  all  people,  from  the 
one  end  of  the  earth  even  to  the  other ;  and  there  thou 
shalt  serve  other  gods  which  neither  thou  nor  thy  fathers 
have  known.     And  among  these  nations  shalt  thou  find 
no  ease,  neither  shall  the  sole  of  thy  foot  have  rest  :  but 
the  Lord  shall  give  thee  a  trembling  heart,  and  failing 
eyes,  and  sorrow  of  spirit ;  and  thy  life  shall  hang  in 
doubt  before  thee ;  and  thou  shalt  fear  day  and  night, 
and  thou  shalt  not  believe  in  thy  life.     In  the  morning 
thou  shalt  say.  Would  God  it  were  even !  and  at  even, 
Woidd  God  it  were  morning  !  for  the  fear  of  thine  heart 
whero%vith  thou  shalt  fear,  and  for  the  sight  of  thine 
eyes  which  thou  shalt  see." 

Now  the  books  of  Moses  were  read  in  the  worship  of 
tho  Temple  ;  their  contents  were  famifiar  to  all  thought- 
ful and  devout  Jews.  The  prophets  meditated  them 
day  and  night.  In  the  history  of  their  race  they  saw  a 
perpetual  aud  gi-omng  commentary  on  the  words  of 
Moses  and  the  principles  they  revealed.  Is  it  not  easy, 
when  once  wo  remember  these  facts  and  are  ourselves 
familiar  with  tho  Pentateuch,  to  see  how  tho  words  of 
Moses  must  have  given  form  to  the  forecasting  thoughts 
and  visions  of  a  prophet  such  as  Joel  ?  He  could  see 
for  himself  that  so  long  as  tho  Hebrews  had  walked  in 
God's  statutes,  done  his  commandments,  kept  his  sab- 
liatlis,  reverenced  his  siinetuary,  tho  Lord  had  given 
them  rain  in  due  season,  filled  their  laud  vnt]\  plenty, 
established  thorn  iu  security  aud  peace.     He  could  also 


JOEL. 


143 


see  that  so  often  as  they  forsook  Jehovah  and  kept 
not  his  commandmeuts,  they  were  cursed  in  city  and 
field,  in  basket  and  in  store,  in  the  frait  of  thou-  body 
and  the  f  rait  of  then-  land.  And  when  ho  looked  round 
on  his  own  time  and  the  facts  of  his  time,  seeking  to  iu- 
tei-pret  them,  to  get  at  the  Divine  thought  and  intention 
in  them,  searching  what  and  what  manner  of  thing  they 
signitied,  he  saw  the  vei-y  judgments  i\-ith  which  Moses 
had  menaced  the  disobedient.  All  the  trees  and  fruit 
of  the  land  were  consumed  by  locusts.  The  people  had 
can-ied  much  seed  out  into  the  field  and  brought  but 
little  in,  for  the  grain  had  rotted  imder  the  clods.  They 
had  planted  vines  and  dressed  them,  but  had  neither 
gathered  the  grapes  nor  drunk  the  wine ;  olive-trees 
were  iu  aU  their  borders,  but  they  did  not  anoint  them- 
selves with  oil.  The  field  was  laid  waste,  the  gi-oimd 
lamented,  the  new  wiuo  was  flried  up,  the  oil  languished. 
The  husbandmen  blenched  over  the  wheat  and  over  the 
barley,  because  the  harvest  of  the  field  had  perished ;  the 
vine-dresser  wailed  because  the  vino  was  dried  up,  and 
the  fig-tree  sickened,  and  the  pomegranate,  the  palm, 
and  the  apple-tree  withered  and  blackened  beneath  the 
locusts  and  the  drought.  These  were  the  veiy  miseries 
which  Moses  liatl  pretlicted  for  the  disobedient.  How, 
then,  could  Joel,  or  any  student  and  lover  of  Moses,  fail 
to  infer  that  these  miseries  were  the  consequence  of  dis- 
obedience ?  that  they  were  judgments  on  the  sins  of 
the  people  ?  and  yet  Divine  judgments,  sent  iu  mercy, 
to  induce  repentance  and  amendment  ? 

But  Moses,  who  had  threatened  the  very  sei-ies  of 
ca,lamitio3  which  Joel  saw  around  him,  had  also  pre- 
dicted even  heavier  and  more  enduring  calamities.  Be- 
yond the  locusts  and  the  drought  he  had  seen  a  fierce 
nation,  swift  as  an  eagle,  fljong  from  afar  to  besiege  all 
the  gates  of  tlio  laud,  to  assault  the  strong  walls  of  de- 
fence, to  bring  on  the  disobedient  children  of  Israel  all 
the  horrors  of  war,  siege,  famine,  and  captivity.  Must 
not  Joel  follow  Moses  in  this  also,  and  predict  a  conflict 
as  the  residt  of  which  the  people  of  Israel  would  bo 
"  scjittered  among  the  nations,"  and  the  land  divided 
among  foreign  foes,  and  the  cajitive  Jews  would  be  so 
numerous  as  that  a  lad  woidd  be  given  for  a  harlot's  kiss 
and  a  girl  for  a  draught  of  wine  (chap.  iii.  2,  3)  p  AU 
this  does  Joel  forecast  and  predict.  Nay,  still  follow- 
ing Moses,  he  also  foresees  that  a  faithfid  "  remnant  " 
will  be  left;  that  "  the  escaped  will  be  on  Mount  Zion ;" 
that  this  holy  remnant  will  multiply  and  wax  strong, 
until  they  take  their  very  captors  captive,  and  mete  out 
to  them  an  exact  recompense  for  the  miseries  they  have 
inflicted  (chap.  iii.  4 — 8).  Nay,  still  more,  as  he  broods 
over  the  facts  around  him,  and  the  words  of  Moses,  and 
the  Di^-ine  meaning  of  these  facts  a.:d  words,  Joel  sees 
dimly,  as  though  he  were  gazing  on  the  vague  faint 
shadows  of  events  cast  on  the  trembling  curtain  which 
veils  the  future,  that  the  fate  of  all  nations  is  hoimd  up 
with  that  of  the  sacred  race  ;  that  the  judgment  of  the 
Jews  is  a  type  and  precursor  of  the  judgment  of  the 


world.  The  vision  is  dim  and  brief ;  tlie  record  of  it  is 
hampered  with  national  and  local  allusions  to  the  slave 
trade  of  Phoenicia  and  the  incursions  of  the  Philistines  : 
he  sees  "all  nations"  gathering  for  the  fhial  conflict  in 
tlie  little  "  valley  of  Jehoshaphat,"  which  would  not  hold 
even  the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem.  But  the  scope  of 
his  vision  constantly  swells  and  rises  till  it  plunges  over 
all  these  local  limitations ;  what  ho  dimly  yet  truly 
sees,  that  we  truly  though  obscurely  feel  as  wo  read  the 
closing  periods  of  his  jirophecy  (chap.  iii.  9—21)  :  that, 
at  some  period  undefined  and  uudefinable,  there  is  to  be 
a  last  conflict  of  good  mth  evil,  the  crisis  of  the  world's 
history,  iu  which  the  "heroes  of  God"  will  gain  tho 
victory ;  a  Divine  "  judgment  "  in  which  good  and  evil 
are  to  be  separated  for  ever ;  a  kingdom  and  reign  of 
God,  in  which  the  wildei-ness  and  solitary  place  arc  to 
rejoice  iu  vordm-o,  the  very  mountains  are  to  drop  \vine, 
and  the  hills  to  flow  with  mUk,  and  tho  water-courses  to 
run  with  perpetual  streams,  and  God  will  make  his 
tabernacle  ivith  men,  and  dwell  among  them,  and  be 
their  God,  and  they  his  people.  And  sui-ely  it  lends 
new  force  and  beauty  to  the  words  of  Joel,  thus  to  trace 
them  to  their  origin  m  the  words  of  Moses ;  to  learn 
that  he  was  inspired,  not  to  utter  truths  which  had  no 
connection  with  the  past,  but  to  imply  and  interpret 
truths  which  had  been  the  possession  of  Israel  for  cen- 
turies ;  to  develop  and  expand  germs  which  the  "  man 
of  God"  had  planted  in  the  national  conscience  and 
heart. 

We  feel  that  wo  stand  ou  soKd  ground  when  we 
thus  base  ourselves  ou  the  connections  of  human  history 
and  thought;  we  feel  that  this  nutst  have  been  the 
Divine  order  and  method,  this  gradual  development 
and  application  of  moral  principles,  for  it  is  the  very  . 
order  we  find  in  the  natural  world  and  iu  the  social  and 
pohtical  phases  of  human  life.  If  prophets,  inspired 
prophets,  were  to  rise  among  us  now — as  perhaps  they 
do — our  first  demand  of  them  woidd  be  that  they  should 
carry  out  tho  principles  of  tho  Gospel  to  their  fair  re- 
sults, and  teach  us  how  to  apply  them  more  closely  and 
more  exactly  to  the  want  and  duties  of  the  time.  "Were 
they  to  make  a  wholly  new  start,  to  lay  down  new  pos- 
tuhit-es,  to  assume  new  moral  axioms,  and  lead  us  in  alto- 
gether novel  directions,  wo  shoidd  need  no  other  proof 
that  they  were  not  of  Grod.  And  what  we  should  expect 
of  our  propliets,  that  wo  should  also  expect,  that  we  may 
find,  in  the  Hebrew  prophets — in  Joel.  Planting  him- 
self on  the  laws,  principles,  threatenings,  promises  of  the 
great  lawgiver  of  his  people,  he  shows  how  they  Iwar 
on  the  current  events  of  his  time — how  they  must  bear 
on  the  events  of  all  time.  Kindling  his  lamp  at  the 
sacred  fire  which  burned  on  the  ancient  Mosaic  altar, 
he  threw  its  full  light  on  the  age  in  which  he  lived, 
and  even  sent  its  rays  streaming  faintly  into  the  dark- 
ness of  the  future,  defining  little  perhaps,  yet  giving  us 
hiuts  and  glimpses  which  wiU  not  misl&nd  us  so  long  as 
we  follow  them  with  inciuiring  and  faithful  hearts. 


IM 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


THE    AEK    OF    THE   COVENANT. 

BT    THE    VEET    EEV.    E.     PATNE    SMITH,     D.D.,     DEAN    OF    CANTEEBUET. 


>  S  it  has  been  supposed  that  the  statement 
about  the  migrations  of  the  ark,  in  Vol.  I., 
page  80  of  The  Bible  Educatoe,  was 
intended  as  a  full  account  of  its  wander- 
ings, whereas  only  those  two  places.  Nob  and  Giboon, 
were  mentioned  where,  as  at  Shiloh,  a  tabernacle  was 
set  up  and  the  rites  of  the  national  religion  i^ractised,  it 
has  been  thought  advisable  to  give  a  somewhat  fuller 
account  of  the  matter. 

At  Shiloh,  then,  in  the  tribe  of  Ephraim,  the  ark  was 
placed  by  Joshua,  and  continued  there,  surrounded  by 
all  the  accessories  of  Divine  worship,  till  the  time  of 
Eli.  Yet  even  during  this  period  it  was  not  altogether 
stationary.  Tor  in  Judg.  xx.  18,  26,  there  is  little 
doubt  that  instead  of  "  the  house  of  God,"  the  right 
translation  is,  "  The  children  of  Israel  arose,  and  went 
up  to  Bethel,  and  asked  counsel  of  God."  As  Bethel 
was  a  sacred  spot,  and  situated  only  six  miles  from 
Gibeah,  the  ark  (see  verso  27)  was  probably  carried 
thither,  from  Shiloh,  for  the  purposes  of  the  war  waged 
by  the  tribes  on  Benjamin. 

But  Shiloh  was  jjlainly  its  usual  Lome  (I  Sam.  i.  3) 
till  the  first  battle  of  Ebenezer  (1  Sam.  iv.),  when  the 
Philistines  destroyed  it,  apparently  with  such  ruthless 
cruelty,  that  the  very  mention  of  it  in  after  times 
sufficed  to  make  the  heai-ts  of  the  people  thrill  with 
horror.  (See  Jer.  vii.  12  ;  xxvi.  6 — 9  ;  Ps.  Ixxviii.  60 — 
64.)  It  was  probably  this  feeling  which  prevented 
ShUoh  from  being  ever  chosen  again  as  the  national 
sanctuary ;  and  which  made  even  Jeroboam  prefer 
Bethel,  a  few  miles  distant  from  it,  as  one  of  the  seats 
of  his  idolatry. 

The  captured  ark,  after  being  can-ied  about  for  some 
months  among  the  Phihstines,  was  restored  to  Israel,  and 
after  the  disasters  at  Beth-shomesh  placed  in  the  house 
of  Abiuadab  at  Kirjath-jearim,  where  it  abode  for 
twenty  years  (1  Sam.  vii.  2).  In  2  Sam.  vi.  2  we  still 
find  the  ark  at  Baalo  of  Judah — i.e.,  at  Kirjath-jearim, 
in  the  house  of  the  same  Abiuadab  on  the  hill  (see  the 
margin),  but  an  interval  of  eighty  years  separates  the 
two  texts.  There  has  been  in  the  meantime  the  judge- 
ship of  Samuel  and  the  reign  of  Saul,  besides  nine  or 
ten  years  of  David's  own  i-eign.  It  is  noteworthy  that 
though  Abinadab  must  have  been  long  since  dead,  the 
house  still  boars  liis  name. 

Now  it  is  in  this  interval  that  we  find  the  ark  at  Nob, 
not  in  a  private  house,  but  ministered  to  by  the  high 
priest,  and  with  no  less  than  fourscore  and  five  priests 
in  attendance  upon  it  (1  Sam.  xxi.  1 ;  xxii.  18).  Nob 
itself  was  a  sacerdotal  town  in  the  tribe  of  Benjamin 
not  far  from  Jerusalem,  and  if  we  look  at  the  dates  we 
shall  see  that  the  twenty  years  during  which  the  ark  abode 
at  Kirjath-jearim  end  about  five  years  before  Saul  was 
made  king.  What  can  be  more  plain  or  more  probable 
than  that  Samuel,  himself  brought  up  at  Shiloh,  and 


with  many  an  affectionate  remembrance  of  his  early 
years,  removed  the  ark  to  Nob,  placed  there  once  again 
the  tabernacle  of  Moses  for  its  reception,  and  restored 
as  much  as  possible  of  the  old  ceremonial  observed  in 
Eli's  days  ? 

But  a  fate  as  hard  as  that  of  Shiloh  also  befell  Nob. 
Doeg  the  Edomite,  at  Saul's  command,  not  only  mur- 
dered the  priests,  but  smote  the  city  with  the  edge  of 
the  sword,  both  men  and  women,  cliildren  and  sucklings, 
and  made  it  an  utter  ruin.  From  this  scene  of  devasta- 
tion pious  hands  carried  back  the  ark  to  its  old  resting- 
place,  and  there  apparently  it  remained  even  longer  than 
at  first.  At  length,  about  ten  years  after  Saul's  death, 
and  when  David  had  now  for  three  years  been  king 
over  Israel  as  well  as  Judah,  ho  determined  to  bring 
up  the  ark  into  the  city  which  he  had  conquered  from 
the  Jebusites,  and  called  by  his  own  name.  On  the 
way  occurred  the  breach  of  Uzzah,  and  the  ark  was 
deposited  for  three  months  in  the  house  of  a  Levite, 
Obed-edom.  With  more  punctual  observance  [of  tho 
Levitical  law,  the  king  then  once  again  attempted  its 
removal,  and  it  was  brought  happily  into  tho  city  of 
David  (2  Sam.  vi.). 

And  now  there  occurs  a  remarkable  separation 
between  the  ark  and  the  tabernacle,  which  was  not 
described  with  sufficient  care  in  tho  previous  article. 
The  ark  remained  in  Zion,  but  the  tabernacle  of  Moses 
and  the  brazen  altar  made  by  Bezaleel  were  placed  at 
Gibeon.  Gibeon,  and  not  Zion,  was  the  seat  of  tho 
national  worship.  To  it  Joab  fled  for  refuge  (1  Kings 
ii.  28) ;  and  to  it  Solomon  went  in  royal  state,  and  offered 
in  sacrifice  a  thousand  burnt-offerings  (1  Kings  iii.  4). 

But  though  until  the  Temple  was  built  Gibeon  was 
the  centre  of  the  Levitical  worship,  yet  there  was  also 
a  service  of  music  before  the  ark.  The  priest  Zadok 
and  his  brethren  ministered  at  Gibeon,  and  offered  there 
morning  and  evening  the  appointed  sacrifices.  It  was 
about  six  miles  from  Jerusalem,  whereas  Nob  lay  close 
to  its  walls,  and  many  inconveniences  must  have  arisen 
from  the  distance.  Yet  there  the  priests  were  stationed 
with  Heman  and  Jeduthun  to  conduct  the  psalmody. 
But  Asaph  and  his  brethren,  and  Obed-edom  with  a 
numerous  staff  of  porters,  were  in  attendance  upon 
the  ark  in  Zion  (1  Chron.  x\-i.  37 — 42),  and  it  was  not 
tUl  the  tenth  or  eleventh  year  of  Solomon  that  this 
strange  separation  between  the  ark  and  tabernacle  was 
put  an  end  to.  Then  it  was  that  Solomon  gathered  all 
the  nobles  of  his  realm,  and  with  great  joy  Ijrought 
the  ark  up  from  tho  city  of  David  unto  Mount  Moriah, 
and  placed  it  in  the  Holy  of  Holies  in  the  Temple. 
From  that  time  not  Giboon  but  Jerusalem  was  tho 
national  sanctuary,  and  the  ark,  though  not  quite  always 
undisturbed,  remained  in  the  place  prepared  for  it  by 
Solomon  till  Nebuchadnezzar  destroyed  the  Temple, 
when  probably  the  ark  perished  with  it. 


THE    COINCIDENCES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 


1-15 


THE    COINCIDENCES     OF    SCRIPTUEE. 

THE    HEEODIAN    FAMILY  (,concluded). 

BY   THE    EDITOR. 


HEEOD  AGEIPPA  I. 
^HE  name  of  this  prince  meets  us  for  the 
first  time  in  the  history  of  the  New 
Testament  in  Acts  xii.  1.  His  previous 
career,  however,  presents  many  points  of 
contact  both  with  it,  and  with  the  wider  history  of  the 
time.  His  very  name  reminds  us  of  the  policy  which 
led  his  grandfather  and  liis  unclos  to  court  the  favour  of 
ihe  Roman  emperor.  His  father,  Aristobulua,  one  of 
the  sons  of  Herod's  favourite  ivife  Mariamne,  was  put 
to  death  in  one  of  the  fits  of  jealous  suspicion  which 
marked  the  close  of  tliis  tyrant's  life,  in  B.C.  G.  Tlie 
precise  date  of  the  bii-th  of  Agrippa  is  not  ascertained, 
but  as  he  was  at  Rome  before  the  death  of  Herod  the 
Great  (Joseiih.,  Atitiq.  xrai.  6,  §  1),  wo  may  infer  that 
Le  was  sent  there  to  be  out  of  the  reach  of  his  grand- 
father's cruelty,  aud  must  therefore  have  been  born 
before  the  death  of  the  great  minister  of  Augustus, 
Marcus  Vipsanius  Agrippa,  in  B.C.  12 ;  and  it  is  reason- 
able to  assume  that  the  name  was  bestowed  on  him  as 
a  compliment  to  the  man  who  was  so  high  in  the 
emperor's  favour,  aud  whose  support  it  was  so  desirable 
to  secure. 

His  position  at  Rome  brought  him  into  contact  with 
some  of  the  more  jirominent  members  of  the  imperial 
family.  His  mother,  Bernice  (a  name  which  ho  after- 
wards bestowed  on  one  of  his  own  daughters.  Acts  xxv. 
13),  was  on  terms  of  intimate  friendship  with  Antonia, 
the  wife  of  Drusus  and  mother  of  Germauicus,  and  the 
youth  of  Agrippa  was  passed  in  companionship  with 
Caius,  the  son  of  Germauicus,  better  known  afterwards 
as  the  Emperor  CaUgiila.  We  trace  his  remembrance 
of  the  family  in  the  name  DrusiUa,  which  he  gave  to 
another  of  his  daughters  (Acts  xxiv.  24).'  His  friend- 
ship with  Caligula  exercised  a  marked  influence  over 
both  his  fortunes  and  his  character.  Without  following 
those  fortunes  in  their  successive  stages,  the  spendthrift 
life  at  Rome,  tho  heavy  debts  which  made  him  return 
to  Judaja  to  escape  his  creditors,  his  marriage  with 
Kypros  his  cousin,  we  come  to  tho  time  in  which  ho 
comes  into  contact  with  the  two  members  of  the  family 
who  appear  so  prominently  in  the  Gospel  history.  At 
first  (this  was  after  the  death  of  Archelaus,  and  pro- 
bably about  the  time  when  John  the  Baptist  began  liis 
ministry)  Herodias,  who,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  hi,'? 
sister,  received  him  kindly,  and,  under  her  influence, 
the  tetrarch  made  him  ruler  of  Tiberias,  aud  assigned 
him  a  salary.  The  good-will  was  not  of  long  continu- 
ance. The  tetrarch  reproached  his  brother-in-law  >vith 
his  poverty  and  dependence,  and  the  latter,  resigning 
his  post,  but  still  embarrassed  ivith  many  difficulties, 
made  his  way  to  Italy.     Tho   memory  of  liis  unpaid 


-'  A  son  who  died  young  bora  tho  namo  of  Brusaa. 
34 — VOL.   II. 


debts  weighed  against  him  with  the  Emperor  Tiberius, 
but  the  tact  and  winning  manners  which  always  dis- 
tinguished him  enabled  him  to  ingratiate  himself  with 
all  the  imperial  family.  He  was  tho  guest  of  Tiberius 
at  Capreffi,  borrowed  300,000  drachma;  of  Claudius,  tho 
futm-e  emperor,  was  ajipointcd  as  a  sort  of  tutor  over 
the  emperor's  grandson  (Tiberius,  the  sou  of  Drusus, 
who  died  yoimg),  and  continued  to  be  the  boon  com- 
panion of  Caligula.  Soon,  however,  all  this  glitter  and 
pomp  were  changed  for  the  confinement  of  a  prison. 
As  the  two  friends  were  ritling  in  a  chariot,  Agi'ippa 
gave  utterance  to  the  wish  that  tho  emperor  might  soon 
die,  and  that  Caius  might  succeed  him.  The  incautious 
words  were  overheard  by  the  chariot-driver,  a  freedman 
of  Agrippa's,  and  reported  by  him  to  others.  They  came 
at  last  to  the  ears  of  Tiberius.  The  emperor  was  still 
at  CapreiB.  Agrippa  was  summoned  to  defend  himself, 
and  was  at  once,  clothed  in  puiiile  as  he  was,  bound 
with  ii'on  chains,  and  thrown  into  prison.  During  his  con- 
finement there  happened,  according  to  Josephus,  whose 
sources  of  information  at  this  stage  of  his  histoiy  seem 
to  have  been  singularly  full,  a  striking  incident  which, 
from  the  historian's  pomt  of  view,  was  connected  with  the 
strange  aud  startling  manner  of  Agrippa's  death.  It 
chanced  that  one  day,  wliilo  Agrijjpa  and  other  prisoners 
were  taking  their  scanty  measure  of  exercise  before  the 
impeirial  palace,  he  leant,  in  utter  despondency,  upon 
the  trunk  of  a  tree.  An  owl  sat  upon  its  branches. 
One  of  his  fellow-prisoners,  a  German,  asked  who  he 
was,  and  on  learning  his  history,  came  to  him  with 
words  of  comfort,  told  him  that  the  presence  of  the 
bird  was  an  augury  of  good,  that  within  a  short  time 
he  would  rise  to  the  highest  prosperity,  but  warned 
him  that  should  he  ever  see  the  self- same  bird  again  it 
would  come  as  a  messenger  of  death,  and  that  within 
five  days  after  it  his  end  would  come.  As  Josephus 
tells  the  story  of  his  death,  it  was  in  tho  midst  of  the 
pomp  and  pageantry  of  the  scone  at  Cajsarea  that  he 
saw  the  bird  of  evO  omen  perched  over  his  head,  and 
as  the  sudden  stroke  of  agony  fell  on  him,  told  his 
friends  that  he  knew  that  the  hour  of  his  death  was  not 
far  off  (Joseph.,  Aniiq.  xvdii.  6,  aud  xix.  8). 

For  the  time,  however,  the  omen  was  fulfilled  for 
good.  The  rigours  of  imprisonment  were  mitigated  at 
the  intercession  of  Antonia.  Friends  were  allowed  free 
access,  and  were  permitted  to  bring  tho  garments  aud 
food  which  belonged  to  the  prisoner's  rank.  After  a 
few  months  of  expectation,  one  of  those  friends,  Marsyas, 
probably  a  Jew,  rushed  into  his  prison,  and  cried 
out  in  Hebrew  that  "  the  licJn  was  dead."-     Caligula, 


-  The  phrase  has  a  special  interest  as  illustrating  St.  Paul's 
language  in  2  Tim.  iT.  17,  "  I  was  deliYered  out  of  the  mouth 
of  the  lion."  It  not  only  justifies  us  in  interpreting  that  language 
of  St.  Paul's  trial  before  Nero,  but  shows  that  this  way  of  speaking 


146 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


designated  by  the  emperor's  will,  was  received  as  his 
successor,  and  Agi-ippa  soon  reaped  the  fruits  of  liis 
favour,  was  released  from  prison,  appointed  to  the 
tetrarchy  of  Iturea  that  bid  been  held  by  Philip,  but 
with  the  title  of  king,  and  afterwards  to  Abilene,  that 
of  Lysanias  (Luke  iii.  1).  As  a  complimentary  memo- 
rial of  what  he  had  undergone  on  the  emperor's  account, 
he  received  a  chain  of  gold  of  the  same  weight  as  the 
iron  one  he  had  worn  in  his  prison. 

The  jealousy  which  was  excited  in  the  minds  of  his 
sister  Herodias  and  her  husband  when  Agrippa  re- 
appeared in  Palestine  with  his  new  title  has  been 
already  dwelt  on.  It  ended,  as  has  been  seen,  in  the 
downfall  of  Herod  Antipas,  and  the  power  of  Agrippa 
wa.s  increased  Ijy  the  addition  of  the  tetrarchy  of 
Galilee,  and  the  private  estates  both  of  the  tetrarch 
and  of  Herodias.  He  seemed  to  bo  in  a  fair  way  to 
equal  his  grandfather  both  in  wealth  and  temporal 
power  as  well  as  name. 

The  power  gained  under  Caligida  was,  however,  but 
the  st-epping-stone  to  a  yet  higher  position.  Agrijspa 
remained  at  Rome  after  the  incidents  thus  narrated, 
and  was  there  when  the  emperor's  mad  career  was 
terminated  by  the  dagger  of  Chorea.  It  was  his  strange 
destiny  to  bo  the  fu'st  to  pay  fimoral  honours  to  the 
body  of  the  dead  emperor,  and  to  persuade  Clautlius 
not  to  lose  the  opportunity  thus  offered  him  of  succeed- 
ing to  the  piirplo.  The  residt  was  that  the  new  emperor 
treated  him  with  special  honour,  added  Judasa  and 
Samaria  to  the  territory  over  which  he  pre\'iously  ruled, 
and  so,  superseding  for  a  time  by  this  restored  monarchy 
the  functions  of  tlie  Roman  procurator  of  Jiidsea, 
brought  Agi-ijipa  for  tlie  first  time  into  direct  cont,ict 
with  the  new  society  which  wo  know  as  the  Church  of 
Christ,  but  which  to  Mm,  doubtless,  presented  itself  as 
the  sect  of  the  Nazarenes.  In  many  respects  he  used  the 
power  thus  gained  in  a  just  and  beneficent  spirit,  and 
sought  in  i^articnlar  (and  here  we  come  to  tliat  which 
connects  itself  with  the  history  of  Acts  xii.)  to  con- 
ciliate the  religious  feelings  of  the  people,  which  had 
been  so  constantly  outraged  by  his  grandfather  and 
Antipas.  The  golden  chain  was  dedicated  as  a  thank- 
offering  in  the  Temple.  At  the  Feast  of  Pentecost  he 
appeared  among  the  multitude,  bringing  Ms  own  basket 
of  first-fruit  offerings.  When  the  law  was  read  at  the 
Feast  of  Tabernacles,  and  lie  heard  the  words  from 
Dent.  xvii.  15,  "  One  from  among  thy  brethren  shalt 
thou  set  Mng  over  thee ;  thou  shalt  not  set  a  stranger 
over  thee,"  he  biu-st  into  tears  at  the  thought  of  Ms  own 
Idumcau  descent,  till  the  people,  whose  affection  ho 
had  gained,  met  Ms  gi-ief  with  the  cry,  "  Trouble  not  thy- 
self, Agi-ippa ;  thou  also  art  our  brother."  A  striking 
instance  of  Ms  desire  to  gain  over  the  more  devout 

of  the  tyrants  who  disjjrraoed  the  purple  was  already  established, 
and  that  there  is  no  need  to  adopt  M.  Reuan's  somewhat  fantastic 
hypothesis  {L'Antachrist,  p.  179),  that  Nero  hecame  "  the  boast"  of 
the  Apocalyijse  because  he  appeared  on  the  arena  of  the  amphi- 
theatre in  the  disguise  of  a  lion.  The  imagery  of  the  Apocalypse 
was  indeed  ready  at  hand  in  the  visions  of  Ezekiel  (sit.  1,  9)  and 
Daniel  (vii.  8).  The  language  of  Marsyas  and  St.  Paul  shows  how 
easy  and  natural  it  was  to  reproduca  it  with  this  apphcation. 


among  his  subjects  to  Ms  side  was  seen  in  the  fact  that 
when  Caligula,  in  one  of  Ms  fits  of  insane  vanity,  issued 
the  command  that  Ms  statue  should  be  set  up  in  the 
Temple  of  Jerusalem,  and  there  worshipped,  and  the 
people  dared  only  oppose  by  a  passive  martyr-Hke  re- 
sistance, Agrippa,  who  had  retmrned  to  Rome  and  taken 
up  his  abode  there,  had  the  courage,  when  CaUgula 
offered  to  bestow  on  Mm  any  gift  that  ho  might  choose 
to  ask,  to  pray,  not  for  fresh  territory  or  increased 
treasm-es,'  but  that  the  emperor  would  recede  from  Ms 
frantic  outrage  on  the  religion  of  his  countrymen,  and 
succeeded  in  averting  the  dreaded  evil. 

With  a  real  or  affected  zeal,  when  he  returned  to 
his  kingdom,  he  adopted  precisely  the  same  means  for 
conciliatmg  the  devotees  of  Jerusalem  as  those  which 
were  afterwards  practised  by  St.  Paid,  and  associated 
liimsolf  with  those  who  had  taken  on  themselves  the 
vow  of  Nazarites,  and  apparently  "  was  at  charges  with 
them  that  they  might  shave  then-  heads  "  (Acts  xxi.  2't). 
Josephus,  who  represents  the  not  over-zealous  type  of 
Pharisee  wMch  was  likely  to  be  soothed  with  this  exter- 
nal conformity,  speaks  of  him  in  terms  of  the  higliest 
praise  :  "  Agrippa's  temper  was  mild  and  equally  liljcral 
to  all  men.  He  was  humane  to  foreigners,  and  made 
them  sensible  of  his  liberality.  He  was  in  like  manner 
of  a  gentle  and  compassionate  temper.  He  loved  to  live 
continually  at  Jerusalem,  and  was  exactly  careful  in  the 
observance  of  the  laws  of  his  country.  He  therefore 
kept  liimself  entu-ely  pure,  nor  did  any  day  pass  over  Ms 
head  without  its  appointed  sacrifice"  (4  (liig.  xix.  7,  §  3). 

Such  wa.s  the  prince  who  was  now  brought  face  to 
face  with  the  disciples  of  Jesus.  A  German  Je^vish 
historiiin'  has  ventured  on  the  strength  of  these  facts  to 
suggest  that  the  narrative  m  Acts  xii.,  which  ascribes  to 
liim  a  systematic  policy  of  persecution,  is  unintelligible, 
and  therefore  iucreilible.  The  statement  is,  I  believe, 
the  very  reverse  of  the  truth.  Those  who  sit  loose  to 
religious  zeal  are  quite  as  likely  to  adopt  a  policy  of  per- 
secution, when  they  \vish  to  gain  the  favom*  of  a  perse- 
cuting party,  as  men  who  are  themselves  in  earnest. 
Assuming  that  the  devotion  of  wMeh  Josephus  speaks 
so  Mghly  was  not  altogether  fictitious,  its  character  was 
precisely  that  which  takes  its  tone  from  the  atmo- 
sphere in  which  it  lives.  It  was  well,  we  may  believe, 
for  the  Christian  Clrarch  that  it  had  time  to  strike  its 
roots  into  the  ground  and  spread  out  its  branches  whUe 
Judaja  was  still  imder  the  government  of  a  Roman 
procurator.  Wlien  Agrippa  arrived  he  must  have 
found  all  the  religious  parties  into  wMcli  Ms  subjects 
were  di^-ided — Pharisees,  SadduceoS,  Zealots,  whatever 
remained  of  the  old  Herodians — watching  the  gi-owth  of 
the  new  society  'n-ith  fear  and  suspicion.  What  more 
ready  way  of  gaining  their  favour  was  there  than  to 
make  himself  tlio  representative  of  their  zeal,  and  to 
crush  the  innovators  ?  Coming  as  he  did  from  Rome, 
where,  there  is  reason  to  believe,  the  faitli  of  Christ 
had  already  made  such  progress  that  Clauihus  but  a 
few  years  afterwards  was  led  to  banish  all  the  Jews,  in 

'  Jost,  Gischkhk  des  Judenthums,  i.,  p.  121. 


THE   COINCIDENCES  OP  SCRIPTURE. 


147 


order  to  stop  the  disturbances  which  were  coutumaUy 
occurring  between  the  believing  and  the  non-lielie^Tug 
portions  of  the  population  of  the  Jewish  quarter,'  it  is 
probable  euoiigh, -indeed,  that  ho  came  ivith  a  temper 
already  adverse  to  the  disciples  of  Jesus,  and  disposed 
to  look  on  them  as  dangerous.  It  was  in  every  way 
natural  that  James,  the  son  of  Zebedeo,  should  be  the 
first  victim,  not  only  as  one  of  the  fom-  whose  names 
always  stand  first  in  the  hst  of  the  Apostles,  but  from 
the  antecedents  of  his  personal  history.  To  one  who 
had  lived  and  rided  at  Tiberias,  the  names  of  the  two 
"  Sons  of  Thunder  "  could  hardly  have  boon  imkuown, 
and  James,  as  in  all  likelihood  the  elder  of  the  two, 
would  attract  his  first  notice  rather  than  the  younger 
and  more  contemplative  John.  That  there  was  no  real 
humanity  in  his  nature  to  restrain  him  from  such 
action  may  bo  inferred  from  the  fact  that  ho  iutrodussd 
into  his  kingdom  the  most  detestable  of  all  the  forms  of 
the  brutal  indifference  to  life  wliich  characterised  the 
empire,  and  sent  condemned  criminals,  to  the  number 
oi  fourteen  hundred  in  one  batch,  to  butcher  each  other, 
as  gladiators  and  convicts  did  at  Rome,  in  the  amphi- 
theatre which  he  had  buUt  at  Berytus  (Joseph.,  Antiq. 
xix.  7,  §  5).  The  execution  of  theguai-ds  who  had  been 
set  to  keep  watch  over  Peter,  though  not  more  rigorous 
than  usage  might  justify,  is,  at  least,  a  sufficient  imli- 
cation  of  severity. 

The  death  of  Agrippa,  three  years  after  JudtBa  had 
been  added  to  his  dominions,  put  a  stop  to  the  persecu- 
tion, and  gave  the  chm-ches  of  Judisa  time  to  breathe 
freely.  The  circumstances  of  that  death,  as  told  both 
by  St.  Luke  and  Josephus,  were  eminently  characteristic. 
Agrippa,  we  are  told  by  the  former,  was  on  the  very 
verge  of  war,  and  full  of  hostile  purposes,  with  the 
neighboui-ing  cities  of  Tyi-e  and  Sidon.  They,  with 
their  crowded  population  and  but  a  narrow  and  un- 
productive coast-land,  were  largely  dependent  on  the 
plains  of  Samaria  and  Galilee  for  their  daily  supplies 
of  food,  as  they  had  been  in  the  days  of  Solomon,  when 
in  exchange  for  the  timber  which  the  ships  of  Tyi-e 
brought  from  Lebanon  he  gave  Hu-am  "  twenty  thou- 
sand measures  of  wheat  for  food  for  his  household,  and 
twenty  measures  of  oU,  year  by  year  "  (1  Kings  v.  11) ; 
and  in  those  of  Ezekiel,  when  the  merchant  city 
traded  \vith  "  Judah  and  the  laud  of  Israel  "  for  "  wheat 
of  Miuuith,  and  Pannag,  and  honey,  and  oil,  and  balm  " 
(Ezek.  xxvii.  17).  Tlie  features  which  Josephus  adds 
to  the  pictm-e  are  not  less  striking.  Tho  legates  of 
Tyre  and  Sidon  had  apparently  selected  what  seemed 
a  favourable  opportimity  for  their  request.  Agrippa 
was  celebrating  games  in  honour  of  the  emperor,  ac- 
companied with  special  prayers  for  his  safety.  After 
the  fashion  which  prevailed  at  Rome,  where  Caligula 
disidayod  hunseU,  even  when  he  personated  Hercules, 
in  gold-embroidered  dresses,  the  king  appeared  before 
the  people  ui  a  robe  of  silver  (tho  royal  or  imperial 
apparel  of  Acts  xii.  21).  which  glittered  in  the  morning 
sun,  and  made  an  oration  to  the  people.     The  servile 


'  Cjiincidences  of  Scripture,"  Vol.  I.,  p.  151. 


crowd,  accustomed  to  the  extravagant  homage  paid  to 
the  emperors,  and  not  sharing  tho  horror  of  the  more 
rigorous  zealots  of  Jerusalem  at  the  apotheosis  of  a 
fiving  CaHgula,  raised  the  cry,  "  It  is  the  voice  of  a  god, 
and  not  of  a  man."  They  begged  him  as  a  god  to  be 
merciful  to  them,  and  protect  them.  And  he  "  gave 
not  God  the  glory."  The  blasphemous  praise  fell  on 
pleased  and  willing  eai's.  That  had  been  granted  to 
him  which  had  been  refused  to  Caligula.  He  accepted 
the  honour  against  wliich  he  had  then  protested.  As 
Joseplms  tells  tho  story,  he  saw  the  owl,  which  re- 
minded him  of  the  old  augury,  sitting  over  his  head, 
knew  that  his  end  was  come,  had  sense  enough  to 
reprove  his  flatterers,  and  to  prepare  for  death,  con- 
gratulating himself,  as  Augustus  had  done,  that  he 
had  played  Ms  part  in  the  drama  of  life  well,  and 
surroimded  by  the  pageantry  and  pomp  of  sovereignty. 
No  sooner,  however,  had  the  cm-tain  fallen  on  that 
tlrama,  than  those  who  seemed  to  be  such  admu'iug  and 
applaudiug  spectators  gave  vent  to  the  hatred  and 
scorn  which  lay  beneath  the  sm'f ace,  kept  high  festival 
in  exultation  at  his  death,  hurled  the  vilest  reproaches 
on  his  memory,  and  insiilted  to  the  utmost  of  their 
power  the  children  whom  he  had  left  behind. 

HEEOD  AGRIPPA  II.  AND  BEENICE. 

Of  the  four  cluldren  who  were  thus  left  fatherless, 
three — Agrippa  II.,  Beniice,  and  DrusiUa — come  before 
us  as  brought  into  contact  with  the  history  of  the 
Apostohc  Church.  The  son,  who  was  only  seventeen 
at  the  time  of  his  father's  death,  had  been  brought  up 
in  the  court  of  Claudius,  and  was  thex'e  at  the  time. 
The  emperor  thought  liim  too  yoimg  to  be  entrusted 
with  power,  and  was  probably  glad  to  use  the  ojipor- 
tunity  of  once  more  placing  Judcea  under  the  direct 
control  of  a  Roman  procurator.  On  the  death  of 
Herod,  King  of  Chalcis,  a  brother  of  Agrippa  I.,  how- 
ever, Claudius  assig-ned  his  territory,  with  the  title  of 
king,  to  the  young  prince,  and  afterwards  added  the  two 
tetrarchies  which  at  the  commencement  of  our  Lord's 
ministry  were  under  Philip  and  Lysanias.  Over  Galilee, 
Samaria,  and  Judasa  he  exercised  no  authority,  and  was 
therefore,  as  compared  with  his  father,  httle  more  than 
a  titular  monarch.  It  is  remarkalde  that  when  he 
appears  in  the  Acts  it  is  in  company  with  Beruiee,  as 
though  she  shared  his  power,  and  though  his  sister  aad 
not  his  wife,  was  recognised  as  queen.  So  she  appears 
in  Josephus  {Wars  of  the  Jews,  ii.  16,  §  3)  as  with  her 
brother  at  Jerusalem,  standing  by  his  side,  joining 
her  tears  with  his,  so  as  to  soothe  the  agitation  of 
the  people,  and  again  as  obtaining  by  her  intercession 
tho  life  of  a  condemned  criminal  {Life,  §  65).  There 
were  not  wanting  those  who  surmised  that  the  taint  of 
the  vices  of  Caliguhi  had  infected  the  children  of  his 
friend,  and  that  this  ostentatious  display  implied  the 
existence  of  an  incestuous  passion  between  the  two. 
She,  like  Herodias,  had  begun  by  being  the  wife  of  an 
uncle,  the  King  of  Chalcis,  just  mentioned.  After  his 
death  she  married,  chiefly  in  order  to  give  the  lie  to  'he 
dark  rumours  of  her  guilt,  Polemon,  a  king  of  Cilicia,  who 


148 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


for  her  sake  became  a  proselyte,  and  submitted  to  cir- 
cumcision. Tlje  marriage  was  not  a  liappy  one,  and  her 
return  to  her  brother  increased  the  suspicions  which 
were  floating  in  men's  minds,  so  that  even  Roman 
historians  and  satirists  took  the  guilt  as  proven.  The 
fasciuation  of  her  beauty,  and  probably  also  of  lier 
ability,  wa.s  strong  enough  to  win  tlie  love  of  the 
Emperor  Titus,  and  the  last  glimpse  of  the  life  of  the 
Herodian  princess  is  that  which  displays  her  as  living 
with  him  at  Rome  in  the  imperial  palace  as  his  mistress. 
Ho  was  for  a  time  spell-bouud  by  her,  as  Cassar  and 
Antony  had  been  by  Cleopatra.  The  amount  of  public 
feeling,  however,  was  as  strong  against  the  influence  of 
the  foreign,  the  "  barbarian  "  mistress  then,  as  it  had 
been  in  the  earlier  case,  and  Titus,  characteristically 
placing  his  public  duties  above  his  private  affections, 
vrithdrew  from  her  society.  "  Dimisit  iuvitus  invitam  " 
is  the  touching  comment  of  the  historian  Suetonius.' 

Tor  one  memorable  day  the  young  king  was  brought 
into  contact  with  the  great  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles,  and 
the  circumstances,  as  recorded  by  St.  Luke,  present 
many  striking  coincidences  with  what  we  know  of  the 
man,  and  of  his  character,  from  external  sources.  He 
came  on  a  visit  of  compliment  to  Eestus,  and  the  history 
of  Josephus  shows  us  that  the  two  liad  already  been 
on  terms  of  intimacy  at  Jenisalom.  Agi-ippa  had 
thro^^^l  out  a  banqueting-haU  from  the  old  palace  of  the 
Asmonajan  kings,  from  the  portico  of  which  lie  could 
command  a  view  of  the  courts  of  the  Temple.  The 
priests  and  people,  knowing  something,  it  may  be,  of 
the  character  of  Agrijipa  and  his  guests,  resented  this, 
as  exposing  the  services  of  the  sanctuary  to  the  gaze  of 
profane  eyes,  and  ran  up  a  high  wall  which  entirely 
blocked  out  the  view.  The  king,  in  his  turn,  backed 
by  the  authority  of  Festiis,  commanded  the  wall  to  be 
pulled  dovm,  and  woidd  have  succeeded  in  demolishing 
it,  had  not  the  Jews  .sent  an  embassy  to  Nero,  and  partly 
on  the  plea  that  the  wall  was  part  of  the  Temple,  partly 
through  the  influence  of  Poppsea,  after  her  strange 
fashion  a  proselyte  to  Judaism,  obtained  an  order  that 
tho  wall  should  be  left  as  it  was.  It  was  not  strange 
that  in  the  interval  between  the  two  stages  of  this 
transaction,  the  two  men  should  be  found  meeting  on 
terms  of  reciprocated  courtesies.  We  may  note,  finally, 
that  the  "  great  pomp  "  of  Agrippa  was  in  exact  keeping 
witli  his  character. 

Tlie  tone  of  St.  Paul's  address  to  Agrippa  is  one  of 
marked  respect  throughout.  This  was,  we  may  beheve, 
only  part  and  parcel  of  the  demeanour  that  characterised 
the  great  Apostle.  But  there  is  ob-i-iously  a  special 
stress  laid  on  one  aspect  of  his  character.  St.  Paul 
welcomes  the  opportunity  of  speaking  before  him,  as 
one  who  is  "  expert  in  all  customs  and  questions  which 

'  The  late  Dean  Alforcl,  in  the  article  "  Bernioe,"  in  Smith's 
Diclionori;  0/  the  Bible,  speaks  of  her  as  having  been  sucoessivclj 
the  mistress  both  of  Vespasian  and  of  his  sou  Titus.  There  is 
nothing,  however,  in  the  passage  of  Tacitus  to  which  he  refers 
(Hist,  ii.  81)  to  lead  us  to  impute  to  her  so  shameless  a  guilt.  His 
words,  which  state  that  she  won  the  father's  favour  by  the  liberality 
of  her  gifts  ("Seui  quoque  Vespasiano  muniflceutia  munerum 
grata''),  imply,  indeed,  the  very  reverse. 


are  among  the  Jews."  He  knows  that  in  the  question, 
"  Believest  thou  the  prophets  ?"  he  can,  without  risk  of 
error,  assume  the  answer,  "  I  know  that  thou  believest " 
(Acts  xxvi.  2,  26).  There  are  not  a  few  intimations  in 
Josephus  that  this  character  was  one  which  Agrippa 
especially  affected. 

At  liis  mtercession,  the  Emperor  Clauilius  conceded 
to  the  Jews  the  right  of  keeping  the  sacred  vestments 
under  their  own  custody  {Antiq.  xx.  1,  §  2),  instead  of 
that  of  the  Roman  procurator.  The  care  of  the  Temple 
was  specially  committed  to  liim  by  the  same  emperor. 
When  the  Levites,  who  formed  tho  choir  of  the  Temple, 
were  anxious  to  secure  the  honour  of  wearing  the  same 
linen  garments  as  the  priests,  it  was  to  Agrippa  they 
applied ;  and  he  accordingly  convened  a  meeting  of  the 
Sanhedrim,  urged  their  claim,  and  so  obtained  for  them 
the  concession  on  which  they  had  set  their  hearts.  He 
had  displayed  just  the  kind  of  interest  in  matters 
affecting  the  religion  of  his  subjects  which  justified  the 
language  of  St.  Paul. 

The  memorable  words  which,  as  rendered  in  our 
version,  have  so  often  furnished  preachers  vrith  a  text, 
"  Almost  thou  persuadest  me  to  be  a  Christian  "  (Acts 
xxvi.  28),  are  now  acknowledged  by  all  competent 
scholars  to  have  no  such  meaning.  Rightly  Lntei-preted, 
as  meaning  "  With  a  little,  sc.,  with  but  scanty  measure 
of  proof,  thou  persuadest  me  to  be  a  Christian,"  the  words 
are  far  more  strikingly  characteristic.  He  uses  for  the 
name  of  tho  new  sect  that  which  was  essentially  Latin 
in  its  form,  and  which  had  probably  by  tliis  time  passed 
into  common  currency  at  Rome.  And  he  speaks  alto- 
gether in  the  tone  of  sceptical  sarcasm  which  we 
might  expect  to  fijid  in  one  who  had  been  the  friend  of 
Nero.  It  wanted  something  more  than  an  incredible 
story,  as  he  must  have  deemed  it,  of  visions  and  revela- 
tions of  the  Lord,  such  as  the  experienced  governor 
looked  upon  as  a  sign  of  madness,  to  induce  him  to 
cast  in  his  lot  with  tho  strange  sect  who  bore  the 
new  name. 

Nothing  in  the  king's  after  life  indicates  that  the 
words  of  the  Apostle  made  tho  sUghtost  impression  on 
him.  When  the  Jewish  war  broke  out,  after  vainly 
endeavouring  to  dissuade  the  people  from  their  insane 
resistjince,  he  unreservedly  took  the  side  of  the  Romans, 
found  an  asylum  in  Rome,  corresponded  with  Josephus, 
assisted  him  in  compiling  his  history  of  the  revolt  of 
Judaea  and  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  and  at  last 
died,  A.D.  100,  in  the  early  years  of  tho  reign  of  Trajan. 

DBUSILXA. 

One  more  member  of  the  Herodian  family  reniains  to 
be  noticed,  as  connected  ivith  the  history  of  the  New 
Testament.  When  Paul  stood  before  Felix,  tho  pro- 
curator who  preceded  Festus,  and  "  reasoned  of  right- 
eousness, temperance,  and  judgment  to  come,"  the  pro- 
curator had  come,  we  are  told,  to  Ccesarea,  accompanied 
by  his  vdto  "  Drusilla,  who  was  a  Jewess  "'  (Acts  xxiv. 
24),  and  she  was  with  him  when  ho  sent  for  tho  Apostle 
and  heard  him.  Here,  also,  as  iu  the  case  of  Beniice, 
there  wf.s  a  beauty  of  singular  attractiveness,  and  there 


JOSHUA. 


149 


liad  been  a  strange  career  of  adventures.  During  her 
father's  lifetime  she  had  been  betrothed  to  an  Eastern 
piinee,  Epiphanes,  the  son  of  Antiochus  of  Commagone, 
on  condition  of  his  becoming  a  proselyie  to  Judaism. 
On  the  death  of  the  elder  Agrippa,  that  prineo  refused 
to  fulfil  the  condition,  and  her  brother  gave  her  in 
marriage  to  Azizus,  king  of  Emesa,  who  was  willing  to 
comply  with  it.  Then  Felix  appeared  on  the  stage, 
brother  of  Pallas,  the  favoured  freedman  of  the  Em- 
peror Claudius,  already  conspicuous  as  having  married 
two  princesses,  and  through  the  agency  of  a  Cyprian 
sorcerer  named  Simon  (whom  some  have  identifiiLd  with 


Simon  Magus  of  Acts  viii.),  prevailed  on  her  to  leave 
her  husband,  and  to  live  with  him.  It  was  not  strange 
that  one  whose  life  had  been  a  strange  combination  of 
the  cruelty  of  a  tyrant  with  the  subser^deucy  of  a  slave, 
should  have  trembled,  as  the  burning  words  of  the 
Apostle  fell  on  his  startled  oar.  They  had,  however, 
no  permanent  effect.  The  extortionate  greed  of  gain, 
which  was  his  dominant  characteristic,  asserted  itself 
immediately  in  his  treatment  of  the  Apostle.  He  con- 
tinued to  Hve  with  her,  and  a  son  who  bore  the  family 
name  of  Agrippa  perished  in  the  great  eruption  of 
Vesuvius,  A.D.  79. 


SCEIPTUEB    BIOGEAPHIES. 

JOSHUA  (continued). 

BT    THE    REV.    EDMUND    VENABLES,    M.A.,    CANON    RESIDENTIARY   AND    PKECENTOK    OF    LINCOLN. 


'he  Jordan  had  now  been  crossed.  The 
covenant  had  been  renewed.  The  feet 
of  Israel  were  at  last  treading  the  land 
promised  to  their  forefathers.  The  work 
for  which  Joshua  had  been  specially  commissioned 
was  opening  before  him.  And  this  work  was  likely  to 
be  long  and  difficult.  Canaan  was  in  the  possession  of 
a  powerful  and  warlike  people,  prepared  to  resist  to 
the  uttermost  the  attempts  of  the  invaders  to  dislodge 
them.  Every  part  of  the  land  bristled  -ivith  fortresses, 
"  cities  liigh  and  fenced  up  to  heaven."  One  of  the  chief 
of  these  fortresses,  the  strong  and  opulent  city  of 
Jericho,  now  confronted  Joshua.  Its  walls  and  towers 
were  seen  rising  above  the  palm-tree  groves,  from 
which  it  took  its  distinctive  name,  "  the  city  of  palm- 
trees"  (Dent,  xxxiv.  3).  The  formidable  strength  of 
its  fortifications  might  well  awaken  anxiety  evea  in  the 
mind  of  so  dauntless  a  loader.  How  could  his  nomad 
tribe,  fresh  from  desert  life,  utterly  unprovided  with 
engines  of  war,  and  destitut-e  of  the  knowledge  and 
skill  necessary  for  the  storming  of  a  walled  town,  hope 
to  take  this  impregnable  fortress  P  Still,  what  he 
could  do,  Joshua  did,  and  did  at  once.  If  he  could 
not  storm  Jericho,  ho  miglit  starve  it  into  submission. 
So  he  beleaguered  the  city,  and  commenced  a  strict 
blockade,  and  "  Jericho  was  straitly  shut  up  because  of 
the  children  of  Israel :  none  went  out,  and  none  came 
in  "  (Josh.  vi.  1). 

But  this  siege  must  necessarily  occupy  a  long 
time,  and  all  seemed  to  depend  on  Israel  striking  a 
sudden  and  decisive  blow.  Wliile  the  Israelites  were 
lingering  here,  might  not  the  other  kings  of  the 
CajQaanitos  gather  their  armies  and  come  down  upon 
them  with  irresistible  might,  and  crush  the  invasion  at 
the  outset  P  And  thou,  as  ever,  just  when  it  is  most 
needed,  came  the  renewed  assurance  of  the  presence 
and  protection  of  the  Most  High.  As  Joshua  was 
"  by  Jericho  "  (Josh.  v.  13 — 15),  having  left  the  camp  it 
should  seem  alone,  and  unaccompanied,  to  recoimoitre 
the   fortress,    and  devise   means   of    assault,   he   was 


suddenly  conscious  of  the  presence  "  over  against 
him "  of  an  armed  warrior,  "  with  his  sword  drawn 
in  his  hand."  With  characteristic  courage  he  chal- 
lenged the  formidable  stranger,  and  demanded  whether 
he  came  as  friend  or  foe  :  "  Art  thou  for  us,  or  for 
our  adversaries?"  The  unexpected  answer,  that  it 
was  as  "  captain  of  the  host  of  the  Lord," '  "  the  Prince 
of  angels,"  that  he  had  come,  and  the  command,  the 
same  given  to  his  great  master  in  Horeb,  to  "  loose  his 
shoe  from  off  his  foot "  before  ho  trod  ground  conse- 
crated by  the  Di\'ine  Presence,  revealed  the  true  nature 
of  this  mysterious  stranger.  Awe-stricken,  he  fell  on 
his  face  and  worshipped,  and  heard  from  Jehovah 
the  assurance  which  would  at  once  dispel  his  fears, 
and  remind  him  that  "  tho  battle  was  the  Lord's," 
not  Israel's — that  he  had  "  given  into  his  hand  Jericho, 
its  king,  and  its  mighty  men  of  valour"  (Josh.  vi.  2)» 
and  received  the  instructions  for  the  capture  of  the 
city. 

In  compliance  with  the  Divine  command,  Joshua  mar- 
shalled his  host,  not  for  assault,  but  for  orderly  march. 
For  six  days — careless  of  the  derisive  taunts  that  may 
have  reached  them  from  tho  fighting  men  on  the  walls 
of  Jericho,  strong  in  faith  that,  however  unlikely  the 
means  employed,  God  would  be  true  to  His  promise — 
did  the  strange  procession  circle  the  doomed  city. 
First  marched  the  warriors,  picked  men,  probably  .as 
representatives  of  each  tribe ;  then,  blowing  the  cornet* 


1  Tliat  "  the  cnptain  of  the  host  of  the  Lord"  was  aot  a 
created  angel  is  evident  from  (1)  Joshua  receiving  from  him  the 
same  command,  to  remove  his  shoes,  given  to  Moses  by  Jehovah ; 
(2)  his  being  called  Jehovah  (vi.  2)  ;  and  (3)  bis  attributing  to 
himself  the  delivery  of  Jericho  into  Joshua's  hand  :  "  Sec,  I  have 
given  into  thy  band  Jericho."  That  we  have  here  a  manifestation 
of  the  Divine  Word,  the  Second  Person  of  the  Trinity,  was  the 
opinion  of  the  early  Jewish  Church,  and  has  been  held  liy  many  of 
the  Christian  fathers— e.g.,  Justin  M.artyr,  Eusebius,  and  Origeu. 
The  real  import  of  this  passage  has  been  obscured  by  the  unfor- 
tunate division  of  chaps,  v.,  vi.  These  chapters  should  liiivo 
been  run  on  without  a  break,  the  first  verse  of  chap.  vi.  being 
merely  parenthetical,  and  the  words,  "  And  the  Lord  said  unto 
Joshua,  &c."  (vi.  2),  following  in  sense  "  and  Joshua  did  so,"  at 
the  end  of  chap,  v. 


isa 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


of  jubilee,'  eouie  the  seveu  priests,  preceding  tlio  ark, 
that  sacred  symbol  and  seat  of  Jehovah's  presence,  borne 
on  the  Levites'  shoulders,  and  guarded  by  "  the  roar- 
ward,"  an  armed  detachment  wliich  closed  the  long  line. 
No  sound  but  that  of  the  priestly  triimpets  broke  the 
solemn  stillness  of  the  array.  The  host  marched  in 
silence.  The  circuit  completed,  as  it  must  have  seemed, 
without  puri^ose  and  without  i-esult,  the  army  returned 
to  their  tents.  The  ark  of  God  was  replaced  in  its 
tabernacle.  On  the  seventh  day  the  mocking  gazers 
from  the  wall  became  cogiiisant  of  a  changed  procedure. 
To  secure  time  for  the  gi-eat  events  which  that  day  was 
to  witness,  the  procession  began  at  day-break.  The 
fii-st  cu-cuit  was  succeeded  by  a  second ;  the  second  by 
a  third,  a  fourth,  a  fifth,  a  sixth.  What  was  the 
meaning  of  this  change  ?  Was  some  mighty  event  at 
hand,  for  which  all  that  preceded  was  the  preparation  P 
They  had  not  long  to  wait  for  the  issue.  At  the  com- 
pletion of  the  seventh  cu'cuit,  the  blast  of  the  trumpets, 
which  had  been  suspended  for  an  interval,  was  renewed. 
This  was  the  signal  for  a  shout  from  the  entire  host. 
At  once  the  whole  circumference  of  the  walls  was  laid 
prostrate,  and,  the  barrier  removed,  "  the  people  wont  up 
into  the  city,  oveiy  man  straight  before  him,  and  they 
took  the  city  "  (vi.  20).  As  the  fii-st-fruits  of  the  guilty 
land,  the  whole  city  Avith  all  that  was  Ln  it  was  "  devoted  " 
as  a  sacrifice  to  the  Lord.  The  whole  population  was  put 
to  the  sword,  with  every  living  thing  the  city  contauied, 
"  both  man  and  woman,  young  and  old,  and  ox,  and 
sheep,  and  ass."  Only  the  faithful  harlot,  Rahab,  with 
her  household  was  spared,  according  to  the  promise  of 
the  spies.  The  city  itself  was  burnt ;  the  houses,  with 
all  their  furniture  and  goods,  rich  draperies,  and  costly 
garments  forming  a  vast  funeral  pyi'e  for  the  coi-pscs  of 
the  slain.  The  indestructible  booty,  "the  silver  and 
gold,  and  vessels  of  brass  and  iron,"  was  consecrated 
to  the  service  of  the  sanctuary.  The  voi-y  site  was 
placed  under  a  ban.  A  curse  was  jironounced  on  any 
one  who  should  presumptuously  dai-e  to  rebuild  the  walls 
which  Jehovah  had  overthrown  (vi.  21 — 26).  Notliing 
was  omitted  that  could  enforce  on  the  Israelites  the 
truth  that  they  were  fighting  not  for  themselves,  but 
for  Him;  not  for  wealth  or  self -aggrandisement,  but 
for  Jehovah's  glory. 

The  same  lesson  was  taught  them  by  the  alarming 
reverse  that  attended  Joshua's  next  military  operation. 
Among  the  confused  ravines  that  run  iip  westwards 
from  the  valley  of  the  Jordan,  not  very  far  from 
Bethel — its  exact  position  is  lost — stood  the  small  town 
of  Ai,  already  known  to  us  in  Abraham's  history.^  On 
the  report  of  the  reconnoitring  pai-ty  sent  by  Joshua, 
that  a  small  force  would  suffice,  as  the  inhabitants  were 

1  The  renderinj  in  the  Englisli  Bible  "  tnimpeta  of  rams' 
horus,"  is  probably  incorrect.  It  is  derived  from  a  statement  of 
Eabbi  Akiba  that  jobel  in  Arabic  means  "  a  ram,"  whicli  Bochart 
stigmatises  as  "  a  mere  Rabbinical  fable,"  no  Bucb  word,  according 
ti)  tbe  best  scholars,  existing  in  tbe  language.  Johel,  from  which 
comes  "jubilee,"  is  probably  a  word  formed  to  express  the  sound. 

-  Gen.  xii.  8 ;  xiii.  3.  The  identity  of  the  places  is  obscured 
by  a  capricious  variation  in  the  spelling — one  of  the  blots  of  our 
Authorised  Version.  "  Hoi  "  and  "  Ai "  both  represent  the  same 
llebrew  word. 


"  but   few,"   a   detachment   of    somo   3,000   men   was 
dispatched  to  take  the  place.     They  reached  the  gate 
unmolested.     But  the  men   of   Ai   making  a   sudden 
sortie,  a  panic  fcU  on  the   Israelite   forces,  who  fled 
precipitately  down  the  steep  descent,  without  waiting 
for  actual  conflict.     "  Tliey  chased  them  from  before 
the  gate,      .    .    .  and  smote  them  in  the  going  down " 
(Josh.  vii.    5).     The  loss  was   small  in   amount — only 
thirty-six  men — but  its  disheartening  effect  was  most 
serious ;  "  the  hearts  of  the  people  melted,  and  became 
as  water."     Even  Joshua  himself  was  carried  away  by 
the  tide  of  dismay.     Only  on  this  one  occasion  we  find 
his  courage,  usually  so  imshaken,  giving  place  to  deepest 
despondency.    ThiB  was  the  first  time  tliat  the  Israelites 
had  met  the  Canaanites  in  actual  warfare,  and  if,  almost 
before  a  blow  was  struck,  they  fled  before  the  warriors  of 
a  small  town,  what  would  be  the  issue  of  the  more  for- 
midable engagements  which  were  before  them  ?     Over- 
whelmed ^^^th  shame  and  apprehension,  he  "  rent  his 
clothes,  and  fcU  to  the  earth  upon  hi3  face  before  the 
ark  of  tlie  Lord  until  the  eventide,  ho  and  the  elders 
of  Israel,  and  put  dust  ujiou  their  heads "  (Josh.  vii. 
6).    With  the  same  holy  boldness  that    characterised 
the  appeals  of  Moses  in  like  distress,  he  expostulated 
■svith  God,  pleading  with  Him  what  He  had  done  for 
His  people  in  former  times,  and  the  disgrace  that  would 
redotmd  to  the  cause  of  the  li\-ing  God  if  He  permitted 
His  servants  to  fall  before  the  heathen :  "  What  wilt 
Thou  do  for  Thy  great  name  ?"     Tlie  answer  of  the 
Most  High  recalls  His  words  to  Moses  in  a  like  emergency 
(Exod.  xiv.  15).     It  was  a  time  for  action,  not  for  pas- 
sionate appeal.     Israel  had  sinned  in  the  person  of  one 
of  its  members,  and  that  sin  must  be  searched  out,  dis- 
covered, and  put  away,  before  the  presence  and  the  help 
of  Jehovah  could  be  again  expected :  '■  I  wiU  not  be 
with  you  any  more,  except  ye  destroy  the  accursed  from 
among  you"  (^ii.  13).    The  sin  was  not  theft  merely,  but 
sacrilege.    That  which  was  to  have  been  wholly  devoted 
to  the  Lord  had  been  appropriated  by  one  of  those  whom 
God   had  appointed  to  execute  his  wiU;  "they,"  the 
whole  nation  being  compromised  by  the  guilty  deed  of 
one,  "  have  even  taken  of  the  accursed  thing,  and  have 
also  stolen,  and  dissembled  also,  and  they  have  also  put 
it  among  their  own  stuff."     The  lot  was  to  be  resorted 
to,  to  determine   the   guilty  party.     Once  more,  with 
that  characteristic  promptitude  we  have  so  often  occasion 
to  remark  in  huu,  Joshua  "  rose  up  early  in  the  morn- 
ing," and  gathered  all  Israel  together  "  by  then-  tribes," 
fur  the  solemn  decision.     Gradually  the  circle  narrowed. 
Fu-st  the  tribe  ;  then  the  family  ;  then  the  household  ; 
then  the  man  was  taken  ;  and  "  Achan,  the  son  of  Zabdi, 
the  sou  of  Zerah,  of  the  tribe  of  Jiidah,"  was  declared 
as  "  the  troubler  of  Israel."     In  answer  to  the  solemn 
adjuration  of  Joshua,  as  the  father  of  the  nation,  to 
acknowledge  the  truth,^  the  unhappy  man  makes  frank 


3  Joshua's  appeal  to  Achan  to  "  give  glory  to  the  Lord "  by 
confessing  the  truth,  shows  the  real  meaning  of  the  much  mis- 
understood passage,  "give  God  the  praise"  (literally,  "glory") 
(John  ix.  21).  The  object  of  the  Pharisees  was  not  to  lead  the 
blind  man  to  give  God,  not  Jesns,  the  glory  of  his  cure ;  but  by 


PERFUMES  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


151 


and  fiiU  confession  of  his  crime.  A  rickly  embroidered 
robe  from  the  jilain  of  Shinar,  two  hundred  shekels  of 
silver,  and  an  ingot  of  gold  among  the  spoils,  had 
proved  an  irresistible  temptation.  He  had  seen,  he  had 
coveted,  he  had  taken  thorn.  "  Behold,  they  were  hidden 
in  the  earth  in  the  midst  of  his  tent,"  Messengers 
run  with  all  speed,  remove  the  earth  at  the  spot  indi- 
cated, "and  behold,  it  was  hid  ui  the  tent,  and  the 
silver  under  it,"  Sentence  and  its  execution  follow 
immediately,  Joshua,  with  the  grim  humour  of  wliicli 
the  Oriental  mind  is  so  fond,  playing  on  the  similarity 
of  the  word  acluir,  "  to  trouble,"  and  the  name  Achan, 
said,  "  Why  hast  thou  troubled  us  ?  the  Lord  shall 
trouble  thee  this  day,"  The  whole  nation  had  shared 
in  the  imputation  of  guilt  and  its  disastrous  conse- 
quences, and  therefore  the  whole  nation,  through  its 
representatives,  must  now  take  part  iu  its  expiation, 
"Joshua  and  all  Israel  took  Achan,  and  stoned  him  with 
stones,"  To  mark  more  deeply  God's  detestation  of  his 
crime,  and  its  spreading,  clinguig  taint,  hi.s  children, 
who  may  probably  have  Ijeen  the  accomplices  of  his 
crime,  his  cattle,  and  all  that  he  had,  share  iu  his  doom. 
The  corpses  are  consumed  with  fire,  together  with  his 
tent,  and  the  accursed  things  it  had  once  vainly  sought 
to  hide.  A  great  heap  of  stones,  after  the  manner  of 
primitive  peoples,  was  raised  over  the  spot,  which  took 
the  name  of  the  Valley  of  Achor,'  i.e.  "  trouble."  And 
the  guilt  being  thus  put  away  by  sacrifice,  "  the  Lord 
turned  from  the  fierceness  of  his  anger  "  (vii.  26). 


defaming  our  Lord's  character,  "  we  know  that  this  man  is  a 
sinner,"  to  frighten  him  into  confessing  that  his  was  a  made-up 
tale,  and  that  he  had  never  been  blind  at  all.  "  Make  confession 
unto  the  Lord"  (Ezra  x.  11)  is  literally,  "Give  praise  to  Jehovah." 
Indeed,  the  Hebrew  verb  ^''-'^ah,  *'  to  praise,"  signiiies  also,  in  one 
of  its  moods,  "  to  confess." 

1  How  deeply  the  memory  of  this  transaction  was  imprinted  on 
the  national  mind  is  evidenced  by  the  references  iu  the  Prophets 
to  "  the  valley  of  Achor,"  as  proverbial  for  a  place  of  trouble. 
"  I  will  give  her  the  valley  of  Achor  for  a  door  of  hope  "  {Hos. 
ii.  15)  ;  *'  The  valley  of  Achor  shall  bo  a  place  for  herds  to  lie 
down  iu  "  (Isa.  Ixv.  10). 


The  renewal  of  the  attack  on  Ai  was  not  long  . 
deferred.  But  Joshua  would  seem  to  have  needed  an 
express  command  from  God,  and  an  assurance  of  the 
success  of  his  enterprise,  before  he  could  shake  of£ 
the  discouragement  of  the  late  calaniifies,  and  prepare 
himself  for  action.  "  Fear  not,"  said  the  Lord  to 
Joshua,  "  neither  bo  thou  dismayed ;  arise,  go  up  to 
Ai :  see,  I  have  given  into  thy  hand  the  king  of  Ai 
and  his  people,  and  his  city  and  liis  land"  (viii.  1). 
The  plan  of  the  engagement  was  to  be  changed.  All 
the  men  of  war— not,  as  before,  a  mere  detachment — 
were  to  join  iu  the  expedition.  Instead  of  the  whole 
booty  being  burnt,  as  at  Jericho,  the  soldiers  were  to 
be  rewarded  with  the  ordinary  spoils  of  victory.  The 
former  disaster  rendered  the  most  c.iroful  generalship 
necessary.  Stratagem  was  to  be  employed.  A  body  of 
soldiers,  dispatched  overnight,  was  placed  in  ambush 
in  a  ra\'ine  to  the  rear  of  the  city.  Early  the-  f oUovring 
morning  Joshua  followed  with  his  troops  to  tho  neigh- 
bourhood of  Ai.  Arrived  there,  ho  posted  the  main 
body  of  the  army  among  the  hills  to  the  north,  and 
descended  himself  by  night  with,  some  picked  men 
to  the  valley  immediately  below  tho  walls.  Descried 
with  the  first  dawn,  they  were  promptly  attacked  by 
the  king  of  Ai.  Their  feigned  flight  promised  again  an 
easy  victory.  Then  Joshua  detaching  himself  from  tho 
fugitives  as  they  hastened  down  the  valley,  climbed  a 
height  from  wliich  he  would  be  readily  ■(•isible  to  tho 
various  portions  of  the  divided  forces,  and  at  God's 
command,  gave  the  appointed  signal  l)j'  stretching  out 
his  spear.  The  ambush  rushed  do^^Ti  on  the  city,  and 
pouring  iu  through  its  open  gates,  set  it  on  fire.  The 
retreating  party  turned  round  and  faced  the  disconcerted 
foe  ;  the  main  body  issued  from  their  place  of  conceal- 
ment, and  the  whole  population  of  Ai  were  hemmed  in 
and  cut  to  pieces.  The  city  was  pillaged  and  burnt. 
Its  king,  who  had  fallen  alive  into  Joshua's  hands,  was 
"  hanged  on  a  tree  " — probably  crucified — and  a  huge 
cairn  piled  over  his  grave  (viii.  10 — 29). 


THE    PEEFUMES    OF     THE    BIBLE. 

BY    GEOEGE    0.  M.    BIKDWOOD,    M.D.  EDIN.,    INDIA    MUSEUM. 


^  ALBANUM,  in  Hebrew  cheJhenah  (Exod. 
xsx.  31). — Galljanum  is  yielded  by  at  least 
two  plants  of  the  UmbelliferEe,  Ophoidia 
galbanifera,  Don,  of  Khorassan,  and 
Galhanuiii  officinale,  Don,  of  Syi-ia.  The  passage  in 
Exodus  prolmbly  refers  to  the  product  of  the  Syrian 
species,  as  Dioscorides  says  tliat  x«^/3at'r;  is  the  ix^Tunnov 
growing  in  Syria,  the  -nauiKis  iv  Supia  of  Theophrastus. 

MxEEH,  in  Hebrew  m&i-  (Exod.  xxx.  23  ;  Ps.  xlv.  8  ; 
Prov.  vii.  17 ;  Song  of  Songs  i.  13 ;  v.  6  ;  Esth.  ii. 
12;  Matt.  ii.  11 ;  Jolin  xis.  30 ;  Mark  xv.  23),  and  lot 
(Gen.  xxx-vii.  25 ;  xliii.  11).  Truo  myrrh,  i.e.,  mur,  the 
Greeks  called  afiipi/a  and  li-i^fia  (^olic),  and  Diosco- 
rides observes  that  the  Troglodytic  was  esteemed  the 


best.  Vaughan  distinctly  states  that  myrrh  is  produced 
in  Arabia,  and  that  in  the  Soumali  countiy,  besides  tho 
true  myrrli,  a  kind  which  the  Arabs  call  baisahol  and 
tlio  Soumalis  liehbalchadc  is  obtained.  The  Bombay 
inferior  myrrh  is  called  baisahol.  Ehrenberg  dis- 
covered it  t«  be  the  product  of  the  plant  named  Balsmn- 
odendron  mijrrlui  by  Nees  von  Esenbeck.  Our  positive 
information  on  the  question  has  been  admirably  stated 
recently  by  Hanbui-y,  tho  greatest  li\Tng  authority  on 
tho  bibliography  and  historical  identity  of  drugs,  and  of 
their  botany,  iu  a  short  paper  on  the  "Botanical  Origin 
and  Country  of  Myrrh,"  in  the  PhannaceuticalJournal 
for  April  19th,  1873,  and  reprinted  from  Ocean  High- 
ways of  the  same  month.    The  myrrh,  i.e.,  lot  of  Gen. 


152 


THE    BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


xxxvii.  25  and  xliii.  11,  is  ladamtm,  in  Arabic  ladan, 
the  i-esinous  exudation  of  Cistus  creticus,  C.  ladaniferus, 
and  other  species  of  rock  roses,  which  have  been  iden- 
tified with  the  "  rose  of  Sharon." 

Ontcha,  in  Hebrew  shecheleth  (Esod.  xxx.  34),  and 
translated  by  the  LXX.  6yv^,  "a  nail,"  is  the  celebrated 
"  odoriferous  shell"  of  the  ancients,  the  operculum  of  a 
species  of  Strombus.     I  once  saw  a  largo  quantity  of  it 


as  quoted  by  Sahna-sius  in  his  Plinianw  Exercitationes. 
Another  Hebrew  word,  shuliam,  is  translated  "onyx 
stone"  in  Gen.  ii.  12 ;  Exod.  xxviii.  9,  20 ;  1  Chron. 
xxix.  2  ;  Job  xxviii.  16 ;  and  Ezek.  xxviii.  13. 

Saffron,  in  Hebrew  harhoni  (Song  of  Songs  iv.  14), 
the  harhum  and  zafran  of  the  Arabs,  Sanscrit  Itwa- 
Icuma,  and  Kp6K0i  of  Homer  and  the  Greeks.  A  native 
of  Cashmere,  the  Hindu-Kush,  and  the  Caucasus,  the 


Liquidanibar  Altingia,  Blume. 


Bolsomodendron  Myrrha,  Nees  von  Esenbeck. 


Weighed  out  of  the  Custom  House  scales  in  Bombay, 
and  under  a  native  name  signifying  finger  "  naUs,"  but 
never  in  fourteen  years  could  get  any  of  it  again.  It 
was  not  perceptibly  aromatic,  and  was  probably  rather 
used  to  bring  out  in  burning  the  fragrance  of  other 
perfumes  than  on  account  of  its  own  odoriferous  quality. 
Pliny  says  of  Bactrian  bdellium  that  it  "  is  shining  and 
diy,  and  covered  with  numerous  white  spots,  resembling 
the  finger  nails."  And  a  pSeWn  om^  is  described  by 
Damoeritus,  an  obscure  medical  writer  quoted  by 
Saracenusin  his  Scholia  in  Dioscoridis,  and  by  Galen, 


saffron  crocus  has  been  associated  with  the  earliest 
history  of  man,  and  ha-s  followed  his  migration  every- 
where throughout  temperate  Europe.  Crocus,  as  Lem- 
priere  tells  us,  was  a  beautiful  youth,  enamoured  of  a 
beautiful  njTnph.  and  turned  into  this  beautiful  flower. 
Spikenard,  in  Hebrew  nerd  (Song  of  Songs  i.  12, 
and  iv.  13,  14),  tho  i-apSos  of  the  New  Testament  (Mark 
xiv.  3,  and  John  xii.  3).  Spikenard,  quasi  spica  nardi, 
is  tho  root  of  the  Nardostachys  Jafamansi,  De  C, 
a  valerian  wort,  and  a  native  of  Nepaul  and  Bootan, 
at  great  elevations.     There  can  be  no  doubt  that  tho 


PERFUMES  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


153 


nared  or  nerd  of  the  Song  of  Songs,  and  St.  Mark 
also,  iu  writing  fdfiSoi/  iricrTiKr/s  Tro\vTe\ovs  ("  uardi  spicati 
pretiosi,"  Vulgate),  refer  to  the  Jatamansi  or  Sumbul 
root  of  the  Hindoos,  which  Sir  William  Jones  was 
the  first  to  identify  with  spikenard.  Dioscorides  un- 
equivocally specifies  Jatamansi  v&pSos  'IvSik)],  called 
also,  as  he  states,  "Gangetic,  from  the  river  Ganges." 


vipSos  'ivSiKri ;  (2)  sumbul-itaHoo7i,oi  uklete  {i.e.,K(\TiK7i); 
(3)  sumbul-jiballee  (ipetv^);  and  {4)  sumbul-farsee  (i.e, 
2uptaK-fi).  The  synonyms  of  stimbul-hindee  they  give 
as  narden,  Greek;  -nardoom,  Latin;  and  jatamansi, 
Indian:  and,  moreover,  the  <pov  of  Dioscorides  {Vale- 
riana Bioscoridis,  Sibthorp),  they  call  Bekh-i-sumbid 
— i.e.,  sumbul  root.    This  should  early  have  afforded  a 


Balsamodendron  Elirenhergianum,  Berp-. 
(See  Hanbury'a  Paper  cited  in  text ; 


He  also  mentions  vdpSos  Ke\TiK^,  vapBos  Spetnij,  and  vipSos 
'SvpiaKri,  the  last  a  variety  of  the  Indian.  But  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  ancients  used  the  word  nard 
for  any  Indian  perfume,  as  the  diar  of  roses.  The 
word  nard  Sir  WiUiam  Jones  proved  to  be  Persian,  and 
tho  Persians,  as  the  carriers  of  spikenard,  must  have 
communicated  the  name  to  Hebrews  {iierd),  Greeks 
(vipSos),  and  Romans  (narduni).  Anconna  used  tho 
word  sumbul  as  the  synonym  of  yipSot,  and  Persian 
works    describe   four   kinds — (1)    Smnbul-hindee  (i.e., 


Nardostach'js  Jatamansi,  De  C. 

clue  to  the  identification  of  jatamansi  with  spikenard, 
but  every  writer  on  the  subject  thought  thiit  spikenard 
must  bo  gramineous,  until  Sir  William  Jones  clearly 
established  it  to  bo  the  root  of  Nardostachys  Jatamansi, 
De  0.  (Asiatic  Besearches,  vol.  iv.),  in  reply  to  Dr. 
Sir  G.  Blane"s  arguments  in  favour  of  Andropogon 
Iwarancusa. 

Stacte,  in  Hebrew  naldf  (Exod.  xxx.  34),  in  Greek 
crraKT?)  and  (rrvpat,  generally  referred  to  tho  Styrax 
officinale,  Linn.,  of  the  Levant,  Greece,  Palestine,  and 


154 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


Syria.  But,  as  Hanbm-y  has  conclusively  shown,  there 
is  no  storax  or  stacte  found  in  modern  commeroe  de- 
rived ifom  Styrax  officinale.  All  of  it  now  comes  from 
Liquidamhar  orientale,  Miller,  a  native  of  Cyprus  and 
Anatolia.  Liquidamhar  AUingia,  Blumo.,  of  Java,  pro- 
duces the  Rasamala  of  the  Javanese  {Bose-maUoios  of 
the  Anglo-Indian  tariffs,  the  word  being  formed  just 
as  jackass-copal  is  formed  from  shalmsi — i.e.,  the  tree 
copal),  the  most  exquisite  and  powerful  of  all  balsams, 
not  excepting  benzoin.  It  is  remarkable  that  Sprengel, 
in  1807,  writing  of  the  iniah  of  Aviceuna,  states,  "Hsec 
est  arbor  rasamala  quae  st"i'acem  liquidam  largitur 
0  rimis  corticis  emanantem.  May  not,  then,  the 
ancients  have  included  rose-mallows  under  their  stacte 
or  storax?  There  is  also  a  Balsamiferos  liquidamhar, 
native  of  the  southern  United  States  of  America. 

It  must  throw  Some  doubt,  oven  on  the  most  satisfac- 
tory identifications  of  the  Bible  names  of  perfumes  with 
the  perfimios  known  in  modem  commerce,  when  it  is 
found  that  none  of  them  include  such  famous  Old  World 
aromata  as  costus  and  sandalwood,  g<un-benjamin,  rose- 
mallows,  and  camphor,  cardamoms,  cloves,  and  nutmeg. 
The  liighest  authorities,  indeed,  say  that,  excepting 
costus,  none  of  these  fnigrant  substances  were  known 
to  the  ancient  world — that  fractional  portion,  that  is, 
of  the  wide  world  known  to  the  Jews,  and  Greeks,  and 
Romans.  But  the  more  reasonable  conclusion  from  the 
fact  that  we  cannot  trace  any  of  them  in  the  descrij)- 
tions  of  Theophrastus,  Pliny,  and  Dioscorides,  would  be 
a  confirmed  misgiving  of  our  best  and  soundest  identifi- 
cations, and  to  start,  in  the  examination  of  these  autho- 
rities, ^vith  the  assumption  that  they  must  have  known 
them.  They  knew  black  pepper  familiarly,  and  is  it 
conceivable  that  they  did  not  know  cardamoms,  a  yet 
more  striking  product  of  the  same  region  ?  Of  camphor 
there  really  would  appear  not  to  bo  a  trace  in  Pliny 
and  Dioscorides,  but  in  favour  of  their  knowledge  of 
cloves,  nutmegs,  and  sandalwood,  many  an  ambiguous 
text  might  fairly  be  quoted.  Gum-benjamin,  I  am 
satisfied,  they  included  under  frankincense,  and  rose- 
mallows  under  stacte.  Costus,  very  familiar  to  the  pro- 
fane writers  of  the  ancient  nations  of  the  Mediterranean 
basin,  I  Ixilieve  to  be  the  "calamus,"  "  sweet  calamus," 
and  "  sweet  cane  from  a  far  country  "  ( Jer.  vi.  20)  of 
the  Bible.  Saffron,  spikenard,  and  costus  would  seem 
to  have  been  the  earliest  known  aromata,  and  all  are 
natives  of  the  same  region — the  classical  Caucasus — 
costus  having  been  identified  by  Falconer,  as  the  root 
of  Auclclandia  costus,  Falo.  {Aplotaxis  auriculata,  De  C), 


a  native  of  Cashmere,  at  the  highest  elevations.  On 
the  other  hand,  sugar  is  a  famous  Old  World  product 
which  was  certainly  absolutely  unknown  to  the  ancient 
Greeks  and  Romans. 

In  this  connection  a  very  common  popular  error  may 
be  pointed  out — viz.,  the  acceptance  of  Aiaerican  plants 
and  products,  now  widely  known  in  the  Old  World,  as 
hft^-ing  been  known  to  the  ancients.  Tear  after  year  we 
see  m  the  Royal  Academy,  and  other  similar  exhibitions, 
the  cactus  and  aloe,  or  the  castor  oO  and  maize  intro- 
duced into  pictm-es  of  ancient  Old  World  life,  although 
these  plants  were  introduced,  with  potatoes,  clulies,  and 
tobacco,  into  the  Old  World  only  after  the  discovery  of 
the  New.  The  works  of  the  Danish  botanist,  Schow, 
which  liave,  however,  been  translated  into  English,  may 
well  have  been  overlooked  by  English  artists,  but  they 
are  T\'ithout  excuse  not  to  be  fanuhar  with  Mr.  Hermann 
Merivale's  delightful  essay  on  the  Landscape  of  Ancient 
Italy  as  delineated  in  tlie  Pompeiian  Paintings,  a  good 
example  of  the  charm  which  a  true  scholar  can  impart 
to  the  exact  correctness  of  a  scientific  treatise.  Tlie 
creation  of  the  world  is  in  ceaseless  operation,  and  the 
changes  in  the  flora  of  countries  makes  it  almost  a  vain 
thing  to  attempt  to  id  'utify  the  plant-names  of  the 
ancients  with  modern  plants,  unless  by  means  of  the 
economic  products  which  they  may  yield,  and  then  only 
with  any  satisfaction  when  these  are  of  strongly  marked 
character.  The  persistence  of  the  ancient  names  of 
plants  and  products  in  the  East  is,  however,  very 
remarkable.  In  Bombay,  and  in  the  most  outlaud 
village  bazaars  of  India,  we  still  find — 

Scolopendrium  as  IsTcoolikundrioon. 
Dryopteris  as  Doonditanis'. 
Pteris  as  Surkhus  and  Bitarus. 
Polypodiiun  as  Bidookinhoon. 
Polytrichum  as  Bulootingen. 
Pareseoshun  is  also,   evidently,  a  corrupted   Greek 
word.    Fiturasulioon  (TreTpoafAifoy)  has  been  transferred 
from  parsley  to  the  fruit  of  Pangros  pahularia,  a  plant 
circumscribed  in  habitat  to  Draz.     Sometimes  in  the 
case  of  products  having  two  Latin  or  Greek  names,  one 
is  corrui^ted,  and  the  other  translated.      When  I  first 
began  to  study  the  contents  of  the  druggists'  (atarees) 
shops,  I  was  much  puzzled  by  a  root  they  called  Lai- 
huhman — i.e.,  red   Brahmin.      But  when,   after   some 
months,    I   accidentally   came   across  Siiffaid-Buhman 
(i.e.,  white  Brahmin),  it  at  once  i-cmiudod  me  of  Behen 
ruhrum  and  Behen  album.    Every  day  the  student  of  an 
Eastern  bazaar  is  gratified  by  such  surprises. 


ILLUSTRATIONS   OF  HOLT   SCRIPTURE  FROM  COINS,   MEDALS,  ETC. 


155 


ILLUSTEATIONS   OF   HOLY   SCRIPTUEE    FEOM   COINS,    MEDALS, 

AND   INSCEIPTIONS. 

ET    THE    r.EV.    CANON    BAWUNSON,    M.A.,    CAMDEN    PBOPESSOE    OF    ANCIENT    HISTORY    IN    THE    UNIVEKSITT    OP    OSFOED. 


XVIII. 

'  E  read  in  the  fourth  chapter  of  tlio  Book 
of  Ezra,  that  in  tlie  reign  of  the  next 
monarch  but  one  after  Cyrus,  a  monarch 
who  is  called  Artaxerxes,'  and  is 
represented  as  the  iinmediate  predecessor  of  Darius 
(Hystaspes),  the  Samaritan  adversaries  of  the  Jews 
addressed  a  letter  to  him,  calling  his  attention  to  the 
fact  that  Jerusalem  was  being  rebuilt  by  the  Jews,  and 
suggesting  that  a  stop  should  be  put  to  their  proceed- 
ings. The  monarch  addressed  responded  favourably, 
and  issued  an  order  that  the  work  should  cease — an 
order  which  he  never  revoked,  for  "  the  work  ceased 
nnto  the  second  year  of  the  reign  of  Darius,  king  of 
Persia  "  (Ezra  iv.  2-1). 

This  stoppage  of  the  rebuilding  of  Jerusalem,  and 
re- establishment  of  the  Jews  as  a  nation,  by  one  of  the 
eai'ly  Persian  kings,  is  the  more  remarkable,  because, 
though  similar  attempts  to  check  and  thwart  the 
Israelites  were  made  by  their  adversaries  ia  the  reigns 
of  all  the  other  early  kings,  in  every  other  case  they 
failed,  in  this  case  only  were  they  successful.  The 
Samaritans  "  hired  counsellors  against  the  Jews,  to 
frustrate  their  pui-pose,  all  the  days  of  Cyrus,  king  of 
Persia,  even  until  the  reign  of  Darius  "  (iv.  5).  They 
"wrote  an  accusation  against  the  inhabitants  of  Judah 
and  Jerusalem,"  and  sent  it  to  the  Court,  in  the  reign 
of  the  successor  of  Cyrus-  (iv.  6).  They  addressed  a 
long  complaint  to  Darius  himself  (chap.  v.  6 — 17),  and 
sought  to  induce  him  to  discountenance  the  work,  in  the 
coiu'se  of  his  second  year.  But,  so  far  as  appears  from 
Ezra,  with  one  monarch  only  did  then-  representations 
prove  effectual.  No  king  forbade  the  building  but  the 
second  monarch  after  Cyrus.  This  monarch  issued  an 
edict  against  the  Jews  (chap.  iv.  17 — 22),  and  brought 
the  building  of  Jerusalem  to  a  stand. 

Now,  both  profane  writer.s^  and  the  inscriptions  show 
us  that  the  next  king  but  one  after  Cyi'us  held  a 
peculiar  position.  He  was,  as  Darius  himself  tells  us, 
a  Magian,  quite  unconnected  with  the  Persian  royal 
family.  He  personated  a  deceased  son  of  Cyrus, 
named  Smerdis,  and  was  allowed  to  reign  on  the 
supposition  that  he  was  really  the  prince  whose  name 
he  assumed.     He  held  the  throne  no  more  than  seven 


^  Ezra  iv.  7.  Persian  Icings  seem  often  to  have  bad  more  names 
than  one.  The  prince  in  question  is  called  Smerdis  by  Herodotus, 
Tanyoxarces  by  Ctesias. 

-  Called  "  Ahasuerus "  {i.e.  Xerxes)  in  Ezra,  hut  probably  the 
eon  and  successor  of  Cyrus,  commonly  known  as  Cambyses. 

3  Herod,  iii.  61—78  ;  aischyl.,  Pers.  7*0  ;  Ctes.,  Eve,  Pers.,  §  10. 


months,  but  still  ho  reigned  long  enough  to  effect  a 
religious  revolution  in  Persia.  He  put  down  Zoroas- 
triauism,  destroyed  the  Zoroastrian  temjiles,  and  put  a 
stop  to  the  Zoroastrian  worship,  substituting  Magiaiiism 
in  its  place.''  Now,  Magianism  was  the  worship  of  the 
elements  ;  it  disdained  temples,  and  denied  a  jjersonal 
God.^  It  is  clearly  most  natural,  probable,  and  readily 
inteUigiblo  that  a  monarch  of  tliis  stamp  should  run 
counter  to  all  the  real  Achffimenian  princes  on  a 
religious  matter ;  that,  as  a  Magian,  he  should  interfere 
to  check  the  building  of  a  magnificent  temple,  and,  as 
a  Pantheist,  should  disallow  the  worship  of  Jehovah. 
Had  we  been  told  that  any  other  of  the  early  Persian 
kings  set  himseK  in  opposition  to  the  Jews,  reversed 
the  policy  of  Cyrus,  and  forbade  the  building  of  the 
Temple,  we  should  have  found  ourselves  confronted  by 
a  difficulty.  The  fact  that  it  is  the  monarch  who  holds 
the  place  of  the  pseudo-Smerdis,^  that  takes  a  peculiar 
lino,  one  opposed  to  the  policy  of  the  Achsemenians 
generally,  turns  the  difficulty  into  an  evidence.  As  the 
religious  views  of  this  monarch  were  wholly  opposed  to 
those  of  both  his  jiredecessors  and  successors,  he  woul  d 
be  almost  certain  te  treat  the  Jews  differently,  if  they, 
as  Zoroastrians,  sympathised  with  the  people  of  Israel, 
he,  as  an  anti-Zoroastrian,  would  dislike  and  suspect 
them.  It  may  be  added  that  his  letter,  being  totally 
devoid  of  any  religious  sentiment,  is  characteristic,  and 
contrasts  remarkably  with  the  decrees  of  Cyrus  and 
Darius  (Ezra  i.  2 — i;  vi.  6 — 12),  and  with  the  letter  of 
Artaxerxes  (vii.  12 — 26). 

^  The  following  are  the  principal  statements  of  Darius  with 
respect  to  the  pseudo- Smerdis  : — "After  the  death  of  the  real 
Smerdis  at  the  hands  of  his  brother,  Cambyses,"  he  says,  "a 
certain  Magian,  named  Gomates,  arose.  He  said  falsely  to  the 
State,  '  I  am  Smerdis,  the  son  of  Cyrus,  the  brother  of  Cambyses.* 
Then  the  whole  state  became  rebellious  ;  from  Cambyses  it  went 
over  to  him,  both  Persia  and  Media,  and  the  other  provinces :  he 
seized  the  empire.  Afterwards  Cambyses,  willing  his  own  death, 
died.  Then  Gomates  the  Magian  became  iing.  There  was  not 
a  man,  Persian  or  Mede,  or  member  of  the  royal  family,  who 
dared  to  dispossess  that  Gomates,  the  Magian,  of  the  crown  until 
I  arrived.  I  prayed  to  Ormuzd,  and  Ormuzd  brought  help  to  me. 
On  the  tenth  day  of  the  month  Bagayadish,  with  my  faithful  men, 
I  slew  that  Gomates  the  Magian  ;  in  the  fort  named  Sictachotes 
in  the  district  of  Media,  called  Nisffia,  there  it  was  I  sltw  him.  I 
dispossessed  him  of  the  empire ;  by  the  grace  of  Ormuzd  I 
became  king ;  Ormuzd  granted  me  the  sceptre.  Thus  I  recovered 
the  empire  which  had  been  taken  away  from  my  family  j  I 
established  it  in  its  place,  as  it  was  before  ;  I  made  it.  The  temples 
which  Gomatea,  the  Magian,  had  destroyed,  I  rebuilt ;  the  sacred  o^'cfs 
of  the  state,  both  tho  religious  chanuis  and  the  worship,  whereof  Gomates 
the  Magian  had  deprived  the  people,  I  restored  to  them."  {Behist. 
In^crip.,  col.  i.,  pur.  10 — 14). 

»  Herod,  i.  131. 

''  As  the  immediate  predecessor  of  Darius,  and  the  next  but  one 
in  succession  to  Cyrus. 


15G 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


BOOKS     OF     THE     OLD     TESTAMENT, 

JOEL    (concluded). 

BT   THE    REV.    SAMUEL    COX,    NOTTINGHAM. 


SECOND  PART. 
iiHE  Jews  had  .sinued  in  that,  hoth  in  their 
daily  life  and  their  religious  worship, 
they  had  forgotten  Him  whose  presence 
alone  gives  sweetness  to  life  and  sanc- 
tity to  worship.  The  dearth  and  misery  inflicted  by  the 
devouring  locusts  were  the  Divine  judgment  and  rebuke 
of  their  sin ;  they  were  intended  to  recall  them  to  the 
ser\'ic«  and  enjoyment  of  the  God  they  had  forgotten. 
So  soon  as  they  repented  of  their  sin  and  turned  unto 
the  Lord,  the  Lord  had  compassion  on  his  people,  drove 
the  locusts  into  the  sea,  and  sent  them  corn,  wine,  and 
oil  in  such  copious  abundance  that  He  made  good  to 
thera  "the  years"  which  the  locusts  had  eaten.  Times 
of  refreshing  came  upon  them  from  the  presence  of  the 
Lord ;  his  Spirit  was  poured  out  on  all  flesh ;  old  and 
young,  bond  and  free,  dreamed  prophetic  dreams  and 
saw  prophetic  visions. 

Even  this  great  benediction,  however,  was  itself  a 
judgment.  This  wide  and  deep  re^^val  of  spii-itual  life 
was  itself  a  tost  by  which  the  hearts  of  men  were  tried  ; 
those  who  resisted  its  influence  being  hardened  in  their 
iniquity.  As  Joel  pondered  the  blessing  which  came  for 
"  the  fall "  as  well  as  for  "  tho  rising  "  of  many,  he  found 
in  it  a  typo  of  the  Divine  dealings  %vith  men  in  all  ages. 
He  pi'ojected  his  thoughts  iuto  tho  future.  Taught  by 
Moses,  the  "  master  "  of  the  Hebrew  prophets,  he  fore- 
saw that  ever  now  judgments  would  come  on  the  chosen 
race,  on  all  races — foresaw  even  that  all  these  judgments 
would  culminate  in  a  final  act  of  judgment  in  which 
the  destiny  of  the  whole  world  will  be  decided. 

It  is  this  final  strife  of  good  with  evU,  this  ultimate 
triumph  of  good  over  evU,  which  now  occupies  his 
thoughts.  In  depicting  it  ho  avails  himself,  as  was 
natural  and  indeed  inevitable,  of  Hebrew  memories,  tra- 
ditions, prophecies  ;  for  he  could  only  use  tho  language 
that  was  familiar  to  him ;  he  could  only  hope  to  bring 
"  the  day  of  judgment "  home  to  tho  men  of  his  genera- 
tion as  he  appealed  to  words  and  facts  with  which  they 
were  familiar.  But  the  very  language  which  most  clearly 
conveyed  his  thought  to  his  contemporaries  veils  it 
from  us ;  for  what  do  we  know  of  the  local  and  politi- 
cal allusions  which  would  be  most  impressive  to  the 
Jews  of  Jerusalem  nearly  thirty  centuries  ago  ?  If  an 
English  statesman  of  the  present  day  were  to  writo  a 
brief  treatise  in  which  ho  traced  out  the  probable  future 
of  the  English  race,  ho  would  inevitably  employ  the 
facts  and  terms  of  this  age  ;  and  we  should  understand 
him  aU  the  better  for  his  use  of  political  facts,  names, 
and  terms  with  which  we  are  familiar.  But  a  student 
of  an  alien  race,  lighting  on  that  treatise  three  thousand 
years  hence,  when  the  whole  face  of  the  world  was 
changed,  and  many  of  the  best  known  names  and  facts 
of  to-day  were  clean  forgotten,  would  have  painfully  to 


recover  the  meaning  of  its  historical  and  political  allu- 
sions ;  and,  after  all,  could  not  hope  to  get  at  more  than 
tho  broad  general  scope  of  the  treatise.  As  he  to  the 
English  statesman,  so  we  stand  to  Joel.  What  made 
hini  plaiu  and  clear  to  the  Jews  of  his  time  renders  him 
obscure  to  us.  It  is  only  with  extreme  difiicidty  that  we 
follow  his  local  and  pohtical  allusions ;  and,  when  all  is 
done,  wo  can  only  hope  to  gain  the  general  sense  and 
scope  of  his  prophetic  poem. 

Our  best  clue,  as  I  believe,  to  his  mcauiug  in  chap, 
iii.  is  tho  con\'iction,  firmly  held,  that  he  is  speaking  of 
the  final  conflict  of  good  and  evil,  the  final  judgment  in 
which  God  will  give  his  verdict  on  tho  combatants  in 
this  great  conflict  of  the  ages.  He  may  see  that  judg- 
ment "as  through  a  glass,  darkly;"  he  may  depict  it  in 
forms  and  terms  borrowed  from  tho  past  history  of  the 
Jews ;  but  I  see  no  room  to  doubt  that  it  is  this  final 
judgment,  this  ultimate  triumph  of  tho  good  over  evil, 
which  he  labom-s  to  set  before  us.  If  wo  hold  this  clue 
stedfastly.  and  follow  it  fearlessly,  I  believe  we  shall  fijid 
tho  whole  chapter  take  new  clearness  and  force. 

Mark  how  it  opens  :  "  In  those  days,  and  at  that 
tinie"  (when  the  Spirit  is  poured  out  on  all  flesh,  when 
the  earth  has  been  made  fruitful  ^dth  showers,  and  the 
men  who  inhabit  it  have  been  raised  to  a  loftier  spiritual 
life),  "when  I  turn  the  captivity  of  Judah  "  as  of  old  I 
turned  the  captivity  of  Job  (Job  xlii.  lO) — when  the  men 
of  Judah  aro  delivered  out  of  all  their  calamities  and 
distresses — "I  will  gather  all  the  tuitions  together,  and 
bring  them  down  into  the  valley  of  Jehoshaphat ;  and 
I  will  contend  with  them  there,  for  my  people  and  fov 
Israel  mine  inheritance."  Here  tho  fate  of  all  nations  is 
obviously  bound  up  with  that  of  Israel,  and  is  to  depend 
on  the  relations  they  have  sustained  to  the  people  of  God. 
But  hero,  too,  there  occm's  one  of  those  disturbing  local 
allusions  which  seem  to  call  away  our  thoughts  from  the 
world-wide  couffict  of  good  and  evil  to  a  mere  incident 
in  Hebrew  story.  AU  nations  are  to  be  gathered  before 
God,  but  they  are  to  be  gathered  in  the  valley  of  Jeho- 
shaphat.  This  valley  of  Jchosaphat  is  a  glen  on  the 
eastern  sido  of  Jerusalem,  through  which  rims  the  brook 
Kedron.  It  would  have  been  impossible  to  crowd  even 
the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem  iuto  it ;  how  then  can  it  be 
the  arena  in  which  "  all  nations  "  are  to  contend  while 
Jehovah  sits  as  judge  or  umpire  of  the  conflict  ?  With 
their  usual  literalism,  the  Jews  assume  that  this  little 
valley  or  glen  will  be  the  scene  of  tho  resurrection  and 
final  judgment;  and  because  they  would  fain  bo  on  the 
spot  when  the  trumpet  sounds,  it  is  crowded  with  their 
tombs ;  mp-iads  of  them  daro  all  dangers,  and  go  to  aU 
costs,  that  they  may  lay  their  bones  in  it.  The  Moham- 
medans, no  loss  literal  and  carnal  than  the  Jews,  have 
left  a  massive  block  jutting  out  from  tho  eastern  walls 
of  Jerusalem  for  the  accommodation  of  their  prophet. 


JOEL. 


157 


who,  as  they  insist,  is  to  sit  here  and  to  judge  the  whole 
world  gathered  in  the  valley  beneath  liis  feet.  Thougli 
we  smile  at  these  literal  readings  of  Joel's  words,  we  may 
learn  at  least  this  much  from  thom,  that  both  the  sous 
of  Isaac  and  tho  sons  of  Ishmael  understand  the  pro- 
phet as  referring,  not  to  any  obscirre  event  in  the  past 
history  of  the  seed  of  Abraham,  but  to  that  great  final 
confliet  and  judgment  whieh  is  to  determine  tho  fate  of 
all  the  families  of  tho  earth. 

And  if  we  ask  how  camo  tha  prophet  to  select  "  the 
valley  of  Jehoshaphat "  as  the  scene  of  the  final  conflict 
and  judgment,  tho  answer  is  simple  and  most  instruc- 
tive. In  the  days  of  Joel,  valleys  were  the  usual "  fields '' 
of  battle,  mountauious  and  wooded  country  being  unfa- 
vourable to  tho  movements,  tactics,  and  strategetical 
combinations  of  military  art.  Naturally,  therefore,  tho 
prophet  would  select  some  valley  as  the  arena  of  the 
final  conflict.  But  this  conflict  was  also  to  bo  a  judg- 
ment. Was  it  possible  to  select  a  valley  whose  very 
name  should  convey  the  idea  of  judgment,  and  of  a 
Di^-ino  judgment  ?  Tos ;  close  outside  the  eastern 
wall  of  Jerusalem  lay  a  valley  known  as  "the  valley  of 
Jehoshaphat."  Jehoshaphat  means  "  Jehovah  judges." 
Here,  ready  to  his  hand,  was  the  vei-y  symbol  tho  prophet 
required.  The  scene  of  the  final  contiict  and  the  final 
judgment  would  be  the  valley  in  which  Jehovah  judgeth 
and  ^viU  judge.  That  it  was  simply  for  the  omen  in 
the  name  that  Joel  selected  this  valley  is,  I  think,  put 
beyond  doubt  by  the  fact  that,  iu  chap.  iii.  14,  he  twice 
calls  it  simply  "the  valley  of  judgment,'"  or  "tho  valley 
of  doom." 

Here,  in  this  symboEc  valley,  God  will  "  contend '' 
with  all  nations — i.e.,  Ho  will  plead  his  suit  against 
them,  assert  liis  right  to  "  an  inheritance"  of  which  they 
have  despoiled  Him.  They  have  "  scattered  "  his  people 
"  among  the  nations  "  with  a  lavish  prodigality.  The 
Israelite  slaves  have  been  so  numerous  as  to  be  well- 
nigh  valueless.  They  have  been  diced  for,  gambled  for 
by  their  captors.  A  lad  has  been  given  as  the  price  of 
a  harlot's  caress,  and  a  girl  for  a  draught  of  wine  (chap. 
iii.  2,  3).  Tlae  Phoenicians,  the  great  maritime  and 
slave-trading  race  of  Joel's  day;  and  the  Philistines  of 
the  five  "  coasts  "  or  districts  they  still  held  iu  Palestine 
— Graza,  Ashkelon,  Ashdod,  Ekron,  and  Gath,  who  pro- 
bably furnished  their  Phceniciau  cousins  of  Tyre  and 
Zidon  with  Hebrew  slaves  taken  in  their  constant  wars  : 
—those,  tho  Philistines  and  tho  Phcenicians,  Jehovah 
scornfully  challenges  to  contend  with  Him.  He  de- 
mands what  "  recompense  "  they  can  make  Him  for 
the  injuries  they  have  inflicted  on  Him.  He  charges 
them  \ni\i  having  carried  away  his  "  silver  and  gold  " 
into  their  palaces,  and  with  hax-ing  sold  his  servants 
to  "  the  lonians  "  (the  Asiatic  Greeks  whose  galleys  now 
began  to  rival  Tyre),  iu  order  that,  removed  to  so 
great  a  distance,  "  tho  sons  of  Judah  and  tho  sons  of 
Jerusalem"  might  give  up  all  hope  of  return.  He 
threatens  these  piratical  slave-dealers  with  the  ven- 
geance of  their  captives,  whom  He  will  redeem ;  and 
forewarns  them  that  they,  iu  their  turn,  will  become  the 
slaves  of  thoso  they  once  held  in  bondage,  that  their 


sous  and  daughters  will  be  sold  to  "  the  Sabeans,  to  a 
people  afar  off,"  in  Arabia  Felix. 

On  these  verses  [3 — 8)  commentators  have  expended 
great  pains.  They  have  laljoured  to  show  how  and 
when  the  sons  of  Judah  and  Jerusalem  were  seized  as 
captives  by  tlie  Philistines  and  Phoenicians,  and  sold 
by  their  captors  to  the  lonians,  or  squandered  for  an 
embrace  or  a  carouse ;  how  and  when  the  captors  were 
themselves  taken  captive,  and  sold  by  the  Jews  to  the 
distant  Sabeans.  And,  in  a  somewliat  dubious  way,  it 
is  quite  possible  to  vindicate  every  turn  of  Joel's  lan- 
guage, to  find  some  historical  incident  wliich  more  or  less 
exactly  corresponds  to  every  feature  of  his  iirediction. 
But  whUe  I  heartily  believe  every  word  of  the  prophet 
to  be  true,  and  have  no  sort  of  doubt  that  the  miuutest 
facts  to  wliich  he  adverts  were  facte,  and  facts  very 
familiar  to  those  to  whom  he  spoke,  I  should  hold  it  to  bo 
but  a  waste  of  time  to  search  curiously  into  tho  records 
of  antiquity  to  see  if  I  could  not  discover  some  definite 
mstance  in  wliich  a  Hebrew  lad  was  given  for  a  harlot's 
kiss,  a  Hebrew  girl  exchanged  for  a  cup  of  wine,  a  gang" 
of  Hebrew  slaves  sold  to  the  Asiatic  Greeks,  or  a  gan^- 
of  Phceniciau  slaves  sold  by  Jews  to  the  Sabeans.  Such 
\'indicatious  of  prophecy  are  unworthy  of  the  poet  v^hose 
words  we  read,  and  still  more  unworthy  of  the  prophet. 
The  temper  which  requires  and  delights  in  them  is  at 
the  very  farthest  remove  from  the  genius  of  Oriental 
speech,  and,  above  all,  of  prophetic  speech.  We  really 
must  receive  the  prophet  in  a  spirit  somewhat  more 
akin  to  his  own,  if  we  are  to  take  Ids  meaning ;  and  as 
for  vindicating  him,  we  may  very  safely  leave  him  to 
vindicate  himself,  if  we  can  but  reach  the  true  meaning 
of  his  words  and  feel  their  power. 

And  surely  we  shall  at  least  get  nearer  to  that  mean- 
ing if  we  ajiproach  them  thus.  Joel  is  looking  forward 
to  a  day  on  which  the  Siiirit  of  God  ^vill  be  poured  out 
on  all  flesh — to  a  day,  therefore,  which  will  bo  a  day  of 
judgment  to  aU  nations  and  all  men,  since,  when  the 
Sjiirit  of  God  comes  to  thom,  they  will  either  resist  or 
yield  to  it,  and  according  as  they  yield  or  resist  will  de- 
termine their  fato.  Ho  wants  to  bring  this  day  of  tho 
Spirit,  this  day  of  judgment,  this  conflict  of  the  spirit 
with  the  flesh,  the  good  with  the  evil  in  man,  home  to 
the  hearts  of  Jews — to  tho  hearts  of  Jews  who  lived 
eight  or  nine  centuries  before  Christ.  How  is  he  to  do 
it  ?  He  does  it,  or  attempts  it,  by  using  facts  with  which 
they  are  familiar,  but  by  using  them  in  a  way  so  pro- 
found, so  fuU  of  a  mystical  and  spiritual  wisdom,  that, 
dimly  at  least,  they  did  see  tho  high  meaning  he  put 
into  them,  and  looked  onward  to  tho  end  of  the  world, 
the  last  judgment,  tho  victory  of  good  over  evil.  More- 
over, he  is  a  poet,  and  therefore  ho  must  cbamatise,  must 
clothe  his  thouglits  in  definite  and  impressive  forms, 
must  give  them  a  local  hahitation  and  a  name.  Hence 
ho  places  the  great  confliet  of  time  in  tho  vaUey  of  Jeho- 
shaphat, "  tho  vaUey  iu  which  Jehovah  judges."  Here  is 
the  scene  :  who  are  to  bo  tho  actors  in  it  ?  Who  shall 
represent  tho  champions  of  righteousness  and  truth  ? 
Naturally  tho  poet  selects  for  this  the  best  men  he  knew 
—the  sons  of  Judah  and  Jerusalem.     Who  shall  stand 


158 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


for  the  champions  of  riiffling  violence,  of  the  Tvickedness 
that  thrives  at  least  for  a  time,  and  flaunts  its  triumphs 
in  the  eyes  of  dejected  virtue  ?  Naturally,  the  poet 
selects  for  this  part  the  ivorst  men  he  knew — the  Philis- 
tines and  Phoenicians,  engaged  in  what  to  a  Hebrew  was 
the  "vilest  of  acts — viz.,  selling  men  as  slaves  into  a  land 
hopelessly  removed  from  their  own.  How  eoidd  he 
more  effectually  portray  to  the  men  of  his  time  the 
great  conflict  Ijetweeu  good  and  evil  than  by  an-aying  it 
in  these  local  habits  and  colours,  than  by  showing  them 
good  Hebrews  plimdered  by  inhuman  and  impious 
Phcenicians  ?  How  could  he  more  vividly  impress  on 
them  the  exact  and  awful  retributions  of  Di'vdne  justice, 
than  by  depicting  these  cruel  and  arrogant  Phcenicians 
as  themselves  condemned  to  the  vei-y  miseries  and  de- 
gradations they  had  inflicted  on  other  and  bettor  men 
than  themselves  ?  Taking  them  thus,  we  get  a  mean- 
ing worthy  of  a  great  poet  from  Joel's  words — worthy 
of  even  an  inspired  prophet.  Nor  do  I  see  how  we 
are  to  read  the  opening  verses  of  this  chapter  otherwise! 
if  we  are  to  read  its  closing  verses  at  all ;  for  in  these 
closing  verses  the  language  grows  far  too  large  for  any 
private  or  local  interpretation.  Tlie  prophet  passion- 
ately invokes  (vs.  9—13)  "  all  nations  "  to  proclaim  a 
holy  war,  a  crusade,  to  come  down  into  the  valley  of 
Jehoshaphat.  So  urgent,  so  universal,  is  tho  summons, 
that  the  very  weakling  is  to  ciy,  "  A  hero  am  I ! " 
and  the  coult-ers  and  pruning-hooks  of  the  husband- 
mjui  are  to  be  forged  into  swords  and  spears,  that  there 
may  be  arms  for  as  many  as  are  willing  to  wield  them. 
But  the  prophet  passionately  invokes  God  also ;  He 
is  to  summon  his  "  heroes  "  to  the  supreme  conflict : 
all  who  love  goodness  are  to  come — perhaps  the  very 
angels  out  of  heaven  as  well  as  the  righteous  men  who 
adorn  tho  earth. 

To  this  passionate  invocation  of  heaven  and   earth, 
God  consents,  and  responds,  saying — 

"  Let  the  natioua  riae  up. 
And  come  iuto  the  volley  of  Jehoshaphat, 
For  there  will  I  sit  to  judge  all  the  nations  round  about." 

Nay,  tiuTiing  to  his  heroes,  Jehovah  bids  them  "  put 
in  the  sickle "  and  reap  tho  harvest.  Ho  bids  them 
"  tread  the  winepress  "  tdl  tho  wiuo  run  out,  since  the 
wickedness  of  man  is  great,  and  the  day  of  judgment, 
the  day  of  division  and  separation,  has  come.  The  grain 
must  bo  gathered  into  the  garner,  and  the  wine  iuto  the 
vats,  while  the  worthless  chaff  and  grapeskius  are  to  be 
consumed  with  fire.  How  St.  John  road  this  verse  of 
Joel's  (ver.  13) — how  therefore  we  should  read  it — 
may  bo  seen  in  Rev.  xiv.  14 — 18.  To  liim  tho  vision 
has  grown  clearer  and  fuller  than  it  was  to  Joel,  though 
he  still  retains  Joel's  figures  of  tho  harvest  and  tlie 
vintage.  He  sees  a  white  cloud,  and  one  like  unto  the 
Son  of  man  sitting  in  tho  cloud,  having  on  his  head  a 
golden  crown,  and  a  .sharp  sickle  in  his  hand.  To  Him 
am  angel,  issuing  out  of  the  heavenly  temple,  cries,  "Put 
forth  thy  sickle,  and  reap ;  for  the  time  of  the  harvest 
is  come  ;  for  the  harvest  of  the  earth  is  ripe."''-    Another 


^  Compare  with  these  Joel's  words, 
harvest  is  I'l^je.*' 


'  Pitt  1/6  in  the  sickle,  f(^  tJie 


angel  comes  out  of  the  temple,  he  also  having  a  sharp 
sickle  in  his  hand,  and  to  him  comes  the  command  from 
the  altar,  "  Put  forth  thy  sharp  sickle,  and  gather  the 
clusters  of  the  vine  of  the  earth,  for  her  grapes  are  fully 
ripe."'^ 

Tliis  was  more  than  Joel  saw,  or  could  see ;  yet 
even  ho  beheld  a  wondrons  and  terrible  spectacle  as  the 
Divine  command  went  forth  for  reaping,  for  judgment. 
As  one  who  gazes  with  starting  eyeballs  on  a  scene  of 
well-nigh  unendm-able  terror,  the  prophet  exclaims^ 

"  Multitudes,  multitudes, 
In  tho  valley  of  Doom  ! 
For  the  diiy  of  Jehovah  is  near 
In  the  v.alley  of  Doom  ! " 

The  heavens  above  the  countless  multitudes,  who  surge 

and  contend  in  the  valley  of  Doom,  darken  beneath  the 

■frown  of  Jehovah ;  the  hills  which  enclose  tho  valley 

echo  with  the  thimder  of  his  indignation  : 

*'  Sun  and  moon  turn  dark, 
And  the  stars  refuse  to  shine  ; 
For  Jehovah  tlumdereth  out  of  Zion, 
And  uttereth  his  voice  from  Jerusalem, 
And  heaven  and  earth  qnake  !  '* 

Wo  cannot  doubt  what  scene  it  is  that  thus  shakes  the 
prophet.  It  is  no  wasting  calamity,  it  is  no  bloody  con- 
flict, in  the  annals  of  a  single  race.  It  is  the  august  and 
most  ten-ible  scone  in  which  the  great  tragedy  of  Time 
is  to  culmiuate.  It  is  tho  final  catastrophe  in  the  history 
of  tho  world  (vs.  13—16). 

The  scene  which  follows  it  (vs.  17 — 21)  lies  beyond 
the  coasts  and  bounds  of  time.  To  the  terrors  of  judg- 
ment, to  the  quaking  heaven  and  earth,  there  succeeds 
tho  kingdom  that  caimot  be  sLiken,  the  fruitfid  and 
pcacefid  splendours  of  tho  now  heaven  and  the  new 
earth,  though  even  these  are  shadowed  forth  in  tho 
historic  forms  of  time.  The  Lord,  who  thtinders  wrath- 
fully  against  the  wicked,  is  "  a  refuge  for  his  people  "  in 
that  great  and  terrible  day,  "  a  stronghold  for  the  sons 
of  Israel."  And  that  day,  darkened  by  stonns  of  fate, 
ushers  ui  an  era  of  concord,  abundance,  joy.  God 
dwells  mth  his  people.  Zion  becomes  a  holy  mountain, 
Jerusalem  a  sanctuary,  no  more  profaned  by  alien  and 
imrighteous  feet.  Tho  mountains,  often  so  ban-en, 
drop  with  new  wine ;  the  hills  flow  with  milk ;  "  all  the 
watercourses,"  now  so  often  di-y,  run  for  ever  with 
piu-e  living  water.  Nay,  a  fountain  springs  up  in 
the  house  of  the  Lord,  which  flows  down  tho  barren 
"  Valley  of  Acacias  " — the  valley  trending  down  from 
Jerusalem  to  the  Salt  Sea,  the  valley  in  which  hereto- 
fore only  the  sand-lo\'ing  acacia  could  fhi-ive — causing 
it  to  take  fertility  again.  Egypt  and  Edom — Egypt,  the 
open  enemy  of  Israel ;  and  Edom,  the  false  treacherous 
kinsman  of  Israel — these  two,  the  symbols  of  all  that 
exalts  itseff  against  God,  are  smitten  \vith  an  eternal 
barrenness  and  desolation  for  the  sins  they  have  com- 
mitted against  the  chosen  people ;  whilo  Judah  and 
Jerusalem,  the  divine  kingdom  and  the  holy  city,  abide 
for  ever,  God  purging  from  them  all  taints  of  evil  not 

2  Compare  with  these  Joel's  words,  "  Come,  tread;  for  tlie  wna* 
press  is  full,  [/lo  vats  run  over;  for  t/te  ii'ic/,edjiess  is  great"  (chap. 
iii.  13). 


THE    POETRY    OP   THE    BIBLE. 


159 


hitherto  removed,  that  Ho  may  dwell  in  them  through 
all  generations. 

Our  best  comment  on  this  passage  is  St.  John's  ^-isiGU 
of  the  new  heaven  and  the  new  earth.'  As  the  rapt 
apostle  gazed  into  futm-ity,  looking  for  "the  end  of 
the  Lord,"  he  saw  the  holy  city,  new  Jerusalem,  coming 
down  out  of  heaven  from  God.  A  river  of  water  of  _lif e, 
clear  as  crystal,  proceeded  out  of  the  throne  of  God,  and 
"ran  forth  from  the  house  of  Jehovah;"  and  on  either 
side  of  the  river  gi-ew  the  tree  of  life,  bearing  twelve 
manner  of  fruits,  and  yielding  its  fruit  eveiy  mouth.  He 
saw  the  city  which  had  the  glory  of  God,  and  could  never 

1  Eev.  xsi.  1 — 1 J  sxii.  1,  2. 


be  moved,  into  which  nothing  could  enter  that  defiled. 
And  as  he  gazed  ho  heard  a  gi'eat  voice  from  the  throuo 
proclaiming,  "  Behold,  the  tabernacle  of  God  is  with 
men,  and  He  will  dwell  with  them,  and  they  shall  he 
His  people,  and  He  sliall  he  God  with  them,  their 
God." 

In  fine,  the  closing  chapter  of  Joel's  prophecy  is  a 
brief  apocalypse,  cast  in  the  forms  of  Hebrew  thought 
and  story  indeed,  and  only  dimly  bodied  out,  yet  settLug 
forth,  in  language  which  even  the  Jews  could  not  and 
did  not  mistake,  the  terrors  of  the  last  judgment,  the 
issue  of  the  time-long  struggle  of  good  with  evil,  and 
the  golden  age  of  peace  and  fruitful  service  which  is 
to  succeed  to  the  conflicts  and  storms  of  time. 


THE    POETEY    OF   THE    BIBLE. 

BY     THE     KEV.      A.      S.     AGLEN,      M.A.,      INCUMBENT     OF      ST.      N  I  N I  A  N's,      A  L  Y  T  H,      N.B. 

OUTLINES   OF   THE    HISTORY    OF   BIBLICAL    POETRY  {continucd-j. 


§  4. — SOLOMON    TO    HEZEKIAH. 

St  has  been  said  of  Da\"id's  political  posi- 
tion that  he  stands  at  the  meeting-point 
of  two  eras.     His  rcLations  as  a  poet  to 
w:-;     the  times   preceding  and  following  him 
are  equally  important  and  interesting. 

On  the  one  hand  his  poetiy  crowns  the  imperfect  and 
fragmentary  efforts  of  pre^dous  ages.  In  the  iuspired 
strains  of  prayer  and  praise  in  which  he  pourad  out.his 
great  heart  to  God, 

"  Bearing  a  tribute  to  the  Almighty's  throne," 

the  genuiue  aim  of  the  true  spiiit  of  Hebrew  poetry 
found  its  fullilment.  From  the  very  beginning  the 
Israelite  sought  iu  poetry  a  worthy  utterance  for  the 
religious  aspirations  of  his  soul.  In  David  the  deepest 
religious  sense  was  combined  with  the  highest  poetical 
faculty.  His  rich  and  powerful  imagination,  his  true 
and  delicate  feeling  for  nature,  his  sympathy  with  all 
phases  of  human  life,  acqiiired  in  those  strange  vicissi- 
tudes through  which  he  passed  from  the  sheepfolds  of 
Bethlehem  to  the  splendour  of  a  throne,  all  brought 
under  the  sway  of  a  genius  consecrated  to  the  holiest 
service,  fitted  him  to  express  iu  corresponding  song  all 
the  loftiest  thought  of  his  ago.  For  tliis  the  ancient 
form  of  the  national  poetry — the  piu-ely  lyric — was,  as 
yet,  sufficient,  and  in  lyric  poetry  David  stands  pre- 
eminent and  imsm-passed.  Greater  excellence  could  be 
attained  in  succeeding  tunes  only  in  other  directions. 

But  the  fact  that  these  new  efforts  now  appear,  marks 
the  beginning  of  a  new  epoch.  The  influence  of  the 
gi-eat  Psalmist  did  not  indeed  die.  We  trace  it  in  the 
new  paths  on  which  poetry  enters.  It  kept  the  national 
song  from  deserting  the  old.  His  spirit  breathes 
through  all  the  melodies  of  Israel's  later  history.  It 
is  David's  harp  that  sounds,  though  other  hands  sweep 
the  strings.  But  between  his  time  and  that  immediately 
succeeding  him  there  is  a  striking  contrast.  "VVe  feel 
it  as  we  turn  from  the  Book  of  Psalms  to  the  Book 


of  Proverbs,  or  the  Song  of  Songs.  We  are  sensible 
that  a  new  period  of  literary  life  has  begun  for  Israel. 
We  see  marks  of  iuteUectual  activity  asserted  in  new 
directions.  The  fair  tree,  which  we  have  watched 
growing,  like  the  stem  of  some  tall  palm,  now  breaks 
into  numerous  branches,  and  displays  signs  of  a  rich 
matimty.  It  is  the  age  of  culture,  and  poetry  becomes 
for  the  first  time  an  art. 

It  has  already  been  i-emarked  tliat  the  lyric  contaius 
within  it  the  germs  of  all  forms  of  poetry.  No  age 
could  have  been  more  favourable  for  the  conscious 
release  of  these  elements  than  that  of  Solomon.  His 
name,  Shelomoh,  "  the  Peaceful,"  distinguishes  his  reign 
from  the  warlike  times  of  David.  The  friendly  relations 
on  which  the  nation  now  entered  with  foreign  countries, 
opened  up  on  every  side  new  and  wide  fields  of  know- 
ledge and  stimulated  general  inquiry.  Literary  efforts 
of  every  kind  were  encouraged  by  the  example  and 
patronage  of  the  magnificent  monarch  who,  to  a  mind 
higldy  poetical  and  profuimdly  immersed  in  all  the 
wisdom  of  the  time,  added  the  taste  and  skUl  of  an 
artist.  Poets  and  men  of  letters  would  be  welcome  at  the 
com-t  of  such  a  king.  There  is  evidence  that  collections 
of  the  older  songs  of  the  nation  were  begun  in  this  reign. 
The  Book  of  Jasher,  or  "  the  Righteous,"  from  which 
the  author  of  the  Second  Book  of  Samuel  quotes  Da\dd's 
noble  elegy  on  Saul  and  Jonathan,  was  probably  a  com- 
pilation of  this  date.  David's  own  poetical  remaius 
were  also  in  great  probability  collected  and  cu'cidated 
in  wilting  by  the  filial  piety  of  Solomon.'  But  it  was 
to  the  creative  power  of  the  mind  of  the  monarch  him- 
self that  the  chief  impulse  came  which  produced  the 
gi-eat  works  renuiiumg  to  us  from  this  period. 

AU  nations  that  have  attained  any  eminence  in  poetry 
have  employed  it  for  a  didactic  purpose.  The  gathered 
experience  and  wisdom  of  life  may  be  expressed  in  a 

J  Ewald,  Eistorji,  iii.  282. 


160 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


pleasing  form  in  verse,  wliich  is  thus  made  useful,  as 
well  as  pleasant  to  the  ear.'  The  didactic  poetry  of  the 
BiUe,  from  its  extent  and  variety,  ranks  noxt  in  im- 
portance to  the  lyric.  A  large  number  of  the  Psalms 
fall  under  it,  as  well  as  many  parts  of  the  prophetical 
books.  It  claims,  therefore,  a  separate  treatment.  But 
a  few  words  on  one  distinct  form  assumed  by  it  are 
necessary  here  to  show  its  place  in  the  history  of 
Hebrew  poetrj'. 

Solomon  sjiake  throe  thousand  proverbs  (1  Kings  iv. 
32).     Of  these  enough  have  certainly  been  preserved  in 
the  book  ascriljed  to  him  to  show  us  their  true  cha- 
racter."    In  Prov.  i.  6  we  read  that  it  was  considered  a 
part  of  wisdom  "  to  understand  a  2J)'ove7-b,  and  the  inter- 
preiation  "  (margin,  "  an  eloquent  speech  "),  "  the  words 
of  the  wise  and  their   clarTc  sayings."     The  Hebrew 
equivalents  for  the  words  in  italics  are  mdshdl,  melitsah, 
and  chidah.     Of  these,  mdshdl  has  a  very  extended 
nse.    It  is  the  title  given  to  the  prophetic  utterance  of 
Balaam,  and  to  the  eloquent  speeches  of  Job,  and  is 
there   translated    "  parable."      Tlio   Greek   equivalents 
irapoi/^ta  and  irapa^oK))  are  both  used  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment for  the  parables  of   our  Lord.     Bishop  Lowth 
takes  vidshdl  to  be  properly  expressive  of  the  Hebrew 
poetical   style,    including   three    forms    or    modes    of 
speech — the  sententious,  the  figurative,  and  the  sublime. 
The    reason   of   this  extended    nse   lies   in  the  root- 
meaning    of    the  word,  which  is    "similitude."     First 
applied  to  these  short  sententious  sayings  which  imply, 
if   they  do  not  express,  a   likeness    or   contrast,  and 
which  are  native  to  the  genius  of  the  Hebrew  language, 
and  therefore  form  the  foundation  of  the  poetical  style, 
it  gradually  gained  the  wider  use.     There  are  portions 
of   the  Book  of   Proverbs  which   demand  this  larger 
meaning.    The  two  passages  especially  in  which  wisdom 
is  described  (iii.  13 — 20 ;  viii.  22 — 31),  rise  to  a  strain 
which  is  poetical  in  the  highest  degree.    But  the  greater 
part  of  the  Proverbs  are  of  the  strictly  sententious  kind 
— short,  pointed,  pregnant  sayings — single  or  grouped 
together  without  any  essential  coherence,  but  such  as 
to  give  simple  and  trutliful  expression  to  the  wisdom 
of  the  time.^     The  experience  of  ages  condensed  into 
a  sentence,  and  made  imperishable  by   some  striking 
figure — such  aro  the  Proverbs.     They  are  not,  of  course, 
to  be  compared  with  the  Psabns.     Their  poetry  is  not 
of  a  passionate  or  higlJy  imaginative  kind.    But  their 
style  is  elevated  and  pure,  and  tho  rhythmic  character 
is  preserved  throughout.     They  have,  therefore,  always 
been  included  in  the  poetical  books. 

The  tendency  in  Hebrew  lyric  to  develop  into  the 
more  artificial  dramatic  form  has  been  already  noticed. 
This  tendency  was  encouraged  in  the  period  of  culture 
on  which  the  nation  entered  under  Solomon.     If,  how- 


1  "  Omne  tulit  punctum,  qui  miscuit  utile  dulci  Lectorem  delcc- 
tando  pariterque  monendo."     (Hor.,  Ars  Poclica.) 

2  The  Book  of  Proverbs  ia  plaiuly  composed  of  Tarious  col- 
loctious,  two  of  which  are  in  the  text  assigned  to  other  authors 
than  Solomon.  The  germ  of  the  work  appears  to  be  the  second 
part  (x.  1— xxii.  16),  which  are  mostly  from  the  pen  of  Solomon, 
or  collected  by  him. 

3  Ewald,  Hislorij,  iii.  is©. 


ever,  any  perfect  dramas  were  produced,  they  have 
perished.  Tliose  that  have  been  preserved,  though 
dramatic  both  in  spirit  and  form,  are  yet  in  many  par- 
ticulars, which  we  usually  expect  in  this  kind  of  com- 
position, deficient.  One  of  these,  the  Book  of  Job, 
though  its  date  vnH  possibly  always  remain  a  f niitful 
subject  of  controversy,  according  to  the  most  eminent 
of  modern  critics,  belongs  to  some  jDcriod  in  the  three 
centuries  between  Solomon  and  Hezekiah.  It  is  a  work 
which,  for  tho  grandeur  of  its  conception  and  the 
sublimity  of  its  poetry,  sm-passes  evei-ything  else  in 
literature.  It  is  didactic  in  its  object,  but  is  cast  in  the 
form  of  a  drama  furnished  both  with  prologue  and 
epilogue,  and  conducted  throughout  with  consimimate 
art.  The  other,  the  Song  of  Songs,  which  must  belong 
to  Solomon's  tune,  or  a  period  not  very  far  removed 
from  it,  claims  by  its  name  {Shtr  shirivi),  and  the  ex- 
quisite miisic  of  its  verse,  to  be  ranked  with  lyi-ic 
poetry.  It  tells  the  stoiy  of  faithfid  shepherd-love,  and 
has  been  regarded  as  a  string  of  beautifid  pastoral 
idylls.  It  consists  in  reahty  of  a  succession  of  dramatic 
scenes,  arranged  with  charming  effect  around  a  chorus 
and  three  actors.  Ewald  calls  it  "  an  undeniable  Hebrew 
opera,"''  and  conjectures  that  many  others  of  tho  same 
kind  may  have  been  produced  at  this  time,  but  have 
perished  because  they  had  less  direct  concern  with  lofty 
interests  than  other  Hebrew  literature. 

The  causes  which  made  the  age  of  Solomon  so 
favom-ablo  to  general  culture,  to  higher  art,  and  wider 
knowledge,  were  not  without  elements  of  danger  to  the 
sacred  song  which  was  Israel's  peculiar  gift.  Tho  very 
eagerness  for  inquiry,  the  thirst  for  knowledge  of  all 
kinds,  the  pursuit  of  wisdom,  so  commended  in  the 
Book  of  Proverbs,  might,  if  uncontrolled  by  strict 
moral  purjiose  and  loyalty  to  the  truth  of  religion, 
gradually  weaken  or  corrupt  the  ancient  faith.  The 
delight  in  outward  ■(•isible  forms  of  beauty  which  rims 
through  the  Canticles  might  be  divorced  from  pmity 
and  become  tho  more  perilous  in  proportion  to  its  grace 
and  charm.  The  poetry  inspired  by  it  would  not  cer- 
tainly be  pitched  in  tho  tone  of  the  Psalms.  Solomon's 
Songs,  "  which  were  a  thousand  and  five,"  may  perhaps 
liave  been  of  this  sensuous  kind.  If  any  religious  jioems 
came  from  his  pen  and  found  their  way  into  the  Psalter, 
they  are  but  few.  Tradition  only  assigns  two  to  liim 
(Ps.  bcxii.  and  cxxvii.).  The  latter  of  these  is  far  later 
than  his  time.  Tho  former  may  with  more  probability 
be  assigned  to  a  contemporary  poet  than  to  tho  monarch 
himself.  It  reflects  the  condition  of  the  empire  imder 
Solomon.  The  geographic  range  of  view,  the  richness 
of  tho  images  drawn  from  nature,  tho  general  tone  of 
contented  happiness  suit  tho  time  when  there  was 
"abimdanco  of  peace,"  and  "Judah  and  Israel  dwelt 
safely,  every  man  under  his  own  vino  and  under  his 
own  fig-tree"  (1  Kings  iv.  2.5). 

In  order  to  trace,  even  in  outline,  the  history  of  psahn 
composition,  it  is  necessary  to  touch  on  the  difficult 


■*  Histm-ij,  iii.  281.     It  would  bo  out  of  place  to  enter  Iiere  on 
the  question  of  tho  meaning  of  Canticles, 


THE  POETRY  OP  THE  BIBLE. 


161 


question  of  the  probable  origin  and  formation  of  the 
Psalter.  If  we  coiild  have  the  one  hundred  and  fifty 
hymns  of  which  it  is  composed  arranged  in  certain 
chronological  order,  the  history  of  Hebrew  lyric  poetiy 
"would  be  easy.  But  although  there  are  traces  of  some 
attempts  to  make  such  an  arrangement  in  their  present 
order,  the  result  is  by  no  means  satisfactory. 

The  Psalter  has  generally  been  considered  to  consist  of 
five  books.  Book  I.  contains  Ps.  i. — xli. ;  Book  II.,  Ps. 
slii. — Ixxii. ;  Book  III.,  Ps.  Ixxiii. — Ixxxix. ;  Book  IV., 
Ps.  xc. — cvi. ;  Book  V.,  Ps.  cvii. — cl.  The  only  ground 
for  this  arrangement  is  the  doxology'  with  which  each  of 
these  divisions  is  concluded,  in  accordance  probably  with 
a,  custom  common  in  the  Temple  service,  where  the  call 
io  praise  Jehovah  would  be  used  like  the  Gloria  Patri 
in  the  Christian  Church.  But  it  is  generally  agreed- 
that  there  are  three  distinct  collections,  Ps.  i. — xli.; 
Ps.  xlii. — lixxix. ;  Ps.  xc. — cl,  which  were  arranged  at 
different  times,  the  collectors  availing  themselves  of 
previously  existing  hymn-books  or  groups  of  Psalms. 
Of  these,  the  Hebrew  text  assigns  seventy-three  to 
David,  twenty- four  to  David's  singers  (Asaph,  Heman, 
Ethan  or  Jeduthun,  and  the  sons  of  Korah),  two  to 
Solomon,  one  to  Moses,  while  fifty  are  anonymous. 
But  the  superscriptions  cannot  be  relied  on.  They  are 
sometimes  genuine,  and  represent  the  most  ancient 
tradition.  At  other  times  they  proceed  from  conjecture 
or  are  mere  inventions.  "  They  are  not  of  any  necessary 
authority,  and  their  value  must  be  weighed  and  tested 
by  the  usual  critical  processes.''^  The  few  points  con- 
nected with  the  growth  of  the  Psalter,  which  stand  out 
with  tolerable  certainty,  after  all  investigations,  may  be 
set  down  here.  Tlie  fii-st  collection  (Ps.  i. — xlii.)  contains 
more  Davidian  psalms  than  the  others.  A  collection  to 
preserve  these  was  made  about  Solomon's  time.  The 
hymn-book  thus  formed  was  employed  by  later  collectors, 
who  added  to  it  some  psalms  which  are  unquestionably 
much  later  than  David's  time.  There  is  reason  to 
connect  one  of  these  later  compilations  with  Hezekiah. 
"We  are  told  in  2  Chron.  xxix.  30,  that  this  king,  when 
lie  kept  that  great  Passover  which  {died  all  Jerusalem 
■with  joy,  appointed  the  Le^ntes  "  to  praise  Jehovah  in 
the  words  of  David,  and  of  Asaph  tho  seer."  The 
second  collection  (Ps.  xlii. — Ixxxix.)  contains  psalms 
attributed  to  Asaph  and  the  sons  of  Korah,  who  were 
David's  singers,  as  well  as  some  to  David  himself.  We 
may  reasonably  conclude  that  some  coUoction  of  songs 
connected  with  these  names  was  made  at  this  time 
either  as  an  addition  to  Solomon's  book  or  as  a  separate 
compilation.  The  later  collection,  as  well  as  the  form 
in  which  the  earlier  ones  have  come  down,  and  even 


1  Tlie  use  of  the  different  Divine  uames  lends  a  characteristic 
feature  to  some  of  the  hooks. 

'^  Tlie  student  will  find  a  good  summary  of  the  conclusion  of 
Ewald  and  other  scholars  on  the  history  of  the  Psalter  in  the 
appendix  to  the  Gohlcii  Treasury  Psalter^  or  student's  edition  of 
The  Psalms  Chronologically  Arranyfd  by  Four  Friends. 

3  This  criticism  must  of  course  be  partly  linguistic,  and  we  can 
do  no  more  than  accept  the  verdict  of  tho  best  scholars  ;  hut 
historical  arguments  can  be  appreciated  by  everybody  ;  a  Psalm 
mentioning  the  captivity  could  not  have  beea  written  by  David. 
^See  Ps.  siv.) 


some  of  their  contents,  must  be  referred  to  tho  period 
succeeding  the  exile. 

According  to  this  theory,  we  should  seek  between 
Ps.  xlii.  and  xc.  for  the  compositions  of  tho  period  on 
which  wo  are  at  present  engaged.  Tho  subjects  of  somo 
of  the  psalms  in  that  collection  fall  into  harmony  with 
what  we  know  from  tho  historical  books.  Two  kings  of 
Judah,  after  Solomon,  took  a  deep  interest  in  literature, 
Jehoshaphat  and  Hezekiah,  who  both  made  meritorious 
eflorts  for  the  promotion  and  cultivation  of  learning. 
Jehoshaphat  appointed  public  instructors  to  teach 
tliroughout  his  dominions  (2  Chron.  xvii.  7) ;  "  Hezekiah 
established  a  society  of  learned  men  whose  duty  it  was 
to  provide  for  the  coUectiou  and  preservation  of  aU 
the  scattered  remains  of  earlier  literature  "  (Prov.  rxT. 
1).  Many  psalms  may  thus  have  been  preserved.  The 
circumstances  of  their  reigns  were  in  other  respects 
favourable  for  the  encouragement  of  psalmody.  "  Both 
monarchs  exerted  themselves  to  restore  tho  Temple 
worship  and  to  provide  for  the  musical  celebration 
of  its  services."  Both  experienced  those  perUs  and 
deliverances  which  call  forth  hymns  of  praise  and 
tliauksgiving.  One  of  them  was  himself  a  poet.  Tho 
plaintive  strain  composed  by  Hezekiah  on  his  recovery 
from  sickness,  which  has  been  preserved  in  tho  Book 
of  the  Prophet  Isaiah,  is  almost  worthy  a  place  amid 
the  hymns  of  David  himself  (Isa.  xxxviii.  9 — 20). 

"  How  far  any  of  the  Psalms  in  our  existing  collection 
can  be  placed  in  the  time  of  Jehoshaphat,  is  doubtful ; 
on  this  point  critics  aro  divided ;  but  there  can  bo  no 
doubt  that  several  are  rightly  assigned  to  tho  reign  of 
Hezekiah.  Amongst  these  are  a  number  of  beautiful 
poems  by  the  Korahite  singers."  Conjecture  fixes  on 
tho  Assyrian  captirity  for  the  date  of  Ps.  xlii.  (and 
xliii.)  and  Ixxxiv.  They  are  supposed  to  have  been 
written  by  a  captive  priest  or  Levite  as  he  .sadly  gazed 
back  from  tho  ridge  of  the  eastern  hills  on  tlio  land  of 
his  birth  and  affection.  "As  before  the  eyes  of  the 
exile  the  gazelle  of  tho  forests  of  Gilead  panted  after 
the  fresh  streams  of  water  which  there  descend  to  the 
Jordan,  so  his  soul  panted  after  God  from  whose  outward 
presence  he  was  shut  out.  The  river  with  its  winding 
rapids,  '  deep  calling  to  deep,'  lay  between  him  and  his 
home.  All  that  he  could  now  do  was  to  remember  the 
past  as  he  stood  '  in  the  land  of  Jordan,'  as  ho  saw  the 
peaks  of  '  Hormon,'  as  ho  found  himself  on  the  eastern 
heights  of  Mizar,  which  reminded  him  of  lus  banislimont 
and  his  solitude."''  But  another  group  of  odos  (Ps.  xlvi., 
xlvii.,  xlviii.)  may  with  much  more  certainty  bo  referred 
to  this  period.  Tlie  striking  coincidences  of  thought 
and  expression  with  the  i)roi5hecies  of  Isaiah  which 
belong  to  the  same  event,  leave  little  room  for  doubt  of 
tho  date  of  these  exquisite  lyrics,  which  are  among  the 
noblest  productions  of  tho  poetic  spirit  of  the  Hebrews. 
Tliey  are  short,  but  full  of  art,  and  ui  the  refinement 
and  elegance  of  their  stylo  they  show  an  advance  on 
the  older  triumphal  odes,  while  neither  in  fire  and 
passion  nor  in   grandeur   of   conception  do  they   fall 

'*  Stanley,  Sinai  and  Palestine,  viii.,  §  G, 


35 — VOL.    IL 


162 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


below  them.   Tko  4Cth  Psalm  is  given  liere  from  the 

Golden  Treasury  Psalter.     The  reader  ttUI  notice  the 

regular  stanzas  marked   by  the  grand   refrain,  wliich 

has  been  inserted  after  verse  3  according  to  Ewald's 

conjecture. 

PS.  xLvr. 

i.  God  a  refuge  in  sionn  and  tempest, 
"  God  is  our  refuge  and  strength, 
A  very  present  help  iu  trouble  ; 
Therefore  will  we  uot  fear,  though  the  earth  do  quake. 

Though  the  mountains  totter  iu  the  niiddt  of  the  sea. 
Though  tho  waters  thereof  rage  and  swell, 

And  though  the  mountains  shake  at  tho  tempest  of  the  same. 
Jehovah,  Lord  of  Hosts  is  -with  us, 

The  God  of  Jacob  is  our  tower  of  streiigth." 

ii.  As  the  stream  of  Siloam  so  hath  been  his  presence  to  the 
hcsieged. 
"  There  is  a  stream  the  waters  whereof  make  glad  the  city  of  God, 
The  holy  places  of  the  tabernacle  of  the  Most  Highest  j 
God  is  iu  the  midst  of  her,  she  shall  uot  be  moved ; 

God  will  help  her,  the  morning  draweth  nigh. 
The  nations  raged,  the  kingdoms  were  moved, 

At  the  voice  of  his  thunder  the  earth  melteth. 
Jehovah,  Lord  of  Hosts,  is  with  us. 

The  God  of  Jacob  is  our  tower  of  strength,'* 

iii.  His  wonders  in  destroying  the  Assyrians, 
*'  Come  hither  and  behold  the  work  of  Jehovah, 

What  wonders  He  hath  wrought  upon  the  earth  j 
He  maketh  wars  to  cease  in  all  the  world. 

He  breaketh  the  hovr  and  kuappeth  the  spear  in  sunder,  and 
burneth  the  chariots  iu  the  fire. 
gt  still  Ibcn,  mi  knoto  tluit  :i  am  (Doij, 

3  Irrill  Ik  faUti  arnirnj  l^t  ^tal^tn,  3  toill  be  tsalltir  in  l^c  sMih. 
Jcliomih,  Lord  of  Hosts,  is  with  its. 

The  God  of  Jacob  is  our  tower  of  strenfjth." 

"  To  the  same  period  of  the  Assyrian  invasion  may 
bo  referred  Ps.  Ixv.  and  Ixsvi.,  and  possibly  also  kxv."'i 

There  is  one  featm-o  of  tho  lyric  poetry  of  this  period 
which  prepares  the  attention  for  those  prophetic  voices 
wliich,  before  this  period  closes,  break  loud  and  clear  on 
the  ear.  Not  only  do  the  psalms  belonging  to  this  time 
form  a  noble  and  trutliful  form  of  expression  for  the 
blended  sentiments  of  religion  and  patriotism  which  at 
aU  times  possessed  tho  hearts  of  Hebrews,  but  they  begin 
now  more  and  more  to  interpret  those  prophetic  thoughts 

1  Perowne,  Psalms,  vol.  i.,  introduction,  from  which  much  of 
the  above  is  taken. 


which,  as  the  splendour  of  David  and  Solomon  receded 
into  the  past,  took  more  powerful  hold  on  tho  people. 
Da-\-id"s  poetry  gives  sign  of  the  prophetic  g-ift,  but  it  is 
now  that  we  hear  in  one  song  after  another  the  loud  and 
stirring  annmmeement  tliat  God  has  declared  his  will  to 
Israel,  denouncing  injustice  and  sin,  and  promising"  life 
and  salvation  to  tho  upright.  Henceforth  tho  "  golden 
thread  of  prophecy  "  is  never  lost.  Clearer  and  larger 
grows  the  national  hope,  and  more  distinct  and  powerful 
tlio  voices  of  those  iu  whom  it  burnt  with  Divine  flame, 
and  from  whom  it  shone  through  tho  miglity  gift  of 
jirophctic  song.  Ps.  xxxix.,  Ixii.,  h-i.,  Ivii.  are  noblo 
examples.  Their  authors  were  prophets,  but  imknown 
to  us.  Thei-o  have  survived,  however,  in  the  writings 
of  those  who  now  in  the  eighth  century  begin  to  follow 
one  another  so  fast  in  the  prophetical  ranks,  many  hymns 
and  odes  which  might  under  other  cu'cumstauces  have 
found  their  place  iu  the  Psalter.  Such  is  tlie  thanks- 
giving hymn  in  the  Book  of  Jonah.  The  many  points 
of  resemblance  between  this  hymn  and  some  of  the 
existing  psalms  have  led  some  schoLvrs  to  pronounce  it 
a  more  compilation.  It  is  thought  to  be  moulded  on 
that  great  Hymn  of  Praise  which  David  has  left  us  in 
Ps.  xviii.  But  its  vigorous  tone  and  singularly  vivid 
touches  proclaim  it  to  be  an  original  ode.  What  could 
smijass  the  beauty  and  power  of  this  description,  in 
which  we  are  made  to  feel  the  reality  of  being  drowned? 

"  The  waters  compassed  me  about  to  the  soul. 
The  depth  closed  me  round  about. 
The  weeds  were  wrapt  about  my  head. 

I  went  down  to  the  bottom  of  the  mountains  ; 
The  earth  with  her  bars  was  about  me  for  ever. 

Yet  hast  thou  brought  up  my  life  from  the  pit,  0  Lord 
my  God." 

The  concluding  chapter  of   tho  prophet  Habakkuk 

contains  a  magnificent   psalm  which   displays  almost 

every   excellence    of   Hebrew   poetry ;   and   amid   the 

sublime  prophecies  of  Isaiah  are  scattered  numerous 

lyric  pieces   of   wonderful   force  and   beauty.     These, 

though  belonging  to  the  history  of  lyrical  poetry,  may 

be  left  till  the  prophetical  books  are  noticcd.- 


For  the  Ode  of  Hahakkuk  see  Vol.  I.,  page  2-45  sq. 


BIBLICAL   PSYCHOLOGY. 

BY     THE     KEV.    J.    E.    HEAED,    M.  A.,    CAITTS     COLLEGE,    CAMBRIDGE. 

THE    PSYCHOLOGY   OF  THE    NEW   TESTAMENT. 


PE  have  stated  beforehand  that  we  must 
wait  for  tho  Now  Testament  dispensation 
to  find  the  fuU  and  true  psychology  of  man, 
as  spirit,  soul,  and  body,  stand  out  in  .all 
its  distinctness.  Earlier  revelations  never  contradict 
the  later,  tliey  load  up  to  it  and  confirm  it;  but  we 
must  not  look  for  the  same  explicit  statements  in  the 
one  as  in  the  other.  Vain  attempts  have  been  made 
by  c.abalists  and  others  to  extract  a  kind  of  trichotomy 
out  of  the  ncpliesh,  rnach,  and  neshamah  of  tho  Old 
Testament,  as  if  they  corresponded  to  the  soul,  spirit, 
and  Divine  Spirit  of  the  New  Testament  respectively. 


But  this  is  fanciful ;  rtephesh  is  only  tho  animating 
principle.  Tho  p^j/c/ie  of  Ai'istotle,  the  life  which  is 
common  to  all,  and  which  is  vegetative  only  in  plants,, 
is  animate  in  sentient  creatures,  and  in  man  becomes 
rational  as  well.  Buacli  is  the  spirit  which  is  breathed 
into  every  nephesh,  and  neshamah  is  siniply  the  act  of 
breathing.  It  is  the  rnach,  the  breatli  of  God  (which, 
when  wo  personify  under  New  Testament  teaching,  wo 
descrilie  as  God  the  Holy  Spirit),  that  breathes  a,  breath. 
or  neshamah,  into  tho  human  nephesh,  or  vital  self  (for 
seele,  soul,  is  only  another  name  for  self;  see  Grimm, 
s.  v.).     This  is  very  far  from  the  trichotomy  of  the  New 


BIBLICAL    PSYCHOLOGY. 


163 


Testament.  The  Old  Testament  is,  strictly  speaking, 
neitlier  dicliotomist  nor  trichotomist.  Man  is  tlie 
monad,  and  the  monad,  as  Lango  very  well  remarks, 
"  resolves  itself  first  of  all  into  a  duality  of  flesh  and 
spirit,  and  (lien  into  a  triad  of  body,  sold,  and  spirit."  It 
is  at  the  second  of  tliese  three  stages  that  the  Old  Testa- 
ment leaves  off.  The  last  word  which  it  teaches  on  the 
subject  is  that  of  Eccles.  xii.,  "  when  the  body  returns 
to  the  dust,  and  the  spu-it  to  God  that  gave  it."  The 
passages  which  some  psychologists  adduce  as  intima- 
tions of  the  trichotomy  bt'fore  the  Holy  Spirit  was  given 
are  not  in  point,  such  as  the  words  of  the  Magnificat, 
"  My  soul  d<ith  magnify  the  Lord,  and  my  sp  irit  hath 
rejoiced  in  God  my  Sa\'iour."  We  have  oidy  here  a 
common  Hebrew  parallelism ;  the  soul,  or  nephesh, 
and  the  spirit,  or  ruach,  are  identical,  or  nearly  so. 
Soul  in  Hebrew  is  identical  with  self,  and  therefore  "my 
soul "  means  only,  "  Myself  and  my  spirit  magnify  the 
Lord."  If  this  wore  all,  the  dichotomy  would  be  as 
Scriptural  as  the  trichotomy,  and  it  is  the  uncritical  way 
in  which  passages  like  these  are  produced  wliich  rather 
weakens  tliau  supports  the  argument  for  the  trichotomy. 
It  is  a  well-known  rule  in  law  that  it  is  dangerous  to 
overload  an  allegation  ;  witnesses  wlio  do  not  strengthen 
the  testimony  witli  some  fresh  point  of  evidence  rather 
weaken  it,  for  they  create  the  suspicion  that  they  may 
be  primed,  and  encourage  the  other  side  to  set  up 
counter  testimony  of  the  same  kind,  and  so  weaken 
the  case. 

We  must  bo  on  our  guard,  then,  on  this  subject.  The 
proof  passages  of  the  trichotomy  amount  to  three  or  four 
at  most,  but  they  are  quite  decisive.  We  shall  turn 
to  them  in  order,  but  we  must  first  clear  the  ground  by 
remarking  on  the  truth  already  noticed,  that  the  psycho- 
logy of  Scripture  and  its  theology  reflect  and  throw  light 
on  each  other.  Under  a  carnal  dispensation,  such  as  the 
Old  Testament,  the  psychical  part  in  man  was  prominent ; 
under  a  spiritual,  such  as  the  New  Testament,  the  pneu- 
matical  comes  into  the  foreground.  Man  as  related 
to  the  eternal  and  divine  is  spu'it ;  as  related  to  the 
conscience,  he  is  soul ;  as  related  to  the  earth  and  other 
living  creatures  in  it,  he  is  body.  All  these  three  relations 
are  implied  of  coiu'so  in  Old  Testament  teaching,  and  to 
that  extent  it  is  trichotomist  and  not  tlichotomist  only. 
But,  inasmuch  as  man's  relation  to  God  was  not  fuUy 
brought  out  until  God  was  distinctly  revealed  as  Father, 
Son,  and  Holy  Spiint,  for  this  reason  the  deeper  psycho- 
logical truths  of  Scripture  were  in  shadow,  in  the  same 
way  that  its  theology  was.  The  revelation  of  the  one 
waited  for  that  of  the  other.  The  distinct  personality 
of  the  Di^•ine  Spirit  was  the  condition  of  our  con- 
sciousness of  the  existejico  of  the  spnit  as  a  distinct 
facidty  in  man. 

With  these  preliminaries,  which  explain  and  account 
fer  the  comparative  silence  of  tlie  Old  Testament  on 
this  important  subject,  wo  turn  to  those  texts  of  the 
New  Testament  which  may  be  regarded  as  proof  pas- 
sages of  the  trichotomy.  In  Heb.  iv.  12  we  read  that 
"  the  word  of  God  is  quick  and  powerful,  and  shai-jier  than 
any  two-edged  sword,  piercing  to  the  dividing  asimder 


of  soul  and  spirit,  as  if  of  hoih  joints  and  marrow." 
The  apposition  is  this — that,  as  a  sword  passes  through 
the  joints  into  the  marrow,  so  the  word  of  God  pierces  the 
psyche  and  enters  into  the  pneuma,  which  is  the  very 
marrow  of  om-  being.     Dean  Alford,  objecting  to  the 
anti-climax  implied  in  this  placing  of  the  literal  after  the 
figurative,  goes  so  far  as  to  understand  the  expression 
"  joints  and  marrow"  in  a  figurative  or  spii-itual  sense, 
as  if  the  psyche  and  pnenma  were  the  joints  and  marrov; 
respectively  of  tlie  hidden  man  of  the  heart.     This  may 
be  correct ;  wo  do  not  think  it  is  of  much  impoi-tance 
either  way,  the  essential  element  in  the  thought  being 
that  the  word  of  God  is  a  two-edged  sword,  that  it 
pierces  so  as  to  penetrate,  not  as  if  dividing  asunder 
sonl  from  spirit  (this  is  not  the  force  of  ^epio-^oO),  but  the 
dividing  of  both  soul-  and  spirit.     The  word  of  God 
reaches  the  psychical  nature,  and,  as  we  should  say,  cuts 
to  the  bone.     This   it  docs  in  all  cases ;  in  the  case  of 
Paul  preaching  before  Felix  and  Festus,  as  well  as  to  the 
Philippian  jailor,  or  to  Lydia,  "  whoso  heart  the  Lord 
opened."     But  in  those  cases  where   it  is  quick  and 
powerfid,  it  goes  much  deeper  than  the  psychical,  it 
reaches  the  marrow  itself,  it  becomes  a  discemer  of  the 
thoughts  and  intents  of  the  heart.     This  is  the  true 
criterion  of  spultual  work.      The  emotions  and  the  im- 
derstandiug  belong  to  the  psychical  part  of  man's  natm-e. 
It  is  comparatively  easy  to  reach  them.     The  law  can 
always  do  that ;   we  all  know  what  is  right,  and  we  all 
instinctively  feel  the  beauty  of  goodness.     Thus  far  oua- 
understandings  may  be  convTnced  and  our  emotions 
stirred.     But  real  conversion  is  a  deeper  as  well  as  a 
more  lastiug  work  than  this.     Felix  trembled,  yet  ho 
bade  Paul  go  Ids  way.     Festus  heard  him  gladly  as 
long  as  he  sat  with  Agrippa  on  the  judgment-seat  and 
listened  to  a  skilled  advocate  arguing  for  certain  Jewish 
customs   and  peculiarities.      But   the   spirit   was   not 
reached  in.  either  case,  as  with  the  Philippian  jailor  and 
Lydia.      The   difference  was  this — that   there    is  an 
element  in  man  underlying  alike  tlie  emotions  and  the 
understanding.     What  that  element  is,  this  passage  by 
itself  does  not  teach  us,  but  the  hints  of  Smipture  else- 
where, as  well  as  oiu*  own  experience,  easily  explain. 
It  is  the  will  or  conscience,  for  the  two  terms  connote 
the  same  idea,     '\\nien  the  will  is  exercised  only  on  its 
own  acts,  and  on  the  will  of  God  with  regard  to  those 
acts,  we  describe  it  as  conscience.    When  again  the  con- 
science becomes  active,  and  determines  what  those  acts 
shall  be,  we  describe  it  as  the  will.     Nothing  can  bo 
more  misleading  than  the  old  controversies  about  a  free 
and  a  constrained  will.     Luther,  in  his    treatise  De 
servo  arbitrio,  goes  too  far.     He  holds  that  the  wUl  is 
enslaved  after  as  much  a-s  before  conversion ;  the  only 
difference  being  a  change  of  masters.     But  tliis  is  to 
misunderstaud  what  freedom   means.     The  wUl  is  en- 
slaved, and  inactive  when  we  are  the  servants  of  sin. 
But  it   is   truly  enfranchised  when   the  conscience  is 
stiiTed  and  we  begin  to  act  out  our  convictions.     Con- 
science gives  us  the  knowledge  of  what  is  right  and 
wi-oug,  the  wUl  enables  Us  to  act  on  that  knowledge. 
Accepting  Keid's   distinction  between  the  intellectual 


164 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


and  active  j)ower  iu  man,  we  should  say  that  conscience 
belongs  rather  to  the  intellectual,  and  the  mil  to  the 
active  powers.  But  if  will  and  conscience  are  not 
identical  faculties,  they  are  inseparable.  Wanting  con- 
science, or  the  moral  sense,  it  is  inconceivable  how  the 
will  could  act  at  all.  or  what  it  could  exercise  itself  upon. 
Wanting  tlie  will,  the  moral  sense  would  be  a  useless 
perception  of  certain  moral  qualities  in  actions,  to 
which  no  corresponding  motive  for  action  was  attached 
on  our  part.  The  relation  of  will  to  conscience  is  very 
well  described  in  the  Collect  where  we  pray  that  "  we 
may  not  only  perceive  and  know  what  we  ought  to  do  " 
(the  conscience),  "  but  also  may  have  grace  and  power 
faithfully  to  fulfil  the  same  "  (the  will). 

The  distinction  of  psyche  and  pneuma  is  thus  indi- 
cated by  the  writer  of  tho  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  as 
the  work  of  the  presence  of  tho  Divine  Word  in  the  soul 
or  self ;  for  we  use  the  word  "  soul  "  in  its  etymological 
exactness  as  equivalent  to  self.  The  entrance  of  God's 
word  gives  understanding  to  tho  simple.  As  soon  as 
it  enters  efEectually  it  pierces  through  tho  psyche,  tho 
seat  of  the  intellect  and  emotions  ;  it  penetrates  into  the 
pneuma,  the  seat  of  the  conscience  and  will. 

Scripture  asserts  and  experience  coufii-ms  the  distinc- 
tion between  deep  and  shallow  religions  impressions. 
Tlie  parable  of  the  sower,  not  to  multiply  instances, 
brings  out  this  distinction  in  a  lively  way.  There  are 
three  classes  of  jisychical  religionists — those  on  the  high- 
way, the  lowest  of  all;  next,  those  on  the  stony  ground; 
and,  lastly,  those  on  the  thorny  ground,  who  are  the 
nearest  of  all  to  the  truth.  But  this  mark  of  grace  is 
wanting  in  all — the  ground  of  an  honest  and  good  heart. 
In  other  words,  neither  the  intellect  nor  the  emotions 
is  the  seat  of  sa^dng  convictions.  A  man  may  be  in- 
telligently persuaded  of  tho  truth  of  the  Gospel,  and 
sometimes  deeply  stirred  mth  the  beauty  of  holiness, 
but  his  moral  nature  is  not  yet  reached.  Tho  true, 
and  the  beautiful,  and  the  good  are  like  the  three  graces  : 

"  Nee  diversa  tamen  qualis  decet  esse  sororum." 

But  the  good  is  like  charity,  she  is  the  greatest  of  tho 
three.  It  is  possible  to  cultivate  the  true  and  the 
•beautiful  without  going  on  fully  to  love  the  good.  The 
stirring  of  the  moral  sense  is  something  deep  and 
peculiar,  and  is  quite  distinguishable  from  our  per- 
ceptions either  of  its  ti'uth  or  beauty.  We  may 
describe  our  sense  of  moral  goodness  by  illustrations 
taken  from  our  sense  of  the  true  and  tho  beautiful,  but 
it  is  never  the  result  of  the  latter.  To  attempt,  as  some 
moralists  have  done,  to  resolve  goodness  into  a  vai-iety 
•of  truth  or  beauty,  a  kind  of  mixed  product  of  the  two 
■others,  is  to  destroy  its  essential  character.  On  this 
subject  we  need  not  repeat  the  arguments  of  Bishop 
Butler.  His  Sermons  on  Human  Nature  have  never 
boon  replied  to.  It  is  impossible  not  to  see  mth  him  that 
wo  do  violence  to  language,  which  is  always  a  reflection 
of  mind,  when  we  do  not  distinguish  between  injury  and 
hurt,  between  duty  and  interest,  between  our  desires  and 
tho  governing  principle,  which,  so  far  from  being  the 
gum  total  of  those  desires  as  the  utilitarian  thinks  it  to  be, 


is  often  directly  o^jposed  to  them.  These  arguments  for 
the  reality  of  conscience,  which  wo  only  refer  to  hero, 
confirm  our  distinction  between  psyche  and  p>neuma. 
The  pneuma  is  the  seat  of  the  conscience,  and  thus  the 
word  of  God,  when  it  enters  there,  pierces  to  the  dividing 
asunder  of  joints  and  marrow,  i.e.  between  the  intellectual 
perceptions  and  the  moral  convictions.  As  the  marrow 
lies  inside  the  bone,  and  the  joints  or  muscles  outside, 
so  the  pneuma  is  related  to  the  psyche ;  it  is  the  inner- 
most of  all  neai-est  the  ego,  or  \vill ;  it  is  indeed  the  wiU 
in  essence.  Thus  the  word  of  God,  when  it  effectually 
enters  man's  nature,  becomes  a  discerner  of  the  thoughts 
and  intents  of  the  heart.  It  discovers  the  man  to  him- 
self, lays  bare  all  the  evasions  and  deceptions  of  self-love, 
follows  the  heart  into  all  its  labyrinths  and  windings  of 
self-pleasing  and  deceit,  and  ends  at  last  by  dragging  the 
conscience,  culprit-like,  out  of  its  hiding-place,  where, 
Mke  Adam,  it  liides  itself  among  the  trees  of  the  garden 
from  tlie  voice  of  the  Lord  God.  Nothing  is  naked  or 
hidden  from  that  God  with  whom  we  have  to  do,  and 
when  He  sends  his  sharii  two-edged  sword  of  the  word 
into  the  soul  it  cuts  deeper  than  into  the  mere  psychical 
or  natural  life,  it  enters  the  pneuma  and  startles  the 
conscience  out  of  its  slumber  vrith  a  voice  which  will 
not  be  silenced  or  smothered. 

We  collect  then  from  this  passage  that  true  pneuma- 
tical  life  can  only  arise  from  the  action  of  the  word  on 
the  conscience.  Wanting  either  of  these  two  factors  of 
the  spiritual  life,  the  conscience  continues  dead  and  evil. 
Hence  the  importance  of  linking  together  faith  and  a 
good  conscience,  as  the  Apostle  Paul  shows  in  more  than 
one  passage  (1  Tim.  i.  19  ;  iii.  9).  To  put  away  a  good 
conscience  is  to  make  shipwreck  as  concerning  tho 
faith.  In  the  case  where  tlie  conscience  is  seared  or 
cauterised,  as  vrith  a  hot  iron,  there  the  apostacy  from  tho 
faith  is  final.  It  may  take  different  shapes  in  different 
ages,  but  the  condition  and  cause  is  the  same  everywhere. 
It  is  the  conscience  or  pneuma  which  is  tlisoased,  and 
when  this  case  is  complete  we  have  then  the  state  of 
second  death.  Then  not  only  is  there  the  death  of  the 
fii-st  Adam,  but  the  death  in  trespasses  and  sins,  which 
is  the  normal  condition  of  man  in  his  present  fallen 
state.  The  second  death  arises  from  the  loss  of  that 
germinal  principle  of  the  second  Adam,  by  which 
we  become  partakers  of  the  divine  nature,  "  having 
escaped  the  corruptions  which  are  iu  the  world  through 
lust."  Scripture  abounds  vrith  warning  on  this  sub- 
ject. Certain  vices  are  not  only  heinous  in  themselves, 
but  have  also  this  additional  evil,  that  they  deaden 
the  slumbering  pneuma  or  conscience.  If,  on  tho  one 
hand,  there  is  a  light  which  lighteth  every  man  that 
Cometh  into  the  world,  on  the  other  hajnd.  that  light 
which  is  in  us  may  become  darkness.  How  great 
then  is  that  darkness  !  It  is  the  state  when  even  the 
mind  and  conscience  is  defUcd ;  the  state  which  is 
marked  out  in  the  concluding  verses  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Romans,  when  men  led  away  by  passion,  not  only 
did  those  things,  but  also  had  pleasure  in  them  that 
did  them  ;  when  they  put  good  for  evil,  and  e\il  for 
good ;  put  sweet  for  bitter,  and  bitter  for  sweet. 


JOSHUA. 


K,- 


SCEIPTUEE   BIOGEAPHIES. 

JOSHUA    {contimied). 

BY    THE    REV.    EDMUND   TENABLES,    M.A.,    CANON    KESIDENTIAKY   AND    PEECENTOE  OF    LINCOLN. 


;HE  next  town  the  Israelitish  host  would 
have  attacked  in  regular  succession  was 
Gibeon.  This  city,  connected  in  after 
years  with  deeds  of  bloodshed'  over- 
shadowing the  magnificent  and  touching  memories  of 
the  opening  days  of  Solomon's  reign  (1  Kings  iii.  4 — 14 ; 
2  Chron.  i.  3 — 13),  was  the  head  of  a  small  confederacy  of 
HiWtes  (Josh.  xi.  19).  It  is  described  (x.  2)  as  "a great 
city,  as  one  of  the  royal  cities."  Panic-strickeu  at  the 
fall  of  Jericho  and  Ai,  and  hopeless  of  resistance,  they 
resolved  to  employ  craft,  that  at  least  they  might  save 
their  hves.  So  they  presented  themselves  to  Joshua, 
who  had  returned  to  the  entrenched  camp  at  Gilgal,  and 
pretemUng  that  they  were  ambassadors  dispatched  from 
a  very  far  country,  to  which  the  fame  of  the  military 
exploits  of  the  Israelites  on  the  eastern  side  of  Jordan 
had  penetrated,  to  make  a  league  mth  the  invaders,  they 
exhibited  their  frayed  sacks,  and  torn  wine-skins,  and 
patched  shoes,  and  moiddy  bread,  as  an  evidence  of  the 
truth  of  their  tale.  With  culpable  negligence,  of  which 
it  is  impossible  entirely  to  acquit  Joshua,  the  leaders 
of  Israel  credited  the  story  at  once,  and  concluded  a 
league  with  the  new-comers  without  seeking  God's 
g^dance.  "  The  men  took  of  their  victuals,"  that 
sacred  token  of  friendship  in  the  East,  "  and  asked  not 
counsel  at  the  mouth  of  tho  Lord  "  (ix.  14).  Three  days 
after  the  league  had  been  ratified  with  the  solemnity  of 
an  oath,  the  mortifying  truth  was  discovered.  "  They 
heard  that  they  wore  their  neighbours,  and  that  they 
dwelt  among  them  "  (ix.  16).  The  people's  indignation 
at  the  deception  which  had  been  practised  on  them  was 
exasperated  when  on  the  thu-d  day  they  reached  the 
Gibeonite  cities,  and  discovered  how  rich  the  spoil  was 
of  which  the  rash  credulity  of  their  rulers  had  dejjrived 
them.  But,  notwithstanding  their  murmm-ings,  the 
Lord's  oath,  though  procured  by  fraiid.  must  not  be 
broken.  "  We  have  sworn  to  them  by  tlie  Lord  God 
of  Israel :  now,  therefore,  we  may  not  touch  them  "  (vcr. 
19).  Tet,  to  punish  their  treachery,  Josliua  condemned 
them  and  tlieir  descendants  to  the  service  of  the  taber- 
nacle, to  be  employed  in  the  menial  labour  of  heaving 
the  wood  and  drawing  the  water  required  for  the 
sacrifices.  Thankful  to  escape  massacre  on  any  tenns, 
the  Gibeonites  submissively  accepted  the  degrading 
sentence,  and  undertook  the  tributary  service  imposed 
upon  them  without  remonstrance.  "  Now,  behold,  we  are 
in  thine  hand :  as  it  seemeth  good  and  right  mito  thee 
to  do  imto  us,  do.  And  so  did  Joshua  unto  them,  and 
delivered  them  out  of  tho  hand  of  tho  children  of 
Israel,  that  they  slew  them  not "  (is.  23 — 26). 

1  The  bloody  encounter  between  tba  men  of  David  and  the 
men  of  Ishboshetli  {2  Sam.  ii.  12—17)  ;  tbe  murder  of  Amasa  by 
Joab  (2  Sam.  xx.  4—13)  ;  and  the  execution  of  Joab  by  order  of 
Solomon  (1  Kings  ii.  28—31). 


The  consequences  of  this  league  with  the  Gibeonites 
were  most  momentous.  The  petty  kings  or  chieftains 
of  Southern  Palestine,  the  king  of  Jebus,  or  Jerusalem, 
being  then-  recognised  leader,  alarmed  at  the  fall  of 
Jericho  and  Ai,  whicli  liad  opened  up  tho  approaches 
to  their  own  territory,  had  already  concerted  measures 
for  a  joint  attack  on  the  invaders,  when  the  gi-avity  of 
tho  crisis  was  increased  by  the  news  of  the  defection  of 
the  impoi-tant  city  of  Gibeon.  Not  a  moment  was  to  be 
lost  in  pimisliing  this  perilous  treachery.  Their  forces 
were  gathered  with  the  utmost  dispatch  and  the  siege 
opened.  But  before  tho  city  was  enth-ely  invested  the 
Gibeonites  found  time  to  send  tidings  of  then-  peril  to 
Joshua,  who  had  again  retm-ned  to  his  head-quarters  at 
Gilgal.  The  extreme  urgency  of  their  situation  is  ex- 
pressed in  the  message — "  Slack  not  thy  hand  from  thy 
servants ;  come  up  to  us  quickly,  and  save  us,  and  help 
us  :  for  all  the  kings  of  tho  Amorites  that  dwell  on  the 
mountains  are  gathered  together  against  us "  (x.  6). 
The  greatness  of  the  perO — imminent  not  to  Gibeon 
alone,  but  to  Israel  also — is  at  once  apparent  to  Joshua. 
If  Canaan  is  to  bo  conquered,  Gibeon  must  be  relieved, 
and  tliat  instantly.  So  ho  starts  without  a  moment's 
delay,  travels  all  night,  and,  by  a  forced  march,  accom- 
plishes in  a  few  hours  a  distance  which  had  previously 
taken  three  days.  In  the  early  morning,  before  the 
besiegers  could  have  heard  of  his  liaving  left  his  camp 
by  the  Jordan,  Joshua  and  liis  solthers,  strong  in  the 
assurance  given  by  God  that  "  not  a  man  of  them 
should  stand  before  him "  (x.  8),  burst  on  the  unsus- 
pecting enemy  and  tliscomfit  them  utterly.  The  huge 
host — the  largest  Joshua  liad  yet  encountered — is  driven 
before  him  up  the  rocky  ascent  to  the  mountain  village 
of  Beth-horon  the  Upper.  They  cross  the  ridge,  and, 
in  headlong  flight,  rush  down  the  slippeiy  rocks  of  the 
precipitous  descent  that  leads  to  tho  lower  village  of 
the  same  name — Beth-horon  tlie  Nether.'  There  a  fierce 
tempest,  partial  as  the  sudden  storms  of  mountain  regions 
usually  are,  for  the  pursuers  were  unharmed  by  it, 
accompanied  with  hail-stones  of  prodigious  size,  bursts 
on  the  fugitives,  and  completes  their  discomfiture.  As 
aftenvards  against  Sisera,  "  the  stars  in  their  courses 
fought  against  them,"  and,  stricken  down  by  the  hand 
of  God,  "  they  wei"e  more  which  died  with  hailstones 


2  Between  the  two  Beth-horons  is  a  steep  pass,  still  very  rocky 
and  rough,  though  tbe  rock  has  been  cut  away  in  many  peaces, 
and  the  path  formed  into  steps.  The  main  road  from  Jerusalem 
and  the  Jordan  valley  to  the  sea-coast  lay  through  the  pass  of 
Beth-horon,  and  accordingly  both  the  Beth-horons  were  secured  by 
Solomon  with  strong  fortifications  (2  Chron.  viii.  5).  It  was  in 
this  pass  that  Judas  Maccabffius  fell  suddenly  on  the  Syrians  and 
routed  them.  Here,  too,  the  Koman  army,  under  Cestius  Gallus, 
after  being  driven  from  its  poflitiou  before  Gibeon  by  an  impetuous 
attack  of  tbe  Jews  from  Jerus.alem,  sustained  severe  losses  in 
men  and  bagg.age  from  the  insurgents.  {Espin,  Speafccr*s  Com- 
mentariif  in  loc.) 


133 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


than  tliey  whom  the  children  of  Isi'ael  slow  with  the 
sword  "  (x.  11). 

And  then,  whilo  the  vanquished  Amorites  were 
rushiac  in  wild  confusion  down  the  mountain  pass, 
eager  to  reach  their  strongholds  or  to  find  refuge  in 
the  rocky  fastnesses  with  which  the  district  abounds,' 
Joshua,  gazing  down  on  them  from  the  summit  of  the 
pass,  and  apprehensive  lest  the  day  should  prove  too 
short  for  the  accomplishment  of  his  work,  uttered  that 
bold  apostrophe,  that  magnificent  venture  of  faith, 
quoted  from  the  Book  of  Jasher,-  in  which  the  servant 
of  the  true  God  called  on  the  heavenly  bodies,  as 
His  ministers,  to  stand  still  and  aid  the  overthrow  of 
their  idolati-ous  worsMppers :  "  Sun,  stand  thou  still 
upon  Gibeon  ;  and  thou,  Moon,  in  the  valley  of  Ajalon." 
How  this  prayer  was  answered — ^by  what  precise  mira- 
culous agency  the  light  of  the  day  was  extended  over  that 
district  to  enable  Israel  to  complete  the  extermination 
of  their  enemies  before  uiglitfaD,  we  cannot  say,  for 
God  has  not  thought  fit  to  record  it.  But  that  it  was 
answered  is  certain.^  Before  the  prolonged  day  closed 
in,  and  the  shadows  of  evening  fell  on  "  the  Valley  of 
Gazelles,"'  God's  promise  had  been  fulfiUod  to  the 
letter.  Not  a  man  of  the  enemies  had  stood  before 
Joshua;  all  had  been  deUvei-ed  into  his  hand.  Long 
and  deservedly  did  the  marvels  of  that  day— a  day 
which,  at  one  sudden  blow,  secured  the  possession  of 
the  Land  of  Promise  to  Israel — remain  engraven  on 
the  memory  of  the  nation.  "  There  was  no  day  like 
that  before  it  or  after  it,  that  the  Lord  hearkened  unto 
the  voice  of  a  man  :  for  the  Lord  fought  for  Israel  " 
(X.  14). 

The  host  was  overthrown,  but  the  five  chieftains  load 
escaped  and  lay  concealed  in  a  well-kno-.vn  cave,^  over- 
shadowed with  a  grove  of  trees,  at  Makkedah.  Joshua, 
to  secure  his  prey,  gave  orders  that  the  mouth  of  the 
cave  should  be  blocked  by  huge  stones  until  the  return 
of  the  army  from  the  pursuit  of  the  enemy  afforded 
opportunity  for  a  public  execution.     Then  the  cave  was 


1  Beth-lioron  signifies  "  house  of  caves." 

-  We  have  one  otlior  passaj^e  quoted  from  the  Boole  of  Jasher, 
namely,  the  elegy  over  Saul  iind  Jonathan,  entitled  "the  Bow" 
(2  Sam.  i.  18 — 27),  Wo  should  probably  not  be  wrong  in  iufeiTing 
from  these  two  (luotatious  that  this  book  wsb  a  collection  of  his- 
torical odes  celebrating  the  exploits  of  the  chief  heroes  of  the 
theocracy.  Jasher,  connected  etymologically  with  "  Jeshurun," 
the  poetical  designation  of  Israel,  signifies  "  upright  "  (cf.  Numb, 
sxiii.  10,  "  Let  me  die  the  death  of  the  righteous,''  reshdrtm). 

3  The  only  legitimate  iuteii»retation  of  this  passage,  including 
not  only  the  poetical  quotation  from  the  Book  of  Jasher  (vs.  12, 
13,  beginning),  but  also  the  prose  comment  (vs.  13,  14\  in  which 
the  fact  is  distinctly  reasserted,  is  that,  by  some  miraculous  agency, 
the  daylight  was  prolonged  over  the  district  in  a  way  enabliug 
Joshua  to  finish  the  overthrow  of  his  enemies.  The  miracle  was 
distinctly  local,  confined  to  the  ueighbourbood  of  Gibeon  and 
Ajalon,  and  we  may  therefore  safely  rid  ourselves  of  the  notion  of 
the  suspension  of  the  earth's  rotation  on  its  axis,  which  has  been 
a  stumbling-block  to  the  intelligent  believer,  as  well  as  a  fertile 
source  of  objection  to  the  sceptic.  An  extension  of  the  daylight 
by  natural  causes — increased  refraction,  or  the  like— satisfies  all 
the  reasonable  requirements  of  the  passage,  when  we  bear  in  mind 
that  tiie  language  is  certainly  poetical  and  figurative,  and  no  more 
intended  to  he  accepted  literally  than  the  analogous  expressions 
Judg.  V.  20  ;  Ps.  sviii.  9,  15 ;  csiv.  4  ;  Isa.  xiii.  10. 

4  "The  Valley  of  Ajalon.."     Ajalon  =  "hinds,"  or  "  gazelles." 
s  "  The  cave  "  it  is  in  the  Hebrew  (Josh.  x.  10,  17). 


opened,  and  the  five  kings  were  dragged  from  its  re- 
cesses. Israel  saw  these  mighty  mouarchs,  whose 
names  had  inspired  such  dread,  groveUiug  in  the  dust 
before  the  conqueror.  The  chief  warriors  were  bidden 
to  approach,  and,  as  a  token  of  complete  overthrow, 
jilaut  their  feet  on  the  necks  of  the  prostrate  kings. 
"As  these  captive  kings  lay  powerless  before  them, 
trodden  beneatli  their  feet,  so  would  aU  their  enemies 
who  should  make  war  upon  them  be  laid  prostr.ate  by 
the  Lord."''  They  were  then  put  to  death,  and  their 
bodies  hung,  eacli  on  its  own  tree,  tiU  the  evening,  when 
they  were  taken  down  and  "  cast  into  the  cave  wherein 
they  had  been  hid,"  the  door  of  which  was  once  more 
closed  by  the  same  huge  stones.  The  kings'  prison- 
house  became  their  sepulchre. 

With  characteristic  promptitude  Joshua  pursued  his 
success.  City  after  city  fell,  tribe  after  tribe  was  ex- 
terminated in  rapid  succession.  Of  Makkedah,  Libnah, 
Lachish,  Eglon,  Hebron,  Debu-,  the  brief  and  stem 
record  is  the  same :  "  Ho  left  none  remaining,  but 
utterly  destroyed  all  that  breathed,  as  the  Lord  God  of 
Isi'ael  commanded.  AU  these  kings  and  their  land  did 
Joshua  take  at  one  time,  because  the  Lord  God  fought 
for  Israel "  (x.  40 — 42).  Southei-n  Palestine  was  now 
conquered,  the  work  immediately  before  Joshua  was 
completed,  and  once  more  Joshua  and  all  Israel  returned 
to  the  camp  at  Gilgal. 

The  turn  of  Northern  Palestine  was  now  to  come. 
"With  impolitic  indifEerenco  the  northern  chieftains 
liad  looked  on  during  the  subjugation  of  the  south. 
They  now  saw  the  tide  of  conquest  roll  back  on  them- 
selves, and,  too  late,  began  to  prejpare  for  then-  defence."' 
A  powerful  confederacy  was  formed,  embracing  all 
the  tribes  that  had  not  yet  fallen  before  Joshua,  of 
which  Jabin,  the  king  of  Hazor,^  was  the  head.  An 
enormous  army,  "  even  as  the  sand  that  is  on  the  sea- 
shore in  multitude,"  was  mustered  and  encamped  at  the 
waters  of  Merom."  For  the  first  time  in  these  wars 
mention  is  made  of  horses  and  chariots  "  very  many." 
The  host  was  formidable,  both  in  irambers  and  military 
preparation.  But  Joshua  is  forbidden  to  fear.  Tlieir 
defeat  should  bo  immediate  and  total.  At  that  selfsame 
hour  on  the  morrow  tlie  Lord  would  have  "  delivered 
them  lip  all  slain  before  Israel."  He  should  hough 
their  horses,'"  and  bum,  as  an  accursed  thing,  "  their 
chariots  with  fii'c  "  (xi.  6).  As  before  on  so  many  occa- 
sions, Joshua's  prompt  decisiveness  secured  him  the 
victory.  Almost  before  the  kings  could  have  learnt 
that  he  had  left  Gilgal,  he  and  Ms  soldiers  burst  upon 


6  Keil.on  Josh.  x.  25. 

'  Milman,  Historn  of  the  Jaws,  book  v. 

"'^  Hazor  signifies  "  enclosed,"  or  "  fortified."  It  is  described  by 
Josephus  as  overlooking  the  lake  of  Merom. 

'•*  "  The  waters  of  Merom  "  have  been  usually  identified  with  tho 
uppei-most  of  the  three  lakes  in  the  higher  part  of  the  Jordan 
valley,  taking  its  name  iVIerom,  or  "  the  high  lake,"  from  its  up- 
land situation.  It  is  described  as  half  morass,  half  tarn,  about 
seven  miles  long  and  six  broad  at  its  greatest  width,  surrounded 
by  an  almost  impenetrable  jungle  of  reeds  abounding  in  wild  fowl. 
(Stanley,  Sinai  and  Palc^iine,  p.  390.) 

1"  Or  "  hamstring  ;"  i.e.,  cut  the  sinews  of  tho  hack  port  of  the 
thighs,  which  would  lame  the  horses  immediately. 


ANIMALS  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


167 


fhem.  Taken  thus  by  surprise,  tlieii-  imnionsc  iiumbei'S 
only  increased  the  confusion  of  the  Cauaauites,  which 
the  horses  and  chariots  would  rendeT  more  inextricable. 
The  rout  was  complete.  The  Canaanites  were  chased 
westward  to  Zidon  and  eastward  to  the  valley  of 
Mizpeh.  The  conqueror  returned  to  finish  the  action 
hj  the  captiu-e  of  Hazor.  This  city,  like  Ai  and  Jericho, 
was  burnt.  The  rest  of  the  cities  taken  in  this  campaign 
■were  simply  pillaged,  and  left  standing  •'  each  on  its  ovm 
Ml "  (xi.  13). 

The  conciseness  of  the  narrative  forbids  our  pursuing 
Joshua's  subjugation  of   Canaan  in  detail.      We   aro 


told  no  more  than  that  the  war  with  the  kings  lasted 
"  a  long  time  "  (xi.  18).  Five  years,  at  least — according 
to  another  reckoning,  seven  years — were  employed  in 
the  complete  reduction  of  the  land.  By  tliis  time  the 
seven  nations  of  the  Canaanites  properly  so  called  had 
been  entirely  vancpiished.  Thirty-one  kings  had  fallen 
by  the  sword.  Every  city,  except  those  of  the  Gibeonites, 
had  been  sacked  and  its  inhabitants  put  to  death. 
Joshua  had  taken  "  the  whole  laud,  accordiug  to  all  that 
the  Lord  had  said  to  Moses  ;  and  Joshua  gave  it  for  an 
inheritance  unto  Israel  according  to  their  divisions  by 
then-  tribes.    And  the  land  rested  from  war  "  (xi.  23). 


ANIMALS    OF    THE    BIBLE. 

ET   THE    BEV.    W.    HOUGHTON,    M.A.,    P.L.S.,    KECTOE    Or    PRESTON,    SALOP. 


ANTELOPES  (concluded). 
iHE  Oryx  has  been  referred  to  by  various 
■RTiters  imder  various  names;  it  is  the 
Antilope  leucoryx  of  Pallas;  the  Anti- 
lope  algazella  of  Biippell ;  the  milk-white 
antelope  of  Pennant ;  the  white  antelope  of  Shaw ; 
the  abu-hard,  jachmur  and  yazmm-  of  the  Arabs  (though 
they  also  apply  this  name  to  the  bubalo).  It  inhabits 
North  and  West  Africa,  Nubia,  Senaar,  and  Senegal. 
Dr.  Tristram  tells  us  that  "  the  oryx  is  still  found  on 
the  confines  of  the  Holy  Land,  though  strictly  an  in- 
habitant of  the  desert ;  "  that  though  he  did  not  obtain 
any  specimen,  ho  approached  quite  near  enough  to  bo 
able  to  identify  it  by  tho  shape  of  its  horns.  Tlieso 
horns,  wMcli  aro  enormously  long,  are  frequently  to 
be  pm-cliased  in  the  bazaars  of  Damascus.  From  the 
general  white  colour  of  its  body,  this  antelope  received 
the  Greek  name  leiworyx,  i.e.,  "  the  white  oryx."  The 
animal  figured  is  drawn  from  a  specimen  in  the  British 
Museum.  The  Onjx  ijazella,  or  gcms-boc  (the  repre- 
sentative of  tho  0.  leucoryx),  is  found  in  South  Africa ; 
it  has  long  straight  horns,  which,  like  its  relative  in 
North  Africa  and  Syria,  it  can  use  with  deadly  effect. 

Another  species  of  antelopo  seems  to  be  mentioned  in 
the  Hebrew  Bible  under  the  name  of  dishon,  rendered 
"  PJa'"''!'?  "  ™  °^^  version.  It  occurs  only  in  Deut.  xiv. 
5,  as  one  of  the  names  of  animals  allowed  as  food.  The 
Septuagiut  and  Vulgate  versions  give  Tuyapyos  and 
pygargus  as  the  representative  of  the  Hebrew  word, 
implying  that  the  animal  in  question  is  a  deer  or  ante- 
lope, '■  having  a  white  rump."  This  character  belongs 
to  several  antelopes.  Nothing  can  bo  gathered  from 
the  Hebrew  term  dishun  beyond  the  fact  that  it  pro- 
bably signifies  "a  leaper."  There  seems  to  be  no  doubt 
that  the  Addax  antelope  is  identical  with  tho  strepsi- 
ceros  mentioned  by  Pliny  (N.  H.  xi.  37),  for  when  this 
species  was,  after  many  years,  at  length  re-discovered 
by  Hemprich  and  Riijipell,  it  was  found  to  be  called 
by  its  Arabic  name  of  akas  or  adas,  tho  very  name 
which  Pliny  gives  as  the  local  one  of  his  strepaiccros. 
The  Addax  nasomaculatus  may  be  the  dishun  of  tho 


Hebrew  Bible ;  at  any  rate  there  is  no  other  animal  that 
has  a  better  claim  to  represent  the  word ;  and  although 
at  present  it  is  not  found  in  Palestine,  it  may  have 
occurred  there  formerly,  for  it  is  now  known  to  inhabit 
Egypt  and  the  Sahara,  Nubia  and  Arabia. 

There  is  much  less  uncertainty  as  to  what  antelope  is 
intended  by  the  Hebrew  word  yachmur,  occurring  only 
in  Deut.  xiv.  5,  as  the  name  of  one  of  the  animals 
allowed  by  the  Levitical  law  for  food,  and  in  1  Kings  iv. 
23,  as  forming  part  of  tho  provision  for  Solomon's  table. 
The  Greek  and  Latin  versions  hero  give  fiov^aXos  and 
hubalus  as  the  representatives  of  the  Hebrew  term, 
while  our  English  version  renders  it  by  "  fallow  deer." 
Now  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  Greek  word  fioifiaKos 
or  /3ou'/3it\i?,  the  Latin  bubalus,  denotes  the  bovine 
antelope,  Alcephalus  biAalis.  Herodotus  (iv.  192), 
Aristotle  (S.  A.  iii.  6),  Diodorus  (ii.  51),  Oppian  {Cyneg. 
ii.  300),  Polybius  (xii.  3,  5),  speak  of  this  antelope  as 
an  inhabitant  of  North  and  East  Africa.  In  a  fragment 
of  ^schylus  the  Greek  poet  mentions  "  the  freshly- 
caught  bubalis  food  for  a  lion ; "  while  Oppian  describes 
the  bubalo  at  some  length. 

Pliny  {Nat.  Hist  viii.  15)  says  that  tho  common 
people  in  their  ignorance  sometimes  gave  the  name  of 
bubalus  to  the  bison  and  the  urus ;  but  the  animal 
properly  so  called,  he  adds,  is  found  in  Africa,  and  bears 
a  resemblance  to  tho  caK  and  stag ;  in  other  words,  the 
animal  is  one  of  the  bovine  antelopes.  The  evidence, 
then,  that  the  bubalus  of  tho  Greek  and  Latin  writers 
denotes  the  Alcephalus  bubalis  of  modem  zoologists  is 
complete,  but  how  shall  we  identify  the  bubalo  with  tho 
yachmur  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures?  Hero  again  is 
very  good  evidence.  Yachmur  is  one  of  the  Arabic  names 
for  the  bubale,  which  by  the  Arabs  of  North  Africa  is 
now  generally  known  by  the  name  of  belcker-el-wash, 
i.e.,  wild  cattle.  Freytag,  in  his  Arabic  Lexicon,  under 
the -word  yachmur, has  the  following:  "yoc/(»i»r,  ruber; 
animal  ad  genus  pertinens  cui  est  apud  Arabes  nomen 
behh&r-el-icash."  Yachmur  is  from  a  root  meaning 
"  to  bo  red ; "  this  antelope  varies  in  colour  from  red 
to  pale  brown.     There  is  then  every  reason,  we  think, 


168 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


to  conclude  that  the  animal  denoted  by  the  Hebrew 
word  yachmur  is  the  bovine  antelope,  Alcephalas 
hvbalis. 

ELEPHANT. 

Of  the  natural  order  Pkoboscidia,  represented  only 
by  the  two  species  of  elephant,  we  have  no  distinct 
mention  in  the  canonical  books,  if  we  except  1  Kings 
X.  22  and  2  Chron.  is.  21,  where  oiu-  translators  for 
"ivory"  in  the  text  read  "elephants'  teeth"  in  the 
margin.  Frequent  mention  of  elephants,  however,  is 
made  in  the  apocryphal  books  of  the  Maccabees,  where 
we  read  that  Lysias,  who  had  been  entrusted  with  the 
government  of  Southern  Syi-ia  by  Antioehus  Epiphanes, 
employed  many  of  these  animals  in  his  wars  against 
the  Jews.  At  the  celebrated  siege  of  Bethsura,  on  the 
Idumean  frontier,  the  royal  force  under  the  command 


midst  of  the  battle,  slaying  on  the  right  hand  and  on 
the  left,  so  that  they  were  divided  from  him  on  both, 
sides.  Which  done,  he  crept  under  the  elephant,  and 
thrust  him  under,  and  slow  him  :  whereupon  the  elephant 
fell  down  upon  him,  and  there  he  died"  (1  Mace.  vi.  43 — 
46).  We  also  read  that  Antioehus  Epiphanes,  the  father 
of  Antioehus  Eupator,  "  entered  Egypt  with  a  great 
multitude,  with  chariots,  and  elephants,  and  horsemen, 
and  a  great  na\'y,  and  made  war  against  Ptolemeo,  king' 
of  Egypt"  (1  Mace.  i.  17,  18).  Elephants  are  also  men- 
tioned in  other  passages  in  the  books  of  the  Maccabees. 
Though  the  name  of  the  elephant  is  not  found  in  the  text, 
of  our  English  version,  the  Hebrew — or  rather  Hebraized 
form  of  the  SaHskrit — name  occurs  in  1  Kings  x.  22, 
and  2  Chron.  ix.  21.  King  Solomon  "  had  at  sea  a 
navy  of  Tharshish  with  the  navy  of  Hiram  :  once  in 


DEEE-HUNTING  :    ATTENDANTS   WITH    NETS    ON    THE    BOKDEKS    OF    FOKEST.      (ASSTEIAN.) 


of  Lysias,  in  the  temporary  reign  of  Antioehus  Eupator, 
consisted  of  "  an  hundred  thousand  footmen,  and  twenty 
thousand  horsemen,  and  two  and  thirty  elephants 
exercised  in  battle.  These  went  through  Idumca  and 
pitched  against  Bethsura  (Beth-tsiir,  '  house  of  rock,'), 
whicJi  they  assaulted  many  days,  making  engines  of 
war ;  but  they  of  Bethsura  came  out,  and  bunied  them 
with  fire,  and  fought  vahantly.  Upon  this  Judas  re- 
moved from  the  tower,  and  pitched  in  Bathzacharias, 
over  against  the  king's  camp.  Then  the  king  rising 
very  early  marched  fiercely  with  his  host  towards  Bath- 
zacharias, where  his  armies  made  them  ready  for  battle, 
and  soimded  the  trumpets.  And  to  the  end  thoy  might 
provoke  the  elephants  to  fight,  they  shewed  them  the 
blood  of  grapes  and  mulberries  "  (1  Mace.  vi.  30 — 34). 
It  was  on  this  occasion  that  Eleazar,  "  perccinng 
that  one  of  the  beasts,  armed  with  royal  harness,  was 
higher  thanaU  the  rest,  and  supposing  that  the  king  was 
upon  him,  put  himself  in  jeopardy,  to  the  end  he  might 
deliver  his  people,  nud  get  him  a  perpetual  name  : 
wherefore  he  ran  upon  him  courageously  through  the 


three  years  came  the  navy  of  Tharshish,  bringing  gold, 
and  silver,  ivory  {shen-habbim),  apes,  and  peacocks;" 
the  Hebrew  word  literally  meaning  "  teeth  of  ele- 
phants," as  in  the  marguial  reading.  Ivory,  the  valued 
product  of  the  elephant,  is  frequently  mentioned  in  the- 
Bible,  and  to  this  we  wiU  turn  our  attention.  The 
Hebrew  word,  which,  excepting  in  the  two  passages, 
quoted  above,  is  always  translated  "  ivory,"  is  ghcn, 
"  a  tooth."  It  is,  indeed,  the  name  of  the  twenty- 
first  letter  of  the  Hebrew  alphabet,  t',  from  its  tooth- 
like  form.  Tlxo  first  notice  of  ivory  occurs  in  the 
passages  which  sjieak  of  its  introduction  into  Palestine 
from  Ophir  together  with  apes,  gold,  and  peacocks,  and 
almug-trces  in  the  time  of  Solomon.  As  all  these  pro- 
ducts are  Indian,  and  the  Hebrew  words  almost  certainly 
Hebraized  forms  of  Sanskrit  names,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  ivory  was  imported  from  some  part  of 
Hindostan  or  Ceylon.  As  Solomon  was  the  first  Jewish 
king  to  introduce  ivory  into  Judea,  so  he  was  the  first 
to  use  it.  In  2  Chron.  ix.  17,  wo  are  told  that  King 
Solomon  "  made  a  great  throne  of  ivoiy,  and  overkid  it 


ANIMALS   OF  THE   BIBLE. 


169 


with  pure  gold."  Later  on  Ahab  made  for  himself  "  a 
house  of  ivory  "  (I  Kings  xxii.  39j ;  it  must  not  be  sup- 
posed that  the  king's  palace  was  actually  made  of  ivory, 
but  that  ivory  panelling  and  carving  adorned  the 
walls,  roofs,  and  rooms.  Such  was  the  palace  of 
Menelaus,  described  by  Homer. 

"  View'st  thou  uumoved,  0  ever  honoured  most ! 
Tliese  prodigies  of  art,  aud  woudrous  cost ! 
Above,  bene.ith,  around  the  palace  shines 
The  Buuiless  treasure  of  exhausted  mines  ; 
The  spoils  of  elephants  the  roofs  iulay, 
Aud  studded  amber  darts  a  golden  ray." 

(Pope's  Odijs.,  iv.  83—88.) 

(See  also  Of?,  xix.  564;  Virgil,  Mu.  vi.  896.)  "Ivory 
palaces "  are  mentioned  in  Ps.  xlv.  8 :  "  AU  thy 
garments  smell  of  myrrh,  and  aloes,  and  cassia  :  out  of 


country.  Diodorus  speaks  of  the  balsam  aud  cassia, 
myrrh,  balm,  sweet  calamus  aud  cinnamon,  and  other 
odoriferous  spices  in  glovring  terms,  aud  especially 
mentions  the  houses  of  the  Miucei,  adorned  with  gold, 
silver,  ivory,  "  precious  stones,  aud  other  things  which 
men  esteem  of  great  value "  (Diodor.  Sic,  hb.  iii., 
cap.  47).  It  has  been  already  stated  that  these  Miuoei 
lived  in  Spicy  Araljia,  and  that  Diodorus  makes  special 
mention  of  the  aromatics  of  the  country;  wheu  this  is 
coupled  with  wliat  the  same  author  says  about  ivory- 
adorned  houses,  we  have  every  reason  for  believing 
that  the  minni  of  the  45th  Psahn  refers  to  the  people  of 
that  name.     The  words  would  tlicn  be  thus  rendered  : — 

"  Myrrh,  aloes,  aud  cassia  aro  all  thy  garments  ; 
From  the  ivory  palaces  of  the  lliuui  have  they  made  thee  glad.'* 


THE  BUBALi:  {Alcej^liolu^  hiihaXis), 


the  ivory  palaces  whereby  they  have  made  thee  glad  " — 

a  Tery  obscure  passage,  for  which  various  explanations 

have  been  proposed.      Mr.  Perowno  reads  the  passage 

thus — 

"  '  Myrrh,  and  aloes,  and  cassia  are  all  thy  garnionts  ; 
Out  of  ivory  palaces  hath  music  made  thee  glad.'  " 

(T/ie  Psaliiis,  vol.  i.,  p.  219.) 

This  makes  very  good  sense.  The  difficult  word  is 
minni  ('sp),  vi'hieh  may  be  taken  as  an  abridged  form  of 
the  plural  minnim  (D'ra),  "  stringed  iustrmnonts."  But 
minni  may  be  the  land  of  the  Minni  (see  Jer.  li.  27),  a 
portion  of  Armenia,  the  Mannai  and  Mannas  of  the 
Assyrian  inscriptions :  we  would  then  road,  "  Prom 
palaces  adorned  with  Armenian  ivory  they  make  thee 
glad."  (See  Fiirst,  Lex.,  s.  v.  ;p.)  But  we  do  not  know 
that  Armenia  was  celebrated  for  its  ivory.  With  far 
greater  probability  may  the  Minni  or  Mincei  (Mii/aioi)  be 
referred  to  the  people  of  K"orthern  Arabia,  one  of  the 
four  great  nations  mentioned  by  Strabo  as  situated 
nearly  at  the  extremity  of  the  peninsula.  Tliese  people, 
a  division  of  the  Sabseans,  dwelt  in  the  frankincense 


The  45th  Psalm  is  evidently  a  man-iage  song  cele- 
liratiug  the  nuptials  of  a  Jewish  mouarch,  and  describing 
the  magnificence  of  an  Oriental  court. 

The  luxurious  Phoenicians  ornamented  tho  benches  of 
their  ships  with  ivory.  "  Of  the  oaks  of  Bashan  have 
they  made  tliiue  oars ;  the  company  of  the  Ashm-ites 
have  made  thy  benches  of  ivory  brought  out  of  the 
isles  of  Chittim  "  (Ezek.  xxvii.  6).  Although,  as  we  shall 
see  just  now,  the  Assyrians  carried  on  a  great  traffic  in 
ivory,  it  is  generally  agreed  by  scholars  that  tho  intro- 
duction of  their  name  in  tho  verse  just  quoted  is  a 
mistake.  The  latter  part  of  the  verse  is  better  trans- 
lated thus  : — "  Thy  benches  have  they  made  of  boxwood 
inlaid  with  ivory,  from  the  isles  of  Chittim ; "  the 
literal  rendermg  of  the  Hebrew  is,  "  Thy  benches  have 
they  made  of  ivory,  daughters  of  box-trees  "  (or  "  cedar- 
trees,"  for  there  is  some  doubt  as  to  tho  wood  denoted). 
Such  expressions  are  not  \incommou  iu  Hebrew  poetiy; 
compare,  for  iustauce,  Ps.  xvii.  8,  "  Keep  me  as  the 
pupil,  the  daughter  of  the  eye,"  as  being  tliat  which 
gives  beauty  and  brightness  to  the  eye ;  so  Lam.  iii.  13, 


170 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


"  the  arrows  of  the  quiver"  are  "  the  sons  of  the  quiver," 
bocnuse  the  quiver  cucIosks  them  ;  similarly  the  ivory  is 
the  daughter  of  the  wood  into  which  it  is  set.     The  ex- 


pression in  the  Canticles  (vii.  4),  "  Thy  neck  is  as  a  tower 
of  ivory,"  doubtless  refers  only  to  the  white  colour  of 
the  neck :  so  whiteness  alone  is  intended  in  Cant.  v.  14. 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    FULFILLED    IN    THE    NEW. 

I.  SACRED    SEAS0X3  (coiUbiued). 

BY    THE     KEV.    WILLIAM     MILLIGAN,    D.D.,    FKOFESSOB    OP    DIVINITY    AND     BIBLICAL    CEITICISH    IN    THE    UNIVESSITT  Or 

ABEKDEEN. 


?E  have   spoken  of   the  three    great   annual 
feasts  of   Israel  individually;  but,  before 
bringing  our   consideration  of  them  to  a 
close,  wo  have   still  to   make  one  or  two 
observations  upon  them  as  a  whole. 

1.  All  were  intimately  related  to  one  another  as  parts 
of  one  religious  system,  and  expressive  of  similar  reli- 
gious truths.  In  this  respect  the  Passover  lies  at  the 
foundation  of  them  all.  It  is  not  a  part  of  the  Feast  of 
Unleavened  Bread ;  it  is  an  introduction  to  the  whole 
sacred  year.  The  propriety  of  assigning  this  position 
to  it  is  vindicated  by  the  arguments  formerly  adduced, 
and  not  needing  to  be  repeated.  On  the  Passover  the 
entu-e  year  rests.  Out  of  it  spring  all  the  sacred  ser- 
vices to  follow.  It  is  as  redeemed  from  its  house  of 
bondage,  and  called  into  covenant  with  God,  that  Israel 
is  prepared  alike  for  the  duties  and  the  privileges  of  its 
future  course. 

Wlien  wo  turn  to  the  feasts  themselves,  however,  it 
is  obvious  in  the  first  place  that  that  of  Unleavened 
Bread  has  something  in  common  with  that  of  Taber- 
nacles in  which  Pentecost  has  no  share.  Both  derive 
their  leading  characteristics  from  the  historical  associa- 
tions connected  with  them,  and  it  is  by  the  greatness  of 
the  historical  truths  which  they  commemorate  that  they 
are  elevated  into  seven  days'  festivals.  Mere  harvest 
ideas  fail  to  explain  this  fact.  Wlien  it  is  said  by  a 
recent  distinguished  commentator  on  the  Old  Testament, 
that  "  Passover  is  the  commencement  of  harvest ;  seven 
weeks  ensue,  which  by  their  number  are  mai'ked  as 
holy ;  then  follows  the  day  of  conclusion  or  Pentecost, 
which,  as  the  culminating  point  of  harvest,  can  possibly 
only  last  one  day,  and  not  seven  days  like  the  two  corre- 
sponding festivals;"'  no  sufficient  reason  is  assigned 
for  the  exaltation  of  the  two  and  the  depression  of  the 
one.  The  conclusion  and  not  the  begiuning  of  harvest 
ought  rather  in  this  light  to  have  been  marked  as  the 
seven  days'  feast,  for  it  is  then  that  the  joy  of  harvest 
is  greatest,  and  that  the  labours  of  the  year  are  safe. 
Besides  this,  it  is  impossible  to  dissociate  harvest  thanks- 
giving from  the  Peast  of  Tab3rnaclos.  Wo  have  seen 
that  it  is  expressly  designated  "  the  feast  of  ingathering 
at  the  year's  end  "  (Exod.  xxxiv.  22  ;  xxiii.  16) ;  and  if 
thanksgiving  spread  itself  over  all  the  seven  days  during 
which  the  people  dwelt  ui  booths,  such  an  arrangement 
receives  its  best  explanation  from  the  fact  that  the 
whole  produce  of  the  season  had  now  been  gathered  m, 

1  Kaliscli  pa  Exod.  xxiii.  15—17. 


that  fruits  and  oil  and  wine,  as  well  as  corn,  had  now 
been  stored.  Not  Pentecost,  therefore,  but  Tabernacles 
is  "  the  conclusion  of  harvest,"  and  it  is  in  something 
else  than  liarvest-thoughts  that  we  must  seek  the 
ideas  which  enlarged  the  latter  along  with  Unleavened 
Bread  into  a  seven  days'  feast,  while  Pentecost  lasted 
only  for  a  day.  Historical  associations,  great  religious 
truths,  supply  the  key.  The  one  feast  symbolises  the 
spirit  in  which  Israel  starts  upon  its  way  to  Zion,  the 
other  the  protection  and  care  with  which  the  Almighty 
watches  over  Israel  in  its  pilgrimage.  In  the  one  the 
nature  of  the  jjcople's  covenant-life  finds  expression  ;  in 
the  other,  God's  covenant  love  to  his  elect  ones.  Nor 
is  either  of  these  two  thoughts  to  be  looked  upon  as 
confined  to  the  moment  when  it  obtains  special  utter- 
ance. The  first  stretches  forward  to  the  second.  Tho 
second  stretches  backward  to  the  first.  Taken  together 
the  two  overshadow  the  whole  year.  Israel  is  reminded 
by  them  alone,  without  in  this  respect  taking  note  C- 
Pentecost,  that  it  is  to  be  a  faithful  people  under  a 
faithful  God.= 

But  if  in  one  sense  Unleavened  Bread  and  Taber- 
nacles thus  stand  alone,  there  are  other  aspects  of  tho 
three  feasts  under  which  Pentecost  takes  its  place  in 
the  series,  and  constitutes  the  fitting  middle  term 
between  the  other  two. 

It  was  so  first  in  relation  to  tho  harvest,  and  tliiu 
dedication  of  it  which  Israel  was  to  make  to  God.  Hero 
the  Feast  of  Unleavened  Bread  embraced  a  thanks- 
giving for  the  grain  as  grain ;  and  the  sheaf  of  barley, 
the  first  ripened  corn,  expressed  tho  dedication  not  of 
the  barley  alone,  but  of  the  whole  gr.aiu  crop  to  Jehovah. 
Tho  Feast  of  Pentecost  followed  as  a  thanksgiving  for 
the  grain  not  only  grown  and  reaped,  but  gathered 
in  and  appropriated  to  the  use  of  man ;  and  tho  two 
leavened  loaves  expressed  the  dedication  of  tho  crop 
as  turned  into  food  for  the  following  year.  Finally, 
the  Feast  of  Tabernacles  embodied  a  thanksgiving  for 
fruits  and  oil  and  wine,  tho  last  productions  of  tho 
season ;  and  its  first-fruits  expressed  tho  dedication  to 
Him  from  whom  they  came  of  the  joys  rather  than  the 
necessaries  of  life.  In  this  respect,  therefore,  all  tho 
three  feasts  were  united  together  by  a  bond  of  simOarity 
and  of  sympathy. 

-  lu  tliG  representiiiiou  now  tciven  is  probably  to  be  found  tLe 
explanation  of  tbe  fact  tbat  wlien  tbo  prophet  Ezeliiel  represents, 
under  iigures  taken  from  these  feasts,  the  better  times  in  store  for 
the  Ctiiireh  of  God,  he  speaks  only  of  the  first  and  last  feasts,  ajid 
omita  all  mention  of  Pentecost  (slv.  21—25). 


SACRED  SEASONS. 


171 


It  wp-s  so,  secondly,  in  relation  to  religious  ideas 
to  wMeli  they  severally  referred.  Under  tliis  point 
of  view  tliey  all  shadowed  forth  certain  great  truths 
rospectiug  the  covenant  life  with  God;  tho  first  its 
nature,  the  second  its  strength,  the  third  its  work. 
Unleavened  Bread  was  a  call  to  repentance  and  a  de- 
mand for  lioliuess.  Leaven,  the  symbol  of  siu,  was  to 
1)8  put  away.  The  "  unleavened  bread  of  siucerity  and 
truth  "  was  alone  to  be  found  in  the  heart,  ui  the  family, 
in  the  nation.  Pentecost  told  of  the  gift  and  ax^pro- 
priatiou  of  the  Spiilt ;  of  that  Spirit  in  whose  strength 
we  walk  with  God.  Lastly,  Tabernacles  spoke  of  the 
diif  usion  of  the  Spirit ;  that  they  vdio  truly  walk  \nt\i 
God  live  not  for  themselves  but  for  others,  tliat  having 
freely  received  they  freely  give.  Translated  iuto  New 
Testament  language,  the  three  feasts  thus  gave  utter- 
ance to  the  three  great  truths  of  all  religious  life : 
"  Repent,  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  at  haud;"  "  Be- 
hold, the  kingdom  of  God  is  within  you  ;"  "  Go  ye  into 
all  the  world,  and  preach  tlie  Gospel  to  every  creature." 

2.  While  thus  ultimately  related  to  one  another,  it  is 
farther  to  be  observed  that  this  relation  was  a  relation 
of  climax.  There  was  progress  in  the  series  of  feasts. 
Each  was  followed  by  one  expressing  something  liiglier 
and  greater  than  itseK.  We  see  this  in  then-  relation 
to  the  harvest.  Each  was  a  harvest  thanksgiving,  and 
was  accompanied  by  the  presentation  of  first-fruits. 
But  the  thanksgiving  grew  more  lively,  the  dedication 
larger,  as  the  year  rolled  on.  The  one  sheaf  of  Un- 
leavened Bread  was  followed  by  the  two  leavened  loaves 
of  Pentecost  and  the  multiplied  offerings  accompanyiug 
them.  These,  again,  were  followed  by  the  stOl  more 
numerous  gifts  and  sacrifices  of  Tabernacles.  Wliile, 
too,  the  worshipper  made  Ms  constantly  increasing 
offerings,  he  at  the  same  time  entered  iuto  a  communion 
with  God  growing  constantly  closer.  At  the  first  feast 
of  the  year  there  was  only  a  bumt-oflcrmg ;  at  the 
second  a  peace-offering  was  added,  yet  without  the 
meal ;  at  the  third  we  have  seen  reason  to  believe  that 
the  peace-offeruigs  were  numerous,  and  that  the  meal 
followed  their  presentation.  But  the  peace-offering 
was  higher  and  more  expressive  of  realised  communion 
with  God  than  the  burnt-offering,  and  the  sacrificial 
meal  was  its  culminating  jioint.  Thus,  therefore,  as 
the  year  passed  away,  a  deeper  sense  of  God's  mercy 
found  utterance  at  each  successive  stage  of  its  progress  ; 
and  in  the  sense  of  that  mercy  the  believing  Israehte 
approached  God  in  an  ever  more  endearing  fellowship. 

It  is  almost  unnecessary  to  point  otit  that  in  the 
typical  aspect  of  these  feasts  the  same  idea  of  progress  is 
to  be  noted.  Repentance,  the  appropriation  of  the  Spirit, 
the  diffusion  of  the  Spirit,  present  an  obvious  climax. 
No  part  is  indeed  entirely  distinct  from  the  others,  just 
as  we  have  seen  that  the  idea  of  each  feast  stretched  its 
influence  over  the  whole  year,  and  not  over  the  week 
or  the  day  only  during  which  the  feast  lasted.  Re- 
pentance is  the  work  of  tlie  Spirit,  and  it  belongs  to  the 
latest  as  well  as  the  earliest  stages  of  the  walk  with 
God.  The  Spirit  is  no  sooner  really  appropriated  than 
it  is  diffused  in  some  corresponding  mcasm-e,  and  fresh 


appropriations  of  it  are  necessary  to  the  very  close  of 
life.  But  still  the  three  ideas  are  distinct,  and  the 
further  we  advance  in  a  divine  fellowship,  the  more 
does  each  of  them  in  succession  become  prominent 
within  us.  "  The  path  of  the  just  is  as  the  shining 
light,  wliich  shiueth  more  and  more  unto  the  perfect 
day." 

3.  A  thh-d  characteristic  of  the  feasts  of  Israel  as  a 
whole  is  to  be  traced  in  the  joyful  emotions  by  which 
they  were  all  pervaded.  The  name  by  which  they  are 
most  frequently  designated  in  the  Old  Testament  is 
derived  from  a  word  signifying  to  revel,  or  feast,  or 
dance  ;  and  although  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that 
any  gaiety  by  which  they  were  marked  was  inconsistent 
with  the  sacredness  of  the  time,  or  with  the  reverence 
due  to  Him  before  whom  they  were  held,  yet  neither 
can  there  be  any  doubt  that  all  the  days  devoted  to 
them  were  days  of  cheerfulness  and  joy.  "  Thou  shalt 
rejoice  before  the  Lord  thy  God,"  "  Thou  shalt  rejoice 
in  thy  feast,"  '"  Therefore  thou  shalt  surely  rejoice," 
are  the  commandments  expressly  given  in  connection 
with  them  (Dent.  x-vl.  11 — 15);  and  fasting  was  care- 
fully avoided  by  the  pious  as  inconsistent  with  the 
spirit  of  the  time  (Judith  viii.  6).  All  the  arrangements, 
too,  connected  with  them  were  calculated  to  promote 
joy.  They  all  took  place  in  the  summer  half  of  the 
year.  They  were  all  associated  with  the  abundance  and 
the  joy  of  harvest.  In  so  far  as  they  commemorated 
historical  events  they  brought  to  view  truths  of  tho 
most  elevated  and  inspiring  character.  Even  the  cir- 
cumstance that  the  two  most  important,  those  of  Un- 
leavened Bread  and  Tabernacles,  always  began  when 
the  moon  was  at  the  full,  and  when,  therefore,  under 
the  clear  sky  of  Palestine,  the  brilliaucy  of  night  would 
have  even  a  greater  charm  than  the  glare  of  day,  must 
have  constituted  no  unimportant  element  of  then-  power 
to  awaken  gladness.  This  characteristic  of  its  festival 
seasons  was  fully  realised  by  Israel.  At  the  great 
Passover  in  Hezekiah's  time  "the  children  of  Israel 
that  were  present  at  Jerusalem  kept  tho  feast  of  Un- 
leavened Bread  seven  days  with  great  gladness;  and 
the  Levites  and  tlie  priests  praised  the  Lord  day  by 
day,  singing  with  loud  instruments  unto  the  Lord  " 
(2  Chron.  xxx.  21).  It  was  the  same  at  the  Feast  of 
Tabernacles  in  Nehemiah's  time:  "And  they  found 
written  in  the  law  which  the  Lord  had  commanded  by 
Moses  that  the  children  of  Israel  shoidd  dwell  iu  booths 
in  the  feast  of  the  seventh  month ;  and  that  they  shoidd 
pu))lish  and  proclaim  in  all  their  cities  and  iu  Jerusalem, 
saying.  Go  forth  unto  the  mount,  and  fetch  olive 
branches,  and  pine  branches,  and  myi-tle  branches,  and 
palm  branches,  and  branches  of  thick  trees  to  mako 
booths  as  it  is  written.  So  the  people  went  forth  and 
brought  them,  and  made  themselves  booths,  every  ono 
upon  the  roof  of  his  house,  and  in  their  couits,  and  m 
tho  courts  of  the  house  of  God,  and  in  tho  street^  of 
the  water  gate,  and  in  the  street  of  the  gate  of  Ephraim. 
And  all  the  congregation  of  them  that  were  come  again 
out  of  the  captivity  made  booths,  and  sat  under  the 
booths ;  for  since  the  days  of  Jeshua  tho  son  of  Nun 


11 


THE   BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


nnto  that  day  had  not  the  children  of  Israel  done  so. 
And  there  was  very  great  gladness"  (Neh.  viii.  14 — 
17).  The  proverbs  in  common  circulation  among  the 
people  bear  \vituess  to  the  same  fact,  as  when  of  the 
Feast  of  Tabernacles  it  used  to  bo  said, "  Whosoever 
hath  not  seen  the  rejoicing  that  was  upon  the  drawing 
of  this  water  hath  never  seen  any  rejoicing  at  all."' 
All  of  them  indeed  were  seasons  of  the  liveliest  joy, 
and  singing,  sonnding  of  trumpets,  and  feasting  were 
their  ordinary  accompaniments.  A  deep  interest  attaches 
to  this  characteristic  of  these  festivals.  The  gloom  so 
often  associated  with  the  thought  of  Israel's  worship 
has  no  real  pLace  in  it.  Tliat  worship  did  not  culminate 
in  fastings  and  penance.  The  more  ton-ible  attributes 
of  the  Almighty  wore  not  the  only  ones  with  which  the 
people  were  familiarised.  The  world  was  not  veiled  in 
darkness  to  the  pious  eye,  nor  were  the  sweets  of  life 
denied  to  him  who  would  walk  with  God.  That 
Judaism  pointed  onward  to  better  things  is  true ;  and 
so  far  it  awoke  aspirations,  longings,  desires,  which 
it  was  unable  f idly  to  satisfy.  But  God  was  always, 
even  under  it,  the  Redeemer  of  His  people.  His  people 
were  redeemed.  Their  highest  solemnities  spoke  of 
the  light  and  the  freedom  of  redemption.  Fasting  was 
only  preparatory  to  feasting.  "  The  joy  of  the  Lord  " 
was  Israel's  "  strength." 

4.  A  fourth  characteristic  of  the  feasts  of  which  wo 
speak  was  the  sanctifying  influence  shed  by  them,  while 
they  lasted,  upon  everything.  For  their  joy  was  not  a 
worldly  but  a  sacred  joy.  It  may  have  often  been  mis- 
directed, just  as  in  the  Christian  Church  itself,  but  a 
short  period  passed  before  in  Corinth  her  holiest  and 
most  joyful  solemnity  was  changed  by  many  into  a 
scene  of  gluttony  and  drunkenness  (1  Cor.  xi.  21).  But 
in  its  intention  it  was  certainly  religious.  The  whole 
time  during  which  the  feast  continued  was  set  apart  for 
God.  The  putting  away  of  leaven,  the  ablutions,  the 
cleansings,  the  rest  from  labour,  the  solemn  assemblies, 
the  greatly  increased  offerings  of  each  day,  all  testified 
to  the  fact  that  throughout  the  feast  God  was  felt  to 
bo  peculiarly  near.  The  liouse  or  the  booth  became  a 
sacred  dwelling,  the  family  a  sacred  family,  the  meal  a 
sacred  meal,  every  vessel  even  employed  in  the  house- 
hold a  sacred  vessel ;  and  hence  it  is  that  when  the 
prophet  Zeehariah  looks  onward  to  the  time  when  the 
enemies  of  Jerusalem  shall  go  up  from  year  to  year  to 
worsliip  the  King,  the  Lord  of  Hosts,  and  to  keep  the 
Feast  of  Tabernacles,  he  immediately  adds,  "  In  that  day 
shall  there  be  upon  the  bells  of  the  horses  Holiness 
UNTO  THE  LoED  :  yea,  every  pot  in  Jerusalem  and  in 
Judah  shall  be  holiness  imto  tlio  Lord  of  Hosts  "  (Zecli. 
xiv.  20,  21).  The  importance  of  such  a  lesson  to  a 
people,  so  many  of  whose  ordinances  of  worship  might 
seem  rather  likely  to  suggest  tlio  idea  of  a  much  more 
I  limited  sacredness,  might  seem  rather  likely  to  confine 
than  to  expand  the  cu-clo  of  holy  places  and  persons 
and  times  and  things,  to  a  people  not  yet  taught  the 
exalted  lesson  of  the  New  Testament,  "  Whether  there- 

1  LigbUoot  on  Jobn  vii.  38. 


fore  ye  eat  or  drink,  or  whatsoever  ye  do,  do  all  to  the 
glory  of  God,"  it  is  impossible  to  over-estimate.  Each 
of  these  festival  seasons  carried  the  sacredness  of  tho 
Sabbath,  to  a  certain  extent  at  least,  into  tho  days  of 
the  week  which  it  embraced.  Each,  therefore,  formed 
a  bright  spot  in  the  desert,  a  little  patch  of  green 
verdure  redeemed  from  the  wilderness  of  secular  days 
amidst  which  it  stood,  and  containing  in  it  the  fore- 
shadowing of  a  greener  and  brighter  future. 

5.  It  has  to  be  noticed  that  all  the  three  great 
feasts  were  national  festivals  celebrated  by  Israel  as 
one  whole,  and  intended  especially  to  impress  the  jieople 
\rith  the  feeling  that,  however  great  tho  niunber  of 
their  tribes,  these  tribes  were  one.  On  no  point  of 
His  arrangements  in  connection  with  them  does  the 
Almighty  seem  to  have  bestowed  greater  care.  It  was 
at  tho  sanctuary  alone  that  they  could  be  celebrated,  at 
the  great  centre  of  national  unity,  in  Jerusalem,  the  city 
in  which  all  were  equally  interested,  and  ■sriiere  He  who 
was  equally  the  God  of  all  had  taken  up  his  special  abode. 
"  ThoTi  mayest  not  sacrifice  the  Passover  within  any  of 
thy  gates  which  the  Lord  thy  God  giveth  thee ;  but  at 
the  place  which  the  Lord  thy  God  shall  choose  to  place 
his  name  in,  there  thou  shalt  sacrifice  the  Passover" 
(Dent.  x^^.  5,  6) ;  and  tho  command  is  given  in  similar 
terms  with  reference  to  Pentecost  and  Tabernacles 
(Deut.  xvi.  11 — -15).  For  the  same  reason  it  was  that 
all  tho  males  of  Israel  were  commanded  to  appear  three 
times  in  a  year  before  the  Lord  "  in  the  place  which  He 
should  choose"  i,Deut.  xvi.  16).  Even  the  more  sub- 
ordinate arrangements  of  the  festivals  tended  to  deepen 
the  same  thought.  The  one  sheaf  of  Easter,  the  two 
loaves  of  Pentecost,  were  waved  iu  the  name  of  the 
nation  and  not  of  individuals.  The  harvest  acknow- 
ledged and  dedicated  was  the  harvest  of  Israel  as  a 
whole,  and  not  that  of  the  individual  proprietors  of  the 
soil.  Everything  contributed  to  remind  the  people  that 
they  were  one. 

That  this  end  was  actually  attained  by  them  is 
evident  throughout  the  whole  history  of  Israel.  The 
Psalms  of  tho  Pilgrimages  already  spoken  of,  and 
proceeding  from  tho  very  heart  of  tho  people,  give 
striking  ei-idenco  of  the  fact ;  and  when  the  gathering 
pilgrims,  beholding  the  city  that  was  compact  together, 
saluted  it  with  the  joyfid  cry,  "  Peace  be  within  thy 
walls,  and  prosperity  within  thy  palaces,"  it  was  because 
they  saw  in  it  tho  city  to  which  "  the  tribes "  of  the 
Lord  went  up,  it  was  "  for  their  brethren  and  com- 
panions' sakes  "  that  they  said,  "  Peace  bo  within  thee  " 
(Ps.  cxxii.).  Of  all  the  ordinances  of  Israel,  in  short, 
none  exercised  a  more  powerful  effect  than  the  three 
great  yearly  feasts  in  attaching  the  different  tribes 
to  one  God,  one  sanctuary,  and  one  national  bond  of 
unity. 

6.  It  remains  for  us  only  to  observe  that  the  more 
general  aspects  of  the  feasts  of  Israel  now  spoken  of 
find,  like  the  more  particular  ones  already  referred  to 
in  previous  papers,  their  fulfilment  in  Chri.st  and  in 
His  people.  The  great  principle  to  bo  bonie  iu  mind  is 
that  we  arc  not  to  seek  this  fulfdmeut  iu  any  outward 


THE    PLAITTS    OF   THE    BIBLE. 


173 


ortliuances  or  institutions  of  tlie  Cliristiau  Church. 
That  Church  may  express  her  feehngs  in  sucli  seasons 
if  she  choose ;  experience  teaches  us  that  she  has  always 
done  it;  human  nature,  tliat  she  must  always  do  it. 
But  her  institutions  must  flow  from  her  own  free  spirit ; 
they  must  not  be  looked  on  as  consummations  of  Jewish 
shadows ;  and  they  must  bo  used  only  as  means  for 
helping  her  to  preserve  that  spirit  which  is  higher  than 
them  all.  It  is  in  spiritual  and  abiding  realities  alone, 
first  in  the  life  and  spirit  of  Christ,  secondly  in  the  life 
and  spirit  of  His  people,  the  members  of  that  one  body 
of  which  He  is  head,  that  the  feasts  of  Israel  find 
their  fulfilment  now. 

Life  in  Christ  is  a  life  lived  under  tho  power  of  two 
great  truths,  first,  "  We  are  not  our  own ; "  secondly, 
'■  All  things  shall  woi'k  together  for  our  good."  Again, 
it  is  one  in  which,  cleansing  ourselves  by  the  help  of 
Divine  grace  from  all  sin,  we  receive  the  gift  of  tho 
Spirit,  and  dispense  it  to  all  around  us  who  are  faint 
and  weary.  Still  further,  it  is  a  life  of  progress, 
although  of  progress  not  so  much  in  kind  as  in  degree. 
The  same  influences  are  at  work  from  the  beginning, 
but  each  experience  of  them  becomes  a  ground  uiJon 
which  they  who  are  partakers  of  the  Christian  life  ask 
for  more,  and,  having  obtained  more,  apply  it  more 
fully  and  more  faitlifully,  till  from  them,  as  from  tho 
temple  of  God,  there  rushes  forth  that  stream  of  life 
which  vridens  and  deejiens  as  it  flows,  making  tho 
solitary  places  to  be  glad  for  it,  and  tho  wOdernoss  to 
rejoice  and  blossom.  Nor  is  this  all ;  for,  as  the  three 
annual  feasts  of  Israel  were  seasons  of  the  liveliest  joy, 
so  is  that  Christian  life  in  which  they  are  fulfilled  to 
be  marked  by  a  joy  that  is  abiding.  Each  Christian, 
indeed,  may  not  be  able  always  to  rejoice.  There  come 
in  the  experience  of  the  individual  times  of  sorrow  as 
well  as  of  gladness,  when  it  would  be  imnatural  not  to 
weep.     But  the  Church  of  Christ  as  a  whole  ought 


ever  to  have  on  hor  wedding  garment,  ought  over  to  be 
celebrating  her  feast.  For  her,  too,  all  things  are  sanc- 
tified. The  sanctifying  influences  of  the  feasts  of  old 
are  fulfilled  in  the  hearts  of  Christians,  and  "  out  of  tho 
heart  are  the  issues  of  life."  To  the  Christian  nothing 
is  common.  Joy  and  sorrow,  earth  and  sky,  solitary 
hours  and  the  social  table,  all  are  sacred,  because  in  the 
deep  recesses  of  his  heart  he  is  keeping  his  festival  and 
singing  its  songs.  Finally,  in  the  fulfilled  Christian 
life  aU  the  followers  of  Christ  are  one.  Redeemed  by 
one  sacrifice,  called  to  the  same  holiness,  enjoying  tho 
same  Divine  protection,  partakers  of  the  same  Spirit 
wherewitli  to  renew  themselves  and  to  convert  the 
world,  they  ought  to  be  in  constant  unity  with  one 
another.  Not  in  outward  denominations  but  in  Christ 
they  are  one.  Their  unity  is  a  "  unity  of  tho  Spirit  in 
the  bond  of  peace." 

Never  until  these  characteristics  of  tho  old  feasts 
of  Israel  are  thus  fulfilled  in  Christian  men  are  they 
taking  into  their  lives  tho  influences  of  the  blessed 
dispensation  under  which  they  live,  as  the  Israelite 
took  into  his  the  influences  of  the  Passover,  foUowed 
by  the  feasts  of  Unleavened  Bread,  of  Pentecost,  and 
of  Tabernacles.  But  when  they  are  fidfilled,  then  we 
shall  see  tho  fulfilment  of  all  that  brought  up  the  people 
of  God  under  tho  earlier  dispensation  three  times  in 
the  year  to  Jerusalem.  Then  shall  tho  followers  of 
Jesus  be  always  in  the  sacred  city  and  at  tlie  joyfid 
feast.  They  shall  not  only  bo  "  the  chosen  generation, 
the  royal  priesthood,  the  holy  nation,  tho  peculiar 
people,"  but  they  shall  bo  that  people  in  the  moment 
of  their  liighest  aud  most  heart-stirring  solemnities. 
They  shall  sing  a  constant  hallelujah.  Their  palms 
and  myrtles  shall  bo  ever  green.  They  shall  reap  and 
dedicate  a  constant  harvest,  where  they  shall  have  not 
only  all  that  is  needed  to  sustain  life,  but  all  that  can 
elevate  and  cheer  and  brighten  it,  world  without  end. 


THE  PLAINTS   OF   THE  BIBLE. 

OEDEE    XVI. — TAMAEISCINE.S. 
ET  W.    CAEEUTHEES,    F.E.S.,  KEEPER   OF   THE   BOTAUICAL   DEPAKTMENT,   BRITISH  MUSEUM. 


fHE  Tamarisks  are  slirubs  or  trees  with 
erect  slender  branches,  densely  covered 
with  very  small  scale-like  leaves.  They 
havo  somewhat  the  appearance  of  tho 
cypress,  and  are  often  mistaken  by  hasty  observers 
for  coniferous  plants.  Tho  numerous  small  flowers 
are  borne  in  catkin-like  spikes  at  or  near  the  tips  of  the 
branches,  and  cover  tho  plant,  when  the  flowers  are 
open,  with  a  mass  of  white  or  rose  colour,  which  almost 
hides  from  view  the  bright  green  of  the  foliage.  The 
plants  of  the  order  are  exclusively  confined  to  tho  tempe- 
rate and  warm  countries  of  tho  northern  hemisphere,  and 
usually  grow  by  the  sea-side,  but  are  also  mot  with  on 
the  margins  of  rivers  and  in  arid  plains.  The  basin  of 
tho  Mediterranean  is  their  head-quarters. 


The  indigenous  vegetation  of  England  has  no  repre- 
sentative of  tho  order,  but  one  species  {Tamarix  gallica, 
Linn.)  has  so '  thoroughly  established  itself  on  our 
southern  shores,  that  it  grows  there  as  if  it  were  wild. 
It  has,  however,  in  all  cases  been  introduced,  iLivin" 
been  planted  as  an  ornamental  shrub  or  as  a  hedge. 
Four  species  of  Tamarisk  occur  in  Palestine ;  two  of 
them  often  attain  a  considerable  size  as  trees.  In  some 
localities  they  exist  in  such  abundance  as  to  givo  a 
marked  character  to  tho  landscajjo.  A  small  shrub 
{Reamnuria  Palcestina,  Boiss.),  belonging  to  the  samo 
order,  is  found  on  tho  borders  of  the  Dead  Sea ;  it 
is  very  different  from  the  tamarisk  in  appearance,  and 
especially  in  having  large  solitary  flowers. 

Tho  tamai-isk  aud  its  products  were  much  valued  by 


174. 


THE  BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


the  Arabs ;  their  great  physician,  Ai-icenna,  in  his  Sys- 
tem of  Medicine,  reijeatedly  dilates  upon  it,  and  recom- 
mends its  different  parts,  as  well  as  the  astringent  galls 
which  are  often  found  on  it,  as  valuable  metUcines.  The 
wood  is  much  esteemed  for  making  vessels,  because  of 
its  compactness  and  durability ;  and  the  charcoal  pro- 
duced from  it  is  so  much  prized  that  in  some  districts 
the  Ai-abs  have  almost  if  not  entirely  extirpated  the 
tree  in  order  to  convert  its  wood  into  charcoal.  The 
young  leaves  are  a  favom-ite  food  of  camels  and  sheop. 
Although  no  reference  is  made  in  our  English  Bibles 
to  the  tamariok,  it  is  generally  believed  that  eshel  (.ViiN), 
which  occurs  in  three  passages  in  Scripture,  refers  to 
this  tree.  In  one  x^lace  it  is  rendered  "  grove."  Abraham, 
desiring  to  leave  a  permanent  record  of  the  covenant 
which  he  made  with  Abimelech,  selecting  this  hardy 
evergreen,  "  planted  a  grove  (a,  tamarisk-tree)  in  Boer- 
sheba"  (Gen.  xxi.  33).  In  the  two  other  passages,  the 
translators  employ  the  general  term  ' '  tree. ' '  Wlion  Saul 
was  seeking  the  life  of  Da's'id,  whom  lie  had  driven  into 
exile,  he  had  his  warriors  and  councillors  with  1dm  under 
a  tamarisk-tree  in  a  place  near  his  native  town,  where 
he  probably  administered  justice,  as  Deborah  did  long 
before  under  a  palm-tree  in  the  same  district  (see  Judg. 
iv.  5).  "  Said  abode  in  Gibeah  imdor  a  (tamarisk)  tree 
in  Ramah,  having  a  spear  in  his  hand,  and  all  his 
servants  were  standing  about  him  "  (1  Sam.  xxii.  6). 
Ramah  was  not  far  from  Gibea!i,but  it  is  probable  that, 
as  in  another  passage,  the  word  should  be  here  trans- 
lated, and  not  treated  as  a  pi-oj)er  name.  It  woidd  thus 
read  that  "  Saiil  abode  in  Gibeah  under  the  tamarisk  on 
the  high  place,''  ha«ng  chosen  this  suitable  position  for 
his  tent.  When,  after  the  disastrous,  and  to  Saul  fatal, 
battle  vrith  the  Philistiues  on  the  plain  of  Esilraelon, 
the  men  of  Jabesh-gilead  valiantly  carried  ofl:  the  bodies 
of  Said  and  his  three  sons  from  the  walls  of  Beth-shan, 
and  burnt  them  at  Gilcad,  ''  they  took  the  bones  and 
buried  them  under  a  tree  at  Jabesli ;  "  or  rather  "  under 
the  tamarisk,"  referring  to  a  particular  tree  stiU  stand- 
ing and  well  known  at  the  time  when  the  history  was 
written  (1  Sam.  xxxi.  13). 

The  identification  of  the  Hebrew  eshel  with  the 
tamarisk  rests  chiefly  on  the  resemblance  between  that 
word  and  the  Arabic  name  {athle  or  asul]  for  the 
tree.  This  is  confirmed  by  the  consideration  that  the 
tree  is  suited  to  the  context  ia  the  three  passages  re- 
ferred to.  Recent  travellers  have  noticed  the  abundauco 
of  the  tamarisk  at  Beer-shcba,  where  Abraham  planted 
one,  as  well  as  the  fitness  of  the  tree  to  that  arid  desert 
region. 

The  tamarisk  has  stiU  greater  interest  to  the  Bible 
student,  because  of  the  connection  which  many  maintain 
it  had  with  the  manna  on  which  God  fed  the  Jews 
daring  their  wanderings  in  the  desert.  Six  days  after 
leaving  Egj'pt  they  arrived  at  the  Wilderness  of  Sin ; 
here  they  murmured  against  Moses  for  bringing  them 
from  Egypt  to  die  of  hunger  m  the  wilderness.  God, 
through  Moses,  promised  to  rain  bread  from  heaven  for 
[heir  use ;  and  until  they  ate  of  the  old  corn  at  GUgal 
forty  years  afterwards,  the  wilderness  around  then-  camp 


was  covered  each  morning,  except  that  of  the  Sabbath, 
with  this  bread  which  the  Lord  gave  them. 

When  the  moi-ning  sun  had  dispelled  the  dew,  the 
Israelites  found  a  substance  on  the  ground,  small  as 
the  hoai-- frost,  round  like  coriander-seed,  and  white  like 
bdellium.  Its  taste  was  like  that  of  oil  newly  expressed 
from  the  olive,  or  of  wafers  made  with  honey.  It  was 
gathered  in  the  morning,  for  when  the  sun  waxed  hot 
it  melted ;  an  omcr  (about  three  English  quarts)  was 
taken  for  each  individual,  but  on  the  morning  of  the 
sixth  day  two  omers  were  collected,  and  what  remained 
over  tin  the  seventh  day  was  good,  whUe  any  that  might 
have  been  kept  over  on  the  other  days  of  the  week  bred 
worms  and  putrefiod  in  the  mornmg.  It  was  treated 
like  com,  being  ground  in  mills  or  pounded  in  the 
mortar,  and  was  boiled,  baked  in  pans,  or  made  into 
cakes.  When  the  Israelites  first  saw  it  they  called  it 
)iia)(  (ja),  rendered  "manna"  in  our  Authorised  Ver.sion. 
The  difficulties  experienced  by  the  translators  in  dealing 
with  this  word  are  shown  by  their  giving  three  different 
iutei-prctations  of  it.  These  three  roadmgs  still  repre- 
sent the  different  opinions  entertained  regarding  the 
nature  of  the  word.  The  marginal  reading,  "  they 
said,  It  is  a  jjortion,"  is  that  adopted  by  Buxtorf  and 
others  who  derive  the  word  from  the  verb  mdnndJi, 
(nsD),  meaning  "to  appoint  or  prepare."  They  adduce 
in  support  of  this  view  a  passage  from  the  axiocryphal 
Wisdom  of  Solomon,  where  the  author,  in  speaking 
of  the  manna,  says,  God  did  "  send  tliem  fi-om  heaven 
bread  pre^^arcd  without  their  labour."  The  second 
marginal  reading,  "  They  said,  What  is  this  ?  "  repre- 
sents the  oldest  and  most  generally  accepted  view  of  the 
origin  of  the  name.  According  to  this  view,  the  fu'st 
syllable  of  "m.anna"  is  supposed  to  be  the  word  man,  the 
neuter  form  of  the  pronoun  what,  and  the  second  syllable 
is  a  corruption  of  li  u,  the  pronomi  this,  the  whole  word 
being  the  inquiry,  "Wliat  is  this?"  This  interpretation 
is  that  of  the  Septuagint,  where  the  verso  is  I'cudercd, 
"But  the  children  of  Israel,  seeuig  it,  said  one  to 
another,  Wliat  is  this  ?  (t/  (Vti  toCto).  for  they  knew  not 
what  it  was."  The  Vulgute  has  the  same  rendering, 
including  in  the  text  the  Hebrew  words  as  well  as  their 
meaning.  Thus,  "  They  said,  Man  hu,  which  means. 
What  is  this  ?  "  Josephus  also,  in  referring  to  the 
manna,  gives  this  as  the  etymology  of  the  word.  This 
ancient  opinion  is  that  generally  accepted,  and  it  ob- 
viously gives  a  natural  explanation  of  the  exclamation 
of  the  Jews  on  seeing  for  the  first  time  the  bread  of 
heaven.  Nevertheless,  the  third  reading,  which  the 
translators  of  our  Authorised  Yersiou  preferring,  placed 
in  the  text,  appears  from  recent  discovery  to  be  correct, 
although  it  seems  as  if  a  plain  contradiction  were  in- 
troduced by  making  the  Israelites  give  a  name  to  a 
substance  which  was  unknown  to  them.  Rashban  sug- 
gested that  the  word  man  was  probably  of  Eg_^i)iiau 
origin ;  and  this  suggestion  has  been  establishi.'d  '«y 
Brugsch  discovering  the  word  in  a  list  of  articles 
contained  in  a  basket  of  oblations  at  Appolouopolis. 
The  other  objects  are  cither  vegetables  or  vegetable 
products.      The  portion  referring  to   the  manna   has 


THE    PLANTS  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


175 


been  translated  for  me  by  my  colleague,  Dr.  Birch, 
the  Egyptologist,  and  is  as  follows  : — "  There  is  white 
manna,  it  is  considered  a  balsam ;  amaeheri-tree  is  its 
name ;  its  colour  is  like  crystal."  This  short  descrip- 
tion may  refer  to  carefully- collected  specimens  of  tarfa 
manna,  as  Brugsch  suggests,  uotwithstantllng  it  is 
called  a  balsam,  for  Dr.  Birch  informs  mo  that  balsam 
included  sweet-tasting  as  weU  as  sweet-smelling  sub- 
stances. This  Egyptian  word  is  obviously  identical 
with  the  Hebrew  man  and  the  Arabic  mann,  and  whether 
the  Egyptian  manna  was  the  produce  of  tlie  tamarisk 
or  not,  the  Israelites  recognised  in  this  material  cover- 
ing the  wilderness  a  resemblance  to  it,  and  exclaimed 
one  to  another,  Tins  is  the  manna  (of  Egypt),  for  they 
know  not  what  it  was  ;  but  Moses  corrected  the  error 
into  whicli  they  fell,  telling  them  that  it  was  not  Egyp- 
tian mauua,  but  the  bread  which  the  Lord  liad  given 
them,  which  neither  they  nor  tlieir  fathers  knew  any- 
thing of  (Deut.  viii.  3). 

The  substance  now  called  mamia  is  the  saccharine 
juice  of  diiferent  plants  which  exudes  through  the  bark 
when  injured,  and  is  prodxiced  generally  in  greatest 
abundance  in  very  warm  weather.  In  some  cases 
the  sweet  juice  escapes  through  a  natural  rupture  in 
the  bark  of  the  plant,  iu  others  its  production  is  induced 
by  the  punctures  of  an  insect,  while  in  others  it  flows 
through  incisions  made  in  the  bark  for  the  pm-pose  of 
obtaining  it.  The  manna  of  the  shops  is  obtained 
by  the  last  method  from  the  flowering  or  manna  ash, 
a  tree  belonging  to  the  Meditei-rauean  region,  and  cul- 
tivated iu  Calabria  for  the  production  of  this  substance. 
The  common  larch,  an  Oriental  oak,  an  Australian  gum- 
tree,  the  camel's  thorn,  the  tamarisk,  and  some  other 
plants  produce  simOar  sweet  juices  which  are  also  called 
mannas.  Some  of  these  substances  consist  wliolly  of 
mucilaginous  uncrystallisable  sugar,  while  otliers,  like 
that  of  the  flowering  ash,  contain  besides  a  considerable 
proportion  of  a  crystallisable  sugar  called  maunite. 
From  their  composition  it  is  obvious  that  all  the  mannas 
must  melt  imder  heat  and  dissolve  in  water.  They  are 
employed  either  as  condiments  or  as  medicines,  from 
the  possession  of  slight  medicinal  qualities. 

Tho  conditions  under  which  "  the  bread  of  heaven  "' 
was  foimd  and  the  properties  it  possessed  wore  very 
diiferent  from  those  of  any  of  tho  known  mannas. 
It  was  found  covering  thg  sm-faco  of  tho  wilderness 
wherever  the  Israelites  went,  as  soon  as  the  heavy  night 
dews  disappeared,  and  not  on  or  under  tho  two  mauna- 
producing  plants  of  the  wilderness,  the  tamarisk-tree  or 
the  camel's  thorn.  It  was  supplied,  not  in  small  quan- 
tities, but  iu  inexhaustible  profusion.  It  was  foimd 
every  morning  all  the  year  roimd  for  forty  years,  except 
on  the  morning  of  each  seventh  day,  when  tlio  supply 
was  completely  suspended.  It  was  prepared  for  use 
by  processes  which  could  not  be  applied  to  saccliarine 
substances,  being  ground  iu  a  mill  and  afterwards 
boiled  or  baked.  It  was  not  used  as  a  condiment,  but 
formed  the  food  of  tlie  hosts  of  Israel  aU  through  the 
wilderness.  Maunas  are  preserved  without  difficidty, 
but  this  substance  very  speedily  decayed,  putrefying  and 


breeding  worms  if  kept  more  than  twenty-fom-  hours  ; 
and  yet  this  property  was  suspended  once  every  week 
in  respect  of  the  Sabbath  supply.  Every  day,  when 
the  sun  waxed  hot,  it  melted  and  evaporated,  leaving 
tlie  face  of  the  vrildemess  without  any  indication  of  its 
recent  presence ;  but  mannas  do  not  evaporate. 

As  long  as  tho  superstition  regarding  manna  pre- 
vailed, there  was  some  justification  for  seeing  iu  one  or 
other  of  them  the  very  material  on  which  the  children 
of  Israel  subsisted  in  tho  wilderness.  These  super- 
stitions, which  even  recently  i^assed  for  science,  were 
obviously  drawn  mora  from  the  Bible  narrative,  from 
tradition,  or  from  the  imagination  of  the  travellers, 
than  from  observation.  Avicenna  thus  describes  it: 
"  Manna  is  a  dew  which  falls  on  stones  and  vegetables, 
has  a  sweet  taste,  is  either  of  the  consistence  of  honey 
or  hardened  into  grains."  Rosenmidler,  in  his  Botany 
of  the  BMe,  quotes  Pliny's  account  that  at  the  season 
when  the  Pleiades  rise,  honey  falls  from  the  air  about 
daybreak,  bedewing  the  leaves  of  the  trees,  and  covering 
the  clothes  and  hair  of  any  one  who  is  out  at  an  e.irly 
hour  with  unctuous  matter,  and  then  adds,  "  This  is 
substantially  confu-med  by  modem  observers.  Pabri 
mentions,  that  iu  his  journey  through  Arabia  Petrtea, 
he  found  the  dew  quite  sweet.  Shaw  remarks  that,  as 
lie  was  riding  one  night  in  Palestine,  his  saddle  and 
bridle  were  covered  with  a  clammy  dew.  Porskal  was 
told  by  the  monks  of  Tor  that  manna  falls  on  tlie  roof 
of  tlieir  convent.  Broitonbach  says  it  falls  in  the  district 
of  Sinai  iu  August  and  September,  resembles  when 
fresh  the  hoar-frost  and  dew,  and  hangs  in  drops  on  the 
leaves,  twigs,  and  stems.  When  it  is  gathered,  it  runs 
together  like  pitch,  but  melts  over  the  fire  and  in  the 
heat  of  the  sun ;  its  taste  is  like  that  of  honey,  and 
when  eaten,  it  adheres  to  the  teeth  "  (Engl.  Edition, 
p.  320). 

The  progress  of  scientific  discovery,  and  tke  more 
careful  observations  of  recent  travellers,  have  established 
that  these  stories  are  almost  entu-ely  erroneous.  Never- 
theless, the  notion  that  tho  desert  food  of  tho  Israelites 
was  some  accommodation  of  a  vegetable  substance 
common  in  the  wilderness,  has  stiU  its  advocates.  But 
in  attempting  in  this  way  to  explain  by  natural  means 
the  heaven-sent  supply,  these  critics  introduce  gi-eater 
difficulties  than  any  suggested  in  the  simple  narrative 
of  the  miracle  by  which  the  chosen  people  of  God  were 
preserved  in  their  long  journey  through  the  desert. 
Apart  from  tho  difficulties  suggested  by  tho  considera- 
tion of  tlie  changes  required  to  be  wrought  in  tho  nature 
and  properties  of  the  natural  manna,  it  is  simply  im- 
possible to  conceive  of  tho  actual  existence  of  f(ivests  of 
tamarisk  or  camel's  thorn  sufficiently  extensive  to  pro- 
vide so  immense  a  supply  of  manna  as  2,150,000  pounds 
a  day,  the  quantity  required  to  give  an  omer  to  each 
Jew,  and  to  provide  tliis  quantity  daily  for  forty  years. 
The  whole  annual  produce  of  the  tamarisks  of  the  Sinaitic 
peninsula  is  not  more  than  600  or  700  pounds  even  in 
the  most  favourable  years;  so  that  tho  quantity  collected 
in  one  day  by  the  Israelites  is  more  than  tho  Ar.ibs  could 
have  collected  in  the  3,300  years  that  have  passed  since 


176 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


tho  Exodus,  eren  at  the 
i-ate  of  tlie  most  favoui-ablo 
annual  in-oduction. 

Three  soiirces  have  been 
suggested  by  different  au- 
thors as  yielding  a  natiiral 
supply  of  manna  for  the 
Israelites.  1.  A  species 
of  lieheu  (iecawora  escu- 
lenta),  found  iu  Eastern 
deserts  and  mountains, 
and  which  supplies  the 
nomadic  tribes  of  the 
Asiatic  steppes  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  Cau- 
casus with  a  certain  amount 
of  food,  although  it  is  in- 
sipid and  not  very  nutri- 
tious. Thoy  call  it  manna, 
jtnd  consider  that  it  comes 
to  them  from  Leaven. 
These  small  plants  are, 
according  to  Pallas,  un- 
attached to  the  ground 
throughout  their  whole 
life.  Great  quantities  of 
them  are  sometimes  taken 
lip  by  tho  wind,  and  when 
they  fall,  often  at  a  dis- 
tance   from    where    tliey 

grew,thcy  cover  tho  groimd 
with    small    greyish   or 

wliitish  irregularly-shaped 
lumps  from  the  size  of  a 
pea  to  that  of  a  hazel-nut. 

Parrot     says    tliat    theso 

*'  rains   of    manna  "  have 

been  knowTi  to  cover  the 

ground  in   some  districts 

in  Persia  to  tho  depth  of 

five  or  six  inelios.     They 

are  occasionally  seen  in  all 

the  countries  around  the 

Mediterranean    from 

Algiers  to   Turkey ;    and 

as  the   tripe  de  roche,  a 

lichen  of  northern  regions, 

has  sometimes   preserved 

for  weeks  or  mouths  the 

lives     of     companies     of 

Arctic    explorers    led  by 

Franklin    and  others,    so 

this   plant   has   added  to 

the  scanty  food-supplies  of 

tho    inhabitants   of  these 

desert    regions.      2.   The 

sweet  tasto  ascribed  to  the 

"  l)rcad  from  heaven''  has  led  autliors  to  refer  it  to  the 

manna  of  either  the  camel's  thorn  or  the  tamarisk.   Tho 

■camel's  thorn  is  a  spiny  shrub  with  clusters  of  pea-liko 


Tamnrix  mannifem,  Elirenb.  Tlie 
(Geu.  xxii.  33).  A  branch,  w 
natur.ll  size. 


flowers,  common  iu  the 
wilderness  to  the  south  of 
Palestine.  The  sugary 
exudation  from  its  leaves 
and  Ijranches  is  called  Per- 
sian manna.  So  satisfied 
was  Don  that  this  was  the 
plant  which  produced  the 
manna  of  the  Israelites, 
that  ho  proposed  to  alter 
tlio  technical  name  of  tho 
plant  from  Alharji  Mauro- 
rum  to  Manna  Hehraica. 
3.  Tho  tamarisk  or  tarfa 
bush  of  the  Arabs  is  an 
evergreen  shrub  or  tree 
with  slender  branches 
clothed  with  minute  leaves. 
In  many  places  it  forms 
the  chief  vegetation  of  the 
desert.  Josephus  first  sug- 
gested tliat  this  plant  was 
the  source  of  tho  mauna. 
Ehrenberg  has  distin- 
guished the  plant  of  tho 
Sinai  peninsula  as  a  dis- 
tinct species,  and  given  to 
it  the  name  of  Tamarix 
mannifcra.  The  tarfa 
manna  is  collected  by  the 
Arabs  iu  May  and  June. 
They  roughly  cleanse  it 
from  impurities  in  collect- 
ing it ;  it  is  afterwards 
dissolved  in  hot  water, 
strained  tlirough  a  coarse 
cloth,  and  boiled  down  till 
it  forms  atliick  syi-up.  It 
is  used  as  a  condiment, 
being  spread  like  honey  on 
bread ;  it  is  sweet  with  a 
slight  aromatic  flavour. 

Wherever  tho  manna  is 
referred  to  iu  Scripture, 
it  is  invariably  regarded 
as  a  miraculous  food  sent 
directly  from  God.  The 
Lord  Jesus,  when  he  ac- 
cepted the  manna  as  a 
t)-po  of  himself— tho  firing 
bread  which  came  down 
from  licaven — corrects  tho 
error  of  those  who,  in  seek- 
ing a  sign  from  him,  insi- 
nuated that  the  bread  from 
heaven  given  by  Moses,  by 
which  he  secured  the  con- 

!  fidenco  of  tlieir  fathers,  was  a  greater  miracle  than  the 
feeding  of  the  five  thousand,  and  sa3's  that  it  was  tho 

1  gift  of  God  and  not  of  Hoses.    We  are  led  to  the  same 


tamarisk  of  tbe  Sinatic  peninsula 
itU  many  clusters  of  llowcrs,  tho 


EASTERN   GEOGRAPHY   0¥   THE  BIBLE. 


177 


conclusiou  by  comparing  its  properties  and  amount, 
and  the  manner  of  its  occurrence  with  what  is  known  of 
■tho  natural  mannas,  and  we  must  regret  all  attempts  to 
identify  the  "  corn  of  heaven  "  with  any  of  them.  Yet 
•we  have  no  doubt  tliat  this  wilderness-food  so  closely 
resembled  in  general  appearance  tho  Egj-ptian  manna  as 
to  justify  the  name  given  to  it  by  those  who  first  saw  it. 
In  tho  same  way  emigrants  apply  names  of  familiar  home 
plants  to  tho  strange  trees  and  plants  they  meet  with, 
because  of  some  observed  resemblance,  though  they  are 
widely  removed  from  each  other  in  scientific  characters. 
The  adopting  a  manna-like  appearance  for  tho  miracu- 
lous food  is  in  accordance  with  tho  general  plan  of  God's 
miracles,  as  recorded  in  his  Word.  For  example,  the 
Lord  Jesus  did  not  bring  bread  from  heaven  to  feed 
the  hungering  niultitndes  on  tho  green  slopes  of  the 
Sea  of  Galilee,  but  employed  the  loaves  and  fishes  which 
•were  the  common  food  of  the  country,  and  by  miracu- 


lously increasing  the  small  supply  found  iu  tho  posses- 
sion of  ouo  in  the  company,  made  it  sufficient  for  all. 
So  when  His  jjeoplo  hungered  for  flesh  in  tho  desert, 
God  sent  them  quails,  migrating  birds  which  occasion- 
ally passed  in  flocks  over  tho  wildei-ness  ;  and  when  they 
wanted  bread,  in  full  keeping  also  with  the  locality,  God 
gave  them "'  manna,"  as  if  Ho  were  only  multiplying  the 
natural  product  of  the  wilderness. 

An  omcr  of  manna  was  taken  by  Aaron  in  accordanco 
with  Di\-ino  instruction,  and  placed  in  a  golden  pot,  to 
be  preserved  as  an  abiding  memorial  of  God's  care  of 
his  people.  The  pot  was  placed  with  Aaron's  rod 
inside  the  ark,  which  held  the  tables  of  tho  law  (Heb. 
is.  4).  It  would  seem,  however,  that  when  Solomon 
removed  tho  ark  of  the  covenant  from  Zion  to  the 
Temple,  the  pot  of  manna  had  been  lost,  for  it  is  parti- 
cularly specified  that  then  there  was  nothing  \vithiu  the 
ark  but  tho  two  tables  of  stone  (1  Kings  viii.  9). 


EASTERN  GEOGEAPHY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 

ST  THE   EEV.   H.   W.   PHILLOTT,   M.A.,   EEOTOB  OP   STAUNTON- ON- WTE,   ANU   PKJELEOTOB   OF   HEREFOKD   CATHEDRAL. 


BABYLON  (continued). 
'HETHER,  in  considering  tho  ancient  ac- 
counts of  Babylon,  we  adopt  the  larger  or 
the  smaller  dimensions  given  by  them  to 
denote  extent,  the  size  of  tho  city,  and  tho 
inagnitude  of  its  fortifications,  in  either  case  they  repre- 
sent both  of  them  as  being  enormous :  aro  they  altogether 
incredible  ?  I.  As  to  tho  number  of  men  employed  in 
the  building.  1.  Diodorus,  from  Ctesias,  has  told  us 
that  2,000,000  persons  were  collected  for  the  building. 
Assuming  those  figures  to  be  not  far  from  tho  truth, 
■can  wo  quote  any  case  of  parallel  or  approximate  num- 
bers ?  2.  Herodotus,  in  his  account  of  the  great  Pyramid 
of  Egypt,  says  that  100,000  men  wero  employed  on  it 
and  the  works  connected  with  it  during  twenty  years. 
Diodorus  gives  tho  number  so  employed  at  360,000 
(Herod,  ii.  124  ;  Diod.  i.  63).  3.  We  read  in  the  Book  of 
Kings  that  Solomon  employed  150,000  men  in  his  great 
architectural  works  besides  3,300  overlookers  (1  Kings 
v.  14,  16).  In  statements  of  numbers  derived  from 
ancient  MSS.  exact  accuracy  cannot  always  be  relied  on  ; 
but  the  evidence  furnished  indirectly  by  the  figures  on 
Egyptian  and  Assyrian  monuments,  as  well  as  that  which 
is  supplied  on  a  smaller  scale  by  the  operations  of  Eastern 
travellers  in  removing  statues  and  stono  slabs,  informs 
ns  of  the  manner  in  which  mere  human  labour  has  been 
and  is  still  employed  in  the  East  for  purposes  which 
■amongst  ourselves  are  effected  by  mechanical  contrivance 
■with  very  much  fewer  men.  II.  As  to  the  size  of  the 
city.  Strabo  tells  us  that  Babylon  was  much  smaller 
than  Nineveh.  Compared  with  some  other  cities,  how 
do  its  dimensions  stand  ?  Its  area  at  the  rate  given  by 
Herodotus  must  have  been  about  170  square  miles ;  at 
the  rate  of  Ctesias,  106i  square  miles.  This  difference 
may  perhaps  be  reconciled  by  supposing  that  the  larger 
area  denoted  the  space  included  by  the  outer  wall,  and  the 
36— VOL.  II. 


smaller  that  by  the  inner  one ;  but  in  this  case  there  must 
have  been  a  distance  between  the  walls,  not,  as  Diodorus 
Bays,  of  two  plethra  (200  feet),  but  of  fifteen  stadia,  or 
nearly  I5  mOe.  If  we  adopt  the  larger  area,  we  shall 
be  able  to  include  within  the  limits  of  the  city  the  Birs 
Nimroud;  but  {a)  it  seems  more  likely  that  this  building 
stands  on  the  site  of  Borsipiia,  already  mentioned  as  a 
separate  place,  and  (6)  the  whole  area,  according  to  M. 
Oppert's  calculations,  would  cover  as  much  ground  as 
tho  entire  department  of  the  Seine,  a  good  deal  moro 
than  five  times  the  area  of  Paris  in  1869,  more  than 
one-third  more  than  that  of  London  in  1870,  and  would 
be  much  more  than  three  times  the  size  of  Poking.' 
At  the  smaller  rate,  Babylon  would  have  been  more 
than  three  times  the  size  of  Paris  in  1869,  less  by  about 
one-eighth  than  London  in  1870,  and  about  twice  as 
largo  as  Poking. 

Are  these  dimensions  incredible  ?  We  may  reply  that 
they  are  very  vast  and  extraordinary  ;  but  that  with  the 
explanation  afforded  by  Diodorus  and  Curtius  of  a  space 
only  very  partially  inhabited,  and  throughout  the  re- 
mainder occupied  by  cultivation,  as  is  tho  case  in  many 
Oriental  cities,  they  are  not  beyond  belief.  But  what 
are  we  to  say  of  the  walls  ?  Taking  the  measures  given 
by  Herodotus,  we  have  a  wall  moro  than  56  miles  long, 
200  royal  cubits  high,  and  50  cubits  wide,  built  of  bricks 
made  from  earth  taken  out  of  tho  adjoining  ditch- 
Hence  the  solid  contents  of  tho  wall  and  of  the  ditch 
must  have  been  nearly  tho  same.  But  what  was  a  royal 
cubit  ?  Herodotus,  followed  by  Pliny,  says  expressly 
that  it  exceeded  the  common  cubit  by  three  fingers' 
breadth.  Reckoning  the  common  cubit  at  20  inches 
and  the  royal  cubit  at  22'4  inches,  we  shall  obtain  a 

'  Area  of  Paris  in  1869,  30  square  miles ;  of  London  in  1870,  122 
square  miles  ;  Peking  about  25  miles  iu  circumference,  perhaps  about 
50  square  miles  in  area. 


178 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


masimiim  height  of  373-3  feet,  and  a  miuimum  of  333-3 
feet.  The  width  was  50  cubits,  i.e.  eithei-  83-3  or  93-3 
feet.  In  other  -ivords,  wo  have  to  imagine  a  wall  55 
miles  long,  83  or  93  feet  tliick,  and  throughout  its 
whole  length  either  14  feet  higher  than  the  top  of  St. 
Paul's  Cathedral,  or  at  least  only  about  27  feet  lower 
than  it.  The  solid  contents  of  such  a  wall  would  bo 
not  far  from  119,000,000  cubic  yards,  and  if  all  the 
material  camo  out  of  the  ditch,  the  ditch  itself  would 
contain  about  2  !■, 000,000  more  cubic  yards  than  the 
Suez  Canal,  which  took  thirteen  years  to  construct, 
and  for  which  almost  96,000,000  yards  of  soil  had 
to  be  excavated.  Nor  was  this  enormous  wall  with 
its  ditch  the  only  defence  of  Babylon,  for  witliin  it 
Herodotus  says  there  was  another  wall,  not  much 
inferior  in  size  to  the  first.  It  is  hardly  worth  while  to 
discuss  formally  the  credibility  of  these  statements. 
The  general  accuracy  of  Herodotus  and  Lis  anxiety  for 
truth  cannot  be  doubted  ;  but  dimensions  so  enormous, 
and,  we  may  add,  so  useless  in  themselves  as  these,  can 
hardly  be  accepted  as  true.  But  wo  find  him  to  have 
been  greatly  mistaken  in  another  case  of  measurement, 
in  wliich  he  tells  us  that  the  stones  of  the  Great  Pyramid 
of  Egypt  were  none  of  them  less  tlian  thirty  feet  long, 
-whereas  none  of  them  are  found  to  exceed  nine  feet 
in  length  (Herod,  ii.  124;  Long,  JSgypt.  Antiq.,  ii.  216). 
We  conclude,  therefore,  either  that  ho  never  saw  Babylon 
himself,  or  that,  having  seen  it,  he  was  greatly  deceived 
in  his  estimates.  We  may,  however,  accept  the  fifty 
cubits  of  Strabo  and  the  wi-iters  spoken  of  by  Diodorus 
as  more  nearly  approaching  the  truth,  and  thus  the  wall 
of  the  great  city  may  well  liavo  been  between  eighty 
and  ninety  feet  in  height,  and  about  thirty  feet  in  -width, 
i.e.  about  as  wide  as  an  ordinary  higli  road  in  England, 
and  quite  enough  for  two  chariots  to  pass  each  other  on 
the  summit. 

Wlien  were  these  vast  stmctures  destroyed,  and  what 
has  become  of  them  ?  Cyrus,  after  his  capture  of  Baby- 
lon, does  not  appear  to  have  destroyed  the  walls ;  but 
some  seventeen  or  eighteen  year  slater,  about  520  B.C., 
the  Babylonians,  when  they  revolted  against  Darius, 
son  of  Hystaspes,  are  said  to  have  kept  him  at  bay 
for  twenty  months  by  the  strength  of  their  walls, 
so  that  he  was  only  enabled  to  enter  the  city  by 
means  of  a  most  elaborate  stratagem.  This  time, 
however,  the  conqueror  partially  if  not  entirely  de- 
stroyed the  walls  and  took  away  all  the  gates,  and 
having  impaled  3,000  of  the  principal  inhabitants,  gave 
up  the  city  to  the  rest  of  the  Babylonians  to  inhabit 
(Herod,  iii.  159  ;  Jer.  Ii.  581  Later  still  the  temple  of 
Belus,  which  Semiramis  was  said  to  have  built,  was 
plundered  and  overthrown  by  Xci-xes,  together  with 
the  other  temples  of  Babylon,  after  his  return  from 
Greece,  480  b.c.  Alexander  the  Great  intended  to  re- 
build this,  and  in  fact  took  some  steps  towards  doing  so, 
but  his  intention  was  arrested  by  his  death,  323  B.C. 
From  this  time  Babylon  declined,  owing  in  great  measure 
to  the  building  of  the  now  city  of  Seleucia,  on  the  Tigris, 
by  the  Macedonian  [sovereign  Seloucus  Nicator  (the 
conqueror).     In  the  second  century  a.d.  Pausanias,  a 


Greek  topographical  writer,  speaks  of  the  temple  of 
Belus  and  also  of  the  city  walls  as  remaining,  though  the 
rest  of  the  city  was  destroyed ;  and  histly,  St.  Jerome  in 
the  fourth  centm-y  says  that  he  was  informed  by  one  who 
knew  the  place  that  the  site  of  Babylon  was  deserted  by 
men,  and  oidy  used  as  a  preserve  for  wild  beasts,  for 
which  purpose  the  walls  served  as  an  enclosure.  From 
this  time  we  hear  nothing  of  Babylon  tiU  the  twelfth 
century,  when  it  was  visited  by  Benjamin  the  Jew  of 
Tudela,  who  says  that  it  lies  in  ruins,  but  tliat  the  streets 
stiU  extend  thirty  mUes ;  that  the  ruins  of  the  palace  of 
Nebuchadnezzar  are  stiU  to  be  seen,  but  that  people  are 
afraid  to  venture  among-  them  on  accoimt  of  the  ser- 
pents and  scorpions  with  which  they  are  infested.  In  the 
seventeenth  centui-y  Pietro  deUa  VaUe,  after  describing 
the  Birs  Nimroud,  teUs  us  that  the  rest  of  Babylon  was 
so  destroyed  that  no  i-emains  existed  sufficiently  largo 
to  indicate  the  vast  size  of  the  original  city.  Thus  it 
appears  that  the  city  was  deserted  before  the  Christian 
era,  but  that  the  walls  lasted  longer,  though  probably  in 
a  dilapidated  condition,  until  their  ilisappearance  at  some 
time  between  the  fom-th  and  the  twelfth  ceutm-y  A.D. 
(Herod,  ii.  183;  Arrian,  Expedition,  -vu. ;  Diod.  ii.  9; 
Strabo,  xvi.,  p.  738  ;  Hieron.  in  laai.  xiii.  20  ;  vol.  iv., 
p.  159  (175) ;  Early  Trav.,  p.  100 ;  P.  della  Valle,  i.  382.) 

How  shall  we  aeeoimt  for  tiiis  almost  total  disappear- 
ance ?  Perhaps  the  "  broad  walls,"  bnilt  of  a  perishable 
miiterial,  have  subsided  into  the  ditch  whence  the  material 
was  taken ;  but  the  most  efficient  instrument  of  destruc- 
tion has  probably  been  the  constant  abstraction  of 
buildiug  materials  carried  on  during  many  centuries,  and 
which  is  stiU  going  on  to  a  vast  extent,  so  that  even  in 
a  few  years  an  alteration  in  the  appearance  of  the  re- 
mains becomes  visible.  The  ioyra  of  Hillah  is  built 
almost  entirely  of  Biibylonian  bricks,  and  they  form  an 
article  of  constant  traffic  for  men  who  carry  them  as  far 
as  Baglidad.  By  these  and  other  means  the  destruction 
of  the  great  city  has  been  gradually  brought  about,  and 
the  prophecies  of  Isaiah  and  Jeremiah  have  been  f  ul- 
filled,  that  "  Babylon,  the  glory  of  kingdoms,"  should  be 
overthrown  like  Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  thsit  it  should 
not  bo  inhabited  from  generation  to  generation,  that 
Arabs  aTul  shepherds  should  avoid  it  as  a  camping  place; 
but  that  wild  beasts  should  make  tlieir  lairs  there,  and 
thiit  the  houses  should  be  filled  with  "doleful  creatures, 
owls,  .satyrs,  and  dragons."  (Niebulir,  Voy.,  ii.  235 ; 
Layard.  Nin.  and  Bah.,  p.  506 ;  Hales,  Chronology,  i.  453 ; 
Isa.  xiii.  19—22.") 

Let  us  conclude  with  a  few  rem.irks  on  the  liistory  of 
Babylon,  especially  in  connection  with  the  history  and 
prophecies  of  Scripture.  In  early  times  it  appears 
to  have  been  frequently,  though  not  always,  subject  to 
Assyria,  whose  power  tlie  Biibylonians  made  efforts  from 
time  to  time,  with  more  or  less  success,  to  throw  off.  It 
is  right  to  mention  that  the  single  native  histoi-ian,  Bero- 
sus,  entii-ely  rejects  the  story  of  Semiramis  as  a  Greek 
invention.  It  seems  likely  that  her  n.ome  represents 
under  a  Greek  form  that  of  a  native  deity,  whose  name 
and  traditional  influence  are  assigned  by  Greek  writers 
to  a  i^ersouage  assumed  by  them  to  belong  to  real  history 


SACRED   SEASONS. 


179 


and  to  possess  a  definite  date.  (H.  Rawliusou,  Mem., 
pp.  6,  10 ;  G.  Bawlinson,  Herod.,  i.  025 ;  Joseplius, 
Cont.  Ap.,  i.  20.) 

Dui'iug  the  reign  of  Hezekiab,  about  712  B.C.,  Baby- 
lon appears  to  have  been  independent  of  Assyria,  for 
Merodaeh-baladan,  its  king,  sent  a  message  of  con- 
gratulation to  him  on  )iis  recovery  from  sickness,  shortly 
after  the  successfid  issue  of  his  revolt  from  Assyria,  and 
the  destruction  by  Divine  interposition  of  Sennacherib's 
anny  (2  Kings  xx.  12).  But  thirty  years  later,  about  680 
B.C.,  it  appears  again  to  have  come  imder  Assyi-ian  m- 
iiuencc,  and  Mauasseh,  Hezekiah's  son,  was  carried  cap- 
tive to  Babylon  by  the  commander  of  the  Assyi-ian  army 
during  the  reign,  probably,  of  Esarhaddon,  who  ruled 
over  both  kingdoms'  (2  Kings  xvii.  24;  2  Chi-on.  xxxiii. 
11 ;  Ezra  iv.  2). 

About  fifty  years  later,  the  conquests  of  Pharaoh- 
ncclio,  king  of  Egypt,  had  encroached  upon  the  power 
of  Babylon,  with  which  Josiah  was  then  in  alliance,  and 
who  lost  his  life  in  resisting  the  Egyxjtian  invasion 
(2  Kings  xxiii.  29).  But  after  a  few  years  these  con- 
quests were  all  recovered,  and  the  power  of  Babylon 
rose  to  its  greatest  height  in  the  reigns  of  Nabopolassar 
and  his  son  Nebuchadnezzar.  In  625  B.C.,  the  foi-mor 
joined  the  Modes  in  their  attack  on  Nineveh,  which 
was  fiually  destroyed  in  606,  if  not  at  tho  earlier  date. 
Nebuchadnezzar,  who  became  king  in  604,  during  his 
reign  of  forty-three  years  greatly  extended  the  power 
of  Babylon,  and  was  also  its  greatest  buUder,  so  that  in 
Ms  hour  of  self-glorification  he  might  say  truly  of  him- 
self, "  Is  not  this  great  Babylon  which  I  have  built  ?  " 
(Dan.  iv.  30.)  But  the  voice  of  prophecy  had  long  ago 
gone  forth  to  foretell  its  ultimate  downfall,  and  with 
such  minuteness  of  detail  in  some  of  its  forebodings  as 
to  induce  some  persons  to  suppose  that  they  were  in 
fact  later  in  date  than  the  events  of  which  they  spoke. 
Beginning  with  Isaiah,  of  whose  consistent  unity  no 
doubt  appears  on  the  face  of  the  volume  attributed  to 
him,  and  whose  age  ranges  from  760  to  697  B.C.,  we 
find  him  pointing  to  a  time  when  Babylon  shall  not  be 
inhabited,  when  even  the  wandering  Arab  shall  avoid  it, 
but  its  site  should  become  an  abode  for  wild  beasts 
(Isa.  xiii.).  Ho  speaks  further  on  of  its  gi-eat  exaltation 
and  subsequent  downfall  (xiv.) ;  of  tho  captivity  there  of 
Judah  (xxxix.)  ;   of  the  drying  up  {i.e.,  turning  of  the 

*  See  a  remarkable  illustration  of  the  Scripture  narrative  in  The 
Bible  Educatok,  Vol.  I.,  p.  313. 


course)  of  the  Euphrates,  in  the  siege  ;  of  Cyrus  as  the 
captor  (xliv.,  xlv.) ;  and  of  the  luxury  and  corruption 
which  brought  on  its  destruction  (xlvii.).  Jeremiah, 
tho  x^eriod  of  whose  utterances  includes  the  climax  of 
Babylon's  greatness  (B.C.  628 — 560j,  speaks  of  the  inva- 
sion of  Judffia  by  Nebuchadnezzar  (xxi.) ;  the  captivity  of 
Jehoiaehiu  (xxii.) ;  the  capture  of  Jerusalem;  the  seventy 
years'  captivity,  and  the  subsequent  return  (xxv.,  xxix.) ; 
the  retribution  to  como  upon  Babylon,  which  in  two 
passages  (xxv.  26 ;  li.  41)  is  called  by  the  name  Sheshach, 
a  word  which  has  given  much  trouble  to  commentators. 
It  has  been  thought  to  be  a  sort  of  anagram  for  the 
word  Babylon,  by  substitution  of  sh  for  b,  and  cli  for 
I.  But  a  later  explanation  founded  upon  iuscriptions 
seems  to  show  that  the  name  of  the  moon  as  a  deity^ 
was  intended,  and  that  thus  Babylon  is  spoken  of  as  a 
city  under  the  protection  of  ShishaM,  the  moon-god 
(Rawlinson,  Herod,  i.  616).  Jeremiah  also  speaks  of 
tho  combination  against  Babylon,  its  overthrow,  the 
drying  up  of  the  river-waters,  the  infatuation  of  its 
rulers,  the  Median,  i.e.  Persian  invasion,  the  vast  extent 
of  the  city,  its  broad  walls  and  lofty  defences,  and  its 
complete  desolation  (1.,  li.).  Tho  prophets,  especially 
Ezekiel,  also  speak  of  tlic  affairs  of  Egypt,  of  Tyre, 
and  of  other  countries  in  connection  with  Babylon,  and 
especially  with  Nebuchadnezzar  (Isa.  six.,  xxiii. ;  Jer. 
XXV.,  xlvi.,  xlvii.;  Ezck.  xxvi.,  xxvii.,  xxviii. ;  Bishcp 
Newton,  Prophecies,  chap,  x.).^ 

These  jjrophecies  have  been  literally  fulfilled.  Not- 
withstanding more  than  one  revolt  of  the  Babylonian 
people,  and  the  magnificent  schemes  of  Alexander  for 
restoring  the  city  to  its  ancient  greatness,  the  empire 
has  been  dissolved  and  the  city  itself  destroyed.  To 
use  some  of  the  language  of  the  proiihecies,  "her 
foimdations  are  fallen,  her  walls  are  thrown  down." 
Nor  is  this  all  that  has  befallen  her  :  "  the  sower  is  cut 
off  from  Babylon,  and  he  that  handleth  the  sickle  in 
time  of  harvest,"  for  "  the  drought  is  upon  the  waters" 
which  refreshed  her  territory  with  fertilising  irrigation. 
She  is  become  a  desolation  among  the  nations  without 
an  mhabitaut,  and  of  the  numerous  travellers  who  pass 
near  her  site  on  their  way  to  and  from  Baghdad- scarcely 
any  except  a  few  Europeans  bent  on  antiquarian  re- 
search take  any  notice  of  the  ruins  of  Babylon. 


2  See  Vol.  I.,  p.  362. 

3  An  important  elucidation   of  the  Scripture  narrative  of  the 
capture  of  Babylon  may  be  seen  in  Vol.  I.,  p.  o3G. 


THE   OLD   TESTAMENT    FULFILLED   IN    THE    NEW. 

I.— SACRED  SEASONS  {contin-Mcl). 

REV.    WILLIAM    MILLIOAN,    D.D.,    rROPESSOK    OP    DITINITT  AND    BIBLICAL    CRITICISM   IN    THE   UNIVERSITY 

OF   ABERDEEN. 


T  was  not  only  by  the  three  great  annual  fes- 
tivals already  considered  by  us  that  Israel 
was  reminded  of  its  covenant  relation  to 
Jehovah,  kept  in   a   spirit  of  dependence 

and  taught,  at  kast  in  part,  the  lesson  that  its 


whole  life  was  His.  These  truths  were  also  impressed 
upon  it  much  more  frequently  and  at  much  shorter 
interv.als,  every  point  in  the  coui-se  of  the  year  which 
afforded  a  natural  resting-place  being  carefully  seized 
upon  and  sanctified  for  tho  purpose  ;  while,  at  the  same 


180 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


time,  -wliateTer  tlie  explanation  of  tlie  sacredness  of  tlio 
number  seven,  those  points  wliioh  were  connected  with 
it  received  that  peculiar  consecration  always  assigned 
to  the  number  of  the  covenant. 

Among  these  the  appearance  of  the  new  moon  could 
hardly  fail  to  be  regarded  as  of  more  than  ordinary 
importance.  Each  revolution  of  the  moon  supplied  a 
division  of  time,  which,  especially  in  Eastern  lands, 
where  her  brilliancy  far  exceeds  that  exhibited  by  her 
in  the  West,  at  once  attracted  the  attention  of  men ; 
whUe  again,  as  each  occupied  almost  exactly  four  weeks, 
whose  length  was  already  determined  by  the  recurrence 
of  the  seventh  day,  the  periods  of  these  revolutions 
became  a  leading  guide  in  tlie  arrangement  of  the  year. 
By  thom,  accordingly,  tho  Hebrew  months  were  fixed, 
and  each  now  moon  stood  out  as  a  definite  point  by 
which  to  reckon  the  progress  of  time,  and  mark  tho 
beginning  of  a  fresh  stage  in  the  journey  of  life.  It 
was  a  fitting  thing,  tlierefore,  that  the  day  of  the  new 
moon  should  be  distinguished  by  religious  services  pecu- 
liar to  itself. 

The  regulations  regarding  these  are  to  be  found  in 
Numb,  xxviii.  9 — 1.5 ;  x.  10.  From  the  first  of  these 
passages  we  learn  that,  in  addition  to  tlio  ordinary  daily 
offering,  there  wore  to  be  presented  to  the  Lord  "  in 
the  beginning  of  their  months"  a  bunit-ofPoriug  of 
two  young  bullocks,  one  ram,  and  seven  lambs  of  the 
first  year,  with  the  meat  and  di-ink  offerings  properly 
belonging  to  thom,  and  one  kid  of  the  goats  for  a  siu- 
ofPei'iag ;  from  the  second,  that  on  the  same  day  tho 
two  sUvor  trumpets,  to  bo  afterwards  more  particularly 
spoken  of,  were  to  be  blown  over  their  burnt-oiiorings, 
and  over  the  sacrifices  of  tlioir  peace-offerings,  that 
'■  they  migiit  bo  to  them  for  a  memorial  before  their 
■God."  Tho  day,  however,  was  not  one  of  "  holy  con- 
vocation," and  labour  was  not  foi-bidden.  The  ser^dces 
now  referred  to  wore  deemed  enough  to  consecrate  it. 
At  a  later  time,  indeed,  tho  estimation  of  the  sacredness 
of  the  new  moon  appears  to  liavo  increased.  Saul  had 
state  banquets  upon  that  day ;  it  was  customary  then 
to  consult  the  prophets  in  cases  of  perplexity ;  the  ob- 
servance of  it  is  associated  witli  the  thought  of  "  solemn 
feast  days  "  and  sabbaths  ;  and  the  Apostle  Paul  speaks 
of  it  as  one  of  those  days  for  the  non-observance  of 
which  the  early  disciples  were  reproached  and  per- 
secuted (1  Sam.  XX.  5 ;  2  Kings  iv.  23 ;  Ps.  Ixxxi.  3 ; 
Isa.  i.  13  ;  Col.  ii.  16). 

The  importance  thus  attached  to  the  ordinary  new 
moon  was  greatly  heightened  when  the  moon  of  the 
seventh  month,  the  month  Tisri,  appeared.  Like  tho 
seventh  day  and  the  seventh  year,  the  seventh  month 
was  more  tlian  ordinarily  sacred.  The  most  impressive 
religious  solemnities  of  the  whole  worship  of  Israel 
took  place  in  it,  and  its  beginning  was,  therefore, 
marked  in  a  manner  corresponding  to  these,  and  to 
its  own  place  as  tho  seventh  month  in  the  calendai'. 
All  "  servile  work  "  was  prohibited ;  the  day  was  one  of 
'■  holy  convocation ; "  trumpets  were  blown,  not  only 
over  the  offerings,  but,  it  would  seem,  the  whole  day 
long ;  and  in  addition  to  the  daily  and  the  usual  now 


moon  offering,  there  were  offered  a  burnt-offering  of 
one  3'oung  bullock,  one  ram,  and  seven  lamlis  of  the 
fh-st  year,  without  blemish,  along  with  their  appropriate 
meat  and  di'ink  offerings,  and  one  kid  of  the  goats  for  a 
sin-offei'uig,  "to  make  an  atonement  for  them"  (Numb. 
xxix.  1 — 6).  The  day  was  thus  exalted  to  a  higher 
character  than  that  attained  by  the  first  days  of  the 
common  months;  and,  although  there  does  not  seem 
to  be  any  express  authority  for  so  naming  it  in  the  Law, 
it  came  to  be  generally  known  as  the  Feast  of  Trumpets. 
Yet,  strictly  speaking,  it  was  rather  a  sacred  season 
only,  and  not  a  feast. 

Wo  tm-n  now  to  tho  meaning  of  these  new  moon 
ceremonies,  and  more  especially  to  the  particulars  con- 
nected with  them,  which  are  "fulfilled"  in  New  Tes- 
tament times.  In  doing  so,  it  is  first  of  all  necessary 
to  distinguish  between  the  ordinary  religious  celebration 
of  the  beginning  of  each  month  and  that  of  the  first  day 
of  the  seventh.  These  were  different,  not  only  in  degree, 
but  in  kind.  The  facts  akeady  mentioned  sufficiently 
establish  tliis — abstinence  from  laljour,  a  "  holy  con- 
vocation," and  an  increase  of  offerings  having  a  place  in 
the  one  thougli  not  in  tho  others.  As  regards  this  last 
particular,  however,  that  of  increase,  much  more  has 
to  be  said.  It  is  no  mere  increase  of  offerings,  no  more 
prolonged  blowing  of  trumpets  that  claims  our  atten- 
tion. The  former  were  not  exactly  doubled ;  had  they 
been  so,  it  might  have  been  enough  to  think  of  in- 
crease alone.  But  there  was  at  least  one  important 
exception  to  tho  doubling,  for  instead  of  two  yoimg 
bullocks,  the  addition  consisted  of  but  one  (Numb.  xxix. 
2  ;  comp.  xxviii.  11) ;  and  as  one  young  bullock  was  also 
the  offeruig  of  tho  great  Day  of  Atonement,  falling  only 
ten  days  later,  whOe  "  to  make  an  atonement  for  you  " 
is  expressly  mentioned  in  connection  with  the  ceremo- 
nial with  which  we  are  dealing,  though  not  in  connection 
with  tho  usual  one,  it  seems  a  legitimate  conclusion  that 
the  new  moon  services  of  the  seventli  month  looked 
forward  to  the  atonement  immediately  to  follow,  in  a, 
way  in  which  those  of  the  common  months  did  not. 

The  difference  in  the  case  of  the  trumpet-blowing  is 
even  more  marked.  There  was,  in  the  first  place,  more 
tlian  a  prolongation  of  the  blowing ;  there  was  a  change 
of  note.  Two  Hebrew  verbs  are  used  to  mark  the 
nature  of  the  trumpet-sound — the  one  denoting  an  ordi- 
nary, tho  other  a  louder,  more  continuous,  and  more 
startling  peal.  The  difference  between  them  is  dis- 
tinctly brought  out  in  Numb,  x.  7 :  "  But  when  the 
congregation  is  to  be  gathered  together,  ye  shall  blow, 
but  ye  shall  not  sound  an  alarm."  It  may  be  doubted, 
indeed,  if  ''  sound  an  alarm"  is  a  good  translation  of 
the  latter  of  tho  two.  It  is  rather  a  loud  ringing 
sound,  which  may  even  bo  joyful,  but  is  not  neces- 
sarily so,  that  is  referred  to.  Now  the  first  of  those 
two  verbs  is  always  used  where  tho  ordinary  new  moon 
service  is  spoken  of,  while  the  second  is  so  characteristic 
of  the  seventh  new  moon,  that  the  day  took  its  name 
from  the  circumstance.  It  was  tlie  day,  not  of  "blow- 
ing tho  trumpets,"  as  in  Numb.  xxix.  1,  liut  of  "  loud 
shouting  or  pealing."     In  the  second  place,  there  seems 


SACRED  SEASONS. 


181 


good  reason  to  believe  that,  so  far  as  the  use  of  trumpets 
contributed  to  this,  it  was  a  different  instrument  by 
■whicli  the  effect  was  produced.     We  must  bear  in  mind 
that  there  were   two   kinds   of  trumpets  used  in   the 
worship  of  Israel — the  long,  straight,   silver  trumpet, 
known  as   the  Mmtsotserah,  and  the  trumpet  curved 
after  the  manner  of  a  ram's  horn,  known  sometimes  as 
the  Jceren,  at  other  tunes  as  the  slioj^liar.     But  these 
trumpets  were  not  only  different  in  shape ;  they  appear 
to   have   been  adapted  and   appKed   to  different  pur- 
poses.    No  doubt  they  are  sometimes  associated  with 
one  another,  as  when  the  ark  of  God  was  brought  up 
to  Jerusalem,  every  musical  instrument  possessed  by 
the  people  being  then  naturally  called  into  requisition 
by  them  to  express  their  joy ;  or,  as  when  siimmoning 
aU  created  things,  sea  and  world,  floods  and  liUls,  to 
celebrate  the  praises  of  Jehovah,  the  Psalmist  is  almost 
necessarily  led  to  group  different  musical  instruments 
together  for   the    same    end    (1    Chron.   xv.   28;    Ps. 
xcviii.  6).     But,  notwithstanding  this   occasional   com- 
bination, different  ideas  are  generally  associated  Avith 
the  two  instruments.     The  first  was  employed  mainly 
as  a  festal  instrument,  at  times  of  high  and  holy  joy, 
at  the  consecration  of  a  king,  when  celebrating  a  tri- 
umph over  enemies,  when  praising  the  mercy  and  ever- 
enduring  goodness  of  the  Lord,  when  gathering  Israel 
together  at  the  door  of  the  tabernacle  of  the  congi-e- 
gation  to  meet  with  God  (2  Kings  xi.  14 ;  2  Chron. 
XX.  28 ;  V.  12  ;  Numb.  X.  3).     It  was  the  fitting  accom- 
paniment of  the   cymbal,  the  psaltery,  and  the  harp 
(2  Chron.  v.  13).     When  it  was  made  use  of  for  other 
purposes,  such  as  the  setting  forth  of   the   diiferent 
camps  of  Israel  upon  their  march,  and  when  it  seemed 
desirable  to  employ  another  than  its  common  note,  a 
different  word,  one  that  belongs  more  properly  to  the 
shopliar.  is  added  to  indicate  the  change  (Numb.  x. 
5,  6).     The  last-named  instrument,  again,  the  second 
of  the  two,  belongs  to  occasions  of  a  more  solemn,  a 
more  arousing,  and  a  more  startling  kind.     It  was  its 
voice  that  sounded  "  exceeding  loud  "  at  the  giving  of 
the  law,  even  amidst  the  thunders  that  re-echoed  among 
the  mountains  of  Sinai,  "  so  that  all  the  people  that 
were  in  the  camp  trembled ; "  it  was  the  trumpet  blown 
with  a  "  long"  blast,  and  accompanied  by  the  "  groat," 
we  may  well  suppose  the  fierce,  shout  of  the  people  at 
the  falling  of  the  walls  of  Jericho ;  it  was  in  a  special 
manner  the  trumpet  of  war,  the   first  mentioned  not 
seeming  to  be  once  used  in  such  a  connection  throughout 
the  whole  Old  Testament,  insomuch  that   it  becomes 
to  the  ear  of  the  prophet  the   very  symbol  of  war's 
alarms  :  "  My  bowels,  my  bowels  !  I  am  pained  at  my 
very  heart ;  my  heart  maketh  a  noise  in  me ;  I  cannot 
hold  my  peace,  because  thou  hast  heard,  O  my  sold, 
the  sound  of  the  trumpet,  the   alarm  of  war;"   and, 
finally,  it  is  by  it  that  Joel  gathers  all  classes  of  Israel 
together  to  fast,  and  weep,  and  pray  that  the  Lord  would 
spare  his  people  :  "  Blow  the  trumpet  in  Zion,  sanctify 
a  fast,  call  a  solemn  assembly"  (Exod.  xix.  16,  19;  xx. 
18 ;   Josh.  vi.  5  ;   Judges,  passim ;    Jer.   iv.   19 ;    Joel 
ii.  15).     It  is  certainly  true  that  the  shopliar  was  also 


the  trumpet  of  the  jubilee,  that  by  which  the  jubilee 
year  with  all  its  blessings  was  proclaimed  ;  but  this  fact 
will  find,  we  trust,  its  explanation  in  what  lias  stiU  to 
be  said  of  its  use  at  tlie  feast  more  immediately  before 
us  now. 

The  shopliar,  then,  would  seem  to  have  been  the  dis- 
tinguishing instrument  of  the  seventh  new  moon,  not 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  other,  but  as  the  leading  trumpet 
of  the  ceremonial.  Such,  at  least,  is  the  distinct  tra- 
dition of  the  Mishua,'  and  the  word  used  both  in  the 
Hebrew  Bible  and  in  the  translation  of  the  LXX.  to 
characterise  the  sounds  of  the  day,  lends  countenance 
to  the  idea.  Putting  these  circumstances  together,  we 
find  a  marked  difference  between  the  ritual  of  the 
seventh  new  moon  and  of  the  new  moons  of  the  other 
months  of  the  year,  and  the  change  of  ritual  must  have 
been  designed  to  mark  a  change  of  thought.  Wliat 
this  change  was  can  only  be  imderstood  when  we  return 
to  the  question  with  which  we  started — what  was  the 
meaning  of  the  trumpet  ritual  as  a  whole  ? 

The  general  significance  of  the  trumpet-blowing  at 
any  religious  solemnity  is  ex]_ilained  in  Numb.  x.  10  : 
"  Also  in  the  (Lay  of  yom-  gladness,  and  in  your  solemn 
days,  and  in  the  beginnings  of  your  mouths,  ye  shall 
blow  with  the  trumpets  over  your  bm-ut-offerings,  and 
over  the   sacrifices  of  your  peace-ofl'erings,  that  they 
may  bo  to  you  for  a  memorial  before  yoiu-  God ;  I  am 
the  Lord  your  God."     Different  views,  however,  have 
been  taken  of  these  words,   some  supposing  them  to 
mean  that  the  "  memorial"  s]Doken  of  was  a  reminding 
God  of  His  people,  others  a  reminding  His  people  of 
Him.     The  use  of  the  word  in  the  Old  Testament  ap- 
pears to  be  conclusive  in  favour   of  the  latter  view. 
Tlius,  for  example,  it  is  that  the  Passover  is  declared 
to  bo  to  Israel  a  sign  upon  its  liand  and  a  memorial 
between  its   eyes,  that  the  Lord's  law  may  be  in  its 
mouth  ;  that  the  stones  set  up  by  Joshua  on  the  other 
side  of  Jordan  are  said  to  be  for  a  memorial  unto  the 
children  of  Isi-ael  for  ever ;  and  that  the  breastplate  with 
precious   stones  worn  by  the  high   prie.st,   and  which 
was  the  symbol  that  Israel  had  been  chosen  and  was 
accepted  in  God's  sight,  is  described  as  '  ■  a  memorial 
before   the  Lord   continually "    (Exod.   xiii.   9 ;    Josh. 
iv.  7 ;  Exod.  xx-riii.  29).     In  aU  these   instances,  and 
there  are  many  othei-s,  the  "  memorial  "  spoken  of  has 
relation  to  man  rather  than  God.     It  expresses  some- 
tliing  passing  from  God  to  Israel,  not  from  Israel  to 
God.     In  addition  to  this  it  has  to  be  noticed  that  in 
Numb.  X.  10  the   silver  trumpets  are  spokeu  of  as  if 
they  were  the  symbols  of  God's  jiresence,  a  presence 
already  assured  to  Israel  :   "I  am  the  Lord  your  God." 
It  is  in  this  light,  therefore,  that  we  must  regard  the 
ritual  of  trumpet-sounding  at  the  ordinary  new  moons. 
The  noise  of  the  silver  trumpets  was  a  pledge  that  God 
was  near.     He  had  come,  as  it  were,  with  more  than 
common  closeness  into  the  Temple,  into  the  city,  into 
Israel's   midst,  at   the  opening  of  this  new  period  of 
time.    And  He  had  come  to  awaken  only  glad  and 

^  Spcalccr's  Conim.  on  Lev.  xxiu.  24, 


18!2 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


grateful  tliouglits,  to  sound  forth  to  Israel  his  son  the 
joyful  message  of  his  love. 

But  in  the  seventh  month  there  -was  a  change ;  and 
that  change  consisted  in  the  introduction,  by  new  sacri- 
fices, other  trumpets,  and  other  notes,  of  the  thought 
of  the  more  terrible  aspect  of  the  Almighty,  and  of 
the  humiliation,  reverence,  and  awe  which  such  an 
aspect  of  Him  was  fitted  to  produce  in  sinful  man. 
God  was  stUl  coming  neai'.  The  trumpet-sound  was 
still  tlie  symbol  of  liis  presence,  but  it  was  a  presence 
which  called  for  fasting  rather  than  feasting,  for  deep 
prostration  rather  than  simple  rejoicing  hi  his  love. 
Not.  indeed,  that  the  former  was  wholly  to  banish 
the  latter,  or  that  the  two  wore  inconsistent  with  one 
another ;  but  that  the  fir.st  was  the  only  solid  basis  for 
the  last,  that  God  must  be  known  in  the  one  before 
Ho  could  be  fully  known  in  the  other  light. 

The  arrangement  now  adverted  to  is  surely  in  a  high 
degree  remarkable.  Had  the  seventh  month  been  less 
rich  in  privilege  than  the  other  months  of  the  yeai%  it 
might  have  seemed  to  us  quite  uatui'al  that  sterner 
thoughts  should  mark  its  opening;  but  the  very  oppo- 
site was  the  case.  It  was  the  seventh,  the  covenant 
month.  It  was  the  most  favoured  month  of  the  whole 
year.  It  brought  with  it  the  great  Day  of  Atonement, 
the  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  and  each  fiftieth  year  the 
year  of  JubUee.  Tot,  while  the  ordinary  new  .moon 
services  were  suggestive  mainly  of  pri\aleges  alone,  it 
w.as  suggestive  of  the  humbled  .spirit  by  which  Israel 
was  to  be  marked,  of  that  sacrifice  of  a  broken  and  a 
contrite  heart,  which  was  due  to  a  holy  and  just  God, 
and  was  of  all  other  oiferings  the  most  precious  in  his 
sight. 

The  facts  now  mentioned,  however,  do  not  stand 
alone.  It  is  worthy  of  our  notice  in  connection  with 
them,  that  in  all  those  passages  of  the  Old  Testament 
where  the  prophets  are  commanded  to  announce  with 
voice  "  like  a  trumpet "  the  coming  of  Gospel  times, 
it  is  as  the  sliophar,  not  as  the  khatsotserah,  that  they 
are  to  cry :  '•  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day  that 
the  gi-eat  triunpet  shall  be  blown,  .and  they  shall  come 
which  were  ready  to  perish  in  the  land  of  Assyria,  and 
the  outcasts  in  the  laud  of  Egypt,  and  shall  worsliip 
the  Lord  in  the  holy  mount  at  Jerusalem."  "  Blow  the 
trumpet  in  Zion  .  .  .  Then  shall  the  Lord  be  jealous 
for  his  land,  and  pity  Iiis  people."  "  And  the  Lord  God 
shall  blow  the  trumpet  .  .  .  And  the  Lord  their  God 
shall  save  them  in  that  day"  (Isa.  xxvii.  13;  Joel  ii. 
15,  18 ;  Zech.  ix.  14,  16,  &e.) — always  the  shophar,  the 
trumpet  of  war  and  judgment.' 

Thus  then  wo  tliscover  the  "  fidfilment  "  of  which  wo 
are  in  search.  Fhrst,  in  that  soimd  of  the  Gospel  mes- 
sage which  tells  us  that  God  is  near,  that  His  taber- 
nacle is  in  the  midst  of  us,  that  He  has  taken  up  his 
abode  vfith  man.  What  the  silver  trumpets  announced 
to  Israel  at  the  opening  of  each  month  is  proclaimed 

1  The  other  trumpet  seems  only  to  he  once  mentioned  in  such 
a.  connection  (Hos.  v.  8)  ;  hut  there  the  word  "  hlow  "  is  not  the 
word  belonging  to  it,  but  that  e.\pressive  of  the  sharper,  louder 
note. 


to  US  continually  by  those  who  cry  that  Jeiusalem's 
warfare  is  accomplished,  that  her  iniquity  is  pardoned ; 
that  they  are  commissioned  to  speak  to  her  words  of 
comfort  from  her  God.  What  Israel  heard  on  the  first 
day  of  the  new  moon  we  hear  without  interruption  in 
Him  who  has  made  us  "  the  temple  of  the  living  God," 
so  that  the  promise  is  fulfilled :  "  I  will  dwell  iu  them, 
aad  walk  in  them ;  and  I  will  be  their  God,  and  they 
shall  be  my  people." 

But  the  "  fulfilment "  is  not  in  words  of  comfort  only, 
or  in  the  thought  of  God  as  only  present  to  bestow 
privilege,  only  present  in  these  New  Testament  times  in 
mccy  and  love.  We  have  seen  tliat  tliere  was  another 
element,  the  element  of  war  and  judgment,  producing 
reverence  and  awe,  iu  the  seventh  and  highest  new 
moon  solemnity  in  Israel.  If  there  is  nothing  corre- 
sponding to  that  for  us,  then  a  part  of  Israel's  economy 
in  the  type  is  wanting  in  the  antitype.  But  there  is, 
and  it  is  our  duty  to  acknowledge  it.  Why  should 
we  not  do  so  ?  Why  should  there  be  such  a  hesi- 
tation in  the  minds  of  many  to  allow  that  the  God 
of  the  New  Testament  is  not  less  truly,  not  less 
fully,  a  God  of  war  and  judgment  than  the  God  of 
the  Old  Testament  ?  Why  should  there  be  stich  a 
desire  to  have  God  proclaimed  to  ns  only  as  a  God 
of  love,  and  that  not  the  strong  deep  love  described 
by  him  who  says  to  ns  "  God  is  love,"  but  a  soft  and 
sentimental  affection,  knowing  little  tliiference  between 
truth  and  falsehood,  between  right  and  wrong  ?  Why 
should  men  speak  as  if  the  Redeemer  had  little  of 
the  stem  and  awful  in  His  words,  when  no  prophet 
of  old  ever  cast  aside  from  him  with  more  terrible  con- 
demnation, with  more  contemptuous  scom,  the  Pharisee, 
the  hypocrite,  the  trader  in  divine  things  for  earthly 
ends  ?  The  Ajjostle  did  not  feel  so  when,  after  the 
most  glowing  descriiition  to  be  foimd  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament of  the  privileges  of  the  citizens  of  Zion,  he  adds, 
as  if  summing  ivp  the  whole  :  "  Wherefore  we  receiving 
a  kmgdom  that  cannot  be  moved,  let  us  have  grace, 
whereby  we  may  serve  God  acceptalily  with  reverence 
and  godly  fear ;  for  our  God  is  a  consuming  fire  "  (Heb. 
xii.  28,  29).  The  Aj)ostlo  of  love  did  not  feel  so  when, 
in  recording  the  discourses  of  Jesus  to  "the  Jews" — 
that  is,  to  the  stubborn  and  stiffnecked  leaders  of  the 
people — ho  records  almost  nothing  but  language  of  the 
most  unsparing  wrath.  We  have  fallen  too  much  away 
in  these  later  times  from  this  characteristic  of  .Jesus 
and  his  words.  We  have  lost  sight  of  the  sternness  of. 
those  relations  between  God  and  sin,  which  ai-e  not 
oidy  expressive  of  truth,  but  wliich  are  the  very  strength 
of  maidy  piety ;  and  to  this  it  is  that  we  owe  so  much 
of  that  whimpering  accommodation  to  determined 
wrong-doing  which  has  made  not  a  little  of  our  social 
action,  not  a  little  even  of  oiu-  legislation,  an  cnconi-age- 
ment  to  vice.  We  need  a  restoration  of  the  stricter,  of 
the  judgment  element  of  the  Bible.  Not  that  we  arc; 
to  have  less  clear  and  unhesitating  views  of  that  love  oi 
God,  whose  height,  and  depth,  and  length,  and  breadth 
pass  knowledge.  Not  that  we  are  to  "  judge  "  men  who 
differ  from  us  in  some  thiugs,  when  they  are  striving 


MUSIC   OF  THE  BIBLE. 


183 


after,  or  are  already  in  possession  of,  that  kingdom  of 
God  which  is  "  rig-hteoiisness,  and  peace,  and  joy  in 
the  Holy  Ghost ; "  but  that  we  are  to  recognise  the 
eternal  nature  of  the  distiuction  between  good  and 
evil,  between  the  liglit  that  comes  to  the  liglit,  and  the 
darkness  that  shuts  it  out ;  that  wo  are  to  look  with 
as  imdimmed  eye  to  the  judgment  that  goes  ever 
forth  against  the  latter,  as  to  the  mercy  tliat  rejoices 
over  the  former ;  and  that  our  hearts  are  to  grasp 
"vrith  satisfaction  and  triumph  every  indication  that 
there  is  not  only  "a  reward  for  the  righteous,"  but 
that  "  verily  He  is  a  God  that  judgetli  in  the  earth." 
There  will  be  both  more  reality  and  more  wholesome- 
ness  in  our  piety  when  we  return  to  tliis.  Wo  shall 
have  a  better  answer  even  in  the  heart  of  the  persistent 
wrong-doer  himself,  for  lie  laughs  in  secret  at  the 
thought  of  mercy,  which  his  own  conscience  tells  him 


he  does  not  deserve.  And  we  shall  have  a  richer  fund 
of  love  to  distribute  to  the  weak,  the  penitent,  the 
humbled,  when  we  do  not  waste  it  upon  those  wlio 
trample  it  under  their  feet,  and  turn  again  and  rend 
us.  Tliis  at  least  wo  ought  to  hold  fast  in  aU  our 
dealings  with  determined  sin,  whether  in  ourselves  or 
others,  that  it  is  the  abominable  thing  which  God 
hateth,  and  against  which  the  inexoraljlo  sentence  of 
His  law  is  pronounced ;  and  this  we  ought  to  feel,  that 
the  beginning  of  all  privilege  lies  in  self-abasement 
and  repentance.  If  wo  do  not  feel  tints  we  may 
jierhaps  up  to  a  certain  point  have  "fulfilled"  in  us 
the  sacred  season  of  the  ordinaiy  new  moons  of 
Israel;  but  wo  shall  not  have  "  fulfilled  "  in  us  the  far 
deeper  and  nobler  thoughts  of  that  seventh  new  moon 
which  opened  the  mouth  laden  with  the  most  precious 
treasures  of  the  year. 


MUSIC    OF   THE    BIBLE. 

BY    JOHN    STAINEE,    M.A.,    MUS.    D.,    MAGDALEN    COLLEGE,    OXFORD  ;    OKGANIST    OP   ST.    PAUL'S    CATHEDEAL. 

WDSfD  INSTRUMENTS  (contUmed). 


T7GAB  {continued). 
5N  attempting  to  form  some  opinion  as  to  the 
degi'ce  of  excellence  reached  by  builders 
of  ancient  (not  mediasval)  organs,  it  is 
veiy  necessaiy  to  bear  in  mind  that  the 
principles  on  which  instruments  of  this  class  are  con- 
structed have  not  undergone  any  radical  change  since 
the  earliest  times.  Indeed,  one  of  our  huge  modern 
organs  exhibits  an  ingenious  expansion  of  old  ideas, 
rather  than  the  invention  of  new.  Let  us  suppose,  for 
example,  that  wo  have  two  rows  of  pipes  (i.e.,  two 
stops),  one  set  of  metal,  the  other  of  wood,  standing  in 
holes  in  the  top  of  a  box,  which  is  supplied  with  air 
(more  or  less  compressed)  from  a  bellows.  Only  two 
problems  present  themselves :  first,  how  is  the  player 
to  make  any  particular  pipe  speak  while  its  neighbours 
stand  silent ;  next,  how  is  the  player  to  have  power  to 
play  on  whichever  of  the  two  sets  of  pipes  he  may  wish. 
When  these  cjuestions  are  answered,  we  shall  have  dis- 
covered the  two  important  principles  on  wliicli  all  organs 
have  been  and  are  constructed.  The  modern  names  for 
the  two  pieces  of  mechanism  wliich  bring  about  these 
restdts  are,  respectively,  the  pallet-action  and  the  slider- 
action.  In  Eig.  59  (page  72),  the  simplest  method  of 
placing  particidar  pipes  under  the  player's  control  was 
shown.  Slips  were  pulled  in  and  out  from  imder  the 
foot  of  the  pipes.  The  utter  impossibility  of  obtaining 
from  such  a  system  a  rapid  succession  of  sounds,  or  the 
simidtaueous  movement  of  several  slips  so  as  to  produce 
a  chord,  will  be  at  once  evident.  In  modern  organs 
there  lies  under  the  foot  of  the  pipe,  some  little  distance 
below  it,  a  small  flat  piece  of  wood  covered  with  leather, 
•which  is  hinged  at  ono  end  and  kept  in  position  liy  a 
spring.  This  is  tho  pallet  (see  annexed  diagram.  Fig. 
63).  A  stroke  on  one  of  the  keys  pulls  down  the  free 
end  of  the  pallet  and  allows  air  to  rush  into  the  pipe. 


When  the  finger  releases  the  key,  the  spring  immediately 
holds  the  pallet  tightly  against  the  orifice. 

But  to  have  a  jiaUet  under  every  pipe  in  a  largo  oi-gan 


Fig.  63. 


CL        a,   W  O'        o^ 


T V 


a.  Chest  of  coniprossed  air.  h.  Piill-dowiis  of  pallet  connected 
with  tlie  keys.  c.  Pullets  which  aJinit  air  into  groove  ;  steadied 
hy  moviutj  between  two  wires.  ''.  Grooves  running  from  back  to 
front  under  pipes,  c  Slider  with  holes  corresponding  to  pipes, 
pulled  from  right  to  left,  so  as  to  admit  or  prevent  admission  of 
air  to  pipes  ;  connected  with  the  stop-handles. 

would  be  an  absurdity ;  therefore,  in  arranging  two  sets 
of  pipes,  tlioso  giving  the  same  note  (^or  likely  ta  bo 
required  for  simultaneous  use)  are  placed  behind  ono 
another  orer  the  groove  into  which  the  pallet  admits  the 
air.  If  now  a  key  is  struck,  tlie  pipes  wliieh  give  tho 
Siime  note  in  both  our  stops  wUl  be  sounding  at  once. 
Hence  the  necessity  for  our  slider-action,  •  which   is 


184 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


constructed  thus.  A  strip  of  wood  runs  continuously 
■under  each  row  of  pipes,  having  holes  at  distances 
exactly  corresponding  to  the  distances  between  the  feet 
of  the  pipes.  If  wo  push  this  strip,  which  is  called  the 
slider,  into  such  a  position  that  its  perforations  and  the 
openings  leading  to  the  feet  of  the  pipes  exactly  coincide, 
then  air  can  pass  into  the  pipes  when  the  paDet  opens. 
If,  on  the  contrary,  we  push  this  strip  of  wood  so  that 
none  of  its  perforations  coincide  with  the  entrance  to 
the  feet  of  the  pipes,  no  air  can  reach  the  pipe,  even  if 
the  pallet  bo  opened.  In  the  former  case  we  say  a  stop 
is  out,  in  the  latter  that  it  is  in.  Tho  diagram  (Fig. 
63)  which  is  annexed  will  make  all  this  easily  under- 
stood. 

How  simple  are  these  two  great  constructive  prin- 
cii>les  of  the  organ  !  And  yet,  when  once  known  to  the 
ancients,  there  remained  no  obstacle  to  their  building 
organs  of  any  magnitude ;  for  the  modern  organ  with 
its  three  or  four  manuals  in  tiers,  and  its  pedal-organ, 
is  nothing  more  or 
less  than  a  collec- 
tion of  as  many 
organs  all  built  on 
these  two  princi- 
ples ;  and,  as  be- 
fore remarked,  the 
ability  and  inge- 
nuity of  modern 
organ-builders  has 
beeu  directed  more 
to  tho  easiest 
means  of  bringing 
these  manifold 
organs  under  ouo 
performer's  con- 
trol than  to  the  discovery  of  a  radical  alteration  in  the 
mode  of  their  construction. 

Who  can  venture  to  say  that  these  simple  principles 
of  construction  were  never  mastered  by  the  ancients  ? 
If  the  reader  will  turn  back  to  our  mention  of  the 
m.igrepha,  ho  will  find  that  such  contrivances  must  liave 
been  known  at  least  as  early  as  the  second  century ; 
and  there  seems  little  reason  to  believe  that  any  sudden 
and  unexpected  discovery  led  to  their  adoption.  In 
the  case  of  all  other  musical  instruments,  a  gradual  but 
very  perceptible  growth  iu  the  ingenuity  of  their  con- 
struction is  to  be  ti-aced.  Why  not  so  with  the  ugab  ? 
The  only  conclusion  to  be  dra^vu  from  all  this  is,  that 
the  ugab  must  be  considered  as  an  instrument  of  im- 
portance and  magnitude  in  direct  proportion  to  the 
period  of  its  existence.  To  some  this  may  seem  a  very 
contemptible  conclusion.  But  it  is  not  so.  The  use  of 
the  word  extends  over  a  vast  period,  and  those  writers, 
there&re,  who  describe  it  as  one  unvaried,  unchanging 
instrument  are,  judging  from  what  the  history  of  music 
teaches  us,  treading  on  untenable  ground. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  latest  improvements  in  the 
construction  of  tho  organ  should  have  been  in  its  bellows. 
Ono  would  have  supposed  that  so  important  an  element 
in  its  existence  would  havo  been  perfected  early  in  its 


— 1 — 

T~r~i — 1 — 1 — 1 — 1 — r~r 

J — 1 1 1 1 L 

Fig.  64. 


use.  Such,  however,  is  not  the  case.  It  must  be 
generally  known  that  as  the  top  of  a  common  bellows, 
such  as  a  blacksmith's,  descends,  if  left  to  itself,  the 
pressure  on  the  air  contained  inside  it  increases,  because 
the  weight  of  the  top  and  sides  is  resting  upon  a  con- 
stantly diminishing  quantity  and  therefore  surface  of 
air.  It  is  also  a  well-known  fact  that  organ-pipes 
change  in  their  pitch  to  a  considerable  extent,  according 
to  the  pressure  of  tho  air  which  is  passing  through  them. 
The  ancients,  then,  if  they  had  only  one  such  simply- 
formed  bellows,  could  have  produced  no  sounds  at  all 
while  the  top  of  the  bellows  was  beiug  raised  by  the 
blower,  as  this  process  took  off  the  pressm-e  on  tho 
inside  air ;  and  even  supposing  tliat  several  such  bellows 
were  adapted  to  one  organ  in  such  a  manner  that  whUe 
the  contents  of  some  were  being  utilised  by  the  organist 
the  others  wei-e  beiug  re-filled,  even  then  the  pressure 
of  the  air  must  havo  been  far  from  constant,  unless  the 
ingenuity  of  tho  blowers  counteracted  tho  influence  of 

natural  laws.  A 
glance  at  Fig.  60 
in  the  pre\'ious 
paper  will  show 
this  plainly.  These 
old-fasliioued  bel- 
lows were  called 
diagonal.  The  bel- 
lows of  modern 
organs,  called  hori- 
zontal, practically 
consist  of  the  old 
kind  of  bellows 
—  (now  called  the 
feeders)  and  a  re- 
servoir just  above 
them,  which,  owing  to  valves  at  its  under  side,  cannot 
drop  while  the  feeders  are  being  replenished.  And 
iu  order  to  still  further  equalise  the  pressure,  the  ribs 
of  our  bellows  are  so  arranged  that  while  one  set  meet 
inwardly  the  others  meet  outwardly.  It  seems  almost 
surprising  that  horizontal  bellows  were  not  made  until 
the  sixteenth  century.  Some  ascribe  their  introduction 
to  Lobinger,  of  Nm-emberg,  in  1.570. 

The  weight  of  the  body  was  very  soon  utilised  by 
blowers  for  the  purpose  of  inflating  theii-  bellows,  in 
preference  to  the  muscles  of  the  arm. 

Tho  Saxon  name  for  a  bellows  was  hilig  or  blast-belg ; 
and  like  it  is  the  German,  Blasebalg.  Hence  a  bellows- 
blower  was  called  a  bellows-treader  (Balgentreter).  Fig. 
64,  iu  which  this  process  is  rather  amusingly  illustrated, 
is  given  by  Dr.  Rimbault,  from  Coussemaker's  article 
in  Didron's  Annates  Archcologiqnes.  The  awkward 
pause  which  must  have  taken  place  when  tho  weight  of 
the  treaders  had  emptied  tho  boUows,  and  before  it  was. 
re-tilled,  can  be  imagined.  Tho  diagonal  bellows  and 
their  treaders  remained  in  existence  quite  up  to  the  cud 
of  last  century.  Tlio  organ  in  the  comparatively  modem 
cafliedral  of  St.  Paul's,  London,  was  blown  after  this 
fashion.  It  possessed  four  such  bellows,  each  mea- 
suring 8  feet  l)y  4.     But  other   lai-go  organs   had  as 


MUSIC  OP  THE  BIBLE. 


185 


mauy  as  eight,  ten,  twelve,  and  even  fourteen.  The 
bellows-treader  used  to  walk  leisurely  along,  and  throw 
his  weight  upon  them  in  rotation.  To  this  (hiy  many 
of  the  German  organs  are  blown  by  the  weight  of  the 
blower's  body,  although  tho  bellows  themselves  are  of 
a  modern  form  of  construction.  It  would  be  quite 
unfair  to  the  reader  to  leave  tho  subject  of  ancient 
organs  without  saying  a  few  words  on  tho  much  dis- 
cussed water-organ  or  hydraulic-organ,  wliich  is  care- 
fully   described   by  YitruWus    PoUio,   tho  celebrated 


into  the  base  of  a  vessel  of  any  given  area,  able  to  exert 
on  every  portion  of  that  are-a  equal  to  itself  any  weight 
equal  to  that  added  to  itself,  we  can,  perhaps,  offer  some 
such  explanation  of  their  mechanism  as  tho  following: — 
Suppose  two  oblong  reservoirs  of  air  to  bo  made  with 
their  tops  fixed,  but  with  movable  bottoms,  and  joined 
together  mth  a  cross-bar  in  such  a  manner  that  tho 
bottom  of  ono  must  rise  as  tho  bottom  of  the  other 
falls.  Suppose  also  that  ordinary  valves  are  placed  in 
the  top  of  each,  so  that  as  the  bottom  rises  the  valves 


Fig.  Go. 


architect  of  the  Augustan  sera.  As  explanatory  draw- 
ings were  not  fasliionable  in  those  days,  it  is  quite  im- 
possible to  discover  what  his  elaborate  and  lengthy 
description  really  describes.  But  there  can  bo  no  doubt 
that  tho  lasting  popularity  of  water-organs  was  owing 
to  the  fact  that  by  some  agency  of  water  or  other,  the 
pressure  of  the  air  was  equalised,  and  the  defects  just 
noticed  as  incidental  to  diagonal  bellows  remedied. 
Considering  the  natural  dread  wliich  a  modern  organ- 
builder  has  to  the  appi'oach  of  water  to  his  instrument, 
altliough  ho  is  content  to  wort  an  hydraidic-engine 
and  fill  his  bellows  at  a  dist<an<*e.  tho  reader  may  well 
wonder  how  and  why  ancient  organ-builders  courted 
the  use  of  this  hostile  element.  Assuming  that  tho 
builders  of  the  water-organ  were  aware  of  that  extra- 
ordinary property  of  water  wliich,  for  instance,  miikes 
it,  if  enclosed  in  a  small  tube  passing  downwards  and 


close,  and  the  air  can  only  escape  through  a  passage  into 
the  box  on  which  stand  tho  pipes;  whUo,  on  the  other 
hand,  as  the  bottom  falls  the  v.alves  drop  too,  and  admit 
a  fresh  supply  of  air  through  their  opcnmgs.  Now,  if 
enclosed  water  were  to  be  admitted  below  the  liottoms 
of  tho  reservoirs  with  a  mechanical  arrangement  which 
should  not  only  stop  the  supply  of  compressed  water 
when  the  bottom  of  each  rcserroir  had  reached  its 
highest  point,  but  also  let  the  water  escape  through  a 
waste-valve  at  the  same  time,  it  is  not  difficult  to  con- 
ceive of  a  very  equiil  and  strong  supply  of  air  being 
sent  to  the  pipes  as  tho  two  reservoirs  were  filled  and 
emptied  in  turn.  As  long  as  tho  water  continued  to 
bo  pumped  to  the  higher  level,  so  long  would  tho  supjily 
of  air  last.  There  is  much  in  the  account  of  tlie  instru- 
ment, as  given  by  Vitruvius,  which  carries  out  tliis 
view,  but  parts  of  his  description  are  unquestioaably 


186 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


somewliat  figurative.  In  opposition  to  the  explanation 
of  wafcer-organs  here  attempted,  it  may  be  urged  that 
had  the  Romans  been  aware  of  the  peculiar  properties 
consequent  on  the  gravity  of  liquids,  they  would  never 
have  taken  the  trouble  to  buUd,  as  thoy  did,  massive 
and  beautiful  aqueducts  when  a  closed  pipe  or  tube 
woidd  not  only  have  brought  the  water  safely  down  into 
the  valley,  but  iip  the  other  hill-side  to  the  smne  level. 
Also,  that  an  hydraulic-organ  is  sometimes  spoken  of 
as  playing  by  itself,  and  how  can  this  be  made  con- 
sistent with  the  account  here  given,  unless  the  organ- 
blower  used  to  be  considered  the  real  player,  while  the 
man  at  the  pipes  was  looked  upon  as  a  mere  nonentity? 
And,  again,  it  is  occasionally  mentioned  that  these 
instruments  were  worked  by  hot  water,  and  if  the  water 
were  simply  used  to  obtain  a  force  from  its  special  laws 
of  gravity,  why  in  the  world  need  it  first  bo  boiled? 

Another  explanation  of  the  structure  of  a  water-orgiin 
may  bo  hazarded.  If  into  a  perfectly  closed  chamber 
of  air  a  water-pipe  is  introduced,  the  air  will,  of  course, 
be  compressed  in  proportion  to  the  quantity  of  water 
forced  in.  If  pipes  were  placed  over  such  a  chamber 
with  a  slider  imder  each  pipe  under  the  control  of  the 
player,  the  admission  of  the  air  from  the  chamber  would 
unquestionably  cause  them  to  speak,  and  with  two  such 
chambers  a  tolerably  constant  supply  of  compressed  air 
coidd  be  obtained,  one  providing  this  while  the  other 
was  being  emptied  of  its  water. 

This  digression  on  the  hydraulic  organ  is  not  alto- 
gether out  of  place  here,  as  enthusiasts  are  not  wanting 
who  would  make  us  beheve  that  this  instrument  was 
among  those  known  and  used  by  the  Jews  in  their 
Templo  worship.  Several  authors  have  attempted  to 
give  pictures  of  them,  and,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say, 
have  seriously  taxed  their  inventive  powers  in  so  doing. 
Among  them  may  be  quoted  Kircher,  Isaac  Vossius, 
Perrault  (Commentary  on  Vitruvius),  and  Publihus 
Optantianus.  A  rude  representation  of  one  is  also  to 
be  seen  on  a  coin  of  the  time  of  Nero,  preserved  in 
the  Vatican.  That  here  given  (Fig.  65)  is  from  Hiiuser's 
Kirchen  Musih,  and  is  to  be  found,  with  much  more 
valuable  information,  including  the  text  of  Vitru\'ius' 
account,  in  Rimbault's  well-known  History  of  the 
Oryan.  It  is  pi-obably  purely  fancifid:  the  reader  is 
therefore  likely  to  be,  after  studying  it  carefidly,  as 
wise  as  he  was  before. 

If  we  turn  to  that  nation  whoso  cai-eful  preservation 
of  old  traditions  in  art  renders  then-  present  customs 
unusually  valuablo^tho  Chinese — we  are  struck  by  a 
remarkable  fact,  namely,  that  the  organ  they  use  is  con- 
structed on  a  totally  diiferent  principle  to  that  wliich 
has  grown  up  in  Europe.  It  is  blown  by  being  placed 
against  the  mouth  of  the  performer,  a  truly  primitive 
method,  and  one  which,  if  atUxered  to,  must  liaye  utterly 
prevented  any  great  improvements  in  the  instrument. 
The  player  finds  room  to  pass  his  hand  round  into  the 
back  of  the  instrument,  and  so  reaches  the  pipes  which 
he  lias  to  stop,  for  by  stopping  the  holes  the  pipes  are 
made  to  speak. 

Fig.  66  represents  a  cheng  or  Chinese  organ,  and  iu 


Fig.  67  is  showTi  the  position  in  which  it  is  held  when 
in  use.  The  most  important  difference  between  the 
cheng  and  our  organ  is  that  its  sounds  are  produced 
by  free  reeds.  The  [method  by  which  sound  is  pro- 
duced in  an  ordinary  reed-stop  on  the  organ  is  this  : 
the  metal  tongue  of  the  reed  is  rather  larger  than  the 
orifice  through  wliich  the  air  is  forced,  and  is  slightly 
curved  at  its  extremity.  When,  therefore,  the  current 
of  air  is  directed  to  it  the  tongue  is  forced  down  over 
the  orifice,  but  its  own  elasticity  causes  it  to  return, 
when  the  air  again  forces  it  down,  and  so  on ;  the 
number  of  these  backward  and  forward  motions  being 
of  course  the  number  of  vibrations  necessary  to  produce 
the  particular  sound  required.  But  in  the  case  of  the 
free  reed,  the  tongue  is  not  so  large  as  the  orifice 
through  which  the  air  is  forced;  when,  therefore,  the 
current  of  air  is  directed  against  it,  it  bends  and  passes 
through  the  opening,  but  is  immediately  restored  to  its 
position,  as  in  the  ordinary  reed,  by  its  own  elasticity. 
That  is  to  say,  the  tongue  of  the  common  reed  beats 
against  the  opening,  that  of  the  free  reed  passes  in  and 
out  of  it.  It  is  almost  increchble  that  such  a  simple 
source  of  obtaining  sweet  sounds  should  have  remained 
so  long  unused  iu  Europe.  It  is  said  that  an  organ- 
buUder,  by  name  Kratzenstein,  of  St.  Petersburg,  saw 
a  cheng,  and  made  some  organ-stops  on  this  principle, 
about  the  middle  of  the  last  century.  Biit  the  real  value 
of  free  reeds  does  not  seem  to  have  been  appreciated 
until  Grenie,  of  Paris,  in  1810,  discarded  the  pipes  and 
used  the  reeds  alone,  thus  inventing  the  haiinonium. 
Perhaps  few  of  the  many  thousands  who  play  upon  this 
cheap  and  (now)  sweet-toned  instrument  are  aware  that 
it  is  a  true  descendant  of  a  cheng.  Accordions  and 
concertinas  form  the  connecting  link  between  the  cheng 
and  hai-monium,  as  they  combine  the  portability  and 
free  reeds  of  the  former,  with  the  bellows-system  of  the 
latter.  The  cheng  contains  from  tliirteen  to  twenty-one 
pipes,  and  is  probably  one  of  the  oldest  wind  insti-uments 
now  in  use.  Some  liave  gone  so  far  as  to  call  it  Jubal's 
organ,  which  would  be  in  fact  the  ugab  ;  but  had  it 
been  in  common  use  among  the  Jews,  it  is  lUfficult  to 
believe  that  all  traces  of  it  would  bo  lost  among  the 
nations  wliich  were  in  close  contact  and  inter-communi- 
cation with  them,  especially  as  it  is  exceedingly  liglit 
and  casUy  carried,  and  would  therefore  in  all  probabUity 
have  been  carried  about  by  them  in  their  wanderings 
and  captivities.  It  is  improbable,  therefore,  that  the 
cheng,  ancient  aa  is  its  origin,  is  allied  to  the  Hebrew 
ugnh,  and  the  latter  was  probably  at  the  earliest  times  a 
collection  of  pipes  of  the  very  simplest  character,  but 
gromng  into  more  importance  as  from  time  to  time 
improvements  were  made  in  its  construction.  We  have 
seen  that  the  Jews  were  not  unwilling  to  adopt  the 
improved  form  of  stringed  instruments  which  they 
sometimes  found  in  neighbouring  nations,  and  there  is 
no  special  reason  for  supposing  that  in  the  case  of  the 
ugab  no  attempts  were  made  to  improve  upon  the  form 
invented  by  Jubal.  An  organ,  in  our  modem  sense  of 
the  name,  it  hardly  could  have  been,  as  l;eys  are  a  com- 
paratively late  invention ;  but  a  collection  of  pipes  it 


JOSHUA. 


187 


certainly  was,  which  could  be  made  to  sound  at  the  will 
of  the  player,  albeit,  perhaps,  with  clumsy  mechauism. 
In  the  Septuagint  the  word  ugab  rejoices  in  thi-ee  dis- 
tinct renderings— KiGapa  [cithara)  in  Gen.  Iv.  21 ;  if^aAjuo's 
{^salmus)  in  Job  xxi.  12,  and  xxx.  31 ;  and  opyapoy  (orija- 
nmn)  in  Ps.  cl.  4.  That  learned  scholars  should  have 
Tcntui-ed  to  translate  one  Hebrew  word  by  three  names 
of  such  totally  different  significations  as  "  guitar," 
"psaltery,"  "organ,"  is  a  sufficient  warning  as  to  the 
danger  of  trusting  to  translations.  In  our  Authorised 
Version  it  is  uniformly  rendered  as  "organ" — "Such 
as  handle  the  harp  and  organ  "  (Gen.  iv.  21) ;  "  Rejoice 
at  the  sound  of  the  organ"  (Job  xxi.  12);  "My  harp 
[Icinnor)  also  is  turned  to  mourning,  and  my  organ 
{ugab)  into  the  voice  of  them  that  weep  "  (Job  xxx.  31) ; 
"  Praise  him  with  the  timbrel  and  organ  "  (Ps.  cl.  4). 
But  in  the  Prayer-book  version  it  is  in  this  last  passage 
rendered  by  "pipes:"  "Praise  him  in  the  strings 
{minnim)  and  pipes  (ugab)."  The  German  version  of 
the  Bible  translates  the  word  in  every  case  by  "  pipes  " 
(Pfeifen). 

As  organs  form,  in  our  days,  such  an  important  ele- 
ment in  the  musical  part  of  Christian  worship,  a  few 
words  on  the  probable  date  of  their  dedication  to  tliis 
sacred  function  may  not  be  unwelcome.  It  is  generally 
said  that  they  were  introduced  into  Church  services 
by  Pope  Vitalianns  in  the  seventh  century.  But  on 
tlio  other  hand,  mention  is  found  of  an  organ  which 
belonged  to  a  church  of  nuns  at  Gi'ado,  before  the  year 
680.  This  instrument  has  even  been  minutely  described 
as  having  been  two  feet  long  by  six  inches  deep,  and  as 
possessing  thirty  pipes,  acted  upon  by  fifteen  keys  or 
slides.  It  is  very  doubtful  if  they  were  famihar  to  the 
Romans,  although  an  epigram  of  Juhau  the  Apostate 
alludes  to  them.  It  seems,  however,  to  bo  tolerably 
authenticated  that  one  was  sent  by  Constantino  in  766 
as  a  present  to  Pepin,  a  king  of  Prance.  Improvements 
in  their  construction  are  attributed  to  Pope  Sylvester, 
who  died  1003.  When  we  reach  the  time  of  Chaucer 
their  use  must  have  been  common,  for  he  thus  speaks 


in  his  Nonnes  Preestes  Tale  (Nuns'  PrJtst  Tale)  of  a 

crowing  cock  "  highto  chaunticloro  " — 

"  His  vols  wa3  merier  thau  the  mery  orgon 
Ou  masse  dales  that  in  the  cliuTyhes  gou." 

The  very  existence  of  organs  was  imperilled  in  tho 
troublous  times  of  tho  Rebellion,  and  Pmltans  were 
no  friends  to  their  re-introduction. 

Opinions  differ  as  to  the  derivation  of  the  word  ugab. 
Buxtoi-f  traces  it  to  a  root  agabh,  wiiich  sigmties  "  to 
love,"  and  therefore  defines  it  as  "  instnimentum  musi- 
cum,  quasi  amabile  dictiun."  By  another  author  it  is 
derived  from  an  Arabic  root  alcab,  "to  blow."  The  only 
passages  iu  Holy  Scripture  in  which  tho  vgab  is  men- 
tioned are  those  above  quoted. 

Maschrohitha  or  mislirohitha  is  tho  name  of  a  musical 
instrument  mentioned  only  in  verses  5,  7,  10,  and  15  of 
the  3rd  chapter  of  Daniel.  It  has  been  described  by 
different  writers  as  a  double  flute,  pan-pipes,  and  also  an 
organ  !  As  an  example  of  tho  thoughtless  manner  in 
which  illustrations  are  appended  to  supposed  descrip- 
tions of  ancient  musical  instruments,  it  may  be  men- 
tioned that  the  figure  of  a  magrepha,  as  given  by 
Gaspar  Printz  (1690)  lias  been  given  in  a  wcU-known 
work  on  Biblical  literature  as  an  illustration  of  a  misli- 
rokitha.  Considering  that  these  instruments  had  not 
only  no  claim  to  similarity  of  construction,  but  also 
were  used  by  two  distinct  nations  at  an  interval  of  about 
600  years,  the  appropriateness  of  the  figure  of  one 
(which  by  the  way  was  in  the  first  instance  pm-ely 
imaginary)  as  an  illustration  of  the  form  of  the  other  is, 
to  say  the  least,  somewhat  remote.  The  word  misliro- 
Mtha  is  traced  to  a  root  scharah,  "to  hiss  "  (sibilare),  and 
as  a  certain  amount  of  liissing  necessarily  accompanies 
tho  use  of  jjan-pipes,  the  mislirokithahas  been  generally 
thought  to  be  an  instrument  of  that  class.  It  is  indeed 
rendered  in  the  Greek  by  (n'pi7|  {syrinx).  The  fact 
that  the  Hebrew  translation  of  mishrclcitha  was  iigab 
does  not  go  to  prove  that  the  vgab  was  a  syrinx,  as  we 
have  had  sufficient  doubt  thrown  on  tho  trustworthiness 
of  translators  by  tho  manifold  reuderiug  of  vgab  itself. 


SCEIPTUEE   BIOGRAPHIES. 

JOSHtJA  {concluded). 

BY  THE    KEY.    EDMUND   VENABLES,    M.A.,    CANON    KESIDENTIAKT   AND    PEEOENTOK   OF    LINCOLN. 


^tTS  "'^^^^'-^  cliiff  duties  remained  to  be  executed 
by  Joshua  now  that  he  had  crushed  tho 
military  strength  of  the  Canaanites  and 
made  Ms  power  felt  through  the  length 
and  breadth  of  the  land.  Tlie  fu-st  of  these  was  the 
solemn  recognition  of  the  law  on  Mount  Ebal  and  Mount 
Gerizim,'  in  obedience  to  the  last  instructions  of  Moses 


1  The  narrative  of  this  trai^saction  occurs  at  the  close  of  chap,  viii., 
immeiliately  after  that  of  the  taking  of  Ai.  But  when  we  consider 
that  the  distance  between  Gilgal  and  Mount  Ebal  was  full  thirty 
miles,  that  the  country  w.as  theniu  the  hands  of  the  Canaanites,  and 
that  the  women  and  children  were  present  at  the  ceremony  (viii.  3.5), 
and  would  therefore  have  had  twice  to  make  a  long  and  toilsome 
march  through  a  mountainous  country,  liable  to  attacks  from  the 


(Dent.  xx\'ii.  2 — S).  An  altar  of  unwi'ought  atones  was 
erected  by  Joshua  on  Mount  Ebal,  and  by  its  side  was 
reared  another  huge  stone  monument,  on  tho  plastered 
face  of  which  were  Luscrlbed  all  the  legislative  portions 
of  the  Pentateuch.  These  were  read  by  Joshua  in  the 
audience  of  the  assembled  tribes  ranged  on  the  lower 
spurs  of  the  hills,  here  nearly  meeting  across  the  vaUey, 
six   on  Moimt  Gerizim  to   bless,   and   six   on   Mount 

enemy,  it  must  appear  in  the  highest  degree  improbable  that 
Joshua  should  have  selected  this  time  for  the  roheorsal  of  the  law, 
instead  of  deferring  it  to  a  period  when  it  might  be  performed 
with  ease  and  without  fear  of  molestation.  We  mast  hold,  there- 
fore, that  this  passage  is  not  in  its  true  contest,  and  that  it 
belougB  to  a  later  period  of  the  history. 


188 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


Ebal  to  curse.  The  presence  of  the  ark  of  the 
covenant,  enshrining  the  tables  of  tlio  law,  borne  hj 
the  Lovites,  imparted  an  additional  solemnity  to  the 
ceremony  by  which,  as  their  loud  Amens  confirming 
the  blessings  and  the  curses  were  rolled  back  from  the 
enclosing  hUls,  the  people  acknowledged  the  obligation 
of  the  law,  and  the  righteousness  of  the  punishments 
denounced  upon  the  breach  of  it.  A  more  impressive 
ceremony,  or  one  fuller  of  the  truest  elements  of 
grandeur,  can  hardly  be  imagined. 

A  Till  then  followed  the  dirision  of  the  conquered 
territory  among  the  tribes  of  Israel — the  last  trans- 
action of  a  public  and  official  kind  the  now  aged 
warrior  was  called  to  execute.  Much  unconquered 
land  still  "  remained  to  bo  possessed  "  (Josh.  xiii.  1)_ 
but  Joshua  was  commanded  by  God  to  apportion  the 
whole,  in  reliance  on  His  promise  to  aid  the  pieoiile  to 
complete  the  conquest  if  they  continued  faithful  and 
obedient.  The  apportionment  was  mainly  by  lot ; 
though  in  certain  cases  unconquered  districts  were 
also  assigned  to  those  who  had  strength  and  courage 
to  make  them  their  own.  One  of  those  cases  was 
that  of  the  aged  Caleb,  who,  in  still  unbroken  strength 
in  his  eighty-fifth  year,  presented  himself  before  his 
companion  of  five-and-forty  years  before,  and  with  a 
soldier's  bluntness  reminded  Joshua  of  the  time  when 
Moses  had  sent  them  to  espy  out  the  land  :  "  Thou 
knowest  the  thing  that  the  Lord  said  unto  Moses  the 
man  of  God  concerning  me  and  thee  in  Kadesh-bamea" 
(Josh.  xiv.  6),  and  claimed  the  fulfilment  of  the  promise 
then  made  to  him,  as  the  reward  of  his  faithfulness, 
of  "  the  land  whereon  liis  feet  had  trodden,  to  be  his 
inheritance."  The  place  on  which  Caleb  had  set  his 
heart,  when  he  saw  it  as  a  spy,  and  which  liad  been 
ever  present  to  his  mind  during  nearly  half  a  century, 
was  the  mountainous  country  round  Hebron,  including 
the  city  itself,  the  sacred  burial-place  of  the  fathers 
of  their  nation,  the  stronghold  of  the  much-dreaded 
Anakims.  It  was  a  prize  that  would  have  daunted  any 
one  of  less  courage  or  weaker  faith.  But  the  difficulties 
the  winning  of  it  offered  were  a  temptation  to  Caleb. 
"  I  am  this  day  fourscore  and  five  years  old.  As  yet  I 
am  as  strong  this  day  as  I  was  in  the  day  that  Moses 
sent  me :  as  my  strength  was  then,  even  so  is  my 
strength  now,  for  war,  both  to  go  out,  and  to  come  in. 
Now  therefore  give  me  tliis  mountain,  whereof  the 
Lord  spake  in  that  day  .  .  .  .  If  so  be  the  Lord 
will  be  with  me,  then  I  shall  bo  able  to  drive  out  the 
Anakims,  as  the  Lord  said"  (xiv.  10 — 12).  Joshua 
knew  that  his  old  and  tried  comrade  was  no  vain 
boaster ;  what  he  undertook  he  was  likely  to  make 
good.  To  no  one  could  the  subjugation  of  that  im- 
portant and  difficult  district  be  more  safely  entrusted ; 
so  he  allowed  his  claim,  though  as  probably  a  foreigner 
— perhaps  an  Iduraean  by  birth,  and  only  incorporated 
as  a  proselyte  with  the  tribe  of  Judah — it  could  not  be 
urged  as  a  right,  and  dismissed  him  witli  his  benedic- 
tion. "  And  Joshua  blessed  him,  and  gave  unto  Caleb 
the  son  of  Jephunneh,  Hebron  for  an  inheritance" 
(xiv.  13).      We  like  this  last-recorded  intercourse   of 


these  grand  old  heroes,  and  see  them  part  with  a  raised 
estimate  of  the  character  of  each. 

Another  like  claim,  but  urged  In  a  very  different 
spirit,  was  met  by  Joshua  with  an  equal  appreciation  of 
its  real  merits.  This  was  the  overweening  demand  of 
the  children  of  Joseph,  the  members  of  the  tribe  of 
Ephraim — already  manifesting  the  arrogant  self-asser- 
tion that  characterised  their  conduct  in  later  times — 
and  the  lialf-tribe  of  Manasseh,  for  a  double  portion  of 
territory,  in  consideration  of  their  superior  numbers: 
"  Wliy  hast  thou  given  me  but  one  lot  and  one  portion 
to  inherit,  seeing  I  am  a  great  people  ? "  The  tribe 
of  Ephraim  was  Joshua's  own ;  but  no  infringement  of 
the  strictest  rules  of  justice  must  bo  expected  from  him 
for  the  advantage  of  his  kinsmen.  One  lot  and  one 
only  should  they  have  in  the  general  apportionment. 
If  they  wanted  more,  they  must  conquer  it  for  them- 
selves. They  grounded  their  claim  on  being  "  a  great 
people,"  having  "  great  power."  Well  tJien,  if  they 
were  so,  let  them  prove  it  by  great  deeds.  There 
was  room  enough  for  them  in  "  the  wood  country ; " 
let  them  get  them  up  there,  and  clear  away  the  forest, 
and  drive  out  the  Perizzites  and  the  giants,  if  Mount 
Ephraim  were  too  narrow  for  them.  So  they  might 
obtain  a  second  portion,  and  not  have  "  one  lot  only." 
"  But  the  mountain  shall  be  thine ;  for  it  is  a  wood, 
and  thou  slialt  cut  it  down  :  and  the  outgoings  of  it 
shall  be  thine  :  for  thou  shalt  drive  out  the  Canaanites, 
though  they  have  iron  chariots,  and  though  they  be 
strong  "  (xvii.  14—18). 

The  latter  days  of  Joshua  must  have  been  clouded  with 
disappointment,  as  he  watched  the  brilliant  hopes  with 
which  the  conquest  of  the  Land  of  Promise  commenced 
becoming  gradually  dimmed,  and  the  Lord's  people, 
forgetful  of  their  high  mission,  preferring  ease  and  quiet 
to  the  faitlif ul  execution  of  his  behests.  Tears  passed 
on,  and  the  Canaanites  were  not  driven  out.  Only  five 
of  the  twelve  tribes  had  obtained  their  inheritance,  and 
of  these  two  and  a  half  (Reuben,  Gad,  and  the  half- 
tribe  of  Manasseh,  Numb,  xxxii.  33)  had  received  their 
portions  before  Moses'  death  to  the  east  of  Jordan. 
Seven  tribes  still  remained  to  be  settled;  and  the  fault 
lay  with  themselves.  "  The  Lord  was  not  slack  con- 
cerning his  promise,"  but  they  were  "  slack  to  go  to 
possess  the  land  the  Lord  God  of  their  fathers  had 
given  them"  (Josh,  xviii.  3).  Enriched  by  the  spoils 
of  war,  they  were  in  no  Lurry  to  face  the  difficulty 
and  danger  of  expelHng  the  warlilie  Canaanites.  They 
"could  not  drive  them  out"  (xv.  63)  because  they 
would  not.  We  can  well  conceive  that  this  indolent, 
self-indulgent  spirit  was  intolerable  to  the  vigorous 
mind  of  Joshua.  The  remissness  of  the  people  was 
depriiing  him  of  his  glory.  He  had  been  commissioned 
to  do  a  work,  and  that  work  he  must  see  done.  All 
Israel  must  be  settled  in  their  portions  before  death 
called  him  away.  So,  as  a  first  step,  a  survey  of  the 
still  unapporfioned  land  was  instituted,  and  the  returns 
being  laid  before  Joshua  at  the  newly-fixed  religious 
centre  of  ShUoh,  to  which  the  tabernacle  had  been 
recently  transferred  from  GUgal,  Joshua  and  Eleazar 


JOSHUA. 


189 


tlio  priest  divided  tlie  territory  by  lot  among  the  seven 
unpi'ovided  tribes,  "  before  the  Lord,  at  tlio  door  of  the 
tabernacle  of  the  congregation"  (xix.  511. 

It  was  not  until  they  had  "  made  an  end  of  diridiug 
the  country,"  and  all  other  just  claims  had  been  satisfied, 
that  the  unselfish  and  public-spirited  ruler  received  his 
own  inheritance.  The  true  nobility  of  Josliua's  character 
shines  out  conspicuoxisly  here.  He  who  might  have 
claimed  the  first  and  largest  share  of  the  spoils  of 
victory  postpones  his  right  to  that  of  the  meanest  of  his 
people.  A  special  portion  had  Ix-en  promised  to  him 
by  God,  as  to  Caleb,  as  a  reward  for  "  folloiving  the 
Lord  fully  "  in  the  matter  of  the  spies.  But  lie  calmly 
•waits  till  all  have  received  their  portions  before  he 
"asks "for  his  own.  And  then  it  is  no  wide-spread 
district,  no  pro\-ince,  that  ho  recjuires,  but  just  one  city. 
"  They  gave  him  that  which  he  asked,  and  he  buUt  the 
city  and  dwelt  there:"  the  name  given  to  the  city — 
Timnath-serah,  "  the  portion  that  remains  " — recording 
the  fact  that  the  conqueror's  inheritance  was  the  last 
assignment  made  in  the  whole  distribution  of  his 
conquests. 

Eight-aud-forty  cities — four  out  of  each  tribe — having 
been  assigned  totlie  Levitcs  (chap,  xxi.),  and  the  Trans- 
Jordanie  tribes  dispatched  to  their  rich  mountainous 
pastures  of  Gilead  and  Baslian  with  a  solemn  charge  and 
benediction  (chap,  xxii.),  Joshua's  public  life  may  be  said 
to  have  ended.  Ho  would  seem  to  have  ivithdrawu  at 
once  to  his  new  home,  and  have  taken  no  part  in  the 
occurrences  arising  out  of  the  misunderstanding  caused 
by  the  erection  of  the  great  altar  by  the  returning 
soldiers  of  those  tribes.  Phinehas — his  father  Eleazar 
having  also  retired  from  public  busines.s — is  the  leading 
personage  in  all  these  transactions,  and  the  name  of 
Joshua  is  not  mentioned  (chap.  xxii.  30 — 341. 

In  the  uncertainty  of  the  chronology  of  this  period 
we  are  unable  to  determine  how  long  Joshua  lived  in 
the  peaceful  retirement  of  Timnath-serah.  Twice,  and 
twice  only— if  the  two  chapters  (Josh,  sxiii.,  xxiv.)  do  not 
describe  different  parts  of  the  same  transaction — does 
he  emerge  from  his  privacy,  in  extreme  old  ago,  to 
fortify  the  tribes  whom  he  had  so  often  led  in  battle 
witli  his  parting  words  of  warning  and  encouragement. 
Obedient  to  his  summons,  the  heads  and  representa- 
tives of  the  tribes  gathered  round  their  venerable  chief, 
beneath  the  old  consecrated  oak  of  Abrah.am  and  Jacob 
at  Shechem.  No  place  in  the  whole  Land  of  Promise 
could  have  awakened  so  many  sacred  memories.  Here 
■was  the  first  halting-place  of  the  father  of  their  nation 
where  he  rested  after  his  departure  from  Haran,  at  which 
he  received  the  first  recorded  promise  of  the  land,  and 
tuilt  the  first  altar  to  tho  one  true  God  (Gen.  xii.  6,  7). 
Here  also  Jacob  made  his  first  settlement  on  his  return 
from  his  sojourn  with  Laban,  and  restored  his  grand- 
father's altar  on  the  plot  of  gi'ound  he  had  purchased 
(Gen.  xxxiii.  18 — 20).  Here  also,  beneath  the  ancient 
tree,  the  same  patriarch  buried  tho  monuments  of  secret 
idolatry  cleaving  to  his  household  (xxxv.  4 1.  And  here, 
on  their  first  entrance  into  the  land,  they  themselves, 
between  Mount  Ebal  and  Mount  Gcrizim,  had  entered 


into  covenant  with  God  (Josh.  \ui.  30 — 3-3).  What  placo 
could  be  so  suitable  for  the  solemn  appeals  to  faitlifulness 
and  obedience,  the  mingled  reproofs  and  encouragements 
here  addressed  by  Joshua  to  the  people  ?  All  around 
would  remind  them  of  what  God  had  done  for  them  and 
for  their  fathers ;  how  Ho  had  "  given  them  a  land  for 
which  they  did  not  labour,  and  cities  which  they  built  not, 
and  vineyards  and  oliveyards  which  they  planted  not," 
and  enforce  the  warnings  against  rebellion  and  idolatry. 
Observing  the  most  complete  reticence  as  to  his  own 
exploits,  and  their  obligations  to  him  as  their  captain 
and  ruler,  Joshua's  one  desire  is  that  his  people  may 
show  their  sense  of  what  they  owe  to  God  by  "  pleasing 
Him,  and  serving  Him  in  sincerity  and  truth."  He  feels 
that  he  is  "going  the  vray  of  all  the  earth,"  and  like 
St.  Peter,  he  "  endeavours  that  after  his  decease  they 
may  have  these  things  always  in  remembrance  "  (2  Peter 
i.  15).  With  an  impressive  solemnity,  like  Elijah  on 
Carmel,  he  calls  upon  them  to  make  up  their  minds 
who  should  be  their  God:  "  Choose  you  this  day  whom 
ye  win  serve :  but  as  for  me  and  my  house,  we  wiU 
serve  tho  Lord."  No  hasty,  shallow  assent  to  his  appeal 
would  content  liim.  Ho  well  knew  the  awful  solemnity 
of  a  promise  to  God,  that  it  is  "  better  not  to  vow,  than 
to  vow  and  not  to  pay"  (Eccles.  v.  5).  And,  therefore, 
on  hearing  their  united  asseveration  that  they  would 
serve  Jehovah,  "  for  Ho  is  our  God,"  Joshua  bade  them 
count  well  tho  cost,  and  abstain  from  burdening  their 
souls  with  pledges  which  they  would  be  unable  to  make 
good.  The  people,  with  ready  enthusiasm,  repeated  the 
declaration,  "  Nay,  but  we  will  serve  the  Lord."  Cheer- 
fully accepting  the  Avitness  against  themselves  that 
they  had  chosen  the  Lord,  they,  a  third  time,  renewed 
their  promise  of  faitlifulness.  And  then,  at  last,  did 
Joshua  ratify  tho  covenant  of  Sinai,  and  having  ^vritten 
a  memorial  of  this  solemn  transaction  and  deposited  it 
with  the  book  of  the  law  in  the  ai-k  of  God,  he  set  up 
a  pillar  under  the  oak  or  terebinth  grove  which  marked 
tho  sacred  spot  whero  Abraham  and  Jacob  had  held 
intercourse  with  God,  as  a  witness  to  all  future  genera- 
tions, "  lest  they  should  deny  their  God."  "  So  Joshua 
let  the  people  depart,  every  man  unto  his  inheritance  " 
(xxiv.  27,  28).  There  was  no  more  for  Joshua  to  do.  To 
the  end  of  his  heroic  and  spotless  career  he  had  "  fol- 
lowed the  Lord  fully,"  and  ho  could  now  contentedly 
"  go  the  way  of  all  the  earth."  He  died  as  he  lived, 
"  the  servant  of  the  Lord."  He  was  a  hundred  and 
ten  years  old — ten  years  short  of  his  great  master 
Moses — when  God  called  his  weary  servant  home. 
And  they  buried  him  whero  ho  died,  "  in  the  border 
of  his  inheritance  in  Timnath-serah,  which  is  in  Mount 
Ephraim."  With  him,  according  to  the  statement  pre- 
served in  tho  Septuagint  version,  were  buried  the  flint 
knives  used  in  the  ceremony  of  circumcision  at  Gilgal 
(chap.  V.  2),  "  which  were  long  sought  out  as  relics 
by  those  who  came  in  after  years  to  visit  tho  tomb 
of  their  mighty  deliverer."'  His  colleague  and  friend, 
Eleazar,  who  occupied  the  same  position  in  relation  to 

'  Stanley,  Jevjuh  Cliuycli,  i.  270. 


190 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


Aaron  that  he  had  done  to  Moses,  follo-sred  him  to  the 
tomb,  and  was  also  buried  in  Mount  Ephraim.  "  Elcazar 
and  Joshua  together  make  a  type  of  the  union  of  the 
priesthood  and  government  in  Christ.     The  types  die 


because  they  are  types  ;  but  the  Diraie  Antitype  exists 
for  evermore, '  Jesus  Christ  the  same  yesterday,  to-day, 
and  for  ever.'  "  • 

^  Bishop  Wordsworth,  Commentary  on  Joshua  zxiv.  30. 


ILLUSTRATIONS   OF  HOLY   SCEIPTUEE  FEOM  COINS,  MEDALS, 

AND    INSCKIPTIONS. 

BY   THE    EEV.    CANON     KAWLINSON,    M.A.,    CAMDEN    PKOFESSOB    OF   ANCIENT    HISTORY    IN    THE    DNIVEKSITY    OF   OXFORD. 


XIX. 

^^^^^HE  histoi-y  of  the  relations  subsistmg  be- 
tween the  Jews  and  the  Persians  under 
Darius,  the  sou  of  Hystaspis,  as  given 
in  the  6th  and  6th  chapters  of  the  Book 
of  Ezra,  receives  the  same  sort  of  iUnstratiou  from 
the  Persian  cuneiform  inscrij)tions  which  has  been 
ah-oady  noted  in  a  previous  paper'  as  furnished  by  the 
same  records  in  respect  of  the  Scriptural  accounts  of 
Cyi-us.  The  wi-iter  of  the  Book  of  Ezra,  havLug  related 
the  gracious  dealings  of  Cyrus  with  the  Jews  in  his 
first  chapter,  and  their  proceedings  in  consequence 
(chaps,  ii.  and  iii.),  goes  on  in  his  fourth  chapter  to 
give  an  account  of  the  hindrances  wliich  interrupted 
the  execution  of  Cyrus's  pious  design,  and  especially 
to  note  the  entu-o  suspension  of  tlie  great  work  which 
ho  had  countenanced — the  rebuilding  of  the  Temple  at 
Jerusalem — dm-ing  the  reign  of  a  monarch  whom  he 
calls  Artaxerxos,  but  who  is  reasonably  identified  with 
the  pseudo-Smerdis."  He  closes  his  fomth  chapter 
with  the  words,  "  Then  ceased  the  work  of  the  house 
of  God  which  is  at  Jerusalem.  So  it  ceased  unto  the 
second  year  of  the  reign  of  Darius  the  Persian ; "  tlius 
introducing  us  to  the  person  of  Darius  Hystaspis,'  and 
implying  in  his  fii-st  mention  of  the  monarch  that  he 
reversed  the  policy  of  his  immediate  predecessor,  and 
returned  to  that  of  tho  great  founder  of  the  empire, 
Cyrus.  Having  in  this  way  struck  the  key-note  of  his 
coming  narrative,  he  proceeds  to  inform  us  of  the  cir- 
cumstances under  which  the  work  abandoned  during 
the  reigu  of  the  pseudo-Smerdis  was  resumed  under 
his  successor,  and  though  again  opposed,  was  pushed 
on,  and  finally  carried  to  a  prcsperous  issue. 

His  narrative  diWdes  itself  into  four  portions.  First 
wo  have  an  account  of  the  actiou  taken  by  tho  leading 
Jews  at  Jerusalem,  Zerubljaliel  the  governor,  Jeshua 
tho  high  priest,  and  Haggai  and  Zechariah  the  pro- 
phets, in  the  second  year  of  Darius  ;  how  they  suddenly 
"rose  up,"  tho  prophets  prophesying  and  encouraging 
their  brethren  to  resume  the  work,''  the  civil  governor 
and  the  ecclesiastical  ruler  taking  the  lead  and  beginning 

'  See  Vol,  II.,  p.  85.  2  Ibid., p.  155. 

'  "Darius  the  Persian "  stands  in  contrast  with  "Darius  the 
Mede,"  mentioned  by  Daniel  (t.  31  ;  ix.  1),  and  known  apparently 
to  tho  writer  of  Ezra.  There  had  probably  been  only  those  two 
kings  of  the  name  when  "  Ezra "  was  written  in  the  reigu  of 
Artaxerses  Longiniauus.  "  Darius  the  Mede  "  had  been  Cyrus's 
viceroy  at  Babylon.  "  Darius  the  rersian,"  a  very  difTerent"  man, 
must  be  "  D.arius  the  First  of  Persia,"  i.e.,  Darius  Hystaspis. 

<  Comp,  Hagg.  i.  1,  14 ;  ii.  2,  &c. ;  and  Zecli.  i.  1 ;  iv.  0—10. 


to  build,  the  people  zealously  labouring  after  their 
example,  and  the  walls  consequently  beginning  to  make 
a  show,  which  attracted  the  attention  of  the  ueighbom-ing 
heathen  (chap.  v.  1 — 3).  Next,  we  are  told  how  the 
Persian  governor  of  tho  Syrian  pro\-ince,  Tatnai,  his 
minister,  Shethar-boznai,  and  the  people  of  his  court, 
called  here  Apharsachites,*  becoming  aware  of  what 
was  going  on  at  Jerusalem,  iuquu-ed  by  what  authority 
such  important  steps  were  being  taken ;  and  learning 
that  the  autliority  was  a  decree  made  in  the  fii-st  year 
of  Cyrus,  proceeded  to  address  Darius  on  the  subject, 
suggesting  that  the  national  archives  should  be  searched, 
in  order  that  it  might  be  seen  whether  any  such  decree 
as  that  pretended  by  tho  Jews  had  ever  been  made ; 
and,  further,  asking  tliat  Darius  himself  should  signify 
his  own  pleasure  in  the  matter  {j.  3 — 17).  In  the  third 
place  tho  author  teUs  us  how  Darius  caused  a  search  to 
bo  made,  not  only  at  Babylon  (as  Tatnai  had  sua-- 
gested),  but  elsewhere;  and  how  a  decree  of  Cyrus  was 
found  at  Achmetha  (Ecbatana")  in  the  palace,  which 
he  proceeds  to  give;  after  which  he  passes  somewhat 
abruptly  to  the  words  of  the  firmaun  sent  down  to 
Tatnai  by  Darius  for  the  direction  of  his  own  conduct 
and  that  of  his  courtiers  towards  the  Jews  (vi.  1 — 12). 
Finally  the  author  relates  how  Tatnai  and  his  com- 
panions followed  precisely  tho  orders  of  Darius,  and 
how  tho  building  of  the  Temple,  being  now  unliindored, 
went  rapidly  forward,  and  was  at  last  completed  in  the 
sixth  year  of  Darius,  or  twenty- one  years"  after  its 
first  commencement  (vi.  13 — 15). 

The  chief  points  of  this  narr.ative  on  which  recent 
discoveries  tln-ow  some  light  are  the  following.  In  the 
first  place,  as  it  appears  from  the  great  inscription  of 
Bohistun,  set  up  by  Darius  himself,  that  in  the  early 
part  of  his  reign  he  was  engaged  in  a  civil  war,  and 
then  in  troubles  caused  by  various  revolts  and  rebel- 
lions, it]  becomes  intelligible  that  the  Jews,  at  such  a. 
time  of  disturb.ance,  should  h.avc  taken  matters  into  their 
own  hands,  and  without  waiting  for  a  formal  permis- 
sion from  the  Court,  should  have  disregarded  the  pro- 

*  Compare  the  "  Apharsathchites  "  and  "  Apharsites  "  of  chap, 
iv.  9.  Ail  these  forms  probably  represent  the  word  "Persian." 
{See  the  Spci^lccr'^  Ct^mmenianj.) 

"  Achmetha  (S'non,^)  corresponds  closely  with  the  native  form^ 
Hagmatan,  found  in  the  Behistun  inscription,  difieriug  only  by  the 
omission  of  the  final  u,  which  is  dropped  also  iu  Hara  (for  Haran, 
1  Chron.  V.  26),  audits  Greek  equivalent,  K.i^lpji,  Lat.  Carila:. 

*  The  first  year  of  Cyrus  at  Babylon  (accordiui:  to  the  Canon  of 
Ptolemy)  was  B.C.  53S.  The  building  of  the  Temple  wos  com- 
menced iu  tho  year  following  (Ezra  iii.  8),  B.C.  537.  Darius  began 
to  reign  in  B.C.  521,  and  consequently  his  sisth  year  was  D.c.  516. 


BIBLICAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 


191 


Libitory  mandate  of  the  pseudo-Smerdis  (Ezra  iv.  17 — 
22),  and  falliug  back  on  the  original  decree  of  tlw  great 
Cyrus,  should  have  resumed  the  biultling  of  the  Temple. 
As  it  became  in  a  little  time  well  known  throughout 
the  empu-e  that  the  new  monarch  had  entirely  reversed 
the  religious  policy  of  his  predecessor,'  they  might  fau-ly 
anticipate  his  approval,  while  the  troubles  of  the  time 
might  prevent  them  from  applying  for  a  positive  sanc- 
tion. Again,  the  known  opinions  of  the  new  monarch 
would  naturally  cause  Tatnai  and  his  companions  to 
adopt  a  guarded  tone  in  writing  to  him  about  tlio  Jows. 
There  is  a  strong  contrast  between  the  letter  addressed 
to  the  pseudo-Smerdis  by  Rehum,  and  that  addressed 
by  Tatnai  to  Darius  a  few  years  later.  Rehum's  letter 
makes  severe  charges  against  the  Jews,  and  does  not 
once  contain  the  name  of  God.  Tatnai's  abstains  from 
all  accusation,  and  makes  frequent  mention  of  the  God 
of  the  Jews  as  "the  God  of  heaven  "  (v.  12),  "  the  God 
of  heaven  and  earth"  (ver.  11),  or  "the  great  God" 
(ver.  8).  All  this  harmonises  well  with  the  contrast 
which  the  Behistun  inscription  di-aws  between  the 
elemental  Magism  of  Darius's  predecessor,  and  his  own 
firm  belief  in  a  real  personal  God.  The  same  belief 
appears  with  still  greater  distinctness  in  his  firmaun, 
where  he  requires  his  officers  to  help  in  the  restoration 
of  "the  house  of  God"  by  the  Jews,  approves  of  their 
offeriug  sacrifices  there  to  "the  God  of  heaven"  (vi.  9), 
and  sets  a  value  upon  the  prayers  which  would  be  offered 
in  the  said  house  "  for  the  life  of  the  king  and  of  his 
sons  "  (ver.  10). 

Thus  the  general  narrative  of  the  part  taken  by 
Darius  iu  this  matter,  and  the  sxieeial  favour  which  he 
showed  to  the  Jews,  accords  perfectly  with  the  con- 
temporary inscriptions  of  Darius  himself,  which  prove 
him  to  have  been  a  zealous  Zoroastrian,  a  firm  believer 
in  the  imity  and  personality  of  God.  and  therefore  a 
natural  sympathiser  with  the  Jewish  people  in  respect 
of  their  religion.  There  arc  also  one  or  two  minor 
points  of  the  narrative  which  receive  illustration  from 
recent  discoveries.  (1.)  When  the  question  ai-ises  as  to 
the  fact,  whether  Cyrus  really  had  issued  a  decree  autho- 
rising the  rebuilding  of  the  Temple,  search  is  made  in 
the  "  houses  of  the  rolls  "  at  the  various  capitals,  and 
when  the  decree  is  found,  it  is  said  to  have  been  found 

'  Darius  says,  "  The  temples,  which  Gomates  the  Magian  had 
destroyed,  I  rebuilt ;  the  religious  chants  and  the  worship  which 
he  had  caused  to  cease,  I  re-established."  {Bch.  Ins.,  col.  i.,  par. 
U,  §  5,  6.) 


"in  the  jxdace  that  is  in  the  province  of  the  Medes," 
(Ezra  vi.  2) ;  whereby  it  appears  that  record  offices  in 
Persia  were  attached  to  royal  palaces.     Now  the  ex- 
cavations iu  Mesopotamia,  though  they  have  not  as  yet 
actually  confirmed  this  fact,  have  revealed  one  parallel 
to  it.     They  have  shown  that  the  Assyi-ian  kiugs,  the 
predecessors  of  the  Medo-Persians  in  the  sovereignty  of 
the  East,  whom  the  Persians  undoubtedly  imitated  in 
various  ways,  had  record  offices  attached  to  their  palaces. 
It  was  in  the  palace  of  Sarchmapalus  at  Nineveh  that 
the  great  discoveiy  was  made  by  Mr.  Layard,  in  1850, 
of  such  an  office — an  office  where  deeds  and  other  docu- 
ments, closely  packed  together,  covered  the  entire  floor 
to  the  depth  of  several  feet.^     (2.)  The  decree  of  CyTus 
was  found  by  Darius  at  Ecbatana.     Wo  naturally  ask. 
Why  at  Ecbatana,  rather  than  at  Babylon,  or  Susa,  or 
Persepolis — the  more   usual  seats  of  the  court  ?     To 
this  the  Behistun  inscription  suggests  a  reply  by  show- 
ing us  that  Darius  iu  his  second  and  third  ye.irs  was 
engaged  in  a  war  with  a  great  Median  rebel,  and  termi- 
nated it  by  occupying  his  capital,  Ecbatana,  and  fixing 
his.5  own  residence  there  for  some  time.^     It  may  thus 
well  be  that,  when  Darius  received  Tatnai's  letter,  he 
was   himself  at  Ecbatana,  and  that    the  record  office 
there  was  the   readiest  and  most   convenient    one   to 
search.      (3.)    The   punishment   threatened  by  Darius 
against  those  who  should  disobey  his  decree — crucifixion 
(Ezra  vi.  11)— is  exactly  that  which  he  tells  us  he  was 
in  the  halrit  of  dealing  out  to  those  who  resisted  his 
wiU.     The   Behistun  inscription   contains   four   places 
where  impalement  or  crucifixion  is  mentioned  as  the 
death  assigned  by  Darius  to  criminals.^     (•!.)  Finally, 
the  decree  of  Darius  ends  with  a  curse  :  "  The  God  tliat 
hath  caused  his  name  to  dwell  there,  destroy  all  kings 
and   people   that   shall  put  to  their  hand  to   alter  or 
destroy  this  house  of   God  which  is  at  Jerusalem." 
Similarly  a  curse  concludes   the   main   inscription  at 
Behistun,''  and  a   similar  formula   is  found   in   other 
inscriptions  of  Darius,  the  general  cast  of   the  curse 
being  something  like  the  following  : — "  If  thou  doeet 
not  as   I  bid  thee,  may   Ormazd  be  thy  enemy,  and 
mayest  thou  have   no  offspring;  and    whatever  thou 
doest,  may  Ormazd  curse  it  for  thee ! " 

-  Layard,  JfijicveTt  and  Bahylon,  p.  345. 

3  Hch.  h\s.,  col.  ii.,  par.  13,  §  8. 

4  Ibid,,  col.  ii.,  par.  13,  §  8 ;  par.M,§16;  col.  iii.,  par.  8,  §  2; 
par.  U,  §  10. 

'"  Ibid.,  col.  iT.,  par.  17. 


BIBLICAL   PSYCHOLOGY. 

BT     THE      KEV.     J.     B.     HEARD,     M.A.,     CAIUS      COLLEGE,     CAMBBIDaE. 

PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  (continued). 


nmfilE  next  decisive  passage  on  the  trichotomy  i  coming  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ"  (1  Tliess.  v, 


23). 


of  the   New    Testament   is   that  in   the 

earliest  of  the  Apostle  Paul's   Epistles: 

"  I    pray    God    your    whole    spirit,   and 

and  body  may  be  preserved  blameless  uuto  the 


The  apostle,  who  had  been  dwelling  in  the  previous 
verses  on  some  of  the  details  of  sauctification,  such  as 
proving  all  things,  holding  fast  th.at  which  is  good,  and 
abstaining  from  every  species  or  form  of  evil,  proceeds 


192 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOK. 


to  sum  up  his  remarks  with  the  prayer  that  this  saneti- 
fieation  might  become  whole  and  entire  (dAoTe\e7s  and 
i\6ic\ri(iov).  These  two  adjectives  are  expressive,  the  one 
of  tlie  whole,  and  the  other  of  the  parts  of  human  nature. 
Wholly  and  entirely,  i.e.,  over  all  and  through  each 
part  of  man's  natm'e,  this  sauctiflcation  was  to  extend 
and  spread.  We  may  here  ask — and  it  is  this  which  sug- 
gests the  ensuing  thought — what  are  those  divisions  of 
our  composite  nature  into  which  sanctifying  grace  is  to 
enter  and  permeate  ?  The  Apostle  explains  that  grace  is 
to  enter  into  his  spiiit,  which  is  the  holy  of  holies  ;  his 
soul,  which  is  the  holy  place ;  and  even  his  body,  which 
corresponds  to  the  outer  court  of  the  Temple.  The 
analogy  from  the  Temple  with  its  throe  courts,  one 
within  the  other,  is  a  lively  and  just  illustration  of  the 
trichotomy  of  man.  Luther,  in  his  exposition  of  the 
Magnificat,  has  very  weU  opened  up  the  analogy  and 
applied  it  in  its  detail.  The  passage  is  quoted  at  length 
by  Delitzsch,  Goschel,  and  other  writers.  Luther 
also  correctly  seized  the  Scriptural  distinction  between 
spirit  and  flesh,  not  as  favouring  the  dichotomy,  as  some 
suppose,  but  rather  as  suggesting  the  good  and  e\-il 
direction  in  which  the  whole  spirit,  soul,  and  body  are 
tirawn  when  the  Spii'it  of  God  or  the  spirit  of  the  wicked 
one  is  the  source  of  the  inspiration,  bringing  with  it 
either  "  airs  from  heaven  or  blasts  from  hell."  Flesh  and 
sjiirit  are  thus  not  so  much  the  direct  factors  of  human 
natiu-e,  as  dichotomists  think,  but  the  opposite  poles  or 
tendencies  to  which  the  pneuvui  or  conscience,  which  is 
also  one  with  the  self,  of  the  ego  inclines,  according  as 
it  is  inspired  from  above  or  from  beneath.  In  the 
preface  to  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  Luther  grasped 
the  right  significance  of  the  word  "  flesh  "  in  Scripture. 
"  Then  set  not,"  he  said.  "  to  understand  flesh  and  spirit 
here  in  such  a  way  as  that  flesh  alone  should  be  that 
which  has  to  do  with  impurity,  and  spirit  that  which  con- 
cerns what  is  internal  in  the  heart ;  but  St.  Paul,  as  well 
as  Christ  (John  iii.  6),  calls  flesh  all  that  is  bom  of  flesh, 
the  whole  man  with  body  and  soul,  with  reason  and  with 
senses,  for  the  reason  is  everything  in  him  that  is  stirring 
towards  the  flesh."  Luther,  accordingly,  quite  correctly 
imderstood  by  the  spirit  the  religious  or  faith-faculty  by 
which  we  know  God  and  the  things  of  God,  and  quotes 
in  support  of  this  Ps.  li.  10  ;  Ixxviii.  37.  "The  soul,"  ho 
says,  "  is  just  the  same  spirit,  only  conformed  to  nature. 
The  sold,"  he  adds,  "  is  the  reason,  and  in  this  sense  is 
the  light  of  the  house ;  but  when  the  spirit  does  not  en- 
lighten as  with  a  higher  light,  tliis  light  of  reason  rules, 
and  therefore  it  can  never  bo  without  error,  for  it  is  too 
feeble  to  act  in  respect  of  divine  things."  "  The  third,"  he 
adds,  "  is  the  body,  with  its  members,  the  agencies  which 
only  bring  into  use  what  the  soul  knows  and  the  spirit 
Relieves."  "  Moses,"  he  goes  on  to  remark,  "  made  a 
tabernacle  with  three  distinct  compartment.s.  The  first 
was  called  sanctum  smictorum,  within  which  dwelt  God, 
and  there  was  no  light  therein ;  the  second  sanctum, 
within  which  stood  a  candlestick,  with  seven  pipes  and 
lamps.  The  third  was  called  atrium,  thci  court,  and  it 
was  under  the  open  house  in  the  light  of  the  sun.  In 
the  same  figure  a  Christian  man  is  depicted.    His  spirit 


is  sanctum  sanctorum,  God's  dwelling-place  in  dim 
faith  without  light.  For  he  believes  what  he  does  not 
see,  nor  feel,  nor  apprehend.  His  soul  is  sanctum ; 
there  are  seven  lights,  that  is,  all  kinds  of  understand- 
ing, discrimination,  knowledge  and  perception  of  bodily 
visible  things.  His  body  is  atrium,  which  is  manifest 
to  every  man,  that  it  may  be  seen  what  he  does  and  how 
he  lives." 

This  is  the  true  psychology  of  Scripture,  and  Luther 
was  a  scribe  instructed  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven  when 
he  thus  rightly  divided  between  the  soul  and  spirit 
and  the  flesh  and  the  spirit.  The  one  indicated  a 
distinction  of  faculties,  the  other  indicated  only  a 
distinction  of  the  dh-ection  in  which  these  faculties 
should  work.  The  flesh  is  a  tendency  even  of  the 
spirit,  just  as  the  vine  may  trail  on  the  ground,  and 
when  we  look  that  it  should  bring  forth  grapes,  behold 
they  are  wild  grajjes.  In  the  passage  in  question 
(1  Thess.  V.  23)  the  sanctificatiou  is  to  be  complete  and 
entire.  In  order  to  this  it  must  work  outwards  from 
within,  and  not,  as  the  mere  moralist  would  suggest, 
inwards  from  without.  According  to  Aristotle  and  the 
morahsts,  doing  good  acts  loads  to  good  habits,  and  thus 
virtue  becomes  second  nature ;  there  is  a  sense  in 
which  this  is  true.  But  this  is  not  the  divine  order. 
Sanctification  liaviTig  its  roots  not  in  mere  reformation 
of  the  outer  man  only,  but  in  renewal  of  the  hidden  man 
of  the  heart,  follows  a  different  order.  It  begins  with 
a  birth;  the  kingdom  of  heaven  can  only  be  entered 
from  the  kingdom  of  nature,  by  a  waking  up  from  the 
sleep  of  unconsciousness  similar  to  that  wliich  marks  the 
beginning  of  the  psychical  life.  To  be  bom  again  is  no 
mere  figure  of  speech,  it  is  the  very  key  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,  and  yet  it  has  been  more  misunderstood  than 
any  other  phrase  in  the  New  Testament,  not  excepting 
even  that  of  eating  the  flesh  and  drinking  the  blood 
of  our  blessed  Lord.  Di\'ines,  from  inattention  to  the 
distinction  of  psyche  and  pncmna,  have  only  obscured 
the  question  and  overloaded  it  with  a  great  deal  of 
irrelevant  argument  and  illustrations  not  to  the  point. 
The  mystery  of  growth  is  the  key  to  imlock  this  and 
every  other  puzzle  of  the  universe.  Till  we  can  under- 
stand life  we  can  never  understand  growth ;  but  this 
we  know,  that  it  is  the  unerring  mark  of  Hfe.  The 
kingdom  of  heaven  is  as  a  grain  of  mustard-seed,  which 
is  cast  in  the  ground :  it  is  like  the  birth  which  is  the 
fruit  of  the  womb.  In  these  two  analogies  of  Scripture 
we  have  the  true  account  of  the  matter.  AU  life  must 
come  from  God,  who  is  the  author  and  giver  of  life. 

This  being  understood,  the  order  of  sanctification  as 
outwards  from  within  is  simple  and  obvious.  The  spirit 
is  sanctified  (!j\6K\-npov)  in  the  first  plac^.  The  entire 
pneuma  becomes  the  /cXijpos,  or  portion  of  God.  "  The 
Lord's  portion  is  his  people ;  Jacob  is  the  lot  of  his  in- 
heritance." This  is  especially  the  case  of  the  pneuma. 
God  must  enter  in  and  dwell  there.  He  must  shekinah 
in  it,  as  Ho  tabernacled  in  the  most  holy  place.  The 
result  of  this  indwelling  of  God  in  us,  must  work 
itself  out  in  the  psychical  life,  the  seat  of  our  in- 
tellect and  affections.     Nor  will  it  end  there,  it  will 


BIBLICAL   PSYCHOLOGY. 


193 


make  a  kAtipos,  or  portion  for  God  even  of  the  body.  It 
may  be  only  the  border  of  his  inheritance,  a  Gralilee  of  the 
Gentiles,  an  outer  court.  StiU  outward  and  onward  this 
impulse  of  self-dedication  will  spread,  until,  "whether 
we  eat  or  drhik,  or  whatever  wo  do,  we  shall  do  all  to 
the  glory  of  God."  Such  is  the  teaching  of  this  passage 
iu  which,  as  is  the  usual  manner  of  Scripture,  a  deep 
psychological  truth  is  brought  out,  but  only  by  the 
way,  as  it  were,  and  arising  out  of  a  practical  matter  in 
hand — viz.,  the  will  of  God  concerning  us,  oven  our 
sanctification. 

The  next  decisive  passage  that  we  turn  to  is  that  in 
1  Cor.  ii.  12,  &c.,  where  the  psychical  and  pneumatical 
natures  are  contrasted  in  this  way,  that  the  one  is 
capable  of  di\'ine  communicatious,  and  of  entering  into 
the  deep  things  of  God,  which  the  other  is  not.  "  What 
man  knoweth  the  things  of  a  man,  save  the  spu-it  of 
man  which  is  in  him  ?  "  This  identifies  the  spirit  with 
the  deepest  and  innermost  part  of  man  ;  the  spirit  is  the 
self  or  ego,  the  seat  of  self-consciousness.  The  Ajjostle 
then  goes  on  to  identify  it  as  the  seat  of  God-conscious- 
ness :  "  Even  so  the  things  of  God  knoweth  no  man, 
but  the  Spirit  of  God."  He  follows  this  thought  out  in 
the  ensuing  verses.  There  is  a  contrast  between  the 
spirit  of  the  world  and  the  spu-it  which  is  of  God. 
Man's  wisdom  coiild  not  teach  these  things ;  it  is  only 
the  Holy  Ghost  who  can  teach  them  by  enabling  us  to 
compare  sph-itual  things  with  spiritual.  This  leads  him 
then  to  contrast  two  characters — the  one  psycliical,  the 
other  pneumatical.  There  is  a  psychical  life,  and  there 
is  a  pneumatical.  The  psychical  man  judges  by  sense, 
and  sense-experience.  He  is  of  the  world,  understands 
its  maxims  and  principles.  His  life  is  a  psycliical  one, 
bounded  by  the  region  of  time,  unable  to  launch  out 
into  the  far-off  future  or  to  take  into  its  calculation 
considerations  broader  and  deeper  than  those  of  the 
generality  of  men.  The  psychical  man,  in  other  words, 
knows  nothing  of  the  walk  and  triimiph  of  faith.  He 
need  not  be,  probably  is  not,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of 
the  word,  an  unbeUever,  much  less  a  misbeliever.  He 
is  probably  orthodox,  and  willing  to  render  to  faith  the 
things  which  are  faith's,  and  to  reason  the  things  which 
are  reason's.  But  in  God's  sight  this  psychical  man  is 
one  wanting  faith  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word.  He  is 
not  willing  to  wait,  like  the  patriarchs,  for  "  a  city  wliich 
hath  foundations,  whose  maker  and  builder  is  God." 
His  horizon  is  bounded  by  time.  He  receives  liis  good 
things  now.  He  does  not  confess  himself  to  bo  a 
stranger  and  a  pilgrim.  The  psychical  man  is  not  the 
mere  slave  of  his  passions — quite  the  contrary.  He  has 
learned  to  act  on  Goethe's  two  favourite  maxims,  me  gwid 
■nimis  and  indulge  genio,  and  the  one  he  sets  off  against 
the  other.  Thus  is  he  temperate  in  all  things,  but  it  is 
after  all  only  to  obtain  a  corruptible  crown,  not  an  in- 
corruptible. His  maxims  are  admired  and  understood 
by  the  world,  and  his  posterity  praise  his  sayings. 

But  with  all  this  there  is  one  fatal  defect — he  lacks 
the  one  thing  wliich  distinguishes  the  pneumatical  man 
as  such.  That  one  thing  is  faith,  that  far-reaching,  long- 
eightod  faculty  which  lives  for  the  hereafter,  and  which 

37 — VOL.    II. 


wiU  not  be  content  with  its  portion  only  in  this  life. 
To  the  psychical  man  the  things  of  the  Spirit  of  God  are 
"  foolishness,  neither  can  he  know  them,  because  they  are 
spiritually  discerned."  The  spiritual  man,  on  the  other 
hand,  "  judges  all  things,  yet  ho  himself  is  judged  of  no 
man" — for  why  ?  The  less  is  judged  of  the  greater,  the 
higher  always  overlooks  the  lower.  Spii'itual  minded- 
ness  is  not  so  much  to  be  described  as  felt.  The 
Apostle  in  this  passage  glances  at  one  or  two  of  its 
specific  qualities,  and  assumes  a  deep  and  radical  con- 
trast between  the  psychical  and  the  pneiunatical.  But, 
after  all,  it  must  be  felt  to  be  understood.  In  this  sense 
it  is  that  "the  secret  of  the  Lord  is  with  them  that  fear 
him,  and  he  will  show  them  his  covenant."  This  view  of 
divine  things  has  always  been  a  derision  to  men  of  the 
world — "  which  way  went  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  from  me 
to  speak  unto  thee  ?  "  is  the  sneer  of  the  false  prophet  to 
the  true.  In  the  same  way  the  mob  kicking  and  jumping 
on  one  of  Wesley's  preachers,  to  kick  the  Holy  Ghost 
out  of  him,  is  another  exhibition  of  the  same  mockery  in 
its  coarsest  and  most  brutal  form.  Thus  the  spiritual 
man  differs  from  the  natural,  as  the  life  beyond  from 
that  which  is.  It  is  on  this  account  that  spiritual 
natures  "do  groan,  being  burdened."  They  feel  the  dis- 
parity between  what  is  and  what  ought  to  be,  between 
their  aspu'ations  after  God  and  the  jjoor  performances 
they  can  attain  to.  The  better  they  become,  the  worse 
they  feel  themselves  to  bo.  Hence  that  contrition  on 
account  of  indweUing  sin,  their  "groaniugs  which 
cannot  be  uttered,"  and  which,  when  they  do  find  vent 
in  words,  seem  so  unreal  and  exaggerated.  A  critic 
like  Maeaulay  is  unable  to  understand  Bunyan's  self- 
reproaches  as  to  his  being  the  chief  of  sinners.  When 
the  psychical  intellect  asks  what  these  enormities  could 
have  been,  he  finds  nothing  but  the  ordinary  indulgences 
of  a  Bedford  tinker,  a  little  tippling  and  a  little  swearing, 
and  so  he  sets  the  whole  down  as  the  morbid  experience 
of  a  man  who  had  distorted  liis  mind  by  brooding  too 
long  on  one  single  class  of  thoughts,  and  who  had  no  other 
model  but  the  one  Book  on  which  to  frame  his  speech. 
So  surely  is  spultual  experience  misunderstood  by  the 
mere  critical  or  logical  faculty,  that  it  is  weD  to  be 
silent  in  such  company.  A  man  of  refinement  instinc- 
tively shrinks  from  parading  his  feelings  at  all,  particu- 
larly before  those  who  are  sm-e  to  misunderstand  them, 
who  toU  set  them  down  as  cant  or  exaggeration,  the 
workings  of  spultual  pride  or  of  presumption.  To  the 
psychical  inteDect  these  things  are  as  foolishness  ;  they 
are  as  music  to  a  deaf  man,  or  a  painting  to  one  bom 
blind.  He  lacks  the  perceptive  organ,  and  for  this 
reason  he  had  better  be  sUeut. 

Esthetics,  or  the  science  of  taste,  furnish  some  very 
just  analogies  to  our  spiritual  perception.  It  is  now 
admitted  on  all  sides  that  there  is  no  external  test  of  the 
sublime  and  beautiful — the  standard  is  in  ourselves.  We 
must  educate  our  taste,  and  as  our  wsthesis,  or  fine  per- 
ception of  beauty,  grows  with  cultm-e,  so  we  seem  to  gain 
a  new  sense — the  insight  of  beauty.  It  is  at  once  an 
intuition,  and  also  the  result  of  many  laboui-ed  exercises 
of  judgment  and  taste.      It  is  instinctive  appai'cntly 


194 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


and  indefinable,  and  yet  it  comes  to  us  only  at  tlie  end 
of  a  long  tratuing  in  art.  It  is  precisely  the  same  with 
our  spiritual'  perceptions.  A  refining  process  has  been 
going  on  for  some  time.  We  have  "  piu'ifled  our  hearts 
in  obeying  the  truth,"  and  at  last,  as  the  result  of  dili- 
gence and  duty,  of  patience  and  prayer,  the  things  of 
God  stand  out,  seen  iu  their  own  light.  It  is  that  "  finer 
light  in  light,"  of  which  the  poet  speaks,  and  which 
distinguishes  the  moral  and  spiritual  from  the  mere 
historical  evidences  for  the  truth  of  Christianity.  This  is 
the  meaning  of  the  beatitude,  "Blessed  are  the  pure 
in  heart,  for  they  shall  see  God:"  as  a  lake  at  night, 
when  the  ripple  of  the  evening  breeze  has  passed  off,  is 
glinted  with  stars,  and  in  the  still  watches  of  the  night 
a  procession  of  the  heavenly  bodies  passes  over  it  as  over 
the  speculum  of  a  reflecting  telescope. 

In  the  Epistle  of  St.  Jude  there  is  the  same  contrast 
between  two  characters ;  there  are  those  who  are  sensual 
and  psychical,  having  not  the  Spii-it.  The  Gorman  here 
mai'ks  a  distinction  which  we  faU.  to  reproduce  in  the 
English.  Luther  renders  it,  "Eleischliche,  die  da  keiuen 
Geist  haben."  But  the  Berlenlnirgh  Bible,"  with  Do 
Wetto  and  Scholz,  render  it  still  more  accurately,  '•  Sinn- 
liche  Menschen,  die  keinen  Geist  haben ;"  men,  that  is, 
who  act  on  psychic  principles,  only  because  they  lack  the 
spiritual  faculty  altogether.  There  are  men  whose  veiy 
conscience  is  defiled,  and  who  by  long  indulgence  in 
known  sin  have  deadened  ihe pneuma,  that  it  is  as  if  it  had 
never  existed.  Theii-  last  state  is  worse  than  the  first. 
We  gather  from  this  decisive  passage  in  St.  Jude,  this 
truth— not  only  that  the  spirit  is  dead  in  uurcgenerate 
man,  but  also  that  it  has  been  deadened  by  the 
hardening  which  results  from  habitual  sin.  The  com- 
mission of  sin  does  not  kill  the  psychical  nature  ui  the 
same  way  that  it  does  the  pneumatical.  On  the  con- 
trary, there  is  a  kind  of  vice  which  loses  all  its  gi'ossness, 
and  seems  to  stimulate  the  intellectual  powers  to  a 
certain  extent  at  least.  Fleshly  lusts,  it  is  true,  war 
against  the  psyche  (1  Peter  ii.  11),  so  that  the  end  of 
these  things  is  death.  We  know  that  they  who  sow  to 
the  flesh,  shall  of  the  flesh  reap  corruption ;  but  the  fii-st 
de.adening  effect  of  these  things  is  felt  in  the  pneuma, 
not  in  the  psyche.  It  is  conceivable  that  a  heentious 
scoffer  should  have  the  psychical  nature  in  its  highest 
perfection ;  it  is  not  conceivable  that  he  should  exorcise 
the  pneuma. 

Another  passage  in  St.  James  confirms  this  view, 
where  the  wisdom  that  is  from  beneath  is  described  as 
earthly,  psychical  and  devil-inspired  (5aiixoiiMSi)s).    Wo 


have  here  a  great  truth  with  regard  to  our  growth  and 
development.  In  the  last  stage  of  all  we  become  the 
children  of  God  or  children  of  the  devil.  The  pneuina, 
cannot  continue  for  ever,  like  a  house  empty,  swept,  and 
garnished.  Seme  one  must  enter  iu  and  dwell  there, 
and  if  it  is  not  made  the  home  of  God  some  spii-it 
ixore  wicked  than  the  fii'st  wiU  enter  in  and  dweU 
there,  and  the  last  state  wiU  become  worse  than  the 
first. 

To  sum  up,  then,  our  view  of  the  New  Testament 
psychology,  it  does  not  contradict  that  of  the  Old — it  is 
only  an  advance  upon  it.  The  psyche  or  soul  is  the 
life  of  man  in  the  rudest  sense  of  the  word  ;  as  it  has  its 
seat  iu  the  body,  it  is  often  identified  with  the  blood 
and  the  breath.  But  neither  one  nor  the  other,  nor  both 
together,  make  up  the  psyche  in  the  true  and  fidl  sense 
of  the  word  ;  for  we  are  told  not  to  fear  those  who  can. 
only  kill  tho  body,  but  rather  to  fear  Him  who  can  cast 
both  body  and  soid  into  gehenna.  The  psyche  is  thus 
the  formative  principle  of  the  body,  but  it  is  also  the 
nucleus  of  another  and  liigher  life  which  we  call  that  of 
tho  pnemna.  In  this  sense  we  may  foUow  Justin 
Martyr's  simile,  and  speak  of  the  body  as  the  house  of  tho 
soul,  while  the  soul  again  is  the  house  of  the  pneuma. 
Tliis  higher  life  was  but  imperfectly  known  under  the 
first  covenant,  and  therefore  the  psychology  of  the  Old 
Testament  is  indistinct  in  comparison  to  that  of  the 
New ;  but  it  is  an  immense  advance  on  the  psychology  of 
Aristotle.  The  faculty  of  God- consciousness  was  un- 
known to  the  Greeks,  for  the  very  sufficient  reason  that 
the  object  on  which  that  faculty  should  exercise  itself 
was  scarcely,  if  at  all,  known.  "  In  Jewry  is  God  known, 
his  name  is  great  in  Israel."  Tor  this  reason  it  was 
only  within  the  covenant  that  the  function  of  spiritual- 
mindedness  could  bo  exercised.  As  we  cannot  imagine 
Aristotle  inditing  the  42nd  Psalm,  so  we  cannot  think 
of  him  as  inserting  in  his  treatise  On  the  Soul,  a  chapter 
on  the  functions  and  use  of  the  pneuma.  Scripture, 
which  teaches  us  what  it  is  to  be  "  athirst  for  God,  yea, 
even  for  the  living  God,"  alone  describes  that  part 
of  man's  nature  from  whence  this  thirst  arises.  But  it 
is  when  we  tiu'n  to  tho  New  Testament  that  we  find  our 
knowledge  of  self  supplemented  by  a  revelation  of  a 
Being  who  is  said  to  be  the  abiding  Comforter,  and 
to  be  with  us  and  iu  us.  As  our  faith  teaches  us  to 
believe  iu  the  Holy  Ghost,  tho  Lord  aud  Giver  of  life, 
so  psychology  suggests  that  there  must  be  a  special 
organ  in  man  which  it  is  the  office  of  the  Holy  Spirit  to 
breathe  into  and  to  teach. 


EZEKIEL. 


195 


BOOKS     OF     THE     OLD     TESTAMENT. 

EZEKIEL. 

BY   THE    VERY    BEV.    E.    PAYNE    SMITH,    D.D.,    DEAN    OP    CANTEEEUKY. 


ZEKIEL  is,  among  the  i^rophets,  what 
Michael  Angelo  is  among  paiaters  and 
sculptors.  Vast  and  colossal  in  his  ima-- 
ger}',  majestic  in  his  diction,  copious  in 
fancy,  he  nevertheless  often  transcends  in  his  ideas 
the  powers  of  language,  and  becomes  obscm-o  and  diffi- 
cult to  understand.  Tliis  is  well  exemplified  in  the 
vision  by  which  he  was  called  to  liis  office.  He  was 
the  son  of  a  priest  named  Buzi,  and  had  been  carried 
away  captive  by  Nebuchadnezzar  with  Jehoiachin,  king 
of  Judah,  at  the  capture  of  Jerusalem,  just  after 
Jehoiakim's  death.  Witli  other  prisoners  he  was  made 
to  settle  upon  the  river  Chebar,  an  affluent  of  the 
Euphrates  ia  Babylonia,  probably  that  known  as  the 
royal  canal  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  the  word  simply  mean- 
ing "  the  great  stream."  The  object,  no  doidjt,  of 
the  king  in  thus  transplanting  people  from  Palestine 
to  Babylonia  was  to  increase  the  popvilation  of  his 
territories.  In  Judsea  they  would  be  restless  and  ever 
ready  for  revolt.  Compelled  to  emigrate,  and  settled 
hero  and  there  in  small  comnnuiities,  they  would  become 
faithf id  subjects  and  help  to  fill  up  the  gaps  among  the 
inhabitants  caused  by  incessant  war. 

We  may  suppose  the  commimity  soon  moderately 
flom-ishing ;  for  the  Jews  were  good  settlers,  and  the 
land  excessively  fertile.  And  Ezekiel  apparently  held 
a  position  of  rank  among  them  (viii.  1 ;  xiv.  1 ;  xx.  1), 
besides  being  probably  their  priest.  They  had  been  five 
years  in  capti^-ity,  when  in  the  "  thirtieth  year"  (chap.  i. 
1)  he  saw  his  vision.  This  date  has  greatly  troubled 
commentators.  Some  have  supposed  that  it  was  the 
thirtieth  year  of  Ezekiel's  age,  others  the  tliirtieth 
year  from  the  jubilee,  but  more  probably  it  means  the 
thirtieth  year  of  the  era  of  Nabopolassar,  the  father 
of  Nebuchadnezzar.  Most  axjpropriately,  the  prophet 
writing  in  Chaldasa  uses  a  Chaldee  epoch,  which  in  the 
2ud  verse  he  checks  by  giving  the  Jewish  date  of 
Jehoiachin's  captivity.  As  Nabopolassar  began  to  reign 
B.C.  62-5,  this  gives  for  Ezekiel's  \'ision  the  year  B.C. 
595,  which  exactly  tallies  with  the  fifth  year  of  the  im- 
prisonment of  the  Jewish  king. 

Walking  then  by  the  river  Chebar  in  deep  meditation 
probably  upon  the  destinies  of  his  country,  the  "  hand  of 
Jehovah  "  rested  upon  Ezekiel,  and,  closing  the  avenues 
of  his  mind  to  the  ordinary  impression  of  the  senses, 
displayed  to  his  tranced  sight  the  most  wonderful  spec- 
tacle ever  presented  to  mortal  eyes.  From  the  dark 
north  a  whii'lwind  appeared  like  a  vast  clovid,  formed  of 
blazing  fire,  shooting  out  rays  and  tongfues  of  flame  on 
every  side,  and  enclosing  at  its  centre  an  a,ppearance  as 
of  amber,  or  rather  dark-blue,  like  polished  steel.  Prom 
this  dark  centre  there  came  forth  four  living  beings. 
each  foui'-sided,  and  having  on  each  side  four  ivings, 
making  for  each  sixteen  in  all.  Their  feet  were  not 
like  those  of  men,  set  at  right  angles  to  the  leg,  but 


came  straight  down  and  ended,  like  those  of  a  calf,  in  a 
fl.at  sole.  On  each  side  imder  their  fom-  wings  they  had 
human  hands,  and  as  thus  each  side  was  perfect  with  its 
face,  four  wings,  and  four  hands,  they  needed  not  to 
tm-n,  but  faced  every  way,  and  moved  ever  straight 
onwards.  Each  one  apparently  liad  on  the  light  hand 
the  faces  of  a  man  and  of  a  lion,  and  on  the  left  those 
of  an  ox  and  an  eagle,  signif  j-ing  tlio  union  in  each  one 
of  inteUigence,  courage,  strength,  and  piercing  vision, 
or  spiritual  insight.  Their  wings  were  so  arranged 
that  two  on  each  side  were  elevated,  enclosing  the  face 
between  them,  while  two  covered  the  body,  but  they 
needed  them  not  for  motion.  Wherever  they  wiUed  to 
go,  thither  they  went ;  and  such  was  their  brightness 
and  the  rapidity  of  their  movements  that  they  seemed 
to  go  hither  and  thither  like  the  lightning  fLash. 

Beneath  these  li\ang  beings  were  wlieels  bright  as  of 
beryl,  shaped  wheel  \vithin  wheel,  but  each  wheel  of 
equal  size,  placed  transversely  to  one  anotlier,  so  as  to 
foi-m  globes.  And  the  circles  or  tires  of  these  wheels 
were  full  of  eyes,  the  symbols  of  intelligence ;  and  as 
each  living  creature  had  beneath  it  one  of  these  globes 
of  wheels,  which  moved  ever  with  it  as  it  willed,  the 
whole  represented  the  rapid  intelligence  with  which 
God's  miuisters  instantaneously  do  his  behests. 

For  these  beings  formed  the  throne  of  the  Deity. 
Above  then-  heads  was  an  expanse  of  dazzling  crystal, 
whence  came  a  voice ;  and  as  they  moved  the  prophet 
seemed  to  hear  a  mighty  rusliing  of  ^vings,  like  the  sound 
of  many  waters,  and  of  rolling  thunder,  and  of  the  din  of 
an  army ;  but  when  the  voice  came  from  the  expanse,  all 
was  stiU,  and  tke  living  creatures  drooped  their  wings. 
For  the  voice  came  forth  from  a  throne  of  sapphire, 
circled  around  with  the  same  deep  blue  coloiu-  as  liad 
formed  the  centre  of  the  cloud  of  whirlwind,  while  above 
it  was  the  rainbow,  and  in  tho  midst  the  Deity  seated 
in  human  form,  but  as  "  the  appearance  of  fii'e  round 
about  within."  And  the  voice  was  Ezekiel's  commission 
to  speak  in  Jehovah's  name  to  Israel's  rebellious  house. 

When  we  contrast  this  vision,  so  intricate,  so  minute 
in  its  details,  so  complex,  and  withal  so  awfiJ  and 
mysterious,  with  the  calm  sulilimity  of  the  glorious 
spectacle  which  greeted  Isaiah's  eyes  in  the  Temple,  or 
with  the  peaceful  simplicity  of  Jeremiah's  imageiy,  we  un- 
derstand something  of  the  reason  which  made  St.  Jerome 
characterise  Ezekiel  as  "tho  ocean  and  labyrinth  of 
God's  mysteries,"  and  which  made  the  Rabbins  forbid 
their  pupils  to  read  his  writings  till  they  were  thirty 
years  of  age.  Well  might  his  name  be  called  Ezekiel, 
that  is,  "  the  strength  of  God." 

The  book  is  divided  iuto  two  parts,  as  Josephus  long 
ago  obsei'ved,  in  a  passage  (Antiq.  x.  6)  which  has  given 
commentators  gi'eat  trouble  from  .supposing  that  what 
we  have  is  one  book  only.  But  just  as  in  Isaiah  we  have 
seen  that  there  are  two  distinct  coUoctions,  besides  the 


196 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


historical  appendix,  and  the  final  prophecy  concerning 
the  "servant  of  Jehovah,"  so  here  in  chaps,  i. — xxiv., 
we  have  a  series  of  prophecies  aU  relating  to  Jerusalem, 
each  one  dated,  and  all  arranged  in  chronological  order, 
and  ending  with  the  capture  of  the  city.  To  this  is 
appended  a  group  of  jirophecies  relating  to  seven  foreign 
nations,  the  number  seven  being,  no  doubt,  intentional. 
The  insertion  of  these  prophecies,  breaking  up  so  com- 
pletely the  strict  order  observed  before,  makes  it  ex- 
tremely probable  that  upon  Jerusalem's  fall — an  event  so 
striking  to  all  his  countrymen,  and  so  exactly  fidfilliug 
the  predictions  of  the  prophets — Ezekiel  collected  the 
scattered  prophecies  spoken  by  him  at  Tel-Abib,  "  the 
mound  of  wheat-ears,"  his  dwelling-place  on  the  Chebar, 
arranged  tliem  according  to  their  dates,  and  published 
them.  It  must  have  been  many  years  afterwards  that  he 
put  forth  the  section  containing  the  prophecies  against 
other  nations,  in  which  chronological  order  is  not  always 
observed,  though  the  dates  are  still  given.  Thus  a 
prophecy  against  Bgj"]->t  in  the  twenty- seventh  year  of 
the  captirity  (xxix.  17)  is  put  between  predictions  re- 
lating to  the  same  country  belonging  to  its  tenth  and 
eleventh, years  (xxix.  1;  xxx.  20 j.  As  it  was  in  the 
eleventh  year  of  the  capti^dty  that  Jerusalem  was  taken, 
this  brings  down  the  date  of  tliis  coOection  to  a  period 
sixteen  years  later,  unless  tins  prophecy  were  inserted 
at  the  time  when  the  second  book  was  pubhshed.  The 
only  date  in  the  second  book  is  the  twenty-fifth  year 
of  the  capti\'ity,  and  thus  it  seems  pretty  certain  that 
it  was  not  pubhshed  tOl  sixteen  or  seventeen  years  after 
the  first,  and  between  them  the  prophet  placed  the 
group  not  belonging  to  his  own  people.  The  prophecies 
of  this  second  book  are,  as  a  rule,  cjiuts  distinct  in 
character  from  those  of  the  fii'st. 

It  consists  of  chapters  xxxiii.— xlviii.,  and  contains, 
first,  a  number  of  prophecies  uttered  after  the  fall  of 
Jerusalem  (xxxiii. — xxxix.),  chiefly  to  comfort  the  people ; 
and  secondly,  a  vision  of  the  future  glory  of  Israel  de- 
picted under  a  roproseutation  of  the  rebuildiug  of  the 
Temple.  This  part  has  often  been  made  the  subject  of 
attack,  and  the  prophet  has  been  accused  of  gi\'ing  way 
too  much  to  a  sacerdotal  bias,  and  confounding  the 
future  development  of  liis  nation  with  the  restoration  of 
the  njaterialism  of  animal  sacrifices  and  cumbrous  cere- 
monies. But  really  the  Temple  was  the  centre  of  the 
affections  of  all  Israelites,  and  was  itself  symbolic,  and 
to  some  extent  its  symbolism  was  imderstood.  Evidently 
also  a  prophet  in  depicting  an  era  of  future  gloiy  could 
only  use  the  ideas  of  his  own  times.  So  in  the  Revela- 
tion of  St.  John,  wliich  reproduces  much  of  the  imagery 
of  Ezekiel,  the  abode  of  the  blest  is  represented  as  a 
walled  city,  because  walls  then  represented  security  and 
strfength.  Commentators,  however,  tliffer  greatly  on 
the  question  whether  these  chapters  are  to  be  uudei'stood 
literally;  or  generally  as  predicting  an  era  of  pros- 
perity to  the  Jews;  or  spiritually  of  Christ  and  his 
kingdom. 

As  inflexible  as  Jeremiah,  and  tenacious  of  liis  duty, 
Ezekiel  was  more  stern  and  uufliuehing.  To  Jeremiah 
it  was  often  pain  and  misery  to  obey  God's  commands, 


and  Ms  natui-e  led  him  to  brood  over  his  own  feelings 
and  look  into  himself,  while  Ezekiel  threw  his  whole 
heart  into  the  struggle  'with  an  iron  steadf.astuess  that 
felt  pleasure  in  the  struggle  itself.  One  prophecy  illus- 
trates this  very  remarkably.  He  had  just  predicted  the 
capture  of  Jerusalem  (chap,  xxiv.),  and  fixed  the  day 
when  the  king  of  Babylon  shoiUd  start  to  conduct  in. 
person  the  siege.  And  then  God  took  from  him  his 
wife  tenderly  beloved,  "  the  desire  of  his  eyei?;  "  and  yet, 
in  the  presence  of  the  miseries  coming  upon  his  people, 
he  was  content  to  show  no  token  of  grief.  He  forbore 
to  cry  and  made  no  mourning,  and  observed  none  of  the 
usual  signs  of  sorrow.  It  was  the  command  of  Jehovah, 
and  he  obeyed  without  a  murmur. 

His  prophecies  in  the  fii-st  part  are  exceedingly  inte- 
resting, as  disclosing  somewhat  of  the  feelings  of  the 
captives  settled  in  a  sti-ange  land,  and  even  more  so  for 
the  bold  spirit  in  which  they  modify  the  letter  of  the 
Mosaic  covenant.  It  was  a  grievous  blow  to  the  Jews 
to  be  torn  away  from  their  homes ;  and  such  an  over- 
turning of  the  whole  course  of  life  often  unhinges  men 
from  what  was  previously  good  in  them,  and  makes  them 
careless  or  even  desperate  for  the  futiu-e.  We  are  all 
such  creatures  of  habit,  that  if  our  old  associations  are 
destroyed  we  often  seem  to  lose  with  them  our  energy 
and  self-control.  It  was  no  wonder,  therefore,  that  the 
jjeople  began  to  hesitate  in  their  allogiauce  to  Jehovah. 
At  Babylon  there  were  men  of  strong  nature  and  .settled 
piety  to  be  their  guides  and  leaders,  but  the  little  com- 
munities of  farmers  along  the  Chebar  had  probably  no 
master-mind  among  them  except  Ezekiel's.  Wo  find, 
therefore,  idolatry  making  way  among  them  (xiv.,  xx.), 
and  even  a  tendency  to  return  to  that  fierce  melancholy 
which  had  led  them  to  make  their  chdch-en  pass  through 
the  fire  (xx.  31).  Ezekiel's  words  often  met  with  oppo- 
sition (iii.  26,  27  ;  xii.  2),  whUe,  naturally  jjerhaps,  they 
brooded  over  the  dealings  of  God's  pro^ddence  with 
them  and  accused  him  of  injustice  (xviii.  25).  There 
were  even  false  prophets  among  them  (xiii.  3),  but  they 
do  not  seem  to  have  been  so  numerous  or  so  powerful 
as  at  Jerusalem,  and  even  at  Babylon  in  the  days  of 
Jeremiah  ( Jer.  xiv.  14 ;  xxvii.  9  ;  xxviii.  1 ;  xxix.  8). 

It  was  the  fall  of  Jerusalem  which  was  the  turning- 
point  of  the  Jewish  mind,  and  which  made  Jeremiiih  so 
influential  with  them.  TiU  then  they  had  hesitated,  but 
it  brought  home  the  fuU  conviction  that  God's  word  as 
spoken  by  the  prophets  was  true.  And  tliis  Ezekiel 
dweUs  on  as  earnestly  iis  Jeremiah,  and  depicts  vrith 
great  force  the  long  series  of  sins  against  Jehovah,  cul  • 
minating  in  open  rebelliou  and  idolatry,  which  had 
brought  upon  the  city  so  severe  a  punishment.  He  thus 
tries  to  wean  them  from  the  past,  and  induce  them  to 
settle  quietly  in  their  new  homes  ;  to  fret  and  plot  no 
longer  for  a  return  to  Judaea,  but  from  its  history  to 
gather  the  lesson  that  then-  one  hope  and  strength  and 
happiness  was  in  being  faithful  to  their  God.  And  this 
instruction  he  gives  them  in  predictions  remarkable  for 
the  diversity  of  i\w  forms  which  they  assume.  There 
are  types  and  symbolical  actions,  parables  and  .allego- 
ries, similitudes  and  riddles,  visions  and  open  prophecies, 


EZEKIEL. 


197 


and  often  we  get  strange  glimpses  of  wliat  went  on  in 
Jerusalem ;  as  when,  in  chap.  Tiii.,  lie  sees  seventy  of 
the  ancients  of  the  house  of  Israel  worshipping,  with 
censers  iu  tlieir  hands,  iu  "  chambers  of  imagery,"  i.e., 
halls  in  which  not  one  idol  only,  but  many,  were  repre- 
sented, some  of  which,  as,  for  iustance,  the  images  of 
"  creeping  tMngs,"  show  that  the  Jews  had  sunk 
almost  as  low  as  the  Egyptians,  to  whom  all  animal 
and  even  vegetable  life  seemed  divine  and  worthy  of 
worship.  Near  them,  iu  the  Temple  itself,  the  women 
were  weeping  for  Tammuz,  a  rite  of  native  worship, 
apparently  representing  the  destruction  of  the  fair  and 
beautifid  spring-time  by  tlie  burning  heats  of  summer. 
This  entirely  agrees  with  the  representation  in  Jeremiah 
(vii.  18;  xliv.  17 — 19)  of  the  devotion  of  the  women  of 
Jerusalem  to  the  queen  of  heaven;  for  in  mythology 
Tammuz  was  represented  as  beloved  by  her,  and  slain 
by  the  jealousy  of  her  lord,  the  sun. 

But  even  more  remai-kablo  are  the  interpretations  put 
by  Ezekiel  upon  the  Mosaic  law.  We  find,  for  instance, 
that  the  exiles  made  bitter  complaiut  of  the  words  of  the 
second  commandment,  that  God  visits  upon  the  children 
the  sins  of  the  fathers.  They  had  repented,  were 
idolaters  no  longer,  and  yet  they  had  to  suffer  the  con- 
sequences of  the  crimes  of  then-  forefathers.  Now  it  is 
the  law  of  God,  iu  nature  and  in  providence,  that  the 
children  are  affected  for  good  and  evil  by  the  doings  of 
their  parents.  Aptitudes  gained  by  the  parent  are 
bestowed  upon  the  cliUd ;  sins,  and  the  diseases  which 
result  from  them,  are  constantly  matters  of  inheritance  ; 
while  the  fortunes  of  the  parent,  his  success  or  failure, 
his  industry  or  his  unthrift  and  profligacy,  cannot  but 
aifect  the  temporal  position  of  his  offspring.  But 
Ezekiel  shows  with  bold  hand  that  this  entail  is  strictly 
limited,  and  does  not  affect  the  moral  probation  of  the 
individual.  Each  one  in  life  makes  his  own  choice,  and 
both  in  things  temporal  and  things  spiritual,  repentance 
may  reverse  the  past.  A  pious  son  may  spring  from  a 
profligate  father,  a  prosperous  son  from  one  overtaken 
by  misery.  Nay,  even  iu  a  man's  own  life,  the  future 
may  be  the  reverse  of  what  has  gone  before.  A  lapse 
into  sin  may  destroy  the  bright  promise  of  former 
years  (xviii.,  xxxiii.). 

Equally  remarkable  and  even  more  bold  is  the  state- 
ment in  chap,  xx.,  tliat  the  whole  of  the  Mosaic  law  was 
not  equally  good.  When  first  the  Israelites  came  out  of 
Egypt,  God  gave  them  "  statutes  and  judgments,  which 
if  a  man  do,  he  shall  even  Kve  iu  them."  But  when 
they  rebelled,  and  despised  God's  judgments,  and  pol- 
luted his  sabbaths,  which  he  had  given  as  a  special  sign 
of  his  covenant  with  them,  then  he  "  gave  them  statutes 
which  were  not  good,  and  judgments  whereby  they 
should  not  live"  (xx.  11,  2.5).  Such  teaching  is  the 
more  remarkable  as  coming  from  a  priest,  and  one  who 
was  in  general  so  strict  himself  in  the  observance  of  the 
Levitical  precepts  (see  iv.  14).  St.  Paul  himself  did  not 
more  plainly  teach  that  much  of  the  law  was  a  burden 
too  heavy  for  men  to  bear. 

And  thus  tlien  prophecies  concerning  Jerusalem  and 
the  Babylonian  war,  together  with  such  instruction  as 


grew  naturally  out  of  the  feelings  and  difficidties  of  the 
exUes  in  their  new  and  painful  position,  form  the  two 
great  divisions  of  Ezekiel's  fii'st  book.  In  the  predictions 
which  concern  foreign  nations,  one  or  two  things  are  so 
striking  as  to  call  for  some  remark. 

The  first  is  the  account  of  the  trade  of  Tyre,  in  chap, 
xxvii.,  where  we  have  a  most  interesting  picture  of  the 
beauty  of  Tyre  itself,  its  buildings  and  ships,  its  military 
strength  and  naval  power,  with  a  long  list  of  the  nations 
which  traded  witli  her,  and  the  articles  brought  to  her 
mart,  giving  us  a  surprising  representation  of  the  com- 
mercial activity  of  ancient  times.  And  this,  in  the  next 
chapter,  is  followed  by  a  lamentation  over  the  prince  of 
Tyi-e,  iu  which  ho  is  described  as  having  been  in  Eden, 
the  garden  of  God,  covered  there  with  every  kind  of 
precious  stones ;  as  being  the  anointed  cherub  that 
guarded  the  mount  of  God;  as  walking  between  the 
stones  of  fire,  and  as  being  perfect  in  all  his  ways  tUl 
imquity  was  found  in  him.  How  are  these  words  to  be 
explained  ?  Some  take  them  as  hyperbolical,  a  descrip- 
tion in  wildly  metaphoi'ic  language  of  the  glory  and 
magnificence  of  tlie  Tyi'ian  state  while  in  the  height  of 
its  prosperity ;  others  put  upon  them  a  more  mysterious 
meaning,  and  suppose  that  before  the  call  of  Al)raham, 
the  progenitor  of  the  Tyi-ian  race  had  been  chosen  as  the 
depository  of  the  light  of  revelation,  but  had  forfeited 
his  privileges  throiigh  sin.  Certainly  of  this  we  find 
no  single  word  in  the  rest  of  Holy  Scripture  ;  but  the 
words  are  very  marvellous,  and  can  scarcely  mean  so 
little  as  that  Tyi'e  was  very  rich  and  rejoiced  iu  luxurious 
liviug.  It  is  after  this  prophecy,  in  chap,  xxix.,  that  we 
have  the  prediction  given  in  the  twenty-seventh  year  of 
the  captivity,  recording  the  long  service  of  the  Chal- 
dean army  in  the  capture  of  the  city,  and  promising  it 
Egypt  as  a  reward.  So  specific  a  prophecy  might  well 
bo  inserted  among  those  relating  to  Egypt  when  the 
second  book  was  put  forth  if,  as  is  probable,  these 
historical  predictions  were  originally  published  at  the 
earlier  date. 

For  many  years  after  the  fall  of  Jerusalem  Ezekiel 
seems  to  have  ceased  to  prophesy,  though  active  as  ever 
in  guiding  and  instructing  the  people.  The  ruin  of 
city  and  temple  was  to  work  slowly  upon  the  minds  of 
the  Jews,  and  gradiuiUy  produce  that  change  in  them 
which  made  them  so  completely  different  a  people  when, 
at  the  end  of  the  seventy  years,  they  returned  to  their 
land.  Still  from  time  to  time  God's  hand  rested  upon 
him,  and,  some  seventeen  or  eighteen  yeai-s  afterwards, 
he  put  forth  this  second  book,  consisting  no  longer  of 
short  and  varied  and  often  startling  visions  and  para- 
bles, but  of  longer  and  more  general  discourses.  In 
them  he  speaks  at  length,  and  mth  much  power,  upon 
the  duties  of  those  who  watch  over  and  feed  the  people, 
while  he  comforts  the  latter  under  their  troubles.  Like 
Obadiah,  ho  condemns  strongly  the  unfrieudly  conduct  of 
the  Edomites  in  the  day  of  Jerusalem's  fall,  and  predicts 
their  ruin ;  and  this  prophecy,  no  doubt,  would  bo  spoken 
when  the  minds  of  aU  were  still  smarting  with  indig- 
nation at  the  cruelty  of  Edom.  who,  when  his  brother 
Jacob  sought  a  refuge  in  his  land  from  Nebuchadnezzar's 


198 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


hosts,  stood  in  the  way  to  stay  the  fugitiyes  and  give 
them  up  to  the  piu'suing  Chaldees.  In  chap,  xxxvii., 
however,  we  have  something  in  his  old  manner.  The 
hand  of  the  Lord  sots  him  down  in  a  valley  filled  with 
human  bones,  and  these  he  is  commanded  to  call  back 
to  life.  And  no  sooner  have  the  words  gone  forth  from  his 
lips  than  there  is  a  rustling  and  motion  among  the  bones, 
and  tliey  seek  each  one  its  fellow,  and  flesh  and  muscle 
and  skin  once  again  clothe  them,  and  he  sees  a  host  of 
living  men.  Now,  no  doubt,  the  piimary  application  of 
this  prophecy  was  to  the  restoration  of  the  Jews  to 
their  laud.  Scattered  among  the  nations,  their  political 
existence  extinct,  powerless  and  utterly  crushed,  they 
were  yet  to  revive  as  a  nation,  and  once  again  live  for  the 
performance  of  that  great  task  assigned  to  them  by 
God.  Yet  we  cannot  but  feel  that  the  vision  suggested 
far  more  than  this.  The  nation  was  to  re^dve,  but  what 
of  those  who  had  died  in  the  long  years  of  exile  ?  Was 
there  nothing  for  them  ?  Had  they  no  share  in  Israel's 
hopes  ?  Yes,  they  too  would  live  again,  and  form  a 
mighty  army  of  Jehovah.  "  O  my  people,  I  will  open 
your  graves,  and  cause  you  to  come  up  out  of  your 
graves,  and  bring  you  into  the  land  of  Israel."  Many 
took  this  even  literally.  We  read  in  the  Talmud  of  a 
Rabbi  Jehuda,  who  claimed  to  be  a  lineal  descendant  of 
one  raised  to  life,  in  accordance  with  Ezekiel's  words. 
Others,  better  instructed  in  the  symbolism  of  the  pro- 
phots,  must  often  h.-^vo  mused  upon  those  words,  especi- 
ally as  years  passed  by  and  there  was  no  literal  fulfilment, 
and  must  have  sought  a  spiritual  interpretation.  So  too 
of  the  rest  of  the  chapter,  in  which  the  prophet  fore- 
tells the  union  of  Judah  and  Ephraim  under  their  king — 
David.     It  excited  hopes  never  to  be  literally  fulfilled. 


But  both  had  a  better  tulfilmeut  when  Christ  brought 
life  and  immortality  to  light  by  his  Gospel. 

And  next  we  have  a  picture  of  the  gathering  together 
of  the  hosts  of  Gog  and  Magog  to  attack  God's  people. 
Into  this  it  would  be  scarcely  proper  to  enter,  for  the 
interpretation  is  so  difficult  and  contested,  that  a  volume 
would  be  necessary  for  its  exposition.  But  after  their 
destruction  God's  new  kingdom  on  earth  is  revealed, 
with  its  temple,  and  now  settlement  of  the  tribes,  and 
the  holy  waters  issuing  in  a  mighty  stream  from  the 
threshold  of  the  house  of  God.  Of  much  of  this  we 
have  an  interpretation  in  the  Revelation  of  St.  John,  who 
had  evidently  mused  deeply  upon  Ezekiel's  mysteries  ; 
and  he  too  tolls  us  of  a  river  of  water  of  life,  flowing 
from  the  thi'ono  of  God  for  the  healing  of  the  nations. 
And  with  some  such  general  meaning  we  must  be,  for  the 
present,  content ;  for  while  upon  moral  points,  and  the 
interpreta,tion  of  the  Mosaic  law,  Ezekiel  is  the  clearest  of 
teachers,  yet  in  liis  mysteries  he  is  too  deep  and  obscure 
for  them  to  be  easy  to  be  imderstood.  It  may  be  that 
much  is  still  f  utm-e,  and  that  when  the  purposes  of  God 
as  regards  Israel  are  more  fuUy  developed,  we  may  un- 
derstand better  than  we  can  do  now  the  prophet's  words. 

It  remains  only  to  add,  that  there  is  nothing  abso- 
lutely improbable  in  the  sta,tement  of  Isidore  and  others 
of  the  fathers,  that  Ezekiel  was  murdered  by  an 
Israolitish  prince,  whom  he  had  rebuked  for  being 
guilty  of  idolatry.  When,  however,  they  add  that  he 
was  buried  "  in  the  land  of  Maur,  in  the  tomb  of  Shem 
and  Arphaxad,"  the  assertion  seems  more  than  dubious. 
In  the  Middle  Ages  his  tomb,  situated  some  days' 
journey  from  Bagdad,  was  a  common  place  of  pilgrimage 
for  the  Jews  of  Media  and  Parthia. 


ANIMALS   OF   THE   BIBLE. 

BY    THE    F.EV.    W.    HOUGHTON,    M.A.,    F.L.S.,    EECTOR    OP    PRESTON,    SALOP. 


THE   ELEPHANT   (coiicluded). 

iHERE  did  the  Jews  obtain  then-  ivory  from, 
and  was  it  in  aU  cases  the  teeth  of  the 
elephant  ?  The  elephant  from  South- 
western India  most  probably  supplied 
Solomon  and  Hiram,  king  of  Tyi-e,  with  ivory ;  but  we 
read  also  that  the  market  of  the  Tyrians  obtained 
ivory  from  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Persian  Gulf. 
"  The  men  of  Dedan  were  thy  merchants ;  many  isles 
wore  the  merchandise  of  thy  hand ;  they  brought  thee 
for  a  present  horns  of  ivory  [harnoth  sfecn.)  and  ebony  " 
(Ezek.  xxvii.  15).  The  Dedanites  were  probably  caravan 
traders  bringing  foreign  produce  from  the  head  of  the 
Red  Sea.  This  tribe  seems  to  liave  dwelt  in  the  north- 
west of  Arabia.  There  also  appears  to  have  been 
another  tribe  of  the  same  name,  the  Cushito  Dedanim, 
who  settled  on  the  shores  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  and 
became  travelling  merchants  across  Mesopotamia  into 
Palestine  .-md  Phoenicia.  The  north-western  Arabian 
merchants  would  convey  goods  brought  via  the  Red  Sea 


from  Southern  India,  Southern  and  West  Arabia, 
Ethiopia  and  tlie  eastern  shores  of  Africa ;  the  Cushite 
Dedanites  on  the  Persian  Gulf  would  convey  merchan- 
dise brought  to  their  shores  from  Northern  India  and 
Persia.  Herodotus  tells  us  (iii.  97)  that  in  his  day 
the  inhabitants  of  Lower  Ethiopia  and  Nubia  made 
presents  to  the  king  of  Persia,  every  third  year,  of 
twenty  elephants'  tusks  with  ebony,  gold,  &c.  Sir  G. 
Wilkinson,  in  Rawlinsou's  Herodotus,  says  that  ivory 
and  ebony,  with  other  productions  of  the  country  and 
of  the  interior  of  Africa,  had  always  been  brought  as  a 
tribute  to  the  Egy[3tiau  mouarchs  of  the  ISth  and  other 
dynasties.  The  Egypiiar.s  made  use  of  the  ivory  of  the 
African  elephant,  though  the  animal  represented  on  the 
sculptures  is  tlie  Asian  species.  The  Ptolemies  later 
on  established  a  hunting  on  the  confines  of  Abyssinia 
for  the  chase  of  the  elephant.  The  art  of  inlaying 
various  kinds  of  wood  with  ivory,  such  as  boxes,  tables, 
and  other  pieces  of  furniture,  was  practised  by  the 
Egyi>tians.  Thus  it  appears  that  the  ivory  used  by  the 
Hebrews,  Assyrians,  Phoenicians,  Egyptians,  and  other 


ANIMALS    OP    THE    BIBLE. 


199 


people  was  supplied  to  them  from  India  and  Africa, 
both  the  Elephas  Indicus  and  the  E.  Africanus  yield- 
ing this  commodity.  At  present,  not  only  do  the  two 
existing  elephants  afford  ivory  •  the  fossU  mammoth  of 
Siberia,  an  extract  kind  of  olepliaut  with  tusks  ten  feet 
long,  supplies  ivory  to  the  Russians ;  the  teeth  of  the 
hippopotamus,  wilil  boar,  and  narwhal  form  ivoiy  of 
various  kinds,  that  of  the  first-named  animal  being  of  a 
superior  quality.  But  the  ivory  known  to  the  ancients 
was  probably  that  of  the  Asian  and  African  elephants 
alone ;  we  can  find  no  distinct  allusion  to  hippopotamus 
ivory.  The  British  Museum  contains  several  Assyrian 
and  Egyptian  works  in  ivory,  as  seats  of  ebony  wood 
inlaid  with  ivory,  high-backed  chairs,  spoons  of  ivory ; 
figure  of  king  and  lotus  flower,  heads  of   cows  and 


long  been  supposed  to  be  of  foreign  origin.  We  have 
seen  that  ivory  was  imported  into  Juda3a  in  the  time  of 
Solomon  from  some  place  in  India ;  but  Africa  also 
produced  ivory,  and  Ethiopia  supplied  Egypt  with  it; 
accordingly  the  hahhim  may  be  referred  to  some  African 
word  for  an  "  elephant,"  or  to  some  Indian  or  Sanskrit 
word.  According  to  Pott,  there  is  an  old  Egyjjtian 
term  ebu  (whicli  appears  to  Ije  the  same  as  the  Coptic 
ebros,  '•  an  elephant ") ;  if  then  we  put  the  Hebrew 
article  before  ebu,  and  make  it  a  plural  form,  we  get 
ha-ebhtm  or  habblm,  "  elephants  ;"  if  this  be  the  correct 
derivation,  the  Hebrews  must  have  got  the  name  from 
the  region  of  the  NUe  during  their  sojourn  tliere.  But 
it  must  be  remembered  tliat  we  do  not  hear  of  shen- 
hahhim  before  the  time  of  Solomon.    There  is  a  Sanskrit 


iV^    ^^  I    .-.jj^.^  .J  .3'aisiEp(.^s.¥iW>sl'»'.*^ -T ua;6iGBi^Swff'r4--niT'i^- " 


-TSSI&tftSfr^UEBrq, 


T-\      /.,' 


fe. 


^^_.i.3Ba3L^£ir'  *>!£,< 


TBIBUTE-BEAEEKS   WITH   ELEPHANTS     TUSKS,    STAVES    OF   WOOD    OK   EAKS    OF    METAE,    AND    BAGS    OF    GOLD. 
(black    OBELISK    OF    SHALMANESEB    II.,    FKOM    PALACE    OF    NILIRUD.)       (ASSYRIAN.) 


other  animals,  part  of  a  chau-  inlaid  with  lapis  lazuli 
and  glass,  male  and  female  deities,  &c.  Some  of  the 
specimens  of  Egyptian  ivory- work  Dr.  Birch  considers 
to  date  back  before  the  Persian  invasion,  and  to  be  as 
old  as  the  18th  dynasty.  The  most  interesting  of  the 
ivory  rehcs  foimd  by  Mr.  Layard  at  Nimroud  were,  he 
says,  "  a  carved  staff,  perhaps  a  royal  sceptre,  part  of 
which  has  been  preserved,  although  in  tlio  last  stage  of 
decay,  and  several  entire  elephants'  tusks,  the  largest 
being  two  feet  five  inches  long."  So  closely  did  the 
earth  attach  itself  to  the  ivory  sceptre,  that  it  was  only 
by  a  very  ingenious  process  that  it  was  restored.  (On 
the  subject  of  the  early  use  of  ivory  amongst  the 
ancients,  see  Dr.  Bu-ch's  "  Memoir  on  tlio  Nimroud 
Ivories,"  in  Trans,  of  R.  Soc.  of  Lit.,  new  series.) 

Shen-habhim  (1  Kings  x.  22  ;  2  Chron.  ix.  21),  "  teefli 
of  elephants,"  occurs  as  karnuth  shcn,  "  horns  of 
teeth,"  in  Ezekiel  (xxvii.  15).  The  latter  is  Hebrew, 
but  hahhim  is  not  a  recogaised  Semitic  word,  and  has  I 


word  ibha  used  to  denote  an  elephant,  and  treating  this 
word  in  the  same  way  as  wo  did  the  Egyptian  ebu,  we 
shall  get  the  Hebraised  f  orm  of  ha-ibhim  or  hahhim,  and 
this  is  the  more  probable  explanation. 

When,  therefore,  we  consider  that  the  Hebrew  words 
for  apes,  peacochs,  and  almug-txces  (also  mentioned  with 
ivory  as  foreign  importations)  have  not  a  Semitic  but 
an  Aryan  origin,  are  not  Hebrew  words,  but  Hebraised 
forms  of  Sanskrit  words,  wo  can  come  to  no  other  con- 
clusion than  that  the  ivory,  apes,  peacocks,  and  almug 
wood  were  Indian  products,  and  imported  by  Hu-am  and 
Solomon  into  Phceuicia  and  Palestine  from  the  west 
parts  of  India  or  Ceylon. 

Tlie  woodcut  representing  tribute-bearers  with  large 
elephants'  tusks  is  taken  from  the  Black  Obelisk  in  the 
Britisli  Museum ;  the  tribute  is  that  of  the  Shuhites 
from  the  Euphrates,  who  are  depicted  on  the  monument 
Ijrhiging  lions  and  a  stag,  shawls,  &c.,  to  the  Assyi-ian 
king,  Shahnaneser  II.     The  cut  representing  the  Indian 


200 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


elephant  and  monkeys,  also  from  the  Black  Obelisk, 
depicts  the  tribute  of  the  Miizri.  or  people  of  Muzr,  or 
North-western  Km-distau.  The  elephant  is  clearly  the 
Indian  species,  which  is  evident  at  a  glance  from  the 
smallness  of  its  ears ;  these  Muzr  probably  traded  with 
India,  whence  they  would  obtain  elephants,  monkeys, 
and  ivory.  Many  years  ago  it  was  thought  tliat  the 
Hebraised  name  hahbim  or  habba  was  the  Assyrian  word 
for  the  elephant  not  uncommon  on  the  monuments ;  it  is 
now  certain  that  the  term  abba  or  habba  is  the  Accadian 
name  for  "the  camel,"  of  which  the  Assyrian  equiva- 
lent is  the  ordinary  Semitic  gam.mel.  Abba  in  Accadian 
means  "  the  sea. "  With  the  determinative  prefix  of 
"  animal,"  it  means  the  "  animal  from  the  sea,"  i.e.  "  the 
Persian   Gulf,"   whence  the   Accadians   procured   the 


bable.  Mr.  A.  H.  Sayce,  however,  thinks  that  thfe  rhino- 
ceros rather  than  the  elephant  is  intended.  The  reader 
will  notice  iu  the  same  woodcut  men  bearing  or  leading 
monkeys.  In  the  same  epigraph  with  the  al-ap  nahr 
'Sa-ci-e  the  word  u-du-mi  occurs ;  this  M.  Lenormant. 
believes  to  be  the  Assyrian  word  for  "apes,"  as  though 
i(.fZ?MH.  was  adam  (071$),  "  a  man;"  the  old  inhabitants  o£ 
the  Mesopotamian  plains  being  struck  with  the  likeness, 
between  man  and  monkey.  This,  however,  is  uncertain. 
Mr.  Norris  renders  ii-du-mi  by  "  footstools,"  referring 
to  the  Hebrew  word  hadum  {pir})  (Assyr.  Diet,  i., 
p.  285.) 

Amongst  the  ancient  Egyiitians  the  elephant,  though 
it  gave  name  to  the  island  of  Elephantine,  was  not  con- 
sidered sacred.     It  only  occurs  at  Elephantine  in  the 


[?f|rg!dSiilliiIiliilliiiiiii|lii!!!!!!'!|£!!!:;il^ 


■^•^^-.ji-a{W|(*Jll>jtfl(tp.« 


4 
n 


■^it-A/. 


'/. 


ELEPHANT  (ELEPHAS  INDICUS)  AND  MONKEYS  (CEBCOPITHECUS),  TRIBUTE  OE  THE  MUZRI.       BLACK  OBELISK  (ASSYRIAN). 


camel :  this  is  explained  under  Article  "  Camel ;"  but  the 
elephant,  it  is  very  probable,  is  mentioned  on  the  Assyrian 
monuments.  Some  years  ago  Dr.  Hincks  imagined  that 
he  had  discovered  the  name  of  the  elephant  in  the  third 
epigraph  of  the  Black  Obelisk  of  Shalmaneser  H.  The 
words  are  al-ap  nahr  '8aci-c,  which  clearly  means  "  the 
ox  of  the  river  'Sace."  It  was  not  an  imcommou  thing 
for  the  ancients  to  call  any  large  animal  an  ox.  The 
Coptic  P-ehe-inou,  "  the  ox  of  the  water,"  is  the  hippo- 
potamus (the  Greek  "  horse  of  the  water  '").  Wlien  the 
Romans  first  saw  the  elephant  in  the  army  of  Pyrrhus 
in  Lucania,  they  gave  it  the  name  of  Luca  &o.s,  "  the 
Lucanian  ox."     To  this  Lucretius  refers  in  the  lines — 

*'  Inde  boves  Lucas  turrito  corpore  tetros, 
Angiiimanos,  beLi  docuenint  vulnera  Pceui 
Sufferre,  et  magnas  Martis  tiirbare  catervas." 
*'  Next  the  Poeni   taugbt  the   Lucan  kine  with  towered  body, 
horrible  to  look  at,  with  suake-Iike  baud,  to  endure  tlie  wounds  of 
war,  and  to  throw  into  coufusion  the  mighty  ranks  of  Mars  "  {De 
Scr.  Jfot.  V.  1,301). 

.  Dr.  Hincks'  supposition,  therefore,  seems  highly  pro- 


name  of  the  place  which  in  hieroglyjihics  is  styled  "  the 
Land  of  the  Elephant,"  eb  or  cbu,  the  original  appellation 
of  the  island.  Nor  was  it  worshipped  iu  the  neighbour- 
ing island  of  Philse,  nor  was  it  probably  ranked  among 
the  sacred  animals  of  Ethiopia.  The  Assyrian  monu- 
ments represent  the  rhinoceros,  which  is,  however,  very 
badly  tb-awu,  and  perhaps  might  have  been  executed 
from  memoi-y  only;  the  horn  is  placed  not  over  the  nose, 
but  over  the  eye ;  it  is  intended,  no  doubt,  for  the  Indian 
rhinoceros. 

An  Indian  buU  and  a  Large  kind  of  antelope  accompany 
the  rhuioceros  ;  the  bull  is  ornamented  with  tassels,  and 
may  have  been,  as  Mr.  Layard  thinks,  a  sacred  animal. 
The  antelope  may  be  intended  for  the  Chikara,  or  goat- 
antelope  of  the  Europeans  in  Deccan,  the  Tragops 
Bennettii  of  Hodgson  (Journal  Asiat.  Soe.  Bengal,  1847, 
11).  It  occurs  in  Madras,  Nepal,  and  Tarai;  it  has 
lyrate  horns,  and  differs  from  antelopes  generally  iu  not 
being  gregarious.  The  figure  on  the  obelisk,  however, 
is  too  thick  for  any  antelope,  and  is  badly  drawn. 


ANIMALS  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


201 


CONET. 

Our  English  word  coney  or  cony — for  it  is  spelt  both 
ways — is  an  old  name  for  the  rabbit ;  a  still  older  form 
is  cunig,  or  conyng,  as  in  Piers  Ploughman's  Vision — 


'  The  while  he  caccheth  conynges, 
He  coveiteth  noght  youre  caroj'ue.' 


(3S4.) 


But  conyes  is  also  found  in  Chaucei- — 

"  The  lytel  conyea  to  her  pley  gunnen  hye.''  {Ass.  ofF.,  193.) 
Wycliffe's  version  in  Lev.  xi.  5  has  coni.  It  is  the 
French  coimil,  Italian  coniglio ,  Spanish  conego,  German 
Konig,  Latin  cuniculus ;  and  as  the  original  home  of 
the  rabbit  was  in  Spain  and  the  Balearic  Islands,  the 
name  itseH  has  a  Spanish  origin.  But  though  the 
word  "  coney  "  occurs  in  our  English  Bible,  it  is  certain 
that  no  rabbit  is  denoted  by  the  Hebrew  word  shAphcin. 


because  in  Phoenician  JBic  (shaphdn)  must  have  liad  the 
same  meaning,  Spain  being  named  by  the  Phcenieians 
from  the  miiltitude  of  its  rabbits."  It  may  be  true  that 
Spain,  or  Span  or  Sapan,  which  is  the  older  form  of  the 
word,  has  its  origin,  as  Bochart  contended,  in  the  Hebrew 
or  Phcenieian  tsdpan,  'sdpan,  or  shaphdn.  Spain  was 
known  to  the  ancients  as  the  land  of  rablnts.  and  has 
been  personified,  on  a  medal  of  Hadrian,  as  a  female 
figure  with  a  rabbit  at  her  feet ;  and  it  is  quite  probable 
that  when  Phceuici.an  settlers  came  to  that  country  they 
caDed  it,  from  the  abundance  of  the  rabbits  there,  after 
the  name  of  that  animal  of  rahbit-lihe  form  known  to 
them  by  tlie  name  of  sapan  in  theii'  own  coimtry ;  but 
shdphdn  cannot  mean  a  rabbit,  an  animal  which  never 
existed  in  Palestine  or  any  other  adjoining  country  until 
its  introduction    into  Aleppo  {ivota  Europe  at  a  com- 


HYKAX    SYKUCUS. 


The  shd/phdn  is  mentioned  in  Lev.  xi.  5 ;  Deut.  xiv. 
7.  where  it  is  named  amongst  certain  other  animals 
which  the  Jewish  law  forbade  as  food :  "  And  the 
shdphdn,  because  he  cheweth  the  cud,  but  divideth 
not  the  hoof,  he  is  unclean  unto  you."  In  the  104tli 
Psalm,  which  has  been  weU  called  "  a  bright  and  living 
picture  of  God's  creative  power  pouring  life  and  glad- 
ness through  the  universe,"  and  which  contains  so 
many  beautiful  allusions  to  wild  animals,  the  shdphdn's 
habit  of  dwelling  chiefly  among  the  rocks  is  spoken  of  : 
"  The  high  hills  are  a  refuge  for  the  wild  goats,  and  the 
rocks  for  the  shdphdns  "  (ver.  18).  In  the  Book  of  Pro- 
verbs, amongst  the  "  four  things  little  upon  earth,  but 
exceeding  wise,"  are  enumerated  the  shdphdns  as  being 
"  but  a  feeble  folk,  yet  having  their  houses  in  the  rocks  " 
(xxx.  26).  The  Hebrew  word,  probably  from  an  unused 
root  meaning  "  to  hide,"  is  now  generally  and  with  very 
good  reason  understood  to  denote  the  Hyrax  Syriacus  of 
naturalists.  Fiirst,  however,  is  rather  inclined  to  coincide 
with  Jewish  tradition,  and  undorsfands  the  rabliit  to 
be  meant.     He  says,  "  This  interpretation  is  suitable. 


paratively  recent  date),  where  tame  rabbits  are  bred  for 
the  sake  of  the  fur.  The  hyrax  is  known  in  Palestine 
and  Sinai  by  the  name  of  ivahr,  from  the  Arabic  wahar, 
"  to  be  hauy,"  in  aUu.sion  to  the  long  black  hairs  which 
stand  out  sparingly  from  the  creature's  fur. 

The  Abyssinians  call  it  ashlcokS  (from  the  Amharic 
word  ashhuk,  "a  thorn")  for  the  same  reason.  In 
Southern  Arabia  it  is  caDed  thofun,  "  the  hider,"  like  the 
'H.ehrew  shdphdn,  this  animal  being  shy,  timid  and  wary, 
instinctively  retreating  into  fissures  and  imder  rocks  at 
any  unusual  noise  or  sight.  The  hyrax  is  the  single 
genus  constituting  the  order  ff(/racot(fe(.;  it  is  ncitlicr 
a  rodent,  nor,  as  i-epresonted  in  Leviticus,  a  ruminant,  its 
chief  affinities  being  with  the  Perissodactyle  Ungulates. 
In  outward  form  it  bears  some  resembknce  to,  and  is 
aliout  the  same  size  as  a  rabbit,  but  it  is  classed  between 
the  hippopotamus  and  the  rhinoceros.  There  are  two 
incisors  in  the  upper  jaw — as  have  rodents — but  in  the 
hyi-ax  they  differ  considerably  in  form  ;  in  rodents  they 
are  of  the  shape  of  a  quadrangular  prism  ;  in  f  lie  animal 
we  are  considering  they  are  pointed  and  triangulai",  like 


202 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


those  of  the  hippopotamus ;  but  the  most  striking  poiut 
in  the  dentition  is  in  the  molai-s,  which  are  very  similar 
in  form  to  those  of  the  rhinoceros.  There  are  also 
osteological  points  which  show  that  the  hyrax  has  its 
true  affinities  with  the  Perissodactyle  Ungulates,  though 
the  genus  is  so  aberrant  that  zoologists  have  constituted 
it  an  order  by  itself,  and  under  t)ie  name  of  Hyracoidea 
have  assigned  it  a  i)lac6  between  the  Ungtdata  and 
Itodeniia. 

The  hyras,  from  its  habit  of  constantly  working  its 
teeth  and  jaws,  was  supposed  by  the  Hebrews  to  chew 
the  cud,  and  is  placed  by  them  amongst  the  ruminants, 
as  the  ox,  sheep,  goat,  &c.  It  is  incorrect  to  say  that 
the  Hebrew  words  do  not  necessarily  imply  rumination, 
and  merely  mean  re-chew;  the  very  same  expression 
which  is  used  for  "  chewing  the  cud "  in  tl»e  true 
ruminants  is  used  for  "  chewing  the  cud"  in  the  hyrax  : 
"  And  the  shd2>hdn,  because  he  cheweth  the  cud,  but 
doth  not  divide  the  hoof,  he  is  unclean  to  you  "  (Lev. 
X.  5).  The  Hebrew  words  are  too  distinct  to  admit 
the  slightest  doubt  as  to  their  full  signification.  The 
Hiphil  j)'irti<?iple  maaleh,  from  the  verb  'dldli,  "to 
arise,  ascend,  go  up,"  literally  rendered,  would  stand 
thus,  "  (The  hyrax)  which  maketh  the  cud  to  ascend," 
and  clearly  shows  that  the  Hebrews  had  a  correct  and 
defijiite  idea  of  the  process  of  rumination,  as  visible  to 
them  in  a  true  ruminant. 

The  Septuagint  made  an  unhappy  emendation  when, 
with  reference  to  the  hyrax  and  the  hare,  it  attempted 
to  redeem  the  scientific  accuracy  of  the  statements 
by  the  addition  of  ovk,  "  not,"  on  oiix  avdyei  ixripvKia-fiop . 
That  the  Hebrews  should  be  deceived  in  the  matter 
of  certain  animals  being  ruminant  or  not  is  natural 
enough.  Dr.  Brehm  says,  "  I  saw  the  rock-badgers 
often  graze  at  the  foot  of  clefts,  and  I  found  that  their 
habits  are  exactly  like  those  of  ruminants,  for  having 
bittxin  off  the  grass  with  their  teeth,  they  move  the  jaws 
like  the  bisuleates  when  chewing  the  cud  "  (Ilhist.  Thier- 
leben,  ii.  724,  quoted  from  Kalisch).  Bruce,  Goldsmith, 
Cowper,  Sir  G.  Wilkinson,  and  others  have  made  similar 
mistakes  with  respect  to  the  hare  and  hyrax.  It  is 
clear  tliat  the  Hebrew  words  ascribe  a  normal  rumi- 
nating ijowor  to  the  hyrax  equally  ivith  real  ruminants  ; 
abnormal  rumination  may  occur  in  non-ruminants,  as  in 
man  and  other  animals  with  stomachs  that  have  no 
valvular  construction  of  the  entry,  which,  in  the  horse 
for  instance,  renders  regm-gitation  physically  impossible. 
Professor  Owen  has  observed  a  quasi-rumlnation  in 
some  of  the  kangaroos,  and  the  power  and  habit 
certainly  is  possessed  by  fish,  as  carp  and  tench  and 
other  fish  whoso  tooth  are  in  the  throat,  and  whose  food 
is  for  the  most  part  vegetable  and  coral.  Aristotle 
mentions  a  fish  he  calls  the  scanis,  to  wliich  he  ascribes, 
and  with  truth,  a  ruminating  power. 

The  hyrax,  the  Klippdachs  or  Schieferdachs  ("rock- 
badger  ")  of  the  Germans,  does  not  burrow  like  the 
rabbit,  but  lives  in  holes  in  rocks,  to  which  it  retreats 


on  the  slightest  disturbance.  Some  observers  have 
remarked  that  an  old  male  is  set  as  a  sentry  in  the 
vicinity  of  their  holes,  and  that  he  utters  a  soimd 
like  a  whistle  to  apprise  his  companions  when  danger 
threatens  ;  to  this,  perhaps,  the  words  of  Agui-  the  son 
of  Jakeh  refer  when  he  mentions  the  shdphdn  as  one 
of  the  four  things  upon  earth  wliich,  though  little,  are 
exceedingly  wise.  The  Rev.  P.  K.  Holland  writes  to 
Dr.  Tristram,  "  Though  I  several  times  saw  single  conies 
hi  Sinai,  I  only  twice  came  upon  any  large  numl^er 
together.  Once  when  crossing  a  mountain  pass,  I  was 
startled  by  a  shrill  scream  near  me,  but  could  see 
nothing.  On  my  return  in  the  evening,  I  approached 
the  place  cautiously,  and  saw  eight  conies  out  playing 
like  rabbits.  I  watched  them  for  some  minutes  before 
they  saw  me.  At  length  one  caught  sight  of  me,  and 
immediately  uttered  its  sci-eam,  and  all  at  once  rushed 
to  their  holes.  On  another  occasion  I  saw  twelve  out 
feeding  at  a  different  spot,  but  on  neither  occasion  did 
I  see  any  appointed  guard." 

The  hyrax  has  been  seen  in  Palestine  and  Sinai  by 
many  travellers,  but  in  the  former  country  it  is  not  so 
common  as  in  the  latter.  Dr.  Tristram,  however,  found 
it  in  many  parts  of  Palestine :  it  is  extremely  common 
in  the  gorge  of  the  Kedron,  from  Marsaba  ea.stward, 
and  all  down  the  west  side  of  the  Dead  Sea.  He  has 
given  an  interesting  account  of  this  little  creature's 
habits  to  which  wo  must  I'efer  the  reader  (see  Nat. 
Hist.  Bib.,  p.  77). 

In  Arabia  Petreea  these  little  animals  are  called 
gannim  Israel,  '■  Israel's  sheep."  Prosper  Alpinus  has 
these  words,  "  Animal  quoddam  humile,  cimiculo  uon 
dissimilo  quod  agnum  filioriim  Israel  nuncupant." 
Bruce  teUs  us  the  same,  and  thinks  the  name  was  given 
from  the  hyrax  frequenting  the  rocks  of  Horeb  and 
Sinai,  where  the  childi-eu  of  Israel  wandered  forty 
years. 

The  hyrax  has  been  now  called  a  iHonftoi,  now  a  cavia. 
The  term  Hyrax  to  express  the  genus  was  first  esta- 
blished by  Hermann ;  it  is  the  Greek  Kpa|,  a  word  used 
by  Nicander  (Alex.  37)  to  denote  some  shrew-mouse, 
apparently.  The  South  African  hyrax  (H.  Capensis)  is 
called  Dasse  by  the  Dutch  settlers,  dasse  being  the 
same  as  the  German  dachs,  "badger."  It  is  not  easy 
to  suggest  a  good  English  representative  of  the  hyrax. 
"  The  stony  rocks  for  the  hyraces  "  does  not  sound  well ; 
■•  reek-badger  "  is  objectionable,  as  conveying  an  erro- 
neous idea,  zoologically.  Perhaps  it  would  be  as  wcU 
to  retain  the  English  word  coney,  familiar  to  all,  and 
as  the  word  is  now  obsolete,  to  re-issue  the  coin,  as  it 
were,  with  the  stamp  of  the  hyi-ax  upon  it. 

We  have  now  noticed  all  the  Mammalia  except  the 
"  gi-eyhound,"  mentioned  only  in  Prov.  xxx.  31  as  sne 
of  the  "  four  things  comely  in  going."  It  is  very  im- 
probable that  the  Hebrew  words  meaning  "  one  girt 
about  the  loins"  denote  a  greyhoimd;  we  agree  with 
those  who  interpret  them  of  a  "  wrestler." 


BETWEEN  THE   BOOKS. 


203 


BETWEEN    THE    BOOKS. 

BY  THE  REV.  G'.    F.  MACLEAK,  D.D.,  HEAD  MASTER  OF  KI;s'G'.S  COLLEGE  SCHOOL. 


INTEODUCTION. 

iHE   Canon  of  the  Old  Testament  closes 
with  the  jjrophecies  of  Malachi.    A  period, 
therefore,    of   about    'our   hundi'ed  yeai's 
separates  the  last  book  of  the  Old  from 
the  first  of  the  New  Testament  Scriptures. 

This  period  is  one  of  supreme  importance  in  the 
Mstory  of  the  Jewish  nation.  During  it  the  Jews  were 
brought  under  the  most  varied  influeuces.  (1)  First 
they  were  subject  to  the  dominion  of  Persia;  (2)  for 
nearly  a  century  and  a  half  they  were  under  Greek 
rulers;  (3)  for  a  century  they  enjoyed  independence 
under  their  native  Asmouaeau  princes ;  ( 4 )  and  for 
more  tlian  half  a  century,  while  nominally  ruled  by 
the  family  of  Herod,  tliey  were  in  reality  subject  to  the 
power  of  the  great  Roman  Empire. 

In  the  course  of  this  period  a  remarkable  change  was 
wrought  in  the  condition  of  the  Elect  Nation. 

(i.)  Whereas  for  many  centuries  they  had  been  almost 
cut  oil  from  contact  with  the  world  around,  they  were 
now  scattered  everywhere,  east  and  west,  north  and 
south,  bearing  about  with  them  their  peculiar  customs 
and  institutions,  and  diifusiug  wherever  they  went  a 
knowledge  of  the  Law  and  tho  Prophets. 

(ii.)  OoiTCsponding  to  this  wide  diffusion  of  the 
people,  which  had  so  long  "  dwelt  apart,"  there  had 
been  brought  about  also  a  change  in  their  vernacular 
tongue,  and  in  their  mode  of  worship.  The  language 
spoken  in  the  days  of  David  and  Solomon  was  gradually 
exchanged  for  the  Chaldee  or  "  Syrian  tongue," '  while 
the  worship  of  the  true  God,  before  carried  on  only  in 
the  Temple  at  Jerusalem,  was  now  celel)rated,  not  only 
there  on  the  occasion  of  the  great  festivals,  but  in 
synagogues,  which  arose  out  of  the  exigencies  of  the 
Capti\'ity,  and  which  were  now  to  be  found,  not  only 
in  every  town,  and  almost  in  every  ^'illage  throughout, 
Palestine,  but  also  in  every  city  in  Sp'ia,  Asia  Minor, 
Greece,  and  Italy,  whei'o  there  was  a  Jewish  settle- 
ment. 

(iii.)  Again,  the  intellectual  culture  of  Greece  had 
an  important  influence  on  Jewish  develoj)ment.  It 
quickened  independent  thought,  and  led  to  the  rise  of 
various  sects,  "  Freedom,  ritualism,  and  asceticism 
found  a  characteristic  expression  in  Sadclucees,  Phari- 
sees, and  Essenes,"^  while  politicians,  as  represented  by 
Herodians,  looked  to  the  family  of  Herod  as  a  bulwark 
against  Roman  ambition,  and  iiretended  to  trace  in  that 
dynasty  the  f  ulfilmeut  of  .ancient  prophecy. 

(iv.)  Lastly,  the  idea  of  tho  Messiah,  which  tho 
"  People  of  the  Future "  had  been  raised  up  to  foster 
and  keep  alive  from  generation  to  generation,  had  been 
affected  in  no  slight  degree  by  the  variety  of  tho  in- 
fluences under  which  the  Jews  had  been  brought.     As 

l"Comp.  2  Kings  xviii.  26  ;  laa.  xxxvi.  11 ;  Dan.  ii.  4. 

-  Westcott's  Gospel  of  the  Resurrection,  p.  82.     Ed.  2. 


before,  so  now,  each  period  added  or  connected  some- 
thing necessary  to  the  completeness  of  tho  conception, 
and  the  sadness  of  the  Ca2jti\dty  ended  what  the 
mournful  close  of  Solomon's  reign  had  begim.  The 
"Son  of  David"  gives  place  to  the  "  Son  of  man,"  and 
the  idea  of  the  Conqueror  and  the  King  is  combined 
with  that  of  the  Lawgiver,  the  Prophet,  and  the 
Priest. 

In  the  following  chapters  we  shall  try  to  give  a  sketck 
of  the  history  of  the  Jews  during  this  eventful  period, 
and  to  trace  the  results  of  the  experiences  through 
which  they  passed  as  they  have  been  just  summarised. 
In  this  way  we  shall  be  able  to  trace  tho  connection 
between  tho  Books  of  the  Old  and  tlio  New  Testaments, 
and  to  see  how  not  only  the  Elect  Nation  itself,  but  also 
Persia,  Syria,  'Egypt,  Greece,  and  Rome,  aU  in  their 
several  degrees  prepared  for  "  the  fiduess  of  time,"^  and 
made  ready  for  the  advent  of  the  long-predicted  Re- 
deemer in  whom  "  there  is  neither  Jew  nor  Greek, 
there  is  neither  bond  nor  free,  there  is  neither  male  nor 
female.  "^ 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    JEWS    UNDEE    THE    PEESIAN    MONAECHS. 

The  first  period  of  the  history  of  the  Jews  after  the 
death  of  Nehemiah,  which  took  place  about  B.C.  413,  is 
ahuost  a  blank  to  us.  For  upwards  of  230  years  after 
the  decease  of  this  last  of  the  Jewish  governors  sent 
from  the  court  of  Persia,  to  the  accession  of  Antiochus 
Epiphanes,  B.C.  175  (a  period  "  as  long,  to  compare  it 
with  modern  history,  as  from  the  death  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth to  the  accession  of  Queen  Victoria,  nearly  from  tho 
death  of  Henri  IV.  of  France  to  the  accession  of  Louis 
Napoleon"*),  tho  record  of  events  is  of  the  scantiest 
description. 

It  appears  certain,  however,  that  Judaea  itself  was 
now  annexed  to  the  satrapy  of  Coelesyria,  and  the 
administration  of  affairs  was  entrusted  to  the  Jewish 
high  priest,  subject  to  the  control  of  the  Syrian  go- 
vernor. 

As  subjects  of  the  Persian  monarch,  the  Jews  were 
distinguished  for  their  loyalty  and  good  faith.  While 
Cyprus,  Phceuicia,  Egyjjt,  and  other  dependencies  of 
tho  Persian  crown,  were  frecjuoutly  the  scenes  of  rebel- 
lions, which  were  with  much  difficidty  suppressed,  the 
Jews  remained  steadfast  in  their  allegiance  to  the 
"  great  kiug,"  and  increased  rapidly  alike  in  wealth 
and  population. 

One  atrocious  crime  distinguishes  the  uneventful 
annals  of  the  period  from  the  death  of  Nehemiah 
to  the  era  of  Alexander  the  Great.  During  the  life- 
time of   this   Jewish   reformer    the   high    priest    was 

3  Gal.  iv.  i.  ■>  Gal.  iii.  23. 

3  MUman*3  HUtory  of  the  Jews,  i.  443. 


204 


THE  BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


Eliashib.'  He  was  succeeded  by  Joiada.'  Joiada 
had  two  sons,  the  one  Jonathan  ox-  Johanan,  the  other 
Jeshua.^  Jeshua  stood  higli  in  favour  with  Bagoses, 
the  Persian  governor,  and  obtained  from  him  the  promise 
of  the  liigli  priesthood.  Fortified  by  this  assurance,  he 
ventured  to  quarrel  with  his  brother,  and  fell  slain  by 
his  hands  within  the  precincts  of  the  sanctuary  itself, 
circa  B.C.  366.  This  hori'ible  occurrence  roused  the 
indignation  of  Bagoses,  and  he  advanced  upon  Jeru- 
salem and  demanded  admittance  into  the  Temple. 
This  the  Jews  tried  to  prevent,  but  the  Persian  general 
declared  he  was  less  unclean  than  the  body  of  the  mur- 
dered man,  and  not  only  polluted  the  sanctuary  by 
entering  it,  but  also  levied  a  fine  of  fifty  drachmas  on 
every  lamb  offered  in  sacrifice  during  the  next  seven 
ycars.^ 

Like  his  father,  Johanan  in  his  turn  had  two  sons, 
Jaddua  and  Manasseh.  Jaddua  succeeded  to  the  high 
priesthood,  B.C.  341,  and  was  distinguished  for  his 
generous  maintenance  of  the  Mosaic  institutions  as  they 
liad  been  restored  by  Ezra  and  Nehemiah. 

Manasseh,  on  tlie  other  hand,  contracted  an  alliance 
with  the  daughter  of  Sanballat  the  Horonite,  one  of  the 
most  active  opponents  of  the  Jewish  reformer.^  This 
roused  the  indignation  of  the  elders  at  Jerusalem,  and 
Jaddua  declared  that  Manasseh  must  either  put  away 
liis  wife  or  resign  all  claim  to  the  priesthood.  This 
the  brother  declined  to  do,  and  betook  himself  to  his 
father-in-law  at  Samaria,  and  commenced  to  exercise 
liis  priestly  functions  at  a  rival  temple  which  Sanballat 
built  on  Mount  Gorizim  with  the  permission  of  the 
Persian  court.  Thus,  according  to  Josephus,''  Manasseh 
became  the  first  priest  of  tho  Samaritans  at  their 
rival  sanctuary,  to  which  those  Jews  also  repaired 
from  time  to  time  who  had  been  expelled  for  criminal 
offences  from  their  own  country,  or  had  any  cause  of 
disaffection.'' 

Meanwhile  the  tide  of  war,  which  had  been  rolling  at 
a  distance  and  wasting  Asia  Minor,  at  length  burst  upon 
the  shores  of  Palestine  and  Oa?lesyria.  Victorious  over 
the  Persian  forces  at  tho  Granicus,  B.C.  334,  and  again  at 
Issus  in  tho  following  year,  Alexander  the  Great  took 
Sidon,  and  laid  siege  to  Tyre,  B.C.  332.  Thenco  ho  sent 
a  letter  to  Jaddua  at  Jerusalem,  demanding  the  trans- 
ference of  his  allegiance  to  himself  from  an  empire 
which  was  crumbling  to  pieces  before  his  armies,  and 
requesting  supplies  for  his  troops.  This  the  high  priest 
declared  was  impossible.  He  had  sworn  to  be  loyal  to 
Darius,  and  to  Darius  he  would  bo  loyal  so  long  as  he 
lived.  Though  annoyed  at  this  reply,  Alexander  delayed 
to  take  vengeance  for  tliis  Ijold  refusal  tOl  after  the 
reduction  of  Tyi-e,  July,  B.C.  331,  and  then  set  out  with 
his  Macedonian  armies  for  the  Holy  City. 

Moving  along  the  flat  strip  of  the  coast  of  Gaza, 
the    conqueror  laid   siege    to    that    stronghold,'  and 


1  Neh.  iii.  1,  20,  21. 

2  Joseph.,  Ant.  xi.  7,  1. 
5  Neh.  ii.  10,  19;  liii.  28. 
?  Jos.,  ^nt.  sri.  8,  7. 
8  Arrian,  ii.  26,  5  ;  Crete's  Grace,  viii.  366,  367, 


2  Neh.  xii.  11,  22. 
*  Jos.,  Ant.  xi.  7,  1. 
^  Jos.,  Ant.  xi.  8,  2. 


having  captured  it  in  October,  secured  the  road  to 
Egypt.  Having  now  leisure  to  tui-n  his  attention  to 
Jerusalem,  he  advanced  thither  apparently  by  the  same 
route  that  Sennacherib  had  taken  on  a  previous  occa- 
sion.' Meantime  Jaddua  and  his  people  were  filled  with 
the  utmost  alarm.  Sacrifices  were  offered,  prayers 
were  put  up,  and  the  Divine  aid  was  sought  to  appease 
the  wrath  of  the  invader.  At  length  the  high  priest  is 
said  to  have  been  warned  in  a  dream  how  he  was  to 
act.  Ho  hung  the  city  with  garlands,  threw  open  the 
gates,  and  as  soon  as  he  was  informed  of  the  approach 
of  the  conqueror,  went  forth,  clad  in  his  robes  of 
hyacinth  and  gold,  and  followed  by  a  train  of  priests 
and  people  arrayed  in  white,  and  met  him  at  Sapha,  i.e., 
probably  Mizpeh,  the  high  ridge  to  the  north  of  the  city.'" 

As  soon  as  Alexander  beheld  the  venerable  form  of 
the  high  piiest,  he  fell  down  ijrostrate  before  him,  and 
adored  the  holy  name  inscribed  in  golden  letters  on  the 
frontal  of  his  tiara.  Tho  PhcEnicians  and  Chaldseans 
in  his  retiune  were  only  awaiting  the  signal  to  pUlage 
the  city  and  put  the  high  priest  to  tho  torture.  They 
could  not,  therefore,  conceal  their  astonishment  at  the 
conduct  of  theh-  leader,  and  Parmenio,  addressing  him, 
inquired  why  ho,  whom  all  the  world  worshipped,  could 
think  of  kneeling  before  tho  high  priest.  "  It  is  not 
the  high  priest,"  replied  the  conqueror,  "  whom  I  wor- 
ship, but  his  God,  who  has  conferred  on  him  the  priest- 
hood. Li  a  vision  at  Dium  in  Macedonia,  I  saw  him 
arrayed  precisely  as  he  now  stands ;  and  when  I  was 
debating  how  I  might  obtain  the  dominion  of  Asia,  he 
exhorted  me  to  lay  aside  all  delay,  and  boldly  cross  over 
the  sea,  for  he  would  conduct  my  army  and  give  me 
victory  over  the  Persians."" 

Then  he  took  Jaddua  by  the  right  hand,  and  entering 
the  city  repaired  to  the  Temple,  offered  sacrifice  there, 
and  conferred  high  honours  upon  the  whole  priestly 
body.  The  scroll  containing  the  prophecies  of  Daniel 
was  then  brought,  and  the  prediction  was  road  in  his 
hearing  how  that  a  Greek  would  destroy  the  Persian 
empire.  Overjoyed  at  this,  he  offered  the  Jews  what- 
ever privileges  they  might  select.  Tliereupon  they 
requested  that  the  free  enjoyment  of  their  lives  and 
liberties  might  be  secured  to  them,  as  also  to  their 
brethren  in  Media  and  Babylonia,  and  that  they  might 
be  exempted  from  tribute  during  the  Sabbatical  years. 
These  privileges  the  conqueror  willingly  conceded.'- 

9  Isn.  X.  28—32. 

"^  Or  Scopus,    the  ^Tob  of    Isa.  s.   32;   whence    rtt  'Upoa6\vfia 

Kat  Tnv  viii'n.  avvi:(3.iivtv  u<fiopantKu.      (Jos.,  Ant.   xi.  8,  5.) 

11  Jos.,  Ant.  xi.  8,  5. 

1-  "  Internal  evidence  is  highly  in  favour  of  the  story,  even  in  its 
picturesque  fulness.  From  policy  or  conviction,  Alexander  de- 
lighted to  represent  himself  as  chosen  by  destiny  for  the  great 
act  which  ho  achieved.  The  siege  of  Tyre  arose  professedly  from 
a  religious  motive.  The  battle  of  Issus  was  preceded  by  the  visit 
to  Gordium ;  the  invasion  of  Persia  by  the  pilgrimage  to  the 
temple  of  Ammon.  And  if  it  be  impoesible  to  determine  the 
exact  circumstances  of  the  meeting  of  Alexander  and  the  Jewish 
envoys,  the  silence  of  the  classical  historians,  who  notoriously  dis- 
regarded and  misrepresented  the  fortunes  of  the  Jews,  cannot  be 
held  to  be  conclusive  agaiust  the  occurrence  of  an  event  which 
must  have  appeared  to  them  trivial  or  unintelligible."  (Smith's 
lHctionar\j  of  the  Bible,  Art.,  "Alexander  ["  Thirlwall's  Greece,  vi. 
p.  206  ;  Eaphall's  History  of  the  Jons,  i.  42—50.) 


BETWEEN  THE  BOOKS. 


205 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE   JEWS    UNDER    THE    KINGS    OP    EGYPT. 

Eight  years  after  thi.'i  visit  to  the  Holy  City,  Alex- 
ander the  Great  died  at  Babylon,  B.C.  323,  and  the  vast 
empire  he  had  won  for  himself  ivas  divided  amongst 
his  generals.  Palestine,  as  a  province  of  Syria,  passed 
into  the  possession  of  Laomodou,  while  Egypt  was 
assigned  to  Ptolemy  Soter.  Before  lung  Ptolemy  con- 
quered Cyi'oue,  and  looked  with  longing  eyes  on  the 
harbours  of  Phoenicia,  and  the  cedar  forests  of  Libanus 
and  Antilibanus.  Accordingly  he  invaded  the  reahns 
of  Laomedon,  and  having  defeated  him  in  battle,  B.C. 
321,  made  himself  master  for  a  time  of  all  Syiia  and 
Phoenicia. 

On  this  occasion  the  Jews  manifested  such  unwilling- 
ness to  break  their  engagements  to  the  Syrian  king, 
that  Ptolemy  advanced  against  Jerusalem,  and  besieged 
it  witlia  large  army.  Entering  the  city  under  pretence 
of  offering  sacrifico  on  the  Sabbath  day,  when  the  in- 
habitants refrained  on  religious  grounds  from  attempt- 
ing any  defence,  he  succeeded  in  capturing  it.  Instead, 
however,  of  following  up  his  victory  by  a  cruel  massacre, 
he  contented  himself  with  transporting  a  great  number 
of  the  inhabitants  to  Egypt,  where  he  distributed  them 
as  garrisons  in  ilifEoront  places,  and  conferred  upon 
them    equal  privileges    with   tho   Macedonians   them- 


The  conqueror,  however,  was  not  long  allowed  to 
remain  in  undisturbed  possession  of  his  new  province. 
It  was  soon  disputed  with  him  by  Antigouus,  one  of 
the  most  ambitious  of  Alexander's  generals.  Twice  the 
coveted  province  fell  into  the  hands  of  his  rival ;  twice 
Ptolemy  managed  to  regain  possesssion  of  it,  and  it 
was  finally  adjudged  to  his  share  after  tho  decisive 
battle  of  Ipsus,  B.C.  301.  But  this  battle  had  other 
results  besides  securing  to  Ptolemy  Soter  the  dominion 
of  Palestine,  Phoenicia,  and  Ccelesyria.  Seleucus  I.  had 
joined  the  confederacy  against  Antigonus,  and  after 
the  victory  was  rewarded  with  a  great  jmrt  of  Asia 
Minor,  as  well  as  the  whole  of  Syi'ia  from  the  Euphrates 
to  the  Mediterranean.  He  assumed  the  title  of  "  king 
of  Syria,"  and  his  dominion,  in  the  words  of  the 
prophet  Daniel,-  became  "  a  gi'cat  dominion,"  the  most 
extensive  and  powerful  of  those  which  had  been  formed 
out  of  the  empire  of  Alexander.  Seleucus  founded  his 
eastern  capital  on  the  banks  of  the  Tigris,  and  called  it 
Seleucia  after  his  o\vn  name.  For  his  western  metro- 
pohs  he  selected  a  spot  on  the  left  bank  of  the  river 
Orontes,  and  hero  he  founded  a  city  B.C.  300,  and 
called  it  Antioch,  after  the  name  of  his  father  Antio- 
chus.  Antioch  soon  became  one  of  the  most  flourishing 
cities  in  tho  world,  and  Seleucus,  convinced,  like  tho 
Egyirtian  monarch,  of  the  loyalty  of  the  Jews,  invited 
many  of  them  to  his  new  capital  and  other  cities  in 
Asia  Minor,  and  bestowed  upon  them  many  important 
privileges. 

The  foundation  of  tho  Syrian  kingdom,  with  Antioch 


'  Jos.,  A.nt.  xii,  1. 


Dan,  xi,  5, 


for  its  western  metropolis,  placed  Juilsea  in  an  unf  urtu- 
nate  position  between  two  great  rival  monarchies,  and 
threatened  to  make  it  the  prize  of  uitenninable  conten- 
tions. But  the  government  of  the  first  three  Ptolemies, 
Soter,  Philadelphus,  and  Euergetes,  was  mild  and 
gentle,  and  while  all  the  rest  of  the  world  was  ravaged 
by  war,  Palestine  enjoyed  profoimd  peace. 

Meauwliile  Jaddua  had  been  succeeded  in  the  high 
priesthood  by  his  son  Onias  I,,  and  he  again,  B.C.  300, 
by  Simon  the  Just,  tho  last  of  the  men  of  the  "  Great 
Synagogue,"  as  ho  was  called  by  the  Jews.  He  repaired 
the  sanctuary  of  the  Temple,  sm-rounded  with  brass  the 
cistern  or  "  sea  "  of  the  principal  court,  fortified  the 
city  walls,  and  maintained  the  sacred  ritual  with  unusual 
pomp  and  ceremony.  On  the  death  of  Simon  the  Just, 
B.C.  291,  his  brother  Eloazar  became  high  priest.  He 
was  succeeded,  B.C.  276,  not  by  his  own  son  Onias, 
but  by  his  uncle  Manasseh,  the  son  of  Jaddua.  On  his 
death,  B.C.  250,  Onias  II.,  tho  son  of  Simon,  became 
high  priest,  but  inherited  none  of  his  father's  ^'ii'tues, 
being  distinguished  for  nothing  but  meanness  and  an 
inordinate  love  of  money.  Neglecting  to  pay  tho 
annual  tribute  of  twenty  talents  of  silver  to  the  Egyjjtian 
king,  he  provoked  the  anger  of  the  latter,  who  threatened 
to  invade  Palestine,  and  divide  it  amongst  his  troops. 
The  Jews  were  filled  with  dismay  at  the  too  probable 
consequences  of  the  throat,  and  were  only  relieved  from 
their  apprehensions  by  tho  spirited  conduct  of  Joseph, 
the  nephew  of  tho  hifjh  priest,  who  repaired  to  Egypt, 
ingratiated  himself  with  tlie  court,  and  was  appointed 
collector  of  the  revenues  from  Judaja,  Samaria,  Coele- 
syria,  and  Phoenici;i.  Pumished  with  a  guard  of  2,000 
soldiers,  he  extorted  payment  from  tho  refractory  towns, 
liquidated  the  arrears  due  from  his  imcle,  and  for  up- 
wards of  twenty-two  years  was  universally  acknowledged 
as  collector  for  the  Egyptian  kings. 

Tho  throne  of  Egyjjt,  on  the  death  of  Ptolemy  Soter, 
in  B.C.  283,  was  occupied  by  Ptolemy  PhUadelphus. 
Like  his  predecessor,  ne  distinguished  himself  by 
uniform  kindness  to  the  Jewish  nation,  conferring 
costly  presents  on  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem,  and  inv-itiug 
many  of  the  Jews  to  settle  in  his  dominions.  He 
showed  himself  also  a  liberal  patron  of  literatui'o  and 
science,  establishing  a  famous  library  at  Alexandria, 
and  sparing  no  pains  in  procuring  books  to  be  deposited 
in  it.  With  his  reign  also  is  connected  the  commence- 
ment of  the  Greek  version  of  tho  Scriptures  called  tho 
Sepiuagint,  from  tho  tradition  that  seventy  or  seventy- 
two  interpreters  from  Jerusalem  were  engaged  in  tho 
translation.  This  celebrated  version  was  begun  about 
B.C.  2S6,  the  Pentateuch  being  translated  first,  and  tho 
other  books  being  subsequently  added. 

On  the  death  of  Philadelphus,  B.C.  247,  Ptolemy 
Euergetes  succeeded  to  the  Egyptian  throne.  Following 
in  the  stops  of  his  father,  he  extended  considerably  the 
privileges  of  the  Jews ;  and  tho  story  just  related  of 
the  manner  in  which  Joseph  obtained  from  him  tho 
farming  of  tho  revenues  of  Judaia,  is  a  striking  illustra- 
tion of  tho  influence  wliii'h  iudiridual  members  of  the 
nation  had  begun  to  acquii'C. 


206 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


The  reign  of  the  Egyptian  monarch  eame  to  a  sudden 
and  tragical  close.  In  the  year  B.C.  222  he  was  assassi- 
nated by  his  owii  son,  Ptolemy  IV.,  who  was  called  in 
irony  Philopater  ("  the  lover  of  his  father  ").  No  sooner 
was  he  seat^xl  on  the  throne  than  he  murdered  his  mother 
Berenice,  and  liis  brother  Magas,  and  then  gave  himself 
np  to  luxury  and  dissipation.  Before  long,  however,  he 
was  constrained  to  rouse  himself  from  his  lethargy,  and 
confront  the  rising  power  of  Antiochus  the  Great,  who 
had  seized  Phrenicia  and  the  greater  part  of  Ccelesyria, 
and  wished  to  add  Judaja  to  his  dominions.  Ptolemy 
confronted  his  rival  at  Raphia,  between  Rhiuocorura  and 
Gaza,  and  defeated  him  with  great  loss,  B.C.  217. 

Meanwhile  the  Jews  had  remained  loyal  to  the  Egyp- 
tian monarch,  who  was  induced  after  his  victoiy  to  pay 
a  visit  to  Jerusalem.  Attracted  by  the  beauty  of  the 
Temple  and  the  solemnity  of  the  services,  he  pressed 
forward  to  enter  the  sanctuary.  Simon  II.,  the  successor 
of  Onias,  entreated  him  to  desist  from  his  purpose  ;  but 
this  only  made  him  more  anxious  to  carry  it  out,  and 
amidst  the  terror  of  the  priests  and  the  wailing  of  the 
populace,  he  proceeded  towards  the  Holy  of  Holies. 
Here,  however,  he  is  said  to  have  been  seized  with  a 
sudden  and  snpernatui-al  terror,  and  fell  speechless  to 
the  earth.  Annoyed  at  this  repulse,  he  returned  to 
Alexandria,  and  wi-eaked  his  vengeance  on  the  nume- 
rous Jews  who  had  been  settled  there.  Some  ho  put 
to  death  ;  others  he  sold  into  slavery,  or  reduced  to  tho 
lowest  class  of  citizens.  Thirteen  years  afterwards  he 
fell  a  victim  to  his  unbridled  excesses,  and  was  succeeded 
by  his  son,  Ptolemy  Epiphanes,  B.C.  20-5,  then  only 
five  years  of  ago. 

During  the  closing  years  of  the  last  reign  Antiochus 
had    been  gradually   recovering   from   his   disastrous 


defeat  at  Raphia,  and  had  re-esfciblished  the  supremacy 
of  tlie  Seleucidas  among  the  Parthiaus  and  Bactrians. 
Returning  to  Western  Asia,  he  found  his  old  rival 
dead,  and  the  throne  of  Egyjjt  in  the  possession  of  a 
child.  Thereupon  he  instantly  attacked  the  Egyptian 
dominions,  and  seized  Coelesyi'ia  and  Judisea.  In  the 
engagements  that  followed  the  Jews  suffered  severely, 
and  became  in  tm-n  tho  prey  of  both  the  contending 
parties.  In  B.C.  203  Antiochus  succeeded  in  capturing 
Jerusalem.  In  B.C.  199  it  was  retaken  by  Scopas,  the 
general  of  tho  Egyptian  forces.  In  the  following  year 
Antiochus  took  the  field  again,  and  at  the  foot  of  Mount 
Panium,  near  the  sources  of  the  Jordan,  defeated  Scopas 
in  a  decisive  engagement,  and  captured  that  general  him- 
self and  the  remains  of  liis  troops,  who  had  fled  for 
refuge  to  Sidon. 

Th-ed  out  with  the  struggle,  and  mindful  of  the  in- 
dignities offered  to  their  sanctuary  by  Ptolemy  PhUo- 
pator,  the  Jews  welcomed  the  conqueror  as  their 
deliverer,  and  furnished  readily  supjjlies  for  his  army. 
Antiochus,  on  his  side,  treated  his  now  allies  with  libe- 
rahty  and  kindness.  Not  only  did  he  assure  to  them 
perfect  freedom  in  the  exercise  of  their  religious  rites, 
but  he  forbade  the  intrusion  of  strangers  into  thou- 
temple,  promised  to  restore  it  to  its  ancient  splendom-, 
and  bestowed  upon  it  many  splendid  gifts.  At  the 
same  time,  following  tho  example  of  Alexander  the 
Great  and  of  Selcucus,  ho  gave  orders  to  Zeuxis  his 
general  to  remove  two  thousand  Jewish  families  from 
Babylon  to  Lydia  and  Phrygia,  where  they  were  to  have 
lands  assigned  them,  to  exercise  their  own  laws,  and 
to  be  exempt  from  tribute  for  upwards  of  ten  years.' 


1  Jos.,  Ant.  xii.  3,  §  3,  4. 


ETHNOLOGY    OF    THE    BIBLE. 

PALESTINE :— (2)  ORIGIN  OF   ISRAEL. 

BT   THE    REV.    WILLIAM    LEE,    D.D.,    KOXBTTKGH. 


JT  was,  according  to  Archbishop  Ussher, 
about  the  year  1450  B.C.,  or,  according 
to  Hales  and  otJier  supporters  of  tho 
Long  Chronology,  about  1.50  years  earlier 
than  this  date,  that  that  great  event  in  the  history  of 
Palestine  took  place  which  transferred  the  possession  of 
the  Holy  Land  from  its  primitive  inhabitants,  of  whom 
we  have  already  spoken,  to  another  race. 

We  have  now  to  inquire  into  tho  etlmical  history  of 
the  people  which  at  the  conquest  thiis  became  pre- 
dominant in  tho  land,  a  position  which  they  continued 
thenceforward  to  occupy,  not  without  many  vicissitudes, 
involving  calamities  which  occasionally  even  threatened 
their  national  existence,  down  to  tho  destruction  of 
Jerusalem  by  the  armies  of  Vespasian,  in  the  year  70 
after  Christ. 

I.    FATHERLAND. 

It  is  in  the  land  of  Chaldea,  or  Babylonia,  and  more 


especially  in  Chaldea  proper,  or  tho  country  lying  im- 
mediately to  the  north  of  the  Persian  GuK,  and  forming 
that  portion  of  the  great  alluvial  plain  between  the 
Tigris  and  the  Euphrates,  wliich  was  afterwards  known 
as  the  southern  di^-ision  of  Babylonia,  that  we  must 
look  for  the  first  beginnings  of  the  Chosen  Seed.  There 
Abraham's  family  had  probably  dwelt  from  the  times 
of  his  remote  ancestor,  Arphaxad  [i.e.,  "the  border," 
or,  according  to  Ewald  {Hist.  i.  282V  "  the  stronghold, 
of  the  Chaldees  "].  There  Abr.aham  himself  was  born, 
and  passed  the  first  seventy-five  years  of  his  life.  In 
the  same  territory  was  the  liu-thplace  of  Sarah,  Abra- 
ham's wife  and  Isaac's  mother.  Tlie  birthplace  of 
Rebekah,  and  of  Rachel  and  Leah,  was  considerably 
further  north,  but  belonged  to  tho  same  great  plain 
of  which  Chaldea  pi-oper  formed  the  lower  extremity. 
Nor  was  the  connection  with  the  fatherland  only  kept 
up  by  marriage.     In  Padan-aram  Jacob,  when  he  fled 


ETHNOLOGY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


207 


from  Esau,  sought  refuge,  for  a  period  of,  as  it  has  been 
variously  computed,  from  twenty  to  forty  j-ears,  amoug 
his  Chaldeau  kindred. 

Though  of  different  races,  the  original  homo  of  Israel 
therefore  was,  if  the  tradition  as  to  tho  origin  of  the 
Phosnicians,  preserved  by  Herodotus,  be  accurate,  not 
remote  from  that  of  one  great  branch,  at  least,  of  the 
nations  whom  they  supplanted,  and  witli  whom  they 
were  for  long  brought  into  such  intimate  relations  in 
Palestine.  Nor  need  we  be  surprised  at  this  coiucidonce. 
In  no  part  of  the  world,  according  to  all  the  information 
we  possess,  was  there,  in  early  times,  found  a  more  re- 
markable intermixture  of  different  peoples  than  in 
Western  Asia,  and  in  no  part  of  Western  Asia  than  in 
Chaldea.  The  fact  now  referred  to,  which  is  in  a  great 
measure  accounted  for  by  the  early  history  of  the 
country  in  question,  is  itself  well  worthy  of  oiu-  notice. 
In  what  part  of  the  world  the  survivors  of  the 
Deluge  first  established  themselves  is  a  question  of  very 
great  difficulty.  The  most  general  opinion  is  ua  favour 
of  some  of  the  mountain-ranges  of  Armenia  (Bochart, 
Phaleg,  18).  Another  conclusion,  apparently  more 
consistent  with  one  of  "the  indications  (Gen.  xi.  2)  of 
its  geographical  position,  and  supported  by  concurrent 
traditions  among  the  Indians  and  Persians  (see  Lenor- 
mant,  Anc.  Hist.,  i.  21),  is  that  the  mountain  mass  of 
Little  Bokhara  and  Western  Thibet  was  the  Ararat  of 
Genesis  (viii.  4)  and  the  cradle  of  the  post-diluvian  race 
of  man.  However  this  question  may  be  determined, 
it  appears  that  in  process  of -time  Noah's  descendants 
migrated  from  their  original  settlements,  and  after 
"  journeyings"  (Gen.  xi.  2),  the  history  of.  which  is  not 
preserved,  arrived — ^by  the  Hebrew  chronology  about 
100  years,  by  that  of  the  Septuagint  about  400  years 
after  the  flood — in  the  very  land  from  which  Abraham 
removed  to  Canaan,  and  there  proceeded  to  establish 
themselves. 

That  the  "  land  of  Shinar  "  must  be  identified  with 
Chaldea,  or  Southern  Babylon,  hardly  admits  of  question. 
"  It  was  a  plain  country,  where  brick  had  to  bo  used  for 
stone,  and  sfime  (mud  ?)  for  mortar  (Gen.  xi.  3).  Among 
its  cities  were  Babel  (Babylon),  Erech  or  Orech 
(Orchoi),  Calneh  or  Calno  [probably  Niffier  (according  to 
Lenormant,  Anc.  Hist.  i.  80,  Ur)],  and  Arrad,  the  site  of 
wfiich  is  unknown.  These  notices  are  quite  enough  to 
fix  the  situation"  {Diet,  of  Bible,  s.  v.  "  Shinar").  Nor 
is  it  much  less  evident  from  the  sacred  history  that  tho 
migration  to  this  territory,  of  which  we  read  in  the  first 
verses  of  Gen.  xi.,  consisted,  not  of  a  section  merely  of 
tho  NoachidEe,  as  was  long  ago  snggested  by  Bryant, 
who  supjioses  these  versos  to  refer  to  the  Cushite  inva- 
sion of  Chaldea,  under  Nimrod,  elsewhere  (Gen.  x.  8) 
described  (Anc.  Mythology,  iii.  32),  but  of  "  the  children 
of  men  "  of  that  day,  as  a  whole ;  and  that  tho  confusion 
of  tongues,  and  the  dispersion,  i-clated  in  the  same 
chapter,  also  in  connection  with  Chaldea.  had  reference 
in  like  manner  to  the  whole  race.  It  is  not  improbable, 
certainly,  that  migr.atious  may  have  occurred  before  the 
dispersion  at  Babel,  before  even  the  arrival  in  the  x>lains 
of  Shinar.    That  such  was  the  case  is,  indeed,  apparently 


implied  in  the  reasons  assigned  by  tho  builders  of  the 
city  and  tower  of  Babel  for  the  course  which  they 
followed  (Gen.  xi.  4) ;  but  this  conjecture,  if  proved  to 
be  correct,  would  not  be  at  variance  with  the  opinion 
generally  received,  namely,  that  the  occupation  of 
Chaldea,  referred  to  in  the  passage  in  question,  was  the 
result  of  movements,  not  on  the  part  of  one  people,  but 
of  the,  as  yet,  undivided  race  of  mankind. 

Such  an  event  as  that  now  described  could  not  fail  to 
leave  its  traces  on  the  population  of  this  tei-ritoiy,  even 
after  the  dispersion.  A  largo  residuum  of  different  races 
would  necessarily  remain  in  the  country  in  which  the 
descendants  of  the  whole  of  the  sons  of  Noah  had  thus 
for  a  time  formed  a  common  home,  and  which  became 
their  point  of  departure  when,  eventually,  "  they  were 
scattered  abroad  upon  all  the  face  of  tho  earth."  After 
events  would  tend  to  perpetuate  and  still  further  to  com- 
pHcate  the  mixed  chai-acter  of  the  population,  doubtless 
due  originally  to  this  cause.  Reference  is  here  made 
especially  to  the  Cushite  invasion  of  Chaldea,  of  which 
there  is  evidence,  both  in  tho  Bible  and  in  the  more 
ancient  monumental  inscriptions. 

But  it  is  with  the  fact  rather  than  its  causes  that  we 
are  here  concerned ;  and  the  fact  of  the  existence  of  a 
strange  medley  of  races  m  the  Tigro-Euphrates  basin 
in  all  early  times  is  abundantly  ascertained.  There  is 
reason  to  believe  that  originally  various  independent 
tribes  divided  the  country  among  them  (Lenormant,  Anc. 
Hist.,  i.  347).  If,  indeed,  the  native  historian  Berosus 
is  to  be  refied  on  here,  the  country  had  for  a  time  fallen 
into  a  state  of  utter  anarchy,  being  without  ci\Tlisation, 
or  the  forms  of  law.  He  describes  it  (Eusobii,  Chron., 
ii.,  §  3)  as  "a  great  resoi-t  of  various  peoples  who  .  .  . 
lived  without  rule  and  order,  like  the  beasts  of  the  field." 
The  question  has  been  raised  (Niebuhr,  Ana.  Hist.,  i. 
11,  sq. ;  Bawliuson,  Anc.  Monarchies,  i.  58.  sq.)  whether 
the  race  which  first  established  a  regular  government  in 
Chaldea  was  Semitic  or  Hamite.  From  some  exjjressions 
in  a  remarkable  fragment  of  primeval  history  which  has 
been  introduced  by  the  inspired  writer,  probably  from 
some  much  earlier  document,  into  tho  Toldoth  Beni 
Noah,  or  "  Book  of  the  Generations  of  Noah  "  (Gen.  x.) 
— confessedly  "  the  most  important  record  that  we 
possess  for  the  affiliation  of  [nations]  "  (Joimi.  of  Asiatic 
Soc,  XV.  233) — as  well  as  on  other  grounds,  it  appears 
to  be,  on  the  whole,  most  probable  that  this  distinction 
belonged  to  a  branch  of  the  race  of  Ham,  the  Cushite 
invaders  of  the  country  already  referred  to.  There  are 
at  the  same  time,  however,  strong  reasons  (cf.  ibid., 
XV.  221,  226)  for  believing  that  Semitic  peoples,  like  the 
Arphaxadas  (Gen.  xi.  11)  and  the  descendants  of  Asshur 
(Gen.  X.  22),  had  previously  in  considerable  numbers 
occupied  the  same  region.  All  along,  indeed,  even  under 
the  Cushite  rule,  an  important  Semitic  element  appears 
to  have  existed  in  the  population.  And  from  the  monu- 
mental inscriptions  it  may  bo  concluded  that  not  only 
Semitic  and  Hamite,  but  also  Turani.an,  and  possibly 
other  groups  of  the  Japhetic,  races  must  have  been  f  ormd 
in  this  territory  in  the  earliest  times.  "  Tho  fact,"  says 
Lenormant,  "  of  the  existence  of  an  ancient  Turanian 


208 


THE  BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


civilisation,  and  the  presence  of  people  of  tliat  race  in 
Chaldea,  is  one  of  the  newest  and  least  expected  results 
of  the  decipherment  of  the  cuneiform  inscriptions,  and 
of  the  study  of  the  original  monuments  of  the  Assyro- 
Chaldean  world.  It  is,  nevertheless,  incontestable" 
{Anc.  Hist.,  i.  342).'  There  is  a  curious  confirmation  of 
the  facts  now  stated  as  to  the  mixture  of  races  in  this 
country,  in  the  title  of  "  rulers  of  the  four  races,"  or 
sometimes  "  four  tongues,"  which  we  find  given  to  a 
dynasty  which  reigned  in  Chaldea  about  the  time  of 
Abraham  himself.^  (Cf.  Rawlinson's  Herod.,  i.  262,  266.) 
Less  is  known  of  the  history,  religion,  customs  and 
manners,  trade  and  commerce,  arts  and  manufactures, 
science  and  literature,  even  the  country  itself,  of  the 
ancient  Chaldeans  than  of  those  of  many  other  peoples 
of  antiquity,  and  much  less  than  will  probably  be  dis- 
covered when  Southern  Babylonia  has  been  more  care- 
fully explored,  and  greater  progress  has  been  made  iu 
deciphering  the  inscriptions  already  collected.  Great 
difficulties  attend  excavations  in  so  inaccessible  a  region 
(Loftus,  239).  The  cuneiform  inscriptions  take  us 
back  to  a  period  of,  in  some  eases,  2,000  years  B.C., 
and  have  already  yielded  valuable  results  ;  but  this 
form  of  writing,  especially  as  found  in  the  older  docu- 
ments, is,  as  yet,  very  far  from  having  been  thoroughly 
mastered.  Then,  the  Greek  historians  of  Babylonia 
all  belong  to  a  date  comparatively  too  recent  to  be 
of  much  value  as  authorities  for  the  history  of  the 
people  in  the  times  with  which  we  are  hero  con- 
cerned. As  far,  however,  as  our  information  goes,  the 
native  country  of  Abraham,  though  it  must  have  made 
great  progress  in  every  way  since  the  times  described 
in  a  passage  already  quoted  from  Berosus,  was,  even  in 
Abraham's  day,  very  much  less  highly  civilised  than 
some  other  countries  with  which  the  migrations  of  that 
patriarch  afterwards  brought  him  in  contact. 

(I.)  The  aspect  of  the  country — a  flat  alluvial  plain — is 
described  by  all  travellers  as,  at  least  iu  its  present  un- 
cultivated and  depopulated  condition,  singularly  monoto- 
nous and  uninteresting.  But  with  two  such  rivers  as 
the  Euphrates  and  the  Tigris,  Chaldea  must  always  have 
been  susceptible  of  being  rendered,  if  not  beautifid, 
sufficiently  fertile  to  support  a  large  population.  It  is 
uncertain  to  what  period  must  bo  assigned  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  complicated  system  of  canals  and  water- 
courses, which  in  the  time  of  the  second  empire  made 
the  Tigro-Euphrates  basin  not  less  fruitful  than  the 
banks  of  the  Egyjitian  Nile.  The  barren  sandy  wastes 
which  now  almost  everywhere  meet  the  eye  throughout 

'  To  tliis  must  be  added  tlie  following  statement  by  Sir  H. 
Kawlinsou : — "  One  of  the  most  remarkable  results  arising  from 
analysis  of  tbe  Hamite  cuneiform  alpbabet,  is  the  evidcnco  of  an 
Arian  clement  in  the  vocahulary  of  the  very  earliest  period,  thus  sbow- 
iug  that  either  in  that  remote  age  there  must  have  been  an  Ariau 
race  dwelling  on  the  Euphrates  among  the  Hamite  tribes,  or  that 
(as  I  myself  think  more  probable)  the  distinction  between  Arian, 
Semitic,  and  Turanian  tongues  bad  not  been  developed  when 
picture-writing  was  first  used  in  Chaldea."  (Essay  on  Early 
History  of  Babylonia,  Rawlinson's  Herod.,  i.  362,  note.) 

-  See  also  Essay  above  cited  (p.  36iJ),  According  to  Sir  H. 
Rawlinson,  "  tbe  four  races  referred  to,  and  which  thus  comprised 
the  early  population  of  Babylonia,  were  probably  Hamite,  Turanian, 
Arian,  and  Semitic." 


this  region,  in  the  neglect  of  culture  that  prevails,  do 
not  confirm  the  accuracy  of  the  tradition  in  Berosus 
(Euseb.,  Chr.,  ii.  §  2)  that  in  primeval  times  it  yielded 
corn   without   cultivation.      But,  according   to  Loftus 
(Chaldcea,  14),  there  is  no  physical  reason  why,  even  at 
the  present  diiy,  it  might  not,  with  care  and  labour,  be- 
come again  the  land  rich  in  com  and  wine,  the  land  of 
pleasant  gardens,  and  groves  of  palm-trees,  described  by 
Herodotus  (Hist.,  i.  §  193).     (2.)  No  stone  is  found  in 
Chaldea,  and  the  invariable  use  of  bricks,  cemented  by 
bitumen  or  mud  (as  in  the  tower  of  Babel)  for  building 
purposes,  was  unfavourable  to  the  development  of  the 
art  of  architecture.      The  only  remains  of  examples  of 
tlus  art  wliich  have  been  explored  are  remarkable  rather 
for  their  massiveuoss  than  their  elegance.     But  even  in 
early  times  ornament  was  not  wholly  absent.     In  some 
chambers  examined  by  Mr.  Taylor  at  Abu-shahrein,  and 
apparently  belonging  to  the  Chaldean  period,  the  inner 
walls  were  found  coated  with  fine  plaster,  and  jjainted  in 
various  designs.     In  one  apartment  the  ornamentation 
assumed  a  form  common  afterwards  in  the  same  country 
(Ezek.  xxiii.  14,  15),  there  being  "  reijreseuted,  but  very 
rudely,  the  figure  of  a  man  holding  a  bird  on  his  wrist, 
with  a  smaller  figure  near  him  "  (Rawlinson,  Anc.  Mon., 
i.  104).   At  Warka,  Mr.  Loftus  f otmd  among  the  remains 
of  an  edifice,  in  his  opinion,  of  early  origin,  part  of 
a  wall  thirty  feet  long,  which  was  entirely  composed  of 
torra-cotta  cones,  embedded  in  a  cement  of  mud,  and  so 
coloured  and  arranged  as  to  form  on  the  outer  surface 
various  ornamental  patterns.      Similar  cones  are  found 
lying  loose  in  the  debris  of  many  of  the  moimds  through- 
out the  country,  indicating  the  prevalence  of  this  style 
of  architectural  embeUishment  [Chaldcea,  187).  Another 
building  in  the  same  place  aif  ords  an  example  of  the  em- 
ployment of  the  column  in  early  Chaldean  architecture. 
The  form  is  very  rude — semi-circular  bricks  being  made 
use  of,  without  cornice,  base,  or  capital  (Loftus,  175). 
Mr.  Loftus  (182,  sq.)  believes  that  the  roofs  were  gene- 
rally ardied.     The  rooms  (Rawlinson,  Anc.  Mon.,  i.  106) 
were  long  and  narrow,  and  usually  communicated  with 
each  other,  or  were  entered  by  doors  opening  directly 
into  them  from  'without.     Passages    are  rarely  found 
mthiu  the  walls.    (3.)  Among  the  commonest  and  most 
remarkable   ancient   remains   are    the    burying-places. 
These  are  of  various  periods,  and  so  extensive  that  it 
has   been   supposed   (Loftus,   199'!   Chaldea   must    in 
com'se   of  time    have   become    the   Necropolis   of    all 
Babylon.     They  consist  of  piles  of  earthenware  coffins, 
covered,  probably  by  the  wind,  with  sand,  and  form 
vast  tumuli.     Brick  vaults  are  also  sometimes  found. 
The  coffins  and  vaults,  besides  human  remains,  contain 
engraved  cylinders   and  gems,   beads  and   neck-orna- 
ments,   date-stones   and   other   remains   of   food,   and 
di-inking  vessels.     Some  of  them  appear  to  belong  to 
the  earliest  periods  of  Chaldean  history  (see  Loftus,  c. 
xviii.).     (4.)  Little  evidence  is  in  our  possession  of  an 
advanced  state  of  the   arts   in  the  time   of  the  first 
empire.     Hammers,  hatchets,  knives,  sickles,  and  other 
implements — in  one  case  (Loftus,  269)  what  appears  to 
have  boon  the  stock-in-trade,  part  of  it  in  course  of 


DIFFICULT  PASSAGES  EXPLAINED. 


209 


manufacture,  of  a  coppersmith — are  amoug  the  spoil 
of  recent  explorers.  The  latter  collection,  which  is  now 
in  the  British  Museum,  includes  large  caldrons,  vases, 
small  dishes,  a  large  assortment  of  knives  and  daggers, 
carpenters'  tools,  a  pair  of  prisoner's  fetters,  and 
several  plates  resembling  horses'  shoes.  Some  of  the 
articles  are  skilfully  wi-ought.  The  fictOo  remains — 
vases,  drinking  vessels,  and  lamps — and  the  gold  or 
iron  ear-rings,  and  other  personal  ornaments,  which 
also  form  part  of  the  collections  of  Babylonian  anti- 
quities supposed  to  belong  to  the  Chaldean  period,  are 
not  without  beauty  of  form  (Loftus,  211).  In  textile 
manufactures  the  Babylonians  eventually  attained  high 
excellence.  The  "  Babylonian  garment,"  which  Achau 
coveted  among  the  spoils  of  Jericho  (Josh.  vii.  21), 
shows  that,  at  least  by  the  time  of  the  conquest,  they  had 
already  acquired  some  repute  in  this  branch  of  industry, 
and  found  a  market  for  their  productions  beyond  the 
limits  of  their  o^vn  country.  (5. )  Nothing  is  kno\vn  of 
their  scieutihc  attainments  except  the  fact  of  their  early 
proficiency  in  arithmetic  and  astronomy.  As  to  the  latter 
science,  we  know  (cf .  Joiirn.  As.  Soc,  xv.  221)  that  when 
Alexander  the  Great  took  Babylon  (c.  332  B.C.),  there 


was  foimd  in  that  city  a  catalogue  of  eclipses,  which 
had  been  observed  by  native  astronomers  during  the 
previous  1,903  years.  According  to  Lenormant  (Anc. 
Hist.,  i.  360),  "  in  the  most  ancient  times  that  the  monu- 
ments permit  us  to  investigate,  asti'onomy  was  more 
advanced  in  Babylon  and  Chaldea  than  it  even  was  in 
EgJlJt." 

It  is  imnecessary  to  enter  here  into  any  account  of 
the  religion  of  Chaldea.  We  have  already  found  that 
nature  worship,  accompanied  tjy  idolatrous,  superstitious, 
and  licentious  rites,  prevailed  throughout  the  whole  of 
Western  Asia,  from  the  earliest  periods  of  which  we 
have  any  knowledge.  The  distinctions  between  the 
Chaldaeans  and  other  members  of  the  Syi-o- Ai'abic  family 
of  nations,  as  to  then- special  behefs  and  usages,  are  more 
ciu-ious  than  important.  The  reader  wUl  find  an  inte- 
resting chapter  on  the  subject  of  the  religion  of  Chaldea 
in  the  fu-st  volume  of  Professor  Rawliuson's  Ancient 
Monarchies.  To  the  general  fact,  that  at  the  time  of  the 
call  of  Abraham,  idolatry  appears  to  haYehoea  universal, 
here  as  elsewhere,  and  was  practised  even  by  the  family 
of  that  patriarch,  there  will  bo  occasion  to  retiu-u  in 
another  connection. 


DIFFICULT      PASSAGES      EXPLAINED. 

THE    GOSPELS:— ST.    MATTHEW. 


BT   THE    KEV.    C.    J.    ELLIOTT,    M.A. 

"  Again,  ye  have  heard  [or,  ye  heard]  that  it  hath  heeu  said  by 
[or,  was  said  to]  them  of  old  time.  Thou  ehalt  not  forsweai*  thy- 
self, but  shalt  perform  unto  the  Lord  thine  oaths.  But  I  say  unto 
you,  Swear  not  at  all ;  neither  by  heaven,  for  it  is  God's  throne  ;  nor 
by  the  earth  ;  for  it  is  hia  footstool :  neither  by  Jerusalem  ;  for  it 
is  the  city  of  the  great  King.  Neither  shalt  thou  swear  by  thy 
head,  because  thou  canst  not  make  one  hair  white  or  black.  But 
let  your  communication  [or  manner  of  speech]  be,  Tea,  yea ;  Nay, 
nay  :  for  whatsoever  is  more  than  these  cometh  of  evil  [or  of  the 
«vil  cue]." — St.  Matt.  t.  33—37. 

5«Ti^SJ.<HE  words  here  quoted  by  our  Lord  are  not 
taken  exactly,  as  in  some  other  parts  of 
this  discourse,  from  the  IVIosaic  law.  They 
contain,  however,  the  substance  of  the 
teaching  of  that  law  as  set  forth  in  the  following 
passages  : — 

(1.)  "  Thou  shalt  not  take  the  name  of  the  Lord  thy 
God  in  vain ;  for  the  Lord  wiU  not  hold  him  guiltless 
that  taketh  his  name  in  vain  "  (Exod.  xx.  7). 

It  must  be  observed  here  that  the  word  rendered  "  in 
vain  "  is  as  applicable  to  the  profanation  of  the  name  of 
Jehovah  in  the  ordinary  intercoiu'so  of  life  as  it  is  to 
false  swearing.  The  word  nib)  (shav)  is  used  in  the 
sense  of  "  false  "  in  Exod.  xxiii.  and  Dent.  v.  20 ;  and 
in  the  sense  of  "  uselessly  "  or  "  to  no  purpose  "  in  Ps. 
cxxvii.  1 ;  Jer.  ii.  30  ;  vi.  29  ;  and  Mai.  iii.  14. 

(2.)  "And  ye  shall  not  swear  by  my  name  falsely, 
neither  shalt  thou  [or,  and]  profane  the  name  of  thy 
God"(Lev.  xix.  12). 

Here  the  word  rightly  rendered  "  falsely  "  is  a  dif- 
ferent word  from  that  which  is  rendered  "  in  vain  "  in 
Exod.  XX.  7. 

38 — VOL.  IL 


VICAR    OF   WINKFIELD,    BERKS. 

(3.)  "  If  a  man  vow  a  vow  imto  the  Lord,  or  swear  an 
oath  to  bind  his  soul  with  a  bond,  ho  shall  not  break 
his  word ;  he  shall  do  according  to  all  that  proceedeth 
out  of  his  mouth  "  (Numb.  xxx.  2). 

(4.)  "That  which  has  gone  out  of  thy  lips  thou  shalt 
keep  and  perform  "  (Deut.  xxiii.  23). 

In  addition  to  these  passages,  which  clearly  imply  the 
lawfulness  of  oaths  under  the  ]*Iosaic  law,  there  are 
other  more  direct  sanctions  for  their  use  on  solemn  and 
necessary  occasions,  such  as  that  contained  in  Deut.  vi. 
13  :  "  Thou  shalt  fear  the  Lord  thy  God,  and  serve  biTn  ; 
and  shall  swear  by  his  name."' 

If  further  confirmation  were  needed  of  the  legality 
of  oaths  under  the  Jewish  law,  reference  might  be 
made  not  only  to  the  example  of  the  patriarchs  (Gen. 
xxi.  24 ;  xxxi.  531,  of  Moses  (Josh.  xiv.  9),  of  David 
(1  Sam.  xsiv.  22),  and  of  Solomon  (1  Kings  ii.  23); 
but  over  and  above  these,  to  the  fact  that  Jehovah  is 
again  and  again  represented  as  swearing  by  Himself, 
as,  e.g.,  in  Ps.  cxxxii.  11 ;  Isa.  xlv.  23 ;  -  Jer.  xliv.  26 ; 
and  Amos  iv.  2. 

Enough  has  now  been  alleged  to  warrant  the  conclu- 

'  It  is  deserving  of  notice  that  the  Hebrew  verb  which  signifies 
"to  swear"  is  not  used  in  the  Jvai,  i.e.,  the  active  voice,  but  in 
the  Nqyhal,  i.e.,  the  passive  voice  ;  and  therefore  that  this  passage 
may  be  literally  rendered  thus :  "  and  shalt  be  sworn  by  [or  in] 
His  name,"  a  rendering  which  precisely  accords  with  the  phrase  in 
common  use  amongst  ourselves  in  reference  to  judicial  oaths — viz., 
(o  be  s^iorn. 

-  It  is  not  unworthy  of  observation  that  the  accomplishment  of 
this  oath  has  reference  to  Christian  times. 


210 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


sion  that  there"  is  nothmg  iuhereutly  ov  essentially 
unlawful  in  an  oath.  It  does  not,  however,  follow,  of 
necessity,  that  that  which  is  in  itself  lawful  at  one  time 
may  not  ho  forbidden  by  Divine  authority  at  another  ; 
and  it  therefore  becomes  necessary  to  inquire  further 
whether  an  absolute  prohibition  of  oaths  as  regards 
Clu'istians  is,  or  is  not,  implied  in  the  words  under 
consideration. 

The  first  reason  which  suggests  itself  to  the  mind,  in 
opposition  to  such  an  inference,  is  that  the  whole  con- 
text leads  to  the  conclusion  that  our  Lord's  reference  is 
not  to  oaths  taken  on  solemn  occasions,  and  in  obedience 
to  lawf  id  authority,  but  to  the  use  of  oaths  in  ordinaxy 
conversation   {Koyos),  and  for    light   and   tri'i'ial   juir- 


Tliis  inference,  drawn  first  from  the  context,  wliich 
has  reference  to  customs  commonly  prevailing  amongst 
the  Jews,  is  confirmed  by  the  unquestionable  fact  that 
the  very  oaths  specially  forbidden,  and  others  of  a 
similar  character,  both  were,  and  still  are,  of  continual 
occurrence  with  that  people.  Amongst  the  oaths  in 
common  use  amongst  the  Jews  of  old,  Buxtorf,'  who 
gives  his  authorities,  enumerates  the  f  oUowiug : — (1)  By 
the  swearer's  own  head ;  (2)  by  the  Temple  ;  (3)  by  the 
altar ;  (4)  by  heaven  ;  (5)  by  the  earth ;  (6)  by  the  sun ; 
(7)  by  Moses ;  (8)  by  the  law  of  Moses ;  (9)  by  the  hfe 
of  the  Rabbins;  whilst  with  regard  to  their  modern 
practice.  Dr.  Thomson"  writes  in  the  following  words : — 
"  This  people  are  fearfully  profane.  Everybody  curses 
and  swears  when  in  a  passion.  .  .  The  people  now 
use  the  very  same  sort  of  oaths  that  are  mentioned 
and  condemned  by  om-  Lord.  They  swear  by  theii- 
head,  by  their  lip,  by  heaven,  and  by  the  Temple,  or, 
what  is  in  its  place,  the  Chm-ch." 

The  natural  and  obvious  import  of  our  Lord's  words, 
then,  seems  to  be  as  follows  (and  it  is  worthy  of  remark 
that  in  some  of  the  best  critical  editions  of  the  New 
Testament  wo  find  only  a  comma  after  the  words  "  at 
all ") :  "  But  I  say  unto  you.  Swear  not  at  aU  [i.e.,  have 
recourse  in  your  daily  and  hourly  intercourse  with  each 
other  to  none  of  the  oaths  so  current  amongst  you,  of 
which  the  following  are  examples],  neither  by  heaven, 
.  .  .  nor  by  eartli,  .  .  .  neither  by  Joi'u.salem, 
.  .  .  neither  shalt  thou  swear  by  thy  head  .  .  . 
but  let  your  communication  [i.e.,  your  ordinary  conversa- 
tion, or  mode  of  affirmation  or  denial]  be.  Yea,  yea ; 
Nay,  nay  :  for  whatsoever  is  more  than  these  cometh  of 
[i.e.,  has  its  origin  in]  c\n\  [or  the  evil  one]." 

It  remains  to  be  seeu  how  far  this  explanation  of  our 
Lord's  words  is  confirmed  by,  or  is  iuconsisteut  vrith. 
His  own  example,  and  the  example  and  teaching  of  His 
inspired  apostles. 

As  regards  our  Lord's  own  example,  it  .should  bo 
observed  that  when  adjm-ed  by  the  living  God  to  tell 
the  high  priest  whether  He  was  the  Christ,  He  neither 
objected  to  the  adjuration,  nor  kept  silence,  as  when 


1  Leisicon   CliaXdaiciLm,  Tahniidicum,  et  Eahbinlcumt  p.   2,315,  fol. 
B.asileEe,  1640. 

2  See  The  Lar.d  and  flic  Book,  pp.  100,  191.      1S64. 


chai'ged  by  the  false  witnesses  with  saying  that  He  was 
able  to  destroy  the  Temple.^ 

As  regards  both  the  example  and  teaching  of  the 
apostles,  the  evidence  is  yet  stronger. 

For,  not  only  does  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  refer,  in  terms  of  implied  sanction,  to  the 
prcvadiug  custom  of  oaths  for  confirmation  ■with  a  view 
to  "  the  end  of  all  strife,"  but  we  find  St.  Paul  again  and 
again  solemnly  appealing  to  God,  and  calling  Him  "  for 
a  record  (or  witness)  upon  his  sold,"  when  he  desired 
to  give  special  weight  aud  solemnity  to  his  assertions 
(cf.  Rom.  ix.  1 ;  2  Cor.  i.  18,  23 ;  xi.  31 ;  xii.  19,  &c.).^ 

"Wliether,  then,  wo  accept  the  view  of  Augustine,  that 
our  Lord  specifies  j)articular  oaths,  such  as  oaths  by  the 
head,  by  the  city  of  Jerusalem,*  by  heaveu,  or  by  earth, 
because  the  Jerfs  thought  that  the  violation  of  such  oaths 
was  permissible ;°  or  whether,  apart  from  such  special 
ground  of  prohibition  applicable  to  them,  we  interpret 
om-  Lord's  words  as  an  absolute  jaroliibition  of  all  oaths 
used  on  light  aud  tri\aal  occasions,  as  calcidated  to 
encourage  profanity  and  to  lead  to  perjmy,  it  seems 
obvious  that  He  coidd  not  have  designed  to  forbid  as 
unlawful  those  oaths  which  in  all  ages,  as  well  by 
the  authority  of  revelation  as  by  the  light  of  reason, 
had  been  sanctioned — which  Holy  Scripture  represents 
Jehovah  himself  as  employing,  in  condesceusion  to  the 
weakness  of  man,  for  the  gi-eater  confh'mation  of  his 
faith — to  which  our  Lord  himself  raised  no  objection 
when  solemnly  adjm'ed  by  the  high  priest — aud  of  which 
the  New  Testament  contaius  many  instances  as  pro- 
ceeding from  the  hps  of  one  who  received  the  Gospel 
which  he  px'eached,  not  of  or  through  men,  but  by 
direct  revelation  from  heaven. 

It  must  not,  however,  be  overlooked  that,  as  it  is 
man's  sin  which  is  the  origin  of  the  necessity  of  oaths, 
so,  in  exact  proportion  as  man  is  restored  to  the  lost 
image  of  his  Maker,  and  created  anew  in  righteousness 
and  true  holiness,  in  the  same  proportion  wih  the  neces- 
sity of  such  solemn  confirmations  of  the  truth  of  his 
words  cease  to  be  ueeiKul,  together  mth  all  those  other 
safeguards  agaiust  crime,  aud  provisions  for  its  detec- 


■*  It  must  be  reineuibered  that  the  custom  in  the  administering 
of  oaths  nmougst  the  Jews  was  in  accordance  with  our  own  in  this 
respect,  that  it  was  the  proposer  of  the  oath  who  repeated  the 
words,  aud  not  tho  person  who  was  sworn. 

^  It  is  not  unworthy  of  observation  that  1  Cor.  xv.  31,  "  I  pro- 
test by  your  rejoicing,"  &c.,  has,  as  Augustine  has  noticed,  the  very 
form  as  well  as  essence  of  au  oath. 

^  There  is  a  different  preposition  (elr)  used  in  reference  to  Jeru- 
salem from  that  which  is  used  in  the  other  oaths  here  specified. 
It  indicates  direction  towards  a  place  or  person,  and  it  may,  there- 
fore, refer  to  the  Jewish  custom  of  praying  with  the  face  towards 
the  city  of  Jerusalem  (Dan.  vi.  10) ;  or  it  may  be  au  allusion  to 
the  Jewish  custom  of  praying  that  all  blessings  may  descend  and 
rest  upon  Jerusalem. 

^  That  such  was  the  opinion  of  the  Jews  with  regard  to  many 
of  the  oaths  which  were  in  most  common  use  amongst  thorn, 
.appears  from  Matt,  sxiii.  Iti — 23,  where  our  Lord  exposes  the 
fallacy  of  the  distinctions  drawn  by  them  between  swearing  by  the 
Temple,  aud  by  the  gold  of  the  Temple  ;  by  the  altai*,  and  by  the 
gift  laid  upon  it ;  by  heaven,  and  by  Him  who  inhabits  it.  In  a 
work  of  high  reputation  amongst  the  Jews,  quoted  by  Bengel  in  his 
Gnomon,  we  find  the  following  passage  ;  "As  heaven  and  earth 
shall  pass  away,  so  shall  the  oath  pass  away  which  calls  them  to 
witness.'' 


EASTERN    GEOGRAPHY  OF    THE    BIBLE. 


211 


tion    and    pimishmcnt,    which,    directly  oi-  iudirectly, 
"  come  of  evil,"  or  "  of  the  evil  one." 

'•  Therefore,"  says  Augustiue,  "  let  him  who  under- 
stands that  swearing  is  to  bo  reckoned,  not  among 
thiags  that  are  good,  but  among'  things  that  are  neces- 
sary, refraiu,  as  far  as  he  can,  from   iudidging  iu  it. 


unless  by  necessity,  when  ho  sees  men  slow  to  believe 
what  it  is  usefid  for  them  to  believe,  unless  they  are 
assured  by  an  oath." ' 


1  Sermon  on  the  Mount  E3:iiOundcd,  p.  42. 
Clark,  lS7o. 


Edinburgh :  T.  and  : 


EASTERN  GEOGEAPHY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


PALESTINE. 

BY    MAJOE  WILSON,    K.E. 


,  ALESTINE,  or  the  Holy  Land,  is  the 
central  portion  of  a  long  narrow  tract  of 
cumitry  which  stretches  along  the  eastern 
shore  of  the  Mediterranean,  from  the  Bay 
of  Issus  and  mountains  of  Asia  Minor  on  the  north, 
to  the  Red  Sea  and  Desert  of  Arabia  on  the  south. 
Separated  from  all  other  countries,  and  almost  isolated, 
by  the  sea  on  the  west  and  the  desert  on  the  east,  this 
region  possesses  peeidiar  physical  characteristics,  which 
require  some  explanation  before  the  geography  of  Pales- 
tine itself,  and  its  relation  to  the  history,  religion,  and 
mode  of  thouglit  of  the  Jewish  nation,  can  be  rightly 
undei'stood.  The  most  remarkable  featm'O  is  the  great 
valley  which  traverses  the  country  from  north  to  south, 
and  runs  nearly  parallel  to  the  coast  from  Antioch  to 
the  Red  Sea ;  the  northern  portion  of  this  valley  is 
watered  by  the  rivers  Orontes  and  Litany,  wliicli,  risiug 
near  each  other  in  the  vicinity  of  Baalbec,  flow  in 
opposite  du-ectious — the  former  north  to  Antioch,  where 
it  turns  westward  to  the  sea ;  the  latter  south,  till  it 
forces  its  way  to  the  Mediterranean  roimd  the  southern 
slope  of  Lebanon.  These  are  followed  by  the  Jordan, 
a  river  wholly  without  a  parallel  iu  the  world,  which, 
hurrying  southward  iu  rapid  descent,  loses  itself  iu  the 
Dead  Sea,  the  ,  cry  deepest  part  of  the  Old  World,  Ijiug 
1,300  feet  below  the  level  of  the  sea.  South  of  the 
Dead  Sea  the  valley  is  known  as  the  Wady  el-Arabah, 
which  reaches  to  Akabah,  and  thence  the  great  cleft,  if 
so  it  may  be  called,  passes  southward  beneath  the  waters 
of  the  Gidf  of  Akabah  and  the  Red  Sea  to  the  pillars 
which  guard  the  Straits  of  Bab-el-Mandeb. 

West  of  the  Gulf  of  Alvabali,  and  risiug  to  a  height 
of  from  6,000  to  8,000  feet  above  the  sea,  are  the 
wild  rugged  momitaius  of  Sinai,  shrouding,  as  it  were, 
with  a  thick  veil  the  secluded  valley  hi  which,  amidst 
scenery  of  the  most  grand  and  impressive  character, 
the  Israelites  were  assembled  to  witness  the  delivery  of 
the  Law  from  Mount  Siuai.  North  of  the  moimtaius 
stretches  the  dreary  desert  of  Et  Tih,  the  scene,  as  it  is 
generally  believed,  of  the  forty  years'  wandering ;  still 
further  north  Kes  the  ]Sregeb,or  "south  country,"  through 
wliich  the  spies  passed  up  to  view  the  land  ;  and  then 
follow  the  hills  of  Judtsa  rmining  northwards  to  the 
plain  of  Esdraelou,  which  separates  them  from  the  hills 
of  Galilee.  These  latter  serve  to  connect  the  mountain 
system  of  Palestine  with  the  lofty  range  of  Lebanon, 
whicli,  after  attaining  a  height  of  10,000  feet  near  the 


cedars,  falls  gradually  to  the  north  before  rising  again 
iu  the  mountains  of  Asia  Minor,  and  leaves  at  this  point 
an  open  highway  for  the  passage  of  the  nations  of  the 
East  from  the  Euphrates  to  the  Mediterranean. 

East  of  the  great  valley  the  country,  as  far  north 
as  the  giant  buttress  of  Mount  Hermou,  presents  no 
marked  physical  features,  and  is  for  the  most  part  a 
broad  jilateau,  affording  abundant  pasturage  for  the 
Bodiiwi  flocks  of  the  present  day,  as  it  did  formerly 
for  the  Hocks  and  herds  which  formed  the  pastoral 
wealth  of  Moab,  Reubeu,  Gad,  and  the  half  tribe  of 
Mauassoh.  With  Moimt  Hermon  tho  range  of  Anti- 
Lebanon  commences,  and  this,  too,  sinks  gradually  to 
tho  north  almost  purposely,  as  it  seems,  to  admit  of  tho 
open  highway  alluded  to  above. 

Between  the  coast  and  the  western  range  of  moun- 
tains there  is  a  belt  of  level  country,  about  twenty  miles 
broad  at  its  southern  extremity  near  Gaza,  but  gi-aduaUy 
narrowing  as  we  proceed  northwards,  until  at  last  it 
almost  disappears,  or  is  broken  nj)  by  the  rocky  spurs 
of  the  hills,  which  frequently  advance  to  the  water's 
edge. 

Tins  district  may  be  divided  into  six  sections — Upper 
Syria,  Lebanon,  Palestiue,  tho  Ncgeb  or  South  Country, 
the  Desert,  and  the  peniusida  of  Siuai — each  of  which 
will  be  treated  separately.  At  present,  however,  our 
attention  will  be  confined  to  the  most  important  section, 
Palestine,  or  the  Holy  Land. 

Name. — The  Hebi.sw  word  which  iu  our  English 
version  of  the  Bible  is  translated  "  Palestine  "  in  Joel  iii. 
4,  and  "  Palestina"  iu  Exod.  xv.  14,  and  Isa.  xiv.  29, 31, 
is  only  found  elsewhere  iu  the  Psalms,  and  is  there 
rendered  by  "  Philistia."  In  tho  Bible  the  name  is  used 
for  the  country  of  the  Philistines  alone,  but  it  after- 
wards came  to  signify  the  whole  land  occupied  by  the 
Jews,  aud  iu  this  sense  we  find  it  employed  by  Josephus, 
PhUo,  aud  some  of  the  writers  in  the  Talmud.  Tho 
countiy  is  alluded  to  iu  the  Bible  under  several  other 
names  ;  it  is  the  "  land  of  Canaan  "  of  the  patriarchs 
and  Joshua;  "the  land"  of  Ruth,  Jeremiah,  aud  St. 
Lidie ;  the  "  holy  land  "  of  Zechariah  ;  the  "  glorious 
ia;;d ''  of  Daniel  and  Amos  ;  tho  "  land  of  Jehovah  "  of 
Hosea,  tho  "land  of  promise"  of  the  Epiistle  to  the 
Hebrews ;  the  "  land  of  Israel  "  of  the  Monarchy ;  and 
tho  "land  of  Juda3a"  of  tho  New  Testament.  It  is 
now  most  commonly  known  imder  its  name  of  Palestine, 
or  the  Holy  Land. 


212 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


EASTERN  GEOGRAPHY  OP    THE    BIBLE. 


213 


Position. — No  one  can  help  being  struck  by  the 
peculiar  position  of  Palestine  in  regai'd  to  the  powerful 
nations  immediately  suiToimding  it,  as  well  as  by  its 
remarkable  geographical  position,  almost  in  the  centre 
of  the  ancient  world  ;  and  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say 
that  in  no  other  country  could  that  striking  combination 
of  moral  and  physical  conditions  have  been  found  which 
rendered  Palestine  the  most  fitting  theatre  for  those 
momentous  events  which  have  had  such  a  gi'eat  and 
lasting  influence  on  the  history  of  the  world . 

Separated  fi-om  the  great  nations  of  the  East  by  the 
arid  plains  which  lie  beyond  the  Jordan,  and  from 
Egyj)t  by  the  southern  desert,  Palestine  was  from  the 
very  first  a  country  set  apart  from  the  rest  of  the  world, 
and  this  isolation  was  increased  by  the  religion  of  the 
Jews,  which  forbade  their  forming  any  alliance  with 
the  surrounding  nations.  No  great  highway  led  thi-ough 
the  country ;  the  hosts  of  Egypt  on  their  way  to  Assyria, 
those  of  Assyria,  of  Babylon,  and  of  Persia  on  their 
way  to  Egypt,  swept  by  it  along  tlie  low  maritime  plain 
which  fringed  the  coast ;  their  object  was  the  conquest 
of  the  rival  empire,  and  the  liill  country  of  Palestine 
hardly  possessed  sufficient  attractions  to  induce  them  to 
turn  aside  from  the  most  direct  road  to  the  end  they 
had  in  view.  Napoleon,  when  he  was  asked,  during 
his  Syrian  campaign,  to  visit  Jerusalem,  replied  that  it 
did  not  lie  in  the  line  of  his  operations,  and  it  was 
probably  to  a  similar  feeling  on  the  part  of  the  leaders 
of  the  hostile  armies  that  the  Jewish  nation  for  so  many 
years  owed  its  independence ;  it  was  only  after  the 
lapse  of  centuries  that  the  coimtry  became  involved  in 
disaster  by  neglecting  the  Divine  commands  and  form- 
ing alliances  with  one  or  other  of  the  contending  powers. 
Later,  Alexander  passed  over  the  country  on  his  way  to 
Oriental  conquest,  and  when,  on  his  death,  the  empire 
which  he  had  formed  fell  to  pieces,  it  became  the  battle- 
field of  the  Seleucidse  and  the  Ptolemies ;  later  stUl, 
nnder  Roman  dominion,  Palestine  became  one  of  the 
thorouglifares  between  the  East  and  the  West,  and  it 
was  during  these  troubled  times  that  a  stream  of 
"Western  ci\'ilisation  flowed  mto  the  coimtry,  exercising 
a  powerful  influence  on  the  arts,  the  mode  of  thought, 
and  the  history  of  the  Jews  during  the  last  three 
centuries  of  their  existence  as  a  nation.  Isoliited  as 
Palestine  was  from  all  other  countries,  its  geographical 
position  with  reference  to  the  three  great  continents  of 
Europe,  Asia,  and  Afi-ica,  as  well  as  to  the  Mediten'anean 
and  Red  Seas,  was  such  that,  when  the  fulness  of  time 
came,  the  knowledge  of  the  Gospel  could  be  spread 
to  the  remotest  comers  of  the  earth,  and  it  is  not  un- 
worthy of  notice  that  the  principal  means  by  which  the 
glad  tidings  were  conveyed  was  that  sea  which  had 
once  seemed  an  almost  impassable  barrier. 

The  physical  character  of  Palestine  is  no  less  re- 
markable than  its  geographical  position ;  there  is  no  other 
country  which,  within  the  same  nan-ow  limits,  contains 
so  many  striking  contrasts,  or  exliibits  featui-es  at  once 
so  varied  and  comprehensive  that,  as  has  been  justly 
observed,  there  is  no  land  or  nation  in  the  world  which 
does  not  find  something  of  itself  reflected  there.     In 


the  north  are  the  lofty  peaks  of  Lelianou  and  Mount 
Hermon,  rarely  free  from  snow,  with  their  cediu-s,  their 
alpine  flora,  and  their  wild  thunder-storms,  to  which 
allusion  would  seem  to  be  made  iu  the  29th  Psalm  ;  in 
the  south  is  the  deep  depression  of  the  Dead  Sea,  \vith  its 
tropical  climate,  and  a  flora  and  fauna  similar  iu  many 
respects  to  those  of  the  lake-regions  of  Equatorial  Africa. 
On  the  west  the  rich  corn-gi'owing  plains  of  Philistia 
are  in  close  proximity  to  the  sandy,  unprofitable  desert 
of  the  south ;  in  the  centre  the  terraced  hflls,  with  their 
Itahau  chmato  so  suitable  for  the  cultivation  of  the 
vine,  olive,  and  fig,  pass  almost  imperceptibly  iuto  the 
barren  wUdemess  of  Juda3a  ;  and  on  the  east  the  dowDS 
of  Moab  and  Gilead,  with  their  abundant  pasturage,  are 
bordered  by   the   tli-y   and   thu-sty   laud  of  the  gi-eat 
eastern  desert.     Lastly,  there  is  the  "  great  sea  "  which 
is  so  frequently  alluded  to  in  the  Psalms,  iu  familiar 
passages  which  come  home  with  especial  force  to  the 
hearts    and    minds   of   the   people    of   a   great   mari- 
time nation  such  as    England.     From  the  Phojnician 
traders  who  did  their  "  business  in  great  waters,"  the 
Psalmist  would  hear  of  "  the  works  of  the  Lord  and 
his  wonders  in  the  deep,"  and  how,  after  one  of  the 
wild  westerly  gales  which  visit  the  coast  of  Palestine, 
the  ships  in  which  they  sailed  would  "mount  up   to 
heaven "  and  "  go  doivn  again  to  the  depths,"  reeling 
"  to  and  fro  "  and  staggering  "  like  a  drunken  man." 

Extent. — Every  writer  has  noticed  the  luirrow  limits 
of  the  Holy  Land.  From  Dan  to  Beer-shoba  is  no  more 
than  140  miles,  and  from  the  Mediterranean  to  Jordan 
the  average  breadth  is  only  40  miles ;  a  little  territory 
about  the  size  of  Yorkshire,  containing  less  than  6,000 
square  mUes. 

Physical  Features. — Perhaps  the  most  striking  fea- 
ture in  the  general  aspect  of  Palestine  is  its  natural 
division  into  four  parallel  strips  of  ten'itory — the  coast 
plain,  the  hUl  country,  the  Jordan  valley,  and  the  eastern 
plateau. 

The  coast-plain  extends  without  a  break  from  the 
desert  south  of  Gaza  to  the  long  ridge  of  Mount  Carmel 
on  the  north;  beyond  Carmel  lies  the  plain  of  Acre, 
stretching  northwards  to  the  headland  of  Ras  el- 
Nakura  (Ladder  of  Tyi'e),  which  separates  it  from  the 
long  narrow  plain  of  Phcenicia.  The  two  latter  sections 
of  the  coast-plain  are  not  mentioned  in  the  Bible ;  the 
first  contains  within  its  limits  the  plain  of  Sharon 
reaching  from  Carmel  to  Jaffa,  and  the  plains  of 
Philistia  extending  southward  to  the  margin  of  the 
desert.  The  gi-cater  portion  of  the  plain  is  flat,  but 
north  of  Jaila  there  are  some  low  hiUs,  through  which 
at  a  remote  period  tunnels  were  cut  to  drain  the  marsh 
land  lying  behind  them ;  the  soil  is  rich  and  of  mar- 
vellous fertihty,  producing  year  after  year  magnificent 
crops,  though  the  ground  is  tQled  iu  the  rudest  manner, 
without  manure  and  without  irrigation.  The  broad 
expanse  of  the  Philistine  plain,  covered  as  it  is  at 
harvest  time  with  a  waving  mass  of  golden  grain,  un- 
broken by  a  single  hedge,  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
sights  in  Palestine.  Under  the  burning  sun  of  Syria 
the  stubble  becomes  so  di-y  that  a  single  spark  might 


214 


THE   BIBLE   EDUOATOB. 


kindle  a  flame  that  would  rim  before  the  wind  like  the 
fires  which  sweep  over  the  American  prairies,  and  strict 
precautions  are  taken  by  the  Bedawi  to  prevent  the  oeeur- 
renee  of  such  a  calamity.  We  cannot,  therefore,  wonder 
that  the  Philistines  were  stirred  to  fierce  wrath  when 
Samson  turned  his  300  foxes  with  their  fire-brands 
"  into  the  standing  corn,"  "  in  the  time  of  wheat  liar- 
vost ; "  fanned  by  the  steady  land  breeze,  which  at  that 
season  of  tlie  year  blows  every  morning  for  tliree  or 
four  hjours,  the  flames  would  spread  witli  fiery  speed, 
licMng  up  corn,  olives,  and  vines,  until  they  were  checked 
by  the  sea;  and  in  those  days,  wlien  the  intercourse 
between  country  and  country  was  so  slight,  the  loss  of 
their  harvest  must  have  been  felt  almost  as  a  national 
calamity  by  the  Pliilistines. 

Between  the  southern  plain  and  tlie  hiU  country  lie 
a  series  of  low  undulating  hUls,  whicli  are  proliably 
noticed  in  the  Bible  under  the  term  shephelah,  a  word 
translated  in  our  EngUsli  version  the  "low  country," 
the  "low plain,"  the  "plain,"  or  the  "  valley ;  "  at  least  it 
is  in  tliis  district  that  we  find  the  towns  mentioned  in 
2  Chron.  xxviii.  18  as  lying  in  the  Shephelah,  viz.,  Beth- 
shemesh,  Ajalon,  Timnah,  and  Gimzo. 

The  hill  coimtry  commences  about  fifty  mUes  south 
of  Jerusalem,  and  rims  northward  through  tlie  land  to 
the  plain  of  Esdraelon,  beyond  which  it  rises  again  and 
Ls  connected  witli  the  Lebanon  by  the  hUls  of  Galilee. 
This  highland  district  varies  but  shghtly  in  altitude, 
and  its  general  appearance  as  seen  frsm  the  sea  is 
that  of  a  long  wall  without  any  prominent  peak  to 
break  the  monotony  of  its  outline.  Its  average  height 
may  be  gatliered  from  the  following  altitudes  : — Hebron, 
2,840  feet;  Mount  of  Olives,  2,665  feet;  Neby  Samwil, 
2,900  feet;  Mount  Ebal,  3,029  feet;  Neby  Ismail, 
1,790  feet;  and  Jebel  Jermuk,  4,000  feet.  The  liiUs 
are  broad-backed,  and  present  none  of  the  grander 
features  of  mountain  scenery,  but  oveiy  here  and  there 
rounded  summits  rise  above  the  general  level  of  the 
range,  and  afford  striking  panoramas  of  the  surrounding 
country ;  such  are  the  views  from  Neby  Samwil,  Moimt 
Ebal,  Little  Hermon,  Neby  Ismail,  near  Nazareth,  and 
the  hUl  on  which  Safed  stands,  each  embracing  no 
inconsiderable  portion  of  the  Holy  Land.  The  eifect 
of  the  views  is  increased  by  the  transparency  of  the 
atmosphere,  which  diminishes  app.arent  distances  in  a 
manner  unknown  in  moistor  climes,  and  by  the  rich 
and  varying  tints  that  light  up  the  steep  slopes  of  the 
Jord.an  valley.  Through  the  centre  of  the  hill  comitry 
runs  the  main  road  from  Jerusalem,  through  Samaria, 
to  Galilee,  following  nearly  the  line  of  the  watershed, 
and  passing  close  to  many  of  the  chief  cities  of  Judah 
and  Israel;  it  is  the  route  now  usually  followed  by 
travellers,  and  was  probably  always  one  of  the  most 
important  thorouglifares  in  the  country.  East  of  this 
road  the  hUls  descend  abruptly  to  the  Jordan  valley ; 
west  of  it,  they  fall  more  gradually  to  the  coast-plain. 
The  wonderful  ramifications  of  the  valleys  which  cut  up 
the  hUl  country  on  cither  side  of  the  watershed  form 
one  of  the  peculi.ar  features  of  P.alestuie  topography ; 
rising  frequently  iu  small  upland  plains  of  great  rich- 


ness, such  as  El  Mukhna,  near  Nablus,  the  valleys 
at  first  fall  very  rapidly,  and  then,  after  a  tortuous 
course,  reach  the  plain  on  the  one  side  and  the  Jordan 
valley  on  the  other.  The  effect  of  this  is  to  split  up 
the  country  into  a  series  of  knifo-fike  ridges,  generally 
preserving  an  east  and  west  direction,  and  eifectually 
preventing  any  movement  over  the  country  from  south 
to  north,  except  along  the  central  liighway ;  the  valley 
of  the  Kishon,  which  spreads  out  into  the  broad  plain 
of  Esdraelon,  and  the  valley  of  Jezreel,  are  the  only 
two  wliich  are  more  than  mere  toiTent-beds.  The 
soil  of  the  hill  country,  except  in  the  wilderness  of 
Judaea,  south-east  of  Jerusalem,  and  some  portions  of 
the  eastern  slopes  of  the  hUls,  is  extremely  rich,  and 
where  cultivated  very  productive.  On  the  small  iipi- 
land  plains  corn  is  grown,  and  on  the  sides  of  the  hills 
•vTue,  olive,  and  fig ;  it  is  true  that  at  present  most  of 
the  country  lies  waste,  and  except  in  spring-time,  when 
the  ground  is  covered  with  bright  flowers,  presents  a 
most  dreary  and  monotonous  asjiect,  but  such  was  not 
the  case  formerly.  Everywhere  traces  are  found  of 
that  "  terrace-cultui-e  "  for  which  the  hiU-sides  were  so 
peculiarly  adapted,  and  which  the  Jews  brought  to 
such  great  perfection.  Professor  Palmer  found  the 
walls  of  old  vineyards  far  south  of  Beer-sheba,  on  the 
very  verge  of  the  desert,  and  there  is  hardly  a  hill  in 
Palestine  on  which  ruined  walls  and  the  cisterns  in 
which  the  scanty  rain-fall  was  husbanded  are  not  f oimd. 
It  would  appear  from  several  indications  in  the  Psalms 
that  the  land  was  highly  cultivated  when  the  Israelites 
came  into  possession,  and  this  is  happily  expressed  by 
the  author  of  the  Christian  Year : — 

*'  It  was  a  fearful  joy,  I  ween. 

To  trace  the  Heathen's  toil. 
The  limpid  wells,  the  orchards  green. 

Left  ready  for  the  spoil. 
The  household  stores  uutouch'd,  the  rosea  bright 

Wreath'd  o'er  the  cottage  walls  in  garlands  of  delight." 

There  is  evidence,  too,  of  the  existence  of  large  forests 
iu  certain  districts,  especially  in  Galilee,  where  the 
roots  fonn  one  of  the  principal  sources  from  which 
charcoal  and  firewood  are  obtained  for  the  Damascus 
market. 

The  Jordan  Valley  runs  nearly  parallel  to  the  coast 
from  the  base  of  Mount  Hermon  to  the  Dead  Sea,  and 
contains  the  one  gi'eat  river  of  the  country,  the  Jordan, 
a  purely  inland  river,  like  no  other  on  the  face  of  the 
earth,  "  having  no  embouchure  on  the  sea,  and  closing 
its  course  in  the  very  deepest  part  of  the  Old  World." 
After  the  junction  of  the  throe  streams  which  rise 
respectively  at  Hasbeiya,  Tell  el-Kady,  and  Bauias, 
the  Jordan  spreads  out  into  the  Lake  el-Huleh,  and 
descends  rapidly  to  the  Sea  of  Galilee,  whence  it  follows 
a  tortuous  course  wholly  below  the  level  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean to  the  Dead  Sea.  On  either  side  of  the  river 
is  a  strip  of  plain  of  varying  Avidth,  with  a  rich  soil, 
formerly  irrigated  by  the  numerous  springs  and  by  the 
streams  that  descend  from  the  hills,  which  rise  abruptly 
on  the  east  and  west. 

The  Eafitcni  Plateau  has  a  gener,al  altitude  of  2.000 
feet,  and  is  tolerably  uniform  iu  its  character,  presenting 


EASTERN  GEOGRAPHY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


SKETCH  MAP 
Showing  Belativb   Positions 
OF  Stbia,  Palestine,  Auabia, 
Sinai,  Egypt,  etc. 


216 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


a  broad  expanse  of  down  or  steppe  land  cut  up  by  the 
deep  ravines  which  find  their  way  to  the  Jordan  valley. 
In  the  south  the  downs  are  covered  with  rich  pasture, 
and  in  the  nortli  are  still  found  remnants  of  the  ancient 
forests  of  Bashan.  The  southern  portion  of  the  plateau, 
on  the  borders  of  the  Dead  Sea,  formed  the  tei-ritory 
of  Moab;  the  centre  and  northern  the  kingdoms  of 
SUion  and  Og,  Gilead  and  Bashan,  which  were  given  at 
their  o\vu  request  to  the  pastoral  tribes  of  Reuben,  Gad, 
and  half  tribe  of  Mauasseh,  who  saw  that  it  was  "a 
place  "  for  the  "  very  great  multitude  of  cattle  "  which 
they  possessed. 

Bivers. — The  Jordan  has  already  been  mentioned ; 
its  principal  tributaries  are  the  Tarmuk  and  Zerka 
( Jabbok)  on  the  east,  and  the  streams  in  Wadies  Jalud 
and  Feria  on  the  west.  The  Sea  of  Galilee  receives  two 
small  streams  from  Wadies  Hammam  and  Rubadiyeh, 
and  Wadies  Zerka  Main,  Mojib,  and  Kerak  discharge 
their  waters  into  the  Dead  Sea.  The  streams  running 
westward  to  the  coast  are  the  Litany  (Leontes),  Naman 
(Belus),  and  Kishon  north  of  the  ridge  of  Carmel,  and 
the  Zerka,  Aihdar,  and  Aujeh  south  of  it. 

S2iri)if)s. — In  Dent.  viii.  7  the  Promised  Land  is 
described  as  being  "  a  land  of  brooks  of  water,  of 
foimtains  and  depths  that  spring  out  of  valleys  and 
hills  ;"  and  so  it  is  when  contrasted  with  Egypt,  which 
derives  its  supply  of  water  from  the  annual  inundation 
of  the  Nile,  though  it  may  not  seem  so  to  travellers 
from  the  more  favoured  countries  of  Northern  Europe. 
Several  of  the  springs  are  of  great  size :  at  Banias,  Tell 
el-Kady,  and  Ras  el-Ain,  rivers  of  pure  limpid  water 
come  to  the  surface  full  grown ;  and  those  of  Jericho, 
Jenin,  Jalud,  and  Nablus  are  of  almost  equal  impor- 
tance, bringing  life  and  vegetation  wherever  their 
waters  flow.  Tliere  is,  in  fact,  no  lack  of  springs  in 
those  places  where  we  might  naturally  expect  to  find 
them ;  but  the  cities  and  villages  of  Palestine  being 
usually  built  on  the  summits  of  the  hUls,  they  depend 
for  the  most  part  on  cisterns  for  their  water-supply, 
and  rarely  have  springs  within  their  walls.  The  springs 
are  frequently  mentioned  in  the  Bible,  often  under  cir- 
cumstances of  great  interest,  as  those  of  Jezreel,  Jericho, 
GUion,  and  Eu-gedi.  There  are  also  several  hot  springs, 
the  most  important  being  those  of  Tiberias,  Gadara, 
and  CalliiThoe. 

Climate. — Fi-om  its  peculiar  formation,  the  country 
possesses  much  variety  of  climate ;  that  of  the  hill 
country  has  been  compared  with  the  climate  of  Italy, 
whilst  that  of  the  Jordan  valley  is  decidedly  tropical. 
The  rainy  season  usually  commences  towards  the  end  of 
October  and  lasts  till  March,  after  which  the  air  clears, 
and  for  mouths  the  bright  blue  sky  is  unbroken  by  a 
single  cloud.  The  rainy  season  is  stOl  ilivided  into  the 
early  and  the  latter  rains,  but  they  are  rather  a  succession 
of  heavy  showers  than  a  continuous  rain,  and  the 
annual  rainfall  is  small,  the  average  of  seven  years, 
during  which  observations  have  been  taken,  being  only 


nineteen  and  a  haK  inches.  There  are  occasional  falls 
of  snow  at  Jerusalem  and  on  the  higher  hills,  but  it 
seldom  lies  on  the  ground  more  than  one  or  two 
days.  Palestine  is  still  visited  by  those  sudden  storms 
which  ai-e  so  frequently  alluded  to  Ln  the  Bible,  as  on 
the  occa,sion  of  the  battle  of  Beth-boron,  and  that  of 
Barak's  victory  over  Jabin,  king  of  Hazor,  in  the  plain 
of  Esdraelou  ;  the  storm  wliich  caught  the  discijiles  on 
the  Lake  of  Galilee,  and  that  which  foDowod  the  dis- 
comfiture of  the  priests  of  Baal  beneath  Mount  Carmel, 
when  Elijah  "girded  up  his  loins  and  ran  before  Aiab 
to  the  entrance  of  Jezreel."  The  writer  was  once 
caiight  in  one  of  these  storms  in  the  plains  of  Galilee, 
and  a  short  description  of  it  may  interest  the  reader. 
Leaving  camp  one  bright  cloudless  morning  with  a 
party  of  Arabs,  his  attention  was  called  by  his  com- 
panions to  a  small  cloud  in  the  west,  no  larger  than  a 
man's  hand,  which  rising  rapidly  soon  overspread  the 
heavens  and  bm-st  upon  the  party.  The  storm  com- 
menced with  a  furious  gale,  against  which  it  was  barely 
possible  to  stand,  and  this  was  followed  by  an  almost 
insfcmtaneous  fall  in  the  temperatiu-e  from  75°  to 
below  freezing-point,  numbing  the  fingers,  and  pro- 
ducing all  the  unpleasant  sensations  of  frost-bite  ;  then 
came  a  ton-ent  of  liaU,  or  rather  sharp  broken  pieces  of 
ice,  which  no  one  could  face,  and  all  had  to  seek  such 
shelter  as  they  could,  roUed  up  in  their  cloaks  on  the 
open  plain.  We  had  on  this  occasion  full  experience  of 
the  Psalmist's  words,  "  He  casteth  forth  his  ice  like 
morsels,  and  who  can  stand  against  his  cold  ?"  and  could 
realise  the  effect  of  those  storms  which  came  so  oppor- 
tunely to  the  assistance  of  the  Israelites  on  the  occasion 
of  the  two  memorable  battles  mentioned  above.  With 
their  backs  to  the  gale  the  warriors  of  Joshua  and 
Barak  would  be  in  comparative  comfort,  whilst  their 
opponents  would  be  perfectly  paralysed,  for  no  soldier 
could  have  notched  an  arrow  or  drawn  a  bow  in  the 
face  of  such  a  storm  as  that  which  has  been  noticed 
above. 

It  has  often  been  supposed  that  the  climate  of  Pales- 
tine has  changed  since  the  time  of  our  Lord,  but  this 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  materially  the  ca,se.  The 
destruction  of  all  the  timber  has,  no  doubt,  somewhat 
modified  the  climate,  and  produced  a  shghtly  diminished 
rainfall ;  but  the  existence  of  the  conduits,  pools,  and 
cisterns  for  the  water-supply  of  Jerusalem,  and  the 
numerous  aqueducts  and  cisterns  for  u-rigation,  show 
that  there  must  always  have  been  a  want  of  water ;  and 
the  fact  that  the  fruits  grown  at  ijresent  are  those  men- 
tioned in  the  Bible  would  seem  to  indicate  that  the 
climate  has  not  undergone  any  great  change. 

Such  are  some  of  the  principal  features  of  the  Holy 
Land,  and  it  is  hoped  that  what  has  been  said  wiU  give 
the  reader  an  insight  into  the  general  character  of  the 
country,  and  enable  him  to  understand  more  completely 
the  detailed  descriptions  of  the  several  districts  and 
localities  which  follow. 


ILLUSTRATIONS   OP  HOLT   SCRIPTURE   FROM   COINS,   MEDALS,   ETC. 


217 


ILLUSTEATIONS   OF   HOLY   SCEIPTURE   FROM   COINS,    MEDALS, 

AND   INSCEIPTIONS. 

BY   THE    BEV.    CANON    KAWLINSON,    M.A.,    CAMDEN    PEOFESSOB    OF    ANCIENT   HISTOET   IN    THE    UNITEESITT    OP    OXFOED. 


^  ERSIAN  cuneiform  inscriptions  later  than 
the  time  of  Darius  Hystaspis  are  exceed- 
ingly rare  ;  and  tlius  the  later  chapters  of 
Ezra,  the  Book  of  Nehemiali,  and  the  Book 
of  Esther,  whicli  belong  to  the  reigns  of  Xerxes,'  the 
son.  and  Artaxerxes  Longimanus,  the  grandson  of  Darius, 
do  not  admit  of  much  illustration  from  this  soui-ce.  Still 
there  are  various  points  connected  with  Persian  manners 
and  customs,  and  also  some  linguistic  peculiarities  of 


not  very  much  below  the  Persians  themselves  (i.  19). 
Now  with  all  this  the  inscriptions  of  Darius  are  iu  com- 
plete accordance.  Iu  the  great  inscription  of  Behistun, 
Media  is  coupled  with  Persia,'  and  the  Medes  with  the 
Persians  in  exactly  the  same  way  as  in  the  Book  of 
Esther.  "  When  Oambyses  had  gone  to  Egypt,"  says 
;  Darius,  "thou  the  state  became  wicked:  then  the  lie 
became  aboimding  iu  the  land,  both  in  Persia  and 
in  Media,  and  in  the  othei  provinces."^  And  again, 
"  From  Cambyses  the  state  went  over  to  Gomates  the 


SIGNET   CTMNDEE    OF    DAEIUS    THE    SON    OF    HYSTASPIS.        ENLAKOED    FEOM    LAJAED  S    "  OULTE    DE   MITHEA, 


these  portions  of  Holy  Scripture,  on  which  the  earlier 
Achsemenian  inscriptions  throw  a  certain  amount  of  light. 
Tliese  points  it  is  proposed  to  consider  in  the  present 
paper. 

1.  We  find  in  the  Book  of  Esther  a  frequent  com- 
bination of  MefUa  with  Persia  (i.  3,  14,  18  ;  x.  2),  or  of 
the  Medes  with  the  Persians  (i.  19),  which  indicates 
that  under  the  early  Achaemenian  kings  the  Medes 
held  a  peculiar  position.  They  had  been  conquered 
(we  know),  and  were  subject  to  tlie  Persians,"  but 
they  were  not  reduced  to  the  condition  of  the  mass 
of  the  provincials.  They  evidently  stood  next  to  the 
Persians,  had  a  share  of  the  royal  favour,  enjoyed 
offices  of  dignity  (i.  14),  and  were  in  fact  accounted  as 


'  Tliat  the  Abasuerus  of  Esther  is  Xerxes  appears  to  be  now 
generally  admitted.  The  resemblance  in  character  was  always  felt. 
Recently  it  has  appeared  that  the  name  is  very  close  indeed  to  the 
native  Persian  form,  which  is  Kiiihayarsha. 

2  Herod,  i.  130. 


Mage,  both  Persia  and  Media,  and  the  other  pro- 
vinces."'' And — "After  Gomates  the  Mage  had  dis- 
possessed Cambyses  both  of  Persia  and  Media,  and  the 
dependent  provinces,  he  did  according  to  his  desire ;  he 
became  king."*  Again,  the  royal  favour  towards  the 
Medes  is  shown  in  the  inscriptions  by  the  appoint- 
ment of  two  of  them  to  higli  commands  imder  Darius : 
"Then,"  says  Darius,  "I  sent  an  army  to  Babylon;  a 
man  named  Intaplu^s,  a  Mede,  him  I  made  their 
leader."  *  And  earh«r  in  his  reign — "  Then  I  sent  forth 
an  army  of  Persians  and  Medes ;  a  man  named  Tacha- 
maspates,  a  Mede,  one  of  my  subjects,  him  I  made  their 
leader,"'  No  other  subject  nation  shares  ■witli  the 
Modes  this  dignified  position. 

2.  It  is  repeatedly  stated  in  the  Book  of  Esther  that 
proclamations  issued  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  different 

3  Col.  i„  par.  10,  §  9,  10.  t  Ibid.,  col.  i.,  par.  11,  §  7. 

5  Ibid.,  par.  12,  §  3.  6  Ibid.,  col.  iii.,  par.  14,  §  3. 

?  Ibid.,  col.  ii,,  par.  14,  §  5,  6. 


218 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


provinces  of  the  Persian  empire  were  addressed  to  them 
in  their  several  languages — "  unto  every  province  accord- 
ing to  the  wilting  thereof,  and  unto  every  people  after 
their  language  "  (viii.  9  ;  compare  i.  -i  ;  iii.  12).  The 
AchiBmenian  inscriptions  harmonise  with  this  statement 
in  respect  of  the  fact  that,  being  more  or  less  of  the 
nature  of  proclamations,  they  are  in  every  instance  sot 
up  in  more  languages  than  one.  Ordinarily  the  inscrip- 
tions are  tri-lingual,  Persian,  Babylonian,  and  Scythic  ; 
sometimes,  but  rarely,  they  are  no  more  than  bi-lingual. 
Persian  and  Scythic,  or  Persian  and  Egyptian.i  The 
principle  is  apparent  in  them,  that  the  Persians  dechned 
the  attempt  to  force  their  own  language  upon  the 
nations  subject  to  them ;-  and  this  pruiciple  is  involved 
equally  in  the  fact  with  respect  to  proclamations  ro- 
coi-ded  in  Esther. 

3.  In  Esther,  as  in  Ezra  (Ezra  vi.  11),  crucifixion  ap- 
pears as  an  ordinary  Persian  punishment  (Esth.  ii.  23 ; 
V.  14 ;  vii.  9).  It  has  been  shown  in  a  former  paper  that 
the  Behistun  inscription  is  in  entire  accordance.-* 

4.  The  employment  by  the  Persian  monarchs  of  a 
signet,  by  wliich  they  authenticated  decrees  and  other 
documents,  is  strongly  marked  in  Esther,  where  the 
royal  signet  is  mentioned  no  fewer  tlian  five  times.'' 
The  late  researches  in  Mesopotamia,  wliich  have  brought 
to  light  signets  of  several  earlier  monarchs,*  have  yielded 
one  such  memorial  of  a  Persian  king.  This  is  the 
signet  cylinder  of  Darius  Hystaspis.''  It  represents  the 
monarch  as  engaged  in  the  chase  of  the  lion  amid  a 
palm-grove,  seated  in  a  chariot,  driven  by  an  unarmed 
charioteer.     (See  the  preceding  page.) 

On  the  left  side  of  the  pictorial  representation  is  a 
lii-lingual  inscription  (Persian  and  Scythic)  which  tells 
us  thiit  the  monarch  represented  is  "  Darius,  the  great 
king."  Wliother  the  signet  of  Ahasuerus  wliich  he 
took  from  Hamau  and  g.ave  to  Mordecai  (chap.  viii.  2) 
was  a  cylinder  or  a  ring  is  perhaps  doubtful ;  but,  on 
the  whole,  probability  is  in  favour  of  its  ha\nng  re- 
sembled the  signet  of  Darius. 

5.  In  Ezra  vii.  12  we  find  Artaxerxes  Longimanus 
styling  himself  in  an  edict  "  long  of  kings."  The 
Achaemenian  inscriptions  exliibit  this  as  the  ordinary 
title  of  every  Persian  monarch  after  Cyrus.''  In  Assyria 
its  use  had  been  infrequent  ;^  in  Babylon  we  have  no 
evidence  that  it  was  assumed  at  all;'  but  the  Persian 


1  The  legend  of  Cyrus  at  Mur^ab  (Pasararadffi)  is  Persian  and 
Scytliic.  A  legend  of  an  Artaserxes  (probably  Ocbus)  on  a  porphyry 
Tase  in  the  treasury  of  St.  Mark  at  Venice  is  Persian  and  Egyptian. 

-  Two  instances  occur  of  inscriptions  in  four  languages,  Persian, 
Babylonian,  Scythic,  and  Egyptian.  (See  the  author's  Ancient. 
Monarchit^s,  vol.  iii.,  p.  205,  note  3,  2nd  edition.) 

3  See  Vol.  II.,  page  191. 

■1  Esth.  iii.  10,  12;  viii.  2,  8,  10. 

5  As  those  of  Urukh,  Ilgi,  and  Kurri-Galzu,  early  Chalda^an 
kings,  of  Sennacherib  (Layard,  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  p.  160),  and 
others. 

*■  Lajard,  Cidte  dc  Mltlira,  pi.  ssy.,  fig.  6. 

7  Bell,  Ins.,  col.  i.,  par.  1,  §  3  ;  Rawlinson,  Cuneiform  Inscriptions, 
vol.  i.,  pp.  261,  320,  .341,  &c. 

■■^  The  phrase  occurs  iu  the  great  inscription  of  Tiglath-pileser  I., 
but  not,  as  far  as  I  know,  elsewhere  in  the  Assyrian  inscrip- 
tions. 

'  Nebuchadnezzar  calls  himself  "the  august  lord"  and  "the 
supreme  lord,"  but  not  "  kin^  of  kings  "  nor  even  "  supreme  king." 


monarchs,  at  any  rate  from  the  time  of  Darius  Hys- 
taspis, took  it  as  one  of  their  proper  titles,  and  used  it 
freely  iu  all  their  addresses  to  their  subjects. 

6.  In  Ezra  vii.  14,  Artaxerxes  speaks  of  his  "  seven 
counsellors;"  and  in  Esth.  i.  14  we  hoar  of  the  "  seven 
princes  of  Persia  and  Media,  wliich  saw  the  king's  face, 
and  which  sat  the  first  in  the  kingdom."  There  is 
a  passage  in  the  great  inscription  of  Behistun  which, 
combined  with  one  in  Herodotus,  thi-ows  light  upon 
these  statements,  showing  us  who  these  ''  piiuce-conn- 
sellors"  were,  and  how  they  acquired  their  superior 
dignity.  Darius  tells  us  that,  when  he  raised  the 
standard  of  revolt  against  the  pseudo-Smerdis,  he  did 
it  in  conjunction  with  six  others,  "Ms  well-wishers," 
and  that  by  their  aid  he  accomplished  the  task  which 
he  had  set  himself"' — the  recovery  of  the  crown  from  the 
Magi,  and  its  re-assignment  to  the  members  of  his  own 
family.  Herodotus  adds  to  this  the  statement  that  the 
six  "  well-wishers  "  were  rewarded  for  their  devotion  by 
being  elevated  to  the  rank  of  a  liigh  nobility,  and  united 
closely  with  the  monarch."  Tliey  were  given  the  right  of 
admission  to  the  king's  presence  whenever  they  pleased, 
and  thus  "  saw  the  king's  face "  continually.  Tliero 
is  a  sliglit  difficidty  iu  resjieet  of  their  number,  which 
in  Herodotus  and  the  Behistun  inscription  appears  to 
be  six,  whereas  in  Esther  and  Ezra  it  is  "  seven."  But 
this  is  sufficiently  met  by  the  suggestion  of  Niebulir,'- 
that  the  seventh  pri\dleged  family  was  that  of  the 
Achsemenidae  itself — represented  by  Darius  at  the  time 
of  the  conspiracy,  and  afterwards  i-epresented  among 
the  counsellors  by  the  nearest  agnate  of  the  king,  as 
by  Artabanus  '■''  (Admatha  ?)  in  the  early  part  of  the 
reign  of  Xerxes. 

7.  The  linguistic  points  on  wliich  the  Persian  cunei- 
form inscriptions  have  thrown  light  are  numerous  ;  but 
the  greater  part  would  perhaps  scarcely  be  appreciated 
by  the  bulk  of  our  readers.  We  refer  fliose  who  may 
wish  for  further  information  about  them  to  the  Speakers 
Commentary,  and  especially  to  the  appendices  to  Ezra 
and  Esther.  In  this  place  we  propose  to  speak  only  of 
certain  Persian  names  or  titles  which  were  formerly 
more  or  less  doubtful,  but  which  have  now,  by  the  dis- 
covery of  the  native  originals,  been  distinctly  and  posi- 
tively identified. 

(1.)  The  name  "  Ahasuerus  "  has  been  identified  with 
the  Greek  and  Roman  "  Xerxes,"  through  the  Persian 
original  Khslmyarsha.  Ahasuerus  (lETrounN)  has  all  the 
letters  of  Khshayarsha  in  theu'  proper  order,  and  only 
differs  from  it  by  the  initial  a,  without  which  the 
Hebrews  could  not  pronounce  the  double  consonant 
khsh,  and  the  vau  which  replaces  the  y  of  the  Persian 
original. 

(2. "I  Achmetha  was  conjectured  to  be  "Ecbatana" 
in  former  times,  not  that  the  words  were  very  like,  ))ut 


^^  Beh,  Ins.,  col.  iv.,  par.  18. 

11  Herod,  iii.  81. 

1-  Lectures  on  Ancient  History,  vol.  i.,  p.  131 ;  E.  T. 

'■'  Herod,  vii.  10,  15,  46 — 52.  The  "  Admatha"  of  the  present 
text  of  Esther  (urTD^I-rt  may  not  improbably  have  come  from  an 
original  »:3m«.     (See  Esth.  i.  11.) 


THE    POETRY    OF    THE    BIBLE. 


219 


that  all  other  knovni  Persian  cities  presented  forms 
more  positively  unlike.  Now,  it  is  found  that  the 
Persian  name  of  the  place  was  Hagmat/m,  and  with 
tlas  word  Achmetha  (xnnnN)  corresponds  nearly.  The 
light  aspu'ate  n  represents  the  Persian  /(, ;  the  guttural 
n,  Jih,  replaces  the  Persian  g ;  the  m  and  t  are  the 
same  in  both;  the  Hebrew  N7  exactly  renders  the  long 
a  of  the  Persians.  Nothing  is  wanting  to  complete 
the  accordance  of  the  two  words  but  the  final  con- 
sonant »,  which  is  dropped  in  the  Hebrew  "Achmetha," 
as  it  is  in  "Hara"  for  Haran  (1  Cliron.  v.  26).  Thus 
Achmetha  is  positively  identified  vnth  Ecbatana ;  and 
what  was  formerly  a  reasonable  conjoctiu-e  has  now 
become  a  matter  of  certainty. 


(3.)  Tirshdthd,  which  our  version  leaves  untranslated 
(Ezra  ii.  63;  Neh.  vii.  65,  70;  viii.  9;  x.  1),  is  no  doubt 
the  title  of  an  oiEce,  and  is  consequently  a  word  of 
which  it  is  not  very  important  to  know  the  exact  mean- 
ing. Still  there  is  a  satisfaction,  to  the  etymologist  at 
any  rate,  in  learning  (as  wo  may  learn  from  the  inscrip- 
tions) what  the  formation  of  the  tei-m  was,  and  what  to 
one  who  understood  that  formation  it  signified.  Now 
we  find  in  the  inscriptions  the  verb  tars,  "  to  fear," 
frequently ;  and  this  verb  would  make  in  its  past  par- 
ticiple tarsdta.  If  Tirshatha,  as  is  probable,  represents 
this  word,  its  exact  meaning  would  have  been  "the 
Feared ; "  and  it  may  be  compared  -with  the  German 
gesirenger  Het-r  and  our  title  of  "  Reverend." 


BT     THE      REV.     A. 


THE    POETEY    OF   THE   BIBLE. 

A  GLEN,      31.  A.,      INCUMBENT      OF      ST.      N  I  N  I  A  N's,     A  L  T  T  H,      N.  B. 


OUTLINES    OF   THE    HISTORY   OF  BIBLICAL    POETRY  (continued). 


§.5. — FROM    HEZEKIAH    TO    THE    CAPTIVITY. 

"^^  ^HE  name  of  Hezekiah  does  not,  like  that 
of  Solomon,  mark  the  beginning  of  a 
distinct  epoch  in  Hebrew  literature.  The 
whole  interval  from  the  latter  monarch's 
reign  to  the  exOe  may  be  considered  as  one  period,  for 
the  impulse  given  by  him  to  every  form  of  artistic 
.ictivity  lasted,  -(vithout  abatement  of  its  vigour,  far 
beyond  the  end  of  the  eighth  century.  The  most 
perfect  works  of  literary  art  produced  l^y  Israel  are,  by 
many  of  the  best  writers,  referred  to  a  date  later  than 
Hezekiah,  while,  of  the  large  group  of  psalms  whose 
composition  may  with  certainty  be  placed  in  the  intei'val 
between  David  and  the  Captivity,  only  a  veiy  few  can 
vrith  approximation  to  certainty  be  connected  with  a 
particular  event  or  reign. 

There  are,  however,  reasons  which  make  Hezekiah's 
time  a  convenient  landmark  in  the  literary  as  in  the 
political  history.  With  the  reign  of  his  son  Manassch 
a  period  of  decline  in  national  greatness  set  in, 
which  must  have  extended  to  the  literature.  The 
wound  which  had  been  given  to  the  empire  by  the 
Assyrian  conquests  was  too  deep  for  recovery,  and  that 
dreaded  power  stOl  hirug  like  a  dark  cloud  over  the 
fortunes  of  Judah,  threatening  to  break  in  ruin.  But  it 
was  not  only  the  visible  power  and  glory  of  the  State 
which  suffered.  The  spirit  of  the  people  was  broken 
and  confused.  Ever  since  the  later  days  of  Solomon 
secret  causes  of  corruption  had  been  at  work.  The 
-vvritings  of  the  prophets  from  Joel  to  Isaiah  show  how 
deep-se<ated  was  the  disease,  and  how  fatal  to  morality 
and  religious  purity.  Under  the  infamous  Manasseh, 
paganism,  which  had  been  long  struggling  -with  the 
worship  of  Jehovah,  seemed  to  gain  the  ascendant. 
The  persecution  of  the  true  religion  in  which,  according 
to  Jewish  ti-adition,  Isaiah's  martp'dom  occurred,  shows 
that  the  corruption  had  now  reached  its  greatest  height. 
Ewald  does  not  hesitate  to  compare  the  dark  reign  of 


Manasseh  to  the  worst  periods  of  Greek  or  Roman 
history.' 

But  it  is  the  great  name  of  Isaiah  which  chiefly 
distinguishes  this  epoch.  Around  the  gi-eatest  of  the 
prophets  all  the  best  iutellectual  power  of  the  country 
must  have  gathered.  He,  more  than  Hezekiah,  must 
have  been  the  centre  of  the  great  cluster  of  nameless 
poets  whose  songs  make  tke  time  con.spicuous.  His 
own  writings  combine  every  excellence  and  every  variety 
of  poetic  composition.  "  We  camiot  in  the  case  of 
Isaiah,  as  in  that  of  other  prophets,  .specify  any  par- 
ticular peculiarity  or  any  favourite  colour  as  attaching 
to  his  general  style.  He  is  not  the  especially  lyrical 
prophet,  or  the  especially  elegiacal  prophet,  or  the 
especially  oratorical  and  hortatory  prophet,  as  we  should 
describe  a  Joel,  a  Hosea,  a  Micah,  with  whom  there  is 
a  greater  prevalence  of  some  particular  colour ;  but 
just  as  the  subject  requu-es,  he  has  readily  .at  command 
every  several  kind  of  style  and  every  several  change 
of  delineation ;  and  it  is  precisely  this  that,  in  point 
of  language,  establishes  his  greatness,  as  well  as  in 
general  forms  one  of  liis  most  towering  points  of 
excellence."  - 

But  it  is  not  his  pre-eminence  alone  which  dis- 
tinguishes this  prophet  from  those  who  succeeded  him. 
He  was  the  last  of  the  great  prophetic  order  who 
was  able  by  the  action  of  his  life  to  influence  in  any 
material  degree  the  course  of  public  events.  Jeremiah 
and  Ezekiel  strove  in  vain  to  resist  the  gi-owing  evils 
of  their  day.  Those  who  felt  the  call  of  God  to  the 
great  office  of  jirophet  were  com))elled  to  resort  to  new 
means  of  giving  utterance  to  truth.  The  orator  was 
merged  in  the  poet  or  his  historian,  the  man  of  action 
in  the  man  of  letters,  and  thus  prophecy  tended  "  to 
become  a  mere  matter  of  literary  and  poetic  compo- 

1  Ewald,  History,  vol.  iv.  277. 

-  Ewalfl,  Propltcten  des  A.  U.,  quoted  iu  Smith's  Did.  of  the 
Bible,  art.  "Isaiah." 


320 


THE  BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


sition."  In  the  history  of  prophetic  poetry,  therefore, 
Isaiah  occupies  a  place  where  two  distinct  eras  meet. 

But  it  is  not  only  in  prophetic  poetry  proper  that 
Isaiah  holds  a  marked  place.  His  influence  on  the 
fortimes  of  lyric  song  was  perhaps  greater  than  that  of 
any  one  after  David.  It  is  true  that  none  of  the  Psalms 
which  are  extant  bear  his  name.  Tradition  has  not 
fixed  upon  him  as  on  Jeremiah,  Haggai,  and  Zechariah, 
as  a  contributor  to  the  Psalter.  Tet  his  poetry  becomes 
in  some  cases  so  pm-ely  lyric  in  tone  and  style  that  we 
may  well  consider  liim  a  psalmist.  There  is  not  in  the 
whole  range  of  poetic  literature  anything  which  in 
grandeur  of  conception  or  splendour  of  language  can 
sm-pass  the  magnificent  ode  over  the  downfall  of  tyranny 
in  chap.  xiv.  Isaiah  was  a  master  too  in  that  elegant 
form  of  verse  which  Ip'ie  poetry  was  now  assuming,  in 
which  the  strophes  are  divided  and  marked  by  a  chorus 
or  refrain.  But  his  influence  is  chiefly  felt  in  the  im- 
pulse and  force  given  by  his  wi-itings  to  the  prophetic 
hopes  which  now  begin  to  blossom  more  vigorously  into 
song,  and  usurp  more  of  the  function  of  lyric  poetry,  in 
proportion  to  the  decline  of  the  public  activity  of  the 
prophets  and  the  weakening  of  their  sway  over  the 
outward  fortunes  of  the  empu-e. 

The  poets  of  Israel  had  always  been  foremost  in 
giving  utterance  to  the  noblest  aspirations  of  the  people. 
The  prophetic  spirit  in  which  David,  in  spite  of  the 
temptations  attending  his  growing  power,  had  ever 
maintained  the  purity  of  the  theocracy,  the  supreme 
majesty  of  the  rightful  Lord  of  Israel,  continued  to 
breathe  through  the  strains  of  those  who  woke  his  harp 
in  succeeding  times.  But  the  faith  gi'adually  assumed 
a  new  form.  The  very  glory  of  David  helped  to  give 
it  this  now  direction.  As  king  after  king  succeeded, 
and,  with  each,  the  national  spirit  seemed  to  weaken 
and  lose  something  of  its  ancient  vigour  and  purity, 
the  noblest  expectation  was  directed,  not  so  much  to 
the  pei-petuity  of  the  theocracy  as  to  the  coming  of  the 
true  hiunan  King  through  whom  it  might  be  consum- 
mated. The  community  could  only  regain  its  lost  hold 
on  true  religion,  and  fulfil  its  high  destinies,  when  one 
born  a  king  should  live  the  perfect  Uf e  becoming  the 
leader  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  Isaiah  was  the  fii-st  to 
grasp  this  truth  and  give  it  a  distinct  and  living  form. 
"  Himself,  so  to  sjjcak,  royal  in  nature,  he  recognised 
for  the  first  time  the  real  character  and  certain  coming 
of  the  true  and  perfect  King."  Prom  him  the  newly- 
shaped  Messianic  hope  passed  not  only  to  the  prophets 
whose  names  we  know,  but  also  to  those  unnamed 
singers  who,  amid  the  general  deeUne,  brought  the 
energy  of  individual  minds  to  the  task  of  keeping  alive 
the  noble  thoughts  and  grand  tniths  which  were  the 
ancient  possession  of  the  nation.  Prom  this  time  on- 
ward it  becomes  a  characteristic  feature  of  lyi'ic  poetry 
to  paint  the  future  gloiy  of  Israel  under  images  borrowed 
from  the  reigns  of  David  and  Solomon,  which,  in  contrast 
with  the  evils  of  later  reigns,  grew  to  be  the  symbols 
of  perfect  internal  and  external  pro.sperity  (cf.  Ps.  Ixxii., 
Ixxxix.,  cxxxii..  &e.).  Other  prophetic  elements  also 
appear.     "A  vision  of  judgment"  becomes  a  common 


topic  for  poetic  treatment.  The  inspired  bard  sees  God 
coming  down  to  arraign  all  the  nations  of  the  earth  and 
pronoimce  sentence  on  the  wicked.  Spiritual  religion 
is  contrasted  ■\vith  mere  outward  and  formal  service, 
and  the  true  worth  and  meaning  of  sacrifice  gradually 
grows  clear.  Poetry  takes  its  stand,  like  prophecy,  as 
the  irreconcileable  antagonist  to  hteralism  of  all  kinds, 
and  even,  in  the  hands  of  Levites  who  chant  the 
praises  of  the  law,  continues  to  exalt  tlie  inner  truths 
over  the  mere  words  of  sacred  books  and  the  ceremonial 
sanctity  of  ofiice.  Psalm  I.  combines  all  these  features 
in  a  remarkable  degree.  Though  it  does  not  famish 
any  evidence  for  fixing  a  precise  date  for  its  compo- 
sition, it  may  be  with  greatest  probabihty  assigned  to 
the  period  with  which  wo  are  now  concerned.  The 
title,  which  ascribes  it  to  Asaph,  may  at  least  be  taken 
in  proof  of  its  connection  with  the  tribe  of  Levi 
(1  Chron.  vi.  38,  39).  In  its  general  tone  and  cha- 
racter it  is  essentially  prophetic.  It  contains  a  mag- 
nificent theophany  in  which  Jehovah  appears  in 
judgment  on  his  people.  The  language  and  style  are 
suitable  to  the  subject.  "  In  elegance  and  subhmity  of 
language,  in  force  and  dignity,  the  jjsalm  is  worthy  of 
the  best  days  of  Hebrew  poetry.'"' 

"  Jehovah,  even  the  most  mighty  God,  hath  spoken  and  called 
the  world 
From  the  rising  up  of   the  sun  unto  the  going  down 

thereof : 
Out  of  Sion,  the  perfection  of  heauty,  hath  God  shined ; 
Our  God  shall  come,  and  shall  not  keep  silence ! 
There  went  before  Him  a  consuming  fire. 
And  a  mighty  tempest  was  stirred  up  round  about  Him. 
He  calleth  to  the  heaven  above. 
And  to  the  earth,  that  He  will  judge  His  people  : 
Gather  7tiy  saints  iogeiher  unto  me, 
Those  tltat  have  made  a  covenant  with  me  with  sacrifice  / 
And  the  heavens  declared  his  judgment, 
How  that  God  himself  doth  judge." 

This  is  the  exordium  in  which  the  poet  describes  his 
"  vision  of  judgment."  God's  sentence  follows  in  three 
utterances :  the  first  addressed  to  the  Jewish  nation ;  the 
second  dii-ected  against  the  wicked ;  the  thii-d,a  message 
of  mercy  and  solemn  warning  to  all  who  are  tempted  to 
forget  the  great  Judge. 

i.  God's  Sentence  against  the  Nation. 
"  Hear,  0  my  people,  and  I  will  speak ;  I  myself  will  testify 
against  thee,  O  Israel ; 
I  am  God,  even  thy  God ! 

I  will  not  reprove  thee  because  of  thy  sacrifices, 
For  thy  burnt-olferings  are  always  before  me ; 
I  will  take  uo  bullock  out  of  thiue  house, 
Nor  he-goat  out  of  thy  folds  ! 

For  all  the  beasts  of  the  forest  are  mine. 

And  so  are  the  cattle  ou  a  thousand  hills ; 

I  know  all  the  fowls  upou  the  mountains, 

And  the  wild  beasts  of  the  field  are  in  my  sight ; 

If  I  were  hungry  I  would  not  t^ell  thee  ; 

For  the  whole  world  is  mine  and  all  that  is  therein'. 

Thinkest  thou  that  I  will  eat  bull's  flesh. 

And  drink  the  blood  of  goats  ? 

Ofler  unto  God  thanksgiving. 

And  pay  thy  vows  unto  the  Most  Highest, 

And  call  upon  Me  in  the  time  of  trouble. 

So  will  I  hear  thee,  and  thou  shalt  praise  me  !" 


'  Perowne,  Psaltn  L.,  vol.  i. 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


221 


ii.  Agaitist  the  Wiclicd. 
"  But  unto  the  ungodly  said  God  : 
Wliy  dost  thou  preach  my  laws. 
And  takest  my  covenant  in  thy  mouth  ; 
Whereas  thou  hatest  to  be  reformed. 
And  hast  cast  my  words  behind  thee  ? 
When  thou  sawest  a  thief,  thou  consentedst  unto  him, 
And  hast  been  partaker  with  the  adulterers; 
Thou  hast  let  thy  mouth  speak  wickedness, 
And  with  thy  tongue  thou  bast  set  forth  deceit; 
Thou  sittest  and  sjieakest  against  thy  brother. 
Yea,  and  slanderest  thine  own  mother's  son  ; 
These  things  hast  thou  done,  and  I  held  my  tongue. 
And  thou  thoughtest  that  I  am  even  such  a  one  as  thyself : 
But  I  will  reprove  thee,  and  set  before  thee  the  things  that 
thou  hast  done." 

iii.  His  Words  of  Mercy  and  Solemn  Warning. 
**  Oh,  consider  this,  ye  that  forget  God, 
Lest  I  pluck  you  away,  and  there  be  none  to  deliver  you  ! 
Whoso  otfereth  me  thanks  and  praise,  he  hououreth  me ; 
And  to  him  that  ordereth  bis  conversation  aright 
Will  I  show  the  salvation  of  God."^ 

Otlier  general  features  of  the  composition  of  this 
period  assume  distinction.  The  songs  are  constructed 
more  elaborately,  and  ai'ranged  with  greater  ^ew  to 
aitistic  effect.  The  strophes  become  more  even  and 
regular.  Even  tlie  letters  of  the  alphabet  are  called 
into  poetic  service  to  secure  uniform  arrangement  of 
the  verses."  There  is  a  general  desire  for  new  graces 
of  expression  and  more  elegance  of  form,  and  the 
rapidity  of  movement  and  terseness  and  vigour  of  the 
ancient  song  are  sometimes  sacriiiced  to  these  external 
adoraments. 

But  the  "well  of  inspiration"  was  still  fresh  and 
pure.  In  spite  of  the  growing  corruption  of  the  ago 
and  the  general  decline  in  national  prosperity,  indi- 
viduals not  only  preserved  their  faith  in  goocbie.ss  and 
truth,  but  were  able  to  give  it  the  noblest  utterance  in 
song.  The  very  miseries  on  which  they  looked  drove 
them  inwards  to  search  in  their  own  hearts  for  the 
strength  and  consolation  which  outward  events  coidd 
not  supply.  And  they  were  not  even  dismayed  when 
they  met,  in  these  "sessions  of  sOent  thought,"  the 
perplexing  problems  which  the  Book  of  Job-  and  many 
of  the  noblest  psalms  seek  iu  vain  to  solve.  It  is 
characteristic  of  the  decline  of  the  Hebrew  monarchy 
that  the  wide  field  of  subjects  which  had  engaged 
the  specuLation  of  Solomon's  time  ceased  to  interest. 
Literature  revolves  more  and  more  round  the  nature 
and  liistory  of  the  true  religion.  But  religion  had  lost 
its  hold  on  national  life,  and  the  poetry  of  tho  decline 
reflects  individual  feelings  rather  than  those  of  the 
nation.  Grand  outbursts  of  ijatriotic  song  were  no 
more  heard.  As  we  read  the  long  series  of  national 
disasters  which  followed  one  another  with  such  startling 
rapidity,  and  are  crowded  by  the  chronicler  into  one 
short  chapter  1,2  Chron.  xxxvi.),  we  feel  that  only  one 
style  of  poetry  could  possibly  flourish  at  such  a  time ; 
that  Jeremiah,  sitting  amid  the  ruins  of  Jerusalem, 
and  singing  those  grandly  mournful  elegies  which  have 
for  ever  made  his  name  a  word  of  lamentation  and 
woe,  is  the  one  figure  which  fully  represents  the  dying 

1  See  T!io  Golden  Treasurtj  Psalter. 

-  Ps.  is.,  s.,  xsv.,  xxxiv.  of  the  alphabetical  psalms  belong 
probably  to  a  date  prior  to  the  Captivity. 


spu-it  of  Jewish  song.  Many  of  tho  psalms  are  in 
subject  and  manner  Jeremiah's,  if  they  were  not  wiitten 
by  his  pen;  and  there  are  others  which,  from  their 
allusions  and  tone,  must  bo  referred  to  the  Captivity. 
Some  of  these  contain  the  bitterest  imprecations  against 
the  heathen  oppressors.  Others  rise  to  nobler  feelings 
of  trust  in  the  redeeming  lovo  of  God  and  hope  of 
speedy  deliverance.  But  all  are  marked  by  that  re- 
morsef id  recognition  of  past  follies  and  sins  iu  which 
lay  the  best  hopes  of  futiu-e  restoration  and  peace. 

§   6. — THE    KETUKN. 

In  the  account  given  in  tho  Book  of  Ezra  of  the 
return  of  the  first  band  of  exiles  with  Zerubbabel,  we 
are  informed  that  it  comprised  sinr/ing  men  and  singing 
women.  It  was  a  time  for  joyful  song.  "Jacob  was 
rejoicing  and  Israel  was  right  glad "  (Ps.  xiv.  7),  and 
we  can  well  understand  not  only  how  tho  right  hands 
resumed  their  cimuiug  and  swept  tho  strings  to  the 
glad  notes  of  the  ancient  "  songs  of  Zion,"  but  how  all 
the  deep  and  strong  feelings  which  are  the  true  source 
of  poetry  were  stirred  into  activity  and  broke  out  iu 
song.  The  captivity  was  tm-ned  as  the  rivers  of  the 
south  (Ps.  cxxvi.  4).  Freshness  and  fertility  had  re- 
vived in  the  parched  and  thirsty  land.  Those  who  had 
sown  in  tears  were  reaping  in  joy.  The  long  time  of 
trial  would  now  bear  fruit.  The  peoiile  had  come 
back  wiser  and  purer,  and  the  ancient  hopes,  which  had 
been  well  nigh  destroyed,  sprang  up  afresh  under  a 
truer  and  nobler  foi-m. 

There  is  one  small  gi-oup  of  fifteen  psalms  which 
must  in  part  have  been  the  offspring  of  the  feelings 
awakened  by  the  return  (Ps.  cxx.— cxxxiv.).  They  bear 
the  inscription  "  Songs  of  Degrees,"  or  "  Songs  of 
going  up"  (shir  hammahaloth).  Tliis  term  has  been 
variously  explained.  It  probably  denotes  a  collection  of 
hymns  made  for  the  use  of  pilgrims  to  the  Second 
Temple,  at  the  period  of  the  great  feasts,  and  which 
turned,  as  was  natural,  on  the  gi-eat  pilgrimage,  the 
return  from  captivity.  Many  of  the  songs  must  owe 
their  origin  to  tho  hopes  called  into  being  by  that 
event.  AH  are  pervaded  by  the  same  sweet  strain  of 
tender  beauty.  They  are  exquisite  little  poems  breathing 
of  the  sanctity  and  peace  of  home  life  in  the  restored 
city  and  under  the  shadow  of  the  new  Temple. 

It  was  indeed  to  the  new  House  of  Jehovah  that  all 
the  mterest  of  the  restored  people  turned.  Dreams  of 
imperial  splenJour  were  broken  and  gone  for  ever,  but 
the  ancient  worship  might  bo  revived,  if  not  with  all 
the  old  magnificence,  yet  pure  from  all  the  corruptions 
of  the  past.  Poetry  lent  its  aid  to  this  noble  revival. 
Many  anthems  and  hymns  were  composed  for  the 
Temple  services,  and  were  sung  with  the  proper 
accompaniments  of  music  and  dancmg.  "Amongst 
these  was  that  long  series  of  psalms  which  open  or 
close  with  the  triumphant  Hallelujah,  a  nation's  great 
thanksgi\-iug,  the  celebration  of  a  deliverance  so  won- 
derful that  it  eclipsed  even  that  which  before  had  been 
ever  regarded  as  the  most  signal  instance  of  God's 
favour  towards  them,  the  deliverance  of  thou-  fathers 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


from  the  bondage  in  Egypt.  One  portion  of  these 
psalms  (cxiii. — exviii.),  '  the  HalUl,''  or,  as  it  was  some- 
times called,  '  the  Eg}'ptiau  Hallel,'  as  if  wnth  the 
'  purpose  of  bringing  together  the  two  memorable  epoclis 
of  the  national  history,  was  sung  at  the  great  festivals 
in  the  Second  Temple,  at  the  Passover,  at  Pentecost, 
at  the  Peast  of  the  Tabernacles,  and  also  at  the  Feast  of 
Dedication  and  at  the  New  Moons.  This  was  doubtless 
'  the  hymn '  which  our  Lord  and  his  apostles  are  said 
to  have  sung  at  his  last  solemn  passover  before  He 
suffered"'  (Matt.  xxvi.  30;  Mark  xiv.  26). 

Another  group,  the  graud  choral  hymns,  which  close 
the  Psalter  (cxlv. — el.),  are  marked  by  an  intense  fervour 
and  glow  such  as  burns  only  in  an  united  congregation. 
This  New  Temple  poeti-y  has  indeed  a  character  of  its 
own.  The  psalms  of  David,  though  adapted  by  liim  to 
hturgical  use,  were  scarcely  hymns  in  our  sense  of  the 
term.  They  wore  lyric  poems,  expressing  indeed 
national  feelings  and  truths  wliich  were  shared  by  tlie 
commimity,  but  springing  from  individual  exijerience, 
and  glowing  with  the  passion  of  the  poet's  ovra  heart. 
The  later  Temple  song  is  'for  the  most  part  wanting  in 
this  iudi\ddual  feeling.  The  compositions  were  evidently 
made  for  public  use.  Historic  allusions  are  frequent. 
The  national  rather  than  the  indi\'idual  past  is  appealed 
to.  The  watchwords  wliich  roused  the  nation  to  action 
in  former  times  are  regarded  as  oracles.  Pi-agments  of 
ancient  song  are  quoted  mth  affectionate  reverence. 
(See  especially  the  graud  dedicatoi-y  ode  Ps.  Ixviii.) 

Of  poetry  of  a  national  kind  little  Ijesides  these  litur- 
gical hymns  sm-vives  from  this  period.  The  lyric 
impulse  had  in  other  du-ections  died  out.  But  in  the 
sanctuary  of  personal  experience,  no  less  than  in  the 
sanctuary  of  public  worship,  it  retained  its  grandeur. 
Here  it  is  not  inferior  to  the  old  models  either  in 
earnestness  and  depth  of  thought  or  in  beauty  of  ex- 
pression, while  Ln  other  respects  it  shows  the  deejj  and 
lasting  effects  of  the  sufferings  of  the  Exile  and  the 
joy  of  the  Return.  The  chief  results  of  this  great 
national  crisis  were  an  increased  and  purified  religious 
zeal  and  a  stricter  regard  to  the  Di^e  law.  But  side 
by  side  'ivith  these  moral  results  were  other  signs  of 
progi-ess,  which  are  reflected,  as  in  a  mirror,  by  the 
poetiy  and  pi-ophecy  of  the  restoration.  In  some  of  the 
later  psalms,  as  well  as  in  that  magnificent  body  of 
prophetic  song  which  bears  in  our  Bibles  the  name  of 
Isaiah  and  concludes  liis  work,  but  which,  in  spirit  if 
not  in  reality,  belongs  to  this  period,  we  discern  a  deeper 
and  wider  sympathy  both  with  nature  and  maukind. 
Tlie  softening  mfluence  of  foreign  intercourse,  thougli 
it  was  with  their  oppressors,  had  enlarged  the  huuian 
interests  of  the  people  of  Israel.  Amid  their  own 
affliction  they  meditated  on  God's  fatherly  love  till  they 
felt  it  to  embrace  all  afflicted  and  oppressed  ones,  and 
extend  to  all  His  creatures.  In  their  zeal  for  the 
restored  religion  they  pictured  the  extension  of  its 
blessings  "even  to  the  isles  beyond  the  sea."     They 


1  Perowne,  Psalms^  vol.  i.,  Introduction. 


saw  all  nations  coming-  to  the  new  Jerusalem  as  to  a 
religious  centre  for  the  whole  world  (Ps.  xcviii.,  Ixxxvii. ). 
But  "  intercourse  -with.  God  had  also  become  closer  and 
more  personal."  The  human  spu-it  sought  for  union 
witli  the  Divine  in  new  and  .untried  directions,  smd  the 
great  works  of  God  were  approached  mth  a  new  mean- 
ing and  irarpose.  This  is  shown  in  the  poetical  repre- 
sentations of  nature.  The  Hebrew  poet  begins  to  look 
on  the  magnificence  and  beauty  of  the  n-eated  world 
through  the  medium  of  human  feeling.  He  draws 
inanimate  nature  into  closer  sympathy  with  himself. 
He  sees  and  hears  on  all  sides  around  him  a  reflection 
and  echo  of  his  o\vn  emotions.  Hitherto  he  has  repre- 
sented Jehovah  as  rejoicing  in  His  works.  Now  the 
world  is  rejoicing  with  himself  in  the  goodness  and 
gre<atness  of  its  author.  Prom  sea  and  land,  from  hill 
and  wood,  one  great  chorus  of  gladness  and  song  rises 
as  the  belief  grows  strong  that  the  eternal  and  righteous 
God  is  coming  to  dispense  His  judgments  and  estabhsh 
righteousness  in  the  earth.  (See  especiiiUy  Ps.  xcvi. — 
xcviii.,  with  remarks  in  Psalms  Chronologically  Ar- 
ranged.) 

Most  of  the  later  psalms  are  anonymous.  The 
LXX.  and  Vulgate  prefix  inscriiitions  to  many  of  the 
great  liturgical  hymns,  assigning  these  compositions  to 
the  prophets  Haggai  and  Zeehariah.-  A  true  tradition 
is  probably  embodied  in  these  inscriptions,  which  re- 
jiresent  the  tendency,  ah-eady  developed  before  the 
Captivity,  of  proxihecy  and  song  to  blend.  We  are 
ignorant  of  the  name  of  the  author  of  the  long  119th 
Psahn,  which,  -svith  some  shorter  compositions,  reflects 
the  elaborate  study  of  the  written  law  which  was 
one  of  the  features  of  a  later  age.  Here  jirophecy 
begins  to  make  way  for  the  wisdom  and  didactic  skill 
of  the  scribe,  and  prepares  for  the  long  silence  about 
to  fall,  in  which  neither  prophet's  voice  nor  poet's  song 
will  be  heard. 

When  that  silence  began  is,  however,  imkuown.  The 
date  for  the  final  closing  of  the  Psalter  has  never  been 
accurately  determined.  Some  psalms  are  refen'ed  by 
many  writers  to  the  Maccabsau  age.  Allusions  in  Ps. 
xliv.,  Ixxiv.,  Ixxix.  are  better  explained  by  reference  to 
the  events  of  that  j^eriod  than  to  those  of  any  other. 
The  common  lament  of  the  time  was  that  of  the 
psalmist's : — 

*'  We  see  not  our  tokens, 
There  is  not  oue  prophet  more, 

Neither  is  there  any  .among  us  that  knoweth  how  long." 

(Ps.  Iisiv.  10.) 

But  it  is  more  probable  that  poetic  and  prophetic  inspi- 
ration died  away  together,  to  be  revived  together  only 
in  the  glad  song  which  resounded  through  the  Temple 
courts  when  the  priest's  mouth  was  uidocked,  and  he 
prophesied  the  futiu-e  of  the  boy  bom  to  prepare  the 
way  for  Him  whose  coming,  not  the  Jewish  nation 
only,  but  aU  the  world  had  awaited  in  silence  so  long. 


-  According  to  the  LXX.,  exsxvii.,  cxlv.,  cslviii. ;  according  to 
the  Vulgate,  cxi.,  are  psalms  of  Haggai  and  Zeehariah, 


ZEPHANIAH. 


BOOKS    OF    THE    OLD    TESTAMENT. 

THE  PROPHETS ;— ZEPHANIAH. 

BY       THE       EEV.        SAMUEL      COX,       NOTTINGHAM. 


INTRODUCTION. 

jN  all  probability,  Zephauiah  was  a  prince 
as  well  as  a  prophet,  in  virtue  of  his 
descent  from  Hezokiah,  the  pious  king  of 
Judah,  who,  aided  and  taught  by  another 
I'oyal  prophet — Isaiah — wrought  a  notable  reformation 
in  the  faith  and  morals  of  the  chosen  people.  In  the 
title  prefLsed  to  this  prophecy  his  pedigree  is  traced, 
through  four  descents  to  a  Hezekiah,  and  there  abrujjtly 
terminates,  as  though,  the  name  being  well  known  to 
fame,  there  were  no  need  to  carry  it  fiu'ther.  Ordi- 
narily, only  the  name  of  a  prophet's  father  is  given.  The 
fact  that,  contrary  to  custom,  Zephauiah's  pedigree  is 
traced  up  to  his  great-great-gi'andfather  is  an  indication 
that  this  ancestor,  Hezekiah,  was  a  man  whose  name  was 
held  in  memory  and  honour-.  We  find  no  Hezekiali 
known  to  fame  in  the  Hebrew  annals,  save  Hezekiah 
the  king;  and  therefore  it  is  probable  that  the  Heze- 
kiah from  whom  Zephaniah  was  proud  to  descend  was 
that  devout  king  who  for  a  time  arrested  the  downward 
current  of  the  Hebrew  story. 

Zephaniah,  the  descendant  of  King  Hezekiah,  prophe- 
sied "  in  the  days  of  Josiah,  kiug  of  Judah,"  who  also 
set  himself,  aided  by  Jeremiah  and  other  prophets,  to 
reform  the  public  faith  and  morals.  Thus  Zephaniah 
serves  as  a  link  between  Hezekiah  and  Josiah,  the  two 
most  godly  and  zealous  mouarchs  of  the  later  ages  _of 
the  Hebrew  kingdom. 

Between  these  two  godly  monarchs  there  spreads  a 
di'eary  waste  of  years,  in  which  the  men  of  Judah  de- 
parted more  and  more  from  the  Lord  their  God,  and 
plunged  ever  more  deeply  into  the  vices  and  supersti- 
tions of  the  neighbom-iug  idolatries.  When  Josiah,  stUl 
a  chUd,  ascended  the  throne  of  his  fathers,  the  Hebrew 
commonweath  was  almost  incredibly  corrupt ;  from  the 
crown  of  its  head  to  the  sole  of  its  foot  it  was  infected 
with  the  most  malignant  forms  of  political  and  spu'itual 
disease.  The  princes  and  nobles,  the  heads  of  tribes 
and  families,  plotted  treason  and  mischief  in  their 
heai-ts.  Their  turbulent  followers  ''  leaped  over  their 
masters'  thresholds"  to  rob  and  plunder  the  defenceless, 
to  commit  crimes  of  public  violence,  filling  the  houses 
of  then-  lords  with  injustice  and  deceit.  The  very 
priests  abandoned  the  pure  ritual  of  Jehovah  to  minister 
at  the  flagrant  altars  of  Baal  and  Astarte.  The  great 
bulk  of  the  people,  openly  falliug  away  from  the  faith  of 
their  fathers,  "  worshipped  all  the  host  of  heaven  on  the 
roofs  "  of  their  houses.  Nay,  even  after  Josiah  had  re- 
published the  Law  and  re-established  the  service  of 
Jehovah,  many  thousands  of  them  attempted  a  compro- 
mise between  God  and  Baal.  "  swearing  both  to  Jehovah 
and  by  their  Malkam,"  or  idol-king;  while  other  thou- 
sands, yielding  to  the  scepticism  which  ever  walks  side 
by  side  with  credulity,  refused  to  believe  iu  aught  that 


the  senses  eoidd  not  grasp  ;  "  di-awn  together  on  then- 
lees,"  cradling  themselves  on  their  baser  passions  and 
lusts,  they  accounted  of  God  himseK  as  One  who  "  did 
neither  good  nor  evil,"  who  neither  rewarded  men  for 
their  virtue,  nor  scourged  them  for,  and  by,  "the  plea- 
sant vices"  with  which  they  pollute  their  lives.  In 
short,  the  interior  of  the  Temple,  which  had  been  suf- 
fered to  fall  into  a  ndnous  disrepair,  was  an  apt  symbol 
of  the  spiritual  decay  that  was  eating  out  the  very  heart 
of  the  national  life  and  unity  and  strength. 

Zephaniah,  of  whom  we  know  nothing  save  his  pedi- 
gree and  liis  function,  was  raised  up  and  inspired  of  God 
to  correct  these  errors  ;  to  rebuke  these  sins  ;  to  denounce 
the  judgment  of  the  Lord  on  all  unrighteousness  of  men  ; 
to  disclose  the  merclEul  intention  and  purpose  of  judg- 
ment ;  to  exliort  men  to  seek  the  Lord,  in  seeking  humi- 
lity and  righteousness ;  to  assure  them  that,  if  they 
retm-ued  to  the  Lord  whom  they  had  abandoned  and 
denied,  the  Lord  would  have  mercy  upon  them  and  re- 
deem them  from  all  evil.  In  this  task  or  mission  he 
must  have  been  greatly  aided  by  the  zeal  and  sympathy 
of  the  king. 

Josiah  was  but  "  eight  years  old  when  ho  began  to 
reign  ;"  but  "  he  did  that  which  was  right  iu  the  sight 
of  the  Lord,"  despite  the  idolatrous  customs  amid  which 
he  had  been  brought  up,  "and  walked  in  the  ivays  of 
David  his  father,  and  declined  neither  to  the  right  hand 
nor  to  the  left."'  The  phrase  "he  walked  iu  the  ways 
of  Da^-id  his  father"  is  probably  a  hint  that  the  good 
men  do  lives  after  them.  Josiah  had  not  been  bred  in 
habits  of  reverence  for  the  only  wise  and  true  God; 
"  the  law  of  the  Lord  "  was  an  unknown  book  to  him. 
But  from  some  wi-itten  clrronicle,  or  from  tradition,  or 
from  some  kind  faithful  voice — perhaps  that  of  the 
venerable  prophetess.  Hnldah — ho  appears  to  have 
learned  the  story  of  David  and  his  "  ways ;"  to  have 
been  deeply  impressed  by  it ;  to  have  been  fii'ed  with  a 
noble  emiJation  ;  to  have  resolved,  while  yet  a  boy,  that 
the  hero  and  darling  of  Israel  should  be  his  model  and 
exemplar. 

"  In  the  eighth  year  of  his  reign,"  when  ho  was  .six- 
teen, his  thoiights  rose  from  David,  the  shepherd  and 
king,  to  the  God  who  was  David's  King  and  Shepherd  ; 
■'  he  began  to  seek  after  the  God  of  David  his  father. '"- 
In  the  twelfth  year  of  his  reign — when  a  yoimg  man  of 
twenty — he  proved  that  in  some  measure  he  had  found 
the  God  wliom  he  sought,  and  had  made  the  laws  and 
principles  by  which  David  ruled  his  life  his  o\vu.  For 
now  ho  began  "  to  purge  Judah  and  Jerusalem  from  the 
high  places  and  the  groves  "  of  the  base  Phffiuician  cult, 
to  break  down  the  altars  of  Baal  and  Astarte,  to  gi-ind 
the  carven  and  molten  images  to  powder.     For  the  next 


2  Cbron.  Yxsiy.  1,  [ 


-  2  Cliron.  : 


dv.  3. 


224 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


six  years  of  Ms  life  and  reign  ho  devoted  liimself  to  the 
task  of  cleansing  the  land  from  the  traces  of  this  foul 
idolatry.  And  then,  having  destroyed  that  which  was 
evil,  lie  set  himself,  in  the  eighteenth  year  of  his  reign 
— the  twenty-sixth  of  his  life — to  develop  and  foster 
that  which  was  good. 

He  issued  a  public  commission  for  the  repair  of  the 
Temple,  and  the  restoration  of  its  splendid  and  elaborate 
ritual.  And  wliUe  the  cloisters  and  courts  swarmed 
with  Levites  and  artisans,  busied  in  liewmg  stones,  carry- 
ing timber,  coUeeting  and  testing  instruments  of  music, 
Hilkiah,  the  high  priest,  lit  on  a  treasure  which  inflamed 
the  king  with  new  ardom'.  In  the  Holiest  of  All,  that 
innermost  shi'ino  into  which  even  the  high  priest  might 
enter  but  once  a  year — in  this  sacred  and  awf  id  arcanum 
laid  up  befoi-e  the  ark  of  the  covenant,  Hilkiah  found 
"the  book  of  the  law  of  Jehovah  by  the  hand  of 
Moses."'  This  book — so  the  most  competent  scholai'S 
affirm — was  nothing  less  than  the  original  copy  of 
Deuteronomy  at  least,  perhaps  of  the  wliole  Pentateuch, 
the  very  skins  on  which  "the  hand  of  Moses"  had 
written  out  the  Divine  Law.  "  The  book  of  the  law  by 
the  hand  of  Moses  " — so  strangely  lost,  so  strangely 
foimd — was  taken  to  the  king,  who  in  all  probability 
had  seen  no  copy  of  it  before,  and  produced  a  profound 
impression  on  his  mind.  That  wliich  struck  him  most 
deeply — stnick  him  to  the  heart — apfiears  to  have  been 
those  very  curses  out  of  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy 
which  we  had  occasion  to  read  in  our  study  of  Joel" — - 
the  curses  pronounced  by  Jehovah  on  the  childreu  of 
Israel  if  they  should  not  walk  in  His  statutes,  do  His 
commandments,  keep  His  sabbaths,  reverence  His  sanc- 
tuary. That  the  men  of  his  generation  had  provoked 
these  curses,  he  coidd  not  doubt.  That  the  ciu'ses  were 
coming  on  them,  he  had  grave  reason  to  fear ;  for,  as 
we  shall  see,  the  land  was  at  this  time  menaced  by  a 
ten-ible  and  portentous  calamity.  Troubled  by  fear  and 
the  consciousness  of  the  national  guilt,  the  king  cannot 
rest.  He  must  know  the  truth,  however  threatening, 
however  ten-ible  it  may  be.  Ho  sends  an  embassy  of 
the  most  honourable  of  his  servants  to  tlie  college  in 
Jerusalem,  where  Hiddah,  the  aged  prophetess,  was 
awaiting  tlie  tardy  api)roach  of  death.  Huldah  had 
been  distinguished  by  her  prophetic  vrisdom  when  Jere- 
miah and  Zephauiah  had  been  young  and  unknown  men. 
To  her,  therefore — wise  by  long  experience,  as  well  as 
by  prophetic  gifts — the  king  bids  his  servants  repair. 
"  Go,  inquire  of  the  Lord  for  me,  and  for  them  that  are 
left  in  Israel  and  in  Judah,  concerning  the  words  of  the 
book  that  is  foimd  :  for  great  is  the  wrath  of  the  Lord 
that  is  poiu-ed  out  upon  us,  because  our  fathers  have  not 
kept  the  word  of  the  Lord,  to  do  after  all  that  is  wi-itten 
in  this  book."^  Only  too  clearly  and  sorrowf  idly  Huldah 
perceives  that  though  during  Josiah's  days  the  chUdren  of 
Israel  may  serve  the  Lord,  they  will  afterward  depart 
from  Him  yet  more  and  more ;  that  the  curses  de- 
nounced by  the  Law  must  fall  in  order  that  the  blessing 


1  2  Chron.  xxriv.  U.  -  See  Vol.  II.,  page  143. 

3  2  Chron.  xsxiv.  21. 


promised  in  the  Law  may  be  bestowed.  She  tells  the 
king's  servants  that  the  Dii-ine  wrath  will  surely  be 
poured  out ;  but  that,  because  he  was  of  a  tender  heart, 
and  trembled  at  the  word  of  the  Lord,  Josiah  should 
come  to  his  grave  in  peace,  and  not  see  the  evils  that 
were  about  to  blacken  on  the  land. 

Undismayed,  or  at  least  imdeteiTed,  by  the  prophetic 
warning,  JosLah  set  himself  more  steadfastly  than  ever 
to  recall  the  people  to  obedience  and  worship.  He  him- 
self read  to  them  "  all  the  words  of  the  book "  which 
had  so  shaken  his  own  heart,  and  persuaded  them  to 
renew  then-  covenant  with  the  God  of  then-  fathers. 

Probably  the,,  were  the  more  disposed  to  listen  to 
the  king  because  of  that  ten-ible  calamity  which  had  just 
swept  through  the  land,  and  which  might  at  any  moment 
retm-n  upon  them.  For  at  this  time  the  Scythian  hordes 
had  broken  out  from  their  pastures  and  deserts  ;■•  they 
had  overrun  Western  Asia,  u-resistible  and  destructive  as 
a  locust  flight ;  they  had  passed  through  Judaea,  eating 
up  the  laud  before  them,  and  had  shaken  a  distant 
hand  of  menace  at  Jerusalem  itseK,  if  they  had  not,  as 
some  writers  aver,  actually  besieged  it.  These  bar- 
barous Cossack  hordes  were  still  surging  to  and  fro  in 
their  career  of  conquest  and  plunder,  now  sweeping  over 
this  land,  now  over  that ;  at  any  time  they  might  return 
upon  their  course  and  flood  the  city  and  kingdom  of 
Judah.  Such  an  inroad,  a  danger  so  imminent  and 
terrible,  might  well  seem  to  Josiah  the  beginning  of  the 
end,  the  first  di'ops  of  that  rain  of  ciu'ses  threatened  in 
"  the  book  of  the  Law."  It  might  well  dispose  the  men 
of  Judah  to  hearken  to  the  words  of  their  king,  to  repent 
of  their  iniquities  and  turn  to  God  with  purpose  of 
heart. 

Now  it  was  about  this  time,  toward  the  middle  of 
Josiah's  reign,  that  Zephaniah  delivered  his  prophecy, 
and  came,  in  the  name  andjiowerof  the  Lord,  to  expound 
the  words  of  the  Law,  and  to  enforce  the  warnings 
of  Huldah  and  the  exhortations  of  the  king.  Most  of 
the  more  able  of  recent  commentators  place  Zephaniah 
in  Josiah's  reign,  for  chronological  and  historical  reasons 
too  minute  and  elaborate  for  popular  discussion.  Wo 
have  the  less  need  to  discuss  them,  since  his  poem  dates 


■"  The  account  which  Herodotus  gives  of  this  terrible  Scythian 
invasion  is  briefly  this.  A  numerous  horde  of  the  Scyths  "burst 
into  Asia  in  pursuit  of  the  Cimmerians,  whom  they  had  driven 
out  of  Europe,  and  entered  the  Median  territory."  They  were 
"  opposed  by  the  Medes,  who  gave  them  battle,  but,  being  defeated, 
lost  their  empire.  The  ScijtMans  hecame  ■masters  of  Asia."  They 
then  formed  the  design  of  invading  Egypt.  " Bid  when  Ihcij  had 
reached  Palestine,  Psammetichus,  the  Egyptian  king,  met  them  with 
gifts  and  prayers,  and  prevailed  on  them  to  advance  no  further." 
(That  the  Egyptian  king  should  "  iiuct"  the  Seyths  in  Palestine, 
is  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  he  was  at  this  time  besieging 
Azotus,  or  Ashdod,  one  of  the  leading  cities  of  the  Philistine  con- 
federation.) For  a  time  the  Scythian  hordes  remained  in  the 
"  Shephelah  "  or  "low  country  "  of  Palestine,  the  broad  maritime 
tract  on  the  south-western  coast  occupied  by  the  Philistine  clans  ; 
but  after  the  main  body  had  departed,  "some  few  who  lagged 
behind  pillaged  the  temple  "  of  Astarte  at  Ascalon.  In  fine,  "  Hie 
dominion  of  the  Scythians  over  Asia  lasted  eight-and-tweniy  years,  during 
nhicU  their  insolence  and  Oi^iiression  spread  min  on  every  side.  For 
besides  the  regular  tribute,  they  exacted  from  the  nations  addi- 
tional imposts,  which  they  fixed  at  pleasure ;  and  further,  they 
scoured  the  cojmti'i/  and  ^^lundered  every  one  of  whatever  they  could." 
(Herodotus,  Book' I.,  chaps.  103—106.) 


ZEPHANIAH. 


itself.  Its  tone  and  scope  imply  a  period  in  which  a 
reformation  of  religion  had  been  commenced,  but  had 
not  boon  carried  to  completion ;  in  which  the  worship 
of  Johovah  had  still  to  contend  with  "  the  remnant  of 
Baal,"  and  men  were  still  wont  to  blend  the  service  of 
God  with  that  of  idols  ;'  in  short,  just  such  a  period  as 
that  in  wliich  Josiah  was  engaged  in  cleansing  and  re- 
pairing tho  Temple,  restoring  its  ancient  ritual,  and 
summoning  the  people  to  the  annual  feasts  which  had 
long  fallen  into  desuetude.^  It  was  at  such  times  that 
prophets  were  needed  and  were  commonly  sent.  Those 
were  the  very  conditions  which  demanded  tho  prophetic 
ministry.  For  it  was  the  prophet's  task  to  interpret  the 
facts  of  his  time,  the  omens  and  portents  in  the  facts, 
and  to  impress  their  significance  oil  tho  hearts  and  con- 
sciences of  men.  Zephaniah  rose  to  the  level  of  this 
high  task.  Ho  took  up  and  expounded  tho  threatenings 
of  the  newly-discovered  "  Book  of  tho  Law."  He  applied 
the  solemn  warning  (?f  Huldah,  bringing  it  homo  to  tho 
conscience  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  In  the 
Scythian  inroad  he  saw  a  symbol  of  future  invasions 
still  more  destructive  and  fatal ;  in  tlmt  day  of  dark- 
ness he  descried  the  portents  of  a  stiU  greater  and  more 
terrible  day  of  the  Lord,  a  day  of  fury,  a  day  of  anguish 
and  distress,  a  day  of  desolation  and  ruin,  a  day  of 
darkness  and  gloom,  a  day  of  cloud  and  of  cloudy  night, 
a  day  of  the  trumpet  and  the  trumpet  blast,  a  true  dies 
iras,  the  terrors  of  which  should  cover  tho  whole  earth 
and  shako  tho  hearts  of  all  its  inhabitants  with  fear  and 
trembling.  Neither  Judah  nor  Jerasalem  should  be 
spared  in  that  day.  Nay,  the  judgment  would  begin  at 
the  house  of  God.  Nor  was  that  day  distant ;  it  was 
even  now  sweepiag  up  like  chaff  di'iven  before  the  wind. 
Nor  must  they  hope  to  escape  it ;  "  not  even  their  silver, 
not  even  their  gold, "  would  be  able  to  rescue  them  in 
the  day  of  the  Lord's  fury.-'  If  they  were  wise,  they 
would  not  so  much  as  wish  to  escape  it ;  for  this  day 
of  judgment  was  also  a  day  of  sovereign  mercy.  The 
very  heathen  were  to  be  smitten  by  its  terrors,  in  order 
that  all  nations,  "  every  one  from  its  place,  might 
worship  Him,"  the  only  true  God,''  and  find  rest  in 
serving  Him ;  while  of  tho  Jews,  as  many  as  humbled 
themselves  under  the  mighty  hand  of  God  should 
"see  evil  no  more:"  Jehovah  would  reveal  Himself 
in  their  midst  as  "  the  Mighty  One  who  saves ;"  Ho 
would  dwell  among  them,  and  rejoice  over  them,  now 
in  tho  silout  ecstasy  of  a  love  which  can  find  no  words, 
and  agam  in  the  rapture  which  breathes  itseK  m  cries 
of  joy.'^ 

This,  in  brief,  is  the  general  scope  and  purport  of 
Zephaniah's  pathetic  and  sublime  poem.  And  in  its 
general  scope  it  closely  resembles  the  prophecy  of  Joel, 
which  wo  have  recently  studied.*^  It  traverses  tho 
same  largo  circle  of  thoughts  In  both  there  is,  first,  a 
threatening  of  judgment,  then  a  caU.  to  repentance,  and. 


'  Chap.  i.  4,  B.  22  Chron.  xxxiv.  S— xxxv.  19. 

•'*  Chap.   j.    14,  18.  4  Chap.  ii.  11  :   iii.  9. 

-'  Chap.   iii.  14—17.  6  See  The  Bible  Eddcator,  Vol.  II., 

pp.  52,  65,  92,  108,  140,  158. 


39— VOL.  II. 


last,  the  promise  of  a  golden  age  of  concord  and  peace. 
In  both,  the  liistory  of  the  chosen  race  swells  and  grows 
into  the  history  of  the  world  at  large.  In  both,  the 
prophet  starts  from  the  history  of  tho  past  and  presses 
on  into  the  future,  until  he  is  met  by  apocalyptic  visions 
of  a  regenerated  race  dwelling  amid  the  sweet  bounty 
and  peace  of  a  restored  universe.  And  it  wUl  be  well 
for  us  to  compare  the  two,  and  mark  how  Zephaniah 
presents  tho  vei-y  truths  and  principles  enunciated  by 
Joel  in  forms  peculiar  to  himself.  For,  though  so 
similar  in  scope  and  purport,  these  sacred  and  inspired 
poets  differ  much  in  form  and  style.  Joel  is  tho  most 
abstract  of  prophets,  and  touches  the  history  of  his  time 
at  points  comparatively  few  ;  while  Zephaniah  abounds 
in  minute  and  elaborate  allusions  to  the  political  facts 
and  events  of  his  age.  And  hence,  wliile  Joel  may  be 
read  with  edification  by  tho  simple  and  unlettered, 
Zephaniah  is  weU-nigh  a  sealed  book  to  them  untU 
a  scholar  unlooses  the  seals  and  opens  the  book.  Of 
tliis  prophecy,  more  than  most,  wo  may  well  ask, 
"  How  can  we  understand  it  except  some  man  should 
guide  us  ?  " 

Tet  even  the  most  simple  and  unlettered  reader  of 
this  poem  will  find  passages  La  it  wliich  move  him  either 
by  their  sublimity  or  their  pathos.  His  enjoyment  of 
these  passages,  however,  wUl  be  much  marred  by  the 
feeling  sui-e  to  grow  upon  him  as  ho  reads,  that  ho  can 
make  nothing  of  the  poem  as  a  whole,  and  that  many 
of  its  verses  are  enigmas  to  wliich  he  has  no  key.  Nor 
will  his  case  be  greatly  mended  should  he  betake  him- 
self to  the  works  of  any  English  commentator  known 
to  the  present  writer.  He  mil  bo  apt  to  feel  much  as 
tho  Ethiopian  statesman  must  have  felt  as  he  rolled 
along  the  desert  road  from  Gaza  to  Egypt,  puzzling  liis 
brains  over  the  dark  sayings  of  Isaiah ;  and  he  will  be 
fortunate  indeed  if  he  meet  any  evangelist  to  teU  him 
of  whom  and  what  the  prophet  was  speaking,  and  be 
led  by  him  to  the  cool  foimtaiu  of  some  green  oasis  in 
wliich  he  may  wash  away  tho  sins  of  his  ignorance. 

On  tho  merits  of  Zephaniah's  stylo — i.e.,  in  the  Hebrew 
— critics  differ,  though  the  better  judges  are  much 
impressed  by  its  "  grace,  energy,  and  dignity,"  and  by 
"  the  unity  and  harmony  of  the  composition,"  viewed  as 
a  whole.  But  of  the  poem  as  translated  into  English, 
eveiy  reader  may  judge  for  himself.  And  in  this  form 
it  surely  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  poems.  It  con- 
tains passages  which  we  should  pronounce  to  bo  admir- 
able had  they  been  written  by  an  Englishman  of  to-day. 
It  abounds  with  vivid  dramatic  touches,  with  exquisitely 
chosen  epithets,  with  elaborate  j^icturesqne  descriptions, 
such  as  our  own  poets  love.  Yiewed  simply  as  a  literary 
composition,  there  are  few  verses  in  which  we  may  not 
find  something  to  admire.  Of  the  longer  passages,  for 
example,  what  can  bo  more  perfect  than  tho  description 
of  the  ruined  city  of  Nineveh  (chap.  ii.  13 — 1.5)  ? — 

**  He  wiU  also  make  Nineveh  a  barren  waste, 

An  arid  waste,  like  the  desert : 
And  herds  shall  lie  doicn  m  the  midst  of  her. 

Wild  beasts  of  cvertj  Icind  in  droves  : 
Pelicans  and  hedgehogs  lodge  on  their  cajyitals ; 


226 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


Birds  sing  from  the  windous; 
Ruhbish-heups  lie  on  the  thresholds. 
For  the  cedar-icorh  is  laid  bare. 
This  is  the  ct(y,  Uie  exultiwj  city,  the  impregnable  city. 
Which  said  in  Iter  hearty 
*  I,  and  no  other  !  ' 
How  is  she  become  a  desolation, 
A  lair  of  wild  beasts  / 
Every  one  that  passeth  bij  her  shall  hiss 
And  sivin-j  his  hand." 

Or  where  shall  we  find  n.  scene  so  steeped  and  suffused 
with  passion  as  liis  picture  of  the  restored  Zion  (chap. 

iii.  I4r— 17)  ?— 

"Rejoice,  O  daughter  Zion  !     Shont,  O  Israel! 
Be  glad  and  exult  with  all  thine  heart,  O  daughter  Jerusalem ! 
Jehovah  hath  removed  thy  judgments, 
He  hath  cleared  away  thine  enemies. 
The  King  of  Israel,  Jehovah,  is  in  the  midst  of  thee; 
Then  Shalt  see  evil  no  more. 
In  that  day  will  men  say  to  Jerusalem, 
*  Fear  not,  O  Zion  t     Let  not  thy  hands  drop  down  I 
Jehovah,  thy  God,  is  in  thy  midst. 

The  mighty  One  who  saves. 
He  rejoiceth  over  thee  with  raphtre  : 

He  is  silent  in  His  love ; 
He  exulteth  over  thee  xoith  cries  of  joy.' " 

Besides  these  more  elaborate  and  poetic  passages, 
there  are  single  verses  so  weighty  with  thought,  ex- 
pressed in  graceful  or  picturesque  forms,  that  we  may 
return  to  them  agaiu  and  again,  always  fiuding  new 
chai-m  in  them,  or  new  suggestion.  As,  for  instance, 
chaj).  i.  12 ; — 


*'And  it  shall  come  to  pass  at  that  time. 
That  I  will  search  Jerusalem  with  candles. 
And  visit  the  men  who  are  drawn  together  on  their  lees 
Who  say  in  their  heart, 
*  Jehovah  doeth  neither  good  nor  evil.'  " 


Or,  again  (chap.  ii.  11) : — 


"Terrible  is  Jehovah  over  them  ! 
For  he  famisheth  all  the  gods  of  the  earth. 

That  all  the  isles  of  tSie  heathen. 
Every  one  from  its  place,  way  worship  Him.'* 

Or,  again,  that  other  verse,  in  which  the  self-sain© 
secret  of  rro\-idence,  the  merciful  pm-pose  of  judgment, 
is  cast  in  yet  another  form  (chap.  iii.  9} : — 

*'  For  then  will  I  turn  to  the  nations  a  pure  lip, 
Tliat  they  maji  all  invoice  the  name  of  Jehovah, 
And  serve  Him  with  one  shoulder." 

Or,  finally,  that  marvellous  and  suggestive  contrast  of 
the  Just  and  Divine  King  in  the  doomed  and  unjust 
city  (chap.  iii.  5) : — 

*'  Jehovah  is  just  in  the  midst  of  Jier, 
H-'  doeth  no  wrong  ; 
Morning  by  morning  He  ncttelh  His  jusUce  in  the  light,  notfaili}V}: 
But  the  unjust  know  no  shame." 

In  addition  to  these  and  other  nohle  verses,  we  shall 
perpetually  meet  with  weighty  sentences  or  graphic 
and  picturesque  phrases  as  we  read  and  study  this 
difficult  but  most  instructive  poem. 


SCRIPTUEE    BIOGEAPHIES. 

SAMUEL. 

BY  THE   KEV.    EDMUND   VENABLES,    M.A.,   CANON   BESIDENTIABT   AND   PEECENTOK   OF  LINCOLN. 


HE  eliaractev  of  Samuel  is,  in  every  stage 
of  his  career,  one  of  the  grandest  in  the 
Old  Testament.  Standing  at  the  meet- 
ing-jjoiut  of  two  diverging  eras  in  the 
national  life  of  Israel — the  last  of  the  Judges,  and 
the  first  of  the  Prophets — the  inaugurator  of  the 
monarchy — no  figure  occupies  a  more  prominent  place 
in  Jewish  history.  Nor  is  there  one  who  challenges  a 
more  unqualified  admiration.  The  exquisite  beauty  of 
his  holy  chUdliood ;  the  vigour  and  wisdom  of  his  ad- 
ministration as  judge ;  the  calm  dignity  with  which  he 
yields  to  the  demands  of  the  peoj)le,  and  bows  to  what 
he  feels  to  be  the  Divine  will ;  the  energy  with  which 
he  throws  liimself  into  the  new  system,  alien  as  it  was 
to  his  own  personal  feelings  and  cherished  convictions  ; 
the  self-f orgcttiug  zeal  -with  which  he  devotes  the  whole 
of  his  powers  to  the  efficieut  carrying  out  of  its  re- 
quirements ;  his  warmth  of  atfoction  for  the  youthful 
monarch  who  had  supplanted  him  in  the  popular  favour ; 
the  depth  of  his  sorrow  at  the  repeated  failure  of  the 
chosen  one  whom  he  had  been  the  instrument  of  raising 
to  his  high  office  ;  the  reluctance  with  which  he  regards 
the  breach  as  fin.al,  and  seals  Saul's  rejection  by  anoint- 
ing a  successor ;  all  combine  to  mate  up  a  portrait  of 
no  oi'dinaiy  attractiveness,  on  which  the  mind  rests  with 


more  complete  satisfaction  than  on  most  of  the  heroes 
of  the  earlier  and  less  perfect  dispensation. 

Tlie  life  of  Samuel  divides  itself  into  three  periods  : 
(1)  his  chOdliood  and  youth,  spent  in  flie  tabernacle  at 
Shiloh  (1  Sam.  i. — iii.  19) ;  (2)  his  recognition  as  a 
prophet,  and  his  administration  as  judge  (iii.  20 — 'S'ii. 
17) ;  (3)  his  old  age  and  comparative  i-etirement  from 
the  public  stage,  after  the  establishment  of  the  monarchy, 
and  his  death  (viii. — xxv.  1). 

Samuel  was  by  birth  a  member  of  the  tribe  of 
Le'id ;  his  father,  Elkanah,  was  descended  from  Kohath, 
Levi's  second  son,  the  grandfather  of  Moses  and  Aaron 
(1  Chron.  -s-i.  33—38).  He  is  called  "an  Ephrathite" 
(1  Sam.  i.  1) ;  not,  that  is,  an  inhabitant  of  Bethlehem- 
Ephratah,  as  in  Ruth  i.  2.  and  1  Sam.  xvii.  12;  but,  as 
the  word  means  in  Judg.  xii.  6,  and  1  Kings  xi.  26,  an 
Eplu'aimite.  This  dnulile  designation  of  Ellcanah  is  to 
be  explained,  just  as  in  the  case  of  Micah's  Levite(Judg. 
xvii.  7)  who  is  said  to  belong  to  "the  famUy  of  Judah," 
as  denoting  that  though  by  birth  a  Levite,  as  far  as  his 
civil  standing  was  concerned,  he  was  reckoned  to  the 
tribe  of  Ephraim.  The  Levitcs,  according  to  Heng- 
stenberg,  were  regarded  as  belonging  to  the  tribes  in 
which  they  had  their  orig-inal  homes ;  and  we  find 
from  Josh.  xxi.  5,  20 — 26,  that  in  the  primaiy  assign- 


SAMUEL. 


227 


ment  the  sons  of  Koliatli,  who  were  not  of  the  family 
of  Aaron,  had  cities  allotted  to  them  in  Ephraim,  Dan. 
and  Manasseh.  The  place  where  Elbanali  lived,  and 
in  wliich  his  son  Samuel  was  born,  is  variously  desig- 
nated as  Ramathaim'-zophim,"  or  Bamah.  The  latter 
form,  which  is  always  written  with  the  article,  1m- 
Bamah,  "  the  height."  is  merely  an  abbreviated  form 
of  the  fuller  expression,  which  from  its  dual  termina- 
tion indicates  a  twin  hill,  on  whose  summits  the  city 
stood. 

Samuel  never  lost  his  love  for  his  mountain  birtli- 
place.  Ho  returned  to  it  when  his  connection  with 
Shiloh  was  violently  snapped  by  Eli's  death,  and  the 
capture  of  the  ark;  and  here  he  lived,  worshipped, 
laboured,  and  died,  and  "  in  his  house  at  Ramah  " — 
i.e.,  in  the  court  or  garden  attached  to  it — ho  was 
bm-ied  (1  Sam.  vii.  17;  xv.  34;  xvi.  13;  six.  18,  19,  22, 
23;  XXV.  1;  xxviii.  3).  Eveiythiug  seems  to  point 
to  Elkanah's  being  a  man  of  substance  in  his  city. 
This  is  confirmed  by  his  having  two  wives,  itself  a 
mark  of  weaJtli  among  the  Orientals.  He  furnishes 
the  earliest  recorded  example  of  polygamy  iii  a  private 
citizen  among  the  Israelites,  and  his  household  expe- 
rienced the  discomfort  of  the  jealousies  inseparable 
from  that  state.  Tlie  names  of  Elkanah's  two  wives 
were  Peniimah  and  Hannah.^  The  former  had  a  large 
family  of  children,  while  the  latter,  though  the  more 
favoured  wife,  was  childless.  Hannah's  barrenness 
exposed  her  to  the  cruel  taunts  of  her  fertile  rival, 
jealous  of  the  greater  affection  shown  her  by  Elkanah. 
It  is  the  story  of  Leah  and  Rachel  over  again,  with  this 
exception,  that  Hannah  bore  her  trial  in  a  far  meeker 
and  more  becoming  spirit  tliau  Jacob's  favourite  wife. 
Elkanah,  as  a  devout  Israelite,  went  up  year  by  year  with 
his  family  to  the  tabernacle  at  ShOoh,  in  obedience  to  the 
injunctions  of  the  law  (Exod.  xsxiv.  23;  Deut.  ■ayi.  16), 
to  worship  and  offer  sacrifice  to  the  Lord.  His  stronger 
love  for  Hannah  was  shown  at  the  sacrificial  feast  that 
followed  the  offering,  in  his  sending  her  a  double  por- 
tion of  the  flesh  of  the  victim.''  This  exasperated 
Peninnah's  jealousy,  and  her  tongue  did  not  spare  her 
rival :  "  Her  adversary  provoked  her  sore  for  to  make 
her  fret."    Tear  by  year  the  same  bitter  provocation 


1  Few  of  our  readers  require  to  be  reminded  that  the  termina- 
tion -aim  marks  the  Hebrew  dual ;  just  as  -im  or  -of/i  marks  the 
plural,  masculine  or  feminine — e.g.,  Aram-naharami,  "Syria  of 
the  tiro  rivers  "  (Tigris  and  Euphrates),  or  Mesopotamia  ;  Maha- 
nrtim,  *'  two  hosts  "  (Gen.  xssii.  2) ;  Kii^athaiTii,  "  the  double  city  " 
(Gen.  xiv.  5)  ;  Shaaraiin,  *'  the  two  gateways  "  (1  Sam.  xvii.  52). 

-  The  addition  '*  Zophim "  {"watchmen'')  may  indicate  that 
this  "hill"  was  used  as  a  look-out  post  in  times  of  war;  but  it 
more  probably  si^ifies  "the  descendants  of  Zuph,''  of  whom  it 
was  the  home  (1  Sam.  i.  1  ;  ix.  5  ;   1  Chron.  vi,  26). 

^  The  name  Hann.ah  {TT:T})  =  "  g:raee  "  or  prayer,"  in  the  Sep- 
tnaf^nt  "Avi/a,  and  in  the  Vult^ate  "  Anna,"  reappears  more  than 
once  in  later  sacred  records.  It  is  the  name  of  the  wife  of  Tohit, 
and  mother  of  Tobias  (Tobit  i.  9) ;  of  the  prophetess  of  the  tribe 
of  Asher,  the  daughter  of  Phanuel  (Luke  ii.  36) ;  and,  according  to 
early  tradition,  of  the  wife  of  Joachim,  the  mother  of  the  Virgin 
IVIary. 

"•  In  the  same  way  as  Joseph  showed  his  affection  for  Benjamin, 
fey  giving  him  a  mess  live  times  as  large  as  his  brother's  (Gcu. 
xliii.31),  and  as  in  later  days  Samuel  himself  reserved  "the  shoulder 
and  that  which  was  upon  it"  for  Saul  (1  Sam.  ix.  23,  21). 


was  i-epeated,  until  as  the  hope  of  her  becoming  a 
mother  gi-ew  weaker,  Hannah's  tender  sjiii'it  became 
utterly  crushed ;  "  she  wept  sore,  and  would  not  eat." 
To  Elkanah's  afiectionato  remonstrance  on  seeing  her 
sit  sadly,  refusing  to  share  in  the  banquet,  and  the 
assurance  of  his  undiminished  affection,  Hauuah  cannot 
trust  herself  to  make  any  reply.  She  retires  to  pom- 
out  her  heart  in  teai-s  and  silent  prayer  before  "the 
Lord  of  hosts,"  at  the  door  of  the  tabei'nacle,'  and  there 
registers  the  vow,  that  if  God  will  grant  her  jietition, 
and  give  her  "  a  man  cluld,"  he  shall  be  devoted  to  the 
Giver  as  a  Nazarite,  "  all  the  days  of  his  life  ''  (1  Sam. 
i.  11).  The  excitement  of  her  passionate  devotion,  and 
the  voiceless  movement  of  her  lips,  are  noticed  by  Eli 
the  high  priest,  as  he  sits  on  his  seat  by  the  gate  of  the 
tabernacle  enclosure  to  watch  the  worsliippcrs,  and  lead 
him  to  suppose  her  intoxicated.  Hannah's  iliguified  but 
respectfid  reply  convinces  him  of  his  error,  and  he  dis- 
misses her  with  the  high-priestly  blessing,  and  the  prayer 
that  God  would  grant  her  petition.  The  words  of  the 
high  priest  are  regarded  by  her  as  the  words  of  God  him- 
self, and  convey  the  welcome  assurance  that  her  prayer 
is  accepted,  and  that  the  long  looked-for  blessing  would 
bo  granted.  With  a  spu'it  relieved  of  its  burden  she 
returns  to  the  family  feast,  and  takes  her  share  with 
a  cheerful  countenance  (chap.  i.  18).  Nor  was  the  trust 
of  this  holy  woman  disappointed.  In  due  time  she 
became  the  exultant  mother  of  a  son,  on  whom  she 
couferi'ed  the  name  of  Samuel,  "  the  heard,"  or  "  asked 
of  God."''  As  soon  as  the  child  was  weaned,  which, 
according  to  Eastern  custom,  would  not  bo  till  he  was 
at  least  two  years  old,  and  might  probably  be  delayed 
till  his  seventh  year,  she  once  more  accompanies  her 
husband  on  his  yearly  visit  to  Shiloh,  and  takes  her 
boy  with  her  to  fulfil  her  vow,  by  personally  detlicating 
him  to  the  service  of  Jehovah.  What  it  must  have  cost 
her  to  pai't  with  her  darling,  so  hardly  won,  none  but  a. 
mother's  heai-t  can  know.  But  God  had  been  true  to 
her,  and  she  must  be  true  to  him.  "She  had  opened 
her  mouth  unto  the  Lord,  and  she  could  not  go  back." 
Her  holy  resolution  is  expressed  in  the  touching  words 
with  which  she  presented  him  to  Eli :  "  For  this  child  I 
prayed,  and  the  Lord  hath  given  me  my  petition  which 
I  asked  of  him.  Therefore  also  I  have  lent  him 
to  Jehovah ;  as  long  as  he  livcth  he  shall  be  lent  to 
Jehovah  "  (chap.  i.  27,  28). 

After  a  triumphant  burst  of  song,  originally  intended 
to  express  no  more  than  her  own  feeliugs  of  joy  or 
thankfubiess,  but,  like  the  other  inspired  hymns  of  the 
Bible,  unconsciously  expanding  into  language  properly 
appHcable  only  to  the  Messiah  and  his  kingdom,  in 
which  we  immistakably  discern  the  prototype  of  the 
"  Magnificat,"  Hannah  leaves  her  little  son  under  the 
high  priest's  care,  and  returns  to  Ramah,  to  be  repaid 


^  "  The  tabernacle  "  is  here,  and  in  iii.  3,  called  by  anticipation 
"the  temple  of  the  Lord."  The  word  Vj'TI  {heicnl)  signifies  "a 
palace,"  or  magnificent  mansion  (Amos  viii.  3 ;  Ps.  slv.  9 ;  Isa. 
xiii.  22). 

''  The  names  "Ishmael"  and  "Elishamah"  have  the  same 
meaning,  and  are  derived  from  the  same  roots. 


228 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


with  interest  for  lier  "  loan  to  Jehovali,"  in  the  gift  of 
three  sons  and  two  daughters.  At  Shiloh,  under  the 
protecting  shadow  of  the  tabernacle,  employed  in  per- 
sonal attendance  on  the  aged  and  dim-eyed  Eli,  and  in 
such  ministrations  as  suited  his  years — trimming  and 
putting  out  the  lamps,  opening  the  doors  of  the  sacred 
ouclosuro,  "  ministering  to  the  Lord  before  the  priest  " 
as  an  acolyte — the  holy  child  passed  his  opening  boy- 
hood, and  like  that  other  Holy  Child  of  whose  days  he 
"  foretold"  (Acts  iii.  24),  "  grew  on,  and  was  in  favour 
with  Jehovah,  and  also  with  men  "  (1  Sam.  ii.  26 ;  Luke 
ii.  52).  The  child's  dress,  an  ophod  of  white  linen, 
the  ordinary  garb  of  the  priests,  marked  his  dedication 
to  the  Lord's  service.  A  robe,  iu  our  version  "  a  little 
coat," '  such  as  that  worn  by  the  high  priest  and  per- 
sonages of  rank,  the  work  of  her  own  hands,  was 
brought  for  him  to  wear  by  his  mother,  on  the  annual 
occasions  of  their  meeting  at  the  time  of  the  yoai-ly 
sacrifice  (1  Sam.  ii.  18,  19). 

The  figure  of  this  innocent  child,  intent  on  his  little 
ministries,  stands  out  in  beautiful  relief  against  the 
dark  background  of  greed  and  licentiousness  sketched 
in  such  appalling  colours  by  the  sacred  writers  (ii.  12 — 
17,  22,  29).  In  daily  association  with  those  "sons  of 
Belial,"  the  young  priests,  Hophni  and  Phinehas ;  forced 
to  witness  the  constant  scenes  of  rapacity  and  de- 
bauchery with  which  they  profaned  God's  holy  place,  and 
made  men  "  abhor  the  offering  of  the  Lord  "  for  them- 
selves, and  dread  the  tabernacle  as  a  place  of  contamina- 
tion for  their  wives  and  daughters,  the  child's  spotless 
soul  received  no  defilement,  but,  like  a  lily  among  rank 
and  foul  weeds,  developed  in  ever-increasing  strength 
and  purity  towards  the  high  dignity  for  which  he  was 
unconsciously  preparing.  "  T!io  child  Samuel  grew 
before  Jehovah,  and  Jehovah  was  with  him  "  (ii.  21 ; 
iii.  19). 

And  then  the  call  came.  That  call  which  was  to 
separate  him  from  other  men,  and  assigning  to  him 
the  highest  of  all  missions,  to  be  the  mouthpiece  of 
Jehovah,  was  to  make  him  acquainted  with  the  deep 
sorrows  and  trials  inseparable  from  that  office.  Samuel's 
first  experience  of  the  prophetic  mission  was  one  of 
sharp  pain.  The  call  came  in  the  stillness  of  the  night. 
A  voice  called  the  boy  by  name,  as  he  lay  sleeping  the 
deep  sleep  of  innocent  childhood  in  his  little  tabernacle 
chamber.  Accustomed  to  bo  roused  from  his  slumbers, 
to  attend  to  the  wants  of  his  blind  aud  feeble  old 
master,  the  child  springs  from  his  bed,  aud  runs  into 
Eli,  ready  to  fulfil  his  bidding.     "  Here  am  I ;  for  thou 

1  The  word  rendered  "  coat"'  iu  1  Sam.  ii.  19,  V:?p  [mcU],  is  the 
same  used  for  the  high  priest's  rohe  (Exod.  xsviii.  4,  .31,  3i  ;  xsix. 
5;  xxxix.  22,  &c.  ;  Lev.  viii.  7),  aud  for  that  of  Jonathan,  with 
■which  he  invested  David  (1  Sam  xviii.  i),  aud  for  th.at  of  Saul, 
the  skirt  of  which  David  cut  off  (xxiv.  5,  11)  ;  for  that  of  Diivid, 
when  he  danced  before  the  ark  (1  Chrou.  xv.  27),  aud  of  his 
daughter  Tamar  (2  Sam.  xiii.  IS).  From  these  instances  it  was 
evidently  a  dress  of  no  ordinary  richness  and  beauty.  It  is  inte- 
resting to  find  this  mc^tl  coutinuiug  to  be  Samuel's  dress  after  he 
was  grown  up  (1  Sam.  xv.  27),  and  so  characteristic  of  him  that 
the  mention  of  it  by  the  witch  of  Eudor,  "  an  old  man  cometh 
up,  aud  he  is  covered  with  a  uiautle ''  (iiicti)  (1  Sam.  xxviii.  14), 
convinced  Saul  that  it  was  no  other  than  Samuel  himaelf. 


calledst  me."  Sent  back  to  his  couch  by  the  kind  old 
man,  whom  it  is  impossible  not  to  love  for  his  gentle- 
ness, while  we  pity  and  lament  his  weakness,  once 
and  again  the  same  voice  arouses  him,  and  sends  him 
on  the  same  errand.  The  strange  repetition  of  tho 
call  at  last  convinces  Eli  that  there  is  something  more 
than  ordinary  in  the  child's  tale.  "  Eli  perceived  that 
the  Lord  had  caUed  the  child  "  (chap.  iii.  8),  and  pro- 
bably rejoicing  that  "  the  word  of  Jehovah,"  which 
had  become  so  rare  aud  "  precious  in  those  days " 
(chap.  iii.  1),  was  beginning  once  more  to  make  itself 
distinctly  heard,  but  with  little  idea  of  the  terrible 
message  it  was  to  convey  to  him  and  to  Ms  house, 
charges  the  lad,  if  the  Voice  is  heard  again,  to  say, 
"  Speak,  Jehovah,  for  thy  servant  heareth."  A  fourth 
time  the  call  is  heard.  The  child  hears  his  name  re- 
peated twice — "  Samuel,  Samuel."  He  declares  his 
willingness  to  receive  the  message  of  Jehovah,  now  for 
the  first  time  delivered  to  him  (ver.  7),  and  is  entrusted 
with  the  announcement  of  the  terrible  and  irreversible 
vengeance  about  to  fall  on  Eli  and  his  family,  "  because 
his  sons  made  themselves  vile,  and  he  restrained  them 
not"  (ver.  13).  And  does  the  boy,  elated  vrith  the 
honour  of  being  charged  with  a  message  from  the 
Lord,  and  eager,  as  is  common  with  childish  natures,  to 
communicate  the  startling  intelligence,  careless  of  tho 
pain  it  will  inflict,  at  once  hasten  to  convey  the  doom 
to  Eli  ?  No !  With  a  remarkable  soK-restraint,  and 
unwillingness  to  bring  the  shadow  of  so  deep  a  grief 
over  the  heart  of  the  good  old  man  he  loved  so  well, 
"Samuel  lay  until  the  morning"  (ver.  15),  and  went 
about  his  usual  duties — "  opening  the  doors  of  tho 
house  of  the  Lord,"  bearing  about  with  him  the  burden 
of  this  unwelcome  truth,  to  be  made  known  to  liim 
whom  he  loved,  honoured,  and  feared—"  liis  first  expe- 
rience of  the  prophet's  cross.""  Eli's  words  of  devout 
submission,  when  his  gentle  persistence  has  extracted 
the  truth  from  its  timid  depositary,  "  It  is  the  Lord, 
let  Him  do  what  soemeth  Him  good,"  manifest  his  con- 
viction of  how  well  the  threatened  judgments  were 
deserved. 

"  The  gifts  and  calling  of  God  are  without  repent- 
ance." Samuel,  once  called  to  tho  prophetic  office,  re- 
ceives more  and  more  of  the  gifts  peculiar  to  it,  and  the 
Most  High  sets  his  seal  on  his  utterances  by  confirming 
his  words.  "  The  Lord  let  none  of  his  words  fall  to 
the  ground."  Soon  it  became  known  in  every  part  of 
Israel,  from  Nortliern  Dan  to  Southern  Beer-sheba,  that 
Johovali  had  once  more  visited  his  people,  and  raised 
up  a  prophet  among  them,  and  that  tho  youthful  Naza- 
rite,  Samuel,  the  son  of  Elkanah,  was  "  established  to  bo 
a  prophet "  of  Jehovah,  at  Shiloh. 

After  this  the  sacred  nan-ative  takes  leave  of  Samuel 
for  at  least  twenty  years.  All  that  is  known  of  him  is 
summed  up  in  the  brief  record  :  "  Jehovah  revealed 
liimself  to  Samuel  in  Shiloh  by  tho  word  of  Jehovah. 
And  the  word  of  Samuel  came  to  all  Israel "  (iii.  21  ; 

~  We  may  compare  Jeremiah's  experience  of  the  same  cross, 
inseparable  from  the  due  fulfilment  of  the  prophetic  office  (Jer. 
XV.   10 ;  xvii.   15—18 ;  XX.  7—18). 


MUSIC   OF   THE   BIBLE. 


229 


iv.  1).  Soon,  very  soon,  tlie  judgment  he  had  been 
commissioned  to  denounce  overtook  Eli  and  his  house, 
involving  in  its  sweep  the  loss  of  Israel's  "  glory,"  the 
ark  of  God,  "  delivered  into  the  enemies'  hand "  (Ps. 
Ixxviii.  61),  and  the  fall  of  the  national  sanctuary  of 
Shiloh.  To  the  young  prophet  it  must  have  been  the 
loss  of  aU  that  was  most  dear  to  Mm.  The  kindly  and 
venerable  man,  who  had  been  to  him  as  a  father,  whom, 
uotwithstaudiug  his  weaknesses,  he  had  over  regarded 
with  rovorenco  and  love  ;  the  ark  of  God,  the  centre  of 
his  sacred  affections,  and  the  object  of  his  service  ;  the 
tabernacle  itsoH — for,  wanting  the  ark  it  enshrined,  it 
was  a  mere  empty  shell,  a  memorial  of  departed  glories 
— all  were  lost  to  him  in  that  fatal  day  when  Israel  fell 
before  the  Philistines  at  Ebeu-ezor.  Wo  would  have 
willingly  traced  the  career  of  Samuel  from  that  sad 
day  when,  in  fulfilment  of  the  former  prophecy,  con- 


firmed by  his  own  mouth,  he  had  to  "  see  an  enemy  iu 
the  Lord's  habitation,"  and  the  two  sons  of  Eli,  Hoplmi 
and  Phinehas,  "  died  both  of  them  iu  one  day,"  aud  "  a 
thing  was  done  in  Israel  at  wliich  both  the  ears  of 
every  one  that  heard  it  did  tingle  "  (ii.  32,  34 ;  iii.  11) ; 
but  it  is  denied  us.  Holy  Scripture  is  silent,  aud  all 
speculation  is  vain.  The  twenty  years  of  deep  national 
humiliation  and  general  confusion  that  followed  the 
defeat  at  Eben-ezer  are  an  absolute  blank.  All  we 
know  is  that  Samuel  was  ackuowledgod  iu  all  parts 
of  the  countiy  as  a  great  prophet,  and  was  thus  quietly 
preparing  for  the  important  events  in  the  nation's 
history  iu  which  he  was  destined  to  take  a  leading 
part.  When  he  reappears,  it  is  as  the  judge  and  de- 
liverer of  Israel,  summoning  the  people  to  national 
repentance,  aud  leading  the  armies  of  the  Lord  to 
victory  over  their  enemies  (chap.  vii.). 


MUSIC     OF    THE    BIBLE. 

BY   JOHN   STAINEE,    M.A. ,    MUS.    D.,  MAGDALEN   COLLEGE,    OXFORD;    OKGANIST   OP   ST.   PAUL's   CATSEDBAL. 

WIND    INSTRUMENTS    (concluded). 


SOUMPONIAH,    SAMPTTNIA,    SUMPHONIA,    STMPHONIA. 

!  HIS  instrument  is  the  last  of  those  enimie- 
rated  in  Dan.  iii.  15.  In  speakiug  of  the 
psanterin  or  dulcimer,  we  had  occasion 
to  regret  that  the  word  symphonia  should 
have  been  ti-anslated  by  "  dulcimer  "  in  our  Authorised 
Version,  when  this  word  would  have  represented  more 
projierly  psanterin.  The  symphonia  is  now  generally 
supposed  to  have  been  a  haypiipe.  The  reasons  for 
this  boUof  are,  that  the  meaning  of  the  word  "  sounding 
together  "  is  not  inapplicable  to  the  union  of  melody 
and  drone  which  it  produces,  and  also  that  the  Italians 
have  to  this  day  a  bagpipe  called  zampugna  or  sampogna, 
and  that  chifonie  or  symphonie  was  an  instrument  of 
the  same  class  used  in  the  Middle  Ages.  Of  the  anti- 
quity of  bagpipes  there  is  ample  evidence.  Varieties 
of  it  seem  to  have  been  common  in  all  pai-ts  of  Asia 
and  Europe.  The  Greeks  called  it  daKavXos  (ascaulos), 
which  means  the  "  leathern-bottle  "  pipe  (from  aa-KSs,  a 
leathern  bag  or  bottle,  and  av\6s,  a  pipe).  The  Romans 
gave  it  a  name  ha\Tng  much  the  same  moaning — tihue 
utriaidarioa  or  utriculariuin  ;  in  Germany  it  is  the 
sacpfeiffe,  corresponding  exactly  to  our  bagpipe;  in 
Italy  scmipogna,  piva  (in  Dan.  iii.  5,  &c.,  the  Italian 
trau.slatiou  has  sampogna),  or  cornamusa,  which  last 
means  apparently  a  hornpipe,  alluding  probably  to 
the  material  of  which  the  "  pipe  "  part  was  some- 
times made,  not  only  in  Europe,  but  amongst  tlie 
Arabians.  From  the  Italian  cornamusa  the  French 
adopted  cornemase,  and  in  both  countries  the  di- 
minutive musetta  and  musette  (a  httlo  musa  or  pipe) 
seems  to  have  been  generally  used.  A  piece  of  music 
written  in  the  style  of  bagpipe  music  came  afterwards 
to  be  called  a  musette.  By  some  it  is  said  to  have  been 
also  called  chalamcau  by  the  French  ;  but  it  is  proba- 


ble that  this  name  was  only  so  far  used  in  connection 
with  the  bagpipe  as  to  describe  the  pipe  which  was 
pierced  with  finger-holes,  iu  opposition  to  that  in  wliich 
the  drone-reed  was  inserted.  The  Gaelic  uiuno  for 
bagpipe  is^iob  morh ;  the  Welsh  pihau.     Fig.  68  shows 


.  -mi 


^  -^^W 


•X  'm 


'\W 


Fig.  68. 


an  Arabian  instrument  of  this  class,  called  by  them 
souqqarah  or  zouggarah.  It  is  of  goat-skin,  aud  the 
two  pipes  with  finger-holes  are  tipped  with  horn.  The 
scale  consists  of  four  notes,  A  to  D  of  the  treble  stave, 
both  pipes  being  in  imison.  It  will  be  noticed  that  the 
goat-sMn  reseiTou-  is  filled  by  meaus  of  the  little  pipe 
seen  on  the  left-hand  side  of  the  illustration,  which  is 
placed  iu  the  mouth  of  the  performer.  There  ai'e,  in 
fact,  two  kinds  of  bagpipe,  if  viewed  as  to  their  con- 
struction. In  the  one  the  reservoir  is  supplied  from 
the  mouth  of  the  performer,  who  blows  into  it  tlu-ough 
!  a  pipe  and  mouthpiece ;  in  the  other  the  reservoir  is 
so  constructed  that  the  pressure  of  the  elbow  against 
its  side  wiU  force  the  air  which  it  contains  into  the 
sounding-tube  or  chanter,  as  it  is  termed.  It  will 
bo  seen  that  the  souqqarah  (Fig.  68)  belongs   to  the 


330 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


former  of  these  kintls.      The  bagpipe  shown  in  Fig. 
69,    which  is   an  Indian  instrument  called    totirti  or 


Fig.  G9. 

tov/rry,  is  of  the  same  kind,  the  inflation  of  the  reser- 
Toir  being  brought  about  through  the  mouthpiece. 
That  its  chanter  has  only  four  holes  is  proof  proljably 
of  gi-eat  antiquity.  Another  instrument  of  the  same 
sort,  called  a  zitty,  has  seven  holes.  So,  too,  the 
magondi  (Fig.  70),  used  by  the  ^Indian  snake-charmers 


Fig.  70. 


when  they  exhibit  their  almost  Orphean  influence  over 
the  reptiles,  is  supplied  with  air  from  the  mouth,  only 
in  this  case  there  is  no  intermediate  tulie.  The  reser- 
voir is  made  of  the  outer  coating  of  a  gourd,  the  small 
end  of  which  is  pierced  for  the  admission  of  the  air. 
Tho   two  tubes  appear  to   have  four  holes  each,  but 


one  has  seven,  three  moi-e  being  pierced  on  the  reverse 
side.     The  tone  is  said  to  be  soft  and  somewhat  sweet. 

Tlie  Persians  have  their  nay-  or  nei-amhanah,  which, 
though  somewhat  different  in  form,  is  of  the  same  con- 
struction as  a  bagpipe. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  the  close  relationship  between 
the  arghool  of  tho  Egyptians,  as  before  described  (Vol. 
II.,  p.  lU),  and  tho  souqqarah.  Tlie  reservoir  is  the  only 
distinctive  featm-e  of  the  souqqarah,  for  the  arglwol  is 
of  two  kinds,  like  its  relations  of  the  bag[)ipe  family, 
having  sometimes  two  pipes  tuned  to  two  unison  scales; 
at  others,  two  pipes,  one  for  the  playing  of  a  tune,  the 
other  for  a  drone,  or  bom-don. 

The  broad  distinction  between  bagpipes  blown  by 
means  of  the  mouth  and  those  blown  by  "  piunping  " 
with  the  elbow,  before  mentioned,  is,  however,  exhibited 
much  nearer  home.  Irish  bagpipes  are  inflated  by  tho 
elbow,  Scotch  by  the  mouth.  Both  have  theii-  special 
advocates,  but  it  is  said  that  the  most  ancient  Irish  in- 
struments of  this  class  were  blown,  lite  the  Scotch,  by 
the  mouth.  The  Ii-ish  lay  claim  to  tho  superiority  of 
their  bagpipes  on  the  ground  of  the  tenor  chords  which 
they  are  capable  of  producing. 

The  Roman  tiblce  utricularioi  must  have  been  of  a 
lower  pitch  than  the  ordinary  bagpipe,  judging  from 
tho  appearance  of  one  which  was  found  depicted  on  an 
ancient  bas-relief  in  the  court  of  the  palace  of  Santa 


Fig.  71. 

Croce.  The  almost  disproportionate  length  of  the  tubes 
suggests  very  deep  sounds.  The  sampogna,  the  modern 
Italian  form  of  tho  idriculariimi,  is  commonly  played 
on  the  Campagna  and  the  surroimding  hills.  Fotis  re- 
marks that  when  some  of  these  poor  sumiMgnatori  or 
savipognari  migrated  to  Paris  some  years  ago,  in  the 
hopes  of  getting  a  livelihood,  they  were  popularly  called 
pifferari,  but,  of  course,  wrongly  so,  as  the  pifferari 
were  oboists,  not  bagpipers.  Some  are  occasionally  to 
be  seen  about  the  streets  of  London. 

The  Assyi'ian  records  of  this  instrument  are  unfortu- 
nately very  scanty.  One  is  given  in  Fig.  72,  but  the 
reader  will  probably  think  that  it  might  \vith  equal 
justice  be  said  to  represent  many  other  things.  The 
Phceniciaus  were  well  acquainted  with  bagpipes  ;  lience 
it  is  probable  that  this  is  the  source  from  whence  the 
Greeks  obtained  them,  or  Imitated  their  method  of 
construction,  and  that  the  Romans  copied  them  from 
the  Greeks.     The  Syrian  Greeks  called  it  trajuiroj/ia  [sam- 


MUSIC  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


231 


ponia),  and  tho  question  at  once  arises — was  this  an 
imitation  of  soumponiah,  a  genuino  Clialdaic  name,  or 
were  both  samponia  and  sownipeniah  corruptions  of  the 
Greek  symphonia  (aufj.<j)iiii'ia) ;  or,  to  put  the  question  in 
other  words,  did  the  Greeks  give  Greek  names  to  Chaldee 
•musical  instruments,  or  did  the  Chaldees  borrow  their 
instruments  from   Greece  ?     This   difficulty  has  beau 


Fig.  72. 

alluded  to  on  page  216  of  Vol.  I.  It  is  completely  out  of 
the  sphere  of  tlie  musician,  and  must  be  left  for  scholars 
ajid  theologians  to  .settle,  or,  perhaps  it  would  be  safer 
to  say,  to  discuss.  As  the  symphonia  is  only  mentioned 
in  that  catalogue  of  musical  instruments  given  in  Dan. 
iii.  with  such  strange  iteration,  it  must  be  presumed  that 
the  captive  Jews  did  not  so  highly  value  its  merits  as  to 
wish  to  adopt  it.  But  harsh  as  the  tones  of  a  bagpipe 
are  when  heard  in  a  small  enclosed  place,  thei-e  can  be 
no  two  opinions  as  to  the  romantic  and  beautiful  effect 
they  produce  when  heard  in  the  midst  of  ^vild  scenery ; 
and  when  large  numbers  are  played  togetlu^r.  the  restilt  is 
even  imposing  and  grand.  The  repetition  of  the  phrase 
"all  kinds  of  musick  "  (Dan.  iii.  5, 10, 15)  would  lead  us 
to  believe  that  a  very  large  company  of  musicians  was 
gathered  together  on  that  memorable  day  when  Nebu- 
chadnezzar tried  to  enforce  idol-worsliip;  but  though 
the  instruments  themselves  were  of  a  barbarous  tyjje,  we 
may  still  believe  that  the  massive  volume  of  sound  pro- 
duced by  so  many  playing  together  must  have  been  awe- 
inspiring  and  terrible. 

KEREN,   SHOPHAE,   CHATZOZERAH. 

These  are  tho  names  of  the  three  important  Hebrew 
trumpets.  The  first,  evidently,  either  actually  was,  or  at 
least  originated  from,  that  most  ancient  of  wind  instru- 
ments, the  horn  of  an  animal.  But  it  seems  absolately 
impossible  to  discover  the  real  distinction  between  any  of 
these  instruments.  Keren  and  shophar  are  sometimes 
used  synonymously,  and  notably  so  in  the  account  of  tlio 
capture  of  Jericho  (.losh.  vi.).  But  in  this  same  account 
there  is  affixed  to  Tcercn  the  word  jobel,  making  tho  whole 
a  " jobel-hora."  Although  this  is  translated  "ram's 
horn"  in  our  version,  and  although  it  has  been  suggested 
that  johcl  in  Arabic,  if  not  in  Hebrew,  might  signify  a 
ram,  yet  on  the  whole  it  seems  probable  that  jobel  is 
the  source  of  our  v/ord  jubilee,  and  that  the  expression 
simply  points  to  the  fact  that  the  instrument  was  used 


on  great  solemnities,  and  was  ajubilee-trumpet  (toC  Jw^ijA). 
The  actual  horns  of  animals  were  in  very  early  times 
imitated  in  metal  or  ivory.  In  the  latter  case  a  tusk 
was  hollowed  out  and  often  elaborately  carved.  They 
were  called  in  the  Middle  Ages  oliphanis,  or  elephant- 
trumpets,  from  their  material.  The  Ashantees  to  this 
day  use  tusks  for  tliis  purpose,  only,  strangely  enough. 


Fig.  73. 

the  in.sti'ument  is  blown  at  a  hole  in  the  side  (like  a 
flauto  traverso) ,  and  not  at  the  small  end.  In  1  Chron. 
XXV.  .5,  after  giving  a  list  of  those  set  aside  by  David  to 
play  upon  the  Tiercn,  the  historian  says,  "  All  these  were 
tho  sons  of  Hemau,  the  king's  seer  in  the  words  of 
God,  to  lift  up  the  horn."  Again,  translated  in  our  ver- 
sion by  "  cornet"  (though  in  the  Septuagint  by  a-i\niyO, 
the  word  occiu-s  in  Dan.  iii.  5,  &c.  Only  in  these  pas- 
sages is  mention  made  of  the  keren  as  a  musical  instru- 
ment, although  the  word  often  occurs  with  other  mean- 
ings, and  is  frequently  used  as  figurative  of  "strength." 
The  slwphar,  judging  fi'om  its  very  frequent  mention, 
extending  in  the  pages  of  the  Bible  from  the  Book  of 
Exodus  to  that  of  Zechariah,  must  have  been  more 
commonly  used  than  tho  Jceren.  It  was  the  voice  of  a 
slwphar,  exceeding  loud,  issuing  from  the  thick  cloud 
on  Sinai,  when,  too,  thunders  and  lightnings  rolled 
around  the  holy  moimt,  which  mado  all  in  the  camp 
tremble.  When  Ehud's  personal  daring  had  rid  Israel 
of  a  tyr-aut,  he  blow  a  shophar  and  gathered  the  people 
together  to  seize  the  fords  of  Jordan  towards  Moab. 
Gideon  used  tho  instrument,  and  Saul  also  (1  Sam. 
xiil.  3),  and  many  other  of  Israel's  warriors,  to  rouse 
and  call  up  the  people  against  their  enemies.  But  it 
was  not  confined  to  military  use,  for  "  Dand  and  all 
the  house  of  Israel  brought  up  the  ark  of  the  Lord  with 
shouting  and  with  the  sound  of  the  shophar  "  (2  Sam. 
vi.  15).  It  is  mentioned  three  times  in  the  Psalms: 
"  God  is  gone  up  with  a  merry  noise,  and  the  Lord  with 
the  sound  of  the  shophar  "  (Ps.  xlvii.  5) ;  "  Blow  up  the 
shop>luir  in  the  new  moon  "  (Ixxxi.  3)  ;  "  Praise  him  in 
the  sound  of  the  shophar"  (cl.  3). 


232 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


The  shophar  is  especially  interesting  to  us  as  being 
the  only  Hebrew  instrument  whose  use  on  certain 
solemn  occasions  seems  to  be  retained  to  this  day. 
Engel,  with  his  usual  trustworthy  research,  has  traced 
out  and  examined  some  of  these  in  modem  synagogues. 
That  shown  in  Fig.  74  is  from  the  synagogue  of  Spanish 


Fig,  74. 


Fig.  75 


Fig.  77. 


and  Portuguese  Jews,  Bevis  Marks,  and  is,  ho  says, 
one  foot  in  length.  Fig.  75  shows  one  used  in  the 
Great  Synagogue,  St.  James's  Place,  Aldgate,  twenty- 
one  inches  in  length.  Both  are  made  of  horn.  Pigs. 
7(j  and  77  Engel  gives  in  his  valuable  ilfitsic  of  the  most 
Ancient  Naticms,  from  Saalsehiitz.  The  fii-st  is  a  ram's 
horn,  the  second  that  of  a  cow.  On  these  instruments 
signals  or  flourishes  are  on  certain  occasions  played,  the 
music  of  which  it  is  unnecessary  to  give,  as  they  are 
well  kn«wn  as  the  simplest  progressions  wliich  such 
tubes  are  capable  of  producing.  All  such  iustniments 
can  only  give  a  series  of  sounds  called  natural  har- 
monics or  overtones,  which  are  j)roduced  in  theii-  special 
case  by  forcing  (by  gi-adually  increasing  the  pressure  of 
air  from  the  lips)  the  column  of  air  they  contain,  into 
two  vibrating  parts;  then  three,  four,  five,  six,  and  so 
on.  When  it  is  required  to  play  a  chromatic  scale,  arti- 
ficial lengths  of  tube  are  formed  by  means  of  pistons 
or  valves,  as  exemplified  in  our  modern  cornet-a-piston. 
The  chatzozerah  is  gonoi'ally  thought  to  liavo  been  a 
straight  trumpet,  with  a  bell  or  "  pavilion,"  as  it  is 
termed.  Moses  received  specific  directions  as  to  making 
them.  ■'  Make  thee  two  trumpets  of  silver;  of  a  whole 
piece  shalt  thou  make  them  :  that  thou  mayest  use  them 
for  the  calling  of  the  assembly,  and  for  the  journeying 
of  the  camps."  In  Ps.  xcviii.  6,  the  chatzozerah  and 
shophar  are  brought  into  juxtaposition:  "  'With chatzo- 
zerah and  sound  of  shophar  make  a  joyful  noise  before 
the  Lord  the  King ; "  or,  as  it  incorrectly  stands  in  the 
Prayer-book  version,  "  With  trumpets  also  and  shawms, 
&c."  In  this  passage  the  Septuagint  has  it,  'Eu  aa.\Trij(,iv 
iXarais,  Kat  c(}wprj  a'iXTnyyos  Keparivris,  "With  ductile 
trumpets,  and  the  sound  of  horn-trumpets.''  So,  too, 
the  Vulgate  :  "  In  tubis  ductilibus  et  voce  tubae  comese." 


The  word  mikshah,  which  is  applied  to  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  chatzozerah  in  Numb.  x.  2,  which  means 
"  roimded  "  or  "  turned,"  may  either  apply  to  a  com- 
plete twist  in  the  tube  of  the  instrument,  or,  what  is 
more  probable,  to  the  rounded  outline  of  the  bell.  But 
if  the  former  is  the  real  interpretation  of  the  epithet,  it  • 
would  make  it  more  like  a  trombone,  and  similar  in 
form  to  that  depicted  on  the  Arch  of  Titus.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  accoimt  given  by  Josephus  points 
out  the  latter  characteristic  of  shape.  He  says,  "Moses 
invented  a  kind  of  trumpet  of  silver ;  in  length  it  was 
little  less  than  a  cubit,  and  it  was  somewhat  thicker 
than  a  pipe ;  its  opening  was  oblong,  so  as  to  permit 
blowing  on  it  with  the  mouth ;  at  the  lower  end  it  had 
the  form  of  a  bcU,  like  a  horn."  It  seems  chiefly  to 
have  been  brought  into  use  in  the  Hebrew  ritual,  but 
was  also  occasionally  a  battle-call,  and  blown  on  other 
warlike  occasions.  It  was  the  sound  of  the  ehaizozeirah 
which  made  the  guilty  Athaliah  tremble  for  her  safety 
and  rend  her  clothes,  crying,  "  Treason !  treason ! " 
Silver  trumpets  have  always  been  associated  with 
dignity  and  grandeur,  whether  blown  before  a  pope 
in  the  ritual  of  the  magnificent  St.  Peter's,  Rome,  or 
canied,  as  in  this  country,  by  royal  trumpeters,  or  by 
a  few  favoured  regimental  bands.  In  Figs.  78  and 
79  two  coins  are  shown,  on  which,   siu-rounded  by  a 


Fig.  79. 

motto,  "the  deliverance  of  Jerusalem,"  trumpets  aie 
delineated.  These  instruments  have,  perhaps,  too 
incautiously,  been  described  as  specimens  of  the  chatzo- 
zerah. 

The  Assyrians  appear  to  have  used  trumpets,  as  Fig. 
80  plainly  shows  ;  but  there  are  at  present  no  records  of 
their  having  trumpets  with  a  bell  mouth.  Figs.  81  and 
82  prove,  however,  that  such  terminations  to  tubes  were 
not  unknown  to  the  Egj'ptians.  The  Romans  had  at 
least  three  varieties  of  trumpet,  the  most  powerful  of 
which  was  called  tiiha.  It  was  used  as  a  war-trumpet. 
Fig.  S3,  from  a  bas-relief  in  the  Capitol,  exhibits  a 
Roman  blowing  a  trumpet  at  the  triumph  of  Marcus 
Aurelius.  Ancient  trumpets,  which  wore  usually 
formed  of  one  piece  only,  could  not  possibly  bo 
adjusted  to  any  variety  of  pitch,  and  therefore  must 
have  been  with  difficulty  associated  with  other  instru- 
ments.     Mo(iBru  hoi-ns  and  trumpets  can  be   tuned 


BETWEEN  THE  BOOKS. 


233 


witli  the  greatest  nicety  by  a  variety  of  crooks,  which 
are  selected  by  the   performer  so  as  to   lengthen  or 


mention  of  the  chatzozerah  is  made  by  the  Psalmist. 
The  iii-st  allusion  to  this  instrument  in  Holy  Scripture 
is  where  Moses  is  commanded  to  make  two  of  silver 


Fig.  81. 


Kg.  80. 

shorten  his  tube  to  orchestral  requirements.     The  verse 
of  the  Psalms  before  quoted  is  the  only  one  in  which 


Kg.  83. 

(Numb.  X.  2) ;  the  last  in  Hos.  v.  8,  where  it  is  used  in 
connection  with  the  shophar,  and  both  instruments  are 
to  be  blown  as  a  warning  to  wicked  Israel  of  the  ap- 
proaching visitation  of  God. 


BETWEEN   THE    BOOKS. 

BY    THE    KEV.    G.    F.    MACLEAE,    D.D.,    HEAD   MASTER    OP    KING'S    COLLEGE    SCHOOL. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE    JEWS    TINDEE    THE    KINGS    OF    SYRIA. 

HE  battle  of  Mount  Panium  marks  an  im- 
portant epoch  in  the  history  of  the  Jews. 

Ever  since  the  battle  of  Ipsus  they  had 
remained  loyal  to  the  kings  of  Egypt.  Tliey 
now  transferred  their  allegiance  to  the  descendants  of 
Seleucus  Nicator,  and  the  period  of  their  connection 
with  the  kings  of  Syria  begins. 

Antiochus,  who  now  stood  "  in  the  glorious  land  " '  of 
Palestine,  and  was  welcomed  by  the  people  as  their 
deliverer,  did  not  long  enjoy  the  fruits  of  his  victory. 
Frustrated  in  his  further  designs  against  Egypt  by  the 
intervention  of  the  Romans,  he  turned  to  Asia  Minor, 
and  after  considerable  success  in  the  jEgean,"  crossed 
over  in  the  year  B.C.  192  into  Greece,  and  ventured  on 
a  contest  with  Rome. 

1  Dan.  xi.  16. 

2  "  After  this  shall  lie  turn  his  face  unto  the  isles,  and  shall 
tate  many  "  (Dan.  xi.  18). 


But  in  the  following  year  (B.C.  191)  the  consul,  M. 
Acilius  Glabrio,  attacked  him  in  his  entrenchments  at 
Thermopylae,  routed  his  ai-my,  and  forced  hiui  to  hasten 
back  to  Asia.  Here  he  collected  a  va-st  host  to  carry  on 
the  campaign,  which  his  fi-iend  Hannibal  warned  him 
was  impendiHg.  But  neither  his  numerous  elephants 
nor  the  Macedonian  phalanx^  could  bear  up  against  the 
irresistible  attacks  of  the  Roman  legions,  when  led 
against  him  by  Scipio  Af  ricanus  aud  his  brother  at  the 
battle  of  Magnesia,  B.C.  190.  Defeated  with  enormous 
loss,  he  w;is  fain  to  sue  for  peace,  which  the  haughty 
conquerors  would  only  grant  on  terms  which  were  the 
ruiu  of  his  empire.  He  was  forced  to  cede  all  his  pos- 
sessions in  Asia  Minor  west  of  Mount  Taurus,  to  defray 
the  expenses  of  the  war  by  successive  instalments,  to 
surrender  all  his  ships  of  war,  and  to  deliver  up  Han- 
nibal and  other  enemies  of  the  Repiiblic  who  had  taken 
refuge  in  his  kingdom.^ 

These  hard  conditions  were  finally  ratified  by  the 


3  Livy,  xxxTii.  39. 


*  Livy,  xxxvii.  45 ;  xxsviii.  38. 


234 


THE   BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


Senate,  B.e.  188,  and  in  order  to  raise  the  enormous 
tribute,  tlie  Sp-ian  king  turned  "  liis  face  toward  the  fort 
of  his  own  land," '  the  rich  temple  of  Belus  in  Elymais, 
situated  at  the  meeting-place  of  the  caravan  routes 
between  Media  and  Susiana.  But  the  Lardy  moun- 
taineers rose  in  defence  of  their  shrine,  and  Autiochus 
was  slain ;  he  stumbled,  and  fell,  and  was  not  found,-' 
B.C.  187. 

On  the  news  of  his  death,  Ms  son  Seleucus  IV.,  who 
had  taken  part  in  the  disastrous  battle  of  Magnesia, 
ascended  the  throne,  and  assumed  the  title  of  Philo- 
pator.  As  the  possession  of  Palestine  was  of  great  im- 
portance in  the  event  of  an  Egyi^tian  war,  the  new  king 
maintained  in  his  dealings  with  the  Jews  the  conciliatory 
policy  of  his  father,  granted  them  the  free  exercise  of 
their  religion,  and  oven  undertook  a  share  of  the  ex- 
penses of  the  Temple  service.^ 

Before  long,  however,  an  intestine  feud  led  to  his 
interference  in  the  afiah's  of  the  people.  We  have 
seen''  that  Joseph,  the  nephew  of  the  high  priest 
Onias  II.,  was  appointed  collector  of  the  revenues  of 
Phoenicia  and  Ccelesyria.  At  his  death  he  left  behiud 
him  an  illegitimate  son  named  Hyrcanus.  Between 
Hyi-cauus  and  his  legitimate  brothers  a  quarrel  arose 
respecting  their  father's  property.  Onias  III.,  who 
succeeded  to  the  high  priesthood  B.C.  195,  sided  with 
Hyi'canus,  and  on  his  death  secured  his  property  iu  the 
treasury  of  the  Temple,  committing  it  to  the  custody  of 
"  the  governor,"  Simon.s 

The  governor,  who  is  thought  by  some  to  have  been 
a  son  of  Joseph,  had  a  spite  against  the  high  priest, 
and  informed  ApoUonius,  the  prefect  of  Phconicia  and 
Ccelesyi-ia,  of  the  amount  of  treasure  now  deposited  iu 
the  Temple,  and  hiuted  that  it  might  be  tm-ned  to 
account  by  his  master,  who  was  anxious  to  fiud  means 
for  paying  the  Roman  tribute. 

ApoUonius  repeated  this  to  Seleucus,  who  ordered 
his  treasurer,  Heliodorus,  to  remove  the  treasures. 
Heliodorus  accordingly  proceeded  to  Jerusalem,  de- 
manded the  surrender  of  the  money,  and,  iu  spite  of 
the  earnest  remonstrances  of  the  high  priest,  declared 
that  he  must  carry  out  his  orders.  But  as  he  was  on 
the  poiut  of  entering  the  sanctuary,  like  Ptolemy  PhUo- 
pator*  before  him,  he,  too,  was  stayed  from  his  design 
by  a  "great  apparition."''  A  horse,  with  a  terrible 
i-ider  arrayed  in  golden  armour,  attended  by  two  young 
men  of  giant  strength  and  a\vf  ul  mien,  is  said  to  have 
suddenly  appeared  iu  the  Temple  courts,  and  so  terrified 
ApoUouius  that  lie  fell  speechless  to  the  ground,  and 
had  to  be  carried  away  insensible  by  his  retinue.  He 
was  afterwards  restored  at  the  earnest  intercession  of 
tlie  high  priest,  and  returning  to  Antioch,  related  what 
had  befallen  him,  and  testified  to  the  in^-iolable  majesty 
of  the  Temple. 

Whatever  may  be  the  amount  of  truth  in  this  nan-a- 

>  Dan.  xi.  19.  ■-  Dan.  xi.  19. 

3  2  Mace.  iii.  3,  6.  ■•  See  above,  Chap.  II. 

5  HpoCTTttTrir  TOW  Upov  (2  Mace.  iii.  4) ;  see  Smith's  Dictionary  of 
ih'i  Bibl«,  art,  "  Simon,  3." 

"^  See  above,  Chap.  II.         "  'ETri^acetu  ^evciXn  (2  Mace.  iii.  24). 


tive,  it  appears  certain  that  Seleucus  did  not  manifest 
any  resentment  against  the  Jews,  though  he  may  have 
le-vied  extraordinary  taxes  from  them.'  But  in  the 
twelfth  year  of  his  reign  {B.C.  175)  he  was  destroyed, 
"  neither  in  auger,  nor  in  battle,"'  but  inconsequence 
of  a  plot  formed  by  Heliodorus,  who  mm-dered  him  and 
usm'ped  the  crown. 

News  of  the  mm-der  reached  Autiochus,  the  youngest 
son  of  Autiochus  the  Great,  who  had  been  given  as  a 
hostage  to  the  Romans,  B.C.  188,  after  the  battle  of 
Magnesia,  and  was  now  at  Athens  ou  his  way  back  to 
SjTia.  He  had  been  released  by  the  intervention  of  his 
brother  Seleucus,  who  had  sent  his  own  son  Demetrius 
to  take  his  place  as  a  hostage ;  and  uow  with  the  assist- 
ance of  Eumenes  and  Attains,  princes  of  Pergamus,  ho 
easily  crushed  the  usurper,  and  obtained  "  the  kingdom 
by  flatteries," '"  in  place  of  his  nephew  Demetrius,  who 
remained  a  hostage  at  Rome. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  JEWS   UNDER   THE    KINGS   OP   SYRIA. 

Among  the  princes  and  chiefs  who  flocked  to  Antioch 
to  congratulate  the  new  monarch,  Autiochus,  surnamed 
Epiphaues,  "  the  illustrious,"  was  Joshua,  the  brother 
of  the  high  priest  Onias  III. 

Joshua  illustrated  iu  his  own  person  the  effect  which 
long  subjection  to  Grecian  monarchs  had  produced  on 
the  Jewish  nation.  He  went  so  far  as  to  assume  the 
Greek  name  of  Jason,  and  headed  a  numerous  party  of 
his  countrymen,  who  were  devoted  to  Greek  manners 
and  customs,  and  had  ac.quii'ed  a  sti'ong  taste  for  Greek 
literatiu'e  and  philosophy.  Received  with  favour  at  the 
Syrian  com-t.  and  knowdng  the  needy  condition  of  the 
king,  he  ofEerod  him  the  tempting  bribe  of  440  talents, 
if  he  would  secm-e  to  him  the  high  priesthood  in  the 
room  of  his  elder  brother. 

Antiochus  consented,  and  Onias  HI.  was  summoned 
to  Antioch,  and  kept  there  as  a  prisoner  at  large,  while 
Jason  returned  to  Jerusalem,  and  gave  liimself  up  to  the 
work  of  introducing  Greek  customs  among  the  people. 
To  such  an  extent  were  his  efforts  successful,  that  he 
was  enabled  not  merely  to  establish  a  gymnasium  iu  the 
Holy  City,  where  the  young  men  could  be  trained 
naked  in  athletic  exercises,  but  induced  his  countrymen 
in  many  instances  to  adopt  Greek  names  and  Greek 
di-esses;  while  even  the  priests  followed  his  example, 
"  despising  the  Temple  and  neglecting  the  sacrifices  "  to 
take  part  iu  the  games."  Not  content  mth  this,  he  even 
persuaded  many  of  the  Jews  to  accept  the  empty  honour 
of  being  em-oUed  as  citizens  of  Antioch,  and  actually 
sent  a  deputation  of   Jemsh  youths   with  offerings'^ 


8  Hence  his  title  o£  "  raiser  o£  taxes  "  (Dan.  xi.  20). 

5  Dan.  xi.  28. 

J"  Dan.  xi.  21.  "  Vir  ille  (Antiochus)  Athenas  pervenerat,  quum 
Seleucus  insidiis  Heliodori,  unins  ex  pui-puratis,  oppressus  incessit. 
Huuc  regnum  afifectantem  Eumenes  et  Attains  expulerunt,  indux- 
eruutque  iu  ejus  possessionem  Antiochum,  quern  sibi  hoc  tanto 
beneficio  devinctum  habere  magni  ajstimabant."    (Livy,  xli.  20.) 

"  2  Mace.  iv.  14;  Jos.,  Ant.  xii.  5,  §  1. 

r:  (Jeupow  (2  Mace.  iv.  19,  20). 


BETWEEN  THE  BOOKS. 


235 


from  the  Temple  of  Jehovah  to  the  festival  of  Hercules 
at  Tyi-e.  In  the  year  B.C.  172,Aiitiochus,  who  was  at 
Joppa,  paid  a  visit  to  Jerusalem,  where  he  was  re- 
ceived with  much  honour  and  rejoicing  by  Jason,  and 
retm-ncd  after  a  short  expetUtion  to  Phoenicia. 

For  throo  years  the  liigh  priest  continued  Ms  work  of 
corrupting  the  habits  and  manners  of  his  countrymen, 
and  then  found  liis  own  treacliery  to  Onias  III.  reeod 
upon  liimself.  His  brother,  Onias  IV.,  who  had  as- 
sumed the  Greek  same  of  Menelaus,  was  sent  by  him 
to  the  Syrian  court,  and  there  offered  Antiochus  300 
talents  a  year  more  than  Jason  had  paid  for  the 
office  of  high  priest.  The  Syi'ian  king  consented,  and, 
escorted  by  a  body  of  Syrian  troops,  Menelaus  expelled 
Jason,  who  fled  for  refuge  beyond  the  Jordan  into  the 
country  of  the  Ammonites. 

For  some  time  the  new  high  priest,  though  ho  owed 
his  appointment  to  bribery,  neglected  to  make  the 
stipulated  payment.  At  last  he  was  summoned  to  the 
Syrian  capital,  and  finding  that  the  money  must  be 
raised  in  some  way,  he  sent  instructions  to  his  brother 
Lysimachus,  whom  ho  had  left  behind  as  his  deputy  ■  at 
Jerusalem,  to  seize  some  of  the  golden  vessels  of  the 
Temple,  which  were  secretly  sold  at  Tyi'e,  and  the  deljt 
was  hquidated.  The  sacrilegious  sale,  however,  could 
not  be  concealed,  and  Onias  III.,  the  legitimate  higli 
priest,  now  a  prisoner  at  Autioeh,  severely  rebuked  the 
usm-per.  Enraged  at  the  reproof,  Menelaus  prevailed 
on  Andronicus,  the  deputy  of  Antiochus,  to  put  the 
aged  priest  to  death,  and  thus  added  murder  to  his 
other  crimes." 

Returning  to  Jerusalem,  he  provoked  general  dislike 
by  his  tyranny  and  rapacity.  Taking  advantage  of  this, 
Jason  suddenly  crossed  the  Jordan,  and  appeared  before 
Jerusalem  at  the  head  of  a  thousand  men.  Admitted 
within  the  walls,  he  drove  his  brother  into  the  citadel, 
and  put  many  of  the  Jews  to  death.3  FaUiiig,  however, 
to  seize  the  Temple  treasures,  he  retired  once  more 
beyond  the  Jordan,  and  '■  perished  in  a  strange  land."'' 
Meanwhile  Antiochus,  bent  on  reducing  Egypt,  had 
twice  invaded  that  country,  and  in  B.C.  170  had  subdued 
the  whole  of  it,  with  the  exception  of  Alexandria. 
He  was  besieging  this  city  when  news  arrived  of  the 
attack  of  Jason  on  Jerusalem,  and  the  rumour  was 
spread  abroad  that  all  Palestine  was  in  a  state  of  revolt. 
Filled  with  rage  at  this  intelligence,  ho  instantly 
marched  upon  Jerusalem,  and  having  effected  an 
entrance  into  the  city,  surrendered  it  for  tlirec  days  to 
the  licence  and  cruelties  of  his  soldiers.  Upwards  of 
forty  thousand  of  the  inhabitants  are  said  to  have  been 
slain,  and  as  many  sold  into  capti-vity.  Then,  under 
the  guidance  of  the  impious  Menelaus,  he  entered  the 
sanctuary,  and  a  general  pUlagc  ensued.  The  golden 
altar,  the  seven-branched  candlestick,  the  table  of 
shew-bread,  the  sacred  vessels — all  were  removed, 
together  with  1,800  talents  of  gold,  which  were  found 
in  the  subterranean  vaults.'^    He  next  ordered  a  great 


1  2  Mace.  iv.  29. 
■•  3  Maoc.  V.  9. 


°  2  Mace.  iv.  27—35. 

»  1  Maoo.'i.  20- 


3  3  Mace.  V.  G. 
-21. 


sow  to  be  offered  in  sacrifice  on  the  brazen  altar  of 
burnt-offering,  a  part  of  the  flesh  to  be  boUed,  and  the 
liquor  pom'ed  over  every  part  of  the  Temple.  Then, 
havuig  pi'ofaned  the  Sanctuary,  and  deluged  Jerusalem 
wtli  blood,  he  left  for  Antioch  with  an  enormous  booty 
and  a  large  train  of  captives,  ha\ang  once  more  handed 
over  the  administration  of  affairs  to  Menelaus,  aud 
nominated  PhUip,  a  Phrygian,  to  be  governor  of  the 
city,  a  man  of  a  more  savage  disposition  even  than 
himscH." 

Having  thus  replenished  his  exchequer,  Antiochus 
led  a  third  expedition  into  Egypt  in  the  year  B.C.  1(59, 
and  once  more  besieged  Alexaudiia.  But  the  cruelties 
lately  enacted  at  Jerusalem  had  raised  up  again.st  him 
even  more  relentless  enemies  than  the  Egyptians  them- 
selves. 

The  Jewish  quarter  at  Alexandria  numbered  a  f  uU 
half  of  the  entu-e  population.  Provoked  beyond  en- 
durance by  the  indignities  offered  to  their  fellow- 
countrymen  and  the  profanation  of  their  national 
sanctuary,  they  readily  assisted  the  Alexandrians  in  de- 
fending their  city,  and  once  more  they  succeeded  in  com- 
peUiug  the  king  to  raise  the  siege.  This  second  repulse, 
however,  did  not  daunt  the  determination  of  Antiochus, 
and  he  apjieared  before  the  walls  again  in  B.C.  168, 
resolved  to  reduce  the  place  to  subjection.  But  on  this 
occasion  he  was  confronted  by  ambassadors  from  the 
Roman  republic,  who  commanded  him  to  desist  from 
the  siege  and  to  quit  the  tei-ritory  of  the  Ptolemies,  who 
were  allies  of  Rome.' 

Not  daring  to  resist,  Antiochus  broke  up  the  siege, 
and  returned  towards  his  own  dominions.  Unfor- 
tunately for  its  inhabitants,  Jerusalem  lay  in  the 
track  of  his  retiu-n.  Accordiugly  he  detached  ApoUo- 
nius  vnth  a  force  of  22,000  men,  with  directions  to 
occupy  the  city,  and  leave  in  it  a  permanent  Syrian 
garrison.  Having  been  collector  of  the  tribute  through- 
out Judsea,  Apollouius  found  no  difficulty  iu  effecting 
an  entrance,  and  on  the  first  sabbath  afterwards  sud- 
denly let  loose  his  soldiers  on  the  unsuspecting  inhabi- 
tants, cliarging  them  to  slay  all  the  men  they  met,  to 
make  slaves  of  the  women  and  children,  and  to  throw 
down  the  city  walls.^ 

His  commands  were  carried  out  to  the  letter.  The 
streets  of  the  city  and  the  courts  of  the  Temple  ran 
with  blood ;  the  walls  were  destroyed,  the  houses 
plundered,  and  a  Syr'ian  garrison  took  up  its  quarters 
in  the  ancient  "  city  of  David,"  the  famous  liill  of  Zion, 
which  overlooked  the  Temple,  aud  commanded  the 
approaches  to  it.'  The  Jews  were  nuable  to  offer  the 
accustomed  sacrifice,  and  the  daily  offering  ceased  iu  the 
month  of  Sivan,  B.C.  167.  Jerusalem  was  now  deserted; 
her  people  fled  in  aU  directions ;  "  her  sanctuary  was 
laid  waste  like  a  wilderness,  her  feasts  were  turned 
into  mourning,  her  sabbaths  into  reproach,  her  honour 
into  contempt."'" 


6  1  Maoo.  i.  24—28 ;  2  Maoo.  v.  22. 

'  For  the  details  of  tlie  interview,  see  Livy  xlv.  10. 

s  2  Mncc.  V.  24—26. 

'J  1  Maoc.  i.  33;  Jos,,  ^iit.  xii.  5,  §  4  (note).       '"  1  Mace.  i.  39. 


236 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


But  the  persecution  did  not  end  liere.  Antiochus 
now  issued  an  edict  to  compol  uniformity  of  worship 
througliout  his  dominions,  and  a  commissioner  named 
Athenffius  arrived  with  instructions  to  enforce  com- 
pliance. He  first  re-consecrated  the  Temple  in  honour 
of  Zeus  Olympius ;'  erected  on  the  brazen  altar  of  burnt- 
offering  another  in  honour  of  that  god,  and  offered 
swine's  flesli  upon  it;  and  introduced  heathen  orgies 
with  aU  their  licentious  accompaniments.  Wlien  he 
had  thus  "  set  up  the  abomination  of  desolation  upon 
the  altar, "^  he  passed  an  edict  making  the  observance 
of  any  particular  of  tlie  law  of  Moses  a  capital  offence. 
Not  only  were  the  people  forbidden  to  keep  the 
Sabbath,  or  read  the  law,  or  practise  circumcision,  but 
every  copy  of  the  sacred  books  that  could  be  dis- 
covered was  seized,  and  either  torn  to  pieces  or  burnt. 
At  the  same  time,  to  the  horror  of  all  stricter  Jews, 
groves   were    consecrated,   heathen    altars    erected   in 

'  2  Mace.  »i.  2. 

2  1  Mace.  i.  54;   comp.  Don.  xi.  31. 


every  city,  and  every  month  the  people  were  ordered 
to  celebrate  the  birthday  of  the  king  with  sacrifices 
and  festivals.  Moreover,  they  were  forbidden  to  keep 
the  Feast  of  Tabernacles.  In  its  place  they  were 
to  celebrate  the  heathen  feast  of  the  Bacchanalia,  to 
wear  ivy  wreaths  in  honour  of  the  god  of  wine, 
and  observe  his  festival  with  joyous  processions.^  All 
who  refused  to  conform  to  the  orders  of  the  tyrant 
suffered  the  most  terrible  tortm-es.  Two  women,  who 
had  ventured  to  circumcise  their  childi-en,  were  dragged 
round  the  streets  of  Jerusalem  with  their  babes  hang- 
ing at  their  breasts,  and  then  were  cast  down  the 
battlements  into  the  deep  valley  below  the  walls  of  the 
city.  An  aged  man,  named  Eleazar,  one  of  the  chiefs 
of  the  scribes,  refused  to  eat  smne's  flesh.  For  this 
offence  he  was  beaten  to  death,  while  a  mother  and 
her  seven  sons,  who  in  like  manner  had  declined  to 
comply,  were  executed  with  i-evolting  baxbarities.'" 

3  2  Mace.  vi.  3—7. 

4  1  Mace,  i   CO— 63 ;  2  Mace,  vi.,  vii. 


ETHNOLOGY    OF    THE    BIBLE 

PALESTINE  :— (2)  ORIGIN    OF    ISRAEL  (contmued). 
BY    THE    KEV.    WILLIAM    LEE,    D.D.,    EOXBDBGH. 


II. — LINEAGE. 
'HE  Israelites  as  a  nation— almost  as  indi- 
viduals— were  descended  from  a  .single 
race,  the  race  of  Shem,  and  from  a  single 
Semitic  family,  nay,  from  a  single  mem- 
ber of  that  family.  Abraham  is,  iu  the  Bible,  always 
recognised  not  only  as  the  founder  of  the  nation,  but  as 
the  common  ancestor  of  the  people  of  Israel. 

I.  It  is  not  the  case,  certainly,  that  there  was  in  that 
people  no  admixture  whatever  of  non-Abrahamic,  or 
even  of  non-Semitic  races  ;  nor  is  there  any  claim  made 
by  the  inspired  historians  of  the  seed  of  Abraham  to  an 
absolute  purity  of  blood  on  their  part :  as  if  it  were  a 
point  of  capital  importance  to  exclude  the  notion  that 
alien  races  were  ever,  under  any  conditions,  suffered  to 
intrude  themselves  into  the  sacred  line  of  the  Peculiar 
People  of  God.  It  is  evident,  even  from  the  genealogies, 
that  foreigners  were  in  fact  occasionally  admitted,  not 
only  to  citizenship,  but  as,  in  every  respect,  members  of 
the  Theocracy.' 

A  curious  but  doubtful  indication  of  one  possible 
source  of  foreign  admixture  is  found  in  the  history  of 
the  Exodus  itself.  In  Exod.  xii.  38,  we  are  told  that 
when,  after  the  destruction  of  the  first-born  of  the 
Egyptians,  the  Israelites  loft  Rameses  for  Succoth,  "  a 
mixed  multitude  also  went  up  witli  them."  More  than 
a  year  afterwards  we  find  the  same  "  mixed  multi- 
tude "  in  the  wilderness  of  Sinai,  still  accompanying  the 
people  of  Israel  in  their  route  (Numb.  xi.  4).     And  in  a 


I  As  to  the  phrase,  "  An  Hebrew  of  the  Hebrews,"  cf.  Lightf  oot, 
PhUippiaTis,  145  j  Trench,  New  Testament  Stjnonyms,  131. 


passage  in  Josh.  viii.  35,  refeiTing  to  the  times  of  the 
conquest  (cf.  Knobel,  Handbtich  zum  Alien  Test,  i. 
121),  they  seem  again  to  be  alluded  to.  From  all  these 
data  it  may  at  least  bo  infeiTed  that  a  considerable 
body  of  foreigners,  probably  in  pai-t  Egyptians  (Lev. 
xxiv.  10),  had  availed  themselves  of  the  Exodus  to  leave 
Egypt  >vith  the  Israelites,  and  had  afterwards  cast  in 
their  lot  mth  them,  forming  from  the  first  commence- 
ment of  the  history  of  Israel  as  a  nation  a  part  of  those 
"  strangers  in  the  land"  who  are  so  often  referred  to 
in  the  legislation  of  Moses.  How  far,  however,  this 
"  mixed  multitude "  was  ever  incorporated  with  the 
Israelites,  does  not  appear. 

But  there  were  provisions  made  in  the  Mosaic  law 
itself  for  the  naturalisation  of  foreigners.  It  appears 
probable  (MichaeHs,  Laws  of  Moses,  §  139)  that  who- 
ever wished  to  become  an  Israelite  was  required  to  con- 
form to  the  religious  institutions  of  the  country.  There 
were  also  other  conditions.  But,  except  in  the  case  of  the 
Moabites  and  Ammonites,  and  in  their  case  on  special 
grounds  (Deut.  xxiii.  3),  no  alien  by  birth  was  wholly 
precluded  from  obtaining  admission  to  the  privileges  of 
citizensliip.  By  an  express  law,  Edomites  and  Egyptians 
were  permitted  to  "enter  into  the  congregation  of  the 
Lord  "?»f/ic  third  generation  (Deut.  xxiii. 8).  In  Uriah 
"the  Hittite  "  we  have  a  well-known  instance  of  a  fully- 
naturalised  Israelite,  who  was  of  Cauaauitish  descent 
(2  Sam.  xxiii.  39). 

Then,  as  to  intermarriages  with  foreigners,  such 
unions,  though  they  were  in  most  periods  of  the  history 
of  the  nation  very  rare,  and  though  they  were  opposed 
to  public  feeling  (Numb.  xii.  1 ).  especially  in  later  times 


ETHNOLOGY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


237 


(Ezra  ix.  3 ;  Jos.,  Antiq.  xi.  8,  §  2  ;  xii.  4,  §  6  ;  Tac,  Hisi. 
V.  5),  having  been  found  by  experience  to  be  full  of 
danger  to  the  purity  of  the  national  faitli  (1  Kings  xi.  4; 
xvi.  31),  were,  except  in  the  case  of  the  Canaanites, 
permissible  by  law,  and  are  known  to  have  at  least 
occasionally  occurred — even  apart  from  the  limitation 
just  referred  to — in  all  periods  of  the  Jewish  history. 
The  practice,  indeed,  was  countenanced  by  men  of  the 
highest  character  and  position  in  Israel.  For  Isaac  and 
Jacob  care  was  taken  to  provide  wives  of  then-  own 
kindred  (Gen.  xxiv. ;  xxviii.);  but  of  the  twelve  sons  of 
the  latter,  two  married  foreigners — Judah,  a  Canaanito 
woman  named  Shua;  and  Joseph,  Asenath,  an  Egyptian, 
the  daughter  of  Potipherah,  priest  of  On  (1  Chron.  ii.  3 ; 
Gen.  xlvi.  20).  Moses  himself  married  first  a  Midianite 
(Exod.  ii.  21),  and  afterwards  a  Cushite  or  Ethiopian 
wife  (Numb.  xii.  1).  Nor  was  it  only  on  the  one  side 
that  alliances  with  non-Israelites  thus  took  place.  In 
at  least  three  cases  we  read  of  Israelite  women  who 
wore  married  to  men  of  alien  race — in  one,  the  husband 
being  an  Egyptian ;  in  another,  an  Ishmaelite ;  in  a 
third,  a  native  of  Tyre  (Lev.  xxiv.  10;  1  Chron.  ii. 
17;  1  Kings  vii.  14).  In  the  times  of  the  Judges 
mixed  marriages  became  comparatively  common.  The 
children  of  Israel  in  those  times  "  dwelt  among  the 
Canaanites,  the  Hittites,  the  Amorites,  the  Perizzites, 
the  Hivites,  and  the  Jebusites  ;  "  and  "  they  took  then- 
daughters  to  bo  their  wives,  and  gave  their  daughters 
to  their  sons  "  (Judg.  iii.  5,  6).  After  the  return  from 
the  Captivity,  so  many  of  the  Jews,  including  even  their 
princes  and  rulers,  entered  into  maniage  with  the 
mixed  foreign  population  with  which  the  land  seems 
then  to  have  been  filled,  that  it  was  found  necessary  to 
take  the  most  severe  measures  to  avert  the  danger  thus 
threatened  to  the  integiity  as  well  as  the  faith  of  the 
nation  (Ezra  ix. ;  x.). 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  even  among  the  direct 
ancestors,  "  as  concerning  the  flesh,"  of  om-  blessed  Lord 
himself,  are  found  at  least  two  women  of  non-Israelite 
birth— Rahab,  at  whose  house  in  Jericho  Joshua's  spies 
were  hidden,  and  who  afterwards  married  Salmon ; 
and  her  daughter-in-law  Ruth,  the  wife  of  Boaz,  and 
grandmother  of  Jesse.  That  the  fact  was  significant 
is  the  more  probable,  because  in  St.  Matthew's  Gospel 
these  two  names — the  only  female  names  (except  Thamar 
and  Bathsheba)  thus  houom-ed — are  carefidly  preserved 
in  the  genealogy  of  our  Lord.  The  latter  case  is  espe- 
cially noteworthy.  There  are,  indeed,  no  more  striking 
illustrations  of  the  state  of  the  country  generally,  under 
the  Judges,  than  in  the  history  of  Ruth.  One  of  the 
periodical  famines  to  which  Palestine  was  subject  had 
compelled  a  certain  man  of  Bethlchem-judah  to  emigi'ate 
with  his  wife  and  two  sons  into  the  laud  of  Moab. 
"  The  name  of  the  man  was  Elimelech,  and  the  name  of 
his  wife  Naomi."  Elimelech  died,  and  his  sons  took  them 
wives  of  the  daughters  of  Moab — the  name  of  the  one 
Orpah,  of  the  other  Ruth — and  after  ten  years  died 
also.  When  the  family  was  thus  broken  up,  Naomi 
resolved  to  return  to  the  land  of  Israel,  the  rather 
because  she  heard  that  the  laud  again  enjoyed  its  cus- 


tomary plenty,  "  the  Lord  having  visited  his  people  in 
giving  them  bread."  Though  she  urged  her  daughters- 
in-law  to  remain  in  their  own  country,  saying,  "  Go, 
return  each  to  her  mother's  house  ;  the  Lord  deal  kindly 
with  you,  as  ye  have  dealt  with  the  dead  and  with  me," 
one  of  them  preferred  to  accompany  her  to  the  home 
from  which  she  had  been  so  long  absent.  Orpah  "went 
back  to  her  people  and  unto  her  gods ; "  but  Ruth  said, 
"  Intrcat  me  not  to  leave  thee  .  .  .  for  whither  thou 
goest,  I  will  go  ;  and  where  thou  lodgest,  I  vrill  lodge ; 
thy  people  .shall  be  my  people,  and  thy  God  my  God : 
where  thou  diest,  I  will  tlie,  and  there  will  I  be  bmied. 
The  Lord  do  so  to  me,  and  more  also,  if  ought  but 
death  part  thee  and  me.  ...  So  Naomi,"  it  is  added, 
"  returned,  and  Ruth  the  Moabitess,  her  daughter-in- 
law,  with  her,  out  of  the  country  of  Moab,  and  came  to 
Betldehem  "  (Ruth  i.  1 — 22).  It  is  needless  to  pursue 
the  history  further  than  to  recall  the  fact,  that,  in  Beth- 
lehem, Ruth  "the  Moabitess"  mado  a  second  marriage 
by  espousing  Boaz,  "  a  mighty  man  of  wealth  of  the 
family  of  Elimelech,"  and  became  "the  mother  of  Obed, 
the  father  of  Jesse,  the  father  of  David,"  and  therefore 
a  progenitor  of  Him  who  was  at  once  David's  Son  and 
David's  Lord. 

Though,  however,  such  exceptions  to  the  rule  oc- 
curred— occurred,  perhaps,  on  purpose  to  show  the 
Israelites  that  any  virtue  found  among  the  Chosen  Race 
was  due,  not  to  hereditary  qualities,  but  to  the  favour 
of  God ;  and  also,  perhaps,  to  prepare  their  minds  for 
the  eventual  admission,  without  restiictipn,  of  men  of 
every  nation  to  all  the  privileges  of  the  people  of  God — 
the  rule  was  as  already  stated.  One  of  the  most  remark- 
able facts  indeed,  in  connection  .with  the  history  of 
Israel,  is  the  evidence  it  affords  of  the  homogeneity  of 
that  people  from  first  to  last.  How  far  this  charac- 
teristic of  the  nation  was  in  itself  favourable  to  their 
national  progress  upon  the  whole,  is  another  question. 
The  presumption  is  that,  whatever  important  ends  it 
may  have  been  designed  to  serve,  it  was,  in  its  own 
nature,  an  element  of  weakness.  As  a  rule,  the  peoples 
who  have  presented  the  highest  types  of  humanity, 
both  physically  and  intellectually,  who  have  attained 
to  the  greatest  worldly  glory,  and  who  have  exercised 
the  most  important  influence  in  relation  to  the  progi-ess 
of  cirilisation  throughout  the  world,  are,  it  is  generally 
agreed  (Prichard,  Besearches,  i.  149) — nor  is  the  prin- 
ciple unrecognised  in  sacred  history  (Gen.  vi.  4) — those 
in  whom,  as  with  the  Romans  (see  Tacitus,  Ann.  xi.  24), 
there  has  been  a  large  admixture  of  distinct  races.  And 
probably  we  have  here  one  cause,  not  only  of  the  failure 
of  the  Jews — as  far  as  they  did  fail — to  distinguish 
themselves  to  the  same  extent  as  many  other  nations. 
otheiTvise  less  highly  favoured,  in  the  arts,  in  science, 
in  literature,  and  in  arms,  but  of  some  of  the  more  con- 
spicuous defects  of  their  national  cliaracter,  especially 
their  nan-owness  of  spirit.  It  is  of  the  fact,  however, 
that  wo  here  alone  speak,  and  of  that  there  can  hardly 
be  any  question.  "  We  bo  Abraham's  seed,"  was  a 
boast  which,  with  little  qualification,  could  be  made  by 
almost  every  member  of  the  commonwealth  of  I.srael. 


238 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


By  the  hypothesis  of  Ewald  as  to  the  origin  of  the 
nation,  a  very  different  conclusion  would  be  necessary. 
He  supposes  that  Abraham  and  Jacob,  as  far  as  they 
are  to  be  regarded  as  historical  persons  at  aU,  were 
merely  leaders  of  successive  and  more  or  less  extensive 
migrations  'into  Canaan  from  beyond  the  Euphrates ; 
and  that  Jacob's  twelve  sons,  also,  were  in  truth  not, 
as  the  Bible  describes  them,  "  one  man's  sons  "  (Gen. 
xlii.  11),  but  types  of  various  distinct  tribes,  who, 
mingling  with  the  older  Hebraic  immigi-ants,  formed 
the  nation  which  was  afterwards  known  as  Israel  (Hist, 
of  Israel,  i.  -362,  381  sq.).  But  tliis  liypothesis  is  not 
only  without  basis  in  any  known  facts,  but  proceeds  on 
principles  of  Biblical  uiterpretation  which  are  wholly 
inadmissible  except  at  the  expense  of  our  faith  in  the 
authenticity  of  the  Biblical  histoiy. 

II.  What  was  the  character — ^physical,  intellectual, 
and  religious — of  the  people  from  whom  Abraham  him- 
self, and  through  him  the  Israelites,  thus  traced  their 
descent  ? 

The  great  progenitor  of  Israel  was  the  member  of  a 
tribe  which,  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  term,  belonged  to 
one  of  the  races  now  known  as  Semitic.     The  "  Semitic  " 
races  are  not  so  called  because  ui  every  case  they  were 
exclusively  descended  from  the  first-born  (Gen.  x.  21  ; 
cf.  RosenmiiUer  and  Kuobel  in  loo.)  of    Noah.     The 
name  is  generally  used  to   designate  the  Syro- Arabic 
nations  as  a  whole,  and  is  so  used  in  the  Bible  itself. 
In  the  tables  of  Gen.  x.,  which  we  have  already  found 
to  be  rather  ethnological  than   genealogical  tables,  the 
children  of  Shem  are  "  Elara,  and  Asshur,  and  Arphaxad, 
and  Lud,  and  Aram  " — names  which,  as  far  as  they  can 
be  identified,  appear  to  represent — (1)  the  Elamites  of 
Susiana;   (2)  the  Assyrians;    (3)  the  Chaldaeaus,  with 
their  offshoots  the  Hebrews  and  the  Arabians ;  (4)  the 
Lydians;  and  (5)  the  Syiiaus,  iacludiug  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Upper  Mesopotamia,    Syria  Proper,  of  which 
Damascus  was  the  capital,    and  the   region  in  which 
was  eventually  formed  the  kingdom  of  Palmyra.     In 
other  words,   the  Semitic  races   include  the   whole  of 
the  peoples  who  occupied  the  countries  extending  from 
Upper  Mesopotamia   to   the   southern   extremities   of 
Ai-abia,  and  from  the    borders  of  the    MediteiTauean 
Sea  to  the  country  beyond  the  Tigris  (Lenormant,  Anc. 
Hist.,  i.  59).     Though  to  a  gi-eat  extent  peoples  of  mixed 
descent,  embracing  descendants  not  only  of  Shem,  but 
also  of  Ham  and  Japheth,  the  populations  of  this  com- 
paratively  narrow   territory  were    distinguished  by   a 
common  ethnical  character,  as  by  a  common  type  of 
religious  belief  and  worship,  and  the  possession  of —in 
its  elementary  principles — a  common  language.     That 
the  descendants  of  Shem  must  hara  originally  prepon- 
derated, and  always  formed  an  important  element  in 
the  population   of  the  whole  territory,  or  at  least  in 
some  way  must  have  given   its   distinctive    character 
to  this  population,  the  statements  of   Genesis  do  not 
permit  us  to  doubt. 

The  character  of  the  races  from  which,  through 
Abraham,  the  Israelites  were  thus  derived,  is  of  tlw 
more  interest  to  us  because  the  permanence  of  native 


qualities,  no  less  than  of  customs  and  manners,  among 
all  Eastern  peoples,  is  proverbial.  Professor  Rawlinson 
has  noticed  "the  striking  resemblance  to  the  Jewish 
physiognomy  [as  familiar  to  us  in  the  Jews  of  the 
present  day]  which  is  presented  by  the  sculptured 
effigies  of  the  Assyrians"  {Ane.  Mon.,  i.  297).  And 
other  as  well  as  more  important  illustrations  of  the 
perpetuation  among  the  Israehtes  of  equalities  derived 
from  the  original  Syro- Arabic  races  of  which  they  are 
scions,  might  easily  be  multiplied. 

(1.)  The  2->hysical  characteristics  of  the  Semites  are 
to  be  learned  partly  from  history,  partly  from  the  sculp- 
tures on  the  Assyrian  and  Babylonian  moniunents,  and 
pai-tly — for  these  races  have  existing  representatives,  of 
whom,  to  say  nothing  of  the  Jews,  the  Arabs  are,  on 
many  accounts,  the  most  important — from  the  reports 
of  Eastern   travellers.     The   correspondence   between 
the  Jews  of  the  present  day  and  the  ancient  Assyrians 
as  regards  physiognomy   has   just  been  noticed.      A 
family  likeness  m  all  physical  qualities  may,  as  far  as 
our  materials  go,  be  traced  among  the  whole  peoples  of 
Semitic  origin.     Speaking  of  the  vaiious  nations  which 
alike  pass  under  the  name  of  Araliians,  M.   Chateau- 
briand  describes   them  from  personal  obsei-vation    as 
characterised  by  the  same  traits.    "  "VVlierever,"  he  says, 
"  I  have  seen  them     .     .     .     they  have   struck  me  as 
rather  taU  than  short  in  statm-e ;    they  are  well  made 
and  slightly  buUt ;  the  head  is  oval,  the  bi'ow  high  and 
arched;  the  nose  aquiliue;  the  eyes  large  and  almond- 
.shaped;   the  look  melting  and   fidl  of   sweetness  (le 
regard  humide  et   singidierement   dons") "   {Itineraire, 
quoted  by  Prichard,  Besearches,  ii.  5881.     According 
to  Professor  Bawhnson,  Chateaubiuand's  portrait  of  the 
Bedouin  in  this  passage  presents  traits  which  "  are  for 
the  most  pai-t  common  to  the  Semitic  race  generally," 
being  "  seen  now  alike  in  the  Aral),  the  Jew,  and  tho 
Chaldaean  of  Kurdistan ;  while,  anciently,  they  not  only 
cliaracterised  the  Assyrians,    but    probably   belonged 
also  to  the  Phceuicians,  the  Syi'ians,  and  other  minor 
Semitic  races  "  {Aiic.  Mon.,  i.  298).     As  in  other  races, 
there  were,  of  coiu'se,  in  details  consideralile  variations  in 
the  physical  character  of  the  Semites.     On  this  subject 
tho  reader  may  be  referred  to  the  second   volume  of 
Vrich^rd's Researches  on  the  Races  of  ManMnd,  where 
extracts  from  all  the  different  authorities  will  be  foimd. 
Even  among  the  Arabs  the  complexion  of  the  people 
"  displays   gi-eat  diversities  in    the  different  countries 
inliabited   by  them "   (Researches,  ii.    597),   from  the 
sicldy  yellow  hue  of  tho  Arabs  near  Muscat  to  the  jet 
black  of  those  of  tlio  low  countries  of  the  Nile  bordering 
on  Nubia.     The  dark  hair  and  eyes  of  perhaps  the  most 
of  the  races  are,  in  some  countries  or  iudiWduals,  inter- 
changed for  fair,  sometimes  red,  hair,  and  blue  eyes — a 
distinction  also  found  among  the  Jews.     Spare  forms 
and  short  stature  characterise  seme  of  these  peoples ; 
while  others  are,  as  a  rule,  above  the  average  height, 
and  are   remarkable   for  physical    power  and   strong 
muscular  development  (Researches,  ii.  599,  sq.l. 

(2.)  InfellectuaUy,  the  same  authority  assigns  to  the 
Semitic  races  a  very  high  position,  on  this  point  differ- 


ETHNOLOGY   OP  THE   BIBLE. 


239 


ing  widely  from  M.  Renan  (see  Histoire  cles  Lang-ues 
Semitiqucs,  i.  4,  sq.).  "  The  intellectual  powers  of  the 
Syro- Arabian  people,"  Dr.  Prichard  says,  "  have  in  all 
ages  equalled  the  highest  standard  of  the  human 
faculties  "  (Researches,  ii.  548).  Mr.  Layard  attribxates 
to  them  "brilliancy  of  imagination  and  readiness  of  con- 
ception "  as  their  more  prominent  intellectual  gifts, 
adding, however,  that  "these  high  qualities,  which  seem 
to  be  innate  in  them,  they  have  taken  no  pains  to  culti- 
vate or  improve"  (Nineveh,  ii.  239;  cf.  PalgTave, 
Arabia,  i.  175).  Ref  ei-ence  has  been  made  to  the  views 
adopted  by  M.  Renan  as  to  the  intellectual  character 
of  the  Semites.  The  views  of  this  learned  author  are 
the  less  to  be  relied  on,  that  they  are  brought  forward  in 
connection  with  a  tlieory — of  which  some  notice  will  bo 
taken  immediately — as  to  the  religious  history  of  these 
peoples ;  and  tliey  have,  m  fact,  been  generally  regarded 
by  critics  most  familiar  with  the  subject  as  of  Uttlo 
value.  He  claims  to  have  been  the  first  to  recognise 
the  fact,  that  the  Semitic  race,  compared  to  the  ludo- 
Eui'ojioans,  represent  in  truth  "  an  inferior  combination 
of  human  nature."  They  were,  he  says,  deficient  in 
scientific  and  philosophical  originality,  had  no  talent 
for  political  organisation ;  with  a  genius  for  some  forms 
of  poetry,  the  range  of  their  imaginative  powers,  both 
in  form  and  expression,  was  extremely  limited;  and 
upon  the  whole  intensity  rather  than  comprehensiveness 
of  mind  was  the  leading  characteristic  of  aU  these  races 
(Histoire  des  Langues  Semiiiques,  i.  4 — 17). 

(3.)  Of  then-  ethical  characteristics  it  is  even  more 
difScidt  to  speak.  If  we  were  in  this  respect  to 
judge  of  these  races  generally,  throughout  aU  periods 
of  their  histoiy,  from  such  specimens  as  are  furnished 
in  "the  godless,  grasping,  foul-mouthed  Arabs  of  the 
modern  desert,"  we  should  doubtless  not  only  do  gi'oss 
injustice,  as  Dean  Stauley  has  noticed  (Jervish  Church, 
1st  series,  12),  to  the  Israelites,  but  to  the  whole 
family  of  nations  of  the  same  original  stock.  It  is 
not  necessary,  certainly,  in  the  interests  of  our  faith, 
to  prove  that  no  gi-oss  moral  obliquities  were  found 
in  the  Semitic  character,  even  as  illustrated  iu  that 
pai-ticidar  nation  which  was  selected  to  become  the 
"  peculiar"  People  of  God.  It  is  from  the  Bible  itself, 
and  from  the  history  in  the  Bible  of  those  men  who 
became  the  most  remarkable  instruments  in  the  intro- 
duction of  the  purest  ethical  system  ever  known,  that 
we  have  disclosed  to  us  some  of  the  darkest  traits  in 
the  natural  disposition  of  these  races.  And  the  less 
hopeful  the  materials  through  which  the  great  work 
assigned  to  the  Chosen  Seed  was  accomplished,  the 
more  must  tho  result  tend  to  the  glory  of  God.  Even 
by  natm-e  the  Semites,  however,  were  doubtless  no  more 
corrupt  in  moral  principle  than  other  men.. '  Possibly  a 
tuna  for  duplicity  and  dissimulation  may  have  been  a 
distinctive  feature  of  the  Semites.  It  must '  not  be 
forgotten,  however,  that  there  is  evidence  of  the  greatest 
possible  diversity  of  character  amongst  them.  This  is 
seen  even  in  the  family  of  Abraham.  Isaac  and  Ishmael, 
Jacob  and  Esau,  and  the  twelve  sons  of  Jacob,  were 
men  remarkable  not  so  much  for  the  resemblances  as 


for  the  strong  contrasts  in  whatever  constitutes  the 
ethical  qualities  of  mankind  by  which  they  were,  iu 
fact,  distinguished. 

(4.)  Before  leaving  the  subject  of  the  native  charac- 
teristics of  the  races  from  which  the  Israelites  were 
derived,  a  few  words  mu.st  be  said  as  to  then-  religious 
tendencies.  A  native  superiority  lias  sometimes  been 
attributed  to  these  races  in  respect  of  those  facidties,  or 
powers,  or  intuitions  of  the  human  mind  which  have 
relation  to  spiritual  or  religious  truth.  Even  Dr. 
Prichard,  after  referring  to  tho  fact,  that  "the  three 
great  systems  of  theism  which  liave  di^dded  the  civilised 
world  came  forth  from  nations  of  Semitic  origin,"  says, 
"The  Semite  people  alone  appear  to  have  possessed 
sufficient  power  of  abstraction  to  conceive  the  idea  of  a 
pure  and  immaterial  nature,  and  of  a  governing  miud 
distinct  from  body  "  (Researches,  ii.  548).  But  it  is  by 
M.  Renan,  in  the  work  already  referred  to,  that  tho 
supposed  possession  by  the  Semitic  races  of  natural 
advantages  in  this  respect  over  the  rest  of  the  world 
has  been  set  forth  most  elaborately  and  with  the  gTeatest 
fulness  and  precision  of  statement.  His  position  is, 
that  not  so  much  by  any  superiority  of  intellect  upon 
the  whole,  or  by  any  depth  of  reflection,  or  force  of 
reasoning  beyond  other  races,  as  by  what  he  calls  a  higher 
instinct  than  was  given  to  mankind  generally,  a  special 
sense,  an  unfaltering  intuition  peculiar  to  themselves,  but 
at  all  events  by  native  powers  possessed  by  them  alone, 
the  Semitic  peoples  generally,  not  excepting  the  Jews,  but 
including  also  aH  the  other  Syi'o- Arabic  nations,  were 
enabled  to  find  out  for  themselves  that  which  he  holds 
to  be  the  fundamental  doctrme  of  true  religion — namely, 
the  unity  of  God ;  that  they  had  a  monotheistic  instinct ; 
and,  indeed,  that  monotheism  was  the  leading  charac- 
teristic of  the  race,  from  the  very  commencement  of 
tlieir  history  {Le  Monotheisme  resume  et  explique  tons 
les  caracteres  de  la  race  Si'miiique).  "  It  is,"  he  says, 
"  tho  glory  of  this  race  that  they  attained  from  theii- 
earliest  times  (des  ses  premiers  jours)  the  conception  of 
the  Godhead  which  all  other  peoples  ought  to  adopt 
after  their  example  and  through  faith  in  their  teach- 
ing. They  never  conceived  the  government  of  the  world 
but  as  au  absolute  monai-chy;  their  theology  has  not 
advanced  a  step  since  tho  time  of  Job ;  the  sublimities 
and  the  aberrations  of  polytheism  have  always  continued 
to  be  alien  to  them  "  (Histoire  Generale,  i.  6,  sq.). 

For  an  examination  of  the  groimds  on  which  this 
hypothesis  professedly  rests,  and  an  exposure  of  its 
entire  variance  with  the  facts  of  the  case,  the  reader 
must  be  referred  to  a  masterly  essay  in  Prof.  Max 
Midler's  Chips  from  a  German  Workshop  (vol.  i.,  p.  341). 
M.  Renan's  object,  of  course,  is  to  account  on  natural- 
istic principles  for  the  great  part  in  the  religious  history 
of  manldnd  assigned  to  the  people  of  Israel ;  and  to 
dispense  with  the  necessity  for  that  supernatural  revela- 
tion, made  to  and  by  means  of  that  "  peciiliar  "  People 
of  God,  to  which  tho  Christian  world  is  accustomed  to 
attribute  tho  origin  of  the  true  faith,  whether  in  the 
elementai-y  form  in  which  it  appears  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, or  in  its  fuU  development  in  the  New.     How 


240 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


inadequate  it  is  for  such  a  purpose  on  the  whole  need 
iardly  bo  said.  For  the  fundamental  doctrine  of  the 
Christian  faith  is  not  monotheism,  but  Redemption. 
But  even  as  far  as  it  goes  it  is  at  variance  with  facts 
inown  to  all  the  world. 

As  to  the  Semitic  races  generally,  or  the  Syro-Arabic 
nations,  we  have  already  seen  how  far  wo  are  from  having 
in  their  history  any  evidence  of  a  monotheistic  instinct. 
Not  to  speak  at  present  of  the  seed  of  Abraham,  these 
races  were  very  much  like  the  rest  of  the  world.  They 
were  whoUy  given  up  to  idolatry,  often  to  idolatry  in 
its  most  corrupt  and  degrading  forms.  From  the  histoiy 
of  Job  and  that  of  Balaam,  as  well  as,  perhaps,  on  other 
oTOunds  (see  Palgravc,  Arabia,  i.  249),  it  appears  that 
partial  exceptions  wore  found  to  tliis  rule  among  some 
of  the  Arabic  peoples  (whoso  descent  from  Abraham 
and  connection  with  Israel  amply  accoimts  for  the 
exception).  But  as  to  the  general  fact  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  So  complete,  indeed,  is  the  evidence  against  the 
assumption  as  to  the  prevalence  of  monotheism  through- 
out Western  Asia  from  the  earliest  times,  that  thougli 
essential  to  his  argument,  M.  Renan  has,  in  a  second 
publication,  in  defence  of  his  original  thesis,  been  com- 
pelled, as  Professor  Max  MiiUer  points  out  {Chips,  i. 
346),  practically  to  abandon  it. 

Nor  If  we  confine  our  attention,  as  M.  Renan  some- 
times appears  wUUng  to  do  (Hist.  i.  6),  to  the  seed  of 
Abraham,  is  there  even  in  them  found  evidence  of  the 
"  instinct  superieur,"  the  "  sens  special  "  in  favom-  of 
monotheism  for  which  he  pleads.  If  the  true  faith  as 
to  the  unity  and  also  as  to  the  perfections  of  God  was 
found  among  this  branch  of  the  Semitic  peoples,  as  wo 
know  it  was,  that  faith  was  so  far  from  proceeding 
naturally  or  instinctively  from  the  people  themselves, 
that  it  appoiu-s  from  their  whole  history  to  have  been 
one  which  was  not  less,  but  perhaps  more,  alien  to  them 
by  natm-e  than  to  all  other  peoples  to  whom  it  has 
through  their  instrumentality  eventually  been  made 
known. 

In  regard  to  the  religious  tendencies  of  the  Semitic 
races,  it  may  indeed  upon  the  whole  be  said  that  no  real 
distinction  can  in  this  respect  be  foimd  between  them 
and  other  races  of  mankind. 

m.  In  connection  with  the  lineage  of  Israel  it  must 
be  noticed  how  many  of  the  nations  by  whom  that  people 
wore,  after  their  conquest  of  Canaan,  suiTOimded,  and 
with  whom,  especially  during  all  their  early  history, 
they  were  brought  most  in  contact,  were  of  near  affinity 
by  blood  to  themselves.  TIio  Moabites  and  Ammonites, 
"the  descendants  of  Lot,  Abraham's  nephew,  have  been 
already  mentioned.  There  is  some  difficulty  in  identi- 
fying the  men  of  the  land  of  Uz,  of  whom  the  patriarch 
Job  is  the  most  eminent  representative.  It  is  probable 
that  in  this  people,  as  well  as  in  the  Buzites.  represented 
in  the  history  of  the  patriarch  just  named  by  Elihu,  we 
find  descendants  of  two  of  the  sons  of  Nahor,  the 
brother  of  Abraham.  But  that,  in  addition  to  the 
Israelites,  there  were  several  peoples — indeed,  large  and 
important  nations — which  could  claim  direct  descent 
from  Abraham  hiraseU',  having  indeed  "  Abraham  to 


their  father  "  no  less  truly  than  the  Chosen  Race,  is  a 
fact  especially  worthy  of  our  attention. 

Little  more  can  here  be  attempted  than  to  enumerate 
the  non-Israelitish  Abrahamida3  now  referred  to.  (a) 
The  first  place  is,  of  coiu-se,  duo  to  the  Ishmaelites,  the 
children  of  that  son  of  Abraham  by  Hagar  the  Egyptian 
whose  name  they  long  continued  to  bear  (Judg.  viii. 
24 ;  Ps.  Ixxxiii.  6).  It  was  predicted  of  Ishmael  that, 
because  he  was  Abraham's  son,  God  would  make  of  him 
a  great  nation  (Gen.  xxi.  13,  18) ;  and  the  destiny  of  that 
nation  was  also  foreshown  :  "He  will  be  a  wild  man; 
his  hand  will  be  against  every  man,  and  evei-y  man's 
hand  against  him ;  and  he  shall  dwell  in  the  presence 
of  all  his  brethren  "  (Gen.  xvi.  12).  It  is  probable  that 
the  Ai-ab  peoples,  of  whom  the  Ishmaelites  became  an 
important  branch,  existed  long  before  the  days  of 
Ishmael.  There  is  indeed  every  reason  to  believe  that 
Arabia  was  originally  occupied  by  a  Cusliito  race,  and 
that,  at  a  period  long  antecedent  to  the  birth  of  Ishmael, 
tho  children  of  Joktan,  a  son  of  Eber,  the  grandson  of 
Shem,  had  also  formed  settlements  in  the  same  country. 
Nor  is  it  otherwise  than  probable  that  the  nomadic  and 
predatory  habits  of  the  Ishmaelites  characterised  "  the 
children  of  the  East"  from  the  earliest  times.  Although, 
however,  the  jirevalent  notion — a  notion  without  warrant 
in  Scripture — that  the  whole  Arab  nation  was  originally 
Ishmaelite,  and  liad  derived  at  once  its  existence  and 
its  more  distinctive  character  from  Ishmael,  must  be 
iliscarded,  it  is  certain  that  among  the  people  to  wliich 
the  son  of  Hagar  attached  himself,  and  whose  habits  he 
adopted,  liis  descendants  for  long  foi-med  one  of  the 
most  important,  and,  ultimately,  the  principal  nation. 
They  appear  to  have  chiefly  occupied  those  districts  of 
Arabia  which  lay  nearest  to  Palestine,  thus  dwelling 
"  in  the  pi-eseuce  of  thou-  brethren."  It  may  be  added 
that,  according  to  the  tables  of  Genesis  (xxv.  12),  they 
were  di^aded  into  several  distinct  tribes.  The  names 
of  the  twelve  sons  of  Ishmael  are  given  in  a  form 
(Gen.  xxv.  16)  which  proves  this  fact,  and  itself,  there- 
fore, indicates  how  soon  the  prediction  that  lie  would 
become  "  a  great  nation '"  must  have  been  accom- 
plished, (b)  Another  Ai'ab  people,  descended  like  the 
Ishmaelites  from  Abraham,  though  by  a  different 
mother,  is  found  iu  the  Midianites.  The  marriage  of 
Abraham  to  Keturah  proljably  took  place  in  the  life- 
time of  Sarah  (Gen.  xxv.  6) ;  and  of  this  imion  were 
born  six  sons — Zimram,  Jokshan,  Medan,  Midian, 
Ishbak,and  Shuah — all  of  whom  probably  became  heads 
of  separate  tribes.  Of  these  tribes,  always  excepting 
the  Midianites,  we  hariUy  know  anything.  A  descendant 
of  the  last  of  the  sons  of  Keturah  in  the  list,  Shua, 
appears  in  the  person  of  one  of  the  friends  of  Job 
(Job  ii.  11).  Tlio  whole  of  them  seem  to  have  been 
portioned  by  Abraham,  and  sent  forth  m  tho  Itfetuno 
of  their  father  to  seek  their  fortunes  in  '"the  cast 
country  "  (Gen.  xxv.  6)— a  phrase  variously  understood 
as  signifying  the  Arabian  desert  east  of  Palestine,  or 
the  whole  territory  of  Arabia.  But  in  regard  to  the 
Midianites  our  information  is  comparatively  complete. 
The  Midianites  occupied  a  prominent   position  in  the 


ETHNOLOGY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


241 


history  of  Moses,  who,  when  ho  fled  from  Egypt,  took 
up  his  residence  in  their  territories  and  married  the 
daughter  of  one  of  their  chiefs  (Exod.  ii.  15) ;  in  the 
history  of  the  conquest  of  the  trans- Jordanic  provinces 
(Numb.  xxii.  4;  xxv.  17;  xxxi.  2)  ;  and  in  the  history  of 
the  Judges,  but  especially  of  Gideon  (Judg.  vi.;  vii.), 
by  whom  their  power,  as  one  of  the  most  active  and 
bitter  of  the  early  enemies  of  Israel,  was  finally  broken. 
A  Tivid  picture  of  the  wealth  and  power  of  this  people 
in  the  time  of  Moses  is  fiu-nisbed  by  the  account  of  the 
spoil  taken  on  the  occa.sion  of  the  first  victory  gained 
by  Isriiel  over  Midian.  Besides  jewels,  and  gold  chains, 
bracelets,  rings,  c^ir-rings,  and  tablets,  of  which  "  the 
offering  to  the  Lord "  "  was  16,750  shekels,"  there 
were  675,000  sheep,  72,000  beeves,  and  61,000  asses 
(Numb.  xxxi.).  In  the  time  of  the  Judges,  though  from 
a  more  settled  and  pastoral  tribe,  the  Midianites  appear 
to  have  now  become  a  desert-horde,  living  chiefly  by 
phmder,  they  were  probably  in  number,  if  not  in  wealth, 
even  in  a  bettor  position  than  before  their  terrible  defeat 
by  the  armies  of  Moses.  "  They  came  up  "  to  the  land 
of  Israel,  it  is  said,  "  with  their  cattle  and  then-  tents ; 
and  they  came  as  grasshoppers  for  multitude  ;  for  both 
they  and  their  camels  were  without  number"  (Judg. 
vi.  5).  la  the  battle  of  Jezreel,  ah'eady  referred  to,  the 
army  of  Midian  consisted  of  no  fewer  than  about 
135,000  men  (Judg.  viii.  10).  Israel,  it  may  be  noted, 
suffered  not  more  from  their  open  acts  of  hostility  than 
from  tlieir  too  successful  attempts  (Numb.  xxv.  18)  to 
lead  them  astray  from  the  mjunctions  of  the  law  of 
Moses,  in  which  direction  it  is  supposed  their  influence 
was  the  more  powerful  and  effectual  in  consequence 
of  the  blood  relationship  between  the  two  peoples, 
through  their  common  descent  from  Abraham.  (c) 
The  Edomites  were  another  people  in  the  same  position. 
Isaac,  Abraham's  son  in  the  lino  of  the  Divine  promise, 
had  himself  twin  sons,  Esau  and  Jacob,  of  whom  we 
are  told  that,  even  before  their  birth,  God  "  loved  Jacob 
and  hated  Esau"  (Mai.  i.  2),  or  selected  the  one  and 
rejected  the  other  in  relation  to  the  .succession  of  the 
Chosen  Line.  Although,  however,  the  pecidiar  bless- 
ings of  the  Abrahamic  covenant  were  conferred  on 
Jacob,  Esau  found  that  for  him  also  a  great  destiny  was 
reserved.  "  Behold,"  he  was  told,  in  words  which 
obviously  looked  far  beyond  his  own  day,  "thy  dwelling 
shall  be  the  fatness  of  the  earth,  and  of  the  dew  of 
heaven  from  above  ;  and  by  thy  sword  shalt  thou  live, 
and  shalt  servo  thy  brother;  and  it  shall  come  to  pass 


when  thou  shalt  have  the  dominion,  that  thou  shalt 
break  his  yoke  from  off  thy  neck"  (Gen.  xxvii.  39,  40). 
Esau  himself,  in  the  lifetime  of  his  father,  migrated 
with  his  Canaanitish  wives  to  the  country  which  after- 
wards became  the  home  of  his  descendants.  This  was 
Mount  Seir,  a  mountainous  but  fertile  region  to  the 
soiith  of  Palestine  which  had  long  been  occupied  by  the 
Horites,  whose  territories  they  at  fii-st  shared,  but 
afterwards,  at  a  period  antecedent  to  the  Exodus,  took 
possession  of.  The  Horites  have  been  already  men- 
tioned as  Troglodytes ;  and  the  Edomites  now,  if  not 
before,  adopted  in  this  respect  their  habits.  That  tho 
caves  or  grottoes  cut  out  of  the  soft  sandstone  so 
common  in  that  region,  which  they  thus  made  their 
dwellings,  were  often  habitations  possessing  ample 
accommodation  and  not  without  architectural  beauty, 
is  proved  by  the  remains  of  the  remarkable  city  of 
Petra.  Their  history,  which  goes  down  to  the  period 
of  tho  destruction  of  Jerusalem  by  Titus  (Josephus, 
B.  J.,  iv.  1),  is  too  long  to  be  told  hero.  In  proof  of 
their  importance  as  a  people,  even  in  the  earliest  times, 
it  may  be  mentioned  that,  in  Gen.  xxxvi.  31,  a  list  of 
eight  kings  is  given  who  "reigned  in  the  land  of  Edom 
before  there  reigned  any  king  in  Israel."  It  was  long 
before  they  forgot,  if  they  ever  wholly  forgot,  their 
hereditary  enmity  to  the  Chosen  People.  Of  that 
enmity  we  find  traces  not  only  in  their  refusal  to  allow 
thoir  "  brother  Israel  "  (Numb.  xx.  1-4)  to  pass  through 
their  land  during  tho  wanderings  in  the  wilderness, 
though  the  request  was  made  under  circumstances  of 
the  utmost  urgency,  but  from  tho  terms  in  which  we 
find  them  denounced  by  the  later  prophets  (Isa.  xxxiv.  - 
5;  Ixiii.  3;  Ezek.  xxv.  13;  Amos  i.  11,  &c.).  The 
waxlike  character  of  Esau  was  likewise  perpetuated 
in  the  latest  of  his  descendants.  They  were  ultimately 
brought  into  close  alliance  with  their  ancient  foes.  But, 
according  to  Josephus  (B.  J.,  iv.  4)  the  children  of 
Israel  found  reason  to  di-ead  the  children  of  Esau  no 
less  as  allies  than  as  open  enemies.  Even  in  his  own 
day  that  historian  describes  them  as  "  a  turbulent  and 
unruly  race  .  .  .  rushing  to  battle  as  if  they  were  going 
to  a  feast." 

So  much  as  to  the  lineage  of  Israel.  It  only  remains 
to  give,  in  the  succeeduig  article,  a  rapid  sketch  of  the 
cu'cumstances  imder  which  they  came  into  existence 
as  a  nation,  and  took  possession  of  the  country  whoso 
most  sacred  associations  are  connected  with  their 
history. 


40- vou  II. 


24-2 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR, 


6CEIPTUEE   BIOaEAPHIES. 

SAMUEL  (concluded). 
BT  THE   EEV.    EDMUND   VENABLES,   JI.A.,    CANON   EESIDENTIART  AND   PEECENTOB  OP   LINCOLN. 


iT  is  witli  almost  startling  suddenness  that 
Samuel  presents  himself  again  on  the 
sacred  page.  The  ark,  on  its  restoration 
by  the  Philistines,  had  halted  at  Kirjath- 
jearim,  and  had  not  been  replaced  in  the  old  sanctuary 
at  Shaoh.  Why  this  was,  we  are  not  informed.  Perhaps 
ShUoh  had  fallen  into  the  Philistines'  power,  after  the 
defeat  at  Eben-ezer,  and,  mth  the  country  round,  still 
remaiaod  in  their  hands.  Samuel's  coHuection  with 
Shiloh  had  consequently  entirely  ceased.  He  starts 
forth  from  obscurity,  whence  we  know  not,  in  the  time 
of  the  nation's  deepest  depression,  when,  do-mi-trodden 
by  their  inveterate  enemies  the  Philistines,  calamity 
was  beginning  to  do  its  appointed  work,  and  they  were 
awakening  to  the  truth  that  their  unfaithfulness  to  their 
covenant  "with  their  God  was  the  origin  of  their  national 
disasters.  Wearied  with  their  infatuated  service  of  the 
idols,  which  could  not  help  or  profit  them  in  the  hour 
of  their  distress,  the  thirst  for  "  the  living  God  "  began 
to  make  itself  felt  in  tlie  nation's  heart.  Jehovah  had 
departed  from  them,  and  went  no  more  out  ivith  their 
armies ;  "  and  all  the  house  of  Israel  lamented  after 
Jehovah"  (1  Sam.  vii.  2).  Samuel  well  knew  how  to 
take  advantage  of  this  change  in  the  people's  feelings. 
It  was  the  hour  he  had  been  long  looking  for  and  pray- 
ing for,  when  he  might  lead  Israel  back  to  Him  from 
whom  they  had  so  deeply  revolted.  The  only  remedy 
for  their  evils  was  a  national  reformation.  And  this 
reformation  must  be  a  thorough  one.  There  must  bo 
no  halting  between  two  opinions.  The  worship  of  Je- 
hovah was  not  to  be  joined  in  unholy  alliance  with  the 
foul  rites  of  the  gods  of  the  nations  round  about.  If 
they  professed  to  "  return  unto  the  Lord,"  it  must  be 
"  with  all  their  hearts."  The  "  strange  gods,"  "  Baalim 
and  Ashtaroth,"  must  be  "  put  away  from  among  them." 
If  they  wished  for  a  restoration  of  Jehovah's  favour, 
they  must  "  prepai'o  their  hearts,"  direct  them,  and  set 
tliem  firmly  iu  devout  allegiance  to  Him,  and  "serve  Hiui 
only."  Then,  and  then  only,  would  He  "  deliver  them 
out  of  the  hands  of  the  Philistines  (viii.  3).  Such  was 
Samuel's  call  to  repentance,  nor  was  it  unheeded.  "  The 
children  of  Israel  did  put  away  BaaUm  and  Ashtaroth, 
and  served  Jehovah  only "  (ver.  4).  To  seal  the 
national  reformation,  Samuel  proclaimed  a  solemn  day 
of  penitence  and  prayer.  The  place  of  assembly  was 
Mizpeh  (Sam-mizpeh,  as  it  is  in  the  Hebrew,  "the  watch- 
tower,"  or  "look-out  post"),  one  of  the  many  "high 
places  "  consecrated  by  early  religious  rites  designated 
by  that  name.  Its  locality  is  not  defined,  but  it  may 
probably  be  identified  with  the  place  of  that  name  in 
the  tribe  of  Benjamin,  the  scene,  previously,  of  the 
gathering  of  the  tribes  to  "  fcike  advice "  and  "  speak 
their  minds,"  in  the  case  of  the  outrage  on  the  Levite's 
concubine  at  Gibcah  (Judg.  xix.  30;  xx.  1),  and,  subse- 


quently, of  the  election  of  Saul  (1  Sam.  x.  17).  On  this 
hallowed  spot  the  assembled  tribes  made  an  acknoW' 
ledgment  of  then-  sin,  accompanying  their  confession 
with  fasting,  and  with  a  symbolical  rite,  probably  in- 
dicative of  deep  penitence — "  drawing  water,  and  pour- 
ing it  on  the  ground  before  Jehovah."'  We  may 
gather  from  the  words  used,  that  ou  this  occasion 
Samuel  was  now  for  the  first  time  formally  accepted  by 
the  popular  voice  in  the  character  of  judge  (.ver.  6). 
The  Philistines  took  alarm  at  this  unwonted  combina- 
tion, and,  headed  by  their  lords,  put  in  motion  the  whole 
forces  of  their  nation  to  suppress  the  movement.  Full 
of  alarm  at  the  consequence  of  their  rashness,  the 
Israelites,  hopeless  of  making  a  stand  against  those' 
whose  superiority  they  had  so  long  acknowledged, 
betook  themselves  to  Samuel,  and  entreated  him  to 
raise  an  earnest  and  continuous  prayer  that  Jehovah 
would  deliver  them.  While  ho  was  offering  a  sucking 
lamb  as  a  whole  bm-nt- offering,  in  propitiatory  sacrifice, 
and  crying  to  the  Lord  with  prevailing  intercession,  the 
Philistines  burst  upon  Israel  with  their  united  army. 
But  God  fought  for  Israel.  As  when  Joshua  was  fight- 
ing with  the  Canaanites  at  Beth-horon  (Josh.  x.  11), 
and  Barak  was  pursuing  Jabin's  host  across  the  plain 
of  Kishon  (Judg.  v.  20,  21),  He  "  who  maketh  the 
clouds  his  chariot,  and  walkoth  on  the  wings  of  the 
wind"  (Ps.  civ.  3),  manifested  His  power  agaiast  the 
enemies  of  His  people.  A  thunder-storm  of  more  than 
usual  violence  broke  on  the  host  of  the  Pliilistines,  and 
threw  them  into  confusion.  The  Isi-aeUtes  followed  up 
the  advantage,  and  charging  down  ou  the  disordered 
army,  drove  them  before  them,  and  gained  a  complete 
victory,  ou  the  very  ground  where  twenty  years  before 
they  had  sustained  their  tremendous  defeat,  when  the 
ark  of  God  was  taken  (iv.  1 — 11).  To  commemorate 
this  great  deliverance,  Samuel  set  w^  a  standing-stone, 
or  pillar,  to  which  he  gave  the  name — already  used  by 
anticipation  (iv.  1;  v.  1) — of  Eben-ezer  ("the  stone  of 
help  "),  saying,  "  Hitherto  hath  the  Lord  helped  us " 
(vii.  12).  This  decisive  victory,  the  first,  and  as  far  as 
we  know,  the  only  mOitary  exphiit  of  Samuel,  esta- 
blished his  authority  as  judge.  Even  when  the  military 
leadership  was  transferred  to  Saul,  on  his  election  as 
king,  the  civil  administration  of  justice  remained  with 
Samuel,  and  "  he  judged  Isi-ael  all  the  days  of  his 
Ufo  "  (ver.  15).  In  pursuance  of  his  duties  as  judge,  he 
made  an  annual  circuit,  holding  sessions  at  three  of  the 
ancient  sanctuaries  of  the  land.  Bethel,  GUgal,  and 
Mizpeh ;  and  "  judged  Israel  in  aU  these  places  "  (ver. 

1  Tbe  Targxim  interpretation  of  this  rite,  wTiicli  has  been  very 
Tai"iously  explained,  is  probably  the  correct  one  :  *'  They  poured 
out  their  heart  like  water  in  penitence  to  the  Lord."  Compftre 
Ps.  sxii.  1^ ;  Lam.  ii.  19,  where  the  expression  "  poured  out  like 
water  "  is  used  to  denote  inward  dissolution,  through  pain,  miser^^ 
and  distress.     (See  Kei]  on  Samuel,  in  toe.) 


SAirUEL. 


243 


16).  His  fixed  home  was  in  his  native  city  of  Bamah, 
where  "ho  built  an  altar  to  Jehovah,"  ius  a  religious 
centre  for  the  tribes  resorting  thither  for  judicial  pur- 
poses (ver.  17).  Another  more  immediate  result  of  the 
victory  of  Eben-ezer  was  that  the  Philistines  were 
comiiletely  cowed  into  submission.  Not  only  did  they 
cease  from  their  predatory  inroads  on  the  Israelitish 
territory,  but  such  was  the  courage  inspired  by  Samuel's 
vigorous  government,  that  tlie  Israelites  tliemselves 
made  reprisals,  attacking  the  Philistines  in  their  own 
territory,  and  recovering  from  them  the  cities  which 
had  fallen  into  their  hands. 

Samuel,  the  last,  was  the  most  powerful  of  all  the 
judges  of  Israel.  No  one  of  those  who  preceded  him 
in  that  office  appears  to  have  exercised  such  wide  au- 
thority. If  not  the  whole  nation,  certainly  the  southern 
tribes  were  united  under  liis  firm  and  beneficent  sway. 
"  This,"  writes  Dean  Milman,'  "  was  his  great  achieve- 
ment, the  crowning  point  of  his  service  to  Israel  and 
the  God  of  Israel ;  the  scattered  and  disunited  tribes 
became  again  a  nation.  The  rival  tribes  Ephraim 
and  Judah  make  common  cause  against  the  common 
enemy;  and  the  more  distant  tribes  do  not  seem  to 
withhold  their  allegiance."  He  thus,  in  a  marked 
manner,  stood  between  the  new  and  old,  and  prepared 
the  way  for  the  establishment  of  the  monarchy.  The 
recognition  of  Said  as  king  of  all  Israel  would  have 
been  an  impossibility  had  not  the  judgeship  of  Samuel 
already  brought  about  a  cohesion  between  the  dis- 
organised members  of  the  Jewish  commonwealth,  and 
afforded  them  practical  experience  of  the  benefits  of 
national  union. 

The  latter  days  of  Samuel's  administration  prepared 
the  way  for  the  establishment  of  the  monarchy  in 
another  manner,  for  whicli  he  can  have  been  little  pre- 
pared, and  which  must  have  been,  to  one  of  such  un- 
sullied justice  and  pui-ity  of  conduct,  a  source  of  the 
deepest  mortification,  as  it  went  to  show  that  piety  is 
not  hereditai-y.  Samuel  was  doomed  to  witness  in  his 
own  two  sons,  Joel  and  Abiah,-  whom,  in  his  declining 
years,  ho  had  associated  with  him  in  his  judicial  func- 
tions, the  same  corrupt  abu.sc  of  their  high  position,  of 
which  he  had  seen  so  scandalous  an  example  in  the  sons 
of  Eli.  They  did  not  follow  the  rectitude  of  their  liigh- 
minded  father,  but  abusing  their  privilege  to  their  own 
gain,  they  "  turned  aside  after  lucre,  and  took  bribes, 
and  perverted  judgment"  (viii.  1—3).  The  per\'ersion 
of  justice  on  the  part  of  these  degenerate  young  men 
heightened  tlie  popular  dissatisfaction  at  the  contrast 
between  Israel  and  the  surrmmding  nations.  "They 
had  tried  judges  long  enough,  and  were  weary  of  them. 
If  they  only  had  a  king  to  judge  them  in  peace,  and 
head  their  forces  in  time  of  war,  all  would  bo  well."  A 
deputation,  therefore,  from  the  whole  nation,  "  all  the 


^  Historij  of  the  Jews,  bk.  Ti,,  vol.  i.,  p.  267. 

2  The  firstborn  of  Samuel  is  called  "  Vaslini,"  according  to  our 
present  text,  in  1  Chron.  vi.  28.  This  name  is  probaljly  a  corrup- 
tion of  ^^la"!,  v'shenl  ("the  second"),  the  name  of  the  eltler  son, 
Joel,  having  dropped  out;  bo  tliiit  it  should  he  read,  "And  the 
eons  of  Samuel,  ioel,  and  the  second,  Abiah," 


elders  of  Israel,"  came  to  Ramah,  and  made  known  to 
Samuel  their  desire  for  a  monarchical  form  of  govern- 
ment. "  Behold,  thou  art  old,  and  thy  sons  walk  not  iy 
thy  ways  :  now  make  us  a  king  to  judge  us,  like  aD  the 
nations  "  (chap.  viii.  5). 

There  is  one  feature  of  Samuel's  character  belongrag 
to  this  period,  which  must  not  be  left  altogether  un- 
noticed. Samuel,  we  learn  from  an  incidental  mention ' 
of  the  historian  (ix.  9),  was  not  known  among  tlio  people 
as  "a  jjrophet"  (nahi),  but  as  "a  seer"  (roeh),  or 
"gazer"  (Hhozeh)— one,  that  is,  divinely  gifted  with 
intuition  into  matters  hidden  from  tho  knowledge  of 
mankind  in  general.  This  keenness  of  sight  was  be- 
heved  to  extend  not  to  things  future  only,  nor  to  be 
limited  to  matters  of  great  and  pressing  importance, 
but  to  embrace  comparatively  insignificant  triiies.  If 
cattle  had  strayed,  it  was  not  considered  a  degradation 
of  the  seer's  office  to  consult  him  how  they  were  to  be 
recovered.  When  Saul's  servant  found  himself  and  his 
master,  after  then-  three  days'  fruitless  search,  within 
easy  reach  of  Samuel's  home,  he  seems  to  regard  it  as 
the  natural  way  out  of  their  difficulty  that  they  should 
apply  to  '•  the  seer,"  with  a  petty  present — a  little  bread, 
or  a  small  coin — in  their  hand,  by  way  of  fee,  and  call  in 
the  aid  of  his  supernatural  gift  to  recover  the  lost 
asses.  If  such  an  application  seems  to  ns  derogatory 
to  the  dignity  of  a  prophet  of  Jehovah,  degrading  him 
to  the  level  of  a  cunning  man,  or  soothsayer,  we  must 
remember  the  low  moi-al  and  religious  condition  of  the 
Israelites  at  that  period,  and  that  their  estimate  would 
be  very  different  from  ours.  Divination,  as  with  all 
ignorant  and  uncultivated  people,  held  a  very  definite 
place  in  the  Israelitish  life.  They  were  accustomed  to 
have  recourse  to  the  possessors  of  or  pretenders  to  super- 
natural knowledge,  on  all  occasions  of  doubt  or  diffi- 
culty. To  have  pronounced  all  such  proceedings  UH- 
lawf id,  and  have  forbidden  them  altogether,  would  have 
been  to  incur  the  risk  of  driving  them  to  forbidden 
arts,  the  consultation  of  mtches  and  the  fike.  In  this 
gift  of  prophetic  sight,  God  supphed  his  people  with 
a  legitimate  substitute  for  divination,  and  by  the  recog- 
nised superiority  of  the  possessors  of  it  to  ordinary 
soothsayers,  and  the  infallibility  of  their  utterances, 
was  loading  them  to  a  recognition  of  himself  as  a 
God  of  truth,  higher  and  greater  than  all  the  gods  of 
tho  heathen  around  them.  It  was  an  important  step 
in  the  education  of  the  people,  that  the  "  man  of 
God  "  shoiUd  be  universally  recognised  as  "  an  honour- 
able man,"  whose  words  "came  surely  to  pa.ss"{ix. 
6).  That  a  prophet  of  tho  Lord  should  be  consulted 
about  strayed  asses,  shocks  our  moral  sense.  If  it 
did  not  shock  the  moral  sense  of  the  Israelites,  it  was 
because  their  standpoint  was  lower  than  ours,  and  that 
this  exercise  of  the  prophetic  gift  was  a  portion  of 
their  religious  education.  It  was  one  of  the  "  sundry 
portions  and  divers  manners  "  in  which  God  .saw  fit  to 
"  speak  to  the  fathers  by  tho  prophets,"  to  prepare 
them,  by  very  gradual  advances,  for  the  more  perfect 
revelation,  when  He  should  "speak  unto  us  by  a  Son" 
(Heb.  i.  1). 


244 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


ANIMALS    OF    THE    BIBLE. 


BY   THE    EEV.    W.    HOUGHTON,    M.A.,    P.L.S.,    KECTOK    OF    PRESTON,    SALOP. 


BIRDS. 

'ODERN  zoologists  divido  the  sub-king- 
dom Verfehrata  into  tteso  three  sub- 
divisions—  the  Mammalia,^  Sauropsida, 
and  Ichthyopsida ;  the  fii'st  comprehend- 
ing t)i9  class  Mammalia,  the  second  those  of  Avos  and 
Reptilia,  and  the  last  those  of  the  Ampliibia  and  Pisces. 
Prom  the  Mammalia,  which  we  have  already  considered, 
wo  come  to  the  class  Aves,  or  Birds,  to  which  we  find 
various  allusions  ia  the  sacred  writings.  There  can  be 
no  doubt  that  birds  on  the  wliole  are  related  more  closely 
to  reptiles  than  to  mammals.  In  accordance,  therefore, 
with  their  essential  morphological  affinities  the  elasses 
Birds  and  Reptiles  are,  as  we  have  just  stated,  placed  in 
the  same  great  sub-division,  the  Sauropsida,  i.e.,  "  lizard- 
like animals."  There  are  marked  characters  which 
separate  these  two  classes,  as  the  very  obvious  one  that 
in  reptiles  the  blood  is  cold — not  much  warmer,  that  is 
to  say,  than  the  temperatui-e  of  the  medium  in  which 
they  lire — -whilst  in  birds  the  blood  is  warm  as  in  mam- 
mals. Again,  in  birds  there  can  be  no  direct  mixture 
of  venous  with  arterial  Ijlood ;  in  reptiles  there  is  this  mix- 
ture. But  the  resemblances  between  birds  and  reptiles 
are,  notwithstanding,  very  strong  and  sometimes  very 
curious.  Every  rearer  of  chickens  is  familiar  with  the 
fact  that  young  birds  are  provided  with  a  hard  knob  or 
tubercle  on  the  extreme  tip  of  the  upper  beak  for  breaking 
the  shell  when  ready  for  hatching;  now  amongst  reptUes, 
the  young  of  the  Ghclonia  (tortoises  and  turtles)  and 
tho  Ophidia  (snakes)  ai-o  similarly  provided.  It  seems 
a  strange  anomaly  that  any  bird  slioidd  possess  actual 
teeth,  and  no  known  adult  bird  possesses  reptilian- like 
teotli;  and  yet  strange  to  tell,  in  the  embryos  of  parrots 
and  the  parrot  family  (Psittacinw).  rudimentary  teeth 
have  been  observed,  while  in  the  summer  of  last  year 
(1872)  some  remains  of  a  remarkable  fossil-bird  wore 
found  in  the  upper  cretaceous  shale  of  Kansas  (U.S.A.), 

*  SinoB  the  articles  on  the  Mammalia  were  written  we  have 
received  au  iutereatin^  letter  from  Mr.  A.  H.  Sayce  on  a  few 
Accadian  names  of  animals  :  one  which  he  has  discovered  throws 
light  on  tho  meauiu;^  of  the  Hohrew  word  ochim,  mentioned 
only  in  Isa.  siii.  21  (see  marginl,  and  rendered  in  the  text  "doleful 
creatures,''  whii.-h,  together  with  jackals,  should  inbahit  desolate 
Bahylon.  In  the  astrological  tablets,  Mr.  Sayce  tells  us  that  lions 
(in  Accadi-m  lig  mahhi.  i.e.,  literally  "great  beasts"),  are  always 
associated  with  animals  called  Ug-harH,  whose  inroad  into  Babylon 
was  to  be  feared,  Lifj-harra  be  has  discovered  to  be  repreaeuted 
in  Assyrian  by  the  word  a-l;/m,  which  is  probably  the  singular 
of  the  Hebrew  ockini  (c^n's).  Now  6aiTa  may  mean  "  striped ;" 
so  lig-bana  means  "  the  striped  beast."  The  Hebrew  word  etymo- 
logically  points  to  some  "lamentably  howling  "  animal,  and  thus 
wo  think  that  stvii>ed  hyenas  are  iuteuded  in  the  passage  in  Isaiah. 
Tho  ancient  Babylonians  often  gave  animals  names  either  from 
some  peculiarity  in  size  or  character,  or  from  tho  countries  whence 
they  wore  derived.  The  lion,  being  the  largest  carnivorous  animal 
with  which  they  were  acquainted,  was  called  the  "  big-beast ;"  tho 
dog,  from  its  docility,  was  called  lirj-cit,  i.e.,  "the  tame  beast ;  " 
one  of  the  names  for  the  wolf  was  liij-hi-ku,  i.e.,  the  "beast  that 
devours,"  which  exactly  answers  to  the  Biblical  expression,  "  a 
taveniug  [feeding  with  rapacity]  wolf"  (Gen.  xlix.  37;  Ezek.  xxii. 
27;  Mitt,  vii,  15).  The  hart,  Mr.  Sayce  tells  us,  has  the  pretty 
name  of  "  horn  of  the  star  "  in  Accadian, 


indicating  that  it  was  aquatic  and  carnivorous  in  habits, 
differing  widely  from  all  known  birds  in  having  bi-con- 
ojive  vertobraB  and  well- developed  teeth  in  both  jaws. 
Here  is  further  interesting  evidence  of  the  relationship 
existing  between  the  two  classes  Birds  and  ReptUes. 

According  to  the  account  of  the  creation  given  in 
the  fii'st  chapter  of  Genesis,  birds  are  said  to  have  made 
their  appearance  on  tho  earth  on  the  fifth  day,  together 
with  creeping  creatures  that  have  life,  sea-monsters, 
and  other  animals  with  which  the  waters  teem  ;  in  verse 
20  our  Biljle  reads,  "  And  God  said.  Let  the  waters 
bring  forth  abundantly  the  moving  creature  that  hath 
life,  and  fowl  that  may  fly  above  the  earth  in  the  oj)en 
firmament  of  heaven."  Prom  this  it  woidd  seem  that  the 
ancient  Hebrews  held  that  birds  were  produced  froit 
the  waters  and  not  from  the  earth  like  mammals  (see 
verse  24) ;  similarly  the  Septuagint,  the  Vulgate,  the 
Targumim,  Luther,  and  some  modern  translators  ;  but 
both  the  verbs  in  tho  Hebrew  are  imperative,  "  Let  the 
waters  swarm  with  living  swarms,  and  let  fowl  fly  above 
tho  earth,"  &c.  Indeed,  in  chap.  ii.  19,  birds  are  ex- 
pressly said  to  be  produced  from  the  earth. 

Tho   following  Hebrew  words   generally  stand   for 

birds:  'o^)?i,  literally  "a  wing,"  hence  "winged  animals" 

or  "  birds  ;"  'ait,  "  a  bird  of  prey,"  from  a  root  signify- 

I  ing  "to  rush  upon;"  and  tsippor,  "a  small  bird,"  or 

I  "bird  of  any  kind,"  from  a  root  meaning  to  "twitter" 

j  or  "  chirp." 

Birds  were  used  as  food  by  tho  ancient  Hebrews, 
though  probably  not  to  the  extent  which  prevailed 
amongst  the  Egyi)tians ;  several  birds  were  expressly 
disallowed  as  food  by  the  Levitical  law,  which,  indeed, 
does  not  differ  much  from  modern  i!)nglish  custom. 
All  birds  of  prey,  whether  diurnal  or  nocturnal  in  their 
habits,  were  forbidden,  such  as  vultures,  eagles,  hawks, 
buzzards,  owls.  Hence  tlie  whole  order  of  Tlaptores 
was  .shunned  as  being  i-eptdsive  and  cruel,  feeding  tipon 
otlier  animals  or  upon  carrion ;  though  the  flesh  of 
young  eagles  and  hawks  was  by  some  nations  recom- 
mended and  eaten  as  delicacies.  Aristotle  expressly 
mentions  the  sweet  and  nourishing  food  afforded  by 
the  flesh  of  young  hawks  (3ist.  An.  vi.  7).  The  raven 
(Corvus  corax),  and  doubtless  all  the  family  of  the  Cor- 
vidw.  as  represented  in  Palestine  in  Biblical  times,  such 
as  the  jackdaw,  hooded  crow,  rook,  alpine  chough,  &e., 
were  avoided.  Some  of  the  cursorial  or  "running" 
birds,  as  the  ostrich ;  many  of  the  grallaiores  or 
"  waders,"  as  the  heron,  bittern,  stork,  and  ibis  ;  a  few 
of  the  natatores  or  "  swimmers,"  as  the  greedy  pelican 
and  tho  cormorant,  were  forbidden  as  food  to  the  people 
of  Israel.  Domestic  poultry,  common  and  familiar 
enough  in  Palestine  in  our  Lord's  time,  was  almost,  if 
not  quite,  unknown  there  before  the  Babylonish  cap- 
tivity. "  Patted  fowl  "  arc  indeed  moutioned  in  1  Kings 
iv.  23  (Hcl).  Bib.  v.  3),  as  amongst  the  good  things  sup- 
plied for  Solomon's  table ;  but  there  is  no  reason  for 


ANIMAIiS    OF    THE    BIBLE. 


245 


believing  that  such  things  are  intended  by  the  Hebrew 
words  barbarim,  abusini,  about  tlio  meaning  of  which 
there  is  nothing  but  conjecture.  It  is  not  improbable 
the  ancient  Hebrews  domesticated  the  pigeon,  though 
there  is  no  direct  statement  to  this  effect.  A  pair  of 
tiu-tle-doves  or  yoimg  pigeons  was  ordered  as  a  substi- 
tute for  a  kid  or  a  lamb  as  sin  or  trespass  offering  in 
the  case  of  poor  jieople  (Lev.  xii.  6  ;  Numb.  vi.  10)  ;  and 
as  early  as  the  time  of  Abraham  we  read  of  a  tm-tle- 
dove  and  a  young  pigeon  (Gen.  xv.  9).  A  passage  in 
Isaiah  (Ix.  8)  points,  somewhat  indefinitely  it  is  true,  to 
tlio  domestication  of  pigeons  by  the  Hebrews :  "  Who 
are  these  that  fly  as  a  cloud,  and  as  the  doves  to  their 
windows  ?"  like  doves  flying  to  their  dovecots,  alluding 
perhaps  to  the  towers  with  latticed  02)enings  for  the 
pigeons,  which  still  fly,  as  of  old,  to  their  homes  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  all  Eastern  villages  and  towns. 
Reference  to  the  wonderfid  migratory  habits  of  some 


was  considered  under  the  especial  care  of  the  deity, 
and  it  was  sacrilege  to  molest  it.  The  quiet  repose 
and  security  of  the  house  of  God  is  beautifully  depicted 
in  very  familiar  words  :  '"  Yea,  the  sparrow  h  th  found 
an  house,  and  the  swallow  a  nest  for  herself,  where  she 
may  lay  her  yoimg,  even  thine  altars,  O  Lord  of  hosts, 
my  King,  and  my  God  "  (Ps.  Ixxxiv.  3). 

Dr.  Tristram  tells  us  that  to  the  present  day  "  the 
Moslem  cherish  tenderly  any  birds  whicli  resort  to  the 
mosques,"  adding,  "  woe  betide  the  reckless  stranger 
who  should  medtUe  with  them !  The  storks  seem  per- 
fectly aware  of  the  immunity,  as  do  the  doves  and  other 
birds  wliich  rest  in  numbers  in  such  situations "  {Nat. 
Hist.  Bib.,  p.  160). 

The  Levitical  law,  wliieh  ever  inculcated  humane 
feelings  towai-ds  animals,  forbade  the  taking  of  an  old 
bird  together  with  its  young,  as  being  unjust  to  take 
advantage  of  maternal  instinct  which  leads  the  parent 


BATTLE-FIELD  :     VTJLTUEE    IN    ATTENDANCE.       (ASSTEIAN 


birds  is  occasionally  met  with  in  the  Bible.  Who  wiU 
not  call  to  mind  with  imceasiug  pleasure  the  poet's 
description  of  spring  ? — "  Lo !  the  winter  is  past,  the 
rain  is  over  and  gone  ;  the  flowers  appear  on  the  earth  ; 
the  time  of  the  singing  of  birds  is  come,  and  the  voice 
of  the  turtle  is  heard  in  om-  land"  (Cant.  ii.  11, 12),  or 
the  prophet's  pathetic  expostulations  with  unrepentant 
Judah  ? — "  Tea,  the  stork  in  the  heaven  knowoth  her 
appointed  times;  and  the  turtle  and  the  crane  and 
the  swallow  observe  the  time  of  their  coming ;  but 
my  people  know  not  the  judgment  of  the  Lord " 
(Jcr.  viii.  7). 

Song-birds  as  pets  are  very  common  now  in  the  East 
both  amongst  Jews  and  Moslems,  and  it  is  probable 
that  the  ancient  Jews  tamed  some  kinds.  That  young 
birds  were  taken  from  their  nests  either  for  food  or 
domestication  is  evident  from  Deut.  xxii.  6 ;  whilst  the 
passage  in  Job  (xli.  5),  "Wilt  thou  play  with  him 
[leviathan]  as  with  a  bird  ? "  looks  very  like  a  reference 
to  tame  song-birds.  Birds  resorting  to  sacred  edifices, 
not  only  amongst  the  Jews  and  other  Eastern  nations, 
but  amongst  Europeans  also,  were  regarded  as  deserv- 
ing protection.     A  bird  that  built  its  nest  on  a  temple 


bnd  to  hazard  her  own  safety  iu  protection  of  her  little 
ones  (Deut.  xxii.  6). 

The  rapid  flight  of  a  bird  is  employed  as  a  figure 
to  express  the  transient  nature  of  e.arthly  tilings.  "  As 
for  Ephraim,  their  glory  shall  fly  away  like  a  bird" 
(Hos.  ix.  11). 

The  singing  of  \)irds  is  alluded  to  in  Cant.  ii.  12,  as 
one  of  the  harbingers  of  spring;  also  in  Ps.  civ.  10, 
12.  "  Ho  sendeth  the  springs  into  the  valleys.  .  .  . 
By  them  sh:dl  the  fowls  of  the  heaven  have  their  liabi- 
tation,  which  sing  among  the  branches."  "In  this 
passage,  as  the  Psalmist  is  speaking  of  the  trees  which 
overhang  the  water-pourses.  or  wadies  and  rivers  of  the 
country,  the  singing  of  the  different  species  of  waj'blcrs 
(Tardidcc)  is  perhaps  pointed  to.  and  especially  tlio 
bulbul  and  nightingale,  both  of  which  tlirong-  the  tTces 
that  fringe  the  Jordan  and  abound  in  all  the  wooded 
valleys,  filling  the  air  in  early  spring  with  the  rich 
cadence  of  their  notes  "  (Nat.  Hist.  Bib.,  p.  161). 

Birds  were  generally  caught  in  snares  *r  nets,  and  to 
this  there  is  frequent  allusion  in  the  Bible,  the  references 
being  for  the  most  part  metaphorical  to  express  either 
the   cunning  devices   of   God's   enemies   (Ps.  ix.  15 ; 


246 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


XXV.  15 ;  xxxi.  4),  or  the  anger  of  God  upon  the  im- 
penitent  (Lam.  i.   13;    Hos.  vii.   12;    Ezek.   xii.  13). 
Traps— but   not  iron  spring-traps— clap-nets,  gins   or 
nooses  were  all  employed  in  capturing  birds,  and  tliere 
are   many   diiierent  Hebrew  words  to  denote  various 
kinds  of  traps.    Decoy  birds  were  apparently  sometimes 
used  in  catching  wild  ones.     "They  set  a  trap,  they 
catch  men ;  as  a  cage  is  full  of  bu'ds,  so  are  their  houses 
full  of  deceit "  (Jer.  v.  26,  27).    The  cage  here  probably 
denotes  a  wicker-work  trap  {chelub)  into  which  bu'ds 
were  enticed  by   means    of    a  decoy.     Compare  also 
Ecclus.  xi.  30  :  "  Like  as  a  partridge  taken  and  kept  in 
a  cage,  so  is  the  heart  of  the  proud ;  and  like  as  a  spy, 
watchoth  ho  for  thy  fall."     "  The  employment  of  decoy 
birds  is  stiU  very  common,  and  much  pains  are  taken  to 
train  the  decoys  for  their  treacherous  office.     They  aro 
carefully  tended  till  perfectly  tame,  that  they  may  not 
bo  deterred  by  the  neighbourhood  of  man  from  uttering 
their  caU-note.      Larks,  linnets,   pigeons,    quails,   and 
especially  partridges,  are   employed  in  this   mode   of 
fowling.    The  bu-d  is  placed  in  a  cage,  partly  concealed, 
wlille  the  fowler  remains  carefully  concealed  under  cover 
in  the  ueighbom-hood,  where  he  can  manage  his  snares 
and  nets.   In  the  case  of  larks  the  cage  is  placed  on  the 
open  ground,  surrounded  with  spiinges  or  horse-hair 
nooses,  wliieh  entangle  the  feet  of  the  incautious  and 
too  curious  visitors.     For  other  small  bii-ds  it  is  placed 
in  a  thicket,  whilo  the  sportsman  is  ready  with  Ids  not 
to  throw  over  them  when  they  alight.    Sometimes  groat 
numbers  aro  taken  in  a  few  hours,  as  the  birds  will 
descend  in  large  iiocks.    Partridges  and  quails  aro  more 
ganerally    captured  by   long   narrow    runs,   carefully 
formed  of  brushwood,  leading  to  the  cage  in  which  the 
decoy  bird  is  concealed.     The  run,  like  the  decoy  used 
for  wild  fowl  in  this  country,  gradually  contracts,  till  it 
ends  in  a  bag-net  thrown  over  the  pathway,  ui  which 
whole   coveys  are    rapidly   captured   wholesale.      The 
mountaineers  of  Lebanon  are  very  skilful  in  this  mode 
of  fowling,  and  I  have  seen  them  often  capture  whole 
broods  before  they  could  fly,  when  the  chicks  aro  lirought 
up  by  hand  either  for  food  or  to  serve  as  decoys  in  turn 
thomsolvos  "  {Nat.  Hist.  Bib.,  p.  163).     Dr.  Tristram 
also  tells  us  of  the  cruel  device  employed  to  take  wood 
pigeons.    A  vrild  one  is  snared,  and  after  its  eyelids  aro 
sewn  together  it  is  tied  to  a  perch  set  among  the  trees. 
The  poor  bird  ttappmg  its  wings  and  uttering  its  caU- 
note  soon  attracts  whole  flocks,  which  fall  an  easy  prey 
to  tho  fowlers.     Besides   traps  and   nooses  the  tlu'ow- 
stick  is  still,  as  it  was  probably  in   ancient  times,  em- 
ployed in   capturing   birds.     Theso    throw-sticks,   tho 
zerioattys  of    the   Ai-abs    mentioned   by   Shaw  {Trav. 
i.  425,  8vo),  are  about  eighteen   inches  long  and  h;Jf 
an  inch  in  diameter.      Among  the  ancient  Egyptians 
the  use  of  tho  tlu-ow-stick  was  very  general.    Allusion 
to  this  kind  of  chase  is  probably  made  in  David's  com- 
plaint of  Saul's  conduct  to  him:  "The  king  of  Israel 
is  como  out  ....  as  wlicn  one  doth  hunt  a  partridge 
in  tho  mountains  "  (1  Sam.  xxvi.  20).   Dr.  Tristram  tolls 
us  that  tho  throw-stick   is   hurled  "with  a  revolnng 
motion  so  as  to  strike  tho  legs  of  the  bird  as  it  runs. 


or  more  frequently,  at  a  little  higher  elevation,  so  that 
when  the  game,  alarmed  at  the  approach  of  the  missile, 
begins  to  take  wing,  it  is  struck  and  slightly  disabled. 
The  pursuers  let  fly  a  i-apid  succession  of  sticks,  and 
generally  finish  tho  chase  by  fliugiug  their  cloak  over 
tho  quany,  which  is  always  dispatched  by  cutting  the 
throat  after  the  Mohammedan  inj  unction,  which,  follow- 
ing the  Jewish  law,  forbids  the  eatiug  of  any  flesh  with 
the  blood  iu  it." 

Wliether  hawkiug,  now  so  favourite  a  chase  amongst 
Orientals,  was  ever  practised  by  the  ancient  Jews,  we 
have  no  definite  information,  neither  do  we  know  whether 
tho  ancient  Egyptians  practised  falconry;  no  represen- 
tation of  the  kind  occurs  on  the  monuments  of  Egypt, 
but  we  must  not  put  too  much  stress  on  negative 
evidence. 

Dr.  Tristi-am  thinks  that  the  rugged  lulls  and  culti- 
vated valleys  of  the  Holy  Land  would  afford  no  scope 
for  the  exercise,  and  that  this  is  the  reason  why  no 
allusiou  to  falconi-y  occurs  in  the  Bible. 

With  regard  to  our  present  knowledge  of  tho  orni- 
thology of  Palestine  we  are  almost  entu'ely  indebted  to 
Dr.  Tristram,  who  has  paid  considerable  personal  atten- 
tion to  it.  He  speaks  in  glowing  terms  of  the  birds  of 
brilliant  plumage,  such  as  the  Roller,  Bee-eater,  Smyrna 
kingfisher.  Belted  kingfisher,  Sun-bu'd,  &c.,  which 
the  traveller  meets  with ;  of  tho  immense  number  and 
variety  of  the  larger  birds  of  prey,  vultures,  eagles,  and 
falcons,  which  abound  iu  every  part  of  the  Holy  Land, 
being  "at  first  sight  its  ornithological  characteristic." 
Dr.  Tristram  and  party  collected  322  species  of  birds, 
and  he  says  there  are  at  least  30  other  species  which 
may  be  added  to  the  list.  The  gi-eater  part  of  these 
are  either  the  same  as,  or  very  similar  to,  the  birds  of 
our  own  country.  "  Of  the  322  species  of  birds  we 
obtained,"  ho  says,  "  26  are.  as  far  as  our  present  know- 
ledge extends,  peculiar  to  Palestine  and  the  districts 
immediately  adjacent ;  8  are  of  Eastern  Asia ;  32  are 
common  to  Arabia  or  East  Africa,  being  chiefly  desert 
forms ;  while  260  are  reckoned  in  the  lists  of  European 
bu'ds,  and  no  less  than  172  are  enumerated  in  the 
catalogues  of  British  bu-ds  "  (p.  168).  There  is  one 
very  remarkable  featm'c  iu  the  ornithology  of  Palestine 
wliich  is  not  met  with  in  that  of  any  other  country,  and 
that  is  the  occuiTence  of  bu-ds  of  tropical  typo  in  a 
country  withiu  tho  temperate  zone.  The  area  of 
Palestine  consists  of  a  slip  of  coast  territory  about  200 
miles  long  and  about  90  miles  wide,  and  eoidd  "  scarcely 
be  expected  to  vary  much  in  character  from  the  other 
countries  bordering  on  the  Mediterranean." 

But  there  is  "  one  unique  and  unparalleled  pheno- 
menon "  iu  the  physical  geography  of  Palestine  which 
affects  its  ornithological  fauna,  and  that  is  the  existence 
of  tho  Jordan  valley,  a  long  chasm,  1,400  feet  below 
the  level  of  the  sea,  "enclosing  tracts,  some  arid  and 
salt,  others  fertile  and  well  watered,  but  all  enjoying 
in  tho  temperate  zone  the  climate  of  the  troi)ics,  and 
wholly  distinct  from  the  country  on  either  side.  These 
tracts  or  oases  nmiure  birds  of  tropical  type  different 
from  those  of  the  upper  country.     But  there  appears  to 


ANIMALS    OF    THE    BIBLE. 


247 


bo  no  difference  between  the  birds  on  either  side  of  this 
isolated  strip  of  the  tropics.  The  same  liirds,  the  wood 
pigeons,  jays,  and  woodpeckers  of  Carmel,  equally 
abound  in  the  forests  of  Gilead  and  Bashan"  (p.  IflV). 
Dr.  Tristram,  in  his  very  interesting  chapter  on  the 
"  Physical  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,"  mentions  five 
of  these  oases  nm-tured  by  copious  spidngs  and  streams, 
where  all  the  varieties  of  this  tropical  basin  are  collected ; 
there  are  the  plains  of  Shittim.  those  of  Jericho,  the 
little  bay  of  Eugedi,  the  Wady  Zuweu-ah,  and  the  Ghor 
es-Sa£ieh  (the  ancient  "waters  of  Nimi-im'");  in  all 
these  the  climate  is  tru'ly  tropical,  the  thermometer  even 
in  winter  ranging  from  60"  to  80'-'.  As  with  the  birds 
so  with  vegetation ;  corn  ripens  in  MareJi,  and  you  may 
eat  melons  in  winter;  heregi-ow  the  "  zukkum  " (Bala- 
nites JEgyptiaca),  the  henna  or  campliire,  the  Salvadora 
persica  (long  and  erroneously  supposed  to  be  the  mus- 
tard-tree of  the  New  Testament),  and  other  tropical 
products.  In  these  favoured  spots  occm*  birds  of 
Indian  and  Equatorial  African  type,  besides  some  which 
are  not  known  elsewhere.  The  large  Indian  turtle-dove 
(Turtii/r  risorms)  is  common,  all  the  year,  around  the 
Dead  Sea ;  "  a  night-jar,  a  sparrow,  and  a  grackle,  not 
hitherto  found  elsewhere,  reside  permanently  here  ;  and 
a  beautiful  little  sun-bird,  Nectarina  osete,  sometimes 
mistaken  for  a  humming-bird,  flits  among  the  shrubs  in 
great  numbers;"  while  the  butterflies,  like  those  of 
Nubia  and  Abyssinia,  hover  over  the  flowers  in  Januaiy. 
We  wiU  now  proceed  to  consider  the  birds  mentioned  in 
sacred  writ,  and  wUl  begin  with  the  order  Raptores,  or 
birds  of  prey. 

THE    VULTURE. 

The  VitUuridce,  a  family  of  Raptorial  birds,  is  repre- 
sented in  Palestine  by  these  three  species — the  gi-iffon 
vulture  (Vulhir  fidvus),  the  liimmergeier  (GjjpaHus 
harhatus),  and  the  Egyptian  vulture,  or  Phai-aoh"s  hen 
[Neophron  percnopterus).  Two  other  large  kinds,  ac- 
cording to  Tristram,  the  Vuliur  imhicus  of  Smith,  and 
the  V.  cinereus  of  Linnaeus,  have  been  observed  in  the 
neighbouring  countries,  and  may  pirobably  occur  iu  the 
south-east  districts  of  Palestine. 

Mention  is  made  of  the  vulture  in  three  passages,  viz., 
in  Job  xxviii.  7  :  "  There  is  a  path  which  ....  the 
■siilture's  eye  hath  not  seen."  The  Hebrew  word  [a7jydh) 
here  rendered  "vulture,"  is  translated  "kite"  in  Lev.  xi. 
14  and  Deut.  xiv.  13.  Two  other  Hebrew  words,  dddh 
(Lev.  xi.  14)  and  dayyah  (Deut.  xiv.  13;  Isa.  xxxiv.  15), 
are  also  rendered  "  -i-rdtm-e." 

There  is  little  doubt  that  none  of  these  Hebrewnames 
denote  any  species  of  vulture,  but  rather  some  smaller 
bird  of  prey,  as  the  kite  or  the  buzzard. 

Tlie  gi-iffon  \ailture  is  frequently  alluded  to  in  the 
sacred  writings  under  the  Hebrew  name  of  nesher, 
always  rendei-ed  "  eagle  "  in  our  version.  The  modern 
Arabic  name  for  the  griffon  vulture  is  nesser  or  nnsr 
(though  this  name  also  includes  the  eagle),  evidently  the 
Hebrew  nesher,  and  in  addition  to  the  evidence  afforded 
by  the  identity  of  the  names  there  is  that  supplied  by 
some  of  the  passages  where  the  bird  is  mentioned. 
Thus  in  Micah  (i.  16)  it  is  said:  "Make  thee  bald  and 


poU  thee  for  thy  delicate  children  ;  enlarge  thy  baldness 
as  the  nesher"  ( A. V.  "eagle").  This  can  only  accu- 
rately apply  to  the  griffon  vulture,  whoso  whole  head 
and  neck  is  destitute  of  true  feathers.  The  reference 
in  the  passage  is  to  the  custom  of  .shaving  the  head  as 
a  token  of  mourning  which,  notwithstanding  the  prohi- 
bition in  Deut.  xiv.  1,  appears  to  have  been  handed  down 
traditionally  and  practised.  Some  have  thought  that 
the  Egyjitian  vulture  {Neophron  percnopterus)  is  here 
intended,  but  this  bird  is  bald  on  the  front  of  the  head 
and  neck,  whereas  the  Hebrew  word  {kdrach)  means  "to 
make  bald  at  the  bach  of  the  head."  The  well-known 
words  of  our  Lord,  "  Wheresoever  the  carcase  is,  there 
win  the  eagles  be  gathered  together  "  (Matt.  xxiv.  28), 
is  more  applicable  to  vultures  which  congregate  by 
huucb-eds,  than  to  eagles  which  associate  only  as  few 
indi\-iduals. 

The  vidture's  rapidity  of  flight  is  referred  to  iu  Job 
ix.  26;  Deut.  xxviii.  49;  2  Sam.  i.  23 ;  Jer.  iv.  13,  &c. 
The  high-soaring  habits  of  these  birds  seem  to  be 
referred  to  in  Isa.  xl.  31 :  "  They  shall  mount  up  with 
wings  as  eagles  "  (neshdrim) ;  see  also  Prov.  xxiii.  5 ; 
XXX.  19.  The  power  of  flight,  the  acuteness  of  vision, 
the  habit  of  selecting  craggy  rocks  whereon  to  make  a 
nest,  the  feeding  on  the  slain,  ai-e  aU  graphically  de- 
scribed in  the  Book  of  Job.  "Doth  the  nesher  mount 
up  at  thy  command,  and  make  her  nest  on  high  ?  She 
dwelleth  and  abideth  on  the  rock,  upon  the  crag  of  the 
rock,  and  the  strong  place.  From  thence  she  seeketh 
the  prey,  and  her  eyes  behold  afar  off.  Her  young  ones 
suck  up  blood  :  and  where  the  slain  are,  thei-e  is  she" 
(xxxix.  27 — 30) ;  see  also  Jer.  xlix.  16 ;  on  which  Dr. 
Tristram  remarks,  "  While  the  eagles  and  other  bii-ds  are 
content  with  lower  elevations,  and  sometimes  even  with 
trees,  the  gi-iffon  alone  selects  the  stupendous  gorges  of 
Ai-abia  Pctraea,  and  of  the  defiles  of  Palestine,  and 
there  in  gi-eat  communities  rears  its  young,  where  the 
most  intrepid  climber  can  only  with  ropes  and  other 
appliances  i-each  its  nest." 

The  passage  iu  Ps.  ciii.  5,  "  Thy  youth  is  renewed 
like  the  nesher's  "  ("  eagle's,"  A.V.),  has  by  some  been 
supposed  to  allude  to  the  old  fables  about  the  eagle  re- 
newing its  strength  when  veiy  old,  as  that  this  bird 
mounts  aloft  till  it  comes  near  to  the  sun,  when,  scorched 
by  the  heat,  it  throws  itself  iuto  the  seas,  from  whence 
it  emerges  full  of  renewed  vigour.  Augvistino  thought 
that  the  eagle  when  very  old  became  unable  to  take 
food  on  account  of  its  beak  having  gi-own  enormously 
large  and  curved,  and  that  the  bird  used  to  dash  its 
beak  and  break  it  agaiust  a  rock,  when  it  could  take 
food  as  before,  and  thus  its  vigour  was  renewed.  The 
verse  in  the  Psalm  most  probably  has  no  reference 
to  any  of  these  fables.  The  Prayer-book  ver.sion, 
"  making  thee  yoimg  and  lusty  as  an  eagle,"  gives  a 
very  good  meaning  of  the  words.  The  care  which  the 
Aiilture  and  other  birds  of  prey  take  of  their  young, 
their  coaxing  and  encouraging  their  young  ones  to  leave 
their  nest  and  try  to  fly,  is  well  known.  This  figui-e 
is  employed  iu  Deut.  xxxii.  11,  and  Exod.  xix.  4,  to 
express  the  watchful  and  sustaining  care  of  his  people 


248 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


by  the  Almighty :  "  As  an  eagle  {nesher)  stiiTeth  up  her 
nest,  fluttereth  over  her  young,  spreadeth  abroad  her 
■wings,  taketh  them,  beareth  them  on  her  wings  :  so 
the  Lord  alone  did  lead  him."  The  vulture  was  con- 
sidered pre-eminently  fond  of  its  young,  both  amongst 
the  Egyptians  and  the  ancient  Greeks  and  Romans, 
and  it  is  curious  to  obsei-ve  that  this  was  the  bird  which 
originally  was  supposed  by  the  ancient  Egyptians  to  feed 
its  young  ones  with  its  own  blood.     HorapoDo  (Hiero- 


spring.  Augustine,  commenting  on  Ps.  cii.  6,  "  I  am 
like  a  pelican  in  the  wildoruess,"  Siiys,  "  These  birds 
(male  pelicans)  are  said  to  kiU  their  young  ofE.sjjring  by 
blows  of  theu-  beaks,  and  then  to  bewail  their  death 
for  the  space  of  three  days.  At  length,  however,  it  is 
said  the  mother  bird  inflicts  a  severe  wound  on  herself, 
pom-ing  the  flowing  blood  over  the  dead  young  ones, 
which  instantly  brings  them  to  life."  To  the  same 
effect  write  Eustathius,    Isidorus,  Epiphanius,  and  a, 


THE    SCAYENOEK,    OK    EGYPTIAN    VULTUKE    (NEOPHRON    PEKCNOPTEKUS). 


glyph.,  i.  11)  says  that  a  vulture  symbolises  a  compas- 
sionate person,  because  during  the  120  days  of  the 
nurture  of  its  offspring,  if  food  cannot  be  had,  "  it  opens 
its  own  thigh,  and  permits  the  young  to  partake  of  the 
blood,  so  that  they  may  not  perish  from  want."  In  time 
this  fable  became  transferred  from  the  vulture  to  the 
pelican — first,  as  far  as  we  make  out,  in  patristic  anno- 
tations on  the  Scriptures.  The  ecclesiastical  fathers 
transferred  the  Egyptian  story  from  the  vulture  to  the 
pelicau,  but  magnified  tlio  already  sufficiently  marvel- 
lous fable  a  hundredfold,  for  the  blood  of  the  parent 
bird  was  not  only  supposed  to  serve  as  food  for  the 
young,  but  was  also  able  to  leanimato  the  dead  of?- 


host  of  other  wiiters,  except  that  sometimes  it  was  the 
female  who  kUlod  the  young  ones,  while  the  male  re- 
animated them  with  his  blood.  The  fable  was  supposed 
to  be  a  symbol  of  Christ's  love  to  men.  It  is  a  mistake 
to  think  that  it  is  to  bo  found  in  the  zoology  of  the 
ancient  Greeks  and  Romans. 

We  learn  from  Dr.  Tristram  that  the  number  of 
griffons  in  every  part  of  Palesl.iue  is  amazing,  and  that 
they  are  found  at  all  seasons  of  the  year.  Many  colonies 
of  eyries  W(^ro  observed  iu  the  gorge  of  the  Wady  Kelt, 
near  Jericho ;  in  the  cliffs  near  Heshbou,  under  Mount 
Nebo ;  in  the  ravine  of  Jabbok,  &c.  The  ravines  on 
the  north  and  east  of  Mount  Oarmol  were  inhabited  by 


ANIMALS  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


249 


two  large  colonies,  "  but  the  most  populous  of  all  were 
tlio  '  griffonries  '  in  the  stupendous  cliffs  of  the  Wady 
Hamam,  '  the  robbers'  caves,'  and  in  the  deep  glen  of 
the  Wady  Leimun,  opening  on  to  the  plain  of  Genne- 
saret.  In  either  of  these  sublime  gorges  the  reverbe- 
rating echoes  of  a  single  rifle  would  bring  forth  griffons 
by  the  hundred  from  then-  recesses." 


nisr,  as  we  have  seen,  being  the  name  of  a  vidtnre  or 
eagle.  But  this  is  doubtful.  Professor  Bawlinson 
says  that  no  such  word  as  Nisroch,  or  nisr,  meaning  a 
"  hawk  "  or  "  falcon,"  occurs  iu  Assyrian.  This  is  not 
quite  correct,  for  the  Assyi'ian  words  to  denote  either  a 
vulture  or  an  eagle  are  na-as-ru  and  e-ru-ti,  the  former 
being  evidently  the  Arabic  nisr,  the  Hebrew  nesliev. 


LAMMERCfEIER,    OR   BEARDED    VULTURE    (OYFAitTUS    EARBATDs). 


Figures  of  the  vulture  occur  on  the  Assyi-ian  monu- 
ments, sometimes  hovering  in  the  air  as  an  expectant 
sharer  of  the  bodies  that  would  fall  in  battle ;  some- 
times resting  on  the  bodies,  and  picking  out  the  eyes 
of  tlie  slain.  Tlie  figures,  however,  are  very  badly 
drawn,  the  Assyrian  artists,  as  Professor  Bawlinson 
truly  says,  being  "  not  happy  in  their  delineation  of 
the  feathered  tribe."  Vulture  or  eagle-headed  human 
figures  occur  on  the  early  Assyrian  monuments,  often 
iu  colossal  proportions.  Some  have  supposed  this 
figure  to  be  the  same  as  the  god  Nisroch  (2  Kings  six. 
37),  in  whose  temple  Sennacherib  was  slain  by  his  sons; 


(See  Sir  H.  Eawlinsou's  W.  A.  I.,  vol.  ii.,  pi.  37,  line 
9  6.)  Professor  Bawlinson  thinks  it  more  probable  that 
the  eagle-headed  figure  often  represented  in  attendance 
on  the  king  is  intended  to  denote  a  good  genius.  (See 
on  this  subject  Bawliuson's  truly  valuable  work. 
Ancient  Monarchies,  vol.  ii.,  p.  30,  2nd  edition.)  Mr. 
A.  H.  Sayce  thinks  that  tlie  vulture  (V.  fulvus)  is  defi- 
nitely denoted  in  Assyrian  by  tlio  name  zin-na  or  zin, 
"a  desert,"  which,  with  the  determinative  of  itstsu-ru 
before  it,  would  mean  "the  bird  of  the  desert."  TIio 
Accadian  for  a  bird  is  lihu,  and  perhaps  id-hlm,  "  turd 
with  hands,"  means  "  an  eagle  "  or  "  vulture." 


250 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


The  giiffou  viiltiu-e  is  a  majestie  bii-d,  and,  according 
to  Tristram,  by  no  means  nnamiable  or  disgusting  in 
its  habits.  "  With  his  follows  ho  is  good-tempered, 
and,  voracious  as  he  is,  never  gi-udges  to  share  the 
feast  with  as  many  as  choose  to  join  him.  There  is 
none  of  the  snarling  or  quiu-relling  of  the  canine  tribe, 
nor  any  attempt  to  rob  a  weaker  cousin  of  his  portion, 
or  to  devour  a  savom-y  morsel  in  secret;  but  each  of 
the  company  amicably  keeps  his  place  ^vithout  attempt- 
ing to  eject  his  neighbour.  They  are  easily  trained,  and 
we  brought  up  two  from  the  nest,  which  were  reared, 
and  arrived  safely  in  England"  {Nat.  Hint.  Sib.,  p.  178). 

Viiltiu-es  are  most  numerous  in  hot  countries,  and 
liero  they  are  immensely  serviceable  in  removing  putre- 
fying remains  which  have  rapidly  decomposed  under  a 
high  degree  of  temperature.  Thou-  services  generally 
gain  for  these  bii-ds  protection  from  injury.  Vultures 
possess  extraordiuary  powers  of  smoU  and  vi.sion  ;  they 
•will  seldom  attack  living  animals,  and  oven  the  eagle 
prefers  his  food  already  slain. 

The  Egyptian  \ailturo  (Neophron  percnopferus)  is 
with  very  good  reason  identified  with  the  "  gier-eagle  " 
(=  German  geier-eagle — i.e.,  vulture-eagle),  mentioned 
in  Lev.  xi.  18,  and  Deut.  xiv.  17,  amongst  the  unclean 
birds.  The  Hebrew  name  is  rdeh.dm  or  rachdmdh, 
which,  according  to  Gesoniiis  and  other  authorities,  is 
derived  from  a  root  meaning  "to  be  affectionate  towards 
its  young  ;  "  but  according  to  Fiirst  {Heb.  and  Chald. 
Lex.,  p.  1,294)  is  akin  to  the  Arabic  airlchani  or  arhain, 
"  parti-coloured  "  or  "  variegated,"  which  is  true  enough 
of  the  bird  in  its  adult  state ;  but  since  vnltures  have 


by  Asiatic  and  European  nations  long  been  regarded 
as  showing  an  extraordinary  attachment  to  their  young, 
it  is  probable  the  true  derivation  lies  in  this  direction. 
The  modern  Arabic  name  for  the  Egyptian  vulture  is 
rachinah,  or  rechmy.  Near  Cairo  the  bu-d  is  called 
Ach  Bobba,  which  in  the  Turkish  language  means 
"  white  father,"  a  name  given  it  partly  out  of  reverence 
the  people  have  for  the  bird,  and  partly  from  the  colour 
of  its  plumage,  which  is  all  white  except  the  primary 
and  some  of  the  secondary  wing-covers,  which  are  black ; 
honco  the  specific  Greek  najnepercnopteras — i.e.,  "  dark- 
winged." 

The  Egyptian  vulture  is  an  admirable  scavenger, 
feeding  on  the  carrion  thrown  about  towns,  "  and  every 
kind  of  filth,  offal,  and  garbage  ;  and  though  elegant  in 
plumage  and  appearance  on  the  wing,  it  is  most  disgust- 
ing not  only  in  habits,  but  ru  odour  and  appearance  on 
a  close  inspection."  Unlike  the  griffons,  these  bu-ds  do 
not  congregate  iu  large  numbers,  but  live  in  pairs,  the 
male  and  female  seldom  separating.  They  bmld  in 
cliU's,  generally  low  down  ;  the  nest  is  described  as 
being  "an  enormous  collection  of  sticks,  clods  of  turf, 
bullocks'  ribs,  pieces  of  sheep-skin,  old  rags,  and  what- 
ever else  the  neighbourhood  of  a  camp  or  village  affords." 
The  eggs,  generally  two  in  number,  are  rich  red  in 
colour,  or  mottled  with  red.  The  Egyptian  vulture  is 
a  migratory  bird  in  Palestine,  very  common  iu  spring 
everywhere,  but  never  seen  in  the  ■winter.  It  is  widely 
distributed,  being  found  in  all  the  warmer  parts  of  the 
Old  World,  from  the  Pyrenees  to  Southern  India,  and 
throughout  the  whole  of  Africa. 


THE   COmCIDENCES    OF    SCRIPTUEE. 

BY     THE     VEN.     KENKT    WOOLLCOMEE,     M.A.,     ARCHDEACON     OF     BARNSTAPLE,    AND    CANON    OF    EXETER. 


'  They  took  knowledge  of  them  that  they  had  been  with  Jesus."— 
Acts  iv.  13. 

»MONG  the  many  undesigned  coincidences 
iu  Holy  Scripture,  the  following  seems 
worthy  of  notice — viz.,  that  between  Acts 
iv.  5 — 14,  and  St.  John  xviii.  12 — 17. 
In  the  former  passage  we  read  of  St.  Peter  and  St. 
John  being  summoned  before  the  Sanhedrim  on  the 
occasion  of  the  healing  of  the  impotent  man  at  the 
beautiful  gate  of  the  Temple.  At  this  meeting  of  the 
Sanhedi-im  (a  veiy  largely  attended  one)  wore  present 
Annas  and  Caiaphas  ;  and  after  the  answer  of  St.  Peter, 
St.  Luke  describes  the  effect  which  that  answer  had 
upon  the  members  of  the  Sanhedrim,  iu  these  words 
(Acts  iv.  13)  :  "  Now  when  they  saw  the  boldness  of 
Peter  and  John,  and  perceived "  [or  rather,  lia-i-ing 
ascertained,  or,  having  had  previous  knowledge.  Cf. 
Acts  XXV.  2-5,  where  the  word  is  rendered  "  When  I  had 
found  "]  "  tliat  tlioy  were  luJearnod  and  ignorant  men, 
they  marvelled,  and  they  took  knowledge  of  them  "  [or 
rather,  they  recognised  them.  See  Acts  iii.  10  ;  xii.  14  ; 
six.  34 ;  xxviii.  1 ;  where  the  same  word  is  used  in  the 


original,  evidently  in  this  sense]  "that  they  had  been 
with  Jesus." 

It  is  often  supposed  that  the  meaning  of  these  latter 
words  is,  that  the  Sanhedrim  attributed  their  boldness 
to  their  intercourse  with  Jesus.  But  this  seems  hardly 
consistent  with  their  wishes,  or  convictions,  that  Jesus 
was  no  other  than  an  impostor. 

A  truer  interpretation  of  the  words  woidd  be,  that 
the  members  of  the  Sanlietb-im,  and  e.spccia!ly  Annas 
and  Caiaphas,  recollected  at  the  moment  that  they  had 
seen  these  two  disciples  La  the  same  "  palace  of  the  high 
priest  "  not  many  more  than  forty  or  fifty  days  before, 
when  Jesus  himself  stood  before  them  in  judgment. 
One  of  the  two,  St.  John,  was  personally  known  to 
Caiaphas,  and  therefore,  probably,  to  Annas,  his  father- 
in-law  (St.  John  xviii.  13).  For  St.  John  owed  his 
means  of  entering  into  the  palace  of  tho  high  priest  on 
that  occasion  (it  would  seem)  to  his  acquaintance  with 
Caiaphas,  and  was  emboldened  by  that  same  .acqu.iint- 
ance  to  obtain  entrance  thereto  for  St.  Peter  also. 
All  this  is  shown  in  St.  John  xriii.  15,  16 :  "  Simon 
Peter  followed  Jesus,  and  so  did  that  other  disciple : 


ZEPHANIAH. 


251 


that  disciple  was  known  unto  tlie  high  priest,  and 
went  iu  with  Jesus  into  the  palace  of  the  Iiigli  priest. 
But  Peter  stood  without  at  the  door.  Then  went  out 
that  other  disciple  which  was  known  unto  the  high 
priest,  and  spake  to  hor  that  kept  the  door,  and  brought 
in  Peter." 

And  so  the  sudden  recognition  of  the  two  apostles 
by  the  Sanhedrim  was  in  truth  a  recoUectiou  of  their 
having  seen  them  at  that  former  most  momentous  trial 
in  that  same  "  palace,"  and  their  surprise  at  their  bold- 
ness was  intensified  by  the  fact  that  on  that  former 
occasion  they  had  seen  them  dispirited  and  humiliated, 
and  that  one  of  them  had  denied  his  Master.' 


1  Cbrysostom,  in  his  Commeutary  on  Acts  iv.  13,  *'  They  toolc 
knowledge,"  kc,  says :  *'  It  is  not  without  an  object  that  the 
Evangelist  set  down  this  passage,  but  he  did  it  that  he  might 
show  where  they  had  so  beeu  with  Jesus.  He  means,  at  His  ijassion. 
Por  these  were  the  only  two  apostles  then  with  Him.     At  that 


Now,  if  this  be  the  true  interpretation,  we  have  hero 
a  very  strikuig  undesigned  coincidence  between  two 
independent  historians,  St.  Luke  and  St.  Johu,  whose 
accounts  were  written  and  published  at  a  considerable 
interval  from  each  other ;  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles 
being  written  somewhere  about  a.d.  64,  St.  John's 
Gospel  not  until  A.D.  90,  or  thereabouts.  St.  John's 
later  account  records  the  circumstance  on  which  was 
grounded  the  recognition  recorded  by  St.  Luke  so  many 
years  earlier. 

This  coincidence,  then,  may  bo  taken  as  among  not 
the  least  remarkable  proofs  of  the  veracity  of  these  two 
inspired  wi'iters. 

time  they  had  seen  them  humbled  and  cast  down,  and  so  their 
complete  change  of  bearing  surprised  them  exceedingly.  For 
Annas  and  Caiaphas  and  their  fellow-counsellors  were  there,  and 
these  two  apostles  had  beeu  among  those  who  stood  by  them. 
Now,  therefore,  their  exceeding  boldness  astonished  them." 


BOOKS    OF    THE     OLD     TESTAMENT. 


ZEPHANIAH    (continued) . 

BY    THE    KEV.    SAMUEL    COX,    NOTTINGHAM. 


I. — THE    THEEATENED   JTJDGMENT    (CHAP.  I.  2 — 18). 

'he  invasion  of  Western  Asia  by  the 
Scythian  hordes  appears  to  have  been  the 
occasion  of  Zephaniah's  prophecy,  and, 
in  large  measure,  to  have*  suggested  its 
form ;  but  this  invasion  is  not  the  subject  or  theme 
of  his  prophecy.  What  he  foresees  and  foretells  is, 
rather,  a  series  of  wide- spread  judgments,  which  would 
embrace  Judah,  Edom,  Moab,  the  Philistino  confedera- 
tion, Assyria,  Egypt,  and  even  Ethiopia.  Still  these 
future  judgments  would  doubtless  grow  more  real  and 
more  terrible  in  his  thoughts,  and  in  the  thoughts  of 
those  to  whom  he  announced  them,  from  theii'  ex- 
perience of  that  present,  or  recent,  judgment — the 
Scythian  invasion,  which  had  devastated  Juda3a,  and 
was  stiU  sweeping  over  the  kingdoms  of  the  East. 

We  have  lately  felt,  as  probably  we  never  felt  before, 
the  terrible  havsc  wluch  dogs  the  steps  of  war.  We 
know — how  can  we  but  know,  who  have  so  recently 
witnessed  the  Franco-German  war? — that  when  the 
enemy  is  approaching  in  force,  aU  the  grain,  cattle, 
food-stores  of  the  undefended  vOlages  and  towns  are 
carried  ofB  into  tho  fortified  cities,  for  the  support  of 
the  garrisons;  while  the  infirm  and  the  aged,  women 
and  children,  are  often  expelled,  that  there  may  be 
the  fewer  mouths  to  feed.  Wo  know  that  when  the 
country  has  thus  been  swept  of  its  substance  by  its 
defenders,  the  invaders  flow  over  it,  consuming  and 
destroying  whatever  has  been  left,  slaying  tJiousands 
of  its  inhabitants,  pressing  other  thousands  into  their 
seri-ice,  and  leaving  yet  other  thousands  to  the  lingering 
agonies  of  starvation,  or  to  the  more  merciful,  because 
swifter,  pangs  of  tho  pestilence  which  follows  in  the 
train  of  war  and  famine.     la  ancient  times  the  modes 


of  warfare  were  far  more  cruel  than  they  are  now, 
and  of  all  the  ancient  races  the  Scythians  wore  perhaps 
the  most  biu-barous  and  remorseless.  Probably  the 
Cossack  hordes,  with  their  robber  instincts  and  name- 
less brutalities,  are  om-  nearest  modern  analogue  to  the 
Scythian  triljes  of  antique  times.  Wherever  they  went, 
the  land  and  its  inhabitants  were  utterly  consumed 
before  them. 

Such  an  invasion  may  well  have  suggested  the 
opening  verses  of  this  prophetic  poem  (chap.  i.  2,  3) : — 

"  Sweeping,  I  will  sweep  everything  from  the  face  of  the  earth, 
Saith  Jehovah : 
I  will  sweep  away  man  and  beast ; 
I  will  sweep  away  tho  fowl  of  the  heaven  and  the  fish  of  the  sea. 
And  their  offences  with  the  sinners : 
And  J  will  cut  off  man  from  the  face  of  the  earth, 
Saith  Jehovah." 

A  clean  sweep  over  the  face  of  the  whole  earth — such 
a  teri'ible  j-udgment  as  this  would  naturally  suggest 
itself  to  one  who  looked  out  from  the  walls  of  Jeru- 
salem on  tho  weltering  hordes  of  barbai'iau  foes,  saw 
the  whole  land  devoured  before  them,  and  had  long 
heard  of  the  frightful  destruction  they  had  carried 
tlirough  the  neighboui'ing  kingdoms. 

But  what  had  Zophaniah,  a  Hebrew  prophet,  to  do 
with  the  great  heathen  empires  ?  His  errand  was  to 
Judah.  Why  should  bo  concern  himself  with  the  fate 
of  Assp-ia,  Egypt,  Edom,  Moab,  Amnion — with  tho 
calamities  of  races  which  had  always  been  tho  bitter 
foes  of  Israel?  Were  not  tho  Hebrews  tho  most 
national  and  exclusive  of  races  ?  Did  they  not  love 
their  poots  and  prophets  because  these  insjiired  men  of 
genius  gave  expression  to  their  patriotic  and  exclusive 
spirit  in  the  most  beautiful  and  impressive  forms  ?  So 
wo  have  too  long,  too  often,  thought.    Wo  have  com- 


252 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


monly  conceived  of  the  Hebrew  poets  as  of  men  wholly 
devoted  to  tho  interests  of  the  siicred  race,  as  exulting 
over  the  calamities  and  defeats  of  alien  tribes,  as  limiting 
their  thoughts  and  hopes  solely  to  the  affairs  of  tho 
Hebrew  commonwealth.  And  in  thus  conceiving  them, 
we  have  done  them  great  wrong.  They  were  patriots, 
patriots  of  the  sincerest  and  loftiest  strain.  But  may 
not  an  Englishman  be  a  patriot  -without  exulting  in  the 
disasters  which  befall  the  French  or  the  Germans  .''  and 
love  his  coimtry  supremely  without  craving  its  aggran- 
disement at  the  cost  of  other  lands  ?  In  pi^oportion  as 
his  patriotism  is  genuine  and  pure,  he  ivill  respect  the 
patriotic  feelings  and  toils  of  other  races ;  in  proportion 
as  his  patriotism  is  intelligent  and  wise,  he  wUl  desire 
the  welfare  of  all  races,  knowing  that  only  as  all  prosper 
can  any  one  people  rise  to  its  full  prosperity.  And  as 
we  come  to  read  tho  Hebrew  prophets  with  intelligence, 
we  find  that  thou-  patriotism  was  as  wise  as  it  was  sin- 
cere. Instead  of  being  of  a  bigoted  and  exclusive  spirit, 
thoy  are  the  most  catholic  of  men ;  or,  if  they  are  not 
catholic,  the  Sjm-it  who  inspired  them  is  a  Spirit  of  love 
and  good^vill  to  all.  If  thoy  long  for  the  prosperity  of 
Zion,  for  the  glory  of  the  seed  of  Abraham,  it  is  that  in 
his  seed  aU  the  families  of  the  earth  may  be  blessed.  If 
they  exidt  in  the  judgments  which  befall  alien  races,  do 
they  not  exult  in  the  judgments  which  fall  on  Judah  ? 
Does  not  tliis  stern  exultation  in  the  calamities  which 
faU  on  their  own  and  on  alien  races  spruig  from  the 
conviction  that  these  judgments  have  a  purpose  of 
mercy ;  that  they  are  sent  to  purify  and  uplift  men,  and 
to  bring  in  the  happy  day  when  all  nations  shall  serve 
God  with  one  mind  and  one  heart  ? 

It  was  in  this  spirit,  as  we  shall  see,  that  Zephaniah, 
who  was  sent  to  denounce  judgment  on  the  men  of 
Judah,  opened  his  prophecy  with  the  denunciation  of  a 
judgment  that  was  to  sweep  througli  tho  whole  earth. 

In  thus  linking  the  fate  of  the  whole  world  with  that 
of  the  chosen  people,  Zephaniah  resembles  Joel,  who 
saw  "  all  nations  "  judged  in  the  VaUey  of  Doom,  and 
the  Spirit  ®f  God  poured  out  on  "  cdl  flesh."**  And 
there  is  another  point  of  resemblante  between  these  twe 
prophets.  Joel  grieved  for  field  and  pasture,  wheat  and 
barley,  vine  and  fig-tree,  for  the  flocks  of  sheep  and 
the  herds  of  cattle ;  in  his  tenderness  for  them,  he  heard 
them  "  moaning  "  because  there  was  no  pasture,  and  cry- 
ing to  God  because  the  watercourses  were  dried  up.  It 
was  a  keen  pain  to  him  tliat  these  innocent  creatures 
should  sulfor  for  the  guUt  of  man."  And  in  precisely 
the  same  .spirit  Zephaniah  views  the  whole  imivorse  as 
sharing  the  fate  of  man,  as  suffering  for  his  guilt.  Is 
"  man  "  to  be  swept  from  the  face  of  the  earth  P  so  also 
is  ■'  beast ;"  sti  also  are  "  tho  fowl  of  the  heaven  and  the 
fish  of  the  sea."  In  our  day  it  is  too  much  the  fashion 
to  regard  mau  as  the  mere  croat-.ire  of  the  mig!<ty  natural 
forces  amid  which  he  stands  aud  moves.  It  is  assumed 
that  physical  laws  govern  his  whole  life,  determine  the 
bent  and  scope  of  his  mental  faculties,  the  cast  of  his 
thoughts,  his  customs,  his  religious  beliefs ;  that  he  is 


'  Joel  iii.  11—14:  ii,  28. 


'  Joel  i.  10-12,  18-20. 


the  mere  outcome  and  sport  of  the  great  forces  and  laws 
which  rule  tho  wide  domain  of  Nature.  Tho  Hebrew 
prophets  breathed  another,  and  surely  a  higher  spirit. 
To  them  it  seemed  that  man  was  tho  ruler,  not  the  ob- 
sequious slave  or  helpless  victim,  of  the  natural  world ; 
that  both  the  world  and  he  were  under  tho  dominion, 
not  of  mere  physical  forces  aud  sequences,  but  of  an  all- 
wise,  all-good  Being,  who  subordinated  the  physical  to 
the  mor;d.  and  was  capable  of  convulsing  the  whole  uni- 
verse, shaking  heaven  and  earth,  for  the  good  of  those 
whom  He  had  created  in  His  own  image,  after  His  own 
likeness.  This  conception  of  man.  as  standing  with  only 
God  above  him,  and  having  all  things  put  under  his  feet, 
may  belong  to  the  pre-scientific  age,  but  I  hojjo  it  is  not 
quite  exploded  yet ;  for  it  accords  with  the  prof oimdest 
intuitions,  and  satisfies  the  deepest  wants  of  our  uatuie, 
We  indeed  may  see,  even  more  clearly  than  tho  Hebrew 
seers,  that  the  physical  and  political  catastrophes  whieh 
they  called  "  judgments,"  were  not  infractions  of  natural 
laws ;  but  cannot  we  also  see  that  the  miserable  aud 
punitive  results  of  broken  laws  are,  in  the  truest  sense, 
"the  judgments  of  God?  "  And  did  not  the  Hebrew 
prophets  see  that,  too — see  it  perhaps  even  more  clearly 
than  we  do  ?  The  sense  of  a  Di^ono  law  penetrating 
himian  life,  and  working  out  in  blessing  or  in  punish- 
ment according  as  it  is  obeyed  or  violated,  is  the  most 
conspicuous  featm-e  in  then-  writings  ;  and  though  they 
may  express  it  in  other  than  our  modern  forms,  it  may 
be  well  for  us  ta  hesitate  before  we  decide  our  forms  to 
be  tho  better  pf  the  two.  or  the  more  accurate.  Let  us 
wait  in  patience  and  humility  before  we  gire  sentence, 
acknowledging  meanwhile  that  these  holy  men  had  at 
least  a  deeper  seu&xs  than  we  have  reached  as  yet  of  the 
immanence  of  a  Divine  law  and  righteousness  in  human 
life  aud  affairs. 

But  if  the  Hebrew  prophets  held  that  all  things  have 
been  put  under  the  feet  of  man,  "all  sheep  and  oxen, 
yea,  and  the  beasts  of  the  field,  the  fowl  of  the  air,  and 
tho  fish  of  tho  sea;"  with  what  a  genuine  sympathy, 
with  what  a  fine  and  tender  humanity,  thoy  take  thought 
for  those  innocent  subjects  of  a  guilty  lord  !  Who  but 
a  Hebrew  prophet,  or  perchance  a  modem  poet  whose . 
mind  had  been  steeped  in  the  spirit  of  the  Bible,  would 
have  had  a  thought  to  spare  for  the  "boasts"  of  the 
field,  or  "  the  fowl  of  heaven,"  or  "  tke  fish  of  tho  sea," 
as  he  stood  trembling  before  tho  vision  of  a  judgment 
which  was  to  "  cut  off  mau  from  the  face  of  the  earth  ?" 
A  tliird  point  of  resemblance  between  Joel  aud  Zepha- 
niah comes  out  in  these  opening  verses.  Joel  was  rooted 
and  gi'ounded  in  the  conviction  that  judgment  was  mercy, 
that  aU  tho  soitows  and  calamities  of  human  life  wore 
designed  to  answer  an  end  of  compassion  and  love  :  the 
locusts  came  to  bring  men  back  to  tho  God  whom  they 
had  forgotten;  .all  n.itions  would  be  judged,  in  order 
that  God  might  manifest  himself  as  tho  stronghold  and 
sanctu.ary  of  the  good,  that  his  Spirit  might  be  given  to 
all  flesh.^  And  on  this  conviction  Zephaniah  also  pLints 
himself.     In  passages  of  an  exquisite  tenderness  and 

3  Joel  ii.  12-14,  23-32;  iU.  16-21. 


ZEPHANIAH. 


263 


beauty,'  he  affirms  that  God  makes  himseK  torriblo  in 
the  earth  in  order  that  "  all  the  isles  of  the  earth,  every 
one  from  its  place,  may  worship  Him ;"  that  Ho  sweeps 
the  earth  with  fire  and  smites  the  nations  with  His  fury 
in  order  that,  the  judgment  having  shaken  them  from 
their  sins.  Ho  may  "turn  to  the  nations  a  pure  lip,  that 
they  may  all  invoke  the  name  of  Jehovah,  and  serve 
Him  witli  one  shoulder."  The  same  thought,  the  same 
intense  couvictiou  of  the  Divine  goodness,  finds  ex- 
pression, though  more  briefly  and  oljseuroly,  in  verso  3, 
"  I  will  sweep  away  .  .  .  their  offences  with  the 
sinners."  Even  these  brief  enigmatical  words  indicate 
that  the  purpose  of  the  far-sweeping  judgment  which  the 
prophet  forecasts,  is  the  purification  of  the  world  and 
of  human  life.  If  even  "  good  customs  "  may  lose  their 
Titahty  by  long  use,  and  so  "corrupt  the  world,"  we 
may  be  sure  that  the  world  would  soon  perish  under 
the  accumulating  mass  of  good  customs  out  of  which 
the  Ufe  has  died  and  of  the  evil  habits  whose  very  life 
is  hostile  and  malignant,  were  it  not  for  the  changes, 
the  floods  of  calamity  and  rebuke,  by  which,  age  after 
age,  "the  things  that  can  be  shaken  "  are  removed,  and 
the  health  of  the  world  is  renewed. 

"  What  custom  wills,  in  all  things  should  we  do  't. 
The  dust  ou  antique  time  would  lie  uuswept, 
And  mountaiuous  error  be  too  highly  heaped 
For  truth  to  o'er-peer."- 

No  revolution,  however,  no  reformation,  whether  in  the 
history  of  individuals  or  of  nations,  is  an  easy  or  agree- 
able process.  Tou  cannot  sweep  away  the  dnst  without 
making  a  dust.  And  yet  these  radical  cliu,iiges,  wliich 
at  the  time  are  so  painful,  often  so  tenible  and  judicial, 
afterward  produce  "  the  peaceable  fruits  of  righteous- 
ness to  them  that  are  exercised  thereby."  "  Sinners  " 
are  "  swept  away  ; "  but  "  their  offences  "  are  swept 
away  with  them.  The  corrupt  and  evil  forms  of  life 
and  worship — feudal  tyrannies,  for  example,  barbaric 
superstitions,  and  "  customs  "  m  the  African  sense — dis- 
appear ;  they  no  longer  load  and  oppress  the  activities 
of  the  race  ;  and,  once  banished,  they  can  never  return ; 
if  the  evU  spirit  should  come  back,  it  must  at  least 
assume  another  form,  and  enter  a  house  that  has  been 
swept  and  garnished. 

And  it  was,  I  suppose,  because  the  Hebrew  prophets 
were  so  strong  in  this  conviction  of  the  beneficent  uses 
of  "  judgments,"  that  they  could  dwell  on  them,  and 
even  exult  in  them,  as  they  did.  Nothing,  for  example, 
is  more  strange  and  painful  to  many  minds  than  the 
way  in  which  Zephaniah  lingers  over  the  details  of  "  the 
day  of  judgment."  He  elaborates  his  description  of  it 
as  though  tlio  theme  were  grateful  to  him,  adding  touch 
to  touch,  piling  epithet  on  epithet,  as  though  ho  were 
reluctant  to  leave  it,  as  though  ho  took  a  stern  and 
almost  malignant  pleasure  in  contemplating  it.'  As 
we  mark  the  gust  vrith  which  he  lingers  on  the  theme, 
turning  it  like  a  sweet  morsel  on  his  tongue,  we  are 
ready  to  say.  "  Tliis  man's  God  is  not  our  God."  Until 
we  understand  that  Zephaniah  believes  judgment  to  bo 

*  Zepb.  ii.  11 ;  iii.  9.  ~  Cnriolanus,  act  ii.,  scene  3. 

3  Zeph.  i.  2,  3,  l^t— IS. 


mercy,  that  he  is  depicting  terrors  through  which  men 
must  pass  in  order  that  tliey  may  be  cleansed  by  thom, 
and  that  as  they  pass  through  them  they  may  find  the 
mercy  in  them,  we  can  have  no  sympathy  with  him,  we 
can  only  bo  repelled  by  the  stern  exultation  with  which 
he  hails  the  groat  and  terrible  day  of  the  Lord. 

Nor  do  I  see  liow  we  can  face  the  facts  of  human  life, 
and  hold  fast  our  faith  in  God,  until  we  share  Zepha- 
niah's  conviction,  that  God  judges  and  afflicts  men  in 
order  that  He  may  cleanse  and  restore  their  souls.  We 
shudder  at  the  prophet's  description  of  the  day  of  an- 
guish and  distress,  the  day  of  desolation  and  ruin,  that 
was  coming  on  Judah,  and  of  the  judgment  that  was 
to  sweep  everything  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  But 
was  that  day  one  whit  more  terrible  than  "  the  day  of 
judgment"  which  lately  darkened  over  Prance?  Might 
not  a  French  prophet  have  taken  up  the  very  words  of 
the  Hebrew  prophet,  &id  have  spoken  of  a  day  of  dark- 
ness and  gloom,  a  daj'  of  the  trumpet  and  tlie  trumjiet- 
blast  against  the  fortified  cities  and  against  the  lofty 
battlements ;  a  day  on  which  men  would  be  brought 
into  straits,  and  walk  like  the  blind,  and  find  with  dis- 
may that  not  even  their  sdver,  not  even  their  gold,  was 
able  to  rescue  them  ?  Has  not  every  nation  in  its  turn 
passed  through  these  days  of  anguish  and  distress,  of 
ruin  and  desolation  ?  Why,  then,  should  wo  carp  at 
Zephaniali's  words,  when  facts  equally  loaded  with 
terror  and  gloom  are  the  common  staple  of  the  human 
story  ?  We  ought  rather  to  bo  thankful  for  his  words  ; 
we  should  rejoice,  that  even  on  a  day  so  dark  lie  could 
see  a  great  fight  of  hope,  and  teach  us  to  see  it.  Let 
us  learn  of  him  the  mercy  of  judgment ;  let  us  hold 
fast  to  the  conviction  that  even  the  judgments  which 
are  most  penetrating  and  of  the  widest  sweep,  are  only 
as  a  surgeon's  probe  which  carries  a  healing  bahu  to 
the  very  seat  of  disease,  that  they  simply  sheathe  and 
convey  the  "  saving  health  "  of  the  Divine  compassion 
and  love. 

Zephaniah  prophesied  in  the  days  of  Josiah,  and  pro- 
bably in  those  earlier  years  of  his  reign  during  wliich 
Josiah  accomplished  the  reformation  which  is  the  gloi-y 
of  his  reign.  The  moral  value  of  Zephaniah 's  prophecy 
lies  in  this :  that  it  presents  the  themes  common  to 
every  prophet  in  rapid  succession,  in  terse  and  pictur- 
esque forms.  Rebuke  of  sin,  threatening  of  judgment, 
the  merciful  and  redeeming  en-and  of  judgment,  invi- 
tation to  repentance,  assurance  of  rcdemjition,  the 
blessedness  of  the  redeemed — these  diaracteristic  topics 
of  the  prophetic  ministry,  though  crowded  within  the 
limits  of  so  short  a  poem,  are  handled  with  singular 
force,  vividness,  and  passion. 

Li  this  consists  the  moral  value  of  Zephaniali's  pro- 
phecy. But  its  main  historical  value  fies  in  the  fact, 
that  it  helps  us  to  comprehend  the  greatness  and  diffi- 
cidtj  of  the  task  to  which  Kijig  Josiah  devoted  himself, 
the  almost  incredibly  corrupt  materials  with  and  on 
which  ho  had  to  work,  tho  varied  and  obstinate  base- 
ness of  tlie  men  whom  he  had  to  reform,  to  recover  to 
patriotism,  virtue,  and  religion.     The  historical  records 


254 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


of  kis  rei<^  tell  lis  in  general  terms  that  tlie  Hebrews  of 
his  generation,  forgetting  God,  abandoning  his  worsliip, 
had  sunk  into  the  cruel  and  obscene  cuUus  of  the 
Chaldean  and  Phcenician  idols.  But  if  we  would  learn 
how  utterly  they  had  been  debased  by  their  base  worship, 
we  must  turn  to  Zophaniah.  He  touches  the  scene  with 
fii-e.  As  we  look,  we  see  a  nation  in  the  very  agony  of 
dissolution.  All  bonds  are  broken  ;  all  the  energies  of 
life  are  paralysed  and  infected :  a  mere  touch,  a  mere 
breath,  will  suffice  to  dissolve  a  commonwealth  seething 
in  such  foul  corruptions.  Every  man  is  Uviug  to  him- 
self, without  thought  of  the  xmblie  weal.  The  private 
life  of  the  nation  is  defiled  with  the  most  tlagrant  forms 
of  vice ;  its  political  life  is  stained  with  fraud,  ojipres- 
sion,  treason ;  its  religious  life  has  degenerated  into  a 
gross  superstition  and  an  infidelity  equally  gross ;  and 
both  the  iufidelity  and  the  superstition  are  rendered 
tenfold  more  sinister  and  fatal  by  an  ostentatious  insin- 
cerity. As  Josiah  moved  tlirough  such  a  chamel-house 
of  corruptions  he  might  well  have  asked.  "  Can  these 
dead  bones  live  ?  "  As  Zophani;ih  contemplated  it,  he 
felt  that  a  day  of  the  Lord  must  come,  a  great  and 
terrible  day,  before  life  could  arise  from  such  a  "  death 
in  sins ; "  that  only  a  Divine  judgment  could  cleanse  and 
revive  a  nation  sunk  in  pollutions  so  foul  and  so  deadly. 

He  is  sui-e  that  that  judgment  will  come,  and  '"  sweep 
away  their  offences  with  the  sinners."  Nay,  as  God  is 
the  God  of  the  whole  earth,  as  other  nations  are  no  less 
corrupt  than  the  Jews,  as  God  loves  all  men  as  well  as 
the  men  of  the  elect  race,  the  prophet  affirms  that  the 
Divine  judgment  will  sweep  through  the  whole  earth ; 
that  everywhere  an  age  so  degraded  must  give  place  to 
an  age  of  purer  maimers,  wiser  laws.  He  opens  his 
poem,  therefore,  as  we  have  seen,  with  a  denunciation  of 
universal  doom,  a  doom  as  wide  and  terrible  as  that  of 
the  Flood,'  out  of  which,  however,  as  from  that  ancient 
catastrophe,  there  is  to  come  a  new  heaven  and  a  new 
earth,  hi  which  humanity  will  commence  a  new  career. 

But  when  Jehovah  stretches  out  his  hand  "  over"  or 
"  against  "  man,  those  will  justly  suffer  most  who  liave 
known  his  vrill  most  clearly  and  have  yet  resisted  it, 
who  have  been  most  obstinate  and  perverse  iu  their 
rebellion  against  his  law.  Accordingly,  the  prophetic 
vision  of  judgment,  which  at  first  embraced  the  whole 
world,  now  contracts  and  settles  on  Judah,  the  land  in 
which  God  was  known  for  a  refuge  (ver.  4,  et  seq.),  and 
then  on  Jerusalem,  the  city  which  He  had  made  glorious 
with  Ids  presence  (ver.  10,  et  seq.). 

The  judgment  is  to  come  on  Judah,  that  "  the  very 
remnant  of  Baal  may  be  cut  off."  This  is  one  of  the 
phrases  ui  our  poem  which  help  us  to  fix  its  date.  For 
the  most  natural  inteii)rctation  of  the  phrase  is  that 
which  takes  it  as  marking  the  period  at  wliich  Josiah 
had  commenced  his  reformation,  although  as  yet  it  was 
incomplete.  In  some  measure,  to  some  degi-ee,  the 
power  of  idolatry  had  been  broken;  but  still  "a  rem- 
nant," and  it  would   seem  a  large  remnant,  of  Baal 

1  The  similarities  and  even  identities  of  expression  in  Gen.  vi.  7 
and  Zeph.  i.  2,  3,  prove  tliat  Zepliauiah  had  tlie  Flood  in  his 
thoughts,  as  well  as  the  Scythian  invasion. 


worshippers  had  been  left.     These,  too,  should  be  swept 
away  when  God  came  to  visit  and  judge  the  land. 

How  large  that  '•  remnant  of  Baal "  was,  how  fatally 
it  was  corruptiug  the  national  life,  verses  4  to  9  abun- 
dantly declare.  For  here,  uistead  of  describing  in 
abstract  terms  the  offences  which  demanded  judgment, 
the  inspired  poet  gives  us  a  dramatic  sketch  of  the 
sinners  whoso  offences  were  "  loud,  and  cried  to  heaven." 
He  sketches  at  least  six  classes  of  the  iuhabitauts  of 
Judah  whose  crimes  were  flagrant  and  notorious,  and 
tlius  virtu.ally  places  the  Hebrew  society  of  the  time 
before  us  with  a  vividness  which  no  abstract  terms,  no 
mere  catalogue  of  offences,  could  possibly  reach. 

(1.)  He  sets  before  us  the  priestly  class,  in  its  twofold 
division  of  hemarim  and  Icdlutnhn,  (ver.  4). 

"  I  will  also  stretch  forth  my  hand  over  Jndah, 
And  over  all  the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem  ; 
And  I  will  cut  off  from  this  place  the  very  remnant  of  Baal, 
The  name  of  priest  and  flamen." 

I  have  translated  these  Hebrew  words  by  "priest 
and  flamen,"  and  can  find  no  better  translation.  But 
no  Enghsh  words  will  accurately  render  the  Hebrew, 
since  none  can-y  the  Hebrew  .suggestions  with  them. 
The  hemArlm  were  the  priests — sometimes  taken  from 
the  tribe  of  Levi,  sometimes  from  the  veiy  "  lowest  of 
the  people  " — ordained  by  the  kings  of  Judah  either  to 
minister  at  the  altar  of  Jehovah  with  ahen  and  impure 
rites,  or  to  serve  the  altars  of  Baal  and  Astai-te.  In 
either  case  they  were  renegades  from  the  national  faith, 
■miscreants  who,  to  cam  a  loaf  of  bread  or  to  win  the 
favom-  of  the  Court,  were  prepared  to  stand  at  any  altar 
and  acbninister  any  ritual.  The  Jiuhanhn,  on  the  other 
hand,  were  the  foreign  priests  who  had  been  trained 
in  the  colleges  of  Phoenicia  or  Assp-ia,  and  ordained 
iu  their  temples — men  who  were  deep  in  the  astral  and 
astrological  learning  of  the  time,  iind  to  whom  the 
severe  and  simple  rites  of  the  Jehovah- worship  would  be 
a  theme  for  laughter  and  contempt.  It  is  easy  to  under- 
stand the  iudign.atiou  with  wliich  the  faitlilul  Hebrew, 
and  stiU  more  the  zealous  prophet,  would  regard  both 
the  haughty  aliens  who,  strong  in  the  favour  of  the 
Court,  despised  the  champions  of  the  national  faith,  and 
the  sordid  miscreants  who,  to  win  Court  favour,  had 
sold  their  Hebrew  birthright  and  corrupted  the  faith 
of  the  elect  people.  Zephaniah  dismisses  them  with  a 
single  phrase.  The  very  "  name  "  of  these  base  priests 
and  haughty  flamens  "  shall  be  cut  off." 

(2.)  From  the  priests  he  turns  to  the  worshippers. 
And  of  these  he  selects  three  classes  for  special  animad- 
version. The  fii'st,  "  those  who  worshipped  the  host  of 
heaven  on  the  roofs;"  that  is,  open  and  avowed  idolaters 
who  blended  the  sei-vice  of  the  sim  (Baal)  and  the  moon 
(Astarie)  ivith  the  Sabean  worship  of  the  stars.  On  the 
flat  roofs  of  the  Eastern  dweUhigs  they  erected  altars ; 
and  here,  iu  full  sight  of  the  host  of  heaven,  they  did 
them  homage,  mainly  by  burning  costly  aromatic  gums. 

(3.)  To  these  .avowed  idolaters  the  prophet  adds,  with 
a  certain  tone  of  sconi,  "  the  worshi2''2^ers  who  swear 
both  to  Jehovah  and  by  their  malkdm."  This  malkdin, 
or  king,  was  Baal,  who  is  named  "  king  "  and  "  lord  "  on 
the  Phoenician  inscription.*?,  not  the  king  of  the  nation. 


ZEPHANIAH. 


255 


"  To  swear  to,"  is  an  Oriental  phrase  for  entering  into 
a  covenant,  for  binding  oneself  by  oath  to  this  person 
or  that ;  '■  to  swear  by  "  a  person  or  god,  means  sLmplv 
to  use  his  name  when  taking  an  oath.  So  that  this 
second  class  of  worshippers,  who  swear  to  Jehovah 
and  by  malkdm,  consisted  of  men  who,  while  pledged 
to  the  ser^aee  of  God,  thonght  it  well  to  be  on  good 
terms  with  Baal,  or,  at  least,  so  far  to  yield  to  the 
fashion  of  the  time  as  to  adopt  the  customary  and 
fashionable  oaths,  and  thus  to  pass  themselves  off,  when 
they  saw  need,  as  adherents  of  the  pi-evalent  idolatry. 
In  short,  they  wore  like  the  men  whom  Elijah  described' 
as  "limping  on  both  legs,"  or  "hmping  between  two 
paths ;  "  or  like  those  whom  wo  sometimes  describe  as 
"wanting  to  walk  on  both  sides  of  the  hedge  at  once;  " 
or  like  the  men  whom  one  ®f  our  own  poets  stigmatised 
as  "  willing  to  servo  God  so  that  they  did  uot  offend  the 
devil."  On  the  whole,  they  thought  Jehovah  to  be  the 
true  God,  and  that  to  worship  Him  was  the  duty  of 
man ;  but  they  held  this  truth  as  mere  opinion,  not  as  a 
conviction  for  which  loss  and  reproach  were  to  bo  braved 
(ver.  5). 

(4.)  After  those  two  cLasses  of  priests  and  these  two 
classes  of  worshippers,  we  come  on  another  class,  who, 
though  they  have  uot  wholly  eradicated  their  religions 
intuitions  and  instincts,  decluie  to  act  on  them,  or  even 
to  profess  to  act  on  them,  They  have  ceased  to  believe, 
ceased  to  woi'ship.  They  "  draiv  hack  from  Jehovah," 
that  is,  they  put  Him  out  of  their  thoughts  ;  they  try,  as 
it  were,  to  get  behind  Him,  where  He  cannot  see  them ; 
"and  neither  seeTc  Jehovah  nor  asTc  after  Him.''  They 
do  not  want  to  find  Him.  They  are  afraid  that,  were 
they  to  ask.  He  would  answer ;  that,  were  they  to  seek. 
Ho  would  be  found  of  them.  And  as  they  do  not 
care  to  find  Him,  as  they  would  only  bo  embarrassed 
by  his  presence,  they  forget  Him  as  far  as  they  can, 
and  abstain  from  and  renounce  the  national  habits  and 
the  rites  of  worship  which  might  bring  Him  to  their 
thoughts  (ver.  6). 

(5.)  Thus  far  Zephaniah  has  been  depicting  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Judah  in  their  religious  aspects,  in  their  relation 
to  God.  But  now,  in  verses  8  and  9,  he  depicts  them, 
or  some  of  them,  in  their  political  aspects,  and  gives  us 
two  new  sketches  to  study. 

"  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  the  day  of  Jehovah's  sacrifice. 
That  I  wili  visit  the  priuces  and  the  king's  sonSj 
And  all  who  clothe  themselves  in  foreign  apparels 
I  will  also  visit  all  who  leap  over  the  threshold  in  that  day« 
"Who  fill  *he  house  of  their  lord  with  violence  and  deceit/' 

First  he  sketches  the  princes  and  nobles  of  the  land, 
and  then  the  turbulent  retainers  who  did  them  suit  and 
service.  "  The  princes  "  are  the  heads,  the  chiefs,  oi 
tribes  and  of  the  great  historic  families.  "  The  hinc/'s 
sons  "  are  not  only  the  sons  of  Josiah,  who  were  still 
very  young;  in  this  case  they  probably  are  not  even 
included  in  the  term  ;  it  is  a  Hebrew  phrase  for  the 
royal  famil}",  and  would  include  tho  uncles  and  nephews 
of  Josiah — all  his  blood  relations,  all  who  were  of  royal 
strain  and  rank.     And  these,  or  many  of  them,  were 


1  1  Kings  xviii.  21. 


idolaters  and  traitors,  some  leaning  to  the  Babylonian 
Court,  some  to  the  Egyptian  Court.  According  as  they 
advocated  alliance  with  Egypt  or  with  Babylon,  they 
adopted  Egyptian  or  Chaldean  modes  of  attire,  and  thus 
set  a  fashion  which  the  rank  and  file  of  then'  several 
factions  would  be  eager  to  follow.  "  All  who  clothe 
themselves  in  foreign  apparel  "  were,  in  aU  probabihty, 
these  apostate  nobles  and  princes  and  their  factions ; 
then-  foreign  apparel  indicating  their  foreign  and  trea- 
sonable leanings,  then-  servility  to  alien  monarchs,  their 
addiction  to  heathen  vices  and  superstitions. 

(6.)  These  haughty  traitorous  nobles  had  their  houses 
crowded  with  armed  retainers,  often  of  foreig-u  extrac- 
tion, who  were  even  more  licentious  and  insolent  than 
the  masters  they  served,  as  is  the  wont  of  their  kind. 
They  lived  by  pillage  and  extortion.  They  ''filled  the 
liouses  of  their  lords  with  violence  and  deceit."  Wlien 
a  caravan  was  passing,  when  a  wealthy  husbandman 
was  to  be  plundered,  when  the  stronghold  of  a  neigh- 
bom-ing  "  lord "  was  to  be  attacked,  in  then-  lust  of 
booty  and  bloodshed,  "  they  leaped  over  the  threshold," 
violently  riishing  out  of  their  own  stronghold,  or  as 
violently  invading  the  stronghold  they  assailed. 

It  was  this  turbulent  nobUity,  with  its  stiU  more  tur- 
bulent followers  ;  it  was  these  base  and  ahen  priests ;  it 
was  these  idolatrous,  trimming,  and  godless  citizens 
whom  Josiah  had  to  confront,  and  on  whom  Zephaniah 
denounced  the  judgments  of  tho  Lord.  "  Oh,  hush!" 
cries  the  prophet ;  "  be  silent  before  Jehovah.  He  is 
coming ;  his  day  is  near.  He  has  already  chosen  and 
called  those  who  are  to  execute  his  judgments  on  tho 
land.  He  hath  prepared  a  sacrifice  and  sanctified  his 
guests  "  (ver.  7).  The  sinners  of  the  Jews  are  to  be  the 
sacrifice ;  and  the  guests  who  ai-e  invited  to  this  sacri- 
ficial meal  are  the  nations  whom  God  has  sanctified,  or 
set  apart,  to  overrtm  the  land,  to  destroy  the  people, 
and  tc  make  then  wealth  a  booty. 

The  figure  of  verse  7  sounds  a  little  strangely  to  us ; 
but  it  would  be  familiar  to  the  Jews,  for  it  was  taken 
from  their  common  life.  We  have  an  iUustratiou  of 
the  habit  on  which  it  was  based  in  the  history  of  the 
fii'st  king  of  Israel.^  "When  Saul  sought  his  father'a 
asses,  but  foimd  them  not,  his  servant  suggested  that, 
before  giving  up  tho  quest  in  despair,  they  should  con- 
sult "  the  man  of  God  "  who  dwelt  in  the  city  of  Zuph 
— i.e.,  Samuel — and  who  peradveuture  would  be  able 
to  show  them  the  way  they  ought  to  take.  As  they 
went  up  tho  hiU  toward  the  city,  they  met  young 
maidens  going  out  to  draw  water,  and  asked  them, 
■•  Is  the  seer  here  ?  "  They  repKed,  "  He  is.  .  .  . 
As  soon  as  ye  be  come  into  the  city,  ye  shall  straight- 
way find  him  before  he  go  up  to  the  high  place  to  eat, 
for  the  people  wUl  not  eat  till  he  be  come,  because  he 
doth  bless  the  sacrifice,  and  afterward  they  eat  that  be 
bidden."  Such  a  saci-ificial  meal  was  so  common  vnik 
tho  Jews  that  they  would  at  once  seize  the  prophet's 
meaning.  They  would  understand  that  God  was  about 
to  make  thevi  a  sacrifice,  and  bid  tho  hostile  nations 

-'  1  Sam.  ix.  1—24. 


256 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


whom  lie  had  set  apart  as  the  ministers  of  his  will  to 
the  feast.  Ami  thus  the  awful  yet  consolatory  truth 
would  he  brought  home  to  them,  that,  though  it  might 
be  the  sword  of  Babylon  before  which  they  fell,  it  was 
God  who  was  meiiiig  out  the  judgment,  even  the  God 
who  in  the  midst  of  wrath  remembered  mercy. 

Zephaniah  sees  a  vision  of  judgment,  then,  which  is 
to  sweep  through  the  whole  earth.  This  vision  contracts 
till  it  settles  in  mauacing  gloom  on  the  land  of  Judah. 
At  verse  10  it  still  further  contracts  on  Jerusalem,  the 
metropolis  in  which  the  national  ^dees  and  impieties 
took  their  most  offensive  forms.  But  as  ho  turns  on 
Jerusalem  the  prophet  .slightly  changes  his  method.  He 
no  longer  describes  the  various  classes  of  sinners  and 
their  offences ;  but  ho  condenses  into  one  expressive 
figure  the  characteristic  and  prevailing  tone  of  its  in- 
habitants. They  were  "drawn  together  on  their  lees" 
(ver.  12),  or,  to  express  the  figure  fidly,  they  were  like 
wine  that  is  settled  on  its  lees,  taking  harsh  and  foul 
flavours  from  its  dregs.  That  is  to  say,  they  were 
cradling  themselves  on  their  lusts,  resting  on  what  was 
vilest  in  them,  on  the  sediment  and  refuse  of  their 
nature;  their  whole  character  was  being  impregnated 
with  the  harsh  fumes  of  their  baser  passions ;  they  were 
taking  their  tone  from  that  in  them  which  was  lowest 
and  worst.  Fixed  in  their  devotion  to  the  flesh  and 
the  world,  they  wore  saying  in  their  hearts,  "  Jehovah 
doeth  neither  good  nor  evil."  They  were  not  at  the 
pains  to  deny  his  existence.  They  had  not  reasoned 
themselves  into  atheism.  They  were  not  so  utterly 
foolish  <as  to  say,  even  in  their  hearts,  "  There  is  no 
God."  But  though  they  did  not  deny  God,  they  forgot 
Him.  They  had  no  vital  faith  in  Him,  or  in  his  ad- 
ministration of  human  afiaii-s.  For  them  He  sat  in 
heaven,  heedless  what  men  did,  suffering  the  world  to 
take  its  own  course,  not  penetrating  and  guiding  that 
coui-se  with  the  pure  counsels  of  his  eternal  will,  neither 
cavising  all  things  to  work  together  for  the  good  of 
them  that  served  Him,  nor  executing  his  idle  threats 
against  the  rebellious  and  ungodly.  Wliy,  then,  should 
they  fear  Him  ?  "Wliat  profit  should  they  have  if  they 
served  Him  ?  Why  not  give  the  reins  to  their  lusts, 
and  carry  themselves  as  though  there  were  no  God  ? 
In  short,  they  had  simk  into  that  practical  but  unrea- 
soned atheism  so  common  in  largo  cities,  when  thoir 
inhabitants  have  long  been  corrupted  with  luxury  and 
vice. 

It  is  this  practical  atheism,  the  atheism  of  the  market- 
place and  the  stews,  which  the  prophet  sets  himself  to 
rebuke.  Because  they  have  eyes  and  yet  cannot  see 
God  in  the  ordinary  and  benignant  course  of  his  pro- 
vidence. He  vriU  como  out  of  his  place  to  judge  and  to 
condemn  them.  Because,  when  their  days  go  lightly  and 
smoothly  they  forget  Him  who  "  sets  their  days  upon 
the  score,"  Ho  will  send  them  a  day  of  terrors  on  which 
their  very  heart  and  flesh  wUl  ciy  out  for  God.  He  will 
como  to  them.  He  will  go  through  the  city  making 
diligent  search,  trying  house  by  house,  man  by  man.  As 
the  \-intner  goes  through  his  cellars,  torch  in  hand ;  or 


as  the  head  of  tho  household,  taper  in  hand,  searches 
every  nook  and  corner  of  his  house  before  Passover, 
lest  any  morsel  of  leaven  should  be  hidden  in  it ;  so 
Jehovah  will  "search  Jerusalem  with  candles,"  hunting 
the  evil  out  of  every  dark  nook  in  which  they  have  con- 
cealed themselves,  suffering  none  to  escape.  No  strength 
will  be  able  to  resist  Him,  no  ))ribo  to  avert  tho  duo 
reward  of  thoir  deeds.  He  will  bring  evil  upon  them 
that  they  may  learn  how  good  He  is,  how  imperatively 
He  demands  truth  and  goodness  in  men.  In  their 
prosperity  they  have  foi'gotten  Him  and  wronged  their 
own  souls;  l)y  the  stripes  of  adversity  He  will  bring 
them  to  a  better  mind,  and  turn  their  heart  back  again 
unto  Himself. 

This  is  tho  teaching  of  verse  12,  which  we  have  taken 
out  of  its  place  because  it  describes  the  sin  of  Jerusalem 
as  well  as  the  judgment  that  was  coming  upon  it.  But 
in  verses  10,  11,  and  13,  the  judgment  is  depicted  under 
an  image  still  more  impressive,  if,  indeed,  it  be  an  imago 
at  all,  and  not  rather  a  prediction  of  literal  facts.  For 
in  these  verses  tho  city  is  described  as  undergoing  tho 
miseries  and  horrors  of  a  victorious  siege.  Its  leading 
inhabitants  gather  in  and  around  tho  Temple  and  strong- 
hold of  Zion.  Standing  on  tho  ramparts  of  the  Upper 
City,  they  see  the  enemy  swarming  round  the  walls,  and 
delivering  the  assault  on  tho  fortifications  of  the  Lower 
City.  They  hear  "  a  sound  of  crying  from  the  Fish- 
Oate,"  probably  a  gate  in  tho  northern  wall  of  the 
Lower  City,  through  which  fish  were  carried  to  mavket 
from  Gennesaret  and  the  Jorda'i.  This  gate  has  fallon, 
as  the  despairing  outcry  which  issues  from  it  denotes, 
and  the  enemy,  pouring  iu,  carry  fire  and  sword  through 
the  streets,  till  the  sound  of  waUiug  overspreads  "  tho 
Lower  City ; "  and  stiU  the  engines  of  war  are  heard 
crashing  from  the  neighbouring  hUls  against  the  walls 
and  forts.  The  storm  of  war  sweeps  on  toward  the 
Upper  City,  severed  from  the  Lower  by  the  ravine 
watered  by  tho  brook  Kedron,  and  known  to  this  day 
as  El-Wad,  or,  "The  Valley."  This  rudo  hollow,  in 
shape  somewhat  resembling  an  ancient  mortar,  Zephaniah 
calls  "  the  Mortar,"  coining  this  new  name  for  it  in 
order  to  suggest  the  fate  of  its  inhabitants ;  that  they 
win  be  bruised  and  pounded  as  in  a  mortar  by  shocks  of 
judgment,  by  the  blows  of  war.  This  valley,  moreover, 
was  from  time  immemorial  tho  haruit  of  the  merchants  of 
the  city;  they  are  to  be  found  in  it  to-day.  Of  these 
merchants  the  prophet  speaks  as  "  the  people  of  Canaan," 
because,  like  the  Canaanitos,  they  were  devoted  to  traffic, 
or,  perhaps,  because  a  colony  of  Phcenician  traders  had 
settled  in  the  valley.  Indeed,  as— now  we  understand 
his  terms — wo  can  see  for  ourselves,  tho  whole  scone  of 
the  siege  is  vivitUy  present  to  the  prophet's  eye.  He 
has  seen  tho  Fish- Gate  fall ;  he  has  lieard  tho  crashing 
of  the  rams  and  the  balistas  from  the  adjacent  hiUs,  and 
the  cries  of  the  inhabitants  of  tho  Lower  City  as  they 
fall  before  tho  sword.  And  now,  as  the  assault  storms 
do\vnwards  into  tho  valley  which  separates  them  from 
the  Upper  City,  ho  cries,  like  one  who  beholds  a  present 
catastrophe  :  "  Shriek  !  ye  inhabitants  of  the  Mortar  ! 
For  all  the  people  of  Canaan,"  all  tho  wealthy  smiths 


CONTRASTS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 


257 


and  merchants  of  the  valley,  "  are  destroyed :  cut  off 
are  all  they  that  are  laden  with  silver." 

The  prophet's  heart  soeras  to  have  failed  him  as  he 
beheld  the  enemy  break  into  the  Upper  City,  invade, 
pollute,  and  destroy  the  Temple.  Of  this  catastrophe  he 
gives  us  no  such  view  as  that  of  the  destruction  of  the 
lower  town  :  yet  ho  leaves  us  in  no  doubt  of  the  event. 
The  whole  city  is  searched  with  flaming  judgments  from 
which  none  esc<apo.  Their  "  wealth  becomes  a  booty  "  to 
their  foes;  "  and  their  houses  a  desolation;"  they  are 
not  suffered  to  inhabit  the  houses  they  have  built,  nor 
to  drink  the  wine  of  the  vineyards  they  have  planted. 

As  Zephaniah  contemplates  the  scene,  as  he  beholds 
Temple  and  city  and  palace  fall,  and  the  unhappy  thou- 
sands who  have  escaped  the  sword  carried  away  captive 
into  d'  strange  laud,  he  breaks  into  that  sublime  song, 
that  solemn  dies  iroe  with  which  the  chapter  closes 
<V3.  14—18)  :— 

"  The  great  day  of  Jehovah  is  near. 
Near,  and  hasting  greatly. 
Hark  !  the  day  of  Jehovah ! 
Bitterly  ahrieketh  the  mighty  man. 
A  day  of  fury  ia  this  day, 
A  day  of  anguish  and  distress, 
A  day  of  desolation  and  ruin, 
A  day  of  darkness  and  gloom, 
A  day  of  clouds  and  of  cloudy  night, 
A  day  of  the  trumpet  and  the  trumpet-blast 
Against  the  fortified  cities. 
And  against  the  lofty  battlements. 
And  I  will  bring  men  into  straits. 


Aad  they  shall  walk  like  the  blind, 

Because  they  have  sinned  against  Jehovah  ; 

And  their  blood  shall  be  poured  out  like  dust, 

And  their  flesh  like  dung. 

Even  their  silver,  even  their  gold. 

Shall  not  be  able  to  rescue  them 

In  the  day  of  Jehovah's  fury  ; 
But  in  the  fire  of  his  wrath 

Shall  the  whole  earth  be  consumed  : 
For  He  will  make  an  end,  yea,  a  sudden  end. 

Of  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  earth." 

Thcro  are  no  grander  verses,  none  more  sombre  and 
tragic,  none  in  which  terror  is  more  picturesque,  in  the 
literature  of  the  world.  But  they  call  for  little  com- 
ment. They  are  to  be  felt  rather  than  critically 
analysed  and  exi^lained.  In  order  to  impress  on  us  the 
terrors  of  that  great  day  of  the  Lord,  the  prophet  ex- 
hausts the  copious  Hebrew  vocabulary  of  its  terms  for 
gloom  and  liorror.  That  day  is  the  day  of  the  over- 
flowing irresistible  wrath  of  God ;  the  day  on  which 
men  sink  into  an  anguish  and  distress  beyond  expres- 
sion, beyond  relief ;  the  day  on  which  the  whole  earth 
is  wasted  with  havoc  and  broken  into  ruin  :  the  day  of 
a  darkness  so  profound  that  day  itself  is  changed  into 
its  very  opposite  and  becomes  a  night,  and  a  night 
wrapped  in  clouds  through  which  no  star  can  shoot  a 
ray  of  hope ;  and  out  of  the  thick  darkness,  stabbing 
all  hearts  with  an  agony  of  fear,  the  war-trumpets  peal 
louder  and  louder,  till,  in  their  misery  and  terror,  men 
"  walk  like  the  blind,"  brooding  in  a  sullen  despair  over 
their  sins,  desperate  of  escape. 


CONTRASTS     OF     SCEIPTURE 

THE   GOSPELS  OF  ST.  MATTHEW   AND    ST.    LUKE. 


BT   THE    REV.    T.    TEIONMOUTH   SHORE,    M.A., 

I  ro?b|KHE  distinctions  of  Scripture  are  no  less 
'  '^•S'^  remarkable  than  the  coincidences,  or 
rather,  they  are  coincidences  of  a  peculiar 
kind.  Every  thoughtful  student  of  the 
Grospel  narratives  must  have  noticed  verbal  differences 
in  the  Gospels  when  the  writers  are  narrating  what  are 
evidently  the  same  events.  It  is  of  some  importance  if 
we  can  trace  these  verbal  differences,  not  to  any  careless- 
ness of  expression  on  the  part  of  the  writers,  but  to 
a  desire  on  tlie  part  of  each  Evangelist  to  use  that 
phraseology  which  would  convey  the  true  impressions 
of  the  event  narrated  in  the  clearest  manner"  to  the 
class  of  persons  to  whom  each  primarily  and  particularly 
addressed  his  Gospel. 

It  is  generally  admitted  that  St.  Matthew  wrote  more 
especially  for  the  Jews,  and  St.  Luke  for  the  Gentiles ; 
and  it  wiU  be  ahke  interesting  and  important  if  we  can 
find,  upon  a  critical  analysis  of  the  text  of  each  of  those 
Evangelists,  that  when  the  phraseology  in  which  they 
both  narrate  the  same  event  differs,  it  does  so  out  of 
a  consideration  of  the  different  classes  addressed.'     I 


INCUMBENT    OP    BEKKELET    CHAPEL,    IIATPAIE. 

j  propose  to  examine  a  few  points  of  difference  in  phrase- 
'  ology  in  the  Gospels  of  St.  Matthew  and   St.   Luke, 
bearing  this  principle  in  mind. 

I.  The  Genealogies. — The  difference  between  the 
genealogy  of  our  Lord,  as  given  by  St.  Matthew  and  St. 
Luke,  is  remarkable.  St.  Matthew  traces  the  descent 
of  Christ  from  Abraham ;  St.  Luke  traces  it  from  Adam. 
I  do  not  here  enter  into  the  question  of  whether  both 
writers  give  us  the  genealogy  of  Joseph,  or  whether 
in  St.  Luke  we  read  that  of  the  Virgin.  I  confine  my 
remarks  to  the  point  which  immediately  concerns  my 
general  argument. 

On  this  point  it  ia  evident  that  the  connection  of 
Christ  with  Abraham  would  bo  most  important  to  the 
Jews  (and  therefore  is  the  point  illustrated  by  St. 
Matthew) ;  and  for  the  Gentiles  the  most  important 
point  would  be  to  teach  them  that  He  and  all  men  were 
descended  from  God,  the  Creator  of  humanity.* 

II.  It  is  noticeable  that,  as  a  rule,  when  St.  Matthew 


I  I  think  this  principle,  which  pervades  the  differences  between 
the  two  Gospels,  goes  some  way  to  disprove  Schleiermacher's 
view  that  St.  Luke  was  only  a  compiler,  as  urged  in  bis  Ueher  die 

Schriften  Lukas. 

41 — VOL.  IL 


2  Keim,  in  his  Life  of  Jesus,  referring  to  this  point,  and  to  the 
date  of  St.  Luke's  Gospel,  sarcastically  remarks  (as  if  there  were 
no  other  solution),  "  Metaphysics  already  bepin  to  attach  them- 
selves to  bis  nature  ;  he  is  a  descendant  from  Adam,  not  the  son 
of  David,  or  the  son  of  Abraham."  Surely  the  reason  of  the  dif- 
ference in  the  genealogies  is  nearer  at  hand. 


THE    BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


writes  of  tlie  "  kingdom  of  heaven,"  St.  Luke  uses  the 
phrase  "kingdom  of  God."  The  words  mean  pre- 
cisely the  same  thing,  but  the  different  phrases  conveyed 
most  accurately  the  same  idea  to  the  Jewish  and  Gen- 
tile mind  respectively.  A  Jew  spoke  commonly  of  a 
"great  thing"  as  a  "  thing  of  God."  Thus  we  read 
of  "  a  city  of  God  "  ( Jonali  iii.  3),  "  mountains  of  God  " 
(Ps.  xxxvi.  6), "  cedars  of  God  "  (Ps.  Ixxx.  10).  So  that 
to  a  Jewish  mind  tho  words  "kingdom  of  God"  would 
convey  at  once  an  idea  of  temporal  splendour  and 
power.  When  wo  remember  that  tho  most  vital  error 
in  Jewish  theological  thought  was  the  belief  that  the 
Messiah's  kingdom  was  to  be  a  temporal  one  of  great 
earthly  might  and  majesty ;  how  that  mistaken  concep- 
tion of  its  nature  led  to  their  rejection  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  because  of  his  humility,  wo  can  easily  see 
how  St.  Matthew  carefully  avoided  the  phrase  "  king- 
dom of  God,"  which  might  encom-iigo  that  misconception, 
and  might  seem  to  pander  to  that  error.  On  the  other 
hand,  tho  erroneous  conceptions  of  tho  Gentile  world 
wliich  St.  Luke  had  to  dispel  were  of  a  totally  different 
character.  To  them  the  phrase  of  St.  Matthew,  "  king- 
dom of  heaven,"  might  have  seemed  to  give  some 
countenance,  while  tho  phrase  so  dangeroiis  to  St. 
Matthew,  "  kingdom  of  God,"  would  in  tho  case  of  the 
Gentiles  not  only  have  given  no  countenance  to  their 
prevalent  eiTor,  but  tended  to  instruct  them  in  much 
needed  positive  truth.  The  Gentile  would  believe  in 
"gods  many,"  in  gods  of  earth,  of  the  sea,  of  the 
heaven,  and  the  phrase  "  kingdom  of  heaven  "  might 
have  implied  to  them  that  there  were  other  kingdoms 
ruled  over  by  other  gods.  Therefore  St.  Luke  speaks 
of  the  "  kingdom  of  God  "  in  every  passage  where  St. 
Matthew  writes  of  the  ''kingdom  of  heaven."  Every- 
where St.  Luke  seems  to  avoid  anything  which  to  Gen- 
tile thought  might  suggest  a  coufii-raation  of  their 
localising  or  individualising  the  Deity.  For  instance, 
St.  Luke  never  speaks,  as  St.  Matthew  so  frequently 
does,  of  ••  our  Father  in  heaven."'  Even  iu  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  aceording  to  the  best  authorities,^  St.  Luke  gives 
only  "  Our  Father,"  and  not,  as  St.  Matthew,  "  Our 
Father  which  art  in  heaven." 

So  also  St.  Matthew  says  (iv.  4),  "  Evoi-y  word  that 
proceedeth  out  of  tho  mouth  of  God  "  — tho  personality 
and  individuality  of  wln>.'h  is  carefully  avoided  by  St. 
Luke  in  tho  phrase,  "  By  every  word  of  God  "  (iv.  4)  ; 
and  tho  phrase  "  Wliosocver  will  do  tho  will  of  my  Father 
which  is  in  heaven,"  of  St.  Matthew  (xii.  50),  is  deloca- 
lisod  by  St.  Luke  into  "  My  mother  and  my  brethren 
are  these  which  hear  the  word  of  God  and  do  it." 

III.  Of  the  distinctive  objects  in  view  and  provided  for 
by  tho  tw9  Evangelists,  wo  have  remarkable  examples 

'  St.  Luke  Ei.  13  may  seem  an  exception,  bnt  here  not  only  the 
ejception  proves  tho  rale,  tut  i>  n<jT^p  o  £.f  oipan/C  ("  the  r.ather  who 
is  of  heaven,"  Beugel,  Euj.  Ed.)  is  simply  in  opposition  to  fathers 
■who  ore  evil  tind  of  the  earth,  and  is  cortninly  not  so  strong  in 
suggestion  of  locTlisatiou  jis  the  o  narijp  6  ^v  toU  ovpavol<:  ("the 
Father  in  tho  heavens")  of  Matt.  vii.  11. 

"  Sea  the  Vulgiite,  Origen  lep;  <^Ss  Tcrtullian.  Grieshach 
(leipsic  Eel.,  1805)  also  rt^'ects  tho  o  ii  rurr  oiipn^u'i-  in  St.  Luko's 
Gospel. 


in  Matt,  xxiii.  27,  as  compared  with  Luke  xi.  44.  St. 
Matthew  writes,  "Ye  are  like  unto  whited  sepulchres,'' 
which  indeed  appear  beautiful  outward,  but  are  within 
full  of  dead  men's  bones,  and  of  all  uncleanness." 
St.  Luke  writes,  '•  Ye  are  as  graves  which  appear 
not,  and  the  men  that  walk  over  them  are  not  aware  of 
them." 

Now  at  fir.st  sight,  and  especially  with  our  minds 
imbued  with  the  popular  but  erroneous  idea  of  a 
"whited  sepidchre,"  these  passages  seem  to  refer  to 
entirely  distinct  things;  but  upon  closer  examination, 
and  esijecially  with  regard  to  the  facts  I  am  seeking  to- 
illustrate,  that  St.  JIatthew  wrote  especially  for  the  Jews, 
and  St.  Lidie  for  Gentiles,  they  will  be  found  to  bo  iden- 
tical. It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  in  Jewish  casuistry 
for  a  man,  however  imconsciously,  to  walk  over  a 
grave,  was  to  incur  ceremonial  defilement.  The  Jewish 
authorities,  therefore,  when  a  grave  Ijocamo  undistin- 
guishable  by  reason  of  the  decay  or  destruction  of  the 
original  indication  of  its  existence,  caused  the  spot  to  be 
marked  with  "  whitewash,"  so  that  no  one  unconsciously 
walking  over  it  should  unwittingly  contract  ceremonial 
defilement.  These  marks,  however,  exposed  as  they  were 
necessarily  to  the  elements,  woidd  become  soon  oblite- 
rated, and,  tho  indication  of  danger  removed,  these  gi-aves 
covered  with  the  renewed  growth  of  gTass  and  herbage, 
would  appear  "  beautiful  outside,"'  while  full  within  ef 
the  sources  of  ceremonial  defilement.  Then  the  "  whited 
sepulchres  "  would  be  dangerously  deceptive  because  the 
whitening  had  worn  off,  and  there  was  nothing  to  warn 
tho  Jew,  when  walking  over  the  "beautifid"  verdure, 
that  he  was  really  treading  on  a  polluting  grave."" 

AH  this  was  intelhgille  enough  to  a  Jew,  accustomed 
to  these  protective  arrangements  ;  bnt  how  unintelligible 
to  a  Gentile  one  can  easily  imagine  iu  the  light  of  the 
fact  that  by  our  very  misapplication  of  the  words 
'■  whited  sepulchre,"  we  show  we  have  proverbially  as 
Gentiles  misunderstood  it.  St.  Luke,  therefore,  as 
instructor  of  the  Gentiles,  speaks  not  of  the  KeKoyiofieVoi 
(graves  which  have  lost  the  pi-ohibitory  whitening,  and 
become  beautiful  with  thercgrown  grass  and  flowers),  of 
the  aSnXc  (graves  "which  appear  not ") — a. phrase  so  un- 
technical  and  simple  that  no  Gentile  coidd  misunder- 
stand it. 

IV.  St.  Matthew  is  generally  more  chronologically  ac- 
curate in  his  narrative  than  other  writers,  yet  he  gives  as 
the  first  mu-acle  the  healing  of  a  leper  (viii.  2 — i),  for 
nothing  in  the  shape  of  exorcise  of  healing  power  would 
so  impress  a  Jew  as  the  curiug  of  a  leper,  especially  when 
the  healing  was  accomplished  by  touch,  which  to  other 
than  One  sent  by  God  would  be  a  source  of  pollution. 
St.  Luko,  on  the  contrary,  puts  iu  the  forefront  of  his 

3  r<'npoi7  KCKOfiajuf voM',  literally  "  graves,''  not  tcI  /ii-rifiera,  "  sepul- 
chres," as  in  Luke  xi.  44. 

•■  See  on  this  point  of  wbiteniug  the  graves,  Poooek,  Koto-  MiscdL 
This  is  also  spoken  of  in  MlsUna  Shckalim,  i.  §  1,  nrapn  n«  ]'3"3D1. 
On  the  first  of  Adar  in  each  year  the  eeptilchres  were  to  be 
"  paiuted,"  i.e.,  marked  with  a  misture  of  lime  and  watei". 
MaimouidGS  mentions  that  they  did  not  mark  those  which  were 
apparent,  but  only  those  which  were  not  likely  to  be  seen,  and 
which,  therefore,  might  accidentally  be  touched  in  passing. 


CONTRASTS  OF    SCRIPTURE. 


259 


record  of  miraculous  signs  (iv.  33 — 3G)  tlio  iiealLiigof  ono 
possessed,  by  far  the  most  impressive  sign  to  the  Gen- 
tiles, wlien  we  remember  that  he  was  a  worshipper  of  the 
demons,  over  whom  Jesus  was  tlius  shown  to  triumph. 
It  is  also  noticeable  that  St.  Luke  speaks  of  an  "  tm- 
clean  spirit  "  or  demon  ;  St.  Matthew  (viii.  28)  speaks 
only  of  a  ''devil."  There  was  uo  distinction  in  the 
Jewish  mind  between  good  and  bad  demons,  but  it  was 
otherwise  with  the  Gentile  conception  of  demons  ;  there- 
fore St.  Luke  points  out  the  nature  of  the  demon  that 
wa.s  expelled.  Luke  ix.  42  may  seem  not  to  bear  out 
this  argument,  but  the  previous  description  in  this  narra- 
tive of  the  results  ef  the  possession  had  .sufficiently 
explained  the  nature  of  the  "  devil "  (SaijuJi/ioc),  which 
in  the  opening  (ver.  39)  is  designated  Tryev/xa  (spix'it) ; 
and  the  words  of  the  naiTative  are  a  striking  contrast  to 
the  account  of  the  same  incident  in  Matt.  xvii.  15,  where 
the  sou  is  described  as  being  "  lunatic"  (on  o-eATj^'iafeTai), 
a  phrase  calculated  to  encourage  superstitious  ideas  in 
a  Gentile  reader,  and  therefore  avoided  by  St.  Luke.  It 
is  also  worth  calling  attention  to  St.  Luke's  omission 
of  the  statement  recorded  by  St.  Matthew  (ver.  21). 
that  "  this  kind  goeth  not  out  but  by  prayer  and 
fasting." 

Another  very  remarkable  example  (the  more  remark- 
able, perhaps,  because  at  first  sight  it  may  appear  the 
contrai-y)  is  to  be  found  in  Luke  xi.  14.  We  are  here 
told  that  Christ  was  casting  out  a  demon,  "  and  it  was 
dumb  ''  (/cal  auTo  ^r  Koicpdi/).  Thus  the  character  of  the 
demon  is  described.  But  in  the  accoimt  given  by  St. 
Matthew  of  this  or  similar  cases,  does  not  he  also  use 
the  word  "  dumb,"  and  thus  describe  the  nature  of  the 
possessing  devil?  If  we  examine  the  passage  in  St. 
Mattliew,  we  shall  find  that  he  applies  the  word  "  dumb  " 
to  tlio  man,  and  not  to  the  demon  wliich  possessed  him, 
which  is  an  essential  and  notable  difference  from  St. 
Luke's  method  of  description,  where  it  is  the  nature 
of  the  demon  itself  which  is  thus  characterised  and 
described.  Matt.  is.  32  I  take  as  the  first  example. 
There  we  read,  "  They  brought  to  him  a  dimib  man 
possessed  with  a  devil  "  (axflpoiiroc  KoKpiv  5ai;UOfi(,'ii|UEi'oc). 
Here  it  is  the  man  that  is  dumb,  not  the  devU.  To  the 
Jewish  mind,  to  be  possessed  of  a  demon  was  a  bad 
thing  in  itself,  and  the  Jewish  reader  would  at  once 
connect  the  dumbness  and  the  possession  of  a  demon  aa 
cause  and  effect. '  The  Gentile  mind  would  not  do  so, 
there  being  in  Gentile  demonology  good  and  bad 
demons  ;  so  St.  Luke  (xi.  14)  describes  tlie  possession 
as  tliat  of  a  "  dumb  demon."  The  other  passage  is  in 
Matt.  xii.  22,  24.  In  the  English  version  the  point  is 
not  so  clear — it  being  most  natiwal  to  conclude  from  the 
English  that  the  demon  is  hero  described  as  "  blind  and 
dumb  " — as  we  read,  "  Then  was  brought  unto  him  one 
possessed  with  a  devil,  blind  and  dumb."  The  original 
Greek  (t<Jt6'  irpofrriffX^^  aur^  5aifjL0i'L^6!J,€V07  TvtpKos  Kal 
Ku<j>6s),  however,  shows  that  the  "  blind  and  dumb  "  refer 
to  the  "  possessed  "  man,  and  not  to  the  demon,  which  is 
not  mentioned  personally  at  all.  In  fact,  St.  Luke,  for 
the  sake  of  the  Gentiles,  has  to  explain  always  that  it 
was  an  evil  demon  of  gome  kind,  while  the  equivalent 


words  in  St.  Matthew  are  by  him  applied  to  the  effect 
on  the  person  possessed. 

V.  When  St.  Matthew  appeals  on  various  occasions  to 
the  commandments  of  the  Jewish  Law,  we  find  uo  such 
refereuce  in  the  parallel  passage  in  St.  Luke.  To  his 
GeutUe  readers  such  an  appeal  would  be  either  weak 
altogether,  er  tend  to  convey  an  idea  that  through 
Jovrish  law  the  liberty  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ 
should  be  attained.  For  example,  St.  Matthew  (vii.  12) 
writes  as  our  Lord's  teaching,  "Therefore  aU  things 
wliatsoever  ye  woidd  that  men  should  do  to  you,  do  ye 
even  so  to  them  :  for  tliis  is  the  law  and  the  prophets." 
St.  Luke  in  the  same  passage  gives  the  word  of  Christ 
thus,  "  Do  ye  also  to  them  hkovviso  "  (Luke  vi.  31). 

Again,  St.  Luke  gives  our  Lord's  rebuke  to  the 
Pharisees,  "  Te  tithe  mint  and  rue,  and  all  manner  of 
herbs,  and  pass  over  judgment  and  the  love  ef  God  " 
(Luke  xi.  42),  where  St.  Matthew  gives  the  additional 
reproach  to  a  Jew,  contained  in  the  words,  "Ye  pay 
tithe  of  mint,  and  anise,  and  cummin,  and  have  omitted 
the  weightier  matters  of  the  Law,  judgment,  mercy, 
and  faith  "  (Matt,  xxiii.  23). 

VI.  In  the  accoimt  of  the  transfiguration  of  C'lmst 
we  have  in  the  different  descriptive  phraseology  of  St. 
Matthew  and  St.  Luke  a  remarkable  instance  of  the 
elaborate  care  mth  wliich  the  ono  adapted  his  narra- 
tive to  the  instruction  of  tlie  Gentile,  and  the  other  to 
the  instruction  of  the  Jew.  St.  Matthew  (xvii.  2) 
writes,  "  And  he  was  transfigui'od  [lit.  mclamorphosed  '] 
before  them."  Knowing  how  such  a  phrase  might  bo 
wrested  to  sanction  erroneous  teaclmig'  by  a  people 
who  believed  in  every  strange  superstition  about  meta- 
morphosis, St.  Luke  avoids  the  word  that  would  be 
misunderstood,  and  says  (ix.  29),^  "  The  fashion  of  his 
countenance  was  altered." 

A  comparison  of  the  report  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount''  (Matt.  v.  et  seq. ;  Luke  vi.  17,  et  seq.),  as  given 
by  St.  Matthew  and  St.  Luke,  wiU  show  that  St.  Luke 
omitted  several  exhortations  which,  addressed  to  the 
Pharisees,  were  useless  for,  and,  indeed,  would  be  un- 
intelligible to.  Gentile  readers.  For  example,  St.  Luke 
omits  that  earnest  denunciation  of  the  ostentatious 
charity  of  the  Pharisees,  which  the  Gentile  converts, 
probably,  did  not  share,  and  to  whom  there  would  be  no 
point  in  such  an  allusion  as  that  made  to  "  the  sounding 
of  the  tiiimpet  "  in  giving  alms,  inasmuch  as  it  referred 
to  the  manner  in  which  some  alms-givers  rattled  their 
shekels  in  the  trumpet-shaped  vessels  at  the  door  of  the 


TO  iiio^    Ttjf  npotrwnuv  ai/TOu 


1    Kai  /iCTC/iop0u!^»|  HnTrpo^dev  OUTuiy. 
■^   Kal   t^tVcTO  ti"  TuJ  TTpoaeuxf^^a'  aVTV 
tTCpov,  K.T.  A. 

^  I  assume  the  two  Evangelists  to  be  recordins  the  same  sermon. 
The  phr.ase  "  stood  iu  the  plain,"  is  not  contradictory  to  the  state- 
ment of  St.  Matthew,  that  he  "went  up  into  a  niountaiu,"  See 
Bengel  in  loc.  jinrov  ncSivov,  "  on  a  level  spot."  "  This  6i)0t  was  not 
in  the  bottom  of  the  valley,  but  half-way  down  the  mountain,  a 
more  snitable  locality  for  addressing  alarf,'e  audience  than  a  com- 
pletely level  plain."  See  also  Bengel  on  Matt.  V.  "Afterwards  ho 
came  half-way  down  the  mountain,  and  as  he  was  coming  down 
with  his  disciples,  he  met  the  people  coming  up,  and  sat  down 
there  to  teach."  Thus  explaining  the  apparent  difl'erenco  between 
the  st.itement  of  the  one  that  "he  was  set,"  and  the  other  that  he 
"  stood." 


260 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


Temple  into  whicli  they  cast  their  alms,  thus  causing 
the  trumpet  to  sound,  so  that  meu  might  be  aware  of 
their  liberal  casting  in  of  offeruigs.' 

I  have  purposely  ui  this  jjaper  confiued  my  remarks 
to  such  varieties  between  the  Gospels  by  St.  Matthew 
and  St.  Luke — in  regard  both  to  the  language  used  and 
to  the  relative  prominence  given  by  each  to  jJarticular 
events — as  may  be  accounted  for  by  the  dilfereut know- 
ledge and  habits  of  thought  of  the  persons  whose  in- 
struction was  the  primary  object  of  each  Evangelist." 

'  For  this  interestiug  view  of  the  meaning  of  this  passage  I  am 
indebted  to  the  Eev.  S.  Cox. 

-  Perhaps  these  poiuts  may  be  in  some  sort  also  a  reply  to  such 
a  remark  as  that  of  Keim,  who  says  of  the  sources  from  which  St. 


There  are,  of  course,  many  other  striking  contrasts  in 
the  various  Gospel  narratives  which  are  attributable  to 
other  causes,  of  which  I  shall  afterwards  treat.  The 
stiuly  of  these  contrasts  between  the  language  and 
styles  of  the  various  books  of  the  Bible  will,  I  hope, 
help  to  bring  out  strongly  the  individuaUty  and  inde- 
pendence of  the  inspired  ^vriters. 

liuke  derived  bis  Gospel,  that  they  "  lay  within  the  range  of  Jewish 
Christianity"  (Dr.  Theodore  Keim's  Life,  of  Jesus).  Surely  the 
fact  that  St.  Luke  wrote  for  the  Gentiles  is  (without  sinister  sug- 
gestions that  much  of  the  Gospel  "  appears  altogether  Pauline") 
sufficient  to  explain  why,  in  St.  Luke's  Gospel,  "bumble  faith 
and  pi-actical  love  of  our  neighbours  are,"  as  Dr.  Keim  says, 
"exalted  above  the  law"  {or,  as  I  think  it  more  accurate  to  say, 
put  without  any  appeal  to  the  law). 


THE    HISTOKY    OF    THE   ENGLISH   BIBLE. 

BY    THE    P.EV.    W.    F.    MOULTON,    M.A.,    PEOFESSOK    OP    CLASSICS,    WESLETAN    COLLEGE,    RICHMOND. 


?AVING  in  former  chaptei's  sketched  the 
life  of  Tyndale,  we  turn  now  to  the  exami- 
nation of  his  work.  We  shall  first  notice 
his  translation  of  the  New  Testament. 
In  our  last  article  (page  125),  some  verses  of  St. 
Matthew  were  given  ui  facsimile  from  one  of  Tyndalo's 
Testaments.  The  specimen  is  taken  from  the  first 
edition,  from  the  sheets  printed  at  Cologne  in  1525, 
before  Cochleeus  appeared  on  the  scone  to  obstruct 
Tyndale's  labours.  These  sheets,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered, were  in  quarto,'  whereas  the  edition  commenced 
at  Worms  was  in  octavo.  The  facsimile,  therefore, 
represents  the  earliest  English  Testament  over  printed 
— the  first  English  translation  of  the  New  Testament 
made  from  the  original. 

Until  recently  it  was  supposed  that  no  portion  of 
this  quarto  Testament  had  escaped  destruction.  In 
the  year  1836,  however,  a  London  bookseller  acci- 
dentally met  with  a  portion  of  an  English  translation 
of  St,  Matthew's  Gospel,  in  black  letter,  bound  up  with 
another  tract.  The  fragment  consisted  of  thirty-one 
leaves.  Seven  of  these  contained  a  prologue,  com- 
mencing, "  I  have  here  translated  (brethern  and  susters 
moost  dore  and  tenderly  Ijeloued  in  Christ)  the  newe 
Testament  for  youre  spirituall  edyfpngo,  consolacion,, 
and  solas."  After  the  prologue  we  find  a  complete 
list  of  the  books  of  the  New  Testament,  and  a  wood- 
cut repi-esentiug  an  angel  holdinj:  an  inkstand  into 
which  St.  Matthew  dips  his  pen.  Then  follows  the 
translation  of  rather  more  than  two-thirds  of  the 
Gospel,  the  kst  words  of  the  fragment  being,  "  howe 
camyst  thou  in  hydder,  and  "  (Matt.  xxii.  12).  As  now 
the  prologue  contains  the  very  passages  which  were 
alleged  against  TjTid,ahi  by  his  enemies ;  as  the  list  of 
books  embraces  the  whole  New  Testament,  .and  follows 
the  peculiar  arrangement  which  is  adopted  in  Tyndale's 
octavo  Testament ;  as  it  can  be  shown  from  the  wood- 


'  By  an  unfortunate  misprint,  the  facsimile  on  page  125  appears 
as  an  extract  from  the  octavo  edition.    For  "octavo"  read  "  quarto." 


cut  and  from  typographical  evidence-  that  the  fi-agment 
was  printed  (by  Quentel)  at  Cologne  before  1526  ;  and 
as  tlie  translation  agrees  to  a  remarkable  extent  with 
t^at  of  the  octavo  Testament ;  there  cannot  remain  the 
losist  doubt  that  in  this  fragment  we  have,  as  has  been 
said,  a  portion  of  the  first  New  Testament  imblished 
by  Tyndale,  and  that  the  eight  sheets  which  it  contains 
are  part  of  the  ten  so  hastily  carried  off  from  Cologne 
to  Worms.  Out  of  3,000  copies  printed,  this  alone  is 
known  to  exist.  It  is  now  in  the  GrenvUle  Library  of 
the  British  Museum,  and  is  commonly  spoken  of  as  the 
Gren^dlle  Fragment.  Tliis  work  is  now  rendered  ac- 
cessible to  .all,  througli  the  publication  by  Mr.  Arber  of 
an  admirable  facsimile  edition  :  to  the  editor's  excellent 
Preface,  which  contains  many  documents  of  great  im- 
portance, we  have  frequently  referred  our  readers. 

Before  entering  into  further  detail  respecting  this 
earliest  version,  let  us  look  at  the  comp.aiiion  volume, 
the  octavo  Testament  issueil  at  Worms  in  1525.  Of 
this  edition  we  happily  possess  one  complete  copy — 
complete,  that  is,  so  far  .as  the  transl.ation  is  concerned, 
for  here  .also  the  title-p.age  is  missing.  This  copy, 
wliich  is  in  the  library  of  the  Baptist  College,  Bristol, 
has  been  most  carefully  reproduced  in  facsimile  by 
Mr.  Francis  Fry.  It  contains  no  prologue,  or  list  of 
contents;  but  at  the  close,  before  the  list  of  errors 
coiTected,  there  is  a  short,  address  to  the  reader,  of 
which  we  shall  have  to  speak  presently.  An  imperfect 
copy  of  the  same  edition,  preserved  in  the  library  of  St. 
Piiul's  Cathedral,  contains  about  six-sevenths  of  the  New 
Testament,  and  is  defective  both  at  the  beginning  .and 
at  the  end.  In  1836  Messrs.  Bagster  republished  this 
translation,  under  the  editorship  of  Mr.  Offor.  Those 
who  hiive  not  access  to  Mr.  Pry's  beautiful  (but  expen- 
sive) facsimile,  ^vill  find  this  edition  convenient,  and 
sufficiently   correct  for   most    purposes.^      The  same 

-  See  Arbor's  Facsimile,  pp.  65,  66. 

^  There  is  considerable  inaccui-acy  in  minor  points,  such  as  the 
spelling  of  words.  In  the  course  of  nearly  thirty  chapters  (taken 
from  St.  Matthew,  the  Acts,  and  the  Epistle  to  the   Colo3siai;s) 


THE  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  BIBLE. 


261 


translation  of  the  Gospels  is  given,  together  with  Wy- 
cliffe's,  in  Bosworth  and  Waring's  Gothic  and  Anglo- 
Saxon  Gospels.  It  will  not  bo  necessary  to  adduce  at 
length  the  evidence  on  which  we  receive  this  Testament 
as  Tyiidale's.  In  the  introduction  to  the  facsimile,  Mr. 
Fry  fully  proves  that  the  book  was  printed  by  P. 
Schoeffer  at  Worms  about  the  time  at  which  Tyndale 
is  known  to  have  been  in  that  city.  In  a  later  woi'k 
Tyndale  makes  reference  to  the  addi-ess  to  the  reader 
which  this  volume  contains;  and  a  comparison  of  the 
translation  with  that  of  subsequent  editions  which  bear 
Tyndale's  name,  is  of  itself  sufficient  to  place  the 
authorship  beyond  doubt. 

As  might  be  expected,  the  differences  between  the 
two  editions  of  1525  are  very  slight,  so  far  as  the 
translation  is  concerned.  A  careful  collation  of  the 
Grenvdle  Fragment  with  the  corresponding  portion  of 
the  octavo  edition  shows  that,  if  we  pass  over  varia- 
tions in  orthography  and  some  manifest  misprints, 
there  are  hardly  more  than  fifty  differences  of  text  in 
740  verses.  Many  of  these  are  of  veiy  little  consequence 
(as  to  for  Jinto,  unto  for  to,  which  for  the  which),  but 
others  show  the  hand  of  the  careful  reviser,  omitting 
unnecessary  words  or  improving  the  style.  There  is  but 
little  advance  in  correctness  of  translation,  the  emenda- 
tions being  balanced  by  almost  an  equal  number  of 
mistakes.  The  only  alteration  of  real  importance  is 
found  in  Matt.  xx.  23,  where  the  quarto  text  has  "  is 
not  mine  to  give  you ;"  in  the  octavo  Tyndale  rightly 
removes  the  "you,"  which  had  come  in  from  the  Vul- 
gate. That  the  Testament  to  which  the  Greuville 
Fragment  belongs  is  of  earlier  date  than  the  octavo, 
would  be  clear  even  if  we  had  only  internal  evidence  to 
guide  us  ;  for  in  more  than  forty  out  of  the  fifty  places 
in  which  the  two  texts  differ,  the  reading  of  the  octavo 
is  that  which  is  found  in  Tyndale's  later  editions.  In 
other  respects  the  two  Testaments  of  1525  have  much 
less  in  common.  The  brief  epistle  "  To  the  Reader  " 
stands  in  marked  contrast  with  the  lengthy  prologue 
prefixed  to  the  quarto  edition,  and  the  absence  of  notes 
in  the  octavo  is  a  stUl  more  striking  characteristic. 
Our  specimen  of  the  earlier  work  (p.  125)  contains  an  ex- 
planatory comment  in  the  outer  margin,  the  inner  being 
reserved  for  references  to  passages  of  Scripture,  usually 
parallel  passages  iu  the  other  Gospels.  As,  however, 
these  two  Testaments  so  nearly  agree  in  the  text  which 
they  present,  they  are  usually  spoken  of  as  one  work, 
under  the  name  of  Tyndale's  first  edition  of  the  New 
Testament. 

The  publication  of  unauthorised  impressions  of  Tyn- 
dale's Testament,  by  printers  in  Holland,  has  already 
been  referred  to ;  these  will  require  no  further  notice. 
In  1534,  however,  George  Joye,  the  author  of  transla- 
tions of  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and  the  Psalms  (not  from 
the  Hebrew,  but  from  the  Latin),  took  in  hand  a  re- 


there  are  only  four  mistakes  wliicla  affect  the  sense  ;  whereas 
within  the  compass  of  fifty  verses  there  are  nearly  thirty  differ- 
ences in  orthosraphy,  &c.,  between  this  edition  and  Mr.  Pry's 
facsimile.  It  should  be  said  that  the  title-page  inserted  by  Mr. 
Offer  has  no  authority  whatever. 


vi.'jion  of  Tyndale's  version,  correcting  it  by  the  help 
of  the  Vulgate.  Many  of  the  alterations  which  Joye 
made  were  veiy  offensive  to  Tyndale ;  though,  no  doubt, 
made  with  good  intentiou.s,  they  betray  great  weakness 
of  judgment,  and  frequently  depart  widely  from  the 
meaning  of  the  original  text.'  Perhaps  it  is  to  this 
unauthorised  procedure  that  we  owe  Tyndale's  distinct 
avowal  that  the  translation  of  the  New  Testament 
(wliich  had  hitherto  appeared  anonymously)  was  from 
his  hand.  The  revised  version  on  which  he  had  been 
long  engaged  was  published  in  November,  1534,  three 
months  later  than  Joyo's ;  and  not  only  does  the  title- 
page  contain  Tyndale's  name,  but  at  the  head  of  the 
Preface  we  find  "  W.  T.  yet  once  again  to  the  Christian 
Reader."  In  this  edition,  usudly  kno^vn  as  the  second, 
the  text  is  accompanied  by  marginal  notes.  Besides 
the  address  to  the  reader,  there  is  a  separate  prologue 
to  almost  every  book,  those  prefixed  to  the  Gospel  of 
St.  Matthew  and  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  being  of 
considerable  length.  A  translation  of  Epistles  taken 
out  of  the  Old  Testament,^  and  a  short  exposition  upon 
certain  words  and  phrases  of  the  New  Testament. 
"  added  to  fill  uj)  the  leaf  withal,"  are  the  remaining  con- 
tents of  the  volume.  A  few  copies  of  this  edition  are 
preserved  in  our  great  libraries  ;  for  example,  those  of 
the  British  Museum,  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  the  Uni- 
versity of  Cambridge,  &c.  In  1843  Messrs.  Bagster 
published  in  their  English  Hexapla  a  careful  reprint  of 
Tyndale's  Testament  of  1534,  taken  from  a  copy  in 
the  Library  of  the  Baptist  College,  Bristol. 

"  One  of  the  few  copies  of  this  edition  which  have 
been  preserved  is  of  touching  interest.  Among  the 
men  who  had  suffered  for  aiding  in  the  circulation  of 
the  earUer  editions  of  the  Testament  was  a  merchant- 
adventurer  of  Antweqi,  Mr.  Harman,  who  seems  to 
have  applied  to  Queen  Anne  Boleyn  for  redress.  The 
Queen  listened  to  the  plea  which  was  iirged  in  his 
favom-,  and  by  her  intervention  he  was  restored  to  the 
freedom  and  privileges  of  which  he  had  been  deprived. 
Tyndale  could  not  fail  to  hear  of  her  good  offices,  and 
he  acknowledged  them  by  a  royal  gift.  He  was  at  the 
time  engaged  iu  superintentling  the  printing  of  his  re- 
vised New  Testament,  and  of  this  he  caused  one  copj' 
to  be  struck  off  on  vellum  and  beautifully  illuminated. 
No  preface  or  dedication  or  name  mars  the  simple 
integrity  of  this  copy.  Only  on  the  gilded  edges  in 
faded  red  letters  rims  the  simple  title,  Anna  Begina 
Anglice.  The  copy  was  bequeathed  to  the  British 
Museum  by  the  Rev.  C.  M.  Cracherode  in  1799."^ 

The  final  residts  of  Tyndale's  labours  on  the  New 
Testament  are  foimd  in  the  edition  which  was  pubUshed 
about  the  time  of  his  imprisonment.  There  is  some 
difficiUty  in  identifying  this  edition,  as  the  same  text 
ajjpears  in  two  forms,  one  bearing  date  1535,  the  other 


1  One  copy  of  Joye's  work  has  been  preserved,  and  is  now  in 
the  British  Museum.  For  further  particulars,  see  Westcott, 
History  of  tiie  English  BiUe,  pp.  46 — 18  ;  Demaus,  Life  of  Tijndale, 
pp.  387—391. 

-  See  above,  page  124. 

^  Westcott,  Ilistortj  of  the  English  Billc,  p.  49. 


262 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


1534  (that  is,  probably,  tlia  commencemont  of  1535) ; 
whore  the  latter  dato  is  given,  the  initials  "  G.  H." 
follow.  It  is  probable  that  the  edition  **  1534  (G.  H,)  " 
is  Tyndalo's  genuine  work,  the  other  being  a  pirated 
edition.     One  circumstance  has  brought  the  book  dated 

1535  into  special  notorieij,  viz.,  the  extraordinary  ortho- 
graphy of  tlio  words.  A  glance  at  the  specimens  which 
we  give  of  the  oarlicr  editions  will  show  how  wonderfully 
the  spelling  of  English  words  maybe  made  to  vary, 
but  in  the  edition  now  under  consideration  there  is  a 
inethod  in  the  madness  which  cannot  fail  to  attract  atten- 
tion. In  Col.  i.  9 — 17,  for  example  (see  next  column), 
we  find  praeyincfCj  fnoetfidlf  faetlier,  haeth,  maede, 
saeynctes,  derhties,  whoom^  'icicle,  &c.  It  has  been 
suggested  that  the  peculiar  orthography  was  adopted 
intentionally ;  that  Tyndale,  wishing  to  adapt  his  work 
not  only  to  his  countrymen,  but  also  to  those  of  his  own 
county,  wrote  the  words  according  to  the  pronunciation 
current  among  the  peasantry  of  Gloucestershire,  that 
even  the  "  boy  that  drove  the  plough  "  might  learn  to 
read  the  Holy  Scriptures.^  It  appeal's  certain,  however, 
that  the  strange  guise  in  which  the  words  appear  is  the 
result  of  the  employment  of  Flemish  printers,  the  novel 
combinations  of  vowels  being  duo  to  peciiliaritics  of 
Elomish  pronunciatiRt.  It  is  worthy  of  remark  that 
Tyndale*s  last  edition,  though  it  has  marginal  references 
and  (in  part)  short  headings  of  chapters,  is  without 
notes.  Two  copies  of  the  edition  dated  1535  are  pre- 
served. Tliat  in  the  British  Museum  is  imperfect  both 
at  the  beginning  and  at  the  end ;  a  complete  copy 
may  be  seen  in  the  Cambridge  University  Library. 
The  text  of  this  edition  has  not  been  republished. 

The  following  specimens  will  illustrate  the  various 
forms  of  Tyndale's  work  on  the  New  Testament,  and 
V7ill  enable  our  readers  to  judge  for  themselves  in  regard 
to  some  interesting  f|ucstion3  which  remain  to  be  con- 
sidered. The  first  extract  is  taken  from  the  second 
edition  (1531-),  as  printed  in  Bagster's  Hexapla.  The 
portion  fjelected  is  Matt.  xiii.  1 — 14,  Tyndale's  earlier 
translation  of  which  verses  has  already  been  given. 
For  the  purpose  of  comparison,  the  later  Wycliifite 
version  of  the  same  passage  is  added.  The  next  extract 
is  from  the  British  Museum  copy  of  the  Testament  of 
1535 ;  Col.  i.  9 — 17  has  been  chosen,  as  a  passage  of 
some  difl5.culty.  Here  also  the  reader  may  compare 
Tyndalo's  work  with  that  of  Purvey,  some  verses  of  the 
ocw-ly  version  having  been  given  on  a  preceding  page.- 
The  last  passage  from  the  Now  Testament  is  Heb.  xi. 
20 — 3i,  as  it  appears  in  the  edition  of  1535  :  we  have 
assimilated  the  si^elling  to  that  of  our  ordinary  Bibles, 
that  the  two  versions  may  be  more  easily  compared.    ^ 

BT.    MATTHEW   XIII.    1 — 14    (tTNDALE,    1534). 

The  Bams  days  weut  lesns  o'lt  of  the  house,  and  sat  by  tho  see 
syde,  aud  moch  psople  resorted  vnto  him,  so  gretly  that  he  went 
aud  sat  iu  a  shippe,  aurl  nil  the  people  stode  ou  the  shoore.  Aud 
he  apalte  mauy  thyngtis  to  them  iu  similitudes,  sayiu^e :  Beholde, 
the  sower  wont  foi-th  to  soTre.  Aud  as  he  sowed,  some  fell  by  tlio 
wayos  syde,  and  the  fowUes  came  aud  devoured  it  vp.  Some  fell 
aponstouy  grouude  where  it  h.id  not  moche  erth,  aud  a  nonne  it 


1  Sse  Vol.  II.,  p.  21. 


■^  Sec  Vol.  I.,  p.  83, 


Bprouge  vp,  because  it  had  uo  depth  of  erth :  and  when  the  suune 
was  vp,  it  cauht  heet,  aud  for  lake  of  rotyuge  wyddred  awaye. 
Some  fell  amonge  tboruos,  &  the  thorues  sprouge  vp  aud  chooked 
it.  Piirte  fell  iu  good  grouud,  &  brought  forth  good  frute :  some 
au  hundred  fold,  some  sixtio  fold,  some  tbyrty  folde.  Whosoever 
hath  eares  to  heare,  let  him  heare. 

Aud  the  disciples  came  and  snydo  to  him  :  Why  speakest  thou 
to  them  ia  parables?  He  answered  aud  sayde  vuto  them:  It  is 
geveu  viito  you  to  kuowe  the  secretes  of  the  kyngdome  of  heveu, 
but  to  them  it  ia  not  geveu.  For  whosoever  hath  to  him  shall  be 
geveu  :  and  he  sUall  have  aboimdance.  But  whosoever  hath  not : 
from  hym  shal  be  ttikyn  a,  waye  even  that  ho  hath.  Therfore 
speake  I  to  them  iu  similitudes  :  for  thou^-'h  they  se,  they  se  not : 
k  hearinge  they  heare  not ;  nether  vudei'stonde.  And  in  Ihem 
is  fulfilled  the  Prophesie  of  Esayas,  which  prophesie  sayth  ;  With 
the  eares  ye  shall  heare  aud  shall  not  vuderstoude,  and  with  the 
eyes  ye  shall  se,  aud  shall  uot  perceave. 

ST.  MATTHEW  XIII.  1 — 14  (PUSVEY,  1388). 
In  that  dai  Jhesua  gede  out  of  the  hous,  and  sat  bisidis  the  see. 
And  myche  puple  was  giiderid  to  hym,  so  that  he  wetite  up  in  to  a 
boot,  aud  sat;  and  al  the  puple  stood  ou  the  brenke.  And  he 
spac  to  hem  many  tbiugis  in  parablis,  and  scide,  Lo !  he  that 
Bowith  gede  out  to  sowe  his  seed.  Aud  while  he  sowith,  summo 
sccdis  feldeu  bisidis  the  weio,  and  briddis  of  the  eir  camen,  and 
eeteu  hem.  But  othore  smdis  feldeu  in  to  stony  places,  where  thei 
hadileu  not  myche  erthe ;  and  anoon  thei  sprongen  vp,  for  thei 
hadden  not  depuesse  of  crthe.  But  whanne  the  souue  was  risun, 
thei  swaliden,  aud  for  thei  haddeu  uot  roote,  thei  drieden  vp. 
Aud  other  seedis  feldeu  amoug  thorues  ;  and  thornes  woseu  vp,  and 
strangeledeu  hem.  But  othere  scmUs  felden  in  to  good  lend,  and 
gauGU  fruyt,  summe  au  hundrid  foold,  an  othir  sixti  foold,  an 
otbir  thritti  foold.  He  that  hath  eris  of  horyug,  here  he.  And 
the  disciphs  camen  uyg,  aud  seideu  to  him,  Whi  spekist  thou  ia 
parablis  to  hem  ?  And  he  ausweride,  and  seide  to  hem.  For  to 
gou  it  is  gouun  to  knowe  the  priuytees  of  the  kyngdom  of  heuenea  ; 
but  it  is  not  gouuu  to  hem.  For  it  shal  bo  gouun  to  hym  that 
hath,  aud  he  slial  haue  plcute ;  buTif  a  man  hath  uot,  also,  that 
thmg  that  ho  hath  shal  be  takun  awei  fro  hym.  Therefore  T 
spoke  to  hem  iu  parablia,  for  thei  seyuge  seen  not,  and  thei  herynge 
heren  uot,  nether  vudurstoudeu ;  that  the  prophesie  of  Ysaie 
seiynge  be  fulfiUid  in  hem,  With  heryng  ge  ac-huleu  here,  aud  ge 
shulou  not  vnduretonde ;  and  ge  seyuge  schulen  se,  aud  ge  shulen 
uot  se. 

COL.    I.    9 — 17    ^TYNDALE,    1535). 

For  this  cause  we  also,  seuce  the  dayo  we  havde  of  it,  haue  not 
ceosyd  praeyiuge  for  you,  aud  desyriuge  that  ye  might  be  fulfilled 
with  the  knowledge  of  his  will,  iu  all  wyadome  &  spirituall 
vuderstoudiugo,  that  ye  might  walke  worthy  of  the  Lorde  iu  all 
thiuges  that  please,  beynge  fruetfuU  in  all  good  workes  and  en- 
creasinge  in  the  kuowletlge  of  God,  strengtheJ  with  all  might 
tborowe  his  glorious  power  vuto  all  pacience  and  louge  sufTeringe 
with  ioyfulues,  geuinge  thankes  vuto  the  faether  which  haeth 
maede  vs  meete  to  be  parttackers  of  the  euheritauuce  of  saeynctes 
in  light. 

Which  haeth  deliuered  vs  from  the  power  of  derknes,  and  haeth 
translated  vs  iuto  the  kiugdome  of  his  deare  sone,  in  whoom  we 
haue  redempciou  thorowe  his  bloiid,  that  is  to  saey  forgeueua  of 
siunes,  which  is  the  ymage  of  the  iuuisible  God,  first  begotten  of 
al  creatures.  For  by  him  wore  all  thiuges  create^!,  thiuges  that 
pre  in  heaueu,  aud  things  that  are  iu  earth  :  thiuges  visible,  and 
thiuges  iuuisible,  whether  they  be  maieste  or  lordshipi>e,  ether 
ruele  or  power.  AH  thiuges  are  created  by  him,  aud  iu  him,  and 
he  is  before  all  thiuges,  and  iu  him  all  thiuges  haue  there  beynge. 

HEB.  SI.  29 — 34  (tyndale,  1535  :  spelling  modernised). 

By  faith  they  passed  through  the  Eed  Sea- as  by  dry  land,  which 
when  the  Egyptians  had  assayed  to  do,  They  were  drowned. 

By  faith  the  walls  of  Jericho  fell  down  after  they  were  com- 
passed about,  sevpu  days. 

By  faith  the  harlot  Rahab  perished  not  with  the  uuhelievera, 
when  she  had  received  the  spies  to  lodging  peaceably. 

Aud  what  shall  I  more  say  ?  the  time  would  be  too  short  for 
me  to  toll  of  Gedeou,  of  Barak,  and  of  Samson,  aud  of  Jephthae : 
also  of  David  and  Samuel,  aud  of  the  prophets  :  which  through 
faith  subdued  kiugdoms,  wrought  righteousnees,  obtained  the  pro- 
mises, stopped  the  mouths  of  lions,  quenched  the  violence  of  fire, 
escaped  the  edge  of  the  sword,  of  weak  were  made  strong,  waxed 
valiant  in  fight,  turned  to  flight  the  armies  of  the  aliens. 

K  our  readers  wiU  now  place  side  by  side  the  extract 
ou  imgo  125  and  the  first  of  the  passag^es  just  given,  the 


ILLUSTRATIONS  FROM  EASTERN  MANNERS  AND  CUSTOMS. 


263 


relation  between  Tyndale's  first  and  second  editions  will 
bo  Ciisily  seen.  In  these  fourteen  verses  there  is  no 
difference  between  the  octa.yo  and  quarto  of  1525 
(except  in  spelling) ;  the  second  edition  exliibits  seven 
changes — no  inconsiderable  amount  of  alteration  for  a 
passage  of  this  nature  and  extent.  In  one  case  an  over- 
sight is  eoiTected  {sixty  ior  Jifty) ;  in  two  or  three  others 
the  original  is  followed  more  closely.  A  more  graphic 
«xpres.sion,  "  the  thorns  sprung  up,"  takes  the  place  of 
"  tho  thorns  arose : "  here,  however,  the  gain  is  more 
than  doubtfid,  for  now  two  different  Greek  words  are 
rendered  by  "  sprung  up,"  and  the  hasty  growth  of  the 
seed  which  fell  on  the  stony  ground  is  not  distinguished 
from  the  "  coming  up  "  of  tho  thorns.  It  will  be  seen 
that  most  of  the  alterations  stood  their  ground,  and  arc 
in  tho  Authorised  Version. 

The  second  and  tliird  passages  happen  to  illustrate 
the  agreement  amongst  Tyndale's  successive  editions, 
I'ather  than  their  difference,  the  only  variations  being 
found  in  Col.  i.  1-i  ("the  forgiveness"  for  "forgive- 
ness"), Col.  i.  17  ("before  all"  for  "of  all"),  and 
in  Hob.  xi.  31  ("them  that  believed  not"  for  "tho 
unbelievers,"   and  "after"  for    "when").      In   fact. 


not  one  of  the  examples  hero  given  fully  illustrates 
the  amount  of  revision  bestowed  by  Tyndale  on  his 
earlier  work.  In  a  chapter  of  St.  Matthew  taken  at 
hazard  (chap,  xxi.)  we  find  that,  whereas  the  two  Testa- 
ments of  1525  differ  in  one  word  only,  the  second 
edition  (1534)  differs  from  them  in  forty  or  fifty  places. 
In  twenty  of  these  tho  new  rendering  is  nearer  to  the 
Greek,  in  three  only  is  it  loss  faithful  than  the  former 
version ;  in  more  than  thirty  of  these  instances  Tyn- 
dale's later  rendering  is  preserved  in  the  Authorised 
Version.  Professor  Westcott  has  compared  the  three 
editions  in  the  First  Epistle  of  St.  John.  Ho  finds 
thirty-four  changes  introduced  in  1534,  sixteen  more  in 
1535 ;  in  most  instances  the  change  was  for  the  bettor.' 
Enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  Tyndale,  like  Luther, 
was  continually  bent  on  the  improvement  of  his  work. 
At  tho  same  time,  we  need  not  go  beyond  the  illustra- 
tions hero  given  to  be  convinced  of  tho  excellence  of 
Tyndale's  first  attempt,  all  tho  changes  introduced  by 
him  at  a  later  period  affecting  but  a  small  portion  of 
his  earliest  text. 


1  Hist,  of  Eng.  Bible,  pp.  309—312. 


ILLUSTEATIONS   FROM  EASTERN   MANNERS   AND   CUSTOMS. 

III.— EAELT    ATTENDANCE    AT    THE    SAKCTUAKT  (conlin-jiei) . 
BY  THE   EEV.   C.   D.   OINSBUKG,   LL.D. 


.  HE  few  principal  articles  which  were  con- 
sidered necessaiy  to  constitute  tho  furni- 
ture of  the  synagogue  corresponded  to 
those  in  the  Temple.  Foremost  among 
them  was  the  ark.  It  consisted  of  a  wooden  chest, 
which  was  placed  against  the  wall  opposite  the  entrance, 
towards  which  the  praying  congregation  stood  with 
their  faces.  This  ark,  which  contained  tho  Scrolls  of 
the  Law,  was  placed  on  an  elevated  base,  with  several 
steps  loading  to  it.  From  those  steps  tho  priests  pro- 
noimced  the  benediction,  "  The  Lord  bless  thee  and 
keep  thee,"  &c.  (Numb.  vi.  24 — 26),  on  tho  great  feasts 
and  fasts.  There  was  a  canopy  over  the  ark.  In 
modem  synagogues  which  possess  a  number  of  scroUs, 
there  are  several  arks  placed  side  by  side  against  tho 
«astem  wall,  as  may  be  seen  in  the  picture  which  iUus- 
tratos  this  ai'ticlc.  The  recess  containing  the  ai-k  is 
called  the  Sanctnaiy,  or  the  Holy  of  Holies  pyn,  imp). 
As  this  was  considered  the  .symbol  of  tho  Divine  pre- 
sence, tho  worshippers,  on  entering  the  synagogue, 
bowed  in  reverence  towards  the  ark,  saying,  "  But  as 
for  me,  I  will  come  into  thy  house  in  tho  multitude  of 
thy  mercy,  and  in  thy  fear  will  I  worship  [or  bow] 
towards  thy  lioly  templo "  (Ps.  v.  7).  In  front  of  tho 
ark  was  a  reading-desk  before  which  stood  the  angel 
of  tho  congregation,  or  tho  one  delegated  to  conduct 
the  public  prayer,  with  his  face  to  the  sacred  shrine 
and  back  to  the  people,  as  exhibited  in  the  illustration. 
In  the  centre  of  the  syn.agngue  stood  the  rostrum  or 
platform,  which  was  capable  of  holding  several  persons. 


From  this  platform  the  lessons  from  tho  Law  and 
Prophets'  were  read,  discourses  wero  delivered,  and 
announcements  made.  The  platform  was  raised  above 
the  top  of  the  seats,  so  as  to  cause  tlie  voice  of  the  reader 
to  be  heai'd  by  all.  Hence  Josephus  teUs  us  that  when 
tho  midtitudo  assembled  together  every  seventh  year 
on  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  tho  high  priest  ascended 
the  high  desk,  whence  he  was  heard,  and  read  the  laws 
to  all  tho  people  (A7itiq.  iv.  8,  12).  It  was  from  such 
a  platform,  capable  of  holding  at  least  foui'teeu  persons, 
that  Ezra  read  the  law.  Thus  we  are  told  "  that  Ezra 
tho  scribe  stood  upon  a  pulpit  of  wood,  which  they  had 
made  for  the  purpose ;  and  beside  him  stood  Mattitmah, 
and  Shoma,  and  Anaiah,  and  Urijah,  and  Hilkiah,  and 
Maasoiah,  on  his  right  hand;  and  on  his  left  hand 
Pedaiah,  and  Mishaol,  and  Malchiah,  and  Hashum,  and 
Haslibadana,  Zochariah,  and  MeshuUam,  and  opened 
tho  book  before  the  eyes  of  all  the  people,  since  he  was 
above  all  the  people  "  (Neh.  viii.  4, 5).  It  was  on  such 
a  platform  that  Christ  "  stood  up  for  to  read "  the 
lesson  from  the  Prophets  on  the  Sabbath  in  the  syna- 
gogue at  Nazareth  (Luko  iv.  16,  17) ;  and  that  St.  Paul 
stood  when  he  delivered  the  discourse  on  the  Sabbath 
in  tho  synagogue  at  Antioch,  after  tho  reading  of  the 
Law  and  the  Prophets  (Acts  xiii.  14 — 16). 

The  seats  of  honour  for  the  elders  of  tho  synagogue 
and  for  tho  doctors  of  the  Law  were  the  next  im- 
portant articles  of  furniture.  These  arm-chairs,  which 
are  alternately  called  in  tho  New  Testament  "  the  chief 
seats"  (Matt,  xxiii.  6;  Mark  xii.  39),  "tho  uppermost 


264 


THB  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


seats"  (Luke  xi.  43),  and  "tlie  highest  seats"  (Luko 
XX.  46),  were  placed  in  front  of  the  ark,  opposite  the 
entrance.  As  this  was  the  \ippermost  part  of  the  syna- 
gogue, and  corresponded  to  the  chancel  iu  om-  churches, 
they  are  appropriately  called  the  uppermost  or  highest 
seats.  Those  elders  sat  with  their  backs  to  the  ark 
and  faced  the  people,  whilst  the  worshippers  stood  with 
their  faces  to  the  ark,  and  hence  face  to  face  with  the 
doctors  of  the  Law.  The  materials  of  which  these  seats 
were  made  varied  according  to  the  size  and  wealth  of 
the  congregation.  The  Talmud  tells  us  that  iu  the 
synagogue  at  Alexandi'ia  there  were  no  less  than  seventy- 
one  of  these  seats  of  honour  placed  around  the  chancel 
somewhat  in  the  manner  of  the  stalls  in  our  cathedrals, 
answering  to  the  number  of  the  members  of  the  great 
Sanhedrin  ;  and  that  they  were  made  of  gold  {Succa, 
81  6).  How  faithfully  this  custom  was  preserved  may 
be  seen  from  the  description  which  Benjamin  of  Tudela, 
the  celebrated  Jewish  traveller  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
^ves  of  the  princiiial  synagogue  at  Bagdad.  "  Many 
of  the  Jews  of  Bagdad,"  ^vl■ites  this  explorer  in  A.D. 
1159 — 1173,  "  are  good  scholars  and  very  rich.  The 
city  contains  twenty-eight  Jewish  synagogues,  situated 
partly  in  Bagdad  and  partly  in  Al-Khorkh,  on  the  other 
side  of  the  river  Tigris,  which  runs  through  and  divides 
the  city.  The  metropolitan  synagogue  of  the  Prince 
of  the  Capti%'ity  is  ornamented  with  pillars  of  richly 
coloured  marble,  pLated  with  gold  and  silver.  On  the 
pUlars  are  inscribed  ver.ses  of  the  Psalms  in  letters  of 
gold.  The  ascent  to  the  holy  ark  is  composed  of  ten 
marble  steps,  on  the  uppermost  of  which  ai-e  the  stalls 
set  apart  for  the  Prince  of  the  Captivity  and  the  other 
princes  of  the  house  of  David."  Before  and  at  the 
time  of  Christ  the  common  people  as  a  rule  had  no 
seats  (James  ii.  2 — 4).  If  fatigued  with  along  journey, 
or  otherwise  unable  to  stand,  the  wor.shippers  sat  down 
on  the  gi'ound  with  their  legs  crossed,  as  may  be  seen 
in  the  East  to  this  day.  The  women,  as  in  the  Temple, 
were  separated  from  the  men.  There  was  a  kind  of 
gallery,  or  one  of  the  aisles  screened  off  with  lattice- 
work, with  a  separate  entrance  specially  arranged  for 
them.  Tliey  could  liear  the  service  and  see  the  wor- 
shippers of  the  opposite  sex  without  being  seen.  This 
practice  stiU  obtains  amongst  the  orthodox  Jews  to 
this  day. 

Prom  the  charge  of  our  Saviour  against  the  scribes 
and  the  Pharisees,  that  "  they  love  the  chief  seats  in  the 
synagogue,"  some  have  supposed  that  one  of  the  sins 
which  the  doctors  of  the  Law  committed  was  their 
occupying  these  places  of  distinction.  Nothing,  how- 
ever, can  be  more  erroneous  than  such  a  supposition. 
The  ecclesiastical  heads  of  the  synagogue  were  surely 
no  more  guilty  of  pride  because  they  deemed  it  right  to 
occupy  "the  uppermost  seats  "  than  are  the  prelates 
and  the  dignitaries  of  our  Church  because  they  sit  on  a 
throne  and  in  stalls  in  catheebals.  It  is  no  disparage- 
ment of  the  humility  which  should  attach  to  his  office  to 
say  that  we  beUeve  that  a  prelate  in  modern  days  would 
be  quite  as  indignant  iu  finding  an  ordinary  worshipper 
occupying   his    throne   as   a   scribe   or  Pharisee  felt 


in  olden  days  if  a  layman  took  his  uppermost  seat 
What  Chi-ist  condemned  was  not  the  existence  and 
occupation  of  such  seats,  but  the  inordinate  Isve  for 
the  seat  which  surpassed  the  feeling  of  responsibility 
attached  to  the  office.  Thus  the  seats  of  distinction 
were  introduced  in  the  Christian  Church  even  in  the 
apostolic  age,  after  the  example  of  the  synagogue. 
Indeed,  the  primitive  Christians  seem  to  have  assigned 
the  seats  of  honour  in  theu-  places  of  worship  to  those 
who  were  attired  in  costly  apparel,  as  appears  from 
the  rebuke  administered  by  St.  James :  "  If  there  come 
unto  your  assembly  [or,  UteraUy,  as  the  margin  has  it, 
synagogue]  a  man  with  a  gold  ring,  iu  goodly  apparel, 
and  there  come  iu  also  a  poor  man  in  \ale  raiment ;  and 
ye  have  respect  to  him  that  hath  the  gay  clothing,  and 
say  unto  him.  Sit  thou  here  in  a  good  place,  and  say  to' 
the  poor.  Stand  thou  there,  or  sit  here  under  my  fsot- 
stool,  are  ye  not  then  partial  in  yourselves,  and  become 
judges  of  evU  thoughts  ?  "  (James  ii.  2 — 4.) 

Against  the  wall  where  the  ark  stood  there  was  sus- 
pended a  lamp  which  burned  day  and  night.  This 
perpetual  light  was  in  imitation  of  the  Tabernacle  and 
Temple  hght.  In  accordance  with  the  command  that  it 
must  be  "  pure  oil  olive  beaten  for  the  light,  which  is  to 
cause  the  lamp  to  bum  always  "  (Exod.  xxvii.  20),  the 
Jews  took  the  greatest  care  that  the  oil  should  be  of 
the  finest  quality.  As  this  hght  was  considered  the 
symbol  of  the  human  soul,  of  the  Di^'ine  law  (Prov.  vi. 
23 ;  XX.  27),  and  of  the  manifestation  of  God  (Ezek.  xliii. 
2),  it  was  most  religiously  fed  by  the  people.  When- 
ever any  special  blessing  or  mercy  was  vouchsafed  ta  a 
member  of  the  congregation,  or  if  he  was  afraid  of 
some  imminent  danger,  or  was  threatened  with  some- 
loss,  he  generally  vowed  a  certain  quantity  of  oil  for 
the  perpetual  light.  Tliis  pei-petual  light  is  not  only  to 
bo  seen  in  many  of  the  synagogues  to  the  present  day, 
but  also  existed  among  many  of  the  nations  of  antiquity, 
and  has  been  introduced  both  into  the  Christian  Church 
and  in  Mohammedan  mosques.  The  fact  that  in  Jewish, 
symbolism  this  light  was  the  emblem  of  the  Divine 
revelation,  gave  rise  to  the  metaphorical  designation  of 
the  apostles  that  they  "  are  the  lights  of  the  world "' 
(Matt.  v.  14),  the  proclaimers  of  God's  word. 

In  describing  the  different  officers  of  the  synagogue 
and  their  respective  functions,  it  is  absolutely  necessary 
to  make  a  distinction  between  the  small  synagogues  in 
provincial  places  and  the  large  synagogues  in  populous 
and  wealthy  towns.  Wo  have  seen  that  according  to 
the  canon  law,  wherever  ten  Jews  resided  who  had 
arrived  at  that  ago  when  they  become  members  of  the 
commonwealth  of  Israel,  they  were  bound  to  form  them- 
selves into  an  ecclesia,  or  worshipping  body.  It  stands 
to  reason  that  iu  so  small  a  congregation  there  could 
not  be  many  officers.  However,  those  that  were  re- 
quu-ed  to  render  the  service  orderly  the  members  them- 
selves appointed.  As  a  rule,  the  one  who  was  rich 
enough  to  have  a  spare  room  in  his  house,  and  who 
thought  it  an  honour  to  give  it  up  as  a  place  of  meeting, 
became  the  chief  or  ruler  of  the  synagogue.  The  most 
aged  and  revered  of  the  congregation  was  requested  by 


THE    ARE    OF   TUE 


GREAT    SYNAGOGUE,    DUKE    STREET,    ALDGATE,    LONDON. 


266 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


the  worsliippers  to  become  the  leader  of  the  Divine 
worship ;  whilst  two  or  three  others,  who  were  known 
for  their  integrity  and  charity,  were  appointed  to  collect 
the  contributions  for  the  sanctuary  at  Jerusalem,  to 
attend  to  any  strangers,  and  to  adjudicate  any  matters 
of  dispute.  Still  these  "  village  synagogues,"  as  they 
were  called  from  the  paucity  of  their  members,  could 
not  copy  the  Temple  service.  Indeed,  the  meetings  for 
worship  were  frequently  interrupted  altogether,  since 
the  illness  of  any  of  the  members,  or  their  absence  from 
home,  occasioned  cither  by  public  duties  or  private 
business,  diminished  the  legal  number  requisite  to  con- 
stitute an  ecclesia,  when  public  worship  was  entirely 
discontiniied. 

The  case,  however,  was  different  in  towns.  Hero 
the  office-bearers -were  not  only  more  numerous,  but  the 
whole  organisation  was  naturally  more  complete,  follow- 
ing as  closely  as  w'as  practicable  the  pattern  of  the 
Temple  arrangements.  No  place  was  called  a  town 
which  had  not  ten  inhabitants  of  independent  means 
who  could  devote  the  whole  of  their  time  to  the  require- 
ments of  the  synagogue.  Tims  the  canon  law  declares, 
"a  proper  town  is  that  which  has  ten  independent 
residents ;  if  it  has  less  than  this  number  it  is  a  village  " 
(Mishna,  Mcgilla  i.  3).  These  "ten  men  of  leisure" 
{baflanim),  as  they  are  technically  called,  were  as  a  rule 
selected  to  fill  up  the  diiferent  offices  required  for  the 
administration  of  the  affau-s  of  the  synagogue,  which 
embraced  both  the  ecclesiastical  and  civil  law.  The 
offices  to  which  they  were  elected,  and  the  names  whith 
they  obtained,  are  as  follow : — 

i.  TJie  Chief  Ruler  of  the  Synagogue. — The  one  of 
the  ten  who  was  most  distinguished  for  piety,  learning, 
experience,  and  business  tact,  was  elected  to  be  the 
cliief  ruler.  The  right  of  election  to  the  office  of 
"shepherd,"  as  it  is  also  called,  was  vested  in  the 
congregation.  Thus  it  is  declared  that  "no  ruler  or 
shepherd  is  to  bo  appointed  over  a  congregation  unless 
he  is  agreed  upon  by  the  congregation."  In  accordance 
with  the  Talmudie  practice  of  deriving  every  enactment 
from  the  Mosaic  legislation,  the  spiritual  heads  of  the 
nation  appeal  to  Exo'd.  xxxv.  30  for  support  of  this 
law.  Hero  Moses  tells  the  children  of  Israel,  "  See, 
the  Lord  hath  called  by  name  Bczaleel."  From  which 
the  Talmud  infers,  "  The  Holy  One,  blessed  be  He,  said 
to  Moses,  '  Do  you  ajtprove  of  Bezaleel  P '  To  whicli 
he  replied,  '  Lord  of  the  universe,  if  thou  approve  otf 
him,  then  I  am  certain  to  approve  of  him.'  Then  God 
said  to  Moses,  '  Go  and  tell  it  to  the  children  of  Israel ; ' 
and  he  went  and  told  them,  asking  them,  'Do  you 
approve  of  Bczaleel  ? '  To  which  they  replied,  '  If  the 
Holy  One,  blessed  be  Ho,  and  thou  approve  of  him,  we 
certainly  approve  of  him ' "  {Bcrachoth,  55  a).  What- 
ever we  may  think  of  the  exegesis  which  deduces  all 
this  from  the  expression  "  see  ye,"  taking  it  to  be  tanta- 
mount to  "  choose  ye,"  it  shows  beyond  a  doubt  that  the 
people  chose  their  own  shepherds  {parnashn  =  ttoi/jeVes). 
Wo  !iave  already  said  that  the  most  learned  and  expe- 
rienced of  the  ten  was  elected  to  this  office.  But  as  the 
people  at  large  who  exercised  their  power  of  choosing 


were  not  ahvays  competent  to  judge  between  the  rival 
claims  of  the  several  members  of  the  decade,  the  delegates 
of  tho  Great  Sanhedrin,  whose  seat  was  at  Jerusalem, 
were  sent  into  tho  different  towns  to  examine  the 
applicants  and  certify  their  fitness  for  the  office.  The 
chief  niler,  with  his  colleagues,  had  to  see  to  it  that  the 
service  was  conducted  decently  and  in  order,  had  to 
indicate  when  they  should  begin  to  invito  any  of  the 
congregation  whom  they  deemed  proper  to  address  tlio 
people  (Acts  xiii.  15),  and  indicated  when  the  congrega- 
tion was  to  say  Amen. 

ii.  Assistant  Rulers  of  the  Synagogue. — Having 
selected  the  chief  rulei-,  the  next  business  was  to  choose 
other  rulers  to  assist  the  supreme  official,  an(J  to  con- 
stitute a  local  sanhedrim  or  chapter,  as  it  wore.  The 
number  of  these  depended  upon  the  size  and  popula- 
tion of  the  different  localities.  In  a  place  which  had 
only  the  requisite  ten  independent  men  to  constitute 
it  a  town,  two  were  generally  chosen  to  be  the  judicial 
colleagues  of  the  cliief  justice,  to  aid  him  in  tho  ad- 
ministration of  the  law,  and  the  chief  ruler  had  the 
principal  voice  in  the  appointment.  These  three, 
assisted  by  other  foui-  of  the  ten  men  of  leisure,  formed 
the  judicial  bench.  In  accordance  with  the  Jewish 
practice,  Josephus  declares  that  Moses  himself  ordained 
that  "  seven  men  should  judge  every  city,  and  these 
such  as  have  been  before  most  zealous  in  the  exercise  of 
virtue  and  righteousness ;  and  that  every  judge  is  to 
have  two  officers  allotted  to  him  "  (Antiq.  iv.  8,  14).  As 
Church  and  State  were  identical  with  the  Jews,  these 
rulers  of  the  synagogue  had  tho  administration  of  both 
the  ecclesiastical  and  civil  affairs  of  the  respective 
communities  over  which  they  were  the  -parnashn  or 
shepherds.  Hence  the  apostles,  following  the  example 
of  the  synagogue,  as  soon  as  the  number  of  the  disciples 
multiplied,  also  appomted  "  seven  men  of  honest  report, 
full  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  wisdom,"  to  manage  tho 
affairs  of  the  community  (Acts  vi.  1 — 6  ;  xxi.  8). 

iii.  The  Tliree  Almoners. — The  remaining  three  of 
the  ten  men  of  leisure  were  appointed  official  almoners. 
Wo  have  already  described  the  necessary  qualifications 
of  these  officers  of  the  synagogue  under  No.  ii.,  "  Deeds 
of  Charity  and  Benevolence  "  (see  Vol.  I.,  p.  252).  Now 
apart  from  the  alms  which  these  functionaries  had  to 
distribute  both  daily  and  weekly  among  the  poor  of  the 
towns  in  tho  synagogues  of  which  they  held  their  affice, 
these  almoners  of  the  synagogues  in  the  provinces,  and 
especially  in  those  congregations  out  of  Palestine,  had 
to  make  collections  for  tho  poor  brethren  who  devoted 
themselves  to  study  and  contemplation  at  Jerusalem. 
This  ancient  practice  is  observed  by  the  Jews  to  tho 
present  day.  Delegated  almoners  from  the  Holy  City 
are  sent  all  over  the  world  to  collect,  and  tho  Jewish 
communities  dispersed  throughout  the  habitable  world 
forward,  contributions  to  the  saints  at  Jerusalem.  A 
striking  illustration  of  this  practice,  which  explains 
several  passages  in  the  New  Testament,  is  related  by 
Dr.  Polak  in  his  excellent  work  on  Persia.  "  In  1854 
a  Jerusalem  Jew  came  to  Teheran  to  make  this  collec- 
tion.    When  I  asked  him  where  else  ho  was  going 


ILLUSTTIATIOK'S  FROM  EASTERN  MANNERS  AND   CUSTOMS. 


267 


to,  he  replied  that  he  was  on  his  way  to  Turkistan 
and  Afglianistan.  On  my  calling  his  attention  to  the 
dangers  to  which  European  travellers  arc  there  exposed, 
and  to  the  massacre  of  Stoddart  and  Conelly,  he  replied, 
'  The  difficulties  of  getting  through  I  only  find  in  Persia, 
where  they  demand  a  toll  in  every  town  through  which  I 
have  to  pass.  As  soon  as  I  have  crossed  the  frontier  I 
shall  obtain  at  each  place  a  Jew  to  accompany  me  from 
one  station  to  the  other,  and  he  will  conduct  mo  safely  to 
each  spot.  I  speak  from  experience,  as  I  have  already 
performed  this  journey.'  After  the  lapse  of  two  years 
he  retm-ned  safely  back,  though  not  with  very  much 
money."  The  apostles  strictly  conformed  to  this  prac- 
tice, and  sent  their  contributions  to  these  "  elders,"  pres- 
byters, or  almoners  at  Jerusalem.  Thus  we  are  told 
that  "the  disciples  [of  Antioch  and  its  neighbourhood], 
eveiy  man  according  to  his  ability,  determined  to  send 
relief  to  the  brethren  which  dwelt  in  Judaea,  which  also 
they  did,  and  sent  it  to  the  elders  by  the  hands  of 
Barnabas  and  Saul "  (Acts  xi.  29,  30).  Again,  St.  Paul 
tells  us,  "I  go  to  Jerusalem  to  minister  to  the  saints, 
for  it  hath  pleased  them  of  Macedonia  and  Achaia  to 
make  a  certain  contribution  for  the  poor  saints  which 
are  at  Jerusalem  "  (comp.  Rom.  xv.  25 — 27  with  Acts 
xxi.  17;  comp.  also  2  Cor.  viii.  8  and  Gal.  ii.  10). 

There  is  another  cu-cumstance  connected  with  the 
manner  in  which  these  ahnonors  received  the  contribu- 
tions of  the  people  to  which  wo  must  advert,  inasmuch 
as  it  illustrates  the  practice  in  this  respect  of  the 
apostles  and  early  Christians.  Besides  the  daily  and 
weekly  poor-rates  levelled  by  the  almoners  which  h.ave 
already  been  described  (comp.  VoL  I.,  p.  252,  &c.), 
there  were  occasional  demands  upon  the  people's 
charity  arising  from  the  persecutions  and  loss  of  all 
things  which  the  pious  at  Jerusalem  sufEered  who  clung 
to  the  very  dust  of  the  sacred  city.  The  appeals  to 
the  congregations  iii  the  different  provinces  and  out  of 
Palestine  were  generally  m.ide  on  the  Sabbath,  when 
the  woi-shippers,  as  a  matter  of  course,  were  most 
numei-ous.  As  the  Jews  from  time  immemorial  would 
not  handle  money  on  the  Sabbath  day,  the  almoners 
ordered  the  chazzan,  an  ofiicial.  whose  functions  we  shall 
presently  describe,  to  receive  promises  of  certain  sums, 
which  were  paid  the  following  day.  This  custom  of 
setting  apart  on  the  Sabbath  what  every  one  intended  to 
give  illustrates  the  passage  in  1  Cor.  xvi.  1 — 3.  Here 
the  Apostle  tells  the  Clu-istians  at  Corinth  that  with 
regard  to  the  collections  for  the  saints,  "  upon  the  first 
day  of  the  week  let  every  ono  of  you  lay  by  him  in  store, 
as  God  hath  prospered  him,  that  there  be  no  gatherings 
when  I  come.  And  when  I  come,  whomsoever  you  shall 
approve  of  by  letters,  them  will  I  send  to  bring  your 
liberality  to  Jerusalem."  It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the 
Apostle  not  only  urged  the  continuance  of  the  ancient 
prjictice  to  give  eveiy  Sabbath,  but  that  the  almoners 
were  chosen  by  the  members  of  the  congregation. 

These  ten  officials,  who,  as  we  have  seen,  had  the 
administration  of  both  the-  ecclesiastical  and  civil  afPairs 
of  the  respective  synagogues  over  which  they  presided, 
constituting  the  chapter  as'it  were,  are  alternately  called 


in  the  extra-canonical  Jewish  ivritings  and  in  the  New 
Testament  by  tlie  following  names  : — (1.)  Presbyters  or 
elders  (znkenim  =  irpta^irepoi).  This,  indeed,  was  their 
natural  and  primitive  title,  since  in  the  most  ancient 
days  old  men  were  selected  to  fill  those  offices  which 
were  required  to  maintain  the  social  fabric  of  the  dif- 
ferent commimities.  When  books  were  of  the  extremest 
rarity,  the  aged  of  the  respective  tribes  wore  the  only 
depositories  of  the  traditions  of  bygone  genei-ations. 
The  old  men,  moreover,  had  most  experience,  and  were 
the  heads  of  large  families,  over  whom  they  exercised 
supreme  authority.  "  With  the  old  is  wisdom,  and  in 
lejigth  of  days  is  understanding"  (Jobxii.  12).  Hence, 
when  information  was  required,  they  were  appealed  to 
to  give  it  from  the  storehouses  of  their  long  memory. 
When  God  pleads  with  his  ungrateful  people,  and  wants 
to  bring  to  then-  mind  his  unparalleled  acts  of  loving- 
kintbiess  in  times  bygone,  he  bids  them  "  ask  thy  father, 
and  he  will  show  thee  ;  thy  elders  [or  aged  ones],  and 
they  will  tell  theo  "  (Dent,  xxxii.  7).  When  monarchs 
wanted  advice  they  asked  for  it  from  the  aged.  "King 
Rehoboam  consulted  ^vith  the  old  men  that  stood  before 
Solomon  his  father  while  he  yet  lived,  and  said.  How 
do  ye  advise  that  I  may  answer  this  people  ?"  (1  Kings 
xii.  6 ;  2  Chron.  x.  6.)  For  this  reason  the  hoary  head 
was  regarded  as  "  a  crown  of  glory  "  (Prov.  xvi.  31) ; 
and  the  Israelites  were  commanded  to  "  rise  up  before 
the  hoary  head,  and  honour  the  face  of  the  old  man" 
(Lev.  xix.  32).  The  same  reverence  was  paid  to  tho 
aged  among  other  nations  of  antiquity.  In  Egypt, 
Herodotus  tells  us,  "  young  men,  meeting  their  elders 
in  the  streets,  gave  way  to  them  and  stopped  aside ;  and 
if  they  approached  a  place,  the  young  men  in  it  rose  up 
from  their  seats  "  (Herod.,  ii.  SO).  The  laws  of  Manu 
declare  that  "  the  spirit  of  life  is  ready  to  escape  from 
a  youth  at  the  apjiroach  of  an  old  man,  but  by  rising 
and  saluting  him  it  is  saved.  A  youth  who  accustoms 
himself  to  salute  and  revei-ence  the  aged  has  a  fourfold 
gain  in  length  of  life,  knowledge,  fame,  and  strength  " 
(Manu,  ii.  120,  121).  To  this  day  both  the  Jews  and 
the  Egyptians  rise  up  from  their  seats  when  an  aged 
man  enters  the  house. 

Regarding,  therefore,  old  age  in  so  sacred  a  light, 
and  as  identified  with  matured  wisdom,  knowledge, 
and  experience,  and  as  a  rowai'd  for  a  virtuous  and 
godly  life,  the  aged,  as  a  matter  of  course,  were  from 
time  immemorial  chosen  to  fill  the  official  positions  in 
the  community.  To  select  a  young  man  over  the  head 
of  the  hoary  aged  would  be  to  commit  the  greatest  indig- 
nity. Heneo  the  terms  "aged,"  "  elder,"  or  "  presbyter '' 
became  identical  with  office-bearer  among  the  different 
nations  of  antiquity  (comp.  Gen.  I.  7 ;  Numb.  xxii.  7), 
and  all  the  different  officials  in  the  synagogue  were 
designated  by  the  appellation  "  elders."  To  this  day  the 
sheikh  [=  the  old  man]  among  the  Arabs  is  the  highest 
authftrity  in  the  tribe.  LUce  many  other  expressions, 
the  word  in  question  was  taken  over  by  the  Jewish 
Christiivns  from  the  synagogue  into  the  Church.  And 
just  as  the  term  "  elder  "  is,  as  we  havo  seen,  used  in 
the  syn.agogue  for  the  whole  body  of  officials,  so  in  the 


268 


THE  BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


New  Testament  the  apostles  employ  it  to  designate  aU 
the  office-bearers  in  the  church  (comp.  Acts  xx.  17,  28; 
1  Tim.  iv.  14 ;  2  Tm.  i.  6 ;  Titus  i.  6,  7  ;  1  Peter  v. 
1 — 5).  It  is  this  identification  of  old  age  -with  office 
which  has  made  the  expressions  zaken  OV)  =  elder, 
presbyter,  like  gerontes,  senatores,  and  patres  among  the 
Greeks  and  Romans,  and  Monseigneur  in  the  Catholic 
Church,  synonymous  with  chief  guide,  counsellor,  and 
judge  in  ecclesiastical  and  civil  affairs. 

(2.)  The  second  name  by  which  these  rulers  of  the 
synagogue  were  called  is  parnasim  (n-DTB  =  noineves), 
"  shepherds."  The  term  parnas,  of  which  parnasim  is 
the  plural,  is  Aramaic,  and  is  used  in  the  Chaldee  Para- 
phrase for  the  Hebrew  rovh  (™^),  "shepherd"  (comp. 
Ezck.  xxxiv.  5,  8. 23 ;  Zech.  xi.  15,  16,  &c.).  This  appel- 
lation was  in  the  Old  Testament  already  given  to  God, 
who  performs  the  office  of  tending  and  caring  for  his 
people  in  the  liighest  sense  (Ps.  xxiii.  1;  Ixxx.  1  [2]), 
and  then  to  his  representatives,  who  exercised  religious 
and  civil  care  over  the  community.  Thus  God  tells 
his  repenting  people  that  he  has  not  only  espoused 
them,  but  "  I  will  give  you  shepherds  according  to  mine 
own  heart,  which  shall  feed  you  with  knowledge  and 
understanding"  (Jer.  iii.  1.5).  As  these  riders  had  to 
feed  the  poor  with  bread,  and  their  respective  congre- 
gations with  knowledge  and  understanding,  the  title 
"  shepherd  "  was  appropi-iate  to  them.  The  Tahnud 
declares  that  "  every  shepherd  who  tends  his  congrega- 
tion in  gentleness  has  the  merit  of  leading  them  in  the 
path  for  the  world  to  come  "  (Sanhedrin,  92  a) ;  and 
that  "the  Holy  One,  blessed  be  He,  moui'ns  over 
the  congregation  which  has  a  shepherd  who  conducts 
himself  haughtily  towards  his  flock  "  {Chagigga,  5  h). 
From  this  custom  of  calling  the  administrators  of  the 
synagogue  "  shepherds "  came  the  application  of  the 
name  to  those  who  bear  office  in  the  church. 

The  use  of  the  word  pastor  instead  of  shepherd  in 
the  Authorised  Version  in  several  passages  in  the 
Old  Testament,  and  in  one  instance  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, is  very  remarkable,  and  is  of  great  importance  to 
the  study  of  the  history  of  the  English  version  of  the 
Bilile,  and  of  the  English  language,  inasmuch  as  it  ex- 
hibits the  sources  whence  the  translators  derived  their 
vocabulary.  Now  the  expression  roeh  (^t^)  is  rendered 
no  less  than  fifty-eight  times  by  "  shepherd "  in  the 
Authorised  Version,  five  times  by  "  herdmen,"  and 
eight  times  by  "  pastor."  In  turning  to  the  New  Testa- 
ment, we  find  that  the  equivalent  Greek  term  poimeen 


(iroi/uT)!'),  which  occurs  eighteen  times,  is  translated 
seventeen  times  "  shepherd,"  and  in  one  solitary  in- 
stance it  is  rendered  "  pastor  "  (viz.,  Eph.  iv.  11).  On 
examining  the  eight  instances  in  which  the  Authorised 
Version  discards  the  general  term  •'  shepherd  "  for  the 
expression  "  pastor,''  the  student  will  be  struck  with  the 
fact  that  they  are  not  only  restricted  to  one  book  of  the 
Old  Testament,  but  to  one  portion  of  the  book.  A 11 
the  eight  instances  are  to  be  found  in  Jer.  ii.  8 — xxiii.  2, 
and  are  as  f oUoW : — ii.  8 ;  iii.  15  ;  x.  21 ;  xii.  10 ;  xvii. 
16;  xxii.  22;  xxiii.  1,  2.  The  student  of  the  English 
language  will  be  .stUl  more  struck  with  this  phenomenon 
when  he  is  told  that,  with  one  exception  which  will 
presently  be  noticed,  the  word  "  pastor  "  does  not  occur 
in  the  earliest  English  versions.  It  is  not  to  be  found 
iu  om-  first  English  New  Testament  made  by  Tyudal 
(1525) ;  in  the  iii-st  English  Bible  made  by  Ooverdale 
(1535) ;  in  the  second  Bible,  which  goes  by  the  pseudonym 
Matthews'  (1537) ;  in  Lord  Cromwell's,  or  the  Great 
Bible  (1539) ;  in  the  six  different  issues  of  this  Bible  by 
Archbishop  Cranmer  (1540-1541) ;  nor  in  the  Bishops' 
Bible  (1568).  In  all  these  versions  both  the  Hebrew 
roeh  and  the  Greek  poimeen  are  translated  "  shepherd," 
or  "herdmen."  In  looking,  however,  at  the  Geneva 
Bible,  which  derives  its  name  from  the  fact  that  it  was 
made  and  printed  by  our  English  Reformers  who  fled 
to  Geneva  (1560),  the  sudden  appearance  of  the  term 
"  pastor "  in  our  Authorised  Version  is  at  once  ex- 
plained. The  Geneva  Bible,  which  in  all  other  passages 
both  in  the  Old  and  in  the  New  Testament  translates 
the  Hebrew  word  and  its  Greek  equivalent  "  shepherd," 
renders  it  in  these  vei-y  instances  by  "  pastor;  "  and  our 
Authorised  Version  has  simply  taken  over  the  excep- 
tional rendering.  The  word  "  pastor,"  therefore,  used 
to  denote  "  a  rider  "'  or  "  governor  "  in  the  English  of 
the  Bible  language,  dates  no  farther  than  the  Geneva 
version  (1560),  which  in  its  tm-n  took  it  from  the  French 
Protestant  translation  likewise  made  and  printed  at 
Geneva.  The  English  Geneva  Bible,  however,  con- 
sistently renders  the  Hebrew  word  roeh  by  "  pastor " 
up  to  Jer.  xxiii.,  inclusive ;  whilst  our  Authorised 
Version  only  follows  it  to  xxiii.  2,  and  hence  incurs  the 
charge  of  inconsistency  of  translating  the  same  expres- 
sion withiu  four  verses  of  the  same  chapter — viz.,  Jer. 
xxiii.  1 — i,  both  "pastor"  and  "shepherd."  The  only 
other  instance  in  which  "  pastor  "  occurs  in  the  Geneva 
Bible  and  not  in  the  Authorised  Version  is  Eccles. 
xii.  11. 


THE    POETRY    OF   THE    BIBLE. 


269 


THE    POETRY    OF    THE    BIBLE. 

BY  THE  r.EV.  A.  S.  AGLEN,  M.A.,  INCUMBENT  OF  ST.  NINIAN's,  ALYTH,  N.B. 

STRUCTURE    OF    THE    VERSE. 


§    1. — PRELIMINARY. 

^^~^~^HE  iJoet's  sway  over  language  is  of  twofold 
operation.    He  influences  a  nation's  speech 
by  his  choice  and  usage  of  words,  as  well 
as   by  his   power  to  combine   them   into 
lasting  and  harmonious  verse.     There  is  a  poetic  dialect 
and  a  poetic  form. 

It  would  be  out  of  place  in  these  papers  on  Hebrew 
poetry  to  do  more  than  glance  at  the  former  of  these. 
The  pecidiarity  of  diction  in  the  poetical  parts  of  the 
Bi))le  is  for  the  notice  of  Hebrew  scholars  alone.  It 
would  be  useless  to  repeat  from  the  grammars  lists  of 
archaic  forms  or  usages  of  words,  pecidiar  construc- 
tions, UTegular  inflexions,  and  other  marks  of  a  poetical 
style.  It  will  be  enough  to  repeat  Bishop  Lowth's 
remark  that,  as  it  is  the  nature  of  all  poetry,  so  it  is 
particularly  of  the  Hebrew,  to  be  totally  different  from 
common  language,  and  both  in  the  choice  of  words  and 
the  construction,  to  affect  a  peculiar  and  more  exquisite 
mode  of  expression.  But  the  phraseology  of  the  poets, 
the  bold  ellipses,  the  sudden  transitions  of  the  tenses, 
genders,  and  persons,  as  well  as  a  minute  examination 
of  the  tropes  and  figures  with  which  all  poetry  aboiinds, 
he  considers  beyond  the  scope  of  his  lectures.  Wo  cannot 
do  better  than  follow  liis  example,  by  passing  over  all 
such  questions  to  the  much  more  important  and  more 
interesting  inquiry  into  the  nature  and  form  of  Hebrew 
versification.  For  this,  little  or  no  acquaintance  with 
the  language  is  necessary.  It  is  one  of  the  most  dis- 
tinguishing featui-es  of  Hebrew  poetry,  arising  naturally 
from  the  form  which  it  assumes,  that,  unlike  the  verse 
of  any  other  people,  it  loses  no  beauty  in  translation, 
and  may  be  studied  almost  as  successfully  in  a  foreign 
as  in  its  native  dress. 

Milton  has  said  of  eloquence  and  song,  that  the  one 
charms  the  soul,  the  other  the  sense.  But  thought 
cannot  clothe  itself  at  aU  in  adequate  expression  without 
conferring  pleasure  on  the  human  ear,  which  listens  for 
a  music  in  prose  no  less  than  in  verse.  The  Greeks, 
vriih  the  same  exquisite  sensibihty  to  beauty  of  sound 
which  made  them  seek  for  symmetry  and  grace  in 
all  objects  of  sight,  called  the  pleasurable  element 
which  they  detected  in  speech  its  movement  or  flow 
(^u9iubs).  We  have  adopted  their  word,  and  speak  of  the 
sustained  movement  of  a  line  ol'  poetry,  or  of  an  orator's 
period,  as  its  rhythm. 

The  term  need  not  even  be  confined  to  the  descriptioii 
of  articulate  sotmds.  It  has  been  said  that  the  melodies 
and  harmonies  which  poets  have  fancied  in  natiu's  are 
all  meta,phorical.  and  that  iimsic  is  the  creation  of  man.' 
But  much  of  the  pleasure  wMch  we  experience  from 
the  soiands  in  air  and  sea  .seems  due  to  the  suggestion 

'  Haweifl,  Music  and  Morals. 


of  unconscious  obedience  to  a  subtle  law  of  movement. 
If  we  listen  long  to  running  water  we  catch  a  definite 
jndsation  in  its  flow.  The  waves  beat  out  a  certain 
rhj-thm  on  the  shore.  There  was  more  tluin  fancy  in 
the  ancient  fable  of  the  mcasm-ed  dance  of  mountain 
and  grove  when  led  by  the  lute  of  Orpheus. 

Whatever  may  be  the  secret  of  the  pleasure  derived 
from  natural  sounds,  it  is  certain  that  man,  in  all  his 
movements  of  voice  or  body,  falls  into  unconscious 
submission  to  some  rhythmic  nde.  It  seems  to  be  a 
necessity  in  sustained  human  action  that  some  strict 
law  of  interchange  shoidd  regulate  the  succession  of 
the  parts.  The  ground  of  this  necessity  has  even  been 
found  in  the  structure  and  functions  of  the  human 
body,  so  that  rhythm  lies  at  the  foundation  of  man's 
natm-o.  In  the  pulsation  of  the  blood,  in  the  outward 
and  inward  flow  of  the  breath,  there  is  a  wavelike  move- 
ment which  governs  every  effort  made  to  give  expression 
to  the  feelings  of  the  soul.  A  certain  balanced  a^-tion, 
a  constant  interchange  of  movements  measured  one 
against  the  other — a  rising  and  sinking,  an  alternation 
from  strong  to  weak,  from  loud  to  soft — results  from 
tliis  unconscious  obedience  to  a  necessary  physica,!  law.'-' 
We  call  this  parallelism  of  movement  measure  or  time, 
or  more  generally  rhythm.  It  extends  to  all  acti\'ities 
of  man.  We  see  it  in  the  swing  of  the  body  in  walk- 
ing, we  hear  it  in  the  accent  of  the  voice  in  speaking. 
The  blacksmith  makes  a  rhythm  on  liis  anvil.  The 
sailor  pulls  at  the  rope  in  musical  time.  Presently 
intellect  and  will  step  in.  The  rhythmic  tendency 
falls  imder  government  and  becomes  a  power  in  artist 
hands.  The  waves  of  feeling  or  thought  are  taught  to 
flow  in  regular  succession.  From  the  rhythmic  move- 
ments of  hand  and  foot  we  got  the  dance.  Inarticulate 
sounds  are  arranged  according  to  tune  and  time,  and 
music  is  born.  By  skilful  management  of  countenance, 
gesture,  and  voice,  the  orator  impresses  his  own  moods 
on  his  listeners,  and  we 

*'  HaBg  to  hear 
The  rapt  oration  flowin'^'  free 
From  point  to  point,  with  power  and  grace, 
And  music  in  the  bounds  of  law." 

At  Last  the  poet  pours  such  passion  into  words,  that  we 
feel  all  the  pulses  of  his  being  beating  throug'h  the 
niunbers  of  his  verse,  wliich  yet  in  its  impetuous  flow 
discloses  the  presence  of  flxed  and  inviolable  laws,  which 
must  become  the  more  severe  as  the  inspiration  rises 
higher,  and  the  emotion  is  kindled  into  more  f  er^ad  glow. 
The  rhythm  of  poetry,  then,  is  distinguished  from  that 
of  prose  by  its  regularity.  Verse  implies  some  kind  of 
measure.  In  prose  the  range  of  rhythmic  flow  is  so 
wide  that  we  can  only  imperfectly  anticipate  it.  The 
pleasure   which   we  derive  from  verse  is  founded,  in 

2  Hupfeld,  Psalmen,  Introduction. 


270 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


groat  measure,  on  this  anticipation.  The  cadences  of 
prose  depend  entirely  on  the  subject.  In  verse  the  sub- 
ject must  bend  to  some  law ;  we  know  where  the  "  dying 
fall"  must  come,  we  are  prepared  for  the  pause,  wo 
eagerly  anticipate  the  rhyme. 

The  genius  of  a  language  determines  what  the  laws 
of  its  verse  shall  bo.  In  the  classical  tongues  of  Greece 
and  Rome,  metre  (Greek,  fitTpon;  Latin,  nimicrns)  or 
measure  depended  on  quantity.  A  metrical  line  con- 
sisted of  a  combination  of  syllables,  arranged  according 
to  the  length  of  time  necessary  for  their  intonation, 
and  restricted  as  to  the  recuiTence  of  long  or  short  by 
fixed  rules  of  prosody.  English,  and  the  modern  lan- 
guages generally,  pay  little  or  no  regard  to  quantity. 
Accent  takes  its  place.  Accent  properly  refers  to  the 
pitch  of  the  voice,  but  metrical  accent  {ictus  metricus) 
is  the  stress  laid  on  particular  syllables  in  repeating  the 
verse.  The  number  of  syllables,  and  the  position  of 
those  accented,  dotermiue  the  different  kinds  of  verse, 
to  which  modern  cars  demand  the  addition  of  the  never- 
ending  charm  of  rhyme.  How  far  the  Hebrew  lent 
itself  to  any  similar  modulations  has  been  for  ages  a 
vexed  question,  which  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  definitely 
answered  even  at  the  present  day.  The  claim  set  up 
for  Moses  by  Pliilo.  that  he  understood  the  theory  of 
harmony,  rhythm,  and  metre ;  and  the  opinion  of 
Josephus  that  the  Song  of  Moses  was  composed  in 
hexameter  voi-se,  and  that  the  various  Greek  metres 
are  visible  in  the  Psalms  of  David,  may  be  dismissed 
as  the  pious  wish  of  Jews  to  find  in  their  ancient 
writings  an  anticipation  of  the  literatm'e  and  art  of 
Athens.'  Among  the  early  fathers,  Eusebius  and 
Jerome  applied  terms  borrowed  from  classical  verse  to 
Hebrew  literature.  The  latter  gives  a  somewhat  minute 
account  of  the  various  metres  observed  in  the  different 
books.  But  his  language  leads  to  the  conclusion  that 
he  recognised  no  more  than  a  certaiu  rough  resemblance 
between  Greek  and  Hebrew  verse.  He  did  not  ap- 
parently maintain  the  existence  of  fixed  metrical  laws. 
The  resemblance  of  the  Hebrew  verse  composition  to 
the  classic  metres  is  expressly  denied  by  Gregory  of 
Nyssa.  Augustine  confesses  his  iguoi'ance  of  Hebrew, 
but  adds  tliat  those  skilled  iu  the  language  believed  the 
Psalms  of  David  to  be  written  in  metre.  Isidore  of 
Seville  claims  for  the  heroic  metre  the  highest  antiquity, 
inasmuch  as  the  Song  of  Moses  was  composed  in  it,  and 
the  Book  of  Job  is  written  in  dactyls  and  spoudees." 
Joseph  Scaliger  was  one  of  the  first  to  point  out  the 
fallacies  of  Jerome's  method.  Tet  this  scholar  himself, 
in  attempting  to  explain  the  natui'e  of  the  rhythm  in 


'  The  reader  who  is  unacquainted  \pith  classical  metres  may  see 
tlic  common  forms  in  the  following  disticli,  translated  from  Schiller 
by  Coleridge  :  — 

'*  I'n  tho  hexameter  rises  tlin  fountain's  silvpry  cUumn  ; 
I'n  the  pentameter  aye  falliug  iu  melody  bacli." 

By  comparinf?  the  accented  syllahles  (marked  thus  ')  with  the  first 
syllable  iu  hexameter  and  yeiitametcr,  which  accordiujj  to  classical 
laws  would  ho  /onj,  but  in  these  verses  must  be  passed  rapidly  over 
aa  unaccented,  he  will  sec  the  difference  of  qiiautity  and  accent. 

"  A  duct'jl  ia  a  foot  composed  of  one  Ions,  followed  by  two  short 
eyllablea  ("  "  *');  a  spondee  of  two  lonj  ("   "). 


the  Books  of  Proverbs  and  Job,  makes  use  of  classical 
terms,  comparing  the  verses  to  dimeter  iamhicsfi 
Gerhard  Vossius  says  that  in  Job  and  in  the  Proverbs 
there  is  rhythm,  but  no  metre  ;  that  is,  regard  is  to  be 
had  to  the  number  of  syllables,  but  not  to  tho  quantity. 
In  tho  Psalms  and  Lamentations,  according  to  this 
scholar,  not  even  rhythm  is  obsen'ed. 

Opiuions  equally  contradictory  have  prevailed  in  more 
modern  times.  The  advocates  of  a  Hebrew  metrical 
system  have  been  many  and  powerful,  and  even  Bishop 
Lowth,  who  so  completely  refuted  Hare's  method,  and 
whose  own  system,  vrith  certaiu  modifications,  has  been 
universally  received  among  scholars,  hesitated  to  deny 
that  tho  ancient  Hebrews  possessed  rules  of  prosody 
analogous  to  those  of  Greece  and  Rome  (Lowth,  Led. 
xix.).  If  liis  hesitation  has  been  shared  by  other 
modem  critics,^  and  we  must  suppose  that  there  were 
some  laws  of  Hebrew  versification  which  it  is  impos- 
sible to  recover,  there  is  an  overwhelming  concurrence 
of  opinion  on  other  points,  wliich  leave  no  doubt  as  to 
what  were  tho  essential  features  of  Hebrew  poetry. 
Quantity  and  metre,  in  the  sense  in  which  a  -Greek 
would  understand  the  words,  must  be  given  up.  Of 
rhyme  proper  Hebrew  verse  knew  nothing.  Instances 
of  assonance,  indeed,  are  common,  and  the  appearance 
of  the  same  suffix,  sometimes  in  five  or  six  words  to- 
gether, shows  that  the  Hebrew  oar,  like  the  French, 
delighted  in  the  f  i-equent  repetition  of  identical  sounds ; 
but  there  is  nothing  corresponding  to  the  charm  of  a 
perfect  rhyme  at  tho  end  of  a  line,  which  is  so  delight- 
ful in  English  and  German  poetry.^  It  boars  a  nearer 
resemblance  to  alliteration,'^'  which  formed  so  marked 
a  feature  of  early  English  poetry,   and  is  practised 


■*  An  iambus  consisted  of  two  syllables,  a  short  and  lon^ 
("  ~).  Foot  is  the  name  given  to  the  combinations  of  long:  and 
short  syllables  (in  English  of  accented  and  unaccented  syllables). 
Metre,  in  its  technical  sense,  denotes  either  a  single  foot  in  a 
verse,  or  a  combination  of  two  consecutive  feet. 

^  Cf.  Taylor.  "  That  a  people  60  pre-eminently  musical  by  con- 
stitution should  have  failed  to  perceive,  or  should  not  have  brought 
under  rule,  the  rhythm  of  words  aud  sentences,  could. not  easily 
be  believed."     {Spirit  of  Hebrew  Poetry,  p.  42.) 

5  In  Song  of  Solomon  v.  1,  out  of  eighteen  words,  twelve 
end  in  the  same  sound  t  (et),  three  in  u,  two  in  vn,  only  one  word 
being  without  a  rhyme.  .Some  o£  the  Liturgical  Psalms,  as  cvi., 
show  a  special  tendency  to  this  .".ssonance. 

^  Alliteration  consists  of  the  recurrence  of  words  begiaming  with 
the  same  letter  or  sound-  Spenser,  among  English  poets,  uses  it 
most  frequently.     Lines  of  this  kind  are  common  iu  his  poetry  : — 

"  They  wasted  had  much  uay,  and  measur'd  jaany  miles." 
Alternate  alliteration  is  the  most  pleasing  : — 

**  Her  dainty  iimbs  did  iay.*'     (Spenser.) 
.f  ssoiiance  is  rhyme  occui-riug  in  other  parts  of  the  verse  than  the 
end.     The  followiug  lines  from  Tennyson's  J.ost  TouiiiamaLt  com- 
bine instances  of  assonance  and  alliteration  : — 

"  Conceits  himself  as  God,  that  he  can  make 
Figs  out  of  t/dsUcs,  siU:  from  bristles,  viilk 
From  burning  spurge,  honey  from  Itoruet-combs." 
The  following  verses  from  Jeremiah  (iii.  21,25)  will  give  an  idea  cf 
Hebrew  assonance  :  — 

"  Vehabbosheth  achlah  eth-yogiah  avothonu  minnnr^nu 
Eth-zonam  veoth-bekaram  eth-beneyem  veeth-bouothcycm 
Nishchevah  bevashtenu 

Uthchass6nu  elielimmathcuu  cbi  layahovah  Eloheynu 
Khataanu  auakhuu 

Veavothenu  minnurL-nn  veh.id-hayoui  hazzeh 
Velo  shamaanu  bekol  Yehovah  Eloheynu." 


THE   COINCIDENCES  OF  SCRIPTURE. 


271 


with  sucli  subtlo  and  charming  effect  by  modern  poets. 
It  is  cvca  doubtful  whether  any  regard  was  paid  to 
the  nuinbor  of  syllables,  as  distinguished  from  words. 


Herder  says  the  syllables  cannot  be  scanued,  nor  even 
counted.  The  laws  of  Hebrew  accent  are  involved  in 
the  gi-eatest  obscurity. 


THE  COINCIDENCES  OF  SCRIPTUEE. 

THE     LOCAL     COLOUEING     OF     ST.     PAUL'S     EPISTLES. 


BY     THE     EDITOR. 


HE  heading  which  I  have  prefixed  to  this 
part  of  the  series  of  papers  on  the 
Coincidences  of  the  Bible  requires,  per- 
liaps,  some  explanation.  Wliat  1  mean  is 
briefly  this,  lu  proportion  as  any  writer  ha,s  influenced 
the  minds  of  his  own  generation  largely,  and  through 
them  has  reached  even  those  who  have  como  after  him 
for  many  centuries,  we  may  expect  to  find  him  with 
quick  and  ready  intellect,  wide  sympathies,  living  ima- 
gination. The  letters  of  such  a  man,  whether  addressed 
to  individiials  or  societies,  will  not  bo  stamped  with 
the  dull  uniformity  of  an  official  circular,  nor  the  logical 
precision  of  a  dogmatic  treatise.  They  wiU  bear 
traces  of  the  emotions,  associations,  memories  that 
gather  round  the  place  from  which  ho  writes,  or  the 
circumstances  of  his  life  at  the  time,  or  the  sxiccial 
characteristics  of  those  to  whom  liis  letter  is  addressed. 
The  presence  of  such  features  in  letters  ascribed  to 
him,  the  subtle  links  of  thought,  the  allusive  references 
to  the  history  of  persons  or  places,  are,  so  far  as  they 
go,  prima,  facie  evidence  of  their  genuiuoness.  When 
it  is  shown  in  two  or  three  instances  that  such  pheno- 
mena mark  the  style  of  the  mau  with  a  distinct  indivi- 
duality, then  their  presence  in  another  instance  is  again, 
so  far  as  it  goes,  a  confirmation  of  any  external  evidence 
which  there  may  bo  as  to  the  authenticity  of  other  letters 
which  boar  the  name  of  the  same  writer.  I  find  no 
better  phrase  to  describe  this  characteristic  than  that  of 
"  local  colouring."  I  propose,  so  far  as  I  am  able,  to 
apply  this  test  first  to  the  epistles  and  afterwards  to 
the  recorded  speeches  of  St.  Paul.  In  doing  so  I  shall, 
of  course,  have  to  notice  coincidences  that  have  already 
been  pointed  out  by  such  writers  as  Paloy  and  Mr. 
Birks,  or  in  commentaries  on  the  Epistles  of  which  I 
speak,  some,  perhaps,  that  I  have  myself  already  dwelt 
on  in  the  pages  of  The  Bible  Educator  or  elsewhere. 
I  can  only  hope  (1)  that  in  so  doing  I  may  bring  them 
within  the  knowledge  of  many  readers  who  have  not 
liithorto  been  acquainted  with  them,  and  (2)  that  to 
those  who  will  recognise  them  as  more  or  less  famifiar, 
it  may  be  a  gain  to  see  them  as  from  a  new  point  of 
view,  differently  grouped,  converging  to  a  new  conclu- 
sion. I  shall  take  the  Epistles  in  what  is  generally 
recognised  as  their  chronological  order,  and  shall  accord- 
ingly begin  with 

THE   EPISTLES   TO  THE   THESSALONIANS. 

1.  The  city  of  Thessaloniea,  as  a  sea-port  town  on  the 
shores  of  the  Thermaic  Gulf,  had  become  under  the  later 
Macedonian  kings,  and  yet  mere  under  the  Empire,  a 


place  of  extensive  commerce.  As  such  it  had  attracted, 
just  as  Corinth  did,  a  largo  Jewish  population.  While 
at  Philippi,  the  Roman  colonia  X>v  garrison  town,  there 
was  only  the  out-door  gathering  by  the  river-side,  where 
prayer  was  wont  to  be  made,  and  whore  the  worshippers 
consisted  predominantly,  if  not  exclusively,  of  women ; 
while  at  Amphipolis  and  ApoUonia  there  would  seem, 
to  have  been  no  Jewish  residents  at  all,  neither  syna- 
gogue nor  place  of  prayer  ;  at  Thessaloniea  there  was, 
not  as  the  Authorised  Version  gives  it,  "  a  synagogue  of 
the  Jews,"  but  the  synagogue,  that  which  was  resorted 
to  not  only  by  the  Jews  of  Thessaloniea  itself,  but  by 
those  who  lived  in  other  towns  or  villages  within  reach. 
Here,  as  in  other  cities  where  the  two  races  were  brought 
into  contact,  many  of  the  Greeks  wore  attracted  by  the 
higher  faith,  or  purer  morality,  or  mysterious  claims 
of  Israel,  and  enrolled  themselves  among  those  whom 
the  rabbis  called  "  proselytes  of  the  gate,"  worshippers, 
that  is,  of  the  one  true  God,  though  not  bound  by 
the  law  of  circumcision  and  other  ceremonial  rites, 
and  whom  St.  Luke  describes  by  the  word  "  devout." 
As  at  Rome,  and  apparently  at  Philippi,  many  of  these 
converts  wero  women  of  the  upper  classes  of  society. 
As  part  of  the  population  of  the  toivn,  however,  we 
have  to  note  those  whom  our  translators  call  "lewd 
fellows  of  the  baser  sort,"  literally,  "  men  of  the  market- 
place," the  turha  forensis  of  the  Roman  orators,  the 
"  loafers  "  of  modem  Americanisms,  the  crowd  of  idlers 
hanging  about  for  odd  jobs  or  stray  excitement,  the 
material  out  of  which  mobs  are  formed  at  a  moment's 
notice,  or  which  swells,  as  soon  as  an  opportunity 
is  offered,  the  ranks  of  mendicancy  and  pauperism. 
Stirred  up  by  the  uubelieviug  Jews,  these  were  the  men 
who  dragged  Jason,  the  host  of  the  Apostle  and  his 
companion  SUas,  and  others,  with  brutal  violence  to  the 
politarchs,  or  city  rulers  (that  was  the  special  title  of 
the  magistrates  of  Thessaloniea),  and  chai-ged  theui  with 
turning  the  world  upside  down,  proclaiming  another 
king,  one  Jesus,  in  opposition  to  the  authority  of  the 
Roman  emperor.'  Such  a  charge  is  always  likely,  in 
the  nature  of  things,  to  be  a  distortion  of  tho  truth 
rather  than  a  pure  invention,  and  we  might  infer  from 
it  that  over  and  above  the  simimary  of  St.  Paul's 
preaching  which  St.  Luke  gives,  as  setting  forth  that 
"  Christ  must  needs  suffer  and  rise  again  from  the  dead, 
and  that  this  Jesus  whom  I  preach  unto  you  is  the 
Christ"    (Acts  xvii.   3),   he   must  have  given   special 


1  The  Greek  gives,  we  may  note,  the  eame  word  for  the  two 

titles. 


272 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


prominence  to  the  kingly  office  and  cliaracter  of  the 
Lord  Josus.  Finally,  the  impression  left  on  the  mind 
of  St.  Luke  by  what  he  had  heard  or  seen  of  the  Church 
of  Thessalonica  was  on  the  whole  loss  favourable  than 
that  of  most  other  churches.  T*hey  were  "  less  noble," 
less  ingenuous  and  earnest  in  their  pursuit  of  truth 
than  their  neighbours  of  Bercea,  more  disposed  to  accept 
or  to  reject  what  was  put  before  them  without  a  careful 
scrutiny.  Such  were  the  general  features  of  the  popula- 
tion which  has  become  memorable  as  the  first  to  which 
the  great  Apostlt' addressed  any  letter  that  is  still  extant 
— perhaps  (though  it  would  be  a  bold  thing  to  affirm  it 
positively)  the  first  church  with  wliich  ho  adopted  the 
plan  of  communicating  by  epistles  addressed  to  the 
.society  as  a  whole,  as  distinct  from  individual  members 
of  it.  Let  us  see  how  far  the  "  local  colouring  "  of  the 
ei)i3tlos  harmonises  with  them. 

(1.)  The  dangers  from  without  which  St.  Paul  dwells 
on  in  the  epistles  (written,  we  must  remember,  from 
Corinth,  and  within  a  few  months  of  his  visit)  were 
precisely  such  as  the  presence  of  an  excitable  mob  such 
as  that  described  in  the  Acts  was  likely  to  occasion. 
Thoy  "had  received  the  word  in  much  affliction" 
(1  Thess.  i.  0).  They  had  sufiered  at  the  hands  of 
their  own  coimtrymen  treatment  like  that  which  the 
disciples  of  Judsea  had  experienced  there  (1  Thess.  ii.  14). 
Thoy  liad  shown  "  patience  and  faith "  in  all  their 
"  tribulations  and  afflictions  "  (2  Thess.  i.  4).  What  St. 
Paul  had  seen  in  the  case  of  Jason  and  his  friends  had 
been  repeated  afterwards. 

(2.)  But  there  wore  also,  strange  as  it  may  seem, 
dangers  from  the  presence  of  a  portion  of  that  class 
within  the  church.  Attracted  by  the  lavish  alms  of  the 
church  in  the  first  days  of  its  fervent  zeal,  they  flocked 
in  to  be  partakers  of  the  daily  or  weekly  dole.  They 
were  disorderly,  "working  not  at  all,"  yet  meddling 
everywhere,  having  no  proper  business  of  their  own, 
yet  "  busybodies  "  (2  Thess.  iii.  11).  By  oral  teaching 
when  he  was  present  (the  "tradition"  of  2  Thess.  iii.  6), 
by  strong  injunctions  in  his  Epistle,  he  sought  to  check 
these  evils,  and  to  enforce  the  gi'eat  law  of  all  organised 
benevolence,  that  "  if  a  man  will  not  work,"  luill  not 
work  when  he  can,  "  neither  shall  ho  eat "  (1  Thess.  iii. 
10).  It  was  perhaps  in  consequence  of  what  he  had 
seen  of  this  tendency  that  the  Apostle  adopted  the  rule 
of  life  which  was  so  noble  a  contrast  to  this  debasing 
idleness,  and  refused  to  accept  any  payment  or  support 
from  any  church  during  the  time  in  which  he  was 
actually  present.  After  he  had  left,  if  gratitude  were 
strong  enough,  and  they  remembered  him  with  affection, 
thoy  might  send  tokens  of  their  love ;  and  so  we  find 
that  while  St.  Paid  was  at  Thcssalonica,  ho  twice  re- 
ceived such  offerings  from  the  church  of  Philippi  (Phil. 
iv.  16).  But  so  long  as  he  remained  in  any  city  no  man 
should  be  able  to  taunt  him  with  being  a  parasite  at 
the  tables  of  the  rich,  or  liring  on  the  hard-earned 
gains  of  the  poor.  The  labour  might  be  hard,  stretching 
into  the  hours  of  night  as  well  as  day,  and  the  wages 
scanty,  but  the  Apostle  would  by  his  own  exjimplc 
make  men  feel  that  there  was  a  diguity  in  the  indepen- 


dence of  honest  labour  which  they  were  in  the  habit  of 
forgetting  (2  Thess.  iii.  7 — 9).  That  such  taunts  were 
aimed  at  the  Apostle  we  see  but  too  plainly.  He  has 
to  defend  himself  against  the  charge  of  "pleasing  men," 
of  using  "  flattering  words,"  of  making  his  mission  a 
pretence  or  "  cloke"  for  covetousuess  (1  Thess.  ii.  4,5). 
So  with  clean  hands  ho  can  call  ou  them  to  resist  the 
temptation  that  beset  them,  to  "  study  to  be  quiet,  and 
to  do  their  own  business"  (1  Thess.  iv.  11). 

(3.)  The  narrative  of  the  Acts  taken  by  itself  leads  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  teaching  of  St.  Paul  at  Thessa- 
louica  gavo  special  prominence  to  the  kingly  office  of  tho 
Lord  Jesus  as  the  Christ.  The  Epistles  show  that  ho 
proclaimed  that  office  precisely  in  the  form  in  which  it 
was  most  likely  to  startle  and  disturb  men's  minds.  It 
was  not  as  a  spiritual  kingdom,  divine,  eternal,  waiting 
for  a  distant  manifestation,  that  he  then  thought  or  spoke 
of  it.  The  times  and  the  seasons  were  as  yet  unrevealed 
to  him,  and  that  which  he  believed  and  taught  was  that 
the  coming  of  the  Lord  Jesus  in  all  the  glory  and  might 
of  His  kingdom  might  be  expected  within  the  lifetime 
of  that  generation.  It  is  true  that  l^o  checked  the  ten- 
dency to  look  upon  it  as  immediate,  that  he  looked  for 
a  fuller  development  of  evil,  for  some  visible  leader  of 
all  the  hosts  of  evU,  for  the  epiphany  of  the  "  lawless 
one,"  the  "man  of  sin,"  in  all  his  mysterious  terrors; 
for  the  yet  more  mighty  and  wonderful  epiphany  of  the 
Lord,  to  conquer  in  the  last  battle  of  the  great  warfare 
that  had  been  waged  from  the  beginning,  and  to  destroy 
with  the  brightness  of  His  presence  all  that  had  opposed 
Him.  But  even  in  these  anticipations  of  tho  stages  of  the 
great  unfolding  drama,  the  Apostle,  it  would  seem,  took 
no  account  of  the  long  centuries  and  manifold  changes 
which  were  to  intervene  between  the  beginning  and  the 
end.  To  him,  with  that  want  of  perspective  which  seems 
to  have  been  inseparable  from  tho  ^-isions  of  all  prophets, 
These  great  events  might  follow  one  upon  another  in 
rapid  succession — it  might  be  (and  ho  prayed  and  hoped 
it  might  bo)  mthin  the  limits  of  his  own  lifetime. 

The  effect  of  that  teaching  ou  such  a  population  as 
that  of  Thcssalonica  was  naturally  unsetthng.  As  in 
the  tenth  century,  when  the  belief  that  the  end  of  tho 
first  milleunium  of  the  Christian  era  would  also  be  tho 
end  of  the  world,  led  men  to  date  charters  and  edicts 
with  the  words,  "  Appropinquante  fine  seeculi,"  and 
thousands  forsook  their  ordinary  employments  for  a 
wandering  and  unsettled  life ;  so  in  this  case  the  expec- 
tation of  the  second  advent  as  close  at  hand  worked  in 
two  ways  for  e'\'il.  It  aggravated  the  tendency  to  a 
life  of  mendicant  idleness.  It  stimulated  the  morbid 
excitability  of  ten-or  or  of  hope.  Voices  were  heard, 
claiming  to  be  inspu-ed  utterances,  proclaiming  tho 
nearness  of  that  advent  in  far  more  positive  terms  than 
the  Apostle  had  ventured  to  employ.  The  tendency,  at 
that  time  so  prevalent,  to  the  manufactm-e  of  spurious 
documents,  to  prove  whatever  men  wanted  to  prove,  or 
injure  any  one  thoy  wished  to  injure,  led  somo  subtle 
foo  or  over-zealous  friend  to  forgo  a  letter  with  the 
Apostle's  signature,  asserting  tlio  certainty  of  the 
immediate   coming   of   Christ  and  the  closing  of  the 


THE   OLD  TESTAMENT   FULFILLED   IN  THE   NEW. 


273 


■sTcrld's  history  (2  Thess.  ii.  2).  On  one  class  of  minds 
the  expectation  had  a  different  influence.  Buoyed  up 
with  eager  expectations  of  their  own  blessedness,  as 
still  living  upon  the  earth  and  sharing  in  the  glory  of 
the  kingdom  of  tlie  saints,  they  mourned  with  bitter 
"hopeless  sorrow  for  those  who  were  snatched  away  by 
death,  and  so,  as  they  thought,  out  off  from  all  partici- 
pation in  that  glory,  even  though  there  might  be  reserved 
for  them  some  share  in  a  far-off  resurrection.  Against 
that  dark  imagination  the  Apostle,  even  while  he  still 
clung  to  the  belief  in  the  nearness,  though  not  the  im- 
mediatonoss,  of  the  coming,  was  guided  to  protest.  To 
Mm  that  thought  was  destructive  of  the  idea  of  the 
unity  of  the  Church,  of  the  communion  of  saints.  His 
first  utterance  on  what  we  call  eschatology,  the  doctrine 
of  the  Last  things,  is  that  which  he  was  taught  "  by  the 
word  of  the  Lord,"  that  "  we  which  are  alive  and  re- 
main unto  the  coming  of  the  Lord  shall  not  prevent 
[shall  not,  i.e.,  in  any  way  get  the  start  of]  them  which 
are  asleep"  (1  Thess.  iv.  15). 

So  far  we  have  seen  how  the  character  of  the  popula- 
tion at  Thessalonica  affected  the  thoughts  and  language 
of  St.  Paul's  Epistles  to  that  Church.  But  there  may 
be  a  local  colouring  traceable  to  the  place  from  which 
as  well  as  that  to  which  an  epistle  is  written ;  and  there 
are  at  least  some  conspicuous  iuflueucos  of  that  colouring 
here,  {a)  He  was  writing  from  a  city  where  the  Church 
was  conspicuous  frem  the  very  first  for  its  spiritual 
gifts,  including  especially  that  of  prophecy,  and  the 
more  marvellous  power  of  "  the  tongues  "  which  came  to 
be  known  as  pre-eminently  "  the  Spirit."  Wliat  he 
thought  as  ts  the  relative  worth  of  the  two  gifts  we 
find  developed  fully  at  a  later  period  in  chaps,  xii. — xiv. 
of  the  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians.  But  the  germs 
of  that  teaching,  the  condensed  expression  of  the  same 
conviction,  we  find  in  the  rule,  "Quench  not  the  Spirit, 
despise  not  prophesyings,"  of  1  Thess.  v.  19,  20.  As 
at  Corinth,  so  also  at  Thessalonica,  there  was  the  risk 
that  mere  frenzy,  or  demoniac  cries,  or  blasphemous 
anathemas  (1  Cor.  xii.  3),  or  wild  predictions  of  the 
coming  end,  might  simulate  the  form  and  claim  the 
authority  of  spiritual  utterances,  and  it  was  therefore 


necessary  to  lay  down  the  rule,  "Prove  [i.e.,  test  and 
examine]  all  things ;  hold  fast  that  which  is  good."  (6) 
A  careful  examination  of  the  Epistles  to  the  Corinthians 
would  show  that  there  was  something  approaching  to  a 
marked  contrast  between  the  chjiracter  of  his  teaching 
in  the  two  churches,  both  of  which  ho  had  founded 
within  a  few  months.  The  words  in  which  ho  speaks  of 
the  second  advent  of  the  Lord  (1  Cor.  xv.  .51,  52)  are 
obviously  such  as  he  would  use  in  proclaiming  a  truth 
which  those  to  whom  he  wrote  had  not  heard  before. 
He  shows  them  a  "  mystery  "  as  the  answer  to  their 
doubts  and  perplexities  as  to  the  resurrection  of  the 
body,  into  which  they  had  not  previously  been  initiated. 
That  fact  is,  I  venture  to  tliink,  singularly  suggestive. 
At  Thessalonica  he  had  made  the  terrors  and  the  glories 
of  that  advent  the  chief  topic  of  his  preaching,  and  had 
foimd  that  it  left  men  over-excited,  and  drew  thorn 
from  their  wonted  industries.  He  had  been  at  Athens, 
and  there  had  reasoned  with  those  Greeks  who  "  sought 
after "  wisdom  on  their  own  groimd ;  had  met  Epicu- 
reans and  Stoics  with  a  philosophy  deeper  and  diviner 
than  their  own.  He  came  to  Corinth,  uniting  in  its 
trade,  wealth,  culture  something  of  the  characteristics  of 
either  city,  and  there  followed  another,  and,  as  the  result 
showed,  a  more  effective  method.  He  neither  stimu- 
lated the  Jewish  craving  for  .signs  from  heaven,  portents, 
and  catastrophes,  nor  the  Greek  appetite  for  abstract 
speculation.  When  he  began  his  work  in  that  city,  he 
determined,  as  by  a  new  resolution  of  self-restraint,  con- 
trolling his  own  desire  to  soar  into  higher  regions,  to 
know  nothing  and  tcj,  preach  nothing  among  them  but 
"Jesus  Christ  and  Him  crucified"  (1  Cor.  ii.  2).  He 
had  learnt  that  the  story  of  the  Cross  as  showing  forth 
at  once  the  eternal  Righteousness  aud  the  eternal  Love 
was  a  mightier  instrument  for  the  conversion  of  the 
souls  of  m«n  than  any  "excellency  of  speech  or  wisdom." 
With  that  he  laid  the  foundation,  reson-ing  other  doc- 
trines and  developments  for  the  superstructure.  That 
was  the  "pm-e  milk"  with  which  ho  nurtured  those 
who  as  yet  were  babes  in  Christ,  reserving  for  a  later 
stage  of  growth  the  "  strong  meat "  that  belongeth  to 
those  that  are  of  full  age. 


THE   OLD    TESTAMENT    EULFILLED    IN   THE   NEW. 


ST   THE   EET.   WILLIAM   MILLIOAN,    D.D.,    PEOFESSOK   OF   DIVIKITY   AND   BIBLICAL   CRITICISM   IN  THE   UNIVEESITT 

OF    ABERDEEN. 


SACEED  SEASONS  {continued). 


lE  have  already  had  occasion  to  notice  tho 
peculiar  importance  of  the  seventh  month 
of  Israel's  sacred  year,  an  importance 
appearing  in  the  religious  rites  with  which 
its  very  fii'st  day  was  introduced.  Tho  course  of  the 
month  corresponded  to  its  opening ;  or  rather,  tho  open- 
ing ceremonial  was  arranged  with  a  view  to  tho  solemn 
seasons  immediately  to  follow.  Of  these  by  far  the 
greatest  and  most  instructive  was  the  Day  of  Atono- 
42 — VOL.  II. 


ment,  which  fell  on  the  tenth  day  of  tho  month,  whicli 
stood  forth,  from  among  all  the  sacred  days  of  Israel, 
alone,  distinguished  by  services  altogether  peculiar  to 
itself,  and  unequalled  in  the  clearness  and  impressive- 
ness  alike  of  its  bearing  on  the  past  and  of  its  typical 
relation  to  the  future.  All  tho  lesser  atonements  of 
the  year  then  reached  their  culminating  point,  whUo 
the  holiness  of  God,  the  evil  of  sin,  the  completeness 
of  the  pardon  offered  to  the  sinner,  and  the  blessed 


274 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


consequences  of  restoration  to  the  Divine  favour  were 
exhibited  and  brought  home  to  the  people  with  an  even 
singular  degree  of  distinctness  and  power.  There  is 
no  sacred  season  of  the  Old  Dispensation,  too,  whose 
"  fulfilling  "  is  more  distinctly  spoken  of  in  the  New 
Testament. 

Upon  the  lesser  features  of  the  time  it  is  unnecessary 
to  dwell  at  any  length.  Like  all  the  great  days  of  Israel, 
the  Day  of  Atonement  was  to  be  one  of  "  holy  convoca- 
tion ;"  it  was  to  be  a  sabbath  of  rest  "  from  even  " — that 
is,  the  evening  of  the  9th — "  nnto  oven,"  the  evening 
of  the  10th,  and  no  work  was  to  be  done  on  it,  under  the 
penalty  of  being  destroyed  from  amongthe  people  (Lev. 
xsiii.  27,  30,  32).  The  grand  peculiarity  of  the  day, 
however,  apart  from  the  more  special  services  which 
marked  it,  was  that  it  was  a  day  when  every  Israelite 
was  to  "  afflict  his  soul."  The  expression  is  a  remark- 
able one,  and  is  not  to  be  resolved  into  an  injunction  to 
fast.  In  no  one  passage  of  the  Old  Testament,  where 
the  word  thus  rendered  "  afflict  "  frequently  occurs,  does 
it  appear  to  be  used  in  such  a  sense  ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  fasting  is  denoted  by  a  word  not  met  with  in  the 
Pentateuch.  No  doubt  it  is  true  that  in  later  times, 
when  Israel  had  lost  sight  of  the  spiritual  elements  con- 
tained in  the  legislation  of  Moses,  and  had  sunk  into  a 
carnality  and  worldliness  from  which  prophet  after  pro- 
phet in  vain  endeavoured  to  arouse  it,  fasting  became 
tho  chief  observance  by  which  the  original  precept  was 
obeyed,  insomuch  that,  as  we  learn  from  Acts  xxvii.  9, 
the  tenth  day  of  the  seventh  month  was  especially  dis- 
tinguished as  "the  fast."  But  it  was  not  so  at  the 
begimiing.  Not  in  any  outward  observance  of  that 
kind,  however  commendable,  do  we  see  the  true  signifi- 
cance of  the  act  referred  to  here,  but  in  such  passages  as 
the  following — "How  long  wilt  thou  refuse  to  humhle 
thyself  before  me  ?"  "  And  thou  shalt  remember  all  the 
way  which  the  Lord  thy  God  led  thee  forty  years  in  the 
wilderness,  to  Immhle  thee  and  to  prove  thee ;"  "I  am 
afflicted  very  much ;"  "  He  was  oppressed,  and  he  was 
afflicted,  yet  he  opened  not  his  mouth  "  (Exod.  x.  3 ; 
Deut.  viii.  2;  Ps.  cxix.  107;  Isa.  liii.  7).  Texts  like 
these  reveal  to  us  the  deep  moaning  of  "  afflicting  the 
soul,"  taking  us  far  beyond  any  mere  act  of  fasting,  and 
showing  us  that  humiliation  of  heart  and  godly"  sorrow 
woro  requh-ed  and  valued  long  before  the  time  when 
David  said,  "  The  sacrifices  of  God  are  a  broken  spirit ; 
a  broken  and  a  contrite  heart,  O  God,  thou  wilt  not 
despise."  Such  then  was  the  general  character  of  the 
day,  and  in  this  manner  was  Israel  prepared  for  its 
special  services.  After  the  usual  morning  offering, 
after  tho  "affliction"  of  the  preceding  evening  and 
night,  these  services  began. 

As  everything  to  be  represented  was  to  be  represenfod 
in  its  highest  potency  and  in  its  most  striking  form,  the 
great  duties  of  tho  day  devolved  not  upon  the  ordinary 
priests,  but  upon  the  high  priest  alone.  First  of  all,  ho 
had  to  bathe  himself  wholly,  and  not  as  tlio  priests 
officiating  at  the  common  sacrifices,  only  partially,  in 
water.  Next  ha  put  on  a  dress  used  by  him  on  no 
other  occasion  of  the  year.     "  He  shall  put  on,"  it  is 


said,  "  the  holy  linen  coat,  and  he  shall  have  tho  linen 
breeches  upon  his  flesh,  and  shall  be  girded  with  a  linen 
girdle,  and  with  the  linen  mitre  shall  he  bo  attired  : 
these  ai'e  holy," — or  rather  the  holy — "garments ;  there- 
fore shall  ho  wash  his  flesh  in  water,  and  so  put  them 
on  "  (Lev.xvi.  4).  The  di-ess  was  thus  entirely  different 
from  the  ordinary  high  priestly  attire,  the  splendour  of 
the  latter  being  laid  aside,  and  plain  white  linen,  such  as 
tliat  worn  by  the  common  priests,  being  substituted  for 
its  variegated  colours  and  golden  and  jewelled  orna- 
ments. This  circumstance  has  led  to  the  idea  that  the 
change  was  designed  to  harmonise  with  the  general 
humiliation  and  contrition  of  the  day,  as  well  as  to 
denote  a  reduction,  in  accordance  with  it,  of  the  decora- 
tions of  the  high  priest  to  the  style  of  an  ordiuary  priest, 
the  slight  differences  that  still  remained  between  tho 
two  being  intended  only  to  make  tho  simplicity  more 
complete,  and  to  leave  some  mark  by  which  the  eleva- 
tion of  tho  high  priest  over  others  might  bo  known.^  It 
is  impossible  for  many  reasons  to  accept  such  an  ex- 
planation. The  fact  that  any  difference  at  all  was  left 
between  this  high  priestly  and  the  common  priestly 
dress,  would  itself  be  conclusive  against  the  supposition 
that  it  was  the  object  of  the  arrangement  to  equalise  tho 
two ;  but  the  whole  idea  of  equalisation  must  bo  rejected 
when  we  remember  that  the  very  kernel  of  the  services 
of  tho  day  was  that  the  high  priest  alone  was  entitled 
to  perform  them.  A  central  idea  of  this  kind  could  not 
have  been  conti'adictod  by  the  symbolism  employed. 
Again,  a  garment  of  white  is  never  in  Scripture  the  gar- 
ment of  humiliation.  It  is  rather  the  garment  of  com- 
pleted holiness  and  heavenly  glory.  It  is  that  given  to 
the  souls  beneath  the  altar  slain  for  the  word  of  God 
and  for  the  testimony  which  they  held ;  that  of  the 
multitude  which  no  man  can  number  standing  before 
the  throno  and  before  tho  Lamb;  that  of  the  armies 
following  Him  who  is  King  of  kings  and  Lord  of  lords ; 
that  of  the  angels  in  heaven  ;  nay,  that  even  of  the  Son 
himself,  whose  raiment,  when  his  glory  broke  through 
the  veil  of  his  humiliation,  was  "  white  as  the  light " 
(Rev.  vi.  11 ;  vii.  9  ;  xix.  14;  Matt,  xxviii.  3;  xvii.2).  It 
was,  therofoi'e,  not  in  garments  of  humiliation  that  tho 
high  priest  appeared  on  the  day  wo  are  considering,  but 
in  garments  symbolical  of  tho  perfect  holiness  to  be 
possessed  by  one  who  would  approach  into  the  imme- 
diate presence  of  a  holy  God. 

Having  clothed  himself  in  his  appropriate  dress,  the 
high  priest  next  proceeded  to  tho  selection  of  the  vic- 
tims. He  supplied  at  his  own  cost  a  bullock,  at  the  cost 
of  tho  people  two  goats,  for  a  sin-offering.  Tlie  object 
contemplated  by  tho  choice  of  two  goats  instead  of  one 
must  be  afterwards  more  fully  considered  by  us.  In  the 
meantime  it  is  sufficient  to  observe  that  they  were  in- 
tended to  express  two  parts  of  one  complex  idea  which, 
in  the  nature  of  the  case,  it  was  impossible  to  express  by 
one.  It  is  a  tradition  of  the  Rabbins,  in  all  probability 
correct,  that  the  goats  were  to  bo  in  every  respect  alike ; 


1  See  among  others  Kuvz,  SacnVicial  irorsJivp  o/  ihc  Old  Testament, 
Clark's  TranslatiOD,  p.  339. 


THE    OLD   TESTAMENT   FULFILLED   IN    THE    IsTEVT. 


and  this  at  least  was  the  prescription  of  the  Law,  that 
only  by  casting  lots  upon  them  could  it  bo  dotormined 
what  pai't  in  the  ceremonial  was  to  bo  assigned  to  each. 
Wten  the  lot  had  been  cast,  one  goat  was  set  apart  "  for 
the  Lord ;"  the  other,  it  is  said,  "  for  Azazcl "  (Lev.  xvi. 
8),  and  both  they  and  the  bullock  were  then  placod  at 
the  door  of  the  tabernacle,  to  await  the  moment  when 
they  would  be  needed. 

The  preparations  being  thus  completed,  the  offerings 
•  of  the  day  began.  First  of  all,  the  high  priest  ofEerod 
the  bullock  as  a  sin-offering  "  for  himself  and  for  his 
house" — that  is,  for  himself  and  the  whole  priesthood 
of  Israel.  Having  slain  the  bullock  and  collected  its 
blood  in  a  basin,  which  he  seems  to  have  left  standing 
for  a  few  moments  in  the  holy  place,  ho  took  a  censer 
"  full  of  burning  coals  of  fire  from  off  tho  altar  before 
the  Lord,  and  his  hands  full  of  sweet  incenso  beaten 
small."  Ho  then  drew  aside  the  veil  separating  tho 
Holy  of  Holies  from  the  holy  place,  and  moved  on  no 
other  occasion  during  the  whole  year  but  thLs,  and 
passed  into  the  innermost  and  most  holy  shrine.  Cast- 
ing the  incense  upon  the  burning  coals,  ho  filled  the 
Holy  of  Holies  with  the  smoke  of  the  incense,  sending 
a  sweet  savour  throughout  the  house.  Then  he 
returned  to  the  holy  place  for  the  blood  of  tho  bullock, 
and,  again  entering  within  the  veil,  sprinkled  with  his 
finger  tho  blood  upon  the  mercy-seat  eastward,  and 
seven  times  before  the  mercy- seat  upon  tho  ground. 
Thus  the  offering  for  the  priesthood  and  for  tho  most 
sacred  part  of  the  tabernacle  or  temple,  in  so  far  as  it 
stood  related  to  the  priesthood,  was  complete.  The 
offei-ing  for  the  people  foUowed.  It  was  mado  with  tho 
blood  of  tho  goat  set  apart  "  for  tho  Lord  "  by  lot,  and 
which  the  high  priest  had  in  the  meaatimo  skin.  Tho 
ceremonial  was  tho  same  as  before.  Tho  blood  was 
sprinkled  once  upon  the  mercy-seat,  and  then  seven 
times  before  tho  mercy-seat  upon  the  ground,  thus  finish- 
ing the  atonement  for  tho  people,  and  for  tho  Holy  of 
Holies  in  its  connection  with  them. 

Tho  holy  place  now  became  the  scene  of  the  high 
priest's  operations.  Taking  the  blood  of  tho  bullock 
and  of  the  goat,  and  excluding  every  one  from  tho  en- 
closure during  the  performance  of  tho  ceremony,  he 
acto<I  towards  the  altar  of  incense  in  tho  holy  place 
exactly  as  he  had  done  towards  tho  mercy-seat  within 
tho  veil,  and  with  the  similar  result  of  atoning  for  and 
cleansing  both  tho  altar  and  the  place  in  which  it  stood. 
,  Tho  forecourt  with  ita  altar  of  burnt-offering  now 
aJone  remained,  laid  steps  analogous  to  those  already 
taken  with  the  holy  place  and  with  tho  Holy  of  Holies 
were  taken  with  them.  "  And  he  shall  go  out,"  it  is 
said,  "  unto  tho  altar  that  is  before  the  Lord,  and  make 
atonement  for  it ;  and  shall  take  of  tho  blood  of  tho 
bullock  and  of  the  blood  of  the  goat,  and  put  it  upon 
the  horns  of  the  altar  round  about.  And  he  shall 
sprinkle  of  tho  blood  upon  it  with  his  finger  seven 
times,  and  cleanse  it,  and  hallow  it  from  the  uncleannoss 
of  tho  children  of  Israel "  (Lev.  xvi.  18,  19).  Thus  the 
forecourt  also  was  cleansed,  and,  as  far  as  regarded 
the  various  courts  and  altars,  and,  by  implication,  tho 


utensils  of  the  Temple,  nothing  further  was  needed  to 
be  done. 

The  most  remarkable  ceremony  of  the  day,  however, 
still  remained  to  be  accomplished.  It  took  place  with 
the  second  goat,  which  had  been  loft  standing  aU  this 
while  in  its  appointed  place.  Tho  high  priest  laid 
both  his  hands  upon  its  head,  confessed  over  it  "  all  the 
iniquities  of  the  chUdreu  of  Israel,  and  all  their  trans- 
gressions in  all  their  sins,"  putting  them  upon  tho  head 
of  the  goat,  and  then  sent  it  away  by  the  hand  of  a  fit 
man,  or  rather  of  a  man  appointed,  into  the  vrilderness. 

The  leading  parts  of  the  ceremonial  of  tho  day  wore 
now  finished ;  and,  ia  expression  of  this,  tho  high  priest 
was  instructed  to  return  into  tho  holy  place,  to  put  off 
tho  white  linen  garments  in  which  he  had  been  clothed, 
to  bathe  himself,  and  to  resume  his  ordinary  high 
priestly  robes.  Ho  thou  offered  his  own  burnt-offering 
an<l  tho  burnt-offering  of  tho  people,  bmning  along  with 
these  the  fat  of  tho  two  animals,  the  bullock  and  tho 
goat,  that  had  been  slain  for  a  sin-offering.  Meanwhile 
the  remaining  parts  of  these  animals  had  to  be  carried 
outside  the  camp,  and  there  in  a  clean  place  consumed 
with  fire.  The  person  to  whom  this  task  w;is  entrusted, 
as  woU  as  he  who  had  led  away  tho  live  goat  into  the 
wilderness,  had  finally,  as  themselves  unclean,  to  wash 
themselves  in  water  before  they  were  permitted  again 
to  take  their  -place  among  the  people.  When  all  this 
had  been  effected,  festival  sacrifices,  similar  to  those 
which  had  marked  the  Feast  of  Ti-umpets  on  tho  first 
day  of  tho  month,  were  offered  "for  a  sweet  savoiu' 
unto  the  Lord,"  one  young  bullock,  one  ram,  and  seven 
lambs  of  the  first  year,  all  ivithont  blemish,  together 
with  their  appointed  meat  and  drink  offerings,  and  one 
kid  of  the  goats  for  a  sin-offering  (Numb.  xxix.  8 — 11). 

Having  thus  described  as  briefly  as  possible  tho  cere- 
monial of  this  sacred  season,  it  is  necessary,  before 
speaking  of  its  fulfilment  under  tlie  New  Testament 
Dispensation,  to  advert  to  its  meaning  for  those  who 
were  immediately  concerned  with  it.  That  meaning  is 
not  difiicult  to  ascertain  except  in  one  particular,  which 
it  will  be  well,  therefore,  first  to  notice.  Wliat  are  we 
to  understand  by  the  words  "  for  tho  scape-goat,"'  or,  to 
employ  the  expression  of  the  original,  "for  Azazel  ?" 

Tho  word  "Azazel"  occurs  only  four  times  in  the 
Old  Testament,  and  nowhere  else.  These  four  texts, 
too,  are  all  within  the  compass  of  a  single  chapter,  the 
16th  of  Leviticus  (vs.  8,  10  twice,  20),  and  not  one  of 
them  is  clear.  Tho  utmost  diversity  of  opinion  has, 
accordingly,  prevailed  as  to  the  signification  of  the  word. 
Without  entering  at  any  length  into  the  controversy,  it 
may  .bo  said  that  two  classes  of  interpretation  alone 
seem  worthy  of  regard — tho  one,  that  which  understands 
by  tho  term  tho  devil,  or  some  evil  spirit  inhabiting  tho 
wildemess;  tho  other,  that  which  supposes  either  the 
wilderness  as  a  whole  or  some  pai-ticuLar  part  of  it  to  be 
meant.  It  seems  impossible  to  receive  tho  former.  How- 
ever widely  accepted,  and  that  by  scholars  of  not  less 
piety  than  learning,  difficulties  attend  it  which,  speaking 
for  ourselves  at  least,  we  are  unable  to  overcome.  It  is 
vain  to  plead  on  its  behalf  that  tho  id»ia  of  an  offering  to 


276 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


the  devil  is  not  intended  to  be  esprossod.    Tiio  very  con- 
trast in  Lev.  xvi.  8,  whicli  is  supposed  to  make  it  neces- 
sary to  refer  Azazel  to  a  person,  "one  lot  for  the  Lord, 
and  the  other  lot  for  Azazel,"  must,  if  it  lead  us  thus 
far,  lead  us  further.    Wo  shall  also  have  to  interpret  the 
preposition  "  for  "  in  both  these  clauses  in  the  same  way, 
and  as  the  idea  of  devotion  is  certainly  in  the  one,  it 
must   be    carried  into  the  other.     Suoh  a  conception, 
however,  is  not  only  against  tho  whole  analogy  of  Scrip- 
ture, it  is  opposed  to  tho  clear  teaching  of  this  particular 
chapter,  whore  we  learn  that  the  two  goats  constituted 
only  one  sin-offering  (ver.  5),  where  we  see  that  both  were 
presented  to  the  Lord  in  precisely  tho  same  way  as 
His  (ver.  7),  and  whore  we  are  even  expressly  told  of  the 
one  now  under  consideration,  that  it  was  to  be  set  before 
the  Lord  "  to  make  atonement  for  him  "  (not  as  in  our 
English  Version,  "  to  make  atonement  with  him,"  ver.  10) 
— that  is,  to  be  itself  an  object  in  which  atonement  is 
carried  out,  so  that,  when  it  afterwards  boars  away  the 
people's  sins  into  tho  wUdemoss,  it  does  so  as  accepted 
and  holy  in  God's  sight.    Obliged,  therefore,  to  abandon 
this  class  of  interpretations,  there  seems  no  help  for  it 
but  to  take  refuge  in  the  other,  which  refers  the  word 
either  to  tho  wilderness  as  a  whole  or  to  some  special 
part  of  it.      It  can  hardly  be  tho  former,  owing  to  the 
tautology  which  would  thus  bo  introduced  into  Lev.  xvi. 
10.     We  are  compelled,  then,  to  have  recourse  to  the 
latter,  and  to  understand  the  word  to  mean  a  portion  of 
the  wilderness  more  than  ordinarily  remote  and  desolate 
and  wild.'     The  wilderness  itself  was  not  wholly  wild. 
It  was  rather  in  many  parts  a  place  of  pasturage  for 
sheep  aad  cattle,  with  grassy  spots  and  pleasant  nooks. 
Not  to  any  of  these  was  the  second  goat  to  bo  taken,  but 
to  one  of  its  most  lonely  and  rugged  solitudes,  far  from 
Jerusalem,  whence  return  to  the  abodes  of  men  should 
be  impossible,  where  it  should  never  be  heard  of  more. 
It  cannot  be  protended  that  even  this  interpretation  is 
free  from  difficulties  ;  but,  whether  accepted  or  not,  the 
general  idea  to  be  attached  to  the  words  "for  Azazel" 
seems  clear.     It  is  for  final  and  complete  removal. 

Lot  us  turn  to  the  moaning  of  the  ceremonial  of  the 
Day  of  Atonement  as  a  whole. 

The  name  of  tho  day,  a  name  expressly  given  it  in 
Lev.  xxiii.  28,  is  at  onco  significant  of  its  design.  "  It 
is,"  says  Moses,  "  a  day  of  atonement,  to  make  an  atone- 
ment for  you  before  tlie  Lord  your  God."  It  occupied, 
however,  a  ground  entirely  different  from  that  of  all 
the  other  atonements  of  the  year.  It  was  not,  like 
them,  for  individual  and  scattered  sins.  Neither  was  it 
intended  only  to  supplement  them,  to  supply  deficiencies 
by  which  they  miglit  have  been  marked,  or  to  cover  sins 
whicli  might  have  been  forgotten.  It  embraced  not 
some  sins  only  of  some  of  tho  members  of  the  congre- 
gation, but  all  the  sins  of  aU,  from  the  high  priest  at  its 
head  to  its  meanest  and  most  obscure  member.  In 
short,  it  was  an  atonement,  in  regard  to  all  the  sins  of 
Israel,   individual  and  complete.      Nay,  not  only  so. 


•  Compare  Wangenianu,  Das  Opfer  nach  Lchrc  dcr  ndlvjen  Schrifl 
Altcn  mid  Nemn  Testaments,  i.  373,  etc. 


Its  efficacy  was  designed  to  extend  to  the  tabornacle  or 
the  Temple  itself,  to  all  its  parts,  to  tho  courts  which 
Israel  had  trodden  and,  in  treading,  had  defiled,  to  tho 
altars  on  which  its  victims  had  been  laid,  to  the  utensils 
employed  in  the  services  engaged  in  on  its  behalf,  to 
everything  with  which  it  had  been  brought  into  contact, 
and  to  which,  therefore,  it  had  communicated  in  a  greater 
or  a  less  degree   its  own  uncleanness.     "  And  ho  shall 
make  an  atonement,"  it  is  said,  "  for  tho  holy  sanctuary, 
and  he   shall  make  an  atonement  for  the  tabernacle  of 
the    congregation,  and  for  the    altar "  (Lev.  xvi.  33) ; 
while  the  reason  of  this  is  given  in  another  verse  of  the 
same  chapter  (ver.  16),  "  because  of  the  uncleanness  of 
tho  children  of  Israel,  and  because  of  their  transgres- 
sions in  all  their  sins,"  and  because  "the  tabornacle  re- 
maineth  among  them  in  the  midst  of  their  uncleanness  ' ' 
— so  wide,  so  comprehensive,  so  all-embracing  was  the 
atonement  of  this  day.     Everything,  accordingly,  was 
arranged  in  such  a  manner  as  to  exhibit  this  idea  in  its 
sharpest   lines  and  in  its  highest  potency.     Instead  of 
tho  ordinary  priests,  the  high  priest,  the  earthly  head 
and  representative  of  tho  whole  theocracy,  could  alone 
perform  the  prescribed  rites.     Instead  of  his  ordinary 
dress,  he  had  a  special  dress  for  the  occasion,  which  is 
spoken  of  with  a  distinct  emphasis  in  different  passages 
as  "  holy  garments,"  while  the   epithet  "  holy  "  is  even 
extended  to  one  of  its  parts  (Lev.  xvi.  4,  32).      Instead 
of  the  holy  place  being  used  as  the   place  for  the  ap- 
pointed ministering,  the  Holy  of  Holies,  so  sacred  that 
no  foot  might  tread  within  it  at  any  other  season  of  tho 
year,  was  entered  by  the  high  priest  for  the  perform- 
ance of  some  of  his  most  solemn  functions  on  that  day. 
Instead  of  the  blood  of  the  sin-offering  being  sprinkled 
only  on  tho  altar  to  which  it  was  usually  applied,  it 
was  sprinkled  on,  or,  if  not  on — for  there  is  some  little 
doubt  upon  the   point — at   least  toward  that  covering 
of  the  ark  of  the  testimony,  resting  under  tho  wings  of 
the  cherubim,  which  was  to  Israel  the  pecidiar  and  at 
other  times  unapproachable  seat  of  the  Almighty.     In- 
stead of  offering  only  for  others,  the  high  priest  then 
offered  for  himself  also,  and  for  the  whole  priestly  family 
of  the  land.     Instead  of  the  many  victims  slain  at  the 
ordinary  festiv.al  seasons  of  tho  year,  one  bullock  alono 
was  now  slain  for  tho  priests,  and  one  victim — though 
formally  two  goats  were  needed  to  embody  the  idea — 
for  tho  people.    EinaUy,  an  altogether  special  rite  sjth- 
bolised  the  complete  removal  of  sin,  while  the  very  soil 
of  the  sacred  enclosure,  and  the  very  materials  employed 
in  tho  worship  offered  there,  were  also  atoned  for  and 
cleansed.     No  wonder  that  the  day  became,  as  it  did 
become,  the  most  memorable  of  the  whole  year.      It 
was  a  point  at  which  old  things  passed  away  and  all 
things  wore  made  new. 

We  turn  to  the  Now  Testament  fulfilment  of  flie 
services  now  considered  by  us.  In  doing  so,  no  doubt 
can  bo  left  upon  our  minds  as  to  that  in  which  they  are 
accomplished.  Apart  from  more  general  expressions 
of  the  Now  Testament  which  point  out  their  typical 
relation  to  tho  person  and  work  of  tho  Redeemer,  the 
writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  (chaps,  ix.,  x.)  has 


THE   OLD  TESTAMENT  FULFILLED   IN  THE   NEW. 


277 


entered  fuEy  into  the  matter,  and  spoken  of  various 
particulars  iu  which  the  fulfilment  we  are  in  search  of 
has  taken  place.  Like  the  festival  seasons  described  in 
previous  papers,  this  sacred  season  is  fulfilled  in  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  in  his  Church. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  fulfilled  in  Christ  himself  ;  for 
as  there  was  then  a  high  priest  mediating  between  God 
and  Israel,  so  Christ  is  the  great  High  Priest  of  the  New 
Testament  Israel,  not  indeed  infirm  and  sinful,  needing 
to  offer  up  sacrifices  for  himself  and  the  priesthood  as 
well  as  for  the  people,  and  clothed  in  garments  only 
symbohcal  of  holiness,  but  who  is  "  holy,  harmless,  im- 
defiled,  separate  from  sinners  "  (Heb.  vii.  26).  Again, 
as  Israel's  high  priest  went  on  the  Day  of  Atonement 
within  the  veil,  sending  up  from  the  censer  in  his  hand 
the  cloud  of  holy  and  sweet  incense,  and  knowing  that 
he  might  then  stand  accepted  and  heard  beside  the 
mercy-seat,  so  our  High  Priest  has  passed  through  the 
heavens  into  the  immediate  presence  of  God — his  pre- 
sence not  as  He  dwells  only  symboHcaUy  upon  earth, 
but  as  He  dwells  fiUiug  all  space  and  time,  in  his  own 
glorious  abode.  There  He  is  our  Advocate  and  Inter- 
cessor with  the  Father,  and  the  Father  heareth  Him 
always.  Still  further,  as  there  was  then  an  offering  for 
Israel,  so  Christ  is  the  offering  for  us,  who  "  not  by  the 
blood  of  goats  and  calves,  but  by  his  own  blood  entered 
once  into  the  holy  place,  having  obtained  eternal  redemp- 
tion for  us  "  (Heb.  ix.  12).  Thus  is  Christ  at  once  the 
priest  who  offers  and  the  victim  who  dies  on  our  behalf. 
But  more.  As  the  oifering  for  Israel  had  its  own  ap- 
pointed efficacy,  so  Christ's  offering  has  its  efficacy  too, 
only  of  a  far  higher  kind,  and  that  in  a  twofold  aspect : 
in  the  first  place,  pacifying  the  conscience,  so  that  "  the 
worshipper  once  purged  may  have  no  more  conscience 
of  sins  "  (Heb.  x.  2) ;  in  the  second  place,  securing  the 
fulfilment  of  the  great  promise  of  the  New  Covenant, 
"  I  will  put  my  laws  into  their  hearts,  and  in  their 
minds  wUl  I  write  them  "  (Heb.  x.  16),  so  that  the 
people  of  God  are  sanctified  not  only  outwardly,  but 
inwardly,  and  are  made  new  creatures  in  Christ  Jesus. 
Therefore  docs  the  Christian's  offering  not  need  to  be 
repeated  every  year.  It  is  an  offering  made  once  and 
for  ever.  It  so  covers  all  the  transgressions  of  the 
past,  it  so  extends  its  atoning  power  to  the  remotest 
future,  that,  as  "  once  in  the  end  of  the  world  Christ 
hath  appeared  to  put  away  sin  by  the  sacrifice  of  him- 
self," we  no  more  look  for  another  sacrifice,  with  aU  its 
humiliation  and  woe  and  suffering,  but  only  for  the 
glorious  appearing  of  Him  who  "to  them  that  look  for 
Him  will  appear  the  second  time  without  sin  unto  salva- 
tion "  (Heb.  ix.  26,  28). 

Such  are  the  leading  particulars  upon  which  the  sacred 
writer  dwells  when  he  describes  the  fulfilment  under  the 
Christian  Dispensation  of  the  great  Day  of  Atonement 
in  Israel.  He  recognises  the  abiding,  the  eternal  truth 
of  the  ideas  which  that  day  embodied.  Ho  sees  the  need, 
the  validity,  and  the  blessed  effects  of  the  offering  for 
sin  that  was  then  presented ;  but  he  does  not  for  a 
moment  think  that,  because  the  Temple  on  Mount  Ziou 
io  no  longer  what  it  was,  all  this  has  passed  away.    The 


form  has  passed  away ;  the  ideas  remain.  They  are 
only  transferred  to  a  higher  sphere,  translated  into  more 
perfect  acts,  productive  of  more  glorious  results. 

It  may  indeed  strike  us  with  surprise  that  he  makes 
no  mention  of  that  part  of  tho  ceremonial  which  is 
always  felt  to  be  the  strangest  and  most  difficult  of 
interpretation,  the  sending  away  of  the  live  goat  into  the 
wUdomess.  Surely  the  fact  that  he  does  not  do  so  is  in 
no  small  degree  a  proof  that  he  does  not  behold  in  this 
any  transaction  of  a  separate  and  independent  kind,  any 
transaction  between  the  people  and  an  evil  spirit  whose 
abode  was  in  the  wilderness.  Had  such  a  thought  been 
present  to  his  mind,  he  could  hardly,  in  dwelliug  so 
largely  upon  the  different  features  of  the  antitype,  have 
failed  to  notice  that  one  which  had  so  singular  an  ex- 
pression given  it  in  tho  type.  Both  himself  and  his 
readers  would  have  felt  that  his  exposition  was  incom- 
plete, and  the  question  would  have  been  asked,  what 
it  was  in  Christianity  in  which  an  incident  of  so  re- 
markable a  nature  found  its  substitute  and  fulfilment. 
That  he  says  nothing  of  it  must  be  regarded  as  so  far 
at  least  a  corroboration  of  the  view  which  we  have  taken, 
that  that  incident  occupied  no  ground  different  in  its 
whole  nature  from  the  groimd  upon  which  tho  shedding 
of  the  blood  of  the  slain  goat  rested ;  that  the  two  goats 
are  iu  reality  one  victim,  devoted  to  tho  same  purpose, 
accomphshing  the  same  end  ;  that  if  the  one  be,  as  it  is, 
a  type  of  the  Redeemer,  the  other  is  not  less  so,  though 
it  presents  a  somewhat  different  aspect  of  his  work ;  and 
that  two  goats  are  made  use  of  instead  of  one,  simply 
because  it  was  impossible  that,  when  one  had  been  slain 
to  atone  for  sin,  it  could  be  further  employed  to  set 
forth  the  removal  of  sin  into  a  place  where  it  should  be 
no  more  remembered,  and  from  which  it  could  never 
return  to  disquiet  those  who  had  been  redeemed.  That, 
we  must  repeat,  and  that  alone,  was  tho  true  meaning  of 
the  act.  Wo  have  in  tho  two  goats  nothing  symbohcal 
of  the  two  natures  of  Christ,  nothing  of  his  death  and 
resurrection.  The  one  is  only  the  expression  of  the 
truth  that  His  blood  cleanses  from  all  sin,  the  other  of 
the  fulfilment  of  the  promises  enjoyed  and  the  expecta- 
tions cherished  by  the  saints  of  old,  "  As  far  as  tho  east 
is  from  the  west,  so  far  hath  he  removed  our  transgres- 
sions  from  us ;"  "  I,  even  I,  am  he  that  blottoth  out  thy 
transgressions  for  mine  own  sake,  and  wiU  not  remember 
thy  sins  ;"  "In  those  days  and  in  that  time,  saith  the 
Lord,  the  iniquity  of  Israel  shall  be  sought  for,  and 
there  shall  be  none,  and  the  sins  of  Judali,  and  they 
shall  not  bo  found;"  "Who  is  a  God  like  uuto  thee,  that 
pardonoth  iniquity,  and  passeth  by  the  transgression  of 
the  remnant  of  his  heritage?  He  rotaineth  not  his 
anger  for  ever,  because  he  delighteth  in  mercy.  He  will 
turn  again;  he  will  have  compassion  upon  us;  he  will 
subdue  our  iniquities  ;  and  thou  wilt  cast  all  their  sins 
into  tho  depths  of  the  sea  "  (Ps.  ciii.  12 ;  Isa.  xliii.  25  ; 
Jer.  1.  20 ;  Micah  vii.  18,  19). 

But  if  tho  services  of  tho  Day  of  Atonement  are  thus 
fulfilled  in  Christ,  they  are  fulfilled  also  iu  that  Church 
which  is  his  body,  the  fulness  of  Him  that  fillcth  all  in 
all.     One  with  Him  who  is  at  once  tho  high  priest  ai;d 


278 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


the  victim,  the  Cliurcli  of  the  Redeemer  passes  with  her 
Lord  into  the  holiest  of  all,  into  the  immediate  presence 
of  Ills  Father  and  our  Father,  of  his  God  and  our  God. 
The  veil  that  separated  her  from  the  mercy-seat  has  been 
for  ever  rent  in  tvrain,  and  not  once  a  year  only,  with 
awo  and  trembling  at  the  unwonted  privilege,  but  con- 
tinually, with  joy  and  confidence  ajid  freedom,  she  goes 
with  prayer  to  the  throne  of  grace  to  obtain  "  mercy  and 
grace  to  help  in  time  of  need."  She  does  this  because 
she  is  in  Christ  Jesus,  in  whose  death  she  dies,  in 
whose  eternal  life  she  lives,  in  whose  intercession  she 
intercedes,  and  in  whose  being  heard  she  obtains  always 
an  answer  to  her  prayers.  In  Christ's  one  offering, 
first  in  that  aspect  of  it  presented  by  the  slain  goat,  and 
then  in  that  other  aspect  of  it  presented  by  the  goat 
carrying  all  siu  away  into  a  land  of  forgetfulness,  she 
is  if  or  ever  perfected,  assured  that  there  is  now  for  her 
no  condemnation,  and  seeing  all  her  sins  cast  into  the 
depths  of  the  sea.  She  is  one  with  her  Lord  in  his 
atoning  sacrifice,  and  one  with  Him  in  his  high  priestly 
privileges ;  one  with  Him  in  his  offering,  in  his  righteous- 
ness, and  in  his  joyful  confidence  in  God;  one  with  Him 
in  his  "  strong  crying  and  tears,"  and  one  with  Him  in 
his  being  heard  because  ho  feared.     Her  sacrifice  is 


ideally  over ;  it  has  only  in  seLf-denial  and  self-sacrifice 
to  be  appropriated  and  made  her  own.  Therefore  if  in 
one  sense  she  has  still  to  realise  her  position  as  a  Church 
offering  herself  up  upon  the  altar  with  her  Lord, "  filling 
up  what  remains  behind  of  his  sufferings,"  in  another 
she  beholds  that  work  accomplished,  and  has  only  to 
re-clothe  herself  in  her  garments  of  glory  and  of  beauty. 
In  this  sense  a  bumt-offoring  of  praise  alone  remains 
for  her,  that  burnt-offering  which  the  writer  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  describes  as  her  continual  sacri- 
fice of  praise, "  that  is,  the  fruit  of  her  lips  giving  thanka 
to  his  name  ''  (xiii.  15). 

It  is  for  Christians  then,  as  they  transport  themselves 
in  thought  to  the  Day  of  Atonement  in  Israel,  and  as 
they  dwoU  upon  the  privileges  of  which  God's  ancient 
people  must  have  felt  that  it  was  the  source,  to  remem- 
ber their  own  better  portion,  and  to  rejoice  in  their  own 
higher  privileges.  Let  them  behold  themselves  in  their 
position  as  the  accepted  children  of  God:  let  them 
make  Abba,  Father  the  key-note  of  their  lives ;  and,  en- 
joying  the  privileges,  let  them  also  live  the  life  of  God's 
children,  the  life  of  peace  and  joy  and  hope  and  liberty, 
the  life  of  willing  obedience  and  unquestioning  submis- 
sion to  their  Father's  will 


MEASURES,  WEIGHTS,   AND    COINS    OF   THE   BIBLE. 


BY  F.  E.  CONDEB,  C.E. 
LINEAR      MEASTJEES. 


i^T  is  impossible  thoroughly  to  understand 
many  parts  of  the  Bible  without  a  com- 
petent knowledge  of  the  various  metrical 
terms  which  are  so  frequently  introduced. 
We  read  of  shekels  and  of  talents ;  of  omers  and  of 
ephas ;  of  the  Feasts  of  Lights'  and  of  Tabernacles ; 
of  the  second  Sabbath  after  the  first ;  of  cubits,  and  of 
a  Sabbath  day's  journey.  Unless  we  can  form  some 
definite  conception  of  the  weights,  the  measures,  the 
dates,  or  the  distances  that  are  indicated  by  these  and 
similar  words,  we  can  only  arrive  at  a  dim  and  vague 
comprehension  of  the  meaning  of  the  sacred  writers. 

The  Jews  were  a  people  to  whom,  above  all  others, 
incertitude  on  these  points  was  intolerable.  No  ancient 
literature  is  so  precise  in  its  definitions,  as  to  number 
.•md  quantity,  as  the  Hebrew  tongue.  The  course  of 
daily  fife  was  prescribed,  in  its  minutest  detail,  to  the 
Jews  by  a  Law  that  was  at  the  same  time  sacred,  civil,  \ 
and  criminal.  Nothing  was  held  to  be  incumbent  on  a 
Jew,  either  to  do  or  not  to  do,  which  was  not  prescribed 
by  one  of  the  613  afiirmative  or  negative  precepts  enume- 
rated as  contained  in  the  Pentateuch.  The  exact  bearing 
of  these  precepts  was  explained  by  the  Oral  Law.  And 
to  the  prophets  and  sages,  down  to  the  death  of  Simon 
the  Just,  and  to  the  judicial  decisions  of  the  Sanhedrin 
since  the  time  of  that  groat  high  priest,  was  ascribed  a 

'  A  synonym  for  tlie  Feast  of  Dedication  (Joseph.,  Ant.  xii.  7). 


power  of  explaining  or  supplementing  the  traditional 
Oral  Laws,  which  combined  the  legislative  and  the 
judicial  functions  of  our  own  constitution. 

Thus,  for  example,  the  validity  of  the  religious  rites  of 
the  whole  Jewish  year  hinged  upon  the  due  observance 
of  the  Great  Fast — that  of  the  tenth  day  of  the  seventh 
month.  Had  the  ceremonies  appointed  for  this  fast 
been  performed,  through  any  error,  on  the  wrong  day, 
the  whole  nation  would  have  been  in  the  condition  of  a 
Roman  Catholic  nation  lying  under  an  interdict.  No 
remedy  for  the  broach  of  this  great  ordinance  of  the 
Law  was  possible  until  the  next  recurrence  of  the  Day 
of  Expiation.  The  determination  of  the  proper  com- 
mencement of  the  seventh  month,  involving  the  pre- 
vious determination  of  the  first  lunar  month  of  the  year, 
was  thus  an  annual  duty  of  the  most  serious  importance. 
Again,  with  reference  to  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  in 
which  the  escape  from  Egypt  was  commemorated, 
certain  dimensions  were  prescribed  for  the  booths,  ono 
of  which  each  householder  was  obliged  to  erect  for, 
and  to  inhabit  during,  the  eight  days  allotted  to  that 
festival.  Thus  the  legal  determination  of  the  standard 
cubit,  and  its  aliquot  parts,  was  a  portion  of  the  Oral 
Law  itself.  Again,  with  regard  to  the  different  baths 
required  for  legal  purification — whether  the  total 
plunging  bath,  called  the  bath  of  Ezra,  or  the  ablutions 
performed  by  pouring  water  over  the  hands  or  feet— 
the    minimum   quantity  of  water   that   was   required 


MEASURES,    WEIGHTS,   AND    COINS   OF   THE    BIBLE. 


270 


for  legal  purification  was  accurately  prescribed;  and 
thus  the  maintenance  of  the  true  standard  of  vessels  of 
capacity  was  intertwined  with  the  ritual  of  the  Temple. 
The  units  or  primary  dimensions  of  caoli  several 
system  of  measurement — for  length,  for  capacity,  for 
weight,  and  for  time — were  all  referred  in  the  Oral  Law 
to  natural  standards.  An  average  grain  of  barley 
formed,  as  in  English  long  measure  and  in  troy  weight, 
the  unit  of  length  and  of  weight.  A  largo  hen's  egg 
was  the  unit  of  capacity.  As  to  time,  the  construction 
of  a  calendar  was  forbidden  for  use  in  Palestine ;  and 
direct  observation  of  the  moon,  and  of  the  ripening  of 
ears  of  corn,  formed  the  appointed  method  for  the 
determination  of  dates.  The  adoption  of  these  stan- 
dards, rouglily  approximate  as  they  may  appear  when 
compared  witli  the  exactitude  of  mechanical  science  in 
our  own  day,  has  proved  to  be  a  more  permanent  and 
exact  institution  than  that  of  any  other  ancient  metrical 
system.  In  Egypt,  and  in  Assyria,  we  depend  ex- 
clusively on  monumental  evidence  for  any  precise 
information  as  to  the  measures  employed.  But  our 
knowledge  of  the  natural  standard  specified  by  the 
Jewish  Law,  enables  us  not  only  to  recover  the  actual 
scales  of  these  ancient  Hebrew  systems,  but  to  under- 
stand, as  wo  might  otherwise  be  unable  to  do,  much  of 
the  metrical  history  of  other  peoples. 

The  first  and  simplest  system  of  measurement  is  that 

"which  is  called  in  the  English  language  "long  measure," 

or  the  determination  of  distances  by  linear  measure. 

As  to  this,  we  have  positive  information  from  the  great 

writers  Moses  ben  Maimon  and  Obadiah  do  Bartenora, 

in  their  commentaries  on  the  treatise  Eriibbi,  and  on 

other  parts  of  the  Mishna.    The  various  items  have  also 

been  collected  with  much  care  by  the  Abbe  Chiarini,  and 

are  to  be  found  in  the  preface  to  his  translation  of  the 

first  treatise  of   the  Talmud  of  Babylon.     For  linear 

measure,  a  double   natural   standard  may  bo  said  to 

have  been  determined.     For  while,  as  we  before  said, 

the  unit  or  primary  dimension  is  identical  with  that  of 

English  long  measure — viz.,  the  barleycorn — every  other 

dimension,  in  one  of  the  systems  or  scales,  is  taken 

from  the  human  body.     The  digit,  of  two  barleycorns, 

is  the  average  width  of  a  finger.     The  2^tt^»i,  of  four 

digits,  is  the  width  of  the  fingers  when  closely  pressed 

together.      The  cubit,  of  six  palms,  is  the  length  from 

the  elbow  to  the  end  of  the  middle  finger.     The  cane 

or  canna,  of  four  cubits,  is  the  height  of  an  ordinary 

man.     Wo  know  that  wo  are  correct  in  identifying  the 

length  of  the  Syrian  barleycorn  with  that  of  the  English 

dimension,  from  the  fact  that  the  ancient  substructures 

of  the  Temple,  which  have  been  recently  explored  by 

our  Royal  Engineers,  liavo  aU  boon  set  out  in  cubits  of 

sixteen  inches,  and  are  thus  exactly  commensurate  with 

the  two-foot  rule  of  the  English  workman. 

Three  terms  occur  in  the  Bible,  which  are  translated 
"hand-breadth,"  "span,"  and  "half-cubit;"  and  the 
distinction  between  them  has  not  hitherto  been  made 
clear.  They  are,  however,  distinct  metrical  dimensions. 
The  smallest  dimension,  which  wo  shall  call  the  pidm,  is 
the  width  across  the  hand  when  the  fingers  are  closed. 


It  is  equal  to  four  digits,  or  three  English  inches.  The 
second,  tlie  hand-breadth,  is  the  double  of  this  dimen- 
sion, being  tho  width  of  the  hand  when  the  fingers  aro 
stretched  apart.  Tho  third  is  tho  span,  or  width  from 
the  end  of  tho  thumb  to  that  of  the  little  finger,  when 
the  hand  is  expanded.  These  dimensions  correspond 
with  Greek  measures,  although  tho  latter  are  on  rather 
a  larger  scale.  A  foui'th  dimension  on  this  scale  corre- 
sponds to  the  length  of  the  foot,  and  to  the  Latin  pes. 
The  Greek  pous  corresponds  to  the  English  foot  of 
twelve  inches,  and  not  to  any  dimension  in  this  scale. 
The  ameh,  smaller  cubit,  or  cubit  of  five  palms,  has 
both  a  Greek  and  a  Latin  cquiv;ilent.  It  is  said  in  tho 
Talmud  that  this  smaller  cubit  was  used  for  the  vessels 
of  the  Temple ;  the  larger  cubit,  of  six  palms,  being  tho 
land  and  buOder's  measure.  This  statement  is  con- 
firmed by  the  Book  of  Ezekiel  (Ezek.  xliii.  16),  where 
sixty  palms  (translated  "twelve  cubits')  is  given  as  tho 
length  of  half  of  each  side  of  the  altar. 

A  distinct,  but  not  incommensurate,  system  of  linear 
measure  is  indicated  in  the  description  of  the  Templo 
which  is  contained  in  the  Book  of  the  Prophet  Ezekiel ; 
a  description  which,  wo  are  told  by  Maimonides,  was 
taken  as  the  guide  for  the  rebuilding  of  the  sacred 
edifice  by  Zerubbabel.  In  this  account  a  cubit  of  ono- 
twelfth  greater  length  than  the  ordinary  cubit  is  indi- 
cated by  the  measuring-reed  of  six  cubits  and  a  half. 
We  aro  enabled  to  speak  with  certitude  of  the  length  of 
the  reed  or  canna  in  question  as  being  104  inches,  from 
the  fact  that  the  larger  dimensions  of  tho  "noblo 
sanctuaiy,"  as  tho  site  of  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem  is 
called  by  the  Moslem,  have  been  so  exactly  set  out  by 
this  imodiihis,  or  scale,  that  the   large  Ordnance  plan 


(on  the  scale  of 


mi^ht  lio  thought  to  have  been 


actually  plotted  on  that  standard. 

In  the  longer  measures  of  length — the  chief  import- 
ance of  which  was  the  determination  of  the  limit  of  the 
Sabbath  day's  journey,  or  distance  from  his  domicUo  to 
which  a  Jew  might  travel  on  the  Sabbath — we  have  u 
scale  of  dimensions  that  aro  readily  expressed  in  terms 
of  English  jrards,  feet,  and  inches.  They  differ  from 
other  European  measures,  whether  Greek,  Roman, 
Italian,  Spanish,  French,  or  German,  but  they  are  com- 
mensurate with  our  own.  Tho  length  of  tho  Sabbath 
day's  journey  was  2,000  paces,  which  is  exactly  240  yards 
more  than  an  English  mile.  The  mil,  or  smaller 
Jewish  mUe,  was  half  the  former  distance,  being  1,000 
English  yards.  Tho  resah,  or  Jewish  furlong,  was 
the  eighth  of  the  mile,  being  tho  equivalent  of  seventy 
cannas,  or  125  English  yards.  Thus,  nothing  can  bo 
more  simple  than  the  expression  of  Jewish  measures  of 
length  in  terms  of  tho  English  foot. 

With  regard  to  tho  two  dimensions  which  exceed  tho 
length  of  the  Sabbath  day's  journey,  they  must  bo 
regarded  as  rather  approximate  than  geometric.  Pales- 
tine, at  the  present  day,  is  almost  without  roads.  There 
are  remains  of  some  noble  Roman  roads,  which  may 
possibly  have  followed  the  lines  of  earlier  caravan 
routes;  but  the  distance  which  a  foot-traveUer  or  a 
horseman  would  accompliah  in  a  day  depended,  in  a 


280 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


great  degree,  upon  the  nature  of  the  country  he  had  to 
traverse.  We  have  tabulated  the  day's  journey  as  160 
furlongs,  being  ten  furlongs  more  than  the  distance 
taken  from  the  Talmud,  for  the  sake  of  uniformity 
in  the  tables.  The  length  indicated,  which  is  ll-f*T 
English  miles,  is  ample  for  an  average  day's  journey. 
Prom  Baphia,  on  the  southern  frontier  of  Palestine,  to 
CcBsarea,  is  a  distance  of  seventy-fivo  geogi-aphical 
miles,  as  the  crow  flies.  The  army  of  Titus  marched 
this  distance  (a.d.  69)  in  five  days.  But  this  was  the 
feat  of  a  Koman  army  over  the  main  line  of  communica- 
tion of  the  country.  It  is  consistent  with  the  smaller 
distance  as  the  ordinary  limit  of  the  traveller.  We 
annex  tables  of  Jewish  linear  measure. 

HEBEEW     LINEAE     MEASTTEES. 
LAKGER   MEASUEES    OF    LENGTH. 


Cane. 

Eesah. 

Mil. 

5  '^ 

Is 

Parse. 

t-5 

Yards. 

Cono  .... 

1 





_ 

Furlong  (Eesah) 
Mil     ...     . 
Sabb.-ith  Day's  ) 
Journey     .     | 
Parse,    Sfcage,  \ 

-0 
SCO 

1,120 

1 

8 

16 

1 
2 

1 

~ 

— 

125 
1.009 

2,000 

or      Horse-  V 

2,24e 

32 

4 

2 

1 



4,000 

course  .     .    } 

Day's  Journey . 

11,200 

160 

20 

10 

5 

1 

20,000 

SMALLER   MEASURES    OF 

LENGTH. 

Barley- 
j     corn. 

Digit. 

Palm. 

Cubit. 

Cane. 

English 
Inches. 

Barleycorn . 

1 

— 



_ 

•33 

Digit      .     . 

2 

1 

. — 





•6S 

Palm       .     . 

8 

4 

1 





2'66 

Cubit      .     . 

48 

24 

.       6 

1 



160 

Cane       .     . 

192 

96 

24 

4 

1 

640 

SMALLER      MEASURES       OF      LENGTH, 
According  to  the  Chaldean  System. 


No.  in 

Hebrew 

Enghsh 

Greek 

Eoman 

Scale. 

Name. 

Name. 

nearest 
Equivalent. 

nearest 
Equivalent. 

Inches. 

1 

Tupah 

Palm 

Doron 

Palmus 

3 

2 

Zereth 

Uandbreadth 

Lichas 

minor 

6 

3 

Sit 

Span 

(  Ortho-  ) 
I    d(&ron  ( 



8 

4 

Eegol 

Foot 

Spithame 

Pea 

107 

5 

Am  eh 

Small  Cubit 

Pygme 

Palmipes 

13-3 

6 

Gamad 

Large  Cubit 

Pygon 

Cubitus 

16. 

MEASUKES     RECORDED     IN     THE     BOOK     OF     EZEKIEL,     AND- 
USED    IN    THE    "  NOBLE    SANCTUARY." 


Ordinary 
Cubit. 

Sacred 
Cubit. 

Sacred 
Cane. 

English 
Inches. 

Cubit 

Cane  or  Eeed 

1^ 
6i 

1 
6 

1 

17-33 
104 

Side  of  tbeDruphactoa,  or"^ 
perforated    fence  round  >  500  Sacred  Cubits  ; 
the  Court  of  the  "Women  J 


722  English  feet. 


EASTERN  GEOGEAPHY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 

BY   THE     REV.    H.   W.    PHILLOTT,    M.A.,    RECTOR   OF   STAUNTON-ON-WTE,  AN1>   PRELECTOR   OF   HEREFORD   CATHEDRAL. 


NINEVEH. 


1 ASSING  by  another  great  monument  of 
Babylonian  greatness,  al-Hymer  (the  red), 
about  eight  miles  N.E.  of  Hillah,  scarcely 
inferior  in  size  to  the  remains  already 
described,  but  too  distant  to  have  belonged  to  the  city 
itself,  we  proceed  towards  the  sit«  of  the  great  capital 
of  the  Assyrian  empire,  the  city  of  Nineveh.  In  doing 
this  the  traveller  will  advance  in  a  direction  nearly  due 
nortli  towards  Baghdad,  a  distance  of  between  fifty  and 
sixty  miles,  impeded  frequently  on  his  way,  if  during 
the  time  of  inundation,  by  the  marshes  created  by  the 
numerous  canals,  once  the  channels  of  wholesome  irriga- 
tion, but  now  neglected,  and  fertile  only  in  poisonous 
miasma.  Of  these  the  principal  is  the  Nahr-Malcha.  or 
royal  river,  probably  "  the  river  of  Chebar  "  of  Ezekiel, 
which  connects  the  Euphrates  with  the  Tigris,  and 
which  Herodotus  describes  as  being  navigable  for  .ships. 
Its  entrance  into  the  Tigris  is  near  the  now  ruined  city 
of  Selcucia.  (Ezok.  i.  1 ;  Herod,  i.  193 ;  Plin.  vi.  120 ; 
Kor  Porter,  Tmv.,  ii.  289.) 

Baghdad,  situate  in  long.  4A°  44',  lat.  33'^  19',  contain- 
ing about  170,000  inhabitants,  whose  name  is  so  familiar 
to  all  readers  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  did  not  exist 
before  a.d.  668,  and  is  therefore  only   indirectly  con- 


nected with  Bible  geography.  It  lies  on  beth  sides  of 
the  Tigris,  which  is  crossed  by  two  bridges  of  boats,  and 
the  city,  which  has  sometimes  been  called  erroneously 
Babylon,  is  built  in  gi-eat  part  of  bricks  brought  from 
the  true  Babylon  and  from  the  ancient  Parthian  capital, 
the  city  of  Ctesiphon,  which  had  origkiaUy  derived  its 
materials  from  the  same  prolific  source,  and  of  which  a 
noble  palace  front  stiU  remains  to  testify  to  its  former 
grandeur.  (Leftus,  p.  18  ;  Layard,  Nin.,  ii  175;  Porter, 
ii.  261,  328.) 

Baghdad,  though  still  a  great  and  important  city,  is 
much  decayed  from  the  splendour  which  it  possessed 
when  it  was  visited  by  Rabbi  Benjamin  of  Tudela  in 
A.D.  1164,  at  which  time  it  was  the  residence  of  tho 
Mohammedan  Khalif s,  and  ^so  of  tho  Jewish  "  Prince 
of  the  Captivity,"  who  imder  their  protection  exercised 
authority  over  the  dispersed  people  in  the  greater  part 
of  Central  Asia.  There  are  stiU  about  20,000  Jews  in 
Baghdad,  but.  although  tliey  are  more  numerous  than 
in  Rabbi  Benjamin's  time,  there  is  not  now,  nor  for  many 
centuries  past  has  there  been,  any  prince  of  the  Captivity 
reigning  among  them.  Dm-ing  the  summer  the  heat  is 
intense  at  Baghdad  ;  the  thermometer  rises  in  the  shade 
to  115°  or  even  120"^  of  Fahrenheit,  and  the  inhabitants 


EASTERN  GEOGRAPHY   OF  THE   BIBLE. 


281 


BAGHDAD. 


are  obliged  to  take  refuge  in  cellars  during  the  day- 
time. During  the  season  of  inundation  the  waters  of 
the  Tigris,  augmented  by  those  of  the  Euphrates  brought 
by  canals,  sometimes  rise  to  a  great  height  and  cause 
much  damage.  At  such  times  the  whole  country  round 
Baghdad  is  covered,  and  the  city  itself  stands  like  a 
castellated  island  in  the  midst  of  a  boundless  sea. 
Should  the  railway  be  completed  which  has  been  long 
contemplated,  and  of  which  the  electric  telegraph, 
already  existing,  is  perliaps  the  precursor,  Baghdad 
will  no  doubt  become  an  important  station  on  the  line. 
(Calmet,  Did.  de  la  Bible,  art.  "  Captivitc ; "  Early  Trav., 
p.  98;  Portor,ii.  258;  Loftus.p.  7;  Rich,iVarra<ii!e,  i.  1.) 
From  Baghdatl,  in  order  to  reach  Mosul,  the  traveller 
proceeds  by  land  by  the  government  postal  route,  in  a 
direction  nearly  N.N.W.,  on  the  east  side  of  the  river, 
but  at  a  considerable  distance  from  it.  It  is  a  journey 
of  about  2.50  miles,  occupying  nine  days.  The  river  is 
obstructed  by  rocks,  and  especially  near  Nimroud,  the 
Awaj,  by  an  ancient  dam  or  wall,  which  impedes  the 
upward  navigation  ;  and  though  this  might  be  rendered 
passable  for  steam-vessels  without  much  trouble,  no 
pains  to  effect  this  have  yet  been  taken  by  the  Turkish 
Government.  (Niebuhr,  ii.  288;  Layard,  Nineveh,  i.  7, 
8*  The  passage  down  the  river  to  Baghdad  is  effected 
without  difficulty  in  three  or  four  days  when  the  water 


is  high,  and  at  other  times  in  about  fifteen  days,  and  so 
cheaply  that  the  river  is  commonly  called  the  cheap 
cameher.  Goods  and  pissengers  are  conveyed  on  rafts 
called  helleh,  formed  of  trunks  and  branches  of  trees 
tied  together  with  osier  twigs,  and  supported  on  sheep 
or  goat-skins,  which  are  filled  with  air  in  the  same 
manner  as  is  represented  on  the  existing  monuments  of 
Nineveh.  The  ordinary  raft  requires  thirty-two  or 
thirty-four  of  these,  but  larger  ones  require  fifty,  or 
sometimes  even  as  many  as  300  skins  to  support  them. 
Care  is  taken  to  place  the  mouth  of  the  skins  upwards, 
so  that  if  necessary  they  may  be  fUled  from  above  with- 
out disturbance  of  the  raft.  Passengers  who  can  afford 
the  expense  are  protected  by  a  small  hut  raised  upon. 
the  raft,  covered  with  reeds  and  lined  with  felt ;  and 
when  the  destination  is  reached  and  the  cargo  disposed 
of,  the  materials  of  the  raft  are  sold  and  the  skins 
carried  back  on  men's  shoulders  or  by  donkeys  to  Mosul 
or  Tekrit,  where  the  men  usually  reside  who  are  em- 
ployed in  the  navigation  of  the  river.  For  crossing 
the  river  or  for  short  distances,  a  circular  boat,  called 
hufa,  is  used,  capable  of  holding  three  or  four  persons. 
It  is  made  of  willow-bark  and  coated  with  bitumen, 
exactly  in  the  same  manner  as  Herodotus  described  the 
boats  on  the  Euphrates  which  carried  wine  to  Babylon 
two  thousand  years  ago.     (Herod,  i.  IW;  Nieb.  ii.  281 ; 


282 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


Porter,  ii.  259  ;  Layard,  Nin.,  ii.  96 ;  Nin.  and  Bab.,  465  ; 
Cliesney,  Exped.,  ii.  635;  Narr.,  p.  TO.) 

At  Kerkuk,  a  dirty  town  about  twenty  miles  S.E.  of 
the  Lesser  Zab,  and  150  mUes  from  Baghdad,  a  Jewish 
tradition,  unsupported  by  historical  eWdence,  has  placed 
the  burial-place  of  Daniel  and  the  "  three  children,"  his 
associates.  (Nieb.  ii.  275.)  A  short  distance  from 
Xerkuk  are  extensive  bitumen  pits.  After  crossing  the 
Lesser  Zab,  about  midway  between  it  and  the  Greater 
Zab,  is  Arbil,  a  town  situate  on  a  lofty  hill  which,  under 
the  Greek  form  of  Arbela,'  was  chosen  to  give  its  name 
to  the  great  battle  between  Darius  and  Alexander, 
which  decided  the  fate  of  the  Persian  empire,  B.C.  331, 
but  which  was  actually  fought  at  Gaugamela,  on  the 
other  side  of  the  river  Zab,  on  the  banks  of  the  Khazir, 
about  six  or  seven  miles  di.stant.  It  was  then  that  the 
rough  he-goat  of  Daniel's  \'ision  finally  smote  the  ram 
and  broke  his  two  horns  ef  Media  and  Persia.  (Dan.  viii. 
7,20,21;  Strabo,vi.737;  Arrian,  i?irp.  vi. ;  Nieb.  ii.  278; 
Eioh,  Kurdistan,  ii.  14;  Layard,  Nin.  and  Bab.,  208.) 

After  crossing  the  Zab,  and  also  its  tributary  the 
Khazir,  or  Khaiisser,  in  approaching  Mosul,  great 
mounds  are  passed,  which  cover  one  at  least  of  the  sites 
belonging  to  ancient  Nineveh,  and  presently,  after'  a 
bridge  of  boats,  approached  by  an  arched  viaduct,  con- 
ducts the  traveller  into  the  city  of  Mosul.  (Nieb.  ii. 
276,  286 ;  Rich,  ii.  14.)  This  is  a  krge  city,  with 
a  population  of  100,000,  including  many  Jews  and 
Christians  of  various  denominations.  Its  name  has 
lieon  supposed  by  some  to  contain  the  origin  of  our 
■word  "  muslin,"  and  some  cotton  manufactures  of  a 
coarse  kind  are  at  present  carried  on  there.  Rabbi 
Benjamin,  already  quoted,  says  (a.d.  1164)  that  it  is 
an  ancient  and  handsome  city,  and  well  fortified,  the 
same  as  "Ashur  the  great"  of  Scripture,  and  that  it 
is  joined  to  Nineveh  by  a  bridge.  Although,  he  says, 
the  latter  lies  in  ruins,  there  are  numerous  inhabited 
Tillages  and  small  towns  on  its  site.  It  contains  the 
synagogues  of  Obadiah,  of  Jonah,  and  of  Nahum  the 
Elkoshite.  Dr.  L.  Rauwolff  (a.d.  1575)  siiys  of  "  the 
famous  city,  MosiU  "  that  it  formerly  went  by  the  name 
of  Nineveh.  "  I  saw,"  he  says,  "  jiist  without  the  town 
a  little  hill  that  was  almost  dug  through  and  inhabited 
by  poor  people,  where  I  saw  them  creep  in  and  out  as 
pismires  in  ant-hills.  In  this  place  and  thereabouts 
stood  formerly  the  potent  town  of  Nineveh,  built  by 
Ashur,  which  was  the  metropolis  of  Assyria  to  tlie 
time  of  Sennacherib  and  his  sons."  He  then  says  that 
after  its  destnietion  it  was  rebuilt,  but  was  finally  com- 
pletely destroyed  by  Tamerlane  (a.d.  1390),  "so  that 
at  this  time  there  is  nothing  of  any  antiquities  to  ho 
seen,  as  in  old  Babylon,  save  only  the  fort  that  Metli 
upon  the  hill,  and  some  few  villages  which,  as  the  in- 
habitants say,  did  also  belong  to  it  in  former  days." 
Sir  Anthony  Shirley,  who  travelled  in  this  country  a  few 
years  later,  says  that "  Nineveh  hath  not  one  stone  stand- 
ing to  give  memory  of  the  being  of  a  town.  One  English 


1  It  ia  perhaps  well  to  rcmarlc  that  this  pl.ice  can  hardly  bo 
Beth-arbel  of  Hos.  x.  14,  though  M.  Oppert  thinks  otherwise. 


mile  from  it  is  a  place  chilled  Mosul,  a  small  thing, 
rather  like  a  witness  of  the  other's  mightiness  and 
God's  judgment,  than  of  any  fa,shion  of  magnificence  in 
itself."  Pietro  delta  VaUe,  early  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  speaks  of  Mosul  and  Nineveh  as  the  same 
place  ;  and  lastly,  the  great  Danish  traveller,  Niebuhr, 
who  in  his  way  to  Mosul  passed  through  the  mounds  on 
the  left  (east)  bank  of  the  Tigris,  opposite  to  that  town, 
speaks  of  them  as  covering  the  remains  of  Nineveh, 
tut  made  no  attempt  to  examine  them.  On  the  other 
hand,  Cartwright,  an  EngUsh  traveller,  early  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  speaks  of  visiting  the  mounds  not 
only  here  but  elsewhere,  and  measuring  the  distances 
between  them,  and  noting  their  agreement  with  the 
statements  of  Diodoms.  {Early  Trav.,  p.  94;  Ray, 
Travels,  ii.  166 ;  P.  della  V.,  i.  429 ;  Purchas,  Pilgrims, 
ii.  1,387,  1,435  ;  Nieb.  ii.  286.) 

Without  accepting  as  strictly  correct  the  statement 
of  Rauwolff  about  the  final  destruction  of  Nineveh 
by  Timur,  we  see  that  common  opinion  has  constantly 
connected  the  remains  in  the  immediate  neighbourhood 
of  Mosul  with  the  site  of  the  Nineveh  of  Scripture.  If 
we  inquire  what  we  know  about  Nineveh,  we  shall  find 
that  in  what  may  bo  called  its  personal  histoi-y  we  know 
far  less  than  we  know  of  Babylon ;  but  in  what  is  cir- 
cumstantial and  ^•^sible  far  more.  Going  b.ack  to  the 
Book  of  Genesis,  we  find  that  Nimrod-  went  forth  from 
the  land  of  Shinar  to  Asshur,  and  "  built  Nineveh  and 
the  city  Rehoboth,  and  Calah,  and  Resen  between 
Nineveh  and  Calah,  a  great  city"  (Giin.  x.  11).  The 
words  "  the  city'  Rehoboth  "  may  be  explained  "  streets 
of  the  city,"  as  may  be  seen  in  the  margin ;  and  if  on 
this  ground  wo  decline  to  give  Rehoboth  a  separate 
position,  we  have  three  cities  in  Assyria  to  be  accounted 
for.  What,  then,  was  Assyria  ?  It  is  described  in 
Gen.  ii.  as  a  weU-known  region  lying  to  the  west  of 
the  Tigris,  i.e.,  th,at  in  the  time  of  the  writer  of  the 
Book  of  Genesis  part  at  least  of  the  whole  country  so 
situate  was  known  to  the  Hebrews  by  that  name  (Gi;n. 
ii.  14;  XXV.  18).  In  later  times  the  name  Assyria 
belonged  more  distinctly  to  the  country  on  the  left 
(east)  bank  of  the  river,  though,  as  has  been  mentioned 
before,  it  was  sometimes  regarded  as  including  the 
whole  of  the  Mosopotamian  district,  and  even  besides 
this  a  vast  extent  of  country  lying  to  the  west  of  the 
Euphrates.  (Plin.  vi.  117;  Strabo,  xvi.  736.)  In  its 
wider,  not  the  widest,  acceptation,  the  name  Assyria 
msy  bo  regarded  as  including  a  region  which  x-oaches 
from  Baghdad  on  the  south  to  Armenia  on  the  north, 
and  from  Mount  Zagros  on  the  cast  to  the  Euphrates 
on  the  west,  a  space  containing  about  100,000  square 
miles,  or  about  the  same  extent  as  Italy,  excluding 
Sicily  and  Sardinia. 

In  connection  with  Scripture  history,  excepting  to 
the  extent  pointed  out  above  in  our  account  of  Babylon, 
and  the  indefinite  though  very  remarkable  mention  of 
Asshur  in  the  prophecy  of  Balaam,  and  also  an  equally 
indefinite  notice  in  the  Book  of  Psalms  of  uncertain 


3  See  BiBLK  Eduoisob.  Vol.  I.,  p.  264. 


EASTERN   GEOGEAPHT  OF   THE   BIBLE. 


283 


date,  we  have  no  spocilio  mention  of  Assjria  until  tlie 
time  of  Menahem,  fifteenth  king  of  Israel,  B.C.  771, 
who  overran  the  country  west  of  the  Euphrates  as  far 
as  Tiphsah  on  that  river,  and  was  in  return  atfackctl 
and  defeated  by  Pul,  said  to  be  a  kmg  of  Assyria,  but 
who,  if  he  were  not  a  Babylonian  monarch,  appears  to 
have  reigned  over  Babylon.  Menahem  only  redeemed 
his  kingdom  from  further  punishment  by  the  payment 
of  a  heavy  tribute.  (Numb.  xxiv.  22  ;  Ps.  Ixxxiii.  8 ; 
2  Kings  XV.  16,  19,  20 ;  Bible  Ed.,  ii.  5.5 ;  Rawlinson, 
III.  of  Old  Test.,  p.  123.)  Another  invasion,  with  results 
stUl  more  disastrous,  took  place,  under  Tiglath-pileser, 
in  the  reign  of  Pekah,  who  succeeded  Pekahiah,  B.C.  759  ; 
and  in  the  reign  of  Hoshea  (731 — 722  B.C.)  the  dissolu- 
tion of  the  Israelite  kingdom  and  the  final  captivity  of 
the  people,  which  has  perhaps  never  been  fully  restored, 
and  which  "  Israel  in  long  captivity  stUl  mourns  "  {Par. 
Reg.  iii.),  took  place  at  the  conquest  of  the  country 
begun  by  Shabnaueser,  and  completed,  as  it  seems,  by 
Sargon  his  son.  This  invasion  was  probably  preceded 
by  that  invasion  of  Syiia  by  tho  Assyrians,  at  the 
solicitation  of  Ahaz,  which  is  mentioned  in  2  Kings 
xvi.,  and  which  had  been  foretold  by  Amos  forty  years 
before.  In  the  meaatime,  however,  though  no  mention 
appears  in  Jewish  history  of  the  fact,  an  Assyrian 
inscription  records  the  name  of  Jehu  as  payiag  tribute 
to  a  king  of  Assyria.  If  this  be  true,  the  Isi-aelite  king- 
dom would  seem  to  have  been  in  some  degree  dependent 
on  the  Assyrian,  and  the  outbreak  of  Menahem  would 
appear  to  be  an  act  of  revolt  against  the  Assyrian  lord 
to  whom  he  had  previously  been  subject.  That  supre- 
macy extended,  as  we  have  seen  above  in  the  case  of 
Ahaz,  to  Judah  as  well  as  Israel ;  but  Hezekiah,  son 
of  Ahaz  (B.C.  726),  broke  off  the  subjection  to  which 
his  father  had  submitted,  and  was  enabled  by  Divine 
interposition  to  escape  from  tho  danger  with  which  the 
invasion  of  Sennacherib,  son  of  Sargon,  the  conqueror 
of  Egypt,  threatened  to  overwhelm  his  kingdom. 
Lachish,  indeed,  and  other  cities  of  Judah  fell,  and  tlie 
Assyrian  monuments  describe  both  in  writing  and  in 
pictorial  reUef  the  sentence  of  tlie  conqueror  and  the 
cruel  treatment  of  his  captives.  Sennacherib,  after  the 
loss  of  his  army,  of  which  an  account,  much  distorted 
by  transmission,  is  given  by  Herodotus,  is  said  to  have 
returned  t«  Nineveh,  and  after  his  death  by  assassuia- 
tion  to  have  been  succeeded  by  his  son  Esarhaddon, 
who,  as  we  have  already  seen,  repaired  the  blow  which 
the  empire  had  sustained  in  his  father's  time,  and 
even  extended  his  influence,  if  not  his  dominion,  over 
Babylon  as  well  as  Assyria  properly  so  called.  (2  Kings 
XV.  29;  xvi.  7;  xviii  7,  1-3,  14;  xix.  8;  Isa.  xx.  1,  4; 
Amos  i.  5 ;  Layard,  Nin.  and  Bab.,  pp.  152,  613 ; 
Monuments  of  Nin.,  pp.  21,  22,  23 ;  Rawlinson,  III.  of 
Old  Test.,  130 ;  Herod,  ii.  141 ;  Bible  Ed.,  ii.  55.) 

But  even  while  the  Assyrian  power  was  at  its  highest 
the  voice  of  prophecy  was  foretelling  its  fall.  Passing 
by  the  well-known  promises  of  deliverance  to  Hezekiah 
from  the  impending  danger  from  Sennacherib's  invasion, 
we  have  a  forecast  of  ultimate  retribution  on  Assyria 
expressed  in  general  terms  fii  Isa.  x.  1 2.     The  principal 


utterances,  however,  respecting  Assyria  and  Nineveh 
its  capital  are  found  (a)  in  tho  narrative  and  prophecy 
of  Jonah,  whose  date  is  uncertain,  ranging  from  B.C. 
860  to  780,  but  whose  connection  with  Nineveh  is  stUl 
commemorated  in  the  name  given  to  one  of  the  mounds 
opposite  Mosul,  Nebbi  Yunvs  (the  tomb  of  the  prophet 
JonalO.  It  is  from  this  narrative  that  we  derive  the 
historical  description  of  the  size  of  Nineveh — -stz.,  as  a 
city  of  three  days'  journey,  and  the  notice  respecting 
its  population,  which  it  is  so  diflicult  to  reconcile  to  those 
dimensions  (Jonah  iii.  3 ;  iv.  11}.  (b)  Micah,  whose  date 
lies  within  well-ascertained  limits — viz.,  about  750  B.C. — 
speaks  of  the  wasting  of  Assyria  and  of  the  land  of 
Nimrod  (Micah  v.  6).  (c)  Nahnm  (whose  date  is  placed 
by  Josephus  in  the  reign  of  Jotham,  but  by  St.  Jerome 
in  thivt  of  Hezekiah,  i.e.,  probably  not  later  than  712, 
and  perhaps  as  early  as  750,  though  by  some  placed  as 
late  as  645  B.C.),  the  Elkoshite,  whoso  name  has  been 
connected  by  popular  Jevrish  tradition  with  El  Kosh,  a 
place  a  few  miles  north  of  Mosul,  foretold  the  complete 
destruction  of  Nineveh,  and  the  nianner  in  which  it 
would  be  effected.  (Nahum  ii.  6,,  7;  iii.  7;  Joseph., 
Ant.,  ix.  11,  3;  Nieb.  ii  286;  Rich;  Besidence,  ii.  111.) 
{dy.  still  later  and  closer  to  the  time  of  the  captm-e 
of  the  city,  Zephaniah,  B.C.  630,  foretells  this  and 
the  desolation  of  Assyria  (Zeph.  ii.  13).  (e)  And 
lastly,  Ezekiel  (B.C.  598)  speaks  of  this  as  an  accom- 
plished fact  (Ezekxcci.  3). .  The  book  of  Tobit  informs 
us  that  Nineveh  was  taken  by  a  combination  between 
tho  Median  and  Babylonian  forces,  but  from  the  un- 
certain date  both  of  this  book  and  of  that  of  Judith,  we 
gain  but  little  information  iu  addition  to  that  which  we 
otherwise  possess  (Tobit  xiv.  15).  But  if  the  history 
of  Assyria  and  Nineveh  be  less  fuUy  wiitten  in  books 
than  that  of  Babylon,  this  deficiency  is  more  than  com- 
pensated by  the  fulness  of  tho.se  monumental  records 
resuscitated  during  the  last  few  years,  which  have  thrown 
so  much  light  upon  the  history,  not  only  of  Nineveh, 
but  also  on  that  of  Babylon.  Less  perishable  than 
books,  independent  of  the  books  which  we  possess, 
whether  in  sacred  or  profane  literature,  and  therefore 
in  this  respect  unimpeachiible  as  witnesses,  they  often 
corroborate  and  sometimes  materially  explain  that 
history.  The  treasures  of  information  which  they  con- 
tain, written  in  a  language  "  hidden  in  earthen  vessels," 
.and  long  regarded  as  beyond  the  reach  of  discovery, 
or 'graven  "  iipon  tho  w.ill"  iu  the  virid  and  visilolo 
language  of  the  sculptor,  but  long  concealed  from  sight 
by  the  ruins  which  preserved  them  from  destruction, 
it  has  been  reserved  for  the  present  age  to  disinter  and 
in  great  measure  decipher.  Surely  iu  these  great  dis- 
coveries we  must  recognise  the  work  of  Divine  Provi- 
dence, reserving  as  is  his  custom  tho  store  of  knowledge 
which  He  intends  us  ultimately  to  possess  uutU  his  oivu 
appointed  time,  to  be  obtained  in  his  own  appointed 
way  by  means  of  the  genius,  and  enterjjrise,  and  per- 
severance of  the  men  on.  whom  He  bestowed  these 
precious  gifts,  by  which  they  have  in  their  various  lines 
of  habour  been  enabled  to  unravel  and  illustrate  "  things 
kept  secret "  during  so  many  ages  of  tho  world. 


284 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


bELEUCIA. 


Let  US,  however,  at  once  review  the  brief  notices 
concerning;  Nineveh  which  are  furnished  by  profane 
writers.  Herodotus,  after  telling  us  that  the  Assjrian 
supremacy  in  Asia  lasted  520  years,  says  that  Nineveh 
was  tiikcu  by  the  Medes,  under  Cyaxares,  of  whicli 
capture  he  promises  an  account  in  a  future  work,  which 
either  was  never  completed,  or  has  been  totally  lost, 
and  whose  absence  we  have,  therefore,  unavailingly  to 
regret.  He  mentions  its  site  upon  the  river  Tigris, 
and  relates  a  story  of  a  plan  adopted  by  thieves  for 
plundering  the  palace  of  King  Sardanapalus  by  means 
of  a  funnel  connected  with  their  own  residence,  the 
eai-ili  from  which,  as  it  was  dug  out,  was  thrown  by 
night  into  the  river.  He  also,  as  wo  have  seen,  men- 
tions the  invasion  of  Egyjjt  by  Sennacherib,  and  the 
manner  in  which,  as  ho  was  told,  it  was  defeated. 
(Herod,  i.  95,  106, 185  ;  ii.  141, 150.) 

Diodorus,  following  Ctesias,  says  that  Ninus,  king 
of  Assyria,  having  s\ibdued  nearly  all  Asia  and  Egypt, 
built  a  city  which  Diodorus,  by  a  strange  blunder, 
but  one  into  which  many  others  have  fallen,  de- 
scribes as  being  on  ilie  Euphrates.  It  was  480  stadia 
(fifty-four  miles)  in  circumference,  the  same  size  as 
Babylon  according  to  Herodotus,  but  not,  like  Babylon, 
square  in  form,  the  larger  side  being  150  stadia  long, 
and  the  shorter  90.     The  walls  were  100  feet  in  height, 


and  wide  enough  for  three  chariots  to  drive  abreast. 
There  were  1,500  towers,  each  200  feet  high.  The  city 
was  built  by  Semiramis,  wife  of  Ninus,  after  her  hus- 
band's death.  The  last  king  was  Sardanapalus,  who, 
when  the  city  was  in  danger  of  being  taken,  raised  a 
vast  funeral  pyre  of  treasures  and  funiitm-e,  on  which 
he  consumed  himself,  his  palace,  and  all  his  family. 
j  Thus  the  Assyrian  empire  came  to  an  end,  having  lasted 
1,300  years.     (Died.  ii.  1,  3,  27,  28.) 

Strabo  says  that  Nineveh  was  buOt  by  Ninus  in  tho 
plain  of  Aturia.  and  that  it  was  much  larger  than 
Babylon.  He  mentions  Arbela,  the  fact  of  its  name 
having  been  given  to  the  battle  of  Gangamela,  and  the 
bitumen  pits  in  its  neighbom-hood.     (Strabo,  vi.  737.) 

Nineveh  is  also  mentioned  liy  Pliny,  as  a  renowned 
city  on  the  Tigris  (vi.  42) ;  by  Ptolemy,  as  an  Assyi-ian 
town  in  the  Tigi-is  district  (vi.  1,  3)  ;  by  Pausanias,  as 
an  extinct  city  (viii.  33,  1) ;  by  Lucian,  as  so  entirely 
destroyed  that  not  a  vestige  is  to  be  seen  (Charon,  vol. 
i.,  359) ;  and  Xenophon,  earlier  than  any  of  these  latter 
writers  by  more  than  400  years,  says  that  the  Greek 
army,  in  its  march  of  retreat,  came  to  tho  Tigris,  ©n 
which  was  a  large  deserted  city  called  Larissa,  two 
parasangs  (about  seven  miles)  in  circumference,  having 
walls  100  feet  high  and  25  fe«t  broad,  built  upon  a 
platform  of  baked  bricks  20  feet  in  height.     Near  it 


DIFFICULT   PASSAGES  EXPLAINED. 


285 


was  a  stone  pyramid,  whoso  sido  was  a  plethrum  (100 
feet),  and  its  height  two  plethra.  Six  pai'asangs  (about 
(twenty-one  miles)  from  Larissa,  he  says,  there  was 
another  town  called  Mespila,  having  near  it  a  great 
fortification  which  was  formerly  inhabited  by  the  Medes. 
This  also  had  a  platform  of  shelly  stone  50  feet  wide 
and  50  feet  high,  on  which  was  raised  a  brick  wall  100 
feet  high  and  50  feet  wide,  and  tj  parasangs  (21  miles) 
in  circuit.  From  his  account  wo  gather  that  the  forti- 
fication was  deserted,  but  the  toira  inhabited.  (Xen., 
Anab.,  iii.  4, 10, 11.)       ■ 

Arrian  speaks  of  Nineveh  as  formerly  a  great  and 
wealthy  city  [Lid.,  p.  5S8).  Tacitus  (A.D.  97)  mentions 
it  as  the  very  ancient  seat  of  Assyrian  government, 
which,  as  well  as  Arbek,  was  taken  by  C.  Cassius  in 


the  reign  of  Claudius  (a.d.  50)  (Ann.,  xii.  13).  Tho 
name  Mespila  has  been  thought  to  answer  to  Mosul, 
and  Larissa  to  represent  Resen  of  Gen.  x.  11. 

In  tho  great  pyramid  of  Larissa  we  may  perhaps 
recognise  the  "  tomb  of  Ninus "  of  Ovid's  .story  of 
Pyramus  and  Thisbe, "  Ninny's  tomb  "  of  the  Midsummer 
Niyht's  Dream,  which  was  the  luckless  lovers'  "  tryst- 
ing-place;  "  but  it  is  plain  that,  with  the  partial  excep- 
tion of  Tacitus,  all  these  writers  speak  of  Nineveh  as 
no  more.  By  Mespila  and  Larissa  Xenophou  proljably 
intends  to  describe  places  representing  Nineveh  and  one 
of  the  other  cities  of  the  Ninevite  disti-ict,  but  without 
any  thought,  as  it  seems,  of  the  identity  of  either  with 
ancient  Nineveh.  (Ovid,  Met.,  iv.  88,  King's  transla- 
tion ;  Layard,  Nin.,  ii.  248.) 


DIFFICULT     PASSAGES     EXPLAINED. 

THE   GOSPELS:— ST.    MATTHEW. 
BY   THE   KEV.   C.   J.    ELLIOTT,    M.A,,  VICAK   OF   WINKFIELD,  BERKS. 


"  Tlieu  cauie  to  liim  the  disciples  of  John,  saying,  Why  do  we 
and  the  Pharisees  fast  oft,  but  thy  disciples  fast  not '?  And  Jesus 
said  unto  tliem,  Can  the  children  of  the  bride-chamber  mouru,  as 
long  as  the  bridegroom  is  with  them  ?  hut  the  days  will  come 
when  the  bridef^room  shall  be  taken  from  them,  and  then  shall 
they  fust.  No  man  [or.  but  no  one]  putteth  a  piece  of  new  [or 
unf uUed,  i.e.,  undressed]  cloth  unto  [or  upon]  an  old  gai-meut,  for 
that  which  is  put  iu  to  fill  it  up  taketh  from  the  garment,  and 
the  rent  is  made  worse  [or,  and  a  worse  rent  is  made].  Neither 
do  men  put  new  wine  into  old  bottles  [i.e.,  leather  bottles  or  skins], 
else  the  bottles  break  [or,  the  skins  burst],  and  the  wine  runneth 
out,  and  the  bottles  perish  ;  hut  they  put  new  wine  into  new 
bottles,  and  both  are  preserved."— St.  Matt.  is.  14—17. 

■E  leam  from  the  records  of  the  three 
synoptical  Evangelists  that  the  incident 
here  related  took  place  in  connection  with 
the  feast  made  by  Le'S'i,  i.e.,  Matthew, 
on  occasion  of  his  call  to  follow  Christ.  The  inquiry, 
"  Why  do  we  and  the  Pharisees  fast  oft  ?  "  or,  as  St. 
Luke  records  the  words,  "  fast  often  and  make  prayers," 
appears  iu  St.  Luke's  Gospel  to  have  been  proposed  by 
the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  ;  whilst,  iu  that  of  St.  Matthew, 
it  is  ascribed  to  the  disciples  of  John  the  Baptist.  St. 
Mark,  however,  who  represents  both  the  disciples  of 
John  and  also  those  of  the  Pharisees  as  proposing  to  our 
Lord  the  same  inquiry,  not  only  removes  the  apparent 
discrepancy  in  this  particular  instance,  but  also  supplies 
a  key  for  the  solution  of  similar  difficulties  arising  out 
of  the  insufficiency  of  the  materials  placed  at  our  dis- 
posal. 

It  has  been  inferrcdby  some,  from  the  particular  form 
of  expression  used  by  St.  Mark,  iiaav  vrjrrTivoyTes.  which 
may  be  rendered  "  were  fasting."  that  both  the  Pharisees 
and  the  disciples  of  John  were  observing,  at  the  parti- 
cular period  in  question,  one  of  those  fasts  which  were 
customary  amongst  the  stricter  portion  of  the  Jews. 
It  is  true,  indeed,  that  the  only  fast  which  can  be 
alleged  to  have  been  enjoined  by  the  Mosaic  law  was 
that  of  the  great  Day  of  Atonement,  i.e.,  tho  tenth  day 
of  the  seventh  mouth ;  and  even  with   regard  to  that 


day  the  word  which  properly  denotes  fasting  is  not 
employed.'  and  it  is  only  by  a  comparison  of  Lev.  xvi. 
29  with  other  passages  in  which  the  affliction  of  the 
soul  consists  in,  or  implies  fasting  (e.^.,  Ps.  xxxv.  13; 
Isa.  Iviii.  3,  10),  that  Ibn  Ezra  and  others  have  arrived 
at  the  conclusion  that  abstinence  from  food  was  specifi- 
cally enjoined  by  the  law  of  Moses  even  on  that  day. 
It  is  equally  true,  however,  that,  independently  of  tho 
fasts  enjoined  by  authority  on  occasion  of  public  cala- 
mities, of  which  we  read  previously  to  the  Babylonish 
captivity,  tho  Jews  in  later  times  were  in  the  habit  of 
observing  annual  national  fasts — (1)  on  the  seventeenth 
day  of  the  fourth  month;  (2)  on  the  ninth  day  of  the 
fifth  month ;  (3)  on  tho  third  day  of  tho  seventh  month ; 
(4)  on  the  tenth  day  of  the  tenth  month  ;  and  (5)  on  tho 
fast  of  Esther  on  the  thirteenth  day  of  Adar.  In 
addition  to  these  annual  fasts  there  were  the  bi-weekly 
fasts  of  the  Monday  and  Thursday,  which  were  observed 
either  during  a  portion  or  diu'ing  the  whole  of  the  year 
by  the  stricter  sect  of  the  Pharisees. 

The  words  of  St.  Mark  may  bo  understood  as  refer- 
ring to  the  observance  of  one  of  these  bi-weekly  fasts  at 
the  very  time  at  which  om-  blessed  Lord  and  His  dis- 
ciples, together  with  "  many  publicans  and  sinners,"  were 
attending  the  feast  made  by  Levi  in  his  own  house ; 
or,  inasmuch  as  similar  words  are  commonly  used 
by  St.  Mark  to  denote  that  which  was  habitual  as  well 
as  that  which  was  incidental,  they  may  be  understood 
as  simply  denoting  the  fact  that,  whereas  the  Pharisees 
and  the  disciples  of  John  were  in  the  habit  of  observing 
periodical  fasts,  our  Lord's  disciples  disregarded  them. 

Having  thus  cleared  tho  way  for  the  discussion  of  the 
chief  difficulties  of  this  passage,  we  vrill  now  endeavoul 


I  It  is  worthy  of  notice  that  the  word  DiS  (fccmi),  which  properly 
denotes  fasting,  does  not  occur  under  any  form  iu  the  Pentateuch. 
It  is  first  found  in  the  books  of  Judges  and  of  Samuel. 


286 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


to  explain  tlie  general  drift  of  our  Lord's  parabolical 
reply  to  the  iufxuu-y  made  of  Him,  "  Why  do  we  and 
the  Pharisees  fast  oft,  but  thy  disciples  fast  not  ?  " 

And  here  it  must  be  observed  that  our  Lord's  reply 
to  the  inquiry  thus  made  of  Him  is  of  a  twofold  nature  ; 
first,  special,  as  applicable  to  the  existing  circumstances 
of  His  disciples  whilst  He  was  with  them  ;  then  general, 
as  applicable  to  the  entire  genius  of  the  Christian  dis- 
pensation. 

With  regard  to  the  former,  our  Lord,  making  use  of 
the  Baptist's  simUitudo  (John  iii.  29),  in  which  wo  re- 
cognise an  echo  of  many  passages  in  the  Old  Testament,' 
as  well  as  a  preparation  for  other  portions  of  His  own 
teaching  and  that  of  His  apostles,^  argues,  by  an  appeal 
to  the  well-kuo\Tn  customs  of  the  Jews  during  the  days 
of  the  bridal  festivity,  the  incongruity  of  fasting  and 
mourning  at  a  time  set  apart  for  feasting  and  rejoicing ; 
thus  recalling  to  the  minds  of  His  inquirers  the  familiar 
words  of  the  Preacher  :  "'  To  every  thing  there  is  a 
season,  and  a  time  to  every  purpose  under  the  heaven. 

.  .  .  A  time  to  weep,  and  a  time  to  laugh  ;  a  time 
to  mourn,  and  a  time  to  dance  "  (Eccles.  iii.  1,  4). 

In  like  manner,  however,  as  St.  Paul,  in  replying  to 
the  inquiries  of  the  Corinthians,  not  only  solves  the 
particular  questions''  propounded  to  him,  but  lays  down 
at  the  same  time  genei-al  rules  for  the  direction  of 
Christians  in  all  ages  (1  Cor.  vii.  29 — 32),  so  our  blessed 
Lord  not  only  solves  the  inquiry  made  by  the  disciples 
of  John  and  the  Pharisees,  so  far  as  it  related  to  the 
existing  circumstances  of  His  own  disciples,  but  proceeds, 
in  a  further  answer  to  the  same  inquiry,  to  contrast 
the  comprehensive  character  and  genius  of  the  Gospel 
with  the  local  and  temporai-y  requirements  of  the  Law 
of  Moses  and  the  ministry  of  the  Baptist.  He  declares 
indeed,  plainly  and  imcquivocally,  that  though,  in 
accordance  with  the  teacliing  of  their  own  Rabbins,  it 
would  be  unseemly  for  the  friends  of  the  bridegroom 
to  mourn  whilst  the  bridegroom  was  still  with  them, 
there  would  be  days  of  moiu'ning  intervening  between 
the  betrothal  and  the  actual  marriage,  in  wliich  the 
Bridegroom  should  bo  taken  away,  and  during  which 
the  friends  of  the  Bridegi-oom  slioidd  mourn.  But  He 
goes  on  to  teach  them — as  though  He  woiUd  correct  in 
the  germ  their  impoj-fect  and  erroneous  conceptions  of 
the  nature  and  design  of  the  Gospel — that  just  as  it 
was  forbidden  by  the  law  of  Moses  (Deut.  xxii.  11)  to 
wear  a  mixed  garment  of  linen  and  of  wool,  so  there 
was  a  deeper  and  a  more  essential  incongruity  involved 
in  every  attempt  to  patch  the  old  and  tattered  garment 
of  the  Law  with  the  new  and  seamless  robe  of  the 
Gospel.  Just  as  the  insertion  of  a  piece  of  undressed 
cloth,  which  shrinks  when  wetted,  and  takes  along  with 
it  a  part  of  the  old  and  worn  garment,  does  but  increase 
the  rent  which  it  is  designed  to  mend ;  just  as  unf er- 
monted  Trine  put  into  old  skins  bursts  the  skins,  and 
perishes  with  them,  even  so  our  Lord  declares  that  all 

'  E.g.,  Pa.  xlv.  ;  Canticles  throngbout ;  Isa.  liv.  5  ;  Jer.  iii.  14; 
Hob.  ii.  16  (to  a  portion  of  which  prophecy  allusion  is  made  iu 
Matt.  ix.  13). 

2  E.g.,  Matt.  xxii.  1—1* ;  Ephes.  v,  32;  Bev.  xix.  7. 


attempts  to  combine  the  bondage  of  the  Law  with  the 
liberty  of  the  Gospel  involved  a  fundamental  ignorance 
of  the  nature  and  design  of  both. 

The  two  similitudes  employed  by  our  Lord  seem  to 
exhibit  this  truth  in  different  ways. 

The  similitude  of  the  old  garment  patched  with  the 
piece  of  new  cloth  seems  more  immediately  applicable  to 
external  rites  and  ceremonies,  such  as  the  observance  of 
those  prescribed  "  days,  and  months,  and  years,"  which 
caused  St.  Paul  to  ' '  stand  in  doubt "  of  the  Galatian 
church,  '■  lost  he  had  bestowed  upon  it  labour  in  vain." 

The  similitude  of  the  now  wine  seems  to  have  refer- 
ence to  the  inner  life  and  spirit — ^the  very  life  and  soul 
of  the  Christian  dispensation,  which  could  not  be  re- 
strained within  the  trammels  of  the  "  worldly  sanc- 
tuary "  of  Judaism.  It  is  true,  indeed,  that  men  do 
not  natm'ally  discern  the  superiority  of  the  Gospel  over 
the  Law ;  that  those  who  have  been  accustomed  to  serve 
iu  "  the  oldness  of  the  letter  "'  do  not  easily  discern  and 
recognise  tho  superiority  of  a  higher  service  in  "  the 
newness  of  the  Spuit."  Their  language  for  tho  most 
part  is  stiU,  as  in  the  days  of  our  Lord  and  His 
apostles,  "  The  old  is  good,"^  and  they  are  unable  or 
unwilling  (oiSeh  .  .  .  fle'Aei)  to  perceive  the  excellence 
and  to  engage  in  the  pursuit  of  the  higher  and  the 
better. 

The  history  of  the  Church  in  all  after  ages  teaches 
how  greatly  this  lesson  was  needed,  and  how  imperfectly 
it  has  been  learned. 

As  tho  Judaising  teachers  of  apostolic  times  corrupted 
the  Gospel  by  incidcating  the  necessity  of  observing 
the  rites  and  ceremonies  of  the  Law,  so  the  popular 
creed  and  worship  of  the  fourth  century  was,  to  a  very 
considerable  degree,  little  better  than  a  Christianised 
form  of  paganism ;  the  religion  of  Christ  being  dragged 
down  to  the  level  of  the  age,  rather  than  the  age  being 
elevated  to  the  .standard  of  the  Grospel.  "  A  new  system 
of  Christian  omens,"  says  the  late  Dean  Milman,  "  suc- 
ceeded the  old ;  witchcraft  merely  invoked  Beelzebub, 
or  Satan  instead  of  Hecate ;  hallowed  places  only  changed 
the  tutelary  nymph  or  genius  for  a  saint  or  martyi-."^ 
And  the  same  writer  describes  the  practical  results  of 
the  diffusioji  of  this  spurious  form  of  mythic  and  poly- 
theistic Christianity  in  the  following  terms  :  "  Thus  in 
a  great  degree,  whUo  the  Roman  world  became  Christian 
in  outward  worship  and  in  faith,  it  remained  heathen, 
or  even  at  some  periods  worse  than  in  the  bettor  times 
of  hoathouism,  as  to  beneficence,  gentleness,  purity, 
social  virtue,  and  peace."* 

The  history  of  the  Jesuit  missions  in  China  and  Japan 
affords  another  illustration  of  the  tendency  which  has 
existed  in  all  ages  to  patch  tho  old  garment  with  the 
now  cloth — to  pour  the  new  wine  into  the  old  skins. 

Tho  attempts  of  tho  Roman  missionaries  to  build  on 
the  old  foundations,  and  to  turn  to  good  account  those 
pagan  institutions  in  which  they  traced  with  astonish- 


3  Tho  true  reading   of  Luko  v.  39  appears  to  bo  xp»ijto?,  not 
as  the  received  text,  xP'i'^T.Wcpoc, 

*  Hist,  of  Chrlstianitij,  book  iv,,  chap.  5, 
5  Ibid. 


ZEPHANIAH. 


287 


ment  a  marvellous  resemblance  to  their  own,  are 
abuuilautly  familiar  to  the  student  of  the  ecclesiastical 
history  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  So 
striking,  oven  in  minuto  particulars,  was  the  corre- 
spondence in  the  rites  of  the  old  and  the  new  religious, 
that  the  only  conclusion  which  commended  itself  to  the 
minds  of  those  who  failed  in  the  attempt  to  transfer 
the  old  forms  of  worship  to  new  objects,  or  who  found 
to  their  dismay  that,  after  a  short  trial,  the  old  super- 
stitions were  too  strongly  rooted  to  be  superseded  by 
the  new,  was  that  the  father  of  lies  had  designedly 
forestalled  tho  missionaries  by  introducing  into  those 
countries  "  a  profane  parody  on  the  institutions  of  the 
Catholic  Church." ' 

The  general  design,  then,  of  our  Lord  in  tho  para- 
bolical teaching  under  consideration,  seems  to  have  been 
to  warn  His  followers  from  the  first  of  the  danger  to 

'  See  Essaijs  in  Eccleniasticai  Biogra^hHf  by  Sir  James  Stephen, 
p.  220. 


which  they  would  ever  be  exposed  of  substituting  a 
worship  consisting  in  outward  forms  and  observances 
in  the  place  of  a  worship  in  "  spirit  and  iu  truth." 

Without  any  disparagement  of  the  efficacy  of  fasting, 
or  of  any  other  means  adopted  with  a  view  to  bring  tho 
flesh  into  subjection  to  the  spirit,  and  without  any  dis- 
paragement, scarcely  need  it  bo  added,  of  tho  duty  and 
efficacy  of  prayer,  our  Lord  forewarns  His  followers 
from  the  first  that  that  kingdom  which  Ho  came  to 
establish  "  is  not  meat  and  driuk,  but  righteousness  and 
peace,  and  joy  iu  the  Holy  Ghost ; "  that  tho  rites  and 
observances  of  tho  Law  were  designed  to  prepare  the 
way  for,  and  not  to  be  incorporated  into,  the  Gospel ; 
that  tho  old  garments  of  the  one  cannot  be  patched 
with  the  new  and  seamless  robe  of  the  other;  and  that 
the  new  wine  with  which  the  Pentecostal  presses  of  tho 
Gospel  burst  out,  can  never  be  restrained  mthin  the  old 
and  effete  bottles  of  a  Law  which  "made  nothing  per- 
fect," and  of  a  covenant  which  "gendered  to  bondage." 


BOOKS    OF   THE   OLD   TESTAMENT. 

ZEPHANIAH. 

BY     THE     EEV.     SAMUEL     COX,     NOTTINGHAM. 


II. — THE   CAIJ,  TO  EEPENTANCE. 

{Chap.  ii.  1  to  chap.  iii.  8.) 
>  N  the  first  section  of  tliis  poem  Zephaniah 
denounces  on  the  men  of  Judiih  and  the 
inhabitants  of  Jerusalem  tho  doom  which 
theu'  idolatries  and  immoralities  had  pro- 
voked ;  he  denounces  that  doom  with  a  stem  vigour 
and  passion  which  give  his  words  an  edge  so  keen  that 
even  to  this  diiy  they  pierce  and  wound  our  hearts. 
But  iu  tho  second  section  he  changes  his  voice ;  he 
modulates  it  into  a  key  more  tender  and  pathetic. 
Tones  of  judgment  and  righteous  indignation  still  fall 
on  our  ears;  but  under  these,  struggling  up  iigainst 
them  ,ind  through  them,  at  times  triiunphing  over 
them,  we  catch  a  strain  of  compassion.  The  threaten- 
ings  of  judgment  melt  into  an  invitation  to  repentance. 
The  gracious  intention  of  the  Divine  "  doom  "  is  dis- 
closed. A  fruitful  rain  falls  on  the  soil  through 
which  tho  ploughshare  has  been  driven.  Healing 
balms  are  laid  on  the  wounds  that  havo  been  probed 
and  searched. 

Though  his  voice  still  trembles  vrith  iadignation 
against  "  the  sinners  and  their  offences,"  the  prophet 
calls  on  them  to  abandon  their  sins,  to  seek  righteousness 
and  humUity ;  and,  to  iaducc  them  to  repentance  and 
amendment,  he  declares  that  the  judgment  which  is 
soon  to  sweep  across  tho  whole  earth,  will  reach  its  end 
only  as  "  all  tho  inhabitants  of  tho  earth,  every  one 
from  his  place,"  acknowledge  Jehovah  to  be  God  and 
worship  Him. 

This  is  the  theme  of  Part  II.,  and  it  is  wrought  out 
thus ; — r/je  Call  to  Repentance  is  g^ven  in  chapter  ii. 


verses  1 — 3;  Motives  to  Repentance  are  supplied  in 
chapter  ii.,  verses  4 — 15  ;  while,  to  give  an  added  force 
to  his  call,  tho  prophet  shows  the  Need  of  Repentance 
by  once  more  depicting  the  sins  of  Jerusalem  in  chapter 
iii.,  verses  1 — 8. 

{1.)   THE   CALL  TO   REPENTANCE. 
(Chap.  ii.  1—3.) 

"  Prove  and  try  yourselves, 
O  nation  that  dost  not  turn  pale, 

Before  the  decree  bring  forth 
(The  day  Cometh  on  like  the  chaff). 
Before  the  burning  wrath  of  Jehovah  come  upon  you. 
Before  the  day  of  Jehovah's  wrath  come  upon  you. 
Seek  ye  Jehovah,  all  ye  humble  of  the  laud. 
Who  do  that  which  is  right  before  Him  ; 
Seek  righteousness,  seek  humility  : 
Peradventure,  ye  may  be  hidden  in  the  day  of  Jehovah's  wrath." 

The  general  contents  of  these  verses  may  be  summed 
up  thus: — Tho  men  of  Judah,  with  the  fear  of  God 
before  their  eyes,  are  to  consider  and  test  themselves. 
They  havo  been  hardened  and  unabashed  in  their 
iuiquity.  Tho  Divine  judgment  is  coming  on  them  to 
compel  them  to  reflection,  that  they  may  put  themselves 
and  their  modes  of  thought  and  action  to  the  proof.  It 
is  coming  quickly,  so  quickly  that  they  must  not  think 
to  escape  it.  Now,  if  ever,  the  occasion  must  be  seized, 
tho  place  for  repentance  must  be  found,  occupied, 
secured.  They  have  forgotten  and  abandoned  the  Lord 
their  Gsd ;  let  them  seek  the  Lord.  They  have  been 
unrighteous  ;  let  them  seek  righteousness.  They  have 
been  proud  and  self-confident ;  let  them  seek  humility. 
In  this  radical  change  of  spiritual  character,  attitude, 
bias,  lies  their  only  hope,  their  solo  chanco  of  escaping 
destruction. 


288 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


But  if  we  look  a  little  more  closely  into  these  verses, 
and  study  the  poetic  forms  in  which  Zophaniah  has  cast 
his  thoughts,  wo  shall  find  thorn  to  bo  singularly  pictui-- 
esque  and  impressiye.  His  opening  words,  for  instance, 
"  Prove  and  try  yotirselves,"  if  literally  rendered,  would 
read :  "  Gatlier  yourselves  together,  and  gather  your- 
selves together."  In  the  Hebrew  the  phrase  consists  of 
a  single  verb,  which  is  repeated  In  order  to  give  it  force 
and  emjihasis,  in  order  to  indicate  the  urgency  of  the 
call.  And  this  verb  applies  to  human  conduct  an 
image  taken  from  the  gleaning  of  fields,  the  collection  of 
stubble,  the  sweeping  up  of  fallen  branches  and  leaves. 
Read  with  its  associations  and  suggestions,  it  implies 
that  the  men  of  Judah  were  to  collect  their  spirits,  now 
distracted  by  so  many  unworthy  objects ;  that  they 
were,  so  to  speak,  to  sweep  out  of  themselves  that 
which  was  dead  and  worthless,  to  glean  up  the  wheat, 
to  bum  up  the  stubble.  That  is  to  say,  they  are  to 
take  stock  of  themselves,  to  put  themselves  to  the  most 
searching  and  discriminating  tests,  to  ascertain  what 
they  are  and  how  they  stand,  to  abandon  that  which  is 
evil  and  to  cherish  that  which  is  good. 

But  how  are  they  to  be  induced  to  self-examination 
and  self-correction  ?  They  are  "  a  nation  which  does 
not  turn  pale,"  a,  nation  not  easily  daunted,  not  given 
to  blench  with  fear.  They  are  proud,  stubborn,  stiff- 
necked,  unappalled  by  miseries  and  calamities  which 
woidd  bring  races  of  a  gentler  strain  to  their  knees. 

Because  they  are  so  hard  and  stubborn,  so  insus- 
ceptible to  fear,  the  greatest  of  all  terrors  is  coming  on 
them:  the  yo-)n  Y'hovah,  the  day  of  the  Lord,  is  at  the 
very  door,  the  day  in  which  all  faces  turn  pale.  Let 
them  not  suppose  that  things  will  last  their  time,  that 
there  is  no  immediate  peril,  no  instant  need  of  repent- 
ance and  amendment.  "  The  decree,"  ordaining  execution 
of  judgment,  has  passed ;  it  is  about  to  "  bring  forth  " 
its  terrors.  The  day  of  the  Lord  is  even  now  driving 
up  like  "  chaff  "  before  the  wind.  How  terrible,  how 
insupportable,  that  swiftly  approaching  day  will  bo 
when  it  breaks  upon  them  is  indicated  by  the  fliiming 
epithets,  by  the  heavy  dragging  tones,  by  the  solemn  and 
emphatic  repetitions  of  the  lines  which  close  verse  2  : 
"  Prove  and  try  yourselves  before  the  burning  wrath 
of  Jehovah  come  upon  you,  before  the  day  of  JehovaKs 
wrath  come  upon  you."  How  wide  and  searching  its 
judgments  will  be,  is  indicated  by  the  exhortation  of 
verse  3:  "  8eelc  ye  Jehovah,  all  ye  humble  of  the  land, 
who  do  that  which  is  right  before  him ;  seek  righteous- 
ness, seek  humility  .-  peradventure  ye  may  be  hidden  in 
the  day  of  Jehovah's  ivrath."  Not  only  are  the  proud 
to  bend,  and  the  sinful  to  repent,  but  even  the  humble 
of  the  land  must  seek  humility ;  even  those  who  do 
tliat  which  is  right  before  God  must  seek  righteousness  ; 
even  those  who  are  in  correspondence  with  Heaven 
must  rouse  themselves  to  new  ardours  of  godliness, 
to  more  strenuous  endeavours  after  the  Divine  wiU  and 
favour.  If,  indeed,  they  seek  the  Lord,  in  seeking 
humility  and  i-ighteousness,  when  his  judgments  are 
abroad  in  the  earth,  they  will  be  secure  whatever  the 
perOs  of  the  day,  and  at  peace  whatever  its  terrors. 


For  by  his  "peradventure  ye  may  be  hidden,"  the  pro- 
phet does  not  intend  to  cast  any  doubt  on  the  security 
of  the  humble  and  the  righteous.  He  intends,  rather, 
to  suggest  the  extreme  rigour  of  the  doom  ho  foresees, 
tlio  difficulty  of  escax)ing  it,  the  improbabUitj  that  a 
people  so  callous  and  proud  will  seek  and  find  the  sole 
refuge  from  the  storm.  All  the  more  ho  urges  them 
to  seek  it,  nor  has  he  any  doubt  that,  if  they  seek,  they 
will  find.  For  why  should  the  prophet  call  the  sinful 
to  repentance,  if  repentance  wore  to  be  of  no  avail  ? 
why  urge  the  good  to  new  ardours  of  righteousness,  if 
even  these  were  to  be  of  no  avail  ? 

Even  thus  early,  then,  we  hear  the  tones  of  mercy 
and  in^-itation  blending  with  the  tones  of  denunciation 
and  rebuke,  not  dominant  as  yet,  indeed,  yet  soimding 
forth  no  doubtfid  promise  that  the  key,  the  mode,  ia 
changing,  and  that  wo  shall  soon  be  gladdened  with  a 
more  cheerful  and  melodious  strain.  Even  thus  early 
we  are  taught,  at  least  by  implication  and  suggestion, 
that  the  judgments  of  God,  however  stern,  however 
wide  and  deep  of  reach,  are  sent  to  summon  the  wicked 
to  self-examination  and  repentance,  and  the  good  to 
more  earnest  and  fruitful  endeavours  after  that  which 
is  right  before  God. 

(2.)  The  Motives  for  Mepentance  follow  the  Call  to 
Repentance.  And  now,  in  chapter  ii.,  verses  4 — 15, 
Zephaniah  travels  through  the  entire  circle  of  doom, 
through  the  lands  which  encompassed  Judah  on  every 
side,  from  east  to  west,  from  north  to  south.  As  ho 
had  opened  his  prophecy  by  denouncing  a  judgment 
which  was  to  sweep  across  the  whole  earth,  destroying 
man  and  beast,  so  now  he  shows  in  detail  how  this 
judgment  is  to  fall  on  the  entire  world  known  to  the 
Jews,  on  all  the  races  with  which  they  were  famdiar. 
Or,  rather,  he  selects,  as  representatives  of  the  world, 
four  leading  races :  the  Philistines  on  the  west ;  the 
Moabltcs  and  the  Ammonites — two  tribes,  but  one  race, 
since  both  were  the  descendants  of  Lot — on  the  east ; 
the  Ethiopians  in  the  distant  south ;  and  the  Assyrians 
far  away  in  the  north.  He  portrays  the  doom  that  is 
to  fall  on  these  races  standing  at  the  four  points  of  the 
compass,  thus  filling  the  whole  horizon  with  heavy 
clouds  of  judgment,  and  leaving  us  to  infer  that  all  the 
races  included  within  these  points  will  have  to  endure 
the  pelting  of  the  storm. 

First  of  all,  wo  have  the  doom  of  the  Philistines 
(vs.  4—7). 

"  For  Gaza  shall  be  forsaken, 
And  Asbkelou  become  a  desert ; 
Aa  for  AshdoJ,  tliey  shjiU  be  driven  out  at  noonday. 

And  Ekron  shall  be  rooted  up. 
Woe  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  Tract  by  the  Sea ! 
The  nation  of  the  Kerethitcs ! 
The  word  of  Jehovah  upon  you : 
O  Canaan,  land  of  the  Philistines  ! 
I  destroy  thee,  so  that  no  inhabitant  remaineth ; 
And  the  Tract  by  the  Sea  shall  become  pastures. 
With  huts  for  shepherds, 
And  folds  for  sheep  : 
Yea,  the  tract  shall  be  for  the  remnant  of  the  house  of  Judah, 
Thereupon  shall  they  feed  ; 
In  the  houses  of  Ashkelon  shall  they  lio  down  at  evening; 
For  Jehovah  their  God  will  visit  them, 
And  turn  their  captivity." 


ZEPHANIAH. 


289 


On  the  west  coast  of  Southern  Palestine,  between 
the  Mediterranean  Sea  and  the  first  range  of  mountains, 
there  spreads  a  broad  tract  of  fertile  land,  averaging, 
perhaps,  some  fifteen  or  sixteen  miles  in  width.  In 
this  tract — the  Shcphelah,  or  "  Low  Country,"  of  Scrip- 
ture, "the  Maritime  Plain"  of  modern  writers — the 
Philistine  clans  took  refuge,  falling  back  on  what  seems 
to  have  been  their  ancestral  seat,  when  they  were  driven 
by  the  Jews  from  the  central  plains.  The  whole  region 
was  highly  cultivated  by  a  somewhat  crowded  popida- 
tion,  and  was  thickly  dotted  with  large  villages  and 
fortified  towns.  Among  these  towns  were  five  chief 
■cities  or  commonwealths— Gaza,  Ashkelon,  Ashdod, 
Ekron,  and  Gath — which  seem  to  have  resembled  the 
free  Italian  cities  of  the  Middle  Ages,  such  as  Venice 
and  Florence,  and  to  liave  been  independent  states,  as 
well  as  cities  in  which  the  civilisation  of  the  time  took  its 
highest  forms.  Commonly,  these  five  cities  were  banded 
in  a  confederation  or  league,  for  mutual  defence ;  and 
their  magnates,  who  formed  the  supreme  council  of  the 
league,  are  well  kno^vn  to  us  by  their  Biblical  title,  "  the 
lords  of  the  Philistines."  AU  these  cities,  now  at  the 
mercy  of  the  Scythian  hordes,  were  to  be  overwhelmed 
and  destroyed  in  "  the  great  day  of  the  Lord ;"  the 
whole  "  Tract  by  the  Sea,"  of  which  these  cities  were 
the  bulwark  and  the  ornament,  was  to  be  depopulated, 
reduced  to  a  desert,  and  then  re-peopled  by  "  the  rem- 
nant of  the  house  of  Judah."  Here,  on  this  rich  soil, 
wasted  by  war,  the  elect  remnant  should  find  pastures 
for  their  flocks,  and  build  huts  for  shepherds  and  folds 
for  sheep. 

Only  four  of  these  five  cities  are  mentioned  by  the 
prophet  (verse  4) :  Gath  is  omitted.  If  we  ask,  why  ? 
the  answer  supplies  a  valuable  hint  on  the  limits  of 
inspiration.  For  the  answer  is,  that  a  law  of  Hebrew 
poetry,  the  law  of  parallelism,  which  demanded  that 
clauses  and  lines  should  go  in  couples,  only  allowed  four 
to  bo  mentioned.  Tiy  how  you  wUl,  you  cannot  arrange 
five  names  in  couples.  And  the  inspiration  of  the  pro- 
phet bowed  to  this  necessity,  submitted  to  this  restric- 
tion :  teaching  us  that  the  Divine  inspiration  may  bo, 
and  is,  limited  not  only  by  the  infirmities  of  the  human 
nature  through  which  it  works,  but  even  by  the  laws  of 
poetic  speech,  by  the  exigencies  of  literary  form.  "  The 
spirits  of  the  prophets  are  subject  to  the  prophets." 

On  all  these  cities  there  is  to  fall  one  doom;  but  to 
each  of  them  that  one  and  the  selfsame  doom  is  variously 
announced.  To  two  of  these,  Gaza  and  Ekron,  the  doom 
is  conveyed  by  a  pun,  or  play  on  words,  such  as  con- 
stantly recurs  in  Hebrew  prophecy,  even  when  its  tones 
are  most  solemn  and  tragic ;  these  flashes  of  liumour 
rendering  the  darkness  through  which  they  dart  the 
more  profound.  "  Gaza  shall  he  forsalcen,"  we  read;  but 
Zephaniah  said,  "  Azzdh  shall  be  azuhdh  (forsaken) :"  we 
read,  "  Elcron  shall  be  rooted  up  ;  "  but  Zephaniah  said, 
"  Ekron  shall  be  te  dqer  (rooted  out,  torn  out  of  its 
soU) :  "  in  each  of  these  clauses,  the  two  leading  words 
of  the  clause  are  from  tlie  same  root,  and  the  fate  of  the 
city  is  indicated  by  a  pun  on  its  name.  To  the  other 
two  cities  the  doom  is  announced  in  literal  terms : 
43 — VOL.   II. 


"  Ashkelon  shall  become  a  desert ;  as  for  Ashdod,  they 
shall  be  driven  out  at  noon-day;"  but  the  latter  sen- 
tence contains  an  allusion  which  needs  to  bo  explained. 
In  the  sultry  East,  noonday  is  a  period  of  repose.  As 
exposure  to  the  sun's  fierce  rays  often  proves  fatal,  tho 
Orientals  commonly  sleep  through  tho  meridian  in  the 
coolest  and  most  shaded  rooms.  To  say  that  Ashdod 
would  l)e  driven  out  at  noon,  was  therefore  to  say,  that 
when  its  inhabitants  deemed  themselves  most  secure, 
when  evU  was  least  expected  and  would  prove  most 
fatal,  the  judgment  of  God  would  overtake  them. 

From  this  detailed  denunciation  of  doom,  the  prophet 
passes,  in  verse  5,  to  a  general  denunciation.  "Woe" 
is  to  descend  on  all  "  the  inhabitants  of  the  Tract  by 
the  Sea  ,"  "the  word  of  the  Lord,"  the  ban  which  Ho 
had  pronounced,  was  to  fall  on  them,  and  beneath  the 
woes  of  this  Divine  ban  they  would  wither  away  till  no 
survivor  was  left.  But  here  again  Zephaniah  uses  terms 
unfamiliar  to  us,  and  even  misleading,  although  they 
were  chosen  for  the  express  purpose  of  giving  point 
and  force  to  his  thoughts,  and  adding  new  weight  to 
his  denunciation.  We  do  not  see,  at  the  first  glance — 
how  should  we  ? — that "  the  nation  of  tlie  Kerethites  "  is 
but  another  name  for  the  Philistines.;  nor  do  we  see  why 
he  should  select  an  antique  and  obsolete  name,  such  as 
"Canaan,"  for  "the  hind  of  the  Philistines."  Never- 
theless, his  terms  grow  perfectly  simple  so  soon  as  we 
get  the  clue  to  them.  He  calls  the  Philistines  Kerethites 
{goi  K'rethim),  because  this  was  the  name  of  one  of 
their  great  families  or  clans,  the  Kretan  clan ;  and  ho 
selects  this  imusual  epithet  for  the  whole  race  to  denote 
that  it  was  devoted  to  hdrath,  or  extermination.  It  is 
another  instance  of  that  habit  of  using  the  omens  in 
names,  of  playing  on  etymologies,  of  which  we  have  so 
many  illustrations  in  Hebrew  poetry.  It  is  for  a  simUar 
reason  that  he  revives  the  ancient  name  Canaan,  and 
applies  it  to  one  district  of  the  land.  He  calls  "  tho 
Tract  by  the  Sea,"  "  the  land  of  the-  Philistines,"  Canaan, 
in  order  to  convey  the  hint  that  its  present  inhabitants, 
like  the  aboriginal  Canaanites,  are  doomed  to  destruc- 
tion because  the  cup  of  their  iniquity  is  now  full. 

In  short,  every  epithet  in  this  5th  verse  is  selected 
with  a  view  of  deepening  the  gloom  of  its  ten-ible  de- 
nunciation with  veiled  suggestions  of  a  judgment  beyond 
the  power  of  words  to  express.  The  inspired  poet  is 
not  content  to  say,  sans  phrase,  that  the  Philistines  are 
utterly  to  perish  under  the  woes  of  the  Divine  ban ; 
even  this  terror  must  be  enhanced  by  terrors  drawn 
from  the  latent  omen  of  tho  Kerethite  name  and  from 
the  ancient  Canaanite  traditions. 

In  verse  5,  then,  Zephaniah  has  relapsed  into  his 
sternest,  blackest  mood.  And  yet,  mark  once  more  how 
moods  of  mercy  struggle  up  against  the  tide  of  his 
burning  indignation ;  how  the  tender  tones  of  compas- 
sion blend  with  and  soar  above  the  tones  of  judgment. 
What  soft  pastoral  images  break  upon  us  in  verse 
6  !  This  once  fertile  Tract  by  the  Sea.  thickly  dotted 
with  the  crowded  hives  of  human  industry,  with  fair 
cities  inhabited  by  free  brave  men,  afterwards  a  desert, 
accursed  by  God  and  abandoned  by  man,  "  shall  become 


2'JO 


THE  BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


pastures,  with  huts  for  shepherds  and  folds  for  sheep." 
Through  the  mountain  gorges  the  flocks  of  the  restored 
Hebrews  will  descend  on  the  green  tiowery  plains, 
knowing  no  want,  fearing  no  evU,  because  the  shepherds 
go  before  them  with  statf  and  rod.  And  how  the  sug- 
gestions of  peace  and  hope  breathed  by  this  verse  are 
confirmed  by  the  next  (ver.  7) !  As  yet,  indeed,  we 
hear  of  no  mercy  for  tho  Philistines ;  but  we  do  hear, 
amid  the  thunders  of  judgment,  a  voice  which  speaks 
comfortably  to  Israel.  A  remnant  of  Judah  is  to  be 
saved,  and  to  possess  the  gates  of  its  enemies.  In 
chapter  i.,  verses  8,  9,  God  had  threatened  to  "  visit " 
tho  men  of  Judah  and  Jarusalem ;  now  he  promises  to 
"  visit  "  them  :  the  same  Hebrew  verb  is  used  in  both 
places ;  but  now,  by  a  slight  change  in  tho  construction 
(pdqad  construed  with  an  accusative  of  the  person  in- 
stead of  with  al),  the  verb  itself  shows  that  God  is 
about  to  visit  them  in  grace.  And  the  grammatical 
hint  is  expanded  in  tho  words  which  foUow:  God  is 
about  to  visit  them  that  he  may  "  turn  their  captivity" 
as  he  turned  that  of  Job,  by  giving  them  freedom  for 
bondage,  peace  for  war,  wealth  for  want.  The  peace 
and  abundance  of  this  happier  time  are  charmingly  ex- 
pressed in  tho  opening  clauses  of  verse  7.  The  prophet 
slightly  changes  the  figure  of  the  previous  verse.  There 
ho  had  depicted  the  redeemed  Hebrews  as  descending 
with  their  flocks  on  the  pastures  of  the  Tract  by  the 
Sea ;  now  he  speaks  of  them  as  themselves  the  flock  of 
the  Divine  Shepherd.  They  are  to  "  feed  "  through  the 
day  on  the  broad  rich  pastures  which  open  on  the  blue 
waters  of  tho  Mediterranean,  and  are  guarded  by  the 
lofty  range  of  inland  hiUs ;  and  "  at  evening  "  they  are 
to  "  lie  down"  in  folds  built  from  the  ruined  houses  and 
temples  of  their  fiercest  and  most  inveterate  foes ;  while 
He  who  neither  slumbers  nor  sleeps  keeps  watch  over 
them,  that  they  may  rest  unalarraed. 

This  note  of  mercy  toward  Judah  we  shall  hear 
again  and  again,  amid  the  angry  discords  of  tho  doom 
which  destroys  their  enemies,  untU,  at  last,  it  swells 
into  a  song  of  mercy  for  aU  races,  even  for  those  who 
have  been  most  hardy  in  their  defiance  of  heaven. 

Fi-om  the  doom  of  the  PhUisfines,  Zephaniah  passes 
to  (2)  Tlie  Doom  on  Moab  and  Amman  (chap.  ii. 
V8.  8—10). 

"  I  have  heard  the  abuse  of  Moab, 
And  the  reviliui^s  of  the  sons  of  Ammon, 
Who  have  reviled  my  people. 
And  boasted  against  their  boundary. 
Wherefore,  as  I  live,  salth  Jehovah  of  Hosts, 
The  God  of  Israel, 
Verily  Moab  shall  become  like  Sodom, 
And  the  sous  of  Ammon  like  Gomorrah,— 
A  region  of  nettles  and  saltpits. 
And  a  desert  for  ever  : 
The  remnant  of  uiy  people  shall  plunder  them, 
And  the  residue  of  my  nation  shall  possess  them. 
This  shall  come  on  them  for  their  pride, 
Because  they  have  despised  and  boasted  against  the  people  of 
Jehovah  of  Hosts.'' 

The  prophet  turns  from  the  west  to  the  east;  and 
on  the  east,  as  on  the  west,  tho  heavens  are  dark  with 
portentous  clouds.  Beyond  the  Jordan,  to  the  south 
of  the  land  of  Gilead  (which  was  inhabited  by  the 
descendants  of  Israel),  and  therefore  to  the  east  ,of  the 


kingdom  of  Judali,  from  Gilead  to  the  eastern  coast 
of  the  Dead  Sea,  there  stretched  a  fine  mountain-land 
of  pasture.  The  large  downs  which  spread  over  and  be- 
tween its  ranges  were,  from  primitive  times,  a  favourite 
haunt  of  the  nomadic  tribes.  It  was  exactly  adapted 
to  their  necessities,  since  it  was  capable  of  sustaining 
the  vast  flocks  on  which  they  themselves  depended  for 
support;  whUo  it  gave  full  scope  to  the  wandering 
habits  which  were  in  their  very  blood.  To  this  day, 
that  fertile  and  elevated  district,  forty  or  fifty  miles  in 
length  by  ten  or  twelve  in  breadth,  the  Belka  of  the 
modern  Arabs,  is  no  less  eminently  fitted  for  pastoral 
jjursuits  than  the  maritime  plains  of  Philistia,  on  the 
opposite  border  of  Palestine,  are  for  the  uses  of  agricul- 
ture. The  descendants  of  Lot,  afterwards  known  as 
the  Moabites  and  the  Ammonites,  early  took  possession 
of  this  rich  lofty  pasture-land.  From  the  first,  they 
showed  themselves  hostile  to  the  sons  of  Abraham ; 
from  the  time  of  Balak,  the  Moabitish  king  who  hired 
Balaam  to  curse  the  tents  of  Israel,  they  were  for  ever 
f  ursing  Israel,  till  "  the  abuse  of  Moab  and  the  revilings 
of  the  sons  of  Ammon"  grew  to  be  proverbial.  Nor 
did  they  only  revile  the  sacred  people ;  they  also  "  boasted 
against  their  boundary,"  making  raids  into  Gilead,' 
and  even  crossing  the  rapid  Jordan  to  harass  and 
plunder  the  inhabitants  of  Judah  so  often  as  theso  were 
weakened  and  distressed  Ijy  foreign  foes.  Tho  pride  of 
these  wealthy  sheepmasters  and  shepherds,  their  lofti- 
ness, their  haughtiness  of  heart,  the  arrogance  and 
insolence  of  their  bearing,  are  a  constant  theme  of  the 
Hebrew  prophets.^  This  prido  was  to  be  humbled. 
Because  they  despised  and  boasted  against  the  people 
of  Jehovah-Zebaoth,  a  heavy  doom  was  coming  on  them. 
They  should  be  made  like  the  ancient  cities  of  Sodom 
and  Gomorrah.  Those  cities,  once  so  proud,  and  so 
impious  in  their  pride,  were  now  entombed  in  the  depths 
of  tho  Dead  Sea,  the  very  sea  on  which  tho  mountains 
of  Ammon  and  Moab  looked  down.  Even  with  that 
terrible  warning  always  beneath  their  eyes,  the  sons  of 
Moab  and  Ammon  had  despised  wai-uing;  they  had 
refused  correction ;  thoy  liad  nursed  their  pride,  and 
cherished  an  insolent  hostUity  and  contempt  for  the 
people  of  Jehovah.  Thoy  must  take  tho  result,  the  due 
reward,  of  then-  deeds  in  a  fate  like  that  of  the  ancient 
"cities  of  the  Plain."  Their  rich  pastm'cs  should  be 
turned  into  a  desert,  a  region  of  nettles  and  saltpits,  in 
which  nothing  would  thrive,  Jehovah  pledges  himself 
to  inflict  this  destruction  upon  them  with  an  oath ; 
"  Verily  .  .  .  as  I  live  .  .  .  Moab  shall  become 
hke  Sodom,  and  tho  sons  of  Ammon  like  Gomorrah." 

But  even  as  we  listen  to  this  inevitable  and  terrible 
doom,  wo  once  more  hear  the  voice  of  mercy.  If  there 
can  be  no  escape  for  Moab  and  Ammon,  at  least  the 
sons  of  Judali  shall  get  good.  "  The  remnant  of  my 
people  shall  plunder  them ;  and  the  residue  of  my 
nation  shall  possess  them."  A  hundred  years  before 
tliese  words  were  uttered,  Isaiah  had  predicted  that 
when  the  Lord  had  mercy  on  his  people,  and  restored 


Amos  i,  13. 


2  Isa.  xvi.  6 ;  and  Jer.  xlviii.  29. 


ZEPHANIAH. 


291 


them  to  their  own  laud,  they  should  take  strangers  and 
possess  them  for  servants  and  handmaidens,  that  thoy 
should  "take  them  captive  whose  captives  they  were;" 
that  "  strangers  should  stand  and  feed  their  flocks,  and 
the  sons  of  the  aliens  be  their  ploughmen  and  vine- 
dressers."' And  now  Zephauiah  predicts  that,  among 
the  strangers  and  sons  of  ahens  who  shoidd  become  the 
serfs  of  Judah,  were  their  ancient  enemies  of  Moab  and 
Ammon.  Just  as  the  elect  people  are  to  find  pastures 
in  the  Tract  by  the  Sea,  "  with  huts  for  shepherds  and 
folds  for  sheep,"  to  feed  on  the  substance  of  the  Philis- 
tines, and  to  lie  down  in  the  deserted  houses  of  Ashke- 
lon ;  so  also  they  are  to  grow  rich  on  the  spoils  of  Moab 
and  Ammon,  and  to  reduce  even  these  inveterate  and 
insolent  foes  to  bondage. 

There  is  a  promise  in  this  doom,  then,  a  promise 
bright  with  hope  for  as  many  of  the  Hebrews  as  were 
loyal  to  their  Divine  King.  But  does  God  care  only 
for  Hebrews  ?  Is  the  whole  world  to  bo  sacrificed  to 
them  ?  "  Have  we  not  all  one  Father,"  whatever- 
our  race  or  blood  ?  and  must  not  the  universal  Father 
have  mercy  and  grace  for  all  ?  So  far  from  sacrificing 
the  whole  world  to  the  Hebrews,  when  they  finally 
refused  to  be  the  ministers  and  prophets  of  his  saviug 
truth  to  all  the  families  of  the  earth,  He  sacrificed  thc^ri 
to  the  good  of  the  world.  If  they  were  chosen,  it  was 
that  they  might  serve,  that  they  might  be  a  blessing 
to  the  human  race  ;  if  they  are  cast  away,  it  is  because 
they  were  perverting  the  blessing  that  was  in  them  to  a 
curse.  Terrible  as  are  the  judgments  he  denounces  on 
heathen  empires,  Zephaniah  reserves  his  heaviest  doom 
for  the  elect  race  ;  "  judgment  begins  at  the  House  of 
God;"  and  whether  he  denounce  judgment  on  heathen 
or  Hebrew,  he  is  sm-e  that  judgment  is  mercy,  and  the 
precursor  of  mercy — that  it  is  but  as  the  knifo  which 
wounds  that  it  may  heal. 

And  in  verse  11  he  gives  us — abruptly,  as  it  were, 
and  before  its  time— his  first  fuU  statement  of  the 
merciful  Divine  intention  of  the  judgments  he  has  been 
commissioned  to  pronounce.  He  stands  on  his  tower 
of  vision.  He  has  glanced  east  and  west  to  find  the 
horizon  dark  with  storms,  which,  if  thoy  are  to  bring 
new  fruitfulness  to  the  house  of  Judah,  are  to  boat 
down  other  races  to  the  dust.  Artistically  speaking, 
I  suppose  the  prophet  ought  to  complete  the  circle  of 
doom,  to  carry  our  eyes  to  the  storms  lowering  on  tho 
north  and  tho  south,  as  well  as  on  the  west  and  tho 
east,  hefore  he  reUeves  our  hearts  with  the  hope  that 
there  will  be  "  clear  shining  after  tho  rain,"  that, 
after  the  night  of  judgment,  there  will  dawn  a  morning 
of  benediction.  But  he  can  no  longer  refrain  himself  ; 
the  secret  of  mercy  must  have  way  and  declare  itself. 
And  so,  when  he  has  but  half  completed  his  appointed 
round,  he  breaks  upon  us  with  the  interjected  song: 

"  Terrible  is  Jehovali  over  them  ! 
For  he  famisheth  all  the  gods  of  the  earth, 
Tluit  aU  the  isles  of  the  heathen. 
Every  one  from  its  place,  may  worship  Htm." 

This  is  the  very  climax  of  his  poem ;  and  in  chapter 
'  Isa.  xiT.  2 ;  la.  5, 


iii.,  verses  9  to  20,  he  reaches  it  in  a  more  gradual  and 
artistic  way.  Here,  it  seems  to  bui-st  from  him  as 
though  he  could  no  longer  restrain  hmself ;  no  longer 
liide  from  us  "  the  secret  strain "  which  was  making 
melody  in  his  heart  amid  the  loud  uproars  of  doom. 
And  surely  it  is  a  true  melody  "  of  tho  everlasting 
chime,"  surely  it  is  in  very  deed  "an  eternal  truth" 
which  the  faith  of  the  prophet  here  makes  "  present 
fact "  to  him.  Veiled  behiud  the  gi-eat  natural  forces 
of  the  universe,  and  those  inscrutable  but  irresistible 
tides  of  thought,  of  social  and  political  tendency,  on  and 
before  which  we  are  but  as  straws  on  the  wind  or 
bubbles  on  the  sea,  God  often  seems  very  "  ten-ible  over 
US;"  he  seems  to  bo  smiting  down  our  "gods,"  all  that 
we  hold  dearest  and  most  precious.  And  when  wo  arc 
thus  filled  with  the  fear  that  bringeth  bondage  and  hath 
torment,  how  shall  we  be  recovered  to  the  freedom  of 
obedience  and  hope,  unless  we  know  that  God  is  de- 
stroying the  false  objects  of  devotion  which,  iguorantly 
or  wilfully,  we  have  chosen  for  ourselves,  in  order  that 
we  may  turn  to  Him  in  whom  alone  we  can  rest,  and  fix 
our  hearts  there  where  only  our  true  peace  is  to  be 
found  ?  A  mere  promise  of  mercy  in  and  after  judg- 
ment would  not  suffice,  for  promises  are  conditional; 
and  as  we  might  only  too  possibly  fail  to  satisfy  the 
•  conditions  of  the  promise,  we  should  still  he  haunted 
by  the  fear  lest,  after  aU,  wo  should  miss  the  blessing 
of  the  promise.  What  we  want,  that  wliich  alone  can 
meet  our  need,  is  a  law,  a  general,  an  universal  law.  We 
want,  we  crave,  to  know  that,  apart  from  any  goodness 
or  constancy  of  goodness  in  ourselves,  tho  Divine  judg- 
ments always  have  a  purpose  and  subserve  an  end  of 
mercy.  No  special  act  or  acts  of  grace  wUl  comfort  us 
with  hope  like  a  law  of  the  Divine  government ;  favour 
or  grace  might  fail  us,  but  the  law  of  God  endureth 
for  ever. 

And  the  immense  value  of  this  verse  consists  in  the 
fact  that  it  reveals  a  law,  a  constant  and  invariable  law, 
of  the  Divine  government.  The  verse  stands  alone,  and 
is  complete  in  itself.  It  is,  so  to  speak,  a  place  of  van- 
tage, a  point  of  rest,  to  which  the  prophet  has  risen, 
and  from  which  he  contemplates  not  simply  the  dooms 
of  which  he  had  spoken,  or  the  dooms  of  which  he  is 
about  to  speak,  but  the  whole  course  of  the  Divine 
Providence.  And  as  he  looks  before  and  after,  as  he 
recalls  the  past  and  projects  liimself  into  tho  future,  he 
finds  tlds  to  be  a  law  of  human  histoi-y,  that  the  judg- 
ments of  God  are  a  necessary  part  of  the  scheme  of 
redemption ;  that  God  intends  them  to  recover  men  from 
error  to  truth,  from  sin  to  holiness.  They  answer  to 
the  convulsions  and  stoi-ms  of  the  natural  world,  and 
serve  to  disperse  the  foul  infections  which  brood  over 
tho  homes  of  men,  to  raise  them  to  happier  conditions, 
and  to  pour  roimd  them  a  more  vital  air.  God  is 
terrible,  he  says,  but  teiTible  only  that  He  may  be 
morcifid.  He  famishes  the  false  gods,  whose  service 
is  bondage,  starves  them  out  of  the  world,  that  men 
may  freely  worship  the  only  wise  and  true  God.  For 
the  moment,  at  least,  the  Hebrew  Seer  rises  far  above 
all  local  or  national  prejudices,  and  proclaims  a  blessing 


292 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


which  belongs,  not  to  the  Jew  only,  but  to  all  the 
world. 

"  All  the  ISLES  of  the  heathen,"  or  "  of  the  Gentiles," 
is  an  epithet  taken  from  the  islands  and  coast-lands  of 
Europe  at  which  the  Hebrew  ships  had  touched,  and 
was  commonly  used  by  the  prophets  [e.g.  Isa.  xli.  1) 
to  denote  the  whole  of  heathendom,  all  races  save  the 
Jewish  race.  It  is  a  fashion  of  speech  with  all  early 
traTSllers.  In  The  Voiage  and  Travaile  of  Sir  John 
Maundeville,  for  example ;  and  in  The  Book  of  8er 
Marco  Polo,  many  great  countries,  and  even  continents, 
are  called  "  islands,"  simply  because  only  their  ports 
and  coasts  were  known. 

The  "gods"  of  these  heathen  races  were  to  be 
"famished"  or  "made  lean"  by  Jehovah;  that  is, 
those  who  worshipped  them,  those  who  bountifully 
supplied  their  altars  witli  sacrifices  on  which  they  grew 
fat,  were  to  be  destroyed  or  corrected  by  the  Divine 
judgment.  The  altars  would  no  longer  steam  with 
blood  and  wine ;  and  the  gods  would  pine  away,  and 
vanish  into  their  original  nothingness,  when  they  no 
longer  ruled  in  the  imaginations  of  men,  nor  were  sus- 
tained by  their  offerings.  Tlie  false  gods  being  starved, 
the  true  God  would  come  forth  from  his  place,  unclothe 
Himself  of  the  terrors  by  which  He  had  compelled  the 
attention  of  men,  reveal  Himself  in  the  fulness  of  his 
compassion,  and  win  all  the  heathen  races,  every  one 
from  its  place,  to  worship  Him. 

This  is  the  law  of  tlie  Divine  method,  of  the  way 
God  takes  with  men.  And  the  great  comfort,  the  great 
value  of  it  is,  that  it  is  a  law,  that  God  will  act  on  it 
whatever  men  do  or  forbear  to  do.  That  there  is  a 
pure.  Divine,  Almighty  wUl  penetrating  and  pervadiug 
the  whole  course  of  the  human  story,  working  in  and 
through  all  men  toward  a  foreseen  end  of  mercy,  an 
end  which  comprises  the  salvation  of  mankind — this  is 
a  solid  ground  on  which  to  build  our  hopes,  whether 
for  ourselves  or  for  the  world.  And  it  surely  is  very 
striking  that  this  law  should  be  stated  here,  that  this 
light  of  life  should  arise  in  a  darkness  so  profound; 
that,  amid  the  harsh  thunders  of  a  doom  launched 
against  all  the  empires  of  the  ancient  world,  we  shoiild 
hear  a  harmony  so  clear  and  sweet  and  full  that  it 
makes  all  discords  tributary  to  itself ;  that  even  as  the 
storm  of  j  udgmcnt  goes  crashing  round  the  whole  horizon 
wo  should  see,  even  for  a  moment,  the  gracious  bow  of 
hope  shining  in  peaceful  splendour  across  the  darkened 
sky,  making  the  very  lightnings  look  dull  and  coarse 
before  a  beauty  so  pure,  so  supremo.' 
(3)  The  Doom  of  Ethiopia  (verso  12). 

"  Also  ye,  0  ye  Cvsfdtes, 
Slain  by  mi/  sword  are  ye  !  " 


'  I  never  but  once  saw  a  flasli  of  lightning  strike  right  athwart 
tlie  arc  of  the  rainbow.  Many  of  my  readers  may  never  have  seen 
it.  And  to  them  it  may  he  well  to  say  that  the  figure  here  used  is 
accurately  true.  On  the  autumn  evening  on  which  I  saw  the  bow 
crossed  by  tho  lightning,  the  electric  fire,  which  ordinarily  looks 
so  pure,  intense,  bright,  grew  positively  gross  and  impure  in  con- 
trast  with  the  perfect  and  serene  toues  of  the  rainbow.  The 
lightning  looked  (hcah-ical — that  at  least  was  tho  impression  it 
made  at  the  moment ;  the  rainbow  alone  was  real. 


At  this  point  we  are  drawn  back  into  the  gloom  from 
which  we  had  for  a  moment  escaped.  Zephaniah  has 
to  complete  his  circuit.  He  has  travelled  east  and  west ; 
he  now  completes  his  round  by  denouncing  judgment 
on  the  nations  of  the  north  and  south.  At  the  south 
ho  merely  aims  a  blow  in  passing  ;  but  it  is  curious  to 
note  how  far  it  reaches.  Zephaniah  does  not  mention 
Edom,  which  lay  immediately  to  the  south  of  Judah, 
although  the  Edomites  were  tho  constant  enemies  of 
tlie  Jews,  aud  were  therefore  a  constant  mark  for  the 
denunciations  of  the  Hebrew  prophets.  Nor  does  he 
invoke  judgment  on  Egypt,  the  southern  foe  which  had 
often  warred  against  Israel,  and  the  very  name  of  which 
had  become  a  type  of  insolent  hostility  to  the  chosen 
people.  He  travels  to  the  utmost  limit  of  his  know- 
lodge,  and  hurls  his  curt  ringing  anathema  at  Citsh,  or 
Ethiopia,  the  southernmost  kingdom  known  to  the 
Hebrews.  Even  the  remote,  but  by  no  means  "  blame- 
less, Ethiopians"  are  not  to  escape  tho  judgment  which 
is  to  sweep  away  "tho  sinners  and  theii-  offences"  from 
the  whole  earth.  The  "  sword  "  of  the  Lord  is  to  reach 
even  to  them.  As  though  he  felt  he  could  not  linger, 
with  a  bold  impersonation,  Zephaniah  speaks  in  the 
name  of  Jehovah — "  Slain  by  my  sword  are  ye,"  and 
addresses  himseK  directly  to  the  southern  race — "Also 
ye,  O  ye  Cushites."  With  this  curt  imperative  pro- 
clamation of  war  against  the  south,  Zephaniah  passes 
on  to  elaborate — 

(4)  Tlie  Doom  on  Assyria  (verses  13 — 15). 

**  And  He  will  stretch  his  hand  over  the  north. 
And  destroy  Assyria ; 
He  will  also  make  Nineveh  a  barren  waste. 
An  arid  waste,  like  the  desert ; 
And  herds  shall  lie  down  in  the  midst  of  her. 
Wild  beasts  of  every  kind  in  droves  ; 
PeUcans  aud  hedgehogs  lodge  ou  their  capitals ; 
Birds  sing  from  the  windows  ; 
Rubbish-heaps  lie  on  the  thresholds. 
For  the  cedar-work  is  laid  bare. 
This  is  the  city,  the  exulting  city,  the  impregnable  city. 
Which  said  in  her  heart, 
'  I,  aud  no  other.* 
How  is  she  become  a  desolation, 
A  lair  of  wild  beasts  ! 
Every  one  that  passeth  by  her  shall  hiss. 
And  swing  his  hand." 

But  why  this  haste  ?  Why  cannot  the  prophet  tany 
to  impress  the  Ethiopian  doom  ujion  us  by  graphic 
touches  such  as  those  with  which  ho  has  abeady 
stirred  our  imagination  ?  The  answer  to  tliis  question 
I  suppose  to  bo,  that,  during  the  period  of  its  culmi- 
nation, Assyria,  fascinated  the  Hebrew  prophets.  Each 
in  turn  is  moved  to  his  loftiest  utterances  as  he  contem- 
plates its  splendours,  the  vastness  of  its  dominion,  the 
wisdom  of  its  policy,  the  fierceness  of  its  military 
ardour,  the  magnificence  of  its  public  buildings  aud 
works,  its  inexhaustible  wealth,  and  the  luxuriousness 
of  its  civilisation.  Prom  Isaiah  onward,  tiU  "  the  goodly 
fellowship  "  is  well-nigh  complete,  this  vast  Assyrian 
empire,  and  especially  its  capital  city,  drew  and  possessed 
their  thoughts.  There  are  few  grander  poems,  even  in 
the  Old  Testament,  than  the  poems  which  depict  its 
glory  and  foretell  its  doom.  And  Zephaniah,  though  he 
gives  but  three  verses  to  it,  rises  to  the  f  idl  height  of  his 


ZEPHANIAH. 


203 


power  as  ho  handles  this  theme.  There  is  indeed  ahnost 
a  modern  tone  in  the  grapliic  and  picturesque  phrases 
in  which  lie  depicts  the  judgment  which  is  to  fall  on 
the  great  city  in  which  so  many  Hebrew  captives  liad 
wept,  the  exulting  city,  the  impregnable  city,  which 
held  itself  to  be  sacred  and  unrivalled;  in  short,  the 
Paris  of  the  antique  world. 

Drawn  from  the  distant  and  all  but  unknown  Ethiopia 
in  the  south  by  the  attraction  of  his  approaching  theme, 
Zeijhaniah  hastens  to  depict  the  storm  which  was  to 
sweep  over  the  great  northern  empire.'  Assyria,  al- 
though so  strong  and  so  proud  in  its  strength,  is  to  bo 
utterly  laid  waste.  The  mistress  of  tho  world,  the  most 
populous,  warlike,  ambitious,  and  cultivated  of  Eastern 
races,  is  to  be  exterminated.  And  Nineveh,  its  wonder- 
ful capital,  so  massively  built,  so  splendidly  and  curiously 
adorned,  so  secure  in  its  impregnable  defences,  is  to 
become  an  arid  and  barren  waste,  over  wliich  men  will 
pass  without  so  much  as  dreaming  of  the  ruins  and 
treasures  that  lie  beneath  their  feet.  As  he  peers  into 
the  future,  the  progress  of  tliis  incredible  doom — its 
successive  stages  and  salient  features — rise  and  pass 
before  the  prophet's  eyes.  He  sees  the  city,  whicli  now 
exults  in  the  stir  and  tumult  of  her  streets  and  wars, 
which  accomits  of  herself  as  sacred  and  incomparable, 
and  saith  in  her  heart,  "  I,  and  no  other !"  that  is,  "  I 
have  no  equal,  no  rival !" — he  sees  this  proud  inviolable 
city  assaUed,  overcome,  destroyed.  Her  forts  and  walls 
crumble  down.  Herds  crouch  where  once  ran  broad 
streets  loud  with  the  wheels  of  traffic  or  tho  tramp  of 
armies.  Wild  beasts  wander  and  climb  about  tlie  fallen 
stones,  seeking  a  prey  or  finding  a  covert  within  its 
dismantled  walls.  Pelicans  from  the  neighbouring 
marshes  and  hedgehogs  from  tho  adjacent  fields  make 
their  homes  in  the  sculptured  capitals  of  her  fallen 
columns.  Bu'ds  perch  and  sing  on  tho  lintels  of  the 
broken  windows.  The  thresholds  of  house  and  temple  are 
littered  with  heaps  of  rubbish.  The  splendid  marbles  and 
massive  stones  of  its  palaces  have  been  battered  down, 
and  tho  costly  cedar  ceiUugs  and  wainscots  hang  in 
ragged  strips  from  sinking  beams.  And  then  the  sand, 
borne  by  wmds  from  the  deserti,  gradually  buries  the 
wreck  of  former  grandeur,  hiding  every  trace  of  its 
magnificence.  Then  the  grasses  and  nettles  spring  up 
in  tho  sand;  uutU,  at  last,  the  immense  and  stately 
city,  which  long  dominated  the  thought  and  fired  tho 
imagination  of  the  ancient  world,  becomes  a  mere 
jungle,  a  lair  of  wild  beasts  ;  and  the  traveller,  hasten- 
ing by,  hisses  with  scorn  and  swings  his  hand,  as  who 
should  say,  "  Well  she  deserved  her  fate !  may  she 
never  rise  again  !  " 

In  what  sense,  and  to  what  extent,  have  these  "  dooms'" 
on  Philistia  and  Moab,  Ethiopia  and  Assyi'ia,  been  ful- 
filled ?  No  doubt,  in  so  far  as  the  Spirit  by  whom 
Zephauiah  was  inspired  intended  them  to  be  executed 


1  Assyria  was  north-oast  of  Judah  rather  than  norih.  But  pro- 
bably because  the  Assyrian  armies  marched  througli  Syria  and 
the  northern  districts  of  Palestine,  wlten  advancing  against  Jeru- 
salem, the  Hebrew  prophets  commonly  spoke  of  the  Assyrian  as 
"the  Northerner,"  or  as  "  him  of  the  North." 


in  past  ages  of  the  world,  they  have  been  fulfilled,  ful- 
filled to  their  utmost  verge,  although,  except  in  tho  case 
of  Nineveh,  we  cannot  exactly  trace  out  the  historical 
fulfilment.  Speaking  broadly,  and  in  general  terms, 
the  Tract  by  the  Sea,  the  land  of  the  Philistines,  was 
turned  into  a  desert  by  the  successive  uivasions  of  the 
Assyrians,  the  Chaldeans,  the  Egyptians,  the  Persians, 
the  Greeks,  tho  Jews,  and  the  Crusaders.  Much  of 
it,  I  believe,  is  in  rough  pasture  to  this  day,  though 
in  parts  it  is  once  more  cultivated  and  bears  out  its 
ancient  reputation  for  fertility.  The  people  of  Moab 
and  Amnion,  too,  were  at  last,  after  many  vicissitudes, 
conquered  by  the  Jews.  The  rich  pastures  of  their 
downs  have  sunk,  in  many  jilaces,  into  a  region  of 
nettles  and  salt-pits,  although  these  lofty  grassy  downs 
are  still  frequented  by  the  Arabs  and  their  flocks.  But 
neither  Philistia  nor  Moab,  so  far  as  wo  know,  ever 
became  the  permanent  possession  of  the  men  of  Judah, 
and  still  less  have  their  inhabitants  been  incorporated 
with  the  people  of  God.  Preliminary  and  partial  ful- 
filments of  the  prophet's  words  there  have  been ;  but 
the  great,  the  spiritual,  fulfilment  is  yet  to  come.  When, 
at  last,  the  Lord  "  turns  the  captivity  of  Judah,"  when 
tho  Israel,  still  rejected  because  .still  rejecting  the 
Lord's  Anointed,  sliall  be  restored,  then  we  may  expect 
that  all  the  Gentile  races,  of  whom  tho  heathen  of  the 
ancient  world  were  representatives,  will  be  conquered 
and  redeemed,  and  "  all  the  isles  of  the  heathen,  every 
one  from  its  place,  will  worship  Him." 

So,  again,  with  the  doom  on  Cush.  We  have  no 
means  of  verifying,  as  the  gainsayer  has  no  means  of 
disproving,  its  historical  fulfilment.  We  have  reason 
to  believe,  indeed,  that  "the  Cushites  spread  along 
tracts  extending  from  tho  Upper  Nile  to  the  Euphrates 
and  tho  Tigris."  And,  no  doubt,  many  of  them  were 
"slain  by  the  sword"  when  the  Assyrian  empire  was 
destroyed  by  the  Modes  and  the  Babylonians.  But  we 
cannot  point  to  any  definite  period  or  event  in  wliich 
the  prediction  of  Zephaniah  was  fulfilled. 

The  one  doom  which  wo  know  to  have  been  carried 
out  to  tho  very  letter  is  that  on  Nineveh.  "  That 
great  city,"  through  which  Jonah  travelled  a  three  days' 
journey,  was  not  simply  the  largest  city  of  the  ancient 
world.  In  tho  mouth  of  the  Hebrew  prophets,  Nineveh 
was  also  the  name  of  a  district,  twenty-five  miles  long 
by  fifteen  broad,  which  included  four  largo  cities,  be- 
sides villages  and  forts,  within  its  protecting  walls ;  and 
about  six  centuries  before  Christ,  this  vast  populous 
district  was  conquered  and  destroyed  by  tho  Modes 
(under  Cyaxares)  and  tho  Chaldeans  (under  Nabopo- 
lassar,  the  father  of  Nebuchadnezzar).  So  complete 
was  the  destruction,  that,  with  a  startling  abruptness, 
the  great  city  vanished  from  the  face  of  tho  earth,  and 
its  very  ruins  were  hidden  from  the  eyes  of  men.  Only 
two  centuries  afterward,  Xenophon,  in  the  famous  re- 
treat of  the  Ten  Thousand,  passed  over  its  site  without 
so  much  as  learning  its  name,  though  he  hc;ird  some 
dim  tradition  of  its  former  greatness  and  its  fate.  And 
till  thirty  years  ago  it  remained  buried  in  oblivion,  as 
in  sand.     In   1766,  Niebuhr  stood  on  the  bridge   of 


294 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


the  Tigris,  and  gazed  on  some  mounds  on  the  eastern 
bank,  which  ho  took  to  be  acclivities  wrought  by  the  ' 
hand  of  Nature ;  but  it  was  not  till  the  year  1842 
that  Layard,  Rawlinson,  and  Botta  dug  into  these 
mounds,  and  exhumed  and  interpreted  the  remains 
which  tell  the  story  of  the  city's  ancient  greatness 
and  luxury  and  culture  with  a  power  beyond  that  of 
words. 

This  doom,  then,  the  doom  on  Assyria,  was  speedily 


and  litei-aUy  fulfilled.  But,  surely,  a  larger  fulfilment 
awaits  it.  For  lq  Nineveh,  as  in  other  ancient  empires, 
the  Hebrew  prophets  saw  the  representative  for  the 
time  then  present  of  all  the  great  world-powers  which 
exalt  themselves  against  God.  Till  the  kingdoms  of 
this  world  rise  and  merge  into  the  kingdom  of  our  God 
and  of  his  Chi-ist,  the  triumph  of  these  ancient  pro- 
phecies, their  fhial  and  victorious  fulfilment,  will  not 
have  come. 


ANIMALS  OF   THE   BIBLE. 

BY    THE    EEV.    W.    HOUGHTON,    M.A.,    F.L.S.,    EECTOK    OF    PKESTON,    SALOP. 


THE    BEARDED   VULTITEE. 

j^^°^^HE  bearded  vulture, or  Idmmergeier  ("lamb- 
vulture'")  of  the  Germans  (so  called  from 
the  destruction  the  bird  causes  amongst 
sheep  and  lambs),  the  Gypaiitus  barhatus 
of  ornithologists,  is  with  much  reason  identified  with 
the  Hebrew  word  i^eres,  mentioned  amongst  the  unclean 
birds  in  Lev.  xi.  13,  and  Deut.  xiv.  12,  translated  in 
our  version  by  the  word  "  ossifrage,"  i.e.  "bone-breaker." 
Tlio  Hebrew  word  is  from  a  root  meaning  "  to  break," 
and  the  bearded  vulture  well  merits  this  name.  Mr. 
W.  H.  Simpson  has  given  an  interesting  account  of  this 
bird's  habits  in  the  Ibis  (vol.  ii.,  p.  282).  Ho  says,  "  He 
is  not  a  demonstrative  bird  like  the  griffon,  who  may 
be  seen  sailing  about  at  a  great  height  in  the  air,  some- 
times alone,  but  more  often  in  troops  of  from  half  a 
dozen  to  fifty,  revolving  in  endless  circles  round  each 
other,  that  no  corner  may  remain  unseen.  The  liimmer- 
geior,  on  the  contrary,  may  be  observed  floating  slowly 
at  a  uniform  level,  close  to  the  cliffs  of  some  deep 
ravine,  wliero  his  shadow  is  perhaps  projected  on  the 
wall-like  rocks.  .  .  Marrow-bones  are  the  dainties 
he  loves  the  best ;  and  when  the  other  vultures  have 
picked  the  flesh  off  any  animal,  he  comes  in  at  the  end 
of  the  feast  and  swallows  the  bones,  or  breaks  them  and 
swallows  the  pieces,  if  ho  cannot  get  the  marrow  out 
otherwise.  The  bones  he  cracks  by  taking  them  to  a 
groat  height  and  letting  thorn  fall  upon  a  stone.  This 
is  probably  tlie  bird  that  dropped  a  tortoise  on  the 
bald  head  of  poor  old  ^schylus.  Not,  however,  that 
he  restricts  liimself  or  the  huge  black  infant  that  he 
and  his  mate  are  bringing  up  in  one  of  the  many  holes 
with  which  the  limestone  precipice  abounds,  to  marrow, 
turtle,  bones,  and  similar  delicacies  ;  neither  lamb,  hare, 
nor  kid  comes  amiss  to  liim,  though  his  power  of  claw 
and  bo.ak  being  feeble  for  so  large  a  bird,  he  cannot 
tear  his  meat  like  other  vultures  and  eagles.  To  make 
amends  for  this,  his  powers  of  deglutition  are  enor- 
mous." Mr.  Simpson,  who  was  travelling  in  Greece, 
was  told  by  a  native  that  an  old  axe-head  had  been 
found  in  this  l)ird's  stomach,  and  humorously  remarks 
that  the  meeting  of  the  marrow-bones  and  cleaver  must 
have  been  veiy  affecting. 

This  vulture  has   the   character   of  attacking   such 


animals  as  lambs,  kids,  and  even  sometimes  men,  and 
trymg  to  force  them  down  the  cliffs.  Mr.  Gould  says 
the  lammergeior  "  refuses  flesh  in  a  state  of  putrefac- 
tion unless  sharjily  pressed  by  hunger ;  hence  Nature 
has  limited  this  sjjecies  as  to  numbers ;  while  on  the 
other  hand,  to  the  vultures  who  are  destined  to  clear 
the  earth  from  animal  matter  in  a  state  of  decomposi- 
tion, and  thus  render  the  utmost  service  to  man  in  the 
countries  wliere  they  abound,  she  has  given  an  almost 
illimitable  increase."  This  bu-d  is  not  common  in 
Palestine,  though  most  of  the  ravines  are  peopled  by  a 
pair,  and  one  or  two,  according  to  Tristram,  may  be 
observed  in  every  day's  journey.  The  same  writer 
repeatedly  watched  a  pair  of  lammergeiers  who  had  an 
ep'ie  close  to  the  camp,  passing  and  repassing  in  front 
of  the  tents  for  hours  at  a  time,  invariably  dropping 
something  upon  a  smooth  ledge  of  rock  hard  by.  For 
several  days  he  imagined  these  were  sticks  the  birds 
were  cari-ying  to  their  nests ;  but  ultimately  he  discovered 
they  were  picking  up  snakes  and  tortoises,  whose  bodies 
and  shells  they  were  thus  trying  to  bruise  and  break 
in  pieces. 

rALCONID.i;. 

The  falcon  tribe  is  very  numerously  represented  in 
Palestine,  some  of  the  species  occurring  more  abundantly 
than  others.  Of  the  eagles  the  following  kinds  have 
been  observed  : — Aqtiila  chrysaetus  or  golden  eagle,  not  ■ 
common,  being  found  for  the  most  part  in  the  northern 
mountain  districts  ;  the  A.  mogilnik  or  imperial  eagle, 
not  quite  so  uncommon  as  the  last  named,  a  noble  bird, 
easily  recognised  by  its  dark  plumage  and  white  shoul- 
ders ;  the  tawny  eagle  {A.  nwvioides) ;  the  spotted  or 
rough-footed  eagle  (.4.  ncevia),  an  occasional  though  very 
rare  vi.sitor  to  our  own  country;  and  Bonelli's  eagle 
[A.  BonelKi).  These  three  last  species  are  said  to  be 
tolerably  common  in  Palestine,  but  nowhere  in  great 
numbers  together ;  but  by  far  the  most  abundant  of  all 
the  eagles  is  the  Circai'tus  cinereus,  or  short-toed  eagle, 
allied  to  the  C.  brachydactylus,  the  Jean-le-blanc  eagle 
(Buffon)  of  the  fir  forests  of  Europe.  Of  this  short- 
toed  species  Dr.  Tristram  says  there  are  probably  twice 
as  many  in  Palestine  as  of  all  the  other  species  to- 
gether. The  buzzard-like  booted  eagle  (Aquilaj'iennata) 
also  occurs.     Of  the  genus  Mihms  (kite)  three  species 


ANIMALS    OF    THE    BIBLE. 


295 


have  been  noticed — viz.,  the  common  red  kite  or  glead 
of  this  country  (Milvus  regalis),  the  M.  niger  or  black 
kite,  and  the  M.  ^gyptius  of  Egypt  and  Arabia.  The 
osprey  or  fishing  hawk  [Pandion  haliaetus)  occurs  in 
small  numbers  ;  thi'eo  species  of  buznard,  of  which  the 
Buieo  ferox  is  the  most  common,  are  found ;  and  three 
of  the  large  falcons,  the  peregrine  {Falco  peregrinus), 
the  magnificent  sakk'r  {F.  saker),  and  the  lanner  (F. 
lauarius),  summer  visitors  to  Palestine,  too  sparingly 
scattered.  Dr.  Tristram  says,  to  claim  a  distinct  notice 
among  the  unclean  birds.  Of  the  harriers  (Circus) 
Dr.  Tristram  says  four  species  are  found ;  he  speaks  of 
the  marsh  (C  curuginosus  and  the  hen  (C.  cyaneus) 
harriers'  as  very  common;  ho  thinks  that  the  honey 
buzzard  {Pernis  apivorus)  and  the  goshawk  (Astur 
palumbarius)  should  also  bo  included  amongst  the 
diurnal  raptores  of  Syria. 


articles  of  diet : — Nes}ier,peres,  'ozniyydh,  dddh,  ayydh, 
nets,  and  rdlchdm ;  the  first  two  and  the  last  have  been 
already  considered,  and  referred  with  much  probability 
to  the  gi-iffon  vulture,  or  any  of  the  large  eagles,  the 
lammergeier,  and  the  Egyptian  vulture  respectively;  it 
remains  for  us  to  consider  the  remaining  names. 

'Ozniijydli  is  rendered  " ospray "  in  our  English 
version  in  the  only  two  passages  where  the  word  occurs 
(Lev.  xi.  13 ;  Dent.  xiv.  12).  The  Septuagiut  and  tho 
Vulgate  give  aKialeros  (haliaiius),  "  sea-eagle,"  whence 
our  translators'  bh-d,  tho  "  ospray."  EtymologicaUy 
the  Hebrew  word  points  to  some  bird  either  of  strong 
sight  or  great  strength.  The  haliaetus  of  the  old 
versions  is  no  doubt  identical  with  the  halaitius  of 
Pliny  {Nat.  Hist.,  x.  3),  who  accui-ately  describes  the 
habits  of  the  osprey.  "It  poises  itself  aloft,  and  the 
moment  it  catches  sight  of  a  fish  in  the   sea  below. 


BATTLE-FIELD,    FKOM    THE    ASSYRIAN    SCULPTURES. 

To  tbe  right  is  a  vulture  pickiDg  out  the  eyes  of  a  dead  soldier ;  to  the  left  is  the  emblem  of  the  God  Asshur ;    the  figure  in  the  circle 

is  shooting  an  arrow  against  the  enemies  of  Assyria. 


Of  the  hawks  or  smaller  birds  of  prey  several  species 
are  found ;  our  own  pretty  little  kestrel  or  windhover 
(Tinnunculus  alaudarius)  is  the  commonest  of  all;  the 
T.  cenchris  is  only  a  spring  and  summer  visitor ;  the 
common  sparrow-hawk  of  our  own  country  [Accipiter 
nisus)  is  plentiful,  its  favourite  food  being  marsh-spar- 
rows and  turtle-doves  ;  the  little  Eastern  sparrow-hawk 
{A.  brevipes)  occurs,  but  not  in  great  numbers ;  the 
hobby  (Falco  suhbuteo),  the  red-legged  hobby  {Falco 
rufipes,  Jen.,  Brit.  Vert.  An.),  the  Falco  Eleonorw  and  the 
black- shouldered  hawk  (Elanus  cceridetis).  occur  here 
and  there  in  pairs  or  small  parties  in  woods  and  olive- 
gardens.  The  following  Hebrew  words  occur  as  desig- 
nating different  kinds  of  diurnal  bu-ds  of  prey  which 
the  Jews  were  commanded  to  hold  in  abomination  as 


'  This  word  (also  writ*-en  harler),  when  applied  to  hare-hunting 
hounds,  is  clearly  derived  froin  the  animal  pursued  ;  when  it  desig- 
nates the  family  of  diurnal-raptorial  birds  is  from  the  A.  S.  hcrgian 
herian,  "to  plunder,"  "  to  vex."  See  Shnksp.,  ^nt.  and  Clco.,  iii.  3^ 

"  I  repent  me  miich 
That  I  so  harried  bim ;" 
and  compare  "  harass." 


pounces  headlong  upon  it,  and  cleaving  the  water  with 
its  breast,  carries  off  its  booty."  The  osprey  occurs 
near  the  coast  and  the  rocky  parts  of  tho  shore,  but 
not  in  very  great  numbers,  the  Lake  of  Gennesaret 
and  tho  Jordan  valley  being  avoided  by  it.  While 
this  bird  may  be  denoted  by  the  Hebrew  name — and 
this  has  the  support  of  tho  two  old  ver.sions — it  is  pro- 
bable it  included  other  strong-winged  raptorial  bu'ds, 
such  as  some  of  the  eagles.  Dr.  Tristram  thinks  the 
short-toed  eagle  (Circaiitus  cinereus),  so  common  in 
Palestine  at  this  day,  may  possibly  be  included.  This 
is  a  largo  and  bold  bird,  with  owl-like  eyes,  and  feet 
and  toes  covered,  chain-armour  fashion,  ^vith  hard 
reticulated  scales,  which  serve  to  protect  it  against 
the  bite  of  venomous  snakes,  upon  which,  with  lizards 
and  frogs,  it  feeds.  "  It  is  by  preference  a  reptile 
feeder,  and  is  consequently  more  scarce  in  winter,  when 
it  probably  withdraws  into  the  Ai'abian  deserts  for 
two  or  three  months,  during  which  the  snakes  and 
lizards  hybemato  in  the  colder  regions  of  Palestine.  It 
remains,  however,  on  the  coast  and  plains,  where  there 
are  abundance  of  frogs  to  be  had  at  all  seasons.     I  do 


296 


THE    BIBLE  EDUCATOE. 


not  know  a  more  maguificent-looking  bird,  as  it  sits 
with  its  great  flat  head  bent  down  on  its  shoulders,  its 
huge  yell  J  w  eyes  glaring  around,  and  the  bright  spotting 
of  its  breast  and  abdomen  as  distinct  as  that  of  a 
missel-thrush.  It  is  very  noisy,  and  always  betrays 
the  neighbourhood  of  its  nest  by  the  loud  harsh  scream 
with  which  the  male  and  female  pursue  each  other, 
rising  into  the  air  and  making  short  cii-cling  flights. 


ciaUy  designated  by  the  Hebrew  terms  dddh,  or  dayydh, 
and  ayijdh  ;  the  dddh  is  mentioned  in  the  list  of  unclean 
birds  (Lev.  xi.  14;  Deut.  xiv.  13')  and  in  Isa.  xxxiv. 
15;  "There  shall  the  dayyoth  [A.  V.,  'vultures']  be 
gathered  together."  The  root  of  the  word  points  to 
some  "  swiftly  flying  "  bird.  There  is  a  similar  word 
in  Arabic — viz.,  Kdayah,  which  is  to  this  day  the 
vernacular  for  "the   kite"   in   North   Africa.     Many 


OSPBET    (PANDION    HALIAETUS). 


after  which  they  suddenly  drop  down,  one  to  the  nest, 
the  other  to  a  neighbouring  post  of  observ.ation.  Tliey 
will  often  dash  down  from  the  clifi:s  to  the  fields  below, 
swoop  for  a  few  minutes  like  a  harrier,  and  then,  seizing 
a  snake,  set  down  and  occupy  some  minutes  in  killing 
the  reptile,  after  which  they  carry  the  prize  away  in 
their  claws,  not,  like  most  eagles,  devouring  it  on  the 
spot.  The  nest  is  ujion  the  rooks  or  in  trees,  and  it 
rears  one,  rarely  two  young."    (Nat.  Hist.  Bib.,  p.  184.) 

If  this  eagle  was  as  common  iu  Biblical  times  as  at 
present,  it  would  have  very  probably  been  included 
under  one  or  otlier  of  the  Hebrew  names  of  the  diurnal 
birds  of  prey. 

The  kites  are  by  some  writers  supposed  to  be  espe- 


versions  agree  in  rendering  the  word  by  a  kite,  as  does' 
Buxtorf  in  his  Chald.  and  Talmud  Lexicon ;  when 
Wdayah  is  used  without  the  epithet  "red"  (with 
epithet  "  red "  it  refers  to  the  Milvus  regalis),  the 
black  kite  (M.  ater)  is  intended.  This  latter  bird  is 
extremely  common  in  Palestine,  excepting  during  the 
winter  months.  It  is  allowed  to  fly  about  unmolested, 
being  a  useful  scavenger.  The  ayydh,  also  by  some 
supposed  to  denote  some  species  of  kite,  is  men- 
tioned only  in  Lev.  xi.  14,  Deut.  xiv.  13,  amongst 
the  unclean  birds,  and  in  Job  xxviii.  7,  where  it 
is   rendered   "vulture:"    "There  is  a  path  which  no 

'  In  this  passage  r?l<"l  (ruah)  occurs,  i  by  an  error  for  •^. 


DIFFICULT  PASSAGES  EXPLAINED. 


297 


bird  of  prey  knoweth,  and  which  the  ayydh's  eye  hath 
not  seen."  This  verse  is  part  of  a  beautiful  and 
very  poetical  description  of  a  miuo  whence  tlio  labour 
of  man  extracts  various  motals ;  the  deep  recesses  are 
unknown  to  the  bird  of  prey ;  and  even  the  keen  sight 
of  the  kite,  proverbially  distinguished  for  peculiar 
keenness  of  vision,  is  unable  to  see  the  hidden  recesses. 
The  singidarly  easy  and  graceful  fiiglit  of  the  common 
red  kite  must  have  attracted  the  attention  of  the  ancient 
people  of  Israel,  as  it  has  done  that  of  more  modem 
nations ;  the  bird  seems  to  glide  smoothly  along  with 
little  muscular  exertion,  now  sailing  in  circles,  govern- 
ing the  curve  with  its  forked  rudder-like  tail,  now 
stopping  and  remaining  stationary,  with  tail  widely 
expanded.  Indeed,  its  gliiliug  smoothly  in  flight  is 
expressed  in  the  old  word  glead  or  glede,  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  glida,  from  the  verb  glidan,  "  to  glide."  This 
bird  is  common  in  Palestine  in  the  winter,  but  in  the 
summer  it  leaves  the  lowlands  for  the  mountains,  to 
breed.  Dr.  Tristram's  party  found  it  breeding  in 
Mount  Carmel  and  in  the  hUls  of  Northern  Galilee. 
It  received  its  specific  name  of  reyalis  (royal)  from 
the  circumstance  that  King  Louis  XVI.  was  very  fond 
of  flying  highly-trained  falcons  called  "  launers "  at 
this  noble  bird,  with  whicli  the  orduiary  peregrine  was 
hardly  able  to  contend.     The  Hebrew  word  dddh,  how- 


ever, is  generic,  as  is  evident  from  the  expression  "  after 
its  kind,"  and  probably  is  used  more  extensively  still, 
so  that  perhaps  buzzards  and  hai-i-icrs  may  also  bo 
included. 

The  various  hawks  or  smaller  birds  of  prey  seem  to 
be  denoted  by  the  Hebrew  name  nets,  occurring  iu  the 
list  of  unclean  bii-ds  (Lev.  xi.  16 ;  Deut.  xiv.  15),  where 
again  the  expression  "  after  its  kind  "  clearly  indicates 
that  the  term  is  generic.  The  passage  in  Job  (xxxix. 
26),  "Doth  the  hawk  fly  by  thy  wisdom,  and  stretch 
her  wings  towards  the  south  ?  "  appears  to  refer  to  tho 
migratory  habits  of  the  hawks,  uiost  of  which  in 
Palestine  are  migrants  from  the  south,  retm-ning 
thither  for  their  mntor  sojourn.  The  kestrel  is  ono  of 
tho  few  that  remain  iu  the  country  all  the  year  round, 
whUe  the  very  closely  allied  smaller  species  {Tinium- 
culiis  cenchris)  is  only  a  spring  and  siunmer  visitant. 
This  little  bird  frequents  the  towers  of  mosques  and 
churches,  or  the  roofs  of  quarried  caves.  Dr.  Tristram 
observed  hundreds  about  the  old  English  chui-ch  at 
Lydda,  said  to  have  been  built  by  Richard  Coeur  do 
Lion  ;  it  is  entirely  insectivorous  in  its  habits,  aud  may 
often  be  .seen  pursuing  large  insects,  as  cockchafers, 
towards  evening.  The  claws  in  this  species  are  white, 
iu  tho  kestrel  they  are  black,  a  distinction  which  the 
Arabs  have  not  failed  to  observe. 


DIFFICULT     PASSAGES     EXPLAINED. 

THE  FIEST  EPISTLE  TO  THE  THESSALONIANS. 

BY     THE     REV.     W.     EENHAM,      B.D.,     VICAK     OF      MARGATE. 


<  S  tlie  general  scope  and  contents  of  the 
epistle  will  be  considered  elsewhere,  wo 
need  only  say  here  that  this  is  the  first,  in 
order  of  time,  of  St.  Paul's  epistles.  The 
Apostle's  visit  to  Thessalonica  is  recorded  in  Acts  xvii. 
1 — 10.  Ho  passed  from  thence  to  Berea,  to  Athens, 
and  to  Corinth  successively  (Acts  xvii.  10 ;  xviii.  1). 
At  Corinth  ho  wrote  the  two  Epistles  to  the  Thes- 
salonians. 

i.  3.  The  first  pa.ssage  on  which  we  remark  is  chap.  i. 
3.  The  Apostlo  is  fuU  of  rejoicing  on  account  of  their 
"work  of  faith,  labour  of  love,  and  patience  of  hope." 
He  means  that  their  faith  is  not  dead  and  lifeless,  but 
that  It  Is  a  working  faith ;  that  their  love  is  not  mere 
sentiment,  but  moves  them  to  labour  for  God ;  that  their 
hope  is  not  feeble  and  soon  cast  down,  but  patient. 
How  he  knows  all  this,  having  spent  so  short  a  time 
with  them,  we  sliaJl  see  from  what  follows,  especially 
from  chap.  iii.  6. 

Let  us  remark  in  passing  that  the  expression  "  God 
and  our  Father  "  is  a  Greek  idiom,  the  English  equiva- 
lent to  which  is  "  God  our  Faiher." 

i.  4.  Their  "election."  The  Apostle  infers  that  they 
have  been  chosen  or  selected  as  God's  people,  from  the 
fact  that  they  hiivo  not  only  received  the  Gospel  call 
Cver.  5),  but  have  believed  it,  have  experienced  its  power. 


have  been  sanctified  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  havo 
much  assurance — i.e.,  strong  confidence  iu  God's  mercy. 
There  is  an  exact  parallel  in  2  Thess.  ii.  13,  14. 

i.  6.  Their  "  affliction"  arose  from  persecution  of  the 
Jews  ;  and  this  affliction  went  hand  in  hand  with  "  joy." 
For  "the  suffering  that  comes  from  without,"  as  ha» 
been  beautifully  said,  "cannot  depress  the  siririt  of  a 
man  who  is  faitlrful  iu  a  good  cause.  It  is  only  when 
'  from  within  are  fears '  that  the  mind  is  enslaved.  .  .  . 
Tho  servant  of  Christ  feels  a  sort  of  exhilaration  at  the 
contrast  between  himself  aud  tlie  world,  similar  to  that 
of  tho  soldier  on  the  battle-field  in  the  presence  of 
danger  and  death.  He  is  not  like  another  man,  but  at 
once  above  and  below  others ;  he  has  the  sentence  of 
death  in  himself,  aud  is  yet  more  than  a  conqueror." 

ii.  3.  The  Apostlo  tells  them  that  the  reason  of  his 
fearlessness  in  preaching  was  that  he  had  no  inward 
misgivings  arising  from  base  or  unholy  motives.  He 
had  the  courage  which  a  good  conscience  gives.  Appa- 
rently this  has  reference  to  some  form  of  evU  prevalent 
in  that  day,  in  which  professed  spirituality  was  joined 
with  licentiousness.  He  upbraids  it  elsewhere  in  the 
false  teachers,  aud  asserts  his  own  freedom  from  it 
here. 

ii.  8.  "Our  own  souls"  —  i.e.,  "lives"'  —  which  the 
preachers  were  ready  to  sacrifice  as  martyrs  for  their 


298 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


hearers'  sake.  It  is  hardly  needful  to  remind  the  reader 
that  St.  Paul's  assertion  of  his  care  and  tender  solicitude 
is  no  sellish  boasting,  but  uttered  to  magnify  his  oflBee, 
and  to  stop  gainsaying  mouths,  that  the  cause  of  the 
Gospel  might  not  suffer. 

ii.  1-1.  Ho  tells  them  that  they  were  but  followers 
of  the  mother  church  of  Judaea  in  having  to  bear  tho 
persecution  of  their  countrymen.  And  hereupon  ho 
digresses  from  his  subject,  as  is  so  frequently  the  case, 
to  speak  of  the  Jews  and  their  hatred  to  the  Gospel. 
"  They  please  not  God "  (rather,  they  are  such  as  are 
displeasing  to  God),  and  they  are  also  the  enemies  of 
man  (ver.  15).  And  now  they  are  filling  up  their  sins  ; 
for  having  begun  by  rejection  of  tho  Gospel,  they  aro 
now  stririug  to  hinder  it  in  others.  This  is  the  history 
of  sin.  In  the  beginnings  of  evil  men  have  hard  work 
to  overcome  the  voice  of  conscience,  but  as  it  goes  on 
they  aro  bound  under  a  curse,  and  seem  to  writhe  in 
the  grasp  of  the  enemy,  as  knowing  that  destruction  is 
impending,  and  that  they  cannot  ward  it  off. 

There  is  one  point  to  bo  noticed  in  tho  concluding 
words  of  the  chapter.  This  was  written  before  the 
destruction  of  Jerusalem,  but  tho  Apostle  saw  plainly 
that  the  catastrophe  was  now  inevitable.  The  people 
oven  now,  as  we  read  in  the  narrative  of  Josephus,  were 
in  a  state  of  frightful  anarchy  and  misery.  The  wrath 
was  already  "  come,"  but  its  bitterness  was  not  past. 

If  it  be  asked  how  do  we  reconcile  the  stern  words 
here  with  such  passages  as  Rom.  x.  I,  the  answer  is  not 
difficult  to  find.  He  was  angry,  as  his  Lord  before  him, 
at  the  hardness  of  their  hearts  ;  but  there  was  a  deep  love 
and  pity  underlying  this  anger,  deep  down  in  his  heart, 
and  often  welling  up  and  overpowering  the  sterner 
feeling  (cf.  St.  Matt,  xxiii.  35—37). 

Before  passing  on  we  may  speak  of  one  subject  which 
has  a  great  interest  in  early  Church  history,  and  which 
is  referred  to  in  this  first  Christian  epistle.  I  mean  the 
persecutions  to  which  tho  Christians  were  subjected. 
There  was  a  time,  though  it  was  short,  when  tho  Chui-ch 
was  in  favour  with  the  Jewish  people  (Acts  ii.  47).  But 
this  could  not  endure.  The  priests  and  rulers  foresaw 
that  the  Gospel  would  militate  against  then-  worldly  in- 
terests, and  the  preaching  of  Stephen  that  the  Temi)lo 
must  give  way  to  a  building  not  made  with  hands — the 
Catholic  Church — was  the  beginning  of  a  continuous 
warfare.  When  tho  Gospel  came  into  contact  with  the 
heathen  world,  tho  fierce  fanaticism  of  tho  Jews  again 
encountered  it,  and  they  made  it  their  business  to  rouse 
the  fanaticism  of  the  heathen,  hardly  less  fierce  when 
once  awakened.  For  Christianity  was  not  contented,  as 
other  religions  had  been,  to  let  things  alone.  It  pro- 
claimed uncompromising  war  against  evil  everywhere, 
and  declared  that  its  purpose  was  to  convert  tho  world. 
This  is  why  even  good  emperors  became  bitter  perse- 
cutors. They  believed  that  reasons  of  state  forbad  the 
toleration  of  a  faith  which  made  war  upon  all  other 
faiths  ;  and  the  ignorant  mass  of  people,  as  usual,  were 
ready  to  foUow  their  loaders  into  unreasoning  cruelty 
and  passion.  Fanatic  priests  and  idol-craftsmen  feared 
for  their  gains ;  men  of  tho  world,  who  cared  nothing 


about  the  idols,  were  angry  at  the  discussions  in  their 
families  between  believers  and  unbelievers ;  the  ignorant 
multitude  were  furious  on  being  told  that  they  were  to 
bo  enthralled  in  bondage,  and  to  lose  the  pleasures  and 
enjoyments  of  life.  The  new  faith,  it  is  true,  was  not 
yet  made  the  subject  of  a  state  persecution,  for  it 
did  not  yet  seem  formidable  enough  to  be  made  of 
importance ;  but  local  persecution  went  on  everywhere 
unceasingly. 

ii.  18.  "  Satan  hindered  us."  All  the  Apostles'  move- 
ments were  overruled  by  God  (Acts  xvi.  6,  7).  Tet 
hero  St.  Paul  says  that  he  was  hindered  from  going  to 
the  Thessalouians  by  Satan.  Something  evil,  we  know 
not  what — opposition  of  some  kind,  brought  about  by 
the  malice  of  the  devil — stood  in  his  way.  We  reconcile 
tho  two  statements  by  remembering  that  though  the 
immediate  cause  of  the  hindrance  to  the  Apostle's 
present  disappointment  was  Satan,  God  overruled  it, 
as  He  does  all  things  to  those  who  love  him,  for  good. 
He  tm-ns  the  wrath  of  man  to  his  praise,  and  shows 
forth  his  power  in  overcoming  all  opposition. 

ii.  19.  "  In  the  presence,"  &c-  He  means  that  his 
converts  will  be  his  crown  of  rejoicing  in  the  day  when 
Christ  shall  appear  in  his  glory. 

iii.  1.  It  is  a  matter  of  some  interest  to  compare 
this  passage  with  the  narrative  of  tho  Acts.  There 
(xvii.  II,  15)  we  read  that  St.  Paul  loft  Bcroea  alone, 
sending  a  message  to  SOas  and  Timothous  to  join  him 
with  all  speed  at  Athens.  But  from  the  verse  before 
us  it  appears  that  in  his  anxiety  to  hear  news  of  his 
Thessalonian  ehOdren,  he  either  countermanded  this 
direction,  and  sent  a  message  to  Timothy  to  go  to 
Thessalonica  first,  or  on  Timothy's  arrival  at  Athens, 
sent  him  immediately  back  on  tho  same  errand,  and  was 
left  at  Athens  alone.  If  this  was  tho  case,  the  brief 
meeting  at  Athens  is  passed  over  in  the  Acts,  which 
tells  us  that  the  re-imion  took  place  at  Corinth  (xviii.  5). 

iv.  4.  Much  difference  of  opinion  exists  respecting 
the  Apostle's  expression,  "possess  his  vessel."  Some 
writers,  as  Dean  Alf  ord,  Jowett,  and  Bishop  EUicott,  in- 
interiiret  it  as  of  the  wife.  Others,  as  Dr.  Vaughan, 
Conybcaro  and  Howson,  and  Bishop  Wordsworth,  make 
it  the  body ;  and  this  opinion  wo  prefer.  The  word 
"  possess  "  does  not  express  the  force  of  the  original,  which 
signifies  "  acquire,"  "  gain  possession  of,"  and  the  sense 
therefore  will  be  that  every  man  must  acquire  the 
mastery  of  his  body — by  continued  discipline  must  get 
it  back  from  sin  into  his  own  power  (cf .  1  Cor.  ix.  27). 
Tho  body  must  be  mastered  thus,  not  given  up  to  the 
lust  of  concupiscence — i.e.,  to  lawless  and  ungoverned 
passion. 

It  was  needful  to  dwell  strongly  on  this,  because 
sinful  lusts  were  so  common  among  tho  Greeks  as  to  be 
regarded  as  not  sinful  at  all.  Parents  made  fight  of 
them  in  their  children  ;  moralists  encouraged  them. 

iv.  5.  "  The  GeutUos  "  here  are  unbelievers,  as  opposed 
to  Christians  (cf.  1  Cor.  xii.  2). 

iv.  6.  The  words  "  in  any  matter  "  should  read  "  in  the 
matter" — i.e.,  in  the  particular  matter  under  notice, 
thus  decorously  hinted  at,  and  not  named. 


DIFFICULT  PASSAGES  EXPLAINED. 


299 


iv.  9.  ■•  Te  need  not,"  because  theii-  actions  proved 
that  they  had  learned  the  divine  lesson  effectually. 

iv.  11.  Wo  have  here  a  hint  of  one  of  the  evils  which 
troubled  the  Thessalonian  Church — naui(;ly,  restlessness, 
the  spirit  of  disorder.  In  the  first  excitement  of  their 
conversion,  apparently  tho  new  believers  had  not  accu- 
rately measured  their  position  as  regards  the  world. 
Some  among  them  already  looked  upon  themselves  as 
raised  above  their  fellow-men  into  a  supernatural  state. 
They  left  their  daily  employments,  and  looked  so  confi- 
dently for  the  speedy  coming  of  Christ  to  judgment,  that 
their  only  doubt  was  as  to  their  departed  friends  having 
a  share  iu  the  victory.  Accordingly  wo  have  here,  made 
yet  more  emphatic  iu  the  Second  Epistle,  an  exhortation 
to  them  to  bo  quiet,  and  do  their  work  steadily,  and 
work  honestly  towards  those  \(i^c  jre  without — i.e.,  the 
heathen. 

iv.  13.  He  now  passes  to  a  subject  of  surpassing 
interest — tho  state  of  the  dead.  "  Leave  to  tho  world 
which  knew  not  Christ,"  ho  says,  "  that  sorrow  whicli 
has  no  hope.  For  as  surely  as  Jesus  died  and  rose 
again,  so  surely  shall  the  sleep  of  his  people  have  an 
awaking."  The  details  of  the  passage  before  us,  however, 
are  by  far  the  most  difficult  in  the  epistle.  We  have 
first  to  consider  what  is  meant  by  the  coming  of  Christ. 
One  view,  and  that  the  most  generally  received,  is  that 
the  Apostle  at  this  time  expected  the  end  of  the  world 
speedily,  and  before  his  death  ;  but  that  ho  modified  his 
expectation  as  time  went  on,  until  he  exclaimed  at  last,  "I 
am  now  ready  to  be  offei-ed,  and  the  time  of  my  departure 
is  at  hand."  It  may  be  so,  but  it  does  not  seem  to  us 
probable.  The  Apostle  shows  in  more  places  than  one 
that  ho  is  in  constant  expectation  of  death,  and  in  the 
Epistle  to  the  PhiUppians  speaks  of  departing  and  being 
"  with  Christ,  which  is  far  better." 

Let  it  be  remembered  that  tho  Thossalonians  were 
acquainted  with  tho  Jewish  Scri2)tures,  and  believed  in 
their  inspiration.  They  knew,  therefore,  that  the  De- 
liverer of  mankind  was  also  the  King  of  Israel.  They 
believed  that  his  resurrection  had  proved  Him  to  be  so, 
and  that  His  pom-ing  forth  of  the  Spirit  at  Pentecost  was 
an  assurance  of  His  abiding  presence.  Then  it  followed 
that  He  was  to  be  manifested  as  tho  King  of  all  tho 
earth,  putting  down  evil  and  establishing  righteousness. 
They  knew  that  Christ  himself  had  declared  that  He 
would  so  come  before  his  own  generation  should  pass 
away.  St.  Paul,  therefore,  was  only  taking  for  granted 
truth  which  they  already  knew  when  he  spoke  of  the 
coming  day  of  the  Lord ;  and  when  he  spoke  of  tho 
wrath  falling  upon  the  Jews,  he  identified  this  as  part  of 
the  work  of  that  great  day.  He  was  only  follovring  tho 
example  of  Joel,  and  Isaiah,  and  Ezekiel  when  ho  regarded 
all  great  events  as  parts  of  the  one  appearing  or  day  of 
tho  Lord,  though  they  might  bo  separated  from  ono 
another  by  years.  And  tho  fall  of  Jerusalem,  the  utter 
uprooting  of  the  ancient  Church  of  God,  was  the  day 
of  the  Lord  which  he  had  especially  iu  his  mind;  and 
yet  it  was  only  one  of  a  series  of  events  which  shall 
follow  age  after  age  until  the  final  consummation  come. 
Whether  ho  should  live  to  see  that  catastrophe  he  knew 


not ;  liis  Lord  had  said  it  should  come  in  that  generation, 
but  he  left  this  to  God,  only  speaking  of  himself,  as  we 
should  aU  do,  as  "  we  that  are  alive." 

The  imagery  with  which  he  clothes  his  vision  is  taken 
from  our  Lord's  own  words,  and  surely  the  trumpet' 
did  sound,  and  those  who  had  ears  to  hear  did  hear  it 
(cf.  Zeph.  i.  14—16;  Zech.  ix.  14;  Matt.  xxiv.  31). 
And  they  should  not  lose  the  vision  of  glory  who  had 
fallen  asleep  in  Him  ;  for  they  all  live  iu  Him,  and  there- 
fore must  partake  in  all  liis  victories.  We  who  live  to 
see  them  on  earth  shall  not  prevent  (i.e.,  get  advantage 
over)  them  that  are  asleep.  All  alike  would  share  the 
same  blessedness. 

Tlie  words  "to  meet  the  Lord  in  tho  air"  seem  in- 
tended to  discourage  the  camal  notion  of  His  coming 
down  as  an  earthly  king,  to  reign  visibly  on  the  earth. 
His  people  will  meet  Him 

"  Above  tlie  emoke  aud  Btir  of  tliia  dim  spot 
"Which  men  call  earth." 

Earth  is  no  homo  for  those  who  believe  in  Christ.  Their 
citizenship  is  in  heaven. 

As  if  further  to  show  that  this  judgment-day  of  the 
Lord  was  not  to  be  the  final  consummation,  he  exliorts 
them  not  to  let  the  expectation  of  it  unsettle  their 
minds,  and  cause  them  to  neglect  their  daily  duties. 
And  in  the  Second  Epistle  he  reiterates  his  exhortation 
with  increased  emphasis. 

v.  1.  Why  ha  vo  the  Thessalonians  "no  need"  that  he 
should  write  of  the  times  and  tho  seasons  ?  Because 
they  knew  that  the  Father  had  kept  them  in  his  own 
power  (Acts  i.  7).  The  principles  were  already  laid 
before  them  ;  the  details  were  for  time  to  make  known. 
Let  the  day  of  tho  Lord  bo  when  it  would,  it  would  be 
terrible  to  those  living  iu  sin,  but  not  so  to  the  children 
of  the  light.  On  this  expression  see  Luke  xvi.  8 ;  John 
xii.  35,  86  ;  Eph.  v.  8. 

V.  8.  The  children  of  the  day  have  once  for  all  put 
on-  the  Christian  armour,  and  renounced  their  former 
sins.  The  spiritual  armour  in  the  present  allegory  is 
somewhat  different  from  that  in  Eph.  vi.  11,  ff.  Here  the 
Apostle  simply  declares  that  the  three  Chi'istian  graces 
—faith,  lovo,  hope — form  the  defensive  armour  of  the 
Christian.  For  "  the  figures  of  Scripture  aro  not  rigid, 
but  elastic.  Many  a  controversy  would  have  been  pre- 
cluded by  remembering  this  "  (Dr.  Vaughan). 

V.  10.  It  win  be  noticed  that  as  St.  Paul  passes  on  he 
somewhat  varies  his  application  of  tho  word  "  sleep."  In 
ver.  6  it  means  the  sleep  of  sin  ;  here  it  is  of  death.  In 
one  sense,  he  would  say,  all  must  sleep ;  but  to  those 
who  obtain  salvation  by  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  this  sleep 
is  not  destructive.  Those  who  wake  and  those  who 
sleep  live  together  with  him  (cf .  John  xi.  25 ;  xiv.  19 ; 
Col.  iii.  3,  4). 

V.  14.  "Feeble-minded"  (cf.  Isa.  xxxv.  4;  liv.  6; 
vii.  15). 

v.  17.  "  Pray  without  ceasing."      The  act  of  prayer 

1  "A  shout;'*  the  origiual  word  si^uiiies  the  sigual-cry  of  a 
commander. 

2  The  literal  translation  is  not  "putting  on,"  but  "having  put 


300 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


must,  of  course,  bo  intermittent,  though  it  should  be 
frequent.  But  the  spirit  of  prayer,  of  entire  dependence 
upon  God,  is  to  be  incessant. 

V.  18.  "In  everything,"  in  sorrow  as  well  as  in  joy 
because  both  alike  are  overruled  by  God's  providence 
for  good  (cf.  Eph.  v.  20). 

V.  19.  "  Quench  not  tho  Spirit."  We  must  remember 
that  the  outpouring  of  the  Spirit  was  a  new  gift  to  men, 
and  as  it  was  enkindled  in  them  by  God,  tho  Apostle 
exhorts  them  not  to  repress  or  smother  it.  Probably 
there  is  a  special  reference  to  the  miraculous  gifts  of 
tongues  and  prophecy,  which  it  was  in  tho  power  of  the 
possessor  either  to  use  or  to  neglect,  and  which  there- 
fore furnished  a  test  of  his  faitlrfulness. 

"  Prophesyings  " — that  is,  not  tho  forcteUing  of  future 
events,  but  the  forthtelling  of  tho  Divine  will.  It  was 
one  of  the  miraculous  gifts — the  most  desirable  of  all 
(see  1  Cor.  xiv.  1 — 5),  because  it  conveyed  edification  and 
comfort,  and,  unlike  tongues,  was  for  a  sign,  not  to  un- 
believers, but  to  beUevers.  Such  powers  were,  of  course, 
liable  to  abuse ;   weakness  and  imposture  might  easily 


be  mixed  with  them  (cf.  2  Thess.  ii.  2 ;  1  John  iv.  1),  and 
therefore  the  Apostle,  while  bidding  the  Thessalonians 
not  to  despise  them,  because  they  were  a  veritable  Divine 
gift,  adds,  "But'  prove  aU  things" — i.e.,  by  Christ's 
rule,  so  as  not  to  bo  led  away  by  false  projjhcsyings. 

V.  "23.  Spirit,  soul,  and  body  are  the  three  parts  of 
man ;  two  invisible,  one  visible.  We  must  not  too 
confidently  undertake  to  distinguish  between  the  two 
former,  for  we  are  told  that  it  is  one  of  the  special 
attributes  of  the  Word  of  God  to  do  so  (Heb.  iv.  12). 
But  we  may  imderstand  generally  that  by  the  soul  is 
meant  the  living  principle,  including  the  mental  quali- 
ties ;  and  by  tho  spirit  that  yet  higher  being  which  is 
created  to  be  united  with  the  Spu-it  of  God  (cf.  Job 
xxxii.  8). 

V.  27.  We  have  here,  in  St.  Paul's  first  epistle,  tho 
tacit  claim  to  be  regarded  as  inspired.  The  epistle  is  to 
])0  read  in  Christian,  as  Old  Testament  books  in  tho 
Jewish  congregation. 

1  This  word  should  l>e  in  the  English  Tersiou. 


THE    HISTOEY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    BIBLE. 

RT    THE    REV.    W.    F.    MOULTON,    M.A.,    PROFESSOR   OF    CLASSICS,    WESLETAN    COLLEGE,    RICHMOND. 


HE  first  impression  produced  by  the  reading 
of  these  passages'  will  probably  be  one  of 
surprise  that  there  is  so  little  difference 
between  tho  English  of  1525  and  that 
of  our  ordinary  Bibles.  Two  or  three  words  or 
phrases  are  unfamiliar,  but  even  these  present  no  real 
difficidty ;  tho  sense  is  plain.  This  impression  is 
strengthened  when  we  pass  from  short  extracts  to 
whole  chapters  and  books  of  Tyndale's  version.  In  the 
Gospel  of  St.  Mark  and  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews 
there  are  not  more  than  eighty  words  (or,  as  some  of 
these  words  occur  two  or  three  times,  not  more  than 
ninety  words  in  all)  which  are  not  found  in  our  Autho- 
rised Version  of  the  Bible ;  that  is  to  say,  there  are  not 
more  than  four  strangers  in  every  thousand  words,  or 
nine  in  every  hundred  versos.  In  the  whole  of  Tyn- 
dale's New  Testament  the  number  of  different  words 
of  this  description  is  probably  below  350.  This  number 
may  seem  liigh,  amounting  as  it  does  to  nearly  a  tenth 
part  of  the  vocabulary  of  our  New  Testament,  but 
many  of  the  unfamiliar  words  occur  once  or  twice  only. 
We  have,  indeed,  no  right  to  speak  of  tho  words  as 
unfamiliar,  for  comparatively  few  (such  as  assoil,  arede, 
rjohhet,  grece,  to  pill,  harberous,  lowtli,  to  disdain  at,  to 
disease,  partlet,  manqueller)  woidd  cause  tho  ordinary 
reader  any  embarrassment.  Many  of  them  differ  very 
slightly  from  well-known  Bible  words,  as  ignorancy, 
moistness,  warmness,  vantage,  uncredible,  temperancy, 
conspiration,  frailness,  prisonment.  A  large  number 
belong  to  the  English  of  the  present   day ;   such  are 


■  See  above,  pnge  262. 


emperor,  scruple,  hreakfast,  farmer,  tenant,  gown,  trifle, 
fiend, prompt,  hetohen,  compile,  friendless,  rose-coloured, 
vainglorious,  hangman,  effusion,  beseem,  suspicious,  to 
piece,  to  swarm,  paschal,  rightful,  sermon,  prelate, 
angrily,  ineffable,  parish,  pith.  Good  Friday,  Sunday, 
Whitsuntide.  The  only  surprise  that  can  be  excited  by 
the  occurrence  of  some  of  these  words  arises  from 
their  apparent  modernness  ;  we  can  hardly  bring  our- 
selves to  believe  that  they  are  nearly  a  century  older 
than  King  James's  Bible. 

On  more  attentive  study,  however,  we  discover  that 
the  familiar  look  which  Tyndale's  version  wears  (when 
once  we  have  overcome  the  diificulty  of  the  spelling)  is  not 
due  to  familiar  vocabulary  alone.  Not  words  only,  but 
phrases  and  whole  sentences  have  rung  in  our  ears 
from  childhood.  Take  for  example  the  passage  given 
from  chapter  xi.  of  tho  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  and 
compare  it  with  the  common  translation ;  not  twenty 
words  in  tho  six  verses  do  wo  find  changed.  This,  as  aD 
win  admit,  is  a  passage  of  groat  beauty — a  passage 
most  happily  rendered ;  but  a  glance  will  show  that 
almost  all  the  excellent  points  are  due  to  tho  first  trans- 
lator. The  other  passages  wo  have  cited  have,  perhaps, 
undergone  greater  change,  but  in  these  also  tho  well- 
known  terms  of  expression  are  continually  presenting 
themselves.  It  has  been  estimated '  tliat,  in  our  Autho- 
rised Version,  about  nine-tenths  of  the  First  Epistle  of 
St.  John,  and  five-sixths  of  the  very  difiicult  Epistle  to 
the  Ephesians  are  retained  from  Tyndale.  When  a 
new  rendering  has  displaced  Tyndale's  the  change  has 

'  Westcott,  History  of  the  English  Bible,  p.  165. 


THE   HISTORY   OP   THE  ENGLISH  BIBLE. 


301 


not  always  been  for  the  better.  It  would  be  a  gain,  for 
instance,  if  in  John  x.  16  we  still  read  "  one  flock," 
instead  of  "one  fold;"  if  1  Cor.  xiii.  set  forth  the 
excellence  of  "love,"  and  not  of  "charity  ;"  if  in  Rom. 
i.  18  St.  Paul  were  not  made  to  speak  of  "  men  wlio 
hold,"  but  of  "men  who  withhold"  (or  "hinder")  the 
truth ;  or  if  "  in  the  name  "  took  the  place  of  "  at  the 
name"  in  PhU.  ii.  10,  and  "by  Jesus"  (or  "through 
Jesus  ")  wore  substituted  for  "  in  Jesus  "  in  1  Thess. 
iv.  14.  In  these  and  in  other  examples  which  might  be 
adduced  the  earlier  rendering  (in  substance)  should  bo 
replaced.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  doubt  that, 
on  the  whole,  the  translation  has  gained  largely  in 
faithfulness  under  the  hand  of  the  loving  labourers  who 
foUowod  Tyndale.  Still  greater  has  been  the  gain  in 
rhythm  and  beauty  of  phrase,  though  oven  here  Tyndale 
stands  high.  Happy  turns  of  expression  such  as 
"  singing  and  making  melody  in  your  hearts,"  "  in  him 
we  live,  move,  and  have  our  being,"  "turned  to  flight 
the  armies  of  the  aliens"  (which  are  all  duo  to  Tyn- 
dale), with  many  others  which  might  be  quoted  from 
sections  of  peculiar  tenderness  and  charm  of  language 
(as  Acts  XX.18 — 35  ;  Eph.  iii. ;  1  Peter  ii.),  tell  their  own 
tale. 

The  connection  between  Tyndale 's  work  and  our 
Authorised  Version  has  a  less  favom-able  side.  If  many 
of  the  excellences  of  the  latter  aro  due  to  the  first 
translator,  so  also  are  some  of  its  characteristic  faults. 
The  inconsistency  of  rendering  so  often  alleged  against 
our  version  (and  not  without  reason)  appears  very 
strikingly  in  Tyndale,  the  same  word  being  very  fre- 
quently rendered  in  two  different  ways  in  the  same 
verse  or  oven  line.  Thus,  iu  Matt.  xxi.  23  wo  read, 
"  By  what  authority  doest  thou  these  things  ?  and  who 
gave  thee  this  authority  >"  The  Greek  word  is  repeated, 
and  the  English  reader  receives  the  very  impression 
which  the  Greek  conveys.  Tyndale,  however,  no  doubt 
to  avoid  the  repetition  of  a  word,  translates  the  Greek 
word  in  the  first  clause  by  "  authority,"  in  the  second 
by  "  power."  It  is  less  surprising  to  meet  with  inac- 
curacies of  other  kinds.  At  so  early  a  period  of  the 
revived  study  of  Greek,  the  influence  of  the  Latin 
language  was  naturally  very  great,  and  we-  cannot 
wonder  Lf  wo  find  a  translator  neglecting  the  Greek 
article  because  it  was  nocossarOy  passed  over  in  the 
Vulgate  (the  Latin  language  having  no  definite  article), 
or  faOing  to  perceive  the  exact  force  of  tenses  and  con- 
structions when  the  peculiarities  of  the  same  familiar 
language  rendered  it  an  unsafe  guide.  The  real  ground 
for  wonder  is  that,  vrith  resources  so  imperfect,  work 
so  valuable  should  have  been  accomplished. 

One  characteristic  of  Tyudale's  translation  strikes  the 
reader  at  once.  No  ono  can  read  the  narrative  portions 
of  the  Gospels,  as  presented  iu  our  Authorised  Version, 
witliout  remarking  the  multitude  of  connective  words. 
And,  but,  now,  then  recur  so  often  that  we  feel  at  once 
that  we  are  reading  a  translation  from  some  other  tongue. 
The  repeated  use  of  a  few  of  the  simplest  Greek  conjunc- 
tions to  dovetad  together  the  successive  portions  of  a 
narrative  would    have    appeared    monotonous    to    an 


Athenian,  and  is  really  a  peculiarity  of  the  Hebrew 
language,  naturally  reproduced  in  Greek  that  was 
spoken  or  written  by  Jews.  An  idiomatic  English 
translation  might  efface  this  feature  of  the  original ; 
a  literal  rendering  seeks  to  present  to  the  English  reader 
every  characteristic  of  the  Greek  which  can  bo  expressed 
without  danger  to  the  clearness  or  force  of  the  sentence. 
In  Tyndale's  first  essay  ho  sacrifices  literalness  to 
English  idiom,  and  very  frequently  neglects  the  connec- 
tive word.  In  four  chapters  of  St.  Matthew  (xviii. — 
xxi.)  we  find  forty-four  omissions  of  this  kind  in  the 
course  of  145  verses ;  in  his  second  edition,  however, 
Tyndale  reduced  this  number  to  thirty-six.  Scholars 
still  differ  as  to  the  course  which  a  translator  should 
take,  but  Tyndale  had  a  definite  oiiinion  on  the  subject, 
and  the  result  is  a  clearly-marked  feature  of  his  work. 

These  various  questions  of  translation  suggest  another 
important  inquiry.  What  was  the  Greek  text  which 
Tyndale  rendered  into  English  ?  Without  entering  into 
any  technical  detaUs,  wo  may  remind  the  reader  that 
tho  manuscrijjts  of  the  Greek  Testament  differ  widely 
among  themselves.  WliUst  agreeing  so  remarkably 
that  (as  was  said  by  Bontley)  not  ono  article  of  faith  or 
moral  precept  is  either  perverted  or  lost  in  the  whole 
mass  of  various  readings,  yet  they  present  many  very 
interesting  and  very  important  variations,  none  of 
which  wiU  tho  reverent  student  of  Scripture  be  willing 
to  neglect.  Until  tho  year  1516  not  more  than  six  or 
seven  chapters  of  the  Greek  Testament  had  been  printed 
and  published ;  the  sacred  book  was  accessible  in  manu- 
script only.  In  that  year  Erasmus's  first  edition  of  the 
Greek  Testament  was  given  to  the  world.  It  is  obvious 
that  the  correctness  of  tliis  printed  text  would  depend 
on  the  excellence  of  the  manuscripts  from  which  it  was 
derived.  These  manuscripts  (five  in  number)  are  still 
at  Basle,'  where  the  volume  was  printed,  and  when 
the  science  of  textual  criticism  began  to  be  studied  with 
care,  scholars  were  at  pains  to  examine  them  and  esti- 
mate their  value.  Not  ono  of  these  manuscripts  is 
ancient.  Tho  most  valuable  of  tho  five  was  written  in 
the  tenth  century ;  to  this  manuscript,  however,  Eras- 
mus seems  to  have  attached  but  little  value.  In  tho 
Gospels  Erasmus  followed  almost  entirely  a  manuscript 
written  in  the  fifteenth  century.  Before  Tyudale's 
earliest  translation  was  i)laced  in  the  printer's  hands, 
Erasmus  had  published  three  editions  of  the  Greek 
text,  tho  third  bearing  date  1522.  Tyndale  may  have 
had  in  his  possession  manuscript  copies  of  the  Greek 
Testament,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  made  full 
use  of  the  results  of  Erasmus's  labours,  and  that  the 
printed  text  was  the  basis  of  his  translation.  As,  how- 
ever, the  successive  editions  of  this  text  differ  among 
themselves  in  many  places,  we  must  carry  the  inquiry 
farther,  and  endeavour  to  ascertain  which  edition  was  tho 
source  from  which  tho  English  version  was  derived.  Ono 
well-known  characteristic  of  Erasmus's  third  and  most 


t  With  the  exception  of  that  from  which  the  Book  of  Revela- 
tion was  taken.  This  manuscript  was  missing  until  IBS'),  when  it 
was  discovered  by  Professor  Delitzsch  in  the  library  at  Mayliiugen, 
in  Bavaria. 


302 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


celebrated  edition  enables  us  to  apply  a  very  simple  test. 
In  1  John  V.  7,  8,  "  For  there  are  tliree  that  bear  record 
[in  heaven,  the  Father,  the  Word,  and  the  Holy  Ghost : 
and  these  three  are  one.  And  there  are  three  that  bear 
ivitness  in  earth],  the  spu'it,  and  the  water,  and  the  blood, 
and  these  three  agree  in  one  ;"  the  Greek  words  coiTe- 
spondiug  to  those  which  we  have  placed  within  brackets 
are  contained  in  no  manu- 
script earlier  tlian  the  tif- 
teenth  century,  and  were  not 
inserted  by  Erasmus  ia  his 
iirst  and  second  editions.  As 
the  missing  clauses  were 
foimd  in  the  Latin  Vulgate, 
their  absence  from  the  Greek 
text  gave  rise  to  much  con- 
troversy. Erasmus's  reply 
to  his  objectors  was,  that  as 
soon  as  any  Greek  manu- 
script containing  the  words 
should  be  discovered,  ho 
would  insert  them  in  his  text. 
One  "  British  manuserii)t "  (probably  the  "  Montfortian 
manusci'ipt,"  in  the  library  of  Tiinity  College,  Dublin, 
wi-itten  in  the  fifteenth  or  sixteenth  century)  was  found 
to  answer  this  reciuiremeut ;  and  Ei'asmus  fulfilled  his 
promise,  giving  the  words 
a  place  in  his  thu-d  edition. 
If  now  we  turn  to  Tyn- 
dale's  octavo  Testament, 
published  throe  years  later, 
we  find  the  controverted 
clauses  given  without  any 
mark  to  indicate  a  doubt 
of  their  genuineness, i  al- 
most as  they  stand  in  our 
Authorised  Version.  Here, 
thou  we  have  a  clear  proof 
that  our  translator  made 
use  of  the  third  edition  of 
Erasmus's  Greek  Testa- 
ment. We  must  not  hastily 
assume  that  this  edition 
was  the  basis  of  Tyndalo's 
whole  translation.  It  may 
easily  be  shown  that  Tyn- 
dalo's work  agrees  with  no 
one  of  Erasmus's  editions. 
For  example,  a  peculiarity 
of  his  first  is  the  omission,  of  several  words  in  Acts 
ii.  30,  and  in  Tyndale's  first  Testament  those  words 
are  wanting;"  on  the  otlicr  band,  nearly  twenty  pas- 
sages might  be  quoted  in  which  Tyndale  differs  from 
Erasmus's  first  etlition  and  agrees  with  liis  second.  A 
very  clear  mark  of  the  second  edition  is  the  substitution 
of  "ye  envy  "  for  "  ye  kill,"  in  James  iv.  2 ;  in  all  other 


'In  his  revised  translntion  (153+),  Tj-ndale  pri-nts  the  disputed 
words  in  different  type  and  in  a  parenthesis. 

-  Perhaps  the  omission  is  due  to  the  influence  of  the  Vulgate. 


ketone  t)alf)  1)13  eyesopenc!)  .-Jfc-  J^imbttt 

not  -no to/3  he\)olbe,\t\xa^^^'^<^^'^'^^'^^^^ 
f})affi  COW&  a fta-rre  of  3ftcolb  a.vii)  ryfeaccpler 
ofSsracf./tDVloJ  f^aff  fmf^i  9  cpoftescf  ^os 
ah  anbyiniitmym  a.Eill)e  «l}ifbevu  ofo^llj. 

feffion  (ifSeix  fl)afbfct()eircni-m)>e6f/aTtb3f 
Toeff^aff  boomon^nffy  .lln6  out  ofjcicab 
5l?aff  come,  \ji.i\(i\,fl)a.^b&fir^ye,\\)Ztntimii 

NUMEEKS   XXIV.    16 — 19  :   TYNDALE    (1531). 


Cr  9rBen£$tforiOba9eQ(teii§e.(?u.baye  Z^s 

■knaiff  p:i.a})f2  l"^  ©  Poibe/t^at  l^ou^3 
t^OtttocifeatigTyeV»'\lO  tne/j)4tt&^acan  efoie.yil- 
gcrtg  turueb/flttb  t^ou  ^afl  comfoite 
me.lBeOofie  (^ob  l6m^fa.£uadon:'3^to\ff6£ 
MU  l^erfote  anb  not  fsaite.jfoi  t6e  £s>\ht 

3  (W^c:  ai\b  10  Become  my  fa'[rpouTe.7lu&;s?c 
l^aK  5mtoc  toaUt  in  ^fabnes  oule  of  Ipe  \xKt 
ie.e  of  •faCuQciot).  21nbye  eljaff  fa^eit)  iftai  bo.'- 
^(.•.t^&xit  tfiankcg  unto  iBe  (ctxhe.!  caff  on  ^»6 110. 
me:maFt£  fttebebee  knotoenamcnge  l^c  ^es 
t(]en:  tememBftT  iBat  fits  uame  is  6ie.  £.>?fte 
Tap.^))Tigc  unto  l^^  Po^bc/foi  ^e  r>cd^  ione 
eiwcfcffenl{ye/an6  l^ai  te  knotecn  l^o:iow  OU'- 
le  off  l6«  toojfie .  £r))e  aKfc  f^otote  J^ouin* 
fia6it«r  of  Stou/ fox  STeatamotiaevottiolBe 
U^i.  ofBfroef.  '     "*  ^   ^  ^ 

ISAIAH,    CHAP.    XII.  :    TYNDALE    (1534). 


editions,  earlier  and  later,  Erasmus  set  aside  this  reading, 
which  had  uo  other  authority  than  his  own  conjectui-e, 
and  restored  "ye  kill;"  Tyndale  has  "ye  envy"  not 
only  in  his  first  edition,  but  also  in  his  re\dsed  version. 
Where  Erasmus's  second  and  thu'd  editions  differ, 
Tyndalo  .seems  to  agree  with  the  second  more  frequently 
than  with  the  third.  It  appears  clear,  then,  that  Eras- 
mus's second  edition  (1519) 
was  that  with  which  Tyndale 
was  most  familiar;  but  that 
on  the  appeai'ance  of  the 
third,  which  contained  so  re- 
markable an  addition  as  that 
in  1  John  v.  7, 8,  he  followed 
the  authority  of  Erasmus  in 
this  passage,  and  possibly  in 
some  others.  Before  Tyn- 
dale's revision  was  pubUshed, 
Erasmus  had  given  to  the 
world  a  fom-th  edition  (1527), 
in  which  the  text  of  the  Book 
of  Revelation  was  materially 
improved  by  the  use  of  the  Complutensian  Polyglott,'' 
which  had  been  prepared  from  bettor  manuscripts. 
Unfortunately,  Tyndale  appears  to  have  made  no  use 
of  this  edition.  In  Rev.  xiv.  1,  "  havyuge  his  fathers 
name  written  in  their  f  or- 
hcdes,"  he  has  one  of  its 
impi'oved  readings,  "  writ- 
ten "  instead  of  "  bum- 
iug ; "  but  as  he  gave  this 
rendering  as  early  as  1525, 
it  is  evident  that  he  ob- 
tained it  from  some  other 
source,  most  probably  from 
the  Vulgate.  If  this  read- 
ing was  taken  from  the 
Latin,  it  would  not  be  a 
solitary  instance  of  the 
kiad.  In  Matt.  i.  18,  for 
example,  the  word  "  Jesus" 
is  omitted  in  Tyndale's 
first  edition,  though  no 
Greek  manuscript  leaves 
out  the  word,  and  the  Vul- 
gate must  have  been  the 
authority  which  Tyndale 
followed.  To  the  same 
influence  we  must  attri- 
bute the  absence  of  the  doxology  from  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  as  given  in  the  first  Testament.  In  both 
these  instances  the  words  omitted  were  restored  in  the 
revision  of  1534.  In  later  translations,  as  well  as  in 
Tyndale's,  we  shall  find  that  the  influence  of  the  Latin 
versions  sometimes  led  to  the  adoption  of  readings  not 
found  in  the  Greek  text  which  the  translators  possessed. 
Not  unf  requently,  as  has  been  already  explained,*  these 


3  See  above.  Vol.  I.,  p.  258. 


*  See  Vol.  I.,  p.  ( 


ETHNOLOGY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


303 


readings  have  been  since  discovered  to  rest  on  high 
authority,  being  confirmed  by  ancient  manuscripts  not 
known  or  not  appreciated  in  the  sixteenth  century.  This 
question,  however,  is  only  one  branch  of  another,  much 
wider  and  more  important — what  iutiuenco  did  the 
Vulgate  and  other  translations  of  Scripture  (by  Eras- 
mus, Luther,  and  others)  exert  upon  Tyndalo's  version  ? 
This  question  must  be  reserved  until  Tyudale's  work 
upon  the  Old  Testament  has  been  reviewed. 

Before  we  pass  away  from  our  present  subject  a  word 
must  be  said  ou  the  order  in  which  the  books  of  the  New 
Testament  are  placed.  The  list  of  books  preserved  in 
the  GrenvUle  Fragment  is  very  curious.  As  far  as  the 
Epistle  to  Philemon  the  arrangement  does  not  differ 
from  that  of  our  own  Bibles,  but  this  Epistle  is  imme- 
diately succeeded  by  those  of  St.  Peter  and  St.  John. 


So  far,  the  books  are  numbered  from  1  to  23.  After 
the  3rd  Epistle  of  St.  John  there  is  a  break  iu  the  list, 
and  the  names  of  the  four  remaining  books,  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews,  the  Epistles  of  at.  James  and  St.  Jude, 
and  the  Apocalypse,  are  left  without  numbers,  and  most 
carefully  kept  ajjart  from  those  which  precede.  This 
arrangement  is  Luther's ;  the  four  books  were  placed 
last  by  him  because,  in  his  judgment,  they  stood  below 
the  other  books  in  rank  and  importance.  It  is  clear 
that  ia  15'25  Tyndalo  accepted  in  the  main  Luther's 
opinion  on  this  point.  In  his  Testament  of  1534  the 
order  remains  imchanged ;  but  the  break  in  the  list 
before  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  has  disappeared;  and 
iu  his  prologues  Tyndale  di.stiuctly  admits,  and  even 
argues  for,  the  authority  of  the  three  Epistles  as  portions 
of  Holy  Scriptm-e. 


ETHNOLOGY    OF    THE    BIBLE 

PALESTINE  :— (2)  OEIGIN    OF   ISEAEL  (concluded). 
BY   THE   BEV.   WILLIAM  LEB,   D.D.,    KOXBURGH. 


III.   EAELT  HISTORY. 

s  H  K  circumstances  under  which  Israel  came 
into  existence  as  a  nation  are  famUar 
to  every  reader  of  the  Bible.  Little, 
indeed,  can  be  added  to  the  informa- 
tion on  this  subject  which  lies  on  the  siu-face  of  the 
sacred  narrative.  Nor  have  we  much  reason  to  regret 
that  the  extra-Biblical  materials  of  our  knowledge  of  the 
times  in  question,  wliile  abmulantly  illustrating  many 
collateral  topics,  and,  as  far  as  they  go,  corroborating 
the  Scriptures,  leave  us  to  depend  for  the  early  histoiy 
of  Israel  on  her  own  national  records. 

1.  The  period  with  which  we  are  here  concerned 
begins  with  the  migration  of  Abraham.  Up  to  the 
time  of  that  event  the  Bible  contains  the  history  of 
maukiud  rather  than  of  any  one  people.  It  is  true  that, 
from  the  first,  wo  have  the  same  distinction  which  existed 
in  the  case  of  Israel,  and  exists  even  now,  between  the 
Church  and  the  world.  In  other  words,  there  was  "  a 
chosen  generation,  a  royal  priesthood,  an  holy  nation, 
a  peculiar  people  "  (1  Peter  ii.  9),  before  Israel,  as  there 
has  been  since  Israel.  Even  antecedently  to  the  Flood, 
Cain's  evil  seed — a  race  not  without  some  material  civili- 
sation, but  destitute  of  true  religion — are  found  in 
Jabal,  "  the  father  of  such  as  dwelt  in  tents  and  have 
cattle ;"  Jubal,  "  the  father  of  all  such  as  handle  the  hai-p 
and  organ;"  Tubal-cain,  "an  instructor  of  every  arti- 
ficer in  brass  and  iron  "  (Gen.  iv.  20 — 22) ;  and  there 
are  also  found  the  children  of  Seth,  whose  characteristic 
distination  it  was  that  they  "  called  upon  the  name 
of  the  Lord"  (Gen.  iv.  26),  and,  like  Enoch  or  Noah, 
"  walked  with  God  "(Gen.v.  24;  vi.  9).  Nor  is  the  history 
of  tlis  chosen  line,  of  the  pre-Noachlc  period,  nnUlve 
that  of  the  Church  in  other  ages.  That  "  the  sons 
of  God,"  and  "the  daughters  of  men,"  of  Gen.  vi.  1, 


I  represent  the  descendants  of  Seth  on  the  one  hand, 
I  and  of  Cain  on  the  other,  is  the  interpretation  which  is 
now  generally  received  by  Biblical  scholars,  as  it  is  that 
which,  in  earlier  times,  was  maintained  by  Theodoret, 
Chrysostom,  Cyril  of  Alexandria,  Jerome,  Augustine ; 
by  Luther,  Melancthon,  and  Calvin  (Diet,  of  Bible,  s.  v. 
"  Noah "),  all  of  whom,  lUcewise,  conclude  from  the 
whole  passage  that,  in  process  of  time,  there  began 
to  be  then,  as  there  has  been  ever  since,  an  admixture 
of  the  holy  seed  with  the  seed  of  the  wicked,  by  which 
the  Church  became  contaminated  with  the  en-ors  and 
vices  of  the  world ;  and  that  one  result  was  that  pre- 
vailing corruption  of  manners,  extending  even  to  the 
Sethites,  which  provoked  the  judgment  of  the  Flood. 
A  comparatively  pure  element,  however,  continued  to 
subsist  iu  the  midst  of  the  almost  universal  depravity 
which  ensued ;  and  in  Noah  himself  the  Church,  no 
less  than  the  race,  was  kept  alivo  in  those  days  when 
both  appeared  to  be  threatened  with  extinction.  But 
if  the  Church  of  Chiist,  like  Christ  himsi  1£,  was  thus 
"  before  Abraham,"  its  history  in  those  early  times  does 
not  belong  exclusively  to  Israel. 

2.  The  migration  of  Abraham  was  not  only  the 
commencement  of  the  history  of  Israel,  but  it  was 
itseH  the  result  of  a  revelation  made  to  that  patriarch 
(Gen.  xii.  1 ;  cf.  Gal.  iii.  8 ;  John  viii.  56) — the  first  of 
many  similar  revelations  which,  as  time  went  on,  were 
with  more  and  more  fulness,  and  in  more  and  more 
explicit  terms,  vouchsafed  to  himself  and  his  posterity 
— as  to  the  gi-eat  imrpose  for  which  Israel  was  called 
into  existence  as  a  nation,  and  the  special  part  they 
were  destined  to  fulfil  in  relation  to  the  providential 
government  of  the  world,  which  demands  our  special 
attention. 
That  the  final  aim  of  the  existence  of  Israel  was  one 


304 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


of  transcendent  importance — one,  too,  in  whieli  "  all  the 
families  of  the  earth "  had  an  equal  interest,  being  no 
other  than  the  introduction  and  establishment  of  the 
kingdom  of  Christ — is  a  part  with  which  it  might 
apiiearwe  have  here  little  concern.  Rightly  to  estimate, 
however,  even  the  ethnical  position  and  character  of  the 
Israelites,  it  is  olnnously  indispensable  that  we  should 
always  keep  in  mind  the  peculiar  work  for  which,  both 
by  prophecy  and  history,  wo  know  they  were  specially 
8ot  apart  by  God. 

It  is  the  more  necessary  to  keep  the  true  mission 
and  aim  of  the  seed  of  Abraham  in  view,  because  other- 
wise it  is  impossible  to  account  for  the  extraordinary 
and  unprecedented  privileges  conferred  on  them.  There 
are  certainly  no  results,  beyond  those  connected  with 
that  mission  and  this  aim,  to  justify  their  claim  to  be 
regarded  as  tlio  peculiar  people  of  God,  and  as  a  nation 
whieli  had  been  dealt  with  as  God  never  dealt  with  any 
other  nation.  Apart  from  their  relation  to  the  spiritual 
kingdom  of  Christ,  they  from  first  to  last  never  made 
any  great  figure  in  the  world's  history.  They  formed 
a  nation  very  much  like  other  nations  of  the  earth. 
They  had  the  same  pursuits  as  their  neighbours — 
merchandise,  politics,  trade,  literature;  the  same  dis- 
tinctions of  rank  ;  the  same  relations,  amicable  or  hos- 
tile, with  the  rest  of  the  world ;  they  were  animated  by 
the  same  pride  of  race,  the  same  patriotism,  the  same 
ambition  for  national  greatness,  the  same  passions  gene- 
rally. And  as  far  as  they  had  no  higher  aims,  they 
made  no  higher,  and  as  a  role  only  reached  much  lower 
attainments  than  many  other  nations.  For  a  brief 
period,  in  the  reigns  of  David  and  of  Solomon,  worldly 
glory  appeared  to  be  within  their  reach.  There  seems 
to  have  been  no  natural  inaptitude  in  the  race  of 
Israel,  preventing  thom  from  arriving  at  distinction  in 
any  of  the  pursuits  of  life.  In  modern  times,  men  of 
Jewish  blood  have  been  found  in  the  very  first  ranks 
among  the  cultivators  of  science,  the  arts,  and  literature  ; 
indeed,  in  every  pursuit  open  to  them  they  have  kept 
pace  with  all  competitors ;  and  the  reign  of  Solomon, 
above  all,  was  one  in  which  the  capacity  of  the  people  for 
a  distinguished  position  among  civilised  nations  seems  to 
have  asserted  itself  so  strongly  as  to  attract  the  notice 
of  other  Eastern  peoples.  The  jiromise  thus  excited  was 
not  fulfilled.  The  momentary  splendour  faded  amidst 
the  troubles  of  the  disruption  of  the  kingdom  which 
foOowed  the  doatli  of  that  monarch.  Upon  the  whole, 
many  other  nations  have  been  more  prosperous ;  have,  by 
policy  or  force  of  arms,  acquired  greater  power  and  wider 
territories  ;  have,  within  the  sphere  of  action  common  to 
them  all,  exercised  more  influence  on  the  world's  history. 
Other  nations  have  done  more  to  promote  intellectual 
eiUture  ;  to  advance  the  physical  sciences ;  to  extend 
commerce ;  to  perfect  the  xiseful  arts,  as  well  as  what 
are  called  the  fine  arts  ;  to  further  the  progress  of  philo- 
sophy, jurisprudence,  political  economy ;  and  to  enrich 
the  world  with  masterpieces  in  architecture,  painting, 
sculpture,  and  some  departments  of  literature.  As  a 
nation,  the  only  distinction  which  can  be  claimed  for 
Israel  is  that  already  noticed.     Nor,  according  to  the 


Bible,  was  any  other  distinction  ever  contemplated. 
Temporal  blessings  were  conditionally  promised,  the 
condition  being  fidelity  on  their  part  in  carrying  out  their 
true  destiny ;  but  eVeu  with  this  limitation  mere  worldly 
greatness  was  not  an  achievement  which  they  were  at 
any  time  encouraged  to  hope  for.  Any  promises  which 
appear  at  first  sight  to  point  to  such  a  result  will  be 
found,  on  investigation,  to  require  to  be  interpreted 
figuratively  as  looking  forward  to  a  kingdom  which  is 
not  of  this  world — the  kingdom  of  Him  who  was  a 
greater  even  than  Solomon,  and  in  whom  there  is 
neither  Jew  nor  Greek,  for  aU  aro  one  in  Him. 

Nor,  let  it  be  added,  is  any  other  reason  for  even  the 
most  extraordinary  of  the  instances  of  God's  distinguish- 
ing favour  to  the  chosen  seed  required. 

3.  It  was  only  after  a  protracted  delay  that  the  nation 
came  into  existence.  "Men,"  says  Bishop  Butler,  "  are 
impatient,  and  are  for  precipitating  things  ;  but  God  is 
deliberate  in  all  his  operations."  A  nation  is  not  bom 
in  a  day ;  nor,  in  the  case  of  Israel,  was  there,  in  this 
respect,  any  miraculous  interference  to  hasten  the  pro- 
gress of  events.  Apart,  indeed,  from  the  rapid  increase 
of  the  people  in  Egy[)t — an  increase  not  attributed  in  tho 
Bible  to  other  than  natural  causes — the  facts  indicate  a 
providential  purpose  to  retard,  rather  than  to  precipitate, 
the  entrance  of  the  children  of  Israel  on  their  national 
existence. 

The  true  chronology  here,  as  elsewhere,  is  undeter- 
mined ;  but  oven  accepting  the  lowest  computation,  the 
period  from  the  departure  of  Abraham  out  of  Haran 
to  the  Exodus  was  no  less  than  430,  and  to  the  Conquest 
about  470  years  (cf .  Gal.  iii.  17 ;  Gen.  xv.  13 ;  Exod.  xii. 
40 ;  Acts  vii.  6). 

Though  long  delayed,  the  time,  however,  came  at 
length  when  Israel  should  enter  on  her  promised  inheri- 
tance. Nor  were  the  intervening  years  \wthout  result. 
On  the  contrary,  these  years  were  among  the  most  im- 
portant in  the  history  of  Israel ;  their  influence,  indeed, 
at  once  on  the  character  of  the  nation  and  its  after 
history  can  scarcely  bo  over-estimated. 

Tho  principal  events  must  bo  very  briefly  recapitu- 
lated. (1.)  Among  these  tho  sojourn  in  Egypt  deserves 
a  prominent  place.  Tho  extent  of  t'ne  influence  of 
Egypt  on  Israel  is  a  question  not  without  difficulty. 
That  a  single  family  should  have  grown  up  into  a  g^eat 
nation,  and  at  tho  very  period  of  their  history  when  they 
were  necessarily  most  susceptible  to  impressions  from 
without,  should,  on  the  lowest  calculation,  have  passed 
upwards  of  200  years  in  tho  midst  of  a  people  Uko  the 
Egyptians,  a  people  possessing  tho  oldest  civilisation, 
and  the  civilisation  tho  most  advanced  of  any  people  of 
antiquity,  without  direct  influences  being  produced,  the 
results  of  which  must  have  continued  to  be  manifested  in 
after  years,  is  inconceivable.  Two  considerations  must 
certainly  be  taken  into  account  as  serving  to  modify 
our  estimate  of  the  probable  results,  (a)  In  Egypt 
the  Israelites  appear  to  have  been,  in  a  great  measure, 
isolated  from  the  bulk  of  tho  native  ijopulation,  having 
been  from  the  first  assigned,  with  that  express  object 
(Gen.  xlvi.  34),  a  special  territory  for  their  exclusive 


ETHNOLOGY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


305 


occupation,  and  a  territory  wliich  seems  to  have  been 
situated  in  a  frontier  province  (Gou.  xlvi.  28,  sq. ;  xlvii.  1, 
11;  Esod.  siii.  17,  IS),  probably  (Did.  of  Bible,  s.  v. 
"  Goslien  ")  scarcely  forming  a  part  of  Egypt  proper. 
And  (6)  the  bondage  was  fitted  to  excite  a  strong  pre- 
judice in  the  minds  of  tlie  Israelites  against  everything 
connected  with  the  land  of  their  oppressors.  Some  in- 
fluence, however,  was  inevitable.  As  far  as  can  be 
judged  from  the  Biblical  history,  the  people  can'ied 
away  with  them  from  Egypt  fewer  traces  of  the  ci\'ilisa- 
tioa  of  that  country  than  of  its  superstitious  beliefs  and 
usages.  Moses  was  "  learned  in  all  the  wisdom  of  the 
Egyptians"  (Acts  vii.  22).  He  had  enjoyetl  singular 
advantages  for  acquiring  an  intimate  knowledge  of  their 
arts  and  sciences,  their  civil  institutions  and  political 
government  (Exod.  ii.  10)  ;  and  we  have  not  any  reason 
to  believe  that  this  providential  arrangement  was  witli- 
out  a  purpose,  and  did  not  form  part  of  the  training  by 
which  the  future  lawgiver  of  Israel  was  fitted  for  the 
office  assigned  to  him  by  Providence.  How  far — if  at 
all — it  influenced  the  character  of  the  polity  and  con- 
stitution which  he  was  inspired  to  introduce,  has  long 
been  a  matter  of  doubtful  controversy  (cf.  Spencer,  Be 
Legibus  HebrcBorum ;  Witsius,  .Mijijptiaca  ;  Michaelis, 
Laivs  of  Moses  ;  Warburton,  Divine  Legation  of  Moses ; 
and  later  authorities  cited  in  Winer,  BealwHrterbucli, 
8.  v.  "Gesetz").  In  any  case,  some  of  the  most  charac- 
teristic customs  of  the  Egyptians,  as  their  rites  of 
burial,  their  mode  of  writing,  their  style  of  architecture, 
appear  never  to  have  taken  root  among  the  Jews.  On 
the  other  hand,  however,  as  in  the  land  of  bondage 
itself  they  served  the  gods  of  Egypt  (Josh.  xxiv.  14),  so 
afterwards,  not  only  in  the  wilderness  (Exod.  xxxii.  1 ; 
Ezek.  XX.  6,  7),  but  long  after  their  establishment  in 
Palestine,  even  down  to  the  Captivity  (1  Kings  xv.  26  ; 
Ezek.  viii.  17  ;  cf.  Warburton,  Div.  Leg.,  iv.  86),  we  find 
how  reluctant  they  were  to  leave  ofl:  the  idolatries 
brought  from  that  country  (Ezek.  xxiii.  8).  In  the 
Bible  itself,  it  is  chiefly  as  an  occasion  of  trial  and  pro- 
bation that  the  sojourn  in  Egypt  is  spoken  of.  In  this 
respect  it  resembled  tlrj  forty  years'  wandering  in  the 
wilderness,  when  God  in  like  manner  "  humbled  his 
people  and  proved  them"  (Deut.  viii.  2);  and  though, 
temporally,  the  result  may  have  been  to  bring  to  light 
the  native  tendency  to  evil  in  tho  hearts  of  the  people, 
its  influence,  whether  for  good  or  evil,  must  have  been 
very  groat.  No  doubt  that  influence  was  upon  the 
whole  beneficial.  Trial  wo  know  to  be  one  of  tho 
great  means  by  which  both  nations  and  individuals  are 
prepared  for  the  highest  services  in  which  either  can 
be  employed.  (2.)  Another  great  event  in  tho  early 
history  of  Israel  belongs  to  tho  times  which  imme- 
diately followed  the  Exodus.  It  was  within  a  year 
or  two  after  the  Exodus,  and  nearly  forty  years  before 


the  Conquest,  that  the  law  was  given  which  provided 
for  Israel  that  peculiar  polity  and  those  moral  and 
ceremonial  and  ci\'il  laws  and  institutions.  Under  which, 
with  non-essential  modifications,  the  Israelites  always 
continued  as  a  nation  to  bo  placed,  and  which  must 
always  have  had  the  greatest  effect  on  their  national 
character  and  the  accomplishment  of  their  destiny. 
(3.)  Last  but  not  least  among  the  events  of  this  period 
must  be  mentioned  the  series  of  signs  and  wonders  and 
mighty  miracles  which  not  only  distinguish  the  history 
of  Israel  from  all  other  histories,  but  are  not  by  any 
means  otherwise  than  exceptional  even  in  tlie  annals  of 
this  nation  itself.  It  was,  indeed,  only  at  this  time,  when 
the  theocracy  was  established,  and  in  the  time  of  Elijah 
and  his  successor  Elisha,  the  period  of  its  restoration, 
that,  eacept  during  the  personal  ministry  of  our  Lord 
and  in  the  Apostolic  age,  miracles,  in  the  received  sense 
of  the  term,  coidd  be  said  to  form  a  conspicuous,  or  even 
an  appreciable  element  in  tho  national  life  of  Israel  (cf. 
Trench,  Notes  on  the  Miracles,  45).  The  mii-aculous 
dispensation  under  which  tho  people  were  at  this  time 
placed,  has  a  direct  relation  to  their  ethnical  history. 
It  has  been  well  observed,  that  "  there  is  as  much  need 
of  an  admission  of  the  supernatural  element  [in  the 
liistory  of  Israel]  for  understanding  their  national 
character,  as  there  is  for  understanding  the  narrative 
of  its  fortimes  and  misfortunes "  (Isaac  Taylor,  Spirit 
of  tlie  Hebrew  Poetry,  p.  117,  quoted  in  Loathes'  Boyle 
Lectures,  1868,  p.  252). 

A  single  word  in  conclusion  as  to  the  general  con- 
dition of  this  the  most  memorable  of  the  i-aces  of  Pales- 
tine, at  tho  moment  that  they  took  possession  of  that 
territory.  The  people  were  already  in  point  of  numbers 
a  great  nation.  There  is  no  reason  to  think  they  were 
less  numerous  at  the  Conquest  than  at  the  Exodus  (cf. 
Exod.  xii.  37;  Numb.  i.  46 ;  xxvi.  51),  when  it  is  com- 
puted that  they  formed  a  population  of  about  2,000,000. 
The  distinction  into  tribes  ah-eady  existed,  and  had 
been  recognised  even  in  Egyi)t  (Exod.  vi.  14).  They 
had  a  standing  ai'uiy,  consisting  of  all  Israelites  above 
twenty  years  of  age;  an  army  regidarly  organised 
(Numb.  i.  3  ;  ii.  2 ;  x.  14 ;  xxxi.  6) ;  and  an  army  which 
was  inured  to  hardships  and  in  some  measm-e  to  war, 
as  well  as  brought  thoroughly  under  discipline  in  the 
prolonged  and  trying  march  through  the  wilderness. 
The  forms  of  worship  and  ceremonial  observances  with 
which  we  are  familiar  in  their  later  history  had  been 
already  instituted.  Their  ci\il  no  less  than  their  moral 
and  ecclesiastical  code  was,  as  to  all  its  leading  pro- 
visions, akeady  fixed.  They  had  courts  of  justice  and 
officers  for  the  administration  of  the  laws  (Exod.  xviii. 
25).  In  short,  before  they  crossed  the  Jordan,  they 
were  already  a  nation,  which  only  wanted  a  territory  to 
take  at  once  its  place  among  the  nations  of  the  earth. 


44 — VOL.  K. 


30G 


THE   BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


THE    HISTOEY    OF   THE    ENGLISH   BIBLE. 


ET    THE    KEV.    W.    F.    MOULTON,    M.A.,    PKOFESSOK   OF    CLASSICS,    WESLETAN    COLLEGE,    KICHMOND. 


'^•■aTl  njaSiHE   two  specimens   given  in  fac-simile  on 
('^^  CSfy*     V^S^  302  are  taken  from  originals  in  tie 
(s^l  ^•■""S     British  Museum.      The  former  is  one  of 
^^^^sr^'^     the    Epistles   from    the    Old    Testament 
which  are  appended  to   Tyndale's  New  Testament  of 
1534 ;  the  second  is  from  the  first  edition  of  Tyndale's 
Pentateuch.    There  are  two  copies  of  the  latter  work  in 
the  British  Museum  :  one  (in  the  Grenville  Library)  is 
perfect ;  the  other  wants  a  few  pag'os,  which  have  been 
supplied  in  fac-simile.    In  this  edition  each  of  the  books 
of  the  Pentateuch  has  its  own  title-page,  but  in  no  case 
does  this  page  contain  the  date  of  publication  or  the 
printer's  name.     Tho  only  information  on  these  points 
is  supplied  by  a   note  at  tho  end  of  Genesis :  "  Em- 
prented   at    Malborow  in  the  lande  of  Hesse,  by  me 
Hans  Luft,  the  yere  of  ouro  Lorde  M.ccccc.xxx.,  the 
xvij.  dayes  of  Januarij."    The  Books  of  Genesis  and 
Numbers    are    in    black    letter;    Exodus,    Leviticus, 
Deuteronomy,  in  Roman.     It  seems  clear  from  these 
indications   that   the   five   books   wore    published   and 
circulated  separately;  whether  they  were  collected  by 
Tyudale  and  issued  by  him  in  one  volume,  we  do  not 
know  with  certainty.     Each  book  has  its  own  prologue. 
The  preface   to  Genesis  is  headed,   "W.  T.      To  the 
Reader,"  and  opens   with  a  reference  to  the  wi-iter's 
translation  of  the  New  Testament.     To  this  document 
we  have  already   referred,'  as   affording  trustworthy 
information  respecting  Tyndalo's  labours  before  he  left 
England   for   tho   Continent.      Tho  initials    "  W.    T." 
stand  at  the  head  of  every  page  of  the  prologues  to 
Exodus,  Leviticus,  Numbers,    and   Deuteronomy.     In 
Exodus  sovoi-al  full-page  illustrations  are  introduced, 
representing  tho  furniture  of  tho  tabernacle,  the  dress 
of  the  high  priest,  &c.     Each  book  is  furnished  with 
marginal  notes,  keenly  controversial  in  spirit,  and  vigo- 
rous in  language;   everywhere  the  writer   is  bent  on 
tracking  out  and  exposing  tho  errors  and  corruptions  of 
Rome.     Are    the   sons  of  Aaron   commanded  not  to 
"make  baldness  upon  their  head"    (Lev.  xxi.  5),  at 
once   follows  the  comment,   "  Of   tho  heathen  priests 
then  took  our  prelates  thoensamplo  of  their  bald  pates." 
Where   the   text  brings  before  us   tho   self-sacrificing 
Bpirit  of  Moses  (Exod.  xxxii.),  Tyndale  is  ready  with  a 
parallel  and  a  contrast :  "  O  pitifid  Moses,  and  likewise 
O   merciful   Paul    (Rom.   ix.).       And    O    abominable 
Pope  with  all  his  merciless  idols."     Though  such  com- 
ments as  these  cannot  but  remind  the  reader  of  Luther, 
it  has  been  shown  by  Mr.  Domaus  =  that  they  are  alto- 
gether different  from  tho  notes  in  Luther's  Pentateuch : 
in  this  respect  thoy  differ  widely  from  the  marginal 
annotations  in  Tyndalo's  fii-st  Testament,  which  wore  m 
great  measure  taken  from  the  Gorman.' 


1  See  above,  Vol.  II.,  p.  22.  2  Life  of  TvnAalo,  p.  238. 

See  Westcott,  Biatory  of  English  Bible,  p.  153  ;  Demaus,  p.  129. 


In  the  Library  of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  we  find  a 
volume  very  similar  in  character  and  contents  to  that 
which  has  just  been  described.  It  contains  the  Penta- 
teuch in  tho  form  of  five  separate  books,  with  different 
title-pages  and  prologues,  and  printed  in  different  de- 
scriptions of  type.  Here,  however,  the  Book  of  Numbers 
alone  is  in  black  letter ;  Genesis  is  in  Roman,  and 
plainly  professes  to  be  "  newly  correctyd  and  amendyd 
by  W.  T.,  M.D.  xxxiiii."  It  is  clear  then  that  wo  have 
before  us  a  new  edition  of  the  translation  of  Genesis ; 
but  whether  the  translation  of  the  other  books  has  been 
in  any  way  altered  is  very  doubtful.  Even  in  Genesis 
the  changes  introduced  are  probably  of  no  great  magni- 
tude. In  the  earlier  edition  Gen.  iv.  7  is  rendered  thus : 
"  Wotest  thou  not  yf  thou  dost  well  thou  shalt  receave 
it?  But  &  yf  thou  dost  evell,  by  &  by  thy  synne 
lyeth  open  in  the  dore.  Not  withstondyng,  let  it  be 
subdued  unto  the,  and  see  thou  rule  it."  In  the  cor- 
rected edition  dost  is  twice  changed  into  do,  but  in  other 
respects  tho  rendering  is  unaltered.  The  later  translation 
of  Gen.  XX.  16,  a  difficult  verse,  is  as  follows  :  "  He  shall 
be  a  coueryuge  to  thyne  eyes  vnto  all  that  ar  with  the, 
and  vuto  all  men  an  excuse."  The  earlier  text  reads, 
"  and  vnto  all  men,  and  an  excuse."  The  two  transla- 
tions have  not  as  yet  been  compai'ed  throughout. 

It  is  generally  believed  that  Tyndale  proceeded  much 
farther  than  the  Pentateuch  in  the  translation  of  the 
Old  Testament,  and  thact  in  a  Bible  pubUshed  the  year 
after  his  death  all  tho  books  from  Genesis  to  2  Chron- 
icles (inclusive)  are  from  his  hand.  The  evidence  in 
support  of  this  opinion  wiU  bo  given  when  we  come  to 
speak  of  "  Mattliews'  Bible."  Tho  only  portion  of  the 
Old  Testameut  which  ap^ieared  in  Tyndale's  name, 
besides  the  Pentateuch  and  the  "  Epistlos,"  was  the 
Book  of  Jonah  (1531).  The  prologue  to  the  translation 
(which  is  five  or  six  times  the  length  of  the  book  itself) 
is  well  known,  but  the  translation  was  until  very  recently 
supposed  to  bo  entirely  lost.  As  lately  as  1848  the  editor 
of  Tyndalo's  works  for  the  Parker  Society  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  maintain  that  Tyndale  had  never  published  a 
version  of  Jonah,  but  a  (so-called)  prologue  only.  In 
1861  all  doubts  were  set  at  rest,  a  copy  of  the  transla- 
tion being  discovered  by  Lord  A.  Hervey,  now  Bishop 
of  Bath  and  Wells  ;  a  fac-simile  edition  was  published 
by  Mr.  Fry,  in  1863. 

To  illustrate  more  fully  Tyndale's  labours  on  the  Old 
Testament,  we  append  the  whole  passage  in  Numb, 
xxiv.  of  which  tho  extract  above  described  is  a  part,  and 
also  some  verses  from  the  4th  chapter  of  Jonah. 

NUMBEKS  XXIV.   15 — 24  (ttndale,  1531).'' 
i-'j  And  bo  began  bis  parable  and  Bayed  :    Balam  tbe  Sonne  of 
Beor  batb  aayed,  and  tbe  man  tbat  hath  bis  eye  open  hatb  Bayed, 

^  Tbe  verses  are  niarlied  for  convenience  of  reference ;  in  Tyn- 
dale's Pentateucb,  as  iu  bis  New  Testament,  there  are  no  divisione 
except  those  of  paragraphs  and  chapters. 


THE    HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH   BIBLE. 


307 


J*"  and  he  'hatTi  sayed  that  heareth  tlie  wordes  of  God  and  hath  the 
kuowlege  of  the  most  hye  and  beholdeth  the  visioo  of  the  all- 
mishtio,  and  when  he  falleth  downe  hath  his  eyes  opened.  '7  I  so 
Lim  but  not  now,  I  beholUe  him  but  not  nye.  There  shall  come 
a  Starrs  of  Jacob  and  ryse  a  cepter  of  Israel,  which  shall  suiy  te  the 
coostes  of  Moub  and  vndermyne  all  the  cbilderu  of  Seth.  '^  And 
Edom  shalbe  his  possession,  and  the  possession  of  Seir  Ghaltie 
their  enimyes,  and  )srael  shidl  doo  manfully.  '9  And  out  of  Jacob 
shall  come  he  that,  shall  destroye  the  remuaunt  of  the  cities. 

'■^  And  he  luked  on  Aumleck  and  began  his  parable  and  sayed  ; 
Amaleck  is  the  first  of  the  uacions,  but  his  latter  eude  shall  perysh 
utterly.  21  And  he  loked  on  the  Kenites,  and  toke  his  parable 
and  sayed :  strouge  is  thi  dwellyuge  place,  and  put  thi  nest  apon  a 
rocke.  ^^  Neuerthelater  thou  sbalt  be  a  burnynge  to  Kain,  uutill 
Assur  take  the  prisoner.  23  ^uj  be  toke  his  parable  &  sayed  : 
Alas,  who  shall  lyue  when  God  doeth  this  ?  ^4  The  shippes  shall 
come  out  of  the  coste  of  Cittim  and  subdue  Assur  and  subdue 
Etoer,  and  he  him  selfe  shall  perysh  at  the  last. 

JONAH  IV.   1 — 5  (tyndale,   1531). 

WberforQ  Jonas  was  sore  discontent  and  angro.  And  he 
prayed  vn  to  the  lorde,  and  sayd  :  O  lord,  was  not  this  my  sayenge 
when  I  was  yet  in  my  centre  ?  And  therfore  I  hasted  rather  to 
flo  to  Tharsis  :  for  I  knew  well  ynough  that  thou  wast  a  mercifull 
god,  ful  of  compassion,  long  yer '  tbou  be  angre  and  of  great 
mercie,  and  rejieutest  when  thou  art  come  to  take  punishment. 
Now  therfore  take  my  life  from  me,  fori  had  lener-  dye  then  Hue. 
And  the  lordo  said  vn  to  Jonas,  art  thou  so  angrie  ?  And  Jonas 
gatt  him  out  of  the  citie  and  sate  him  downe  ou  the  est  syde 
theroffe,  and  made  him  there  a  bothe,  and  sate  thervnder  in  the 
ahadowe,  till  he  might  se  what  shuld  chaunce  vn  to  the  citie. 

Let  us  now  examine  these  passages  in  detail,  taking 
first  the  verses  from  Numb.  xxiv.  This  passage,  we  may 
say,  has  been  selected  solely  on  account  of  its  intrinsic 
intt!rest,  and  because  it  well  tests  the  powers  of  a  trans- 
lator. As  in  the  extracts  from  Tyndale's  New  Testa- 
ment, so  here,  we  notice  much  that  is  preserved  in  our 
Authorised  Version  ;  we  may  easily  calculate  that  nearly 
seventy  words  out  of  every  himdred  have  remained 
unchanged.  Even  a  hasty  comparison,  however,  wUl 
reveal  some  important  differences  (of  interpretation,  and 
not  merely  of  phraseology)  between  the  two  versions. 
The  renderings  which  wiU  strike  the  reader  most  for- 
cibly are  the  present  tenses  in  verses  16  and  17  (heareth, 
hath,  beholdeth,  I  see,  I  behold);  the  last  few  words  in 
verse  16  ("  when  he  falleth  down  hath  his  eyes  opened  ") ; 
the  substitution  of  coasts  for  corners,  and  undermine  for 
destroy,  in  verse  17  ;  of  is  for  was  in  verse  20 ;  and  of 
put  for  thou  puttest  in  verse  21 ;  the  omission  of  "  shall 
have  dominion  and  "  in  verse  19 ;  and  the  changes  in  the 
first  half  of  verse  22  :  in  verse  18  the  meaning  intended 
is  probably  the  same  in  both  versions.  Now  in  most  of 
these  points  of  difference  Tyndale's  version  clearly  do- 
serves  the  preference.  In  verses  16,  17,  an  accurate 
modern  translation  would  come  very  near  to  Tyndale's. 
Both  coasts  and  corners  (verse  17)  are  possible  renderings 
of  the  Hebrew  word,  and  either  is  preferable  to  the  ren- 
derings found  in  the  Vulgate  and  Luther's  version. 
TIio  translation  MK(?ei-miBe  (verse  17)  is  interesting a,3  an 
attempt  to  render  the  Hebrew  word  with  great,  exact- 
ness— an  attempt  not  suggested  by  either  of  the  ver.sions 
just  mentioned,  or  by  tho  Latin  version  of  Pagninus. 
The  omission  in  verse  19  seems  to  be  duo  to  a  diiferent 
reading  of  the  Hebrew,  probably  incorrect,  but  not  with- 
out some  critical  support.  Commentators  still  differ  in 
opinion  as  to  the  choice  of  is  or  was  in  verse  20.     Tlie 


^  Ere,  before. 


2  Eathtr. 


same  may  be  said  of  put  and  is  put  in  verse  21 ;  the 
rendering- of  the  Authorised  Version  ("thou  puttest") 
cannot  stand,  unless  as  a  free  translation,  following  tho 
sense  rather  than  the  form  of  the  original.  In  verso  22 
our  common  version  is  probably  right,  but  it  is  interest- 
ing again  to  note  in  the  word  "  burnijig "  Tyndale's 
oif  ort  to  keep  close  to  the  Hebrew.  The  general  results 
of  a  careful  comparison  of  Tyndale's  version  with  the 
Authorised  in  this  passage  may  bo  stated  as  follows  : — 
There  are  in  these  ver.sos  about  seventeen  differences  of 
some  importance ;  in  eleven  of  these  Tyndalo  is  probably 
right.  In  three  of  tho  eleven  he  agrees  with  Luther 
and  the  Vulgate,  in  three  more  with  tho  Vulgate  against 
Luther ;  in  five  he  has  the  support  of  neither  of  these 
versions.  The  instances  in  which  Tyndalo  is  wrong 
are  of  less  moment.  Once  he  follows  a  different  read- 
ing of  the  original  text,  twice  he  inserts  and,  twice 
omits  and  or  also,  once  veaiis  which  in  the  place  of  and; 
in  verse  19  he  has  cities  for  city.  In  minor  points  the 
Authorised  Version  has  some  advantage  :  for  example, 
took  up  is  better  than  began  or  took,  and  kneiv  (verse  16) 
is  more  literal  than  hath.  It  should  be  said  that  in  one 
of  the  important  variations  {ptd,  in  verse  21)  Tyndale's 
translation  may  be  due  to  the  Latin  version  of  Pagninus. 
Surely  nothing  can  be  clearer  than  that  in  this  passage 
(and  we  repeat  that  the  verses  were  selected  for  their 
internal  character  alone)  Tyndale  has  played  the  part 
of  the  careful,  able,  and  honest  translator,  using  all 
available  helps,  but  studying  the  original  for  himself 
with  independent  judgment. 

The  second  passage  is  of  a  different  cast.  There  are 
no  difficulties  of  accotmt  in  Isa.  xii.,  and  hence  the 
differences  between  Tyndale's  version  and  the  Autho- 
rised consist  almost  entirely  in  tho  phraseology.  It  is 
therefore  with  some  surprise  that  we  discover  the  verbal 
agreement  between  the  two  versions  to  be  no  greater 
than  in  the  passage  last  examined.  Here  again  Tyn- 
dale's tmnslation  often  shows  close  attention  to  the 
original ;  whereas  he  is  frequently  at  variance  with  the 
Vulgate,  and  the  extent  of  his  divergence  from  Luther 
is  really  remarkable.  In  the  third  passage,  Jonah  iv. 
1 — 5,  hardly  more  than  haK  the  words  in  our  version 
are  found  in  Tyndale's,  though  here  also  there  is  not 
much  room  for  serious  difference  in  interpretation.  The 
translation  "  Art  thou  so  angry  ?  "  differs  both  from 
Luther  and  from  the  Vulgate. 

We  may  at  present  dismiss  from  consideration  Tyn- 
dale's translations  from  the  pi'ophetical  books ;  though 
interesting  in  themselves,  they  are  of  little  importance  for 
our  present  purpose  in  comparison  with  his  version  of 
the  Pentateuch.  Of  this  it  would  not  be  right  to  form 
a  judgment  from  an  examination  of  one  passage  only. 
Indeed,  this  passage  taken  by  itself  gives  an  inadequate 
impression  of  the  extent  to  which  our  version  is  indebted 
to  Tyndale  in  the  Pentateuch  The  more  difficult  the 
passage  chosen  as  a  specimen,  the  larger  is  the  amount 
of  variation  which  different  translations  will  exhibit. 
If  we  take  the  last  twenty-four  verses  of  Deuteronomy, 
we  shall  find  that,  in  the  first  half  of  this  portion,  which 
is  difficult,  we  owe  to  Tyndale  about  two-thirds  of  tho 


308 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


Authorised  Version ;  in  the  second  half,  a  plain  narra- 
tive, the  debt  is  largely  increased,  amounting  to  eighty- 
six  words  in  every  hundred.  A  study  of  diificult  verses, 
taken  from  such  chapters  as  Deut.  xxxiii.  and  (Jen.  xlix., 
confirms  the  conclusions  already  expressed  in  regard  to 
Tyndale's  position  as  a  translator.  No  one  will  suppose 
that  the  characteristics  wliich  we  have  discovered  in 
Tyndale's  Pentateuch  will  be  wanting  in  his  New  Testa- 
ment. Here,  however,  wo  cannot  go  into  detail;  the 
limits  of  our  space  will  not  permit  more  than  a  state- 
ment of  the  results  of  examination.  The  translations 
accessible  to  Tyndale  in  the  New  Testament  were 
Luther's,  the  Vulgate,  and  the  Latin  version  of  Erasmus, 
which  accompauied  his  editions  of  the  Greek  text.  A 
careful  examination  of  continuous  passages  of  some 
length,  and  also  of  isolated  verses  of  peculiar  difficulty, 
leads  us  to  the  same  conclusion  as  in  the  former  case. 
Alike  in  the  Old  Testament  and  in  the  New,  Tyndale 
had  before  him  the  best  of  existing  translations,  and 
every  page  shows  that  he  was  largely  influenced  by 
them ;  but  all  who  scrutinise  his  work  with  care  will 
testify  that  Tyndale's  version  was  made  neither  from 
the  German  nor  from  the  Latin,  but  most  undoubtedly 
from  the  original  tongues. 

It  may  be  thought  that  too  much  stress  lias  boon  laid 
on  Tyndale's  independence.  Seldom,  however,  has  any 
translator  been  so  completely  misjudged  as  Tyndale 
has  been.  One  cause  of  this  misapprehension  is  no 
doubt  to  be  found  in  the  vigour  and  warmth  (to  use  no 
stronger  terms)  of  his  controversial  works.  The  un- 
prejudiced reader  who  looks  at  his  writings  as  a  whole 
will  do  justice  to  Tyndale's  deep  religious  feeling  and 
fervent  zeal  for  the  truth ;  but  it  is  no  matter  of  surprise 
that  those  who  were  the  objects  of  his  unsparing  attacks 
should  have  doiireciated  his  labours  and  misunderstood 
his  character.  Their  assertions,  unhappily,  have  boon 
repeated  by  later  writers,  who  in  their  haste  have  mis- 
taken the  statements  of  partisans  for  authentic  history. 
It  was  natural  for  More  to  connect  Tyndale's  Now  Tes- 
tament with  Luther ;  but  we  may  well  be  astonished 
when  we  find  a  modern  historian  of  note  describing 
Tyudale's  translation  as  "  avowedly  taken  from  " 
Luther's  and  from  the  Latin  Vulgate,  and  another 
afiii'ming  that  "  Tyndale  saw  Luther,  and  under  his 
immediate  direction  translated  the  Gospels  and  Epistles 
while  at  Wittenberg."  More  recently  still  Tyndale  has 
been  classed  among  certain  translators  who,  whilst  pro- 
fessing to  carry  out  the  idea  of  forming  an  Enghsh 
Bible  from  the  original  languages,  "  seem  chiefly  to 
have  worked  for  the  printers,  and  to  have  translated 
chiefly,  in  the  end,  from  Luther's  German  Bible  and 
the  Vulgate."  It  is  therefore  stiU  necessary  to  insist 
on  the  internal  eridence  which  so  strongly  supports  the 
claim  which  Tj-ndale  everywhere  makes  (by  implicjition, 
if  not  openly)  to  have  had  resort  to  the  original  Scrip- 
tures. When  he  made  his  first  attempt  to  obtain  the 
countenance  of  Bishop  Timstal  as  a  translator  of  the 
Greek  Testament,  he  offered  an  English  version  of 
Isocrates  as  a  token  of  his  competence.  More  himself 
aUowed  and  appealed  to  Tyndale's  knowledge  of  Greek. 


One  of  the  most  celebrated  scholars  of  that  day' 
spoke  of  the  Englishman  who  was  translating  the  New 
Testament  at  Worms  as  a  man  "  ■  so  learned  in  seven 
lauguagos — Hebrew,  Greek,  Latin,  Italian,  Spanish, 
English,  and  French — that,  whichever  he  spoke,  you 
would  think  it  his  native  tongue."  Tyndale  speaks 
familiarly  of  the  peculiar  constnictions  of  Hebrew,  and 
the  extent  to  which  they  influence  the  Greek  of  the 
New  Testament;-  his  remarks  on  the  translation  of 
Greek  and  Hebrew  into  English  •*  will  command  the 
assent  of  all  who  are  acquainted  with  the  properties  of 
the  languages  in  question.  In  his  Pentateuch  he  ex- 
plains many  peculiar  words — such  as  Ahrech  (Gen.  xli. 
43)  and  Zaphnath-paaneah — in  such  a  way  as  to  show 
familiarity  with  the  subject;  his  explanations  not  un- 
frequently  differ  from  those  found  in  the  two  versions 
to  which  he  is  supposed  to  be  in  bondage,  and  not 
always  for  the  worse.  But  enough  has  been  ah-eady 
said  to  show  how  baseless  are  the  reflections  which  are 
cast  on  Tyndale's  work  as  a  translator  of  Scripture. 
His  indejjendonce  in  this  respect  really  stands  in  fre- 
quent and  marked  contrast  with  his  close  adlierence  to 
Luther  in  many  of  his  prologues,  notes,  and  expositions 
of  Scripture.  To  use  the  words  of  one  who  has  ex- 
amined this  subject  with  the  greatest  care,  "  Tyndale 
availed  himself  of  the  best  help  which  lay  within  his 
reach,  but  ho  used  it  as  a  master  and  not  as  a  disciple. 
In  this  work  alone  he  felt  that  substantial  independence 
was  essential  to  success.  In  exposition  or  exhortation  he 
might  borrow  freely  the  language  or  the  thought  which 
seemed  suited  to  his  purpose,  but  in  rendering  the  sacred 
text  he  remained  throughout  faithful  to  the  instincts  of 
a  scholar."^ 

One  of  Tyndale's  adversaries  must  receive  more  than 
a  passing  notice.  We  have  already  referred  to  Sir  T. 
More's  violent  attacks  upon  Tyndale  and  all  who  were 
supposed  to  be  confederate  with  Mm.  In  the  folio 
edition  of  More's  works,  more  than  a  thousand  pages  are 
taken  up  with  this  controversy.^  More's  skill  in  Greek 
is  not  doubted,  and  as  little  can  any  one  question  his 
eagerness  as  a  disputant ;  if  then  Tyndale's  translation 
of  the  Now  Testament  were  bad  and  false,  by  such  an 
opponent  the  defects  must  surely  be  brought  to  light. 
It  is  no  small  testimony  to  Tyndale's  substantial  accu- 
racy that  More  occupies  himself  so  largely  witii  his 
adversary's  doctrines,  so  little  with  the  translation.  In 
this,  it  is  true,  ho  discovers  many  errors,  as  the  follow- 
ing quotation  will  show,  but  the  same  passage  will  also 
reveal  the  method  of  reckoning  employed  : — 

"  So  had  Tyndale,  after  Liither's  counsel,  corrupted 
and  changed  it  from  the  good  and  wholesome  doctrine 
of  Christ  to  the  devilish  heresies  of  their  own,  that  it  was 
clean  a  contrary  thing.  'That  were  marvel,'  quoth  your 
friend,  '  that  it  should  be  so  clean  contrary  ;  for  to  some 
that  read  it  it  seemed  very  like.'  'It  is, '  quoth  I,  '  never 
the  less  contrary,  and  yet  the  more  perilous.    For  like 

'  Hermnnn  von  dem  Buscho,  usually  kuown  as  Buscliius.  See 
Arber,  Preface,  p.  25. 

2  Works,  vol.  i,,  p.  4G3.  3  TToiis,  vol.  i.,  p.  143. 

*  Westcott,  Hist,  of  Enylish  BiiU,  p.  104.  *  Demaus,  p.  281. 


THE   HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH   BIBLE. 


309 


as  to  a  true  silver  groat  a  false  copper  groat  is  never 

the  less  contrary,  though  it  be  quicksilvered  over,  but 
so  much  tlie  more  false,  in  how  much  it  is  counterfeited 
the  more  lUcc  to  the  truth,  so  was  the  translation  so 
much  the  more  contrary  in  how  much  it  was  craftily 
devised  like,  and  so  much  the  more  perilous  in  how 
much  it  was  to  folk  unlearned  hard  to  be  discerned.' 
'  Why,'  quoth  your  friend, '  what  faults  were  there  in  it  ?' 
'  To  tell  you  aU  that,'  quoth  I,  '  were  in  a  manner  to  re- 
hearse you  all  the  whole  book,  wherein  there  were  found 
and  noted  wrong  or  falsely  translated  above  a  thousand 
texts  by  tale.'  '  I  would,'  cjuoth  he,  '  fain  hear  some  one.' 
'  He  that  shoidd,'  quoth  I, '  study  for  that,  sliould  study 
where  to  find  water  in  the  sea.  But  I  will  show  you 
for  ensample  two  or  thi-oe  such  as  every  one  of  the 
tlu-ee  is  more  than  thrico  three  in  one.'.  '  That  were,' 
quoth  he,  '  very  strange,  except  ye  mean  more  in  weight ; 
for  one  can  be  but  one  in  number.'  '  Surely,'  quoth  I, 
'  as  weighty  be  they  as  any  lightly  cau  be.  But  I 
mean  that  every  one  of  them  is  more  than  thrico  three 
in  number.'  '  That  were,'  quoth  he, '  somewhat  like  a 
riddle.'  '  This  riddle,'  quoth  I,  '  will  soon  be  read. 
For  ho  hath  mistranslated  three  words  of  great  weight, 
and  every  one  of  them  is,  as  I  suppose,  more  than 
thrice  three  times  repeated  and  rehearsed  in  the  book.' 
'  Ah,  that  may  well  be,'  quoth  he ;  '  but  that  was  not 
well  done.  But,  I  pray  you,  what  words  be  they  ? ' 
'  The  one  is,'  quoth  I,  'this  vrorA priests ;  the  other,  the 
church;  the  third,  charity."' 

This  was  the  head  and  front  of  Tyndale's  offending. 
He  had  discarded  some  of  the  familiar  ecclesiastical 
words,  employing  common  words  in  their  place.  For 
church  he  uses  congregation,  as  More's  friend  Erasmus 
had  (sometimes)  done  before  him  ;  for  priest  ho  uses 
senior,  as  a  less  ambiguous  word ;  grace  gives  way  to 
favour,  confess  to  hnoxcledge  (that  is,  acknowledge), 
penance  to  repentance.  "  Senior,"  Tyndale  admits,  "  is 
no  very  good  English ; "  and  in  his  later  editions  he  puts 
elder  iu  its  place.  Wliatovor  judgment  may  be  passed 
on  Tyndale's  procedure,  his  defence  deserves  considera- 
tion;- surely  at  a  time  when  so  many  injurious  and 
false  notions  were  attached  to  the  words  in  question,  a 
translator  might  well  take  refuge  in  simple  terms  of 
imdoubted  signification.  Even  should  the  older  terms 
bo  restored  at  length,  to  have  been  reminded  of  their 
proper  meaning  would  bo  a  gain  to  every  reader. 

One  other  point  remains,  a  point  referred  to  in  an 
earlier  paper,'  but  left  for  consideration  in  this  place. 
Was  Tyndale  indebted  in  any  degree  to  the  early 
English  versions  of  Wycliffe,  Hereford,  and  Purvey  ? 
It  is  hardly  possible  that  he  can  have  been  unacquainted 
with  these  versions,  though,  as  we  have  seen,  they  were 
not  printed  for  two  or  three  centuries  after  Tyndale's 
age.  A  very  able  writer  on  the  English  language,  Mr. 
G.  P.  Marsh,  considers  it  certain  that  "Tyndale  is 
merely  a  full-grown  Wycliffe."    "  His  recension  of  the 


1  More's  Blnlogue,  book  iii.,  cb.  8.     See  Avbor,  Prefaco,  p.  55. 

2  See  bis  Works,  vol.  ).,  pp.  16— 2i  (Parker  Society). 

3  See  above,  toI.  i.,  p.  S3. 


Now  Testament  is  just  what  his  great  predecessor  would 
have  made  it,  had  ho  awaked  again  to  see  the  dawn  of 
that  glorious  day  of  which  his  own  life  and  labours 
kindled  the  morning  twilight.  Not  only  does  Tyndale 
retain  the  general  grammatical  structure  of  the  older 
version,  but  most  of  its  felicitous  verbal  combinations, 
and,  what  is  more  remarkable,  he  preserves  even  the 
rhythmic  flow  of  its  periods,  which  is  again  repeated  in 
the  recension  of  1611.  Wycliffe,  then,  must  be  con- 
sidered as  having  originated  the  dicticm  and  phraseology 
which  for  five  centuries  have  constituted  the  conse- 
crated dialect  of  the  English  speech ;  and  Tyndale  as 
having  given  to  it  that  finish  aud  perfection  which  liavo 
so  admirably  adapted  it  to  the  expression  of  religious 
doctrine  and  sentiment,  and  to  the  narration  of  that 
remarkable  series  of  historical  facts  which  are  recorded 
in  the  Chi-istian  Scriptures."''  On  the  other  hand, 
Tyndale  must  be  heard  in  his  own  cause.  "  Them  that 
are  learned  Christianly,"  he  says,'  "  I  beseech  .  . 
that  they  consider  how  that  I  had  no  man  to  counter- 
feit" (that  is,  imitate),  "neither  was  holpen  with 
English  of  any  that  had  interpreted  the  same  or  such 
like  thing  in  the  Scripture  beforetime."  These  words 
do  not  disavow  all  knowledge  of  the  carher  version,  but 
they  distinctly  deny  that  that  version  served  as  a  basis 
for  the  new  work.  A  comparison  of  the  two  transla- 
tions (if  wo  bear  in  mind  that  they  are  translations — one 
avowedly  taken  from  the  Vulgate,  the  other  frequently 
influenced  by  the  Vulgate)  fidly,  wo  think,  confirms 
Tyndale's  statement.  Again  and  again  we  meet  with 
startling  resemblances,  but  on  examination  it  becomes 
evident  that  the  Vulgate  has  supplied  the  connecting 
link.  At  first  sight  it  appears  strange  that  in  Col.  i.  13 
both  versions  should  have  the  word  "translated;"  that 
in  both  we  should  read  "pinnacle  of  the  temple"  in 
Matt.  iv.  5  ;  "  comprehended  "  iu  John  i.  5  ;  "  tribula- 
tion and  anguish  "  in  Rom.  ii.  9  :  for  in  none  of  these 
examples  is  there  anything  in  the  Greek  which  compels 
the  adoption  of  one  particular  English  word.  When 
we  observe  that  the  familiar  Latin  words  are  transtulit, 
pinnaculuni,  comprchenderunt,  trihtdatio  et  angtistia, 
we  understand  at  once  the  coincidences  in  the  Enghsh. 
We  are,  however,  willing  to  admit  that  this  explanation 
will  not  account  for  every  instance  of  affinity  between 
Tyndale  and  Wycliffe.  Many  of  the  earlier  renderings 
must  have  become  current  plu-ases ;  proverbial  sayings 
from  the  New  Testament  could  hardly  fail  to  present 
themselves  to  the  new  translator  in  their  famihar 
guise.  Hence  we  cannot  be  surprised  to  find  that 
'■  mote  "  and  "  beam  "  are  common  to  both  versions  of 
Matt.  vii.  3;  that  "  God  forbid  "is  used  in  both,  though 
the  Greek  phrase  is  altogether  different  in  form ;  that 
the  promise  of  the  "  Comforter  "  remains  unchanged, 
tliough  the  Latin  translations  either  retain  the  Greek 
word  (the  "  Paraclete  ")  or  express  it  by  "Advocate;  " 
that  in  Matt.  vii.  6  both  Wycliffe  and  Tyndale  adopt  a 


■*  LccUires  onihe  English  Latignage,  p.  447  (Murray). 
5  Iu  tbe  Address  to  tbe  Reader,  added  to  tbe  octavo  edition  of 
bis  New  Testament  (1525). 


310 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


rendering  (not  suggested  either  by  the  Greek  or  by  the 
Latin)  which  refers  the  "trampling"  to  the  "swine," 
the  "  rending "  to  the  "  dogs ; "  or  that  in  the  14th 
verse  of  the  same  chapter  both  speak  of  the  "  gate  "  as 
"  strait,"  of  the  "  way  "  as  "  narrow."  We  might  even 
concede  to  Mr.  Marsh  that  Wyeliffe  and  his  coadjutors 
had  in  some  degree  succeeded  in  fixing  the  general 
character  and  stylo  of  an  English  version  of  the  Bible, 
and  that  thi-ough  their  labours  Englishmen  had  been 
taught  to  look  for  simplicity  and  literalness  of  rendoiing 
instead  of  idiomatic  paraplirase.  When  all  this  allow- 
ance lias  been  made — and  in  making  it  we  are  convinced 
that  we  have  rather  enhanced  than  depreciated  the  just 
rights  of  the  older  versions — Tyndale's  claims  on  our 
gratitude  remain  unimpaired ;  he  is  stlU  the  father  of 
our  present  version.  The  labours  of  his  successors 
effected  many  improvements  in  detail,  but  the  plan  and 
spirit  of  the  work  have  been  left  unchanged.  Mr. 
Proude's  well-known  words,  if  understood  of  the  whole 
rather  than  of  each  part,  if  read  with  the  recollection 
that  Tyndale  was  cut  off  before  his  cherished  task  was 


finished,  and  that  others  entered  into  his  labours  and 
made  his  work  complete,  are  as  just  as  they  are  elo- 
quent : — 

"Of  the  translation  itself,  though  since  that  time  it 
has  been  many  times  revised  and  altered,  we  may  say 
that  it  is  substantially  the  Bible  with  which  wo  are  all 
familiar.  The  pecuhar  genius — if  such  a  word  may 
be  permitted — which  breathes  thi'ough  it — tke  mingled 
tenderness  and  majesty — the  Saxon  simplicity — the 
preternatural  grandeur — ^unequallod,  uuapproached  in 
the  attempted  improvements  of  modern  scholars^aU 
are  here,  and  bear  the  impress  of  the  mind  of  one 
man — William  Tyndale.  Lying,  while  engaged  in  that 
great  ofiice,  under  the  shadow  of  death,  the  swoi'd  above 
his  head  and  ready  at  any  moment  to  fall,  he  worked, 
under  circumstances  alone  perhaps  truly  worthy  of  the 
task  which  was  laid  upon  him — his  spirit,  as  it  wire 
divorced  from  the  world,  moved  in  a  purer  element 
than  common  air." ' 

1  History  of  England,  vol.  iii.,  p.  84. 


MUSIC     OF    THE    BIBLE. 

BT    JOHN   STAINEE,    M.A.,    MUS.   D.,    MAGDALEN   COLLEGE,    OXFOKD  ;    OEGANIST   OP  ST.   PAUL's   CATHEDEAL. 

INSTEUMENTS  OF  PEECUSSION. 


TZELTZELIM,   METZILLOTH. 

^HESE  words,  which  are  found  about  a  dozen 
times    in   the  Old   Testament,   are,   with 
only  one  exception,  rendered  "  cymbals  " 
in  our  version.    This  name  fuUy  describes 
the  form  oi   the  inistrument,  for  cymbal  comes  dh-ect 


Fig.  84. 

from  the  Greek  Kiii^dKov  (cymhalum),  which  in  turn 
comes  from  iciV/3os  (cyitihxis),  a  hollowed  plate  or  basin. 

Now,  although  there  are  ui  use  among  most  nations  a 
largo  number  of  varieties  of  this  instrument,  differing 
in  size,  yot  there  are  only  two  havLug  any  broad  dis- 


tinction in  form.  Of  these,  the  one  was  almost  iden- 
tical with  our  modern  soup-plate  (having  a  somewhat 
larger  rim) ;  the  other  had  a  hollow  commencing  at  the 
very  rim,  and  terminating  in  an  upright  handle,  giving 
it  the  appearance  of  a  hoUow  cone,  surmounted  -by  a 
handle.  Both  sorts  were  in  use  among  the  Assyrians. 
The  comparatively  flat  cymbals  were  jilayed  by  bringing 
the  right  and  left  hands,  each  of  wliich  held  one  plate, 
sharply  together  at  right  angles  mth  the  body.  Of  the 
conical-shaped  cymbals,  one  was  held  stationary  in  the 
left  hand,  while  the  other  was  dashed  upon  it  vertically 
with  the  right  hand.  Fig.  84  shows  an  Assyrian  in  the 
act  of  striking  this  last-mentioned  form  of  the  instru- 
ment. Scidpturo  also  shows  people  .sti-iking  the  flatter 
instruments  in  the  manner  above  described.  The  ancient 
Egy])tians  also  used  cymbals  made  of  copper,  with  a 
small  admixture  of  silver.  Most  fortunately  a  pair  of 
these  was  discovered  in  the  tomb  of  a  priestly  musician 
named  Ankhape,  close  by  his  mummied  body.  These 
are  given  in  Pig.  85.  The  perforation  in  the  top  is,  of 
course,  for  tho  purpose  of  passing  a  loop  of  cord  through 
as  a  liandle.  A  leather  strap  is  used  for  this  in  modern 
instruments.  Those  ancient  specimens  are  about  five 
inches  in  diameter,  and  are  said  to  bo  almost  identical, 
both  in  form  and  size,  with  those  used  in  Egypt  at  tho 
present  time. 

In  Ps.  cl.  5,  two  sorts  aro  evidently  pointed  out  : 
"  Praise  Him  upon  the  loud  cymbals ;  praise  Him  upon 
the  high-sounding  cymbals."  Bearing  this  in  mind,  it 
is  very  interesting  to  find  lliat  the  Arabs  have  two  dis- 
tinct varieties,  largo  and  small;  for  the  "  loud  cymbals" 


MUSIC    OF   THE   BIBLE. 


311 


of  the  Psalmist  would  certainly  be  of  a  larger  diameter 
than  the  "  high-sounding  "  cymbals.    In  the  Prayer-book 


Fig.  So. 

version  of  this  Psalm,  the  real  distinction  between  these 
two  species  is  unfortunately  not  made  jilain  :  "  Praiso 
Him  upon  the  well- tuned  cymbals ;  praise  Him  upon  the 
loud  cymbals."  The  Arabs  use  their  large  cymbals  in 
religious  ceremonies,  but  the  smaller  kind  seem  to  bo 
almost  limited  to  the  accompaniment  of  dancers.  In 
India,  instruments  of  this  class  are  called  talan.  Tiicro 
is  also  a  smaller  species  called  hintal.  The  Bayaderes 
dance  to  the  tal. 

The  Turks,  as  would  be  expected  from  their  Asiatic 
origin,  inherit  a  system  of  music  chiefly  founded  on  the 
Persian.  They  have  always  exceUed^  not  only  in  the 
use  of  instruments  of  percussion,  but  also  in  theii-  con- 
struction. Prom  the  fact  that  the  foot-guard  of  the 
Sultan  were  formerly  called  janissaries,  music  chiefly 
consisting  of  a  combination  of  the  sounds  of  instruments 
of  percussion  has  been  called  "janissary  music."  The 
efforts  of  Predoric  II.  to  obtain  genuine  music  of  this 
sort  for  Gorman  use  are  well  known.  Turkish  cymbals 
still  hold  a  high  value,  and  are  manufactured  in  that 
country  in  very  Lirge  quantities,  for  exportation  west- 
ward. 

Gongs,  though  perhaps  less  strictly  musical  instru- 
ments than  cymbals,  must  be  classified  with  them ;  and 
many  na-tions  celebrated  for  the  manufacture  of  one,  are 
equally  famous  for  producing  the  other.  The  Chinese 
and  Burmese,  for  instance,  use  both  cymbals  and  gongs, 
the  latter  being  sometimes  suspended  on  cords  in  a 
series  of  diif  erent  sizes,  so  as  to  pr'oduce  their  national 
scale  when  struck  in  rotation. 

Fig.  86  shows  a  specimeu  of  ludian  cymbals  ;  Fig.  87, 
one  from  Burmah.  The  joining  together  of  the  two 
plates  by  means  of  a  cord  does  not  appear  to  have  been 
at  any  time  a  common  custom  in  Eui-ope. 

The  Greeks  and  Romans,  by  whom  cymbals  seem  to 
have  been  shaped  strictly  in  accordance  with  what  the 


name  implies,  so  as  to  have  been  hollow  hemispheres  of 
metal,  used  them  in  the  rites  connected  with  the  worship 
of  Bacchus,  Jimo,  and  Cybele.  But,  as  has  been  the 
case  with  other  musical  instruments,  tho  name  cymbal 
has  been  in  the  most  extraordinary  way  applied  to 
instruments  of  a  totally  different  construction.  Tho 
Italians,  at  one  period,  called  a  common  tambourine  by 
this  name,  and  even  went  so  far  as  to  apply  it  to  the 
dulcimer  1  We  have  in  a  previous  article  traced  tho 
growth  of  a  dulcimer  through  various  stages,  till  it 
reached  the  form  of  a  harpsichord :  the  reader',  therefore, 
wUl  not  bo  astonished  to  find,  at  a  later  date,  '•  cymbal " 


Pig.  8G. 


Fig.  87. 

used  for  harpsichord.  But  tliis  is  not  all.  As  tho 
pianoforte  was  the  direct  offspring  of  the  harpsichord, 
the  pianoforte  part  in  a  full  score  is  to  this  day  some- 
times marked  cembalo,  or  "tho  cymbal  part."  It  seems 
to  be  a  matter  for  much  regret  that  musicians  should 
feel  bound,  by  habit  or  fashion,  thus  to  pci'petuate  a 
title  which  is  not  only  unmeaning,  but  absolutely  in- 
correct. It  is  difficult  to  imderstaud  in  wliat  respect 
tho  dulcimer  was  thought  to  bear  any  resemblance  to 
cymbals.  Some  say  that  because  it  was  struck  with 
hammers,  it  might  with  justice  be  called  an  instrument 
of  percussion ;  but  it  is  more  probable  that  the  pecidiar 
clang  caused  by  hitting  wire  strings  with  little  wooden 
mallets,  gave  some  fanciful  resemblance  between  the 
"ringing"  tone  of  both  instruments.  In  modem 
military  bands,  cymbals  are  used  as  of  old,  a  plate 
being  held  firmly  in  each  hand  by  a  leather  thong,  and 
by  swinging  the  hands  together  the  plates  clash.  In 
modem  orchestras  the  instrument  is  generally  used 
thus  :  one  plate  is  horizontiilly  fixed  (rather  loosely)  on 
to  tho  top  of  an  upright  (bum  ;  mth  his  left  hand  the 
player  holds  the  other  plate,  and  \Tith  his  right  hand  a 
drumstick.  Thus,  not  only  can  one  performer  pky 
both  instruments  simultaneously,  but  the  tone  and 
clang  of  the  cymbals  are  much  intensified  by  being  in 
close  connection  with  tho  vibrating  skin  and  frame  of 
tho  drum. 

Cymbals,  in  a  somewhat  imexpccted  manner,  came  to 


312 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


ba  associated  with  tlie  tambour.  For  as  they  became 
reduced  in  size  it  was  found  possible  to  insert  several 
pairs  inside  the  rim  of  the  tambour,  so  that  their 
clatter  should  either  joiu  the  rhythmical  beating  of  the 
tambour,  or  be  heard  alone  when  the  tambour  is  held  by 
one  hand,  and  made  to  swing  rapitUy  from  side  to  side, 
a  diameter  being  its  axis.  These  •'  petites  eymbalcs " 
were  occasionally  fixed  to  the  thumb  and  forefinger  of 
both  hands,  which  were  then  clapped  together,  as  shown 
in  Fig.  88.     Hence  they  came  to  be  called  castanets. 


Fig.  88. 

from  their  similarity  to  the  old  toy — hardly  worthy  of 
the  name  of  a  musical  instrument,  although  it  was  used 
with  dancing — which  consisted  of  chestnuts  attached  to 
the  fingers  (as  in  Fig.  88),  and  beaten  together ;  the 
words  chestnuts  and  castanets  both  being  derived  from 
castanea  (Lat.),  and  KaiTTavov  (Greek),  the  name  of  the 
plant.  But  in  process  of  time,  pieces  of  ivory  or 
mother-of-peai'l  were  substituted  for  chestnuts.  Hence 
the  bones  which  we  see  rattled  between  the  fingers  of 
supposed  negroes  are  dignified  with  the  name  castanets, 
and  can  in  some  sense  trace  their  pedigree  to  the 
ancient  cymbals.  Hence,  too,  we  get  an  explanation  of 
the  old  word  nahers  or  nachers,  which  was  applied  to 
castanets  by  Cliaucer,  and  used  commonly  at  a  later 
period.  Evidently  it  alludes  to  the  material  of  which 
they  were  made,  nacre  being  the  French,  and  nacar  the 
Spanish  for  "  mother-of-pearl."  Very  small  cymbals 
have  occasionally  been  used  in  the  modem  orchestra. 
Berlioz,  who  gave  so  much  attention,  and  devoted  so 
much  talent,  to  the  increasing  of  the  resources  of  a 
band,  used,  in  a  symjihony,  a  pair  not  bigger  than  the 
palm  of  the  hand,  and  tuned  them  at  an  interval  of  a 
.  fifth  ajiart.   It  should  l)e  stated  that  m  playing  cymbals, 

not  only  in  Europe,  but  in  Asia,  it  is  not  usual  to 
strike  them  edge  against  edge,  as  the  Assyrian  appears 
to  be  doing  with  his  conical  cymbals  in  Fig.  83,  but  to 
make  one  plate  only  partially  overlap  the  other.  If 
the  former  method  be  adopted,  the  vibrations  of  the 
plates  are  very  liable  to  destroy  each  other,  owing  to 
the  extent  of  the  contact  of  the  two  surfaces;  if  the 
^  latter,  the  plates  have  more  "  play  "  when  in  ■s'ibration. 
In  the  Holy  Scriptures  the  use  of  cymbals  is  solely 
confined  to  religious  ceremonies— the  bringing  back  the 
ark  from  Kirjath-jearim  (1  Chron.  sv.  16,  19,  28) ;  at 
the  dedication  of  Solomon's  Temple  (2  Chron.  v.  13) ; 
at  the  restoration  of  worship  by  Hczekiah  (2  Chron. 
xxix.  2.5);  at  the  laying  the  foundation  of  the  second 
Temple  (Ezra  iii.  10) ;  and  at  the  dedication  of  the  wall 
of  Jenisalem  (Neli.  xii.  27).      This  would  lead  us  to 


suppose  that  cymbals  were  not  commonly  used  as  an 
accompaniment  to  dancing  among  the  Jews.  Certain 
Levites  were  set  aside  as  cymbalists,  as  described  in 
1  Chron.  xvi.  42,  and  elsewhere.  They  are  mentioned  in 
Ezra  iii.  10,  as  being  used  with  trumpets  {chatzozerah) 
only.  Ijut  iu  most  other  instances  are  described  as  being 
used  with  harp.s  and  other  Hebrew  instruments.  There 
is  deep  meaning  in  the  allusion  of  St.  Paul  to  this 
instrument  iu  1  Cor.  xiii.  1.  Inasmuch  as  it  gives 
out  a  shrill  and  clanging  sound  [nvfifiaXov  dXaXa^oy),  and 
is  incapable  of  being  tempered  or  tuned  so  as  to  form, 
ever-vai'ied  chords  with  those  musical  instruments  which 
surround  it,  it  too  well  illustrates  the  hollowuess  and 
emptiness  of  character  which,  while  making  noble 
professions  with  the  tongue,  lacks  that  gift  of  charity 
which,  if  it  truly  glowed  in  us  all,  would  soon  attune 
all  the  discords  of  this  world  into  such  a  sweet  harmony 
as  were  worthy  of  heaven  itself. 

The  one  insfance,  before  alluded  to,  in  which  the  word 
tzeltzelim  has  been  translated  otherwise  than  by  the 
word  "cymbals,"'  occui-s  in  Zech.  xiv.  20,  whei-e  it  is 
rendered  by  "bells  :"  "  In  that  day  shall  there  be  upon 
the  bells  of  the  horses.  Holiness  unto  the  Lord." 
The  margin  here  has  another  reading — "  upon  the  bridles 
of  the  horses;"  but  if  the  word  be  understood  in  a 
musical  sense  or  not,  it  is  in  no  way  to  be  considered 
as  badly  rendered  by  "  bells."  For  the  Eastern  custom 
of  having  little  plates  of  metal  attached  to  the  capa- 
risons of  horses,  so  as  to  produce  a  jingling  noise, 
is  well  known.  And  if  these  plates  had  a  circular 
indentation,  they  would  be  little  cymbals ;  and  if  the 
iudeutation  grows  deeper,  and  the  rim  be  gradually  bent 
into  a  circtilar  outline,  a  little  beU  is  the  result.  This 
gradual  change  of  metal  plates  into  bells  is  interesting 
.and  important.  The  indentation  of  cymbals  would  be 
found  to  add  to  their  vibrating  power  and  sonority, 
and  as  this  indentation  became  exaggerated,  notliing 
would  be  more  probable  than  that  they  should  eventually 
be  formed  into  half -globes.  This  form,  as  has  been 
before  remarked,  is  actually  to  be  found  in  Roman  and 
Greek  sculpture.  Then  again,  in  course  of  time,  these 
half-globes  or,  as  they  might  be  truly  called,  these 
hemispherical  bells,  would  be  found  to  be  shrill  and 
noisy  in  tone.  Then  again  would  naturally  foUow  the 
oxxJeriraents,  as  made  in  Europe,  of  moulding  the  rim 
slightly  out-turned,  and  thickening  its  metal.  Here  at 
last  we  have  a  real  bell  with  the  so-called  sound-boiv, 
or  thick  lip.  But  here  it  should  be  observed  that 
Europe  is  the  birth-place  of  modern  bells;  they  seem 
not  to  have  existed  as  musical  instruments  until  the 
Middle  Ages.  Of  the  bells  of  the  Bible,  therefore, 
wo  have  but  little  to  say.  They  were  noisy  accoutre- 
ments, not  capable  of  being  arranged  so  as  to  produce 
the  consecutive  sounds  of  a  musical  scale.  The  care 
bestowed  upon  their  form  and  construction,  particuslai'ly 
in  Holland  and  Belgium,  led  to  the  casting  of  those 
rich  and  niellow-toucd  instruments  whose  sounds  ever 
stir  deep  emotions  in  us,  whether  of  joy  or  son'ow. 
England  was  not  slow  to  adopt  so  appropriate  and 
usefid  an  addition  to  her  many  church   towers,  and 


MUSIC   OF  THE  BIBLE. 


313 


learnt  to  make  use  of  them  in  a  way  even  now  im- 
perfectly understood  on  tlio  Continent — namely,  that  of 
hanging  them  on  the  axis  of  a  wheel,  and  ringing  them 
by  a  complete  swing.  The  most  ancient  bells  yet  dis- 
covered ai-e  found  not  to  be  castings,  but  to  consist  of  a 
plate  of  metal,  bent  round,  and  rudely  riveted  where  the 
edges  met.  Bells,  then,  are  closely  allied  to  cymbals, 
but  when  mentioned  in  ancient  authors,  are  not  to  be 
looked  upon  as  musical  instruments.  The  Assyrians 
used  them,  as  did  the  ancient  Chinese,  and  not  a  few 
have  been  found  in  Irish  bogs,  or  in  the  drift.  If,  then, 
the  "  bells  on  horses  "  were  not  little  cymbals,  they  were 
not  more  than  toy-belLs,  such  as  are  to  be  often  heard 
in  our  own  country  lanes,  when  the  miller's  team  is 
lazily  led  along  imder  the  autumn  sun,  warning  any 
wagoner  coming  in  an  opposite  direction  to  draw  near 
the  hedge  and  allow  a  free  passage.  Phaamon  is  the 
name  used  in  Exod.  xxviii.  33,  for  such  bells  on  the 
priests'  garments :  "  And  beneath  upon  the  hem  of  it 
thou  shalt  make  pomegranates  of  blue,  and  of  purple, 
and  of  scarlet,  round  about  the  hem  thereof ;  and  hells 
of  gold  between  them  round  about :  a  golden  bell  and  a 
pomegranate,  a  golden  bell  and  a  pomegranate,  upon  the 
hem  of  the  robe  round  aboutr.  And  it  shall  be  upon 
Aaron  to  minister  :  and  his  sound  shall  be  heard  when 
he  goeth  in  unto  the  holy  place  before  the  Lord,  and 
when  he  cometh  out,  that  he  die  not."     In  Exod.  xxxix. 

25,  we  read — "And  they  made  them as 

the  Lord  commanded  Moses."  These  are  the  only  two 
passages  in  which  phaamon  occurs. 

MENAANEIM. 

Once  only  is  this  word  met  with  in  Holy  Scripture — 
in  2  Sam.  vi.  5 :  "  And  David  and  all  the  house  of 
Israel  played  before  the  Lord  on  all  manner  of  instru- 


Now,  the  word  sistnim  {(nTjTpov)  comes  from  a  Greek 
verb  o-ei'to,  having  an  almost  identical  meaning.  There 
is,  therefore,  a  very  good  reason  for  believing  that  the 
word  menaaneim  refers  to  an  instnmient  which  vibrated 
when  shaken  or  rattled.  One  of  the  two  classes  of 
sistrums  exactly  answers  to  this  description.  Through 
.an  upright  frame  of  metal,  supported  on  a  handle, 
several  metal  rods  are  passed  and  fixed  in  their  position, 
generally  by  bending  the  extremities.  On  them  are 
placed  loose  metallic  rings.   Fig.  89  shows  two  examples 


Fig.  90. 

of  this  instriunent  which  are  preserved  in  the  Berlin 
Museum.  The  position  of  the  rings  in  this  illustrafiou 
may  perhajis  lead  to  the  supposition  that  they  are  fixed 
by  the  centre ;  this  is  not  the  case.  They,  of  course, 
should  lie  loosely  on  the  bars.  Fig.  90  shows  Egyptian 
priestesses  in  the  act  of  playing  on  this  kind  of  sistrnnj 


Fig.  89. 

ments  made  of  fii"  wood,  even  on  harps,  and  on 
psalteries,  and  on  timbrels,  and  on  cornets,  and  on 
cymbals."  Although  translated  here  "  cymbals,''  the 
root  of  the  word  in  Hebi-cw  points  to  the  old  Latin 
root  nuo,  whence  7iuto,  "  to  sway  to  and  fro,  to  vibrate." 


Fig.  91. 

at  a  rehgious  ceremony.  The  second  kind  of  sistrum, 
above  mentioned,  had  metallic  bars,  imihoid  rings. 
Hence,  it  has  been  theught  by  some  that  the  bars  were 
of  graduated  length,  and  gave  a  series  of  musical 
sounds  when  struck  by  some  hard  substance  held  in  the 


314 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


other  hand  of  the  player.    Pig.  91  represents  two  of 

these.     Their  Egyptian  name  is  doubtful,  but  the  word 

hem-hem  is  thought  to   apply  to  them,  although  the 

Coptic   version   translates   the    "  soimtling   brass "    of 

1   Cor.  xiii.  1   by  hem-hem.      Others  think  it  applies 

to  the  tambour.      BoseUini   lias   deciphered  the  word 

sescesch,  and  interprets  it  as  "  sistrum."     If  the  rods 

were  reaUy  in  proportional  lengths,  and  wore  strucfc 

the   tones   of  a  sistrimi  of  this  class  would  be  more 

determinate  than  those  of  cymbals.     The  Romans  used 

it,   or  at  least  wore  aware  of  its  existence  and  uses, 

fairly  true  representations  of  it  being  found  on  some  of 

their  medals.     This   may  have  been  the  wreiwi  crepi- 

taeuhim  of  their  poets.     As  the  sistrum  often,  among 

the   Egyptians,   accompanied   rites  of   a  very  wanton 

and  lascivious  character,  there  is  something  intensely 

sarcastic  in   the  description  of  Cleopatra  leading  her 

forces  to  battle  to  the  sound  of  the  sistrum — 

"  Kegina  in  mediis  patrio  vocat  agraina  Bistro." 

(Virgil,  JSnetd,  viii.  G98.) 

Tho  close  connection  between  musical  instruments 
of  apparently  very  divergent  species  has  been  often 
remarked ;  it  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  to  find  a  link 


viol  family,  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  an  instrument, 
wliich  must  have  been  in  veiy  common  use — as  tho  people 
iloeked  together  who  could  play  it,  "  from  aU  cities  of 
Israel " — should  be  only  iucideutally  mentioned  once  in 
the  whole  course  of  Jewish  chronicle.  The  notion  that 
all  the  women  of  Israel  were  experts  on  a  three-stringed 
fiddle  is  certainly  novel,  but,  to  say  the  least,  very 
doubtful.  A  triangle  it  might  have  been,  but  it  is 
more  probable  that  it  was  a  sistrum,  either  with  three 
i-ings  on  each  bar,  as  in  Eig.  89,  or  with  three  vibrating 
bars,  as  in  Fig.  Ul. 

TOPH. 

Eortunately  there  is  but  little  doubt  as  to  the  nature 
of  this  miisical  instrument.  It  was  a  tambour,  timbrel, 
or  hand-drum.  All  nations  seem  to  have  possessed 
diTims  of  vaiious  kinds,  but  always  of  a  comparatively 
smaU  size.  It  remained  for  modern  Europeans  to  pro- 
duce tho  gigantic  specimens  wliich  are  to  be  found  in 
om*  orchestias.  Few,  who  have  been  present,  can  forget 
the  huge  upright  drum,  far  exceeding  the  height  of  its 
upstanding  player,  that  adds  its  deep  rolling  bass  note 
to  the  mass  of  sounds  which  are  heard  at  the  Handel 
Festivals  in  the  Crystal  Palace.  Such  drums  were 
never  dreamt  of   by  the  ancients.     The  necessity  for 


Fig.  92. 

between  cymbals  and  the  sistrum.  Fig.  92  shows  two 
ornamental  bars  of  metal  held,  one  in  each  hand  of  the 
performer,  which,  when  struck  togethei-,  produce  a  loud 
clangmg  sound  to  mark  tho  rhytlim  of  a  dancer.  The 
fact  that  they  are  clashed  together  gives  them  a  relation 
to  cymlials,  whOe  their  form — that  of  vibrating  rods — • 
renders  it  difficidt  to  place  them  otherwise  than  under 
the  head  "  sistrum." 

SHALISHIM. 
This  word  occurs  oidy  in  1  Sam.  xviii.  6.  It  has 
been  variously  described  as  a  triangle,  a  sistrum,  and  by 
some — a  fiddle !  The  root  imjilies  the  numerical  value  of 
three.  "  And  it  came  to  pass  as  they  came,  when  David 
was  returned  from  the  slaughter  of  the  Philistine,  that 
the  women  came  out  of  all  cities  of  Israel,  sindnff  and 
dancing,  to  meet  King  Saul,  -ivith  tabrets,  with  joy,  and 
Viiih.  inslnwients  of  music"  (margin,  "three-stringed 
instruments").     Whatever  may  be  the  anticpiity  of  the 


liaving  portable  instruments  would  have  excluded  them 
from  use,  even  if  their  presence  liad  been  thought 
dosii-able.  Modern  tambours,  or  tamboui'iiies,  as  wo 
more  usually  term  them,  are  invariably  round  in  shape; 
those  of  the  ancients,  especially  of  the  Egyptians,  were 
.sometimes  oblong  or  square.  Fig.  93  exliibits  both  kinds 
in  use.  Tliey  were  one  of  tho  chief  ingredients  of  then* 
fimeral  lamentations,  which  seem  to  us  to  have  been 
strangely  prolonged.  It  is  said  that  such  ceremonies, 
when  a  prince  died,  lasted  as  many  as  seventy  days. 
They  then  sang,  or  uttered  their  mournful  cries,  io  a 
tambour  accompaniment.  But  the  Egyptians  also  had 
drums  of  two  other  kinds.  One  consisted  of  a  wood  or 
copper  cylinder  covered  at  both  ends  with  pareliment, 
which  was  beaten  at  both  ends  with  the  hands,  just  as 
tlie  tom-tom  of  India  is  played.  Tlie  Egj-ptian  "long-  . 
drum,"  as  it  may  be  called,  was,  both  as  to  size  and 
shape,  very  similar  to  this  tom-tom,  which  is  not  un- 
fretiuontly  to  bo  seen  in  tho  hand  of  some  poor  wanderer 


MUSIC   OF  THE  BIBLE. 


315 


from  that  distant  empii'o,  wiio  is  beggiug  about  tlie 
streets  of  Londou.  Fig.  94  sliows  tiio  maimer  iu  wliick 
it  was  carried  and  beaten.     Tlio  other  iostnunent  of 


Figr.  94. 

this  class  is  peculiarly  iuterestmg,  a»- being  evidently 
the  prototype  of  our  modern  kettledrum.  It  was 
called  clarabooka,  and  was  formed  by  stretching  parch- 
ment over  the  open  end  of  a  basin  of  metal  or  earthen- 
ware. When,  as  was  the  case  in  ancient  times,  this 
kind  of  drum  was  small  and  easOy  carried,  the  termi- 
nation of  the  hollow  bowl  by  a  handle  was  ingenious 
and  useful.  But  as  their  size  increased,  the  handle  had 
to  give  place  to  three  feet,  and  the  metal  bowl  could  be 
rounded — a  form  greatly  to  the  advantage  of  free 
vibration.  Our  kettledi-imi  is  therefore  little  else  than 
a  very  large  darabooka,  standing  on  a  tripod,  instead  of 
terminating  with  a  handle.  The  dardbooha  is  shown  in 
Fig.  95. 


Fig.  95. 

The  Assyrians  appear  to  have  used  the  tambour,  and 
also  a  drum,  suspended  by  a  cord  round  the  neck  (see 
Figs.  96  and  97).  But  the  instrument  they  thus  carried 
seems  not  to  have  Ijoen  beaten,  like  the  Egyptian  long- 
drum  and  the  Indian  tom-tom,  at  both  ends,  but  only  at 
its  upper  smface. 

Two  questions  arise  with  regard  to  ancient  drums  and 
tambours.  Was  the  parchment  or  head  of  the  drum 
rigidly  fixed,  or  was  it  capable  of  being  tuned?  The 
reader  is  no  doubt  well  awaro  that  to  the  edges  of  the 
head  of  a  modern  drum  is  attached,  iu  tho  case  of  a 
side-drum,  a  series  of  cords,  and  in  the  kettledrum  a 
metal  ring,  by  means  of  which  tho  parchment  can  be 
tightened  or  louseuod,   and  consequently  a  power  of 


regulating  tho  pitch  is  obtained.  Probably  tho  head  was 
fixed,  and  the  ancient  drums  and  tamboui-s  could  not  bo 
timed.    Tho  lines  which  cross  tho  lonff-di-um  of  the 


Fig.  9G- 


Egyptians  iu  Pig.  94,  look  very  much  like  the  cords 
which  cross  tho  cylinder  of  om*  side-di-ums,  but  these 
cross-bars  are  evidently  only  a  rudo  attempt  at  orna- 
mentation. The  second  question  is,  had  the  ancient 
tambom-s  little  bells,  plates  of  metal,  or  castanets, 
inserted  in  the  rim,  as  wo  have  in  our  tambouiines — 
probably  they  had.     Fig.  98  shows  an  Arabian  tambour 


Fig.  98. 

called  bendyr.  There  are  holes  in  tho  rim  of  this  which 
unmistakably  suggest  the  probable  insertion  of  some 
sort  of  pulsatile  contrivance  or  other.  Moreover,  it  is 
known  that  such  appendages  were  not  strange  to  the 
Greeks.  The  bendyr  also  contains  five  strings  stretched 
across  the  inner  surface  of  the  head,  as  seen  in  the 
illustration,  for  the  purpose  of  reinforcing  its  tone. 
Such  a  construction  seems  to  have  been  introduced  in 
comparatively  late  times.  Stretched  strings  were  for- 
merly used  for  a  like  pm-poso  iu  instruments  of  several 
other  kinds,  notably  in  tho  stringed  instruTuent  called 
viola  d'  amore,  in  wMch  metal  strings  were  stretched 
under  those  of  catgut,  passing  under  the  finger-board 
and  through  the  middle  of  the  bridge,  which  was  pierced 
to  receive  them.  The  Arabs  have  three  varieties  of 
tambour,  besides  that  called  bendyr.  One  of  them,  tho 
mazhar,  smaller  than  tho  bendyr,  has  no  revorberatiug 
strings,  and  has  metal  rings  instead  of  castanets. 
J',.uother,  the  tar,  has,  like  the  tnazhar,  no  stretched 
strings,  but  has  four  coi^por  castanets.     Tho   fom-tU 


316 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


kind  has  only  two  castanets.  Goatskins  generally 
form  the  head  of  these  Arabian  tambours,  which  are 
chiefly  played  by  women,  as  was  the  case  among  the 
ancient  Egyptians.  The  Arabians  have  drums,  not 
unlike  kettledrums,  and  they  may  be  seen  playing  them 
on  horse-back  or  camel-back,  just  as  the  kettledrums 
are  carried  and  played  by  the  bands  of   our  cavalry 


Fig.  99. 

regiments.  Fig.  99  shows  a  very  beautiful  specimen  of 
an  old  tambour,  exhibited  in  the  Kensington  Museum, 
which  has  not  only  castanets  in  the  rim,  but  bells  sus- 
pended in  the  interior. 

It  is  impossible  to  say  whether  the  Hebrews  used 


drums  as  well  as  tambours.  Most  probably  the  latter 
only  were  known  to  them.  Its  antiquity  is  proved  by 
the  fact  that  mention  is  made  of  it  in  conjunction  with 
the  Mnnor,  in  the  passage  once  before  quoted  (Gen.  xxxi. 
27),  where  Laban  rebukes  Jacob  for  having  left  him 
stealthily,  whereas  an  honourable  departure  would  have 
been  accompanied  with  songs,  ioph,  and  Mnnor. 

It  was  a  toph  which  Miriam  took  in  her  hand  when 
she  led  the  song  and  dance  on  that  wondrous  day  ivhen 
Israel  saw  the  "great  work"  which  God  had  done,  and 
thankfulness  burst  forth  from  side  to  side  as  they 
answered  one  another — "  Sing  ye  to  the  Lord,  for  he 
hath  triumphed  gloriously  "  (Exod.  xv.  1).  Very  different 
were  the  feelings  wliich  filled  the  breast  of  Jephthah 
when  his  only  child  came  forth  with  toph  in  hand 
to  welcome  his  victorious  return  from  unequal  fight 
with  Ammon.  Among  the  instruments  which  the 
company  of  proi  bets  bare,  who  met  the  future  King 
Said,  was  a  toph  (1  Sam.  x.  5),  and  the  same  instrument 
was  ere  long  to  be  a  source  of  jealousy  and  chagrin  to 
him  when  the  women  of  Israel  praised  the  youthful 
hero  David  on  his  return  from  slaying  the  giant ;  and 
it  was  part  of  the  music  which  graced  the  return  of  the 
ark  from  Kirjath-jearim.  That  the  use  of  the  timbrel 
was  not  limited  to  religious  ceremonies,  is  plain  from 
the  allusion  in  Isa.  v.  12.  It  seems  not  to  have  been 
carried  in  warfare.  On  the  contrary,  in  the  following 
passage  from  Isaiah  (xxx.  32)  its  mention  is  apparently 
intended  to  show  the  cheerful  peace  which  should  every- 
where follow  on  the  smiting  of  the  Assyrian — "  And  in 
every  place  where  the  grounded  staff  shall  pass,  which 
the  Lord  shall  lay  upon  him,  it  shall  be  with  tabrefs  and 
harps."  The  tabret  has  now  been  excluded  from  sacred 
buildings,  having  given  place  to  the  more  solemn  and 
imposing  drum. 


BOOKS    OF    THE    OLD    TESTAMENT. 

THE  BOOKS   OF    SAMUEL. 

BT    THE   KEV.    EDMUND    VENABLES,    M.A.,    CANON    RESIDENTIARY    AND    PEECENTOE    OP    LINCOLN. 


HE  Books  of  Samuel  form  one  continuous 
historical  work,  of  which  the  division  into 
two  is  merely  artificial.  Of  this  division 
we  have  other  examples  in  the  kindred 
Books  of  Kings  and  Chronicles,  Ezra  and  Nchemiah 
(anciently  reckoned  by  the  Jews  as  one  book),  besides 
the  notable  one  of  the  Pentateuch.  The  separation  was 
probably  introduced  for  the  sake  of  convenience,  with 
the  view  of  breaking  up  a  somewhat  imwieldy  whole 
into  more  manageable  portions.  In  the  Hebrew  MSS. 
the  two  books  form  one ;  and  Origen,  cjuoted  by  Eusobius 
[Hist.  Eccl.  vi.  2.5),  expressly  states  that  the  division  was 
unknown  to  the  Jews  in  his  day.  They  were  also 
printed  as  one  in  the  earlier  editions  of  the  Hebrew 
Bible.  The  first  iu  which  the  present  division  is  adopted 
is  that  of  Dan.  Bomberg,  in  1.518.  We  owe  the  existing 
arrangement  to  the  Greek  Septuagint  version,  whence 


it  passed  to  the  Latin  Vulgate,  and  from  that  was 
adopted  by  our  translators  in  the  Authorised  Version,  in 
which  they  are  entitled  "  The  First  and  Second  Books  of 
Samuel,  otherwise  called  The  First  and  Second  Books  of 
Kings."  The  second  alternative  title  is  adopted  from 
the  Latin  Vulgate,  Liber  Begum.  The  title  in  the  Sep- 
tuagint, vrith  a  slight  variation,  is  "  The  First  and  Second 
Books  of  the  Kingdoms."  The  appropriateness  of  either 
designation  for  the  great  historical  work,  which,  begin- 
ning with  1  Samuel,  runs  on  continuously  to  the  end  of 
2  Kings,  is  evident.  Both  "  Kings  "  and  "  Kingdoms  " 
fitly  characterise  the  contents  of  these  books,  in  which 
wo  find  the  whole  liistory  of  the  kings  of  God's  chosen 
people,  and  of  the  kingdoms  over  which  they  ruled, 
from  the  first  establishment  of  monarchy  under  Saul  to 
its  final  extinction  in  Hoshca  and  Zedekiah.  The  name 
by  which  this  portion  of  the  Bible  is  known  to  English 


THE  BOOKS  OF  SAMUEL. 


317 


readers  is  the  same  by  which  the  work  was  designated 
among  the  Jews,  by  whom  it  was  called  "  the  Book  of 
Samuel,"  or  "  Samuel  "  alone.  According  to  modern 
usage,  such  a  title  would  indicate  the  author.  But 
although  the  Talmudists,  with  their  wonted  disregard 
of  common  sense,  have  asserted  that  Samuel  was  the 
writer  of  the  whole  work,  and  in  the  spirit  of  prophecy 
uarrated  events  happening  long  after  his  death,'  it 
would  be  a  mere  waste  of  time  to  stop  to  prove  that  our 
books  must  have  had  another  author  than  the  prophet 
whose  name  stands  as  their  title,  whose  death  is  recorded 
in  chap.  xxv.  of  the  former  of  them.  Here  Biblical  and 
modern  usage  entirely  diifer.  It  is  very  rarely  indeed 
that  the  historical  books  of  the  Old  Testament  afford  any 
indication  of  the  authors  by  whom  they  were  composed ; 
and  the  names  they  boar — e.g.,  Joshua,  Judges,  Ruth, 
Esther,  &e. — have  reference  to  the  person  or  persons 
who  occupy  the  leading  place  in  the  narrative,  and  have 
nothing  to  do  vrith  the  authorship.  It  is  very  possible 
that  the  earlier  chapters  of  the  First  Book  of  Samuel 
may  embody  writings  proceeding  from  the  pen  of  Samuel 
himself,  such  as  those  indicated  under  the  term  "  Book 
of  Samuel"  (1  Chron.  xxix.  29),-  but  it  woidd  be  quite 
erroneous  to  conclude  that  this  was  the  reason  why  the 
books  were  called  by  Ids  name.  The  true  reason,  doubt- 
less, is,  that  Samuel  stands  out  in  them  as  the  great 
central  figure,  guiding  and  controlling  aU  the  events  of 
the  earlier  part  of  the  history  by  his  personal  influence 
duiing  his  life,  and  whose  power  and  spu'it  sui-vived, 
even  after  his  death,  in  that  monarchy  which  he  was 
God's  chosen  instrument  of  calling  into  existence,  and 
moulding  into  shape  by  Ids  counsels  and  commands 
(1  Sam.  X.  25).  To  adopt  the  words  of  Keil,^  "  the  title, 
'  the  Book  of  Samuel,'  was  intended  to  indicate  tliat  the 
spirit  of  Samuel  formed  the  soul  of  the  true  kingdom  in 
Israel,  and  that  the  earthly  throne  of  the  Israehtisli 
kingdom  of  God  derived  its  strength  and  perpetuity 
from  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  which  lived  in  the 
proiihet." 

The  Books  of  Samuel,  according  to  the  Hebrew  divi- 
sion, belong  to  the  fir.st  section  of  the  second  of  the  three 
great  classes  to  wliich  the  Jewish  doctors  assigned  the 
books  of  the  Old  Testament — the  Law,  the  Prophets,  and 
the  Psalms  (Luke  xxiv.  44).  The  class  of  "  the  Prophets  " 
was  subdivided  into  jyriores  and  posteriores.  While  the 
latter — the  posteriores — embraced  the  writings  of  the 
prophets  properly  so  called,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel, 
and  the  twelve  minor  prophets,  under  the  former — 
priores — were  found  the  historico-prophetical  books  of 
Joshua,  Judges,  1  and  2  Samuel,  and  1  and  2  Kings. 

1  In  the  Baha  Bathra,  quoted  by  Keil,  it  is  affirmed  that  Samuel 
wrote  the  book  that  bears  his  name,  and  also  Judges  and  Ruth. 

-  "  Now  the  acts  of  David  the  kin^:,  .  .  .  behold,  they  are 
written  in  the  book  of  Samuel  the  seer."  Here  it  deserves 
notice  that  the  Hebrew  word  translated  "  book  "  is  the  same  {dibixi, 
■•nBl)  with  that  rendered  "  acts  "  at  the  beginning  of  the  verse,  and 
really  signifies  "  words,"  and  then  "  deeds,"  "  acts."  It  would  have 
been  preferable  if  our  translators  had  employed  the  word  "  acts  " 
throughout  the  verse,  employing  the  "  Acts  of  Samuel "'  as  the  title 
of  a  book,  in  the  same  manner  as  the  "  Acta  of  the  Apostles  "  is 
used  in  the  New  Testament. 

3  Biblical  Comment,  on  f/te  Books  of  Samuel.     Introduction,  p.  i. 


The  title  "  prophetical "  was  ^ven  to  these  books,  not 
simply  or  chiefly  because  they  had  prophets  or  prophet- 
ical persons  for  their  authors,  but  on  accoimt  of  the 
prophetical  .spirit  wliich  pervaded  them.  Indeed,  we 
must  carefully  bear  iu  mind  in  reading  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, that  the  whole  of  the  history  of  God's  chosen  people 
had  a  distinctly  prophetical  character,  looking  onward 
and  leading  up  to  the  grand  consummation  of  God's  pur- 
poses for  mankind  in  the  establishment  of  the  kingdom 
of  Christ,  and  the  foundation  of  his  Church — the  true 
spiritual  Israel.  We  are  not  to  look  in  them  for  a  con- 
tinuous history,  such  as  we  are  accustomed  to  in  the 
annals  of  the  kingdoms  of  this  world.  Long  periods  are 
dispatched  summarily  or  passed  over  in  complete  silence, 
while  others  are  narrated  at  considerable  length.  This 
varied  mode  of  treatment  is  not  to  be  explained  by  the 
comparative  wealth  or  poverty  of  the  materials  at  the 
writer's  command,  but  depends  on  their  value  and  import- 
ance for  the  gi'eat  end  iu  view — the  development  of  the 
Divine  plan  as  set  forth  in  the  national  life  of  the  chosen 
people.  The  events  described  are  not  selected  capri- 
ciously. Critical  epochs  are  chosen — turning-points  in 
the  history  of  the  people,  on  which  their  future  fortunes 
depended  for  weal  or  for  woe,  according  as  they  obeyed 
or  resisted  God's  revealed  will.  Thus  the  narrative  illus- 
trates the  Divine  law  of  retribution,  in  the  variation  of 
the  fortunes  of  Israel,  in  exact  correspondence  with  their 
changing  relations  to  their  theocratic  King ;  wMle  we 
watch  how  certainly  national  disaster  follows  apostacy, 
and  prosperity  attends  faithful  adherence  to  the  cove- 
nant of  God.  This,  wluch  is  the  leading  principle  of 
these  historico-prophetical  writings,  and  which  gives 
them  their  chief  value  for  us,  and  for  all  future  time, 
is  nowhere  more  plainly  to  be  traced  than  in  the  Books 
of  Samuel.  "  They  are  not,"  in  the  words  of  Bishop 
Wordsworth,  "  a  congeries  of  ill-digested  materials,  or 
of  fruitless  repetitions,  but  a  prophetic  history  of  real 
events  preparing  the  way  for  the  priesthood  and  kingdom 
and  prophetic  oflice  of  Christ,  and  foreshadowing  them. 
They  hold  a  place  of  their  own,  and  perform  a  peculiar 
work,  not  only  in  relation  to  the  Hebrew  nation,  but  iu 
a  higher  f imction,  as  preparing  the  way  for  Christ.  The 
holy  Apostle  St.  Peter  marks  their  character  in  this 
respect  when  he  says,  '  All  the  prophets  from  Samuel 
.  .  .  .  have  foretold  of  these  days' — the  days  of 
Christ  and  the  Gospel  "  (Acts  iii.  24).  The  eye  does  not 
rest  on  the  persons  and  events  recorded,  and  stop  there ; 
but  seeing  in  them  illustrations,  as  striking  as  they  are 
unmistakable,  of  the  principles  of  God's  moral  govern- 
ment of  mankind,  and  the  great  ends  of  aU  his  deal- 
ings with  them,  is  led  onward  to  Him  of  whom  every 
righteous  king,  true  prophet,  and  holy  priest  was  a 
type,  in  whom  God's  will  lias  been  fully  dechired,  and 
His  purposes  summed  up — "the  Lord's  Anointed," 
'•  the  Son  of  David,"  "  Christ,  the  King." 


The  First  Book  of  Samuel,  after  a  gap  of  uncertain 
length,  takes  up  the  thread  of  Jewish  history  where  it 
was  dropped  iu  the  Book  of  Judges,  at  the  close  of  the 


S18 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


Mstory  of  Samson  (Judg.  xvi.).'    The  Philistines  are 
still  formidable  enemies  of  Israel,  strong  enough  to  put 
thoir  armies  to  the  rout,  an  •!  inflict  crushing  loss  upon 
thorn  (1  Sam.  iv.  2,  10).      The  chief  authority,  both  re- 
hgious  and  political,  is  concentrated  in  tho  person  of  the 
aged  Eli,  at  once  high  priest  and  judge.     Nothing  is 
heard  of  any  high  priests  during  the  disordered  period 
of  the  Judges.     The  last  who  has  appeared  oil  the  scene 
is   Phinehas,  the   grandson  of  Aaron  (Judg.  xx.  28). 
Indeed,  the  high  priesthood  was  an  office,  whose  value 
nationally  was  inseparably   linked  with   the   personal 
character  of  its  holder.     The  successors  of  Phinehas 
may  have  been   men  without  any  force  of  character, 
devoting  themselves  mechanically  to  the  ritual  observ- 
ances belonging  to  their  office,  unqualified  to  act  as  the 
guides  or  counsellors  of  tho  nation.     No  reference  is 
made  to  them   in   any  of  the  emergencies   of   Israel. 
Perhaps  they  may  have  shared  in  the  deep  moral  cor- 
ruption of  that  dark  age,  and  thus  early  have  given  an 
example  of  the  truth  uttered  by  Hosea  centuries  after, 
"Like  people,  like  priest"  (Hos.  iv.  9).     If  this  be  so, 
it  may  help  to  explain  the  otherwise  obscure  fact  of 
the  transference  of  the  high  priesthood  from  the  elder 
house  of  Eleazar  to  that  of  Ithamar,  Aaron's  younger 
son.     It  was  to  this  junior  branch  that  Eli  belonged. 
The  concentration  of  religious  and  civil  authority   in 
his  person  was  a  preparation  for  that  great  revolution 
in  the  history  of  the  chosen  people,  which  is  the  leading 
subject  of  the  Books  of  Samuel — the  establishment  of 
monarchical  rule.     In  the  events  of  his  administration 
we  see  traces  of  that  union   of   the   twelve  tribes  in 
one  confederacy,  which  was  confirmed  by  the  central 
judicial  power   subsequently  vested   in  and   exercised 
by   Samuel.     Thus,  step  by  step,  the  narrative   leads 
us  on  to  the  introduction  of  kingly  power.     We  watch 
the  scattered  tribes   gradually  coalescing  in   a  nation. 
We  see  them  resigning  the  independence  when  "  every 
man  did  that  which  was  right  in  his  own  eyes"  (Judg. 
xxi.  25),  the  consequences  of  which  had  been   moral 
degradation,   national  weakness,    and   intestine  feuds, 
and  contentedly  acquiescing  in  the  judicial  authority 
of  the  wise  and  holy  Samuel.     And  thus  we  are  pre- 
pared for  the  demand  of  the  tribes,  newly  awakened  to 
the  evils  of  dissension  and  the  strength  of  combined 
action,  that  jarred  so  painfully  on  the  sensibilities  of  the 
aged  prophet ;  but  which,  though  to  his  mind  it  meant 
not  only  ingratitude  to  himself,  but  disloyalty  to  their 
Divine  Head  and  King  (1  Sam.  viii.  7 ;  x.  19 ;  xii.  I — 3, 12), 


*  The  two  disroTineetef!  nnrratives — viz.,  that  of  Micah  and  his 
house  of  idola  (Jiid_',  xvii.,  xviii.l,  and  that  of  the  outrn^e  on  the 
concubine  of  tiie  Levite,  aud  its  terrible  consequences  (Juds;  xis. — 
ssi.) — which  stand  as  an  appendix  to  the  Book  of  Jndires,  though 
placed  at  the  end  of  the  book,  belong  chronologically  to  tho  he- 
ginning  of  it.  It  is  evident  from  the  first  narrative  that  the  events 
recorded  in  it  to.dt  pluce  upon  tho  completion  of  the  settlement  of 
the  tribes,  and  were,  perhiips,  anterior  to  the  death  of  Joshua 
(Josh.  xix.  47  ;  Jndg.  xviii.  1,  7,27—29)  ;  while  the  civil  war  with 
Benjamin  was  waged  while  Phinehas,  the  grandson  of  Aaron,  was 
still  nlive  (Judg.  xx.  2'*1  The  Book  of  Ruth  also  narrates  events 
belonging  to  the  e.nrly  period  of  the  occupation  of  Canaan,  if  we 
nre  to  accept  literally  the  statement  that  Boaz  was  the  son  of 
Salmon  and  Rah  ib,  **  the  harlot ''  of  Jericho. 


he  carried  out  with  so  much  of  true  disinterested  patriot- 
ism. We  look  with  sympathy  and  admiration  on  the 
aged  prophet  contentedly  retiring  into  private  life,  and 
employing  the  whole  weight  of  his  influence,  both  with 
the  newly-appointed  monarch  and  the  people  he  had  ruled, 
to  secure  the  success  of  the  new  in.stitution.  We  watch 
with  sorrow  tho  gradual  decay  of  the  bright  hopes  with 
which  Saul's  rule  began,  as  he  becomes  wilful,  headstrong, 
the  prey  of  jealous  and  vindictive  passions,  a  murderer 
repeatedly  in  will  if  not  in  deed ;  and  after  a  rapid 
decline  of  liis  political  power,  falls,  with  all  his  sons,  in 
the  total  rout  of  his  army  by  the  Philistines — whom,  in 
earlier  and  bettor  days,  he  had  so  often  vanquished — on 
Mount  Gilboa,  with  which  the  first  book  closes.  The 
main  interest  of  the  latter  part  of  the  fijst  book,  and  the 
whole  of  the  second,  centres  in  David.  David,  indeed, 
"  the  man  after  God's  own  heart "  (1  Sam.  xiii.  14 ; 
Acts  xiii.  22),  the  typical  monarch  of  God's  people,  the 
foreshadowing  of  his  greater  Son,  the  King  Messiah,  is 
the  chief  subject  of  both  books.  Whatever  else  is 
narrated  has  reference  nearer  or  more  remote  to  him 
and  his  monarchy,  as  typ  cal  of  the  kingdom  and  person 
of  Christ.  Tho  history  of  the  high  priest  Eli  and  his 
sons  is  simjjly  preparatory  to  that  of  Samuel,  whUe  the 
importance  of  Samuel  himself  is  not  absolute,  but  rela- 
tive, as  introducing  David's  kingdom;  and  all  coalesce 
and  find  their  fulfilment  in  Him  in  whom  tho  priests, 
prophets,  and  kings  of  the  Hebrew  dispensation  culmi- 
nate— tho  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  This  perpetual  reference 
to  Him  of  whose  days  "  Samuel  and  all  the  prophets 
that  follow  after  foretold"  is  tho  golden  thread  uniting 
the  separate  parts  and  sections  of  these  books  into  one 
organic  whole.  Here,  no  less  than  in  the  more  dis- 
tinctly predictive  portions  of  the  prophetic  writings, 
"the  testimony  of  Jesus  is  the  spirit  of  prophecy" 
(Rev.  xix.  10). 

In  this  connection  it  is  important  to  notice  that  in  the 
Book  of  Samuel  we  find  the  first  record  of  the  prophetic 
office  as  an  institution  in  the  Jewish  Church.     Moses,  it 
is  true,  is  called  a  prophet  (Deut.  xviii.  15,   18) ;  and 
Aaron,  in  an  earlier  passage,  has  the  same  title  given  to 
him  as  his  brother's  spokesman  or  mouthpiece  (Exod. 
vii.  1).     After  the  death  of  Joshua,  a  nameless  prophet 
addresses  the  people  at  Bochim  (Judg.  ii.  1).     Another 
unnamed  prophet  appears  in  the  days  of  Gideon  (Judg. 
vi.  8).     Deborah,  who  judged  Israel,  was  a  prophetess 
(Judg.  iv.  4),     A  prophet  is  also  mentioned  in  an  early 
chapter  of  these  books  (1  Sam.  ii.  2T).     But  the  pro- 
phets  did   not   exist    as   an   established   order   before 
Samuel.     He  was  the  founder  of  the  prophetical  class. 
In  his  time  wo  fu-st  meet  with  those  "  schools  of  the 
prophets,"  and  companies  of  the  "  sons  of  the  prophets," 
of  which  ho  was  probably  the  head  (1  Sam.  x.  5,  10  ; 
xix.  20),  which  are  so  continually  recurring  during  the 
progress  of   tho  Jewish  history  (1  Kings  xx.  35,  41 ; 
xxii.  6—23 ;  2  Kings  ii.  5,  7,  15  ;  iv.  1,  38  ;  vi.  1 ;  ix.  1).    • 
These  books  present  to  us  not  Samuel  alone,  but  Gad, 
Nathan,  and  Heman,  Samuel's  grandson  (1  Chron.  vi.  33), 
besides  David  himself,  exercising  the  gift  of  prophecy, 
and  introduce  us  to  a  new  power,  which  never  entirely 


THE  BOOKS  OF   SAMUEL. 


319 


ceased  in  the  Jewish  Church  tUl  Malachi  closed  the 
prophetical  cauon. 

CONTENTS. 

The  contents  of  the  Books  of  Samuel  may  be  divided 
into    four    principal    portions.       I.    The    history    of 
Samuel's  life  and  administration  (1  Sam.  i. — sii.).     II. 
The  histmy  of  Saul's  reign,  from  his  election  to  his  final 
rejection  by  God  (1  Sam.  xiii.  1 — xv.  35j.  III.  The  history 
of  David  from  his  anointing  as  Saul's  successor  (1  Sam. 
xvi.  1.)  to  Saul's  death  (2  Sam.i.  27).    IV.  David's  king- 
dom, first  over  Judah,  and  then  over  all  Israel  (2  Sam. 
ii.  to  the  end  of  the  Second  Book).  These  four  main  divi- 
sions may  be  separated  into  the  following  subdivisions  or 
sections : — I.  (1.)  Samuel's  birth,  dedication,  and  call, 
and  his  recognition  as  a  prophet  of  the  Lord  (1  Sam.  i. — 
iii.).  (2.)  The  capture  of  the  ark ;  its  restoration;  Samuel's 
victory  over  the  Philistines,  and  a  general  summary  of 
his  admiuistration  as  a  judge  (1  Sam.  iv. — vii.).     (3.) 
The  desire  of  the  Israelites  for  a  king;  the  introduc- 
tion of  Saul ;  his  anointing,  election,  and  confirmation 
as  king;   and  Samuel's  farewell  addi'ess  (1  Sam.  viii. 
— xii.).    II. — The  subdi\'isions  in  the  second  section  are 
— (1.)  Saul's  military  operations  against  the  Phihstincs, 
and  his  fii-st  act  of  disobedience  (chap.  xiii.).     (2.)  His 
victory   over  the  Philistines  through  the  prowess   of 
Jonathan,  and  the  danger  of  the  latter  from  his  father's 
rash  oath  (chap.  xiv.).     (3.)  His  second  act  of  disobe- 
dience in  the  war  vrith  Amalek,  and  his  final  rejection 
(chap.  XV.).      III.  (1.)  David's   anointing  by  Samuel; 
his  selection  as  Saul's  minstrel;  his  victory  over  Goliath; 
and  his  subsequent  relations   to   Saul  and   Jonathan 
(chaps,  xvi. — xviii.).      (2.)    Saul's   jealousy   of    David; 
David's  flight,  and  his  life  among  the  Pliilistines,  and 
as  an  outlaw  among  the  mountains  of  Judah   (chaps. 
xix. — sxvii.,  XXX.).     (3.)  Saul's  application  to  the  witch 
of  Eudor;  his  defeat  and  death  (chaps,  xxviii.,  xxxi.). 
rV.  (1.)  David's  mourning   over   Saul  and   Jonathan, 
and  his  anointing  as  king  over  Judah  in  Hebron,  while 
Ishbosheth  is  made  king  of  Israel  by  Abuer  (2  Sam.  i., 
ii.).    (2.)  Abner's  desertion  of  Ishbosheth ;  Ishbosheth's 
murder ;  David's  anointing  as  king  over  Israel  (chaps. 
iii.— V.  5).     (3.)  The  establishment  of  David's  kingdom 
at   Jerusalem;    the  removal   of   the  ark  thither;   his 
domestic  and  external  relations  (chaps,  v.  6 — x.).     (4.) 
David's  adultery  with  Bathsheba,  and  murder  of  Uriah 
(chaps,  xi.,  xii.).     (5.)  The  crimes  of  his  sons;  the  re- 
bellion and  death  of  Absalom;  and  the  revolt  of  Sheba 
(chaps,  xiii.— XX.).     (6.)  The  book  closes  with  a  series 
of  unconnected  documents,  affording  no  definite  note 
of  time,     (a.)  The  famine  sent  in  punishment  of  Saul's 
massacre  of  the  Gibeonites,  and  the  expiatory  sacrifice 
of  his   grandsons   (ckaps.   xxi.   1 — 14).      (b.)    Warlike 
achievements  against  the  Philistines  (vs.  15 — 22).     (c.) 
David's  psalm  of  thanksgivin;?,  found  with  scarcely  any 
variation  in  Ps.  xviii.,  and  liis  last   prophetic  words 
(chaps,  xxii. — xxiii.  7).    {rl)  The  list  of  his  mighty  men 
(chaps,  xxiii.   8 — 39).     (e.)  David's   sin   in  numbering 
the  people,  and  the  consequent  pestilence  (chap.  xxiv.). 
It  is  remarkable  that  the  book  terminates  before  the 


death  of  David,  and  leaves  that  event  to  be  narrated 
in  the  First  Book  of  Kings. 

DATE  AND  AUTHOKSHIP. 

An  early  date  is  by  almost  universal  consent  assigned 
to  the  Books  of  Samuel.     It  is  admitted  by  all  compe- 
tent authorities  that  its  composition  was  considerably 
anterior  to  that  of  the  Books  of  Kings.    In  style  "  it  is 
one  of  the  best  specimens  of  Hebrew  prose  in  the  golden 
ago   of   Hebrew   literature.'"       The   diction    is   pure, 
simple,  and  forcible;  Chaldeeisms  are  hardly  to  be  found 
in  it.     The  identity  of  style  through  the  whole  indicates 
that  it  is  the  work  of  one  author;    but  we  have  no 
means  of  determining  who  that  author  was.  or  when  he 
lived,  beyond  the  evidence  afforded  by  the  purity  of  tho 
language  that  his  epoch  was   an  early  one.     That  he 
must  be  placed  at  some  considerable  distance  from  the 
events  recorded  follows  from  the  explanations  of  ex- 
pressions and  customs  which  had  passed  out  of  use — 
e.g.,  "  a  seer"  (1  Sam.  ix.  9) ;  the  proverb,  "  Is  Saul  also 
among  tho  prophets  ?"  (1  Sam.  x.  12 ;  xix.  24) ;  the  di-ess 
of  princesses  (2  Sam.  xiii.  18);   and  by  the  formula, 
"  Unto  this  day "  [e.g.,  1  Sam.  v.  5 ;  vi.  18  ;   xxx.  25 ; 
2  Sam.  iv.  3 ;  vi.  8 ;  xviii.  18).    The  use  of  this  phrase  in 
the  notice  that  "  Ziklag  pertainefh  unto  the  kings  of 
Judah  unto  this  day"  (1  Sam.  xx-idi.  C)  evidently  points 
to  an  authorship  subsequent  to  the  separation  of  the 
kingdoms  of  Israel  and  Judah.    But  we  must  acquiesce 
in  Keil's  decision,  that  "  all  other  marks   which   have 
been  adduced  to  fix  tho  date  of  composition  now  pre- 
ceding are  wholly  unconvincing."* 

The  Books  of  Samuel  bear  distinct  evidence  of  being, 
to  a  certain  extent,  a  compilation  from  earlier  sources, 
though  tho  unity  of  style  shows  that  they  must  have 
been  works  of  the  same  age,  or  that  the  compiler  adapted 
them  to  the  style  of  the  ago  in  which  he  was  writing. 
Tho  only  source  actually  named  is  "  the  Book  of  Jashor" 
{i.e.,  "  the  Book  of  the  Upright  "),  from  which  David's 
lamentation  over  Saul  and  Jonathan,  entitled  the  "  Song 
of  the  Bow,"  is  quoted  (2  Sam.  i.  18).     If  tho  conjecture 
that  the  Book  of  Jasher  was  a  collection  of  historical 
poems  be  well  grounded,  it  is  possible  that  tho  other 
poetical  compositions  contained  in  the  Books  of  Samuel 
may  have  been  borrowed  from  it.     But.  notwithstanding 
the  learning  and  ingenuity  which  has  been  devoted  to 
this  book,  our  knowledge  of  its  contents  and  character 
is  still  too  indefinite  to  allow  us  to  say  whether  these 
ancient  odes  are  derived  from  that,  or  from  other  sources. 
These  poems  consist  of — (1.)  Hannah's  song  of  thanks- 
giving on  Samuel's  birth  (1  Sam.  ii.  1 — 10).    (2.)  David's 
lamentation  over  Saul  and  Jonathan  (2  Sam.  i.  19 — 27). 
(3.)  David's  dirge  over  Abner  (2  Sam.  iii.  33,  34).     (4.)> 
David's  song  of  thanksgiving  for   God's   deliverance, 
identical,  with  some  few  minor  verbal  differences,  with 
Ps.  xviii.  (2  Sam.  xxii.).    (5.)  "  The  last  words  of  David" 
(2  Sam.  xxiii.  1 — 7).     There  is  no  reasonable  doubt  that 
the  whole  of  these  are  genuine  poetical  utterances  of  the 


1  Hon.  E.  H.  B.  Twisleton,  D;cf>'oiwri(  of  the  Bible,  ii.,  1128. 
-  Keil,  Introduction  to  the  Old  Testament,  i.,  p.  2-17, 


320 


THE  BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


jiersons  whose  names  they  bear,  and  that  the  occasions 
of  their  composition  are  correctly  assigned. 

Passing  from  the  scanty  domain  of  poetry  to  the 
more  copious  one  of  history,  we  are  directed  to  the  pro- 
able  source  of  a  large  portion  of  the  narrative  in  the 
mention  (1  Clu'on.  xxix.  29)  of  a  series  of  historical 
records  bearing  the  names  of  the  prophets  Samuel, 
Nathan,  and  Gad.  "  Now  the  acts  of  David  first  and 
last "' — i.e.,  the  events  of  his  entire  reign—"  behold, 
they  are  written  in  the  Acts  of  Samuel  the  seer,  and  in 
the  Acts  of  Nathan  the  prophet,  and  in  the  Acts  of 
Gad  the  seer."'  A  further  source  is  indicated  in  "the 
Chronicles  [literally,  'the  words  of  the  days' — i.e.,  a 
contemporary  record]  of  King  Darid"  (1  Chron.  xxvii. 
24).  Other  historical  documents  of  a  similar  character 
would  naturally  be  at  the  command  of  the  compiler  as 
materials  for  his  work.  The  vividness  and  clearness  of 
the  deserijjtions,  the  life-like  portraiture  of  the  persons 
engaged,  and  the  frequent  mention  of  minor  details, 
filling  up  the  picture,  sliow  the  documents  employed 
were  to  a  great  extent  contemporaneous  with  the  events. 

Distinct  traces  of  the  composite  character  of  the  Books 
of  Samuel  appear  in  the  brief  summaries  which  wind 
up  several  of  the  historic  sections.  Of  this  usage  we 
have  examples  in  the  summary  of  Samuel's  government 
(1  Sam.  vii.  1-5 — 17);  the  catalogue  of  the  wars  of  Saul's 
reign,  and  of  his  family  (xiv.  47 — 52) ;  the  brief  record 
of  Da^^d's  kingly  power,  and  of  his  chief  officers  (2  Sam. 
viii.  15—18)  ;  the  similar  list  (xx.  23—26).  A  just 
sm-vey  of  the  book  shows  that  the  compiler,  whoever  he 
may  have  been,  did  his  work  with  real  ability,  and  with 
a  distinct  purpose.  As  regards  the  alleged  contra- 
dictious, it  may  be  safely  asserted  that,  if  they  exist 
at  all,  they  are  so  insignificant  that  they  would  be 
deemed  imdeserviug  of  notice  if  they  were  found  in  an 
orilinary  secidar  history."  More  may  at  fh-st  sight 
seem  capable  of  being  urged  in  favour  of  the  supposed 
duplicate  narratives  of  the  same  events,  such  as  the  two 
aceoimts  of  (1)  the  origin  of  the  proverb,  "  Is  Said  also 
among  the  prophets  ?"  (1  Sam.  x.  9 — 12;  xix.  22 — 24) ; 
(2)  the  rejection  of  Saul  as  king,  for  his  disobedience 
to  the  divine  command  (xiii.,  xv.) ;  (3)  David's  first 
introduction  to  Said  (xvi.  14 — 23;  xvii.);  (4)  Da\-id's 
having  forborne  to  take  Said's  life  when  it  was  in  his 
power  (xxiv.  3 — 15 ;  xxvi.  7—12) ;  (5)  Saul's  death 
(xxxi.  1 — 6  ;  2  Sam.  i.  1 — 16),  &c.  But  a  more  careful 
examination  of  the  circumstances  of  the  events  recorded, 
displaying  amid  general  similarity  the  most  complete 
diversity  of  details,  and  a  fuller  acquaintance  with  the 
genius  of  Hebrew  historical  composition,  satisfactorily 
prove  that  these  apparently  conflicting  traditions  are 
either  narratives  of  similar  but  really  distinct  events, 


'  As  has  been  already  remarked,  the  word  rendered  "book  "  in 
the  Authorised  Version,  dihrei  (literally,  *'words"),  may  be 
more  correctly  translated  "  acts." 

-  The  supposed  discrepancies  and  contradictious  brought  forward 
by  Do  "Wette  and  Theuius  have  beeu  carefully  sifted  by  Keil. 
Introduction  to  Old  Tfstament,  vol.  i.,  pp.  235  ff.,  and  their  general 
worthlessnesa  satisfactorily  shown.  The  greater  part  of  them 
indicate  a  foregone  conclusion  to  disparage  the  authority  of  the 
sacred  record. 


or  are  examples  of  that  system  of  repetition  which, 
however  much  at  variance  with  the  more  artificial  rules 
of  Western  nations,  is  of  frequent  occurrence  in  the 
simj)ler  compositions  of  early  Eastern  authors.'  "  It  is 
quite  consistent  with  the  genius  of  Hebrew  narrative," 
^vi'ites  the  Bishop  of  Bath  and  Wells,  "  for  the  narrator 
to  pursue  his  theme  to  its  ultimate  consequences  in 
respect  to  the  leading  idea  of  his  naiTative,  and  then  tc 
return  'to  fill  up  the  details  which  liad  been  omitted,'"' 
thus  producing  the  appearance  of  a  double  and  conflict- 
ing version  of  the  same  event. 

Certain  passages  in  the  Books  of  Samuel  are  almost  or 
quite  identical  with  portions  of  the  Books  of  Chronicles. 
These  are  the  defeat  and  death  of  Saul  and  his  sons 
(1  Sam.  xxxi.;  1  Chron.  x.  1 — 12);  the  anointing  of 
David  in  Hebron,  and  the  capture  of  Jerusalem  (2  Sam. 
V.  1 — 10 ;  1  Chron.  xi.  1 — 9) ;  details  of  the  family 
and  wars  of  David  (2  Sam.  v.  11 — 25 ;  1  Chron.  xiv.) ; 
the  bringing  of  the  ark  from  Kirjath-jearim,  and  the 
smiting  of  Uzzah  (2  Sam.  \i.  1 — 11 ;  1  Chron.  xiii.) ; 
the  translation  of  the  ark  to  Jerusalem,  and  Michal's 
contempt  of  David  (2  Sam.  vi.  12 — 23  ;  1  Chron.  xv.  25 
— 29) ;  David's  resolve  to  buQd  a  house  of  God,  and  his 
communications  with  Nathan  on  the  subject  (2  Sam. 
vii.;  1  Chron.  xvii.) ;  Da\ad's  wars,  and  his  ofiicers  (2 
Sam.  ■N'iii. ;  1  Chron.  xviii.)  ;  the  insult  passed  on  his 
ambassadors  by  Hanun,  and  his  campaign  against  the 
Ammonites  (2  Sam.  x. ;  1  Chron.  xix.)  ;  the  conclusion 
of  the  campaign,  and  the  capture  of  Rabbah  (2  Sam, 
xi.  1 ;  xii.  26,'  30,  31 ;  1  Chron.  xx.  1—3) ;  the  giants 
slain  by  Darid's  mighty  men  (2  Sam.  xxi.  16 — 22 ; 
1  Chron.  xx.  4 — 8)  ;  the  names  and  deeds  of  his  mighty 
men  (2  Sam.  xxiii.  8 — 39;  1  Chron.  xi.  10 — 47);  the  num- 
bering of  the  people,  and  the  plague  (2  Sam.  xxiv. ; 
1  Chron.  xxi.  1 — 27).  It  has  been  ciuestioned  whether 
these  passages  were  borrowed  by  the  later  writer  of  the 
books  from  the  earlier,  or  whether  both  writers  were  in- 
debted to  the  same  historical  sources.  There  can.  how- 
ever, be  little  doubt  that  the  fonner  ot  these  hypotheses 
is  correct,  and  that  the  wi-iter  of  Chronicles  had  the 
Books  of  Samuel  before  him  as  he  \vrote  ;  and  that  they 
were  used  by  him  freely,  but  not  slavishly,  as  the  basis 
of  his  narrative.  The  remartable  diiferences  of  treat- . 
ment  in  the  two  works,  shown  now  in  omission  and 
abbreviation,  now  in  addition  and  amplification,  may 
bo  more  properly  considered  when  speaking  of  the 
Books  of  Chronicles. 


■*  The  pregnant  words  of  the  late  Professor  Maurice  relative  lo 
the  theory  of  duplicate  narratives  are  well  worth  serious  attention. 
He  is  commenting  on  "  la  Saul  also  among  the  prophets  ?  "  (1  Sam. 
X.  12  :  xis.  24).  "  It  is  the  fashion  of  our  times  to  suppose  that  these 
must  be  two  versions  of  the  same  fact  i>reserved  by  diftereut  chroni- 
clers, and  brouglit  together  by  some  careless  compiler.  I  venture 
to  thinlc  that  that  solution  of  the  difficulty  is  not  a  necessary  one, 
not  eveu  the  most  probable  one.  I  believe  that  there  occur  events 
in  most  of  our  lives— events  often  separated  by  many  years — which 
look  as  if  one  was  the  repetition  of  the  other.  .  .  .  And  if  so, 
a  faithful  biojrrapher  will  be  careful  to  record  such  pairs  of  events. 
He  will  find  them  especially  useful  in  making  the  life  of  his  hero 
intelligible.  They  will  give  bis  reader,  though  he  may  not  know 
why,  a  sense  that  he  is  meeting  with  an  actual  man,  not  merely 
with  a  mail  in  a  book."  [Prophets  and  Kinfjs,  pp.  17,  IB.) 

^  Speaker's  Commentary  (1  Sam.  xvi.  21),  vol.  ii.,  p.  317. 


THE  BOOKS  OF  SAMUEL. 


321 


In  the  poetical  portions  of  the  book,  besides  2  Sam. 
xxii.,  which  is  identical  with  Ps.  xviii.,  Ps.  cxiii.  7 — 9  is 
almost  a  repetition  of  1  Sam.  ii.  5 — 8,  while  in  Ps.  Ixsxix. 
19 — 37,  and  Ps.  cxxxii.  11,  12,  we  read  several  passages 
foimd  also  in  2  Sam.  vii.  10 — 16. 

The  writer  of  the  Books  of  Samuel  evidences  too  inti- 
mate an  acquaintance  with  the  facts  recorded  in  the 
Pentateuch  to  be  explained  on  any  other  supposition  than 
that  he  had  those  books  before  him.  The  mention  of 
Rachel's  sepulchre  (1  Sam.  x.  2)  carries  us  back  to  Gen. 
XXXV.  19,  20;  Jacob's  going  do\vn  into  Egypt  (xii.  8) 
to  Gen.  xlvi.  The  narrative  of  the  Exodus  is  frequently 
alluded  to  with  great  fulness  of  detail :  the  cry  of  the 
people ;  the  call  of  Moses  and  Aaron ;  the  plagues  of 
the  Egyjitiaois ;  hardening  of  their  hearts ;  their  letting 
the  people  go ;  the  coming  forth  from  Egypt  —  are 
spoken  of  as  well-known  historical  facts,  and  not  only  by 
the  Israelites,  but  also  by  the  Philistines  (1  Sam.  ii.  27 ; 
iv.  8  ;  vi.  6  ;  xii.  6 — 8).  The  promises  to  Aaroa  are  re- 
corded (ii.  27 — 30).  We  find  the  legal  enactments  of 
the  Pentateuch  spoken  of  as  in  regular  observance ;  wo 
have  the  sacrificial  regulations  as  to  burning  the  fat,  and 
the  portion  of  the  priests  (ii.  13 — 16,  28) ;  the  vow  of 
the  Nazarites  (i.  11) ;  the  law  of  the  showbread  (xxi. 
4,  5) ;  of  blood  revenge  (2  Sam.  xiv.  6,  7).  Thei-e  are 
distinct  references  to  the  books  of  Joshua  and  Judges  in 
the  mention  of  the  Gibeonites  (2  Sam.  xxi.  2),  and  of  the 
deliverances  wrought  by  Barak,  Gideon,  and  Jephthah 
(1  Sam.  xii.  9 — 11),  and  of  the  death  of  Abimelech  (2 
Sam.  xi.  21).  A  minute  examination  of  tho  sacred  text 
shows  several  words  and  exjoressions  derived  from  the 
earlier  books.  Thus  Hannah's  words,  "  Neither  is  there 
any  rock  like  our  God  "  (ii.  2),  remind  us  of  the  frequent 
use  of  tho  "Rock"  in  Moses'  song  (Deut.  xxxii.  4,  18, 
30,  31) ;  while  verse  6  is  almost  a  cjuotation  from  tho 
same  song  (ver.  39).  "  The  Strength  of  Israel  wiU  not 
Ue,"  &c.  (1  Sam.  xv.  29) ,  is  almost  identical  with  Balaam's 
words  (Numb,  xxiii.  19).  The  phrase  "  A  deep  sleep  from 
the  Lord"  (1  Sam.  xxvi.  12,  25),  is  found  also  in  Gen. 
ii.  21 ;  XV.  12.  The  argument  as  to  the  date  of  com- 
position, derived  from  these  references  to,  and  coinci- 
dences with,  the  earlier  books,  is  not  one  that  can  be 
lightly  set  aside. 

The  quotations  from  and  references  to  these  books  in 
the  New  Testament  are  not  very  frequent.  But  they 
occur  quite  as  often  as  their  historical  character  would 
warrant  us  in  anticipating,  and  with  sufficient  frequency 
to  stamp  their  genuineness.  The  "  Magnificat"  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin  is  founded  upon  Hannah's  exultant  song 


of  thanksgiving,  with  which  it  presents  some  remark- 
able parallels  in  expression.  Our  Lord  refers  to  the  high 
priest  giving  David  the  shewbread  (1  Sam.  xxi.)  in 
Mark  ii.  25,  26;  Luke  vi.  3,  4.  The  description  of 
Da\'id,  as  "  a  man  after  God's  own  heart,"  is  quoted  by 
St.  Paul  (Acts  xiii.  22)  from  1  Sam.  xiii.  14.  Hob.  L  5 
is  a  quotation  from  2  Sam.  vii.  14,  to  which  also  there  is 
a  reference  in  2  Cor.  vi.  18.  Rom.  xi.  1,  2,  seems  derived 
from  1  Sam.  xii.  22. > 

Among  the  characteristic  words  and  phrases  of  these 
books,  the  most  remarkable  are  "the  anointed  of  tho 
Lord,"  niEO,  "  the  Messiah  of  Jehovah,"  "  tho  Lord's 
Christ"  (Luke  ii.  26),  which  we  find  in  1  Sam.  ii.  10,  35 ; 
xii.  3,  5 ;  xvi.  6 ;  xxiv.  6,  10,  &c.  &c.,  used  for  tho  first 
time  of  a  king  (tho  title  of  Messiah,  anointed,  had  been 
already  given  to  the  high  priests.  Lev.  iv.  3,  5,  16),  and 
thus  typifying  the  true  Messiah,  or  "  Christ  of  God." 

In  tliis  book  also  tho  title  of  "Lord  of  Hosts''^ 
("Jehovah  Sabaoth"),  so  common  afterwards,  occui-ring 
upwards  of  260  times  in  the  Old  Testament,  meets  us 
for  the  first  time  (1  Sam.  L  3,  11).  The  nation  of  Israel 
is  designated  "  the  inheritance  of  Jehovah  "  (1  Sam. 
xxvi.  19;  2  Sam.  xx.  19;  xxi.  3).  "  God  do  so,"  or  "the 
Lord  do  so,"  is  employed  as  a  strong  negation  (1  Sam. 
iii.  17;  xii.  44;  xx.  13,  &c.). 

It  is  impossible  to  define  accurately  tho  period  of 
time  embraced  by  the  Books  of  Samuel.  The  length  of 
Saul's  reign  is  given  (Acts  xiii.  21)  as  forty  years.  An 
equal  period  is  assigned  to  David's  reign  (2  Sam.  v.  4). 
The  tliu-d  period,  fi'om  the  birth  of  Samuel  up  to  tho 
election  of  Saul,  cannot  bo  determined  ^vith  any  precision, 
but  it  can  hardly  have  covered  less  than  fifty  years. 
This  would  make  the  whole  time  included  in  the  history 
130  years. 

1  The  similarity  is  moro  evident  in  the  Septuagint  than  in  the 
Authorised  Version  ;  oi/tc  airiaaeTai  nvpiot  tov  \a6v  aifToU  in  Samuel : 

ouK  uTTiixTaTO  6  i)e6<!  Tov  \a6v  avTOV  iu  Romans. 

-  The  name  "the  Lord  of  Hosts,"  "Jehovah  Sabaoth,"  has 
been  variously  explained.  The  current  modern  view,  based  on  the 
fact  that  it  appears  in  the  sacred  books  contemporaneously  with  the 
appoiutment  of  a  king  who  should  go  out  before  them,  and  lead  the 
hosts  or  armies  of  Israel,  assigns  to  it  a  military  significance. 
According  to  this  view,  "  the  Lord  of  Hosts  "  meant  no  moro  than 
the  Divine  leader  and  commander  of  tho  armies  of  the  nation,  who 
"went  forth  with  them"  {Ps.  sliv.  9)  to  overthrow  the  followers 
of  the  false  gods  of  the  nations  around.  The  earlier  view,  howeverj 
which  identifies  the"hosts"  with  the  angels  conceived  of  as  God's 
army,  or  with  the  heavenly  luminaries  of  which  the  angels  were 
supposed  to  he  the  rulers  and  guides  in  tlieir  couraes  through  the 
sky,  is  probably  the  more  correct.  Compare,  for  the  former,  1  Kings 
xxii.  19 ;  Ps.  ciii.  21 ;  cxlviii.  ij.  For  the  latter,  Gen.  ii.  1  ;  Deut. 
iv.  19  ;  xvii.  3  ;  Isa.  xxxiv.  4.  It  deserves  notice,  however,  that  there 
had  been  already  a  revelation  of  God  to  Joshua  under  a  somewhat 
similar  title,  "  Captain  of  the  host  of  the  Lord  "  (Josh.  v.  1-1). 


45 — VOL.  II. 


322 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  FULFILLED  IN  THE  NEW. 

BT  THE   KEV.   WILLIAM   MILLIGAN,   D.D.,   PEOFESSOE   OF   DIVINITY  AND  BIBLICAL  CKITICISM   IN   THE   UNIVERSITY 

OF   ABERDEEN. 

SACKED  SEASONS  (continued). 


iLTHOUGH  the  Feast  of  Trumpets,  the 
Day  of  Atonement,  and  tbo  Feast  of 
Tabornacles  carried  the  special  ideas  con- 
nected TvitK  the  sacreduess  of  the  fii'st  day 
of  each  month,  with  the  various  oiferings  for  sin,  and 
with  the  three  gi-eat  annual  festivals  to  their  liighest, 
thcii-  culminating  point,  they  did  not  exliaust  the  singu- 
larly important  services  of  the  seventh  month  of  Israel's 
year.  That  month,  sealed  as  it  was  with  the  covenant 
number,  stood  in  yet  other  respects  alone  and  unap- 
proached  by  any  other  month  of  the  calendar.  In 
particular,  it  was  the  month  with  whose  first  day  every 
seventh  year,  what  we  know  as  the  Sabbatic  year,  with 
whose  tenth  day  every  fiftieth  year,  what  we  know  as  the 
year  of  Jubilee,  began.  These  two  sacred  seasons  we 
have  now  to  speak  of,  and  wo  take  first — 

THE   SABBATIC   TEAR. 

The  regiJations  regarding  this  year  are  to  be  found  in 
different  parts  of  tho  Pentateuch,  of  which  the  principal 
are  Esod.  ssiii.  10,  11 ;  Lev.  xxv.  1 — 7  ;  Dout.  xv.  1 — 
11 ;  xxxi.  10 — 13.  It  began  with  tho  beginning  of  the 
month  Tisri,  at  the  end  of  every  period  of  sis  years, 
standing  to  these  in  a  relation  exactly  similar  to  that 
occupied  by  tho  Sabbath  day  towards  tho  preceding  six 
days  of  tho  week.  For  six  years  successively  tho  Israel- 
ites wore  to  engage  with  diligence  in  all  tho  labours  of 
agriculture,  sowing  their  seed,  pruning  their  vineyards, 
and  gathox'ing  their  fruits ;  but  the  seventh  year  was  to 
bo  a  sabbath,  when  thoy  were  neither  to  sow  their  fields, 
nor  prime  their  -vineyards,  nor  reap  what  harvest  might 
grow  of  its  own  accord,  nor  gather  the  grapes  from 
their  undressed  vines.  The  year  was  to  bo  one  of 
rest  unto  tho  land  (Lev.  xxv.  3 — 5).  During  a  whole 
year,  therefore,  the  toils  of  cultivation  were  to  be  sus- 
pended ;  and  only  when  tho  year  expired  at  the  begin- 
ning of  tho  next  foUowiug  Tisri,  a  month  nearly 
corrosj)onding  to  our  October,  were  these  toils  to  be 
resumed,  and  work,  so  far  as  it  was  agricultural,  to  be 
proceeded  with  as  before.  There  is  no  reason,  however, 
to  suppose  that  this  prohibition  of  labour  extended  to 
any  other  kind  of  work  than  that  connected  with  the 
produce  of  the  ground.  Tho  pooijlo  might  stiU  occupy 
themselves  with  hunting,  fishing,  manufacturing  cloth 
for  their  garments  and  tents,  constructing  and  repairing 
their  buildings,  and  so  on.  The  year  was  not  to  be  a 
season  of  idleness.  Even  tho  reaping  of  what  grew 
spontaneously  in  tho  fields,  or  the  gathering  of  such 
fruits  as  wero  spontaneously  produced  in  gardens,  or- 
chards, and  vineyards,  must  not  be  thought  to  have  been 
prohiljited.  Tho  injunction  of  Lev.  xxv.  5,  when  com- 
pared with  the  declaration  of  xxv.  6,  that  "  the  sabbath 
of  tho  land,"  that  is,  what  grow  of  itself  duriug  tho 


land's  sabbath,  was  to  be  "  meat  for  them,"  distinctly 
implies  that  these  things  were  to  be  used,  and,  if  to  be 
used,  thoy  must  have  been  collected  in  tho  ordinary  way. 
The  prohibition  only  means  that  thoy  were  not  to  be 
gathered  as  a  common  harvest,  associated  on  the  one 
hand  with  the  thought  of  labour,  and  reserved  on  the 
other  for  tho  proprietor  of  the  soU.  There  was  thus 
scope  for  a  large  measure  of  activity  and  industry  during 
the  year,  and  any  impression  that  tho  people  wore  for- 
bidden all  employment  must  bo  dismissed.  Nor  would 
the  arrangement  tend,  as  has  often  been  supposed,  to 
bring  famine  into  tho  land ;  for,  in  tho  first  place,  tho 
people,  knowing  what  tho  arrangements  of  the  year 
wero  to  be,  would  bo  led  beforehand  to  make  tho  neces- 
sary provision  for  tho  want  of  their  regular  harvest,  and 
would  be  more  careful  in  laying  up  in  store  the  produce 
of  preceding  years.  Then  there  was  a  positive  blessing 
promised  to  the  land,  for  the  words  of  Lev.  xxv.  20,  21, 
though  apparently  belonging  In  their  pai-ticular  connec- 
tion to  a  conjunction  of  the  Sabbatic  and  the  Jubilee 
years,  woidd  yet  seem  to  contain  a  general  promise 
always  applicable  to  the  foi-mer  oven  by  itself,  "  And  if 
ye  shall  say,  What  shall  we  eat  the  seventh  year  ?  be- 
hold, we  shall  not  sow,  nor  gather  in  our  increase.  Then 
I  wiU  command  my  blessiag  upon  you  in  the  sixth  year ; 
and  it  shall  bring  forth  fruit  for  three  years."  It  has 
further  to  be  considered  that  in  the  fertile  soil  of  Pales- 
tiae,  while  a  system  of  irrigation  was  in  existence,  even 
tho  spontaneous  growth  of  a  year  would  be  no  incon- 
siderable harvest.  And,  finally,  wo  cannot  put  entirely 
out  of  view  the  thought  of  tho  benefit  that  would  accrue 
to  the  land  from  thus  lying  fallow  for  a  season,  at  a 
time  when  tho  scientific  operations  of  husbandry  and 
tho  importance  of  a  regular  manuring  of  the  soil  wero 
probably  little  understood.  However  extraordinary, 
therefore,  and  full  of  risk  for  tho  sustenance  of  life  such' 
an  aiTangement  as  that  of  the  Sabbatic  year  may  seem  to 
us,  there  is  no  cause  to  think  that  it  would  be  attended 
with  the  dreaded  consequences.  With  proper  precau- 
tions food  woitld  stiU  bo  abundant  in  the  land,  and  the 
promise,  associated  indeed  with  th3  very  institution  of 
which  we  are  speaking,  would  be  fulfilled  to  Israel, 
"  The  land  shall  yield  her  fruit,  and  ye  shall  eat  your  fill, 
and  dwoU  therein  in  safety  "  (Lev.  xxv.  19). 

Wo  have  referred  to  the  chief  characteristic  of  the 
year  before  us,  but  it  had  others  which  must  also  bo 
noticed.  Among  these  the  most  striking,  and  the  most 
intimately  connected  with  its  special  character,  was  that 
as  to  the  right  to,  and  tho  disposal  of,  those  spontaneous 
fruits  of  the  gi-ound  of  which  wo  have  already  spoken. 
These,  although  to  be  gathered,  wero  not  to  be  indivi- 
dual, but  common,  property.  As  it  is  distinctly  ex- 
pressed in  the  Book  of  Exodus,"  Six  years  thou  shalt 


THE   OLD   TESTAMENT  EULFILLED   IN  THE   NEW. 


323 


sow  thy  laud,  autl  shalt  gather  in  the  fruits  thereof ;  but 
the  seventh  year  thou  shalt  let  it  rest  and  lie  stiU,  that 
the  poor  of  thy  people  may  eat ;  and  what  they  leave  the 
beasts  of  the  field  sliaU  eat.  In  like  manner  thou  shalt 
deal  with  thy  viueyai-d  and  with  thy  oliveyard  "  (xxiii. 
10,  11 ;  comp.  Lev.  xxv.  6,  7) ;  that  is,  no  man,  not  even 
the  owner  of  the  field  or  of  the  garden,  had  any  special 
claim  upon  the  fruits  of  it  that  year.  It  was  for  aU,  for 
rich  and  poor,  the  master  aud  the  servant,  the  foreigner, 
and  even  the  beast.  There  was,  in  short,  for  the 
time,  the  institution  of  a  community  of  goods,  as  far  at 
least  as  these  were  connected  with  the  productiveness 
of  the  soil,  when  "  all  were  of  one  heart  and  one  soul ; 
neither  said  any  of  them  that  ought  of  the  things  which 
he  possessed  was  his  own ;  but  they  had  all  things  com- 
mon "  (Acts  iv.  32). 

A  second  characteristic  of  the  sabbatic  year  con- 
sisted in  this,  that  it  was  forbidden  to  exact  certain 
classes  of  debts  during  its  course  :  "  At  the  end  of  every 
seven  years  thou  shalt  make  a  release.  And  this  is  the 
manner  of  the  release.  Every  creditor  that  lendeth 
ought  unto  liis  neighbour  shall  release  it ;  ho  shall  not 
exact  it  of  his  neighbour  or  of  his  brother ;  because  it 
is  called  the  Lord's  release  "  (Deut.  sv.  1,  2) ;  while,  im- 
mediately afterwards,  encouragement  to  obey  the  pre- 
cept is  given  in  tho  words,  "  For  the  Lord  shall  greatly 
bless  thee  in  the  land  which  the  Lord  thy  God  giveth 
thee  for  an  inheritance  to  possess  it  "  (xv,  4).  From 
these  versos  wo  may  gather  the  true  meaning  of  the 
characteristic  in  question.  It  was  not  a,  release  of  all 
debts,  but  only  of  such  as  were  secured  upon  the  laud 
or  upon  its  crops ;  and  if  we  may  jxidge  from  the  analogy 
of  modem  times  when  properties  are  small,  as  well  as 
from  the  fi'equent  references  to  loans  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, such  debts  must  have  been  extremely  common. 
Other  debts  having  no  connection  with  tlio  soil,  or  not 
secured  upon  it,  probably  did  not  come  under  the  opera- 
tion of  this  law.  It  soems  even  possible  that  tho  debts 
thus  remitted  were  only  such  as  had  been  incurred  iu 
consequence  of  poverty.  Tho  words  "  save  when  there 
shall  be  no  poor  among  you "  ought  rather  to  be  ren- 
dered, "  save  when  there  shall  be  no  poor  with  thee," 
that  is,  no  poor  mau  concerned  in  the  transaction.' 
When  a  debtor  was  in  circumstances  to  pay  his  debt,  it 
might  bo  exacted  even  during  "  tho  year  of  release." 
Not  dependent  upon  the  produce  of  the  soil  for  that  par- 
ticular season,  he  was  able  to  pay,  and  had  no  claim  to  be 
excused.  The  same  rule  was  applied  to  foreigners.  They 
could  hold  no  iiroperty  in  tho  soil  of  Palestine.  Their 
income  was  drawn  from  other  sources,  and  they  were 
therefore  under  an  uninterrupted  obligation  to  discharge 
their  debts.  Once  more,  there  is  no  cause  to  thiuk  that 
tho  debt  even  of  the  poor  Israelite  was  completely  can- 
celled by  the  sabbatic  year.  It  was  only  remitted  for  a 
time.  "  He  shall  not  exact  it  of  his  neighbour  or  his 
brother,"  are  the  words  of  tho  commandment,  "  because  it 
is  the  Lord's  release ;''  and  again,  '"That  which  is  thine  with 
thy  brother  thine  hand  shall  release,"  where,  as  has  been 

^  Speaker's  CommenUrij  ou  Dcut.  xv.  -i. 


well  pointed  out,  the  word  "  release "  is  identical  with 
that  used  in  Exod.  xxiii.  11  of  tho  land  itself,  "But 
the  seventh  year  thou  shalt  let  it  rest,"  thus  implying 
that  the  release  in  question  must  have  been  for  the  year, 
not  total  aud  fiual.^ 

A  third  and  last  characteristic  of  the  sabbatic  year 
was  that  at  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles  wliich  fell  iu  it  the 
Law  was  to  be  read  in  the  hearing  of  all  tlio  people. 
They  were  to  be  gathered  together,  men  and  women  and 
children  aud  strangers,  tliat  they  might  hear  aud  learn, 
and  fear  the  Lord  their  God,  and  observe  to  do  all  the 
words  of  His  law  (Deut.  xxxi.  12).  It  is  of  this  reading 
of  the  Law  by  Ezra  that  so  interesting  an  account  is 
given  iuthe  Book  of  Nehemiah  (viii.  1 — 12). 

Such,  then,  were  the  distinguishing  characteristics  oi 
the  remarkable  sacred  season  of  Israel  now  before  us, 
and  tlie  questions  arise,  What  was  its  meaning  to  Israel? 
What  is  its  fidfilment  now  ? 

As  to  the  first  of  these  two  questions,  it  is  of  supreme 
imiiortance  to  observe  that  the  institution  was,  in  its 
main  character,  neither  civil  nor  economical,  but  essen- 
tially sacred.  Various  purposes  of  tho  former  kind, 
ah-eady  incidentally  alluded  to,  may  indeed  have  been 
served  by  it.  It  may  have  taught  the  lesson  of  the 
great  value  of  accumulating  corn,  so  that  not  only  at 
that  but  at  any  time  dearth  might  be  prevented.  It  may 
have  improved  the  fertility  of  tho  soil  by  giving  it  a 
septennial  rest.  It  may  also  have  been  a  period  of  re- 
freshment and  quickening  for  those  whoso  toils  in 
agriculture  and  vinodressing,  under  tho  burning  summer 
sun  of  a  southern  sky,  must  have  been  more  than 
usually  severe.  All  those  ends  may  have  been  an- 
swered, but  none  of  them  explain  snfiiciently  tho  lan- 
guage of  the  Mosaic  law  regai'ding  the  sabbatic  year. 
There  il  comes  before  us  as  an  essentially  sacred  insti- 
tution, founded  on  religious  ideas  aud  designed  to 
promote  rehgious  ends.  It  is  spoken  of  with  the  utmost 
reverence,  is  associated  with  the  rest  of  the  Sabbath  day, 
and  is  represented  as  emphatically  dedicated  to  God. 
Its  object,  therefore,  was  certainly  religious. 

When  wo  inquire  more  particularly  what  this  religious 
object  was,  wo  find  it  mainly  brought  before  us  in  the 
words,  "  But  in  the  seventh  year  shall  be  a  Sabbath  of 
rest  unto  tho  land,  a  Sabbath  for  tho  Lord;"  and  again, 
"  The  land  is  mine,  for  ye  are  strangers  and  sojourners 
with  mo  "  (Lev.  xxv.  4,  23).  "  The  land  is  mine,"  that 
is  the  keynote  of  the  whole.  It  was  a  land  "  given  "  to 
Israel  by  tho  Lord  (Lev.  xxv.  2  ;  Exod.  xx.  12),  not  won 
by  its  o\vn  prowess  or  to  be  regarded  as  its  own  posses- 
sion, but  a  land  of  which  God  himself  was  the  true  pro- 
prietor, and  all  whom  He  had  chosen  to  place  as  settlers 
in  it  tenants  at  His  will.  From  this  fundamental  idea 
the  different  parts  of  the  institution  flowed. 

In  the  first  place,  it  was  thus  that  a  periodical  inter- 
ruption to  the  labours  of  tho  sod,  that  a  periodical  rest 
for  it  according  to  the  sacred  number  of  the  covenant, 
came  iu.  This  idea  had  ah-eady  found  expression  in  tho 
fom-th  commandment  iu  regard  to  time.  "  The  seventh  day 

-  Speaker's  Commcutoi'ij  ou  Deut.  sr.  1, 


324 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


is  the  Sabbath  of  the  Lord  thy  God;  initthoushaltnot 
do  any  work,  thou,  nor  thy  son,  nor  thy  daughter,  thy 
man-servant,  nor  thy  maid-servant,  nor  thy  cattle,  nor  thy 
stranger  that  iswithin  thy  gates  "  (Exod.  xx.  10).  No  one 
■sras  entitled  to  use  time  for  his  own  purposes.  No  part 
of  time  belonged  to  man  as  his  own  property.  God  alone 
was  the  proprietor  of  it.  It  was  He  who  gave  man  six 
days  out  of  every  seven  that  in  them  ho  might  labour 
and  do  all  his  work  ;  and  in  token  that  it  was  so,  He  re- 
served the  seventh  day  to  Himself,  forbidding  work  on 
it,  and  requiring  that  in  its  rest,  the  holy  rest  belonging 
to  it  as  His,  not  only  the  head  of  the  household,  but  the 
lowest  servant  and  the  meanest  animal  owned  by  him 
should  share.  The  Sabbath  was  a  witness  not  only  that 
one  day  but  that  all  days  were  God's.  Now  what  each 
day  was  to  the  labouring  man  or  beast  the  whole  year 
was  to  the  soU.  Spring  was  its  morning  and  autumn 
its  evening.  From  its  morning  even  to  its  evening  it 
went  forth  to  its  labours,  and  its  periodical  round  of 
labour  was  performed  in  a  year.  As,  therefore,  by 
claiming  the  Sabbath  day,  God  had  signified  that  the 
time  of  all  men  and  animals  belonged  to  Him  and  that 
He  had  a  just  claim  upon  it,  except  in  so  far  as,  in  dis- 
tinctly giving  them  six  days  in  which  to  labour,  Ho  had 
remitted  His  claim,  so  by  demanding  the  seventh  year, 
the  seventh  working  day  of  the  land.  Ho  showed  that 
it  too  was  His.  The  demand  was  a  perpetual  token  and 
proof  to  Israel  that,  when  the  people  sat  down  under 
their  vinos  and  fig-trees  and  gathered  in  their  harvests, 
they  wore  pensioners  on  the  bounty  of  One  who  had 
settled  them  in  these  pleasant  places,  and  could  at  once 
dispossess  them  if  He  chose  to  do  so. 

In  the  second  place,  it  was  thus  that,  when  the  land 
was  claimed  by  the  Almiglity,  it  was  claimed  for  rest. 
Again,  this  was  tho  foundation  of  the  fourth  command- 
ment, "for  in  six  days  tho  Lord  made  heaven  and  earth, 
the  sea,  and  all  that  in  them  is,  and  rested  the  seventh 
day  :  wherefore  tho  Lord  blessed  the  Sabbath  day,  and 
hallowed  it"  (Exod.  xx.  11).  In  Him  there  was  not 
merely  working,  there  was  repose.  There  was  the 
thought  of  something  finished  as  well  as  of  something 
in  progress.  Such  was  His  rest,  and  as  all  that  is  His 
must  share  with  Him  what  Ho  is  and  has,  not  only  the 
heads  of  households,  but  the  lowest  servants  and  the 
meanest  animals  in  their  possession  were  to  rest  on  the 
seventh  day.  So  then  also  the  land  must  rest.  When 
its  six  working  days,  its  six  years  of  labour,  are  over,  it 
too  must  enjoy  its  sabbaths. 

In  the  third  place,  it  was  thus  that  tho  crop  of  the 
seventh  year  was  not  to  go  into  the  barns  or  storehouses 
of  the  ordinary  proprietor  of  the  fields.  It  was  God's. 
It  was  the  harvest  of  His  year;  and,  whatever  it 
amounted  to,  no  hand  of  man  had  helped  to  produce  it. 
No  plough  had  been  put  into  tho  soil.  No  seed  had 
been  sown.  Tho  very  %'incs  and  fruit-trees  had  not  been 
pruned.  Hero  then  God  was  visibly,  palpably,  the  only 
Author  of  the  crop,  and  to  Him  it  must  belong.  But, 
if  it  belongs  to  Him,  if  He  lias  not  assigned  it  to  any  one 
in  p.articular,  it  must  be  distribiited  according  to  that 
preat  principle  of  His  government  which  leads  Him  to 


watch  over  and  to  care  for  all.  Does  He  not  make  His 
sun  to  rise  on  the  evil  and  the  good,  and  send  His  rain 
on  the  just  and  on  the  unjust  ?  Does  He  not  care  for 
the  servant  as  well  as  for  the  master,  for  the  small  as 
well  as  for  the  great,  for  tho  poor  as  well  as  for  the 
rich  ?  Does  He  not  cause  grass  to  grow  for  the  cattle, 
as  well  as  herb  for  the  service  of  man  ;  give  the  stork 
the  fir-trees  for  her  house ;  send  His  springs  into  the 
valleys,  that  by  them  tho  wild  asses  may  quench  their 
thirst ;  give  drink  to  every  beast  of  the  field  ?  Nay,  do 
not  even  the  young  lions  roar  after  their  prey  and  seek 
tlieir  meat  from  God  (Ps.  civ.)  ?  How  then,  when 
He  takes  the  produce  of  the  fields  into  His  own  hands, 
can  it  be  for  any  other  than  for  all,  for  man,  and  for  his 
servant,  and  for  his  maid,  and  for  his  hii-ed  servant,  and 
for  the  stranger  that  sojourneth  with  him,  and  for  his 
cattle,  and  for  the  beasts  that  are  in  his  laud  (Lev.  xxv.  6, 
7 )  ?  It  is  in  the  very  nature  of  tho  case  that  distribution 
shall  be  made  according  to  this  rule,  when  we  start  with 
the  idea  that  the  land  is  God's. 

In  the  fourth  place,  it  is  thus  that  particular  debts  are 
to  bo  remitted  for  a  year.  They  rested  on  the  land,  but 
the  land  is  the  Lord's,  and  how  can  either  it  or  its  pro- 
duce be  taken  for  the  debt  ? 

In  the  last  place,  it  is  with  this  fundamental  idea  that 
wo  must  also  connect  the  reading  of  the  Law  at  the  sab- 
batic year's  Feast  of  Tabernacles.  There  is  no  special 
connection  in  idea  between  the  reading  and  the  parti- 
cular feast  itself.  It  is  because  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles 
falls  at  tho  vei-y  opening  of  the  sabbatic  year  that  it  is 
hallowed  for  this  purpose.  Had  the  sabbatic  year  begun 
in  April,  we  cannot  doubt  that  this  reatling  would  have 
been  connected  with  the  Feast  of  Unleavened  Bread.  As 
it  is,  the  first  great  solemnity  which  falls  after  the 
opening  of  the  year,  when  aU  the  people  are  gathered 
together,  is  made  use  of  for  the  purpose.  And  that 
purpose  is  not  merely  testimony  to  the  God  with  whom 
Israel  has  to  do  :  it  is  also  positive  instruction.  The 
great  septennial  Sabbath  has  begun  and,  like  the  ordi- 
nary Sabbatli,  it  must  bo  more  than  a  time  of  rest.  It 
must  be  a  time  of  spiritual  quickening,  that  the  people 
may  be  brought  nearer  Him  whose  day,  whose  year,  it 
specially  is. 

All  the  arrangements  of  the  time,  in  short,  lead  us 
back  to  this,  that  the  land  is  the  Lord's.  Because  of 
this,  it  must  enjoy  its  Sabbaths,  and  be  employed  as  it  is. 
Wo  tui-n  to  the  second  question  proposed.  What  is 
the  fulfilment  of  all  this  now  ?  Hero  it  appears  to  us 
that  the  fulfilment  we  are  in  quest  of  is  not  to  be  sought 
in  anything  connected  with  the  soil  simply  as  soil.  We 
may  certainly  accept  the  statement  of  KoU,  adopted  by 
Ochler,  that  from  tho  leading  arrangement  of  tho  year 
"  Israel  as  the  people  of  God  was,  on  the  one  hand,  to 
learn  that  the  earth,  though  created  for  man,  was  yot  not 
created  for  the  simple  purpose  that  ho  should  extract 
its  strengtli  for  his  own  use ;  but  that  it  was  holy  to  the 
Lord,  and  had  a  part  in  this  sacred  rest :  on  the  other 
hand,  that  the  congregation  of  the  Lord  was  not  to  find 
the  purpose  of  its  life  in  labour  bestowed  upon  the 
earth  vrithout  ceasing,  and  in  the  sweat  of  its  face  (Gen. 


THE    OLD   TESTAMENT   FULFILLED   IN   THE    NEW. 


325 


iii.  17,  19),  l)ut  in  a  thankful  enjoyment  of  those  fruits 
which,  without  toil  of  its  own,  its  Lord  bestows  upon  it 
now,  anil  will  continue  to  bestow  upon  it,  so  long  as  it 
strives  to  bo  faithful  to  His  covenant  and  to  quicken 
itseK  by  His  law.'"'  But  the  thought  of  any  re- 
storation of  the  land  as  laud  to  its  state  before  the  full 
is  too  limited  an  ajiplication  for  the  Church  of  Christ. 
The  land  in  Israel  is  the  representative  not  merely  of 
property  of  a  simila,r  kind  that  may  be  possessed  by  a 
Christian  man,  but  of  property  of  every  kind  which  he 
may  own.  As  therefore  the  lesson  of  the  sabbatic  year  to 
Israel  was  that  the  possession  it  most  highly  valued — via., 
property  in  land — was  not  its  own,  but  God's,  the  lesson 
of  the  fulfilment  to  us  is  that  all  our  property  of  every 
kind  belongs  to  Him  who  by  the  right  of  redemption  claims 
to  Himself  both  us  and  what  we  have.  It  is  not  of  the 
soil  only,  when  we  may  own  it,  that  we  are  stewards  ;  we 
are  only  stewards  of  all  that  we  possess.  Tlie  Christian, 
in  giving  himself  to  God,  gives  also  iis  goods,  whatever 
they  may  bo.  He  does  not  say  of  anything  he  possesses 
that  it  is  his  own.  He  acknowledges  the  Divine  claim 
upon  himself  and  everything  that  he  has  ;  and  in  so  far 
as  he  retains  it  he  does  so  in  the  spirit  of  God's  holy 
rest,  regarding  it  as  consecrated  to  Him,  and  to  be  used 
in  whatever  manner  He  may  direct,  for  His  glory,  and 
the  good  of  His  truth  and  kingdom  upon  earth.  That 
this  is  the  real  fulfilment  of  the  sabbatic  year  will  ap- 
pear still  further  if  we  consider  the  analogy,  already 
hinted  at,  between  the  distribution  during  its  course  of 
the  spontaneous  productions  of  the  soil  and  the  events 
which  immediately  followed  the  outpouring  of  the  Spirit 
at  Pentecost.  Compared  with  Pentecost,  there  is  notliing 
exhibited  in  act  in  the  New  Testament  between  which 
and  one  of  the  leading  arrangements  of  the  sabbatic 
year  so  close  a  resemblance  can  be  pointed  out.  It  is 
even  difficult  not  to  imagine  that  we  see  the  specially 
Jewish  spirit  of  that  year  working  in  those  who,  just 
brought  under  the  fresh  power  of  Christian  love,  and 
desirous  to  express  it  in  what  to  a  Jew  was  the  most 
striking  way,  parted  with  their  land.  It  is  at  all  events 
curious  that  it  was  "  land  "  that  Barnabas  sold  when  he 
brought  the  money  and  laid  it  at  the  apostles'  feet 
(Acts  iv.  37) ;  and  again  the  possession  sold  by  Ananias 
and  Sapphira  was  of  the  same  kind,  "  But  Peter  said, 
Ananias,  why  hath  Satan  filled  thine  heart  to  lie  to  the 
Holy  Ghost,  and  to  keep  back  part  of  the  price  of  the 
land  "  (Acts  v.  3)  ?     But  while  this  was  the  case  we 


1  Keil,  Arcliacologie^  i.,  p.  373 ;  Oebler,  in  Herzog's  EiicijldJimlic, 
ziii,,  p.  211. 


are  yet  distinctly  informed  that  Christians  had  all  things 
common,  and  tliat  none  of  them  said  that  ought  of  the 
things  he  possessed  was  his  own.  The  first  biu'st  of 
Christian  affection  extended  a  principle  which  had 
been  shadowed  forth  previously  upon  a  more  limited 
scale. 

Again,  therefore,  we  see  the  fulfilment  of  the  common 
sluaring  of  the  produce  of  the  field  and  of  the  garden 
during  the  sabbatic  year.  It  is  in  the  spirit  of  the 
Pentecostal  season  of  the  early  Cliurch.  But  that  spirit 
takes  different  forms.  It  did  not  long  retain  the  form 
in  which  it  comes  before  us  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles. 
Tet  it  wiU  not  be  denied  that  later  ones  assumed  by  it 
are  quite  as  true,  or  that,  when  the  Christian  feels  for 
others  as  for  himself,  when  he  gives  food  to  the  hungry 
and  water  to  the  thirsty,  when  he  forgets  not  "  to  dp 
good  and  to  communicate  "  according  as  necessity  arises, 
he  is  exhibiting  that  very  spirit  of  theChrisliau  Church 
which  once  took  shape  in  a  community  of  goo  is.  The 
Christian  spirit  in  its  generosity,  liberality,  beneficence, 
ruling  in  the  breasts  of  the  Christian  commxiuity,  mak- 
ing the  glad  man  helx)ful  to  the  sorrowfid  and  the  rich 
man  helpful  to  the  poor,  making  aU  feel  as  brethren, 
and  shedding  its  benignant  influence  on  everything  with 
which  Christians  come  in  contact,  is  the  true  fulfilment 
of  that  common  eating  by  man  and  bii'd  and  beast 
which  was  one  of  the  great  chai-acteristics  of  the  year 
before  us. 

If  what  has  been  said  be  true,  it  is  not  necessary  to 
ask  how  the  more  subordinate  arrangements  of  the 
season  are  f  ulfiDed,  for  they  pass  simply  under  the  scope 
of  its  more  general  idea.  The  remission  of  debts,  for 
example,  is  simply  one  part  of  that  Christian  spuit 
which  may  not  indeed  always  take  this  particular  form, 
but  which  will  never  exact  cruelly  of  a  brother,  which 
will  rather  sacrifice  itself  than  break  the  bond  of  love ; 
while  the  solemn  reading  of  the  Law  reminds  us  that  we 
too  are  in  covenant  ^vith  God,  and  that  only  when  wo 
keep  our  covenant  can  we  either  enjoy  the  privileges  or 
exliibit  the  spirit  of  those  who  are  "  called  and  chosen 
and  faithful." 

It  is  unnecessary  to  say  more.  We  see  in  the  sab- 
batic year  the  shadow  of  the  time  when  not  the  seventh 
crop  only  should  be  claimed  by  One  who  had  redeemed 
His  people  out  of  Egypt  and  given  them  the  promised 
land,  but  when  One  who  has  redeemed  us  from  all  evil 
claims  as  His  own  aU  that  we  possess,  and  when,  remind- 
ing us  of  His  own  great  love.  Ho  says,  "  A  new  com- 
mandment I  give  unto  you,  that  ye  lovo  one  another ; 
as  I  have  loved  you,  that  ye  also  lovo  one  another." 


326 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


THE  PLANTS  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


ORDBES     XVII. — SSI.        ELATINE^,    HTPEEICINE.E,    MALVACEAE,    TILIACE.!;,    AND    LINEiE. 
BY    W.    CAKKUTHEES,    F.E.S.,    KEEPEK    OF   THE    BOTANICAL    DEPARTMENT,    BBITISH    MUSETJM. 


'he  Water-peppers  {ElatinecB)  are  a  small 
order  of  marsh  annuals  scattered  over 
the  globe,  and  represented  in  England  by 
two  minute  and  somewhat  rare  plants, 
which  form  a  moss-like  turf  on  the  margins  of  lakes 
and  ponds  that  often  extends  for  some  distance  under 
the  water.  Their  acrid  properties  have  suggested  for 
them  their  popular  English  name  of  Water-peppers, 
though  they  more  resemble  small  chick-weeds.  A 
single  species  closely  allied  to  one  of  the  British  forms 
has  been  observed  by  Kotschy  near  Joppa. 

The  St.  John's  Worts  {Hyi^ericincoi)  are  a  group  of 
plants,  generally  of  a  shrubby  character,  which  are 
almost  confined  to  the  temperate  regions  of  the  earth, 
being  found  only  on  mountains  in  warmer  climes.  They 
have  usually  smooth  leaves,  with  immersed  pellucid 
glands,  and  conspicuous  yellow  flowers.  Their  orna- 
mental ajjpearance  has  given  them  a  favourite  place  in 
shrubberies.  The  nine  British  species,  belonging  to 
the  largo  genus  Hypericum,  are  chiefly  found  on  dry 
situations  in  hedge-banks  or  in  copses.  A  dozen  species 
of  the  same  genus  occur  in  Palestine,  chiefly  in  the 
Lebanon  and  Anti-Lebanon  ranges.  Only  a  single  one 
{H.  lanuginosuin,,  Lam.)  has  boon  observed  in  the  lower 
country,  and  this  has  been  detected  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Jerusalem  and  on  Mount  Carmol.  The  common 
British  species  {H.  perforatum,  Linn.)  found  in  all  our 
copses,  woods,  and  hedge-banks,  occurs  on  the  shores  of 
Syria  and  on  Lebanon. 

The  Mallows  {Malvacece)  form  a  considerable  group 
of  prominent  plants  found  all  over  the  world  except 
in  regions  of  extreme  cold.  They  are  generally  shrubs, 
yet  small  lierbs  are  f  oimd  in  the  order  as  well  as  some 
of  the  largest  trees,  such  as  the  enormous  baobab 
of  Africa,  and  the  scarcely  smaller  one  of  Northern 
Australia.  The  flowers  are  often  largo  and  brightly 
coloured,  and  the  stylo  is  always  surrounded  by  nu- 
merous stamens  united  to  form  a  tube  around  it.  The 
leaves  are  large  and  more  or  less  divided.  The  plants 
are  furnished  with  a  considerable  amount  of  mucilage, 
but  have  no  special  virtues.  They  supply,  however,  a 
largo  quantity  of  textile  materials,  sometimes  from  the 
strong  fibres  of  the  bark,  but  chiefly  from  tho  fine  soft 
filaments  which  cover  tho  seeds  of  the  cotton-plants. 

Although  represented  by  only  five  species  of  indi- 
genous plants,  the  Mallows  form  a  somewhat  conspicuous 
portion  of  our  native  flora,  because  two  species  with 
large  lilac  or  purple  flowers  are  evei-ywhero  common  by 
roadsides  and  in  wasto  places.  Tho  others  are  less 
common :  one,  the  tree-mallow,  is  found  on  rocks  by 
the  sea-side ;  another,  tho  marsh-mallow,  occurs  in  mari- 
time marshes  in  the  south  of  England. 

Some  eighteen  species  are  known  in  Palestine,  and 
thi-ee  of  these  aro  British,  two  being  the  common  way- 


side mallows  (Malva  roiundifoUa,  Linn.,  and  M.  sylves- 
tris,  Linn.)  and  the  other  the  marsh-mallow  {Althiea 
officinalis,  Linn.).  The  gay  pink-flowered  shrub,  which 
is  so  familiar  an  ornament  of  oui'  shrubberies  in  autumn, 
called  Alihceafrutex,  is  a  Syi'ian  plant.  It  is  the  Hibis- 
cus syriacus,  Linn.,  a  plant  which,  though  it  grows  so 
freely  with  us,  appears  to  have  become  extinct  in  tho 
localities  where  it  was  f  ormei-ly  obsei-ved  in  Syria.  The 
plants  in  this  order  which  are  of  most  imijortance  to 
man  aro  those  belonging  to  the  small  genus  Gossypium, 
which  have  their  seeds  covered  with  the  long  hairy  fila- 
ments called  cotton.  One  species  [G.  herhaceum,  Linn.)  is 
a  native  of  India,  and  its  natural  distribution  westwards 
extended  probably  to  Southern  Arabia.  It  has  been 
always  used  for  the  manufacture  of  cloth  in  India. 
Four  centuries  before  our  era  Herodotus  refers  to  this 
plant  in  his  account  of  the  products  of  India,  when  he 
says  that  "  the  wild  trees  in  that  country  bear  fleeces  as 
then-  fruit,  sur[)assiug  those  of  sheep  in  beauty  and 
excellence,  which  tho  Indians  make  garments  of  "  (lib. 
iii.,  cap.  106).  The  use  of  cotton  in  Persia  and  Southern 
Arabia  is  probably  as  ancient  as  in  India.  Tho  date  of 
its  introduction  into  Egypt  cannot  be  determined ;  there 
is  reason  to  believe  that  it  was  known  to  the  Egyptians 
before  the  time  of  tho  Greek  conquest,  B.C.  333,  but 
only  as  an  imported  material,  for  tho  late  Mr.  Yates 
has  established  that  the  cotton-plant  was  not  grown  ia 
Egypt  before  tho  thirteenth  centm-y.'  Much  has  been 
written  as  to  the  supposed  use  of  cotton  by  tho  ancient 
Egyjitians.  Up  till  the  middle  of  last  century  it  was 
believed  that  the  cloth  emjiloyed  for  wrapping  mum- 
mies was  linen,  but  at  that  time  (1750)  Ronelle,  in 
his  memoir  on  mummies,  declared  that  the  cloth  of 
every  mummy  he  had  examined  was  made  of  cotton. 
This  opinion  was  sujiportod  and  confirmed  by  Forstor, 
who  had  the  help  of  tho  celebrated  botanist  Solandor  in 
his  examination  of  different  specimens  of  mummy-cloth 
pi-eserved  in  the  British  Museum.  At  the  time  of  this 
inquiry  (1770)  the  microscopic  differences  between  the 
filaments  of  cotton  and  flax  had  not  been  detected,  and 
as  the  method  by  wliich  the  determination  was  arrived 
at  has  not  been  recorded,  it  is  impossible  to  judge  of  the 
value  of  tho  characters  on  which  those  observers  trusted. 
Subsequent  investigations  appeared  to  furnish  additional 
evidence  in  confirmation  of  those  opinions,  which  wero 
generally  adopted  by  writers  xintU  Thomson  began  liis 
series  of  exhaustive  researches  in  1820.  After  many 
years  of  laboixr,  ho  published  the  results,  which  showed 
that  all  the  specimens  of  mummy-cloths  he  had  been 
able  to  obtain,  amounting  to  about  400  different  pieces, 
were  linen.     [Philosophical   Magazine,    Nov.    1834.) 


1  Textrinum  Antiquorum,  by  James  Tates,  p.  471.  The  reader 
will  find  in  this  learned  and  exhaustive  treatise  a  complete  history 
of  tho  raw  materials  employed  by  the  ancients  for  weaving. 


PLANTS  OP  THE  BIBLE. 


327 


Tho  value  of  fho  microscope  as  an  instrument  of  scien- 
tific inquiry  had  greatly  advanced  since  the  time  of 
Solander,  and  Thomson  secured  the  assistance  in  his  in- 
vestigations of  the  eminent  microseopist  Prancis  Bauer, 
whose  remarkable  work  is  scarcely  now  surpassed,  not- 
withstanding tho  many  improvements  made  in  the 
microscope  during  the  last  fifty  years.  He  showed  the 
characters  by  which  the  fibres  of  linen  can  be  distin- 
guished from  the  filaments  of  cotton,  and  decisively 
settled  that  mummy-cloth  was  made  only  of  linen. 

The  conquest  of  Alexander  made  the  Greeks  ac- 
quainted with  cotton.  Tho  wool-beax-ing  trees  of  India 
surprised  his  soldiers,  and  the  accounts  of  these  wonders 
by  his  admiral  Noarchus,  and  by  Ai-istobulus,  one  of 
his  generals,  have  been  preserved.  To  this  expedition 
we  are  indebted  for  the  singularly  accurate  description 
of  the  cotton-plant  and  its  method  of  cultivation  given 
by  Theophrastus,  the  disciple  and  successor  of  Aristotle, 
and  the  friend  of  several  of  Alexander's  officers.  He 
says,  "  The  trees  from  which  tho  Indians  make  cloths 
have  a  leaf  like  the  black  mulberry,  but  the  whole 
plant  resembles  the  dog-rose.  They  plant  them  in  tho 
plains,  an-anged  in  rows,  so  that  they  look  like  vines  at 
a  distance.  They  bear  no  fruit,  but  the  capsido  con- 
taining tho  wool  is,  when  closed,  about  the  size  of  a 
quince ;  when  ripo  it  expands  so  as  to  let  the  wool 
escape,  which  is  woven  into  cloths."  {Hist.  PL,  lib.  iv.) 
The  Eastern  name  for  cotton  was  introduced  into  the 
languages  of  Europe  when  the  substance  itself  became 
known.  Tho  Sanskrit  kurpasa  is  converted  into  harpas 
(DB-is)  in  Esth.  i.  6  (a  term  certainly  of  foreign  origin), 
into  Kapirotroj  of  Greek  authors,  and  carhasus  in  the 
Latin  language.  The  only  reference  to  cotton  in  Scrip- 
ture is  in  the  passage  just  quoted,  which  contains  an 
account  of  the  decorations  of  the  royal  iJalaco  of 
Ahasuerus  and  its  courts  on  the  occasion  of  a  great 
festival  given  to  his  people.  The  sense  is  obscured  in 
the  Authorised  Version  by  harpas  being  rendered 
"green  "  instead  of  cotton,  the  passage  reading,  "  Where 
there  were  white,  green,  and  blue  hangings,"  instead  of 
hangings  of  white  and  IjIuo  cotton  cloth.  Tho  trans- 
lators have  followed  the  Chaldeo  paraphrase,  although 
tho  true  meaning  had  been  given  both  in  the  Septuagint 
and  the  Vulgate.  Even  if  cotton  were  not  at  that  time 
a  product  of  Southern  Persia,  it  is  more  than  likely  that 
when  the  Persian  empire  extended  to  India,  and  its 
court  possessed  every  luxury,  the  brightly-coloured 
hangings  of  the  neighbouring  country  would  form  part 
of  tho  furnishings  of  tho  palace. 

The  opinions  advocated  by  RosenmiiUer  and  others, 
that  the  shesh  and  buz  of  the  Old  and  the  /SuVtros  of  the 
Now  Testament  mean  cotton,  are  not  established  by  any 
of  the  arguments  advanced  in  their  support.  Excepting 
the  single  reference  to  cotton  under  a  foreign  name, 
and  in  connection  with  a  foreign  palace,  there  is  no 
reason  for  supposing  that  tho  writers  of  the  Old  or 
New  Testament  were  acquainted  with  it. 

At  the  present  day  cotton  is  somewhat  extensively 
cultivated  in  Palestine,  the  species  being  Gossypium 
herhaceum,  Linn.     A  small  proportion  of  tho  produce 


is  made  into  cloth,  but  the  principal  portion  is  exported 
to  France.  The  Arab  women  are  almost  entirely  clad 
in  blue  cotton  that  has  been  spun,  woven,  and  dyed  by 
their  own  hands  (Tristram,  Nat.  Hist.  Bible,  p.  441). 

Tho  Linden  family  {Tiliaceoe)  comprises  a  large  num- 
ber of  tropical  trees,  and  some  herbs,  all  of  which 
possess  fibrous  barks.  The  lime  or  linden-tree  is  the 
only  British  member  of  the  family.  The  fibrous  ma- 
terial called  bass  or  bast,  so  largely  used  by  gardeners, 
is  the  tough  inner  bark  of  this  tree.  Tho  flora  of 
Palestine  has  also  a  single  representative  of  the  order, 
Corchoras  olitorius,  Linn.,  an  annual  shrub  some  ten 
feet  high,  belonging  to  a  genus  of  tropical  plants 
wliich  finds  its  northern  limits  hero.  The  young  shoots 
are  used  as  a  potherb ;  it  is  cultivated  in  Egypt  and 
Syria  for  this  purpose,  and  being  thus  employed  by  tho 
Jews,  it  is  called  the  Jews'  mallow.  Its  fibre  is  the 
textile  material  called  jute,  which  has  been  extensively 
imported  into  Britain  in  recent  years.  The  principal 
portion  of  the  jute  of  commerce  is  derived  from  G. 
capsularis,  Linn.,  an  allied  species.  Many  persons 
have  supposed  that  the  plant  mentioned  by  Job,  and 
translated  in  the  Authorised  Version  "  mallows,"  is  this 
Jews'  mallow.  The  word  malluach  (m'"?)  occurs  only 
in  Job  XXX.  4,  where  tho  patriarch  bemoans  the  condi- 
tion to  which  his  afflictions  have  brought  him,  making 
him  tho  derision  of  those  "whose  fathers  I  would  havo 
disdained  to  have  set  with  the  dogs  of  my  flock,"  and 
who  "  for  want  and  famine  were  solitaiy ;  fleeing  into 
tho  wilderness  in  former  time  desolate  and  waste  ;  who 
cut  up  mallows  by  the  bushes,  and  juniper  roots  for 
their  meat."  It  is  not  possible  to  determine  with  cer- 
tainty the  particular  plant  referred  to ;  but  there  are 
two  considerations  which  appear  to  exclude  tho  Cor- 
chorus.  The  name  of  the  plant  is  derived  from  melach, 
"  salt,"  and  must  be  considered  as  applied  to  a  saline 
plant ;  wMle  the  miserable  people  who  were  driven  by 
famine  to  use  it  as  food,  obtained  it  in  the  wilderness. 
Tristram  found  the  Jews'  mallow  "  common  on  the  salt 
plains  near  Jericho ; "  it  is,  however,  neither  a  saline 
plant  nor  a  true  desert  plant,  being  found  aU  over  tho 
tropical  world  in  cultivated  or  waste  places.  It  is  more 
probable  that  the  plant  is  one  of  the  saline  Ohenopo- 
diaceous  plants  that  are  common  on  tho  salt  desert 
regions  aroimd  Palestine,  have  a  bitter  saline  taste,  and 
are  used  as  food  in  seasons  of  scarcity. 

Tho  Flax  family  (Linem)  consists  of  a  small  gi'oup  of 
herbs  found  principally  in  temperate  regions,  in  no  way 
remarkable  except  for  their  valuable  fibrous  bark,  which, 
when  prepared,  forms  the  flax  of  commerce.  Besides 
the  common  flax,  only  known  as  a  cultivated  plant,  or 
as  an  escape  from  cultivation,  the  British  flora  contains 
four  intligenous  species  of  tliis  order.  These  are  tho 
all- seed  (Badiola  millegrana.  Smith),  one  of  our  smallest 
flowering  plants,  found  in  damp  sandy  places,  but  often 
overlooked  from  its  mrnuto  size ;  the  white-flowered 
purging  flax  so  common  in  p.istures ;  and  two  blue- 
flowered  species  allied  to  tho  cvdtivated  flax.  Boissier 
records  eleven  species  of  Linum  from  Palestine,  besides 
the   common  flax   (i.  tisitatissimum,  Liun.),  which  ia 


328 


THE   BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


there,  as  with  us,  extensiYely  cultivated  for  its  fibre. 
Elax  was  the  most  important  of  all  the  fibre-producing 
plants  to  the  ancient  inhabitants  of  Egy^jt  and  Syria. 
It  is  frequently  referred  to  in  the  Bible,  and  various 
names  are  applied  to  the  plant  and  its  raw  or  manu- 
factured products.  1.  The  most  general  term  is  2nshtah 
(nnitie),  the  primary  meaning  of  which  is  the  plant  itself, 
and  then  it  was  applied  to  the  products,  being  used 
with  the  same  latitude  of  meaning  as  we  use  the  word 


hands  (Judg.  xv.  14).  It  is  further  used  to  denote  the 
flax  when  made  into  wicks  for  lamps,  "  The  smoking 
flax  shall  he  not  quench "  (Isa.  slii.  3) ;  into  mcasuiing 
lines,  "  Behold  a  man  with  a  line  of  flax  in  his  hand,  and 
a  measuring  reed  "  (Ezck.  xl.  3) ;  and  into  the  dresses 
of  the  priests,  "  They  shall  be  clothed  with  finen  gar- 
ments "  (Ezek.  xliv.  17).  2.  Of  the  less  comjirehensive 
words  the  first  used  is  shesli  (li'iS),  generally  translated 
"  fine  linen."   This  word  is  probably  of  Egyptian  origin. 


Grossypwim  Iwrhace-ii-n,  Liua.     Cultou.     (Ksth.  i.  6.)     One-third  tlio  nafui*al  size. 


*' cotton  "  at  the  present  day.  It  is  applied  to  the  plant 
itseK  in  the  account  of  the  seventh  plague  sent  by  God 
on  the  land  of  Egypt.  The  flax  crop  was  ready  to  be 
harvested  when  it  was  com})letely  destroyed  by  a  terrible 
haU-storm  (Exod.  ix.  31).  The  word  is  also  applied  to 
the  plant  in  the  narrative  of  Rahab's  protection  of  the 
two  spies,  when  she  hid  them  under  the  bundle  of  flax 
which  was  drying  on  the  house-top  (Josh.  ii.  6).  The 
flax,  or  raw  material  in  the  first  stage  of  the  manufac- 
ture, is  designated  by  the  same  word  when  it  is  recorded 
that  the  new  cords  with  which  his  brethren  bound 
Samson,  so  as  to  deliver  him  to  the  Philistines,  "  became 
as  flax  that  was  burnt  with  fire,"  and  fell  from  his 


and  was  employed  to  characterise  the  yarn  made  from 
the  flax.  It  has  been  thought  that  it  may  be  the  same 
word  as  the  Hebrew  numeral  six,  and  that  it  was  applied 
to  the  yarn  because  it  was  composed  of  six  threads  ; 
others  hold  that  it  is  derived  from  a  root  meaning 
white,  and  was  appropriately  applied  to  flax  because 
of  its  colour  when  prepared.  When  Pharauh  made 
Joseph  ruler  over  Egypt,  he  "  arrayed  him  in  vestures 
of  fine  linen"  (shcsh)  (Gen.  xli.  42) ;  so  also  among  the 
offerings  for  the  tabernacle  presented  by  the  chUdron 
of  Israel  from  the  materials  they  had  brought  out  of 
Egyjjt  were  "fine  linen"  (Exod.  xxv.  4);  and  of  the 
same  material  were  made  the  curtains  of  the  tabernacle, 


PLANTS  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


329 


with  tlio  door  enrtams,  and  the 
veil  that  enclosed  the  holy  place 
(Exod.  xxW.  1,  31,  3(3).  3.  Bad 
("13)  is  a  word  employed  in  de- 
scribing the  linen  dresses  which 
were  worn  in  religious  cere- 
monies, and  may  refer  to  the 
cloth  made  from  the  sliesh  or 
yarn.  The  tunic,  turban,  and 
drawers  of  the  priests,  which  in 
Exodus  (xxxix.  27,  28)  are 
ordered  to  be  made  of  shesh, 
are  in  Leriticus  (ri.  10)  to  be 
made  of  bad,  establishing  that 
these  were  the  same  material,  if 
the  words  were  not  precisely 
synonymous.  In  the  prepara- 
tion for  the  erection  of  the 
tabernacle,  the  wise  -  hearted 
women  are  said  to  have  sjiun 
"  fine  linen"  with  theii-  hands; 
and  this  continued  to  be  the 
occupation  as  well  as  the  dress 
of  women  in  the  days  of  Solo- 
mon (Prov.  xxxi.  22,  incorrectly 
rendered  "  silJ: "),  and  after- 
wards (Bzok.  xvi.  10, 13).  4.  Butz 
(pa)  is  always  translated  "fine 
linen,"  and  is  employed  to  desig- 
nate the  robes  worn  by  kings 
(1  Chron.  XV.  27)  and  rich  men 
(Esth.  viii.  15),  and  the  official 
dresses  used  by  the  Levite  choir 
when  the  ark  was  brought  into 
the  Temple  (2  Chron.  v.  12), 
as  well  as  the  veil  of  the  Temple 
(2  Chron.  iii.  14).  The  word 
is  probably  of  Assyrian  origin, 
and  is  applied  to  "  fine  linen  " 
obtained  from  the  East  (Ezek. 
xxvii.  16),  while  sliesh  is  em- 
ployed to  designate  the  "  fine 
linen"  brought  to  the  market 
at  Tyre  from  Egypt  (ver.  7). 
The  jSkVo-os  of  the  Now  Testa- 
ment is  obriously  the  Greek 
form  of  this  word,  and  is  simi- 
larly employed  to  designate 
costly  dresses,  like  that  worn 
by  Dives  (Luke  xvi.  19),  and 
those  in  which  the  Lamb's  wife 
and  the  armies  in  heaven-  are 
arrayed  (Rev.  xix.  8,  14).  The 
word  is  synonymous  ^vith  the 
XiVoi/  of  Rev.  XV.  6,  in  which  the 
angels  were  dressed  who  were 
the  bearers  of  the  seven  last 
plagues.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  Greek  AiVoc  is  used  as  tho 
eciuivalent  of  pishtah    in   tho 


Liiium  usitalissimHm,  Linn.     Common  Flos. 
(Kxod.  IX.  31.)     UuU  the  natural  size. 


rendering  of  the  prophetic  ac- 
count of  our  Saviour,  "tho 
smoking  flax  shall  he  not 
quench"  (Matt.  xii.  20).  5. 
Sadiii  O'-iD)  is  applied  to  the 
cloth  made  from  linen,  and  is 
used  in  speaking  of  the  thirty 
sheets  which  Samson  promised 
his  companions  at  his  marriage 
if  they  declared  his  riddle 
(Judg.  xiv.  12,  13),  as  well  as 
of  the  dresses  made  from  this 
cloth  (Isa.  iii.  23;  Prov.  xxxi. 
24).  6.  Etim  (pT2«)  occurs  only 
once,  where  it  is  said  to  be  a 
product  of  Egypt  (Prov.  vii. 
16).  The  oeSv-n  of  the  New 
Testament  is  the  Greek  form  of 
this  word.  It  is  used  to  cha- 
racterise the  great  sheet  let 
down  from  heaven  in  Peter's 
vision  at  Joppa  (Acts  x.  11), 
which  accords  very  well  with 
the  use  of  the  word  in  the  pas- 
sage in  Proverbs.  The  diminu- 
tive form  o6iviov  is  employed 
by  John  to  designate  the  hnen 
clothes  in  which  Joseph  wrapped 
the  body  of  Jesus  (John  xix.  40  ; 
XX.  5,  6,  7).  Matthew  and  Mark 
employ  the  word  (rivSiiv  for  the 
same  linen  cloth,  while  Luke 
uses  both  words  in  the  same 
passage.  Ho  says,  Joseph 
"went  unto  Pilate  and  begged 
the  body  of  Jesus,  and  he  took 
it  down  and  wrapped  it  in  linen 
{iTwSiiv)  • "  and  afterwards,  in 
describing  the  visit  of  Peter  to 
the  empty  grave,  ho  wi-ites, 
that  "  stoojjing  down  he  beheld 
the  linen  cloths  {Mvlo]  laid  by 
themselves  "  (Luke  xxiii.,  xxiv.). 
Tho  only  other  reference  in  the 
New  Testament  to  linen  is  in 
the  account,  by  the  Evangelist 
Mark,  of  tho  remarkable  inci- 
dent that  occurred  in  Gethse- 
mane  at  the  betrayal  of  the 
Lord,  when  a  yoimg  man  who 
was  following  Him  left  liis  only 
covering,  a  linen  garment 
((ncSwf),  in  the  hands  of  his 
captors,  and  fled  away  naked 
(Mark  xiv.  51,  52).  7.  Our 
translators  have  interpreted 
mikveli  (^ipp)  as  meaning  linen 
yarn.  The  word  occurs  only  in 
the  account  of  the  goods  brought 
from  Egyi^t  by  the  merchants 


330 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


of  Solomon  (1  Kings  x.  28).  Various  and  different  ex- 
planations have  been  offered  of  this  'n-ord.  Gesenius 
renders  it  "troop;"  Bochart  makes  it  " tax ; "  and  tlie 
Septuagint,  Vulgate,  and  other  early  versions,  construe 
it  as  the  name  of  a  place  in  Arabia  Felix  or  Central 
Africa.  Amid  such  diversity,  and  with  nothing  to  assist 
in  arriving  at  a  decided  opinion,  we  may  set  aside  this 
word  as  at  most  doubtfully  connected  with  linen.  There 
can  bo  little  doubt  that  all  the  other  words  enumerated 
above  refer  to  the  flax-plant  or  some  of  its  products. 
Dr.  Royle  has  suggested  that  shesh  is  not  linen,  but 
hemp,  because  the  Arabic  name  for  this  plant,  Imsheesh, 
is  the  same  word,  with  only  the  asph-ate  prefixed. 
There  is,  however,  no  evidence  whatever  of  the  cultiva- 
tion of  hemp  in  ancient  times,  either  in  Palestine  or 
Egypt.  Besides,  as  we  have  seen,  the  use  of  shesh  as  a 
synonym  of  pishtah,  had,  and  butz,  establish  that  those 
were  aU  the  same. 

The  use  of  flax  as  a  textile  material  in  Palestine  and 
the  neighbouring  countries  dates  from  the  earliest  times. 
Joseph  was  arrayed  in  fine  linen  when  he  was  elevated 
to  bo  ruler  over  Egypt.  The  reference  to  the  miracidous 
destruction  of  the  flax  crop  establishes  that  the  cultiva- 
tion of  flax  was  an  important  branch  of  agricidturo  in 
Egypt  before  the  Israelites  left  that  country.  Egypt 
was,  indeed,  the  great  centre  of  tho  linen  manufacture 
in  ancient  times.  Tho  principal  part  of  the  dress  of 
the  people  was  made  of  linon,  and  it  was  the  only 
material  used  for  the  dress  of  the  priests.    The  city  of 


Panopolis  was  inhabited  by  linen-weavers.  All  the 
mummy-cloths  ai'e  composed  exclusively  of  linen,  and 
though  the  finest  specimens  are  coarse  compared  with 
what  can  be  produced  at  tho  present  day,  they  are  fine 
considering  the  appliances  for  preparing  and  weaving 
which  were  in  use  at  that  time.  There  are  several 
interesting  representations  of  tho  cultivation  and  pre- 
paration of  flax  preserved  in  tho  .-iculptured  tombs  of 
Egypt.  Rosellini  figm-es  one  from  the  Shunmor  tomb, 
and  Hamilton  another  from  the  Grotto  of  El  Kab.  In 
these  the  plant  is  seen  to  rise  straight  froni  the  soil, 
and  to  reach  about  the  middle  of  tho  body  of  the 
husbandmen.  It  is  pulled  up  by  the  roots,  and  bound 
into  bundles  or  sheaves  to  be  canied  to  the  man  who 
sepai-ates  the  seed  from  the  stem  by  means  of  a.  simple 
rippling  instrument.  It  was  then  exposed  to  the  action 
of  water  and  tho  sun,  in  order  to  separate  the  fibres 
from  the  rest  of  the  stem.  It  was  for  this  pui-pose  that 
Rahab  had  placed  the  stalks  of  the  flax  on  the  house- 
top, which  sho  employed  to  hide  the  spies. 

The  eai-ly  cultivation  of  flax  in  Palestine  is  testified  to 
by  this  narrative  of  the  spies'  visit  to  Jericho,  showing, 
as  it  does,  that  it  was  an  important  article  of  husbandi-y 
there  before  the  Israelites  got  possession  of  the  country. 
In  compariitively  modern  times  it  has  been  superseded 
as  the  material  for  the  ordinary  dress  of  the  inhabitants 
of  Syria  by  the  cotton-plant,  which  supplies,  with  less 
care  in  the  cultivation,  and  less  trouble  in  preparation, 
an  equally  valuable  substance. 


EASTERN   aSOGRAPHY    OF   THE   BIBLE. 

BY  THE  EET.   H.   W.   PHILLOTT,   M.A.,   RECTOR   OF   STAUNTON-ON-WTE,   AND   PRELECTOR   OF   HEREFORD   CATHEDRAL. 

NINEVEH  (continued). 

other  remains.  Mr.  Rich  died  in  1821,  and  the  groimd 
thus  broken  remained  untouched  for  twenty  years. 
In  1839  and  1840  Mr.  Layard  visited  Nimroud  and 
also  Kalah-Sherrjhai,  fifty  nides  lower  down  the  river; 
but  it  was  not  until  1843  that  M.  Botta,  French  consul 
at  Mosul,  having  begun  excavations  at  Koyounjik,  was  • 
induced  to  transfer  his  operations  to  KJiorsabad.  a  village 
fourteen  nules  to  the  N.N.E.  of  Mosul.  (Rich,  ii.  c.  12 — 
17  ;  Nieb.,  ii.  297  ;  Vaux,  Nin.  and  Perse2iolis,  p.  194.) 
The  first-fruits  of  M.  Botta's  researches  were  announced 
to  tho  world  in  AprU,  1843,  and  in  spite  of  great  difii- 
cidties,  arising  partly  from  the  extreme  unhoalthiness 
of  the  place,  and  partly  from  the  ignorant  hostility  of 
the  inhabitants  and  of  the  Tiu-kish  atithorities,  wero 
contintted  untU  1845  with  results  most  interesting  and 
important.  Encom-aged  by  M.  Botta's  success,  oiu" 
coimtryman,  Mr.  Layard,  wiis  induced,  though  at  first 
with  little  support  from  home,  to  undertake  similar 
researches  in  other  localities,  btit  from  want  of  funds 
was  obliged  to  delay  his  operations  till  late  in  1845. 
They  were  carried  on  at  iatervals  tmtil  1852  with  won- 
derfid  success;  the  results  both  of  these  researches 
and  of  those  of  M.  Botta  have  been  published  in  several 


?^T°?^»  HTJS  for  more  than  2,000  years  did  the  site 
^1^1  (\  _  of  this  ancient  and  great  city  lie  neglected. 
Its  ruins  from  time  to  time  were  used  for 
mifitary  purposes,  by  Cassius,  as  mentioned 
above,  by  Heraelius,  before  his  attack  on  the  Persians 
in  627  A.D.,  perhaps  by  Timur,  and  even  as  late  as  the 
eighteenth  century,  when  Nadir  Shah  occupied  them 
as  a  station  to  bombard  Mosul  (.a.d.  1743) ;  but  they 
were  tiU  lately  remembered  by  name  in  the  imme- 
diate neighbourhood  less  for  then-  own  sake  than  for 
containing  the  supposed  tomb  of  Jonah,  the  foreign 
prophet  of  the  city's  destntction  (Nieb.,  ii.  291).  Tdl 
the  year  1820  scarcely  any  attempt  had  been  made  to 
examine  the  ruins,  either  there  or  elsewhere,  of  the 
Assyrian  cities,  but  in  that  year  Mr.  Rich,  so  often 
mentioned  before,  visited  and  surveyed  carefully,  and 
to  some  extent  examined  tho  moimd  on  which  is  situated 
the  village  of  Nchhi  Yunus,  and  the  mosque  supposed 
to  cover  the  prophet's  tomb,  and  also  the  adjoining  one 
of  Koyounjik.  He  also  -lisited  the  -lillage  of  Nimroud. 
about  eighteen  miles  from  Mosul,  and  which  he  thought 
to  be  Xcnophon's  Larissa,  .lud  where,  as  well  Jis  at 
Koyounjik,  he  found  inscribed  bricks  and  stones  and 


EASTERN  GEOGRAPHY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


331 


volumes  both  in  France  and  in  England,  and  the  sculp- 
tui-es  wliieh  they  were  enabled  to  recover  from  tlio  ruins 
are  deposited  in  the  great  national  museums  of  the 
respective  countries.  Tlie  chief  places  that  have  been 
examined  are  (1)  the  great  mound  opposite  Mosul,  on 
which  stood  the  collage  called  Koyounjih  (Uttle  lamb) 
now  destroyed,  and  its  neighbour  Nebbi  Yunus  (Prophet 
Jonah);  (2)  Khorsabad ;  (3)  Nimroiul,  eighteen  mOes 
to  S.E.  of  Mosid;  (•!•)  Kalah-Sherr/hat,  iifty  miles  lower 
down  the  river  than  Nimroud ;  (6)  Baasheika ;  (6) 
Karamles;  (7)  Shereef  Khan.  From  these  three  places 
last  mentioned  the  results  obtained  are  less  important 
than  from  the  other  sites,  iu  all  of  which,  but  especially 
the  first  three,  remains  have  been  excavated  of  the 
most  valuable  kind,  and  most  of  them  in  the  highest 
state  of  preservation,  chiefly  of  palaces  wliich  appear  to 
have  served  also  as  temples,  usually  raised  on  platforms 
of  brickwork  answering  to  the  description  given  above 
by  Xenophon  of  Mespila.  The  long  narrow  halls  of 
these  edifices,  entered  through  portals  flanked  by 
huge  statues  of  winged  hons  or  bulls  of  solemn  and 
majestic  aspect,  were  lined  with  slabs  of  alabaster 
or  limestone,  engi-aved  with  fonns  and  figures  which 
were  sometimes  coloured,  "  images  of  Chaldaeans  por- 
trayed with  vermilion,"  pictui-es  on  stone  in  low  reUef 
of  battles  and  sieges ;  the  horrible  tortures  of  the 
captives,  and  their  attitudes  of  abject  submission,  hunt- 
ing expeditions,  ships  and  naval  operations,  the  various 
incidents  of  war  or  of  the  chase,  the  ex[)loits,  the  amuse- 
ments and  the  triumphant  crimes  of  these  mighty 
hunters  before  the  Lord,  the  descendants,  either  by 
birth  or  succession,  of  Nimrod,  the  great  founder  of 
thou-  empire.  Among  them  wore  figiu-es  of  men  and 
animals  from  various  countries :  Jews  from  Lachish, 
Israelites  from  Samaria,  Phoenicians  from  the  sea-coast 
of  Palestine,  Persians  from  Susiana;  Uons  from  Meso- 
potamia, camels  of  the  ordinary  kind,  and  also  the  two- 
humi^ed  Bactrian,  the  Indian  elephant,  the  large  and 
small  Indian  monkey,  the  rhinoceros,  tlie  large  antelope, 
and  the  bull  of  India,  the  ostrich  of  Arabia ;  and  where 
the  sea  was  represented,  figures  of  fish  and  marine 
creatures,  testifying  to  the  acquaintance  of  the  Assyrian 
nation,  "  the  Chaldjeans,  whose  cry  is  iu  the  ships,"  with 
maritime  affairs,  and  their  intercom-se  with  other  nations 
by  sea.  Eminent  among  the  figures  of  royal  conquerors 
and  commanders  is  that  of  Sennacherib,  whose  name  is 
read  in  inscriptions  which  also  contain  tlie  names  of 
Sargon,  Tiglath-pilesor,  and  perhaps  Pul,  kings  of 
Assyria ;  T)f  Jehu,  kiug  of  Israel,  and  of  the  unfortimate 
Manasseh,  king  of  Judah,  names  familiar  to  us  in 
the  Scripture  narrative,  on  which  these  mute  yet  living 
records  are  a  faitlif  ul  and  eloquent  commentary. 

The  early  history  of  Assyi-ia  is  beset  with  much  diffi- 
culty, which  it  is  not  worth  our  while  here  to  attempt  to 
unravel.  Herodotus,  as  we  have  seen,  says  that  the 
Assyi-ian  empire  in  Upper  A.sia  lasted  for  520  years, 
untU  the  Medes  revolted,  who  were  followed  in  their 
defection  by  other  nations.  With  him  Berosus  iu  the 
main  agrees,  but  from  what  time  this  period  is  to  be 
dated  is  by  no  means   certain.     It  is  clear,  however. 


that  for  some  time  the  authority  of  Assyria  extended 
over  Babylon ;  that  the  Babylonians  shook  it  off,  pro- 
Ijably  about  747  B.C.,  tho  era,  as  it  is  called,  of  Nabo- 
nassar,  king  of  Babylon ;  but  that  they  again  became 
subject  to  it,  xmtil  they  took  part  with  the  Medes  iu  the 
attack  on  Nineveh  which  ended  in  its  destruction  and 
the  dissolution  of  the  empire,  either  in  625  or  606  B.C. 
Tho  inscriptions  tell  us  of  a  king  Sardanapalus,  not  the 
one  whoso  name  is  so  familiar  to  tis  as  tho  very  type  of 
sensual  luxury,  but  one  of  an  earlier  date,  who  overran 
Western  Asia ;  and  of  his  son  Shalmaneser,  still  greater 
as  a  couqueror,  to  whom  Jehu,  king  of  Israel,  appears  to 
have  paid  tribute.  They  tell  us  also  of  Pid,  grandson 
of  the  last-named  king,  and  mentioned  above,  who,  if 
the  interpretation  of  the  inscriptions  compared  with  the 
statement  of  Berosus  is  correct,  appears  to  have  reigned 
at  Calah  from  800  to  750  B.C.,  and  to  have  held  .sway 
over  Babylon;  also  of  Tiglath-piloser,  the  "tiger" 
monarch,  his  war  with  Syi-ia  and  Israel,  and  his  pro- 
tection of  Ahaz.  (2  Kings  xvi.  9 — 16 ;  Ainswortli,  Trav., 
ii.  142  ;  Bawlinson,  HI.  of  0.  T.,  p.  126.)  Shalmaneser, 
second  of  tho  name,  to  whom  Hoshea  paid  tribute 
(2  Kings  xvii.  3),  is  not  mentioned;  but  Sargon,  who, 
if  he  was  not  his  son,  was  perhaps  a  usui-per,  and  who, 
if  the  records  are  rightly  imderstood,  appears  to  have 
been  the  king  who  carried  Israel  into  captivity,  and 
placed  them  iu  Halah  and  Habor,  the  river  of  Gozan, 
and  in  the  cities  of  the  Medes  (2  Kings  xvii.  6  ;  Raw- 
linson,  pp.  127,  130).  Sargon  appears  to  have  Iniilt 
jjalaces  both  at  Nimroud  and  at  Khorsabad,  to  which 
latter  place,  according  to  Arab  geographers,  the  name 
Sarghuu  belonged  down  to  the  period  of  the  Moham- 
medan conquest  (Layard,  Nhi.,  i.  149).  His  son 
Sennacherib  (702 — 680  B.C.)  is  doubtless  the  best  known 
of  Assyrian  kings,  and  during  his  reign  the  empire 
reached  its  climax  of  prosperity.  The  records  preserved 
in  tablets  found  at  Koyoimjik,  where  he  built  a  vast 
palace,  tell  us  in  great  detail  of  his  conquests ;  of  his 
defeat  of  Morodach-baladan,  king  of  Baljylon  (2  Kings 
XX.  12),  and  of  tho  Egyptians,  and  of  the  tribute  exacted 
from  Hezekiah  (2  Kings  xviii.  14 ;  Layard,  Nin.  and 
Bab.,  pp.  139—146,  159,  160).  His  son  Esarhaddon 
built  a  palace  at  Nimroud,  one  also  at  Nebbi  Yimus, 
and  one  at  Shereef  Khan  (Layard,  pp.  160,  598 — 621, 
654).  Memorials  are  found  of  Ms  son  at  Koyounjik, 
and  of  his  son  and  grandson  at  Nimroud.  It  was  pro- 
bably during  the  reign  of  this  last  prince,  whose  name 
appears  to  have  been  Saracus,  that  the  Median  revolt, 
supported  by  Babylon,  took  place  which  ended  in  the 
destruction  of  Nineveh  (Tobit  xiv.  15  ;  Joseph.,  Ant, 
X.  5,  1 ;  Berosus,  p.  89 ;  Pusey,  Introd.  to  Nahum,  p. 
306 ;  Layard,  pp.  452,  599).  The  marLucr  in  which, 
according  to  Diodorus,  the  captm'O  was  effected  corre- 
sponds in  a  remarkable  manner  to  the  Scripture  prophe- 
cies, and  is  confirmed  in  one  respect  at  least  by  the 
condition  of  tho  remains  themselves.  He  says  that  tho 
city  was  entered  during  an  inimdation  of  tho  river, 
which  by  a  mistake  he  calls  the  Euphrates,  in  the  third 
year  of  the  siege.  This  broke  down  the  waU  and  made 
an  entrance  for  the  enemy,  and  the  king,  as  has  ))een 


332 


THE  BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


mentioned  aboTe;  destroyed  Mmself  and  Ms  palace  by 
fire  (Died.  ii.  27).  What  does  Nabum  say  P  That 
"the  gates  of  the  rivers  shall  be  opened,"  and  "the 
palace  bo  dissolved ;  "  that  "  the  gates  of  the  land  shall 
be  set  open  to  the  enemy ;  "  that  the  city  should  be  de- 
stroyed by  fii-e  ;  that  Nineveh  shoulil  be  laid  Traste,  and 
that,  lastly,  there  should  be  no  healing  for  the  "  bruise  " 
of  Assyria.  It  is  to  bo  noticed  that  in  his  description 
the  prophet  uses  the  vcord  Riizzab,  a  word  which,  if 
not  intended  to  denote  the  ciueen  of  Assyria,  as  repre- 
senting the  kingdom,  may  perhaps  be  a  geographical 
term  for  the  couutiy  watered  by  the  Zab.  (,Nah.  ii. 
6,  7 ;  iii.  7,  13,  15,  19).  Zephaniah  says  that  Nineveh 
should  be  made  "a  desolation,  dry  like  a  wilderness ; " 
that  flocks  should  "  lie  down  in  the  midst  of  her ; " 
and  that  when  the  "  cedar- work'" — i.e.,  of  the  roofs  and 
ceilings — should  be  "uncovered,"  the  "cormorant  and 
bittern"  shoidd  lodge  in  the  buildings  (Zeph.  ii.  13 
— 15).  In  reference  to  these  prophetical  descriptions, 
it  may  bo  remarked  (1)  that  the  river  Khausser  passes 
through  the  mound  of  Koyounjik,  and  that  after  rain  it 
becomes  an  impetuous  torrent,  capable  of  effecting  great 
mischief;  (2)  that  the  Tigris,  which  now  flows  half  a 
mile  from  the  mound,  frequently  changes  its  course, 
and  may  thus  have  been  the  cause  of  the  breach  in  the 
city  walls,  the  opening  of  the  river-gates  which  admitted 
the  enemy  into  the  city;  (3)  that  manifest  traces  of 
fire,  especially  of  cedar-wood  destroyed  by  fire,  are 
evident  at  Nimroud,  at  Khorsabad,  and  at  Koyounjik ; 
and  the  complete  destruction  and  desolation  of  the  sites 
is  verified  not  only  by  the  silence  of  writers  and  the 
general  ignorance  of  travellers  respecting  them,  but  by 
their  actual  state  at  the  present  time.  (Layard,  Nln. 
and  Bab.,  77,  357 ;  Nineveh,  i.  149 ;  ii.  121 ;  Ainswortb, 
Trav.,  ii.  142,  143.) 

Where,  then,  was  Nineveh,  "  of  that  first  golden 
monarchy  the  seat,"  and  which  of  the  great  moimds  of 
ruins  is  it  that  covers  its  site  ?  Is  Nineveh  to  be  foimd 
at  Koyounjik,  or  at  Nimroud,  or  at  Khorsabad  ?  One 
view  would  place  separate  cities  at  each  of  these  places, 
arg^ng  that  if  Koyounjik  represents  Nineveh,  Khor- 
sabad was  to  it  what  Versailles  is  to  Paris,  or  Hampton 
Court  to  Loudon,  and  that  Nineveh  was  in  fact  a  group 
of  cities  known  by  a  common  name.  (H.  Bawlinson, 
quoted  by  Layard,  Nin.  and  Bab.,  638  ;  Oppert,  p.  67.) 
The  other  view,  which  is  Mr.  Layard's,  would  include 
the  three  places  above  mentioned,  together  with  Shereef- 
Klian  and  Karamles  in  the  circuit  of  Nineveh,  whose 
dimensions  would  then  answer  pretty  nearly  to  those  of 
Diodorusandfo  the  city  of  three  days'  journey  of  Jonah. 
Nimroud  in  this  view  represents  the  original  site  of  the 
city,  whose  founder  also  built  the  etlifice  at  Baasheika, 
and  founded  a  new  city  at  Kalah  Sherghat.  Later 
still,  palaces  were  built  at  Khorsal^ad  and  Karamles, 
and  the  largest  structure  of  all  was  buUt  by  Sennacherib 
at  Koyounjik.  Besides,  at  these  more  distinguished 
sites,  remains  have  been  dug  up  at  various  places  overthe 
whole  area.  This  extended  -v-iew  of  the  size  of  Nineveh 
was  entertained  liy  Cartwright,  mentioned  above,  who 
says,  "It  seems  by  the  ruinous  foimdation,  which  I 


thorougldy  A-iewed,  that  it  was  buUt  with  four  sides,  but 
not  equal  or  square.  For  the  two  longer  sides  had  each 
of  them,  as  we  guess,  150  furlongs,  the  two  shorter 
sides  90  fiu-longs,  which  amounted  to  480  furlongs  of 
ground,  which  makes  threescore  miles,  accounting  eight 
furlongs  to  an  Italian  mUe."  (Layard,  Nin.,  ii.  243, 
247,  248 ;  Nin.  and  Bab.,  640 ;  Pus'ey,  On  Jonah,  Intr., 
p.  253 ;  Purchas,  Pilgrims,  ii.  1,435.)  On  these  vast 
dimensions  we  may  remark  noai'ly  to  the  same  effect 
as  was  done  in  speaking  of  Babylon,  viz.,  that  it  is 
certainly  jiossible  to  imagine  an  area  of  the  size  described 
above,  a  parallelogram  of  18  miles  x  12  miles,  loosely 
occupied  by  vast  palaces  and  detached  buildings,  thinly 
inhabited,  and  containing  a  large  space  of  ground  not^ 
covered  by  buildings,  but  imder  cultivation,  and  the 
whole  surrounded  by  a  wall  54  mUes  long ;  but  that 
the  other  theory,  viz.,  of  an  aggregate  of  towns  incor- 
porated under  one  general  name,  seems  more  consistent 
with  probability,  and  not  repugnant  to  the  descrij)tion 
given  in  the  prophecy  of  Jonah.  But  if  we  regard 
Nineveh  as  occupying  the  whole  of  this  vast  parallelo- 
gram, where  are  wo  to  place  Asshur,  Behoboth-Ir, 
Calah,  and  Resen  P  As  to  Asshur  there  is  perhaps  no 
difficidty,  for  we  shall  easily  accept  this  name  as  de- 
noting the  country  at  large  rather  than  any  single  town, 
identical  with  Atui-ia,  the  name  given  by  Strabo  to  a. 
province  of  Assyi'ia,  and  applied  by  Arab  geogra- 
phers to  Mosul,  to  Selamiyah,  to  the  pro^'ince  of 
Mesopotamia,  and  even  till  lately  to  Nimroud 
(Layard,  Nin.,  ii.  345).  Rehoboth-Ir  we  shall  pro- 
bably regard  with  the  margin  of  our  Bibles  and  with  St. 
Jerome  as  denoting,  not  a  separate  city,  but  the  "  streets 
of  the  city,"  i.e.,  of  Nineveh  (Hieron.,  Quasi,  in  Gen., 
vol.  iii.,  p.  954  (320).  There  remain,  therefore,  Calah. 
and  Resen,  the  latter  "  between  Niuoveli  and  Calah,  a, 
great  city."  It  has  been  variously  identified  with  Sela- 
miyah, five  miles  north-west  of  Ninu-oud,  with  Nimroud, 
and  with  Larissa  of  Xenophon,  though  this  last  opinion 
throws  little  light  on  its  actual  position ;  while  Calah 
has  been  thought  by  some  to  be  represented  by  Holwan, 
on  the  river  of  that  name,  an  affluent  of  the  Diyaieh, 
but  is  more  commonly  thought  to  answer  to  Kalali- 
Shergbat,  in  whicb  case  Resen  may  perhaps  be  placed  . 
at  Nimroud  (Layard,  Nin.,  i.  4 ;  Oppert,  p.  83 ;  H. 
Rawlinson,  in  Geogr.  Joxirnal,  vol.  ix.,  p.  35 ;  Assemani, 
Bibl.  Orient.,  vol.  iii.,  pp.  DCCLIII.  and  2).  It  is 
jierhaps  impossible  now  to  come  to  a  positive  conclusion 
on  either  of  these  ojiinions ;  but  the  general  statements 
of  history,  both  sacred  and  profane,  have  been  amply 
verified  by  the  discoveries  which  have  been  made 
within  the  region  to  which  these  places  must  have 
belonged,  and  within  which  there  is  ample  room  for 
all  of  them,  whether  collected  within  a  single  enclo- 
sure or  dispersed  more  widely  over  its  surface.  But 
their  sites,  wherever  they  may  be  assigned,  have 
become  a  desolation ;  the  great  cedar  of  Lebanon, 
exalted  above  all  the  trees  of  the  field  has  been  cut 
ofl:  by  strangers ;  his  branches  are  fallen  and  his 
boughs  broken,  and  the  people  of  the  earth  have  gone 
from  his  shadow  and  have  left  him  (Ezck.  xvii.).     The 


DIFFICULT  PASSAGES  EXPLAINED. 


333 


descendants  of  the  ancient  Assyrians,  those  deter- 
mined and  cruel  warriors  wlio  subdued  Asia  and  even 
penetrated  into  Egypt,  the  Kurds  of  modern  Assyria, 


"are  scattered  upon  the  mountains,"  while  men  of  other 
races  inhabit  the  towns  or  wander  among  the  regions 
once  fertile  and  populous,  but  now  wasted  and  desolate. 


DIFFICULT    PASSAGES    EXPLAINED. 

BT  THE    KEV.    H.    D.    M.    SPENOE,    SI. A.,    KECTOR    OP    ST.    MAKT    DE    CEYPT,    GLOUCESTEK,    AND    EXASIINING    CHAPLAIII 
TO    THE    LOKD    BISHOP    OP    GLOUCESTER   AND    BRISTOL. 

THE  CATHOLIC  EPISTLES:—!  ST.  JOHN. 


"THE    SIN   TTNTO    DEATH. 

"...     There  is  a  sin  unto  death.      I  do  not  say  that  he 
Blinllpray  for  it."— 1  John  v.  16. 

'here  are  two  passages  intimately  con- 
nected in  the  New  Testament  of  our  Lord 
and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  St.  Matthew 
xii.  31  :  "  Wherefore  I  say  unto  you,  AH 
maimer  of  sin  and  blasphemy  shall  be  forgiven  imto 
men  :  but  the  blasphemy  against  the  Holy  Ghost  shall 
not  be  forgiven  unto  men ; "  and  the  one  we  are  about 
to  consider  from  the  First  Epistle  of  St.  John.'  The 
saying  of  our  Lord  and  the  written  words  of  the  beloved 
apostle  at  first  sight  seem  to  point  to  a  creed  harsher 
and  less  lo^ang  than  that  which  is  usually  beheved  to 
be  the  sum  of  the  teaching  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus. 

They  are  no  doubt  most  weighty  sayings,  and  calcu- 
lated to  exercise  deex)  influence  on  the  minds  and  actions 
of  thinking  men.  Wrongly  understood,  their  influence 
may  be,  often  has  been,  most  mischievous,  calculated 
to  di'ive  the  shrinking  trembling  soul  rather  to  despair 
than  to  repent ;  whUe,  rightly  understood,  they  will  only 
powerfully  lead  the  poor  erring  one  to  lean  more  entirely 
on  the  Everlasting  arms ;  they  wiU  mightily  persuade 
the  sorrowful  and  repentant  to  trust  more  closely  in 
the  blood  of  their  Saviour  and  Redeemer  Jesus  as  their 
only  hope. 

Before  setting  forward  what  we  believe  to  be  the 
true  meaning  of  this  hard  saying  of  St.  John,  which 
after  all  was  but  the  repetition  of  a  truth  ho  had  heard 
from  his  Lord's  own  lips,  let  us  at  once  dismiss  all  idea 
of  watering  down  and  weakening  the  statement  which 
so  many  have  attempted  but  in  vain  to  do.  And  first, 
in  the  words,  "  There  is  a  sin  unto  death,"  we  declare 
without  hesitation  "  death  "  is  used  in  its  deepest  and 
most  awful  signification.  The  reference  is  not  merely 
to  physical  death,  to  the  death  of  the  body,  but  to 
"death  eternal,"  whatever  that  may  be.  It  refers 
plainly  to  sometliing  utterly  unconnected  with  this  life 
and  this  world.  And  secondly,  we  must  give  up  the 
not  uncommon  interpretation  which  sees  in  the  second 
clause,  "  I  do  not  say  that  he  shall  pray  for  it,"  no 
positive  command  not  to  pray  for  the  sin  unto  death, 
but  merely  a  recommendation  not  to  ask  God  for  what 
■will  hardly  be  granted.     But  the  context  of  the  passage 


'  To  these  two  a  third  may  perhaps  he  added  (Heb.  vi.  4,  5,  6), 
■where  men  are  warned  of  the  impossibility  of  repentance  in  certain 
unhappy  cases,  after  a  deliberate  course  of  sin. 


clearly  shows  us,  that  just  as  there  are  cases  of  sin  in 
which  God  wills  we  shoidd  pray  one  for  another,  so  too 
there  is  a  sin  for  which  God  wills  no  prayer  should  be 
made.  What  now  is  this  changeless,  hopeless  sin,  for 
which  no  prayer  may  be  offered  by  man  to  God  ? 

Tho  idea  of  the  existence  of  an  unpardonable  sin,  "a 
sin  unto  death,"  has  worked  on  the  minds  of  aU  Chris- 
j  tian  men  with  greater  or  less  influence  from  the  very 
earliest  days  of  Christianity ;  and  the  words  of  St.  John 
we  are  now  dwelling  upon  doubtless  served  as  the 
foundation-story  of  many  of  those  gloomy  and  cheerless 
j  conceptions  of  the  Divine  natm'O  we  find  in  the  Gnostic 
I  creeds,  and  somewhat  later  in  the  teaching  of  the  Mon- 
tanists  and  Novatiaus.  Basilides,  the  Gnostic,  says 
Clement  of  Alexandria  taught  that  not  all  sins,  but  only 
sins  committed  involuntarily  or  through  ignorance,  were 
forgiven."  The  Montanists  denied  that  there  was  any 
remission  of  certain  great  sins  committed  after  baptism. 
The  error  of  the  Novatians  ^  (third  century)  principally 
consisted  in  their  denying  to  the  Church  the  power  of 
restoring  to  communion  those  who  had  lapsed  in  time 
of  persecution.  (This  lapsing  in  jJersocution  has  been 
frequently  supposed  to  have  been  the  sin  against  the 
Holy  Ghost.)  But  from  the  fii'st  days  of  Christianity 
by  far  tho  gi-eator  number  of  those  eminent  men  who 
have  been  permitted  by  the  providence  of  God  mainly 
to  mould  and  influence  the  Church  of  Christ  on  earth 
in  her  government  and  her  discipline,  have  struggled  to 
combat  this  mistaken  notion  concerning  an  unpardon- 
able sin.  Cyprian  of  Carthage,  Ambrose  of  Milan, 
Athanasius  of  Alexandria,  and  Augustine  of  Hiiipo, 
may  be  cited  as  among  tho  most  famous  of  the  early 
Catholic  theologians  who  earnestly  and  successfully 
opposed  thLs  fatal  error. 

Tho  question  respecting  forgiveness  of  deadly  sin, 
and  the  consequent  restoration  of  the  sinner  to  com- 
munion with  his  fellow-believers,  divided  tho  foUowers 
of  Christ  from  the  first  days  into  two  distinct  parties  : 
the  one,  resting  on  the  few  condemnatory  sentences  of 
the  Saviour,  and  on  such  texts  as  wo  are  now  consi- 
dering, was  ever  too  ready  to  judge  its  fellow-men 
with  a  severity  as  unjust  as  it  was  pitiless ;  the  other, 
with  a  better  comprehension  of  the  mind  of  Christ  and 
tho  spirit  of  His  teaching,  shrunk  from  pronouncing  a 
positive  and  final  judgment  here,  and  preferred  ever 
to  win  the  sinner  to  repentance  rather  than  to  drive 


'  Clem,  Alex.,  Slromata,  iv. 


3  C(.  Eusebius,  H.E.,  vi.  43. 


334 


THE   BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


Tiim  to  despair.  The  great  system  of  ecclesiastical  dis- 
cipline—slowly elaborated  as  the  Church  developed— 
Tvhich  punished  men  by  depriving  them  for  a  long  or 
short  period  of  all  the  benefits  and  privileges  of  holy 
baptism  by  banishing  thom  from  the  society  and  com- 
munion of  the  Church,  by  excluding  them  from  public 
prayer  and  praise,  by  preventing  them  from  receiving 
the  eucharist,  and  from  entering  a  church  even  to  hoar 
the  Scriptures  read  till  the  days  of  then-  repentance 
were  fulfilled,  may  bo  regarded  in  some  way  as  a  com- 
promise ■  between  the  two  parties — the  one  desii-ous  of 
judging  sinners  with  a  stem  and  cruel  harshness  ;  the 
other  wishful  rather  to  win  back  the  erring  to  the  fold. 
Into  these  two  parties  the  Church  of  the  first  days, 
roughly  speaking,  may  bo  said  to  have  been  divided. 

Stai,  in  spite  of  the  general  condemnation  on  the 
part  of  the  Catholic  Church  of  all  stem  and  cruel 
interpretations  of  St.  John's  words,  there  remained 
deep  seated  in  the  hearts  of  many  earnest  Christians 
a  fear,  often  undefined  but  constantly  present,  that  in 
some  way  or  other  tlio  awfid  unf orgiven  sin  may  have 
been  committed  either  in  their  own  persons  or  by  some 
closely  and  dearly  connected  with  them.  The  great 
teachers  of  the  Church,  aware  of  this  wide-spread  feel- 
ing, set  themselves  to  show  that  such  statements  were 
groundless,  and  were  based  upon  a  complete  misappre- 
hension of  the  grave  and  weighty  statements  of  the 
Apostle. 

Before,  however,  considering  the  meaning  of  St. 
John's  solemn  words,  aU  doubt  must  be  removed  re- 
Bpocting  the  persons  to  whom  the  Apostle  was  referring. 

They  were  "brotlu'on,"  men  and  women,  who  had 
voluntarily  joined  the  company  of  those  who  believed 
in  Jesus.  Thus  wo  may  decide  at  once  that  to  all  the 
heathen  world,  to  all  those  who  stood  outside  the  pale  of 
Christianity  in  this  and  every  other  land,  no  reference 
whatever  is  made  in  this  passage.  The  sinner  in  tliis 
case  must  be  one  who  has  made  shipwreck  of  his  faith. 
What  now,  must  wo  conclude,  is  this  "  sin  unto  death," 
for  which  there  is  no  remission,  and  for  which  men  may 
not  pray  ?  Different  schools  of  thought  in  different 
ages  have  suggested  deadly  heresy,  or  complete  apostacy 
from  the  faith,  or  falling  away  in  times  of  persecution, 
or  denying  the  Godlioad  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  or  refusing 
to  accept  the  doctrine  of  the  personality  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  or  lightly  and  even  injuriously  speaking  of  God, 
coming  under  the  general  head  of  blasphemy,  which  by 
the  laws  of  Justinian  was  reckoned  a  capital  offence, 
and  was  to  be  punished  with  death.  But  for  each  and 
all  of  these  surely  repentance  is  possible ;  surely  for 
those  unhappy  ones  who  do  these  things  and  oven  glory 
in  them,  prayer  is  not  forbidden.  Witness  the  fall 
and  conversion  of  Peter  the  blasphemer,  of  Paul  the 
persecutor;  witness  the  prayer  of  a  dying  Stephen,  and 
of  One  greater  even  than  that  blessed  martyr,  whose 


1  Many,  we  know,  declined  all  compromise,  and  separated 
themselves  from  tbe  great  body  of  believers.  This  misapprehen- 
sion respecting  unpardonable  sin  held  a  foremost  place,  as  we 
have  noticed,  among  the  peculiar  tenets  of  the  Mont.^nists,  the 
Novatians,  and  of  some  of  the  Gnostics. 


last  holy  breath  breathed  out  prayer  for  those  hapless 
men  who  were  watching  with  an  unholy  joy  the  agony 
of  the  cross. 

The  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  sin  unto 
death,  is  none  of  these ;  nor  is  it  indeed  any  one  con- 
ceivable sinfid  act ;  but  it  must  be  looked  for  in  a  life 
which,  after  having  received  the  knowledge  of  the  truth, 
casts  away  faith  and  love,  and  without  looking  back, 
untouched  by  remorse,  or  sorrow,  or  repentance,  un- 
swervingly holds  on  its  lightless,  loveless  course  till 
death  parts  soul  and  body.  So  in  the  main  thought 
the  greatest  and  most  revered  of  the  early  Christian 
teachers.  So  Chrysostom,  whom  we  may  regard  as  the 
exponent  of  the  mind  of  the  Greek  Church  on  this 
subject,  understands  the  sin  unto  death  when  he  asks,- 
■'  Is  there  no  remission  for  those  who  repent  of  their 
blasphemy  against  the  Spirit  ?  How  can  this  be  said 
with  reason  ?  for  wo  know  it  was  forgiven  to  some  that 
repented  of  it;  many  of  those  Jews  which  blasphemed 
the  Holy  Ghost  did  afterwards  boheve,  and  all  was 
forgiven  them."  So  in  unmistakable  language  the 
opinion  of  the  Latin  Church  is  declared  by  Augustine, 
whose  words  are  held  in  equal  honour  byaU  theologians, 
Protestant  as  well  as  Romanist. 

Augustine's  exposition  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans 
treats  of  the  question  of  the  blasphemy  against  the 
Holy  Ghost  as  "  the  sin  unto  death  "  for  which  there 
was  no  remission,  and  gives  us  still  further  insight 
into  the  deep  searchings  of  heart  of  the  eai-ly  Church 
in  the  matter  of  "  the  sin  unto  death,"  and  shows  us 
even  if  we  had  not  abundant  proof  abcady  in  the 
schisms  of  Novatian  and  Moutanus,  how  divided  in 
opinion  here  the  early  Christian  teachers  must  have 
been.  His  words  in  this  treatise  on  the  mere  utterance 
of  blasphemous  expressions  ag.ainst  the  Holy  Ghost  are 
most  weighty.  "  To  speak  blasphemy  against  the  Holy 
Ghost  is  not  put  to  denote  barely  ihe  uttering  it  with 
the  tongue,  but  the  conceiving  it  in  the  heart,  and  ex- 
pressing it  in  actions ;  for  as  they  are  not  rightly  said 
to  confess  God  who  do  it  only  with  tho  sound  of  their 
lips,  and  not  with  their  good  works,  in  like  manner  he 
who  speaks  the  unpardonable  word  against  the  Holy 
Ghost  is  not  presumed  to  say  it  perfectly  unless,  as 
well  as  say  it,  he  despairs  of  the  grace  and  peace  which 
the  Spirit  gives,  and  determines  to  continue  in  his 
sin."  = 

The  contest  between  the  two  parties  must  have  been 
bitter  and  of  long  continuance,  more  bitter,  perhaps, 
and  involving  far  deeper  interests  than  men  are  willing 
now  to  concede.  Throughout  the  long  fierce  struggle 
the  (orthodox)  Catholic  Church  was  ranged  on  the  side 
of  moderation  and  of  gentle  forbearance  to  all  sinners, 
however  desperate.  We  have  quoted  some  extracts 
from  the  opinions  of  some  of  her  most  distinguished 
teachers  respecting  that  deepest  of  all  sins,  the  sm  unto 
death,  the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  from  these 
opinions  we  gather  this  conclusion — The  early  Church 


-  St.  Chrysostom,  Horn.  42  in  St.  Matt.  xii. 
3  Ej-i^ositio  in  Horn. 


DIFFICULT   PASSAGES  EXPLAINED. 


335 


declined  to  decide  positively  that  the  hlasphevhT/  against 
the  Holy  Ghost,  the  sin  unto  death,  coiildT  ever  be  con- 
summated lohile  life  remained  in  the  body.  While  the 
einnor  lived,  so  loug  was  lie  capable  of  pardon ;  "  and 
even  though  men  had  begun  in  any  degree  to  commit  the 
sin  unto  death,  they  were  still  capable  of  pardon,  if 
they  did  not  render  it  unpardonable  by  their  own  obsti- 
nacy and  wilful  impenitoncy  to  the  hour  of  death,"'  after 
which  there  was  no  foi'givouoss  for  it. 

If  men  continued  in  their  sins,  and  died  impenitent, 
the  Church  considered  the  "  sin  unto  death  "  was  con- 
summated. "Thoy  died  excommunicate,  and  so  had 
neither  the  solemnity  of  a  Christian  burial,  uor  the 
suffrages  of  the  Church  after  death,  being  struck  out 
of  her  diptychs,  and  no  memorial  over  after  being  made 
of  them,  as  of  persons  desperate  and  entirely  out  of 
God's  favour."  - 

This  seems  to  have  boon  the  deliberate  judgment  of 
the  Latin  and  Greek  Churches  of  the  first  centuries  in 
the  matter  of  the  practical  beai-iug  of  that  gi'eat  text 
we  are  now  considering,  upon  the  life  and  work  of  the 
Christian  community. 

With  the  gradual  relaxation  of  Chui-ch  discipline 
public  attention  scorns  in  gi-eat  measure  to  have  been 
withdrawn^  from  the  consideration  of  the  "sin  unto 
death."  The  burning  controversies  excited  by  the 
exaggerated  and  imreal  doctrines  of  such  heretics  as 
the  Montanists,  tho  Novatians,  and  certain  of  the 
Gnostics,  slowly  died  out,  when  the  sects  which  had 
originally  kindled  them  then  ceased  to  exist.  But 
although  tho  memorable  words  of  St.  John  ceased  after 
the  first  few  centuries  perhaps  to  occupy  the  Church's 
special  attention,''  stUl,  in  all  ages,  in  spite  of  decisions 
of  CImrch  councils,  in  spite  of  tho  thoughtful  teaching 
on  this  subject  which  at  different  times  and  from  various 
centres  has  emanated  from  many  of  tho  most  learned 
and  pious  of  the  fathers  of  the  Church,  the  words  of 
St.  John  and  his  Divine  Master  have  been  and  still  are 
pondered  over  by  tho  believer  in  private.  Again  and 
again  have  thoy  stirred  up  in  many  a  troubled  heart 
weakened  by  sin  and  suffering  hot  thoughts  sugges- 
tive of  keen  and  bitter  anguish ;  again  and  again  have 
they  aroused  such  questioning  as,  "  Is  it  possible  that 
I,  after  all,  am  one  of  those  guilty  ones  for  whom  no 


'  Compare  Bingham,  CTirisfimi  Ani.,  Ijook  xvi.,  chap,  vii.,  "  0£  the 
Unity  and  Discipline  of  the  Ancient  Church.*' 

-  Ibid. 

•*  Although  tho  question  of  the  "siu  unto  death"  was  never  a 
foremost  question  for  mediieval  Christianity,  still  the  schoolmen 
havo  raised  six  several  species  of  blasphemy  against  tho  Holy 
Ghost — viz.,  despair,  presumption,  final  impenitency,  obstinacy  in 
siu,  opposiug  and  impugning  the  truth  which  a  man  knows,  and 
envious  mahco  against  the  grace  of  the  brethren.  (Cf.  Bingham, 
Antiquities,  chap,  xvi.) 

■*  At  the  period  of  the  Eeformation,  among  the  sects  which 
then  arose,  the  Anabaptists  wore  conspicuous  for  their  revival  of 
some  of  the  Novatian  errors  in  respect  to  extreme  rigour  in  refusing 
repentance  to  the  lapsed.  Tho  11th  Article  of  the  Confession  of 
Augsburg  and  the  ICth  Article  of  the  Church  of  England  seem 
in  great  measure  directed  by  the  Reformers  in  Germany  and  in 
England  against  the  old  error  revived  by  the  Anabaptists.  Com- 
pare the  Bishop  of  Winchester  on  Article  XVI.  of  the  Church  of 
England. 


prayer  is  heard,  no  blessed  communion  of  saints  exists, 
for  whom  tho  Isve  of  God  is  dead  for  ever  P  " 

For  those  wo  draw  our  answer  in  great  measure  from 
tho  wells  of  early  Christian  thought  and  learning,  from 
the  collected  writings  of  tho  many  great  Greek  and 
Latin  fathers  who  fii'st  camo  face  to  face  with  these  and 
such  like  awful  questionings,  from  men  like  Cyprian 
and  Ambrose,  from  men  like  Basil  and  Chrysostom, 
from  the  saiatly  Augustine.  Those  used  their  deep 
learning,  their  devoted  piety,  thou-  bright  warm  elo- 
quence, to  counteract  the  false  impressions  of  God's  love 
and  mercy  foolish  and  erring  men  wore  sowing  in 
theii-  days  deep  and  broad  in  tho  fields  of  Christianity  ; 
and  listening  to  the  words  of  these  true-hearted,  loyal 
defenders  of  Catholic  truth,  we  explain  unhesitatingly, 
that  "  sin  unto  death  "  is  committed  only  by  that  imhappy 
one  who,  having  once  learned  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus, 
deliberately  forsakes  the  covenant  of  his  God,  throws 
oil  all  self-restraint,  and  plunges  into  what  he  knows 
and  feels  to  be  deadly  sin  and  shame,  casting  aside 
every  holy  prompting,  stamping  down  every  reproachful 
memory  of  a  happier  past,  and  stifling  every  remorseful 
feeling,  gives  himself  up  to  a  life  of  selfish  unbelief  till 
tho  dread  summons  comes,  when  ho  passes  away  from 
tho  midst  of  us  with  heart  untouched,  hard,  impenitent 
to  the  last. 

To  whom  now  should  the  Christian  man  or  woman 
pray  for  such  a  sin  P  a  sin  indeed  unto  death.  To  that 
God  mocked  at,  dishonoured,  defied  to  the  last  ?  In 
whose  name  and  for  whose  sake  should  the  prayer  for 
pardon  be  offered  P  Could  men  plead  the  blood  of  that 
Jesus  whose  power  and  Godhead,  once  acknowledged, 
was  denied;  whose  love,  once  believed  in, was  deliberately 
rejected? 

The  sinner  who  sins  even  what  men  fear  to  be  "the 
sin  unto  death,"  may  we  pray  for,  ay,  even  hope 
for.  Tet  again  he  may  ttrni  with  weeping  and  with 
mourning,  and  once  more  seek  his  Master's  face,  and 
live.  But  for  tho  "  sin "  unreijcntod,  may  no  man 
pray  P  It  has  no  remission  neither  in  this  world  nor 
yet  in  the  world  to  come ;  for  tho  sin  unto  death  is  the 
dehberato,  the  final  rejection  of  Jesus  the  Redeemer, 
our  Lord,  our  Love,  our  God. 


We  must  not,  however,  close  our  "  study "  of  this 
strange  hard  passage  without  calling  attention  to  the 
two  different  Greek  words  St.  John  uses  in  this  I6th 
verse,  both  implying  hero  a  request  from  man  to  God 
for  a  pardon  for  sLa — (a)  For  "  tho  sin  not  unto  death," 
he  shall  ask  (ah'ria-ei).  (b)  For  "  tho  sin  unto  death  "  I 
do  not  say  that  he  shall  pray  for  it  (epoiTi'jo-i;). 

(d)  aiTe'n)  Q)efo) — used  in  tho  first  clause  of  tho  verso 
for  a  legitimate  request,  favourably  allowed,  if  not 
enjoined,  by  God — is  the  word  constantly  employed 
when  an  inferior  seeks  to  obtain  a  favour  from  a. 
superior,  a  subject  from  the  ruler,  man  from  God. 

(h)  While  epoiTcia  {yogo,  occasionally  interrogo) — used 
in  the  second  clause  of  the  verso  for  a  request  not 
approved  or  sanctioned  by  God — is  tho  word  ever  used 
by  an  equal  addressing  an  equal,  as  a  king  desu-ing  a 


336 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


favour  from  a  king  (Luke  xiv.  32).  It  implies  an  equality 
which  lends  authority  to  the  request. 

Of  these  two  words  the  former,  ahtlv,  is  never  used 
by  our  Lord  in  His  own  reqxiests  to  God,  but  always 
epaiTav  is  employed  by  Him  on  those  occasions,  as 
becomes  an  equal  addressing  an  equal.  (Cf .  St.  John, 
xiv.  16 ;  xvi.  26 ;  xrii.  9,  15,  20.)  Never  is  epwruy 
used  in  the  New  Testament  of  the  prayer  of  man  to 
God,  of  a  creature  to  the  Creator.' 


'  Cf.  Arclibishop  Trench,  Synonyms  of  the  New  Testament^  1st 


The  sileut  eloquence  of  this  change  of  words,  the 
substitution  of  the  ^puTai'  for  the  aiT€7y,  conveys  a  mute 
reproach,  and  more  forcibly  than  any  argument  teUs  us 
how  the  asking  for  forgiveness — if  there  bo  forgiveness 
— for  "  the  siu,"  is  no  request  which  a  created  being 
may  offer  to  its  Maker ;  teUs  us  how  the  asking  fol 
pardon — if  there  be  a  pardon — for  the  "  sin  unto  death  ' 
has  passed  out  of  the  realm  of  prayer. 

series,  sect,  si.,  where  these  two  words  are  admirably  discussed ; 
and  UUsterdieck,  Comm.  on  Epp.  of  St,  John. 


BOOKS   OF   THE   OLD   TESTAMENT. 

ZEPHANIAH  (contimied). 

BY     THE     BEV.     SAMUEL     COX,     NOTTINGHAM. 


II. — THE   CALL  TO   EEPENTANCE   (continued). 
Chap.  ii.  1,  to  Chap.  iii.S. 

iHE  Need  op  Repentance.  —  To  give 
additional  force  and  emphasis  to  his  sum- 
mons to  repentance,  the  prophet  reverts 
to  and  completes  the  description  of  Jeru- 
salem, given  in  chajjter  i.  verses  4 — 13.  Once  more, 
his  pencil  labours  to  depict  the  vices  and  corruptions  of 
that  sinful  city,  in  which  the  Lord  Jehovah  daily  set 
forth  his  righteousness  and  truth,  in  which,  therefore, 
there  burned  and  shone  a  steadfast  light.  That  the 
citizens  of  Jerusalem  and  their  leaders  hated  this  light, 
that  they  wilf idly  turned  from  it  and  shi'ouded  them- 
selves in  darkness  because  their  deeds  were  evil — this 
as  it  was  their  deepest  guilt,  so  also  it  was  the  last  and 
most  conclusive  jjroof  of  their  need  of  repentance. 

That  it  is  Jerusalem  which  is  described  and  addressed 
in  the  first  eight  verses  of  chapter  iii.  is  beyond  a  doubt ; 
for,  though  we  might  take  at  least  ver.  1  as  a  continua- 
tion of  the  denunciation  agaiust  Nineveh  wliich  closes 
chapter  ii,,  it  is  impossible  to  read  the  subsequent  verses, 
which  expand  and  interpret  the  first,  in  that  sense. 
They  can  only  refer  to  Jerusalem.  For  no  other  city 
could  be  reproached  with  not  having  trusted  in  Jehovah 
nor  drawn  near  imto  God ;  in  no  other  city  did  He  set 
His  justice  in  the  light,  morning  by  morning,  and  plead 
with  man,  "  Only  fear  thou  Me ;  accept  correction." 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  final  appeal  to  Jerusalem 
(chapter  iii.,  verses  1 — 8). 

"  Woe  to  the  rebellious  and  polluted  city, 
The  oppressing  city  ! 
She  hath  not  hearkened  to  the  voice ; 
She  hath  not  accepted  correction  ; 
She  hath  not  trusted  in  Jehovah  ; 
She  hath  not  drawn  near  to  her  God. 
Her  princes  are  roaring  lions  in  the  midst  of  her; 
Her  judges  are  ravening  wolves 
Who  leave  no  bones  for  the  morning  ; 
Her  prophets  are  boasters,  traitors  : 
Her  priests  profane  that  which  is  sacred. 
And  violate  the  law. 
Jehovah  is  just  in  the  midst  of  her ; 

He  doeth  no  wrong  ;  [failing  : 

Homing  by  morning  He  setteth  His  justice  in  the  light,  not 
But  the  unjust  know  no  shame. 


I  have  cut  off  the  nations : 

Their  battlements  are  laid  waste ; 

I  have  devastated  their  streets, 

So  that  no  person  passeth  through  them  : 

Their  cities  are  laid  waste, 

So  that  no  man  is  in  them,  no  inhabitant. 

I  said,  '  Only  fear  thou  Me, 

Accept  correction,* 

That  her  habitation  might  not  be  cut  off. 

According  to  all  that  I  had  appointed  concerning  them  : 

But  they  rose  up  early  to  corrupt  all  their  doings. 

Therefore  wait  for  Me,  saith  Jeliovah, 

In  the  day  when  I  rise  up  to  the  prey ; 

For  it  is  just  that  I  gather  the  nations. 

And  call  together  the  kingdoms, 

To  pour  out  on  them  my  fury. 

All  the  heat  of  my  wrath  : 

For  by  the  fire  of  my  zeal 

Shall  the  whole  earth  be  consumed." 

The  appeal  opens  with  a  brief  denunciation  of  "  woe," 
which  contains  three  epithets  that  Jerusalem  should 
have  been  the  last  city  in  the  world  to  deserve.  Chosen 
of  God  to  be  His  i^eople,  "  a  holy  peojile,  zealous  of 
good  works,"  instead  of  doing  His  will,  its  inhabitants 
straitened  and  hardened  themselves  against  Him ;  in- 
stead of  being  a  holy  people,  they  were  stained  with  the 
foulest  vices ;  instead  of  loving  and  serving  one  another, 
they  oppressed  and  devoured  each  other.  Jerusalem 
is  a  rebellious  city,  a  polluted  city,  an  oppressing  city. 

These  epithets  are  exjilained  and  vindicated  in  verse 
2.  "She  hath  not  hearkened  to  the  voice"  of  God,  as 
uttered  in  the  law  of  Moses,  and  in  the  remonstrances 
and  appeals  of  the  prophets.  "  She  accepts  no  chastise- 
ment," so  that  even  the  infinite  patience  of  Jehovah  is 
exhausted,  and  Ho  is  weary  of  coi-rcctiug  her  in  vain.' 
And  as  law  and  punishment  have  failed  of  their  proper 
effect,  so  also  have  promise  and  in\-itation.  She  has  no 
faith  in  the  gracious  offers  of  Divine  mercy,  does  not 
"  trust "  them  nor  Him  who  makes  them,  nor  suffer 
them  to  "  draw  "  her  "  near  to  her  God." 

As,  however,  we  listen  to  the  successive  counts  of 
this  terrible  indictment,  we  become  aware  of  an  under- 
tone of  grace  and  pity.  The  words  sound  as  though 
they  were  set  in  sighs.     The  Dirine  pm-pose  of  God's 

1  Compare  Isa.  i.  5. 


ZEPHANIAH. 


337 


varied  dealings  with  men  comes  out  in  the  very  phrases 
in  wliich  He  confesses  and  laments  tliat  His  purpose  has 
not  been  reached.  If  Ho  speaks,  it  is  that  men  may 
"  hearken  to  the  voice ; "  when  He  corrects,  it  is  that 
they  may  ''accept  correction,"  and  suffer  Him  to  show 
them  His  love.  His  aim  is  to  win  their  trust.  He 
draws  near  to  them  that  they  may  "  draw  near  "  to  Him. 
He  does  not  command  simply  that  He  may  got  His  will 
of  us,  but  that  our  wills  may  be  fixed  in  the  love  and 
service  of  the  truth.  He  corrects  us,  not  for  His  plea- 
sure, but  for  our  profit,  that  wo  may  become  partakers 
of  His  holiness,  and  yield  the  peaceable  fruits  of  right- 
eousness. And  when,  with  tender  infinite  regret.  He 
finds  that  these  the  ordinary  ministries  of  His  goodness 
iavo  failed  to  produce  their  due  effect  upon  us.  He 
betakes  Himself  to  exceptional  means,  and  pierces  our 
hearts  with  an  overmastering  "  woe,"  only  that  we  may 
feel  our  need  of  Him,  and  learn  that  we  cannot  do 
without  Him,  and  accept  the  lovo  He  waits  to  lavish 
on  us. 

The  constant  and  more  gentlo  ministries  of  Divine 
grace  had  failed  on  the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem.     In- 
stead of  drawing  near  to  theii-  God,  they  "  drew  back 
from  Jehovah,"  neither  seeking  nor  asking  after  Him.i 
And  their  leaders,  eiyil  and  ecclesiastical,  exaggerated 
the  popular  sins,  presented  them  in  their  most  flagrant 
tjrpes.     Their  "princes,"  whom   Zephaniah,  himself  a 
prince,  must  have  known  well,  and  whom  he  had  already 
depicted-  as  betraying  then-  heathen  proclivities  by  their 
foreign  apparel,  he  now   desci-ibes    as  rushing   open- 
mouthed,  like  "roarijit/  lions,"  on  the  poor  and  those 
who  had  no  helper.    The  "j)(fZ(/es,"  whose  very  function 
it  was  to  minister  justice  indifferently  to  all  men,  instead 
of  checking  the  iusoleneo  and  rapacity  of  the  nobles. 
displayed  a   still  more  ignoble   and  insatiable  greed : 
if  the   princes   were    roaring  lions,   the   judges   were 
"ravening  loolves,"  who  left  no  bone  of  their  evening 
prey  for  the  hunger  of  the  morning.  Their  " Prophets' 
the  very  tribunes  of  the  people,  wore  "boasters,"  i.e., 
men  who  "  boUed  over "  with  frivolous  and  insolent 
speeches,  and  "  traiters,"  or  "  men  of  treacheries,"  i.e., 
men  who  were  faithless  apostates  from  their  God  and 
King.     The  "priests,"  whoso  office  it  was  to  consecrate 
■that  which  was  common,  and  to  teach  men  the  law  of 
the  Lord,  reversed  then- functions ;  ihej  "  profaned  that 
■which  was  sacred,   and  violated  the  hnu "  they   were 
ordained  to  administer  (verses  3,  4). 

With  a  people  so  ungodly  and  so  incorrigible  in  their 
•ungodliness,  with  princes  who  plundered  those  whom 
they  should  have  protected,  judges  who  wi-onged  those 
whom  they  should  have  righted,  prophets  who  aposta- 
^tised  from  the  God  to  whom  they  should  have  borne 
^witness,  priests  who  profaned  that  which  was  holy 
instead  of  sanetifjiug  that  which  was  profane,  Jerusalem 
might  well  be  denounced  as  a  rebellious,  a  polluted,  and 
an  oppressing  city. 

What  aggravated  then-  guilt  tUl  it  became  intolerable. 
and  put  them  beyond  all  mercy  save  the  "mercy  of 


1  Chap.  i.  C. 

46 — VOL.  II. 


Chap. 


judgment,"  was  (li  that  God  had  given  them  a  pure 
law  of  life,  and  Himself  administered  it  among  them  ; 
|2)  that,  in  the  destruction  inflicted  on  neighbouriag 
kingdoms.  He  had  constantly  warned  them  of  the  in- 
evitable results  of  violating  that  law  :  and  (3)  that  He 
had  not  spared  to  correct  them  so  often  as  they  went 
astray,  and  to  plead  with  them,  and  to  ui'ge  them  to 
repentance  and  obedience. 

(1)  He  had  given  and  administered  a  pure  law  of  life 
among  them  (verse  5).     "  Jehovah  is  just  in  the  midst 
of  her ;  He  doeth  no  wrong  :  morning  hy  morning  He 
setteth  His  justice  in  the  light,  not  failing."    The  simple 
exquisite  beauty  of  these  phrases,  then-  perfect  form, 
is  their  least  though  it  is  then-  most  obvious  charm.     It 
is  their  soul  of  meaning  by  which  our  souls  are  moved ; 
and,  above  all,  by  the  contrast  they  suggest.     In  the 
jjolluted  and  oppressive  city,  whose  princes  were  roaring 
lions  and  their  judges  ravening   wolves,   there   sat   a 
King  and  a  Judge,  of  whom  it  might  be  said,  "  His  work 
is  perfect ;  all  His  ways  are  righteous ;  a  God  of  truth, 
and  without  iniquity,  just  and  right  is  He;"  a  King 
and  Judge  who  respected  no  man's  person,  and  did  no 
man  wrong,  whoso  righteousness  and  truth  came  back 
day  after  day  with  the  morning  light — as  certainly,  as 
clearly,  with  as  bright  a  jiromiso  of  good.      In  other 
cities,   such   as   Gaza   or   Nineveh,  the    presence,   the 
authority,  the  law  of  God  were  but  obscurely  revealed ; 
men  were  left  to  grope  after  the  Unknown  if  haply 
they  might  find  Him,  to  infer  a  spiritual  Presence  from 
the  operation  of  physical  laws,  to  deduce  a  Divine  rule 
from  the  imperfect  and  confused  utterances  of  reason 
and  conscience.     But  at  Jerusalem,  God  and  His  wiU 
were  "  set  in  the  light ;"  the  history  of  the  chosen  race, 
the  services  of  the  Temple,  the  voices  and  scriptures  of 
the  prophets,  the  national  habits  of  thought,  and  manner 
of  life  loudly  proclaimed  God  to  bo  then-  God  and  His 
^viU  their  law.     Who  should  know  Him,  if  they  did 
not?  and  who  do  His  will  if  they  disobeyed  it  ?    Where 
should  princes  be  princely  and  judges  just,  if  not  iu 
the  city  in  which  Jehovah  reigned  ?     What  prophets 
should  be  faithfid  if  not  those  whom  He  had  called,  and 
what  priests  holy  if  not  those  whom  He  had  ordained. P 
Had  they  been  capable  of  shame,  would  they  not  have 
l^een  ashamed  that,  with  so  pure  a  light  of  goodness  in 
their  midst,  they  had  wrapped  themselves  in  darkness 
and  come  to  hate  the  light  which  reproved  their  deeds  ? 
"Bat  the  unjust  hnoio  no  shame." 

(2)  Their  guUt  was  still  further  aggravated  by  the 
fact  that,  in  the  judgments  inflicted  on  neighbouring  na- 
tions for  their  sins,  God  had  constantly  warned  the  men 
of  Judah  and  Jerusalem  of  the  inevitable  and  miserable 
results  of  sin  (verso  6).  They  had  seen  race  after  race 
cut  off.  the  battlements  of  their  fortified  places  laid 
waste,  their  cities  battered  down,  their  streets  reduced 
to  such  rumous  desolation  that  no  man  dwelt  in  them, 
no  man  so  much  as  passed  through  them.  And  what 
were  these  Divine  judgments  but  the  law  of  God  '•  wiit 
large,"  and  illustrated  on  a  scale  so  vast  and  impressive 
as  to  arrest  the  attention  of  the  most  heedless,  and  to 
rouse  a  saving  fear  in  the  stubborn  and  impenitent  ? 


338 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


But  even  these  glaring  and  portentous  illustrations  of 
the  wratli  of  God  against  evil,  and  all  who  cleave  to  it, 
had  been  wasted  on  the  stiff-necked  nation,  "  the  nation 
that  did  not  turn  pale." '  They  had  stood  under  these 
shocks  and  alai-ms  unmoved,  or  moved  only  for  the 
moment.  And  now  what  was  there,  short  of  a  judg- 
ment more  severe  than  any  they  had  ever  yet  seen 
or  known,  that  could  constrain  them  to  penitence,  and 
through  penitence  to  righteousness,  through  righteous- 
ness to  peace  ? 

(3)  A  more  severe  jnigmeui :  for  another  aggravation 
of  their  guilt  was  that,  much  as  they  themselves  had 
ah-eady  suffered,  they  had  not  accepted  correction,  nor 
learned  that  beginning  of  wisdom — the  fear  of  the  Lord 
(verse  7).  It  was  not  only  that  they  had  seen  "  a  day 
of  the  Lord "  darken  over  other  lands,  and  His  judg- 
ments desolate  heathen  cities.  They  had  themselves 
been  visited  with  days  of  judgment.  God  had  smitten 
them  again  and  again,  till  the  whole  head  was  sick  and 
the  whole  heart  faint,  till,  from  the  crown  of  the  head 
to  the  sole  of  the  foot,  the  whole  body  politio  was  bruised 
and  wounded  and  sore.  As  they  looked  back  on  the 
past,  their  whole  history  was  full  of  Divine  chastenings. 
And  what  was  the  meaning  of  those  chastenings  P  what 
were  they  sent  to  say  ?  They  came  to  say,  "  Only  fear 
God,  accept  correction,"  let  it  produce  its  natural  effect 
on  you,  and  all  shall  bo  well.  God  had  sent  these  cor- 
rections in  order  that  their  "  habitation  might  not  be 
cut  off,"  that  the  land  and  the  city  might  be  spared, 
that  He  might  not  be  compelled  to  execute  the  sentence 
which  their  sins  had  compelled  Him  to  pronounce,  that 
He  might  not  havo  to  use  the  axe  which  Ho  had  laid  at 
the  root  of  the  tree. 

No  words  could  bo  more  simple  and  direct  than 
these ;  none  could  stato  mora  plainly  the  merciful  and 
Divine  purpose  of  judgment,  the  true  function  of  the 
miseries  men  are  called  to  endure.  These  judgments 
and  miseries  come  to  teach  us  the  fear  of  the  Lord, 
that  is,  to  save  us  from  all  fear.  So  soon  as  wo  accept 
them  as  corrections  of  our  sins,  their  end  is  answered ; 
henceforth  there  is  no  anger  in  them,  no  injurious  pain, 
but  only  a  Divine  love  and  goodwill.  And  if  no  state- 
ment of  the  meaning  and  function  of  suffering  can  be 
more  plain  than  this,  surely  none  can  be  more  conso- 
latory. Eor,  according  to  Zephaniah,  it  comes  only  for 
om'  good,  for  our  highest  good — to  teach  us  the  true 
wisdom  and  to  make  us  perfect.  When  once  we  "  accept " 
it,  its  end  being  reached,  there  is  no  reason  why  it 
should  not  either  pass  away  or  bo  changed  into  the  stay 
and  stimulus  of  our  hfe. 

On  the  other  hand,  if,  instead  of  being  accepted,  it  be 
resisted,  it  hardens  and  depraves  those  whom  God  sent 
it  to  teach  and  bless.  In  place  of  mending  their  ways 
and  making  them  good,  the  Jews  of  Jerusalem  yet 
further  corrupted  their  ways  when  God  chastened  and 
afflicted  their  soids.  Before,  they  had  been  content  to 
give  the  day  to  disobedience  and  mutiny.  Now,  as  if 
the  day  were  not  long  enough  for  the  sins  they  were 

1  Chap.  ii.  1, 


eager  to  commit,  "  they  rose  up  early  "  in  the  morning 
"  to  corrupt  all  their  doings,"  so  shameless  were  they, 
so  incorrigible. 

Despising  the  chastenings  of  the  Lord,  hardened  and 
depraved  by  them,  there  was  nothing  left  them  but  a 
judgment  they  could  not  despise.  And,  therefore,  the 
summons  to  repentance  fitly  closes,  as  it  began,-  with 
an  invitation  to  the  humble  and  i-ighteous  of  the  land ; 
and  with  a  threatening,  such  as  that  with  which  the 
prophecy  oponed,^  of  a  doom  which  shall  sweep  away 
the  impenitent  sinners  and  their  offences,  a  fire  that 
shall  consume  the  whole  earth.  As  tho  prophet  had 
exhorted  the  humble  to  seek  humility,  and  those  who 
did  right  to  seek  righteousness,  so  now  Jehovah  Him- 
self calls  on  them  to  wait  for  Him  and  His  salvation 
(verse  8).  But  how  do  we  know  that  it  is  this  elect 
Remnant  who  are  here  addressed  ?  We  know  it  simply 
because  the  Hebrew  words  translated  "  wait  for  me  " 
are  not  used  ironically  or  menacingly,  but  imply  a 
believing  and  hopeful  attitude  in  those  who  are  to  wait. 
It  is  good  for  which  they  are  to  wait,  not  evil.  And 
this  pious  remnant,  faithful  among  the  faithless,  the  prey 
of  "roaring"  nobles  and  "ravening"  judges,  the  scorn 
of  prophets  in  whose  wicked  mouths  the  very  truth  was 
changed  into  a  he,  and  of  priests  whose  ministry  dese- 
crated that  which  was  holy,  tho  derision  of  a  people  who 
swore  both  to  Jehovah  and  by  their  Malkam — did  not 
they  sorely  need  consolation  and  hope  ?  If  it  was  some 
comfort  to  them  to  hear  that  judgment  was  about  to 
fall  on  those  who  oppressed  and  mocked  them,  as  to 
then-  stern  Hebrew  blood  no  doubt  it  was ;  if  it  was  a 
stiU  greater  comfort  to  know  that  they  themselves  should 
be  hidden  in  an  inviolable  Refuge  in  the  day  of  Jehovah's 
wrath ;  the  greatest  of  all  comforts  was,  to  learn  that 
the  judgment  which  would  sweep  through  tho  whole 
earth  was  to  cleanse  and  sanctify  the  whole  earth,  and 
that  on  some  distant  but  most  happy  day  the  sinf  id  and 
scattered  sons  of'  Israel  were  to  be  restored  to  the  land 
of  their  fathers,  and  Jerusalem  be  made  the  joy  and 
praise  of  all  lands.  And  even  this  great  consolation,  as 
we  shall  see  in  tho  next  section,  was  implied  in  the  invi- 
tation now  addressed  to  them :  "  Therefore,  wait  for  me, 
saith  Jehovah  " — wait  in  an  attitude  of  faith  and  hope. 

But  it  is  the  lesser  comfort  of  retribution  to  which 
verso  8  gives  prominence.  These  good  men,  oppressed 
by  so  many  evUs,  must  at  times  havo  felt  their  faith  in 
the  Di-idne  Providence  grow  perilously  weak.  Wlien 
they  saw  elders  wax  rich  by  plunder  and  judges  with 
bribes,  when  they  saw  pi'ophots  win  f avom-  by  prophesy- 
ing falsehood  and  priests  by  prostituting  themselves  to 
the  service  of  idols,  it  must  have  been  hard  for  them  to 
rest  in  the  conviction  that  there  was  a  Judge  of  all  the 
earth,  and  that  all  Ho  did  was  right.  As  tho  dismal 
scene  of  national  apostasy  and  vice  imfolded  itself  before 
them  year  after  year,  as  wave  after  wave  of  foreign  in- 
vasion broke  over  the  land,  and  the  umocent  suffered 
with  the  guilty,  it  must  have  been  very  hard  for  them 
to  hold  fast  their  faith,  that  it  was  well  with  the 


3  Chap.  ii.  ; 


2  Chap.  i.  3. 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


339 


righteous,  that  the  providence  of  God  was  just  and  kind. 
To  reward  thom  for  their  fidelity  in  evil  times,  to  deepen 
and  invigorate  their  faith,  Jehovah  assures  them  that  He 
is  about  to  clothe  Himself  with  judgment,  and  to  over- 
wholm  guilty  Jews  and  guilty  heathen  with  a  destruc- 
tion from  which  there  shall  be  no  escape,  save  by  the 
renunciation  of  guilt.  "  Wait  for  me,"  he  virtually 
says;  "wait  yet  a  little  longer,  O  tried  aud  faithful 
Boiils !     The  day  is  at  hand  on  which  I  will  rise  up  to 


seize  my  prey.  Tom-  hearts  have  not  misled  yon.  It 
is  but  just  that  I  should  gather  the  nations,  and  call 
together  the  kingdoms,  and  pour  out  the  fury  of  my 
zeal  upon  them,  all  the  heat  of  my  wrath  against  sin. 
Wait  yet  a  little  while,  and  ye  shall  see  the  whole  earth 
swept  with  the  consuming  fires  of  my  insulted  love, 
that,  out  of  the  ruins,  there  may  come  forth  a  new 
heaven  and  a  new  earth,  in  which  righteousness  and 
peace  shall  dwell." 


THE    POETEY    OF    THE    BIBLE. 

BY  THE  EEV.  A.  S.  AGLEN,  m.A.,  INCUMBENT  OF  ST.  NINIAN'S,  ALYTH,  N.B. 

STEUCTUEE  OF  THE  VEESE 


^   2. — PAEALLELISM. 
'  Amaut  altema  CamcenEe."— Vieg.,  Eccl.  iii.  59. 

jjINDING  all  attempts  fail  to  build  up  a 
system  of  Hebrew  verse  on  the  analogy 
of  the  classical  languages  of  Greece  and 
Rome,  scholars  began  to  question  Biblical 
poetry  more  closely,  to  make  it  give  up  the  laws  of  its 
own  structm-e.  Dismissing  the  hope  of  finding  a  regu- 
lated recurrence  of  measured  syllables,  they  listened  for 
the  music  of  the  verse  in  the  succession  of  sentences 
rather  than  in  the  succession  of  words.  Single  linos 
show  no  certain  indications  of  a  rule  of  quantity  or  ac- 
cent guiding  and  regulating  the  flow  of  thought,  but 
when  two  or  more  versos '  are  taken  together  there  is 
foimd  to  be  a  rhythmical  proportion  or  symmetry  be- 
tween them,  which,  whUe  it  admits  tho  greatest  range 
and  freedom  of  treatment,  and  lends  itself  with  such 
elasticity  to  tho  varying  hues  of  emotion  that  it  is  impos- 
sible to  make  a  perfect  classification  of  all  instances, 
yet  exhibits  a  definite  law  of  structure,  of  which  it  is  easy 
to  discover  the  normal  form.  Tho  general  character 
of  this  verse  is  expressed  by  tho  names  which  have  been 
given  to  it.  It  has  been  called  a  "rhyme  of  sentiment," 
a  "  rhythm  of  thought,"  "  verse  rhythm."  Bishop 
Lowth  employed  for  it  the  mathematie;d  term  Paral- 
lelism (parallelismus  membrorum),  a  name  which  has 
been  generally  adopted  since  his  time.  Tho  word  is  aU 
that  coidd  be  wished  to  suggest  the  essential  peculiarity 
of  Hebrew  verse,  in  which  the  lines  are  so  balanced  one 
against  the  other  that  "  thought  corresponds  to  thought, 
in  repetition,  amplification,  contrast  or  response."-  This 
correspondence  expresses  itseH  generally  in  the  outward 
form  and  sound,  and  is  sometimes  so  close  that  tho 
second  of  two  verses  is  a  complete  and  perfect  echo  of 
the  first.  But  the  method  has  its  origin  ui  the  same 
rhythmical  necessity  which  in  other  Lmguages  opposes 
long  syllables  to  short,  accented  words  to  those  which 
the  voice  passes  over  hghtly  aud  without  emphasis.  It  is 
the  rhythm  of  Hebrew  thought  expressed  in  sound,  tho 

'  Forse  and  line  are  used  here,  and  generally  in  this  paper,  as 
synonymous  terms. 

2  Davidson's  Intvoductioti  to  ilie  Old  Testament :  Psalms. 


{continued). 

natural  wavelike  movement  of  the  poetic  mood  conformed 
to  tho  genius  of  a  language,  which  flows  in  short  lively 
sentences  and  xiuts  a  sentiment  in  each.  If  one  sen- 
tence balances  another,  the  Hebrew  oar  is  satisfied.  We 
might  make  a  rough  analogy  by  compaiing  the  rhythmic 
movement  of  verse  to  the  time-beats  of  a  clock  or  watch. 
Other  languages  divide  the  verses  into  measured  feet, 
as  a  watch  ticks  off  the  seconds ;  but  Hebrew  opposes 
lino  to  line  with  the  longer,  more  solemn,  aud  more  ma- 
jestic beat  of  the  jjendulum  of  a,  large  clock. 

That  parallelism  is  not  confined  to  the  poetry  of  the 
Bible,  but  appears  in  it  as  a  specLal  form  of  a  veiy 
general  poetic  featm-e,  there  are  abundant  examples  in 
tho  literature  of  every  country  to  prove.  It  has  been 
said  indeed  to  be  essential  to  all  poetry.  Cicero  has 
remarked  that  where  words  or  sentences  dii'eetly  corre- 
spond, or  whore  contraries  are  opposed  exactly  to  each 
other,  or  where  words  of  a  similar  sound  run  parallel,  the 
composition  wiU  in  general  have  a  metrical  form,  and  rise 
in  this  respect  above  a  prosaic  stylo.  The  Hexameter 
has  been  desci-ibed  as  a  continuous  paraOelism,  where 
tho  poetic  flowers,  wliich  in  Hebrew  verse  grow  on  se- 
parate stems,  are  woven  into  an  unbroken  wreath.'  The 
pleasure  derived  from  a  Pentameter  depends  on  the 
even  balance  of  its  two  members.  Rhyme  is  a  parallelism 
of  sound.  But  all  poetry  offers  examples  far  more 
closely  analogous  to  tho  special  form  of  Hebrew  verse. 
Poets  of  all  countries  have  delighted  in  repetition  and 
antithesis,  both  in  form  of  expression  and  thought.  The 
Homeric  repetitions  of  epithets,  phrases,  lines,  and  even 
of  whole  passages  have  been  accepted  as  the  rule  of 
Epic  verse.  The  conversations  carried  on  in  the  Greek 
tragedians  by  alternate  lines  {<rTtxoiJ.vSia)  aiford  exam- 
ples of  a  kind  of  parallelism,  not  very  dissimilar  to  that  of 
sententious  Hebrew  sayings.  The  following  lines  from 
the  conversation  of  Apollo  and  Death  in  Mr.  Browning's 
adaptation  of  the  Alcestis  of  Euripides  will  show  how  the 
verso  gains  in  liveliness  and  picturesque  effect  by  the 
admixture  of  tliis  element  of  parallelism,  which  appears 
not  only  in  "  the  rapid  interchange  "  with  which  "  each 
plied  each,"  but  also  in  the  correspondence  of  form  and 

2  Herder,  Gcist  tier  Ebr.  Poesie, 


3i0 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


repetition  of  terms  or  play  on  words,  -n-liich  forms  so 
striking'  and  powerful  a  detail  of  Heljrew  poetry  : — 

"  What  ueed  of  loic  were  justice  arms  enough  ?" 

"  Ever  it  is  my  wout  to  bear  the  boic." 

•'  Ay  and  with  hoii-,  not  jiisttcf,  /tc!jj  this  house  !" 

"  I  helj!  it,  since  a  friend's  woe  weighs  me  too.'' 

**  And  now, — wilt  force  from  me  this  second  corpse  ?  '* 

**  By  force  I  took  no  corpse  at  first  from  thee." 

*'  How  then  is  he  above  ground,  not  beneath  ?" 

*'  He  gave  his  wife  instead  of  him,  thy  prey, 

*'Andpreu  this  time  at  least  I  bear  below.  "> 

The  following  examples  from  Virgil  show  that  the 
Latin  poets  felt  the  increased  emphasis  which  is  gained 
in  i^oetry  by  repetition,  and  may  help  to  explain  why 
Hebrew  verse  is  so  perfect  a  vehicle  for  the  solemn  and 
stately  thoughts  it  was  chosen  to  exjiress.  The  poets 
of  other  nations  assume,  in  passages  intended  to  bear  a 
formal  and  jutUcial  tone,  a  style  which  was  usual  and 
natural  to  the  prophets  and  poets  commissioned  to 
declare  the  judgments  of  God  to  Israel : — 

"  Pan  etiam,  Arcadia  meciim  si  judice  certet. 
Pan  etiam  Arcadia  dicat  se  judice  victum."  - 

"Cantantes  licet  usque  (minus  via  Ifedit)  eamns  ; 
Cantautes  ut  eamus,  ego  hoc  te  fasce  levabo.3 

But  it  is  in  modem  poetry  that  we  must  seek  for  the 
nearest  approach  to  the  parallel  style  of  the  Hebrews.  In 
this  as  in  almost  every  other  du-ection,  the  literatiu-e  of 
the  Jews  has  influenced  that  of  modern  Europe.  Eng- 
lish and  Hebrew  specimens  ^vill  he  placed  side  by  side 
as  we  proceed.  But  the  following'  magnificent  passage 
from  Shakesjieare's  Eichard  II.,  containing  as  it  does 
some  most  perfect  examples  of  the  different  forms  of 
parallelism,  will  show  how  powerful  an  aid  to  pathos  it 
may  become  in  skilful  hands,  and  will  prepare  the 
reader  to  recognise  in  it  the  source  of  much  of  the 
vigour  and  ■riridness  of  Hebrew  poetiy : — 

"  I  give  this  heavy  weight  from  off  my  head. 
And  this  unwieldy  sceptre  from  my  hand. 
The  pride  of  kingly  sway  from  out  my  heart ; 
With  mine  own  tears  I  wash  away  my  balm, 
With  mine  own  hands  I  give  away  my  crown. 
With  mine  own  tongue  deny  my  sacred  state. 
With  mine  own  breath  release  all  duteous  oaths; 
All  pomp  and  majesty  I  do  forswear  ; 
My  manors,  rents,  revenues,  I  forego ; 
My  acts,  decrees,  and  statutes,  I  deny  : 
God  pardon  all  oaths  that  are  broke  to  me  ! 
God  keep  all  vows  uubroke  are  made  to  thee  ! 
Make  me,  that  nothing  liave,  with  nothing  grieved; 
And  thee  with  all  pleased,  that  hast  all  achieved ; 
Long  may'st  thou  live  in  Richard's  seat  to  sit. 
And  soon  lie  Eichard  in  an  earthy  pit ! 
God  save  King  Henry,  unking'd  Richard  says, 
And  send  him  many  years  of  sunshine  days." 

It  is  the  opinion  of  some  scholars  that  Moses  brought 
the  art  of  poetry  from  Egypt.  This  ^-iew  may  derive 
some  support  from  specimens  of  verse  discovered  among 
Egyptian  inscriptions.  The  following  Threshing-song 
has  a  rhj-thm  not  unlike  that  of  the  Carol  of  the  Well  in 
the  book  of  Numbers  : — 

^  Balaustion's  Adventure,  p.  27. 
-  Virgil,  Eclogue  iv.  58.  3  Ibid.,  is.  61. 


"  Thresh  ye  for  yourselves, 
Thresh  ye  for  yourselves,  O  men. 
Thresh  ye  for  yourselves. 
Thresh  ye  for  yourselves 
The  straw  which  is  yours. 
The  com  which  is  your  master's."  * 

This  parallel  structure  of  Semitic  poetry  was,  however, 
of  native  growth.  We  do  not  need  the  evidence  of  the 
poetical  reUcs  of  the  patriarchal  times  to  prove  this  fact. 
There  is  abundant  confirmation  of  it  in  the  style  of 
Hebrew  si^eeeh.  In  that  the  unity  and  simplicity  of 
the  Semitic  character  is  reflected.  The  rounded  period 
of  classical  and  modem  Languages  was  unknown  to  the 
■writers  of  the  Old  Testament.  They  wrote  as  a  chUd 
talks.  Their  sentences  are  not  long  and  elaborate 
structm-es,  composed  of  dependent  members  and  finished 
^rith  artistic  completeness ;  but  short  and  simple  pro- 
positions, fitted  together  ■with  no  greater  art  than  is 
represented  by  the  copula  and,  which  in  Hebrew  sei'ves 
the  pui^pose  of  many  conjunctions.  No  grammatical 
law  determines  the  end  of  the  sentence.  The  author 
pauses  from  want  of  breath,  not  because  the  sense 
requires  it,  sometimes  when  it  almost  forbids.  Thus 
Hebrew  eloquence  is  a  lively  succession  of  vigorous  and 
incisive  sentences,  producing  in  literature  the  same 
effect  which  the  style  called  arabesque  produces  in 
architecture.*  Hebrew  ■wisdom  finds  its  complete 
utterance  in  the  short  pithy  proverb.  Hebrew  poetry 
wants  no  further  art  than  a  rhythmical  adaptation  of 
the  same  sententious  style. 

It  has  abeady  been  remarked  that  Hebrew  is  a  Lin- 
guage  rich  in  the  elements  of  poetry.  The  root-words 
are  nearly  all  borrowed  from  natural  objects.  The  vo- 
cabulai-y  takes  us  back  to  the  infancy  of  the  world,  when 
eveiy  sensation  was  fresh  and  ■N'ivid.  The  poetic  style 
continues  the  impression.  The  poet  of  the  Bible  seems 
to  stand  at  the  beginning  of  time,  watching,  ■with  min- 
gled cmiosity  and  awe,  the  energy  of  creative  power. 
He  presides  over  the  shajung  of  the  primal  world.  He 
hears  the  Creator's  voice  and  sees  His  ■will  take  form. 
'•  He  looks  from  heaven  to  earth,  from  earth  to  heaven." 
and  still  the  same  consciousness  of  an  Almighty  Power 
surrounds  him.  "  God  spake  and  it  was  done."  Still 
the  same  sense  of  one  Eternal  Presence  ruling  and 
controlling  all  remains  with  him.  "  Thus  saith  Jehovah, 
Heaven  is  my  throne  and  earth  is  my  footstool."  These 
are  the  prime  intuitions  of  Israel,  the  foundation  of 
his  religion  and  philosophy,  and  they  are  reflected  even 
in  the  style  of  his  poetry.  Through  the  wliole  Bible 
there  runs  one  dominant  and  persistent  tone,  which 
the  balanced  movement  of  the  verse  sustains  and  makes 


••  Sir  J.  G.  Wilkinson's  .-Ijicicilt  Egyptians.  Parallelism  seems  to 
he  a  marked  feature  of  Russian  popular  song.  I  extract  the 
following  from  a  Review  :  — 

"  Ah,  thou  dear  child  of  mine  ! 
Did  I  Imt  possess  my  old  strength, 
I  would  go  forth  into  the  wide  court. 
Seize  the  Tai-tar  by  his  ruddy  curls. 
Fling  the  Tartar  into  the  deep  vault. 
Feed  the  Tartar  on  yellow  sand. 
Give  the  Tart.ar  water  from  the  swamp  to  drink." 


^  Cf.  Eunan,  Lfs  Langucs  Scmitiques,  p.   21. 


THE   POETRY    OF   THE   BIBLE. 


341 


resonant  through  all  the  varieties  of  rhythm  which  are 
suggested  by  unfettered  lyric  song,  so  tliat  in  the  rise 
and  fall  of  the  measure  we  continuously  hear  the  creative 
word  and  deed,  the  heart  and  hand  of  God  in  unison. 
"  Let  there  be  light,  and  there  was  light." 

Bishop  Lowth  has  thus  explained  his  use  of  the  term 
parallelism}  "  The  correspondence  of  one  verse  or  line 
with  another,  I  call  parallelism.  When  a  proposition  is 
delivered,  and  a  second  is  subjoined  to  it  or  di'a\vn  under 
it,  equivalent,  or  contrasted  ivith  it  in  sense,  or  similar 
to  it  in  the  form  of  grammatical  construction,  these  I 
call  parallel  lines  ;  and  the  words  or  phrases  ausweriug 
one  to  another  in  the  corresponding  lines,  parallel 
terms."  Here  are  three  notes  of  parallelism  (indicated 
by  the  italics),  viz.,  equivalence  of  thought,  antithesis 
of  thought,  and  similarity  of  construction,  marking  re- 
spectively the  three  chief  varieties  of  this  style  which 
the  Bishop  distinguishes — the  synonymous,  the  anti- 
thetic, the  synthetic. 

These  distinctions  are  useful,  and  will  be  observed 
as  far  as  possible  in  these  papers.  But  more  recent 
scholars  have  introduced  various  modifications  of 
Lowth's  system.  These  vrSl  be  consulted  where  they 
serve  to  give  a  simpler  and  more  natural  aceoimt  of 
Hebrew  verse-structure.^ 

Let  us  take  the  opening  of  the  sublime  song  of  Moses 
at  the  end  of  the  Book  of  Deutei-onomy : — 

"  Give-ear,    0-ye-heavens,    and-I-will-speak  ; 
And-liear,    0-earth,    tlae-worcTs-of-my-mouth.'' 

The  hyphens  are  introduced  to  mark  the  phrases  which 
represent  one  Hebrew  term.  The  twofold  symmetry  in 
these  lines  must  strike  every  ear.  The  second  member 
is  an  echo  of  the  first,  both  in  thought  and  sound.  And 
yet  it  is  not  a  mere  repetition  of  it.  lu  the  opposition 
of  the  earth  to  the  sky,  in  the  varied  form  of  the  pro- 
phet's appeal,  where  each  term  is  different  and  yet 
makes  a  true  balance  to  tlie  corresponding  term  of  the 
preceding  line,  we  get  all  the  charm  of  freshness  and 
change.  The  dullest  ear  wiU  distinguish  the  rise  and 
fall,  the  wave-like  motion,  which  is  essential  to  musical 
rhythm.  Each  sentence  is  contained  in  a  line  and  cuds 
Avith  it.  In  other  languages  a  fixed  recurrence  of  feet 
or  rhymed  syllables  would  mark  the  conclusion  of  tlio 
verse.  Here  voice  and  sense  pause  together,  and  the 
ear  is  satisfied  with  this  natural  cadence,  which  is 
doubtless  improved  in  the  original  by  the  equality  of 
the  words  in  the  two  parts  of  the  verse. 

Two  distinct  points  thus  engage  our  attention — the 
thought,  and  the  form  in  which  it  is  expressed.  That 
pai'allelism  will  be  most  complete  where  the  symmetry 
is  preserved  in  both.  The  above  distich  may  be  re- 
garded in  both   aspects   as  an   example   of  standard 

1  Dissertation  prefixed  to  Lowth's  Translation  of  Isaiah.  Cf. 
his  Lecttires. 

-  De  Wette,  followed  by  Ewald  and  Dnvidson,  have  given  the 
most  complete  and  satisfactory  analysis  of  verse-fomas.  Delitzsch 
has  some  valuable  remarks  in  the  introduction  to  his  Psalms. 
Schoettgen's  system,  given  in  Smith's  Diet.,  art.  "  Poetry,"  is  an 
exhaustive  ana^sia  and  a  useful  guide  to  a  classificatiou.  That 
article  shcald  be  studied  for  the  history  of  the  various  methods. 


rhytlrm.  But  a  variety  of  modifica,tious  occur  as  one 
or  the  other  rises  into  greater  prominence. 

Our  classification  will  embrace  simple  and  complex 
parallelism.  Simple  parallelism  consists  of  verses  of 
two  members  only,  complex  of  more  than  two. 

I.  Simple  parallelism  admits  of  arrangement  under 
three  heads,  according  to  the  degree  in  which  the  har- 
mony of  feeling  and  form  is  preserved  in  the  two 
members  of  the  distich. 

The  most  perfect  form  exliibits  a  symmetry  both  in 
thought  and  exjirossion,  but  wiU  divide  into  two  classes 
(corresponding  to  Lowth's  synonymous  and  antithetic) 
according  as  this  proportion  is  one  of  resemblance  or 
contrast. 

Many  varieties  are  foimd  of  each  of  these  classes. 
Thus,  of  verses  that  are  synonymous,  the  second  line 
may  repeat  the  first  like  an  echo,  or  reproduce  it  \vith 
more  or  less  variation,  or  amplify  and  extend  it  by 
Ulusti-ation,  explanation,  or  addition.  The  following  may 
be  taken  as  typical  forms  of  each  of  these  three  varieties : 

**  Adah  and  Zillah,  hear  my  voice  ; 
Te  wives  of  Lamech,  listeu  to  my  speech." 

(Gen.  iv.  23.) 

Here  the  equivalence  of  both  thought  and  sound  is  close 
and  complete. 

"  Though  your  sins  be  as  scarlet,  they  shall  be  aa  white  as  snow ; 
Though  they  be  red  as  crimson,  they  shall  be  lite  wool." 

(Isa.  i.  IS.) 

Here,  while  the  resemblance  of  the  thought  is  so  close 
as  to  make  the  two  propositions  identical  in  meaning, 
there  is  more  variety  than  a  mere  repetition  affords. 

"  I  will  siug  unto  Jehovah,  for  he  hath  triumphed  gloriously  ; 
The  horse  and  his  rider  laath  he  thrown  into  the  sea." 

(Exod.  XV.  1.) 

Here  the  parallelism  is  jilainly  of  another  kind.  The 
second  member  does  not  repeat  the  first,  but  explains 
it.  The  enemy,  which  is  ih-st  spoken  of  in  general 
terms,  is  afterwards  more  particularly  described. 
The  principal  term  of  the  first  member  recurs 
in  the  second  for  more  complete  development.  The 
following  passage  from  Ps.  xlix.  affords  in  the  first 
couplet  an  example  of  this  kind  of  parallelism  in  con- 
venient proximity  to  a  verse  in  wliich  the  proportion  is 
one  of  similarity  : — 

(  "  wherefore  should  I  fear  in  ihc  days  of  wickedness, 

\      When  the  sin  of  tliem  that  ^oould  overthrov:  doth  covipass  me  about, 

i      Of  them  that  put  their  trust  in  their  goods, 

\     And  boast  themselves  iu  the  multitude  of  their  riches. 

f     But  surely  none  of  them  may  redeem  himself, 
\     Nor  give  a  ransom  for  himself  to  God." 

The  last  couplet  supplies  an  instance  of  anotlier  variety 

of  the  same  kind  of  parallelism.     By  introducing  tlio 

word  "  God,"  only  impUed  in  the  first  line,  the  second 

member  completes  the  sense,  which  else  would  be  left 

imperfect. 

But  the  most  frequent  of  all  the  forms  which  fall 

imder  this  division  is  that  in  whicli  the  pv(jpurtlou  is 

one  of  progression.     Indeed,  this  feature  is  claimed  by 

Jobb  in  his  Sacred  Literature  to  be  almost  universal 

iu   Hebrew  verse.      He   objects   that   Lowth's  name 


342 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOE. 


synonymous  is  inappropriate  to  describe  the  commonest 
-forms  of  parallelism,  for  the  second  clause,  witli  few 
exceptions,  "  diversifies  the  preceding  clause,  and  gene- 
rally so  as  to  rise  above  it,  forming  a  sort  of  climax  in 
the  sense.'"'  The  same  peculiarity  had  been  noticed 
by  Lowth  himself  m  his  fourth  Lecture,  where  ho  says, 
"The  Hebrew  poets  frequently  express  a  sentiment 
with  the  utmost  brevity  and  simplicity,  illustrated  by 
no  circumstances,  adorned  with  no  epithets  (which, 
in  truth,  they  seldom  use)  ;  they  afterwards  call  in  the 
aid  of  ornament ;  they  repeat,  they  vary,  they  amplify 
the  same  sentiment."  Jebb  not  only  calls  attention  to 
the  frequency  with  which  the  poets  of  the  Bible  resort 
to  tills  style,  but  also  discovers  in  it  a  valuable  pro- 
vision for  marking  with  the  nicest  precision  the  moral 
differences  and  relations  of  thbigs,  and  notices  how 
fine  an  instrument  was  put  into  the  hands  of  the 
inspired  bards  of  Judtea  to  utter  and  preserve  for 
the  world  the  external  ti-uths  of  moi-ality  and  religion. 
The  name  which  this  writer  proposes  to  substitute  for 
synonymous  is  cognate. 

As  a  striking  instance  of  the  powcrfid  way  in  which 
this  element  of  progression  may  be  introduced,  wo  may 
take  the  following  verses  from  the  song  of  Deborah. 
The  whole  ode  is  indeed  one  fiery  march  of  impetuous 
verse,  for  which  no  better  name  than  progressive  paral- 
lelism could  be  found.  The  greater  part,  hofrever,  is  of 
a  complex  kind.  This  passage  strictly  belongs  to  the 
present  group  of  simple  parallelisms  : — 

^  "Jehovah,  when  tbou  wentesfc  forth  from  Seir, 
1[     When  thou  marchedst  out  of  the  field  of  Edom, 

C     The  earth  trembled  and  the  heavens  droxjped  ; 
\     The  clouds  also  dropped  water ; 

(     The  inountains  loefted  before  Jehovah, 

\     Even  that  Sinai  before  Jehovah,  God  of  Israel.'' 

(Judg.  v.  i,  5.) 

Hero  the  gj'adations  from  wentest  forth  to  marchedst 
out,  from  Seir  to  field  of  JSdom,  from  heavens  to 
clouds,  from  the  genei'al  mountains  to  the  particular 
and  emphatic  that  Sinai,  is  very  fine  and  imiiressive. 
Aud  the  general  feeling  of  progression  in  the  rhythm 
is  exquisitely  maintained  liy  the  addition  of  the  words 
God  of  Israel  to  the  name  Jehovah.  Every  bettor  feel- 
ing which  an  Israelite  had — his  poetry,  patriotism,  and 
religion,  and  his  historic  sense  as  well,  are  touched  in 
the  fine  art  of  these  lines  : — 

•'  The  mountains  melted  before  Jehovah, 
Even  (liat  Sinai  before  Jcliovah,  God  of  Israel." 

The  sense  of  rapid  movement  in  this  kind  of  verse  is 
often  attained  by  the  repetition  in  the  second  sentence  of 
part  of  the  first.  As  wo  have  already  seen,  this  device 
is  common  in  all  poetry,  and  often  lends  peculiar  em- 
phasis to  a  passage.  The  following  instances  of  the 
Hebrew  method  of  employing  it  may  bo  added  to 
Deborah's  ode,  which  is  thi'oughont  constructed  on  this 
principle : — 

*'  Thy  right  hand,  0  Jehovah,  is  glorious  in  power  ; 
Thy  right  hand,  O  Jehovah,  hath  dashed  in  pieces  the  enemy." 

(Esod.  XV.  6.) 


^  Sacrod  Literature,  p.  35. 


j  "  My  voice  is  unto  God,  and  I  cry  aloud  ; 

I     My  voice  is  unto  God,  and  he  will  hearken  unto  nie. 

(      I  will  remember  the  works  of  Jehovah, 
\     Yes,  I  will  remember  thy  wonders  of  old. 

f     The  waters  saw  thee,  O  God ; 

I     The  waters  saw  thee  ;  they  were  seized  with  anguish." 

(Ps.  Isxvii.  1,  11,  16.) 

There  is  stiU  remaining  a  variety,  which  it  is  con- 
venient to  class  among  those  forms  of  parallelism  which 
we  are  considering.  The  proportion  of  thought  is  not 
always  one  of  simOarity  or  progression.  The  sense 
sometimes  trails  itself  out,  as  it  were,  through  both 
members  of  the  verse.  The  rhythm  of  such  verses  is 
less  animated.  There  is  a  manifest  intention  of  paral- 
lelism, but  the  charm  of  the  echo  is  gone.  We  are 
api)arently  very  near  to  prose  in  verses  like  this  : — 

"  He  blesseth  them  so  that  they  multiply  exceedingly  . 

And  suffereth  not  their  cattle  to  decrease  ; 
Again,  when  they  are  minishcd  or  brought  low 

Through  oppression,  through  any  phigue  or  trouble. 
He  poureth  contempt  upon  princes. 
And  maketh  them  wander  out  of  the  way  in  a  wilderness ; 

Yet  helpeth  He  the  poor  out  of  misery  ; 
He  maketh  him  households  like  a  flock  of  sheep ; 

The  righteous  will  consider  this  and  rejoice. 
And  the  mouth  of  all  wickedness  shall  be  stopped." 

(Ps.  cvii.  38—42.) 

The  alphabetical  poems,  which  will  be  noticed  in  a 
future  paper,  show  how  the  Hebrew  poets  of  the  later 
ages  tried  to  supply  to  this  kind  of  verse  something  of 
the  definiteness  wanting  from  the  lax  nature  of  their 
parallelism. 

The  following  examples,  chosen  from  the  different 
poetical  books  of  the  Bible,  falling  all  of  them  under 
the  class  of  parallelisms  under  discussion,  may  be  referred 
by  the  student  to  its  different  varieties.  It  may  be 
remarked  from  them  that  the  degrees  of  completeness 
of  the  parallelisms  vary  considerably.  The  parallel 
lines  sometimes  consist  of  three  or  more  sjTionymous  or 
similar  terms,  sometimes  of  two.  This  is  generally  the 
case  when  the  verlj  or  nominative  case  of  the  first 
sentence  is  to  bo  carried  on  to  the  second  or  understood 
there.  Sometimes  only  one  term  in  "each  line  corre- 
sponds. The  first  two  examples  should  especially  be 
noticed  as  exhibiting  very  perfect  and  graceful  speci- . 
mens  of  lines  composed  of  two  propositions,  tho  second 
member  distinctly  answering  to  tho  first,  like  two  syl- 
lables in  an  echo. 

("  Bow  thy  heavens,  0  Jehovah,  and  descend ; 
\    Touch  the  mountains,  and  they  shall  smoke ; 
5      Dart  forth  hghtuing,  and  scatter  them ; 
i      Shoot  out  thine  arrows,  and  destroy  them." 

(Ps.  cdiv.  5,  6.) 
(  "  And  they  shall  build  houses,  and  shall  inhabit  them  ; 
I      And  they  shall  plant  vineyards,  and  eat  the  fruit  thereof : 
(     They  shall  not  build,  and  another  inhabit ; 
\     They  sh.ill  not  plant,  and  another  eat : 
(      For  as  the  days  of  a  tree  shall  bo  the  days  of  my  people, 
\     And  they  shall  wear  out  the  works  of  their  own  hands." 

(Isa.  Ixv.  21,  22.) 

f  "  Give  ear,  O  ye  heavens,  and  I  will  speak  ; 

(      And  hear,  O  earth,  the  words  of  my  mouth. 

(     My  doctrine  shall  drop  as  the  rain, 

(     My  speech  shall  distil  as  the  dew, 

(      As  the  small  rain  upon  the  tender  herb, 

\     And  as  the  showers  upon  the  grass.'' 

(Deut.  xxxii.  1,  2.) 


THE  POETRY   OF   THE   BIBLE. 


343 


"  I  :iliuU  see  Him,  but  uot  now ; 
I  shall  behold  Him,  but  not  uigh." 

(Numb.  sxiv.  17.) 

'*  Jehovah,  when  thou  wentesfc  forth  from  Seir  : 
When  thou  marchedst  out  of  the  field  of  Edom." 

(Jud-  V.4,) 

j  "  O  Jehovah,  in  thy  strength  the  kiug  shall  rojoice  ; 
)      And  in  thy  salvation  how  greatly  sball  he  exult ! 
(     The  desire  of  hia  heart  thou  hast  granted  unto  him  ; 
(     And  the  request  of  his  lips  thou  hast  not  denied." 

(Ps.  xxi.  1,  2.) 
J  "  Because  I  called,  and  ye  refused; 
\      I  stretched  out  my  hand,  and  no  one  regarded ; 
(      13ut  ye  have  defeated  all  my  counsel ; 
\      And  would  not  iuchue  unto  my  reproof." 

(Prov.  i.  24.) 
(  "  Surely  with  joy  shall  ye  go  forth, 
\     And  with  i)eace  shall  ye  bo  led  onward : 

{The  mountains  and  the  hills  shall  burst  forth  before  you  with 
song; 
And  all  the  trees  of  the  field  shall  clap  their  hands. 
(      Instead  of  the  thorny  bushes  shall  grow  up  the  fig-tree, 
I      And  iuste;id  of  the  bramble  shall  grow  up  the  myrtle  ; 
j      And  it  shall  be  unto  Jehovah  for  a  memorial, 
(     For  a  perpetual  sign  which  shall  uot  be  abohshed.' 

(Isa.  Iv.  12.^ 
j  "  Like  mighty  men  shall  they  rush  on  ; 
\      Like  warriors  sliall  they  mount  tho  wall ; 
(      And  every  one  in  his  way  shall  they  march  ; 
(     And  they  shall  uot  turn  aside  from  theii"  i)aths.'' 

(Joel  ii.  7.) 

*  And  they  that  he  wise  shall  shine  as  the  brightness  of  the  firmr.- 
ment ; 
And  they  that  turn  many  to  righteousness  as  the  stars  for  ever 
and  ever.''  (Dan.  xii.  3.) 

(  "  God  came  from  Teman, 
^     And  tho  Holy  One  from  Mount  Paran. 
(      His  glory  covered  the  heavens, 
1^     And  the  earth  was  full  of  His  praise." 

(Hah.  iii.  3.) 
"  For  my  memorial  is  sweeter  than  honey. 
And  mine  inheritance  than  the  honeycomb." 

(Eeclus.  s::iv.  20.) 

J  "  Who  hath  laid  the  measures  thereof,   if  thou  knowest  ? 

(     Or  who  hath  stretch'd  the  line  upon  it  ? 

(      Whereupon  are  the  foundations  thereof  fastened  ? 

(      Or  who  laid  the  corner-stone  thereof; 

(      When  the  morning  stars  sang  together, 

\     And  all  the  sous  of  God  shouted  for  joy  ?  '* 

(Job  ssxviii.  5, 6,  7.) 
'*ily  soul  doth  magnify  the  Lord, 
And  my  si^irit  hath  rejoiced  in  God  my  Saviour." 

(Luke  i.  46,  47.) 
J  "  And  the  Spirit  and  tho  bride  say,  Come. 
\     And  let  him  that  haareth  say.  Come. 
f     And  lot  him  that  is  athirst  come, 

(     And  whosoever  will,  let  him  take  the  water  of  life  freely." 

(Kev.  xsii.  17.) 

*'  Tho  ploughers  ploughed  upon  my  back. 
And  made  long  furrows." 

(Ps.  05X12.3.) 


**  The  righteous  shall  inherit  the  laud. 
And  dwell  therein  for  ever." 

{Ps.  sxxvii.  29.) 
"  Eise  up,  Balaam,  and  hear. 
Hearken  unto  me,  thou  son  of  Sippor.'* 

(,Numb.  ssiii.  18.) 

These  varieties  of  parallelism  miglit  be  illustrated  m 
nearly  every  particular  from  English  poetry.  Shake- 
speare, among  owe  older  poets,  and  Tennyson  among 
modern,  make  frequent  and  powerful  use  of  it.  Tho 
reader  may  refer  back  to  the  passage  already  given 
from  King  Richard  II.  for  instances  of  its  emplo}Tneut 
to  increase  dramatic  effect,  for  it  is  in  the  stately  lan- 
guage of  the  drama  that  room  is  chiefly  found  for  the 
exercise  of  this  form  of  the  poetic  art.  The  following 
instances  might  bo  multiplied  to  almost  any  extent 
from  the  works  of  Tennyson  :— 

*'  The  slow  sweet  hours  that  bring  us  all  things  good ; 
The  slow  sad  hours  that  bring  us  all  things  ill.*' 

[Love  and  Duty.) 
"  I  heard  tho  ripple  washing  in  the  reeds. 
And  the  wild  water  lapping  on  the  crag." 

{21orlc  d'Arthur.) 
*'  There  will  I  enter  in  among  them  all. 
And  no  man  there  will  dare  to  mock  at  me; 
But  there  the  fine  Gaw.iin  will  wonder  at  me. 
And  there  the  great  Sir  Lauculot  muse  at  me  ; 
Gawain,  who  bad  a  thousand  farewells  to  me  ; 
Lancelot,  who  coldly  went,  nor  bad  me  one  : 
And  there  the  king  will  know  me  aud  my  love. 
And  there  the  queen  herself  will  pity  me. 
And  all  the  gentle  court  will  welcome  me. 
And  after  my  long  voyage  I  shall  rest." 

(Elaine.) 
It  is  interesting  to  see,  from  Longfellow's  Song  of 
Hiawathaj  if  that  poem  really  represents  tho  rhythm  of 
Indian  song,  how  largely  the  parallel  form  enters  into 
the  musical  foeKng  of  the  wild  tribes  of  America. 
Wo  shall  more  than  once  go  for  illustration  to  this 
graceful  poem.  The  following  passage  echoes  Old 
Testament  prophecy  both  in  form  and  spirit : — • 

"  I  am  weary  of  your  qmirrels. 
Weary  of  your  wars  and  bloodshed. 
Weary  of  your  prayers  for  vengeance. 
Of  your  wranglings  and  dissensions. 
All  your  strength  is  in  your  union, 
All  your  danger  is  in  discord  ; 
Therefore  be  at  peace  henceforward. 
And  as  brothers  live  together. 
I  will  send  a  Prophet  to  you, 
A  Deliverer  of  the  nations. 
Who  shall  guide  yon  aud  shall  teach  you. 
Who  shall  toil  and  suffer  with  you. 
If  you  listen  to  his  counsels. 
You  will  multiply  and  prosper ; 
If  his  warnings  pass  unlieedecl. 
You  will  fade  away  and  perisb-  ' 


04-i 


THE    BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


ANIMALS    OF    THE    BIBLE. 

BT  THE  EEV.  W.  HOUGHTON,  3I.A.,  F.L.S.,  EECTOK  OF  PRESTON,  SALOP. 


NOCXrENAL  BIEDS  Or  PREY. 
,  F  the  owl  family  (Strigidce)  the  following 
species  are  inhabitants  of  Palestine :  the 
great  owl  (Bubo  ascalaphus),  the  tawny 
owl  [Syrnium  aluco),  the  little  owl  {Athene 
Persica)    tha    scops    owl   (Scops    giu),    the  white   or 


we  may  reasonably  expect  several  allusions  to    these 
nocturnal  birds  of  prey  in  the  sacred  writings. 

The  following  Hebrew  words  have  been  rendered 
owl  in  the  Authorised  Version: — Bath-haya'anah, 
yanshuph  or  yanshoph,  cos,  hippoz,  and  liltth.  The 
first  word  designates,  without  doubt,  an  "ostrich,"  and 


TAWNY  OWL  (Syrtimm  aluco). 


barn  owl  (Sirix  flammea) — all  of  which  are  pretty 
common — the  Indian  fish  owl  [Eetiqia  Ceylonensis),  the 
long  and  short-horned  owls  of  our  own  country  {Strix 
otus  and  S.  brachyoius).  The  grotesque  expression 
produced  by  the  arrangement  of  the  feathers  of  the 
face,  the  peculiar  voice,  the  habit  of  flying  by  night, 
their  frequenting  ivy-covered  ruins  and  places  of  soli- 
tude, have  aJl  contributed  to  engender  superstitious 
feelings  in  the  minils  of  many  people.  Owls  are  in 
popular  belief  birds  of  darkness,  death,  and  iU-omen, 
as  Shalsespeare  says — 

"  Out  on  ye  owls,  nothing  but  Bongs  of  death  !  " 

In  the  minds  of  the  Orientals  this  idea  has  always  been 
fully  as  prevalent  as  in  those  of  Western  people,  and 


will  be  considered  when  we  come  to  treat  of  that  bird  ; 
the  last-named  word,  which,  in  the  text  of  Isa.  xxxiv.  I-t, 
is  translated  "  screech-owl,"  is  more  correctly  given  in 
the  margin  as  "night  monster;  "  the  remaining  words, 
there  is  some  reason  to  beUere,  denote  some  kinds  of 
owls.  But  besides  these,  there  is  another  Hebrew  word, 
tachmds,  occurring  in  Lev.  xi.  Itl  and  Deut.  xiv.  15,  as  one 
of  the  bii'ds  that  were  to  be  held  in  abomination  by  the 
Israelites,  and  translated  "  night-hawk"  in  our  version, 
which  also,  we  tliink,  denotes  some  owl. 

Tanahi'qih  occiu-s  in  Lev.  xi.  17,  Deut.  xiv.  16,  as  one 
of  the  unclean  birds  ;  it  is  rendered  "  great  owl"  by  our 
version  ;  it  occurs  once  more  ilsa.  xxxiv.  11,  where  it  is 
translated  "  owl ")  in  the  i)rophet's  graphic  description 
of  desolate  Edom  :  "  The  owl  also  and  the  raven  shall 


ANniALS  OP  THE  BIBLE. 


315 


'i       ' 


Sr^Jr 


•t     ■* 


r 


t^', 


BKrisWY  ^pfSfi^  K:f>0-; 

THE    DAULE-OWLS    (i3l6!;0   TOaXli/lUs). 


dwell  in  it."  Tlio  Septuagint  and  the  Vulgate  read 
Ms,  i.e.,  the  This  religiosa  of  Egypt,  to  wliicli  Dr. 
Tristram  objects,  inasmueli  as  "  the  ibis  is  strictly  a 
bird  of  the  reedy  marshes  and  mud  flats,  the  very  last 
to  be  thought  of  among  the  ruins  of  Petra."  Tliis  is 
quite  true,  but  it  mnst  be  remembered  that  in  the  same 
scene  of  desolate  Edom  water-birds  such  as  the  pelican 


and  the  bittern  are  introduced.  The  description  is 
very  simOar  to  the  one  in  Isa.  xiii.  20—22,  xiv.  23, 
and  Zeph.  ii.  14,  which  Dolitzsch  says  is  founded  upon 
this  one.  It  was  a  favourite  idea  of  the  Hebrew  pro- 
phets to  introduce  into  the  picture  of  a  waste  desert 
land  pools  or  marshes  here  and  there,  to  sei-vo  to  add 
to  the  scene  of  desolation.     Thus,  of  Babylon  it  is  said, 


346 


THE  BIBLE  EDFCATOK. 


"  I  will  mako  it  a  possession  for  bitterns  and  marslies  of 
water."'  When  a  country  is  liable  to  inundation  from  a 
river,  bollow  places  fuU  of  water  would  remain.  More- 
over, tbe  prophet  does  not  specially  mention  Petra. 
The  judgments  of  Jehovah  were  to  be  directed  against 
Bozrah  and  the  land  of  Idumea  (Isa.  xxsiv.  6}.  Still, 
we  do  not  think  that  the  ibis  is  intended  by  the  word 
ijanshu}}h,  but  the  great  eagle-owl  (Bubo  maximus),  or 
rather  the  -B.  ascalaphiis,  the  Syrian  and  Arabian 
representative  of  the  European  species.  The  Targum 
renders  yanshuph  in  Isaiah  by  i-ijywj:)/!?)!  (pi.)  (Syriac, 
kafii/o),  i.e.,  "  eared  owls,"  which  are  frequently  men- 
tioned in  the  Talmud  as  birds  of  iU-omen.  The  singular 
noun  MppopUa  occurs  in  Lev.  si.  17 ;  Dent.  xiv.  16,  as 
the  representative  of  the  Hebrew  yanshuph,  which 
may,  we  think,  be  fau-ly  identified  with  the  eagle-owl, 
a  magnificent  species  inhabiting  ruins  and  caves  in 
every  part  of  Palestine,  "as  in  tombs  in  Carmel, 
robbers'  eaves  near  Gennesaret,  the  hermit  caves  above 
Jericho,  among  the  ruined  cities  of  southern  Judah. 
and  in  the  desert  wadys  near  Beersheba,  among  the 
temples  of  Rabbath  Ammon ;  in  fact,  everywhere 
where  man  has  been  and  is  not."  It  occurs  also  very 
abundantly  in  the  rock  tombs  of  Petra.  Where  there 
are  no  rocks,  the  eagle-owl  burrows  in  the  sand -banks 
and  lays  its  eggs  there.  Its  cry  is  a  loud,  prolonged, 
and  very  powerful  hoot,  which  brought  viviiUy  to  Dr. 
Tristram's  mind  a  sense  of  desolaticm  and  loneliness,  as 
he  stood  at  midnight  among  the  ruined  temples  of 
Baalbek. 

Some  kind  of  owl,  it  is  thought,  is  intended  by  the 
Hebrew  word  cos,  translated  "  little  owl "  in  Lev.  xi.  17 ; 
Deut.  xiv.  16,  where  it  is  mentioned  amongst  the  unclean 
birds.  It  occurs  also  in  Ps.  cii.  6  :  "  I  am  like  a  pelicaji 
of  the  wildemess  :  I  am  like  an  owl  of  mined  places  " 
(A.  v.,  "  desert ").  The  Hebrew  word  cos  means  a 
"  cup "  in  some  passages  of  Scripture,  from  a  root 
meaning  to  "  receive,"  "to  hide,"  or  "  bring  together  ;  " 
hence  the  pelican,  "  the  cup,"  or  "  pouch-bird,"  has 
been  suggested  as  the  bird  intended.  In  this  case  the 
verse  in  the  Psalm  would  be  rendered  thus  :  "  I  am 
become  like  a  pelican  in  the  wildemess,  even  as  the 
pouch-bird  in  the  desert  places."  But  the  fact  that  both 
the  pehcan  and  the  cos  are  enumerated  in  the  list  of  birds 
to  be  avoided  as  food  is  against  this  theoiy,  unless  the 
word  changed  its  meaning  in  the  Psalmisf  s  time,  which 
is  improbable.  The  expression  cos  "  of  ruined  places  " 
looks  vei-y  much  as  if  some  owl  were  denoted.  The 
Arabic  definitely  applies  a  kindred  expression  as  one 
of  the  names  of  an  owl,  viz.,  um  eJcharab,  i.e.,  "  mother 
of  ruins."  The  Septuagint  gives  wKriKopa^  as  the 
meaning  of  cos ;  and  we  know  from  Aristotle  that  the 
Greek  word  was  a  synonym  of  &tos,  evidently,  from  his 
description  of  the  bird,  one  of  the  eared  owls.  Dr. 
Tristram  is  disjMsed  to  refer  the  cos  to  the  little 
Athene  Persica.  the  most  common  of  all  the  owls  in 
Palestine,  the  representative  of  the  A.  noctua  of 
Southern  Europe.  The  Arabs  call  this  bu-d  "  boomah," 
from  his  note ;  he  is  described  '"  as  a  grotesque  and 
comical-looking  little  bu-d,  familiar  and  yet  cautious; 


never  moving  imnecessariLy,  but  remaining  glued  to  his 
perch,  unless  he  has  good  reason  for  believing  he  has 
been  detected,  and  twisting  and  turning  his  head  instead 
of  his  eyes  to  watch  what  is  going  on. "  He  is  to  be  found 
amongst  rocks  in  the  wadys  or  trees  by  the  water-side, 
in  olive-yards,  in  the  tombs  and  on  the  mins,  on  the 
sandy  mounds  of  Beersheba,  and  on  "the  spray-beaten 
fragments  of  Tyre,  where  his  low  wailing  note  is  sure  to 
be  heard  at  sunset,  and  himseK  seen  bowing  and  keep- 
ing time  to  his  own  music." 

The  Hebrew  word  hippoz  is  found  in  one  place  only, 
viz.,  Isa.  xxxiv.  15 :  "  There  (in  Idnmea)  shall  the 
Jcippoz  [A.  v.,  "  great  owl  "]  make  her  nest,  and  lay, 
and  hatch,  and  gather  under  her  shadow."  Some  bird 
is  evidently  intended,  and  not  a  darting  snake,  as 
argued  by  Bochart  and  others,  from  the  sole  fact  that 
the  Arabic  Ici^yphaz  is  used  by  Avicenna  to  denote 
a  "  darting  tree-serpent,"  from  a  root  meaning  "  to 
spiing  forward."  Gesenius,  Piirst,  Rosenmiiller, 
Maurer,  Delitzsch,  Benisch,  in  the  Jewish  School  and 
Family  Bible,  Lesser,  Samuel  Sharpe,  and  Cheyne,  all 
read  "  an  arrow  snake."  We  presume  that  the  Eryx 
jaculus  (Daudin),  a  harmless  sand  snake  common  in 
Palestine,  is  intended.  But  the  expression  "  make  her 
nest,  and  lay,  and  hatch,  and  gather  under  her  shadow," 
clearly  alludes  to  some  bu-d.  It  is  true  that  the  boa 
or  python-snake  occasionally  broods  over  its  young,  but 
it  is  unlikely  that  such  an  act  was  known  to  any  of 
the  sacred  wiiters.  Dr.  Tristram  thinks  that  the  word 
is  possibly  an  imitation  of  the  cry  of  the  scops  owl 
[Scops  gill),  called  ?/io  coo/ by  the  Arabs,  common  about 
mins,  caves,  and  the  old  walls  of  towns.  He  adds  that 
its  note  is  well  represented  by  the  name  hippoz.  Against 
this  idea  is  the  fact  that  the  scops  owl  is  a  very  small 
and  pretty  little  bird,  and  would  hardly  be  brought  in 
with  howling  jackals,  dancing  satyrs,  child-stealing 
night  fairies  (lilith)  to  add  to  a  scene  of  desolation. 

Lilith,  rendered  "screech-owl"  in  the  text  of  Isa. 
xxxiv.  14,  is  more  cori'ectly  given  as  "  night  monster  " 
in  the  margin.  This  creature  of  the  night  was  a 
female  demon  (shedali)  of  the  popular  mythology; 
according  to  the  legends  it  was  a  mahcious  fairy  that 
was  especially  hurtful  to  childi'en,  like  the  ghouls  of  the 
Araiinn  Nights.  LiUth  was  to  find  a  home  in  company 
with  dancing  satyrs  in  deserted  Edom.  On  an  earthen 
bowl  from  Babylon,  now  m  the  British  Museum,  there 
is  an  inscription  in  the  ancient  Chaldee  language,  which 
contains  an  amulet  or  charm  against  these  lilith  or  night 
monsters,  and  other  demons,  of  which  the  following  is  a 
translation  : — "  This  is  a  bill  of  divorce  to  the  devil  and 
to  .  .  .  and  to  Satan,  and  to  Nerig,  and  to  Zachiah, 
and  to  Abitru-  of  the  mountains,  and  to  .  .  .  and 
to  the  night  monsters  (lilitha),  commanding  them  to 
cease  from  Beheran  in  Batuaiun,  and  from  the  coimtry 
of  the  north,  and  from  all  who  are  tormented  by  them 
therein.  Behold,  I  make  the  counsels  of  these  devils 
of  no  effect,  and  annul  the  power  of  the  ruler  of  the 
night  monsters.  I  conjure  you  aU,  monsters  .  .  . 
both  male  and  female,  to  go  forth.     I  conjure  you,  and 

.     .     .    by  the  sceptre  of  the  powerful  one  who  has 


THE  MINERALS  OF  THE  BIBLE. 


347 


power  over  the  devils  and  over  the  night  monsters,  to 
quit  these  habitations.  Behold,  I  now  make  you  cease 
from  troubling  them,  and  make  the  influence  of  your 
presence  cease  in  Beherau  of  Batnaiun  and  in  their  fields. 
In  the  same  manner  as  the  devils  write  biUs  of  divorce, 
and  give  them  to  their  wives,  and  retiuTi  not  unto 
them  again,  receive  ye  your  bUl  of  divorce,  and  take 
this  written  authority,  and  go  forth,  leave  quickly,  flee 
and  depart  from  Beherau  in  Batnaiun,  in  the  name  of 
the  living  ...  by  the  seal  of  the  powerfid  one, 
and  by  this  signet  of  au- 
thority. Then  wiU  there 
flow  livers  of  water  in  that 
laud,  and  then  the  jjarched 
ground  mil  bo  watered. 
Amen,  Amen,  Amen, 
Selah."  There  are  a  num- 
ber of  these  terra-cotta 
bowls  in  the  British  Mu- 
seum ;  they  seem  to  have 
been  used  as  divinmg  cups. 
(Compare  Gen.  xliv.  5 :  '"  Is 
not  this  it  .  .  .  whereby 
my  lord  divineth .''  ")  See 
on  this  subject,  Layard's 
Nineveh  and  Babylon,  509 
— 526,  and  a  recent  paper 
by  Mi\  RodweU  in  the 
Transactions  of  tlie  Society 
of  Biblical  ArchcBology, 
vol.  ii.,  pt.  1,  p.  Hi- 
lls. 

The  Hebrew  word  tachmds,  occurring  only  in  the  list 
of  unclean  bii-ds  (Lev.  xi.  16  ;  Deut.  xiv.  15),  and  trans- 
lated "  night-hawk "  in  our  version,  more  probably 
denotes  an  owl  of  some  kind.  By  "  night-hawk  "  our 
translators  probably  meant  the  "  night-jar  "  or  "  goat- 
sucker" (Caprimidgus),  of  which  tlu'ee  species  are 
known  in  the  Holy  Land.  This  bird  (C.  Europmius) 
has  been  the  subject  of  many  superstitions,  and  absurd 
properties  have  from  the  time  of  Aristotle  been  ascribed 
to  it.  It  utters  a  strange  dismal  eiy  resembling  the 
sound  of  a  spinning-wheel,  only  heard  at  night ;  hence 
the  name  of  the  bu-d,  "night-jar"  or   "night-churr." 


'LILSth" EARTHEN   BOWL,    INSCKIBED. 

(ekitish  museum.) 


The  LXX.  and  the  Vulgate  render  the  Hebrew  word 
by  -yXai^  and  noctua,  i.e.,  "  an  owl."  The  derivation  of 
the  Hebrew  term  from  chdmas,  "  to  act  violently," 
Arabic  chamash,  "  to  wound  the  face  with  the  claws," 
points  to  some  bu'd  of  prey.  It  is  curious  to  note,  in 
connection  with  tliis,  a  popular  belief  in  the  East  that 
there  is  some  kind  of  owl  which  glides  stealthily  into 
bed-chambers  at  night,  and  tears  the  flesh  off  sleeping 
children.  Hasselquist  says  this  owl  is  of  the  size  of 
the  common  owl;  he  calls  it  Strix  orientalis,  which, 
he  tells  us,  the  Arabs  in 
Egypt  call  massassa  and 
the  Syiians  bana.  The 
women  are  much  afraid  of 
this  infant  -  kUling  owl, 
and  carefully  watch  their 
houses  lest  the  cruel  bird 
should  gain  admittance 
through  an  open  window 
(Travels,  p.  196).  It  is  not 
improbable  that  tachmas 
may  mean  the  screech-owl 
(Strix  Jiammea)  common 
in  Palestine,  it  being  easy 
to  understand,  as  Tristi-am 
says,  "  how  the  light  plu- 
mage, ghost-like,  noiseless 
flight,  and  unmusical 
screech  of  the  bird  heard 
suddenly  in  the  stUlness  of 
the  nighi,  almost  always  in 
the  ruins  and  caves  which 
local  superistition  has  peopled  with  "  ginns  "  or  sprites, 
should  have  earned  for  it  this  evil  character."  But 
it  is  impossible  to  come  to  any  definite  conclusion  as 
to  the  bird  denoted.  The  name  of  the  owl  occurs 
in  the  Assyrian  inscriptions  as  iis-tsur  mu-si,  i.e., 
"  bird  of  night "  (W.  A.  I.,  ii.  37,  line  306).  Tsulamu, 
tsalamdu,  or  tsal-lam-mu,  also  stands  for  "an. 
owl." 

Compare  Shakespeare : — 

'*  Yesterday,  the  bird  of  night  did  sit. 
Even  at  noonday,  upon  the  market-place. 
Hooting  and  shrieking." — Jul.  Cces.,  i.  3. 


THE   MINEEALS  OF   THE  BIBLE. 

BY  THE   EEV.   G.   DEANE,   D.SC,   F.G.S.,    PKOFESSOK   OP   OLD  TESTAMENT   EXEGESIS  AND   NATURAL   SCIENCE     IN 

SPRING    HILL    COLLEGE,    EIKMINQHAM. 


^HE  minerals  named  in  the  Bible  may  bo 
classed  in  three  groups :  (1)  Gems,  or  pre- 
cious stones;  (2)  those  connected  with 
metals,  mining,  and  metallurgy ;  and  (3) 
mineral  substances  not  referable  to  either  of  the  pre- 
ceding classes. 

I.    PEECIOirS    STONES. 

Prom  time  immemorial  precious  stones  have  excited 
curiosity  and  commanded  admiration.      Brilliant  and 


richly-coloured  gems  have  a  strange  fascination.  They 
blaze  on  the  brow  of  beauty,  and  deck  the  crown  of 
royalty.  Imagination  has  vested  them  with  strange, 
fantastic,  and  mystical  powers.  Religion  has  claimed 
them  for  her  service. 

Most  of  the  precious  stones  named  in  the  Bible  are 
included  in  thi-ee  distinct  lists — the  description  of  the 
high  priest's  breastplate  (Exod.  xxviii.  17  ;  xxxix.  10) ; 
the  account  of  the  ornaments  of  the  king  of  Tyre  in 


34S 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


Ezek.  xxviii.  13;  and  the  apocalyptic  ^sion  of  the 
foundations  of  the  New  Jerusalem  (Rev.  xxi.  18 — 21). 
Besides  these  passages,  there  are  others  in  which  par- 
ticular stones  are  referred  to  :  e.g.,  Rev.  iv.  3 ;  Job 
xxviii.  19  ;   Gen.  ii.  12  ;  and  others. 

To  identify  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  names  used  iu 
these  passages  with  the  names  of  modern  mineralogy  is 
in  many  cases  no  easy  task.  Most  probably  iu  those 
early  times,  when  the  ritual  and  priestly  cbesses,  as 
described  in  the  Book  of  Exodus,  were  determined, 
Egypt  and  Arabia  were  the  only  countries  through 
which  the  Israelites  could  obtain  a  knowledge  of  gems. 
Subsequently  tlie  commerce  of  Phenicia  and  Ezion- 
geber  (1  Kings  is.  26;  xxii.  48)  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  Babylonian  capti\'ity  on  the  other,  opened  to  them 
a  knowledge  of  the  treasures  of  the  East.  And  later 
still,  the  conquests  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans  must 
have  had  some  effect  upon  the  nomenclature  of  the 
precious  stones. 

Among  the  ancients  mineralogical  science  was  in  a 
very  crude  contlition.  The  names  and  description  given 
by  Pliny,  Theophrastus,  Epiphanius,  and  other  writers, 
are  conflicting  and  embaiTassing.  But  through  their 
aid  many  points  can  be  set  definitely  at  rest  with 
re<;ard  to  the  exact  character  of  ancient  gems. 

A  second  means  of  determination  is  found  in  the 
etymology  of  Hebrew  and  Arabic  roots.  The  ancient 
names  of  many  of  these  precious  stones  are  derived 
from  some  physical  character  they  possess :  e.g.,  the 
Hebrew  name  of  the  sardius,  or  sardine  stone,  is  uclem, 
from  a  root  signifying  "  to  be  red,"  a  derivation  which 
manifestly  excludes  all  stones  which  are  not  red.  There 
is.  moreover,  every  reason  to  believe  that  the  modem 
Arabic  names  have  not  been  substantially  altered  for  at 
least  2,000  years ;  and  this  affords  us  a  f m-ther  clue 
to  exact  determination,  on  account  of  the  resemblances 
between  Hebrew  and  Ai'abic. 

A  thu-d  and  still  more  imxiortant  aid  to  identification 
is  found  in  a  comparison  of  the  original  texts  of  the 
Septuagiut,  the  Vulgate,  and  Josephus.  The  Sei>tuagint 
is  the  Greek  version  of  the  Old  Testament  made  in  the 
third  century  B.C.  at  Alexantkia.  The  Vulgate  is  a 
Latin  text  of  the  Bible,  made  under  the  direction  of 
Jei'ome,  at  the  close  of  the  fourth  century  A.D.,  not 
exclusively  by  translation  from  the  Septuagint,  but  from 
the  original  Hebrew.  The  names  of  the  stones  given 
by  these  three  versions  are  in  full  agreement,  the  order 
in  three  cases,  however,  being  changed.  This  agreement 
is  remarkable.  Josephus  amdoubtedly  saw  the  breast- 
plate in  the  Temple  services  repeatedly.  In  Jerome's 
time  it  was  still  to  be  inspected  in  the  Temple  of 
Concord  at  Rome.  And  if  we  had  any  guarantee  that 
Joscplius  and  Jerome  were  acquainted  with  minerals, 
the  agreement  of  these  three  lists  woidd  go  far  to  settle 
many  disputed  points.  Even  without  this  guarantee 
we  have  here  a  valuable  aid  in  determination.' 

The  account  given  in  Exodus  of  the  breastplate  shows 

^  Jerome  cannot  be  credited  with  any  special  mineralogical 
kuowk'dge,  as  be  speaks  with  praise  of  the  work  of  Epiphanius, 
which  abounds  j^  absurd  errors. 


that  the  names  of  the  children  of  Jacob  were  engraved 
upon  the  stones  thereof,  and  also  upon  the  two  stones 
worn  upon  the  high  priesfs  shoulders.  The  account  of 
Josephus,  which  is  even  more  precise,  is  as  follows  : — 
'•  There  were  also  two  sardonyxes  upon  the  ephod  at  the 
shoidders  to  fasten  it,  in  the  nature  of  buttons,  having 
each  end  running  to  the  sardonyxes  of  gold,  that  they 
might  be  buttoned  by  them.  On  these  were  engraven 
the  names  of  the  sons  of  Jacob,  in  our  own  country 
letters  and  in  oiu-  own  tongue,  six  on  each  of  the  stones 
on  either  side ;  and  the  elder  sons'  names  were  on  the 
right  shoulder.  Twelve  stones  also  there  were  upon  the 
breastplate,  extraordinary  in  largeness  and  beauty ;  and 
they  were  an  ornament  not  to  be  purchased  by  men  be- 
cause of  theii'  immense  value.  .  .  .  The  names  of 
all  those  sons  of  Jacob  were  engraven  in  these  stones, 
whom  we  esteem  the  heads  of  oui-  tribes,  each  stone 
ha\-iug  the  honoui-  of  a  name  in  the  order  according  to 
which  they  were  born  "  {Ant.  iii.  7,  §  5).  The  ancient 
IsraeUtes  must  therefore  have  known  somethmg  of  the 
art  of  engraving  hard  stones.  There  is  an  old  rabbinical 
legend  that  Moses  engraved  the  stones  of  the  bi'eastplate 
by  means  of  a  worm  called  shdmir.  But  this  word 
occurs  three  times  in  the  Old  Testament  in  passages 
where  nothing  but  a  very  hai'd  stone  will  suit  the  mean- 
ing. In  two  of  these  it  is  rendered  "  adamant "  in  the 
English  version,  in  the  thu-d  "  diamond"  (Ezek.  iii.  9 ; 
Zech.  XTi.  12 ;  Jer.  x\-ii.  1).  There  can  be  no  question 
that  the  Israelites  possessed  the  knowledge  of  engraving 
stones.  In  Gen.  xxxviii.  18  we  find  mention  of  the 
signet  of  Judah ;  in  Gen.  xli.  42  we  learn  that  the  ring 
of  Pharaoh  was  placed  upon  Joseph's  hand  when  he  was 
made  ruler  over  the  land ;  and  the  stone  of  the  den  iu 
which  Daniel  was  given  to  the  lions  was  sealed  with  the 
signet  of  Darius  and  ■with  the  signet  of  his  lords  (Dan. 
vi.  17).  Indeed,  we  are  not  left  to  infer  the  existence 
of  stone-engraving  from  these  jiassages  ;  for  in  Jer. 
xvii.  1  there  is  explicit  reference  to  cngi-aving  with  the 
point  of  an  adamant  {shdmir).  History  and  archaeology 
alike  show  that  both  the  Egyptians  and  the  Assyrians 
possessed  this  knowledge,  and  doubtless  the  ancient 
Israelites  likewise. 

But  how  was  this  engraving  accomplished?  Pliny 
explains  that  in  his  day  fragments  of  diamond  were 
used  for  the  purpose,  just  as  in  our  day  the  same 
material  is  used  for  cutting  glass.  It  is,  however,  ex- 
tremely doubtful  whether  the  diamond  was  known  either 
to  the  Egvi^tians  or  to  the  Assyrians ;  and  it  is  much 
more  probable  that  the  adamant  of  the  Old  Testament 
is  the  corundum,  which  is  simply  the  compact  form  of 
what  is  popularly  known  as  emery  powder.  This  is  the 
hardest  of  stones  next  to  the  diamond,  has  been  used  in 
India  from  time  immemorial  for  gem-cutting,  and  can 
be  shown  to  have  been  in  extensive  use  for  this  piUTpose 
in  early  liistorical  times.  It  is  certain  that  the  diamond 
was  not,  as  our  English  version  makes  it,  the  sixth  stone 
of  the  Jewish  breastplate ;  partly  on  account  of  the 
size  of  the  stones  as  narrated  by  Josephus,  and  partly 
because  it  would  have  been  utterly  impossible  for  the 
ancient  lapidary  to  carve  tipon  the  hardest  of  all  stones 


THE  MINERALS  OP  THE  BIBLE. 


349 


the  letters  of  the  Hebrew  uamo  of  the  sixth  son  of 
Jacob. 

The  stones  of  the  breastpkte  were  arranged  in  four 
rows  of  three  in  each  row.  But  in  the  lists  given  in  the 
different  versions  there  are  some  slight  differences  in  the 
order.  The  most  ciuious  variation  is  that  the  ydsh'pheh 
or  jasper  is  the  twelfth  stone  of  the  Hebrew  list,  but  the 
sixth  of  the  Septuagint  and  Vnlgate.  Rosenmiiller  con- 
jectures that  the  Greek  translator  of  the  Septuagint  in 
his  Hebrew  manuscript  must  have  found  this  transposi- 
tion of  yd  h'jjheh  from  the  tweLffch  to  the  sixth  place, 
and  of  yaiialom  from  the  sixth  to  the  twelfth  place. 
But  even  if  this  supposition  be  correct,  there  are  other 
ditficulties  attending  the  exact  identification  of  the  three 
stones,  named  in  the  Hebrew,  yaiialom,  slwham,  and 
ydsh'pUeli,  which  are  rendered  in  our  English  Bible 
"diamond,"  "onyx,"  and  "jasper."  The  translation 
"  diamond  "  is  undoubtedly  wrong,  for  reasons  already 
stated ;  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  also  that  the  Hebrew 
names  represent  the  beryl ,  the  onyx,  and  the  jasper.  There 
is  a  clear  etymological  connection  between  ydsh'pheh  and 
jasjjer.  YahalSm  and  shoham,  then,  represent  the  onyx 
and  the  beiyl.  But  which  is  which  ?  Braun,  Michaelis, 
Eichhom,  and  others  maintain,  on  etymological  grounds, 
that  the  shvham  is  the  onyx  :  others  maintain  from  other 
considerations  that  shuhani  is  the  beryl.  The  word  is 
used  in  Gen.  ii.  12  to  describe  a  product  of  the  land  of 
Chavilah ;  in  Job  xxviii.  16  as  a  most  precious  stone 
classed  with  sapphire  and  gold ;  and  also  in  1  Chron. 
xxix.  2  as  collected  by  David  for  the  Temple.  Yahalom, 
derived  from  a  root  connected  with  hardness  or  tough- 
ness, would  apply  to  either  stone,  and  as  it  is  used  only 
in  Exodus,  is  of  very  little  aid  in  determination.  The 
latest  and  most  ingenious  attempt  to  identify  shoham 
is  that  of  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson  in  his  paper  "'  On  the 
Site  of  the  Terrestrial  Paradise  "  read  before  the  British 
Association  in  1870.  He  believes  that  the  term  really 
applies  to  alabaster,  quarries  of  which  existed  just  out- 
side the  Euphrates  alluviiun.  We  must,  however,  re- 
member that  this  word  shoham  first  appears  in  the 
very  earliest  records  of  the  human  race  (Gen.  ii.  12)  as 
describmg  a  jiroduct  which  was  highly  valued.  Before 
any  reference  to  metal-working,  we  find  the  stone  shoham 
highly  prized.  Wliy  ?  Manifestly  because  it  was  the 
material  of  the  only  known  cutting  implements,  tools, 
and  weapons — the  tough,  sharp-edged,  flinty  mineral 
which  in  its  finer  varieties  became  subsequently  a  pre- 
cious stone  valued  for  other  reasons.  Such  stones  are 
found  in  the  alluvial  gravels  of  rivers,  and  the  river 
Pison  in  the  land  of  Chavilah  was  pre-eminent  in  this 
particular.-  These  considerations,  together  with  the 
pliilological  reasons  assigned  by  Braun,  Michaelis,  and 
Eichhorn,  appear  to  us  conclusive  of  the  question  that 
the  shoham  in  early  days  represented  the  tough  and 
flinty  varieties  of  the  same  cpiartz  mineral  wliose  finer 
Tarieties  were  in  later  times  jirized  for  ornamental  pur- 
poses. It  is  a  singular  confirmation  of  the  ^^ew  here 
expressed  that  an  Arabic  word  for  "  arrow  "  is  derived 
fromacognate  root.  The  shoham  stone  is  the  arrow  stone. 

The  variation   in  the  order  of  the  stones  prompts 


the  inquiry  whether  the  breastplate  which  Josephus 
repeatedly  saw,  and  which  Jerome  might  have  seen  in  the 
Temple  of  Concord,  was  identical  with  that  of  ancient 
times.  If  the  whole  of  the  original  stones  were  pro- 
served,  the  order  also  must  have  been  kept,  in  con- 
sequence of  the  names  engraved  upon  them.  But  it  is 
not  by  any  means  unlikely  that  in  the  great  ricissitudes 
of  the  Hebrew  nation,  some  of  the  original  stones  may 
have  Ijcen  lost,  and  have  been  replaced  by  others.  There 
is,  so  far  as  we  are  aware,  no  record  of  any  such  loss, 
nor  of  any  appearance  on  the  breastplate  indicative  of 
such  reidacement ;  and  this  therefore  is  a  mere  con- 
jecture which  may  have  no  foundation  in  fact. 

There  is  another  question  closely  connected  with  the 
possibility  of  changes  subsequently  made  in  the  original 
stones  of  the  breastplate — viz.,  whether  the  so-called 
Oriental  stones  which  form  our  most  precious  gems  were 
known  to  the  ancient  Israelites.  These  gems — ruby, 
topaz,  sapphu-e,  emerald,  &c.,  with  the  prefix  "  Oriental " 
to  distinguish  tliem  from  other  difi:erent  stones — all 
consist  of  crystallised  alumina,  and  owe  their  different 
colours  to  small  quantities  of  different  metallic  oxides. 
Allusion  has  already  been  made  to  the  shdniir  of  the 
Hebrews  as  the  rough  and  subcrystalline  corundum 
which  was  used  for  engraving  other  stones.  These 
various  Oriental  stones  are  ciystaUiue  forms  of  the 
same  mineral ;  just  as  the  diamond  is  the  crystalhne 
and  transparent  form  of  opaque  and  dull  carbon. 

There  is  not  a  tittle  of  endence  to  show  that  these 
Oriental  stones  were  known  to  the  Egyptians,  nor  even 
to  the  Assyrians.  The  classical  nations  subsequently 
to  the  Christian  era,  as  shown  by  the  wi-itings  of  Diony- 
sius  Periegetes,  were  acquainted  with  them.  And  it  is 
probable  that  the  Pha3nician  merchants,  even  in  the 
times  of  the  Assyrian  and  later  Egyptian  kingdoms, 
may  have  imported  these  j)i'ecious  stones  from  the  far 
East.  Ezekiel  speaks  of  the  Arabian  merchants  dealing 
in  all  manner  of  precious  stones.  But  whatever  may 
have  been  the  case  in  the  times  of  Ezekiel  and  subse- 
quently, it  is  highly  improbable  that  in  the  early  times 
of  the  Hebrew  nation  these  Oriental  stones  were  known 
to  them.  This  improbability,  as  respects  the  breast- 
plate, is  rendered  the  greater  by  the  fact  that  all  these 
stones  are  excessively  hard,  and  that  even  the  shdmir 
or  corimdum  would  fad  effectually  to  carve  on  them 
the  names  of  the  sons  of  Jacob. 

The  question  whether  there  were  any  of  these  Oriental 
stones  appears  to  us  to  rest  entu-ely  on  the  previous 
question,  whether  the  stones  were  fixed  in  the  time  of 
Moses  and  never  altered  subsequently.  If  so,  the 
evidence  is  strong  against  the  presence  of  the  Oriental 
gems,  as  there  is  not  a  shadow  of  testimony  that  they 
were  known  at  .such  times,  and  distinct  proof  that  they 
were  unknown  in  Egyi^t,  Arabia,  and  Assyria.  If  we 
are  confined  to  the  times  of  Moses,  we  are  limited  also  to 
the  stones  known  in  the  countries  with  which  ho  was 
acquainted.  But  in  the  time  of  Solomon  a  gi-eat  change 
came  over  not  only  the  commerce  of  the  Hebrews,  but 
also  over  the  paraphernalia  of  the  Temple  wor.ship.  It 
may  bo  thought  that  the  rehgious  feeling  and  intense 


350 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


reverenco  of  the  Hebrews  would  prevent  all  change  in 
regard  to  so  j)recious  and  sacred  a  relic  as  the  high 
priest's  breastplate  ;  and  this  argument  must  be  allowed 
as  far  as  it  goes.  It  may  be  said  that  there  is  no  evi- 
dence of  such  changes,  and  that  such  a  thing  was  far 
too  important  to  have  been  done  without  some  recoi-d. 
The  reply  to  this  is  obvious :  there  are  distinct  records 
of  extensive  commerce  in  precious  stones  in  the  times 
of  David  and  Solomon.  Thus,  in  David's  charge  to 
Solomon  we  find  these  words  :  "  Now  I  have  prepared 
with  all  my  might  for  the  house  of  my  God  the  gold  for 
things  to  be  made  of  gold,  .  .  .  onyx  stones  and 
stones  to  be  set,  glistering  stones,  and  of  divers  colours, 
and  all  manner  of  precious  stones  and  marble  stones  in 
abundance  "  (1  Chron.  xxis.  2  ;  see  also  2  Chron.  v.  1). 
When  all  things,  then,  were  made  new,  it  is  quite  within 
the  bounds  of  possibility  that  the  breastplate  shared  in 
the  improvement. 

But  waiving  this  question  as  one  of  mere  conjecture 
and  probability,  we  pass  to  consider  in  detail  the  stones 
which  may  possibly  bo  represented  by  Oriental  gems. 
Wo  have  to  do,  of  course,  with  the  original  breastplate 
of  Moses,  not  with  any  possible  changes  which  took 
place  in  it  afterwards ;  and  wo  shall  see  that,  apart  from 
the  general  considerations  already  adduced,  there  is  in 
each  case  strong  evidence  in  favour  of  stones  that  were 
not  Oriental. 

Wo  begin  with  the  stone  named  in  Hebrew  sapptr. 
The  modern  sapphire  is  the  crystalline  corundum,  au 
Oriental  stone.  And  it  has  been  thought  by  many  that 
the  Biblical  references  to  sapphire  demand  transparency 
and  brilliancy.  The  Hebrew  root  saphar  means  to  "  en- 
grave "  or  "  to  write,"  and  accordingly  sappir  might  moan 
either  tho  "  thing  which  engraves,"  or  "the  thing  which 
is  engraved."  If  the  former,  the  stone  in  all  probability 
would  bo  somo  variety  of  the  hard  corundum.  But  as 
the  Hebrew  derivatives  from  the  root  are  tho  terms  for 
a  "  book,"  a  "  writing,"  an  "  engraving,"  and  so  forth,  the 
latter  meaning  above  named  is  tho  most  probable.  Tho 
Talmud  states  that  tho  tables  of  the  Law  were  made  of 
sappir.  The  BibUcal  references  to  sapphire  make  it  re- 
present "  the  pavement  of  sappir  "  under  tho  feet  of  tho 
God  of  Israel  "  like  the  body  of  heaven  in  purity  "  (Exod. 
xxiv.  10),  and  also  tho  throao  of  God  above  the  firma- 
ment of  heaven  (Ezek.  i.  26).  All  these  references  and 
allusions  suit  most  completely  tho  stono  which  is  well 
known  to  have  been  tho  sapphire  of  the  Greeks  and 
Romans,  viz.,  tho  lovely  blue  la^ns  lazuli,  or  stone  from 
which  the  pigment  called  ultramarine  is  made.  Pliny's 
description  of  it  is  "  refulgent  with  spots  of  gold,  of  an 
azure  colour  sometimes,  but  very  often  purple ;  the  best 
kind  comes  from  Media ;  it  is  never  transparent,  and 
is  not  well  suited  for  engraving  upon  when  intersected 
with  hard  crystaUino  particles  "  (Nat.  Hist.,  xxxvii.  9). 
There  are  two  points  in  the  description  which  require  a 
word  of  explanation.  The  "  spots  of  gold  "  and  "  crystal- 
lino  particles  "  are  iron  pyrites,  which  occur  abundantly  in 
some  specimens  of  lapis.  A  deep-blue  stone  then,  with 
brilliant  crystalline  particles,  well  represents  tho  star- 
spangled  firmament,  "  like  tho  body  of  heaven  in  its 


purity,"  and  is  also  more  suitable  for  a  royal  pavement 
than  tho  brilliant  glassy  sapphire.  Again,  Pliny's  refer- 
ence to  hard  crystalline  particles  appears  opposed  to  the 
usage  of  this  stone  for  engraving  the  Liw  or  anything 
else  thereon.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  quantities  of 
engraved  Egyptian  jewelry  made  of  lapis  are  known. 
Mr.  King,  in  his  Antique  Gems,^  says  that  lapis  is 
tho  "  only  stone  of  any  intrinsic  value  known  to  the 
Egyptians  under  the  Pharaohs."  And  engraved  works 
in  it  are  known  of  every  period  of  antiquity.  "  Before 
the  true  precious  stones  were  introdueed  from  India,  the 
lapis  lazuli  held  the  highest  place  in  tho  estimation  of 
tho  primitive  nations  of  Asia  and  Greece."  A  stone 
intersected  by  particles  of  pyrites  would  of  course  be 
unsuitable  for  engraving,  not  only  on  account  of  tho  hard 
crystaUino  nature  of  such  particles,  but  also  because 
they  readily  decompose  and  decay.  But,  as  Pliny's 
words  manifestly  imply,  there  are  specimens  of  lapis 
without  these  particles,  and  therefore  suitable  for  en- 
graving.' And  there  seems  no  reasonable  doubt  that 
the  sapphire  of  the  breastplate  was  the  much-valued 
lapis  lazuli  of  the  ancients.  Epiphanius  says  that  it 
was  "  medicinal,  for  being  powdered  it  heals  the  sores 
following  pustules  and  boils  if  smeared  over  them, 
being  appUed  mixed  with  milk  to  the  ulcerations." 

Wo  now  come  to  the  emerald  and  beryl.  The 
emerald  was  the  third  stone  of  the  breastplate,  not  the 
fourth,  as  in  our  English  Version.  Tho  Hebrew  root 
means  to  "  flash  lightning,"  a  meaning  which  materially 
aids  in  determining  the  stone.  Tho  term  emerald  in 
Pliny's  days  was  applied  to  a  great  number  of  stones  ; 
Pliny  names  twelve.  Of  these  the  Oriental  stones  are 
excluded,  as  we  have  already  shown.  There  remain  to 
be  considered  the  so-called  copper  emerald  or  chryso- 
colla,  the  beaxitiful  green  malachite,  and  the  tnio 
emerald  of  modern  mineralogy.  Theophrastus  speaks 
of  the  emerald  of  CyiJrus  as  a  gem  "  very  rare  and  of 
a  small  size.  It  has  some  peculiar  properties,  for  it 
renders  water  of  the  same  colour  with  itself.  It  soothes 
the  eyes,  and  people  wear  seals  of  tliis  stono  in  order 
that  they  may  look  at  them."  We  have  known  persons 
now-a-days  who  have  found  the  view  of  their  seals  and 
emerald  rings  very  soothing  to  their  eyes.  Tliis  emerald 
of  Cyprus  is  tho  silicious  ore  of  copper  called  chryso- 
colla ;  and,  though  very  beautiful,  is  scarcely  likely  to 
have  been  the  emerald  of  the  breastplate.  Nor  has  the 
well-known  green  carbonate  of  copper  called  malachite, 
which  is  now  so  extensively  used  for  ornaments,  a  much 
better  claim;  although  there  is  abundant  evidence  to 
show  that  this  in  ancient  times  was  called  emerald 
{smaratjdiis.  <riJ.apaySos)  and  that  it  was  well  knoivii  to 
tho  Egyptians.  Tho  significance  of  these  copper  ores 
in  relation  to  the  Scriptural  emerald  arises  chiefly  from 

^  Ifc  ia  almost  impossible  to  treat  the  subject  of  precious  stones 
in  the  Emrlish  l;iui?uage  without  copious  refereuces  to  the  most 
valuable  books  of  the  Rev.  C.  W.  Ein?,  of  Trinity  Collefro,  Cambridge. 
And  the  writer  wishes  to  state  at  the  outset  that  liis  owu  studies 
somo  years  ago  derived  gi-eat  assistance  from  these  books,  and 
that  ho  feels  under  much  obligation  to  their  author  for  his 
Fcbolarly  and  exhaustive  treatment  of  the  subject.  On  some 
poiuts,  however,  ho  is  constrained  to  differ  from  Mr.  King. 


THE  MINERALS  OP  THE  BIBLE. 


351 


tho  passage  in  Rev.  iv.  3,  whicli  likens  tte  emerald  to 
a  rainbow,  as  there  are  some  varieties  which  have 
curiously-hlended  tints  of  blue  and  green  suggestive  of 
the  rainbow.  Tho  etymology  of  tho  Hebrew  word,  how- 
ever, as  given  above,  renders  it  most  probable  that  the 
stono  of  the  breastplate  was  the  true  emerald  of  modem 
mineralogy.  There  is  a  striking  peculiarity  in  tho  true 
eaerald,  when  of  any  considerable  size.  In  one  par- 
ticular position  of  the  light  its  green  colour  is  lost,  and 
it  flashes  the  light  back  like  a  brilliant  mirror.  This  is 
in  striking  conformity  with  tho  meaning  of  the  Hebrew 
word.  AU  the  stones  called  emerald  known  to  the 
ancients  were  green  stones.  This  is  tho  only  green 
stone  wliich  has  this  peculiarity.  Tho  conclusion  is  ob- 
vious. Some  have  felt  a  difficulty  in  this  conclusion 
because  most  of  tho  modem  true  emeralds  come  from 
South  America.  But  the  miaes  of  Egypt  and  Ethiopia 
were  the  chief  source  of  supply  of  emeralds  to  the 
Romans;  aad  Moiuit  Zabarah  in  Upper  Egypt  stQl 
affords  them,  several  specimens  from  that  locality  having 
been  obtained  by  Sir  G.  Wilkinson  and  placed  in  tho 
British  Museum.  There  is  no  doubt  that  these  mines 
were  largely  worked  by  tho  auciout  Egyptians,  and 
therefore  no  reason  for  doubting  that  tho  stone  of  tho 
breastplate  was  tho  true  emerald.  The  ancients  had 
some  curious  ideas  as  to  the  medicinal  virtues  of  tho 
emerald  : — "Reduced  to  powder  and  taken  internally  in 
a  dose  of  from  four  to  ten  grains,  emerald  was  aceoimtod 
a  certain  antidote  for  poisons,  and  bites  of  venomous 
animals,  as  well  as  a  remedy  for  fluxes,  the  plague,  in- 
fectious fevers,  hemorrhages,  and  dysentery.  Worn 
externally,  as  an  amulet,  it  was  also  regarded  by  the 
ancients  as  a  cure  for  epilepsy,  to  possess  tho  power  of 
assuaging  terror,  and  driving  away  evil  spirits — as  of 
assistance  in  childbirth,  and  as  an  infallible  preservative 
of  chastity,  to  tho  violation  of  which  it  possessed  such 
an  innate  antipathy  as  to  fly  to  pieces  if  worn  in  a  ling 
on  the  finger  of  any  person  transgressing."'  In  this 
last  respect  tho  emerald  appears  to  have  shared  its 
honour  with  the  oriental  sapphire. 

Closely  allied  to  the  emerald  is  the  beryl  or  aqua- 
marine, which  was  tho  last  or  twelfth  stone  of  the 
breastplate.  Beryl  is  the  name  now  given  to  the  kinds 
of  emerald  which  are  either  not  transparent  or  are 
destitute  of  the  bright  rich  green  colour.  This  colour 
is  due  to  a  slight  admixture  of  chromium.  When  this 
metal  is  absent,  or  is  replaced  by  other  metallic  oxides, 
the  rich  green  colour  disappears.  When  the  stone  is 
crystalline  and  transparent,  with  a  faint  bluish-green  or 
sea-green  colour,  it  is  called  aquamarine.  And  this 
appears  to  have  been  the  beryl  of  tho  breastplate. 

Toiyaz  and  chrysolite  next  demand  notice.  In  some 
curious  way  these  terms  have  become  interchanged. 
The  topaz  of  tho  ancients  is  the  chrysolite  of  the 
modems,  and ■ui'ce  versa.  Bellermann  (JJrim  ami  Thmn- 
mim,  p.  39)  has  tried  to  confute  this  statement ;  but  liis 
reasoning  is  inconclusive  ;  the  balance  of  evidence  lies 
quite  the  other  way.  Besides  the  references  in  the 
books  of  Exodus,  Ezokiel,  and  Revelation,  Job  speaks 
of  tho  topaz  of  Cush  (Job  xxviii.  19).     The  ancient 


topaz,  or  our  chrysolite,  is  a  yellowish-green  or  greenish- 
yellow  transparent  stone,  not  unlike  some  kinds  of  glass 
in  appearance.  It  was  found  in  Egji)t,  and  specially 
in  an  island  in  the  Red  Sea,  from  which  it  derived  its 
name. 

Chrysolite  appears  in  tho  later  versions  as  the  equiva- 
lent of  the  Hebrew  tarsMsh,  the  tenth  stone,  or  the 
first  of  the  foiu'th  row.  The  translation  of  the  English 
Version,  heryl,  is  obviously  incorrect.  Tho  finest  kind  of 
chrysolite  named  by  Pliny  corresponds  to  the  Oriental 
topaz,  a  stone  which  tho  general  reasons  already  given 
woidd  exclude.  The  modern  Brazilian  topaz  was  un- 
known to  all  the  nations  of  antiquity.  Pliny  mentions 
other  kinds  of  chrysolite,  one  of  which,  distinguished 
from  others  by  its  lessor  weight,  came  from  Spain. 
Tarshish,  tho  Hebrew  name  of  the  breastplate  stone,  is 
the  Hebrew  name  of  Tartessiis  in  Spain,  from  which  the 
Phoenician  merchants  brought  many  articles  of  com- 
merce. What,  then,  can  bo  clearer  than  thatthis  Spanish 
chrysolite  is  tho  stono  which  the  commerce  of  the 
Phoenicians  brought  in  early  times  to  Syria  and  Egypt  ? 
Prom  tho  account  given  of  it,  it  is  manifestly  the  same 
as  our  yellow  crystalline  quartz — tho  Scotch  cairngorm. 

Five  other  of  the  stones  were  different  species  of 
the  ubiquitous  mineral  quartz — viz.,  sardius,  agate, 
amethyst,  onyx,  and  jasper;  and  the  two  sardonyxes 
which  formed  the  shoulder  bxittons  are  of  the  same 
class. 

The  sard  of  the  ancients  is  our  brilliant  red  camelian. 
It  was  highly  valued,  and  was  extensively  used  for  sig- 
nets and  carved  gems.  The  finest  appear  to  have  come 
from  Babylon;  but  Egypt  and  Arabia  also  supplied 
numbers. 

The  precious  onyx  is  the  banded  carnelian  often  cut 
across  the  layers  so  as  to  exhibit  stripes  or  spots  of 
black,  white,  red,  or  other  colours.  Some  have  main- 
tained that  the  onyx  was  a  banded  stono  of  two  shades 
— black,  brown,  red,  yeUow,  or  some  other  colour,  with 
white  ;  reserving  the  term  sardmiyx  for  those  contain- 
ing throe  layers,  one  of  which  was  red — as,  e.g.,  the 
Arabian  stone,  which  was_  Ijlack  or  blue,  covered  by 
opaque  white,  and  then  a  kyer  of  vermilion.  Others 
maintain  that  the  distinction  was  based  upon  the  mode 
of  arrangement  of  tho  layers :  if  the  coloured  ground 
was  covered  by  wliite  veins  irregularly  disposed,  so  that 
when  cut  these  veins  formed  sometimes  stripes,  some- 
times spots  or  eyes,  then  the  stono  was  onyx ;  but  if 
the  bands  were  in  regular  parallel  strata  one  over  the 
other,  then  it  was  sardonyx.  Tho  Lapidarium  of 
Marbodus,  Bishop  of  Reunes,  of  which  an  admirable 
translation  is  given  in  Mr.  King's  Antique  Gems, 
explains  the  difference  thus : — 

"  The  sard  and  ouyx  in  one  name  unite, 
And  from  their  union  spi-ing  three  colours  bright ; 
O'er  jetty  black  the  brilliant  white  is  spread, 
And  o'er  the  white  diffused  a  fiery  red ; 
If  clear-  the  colours,  if  distinct  the  line 
Where  still  uumixed  the  various  layers  join, 
Sucli  wo  for  beauty  aud  for  value  prize. 
Rarest  of  all  that  teeming  earth  supplies  ; 
Chief  among  signets  it  will  best  couvey 
The  stamp  impressed,  nor  tear  the  wax  away.'* 


352 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


The  true  sardonyx,  consisting  of  parallel  layers  of 
different  colours,  is  a  very  lovely  stone;  it  is  now  mueh 
used  for  seals,  rings,  &c.,  and  forms  the  material  of 
many  of  the  much-valued  antique  cameos.  Marbodus 
held  a  curious  opinion  as  to  what  ought  to  be  the  vh'tues 
of  its  wearer : — 

"  The  man  of  humble  heart  and  modest  face, 

And  purest  soul  the  sardonyx  should  grace ; 

A  worthy  gem,  yet  boasts  no  mystic  powers  ; 

'Tis  sent  from  Indian  and  Arabian  shores." 

The  first  Roman  wearer  of  the  sardonyx  was  Scipio 
Africamis  the  elder,  whose  "  humble  heart,  and  modest 
face,  and  purest  soul "  scarcely  bear  out  tho  words  of 
Marbodus. 

Tho  agate,  or  achates,  well  illustrates  tho  great  diffi- 
culty of  determining  accurately  some  of  these  stones.  Its 
Hebrew  name,  sliebo,  is  derived  by  Gesenius  from  a  root 
meaning  "  to  take  prisoner  ;"  but  Fiirst  connects  it  with 
an  Arabic  root  meaning  "to  glitter."  It  may  also  be 
derived  from  anotlier  Arabic  root  meaning  "  to  be  dull 
and  obscure."  And  thus  etymology  alone  utterly  fails 
to  solve  the  problem.  The  Hebrew  word  occurs  only  in 
the  two  descriptions  of  the  breastplate  in  Exodus,  and 
we  therefore  have  no  further  aid  of  other  usage  to 
guide  us.  It  is  rendered  in  the  Septuagint,  Josephus, 
and  tho  Vulgate  by  achates,  dxaTTjr.  The  achates  of  the 
Romans  included  most  of  tho  stones  now  known  as 
jasper,  and  a  number  of  other  inferior  coloured  quartz 
gems.  And  tho  agate  of  tho  breastplate  was  most  pro- 
bably some  variety  of  unerystallised  quartz,  such,  per- 
haps, as  the  ordinary  Scotch  pebble. 

The  amethyst  is  undoubtedly  tho  common  amethyst 
of  modern  science — crystalline  quartz  coloured  by  oxides 
of  manganese  and  iron.  Tho  colour  is  violet,  sometimes 
passing  into  blue.  It  is  to  be  distinguished  from  what 
is  called  tho  Oriental  amethyst,  or  purple  sapphire,  which 
is  an  exceedingly  rare  stone  of  the  corundum  species. 
The  amethyst,  as  its  Greek  name  implies,  was  con- 
sidered a  preservative  against  drunkenness.  Perhaps  the 
Hebrew  name,  derived  from  a  root  meaning  "  to  dream," 
has  reference  to  a  similar  property.  Pliny  states  the 
opinion,  that  it  was  so  designated  because  it  imitates 
the  colour  of  wine  without  reaching  it.  Water  di-unk 
out  of  an  amethyst  cup  would  look  like  wiuo  and  be 
perfectly  harmless.  "Wine  dnmk  out  of  an  amethyst 
cup  would  bo  harmless  clearly  because  such  a  cup  would 
be  very  small.  Perhaps  tho  ancients  had  some  prevision 
of  modem  amethyst  coloured  claret-glasses. 

Jasper  is  the  modern  chalcedony.  Many  of  the 
known  Egyptian  and  Phcenician  gems  are  engraved 
upon  a  dark  green  variety.  And  this  was  most  likely 
the  stone  of  the  breastplate.  Tho  ias2'>is  {taa-n-is)  of  Greek 
and  Roman  times  included  many  of  the  stones  now 
called  chalcedony,  and  some  of  the  sub-crystalline  kinds 
of  quartz.  There  is  nothing  either  in  tho  Hebrew  root 
or  in  the  Old  Testament  references  to  determine  which 
of  these  is  intended.  In  the  absence  of  other  indica- 
tion, the  Egyptian  usage  m.ay  be  considered  decisive. 

The  fourth  stone,  first  of  the  second  row,  was,  as  all 
admit,  the  carbuncle,  or  garnet.  It  received  the  names  it 
bore  in  classical  writings  on  accoiint  of  its  resemblance 


to  a  burning  coal,  and  some  cui'ious  and  fanciful  stories 
are  related  concerning  it.  Mr.  King  (Precious  Stones, 
p.  150)  quotes  the  following  two  : — "A  certain  Grecian 
widow  named  Heraclea  had  tended  a  young  stork  that, 
having  fallen  out  of  its  nest  before  it  was  fully  fledged, 
had  broken  its  leg,  and  the  gratefid  bird,  on  returning 
from  the  annual  migration  of  its  kind,  dropped  into  her 
lap  as  she  sat  at  her  door  a  precious  stone,  which  on 
her  awaking  at  night  she  found  to  her  astonishment 
had  lighted  up  her  chamber  like  a  blazing  torch."  Tho 
Spian  goddess  Astarte  is  represented  by  Lucian  as 
"  wearing  on  her  head  a  gem  called  Lychnis  (lamp- 
stone),  a  name  derived  from  its  nature ;  for  from  it  a 
great  and  .shining  light  is  diffused  in  the  night  time,  so 
that  the  whole  temple  is  thereby  lighted  up  as  though 
by  many  lamps  burning.  By  day  the  lustre  is  more 
.feeble,  nevertheless  it  presents  a  very  fiery  appearance." 
The  blazing  colour  of  many  garnets  must  be  familiar  to 
all  who  have  seen  them.  The  finest  in  modern  times 
come  from  South  America  and  Ceylon ;  but  the  stone 
is  very  widely  diffused  in  nature. 

The  only  remaining  stone  is  tho  leshhn,  or  ligure,  the 
first  of  the  third  row.  Concerning  this,  conjectures 
have  been  numerous.  The  fossil  known  as  "belemuite," 
amber,  opal,  and  the  modern  ligurito  have  all  been  sup- 
jjorted  on  different  grounds.  Dr.  Watson,  in  the  fifty- 
first  volimie of  Ph ilosoiihical  Transactions,  p.  394,  argues 
for  tourmaline  mainly  because  Theophrastus  represents 
the  ligure  as  attracting  small  particles  of  wood,  iron,  and 
brass ;  and  it  is  well  known  that  tourmaline  possesses 
electric  properties.  But  it  is  much  more  probable  that 
the  stone  known  as  jacinth,  or  hyacinth — a  variety  of 
zircon — is  the  ligure  of  olden  times.  This  also  is  elec- 
tric when  nibbed  ;  and  is  known  to  have  been  in  esteem 
in  Egyjjt  and  Ai'abia.  It  is  not  much  worn,  on  account 
of  its  often  porous  character  and  the  flaws  and  blebs  it 
frequently  contains.  Still,  despite  these  defects,  it  is  a 
magnificent  stone  of  a  rich  orange  colour. 

The  stones  of  the  breastplate  then,  according  to  the 
arrangement  of  the  Septuagint,  come  out  as  follows.  The 
numbers  of  course  go  from  right  to  left,  in  accordance 
with  the  Hebrew  method  of  reading  : — 


3 

Emerald 

(true  but  not 

Oriental). 

Chrysolite 
(modem). 

1 
Sard, 
or 
Eed  Carnelian. 

6 

Jasper,  or  Green 
Chalcedony. 

5 
LnpiB  lazuh. 

4 
Garnet, 
or 
Carbuncle. 

9 

Quartz 
Amethyst. 

8 
Agate,  01 
semipellucid 
unerystallised  CJuartz. 

7 

Jacinth, 

or 

Hyacinth. 

12 
Beryl, 
or 
Aquamarine. 

11 

Onyi. 

10 

Quartz-topaz, 

or 
Cairngorm. 

Josephus  interchanges  five  with  six.  eight  with  nine, 


MINERALS    OF   THE   BIBLE. 


353 


and  eleven  with  twelve ;  the  Vulgate  interchanges 
eleven  with  twelve ;  the  Hebrew  text  interchanges  six 
with  twelve. 

It  will  be  reatlily  gathered  from  what  has  already 
been  said,  that  in  the  subsequent  times  of  David  and 
Solomon,  and  stUl  more  in  tlio  time  of  Ezekiol,  the 
Oriental  stones  may  have  come  into  prominence  ;  and  by 
their  transcendent  excellence  have  been  prized  beyond 
these  previously  known.  Be  this  as  it  may,  it  is  certain 
that  in  the  early  times  of  the  Christian  era  these  were 
well  known  to  the  Greeks  and  Romans.  And  accord- 
ingly we  must  give  a  few  linos  to  the  description  in  the 
book  of  Revelation  of  the  precious  stones  in  the  apo- 
calyptic vision  of  St.  John.  This  description  is  evidently 
couched  in  a  spirit  of  high  poetic  imagery,  the  idea  being 
to  illustrate  by  the  most  splendid  of  known  gems  the 
brilliancy  of  the  future  city.  All  the  reasons,  therefore, 
which  we  have  deemed  conclusive  as  to  the  absence  of 
such  gems  from  the  priestly  dross  of  Aaron  and  his 
successors  fail  to  obtain  in  this  case. 

Nothing  needs  to  bo  added  to  what  has  already  been 
said  concerning  sapphire,  sardonyx,  sardius,  topaz  {i.e., 
modern  ehiysolite),  beryl,  emerald,  and  amethyst.  The 
two  latter  may  indeed  be  conceived  to  be  the  most  rare 
and  valuable  Oriental  stones  so  named,  though  in  point 
of  richness  of  colour  but  little  is  gained  thereby.  The 
other  stones  demand  a  word  or  two  of  explanation. 

The  chrysolite  of  St.  John  is  most  probably  the  true 
Oriental  tojiaz,  a  brilliant  golden-yellow  crystalline  stone. 
The  jacinth  (^vaKiyBos)  of  Greek  and  Roman  days,  as 
its  description  by  Soliuus  shows,  is  undoubtedly  the 
true  Oriental  sapphire,  a  stone  of  brUIiant  transparency 
and  lustre,  and  of  splendid  blue.  The  description  of 
Pliny  agrees  with  this ;  but  that  of  Solinus  is  perfectly 
conclusive.  He  says  (we  give  tlio  translation  of  Mr. 
King's  Precious  Stones,  p.  194) :  "  Amongst  those  things 
of  which  we  have  treated,  is  found  also  the  hyacinthus, 
of  a  shining  sky-blue  colour ;  a  stone  of  price  if  it  be 
fouud  without  blemish ;  for  it  is  extremely  subject  to 
defects.  For  generally  it  is  either  diluted  with  violet, 
or  clouded  with  dark  shades,  or  else  melts  away  into  a 
watery  hue  with  too  much  whiteness.  The  best  colour 
of  the  stone  is  an  equable  one,  neither  dulled  by  too 
deep  a  dye  nor  too  clear  with  excessive  transpai-ency,  but 
which  draws  a  sweetly-coloured  tint  from  the  double 
mixture  of  brightness  and  violet.  This  is  the  gem  that 
feels  the  iniiuence  of  the  air,  and  sympathises  with  the 
heavens,  and  does  not  shine  equally  if  the  sky  be  cloudy 
or  bright.  Besides,  when  put  in  the  mouth  it  is  colder 
than  other  stones.  For  engraving  upon,  indeed,  it  is 
by  no  means  adapted,  inasmuch  as  it  defies  all  grind- 
ing ;  it  is  not,  however,  entirely  invincible,  since  it  is 
engraved  upon  and  cut  into  shape  by  means  of  the 
diamond." 

The  hyacinth  of  the  classical  writers  is  the  blue 
sapphire.  Other  varieties  of  the  same  mineral  are  tlie 
Oriental  ruby  and  the  Oriental  topaz.  The  three  are 
conjoined  in  the  Lapidarium  of  Marbodus — 

"  Three  Tftrioii.s  kiucia  tbe  skilled  as  hyacintha  name. 
Varying  in  colour,  and  unlike  in  fame ; 

47 — VOL.  II. 


One  like  pomegranate,  flowers  a  fiery  blaze. 
And  one,  the  yellow  citron's  hue  displays  ; 
One  charms  with  paley  blue  the  gazer's  eye, 
Like  the  mild  tint  that  decks  the  northern  sky  : 
A  streui?theuiug  power  the  several  kinds  convey, 
And  grief  and  vain  suspicions  drive  away." 

This  Oriental  stone  is  essentially  different  from,  and 
vastly  more  valuable  than,  the  modern  hyacinth,  which 
is  the  ligure  of  the  Old  Testament. 

The  chrysoprase  of  modern  times  is  a  beautiful 
apple-green  translucent  stone  of  the  chalcedony  class. 
It  was  unknown  to  the  ancients,  and  is  found  now  only 
in  Silesia  and  America.  Some  old  Egyptian  jewellery 
shows,  however,  a  stone  closely  resembling  it,  but  more 
blue  in  colour.  Some  varieties  of  Indian  beryl  have  a 
golden  lustre ;  and  Epiplianius  sjjeaks  of  a  variety  of 
chi-ysolite  which  he  calls  chiysopastus,  dark  blue  with 
golden  spots.  There  seems  no  means  of  determining 
which  of  these  stones  was  alluded  to  in  St.  John's  vision  : 
the  last  is  most  probable. 

Chalcedony  must  have  received  its  name  from  Chal- 
cedon,  the  place  whence  it  came.  The  only  stone  of 
which  there  is  any  evidence  bearing  this  name  in  the 
time  of  St.  John  is  the  copper  emerald,  which  Theo- 
phrastus  describes  as  found  in  the  copper  mines  near 
Chalcedon.  It  was  a  small  transparent  brilliant  green 
stone,  rivalling  in  colour  the  true  emerald.  The  well- 
known  ornamental  stone  now  called  malachite,  and  the 
sOicious  ore  of  copper  called  chrysocolla,  are  closely 
allied  to  it.  How  the  name  chalcedony  can  have  been 
transferred  from  a  stone  of  this  character  to  the  mUk- 
white  earuolian  and  other  varieties  thaf  now  bear 
the  name,  is  one  of  the  many  puzzles  in  mineralogical 
nomenclature. 

Some  little  difficulty  attends  the  identification  of 
the  jasper  of  St.  John.  In  Rev.  iv.  3,  the  word  is 
used  in  conjunction  with  sardine  stone  and  emerald  as 
descriptive  of  the  Divine  Glory,  and  the  walls  and 
first  foundation  of  the  New  Jerusalem  are  described 
as  buUt  of  it.  In  Rev.  xxi.  11,  the  light  of  the  city 
is  described  as  like  a  crystallising  jasper  (iatnnSi  KpvnraK- 
A.ffocTi).  This  jjhrase  has  been  considered  by  some 
as  refen-ing  to  the  diamond.  The  diamond,  no  doubt, 
was  known  in  those  days,  for  Pliny  describes  at 
least  four  forms.  But  it  went  by  another  name, 
and  if  St.  John  had  meant  diamond,  he  would  have 
used  the  right  term.  Indeed,  the  use  of  the  word 
crystal  in  connection  with  jasper  is  a  strong  confirma- 
tion that  jasper  itself  was  not  necessarily  crystalline, 
and  that  when  applied  to  illustrate  the  light  of  the  glory 
of  heaven  the  further  idea  of  crystalline  purity  was  re- 
quisite. Mr.  King  expresses  the  opinion  that  the  dark 
opaque  green  chalcedony  is  the  jasper  of  St.  John;  and 
explains  the  "  jasper  crystallised,"  which  represents  the 
light  of  the  city,  as  "  the  green  of  the  jasper,  brilliant  and 
transparent  as  crystal,  by  which  he  probably  means  to 
express  the  true  emerald."  But  if  St.  John  probably 
meant  to  express  the  true  emerald,  why  not  use  the 
term  emerald  ?  It  was  as  well  known  to  him  as  jasper, 
for  it  is  made  one  of  tlie  foundations  of  the  city,  and  is 
named  with  jasper  in  Rev.  iv.     Although  the  original 


354 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


idea  of  jasper  is  undoubtedly  that  of  a  green  translu- 
cent chalcedony,  it  is  clear,  as  Mr.  King  himself  shows, 
that  in  the  early  times  of  the  Christian  era  the  term  was 
also  apjtlied  to  a  number  of  other  translucent  stones  of 
different  colours,  or  with  only  a  faint  tiuge  of  colour. 
And  from  the  peculiar  way  in  which  St.  John  applies 
the  term,  it  appears  not  improbable  that  by  crystallising 
jasper  is  meant  the  brilliant  crystallised  quartz,  and  by 
jasper  itseK  some  variety  of  translucent  chalcedony. 

We  may  sum  up  in  modern  terms  the  imagery  of  St. 
John's  vision  with  regard  to  the  foundatioa  of  the  royal 
and  heavenly  city  thus :— " 


1.  Jasper,  or  chalcedony. 

2.  Lapis  lazuli. 

3.  Copper  emeralil. 

4.  Emerald. 

5.  Sardonyx. 

6.  Sardius. 


7.  Oriental  topaz. 

8.  Beryl,  or  aquamarine. 

9.  Chrysolite. 

10.  Chrysoprase  (?). 

11.  Sapphire. 

12.  Amethyst. 


The  absence  from  the  scriptural  accounts  both  of  the 
diamond  and  of  the  ruby,  the  most  precious  of  modern 


stones,  is  noteworthy.  Both  words,  indeed,  occur  in  the 
English  Version.  But,  as  has  been  shown,  there  is  no 
foundation  whatever  for  the  translation  "diamond." 
And  there  is  as  little  for  that  of  "  ruby."  This  word 
appears  Job  xxviii.  18 ;  Prov.  iii.  15 ;  viii.  11 ;  xx.  15 ; 
xxxi.  10;  Lam.  iv.  7  ;  and  in  all  those  places  is  given  as 
the  translation  of  the  Hebrew  iienhiim.  Some  Hebraists 
render  this  "corals"  others  "pearls  ;"  but  the  English 
rendering  "  rubies  "  is  absurd.  The  word  is  absent 
from  all  the  lists  of  gems,  and  nowhere  occurs  with 
distinct  reference  to  precious  stones.  The  nearest  a.]i- 
proach  in  the  Hebrew  to  anything  like  the  Oriental  ruby 
is  in  Isa.  liv.  12 ;  and  Ezok.  xxvii.  16,  whore  the  word 
cadcod,  translated  in  our  English  Version  agate,  may 
possibly  be  this  very  gem.  The  Hebrew  root  means 
"  to  strike  fire,"  and  the  cognate  Ai-abic  word  signifies 
vivid  redness.  But  even  here  it  is  impossible  to  say 
decisively  that  the  ruby  is  meant. 

We    shall   next  consider  minerals   connected    with. 
metals,  mining,  and  metallurgy. 


BOOKS    or    THE    OLD    TESTAMENT. 

ZEPHANIAH    {conchi-ded). 

BY   THE    KEV.    SAMDEL    COX,    NOTTINGHAM. 


III. — THE  PROMISED  BLESSING. 
Chap.  iii.  9—20. 

5T  is  convenient,  for  pui-poses  of  study,  and 
exposition,  to  divide  this  inspired  poem 
into  three  sections  ;  but  we  must  bear  in 
mind  that  it  is  a  single  poem  with  an  un- 
broken continuity  of  thought.  Our  divisions  are  ar- 
tificial. There  are  no  breaks,  no  pauses,  in  the  poet's 
strain.  He  ghdes  by  the  easiest  transitions,  with  a 
movement  almost  imperceptible,  from  point  to  point. 
As  the  denunciation  of  judgment  melts  into  the  call  to 
repentance,  so  the  call  to  repentance  melts  into  the 
promise  of  good.  In  chapter  iii.  verse  8,  the  prophet 
invites  the  faithful  to  "wait"  for  the  day  of  judgment 
in  an  attitude  of  hope;  and  in  verso  9,  and  the  verses 
which  follow  it,  he  gives  them  ground  and  reasons  for 
hope :  the  day  of  judgment  is  to  bring  in  the  year  of 
redemption;  the  fire,  which  is  to  destroy,  is  also  to 
renew,  the  world.  Hitherto,  the  thought  of  the  Divine 
judgment  and  its  terrors  has  been  uppermost  in  his 
mind ;  now  he  sees  judgment  issuing  in  mercy,  mercy 
rejoicing  over  judgment.  The  storm  is  over  and  gone  ; 
the  air  is  soft  and  clear,  the  bow  of  hope  shines  with 
tender  hallowing  radiance  on  the  clouds,  the  earth 
breathes  her  sweetest  fragrance,  and  the  birds  fill  the 
air  with  notes  of  joy  and  praise. 

As  wo  have  followed  the  prophet  through  the  changes 
of  his  spiritual  mood,  ho  has  given  us  many  brief  hints 
of  a  secret  hope  which  enabled  him  to  face  the  terrors 
of  doom  without  fear ;  nay,  to  rejoice  and  exult  in  them  : 
and  now,  as  his  poem  di-aws  to  a  close,  he  gives  his 


heart  way,  and  discloses  his  secret  in  words  that  labour 
and  tremble  under  their  burden.  He  had  foreseen  that 
the  clouds,  "big  with  mercy,"  would  "break  in  bless- 
ing;" and  now  that  the  storm  is  past,  he  beholds 
Jehovah  leading  His  people  as  a  shepherd  his  flock, 
dwelling  among  them  as  a  king  with  loyal  subjects, 
rejoicing  over  them  as  a  bridegroom  over  his  bride 
(verses  13,  15,  17).  It  is'  an  apocalyptic  vision  which 
passes  before  his  eyes,  a  vision  such  as  was  granted  to 
all  the  Hebrew  jsrophets,  from  Joel  to  St.  John.  Taken 
in  their  largest  sense,  his  words  predict  the  coming  of 
a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth,  in  which  the  tabernacle 
of  God  shall  be  with  men  and  "the  nations  of  the 
saved"  shall  walk  in  white.  Like  St.  Paul,  he  admitted 
that  Israel  had  "stumbled;"  but,  like  him,  he  also  re- 
fused to  admit  that  they  had  "  stumbled  in  order  that 
they  should  fall "  beyond  redemption.  Like  St.  Paul, 
he  saw  that  their  "  lapse,"  their  "  trespass."  was  the 
gain  of  the  Gentiles,  and  "  the  reconciling  of  the  world ;" 
but  that  their  "  recoveiy "'  would  bo  "  as  life  from  the 
dead.'" 

According  to  Zephaniah,  the  first  groat  effect  of  the 
great  day  of  the  Lord  would  bo  this  :  "  Then  loill  I 
[Jehovah]  turn  to  the  nations  a  pure  lip,  that  they  may 
all  invoke  the  name  of  Jehovah,  and  serve  Him  with 
one  shoulder  "  (verse  9).  And  the  second  great  effect 
would  be,  that  the  nations  would  bring  hack  the  dis- 
persed ones  of  Israel,  "  as  a  meat  offering  "  unto  the 
Lord  (verse  10). 


'  Eom.  li.  11—15. 


ZEPHANIAH. 


a55 


Thus  the  pi-ophet  anticipates,  and  casts  into  poetic 
form,  the  very  conclusion  to  wliich  St.  Paul's  sublime 
argument  conducted  him,  when,  writing  to  the  Gentiles 
of  the  Jews,  ho  said :  "  For  as  ye  in  times  past  were 
disobedient  to  God,  yet  now,  by  their  disobedience  have 
obtained  mercy,  even  so  have  these  also  now  been  dis- 
oliodient,  '  that  by  the  mercy  shewn  to  you,  they  also 
may  obtain  mercy. ^ " ' 

If  St.  Paul's  statement  of  the  Divine  purposes  be  the 
clearer  of  the  two,  Zephaniah's  is  the  more  picturesque. 
Both  are  sure  that  "  God  hath  shut  up  all  men  to  dis- 
obedience," and  to  the  judgments  which  wait  on  dis- 
obedience, "  that  He  may  have  mercy  on  all  men  ;  "- 
but  Zephaniah  depicts  this  mercy  in  graphic  and  musical 
phrases  whose  charm  lingers  in  the  ear.  Had  he  simply 
affirmed  that  the  nations,  saved  by  judgment,  would 
rise  to  purity  of  speech  and  unity  of  service,  the  bare 
thoughts  would  have  been  beautiful  and  impressive. 
Even  these  thoughts,  however,  are  bettered  by  his  ex- 
pression of  tliem.  Instead  of  saying  that  men  will  be 
raised  to  a  purer  and  more  spiritual  use  of  language, 
ho  represents  Jehovah  as  saying,  "  I  will  turn  to  the 
nations  a  pure  lip,"  a  cleansed  and  sinless  lip,  in  order 
"  that "  in  place  of  defiling  themselves  with  invocations 
addressed  to  false  gods,  and  with  the  foul  strains  sung 
in  their  honour,  "they  may  all  invohe  the  name  of 
Jehovah."  Instead  of  saying  that  men  will  be  happily 
united  in  their  service  of  Heaven,  he  represents  Jehovah 
as  predicting  that,  when  men  speak  with  purified  lips, 
they  will  "  serve  Sim,  ivith  one  shoulder ;"  that  is,  they 
will  walk  with  even  shoulders  under  the  yoke  and 
burden  of  His  law,  walk  in  unity,  iu  a  happy  consent  of 
obedience,  each  bearing  his  full  share  of  the  load,  each 
keeping  step  with  the  rest,  and  thus  making  the  burden 
unburdensomo  to  any. 

Now  speech  is  the  flower,  as  deeds  are  the  fruit,  of 
the  soul.  Our  words  indicate  character,  as  the  blossom 
the  tree.  If  these  are  pure,  we  are  pure ;  if  these  are 
impure,  we  are  impure.  Hence  it  is  that  the  Seriptiu-es 
lay  so  heavy  a  stress  on  the  use  of  the  tongue,  teaching 
us  that  if  any  man  can  "  rule  this  unruly  pest,  so  that 
he  offend  not  in  word,  the  same  is  a  perfect  man  ;"^ 
assuring  and  forewarning  us,  that  "by  our  words  wo 
shall  be  justified,  and  hy  our  words  condemned."*  To 
have  a  pure  lip  is  to  have  a  pure  soul.  And  tlie  judg- 
ments of  God  come  on  men  to  make  them  pure — pure 
within,  that  they  may  be  pure  in  all  that  expresses  their 
inward  nature.  The  terrors  of  the  Lord  reach  their 
end  only  as  they  purge  the  lips  of  men,  and  constrain 
them  to  show  forth  His  praise  and  "  worthily  magnify 
His  holy  Name." 

Tlie  metaphor  of  the  "  one  shoulder "  is  even  more 
suggestive  than  that  of  the  "pure  lip."  The  image 
the  prophet  had  in  his  mind  was,  obviously,  that  of  a 
number  of  men  bearing  a  single  burden.  If  they  ari^ 
to  bear  it  without  strain  or  distress,  they  must  walk 
with  level  shoulders,  no  one  of  them  shirking  the  work 


'  Rom.  xi.  30,  31. 
3  James  iii.  8  and  1. 


-  Eom.  xi.  32. 
■<  Matt.  xii.  37. 


or  tilting  the  burden  on  to  his  neighbour,  each  of  them 
keeping  step  with  the  rest :  in  short,  they  must  stand 
and  move  as  if  they  had  only  one  shoulder  among  them. 
This  imago  the  prophet  transfers  to  the  spiritual  region 
of  human  experience.  The  law  of  God  is  a  burden. 
Men  can  only  bear  it  vrithout  strain  and  distress  of 
spirit  as  each  of  them  freely  assumes  it,  as  they  all 
he]-p  to  bear  it,  as  they  walk  in  a  wUling  and  happy  con- 
sent of  obedience.  It  is  for  this  end,  to  induce  a  free 
and  universal  obedience,  that  men  are  judged  and 
corrected  of  the  Lord. 

The  metaphor,  therefore,  suggests  three  main  thoughts. 
(1)  That  the  law  of  God  is  a  burden  which  men  are 
reluctant  to  assume.  And,  indeed,  to  our  self-wUl  it 
cannot  but  be  hard  to  submit  even  to  the  pm'cst  and 
tenderost  will,  even  to  that  Divine  WOl  which  moves  in 
the  light  of  an  eternal  wisdom,  at  the  impulse  of  a 
l^erfect  love.  Even  He  who  came  to  robe  that  WiU 
in  the  inviting  forms  of  grace,  and  to  give  us  rest, 
warns  us  that  the  rest  He  offers  us  is  the  rest  of 
obedience.^  And  this  obedience  He  admits  to  be  a  yoke 
to  our  unruly  passions,  a  burden  to  our  stubborn  necks. 
Even  when  we  delight  in  His  law  after  the  inward  man, 
we  find  another  law  iu  our  members  warring  ai  liust 
tlio  law  of  our  mind,  and  bringing  us  into  cai^tivity  to 
the  law  of  sin.''  And  how  shaU  we  find  "rest"  while 
this  fatal  strife  goes  on,  iu  which  ice  are  wounded 
whichever  combatant  wins,  our  flesh  smarting  if  the 
spirit  prevail,  om-  spirit  stuug  with  shame  should  the 
flesh  prevail  ?  We  can  only  enter  into  rest  as  we  get 
unity  and  freedom  into  our  Ufe,  as  we  willingly  submit 
to  a  higher  will  than  our  own.  And  (2)  we  can  only 
attain  this  freedom  as,  ivith  cheerful  and  unforced 
accord,  we  assume  the  burden  of  the  Divine  laiv,  and 
do  the  will  of  God.  Self-will  makes  us  hateful  to  our- 
selves and  to  om-  neighbours ;  it  incapacitates  for  social 
and  for  spiritual  life.  Ho  who  simply  follows  the 
vagrant  and  fluctuating  impulses  of  his  own  will  be- 
comes a  burden  to  himself  and  all  about  him.  TUl 
ho  voluntarily  curtails  his  own  liberty,  ho  has  no  true 
liberty.  He  cannot  make  his  will  law.  If  he  sets  him- 
self against  the  woi'ld,  he  will  soon  discover  that  the 
world  has  a  stronger  will  than  his.  We  must  take  up 
some  bui-den,  bear  some  yoke,  submit  to  some  law. 
All  wo  can  do  is  to  choose  the  law  to  which  we  will 
yield.  And  no  law  is  so  good,  no  yoke  so  easy,  no 
burden  so  light,  as  the  good  will  of  God.  It  is  this  will 
which  really  rules  in  human  affairs,  and  therefore  it  is 
wise  to  make  this  will  our  law.  Nor  is  it  enough  that 
we  yield  to  it.  We  must  willingly  and  cheerfully  adopt 
it,  if  we  are  to  be  free ;  we  must  love  it,  if  we  are  to 
walk  in  liberty.  Love  makes  all  burdens  light.  When 
we  love  God,  His  will  grows  beautiful  to  us,  preferable 
to  our  own.  Because  we  bear  the  yoke,  wc  find  rest ; 
because  wo  keep  the  commandment,  we  walk  at  large.' 
But  even  so  our  rest  is  not  perfect.  We  have  become 
a  law  unto  ourselves  by  our  cheerful  adojjfion  of  the 


5  Matt.  xi.  28-30. 


Ps.  cxix.  15. 


6  Eom.  vii.  21—23. 


356 


THE   BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


Divine  Will.  We  are  free  because  we  obey.  But 
because  we  are  free,  are  we  of  necessity  happy  ?  (3) 
The  happiness  of  obedience  depends  on  the  unanimity 
and  the  uni/versality  of  obedience.  It  is  only  when  all 
men  serve  God  with  one  shoulder  that  the  sense  of 
strain  and  distress  will  pass  from  us.  To  love  God  is 
to  lore  men.  Till  they  share  our  freedom,  it  cannot 
bo  an  altogether  happy  freedom.  And,  again,  till  they 
love  Him  and  do  His  will,  they  wiU  put  many  hiudi-ances 
and  temptations  in  our  way,  which  cannot  but  make 
o'jodionce  hard  and  painful  to  us.  Till  then,  the  burden 
must  press  unduly  on  our  shoulders,  because  they  do 
not  take  their  full  share  in  bearing  it;  because  some 
who  stand  under  it  are  morally  taller  than  wo  are,  and 
others  morally  shorter ;  because  many  do  not  keep  stop 
with  us.  Only  when  the  whole  world  stands  under  the 
Divine  burden  as  with  one  slioidder,  and  moves  as  with 
one  step,  will  '"  the  cross  we  bear,  bear  us."  Only  then 
will  our  freedom  be  a  happy  freedom,  and  God's  statutes 
bocome  our  songs.  And,  seeing  how  men  suffer  from 
the  sins  of  men,  and  nations  for  the  sins  of  nations, 
we  may  well  long  and  pray  for  the  time  wlien  all  men 
shall  speak  with  a  pure  lip,  and  serve  with  a  single 
shoulder ;  when  the  promise  shall  be  fulfilled  :  "  I  will 
give  them  one  heart  and  one  way,  that  they  may  fear 
Mo  for  ever,  for  the  good  of  them,  and  of  their  children 
after  them." ' 

One  form  in  which  the  redeemed  nations  wiU  serve 
Jehovah  will  bo  this  ;  they  \vill  bring  the  dispersed  and 
rejected  Israelites,  as  an  offering  to  the  Lord  who  has 
redeemed  them,  even  from  the  remotest  regions  to 
which  they  have  been  driven  by  the  storms  of  judg- 
ment, even  "from  beyond  the  rivers  of  Ethiopia,"  the 
Nile  and  the  Astaboras,  the  outside  limit  of  Hebrew 
geography.  In  this  promise  I  take  the  pi-ophet  to  refer 
to  that  recovery  of  the  Jewish  race  for  which  St.  Paul 
hoped  "  when  the  fulness  of  the  Gentiles  had  been 
brought  in."  These  dispersed  ones  are  to  be  brought 
back  by  the  nations,  and  laid  "  as  a  meat  offering  "  on 
the  altar  of  God.  Whether  the  prophet  consciously 
selected  the  symbol  of  '•thomeat  offering'"  because  of 
its  latent  suggestions,  it  is  impossible  to  say ;  but  cer- 
tainly no  symbol  could  be  more  approprLat«.  For  the 
meat  offering,  we  are  told,  "was  to  be  composed  of 
fine  flour  seasoned  with  salt,  and  mixed  with  oil  and 
frankincense,  but  without  leaven ;  and  it  was  generally 
accompanied  by  a  drink  offering  of  wine.  Its  meaning 
appears  to  be  exactly  expressed  in  the  words  of  David  : 
'  All  that  is  in  the  heaven  and  in  the  earth  is  Thine ; 
all  things  come  of  Thee,  ami  of  thine  own  have  ice  given 
Thee.'  It  recognised  the  sovereignty  of  the  Lord,  and 
His  bounty  in  giving  them  [the  Jews]  all  earthly  bless- 
ings, by  dedicating  to  Him  the  best  of  His  gifts :  the 
flour,  as  the  main  support  of  life ;  oil,  as  the  symbol  of 
richness;  and  wine,  as  the  symbol  of  vigour  and  re- 
freshment. All  those  were  unleavened,  and  seasoned 
with  salt,  in  order  to  show  their  purity,  and  were 
hallowed  by  the  frankincense  for  God's  special  service. 


>  Jer. 


lii.  39. 


It  will  bo  seen  that  this  meaning  involves  neither  of 
the  main  ideas  of  sacrifice — the  atonement  for  sin  and 
the  self-dedication  to  God.  It  takes  them  for  granted, 
and  is  based  upon  them."  So,  when  the  nations  bring 
back  the  "  dispersed  ones  "  to  God,  they  also  will  take 
the  atonement  for  sin  and  self-dedication  to  His  service 
for  granted ;  these,  for  them,  will  be  things  of  the  past. 
And  now,  in  grateful  acknowledgment  of  His  grace  and 
bounty,  they  bring  to  Him  "  the  best  of  His  gifts,"  viz., 
the  race  by  which  salvation  came  to  men,  the  race  which 
has  boon  "'  the  main  support  of  the  life  "  of  the  world, 
whose  very  loss  was  the  riches  of  the  Gentiles,  through 
whom  men  received  the  wine  of  the  Kingdom;  the  race 
which,  from  tho  beginning,  God  has  "  hallowed  "  for  His 
"  special  service,"  and  which,  at  last,  He  has  made  pure. 
And  as  they  bring  this  "  meat  offering  "  to  His  altar, 
they  too  will  sing,  "  All  things  come  of  Thee,  and  of 
thine  own  have  we  given  Thee." 

In  verses  II  to  13,  the  prophet  depicts  the  happy 
estate  of  the  restored  Israel,  whieli,  now  that  it  is 
restored,  sits  at  the  centre  of  a  regenerated  world. 
And  surely  it  denotes  a  singularly  complete  and  con- 
firmed recovery  to  holiness,  that  God  should  be  able 
to  speak  to  them  words  so  comfortable  as  these :  "  In 
that  day  thou  shalt  not  be  ashamed  of  all  thy  doings  in 
which  thou  hast  transgressed  against  me;"  for  shame 
for  sin  endures  long  after  sin  itself  has  been  renounced 
and  forgiven.  He  who  could  say,  "  For  me  to  live  is 
Christ,"  to  the  very  last  broke  into  the  most  passionate 
confessions  of  guUt,  and  would  have  it  that  he  was  "  the 
chief  of  sinners."  That  tho  redeemed  of  Israel  should 
have  overgot  the  shame  of  their  former  transgressions, 
implies  something  more  than  that  they  had  ceased  to 
repeat  them,  or  that  God  had  forgiven  them  ;  it  implies 
an  utter  change  of  character — such  a  death  to  sin,  and  a 
new  life  so  halo  and  perfect,  as  we  cannot  hope  to  see 
\mtil  the  Son  of  Man  shall  once  moro  dwell  on  tho 
earth. 

Does  not  tho  next  promise — "  I  will  remove  from  thy 
midst  them  that  rejoice  in  thy  pride,  and  thou  shalt  no 
more  pride  thyself  in  my  holy  mountain," — point  to  the 
same  conclusion,  to  the  samo  happy  but  remote  period  ? 
If  pride  be  "  the  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds,"  is  not 
spiritual  pride  the  last  infirmity  of  religious  minds  ? 
When  the  Jew  shall  no  longer  boast  himself  in  Jerusalem 
and  the  Temple ;  when  there  shall  not  be  a  single  secta- 
rian left  to  pride  himself  in  his  exclusive  possession  of 
some  spiritual  gift,  or  on  his  singular  fidelity  to  some 
neglected  truth ;  when  every  man  shall  hold  all  he  has 
in  trust  for  his  brethren,  call  nothing  his  own,  and  value 
all  gifts  in  proportion  as  they  are  common  to  aU  ;  when 
this  catholic  charity  is  the  animating  all-pervading 
spirit  of  tho  Church  of  God,  wiU  the  Millennium  be  far 
off  ?  or  heaven  itself  ? 

Is  it  not  singular,  too,  that  these  people,  so  free  from 
sin  that  they  have  ceased  to  be  ashamed  of  it,  of  so  catholic 
a  spirit  that  they  are  pure  from  all  taint  of  spiritual 
pride,  should  be  still  further  characterised  as  "  a  humble 
and  poor  people,"  i.e.,  men  who  are  broken  dovm  into 
ubtor  poverty  of  spirit  by  their  eouscious  impotence  for 


ZEPHANIAH. 


357 


aught  that  is  good  P  It  seems  singular,  but  is  not  so 
singular  as  it  seems ;  for  it  is  one  of  the  "  secrets,"  one 
of  the  common  experiences,  of  the  spiritual  life,  that, 
as  men  grow  good,  they  feel  that  in  themselves  there  is 
nothing  good,  that  only  as  God  dwells  in  them  can  they 
do  His  wiU ;  and  lienee,  humble  and  poor,  utterly  dis- 
trusting themselves,  "  they  trust  in  the  name  of  Jehovah." 

As  thi  natui-al  result  of  their  trust  in  Him,  "  they  do 
no  wrong  ;  "  for,  as  we  are  told  in  verso  5,  "  He  doeth  no 
wrong ; "  nor  can  they,  to  whom  He  has  turned  a  pure 
lip,  "  speak  lies"  or  carry  "  a  tongue  of  deceit  in  their 
mouths."  This,  the  promise  of  verse  13,  may  sound 
like  an  anti-climax.  When  we  have  heard  of  a  race 
from  which  God  has  taken  away  the  very  shame  of  past 
sins  as  well  as  the  need  for  it,  a  race  whicli  Ho  has 
purified  from  the  last  infirmity  of  the  devout,  and  gifted 
with  that  poverty  of  spirit  to  which  appertains  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,  we  hardly  expect  to  hear  of  thom 
that  they  neither  speak  lies  nor  do  wrong.  What  have 
they  to  do  with  such  plain  homespun  virtues  as  these  P 
are  they  not  leagues  beyond  them  ?  No,  nor  ever  will 
be.  Only  as  wo  yield  to  the  common  error  which  places 
religion  above  morality,  shall  we  suspect  the  prophet 
of  a  descent  from  a  higher  to  a  lower  plane  of  thought. 
"  Religion  is  a  mean  ;  morality  the  end."  God  reveals 
Himself  to  us  that  we  may  bo  like  Him ;  i.e.,  good. 
Men  are  saved  precisely  for  this— that  they  may  no 
longer  speak  lies  and  do  wrong.  Instead  of  sinking  in 
his  flight,  therefore,  the  inspired  poet  rises  to  a  true 
climax  when  ho  passes  from  spiritual  graces  to  plain 
moral  virtues,  and  holds  out,  as  our  brightest  hope,  the 
prospect  of  a  time  when  all  men  shall  speak  only  that 
whicli  is  true,  and  do  only  that  which  is  right. 

Of  those  who  have  attained  to  this  high  mark  of 
virtue  he  might  well  say,  "  They  shall  feed  and  rest," 
like — so  the  Hebrew  words  imply — a  flock  under  the 
care  of  its  shepherd,  "  and  none  shall  make  them,  afraid." 
For  what  want  can  they  know,  what  evil  need  they 
fear,  wlio  speak  the  truth  and  do  the  right  P  What,  or 
who,  can  harm  those  who  f  oUow  that  which  is  good  with 
a  single  heart  P  They  are  beyond  harm,  beyond  fear. 
They  "  feed,"  as  in  gi'een  pastures,  and  "  rest,"  "  in  a 
good  fold ;  "  for  "  I  will  feed  my  flock,  and  I  wiU  cause 
them  to  lie  down,  saith  tho  Lord  God ; "  '  and  when  God 
Himself  is  the  Shepherd,  must  not  the  sheep  bo  safe  P 

While  he  thus  depicts  the  happy  estate  of  the  re- 
stored Zion.  which  he  throughout  regards  as  the  centre 
and  throne  of  a  redeemed  world,  Zephaniah  breaks  into 
a  rapture,  a  prophetic  ecstasy  (verses  14 — 17).  Ad- 
dressing himself  to  the  impersonated  Israel,  ho  piles — 
I  had  almost  said  huddles — word  on  word,  epithet  on 
epithet,  image  on  image,  like  ono  in  a  transport  beyond 
the  power  of  language  to  express.  Using  the  fond 
tender  epithets,  "  O  daughter  Zion,"  "  O  daughter 
Jerusalem,"  the  Oriental  warmth  of  which  makes  our 
"  Britannia  "  sound  very  cold  and  thin,  he  calls  on  her 
to  "  rejoice"  to  " shout "  for  joy,  to  "  he  glad,  and 
exult"  vrith  all  her  heart.     And,  of  course,  ho  rings  the 

1  Ezok.  XXXV.  15. 


changes  on  this  peal  of  words  in  order  to  give  vent  to 
tho  passion  and  tumult  of  his  joy. 

Wliat  does  he  see,  that  ho  should  be  thns  profoundly 
moved  ?  He  sees  God  ;  and  for  tho  moment  he  is  what 
Novalis  calls  "a  God-intoxicated  man" — a  man  filled, 
not  with  wine,  but  with  the  Spii'it.  He  sees  God 
"  remo^ang  the  judgments"  and  "clearing  away  the 
enemies "  of  the  New  Jerusalem,  preparing  it  for  the 
habitation  of  His  redeemed,  sweeping  out  every  trace 
of  disorder,  whatsoever  defileth  or  loveth  a  lie,  shedding 
light  through  tho  windows  that  have  so  long  been 
darkened  with  cloud  and  storm.  Tho  city  !Uid  Templo 
being  restored  and  cleansed,  he  sees  Jehovah,  the  King 
of  Israel,  once  more  seated  on  the  throne,  revealiug 
Himself  no  longer  as  "  a  fire  involved  in  a  cloud,"  as  a 
judicial  purifying  energy  wrapped  in  mystery  and 
terror,  but  as  a  gracious  familiar  Presence,  redeeming 
men  from  all  evil,  infusing  into  them  a  saving  health, 
rejoicing  over  them  with  sacred  rapture.  As  he  gazes 
into  this  bright  future,  the  prophet  discerns  that  God 
is  so  manifestly  and  graciously  in  the  midst  of  His 
people  that  tho  nations  who  have  lirought  back  His  dis- 
persed ones  behold  His  presence  from  afar,  and  cry  : 

"  Fear  not,  O  Zion  !     Let  not  thy  bands  drop  down  ! 
Jelaovab,  thy  God,  is  in  thy  midst, 

The  Mighty  One  who  saves. 

Se  rejoiceth  over  thee  with  rapture  : 

He  is  silent  in  His  love ; 

He  exulteth  over  thee  with  cries  of  joy." 

There  are  no  bolder  words  in  Scripture,  and  few  that 
are  more  sublime  in  their  simplicity.  Not  only  does 
the  prophet,  with  the  fearless  audacity  of  perfect  trust, 
attribute  to  God  Himself  the  raptm-e  under  which  his 
own  heart  reels  and  faints ;  not  only  is  he  sure  that  all 
human  love  is  but  a  pale  reflection  of  the  love  of  God : 
he  even  ventures  to  take  two  of  the  commonest  forms 
in  which  human  love  expresses  itseK  when  it  mounts 
towards  ecstasy,  and  to  transfer  those  to  the  Almighty. 
As  man  in  the  rapture  of  his  passion  is  at  times  dumb, 
finding  no  words  that  will  even  shadow  forth  his  emo- 
tion, and  at  other  times  vents  his  unwordable  rapture  in 
vague  inarticulate  sounds  and  cries  ;  so  Zephaniah  con- 
ceives of  God  as  kindling  into  a  rapture  of  love  over  His 
redeemed,  which  can  find  no  utterance — "  He  is  silent 
in  his  love,"  or  which  can  only  express  itself  in  vague 
unsyllabled  outcries :  "  He  exulteth  over  thee  with  cries 
of  joy."  The  Eternal  Lover  of  men,  whom  the  theolo- 
gians— not  altogether  untruly,  though  very  insufficiently 
— teach  us  to  conceive  as  an  Infinite  Essence,  without 
parts,  without  passion,  without  emotion,  Zephaniah 
portrays  as  exulting  over  men  with  an  ecstasy  liko 
that  of  the  bridegroom  rejoicing  in  tho  beauty  and  ten- 
derness of  his  bride  :  even  as  the  Lord  Jesus  portrays 
Him  as  like  a  father  who  runs  to  meet  his  returning 
son  while  yet  he  is  a  great  way  off,  and  falls  on  his  neck, 
and  kisses  him.  And  of  these  two  methods  of  rcjirc- 
sonfiug  the  Divine  Nature  in  its  relation  to  humanily, 
we  may  be  sure  that  the  prophetic  is  as  much  more 
true,  as  it  is  more  potent,  than  the  theological. 

Viewed  simply  as  a  work  of  art,  perhaps  tho  poem 
of  Zephaniah  should  have  closed  with  verse  17,  since 


358 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


here  it  rises  to  its  highest  point,  soars  iuto  its  finest  aud 
boklest  strain.  But,  like  all  the  Hebrew  poets,  Zepha- 
niah  cared  eveii  more  for  truth  aud  completeness  than 
for  art.  And  as  he  forecasts  that  first  return  from  exde, 
the  return  of  the  Jews  from  Babylon,  in  which  his 
words  would  liavo  a  first  but  partial  fulfilment,  he  sees 
that,  while  the  nation  returns,  many  of  the  Hebrews, 
scattered  and  bound  in  distant  lands,  will  mourn  tJieir 
exclusion  from  the  Temple  aud  from  the  joy  of  recovered 
freedom  and  worship.  Aud  before  he  closes,  he  must 
say  a  word  of  comfort  to  these  pensive  souls,  "  the 
tribes  of  the  Dispersion."  Nay,  even  that  first  f  ulfU- 
meut  was  distant.  Before  it  came  to  pass,  the  whole 
nation  was  to  be  scattered  among  the  heathen  by  the 
judgments  of  God.  And  therefore,  in  order  that,  when 
they  were  pining  in  bondage  and  misery,  they  might 
have  a  promise  to  sustain  their  faith  and  hope,  the 
prophet  concludes  his  poem  with  an  assurance  that 
all  who  are  dispersed,  aU  who  are  "  bm-dened  with 
reproach,"  shaU  be  gathered  and  saved  by  God  (verses 
18 — 20).  As  many  as  seek  Him  shall  find  Him.  As 
many  as  "  mourn  "  because,  banished  in  alien  lands, 
they  cannot  share  the  joy  of  the  festal  meetings  and 
come  before  the  Lord  in  his  House,  shall  taste  of  his 
mercy,  since  "  ihey  are  of  tliee,"  i.e.,  of  the  faithful 
seeking  Israel.  No  matter  how  infirm  they  may  be,  how 
much  a  mark  of  scorn,  how  tied  and  bound,  Jehovah 
will  "  deal  with  all  their  oppressors,  and  will  save  the 
liinjnng,  and  gather  together  the  dispersed,  "  and  make 
those  who  are  now  "  burdened  with  reproach,"  "  a 
praise  and  a  name  in  every  land  which  now  witnesses 
their  shame."  The  promise  is  repeated  in  verse  20,  "  I 
will  make  yon  a  name  and  a  praise  among  all  the 
nations  of  the  earth,"  to  show  that  it  is  a  sure  word  of 
promise,  to  give  it  emphasis,  that  it  may  cany  con^'ic- 
tion.  Once  more,  too,  the  prophet  falls  back  on  the 
pastoral  image  of  verse  13.  "  At  that  time  I  will  lead 
you,"  as  the  shepherd  goes  hefore  his  flock,  "  and  gather 
yon  in  due  season,"  as  the  shepherd  collects  his  flock  in 
the  fold  :  for  even  these  weak  and  helpless  ones,  who 
limp  and  are  hurdened  and  have  been  dispersed,  are  of 
the  flock  of  the  Lord,  and  will  experience  the  tender 
care  of  the  Great  Shepherd  and  Bishop  of  Souls. 

And  so,  with  this  scene  of  ;i\iiot  pastoral  felicity,  the 
poem  closes ;  and  Ze^jhanlah,  whose  earlier  words 
seemed  to  bespeak  a  veritable  "son  of  thunder," 
proves  himself  to  bo  a  true  "  son  of  consolation,"  oven 
as  the  judgment  he  was  sent  to  denounce  proves  to  be 
an  act  of  sovereign  and  Di\'ine  mercy.  Harsh  and 
severe  in  husk,  in  outward  seeming,  its  heart  is  "  made 
of  tenderness."  It  is  like  one  of  those  fairy  nuts  in 
which,  when  they  could  be  broken,  there  were  found 
lustrous  gems  of  price. 

There  is  one  question  wliieh  the  study  of  Zcphaniah, 
as  also  that  of  Joel,  or  indeed  almost  any  of  the 
prophets,  cannot  fail  to  suggest.  Like  their  fellows, 
both  Zephaniah  and  Joel  predict  a  judgment  which  is 
to  come  on  all  nations  as  well  as  on  the  nation  of  the 
Jews;  and,  beyond  the  judgment,  a  redemption  which 


is  to  embrace,  not  the  elect  people  only,  but  "  all  people 
that  on  earth  do  dwell."  Both  the  judgment  and  the 
redemption  are  described  iu  terms  so  largo,  that  we  feel 
and  are  sui'e  they  have  not  been  exhausted  by  any  past 
doom  or  any  past  salvation.  According  to  Joel,  "  all 
nations "  are  to  be  brought  down  into  the  Valley  of 
Doom,  and  the  Spirit  of  God  is  to  bo  poured  out  on 
"all  flesh."  According  to  Zephaniah,  the  Divine 
judgment  is  to  "sweep  everything,"  and  to  "cut  of£ 
man "  from  the  face  of  the  earth ;  and  the  Divine 
redemption  is  to  turn  to  the  nations  "  a  pure  lip,"  that 
they  may  "  all  "  serve  God  "  with  one  shoulder."  Aud 
as  we  read  predictions  so  large  in  their  scoijo,  we  cannot 
but  ask,  "  When  shall  these  things  be  ?  and  how  shall 
they  come  to  jmss  ?  " 

To  the  second  branch  of  that  question,  the  prophets 
give  an  answer  which  again  carries  our  thoughts  iuto 
the  future,  rather  than  into  the  jiast.  They  speak  of  a 
restored  Jerusalem,  indeed,  aud  of  an  advent  of  Je- 
hovah which  seem  to  point,  and  doubtless  did  point,  to 
the  return  of  the  Jews  from  the  Babylonian  Captivity, 
and  to  the  advent  of  the  Messiah.  But  even  of  these 
events  they  speak  in  terms  so  largo,  that  we  cannot 
suppose  them  to  have  been  exhaustively  fulfilled  as  yet, 
Joel,  for  example,  predicts  (chap.  iii.  17, 18 — 20) : — 

"  Aud  ye  shall  know  that  I,  Jehovah,  am  your  God, 
Dwelling  in  Zion,  my  holy  mountain : 
And  Jerusalem  shall  be  a  sanctuary  ; 
And  aliens  shall  pass  through  her  no  more: 

And  it  shall  come  to  pass  on  that  day. 

That  the  mountains  shall  drop  new  wine. 

And  tUo  hills  flow  with  milk, 

And  all  the  watercourses  of  Judah  shall  run  with  water ; 

And  a  fountain  shall  go  forth  from  the  house  of  Jehovah, 

And  water  the  Valley  of  Acacias. 

Jtidah  shall  abide  for  ever, 

Anii  Jerusalem  from  generation  to  generation.*' 

Zephaniah  sees  what  Joel  foresees,  and  cries  to  the 

restored  Jerusalem  (chap.  iii.  15 — 17) : — 

"The  King  of  Israel,  Jehovah,  is  in  the  midst  of  thee; 

Tliou  s/mU  see  evil  iio  more. 

In  that  day  will  men  say  to  Jerusalem, 

'  Fear  not,  O  Zion  !    Let  not  thy  hands  droi)  down  ! 

Jehovah,  thy  God,  is  in  thy  midst. 

The  Mighty  One  who  saves. 

He  rejoiceth  oyer  thee  with  rapture : 

He  is  silent  in  His  love ; 

He  exulteth  over  thee  with  erics  of  joy.'" 

Can  we  say,  can  we  suppose,  that  these  large  promises 
of  good  have  been  fulfilled  to  their  utmost  verge, 
whether  in  the  retui-n  from  the  Captivity  or  the 
advent  of  Messiah  ?  Even  when  the  Lord  Jesus  came 
to  His  own.  His  own  received  Him  not.  Instead  of  re- 
joicing over  Jerusalem  with  rapture.  He  wept  over  it; 
instead  of  bringing  the  house  of  Judah  an  eternal 
peace.  He  brought  them  a  sword.  So  far  from  carrying 
our  thoughts  to  the  past,  the  words  of  the  prophets 
project  them  into  the  future  ;  in  place  of  calhng  up  an 
image  of  the  Jerusalem  of  Herod  aud  the  Pharisees, 
they  rather  remind  us  of  that  "  new  Jerusalem  "  which 
St.  John  saw  "  coming  down  out  of  heaven  from  God, 
prepared  as  a  bride  adorned  for  her  husband,"  aud 
of  that  groat  Voice  which  he  heard  "  out  of  the  throne," 
proclaiming,  "  Behold,  the  tahernacle  of  God  is  with 


ZEPHANIAH. 


359 


men,  and  He  will  dwell  with  them,  and  thoy  shall  be  His 
people,  and  He  their  God  ;  and  God  shall  wipe  away 
every  tear  from  their  eyes ;  and  there  shall  he  no  more 
death,  neither  sorrow,  nor  crying,  nor  pain,  for  the 
former  things  are  jjassed  away."  When  St.  John's 
"  vision  "  is  translated  into  the  region  of  fact  and  human 
experience,  then,  but  not  till  then,  will  the  City  of  God 
" abide  for  ever,"  the  cynosure  and  sanctuary  of  all 
races,  and  men  "see  evil  no  more,"  because  Jehovah 
dwells  in  their  midst,  and  exults  over  them  in  the  raptui'o 
of  consummated  love. 

The  prediction  in  which  each  of  these  inspired  poems 
culminates,  will  receive  its  complete  fulfilment'  only 
when  all  things,  oven  the  heaven  and  the  earth,  are 
made  new.  But  have  there  been  absolutely  no  ful- 
filments of  it  iu  tho  past  ?  Assuredly  there-  have, 
although,  through  the  unfaithfulness  of  man,  these  ful- 
filments were  only  partial  and  imperfect.  Judgment 
fell  on  Israel  when  they  were  carried  away  captive  into 
strange  lands.  Judgment  fell  on  the  ancient  world 
when  their  captors  fell  beneath  the  pestilence  and  the 
sword.  There  was  a  Divine  redemption  when  God 
moved  Cyrus  to  restore  the  exiled  Jews  to  their  wasted 
land ;  Jehovah  did  return  and  dwell  among  His  people 
when  the  Temple  was  rebuilt,  and  its  services  were  re- 
sumed. And,  again,  there  was  a  Divine  judgment  and 
redemption  when  God  was  manifest  iu  the  flesh,  when, 
incarnate  in  Christ  Je.sus,  He  came  and  dwelt  among 
men.  Had  the  Jews  been  faithfid  io  their  high  calling 
on  cither  occasion,  the  redemption  might  have  become  a 
complete  redemption,  and  thij  prediction  of  their  seers 
might  have  risen  to  its  final  au<l  perfect  accomplish- 
ment. But,  though  they  were  unfaithful,  their  unfaith- 
fubjess  could  not  make  tho  piirposes  of  God  of  none 
effect,  although  it  might  postpone  its  fulfilment.  The 
complete  fulfilment,  the  universal  redemption,  is  but 
delayed,  not  renounced.  And  wo  of  to-day  are  looking 
forward  to  the  aiipcaring  of  our  great  God  and  Saviour, 
Jesus  Christ  the  Righteous,  who,  at  His  second  advent, 
will  perfect  His  work,  and  gather  all  nations  into  His 
service  and  love. 

If,  iu  form,  our  hope  differs  from  that  of  the  Hebrew 
prophets,  iu  substance  it  is  the  same.  Through  the 
grace  of  God,  and  the  interpreting  ministries  of  time, 
we  may  see  that  hope  more  clearly  than  they  did ;  but 
it  is  the  same  glorious  spectacle  on  which  we  bend  our 
eyes.  To  them,  it  would  seem,  the  future  glory  pre- 
sented itself  as  a  single  spot  or  hue  of  fight.  As  they 
gazed  into  the  future,  tho  Divine  events  which  were  to 
fulfil  and  transcend  their  hopes  stood,  so  to  speak, 
behind  each  other,  blending  their  separate  rays  into  a 
common  splendour.  The  redemption  from  the  bondage 
in  Babylon,  the  redemption  commenced  by  Christ  when 
He  came  in  great  humility,  and  the  redemption  to  be 
perfected  by  Him  when  He  shall  come  again  iu  the 
gloiy  of  the  Father,  to  repeat  in  power  tho  works  once 
wrought  in  meekness — all  these,  to  tho  prophet's  eye, 
merged  iu  one  great  light  of  hope,  which  made  the 
future  bright  with  promise.  At  times,  ho  saw  only 
that  there  would  bo  a  redemption  of  the  world.     At 


other  times,  he  saw  that  this  redemption  could  be 
wrought  only  as,  in  some  way  he  could  not  define, 
Jehovah  visited  men  in  judgment  and  in  grace.  At 
other  times,  the  undefined  advent  of  Jehovah  took 
definite  form,  and  the  prophet  saw  that  He  would  come 
in  tho  likenoss  of  human  flesh  ;  that  a  Man,  anointed 
above  1ms  fellows,  woTild  appear  to  save  tho  world.  At 
still  other  times,  ho  even  caught  glimpses  of  a  period 
of  sufllei'ing  which  must  precede  the  triumph  of  the  iu- 
earnato  God,  and  conceived  of  the  Divine  Man  as  "  the 
Man  of  Sorrows  and  the  Acquaintance  of  Grief."  But 
these  various  glimpses  and  conceptions  were  blended 
confusedly  in  his  mind.  "  No  prophecy "  that  he 
uttered  "was  of  a  private  interpretation,"  none  -was 
clear  even  to  the  seer  who  was  moved  to  utter  it.  •  Ho 
was  "  borne  along  by  tho  Holy  Spirit,"  as  the  ship  is 
borne  before  the  wind,  and  could  not  clearly  see  whither 
ho  was  bound,  even  though  he  was  being  carried  to  tho 
desired  haven.  These  holy  and  inspired  men  saw  a 
salvation  ;  they  knew  that,  at  some  time,  iu  some  form, 
God  would  appear  to  redeem  the  world.  But,  as  St. 
Peter  reminds  us,'  "  Concerning  this  salvation,"  those 
who  "  prophesied  of  tho  grace  "  that  has  come  on  us, 
"  difigently  enquired  and  diligently  oxplox-ed,"  searching 
to  wh.at  person  or  to  what  season  "  the  SxJU'it  of 
Christ  which  was  in  them  did  point,  when  it  testified 
beforehand  tho  sufferings  of  Christ,  and  the  glories 
that  should  follow  them."  And  unto  them  "  it  was  re- 
vealed, that  not  unto  themselves,"  but  unto  us,  "  they 
did  minister  the  things  which  have  now  been  reported 
unto  us  by  them  who  have  preached  the  Gospel."  With 
all  their  diligence  in  searching  and  exploring  the  words 
they  wore  given  to  utter,  all  the  Hebrew  prophets 
learned  was,  that  they  were  darkly  uttering  truths  which 
would  only  become  clear  to  the  generations  that  came 
after  them ;  that  their  prophecies  were  parables  which 
only  "  time,  and  He  that  shapes  it  to  a  perfect  end," 
would  interpret.  They  appear,  indeed,  to  have  obscurely 
felt  that  they  were  gazing  on  many  events,  not  on  one — 
events  divided  from  each  other  perchance  by  broad 
.spaces  of  time;  but  they  could  not  distingmsh  event 
from  event,  epoch  from  epoch,  the  earfier  from  tho 
later  judgments,  the  earlier  from  the  final  redemption. 
AU  the  seasons  and  events  ran  up  into  a  single  point 
of  light,  which  they  could  not  break  into  its  separate 
rays. 

A  singer  wiU  sometimes  sit  down  to  an  instniment, 
and  strike  a  few  mysterious  chords,  or  pick  out  a  few 
bars  of  melody,  which  excite  only  vague  thoughts  and 
vaguer  emotions  within  us ;  but,  soon,  the  rich  sweet 
voice  steals  in,  uttering  articulate  words,  and  then  oul 
vague  thought  and  emotion  take  definite  forms,  and  we 
comprehend  what  it  was  that  touched  and  moved  us  in 
the  prelude.  Not  till  God  uttered  his  voice  in  Christ 
could  men  understand  the  preluding  notes  which  the 
prophets  were  constrained  to  sound,  or  put  clear,  de- 
finite, authentic  meaning  into  these  yearning  mysterious 
tones.     But  now,  now  that  we  have  heard  the  voice  of 

1  Pet.  i.  10—12. 


360 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


tho  Sou  of  Man,  we  may  see,  at  least  in  part,  that  "  the 
spirit  of  the  prophets  is  the  testimony  of  Jesus  ;  "  and 
that  all  past  fulfilments  of  their  promise  of  salvation 
are  as  nothing  to  the  fulfilment  which  is  to  come  when, 
in  the  Regeneration,  He  shall  both  judge  and  save  the 
world. 

And  here  we  come  on  the  explanation  of  a  fact  which 
may  have  often  perplexed  us,  viz.,  that  the  prophets  of 
the  Old  Testament,  in  their  clearest  Messianic  predic- 
tions, even  when  they  have  some  glimpses  of  the  death 
of  the  Christ,  and  see  that  Ho  will  be  despised  and 
rejected  of  men,  nevertheless  speak  of  His  advent  as 
fulfilling  the  world's  hope,  and  ushering  in  the  golden 
age  of  peace  and  good-will.  For  they  foresaw  His  work 
as  a  whole ;  they  could  not  detach  tho  beginning  from 
the  end,  the  first  from  the  second  advent :  they  did 
not — from  their  point  of  view  they  could  not — discern 
the  immense  interval  which  would  elapse  between  the 


sorrowful  opening  and   the   triumphant   close   of  His 
ministry  of  reconciliation. 

Here,  too,  we  may  learn  how  it  was  that  even  the 
Apostles  of  the  New  Testament,  at  least  for  a  time,  and 
till  time  had  made  them  wiser,  expected  the  immediate 
return  of  their  Lord.  They  had  learned  from  the 
Hebrew  prophets  to  look  on  His  work  as  a  whole,  as 
though  it  were  to  be  accomplished  in  a  single  age,  in- 
stead of  extending  over  all  ages.  And  hence  it  was 
that,  tUl  His  Spirit  opened  their  eyes  and  gave  them 
"  understanding  in  the  Scriptures,"  they  could  not  see 
how  patiently  He  would  work  on,  not  taking  the  world 
by  surprise,  nor  forcing  conviction  by  irresistible  con- 
straints, but  winning  the  world  to  Himself  man  by 
man,  and  race  by  rac«,  age  after  age ;  until,  when  the 
centuries  led  in  the  "acceptable  year  of  the  Lord,"  He 
could  come  again,  not  now  to  be  rejected,  but  to  be 
welcomed  and  acclaimed  by  a  regenerated  world. 


ANIMALS   OF   THE   BIBLE. 

BY    THE    KEV.    W.    HOUGHTON,    M.A.,    P.L.S.,    RECTOR    OF    PEESTON,    SALOP. 


PERCHING  BIKDS. 

F  the  Insessores,  or  perching  birds,  the 
following  only  are  mentioned  in  our 
English  Bible  ;  the  raven,  swallow,  spar- 
row, lapwing,  and  cuckoo ;  the  first  tliree 
are  correct  renderings  of  the  Hebrew  words.  The  lapwing 
(A.  V.)  we  shall  show  to  be  the  hoopoe ;  the  cuckoo 
(A.  V.)  is  probably  some  species  of  sea-gull.  Palestine 
abounds  in  passerine  bu'ds.  Dr.  Tristram  has  enume- 
rated 144  species  (exclusive  of  the  crow  family,  and 
taking  no  account  of  the  many  so-called  fissirostral 
birds,  as  kingfishers,  rollers,  swifts,  cuckoos,  hoopoe, 
and  others)  as  collected  iu  the  Holy  Land.  The 
Hebrew  word  Hsippor  is  ononiatopcetic  and  denotes 
any  "chirping"  or  "singing"  bird;  it  is  generally 
translated  "  bird,"  fowl,''  and  in  two  passages  "  sparrow." 
Hence  tho  term  is  a  very  comprehensive  one,  and  may 
be  taken  to  represent  finches,  larks,  warblers,  &c., 
which  are  very  numerous  in  P^ilcstine,  though  of 
course  not  found  all  together  or  in  the  same  district. 
"  Owing  to  the  great  varieties  in  elevation,  temperature, 
and  degree  of  moisture  in  different  parts  of  Palestine, 
there  is  far  more  difference  between  the  ornithology  of 
one  ilistrict  and  another  than  between  that  of  the  South 
of  England  and  the  North  of  Scotland,  Thus,  the  larks, 
pipits,  iuid  chats  abound  in  the  hill  country  and  wilder- 
ness of  Judaea.  On  the  maritime  plains  and  in  the 
north  of  the  countiy  we  find  chiefly  the  denizens  of  our 
own  fields  and  wootUand  glades,  while  in  the  Jordan 
valley  we  have  an  entirely  new  group  of  birds,  more 
like  those  of  India  or  Abyssinia,  the  bulbul,  bush- 
babbler  {Crateropus  chalybeus),  orange-winged  grackle 
(Amydrus  Tristramii),  and  especially  the  beautiful 
little  sun-bird  {Ncctarina  o.-feoe),  a  tiny  little  creature 
of  gorgeous  plumage,  rivalling  the  humming-birds  of 


I  America  in  the  metallic  lustre  of  its  feathers,  greea 
!  and  purple,  with  brilliant  red  and  orange  plumes  under 
'  its  .shoulders."     {Nat.  Hist.  Bib.,  p.  204.) 

Distinct  mention  is  made  in  the  Bible  of  the  raven, 
the  "black  bird,"  as  the  Hebrew  word  'oreb  means. 
The  term  is  doubtless  generic,  and  includes  all  the 
members  of  the  crow  family  {Corvidre)  found  in  Pales- 
tine, viz.,  besides  the  common  raven  {Corvus  corax), 
the  brown-necked  raven  (C  ?M)i6ri»iws),  the  square-tailed 
raven  (C.  affinis),  the  hooded  crow  (C  comix),  the 
rook  (C.  agricolce),  the  jackdaw  (C.  monedula  and  G. 
collaris),  and  the  Alpine  chough  (Pyrrhocoraxalpinus), 
which  is  found  on  Lebanon  and  Hermon.  Our  English 
red-legged  chough  {Pyrrhocorax  graculus)  and  carrion 
crow  (Corvus  corone)  do  not  appear  to  have  been  noticed 
in  Palestine.  In  the  account  of  the  Deluge  a  i-aven 
was  sent  out  by  Noah  from  the  ark  at  the  end  of  forty 
days,  "  which  went  forth  to  and  fro  until  the  waters 
were  dried  up  from  ofi  the  earth"  (Gen.  viii.  7).  In 
the  Chaldean  story  of  the  Deluge,  translated  by  Mr.  G. 
Smith,  this  bnd  also  appears.  Sisit,  like  the  patriarch 
of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  sends  forth  fir.st  a  dove,  then 
a  swallow,  then  a  raven  from  his  ship.  The  follo\viug 
is  the  interesting  passage  : — 

139  On  the  seventh  day,  in  the  course  of  it 

140  I  sent  forth  a  dove,  and  it  left.    The  dove  went  and  searched 
and 

141  A  resting-place  it  did  not  find,  and  it  returned. 

142  I  sent  forth  a  swallow,  and  it  left.  The  swallow  weut  and 
searched,  and 

143  A  resting-place  it  did  not  find,  and  it  returned. 

144  I  sent  forth  a  raven,  and  it  left. 

14.5  The  raven  went,  and  the  corpses  on  the  waters  it  saw,  and 
146  It  did  eat,  it  swam  and  wandered  away,  a-nd  did  not  return. 
Transact.  Soc.  Bill.  Archcsol.,  vol.  ii.,  pt.  1,  p.  222. 

Tlie  Assyiian  word  for  a  "  raven  "  is  a-ra-bu,  or  a-ri- 
lu,  sometimes  a-ri-bu  klia-mur,  i.e.,  "  the  black  raven  " 


ANIMALS    OF   THE    BIBLE. 


;i61 


(see  Bawlinson's  W.  A.  I.,  vol.  ii.,  pi.  37,  44a  and  36). 
It  is  only  another  form  of  the  Hebrew  'oreh.  The 
raven  and  other  birds  "  after  its  kind"  were  to  bo  held 
in  abomination  by  the  Israelites  (Lev.  xi.  15).  This 
bird's  carnivorous  habits,  and  its  readiness  to  pick  out 
the  eyes,  are  mentioned  in  Prov.  xxx.  17  :  "  The  eye  that 
mocketh  at  his  father,  and  despiseth  to  obey  his  mother, 
the  ravens  of  the  vaUey  [Heb.  "ravine"'  or  "gorge"] 
shall  pick  it  out."  On  this  passage  Dr.  Tristram 
remarks,  "  The  expression  '  the  ravens  of  the  ravine ' 
aptly  describes  its  favourite  resorts  ;  for  far  as  it  roams 
for  food  during  the  day,  its  home  is  generally  in 
some  of  the  deep  rocky  glens  or  gorges  mth  which 
Palestine  abounds,  and  where  it  rears  its  young  in 
security."  The  raven  is  one  of  the  birds  which,  to- 
gether with  owls  and  bitterns,  the  prophet  introduces 


twice  a  day  to  supply  the  prophet,  thus  giving  them- 
selves needless  trouble,  and  incurring  the  chance  of 
detection,  when  they  might  easily  have  left  him  a 
supply  for  several  days  "  (Speaker's  Com/mentary,  ii.,  p. 
.586).  The  general  opinion  is  in  favour  of  the  simple 
statement  as  recorded  in  our  own  version,  and  there 
seems  no  alternative  but  either  to  accept  it  as  it  stands 
or  to  reject  it  altogether. 

The  strange  stories  told  by  Jewish  and  Arabian 
writers  of  the  raven's  cruelty  to  its  young,  in  driving 
them  out  of  their  nests  before  they  are  quite  able  to 
provide  for  themselves,  are  entirely  without  foundation, 
as  no  bu-d  is  more  careful  of  its  young  ones  than  the 
raven.  To  its  habit  of  flying  restlessly  about  iu 
search  of  food  to  satisfy  its  own  appetite,  and  that  of 
its  young  ones,  may  perhaps  bo  traced  the  reason  for 


EATEN  (Corvus  corax). 


into  his  grand  pictm'e  of  the  desolation  of  the  land  of 
Idumea  (Isa.  xxxiv.  11).  Ravens  are  in  a  few  places 
singled  out  as  instances  of  God's  protecting  goodness 
to  the  creatures  He  has  made.  "  Who  provideth  for  the 
raven  his  food  ?  when  his  young  ones  cry  unto  God,  they 
wander  "  (Job  xxxviii.  41).  See  also  Ps.  cxlvii.  9  ;  Liie 
xii.  24.  The  glossy  blackness  of  the  raven's  plumage 
is  referred  to  in  the  Canticles  (chap.  v.  11)  :  "  His 
locks  are  bushy,  and  black  as  a  raven." 

The  passage  in  1  Kings  xvii.,  relating  to  ravens 
bringing  bread  and  flesh  to  the  prophet  Elijah  at  the 
brook  Cherith,  lias  been  variously  explained,  it  being 
considered  doubtful  by  some  writers  as  to  the  meaning 
of  the  word  translated  "  ravens."  Accordingly,  omit- 
ting the  vowel  points,  the  Hebrew  word  may  signify 
"  Arabians,' '  or,  retaining  the  points,  it  may  be  rendered 
"merchants,"  and  in  this  sense  Jerome  and  the  Arabic 
version  understood  it.  But  most  of  the  old  versions 
agree  with  our  version.  Canon  Rawlinson  aptly 
remarks,  "  The  chief  objection  to  Jerome's  explanation 
is  the  improbability  that  men  would  come  regidarly 


its  being  selected  by  the  sacred  writers  as  an  especial 
object  of  God's  protecting  care.  Talmudical  wi'iters 
record  strange  stories  about  the  raven,  as  that  it  was 
originally  white,  and  that  it  was  turned  black  for  its 
deceitful  conduct.  As  an  unclean  bird  it  was  not 
allowed  to  perch  on  the  Temple,  various  devices  being 
adopted  to  scare  it  away.  "  Of  all  the  bii-ds  of  Jeru- 
salem," says  Dr.  Tristram,  "the  raven  tribe  is  the  most 
characteristic  and  conspicuous,  though  the  larger  species 
is  quite  outnumbered  by  its  small  companion  (Corvas 
umbrimts).  They  are  present  everywhere  to  eye  and 
ear,  and  the  odours  that  float  about  remind  us  of  their 
use.  The  discordant  jabber  of  their  evening  sittings 
round  the  Temple  area  is  deafening.  The  caw  of  the 
rook  and  the  chatter  of  the  jackdaw  unite  in  attempting 
to  drown  the  hoarse  croak  of  the  old  raven,  but  clear 
above  the  tumult  rings  out  the  more  musical  call-note 
of  the  lesser  species.  We  used  to  watch  this  great 
colony,  as,  every  morning  at  daybreak,  they  passed  in 
long  lines  over  our  tents  to  the  northw.ixd,  the  rooks  in 
solid  phalanx  leading  the  way,  and  the  ravens  in  loose 


362 


TKE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


order  brinfino-  up  the  rear  far  out  of  shot.  Before 
retirino-  for  the  night,  popiilar  assemblies  of  the  most 
uproarious  character  were  held  in  the  trees  of  Mouut 
Olivet  and  the  Kecbon,  and  not  till  after  sunset  did  they 
withdraw  in  silence,  mingled  indiscrimiuately,  to  their 
roosting-places  in  the  sanctuary  "  (pp.  200,  201).  With 
our  English  word  "  raven  "  may  be  compared  the  Latiu 
corvus,  the  Greek  Kipa^.  German  rabe,  all  of  which 
come  from  the  Sanskrit  ka-rava,  "  the  bird  which  makes 
a  discordant  sound."  Compare  also  hdka,  "a  crow," 
probably  from  kai  (Sks.),  onomatopcetic  "to  caw." 

SPABEOW. 

It 'has  abeady  been  stated  that  the  Hebrew  word 
tsippor  is  a  general  one  to  denote  any  kind  of  passerme 
bird.  It  is  always  translated  "  bii-d"  or  "  fowl "  in  our 
version,  except  in  two  passages  iu  the  Psalms,  where  it 
is  rendered  "  sparrow."  The  Psalmist  complains,  "  I 
have  watched"  (sorrow  having  driven  away  sleep), 
"  and  am  as  a  sparrow  alone  upon  the  house-top " 
(cii.  7).  Again,  in  Ps.  Ixxxiv.  3,  "The  sparrow  hath 
foimd  an  house,  and  the  swallow  a  nest  for  herself, 
where  she  may  ky  her  young,  even  thiae  altars,  O  Lord 
of  hosts,  my  King  and  my  God."  In  the  New  Testa- 
ment the  Greek  word  is  arpovdlov :  "  Aro  not  two 
spai-rows  sold  for  a  farthuig  ?  "  (Matt.  x.  29).  See  also 
Luke  xii.  6.  Hence  wo  infer  that  these  small  birds 
were  commonly  sold  and  used  as  food  in  ancient  times 
as  they  are  at  the  present  day.  The  lonely  spaii'ow 
upon  the  house-top  has  been  referred  to  the  blue  thrush 
of  Southern  Europe  {Petrocincla  cyanea),  common  in 
Palestine.  Unlike  our  domestic  sparrow,  which  is  gre- 
garious and  fond  of  associating  in  flocks,  it  is  a  lonely 
bird,  often  sitting  on  the  ridge  of  a  roof,  where  it  utters 
at  intervals  a  plaintive  monotonous  note. 

The  common  house-spari-ow  {Passer  domesticus)  is 
found  in  Palestine  only  in  towns  on  the  coast ;  the 
Passer  cisalpina,  a  closely  allied  species,  occurs  plenti- 
fully inland ;  but  the  most  numerous  species  is  the  P. 
salicarms,  or  Spanish  sparrow,  which  Tristram  saw  in 
coimtless  myriads  in  the  thorn  trees  of  the  Jordan 
valley.  Tlie  tree  sparrow  (P.  montanus)  may  also  be 
seen  abundantly  on  Mount  Olivet,  and  also  about  the 
sacred  enclosure  of  the  Mosque  of  Om,ar,  and  per- 
haps this  is  more  especially  the  kind  referred  to  in 
Ps.  Ixxxiv.  "3. 

SWALLOW. 

The  nirundinidce,  or  swallow  family,  is  well  repre- 
sented iu  the  Holy  Land.  All  our  English  sjiecics 
occur  there.  Besides  these  there  is  the  Oriental  chimney 
swallow  (Sirundo  caMrica),  which  is  common,  and 
does  not  always  migrate,  in  the  warmer  pai-ts  of  the 
ooimtry;  the  Biruiido  rnfula  (Temm.),  abimdant 
throughout  the  country,  visiting  it  in  March  ;  the  crag 
swallow  (Cotyle  rupestris),  and  the  marsh  swallow  (C 
palU'Strls),  "  the  former  a  south  European,  the  latter  an 
Al)yssinian  bu'd,  which  resides  all  the  year  in  the  Jordan 
valley,  roimd  the  Dead  Sea,  and  in  tlie  wadys  of  rivers." 
Of  the  genus  Cypselus  (swifts),  our  English  swift 
swarms  everywhere  in  summer,  visiting  the  country  in 


AprU.  The  Alpine  or  white-bellied  swift  [C.  alpinus) 
is  common,  returning  from  the  south  eai-lier  than  the 
other ;  large  flocks  being  seen  by  Dr.  Tristram  and  party 
passing  northwards  over  Jerusalem  as  early  as  the  12th 
of  Pebmary.  "  Its  powers  of  flight  are  amazing,  and 
it  seeks  its  food  at  vast  distances  from  its  nightly 
roosting-iilaces,  being  able  to  traverse  the  whole  extent 
of  Palestine  iu  an  hour  or  two."  Then  there  is  the 
Galilsean  swift  (C  affinis),  which  resides  in  the  Jordan 
valley  all  the  year  roimd,  not  being  found  elsewhere  in 
Palestine,  though  it  occurs  in  other  countries,  as  in 
India  and  Abyssinia.  This  species  differs  considerably 
from  other  swifts  in  its  note,  which  consists  "  of  a 
o-entle  and  melodious  waQ,"  unlike  the  harsh  scream  of 
other  swifts. 

Two  Hebrew  words,  deror  and  dcjur,  are  rendered  by 
"swallow"  in  our  version.  The  former  woi-d  occurs 
only  in  Ps.  Ixxxiv.  3  :  "  And  the  swallow  [derijr)  a  nest 
where  she  may  lay  her  young  ;  "  and  in  Prov.  xxvi.  2  : 
"  As  the  swallow  {deror)  by  flying,  so  the  curse  cause- 
less shall  not  come."  The  word  dgiir  occurs  in  company 
with  another  Hebrew  word,  viz.,  sus,  in  Isa.  xxxviii. 
14  {Ke  sits  agar  ken  atsapliiscph) :  "  Like  a  crane  or  a 
swallow,  so  did  I  chatter  "  (A.V.) ;  and  in  Jer.  viii.  7  : 
"  The  crane  and  the  swallow  observe  the  time  of  their 
coniiug."  In  both  these  passages  the  words  crane  and 
swallow  should  bo  transposed,  ''like  a  swallow  or  a 
crane,"  for  there  is  no  doubt  that  sas  or  sis  means  a 
"  swallow"  or  "  swift,"  and  dgur  "  a  crane."  Thep.as- 
sago  qiiotod  above  from  Proverbs  is  obscure  as  it  stands. 
AuriviUius  thus  clearly  explains  it :  "Uti  solent  temero 
vagari,  celerique  volatu  aliorsum  tendere  sic  maledicta 
sine  causa  et  injuste  in  ahquem  conjecta  himc  non 
ferient,  in  tenues  dOabentur  auras,"  i.  e.,  As  birds  aro 
"  accustomed  to  wander  and  fly  with  rapid  com-se  else- 
where, so  undeserved  curses  hurled  against  a  man  inll 
not  strike  him,  but  ^vill  vanish  into  thin  aii-."  Tho 
rapidity  with  wliich  an  undeserved  curse  shall  flee  away 
is  well  illustrated  by  selecting  the  derur  or  swallow, 
one  of  the  swiftest  of  birds  in  its  flight.  The  pas- 
sage in  Jeremiah  refers  to  some  migratoiT-  kind  of 
Hirundo.  To  this  day  swallows  resort  to  the  Temple 
enclosures  at  Jerusalem,  and  the  Mosque  of  Omar,  as  ■ 
safe  places  where  to  buUd  nests  and  rear  their  young, 
and  numbers,  we  are  told,  continu.ally  sMm  round  its 
domes,  while  the  swifts  in  swarms  dash  screaming 
through  the  streets  of  the  city,  and  lodge  in  the  mght 
in  tho  cre^accs  of  the  walls. 

Hezolriah  iu  his  illness  compares  his  sorrowful 
moui-niug  to  the  "twittering"  of  a  swallow  (sits). 
The  modern  vernacular  Arabic  for  a  swift  is  identical 
with  tho  Hebrew  word.  In  Palestine  the  swift  is  a 
regular  migrant,  the  swallow  only  a  partial  one.  Tho 
former  returns  "  in  myriads  eveiy  spring,  and  so 
suddenly  that,  while  one  day  not  a  swift  can  be  seen  in 
the  country,  on  the  next  they  have  overspread  the  whole 
land,  and  fill  tho  air  with  their  shrill  cry."  The  loud 
harsh  screaming  of  the  swift  may  h.ave  been  considered 
indicative  of  restless  grief,  and  that  bird  may  bo 
more  especially  intended ;  but  we  must  remember  that 


ANIMALS  OF  TKE  BIBLE. 


363 


the  ancients  regardscl  the  swallow  as  a  mournful  garru- 
leus  bird.  There  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  both  the 
Hebrew  terms  deror  (literally  the  "  free  "  bird)  and  the 
s{is — the  derivation  of  which  is  imcertain — denote  more 
especially  a  "  swift "  or  "swallow,"  though  possibly  both 
terms  may  include  the  bee-eaters,  similar  in  flight, 
note,  and  habits,  at  least  in  the  eyes  of  a  cursory 
observer,  to  many  of  the  swallows.  Of  the  genus 
Merops,  three  species  occur  iu  Palestine — M.  ((piaster, 
occasionally  seen  in  this  country,  M.  Persians,  and  M. 
viridis ;  this  latter  bu-d  being  found  only  in  the  Jordan 
valley. 

HOOPOE. 

There  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  the  Hebrew  word 
{dukqihath)  translated  in  our  version  by  "  lapwing " 
denotes  the  hoopoe  (Upupa  epops).  The  word  occurs 
only  in  Lev.  xi.  19,  and  Deut.  xiv.  18,  in  the  list  of 
birds  forbidden  to  be  used  as  food  by  the  ancient  Jews. 
The  old  versions  and  commentators  gsuerally  are 
agreed  ou  this  point.  The  Coptic  hoiikouphat,  the 
Syriac  hilcuplm,  are  allied  to  the  Hebrew  word,  and 
both  these  terms  signify  the  hoopoe.  Tlio  Arabic 
version  reads  hudhud,  and  this  word,  as  Forskal  tells 
us  (Descript.  Animal.,  p.  7),  is  the  modern  name  at 
Cairo  for  the  hoopoe.  The  Talmud  says  it  bears  its 
Hebrew  name  because  its  crest  is  thick.  This  is  true  of 
the  hoopoe,  which  has  a  characteristic  fan-shaped  ci-est 
ou  the  top  of  the  head.  The  derivation  of  the  Hebrew 
word  is  uuceriaiu.  Dr.  Tattam,  in  his  Coptic  Lexicon 
(p.  164),  with  nmch  probability,  we  tliink,  suspects  that 
the  word  is  Egyptian.  The  hoopoe  occurs  ou  the 
Egyjjtian  momunents.  In  a  representation  of  a  hippo- 
potamus chase,  this  bird,  with  the  heron,  spoonbUl,  and 
other  bii-ds,  is  seen  fljang  out  of  the  reeds  as  the  chas- 
seui'  r/jpi'oaches  -with  his  boat  (Wilkinson's  And.  Hgypt., 
iii.  71).  HorapoUo  tells  us  that  when  the  Egy[)tiaus 
wished  to  represent  gratitude  they  delineated  a  hoopoe 
(/toKKou^ai/  C'^y(,arpov<Ti\,  because  this  is  the  only  dumb 
animal  which,  after  it  has  been  brought  up  by  its 
parents,  rejiays  their  kindness  to  them  wlien  old ;  for  it 
makes  a  nest  in  the  place  where  it  was  reared,  and  trims 
their  wings,  and  brings  them  food,  till  the  old  birds 
acquu-e  a  new  plumage  and  are  able  to  look  after  them- 
selves, whence  'the  hoopoe  has  been  honoured  by  being 
placed  as  an  ornament  on  the  sceptres  of  the  gods 
[KierogJyph.,  i.  55  ;  see  Leeman's  Notes.  Compare  also 
Jablonski.  Voces  JiJgiQdiacce,n]).  Script.  Veteres,  p.  115). 
The  Chaldee  rendering  of  naggar  turah  (Targums  of 
Onkelos  and  Jouathau),  i.e.,  "  a  rook  workman ;"  the 
Greek  version,  aypmAeKTOfii't,  i.e.,  '"  mountain  cock,"  at 
first  sight  appears  to  point  to  some  other  bu'd  than  the 
hoopoe,  which  frequents  marshy  ground,  ploughed 
land,  dunghUls,  rather  than  mountains  and  rocks ;  stiU 
the  hooijoe  makes  its  nest  often  in  crerices  of  rocks. 
The  ancient  Greeks  also  speak  of  the  hoopoe  as  a 
mountain  bird.  Aristotle  says,  "  Now  some  animals 
are  found  in  the  moimtains,  as  the  hoopoe."  ^lian 
says  the  hoopoe  builds  in  lofty  rocks  {N.  A.,  iii. 
26).  JEschylus  (Fragm.,  291)  calls  the  hoopoe  a  rock 
bird.      When    the    two    lawsuit-wearied     citizens    of 


Athens,  Euelpides  and  Pisthetserus,  in  the  comedy  of 
the  Birds  of  Aristophanes,  are  on  then:  search  for  the 
homo  of  Epops,  King  of  Birds,  their  ornithological 
conductors  lead  them  tlu"ough  a  wild  desert  tract, 
terminated  by  mountains  and  rocks,  in  which  is  situated 
the  royal  aviaiy  of  Epops.  The  rendering  of  "  wild 
cock,"  "  mountain  cock,"  of  some  of  the  versions,  has 
reference  probably  to  the  crest  of  the  bii'd,  calling  to 
mind  the  crest  or  comb  of  the  cock  (gallus).  The 
hoopoe  {Upupa  e-pops)  is  found  in  Egyi)t,  France,  Spain, 
and  in  many  other  warm  parts  of  the  Old  World.  It 
is  pretty  common  in  Palestine,  which  country  it  visits 
in  the  early  spring,  leaving  it  in  the  winter.  In  Egypt 
it  is  very  common,  and  resides  there  all  the  year.  It  is 
occasioually  fotmd  in  England.  The  rtiiued  temples  of 
Rabboth  Ammon  and  Ba;ilbek  are  among  its  favom'ite 
resorts.  The  Ai-abs  have  a  superstitious  reverence  for 
the  hoopoe,  which  they  believe  to  possess  marvellous 
medicinal  cjualities  ;  they  call  it  "  the  doctor."  Its  head 
is  an  indispensable  ingi-edient  in  all  charms  and  in  the 
practice  of  witchcraft  (see  Ibis,  i.  p.  27).  The  Arabs 
say  also  the  hoopoe  betrays  secrets,  and  that  it  can 
point  out  liidden  undergrotind  springs  of  water.  This 
idea  has  arisen  from  the  grotesque  movements  of  the 
bird.  On  settling  on  the  groimd  it  has  a  strange  habit 
of  bending  the  head  slowly  down  till  the  point  of  the 
biU  totiches  the  ground,  raising  and  depressing  the 
crest  omiuotisly  at  the  same  time.  Our  word  hoopoe 
is  derived  from  the  bird's  voice,  which  resembles  the 
words  "  hoop,  hoop,"  softly  and  rapidly  uttered.  Simi- 
larly, the  Latin  upupa  and  the  French  huppe,  &c.,  aU 
of  wliich  perhaps  come  from  the  Greek  e!roi|/,  wliich 
is,  however,  not  so  good  a  representation  of  the  bh-d's 
notes  as  its  derivatives.  In  Sweden  the  hoopoe  is  called 
Sdr  Fogel,  i.e.,  "the  army  bird,"  because,  from  its 
ominous  cry,  heard  in  the  wUds  of  the  forest  (a  "wood- 
land cock"  in  this  case),  the  peoijlo  think  war  and 
scarcity  are  impending  (Lloyd's  Scand.  Advent.,  ii.  321). 
The  hoopoe  is  abotit  the  size  of  a  missel  thrush  ;  the 
plumage  is  of  a  light  russet  colour,  wings  and  tail  black, 
with  broad  white  bars.  The  long  feathers  of  the  crest 
are  each  tijjped  with  black. 


occurs  only  iu  the  list  of  tmclean  bu-ds  (Lev.  xi.  16 ; 
Deut.  xiv.  15)  as  the  translation  of  the  Hebrew  word 
shalchaph,  btit  it  is  very  improbable  that  the  cuckoo  is 
intended.  There  is  some  reason  to  think  the  "  sea- 
gull "  is  the  bird  denoted  by  shahhaph,  and  this  point 
will  bo  considered  when  we  come  to  treat  of  the  swim- 
ming birds  {Natatores).  The  cuckoo  was  doubtless 
well  known  to  the  ancient  Hebrews,  and  its  familiar 
voice  must  have  gladdened  many  a  heart  when  it  was 
heard  in  the  land,  proclaiming  that  the  winter  had  gone, 
and  Slimmer  and  flowers  once  more  smiled  ou  the  earth. 
Both  our  own  species  (Cueuhis  canorus)  and  the  great 
spotted  cuckoo  (O.vylophus  glandarius)  are  now  fotmd 
m  the  Holy  Land,  the  latter  species  being  the  most 
common  of  the  two.  The  great  spotted  cuckoo  is  an 
inhabitant  of  North  Africa.    Like  oui-  own  species,  it  is 


364 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


arcoy^. 


HOODED  CKOW  (Corvus  comix) 


GREAT  SPOTTED  CUCKOO  (Oxylophus  glandariiis). 


parasitic  in  its  habits,  depositing  its  eggs,  whicli  aro  of 
the  same  colour  and  size  as  those  of  the  magpie,  in  the 
nests  of  tlic  magpie,  ravou,  jackdaw,  &c.     So  peculiarly 


characteristic  is  the  note  of  this  bird  as  to  give  the 
bird's  name,  "  cuckoo,"  amongst  many  nations.  It  is 
the  same  as  the  Greek  k6kku^,  the  Latin  cuculus  or 


SACRED  SEASONS. 


365 


cuculus,  the  Italian  cuceo,  the  Gorman  kukkuk,  the 
Sanskrit  koha  or  kokila  (compare  the  Skr.  kulm,  i.e., 
"  the  cuckou's  note."  Amongst  a  number  of  birds' 
names  in  A^S3frian  occurs  the  word  khu-ii-qxi,  which 


Mr.  Fox  Talbot  takes  to  mean  the  cuckoo  (see  Sir.  H. 
Rawlinsou's  W.  A.  I.,  vol.  ii.,  pi.  37,  lines  4a  and  54a). 
The  Hebrews,  therefore,  perhaps,  would  have  called  the 
bird  by  a  similar  name. 


THE   OLD   TESTAMENT   FULEILLED   IN    THE   NEW. 

BY    THE    BEV.    WILLIAM   MILLIOAN,    D.D.,    PEOFESSOK    OF    DIVINITY    AND    BIBLICAL    CEITICISM    IN    THE    UNIVEKSITT 

OF   ABEBDEEN. 

SACKED    SEASONS    (continued). 


J  ROM  the  consideration  of  the  Sabbatic 
Year,  we  turn  now  to  the  still  more  remark- 
able sacred  season  of  Israel  known  as  tlie 
Year  of  JubUee,  the  provisions  with  regard 
"to  which  are  found  chiefly  in  the  25th  chapter  of  Levi- 
ticus. It  took  place  at  the  close  of  every  seven  weeks 
of  yoar.5,  that  is,  at  the  close  of  seven  year.^  multiplied 
by  seven,  or  every  fiftieth  year.  Tlia  idea  has  indeed 
boon  entertained  by  luany  that  the  year  of  JubUoo  was 
each  forty-ninth,  and  n<it  each  fiftieth,  year,  it  being 
supposed  that,  according  to  a  method  of  reckoning  not 
tmcommon  both  among  the  Hebrews  and  other  nations, 
the  last  term  of  the  preceding  series  was  reckoned  also 
as  the  first  term  of  the  next.  It  has  boon  thought  that 
in  this  way  wo  might  best  obviate  the  difficulty  arising 
from  the  fact  that,  if  the  Jubilee  wore  the  fiftieth  year, 
and  not  the  forty-uiuth,  then,  as  the  latter  was  unques- 
tionably a  Sabbatic  Year,  the  land  must  have  lain  falluw 
for  two  years  in  succession ;  an  arrangement  which 
has  seemed  incompatible  \vitli  all  proper  economical 
measures  for  the  welfare  aud  oven  for  the  sustenance  of 
the  people.  Considering  the  object  that  wo  have  before 
Tis  in  these  papers,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  discuss 
the  question.  We  remark,  therefore,  only  briefly  in 
passing,  that  tjio  view  commonly  taken,  that  the  Year  of 
Jubilee  was  the  fiftieth  and  not  the  forty-ninth  year,  is 
that  which  has  most  foundation  in  the  language  of 
Scripture,  and  in  tlio  analogy  afforded  by  other  sacred 
institutions  of  Israel.  Thus  Lev.  xxv.  10,  "And  ye  shall 
hallow  the  fiftieth  year,"  compared  with  xxv.  8,  "  And 
thou  shalt  number  seven  sabbaths  of  years  unto  thee, 
seven  times  seven  years ;  and  the  space  of  the  seven  sab- 
baths of  years  shall  bo  unto  thee  forty  and  nine  years," 
is.  itself  almost  decisive  of  the  question.  Forty-nine 
years  are  here  expressly  distinguished  from  fifty,  and 
the  fiftieth  follows  the  complete  accomplishment  of  the 
forty- nine.  In  like  manner,  wo  read  in  Lev.  xxv.  21,  22 
words  which  must  refer  to  the  last  cycle  of  seven  years 
immediately  preceding  the  Jubilee,  and  which  are  not 
to  be  supposed,  as  by  Ewald,  to  have  fallen  out  of  their 
proper  place  in  the  chapter  :  "  Then  wQl  I  command  my 
blessing  upon  you  in  the  sixth  year,  and  it  shall  bring 
forth  fruit  for  three  years.  And  ye  shall  sow  the  eighth 
year,  and  eat  yet  of  old  fruit  until  the  ninth  year ;  until  her 
fruits  come  in  ye  shall  eat  of  the  old  store."  That  is, 
the  harvest  ripened  in  the  sixth  year,  which  in  other  cir- 
cumstances would  have  been  consumed  in  the  seventh, 


was  to  last  three  years,  not  only  through  the  seventh,  Dut 
through  the  eighth  and  ninth  ;  the  crop  sown  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  ninth  year  then  coming  in  at  its  close  to 
supply  the  wants  of  the  tenth.  Only  by  such  an  inter- 
pretation can  we  give  moaning  to  the  words  "  It  shall 
bring  forth  fruit  for  thr?e  years."  Fruit  for  two  years 
would  have  been  all  that  was  required  had  the  Sabbatic 
Year  and  the  Year  of  Jubilee  synchronised.  Nor  can  it 
be  said  that  throe  years  are  spoken  of  simply  to  indicate 
that  there  would  bo  groat  abundance  in  the  sixth  year, 
more  oven  than  would  be  necessary  for  life.  It  is  not 
abundance  that  is  before  the  mind  of  the  lawgiver,  it  is 
simply  the  means  of  sustenance  for  a  continued  series 
of  years ;  for  he  speaks  distinctly  of  the  sixth,  the  seventh, 
the  eighth,  and  the  ninth  years,  and  of  eating  of  "  old 
fruit,"  the  fruit  of  the  sixth,  during  the  three  last  men- 
tioned. A  similar  conclusion  may  be  drawn  from  Isaiah 
xxxvii.  30 :  "  And  this  shall  bo  a  sign  unto  thee.  Ye  shall 
eat  this  year  such  as  growcth  of  itself ;  and  the  second 
year  that  which  spriiigeth  of  the  same  :  and  in  the  third 
year  sow  ye,  and  reap,  and  plant  vineyards,  and  eat  the 
fruit  thereof'."  It  is  possible,  indeed,  that  these  words 
do  not  refer  to  a  Sabbatic  Year  immediately  followed  by 
a  Year  of  Jubilee,  and  we  do  not  quote  them  as  if  they 
necessarily  did.  Enough  if  they  exhibit  the  idea  of  the 
people's  allowing  the  labours  of  the  field  to  be  inter- 
mitted for  two  years,  and  yet  finding  food.  They  thus 
show  that  the  difficulty  connected  with  the  two  fallow 
years  is  not  so  great  as  is  supposed.  Finally,  the 
analogy  of  Pentecost  confirms  what  has  been  said.  Seven 
weeks  of  days,  or  forty- nine  days,  were  coimted  from 
the  second  day  of  Unleavened  Bread,  and  the  day  after 
these,  the  fiftieth,  was  the  festival.  Wo  conclude, 
therefore,  that  the  Year  of  Jubilee  was  the  flftioth  year, 
and  not  tho  forty-ninth. 

As  in  the  case  of  the  Sabbatic  Year,  it  was  in  the 
seventh  month  that  the  Jubilee  began ;  but  it  began  on 
the  tenth  day,  and  not,  like  the  former,  on  the  first.  Tho 
tenth  day,  however,  was  the  great  Day  of  Atonement, 
tho  most  solemn  of  all  the  days  of  Israel's  year,  and 
that  most  closely  associated  with  a  humbled  and  sorrow- 
ful recollection  of  tho  past.  It  is  difficult,  therefore,  to 
imagine  that  tho  opening  and  welcome  of  the  most  joy- 
ful of  all  the  years  of  the  people  could  take  place  on  the 
morning  of  that  day ;  it  would  naturally  be  reserved 
for  tho  evening.  Thea  the  day's  "  afflicting  of  the 
soul "  was  over ;  the  groat  appointed  atonement  was 


366 


THE    BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


complete  ;  sin  had  been  expiated ;  the  way  into  tlie 
Holy  of  Holies  had  been  opened  to  the  high  priest,  the 
head  and  representative  of  Israel,  who  had  entered 
•within  the  vail,  and,  as  accepted  in  God's  sight,  had  re- 
tui-ned  alive  ;  all  transgi-essions  had  been  seen  symboli- 
cally carried  away  to  the  desolate  wilderness  from  which 
they  should  return  no  more;  and  the  smoke  of  the 
biu-nt-offeriug,  emblem  of  Israel's  dedication  to  the 
Lord,  had  ascended  to  heaven.  Now,  therefore,  joy 
and  triump)h  might  well  be  the  order  of  the  time,  and 
the  people  would  be  ready  to  receive  the  glad  tidings 
that  the  Jubilee  had  begun. 

It  was  announced  vrith  the  sound  of  trumpets,  the 
trumpet  used  being  the  shophar  which,  in  speaking  of 
the  services  of  the  first  day  of  the  month,  we  have 
already  described.  It  was  the  token  of  God's  peculiar 
presence  among  His  people,  yet  His  presence  not  merely 
in  favour  and  grace,  but  His  presence  as  Ho  is,  in  the 
completeness  of  His  character,  and  therefore  also  in  the 
holiness  of  Hisnatiu-e,  in  the  awfulness  of  His  attributes, 
in  the  terribleness  of  His  judgments.  Even  the  JubOoo 
Tear  was  not  to  be  introduced  with  sounds  associated 
only  with  feasting  or  with  privilege;  and  as  the  long, 
clear,  shrill  notes  of  the  shophar  were  poured  forth  by 
the  priests  from  the  Temple  heights — that  streaming 
sound  which  seems  indeed  to  be  the  true  root  of  the 
word  Jobel  or  Jubilee — the  people  were  reminded  that, 
whatever  their  mirth,  it  must  bo  mixed  with  trembling ; 
that,  whatever  the  grace  proclaimed,  it  was  stiU  the 
grace  of  one  who  was  also  a  consuming  fire. 

The  peculiar  arrangements  of  the  Tear  of  Jubilee 
were  in  some  respects  similar  to  those  of  the  Sabbatic 
Tear,  but  in  ctbors  were  much  more  important  and  re- 
markable. 

In  the  first  place,  in  the  former  year,  as  in  the  latter, 
the  soil  was  to  lie  uncidtivated.  The  people  are  en- 
joined neither  to  sow,  nor  to  reap  that  which  groweth 
of  itself,  nor  to  gather  the  grapes  of  their  undressed 
vinos ;  the  meaning  of  tliis  injunction,  as  wo  saw  in 
sjieaking  of  the  Sabbatic  Tear,  Ijcing  not  that  they 
were  not  to  use  such  things  as  might  thus  be  gathered 
for  food — they  are  rather  expressly  enjoined  to  do 
so — but  that  they  are  not  to  gather  them  as  if  they 
were  their  own  indi\adual  harvest.  They  were  to  be 
the  common  property  of  all,  of  the  rich  and  the  jjoor, 
of  the  master  and  tho  servant,  of  tho  game,  and  even  of 
the  wild  beasts  that  might  be  found  in  the  laud. 

In  the  second  place,  evei-y  Israelite  who  had  been 
compelled  by  the  pressure  of  poverty  to  alienate  his 
paternal  inheritance  was  now  permitted  to  return  to  it. 
It  was  lawful,  indeed,  to  redeem  such  a  property  at  any 
time.  If  the  person  who  had  been  under  tho  necessity 
of  parting  with  it  had  a  friend  able  to  do  this,  pro^^- 
sion  was  made  in  tho  law  for  the  restoration  of  what 
had  been  sold.  Its  value  was  determined  according  to 
a  prescribed  scale,  and  tho  purchaser  was  obliged  to 
accept  tliis  value,  and  to  give  back  the  land.  It  often  hap- 
pened, however,  that  the  seller's  relations  wore  as  poor 
as  himself.  Then  tho  Jubilee  Tear  came  in  with  tho 
remarkable  peculiarity  that  it  was  tho  redeemer.    Tho 


land  returned  immediately  on  the  opening  of  the  year,  and 
that  without  price,  to  its  original  proprietor.  In  reality, 
it  had  never  been  sold,  according  to  the  sense  attached, 
by  us  to  that  expression ;  it  was  only  the  products  of 
it  for  the  number  of  years  mtervening  between  the  date 
of  sale  and  the  Jubilee  that  had  come  into  tho  market. 
The  price,  therefore,  varied  in  proportion  to  the  number 
of  these  years ;  and  by  tho  time  the  period  of  redemption 
arrived,  the  purchaser  had  obtained  a  fidl  equivalentfor 
his  money.  Upon  this  j)oint,  accordingly,  the  provisions 
of  the  Mosaic  law  were  extremely  definite  and  precise  : 
"And  if  thou  sell  ought  imto  thy  neighbour,  or  buyest 
ought  of  thy  neighbom-'s  hand,  ye  shall  not  oppress  one 
another :  according  to  the  number  of  yeai'S  after  the 
jubilee  thou  shalt  buy  of  thy  neighbour,  and  according 
unto  the  number  of  years  of  the  fruits  he  shall  sell  unto 
thee  :  according  to  the  midtitudo  of  years  thou  shalt 
increase  the  price  thereof,  and  according  to  the  fewness 
of  years  thou  shalt  diminish  the  price  of  it :  for  accord- 
ing to  the  number  of  the  years  of  the  fruits  doth  he  sell 
unto  thee ;"  while  the  ground  of  this  provision,  which 
lay  in  the  anxiety  of  the  law  to  guard  against  oppression, 
is  given  in  the  next  following  words  :  "  Te  shall  not 
therefore  oppress  one  another ;  but  thou  shalt  fear  thy 
God :  for  I  am  the  Lord  your  God  "  (Lev.  xxv.  14 — 17). 
There  were,  indeed,  two  exceptions  to  the  operation  of 
this  part  of  tho  law  of  the  Jubilee,  which,  however,  only 
illustrate  more  fully  the  natui'e  of  the  principle  involved. 
The  fii-st  of  those  had  relation  to  the  houses  in  walled 
cities,  permission  to  redeem  which  lasted  only  for  a  year 
after  the  sale.  If  they  were  not  redeemed  within  that 
time,  they  were  "  estabhshed  for  ever  to  him  that  bought  ■ 
them  throuffhout  all  trenerations,"  and  they  did  not  go 
out  in  the  Jubilee  (Lev.  xxv.  29,  30).  Houses  of  the 
villages,  again,  which  had  no  wall  round  about  them,  wero 
counted  as  the  fields  of  tlie  country.  They  might  both 
be  redeemed  at  any  time,  and  they  went  out  in  the  Ju- 
bUoe  (v.  31).  The  reason  of  the  exception  is  thus  ob- 
vious. These  houses  in  walled  cities  had  no  particular 
connection  with  the  laud.  They  would  be  inhabited, 
not  by  agricultural  labourers,  but  by  dili'erent  classes 
of  artisans,  perhaps  often,  as  has  been  conjectured,  by 
foreigners.  To  them,  therefore,  a  law  piu-ely  rural  in 
its  chai'acter,  and  founded,  as  we  shall  sec,  upon  a  prin- 
ciple of  this  nature,  did  not  apply.  The  houses  of  the 
Levites  in  cities  wero  the  only  ones  that  did  not  come 
under  this  ride  (Lev.  xxv.  32,  33).  The  second  excep- 
tion had  reference  to  tho  case  of  land  tho  value  of  which 
was  devoted  to  tho  sei-vico  of  God,  or  sanctified.  Then 
the  produce  of  tlie  laud  belonged  to  God  until  the  Tear 
of  Jubilee.  It  might,  however,  be  redeemed  at  any 
moment  up  till  that  time,  by  adding  to  its  value  a  fifth 
part.  But  if  while  not  so  redeemed  tho  original  owner 
sold  it  again  to  another  man,  thus  endeavouring  to  re- 
couj)  himself  whCe  still  retaining  tho  benefit  of  his  vow, 
then  it  could  bo  redeemed  no  more ;  it  was  holy  unto 
tho  Lord  as  a  thing  devoted ;  tho  possession  thereof 
was  to  bo  the  priest's  (Lev.  xxvii.  14 — 21).  These  ex- 
ceptions, it  will  bo  observed,  confirm  instead  of  over- 
turniug  tho  general  principle.     If  tllo  latter  does  not 


SACRED   SEASONS. 


367 


soein  to  do  so,  it  is  only  iu  appearance,  for  it  is  obvdous 
tliat  the  Israelite  who  thus  loses  the  ordinary  privilege 
of  the  Jubilee  loses  it  simply  because,  by  fraudulent 
conduct  iu  a  sacred  transaction  between  himself  and 
God,  he  has  forfeited  his  title  to  Israel's  privileges.  The 
general  rule  remained  iutact  alike  in  its  priuciplo  and 
application.  An  inheritance  iu  land,  or  in  houses  con- 
nected vidth  land,  which  had  been  sold  through  poverty, 
returned  in  the  Tear  of  JubUoe  to  the  original  and 
hereditary  owner. 

In  the  third  place,  all  Israelites  who  had  been  com- 
pelled by  poverty  to  sell  themselves  to  another  were  set 
free  in  the  Jubilee  :  "  And  if  thy  brother  that  dwelleth 
by  thee  be  waxen  poor,  and  be  sold  unto  thee ;  thou  shalt 
not  comj)el  him  to  servo  as  a  bondservant  :  but  as  an 
hired  servant,  and  as  a  sojourner,  he  shall  be  with  thee, 
and  shall  serve  thee  imto  the  year  of  jubUeo :  and  then 
shall  he  depart  from  thee,  both  he  and  his  children 
with  him,  and  shall  return  imto  his  own  family,  and 
imto  the  possession  of  his  fathers  shall  ho  retiu-n  "  (Lev. 
XXV.  39 — il).  It  was,  indeed,  another  provision  of  the 
Mosaic  law  that  no  Israelite  could  sell  himself  into 
servitude  for  a  longer  period  than  six  years  (Exod.  xxi. 
2) ;  and  it  was  even  provided  that  when  he  thus  went 
out  of  bondage  in  the  seventh  year  he  was  not  to  go 
empty-handed,  but  with  his  wants  liberally  supplied 
(Dcut.  XV.  13 — 15).  Tlie  pecidiarity  of  the  law  of  the 
Jubilee  was  that  when  it  fell  it  at  once  interrupted  the 
period  of  service,  oven  although  the  six  years  had  not 
expired.  As  his  old  possession  then  i-eturned  to  him, 
the  Israelite  received  also  his  freedom  to  enjoy  it. 

In  the  fourth  place,  it  has  been  made  a  question 
whether  debts  were  remitted  or  cancelled  during  the 
Tear  of  Jubilee.  The  law  says  nothing  on  the  point, 
any  remission  of  debt  being  connected  in  it  with  the 
Sabbatic  Teai\  It  is  probable  enough  that  debts  for 
which  land  had  been  pledged  were  then  cancelled,'  as, 
indeed,  had  it  not  been  so  the  Israelite  could  not  have 
been  said,  iu  the  fuU  meaning  of  the  words,  to  have  re- 
ceived again  the  inheritance  of  his  fathers.  But  if  so, 
this  cancelling  of  debt  is  really  a  part  of  the  general 
principle  involved  in  the  restoration  of  the  soU,  and  we 
need  take  no  further  notice  of  it  in  itself. 

We  tm-n  to  the  purport  and  meaning  of  the  institu- 
tion the  particulars  of  which  we  have  beeu  explaining. 
As  in  the  case  of  the  Sabbatic  Tear,  the  ground  of  it  is 
to  be  sought  not  in  merely  civil  or  economical,  but  in  re- 
ligious considerations.  It  may  have  answered  all  of  the- 
former  purposes  enumerated  by  Michaelis.  It  may 
have  pei-petuated  equality;  made  it  impossible  to  be 
born  to  absolute  poverty  ;  retained  the  Israelites  in  their 
own  land  by  cutting  off  poverty,  the  great  cause  of  emi- 
gration ;  encouraged  marriage ;  secured  a  better  cultiva- 
tion of  the  soU ;  and  strengthened  the  spirit  of  patriotism. 
All  this  it  may  have  done,  but  its  essential  principle 
and  aim  must  bo  sought  in  something  higher.  It  is 
distinctly  declared  that  the  Jubilee  was  in  the  eyes  of 
the  people  to  be  "  holy  "  (Lev.  xxv.  12).     Its  most  im- 

1  Jahn's  Sacred  Antiquities,  p.  177. 


portant  arrangement  was  enforced  by  the  consi?l  ation, 
"  Thou  shalt  fear  thy  God  :  I  am  the  Lord  your  God" 
(Lev.  xxv.  17).  The  special  blessing  of  the  Almighty 
was  jiromised  to  the  soU  iu  preparation  for  the  period 
during  which  it  was  to  lie  fallow  (verse  21).  When  allu- 
sion is  made  to  it  in  the  prophets,  it  is  in  such  a  way  as 
to  imply  that  the  observance  of  the  year  was  a  token 
of  Israel's  faithfulness  to  its  covenant,  its  neglect  of  it 
the  reverse  (Isa.  xxxvii.  30).  When  the  foimdation  ef 
its  ordinances  is  given,  it  is  placed  in  the  relation  of 
the  Israelites  to  God  rather  than  one  another  (Lev.  xxv. 
23,  42).  And,  above  all,  it  constitutes  one  of  those 
great  s;ibbatic  institutions  which  were  invested  with  a 
character  of  peculiar  sacreduess. 

The  first  and  leading  idea  of  the  year,  then,  was  the 
restoration  of  Israel  as  a  whole  to  the  position  in  which 
God  had  originally  placed  it,  and  that  alike  iu  regard 
to  worldly  possessions  and  personal  freedom.  In  both 
of  these  respects  there  was  a  constant  tendency  to  fall 
back  into  a  condition  of  selfish  grasping  on  the  one 
hand,  of  hopeless  destitution  and  misery  upon  the  other. 
Upon  these  the  JubUee  was  to  place  a  salutary  check, 
and  to  renew  from  period  to  period  the  original  ar- 
rangement appointed  by  the  wisdom  and  goodness  of 
the  Almighty,  and  entirely  independent  of  the  people. 
Thus,  in  regai-d  to  the  land,  the  principle  upon  which 
it  returned  in  the  year  of  JuIjUee  to  its  former  owner 
was  that  it  was  God's  (Lev.  xxv.  23).  Israel  had  never 
received  it  to  be  a  possession  of  its  own.  It  had  been 
originally  distributed  among  the  people  by  lot  (Numb, 
xxvi.  52 — 56  ;  xsxiii.  54),  and  God's  absolute  proprietor- 
ship in  it  had  thus  been  recognised.  It  was  His,  there- 
fore, to  give  it  again  iu  a  manner  consistent  v^-ith  just 
and  equitable  dealing  towards  those  who  had  first  re- 
ceived it.  In  the  same  manner,  the  persons  of  the 
Israelites  were  not  their  own.  God  was  no  less  pro- 
prietor of  them  than  of  the  soU.  They  were  His  servants, 
whom  He  had  brought  forth  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt 
(Lev.  xxv.  42,  55),  and  He  had  a  right,  therefore,  to 
restore  to  them,  in  a  manner  agam  consistent  with  jus- 
tice and  equity,  the  freedom  which  they  had  at  any  time 
forfeited.  This  then  was  what  He  did.  Eveiy  fiftieth 
year  He  gave  back  to  the  man  who  had  been  obhged  to 
aUenato  it  the  inheritance  of  his  fathers,  and  broke  the 
bonds  Lu  which  he  might  have  been  hold  captive  for  a 
season.  He  restored  the  whole  economy  of  the  state  to 
what  it  was  at  the  first,  that  thus  the  covenant  of  the 
people  with  Him  might  bo  placed  upou  its  original  foot- 
ing, and  that,  with  all  their  early  advantages,  a  new  era 
in  then-  history  might  begin. 

These  two  blessings,  recoveiy  of  his  inheritance  and 
of  freedom,  were  probably  the  greatest  that  an  Israelite 
could  have  bestowed  upon  him.  As  to  the  first,  we 
Icuow  from  the  history  of  Naboth  with  what  deep 
attachment  the  land  of  the  family  was  regarded,  "  The 
Lord  forbid  it  me,"  was  the  reply  even  to  a  king's  re- 
quest, "  that  I  should  give  the  inheritance  of  my  fathers 
unto  thee  "  (1  Kings  xxi.  3) ;  and  another  illustration  of 
the  same  kind  is  afforded  us  in  the  case  of  the  daughters 
of  Zelophehad  (Numb,  xxx^-i.  7,  &c.).    As  to  the  second 


368 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


of  these  points,  again,  the  spirit  of  the  Jews  appears  in 
the  answer  given  on  one  occasion  to  our  Lord  :  "  We  be 
Abraham's  seed,  and  were  never  in  bondage  to  any 
man  "  (Jolin  viii.  33). 

Great,  however,  as  these  blessings  were,  it  will  not  do 
to  rest  in  them  as  the  sole  characteristics  of  the  Jubilee 
Tear,  or  to  think  of  them  only  in  their  relation  to  the 
state.  The  sabbatic  character  of  tlie  year,  the  provision 
with  regard  to  the  resting  of  the  soU,  the  common  right 
given  to  its  produce,  the  warnings  agaiust  oppressing  a 
brother,  together  with  the  ground  upon  whicli  they  are 
foimded^points  of  which  wo  have  already  spoken  ia 
connection  with  the  Sabbatic  Year^show  us  that  even 
the  outward  blessings  of  restoration  to  a  paternal  in- 
heritance and  of  bodily  freedom  were  connected  not  so 
much  vrith  the  civil  as  with  the  theocratic  relation  of  the 
people  to  God  and  one  another.  The  leading  idea  of  the 
year,  in  short,  was  restoration  to  the  blessings  of  God's 
covenant  of  love  in  their  first  freshness  and  fulness. 
Israel  was  brought  to  experience  knew  all  the  privileges 
of  His  redeemed.  The  earth  brouglit  forth  its  fruits 
for  their  sake,  witliout  being  cultivated  in  the  sweat  of 
the  brow.  The  primeval  curse  seemed  for  the  time  re- 
moved. Israel  walked  among  the  trees  of  the  garden 
with  the  feeling  that  the  Almighty  was  in  its  midst,  and 
it  was  not  afraid.  Thus  it  must  hsive  been  a  glad  and 
joyful  day  when,  as  pardoned  and  accepted  through  the 
atonement  that  had  been  offered,  the  "  afflicting  of  the 
sold  "  was  brought  to  an  end,  and  the  shrill  sound  of 
the  JubUee  trumpets  proclaimed  that  the  season  of 
deliverance  was  come. 

It  remains  for  us  now  to  inquire  into  the  rulfibnent 
of  the  year  of  which  we  have  been  speaking.  Here,  for- 
tunately, we  have  little  difficulty.  The  allusions  to  the 
year  both  in  the  prophets  of  the  Old  Testament  and  in 
the  words  of  Clirist  and  His  Apostles  in  the  New,  guide 
■us  to  a  conclusion.  Thus,  for  example,  there  can  bo  no 
mistaking  the  reference  in  Isaiah  Ixi.  1,  2  :  "  The  spirit  of 
the  Lord  God  is  upon  me;  because  the  Lord  hath 
anointed  me  to  preach  good  tidings  unto  the  meek ;  he 
hath  sent  me  to  bind  up  the  brokenhearted,  to  proclaim 
liberty  to  the  captives,  and  the  opening  of  the  prison  to 
them  that  are  bound ;  to  proclaim  the  acceptable  year  of 
the  Lord."  A  similar  reference  is  to  bo  found  in  Ezek. 
xlvi.  16 — 18,  where  the  prophet  is  engaged  in  picturing 
the  glory  of  Messianic  times,  and  where,  in  a  figure 
dra^vn  from  the  Tear  of  Jubilee,  he  points  out  the 
well-ordered  condition,  the  justice,  and  freedom  from 
ojipression,  that  were  to  characterise  the  coming  period 
of  grace  and  glory.  The  references  to  the  Jubilee  Tear 
thus  contained  in  the  Old  Testament  are  taken  up  again 
and  applied  in  the  New.  Thus  it  is  that  our  Lord,  in 
His  first  discourse  in  the  synagogue  at  Nazareth,  appro- 
priated to  Himself  the  language  of  Isaiah  when,  hav-ing 
read  the  passage  from  that  prophet  which  wo  have 
abeady  quoted.  Ho  closed  the  book  and  gave  it  again  to 
the  minister,  and  "  began  to  say  unto  them.  This  day  is 
this  scripture  fulfilled  in  your  ears  "  (Luke  iv.  21). 
Thus  it  is  that  St.  Peter,  in  Acts  iii.  19—21,  exclaims, 
"  Repent  ye  therefore,  and  bo  converted,  that  your  sins 


may  be  blotted  out,  that  so  times  of  refreshing  may 
come  from  the  presence  of  the  Lord  ;  and  that  he  may 
send  Jesus  the  Christ  which  was  before  appointed  for 
you  :  whom  the  heaven  must  receive  until  the  times 
of  restitution  of  all  things,  which  God  hath  spoken  by 
the  mouth  of  all  his  holy  prophets  since  the  world 
began ;"  words  which  it  is  hardly  possible  to  refer  to 
anything  else  than  the  ideas  imperfectly  expressed  in 
the  Tear  of  Jubilee.  And  thus  also  it  is  that  St.  Paid 
must  be  understood  to  have  the  same  year  in  his  eye  as 
the  figure  of  better  things,  when  in  writing  to  the  Romans 
(viii.  19 — 21),  he  says,  "  For  the  earnest  expectation  of 
the  creature  waiteth  for  the  manifestation  of  the  sons  of 
God.  For  the  creature  was  made  subject  to  vanity,  not 
willingly,  but  by  reason  of  him  who  hath  subjected  the 
same  in  hope,  because  the  creatm-e  itself  also  shall  be 
delivered  from  the  bondage  of  corruption  into  the  glo- 
rious liberty  of  the  children  of  God  ;  "  and,  in  writing 
to  the  Ephesians  (i.  13,  14)  :  "  In  whom  also  after  that 
ye  believed,  ye  were  sealed  with  that  holy  Spirit  of  pro- 
mise, which  is  the  earnest  of  our  inheritance  uiitLl  the 
redemption  of  the  purchased  possession." 

Passages  such  as  these  can  leave  no  doubt  upon  oiu' 
minds  that,  under  the  New  Testament  dispensation,  the 
Tear  of  Jubilee  has  its  fulfilment  in  the  idea  of  the  re- 
stitution of  all  things.  Man  cannot  believe  that  his 
first  estate  was  one  only  of  fetichism  and  degradation 
or  that  his  histoiy  has  been  one  simply  of  long  and  slow 
pi'ogress  upwards.  He  must  look  back  to  a  golden  era 
to  a  bright  primeval  age,  when  sin  and  misery  played 
no  such  part  on  earth  ;is  they  do  now.  Scripture  cou- 
fh-ms  the  idea,  and,  in  beautiful  though  brief  touclies  of 
the  sacred  historian's  pen,  shows  us  what  this  state  was 
before  the  Fall.  Of  that  state,  then,  we  bear  the  traces  in 
us  stiU.  Even  on  the  shore  of  this  world  we  pick  up 
shoUs  which,  when  wo  put  them  to  our  ear,  are  f  uU  of 
the  echoes  of  that  far-off  land  and  distant  day.  We 
long  after  it  again,  and  Scriptiu-o  tells  us  that  the  long- 
ing sluill  be  fulfilled.  It  is  so,  in  part  at  least,  even  now. 
The  dispensation  under  which  we  live  is  the  true  Jubilee 
Tear ;  in  its  idea,  a  time  of  refreshing  and  restoration 
of  all  things. 

For,  in  the  first  place,  the  gifts  of  God  distributed  ' 
with  "  lavish  kindness  "  to  the  believer  are  recognised 
as  His,  and  are  enjoyed  as  blessings  of  a  Father's  hand. 
We  have  not  to  toil  for  them  as  if  obtaining  them  were 
the  great  business  of  life.  Nor,  when  wo  do  obtain 
them,  can  we  regard  them  as  things  gained  in  the  sweat 
of  our  own  face  alone,  and  which  we  may  lawfully  ust 
only  for  om-selves.  The}-  ai-e  free  as  the  air,  they  spring 
up  as  the  grass,  they  shine  around  us  as  the  light.  There- 
fore the  Christian  enters  into  the  spirit  of  his  Father  iu 
heaven,  views  man  and  beast  and  nature  with  love,  and 
distributes  to  all  as  he  has  opportunity  and  means.  The 
labour  of  life  is  lightened  to  him,  the  bitterness  of  its 
burden  is  sweetened,  the  quick  pulse  beats  more  gently, 
and  the  hot  brow  is  cooled.  Thorns  and  tliistles  may 
still  be  in  part  around  him,  but  they  are  gi-adually  dis- 
ajipeariug.  The  earth  is  again  become  a  garden,  an 
Eden,  full  of  trees  beneath  whose  shadow  he  sits  with 


daSiel. 


369 


great  deliglit,  and  the  fruit  of  which  is  sweet  unto  his 
taste. 

In  the  second  place,  the  Christian  has  restored  to  him 
the  inheritance  which  he  had  lost,  and  which,  left  to 
himself,  he  could  never  have  regained.  That  inheritance 
was  God.  It  was  forfeited  by  sin,  and  man  wandered 
only  farther  and  farther  from  it,  not  liking  to  retain 
God  in  his  knowledge,  and  given  over  to  a  reprobate 
mind.  But  the  Gospel  message  comes,  is  received, 
enters  into  the  heart,  becomes  a  living  power  within  the 
soul,  and  man  learns  immediately  that  the  long-lost  in- 
heritance of  God's  children  is  once  more  his.  Ho  is  no 
more  a  stranger  to  the  covenant  of  promise,  or  an  alien 
from  the  commonwealth  of  Israel,  but  a  fellow-citizen 
viith  the  saints  and  of  the  household  of  God.  He  re- 
ceives the  spirit  of  adoption  by  which  he  cries,  "  Abba 
Father."  He  has  been  brought  back  to  his  Father's 
house,  and  he  rests  in  the  assurance  that  tho  grace 
wluch  lias  recalled  him  will  never  again  let  him  go. 

In  the  third  place,  tho  Christian  is  now  again  free. 
In  Christ  Jesus,  God  is  a  Fatlier  to  him,  God  is  love, 
and  love  becomes  tlio  animating  principle  of  his  new 
obedience.  Tho  commandments,  once  thought  by  him 
80  hard  a  task,  he  feels  to  be  no  longer  grievous.  The 
holiness  once  shunned  by  him  he  now  aspires  after  as 
that  which  alone  brings  true  happiness  to  the  soul. 
The  path  once  thought  by  him  to  be  full  only  of  diffi- 


culty and  trial  he  now  finds  to  be  a  light  and  gladsome 
path,  where  "  the  joy  of  tho  Lord  is  his  strength."  And 
with  no  fear  and  no  anxiety,  with  a  pacified  conscience 
and  a  heart  rejoicing  in  tho  smiles  of  a  reconciled  God, 
ho  passes  along,  the  freeman  of  the  Lord,  to  Zion.  The 
Son  has  made  him  free,  and  ho  is  free  indeed. 

All  this,  however,  is  only  as  yet  ideally  enjoyed  by 
Christians.  They  have  part,  but  they  have  not  the 
whole,  in  actual  experience.  Therefore  the  true  fulfil- 
ment of  the  Jubilee,  its  perfect  fulfilment  in  everything 
it  symbolised  to  Israel,  is  stiU  future.  It  awaits  us 
there  where,  that  which  is  perfect  being  come,  that 
which  is  in  part  shall  be  done  away. 

Such,  then,  is  to  tho  followers  of  Christ  the  fulfilment 
of  Israel's  Jubilee.  No  doubt,  wo  can  but  faintly  imagine 
those  longings  with  which  tho  Jew  of  old  would  look 
forward  to  the  coming  of  a  year  that  returned  only 
twice  in  a  century,  and  which  few  of  them  could  expect 
to  see  more  than  once.  But,  however  deep  wo  may 
imagine  those  longings  to  have  been,  and  however  great 
the  joy  with  which  the  sound  of  the  shopliar  would  bo 
hailed  as  it  re-echoed  from  one  mountain  and  valley  and 
town  and  cottage  to  another,  it  is  ours  to  remember  that 
with  Christ  the  true  "  acceptable  year  of  tho  Lord  "  camo 
in  ;  and  it  is  ours  to  say,  with  a  greater  emphasis  than 
even  Israel  could, "  Blessed  is  the  people  that  know  the 
joyful  sound." 


THE  BOOKS  OF    THE    OLD  TESTAMENT. 

DANIEL. 

BT  THE  VERT  KEV.  B.  PAINE  SMITH,  D.D.,  CEAN  OP  CANTEKBUKT. 


)  INCE  the  publication  of  Dean  Stanley's 
Life  of  Dr.  Arnold,  the  Book  of  Daniel 
has  been  looked  upon  as  peculiarly  open 
to  hostile  criticism.  For  in  a  letter 
(No.  ccxxiv.)  addressed  to  Sir  Thomas  Pasley,  that 
eminent  man  described  the  latter  chapters  of  this  book 
as  being  a  "  clear  exception  to  his  (Dr.  Arnold's)  canon 
of  interpretation  of  prophecy,  inasmuch  as  no  reasonable 
spiritual  meaning  can  be  made  out  of  the  kings  of  tho 
North  and  South."  He  then  says  that  he  has  long 
thought  that  the  greater  part  of  the  Book  of  Daniel 
was  most  certainly  a  very  late  work  of  the  time  of 
the  Maccabees;  and  that  the  pretended  prophecy 
about  the  kings  of  Grecia  and  Persia  and  of  the  North 
and  South,  was  mere  history,  like  the  poetical  prophe- 
cies in  Virgil.  Ho  further  remarks  that  it  is  curious 
that,  while  confessedly  apocryphal  books  existed  under 
the  name  of  the  Book  of  Daniel,  as,  for  instance,  the 
stories  of  Susannah  and  Bel  and  the  Dragon,  they 
should  have  been  rejected  because  they  were  only 
known  in  "the  Greek  translation,"  and  the  rest,  be- 
cause it  happened  to  be  in  Chaldee,  has  been  received 
at  once  in  tho  lump,  and  defended  as  a  matter  of  faith. 
And  finally,  whilo  thinking  it  probable  that  there  are 
48 — VOL.  II. 


genuine  fragments  in  the  book,  he  considers  the  non- 
authenticity  of  great  part  of  it  as  proved. 

The  authority  of  so  famous  a  name  could  not  but  have 
very  great  weight,  and  the  more  so  because  the  Book 
of  Daniel  does  really  occupy  distinct  ground  from  the 
writings  of  the  prophets  with  which  it  is  classed  in  our 
Authorised  Version.  Tlie  Jews,  as  might  have  been 
expected  from  their  greater  knowledge  of  the  subject, 
do  not  regard  it  as  a  prophecy  at  all.  They  place  the 
book  among  the  Hagiographa,  or  Sacred  Writings, 
arranging  it  between  Esther  and  Ezra.  Had  the 
Scriptures  of  the  Old  Testament  been  arranged  by  our 
translators  as  thoughtfully  as  they  were  by  the  Jews, 
Dr.  Arnold  would  never  have  judged  of  tho  book  by  a 
criterion  which  is  not  properly  apphcable  to  it.  What 
is  the  true  nature  of  the  Book  of  Daniel,  and  in  what 
way  it  occupies  an  entirely  distinct  place  of  its  own  in 
the  scheme  of  revelation,  will  bo  fully  shown  in  the 
course  of  this  paper. 

It  is,  however,  very  necessary  first  to  say  a  word 
respecting  what  Dr.  Arnold  regards  as  something 
curious.  For  he  supposes  that  the  Book  of  Daniel  has 
been  received  as  inspired  simply  because  it  is  written 
in  [Hebrew  and]  Chaldee,  and  the  stories  of  Susannah 


370 


THE  BIBLE  EDUCATOR. 


and  Bel  and  the  Dragon  have  been  rejected  because 
they  are  mere  translations.  Now  these  stories  are 
not  translations.  Had  Dr.  Arnold  read  the  History 
of  Susannah  in  the  Greek,  he  would  have  found  that 
it  is  full  of  puns,  and  some  of  them  very  bad  puns. 
We  haye,  moreover,  various  recensions  or  new  editions 
of  the  story,  in  which  attempts  have  been  made  to 
improve  these  puns,  and  we  may  add  that  they  are 
essential  to  the  narrative.  But  in  the  present  day 
every  critic  is  aware  of  the  existence  of  a  large  Jewish 
literature,  written  originally  in  Greek  at  Alexandria, 
Leontopolis,  and  other  Egyptian  towns,  to  which  the 
apocryphal  books  mainly  belong.  And,  of  course,  no 
one  imagines  that  a  book  written  originally  in  Greek, 
had  Daniel  for  its  author.  One  is  able,  in  fact,  to 
gauge  the  growth  of  modern  criticism  by  going  back 
to  such  a  statement  as  this  of  Dr.  Arnold.  Ho  was 
probably  in  advance  of  most  critics  in  his  day,  and  yet 
was  not  aware  of  th9  entirely  different  groimd  occupied 
by  the  apocryphal  from  that  of  the  canonical  Scriptures. 

We  receive  those  canonical  Scriptures  on  the  deli- 
berate judgment  of  tho  Jewish  Church,  inasmuch  as 
"  to  the  Jews  were  committed  ihe  oracles  of  God."  We 
do  not  accept  them  because  they  were  written  in  Hebrew 
or  Chaldee ;  very  many  works  written  in  Hebrew  existed 
in  the  days  of  Ezra  and  the  Great  Synagogue,  and  of  these 
several  were  composed  by  prophets,  and  are  referred  to 
as  such  in  tho  Books  of  Chronicles ;  and  yet  they  were 
not  placed  among  the  canonical  Scriptures.  Slowly  and 
gradually  the  Jewish  Church  felt  its  way,  till  a  rule 
or  canon  was  formed,  by  which  certain  writings  took 
their  place  as  authoritative,  while  others  were  excluded. 
There  is,  in  fact,  nothing  at  all  curious  or  hap-hazard 
about  the  reception  of  tho  Books  of  tho  Old  Testament, 
and  until  their  authenticity  is  disproved,  we  accept  them 
•upon  the  judgment  of  those  who  had  far  larger  knowledge 
of  their  history  and  much  better  means  of  forming  an 
opinion  upon  thou-  nature  and  claims  than  we  can  pos- 
sibly have.  Apocryphal  works  stand  upon  a  completely 
different  footing.  Wo  have  as  an  appendix  to  tho  Old 
Testament  a  small  collection  of  them,  containing  some 
of  the  most  valuable  and  some  of  tho  most  worthless 
of  these  writings.  The  complete  neglect  into  which 
they  had  fallen,  accounts  for  such  mistakes  as  that 
made  by  Dr.  Arnold  in  supposing  that  the  stories  of 
Susannah  and  Bel  and  tho  Dragon  were  translations. 
The  Second  Book  of  Esdras  was  written  in  Hebrew, 
but  is  none  the  less  apocryphal.  A  scholar-like  edition 
of  all  these  works,  with  a  full  account  of  their  probable 
scope,  date,  and  authorship,  would  be  a  valuable  aid  to 
Biblical  criticism. 

Tho  most  important  apocryphal  books  came  to  us 
through  the  Septuagmt,  to  which,  as  the  Alexandrian 
edition  of  tho  Scriptures,  tho  Egyptian  Jews  added 
such  of  their  own  -ivritings  as  they  deemed  most  valu- 
able. Tho  rest  come  to  us  by  chance,  some  of  them  in 
sopai-ate  manuscripts,  but  most  of  them  as  additions  to 
tho  Scriptures,  appended  to  some  Biblical  manuscript 
by  tho  fancy  or  ignorance  of  some  monkish  scribe.  As 
for  tho  Jewish  canon,  I  am  quite  aware  that  wo  have 


not  a  full  historical  record  of  the  manner  in  which  it 
was  formed.  We  could  scarcely  expect  any  such  recn  . 
either  to  have  been  drawn  u]),  or  if  it  had  been  dra\, , . 
up,  to  have  sm-vived  the  manifold  troubles  which  bef  '• ', 
the  Jewish  nation.  We  do  not  even  possess  any  manu- 
scripts of  the  Old  Testament  itself  of  great  date,  an  ■ 
were  it  not  for  the  existence  of  ancient  versions,  lil.- 
the  Septuagiut  and  the  Syriac,  the  authenticity  of  th  ■ 
Hebrew  Scriptures  would  be  exposed  to  serious  doubi-,. 
We  have,  however,  many  scattered  remarks  and  inci- 
dental allusions  to  the  subject,  and  in  tho  Talmud  variuiH 
traditions  are  found,  showing  that  the  Jewish  mini 
was  fully  awake  to  the  importance  of  discriminating 
between  those  scriptures  which  were  nuthoi-itative  and 
those  which  were  not.  This  work  apparently  was  begun 
soon  after  the  return  from  the  Captivity,  and  as  early  as 
the  time  of  Jesus  the  son  of  Sirach  wo  find  the  same 
threefold  division  of  the  Bible  into  tho  Law,  the  Pro- 
phets, and  the  Sacred  Writings,  as  exists  now  (see  Pro- 
logue, and  also  chaps,  xliv. — xlix.,  which  contain  a 
summary  of  the  Old  Testament).  Already  this  arrange- 
ment is  described  as  a  thing  long  settled,  and  most 
certainly  was  universally  received  by  the  Jews  as 
authoi'itative.  Though  tradition  generally  assigns  the 
work  to  Ezra,  yet  in  2  M.acc.  ii.  13  it  is  ascribed  to 
Nehemiah,  who  is  said  to  have  founded  a  library,  ha\ing 
collected  for  that  pui-pose  "  the  acts  of  the  kings  and 
the  prophets,  and  of  David,  and  the  epistles  of  the 
kings  concerning  the  holy  gifts."  Supposing  that  this 
refers  to  the  gathering  together  of  the  many  volumes 
which  form  tho  Old  Testament  into  one  case — the  word 
bibliotheca,  hero  rendered  "library,"  originally  meaning 
simply  a  case  for  the  safe  keeping  of  one  or  more 
manuscripts — it  would  seem  that  Nehemiah  appended 
to  the  Law  not  merely  the  vrritings  of  the  jjrophets  and 
the  Psalms,  but  also  the  decrees  of  the  Persian  kings. 
Nothing,  in  fact,  could  be  more  probable.  In  his  days 
those  decrees  were  the  main  protection  of  the  Jewish 
commonwealth ;  but  in  time,  as  tho  Persian  power  de- 
cUned,  their  value  would  diminish,  and  as  tho  piTnciples 
upon  which  books  were  to  be  admitted  into  the  canon 
became  better  understood,  they  would  tinally  disappear. 
The  one  fact  of  importance  is  that  we  find  a  settled  ' 
canon  and  arrangement  of  tho  Sacred  Scriptures  imi- 
versally  accepted  by  the  Jews  long  before  the  time  of 
om-  Lord  ;  a  general  consent  that  Malachi  was  the  last 
inspired  prophet ;  and  numerous  traditions,  more  or 
less  trustworthy,  throiving  light  upon  the  manner  in 
which  the  canon  was  formed.  And  wo  receive  the 
Book  of  Daniel  as  being  one  of  those  scriptures  which 
tho  Jews  received  into  their  canon.  Tho  books  of  tho 
OH  Testament  come  down  to  us  with  a  great  weight  of 
authority  to  back  them,  just  as  those  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment come  with  all  the  authority  of  the  councOs  of  the 
Church  in  tho  fourth  centuiy.  We  do  not  say  that 
either  tho  Jewish  r.abbins  or  the  doctors  of  the  Church 
could  not  make  a  mistake ;  but  we  do  say  that  this  mistake 
must  be  clearly  proved  before  we  reverse  their  decision. 
Too  gener.ally,  modern  criticism  has  ignored  this  fact, 
and  men  have  written  as  if  their  fancies  and  notions 


DANIEL. 


371 


were  as  solid  grounds  for  foriniiig  a  judgment  as  the 
full  knowledge  possessed  by  the  Jews,  and  by  the 
Fathers  of  the  fourth  century,  who  performed  for  the 
writings  of  the  Apostles  that  same  work  of  careful  dis- 
crimination wliich  the  men  of  the  Great  Synagogue 
performed,  after  the  return  from  exile,  for  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures.  Lay  whatever  stress  you  like  upon  the 
fact  that  the  admission  of  a  book  into  the  canon  of 
Scripture  was  the  work  of  meu,  yet  it  remains  that  it 
was  done  by  men  who  were  competent  for  the  task,  and 
that  their  judgment  has  stood  the  test  of  ages. 

As  the  Book  of  Daniel  has  been  especially  selected 
by  modern  critics  for  attack,  these  general  remarks 
may  not  be  out  of  place  :  especially  as  it  by  no  moans 
follows  that  because  a  critic  attacks  the  cauonicity  of  a 
particular  book,  he  therefore  attacks  the  Bible  generally. 
He  may  simply  mean  that  the  book  in  question  was 
wi'ongly  inserted  among  those  scriptures  which  he  too 
regards  as  divine.  We  will  now  proceed  to  consider 
first  of  all  the  personal  history  of  Daniel,  and  next  the 
nature  of  his  writings. 

We  read,  then,  that  in  the  third  year  of  Jehoiakim, 
Nebuchadnezzar  besieged  aud  captured  Jerusalem,  and 
carried  part  of  the  sacred  vessels  away  as  spoil  of  war, 
and  also  certain  prisoners,  out  ot  whom  he  ordered  such 
youths  as  were  remarkable  for  beauty  and  intelligence 
to  be  trained  in  the  language  and  learning  of  the 
Chaldees,  that  they  might  minister  as  eunuchs  in 
the  king's  household.  Now  here  comes  the  first 
diiEculty.  Wo  read  of  no  such  invasion  ot  Judsea  in 
the  Books  of  Kings  and  Chronicles,  and  in  Jeremiah 
it  is  in  the  fourth  year  of  Jehoiakim  that  the  great 
struggle  between  Babylon  and  Egypt  is  brought  to  an 
issue.  In  that  year  Nebuchadnezzar,  stiil  acting  only 
as  general  for  his  father  Nabopoiassar,  defeated 
Pharaoh-necho  at  Carchemish,  and  won  for  the  Chal- 
diean  empire  complete  ascendency  over  all  Western 
Asia.  But,  after  all,  the  difficulty  arises  only  from  oiir 
want  of  knowledge.  The  narratives  in  the  Books  of 
Kings  and  Chronicles  are  so  brief  as  to  give  only  three 
or  four  verses  to  the  whole  c'oven  years  of  Jehoiakim's 
reign ;  and  this  raid  upon  Jerusalem  was  probably  not 
a  very  serious  affair.  There  is  no  ground  for  supposing 
that  the  fords  of  the  Euphrates  at  Carchemish  were 
held,  as  some  suppose,  by  an  Egyptian  garrison,  and 
a  young  and  brilliant  soldier  like  Nebuchadnezzar  may 
well,  while  Pharaoh-necho  was  gathering  his  forces, 
have  puslied  a  reconnaissance  up  to  the  walls  of  Jeru- 
salem, and  struck  a  blow  there  at  Pharaoh's  ally. 
Jehoiakim  had  been  elevated  by  Pharaoh  to  the  throue 
in  place  of  his  brother  Jehoahaz,  an  adherent  of  the 
Chaldee  party,  and  who  on  that  account  had  been  carried 
prisoner  into  Egypt.  This  was  just  such  an  act  as  the 
Chaldees  were  bound  to  avenge  as  quickly  as  possible. 
And  yet,  before  the  decisive  battle  with  Pharaoh  was 
fought,  Nebuchadnezzar  would  not  be  willing  to  provoke 
an  obstinate  resistance.  With  his  father  in  failing 
health,  and  the  probability  of  troubles  in  obtaining  the 
succession — for  even  after  the  battle  of  Carchemish 
Nebuchadnezzar  had  to  hasten  home  to  secure  the  crown 


— it  is  not  probable  that  he  would  expose  himself  to  the 
risk  of  fighting  a  decisive  battle  so  far  from  his  re- 
sources. Apparently  he  had  fallen  upon  Jehoiakim 
too  .suddenly  for  the  Jewish  king  to  be  prepared  for  a 
siege,  and  yet,  as  all  he  wanted  was  to  avenge  the 
insult  offered  to  Jehoahaz,  aud  make  the  Chaldaean 
army  respected,  he  would  readily  grant  Jehoiakim 
easy  terms.  A  part,  therefore,  of  the  vessels  of  the 
sanctuary,  some  chUdi-en  of  the  pi-inces  and  of  the  royal 
house,  as  hostages,  probably,  for  the  king's  f utiire  alle- 
giance, together  with  a  formal  recognition  of  Chaldee 
supremacy,  satisfied  the  youthful  commander  for  the 
present.  But  in  the  face  of  the  more  serious  events  which 
followed,  this  raid  was  of  small  account.  In  the  Books 
of  Kings  and  Chronicles  we  have  absolutely  nothing 
but  the  briefest  summary  of  Jehoiakim's  final  rebellion 
and  ovoi-throw.  In  the  Book  of  Jeremiah  there  is  an 
entire  blank  between  the  first  and  fourth  years  of 
Jehoiakim's  reign,  and  any  allusions  which  occur  in 
the  subsequent  histoiT-  load  to  the  idea  that  somehow 
the  Jewish  king  had  become  in  the  meantime  a  vassal 
of  the  Chaldees.' 

It  is  exceedingly  probable  that  the  statement  of 
Josephus  that  Daniel  was  a  prmce  of  the  royal  house 
is  true.  Isaiah  ( xxxix.  7)  had  long  before  prophesied 
that  Hezekiah's  descendants  should  sufiler  the  fate 
which  befell  Daniel,  and  it  is  expressly  said  that  tho.se 
selected  for  what  was  considered  a  very  honourable 
service  were  of  the  king's  seed  and  of  the  princes.  Thus 
chosen,  his  name  Daniel  (God  is  my  Judge)  is  changed 
to  Belteshazzar  {the  Prince  of  Bel),  and  in  company 
with  his  throe  friends,  the  heroes  subsequently  of  the 
fiery  fiu-nace,  he  refuses  to  eat  of  food  offered  to  idols  ; 
but  having  gained  the  favom-  of  Melzar,  then-  trainer, 
they  are  allowed  to  make  a  ten  days'  trial  of  a  vegetable 
diet  and  water,  and  by  God's  blessing  so  fiourished  upon 
it  that  they  were  henceforward  not  interfered  with,  while 
in  learning  and  understanding  they  quickly  outstripped 
all  the  other  youths. 

The  first  trial  of  Daniel's  skill  was  in  mterpreting 
the  king's  dream  of  the  mighty  image.  With  all  the 
wilfulness  of  an  absolute  monarch,  Nebuchadnezzar  had 
demanded  of  the  Magi  that  they  should  even  tell  him  the 
dream  itself ;  and  full  of  wrath  when  they  could  not 
comply  with  so  unreasonable  a  demand,  vexed  also,  pro- 
bably, with  himself  for  having  forgotten  a  vision  which 
had  left  upon  his  mind  so  deep  a  general  impression, 
he  ordered  the  execution  of  the  whole  tribe  of  astro- 
logers, magians,  and  wise  men.  In  this  decree  the 
death  also  of  Daniel  and  his  companions  was  involved, 
but  the  youth  obtained  through  Aiioch  an  audience,  be- 
sought Nebuchadnezzar  for  some  delay,  and  going  to  his 
house,  prayed  with  his  youthful  friends,  until  in  a  night 
vision  the  secret  was  revealed  unto  him."  And  so  struck 
was  the  king  by  the  clearness  with  which  he  made 
known  to  him  both  the  di-eam  and  its  interpretation, 
that   he   elevated   him   at  one  bound  to  the   office  of 

1  Niebuhr,  in  Ws  Histoni  of  Assyria,  also  Batisfiictorily  clears 
away  the  difficulties  o£  tliia  passage,  but  in  a  Bomewliat  different 
way. 


37a 


THE  BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


iiresident  of  the  Magi,  and  henceforward,  except  in  the 
sanguinary  interval  between  Nebuchadnezzar's  death 
and  the  capture  of  Babylon,  Daniel  was  the  chief  officer 
and  governor  of  the  vast  realm  of  which  Babylon  was 
the  head. 

Daniel  was  not  present  when  his  three  friends  were 
cast  into  the  burning  fiery  furnace.      For  what  reason 
we   cannot  tell,  but  probably  he  was  not  at   Babylon 
when  the  king  set  up  the  imago  in  the  plain  of  Dura, 
and  commanded  the  presence  of  his  nobles  at  its  dedi- 
cation.    Dr.  Pusey  thinks,  however,  that  he  might  have 
boon  present,  but  was  too  high  in  office  for  any  one  to 
venture  to  accuse  him  ;  and  it  is  quite  probable  that  the 
enemies  of  the  Jews  would  begin  with  men  in  inferior 
place  before  attacking  the  chief  minister  of  the  crown. 
Among   the   musical  instruments    mentioned    on  this 
occasion  in  chap.  iii.  5  aro  several  which  cither  are,  or 
look  like,  Greek  words.     Three   especially  are  claimed 
as  Greek,  namely,  the  symphony,   translated  "dulci- 
mer;" the  cithara  or  guitar,  rendered  "harp;"  and  the 
psaltenj.      While   the  science   of    philology   was  still 
in  its  infancy,  critics  used  also  to  enumerate  a  long  list 
of  other  supposed  Greek  words  in  the  Book  of  Daniel, 
and  argue  from  them  that  it  was  written  in  the  days  of 
the  Maccabees,  after  the  conquests  of  Alexander  had 
spread   abroad   a  knowledge   of   the   Greek   language 
throughout  great  part  of  tho  East.     Our  increased  ac- 
quaintance both  with  the  laws  of  language  and  with  the 
dialects  of  the  East,  has  swept  aU  but  these  three  words 
clean  away,  and  even  here  the  word  symphonia,  which 
looks  so  thoroughly  Greek,  is  most  probably  the  Ara- 
maic sephonja,  a  "  reed-pipe."     "  Guitar, ' '  under  various 
forms,  belongs  to  most  languages,  but  the  Greek  has  no 
especial  claim  upon  it,  nor  offers  any  tenable  derivation. 
The  third  word  is  in  the  original  psanterin,  and  its 
identification  with  psaltery  is  doubtful.     But  even  were 
these  words  Greek,  they  would  prove  nothing.     Articles 
of  commerce  carry  their  names  with  them  all  over  the 
world,  and  we,  for  instance,  stiU  call  cotton-cloth  calico 
because  it  was   first   brought  from  Calicut;  our  own 
manufactures  are  known  all  over  tho  East  by  the  names 
of  leading  Manchester  firms ;  and  similarly,  several  of 
the  most  important  articles  of  female  attire,  introduced 
at  the  time  of  the  Crusades,  stlU  retain  with  us  their 
Arabic  names.     At  tho  m.art  of  so  rich  and  luxurious  a 
city  as  Babylon,  instruments  of  music  and  all  things  which 
minister  to  pleasure  would  be  sure  to  find  a  ready  sale ; 
and  the  commerce  of  Tyro,  referred  to  in  the  article  on 
Ezekiel,  shows  how  large  and  active  was  the  trade  of 
those  days.     As  a  matter  of  course  all  foreign  articles 
would  everywhere  retain  their  own  names. 

Towards  the  close  of  Nebuchadnezzar's  reigfn  Daniel 
foretells  his  seven  years'  madness,  and  we  find  him  stLU 
addi-essed  as  tho  '•  master  of  tho  Magi  "  (chap.  iv.  9) ; 
but  when  subseciuently  ho  was  called  in  to  interpret  the 
handwriting  on  the  wall,  he  was  plainly  unknown  per- 
sonally to  Belsliazzar,  and  it  was  at  the  suggestion  of 
Nitocris,  the  widow  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  and  who  appa- 
rently held  tlie  office  of  queen-mother,  that  Daniel  was 
summoned.    Without  doubt  he  had  been  deprived  of 


his  office  during  the  stormy  interval  which  followed 
the  forty-three  years'  long  reign  of  Nebuchadnezzar. 
Babylon,  tho  city  "  buUt  with  blood"  (Hab.  ii.  12),  was 
to  sink  in  blood ;  and  so  Evil-merodach,  Nebuchad- 
nezzar's son,  was  murdered  after  a  two  years'  reign  by 
NerigUssar,  his  sister's  husband.  This  prince,  called  by 
Jeremiah  (chap,  xxxix.  3,  13}  "  Norgal-sharezor,  the 
Rab-mag,"  or  high  priest,  reigned  three  years,  and  was 
succeeded  by  an  infant  son,  named  Labrosoarckad, 
who  was  murdered  after  a  reign  of  nine  months.  Upon 
his  death  the  crown  apparently  reverted  to  another  sou 
of  Nebuchadnezzar — or,  as  others  think,  the  husband 
of  another  of  his  daughters — named  Nabonnedus,  wlioso 
son  was  the  Belshazzar  of  the  Book  of  Daniel,  and,  of 
course,  Nitocris  would  be  liis  grandmother. 

And  here  we  find  one  of  tho  most  interestiag  and  in- 
structive results  of  tho  increased  knowledge  of  modern 
times.  Till  tho  last  few  years  we  had  in  the  accoimts 
of  the  fall  of  Babylon  one  of  the  most  hopeless  and 
irreconcUablo  discrepancies  between  Holy  Scriptui-o 
and  profane  history.  The  Bible  represents  Belshazzar 
as  king  of  Babylon,  and  says  that  the  city  was  captured 
during  a  festival  by  an  unexpected  entry  of  tho 
Persians  within  the  walls  at  night,  and  that  the  king 
was  slain  in  the  midst  of  his  carousals.  Berosus  says 
that  the  last  king  was  Nabonnedus ;  that  he  retired  to 
Borsippa,  was  there  blockaded,  but  that  on  his  surrender 
his  life  was  spared  by  Cyrus,  who  granted  him  a  princi- 
pality in  Carmania,  where  he  spent  the  rest  of  his  days. 
With  much  of  this  Herodotus  agrees,  only  he  calls  the 
king  Labynetus.  Thus  the  Bible  and  profane  history 
seomod  at  hopeless  variance  ;  but  in  1854  Sir  H.  Raw- 
linson  deciphered  some  cylinders  discovered  among  the 
ruins  of  the  ancient  Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  and  found  that 
Nabonnedus  had  an  eldest  son,  named  Bel-shar-czar, 
whom  he  admitted  to  a  share  in  tho  government.  All 
is  now  clear.  The  father  commanded  the  forces  in  the 
field ;  the  son  took  charge  of  the  capital  and  its  garri- 
son. He  perished  in  the  night  attack ;  whOo  his  father, 
defeated  in  his  attempt  to  relieve  the  city,  withdi-ew  to 
Borsippa,  and  being  no  longer  formidable,  now  that 
Babylon  had  been  captured,  obtained  from  Cyrus 
honourable  terms. 

And  here  we  must  notice  that  Belshazzar  proclaims 
him  Ijefore  the  assembled  nobles  of  the  realm  thei'o 
feasting  with  him,  "The  third  ruler  in  the  kingdom  " 
(Dan.  v.  16,  29).  Why  the  third  ?  His  old  post  under 
Nebuchadnezzar  had  been  that  of  ruler  over  the  whole 
province  of  Babylon  and  chief  of  the  governors  over  all 
the  wise  men  of  Babylon  (chap.  ii.  48).  Who  was  it  that 
was  now  preferred  before  him  ?  Sir  H.  Rawlinson's 
discovery  makes  aU  plain.  Belshazzar  was  himself  the 
second  ruler,  his  father  being  the  first,  and  he  gave 
Daniel  tho  post  next  in  dignity  and  power  to  his  own. 

Upon  the  capture  of  Babylon,  Daniel  retained  his 
high  office,  being  made  chief  of  the  three  presidents 
of  the  empire  by  Darius  the  Mede,  and  becoming 
thus  exposed  to  tho  envy  of  the  princes,  he  was  by 
their  artifices  cast  into  the  den  of  lions.  The  reign  of 
Darius   seems  to  have  been  short,  and  his  scheme  for 


DANIEL. 


3?3 


the  division  of  the  empire  into  satrapies  (chap.  vi.  1) 
was  not  carried  out  by  Cyrus,  and  remained  in  abeyance 
until  the  time  of  another  Darius,  the  son  of  Hystaspes. 
But  Cyrus  knew  the  worth  of  Daniel,  and  apparently 
he  continued  in  office  all  the  rest  of  his  days  (chap.  vi. 
28).  He  never  returned  to  Judsea,  being  on  the  acces- 
sion of  Cyrus  to  the  throne  too  far  advanced  in  years. 
As  he  was  taken  to  Babylon  a  year  before  Nebuchad- 
nezzar began  his  reign,  and  as  that  monarch  reigned 
forty-three  years,  and  Daniel  was  stU]  alive  in  the  third 
year  of  Cyrus  (chap.  x.  1),  he  must  have  attained  to  a 
ripe  old  age. 

It  is  remarkable  that  in  Ezokiel  (chap.  xiv.  14,  20) 
Daniel  is  coupled  with  Noah  and  Job  as  an  example  of 
righteousness,  and  (in  chap,  xxviii.  3)  is  described  as 
possessed  of  such  wisdom,  that  no  secret  could  bo  hid 
from  him.     On  the  slender  fact  that  his  name  is  foimd 
between  those  of  Noah  and  Job,  German  critics  have 
built  up  an  imposing  edifice  of  conjecture,  Hitzig  and 
others  arguing  that  there  was  a  mythical  hero  of  the 
name  in  days  not  long  subsequent  to  the  Flood ;  while 
Ewald  and  Bunsen  fancy  that  he  may  have  flourished 
during  the   Assyrian  exUe.     Bleek  even  more  wildly 
imagines  that   the  Daniel   commemorated   by  Ezekiel 
may  have  been  the  hero  of   some  lost  poetical  book. 
Really  the  elevation  of  a  man  of  their  own  race,  and 
probably  a  scion  of  the  royal  house,  to  such  high  rank 
at  the  court  of  the  conqueror,  must  have  sent  a  thrill 
of  joy  through  the  heart  of  every  Jewish  exile ;  and  the 
wouderfid  dream  of  the  king,  and  Daniel's  revelation 
of  it,  as  weO  as  its  interpretation,  must  have  been  the 
subject  of  endless  rumours  and  of  many  an  eager  talk 
wherever  Jews  met  together.     Whenever  a  merchant  or 
traveller  came  from  Babylon,  the  Jews  would  inquire 
about  this  second  Joseph,  raised  up  to  be  the  protector 
of  his  brethren  ;  and  that  Ezekiel  should  mention  him, 
ten  years  after  his  elevation  to  be  the  President  of  the 
Magi,  and  when  Daniel  must  have  been  nearly  forty 
years  old,  is  natural  enough.     What  is  unreasona!-)le  is 
the  assumption  that  the  names  Noah,  Daniel,  and  Job 
are  placed  in  chronological  order.     Thoy  are  probably 
quoted  as  examples  of  different  kinds  of  righteousness ; 
Noah  representing  the  righteousness  that  was  before  the 
Law,  Daniel    that  under  the   Law,  and  Job   that   of 
the  Gentiles  living  outside  the  Jewish  covenant.     The 
Patriarch  thus  comes  first,  the  Jew  second,  the  Gentile 
descendant  of  Abraham's  brother,  Nahor,  third  and  last. 
Wo   may  now   proceed   to  some  remarks  upon  the 
Book  of  Daniel.     It  is  remarkable  in  the  first  place  as 
being  written  partly  in  Hebrew  and  partly  in  Chaldee, 
like  the  Book  of  Ezra.     Hebrew  was  a  sacred  language, 
and  probably  even  in  Jerusalem  its  use  was  in  the  main 
confined  to  the  priests  and  men  of  high  rank  and  learn- 
ing; while  the  mass  of  the  people  used  an  Aramaic 
dialect.     But  at   Babylon   its   use   became   still   more 
strictly  limited  to  men  of  the  flacerdotal  caste,  so  that 
on  the  return  from  the  Captivity  it  was  necessary  to  in- 
terpret the  Law  into  the  vernacular  dialect  (Neh.  viii.  8) 
before  the  Jews  could  understand  it.     To  this  necessity 
we  owe  the  Targums  or  Paraphrases,  which  give  us  a  I 


somewhat  loose  translation  of  the  Hebrew  into  Chaldee. 
It  is  at  chap.  ii.  4  that  the  Chaldee  is  first  used,  wrongly 
called  in  our  version  Syriac,  but  in  the  original  Aa'amaic, 
the  common  dialect   of  all  the  descendants  of  Aram 
(Gen.  X.  23).     Really  Syriae  and  Chaldee  are  simply 
dialects  of  Aramaic,  but  the  former  is  best  known  to  us 
as  a  Christian  tongue,  famous  for  the  translations  made 
into  it  of  the  Scriptures,  and  for  the  works  of  the  great 
writers  of  the  schools  of  Edessa  and  Nisibis,  beginning 
with  Ephrem  Syrus  in  the  fourth  century,  and  ending 
■with    Gregory  Bar-Hebrasus  in  the  thirteenth ;   while 
Chaldee  had  a   literature   partly   heathen  and   partly 
Jewish,  having  maintained  in  Palestine  the  ascendency 
which  it  obtained  over  the  Jews  while  living  .it  Babylon. 
The  exact  comparison  of  tho  Chaldee  of  Daniel  with 
that  of  Ezra  has  clearly  proved  that  they  are  of  the 
same     age,     while,    nevertheless,   there   are    sufficient 
points  of   difEorence  to   show  that  the  one  is  not  an 
imitation  of  the  other.     In  both  the  influence  of  pure 
Hebrew  is   strongly   marked;   while  in   the  Targums, 
which  were  not  actually  committed  to  writing  till  about 
the  time  of  tho  Christian  era,  though  most  of  the  matter 
was  more  ancient,  having  been  handed  down  by  oral 
tradition  in  tho  schools  of  the  scribes,  the  differences 
from  the  language  and  style  of  Daniel  and  Ezra  are 
very  large,  and  there   is   a   complete  absence   of  all 
Hebraisms.     A  careful  examination,  moreover,  of  the 
Hebrew  of  Daniel  justifies  Keil   in  the  assertion,  as 
"an    incontrovertible    fact,  that   it   bears    the   closest 
affinity  to  tho   language  of  the  writings  in  the  exile, 
especially  Ezekiel's  "  (Introditction,  pt.  i.,  see.  ii.,  div. 
iii.,  §  133).     The  Chaldee  extends  from  chap.  ii.  4  to 
the  end  of  chap.  vii.     With  the  first  verse  of  chap, 
viii.  Hebrew  is  resumed  and  continued  to  the  end  of 
the  book.     It  was  only  during  the  time  of  the  exile  that 
there  was  any  occasion  for  using  both  languages,  or  the 
probability  that  a  writer  would  be  equally  skilled  in  the 
employment  of  them. 

The  use  of  the  Chaldee  is  continued  after  the  occasion 
had  ceased  which  fii-st  led  to  its  introduction.  For  the 
book  is  divided  into  two  nearly  equal  portions,  whereof 
the  first,  containing  chaps,  i. — vi.,  is  chiefly  occupied 
vrith  historic  events,  and  the  interpretation  of  Nebuchad- 
nezzar's dream  and  of  the  handwriting  upon  the  wall. 
The  second,  containing  chaps,  vii. — xii.,  is  apocalyptic, 
unfolding  to  us  the  course  of  the  world's  history  and  of 
the  kingdom  of  Christ.  Yet  the  seventh  chapter, 
written  in  the  first  year  of  Belshazzar,  is  still  in  Chaldee, 
for  no  possible  reason  except  that  Daniel  was  equally  in 
the  habit  of  using  both.  A  forger,  especially  in  the 
days  of  tho  Maccabees,  would  have  been  careful  to  use 
only  Hebrew  for  tho  apocalyptic  portion,  especially  as 
his  work,  though  professing  to  be  written  at  various 
epochs,  would  really  be  all  of  one  date,  and  written  on 
one  definite  plan. 

Now  it  is  this  apocalyptic  character  of  the  last  six 
chapters  of  Daniel,  as  also  in  a  minor  degree  of  what 
precedes,  which  distuigiiishes  this  book  from  the  whole 
of  the  rest  of  Holy  Scripture,  and  justifies  tho  Jews 
in  placing  it  among   the   Hagiographa.      We  havo  a 


374 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


similar  book  in  the  New  Testament,  rightly  placed  there 
at  the  end  of  the  canon ;  and,  similarly,  Daniel,  on  all 
principles  of  philosophic .  arrangement,  ought  to  close 
the  roll  of  the  Old  Testament  Scrii^tm-es. 

Tor  Daniel  is  the  point  cjf  contact  between  the  Church 
and  the  world.  All  the  Jewish  jjrophets  were  national 
in  the  most  intense  degree.  To  them  the  Church,  which 
was  identical  with  the  nation,  was  everything.  Its 
duties,  its  sins,  its  hopes,  culminating  in  the  advent  of 
David's  seed,  were  the  one  subject  of  discourse,  the  one 
theme  on  which  they  ever  descanted.  Whenever  they 
referred  to  other  nations,  it  was  only  in  their  relation 
to  Israel  that  they  could  recognise  them.  They  were 
the  Gentiles,  aliens  and  strangers  only,  who  were  indeed 
to  find  admission  into  the  theocracy  on  an  inferior 
footing,  but  whose  history  and  fortunes  had  no  intrinsic 
interest,  and  lay  entu-ely  beyond  the  pale  of  Jewish 
thought.  It  is  a  constant  miracle  that  the  prophets,  not- 
withstanding this  intense  nationalism,  yet  ilid,  in  very 
spite  of  themselves,  predict  so  clearly  that  the  Gentile 
was  finally  to  take  Israel's  place,  and  become  the  pos- 
sessor of  the  promise. 

But  would  Holy  Scripture  have  been  complete  had 
it  contained  no  direct  acknowledgment  of  the  relation 
which  the  Gentries  hold  to  God  .►■  Valuable  as  is  Dr. 
Ai-nold's  criterion  of  prophecy,  the  Bible  may  have 
larger  uses  than  he  imagined ;  and  to  say  that  unless  a 
tiling  can  be  spiritualised,  and  made  thereby  the  vehicle 
for  moral  instruction,  it  cannot  be  inspired,  is  to  assert 
that  Scripture  has  but  one  use.  Now  in  the  Book  of 
Daniel  the  vast  drama  of  Gentile  liistory  is  claimed  for 
God,  and  the  grand  stream  of  the  world's  onward  pro- 
gress is  set  before  us  as  possessing  an  intrinsic  value, 
and  therefore  as  the  fitting  object  of  God's  providence. 

And  Daniel  held  just  the  position  which  made  him 
the  right  person  thus  to  vinilicate  for  God  the  whole 
course  of  human  events.  A  Jew  by  birth,  intensely 
patriotic,  devoted  to  the  observance  of  the  Jewish  law, 
constant  in  his  prayers  for  his  people,  he  was  also  the 
president  of  a  learned  heathen  caste,  and  the  vizier  of 
a  Gentile  king.  The  conduct  of  the  affau-s  of  a  mighty 
empire  must  have  daily  brought  him  into  business  rela- 
tions with  other  men,  and  the  narrow  prejudices  which 
grow  np  in  isolation  must  have  melted  before  the  warmer 
feelings  and  larger  interests  which  arise  out  of  a  more 
extensive  knowledge  of  human  affairs  and  a  closer  con- 
tact with  men.  To  Daniel  the  Jewish  Church  and 
nation  were  of  all  tilings  those  which  he  most  prized, 
but  he  knew  the  worth  also  and  importance  of  God's 
empire  over  the  heathen  world. 

These  apocalyptic  prophecies  are  remarkable  for 
their  definiteness.  Kingdom  after  kingdom,  many  of 
them  entirely  unknown  in  Daniel's  time,  is  described, 
and  the  order  of  the  succession  of  the  great  world- 
powers,  with  then-  rents  and  divisions,  clearly  marked 
out,  yet  never  with  that  fulness  of  detail  and  specifica- 
tion of  the  minuter  mcidents  which  woidd  be  natural  if 
really  it  was  a  history.  But  these  world-powers,  after 
aU,  are  not  thus  descril)ed  for  their  own  sakes.  Among 
them  there  is  growing  up  a  kingdom  '•  which  shall  never 


be  destroyed ; "  a  kingdom  "  which  shall  not  be  left  to 
other  people,  but  it  shall  break  in  pieces  and  consume 
all  those  kingdoms,  and  it  shall  stand  for  ever  "  (chap, 
ii.  44).  The  fundamental  idea  is  the  triumph  of  God's 
kingdom  in  its  struggle  with  the  kingdoms  of  the 
world.  Starting  from  the  tlifiiculties  and  necessities  of 
the  present,  the  prophet  sees  this  struggle  growing  in 
intensity,  and  carries  it  onward  not  merely  to  the  times 
of  Antiochus  Epiphanes  and  the  Maccabaean  uprising, 
but  to  the  very  end  of  time,  when  they  "  that  sleep  in 
the  dust  of  the  earth  shall  awake,  some  to  everlasting 
life,  and  some  to  shame  and  everlasting  contempt" 
(chap.  xii.  2).  Then  is  the  hour  of  God's  final  glory, 
when  He  becomes  all  in  all ;  and  the  kingdoms  of  men, 
which  have  meanwhile  had  their  use  and  pm'pose,  are 
all  merged  in  the  one  kingdom  of  God  and  of  His 
Christ. 

It  is  remarkable  in  these  visions  that  they  also  con- 
tain some  of  the  most  precise  chronological  predictions 
found  in  Holy  Scripture.  Occasionally,  as  in  Jeremiah's 
prophecy  of  the  seventy  years,  we  have  had  similar  exact 
specifications  before,  but  the  moral  purpose  of  prophecy 
forbade,  as  a  rule,  this  exactness,  as  being  at  variance 
with  the  fundamental  principle  of  man  being  in  a 
state  of  probation.  Probation  and  moral  discipline 
would  be  impossibilities  if  our  lives  were  passed  among 
certainties,  and  not  among  things  wliich  involve  the 
exercise  of  faith.  Tet  for  special  purposes  we  do  ficd 
in  the  Bible  a  considerable  number  of  particular  predic- 
tions, many  of  which  are  definitely  exact  as  to  the  date 
when  they  were  to  be  fulfilled.  The  Babylonian  exile 
was  snch  a  conjimcture  in  the  history  of  the  Jews  as 
justified  special  miracles,  like  the  delivery  of  the  three 
youths  from  the  fiery  furnace,  and  also  these  exact 
intimations  as  to  the  time  of  the  Messiah's  advent.  The 
readers  of  Mr.  Greswell's  Dissertations  upon  the 
Gospels  know  how  thoroughly  these  predictions  were 
fulfilled  to  the  very  letter.  I  need  only  add  that  though 
thus  exactly  fulfilled,  yet  the  predictions  themselves 
are  to  a  great  extent  symbolical,  having  for  their  basis 
the  holy  number  seven  with  its  multiples.  But  besides 
thus  exactly  fixing  the  date  of  Messiah's  advent  and 
death,  Daniel  also  foretells  in  the  plainest  language  the 
capture  of  Jerusalem  by  the  Romans  and  the  desti-uc- 
tion  of  the  sanctuary  (chap.  ix.  24,  26),  the  abolition  of 
the  daily  .sacrifice  (xii.  11),  the  cessation  of  vision  and 
prophecy,  and  the  abolition  of  the  Jewish  Church  in 
order  that  that  which  is  final  might  take  its  place  (ix. 
24).  No  Jew,  holding  the  ground  of  the  old  prophets, 
would  have  been  a  proper  medium  for  such  revelations ; 
but  instead  of  falling  below  the  previous  I'ange  of  pro- 
phecy, they  rise  high  above  it.  The  Jewish  Church 
takes  its  true  place  as  the  introductory  dispensation, 
preparing  the  way  for  the  Christian  covenant ;  whUe 
the  kingdoms  of  the  world,  instead  of  being  ignored  or 
looked  upon  as  opposing  powers,  are  set  forth  as  having 
also  their  place  in  leading  onward  to  the  kingdom  of 
Christ.  And  this  kingdom,  as  the  stone  cut  out 
without  hands,  is  shown  to  be  of  no  earthly  origin; 
it  is  set  up  by  the  God  of  Heaven,  and  its  perpetual 


DANIEL. 


375 


duration  and  final  conquest  of  the  whole  earth  are  in 
marked  contrast  with  the  limited  existence  of  each  of 
the  vast  monarchies  which  played  so  important  a  part 
in  making  the  world  ready  for  the  rapid  propagation 
of  the  Gospel. 

Lastly,  we  must  ohservo  that  the  Book  of  Daniel 
was  foUowed  by  a  vast  mass  of  apocalyptic  literature. 
Its  nature  was  such  as  immediately  to  arrest  attention, 
and  its  form  was  eagerly  seized  upon  as  the  fittest 
medium  for  conveying  ideas  about  the  future  course  of 
God's  providence.  Foremost  among  such  works  we  may 
mention  the  Book  of  Enoch,  whUe  the  Second  Book  of 
Esdras  in  our  ApocryjAa  is  a  far  later  and  inferior 
work,  in  which  some  Jew,  writing  after  the  destruction 
of  Jerusalem  by  Titus,  represents  the  Messiah  as  coming 
for  the  chastisement  of  Rome.  Now  it  is  remarkable 
that  in  these  works  the  delineation  of  the  Messiah  is  at 
variance  with  that  given  in  the  canonical  Scriptures. 
In  Daniel  this  is  not  so.  He  is  there  described,  in 
exact  conformity  with  the  Immauuel  of  Isaiah,  as 
endowed  with  the  attriljutes  at  once  of  manhood  and  of 
Deity  (chap.  vii.  13,  14),  and  as  a  personal  being.  In 
the  entire  apocryphal  literature  there  is  no  recognition 
of  Him  as  a  person,  and  no  acknowledgment  of  the 
union  in  Him  of  the  human  and  Dirino  natures.  Nor 
is  there  any  mark  of  progress.  In  the  inspired  Scrip- 
tures there  is  ever  one  great  law  whose  pervading  pre- 
sence knits  together  the  manifold  and  diverse  works  of 
which  the  Bible  is  composed  iuto  one  harmonious  whole. 
Tlds  law  is  that  of  the  perpetual  development  of  truths, 
the  germs  and  first  outlines  of  which  are  manifestlyprc- 
seut  in  the  older  writings,  but  which  successive  prophets 
bring  out  into  plainer  relief  and  clearer  manifestation, 
yet  so  that  their  development  is  always  consiistent 
with  what  has  gone  before,  and  a  step  towards  still 
plainer  teaching  in  the  future.  In  the  Apocryjjha  there 
is  no  such  progress.  AU  that  it  has  which  is  distinctive 
is  at  variance  with  Holy  Scripture,  and  diverges  into 
ideas  and  doctrines  irreconcilable  with  the  past  and 
barren  for  the  future.  Not  so  Daniel.  Besides  the 
most  express  predictions  fixing  the  exact  time  of  the 
Messiah's  advent,  Daniel's  teaching  concerning  the 
universality  of  His  kingdom,  and  its  perpetual  dui'ation, 
is  far  in  advance  of  those  passages  in  the  Psalms 
which  describe  the  heathen  as  Christ's  inheritance, 
and  even  of  Isaiah's  description  of  the  holy  moun- 
tain to  which  all  Gentiles  are  to  flock.  All  Jewish 
jian-o^vness  and  exclusiveness  has  disappeared,  and  we 
feel  ourselves  standing  on  the  very  threshold  of  that 
love  for  all  mankind  which  has  made  the  Church  of  the 
New  Testament  catholic  and  world-mde  in  its  sym- 
pathies. And  so  as  regai-ds  the  doctrine  of  the  resur- 
rection of  the  dead.  There  are  indications  of  it  in  the 
Psalms  (xvi.  10  ;  xlix.  15),  in  Isaiah  (xxvi.  19),  in  Ezekiel 
(xxxvii.  1 — 11)  ;  but  it  is  in  Daniel  (xii.  2)  that  we  find 
it  fully  developed.  Erase  the  Book  of  Daniel  from  the 
canon,  and  you  leave  a  chasm  between  the  Prophets  and 
the  New  Testament  which  Daniel  now  exactly  fiUs. 

Much,  too,  has  been  said  about  the  doctrine  of  angels 
as  taught  by  Daniel  (chaj)s.  x.  13 ;  xii.  1),  as  though  it 


were  mere  Parseeism  leamt  by  him  fi'om  his  Magian 
teachers.  But  here  again  there  is  at  most  only  a  de- 
velopment of  what  had  been  taught  before,  and  a  pro- 
gress towards  the  angelic  appearances  in  the  Gospels. 
Michael,  the  gi-eat  prince  who  protects  the  Jews,  is  ui 
exact  harmony  with  the  Captain  of  Jehovah's  host  seen 
by  Joshua  before  Jericho  (Josh.  v.  13).  Angels  appear 
on  several  occasions  in  the  Book  of  Judges,  and  the 
seraphim  of  Isaiah  (chap,  vi.)  and  the  cherubim  of  Ezekiel 
(chap.  X.)  represent  the  same  spiritual  ministrations  as 
those  of  the  bright  beings  seen  by  Daniel  in  his  visions, 
only  his  teaching,  like  that  subsequently  of  Zechariah, 
is  more  definito  and  express.  In  the  Apocrypha,  an- 
gelic appearances  are  rare,  but  where  they  do  appear, 
like  Raphael  in  the  Book  of  Tobit,  they  transgress  the 
l5ounds  both  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament  teach- 
ing. Rajjhael  assumes  human  form,  and  takes  his 
place  among  the  characters  of  the  story.  He  is  no  mes- 
senger of  heaven,  but  a  Mentor  to  guide  the  young  Tobit, 
and  give  him  in  his  search  after  a  wife  that  aid  which 
would  enable  him  to  batfle  the  violence  of  the  demon 
Asmodeus,  and  bring  back  his  father's  money-bags. 
In  Raphael  we  have  an  angel  reduced  to  the  level  of  a 
popular  legend. 

We  have  then  in  the  Book  of  Daniel  a  necessary  link 
between  the  Old  and  New  Testament,  and  its  develop- 
ment of  doctrine  as  regards  the  abolition  of  the  Jewish 
dispensation,  the  universality  of  Christ's  kingdom,  the 
resurrection  of  the  dead,  and  the  general  judgment,  is  as 
indispensable  for  the  unity  of  Holy  Scripture  as  Isaiah's 
development  of  doctrine  with  regard  to  the  efficacy  of 
Christ's  atonement.  It  remains  ouly  to  add  that  no 
single  trace  of  Maccabtean  foeUng  can  be  foiind  in  it. 
The  time  of  the  Maccabees  was  intensely  Jewish  in  its 
sympathies ;  the  Book  of  Daniel  is  cosmopolitan.  The 
Maccabees,  wronged  and  persecuted  by  Antiochus 
Epiphanes,  hated  the  Gentiles  with  hearty  abomina- 
tion ;  the  Book  of  Daniel  regards  them  with  lai-gc-heartcd 
affection.  In  the  Maccabaean  age  the  people  mourned 
over  the  absence  of  the  jirophetic  spuit,  and  the  ivith- 
drawal  of  all  external  signs  of  God's  presence ;  the 
Book  of  Daniel  belongs  to  a  time  when  prophecy  and 
miracle  are  stiU  things  of  the  present,  vouchsafed  upon 
all  worthy  occasions.  And  when  we  take  into  conside- 
ration the  historical  accuracy  of  the  book,  its  thorough 
acquaintance  with  the  minuter  details  of  the  Babylonian 
and  Medo-Persian  empires,  its  perfect  mastery  both  of 
the  Hebrew  and  the  Chaldee  languages,  and  the  deep 
interest  it  displays  in  the  fortunes  of  heathen  empires, 
we  may  feel  quite  certain  that  such  a  work  was  no 
product  of  Maccabtean  times.  There  was  neither  know- 
ledge enough  then,  nor  largeness  of  heart  enough  for 
such  a  work.  The  intense  patriotism  of  the  Macca- 
bees, stu-red  to  fury  by  the  cruelties  of  the  Seleucida;, 
smarting  under  the  vilest  outrages,  and  concentrated 
upon  a  fierce  struggle  for  existence  against  overwhohn- 
ing  force,  would  never  have  taken  for  its  hero  a  mas 
trained  under  heathen  teachers,  the  president  of  a  college 
of  heathen  sages,  the  -vizier  of  an  Oriental  despot, 
peaceful  in  his  ways,  ready  to  serve  Chaldoe,  Persian,  or 


376 


THE   BIBLE    EDUCATOR. 


Mode,  and  offering  no  resistance  even  when  about  to  bo 
cast  into  a  den  of  lions.  Their  rigorous  Judaism,  their 
bold  and  audacious  spirit,  their  manly  perilling  of  life 
audhmb  for  the  faith,  would  have  called  forth  a  sterner 
and  more  exclusive  character  to  be  the  model  to  guide 
their  conduct.     They  were  the  Covenanters  of  the  Old 


Dispensation,  martyrs  for  their  religion,  but  martyrs 
sword  in  hand,  who  fell  in  the  foremost  of  the  fight ; 
but  this  was  not  Daniel's  spirit,  and  the  very  object  of 
his  book  is  to  show  that  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  are 
still  God's  kingdoms,  are  doing  Hin  work,  and  have 
their  share  in  His  providence. 


THE    COINCIDENCES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 

THE    LOCAL    COLOUKING    OP    ST.    PAUL'S    EPISTLES. 


BY    THE    EDITOK. 


-•-w>6»!>; 


FIRST   AND    SECONB    EPISTLES    TO   THE 
CORINTHIANS. 

|HERE  are  among  the  Epistles  of  the  New 
Testament  none  that  bear  more  strongly 
the  impress  of  what  I  have  called  local 
colouring — the  influence,  i.e.,  of  the  cir- 
cumstances, associations,  and  events  which  distingmshed 
the  place  to  which,  and  the  place  from  which,  any 
given  letter  was  written — 
than  these  two  that  were 
addressed  to  tho  Church  of  —  a 

Corinth.     It  was  probably  '  ^  " 

in  tho   nature   of    things  - 

that  it  should  be  so.  The 
duration  of  St.  Paul's  so- 
journ there  (two  years  and 
six  months)  had  been  such 
iis  to  make  him  acquainted 
with  every  aspect  of  its  life, 
and  that  life  presented 
very  strongly-marked  fea- 
tures. No  place  at  which 
ho  hatl  as  yet  worked  was 
so  well  fitted  to  servo  as  a 
centre  for  his  great  enter- 
prise of  evangelising  the 
West.  With  its  two  har- 
bours of  Lechseum  and 
Cenchrese  en  either  side  the  isthmus,  it  became  the 
natural  entrepot  of  the  commerce  between  the  East 
and  West,  and  carried  on  an  active  trade  with  Rome, 
Sicily,  Cyrene,  Carthage,  in  tho  one  direction,  with 
MUetus,  Ephesus,  Smyrna,  Cyprus,  on  the  other. 
After  its  capture  and  partial  destruction  by  Mummius, 
it  had  risen  rapidly  from  its  ruins,  and  regained  in  no 
small  measure  its  former  greatness,  and  even  more  than 
its  former  fame  for  luxury  and  vice.  The  old  prover- 
bial speech  which  made  tho  verb  "to  live  as  at  Corinth" 
(K(,pii/e,rif.,T9a,)  a  synonym  for  profligate  indulgence,  had 
not  become  obsolete.  And  the  harloti-y  of  Corinth 
associated  itself,  as  so  often  elsewhere  in  Hellenic 
heathemsm,  with  its  worship.  The  women  wh®  thus 
gave  themselves  to  a  life  of  sliame  were  recognised  as 
the  votaries  {Up6SovKoi).  almost  as  the  priestesses,  of 
Aphrodite,  and  the  feasts  which  were  held  in  the  temple 
of  that  goddess  were  the  occasions  of  their  gathering 


_^ .M'J'' 


ACROPOLIS,   COBINTH. 


in  larger  numbers,  and  with  more  ostentatious  parade 
of  their  venal  beauty.  The  constant  arrivals  of  ships 
from  all  parts  of  the  empire  increased  all  these  evils, 
exposed  their  crews  to  the  frauds  and  extortions  of  dis- 
honest innkeepers,  brought  with  it  on  the  other  hand 
a  constant  demand  for  the  materials  which  were  wanted 
for  supplying  ship's  furniture  that  had  been  worn  or 
damaged  in  then-  voyage.  The  city  had  also  a  pro- 
minent position  in  its 
relation  to  the  Imperial 
government.  It  was  the 
centre  of  tho  Roman  pro- 
vince of  Achaia,  and  there 
the  proconsul  for  the  most 
part  resided,  administering 
justice  after  Roman  rules. 
At  the  time  of  St.  Paul's 
arrival,  as  wo  know,  that 
office  was  filled  by  Lucius 
AnnsBus  GaUio,  the  brother 
of  the  illustrious  Seneca, 
himself  the  "  dulcis  Gallio  " 
of  aO  his  friends,  beloved 
and  esteemed  by  all  who 
knew  him.  The  disorders 
of  such  a  city,  tho  disputes 
incident  to  its  trade,  called, 
we  may  well  believe,  for 
a  strict  police  administration.  As  with  all  the  other 
great  cities  of  ihe  Empire,  Jews  had  flocked  there  in 
Largo  numbers  in  pursuit  of  gain,  as  money-changers, 
traders,  and  usurers.  Just  at  this  juncture  that  portion 
of  the  population  had  received  a  large  addition  from  tho 
influx  of  many  of  tho  Jewish  residents  of  Rome,  who 
had  been  compelled  by  the  decree  of  Claudius  to  leave 
that  city.  Some  of  the  new-comers  probably  brought 
with  them,  as  we  have  seen,'  the  new  faith  of  which  St. 
Paul  was  tho  preacher,  and  the  absence  of  any  reference 
to  the  conversion  of  Aquila  and  Priscilla  makes  it  all 
but  certain  that  they  were  among  the  number. 

The  culture  of  Corinth  could  not  assert  any  claim  to 
equality  with  that  of  Athens  in  the  higher  regions  of 
knowledge.  The  speculations  of  the  new  Academy,  of 
the  Stoics  and  Ej-iicureans.  found  their  natural  home  in 

'  BlBLC  Eddcator,  Vol.  I.,  p.  151. 


THE   COINCIDENCES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 


377 


the  city  of  Athena.  But  the  deficiency  in  sustained 
intellectual  power  was  more  than  balanced  by  the  fond- 
ness— natural  in  a  rich  and  luxurious  city  anxious  for 
the  fame  of  culture— for  its  more  ornate  forms.  The 
teaching  of  Epicurus  would  appear  there  in  the  pithy 
maxims  of  a  self-indulgent  easy-going  morality.  If 
Athens  was  the  centre  of  philosophical  thought,  Corinth 
was  hardly  less  famous  for  a  rhetoric  as  florid  as  the 
architecture  to  which  it  gave  its  name.  And  above  all, 
as  that  which  gave  Corinth  a  celebrity  over  any  merely 
commercial  or  merely  literary  town,  there  were  the 
great  Isthmian  games  celebrated  every  alternate  year 
(twice  in  every  Olympiad),  calling  out  all  the  athletic 
ambition  of  men  of  every  rank,  stimulating  those  who 
were  not  sunk  in  luxury  or  the  greed  of  gain,  to  some 
effort,  for  at  least  a  few  weeks  or  months,  at  discipline 
and  self-control,  so  that  they  might  wear  the  parsley 
wreath  which  was  there  the  distinctive  decoration  of 
the  victors. 

It  was  to  a  Church  that  had  grown  up  under  his 


he  must  have  looked  on  it,  with  the  voluptuous  beauty 
of  its  Aphrodites  and  its  Ganymedes,  as  ministering  to 
the  impurity  which  had  eaten  like  a  canker  into  the 
life  of  Greece.  But  in  the  games  of  Greece  he  recog- 
nised almost  the  one  surviving  element  of  manliness, 
the  one  discipline  that  was  corrective  of  sensual  self- 
indulgence.  To  him,  as  he  watched  the  crowds  stream- 
ing to  the  arena,  or  looked  from  afar  upon  the  contests 
of  the  combatants,  what  he  saw  seemed  as  a  parable  of 
the  spiritual  life.  Much  that  those  contests  involved — 
the  wild  excitement,  the  symbols  of  a  heathen  worship, 
the  naked  forms  of  the  wrestlers,  or  the  racers — would 
have  seemed  to  him,  as  they  did  to  the  devout  Hebrews 
of  the  days  of  the  Macx^abee8  (1  Mace.  i.  12  ;  2  Mace.  iv. 
9 — 15),  debasing  and  demoralising,  but  his  intercourse 
with  men  not  of  his  own  race  had  given  him  a  largeness 
of  heart  to  which  they  liad  not  attained,  and  he  could 
recognise  "  a  soul  of  goodness  "  even  in  "  things  evil." 
And  so  he  compares  his  own  dLscipline  of  self-denial  to 
that  of  the  wrestlers  who  were  "temperate"  in  all  things. 


COBINTHIAN   GAMES. 


watchful  care,  and  through  the  hearty  co-operation  of 
his  fellow-labourers,  Timotheus,  Silvanus,  Aquila  and 
PrisciUa,  among  such  .surroundings,  and  exposed  to  such 
influences,  that  St.  Paul  wrote  the  Epistles  which  are 
now  before  us.  The  occasion,  the  contents,  the  general 
structure  of  those  Epistles  will  form,  in  due  course,  the 
subject  of  a  separate  paper,  under  "  The  Books  of  the 
New  Testament."  I  confine  myself  now  to  such  coinci- 
dences as  illustrate  the  special  points  of  which  I  propose 
to  treat. 

Foremost  among  these  is,  of  course,  the  well-known 
passage  in  1  Cor.  ix.  24 — 27  : — "  Know  ye  not  that  they 
which  run  in  a  race  rim  all,  but  one  receiveth  the  prize  ? 
So  run,  that  ye  may  obtain.  And  every  man  that 
striveth  for  the  mastery  is  temperate  in  all  things.  Now 
they  do  it  to  obtain  a  corruptible  crown ;  but  wo  an 
incorruptible.  I  therefore  so  run,  not  as  uncertainly ; 
so  fight  I,  not  as  one  that  beateth  the  air :  but  I  keep 
under  my  body,  and  bring  it  into  subjection ;  lest  that 
by  any  means,  when  I  have  preached  to  others,  I  myself 
should  be  a  castaway."  Here,  as  has  often  been  pointed 
out,  we  have  the  fullest  and  most  vivid  of  all  the 
agonistic  imagery  that  St.  Paul  seems  to  have  delighted 
in.  The  art  of  Greece  seemed  to  him  irremediably 
tainted  with  idolatry.  Judged  by  the  test  of  the  life 
out  of  which  it  had  grown  and  to  which  it  ministered. 


so  he  made  himself  the  servant  of  all,  instead  of  assert- 
ing his  individual  freedom,  as  they  submitted  themselves 
to  the  rides  of  the  master  of  tho  training  school,  that 
he  might  win  the  prize  of  his  high  calling.  So  he  con- 
trasts their  perishable  crown  of  leaves  with  the  incor- 
ruptible crown  of  life  eternal  after  which  he  strove. 
But  he  goes  beyond  this.  He  is  not  only  preparing  for 
a  contest,  but  is  actually  engaged  in  one.  His  daily  life 
is  the  race  which  has  Heaven  for  its  goal,  and  he  runs 
therefore  not  "  as  uncertainly,"  with  blind  haste  or 
random  impulse,  or  faltering  footstep,  but  straight 
onward  to  the  mark  of  his  high  calling.  He  has  an 
enemy  to  contend  with,  and  that  enemy  is  the  base 
fleshly  nature  which  attacked  him  through  tho  body 
and  its  senses,  and  therefore  he  does  not  fight  as  one 
that  "  beateth  the  air,"  wasting  his  strength  in  blows 
which  miss  their  aim,  but  plants  them  where,  like  tho 
pugilist's  "facer"  (tho  Apostle  uses  tho  technical 
phrase,  one  might  almost  say,  the  slang,  of  the  gym- 
nasium) they  ^vill  leave  the  livid  mark  of  the  black  and 
blue  weal,  and  come  as  a  knock-down  blow.  Wlien  he 
has  so  gained  the  mastery,  he  drags  tho  conquered  foe 
with  him  as  a  slave  ("  bring  into  subjection  "  is  far  too 
weak  a  rendering),  so  subdued  at  last  as  to  be  powerless 
to  resist  or  harm. 

And  tho  impression  thus  made  on  him  was  a  lasting 


378 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


one.  Again  and  again  he  returns  to  the  same  agonistic 
imagery.  He  is  as  one  who  with  head  stretched  forward 
■with  intense  eagerness,  forgetting  the  space  which  he 
has  ab-eady  traversed,  thinking  only  of  what  yet 
remains,  presses  onward  and  onward  to  the  end  for  the 
prize  which  there  awaited  him  (PhU.  iii.  13,  14).  When 
he  knows  that  that  end  is  near,  he  returns  to  the  old 
language,  "  I  have  fought  the  good  fight,  I  have  finished 
the  race ;  henceforth  tliere  is  laid  up  for  me  a  crown 
of  righteousness "  (2  Tim.  iv.  7).  If  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews  be  his,  there  also,  as  he  dwells  upon 
the  achievements  and  the  suti'orings  of  the  gi-eat 
heroes  of  faith,  he  seems  to  himself  to  see  in  them  the 
great  cloud  of  witnesses  who  are  now,  in  their  hard-won 
rest  and  peace,  spectators  of  those  who  with  liim  are 
stiU  running  the  race,  and  calls  on  his  companions  to 
lay  aside  every  weight,  as  the  runner  laid  aside  clothes 
and  boots,  or  got  rid  of  the  "  too  too  solid  flesh"  that 
would  impede  his  pace  ;  to  put  away  also  tlie  sin  which 
did  "  so  easily  besot  them,"  as  ho  got  rid  of  every  i-ag 
which,  though  it  did 
not  encumber.might 
yet  entangle  him, 
and  to  look  to  Jesus 
as  the  true  leader 
and  captain  (not 
"author")  of  theii- 
faith,  whom  they  see 
afar  off  waiting  to 
crown  it  at  the  goal. 
He  calls  on  them 
not  to  be  "weary 
and  faint,"  like  tho 
cowards  and  the 
cravens  who  leavo 
the   ground   at  tho 

first  hard  blow,  and  reminds  them  that  as  yet  no  blood 
had  been  drawn  in  tho  combat  in  which  they  were 
engaged.' 

The  allusion  in  the  Epistles  now  before  us  may  even 
have  been  pointed  by  a  special  fitness  of  time  as  well  as 
place.  Tho  fh-st  Epistlo  to  the  Church  of  Corinth 
appears  to  have  been  written  in  the  Later  mouths  of 
spring.  St.  Paul  intends  to  "  tarry  at  Ephesus  until 
Pentecost"  (xvi.  8).  He  is  writing,  we  may  beheve,  at 
or  about  the  time  of  the  Passover,  when  the  old  associa- 
tions aud  customs  of  that  feast,  the  '"  old  leaven,"  the 
new  hmip,  the  imleavcncd  bread,  the  passovor  sacrifice, 
come  before  his  mind  with  a  new  and  higher  significance 
(1  Cor.  V.  7).  So  far  we  have  something  liko  a  definite 
date.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Isthmian  games,  when  they 
occurred  in  the  third  year  of  the  Olympiad,  were  cele- 
brated in  tho  month  known  in  the  Attic  calendar  as 
Munychtum,  which  covered  part  of  April  and  part  of 

*  If  we  accept  a  theory,  which  has  much  to  support  it,  and 
assume  that  the  Epistle  to  the  Hchi-ews  was  written  to  the 
Jewish  Christians  of  Cffisarea,  we  may  trace  a  "local  colouring" 
here  also.  That  town  was  conspicuous  for  the  large  amphitheatre 
which  Herod  the  Great  had  built  there,  and  in  which  games  such 
as  those  of  which  the  writer  speaks  were  celebrated,  it  may  bo, 
©very  year. 


May.  It  is  therefore  more  than  probable  that  when 
the  Corinthians  received  the  Epistle,  the  games  of  the 
Isthmus  were  the  absorbing  topic  of  the  day,  filling 
men's  thoughts  and  caUing  into  play  all  their  energies. 

It  is  possible,  as  Dean  Stanley  has  suggested  [Com- 
mentary, i.  77),  that  tho  architectural  imagery  of 
1  Cor.  iii.  10 — 13,  may  have  a  like  distinctively  local 
character.  The  conflagration  which  had  attended  tho 
capture  of  the  city  by  Mummius  had  acted  as  a  test  of 
the  worth  and  durability  of  the  buildings.  The  older 
stately  temples  had  remained,  though  "  tried  by  fire," 
comparatively  unhurt,  whOe  the  "  wood,  hay,  stubble," 
the  timl)er-work  or  thatching  of  meaner  buildings,  had 
perished  utterly.  The  memory  of  the  reconstruction 
of  the  city,  the  employment  of  materials  of  various 
kinds,  some  fit  only  for  the  most  temporary  use,  some 
calculated  alike  for  permanence  and  beauty,  could  not 
have  entirely  faded  away  from  tho  minds  of  tho 
descendants  of  those  by  whom  that  reconstruction  had 
been  accomplished.    So  again  the  dangers  against  which 

the  Apostle  warns 
the  Corinthians  are 
especially  those 
which  arose  from 
the  combination  of 
culture  and  profli- 
gacy that  distin- 
guished their  city. 
Taught  by  his  ex- 
perieuce  at  Athens, 
he  had  come  among 
them  "  not  with  en- 
ticing  words  of 
men's  wisdom,"  but 
ho  found  them  stUl 
seeking  after  wis- 
dom, still  disposed  to  regard  the  preaching  of  tho 
cross  of  Chiist  as  foolishness  (1  Cor.  i.  18).  It  was 
the  taimt  of  St.  Paul's  enemies  that  liis  speech  was 
"  contemptible  "  (2  Cor.  x.  10),  as  compared  with  the 
more  ornate  Alexandrian  elociuence  of  ApoUos  (Acta 
xviii.  25).  Even  among  those  who  pressed  into  the 
Church  of  Christ,  and  received  the  higher  gifts  of  the 
Spirit,  there  was  the  old  restless  eagerness  for  display, 
the  old  assertion  of  indiv^idual  license  in  debate,  the  old 
preference  not  for  that  which  was  most  jjrofitable  to 
the  hearers,  but  for  that  which  ministered  most  directly 
to  tho  vanity  of  the  speaker  (1  Cor.  xiv.  26).  Every 
ouo  had  a  doctrine,  a  psalm,  an  interpretation.  Tha 
gift  of  tongues,  with  its  strange  mysterious  power  to 
startle  and  attract,  was  more  coveted  than  that  of  pro- 
phecy, which  was  profitable  for  the  edifying  of  the 
Church. 

Nor  were  tho  dangers  on  the  more  sensual  side  less 
chai-acteristic.  The  question  of  eating  things  sacrificed 
to  idols,  which  shocked  tho  feelings  of  devout  Jews 
everywhere,  presented  itself  at  Corinth  in  its  most  com- 
plicated ami  aggravated  form.  Where  the  dominant 
worship  was  tliat  of  Aphrodite  (Venus),  whore  tho  idol- 
feasts  were  hold  in  tho  temple  of  that  goddess,  where 


COBINTHIAN    QAMES — USE    OP    THE    CESTUS. 


THE   COINCIDENCES   OF  SCRIPTURE. 


379 


the  precincts  of  the  temple  were  crowded  with  the 
women  who  gave  themselves  to  the  service  that  they 
mis;ht  carry  on  their  trade  of  prostitution,  the  two  ovDs 
of  idolatry  and  impurity  were  found  iu  the  closest 
possiblo  alliance,  and  the  warning  of  the  Apostle 
against  "  sitting  at  meat  in  the  idol's  temple  "  was  the 
necessary  complement  of  his  ui'gent  entreaty  that  all 
who  bore  the  namo  of  Clirist  should  "  flee  fornication." 
Out  of  that  basest  evU,  lust,  many  of  Ms  converts  had 
been  rescued.  Would  thoy  plunge  into  it  once  again,  and 
so  dofOe  a  temple  of  God,  more  truly  consecrated  to  His 
service  than  any  which  iu  the  times  of  their  ignorance 
they  had  shrunk  from  profaning  (1  Cor.  vi.  19)  p 

Another  of  the  characteristic  vices  of  a  Greek  com- 
mercial city  furnishes  the  Apostle,  if  I  mistake  not, 
with  one  of  his  most  forcible  and  stinging  phrases.  The 
streets  of  such  a  city  were  sure  to  swarm  with  inns  and 
taverns  of  the  lowest  type,  where  the  imwary  traveller 
was  liable  to  pay  an  enormous  price  for  adulterated, 
perhaps  even  drugged,  wine.  The  baseness  of  those  who 
kept  such  taverns  seemed  to  St.  Paul  to  present  an 
analogy  to  the  sin  of  those  who  tampered  with  the  faith 
which  they  professed  to  preach,  in  order  to  please 
the  vitiated  tastes  of  theii'  hearers,  and  so  win  a  larger 
profit  for  themselves.  Wo  cannot  fail  to  hear  the  ring 
of  a  noble  scorn  for  all  such  baseness  in  the  words,  "  Wo 
are  not  as  the  many  who  corrupt  (i.e.,  as  the  word 
literally  moans,  adulterate  after  the  manner  of  traders) 
the  word  of  God,  but  as  of  sincerity,  but  as  of  God  in 
the  sight  of  God,  .speak  we  in  Christ ''  (2  Cor.  ii.  17). 

But  St.  Paid  also  had  been  brought  into  close  contact 
at  Corinth  with  a  large  number  of  men  and  women  who 
had  been  resident  at  Rome.  From  them  he  was  likely 
to  have  heard  a  report  of  that  which  was  at  all  times  her 
greatest  and  most  impressive  spectacle — the  triumph  of 
one  of  her  gi-eat  generals  or  emperors.  He  must  in 
that  case  have  been  told  how  in  that  triumph  the  pro- 
cession wound  its  way  through  the  streets  of  the  city  to 
the  temple  of  the  Capitoline  Jupiter,  with  clouds  of 
incense  smoke  perfuming  the  air,  how  the  chief  repre- 
sentatives of  the  conquered  nations  followed  the  chariot 
of  the  conqueror,  S'-rne  destined  to  receive  the  grant  of 
pardon  at  his  hand  and  to  live  as  pensioners  on  his 
bounty,  some,  those  who  had  held  out  most  obstinately 
against  him,  to  pass  from  the  triumph  to  the  dungeon  and 
the  grave.  The  recollection  of  what  he  had  thus  heard 
— for  there  is  no  probability  that  ho  had  ever  actually  seen 
it— shows  itself  with  marvellous  boldness  and  grandeur 
in  the  imagery  which  precedes  the  more  homely  similitude 
just  quoted.  "  Tlianks  bo  unto  God  which  always  leadeth 
ns  iu  triumph  "  (this,  and  not  "  causeth  us  to  triumph  " 
is  now  generally  recognised  as  the  right  rendering)  "  iu 
Christ,  and  maketh  manifest  the  savour  of  his  knowledge 
by  us  in  every  place"  (2  Cor.  ii.  14 — 16).  The  Apostle 
thinks  of  himself,  not  as  a  victor  exulting  in  his  con- 
C(Ufists,  but  as  one  who  has  liimself  been  overcome  and 
who  is  now  honoured  by  being  employed  to  diffuse  the 
incense  of  his  Master's  praise,  and  of  tho  knowledge 
of  His  truth.  But  as  the  triumph  wends  its  way,  he 
sees  the  men  around  him   dividing  into   two  classes, 


some,  like  himself,  in  the  way  of  life,  among  those  that 
are  saved  and  pardoned,  some  on  the  way  to  a  self- 
chosen  destruction.  The  inceuso-cloud  is  to  one  fragrant 
as  with  the  breath  of  life,  to  another  tainted  as  from 
the  charuel-house  of  death,  "We  are  unto  God  a  sweet 
savour  of  Christ,  in  them  that  are  saved  and  in  them 
that  perish ;  to  the  one  we  are  the  savour  of  death  imto 
death,  and  to  the  other  the  savom-  of  life  imto  life." 

Lastly,  we  may  note  tho  special  character  of  the  scep- 
ticism which  St.  Paid  encoimtered  in  the  Corinthian 
Church  as  to  the  great  truth  that  Cluist  had  risen 
and  that  man,  too,  shoidd  rise  from  the  dead,  and 
bo  made  manifest  before  tho  judgment-seat  of  Chiist. 
That  which  offended  these  half-philosoxihic,  half-sen- 
suahst  converts,  was  the  doctiino  of  the  resurrection 
of  the  body.  Tho  Platonist  woidd  have  accepted  the 
immortality  of  the  soul.  The  Stoic  would  have  admitted 
the  absorption  of  tho  human  soul  in  the  great  Divine 
Sold  that  pervaded  the  universe.  But  that  each  man 
should  rise  at  one  far  distant  day,  in  his  own  individual 
persouality,  defined  by  a  bodily  organisation,  this  they 
stumbled  at.  But  the  school  which  was  dominant  at 
Corinth  was  naturally  that  of  the  followers  of  Epiciu'us. 
And  they  rejected  the  resurrection  of  the  body  on  two 
distinct  grounds.  They  were,  in  the  strictest  sense 
of  the  word,  materialists.  Life  was  but  the  residt  of 
the  coherence  of  the  particles  of  which  the  body  was 
composed.  When  it  was  dead  and  decayed,  and  the 
particles  had  passed  into  other  forms  of  life,  what 
could  bring  them  again  into  the  old  combination  and 
the  form  in  which  they  had  given  individuality  to  this 
or  that  man  ?  So  it  was  that  they  had  mocked  at 
Athens.  So  it  was  that,  at  Corinth,  wliOo  they  were 
ready  to  receive  some  portion  of  the  truth  of  Christ,  the 
the  same  school  of  thinkers  asked  the  question,  "How 
are  the  dead  raised  up,  and  with  what  body  do  they 
come  ?  " 

The  answers  which  St.  Paul  gives  to  their  doubts  and 
questionings  bear,  it  is  believed,  the  impress  of  special 
adaptation  to  these  tiu'ns  of  thought.  Those  who 
prided  themselves  as  being  specially  the  physicists  of 
the  ancient  world,  students  of  the  phenomena  of  natiu'o, 
as  that  in  which,  and  in  which  alone,  they  could  hope 
for  certainty,  he  presses  the  analogy  of  those  phenomena. 
In  that  world  of  nature  there  were  infinite  varieties  of 
en;  ivcal  Hfe,  in  not  a  few  cases  a  higher  life  evolved 
out  of  a  seemingly  poor  and  imperfect  beginning.  To 
those  who  shrank  from  transferring  the  ignoble 
conditions  of  our  present  bodily  life  to  that  future 
stage  to  which  they  had  looked  forward  as  an  ap- 
proximation to  the  purity  and  incoiTuption  of  the 
Divine  Essence,  he  presents  the  thouglit  (too  much 
forgotten  in  the  later  theologies  of  Christendom) 
that  the  body  which  shall  rise  is  no  structure  of 
flesh  and  Ijlood,  subject  to  corruption  and  decay,  but 
spiritual,  tho  organ  of  the  spirit,  as  this  body  of 
ours  is  the  organ  chiefly  of  the  natural  or  sensuous 
life,  incorruptible,  imperishable,  glorious.  Finally,  on 
those  who  were  striving  after  a  high  ideal  of  life,  he 
urges  the  reflection  that  they  were  imconsciously  de- 


380 


THE    BEBLE    EDUCATOR. 


stroying  the  very  foundation  on  which  alone  that  super- 
structure of  the  ideal  could  be  built  up.  Let  men  say 
what  they  would  of  the  beauty  of  virtue,  its  desirable- 
ness for  its  own  sake,  it  was  yet  true  that  it  required 
faith  in  the  futui-e,  the  hope  of  immortality,  the  confi- 
dence that  what  we  see  now  in  tendency  and  germ 
would  be  developed  to  completeness.  Without  that 
hope,  those  who  chose  poverty,  hardship,  persecution, 
ceaseless  toU,  ever-pressing  anxiety  for  the  sake  of 
Christ,  would  be  of  all  men  most  miserable.  Those  of 
the  Stoic  or  Platonic  schools,  who  talked  of  the  ideal 
life,  yet  denied  that  hope,  were  practically  taking  up 
the  watchword  of  the  gi'osser  Epicureans,  and  saying, 
"  Let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die,"'  He  has 
to  remind  them  of  another  maxim,  common  in  the  life 
of  men,  passing  from  the  comedies  of  Meuander  into 
their  proverbial  speech,  and  to  warn  them  that  here 
also  "  Evil  communications  con-upt  good  manners." 

Tet  another  coincidence  remains  to  be  noticed  in  con- 
nection with  this  subject.  When  St.  Paul,  at  the  close 
of  1  Cor.  XV.,  brings  before  hLs  readers  that  magnificent 
picture  of  the  Resurrection,  it  is  manifestly  as  a  truth 
which  they  had  not  heard  before.  "Behold,  I  show 
you  a  mystery."  That  is  his  final  answer  to  their  per- 
plexities and  doubts.     He  has  a  revelation  to  disclose,  to 


withdraw  the  veil  from  the  secret  which  had  been  hidden 
from  ages  and  generations.  He  appears  as  the  revealer 
of  mysteries  more  marveUous  and  more  dirine  than  those 
of  the  Eleusinian  goddess.  How  was  it,  we  may  ask, 
that  he  had  withheld  this  so  long  ?  What  reserve  had 
sealed  his  lips  during  the  two  years  and  a  half  of  his 
apostolic  work  at  Corinth  ?  Why  did  ho  wait  till  that 
was  drawn  from  him  in  a  letter  which  he  had  not  spoken 
with  his  lips  ?  The  answer  is  to  be  found  in  what  he 
himseK  teUs  lis  as  to  the  mental  and  spu-itnal  condition 
of  the  Church  of  Corinth  when  lie  came  among  them. 
He  had  found  them  "  carnal,"  as  mere  "  babes  in 
Clu-ist,"  requiring  the  "  milk"  of  the  simplest  and  most 
elementary  truths  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ,  not  the 
"strong  meat,"  the  solid  foods  of  its  profoimder 
mysteries.  With  them  he  had  reasoned  of  ''  righteous- 
ness, temperance,  and  judgment  to  come,"  and  had 
"  preached  Christ  and  Him  crucified."  The  higher 
truths  of  the  brotherhood  of  mankind  in  Christ,  of  the 
order  of  tlie  "  last  things,"  of  the  close,  even,  of  the 
mediatorial  kingdom  of  Christ,  and  of  the  final  con- 
summation, in  which  God  should  be  "  all  in  aO."  These 
ho  had  deliberately  reseiTed  till  they  should  be  able  to 
receive,  till  they  were  needed  to  remove  doubts  or  to 
counteract  errors. 


MEASUEES,  WEIGHTS,    AND   COINS  OF   THE   BIBLE. 

BY    F.    B.    CONDER,    C.E. 


II.   HEBREW 


[EASUEES    OF    AREA. 


f  HE  statement  that  an  accurate  and  minute 
system  of  land  measurement  existed  at 
the  time  of  the  conquest  of  Palestine  by 
Joshua,  and  not  only  so,  but  that  its 
elements  are  recorded,  and  may  now  be  fully  understood 
by  the  English  student,  may  excite  some  surprise.  Not 
only  is  such  a  system  now  to  English  literatm-e,  but  it 
is  not  to  be  found  exhibited,  in  any  perspicuous  form, 
among  the  works  of  those  great  Benedictine  and  Jesuit 
writers,  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centui-ies, 
whose  profound  and  wide-spread  erudition  has  been 
so  unfortunately  neglected  by  modem  teachers.  The 
Jowisli  doctors,  wliile  painstaking  and  minute  to  a  de- 
gree of  which,  in  this  more  hurried  ago,  we  form  little 
idea,  consistently  avoid  that  well-subordinated  logical 
form  of  statement,  which  is  one  of  the  rudiments  of 
true  science.  Thus,  while  wo  shall  advance  nothing  in 
support  of  which,  either  positive  certainty,  or  rational 
induction  from  established  facts,  cannot  bo  cited,  it  is 
undeniable  that  tho  system,  now  for  tlio  first  time 
brought  under  English  eyes,  is  no  less  novel  than  it  is 
important. 

Many  injunctions  of  tho  Law  demand  some  geo- 
metric knowledge,  in  order  to  ensure  a  punctual 
obedience.  Chief  among  those  are  tho  prescriptions 
whieli  relate  to  the  observance  of  tho  Sabbatii ;  not 
only  with  reference  to  the   distance  beyond  which  it 


was  forbidden  to  move  from  the  domicile  on  that  day 
(as  before  alluded  to),  but  also  with  reference  to  the 
barriers  and  divisions  which  marked  the  domicile,  and 
to  the  combination  of  limits.  Still  more  intimately 
connected  with  what  we  now  call  land  surveying,  were 
the  prescriptions  of  the  Law  of  Kilaim,  or  the  prohibi- 
tion of  mixture  of  seeds,'  a  subject  which  is  treated  in 
such  detail  by  the  Oral  Law  that  no  Israelite  could  be 
left  in  doubt  as  to  what  did,  and  what  did  not,  come 
imder  the  prohibition  in  question,  according  to  what  we 
may  call  the  Common  Law  of  Palestine.  In  that  por- 
tion of  Hebrew  jurisprudence  wliich  relates  to  the  law  of 
real  property,  and  which  is  to  be  found  specially  treated 
of  in  the  Baba  Mezia,  or  second  Godex  de  Damnis,  the 
denominations  we  have  to  explain  are  mentioned  by  the 
Mishna  itself. 

The  unit  of  land  measure,  like  almost  every  detaU  of 
Jewish  learning,  was  definitely  connected  with  the 
Divine  injunctions  recorded  in  the  Pentateuch.  It  is 
the  sea,  or  saton  ;  a  term  identical  with  a  correspond- 
ing denomination  in  the  measures  of  capacity,  which 
are  thus  indicated  to  have  emanated  from  the  sami- 
source.  The  court  of  the  Tabernacle,  erected  by  Moses, 
covered  two  seas  of  land;^  so  that    the  sea  was    a 

'  Lev.  xiK.  19. 

2  Maimonides  in  Kilaim,  ii.  9.  Barteuora,  Df  UdcrOQeniis^  ii.  1. 
Codex  tertiua  de  Damnis,  ii.  5. 


MEASURES,   WEIGHTS,   AND   COINS  OP  THE   BIBLE 


381 


space  01  fifty  cubits  square,   or  2,500  square  cubits ; 
which  is  equal  to  about  16i  poles  English. 

Thirty  sata  went  to  the  km;  or  gomor.  This  is  the 
same  name  and  dimension  that  occurs  in  measures  of 
capacity,  notwithstanding  the  difference  between  square 
and  cubic  measure ;  thirty  square  sata  are  one  square 
]:or  of  land,  as  thirty  cubic  sata  are  one  cubic  hor  of 
corn.  The  division  by  thirty  is  to  be  found  in  all  the 
Babylonian  tables  of  measure.  A  hor  contains  a  frac- 
tion over  three  English  acres. 

The  minor  divisions  of  the  square  sea  also  resemble 
those  of  the  cubic  sea.  From  the  authorities  above 
cited,  wo  loam  that  a  sea  contains  six  cahi,  and  the  cab, 
four  rebali,  or  quartarii.  This  word,  quarter,  is  fre- 
quently used  as  a  Hebrew  dimension,  but  its  value 
usually  depends  on  that  of  the  measure  last  named 
before  the  word  was  employed.  It  is  not  a  quarter 
simply,  but  a  quarter  of  the  dimension  cited.  The 
quarter  of  a  cab,  in  cubic  measure,  is  a  log. 

The  epha  is  a  cubic  measure  intormodiato  between 
the  hor  and  the  sea.  The  term  has  not  been  found 
applied  to  land,  but  convenience  seems  to  require  a 
corresponding  dimension.  The  epha  is  called  La  the 
LXX.,  "the  three  measures,"  a  tei-m  probably  adopted 
from  the  fact  that  it  contained  three  seas  and  that  it 
had  no  Greek  or  Roman  equivalent. 

More  passages  than  one  in  the  Bible,  of  much 
obscurity  in  the  Authorised  Version,  are  rendered  per- 
fectly intelligible  by  a  knowledge  of  the  terms  of 
Hebrew  land  measiire.  Thus  Leviticus  xxvii.  16,  which 
in  the  LXX.  reads  plainly  "  a  hor  of  barley,"  is  rendered 
by  St.  Jerome,  "  land  sown  with  thirty  modii  of  barley," 
and  in  the  Authorised  Version, "  an  homer  of  barley  seed 
shall  be  valued  at  fifty  shekels  of  silver."  The  price  of 
£8  63.  8d.  in  silver,  for  something  less  than  a  quarter 
of  barley,  is  impossible.  But  the  estimation  of  that  sum 
as  the  annual  return  of  a  hor  or  three  acres  of  land 
is  intelligible.  The  estimation  is  equal  to  £2  ISs.  6d. 
in  silver  (or  £4  3s.  3d.  in  gold,  according  to  the  pre- 
sent proportion  between  the  metals)  for  the  crop  of 
an  acre.  In  England,  at  the  present  time,  the  value  of 
an  acre  of  ripe  barley  ranges  from  £5  on  poor  land,  to 
£10  on  rich  soil. 

The  hor  of  land  is  again  mentioned  by  the  Prophet 
Isaiah,'  who  predicts,  as  a  mark  of  famine,  that  the 
produce  of  a  hor  of  land  shall  bo  only  an  epha  of  corn, 
whidi  is  at  the  rate  of  about  two  gallons  to  the  acre,  or 
almost  utter  failure  of  crop. 

The  land  dimension  corresponding  to  the  epha  ap- 
pears to  be  referred  to  in  the  Book  of  Samuel,''  where 
the  Hebrew  word  inaanah  is  translated  "  a  stone  cast " 
by  the  LXX.,  and  "an  acre  "  by  the  Latin  and  English 
versions.  Both  in  this  passage  and  in  Isa.  v.  10  occur 
the  word  zimeed,  which  is  found  in  the  Talmud  with 
the  meaning  of  "  the  yoke  of  an  ox,"  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Latin  word  jugum.  Tlie  expression,  ten  zimeeds 
yielding  one  bath  (which  is  a  liquid  measure  applicable 
to  wine)  is  thus  parallel  to  the  yield  of  an  epha,  the  cor- 


1  Isa.  V.  10. 


3  1  Sam,  xiT.  14. 


responding  dry  measure,  from  a  hor  of  land.  The  tenth 
part  of  a  hor  is  about  three-tenths  of  an  acre,  or  foi-ty- 
eight  rods  of  land ;  and  the  fall  of  twenty  men  in  half 
that  space  would  show  marks  of  fighting  more 
destructive  than  usual  before  the  introduction  of 
artillery. 

We  have  not  inserted  the  zimeed  in  our  tables,  as, 
although  there  seems  little  reason  to  doubt  that  it  was 
the  tenth  part  of  the  hor,  it  is  not  so  stated,  as  far  as 
wo  are  aware,  in  the  Talmud.  It  is  important,  in 
matters  of  this  nature,  to  keep  in  view  the  broad  dis- 
tinction between  inference  and  direct  testimony. 

A  reference  to  the  fertile  character  of  the  vineyards 
of  Palestine  occurs  somewhat  later  in  the  book  of 
Isaiah,  although  the  actual  measure  contemplated  is 
not  specified.  The  yield  of  a  vino  is  estimated  at  a 
shekel.  This  appears  to  refer,  not  to  the  treUised  vine, 
but  to  the  plant  grown,  as  in  the  Bordeaux  vineyards 
at  the  present  day,  on  standards,  or  echalards,  like 
our  own  hop-bines.  By  the  injunctions  of  the  Law 
of  Kilaim,  the  calvities,  or  bare  places  required  to  be 
kept  between  different  sorts  of  plants,  were  such  as 
to  give  an  area  of  a  rebah  (of  a  cabus)  to  each,  giving 
720  plants  to  the  hor.  The  vines,  however,  might 
be  planted  closer  to  one  another,  if  the  land  did  not 
bear  any  other  plants ;  so  that  it  is  quite  possible  that 
1,000  standard  vines  might  grow  on  the  hor,  giving 
a  return  of  from  £40  to  £55  per  acre — about  a  thud 
of  the  returns  of  a  prime  crop  of  hops  in  Kent,  when 
prices  are  high. 

The  determination  of  the  Hebrew  measures  of  land 
throws  a  flood  of  light  on  that  passage  in  the  Book  of 
Ezekiel  (xlv.  1 — 8)  which  has  been  regarded  by  so 
many  writers,  not  only  as  an  unfulfilled,  but  as  an 
inexplicable,  prophecy. 

If  we  consult,  in  the  first  instance,  the  account  of  the 
measurement  of  the  court  of  the  Temple,  we  find  the 
area  of  the  sanctuary  (which  we  know  from  other 
sources  to  mean  the  second  court  of  the  Temple, 
which  was  surrounded  by  the  perforated  barrier  called 
the  druphahtos,  referred  to  in  our  tables  of  linear 
measure),  was  500  cubits  square.  This  is  equal  to  100 
sata  of  land,  or  fifty  times  the  size  of  the  court  of  the 
Tabernacle.  The  area  of  the  ante-murale,  or  outer  court 
(which  is  called  "  the  profane  place "  in  the  English 
version),  is  not  stated  oitlier  in  the  Bible  or  in  the  Tal- 
mud. In  the  Apocalypse,  the  prophet  is  forbidden  to 
measure  it.  The  Ordnance  Survey  of  Jerusalem,  how- 
ever, gives  us  the  boundaries  of  the  great  court.  From 
this  plan,  as  nearly  as  can  \A  ascertained,  and  taking 
the  same  cubit  of  six  palms  two  digits  that  is  used 
tliroughout  the  description,  the  outer  court  covered 
exactly  ten  hori  of  land. 

Reverting  to  the  forty-fifth  chapter,  it  seems  to  be 
intended  that  a  trumah,  or  "  oblation  "  of  land,  25,000 
amoth,  or  cubits,  square  in  all,  was  to  be  set  apart,  and 
divided  into  three  portions,  viz.,  two-fifths  for  the  sup- 
port of  the  Temple  and  its  retinue ;  two-fifths  for  the 
support  of  the  priests  and  Levites ;  and  one-fifth  for 
the  support  of  the  king.     The  passage  has  been  involved 


382 


THE    BIBLE    EDUCATOE. 


in  extreme  obscurity  (as  -was  also  the  description  of  the 
Temple)  from  the  entirely  gratuitous  introduction  of  the 
word  "  reed,"  in  italics,  -which  leads  to  a  midtii>lication 
of  the  area  described  by  no  less  than  thirty-sis-fold. 

The  total  area  of  the  trumah,  according  to  the  correct 
measurement,  -was  250,000  kori  of  laud  ;  in  the  midst  of 
which  were  the  100  sata  of  the  second  court,  surrounded 
by  the  unmeasured  ten  Icori  of  the  outer  coui-t. 

The  whole  of  Palestine  west  of  the  Jordan  is  roughly 
estimated  by  Lieutenant  Conder,  B.E.,  the  officer  in 
command  of  the  Ordnance  Survey,'  at  an  area  equal  to 
4,224,000  English  acres.  To  this  must  be  added  at 
least  half  as  much  more  for  Palestine  east  of  Jordan ; 
which  gives  a  total  a  little  over  six  and  a  third  millions 
of  acres.  The  trmmtli  is  equal  to  rather  less  than  the 
tenth  part  of  this  acreage.  Thus  there  seems  good 
reason  to  suppose  that  the  passage  ia  question  refers  to 
a  commutation  of  the  tithe,  payable  through  Palestine, 
for  an  equivalent  in  land. 

It  is  proper  to  notice  that  the  determination  of  the 
length  of  the  Sabbath  day's  journey,  stated  in  the 
article  on  linear  measures,  is  that  of  the  Abbe  Chiarini, 
Professor  of  Oriental  literature  at  the  University  of 
Warsaw,  and  one  of  the  profoimdest  scholars,  both  of 
Hebrew  and  of  Chaldee,  of  our  o-wn,  or  any  other  time. 
The  more  ordinary  interpretation  of  the  legal  limit  of 

1  Palestine  Exi^loratiou  Fund,  Quarterly  Statement,  October, 
1873.     Lieutenant  Conder's  Report,  No.  14,  June  21st,  1873. 


2,000  amoth  gives  a  distance  of  888-8  English  yards. 
This,  however,  is  measured  in  every  direction  from  the 
domicile,  a  fact  which  may  possibly  explain  this  diver- 
gence of  opinion  between  the  best  authorities. 
Tables  of  Hebrew  land  measure  are  subjoined. 

HEBEE-W    LAND    MEASURE. 

RATIO. 


Eebah. 

Half 
Cab. 

Cab. 

Sea. 

Kor. 

Eebah  or  Quartariua     .     . 

Half  Cabus 

Cabus 

Saton  or  Sea 

Corns  or  Kor 

1 
2 

4 

24 

720 

1 

2 

12 

360 

1 

6 

180 

1 
30 

I 

£:<20IVALEKTS. 


Square 
Cubita. 

Square 
Tards. 

Acres, 
English. 

QuartariuB 

Half  Cabug 

Cabus      

Sea 

Kor 

104-15 
208-3 
416-6 
2,500 
75,000 

20-5 

41-1 

82-2 

493-6 

14,809 

2-7  poles. 
16-32     „ 
3-06  acres. 

MEA3DEEBIENTS   OF   THE    BOOK   OF    EZEKIEL. 

Sauctuary  (second  court)    ...  100  Sata. 

Sanctuary  (outer  court — Ord.  Surv.)         10  Kori. 

Oblation  for  Temple       ....     100,000  Kori 

for  Priests 100,000     „ 

for  Prince 50,000     „ 


DIFFICULT    PASSAGES     EXPLAINED. 

THE    GOSPELS:— ST.    MATTHEW. 

BY   THE   BEV.    C.    J.    ELLIOTT,    M.A.,   VICAB   OP   WINEriELD,    BEEES. 


*'  "Wherefore  I  say  unto  you,  All  manner  of  sin  and  blasphemy 
shall  be  forgiven  unto  men  :  but  the  blasphemy  against  the  Holy 
Ghost  shall  not  be  forgiven  unto  men.  And  whosoever  speaketh 
a  word  against  the  Son  of  man,  it  shall  be  forgiven  hiai :  but  who- 
soever speaketh  against  the  Holy  Ghost,  it  shall  not  be  forgiven 
him,  neither  in  this  world,  neither  in  the  world  to  come." — Matt. 
3LU.  31,  32. 

TWOFOLD  difficulty  meets  us  in  the  con- 
sideration of  this  passage :  (1)  What  is  tho 
nature  of  this  blasphemy  which  is  beyond 
the  roach  of  forgiveness  ?  and  (2)  What 
is  the  meaning  of  tho  assertion  that  forgiveness  of  this 
blasphemy  can  be  obtained  "  neither  in  this  world, 
neither  in  tho  world  to  come  ?  " 

It  is  proposed  to  consider  these  two  points  in  the 
order  in  which  they  have  been  stated. 

Amongst  the  many '  explanations  which  have  been 
proposed  of  tho  nature  of  that  sin  which  is  hero  repre- 
sented as  unpardonable,  there  are  two  which  have  met 
with  a  largo  measure  of  acceptance,  of  which  one  ro- 


1  Maldonatus,  speaking  of  tho  different  opinions  enunciated  by 
Augustine  on  this  subject,  says;  "Qninque  diversis  in  locis 
diversas  opiniones  secutus  est,"  and,  after  enumerating  four  of 
these  opinions,  and  observing  that  not  one  of  the  sins  specified 
consists  in  words — i.e.,  that  none  can  be  described  in  the  literal 
sense  of  tho  word  as  6Ia.'!p?tcniv,  he  observes  that  in  another 
place  Augustine,  approaching  more  nearly  to  the  truth,  regards 


stricts  the  sin  to  that  of  tho  Pharisees  in  the  ascription 
of  our  Lord's  mu-acles,  of  which  they  were  eye--witnesses, 
to  demoniacal  agency ;  whilst  tlie  other  interprets  it  of 
the  deliberate  and  final  apostasy  of  those  who  have 
been  "  once  enlightened,"  and  "  made  partakers  of  the 
Holy  Ghost." 

Neither  of  these  -views  seems  to  be  consistent  with 
sound  principles  of  Scripture  intei-pretation. 

With  regard  to  the  first,  it  will  stiffice  to  observe — 
( 1 )  that  however  imminent  tho  danger  incurred  by  the 
Pharisees  of  the  commission  of  blasphemy  against  the 
Holy  Ghost,  it  is  nowhere  allegedthat  they  had  actually 
incurred  that  guUt;  whUst  the  tenor  of  our  Lord's 
subsequent  teaching,  and  the  renewal  of  the  offers  of 
pardon  by  His  apostles,  seem  inconsistent  with  such  a 
supposition;  (2)  that  although  St.  Matthew  and  St. 
Mark  (iii.  28)  record  these  words  of  our  Lord  in  imme- 
diate connection  -with  the  ascription  of  His  miracles  by 

the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost  as  consisting  in  the  conscious  as- 
cription of  the  operations  of  tho  Holy  Spirit  to  demoniacal 
agency  ;  and  then  continues  thus  :  *'  Unde  vulgaris  theologornm 
opinio  nata.  sex  peccati  in  Spiritum  Sanctum  genera  ponentium, 
finalem  impoenitentiam,  desperationem,  obstinationem  in  malo, 
scienter  veritatem  impugnare,  prfesumptionem,  et  fratemcs  chaii* 
tatis  invidiam." 


DIFFICULT  PASSAGES  EXPLAINED. 


383 


the  Pharisees  to  demoniacal  agency,  St.  Luke  (xii.  10) 
represents  them  as  addressed  primarily  to  His  own  dis- 
ciples, and  in  connection  with  that  confession  or  denial 
of  the  Son  of  man  which  shall  determine  the  destiny 
of  all  to  whom  His  Gospel  has  been  communicated ; 
(3 1  that,  iudependently  of  the  universality  of  applica- 
tion thus  expressly  assigned  to  these  words  in  one  of 
the  Gospels,  it  would  bo  inconsistent  with  the  general 
character  both  of  om*  Lord's  teaching  and  also  of  the 
records  of  the  evangelists,  to  impose  upon  them  so 
restricted  an  interpretation;  and,  lastly,  that  this  in- 
consistency becomes  yet  more  manifest  when  it  is  ob- 
served that  this  solemn  warnuig  of  the  heinousness  of 
sin  committed  against  the  Holy  Ghost  is  interpreted  as 
belonging  exclusively  to  a  time  at  which,  in  tho  pleni- 
tude of  His  iuHueuces,  "  tho  Holy  Ghost  was  not  yet 
given." 

In  regard  to  tho  second  view,  commonly  entertained, 
of  the  nature  of  the  sin  against  tho  Holy  Ghost,  it  will 
suffice  to  observe  that  whUst,  on  tho  one  hand,  for  the 
reasons  already  assigned,  it  seems  impossible  to  restrict 
the  reference  of  our  Lord's  warning  to  tho  single  sin  of 
the  men  of  ono  generation,  it  is  equally  inconsistent, 
both  with  the  context  in  which  it  is  found  in  the  Gospels 
of  St.  Matthew  and  St.  Mark,  and  also  with  the  express 
declaration  of  the  latter,  "  Because  they  said,  Ho  hath 
an  unclean  spirit,"  to  deny  or  to  overlook  its  direct 
application  to  that  state  of  the  heart  and  conscience  into 
wliich  the  Pharisees  had  actually  fallen,  or  were  in 
imminent  risk  of  falling,  when  these  words  wore  ad- 
dressed to  them.^ 

It  seems  to  follow  from  what  has  now  been  advanced 
that  the  only  interpretation  of  the  words  under  considera- 
tion, which  will  satisfy  at  once  their  obvious  import  and 
tho  conditions  of  tho  circumstances  under  which  they 
were  uttered,  is  an  iuterpi-etation  which,  whDst  it  admits 
a  direct  and  primary  reference  to  the  rejection  of  our 
Lord's  claims  on  the  part  of  the  Pharisees,  recognises 
also  their  applicability  to  the  case  of  all  those  who,  in 
after  ages,  should,  under  the  influence  of  the  same  or 
like  motives,  "  deny  Christ  before  men,"  and  "  be 
ashamed  of  Him  and  of  His  words  in  an  adidterous  and 
sinful  generation." 

It  would  be  beside  tho  object  hero  proposed,  to  dis- 
cuss at  length  the  question  of  the  identity  of  the  sin  of 
blasphemy  against  the  Holy  Ghost  with  tho  sin  spoken 
of  by  St.  John,  concerning  which  ho  says  :  "  I  do  not  say 
that  he  shall  pi-ay  (epoirV-n)  for  it"  (1  John  v.  16),  or 
with  that  apostasy  which  is  spoken  of  in  Heb.  vi.  4 — 6, 
and  in  x.  26 — 31.  It  may  suffice  to  observe  that  in 
whatever  degree  the  words  of  warning  now  under  con- 
sideration apply  to  tho  case  of  those  who  have  been  tho 
subjects  of  tho  renewing  influences  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
tho  same  reason  which  has  been  already  assigned  for 

*  The  two  variations  in  the  Vatican  MS. — viz.,  the  insertion  of 
the  worri  "  you  "  and  the  omission  of  the  words  '*  unto  men  " — 
though  they  do  not  materially  affect  the  g-eueral  sense,  serve  to 
make  the  application  of  the  words  to  the  Pharisees  more  direct  : 
"Wherefore  I  say  unto  you.  All  sin  nnd  htisphemy  shall  be 
forpiven  unto  you  men  ;  hut  the  blasphemy  agaiust  the  Spirit 
shall  not  be  forgiven." 


the  rejection  of  that  interpretation  of  our  Lord's  words 
which  restricts  them  to  the  case  of  final  apostasy,  applies 
also  to  any  other  interpretation  which  represents  the 
sin.  which  is  here  pronounced  unpardonable,  as  one 
which  none  but  Christians  can  possibly  commit.  On  the 
other  hand,  whilst  it  may  be  fairly  inferred,  from  the 
fact  that  tho  words  spoken  by  our  Lord  were  adcbessod 
both  to  tho  Pharisees  and  also  to  the  disciples,  that  the 
warning  therein  contained  is  applicable  to  all  to  whom 
the  revelation  of  the  Divine  WUl  is  commimicated,  and 
by  whom  the  influences  of  the  Holy  Spirit  are  con- 
sciously resisted,  as  St.  Stephen  testified  of  the  Jews 
(Acts  vii.  51),  the  two  passages  in  tho  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  and  that  iu  the  First  Epistle  of  St.  John,  to 
which  reference  has  ah-eady  been  made,  may  serve  to 
direct  us  in  some  measure  to  the  true  .interpretation  of 
that  under  consideration,  as  not  only  proving  that  the 
unpardonable  sin  of  blaspheming  tho  Holy  Ghost  may 
be  incurred  by  those  who  have,  as  well  as  by  those  who 
have  not,  been  the  subjects  of  that  Spirit's  influences, 
but  as  showing  also  the  imminence  of  the  perU  to  which 
all  are  expose  J  by  whom  those  influences  are  resisted ; 
and,  it  may  be,  the  greater  danger  of  the  commission  of 
tho  unpardonable  sin  by  those  who  have  been  once  en- 
lightened than  by  those  who  have  hitherto  shown  them- 
selves impervious  to  conviction. 

Now  tho  sin  of  which  some  of  tho  Pharisees  were 
guilty  appears  to  havo  been  the  wilful  rejection  of  that 
light  which,  as  then-  own  hearts  and  consciences  assured 
them,  came  from  heaven ;  in  other  words,  tho  conscious 
and  deliberate  rejection  of  the  truth,  for  no  other  reason 
than  this,  that  they  loved  the  darkness  rather  than  the 
hght,  because  their  deeds  were  evil. 

Tliis  sin  it  is  which,  above  all  other  sins,  sears  tho 
conscience  and  hardens  tho  heart;  which  grieves  the 
Holy  Spirit  of  God;  and,  which,  wherever  there  is  a 
continued  resistance  of  His  influences,  issues  in  final 
impenitence. 

It  is  obvious  that,  whether  the  final  stageof  impenitence 
had,  or  had  not,  beeu  reached  by  those  who  ascribed  our 
Lord's  miracles  to  demoniacal  agency,  there  was  an 
imminent  danger  that  tho  course  which  they  were  then 
pursuing  would  ultimately  be  productive  of  that  result. 
It  is  equally  obvious  that,  in  the  ease  of  those  who 
have  been  '"  ouce  enlightened,"  and  have  "  tasted  of 
the  heavenly  gift,"  and  have  been  "  made  partakers  of 
the  Holy  Ghost,"  tho  conscious  rejection  of  God's  -n-iU, 
however  that  wiU  may  be  manifested,  by  reason  of 
worldly  and  interested  motives,  must,  if  persevered  in, 
infallibly  issue  in  that  last  stage  of  hardness  and  of  m- 
sensibility,  "  the  persevering  hardness"  (as  Augustine, 
in  one  of  his  sermons  on  this  subject,  expresses  it) 
"of  an  impenitent  heart,"  from  which  there  is  no 
renewal  unto  repentance,  because  there  is  no  longer  any 
desire  to  repent. 

The  occurrence  of  the  word  "  blaspheme,"  or  "  blas- 
phemy," in  tho  records  of  the  three  evangelists,  viewed  in 
connection  with  our  Lord's  two  solemn  declarations,  the 
one  as  recorded  by  St.  Luko  (xii.  9),  concerning  the 
confession  or  denial  of  Himself  by  men ;  the  other,  a« 


384 


THE   BIBLE   EDUCATOR. 


recorded  by  St.  Matthew  (xii.  36,  37),  respecting  the 
influence  of  men's  words  on  their  future  destiny,  natu- 
rally suggests  the  idea  that  that  form  of  sin  against  the 
Holy  Ghost  which  is  here  pronounced  beyond  the  reach 
of  forgiveness,  is  one  which  naturally,  if  not  necessarily, 
finds  its  utterance  and  its  culmination  in  sins  of  the 
tongue.  Bo  this  as  it  may,  we  seem  to  be  warranted  in 
concluding  from  what  has  been  now  advanced  that  the 
blasphemy  against  the  Holy  Ghost  which  our  Lord,  in 
these  words,  solemnly  pronounces  to  be  beyond  for- 
giveness, consists  in  that  wilful  rejection  of  the  offers 
of  salvation  which  is  the  result  of  the  deliberate  closing 
of  the  eyes  against  the  truth,  and  saying  to  known, 
and  consciously  accepted  evil,  "  Be  thou  my  good." ' 

The  second  difficulty  involved  in  tho  passage  under 
consideration  consists  in  the  right  interpretation  of  the 
words  "  neither  in  this  world,  neither  in  the  world  to 
come." 

We  propose  to  confine  ourselves  strictly  to  the  in- 
quiry whether  the  inference  that  some  sins  which  are 
not  forgiven  in  this  world  may  be  forgiven  in  tho  world 
which  is  to  come,  may  be  safely  drawn  from  these 
words. 

The  following  reasons  may  be  assigned  for  answering 
this  inquiry  in  the  negative  : — 

(1)  Inasmuch  as  our  Lord's  words  were  addressed  to 
the  Pharisees,  and  inasmuch,  further,  as  the  Gospel  of 
St.  Matthew,  whether  originally  composed  in  Hebrew 
or  in  Greek,  was  designed  primarily  for  the  use  of 
Jews,  it  is  only  reasonable  to  inquire  how  the  words  in 
question  would  naturally  be  understood  in  accordance 
with  Jewish  modes  of  thought  and  expression.  Now  it 
is  well  known  that  a  twofold  distinction  was  understood 
by  the  Jews  to  bo  conveyed  in  the  expressions,  "  this 
world"  and  "  the  world  to  come"  (ninD';w  and «3n dSis), 
expressions  which  occur  in  almost  every  page  of  the 
rabbinical  writings — viz.,  the  distinction  between  the 
periods  before  and  during  the  time  of  the  Messiah, 
and  the  distinction  between  the  present  state  and  the 
state  after  death. 

The  received  notions  of  the  Jews  as  to  the  punish- 
ments respectively  assigned  to  tho  transgressions  of 
different  precepts  of  tho  law  are  thus  expressed  in  the 
Babylonian  Talmud :  "  He  that  transgresses  an  affirma- 
tive precept,  if  ho  presently  repent,  is  not  moved  until 
the  Lord  pardon  him.  .  .  He  that  transgresses  a 
negative  precept  and  repents,  his  repentance  suspends 
judgment,  and  the  day  of  expiation  expiates  him.  .  . 
But  he  by  whom  the  name  of  God  is  profaned  (or  blas- 
phemed}, repentance  is  of  no  avail  to  him,  to  suspend 
judgment — nor  tho  day  of  expiation  to  expiate  it — nor 
scourges  to  wipe  it  off,  but  all  suspend  judgment,  and 

'  Paradise  Lost,  iv.  110. 


death  wipes  it  off."  -  It  is  almost  superfluous  to  observe 
that,  in  the  ears  of  men  imbued  with  these  notions, 
tho  words  of  our  Lord  would  naturally  convey  no 
other  meaning  than  that  the  sin  of  blasphemy  against 
tho  Holy  Ghost  could  bo  forgiven  neither  by  correction 
in  this  life,  nor  by  death,  nor  by  any  of  those  punishments 
after  death  which  the  Jews  were  accustomed  to  regard 
as  expiatory  of  sins  of  so  deep  a  dye  as  blasphemy. 

(2)  On  reference  to  the  Gospels  of  St.  Mark  and  St. 
Luke,  which  were  designed  more  immediately  for  cu'cu- 
lation  amongst  the  Gentiles,  we  find  no  allusion  to  the 
Jewish  distinction  between  "  the  world  which  now  is," 
and  "  the  world  which  is  to  come,"  but  the  simple  and 
unconditional  assertion  that  for  the  sin  of  blasphemy 
against  the  Holy  Ghost  there  neither  is,  nor  can  be, 
forgiveness.  In  Mark  iii.  29  the  words  are  these : 
"  He  that  sliall  blaspheme  against  tho  Holy  Ghost  hath 
never  forgiveness,  but  is  in  danger  of  eternal  dam- 
nation "  (or,  according  to  the  reading  of  the  best 
MSS.,  is  guUty  of  an  eternal  sin — ivoxis  iaTiv  aimviov 
afiapTii/iaTos  ^) ;  whilst  in  Luke  xii.  10  the  same  solemn 
assurance  is  expressed  ia  the  words,  "  Unto  him  that 
blasphemeth  against  the  Holy  Ghost  it  shall  not  be 
forgiven  " — i.e.,  there  shall  be  no  remission. 

If  it  be  deemed  needful  to  adduce  any  further  con- 
siderations in  support  of  that  interpretation  which 
has  been  here  assigned  to  tho  words  "  neither  in  this 
world,  neither  in  the  world  to  come,"  it  may  be  observed 
that  on  reference  to  the  three  passages  to  which  allusion 
has  already  been  made — viz.,  Heb.  vi.  4 — 6  ;  x.  26 — 31 ; 
1  John  V.  16,  17 — it  wiU  bo  found  that  in  each  case 
the  inspired  writers  content  themselves  with  a  solemn 
warning  of  the  greatness  of  the  guilt,  and  of  the  con- 
demnation incurred  by  the  commission  of  tho  sin  there 
described,  without  any  intimation,  however  remote  or 
obscure,  of  the  possibility  of  a  future  reversal  of  the 
sentence  which  shall  be  pronounced  upon  the  sinner. 

[Note  bt  the  Editor.  — It  will  be  seen  that  the  foregoing  paper 
touches,  as  wa3  iuevitable,  upon  c,  i;eatious  already  discussed  la 
Mr.  Spence's  notes  on  1  John  v.  10  [i-ide  page  333),  and  that  the 
two  writers  differ  to  some  extent  in  the  view  they  take  of  them, 
I  have  thought  it  better  to  insert  buth  papers,  notwithstanding 
this  difference,  in  the  convictiou  iiat  the  readers  of  the  Bible 
EuDCATOR  are  more  likely  to  be  led  to  a  right  estimate  of  what  is 
so  difijcult  and  mysterious  by  seeing  how  it  presents  itself  to 
different  minds,  each  qualified  by  scholarship  and  devoutness  to 
form  a  right  judgment,  than  to  put  before  them  a  formulated, 
sharply-defined  solution  representing  one.  view  oul}".] 

2  See  Lightfoot's  Hehrev;  and  Talmudical  Exercitations  upon  St. 
Maltheio  ;  Works  by  Pitman,  xi.,  p.  198  ;  also  "  Hermanni  Witsii 
Dissertatio  de  Seculo  hoc  et  future  "  in  Meuscheu's  Novum  Testa- 
mentum  ex  Talmude  ol  AntinuitaUbiLS  Hebrceorum  Illustratum,  p. 
1174.  .  _  •', 

3  The  meaning  appears  to  be  that  such  blasphemy  is  a  sin  of    . 
which  the  guilt  and  the  condemnation  are  enduring.     Beza  ex- 
plains ai'i)^toii  by  nvnquam  dehndi.      We  may  compare  the  worda 
of  our  Lord  addressed  to  the  Jews  (John  viii.  4');   '*  Your  eiu 
remaineth." 


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The  Bible  Educator. 

Edited  by  the  Rev.  E.  H.  PLUMPTRE,  M.A., 
Professor    of  Exegesis   of  the   Nei<:    Testament,    Kings    College,    London. 

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The  Right  Rev.  the  Lord   Bishop  of 

C.LOiiCESTER  and  Bristol. 
The  Right  Rev.  the  Lord  Bishop  of 

Bath  and  Wells. 
1'he  Very  Rev.  J.  S.   HowsoN,  D.D., 

Dean  of  Chester. 
I'he  Very  Rev.  R.  Payne  Smith,  D.D., 

Dean  of  Canterbury. 
Rev.  A.  S.  Aglen,  M.A.,  Minister   of 

the    Episcopal    Church    of   Alyth, 

N.B. 
Rev.  H.  Allqn,  D.D.,  Canonbury. 
Rev.    A.    Barry,    D.D.,    Principal    of 

King's  College,  London,  and  Canon 

of  Worcester. 
Rev.  W.  Benham,  B.D.,  Vicar  of  Mar- 
gate,  and    Preacher  in  Canterbury 

Cathedral. 
W.   Carrl'thers,  F.R.S.,   Principal   of 

the   Botanical   Department,   British 

Museum, 
Rev.  S.  Clark,  M.A.,  Rector  of  Eaton 

Bishop. 


CONTRIBUTORS. 
Rev.   C.  J.   Elliott,    M.A.,    Vicar   of 

Winkfield.  Windsor. 
Rev,   F.  W.   Farrar.  D.D.,  Master  of 

Marlborough  College,  and  Chaplain 

in  Ordinary  to  the  Queen. 
Rev.  Dr.  Ginsburg. 
Rev.  W.  Hanna,  D.D.,  Edinburgh. 
Rev.  Stanley  Leathes,  M.A.,  Bamp- 

ton    Lecturer   in  the   University  of 

Oxford,  and   Professor  of  Hebrew, 

King's  College,  London. 
Rev.  W.  Houghton,   M.A.,  Rector  of 

Preston,  Salop. 
Rev.  Dr.  W.  Lee,  Roxburgh. 
Rev.  W.  F.  Moulton,  M.A.,  Professor 

of     Classics,     Wesleyan     College, 

Richmond. 
Rev.   J.    P.   NoRRis,    M.A.,   Canon  of 

Bristol. 
Rev.  H.  W.  Phillott,  M.A.,  Rector  of 

Staunton-on-Wye,  and  Prelector  of 

Hereford  Cathedral. 


Bickley,  and  Professor  of  Exegesis 
of  the  New  Testament,  King's 
College,  London. 

Rev.  George  Rawlinson,  M.A,,  Cam- 
den Professor  of  Ancient  History  in 
the  University  of  Oxford,  and  Canon 
of  Canterbury. 

Rev.  Geo.  Salmon,  D.D.,  Regius  Pro- 
fessor of  Divinity  in  the  University 
of  Dublin. 

Rev.  T.  Teignmouth  Shore,  M.A., 
Incumbent  of  Berkeley  Chapel, 
May  fair. 

Rev.  H.  D.  M.  Spence,  M.A.,  Rector 
of  St.  Mary  de  Crypt,  and  Chaplain 
to  the  Lord  Bishop  of  Gloucester 
and  Bristol. 

John  Stainer,  M.A.,  Mus.  D.  Oxon, 
Organist  of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral. 

Rev.  C.  J.  Vaughan,  D.D.,  Master  of 
the  Temple. 

Rev.  E.  Venables,  M.A,,  Precentor  of 
Lincoln  Cathedral. 


from  the  names  of  the 


Rev.  E.  H.  Plumptre,  M.A,,  Vicar  of 
HIS  GRACE  THE  ARCHBISHOP  OF  CANTERBURY. 
•'  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  I  fully  approve  of  the  scope  of  the  work,  and  that,  judgin: 
contributors,  I  am  sure  it  will  be  a  valuable  addition  to  the  literature  on  the  subject." 

HIS  GRACE  THE  ARCHBISHOP   OF  YORK. 
"  It  seems  to  be  well  planned,  and  likely  to  be  widely  useful." 

THE   LORD   BISHOP  OF    ST.   DAVID'S. 
"  I  am  very  much  pleased  with  the  Prospectus,  and,  as  far  as  I  have  gone,  the  execution  of  the  '  Bible  Educator,' which 
promises  a  rich  variety  of  instructive  and  interesting  matter  for  all  classes  of  readers,  and  I  hope  will  have  a  large  circulation.  " 

"  We  sincerely  wish  that  every  teacher  in  the  land  would  take  the  '  Bible  Educator '  month  by  month,  and  master  it.  Its 
publication  is  most  timely.  Just  when  there  is  a  general  cry  that  Sunday-schoul  teachers  must  be  better  trained,  the  very  book 
to  give  them  at  all  events  a  large  portion  of  the  instruction  they  need  offers  itself  to  their  notice."— C/;«rcVi  Sii7iday-sckool 

"It  is  with  satisfaction  that  we  hail  the  appearance  of  this  comprehensive  work.  We  shall  watch  the  progress  of  the  '  Bible 
Educator'  with  great  interest ;  we  trust  it  will  soon  attain  a  high  position  amongst  the  periodical  literature  of  the  day,  and 
prove  a  sound  and  faithful  '  Educator'  of  our  Bible  students,"— C/iWj//tr«  Observer. 

"A  storehouse  of  information,  which  will  not  only  be  of  great  service  to  students,  and  to  teachers  of  Bible-classes  and 
Sunday-schools,  but  to  all  who  wish  to  obtain  an  intelligent  knowledge  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  and  the  faith  they  enshrme,  — 
Educational  Times. 

"  A  work  which  will  be  indispensable  in  the.  study  of  the  minister,  and  in  the  libraries  of  colleges  and  superior  schools,  and 
indeed  to  all  who  rejoice  to  draw  water  out  of  the  wells  of  salvation." — Baptist  Magazine. 


Weekly  Numbers,  Id,,  Monthly,  Farts,  6d.,  and  Yearly  Vols.,  7s. 

The  QUIVER: 

An  Illustrated  Magazine  for  Sunday  and  Week-day  Reading, 
on   Toned   Paper,   and   beautifully   Illustrated. 


6d. 


Printed 


The  Volume  for  1873  now  ready,  816  pages,  cloth,  7s.   6d. 


His  Grace  the  Archbishop  of  Cantkr- 

BURV. 

His  Grace  the  Archbishop  of  York. 
The    Right    Rev.  the  Lord   Bishop  of 

Carlisle. 
The  Right  Rev.  the  Lord  Bishop  of 

Derrv. 
The   Right   Rev.  the  Lord  Bishop  of 

Rochester. 
The  Ve-V  Rev.  the  Dean  of  Canter- 
bury. 
Rev.  Canon  Barry,  D.D.,  Principal  of 

King's  College,  London. 
Rev.  Canon  Bateman,  M.A. 
Rev.  Canon  Rvle,  M.A, 
Rev.    F.   W.   Farrar.   D.D.,   F.R.S.. 

Chaplain  to  the  Queen,  and  Master 

of  Marlborough  College. 


CONTRIBUTORS  TO 

Rev.  Daniel  Moore^ 

to   the  Queen,    and   Vicar  of  Holy 

Trinity,  Paddington, 
Rev.  P.  B.  Power,  M.A. 
Rev.    W.     BovD    Carpenter,    M.A., 

Vicar  of  St.  James's,  Holloway. 
Rev.    R.     Magi/ire,     M.A.,    Vicar  of 

Clerkenwell. 
Rev.  S.J.  Stone,  M.A. 
Rev.  Gordon  Calthrop,  M.A. 
Rev.  C.  Carus-Wilson,  M.A. 
Rev.  Henry  Allon,  D.D.,  Islington. 
Rev.  W.  Hanna.  D.D.,  Edinburgh. 
Rev.  Samuel  Cox,  Nottingham. 
Rev.  W.  M,  Statham,  Hull. 
Rev.  J.  Ci'MMiNG,  D.D, 
J,  F.Waller,  LL.D. 
Douglas  Straight,  M.P. 


'THE  QUIVER." 

M.A.,  Chaplain   I  William  Gilbert. 
Edward  Garrett. 
W.  H.  G.  Kingston. 
Matthias  Barr. 
Dora  Greenwell. 
Julia  Goddard. 
The  Hon.  Mrs.  R.  J.  Greene. 
The  Author  of  "Poems   Written  for  n 

Child." 
The   Author  of  **A  Trap    to   Catch    a 

Sunbeam." 
The  Author  of  '*  Papers  for  Thoughtful 

Giris." 
The  Author  of  "Mary  Powell." 
The    Author    of    "The    Book  and   ii> 

Story." 
The  Author  of  "  The  Troubles  of  Chatty 

and  Molly." 


CASSELL,  PETTER,   &-   GALPIN,  LONDON,  PARIS,  AND  NEW   YORK. 


A    SELECTION   FROM    CASSELL,    FETTER,    &-    CALFIN'S   FUBLICATIONS. 


Illustrated  Bibles,  &c. 

CaSSell'S     Guinea    Illustrated    Bible.        with   900   illustrations,   full    References,   a 
Concordance,    Critical   and  Explanatory  Notes    on  the  New  Testament,   Family  Register,   &c.   &c. 
Royal  4to,  1,476  pages.    New  Edition.    Cloth  gilt,  gilt  edges,  21s. ;  or  25s.,  strongly  bound  in  leather. 
"The  illustrations  are  all  good  examples  of  art — nothing  is  omitted  that  can  elucidate  the  text." — Ari  Journal. 

CaSSell'S  Illustrated  Family  Bible.      with  900  illustrations.     Toned  Paper  Edition, 
leather,  gilt  edges,  £2  los. ;  full  morocco  antique,  ^3  los. ;  best  morocco,  flexible,  elegant,  £s  15s. 
*^*  ATew  Edition,  now  publishing  in  Monthly  Parts  at  "jd. 

The    Dore    Bible.      illustrated   by    GUSTAVE   Dor£.     Complete    in    Two    very  handsome 
Volumes.     Small  folio,  1,676  pp.;  230  Illustrations,  and  Engraved  Family  Register.     Bound  in  cloth 
gilt,  ;^S;  morocco,  gilt  edges,  ;^I2;  best  polished  morocco  antique  extra,  ;^is. 
*«*  New  Edition,  now  publishing  in  Monthly  Parts  at  <)d. 


The  Child's  Bible.      830  pp.  ;  200  illustrations.     Demy  4to.     Being  a  Selection  from  the 

Holy  Bible,   in  the  Words  of  the   Authorised  Version,  witli  large  full-page   Illustrations,  especially 

designed  for  Children  by  the  best  Artists  of  the  day.     Cloth,  gilt  edges,  £i  is.;  flexible  leather,  giU 

edges,  ^i  los. ;  best  morocco,  £2  2s.     May  also  be  had  with  clasps  and  rims,  and  in  illuminated  leather. 

"  This  grand  volnme,  compiled  from  the  Jewish  and  Christian  sacred  writings,  with  due  reference  for  their  te.vt  and  original 
order,  to  suit  the  comprehension  of  very  young  readers,  is  the  best  of  birthday  gifts  from  a  parent  or  guardian.  The  great 
multitude  of  fine  engravings,  carefully  e.vecuted  from  designs  by  eminent  British,  French,  and  German  arti>ts,  must  render  tlie 
'  Child's  Bible  '  one  of  the  most  attractive  volumes  in  the  family  library,  an^',  a  treasury  of  delight  to  the  youngest  members  of 
the  household.  We  observe  that  it  has  received  the  high  approval  of  the  Bishops  of  Ripon,  Peterborough,  and  Gloucester  and 
Bristol,  Canon  Payne  Smith,  the  Rev.  Newman  Hall,  and  other  ministers  of  religion." — 1  liiistrated  Loftdon  News, 


The  Christian  Year,  Cassell's  illustrated  edition  of.  with  Engravings  on 
nearly  every  page.     Monthly  Parts,  price  6d.  each. 

Cassell's  Bible  Dictionary.  with  nearly  600  illustrations  ;  1,100  pp.  Imperial  Svo. 
Complete  in  One  or  Two  Volumes,  cloth,  2is.;  in  One  Volume,  in  russia  or  morocco,  40s. 

"  As  a  work  of  reference  it  will  be  invaluable  both  to  the  student  and  to  the  teacher,  who  will  find  in  it  a  storehouse  of  informa- 
tion upon  everj-  point  connected  with  the  history,  interpretation,  and  criticism  of  the  Bible." — Editcationai  Times. 

Mattheno  Henry's  Commentary,    unabridged  edition.     Demy  410,  3,308  pp. 

Cloth,  lettered,  £2.  12s.  6d. 

*,*  A'aa  Annotated  Edition,  ncnu publishing  in  Monthly  Parts  at  "jd. 

Dally  Devotion  for  the  Household,  containing  a  short  Prayer  with  Hymn,  and  a 
portion  of  Scripture  for  every  Morning  and  Evening  in  the  Year,  with  a  few  Special  Services  for 
special  family  occasions.  Illustrated  with  24  full-page  Plates,  and  engraved  Title-page.  Royal  410, 
cloth,  gilt  edges,  ;{^ I  us.  6d. 

Cassell's  Family  Prayer  Book.      Demy  4to,  398  pages,  bound   in   plain   doth,   7s.  6d. ; 

handsome  cloth,  with  gilt  edges,  gs. 
"  All  that  can  be  desired,  both  as  respects  the  character  of  the  prayers,  and  the  paper,  printing,  and  general  appearance  of  the 

work." — Edjtcatif^nal  Times. 

The  Book  of  Sacred  Poems.  with  about  200  illustrations.  Edited  by  the  Rev.  R.  H. 
Baynes,  M.A.      Twentieth  Thousa-nd.     Imperial  Svo,.  400  pages,  cloth,  7s.  6d. ;  full  gilt,  los.  6d. 


Cassell's  Bunyan'S   Pilgrim's  Progress.      Printed  on  tine  Toned  Paper,  large    Svo. 
with  100  Illustrations  by  H.  C.  SiiLous  and  Paolo  Priolo.     Cloth,  7s.  6d. ;  cloth  gilt,  los.  6d. 

Cassell's  Bunyan's  Holy  War.    with  loo  illustrations,   cioth,  7s.  6d. ;  doth  giit,  giit 

edges,  IDS.  6d.    Uniform  with  "The  Pilgrim's  Progress." 


Cassell's  Foxes  Book  of  Martyrs.    Edited  by  the  Rev.  w.  bramley-moore,  m.a. 

With   181  Engravings  by  John  Gilrekt,  Morten,  Edwards,   &c.   Sic.     Imperial  Svo,  732  pp., 
bound  in  jilain  cloth,  12s.;  full  gih  cloth,  gilt  edges,  15s. 

"  It  is,  perhaps,  the  finest  edition  of  the  work  that  has  ever  been  \sinei."—SlaHjard. 

CASSELL,   FETTER,    &-   GALFIN,  LONDON,   PARIS,   AND   NEW   YORK. 


1 


A    SELECTION   FROM    CASSELL,    PETTER,    &-    GALPIN'S   PUBLICATIONS. 


Standard  Illustrated  Works. 

Cassell's  Illustrated  History  of  England,     with  about  2,000  illustrations.   Post 

4to,  5,000  pp.      Complete  in  Eiglit  Volumes,  cloth,  6s.  and  7s.  6d.  each;  or  Four  Volumes,  half-calf, 
£l^.     The  Cloth  Volumes  can  be  had  separate. 

-pi^g  Toned  Paper  Edition,  Vols.  I.  to  VIII.  now  ready,  bound  in 

doth,  each  gs.  ,^,  ^^^^  publishing  in  Monthly  Parts  at  ^d. 


Cassell's  New  Popular  Educator.  Revised  to  the  Present  Date,  with  numerous 
Additions.  Complete  in  Six  Vols.,  412  pp.  each,  cloth  gilt,  6s.  each ;  complete  in  Three  Vols.,  half- 
calf,  £2  los.  »^»  jy^^  Edition,  now  publishing  in  Monthly  Parts  at  id. 

Cassell's  Technical  Educator,  complete  in  Four  Volumes,  containing  Coloured 
Designs  and  numerous  Illustrations.  Extra  crown  4to,  416  pp.  each,  cloth  letteicd,  6s.  each ;  or  Two 
Volumes,  half-calf,  31s.  6d. 

Cassell's  Recreator.  An  illustrated  Guide  and  Key  to  In-door  and  Out-door  Amuc3- 
ment.     Vol.  I.,  3S4  pp.,  e.vtra  crown  4to,  cloth,  6s. 

Cassell's  Popular  Natural  History,    with  about  2,000  splendid  Engravings  and 

Tinted  Plates.     Complete  in  Two  Vols. ,   crown  4to,    1,532  pp.,  cloth,  30s.;  half-cilf,  45s.:  or,  half- 
morocco,  50s.     Also  in  Four  Vols.,  with  Coloured  Illustrations,  cloth,  42s. 


Cassell's  Household  Guide.  Furnishing  a  Guide  to  Every  Department  of  Practical  Life, 
with  numerous  Coloured  Cookery  Plates,  and  Illustrations  on  nearly  every  page.  Complete  in  Four 
Volumes,  with  copious  Analytical  Indices,  cloth  gilt,  price  6s.  each  ;  or,  complete  in  Two  Volumes, 
half-calf,  £1    IIS.  6d. 

*#*  A'ew  Edition,  no7i>  publishing  in  Monthly  Parts  at  "jd. 

Old  and  New  London.  a  Narrative  of  its  History,  its  People,  and  its  Places.  By 
Walter  Thornbury.     Vol.  I.,  with  about  200  Engravings.     Ex.  crown  4to,  576  pp.,  cloth,  gs. 

The  Races  of  Mant^ind.  a  Popular  Description  of  the  Characteristics,  Manners,  and 
Customs  of  the  Principal  Varieties  of  the  Human  Family.  By  Robert  Brow.v,  M.A.,  Ph.D., 
F.L.S.,  F.R.G.S.,  President  of  the  Royal  Physical  Society,  Edinburgh.  Vol.  I.,  Illustrated 
throughout.     384  pp.,  extra  crown  4to,  cloth,  6s. 

Illustrated  Travels  :  a  Record  of  Discovery,  Geography,  and  Adventure.  Edited  by 
H.  W.  Bates,  Assistant-Secretary  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society.  Vols.  I.,  II.,  III.  and  IV. 
now  ready,  containing  nearly  200  Engravings  in  each  volume.  Royal  4to,  15s.  cloth,  or  iSs.  cloth,  gilt 
edges,  each.  ^^^  Also  piMishing  in  Monthly  Parts  at  Is. 


Cassell's  Illustrated  Shakespeare,   with  500  Engravings  by  h.  c.  selous.   Edited 

by  Charles  and  Mary  Cowden  Clarke.     Complete  in  Three  Vols.,  2,168  pp.,  cloth,  lettered, 
£1  15s.  ;  half-morocco,  ;/^2  los. 

Cassell's  Illustrated  Readings,    first  and  second  series.    Each  Sei-ies  complete 

in  One  Volume.     Illustrated  by  Sir  J.  Gilbert,  H.  K.  Browne,  W.   Small,  Weig.\nd,  Leitch, 
Cruikshank,  Barnard,  F.  Gilbert,  &c.  &c.     Cloth,  each,  7s.  6d.  ;  cloth,  gilt  edges,  los.  6d. 

Cassell's  Biographical  Dictionary.     1,152  pp.,  imp.  svo.    illustrated  with  Portraits. 

Cloth,  2IS. ;  ha.f-motocco,  or  calf,  35s. 
CASSELL,   PETTER,   >l-   GALPIX,  LONDO.X,   PARIS,   AND  NEW    YORK. 


A    SELECT/ON  FROM    CASSELL,    FETTER,    &-    GALPIN'S   FUBLICATIONS. 


Miscellaneous   Works. 


Pulpit 


Day  with   Christ,    ny   the  Rev. 

Samuel  Cox,  Author  of  "The  Private 
Letters  of  St.  Paul  and  St.  John,"  "The 
Quest  of  the  Chief  Good,"  &c.  &c.  Cloth, 
bevelled  boards,  gilt  edges,  3s.  6d. 

Table  Tal/^.  containing  Re- 
marks and  Anecdotes  on  Preachers  and 
Preaching.  By  Edwin  B.  Ramsay,  M.A., 
LL.D.,  F.R.S.E.,  Dean  of  Edinburgh. 
Fcap.  8vo,  168  pp  ,  cloth,  3s.  6d. 

Sermons  for    Boys.      By  the  Rev. 

Alfred  Bakry,  D.D.,  Principal  of  King's 
College,  London,  late  Head  Master  of  Chel- 
tenham College.  Fcap.  Svo,  294  pp.,  cloth, 
3s.  6d. 

The  Young  Man  in  the  Battle  of 

Life.  'Ihird  Edition.  By  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Landels,  Author  of  "Woman  :  her  Sphere," 
t<cc.     Fcap.  Svo,  292  pp.,  cloth,  3s.  6d. 

Woman:  her  Position  and  Power. 

By  the  Rev.  Dr.  Landels.  Crown  Svo. 
292  pp.,  cloth,  lettered,  3s.  6d. 

The  Child's  Bible  Narrative:  Being 

a  Consecutive  Arrangement  of  the  Narrative 
and  other  portions  of  tlie  Holy  Scriptures,  in 
the  Words  of  the  Authorised  Version.  With 
Twenty-four  full-page  Illustrations  by  Gus- 
TAVE  DoRE.  Finirt/i  Edition.  Cloth,  bevelled 
boards,  gilt  edges,  price  5s. 


The  Child's    Book  of  Song   and 

Praise,  with  250  illustrations.  Second 
Edition.  4to,  cloth,  5s.  ;  cloth  gilt,  gilt 
edges,  6s.  6d. 

Little   Follis.    Vols.  i.  to  vi.  with 

over  2,000  Pictures,     Coloured  boards,  3s.; 
clotli  gilt,  gilt  edges,  5s.  each. 
T/ie  Set  0/  6  Vols,  complete  in  ctoth,  21s. 


Shall 

Rev.  CHiion  Rvle.  M.A 


Cloth  limp,  6d.   each  ;  cloth  bevelled,  is.  each. 

The  "Little  Gems"  Series, 

COMPRISING — 

Know  One  Another?    By  the 

Tzventy-third  T/iotcsand. 

The  Voice  of  Time,  By  j.  stroud.  Con- 
taining a  Meditation  on  a  Verse  of  Scripture  for  Every 
Hour  of  the  Day.     Nineteenth  Thousand, 

Home  Religion.  By  the  late  Rev.  W.  B. 
Mackfnzih,  M.A.     l^ijtecntk  Thousand. 

The  Grounded  Staff.    Sccomi  Edition.    By 

the  Rtv.  R.  M.\gui[<h;,  1\I.A. 

Pre-Calvary  Martyrs,    and  other  Papers. 

Dy  the  late  Rev.  J.  B.  (.)wi;n.  M.A      Second  Edition, 

Words  of  Help  for  Every-day  Life.    By 

the  Rev.  \V.  M.  St.\th.\m.     Second  Ediiioti. 

All  Men's  Place,  and  other  Selections  from 
the  Sermons  of  the  Rev.  Georci;  Whitefield. 
(Kaently  fuUislied.) 

God's  New  World,  and  other  Selections  from 
the  Sermons  of  the  Rev.  JoH.N  Wesley.  {^Recently 
puMislu-d.) 


To  be  obtained  of  all  Booksellers,  or  post  free  from  the  Puljlishers, 

Cassell,  Fetter,  &  Gatpins  Descriptive  Catalogue, 

Containing  a  Complete  List  of  their  Works,  incluiling  ; — 

Bibles  and  Religious  Literature.  ,  Hand-Books  and  Guides. 

Children's  Books.  Miscellaneous. 

Dictionaries.  Natural  History. 

Educational  Works.  Poetry. 

Fine  Art  Volumes.  Travels. 

History.  i  Serials. 


THE    NEW    EDITION    OF 


Cassell,  Fetter,  &  Galpins  Educational  Catalogue 

Is  now  ready,  containing  full  descriptions  of  a  large  mnnber  of  New  and  Standard  Educalional  Works, 
suitable  for  all  classes  of  Schools,  and  an  enlarged  List  of  their  School  Materials,  including  all 
descriptions  of  Mathematical  Instruments,  Water  Colours,  Drawing  Models  and  Copies,  Drawing 
Boards,  T  Squares,  Set  Squares,  Chalks,  Crayons,  Drawing  Pencils,  &c.  &c.     Post  free  on  appUcation. 


CASSELL,   FETTER,   &^   CALPLN,  LONDON,   PARLS,   AND  NEIV    YORK. 


U^y^Wtf^^^Ji^m^r^^- 


BS417.P736V.2 
The  Bible  educator. 

Prrnceton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00079  2095 


/''<^' 


'/,•/' 


■    ■    ■,   / 


m