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\ STUDIA IN
Presented to
THE LIBRARY
of
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY
Toronto
by
Miss Christine MacKeracher
OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY
THE HISTORY OF HEBREW RELIGION
FROM THE YEAR 800 B.C.
ARCHIBALD DUFF, M. A., L L. D.
PKOKKSSOR OF OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY IN THE YORKSHIRE
I MTKD INDEPENDENT COLLEOE, BRADFORD
KKOM 800 B.C. TO JOSIAH (540 B.C.
LONDON cSc EDINBURGH
ADAM & CHARLES BLACK
1891
EMMANUEL
STOR
62992
Beyitn on the Eve of my Father s Birthday in 1S89.
Go bis Memory
BE INSCRIBED ALL THAT I WRITE ;
FOR HIS DEVOUTNESS AND HIS DEVOTION
TO WHATEVER WAS HIGHEST HAVE BEEN TO ME THK
INSPIRING WORD OF THE ETEHNAL.
July 9, 1891.
PREFACE.
THE attempt is here made to write the history of Hebrew
beliefs from the year 800 B.C., as these are preserved for us
in the Old Testament, to delineate the personality of each
contributor to them, and to estimate the place of each in
the onward movement. The time seems ripe for such a
work.
The appearance of treatises on related topics, literary
and historical, in the field of Old Testament study, and the
demand for these, imply the further need for a constructive
account of Hebrew religion as a living- growth in history.
Two works have just appeared which may well be said to
mark an epoch in Biblical study in this country, viz., Pro
fessor Cheyne s Bampton Lectures for I 889, on " The Origin
of the Psalter," and Professor Driver s " Introduction to the
Literature of the Old Testament." Let me here thank
Professor Cheyne for his magnificent work, so eloquent
and so rich in stores of learning. By it he renders signal
service to all thoughtful religious teachers, and through
them to the whole kingdom of God. It has been a deep
pleasure to me to see that method of work with Old Testa
ment documents which I have contended for in this volume
so clearly laid down and so strictly followed by Professor
Cheyne in his handling of the Psalms. He begins his work
viii PREFACE.
by exposition of those psalms about whose date there is
little or no controversy, and thence proceeds to give judg
ments, thus made possible and reliable, concerning the con
troverted writings ; and his aim, above all, is to construct
the story of religious life and faith manifested in that
poetry. I may borrow from Professor Cheyne his words
on p. 124, and apply them to my own work and to my
conviction of its correctness in principle ; as he says, " Our
conception of the range of Bible-history, and of the extent
and methods of inspiration, has already, I trust, begun to
widen. The opening words of Heb. i. I (TroXu/xepw? KOI
7ro\vTpo7r(os) should already be acquiring a richer and more
satisfying significance."
Professor Driver s admirable work is a new departure
altogether in English literature. I am very fortunate in
having been able to consult it while reading the proofs of
the following pages. The appearance of such works means
that our Christian teachers are turning with a new devotion
to the Old Testament, and are demanding all possible aid
in its study, and in the investigation of the arena on which
Christianity appeared. The present volume aims to serve
this study by a constructive view of the facts of Hebrew
religious life.
Another ground for publication is, that many men in the
ministry urge that they ought to be allowed to share in the
joy which students in class testify they find in this investi
gation. For some sixteen years I have been lecturing, in
the Congregational College and in the University in Mon
treal, and in Airedale College and the United College here,
on the whole course of the history of Hebrew religious faiths
down to the end of the first Christian centurv. To Professor
PREFACE. ix
Duhm, now of Basel, and to his Theologie der Propheten,
published in 1875, I owe deep gratitude for early guidance
by that pioneer work in this direction. The pleasure which
the men of my classes have received has been evidently deep.
I have myself been surprised, and made more glad than I
had dreamed I should be, by their enthusiastic and lasting
devotion to the Old Testament, as it has constantly arisen.
Many have begun the work with a prejudice against the
Book, produced by want of acquaintance with it. For this
want of acquaintance the treatment of the precious records
as a mere canon or rule and liturgy is largely to blame.
An unhistorical method kills interest in the records of life :
" The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life " (2 Cor. iii. 6).
Let me here say how my students have made my class-
work a constant delight, even while sorrow has been my
companion ; and let me thank the whole loved brother
hood of fellow-workers who have gone out from the class
room to tell widely of the beauty and blessing in the Old
Testament.
For, all about me near and far, here and over the sea,
pastors have urged that the method and results so inter
esting to students should be laid before men who are
already beyond class-days. Hitherto much difficulty has
lain across the way, but now the demand has made the
answer possible.
The origin of the following discussions as class-instruc
tion explains much of their form, and may let me anticipate
some criticisms. Perhaps I preach too much in these pages.
But I am called in my life-work to teach men to preach ;
and I can never forget this. Rather have I both preached
re^ularlv to mv classes to show them how to use the Old
x PREFACE.
Testament for the people, and to this end I have devoted a
large share of my time to preaching to missionary congre
gations up and down the country ; and no doubt I have
thus taken on the preacher s habit. But I am comforted
by remembering that the greatest teachers I have known
my beloved master and dear friend, Professor Park, as also the
late Professor Phelps, and Professor E. C. Smythe of Andover,
and again Tholuck, my almost more than father, and Ritschlj
both saintly and now sainted men, and even Lagarde,
my inspiration, so also younger men of singular teaching
power, Haupt of Halle and Herrmann of Marburg, all
have seemed to me to preach to their classes as they taught.
It is no doubt right thus to rouse enthusiasm.
Perhaps I have deviated from strict historical exposition
more than some would have done to say things which
belong rather to Prolegomena on the one hand, and to the
Christological section of modern dogmatics on the other.
These excursive passages have had their rise also in my
class-room habits ; and the habits have grown by necessity.
Constant questioning on the part of the student is the true
way to learning, and it is certain that just such questions
will be put as might be discussed with fitness among
Prolegomena or in Christological study. I feel, however,
that the questions of the student will prove to have been a
good guide in meeting the anxieties of the reader ; and I
think I have not gone beyond justifiable limits.
My method of frequent recapitulations has arisen also in
the exigencies of the class-room, and will perhaps prove to
be of good service in aiding students outside of the class.
The present rapid increase of study of all phases of
religious life has made the Old Testament peculiarly a
PREFACE. xi
centre of scientific interest and research ; but the work
done has been thus far chiefly analytic. Large stores of
accurately tested material are now lying ready for the
synthetic workman who shall build together in complete
historical statement these separate results of analysis and
criticism. The appearance of the unbuilt material, and the
apparent negations which analytic and critical operations
necessitate, have caused uneasiness to the timid and to the
mere onlooker. But the constructive work was sure to
follow ; it follows by the very nature of processes of
thought, for the mind questions only in order that it may
obtain answers, and criticises in order to have a rightly ad
justed system of positive truth. The effort is made in the
following pages to give in constructive historical form the
results of such research in the special field of Hebrew religion.
This volume covers a period of nearly two centuries,
and, it is hoped, will be duly followed by exposition of the
succeeding periods. The whole of the documents of the
Old Testament will thus be used, and also that extra-
Biblical religious literature which arose among the Jews
in the later centuries before Christ or during the early
Christian generations. The aim is, indeed, to give the story
of the Faiths of the Hebrews ; but this is to be watched as
it appears in the course of the Biblical and other Hebrew
religious records. The whole work will thus be at once
a History of Hebrew Religion, and a Guide for the
Christian Teacher in the Use of the Bible. May it help
to lead to a closer study of the precious Records, and to an
ever stronger, calmer, and more joyous proclamation of the
Love of God as it is manifest in the Son of Man, our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ.
xii PREFACE.
I have acknowledged help from my students, who, let me
add, have done most of the work in making my Index ; and
I have now named several eminent teachers whom I follow
gratefully, as I shall name others in the body of my work.
One guide and friend has done for me in these latter
months more than I can ever tell or reward. Rev. James
Fotheringham, author of " Studies in the Poetry of Robert
Browning," has most carefully read all my proofs, and given
me the great aid of his profound philosophic insight, his
fine literary judgment, and his close acquaintance with the
history of the rise of our Christian Religion. I record his
goodness here, although I can never repay it. To other
kind friends also, I am indebted for constant counsel
and aid during the preparation of this volume. May the
loving help of all find some reward in aid which the book
may bring to others.
A. D.
THE UNITED COLLEGE, BRADFORD,
Oct. 15, 1891.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
INTRODUCTORY STUDIES THE PENTATEUCH AND
THE STUDENT.
CHAP. PAGK
I. INTRODUCTORY 3
i. The Pentateuch stands first in the Canon ... 3
2. Our problem is theological ...... 3
3. Pentateuch investigation cannot be accomplished first 4
4. The method of procedure ...... 5
II. UNSATISFACTORY METHODS 7
i. The Pentateuch cannot be its own standard . . 7
2. In the end the Pentateuch will give confirmatory
evidence 9
3. The study of literary and linguistic differences in the
Pentateuch cannot be the test . . . .10
4. The claim that there is a religious test . . .11
5. The demand for an infallible guide . . . .11
6. Of the test, " What does God say ?" . . . .14
III. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE KEAL STANDARD AND TEST . 16
i. The pleasure it will give 16
2. The autograph records of Hebrew religious life for
eight centuries . . . . . . .16
3. These give the history of the people .... 20
IV. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE RESULTS 23
i. Necessary counsels ....... 23
2. General remarks on the Pentateuch (a) law of Moses ;
(b) the New Testament use of " law ; " (c) the sup
posed forgery ........ 23
3. Illustrations (a) concerning Deuteronomy ; (6) con
cerning Elohist and Jehovist ; (c) concerning Levi-
tical ceremonial ; (d) concerning the narratives ;
(e) concerning the editor , . . . .27
CONTENTS.
BOOK II.
HEBREW RELIGION FROM AMOS TO JOSIAH,
OR FROM 800 TO 640 B.C.
PART I. THE KELIGION OF AMOS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK 35
i. Of its literary history 35
2. The analysis into nine paragraphs .... 36
II. THE MAN AMOS 41
i. Our need of him ........ 41
2. His inspiration 42
3. The scene of Amos s preaching 44
4. The age of Amos and its wide activity ... 49
III. THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE AMOS AGE 56
i. The meaning of the question ..... 56
2. The faith of Amos in a Davidic age .... 56
3. It is common to the prophets 57
4. What this faith meant 57
5. The work of David 58
6. The ri.se of world-monarchies . - . . . .61
7. The name " Jehovah of Hosts " . . . . 63
8. The sum of the argument ; the nature of the David-
revelation 64
IV. THE AMOS-REVELATION 66
I. It comes amid wrestlings () thoroughly human ;
(6) in company with God ; (c) wrestling with God ;
(d) wrestling with men ; (c) wrestling in argu
ment 66
2. His revelation was breadth and keenness of con
science (a) the tribal conscience ; (&) the first
writing prophet is the prophet of conscience ; (c)
Amos s demand is righteousness ; (d) the wrongs
of his time ........ 70
3. His conception of man ...... 76
4. Amos s view of the ways of revelation . . .81
5. His view of the nature of God 85
6. The problems he left unsolved 87
CONTENTS. xv
PART II. THE RELIGION OF HOSEA.
CHAP. PAGE
I. GENERAL CHARACTER OF HIS BOOK ; ITS CONNECTING THREADS 90
i. Chronology 90
2. The perplexities of the book ; in text, c. . . " . 91
3. The unchaste society 92
4. His general idea of Jehovah and Israel ... 93
5. His political knowledge 96
6. His love and esteem for men 99
II. ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK OF HOSEA 105
A. Chapters i.-iii. in three sections 105
B. Chapters iv.-xii. in nine sections 105
III. THE MAN HOSEA 1 1 1
I. His home . . . . . . . . . rn
2. His rank 114
3. His personal story . . . . . . .115
4. His mind and way of thinking . . . . .117
5. His heart and feeling 118
6. His inner soul 119
IV. HOSEA S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS GENETICALLY CONSIDERED . 120
i. The kernel of his thinking . . . , .122
2. What he inherited from others . .. . . .123
3. What was new in him 123
4. His doctrine of men . . . . . . .129
5. His idea of God 134
V. THE ADVANCE MADE AND TO BE MADE 144
i. The material pathway for this 144
2. The advance made by Hosea 146
3. The advance still needed . 148
PART III. THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH.
I. A SKETCH OF THE WHOLE COURSE OF THE DEVELOPMENT
OF HIS THOUGHT, AS MANIFESTED IN HIS RELATION TO
ZION 150
i. Perspective in history 150
2. The faiths before Isaiah concerning Zion . . . 151
3. His own experience in Zion . . . . .155
4. Zion in the early discourses 166
5. The hour of change . . . . . . 168
6. The growth of the new faith 173
7. The changed faith at the fall of Samaria . . . 175
8. Thence to the end 176
xvi CONTENTS.
CHAP. 1 AGK
II. ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES T.ONOLOGICAL ORDER . 181
I. The Assyrian canon 182
2. Chronological outline 184
3. The analysis proper, in outline. I. The Oracles of
Judgment ; II. The Oracles of Grace under Ahaz
and Hezekiah 189
4. Description by paraphrase of the substance of Isaiah s
preaching, following the analysis given . .196
III. A SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS, GENETICALLY
CONSIDERED 227
i. The kernel of his character ..... 227
2. A scheme of his thinking .... . . 233
3. His fuith in the overlordship of Jehovah . . . 234
4. His faith that the earth must be cleansed . . . 242
5. His grasp of the grace of God 254
6. His rise to faith in regeneration .... 259
7. His thought on three fundamental questions God,
Man, Perfection 265
IV. ISAIAH S PLACE IN HEBREW RELIGIOUS HISTORY . . 285
i. Advance in conception of God ..... 286
2. Advance in imderstanding man s nature and value . 288
3. In estimate of religious relations .... 290
4. In comprehension of the future 291
5. The problems he started and left unsettled . . 291
6. His limit of Divine presence and salvation . . 292
7. His hope for material prosperity .... 292
8. Of the expected Prince 293
PART IV. RELIGION IN JUDAH FROM ISAIAH TO
JOSIAH.
I. PRELIMINARY 295
II. THE ANALYSIS OF MICAH 299
III. THE RELIGION OF MICAH AND HIS TIMES .... 305
i. Its general characteristics 305
2. The mind of these times concerning religious forms . 310
3. Their estimate of the soul 315
4. Their fundamental faith 323
5. Their relation to the Pentateuch .... 328
IV. CONCLUSION 330
INDEX 333
BOOK I.
INTRODUCTORY STUDIES THE PENTATEUCH
AND THE STUDENT.
OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY,
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
i. The Pentateuch stands first in the Canon.
THE narrative books of Hebrew Scripture are all placed first
in the Christian Old Testament. Therefore, the very firit
question the Bible student asks must be, how he can
understand and use these books. In other words, how
may we sit with Christlike reverence at the feet of
these Jewish teachers in the Moses-Torah ? How shall
we exalt the Pentateuch and its continuations in Kings,
and the parallel work called by us " The Chronicles," to
the high honour they deserve, bidding them tell us the
deep inspiration and Divinely-given faith of their writers
and their heroes ?
2. Our probhm is theological.
We have here little to do with a purely literary problem.
Our business must be distinctly religious, theological, and
aimed directly to bring spiritual blessing to men to-day.
We are to study something more precious than the his
tory of documents and scribes, or of wars and kings, for we
have to ask, " What is God ? " Our special task is to
4 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
trace the footprints of God along Hebrew pathways, and
to read the meaning of His voice in His ceaseless com-
munings with Hebrew souls. We are to ask, " What
was the ever-living Word of God before He became flesh
in Bethlehem ? " Forasmuch as the great Triune God
liveth eternally, and the Father eternally sendeth forth
His Son, ordained for ever to give light to the world,
anointed ever to give life and power to trusting souls,
we ask what was the Son, what were the manifestations,
revelations, inspirations of God among the Hebrew people
before the birth of Jesus ? What was the pre-existent
Christ in Israel ? What is the story of Eevelation or of
Inspiration which we may gather from the Hebrew Scrip
tures ? We ask, therefore, naturally first, what the Pen
tateuch with its continuations tells us of the course of God s
inspiration of men ? But the answer here, at this stage
of our work, must be indirect.
3. Pentateuch investigation cannot be accomplished first.
All direct results of Pentateuch investigation must be
deferred until another problem is solved ; for the very first
result of any thoughtful reading in it is the discovery of
remarkable art in its construction, and therefore of need
for corresponding skill in handling it. It is at once strik
ingly poetical and also decidedly philosophical. Speedily
it becomes an exceedingly complicated structure. The
criticism of it is no task for beginners. It is a common
axiom that wherever much controversy gathers, centres,
and abides, there must be a difficult problem, and one
demanding reverent skill. Here is a work that has started
fresh debates in every meeting-place of thoughtful men,
and at every new dawning of mental strength. Its pro
blems must therefore be beyond the tyro s skill ; and
CHAP, i.] INTRODUCTORY. 5
the wondrous old fabric, pricelessly precious, forbids in
venerable solemnity the rude touch of the ignorant. The
august persons of this world-drama of religion will be
silent as the Sphinx to all who have not sat long bowed
over the alphabet of their profound speech.
4. The method of procedure.
Our first discovery, then, on opening the books of Genesis,
is not a final result but a Method. The Method is simply
that, in coming to analysis of any controverted records of
the religious life of a people, we must bring to the task
an advanced knowledge of the people. Study of the
Pentateuch demands preliminary knowledge independently
gained of the main course of the history of the Hebrew
people s religious life. To value truly such an intricate
record of God s speech to man, and man s recognition of
God s character, we must first qualify our hand and eye
and judgment for the task by gaining from some indepen
dent sources a general outline of the history of that Divine
speech to men and that human recognition of this speech.
Need it be said that here is no pre-judgment of the
controverted records ? The preliminary acquisition of skill
and careful judgment can never make an early record
into a late one, or make venerable treasure worthless.
Nay, rather, only such acquisition of skill will preserve
the treasure from any tarnishing touch, and the record from
careless displacement. Truly indeed will the student him
self be prejudged by this demand for preliminary acquisition
of skill. But the true student will be content to be
prejudged and sternly tested ere he begins to utter judg
ments or to trust his own judgment on such difficult
problems. The finest mark of the worthy scholar is his
abiding humility before the great monuments which he
6 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. I.
seeks lovingly and fearlessly to decipher. It is only his
perfect love and reverence that cast out all fear.
In coming, then, to the Pentateuch controversy, we must
first learn all the story of religious life in Israel that can
be learnt from sources independent of the Pentateuch.
This done, we may then proceed to an examination of the
Pentateuch, and to the discovery of the place or places in the
course of history to which it belongs. We can learn thus
whether it must be placed as a whole before the beginning
of the story already gained from independent sources, or
whether it falls in as a whole at any one point in the course
of that story. We shall learn whether perhaps one part
falls into one niche in time, and another part into another.
Such work will be actual analysis of the book, and will
justify us in counting it either homogeneous on the one
hand, or, on the other hand, a composite of many elements
and origins and dates.
CHAPTER II.
UNSATISFACTORY METHODS.
ERE we proceed to define closely the sources of the historic
test which we must construct and apply, and to give intro
ductory outlines of the independent course of Hebrew
religious history which we seek, let us note some of the
inadequate tests usually applied to the Pentateuch and
the allied historical books.
i. The Pentateuch cannot be its own standard.
First, it is sometimes said that the Pentateuch ought
to be its own standard. It ought to be allowed to settle
by its own statements the controversy concerning its own
date. This means, in other words, there ought to be no
controversy. But there is controversy. The controversy is
not indeed whether the Pentateuch is or is not a splendid
literary fact, a magnificent literary structure, a finely
fascinating literary work. All agree that it is all of this ;
the man who has not read it is the only doubter here.
Again, the controversy is not whether the Pentateuch be
or be not a great series of scenes in religious life. No
one doubts this who ponders over its every paragraph.
No reader doubts that the books give singularly great, and
profoundly impressive exhibitions of religious life. The
same impression is produced upon the reader as upon him
who stands before a great painter s canvas or a great
8 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
sculptor s stone. You enter that hall in Dresden galleries
of art, where all alone in majesty, unique and glorious,
solemn and beautiful, the Sistine Madonna shines. You
are silent, bowed, reverent before the monument of mighty
genius ; you are conscious that here is overwhelming power.
You stand, a puny man, on the floor of the tremendous
Coliseum in the Eternal Rome, and you know that here
great minds planned and great power built. You stand
beneath the beetling mountain limestone crag ; you climb
far above and trace the print of fern-leaf on the huge
sandstone sheet ; you rise past layer after layer written full
with the hieroglyphic speech of fossil life, and you bend
astounded, cognisant of the enormous forces that have
worked all this. Great it is ; and behind it all, beside
it all, is the Creator. But now you begin to ask when
God wrought all this, and what are the successive methods
of His operation ? There are geological controversies con
cerning the age of rocks, their relative age, and the agency
of one vast layer in the formation of another. What
standards shall decide the controversies ? You must first
study the places where there is no controversy and con
struct from them your standard. There are keen contro
versies touching the age of great works of art. How were
they produced ? Great they are ; that we know. But
what were the great factors in them ? At what periods of
the painter s history did he use his pencil with such skill ?
Knowledge gained outside the picture must largely decide.
If the artist have failed to write his name upon his canvas,
who was the artist ? These questions can be answered only
by him who has made abundant previous study of all the
uncontroverted certainties in the field ; and he will apply to
the solution of difficult problems some test constructed by
independent study of uncontroverted facts.
For every analysis there must be some external test,
CHAP, ii.] UNSATISFACTORY METHODS. 9
and for every criticism there must be some external canon
or standard. In solving a problem we refer to axioms and
fundamental propositions ; when a judgment is to be given
we must refer to independent law and evidence. If,
therefore, you would lay a measuring-line on the Penta
teuch, that measuring- line cannot be the book itself.
The very task which is proposed by every Pentateuch
student, whether he lean to the composite theory or to the
homogeneous, is that he shall discover where the place is in
history, or where the places are, into which the Pentateuch
or its portions do exactly fit. The Pentateuch must be held
apart, meanwhile, until we have learned the events of history
independently of this source. The Pentateuch may not be
its own test.
2. In the end the Pentateuch will give confirmatory evidence.
Undoubtedly in the end the Pentateuch will throw back
confirmatory evidence on the investigations and on the stan
dard. The niche or niches whereinto the work fits will be
themselves illuminated afresh by what thus fits into them.
Certainly, while we, are testing a mass of keys to see what
locks and treasures they will open, we simply pass along the
line of locks trying in turn each key in every lock, and so
we learn to which each belongs. But then these keys,
entering their own wards and unlocking their own doors,
let fall floods of light upon themselves as well as upon the
treasures within. A series of new fossils, all unarranged,
is placed in a geologist s hands for arrangement in proper
chronological classification. His previous knowledge of the
geologic ages enables him ere long to classify the fossils
satisfactorily. Then these fossils, thus perfectly arranged,
throw a whole flood of new light back upon the previously
known history of rocks and history of life. So the Penta-
10 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. ir.
teuch will in the end make all Hebrew religious history
brilliantly, gloriously vivid.
3. The study of literary and linguistic differences in the
Pentateuch cannot be the test.
Again, the existence of literary variety and linguistic
differences in the Pentateuch cannot furnish the sufficient
clue for criticism. If we do find distinctly dissimilar styles
as we read the Hebrew from page to page, and note philo
logical gaps between line and line, who shall tell us the
order in which the various shades of the language arose ?
o o
We must appeal to the history of the literature and the
language, as gained from other and quite independent docu
ments whose dates we know. If once a false order be
assumed, the consequence must be distortion in every sense.
If the philological standard put effect for cause, and branch
for root, chaos will come again at the end as in the begin
ning. The historian will grow confused at every line, no
thinker will remain for sheer weariness, and common men
will turn away carelessly. It may be said that it will be
sufficient to discover philological variety without discovering
any order of sequence in the dates of the component parts.
This is impossible ; but were it possible, what good would it
bring us ? It is not mere literary curiosity or aimless word
play that lies before us. We yearn to know God s face, and
the ever-gracious disclosures thereof, as He has given first
to the fathers, then to the children the ever deeper and
deeper treasures of His love. What are the highest heights
of revelation ? What are the first faint springs of infant
thoughts of God ? Tell us not of mere multiplicity of re
velations, for that wearies into terror. Tell us of the order
of God through the ages eternally rolling onwards, which is
itself the great infinite fact of God, the same yesterday,
to-day, and for ever.
CHAP, ii.] UNSATISFACTORY METHODS. 11
4. The claim that there is a religious test.
Again, there is a test much in the mind of many per
sons in a somewhat undefined fashion, yet not at all inde
finable. This test is suggested by the troubled complaint
we hear of want of reverence, Avant of delicacy, want of satis
factory completeness in the work of analysis. The com-
plainers prophesy, indeed, with a pleasant sharing of the
scientific attitude, that certainly there will be plenty of
work for good analysts to do a hundred years hence, even
were all analysts now and onward perfect masters of their
task. But then the complaint awakes again that the work
of all the analysts so far is not satisfactory. It is not com
plained by the timid for one moment that scientific Hebraists
and Old Testament theologians are bad, idle, lazy, super
ficial, " scamping " workmen, or unsatisfactory in any of
these senses. None of the complainers would make any
such charge against Old Testament students. It is not,
then, of scientific unsatisfactoriness or incompleteness that
complaint is made, for this incompleteness and unsatisfac
toriness are acknowledged by even the timid complainers
to be the true, essential, desirable quality of scientific work.
Scientific workmen must never claim to have reached *a ne
plus ultra. Next century there must necessarily be plenty
more to do. The complaint is not against scientific unsatis
factoriness ; it is a complaint against religious unsatisfac
toriness.
5. The demand for an infallible guide.
The complaint takes another form, which shall help to
define this undefined test. It takes the form of a cry for
some certain and infallible propositions by which men, minds,
souls may hold firmly amid the darkness of life. There is
12 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
a cry for some historical facts to which tlie soul may easily
point in time of need, sure that these facts of history guar
antee God s character and purpose. But the very search
for such a guarantee of character drives the soul to seek
more than mere events. Character is sought, and character
implies a Person. The cries of the timid are for a per
sonal authority, an infallible person, who shall be absolutely
known, and who shall assure us how God will act. We do
need some knowledge of God which shall be absolutely
comprehensible by us in a personal Revelation. We must
have a Word of God in flesh. The cry is most legitimate ;
the timid are quite right. We must see God ; and we
believe we do see Him in Christ Jesus. Here then is a
test : What does Jesus say of the Old Testament and the
Pentateuch ? or, what was believed concerning the Pentateuch
in the first Christian century ? Observe that the second of
these two questions is really always put forward in place of
the first. We have not Jesus words, but we have the re
cords of men round Him as to what He said. We take their
words as His. Why is this in any sense right ? Why
should opinions of men standing round Jesus, some nearer,
some farther, be taken as His even on questions of intense
importance, such as : What is God ? What is His char
acter ? What will He do ? And also on questions of only
less importance : What has God done ? What was the
past ? AVhat was Israel ? What is the Pentateuch ?
The common answer is : Those men were filled with His
Spirit. He was present in them ; and it w r ill be generally
allowed that we are at no disadvantage in lacking writings
from our Lord s own hand, although our knowledge of His
opinions is thus thoroughly moulded by the subjective
peculiarities of the New Testament writers, their times,
abodes, and audiences. The Spirit of God was present with
those writers, the Spirit of Christ was speaking in them and
CHAP, ii.] UNSATISFACTORY METHODS. 13
through them. The speech of that Spirit through them was
not a speaking "in spite of" their local or subjective pecu
liarities, but it was speech of God in their peculiarities. We
do not say that Jesus was the Word of God " in spite of "
His flesh ; the Word of God was made flesh. Likewise the
Spirit of Jesus was made flesh after His resurrection, and
the New Testament gives us all we possess of that Word of
God from those early days after the crucifixion.
But the Spirit of God has not ceased to dwell in men.
The Spirit of Christ has not ceased to speak through the sub
jective or local peculiarities of men to-day. Not one living
soul to-day could by any possibility put on the subjective
local peculiarities of the first century. Not one could put
off now his own subjective quality, gained from the present
century, and from last century, and from the Reformation,
the Renaissance, the Schoolmen, the Dark Ages, the later
Roman Empire, and all the past. Our Lord Jesus, the
Christ in the first century, spoke the language of the first
century. He did not speak at all in the language of the
nineteenth. So the present Christ, the Word of God, ever
living and speaking in the nineteenth century, does not
speak altogether in the language of the first. He does
speak altogether in the language of the nineteenth, includ
ing in that language and speech all the fruit of the nineteen
centuries since the first. W T hat follows ? Clearly that we
learn the opinion of the present Christ on every question
now from the thoughtful voice of His Present Body, wherein
He is made flesh to-day. Christ liveth to-day in us ; we
are to-day partakers of the Divine nature. The mind of
our Lord Jesus Christ, concerning especially the Pentateuch,
is to be learned in the thoughtful mind of Christians now ;
and, as of old, he that will do the will of God shall know of
the doctrine whether it be of God. In simple words, he
that will seek shall find knowledge. Such seekers may
14 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. ir.
speak in the name of God nay, they must speak, for they
have the mind of Christ. Like Jesus, they must bear the
burdens of others. Some can hardly learn, for they have
been prevented by the various misfortunes of society ; but
their listening trust in the seekers who preach God is to
them life everlasting.
In conclusion, two things must be said : first, let it be
plainly understood that only the man who reads the Bible
has the authority of Jesus to say what is in the Bible.
In the second place, let there be absolute denial of the
cry that the analysts of the Bible are not godly men. It were
presumption to write certificates of Christian character for
scholars in Old and New Testament theology ; but let it be
recorded here as an honour to this page that increasing
personal acquaintance with these men, the oft-named men
and the little-known investigators, always reveals them, man
by man, to be the very embodiment of saintly spirituality,
eager missionary activity, apostolic fervour, and Christ-
likeness.
6. Of the test, " Wlicd does God say?"
The test, " What does God say ? " is profoundly important ;
and it is perfectly answered in the words of the Gospel,
" The Word became flesh." The meaning which these
words conveyed in the first century depended on two
things: (i) What was it to utter God, God s Spirit, God s
heart, God s unchanging love ? The answer was found
in " The Death on the Cross." (2) But what was it for
this Love to be flesh in the first century ? The answer
must be found in the special customs and possibilities of
that century. But it is not possible for us to-day and here
to think according to those customs. The literary pos
sibilities of the first century are not possibilities for us.
This is the doing of Providence. It is not of chance, it
CHAP, ii.] UNSATISFACTORY METHODS. 15
is of God. Therefore the question of profoundest import
ance rises again, " What does God say in the nineteenth
century ? " The answer is as before, " The Word became
flesh ; " and, as before, we look for the present revealed
God, and we find Him in His children, in those men who
are one with God, who utter God s Spirit and God s love.
We find the Christ and the voice of the Christ to-day in
those men who are new creatures in Christ Jesus, in whom
Christ is formed, who are reconciled to God by the blood
of His Cross, and who are found in Christ, risen with Him,
striving to attain unto the resurrection of Christ. God is
in these men ; He works in them, thinks in them, speaks
in them. What He says of the Pentateuch is heard in the
souls of those of His children who work devotedly at this
subject. That is the common faith of both conservative
and advancing men. If it were not the faith of conser
vative Christians, no one of these would dare to write or
speak one word on the subject, for to them all that dare
be said would be already said. Even were they to copy
biblical passages which they believed to be suitable, here
again the copying and choosing hands would sin, being
guided by the judgments of to-day. But thanks be to
God ! we can hear His mind to-day only in the thinking
minds of to-day. Such listening is profoundest reverence.
CHAPTER III.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE REAL STANDARD AND TEST.
I. The pleasure it will give.
THE study of this last test leads us thus to tlie historic test
suggested above. The mind of Christ confirms the historical
method, demands the historical method, and condemns the
unhistorical as wrong. The task of the student grows
heavier indeed, but the attraction grows also, and the
burden becomes light. To the faithful historical reader
the Bible is no longer a dust-covered relic, but a
treasure-house bringing raptures of delight. Unhistoric
method has closed the Bible, and must keep it closed. The
faith that the thought of to-day may not test those records
bears its fruit in neglected Bibles, in Christians who do
not know its story, its lives, its loves, its beauty, and in
many a Christian teacher who is ready to acknowledge that
he has not read it all. But insistance on historic investiga
tion is introducing us to acquaintance with the great souls
of Hebrew days and of the first Christian age as new, rare
friends. The pleasure of friendship, of human fellowship, is
kindling round the old volumes. They are proving to be
full of human attractiveness, love, and beauty.
2. The autograph records of Hebrew religious life for
eight centuries.
How then does this method proceed to discover the real
course of knowledge of God among the Hebrews ? How
1G
CHAP, in.] THE REAL STANDARD AND TEST. 17
shall we construct this history, at first independently of the
Pentateuch, in order that we may next lay the independent
standard upon the Pentateuch, measure it and analyse it
thereby, and finally weave all the Pentateuch material into
its true place in the great plan first wrought out by God s
finger and now traced out after Him by us ?
The answer is that we possess a series of autograph
records of Hebrew religious life running through all the
eight centuries before our Lord s day. For we have the long
series of words and prophesyings, burdens and promises, by
which the men of God in all these centuries strove to rouse
and win their fellows to righteousness and rest. They
prophesied they preached, and their Gospel was God.
Soul struggled with soul ; living men, they wrestled with
living men in keenest conflict of will with will, of purpose
with inclination, of thought with thought, of vision with
imagination, that by all means they might save Israel. It
was God, loved in their hearts, known in their souls, that
kindled and moved their flaming words. God, and no
other, created them ; God gave them life, home, and heart.
God, and no other, whispered their hope and faith ; God
breathed in their song and speech. How much God gives !
How much lie gave them ! He disclosed His character to
them. He told them His cares, His love, Himself, until
they loved Him and all His ways. Out of that love came
their evangel of wisdom, of righteousness, of hope, of truth.
They saw and spoke, seeing one after the other deeper and
ever deeper truths. When we read to-day we start at their
insight ; we bow, and kiss the page, saying with reverent
voice, " This is the Word of God."
Do we doubt whether the visions of God that such seers
saw may be exalted as the highest religious characteristics
of their times ? Do wo read Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and
Jeremiah, and rise thinking it probable that there have
B
18 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
ever been men more truly men of God than these men
were ? Do we insist, like the Rabbis of the early Christian
centuries, that the fellowship of God with these men was of
a lower sort than His fellowship with Moses ? Were the
efforts of these prophets to save their fellow-men less good,
less holy, less divine than the efforts of Moses ? If any
men nowadays relegate them to a farther distance from God
than they allow to Moses, shall we do so ? Does God do
so ? Are they not peers of the great realm ? Who will
venture to say it is a dishonour to the I2th chapter of
Deuteronomy to compare it with the 5th chapter of Amos,
or the /th chapter of Jeremiah, or the 33rd or 53rd chapter
of Isaiah ? Is it not reverence for that Deuteronomic dis
course to ask whether it belongs to the same category of
religious exaltation with any of these prophetic passages ?
Who will shrink from considering the question whether
Deuteronomy belongs to the same stage of bold, sublime,
sacred advance, or to a time of quieter, reflective, sacred
consolidation ? And if the date of the composition of
Deuteronomy xii. be in the crucible of controversy, who
ventures to charge with irreverence a high trial of that
chapter by the standard of a chapter in Amos ? Indeed,
such comparison has been steadily practised by both con
servative and advancing Christian men for centuries past.
And the Lord Jesus has been with them all, as they have
been fain to acknowledge of one another, when days of
special conflict have gone by.
Come then, let us read the words of these seekers and
seers into God s heart. In vain should we stay to define
their inspiration, and to argue that they had it, if we did
not first read their words, all their words in the light of
their historical setting, and grasping the meaning of the
hearts of the men and a vision of themselves as they stand
in their own place in the noble line. Let us not argue
CHAP, m.] THE REAL STANDARD AND TEST. 19
concerning inspiration, but go read to men the great
mastering truths soul truths that an AMOS wrote
"Seek good, and ye shall find God."
" All the sinners shall be cut off with the sword."
Or those of the answering HOSEA :
"I am God, and not man ; I am Israel s lover."
" I will not return to destroy."
Read the oracles of the son of these fathers, the sublime
ISAIAH, who had no hesitation about his relation and even
his children s relation to his God : but how shall we quote
Isaiah ?
" God touched my unclean lips, and cleansed them."
" God is Immanuel."
"The sinners are afraid."
But
" They that dwell in Zion shall be forgiven."
Then tell men the tale of the simpler MICAH, who sang :
" When I sit in darkness my God shall be light about me."
Who has fully read the depths of brave JEREMIAH S soul
and words ?
" Lo ! I am with thee to deliver thee."
"I will give them a new heart of flesh, that they may know
me."
Have we felt EZEKIEL S faith in a resurrection that might
repeople the empty Palestine ? Recall the more miraculous
faith uttered by an ISAIAH to the exiles :
" Go ye forth from Babylon ! "
" When the poor and needy seek water, I Jehovah will not
forsake them."
20 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
Do we teach our children that story of the desert, and with
it the faith of that preacher ?
" Even though Israel be not gathered, yet ..."
" We may be God s salvation unto the ends of the earth."
Have those scenes and words been recalled to re-inspire
our missionaries and their upholders ? Handel has taught
men to sing part of Isaiah liii. ; and when preachers tell
men to-day the story of its first utterance, their wondering
audiences shall melt in tearful cry, " God be merciful to
us ! " Men are weary to hear from us the story of these
inspirations.
Such are but glimpses of the story of two whole cen
turies, that are full to dazzling brightness of such words.
The whole eight centuries from Amos, or nine centuries
from Elijah to our Lord, can be illustrated almost as fully
as those first two of them may from which the utterances
above are taken. In some cases the material is still more
abundant.
3. These give the history of the people.
So much for illustration of the religious counsels that
were moving men then. But in these we have more than
a history of the preachers of the times. The history of
sermons is also the history of audiences. The sermons
of a preacher tell far more than his own knowledge of God ;
they tell more, indeed, than a tale of his own spiritual or
mental growth. They tell of the soil on which he grew,
and that in a more important sense than does a tree tell
of the nature of the ground beneath it, its dryness or
moisture, its alpine height or its marshy luxuriance. The
sermon tells what home experiences God used in making
the preacher ; it tells also what sort of homes and experi-
CHAP, in.] THE REAL STANDARD AND TEST. 21
ences the preacher is trying to mould. In the prophecies
you may see the people to whom they were preached. In
the speaker s words the hearers are all plainly pictured.
Those comforting words tell of the longings they cherished
and he strove to soothe ; those arguments tell the diffi
culties, hard and real, which they felt and raised, and which
he felt and strove to overcome. Those great faiths of his
echo great faiths of theirs ; those approvals and commands
tell what righteousness could be or was in the people ; those
condemnations mark out the well-known sin. Those hopes
and warnings and eschatological visions of the prophet tell
what the people could expect for their own future.
Yonder, then, in the four or five preachers of the brilliant
eighth century ; in as many of the seventh, that reflective
age; in the sublime supernaturalism on one hand, and
miraculous missionary. grasp on the other among the masters
of the sixth century, and amid its exile ; then, after the
return, in the darkened yet saintly souls that have left us
their words from that same century ; on again, in the ela
borate plannings and dreamings through Ezra s days and
onward till Alexander s, when finest fingers wove fairest
lacework of earthly glory, in song and form, about the
earthly temple 1 ; on still through apocalyptic seers highest
hopes, that, soaring into the invisible, amid the martyr-fires
of Antiochus pictured beforehand the very man and Christ
of God that should be ; in the more comfortable ecclesiasticism
and Scripture-worship of both Palestinian and Alexandrian
commentators ; and finally in the philosophic writers, who
were certainly " not far from the kingdom of God " in all
these sermons, preachers, recorders, and records there is
imbedded for us a rich, -almost a complete story of the suc
cessive thoughts of God which Israel and Judah, people and
prophets, had through well-nigh a thousand years.
The material is abundant, the work is fascinating. Let
22 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
a man first master tins succession of religious life, as fur
nished by these well-known data ; then he will be able to
undertake Pentateuch analysis, and his judgment concerning
the historical books from Pentateuch on to Chronicles
their contents, their meaning, their inspiration, will bo
trustworthy and life-giving.
CHAPTER IV.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE RESULTS.
WHAT will be the result of such work ? It is only fair to
ask and to give some illustration.
I. Necessary counsels.
But first let some necessary counsels be remembered.
Since the possession of the standard we have described is
indispensable to complete historical reliability, therefore it is
hazardous to risk here any illustrations of future results.
Still let there be the attempt, lest the way seem too long at
the outset ; and in the confidence that even adverse criticism,
if genuine, will be based on a preliminary construction of
the standard described, and is therefore desirable.
Another counsel is, that unnecessary pain to students,
teachers, and people must be avoided. This is indeed one
of the primary aims of this method of studying first the
uncontroverted writings.
By this method may be avoided very materially that fre
quent painful experience of the sudden discovery of start
ling discrepancy between traditional and scientific opinions.
It is right to avoid such pain, and therefore we may not
justly say much in detail here of results.
2. General remarks on the Pentateuch (a) law of Moses ; (&)
the New Testament use of "law;" (c) the supposed forgery.
There are one or two somewhat general remarks suitable
before giving a few special illustrations of the results.
23
24 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
(a) The expression translated " law of Moses " (J"niF)
H ^D) is somewhat misunderstood for want of careful regard
for the nature of Hebrew speech. The word " Torah " does
not mean " law." It means " instruction." It is a prefix-
noun describing concrete action, and is derived from a verb
(TV) meaning " he pointed," or " he taught." The noun
is frequently used ; and in the unquestioned cases, which
are abundant, it means that instruction which a prophet or
a priest or any teacher might give by way of information
as to the past, warning and counsel for the present, and ex
pectation concerning the future. Therefore we might expect
that the Torah, which we English folk style the Pentateuch,
would contain narrative, direction, and promise. And so it
does. It is not a book of law, although laws are of course
an element in it. It is not even specially a book of law ;
laws are comparatively a minor part of it. It is essentially
an instruction concerning the ways of God toward the
Hebrews. So it tells a long history of His creation of
them, and includes in this an account of the way He wishes
them to take and the hopes He sets before them.
But again, the second word in the expression, " Torath-
Mosheh," has been understood as if it were a genitive of the
author. It is a wonder that this theory has not been criti
cised. Recently even conservative opinion has moved steadily
toward acknowledgment of various origins for the materials
of the work. It is commonly said that, whoever wrote the
Pentateuch in its final form, that final writer must have col
lected documents from earlier hands, and incorporated these
in his book. Thus the explanation of the title " Torah-of-
Moses," as meaning " Torah, whose author was Moses," has
practically passed out of use. And the change is gram
matically perfectly correct. A Hebrew, reading the words
" Torath-Mosheh," would have understood them to mean
" The Deliverer-Torah," or The Divine instruction con-
CHAP, iv.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE RESULTS. 25
cerning deliverance." The word " Moslieh " is here used
in an adjective or attributive descriptive sense. The whole
work, therefore, ending at Deuteronomy, or, it may be, at
Joshua, or even at 2 Kings, is an instruction concerning
God s way in creating, saving that is, delivering His people
Israel. It is the story especially how He brought them
up out of Egypt, with all the previous blessings, and all
the requirements, and all the later hopes included in that
picture of God s way. This was " The Torali of the De
liverer."
(I) Now, since this was the very charter of those Hebrews
who possessed it, we can easily understand the reverence it
received. This reverence ought naturally to appear in the
New Testament literature and life. And no doubt it does.
There of course the word Torali cannot occur, but the word
which takes its place is " Nomos," and this is a not alto
gether unsuitable substitute. When, then, we find Paul
distinguishing between " salvation by faith in Jesus " and
" salvation by the Nonaos-works " (the works of the law, as
we render it), or simply " salvation by the Torah," it is quite
possible that he did not mean to distinguish between salva
tion by faith and salvation by works, whether of a ceremonial
law or of a moral law. He meant most likely to distinguish
between salvation on the one hand as a simple human soul
by trust in God present with man as man, and on the other
hand salvation as a true Hebrew, proved by his birth and
ways to be a son of Abraham, and so claiming all the
privileges of salvation that were ensured to Hebrews in their
great charter, the " Deliverer-Torah." The whole matter is
one for careful inquiry by New Testament theologians. 1
1 A similar misunderstanding of such a title has taken place in the case of
the Institutio of Calvin, which has been so persistently called "The Institutes
of Calvin." Calvin probably thought of giving simply a theory of Chris
tianity ; most meu have supposed he gave laws by which the elect must bo
governed.
26 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
This reminds us that the whole fallacy concerning the
elect was based upon Pauline language. There was certainly
a Jewish doctrine of the elect; Judaism was just that doc
trine. When men began to theologise concerning Paulinism
and Christianity, it was very natural to preserve the formal
notion concerning an elect, with simple alteration of the
qualifications of that elect. Thus the persistence in Christian
theology of a doctrine of the elect helps to confirm the
opinion that Paul s polemic was not so much against works,
deeds, duty, as against the essential fact of Judaism, the
theory of a chosen few elected according to the great charter
of the people, the " Deliverer-Torah."
(c) Once more, let us anticipate an exposition to be given
in a future volume of this work. It is often said that if
Moses did not write Deuteronomy, the actual writer forged
Moses name by imputing the work to Moses. The charge
becomes a real charge, and does not remain a mere hypo
thesis, when we find the Revised Version saying that the
writer of Deuteronomy lived on the west side of Jordan,
where Moses never was (Deut. i. I ; iv. 46, &c.)
Now, the writer of the book takes care not to say that
Moses was the writer. He is careful also to give his
authority for his own work of narration of what he be
lieves Moses did and said. He gives in Deuteronomy v.
Moses authority for what he the Deliverer did and said,
and in chap, xviii., resuming the subject, he gives the
similar authority by which a later man may do similar
work, and learn, know, and describe what Moses had done.
We may almost say that the writer of Deuteronomy gives
his own sign manual in Deut. xviii. 1 8 ff. He is no
impostor. He declares that he himself has God s authority
for writing.
CHAP, iv.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE RESULTS. 27
3. Illustrations (a) concerning Deuteronomy ; (b) concern
ing Elohist and Jehovist ; (c) concerning Levitical
ceremonial ; (d) concerning the narratives ; (e) concern
ing the editor.
We proceed now to a few brief illustrations of the results
of Pentateuch analysis.
(a) In meeting the question, " When did Israel become
able to understand or use the Book of Deuteronomy ? " the
test described has long been used by men of both the
critical schools. Conservative men have held that its use
earlier than 800 B.C. is proved by certain allusions in Amos
to the religious uses of leavened and unleavened bread, and
to the payment of tithes at certain threefold divisions of
time. Another class of students have compared Deuteronomy
with the story of the Josian Reformation, and think that
then was the period when all Judah solemnly recognised the
Deuteronomic principles as the rule for the kingdom.
This leaves of course undecided the date and person of the
writer ; but here again there has been singular unanimity
in appealing to the standard we have described, although
the results of the appeal have not been in full agreement.
According to some, the generations shortly preceding Josiah
might have furnished, in the order of Providence, just that
reflective and argumentative kind of religious faith which
records itself in Deuteronomy, and it is held that therefore
Deuteronomy was written then. Others agree that the
style of the book suits that age. But they hold that the
real author may have lived several centuries earlier, and
may have been enabled of God to write as if he were living
in the later age. Just such a case of authorship was once
held by Dr. Delitzsch to have occurred in the case of
Isaiah xl.-lxvi. (Comm. Isaiah, 2nd ed. p. 410). Dr.
Delitzsch said there, " We have granted that the author of
28 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
chaps, xl. Ixvi. keeps to the Exile as his fixed standpoint
through all the twenty-seven chapters, moving his position
only as one in the Exile would be always moving nearer to
the Emancipation ; and nowhere does he betray that his
actual position or environment is different from this his
ideal position." Dr. Delitzsch believed that the writer,
living in say 725 B.C., was divinely and extraordinarily
enabled to think and write exactly as if he were among
the exiles in Babylon in 675 B.C. The extraordinary or
miraculous character of such authorship Dr. Delitzsch
held to be nothing impossible. And no one can prove
the impossibility of it. Others hold that the early writer
did indeed thus project himself into a time several centuries
after his own time ; but they add to this the opinion that an
audience also actually surrounding the early speaker heard
him and thought with him as if they were all living, not in
their own time and environment, but in the later time of
Uzziah, Hezekiah, and Josiah. While Dr. Delitzsch believed
such a vision or transposition in the plan of the prophetic
writer of Isaiah xl. Ixvi., some would hold that in the case of
Deuteronomy such a transposition took place in the minds
of both writer and audience. They consider that the audience
who adopted the Deuteronomic teaching under Josiah were
a second audience. Of course in this case, as well as in the
others, the Book of Deuteronomy, even on such a theory of
it, will give us a correct picture of the popular state of mind
under Josiah, which is the most valuable matter in view
of our effort to construct the history of religion in Israel.
Finally, some think that the book did indeed suit exactly
the people who adopted it in Josiah s day, and does reflect
their religious character ; but they hold that it fitted with
equal exactness the men of the Exodus in Moab. This view
of course supposes a fixed religious character, continuing
from the Exodus to Josiah s day, say seven hundred years,
CHAP, iv.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE RESULTS. ?9
without change. The important fact for our present pur
pose is the general agreement that Deuteronomy, whenso
ever written, corresponds in religious standpoint with Josiah s
time, and furnishes most valuable material for the history of
religion at that time. Thus the value of our method of
work is confirmed by all.
(6) Our standard has been generally acknowledged to be
the correct one by all classes of investigators of the problem
whether the so-called Elohistic, methodical passages, running
from Genesis to Kings, are of an earlier or a later date than
the so-called Jehovistic and popular passages in the same
books. Very few teachers of any shade of opinion have
refrained from applying to this matter the test which we
have proposed. Many who are strongly conservative in
their results have firmly and nobly opened the way for con
tinued thorough application of our test. The results are
not complete, but as they near completion they add intense
and constantly increasing interest to the study, and to the
parts of the Bible which are thus studied.
(c) The test may be applied again to the many collec
tions of ceremonial regulations contained in the Pentateuch.
When it is so applied there is discovered in these successive
sets of regulations a striking series of parallels to the pro
phetic processes of deeper and ever deeper search into the
character of God, as the previous independent study of
religious history in the prophets reveals these. The fancy
that theology is a dry study vanishes like a dream, for
gotten in the hearty pleasure such earnest Bible study gives ;
and the steady growth of this research is convincing thought
ful men that the study of religious phenomena is no more
a dilettante s trifle. One rises, for example, from careful
analysis of the Book of Leviticus saying, " Never was there
a more fascinating story of life," so intensely interesting is
the evident progress of reflection, of wonder, of a very agony
30 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
of striving after peace in the soul. And a higher result still
comes to the historical student of these laws, for he is con
firmed in faith in the Great Spirit s unfailing presence in all
the simplest ways of men. Those anxious estimations in
Leviticus of the value of anointings with oil and burnings
with fire, of apportionings of sacrificial flesh, and of cutting
and adorning of fit garments, of preservation of genealogies
and of gradations of rank, those analyses of guilt values
and of the vital function of blood and its symbolic spiritual
significance all these have wearied many readers of the
Bible, and have been left unread as purely local and trivial
phenomena. But they came into being in the order of Pro
vidence, and the worshippers who practised them tried them
one after the other in earnest reflection how they could be
perfect before God. So they moved on in wonderfully ad
vancing refinement of these regulations, and this means that
God did indeed care to have men reflect thus, and grow by
such reflection. He inspired their desires, their struggles,
their faith ; He was present there. The historical reader
rises believing, " Surely this presence of God amid such
weary ritual struggles proves that He is never far away
from us also ! "
(d) The narratives of the Pentateuch and the succeeding
books are at times popular, homely, of the fireside or the
noontide resting hour. They are then poetry of the rarest
sort, the songful communings of a nation s days of childhood,
the strong excitement and eager demand for righteousness
that marks the healthy youth of a nation. Comparing
these with the history constructed already by independent
study of the prophets, one hears the very voices of these
men echoed again. You hear at one point the quick lyric
measure and the overflowing joy and passion of the earliest
prophets. You recognise then the voice of an age that had
not lost the power to weave in finest nature-parable the facts
CHAP, iv.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE RESULTS. 31
of men s earliest life. Again you are in the atmosphere of
the simplicity, boldness, and sorrow of the Nahash- David,
first soul to burst away from the Eden-home, and from laws
of childhood, into the daring and suffering of maturity.
Then further on you read terrible denunciations poured out
on the wrongdoer and his wrong deed, with no discrimination,
o o *
and with little thought of mercy. They could frame their
home- like pictures round with a dark border, and write
thereon the dread Amosian penalty, " All the sinners of my
people shall die by the sword ; " " The soul that sinneth, it
shall die ; " " In the day of disobedience thou shalt surely
die."
At other times those Pentateuch narratives are philo
sophical or philosophico-poetical. We hear in them a very
sound of solemn psalm and stately chant. We shall recall,
as we read, the periods in which our previous study of his
tory shall have revealed the rise of careful reflection on
creation, on the meaning of God s name, on the dark pro
blems of life, on the facts of Providence in the past and on
the troubled hopes concerning Providence in the future.
But whether the narratives are of one sort or the other,
and whether they shall prove to be like to the people of
one age or of another, the hands that wove them together
were moved by a faith minded above all things to exhibit
in the story of " a little one among the nations " something
of the great control of God over all.
(c) To end these illustrations, we may observe that there
is a rather scholastic classification of kinds of inspiration
that ends by finding the climax of all inspirations, and
indeed almost the only real or infallible inspiration, in the
final editors of the Pentateuch. Such a fancy is like the
refinements of the ritualist, and may make the serious
student smile. But this is certainly true : that subordinate
as editors must always be, those Pentateuch editors to avoid
32 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
the outlandish word " redactor " were men of sublime faith,
of fearless grasp, selecting, moulding, fitting, even rejecting
very precious things ; and they remain men of grand reli
gious power to this day.
We leave now the questions of the Pentateuch, to con
struct the history of this Hebrew religion from the materials
given in uncontroverted sources. Only complete study
of these will entitle us to return to the Pentateuch as men
fairly skilled for its analysis. But, from the beginning and
henceforward and at the end, the best, highest, latest and
only true study of the Bible must be that which finds there
the story of God talking with men and therefore reads it
to see God and to reveal Him. God needs man s every
hour to tell man all the love of God. The history we now
begin is the story of God, of the God-man, of God s Christ,
of God s life given to men, to Hebrews, to Christians, for
all men, the same yesterday, to-day, for ever.
BOOK II.
HEBREW RELIGION FROM AMOS TO JO SI AH,
OR FROM SCO to 640 B.C.
PART I.
THE RELIGION OF AMOS (CIRCA 775 B.C.).
CHAPTER I.
ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK.
I . Of its literary history.
THE earliest of the virtually uncontroverted monuments
of Hebrew religion is the little book of the prophet or
preacher AMOS. In our work with this book, and with
each book we may have to discuss, we must take as sub
stantially completed for us by other specialist hands all the
exegetical and literary historical work that ought to lie
completed before us as preliminary to our own special task.
It is not necessary to load these pages with the bibliography
of those literary and exegetical departments. Lists of
works and teachers that the student must consult may
be found in works on theological encyclopaedia. But the
student cannot afford to pass unheard any teacher in the
Old Testament department of theology ; and study of those
teachers published work can but inadequately make up for
lack of personal acquaintance and direct pupilship.
Let the writer add to such general acknowledgment of
unspeakable indebtedness the glad testimony of his deepest
reverence, and in some cases close personal affection for
the masters he has followed in Old Testament study : Drs.
35
3G OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. I.
Riehm, De Lagarde, Dukm, Wellhausen, Stade, Delitzsch,
Kautzsch, Guthe, Smend, Kuenen, Renan, Cheyne, Davidson,
"W. R. Smith, Carpenter, Driver, Cave, Whitehouse, Meade,
Curtiss, Briggs, Bissell. Where these men have published
their results of investigation, there is not very much that
a well-informed studious man could find fault with, either
in the completeness of their investigation or in the strict
correctness of their method.
2. The analysis into nine paragraphs.
The Book of Amos is virtually the earliest certain auto
graph of a Hebrew religious life. It carries a characteristic
title, " The Utterances of Burden-Bearing ; " for the author s
name had that sad solemn significance, and all his utter
ances have that same sad, solemn tone. Whether the name
was given him by his fathers, or by his followers, is an
interesting question ; if by the latter, then his warning
influence found quick response, whereas if by the former,
we have all the more certainly in the boy and man and
prophet a picture of the solemnity and character and
religion of his whole time and generation.
The Oracles may be read through at a sitting, for they
make only nine short chapters. Their contents may be
easily divided into nine paragraphs, nearly coterminous
with the chapters, as follow :
IT I, chap. i. I ii. 5. A song of seven stanzas, with regular
refrain, chanting (Jahweh s) Jehovah s lordship over all the
nations that lie around the horizon of central Israel. That
Overlord s care is chiefly first to condemn wrongs that men,
or rather tribes of men, do to their neighbours, hurting
especially the body and liberty, but also the sense of honour.
And secondly, the Overlord s care is to declare that the
course of coming Providence shall be all retribution for these
CHAP, i.] ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK. 37
wrongs. "With this claim and description of over-lordship
the oracle turns from the circling peoples to strike hence
forth only the central Israel.
IT 2, chap. ii. 6 end. The chant goes on, but soon sways
into less stanzaic form, declaring that all Israel s doings have
bfipTTprnft]^ In^fcful, greedy, and ungrateful. All has been
disregard erf Jehovah, who is Providence, Creator, true
Receiver of Divine honour, and whose whole desire is for
kindness, honesty, purity, faithfulness among His own loved
tribes. For these wrongs He will make all coming Provi
dence a retribution.
H 3, chap. iii. Tells of Jehovah s need ofpersonal friend
ship, and of His plan to have it with one people, Israel. But
He has been bitterly disappointed, for the inhumanity of
Israel is intolerable to Him. Therefore retribution shall fill
all His future Providence.
H 4, chap. iv. is in three subdivisions. First, the retribu
tion is declared certain upon the court harem and other
persons of high rank for the cruelty, selfish and sensual, or
the harem ladies. Secondly, a taunt is flung at the religiosity
of the day; for abundant religious observance, and thoroughly
pleasurable religious observance too, are quite consistent
with immorality. Thirdly, in continuation of the second
subdivision, the providences of Jehovah are declared to be
the true occasions for actual contact with Him, vision of
Him, humble intercourse with Him. This view of them has
been utterly disregarded. Therefore Amos solemnly pro
claims Jehovah s creatorship of all nature, and His sole rule
and real presence therein ; and he bids Israel now at last
know this, and think and act in such real consciousness,
and begin thereby a real worship of God.
^1 5, chap. v. may be called a dialogue, where the words of
the answering hearer may be easily supplied from the words
of the preacher :
38 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
" Ye die," cries he ; " Providence is against you."
" How then shall we live ? " is the implied answer.
" Seek the Life-giver, the Creator, Jehovah, who causeth
to be, for such is He by very name, as by very nature.".
" But," they say again, " Jehovah is with us in the many
sanctuaries Gilgal, Bethel, Mizpeh, Beersheba, where He
chose to show Himself to our fathers, Samuel, Moses, Jacob,
Abraham. Our venerable faith is this : wherever He has
showed His face there will He be again, and there shall we
stay and eat the feast of sacrifice to Him. He is here ; we
shall then live."
" No, no," cries the preacher ; " seek not sanctuaries,
but seek the Life-giver. Believe no more in safety in that
venerable faith," cries this first of the long line of Hebrew
iconoclasts. " Seek not places, but seek Jehovah."
" Why ? How," they answer, " can He be away from
these ? " Note that both preacher and hearers of this first
great doctrine of revelation believed not in one revelation
once for all, but in an ever-possible, ever-new revelation^
The answer comes, fearless and dread, "Your sin, your
multitude of dishonest deeds, your cruel silencing of honest
speech, your slanders uttered from the very judge s seat
against the petitioner whose rights cross your wishes these
all drive God away from you. He is not in all the courts,
homes, hearts where you do these things."
" Imprudent man," they shout ; " thou art a fool who
speakest thus. Thy place, thy bread, all oughtest thou to
lose for such words ay, thy life. Hush ! Keep silence !
Prudence bids thee."
The imprudent preacher only sounds again aloud his cry,
" Seek good, seek good. When ye find good, and possess
it and dwell in it, then Jehovah, that God who abides with
good, shall abide with you. Ye say He is with you now ;
He shall really be with you then."
CHAP, i.] ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK. 39
Bat this gospel _of_lifejs._li_opel_ess, because unused. The
hearers persist in worship, feast, song, sacrifice, which are
godless, untrue, hateful. Therefore retributive providence
is the only outlook ; dangers, horrors, slavery, wailing, death
shall come. Thus shall the presence of Jehovah be felt
indeed, but not as a life-giving presence. For He causes
all things, death as well as life ; and the coming great " Day
of Jehovah," the day of His manifest presence, shall be a
day of death.
i 6, chap. vi. A more pointed condemnation. The
highest authorities officers, chairmen, committee-men are
the worst men. They cause most mischief, and are most care
less about it. Therefore plague shall ravage, and every pro
vidence shall be retribution, until in terror men shall grow
superstitious towards Jehovah. They shall grow terrified
to speak His name, and so at length it shall cease to be
desecrated.
H 7, chap, vii.- Parables, possibly for the simpler folk.
Amos tells how he once tried to believe in forgiveness, and
more than once prayed for mercy on Israel. And Jehovah
listened. Again and again Amos felt an assurance they
should be forgiven. But now they have gone too far to be
forgiven again. His great grace is exhausted. No wonder,
for the chief man charged with leading Israel to God and
speaking Jehovah s mind to Israel is the very chiefest
despiser of the godlike heart and word of Amos. The
prophet declares how unselfish his own aim had been. For
no price, or honour, or self-satisfaction had he spoken, but
only to utter Jehovah s own mind against badness and for
goodness. But for these godlike things there was no
sympathy in the Bethel-priest, Amaziah. Therefore the
priest and his people must suffer a pollution which they can
feel visible, tangible a horrible outlawry from Jehovah s
home.
40 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
IF 8, cliap. viii. I ix. i o. Once more a parable of death
for the text, and then a sermon that gathers together all the
dread oracle sentences from the past paragraphs or ser
mons, until the most terrible of all is added, " For the
sinner there can be no forgiveness."
" All the sinners shall die by the sword." Down to
Sheol they shall go in pollution, and there they shall be for
ever bitten with torment.
TF 9, chap. ix. ii-end. In the world thus cleansed
Jehovah shall dwell, the glorious God, at home in the land that
shines with pristine glory. The golden age shall dawn again
that is, the David-days shall come once more, and shall
endure for ever. Wide rule over all known nations, wealth,
health, peace, power and prosperity in field, in vineyard,
and in hall, shall be for ever through all the coming ages
the glad portion of Israel with his God Jehovah.
CHAPTER II.
THE MAN AMOS.
I . Our need of him.
THE question will often rise, But what have we to do with
this man, and with any of these far-away people ? Let
us say a word in answer. We are certainly not construct
ing here the history of mankind in general, wherein no
doubt this man Amos and his fellows would have their place
like others. We are investigating religious history, where
Amos certainly has an interesting and prominent position.
But further, our aim is not the mere knowledge of religious
phenomena. Our impulse is an eager thirst to know what
our own religion is, and has been, and may be. Ours
is like the very practical desire of the mariner on the
wide ocean, whose first daily inquiry is, Where am I ? and
How must I move now ? Here then lies our reason for
reading Amos. We know what Christ is to us to-day, but
we would know what He was yesterday in order that we
may certainly know Him to-morrow. Peace for us lies
herein. We seek assurance of more than our present
living being, out, as it were, upon the wide ocean of time.
Our life insists on widening its grasp and including in our
personal possession the whole story of our past and the
promise of all the future. Here lies a constant character
istic feature of the soul s life. The real self yearns for
larger and larger life in fact, the living soul must have
some share in the infinite life.
41
42 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. ir.
Therefore the story of Christ is of personal interest to
us, and the story of His coming is indispensable to the
growing soul. Truly has He created life in us, and He
is, therefore, the first revelation we have of God. He is
" Son of God " by His power over us ; or, as the Hebrews
understood these words, He is to us " Very Divine Being."
"We fall before Him with humble gladness, crying, " My
Lord and my God." But none the less is He " Son of
Man," and, again, as the Hebrews understood these words,
" Very human Being." As such He became, He was born,
He had ancestors physical and mental ; and knowledge of
Him means knowledge of His physical and mental genesis.
Amos is a marked feature in that genesis. His words
stand like brilliant gems in the treasure-house of records of
the story of Christ. Those oracles are part of Christ s
story, and so part of Himself. In this sense, as Amos is a
part of Him who is to us " The Word of God," he is a part
of the Word of God. Indeed, his story is not merely a part
of the story of the coming of Jesus, Son of Man, but Amos
himself is also a part of the unfolding of the Divine revela
tion which culminated on the Cross. Therefore Ainos s
words, life, self are part of the story of the Son of God.
It is no wonder that this conclusion agrees thoroughly with
the strange experience we have as we read Amos s words.
Again and again we bow and say, " Surely this is the voice
of God."
2. His inspiration.
We need, therefore, no preliminary apologetic to prove
the inspiration of Amos before we read his words as living
food for our very souls. When we have read his words we
recognise his inspiration, and then only. All argumenta
tion a priori that he is inspired, i.e., argument that he is
in the canon, and that, because the canon is all inspired,
CHAP, ii.] THE MAN AMOS. 43
therefore he is inspired, and will therefore furnish spiritual
food, and therefore is to be read all this is superfluous,
and waste of precious time. It may be interesting scholasti
cism and traditional dogmatic method, but it is not vital.
But Amos makes a constant claim that he is uttering the
utterances of God. Does not such claim seem blasphemy,
unless we have good reason on other grounds for believing
that he had a right to speak thus ? What right had Amos
to use such language ? Must we not hold either that this
language marks him as a trifler, and shuts him out from all
religious respect, or that his very claim and unhesitating
practice may indicate the presence of a religious power
which we must at least face and investigate ? Now comes
to every mind the fact that we too hear a voice of whose
utterances we are ready at once to say, " Thus saith the
Lord." There lives not a soul which lacks utterly convic
tions of various sorts. The final authority for these and
their ultimate source must unquestionably be the same as
the final and supreme source of all things. Further, we
cannot get away from the controlling sense of some of our
convictions. Some of them are by no means mere opinions.
Mathematical demonstrations are surely the mind of God.
But we have besides these other convictions, whose hold we
cannot by any means escape. We are sure that " we ought
to do right." That "duty to do right" may be hard to
prove, and sometimes we may be tempted to ask whether
this sense of it is not a mere custom, a result of ages
of practice ; nevertheless we do know that we ought to
do right, and nothing can convince us that we ought to do
wrong. Nay, more, there are comparatively few persons
who are always in uncertainty what particular things are
the right things which they ought to do. We can go
further, for a great host of living men are convinced that
they are children of God, doubly dear to Him, forgiven
44 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. ir.
sinners, born again into a new, strong, glad, godly course of
life in which God will help them to abide. They trust, as
many, many more in the past have trusted, that the Spirit
of God speaks to them, bearing witness with their spirits
that they are God s children. In such faith they lay hold
of their callings, they train up their offspring, and they
step forward through this life into the world beyond. In
all these things they believe they know and obey the very
voice of God whispering to them. They can say, like Amos,
" Thus saith the Lord."
There is therefore nothing unexpected in Amos s faith
on the contrary, we expect just such faith in every true
man. We understand his claim of oneness with God s
mind, for we make it ourselves.
3. The scene of Amos s preaching.
This scene and his position in history go far to give reality
and value to his words, and to create the keenness of our
interest in his words to-day. Come back and look.
It is evening, and the sun s level beams are striking
across the western hills, gilding with fairest beauty the
domes and pinnacles, the wall-tops and feathery palms of
the queenly Samaria. She rests there like a golden crown
on that proud head, that lordly hill rising in the midst of
the fat valley. Fat, rich valley indeed it is, whose circling
slopes, sweeping round this central hill, are all hidden be
neath the veil of vines. On the bottom of the vale perhaps
corn is waving, but up on the rocky central height the vines
spread again about the jutting cottages of the vine-keepers
until the hill seems like the face of some revelling youth
garlanded with vine-leaves and purpling grape-clusters.
Twice happy Samaria, planted amid such gardens, and
exalted high on rocky height, inaccessible if guarded well ;
CHAP, ii.] THE MAN AMOS. 45
by nature and by name thou art " The Keep." Great city
too ! Thy royal courts gather a host within thy walls, and
attract from far the merchant, the herdsman, the husband
man with grain and fruits and cattle and wares of every
sort. Plenty of fortune-seekers are there the man of plea
sure, the skilful player on string and pipe, the low and the
high, the lord and the lady, the master with his slave, the
subtle or the bold evil-doer, as well as the princes, the judges,
and good men too of every calling all are there.
It is even, and on the broad " Rehoboth " squares, where
market has surged the whole long day, the night-fires are
smoking. Round them are ranged the herds, that are bleating
less now, and settling to their rest. Nearer, close circling
by the fitful blaze, the motley groups of men, sellers and
buyers, strangers and townsmen, chaffer over their trade,
their purposes, the little world they know, or the wider
world that some far-travelled ones can tell of. The piper
pipes and the singer croons his lay of home, or of desert,
or of sea. The enthusiast lifts his voice over his theme,
and the gay, the careless, the simple, the superstitious, the
devout, listen with common interest.
Hark ! one voice sounds shrill and strong, although not
so loud. What is this man s power, thus to silence and to
hold all others ? Perhaps we have sat upon some house-top
bordering hard upon the square, as we have watched and
listened ; but now let us come down, and from the house-
court thread the narrow lane out to the gathering congrega
tion of this solemn herdsman-preacher.
He is a striking figure, as some men turn out to be who
at first sight have seemed ordinary plain-spoken, home
spun folk. This very plainness makes the impression all the
deeper when we see the calm depth of the eye, the quiver
ing firmness of the mouth, the alert readiness of the whole
frame. The late Mr. Green quotes Sir Philip Warwick s pic-
46 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
ture of Cromwell thus : " I came into the House one morning
well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking whom I knew
not, very ordinarily apparelled, for it was a plain cloth suit,
which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor.
His linen was plain, and not very clean, and I remember a
speck or two of blood upon his little band, which was not
much larger than his collar. His hat was without a hat
band. His stature was of a good size ; his sword stuck
close to his side ; his countenance swollen and reddish ; his
voice sharp and untunable, and his eloquence full of fer
vour " (Short Hist., p. 554). That picture of Cromwell is
almost a picture of Amos. His eloquence was full of fer
vour. Resting one arm upon his shepherd s crook, he sways
the other high, and it falls full of threatening solemnitv.
CD / /
He is dark with the southern sun, and his rough-spun gar
ments are somewhat hidden by the hairy leathern cloak that
tells of the wild storms he has often faced alone with his
flock on the mountains of Judah. Far up on those southern
slopes is his native town, nestling indeed beneath the higher
mountain wall, yet well seen from far. It is well known
as the " Beacon " hamlet ; its fit name is Tekoa, " Place of
Trumpet-stroke ; " and when from its walls the watching
trumpeter strikes an alarm-blast, his warning is heard afar,
far away in Bethlehem and even by Jerusalem s gates.
But it is a sunny place as well ; the burning sun ripens
the grape-clusters round and ruddy there, for near it lies
Beth-haccerem, " The home beside the most excellent vines,"
the southern Carmel. So the life of Amos was spent in
part among gardens, vines, fields, and groves of sycamores,
whose quiet, delicious luxuriance fed rich imaginative
thoughts, and led to graceful clear utterance ; another part
was full of following the flock on the mountain pasture, or
over the stern pass, or down through the deep gorge, that
valley of the shadow, where sunlight beamed at noon-time
CHAP, ii.] THE MAX AMOS. 47
only, and gloom hid the ravenous beast s crouching or the
horrid snake s coil. Up yonder on the sullen mountain
side Amos had stood guarding his sheep, while the thunder
rolled and the terrible lightning darted across the black
ness. He had thought there, like a true Semite, of the
Being that was behind the storm ; and his lonely cherished
thought had deepened into a very speech of God to him.
He felt he had talked and walked with his God. No doubt
the twain had been agreed. Gazing across the wide horizon,
he had listened to the thunder-tread upon the mountain-
tops ; round the whole heavens he had seen One lead
the winds. He felt Jehovah moving his soul within him,
giving to him his thought. Down into the gloomy glen
he had peered and stalked, listening for the horrid roar
or hiss, yet girding his heart with brave faith in Jehovah s
power to control the lion, the serpent, the nations, all things.
There was a third portion of his life. His business led
him at times away north to the market-towns, especially
to the greater city Samaria. The new sanctuary in Jeru
salem was already sacred with the traditions of the glorious
David-age, a centre whence Jehovah s oracles ought to
sound out over all Israel as well as Judah, but it was not
yet the only place for intercourse with Jehovah, exclusive
of all others. Amos knew that Jehovah was with him
wherever he went ; he had walked in friendship and truest
worship beside his God on mountain and meadow, in
orchard path or city street. He honoured the sanctuary
of Jerusalem, indeed, but he gave it few words and few
thoughts; and when he denounced other sanctuaries, and
bade men seek not these but seek Jehovah, he never told
them that Jerusalem was a place where they might find
Him.
It is in Samaria we find him setting up his Divine
oracle, with a faith apparently far, far before its time.
48 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
It was this faith, so absorbing, and so perfectly exhibited
by his personality, that arrested all hearers, silenced and
drew together all other talkers, stole through streets and
halls like the dawn, held the city listening, brought the
foremost priest of the chief Israelite house of God to the
spot to hear for himself and to condemn.
Here is a problem of the very hardest sort How does one
man, conscious of a purpose to be godly, and acquainted
with the Divine purpose to bless his people, nevertheless
strike to death a fellow-man who is conscious of the same
things and who is aiming to accomplish their realisation ?
It is a common experience to-day ; it was the fact of the
Cross ; it was the experience of Amos at the hands of
Amaziah ; it is the inexplicable fact of sin. As the rabbis
who caused the crucifixion were preachers of almost the
identical faith that Jesus proclaimed, viz., the abode of God
in and with every soul that truly seeks Him, so always
those who know best, and who might do best, and who
indeed at times actually do best deeds, may prove the very
deadliest evil-doers, and may crucify one another. As the
odium theologicum to-day is the most odious unholiness,
so Amaziah, a servant of Jehovah, would have struck Amos
dumb, the man who also knew himself to be a servant of
Jehovah and commissioned by Him.
"What cause could there be for the antagonism ? Amos
may have seen in Jehovah some part of the great God s
immense character which Amaziah did not see. The cause
of antagonism must lie in the limited vision which the
one soul has, but which to him is all Divine and even all
he thinks can be Divine ; while the other soul receives a
farther vision necessarily altogether new, and therefore
apparently excluded by the former. All along man s story
there has been this struggle of souls to claim each for
itself an utter oneness with God, a knowledge of Him
CHAP, ii.] THE MAN AMOS. 49
which excludes all further knowledge. It is a splendid
struggle and claim ; it marks human nature as partaker
of the Divine nature. Yet in reality just this very certain
share by one soul in the Divine nature gives every other
soul an equal claim. One soul s fellowship with God implies
God s fellowship with the whole family ; and therefore the
vision of God must be ever growing greater, ever, ever
new, for ever and for ever opening new pages of the infinite
Word of God.
We have therefore to ask what Amos brought which
Amaziah had not. What was the new revelation in this new
man of God ? Consider then, first, that the age of Amos
was one of remarkable activity in the development of man
kind at large.
4. The age of Amos, and its wide activity.
It is difficult to say that Providence purposed some
particular developments in this or that period. Our
knowledge of the cycles of Providence is far too small for
such easy assertion. But our tendency to such assertion
is another token of our inborn struggle for oneness with
God. It is also the singular instinctive impulse in us
towards ceaseless investigation. Unwearied we ask what
is in this world about us ; what has produced it, and what
will it produce ?
In spite of the difficulty of mapping the plans of Provi
dence, we can certainly fix great era points in the mighty
evolution. The faith in Christianity is a faith that for
one definite date in human story we do know utterly the
mind of God. On Calvary God s whole mind was revealed,
grasped in human soul, and recorded in human history.
Remarkably like that era are the years 800 to 750 B.C.
Manifestly in that half century the great Creator-Spirit s
50 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
ceaseless work was for a while extraordinary. Some scholars
think that the philosophic poem of earth s creation recorded
in Genesis i. was first sung soon after this era, and under
its influence. However that may be, it is certain that then
thoughtful men of God must have heard with devout awe
the very present tread and voice of the Almighty Creator.
The Spirit brooded upon the face of the deep, and brought
forth light. Look west or east, south or north, and the
muttering thunder-throes of the birth of a new age are
there.
Far east, on Tigris and Euphrates banks, those years
saw the intense mental activity that piled the huge stone
libraries we are just unearthing, to find, to our bewilderment,
disclosures of wondrous scientific skill, literary keenness,
depth and beauty, economic care and civil order, with a
religious yearning ay, and grasp that have seldom been
far surpassed. Then the librarians cared to store not their
own age s wealth of thoughtful words alone, but they had a
care for the past that we might well copy, for they gathered
and re-wrote and preserved the lore of the whole thousand
years that had gone before them.
And this thoughtful power within was fellow to their
power for action without. Earlier struggles for world-empire
there may have been, but then first the Assyrian empire
began the splendid series of mighty monarchies that has
included the Babylonian, the Persian, the Greek, the Roman
and its more modern Titanic sons. Egypt has been almost
all along the rival of all these, always giving cause to look
to the south-east corner of the Levant, always keeping that
the arena of war and of wonder.
For a moment look at the west during Amos s dav. In
v
776 B.C., while he preached in Samaria, Greece was rising
up into full consciousness, and learning to count her own
years and tell her own tale. The first Olympiad began in
CHAP, ii.] THE MAX AMOS. 51
that year. A dozen years later, in 753 B.C., was the first hour
of the common reckoning of the age of the city of Rome.
Whether that year saw much masonry rise on the Seven
Hills or not may be uncertain, but something held the gaze
of all later Romans fixed on that age as the birth-time of
the life of their nation. In all these lands the Cause of all
causes was quickening life greatly.
So too it was in Israel and Judah. Then lived a whole
galaxy of thoughtful men, whose deeds the world has never
since let die. Perhaps we may not infer great political pro
sperity from the long reigns of fifty years each which are
attributed to the two kings or sheikhs, Jeroboam II. of Israel
and Uzziah of Judah, who ruled in the beginning of the
century. The records of length of reigns in those days
were subject to the feeling of the recorder. But this feeling
evidently made great men of these two rulers Jeroboam,
whose name means " Let the nation increase," and Uzziah,
" Strength gotten from Jehovah." Ahaz, the grandson of
Uzziah, was a heartbreak to Isaiah, but more because of
his cold, hard, philosophic scepticism than for any weakness
in him. He was certainly a thoughtful man, a leader
among astronomers, and not careless of other physical inves
tigations ; while he was far from being irreligious, but rather,
like the Athenians, eager to know all about all sorts of
gods. His son, Isaiah s pupil Hezekiah, was at the least a
remarkable man, playing a great part in the story that we
shall have to tell. All the various Israelite rulers after
Jeroboam II. gave the great Assyrian commanders a hard
task ere they could overthrow Samaria and master Palestine,
But all these were only the lesser stars of a great constella
tion of genius. Call it only genius, and it is unsurpassed.
Here on the world s arena a band of men stood forth and
wrote themselves on its records in words which the world
has not once in these nearly 3000 years let die words, we
52 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
may safely say, that it never will forget. Leave it to later
pages to tell how those writers have moulded by their work
the whole fellowship of men in ever-widening circles since
they lived. To-day their thoughts and words make up
very much of the foundations and pillars of the Christian
religion ; they make up the carving and the inscriptions,
the tracery and the colour, the great depths of shadow and
the golden wealth of adornment, spiritual and even material,
in the vast fabric where our souls meet God. They have
done this, Amos and his fellows and peers have done this ;
and they have done it, as who denies, and who would
not expect, by splendid personal qualities. Scholars they
were, in that they were men of hard work at their calling,
their line of investigation, their effort to produce. They
studied not indeed history ; neither did they write of earth
or of mankind. They studied not law ; neither did they
write laws of ethics or the laws of matter. They were not
poets, wrestling with utterance until they could compel it
to imprison the fleeting visions of their souls. They used
indeed something of all these, as masters use all things
for their service ; but their method was another, their aim
was another, and their subject was far, far higher. These
men were souls struggling with souls, laying hold on
very God that they might exhibit Him as motive to move
their hearers, to the end that they might win, might hold
and weld their fellow-countrymen into oneness with their
God. The task of those preachers, who were indeed
prophets, is the very highest task on earth. The forces
among which they operated were the greatest ; those forces
were God and the souls of men. The matter they set forth
in discourse was the greatest ; it was God. But it was not
a philosophy of God, and not the mere physical nature of
God, so to speak it was the heart of God, God s will, God s
very soul that they declared. It is much to study the laws of
CHAP, ii.] THE MAX AMOS. f>3
gravitation, of light, of electricity, of animal evolution, for
these are all God s movements. The laws of those move
ments tell much of what God has done in the past. But
what will God do henceforth ? How can we know that,
how can we handle that ? What is the Will that set in
being all those forces of gravitation and of light ? Who is
it that follows those force -laws as His modes of action ?
And what is He working out ? It is after all a simple
question, and the answer is a simple one to the soul that
willingly follows those laws. Such a soul knows that it is
right to follow them, and in its knowledge and conduct it
has perfect peace. We do not say that such souls have
always had perfect peace, but they have entered into peace.
What is that peace but a state of atonement with the heart
of all things ? We may turn this into another expression.
Such souls believe that the great Cause of all forces will
always do right. They circle about Jesus as their Head and
Lord because He is the Declarer of that faith even in death.
He is thus the centre of the whole family of such believers.
He is by the fact and nature and triumph of His death
the very atonement between them and the cause of death.
By His being such a Person He is the very Revelation or
Word of God : He is the very Fact of God revealed. He
is the essential Son of God, because Sonship and Father
hood alone adequately express the relation of such living
Revelation and such a Revealed One. We say then
that such trustful, dutiful souls gazing ever on this
centre of their life and faith do taste and share the Divine
nature. They know God s heart, and are one with it, and
reveal it.
This brief recital of such great faiths illustrates the
height of the matter which the true preacher or prophet
has to set forth. Amos did not indeed use such language
as we have just used. Our words have, however, sought to
4 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
express the legitimate culmination of the faith of Amos, as
of every man of God.
The unique value of the preacher s task lies thus in the
transcendent theme of his utterances. But it lies also in his
method, for this is a wrestling of one mind with another.
It is no mere description of things which, if a correct
description, is an end in itself ; for the preacher fails if he
has no hearer. It contains descriptions indeed, but these
are so couched that they may catch and hold the ear and
heart even of the listless. It is not mere poetry where the
singer is perfectly satisfied to imprison in measured words
the rapture of his own vision. It contains poetry certainly,
but that must be the song of the wooer that brings equal
rapture to the wooed. It is not philosophic argument,
where mind reasons to satisfy itself; but it contains the
very highest philosophy, tested by the hold the argument
has on the speaker s whole audience. So the prophetic
books of that far-off simple Hebrew folk are profound with
a strangely masterful philosophy that seems written for
eternity. Magnificently beautiful they are with poetry that
has never been surpassed, and still steals in upon the hour
of sorrow or floats through the days of gladness as the very
utterance of the reader s own joy or pain to-day. The
true preacher s song is sung for all ages, and the enduring
quality of that Hebrew literature marks it as true prophecy
and literature of the very highest order. It is of the
finest sort of utterance that the Creator has ordained. Its
method is Divine.
But if subject and method give such value to these utter
ances, so does their aim add a transcendent value. They
speak with men of God, to the end that they may make
men and God one. Such a purpose makes even the narrow
formalist who cherishes it a great man. Misguided as his
means may be, and foolish as may be his fancy as to what
CHAP, ii.] THE MAX AMOS. 55
sort of a being God is, yet lie is a controller of gods and
men. He would bind these together. He struggles to hold
them breast to breast by his own clasping arms. This
struggle is itself a Divine thing ; feeblest men show hereby
their birthright. Men were created to be children of God ;
their nature asserts itself. The Creator surely meant to
satisfy the claim which we find so persistent in us. And
the preacher or prophet is the great assertor of this birth
right, by the high aim of his prophecy. Here he holds
indeed the highest function man ever can hold.
It was a succession of such preachers arising in that
eighth century before Christ in the Hebrew land that
made the age so notable. Another question springs at once.
How did their writings or words win such respect and pre
servation, whilst the prophesyings of earlier prophets were
lost ? Great preachers, such as Elijah, had risen before,
but with all the sharp impression that Elijah made, and
with all the care men took to tell how great his character
was, they did not preserve any book of his utterances.
The question will probably be best answered along with the
corresponding one, Why did the eighth century prophets
arise, and work so greatly ? We turn therefore more
directly to Amos himself, to find in him a clue to his
genesis.
CHAPTER III.
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE AMOS AGE.
I . The meaning of the question.
WHAT was God s process in His bringing to the birth
that age and His inspired prophets therein ? If we can
trace God s processes in inspiration, may we not hope
that by falling ever into line with these we may find His
inspiration coming amongst us now, to kindle and bless our
souls, and to quicken the whole people about us ? Surely
this is the task proper of the student of religion, the theo
logian, to inquire diligently and search what and what
manner of times the Spirit of God in us signifies in His
revelation to us of the salvation and glory that He works to
establish among us. In this quest we are in fellowship with
all the prophets before and since Calvary.
Amos and his successors were then no mere men of an
hour, no flitting dreams, no gourdlike mushroom growth.
Note the evidence in themselves.
2. The faith of Amos in a Damdic age.
Amos s closing words tell of his dearest, highest hope
by striking a rich and old chord, pregnant with the whole
music of centuries past. He sings exultant in hope of
a cleansed, clean land, with no sinners and no sin upon
it ; and he cries " Then the David days shall come again."
What was the meaning of this " David day " faith ? To
56
CHAP. HI.] THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE AMOS AGE. 57
Amos the coming golden age is to be a revival of the
o o o
golden age that had been, for the golden days of the
Hebrew past were the days of David. Perhaps they did
not think that the original, pure, unsullied state of men,
fresh from the hand of the Creator, had existed under
David ; but then, they certainly believed, was the perfect
culmination of all their national life.
3. It is common to the prophets.
Amos is not alone in this faith. All the prophets of
his century declare it with solemn gladness ; and in later
centuries it is the faith and oracle of one great prophet after
another.
Hosea hopes for the union again of Israel and Judah
under one head, when the children of Israel shall seek at
once Jehovah as their God and David as their king.
Isaiah laments the separation of Israel and Judah as
the saddest deed that story ever told ; and his picture of
a coming perfect day is a vision of the time when " the
scion of Jesse shall rule " in " the city where David dwelt."
So we might quote Micah. " From Bethlehem," David s
birthplace, " shall he that is to be ruler of Israel go forth,
whose goings forth have been from of old." Jeremiah a
hundred years later cries, " David shall never want a man
to sit upon the throne of Israel," and he sings a panegyric
on the great hero king. So Ezekiel, and so the oracles
sent to the exiles in Babylon.
4. What this faith meant.
What did this mean in these men s inmost souls ; and
to what does it point in their secret trust toward God ?
Was God s purpose bound up in their minds with mani-
58 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. m.
festations of destiny which had come to them in David ;
and did these men look back to such a manifestation as one
of their dearest spiritual possessions ? In other words, let
us inquire, first, what Divine revelation came in David?
and secondly, what new inspiration came to Amos from that
revelation ? l
Here is the doorway into the very heart of the Hebrews.
This point where we stand is the gate to enter into as we
prepare to preach from the Old Testament. No mere tale
of dates, or of kings, or of ritual, no reading in of modern
ideas, nor reading reality out and away from those people,
is worthy of a preacher. The real study of the Old Tes
tament consists in learning how men then thought of God,
and how by God s providence they moved on to know Him
better; and real preaching on the basis of this will consist
in declaring how the character of God has been revealed in
all, so that men may trust Him.
We ask, then, what Divine revelation came in David ?
What religious feelings, thoughts, deeds centred provi
dentially in David, and especially what current of religious
experience seems connected with him as with a central,
abundant wellspring ?
5. Tlie work of David.
There is no doubt that the possession of Jerusalem by
Hebrews dates from the days and work of David. There
1 A prominent physiologist s recent attempt to trace the " Jahweh " religion
to fancies such as the witch of Endor story pays no regard to the date from
which that story comes to us, and no regard to the much earlier and much
more reliable Amos-phenomena. Ne sutor ultra crcpidam. There is need to
say that students had better not credit a most able physiologist with a
complete equipment and ability on every point outside his department. The
strangest blunders in Chinese philology, in political economy, and in religious
and theological history, may be perpetrated by our most valued, honestly
admired masters of theoretical and practical physiological science.
CHAP, in.] THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE AMOS AGE. 59
was another fact allied to this which gave to Jerusalem
its great worth. That city was the seal and symbol of the
unification of the Hebrew tribes. David first welded the
settled tribes into a kingdom, made them into one ordered
people and one organic working whole. He created the
nation ; and not only so, he spread its rule to distant
borders on north, south, and east. On the west lay the
Mediterranean Sea ; its distant islanders learned to know
him and to serve under him.
His kingdom stretched, it seems, from the isthmus of
Suez up through all Palestine, over all the mountain-land
in the north, away across the desert and the slowly sinking
slopes of the immense Euphrates valley till it stopped at
the bank of the river itself. Alike wide was his rule from
west to east. Here was, in a sense, the first in the great
series of world empires. We hardly count hoary old Egypt
of earliest days, with its primeval thrones, in the world-
monarchy annals, mighty though the Egyptian dynasties
were. We begin usually with Assyria in its later glory.
But David was before later Assyria. David was the first
forerunner of imperial Caesar ; he may almost be called the
first world-monarch of later well-known history. The rough
tradition, that was long the only guide to men curious over
the past, knew with singular correctness that there were
three ruling factors in history, Rome, Greece, Judea. His
torians are now confirming the correctness of this opinion
by showing us that our so-called formal Christian Church
has been, almost until to-day, the Roman empire prolonged,
and that our so-called formal Christian doctrine has been
pre-Christian Aristotle and Plato all too long. And the
prophets doctrine concerning David has had a singular con
trol of the East, and of the West no less. Kenan s pointed
satire, Tcste David cum Sylilla (Hist, of Isr. i. 451), points
to a great fact. We have a great deal to do with the Jews,
GO OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
and light on many a difficulty comes to us as we face the
fact. Thus far we are certain that to the mind of the
prophets the David age of the Hebrews was a time of great
religious revelation. What that revelation was we must
define more exactly.
We have more light to guide us touching David s story,
and the Amos-faith touching him. Our records concerning
his work have been often attributed to contemporaries of
Isaiah and of Jeremiah ; and even these prophets themselves
have been counted authors of much of the four books of
Kings. Some good men have supposed that Samuel must
have written the two books that sometimes bear his name ;
but they will find Samuel s death described when the author
is only beginning the last quarter of the first book of
" Samuel." We may learn something from our early Greek
and Roman and African fellow-Christians, who spoke, we
may say, always of " the first, second, third, and fourth
books of Kings." We may learn also from the Jews them
selves, whose Bible calls Joshua, Judges, ist and 2nd
Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, respectively "the six prior
prophetical books," imputing to them authorship by pro
phets. There were many prophets before Isaiah and Jere
miah ; but it is remarkable that Amos and his contemporaries
were the first who seem to have written down their own
oracles and exhortations. Again, the coincidence of Jere
miah s life with the latest events recorded in Kings makes
it certain that the writer who finished the book lived no
earlier than Jeremiah. Between Amos s day and Jeremiah s,
therefore, we must look for what we may call the first
clearly uttered recognition we possess of the David-reve
lation. In a very deep sense we must count that the
very age of this revelation. We say rightly that the age
when men become conscious of a revelation is the real date
of God s giving that revelation. Doubtless earlier records
CHAP, in.] THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE AMOS AGE. Gl
were used by the writer and collector of the books of
Kings, in the days of Jeremiah, for as soon as events
happen the record of them begins in some way to be
formed, whether it be only in memory or in some written
sort. But in any case the prevailing character of our
records concerning David is due to the times of Jeremiah
and to the generations just preceding him. Later serious
modifications of details might well happen when the Exile
had blurred the past, as we know it did in the mind of
Malachi, who, although a singularly devout soul, was yet
utterly ignorant of the gospel of Isaiah liii. But the
ground-lines of the picture given in those narrative books
of David as world-monarch were evidently drawn by one
who lived between Amos s and Jeremiah s days. This con
clusion will lead us on now to one more important fact con
cerning what God was doing: in those ages.
6. The rise of world-monarchies.
The writers, the quiet thinkers, and all men in those two
hundred years, lived amid providences very terrible to the
smaller peoples of the time.
It was the day of Assyria s march toward world-empire ;
it was the day of terror for every smaller state, and of
subjugation for many; it was the day of Egypt s steady
resistance and rivalry ; it was the day of Assyria s final
crashing overthrow by the hand of her own mother-state,
Babylon, that had been long a vassal or slave of her own
daughter. Those tremendous invasions, enslavings, catas
trophes, thus briefly enumerated, are the chief matter of
discussion in all the prophets from Amos to the Exile ; they
were " the work of God " to every thoughtful Hebrew ; the
meaning of all these things was the very word of God to
them. The Semite or let us be distinct, the Hebrew
02 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
was more sensitive to the transcendent voice of God than
Englishmen are. We are ready to say nature speaks ; they
knew that God speaks.
Now, just in the movements and thoughts in that Amos
age lies one of the quick and clear recognitions of God, or
steadily invading and overwhelming convictions of Him,
which produced the monotheistic faith. We may view it
thus. In a time when each nation cared for itself alone,
each nation claimed absolute possession of all its appurten
ances, even including God. Each learned to think of a
Divine Being exactly fitted to itself, and devoted to itself
" its own Holy One," as the Hebrew would say. They thought
that for many nations there must be many Gods ; and
thus tribalism and extreme nationalism established an actually
polytheistic faith. Parallel, however, to this desolating belief
there was that touching faith, visible in Amos s thinking
as elsewhere, that a god cannot live without a people. The
wars of the peoples were the very wars of their gods, and
the victory of one god over many was the establishment
of a divine over-lordship. Such an establishment had
taken place under the hand of David ; the recognition of
it was the David-revelation. In the prophets souls there
dawned at the very midnight of imperial enslavings the
morning of conviction that there must be one Over-Lord
over all gods and all peoples, because there could be one
nation ruling over all nations. But who should be this
Over-Lord ? The answer of the prophets sprang at once
from their view of the past. There was a day, they cried,
when the Lord of Judah had joined all the Hebrew tribes
that owned Jehovah under His sole rule ; surely that lord
David was the man after Jehovah s own heart. His very
name signified " The uniquely-beloved." But more, far
more. Had not that David made himself lord over
many nations far and near ? As the Assyrians were now
CHAP, in.] THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE AMOS AGE. (53
thinking to do, so had Zion s king surely done long before.
David s throne had swayed many peoples. Therefore,
glorious oracle ! David s God Jehovah was Over-Lord over
all those gods.
7. The name " Jehovah of Hosts."
This faith is matter of history ; this singular conviction
is recorded in the very features of speech due to those
times as well as in the declarations of the prophets. It is
worded in the very language of the people, for it is well
known that the expression " Jehovah of hosts," the Lord of
hosts, Jahweh Sebaoth, -Tl^NT^ HIIT, comes into use in and
just after the David days, and is most remarkably character
istic of the men who had to do with the construction of the
four books of Kings. A few figures will help the judgment.
The expression does not occur in the Pentateuch, Joshua,
or Judges. Amos is the oldest document which has it; he
has it nine times in nine chapters. Hosea uses it once in
fourteen chapters ; but Hosea was probably a north-kingdom
man, one of those least likely to glorify a Judah king.
Micah has it once in seven chapters ; Isaiah fifty-four times
in the thirty-nine chapters, mostly addressed to Hezekiah s
days ; Nahum, circa 630 B.C., once in three chapters ; Zepha-
niah, 630 B.C., twice in three chapters ; Jeremiah, 620-600
B.C., seventy-nine times in fifty-two chapters ; Habakkuk,
610 B.C., once in three chapters; the Isaian oracles for
the Exile, i.e. for 600-540 B.C., six times in twenty-seven
chapters; Ezekiel, never; Haggai, 520 B.C., fourteen times
in two chapters ; Zechariah, fifty-four times in fourteen
chapters, of which five chapters with nine occurrences may
have been pre-Exilic, the rest of date circa 520 B.C. ; Malachi
has it twenty-four times in four chapters. It occurs fourteen
times in the four books of Kings, of probable date 600 B.C. ;
64 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
and three times in Chronicles, of date say 300 B.C. ; and it
stands sixteen times in the Psalms.
In brief, the title is a favourite with the prophets, and
specially with those who speak much of the David days, and
who write the story of them. Those men who arose to
preach amid the convulsions of the first wars for world-
monarchy, and who called their God the Lord of all Hosts,
declared thereby their fundamental faith.
8. The sum of the argument; the nature of the David-
revelation.
The sum of our argument is this. The David-revelation
was, Jehovah is Supreme Lord over all other gods, powers,
and nations. This is what we may call the religious
antecedent of the Amos age, as it is to be gathered from
Amos and contemporary prophets. It is that faith which
we find the prophets derive from the period just preceding
their own day ; and we learn that it is so from consideration
of the words of the prophets themselves. Their favourite
name for their God, " Jehovah of hosts," is their formula for
this faith and doctrine ; and their common hope for the return
of the Davidic golden age tells us how the great faith which
they inherited from the past seemed to them to spring from
David s days and from the experiences that circled round
him. What we know of David we learn partly from the
prophets and partly from narratives collected together under
their influence, and all agree to exalt his singular power in
unifying the divided tribes of his own people, and in extend
ing their sway over others. To David and to his age, there
fore, they looked as the time of Jehovah s manifestation of
His power to overcome all other gods. We call it an
inherited faith, and yet we call it also their own faith. It
sprang in their own souls because of the circumstances in
CHAP, in.] THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE AMOS AGE. G5
which they lived, that is, the clash of strife for world-empire;
but that need drove them to find rest in the meaning of the
long-past David events. The revelation which they saw in
David gave them life for their own times, just as the revela
tion which we see in Jesus gives us life amid the needs of
to-day. The prophets themselves beiug witnesses, we learn
that the David-revelation was " Jehovah is Over-Lord, He is
the Lord of hosts." We must proceed now to discover what
was the next stage of insight into the character of God, the
stage in which they themselves were the direct original
searchers and discoverers. We do not, surely, need to re
assert the fact that, whoever be the learner, the searcher,
the preacher, it is God, the great Giver of their thoughts to
men, who gives the increase, the light, the knowledge.
It is interesting to observe, ere we leave this place, that
perhaps we have lighted upon one important cause of the
commencement of the use of writing by the prophets at this
time. If the preachers were surrounded by danger from
the wars and intrigues for world power, danger of cruelty
from foreign soldiery and from domestic spies, it was very
wise and natural to write the oracles for the most part, and
let them reach their audience silently. This was probably
one cause of the new method ; we shall discover another ere
loner.
CHAPTER IV.
THE AMOS-REVELATION.
I . It comes amid wrestlings (a) thoroughly human ; (b)
in company with God ; (c) wrestling with God ; (d)
wrestling with men; (e) wrestling in argument.
THIS comes amid the wrestlings of his soul. Amos is no
mere vessel to be filled with something poured into him
and through him, nor pen unconscious held by an invisible
writer, nor phonographic mouthpiece uttering another s soul.
He wrestles with men whom he would check and change.
When they oppose objections he stands at times per
plexed for a moment by the difficulty ; but then, gather
ing all the light he possesses on the matter, gathering in
solid strength all the reasoning powers he has for the
question s solution, with a great struggle he throws the hin
drance from before him, and unveils the positive answer that
objector and prophet equally need. This wrestling with
man is on another side of it a wrestling with God. Never
staying to wonder whether God is with him, or has per
chance moved away far from him, he turns to the fountains
opened for him, and follows the methods God has taught him ;
then he utters with childlike faith his sublime valuation of his
conclusions, " Thus hath Jehovah said." This is inspiration
indeed ; this is belief in God. Would that some timid men
to-day could understand how the day of objectors and
objections, the age of opposers and oppositions, is the very
day of living revelation from God. In the perplexities
66
CHAP, iv.] THE AMOS-REVELATION. (J7
come the answers, and in the wrestlings of the reasoning
soul compelled by the very keenness of the opponent
to straightforward integrity of reply, God s own mes
sages come. The Word of God was from the beginning ;
they beheld indeed His glory in Galilee, but He lived and
spoke in the days of Amos also. The Christ is the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Let us watch the soul of
Amos actually at work.
(a) He is so thoroughly human ! The lone mountain
shepherd, he stands on the market-place as if he were on
his own lofty mountain-side pasture. That look of his comes
from acquaintance with every flock, every sheep, every glen
below, every cloudy sign above, and all his wide nature-
home. And he seems conscious too of having a thorough
knowledge of men. He gives his counsel unhesitatingly ;
his opinions on many things he gives you as very gold ; his
healthy self-confidence impresses itself deeply upon you, and
you obey him. He is indeed so thoroughly his own vivid
self, that you feel something of God in him. All he had
and gave he had gained by his own strong personality. He
was a real man, and just therefore he was a man of God.
(5) It is such a man who can speak of God and men as
having companionship. You listen as to the story of a
personal experience as he tells of the " two who must be
agreed if they are to work together." You are ready to
believe it is an experience that both the companions, the
man and God, have enjoyed. But the honest dignity of the
man never lessens but ever exalts the transcendent dignity
of the companion God. So he says of that illustrious Friend,
" It is He who giveth to man his thought." In that
wondrous communion the great Jehovah had doubtless
satisfied some mysterious yearning of His own high soul
which only fellowship with a man could satisfy. But the
man went out from that converse conscious that, for his part,
68 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
lie bad there received all that he possessed. For God had
there "given to the man his thought." Such a man was
Amos.
(c) He wrestled with God. Such a conception is well
known to be a Hebrew one. Amos does not himself say
that he wrestled ; but he tells us of some scenes in his life,
and then we say " he wrestled with God." One part of his
book is less grand than others, because it is more childlike
in style. There in parables he tells of his wrestling, although
there also he suffers a tenderness to appear which elsewhere
he resolutely excludes. The parables in chapter vii. are tales
of his pleading with God to forgive the wrong-doings of
Israel. A plague of grasshoppers was likely to come, and
Amos says he besought God to avert the scourge, and God
heard and did. He wrestled till he prevailed. Again
another scourge this time a fiery destruction was averted :
Amos had rushed in to the rescue, struggling with the
God of fire till he prevailed. A third time he strove, but
this time in vain. The conclusion he reached was, that
God s forgivenesses were a store of good that could be ex
hausted. The whole position is that of a man in intensely
keen action, never allowing for one moment that he knows
all of God s revelations until he has searched, tried, and
exhausted all the alternative possibilities. So came Amos s
revelations to him.
(d) Following those parables in the seventh chapter
comes another tale of struggle. To the outer eye it was
with a man, Amaziah, the chief priest of Bethel ; but it was
a struggle with God. Was not this a priest of the God
of Israel in the Bethel that Abraham loved and Jacob
revered, and where Samuel and Elijah worshipped ? What
outward sign of Divine commission could Amos have that
might set aside this priest s Divine authority ? One can
feel the fear and sharp uncertain pain in the prophet s
CHAP, iv.] THE AMOS-REVELATIOX. (50
heart: one almost hears his silent cry, " My God, hast Thou
not bidden me ? " If any one doubts the utterly human
condition of Amos in that hour, let him read the speedily
following words that call any other soil than Palestine s
" a polluted land." Amos was a Jew indeed, he was very
human in that hour ; he was sure to tremble before such
an opponent as a great priest. But in weakness arose
perfect strength. He dashed aside all official authority
which this great priest had ; he looked into the sanctuary
of his own soul, and there he saw God, heard God, felt
God. Forward then he flew to the charge : " Jehovah
called me, said to me, says to me, Go prophesy. I tell
thee, in His name, thou withstandest Him." It may be
hard for some to-day to see how the apologetics of Amos
sweep away the apologetics of Amaziah. Men still seek
signs. But no signs shall serve them, save such as the
signs of the prophet Amos. It is in living wrestling souls
that God gives His unconquerable inspiration.
(e) Already we have seen in our analysis of the book
that chapter v. verses 1 14, are a picture of a keen struggle
in argument between the brave prophet and the self-
justifying Samaritans. But a keener struggle far records
itself amid all that outer fighting. The prophet turns from
the audience at every question or objection they propose,
and turning to his great Lord, he seems to question Him
and wrestle for the true answer he feels God must give.
Not this chapter alone but the whole book is a constant
controversy. He ranges the whole horizon round to con
demn the surrounding peoples in preliminary argument,
as it were, that he may justly condemn his own people.
He stretches out fearless hands to unveil the bosom secrets
and companionships of God, the Divine loves and purposes ;
the things of high heaven are his arguments, if by any
such means he may convince men. He plunges down to
70 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
Sheol to forge there his last argument for his last terrific
oracle. That place, marked by its very name as the weird
mystery that men for ever peer into and question, is ransacked
by Amos for the sword that shall cut off all sinners from
Israel. Wrestling, restless, the man Amos grasped oracles
from God for men, and men have listened with trembling
ever since. We do not wonder at this ; yet the man s
power is a great wonder.
2. His revelation was breadth and keenness of conscience,
(a) The tribal conscience ; (b) the first writing prophet
is the prophet of conscience; (c) Amos s demand is
righteousness; (d) the wrongs of his time.
What revelation came to Amos in such wrestlings ? Let
us give the answer at once : A wide and keen conscience.
And now trace its genesis.
(a) In early tribal days " every man did what was right
in his own eyes." That well-known simple historical fact
means that men strove to do what was right, but their
horizon was not large. They did not take into consideration
any man who was not of their own family, and who did not
serve their own God. They heard a controlling voice in
the soul demanding righteous conduct, or in simple words
they could not escape the law, "Do right." That was
Divine law to them. But what was right ? This was
defined by the horizon that marked off the interests of their
God ; and so long as He was only a tribal God they were
bound to care for the tribe s interests only. This is a first
fact in the investigation.
But in Amos s day there had come a greater revelation of
their God s power and interests ; He was Over-Lord, Jehovah
of hosts, God of gods. This second historical fact we have
discovered already. And now a third fact is that Amos s
CHAP, iv.] THE AMOS-REVELATION. 71
first and last and constant oracle is a keen demand for
a righteousness broad enough to bless all the peoples that
Jehovah ruled over.
(b) It is remarkable that the first great writing prophet
is essentially a prophet of righteousness. His adoption of
writing may be partly explained by the troubles which the
proud world-empires brought, as we have seen. But still
more certainly was it connected genetically with the widened
faith in God. For when Jehovah rules the nations far and
near then all must hear of Him ; and the man of God sees
that duty is a far more serious matter than before, a matter
to be laid on all men s hearts far and near. Therefore he
writes his vision, and makes it plain on tablets for all to
read near and far, present and future.
(c) This illustrates the essential feature of Amos s oracles.
Their characteristic is demand for larger righteousness ; and
to this task Amos rose through his sense of the overlordship
of Israel s God. To the soul of the man of God, finely hear
ing, devotedly watching the work of his Master, the vision
of the wide sway, the hitherto undreamed of sway of
Jehovah, becomes at once a vision of vastly enlarged duty for
men. "With the new interests spring new cares, with the
new brotherhood come new needs. Those who once were
foreigners have now duties to Jehovah, to each other, to
Israel ; and Israel has new duties to them all. Simul
taneously with multiplied duties comes finer sense of duty.
The mature man has finer conscience than the child, for
moral exercise brings moral skill. No wonder then that
Amos has written his character on Hebrew story as the
stern keen preacher of righteousness. He is by no means
indeed only a moralist, but in comparison with Hosea the
duty of man is to him almost everything, and religion or
the sense of man s need and God s mind almost entirely
wanting.
72 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
(r?) But let us be more exact. What was righteousness
with Amos ? There arise two questions : What sort of evil
deeds were common then ; and how far had Amos risen to
condemnation of them ? We must be careful, for it is
easy to decry moral conditions if they be different from our
own. But taking simply Amos himself as a standard for
judgment of his own times, let us compare him and his
times, and the great difference will move us to say, Here
is noble exaltation over against base degradation ; here
was one singularly alive ethically amid a very want and
death of character ; here amid men and sin was surely a
revelation of good and God. Do the ethics of Amos and
his code of morality approve the claim of his cry, " Thus
saith God" ? What are his ethics? What does he see to
abhor round about him ?
(a) There is much of brutal cruelty. Torture of prisoners
by dragging iron harrows over their bodies is brutal enough,
and Amos knows the practice well. There was also hor
rible torture of women with child by tearing them open,
so adding awful mockery of the function of motherhood to
the fiendish hurt. It is ghastly. And that was the en
vironment of Amos ! Is the individual the product of
society ? Or was there another element in his environment,
unseen but real, purposeful, almighty, creating righteous
ness ?
(/3) There was dishonour of manhood. Slave-trade was
common, and it was greedy and heedless. Perhaps a
tolerable slavery may exist in a patriarchal system of govern
ment, where the home-born slave is always honoured and
cared for as part of the family and as a son or daughter
in a secondary sense. Missionaries tell us we must be
careful not to condemn altogether modern Semite slave-
holding. But Amos thunders against the capturing of
whole villages, and the sparing of no soul among them.
CHAP, iv.] THE AMOS-REVELATIOX. 73
The dealers take and sell all for accursed gain. This class
of investment is customary still in our own traffic and
society; the wonder is that 2500 years ago Amos was far
above such a level. But to his mind there is an added
baseness in the slavery he sees : they steal and sell whole
villages of their own kinsmen. There are indeed such
deeds to-day, and strange it is that to-day social interests
can be sacrificed for selfish gain ; educational interests, ay,
pure religious interests, can be set aside for the sake of
selfish gain. But more strange it is that yonder, two
thousand years ago, many centuries before Christ, in a
society closely like that of our slave-trading African Arabs,
a man rose to denounce this selfish gain. He would not
endure such mean dishonour of the manhood of the enslaved.
(-y) He revolted against dishonour even of the dead.
To rifle graves and burn men s bones, especially a prince s
bones, into lime, was an unmanly deed to his mind, but it
seems to have been common. And Amos condemns espe
cially such treatment of the body of a prince of Moab.
Conscience was larger than once it had been.
(<5) There was still worse dishonour common, he says,
for prisoners lying under indictment or out on bail, but not
yet proved guilty, were robbed of their bail-pledges and of
their means of defence in court-trial. Amos abhorred and
condemned all who sway courts of justice to either side
for partisan advantage. Here was a demand for justice
recognisable surely as, on the one hand, no mere gift
of ghosts, and as, on the other hand, a mark of the
prophet s like-mindedness with God. Unless God Himself
forsakes eternal righteousness, this prophet Amos was a
man of God. Surely the Spirit of God and the spirit in
Amos were one.
(e) The Israelite dishonour of man went further. They
dishonoured themselves by falsehood in commerce, by un-
74 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
true certificates of the value of their yardstick, their pound
weight, and their coin. This was double dishonour.
() But they added one black shade more, Amos thought,
when they polluted the fountains of human birth. Here
fathers, and mothers too, dishonoured their own high pre
rogative when they flung out the life that was to be to
worse than orphanage.
(tj) Just at this point Amos s morals and condemnations
throw a strong light on the religious nature of his country
men. When they give rein to their lusts, says he, they
ease their conscience by regarding their deeds as religious
performances. The cause of such regard is not far to seek,
and it is important. The wine-drinker, thirsting for his
excitement, counts the uncontrollable impulse in his body
as the moving of a god within him ; so likewise thinks
the most lust-swayed debauchee. Evidently all forces that
work uncontrolled by will of men, as lightning or lust, the
fructifying rain or the pestilence, alcohol, reproductive
power in tree and animal, all these the men of those days
counted the work of Elohira. We may say that their
thoughts rose at once from the conception of such powers
around them to the conception of beings unseen but other
wise somewhat like themselves, though stronger, whom they
named " Far-reachers," " Elohim." It is idle to regard all
this as the outcome of watching the bodies of the dead, and
of wonder where the departed souls were wandering. The
notion of God steals over us as we feel all the influences of
the home whence we go forth into the world ; it is voiced by
the busy whisperings of life around us to the eager listening of
life within. God is manifest to us first in birth rather than
in the looming shadow of the bourne to which we go, and
whence no traveller returns to be a familiar guiding friend.
Even the vicious excuse for vice in Amos s day shows that.
We see plainly that Amos shares the fancy that there
CHAP, iv.] THE AMOS-REVELATIOX. 75
are other deities besides Jehovah, some of whom receive and
relish the honours from the drinker and the lustful. Only
he insists that honour done to those deities is dishonour
done to Jehovah. When a father and his son go both to
one poor girl to please themselves, to her ruin and their off
spring s and their own, then they may be giving pleasure to
the god called " Male-master," " Baal," but they also put to
shame Jehovah s devotion to themselves and to their nation.
He is their national God, pledged to care altogether for
them; He is their" Qadhosh," their " Holy, Devoted One; "
therefore deeds that mean any respect for the Baal, or any
pleasure in him, profane Jehovah s devotion, His character,
and His name. Thus the Jehovah religion condemned lust,
drunkenness, and superstition. Here are valuable facts in
the history of this religion.
(6) As we naturally expect, all these moral characteristics
already seen in Amos are accompanied by qualities of still
higher and deeper sort. There glistens in every look he
gives a kindly remembrance of the suffering poor, there
mantles on his cheek at every word a reverence for the
pure, there glows at his highest climax such a longing for
the simple ideal good, that we may fairly say Amos preached
afar yonder in Samaria the Christ that was to come in
Galilee. And it was no orphaned or helpless hope for an
ideal good that Amos preached, but this Tekoan of 800
years before our Lord was perfectly convinced of the high
dignity of personal communion with God, of its reality in
himself, and of its possibility for all. That high privilege
was to him, and was to bo to all, the most momentous
ground, spring, and cause of all highest morality. Such
was Amos, a contrast to the society about him, an oracle of
the God within him. He was emphatically the prophet
of righteousness. He was the revealer of the God of
righteousness.
TO OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
3. His conception of man.
Who were to be influenced by this Amos-revelation ?
What did he himself think of them? Or, in other form,
let us ask what the soul of man seemed to him to be ?
The answer will tell us perhaps less about the actual hearers
than about the preacher s power of understanding them.
This will be itself a picture of the mind of the times,
inasmuch as it will tell us how far the more thoughtful men
of the times understood the soul s nature. Amos s psychology
will certainly give us insight into the contemporary Hebrew
mind ; and this is essential to a grasp of the Hebrew
religion of that day. His psychology will tell us more ;
it will reveal to us the providential method by which it
pleased God to reveal Himself then. We are coming thus
to the inner centre of religion in that age, and to the
vision of the supernatural moving of God there.
To be perfectly plain from the outset, let us say that
here Amos s mind is the white-hot crucible of the analyst,
and all his thoughts of the nature of the soul are in the
intense flux of readjustment, and of change to a far grander,
finer form. For
(a) The common faith of the time, which Amos shares
when not driven fro?n it by reflection, is that Jehovah has
to do with the Israelite people as a whole only He does
not speak to individuals. " Oh, children of Israel, the
whole family which I have brought up out of Egypt. You
only have I chosen out of the nations ! therefore I will
punish you for all your iniquities." " The virgin of Israel
is fallen . . ." " Thus saith Jehovah unto the house of
Israel, Seek ye Me, and ye shall live." " Lordly Jehovah,
cease, forgive, I beseech Thee. By whom shall Jacob arise,
for he is small ? " " Behold the eyes of the Lordly Jehovah
are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off
CHAP, iv.] THE AMOS-REVELATION. 77
the face of the earth." This Israel, whom Amos exhorts,
is a state, an organised unit ; and we may add that it is
materially endowed, and continues in life by continuing in
enjoyment of cities, fields, corn, and wine, and cattle.
(6) But the soul of the prophet is not at rest in this
theory. The nation remains Jehovah s, and he himself is
Jehovah s ; but there are foul and manifold sins done in the
nation, against which at least his soul revolts, and other
souls like his revolt as well. He prays, and knows he is
heard. He knows he is himself a servant and friend of
God. There are other prudent souls also who condemn
and have no part in the evil deeds. They do not shout in
the revelry, they sit silent for shame in the courts of justice.
They abjure by that silence the shameful excesses about
them and the shameful decisions of the magistrates. Their
silence is prudent perhaps ; but it is compulsory also, for
they are forbidden at their peril to speak. The evil-doing
men in. authority know them very well, and regard them
as separate from other men. And Amos too is learning
that these are not like the mass of Israel. They are fit
companions for Jehovah. It is dawning on him that not
all Israel is Jehovah s people. In the paragraph (chap, iii.)
where he argues that only those who are agreed with
Jehovah can walk with Him, there specially does he speak
of Jehovah s servants and confidants as a limited number,
and not all Israel. He is leaving one faith and advancing
to another.
(o) Now rises the question, "What is this difference
between the two classes that is becoming clear to Amos,
and already characterises his exhortations ?
The class which he condemns is large and important, in
cluding sons and fathers, merchants and magistrates, para
mour women and men of the highest rank, artists, rulers, a
priest of highest position. These are the sinners in Israel
78 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
who say, " The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us."
But such were present quite as much in the elder days
when the whole people was counted the true Israel : the
title, " People of Jehovah," was previously applied to all
Israel, including just such men of evil sorts. It was not
the case that some had begun to do wrong where none had
clone wrong before. Doing wrong was not a new feature
that had been added to Israelite nature. What was new ?
It was not some fact in Israelite character that was new it
was only Amos s knowledge of a fact.
(d) Amos had become aware that true Israelite character
needed one feature more than had been demanded before.
So he moved toward clearer understanding of the individual
value of men. How remarkable that it was an advance in
the moral estimate of men which led towards truer estimate
of human personality. Amos doubtless did not reflect on
this psychological fact in himself, but its appearance in a
practical earnest life is of highest importance. This fact
in the story of men confirms the reasoning of keen philo
sophers, who tell us that such ought reasonably to be the
case. The starting-point of all true philosophy is ethical
and practical.
(e) The true Israelites, according to Amos s new idea, are
those who do good. Does then the difference between these
true men and the false depend on some radical difference of
nature ; or can a false man become a good man ? And
how ? Amos s only answer is " Seek good." " If they will
seek good, they shall live ; for then Jehovah the life-giver
will be with them." The sinful men can do good, thinks
Amos. At an earlier point he had said that evil cannot be
in the land unless Jehovah hath done it ; and again he had
said that it is Jehovah who gives to man his thought. To
Hebrews of a few generations later the apparent conflict of
this Divine control with the command " Seek good," caused
CHAP, iv.] THE AMOS-REVELATION. 79
difficulty. We understand the mysterious conflict of the
great facts, but Amos had not reflected so far on the per
sistence of character. To him the act of conversion was
therefore as yet a light matter. It was to his mind entirely
in the individual s hand and power to change himself from
badness to goodness. This was the natural outcome of the
hitherto universal faith that Jehovah had chosen the whole
nation ; for that choice implied that all Israel was naturally
quite likely to do good, or, in other words, it implied that
there was certainly no inherent evil nature in Israel, nothing
there essentially obnoxious to Jehovah. Very certainly no
one had ever hitherto raised the question of the essential
personal character of a man, good or bad. But it is a part of
the Amos-revelation that in God s Providence the prophet
comes close up to the question, and leaves the world hence
forth the richer by this glimmering dawn of a sense of the
importance of personal character.
(/) If Amos is corning but slowly to the grasp of this one
particular feature of character, he is nevertheless coming
to it from various sides. When he utters his most awful
oracle, the climax of all, crying, " All the sinners of my
people shall be cut off," we start back in horror at first.
Then feeling about for some ground for such a dreadful
sentence, we are compelled to think it must have been
because the prophet identified thoroughly a wrong with its
wrongdoer. He seems to have believed that the cleansin^
O D
God must cleanse away all sinners if He would cleanse
away all sin. A happy day is to come, he believes, when
all will be righteous, and the Davidic days, the golden,
perfect days, shall have come back again ; but to this end
all that is bad must be cleansed away. Therefore all sin
and all sinners must be destroyed. So we discover again
from this side that he is learning the inherent nature of
evil character. He is not learning it scholastically, but
80 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
practically ; the form which the faith takes with him is
that inherent sinful character begins with the act of sin,
while he does not know any inherent sinful character
preceding the actual sin. Here we feel at once that he is
drawing near to eternal truths ; therefore when he says of
this dread oracle, " Thus saith Jehovah," we answer, " This
is the finger of God," and bowing reverently, we kiss the
page.
Instinctively we look now for some dawn of faith con
cerning atonement. Amid such revelation of judgment we
wonder whether there was mercy. And the instinct is
correct. For here in fact begins the story of grace. But
before we look on that another line of reflection holds us
for a moment.
(y) Amos identifies the sinner with his sin ; he does not
rise to identify the good man with absolute good. This
would have been Christianity. When in that wonderful
and profoundly valuable fifth chapter we see him driven
back in his argument that only the seekers of God shall
live, and the answers of his audience or of his own tra
ditional faith, " God is in Israel," " God is in our sanc
tuaries," only call forth his loud and louder, No ! No ! ; then
at last he declares his ultimate oracle and faith, " Seek
good, and so Jehovah shall be with you, as ye say." But
the troubled hearer could at once cry "And where shall
good be found ? l Now undoubtedly Amos was with God,
and God was with him, according to his own firm convic
tion. If he had bidden the seekers after God to come to
himself, to the man of God, they would have found God.
They would have found good ; they would have found the
fountain whence flowed his great demand for righteousness.
1 This is the soul s constant cry through the ages : " Who will show us any
good ? " " What good thing shall I do ? " " What must I do to be saved ? "
Monasticism, " Imitation of Christ," "Rules of Faith," are all illustrations of
the same cry.
CHAP, iv.] THE AMOS-REVELATION. 81
But Amos had not risen to that height that great revela-
was not yet come. The need for it was to compel men yet
for many a day to " look -forward for Another." In other,
greater words, the inspiration of God made Anios s com
mands and his awakening influence an insufficient gospel
and an utterance of need of One who should say, " Come
unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest."
4. Amoss view of the ways of revelation.
Here arises the question, What were then understood by
Amos as the ways in which God manifested Himself to
men ? "With this question we begin the study of the pro
phetic faiths in atonement. There are at least three sorts
of answers ; and in all of them is again evident that flux of
thought, that process of the soul s alchemy, that advance
from one way of thinking to another, which singularly and
most truly marks men who are in close fellowship with
God.
(a) First then, to Amos the very soil of Palestine had a
certain contact with Jehovah, and to walk upon it was to
be with Him. On the other hand, all lands outside lacked
this blessed presence and were polluted. To dwell in
them was sorrow, to die and to be buried in them was
to be accursed.
There is one passage indeed, although there is only the
one, which calls one spot in the sacred land peculiarly
sacred. " Jehovah roars from Zion, it is from Jerusalem
that he utters His voice." And yet there is no denial by
any writer of any land or time stronger than Amos s denial
of the doctrine that Jehovah is to be found in sanctuaries.
Quite true it is that that grand outburst of denial is in
the first place a denial that to seek Bethel or Beersheba or
F
82 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
Gilgal is to seek Jehovah. No doubt the local prejudice of
Amos and his tribal love for Judah helped him in this con
demnation of the Israelite Bethel, the venerable house of
God where patriarchs saw their promise-speaking Saviour.
But it is doubtful whether there was any tribal prejudice in
Judah against Beersheba, that sanctuary in the far south,
more venerable still than Bethel, or against the Gilgal, some
one of the many Gilgals, i.e., rolled-up stoneheap altars,
probably that one which a Samuel s prophesying and judg
ing and priestly offices had made dear. Possibly it was
prudence that forbade his mention in Samaria of Zion,
the capital of Judah, and the very youngest among all
the sanctuaries, although it was already a few centuries
old.
But Amos leaves us in no donbt ; he goes right forward,
and rises far above faiths or fears concerning all or any
material sanctuaries. He cries, " Jehovah is where good is ;
He is not where good is not : seek good, and then Jehovah
shall be with you truly, as ye now falsely think He is."
Unquestionably Amos rose here to a new and higher con
ception than he had held just before, moved perhaps into an
atmosphere too rare for him long to breathe. But he rose ;
and in that marvellous soaring we recognise God s in
spiration. Revelation consists in to borrow words from
Amos God s giving to man his thoughts. The gift may
be, in the highest instance, an eternal, absolute truth, like
Amos s grasp of the fact of God s abode with good ; or it
may be only a deeper vision of relations, deeper than men
have ever had before, to be left behind again by the soul
that searches still deeper and beholds more of the ways of
God. We learn then that our prophet found manifestations
of God in material things, places, soil, but that he was also
moving forward far beyond that stage to one more profound
and spiritual.
CHAP, iv.] THE AMOS-REVELATION. 83
(b) Secondly, Amos does not think of any manifestation
of God to the wrongdoer as a personal regenerating Saviour.
The oracle is simply, " Do right, and you shall live ; seek
good, and you shall find Jehovah, the Life-Causer ; but
whosoever does wrong shall be cut off ; all the sinners of
my people shall die." It has not dawned on Amos that
God seeks out the individual wrongdoer to woo him and to
regenerate him. And no wonder, for the whole circle of his
religious interests moved round the tribal body as the unit
and centre. We find then that if the idea of forgiveness
was coming in, it was not to be at first a reconciliation for
the individual. We shall discover as we watch thinker after
thinker that a reaction awoke against Amos s awful oracle
of death, but it awoke first as a hope for restoration of the
whole people, then of a class among that people, then for
individuals, and finally for other nations. This absence of
thought for the individual helps us to understand what Amos
does say of forgiveness. For he does mention it ; he pleads,
" Lord, forgive Jacob ; " but it is Jacob the nation, and the
land, and the harvest that are in danger of devastation. He
is not pleading for personal forgiveness, and yet this very
mention of forgiveness illustrates again the struggle in
which we have seen the prophet s soul constantly wrestling.
" More light, more life," is his cry, and his need ; and herein
is his intensely real prophecy of an atoning Saviour to
come.
(c) But there is a finer feature than all these in his con
ception of God s revelation of Himself to men, and it is one
which shows most strikingly that constant self-contradiction,
that very living flux and upward advance in his conceptions.
He has the firmest faith that Jehovah has spoken to him
self, and commissioned him to speak. Here is his precious
central spring of estimation of himself. The nation may
be the chief or the only being that he thinks to move by
84 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY". [CHAP. iv.
his speech ; individuals in general may be nothing, but
there is one individual of value great enough to enjoy the
fellowship of Jehovah. Indeed, he knows well a whole
class of men who have made like claim to be direct
messengers from God ; prophets some of them are, with a
message in speech, ascetic Xazarites others are, with a
message in symbol. And he has defended these against
sacrilegious scoffers. He counts them in some sense a gift
of God, a link of relation to Him. That is one side of his
changing thought, but there is also the other very different
side. These men are a class privileged by birth or by some
formal initiation to receive and give messages for God. But
his faith in his own possession of a message lacks all those
external marks, and rests wholly on conviction that he has
talked with Jehovah, and that a certain still small voice
within him is God s own voice telling him to prophesy to
this people all that he feels he ought to say.
And Amos was standing here on an ultimate fact. We
have never since got beyond personal consciousness of
an unflinching categorical imperative, shall we say ? or,
more simply, an unavoidable controlling voice ; that is, God
speaking to us in the facts of ourselves and around our
selves. We never shall get beyond this. To say so is a
truism, for to get beyond it would be to get beyond our
selves and to cease to be.
But Amos did not see that every other soul must have
some such intense personal value, just as he had himself.
Here the full light was still beyond his horizon. There
was, however, a faint promise of it in the fine faith he had
in his own personal inspiration and power to arouse men to
seek more knowledge of their own value. This was after
all an unfailing prediction of some Greater Soul to come
who would proclaim, " What shall it profit any man if he
gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? "
CHAP, iv.] THE AMOS-REVELATION. 85
5. His view of the nature of God.
Xow let us gather together in conclusion the features of
God which we see in Amos.
(a) The fundamental idea of God in this prophet s mind
is a thought of an unseen Lord or Authority, and Friend or
Helper, peculiar to this nation or this body of small related
tribes. Amos does not come to his conception of Jehovah
by arguing from a primary conception of an absolute, single,
Divine Being to the idea of God revealing Himself in
the Jehovah character. The language of the prophet
indicates the opposite process. Constantly he speaks of
" Jehovah " ( n .V^_) as a Being before whom his soul bows
with reverence as the inevitable Lord. Occasionally he adds
the adjectival word D^- K, Gods, and says " Jahweh Elohim,"
or Jehovah Elohim, i.e., Jehovah of the gods. Divine Jehovah,
Jehovah belonging to the " far-reaching ones."
This and the Christian mode of conceiving God in Christ
mutually illustrate each other. We find in our Lord Christ
Jesus our all, our ideal, our conviction of sin, our forgive
ness, the mighty Power that regenerates us in one word,
our atonement. We cry, " Thou, Jesus, art our Lord and
our God ; " and we build our conception of God from our
picture of Jesus. So with Amos : Jehovah, the personal
Lord and Friend, whom he felt he knew by the story of the
past providences, theophanies, revelations, was all in all to
him. From this he was beginning to rise to an absolute
conception of the Divine Being.
(6) Even more naturally still does Amos think of the
nature of his God as like his own human nature. Jehovah
loves companionship, talks of His plans with His servants
among mankind, chooses a particular people as a family for
whom He will be Patron. 1
1 Theologians have sometimes considered this way of conceiving God as a
sort of foreshadowing of the Christ idea. The mode of thought is rather an
86 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
(c) Perfectly natural therefore do we find the modes in
which Amos and the men about him expect intercourse
with God and seek it. They make feasts in His honour, in
which they expect Him to take pleasure ; and as odours
rich and fragrant rise from meats and wines with gratifica
tion to the guests, so they think Jehovah will breathe the
smell of the feast with favour.
They look to a class of habitually eager speakers as the
natural message-bearers that Jehovah will choose, and look
on ascetic men as symbols of due devotion to Him. They
count the spots of earth where theophauies have been of
old as most likely to be still the favoured resting-places of
their God on earth.
But Amos feels rising within him a strange scepticism
about it all ; and probably he only speaks out the fears of a
large number. Their God surely cannot, does not mingle
in all the assemblies of these sanctuaries, for has not His
character come to seem too pure for that ?
(d) The widened thoughts of Jehovah s control over lands
and men has brought with it far deeper sense of His
righteousness. Cruelties and impurities they once thought
He overlooked are known now to be abhorred by Him.
They are in awful contrast with Jehovah s purpose and
character. He will not abide in the abodes of wrong ; He
will be found only where good is sought.
(e) The good He loves is indeed very specially ^ten, " that
which is pleasant," viz., what is needful for physical life;
but it includes certainly also due regard and respect for
rank and for sex. It rises higher ; it includes respect for
Jehovah s preachers, whether members of a traditional class
illustration of the constant, instinctive, true mode of conceiving the Deity.
The Christian mode is thus the central declaration of the eternal truth for
life, and the normal method for thought. A brief expression of it is, God
reveals Himself in man, or man s highest conceptions come through a Son
of man.
CHAP, iv.] THE AMOS-REVELATION. 87
or whether single specially sent men. These are all valu
able and precious to Jehovah. But his own character is the
most precious thing of all ; offences against other precious
things are bad especially because they dishonour his name
that is, His character.
(/) Finally, Jehovah has purposes all in perfect keeping
with His pure character. He means to purify the earth on
a great day to come which is already commonly expected
with a well-known designation, " The day of Jehovah."
Perhaps we may suppose that even Amos used this phrase,
as Jeremiah does 150 years later, with the meaning "The
day of Him who is called He establisheth," that is, The
day of fulfilment of expectations and ideals, the day of
reward and retribution. If so, then we have thus early the
germ of our later conception of the Day of Judgment. In
any case the title given to the day implies that it was a
day when Jehovah should have all things exactly in agree
ment with His own mind. Then Jehovah would cleanse
away all evildoers. Sheol should not conceal them from
Him, but should help His judgment. A biting serpent too
should be His avenging instrument. Then should the old
golden age of David come again, when life, earth, men,
and manners should all be good. Such was the nature
of the God Jehovah, whom Amos knew and proclaimed
as the highest religious conception of the Hebrews of
his time in the beginning of the eighth century before
our era.
6. The, problems he left unsolved.
Amos left problems unsolved : he started the thoughts of
men along lines of new questioning. It may seem strange
to say this of a book and a man apparently so little known;
but in the study of some who followed him, and chiefly in
68 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
Isaiah, we shall learn something of the direct influence
that he exerted. Meanwhile, in preparation for study of
Hosea, Isaiah, and others, let us mark what difficulties
Amos perhaps unconsciously set up and certainly be
queathed. Let us here observe that the comparatively
lengthy treatment of Amos has not been a discussion of
him alone, but a recording of the highest position reached
by the whole complex of Hebrew religion in Amos s time.
Without such full record his followers could not be fairly
estimated ; but upon the basis now laid down we may build
with much briefer handling of each individual stone in the
building. What problems then did Amos leave for his
successors, or incite them to raise ?
(a) Assuredly chiefly this, What is good ? We have seen
him driven ever further in his argument until he falls back
on his final gospel, " If ye would find God and live, seek
good, for there is His abode." But only the more intensely
starts afresh the cry, " What then is good ? Where shall we
find that ? " Here is the main line along which prophets
after Amos for ages to come must search into the deep
things of God.
(&) The awful oracle, " All who sin shall die," was sure
to work a recoil. A tender heart could not feel the dreadful
sentence without terror for those it loved and a yearning
for some door of hope. Could God do nothing to convert
the wayward sinner into a seeker after good ? This reaction
we shall find rising at once.
(c) But can even the righteous live under the severity of
Amos s oracle concerning sanctuaries ? Must the souls of
men have no help from sight and touch ? Is Jehovah a
God who conceals Himself altogether, save from the purely
spiritual ? And are men already able to pursue Him along
such unseen paths ? Are all able, or are even few ? Nay,
shall ever any souls on earth be satisfied without seeing
CHAP, iv.] THE AMOS-REVELATION. 89
Him so as they have seen Him in the sanctuary ? Here
again reaction was speedily to set in.
(d) And Amos has unsettled the unconscious sleep of
individual life. No longer can the organised nation, or
its representative leaders, be the only responsible actors.
Dimly for many a day, and yet surely shall men wonder
and reach out from the infancy towards the full conscious
strength of personal religion, for the dawn is near. The
question must be asked and pondered by all men hence
forward, Who are the righteous ? What is my sin ?
(e) Amos s expectation for the future holds a doubt locked
within its very self. Why had the golden age passed away ?
Could the evils that had hurried it away be ever overcome
to let it return again ? Whether men asked these questions
consciously or not, their equivalents must have stirred in
their breasts. And certainly Amos s prediction ensured an
ever more eager scanning of the signs of the times, to dis
cover whether at length the promised glad day should break.
Delay, disappointment now could only make peoples and
prophets ask with more longing and with a scrutiny more
unwilling to go unsatisfied, " Why does Jehovah delay His
coming ? "
Such then are the first writing Hebrew prophet and his
book. Short though the book be, it is richly fruitful to
the student; and when we begin in earnest to read its
records, profound reverence for the man fills the soul.
The oracles written 2000, nearly 3000 years ago, will
minister life perhaps more richly still than ever they have
done before.
PART II.
THE RELIGION OF HOSEA.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL CHARACTER OF HIS BOOK ; ITS
CONNECTING THREADS.
I. Chronology,
THE chronology of Hebrew affairs from 900 to 700 B.C. has
been ably discussed by Professor W. Robertson Smith in
his "Prophets of Israel," pp. 145, &c. Sufficient be it
here to urge the student to learn from so admirable a
master. We have simply to accept and work upon the
results furnished by Professor Smith which immediately
affect our own problem and investigation of the steady
progress of revelation of God to men, and the insight of
men of God into His character.
It seems then most probable still, as it has generally
seemed to Old Testament readers, that the work of Hosea
was begun in Israel, the northern kingdom, some short time
after Amos of Judah had visited Samaria and begun his
mission there. Professor Smith has shown that the earlier
known events of the eighth century have been usually as
signed to dates that are probably too early by ten or even
twenty years. In the books of Kings two different sets
of dates are given for these events, doubtless due to the rise
90
CHAP. I.] GENERAL CHARACTER OF HOSEA S BOOK. 91
of the records in the two different kingdoms. But working
from the date of a total eclipse across Western Asia in
763 B.C. (see Geo. Smith, Ep. Can., p. 200) and the date
of the fall of Samaria, which is concurrently fixed by all
records, Hebrew and Assyrian, as falling in or very near
720 B.C., we are led to shorten the duration of most of the
activities, national, royal, prophetic, and otherwise in the
century so far as they precede the fall of Samaria. The
relative order remains largely the same.
Hosea s oracles are occupied with the affairs of the state,
the king and his court, far more than were the words of
Amos. He was evidently a man of high station, and he
lived in Israel, the northern kingdom. The state was in
much trouble in his time. The background looming through
his utterances corresponds well with that story of revolu
tions which we read in the books of Kings concerning the
successors of Jeroboam II. of Israel, the contemporaries of
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. It
is enough to call attention to these external features, as we
now turn to the religious features exhibited in the book of
Hosea.
2 . The perplexities of the look, in text, &c.
The book of Hosea is quite simple at the beginning, but
soon leads us into a very labyrinth of perplexities.
(a) It begins quite systematically, and so it continues
through chapters i. to iii. So far there is regular order and
sequence of paragraphs, and clear sequence of thinking and
argument. Likewise is there at the close a beautifully-
ordered section that speaks of the unseen expected future.
At various points in the rest of the book we find short pas
sages with very orderly, decisive treatment of the matters in
hand at the moment.
(b) With such exceptions, chapters iv. ff. seem to be a
92 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
collection of material for a book rather than a book itself.
The materials are evidently such oracles of intense moment
as had been noted down at the times of utterance, no
doubt fully suited to their special occasions, but then put
together somewhat like an incompletely kept diary. If
Hosea had succeeded in arranging them according to some
central principle in his own mind, they might then have
given us better light on his own grasp of that principle, yet
they might have been even less indicative of the progress
of his mind in searching into the things of God. As they
o o /
stand, however, it is difficult to trace any long-continued
thread in them, and to this difficulty is added that of a
very awkward text. This last peculiarity is connected
doubtless with the position of the book in the MS. from
which all our copies are taken, as Professor de Lagarde has
shown in his treatise on Proverbs. The book stood first no
doubt in a roll or volume containing the shorter prophetical
books, and therefore suffered damage from finger-marks and
rubbing in general, like the first few pages of any book,
especially if it be unbound, or if it be in the form of a
scroll. But the details of these things are matters for the
careful textual interpreter, whose results we have here to
receive and use for our own historical purpose.
It is sufficient for us here to sketch the book s general
features, and then to give an analysis, which shall show the
presence of these features and shall also furnish the basis
for further work.
3. The unchaste society.
Prominent everywhere amongst these features is Hosea s
acquaintance with unchaste society on every side of him
and all through the times. Lust and licentiousness are
almost the commonest matters of si<rht and remark. There
CHAP. L] GENERAL CHARACTER OF HOSEA S BOOK. 93
is either a common belief, or a common tendency to believe,
that some deity, perhaps deities, Ba-alim (DvJD), master-
gods, are moving this passion, and that these deities are to
be honoured, worshipped, and secured as friends by unchaste
indulgence.
Hosea knows intimately the feelings of an outraged
husband. He lives among men who would readily outrage
his own wife, and he knows women who would readily for
sake a husband like himself. The whole society in which
he lives is honeycombed by such disregard toward vital
obligations. But at the same time these obligations are
held very sacred by some ; they are obligations of religious
import and sacredness to himself and to such as he. This
kind of unfaithfulness was so common that then the preacher
and others could speak of it constantly as we cannot speak
of it now. This makes our comprehension of the times very
difficult; it lessens our knowledge of the religions of the
age. For we are apt to suppose Hosea much like ourselves,
and to conclude when he speaks often of whoredom that he
means idolatry under a strong figure of speech. But figures
of speech must have some source in reality. We cannot use
to-day these figures as he did ; society may be as bad indeed,
but it is not so openly. Hosea may be at times using these
awful imageries as figures ; but the more awful realities
were common about him. The open condition of society
was unspeakably revolting.
4. His general idea of Jehovah and Israel.
Hosea s series of utterances concerning Jehovah s character
are even more intensely full of import than those of Amos.
The new prophet searches deeper than the old. Observe
the details a moment.
() Hosea has the same unhesitating Semitic faith that
94 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
his God causes all things. The creation of men, the work
ing of events, the establishment and destruction of states,
are all Jehovah s deeds. The people s path is ordered of
Jehovah, and He commands the prophet s steps as they
enter into bitterest shame and pain.
(&) The national relationship of Jehovah is of vital
moment to Hosea. Israel has always been the very
chosen one of Jehovah ; and the relation of spouse, not
that of a mere friend, but spouse of a man s own bosom,
pictures best what the prophet loves to think of the re
lationship. He gives this as Jehovah s own thought of
that relation. There is a further and even finer touch in
the portrayal. To many Easterns husbandhood was only
masterhood, little more than the relationship of a male
animal to his female mates. Many amongst the Hebrews,
like many round about them, thought chiefly of fruitful
seasons and a good harvest and plenty of food, when they
prayed to their gods for favour. The chief task of heaven
and God was, in their mind, to fertilise the earth and the
herd, and also the race. The gods were the great Baalim
(D s py2) 5 masterly generating animals ; and Israel, says Hosea,
had too often counted Jehovah as her Baal, her husband
indeed, but husband in that sense, unsatisfying to the
deeper soul. " But ye shall no more call me Baali," my
master, says he, " but Ishi," my husband, my man, my all
that woman soul knows in the great love of a man soul.
Here is one of the delicately fine features of Hosea. He is
truly human. In Amos we saw the fierce boldness of the
mountain shepherd bursting through vain forms until we
thought he would touch the inmost centres of philosophic
truth, but as we gazed on there never came the calm full-
orbed harmony of soul. In Hosea, on the other hand, there
is a higher estimate of every human possession and joy, and
instinctively we feel he is a greater man. In his generous
CHAP, i.] GENERAL CHARACTER OF HOSEA S BOOK. 95
and loving estimate of all that is about him, whether of
nature or custom, he belongs so thoroughly to his time that
we count him a genuine man and therefore a real brother
for us all. He who thus truly knows all that is in man is
the true seer and revealer of God s mind-.
(c) Much more than Amos does Hosea speak of all non-
Hebrew lands as unclean. Words of dislike, contempt,
disgust for Assyria and Egypt are constantly on his lips.
And with his love for argument, which we shall presently
find to be quite remarkable, he reasons that in Assyrian or
in Egyptian slavery all wine and flesh and bread of solemn
gatherings shall be as food of mourners and polluted, because
it cannot come into the house of Jehovah. Certainly he
seems thus at first to be on a lower level than Amos ; but
this is only seeming, for from his far greater consistency
with his position and with his time there comes to us a
sense of natural harmony in the whole character of Hosea,
finer than finest art, due perhaps to more care, due cer
tainly to higher nature and ability than Amos possessed.
(d) The faith in the David age as the golden age of the
past, and as the picture of the happy days to come is even
more clearly proclaimed by this prophet than by the last.
And while this is at first thought startling in a man of the
northern kingdom, yet we recall the story that David him
self, while he lived and reigned, held the thorough devotion
of all the tribes, and it was from his sons after him that the
annoyed ten tribes revolted. All claimed David as their
great past king, although not all claimed Eehoboam. And
here again it is natural to find Hosea speaking out a
national faith with much more of the national enthu
siasm than Amos felt. Hosea was a greater man, and this
is manifest in his more accurate utterance of the national
mind.
(e) The faith in Jehovah s overlordship over all gods
96 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. I.
and all peoples seems to be less asserted by Hosea than we
saw it in Amos, but it is more thoroughly implied. The
golden day is coming again certainly, although Egypt and
Assyria are meanwhile to prey on Israel as Jehovah s
scourges. The two great oppressor nations are far oftener
named and far more terribly described, but only the more
surely is their final utter confusion foretold. Israel shall
laugh at last at Asshur, who shall not save, for Jehovah is
Lord of all hosts, and His words alone rule all the world.
Faith that Jehovah is God over all gods has become the
current faith amonir the Hebrews,
5 . Sis political knowledge,.
Hosea knows more clearly than Amos the actual political
movements round the horizon of Israel, and far beyond it.
(a) From Amos we heard only generally that trouble
murmured round the sky, and danger was looming on the
far horizon. Amos s knowledge of the political powers
that might soon bring death and decimation on Samaria
was only vague, or it was largely concealed. But Hosea
knows, and he speaks very fully. He has probably inti
mate acquaintance with the discussions of the court, and
with the dangers well known there threatened by potentates
eager for world-empire. Hosea gives us, we may say, the
first contemporary record by a statesman of the movements
of the great world monarchies. Since the history of these
makes up the bulk of the world s most striking history,
Hosea s book is an important document.
(&) He pictures Assyria and Egypt very clearly, and he
draws his picture with no timid hand. The native religious
faith, indeed, of the prophet prevents that, and makes him
write, as we have seen, with abhorrence and contempt for
the very soil of those far lands, as lands not precious to
CHAP, i.] GENERAL CHARACTER OF HOSEA S BOOK. 07
Jehovah, not blessed by His presence and temple. More
over, he knows and describes again and again a glorious
deliverance in the past from Egypt, that is now once more
threatening harm. Amos showed us, but far more does
Hosea, that in those days, from Soo B.C. onward, a story of
deliverance from Egypt was well known.
The question whether our book of the Exodus was in
circulation at the time is evidently another question entirely,
and one to be examined elsewhere. What Hosea shows us
is, that the story and glory of the Exodus were too great to
be absent from the people s thoughts when they sang with
one another by their firesides and in their field labour, when
the fathers told the children, and the preachers preached
to men what work Jehovah had done in the times of old.
They heard with their ears, their fathers told them ; they
believed Jehovah had brought their people out of Egypt,
and they trusted and feared not for their own day. It
is that Hosea uses, that well-known story, to draw from
it strong ground for hope now and in coming danger.
" Jehovah," cries he, " was our God in the Egypt days ;
and He who delivered us then is mighty to save now." But
he has a still happier inference to draw from that past
deliverance, for it was a deliverance wrought at terrible
disadvantage, a deliverance of a helpless people who had a
dread wilderness to cross ere they could be free, and " for
leader," says he, they had " only one of that class so much
despised, only a prophet." " By a prophet Jehovah brought
Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet was he preserved."
(c) But Hosea s reproach to his own people, and his
confidence in deliverance from the rival potentates, rests not
on the past only. He knows something else concerning
the secrets of Samaria s court. Assyria and Egypt have
been trying an easier weapon than the sword ; they are
rival wooers for the little people s confidence and obedience.
G
98 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
Foolish Israel lias been coquetting with each ; she has gone
in turn to each for help against the other ; and worse, she
has sought there for help in her own internal quarrels.
She is being snared by both fowlers.
(d) Therefore her subjugation shall not be delayed for
one day. That is absolutely certain nay, it is to Hosea
the centre of God s plan for the future salvation of the
people. Righteousness is the demand of Hosea no less
than of Amos ; judgment is the prediction of both. The
outcome in Amos of the rise to faith in Jehovah s overlord-
ship was faith in Jehovah s demand for far greater right
eousness in men than they had risen to before, and faith in
His unchangeable purpose to secure such righteousness in
all the earth. Not one jot or tittle of this demand does
Hosea relax. But while Amos is to get this universal
righteousness by the destruction of all evil things and evil
men, Hosea believes God is to obtain it by the disciplinary
corrective effect of the terrible judgments and sufferings.
Hosea rather deepens the emphasis of demand, and he does
this by searching beyond Amos into the depths of the
righteous reason for all the demand, the righteous result
aimed at by all the judgment. He proclaims the righteous
ness which he counts sure to be produced among the men
of Israel by such judgments.
So with no word of discussion whether Jehovah be Lord
of all, but resting in unquestioned conviction of that great
faith, Hosea, true to his finer power, pours out warning
after warning, picture after picture, each new picture ever
more awful in its minuter revelation of the coming judg
ment of Jehovah, Lord of hosts.
CHAP. I.] GENERAL CHARACTER OF HOSEA S BOOK. 99
6. His love and esteem for men.
Yet just the opposite of judgment is Hosea s joy. He
was called "Hoshea" (F ^ n ), "He hath brought salva
tion ; " as long afterward the Lord received the same name
in Greek form, " Jesus, because He saved His people from
their sin."
Let us try to understand this, yet not here from full
examination of his theory of salvation, for that must be
studied further on ; rather listen now to him uttering, one
after another, a series of singularly high estimates of the
value of men. He who with persuading and pleading brings
to men a high and fine estimate of their own value, does by
that very service in some sense save them. By such service
at least he shows his own great desire to save them ; he
shows that his delight is in mercy rather than in judgment.
(a) Consider, then, how much Hosea argues with men,
and appeals to their own minds as sufficient arbiters. His
method is full of reasoning, while others so constantly give
command only. In their own souls he sees the ultimate
power which must bend them, and which alone can bend
the will ; no external authority avails much here. And
he would see that inner authority exalted, truly honoured,
strengthened, sweetened, made pure and godlike.
(b) We may call him the first theologian, so prominent
and characteristic is his argumentative method. It is
directly illustrated in his discussion whether this or that
symbol can be a god, and in his conclusion that, because a
workman made it, therefore it is not a god. The argument
is not a bit of rhetorical play, but a train of reasoning that
he feels he needs for his own soul s sake. This is evident
from his pathetic cry elsewhere that symbols of deity are
necessary for men s true life, and the lack of them is a sore
calamity. Here then, again, is a sign and a part of his
100 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. r.
gospel of salvation. He yearns to save, and pleads that
men be reasonable, and look for help to sources whence
alone help can come.
(c) Even more strikingly illustrative of his theological
method, and his dependence on argument, and his high
estimate of the soul, is his discussion of a method of salva
tion. It fills his second chapter, and it pervades the whole
of the book. He says, men do wrong because they do not
know the right thing to do. Their ignorance comes from
the dull and dazed state, physical and mental, which
drink and lustful habit produce. Therefore life is to be
saved by removal of these causes of death ; salvation lies
in solitude and restraint. If only the debasing drink and
license be far removed, then the man, or woman, or
people, sitting alone and silent, will think, will reflect,
and will choose the right and do it. " In their affliction
they will seek Me early." This gospel of Hosea has failed,
as we know, and as the story of the Hebrews specially
shows ; but this first prophet of it was a soul that loved
men, and longed to save them. The very utterance of
such a hope shows that he was well called Hosea.
(d) But there is more. The man that so argued could
not be content with arguments that seemed in any sense
based on his own wish only. He was too much of a Semite
for that ; it must be a declaration from Jehovah that he
makes known, for it is He alone that can afflict or save.
The New Testament statement concerning the prophets is
very true touching Hosea. They searched what the Divine
spirit in them did signify concerning salvation. It was
an ethical and psychological quest indeed, into the methods
and forces of salvation ; but the Hebrew was sure there
was a Great Person working in those forces, and it was
His methods that Hosea strove to know. That sort
of search was peculiarly Hosea s life-study. So again we
CHAP, i.] GENERAL CHARACTER OF HOSEA S BOOK. 101
find him thinking out a great theological argument. He
seems to say (chap, xi.), " Can Jehovah save ? Can Jehovah
fail to execute the dread oracle of Amos, All the sinners
shall be destroyed ? Can He refuse to cleanse the earth of
unclean men ? " In a passage of sublime pathos and power,
his heart pours itself out in a picture of the great Divine heart
that yearns and cannot give up Ephraim to death. Then in
one great throe he bursts away beyond the limits thus far
dreamed to be the limits of what God could do, crying,
* Jehovah is not man ; He is not limited as we are ; He
is not bound by the possibilities that Amos and all us have
thought to be His utmost possibilities ; He can satisfy His
great, great desire to save ; He will not come to destroy us."
The prophet plunges down deeper than he had ever thought
before into the arcana of God s heart. He sees down into
depths of agonising love, where Amos s gaze had seen only
the crystal purity of the Great Heart and its austere demand,
" Seek good." Far nearer to the still distant centre gazes
Hosea, and sees some gleam, faint yet glorious, of that
grace that was to be utterly revealed on the cross. It
is not strange, but most natural, that Hosea, while so
beholding, was filled with the sense of perfect oneness with
God, and cries out not concerning God, " He is gracious,"
but with the very voice of his God, " I am God and not
man ; I will not return to destroy." Thus does the pro
phecy of forgiveness and atonement begin, amid the agony
of this man s soul, and with his rise to a revelation of God
in his own person. The most valuable human joy comes
in deepest human pain, and in agony comes the divinest
exaltation of man.
(c) Hosea s argumentative and winning method is illus
trated again by his constant appeal to the story of the past.
Amos had merely alluded to the story ; he had not argued
much from it. Hosea points to the early nomadic days,
102 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
long before Egyptian slavery, and bases his pleas on that ;
and again and again, over and over, he tells of Egypt and
the sufferings there, pleading that, since such oppressions
have been, they may come again. Now, both Egypt and
Assyria are on the watch, ready to overwhelm both the
present prosperity and the present wrongdoings in Israel ;
therefore Israel may well be wise and provide for themselves
a strong refuge.
(/) Another mark of his esteem for men and desire to
exalt them is his introduction of the figure of a covenant
between Jehovah and Israel. Professor Guthe s admirable
monograph on Jeremiah (De fcedcris notione Jeremiana,
Leipzig, 1877) is at fault in a vital point. In the
Conchisio, p. 66, my loved fellow-student and faithful
friend says, " Jeremias primus inter proplictas notionem
fcederis in iisum rdiyionis condusit aliis deindc secutis"
But Guthe speaks himself (p. 10), of Hosean loci vi.
7; viii. I, quibus ad religionem applicatur vox -D" 1 ")^!
(focdus). The matter is of much importance for the
appreciation of the Deuteronomic Reformation in 622
B.C. under King Josiah. We need not discuss here the
use made of the idea of a covenant in that Reformation.
We need only note that not indeed in Amos, but very
naturally in Hosea we can see the early springs of that
popular mode of thought which made the covenant under
Josiah possible, and led on to Jeremiah s discussion of
covenants, and to his fierce criticism and condemnation of
Josiah s national establishment as utterly inadequate without
a new covenant written on men s hearts. Hosea does not
indeed say a great deal about covenants. But the man
who felt into the very secret of God s normal relation to
men, so that he called it the love of espousal, could scarcely
miss speaking of the slighted troth between such lovers.
We expect him to speak of a bond, a tryst, a covenant
CHAP. I.] GENERAL CHARACTER OF HOSEA S BOOK. 103
between the betrothed pair, and so we find he does.
Hosea was fitly the forerunner of that profound teaching
concerning covenants which Jeremiah expounds, and which
Christian theology has so highly exalted.
(g) This fine feature and thread of humanity running
all through the book stands out also in its judicious valua
tion of symbols. Judicious it is, for while on the one hand
Hosea judges that these are certainly " not God, for the
workman made them," and is not misled one step by his
readiness to give its due to every human fact and need ; yet,
on the other hand, he does give that due, and counts symbols
valuable. He says it will be a deplorable day for Israel
when there shall be no prince or law, no priest nor sacrificial
meal, no ephod nor sacerdotal robe that makes the wearer
a very oracle of God, no pillars or ma^ceboth, like Jachin
and Boaz before Solomon s temple, no teraphim, and no
household shrines with their emblems of Jehovah. Hosea
is more evidently filled than Amos was with the faith
of the time concerning cleanness or uncleanness, and
sacredness or otherwise of external things. Hosea felt
the need of holy objects, holy garments, holy places, holy
ritual, if life was ever to be " saved." He foretells exile to
Egypt and Assyria, and counts it a horrible thing to die
there, and be polluted after death by the sleep in a grave
that does not belong to Jehovah. Life there will be even
worse than death ; for no feasts of joy can be eaten where
the food of the feast has not been made fit by being slain
and fired in Jehovah s own sanctuary. Hosea is here most
humanly consistent with his time and with himself, while
Amos was in part inconsistent with both.
(A) Finally, the most constant evidence of Hosea s
thorough humanity is his attack not on sin, but on sins.
Amos was vague in his conception of good, and not
minutely definite in his picture of the evil deeds of men.
104 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. r.
But Hosea s chapters heap awful detail upon detail of
wrongdoing, until one almost revolts at the story. ~VVe do
not revolt nor lay the book away with dislike, for the
terrible moral earnestness of the writer holds us and
carries us on with him. We must listen to him, as we
listen to the terrible denunciations of an aroused con
science. There speaks the man, the true soul, not cata
loguing sins for the curious and the prurient, but crying
with a great horror upon him, " Look, look, and help. Save
men from this awful death." The book is a most human
record of ceaseless love for men, and of pain over human
wrongs.
Such is a general characterisation, which, of course,
must rest for verificcation on the following analysis, and
careful detailed study of the book.
CHAPTER II.
ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK OF HOSEA.
A. Chapters I. to III. Symbolical expositions of the sin
and salvation of Israel.
(1) Chap. i. ver. I ; the title; vers. 29 : The husband.
Hosea s" home sorrow, used as a picture of Israel s hurt done
to Jehovah. It tells the story of unfaithfulness, and threatens
retribution, for which there shall be no relief for Israel,
although there may be for Judah. This latter exception
reads strangely, and arouses suspicion of its authorship.
(2) Chap. ii. 2-23, with chap. i. 10 to ii. i. The latter
part seems to have been misplaced, as might easily happen
with the outside sheet of a MS. The former tale is told
again. But the saving love of Jehovah is proclaimed. The
method of that grace is to discipline by solitude and priva
tion. Then sober thoughts will work wisdom, devotion, joy,
and the old Davidic union of the kingdoms shall be restored.
(3) Chap. iii. The same wrong, and the same mode of
righting it, with even more explicit hope of a Davidic
restoration.
B. Chapters IV. to XII. A collection of brief oracles
witlwut clear arrangement.
(i) Chap. iv. Of corruption and its causes: vers. 13,
Israel is unfaithful, ignorant, unnatural; vers. 410, the
very teachers teach ignorance ; vers. 1 1 14, how debauchery
blinds. Appendix, vers. 15-19, Judah is as bad as Israel.
105
lOfi OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. ir.
(2) Chap. v. 1-14. Nemesis: vers. 1-7, its seed sown
by the leaders who mislead ; vers. 8-14, Assyria, the fancied
friend, shall be the desolating enemy.
(3) Chap. v. I5~vi. 7. Jehovah s gracious method and
His whole desire: (a) v. 15 vi. 3, He will leave Israel to
suffer; this will move them to return. (6) vi. 4-7, while
they are so uncertain, His desire is changeless and simple ;
not burnt-offerings, not any sacrifice does He seek, but
mercy, with true regard for men ("TEJT) and knowledge of
God, which is thoughtfulness worthy of the children of
God.
N.B. (i.) Hosea requires "N^ "love," where Amos
requires 2)13, " what is pleasing." (ii.) He considers the
heart " to be the organ of knowledge.
(4) Chap. vi. 8 vii. 16 (end). The degradation of Israel.
Unfaithfulness, a human failing, yet unmanly. It is 21N3,
common to men generally, mere men, but not what a true
man, a husband (^N), would show.
Here and there are murders ; everywhere is unchastity.
The prince riots with his councillors in drunken bestiality.
So revolution chases revolution across the throne. 1 Yet
when panic rises, the foolish look now to Assyria and
now to Egypt for help. When they seem to come back
to themselves they do not come to Jehovah, their own
God. They know well He is supreme, for they blame Him.
for the calamity, and so excuse their rebellion. Their anger
over calamities does not turn into earnest counselling with
Jehovah.
(5) Chap. viii. Stern warning based on formal argument.
The Amos-like passage closes with a quotation from that
prophet. So his preaching seems to have given direct
incitement to Hosea. Because Israel breaks the relation to
Jehovah (VTniJl), and refuses teaching from His oracular
1 In 2 Kings xv. we read of four revolutions within forty years.
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK OF HOSEA. 10
representatives (VTliJ^), Therefore," says Hosea, " let them
look to those other gods," who will certainly not save them
from perishing. Because the calf-god that stands in Sama
ria is made by a workman, therefore it is not a god ; it
cannot save, and it shall be destroyed. Because Israel has
sown the wind, therefore they shall reap the whirlwind.
Because Ephraim has multiplied altars on account of his
sin, therefore these altars are the evidence of his sin. In
other words, Ephraim, being in trouble, has thought his
troubles were the angry strokes of many gods whom his
deeds have displeased, and therefore he has held sacrificial
feasts at many, altars in honour of those gods, in the hope
to propitiate them. And, therefore, just these sacrifices and
altars are the evidence that Israel has sinned, and that he
knows it. And yet, when the Jehovah-teachers, the pro
phets and the priests, tell Ephraim Jehovah s mind, and
His desire for mercy or for goodness, Ephraim pays no
attention. Such counsels are a strange thing to him ; he
prefers his sacrificial feasts which Jehovah does not desire,
and does not count a justification of wrongdoings. There
fore judgment must come on Ephraim.
(6) Chap. ix. Joyless pollution shall be the reward of
polluted ways. Israel shall go into slavery in Egypt and
Assyria, where there can be no pure food, for there is no
Jehovah-house. On the days for the feasts of Jehovah
there can be no feasts at all in those lands of exile : but
there shall be death and polluted burial.
This is the reward of unfaithfulness. For the unfaith
fulness has grown into disregard of the highest quality in
man, the power to prophesy, the power to be filled with
the Spirit.
And the nature of the evil is very evident. " The pollu
tions of to-day," says Hosea, " are the same that polluted
the days before David." They who have fallen away from
108 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
the national unity and exaltation that David brought in
have also fallen back to looseness of life, like the abomi
nations that the pre-Davidic judges strove in vain to stamp
out.
The root-evil is too plainly seen. Hosea s denunciation
of unchastity is no mere figurative denunciation of idolatry.
The home has become, by unfaithfulness, the world s worst
misery.
(7) Chap. x. A deeper shaded copy of chapters viii. and
ix. Lurid light from the Amosian judgments plays fearfully
through the scenes. The winsome land and its winsome
people are blood-spattered and weed-covered..
But there is a gleam of Hosean grace in one verse (ver.
1 2). It is indeed almost modelled on Amos s stern law,
" Seek God," yet it is so touched with hope of mercy, grace,
kindness in men and for men, that it becomes long after a
worthy quotation for Jeremiah, when he would preach a way
of deliverance to the people of his day. 1
(8) Chap, xi. xiii. 13. Opening with the word " Love,"
Hosea rises away now to his very highest vision of the heart
of God and its gracious power. Then follows a story of
that grace in the past. The awakening, trembling purpose
of love is manifest in the oracle, " At least Egypt shall not
have again her old triumph of Jehovah s people." If they
go captive it shall be to Assyria. Yet no ! How can He
give up Israel so ? Must He ? Perhaps men cannot but
mete out dreadful justice, but Jehovah s love is greater,
and His authority also. " He is God and not man." He
is the one God who is devoted to Israel ; He is the Holy One
of Israel. He will indeed visit His people, but not to
destroy. They shall yet walk after Jehovah. Like migrat
ing birds that return to their own dear land, so the people
1 Hosea must have been well studied, for he is often quoted in the Old
Testament. He was well known by Paul and men of his day.
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK OF HOSEA. 109
shall come back out of all slaveries, out of all follies, and
God shall let them nestle in their own homes.
The story of the past is a tale of evil done by Israel indeed,
but a tale of good and only good from God. Many of
the patriarchal scenes of which we read in the books of the
Pentateuch and Kings are familiar to Hosea, e.g., the story
of the birth of the twin patriarchs, the divine vision in
Bethel, the Syrian betrothal, the trafficking ways of the
Hebrews, the Exodus, the sanctuary in Gilgal. There are
characteristic features in these allusions : no deliverer from
Egypt or after the Exodus is named, but two of such are
described as " prophets." Twice over, especially in xiii. 4,
there are words strikingly like a formula of Deuteronomy,
but there is no appeal to any authoritative canon, nor any
allusion to such.
(9) Chap. xiii. 14 to the end (xiv. 9). The golden days
to come.
(a) Chaps, xiii. I4~xiv. I. The opening is a sublime
declaration that nought hereafter, not death, not the grave,
can resist Jehovah s delivering power. Here first were uttered
the great words, used again by a Hebrew in the exalted
song of Isaiah xxv., and finally sealed by the Apostle Paul as
the grandest chorus of Christianity, the creed and song of
resurrection.
The triumph is also over nearer ills ; the desert winds
may destroy, yet there is deliverance in Jehovah.
(b) Chap. xiv. 28. Now begins as it were a dialogue
between the kind teacher and those who begin to call on
Jehovah. The people is pictured as a thirsty soil, which
Jehovah will bedew and clothe in all the fair luxuriance
of a tropical Eden.
(c) Chap. xiv. 9. This final verse may be a gloss by
some later true man of God. It was certainly a well-known
and well-loved thought, for it is used again and again by
110 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. IT.
later men: by Jeremiah (Jer. ix. 12), and by the writer of
Ps. cvii. (ver. 43), and it is echoed by the Apostle James
(James iii. 13). It suits Hosea s hand, however ; it is confi
dent in men s ability to be wise and good, it is greatly
hopeful for that wisdom and goodness which he has said all
along shall save them, but it is touched with anxiety and
uncertainty. He has no doubt of Jehovah, but he seems to
doubt his own Hosean plan of salvation. Will it succeed,
or must they look for another ? The very question mingled
with the faith in Jehovah is a virtual prophecy of deeper
depths in God s heart than Hosea had found, and of a greater
gospel yet to come.
CHAPTER III.
TEE MAX HOSEA.
I. His home.
THE features which analysis has given may now be clustered
in one portrait of the man as he lived and walked. But be
it borne in mind that evidence of the features comes only
through closest reading of the book ; and from that source
only can come also an acquaintance with him which shall
fit us to make him known, and let him bless others to-day.
First, then, we recall his home.
(a) It was in Samaria, the fair centre of the happy,
wealthy, northern kingdom, Israel. Round the fortress-like
hill, with its crowning city, the vine-clad slopes and hill
sides beyond blushed rich in rivalry with the green and
yellow grain-covered plains. It was as when some dark
maiden flushes in the contest of beauty over against her
golden-haired companion, and all about are moved to admira
tion and gladness. Amid such beauty Hosea grew.
There were few bare hills here, and few gloomy glens
like the many in southern Judah, that sterile home of safety,
but of austerity as well. Few foreign invaders would care
to plunder Judah ; but Israel, called so often Ephraim,
which may be interpreted " the hill whose either side is a
fertile field," Israel s beauty and plenty, Israel for booty
was the delight of the invader. From earliest days the
adventuring sheiks from abroad plundered her, and like our
modern France she was always soon ready again to be
ill"
112 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. nr.
plundered. The captivity of the north came a century
before the exile of the south, because Ephraim, the home of
Hosea, was a rich and comfortable land.
(Z>) The rich land and people could early grow luxurious
in knowledge and thought and utterance, as they did.
Schools always spring up first in rich centres : Italy,
Greece, Egypt are examples. We find, accordingly, that
the number of prophets, thinkers, teachers in the northern
kingdom, as the books of Kings describe them, was far
greater than the number in Judah. It may be readily asked
in reply, do not the most of the records concerning the
kings and other leaders of the people seem to have been
written in the north and by northern men, and by men
fond of the north ? Does not the very full account of
Elijah, that thorough northerner, seem to be from a northern
pen ? Very possibly, but this thoroughly confirms the
belief that the north produced more of such men, writers,
speakers, thinkers, than the south produced. On the other
hand, it is just in those more luxurious centres that careless
ness first comes. Hosea is an early witness to this constant
feature of history. Amid the abundance of comforts and
pleasures, men may revel in assurance and mastery to very
intoxication, blindness, and folly. Where there is no struggle
for life there may come emasculation. So it has been in
southern Europe ; and so it was evidently in comfortable
Israel, as many a Hebrew passage hints. Hosea learned in
such schools, and God led him through such dangers.
(c) The low level plains of Jezreel that led to the Phil
istine coast were the easy highway between Africa on the
south and Asia and Europe on the north. They may
become so again ; and the wise prophet Isaiah, who coun
selled so long ago concerning that world- high way, may
prove to be a prophet for the coming twentieth century,
forecasting some iron road to run from Cairo to Damascus,
CHAP, in.] THE MAN HOSEA. 113
and all lands beyond in east and west. Such highways
bring culture, and they are culture, a God-provided culture.
But they bring also and certainly large occasions for deteri
oration. For example, the Hebrew language may be one
of the younger sisters of the Semitic sisterhood, but it is
the most deteriorated, the worst preserved. It has been
rubbed and worn, like a well-used coin, by the ceaseless
friction of the many, many strange tongues that passed to
and fro, up and down that road for all the world s traffic,
the little Hebrew coast of the Levant. As English speech
is becoming a traffic speech for all the peoples of the world,
and, as used by them, it looks to the philological student like
a bagful of worn, defaced coins, without inscription or figures,
a puzzle in date and origin, lacking everything save bright
ness and value, so was Hebrew a language of merchants
and passengers, and it lost nearly all its fine detail of form.
The language of the far-away interior of Arabia remains
to-day almost as full and as gracefully perfect as when it
reached its highest development probably thousands of years
ago, but the exposed speech of the great west road was
actually worn out and disused two thousand years ago.
The people who spoke it deteriorated like their speech ;
rapidly they rose, rapidly they sank. They learned the
favours of the great nations to north and south, and, coquet
ting with them for more, their luxuriant life became licen
tious. They learned the possible falseness of those neighbours
too, and they fed on shame till they grew like the shameless
on the street. Hosea grew up among all this, and pictures
it very truly.
(d) There had been already a reformer in the north.
The course of providential events which brought forth an
Amos, prophet of righteousness in Judah, gave earlier
birth to a reformer in Israel. But something quelled the
reforming spirit. It was in Israel that Elijah had
H
114 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
preached, now thundering forth his faith, now hiding it.
That faith, now majestic, and again a trembling spark,
was the new faith in Jehovah the Over-Lord, God over
all the Baalim. With mixed fearlessness and fear he had
offered this to the test. He was victorious ; the people
were rising to a reverence and purpose like his own. But
hesitancy followed. His lack of the tremendous self-asser
tion of an Amos explains perhaps the delay of the rise in
the north of great moral teachers like Amos ; and the failure
seems characteristic of the northern people. They knew
even more than Amos knew, but they lacked the severe
assertive power. They could question, and by their sharp
questioning it was, doubtless, that Amos was driven to
grasp at the grand facts of God he found and proclaimed.
That was their peculiar share in the seeking after God.
Hosea has all this peculiarity in himself, a keen humanity
that will ceaselessly speak out its feeling, its needs, its
questions, its certainty that there is still uncertainty, it3
faith that God^ heart has yet unsounded depths.
2. His rank.
That he was of high rank seems evident from his fami
liarity with the court and all its ways, even when the facts
are anything but noble or honourable. He knows of royal
conduct that has been careless and unkingly, and doubt
less hidden from all but boon companions or responsible
guardians.
His evident culture confirms the opinion. He knows the
past well. Probably the events of the Exodus which he
mentions were matters of current tradition, talked of by
the fireside ; and yet there is fulness of detail, and a readi
ness to draw argument from the story, which suggest much
more than the ordinary acquaintance with the past. He
CHAP, in.] THE MAX HOSEA. 115
seems to have been well versed in statesmanlike knowledge
of the history of the state. Amos scarcely gives a hint of
such knowledge.
And the present relations of Israel with the great world-
empire rivals are well known to Hosea. Amos knows
there is danger of foreign trouble, but he scarcely names
the rival empires. Not so Hosea, who even knows the
simultaneous traffickings that have been foolishly carried on
with both Egypt and Assyria. He was surely of high rank.
His whole disposition and fineness of feeling argue also
a man of unusual experience and cultivation. It may be
added that the preservation of the work and name of this
one alone of northern writers in a collection like the canon,
so thoroughly influenced by Judah, and furthermore the
very frequent, almost unusually frequent, quotation from
Hosea by later writers in Judah, mark him as one of the
most notable of all Hebrews in everv sense.
3 . His personal story.
This is written in all his sentences. The true man ig
never a masked character, but bears the lines of God s
carving on his brow. His soul s portrait is well drawn
on his cheek and in his earnest eye ; its voice is never
muffled nor ambiguous. What had Hosea done, or what
had he suffered ?
(a) His parents we do not know indeed, but he has
made himself in a special sense the child of his people, for
ho has read and fed on the story of its past and its fathers
until we learn them well if we only learn to know him.
(&) His name, as we have it, may possibly have been
given him by father and mother. It means, " The bring
ing of salvation," or, " One hath caused salvation ; " and
perhaps the parents saw in their child an answer to some
116 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
great cry for help. But it is almost as probable that the
nation whom he loved, for whom he lived, in whose very
fullest, finest joy he sought all his life, the nation whom he
preached to save, and so did save, perhaps it was they who
called him Hoshea. At all events, it is they who have
told us his name, for in their love for him they saved his
words, and handed them on with this name to be saved
for ever.
(c) But we know far more. He had a sad, very sad
experience. Perhaps his terrible picture of a doomed home
is only what he saw with awful sympathy in the house of
some friend. He says it was his own experience ; he says,
in strangest and strongest faith, that it was God, Jehovah,
the God he trusted, who led him through the experience.
Why do we doubt it ? Why do we doubt that good men
have gone through worst pain, the pain of astonished and
appalled recoil from God s providences ? Did not Jesus
cry, " My God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? " There is
much to appal us in the providences of God. Why should
there not be depths inexplicable or unexplained in His
ways ? He is God, and not man. Why should not He
cause pain, and bitterest pain ? For pain is that keen
reminder of Him to which every human soul listens with
the quick, terrified cry, " God ! "
Hosea knew the awful sorrow only too well, whether he
himself had gone through the agony, or had simply stood
by a stricken friend, and given him counsel to strengthen
and to save him. In it all he had the wonderful faith,
" My God does it," which faith is itself altogether a
salvation. The sight of such a faith saves others too.
No wonder that this man s words were gathered and pre
served.
CHAP, in.] THE MAN HOSEA. 117
4. His mind and way of thinking.
Let us consider a moment his mode of thought ; let us
become acquainted with his mind.
(a) How keenly he reflects. The scenes he sketches are
all so finely traced that any explanation of them seems
unneeded, all the causes of the events seem quite plain,
and all possible ways of hope amid the evils seem clearly
disclosed. Finely he can trace the subtle relations of cir
cumstances and events, just as finely and strongly can he
grasp and tell the whole story of his people, the past, far
and near, the present, its inmost secrets and its outmost
contacts.
(b) How closely he argues. You shall have reason for
all he bids you do, a-nd for all he believes that he himself
must do and say. The firm philosophical spirit seems born
full-grown in him, for he teaches that knowledge of the
nature of sin, and grasp of a satisfactory theory of it, are
themselves a cure for the evil. This knowledge comforts
him and those whom he persuades. He teaches, and rests
in the teaching, that to know good is to be certain to be
good. He believes that the soul which sees full reason
for a certain course will certainly follow that course. In
deed, his theory is that sin comes only through ignorance.
Know, and you will do, says he ; see, and you will follow.
It is a singular Hosean doctrine that the rcasoner will
always be righteous.
(c) His reasoning is large-minded. He can argue against
a custom because of any falseness that is in it, but he can
also bewail its ceasing, for he can discover the valuable
features of it.
118 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
5. His heart and feeling.
Now touch his heart. It is laid bare by its own warm
beating. You see it through the garment s folds. You
hear its pulsing, its nervous start, the sigh that wells from
it in a cry of lament or of hope.
(a) He was truly a man, for he could love a woman with
all the thirst we know. God made that thirst in earliest
Eden, when Adam saw Eve, and felt that his breast was
her home, and she must ever abide there. Ever since that
day this love has been one of our earliest, surest, richest
treasures, blessing all our life, and all life that shall be of
us. Hosea was a real man, for he knew this love.
(b) He was a father, and had all a father s mysterious
solicitude for his children. Home meant the children along
with the wife. And when he wept for his lost spouse, he
could talk with the children over their common awful loss
as a wise man will seek counsel in the sacred circle of his
own hearth. Home was a blessed comfort to him, which
he understood.
(c) He could love the traditions of his people. The
stones where the patriarchs worshipped, because they had
slept and dreamed beside them of heaven and of God,
brought to Hosea like visions of God s presence and care.
He knew his people s story, its past leaders and prophets,
because his heart went out to them in affection. His heart
sought company with hearts that were its kin.
(el) He loved manhood, and could not think God would
fling it away. It is his own heart s yearning that speaks out
in those wonderful words, " How shall I give thee up ! . . .
I am God and not man ! " Let conventional sense of duty
towards wrongdoers be what it will, and let it cry doom
against them ! Let it seem impossible to pass by the evil
deeds ! " Yet," he cries, " the heart yearns after them ; it
CHAP, in.] THE MAX IIOSEA. 119
struggles to hold them, to stay with them, to bless them."
Hosea s heart struggles thus, and in his simple but sublime
faith he counts his own heart s moving to be a moving of
God. Hosea s great heart received disclosures of God in its
own great love for men.
6. His inner soul.
Finally, then, let the words " Hosea s soul " gather together
into one all these features without and within the man, and
make for us a complete picture of the man of God. It is a
precious picture. The man companies with God ; they walk
together. The one is the other s agent ; they work to
gether. Hosea s face shows the face of God. Here is one
example comprehensible by us all of the pre-existence of
the Body of Christ, that Word of God. A child of God
Hosea was, and he saw into his Father s heart. So Amos
too had seen; but as one star differeth from another, so to
the eye of one child is given one measure of insight, a
deeper measure of insight is given to the eye of another.
So Hosea saw and has told us of God s far more than
human heart, as his wider sweep of vision caught and under
stood far more of the whole circle of the needs of men.
So he looked far beyond visible things, and saw in the land
and people fruits of God s own husbandry more precious to
God than could be appreciated, save by " whoso is wise."
Such was he in mind, in heart, in soul, a noble true man,
a man after God s mind, a man of God.
Such a precious picture may we have, so far away and
all along the line of Providence, if we but look into the
records. Men turn languidly from the Old Testament, and
from the New also, and call the volumes of the fathers a
waste ; they say petulantly, " What have we to do with the
Jews ? " But he who reads himself into company with
those men finds God with them. Then the God who was
with them becomes a God with us.
CHAPTER IV.
HOSEA S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS GENETICALLY CON
SIDERED ; OR, A HOSEAN SYSTEM OF DOCTRINE.
WHY are we confident that the food of the mouth and
appetite shall feed the heart with coursing blood, the muscle
with strength, and the brain with quick power to perceive ?
Why but because one system links all, and linking them
makes them no mere mass conjoined, but a body, from any
point of which influence radiates directly and duly to every
other part of the whole organic system.
The importance of systematic theology is immense, if it
duly exhibits the complete relationship between all the
facts of religious life. It is vital to powerful preaching,
and only its abuse works its temporary neglect. This is
true of the systematic statement of our own conceptions of
Christianity to-day ; it is fully as true of the systematic
description of the religious conceptions of any past period
or point in history, or of any individual whose influence we
would understand and use.
It is certainly an abuse to come to the writings of any
individual who lived in days far away from us or even
nearer, with a pre-arranged schedule of topics, on each of
which we shall demand some deliverance from the old
writer. We may not treat any man or any period thus.
The abuse becomes vandalism when we insist on an actually
positive deliverance in our own favoured sense on each topic
as condition of our recognising the writer s fellowship with
120
CHAP, iv.] HOSEA S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 121
God and the Father of our Lord Jesus. Such a Procrustean
bed is in essence unchristian ; it is utterly ungodly. It may
be called religious, but it is so only in a lower sense than
heathen religions are.
Our true method of search for the doctrines of a man or
a people is first to trace all their utterances to one root, if
possible, out of which all have naturally grown. If we be
successful, we shall know what root we must plant if we
desire the same fruits to grow. Here lies the inevitable
connection between a thoughtful study of systematic theology
and a sound serviceable homiletic method, or a practical
ministry.
If it become evident that not one vital root has begotten
all the utterances and all the faiths we are watching, some
inconsistency amongst the various utterances and faiths will
become clear ; and we shall discover thus, as we had not
dreamed before, the marks of perpetual need, uncertainty,
change, and growth in the life of man or the people. We
shall see the strife, the pain, the long subjection to fear.
"We shall know how to avoid these, knowing their cause,
and we shall be quicker to remove causes of similar pain.
We shall have finer sense, finer souls, happier days, far
truer life. And this shall be ours to give to others also in
practical ministration. Such is the value of systematic
theology.
It may be that we shall discover, however, away behind
the man himself, the one cause which worked both his
conflicting currents of faith. The cause may be in the men
and things who were long before him, and thus our syste-
matising of the one man s thoughts will help us to feel the
solidarity of men. Our own knowledge as to ourselves, and
the best plans of life for us, will be seen to depend on
knowledge of much else. In fact we shall know our real
selves to be much larger than we had thought, and with
122 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
this expansion will come increased sense of our value. We
turn to Hosea and find an illustration. We ask first what
is his central characteristic ?
i. The kernel of his thinking.
The ablest of recent English writers in this historical
field has pointed to "TDH (kindness) 1 as the characteristic
principle of Hosea s religion. And this is certainly what
Hosea counts the true character of Jehovah, and the ideal
character in men. But can we say more exactly what it is
in Hosea s own character which leads him to this charac
terisation of God ? Let us know, not so much what Hosea
preaches as highest religion, but what is his own religion
and the root of his own life.
Professor Duhm s admirable Theologic der Proplictcn de
scribed Hosea as a man of religion, as distinguished from
Amos the man of righteousness, " Das religiose Moment
wiegt einseitig vor " (p. I 27). This is true, but it requires
closer explanation. To show the need for such explanation
let us observe that if we call Hosea the more religious
prophet and Amos the more ethical, meaning by religious
ness a more special care for the unseen, and by ethical
character or righteousness a greater regard for duty, espe
cially toward men and visible things, then we shall have
actually reversed the real characters of the two men ; for
Amos s exhortation to seek good was to the end that they
might find God, while Hosea s soul is full of tender yearn
ing love for men, and it is certainly in that love that we
find his religiousness and godlikeness.
When Professor Guthe considers the idea of covenant,
riH^, as characteristic originally of Jeremiah, he almost
robs Hosea of a possession. Hosea is really the first to
1 Professor \V. R. Smith, "Prophets," p. \6off.
CHAP, iv.] HOSEA S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 123
speak of covenants in religion, and, as we have seen, he
does so with peculiar fitness. Yet it is something in Hosea s
nature deeper than all these characteristics just named which
gives rise to his speech of covenants, and gives birth to his
kindness, and makes him seem to see the unseen as Amos
does not. That nature of his is what we must grasp and
keep in mind as his central, fundamental characteristic and
the root of the whole system of his thinking.
2. What he inherited from others.
Let us pause to recount what he had in common with
his predecessors, or had received from them.
(a) There filled every Semite, and Hosea too, a sense of
Divine omnipresence. All beings, all deeds, all utterances
of the soul were the direct work of the Divine Being. God
was always everywhere. And to the Hebrew, at least in
Hebrew lands, it was Jehovah who did all things and was
everywhere.
(6) The revelation that seemed to the prophets to fill the
David age was that Jehovah was more than Israel s God,
more than God. He was Lord of gods ; He was The God,
the Over- Lord of hosts.
(c) In Amos we saw a clear conception added. Amos
sees that the Over-Lord Jehovah is the great Eighteous One,
and accordingly conscience has a far keener voice than it
had before, and it points out duty towards foreign men and
lands as well as towards the home-born brother.
3. What was new in him.
Hosea s new vision into God s heart was Hosea himself.
He himself was his addition to the revelations of God that
other men of the age had grasped. The kernel of his soul
124 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
was his thorough sympathy with men ; and this produced
his own kindness, his faith in Jehovah s kindness, and his
cry for kindness in Israel. If we seek a definition of his
" sympathy," we shall get it from those oracles concerning
men which tell us how he estimated them. In technical
phrase, we begin the system of his theology by the scheme
of his anthropology.
() He thinks that men naturally do right. Many, or
perhaps most, of his fellows are blinded, and cannot see the
road they would naturally take. This is the result of
intoxication and its stupidity, of lustful excess and its mad
carelessness. At one point indeed he seems to hold what
may have been a common belief, that mankind generally,
and the original father-man, he whose very name, D"J^
( Adham), marks his close relation to the mother-earth,
H^lhJ ( Adbamah), is heavy, careless, a covenant-breaker by
nature. Yet this utterance, so like that in Job xxxi. 33,
marks his faith that Hebrew men, the normal men, of
whom and to whom he almost exclusively speaks, are of
a higher nature than those other human beings of the
general sort. He cannot ignore those others that would be
unlike him but while he wonders over them, all his work
ing theory and estimate of men refer only to normal men,
the Hebrews. Hosea may mean indeed that the Hebrews,
alas, are no better than other men but as thoroughly bad
when drink or debauchery fills them ; but this would only
confirm us in the opinion that to him the Hebrew was by
nature the perfect normal man.
In any case, very clearly he lays the blame for the sins
of the Israelites on that sensuality which blinds and so
begets ignorance. Sin, then, is the deed of an ignorant
man only. Righteousness will always be, if men have only,
first, a clear mind, and secondly, true instruction. How
great an advance this is from Amos s failure to suggest any
CHAP, iv.] HOSEA S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 125
method for changing men from bad to good ! We shall
have another occasion to refer to this. Meantime we may
note that a fruit of Hosea s far deeper sympathy with men
is his "1^0 (chesedh), his kindness toward them, and his
eager desire to save them. This truth is not lessened by
the insufficiency of his theory ; the faulty theory itself
becomes his own declaration of faith that the true salvation
shall come some day.
(I) Hosea s sympathy sees men s natural affinity for
knowledge.
(a) First let us remark that the popular psychology of
the time regarded the heart as the organ of knowledge.
When Hosea says wine takes away the heart, he means
that it dulls the mind.
(/3) Observe, then, that it is knowledge of Jehovah, as
the proper God of Israel, that Hosea longs for, deploring
its absence. The great need was then, as in Galilee in
later days, and now as then, a knowledge of the real way
of God. We may call this, in later phrase, the logos of
God. For as our Lord Jesus is to us our trusted logos of
God, our idea of our God s way, so to Hosea there was a
sort of logos of God, an idea of God s way, namely, his con
ception of Jehovah as the devoted God of Israel, and the
Over-Lord over all hosts. The beautiful words in chap. xii. 5
set both ideas in one setting : " In Bethel he will find us,
and there he will talk with us : even Jehovah God of hosts."
Hosea means that we shall learn all that knowledge which
is life from Him who is by name and history our own
national God, and who is also by conquest the supreme
Lord of all powers. He shall teach us, for his covenant
name Jehovah, " Causer to be," and His title Lord of hosts,
together ensure it. It was knowledge of this character,
and a true estimate of it, and accordant lives, that Hosea
longed to secure.
126 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
(-y) But he was urging this in place of disorderly
religiousness rather than in place of godlessness. Hosea
did not charge the people with godlessness. He would
replace a loose, thoughtless, debauched, yet strong religiosity
by a clear, calm, single devotion. They did care for know
ledge of the gods; they were not altogether unlike the
Athenians of later days. And Hosea appreciates this
characteristic in them. He was a generous man of the
times. He and his fellows all felt keenly the sensuous joys
of their life, and felt too the mysterious voices that seem
to whisper, more to some souls than to others, of the living
Cause behind the joys. Semitic souls could hear this
speech acutely.
To Hosea s countrymen their luscious plenty, their social
luxuriance, their seeming power lent them by the amours
of the political rivals, Assyria and Egypt, their self- fascinat
ing coquetry, fanned by eager leaders all these were gifts
of the gods ; and they were messages telling the love of
the gods for them, wooings to communion with those unseen
lovers in boundless feasting on their gifts. So the intoxi
cation of men was wrought by their very seeking after the
gods ; their delight in knowledge of the gods and their
very use of symbols of Divine presence were proving their
ruin.
($) And Hosea deplores the day of Jehovah s inevitably
coming discipline, because it must shut Israel away from
all that gives knowledge of the Divine presence. The day
is coming when to save Israel Jehovah will take away from
them their sacred places, their kings and sacrificial feasts,
the pillars that mark the sacred places of Jehovah, the
official sacred garments, and all household symbols of Deity.
These all speak to the soul concerning God, and the true
worshipper desires them worthily. These symbols, and the
knowledge of Jehovah which they symbolise and which they
CHAP, iv.] HOSEA S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 127
bring, are to Hosca the needed and beloved and just means
of grace. Men care for them naturally, and Hosea is glad
they do. He cares for them himself also.
(e) These things are not evils, but it is the luxurious
abundance of them that intoxicates, blinds men, and occa
sions sin. Hosea s theory is that things of this sort all
attract ; men are naturally drawn by all they see of the
good and the true and beautiful ; but order in choice is
needed, so that every attraction be suffered to woo only in
due measure, and neither intoxication, ignorance, nor sin
may result. The soul stands amid a world of lovable things.
The question of life is, which of all the soul s lovers is most
lovable ? How shall we choose Jehovah chiefly, and hold
all else in fit place as adornment given from Him, and to be
used for His honour again ?
Certainly Hosea s is not a complete philosophy, nor a
fully written lesson of life ; but so high, so beautiful is it
that we look away upwards for his teacher. We feel that
it must have been some high fellowship that taught him
these high thoughts. Only an inspiration from above could
give such yearnings as his, and bid his soul speak out
such beliefs with such faith. The deep sympathy of Hosea
for man and for man s loves was breathed in him from the
very Spirit of God.
(c) Hosea s sympathy sees a finer feature still in men s
nature. Man needs another s love. Hosea sees this in
himself. The prophet, and also every true son of man
about him, is susceptible of the fine wooings of some
other loving soul, be it of woman that attracts man, or of
the Divine Being that holds his riveted attention, or be it
the affection of trysted souls like David and Jonathan,
whose love surpassed that of women. Hosea knew his
own need for more than a mere sight of beauty ; he needed
tokens of human love more precious than the sanctuary
128 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
symbols or the beloved national customs. He saw a deeper
undercurrent of affections, exquisite even to the simple
beholder, but charged with the very vital current itself to
the lover and the beloved.
(d) A single gleam, shot across the pages of the book,
reveals delicately, yet not faintly, Hosea s appreciation of
the highest type of man, and the finest possible feature of a
soul (cf. chap. ix. 7). He tells us, with just a shade of
apprehensive trembling, of some who are worthy to be
called " men of the Spirit." Such are pervaded by a
spiritual quality akin to God ; they speak as Divine voices
the very utterances of Jehovah. They are God s watchmen,
and they stand in His stead before men. They stand in
front of God, they appear for Him as the very equivalent of
God to human sight. Even the intoxicated people know
that such men are to be found, and that they are essential
to a nation. So they set up some one, any one, to be their
spiritual man and their prophet in times of trouble. Hosea
can tell of the past blessing that such men have worked,
both by oracles of death and by deeds of deliverance, and
he knows in himself the secret working of God that does it
all. He speaks from experience ; he is himself such a man
of the Spirit. His own intensely fine sympathy speaks out
in all his description of men who have such a vocation.
He believes men can carry such a high endowment. He is
conscious of carrying it ; and to his perfectly sympathetic
soul all men may be as he is. He believes in men. He
believes in Jehovah s sympathy with men. Such was God s
way with Hosea; such life did God make possible and real
in him. Such was the Divine inspiration of Hosea.
(c) Finally, Hosea s high instinctive appreciations of man
are indeed somewhat disturbed and hard to follow in the
book ; and the prophet may not even have thought them
through in very orderly fashion. Nevertheless they are no
CHAP. iv. J HOSEA S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 129
passing fancies, but the very essence of the man and of
all his oracles. Just as we saw in Amos an overmastering
devotion to righteousness, so the characteristic sympathy
of Hosea, and his high, fine, gracious estimate of men, are
written on every page and passage of his book. He was
a man of sympathy.
4. His doctrine of men.
For this very reason his doctrine of man implies a
strongly marked doctrine of men that is, of the people as
a whole. Indeed, he addresses his prophecy of counsel and
of blame and warning to the nation, and not to individuals,
with more consistency than Amos had been able to use.
While the figures he uses are of individual action and
character, and so an estimate of the individual underlies
all he says, yet his application of the figures is national.
In other words, he is thoroughly a man of his time in all
his formal expressions. His fineness of sense only deepened
this feature.
(a) Thus it is Israel as a people whom he charges with
adultery from Jehovah. This consists in their breaking
away from the Davidic house, in their coquetting with
Assyria and Egypt, and, above all, in the immorality
utterly unlike Jehovah s ways, that is practised among
leaders of state and of worship, and among the body of the
people.
(&) The force of this charge lies in the faith that the
true relation of Jehovah and the state should be that of a
tenderly loving spousal pair. This conception it is that
gives deep significance to the description of other peoples
and other lands as unloved, undesirable, unclean, and even
polluted. The strong expression must be read as coming
from a man of that time. If Israel was the beloved and
I
130 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
betrothed of Jehovah, and the espoused wife of His heart,
then all other peoples were the rejected maidens, unloved,
whom His love desired not in comparison. The land of
Israel was the bower and home of the bride where the
Divine Lover would willingly be for ever, caring for no
other spot, but counting all other lands unhappy and
unholy.
(c) How natural to Hosea, therefore, was the covenant
idea. There is no occasion for fancying a bargain struck
and signed with formalities and difficulties, as between seller
and buyer, servant and master ; none of these things under
lie Hosea s conception. But the lovers have met and trysted ;
without visible touch or nearness they have known each
other and loved. Heart has felt heart s embrace, and
rested there. Each has taken the other to itself. That is
the covenant ; it is a lover s troth ; it is the flash of love
that needs no word to utter it, no speech to make it fact
and vow.
But note a finely significant shade in Hosea s words.
If the loved people become in any way like mere men in
general, and lose the particular, national something that is
so loved of Jehovah, and that yearns so toward Him, then
the plighted troth shall vanish though it were plighted or
engraved on tablets a thousand times. When they are mere
men CHN3 (K Adham), then they break the covenant.
This covenant is only possible between two who are like
man and wife, different in each other s eyes from all other
women and men. They are the only two in each other s
eyes ; so Jehovah would be nothing but the Ishi ("4^),
" my own one man," for Israel. We have not synonyms in
English as they have in Hebrew to speak out this shade of
love s intense devotion. But the Greeks and the Romans
had them, and so have the Germans. They all can say
of the spouse, vir mcus, mein Mann, &c. } where homo and
CHAP, iv.] HOSEA S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 131
Mcnsch, &c., would mean only " some man unloved, not my
own one." Such is Hosea s thought.
Let us observe that while he pleads with the whole
people as one beloved being, his figure and his words have
all sprung from his own personal experience and tenderest
human fellow-feeling.
(cT) We may indeed find some confusion in the figures
and the facts. And we may say that Hosea s exalted con
ception of the people as an individual tends to melt away,
and he comes to speak of individual men and women as
the real units. This is true. Hosea s very words are
faiths, and a prophecy of something more yet to come. His
faithfulness to feeling makes that certain. And yet that
faithfulness reminds us that his conception of the nation as
an individual must have also some inherent truth. Certainly
the idea of a people of God is an eternal truth. Amos had
spoken of God s people Israel with customary sternness almost
bordering on indifference ; but Hosea s finer instinct finds
far more reality in all the current phrases touching Israel.
He is a seer of humanity and reality, and so he is a
preacher of that great true Unit, all mankind. The king
dom of God, the brotherhood in Christ, the temple not
made with hands, the solid mankind knit together of true
sons of men, is a great necessary truth alongside that of
individuality. Hosea s conceptions make us feel how truly
all the great facts of life, old and new, were gathered
together in Christianity, and how the Hebrew preachers
were prophets of the Son of Man.
(V) And this doctrine of the true people of God which lie
sketches implies a story of the love of God to such a people
in the past. So Hosea speaks much of that story. What
soever documents may have been already in existence and
in his hands, and howsoever hard or easy it may be for us
to recognise in Hosea s language marks of his possession
132 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
of them, this is evident, that he was far more interested in
such narratives than was Amos. Among thoughtful men of
higher rank and greater leisure written notes of the story of
the past were evidently coming into use. and therefore were
being more and more constructed. Hosea wrote, in 775 B.C.,
notes of the Exodus and of the Patriarchs life. Whatever
may or may not be proved to have been written earlier,
we see that this writer gave and his readers received a
brief story and theory of Jehovah s relation to Israel s past
history. Such a theory and teaching the Hebrews called
a Torah (rnlH). Here was a Torah of Jehovah. It was a
Torah concerning a deliverance from Egypt, and concerning
a deliverer, a Mosheh (H$Q). The word " Moses " is never
used by the prophet, and the deliverer, whatever may have
been the personal name Hosea would have given him, is
simply called a prophet, and not at all a lawgiver in the
modern sense. Our Roman idea of law has awkwardly
confused the Hebrew picture of Hebrew Torah, and our
English speech has blurred the meaning of the Hebrew
word. Hosea wrote a Moses-Torah in the sense that he
wrote a theory of the deliverance and deliverer of Israel ;
and he wrote it in faith in God s agreement with him,
God s gift of it to him, God s inspiration of himself as he
wrote it. We find then in Hosea an implicit theory of the
revelation of God written in the story of the people of God.
(/) There is in Hosea the germ of another important
conception. Israel is the child of God, Jehovah s son. The
beauty and tenderness of the marriage picture should not
obscure this other and even more important figure. The
faith in the Fatherhood of God is by no means originally a
Christian doctrine ; it is at least as old as Hosea. The
infinite significance of it indeed dawns on us as we stand
in the presence of Jesus ; but even that will not be under
stood unless we know what son ship of God meant to a
CHAP, iv.] HOSEA S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 133
Hebrew seer like Hosea. The language of liis time and of
all his people after him makes this plain. When a Hebrew
said "son of" he meant "one of the same sort." Son of
cattle ("Ip^ l^l) meant an individual ox, sons of Ammon
(Ttoy VQ) meant Ammonites ; son of prophets (D\S"3J-I2)
meant a prophet, and son of death (TP!p~}3) meant one
destined to die. Thus, to a Hebrew, the cry " Ephraim my
son," uttered by Hosea in the name of Jehovah, implied
that in the prophet s estimation Ephraim shared, in some
deep true sense, the very nature of Jehovah. The mode of
thought was indeed an inheritance from far simpler earlier
times, when the people were counted as the offspring of
their God ; and the sacrificial feasts were presented to Him,
and eaten with faith that their patron God, who was really
their first Father, feasted with them. A very full and fine
exposition of this may be read in Professor TV. R. Smith s
" Religion of the Semites." Hosea s use of the mode of
thought, with his thorough sympathetic sharing of all the
reality in it, is a vital stage in the advance to the day when
Jesus declared Himself both Son of Man and Son of God.
There is a word including both ideas, the coinage of a far
later day, which has become the symbol of the ever-growing
grasp of the eternal verity. God is revealed in men His
children. We are learning to call Jesus the God-man.
With singular suggestiveness and force does the Gospel,
whose text is " The Word became flesh," conclude its
wonderful argument with the personal confession of one
who felt Jesus creative power and cried to Him, " My Lord
and my God." Hosea s faith in Jehovah as the Father of
Ephraim is but an early stage in the rise of the soul to
ability to comprehend and receive the revelation of the " Son
of God " in Jesus.
(g) One feature further marks Hosea s thoughts con
cerning society, and it marks them with nobility. He is a
134 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
monogamist ; the age of justifiable polygamy has for him
quite passed away. All the more valuable is this feature
because the prophet seems to possess it in common with the
most or the best of the people ; we have here really a note
of the process of history riot of an individual, but of the
Hebrew people.
It may be that the deplorable picture Hosea gives us is a
relic of the old system of polyandry which seems to have
prevailed in early days. In any case society is rising far
above it, and learning to regard each woman-soul as a
precious unit, co-ordinate in value with the individual man-
soul. The rise to this view is an advance in grasp of the
thoughts of God ; and God s leading of men to this height
is strictly a process of revelation. It is most significant
that this evident revelation of a new high estimate of
woman, and of man as husband, and of home, is a revelation
in and by that prophet whose distinctively new revelation
of God is that He is more than man and yet is altogether
devoted to Israel.
5. His idea of God.
This is both complex and incomplete. The final picture
of Jehovah s control even over death is his normal thought
as it is his highest thought, but there are many stages of
anxious doubt and wondering whether Jehovah shall be
able to overcome all men s resistance to His power. Let us
watch the different elements which work together to pro
duce this Hosean theology or doctrine of God.
I. To Hosea Jehovah is a national God that is, He is
co-ordinate to some extent with the Baals and other national
or tribal deities. He has been called by Israel " My Baal "
(v^B), and Hosea s hope is that this exclusive relationship
between Jehovah and Israel shall be exchanged for the other
CHAP, iv.] HOSEA S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 135
exclusive relationship, " My husband " (^ ^), " mine " as dis
tinct from any other nation s "husband."
As such a national God, Jehovah guides all the affairs
of this people. All their past history, all their institutions,
the Exodus, the royal line, tbe Torah-teachers (Morehs),
whether priests or prophets, the coining relations to Assyria,
all are the special work of Jehovah. " When Israel was a
child, then I loved him and called him. ... I taught him
to go. ... I am Jehovah thy God from the very land of
Egypt."
But this national Israelite God is also to Hosea, as to all
his people since David s day, the Over-Lord over all national
deities. Hosea believes firmly the revelation of the Davidic
conquests. Jehovah has mastered Egypt, and fears not
Assyria. Even death itself and the powers of Sheol will He
plague and conquer.
The fine Hosean touch upon all these faiths is the evident
wondering and trembling uncertainty how this Divine power
shall be made good. There is indeed no lack of certainty
that it shall be made good. But the utterly sympathetic
man has a sort of filial sympathy with his God in the
quivering strain of heart and nerve and hand amid real work.
2. Hosea shared most thoroughly in the Amosian
advance from all these previous attainments to the grander
grasp of righteousness. Not Amos alone beheld in vision
Jehovah s demand for a justice far wider than Israel had
once counted perfect, a justice between man and man
wherever the Davidic empire had reached. Not Amos s
conscience alone had grown deeply tender while it had
grown so large. For the words of Hosea (x. 12), which
Jeremiah quoted 150 years later, tell how the later great
prophet of personal godliness learnt righteousness at the
feet of that twin-prophet of Amosian purity. In evidence
scan Hosea s words closely.
136 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
(a) His idea of purity stands out all the finer for that very
revolt of his soul that so startles us as we read it and blush.
He had to speak. He had to rise from the dark sorrow.
And more, the pain is pictured by him as a feature of God.
Hosea thinks of Jehovah as so sacredly pure, that His purity
has a concrete well-defined character. Here is no vague
sentimentalism, but a clear demand for a certain treatment
of the souls of men and women.
(b) This view of Jehovah s righteousness is accom
panied in Hosea by condemnation of the other great wrongs
wrongs against property and bodily life. And at these
very points it is the priests who are heavily blamed ;
because they ought to be what they are not at all, true
exponents of Jehovah s mind. They ought to give true
Torah, and so stay the evil ; but they are actually blood
thirsty and thieves. Jehovah and Hosea are utterly against
them.
(c) The righteousness of God which Hosea exalts is
like to that of Amos and also different ; it is of a higher
grade. The very features which mark the two men as
akin reveal singularly the higher rank of Hosea. We shall
see presently that to him righteousness and knowledge of
God are virtually one, and graciousness of character is highest
righteousness. But these peculiarly Hosean thoughts stand
best in a later setting.
(d) Let us observe as we advance how evident it is that
we have here learned something of the general level of reli
gious attainment of all the best men of the people. What
is common to both Hosea and Amos is no mere individual
characteristic, but may be counted as the general faith of
their best men. Certainly the Hebrew people of that
day, although not indeed every Hebrew, believed in a God,
Jehovah, who cared chiefly for the right. It may be said
right is itself a relative thing, varying as the ages move on.
CHAP, iv.] HOSEA S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 137
But we know now that Jehovah, whom these men believed
in and obeyed, valued each soul of every Hebrew man or
woman, with its endowments of body and property, of
affections and of reason, as an essential part of the divinely-
prized Israel, and He prized all surrounding peoples as
secondary indeed, or even subject to them, and yet all
indispensable to Israel, and therefore within Jehovah s
ruling care.
3. Now we can understand Hosea s own peculiar addi
tion to the conception of God ; we can see the vision which
was given to himself alone. What had he which was neither
the common inheritance from the fathers and the Davidic
age, nor yet common to himself and men like Amos ? That
special feature which we have already traced in him, his
strong sympathy of soul, will be our clue here again as we
watch his closest gaze on God to learn the new depths he
saw there.
(a) It is through his sympathy with men, and his own
fine humanity truly prizing itself that he counts human
graces worthy of Jehovah, and attributes them to Him.
(a) So he thinks that Jehovah has the heart of a husband,
husband-love, a husband s ways.
((3) He is a Father also. The doctrine of the Fatherhood
of God was not new in Galilee. It was at least as old as
Hosea, and Jesus showed us the fact of it. He has not
merely left us a doctrine : the Son of man icas and is the
Son of God. And Hosea felt and prophesied 800 years
before that his heart said this must be true, Jehovah must
have a Father s heart.
(7) Hence too He must be a great Leader of the
nation ; the patriotic zeal that flamed in Hosea must burn
in Jehovah.
(<5) Altogether He must be of the same nature as the
men of Israel. We saw his faith in the converse of this
138 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
doctrine. Men are of the same nature as God; that is the
declaration of the preciousness of men : but God is of the
same nature as men ; that is the foundation of all theology,
all philosophy, all knowledge, all possible peace of mind, for
it means we can learn something of God. It is the eternal
truth of the cross, God manifest in the flesh, even unto
that death. It is the answer, an answer of faith alone
indeed, yet a great full satisfying adequate answer to all
the deep craving of the soul. It is the Gospel that Jesus
revealed and that Paul declared ; it was also the soaring
faith of old Hosea. Well was he called " Hosea," " He hath
caused salvation." By that profound instinctive sympathy
for men which the Divine Creator-finger planted in him,
and the hand of Divine Providence nurtured in him, Hosea
thought of God, beheld God and declared Jehovah is of us.
Not completely defined was his treasure, but he had it ;
the true light that lighteth every man beamed into his
eyes, and from him so far away the bright beam comes
flashing through the ages. This has been a glorious world,
and is, wherein such visions dwell.
(I) It was said above that Hosea s conception of God s
righteousness has lineaments which are finer than any in
the Amosian conception. The finest moral graces of men
which Hosea knew and understood, because he shared them,
were richly prized by his sympathetic soul. They were
invaluable, they were Divine.
(a) Jehovah must love knowledge, and must seek it as
the greatest righteousness, because Hosea and men like him
did. Jehovah s great demand, cries Hosea, is that men
should know Him. This is the prophet s declaration of the
vision of God s soul which has been given him. Jehovah,
cries he virtually, exalts knowledge as a supreme element
in righteousness. To grow ignorant is deep sin, and Je
hovah fights against that ignorance, that He may fight it
CHAP, iv.] HOSEA S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 139
away. Accordingly He exalts the power of reason ; God
honours the reason of man singularly by constant argument
with men. He is scrupulously reasonable Himself in all
His deeds and purposes ; and He, the great King, is ready
to submit all His ways to the judgment of the wise man.
In this high faith Hosea is almost unique, for few Hebrew
religious thinkers of far later days have traced so profoundly
the authorship of God in the human reason. And yet again
and again they have quoted Hosea s eulogy of the wise,
when their own words perhaps could scarce have framed
such faith.
(/3) But most fair of all the attributes clothed upon his
Jehovah by Hosea is that gracious character, that ckcsedh
OPQ)) a thing so full of meanings and of beauty that many
words are needed for its translation. Grace, which is favour
to the ill-deserving, is implied in it, and the gracious way
which sets every present heart at peace, and the gracefulness
which delights and makes the hearts smile for gladness ;
that grace it is that knows no barrier to its loving, its
kindness, its royal benediction. That was the sort of
righteousness Tlosea required from men. He must have
known its sweetness, and to know it is to have it within
the soul, filling every passage of that labyrinth. He
counted it the thing Jehovah required, and so the thing
Jehovah knew and loved and possessed. Such a law of
righteousness could be given only by such a righteous law
giver. Amos had exalted Jehovah s severe command, " Do
right," " Seek good," until the task seemed mysterious and
hard, almost impossible and cruel. Hosea speaks of Jehovah s
grace, and all the trouble and fear fly away like a morn
ing mist. The righteous God is gracious ; there is no
impossibility now.
(c) From the same source in Hosea s soul, his singular
regard for all he has in himself, rises his picture of the
140 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
Divine anxiety amid His working. The prophet attributes
to Jehovah a sense of anxiety or uncertainty as to the way
in which His ends shall be accomplished. This is the inevi
table accompaniment of the reasoning with men which runs
through the whole book. It is, of course, most dramatic
ally exhibited in the scenes of the second chapter. There,
as we watch the wayward tempted and tempting ones, and
turn to the husband, stricken, yet bent on saving the life he
loves, we can see the wistful eye, and, as the brow is knit
in close study, we almost hear the anxious questioning :
How shall I convert the heart back again to goodness and
to me ? Tell me what can I do. This way I will try !
How could I give the beloved up ! Oh no, I shall find a way !
Difficulty ! Yes, yes, indeed, almost beyond thought, well-
nigh past power. But the wise must win ; the prudent soul
shall know, shall walk on, and at last shall behold the light.
The scene is marvellous, and almost unique. But Hosea s
vision of the very living God, quick, striving in intensest
agony of mind, was the far-away forerunner of the pro-
foundest philosophy of creation, of Providence, of Triune
Father, Son, and Spirit God.
(d) This leads at once to the highest element in Hosea s
conception, his declaration that Jehovah is not human at
all. Strange fact, that the very man who can prize his
fellow-men most accurately and most richly can estimate
God most grandly. "We are often superficial, and speak
of God as of a great noble in our race ; His name sounds
like a great family name of our known kin. But let
our vision grow keen by gazing into the dark for help
when no man s help is seen, and then the truest human
reason knows best that its God is more than itself. He
who cries in darkness for help, convinced that his voice
will reach a kindred ear, is most certain that his helper
shall be one more powerful than himself.
CHAP, iv.] HOSEA S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 141
Let us trace the reasoning of the prophet s soul in that
classic passage (xi. 8-12) that records his profoundest gaze
into the very heart of God and God s peculiar word to
Hosea himself.
(a) Invasion is coming, he cries ; and the terrible judg
ment-oracle of Amos is as righteous as it seems inevitable.
" He shall not return to Egypt, but the Assyrian shall be
his king " king of that Israel, child, son, that " I loved and
called out of Egypt ! "
(/3) Yet how is it possible ! Hosea s love, his manly
love, his patriot love, his husband love, all mount and beat
in agony against such undoing. No ! they cry, he cries ;
and in his faith, that springs highest in the hour of need, he
declares his own yearning to be God s yearning too. God s
yearning, the fountain, is the same, only it is far greater
than this stream of Hosea s. More truly we must say,
according to our own faith, God yearned in love, and
yearned to tell His love ; but He had no voice save the
voice of man, which He had created, by which to speak
the language that man s ear could hear, and therefore He
breathed, He brought forth the faith of Hosea, and thus
Hosea s words.
(y) In Hosea s speech is Jehovah s speech :
" I am Israel s Devoted One.
My home is in Israel s midst.
"When that home fails, then my heart fails.
Truly do I come likewise from afar;
For I rule all, even the Assyrians who march from afar.
But I am Israel s Devoted One :
I come not to destroy Israel"
(S) Now turns the manly soul of the prophet to give
answer and reason to the questioning of men, and of an
Amos, and of himself, How can Jehovah thus pass by
wrong? We know our own heart s declaration^ " All that
142 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
sin shall die ; " and we have declared this in the name of
Jehovah, saying for Him, " All the sinners of my people
shall die by the sword." We know not how He can come
hither without destruction in His hand.
" He is God, and not man,"
answers Hosea, the man and seer, who sees beyond man.
But how can due retribution be left undone ?
" He is God, and not man,"
answers Hosea. Men know not, but God knows. But
how can He dwell with evil ?
" He is God, and not man,"
comes the answer. The Devoted One, who must dwell in
the midst of Israel, can create again what man has undone.
But can Jehovah cleanse away evil from men and make
them good again ?
He is God, and not man.
He will come, but not to destroy. He will be as the dew
unto Israel.
Take with you words and turn to Jehovah.
Say unto Him,
Take away all iniquity.
Thus a gospel of reconciliation is dawning. The preacher
of salvation begins to proclaim :
" I, Jehovah, am thy God, even from Egypt :
There is no Saviour beside Me."
What is now prophesied with trembling shall yet be preached
by a great host of voices.
(c) Is it finely characteristic that the whole book closes
with the appeal to the wise (the DSDn), and to their
prudence ? Is the verse not Hosea s, but a note on the last
CHAP, iv.] HOSEA S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 143
flyleaf from some thoughtful reader ? If so, that reader
was the truest pupil of Hosea. He spoke the very heart
of Hosea ; the prophet spoke through him in this verse.
It sums up all the trembling hope, all the boundless faith
in God, all the certainty that righteousness is right, all the
kindly, manly estimate of man. We too may close thus :
Whoso is wise, even he shall understand Hosea ; lie shall
understand nnd love God.
CHAPTER V.
THE ADVANCE MADE AND TO BE MADE.
I . The material pathway for this.
IT is well to gather here in short outline the results thus far
in order that, holding them in mind as points of attachment,
we may quickly build again in our imagination the living
religious society of the time. But what time ? one naturally
asks.
Let us first, then, recall the chronological data on which
we have been working, and are to work for some time. For
closer investigation of dates the reader may consult Professor
W. K. Smith s Appendices to his Lectures on the " Prophets
of Israel."
The David-era culminates with Elijah about 8506.0. Then
evidently the faith that Jehovah was Lord of hosts, God over
all gods, had become the fixed Hebrew belief. During the
next hundred years came about those developments which
have given to us written prophecy. The earliest preserved
works of prophetic men, Amos and Hosea, were uttered
between 800 and 750 B.C. We shall see that the lad Isaiah
had his first vision (chap, vi.) say in the year 750, when he
was probably some fifteen years old.
This first half of the eighth century B.C. was the era of
stern consciousness of duty. Certainly the demand for
righteousness made by a few is itself proof that many lives
were far below that demand ; yet even these must have
understood verv clearly the words and the standard of the
144
CHAP, v.] ADVANCE MADE AND TO BE MADE. 145
preachers. It was the age of conscience, and it was also
the age of comparative comfort. The very long reigns of
Uzziah of Jerusalem and Jeroboam II. of Samaria partly
produced and partly were produced by this time of ease.
But darkness was creeping on. About 750 B.C. Assyria s
last great assertion of world empire and her last terrible
conflict with Egypt began together. Beginning about 750,
this grew fiercer as the century grew. In the second half of
the eighth century she was to be the terror and the destruc
tion of Palestine and its Hebrew peoples. That belt of
land, the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, semi-tropical
yet well -watered, and fairly level, was the great road
between three continents, and especially the highway from
the valley and plains of the Euphrates to the valley and
delta of the Kile. The march of the caravan in peace, or of
the army in war, was seen every day. Here, from Amos s
day onward for a hundred and fifty years, the advance or
retreat of Assyrian or Egyptian hosts was almost ceaseless.
If those greater armies rested a while in their homes, then
other bauds and masses of marauders coursed to and fro.
These were at times the near Syrians from the white
mountains and rich valleys of Lebanon and beyond, or they
were later on the hordes of wild Scythians from the far-off
lands we now call Russia and Tartary.
The dread warnings of Amos meant that he heard the
thunder-mutterings along the horizon. In his high moun
tain-home in south Judea all was comparatively safe ; the
foreigner s tread would scarcely ever leave the easy coast-plain
and the road through Philistine towns to plunder Judah.
But in Samaria, the rich market-town in the very centre of
the great highway, and above all at the court, both he and
Hosea saw the certain danger of the city and its lands.
Traders, travellers, and courtiers from the far north were
bringing in the first rumours of Assyrian purpose and
march.
E
14G OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. v.
Hosea tells far more fully than Amos of the nearing war-
flood. His picture of intestine quarrellings, overturnings,
recklessness, revolution, scarcely needs the story of 2 Kings
xv. to give it definite line and shade. Simultaneously with
the death of the two strong chiefs Jeroboam II. and Uzziah,
Assyria and Egypt began their invasions, or at least their
rival grim coquettings. Had the strength of the two
Hebrew princes prevented earlier attack, or was it their
prudence only ? Perhaps they had understood, as Jere
miah understood long after, how to adapt themselves to
the advances of the overwhelming powers, and to study the
comfortable safety of their subjects rather than a greedy love
of mastery for themselves. But these princes died, and at
once, terror rolled in from far, and the fever of disorder
broke out within.
Now we see the setting of the burden of these prophets.
While brightness still beamed on every side they demanded
righteousness worthy of their blessings, and pointed the
demand with earnest warning that possible evil was not far
away. But the evil began to lower darkly ; and now still
maintaining their high demand, and their estimate of men s
responsibility, the prophets stretch out the hand and cry for
unseen help. It was sorely needed in those fifty years that
followed Amos s preaching. Let us then gather here in
summary what truths Hosea proclaimed as comfort in this
day of darkness, and then we shall ask what greater pro
blems still he left and compelled his followers to face.
2. The advance made by Hosea.
Here then is the peculiar height that Hosea reached, or
here, rather, are the special depths he sounded in the great
heart of God.
(a) He has grasped some hope for the sinner. The story
of faith in atonement has begun.
CHAP, v.] ADVANCE MADE AND TO BE MADE. 147
(Z>) That hope speaks out in a definite theory of the way
of salvation. This is no mere vague hope, but the man of
faith tells us he can conceive a great possible plan for atone
ment, and he tells us what it is.
(c) The plan springs from a new, greater and diviner
conception of God s character. It is no new God that has
been made by men, but the great Spirit has touched men
with new power to see, has revealed Himself as never
before. They behold, and cry, He is God, not man. He is
Israel s Devoted One. When He comes it is not to destroy
the evildoers. He can show favour to the fallen.
((/) And this new superhuman view of God springs amidst
and from a far profounder, richer view of the value of man.
Included here must be the richer view of history which we
find, and the fine, unostentatious, yet dignified self-estimate
of the prophet. The knowledge of the value of men comes
because the speaker has learned his own value.
(c) Here must be singled out a special feature of this high
estimate of man. Knowledge is exalted, and ever presses
to the front as the secret of goodness. Hosea s special
claim is that it is knowledge of God which saves ; none the
less emphatically is it knoidedye. It may be possible for us
to grow much wiser than those old writers, but there is an
eternal truth in this Hosean doctrine. That recognition of
facts and truths in God s ways and deeds, which in a word
we call knowledge of God, is essential to life ; we may well
say it is life. They who would give life must give knowledge,
and they must have it themselves abundantly.
(/) Let us set out by itself another new trait in the
humanity of Hosea which sheds beauty on every side from
its own beautiful nature. He exalts marriage far, far higher
than it has been before. Not with words of plea or praise,
but with tenderest respect he lifts the love of man and
woman into almost loftiest sacreduess. Israel seems to him
the beloved wife of Jehovah.
148 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. v.
(#) To close, we observe Hosea s advance far beyond
Amos s position towards worthy valuation of formal religious
observances. Only symbols they all are, and not God, for
they are the work of men s hands ; yet such priests as they
have, and princes too, are God s voice. Such sacrifices as
they may have, more or fewer, for he says little of them, are,
or ought to be, blessed occasions of family fellowship with
the Husband, Father, Jehovah. As for their symbolical
pillars of stone, their ephods, whether of precious metal or
of woven stuff, their teraphim, each is to Hosea a possible
shechinah, the abode of God, where the soul may find the
very gate of heaven.
3. The advance still needed.
Hosea leaves problems still unsolved. Certainly no man
can declare all the revelations of God that other souls need,
else those souls would not know the revealing grace of God
towards themselves. They would have no personality in
their life. The new questioning which rises within each soul
is simply the outcome and the proof of the new individual
personality. The great way of God is indeed always the
same ; He will always answer the questionings of the sons
of men. But no son of man can enter into the joy of the
sons of God save by crying to God himself for the answer
to his own individual life s needs and questionings.
Hosea s failure to solve all problems was itself a true
solution of life s problem; it was a law and a prophecy,
"Ask still, and revelation shall still come." What questions
do his words start, and yet leave unsolved ?
(a) His theory of regeneration must fail. Affliction does
not make men good. In pain men cry out, indeed, for help
from the unseen ; but often they curse bitterly the afflicting
hand. Men do not kiss the rod ; it is rather the saviour,
the defender, him who wards off the stroke, that they learn
to love.
CHAP, v.j ADVANCE MADE AND TO BE MADE. 149
And ignorance is not the cause of all sin. Rather to him
that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
A plan of regeneration must indeed set every motive, all
knowledge and light, before a habitual wrongdoer, but then,
besides, it must win him to do what he knows to be most
reasonable, most happy and best. From Hosea s plan men
turn away, and long for a new creation, a power to be "born
again."
(I) Hosea s lines of advance from the faiths of Amos
bring eager hopes rather than clear possessions. His large
human and sympathetic love bids faith rest in the love
of God ; but henceforward concrete methods must be defi
nitely proclaimed, tried, and moulded into ever new fitness
to the lives that use them. Henceforward there must be
reflection on the profound faith of such as Hosea. Philo
sophy has begun, for Hosea himself has reasoned and
argued ; and men must now listen for the revelations of G od
in the hidden reflection of their own mind on the ivcuj of
the Grace of Jehovah.
(c) For, to speak more particularly, Hosea has breathed
out his own and all men s need of some visible manifestation
of God, but that very need will demand the time and the
place and the form which alone are holy. Because men
need a sanctuary, therefore ere long a sanctuary-law shall
be exalted, and for a time obeyed. Sacrifices will not seem
sacred unless they become separated from the family meal
and the common places of resort. More still shall men
need. They cry now to God for forgiveness, and sit with
priestly teachers round the feast of propitiation for sin ; but
the penitent soul in its hour of subdued reflection craves
special and minute direction lest it sin again. The sym
pathetic prophecy of Hosea is not enough. Law must appear ;
ritual must be used in the acres to come.
PART III.
THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH.
CHAPTER I.
A SKETCH OF THE WHOLE COURSE OF THE DEVELOPMENT
OF HIS THOUGHT, AS MANIFESTED IX HIS RELATION
TO ZION.
| I. Perspective in history.
ATTENTION has been often turned of late to the meaning and
beauty of the book of Isaiah. A gifted, but alas ! now
vanished hand has written gracefully of the beauty hidden
in our common English version of the prophet s oracles, and
has bidden us share the delight he found in the wondrous
visions. But that beauty in Isaiah s book grows fairer far if
we will look on those visions in their true perspective.
For there is a perspective in life, and one event ranks
there after another, with thought following in the train of
thought. At one point perhaps a new conception is nearing
the dawn, and behind the translucent darkness there is
swelling the rich wealth of brightness that in a moment
shall burst in joyous vision on us, now as never before, and
never perhaps again. Or perchance yonder a giant form of
faith is withdrawing, mellowing into a dream of the past,
fair still, but speechful only as it quietly points to its great
followers, prophesying a greater future. Therefore let there
stand here before the book of Isaiah a portrait of the man we
105
CHAP, i.] THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH. 151
would describe as frontispiece. And let it be a portrait of a
living man, not in stone, but in action, not a motionless soul,
but a man actually receiving revelation from his God.
In the full study of Isaiah all the rich detail of his thought
must be enshrined ; here it is enough to trace one bright
beam along its quivering path. Let us begin acquaintance
with him by watching his ever-deepening grasp of his
plainest faith and his wondrous work as he imprints that
faith upon the very traditions of the people. Let us look at
Isaiah s personal development in his thought concerning
Zion.
2. The, faiths before Isaiah concerning Zion.
Recall for a moment what we have learned of men s faith
Zionwards before Isaiah s day.
(a) What the young prophet could inherit from the pre-
Davidic days was the faith in a great Deliverer, God, and in
His hovering presence at many a sacred spot in Canaan
where patriarchs had met Him. This was the faith on the
one hand; on the other was the consciousness of feeble
ness in the people throughout all its loosely knit families
and tribes. They could only cry to their God for deliverance
from themselves, and strive to weld a stronger union more
worthy of Jehovah. The bond was welded by David s hand,
and held well for a while. So Isaiah looked back to the
great man who was after Jehovah s heart, for he had made
the tribes all one Hebrew nation, and he had taught them
too that their Jehovah, the God of Israel, was also the God
of all hosts. This faith, which King David founded by his
sword and sceptre, the prophet Elijah sealed finally by his
oracles and command. Jehovah, God of Israel, was hence
forth to be Jehovah alone, the only true God.
(I) Amos had risen to a far higher faith. The Lord of
hosts was Lawgiver and Judge of hosts. The Deliverer
was all-righteous, and demanded all righteousness. " Seek
152 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
good and ye shall live," he cries, "for so Jehovah, God of
hosts, shall be with you, as ye say." It seems almost the
climax of truth, it sounds like a wonderful anticipation of the
Teacher who sat by Sy char s well and proclaimed, " God is a
Spirit." But there was an awful phase of Amos s faith
utterly unlike the gospel of Sychar s Saviour, for he healed
the woman s sin-sick soul, but Amos knew of no forgiveness.
Amos s gospel had no room for mercy in it. It cried only,
"Seek good, and ye shall live," for "All the sinners of my
people shall die by the sword."
(c) Hosea s deeper insight saw man s need of forgiveness,
and also God s need to forgive. He too demanded perfect
righteousness, but he searched for a way to better life and
joy for the unrighteous. He felt the wrong of sin, and cried
again God s judgments against wrongdoers ; but he felt in
behalf of man, and in behalf of God too, that God must be
gracious, and must know some way of grace beyond men s
knowledge. He knew, moreover, men s need of visible,
tangible tokens ; and while Amos, the lone mountaineer, had
scorned sanctuaries, Hosea, the man among men, knew the
blessing that hovered round altars, shrines, symbols of God s
face.
(d) Isaiah s coming doctrine was to bind together all these
faiths. He was to centralise the faith in a material revela
tion of the gracious love of Jehovah in the sanctuary of Zion.
That rock and temple were to be to him, and so to the
Hebrews, and thence to the world, a symbol of the devoted
love of God. But ere the prophet saw that, he was to try the
stern Amosian faith in Divine righteousness, and to declare
the Amosian oracle of judgment. Forgiveness was not to be
at first his remedy for awful sin.
(e) Let us look back on the story of the Zion sanctuary
hitherto.
(a) Students are aware that only some three and a half
centuries before Isaiah s day Jerusalem was not a Hebrew
CHAP, i.] THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH. 153
town, but alien from both Judah s land to the south of it,
and Israel s land that began immediately on the north.
While David was ruling in Hebron, the future seat of his
long dynasty was the stronghold of his bitter enemies, the
Jebusites. But David besieged and reduced their fortress ;
and then he made his military skill and his statesmanlike tact
notable for ever by his choice of that spot of neutral ground
as the seat of his government over the united north and
south, Israel and Judah.
(/3) In David s day, and for generations before, it was
Shiloh, some fifteen miles north in Israel, that seems to have
been counted the chief among the many sanctuaries, where
David and Samuel, the patriarchs, the judges, the kings and the
people worshipped. Shiloh became neglected and dishonoured,
as many records tell us, but its abandonment does not seem
to have been held due to a substitution of Zion instead of
Shiloh, as if Zion had been discovered in David s day to be
the divinely ordered spot. Shiloh was abandoned, not at all
for Ziou s sake, but because of wrongdoings in Shiloh itself.
Jeremiah, long after Isaiah s day, says so, and warns Zion
that its present distinction, due to no more inherent grounds
than Shiloh s, may easily be forfeited for similar reasons.
No Zion had ever been, if Shiloh had not sinned ; Zion might
become nothing, exactly as did Shiloh. It took many a
century, and a long exile, to change into a Divine oracle the
cry which Jeremiah had scorned, " The temple of Jehovah,
the temple of Jehovah are these." Indeed, the honour paid
to Beersheba and Bethel by the patriarchs, and to JNIizpah,
Cilgal, Shiloh, and many another altar by the prophets and
all men of the Davidic days, lead us to think that Zion was
not a favourite sanctuary before Isaiah s prophecies. The
slight regard for Zion that Amos, Hosea, Elijah had, confirms
this.
(7) David built an altar to Jehovah in his new capital, but
the sanctuary where it stood was of the simplest nomadic
154 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. r.
order. Where he met his God, there, like Jacob, he set up
his altar, aud there he spread a tent for the abode of Jehovah,
and for the ark, the symbol of His oracle.
Solomon built a magnificent temple upon that spot, where
his father had prayed ; he lavished on it his own great skill
and the immense wealth his greater father had won and
bequeathed. But Solomon seems to have dazzled the sight
of his austere people with the glory of this sanctuary,
gorgeous like the glittering shrines and ornate symbols of
Tyre and her luxurious sisters. Moreover, Solomon s temple
was to be a pantheon. The whole family of the gods must
lodge here, thought the exalted king, for his heritage of
power over all peoples, from Egypt to Euphrates, must be
symbolised by his assemblage of all their heavenly lords in
this central palace. Jehovah was doubtless counted the Lord
of the hosts here marshalled ; but His simple worshippers
must wander through a distracting maze to find their own
loved God, if haply then they still prefer Him before all that
glorious company. How strange that after all this such high
blessing came in Zion. It came slowly, and it came through
Isaiah.
(8) Watch how slowly it came. There is an under-current
of connection, not obscurely expressed, between that Solo
monic luxuriance of religious eclecticism and the speedy revolt
of the northern Israel from the house of David. Thereafter
Ephraim never worshipped with Judah, nor bowed to her
sceptre ; and for the unhappy division of the kingdom in
twain Solomon s religious unwisdom seems to have been
sadly to blame. The rent in the royal power was a heavy
blow to Judah and to David s throne, but it was a heavier
blow to the prospects of Zion. Zion had become the occasion
of the estrangement, the rock of offence to kings and people.
To predict that she should become the centre of all light, of
all love, of all nations, seemed impossible.
(e) For many generations even Judah herself did not consent
CHAP, i.] THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH. 155
to worship in Zion alone. Certainly there seem to have been
few shrines in the poor bare south as compared with fertile
Ephraim s many sacred spots, yet Isaiah, in his early days,
had not learned to honour her altogether, as his taunt in his
opening text of chapter ii. tells. And quite a hundred years
after Isaiah had preached his great faith in Zion there were
rnanv country altars to be broken down by Josiah. Jere-
/ / v
iniah himself, of that date, was one of the priests of Anathoth ;
hence perhaps his condemnation of Zion ; hence perhaps also
Ezekiel s surprising condemnation of Jeremiah along with the
people whom that saint was toiling to bless. Of course by
that day, 600 B.C., the inhabitants of the royal city, and Eze-
kiel among them, had learned to honour their temple and her
priests, the Zadokites, as the best and only true institutions.
We have to trace how, in Isaiah s own day, and by his
faith and word, that great change began to dawn. To
Isaiah, not at first, but after long years and toil, came a
vision of Jehovah s gracious healing love pouring forth from
Zion for an unclean people in the hour of deepest spiritual
despair. We have seen, then, the story of Zion before
Isaiah, and before his own awakening to his Zion-faith.
3. His own experience in Zion.
We turn to the story of Isaiah s own experience.
I. He was born probably between 770 and 760 B.C. That
was a time of manifold importance in the world s story, for
just then, far to the west, two great peoples were awaking
into consciousness, as the dating of the Olympiads and the
founding of Rome tell, and far to the east the old nations of
the Tigris and Euphrates were all astir in deed and word,
seeking world-empire, and recalling and recording their
older and their younger story on the slabs we find and
read to-day. Yet perhaps the greatest, and far the subtlest,
of all the factors for later life was the wondering about God
156 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
that filled the Jew boy Isaiah in Jerusalem. We can fancy
his boyhood among the courts and lanes of the rocky capital.
As he played he watched the new fortresses a-buildiiig under
the Prince Uzziah, well named thus "Fortress of Jehovah."
The lad would scarcely dream that this loved Zion had ever
been aught but the sacred centre of the whole world s
strength. Did he play in the gorges beneath those tower
ing walls ? Did he step beside his father Amoz, " the firm-
treading man," along those echoing aisles and toward those
smoking altars that had stood now three hundred years ?
Did he not gaze in wonder at the splendour Solomon reared,
and the follies of his unwise successors had scarcely marred ?
Surely to the young poet-soul that sanctuary might seem the
very abode of the God of Ages the glorious throne on earth
of Jehovah s heavenly glory.
Doubtless the lad heard often in those wide courts the rapt
utterances of strangely-clad seers from southern ravine and
rock, or from more northern fruitful vale. Perhaps he
strayed after these men of God as through dark lane they
threaded out to market-square Rehoboths," to cry aloud
there of sin and for the right. Doubtless he would hasten
home, and in some housetop corner he would brood upon
their words, then ponder over the written sayings of the
older prophets, storing in his memory their burdened cries
and w r ondrous faiths. So probably did he learn that text,
full of high hope, which he was to write one day over his
own first lament for his country. The words of the past seer
prophesied that light should flow out of Zion : the lad must
have caught up that hope eagerly ; he was to learn from the
present seers to doubt it. He was himself publicly to deny
it, and then most wondrously to assert it. His faith and
word touching Zion should be the light to save and bless all
Hebrews and all men. He was to compel into the one focus
of his soul all heaven s beams that shone down through the
past, and all that burst daily through the darkness of the
CHAP, i.] THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH. 157
present. He was to move all souls around him that seemed
so dead. He was to illumine all the past, and to send on
through all coming 1 ages a light to lighten men by revealing
the very face of God Himself.
2. In those early years the lad had a strange experience.
The great chieftain Uzziah lay a-dying. It may be that his
*/ v O */
leprosy-bitten form lay already cold in the rocky tombs, and
his spirit had returned to God from its busy, weary toil.
Was it this failing of the strength of men that sent the sen
sitive Isaiah away to the sanctuary, to sit silent there, shaken
to the soul by this strange thing, a king s death ? Such a
dread day the boy had never known before ; scarcely even
his father remembered the like, for it had not been in Judah
for well-nigh half a hundred years. The trembling soul drew
instinctively toward God for help. But he was to tremble
yet more awfully amid his search for God s comfort. Bowed
and covered he sat, buried in his thought. Then God shook
the earth. The foundations of the great temple quaked, the
boy s heart quivered, bright flashes flew across the darkened
halls. A light that was not of earth filled the boy s soul : he
saw God. He saw and lived. While he lay stricken to the
earth with awe God talked with him. God came to him;
God gave him clean lips to talk with God. There was other
converse also ; the heavenly ministrants spake together with
veiled voice of the holy devotion of Jehovah to His own.
God thought on the lad. Was not Isaiah the representative
there of Jehovah s own beloved, and did not all the move
ments of that vision seem like a wooing of Isaiah by Jehovah
and for Jehovah by His angels ? How singular the sup
pressed eagerness of God to win this boy s help. Jehovah
is burdened with a care, and cannot speak out His will to
men. He needs a human voice to reach human souls, and
therefore suppliant He seeks His angels counsel whom to
send. The angels cannot go, but the young man rises at
the thought. This desire of God is a command to him. He
158 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
rises filled with the sense of a Divine commission, and with
its strength.
3. What was this commission ?
(ci) The question becomes complicated at once when we
reflect on the well-known but peculiar position of the vision
in the course of the book. Why does it not stand at the
beginning ? Had Isaiah begun to prophesy long years
.before he had the vision and its call? Had he already
declared all the stern judgments of the earlier chapters,
when this theophany came as a revelation to close and even
to reprove that early tone, and to introduce an entirely new
and truly godlike utterance ? Or was the vision indeed the
occasion of the lad s first dedication of himself to prophetic
work ? Were his first call and ordaining here, as commonly
supposed ? Why then, in this case, does it not stand first
among the chapters ? Perhaps he received the vision twice ?
Or he may have obeyed it at first with partial grasp of its
great meaning, and then recalled it again amid his troubled
work, remembering then the grace of the Hand that first
ordained him, and feeling that thus far he had prophesied
only of judgment, and now must prophesy of grace also ?
Was this the reason why he set the story of the vision there,
as the preface to his new and gracious declaration ?
(b) Known dates do not help us much here. If Uzziah s
death fell, not about 760 B.C., as has been supposed, but as
late as 750 B.C., as juster calculations say, and if Isaiah
died about 700 B.C., when his prophecies cease, then to read
chapter vi. as the story of the initial vision is to count the
prophet a lad of say fifteen to twenty years in 750 B.C., and
a man of sixty-five to seventy at his final words and death.
This seems a reasonable theory, and it agrees with the tenor
of the story of the vision, for this would seem an unnatural
picture unless the boy were comparatively young, untried,
and tender. But why then does not the chapter open the
book?
CHAP, i.] THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH. 159
Perhaps the vision came after the the first period of pro
phesying. In this case the year 750, when Uzziah died,
must have found him already a man of strength and skill, a
man surely of some twenty-five to thirty years. At his
death he would thus be seventy-five to eighty years of age.
The theory is possible, and would agree with the calm
strength of the last words of the great soul. But it does not
fit well the tenor of the call and of the response, for it would
be strange to see the man of chapters ii. to v. put on the
simple untried attitude of chapter vi.
(ti) In either case, however, this chapter vi. may stand where
it does as introduction to a new period of work, whose tone and
aim is remarkably different from that of the early chapters.
Take the former theory. Our wonder over the vision
grows intense as we think that perhaps Isaiah himself wrote
down or told the tale long years after he had seen the vision
and obeyed the call.
Did the man, in his searching after God, in his diligent
inquiry what the Spirit in him signified, look back across the
vista of years once full of hopes, then full of toils, and finally
growing clouded in failure ? Did he wonder, as he recalled
the vision, whether in his first young eagerness he had taken
in all the deep meaning of the revelation ? Did the old
vision become a new vision in the light of the experience
God had given, that divinest " theophany of experience " that
comes to every man ? He would feel justified indeed in all
the work he had done, for the impulse to it was all given in
that first sacred hour ; but he would feel now that far more
was given him than he could then comprehend. He would
see now, in the vision s meaning, truths far higher, far
diviner, truths too big for any soul to know till it had
tried life, but truths which he must now lift up before
men and proclaim to the last ever more and more fully. If
this was the order of events, it was very natural ; we can
understand it thoroughly.
160 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
If, on the other hand, the vision did not come to him until
after his first period of prophesying, then two things are evi
dent. He must first of all have had some sort of initial call
sufficient to send him out on that first mission of judgment,
and then at its close this vision (cf. chap, vi.) revealed to him
the profounder truth of Jehovah s grace toward the unclean,
and sent him out to a very new and different task from the
first. The second theory then resolves itself into a somewhat
less natural case of the first.
There is of course the further theory possible, that not
Isaiah but compilers arranged the order of the chapters.
This would only signify that the compilers saw long ago an
order and progress in Isaiah s utterances ; and seeing the
vision s deeper truths, the kernel of the later work, they
put its story in chapter vi. as the introduction to that later
work. We may leave untouched a remaining theory, that
the position of passages is due to haphazard collection. To
discuss it would be fruitless toil ; better assume any of the
others.
(d) Falling back then on the first theory, let us enumerate
the momenta of the vision, and then \ve can proceed to watch
in the progress of the book and the man the successive rise
of each faith into controlling pre-eminence.
(a) Clearly the Amosian doctrine of stern judgment, and
only a remnant spared, is prominent. Mr. Matthew Arnold
said truly that Isaiah proclaimed the faith, " A remnant only
shall return." The prophet carved his faith upon an en
during monument when he gave the name Shear-Jashubh
(" It is only a remnant that remaineth ") to his son. Isaiah
firmly believed this doctrine in his early days. But Isaiah
was not the first to believe it. Doubtless he learned it from
Amos, who proclaimed it before Isaiah. Isaiah received
many inheritances from the past, and this was one. So
when the vision came, and struck out into vivid form the
faiths which God s providence had been sowing thus in
CHAP. L] THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH. 161
the young soul, then this dread note sounded deep and strong
in the chord. The stern Amosian tone was certain to prevail
for a while in the words of this second Judaean prophet of
the century. He was sure to follow his own compatriot s
teaching; and a young man who cares for God is always
most ready to insist sternly on absolute righteousness with
no compromise, no escape for the evildoer. This is the great
prerogative of young men, so Isaiah speeds away out to pro
claim terrible judgment ; of this stubborn people only a few
shall escape deserved death. The oak-tree of the nation shall
be stripped of all its leaves by the winter blasts, although
within indeed its life shall hide safely.
(/3) The certainty of this safety is the second moment of
the vision. The prominent character of Jehovah revealed to
the young man was His holiness ( ^7P)- This holiness
meant devotion, the devotion of Jehovah to His own peculiar
chosen people. Here we find again a note sounding across
from the past, a heritage of Isaiah from the ministry of
Hosea. Amos had known it, but Hosea had loved and
declared it. Is it strange that to the lad this fair thought
of God seems to be the chief meditation of the heavenly
ministrants ? Although it was an Israelite, Hosea of the
north, a foreigner, who had taught the doctrine, its beauty
had won the instinctive love of Isaiah s heart, and even en
shrined the faith in a sacred place in his imagination.
But consider the meaning of the faith. We read the
seraph s cry, " Holy, holy, holy ! " What was this holiness
in the Hebrew sense ?
(i.) There is certainly something of the idea of " separa
tion " in the word Q-D-Sh ; but what sort of separation,
separation "from" something or separation "to" some
thing?
(ii.) The consequences of the theophany tell us of its
nature. For observe that the vision of the "holy" Je
hovah aroused in Isaiah first a sense of sin, then a sense
L
162 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
of forgiveness, and finally a sense of vocation and power.
Such results would never have been produced by an attitude
of separation and removal of God away from the man ; only
a kind gracious approach to him could work this. Not a
cold, crystalline, icy purity, but the warm tender embrace of
love can thus win. It is the holiness of devotion, not the
holiness of distance, we see here ; it is the holiness of
separation, unto men and to their benefit that humbles and
heals and holds men s hearts.
(iii.) If we trace the Hebrew idea of holiness through the
history of ceremonial practice, we find it constantly equivalent
to the idea of appropriation. The "holy things" described
in Deuteronomy xii. 26 are various kinds of food which may
not be eaten at home or in any chance place, but in the
central sanctuary only. They are however the property and
the food of the worshipper, and are not separated from him ;
and they symbolise his relation to his God. They say " This
man, his food, his all, are devoted to Jehovah." The holy
things are the things appropriated to the symbolical acts
of honour towards God. Such, then, was the meaning of the
word to those Hebrews who adopted Deuteronomy as their
political constitution in Josiah s reign in circa 620 B.C.
About the same date Jeremiah preached, " Make holy a
war upon Jerusalem," i.e., Appropriate a war to her, do it
thoroughly, in all solemn earnest. Devotion is the idea the
word conveys.
After the Exile the people who used the various directions
of Leviticus as their rules of worship had constantly in mind
the fundamental law, " Men must be holy, because their God
is holy." The meaning is evidently, " Your God is devoted
to you, caring for you chiefly among all the peoples, therefore
surely ought ye to care for Him chiefly, devoting your souls
to deeds in His honour. Bear ye His ensigns, for He has
chosen you for His special care." The essential feature in
this old ceremonial holiness was the mutual devotion of Lord
CHAP, i.] THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH. 1G3
and follower. Of course the followers of one chieftain are
separate from any other chieftain s flag and feast, but the
devotion, and not the separation, is the essential matter. Men
who are essentially separated men are essentially friends of
nobody. It is not separatist-holiness, but something of the
old Hebrew holiness we need to-day.
Most clearly was it such holiness of devotion that Jesus
exhibited and required. We read in the vision of His last
prayer that arose so wondrously in His followers hearts,
" Sanctify them in Thy truth ; and for their sakes I sanctify
Myself." On the eve of crucifixion He did not flee from
death, but devoted Himself even unto it, thus devoting
Himself to men. His holiness was no separation from sinful
men, but a coming down to them, even unto the taking all
their form and woe upon Himself with perfect willingness.
He was holy in His clasping souls to His heart, though the
souls had sinned and the love meant death.
(iv.) Philological discussion need not be extensive, for the
matter is simple, if but simply handled. The meaning of the
stem Q-D-Sh can be best illustrated by its actual use in its
various derivations. Of these observe
First. Qadhosh. Jehovah is called Israel s Qadhosh. The
form is infinitive, the nomen actionis ; and it is distinctly
active, certainly not passive, and not even stative. There
fore Jehovah was to the Hebrew one great act of separation
connected with Israel. He is not passive, separated by Israel,
He is essentially active. He is not a Being actively hedging
Himself away, else why should this action respect Israel
alone ? Why should He separate Himself from Israel alone,
and not from other men as well ? Duhm has pointed out
that while He is Qadhosh towards Israel He is " Exalted "
towards all the earth. The best translation of the words
Qadhosh Yisrael is " appropriating self to Israel," or the
" devoted one of Israel." Jehovah is that Deity who devotes
Himself to Israel. Professor Robertson Smith reminds us
164 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
that other Semitic nations use the expression, each applying
it to its own peculiar deity.
Secondly. The word " Qaddishin " is used by the Baby
lonian queen in the Aramaic of Daniel v. 1 1 to describe
the gods. The Babylonian is pictured as counting all the
gods so related to men as Jehovah was related to Israel,
namely, caring for them with all devotion.
Thirdly. The word " Qadhesh," a stative form, was used
to describe those devotees of various sorts who frequented
sanctuaries, sacrificing by their own act their body, honour,
life to the honour of the deity.
Finally. The remaining term " Qudhsh " is a strict passive,
and means something separated, devoted by the worshipper
to the honour of the deity. This word, used as an attributive,
appears in the expression " a hill of a devoted nature," or
" hill of holiness," i.e., holy hill.
Now, arranging all these expressions in derivative order,
we begin with the stem, following with the monosyllabic,
dissyllabic, duplicated (frequentative), and extended forms :
Q-Dh-Sh = Appropriate, or devote.
Qudsh, or Qodhesh = A thing appropriated or devoted.
Qadhosh = An act of appropriation or devotion ; or, used
as an adjective concerning a person = One who devotes all
to some one else, and is all in all to him.
Qadhesh = A devotee.
Qaddish = (Aramaic) One ever appropriating or devoting
himself, a national deity, a numcn proprium.
Qaddesh = He appropriated, devoted, sanctified.
Hithqaddesh = He volunteered for war, &c.
(v.) Finally, the suggestion of Duhm that the idea of holi
ness is an aesthetic one is correct, but should not lead to the
mistake that "to be holy " means "to be separate from
something." Of course the devotee is likely to wear some
badge of distinction, some monastic robe, some aesthetic
garb, and hence the generalisation that holiness is simply
CHAP, i.] THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH. 165
the aesthetic form which marks the devotees of a deity. But
the generalisation fails just at the crucial point. Jehovah is
the chief Holy Person, and His holiness is more than an
aesthetic garb, it is His devoted love, His guarding, healing,
and even forgiving grace.
Such then is the second moment in the vision. As we
recall the faith of Hosea, we feel that there was a providen
tial impression of this faith in God s grace passing over
many hearts in those years. Isaiah may have learnt from
Hosea, perhaps he did ; perhaps he was moved by Hosea
more than his patriotic aversion from an Ephraimite was
willing to allow. In any case, Hosea and Isaiah were both
moved, and to the same thought, by the Spirit of God that
giveth to man his thought.
(7) We find the third moment of the vision in the fact of
its occurrence in the sanctuary in Zion. We recall the stern
cry of Amos, " Seek not sanctuaries, but seek Jehovah ; "
and we know how natural it was that the lad Isaiah should
bend toward his countryman, Amos, as the most favoured
teacher. Yet the far more sensitive soul of Hosea had
uttered the far deeper truth. Man needs visible tokens of
God. A man needs sanctuary. And when Isaiah looked
back upon his early vision for more light on his troubled
path, he remembered God "so as he had seen Him in the
sanctuary ; " he remembered the altar that had seemed indeed
the Father s table whence the angels had fed the child with
the fire, the cleansing, the Spirit, and the words of God.
Amos condemning all known sanctuaries, and Isaiah scorn
ing Zion in his earlier oracles, stood both of them, indeed,
on the level of their time where some sanctuary was sure to
be the very gate of heaven, if one could only find the true
one. And in Zion Isaiah did find it, for he saw God there.
His faith in Zion, springing up after many days, grows into
the glorious form wherein he enshrines his faith in the love-
of God. Immanuel is to him Jehovah in Zion.
166 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
The course of development of this phase of his thought,
will now become evident if we run rapidly along the line of
his utterances touching 1 Zion.
4. Zion in the early discourses.
(Chaps, ii.-v. 24; ix. 8-21 ; v. 25~end. Circa 740-
735 B.C.)
1. These passages seem to date from about 740 B.C., when
Uzziah s glory had passed away, and when Jotham s regency
and reign had altered the state little for either better or
worse. Ahaz was beginning to rule while yet a boy, and
under harem control. He was gifted indeed, but seems to
have been graceless ; he was thoughtful and studious, but
lacking the grasp which his name (Ahaz = grasp) seemed to
claim for him ; he was religious even to superstition, but
without strong faith ; he was fond of beauty, but the prey of
effeminacy. David s son was no saviour of David s people.
It may be that Isaiah had been altogether silent in the
long years between his vision in 750 and these discourses in
740. Perhaps the Hosean influence was breathing on him.
then, like a fragrant breeze soothing him to patience, although
the strong, stern soul of the young man leaned hard toward
the sterner doctrines of Amos. It is worthy of note that in
these years was, no doubt, born to him that son whom he
called Shear Jashubh (" It is a remnant that shall return ").
He bade, as it were, his child carry in his name such an
echo of the Tekoan prophet s voice that the father calling
to the son might ever be repeating the great preacher s
righteous sentence.
2. But he who so sternly forbore to speak could at length
forbear no longer. The times were rotten. Not the little
lad Shear Jashubh s name alone suffices for a sign ; out from
the father s soul, full to breaking with God s indignation,
must break forth His judgment. Now shall there burst
CHAP, i.] THE EELIGION OF ISAIAH. 167
over Jerusalem the most terrible oracle of judgment that
the literature of the world contains. Scorn is the theme
and fulness of all the prophecies in this section.
3. They open with the quotation of a well-known hope
for Zion, the utterance of an earlier prophetic voice (ii. 2-5).
But when Isaiah has quoted, he turns from the hope for light
from Zion to lighten all peoples, and pictures the sad reality,
all superstition, all folly, all bad. He may have once shared
the fair hope, but now, if Amos has condemned older sanctu
aries, Isaiah will utterly condemn this newer and dearer one ;
he scorns the hollow claim that Jehovah is manifest here.
The torrent of awful eloquence rolls on, condemning wealth,
luxury, state, religion, men, women, all that is fair with all
that is strong, for all is perverted. From the fierce verdict
his thought turns back again to the sanctuary ; and there,
for a moment, the bitter scorn, as if exhausted, rests in a
hope which is itself bitterness. When men are dead, then
God can create life. "When once Jehovah shall have blown
a burning and righteous wind across the sanctuary hill, to
burn away the badness of her best even her daughters
then at the last there may float over every home of the
small remnant in Zion the smoky, flaming sign of reveren
tial feasting. Then every home shall be a pure sanctuary
of Jehovah, and every hearth His altar."
The seer turns to song. He would gladly woo to God
as he sings of Zion, that richest of vineyard hills. But in
vain. All lavish care in hope of delicious fruit there has
only been rewarded with bunches of bitter things. There
fore the love-song fades away, and the dirge of woe ! woe !
woe ! begins. At the last there is heard in the oracle only
a low moan like the moaning of the cold sea. The prophecy
is all dark ; the prophet s own soul is in darkness, for the
prophet of judgment must himself sit down in the gloom he
brings. Isaiah s prophesying has not brought life, but death ;
his own soul seems in utter despair.
168 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP j.
4. Observe one feature of the language of this section.
Isaiah seems determined to push aside all suggestion of the
holiness or devotion of God and men. Only twice in all
these discourses does, he use the words, "The Holy One of
Israel," and only twice more does he use the word " holy."
Like Amos, he avoids the thought. In chap. iv. 3 it is when
he has uttered the sentence of death on all who sin, and
has pictured Zion s desolate gates, that he allows a hope, an
uncertain hope indeed, that then all who are left alive by
the scourge of Jerusalem may be called holy, and be filled
with devotion to their God. In chap. v. 16 is spoken the
dread faith that when proud men are all laid low, then
Jehovah s holiness, His devotion, shall be manifested in the
unwavering firmness of His awful judgments. In verse 19
of the same chapter the prophet records the blasphemous
sneer of the debauchee over God s name, " The Holy One."
" Let this devoted God use more speed in His devoted
work," they cry, not knowing that the long-suffering of
God is their life. Then, with indignation and words that
wax white-hot, Isaiah calls down quick destruction on " such
as have despised the Holy One of Israel." These four utter
ances of the word tell how Isaiah here counts Jehovah s love
a jewel far too precious to come near evil men. He thinks
of this God as devoted indeed, but devoted only to the good.
But the hottest fire burns low at length, and Isaiah s preach
ing of justice ends in failure and gloom. Yet the dawn was
near, for man s extremity is God s opportunity.
5. The hour of change.
The darkness that can be felt in Isaiah s closing sentences
in chap. v. is only the shadow of the darker reality recorded
in the picture of affairs and men in chap. vii. Prof, de
Lagarde shows (Semitica I. 1 2) that chaps, vii. to ix. are only
a cento formed of lines from many separate oracles uttered,
CHAP, i.] THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH. 169
some in the very gloomiest days, and some again as the
joyous songs of firmest faith and expectation, and even actual
possession of blessing. The cento is arranged as a pasan of
joy indeed, and yet one can easily read in it the story of the
dark hours before the dawn.
(1) It was about the year 735 B.C. that the weak, harem-
guided king Ahaz was threatened by two strong allied tribes.
Syria and Samaria exulted in the temporary absence of the
Assyrian over-lord, Tiglath-Pileser, and his armies, and they
leagued to harry little Judah, and, if possible, to depose its
chief, Ahaz. The people of Jerusalem trembled like the leaves
of the forest in the wind. Their city was indeed always com
paratively safe from the great invaders, the Assyrians or the
Egyptians, or the Scythians in later days, for it lay among
the hills away from the great road along the coast ; and
besides, it was of little worth compared, for example, with
Samaria and Damascus, both luxuriantly rich, and both
right upon the great road besides. But safety from giants
was not safety from dwarfs ; and the two small allies knew
no bigger quarry than little Judah nestling among the rocks.
We may as well note by the way that the great story of
revelation is not at all a story of mighty kings and countries,
but of little folk; for these indeed, "and base things of the
world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea,
and things which are not, to bring to nought things which
are."
(2) It was in such a troubled juncture of affairs that there
came to Isaiah one of the most priceless conceptions the
world has known. He was ever tender to his fellows when
trouble fell upon them. The man who thundered threaten-
in gs against Zion s wrongdoing in sunny days sprang to
the defence against a foreign foe ; for the same strength was
strong against every enemy, whether from within or without.
Therefore, on a day when Ahaz examined his defences, Isaiah
went out to meet him with counsel and with cheer. It was
170 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. I.
a heavy task to inspire this heartless prince ; it was all the
heavier that the prophet carne leading by the hand his boy
Shear- Jashubh, the silent foretoken of God s coming judg
ment. Yet this Amos-like symbol was unlikely to win the
careless Ahaz ; it was a far more significant omen that it was
a whispering of the Spirit within him that moved Isaiah to
take the lad. God was near to help ; yes, even the God of
judgment was bringing help.
(3) Isaiah s first words were the stern old Amosian com
mand repeated, " Seek Jehovah, and thou shalt live."
Believe that thou shalt be delivered. Isaiah s faith was
absolute that this deliverance would come. He believed
that Jehovah was simply determined to save, and that at all
costs He would. Whatever sign of this a man might look
for would certainly take place.
Ahaz refused to ask any sign. Isaiah was indignant, and
in the fulness of his sense of his Divine mission, and of the
Divine presence within himself, he poured forth his indigna
tion as the very anger of God. Rev. G. A. Smith points out
with force (Isaiah, 1 14) that Isaiah was here discovering and
exposing an unpatriotic guilty secret of the king s, viz., his
plan to hire great Assyria to destroy the little allied enemies
by giving his own independence and his country s freedom
to Assyria as price. This was the political or material mean
ing, as we may say, of the acts of the king and of the
prophet. We must look what their religious meaning was.
(4) Isaiah first tried to persuade Ahaz by the promise
that he should see any physical phenomenon, whatsoever he
should choose. We may naturally ask, was this a worthy
method of persuasion to godliness, to goodness, to trust in
God ? It is certainly true that the influence of Christ
through these nineteen centuries has gradually done away
this method. It is not employed. We do not bid men ask
signs. We are decidedly not concerned to teach men the
immense power of the great Spirit who controls them. They
CHAP, i.] THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH. 171
believe in that, and tremble. We rather seek to teach them
the character of that Spirit, that he is the Father of Jesus.
So we seek to woo them to trust Him, to love Him, to be
good.
Of course, to produce a change in character we must work
on the will. We must hold up a motive for the soul s
choice ? Yes, but more. We must present such a motive
that the very choice of it will be goodness itself. To make
a soul good you hold up the best, that is, God. The vision
of Him, the choice of Him, the love of Him is good ; it is
conversion, salvation, goodness, life. The rejection of Him
is inexplicable ; it is sin.
This is certainly true. But how is a soul to see God so as
to choose Him. We must see a revelation of Him. The
sense of His presence must come to us along the channel of
of what? simply said, of ourselves. And that to some
men, in some ages, may be "signs." Suppose that the
highest apprehension of God must come by way of thought,
even that must be our thought, linked wondrously all round
with all the other characteristics of the human soul, its
affections and all its sensations. So to-day. So nineteen
centuries ago. One remarkable fact in the Word s be
coming flesh is this, that we can get at Jesus only through
media of a very material nature. So then in Isaiah s day
the command to ask for a sign was the speech wherein an
utter confidence in the love of Jehovah reached out to woo
the soul of Ahaz to like trust.
We may go further. The prophet made it possible, says
some one, for Ahaz to ask some impossible sign, and so turn
Isaiah, and even all religious faith, to ridicule. Be it remarked,
however, that men of faith are, after all, not very often
turned to ridicule in this world. God does take care of them.
But in this case one may suggest that Isaiah should rather
have proposed, " Ask any sign which a man truly at one with
God would ask." This form may seem better, but Isaiah s
172 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
instinct was more correct. He was himself at one with God ;
he would not have asked any foolish sign. And he loved
Ahaz, and was eager to make the king happy ; in pure, honest
goodness he expected the man to be good too. He was pure
in heart, and he saw God ; and he was not deceived. If this
seem all too unreal, and such a man too simple for a prophet
who ought, think some, to be astute, let us remember that
Isaiah had himself received a vision, a sign that was to him
as transcendently great as any sign Ahaz could possibly ask.
He had learned that Jehovah dwelt in Zion to be gracious
there even to the unclean, and even to cleanse them and
trust them with His work. The faith coined into the golden
word Immanuel was born in the temple-vision. Isaiah saw
there God gracious in Zion.
(5) And Ahaz said, "I am not going to ask, and I am not
to keep treating Jehovah as a waverer." The language
might have come from a saint. It is well that in thinking
through the history of the religion of the people, we are not
compelled to give verdict on Ahaz : guilty or not guilty. We
are concerned with the story of religion in the nation, and
may be uncertain here and there concerning individual sins.
But Isaiah s verdict in this story was emphatically, " Guilty,"
and the main point of his indictment of the king was not
carelessness, for Ahaz was anxiously careful, but it was refusal
to let Jehovah act in the way He purposed to act, namely, to
"give a sign." This was what Isaiah called wearisome to
God. The prophet was all overwhelmed and filled with his
new sense of the grace of God that reveals itself in signs, in
a sign, in Zion. It was this sense that the king refused ; so
he refused what to the prophet was the very word of God.
To Isaiah s faith, Jehovah was with him, his speech was
Jehovah s word; the thoughts of Isaiah w^ere the revelations
of Jehovah, God of Israel.
We have here, then, a religious fact in Isaiah s experience
which might and did become a turning-point in the history
CHAP, i.] THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH. 173
of the people. But we have more. The king s opposition
shows that such faitli in Zion s special protection by Jehovah
was a new thing. This will be confirmed by other indica
tions as we proceed. The faith in Zion as the exclusive
choice of Jehovah, His sanctuary, His pledge of His gracious
saving love for Israel, began with Isaiah. A hope there had
been before, and Isaiah tells us of it ; but now came the satis
fying revelation. He grasped the idea, and made it all
in all for himself, until the nation too accepted it as their
central faith.
(6) The sign which Isaiah finally gave to Ahaz, " A virgin
shall conceive and bear a son, and call his name Immanuel,
and ere he be grown a lad this Judah shall be all safe,
although thou, Ahaz, be discomfited " this is in essential
meaning the same as the sign Isaiah had had in the temple
vision. It is certainly also framed in that setting which
Isaiah loved so well, the name and life and value of a child
as a gift from God. But its meaning was, Jehovah is a God
who conies to the wrongdoers in Zion to forgive them.
Abide in Zion and be true to it, for there God gives life.
Elsewhere is death.
6. The growth of the new faith.
A striking side-light confirming the opinion that the
Zion faith was new appears in chap, xvii., the passage next
in chronological order after chaps, vii. to ix. There we find
Isaiah declaring the austere Amosian faith: "In that day
men shall trust no altars, nor any other symbols ; " but he
adds to that negation the kernel of the new faith : But all
shall look to Him whose name and nature are "the Maker."
For the God of all power is the Devoted One of Israel,
Israel s saving God.
Now watch the rapid growth of the faith. Ten years
sped away, and in 727 B.C. Ahaz lay dead. Then Isaiah
174 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
wrote a significant oracle, which we find in chap. xiv. 28
and xxviii. 1 6. The Philistines, always troublesome, thought
to rob Judah when her prince had fallen and his son Heze-
kiah was but a boy. Mourning and danger hung round the
city. Perhaps the boy-king sent to the prophet, who became
his close friend, to seek some counsel or some cheer. Then
the brave prophet took up his parable, and sang back this
message
Rejoice not, all Philistia,
Though the striker s rod hath broken,
For out of the Nahash root there riseth ever a David seed.
(Fear not) For Jehovah is founding Zion.
And there may rest quietly all the loved meek ones.
Our English versions write here, " Jehovah hath founded
Zion," but the text is uncertain. The correct meaning we get
from chap, xxviii. 1 6, where the same oracle is repeated five
years later and in unquestioned form. Some may say, How
could Isaiah write, " Jehovah is founding Zion " ? He must
have said, " Jehovah has founded Zion." But since Isaiah
certainly wrote in 722, "Jehovah is founding Zion," then he
could say it more easily in 727, and we may decide that the
doubtful words of xiv. 28, which allow this meaning, very
certainly did carry it when Isaiah spoke.
A word on the later passage in chap, xxviii. to point out
the force of the oracle. Samaria had broken away from the
Assyrian vassalage and paid no more tribute. Salman-Assur
and Sargon were hastening from the east and closing in their
circles round the doomed city. None the less within whirled
the mad carouse of the vintage feast. The wine waggons
rolled in from the fat vales and sunny slopes about the fair
hill-top city, and reckless riot drowned every anxious voice.
The senses of people and priests, prophets and princes, were
dazed. Isaiah was witnessing like rioting in Jerusalem. He
implored his countrymen to learn wisdom from Samaria s
madness, for her danger from Assyria might easily become
CHAP, i.] THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH. 175
their own. Yet over their cups the very seers flung filthy
sneers at their chief, while the priests of Zion staggered to
their sacrificial prayer. "We are safe." they cry, " for are
not here in our bacchanal march and dance the grim ghouls
and gods of night and dark, of Sheol and death itself." The
demons were alive, for they were masked men. They shout,
"Ha! ha! these devils would deceive Jehovah Himself.
Under falsehood have we hidden. If the Assyrian scourge
came, he would never find us." We may not stay now to
picture the scene of filthy mockery that follows, and is quite
obscured in our English version. Enough to tell here how
Isaiah thunders the awful and well-known talisman of Fate,
"a decree and a doom" that always makes the stoutest
quail before the prophet of Jehovah, whom they count the
God of Fate. But now when a hearing is gained by fear
the great-hearted prophet pours out his oracle of salvation.
The great faith speaks. Jehovah is founding Zion, and he
who believes shall not make haste.
To Isaiah these years were the foundation days of the
sanctuary in Zion. He was steadily entering into this joyful
faith, and surely the day when a man plants his foot on a
foundation faith is the day when God founds that faith for
that man. He was setting it too in brightest, winsome
beauty before his countrymen for their grasp and their joy,
and the centuries ever since have proved that this belief is a
foundation stone of Hebraism.
7. Tlie changed faith at the fall of Samaria.
Prof. Guthe (Zukunftsbild dcs Jcsaias, appx.) has shown
reason for assigning the "oration against Assyria," contained in
chaps, x. and xi. to 710 B.C., ten years later than the date which
had become currently adopted. In any case Isaiah fears
that Sargon will swoop down from the north to desolate Judah
and destroy Jerusalem. Xow, as always, Isaiah s courage
176 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
rises with danger. His faith in Zion s safety bursts out in
sublime utterance. Has Assyria " shaken the spear against
God s beloved Zion ? The people that dwell there are safe,
who stay themselves firmly on Jehovah, Israel s devoted
God." The fearfully looked for danger, and the proudly
looked for triumph are sung in high rhapsody in the close
of chap. x. " The hosts of devastation may speed on, until
on yonder heights of Anathoth the thousand spears stand
thick like the forests on Lebanon ; but there shall the Great
Forester, Jehovah, hew every stem to earth. All shall fall."
Here are Isaiah s voice and power in climax.
The raptured seer marches on into that grand vision of
Incarnation which has been a weary world s dream and
psalm, chaps, xi. xii. ; and here the faith we are tracing
stands out like a mountain-top :
When the spears are all hewed down,
When Jehovah s forest s growing,
Where God s living wind is blowing,
Hurt and death shall be unknown
In Zion.
The vision of the coming golden age starts questions for
study later on. Our present quest is satisfied in that de
claration of perfect safety for the holy hill of Zion ; and even
if chap. xii. should ever be clearly traced to another later
hand than Isaiah s, it adds an echo of his controlling gospel
in its chorus, " Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion,
for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee."
8. Thence to the end.
We know comparatively little of Isaiah s work during
most of the years of Hezekiah s reign from 727 to 700 B.C.
Only a few words have come from the years 727 and 721,
perhaps from 710, and then more fully from 705 to 700.
But if we can rely upon the suggestions of the story in the
CHAP, i.] THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH. 177
book of Chronicles, 2 Chron. xxix.jf-, then Isaiah s eloquence
concerning Zion bore early fruit, and the reformation under
Josiah in 622, with its exaltation of Zion, was the second
and not the first royal eifort to establish Isaiah s faith as the
state doctrine. And even if, on the other hand, we cannot
rely on the chronicler, but must consider that he read into
Hezekiah s days the ways of centuries later, still it is re
markable that he felt how appropriate such a royal establish
ment of Zion would have been in the days of Isaiah.
But amid the terrors of Sennacherib s invasions, 705-700
B.C., the prophet s voice rang out clear and full of cheer.
In chaps, xxix., xxx., xxxi., xxxiii., you read his brave,
strong alarum, and every utterance is keyed on the old note
of faith, " Zion is safe." The Zion sanctuary cannot be hurt,
cries Isaiah ; the place chosen of Jehovah for His gracious
abode on earth is Judah s pledge and place of safety.
( I ) In chap. xxix. he sings of Ariel, God s altar-hearth.
Her halls, where Judah s families meet for sacred feasting,
are in distress ; but distress more bitter shall come on those
who fight against Mount Zion. For, after all, it is Jehovah s
hand that visits her with distress, and His hand will bring
relief. The kernel of the faith lies in the words, " The poor
among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel," ver. 19 ;
Jacob s face shall not wax pale, but he shall sanctify Je
hovah s name, i.e., he shall count Jehovah s character full of
devotion. He shall sanctify the Holy One of Israel, i.e., he
shall know Jehovah s devotion and live in the faith of it.
In chap. xxx. those who flee from Zion to a fancied safety
in Egypt are told their folly. The saving love of Jehovah is
the ever-recurring theme of the wooing song. One passage
especially (ver. 18) is of striking beauty in its contrast with
the terrible judgment of earlier days. The young prophet of
judgment cried, ii. 17, v. 16
Hide thee, hide in the dust, for terror of Jehovah,
He will exalt Himself by thine abasement.
If
ITS OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
But now the prophet of grace whispers
He longs to bless, He patient waits to save,
Until at last, impatient grown, He will arise
Yet not to slay, to woo and win.
He will exalt Himself by thy salvation.
(2) Among all the utterances of these invasion years per
haps the most beautiful are in chap. xxxi. 45 ; few indeed
even of Isaiah s sayings have so exquisite a grace. With
majestic strength of figure as of faith he writes
Like as a lion sallies out against a shepherd-band,
Knowing no fear,
So shall Jehovah come, Creator of all hosts,
To fight, to save Mount Zion from Assyria.
But now, as if his figure and his tone might seem too fierce
to soothe the timid folk he loves, he writes on
Like parent birds that flutter to and fro over their nest with
cries and courage strange,
When enemies are near,
So doth Omnipotent Jehovah hover o er Jerusalem
Defending and delivering.
Let Asshur mark the smoky cloud o er Zion s altar fire !
That is Jehovah s ensign ;
His home is there, and Judah s
Zion is safe. Asshur shall fear and fail.
(3) The siege grew close and hot, as we read in chap,
xxxvii. Isaiah s confidence breaks out in a song of glee
Prince of Asshur, hear
The virgin Zion, daughter of Jehovah,
God s fair beloved one, despiseth thee.
Stay now the battle-noise, and listen to her merry taunt ;
She shakes her head in laughter at thee.
Such was the first strong impulse to fearlessness. But
the danger grew, and Isaiah seems to have found that the
city must be taken. His brave soul counts quickly over all
CHAP, i.] THE RELIGION OF ISAIAH. 179
the resources of the hour, and like a general, he marks out
at once the new line of outlook and of action. Only, in it all
there remains the one unchanging faith Zion shall not fail.
He issues his oracle his and God s for to him his thought
and God s are one. He cries, "Even out of the bruised
city shall a remnant be saved ; and they that escape shall be
a seed to fill the land again with fruit, with life, with men of
Zion. The zeal of Jehovah, Lord of hosts, will do this," for
our pledged Lord would be no God at all had He no people,
or were His promise and His power vain. He will do this.
But this is the voice de profundis ; the seer shall rise to
greater things. The siege waxes hotter ; so does Isaiah s
excited spirit rise. Then he cries, Thus hath said Jehovah
I will defend this city and deliver it ;
For mine own sake, and for my servant David s sake.
The lightness of laughter is not there, nor is it on the
fearless seaman s brow in the fiercest storm ; but there is
the short strong word, while breath is held and death is
defeated. "We read in independent records, written far away
on Tigris and in Greece, that the order of Providence did
coincide even with the material expectation of Isaiah. Senna
cherib lifted his siege and left Zion safe. But this material
event was a light thing compared with the highest of Isaiah s
hopes for Zion. That is manifest in the final passage we
have to touch.
(4) The final poem was probably chap, xxxiii., written,
one can easily see, after the Assyrians and danger had gone.
The faith in Zion is its chief theme.
Xow hath Jehovah gotten Himself exalted, for He inhabiteth
a lofty place. Again and again (ever) hath He filled Zion with
justice and stability.
Sinful people have indeed been trembling in Zion. They
fear they ll die and burn in Hinnom ; they fear war, hunger
slavery.
180 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
But only let thy soul gaze on Zion,
Tis the place of our tryst with Jehovah.
Look, and with bodily eye behold Jerusalem !
There is a pasture free from fears,
There is a shepherd s tent that s never struck ;
Her stakes are never drawn,
Her cords are never broken.
For do ye doubt Jehovah s there ?
Is not He our Judge, our Guide, our King ?
But His mind is to save us.
O ! let none who dwell in Zion say, I am sick.
From the people who abide there iniquity is taken away.
Here are Isaiah s highest words. This is man s holiest
hope and God s holiest purpose, forgiveness. It was this
greatest need of men that the prophet felt, and God was
with the soul that felt it ; it was this high gift of God his
soul grasped, and God breathed the faith that grasped it.
And the revelation to the senses, whereby alone a son of
man in Isaiah s day could think this faith and speak it to his
fellows, was Zion. In that sanctuary the soul of Isaiah saw
a vision of the present healing Jehovah, and the longing
heart trusted God. Hosea s hunger for some atonement
whereby God should not return to destroy the sinful city
was answered. God had told men another sentence from
the eternal tale of love ; men had gained a new depth of
vision into the infinite heart of God.
Such is the story of Isaiah, his life-quest, and his finding,
as we see them along one principal line of his being.
CHAPTER II.
ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH IN JERUSALEM,
IX CHRONOLOGICAL ARRANGEMENT.
INTEREST is deepening fast and wide in those parts of the
Bible which we are discussing. Works on individual parts
and treatises on various phases of them are multiplying.
Sermons are signs of the people s thinking, and therefore we
may be sure the people are thinking of Isaiah. But the
sermon hearer and reader are often anxious over the ques
tion of the order of the oracles of our prophet, and are
ready to lose heart over this best preacher more than over
less valuable books.
Prof. Driver s "Introduction to the Old Testament," pp.
194-217, provides large information and excellent counsel in
explanation of the prophet s labyrinth, and that treatise is
in every way of great value.
The following analysis could not repeat all the reasons for
its arrangement ; they would be few and feeble reasons if
they could be so easily rehearsed. But the lines of study
can be suggested.
The reasons depend largely on the contents of the chapters
themselves. The good-natured proposal to submit the various
questions of Hebrew literature to persons who are masters of
the English versions only, revised or authorised, &c., is a
good proposal, because it will induce some men to master
the English versions. These men will at once discover the
insufficiency of those versions. Of course a man who can
read Goethe s Faust in English translations only has but a
181
182 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
slight knowledge of the story of German literature, its un
folding, its bloorn, its richest words. The faithful student of
good translations only can know little of he splendour and
the keen word and wit and pathos and majesty of the Greek
dramatists and philosophers, or of Herodotus and Homer.
Such readers crop at the fringe of the pasture ; the soul
that looks out from the old speech is veiled, and those readers
discover it. So with Hebrew literature. The Hebrew reader
alone knows its meaning. We have an English Isaiah indeed,
who is even held infallible, but he is not the Hebrew Isaiah.
There are external sources of light on the dates of Isaiah s
utterances. In his own day great libraries were being
written in Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt, also on endur
ing tablets, and we are reading those very tablets to-day.
They were written quite independently of the Hebrews,
many many hundreds of miles away from them, by men who
had indeed Palestine within their range of vision, but knew
it for one very small land amongst a host of like little lands
sometimes tributary to their own great states. They could
err, certainly, but they were not likely to be always wrong,
even when their statements conflict with Hebrew opinion.
Let us gather in brief the general information gained from
these tablets which is necessary for our task, and arrange a
general outline of chronology ere we proceed to the analysis
of our prophet.
I. The Assyrian canon.
i . The little book on the Assyrian canon, written by the
late George Smith (The Eponym Canon), gives a valuable
brief account of the Assyrian libraries, their methods and
records. A still more valuable guide in the matter is
Prof. Schrader s " Old Testament and the Cuneiform Inscrip
tions," translated by Prof. TVhitehouse.
The languages of the Euphrates valley need not be de
scribed here, nor yet the somewhat hieroglyphic style of
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 183
writing with letters made up of systems of marks shaped
like arrow-heads. These cuneiform marks might be made
by pressing a square chisel into the clay tablet before
baking, or by driving it into a stone slab, according as the
country furnished slabs, in the upper valley-lands of .Assyria,
or the clay, as in the lower alluvial plains of Babylon.
More remarkable is the wide range of records covered
by these old libraries. In Isaiah s day writers were busy
at works on religion, law, language, history, or chronicles,
astronomy, arts, commerce, and the like. And they were
busy further in reproducing older libraries written from
time to time in many previous centuries. Here we reach
the point of finest interest. The Assyrians had a regular
system of dating all their documents and the events they
described. Just as Romans had their era A.U.C., and as we
have our Christian era, and mark the date of an event by
saying that it happened in such and such a year B.C., i.e.,
before Christ, or in such a year of our Lord A.D., i.e., in the
year number so and so after the birth of our Lord, similarly
did they, making a little era of each emperor s reign.
A closer analogy is the Olympiad system of the Greeks,
but the closest furnished by is the method of dating
our Acts of Parliament. We say Act 38 Victoria, and we
mean the volume of Acts passed in the 38th year of Her
Majesty s reign, i.e., in the year 1874 A.B. The Assyrians
named the years, not by numbers, but after certain officers
of state in regular order, and they dated their chronicles of
events by saying such and such a thing happened in the
year of officer so and so under emperor so and so. Still we
should be helpless but for two fortunate facts. One is that
there have been found in the libraries careful tables of the
names of the years, and not one table, but several, all agree
ing. These form calendars of reference for us when we
wish to read a dated document. But it is more important
that the Assyrians recorded eclipses in their chronicles, and
184 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
dated the year, officer, and king in whose days these eclipses
occurred. We know when all these eclipses happened accord
ing to our reckoning, and can thus readily read all the
Assyrian dates in our own style. The astronomical care of
the Assyrians warrants us in putting much confidence in all
their calculated records. Political pride or religious pre
judice may hare led them to exaggerate their gods honours
and their own, but they are not likely to trifle with dates.
These are not the only records. Some come from Egyp
tian sources, notably the so-called Ptolemaic Canon (tcavwv
/SacriXecoi ), a chronological work of the Alexandrian philo
sopher Ptolemy, A.D. 139-161.
2. Chronological outline.
Let us note the main events of certain noted years.
B.C. 2500. Thus early was there regular government in
Elam, the south-eastern part of the Assyro-Babylonian region
to the north-west of the Persian Gulf. The peoples and
their speech were probably of the Turanian or central
Asiatic sort. This was the so-called Accadian element in
the later Assyro-Babylonian language. The Assyrian em
perors called themselves princes of Accad and Sumir. The
two words seem to have been the designations of the early
Turanian inhabitants, " Accad," of the hill-folk, and " Sumir,"
of the river-folk, and the title was kept, as we keep the old
word "British."
In the course of the next thousand years there was pro
bably an invasion of men and manners, of sovereignty and
of speech, from the Semitic lands of the south-west, espe
cially Arabia. These were the Casdim (Hebrew name) or
Chaldeans (Assyrian and Greek name). This made the
later Assyro-Babylonian nations a virtual part of the family
which contained the Hebrews and their brother Canaanites.
The centre of this new half-Semitic people was in the
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 185
southern alluvial plains of the united Euphrates and Tigris.
This was the old and at first independent Babylon.
B.C. 1 500. A colony of early Babylon moved away up the
rocky Tigris valley (cf. Gen. x. 1 1 ), and by this date became
independent of the mother Babylon, and in the ninth century
B.C. ruled over her. A famous king was Salman-Assur I.
about 1300 B.C. Doubtless the new mountain region was
securer than the old plain from all attack, and furnished
besides sturdier warriors and thinkers to frame the future
world monarchy. These are the beginnings. It is not
necessary for us to trace the various fortunes onwards to
Isaiah s time. These can be read in various works. The
fact of immediate interest for us is the chronological spirit
of those peoples, and the aid they give us in arranging the
order of events in their day. We may sum up the matter in
the words of Mr. George Smith, "Assyrian Eponym Canon,"
p. 19: "It is evident from the Assyrian inscriptions that
there was a regular chronological computation in Babylonia
reaching up at least to the beginning of the twenty-third
century B.C., and in Assyria to at least the nineteenth cen
tury B.C. ... If the Assyrians knew the dates of events
more than 2OOO years B.C., we may safely trust them with
reference to the comparatively modern period of the Hebrew
kings."
We pass to years and events which concern the Hebrew
people and the prophets directly.
B.C. 850. Salman-Assur II. of Assyria made an expedition
to Hainath and defeated Benhadad of Damascus and his allies,
including an Ahab. Elijah s work was going on.
B.C. 845. Jehu overthrew the Omri dynasty of Israel.
B.C. 842. Salman-Assur made another expedition to
Lebanon, defeated Hazael of Damascus, and took "tribute
from Jehu, son of Omri, silver, gold, bowls of gold, cups of
gold, bottles of gold, vessels of gold, maces, royal utensils,
rods of wood " (Schrader, C. I. & 0. T., i, 199).
186 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
B.C. 790. About this date Jeroboam II. of Israel must
have begun to rule, and shortly after him, say 780, Uzziah
of Judah. Each ruled some forty years or more.
About B.C. 780 Salman- Assur III. was warring against
Tyre, Sidon, Omri, Edom, and Philistia, overwhelming with
terror all lands towards the great sea of the setting sun, and
carrying off their treasures. Here is the evident occasion of
the warnings of all the prophets from Amos to Isaiah.
B.C. 763. The Assyrian Canon records two events in this
year, named after Esdu-sarabe, governor of Gozan in the
reign of Assur-daan III. One event was a revolt in the
city of Assur. The second record, of first importance to us,
is that "in the month Sivan the sun was eclipsed." To be
more exact, let us say that the Canon records an impor
tant eclipse visible in Assyria in a year which must have
fallen about the date 763 B.C., as we know from the general
sequence of events. But our astronomers tell us that an
important eclipse happened on the I5th of June 763, and
affected most severely an area reaching from Sicily to
Mount Ararat. We conclude that this Canon-year, Esdu-
sarabe, with its events, was the year 763 B.C., and we reckon
backwards and forwards from this as a known point in
Assyrian chronology.
B.C. 745. There was a revolution in Assyria. The old
reigning dynasty was deposed, and another begun by Tiglath-
Pil-Assur. 1
About B.C. 743-740 Tiglath-Pil- Assur II. taxed Eezin,
king of Syria, very heavily.
B.C. 750 onwards. Israel was ruled by Menahem, Peka-
hiah, Pekah, one after the other, down to 730.
About B.C. 738 Tiglath-Pil-Assur helped Azariah (Uzziah)
of Judah, and enslaved whole bands of the enemies of Judah,
1 Note the possible relations of the first two parts of his name. Cf. Tiglath
with Di-ig-lat and Hidiglat of the Inscriptions, and Hiddiqel (Gen. i. 14),
Assyrian names of the river Tigris. Pil seems perhaps equivalent to the
name Phul given to thi.s very king in 2 Kings xv. 19.
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 187
taking heavy tribute also from them, and among others
from Rezin of Syria and Menahem of Samaria. At this
date Judah s trouble was calling Isaiah from his stern
oracles of judgment to the new gracious gospel of safety
and forgiveness for Zion.
About 734-722 the same Assyrian warrior-king was
punishing sorely Syria, the Philistines, Arabia, Ammon,
Moab, Edom, Israel also with its kings, Pekah and Hoshea,
and Judah with its king, Jeho-Ahaz.
B.C. 730-722. Hoshea was made ruler of Israel by the
Assyrians, but soon led his people in revolt. They kept
their freedom until the siege of 722-720, which ended in
Samaria s destruction and the final captivity of the northern
ten tribes.
B.C. 727. Ahaz died. Hezekiah, a young child, began
his reign, which lasted till about 699. Professor Guthe
(Zultunftsbild des Jesaia, p. 37) holds that Ahaz died in
714, and was then followed by Hezekiah, But cf. "W. R.
Smith s "Prophets," p. 416.
B.C. 727-722. Salman-Assur IV. was emperor of Assyria,
and perhaps was a less terrible warrior than his father, the
founder of his dynasty, for there must have been some
such cause for Israel s revolt. He died while Samaria was
still in siege, and his fierce follower Sargon destroyed the
city.
B.C. 721. Samaria fell. The northern kingdom was for
ever destroyed, its people largely exiled to far-off Assyrian
lands, its sanctuaries were broken down, as the book of Judges
(chap, xviii. 30) tells us. Xo wonder that Isaiah s faith
grew stronger in Zion the unharmed, the safe. He must
have written chap, xxviii. shortly before 721.
B.C. 721-705. Sargon was Assyrian emperor. He claims
that Samaria fell by his hand, although his predecessor had
begun the siege. Many suppose that chaps, x. 5~xi. end
or xii. end were written just after this destruction, when
188 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
every one in Jerusalem might well fear that the terrible
Sargon would march to the south and ruin Jerusalem next.
But the cities named as fallen in chap. x. 9 had not fallen
until the year 717 at the earliest. (Arpad fell 740 ; Damas
cus, 734; Samaria, 722 or 721 ; Hamath, 720; Carchemish,
717 B.C.)
B.C. 720. Sargon defeated Seveh (So), king of Egypt, at
the battle of Raphia.
B.C. 715. He transported foreigners to Samaria, also took
tribute from Egypt.
B.C. 711. Sargon punished Ashdod for rebellion (Isa.
xx.), and the records say that the neighbouring princes,
doubtless Judah, Moab, and Edom, were then in league with
Ashdod. Possibly chaps, x. xi. were written by the prophet
then amid fear of an invasion. It is difficult to be quite
certain when Isaiah s faith in Zion s safety came to its
greatest strength and strongest utterance as recorded in
this oracle.
B.C. 710. He defeated Merodach-Baladan, king of Baby
lon. From this year Sargon is counted king of Babylon
in Egyptian records as well as Assyrian. Merodach escaped
with his life, to turn up again after Sargon s death, plotting
insurrection against his successor, Sennacherib. Merodach s
visit to Hezekiah (Isa. xxxix.), and Isaiah s condemnation of
it, are no doubt to be explained by these conflicts.
B.C. 706 or 705. Sargon was murdered.
B.C. 701. Sennacherib, the new Assyrian emperor, marched
against Judah and Egypt. The note in Isaiah xxxvi. places
this in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah. If this be correct,
then Hezekiah did begin to reign in 714 B.C. as Guthe holds
(see above). The date of Hezekiah s recorded sickness (chap,
xxxviii.) is very uncertain, but perhaps we may fix it by
counting back fifteen years (xxxviii. 5) from his death, circa
695, i.e. to the year 709. If we do so, then it may be that
Merodach-Baladan paid Hezekiah his . visit just after this
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 189
illness, and soon after his own dethronement by Sargon in
Babylon. If so, the pretext was convenient, but the pur
pose was doubtless to plot revenge against Sargon. Hence
Isaiah s keen-eyed and quick disapproval of it.
B.C. 695, or a little later, Hezekiah s death. Isaiah dis
appears without a comment at the same time. Such a man s
death scarcely needs a record. He lived on in his work
as few other men do.
B.C. 68 1. Sennacherib is killed, and is followed by Assur-
haddon, one of her most brilliant rulers (Duncker, Anc.
Hist. ii. 283).
B.C. 680. Manasseh, king of Judah, Hezekiah s successor,
is punished by Assyria, and apparently exiled.
B.C. 671. Manasseh is restored. Meanwhile the Assyrians
hands are full, through conflict with a rising power, Tirhakah,
king of Ethiopia (cf. Isa. xxxvii. 9).
Later on Amon rules Judah from 642, and Josiah from
640, while Assyria has one more truly great ruler (668-626),
Assur-bani-pal, son of Assur-haddon, who is succeeded by
his son, the last monarch, the effeminate Assur-idil-ili.
Under him Assyria is overthrown by the Babylonians, and
the great Assyrian empire ceases for ever, 606 B.C. One
lingers fascinated over Duncker s story of those brilliant
days from 700-626, vol. ii. 283 and 290, and then feels
almost grief over the tale of ruin, ii. 334. From highest
might under grandfather and father, the son brought the
great nation to its fall and utter extinction.
3. The analysis proper in outline.
Following the clue given in our previous study of " Isaiah
and Zion " we shall find our way across the maze of great
oracles, and see withal how vistas open along other main lines
of thought.
190 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
i. We may set certain mottoes over Isaiah s work.
(a) First, over the whole of his utterances may stand
mrr
" Jehovali is the Devoted One of Israel."
True, Amos had almost spoken it, and Hosea had flung all
his hopes upon it in his hour of agony; but Isaiah first
wrestled with it, and even against it, then seized it as a
discover seizes on a great truth. He saw God ; he saw this
great fact in God s character, and he declared it with all his
power. But this change in the course of his work divides
his life into two great periods, as we have seen, and hence
we have two other mottoes.
(&) Over the first period and its oracles we may write the
words
" Only a remnant snail return."
The sentence is what a grammarian calls circumstantial.
In the ordinary declarative sentence the Hebrew sets his
verb first, as the most important matter ; but when he leaves
this order and sets a noun in the front, as in the present
case, then we know he is calling attention to that noun as
the most important thing. He means to say, "It is a
remnant that shall return, and not the whole people," or
as above written, " Only a remnant shall return." Mr.
Matthew Arnold called this very truly one of Isaiah s great
sayings. So it is, but it was inherited by Isaiah from Amos.
The defect of Mr. Arnold s beautiful book is its disregard
of this descent of faiths, which marks the ceaseless unfolding
of truth and life from God on the one hand, and tells
on the other of the solidarity of mankind, the unbroken
unity of all true men transcending the single and transitory
individual.
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 191
(c) For the whole of the rest of Isaiah s work after the
first gloomy " remnant " oracles the motto is
bvt vfiy
" With us is God."
God whose very name, El, means that He reacheth out
afar to us, whether in beams of light or streams of rain, or
gifts of any far-off, hoped-for blessing God is with us. God
-whose very name tells how we lift up our hands to Him,
as we reach and plead, or again, proclaim our solemn
oaths, yearning towards the place where His glory dwelleth
God is with us.
God not "the Gods," not that mysterious sum of powers
that work on us from every side, appearing so infinite, and
yet all one and working together because all ruled by one
Lord of all those hosts; not "Elohim," the Gods, but the
single one ruling God, El He is with us.
With us He is in heart, love, and gracious purpose, in the
home He loves best and the spot of earth He chooses in
Zion, and in all its true souls, its kings, its prophets, in their
children, in the inhabitants of Zion He is with us.
With us He is, and who can be against us ? for no others
have Him with them : God is with us.
Such are Isaiah s three great watchwords.
2. The following is a brief outline of the oracles for ready
reference as we proceed to their explanation and to a justifi
cation of their order :
Introductory. Chap. vi. tells of the prophet s original call
(B.C. 740); but its deeper lesson, grasped in B.C. 735, causes
it to be placed as prelude to the later oracles of grace.
Chap. i. was probably written about 725 B.C.; but its ex
pression of faith in both judgment and grace led the
collector to set it as prelude to the whole book.
192 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
The first great division is :
(I.) The Oracles of Judgment :
Amos-like in character ;
Characterised by the motto,
a- P; ">st " Only a remnant shall return."
Oracles uttered probably from 740735 B.C. These are
chaps, ii.-v., and ix. 8-x. 4. They fall into two sections,
thus :
(A.) Chaps, ii.-iv. Oracles in plain prose form, which
can be again subdivided into
(1) Chap. ii. i. A title.
(2) Chap. ii. 2-5. A text taken from an elder prophet,
extolling Judah s possible future.
(3) Chap. ii. 6-8 declares the actual present licentious
state.
(4) Chap. ii. 9~iii. 7. Awful but sublime sentence
pronounced.
(5) Chap. iii. 8-15. The religious kernel of mischief
is laid bare, with exhortation to conversion.
(6) Chap. iii. i6-iv. I. Woman, who should be best
and fairest, is foolishly bad, and shall suffer terribly.
(7) Chap. iv. 2-6. Only superhuman power can save
a remnant, can purify woman, and can make each
fireside an altar.
(B.) Chaps, v. 1-25 ; ix. 8-x. 4 ; v. 26-30. Parable and
dirge in regular stanzas. The detailed divisions are
(1) Chap. v. 1-7. The parable-song of the "vine
yard."
(2) Chap. v. 8-24. A dirge of six woes.
(3) Chap. v. 25 ; ix. 8-x. 4 ; v. 26-30. The chant
of the outstretched hand, and anger not turned
away.
CHAP. IL] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 1 ( J3
We turn to the second great division of the book.
II. The Oracles of Grace
Hosea-like in character ;
Characterised by the motto,
^ V, Immanu-El, "With us is God."
These include all the remaining prophecies from 733 B.C.
onward. We may distinguish first those proclaimed in the
remaining years of the reign of Ahaz, 733-727 B.C., and
then those uttered under King Hezekiah in the years 735-
700 B.C.
(A.) The new gracious oracles in the days of Ahaz :
(1) Chap. vi. The story of Isaiah s original vision of
Jehovah, which he had experienced in the temple in the
year 740, is now recalled, and written in 733.
(2) Chap, vii., viii., ix. 1-7. A cento woven of parts of
various utterances spoken amid the events that led the
prophet up to the new understanding of God s heart. The
bits of utterance are set like mosaic in a framework of story,
which tells when and how the oracles were given.
(3) Chap. xvii. I II. A final word of wrath against Syria.
(B.) The Oracles of Grace, as they flow on in the days of
Hezekiah, from 727-70x3 B.C.
We must recall here that possibly Hezekiah did not begin
to reign until the year 714, as Professor Guthe suggests. If
this suggestion be correct, some of the following passages
must have been uttered under Ahaz, while those which refer
to Ahaz s death as past must be set down later than we mark
them here.
We may in any case distinguish first those marked by
much anxiety for Zion, although full of faith, and then those
of a later date, with a thoroughly triumphant tone.
(I.) First, in the anxious days ; and here stand
(i) Those before Samaria fell.
(a) Perhaps chap, i., a sermon of pain and hope.
194 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
(&) Chap. xiv. 2832. The dirge over Ahaz bier ;
date circa 727 B.C. But see discussion later on.
(c) Chaps, xv. and xvi. Story of Moab s devastation.
(d) Chap, xxviii. The greatest of all these oracles,
just preceding Samaria s ruin. All her brightness
is to be swept away. Jerusalem ought to learn
wisdom from Samaria s fall, but many will not.
Yet Jehovah is founding in Zioii a sure refuge.
He is the great wise Lord, Guide, Keeper.
(2) When Samaria had just fallen, Isaiah was, like others,
in fear lest Jerusalem should be the next prey of the
Assyrians. Probably it was in these days that he uttered
chaps, x. 5~xi. A few other passages are related to the
same circumstances.
(a) Chaps, x. 5-xi. The fierce challenge to Assyria,
and the high faith in golden days and regenera
tion close at hand.
(6) Possibly also chap, xxii., at least vers. 114, be
long here. It is likely an utterance of dread of
invasion by the conqueror Sargon.
(c) Chap. xxi. may also be set here with its three
short oracles, one touching Babylon, a second con
cerning Edom, and the third speaking of Arabia.
(II.) We turn to the more confident utterances.
(A.) W"hen no danger is near.
(1) Chap. xx. Symbolic.
(2) Chaps, xxix.-xxxii.
(a) Chap. xxix. A siege lifted.
(&) Chap. xxx. Unearths the plot with the Egyptians ;
then pours out some of the tenderest beauty the
book contains (ver. 18 $ .).
(c) Chap. xxxi. Grows more indignant at the foolish
trust in Egyptians, who are men, not God (cf. Hosea
viii. 6) ; then moves the fearful by the love of God,
CHAP, n.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 19f.
more tender than love of men, or mother, or brood
ing bird.
(d) Chap, xxxii. A joyful song of the peace and good
ness Isaiah believes are coming for state, for homes,
for field, and for all souls.
(3) Chap, xxiii. A wail for Tyre.
(B.) Here follow, as the second subdivision, oracles declared
amid the siege of Zion.
(1) Chap, xxxiii. Isaiah rises to the highest height of
faith in forgiveness, as he understood it ; and such faith does
he fearlessly proclaim, although the " everlasting burnings "
of the awful enemy blaze all round the city.
(2) Chap, xxxvii. 6, 7, 22-35. A C1 T f r help and a
cry of trembling confidence in Jehovah amid Sennacherib s
worst attack. It may be a picture of what Isaiah said,
painted by a devoted follower.
(C.) In a third subdivision fall three utterances that in the
view of some presuppose the withdrawal of Assyria from
Palestine.
(1) Chap. xxi. i 10. Prediction that Babylon shall fall
before Assyria. Possibly it refers to an earlier siege of
Babylon, in Merodach-Baladan s days, and we have given it
a place once already above. More likely Isaiah foretold how
it would fall when Sennacherib had returned from Palestine
to the Euphrates lands.
(2) Chap, xviii. A song of the fall of Assyria the Great ;
the great conqueror, shouts Isaiah, shall at last be conquered.
Probably the date is 705-700, after Sennacherib s return
home. Here falls also chap. xvii. 12-14.
(3) Chap. xix. Perhaps Isaiah s last oracle. A prophecy
that Egypt shall be humbled, and at last shall learn to
worship Jehovah, the God of the Israelites. The close has a
still larger hope : Assyria too shall be Jehovah s follower,
the third with Egypt and Israel. Such faith in salvation
196 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
could Isaiah grasp. The date of the words may be even
later than 700 B.C. There is no record then that Isaiah
died. His words simply worked on ; he lives in them.
4. Description ~by paraphrase of the substance of Isaiah s
preaching, following the analysis given.
Introductory to the oracles of judgment it is to be noted
here :
1. The text of chap. ii. vers. 2-5 occurs also in Micah iv.
1-4, in a form evidently more original than Isaiah s form of
it. It belongs probably to some earlier preacher than Isaiah,
and in any case to an earlier date than here.
2. The date of the whole section, as outlined on a previous
page, falls most likely in the earlier years of Ahaz, for the
luxury, licence, child-rule, harem-rule, and godlessness that
Isaiah condemns marked those days more than any others.
3. The verses, chap. ix. 8-x. 4, agree so exactly in poetical
form, and in contents, and date allusions, with the whole of
chap, v., and especially with vers. 25-30, that Ewald s and
Cheyne s replacement of them beside the latter commends
itself at once.
I. PARAPHRASE OF THE ORACLES OF JUDGMENT.
A. i and 2. 1
Have we believed in Judah s lordship over men ?
Have we hoped to lead all men in Jehovah s ways 1
Did we dream of Zion as Great Arbiter,
Whose realm no angry strife shall e er disturb 1
Alas for the reality !
3-
This Zion learns from all the low-born,
She bargains with all strangers
That she may gain, gain, and have, and have !
Her soul needs a god, so she buys for it a nothing !
1 The letters and numbers refer to the brief outline given above, p. 191 ff.
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 197
4 and 5.
Down on your knees, small and great,
Fly to the hills and to the holes !
The earthquake comes !
Proud looks shall fall, and Jehovah alone
Shall be exalted in that day.
His day comes, it dawns o er all your pride,
O er all your wealth, your strength,
Your empire, and your forces,
Your far-fetched glory and your beauty.
Proud looks shall fall, Jehovah alone
Shall be exalted in that day.
Ha ! look to those rock-caves and graves.
Look ! the bats fly out as the little gods are flung in,
Fly ! from His terrible shaking,
The whole earth is quaking.
His day is now, and is not yet to come :
All dignity has fled, and here fools rule.
Brother flies from suffering brother, no help is near.
Who makes God weep has already fallen.
6. Chap. iii. S-iv. I.
(July too plainly do they their deeds, and earn their hire.
"Women and boys give law here.
He who should right us is he who wrongs.
Oh, let Jehovah come as judge !
We know Jehovah s oracle, wherewith He rules the world.
Tis this, " Why hurt the poor ? "
Jehovah loveth beauty ; He created it.
But woman s vanity is not woman s beauty.
Nay, it is her shame, and shall be.
Does she think to do kings work ?
Then kings and men shall die all round her,
Till there be none to cover her shame.
1H8 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
7. Chap. iv. 2-6.
In that day of man s death
God alone shall give life.
Our God inaketh many a waste to blossom
"Where no hand tills and no rain falls.
When the careless all die, then only shall the devoted live.
Storm, wind, and lightning shall sweep out all disgusting traces
of the past.
Then over each pure home the hearth-fire s smoke shall rise,
the cloudy token of the family feast, Jehovah s best-loved
sacrifice.
Then each home shall be a true sanctuary, refuge from all ill.
This is woman s true beauty.
B. I. Chap. v. I-/.
Come, music, aid me, that I hold this easily wearied audience.
Let us sing of love and gardens, of the tawny grape, and of
the blushing wine.
Told is the tale.
There lies a hopeless and forsaken vineyard,
Once full of promise because twas full of toil.
I toiled, I hoped ; I ve mourned, I ve spurned.
: T\vas no poor earth-field, twas the life of Judah that I
cherished.
Judah s love was the wine I vainly longed to drink.
What more was there to do ! Naught, naught !
What is there now to do ? Make it all naught.
Why cumbereth it the ground ? cut down that vine.
Ah, Israel !
Who, cruel, frustrated the kindly hand of justice.
Ah, Judah !
I cried Be righteous." I hear a cry ! tis piteous.
THE DIRGE. 2. Chap. v. 8-24.
Woe to him who would own alone ;
When all the land is his own, he shall dwell alone.
Woe to him who devours : Sheol shall devour him.
Woe to the godless, the deceiver, the conceited, to the lover
of strong drink, and to the false man.
For the mocked Jehovah is still devoted to righteousness.
CHAI-. ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 19!)
THE OUTSTRETCHED ARM. 3. Chap. v. 25-30, and ix. 8-x. 4.
The earthquake shook ;
But His anger burned, and His arm was not turned away.
God has sent the Syrian and Philistine war ;
But His auger burns on. and His arm is not turned away.
None sees His hand ; and they die, die on.
And His anger burns !
Twas their burning passion that burned them ;
Brother devoured brother.
His arm is not yet turned.
Oh, selfish fools ! who but God could bless you 1
But his anger burns on !
Hark ! the roar of the terrible, the hoof of the swift.
Dark grows heaven and earth ; there s moaning like the sea.
Hark ! thro the mist and darkness ; tis the moan of men.
"Woe, oh Judah ! Woe s me !
Notes in conclusion.
1. The steady progress of thought in these oracles is
remarkable. Many Hebrews lack it, and they give trouble
to Western readers. Isaiah carries us on like a mountain
torrent.
2. The grandeur of conception and the brilliance of
imagery that carries it give these chapters splendid power.
3. There is a fineness of diction all through them which
can be appreciated only by the Hebrew reader. The charac
teristic word play of the Semites is present here in its best
style.
II. PARAPHRASE OF THE ORACLES OF GRACE.
(A.) Under Ahaz.
i. Chap. vi. The story of the call is brought to mind
amid the darkness just felt, and yet more fully to be pictured.
Lifjht breaks in from the new vision of God s heart.
200 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
" Jehovah came to me," writes Isaiah, " when I was unclean,
in unclean Zion. He made Zion his home, and He touched
my lips. I am His, Zion is His, Judah has received from
His love the secret of life."
2. Chap. vii. l-ix. 7.
(a) vii. 1-12. Of Ahaz s trial and failure. Isaiah s first
child, Shear-Jashubh, bears before the king in his strange
name at once the token of the prophet s faith in Jehovah s
commission to himself and also the omen of warning to the
king. Ahaz doubts the oracle.
(&) vii. 13-16. The prediction, nevertheless, of God s kind
deliverance of the untrustful prince. A second child shall
be, by the name he bears, a token of this kindness, even of
Jehovah s ever-present help.
(c) Chap. vii. 17-25. A strange interlacing of warning
for the David-dynasty, prediction of Assyrian invasion,
and assurance of corning comfort for the tillers of the
soil.
(d) Chap. viii. i-S. A third child shall come, and bear in
his name a warning of the dread invasion.
(c) Chap. viii. 9-20. The prophet and all his children are
the best token of the devotion of Jehovah to Israel, and of
His purpose to save. They are the true token, because they
carry the living speech of His love.
(/) Chap. viii. 2i-ix. 7. The darkest days and souls shall
be lighted up by that devoted love. For He will send a fourth
child, a David-heir this time, who shall counsel and work
and rule righteously, and so establish the kingdom safely for
ever.
3. Chap. xvii. i-ii. Final oracle of wrath against Syria,
which has been the tormentor of Judah by its alliance with
northern Israel to vex the southern kingdom. The passage
fits so well the same occasion as the oracles just described,
and fits it alone so exactly, that it is probably of the same
date, 733-727 B -C-
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 201
O Damascus, fair city and old, hear the oracle of the All-
Creator.
A ruin for ever shalt thou be ; thou and Samaria shall be
sheep-pastures.
A reaped field, a shaken olive, that once was full.
Samaria, thou despisest Zion s altar : despise all altars and
seek God alone.
Hear old Amos s oracle.
Away with thy tree-worship and thy sun-worship.
Thy anemones of Adonis, and thy vines of Bacchus.
They shall away . . . and leave thee a ruin-heap.
Isaiah did not foresee the singular power of endurance
Damascus was to have.
(13.) The oracles of grace under Hezelciali (727-700).
(I.) In the anxious days.
I. Before Samaria s fall.
(a) Chap. i. A discourse of reproach mingled with tender
ness. Interwoven in it are both the great characteristics of
Isaiah, his early sternness and his later love. It may well
have come from the days of transition in the prophet s mind.
The desolations described are exactly what we might expect
in the end of Ahaz s reign, when the Syro-Samarian alliance
had been tormenting Judah, and when the armies of Tiglath-
pilassur and Salman-assur, between 740 and 720, had foraged
and ravaged in all directions.
Listen, O earth and all ye heavens, and wonder.
God poured on this people all His wealth of love,
And they have only provoked Him to anger.
O nation, ye are now stricken, invaded, ruined ;
Why not turn to your Great Lover ?
Festivities of sacrifice, formal holydays are of no use ;
Among such a people they only disgust God.
Be clean, be good, be kind, be reasonable,
Else Amos s word shall prove true, ye shall die by the sword.
Hosea s picture of your harlotry and blood, among your very
highest, is too true.
202 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. ir.
Jehovah is wroth ; He will burn, He will purify.
There must be righteousness; will only justice bring it ?
Turn, else blight shall fall on you, as it can fall even on the trees
sacred to the gods.
(b) Chap. xiv. 28-32. The dirge over Ahaz s bier. This
must have been written in 727 B.C., unless Guthe be right ;
if so, this chapter and chap, xx., written in 711. are closely
related.
The dirge becomes a song of defiance against the Philis
tines. Ahaz is dead, but the David house dies not. That
Nahash-serpent blood and genius which first led the Hebrew
people out from childhood into nationality, maturity, shall
lead men still. Death comes indeed, and folly comes even
worse than death, but life and wisdom rule still. The proof
shall be when Assyria ravages the Philistines coast and their
trembling messengers seek help in Jerusalem. Then let all
men know our faith that Jehovah is founding Zion as His
sacred city of refuge, and His troubled people shall rest
safely there.
(c) Chaps, xv. and xvi. A lament for Moab. The passage
with its vivid imagery must have been a favourite. Jeremiah
quotes it again and again in his oracle on Moab (Jer. xlviii.).
It may be, as Duhm thinks, the work of that early Jonah,
a generation before Isaiah, who sang of Jehovah s help for
the peoples of Canaan wrought by the hand of Jeroboam II.
Yet, in any case, Isaiah seems to have re-issued the oracle
with his own touches added. Whoever be the writer, he
can use play of sounds very skilfully, lighting up as with a
bright glint the things he would have you couple or contrast
by using for them words of close-related sound.
xv. i. For Moab in the night falls blight, eternal night.
2-5. Weep, pray ; ye terror-stricken, fly.
6, 9. The springs are dry and desolate.
The streams shall run blood, for the lions shall crouch
there.
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 203
xvi. 1-5. Who shall save Moab ? Send to Zion ! She shall tell.
Cry unto Zion for counsel and for care,
For her king and her throne are perfect,
Firm, kind, righteous, just.
6-12. Oh, Moab is proud of her prowess, and haughty of
heart.
But woe to her, wailing and weeping and want
Dread Asshur shall bring.
To-day my heart sighs, to-morrow hers too.
She shall come then to Zion, so weary, so late.
13-14. Has to-morrow come harmless ? Three years be the
term.
Thus sayeth Jehovah.
The characteristic Isaian faith in Jehovah s care for Judah
is clearly uttered here. That care is to be seen in symbol in
His gifts of safety to Zion and wise strength to David s heir.
And that care can shelter other Canaanite tribes from
destruction.
(d) Chap, xxviii. Here follows one of the most striking
of all Isaiah s discourses. Its imagery and its poetic energy
are very fine ; the faith is the same as ever, and the sublime
utterance of it has made it a household word for the reli
gious for ever.
0TV & V*jan, in old-fashioned phrase
" He that believetli shall not make haste,"
but in exacter reading
" That God who plants thee firm
Can never make thee slip."
The date of the utterance is evidently just before the fall of
Samaria. It is vintage-time, and the feast of wine-gathering
has become a mad carouse in the fair fortress-city. The
vine-crowned are wine-drowned, and the coming Assyrians
are altogether forgotten. An awful storm of death is near.
But it is to Judah that the prophet cries. She too is in the
204 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
like carouse, and worse, as Isaiah warns her leaders, and
even her prophets babble mockery back. The calm reply is
first of warning ; justice is certain : yet in that justice is
wrapped up Jehovah s devotion ; He is preparing in Zion a
place of safety for all the poor in spirit, and all the trustful,
and
Tis the man of steady confidence
Who never slips his hold !
The closing verses are a beautiful argument for the love
of Jehovah, shown in His gift of wisdom to the tillers of the
soil.
1-6. O vaunted crown of Ephraim s debauchees,
Thou withering sprig of his adorning braveries,
Wealthy and well-defenced, yet wine-smitten !
Lo, one of strong grip comes like a hail-burst,
A horrid ravager, a wide-enguliing wave.
His host shall level thee.
Thy gaiety shall he crunch like early fig ;
Then shall Jehovah be the only vaunted crown,
The Creator of all hosts, the only adornment.
7-13. But these too, men of Judah, wine-wild wallow.
Inspired, aye drunk, their prophets :
They swallow aye are swallowed.
They guide, aye blind with drink, they guide.
They wander off.
Maundering they wander off from the very cups they
seek.
Seers they ! ay, staggering seers ;
See them tottering to the place of prayer.
Ugh ! their table s spread with . . . vomit
Filthy ! They lie in it,
Hark, they babble now !
They have heard my disgusted cry. What have they
made of it ?
Alas ! only the words "filthy" and "spewing" have they
caught,
And these they roll with relish on their tongues.
" He ! he ! And what s he babbling of ?
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 205
To infants, weanlings, surely he is rattling off
His ^au, gau, qaw, qaw, law, law, caw, caw,
Line upon line, time upon time, the stammerer ! "
So hear them hoot and mock the voice that spake,
" Come unto Zion, weary ones, and here ye shall have
rest."
But no ! They care not !
Thus do men often turn from friends for spite,
Call their love gall, and perverse choose the worse !
These tipsy mummers shout, " We re safe ;
"We ve death upon our side. Look at his mask.
See the masked devils, Death, Sheol.
As for Assyria, why, they ve passed us by. We re safe !
Ha ! ha ! We cheated them ! Ha ! ha ! "
Oh, listen to the God who loves you, men of Judah ;
He s building now a refuge for us.
Every stone He hath tried, each corner s dear to Him.
Oh, hear, and love and live.
That God who plants this Zion firm
Will never bid it fall.
But lies shall fall.
The awful torrent, the engulfing wave, shall sweep away
Thy refuge built on sand. Day after day,
Again, again, again the storm shall rage. Mock thou
not now.
Ah, drunkard, thy bed is always short for thee,
Thy covering is too narrow for thy shame.
See, Jehovah riseth, rouseth His dread hosts,
Let His dread watchword, well-known, sober thee -
Let the decree be done.
Sobered now art thou, tiller of Judah s land !
God s care is known to thee, made known on every
hand.
Ploughing and levelling, scattering and gathering,
All in due order, who hath taught thee this ?
God taught thy fathers, God was thy teacher,
Wondrous wise, wondrous kind ; God is thy wondrous
Friend.
Trust Him, not lies nor the wine gods.
206 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAI>. n.
2. Discourses after Samaria had fallen, all still in an
anxious strain, but with rising confidence.
(a) Chap. x. 5-xi. The date of this magnificent piece of
work is disputed. The older theory was that Isaiah wrote it
about 701 B.C., when the Assyrian emperor Sennacherib was
marching across Canaan to strike his mortal foe Egypt, and
on the way was ravaging many of the little states that had
thrown off the Assyrian sovereignty and leagued with Egypt.
Judah was one of those leaguers. The story we shall learn
more clearly by-and-by; here it is enough to know that
Isaiah was no doubt then in great anxiety lest Sennacherib s
march from the north should strike Jerusalem. It was once
commonly thought that chaps, x. 5 xii. were Isaiah s shout
of defiance, and hope rising to sublime rapture in expectation
of glories to come instead of any hurt to Zion. This theory
is still that of Prof. Driver, Introd. 0. T., p. 200. There
are, however, many students of the passage, including Prof.
Cheyne, who agree that not Sennacherib speaks here, who did
not overthrow Samaria and the other states over which Isaiah
makes the victor glory, but that Sargon must be meant, who
did destroy these, and that, moreover, long before Sennache
rib s day. The horrors of the captivity of the northern king
dom must have been all fresh in Isaiah s mind when he wrote
of it so vividly as he does, as we shall hear presently.
Further, Professor Guthe does well to point out that the
foremost faith in the writer s soul here is not that which
filled Isaiah in the latest days, near 700 B.C., but rather does
he pour out the hopes he had in earlier years, not indeed in
the days of his oracles of judgment, 740-725 B.C., but in
the earlier oracles of grace. For Guthe shows that among
the oracles of grace themselves there is a progress. At first,
says he, the hopes gathered not round Zion alone, but
round the heirs of David in Zion. He had great faith in
persons when he began to preach his gospel of hope. We
know this ; we know how he preached of babes as message-
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 207
bearers, of himself and the children God had given hirn
as signs, of the David-heir as God s own image. This
was indeed the highest form of his faith. As years went
on he had less confidence in individuals, was "more prac
tical," as some say, but in reality less grandly ideal, less en
thusiastic, and certainly less Divdne. We shall read this
clearly in the oracles which belong undoubtedly to the latest
years. He came down from faith in the power of a Spirit to
put his faith more in Zion, in a place, in stone and lime, in
material tilings. It was possible for even Isaiah to pass the
meridian of his clearest vision of God.
Now it is the highest height of his hopes we hear pro
claimed in chap. xi. He does indeed sing of Zion s safety,
but his swelling heart yearns out towards another human
heart, great, gifted, good, as God s grandest revelation of His
ceaseless love. Guthe seems right, and chaps, x. and xi.
doubtless belong to the earlier date.
But Guthe holds also that the date, 720 B.C., immediately
after Samaria s fall, is too early, because the other states
declared to be overthrown were not all overthrown until
717 B.C. He thinks chap, xi., with its strong faith in the
Person who should work all safety and joy for the people,
may be of earlier date than chap. x.
But the close relation of both chapters to chap, xxviii. is
significant, and may not be passed lightly by. The terrible
proverb of chap. x. 23 and the allusions of verses 22 and 26
recall at once the same awful proverb-oracle uttered in chap,
xxviii. 22, and the imagery of verses 15, 18. Isaiah seems
to have hurled forth both these great cries in the same hot
hour of danger. Their stamp is the same.
5-19. Woe ! woe to thee, Asshur, mine angry scourge,
I, Jehovah, wield thee. Thou art not God.
A cruel- hearted soldier thou, but I m commander.
I hear thy boast. Thou fool !
" I ve kings for captains, states for slaves ;
208 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
As I have done I ll do.
Samaria, Syrin, many more I ve felled ;
I ll fell Jerusalem.
As I have done to Samaria s God,
So willl dotoZion s."
Big boaster, how thou lt burst.
"I m wise," sayest thou, "and mighty ; I am lord.
I ll gather towns like eggs ; no hen shall cackle me
away. "
I heard a swinging axe scolding its swinger,
A saw ordering its sawyer, as it rose and fell :
A sceptre held a king, a rod ruled a soul.
But look, these rods and sceptres, thistles, thorns,
Are all aflame,
Blown to a blaze by the blast of God.
How Jehovah s devotion devoureth.
He burneth forests of sceptres, till one or two
standing
Totter to sinking like sick men.
20-23. Then let the stricken lean on the striker no more.
O fallen Israel ! once countless as sand by the sea,
A remnant shall yet return. My boy She ar Jashubh
cries to thee, She ar Jacob.
The far-reaching God is reaching out arms of love
To thee. " Let the decree be done," saith God.
But His decrees are all devotion to His own.
24-34. Asshur shall fall. God gave, and God shall take away.
Zioii ! thou art safe.
Ay, let him march on, till he s close upon us,
A day s march off, or nay, an hour s,
Till all the villagers about us flee in terror.
Lift now thine arm o er us, Asshur !
Plant thy spears, a forest of them, gainst us.
Rise now, Jehovah, hew that forest down.
xi. 1-5. Now David s time hath come ; his plants shall sprout,
In his tree-tops shall rustle the winds of God,
Wise winds that give kings strength,
Bowing their reverent crowns before Jehovah s throne.
Then shall the poor, the meek, stand firm mid honest
judges.
A good king s breath is life, his girdle truth.
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 209
6-9. Come soon, O happy day ! Change all creation.
Make the fierce lion kind, the pretty snake an infant s
harmless toy ;
Change them within ; breathe in new laws for all,
Till every clod knows God.
10- 1 6. Wave David s banner high, till all men see.
And now come Israel s exiled remnants, gather home
again.
From Afric, Asia, Tigris, Nile, fly on wind s wings.
Come, Ephraim and Judah, one in the past golden
day,
Now one for evermore in the glad golden day to be.
Dry up the seas that sunder brothers.
Sea and earth shall know Jehovah,
And build His glad people s pathway home.
Here we may not include chap. xii. in our description of
what is undoubtedly Isaiah s, for many careful students
doubt whether he wrote it. It is a most beautiful psalm,
full of the very voice of God whispered through a wondrously
gifted soul. Whoever wrote it, it was not unfitly placed
here to swell the glad psalm.
But its close relation to the song of Miriam in Exodus
xv., and its distinct linguistic alliance with Deuteronomy
xxxii. and xxxiii., perhaps also with Psalm xc., taken with
its unlikeness to Isaiah s style, place it among those con
troverted works which cannot be truly estimated until our
history s guiding lines are learned from the documents which
are uncontroverted.
(&) Chap. xxii. There is a siege. Those who understand
the danger are on the housetops watching anxiously the
besiegers, and the reservoirs are carefully filled. But, like
the Samarian bacchanalians above, the people below in hall
and street are in loud carnival !
This is madness, blindness in visible danger. But Isaiah
exhorts the careful men too ; they have looked to walls and
water-tanks, but they do not look on God and God s heart,
God s devotion to them and His purpose.
o
210 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
Appended is a warning to a " familiar " of the court, a
man with an Aramaic name, Shebna, and so a foreigner
from Syria, who had got himself into high place and
magnificence and power, and was even coveting a tawdry
immortality in Jerusalem, building himself a grand tomb
there. Isaiah is annoyed ; he thunders anathema, and pre
dicts that Shebna shall fall, and be superseded by one
Eliakiin. The later chapters, xxxvi. 22, &c., seem to record
the fulfilment of the threat.
Isaiah s thoroughly human character appears finely here.
The intense concern with "persons," which characterises his
earlier work, is seen in this personal attack. He rises
naturally also to sing of his highest theme, faith in the
house of David. Very naturally too did such an oracle, with
its personal features, catch the attention of men long after,
and furnish language for the writer in the Apocalypse (Rev.
iii. 7, 8). The oracle was doubtless spoken in Hezekiah s
earlier days.
(c) Chap. xxi. We need not delay over the three oracles
here, save to say: (a) the first (verses I 10) warns Babylon
of one among its many attacks by Assyria, and its only
theological interest for us here is its splendid assertion of
the omniscience of Jehovah, Israel s God, who is Lord of all
hosts.
(/3) Verses 11-12. The second pictures Edoni asking
counsel from Jehovah s prophet. Here again is an exalted
faith in God s presence with the soul.
(7) Verses 1 3-16. The third predicts Arabia against suffer
ing, starvation, blood, decimation at Assyria s hands. And
again Isaiah speaks his profound faith in God s guidance of
his thoughts. What the prophet feels and speaks he knows
Jehovah thinks and purposes.
All these are of uncertain date, but we may easily
conceive them uttered when Sargon was conquering and
devastating on every hand, 720-710 B.C.
CHAP, ir.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 211
(II.) Secondly, more confident utterances. And here again
we have three subdivisions :
(A.) Utterances of the perfect assurance in the prophet s
soul, and as yet no danger actually near. Most of these
oracles seem to imply that Hezekiah has revolted from the
Assyrian suzerainty, and many of the people fear that there
may be a new invasion to avenge the revolt. The dates
are not certain to a year. The whole may have preceded
711 B.C., when Sargon did invade Palestine again and took
Ashdod, as we shall see. Or they may have just preceded
Sennacherib s fresh invasion and his siege of Jerusalem,
about 706 B.C. In any case, we enumerate
(1) Chap. xx. A dated oracle. It was uttered in the
year of the siege of Ashdod by the armies of Sargon under
the command of a "tartan," i.e., a general. Ashdod was
twice thus besieged, in the year 711 and in the year 709
B.C. Some men of Judah in their terror thought Egyptian
help should be invoked, but Isaiah pours out supreme con
tempt for all aid from the African states Gush and Migrairn.
He uses no euphemisms, but himself performs a rather strong
symbolic act, and then plainly interprets it, declaring that
men shall remember with blushing for three years to come
the shame of the vaunted African helpers.
(2) Chaps, xxix.-xxxii. We open now one of the most
important sections of the book. Canon Driver s description
of it is excellent, one of the finest parts of his little book
(Driver s Isaiah, chap. vi. pp. 55-56, cf. Introd. 0. T.,
p. 212).
Sargon the great emperor has died, after fifteen years of
battle and blood from the day in 720 B.C. when Salrnan-
Assur IV. bequeathed him the siege of Samaria. Samaria
fell quickly ; and then Isaiah expected a siege of Zion. But
there was Hamath away in the north to beleaguer, and when
very soon, in 720 too, there was war with Egypt, the war
path lay along the level coast of the Philistines to the field of
212 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
llaphia, and not across hilly Zion. Later on, about 711, the
great king punished Philistia again by a siege of Ashdod, as we
have seen ; but this time again Judah suffered little, although
she had been plotting with Philistia against the common over
lord Sargon. Then in far-off Babylon a prince, Merodach-
Baladan, had tried, and failed, to make his country free. He
had wooed Hezekiah with courtesies in time of his illness,
seeking support from Judah ; and Isaiah had feared mischief
might result from this. Nevertheless the prophet s faith in
Judah s safety had all along proved true till now, when, in
703, Sargon died. Sennacherib, who next took the throne,
was a more bitter foe than Sargon. If Sargon was a
Napoleon, Sennacherib was an Alva.
Those little kingdoms on the south-eastern coast of the
Levant had not considered what Sennacherib might be and do,
when at the news of Sargon s death they plotted eagerly for
freedom. In Babylon too Merodach revolted again; and
now all the states in Palestine threw off the yoke, Judah
among the rest, all counting on Egypt as their champion
if Assyria should turn again upon them.
Isaiah approved of the independence, but not of any
alliance with Egypt to defend it.
The four chapters from xxix. to xxxii. are a set of three
prophetic proclamations for these times, 705 B.C. and later,
each sounding the same keynote and theme in its initial
chords, " Ho ! ho ! ! Woe ! woe ! ! " each with skilful rhetoric
interweaving denunciation of Egyptian hopes with cheer for
the anxious through trust in the devoted Jehovah. In each
the tone swells, and the torrent swells more and more cheer
ful, jubilant, fierce, till the third is a chant of victory over
the Assyrian ; and then follows as a final coda an exquisite
picture of ideal days to come.
CHAP, rr.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 213
(rt) Chap. XXIX. A SIEGE LAID AND LIFTED.
(i.) Verses 1-6. Jehovah surely causes trouble.
altar, altar, round thee David camped, and round thee
sacred dances whirl.
Round thee shall wailers wail,
For round thee, all around, shall awful Asshur camp.
Down, down, face to the ground, in haste,
The awful sandstorm s on the horizon !
The whirlwind, quaking earth, the dazzling flash !
Men ? Asshur ? No, not they ; tis God does this
The Lord of all hosts, Jehovah, Zion s own God.
(ii.) Verses 7-12. Are God s ivays a riddle?
Oh, who shall read the riddle of God ?
Shall the hosts that are swept against Zion to-day,
And to-morrow are swept away, away as the sandstorm 1
Have they dreamed the purpose of God ?
O ye blinded, ye drunken with dread, can ye tell ?
Ho, scholar ! ho, yeoman ! can neither explain ?
Can none of you read God s oracle, written in storm 1
(iii.) Verses 13-16. To deceivers God s ways are a riddle.
Why are God s ways so dark 1 Let Him tell :
My ways are known to the men who walk with me
In heart as in words, in love as in rites.
Does God know naught of your secret Egyptian plot ?
Can God not see ? Tis you, fools, are blind.
(iv.) Verses 17-24. trust II im ! He will save.
We need no Egyptian help ; our devoted Jehovah will
speedily help.
Even blind eyes shall see and laugh
When earth herself is free, and full of the riches of God.
For the tyrant Asshur shall pass away ;
That vain deceiver, Egypt, shall pass away too ;
Likewise all perverters of justice at home.
214 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
Jacob ! beloved of Jehovah, trust in His love !
Gaze on His work for thee ;
So learn His love for thee.
Trust that He ruleth all ;
Trusting, thou lt never fall.
Then troubled souls shall know and rest ;
Then murmuring hearts shall see God s way is best.
Note how distinctly religious the writer is. He handles
politics, it is true, but not as his primary interest. He
preaches a method and place for deliverance, but not with
a priestly interest, not as a traditional institution. The
form he preaches is a new one, and almost an innovation.
But Isaiah s pressing points are, "It is our Jehovah that
is so powerful," "How wonderful His ways," "How close
He walks with men." " How utterly He loves." Isaiah is
all absorbed in his gaze on God. God, God he sees, and must
declare.
(&) Chap. XXX. THE FOOLISH USELESSNESS OF THE
EGYPT-PLOT DISCLOSED.
(i.) Verses 1-7. The plot is well Jcnoion, and Egypt s icortli-
lessness also.
Ho ! ho ! an oracle, an oracle of God is in our household
word,
" As restless as a child."
Ay, restless are ye that should counsel well,
That should sway men, save them !
Your plans will fail ; there s nothing manly, godlike in them.
Who knows not that your emissaries have been seen
In Tanis, Dafne, sneaking in shadow of some sphinx.
Hear plain speech : Egypt is worthless ;
She never helps her allies, save to contempt.
I ll sing you a song of the hot land,
Land of the lion s lair ;
Hot biting vipers glide there,
They ll be your camel and ass
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 215
To carry your treasures away yes, away !
Go there, and be robbed, and bitten, and burned.
Go and get pain ; seek help in vain
In proud, idle Egypt.
(ii.) Verses 8-1 1. " You have silenced true guides."
Alas for the day that has heard !
Alas for the record, written this day for our children to read
and to weep !
This people cry, " Tell us no more of Jehovah s devotion."
They say the seer s dream of God is all a dream !
" Let the preacher stop ! To Egypt we must go, our only
hope."
(iii.) Verses 12-17. This Egyptian hope will be your ruin.
But think what that scorned devotion of God to you means.
He moves me to cry to you,
He who trusts mockery will surely be mocked.
As a wall that towers too high falls with a crash,
So falls he who trusts in pride.
What said Jehovah s seer ?
" Trust Him. You re safest here.
Cheer all the timid. Twill bring yourself cheer."
What then do ye cry ?
" Nay, saddle quick; we must fly."
Then saddle horses, camels. Fly !
Fools run in thousands at that cry
From one Assyrian. They ll die ! They ll die !
(iv.) Verses 18-26. " Yet Jehovah will save"
Like one lone tree left of a forest by the storm,
Zion shall stand nay, not alone ;
Jehovah, God with us, waits too.
Waits to be gracious ; rises not to shake
The earth, as once we feared, but to breathe grace, love,
life on us.
Oh, blest are they who put their trust in Him !
In Zion God wipes all tears away. gracious God !
21G OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
He may cause siege for reasons known to Him.
We will be His men, brave to fight or wait
His oracle, His whisper, " This is the way, walk in it here."
Oh, bitterly do we lament our leaving Thee, Jehovah,
To worship other deities. Oh ! they disgust us now.
For Thou wilt give us rain and grain for beast and man.
Thou art the great Rain-Giver. Thou wilt circle the dry
mountain-tops
With water channels. The days shall be too short
To gather all the harvest, but the days themselves
Shall lengthen, and the night be bright as day.
Siege, breach, Jehovah heals it all.
(v.) Verses 17-33. Jeliovali will overthrow Assyria.
Lo ! Asshur is coining from afar for war.
Lo ! Jehovah comes farther ; His wrath s fiercer far.
Asslmr s -war-drum shook nations ; God s breath shakes
them all.
Ho ! a song ! a great feast ! God thunders His call.
Flash, lightnings ! roar, storm-clouds ! rain, hail, fall !
Dash Asshur to death !
Now feast, fire, in Tophet !
Twere food for Moloch ! Faugh, the stink !
Now, flying besiegers, think
Of Jehovah s storm-breath !
(c) Chap. xxxi. THE EXULTING SOXG.
(i.) Verse i.
Ho, fools ! Woe, fools !
Ye trust Egyptian horses, because ye see them.
Ye trust not Jehovah s care, because ye have forgotten it.
(ii.) Verse 2.
Ye are fools : but God is wise.
He ne er forgets.
When evil helpers ruin foolish men, then God will rise
Never-failins;.
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 217
(iii.) Verse 3.
Egypt is human, he s not God ;
His horses flesh, not spirit !
Oh, trust in God.
(iv.) Verses 4, 5.
The still voice of Jehovah whispers in my soul ; hark :
" Like lion o er his prey, roaring
When shepherds, a band of them, run and shout to frighten
him.
But he flies not ; no, but roars again
So is Jehovah crouching, guarding Zion."
Again the gentle Spirit whispers ; listen :
" Like fluttering parent birds, over their nest
When danger comes, so I, Jehovah, hover,
Shielding and saving 1 Zion."
(v.) Verses 6-9.
Turn, turn back to God :
Fling away little gods, all ;
For tis Asshur shall fall by the sword of no man, but of God.
Stricken, faint, sick ;
Were he a rock, he d fear and fall.
Thus sayeth Jehovah,
Who shineth in Zion.
(d) Chap, xxxii. THE GOOD TIME COMING.
(i.) Verses 1-7.
When kings are firm, and princes just,
When each man shields his neighbour,
Then seers shall see, and all men hear
God near them mid their labour.
When churls are known, and churls called,
No high-placed thief called honest ;
When loud-voiced fools are not held wise,
218 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
K"or clever sneerers bravest.
Then quiet safety shall fill all Jehovah s land ;
We shall know the power and presence of Jehovah s hand.
(ii.) Verses 8-14.
O women, veiled yet powerful, beware !
Ye trust in men, and that is womanly ;
But men are not almighty,
And least of all, when at your bidding they re unmanly.
Within a year ye 11 beat your breasts
Like gleaners in a famine.
Men shall fail, the wild-ass roam,
And you ]
(iii.) Verses 15-20.
Jehovah works when our work s done.
Then deserts blossom ; vines wax like the cedars ;
Where no man dwelt, rise tents, justice, joy
In richest pasture.
Then woman, thou lt be happier in that humbler nomad home,
Like mothers of old, than in these crowded courts
All wealth and wrong.
! most blessed are the quiet tillers of the soil.
(3) Chap, xxiii. A wail over Tyre, with a warning for
Egypt. She seems about to fall before the Assyrians.
Sargon s inscriptions tell us he did gain mastery in some
form over the island city. Isaiah s cry in ver. 13, "Behold
the land of Chaldea ; this people is no more," means surely
that when he wrote the words Sargon had already crushed
the Chaldean or Babylonian revolt under Merodach-Baladan.
We know he crushed that in 710 B.C. Putting these things
together, we can see how Isaiah may well have proclaimed
this oracle of chap, xxiii. just after his oracles of chaps,
xxix.-xxxii. described above. In these latter he condemned
all trust in Egypt. Now he adds, " See how Sargon has
beaten Tyre, the help and sister of Egypt ! How now will
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 219
the heart of Egypt, always weak, be cowed and paralysed
with fright ! Seek no help there ; seek your own Jehovah.
He can and will help, and He does help ; for are not Sargon s
sieges of Tyre, and Ashdod, and elsewhere, while Jerusalem
is left comparatively untouched, all fulfilments of our faith ?
"He is truly founding in Zion a sure refuge!" Here is
again evidence that Isaiah is indeed a politician ; but his
politics are all simply expressions of his religious faiths, on
which all his opinions are based. And his utterances touching
foreign politics or peoples are uttered for the sake of that folk
who are to Isaiah an essential part of the life, the purpose,
the joy of Jehovah. Here is the sum of chap, xxiii. :
THE DOOM OF TYRE.
(i.) Verses 1-7.
O Cyprus ! isles of sea ! straits far over the sea !
Blush for the pitiful fall
Of the merchant-mistress of all !
But thou Egypt, Tyre s harvest-field, blush most of all !
Nay, pale ! Shriek ! Fall in this fall.
(ii.) Verses 8-12.
Who could do this ?
Who devised, who spake, who struck ?
Jehovah, the Lord of all hosts, our Lover.
(iii.) Verse 13.
Think ye twas Asshur ? Think ye that Asshur slew Babel 1
(iv ) Verses 14-18.
Our God decreed the past ;
Hear Him decree the age to come :
O Tyre, mistress, harlot !
Go, thou shalt hide thee a whole age to come ;
220 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
Then a harlot, all selfish, thou wilt be again.
But thy gains God will bid thee disgorge
Thou shalt bring them to Zion, to us, to Jehovah.
Jehovah ruled all, and He will rule.
(B.) The second subdivision of these more confident utter
ances is the oracles declared amid actual siege, chap,
xxxiii. and part of chap, xxxvii.
(i) Chap, xxxiii. Quite true it is that Isaiah descended
from the ideal faith in men, in persons filled with Jehovah s
words, or covered with His Spirit. He came down to a more
material faith in a place as chosen by Jehovah to be the one
place of safety in the world. It was, of course, a practical
faith ; but it is a disappointment. Yet here is a remarkable
fact ; in the midst of actual danger Isaiah s inspiration
rose again repeatedly to a high spiritual level. In the midst
of the siege he proclaims the highest spiritual deliverance he
ever conceives, and the most purely moral endowment for
soul and character that we have thus far seen. It is forgive
ness he preaches now forgiveness for those who live in Zion,
it is true, yet forgiveness for trembling sinners.
(i.) Verse i.
cruel, false Asshur, God hinder thee !
(ii.) Verses 26. The prayer.
Jehovah, save, O save !
Thou giv st the striking arm strength ;
O, therefore, Thou canst save.
Greater than men, than Asshur, Thou !
For dost Thou not brood o er all !
God, Jehovah, Zion s Friend,
We re strong, wise, safe in Thee.
(iii.) Verses 7-9. The distress.
The soldiers weep,
The towns are fallen,
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 221
The roads grow green,
The footfall is hushed,
The earth is faint and weeps.
Lebanon, Sharon, Bashan, and Carmel,
Fling off their leaves in grief ;
Zion s alone now !
(iv.) Verses 10-24. The deliverance.
() Verses 10-13.
Jehovah s shout ! " I come !
Asshur, conceiver of folly,
Burn in the heat of thy mad conceit.
Blaze like a beacon, till the world see ! "
(/?} Verses 14-16.
Sinners in Zion see, and cry in fright,
" Oh, woe ! Oh woe ! The awful fire
The enemy kindles to destroy us.
We are undone ! Who can escape ?
Perhaps the righteous they perhaps !
Oh, we have sinned, we ve sinned.
Oh yes, we wronged our neighbour ;
Blood-guilt is on our souls !
No rocky fastness for us now !
The awful God has that for righteous souls.
Only for such, cried Amos long ago ;
Now we must die."
(7) Verses 17-19.
Nay, look; see near thee God s beloved,
Thy king ; thee too He saves.
"Tis Asshur that s on fire ;
Jehovah burneth up his host.
(3) Verses 20, 21.
Look upon Zion, sinner ; look around thee
On this trysted meeting-place of God and men ;
Can he break tryst 1
Jehovah never strikes His tent.
222 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
(i) Verses 22, 23a.
Hear, sinner, let Jehovah be thy trust.
His judgment s full of favour to the fallen.
Look unto Him and live. Let Him hold thee.
() Verses 23b, 24.
Take, sinner, take Jehovah s gifts ;
Thou art in Zion. Here all s well.
Here shall all faintness cease ;
Here all are forgiven.
(2) Chap, xxxvii. 6, 7, 22-35. Some phrases in these
oracles suggest the style of a follower rather than the master s
hand ; and the setting of the words in a narrative which
occurs also in 2 Kings xviii. ff., strengthens this suggestion.
If this should be a correct surmise, we should have in the
whole passage an excellent record of the impression Isaiah
had made on men by his proclamations of his great faith.
The writer, whether Isaiah or another, depicts the prophet s
soul as full to the last of enthusiastic faith in his great
Zion-doctrine.
The words are a fierce challenge, a sort of weird laughter
flung at the terrible besieging host. For a brief hour there
whispers fear. Then leaps out again the shout of perfect
fearlessness for Zion.
He who set the words in narrative was full of wonder at
the great seer s power of faith and deed, and at his power to
work like faith and deeds in the king and men of Judah.
It must be observed, however, as one reads the close of
chap, xxxvii., that the story s end is very abrupt. What
was the "angel" by which God slew so many of the
Assyrians ? Was it a pestilence ? Or was it some successful
stroke by the Egyptian forces ?
This latter clue is distinctly implied in the narrative.
And it is also made probable by Sennacherib s very inscrip-
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 223
tion, telling of what was evidently in his own eyes a failure
and severe disappointment. The record is given in Schrader.
C. I. & 0. T., pp. 277 ff. The Egyptians preserved a record
of the matter, and gloried over it to Herodotus (ii. 141) long
after, quite possibly with some exaggeration of their valour
and success.
The important facts for us are, in brief: ist. Zion was
partially, but only partially, delivered from the Assyrian
attack. 2nd. Egypt seemed to have proved an important
helper in the deliverance. 3rd. Isaiah s ministry appears
suddenly to cease ; and of his later story we hear nothing.
When we link together this silent disappearance with the
double non-fulfilment of the strict letter of the promises,
perfect safety for Zion, and perfect uselessness of Egypt to
help, we have probably to conclude that Isaiah s final experi
ence was the opposite of what happened later to Jeremiah.
The latter prophet rose immensely in popular favour as a
predictor. Isaiah surely lost repute, and his last days were
hid under a cloud of disfavour. His greater glory was to be
the glory of the rising again of his influence in a spiritual
and ideal resurrection.
(C.) The discussion of any oracles supposed to be later
than those above will now seem strange ; but such discussion
may be hypothetical; and by allowing the hypothesis the
view above set forth will be found to be confirmed.
(r.) Chap. xxi. i-io is a warning that Babylon is in danger.
It used to be considered as the work of some hand in the
Babylonian exile of 590-540 B.C., a shout of satisfaction over
the coming of Cyrus to liberate the Jewish slaves by the
overthrow of Babylon. But it is quite as likely to be Isaiah s
warning to his own countrymen not to trust in help against
Assyria from Merodach-Baladan or other Babylonian patriots
and insurgents. Viewed thus, it agrees with the probable
disrepute into which Isaiah had come. It illustrates the
willingness of Jerusalem to treat with allies like Egypt and
224 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. ir.
Babylon, whom Isaiah disliked. The passage has no en
thusiastic word about Zion, but it speaks the prophet s abid
ing trust in Jehovah.
(2) Chap, xviii. Here is a scornful warning for Ethiopia.
Has Egypt managed to trouble Assyria and hinder Sen
nacherib ? It shall be but for a day. For far beyond
Egypt, far south in Abyssinia, alarm flying south shall
paralyse all men. Assyria shall humble Africa utterly.
Not a word of safety or promise for Judah comes till the
very last sentence. Not even there aught but the prophet s
faith that, after all, not Assyria shall be supreme. Ethiopia
shall acknowledge God, who is the God of Israel, Lord of all
hosts, whose chosen seat is Zion.
Chap. xvii. 12-14. This is apparently a declaration that
Assyria too shall suddenly pass away. But it has no word
of Zion, scarcely even an allusion to her. Isaiah s heart is
checked. The cries of joy in Zion do not leap out now so
grandly. A cloud is upon his soul darkening his once pre
cious earthly jewel.
(3) Chap. xix. A scornful cry against Egypt. Whatever
help she may have brought, she shall be utterly undone.
Her little gods shall give no help. Civil strife shall unnerve
her. Her great river shall fly away in shame ; fisher and
farmer shall weep for want. Her counsels and counsellors
are all foolish, twisting about, always wrong. Judah shall
become a trouble to her. David shall actually rule over
her.
But Isaiah was the preacher of grace, and grace must
bring healing to the wounded, even if these be outside the
pale. When at last Egypt becomes Assyria s servant, then
both shall bow to Jehovah. With these two servants of the
God of hosts Israel shall be the third.
Here is no jubilant exaltation of Zion, nor a cry of exulta
tion in her. The prophet s tone is changed. He is no longer
the greatly honoured seer in Zion. He is still, however, even
CHAP, ii.] ANALYSIS OF THE ORACLES OF ISAIAH. 225
in his pain, the devoted man of Jehovah, who is Lord of
hosts, God over all the earth.
The tone of these last few oracles thus seems to confirm
the opinion that Isaiah lost repute as a successful predictor
at the end of Sennacherib s campaign. The pendulum of
favour was swinging away from him and from his faith for a
little while. The reaction of Manasseh, of which we have to
hear, was the greater manifestation of the disfavour we saw
rising so mysteriously in the end of the narrative of Isaiah
xxx vii.
As we turn from this description of his oracles, let us sum
in brief their course.
1. First, following his call, was a period of denunciation,
keen and awful. At its close was sense of failure of that
method for conversion.
2. Recalling his first vision in Zion s temple, and God s
grace in it to him and his there, although all unclean in life
and lips, Isaiah hastens out again to preach that grace of
God, ready to touch and teach and heal the worst.
3. He proclaims persons at first as the signs of God s
grace, saying comparatively much less of Zion. There is a
remarkable succession in the sorts of persons. First it is the
infant yet unborn, then the family of the prophet, then a
new-born babe in the royal home, heir to all the great en
dowments of David, and at Ahaz s death it is the new king who
follows, springing from the old and wise Nahash-root. But
the hope in persons grows at once more ideal and less real in
the utterances of chap. xi. at Samaria s fall ; for less is said
here of the actual human well-known prince, and far, far
more of endowments to be given and gotten from the descend
ing and abiding Divine Spirit. At the same time the Ziou
faith is growing into plainer utterance. Doubtless the dis
appointing discovery came that persons are not all one hopes
from them. Possibly easier times made men less devout,
less devoted at the prophet s call. Doubtless also, then as
P
226 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
now, religious enthusiasm was wont to grow cool at least in
appearance ; most of what purely spiritual impulse could
accomplish for the time had been accomplished. Then it is
the nature of such feelings and conviction to crystallise and
harden. Faith shows its power to resist decay by its grasp
of visible tokens, its strong love of them, its adornment
of them. They are the visible evidence of life when finer
signs fail and do not record our relation to the unseen. So
Isaiah s faith in Zion came to foremost utterance, and in
event after event his prediction of safety in Zion was proved
correct. At last the darkest day of all came. Then Isaiah
cried out again his faith in Zion s safety, but rose now back
again from that to the highest ideal faith for persons that he
ever uttered, " Sinners in Zion shall be forgiven." It was a
limited vision indeed, but it was a vision into God s divinest
treasure and gift. When after this Isaiah s external hopes
seem baffled, and men s hope grows cold, we can be satis
fied. He has preached to Zion the very gospel. Better
that earth s joys grow dim, and the cross be held of God
before his closing eyes. He triumphs still, and shall still
triumph.
CHAPTER III.
A SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS
GENETICALLY CONSIDERED
I. The kernel of Isaiah s character.
LET us announce at once the conclusion of the matter. The
kernel of Isaiah s character is his faith in revelation. Cer
tainly the revelation he believed in was a revelation to him
self ; and his faith in it was his constant intense sense of a
very atmosphere of Divine communications always breathing
in upon him. It would be vain to. look for theological defini
tions in his century, and of all the writings in that century
his are far too thoroughly busy in persuasion of the people
round him to furnish us with leisurely reflections on the
nature of the revelations he enjoyed. But if we count as a
Divine revelation that which comes to a soul in trouble, and
gives it most joyful light on its path, then Isaiah lived in a
constant sunshine of such experiences. Most people do
count such experiences as their real revelations of God. 1 We
have such experience of conversion and of providential leading
to-day; the Hebrew prophet s vital air was a sense of such
Divine help and illumination. Isaiah overwhelms the reader
with the thought that his mind was all on fire with such high
fellowship, all his life-purposes were splendidly controlled by
1 From the admirable tract of Professor Herrmann of Marburg, on Offcn-
barung (Giessen, J. Ricker, 1887, p. 65), I take this definition. That tract is
indeed a study in dogmatics ; but it is a most attractive dogmatical utterance,
fur it sets in simplest speech the story of the actual Christian experience of
most people.
227
228 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
it, and all his speeches planned with a masterly aim and high
dignity inspired in him by the consciousness of this mar
vellous fellowship.
He was essentially the prophet ; he was the chief of pro
phets. This does not mean that he counted it his great
business to predict, although he did predict at times ; but,
in most direct and clear fashion for that age, he professed to
tell his people and the world what was the mind of Jehovah,
the God of the Hebrews. It is indeed remarkable that
chaps, ii. to v., that is, the record of his early sterner work,
contain no allusion to himself or to his office. But this is
not unnatural ; rather may we consider it a truly manly
trait that he makes no claim to special professional authority
while he is indignantly denouncing immorality. That denun
ciation can stand on its own merits. And yet he reveals
even in this section an instinctive sense that he has an
authority men cannot escape. It appears, of course, in his
formula, " Jehovah saith ; " but it gleams, if possible, more
determinedly through the quotation which opens chap. ii.
He says in effect, " These words have authority ; they hold
your reverence. I, Isaiah, plant myself on that foundation,
and declare only the clear consequences of that which you
admit." What could hold his hearers more inevitably? In
other words, this use of a text was a real and powerful
appeal to supreme controlling force, to Divine authority.
Such is likewise to-day the practical principle underlying
the preacher s use of a text. The preacher does not swear
by the text indeed, like Isaiah, he may contradict it. But
the hearer s just reverence for the words secures attention
for those declarations of the preacher which are logically
connected with the text either by their parallel nature or by
their contrast. With unfailing certainty does the soul hear
God in its own reverent, honest judgments. So is God ever
seen in the true soul of man. The true Son of man is Son
of God. Such was Isaiah s skilful, ideally homiletic attitude
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 229
in his most youthful work. He was "The Prophet" from
the first.
But with the new, deep sense of the devotion of his God
to the Hebrews, as it flashed upon him in his remembrance
of the initial gracious vision, there came evidently a new
intense consciousness of his personal possession of prophetic
mission. At once after the sixth chapter we find him going
out with a prophetic badge, that fine symbolic oracle, his boy
Shear- Jashubh (" When a remnant returns "), walking by his
side. And it is to the king he goes now, as the co-ordinate
high officer of Jehovah s people. He is no mere general
preacher of G od and good ; he is of the Divine executive, and
has definite demands to bring.
The little son so honoured is guide into an honoured home.
Of the many children Isaiah names symbolically, two were
his own, we know ; and they were held close to the father s
heart as part of his dearest self and strength. "When one
was as yet not born the babe was the father s theme in his
counsellings with God and his self-consecration. When the
father was living through hours of agony for Jerusalem s
safety from Syria, or from the vastly greater enemy, Assyria,
he clasped his elder boy s hand or cried aloud the lad s loved
name for cheer. There is a pathos altogether unique in old
Hebrew records in the words (chap. viii. 1 8)
" Behold, I and the children Jehovah hath given me are for
signs and wonders in Israel :
From Jehovah of hosts, who dwelleth in Mount Zion."
But not pathos alone is here. The man who spoke saw
the power of God in himself and in all that was knit about
him. The outermost circle of his personality was the circle of
his disciples, learning his words and reproducing his faith.
" Seal up instructions for my disciples," wrote he, chap,
viii. 1 6. Thus the outermost wave of his influence was very
truly himself. Then within these were his beloved, his
230 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
boys. But inmost was the dear wife of his bosom, and her
he calls "The Prophetess." Such a title no other prophet
gives his spouse. This is the finest stroke in this great
picture of a prophet. All that was of him, with him, in him,
was charged of God with revelation. This was truly a high
conscious worth. Here was a profound faith in inspiration.
The home was a revelation. At the table s head sat such a
father and mother, their children nestled near, and down
the sides sat the honoured disciples of the high calling. The
bread they shared was the revelations of their God.
These revelations to him and round him were messages of
supreme help in hours of utter helplessness. They were
overwhelming convictions of the arrival of God s opportunity
in the actual hours of man s extremity. There was certainly
a growth in the reality and joy of this experience. In his
earlier days and words, amid despair over the uncleamiess of
men, faith arose in him that the cleansing which seemed
impossible should be accomplished first by a .supernatural
interposition of awful judgment to burn away bad men, and
then by a new creation of men to replace these. But this
grasp of a hope was only an infant s lesson compared with
the great faith of the later prophecies, those which follow
chap, vi., that Jehovah would descend in His love to unclean
men, would touch their unclean lips, would cleanse them, and
even give into the charge of these new-created souls the
dearest, holiest, most glad messages He had to give. One is
often struck, when reading Hebrew psalms, with their pre
vailing mournful opening and their frequent joyful close.
The prayer for the peace of God to fill the heart now sadly
empty seems in the very hour of prayer to be answered. It
is a peculiarity not confined to psalms ; it is the recorded
fact in all spiritual experience. It is the story of true men ;
it is the law of the true God. Isaiah s story, his oracles, his
experience, and his character written in all these, were pre
eminently an illustration of that story of true men and a
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 231
symbol of that law of God. He was a sign and a symbol of
the Divine, the supernatural, the strangely intervening help,
strength, light in utter darkness. This we have seen recorded
in his hope declared to hopeless Ahaz (chap, vii.) ; and again
in the faith uttered when Ahaz died (chap, xiv.) ; then
again so brilliant in the gospel preached to the foolish bac
chanals (chap, xxviii.). It was splendidly declared in the
face of Assyria (chaps, x., xi.), when all human probability
allowed but one night s respite to Jerusalem before her utter
ruin. And the splendour of this utterance is in its fine
spirituality, for mere physical deliverance is but little to the
writer s soul. He rushes on, not content until he has an
nounced a great supernatural regeneration of the hearts of
the delivered Hebrews (chap. xi. I ff.}. Now let the reader
beware who thinks to find the supernatural in the method of
regeneration described, or who even thinks that Isaiah s
declaration, " Regeneration shall be," is a supernatural rock
whereon we may stand and argue thence that therefore
regeneration shall be, forasmuch as Isaiah was supernaturally
moved when he spoke. Such fancy would be to identify
an easy argumentation on our part with those transient
visions which overwhelm us, and, wrapping us about in silent
solemnity, make us whisper, " Speak, Lord, thy servant
heareth thee." No, God s opportunity is not only in the hour
of triumph of skilful reason; in man s extremity is God s
opportunity. So it is now, as it was in Isaiah s clay. The
revelation to him was that conviction borne in upon him
as he looked on Zion and recalled all his experience there :
" God is with us." " Jehovah will not let Zion fall." The
whisper came, worked providentially. He trusted ; his
trust was itself a flame breathed of the great Creator
Spirit. He stayed his soul upon that faith ; he opened
the floodgates of his soul to let it in more and more
richly even to utter fulness of the hope ; he let that hope
pour its glow over all things round him. His thoughts
232 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
were fired, lie saw in imagination the march of Asshur, and
in his faith he quickly pictured their crashing fall. He looked
on the ruin, he looked on his own helpless countrymen, and
in that hour he believed Judah should be made good and
strong. His thought beheld at once in readiest form the
longed-for healing. He stayed not even for dialectic criti
cism or for stern experience to test the expectation, but there
it stands, fair vision, truth in poetry, undying declaration of
the faith of a soul that knew God and said, God can and
will make men good.
Likewise glows his sense of God s presence with him in all
his argumentation with his people concerning Egyptian help
against Assyria (chaps, xxix., xxxii.). Ever realising the
darkness that clouds and clogs men, feeling its deadly grip,
ever does he rise to proclaim his gospel of trust in the
devoted God of Israel. Finally, we may set that wonderful
chap, xxxiii., where the interposition is so utterly unex
pected by the sinful hypocrites in Zion, that Isaiah mixes
powerful sarcasm in his picture of their terror and of the
contrasted near salvation, which their evil eyes do not see.
Even to them cries Isaiah, Yes, ye do well to be afraid, but
look upon Zion. The dwellers shall not even be sick. Ye
shall be forgiven your waywardness.
Such brief resum.6, then, indicates the ground of our defini
tion of the kernel of Isaiah s character. That kernel is his
faith in revelation. For the faith is manifest from the first
in his tone of certainty ; it is manifest in estimate of his own
personality and of his home ; it is manifested to us in his
fearless forecasts of events, and in his brilliant theoretical
deductions concerning the ways of God and men drawn from
the various known sources, the facts of life, the ways of
thought in the time, and a keenly strong imagination. But
all these were grasped and intensified and controlled by a
soul utterly devoted to Jehovah, and absolutely certain that
Jehovah was with him, utterly devoted to him and his, and
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 233
all-powerful to help. The forecasts and theories were not
the revelations ; this was rather that love for God, that trust
in God, that sense of the love of God, and the present power
of God underlying all his forecasts, theories, thoughts, and
words, and worked in Isaiah by the disclosure to him of God
Himself. This picture of Isaiah will be established as correct
as we proceed to more and more minute acquaintance with
his thoughts or faiths, and arrange them in ordered sequence.
2. A scheme of his thinking.
We turn to the consideration of these thoughts, and here
we shall group them in two divisions, thus :
(A.) More general faiths, the term "faith" being used
herein the less strict sense of "religious opinions." This
avoids the use of the term "doctrines," which as applied to
Isaiah in any way is somewhat misleading. Under this
general title stand his faith in
1 I ) The overlordship of Jehovah ;
(2) The necessity of purification of the earth ;
(3) The grace of Jehovah ; and
(4) A regeneration of men.
This general division will give a genetic view of all his
faiths and a historic account of his whole theological char
acter. Then on this basis we shall seek to formulate
(B.) The essence of his thinking on the three fundamental
questions
1 i ) Concerning the nature of God ;
(2) Concerning the nature of man ; and
(3) Concerning perfect life.
From this we shall proceed to estimate in another chapter
Isaiah s place in Hebrew religious history, his advance on
what had been before him, the new problems he started and
left to be faced by those who followed him, and his whole
234 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
value as a religious factor in the life of his people and in the
life of all men.
3. (A) i. His faith in the ovcrlordsliip of Jehovali.
(i.) This is an inherited faith; it is an opinion Isaiah
holds in common with his time. "We have traced its rise
and growth from the golden age in the days of David. We
have seen that supreme hero of the people become ruler
over all the peoples round about his own from Egypt to
Euphrates, and we have seen the Hebrews learn to count
the God of the conqueror the Lord over the gods of the con
quered. So David gave to the people a worthy rank, and
for Jehovah he worked out true reverence among men. He
was really the man after Jehovah s own heart. We know
also how Elijah led the host of Jehovah, small though it
might seem, to final struggle with the host of Baal, and in
that struggle on Mount Carmel the popular lingering liking
for Baal-worship had to bow to the new faith that Jehovah
was after all the supreme God.
We have read Amos s unhesitating summons to all peoples
to receive from Jehovah what judgment He should adjudge
to them. Although Amos makes little of Zion, yet he does
once bid all men look to that city, because its God, Jehovah,
is about to sound forth thence the doom of Syria, of Philistia,
of Phoenicia, of Arabia s tribes, as well as of the Hebrews.
Amos s visions have not a very wide horizon, yet he knows of
Egypt, and even of Ethiopia, and of distant regions too, far
beyond the Syrian north, and over all these he counts
Jehovah supreme God.
Hosea s knowledge was greater, and his faith in this over-
lordship is none the less. He lived in Samaria, and perhaps
shared the northern kingdom s jealousy of Zion, yet he
exalts Jehovah even more clearly than Amos does. Assyria
and Egypt loom largest in his thoughts, for he is a states-
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIE\V OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 235
man, and knows that these great world powers are the chief
engines in the society of the time ; but it is just these chief
engines that Jehovah controls absolutely. Already the main
fact of past story in Hosea s mind is Jehovah s deliverance
of the Hebrews from great Egypt. And now God knows all
their foolish coquetting with that former slavemaster and
with the rival Assyria, and He ordains what scourging or
what dishonour the one or the other rival shall contribute to
the chastisement and regeneration of His own chosen people
Israel.
But stronger than all these statements of Jehovah s
supremacy is the implication in the constant lament over
the division into two kingdoms. It was David s unification
and consolidation of the many Hebrew tribes that made him
easily rule many more as subjects far beyond. Thus the unity
was the foundation of Jehovah s great glory. Hence the
division that came so sadly meant a constant seed of fear, of
doubt whether He who did not hold His own in strong unity
could nevertheless control all gods, and of trembling lest His
people should become slaves again and even He should lose
His honour.
Here now entered a remarkable divergence in the ad
vance of faiths. The faith in Jehovah and His supremacy
wavered in some, but it grew the stronger in others. Indeed,
among a large class of careless or fearful or selfish people,
it wavered even to failure, for such is the meaning of the
prophet s complaint of much turning to other gods. But
all the while there was the nobler class, the godly prophets,
the godly men, the indefatigable workmen, whose faith in
Jehovah never failed, but rather grew, and grew stronger
and purer. We say these were godly men, for their nobility,
their goodness, is what we count a Divine product. We say
of it, with our ideas of God gained from our Christian faith,
that here was true sonship of God, truly godlike character ;
in their character spoke the supernatural. So we conclude
236 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
that the advance among the Hebrews towards, if not as yet
quite up to, monotheism, was the work of the good men, the
godly men, the men with supernaturally inspired true char
acter. This advance was not a national advance, or a natural
advance strictly so termed ; it was not the work of all the
people, or of all the thinkers, or of all the leaders. Rather,
when external circumstances tended all the other way, there
was another spiritual element in the environment of the souls
of these few men that swayed them in this distinctly new
and better direction. It was God s opportunity in men s
extremity. It seemed a dark hour, but light for the whole
future of the world shone in from God.
(ii.) The prophets held fast their faith in the supremacy of
Jehovah, but moved away from faith in the worthiness of the
people to be the supreme people. It is at this point in the
story of faith that we hear the voice of Isaiah breaking in
upon the ear.
Isaiah s opinion concerning the supreme government of
the nations is first a scornful denial of the hope that the
Hebrews are fit to be the chief rulers, and Zion the capital of
all. Yet along with this there pervades the whole of the
first stern period and its oracles a determined assertion that
Jehovah shall be exalted. Alone, indeed, He shall be, and
He shall shake the whole earth. Already all the judgments
brought on the Hebrews, whether from within or from with
out, are worked by Jehovah. He is described as certainly
coming to dash to ruin all other gods. Isaiah calls them
" little gods," of whatsoever national origin they may be.
When he recalls and records his initial vision, as we read
in chap, vi., it is his own faith that we learn in the ceaseless
confession of the angels, "Jehovah s glory fills all the earth."
God s heart is indeed holiness itself, which is devotion and
love, and the yearnings of that love centre round one chosen
family and pour out on it all blessings ; but at the same
time His great glory, which is the weight of His Being, over-
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 237
awes and subdues all nations and all things. Prof. Dulim
shows, Thcologie dcr Prophden, p. 170, that Jehovah s
"glory " and His "holiness" are co-ordinate aesthetic attri
butes of Jehovah ; the former the quality He wears towards
all nations, the latter the quality He wears towards His own,
i.e., His devotion to them. For us the important fact is that
Isaiah believed in a supremacy of Jehovah over all things,
while at the same time he counted his God s strictly Divine
occupation, that is, Jehovah s care and love, as all devoted to
the one nation, the Hebrews. Now this opinion of Jehovah
stands side by side with the remarkable consciousness that
the whole people, and even Isaiah himself, are so utterly un
worthy of this devotion ; G od s approach to them ought to
mean death to them all. Yet to Isaiah it has brought life,
and to many more it will bring life, because Omnipotence is
found to have a new meaning not known before. Overlord-
ship has come to mean a power to restrain retribution and
its agents, to prevent the pains that might overtake the
unforgiven and the God-forsaken.
It is this aspect of overlordship we see disclosed now. The
prophet is " searching what the Spirit within him signifies "
" concerning salvation ; " and he has plunged down to
deeper depth than ever before was sounded in the great
heart of God. With joy he pours out henceforth this new
conception of Jehovah s supreme power in all his subsequent
oracles.
(iii.) A rapid glance will reveal this.
(a) The bold offer to Ahaz is not alone a brilliant declara
tion of Jehovah s omnipotence to rule all signs in the depth
beneath or in the height above. It is a declaration of faith
in Jehovah s absolute power to help and to heal Ahaz and
both the divided kingdoms, foolish, wayward, sinful though
they be.
(&) The oracle of chap, xiv., 2Sff. bids the Philistines of
the coast halt in their conclusion that Jehovah s smiting King
238 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
Ahaz to death means any unmerciful anger on God s part.
No ; out of the old David stock that once ruled the nations
in the past He is able to raise new rulers to bless His people
more than ever. For, while He brings Assyria to devastate
Philistia and all the coast-road, He can give shelter from
Asshur in Zion even to Philistine refugees. Jehovah controls
the world-powers to the saving of the Hebrews.
(c) The sum of the dramatic poem and homely philosophy
of chap, xxviii. is that Jehovah controls Asshur, controls
Sheol, controls the elements and the fruits of the soil, all
with the same excellent working and healing purpose toward
His beloved people.
(d) Here follows the magnificent Te Dcum of chaps, x.
and xi., which sings Jehovah s marvellous swaying of Assyria
as a father sways a rod of correction, or a woodman sways a
pruning axe. And when the loved child is corrected then he
shall be filled with all the fulness of the Divine spirit and
mind and will. When the forest is pruned then shall
Jehovah s own plants grow in beauty and goodness. God
will heal the sin-sick children. He can prevent all hurt in
Zion. He can cover the sacred soil with knowledge of
Jehovah. To such gracious end will the Supreme Ruler
work.
(e) The series of oracles from chap. xxix. to chap, xxxii.
have a fresh striking feature. Assyria s power and purpose
are indeed to be disappointed utterly, as Isaiah had believed
before. But new and startling almost to amusement is the
prophet s cool estimate of Egypt. Isaiah counts the qualities
of the great rival of Assyria, and the citizen of a little hill
in Judah laughs with a fairly astounding cynicism at the
ancient mistress of the Nile. The height of his assurance
seems moreover all the greater when we recollect that in the
result he under-estimated what Egypt would do. Egypt was
not by any means an insignificant power. We have already
seen how the prophet s ultimate loss of reputation as seer was
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 239
due to his under-estimate of her strength. But his great
faith in Jehovah s overlordship pressed forth from his heart
a cry of utter contempt for Egypt. Jehovah would save,
forgive, heal Judah. Jehovah, the supreme God, could do
this. Was Egypt rival oppressor with Assyria ! Did any
men count her a rival with Jehovah, and a saviour instead
of Him ! Out upon her, proud Egypt ! Out and away with
her, useless Egypt ! The faith is sublime ; and it is faith
that Jehovah is the greatest God, although Jehovah s people
are the feeblest folk.
(/) This assurance rises to a height that men might call
fanaticism in the day of actual awful siege by Sennacherib.
Then the weirdly inspired man flings at the enemy the shriek
and laugh of the daughter of Zion. "0 Asshur, mightier
than thou art is our God Jehovah ! He ruleth thee, and we
laugh thee to scorn ! " Xow enters a new phase of the faith,
whose full significance Isaiah did not see, nor did he live to
hear its later greater proclamation. His confidence that
Zion shall stand scatheless wavers a little. Quick he leaps
in his assurance upon another rock that has indeed been
looming dimly in the mists of danger. He grasps at a great
new possibility, which is indeed a profounder truth than all
he has yet known. Zion may fall, but the escaped shall take
root again. Jeremiah long afterwards was to understand
and proclaim this fully. And now sounds forth grandly the
new, richer formula of overlordship
It is the zeal of Jehovah, Lord of all hosts, that shall per
form even this (chap, xxxvii. 32).
(y) The jubilant voices of chap, xxxiii. are the fitting
hallelujah chorus at the close of this great Isaiah oratorio.
The utterance of faith in Jehovah s supremacy is here truly
sublime :
Woe to ihee, Asshur, spoiler !
" Jehovah, be gracious unto us.
At the noise of the tumult the people fled."
240 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
Jehovah is exalted, for He dwelleth on high.
Now will I rise, saith Jehovah ;
Now will I be exalted ;
Now will I lift myself.
The sinners in Zion are afraid.
Look upon Zion, the city of our annual tryst with Him.
There the glorious Jehovah will be unto us a place of broad
rivers and streams,
Our Euphrates and our Nile.
But therein shall go no galley with oars, nor gallant ship,
For Jehovah is king.
(h) Finally, if chaps, xxiii., xviii., and xix. are the last
words of this man, and from his hour of disappointment and
death in darkness, they are verily nevertheless an amen to
all his faith in Jehovah, Lord of hosts. They paint the
Tyrians and the far-off Ethiopians marshalled by Jehovah s
word, and then they close with this striking legend :
Blessed be Egypt, my people,
And Assyria, the work of my hands,
And Israel my inheritance.
" This shall be the blessing of Jehovah, God of hosts."
(iv.) As we leave these scenes of Isaiah s faith in the supre
macy of Jehovah, let us note how he was in all this interpret
ing the real need of the nations at the time. If the Hebrews
were filled with satisfaction in the thought that David con
trolled all the kings who touched them, and their God con
trolled all hosts in earth or in heaven that could do them
good or evil, the Assyrians and the Egyptians and the
Syrian tribes were seeking eagerly at the same time a similar
sense of safety, for this was the meaning of their warring
for world-empire. And it was not merely a strife as to
which should be the supreme nation, but all we know of any
of them tells of the faith of each in his several deity, that
his god was fighting for and with the nation. They fought
each for the supremacy of his own god. In the hour of
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 241
victory the victor soldiers might die, but the victor god was
supreme. It is vain to say, in depreciation of all religion,
that these peoples were ignorant and fanatic ; for ignorance
is only a relative term, and to acknowledge the fact of fana
ticism is to acknowledge one set of religious phenomena.
These people were not without some assurance in their souls
and of a longing for more of just such assurance ; it is the
untempered sway of that assurance which is fanaticism.
It is vain also to say, in depreciation of all non-Hebrew
religions of that age, that those were base religions, and we
ought not to seek any light from them on the nature of
better religion, and on the nature of the prophet s inspiration.
It is the fact that there was in Isaiah s day a common yearn
ing in all souls for some fellowship with unseen forces, spirits
we call them, who should control all other powers in earth
and heaven, and thus give their human followers safety.
Isaiah s faith in the supremacy of Jehovah is the answer of
a godlike soul to this universal yearning. We say he was
godlike, not because he was a Hebrew, but because his char
acter was good, which is godlike ; and we test his character
by comparison with the ideal which Christianity has begotten
in us to-day. Thus we recognise in Isaiah a Divine seer for
his age. He was indeed far above contemporary Hebrews
in his wonderful insight into the pro founder features of this
truth we have just traced. We feel, as we follow him, that
it is no wonder his people became ultimately the leaders into
pure monotheism and the greatest religious influence in the
world. We acknowledge the hand of God unveiling His own-
purpose and nature in Isaiah s mind and oracles. We dis
cover in this man an answer, from the great God and Cause
and Father of all things, to the questioning which He had
brought to birth in the souls of all men in all lands in that
age. In the unceasing process of education of our race, who
are His children, God had moved them by all the influences
of their environment to count it necessary, for their very life,
Q
242 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
to be assured of the absolute supremacy of some one great
power in the world, and the favour of that power towards
themselves. Isaiah shares that common conviction, and
answers it with the firm assertion that the righteous God,
Jehovah, the devoted Divine Lover of Israel, is supreme
Lord. The seer of a little tribe is the interpreter of the
problem of the age.
4. His faith that the earth must be cleansed.
The closing declaration of last paragraph, that Jehovah
was essentially a righteous God, might be generally acknow
ledged ; but at the same time, no doubt, the usual estimate
of the quality of that righteousness is indistinct. It is cus
tomary to apologise for the righteousness as something, of
necessity, very unlike righteousness to-day. It is supposed
that good men like Isaiah could preach the massacre of a
whole tribe, its men and its babes, and that they wrote or
sang imprecatory psalms. An apologetic for that would
certainly be right, but it ought to await the exact tabulation
of the crimes and wrongs which Isaiah abhorred and strove
to cleanse away from his people.
At the very outset of his work he proclaims a catastrophe
that is to fall on the " day of Jehovah." In that day Jehovah
will arise and delay no longer. He will cause that His will alone
be done. And a terrible day it shall be for the Hebrews,
for they have been doing anything but Jehovah s will ; their
hands and hearts are full of what disgusts Him and what
He will destroy. The well-known formula, "In that day,"
is the dread opening of oracle after oracle of warning. At
first these are fierce but general threats of overturning by the
hand of Jehovah in His day of visitation. He is now absent
or busy otherwise, but then He will visit to inspect, to enforce
His will. The conceptions do not seem high. We have
learned the poverty of the conception of an absentee Creator
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 243
of the Universe by our observation of deism. Our knowledge
of the inadequate morality of deism makes us hesitate to give
our approval of the anger and furious threats of the prophet
against the people he condemns. And we hesitate still when
later on he drops the general warning of a catastrophe, and
proclaims the coming of the Assyrians as the coming of
Jehovah s judgment on the Hebrews. Of course it would be
a mere superficial criticism of this Isaian reading of Provi
dence to point out that it hurts the good men as much as the
evil. The more serious cause for hesitation is his whole theory
of Providence ; for we have learned from the crucifixion of our
Lord the truth of the later doctrine that He whom we too
readily "esteem stricken, smitten of God and afflicted," is
wounded for our transgressions. " It pleased Jehovah to
bruise Him ; He hath put Him to grief . . . but the pleasure
of Jehovah prospers in His hand." The stricken one may
be Jehovah s righteous servant ; the cross is not the sign of
God s anger with the crucified. Isaiah s doctrine of pro
vidence is not indeed on the same level with the high faith
that was to come.
We have seen in the former paragraph how he rose to the
conception that all things are controlled by one Lord who
loves intensely ; and that conception would surely sweep
away the thought of an absent Lord. It did sweep it away,
and brought in the Immanuel-faith, as we shall presently
see. But we turn to a test of the prophet s religious worth
that is more unerring still when we ask, What were the
evils he denounced and strove to cleanse off the earth ?
What was immorality in Isaiah s eyes ; and what were the
demands of his moral code ? Here we find what makes
Isaiah indeed our own brother in heart.
(i.) The moral sense of Isaiah revolts most intensely at care
lessness of God s honour. It was not the honour of Deity as
such, but Jehovah s honour that was dear to the prophet. The
nature of the Absolute had not occupied any one s thoughts
244 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
so far, and Isaiah does not defend deity in the abstract. So
much the better. He knows by experience a Being to whom
he bows ; he knows the loves of that Being, His haunts, His
ways, and His inspirations and thoughts, and he has bowed
to that God. He knows that all men round him share at
least some of these experiences. They have bowed sometimes
because they felt it was right. But they have turned their
eyes and ears and thoughts away from all indications of His
presence. This Isaiah condemns at first, at last, and always. To
have no care for God is to be bad. The early chapters denounce
this carelessness in the luxurious. The songs of the vineyard
and the outstretched arm in chap. v. denounce it in the selfish.
Ahaz s worst deed was his sneer at Jehovah s interest in him.
The shocking profanity of the bacchanalian orgies among
priests, prophets, and people is the heaviest burden in
chap, xxviii. It is hypocrisy that chaps, xxix. to xxxiii. con
demn most strongly. With their lips they honour Jehovah,
but they have removed their heart far from Him. To Isaiah
the heart was the seat of the mind, and his accusation here
means that men do not care to know Jehovah s character or
His ways. And yet the essence of his regard for Jehovah was
not something learned by custom. Isaiah bowed before the
inevitable inner voice, " Thou oughtest to do right ; " and it
was this voice, he said, that must be honoured if a man would
be right and good. It is of secondary consequence to discover
the original occasion of the appearance in men or in Hebrews
of the sense of "ought." Indeed, we cannot think of what
we call man as existing without it. Isaiah knew the control
of this voice. He counted it righteousness to honour this
voice with thoughtful, whole-hearted care ; and to dishonour
the controlling Divine voice was to him always utterly bad.
(ii.) Second only in severity is his condemnation of vanity.
His satire on the showy coquetry of the ladies of Jerusalem is
the most striking case of this severity ; but it is by no means
all of it, it is only the best seen symbol of much more. The
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 245
homes are showy, and the men are passionately fond of dis
play. The wealthy Israel and the smaller Judah vie with
each other in festival dress. It is the spirit of the age.
Assyria is at best pictured as never done counting and telling
her exploits and her powers ; and Isaiah s scorn of Egypt is
scorn of big-voiced claims and professions of strength and
wealth or performance and purpose.
But why condemn this ? Pleasure is not in itself a wrong
thing. Isaiah would be the last to teach that. His pleasure
in things of beauty beams in all his description of the adorn
ments of the homes and the persons about him, although he
is condemning them. His songs tell the same tale ; how he
knew the delights of love, and the merry joy of the vineyard
and of the feast. His interest in them tells that he had taken
part in them, and he had done so with keen interest. Why
should he then condemn the pleasures round him ? Just
because he knew the real value of beautiful things he could
expose false pretensions to beauty and he could check over
estimate of value. Listen to his plain talk to those women,
" Ye go ogling with your eyes." We understand the words ;
we know the parade of lures to win a regard that is not
deserved. Isaiah was condemning vanity. He was not con
demning pleasure or beauty, but falsehood. These gay folk
were telling men to come and enjoy all the precious joy that-
true womanhood can give ; but they told a lie, for true
womanhood never thus parades her gifts. The sumptuous
householders stored their homes with gold, silver, and gems,
and rare paintings relieved their walls. This was a profes
sion of ease, perfect ease, perfect satisfaction with life ; but
to Isaiah it was falsehood. He was a Hebrew and a man of
Zion as well as they, and he was a man of insight as clear as
any other ; and he was ill at ease, he saw dangers all about
him. Their homes might any day be ruined, and it was
a time for sternest training for conflict rather than a time for
the enervation of luxury. Worse still, while there was
246 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
danger all round them they were losing their devotion to
Jehovah in their easy luxuriance. They were losing there
their one national inspiration ; they were losing the very soul
of their strength ; and it was false to say to self and family
and fellow-men, " We are very safe and happy." The sin was
their vanity. It was the untruth of their life that Isaiah
struck and would cleanse away. The same untruth was to
him the fault of Assyria s boasting and Egypt s pride. True,
he saw it as perhaps they did not, for it was their claim to
be stronger than Jehovah that he condemned. But the vanity
of men, whether at home or afar, was sin. This prophet
is truly upon a high plane morally, for to him dishonour of
what is Divine ranks evidently worst among bad things, but
linked with it at every point, and only second in badness, is
untruth in life, the vanity of men, of women, of nations.
(iii.) Intoxication is wrong. If Isaiah does suggest any
relative order in badness, this seems to rank next to what we
have seen. While the two evils we have already counted are
badness in the root, bad principle, the further evils he con
demns are rather badness in the fruit, bad doings. But
this evil of intoxication is a double evil ; it is poison let into
the channels between root and fruit. Isaiah does not say that
all use of wine is bad ; he knows what good wine is, and calls
bad men " wine mixed with water." He knows the beauty
of the old prophecy which he quotes in chap, xvi., and here
he is at one with the best men of his people, for the same
old prophecy is quoted with keen zest by Jeremiah a hundred
years later ; and that old prophecy laments the possible
silencing of the vineyard song and shout. The drying-up of
the winepresses on the hillsides of Moab would mean to him
the departure of all Moab s gladness. What he does count
wrong is quite evident from the two denunciations he hurls
against it, first in his earlier stern preaching in chap, v.,
and later in his severe though kind-souled exposure of the
bacchanal orgies just before the fall of Samaria (chap, xxviii.).
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 247
In the former the wrongdoing is the restlessness for alcoholic
stimulus that steals from the couch at dawn to drink spirits.
And all day long, writes Isaiah, such men keep following,
following something " a phantom in a mist, and it s wine
that so excites them." Feeble, are they ? Unable to control
their passion, do you call them ? Not so thinks Isaiah, for
he tells how they arrange merry feasts, with songs and
players all skilful enough, all clear-headed enough ; they are
very champions, men of power, and all are strong-minded
enough to shut out certain things from their thoughts. When
we find that it is Jehovah they deliberately shut out of
thought, and when we find that they will not take His ways
and purposes into account, then we need not hesitate to
approve Isaiah s condemnation. What he condemned was
strong men s deliberate and violent alcoholic self-excitement,
that stifles noble impulses and is practised in order to stifle
these. So we have not said Isaiah condemns the use of wine,
for he does not, nor have we said he condemns drunken
ness, which is a state of death ; but he rather condemns men
who are strong while they sin. Intoxication is a better name
for the conscious self-debasement he strikes at. This is fully
borne out by his scorn of the bacchanals in chap, xxviii., who
know well the risk they run and the ugliness they put on
when they begin their carouse. This second denunciation is
only more powerful than the first because it pictures the
height many a sinner falls from and the depth of the degra
dation. Prophets fall so, and priests too, from the most
precious functions of teaching God s oracles and ministering
to men s peace down to staggering and babbling and filth.
By contrast now we know the moral height to which Isaiah
would raise his people. In a word, his command is, Refuse
what degrades your soul, your power of thought, imagina
tion, and judgment. Never unfit these to handle the realities
of life. Certainly Isaiah s moral level was very high.
(iv.) We need not prove now in detail that he condemned
248 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
disregard of fellow-mortals. It is quite true that Hebrews
in various ages identified the poor with the good ; and when
they did not quite identify them they frequently confused
them together. This we shall see from time to time, and
Isaiah shared in the view. It was no wonder that he did.
For the Hebrews were a small, feeble people, and Judah
especially was an insignificant, ill-equipped tribe, and like all
weak tribes was exposed to risk of robbers, slave-hunters,
ruinous and murderous wars ; yet at the same time it was
the national faith that they were the people Jehovah de
lighted to bless. It was an easy mistake to count themselves
all good, and to identify the poor with the good. Much of
Isaiah s condemnation of cruelty is denunciation of foreign
cruelty to Hebrews. We might easily, therefore, be led to
discount his condemnation of injustice to the poor as largely
a national resentment against Assyrian injuries and the
like.
But it is certain that Isaiah condemns Hebrew disregard of
Hebrew fellow-men, and women and children. He does not
speak so much of unchastity as Hosea did, but its plentiful
presence disgusted him, and his withering wrath at it is
too plain for public use to-day. Again, there was a common
wickedness in Judah as well as in Israel which we have
almost explained away from our picture of Zion life. Murder
was quite common. Christianity has indeed cleansed the
earth, for in mediasval times Rome and Spain and England
were probably not so bloody as Jerusalem was in Isaiah s
time. They did need a purification of the earth.
One might expect that people and preachers who con
stantly saw bloody cruelty about them would lack all the
finer care that kindly folk learn in gentler days. The daily
need to guard their very lives, and anxiety as to that would
surely prevent all gentler feelings. But no ; in such a
day there could live and think and plead such as Isaiah.
Doubtless even among wolves there is maternal kindness ;
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 249
perhaps there is much more. So Isaiah could plead hard
in such society for kindness to the orphan and the widow,
and to the poor man who needed legal counsel. We grow
weary at times of the pursuit of our high ideals ; often we
smile at the enthusiast who would cheer us on, and who
always ends his speech with, "Things do move, after all."
But what an enthusiast was Isaiah, who declared with intense
unceasing determination to that unchaste, dagger-drawing
people, " You must spare the widow and the orphan. Hands
off them ! The land must be cleansed of all who hurt these,
and unjust judges and bribe-takers must be cleansed away
from our courts of justice." Isaiah never sounded the
revolution s triple-voiced cry, but he was a revolutionist.
He demanded fire from God to burn, and wind from God to
scour away impure deeds, bloody deeds, unmanliness, all dis
regard of fellow-mortals.
(v.) Another blot he believes must be cleansed from
earth ; it is abuse of land tenure. This was long ago,
and we cannot look to the methods of that day as a
correct guide for the reform of our present land laws.
Nevertheless the hope that starts within us at the bare
suggestion of any light on the perplexing question is not
doomed to entire disappointment. For Isaiah s faith that
there can be a righteous law of land, and that all the
injustice which prevents this shall be done away, tells
certainly at least of an old, old instinct in us to look
upon the soil with some such yearning as we feel towards
a fellow-being.
Isaiah has not many words directly touching the matter,
but they are enough.
" Woe to you who are grasping house after house,
And you are linking one broad acre to another as your
own
Till there is no room for a man to stand,
And ye get you left alone in the midst of the land."
250 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP in.
As in some work of Rembrandt, the grim horror of this
picture dawns upon you only after you have gazed a while.
Then peering out of the darkness the gaunt face of the lone
man, lord of all the acres, chatters an awful appeal for help,
comfort, brotherhood ere he die, and for burial then.
Although this is the only denunciation of land-wrong that
Isaiah has left to us, his followers had nevertheless a keen
sense of this very evil. And as we read we find why, for he
delights in field and tree, and waving corn and juicy green
pasture, ruddy vineyard and pale olive-grove ; joy in fellow
ship with the soil is poured forth in his verses as in few
others. To him ownership of land was necessary to life, for a
man must have a place whereon to stand. And since the gods
were in his view dependent on families of followers for their
right to godhead, he who drove away the people from a land
destroyed the god of the land. He who evicted Jehovah s
people evicted Jehovah ; and so the soulless, godless land
about his home became a polluted land. We can under
stand that beyond this there was a still deeper sense of the
evil when we remember that all believed then, as Isaiah
certainly believed, that Jehovah Himself needed to possess
certain portions of soil. He could not act nor live among
men otherwise. So families and men must have inalienable
rights in the soil, else they die. Therefore land-monopoly is
a sin to be cleansed away. We find then that exclusion of
men from all share in land-possession was practised, and
Isaiah counted it a great wrong. The earth must be
cleansed.
(vi.) Finally, he holds that the ritualistic formalism about
him is an evil which must be done away. Let us note at
the outset that among the few words he writes about such
worship is one prediction (chap. xix. 21), that in the ideal
days to come the Egyptians shall know Jehovah, and then
"they will serve him with slaughtered victim and with gift;
they will vow vows, and always fulfil them." So Isaiah recog-
CHAP, in] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 251
nised a symbolic value in religious feasts and ascetic
pledges.
But much fuller reference, and the only other reference
he makes to the topic, is in that chapter (chap, i.), of so
uncertain date that it is wisely regarded as a summary of all
the book, placed as preface, not as a first youthful utterance
of his least-considered thoughts, but rather as a well-balanced
summary of all his opinions written in his maturest years.
There he pictures the people satisfying their religious crav
ings by feasts where the slaughtered victims are many, and
the smoke of much burning fat ascends into God s nostrils,
and much blood of oxen and lambs is scattered. But Isaiah
thinks Jehovah does not desire this. There is much attend
ance in sanctuary worship. But Isaiah says decidedly
Jehovah has not asked this. They give gifts, they burn
incense ; they observe religious days weekly, monthly, and
they hold religious assemblies. But all this Isaiah counts a
pain to the soul of the Unseen Lord. When he scorns those
who stretch out their hands to make many prayers we do not
argue that he would have nobody ever pray, not even a god
like soul whose cry to God would be as genuine and as right
as an infant s cry for its mother. Isaiah certainly thinks
of a religious feast as a natural expression of true fellow
ship with God. Yet he denies any Divine requirement of
ritual service at the hands of his fellow-countrymen, and
does this in language so strong that we must say Isaiah
counted among the bad things that are to be cleansed away
all the religion of ritual or law, whether written or un
written. There is a passage, chap, viii., that seems, in our
ordinary English version of it, like an exaltation of some
body of law and testimony. But Torah (^^-H), usually trans
lated "law," means not legal prescriptions or codes, but the
"instruction" of some counsellor such as a prophet or a
priest ; and in the passage in question Isaiah is very plainly
speaking of his own instructions to his own disciples. It is
252 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. m.
quite true, as we have seen, that he is the real founder of the
peculiar Jewish faith in Zion as the saving sanctuary, but
here he acts as a discoverer of something new, a new
hope. Otherwise he is an iconoclast, much like Amos
before him. He denounces formal worship, bidding men
cease to do this evil and learn to do well. The earth must
be cleansed.
In these pictures of the wrongs Isaiah condemned we see
the baseness of Hebrew life about him. It is certainly well
to be able to check the mistaken impression that Zion was a
very moral place. On Isaiah s evidence it is proved to have
been sadly filled with godless men and blasphemers, with con
ceited men and shameless women. It had always too many
hard drinkers and debauchees, and very often it became a
pandemonium of filthy carousers. Not the peasants only
drank too much, but the very leaders, prophets, and priests
staggered about at their religious tasks. Consequently
there was harlotry, as with us ; and, clearly more than with
us, murder and violence to the widow, the orphan, and
other helpless persons prevailed. There was administrative
injustice, and there was disregard of a fine national instinct
that every man should own land. Finally, there was much
injurious ritual.
Such were the ordinary Hebrews. But in the picture we
see more than this. There was a shadow across it. Con
science breathed its secret "Thou sh alt not." The voice of
Isaiah would have been meaningless had there not been a
hidden conscience in every one of those Hebrews echoing the
condemnation of the prophet. They knew their deeds were
evil. Isaiah s condemnation and his demand for purification
tell more than his own opinion ; they tell what every good
man would then wish to do, and what the conscience of every
evil man knew. We have learned not a mere set of opinions
acquired by one man ; we have learned how the Spirit of
God then was " convincing men of sin, and of righteousness,
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 253
and of judgment." These later words express very accurately
much of the constant nature of revelation.
Here we must observe the history of Isaiah s condemna
tion of sin as it advanced from his first utterances up to
his latest. For his temper towards these wrongs varies.
His minuter delineations of wicked deeds are in his earlier
utterances, as there also stand the fiercest denunciations.
That was the work of his younger ministry. It is the high
prerogative of youth to feel strongly. It is the high pre
rogative of youth born anew into godliness to feel keenly
the voice of conscience, and to cry at once its loud enthu
siastic praise of goodness and indignant scorn of bad
deeds. So did Isaiah speed out from his lonely ordination
to demand at once utter destruction of all evil deeds and
men. His burning word was itself fierce castigation. The
conscience awakes to-day at the words. But Isaiah himself
felt most keenly the bitter pain of his words ; and they were
sure to weary him till he rested on deeper truth. In the
great advance of his life, when he gained his new insight into
grace, he moved forward also to a maturer, calmer, truer
condemnation of wrongs. In his later years the definite
evils he strikes are rather evil principles than evil deeds. The
one sensuous sin which he then singles out clearly for wrath
and scorn is intoxication. But just that sin is doubly evil
for it means deliberate self -debasement first in preparation
for evil deeds, and afterwards the vile condition of the
drunkard which it produces. Isaiah attacked that indeed,
crying aloud for its cleansing in his later days as well as
before. But the most of his later denunciations were
against disregard of God and against untruth in life. He
condemned then the unfaithfulness that trusted Egypt
rather than Jehovah, and this means that his outlook was
larger; but at the same time it is in these later chapters
that he writes his verdict against the private churl and the
hypocrite in Zion. He could see a wider horizon, for he
254 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
was a larger man ; but lie could scan individuals now, and
more thoroughly than before, for he looked past their lips
and hands and discovered evil in their hearts. It was along
side of such keener verdict of guilty, guilty of more than
deed, guilty of malice intent, that he rose far above the
Ainosian way of purification by excision, and far beyond the
Hosean theory of seclusion also. How his spirit wrestled
with this problem of the method, and how he reached that
last wonderful prophecy of cleansing for Zion, " They that
dwell there shall be forgiven their iniquity," and what that
cleansing of forgivenness meant, we are to trace in the next
paragraphs.
5. His grasp of the grace of God.
Deeply interesting are the two facts that Isaiah rose to
faith in grace, and from his first grasp of it his whole life
was one great struggle to understand its depths. So our
introductory chapter, "Isaiah and Zion," which made us
acquainted with the man s soul and a tale of his life, was
simply a story of his discovery of the grace of God. So too
all we have seen of him since, as we have walked by his side
and watched, has been lit up by this bright faith breaking
in on point by point.
Therefore a systematic formulation of the prophet s doc
trine of grace ought to be a simple index to the experiences
of the man, and to the story that has passed before us.
Recall them rapidly.
(a) The story of Isaiah and Zion told of his young man
hood s strokes for the right, and his cry, " Down with all
wrongs, and God save the good." These were the oracles
until soon and naturally he failed, as the prophet of judg
ment must fail to heal. Then came his soul s backward
gaze to the day of his own first devotion to Jehovah. The
Giver of all thought touched the heart with recollection of His
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 255
gracious descent to spare, to cleanse, to commission the man
who knew his own uncleanness, and to send him forth full
of devotion and of speech. Now and to the end Isaiah was
the prophet of just such healing and grace. Such favour to
the fallen, he declared, should be found in Zion by the
dwellers and worshippers there.
(b) We have learned also how this conception of Jehovah s
character expanded the earlier and less definite conception of
His holiness. All the earth was full of His "glory" ("H33
nVT), and glory was the robe He wore before all peoples.
That is, they knew only His great importance; the Hebrew
had come to believe that all peoples were bowing to Jehovah s
supreme control. To the Hebrew, again, his God exhibited
His devotion (i~TVT $~T|3). They believed that all Jehovah s
affection and energies were devoted to them. But hitherto
this had meant simply a great good for the nation as a whole,
and more generally still a great good for the nation as
naturally worthy of it, and only so long as it was thus
worthy. There was little thought of individuals and their
value ; there was no blessing, and even no life, for the
evildoers.
But now Isaiah learnt to believe Jehovah would be devoted
also to sinful men in Zion. He had been so graciously
devoted to one man of unclean lips that henceforth, said
Isaiah, He would forgive, heal, and bless all who dwelt
there.
(c) We have seen this new vision of God lighten up
another of Isaiah s early faiths with a new great glory. We
have read how the national faith in Jehovah s overlordship
arose and grew. Isaiah had shared it truly, but he came to
read in it far more than he dreamed at first. For the great
Over-Lord, who could make the Hebrew David king over
many tribes beyond the national home lands, was not dis
obeyed by Egypt, or even by Assyria. These might scourge
God s chosen tribe, but they obeyed His command, and they
256 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
did it to work out His chastening purpose. For Jehovah
meant to cause the remnant to return, and Israel to be indeed
restored in sure and settled purity and goodness. Jehovah
was to prove Over-Lord over sin, for He would forgive it,
Over-Lord over all powers of evil, for He would cleanse the
unclean men of Zion and make them good. This was the
new overlordship ; it was the old faith all woven through
with the faith in the grace of God.
(d) But now let us trace the prophet s struggle to fathom
the deep meanings of this grace. And we shall follow this
best by watching the successive tokens of this grace which
he discovers.
(a) First then, when he recalls his initial vision and reads
its fresh revelation he grasps at once that estimate of Zion s
significance which, as we saw above, pervades all his further
oracles. This estimate of Zion colours also all his discoveries
of other tokens of the Divine grace, as we shall see. And
yet even in the picture given in chapter sixth there is besides
Zion another token ; Isaiah himself is likewise an exhibition
of that grace. It was not Zion alone that was blessed ; it
was not, after all, the mere place on earth, the sacred spot,
or the walls, or the altar, nor was it even the throne, which
was " high and lifted up," rather than gracious in its near
ness. It was Isaiah who exhibited in person the marks of
the love of God, his lips bore henceforth the purity God s
cleansing gave ; those lips spoke Jehovah s will of God with
an utter love for Him which the gracious Divine love had
wooed and won. Isaiah s soul lived anew, happy, strong
with a new life which God had begotten ; Isaiah was a
work of grace. He was so in Zion indeed, and he never
forgot that.
(/3) "We turn to a second notable record of his faith in God s
grace, and of his recognition of the channels where it flowed.
It stands in the words of chap. viii. 10, 1 6, 17, 18. Here,
as before, Zion is the place ; but the grace is revealed from a
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 257
God who dwells there, and uiito persons who dwell there too.
" Behold I and the children whom Jehovah hath given ine are
for signs and for wonders in Israel from Jehovah of hosts,
who dwdleth in Mount Zion" This utterance marks his rise
from faith in a sanctuary to higher and finer faith in God s
love for persons. It is remarkable, and surely not without
import, that the prophet declares in an early verse in this
chapter, " God is with us " as a people. A foolish people we
are, ay, and untrustful towards Him. Yet He is with us,
and our wisdom would be to count Him devoted to us. Then
a few verses later on, as if he is hardly able to count them
all worthy of this oracle and this counsel, he somewhat limits
his grasp and his token, and says this teaching must be sealed
and treasured up by his pupils as their own. Then once
more the limitation proceeds, for even pupils may not all
prove true ; but in his own soul, whose life he knows, and in
the children that are of his own body and moulded by his
own character, in all this his real and full self is an unques
tionable gift and token of Jehovah s merciful saving love for
this people.
(7) Soon follows in those chapters, so full of mingled oracle
and narrative, chaps, vii. to ix., the further stage of effort to
understand how Jehovah can be graciously present although
the people are not all good. He will dwell upon and in the
prince. " Unto us a king is born," who shall be a very
Divine person in his heroic strength, in his wisdom, and in
his fatherhood of his people. Here is a hope co-ordinate with
the prophet s faith in his own personal representation of God,
and also in some sense a higher faith than that. Higher it is
in so far as the king is in actual touch with the people more
fully than the prophet. The serious defect is the frequent
want of true godliness in the king.
Isaiah sees this. Thrice over does he prophesy of the
king as such a token of God s saving love, and each time
does he grow more solicitous for Divine mercy to make the
258 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
king fit for the task. In chap. ix. we have the first impas
sioned picture ; in chap, xiv., when Ahaz dies, is the belief
that even out of death Jehovah can raise living strength,
and beside a tomb build refuge for His beloved poor. Then,
finally, in chap. xi. is the wonderful realistic representation
of Jehovah s regeneration of the prince for the sake of saving
all the land and people. It is of great interest to observe
here the steady rise of Isaiah far above all faith in the
inherent goodness of institutions, or even of men, and his
discovery of rest in God alone. All things else, tested one
by one, seem to fail, but the character of the invisible
Jehovah grows to Isaiah more sufficient, more gracious, more
utterly trustworthy in its love.
(8) Chapter xxxiii. is Isaian, although its present form
may not be. (But see Cheyne, Or. of Psalter, 237). Here
there are a few words about the king s work and beauty, but
they are very few indeed in comparison with the emphatic
utterances of the value of Zion, and the safety of all
who are found there. Yet this is not strange. The facts
concerning the chapter are these. It pictures the failure
and sin of men, and their need of forgiveness, health, grace,
more emphatically than any previous oracle since chapter
sixth. At the same time it proclaims Zion, the great refuge,
with what is at first sight a startling exaltation of a mere
material instrument as working salvation of every sort. But
this proclamation only serves to exalt as the real and only
and utter Saviour, not Zion, and not any personage at all,
but Jehovah. Isaiah is so absorbed in this thought of
Jehovah that he forgets his own personality, does not quote
Jehovah in the third person when he begins his oracle, but
is a mere channel for Jehovah s personal utterance.
Hear, ye that are far off,
What I have done.
Acknowledge, ye that are near,
My might.
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 259
And in cries of splendid rapture he sings
The glorious Jehovah will be unto us our
Euphrates and our Nile.
For Jehovah is our Judge,
Jehovah is our Lawgiver,
Jehovah is our King.
He will save us.
The inhabitants of Ziou shall not say,
I am sick ;
The people that dwell there
Shall be forgiven their iniquity.
One is startled indeed by Isaiah s limitation of the area of
grace, but by it he seems able after all to concentrate his
gaze on the fact of grace and on its cause. Plunging thus
into the very centre of the soul of God, he leaves it to later
seers and ages to watch the circling waves of that ocean of
love. We know by our vision of Jesus the Christ that the
ocean is infinite.
6. His rise to faith in regeneration.
Ever and anon in what we have seen hitherto there have
been unmistakable utterances of a faith in Isaiah s soul
that Jehovah must create utterly new life if there is to be
any true goodness in the land. Proof is hardly needed here
that he does so speak ; what will be in place is rather a
picture of these utterances in their actual setting in the
prophet s story, and in the history of the whole period.
Recall then a few features of the time.
(i) In the earlier century, when Elijah fought for the
supremacy of Jehovah, there was not much thought of a
character in the people as over against the character of
Jehovah. The people were prized by the God as a possession
260 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
co-ordinate with the land which He possessed as His special
country.
(2) When Amos spoke, the conception of Jehovah s char
acter as supremely righteous was rising high and growing
profounder than ever before. Necessarily there grew the
keen sense that the people of this righteous God must be
righteous too. So the cry of Amos was, " Seek good ; " and,
to obtain a people who are all good, Amos declares Jehovah
will cut off all the evil. In one sense this is of course a
gospel ; it is a prophecy of a clean land. And it is likewise
a gospel of salvation, for the land and the good who dwell
there are to be saved from the defilement of the bad. But
there is no salvation for the bad, and there is no regenera
tion, no work of God that changes character, and makes a bad
man good.
(3) Hosea believed the bad Hebrew could be good. If
the bad soul were prisoned away from the wine and whore
dom that depraved his mind, then at once with cleared vision
he would see the right way and walk in it. The nature of
the Hebrew was essentially good ; he needed no change, he
needed only freedom. Hosea did not preach regeneration.
(4) But Isaiah saw deeper into the evil. There are two
remarkable declarations of the need of regeneration and of
its certain coming, and one of these he preached amongst
his oracles of judgment ; the other stands among his oracles
of grace. We shall see that either the one prevailing faith
or the other, either the supreme faith in judgment or the
faith in grace, demands a regenerative work of God, a
creative interposition, a supernatural work, a permanent and
immanent Divine aid for men.
(a) In the earlier period, although Amosian, Isaiah is far
more searching than Amos was. If the sinners of the people
were all cut off, then should there be no man left in the land.
So in the end of chap. iii. stands the dread scene of desolate
death. The bereaved city sits upon the ground in speech-
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 261
less woe for her sons. All are gone, just as Amos pro
phesied ; all sinners have died by the sword. The gates are
gaping mouths that howl. The misery is only made more
real by the peopling of the emptiness with representatives
of sorrow ; there are seven women to wail, and round one
man these seven hunger greedily for spousal love with
weak devices to hide their jealousy. Then, says the prophet,
if there is to be any more life in Jerusalem, it cannot be the
simple fruit of Jerusalem s homes. If the city is to be a
garden of flower and fruit again, the trees must be altogether
of God s creative planting. Prof, de Lagarde, Semitica I. 8,
throws much light on this oracle by telling us how the Hebrew
and the Arab distinguished between the crops in cultivated
fields, which were man s work, and the herbs, shrubs, trees
which grew in the broad untilled lands afar from men s toil.
These latter were plants of God ; they might be Baal s
plants, here they were "Jehovah s shoots." There is another
fine illustration of this figure in a passage where we read that
Egypt was watered by man s foot, but Canaan was a more
blessed land, for there the " eyes of God," which are " the
springs of God," the bubbling wells of water which God alone
sends forth, are everywhere and always, Deut. viii. 7 ; xi. 10.
So Isaiah in the hour of absolute desolation and death
believes that God will create new souls. They shall all be
good souls, and every one registered in the rolls of the living
inhabitants of Zion shall be holy, devoted to Jehovah. The
prophet carries on his fair creation scene ; Jehovah will
clothe all souls, all women, and all homes with the garments
of goodness, for He will create above each roof the pillar of
smoke, grey by day, ruddy by night, that tells of a sacrificial
fire and feast on the hearth below.
The land must be full of godly men ; and God s hand will
create them. This faith in regeneration rose out of Isaiah s
doctrine of sternest judgment.
(V) But Isaiah learned more of God, and better ; he
262 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. m.
learned to preach that Jehovah comes down in grace to the
unclean, cleanses him and fills him with God s own mind and
utterance. This is itself regeneration. No wonder that,
when once he had clearly realised this experience, a few
years reflection on it resulted, on a day of intense emotion,
in that most splendid outpouring of the faith of his God-
filled soul that stands in chap. xi. Professor Duhm has
pointed out that this oracle is not opened by the formula,
"Thus saith Jehovah," and he suggests that possibly Isaiah
hesitated to attribute the grand future of the coming golden
age to Jehovah s inspiration. But we must not be moved to
accept this theory by the consideration that, were the oracle
introduced by this formula, it would be an infallible forecast
of the regenerated future ; whereas lacking the formula it
lacks the infallibility, and we need not perplex ourselves
over the difficulty of a lion eating straw. The triviality of
the conclusion reveals the triviality of the principle which
produced it, and the barrenness of such conceptions of God
and of man, which weary our souls with puzzles. Isaiah
seems rather to be utterly unconscious here of any separa
tion between himself and Jehovah, and "all taken up with
God," he pours out the faith, the conception, the self, that
are indeed all God s own. The insertion of the formula
would rather signify some consciousness of distinction
between the Inspirer and the speaker, and this is here all
gone as in many another of the best utterances of the Old
Testament, and as in so many of all the words of the New.
Isaiah could say, "I live, yet not I, but Jehovah liveth in
me." If a theory of infallibility is troubled by this fact, it
is troubled. We turn to the story of Isaiah s new faith in
regeneration.
He has just described the chastisement of the people by
the Assyrian rod. He knows chastisement is not enough ;
he has learnt, some years ago now, that the rod of judgment
fails. There must be regeneration of character in those who
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 263
remain ; but how ? Evidently the thought that the Assyrian
forest of spears shall be all hewn down recalls to the pro
phet s memory that very oracle of his which we read in
chap. iv. But he does not repeat it now ; he mounts from
it with the wings of his new faith in grace to the newer,
truer vision. Jehovah can descend to sinful souls in Zion ;
and Ho who has cut off all the Assyrian forest will hover
like the wind in the tops of the Hebrew tree to fill it with
Himself and make it all godlike. That tree-top is, to the
Oriental thinker, the prince. That monarch shall be filled
of God with the Spirit of God, with reverence for Jehovah,
with knowledge of all His will ; and then by the absolute
rule of the prince the people shall all bo led righteously.
Observe here the beautiful fountain of a new stream of God s
truth that was to swell into a great river between Bethlehem
and Calvary, and to roll on thence as a river of the water of
life through all the ages. Isaiah s first doctrine of regenera
tion was that of utterly superhuman action ; the new is a
conception of the spirit of Jehovah working in man, and
through man upon man. When five centuries later the
collision of the Greek faiths with the Hebrew under Antio-
chus made awful agony, the resistance of each toward the
other was only the instinctive travail of each to bear love
toward the other. The Hebrew struggle was begun by
Isaiah when he conceived God moving in Him, as He
moves in all such conceiving that regeneration must be the
work of Divine men. Do we wonder that the evident, simple
possibility of such a work on the one hand, combined with
its inevitable, matchless, godlike outcome on the other, filled
Isaiah with a rhapsody of delight, tuned his voice into
idyllic melody, and bade him wrestle with what he thought
unwilling nature to compel her to aid the universal joy and
to forego all her work of pain. Shall the tree-top shake with
the wind of God ? then the clods of earth too can know Him.
All things from the prince to the very soil beneath the
264 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
feet shall be changed, and even savage beasts shall learn to
work together for good in this coming day of regeneration.
There shall be no hurt in Zion or in her territory. The
rival divisions of the Davidic people shall be one, envying
each other no more. The surrounding peoples who bowed
beneath David s overlordship shall run to serve the people of
Jehovah. Egypt and Assyria shall send home all Hebrews
who may be enslaved in them, and the way home shall be
safe.
The problem has been raised, Can an evil man become
good ? In jubilant faith Isaiah begins the long process of
solution by his emphatic "Yes," and by his wonderful
vision and song of the result. He did not wait for the
tests of experience upon his theory, but he ensured their long
slow application. His plan raised many a fresh question,
and so heralded more and more of the revelations which God
vouchsafes to those who ask and think and listen in their
souls for the truth. Were Isaiah s picture or his theory a
final ordinance of God, then God would have given up His
function as Creator of sons unto Himself who should ever
learn from their Father s providence and from their com
munion in spirit with the Father of Spirits. God gave
through Isaiah a theory of regeneration which was sure to
pass away by awakening others to learn more and more from
that Divine inspiration themselves.
The idea grasped by Isaiah in the eleventh chapter is not
a momentary thought that soon vanishes. It pervades much
of his later oracles, and especially that in chaps, xxix. and
xxxii. But there is no further rise ; rather is there a more
cautious emphasis upon the more purely spiritual phases of
the regenerated life. The passages are especially xxix. i$ ff,
and xxxii. 4, 1 5 ff.
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 265
7. (B.) Isaiah s thought on the three fundamental questions.
(1) Concerning the nature of God.
(2) Concerning the nature of man.
(3) Concerning perfect life.
We think of theology to-day as a carefully articulated
expression of our mental grasp of the facts of religious life.
Not every one needs a theology for the purposes of his life ;
although every one needs a religion, and indeed every one has
a religion. But to know another man s religion, and to
have true regard for it, and to delineate it, you must think
out for yourself and get into clear mental grasp all the facts
of his religion in a word, you must construct the theology
of his life. Isaiah was not a theologian ; he does not write
for us his theology. He was simply a great religious man, a
man of intense faith pouring out splendid utterances of that
faith. But we may and must trace the groundlines of that
faith if we would pourtray the man truly in all his fulness.
(i) First then let us formulate what was to Isaiah "the
nature of God." Theology circles round a definition of the
central religious fact in a man s life that is, round a careful
expression of what God was to the man ; therefore we must
collect the momenta of Isaiah s thoughts of God, some of
them prominent and already described above, others more
hidden, the essential framework rather than the apparent
features.
(a) Isaiah spoke then of a Person Jehovah, and spoke of
Him as a Divine Being. He spoke of Him, to be more
exact, as one of the Elohim ; he meant, so far as the meaning
of the word can tell us, that Jehovah was one of the far-
outreaching beings. For the words Elohim, Eloah, El are
evidently connected with alah = he reached out, he sware
(reaching out the hand), whence also el = unto, elah = pine-
266 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
tree, &c., elleh = those, allon = oak, &c. The word for
"God" is also an intransitive ( = outreacher), as its main
vowel "i" shows. Professor de Lagarde s careful and re
peated discussions of the word throw abundant light on the
matter, and are invaluable. (See his Oricntcdia, Gottingen,
1880, ii. p. 3, &c.) Isaiah therefore was conscious of an
Unseen Person who reached out" to him, and to whom in
stinctively his soul and cry and praying hands reached out.
But this does not lead us far. The profounder fact is that
Isaiah felt his own faiths and opinions concerning the nation,
its symbolic personages, and himself, also his faiths concern
ing the destiny of all these, and finally also concerning the
duty of nation and self he felt all these to be the mind of
this Divine Jehovah communicated to himself. Jehovah was
therefore not "One afar" only, but also a very present
Person who created in the prophet s mind faiths and
thoughts. So the prophet speaking out these called his own
words the word of Jehovah, God of hosts, the Devoted One
of Israel.
These words point to the source of this consciousness of
God. He obtained this like all his national inheritances, his
body and his life, his possessions, speech, knowledge, and
traditions, from the people among whom he was born. His
religion was no fancy of his own ; it was a historic possession.
It was conceivable, of course, that such an inheritance might
become worn out in time, or be given up, as some inheritances
are ; it might, on the other hand, be as essential to life as is
one s very body, and might also increase constantly in beauty
and in preciousness. Certainly to Isaiah his faith in Jehovah
was such an inheritance ; he needed no proof that Jehovah
was. Yet he could increase in knowledge of Him ; he could
even leave faulty conceptions of Him, and new features of
his God s love might burst upon the vision of the wondering
prophet.
Isaiah s conception of his God Jehovah was in a sense
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 267
parallel to our Christian conception of Christ, who is to us
God manifest in the flesh. When we formulate carefully
what God is to us, we write down the story of our new birth
into life in the kingdom of God wrought in us by our Saviour
the Christ ; and the narrative of this experience of ours,
comprehended as part of the great story of experience that
circles round the Cross, is our story of God revealing Himself
to create us anew. Our hold on God is an assurance within
that we are alive through and in this ever living, present
Christ. So Isaiah s faith in God was his assurance of inward
communion with the Divine Person whom the Hebrew
people had known through the ages as a God devoted to
them, called by the name Jehovah.
(&) But how did Isaiah conceive of the action of Jehovah
upon himself and men, and what was his conception of the
concrete form of Jehovah s self-revelation ?
(a) It is of secondary importance here to know the sig
nificance of the vision described in chap, vi., yet that
significance is intensely interesting. Evidently the vision
took place amid unusual natural phenomena ; and this
lessens its importance to us, for we wish to know how
Jehovah was to be recognised when only ordinary natural
phenomena were occurring. Isaiah saw, as he records, a
lordly One exalted high upon a throne, and His train skirt
ing about that glorious throne filled all the palace where the
Divine throne stood. We understand most of these features ;
we know what lordly appearance is, and what the singularly
exalted throne. But we do not know what the train was of
which he speaks. Was it a great sweeping robe, or was it
the glorious host of seraph courtiers ? The result we reach, if
we try to conceive of the scene, is that Isaiah does indeed
conceive of God in anthropomorphic manner, but his anthro
pomorphism is uncertain. He is not strongly realistic ; he
tends rather towards a more austere, more spiritual con
ception.
268 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
(/3) Let us remember that even in the earlier ministry,
when we might perhaps look for more anthropomorphisms,
we find very few, and fewer of these are strictly tangible
features. We read of the paths of Jehovah, and that He
standeth to judge ; but these are scarcely realisms. When
the prophet with fine sympathy grieves at the thought of
Jehovah s glorious eyes embittered with pain, and when in
anger he draws back the veil and reveals Jehovah s arm
outstretched to strike, in these things we have all that is
very material in Isaiah s conception of Jehovah s nature.
(7) But the oracles of the later more gracious period
represent God s action in a still more spiritual way. The
regeneration of prince and people, and of earth and beasts
of earth, and all men and things, is to be worked by the
resting of the Spirit of Jehovah upon the prince. The
" Spirit of God " we may translate by the " wind of God " if
we choose ; certainly the moving of this Spirit is represented
by the figure of the wind that moves in the leaves of the
forest. We hear the sound thereof, we know its presence
and its work, but we see it not, nor can we tell whence it
cometh and whither it goeth. It is interesting to observe,
by the way, how much of the forms of New Testament
speech may have been the natural fruit of converse with the
voices of the prophets of long before. And as the conception
in John iii. was finely spiritual, so was that in Isaiah xi. ;
largely so was it through the choice of figure for the repre
sentation. The hovering figure of the defending Jehovah
(chap. xxxi. 5) is of course in significance closely like the
figure of the wind ; and this bird-figure is likewise used in
the New Testament. Throughout these later oracles this
level of conception is well maintained. The writer certainly
does regard the thunder as the voice of Jehovah, calling it
His glorious voice ; but again and again he alludes to the
monitions of conscience as the Divine voice also (xxx. 21).
All the more striking is this allusion when we find the simple
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 269
husbandman s judgment concerning his daily farm duties
described as the very instruction of God, Jehovah of hosts.
(8) Here then we have clear light on Isaiah s conception of
Jehovah s communication of His oracles to him. As he con
ceived the brooding Spirit giving to the prince all godliness
and knowledge of Jehovah s mind, so we must think did he
count all his own knowledge of Jehovah to be the work of
that unseen brooding Spirit, and he trusted in Jehovah that
He did not mislead him.
(c) This leads us at once to the few words necessary here
concerning the power of this God Jehovah. We have seen
already the full story of the prophet s faith on this matter.
Jehovah was the controlling Lord over all hosts and all
powers in the world around him, and in the nether world.
And this faith was expanding into the larger belief that
Jehovah ruled over the causes of sin, and could lift men
out of the disease of it back into the healthy condition of
the righteous, and He could give them again all the glad
dening marks of children of Israel.
The conception of Jehovah as suzerain, or lord paramount
over many Divine powers, each in some sense sovereign, was
thoroughly a conception of the times. It does not satisfy the
philosophy of our day ; that is unnecessary. But it arose
at once from observation of the customary royalties of that
age. Given the profound sense of control by many invisible
Persons, and a faith that the Israelite Deity, Jehovah, was
the Supreme One over these, we at once appreciate Isaiah s
mode of representing these ideas.
(d) Here we recall the various aesthetic features in Isaiah s
conception of Jehovah. There are, he intimates, certain
sensations produced by the knowledge of Jehovah s presence
which are akin to our sense of beauty. These tell us, the
prophet feels, partly what the aesthetic characteristics of the
very Person of Jehovah are, and partly what are the fit
characteristics of His environment.
270 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
(a) Glory is the ceaseless efflux from Jehovah s Person, of
which Isaiah speaks in almost every oracle. The man who is
conscious of God s presence feels a radiance as of glorious
eyes beaming on him, and the voice of God is glorious,
whether it is heard in the thunder or in conscience. This
impression of effluent glory was literally a sense of the
weight of God. It signifies a sense of the transcendent
importance, the exceeding value of Jehovah. We have read
how Isaiah felt that this sense filled all the earth ; all things
were overpowered by the sense of the glory of Jehovah.
But in the beams of that brilliance Isaiah says the Hebrew
soul could see a still more wondrous light. Love streamed
along those beams. While all others bowed overwhelmed
the Israelite could feel that wondrous sense that gives
ecstasy to a lover. He was beloved. Jehovah s presence
made that impression. Isaiah s greatest task was to sound
the unknown depths of this love and proclaim it to his
fellows.
(/3) But only a certain environment was fit for this great
Person. Not always nor everywhere could His presence be
felt. His subjective aesthetic quality required an objective
aesthetic setting. A very tangible part of this was Zion,
according to the clear and eagerly declared mind of Isaiah
in his later days. The great glory of Jehovah could be
known indeed throughout all the earth, but only in Zion
could His devotion reach and enswathe every soul, and there
only could this matchless depth of His character be felt.
There too the worshipping Israelite could behold and even
touch the glorious robe of God, for in the Zion temple the
heavenly train could be unfolded to fill that house. There
the hosts of His court could assemble and hold high converse
on His name. But even they counted His appearance too
sacred to behold ; utterly satisfied were they that Deity
should be invisible. This is a remarkable feature in Isaiah s
conception ; it borders on appreciation of the invisible nature
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 271
of God. And it is the more remarkable because the mail
who has a part in the scene, as representative of beings not
yet all pure and perfect, does see a form while the perfect
souls forego all sight.
The perfection of these perfect spirits consists in their
ceaseless realisation of the love of Jehovah, which is His
highest attribute and His essential nature. Such an environ
ment befits this Deity ; this is His garment.
The question whether Isaiah counted sacrifices and ritual
of any special and considerable degree of elaborateness as the
worthy environment of Jehovah has been already discussed.
Isaiah lived in an age that loved feastings, meats, and wines,
and considered these as religious occasions wherein the Deity
took pleasure because they did. Isaiah is a man of his time,
and he shares the feeling that such pleasure may be religious ;
but he does not exalt the custom as the very desirable way
to honour Jehovah. He does not prescribe a ritual of worship,
either sacrificial or otherwise, he does not hint at any such
ritual as well known and worthy ; he condemns unsparingly
all the Hebrew sacrifices he mentions. Only once does he
predict any sort of altar worship ; it is to be performed by
the Egyptians, as (xix. 21) he says
Jehovah shall make Himself known to Mifraim,
And let Mi^raim know Jehovah in that day;
And let Mifraim serve with sacrificial slaughter and with gift.
Let them vow vows to Jehovah and keep them.
The true attitude Isaiah desires in the people and counts
worthy towards God is goodness in thought (chap, xi., &c.),
in heart and in speech (chap, xxxii., c.), in calling (chap,
xxxiii., &c.), in home (chap, iv., &c.), and throughout all in
trustful love for the ever-present loving Jehovah (chap,
viii., &c.). Such is the aesthetic character of Jehovah.
(e) The moral character of Jehovah, as Isaiah conceived it,
is inseparably manifest in all His aesthetic features ; and it
272 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
has also appeared in the pictures we have gained of His self-
revelation and of His administration of His power. And
certainly, as the stream s highest level tells the level of the
fountains, so the Isaian conception of the goodness of Jehovah
must be a picture of Isaiah s own conscience. What Isaiah
thought was right was sure to be what he thought Jehovah s
moral nature was. The pictures of Isaiah s own high moral
aims, as we have seen them all along our way, are therefore
truly also Isaiah s conception of the high purposes of Jehovah.
Such then is this prophet s theology proper.
(2} There is an Isaian anthropology. It is simple, elemen
tary in a sense, and unlike ours ; yet it exhibits growth, that
infallible sign of life.
(a) This then we may record of it in the first place, that
Isaiah s conception of human nature is a conception in process
of development. Our study of details in the matter will make
this plain; meanwhile we may remember that a priori we
must expect Isaiah to be a man of progress, and progress
most decided, For essentially he was a receiver of revelation,
as we saw. His whole life was one constant listening to the
mind of God, ever newly poured forth in him ; he was one
constant record of that revelation in speech to men. He
certainly did not limit the truth of God, and there is no evi
dence that he had any inherited philosophical system or code
of oracles whose ever new light was to be got by simple pro
cess of exegesis. No, he expected always to receive Divine
visions of truth, and ever and anon to forsake opinions he
had earnestly proclaimed to be Divine that he might move
forward to grasp others quite different, and proclaim these
as the new word from God. He thought in this way on
every subject; it was certain that his conception of man
would not be crystallised, but organically growing.
(b) We turn to the oracles preached, and find that, for the
most part, like Hebrews before him, he thought of all Israel
as a mass. The possession of Jehovah was " the people as a
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 273
whole ; " there was little thought of the value of an individual.
This was perfectly natural. Of course there was individual
conscience, but there was not much reflection on its meaning.
The reflection which was essential to the prophet s speech
circled chiefly round the great Divine conception, a conception
that seems to have been more utterly absorbing to a Hebrew
than it is to Western minds. So too in the denunciations of
chaps, ii. to v., while there is indeed minute description of
wrong deeds, these deeds are charged against all Israel
as a whole. There is certainly no distinct individualisa-
tion of sinners in the repeated formula, " Woe unto them
that, . . ." as if there were some who did this evil, and some
who did that, and some who did neither. The words do not
necessarily carry that meaning. They say simply, " Ho, ye !
joining house to house," "Ho, ye! rising early to drink,"
&c., &c. The descriptions and the woes are addressed to the
whole people. It is " my people " that has no knowledge.
It is " the inhabitants of Jerusalem " that have disappointed
Jehovah. It is " the daughters of Zion " that are haughty.
We read, " house of Jacob, come ye," not " sinner,
come thou." And so we might quote through all the
periods.
But especially in a passage like chap, xi., which does
single out an individual, the absence of individualism is evi
dent. The prince is indeed to have a direct personal gift of
the Divine Spirit to make him of quick understanding and
make him rule righteously ; but the Spirit is given no further.
The individual Hebrew s capacity for such a gift to make him
a true subject or citizen is not realised by Isaiah. When
the prince is once divinely swayed, then he sways all his sub
jects by his power and command as one drives a flock of
soulless sheep. There must be one central soul, one con
science and will ; and this is regnant in one over all, and
not even in one of the mass, but in one above them. This
kind of solidarity is characteristic throughout the oracles.
S
274 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
Finally, the lack of individualism appears in the plan of
salvation by residence in a city, Zion, which is assured of
safety for itself and all its inhabitants. These people are
treated as a mass, without regard to individual character.
Kay, more, even the sinners in Zion, the debauchees (chap,
xxviii.), the hypocrites (chap, xxxii.), are in a sense divested
of their distinctive character and their desert, and are saved
in the mass in this first wonderful effort to conceive of for
giveness and salvation. Thus the loftiest grasp of God s love
at this date conceived only of His love for a mass, a people as
a whole.
(c) And yet very evidently a deeper vision was beginning.
The evidence is largely the same as we have just had. There
existed already the conviction that at least some one human
soul must have individual grace from God if there was to be
any righteousness and any salvation. The prince was, in a
sense, an individual Hebrew ; and his individual function and
value were well estimated, even although it were Oriental
and despotic. And other individuals were emerging from
the dim haze into clear outline and preciousness. The pro
phet s own value certainly was, as the story of his call shows.
But so also were the figures growing distinct that moved
about the prophet s personal life, his spouse, his children,
who were signs from Jehovah too ; and his pupils also were
being detached in character from the general mass. So too,
on the other hand, wrongdoers were being singled out. For
while it was " the people " that were astray and condemned,
yet it was "the rulers" who caused this (chap, xxviii. 14),
just as good rulers could produce national righteousness.
Moreover, in the terrible song of woe and of " the outstretched
arm," where " the people " as a whole is condemned, there is
also some specification of individuals. The ordinary English
versions are ambiguous, as we have seen, and may not be
pressed too far. But there is a change beginning in the dis
tinction, chap. v. 23, between " the wicked " and the whole
CHAP. m.J SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 275
people who "justify the wicked," and between "the right
eous " and the whole people, " who take away the righteous
ness of the righteous from them." There is scarcely need of
evidence, for the man who attacks sin must see individual
sinners, and the primitive childlike dream of the people as a
mass is sure to break down. Isaiah s anthropology, then,
was in process of change. His mind was searching ever
deeper, and thus did God give to him revelations.
(3) Isaiah had an ideal of perfect life. We might call this
his eschatology. It is certainly his "doctrine of the last
things." for he always speaks of the ideal as yet to be
realised when the golden days shall come. He begins his
description of it mostly with the familiar Ninn D^3 ; " In
that day." When that day shall have dawned there shall be
no sunset that Isaiah knows ; then shall have begun the
grand last things. Our Christian thinking bears the im
press of Isaiah s mind, and has been so inspired by his faith
as to conceive many a time its own ideal of heavenly life in
the wondrous forms he spoke. Isaiah s eschatology has
moulded ours ; his ideal of perfect life is a well-known vision
in the treasure-house of our own ideals. Its features here
following are therefore somewhat familiar :
(rt) It was an old faith our prophet took and wove into it
newer, finer features to form Ins vision of the future. He
opened his oracles by quoting from the past, although he was
to become and abide prince among Hebrew preachers. He
took an old faith in Zion, shook it to the foundation, lest evil
might cling to it, and clothing it in the new robe of Jehovah s
gracious love for ill-deserving men, he made the Zion temple
the centre of his new heavenlike kingdom on earth.
(l>) The title "his doctrine of last things" seems to grow
inappropriate when we find that its central figure is David,
the hero of the past. But so it has been in other Utopias ;
the golden age to come is a return of the golden age that is
gone. Of course the secret is, that the ideals of to-day are
276 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
read into the honoured past when this is so far away that its
troubles are forgotten. God smooths away the lines of care
from the cheeks of our beloved dead ; and He has ordained
that we shall magnify the beauty of the far-off past while
we think ever less of its pain. So Isaiah glorified the age of
David, the long-past days of the foundation of the Hebrew
monarchy ; and when he would picture the glorious age that
he hoped should come, he thought it must be just the
glorious David-days come back again. So he sang his vision
of the perfect life to be.
(c) We have seen that he felt there must be a very radical
change of nature when that new age begins. Men and
things must be virtually re-created. Men must be re
generated, and turn to new thoughts and deeds. Here the
prophet had struck on a law of life that has proved funda
mental; Christianity has exalted it as a very part of the
constitution of the kingdom of God among men, and the
thinking world in general seems to be adopting a similar
theory. But when Isaiah leaped to the conclusion that the
nature of all things must be changed as well as human nature,
his mind was doubtless moved to this by two considerations.
For to him thus far men and other things had seemed to be
all of one nature. As we have seen, he had little thought of
the value of the individual and of character. If then men
and things were of the same sort, and one part of these must
be changed, then surely the other part must be changed
also. Again, it was to do away the evil that was in the
world that the change was necessary ; but while men did
much of the evil, it seemed to him that the beasts also
delighted to hurt and destroy, and the sea and the desert
helped to make ever-dreaded slavery a more bitter curse. So
Isaiah learned to believe that if true happiness is to come on
earth, the very earth herself must become pervaded by the
mind of God ; her form must here and there be changed, and
her forest beasts must put on new nature, her serpents,
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 277
her bears, and lions must have a new physical organisation.
Isaiah did not see it was left for later prophets to see
ever more clearly that evil has little to do with circumstances,
with earth and beasts and death, and sin belongs only to
souls. Isaiah s prophecy lay in the hope for some golden
age of perfect life, not in the manner of it ; and the Perfect
Life that came to highest bloom on Calvary was realised
through greatest pain.
(d) Here we must record how Isaiah s picture of perfect
life contains certain other features, of great beauty too, which
reveal how a true estimate of the value of character should
come about, although it had not yet quite come to Isaiah
himself. He tells in chap. iv. how each living soul registered
in the Zion city-roll shall be devoted to Jehovah. This is, of
course, the mere statement of the high hope ; but the next
few words tell of another feature of the happy time, whose
mention shows in what direction thinking was sure to pro
gress. Every home should be a sanctuary, and every hearth
an altar ; on every roof should rise the pillar of smoke by
day and gleaming light by night that marked the place
where a sacred feast was being prepared or enjoyed amid
devout praise and prayer, and in faith that Jehovah Himself
was a present guest. Along this path of love for home
godliness, where womanly purity would be the central fra
grance, Hebrew thinkers were certain to rise to consciousness
of the value of each individual soul. The man who carried
such conceptions of perfect life as Isaiah had was sure to be
constantly advancing to deeper truth and to more truth.
(c) There is often a fine interlacing of ideas in Isaiah ; and
this makes the point which we have reached the right place
to speak of the agricultural wealth which Isaiah expects
shall clothe the coming perfect days. For he gives one of
his fairest visions of this in a passage where he emphasises
peculiarly woman s share in producing or in delaying it
(chap, xxxii. 920). And the agricultural prosperity of the
278 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
coming golden age must be mentioned here for another
reason namely, this, that while Isaiah does predict a radical
change of the nature of beasts and the like that do hurt to
men, yet he certainly speaks much more of the good things
and good times that may come by ordinary wise husbandry.
In fact, while he desires all evil agencies to be stopped and
turned to good, he desires also all good agencies to be abun
dantly used. And he has far more to say of this latter than
of the former. He is not often a dreamer, but mostly a very
practical economist. For quite certainly material joys bulk
very largely in his ideal of the highest good. The fact that
men to-day are learning to count these material comforts an
important part of the gifts of the Gospel suggests an inter
esting question. When men believe strongly in a very
present God, as good men are more generally coming to
believe now, and as Isaiah and his fellow Hebrews certainly
believed, are they then always more likely to believe in the
necessity of material good ? A deistic belief in the absence
of God from, earth and its concerns and us has coloured
much of the religious thinking which is just now passing
away. The same religious thought has been apt to relegate
all true joy to the far-off, unseen, future world ; such, at
least, has been the creed. And we have been wont to count
all the Hebrews materialistic, and to find too much of it
even in Isaiah. Are we to become more just to him and to
all of them? Are we to say they were wise in hoping for
heaven upon earth ? Is our real advance beyond them only
the discovery that heaven is already upon earth to the Son
of man and to His brethren, forasmuch as He said, " The
kingdom of heaven is within you " ?
(/) Isaiah certainly included also what we call spiritual
features in his ideal of the good time coming. Of course his
picture in chap. xi. of the prince regenerated by the Divine
breath brooding upon him, and fitting him to work all good,
is a picture of spiritual excellence, although only one in-
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 279
dividual is supposed to receive it immediately. Later on,
however, by the time he wrote chaps, xxix.-xxxii., Isaiah
had probably gained larger views. lie is not speaking to
the prince only when he says
Jehovah hath poured over you a sleepy wind,
And He hath bound fast your eyes.
And your insight into all things has become like things in a
sealed record ;
Give it to one who understandeth records and say
" Read this, I pray."
But he will say, " I cannot ; it is sealed."
Give it to him who understandeth not ;
And he will say, "I cannot read !" (chap. xxix. io m // .)
But in that day
The deaf shall hear the things recorded ;
Yea, even blind men out of very mist and darkness shall see.
Those who are meek-in-Jehovah shall grow in joy ;
And those who sorely feel all human needs shall find that in
Israel s Devoted One they may dance for joy (chap.
xxix. i8/).
Though the Lordly One shall give you trouble to eat and drink
Yet no more shall your Torah-givers be silenced.
Yea, your eyes shall see those Torah-givers ;
Yea, your own ears shall hear one saying from behind you,
"This" is the way; walk here !" (chap. xxx. 21).
The song ye shall have shall be like the night when they pre
pare a feast,
And delight of mind as when one marcheth by the sound of
the flute,
To come to the mountain of Jehovah, even unto Israel s rock
(chap. xxx. 29).
Lo, when kings rule with firmness, and among princes they
work for justice.
Then each common man shall be a place of hiding from the wind
and a shelter-place from rain.
Yea, like streams of water in Zion,
And like the cool shadow of rocks in a weary land,
Then the eyes of those who watch shall not wander,
280 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
And even the ears of those who hear shall grow more attentive.
Yea, the thoughts of the hasty shall discern knowledge ;
The tongue of the stammerer shall at once speak plain.
There shall not be said to a churl, " Oh, excellent man."
And it is not of the cheat they shall say, " Success ! "
For whoso is a churl, churlish shall he talk ;
In all his thoughts he shall do mischief,
Thinking how to do godless things,
Talking utterly mistakenly about God.
But when a man is "excellent," he always desires excellent
things ;
And he shall endure in the excellent days (chap, xxxii. i-S).
Without being a literal translation, this is the substantial
sense of the words of Isaiah. Beautiful and good indeed they
are. And now there is evidence that these finely spiritual
words concerning the golden days to come were not merely
childlike and unreflecting, but were accompanied all through
his later work at least by a wondering effort to understand
the matter, to analyse the nature of such spiritual phenomena,
to discover the causes of them, and to enlist all men in the
Divine work of securing them. We have seen some evidence
of this in chap, xi., in the theory of the regeneration of
the prince by the brooding Divine spirit ; and the date
of this passage we know to be not earlier than 720 B.C.
Head now the later evidence of it in chap, xxxii., the con
clusion of the beautiful passages just above quoted. Their
date is, as we saw, about 705 to 700 B.C. The prophet sings
of the present imperfect life, and then tells how it can be
changed, as lie believes :
On the vineyard soil of my people s hearts thorns and thistles
are luxuriant now ;
For such cover the very houses where delight should be.
Ah ! thou once merry town !
Thou art a delight of roaming asses, a pasture-run for flocks,
Until there be revealed and blow upon us that spirit that
cometh from on high ;
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 281
Then shall all change ; men shall feel all has changed.
Then shall steppe land seem like vine land,
And vine land shall seem like forest ;
For then shall judges writ prevail in farthest steppe,
And steadfast character shall dwell in all vine lands.
The fruit of steadfast character shall be health ;
Yea, steadfast service shall cause quiet,
And there shall be security on into unknown time.
In those good days, therefore, knowledge and wise thinking
are to come, and the high agent to work their coming must
be that spirit-being who comes like the unseen wind from
heaven. The work and the character must be spiritual.
Isaiah is sure of that, and he is thinking over the problem
what all this means. We too are meeting it ; and although
we know far more than he, there is still far more to
learn.
(g) Finally, in that day something shall have taken place
for all Hebrews which Isaiah calls "forgiveness." Sinners
as well as righteous, all who dwell in Zion, shall be forgiven
their waywardness. They shall be ]ty N&3 (c. xxxiii. 24).
What does this mean ?
(a) The mere literal sense of the words is, of course, that
" twistedness " shall be "eliminated " from all who dwell in
Zion. Or, the words being read the other way about, which
is more correct, they mean that all the Zioii people shall be
lifted up out of twistedness and all its works. But what
does this mean ?
(/3) Watching carefully the cries of fear and of faith in
the verses just preceding, much is evident. The deliverance
preached to the hypocrites in Zion is to set them in the same
comfort that the righteous enjoy. These are free, and so
all are to be free, from the horrors of invasion, from
slaughter, from starvation, from slavery. Like those perched
high in rocky fastnesses, with plenty of food beside them, with
fresh watersprings near, all shall be able to laugh at the
invaders and sit fearless, although the lurid fires of enemies
282 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
camps and burning villages gleam and gloom by night and
day.
(7) But the words mean more still ; a worse evil is to be
lifted away. Utter desolation is felt by the sinner to be
the expected and proper outcome of his sin. He chose the
premiss clearly, and so clearly chose the conclusion. "Who
among us," he cries, " can dwell among everlasting burn
ings ? Only the righteous ! " But Isaiah preaches a break
between the premiss and the conclusion. " Look upon Zion.
the city of God s tryst with us," he says; "look, Jehovah
has pledged Himself to do a wondrous thing for all dwellers
there. He will save us all." The prophet certainly does
not preach that anybody in Zion may do as he likes, good
or bad, and God will always coolly annul the law of cause
and effect as regards sinners, upholding it only in the case
of good men. No, we shall see presently that this is not
his mind. But he does say. " Ye have been godless, cruel,
greedy, filthy, murderous ; but come in here, Jehovah has
come down to find us, and to purify us in this sanctuary.
Come in, then, and He will work for you all gladness where
you expected all evil. You expected evil rightfully ; He will
give you good."
We say to-day, here is the mystery of forgiveness. Doubt
less Isaiah did not appreciate it fully, else he would have
seen and said that it might apply to all men equally, out
of Zion as in Zion. But he did feel that it was a mysterious
gospel. He felt that it needed explanation to persuade men
to trust to it, pleasant though it might sound. So he said
something more was contained in "forgiveness."
(6) For it meant further their realisation that Jehovah
was their King, their Lawgiver, and their Judge, and that
for these reasons He would cause their safety.
Let us remember that the actual facts of religious experi
ence in those days might be largely the same as the facts
which we experience now, while the way of looking at those
CHAP, in.] SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF ISAIAH S FAITHS. 283
facts was very different. So Isaiah had a controlling con
viction of the love of the unseen Lord for him, and this
conviction, or vital faith, as we should call it, simply made
impossible all fear, and gave a sense of highest pleasure
even amid pain and danger. He felt exactly what Paul
meant when lie wrote, " All things work together for good
to them that love God." However, the understanding of
this had to depend in each case on each one s understand
ing of the ideas " God" and "good," and "love" and "all
things." Isaiah thought of God as "Jehovah." that one
of the heavenly host pledged to care for the Hebrews, and
in Isaiah s own experience ready now to purify all Zion
worshippers. To be such a worshipper was to cast one s
self trustfully upon this Jehovah ; it was to realise in an
act of confidence, and then in its resiilts, what a Saviour
Jehovah was. Isaiah invited sinners to the act of confidence,
joyfully sure through his own experience that every trust
ful one should have the same fearless sense of safety. So,
cried he, all who dwell in Zion shall realise what Jehovah is,
and this realisation may well be called a lifting away of all
waywardness.
(e) Finally, the siim of all these phases of forgiveness is
this, all the people who dwell in Zion shall feel they are full
citizens of that city of God. They shall enjoy all the good
things flowing from undisturbed fellowship with each other
and with their Lord in the home of the great good Divine
King. Such was forgiveness in Isaiah s thought. It meant
full citizenship in the kingdom of Jehovah ; it meant trust
in and realisation of Jehovah s love. It meant a break in
the sequence of their deserts for their past wrong ; it meant
safety from all evil. Thus all twistedness was to be lifted
away.
If we think the prophet would recognise belter nowadays
the inevitable sequence of wrong and retribution, folly and
failure, cause and effect, let us recollect that the Christian s
284 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. nr.
view of the world with all its pain is that it is all good, and
the Cause of it, the God of it, is love ; or to use the thought
of a really Christian teacher, we find all happiness, although
often the happiness is so like pain that we can only tell it
from pain by knowing that we choose it rather than all the
world beside. 1 Such is present-day Christian philosophy ;
and Isaiah s oracle concerning forgiveness, while not big
enough for all men, was a true prophecy of the greater faith
that was to come.
Such then was his whole ideal of perfect life, and happy
was the world wherein it was uttered.
1 Compare "Komola," Epilogue.
CHAPTER IV.
ISAIAH S PLACE IN HEBREW RELIGIOUS HISTORY.
()UU method prevents us from claiming that the following
estimate is absolutely final. It is quite possible for us here to
register in summary the steps we have seen this prophet
take beyond his predecessors Hosea, Amos, and the general
body of Hebrews, so far as we have been already able to
record their religion. But it is also possible that our pro
gress forward may disclose to us in controverted documents
some records which shall clearly tell us more of the period and
the people whom we have now been studying. Indeed, this
was the hope held out by our method. We were to study
the uncontroverted records of the times, those monuments
which were the very autographs of the preachers as they
sought to persuade their fellow-men. This study of the
preachers religion by analysis of their sermons was to give
us understanding of the times which produced the preachers,
and to which these men preached. Then we hoped that this
study would give skill to detect where some controverted
documents most probably arose, and the further picture of
these historically located records would fill our picture with
many a new and fair feature. Therefore our present descrip
tion of Isaiah s advance on the religious position which we
had noted ere we reached him can tell us only how life grew
in the society immediately about Isaiah, and in those parts of
it which Amos and Hosea and himself represent.
Isaiah was a prominent man in his society, in Zion and the
regions of Judah and among the southern Hebrews. We have
285
2SG OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
seen that he probably caused the rise of this people to the
higher literary level of caring to preserve the written words of
their leading thinkers. And yet, great as was this service,
it was a service to a very small people. Isaiah s immediate
area of influence could not extend much beyond the city of
Jerusalem. He was known then to the people of a moder
ately sized town and to the outlying villages and farmer
folk in a kingdom only thirty miles square, whose population
was not very dense, not 1 50,000 at the most extravagant
estimate (see Professor Socin in Ba3deker s "Palestine,"
Introduction). Our study above of the religion of Hosea
must not be supposed to imply that Isaiah s influence acted
at once over all the northern sister kingdom ; rather does it
mean simply that Hosea s influence moulded the southern
way of thinking by its affecting at least Isaiah. What
advance, then, in the religious thought of the little people
in and round Jerusalem is revealed by the advance of Isaiah
beyond the writers we have studied before him ? Having
first examined (I.) this advance, we shall ask (II.) what pro
blems seem raised by Isaiah and left for later solution ?
i. Advance in conception of God.
(I.) i. Recall first of all the different conceptions of God.
Isaiah has seen more of the lordly Jehovah s character.
Amos s revelation was, " Our God is righteous, pure, good."
But in this goodness Isaiah has watched new beams
of glory kindle. Jehovah is good yes ; but that goodness
is now known to be best in its grace and favour to the
undeserving. Amos knew the word that means "holy" or
"devoted," but he seemed to dislike it and avoid its use, as
if it could not be true that Jehovah was devoted to this evil
people. Hosea s soul felt the old traditional sound of the
word echoing within him, and ventured to hope that herein
lay some hidden way of deliverance for the doomed. Isaiah
CHAP, iv.] ISAIAH IX HEBREW RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 287
rose from the despair of Amos, above the despairing hope of
Hosea, to faith in Jehovah s cleansing of his own unclean
lips and life, and then to like faith that this God could love
the worst men in Zion and would save them.
Isaiah s advance on Hosea is the point of special interest
to us here. Hosea caught eagerly at the hope of salvation,
but his oracle was his only declaration of this hope to his
fellows. Isaiah went mueh farther. He planted virtually a
firm symbol on the soil to repeat his gospel to all who saw
it ; for he proclaimed the new quality of the old Zion. and
so he made a new Zion. Zion, said he, is and shall be the
everlasting symbol of God s saving love. Isaiah saw the
need for manifestations of truths to men, and hereby he
stepped at once into the front rank of the great seers of our
race. No sage, artist, or ruler has done a more needful work
than this which Isaiah did.
Here we recall also Isaiah s advance to profounder grasp
of the power of God. From the early childlike fancy or faith
that everything has its own hidden God within it. the men
of Israel had risen already to the belief that all the nations
and their separate tribal gods were controlled by their own
national God Jehovah. Such was the long stride in uncon
scious argumentation from faith in a cause for every effect
up to faith in one central control over the separate causes of
the separate nations. But Isaiah began his keen share in
the practical solution of life s problems, and now men heard
of greater power in the God Jehovah. He controls more than
the nations of earth and visible actions ; He is Lord over the
powers beyond death. But He is far more powerful still ;
He can regenerate souls and all the nature of piinces, men,
beasts, and soil. He has control of the subtle forces in the
soul that demand retribution for sin. He can forgive.
Although He does not write out in order his philosophy of
religion, yet His teaching and grasp imply such a philosophy
implicit indeed, but of a very high order. Of course we
288 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
are giving up the dream long common that the attainment
to a conscious monotheism and clear possession of it was of
far earlier date, aboriginal indeed, forgotten repeatedly by
idolaters, but always reasserted by the prophetic men. It is
perhaps sufficient comfort that we are thus laying aside the
unworthy Chinese landscape into which we had forced all
the vivid life of the great Old Testament centuries. When
God creates He causes development : He did so then as now.
So the man Isaiah rises up before us ; searching are those
eyes, strained that massive brow, nervous and quick those
speaking lips, firm yet questioning, his tread and grasp of
hand, the whole man a questioner profound, every fibre of
him studious, ever learning, knowing all that all men know
about him, and ever coming to greater knowledge of the
truth. Great Isaiah, peer as searching thinker he of a Plato,
an Aristotle, a Paul, a John, an Origen, Augustine, Abelard.
Thomas, Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel.
2. Advance in understanding mans nature and value.
2. Advance has been great in understanding man s nature
and his value. There is no need here for more than a sum
mary, for we have just been examining the details. One
can hardly avoid the impression that society is in a slightly
better state at the end of this period than it was at the
beginning. There is much sin, and it is very bad, but there
is a slightly more hopeful impression left by Isaiah s story of
it than by Hosea s. Of course, Amos s fierce demand that
all sinners must die makes a very dark picture, and yet its
fierceness inclines us all the more to care in judgment. Was
he not, we say, perhaps unduly fierce ? And may not society
have been less guilty than his tone suggests ? But when we
read the kind-hearted Hosea s tale of his own wife, and hear
him tell of his enduring devotion to her, his patient suffer
ing and his pleadings with her, all of which he regards as
CHAP, iv.] ISAIAH IN HEBREW RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 289
not simply providential but most directly ordered by Jehovah,
and when we read of domestic ruin in such a good man s
home, we may well be appalled. How many have said this
must be a supposed picture only ! No wonder they have
thought so. But the occasion for such a supposed picture
would have been itself very bad. The northern kingdom in
Hosea s time must have been strangely wrong. In Isaiah s
account the wrongdoings seem at least a little more manly
and womanly. Perhaps this was more natural in the sterner,
hilly Judah lands than in the more luxuriant, voluptuous
plains of Ephraim. Or perhaps the destruction of the fair
city Samaria sobered all men a little. In any case, Isaiah
either lived in a slightly purer society, or he judged men more
gently.
Amos had simply ordered men to " Seek good," naively
implying conscience and some kind of ability. Perhaps he
reflected somewhat philosophically on the matter ere he
declared his final sentence that the evil-doers must all die.
Perhaps he had concluded that they who did not seek good
could not, and therefore were worthless. Not so Hosea, who
must have reflected a good deal on the matter. He believed
that seclusion, total abstinence, strict denial of alcohol and
whoredom, would leave the mind, which to him was the heart,
quite pure, ready for good action, and sure to do right. In
Hosea s view the real nature of every Hebrew was good. He
left Amos far behind. But Isaiah saw more deeply than
Hosea, and declared that there must be a change wrought
more deeply than a monastic seclusion can work. Isaiah
denies entirely Arnos s theory that evil men are worthless,
but he denies also Hosea s theory that they are naturally
good. He says a man may be radically changed ; he must
be regenerated by the working of the Divine Spirit brooding
upon him. And here Isaiah rises beyond that massing of
all Hebrews in one sum, or at least in two, which Amos and
Hosea had both implied. These former prophets had not
T
290 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
handled the case of any single individual ; Isaiah thinks at
least of the individual case of the prince, of his special char
acter, his special regeneration, and his individual influence.
Finally Hosea and Amos had described awfully the evil in
man, but had said little of the character of the good ; while
Isaiah moves on to definite descriptions of the good features
of a good man, as we have seen just above (chaps, xxix.
xxxii.).
3. In estimate of religious relations.
3. The advance toward definite estimate of the religious
relations of the soul is most marked. Amos had condemned
all sanctuaries, and had refused to call himself a prophet.
He saw these forms filled with wrongdoing, and he struck at
both together. But they were not necessarily one, although
he so identified them. He identified a man and his sin, and
knew no way of separating them, yet his successors found
they could be separated ; and so also religious forms are not
necessarily full of evil. Hosea went back, and naturally, to
a love for religious symbols and to a lament for their loss.
He longed for religious life, and he knew that it must have
some form in which to appear. The position of Amos is thus
directly traversed. Isaiah follows Hosea, and carries his doc
trine to a much further issue by his faith concerning the
Zion sanctuary. We have seen how he implies that this form
must be full of life, and the clearest confirmation of this lies
in his further negation of Amos s position respecting prophets.
For he asserts not only the value of a Zion sanctuary, but
also the Divine authority of a professional prophetic body,
that body being certainly to his mind full of living devotion
to Jehovah, for it consisted of himself, his wife and children,
and his disciples, all possessed of and devoted to his own
teaching, which he believed to be Jehovah s own mind.
Herein, as we have said, Isaiah was consciously asserting a
CHAP, iv.] ISAIAH IN HEBREW RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 291
great principle of life that was to be a main feature in later
Hebraism, and was also to lead to the faith in the only true,
yet necessary visible sanctuary, which is the person of man.
4. In comprehension of the future.
4. Finally, we record the advance in comprehension of the
new world of life that was looked for. All believed it must
come ; each described it, and toiled to hasten its day. But
while the way of its attainment was with Amos death and
with Hosea slavery, with Isaiah it was creation. We shall see
this positive method expand greatly in the ages to follow,
until, when once it has moulded the whole popular cos
mogony and has fought in great conflict against the keen
sword-like subtlety of the Greeks, it merges into the grand
utterances of Galilee and Calvary : " The kingdom of God
is within yon," and " My Father, into Thy hands I commend
my Spirit."
5. The problems he started and left unsettled.
(II.) What further problems did Isaiah s work lay bare
and compel good men speedily to face ? Many thoughts must
have been suggested by the reading of his oracles in the
generations that followed one by one, but there are some
(juestions that must have risen very soon. Certainly we
ought to be guided here by the actual historical occurrence
of such rise of questions. It would not be just to write his
tory even in this case on d priori expectations. But, borrow
ing a little from evidence which we shall speedily read, we
need not go far astray in singling out some questions which
Isaiah was sure to start. These questions will rightly com
plete our picture of Isaiah as he stands in his place in history
casting a flood of light around him, backwards from him on
the past, and forwards on the seers who were to see still
more than he.
292 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
6. His limit of Divine presence and salvation.
1. First, this question was sure to spring: Why Zion
only ? Why should Jehovah s grace be limited to dwellers
there ? Were there not sanctuaries far older and still
beloved ? Abraham, Jacob, Moses. Joshua, Samuel, David,
Elijah yes, Hosea too had tasted that grace in sanctuaries
in Ephraim, Moab, and the southern desert. Local jealousy
would quickly resist the Isaian doctrine. And in all these
pleas, stronger or weaker, true sympathy could surely hear
the honest whisper of many a soul, " Must Jehovah be so far
away from me and my home ? " Joyful men as well as
troubled spirits everywhere must have God nearer to them.
Isaiah s teaching must have made the generation that
followed him full of such questioning. We shall see that a
reaction followed him at once in the long reign of Manasseh.
7. His hope for material prosperity.
2. Another question was sure to arise : Would Zion pre
vail ? We know that Providence did not exempt Zion from
invasion and terror ; for the Assyrian records of Assur-
haddon s and Assur-banipal s taxation of Judah, and Hero-
dotus s story of the Scythian ravages on the Euphrates, and
in Palestine and Egypt, confirm the information we get
from the books of Kings, Nahum, and Zephaniah, to say
nothing of the later trouble in the days of Josiah, Jeremiah,
and the enslavement under Babylon. Zion was not pro
videntially spared. But we have learned to believe that
such sparing is not the best thing for us, and not what we
may expect from Providence. Now, although this later
Christian doctrine of Providence must not be read into the
thoughts of any men in those days, yet the strength of a
Christian doctrine lies in its focussing and gathering into
clear vision the thoughts, the instincts, the questionings
CHAP, iv.] ISAIAH IN HEBREW RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 293
which have been seeking clear utterance always in all men.
So, although the Christian doctrine that Providence is sure
to give us suffering was not understood in those days, yet
doubtless many hesitated to accept Isaiah s faith in the
immunity of Zion and the certainty of all blessing for her
inhabitants. Again, some must have questioned the pro
bability of the fulfilment at any early time of the hopes of
change of the very nature of the world out of hurtfulness
into helpfulness. Doubtless some sadly feared the visionary
day would never be real. These would have in their souls a
prophecy as true as Isaiah s namely, a prophecy of suffer
ing. Isaiah s high hopes would be counted the natural ex
pression in his bright hours of great faith in God s love,
and that faith in itself was far more precious than the
passing expression of it. But as surely as the pendulum
swings and life throbs, so surely would other men speak
their expectation of suffering in Zion, and they would speak
it with equal trust in God. Isaiah s positive expectation
was sure to produce doubt. The hope and the doubt were
both part of the life he produced, and together they picture
the great soul in his place in history.
8. Of the expected prince.
3. One more question, sure to rise, we must name : Would
there come a true godlike prince ? The Isaian doctrine of
regeneration through the prince s absolute sway was certain
to awaken questioning. It directed attention to the char
acter of the prince, and brought him into comparison with
other men as never before. He ought to be best of all,
and the centre of all good men and work. Was he this ?
If he were not, were there other men who were the real
channel of the Divine spiritual re-creation ? Here were
several problems. One was the whole problem of govern
ment ; and we shall see how great were the changes in men s
294 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. iv.
conception of it that soon arose. Another was the greater
problem of Divine government and God s relation to the
individual character. Ere long this became a chief question
among thoughtful men.
Such was Isaiah, the noble heir of great heritages, the
truly great seer, thinker, speaker of Divine truth, miner into
unfathomed depths of life and of God, bequeathing to the
ages great oracles, and, an even better legacy, the thirst
for more. Child of his age he was, and its spokesman ; its
teacher too was he, and fashioner of all his race. Isaiah
was a very voice of Jehovah saying, " Let there be light, now
and henceforth."
PART IV.
RELIGION IN JUDAH FROM ISAIAH TO JOSIAH.
THE RELIGION OF MICAH AND RELATED
PROPHETS.
CHAPTEE I.
PRELIMINARY.
MICAH was a man of the people in the days when Isaiah was
a leader. This secondary man, this Epigon, as the Greeks
would call him, is almost as valuable to us as a leading
prophet would be, because his words show us whether the
faiths of men like Isaiah have or have not become common
to the people. The religion of Micah will show us how
much the people were changing in the half-century after the
days of Amos. For Micah lived in the later days of Isaiah,
as we know from two sources. The title of the little book
(chap. i. i) says he prophesied in the days of Jotham, Ahaz,
and Hezekiah, kings of Judah ; and the book of Jeremiah
(chap. xxvi. 17 ff.) tells a story of Micah and of what befell
him when he proclaimed the words of chap. iii. 12 of his
book. This happened, said the people of Jeremiah s time,
in the days of Hezekiah. The little book itself tells of
Micah s predicting the fall of Samaria ; therefore very likely
he spoke the words concerning Samaria before 720 B.C., that
is to say, in the earliest days of Hezekiah, who probably
began his rule in 725. The statement that he prophesied
295
296 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
also in Ahaz s days, and even under Jotham, may be quite
correct, but being evidently the note of the editor and there
fore of later times, it is of less moment. We shall presently
see further reason for counting some of the chapters quite
post-Isaian.
Let us begin our study of the book with a few preliminary
notes. An analysis of the contents will follow. Then we
may proceed to construct a picture of the religion set forth
in these oracles. And we shall conclude with a brief esti
mate of the point in history at which we have thus arrived,
and a note of its importance in view of the period that is to
follow.
i. A feiv preliminary notes on the book of Micah.
(1) It is a controverted book. The points under contro
versy will presently appear. On the ground of these our
rule to avoid controverted documents might exclude it alto
gether. But this is not necessary, for the controversies
refer only to portions of it, and the parts affected are not
removed far away from the times of Micah (circa 725-700)
by any save a very few students. It is very certainly from
beginning to end a product of the century between 740 and
640 B.C.
(2) One passage seems certainly not Micah s, namely, chap,
iv. 1-4, perhaps even all the verses iv. i-S. But these
words are older than Micah ; he doubtless quoted them.
For Isaiah quotes them too (Isa. ii. 2-4), less correctly
perhaps, repeating them it may be from memory ; but he
quotes them early in Ahaz s days, while Micah used them in
the time of Hezekiah. Such quotation is one proof that
Micah is a real man of the time. Isaiah quotes rather as a
brilliant master who repeats the well-known words from
memory, while Micah carefully copies out the words sacred
to his fellows and to him, words sure to evoke reverence
and response.
CHAP, i.] PRELIMINARY. 297
(3) The paragraph iv. 6-v. I has a touch of exilic scenery
about it. It talks of such chastisement as Ezekiel pictures
and Jeremiah foretells in his later years. It does seem for
a moment to be unlikely that Micah should talk of an exile
to Babylonia, since in his days that land was a mere province
of Assyria, sometimes revolting indeed, but always firmly
subjugated. And yet why should not Assyria like to people
her refractory provinces with slaves from afar ? What more
likely ; and what more natural in Micah s countrymen and
himself than fear of such enslavement ? The passage is
quite like Micah, but probably from his later years in the
reign of Manasseh.
(4) Following this paragraph in chap. v. 2-9 is a joyful
exhortation to courage even against Assyria. The previous
reference to Babylon has led some scholars to treat these
Assyrian references as interpolated. But they are thoroughly
and organically part of the whole paragraph. The courageous
words are quite in the brave tone of Isaiah or of a follower
of Isaiah. They might indeed fit the days of Sennacherib,
who was not a very successful invader of Canaan, but they
would scarcely suit the more terrible days of Sargon just
before Sennacherib, or of Assur-haddon just after him. Most
likely they belong to Manasseh s reign. The throne seems
to be in weak hands, and a royal heir is hoped for who shall
be a heroic deliverer. This w r ould certainly fit the times just
before Josiah s birth. Here comes to our help singularly
enough the story in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 1 1 of the exile of King
Manasseh, Josiah s grandfather, to Babylon by the Assyrian
king. Further light is given by Schrader, C. I. 0. T. ii. 53.
In 650 B.C. Assyria was in peril from an internal revolt.
Manasseh appears to have helped the revolters, and was
punished by exile to Babylon, but was soon liberated. A
prophet might well write first words of fear of exile, and then
words of exultation in faith that a coming unborn king of
Judali should free his people from all Assyrian troubling. So
298 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. i.
these paragraphs may be Micah s, as we have said, but more
likely they date from the middle of the seventh century.
(5) The sixth and seventh chapters are very surely from
the darker days of Manasseh, or from the time of Amou,
more gloomy still. No point in Hezekiah s reign agrees
fully with the sense of utter darkness which the prophet
speaks. He is in absolute darkness, and knows no source of
light save the Lord. Only from beyond man s ken can come
help. So we get one of the world s grandest utterances of
faith in the supernatural, the unknown, even God. We
hear a man of God speak who sees the Invisible.
(6) The later chapters, chaps, v., vi., vii., breathe through
out the spirit we shall find coming in with the Josian
reformation, and recorded clearly in the condemnations of
Jeremiah as well as in the ordinances of Deuteronomy.
The book of Micah is an excellent guide to the times when
the influence of the vivid preaching of Isaiah was changing
the whole people into the new form-loving people of the
days of Josiah and Jeremiah It is a book of the people,
and a monument of transition. It closes for us a whole
period.
CHAPTER II.
THE ANALYSIS OF MICAH.
AFTER the title, chap. i. ver. i, comes a first section occupy
ing the first chapter.
Section I. chap. i. verses 1-16. Picture of the coming of
the lordly Jehovah. And its features are these :
(1) Verses 2-4. Summons to all things and men to attend
Him. As He advances from His home and treads the earth,
planting His footsteps on the sacred hill-tops, the hill-sides
melt like wax beneath His brightness.
(2) Verse 5. A summary declaration that Samaria s very
existence is sin. Micah shares the opinion of all the prophets
that the separation was disastrous.
(3) Verses 6-9. Samaria s calamity to come as judgment.
She shall be utterly desolated.
(4) Verses 10-16. The effect of this on the whole
country. All the regions south of Samaria, and especially
west of Jerusalem, and round about Micah s home in the
" wine-press possession " (Moresheth-Gath), shall be in dis
may, as across them hurry the Samarians flying from their
ruined city and the terrible Assyrians who have ruined it.
The dramatic vividness almost equals that of Isaiah s famous
" march " scene in his eleventh chapter.
The second main section occupies the second chapter and
part of the third, thus :
Section II. chap ii. i-iii. 3. The sin Micah sees close
about him. This is chiefly his neighbours cruelty to the
poor fugitives as they pass ; also the resentment of these
299
300 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
cruel neighbours at Micah s reproof. It is understood more
clearly in its details, as follows :
(1) Chap. ii. verses I, 2. Woe to plotting, greedy, thiev
ing men.
(2) Verse 3. A summary of deserved calamity that is
sure to come.
(3) Verses 46. The people resent the prophet s inter
ference, and threaten him with expulsion. They would
silence his prophesying.
(4) Verse 7. His astonishment at such practical atheism.
(5) Verses S-IO. The cruelty practised on the fugitives :
stealing of lands, goods, even clothing, and ejectment from
any resting-place.
(6) Verse n. Superstitious choice to the prophetic office
of men who encourage drunkenness and even untruth.
(7) Verses 12, 13. Parenthetic cry of faith that the suf
ferers shall yet be restored to comfort.
(8) Chap. iii. verses 1-3. The deeper wrong. The leaders
hate good and love evil, destroying the very flesh and bones
of the people.
Such a policy among chiefs and employers rouses the
preacher to denunciation. So follows a threatening section.
Section III. chap. iii. 4-iv. 8. The consequence. What
the Controller of Providence will do.
(1) Verses 4-7. He will close the Divine visions, the
fountains of good guidance for life and joy of soul.
(2) Verses 8-1 1. Micah feels it might be retorted, " Then
how canst thou be inspired ? " and he pours out his faith
that the Jehovah spirit is with him. He gives evidence of
it, for Jehovah who leaves the evildoer must be with him
who condemns the wrongdoer.
(3) Verse 12. Therefore he sounds the alarm, "/ion, for
the sake of your evil rulers, shall be plowed as a field." This
was preached in Hezekiah s time (see Jer. xxvi. 18). We
should scarcely have expected this under a king supposed to
CHAP, ii.] THE ANALYSIS OF MICAH. 301
be one of the best, and known to be much under the influence
of Isaiah. But Isaiah s condemnation was launched against
the evils and evil men in the out-district near the coast, say
fifteen to twenty miles from Zion, and the governors there
might be vicious even in Hezekiah s reign. The country
prophet Micah could easily identify them with the Zion rule,
and would conceive their sin bad enough to involve Zion in
ruin.
(4) At once, however, he recalls and records again, as
Isaiah had done, the great hope all Judah had for Zion.
But Micah does this with real hope, which he expresses in
his own words in verses 6 and 7, while Isaiah had quoted
the words only to show the present hopelessness. (See Isa.
ii. 2-4 /.)
We reach now the first passage which may be of later
date than Micah. We say it may be. It dreads exile to
Babylon ; perhaps this was in Hezekiah s day, perhaps not
until Manasseh s.
Section IV. chaps, iv. g-v. g. Of the people s reception
of warnings of exile, their dread and the prophet s hope for
future restorations. He cries :
(1) Chap. iv. 9, 10. "Lay aside thy fears, Zion! even
from exile, from the Euphrates plains thou shalt return."
(2) Verses 11-13. "Those who now mock at thee shall
be greatly surprised ; their ill expectations shall be utterly
disappointed. Thou shalt become a conqueror, a hero for
Jehovah."
(3) Verses 14 v. 8. The picture of the times of Israel s
new exaltation.
(a) Chap. v. I. A summary of it. Israel s smiter smitten.
(5) Chap. v. 2-9. The new rule, (a) By a Bethlehemite
prince, or a Bethephrathite. (Is there a slip of the scribe
here, and is /nSS-TTia a mistake for that rnS^-JVa
in Micah s own district, chap. i. i o, which was troubled ?
This is less likely, of course, if the passage is not Micah s.)
302 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. n.
(/3) The prince is yet unborn. (7) He is to be divinely
strong. Here is an echo of Isaiah s forecast of an infant
prince (Isa. ix.). (8) He is to overcome Assyria. Of course,
then, the writer, Micah or the later prophet, was thinking
of an infant about to be born, and coming to accomplish
this invasion before Assyria s final fall, which took place
in 606 at the latest, (e) This elevation of Israel is to be a
great surprise, coming mysteriously, like the dew, all un-
watched, but wrought of God and inevitable. Here is a
fine picture of the supernatural which is natural, orderly,
yet Divine, and beyond men s expectation. () Israel shall
be entirely supreme.
But there is at once reaction in the preacher s soul. Such
promises awaken the remembrance of the ill-desert of these
very people. There must be discipline.
Section V. chap v. 9-14. The discipline that must come.
(1) All the glorious cavalry forces shall be cut off, to
humble the nation.
(2) So all the structures for defence.
(3) All sources of counsel except Jehovah must cease.
(4) All who are careless toward Jehovah s honour and
ways must feel the wrath of Jehovah and Jehovah s host.
We come thus to the two chapters (vi. vii.) which seem
to belong to a period later than the days of Micah, and are
certainly much later than Isaiah. In some respects their
character is loftier than that of the earlier chapters ; it is
more reflective, and even more profound. The conception
of high argument with Jehovah borders on the loftiest
sublimity. The confession of faith in chap, vii., and the
reflection on Jehovah s delight in grace, are two of the very
finest of Hebrew utterances. In these we seem to be nearing
the age that produced such minds as that of Jeremiah, the
early psychologist and theologian, and the deeply reflective
minds of the Exile.
Section VI. chap. vi. The conference and controversy
CHAP, ii.] THE ANALYSIS OF MICAH. 303
between Jehovah and mankind, especially Israel. It seems
singular that the name " Israel " should be used after the fall
of Samaria, but perhaps we give the name to-day to the
northern kingdom much more exclusively than it was ever
given by Hebrews themselves. All Hebrews were children
of Israel. Judah was the princely tribe of all Israel in
David s and Solomon s days. After the separation the
northern kingdom doubtless claimed to be Israel alone, being
the larger section ; but the southern kingdom was still Israel,
with Judah as its princely tribe. After Samaria s ruin the
southern people remained the only Israel.
(1) Chap. vi. I, 2. Summons to the mountains, which
were sanctuaries, abodes of Divine powers, to attend in audi
ence of this high conference.
(2) Verses 3-12. The dialogue.
(a) Verses 3-5. Jehovah speaks. He recounts His gifts
and wonders, all gracious ; He names Moses, Aaron, Miriam
as leaders of the Exodus. He contrasts Israel s gracelessness
with Jehovah s grace ; He wonders why they treat Him so.
(6) Verses 6, 7. Israel speaks. They are humble, and ask
how they shall set themselves right. By what worship ? By
sacred feasts ? By anointings with oil that shall make the face
shine ? By gift of children in some way to Jehovah. Such
were the ritual customs of the day, straage to us indeed ; but
only by knowledge of them can we understand those days
and their religion.
(r) Verses 8-12. The prophet speaks. He declares
Jehovah s answer, setting forth what God demands from all
mankind. God asks only "what is good," thus identifying
Himself, the Lord of Israel, the Cause of all things, with
conscience. " The good " is equivalent to (a) just deeds ;
(/3) a gracious heart ; (7) a humble soul. This is also sup
plemented by special mention of (8) wisdom in thought ;
(e) honesty in trade ; () kindness; (77) truthfulness. Thus
ends the dialogue, and here is uttered
304 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. u.
(3) Verses 13-16. Jehovah s judgment. He asserts His
control of all past events and calamities. He passes sentence
of famine to come ; He pronounces this to be the just retribu
tion for their Ahab-like disregard of their own God Jehovah.
They are to be a reproach in the eyes of the whole world.
Now the preacher breaks out into lamentation.
Section VII. chap. vii. The prophet s soliloquy, his pain,
and faith.
(1) Verses 1-6. His lament over the demoralisation about
him.
() Verses i, 2. He is utterly lonely. All the good are
gone.
(b~) Verses 26-4. All others kill, steal, and pervert.
(c) Verses 5, 6. Not even home confidences survive.
(2) Verses 7-10. Amid all this the prophet will trust to
Jehovah.
(a) Verses 7, 8. In darkness light can only come from
a source that is beyond man. And it will come ; Jehovah s
character is "Saviour." The soul shall live by the Invisible.
(6) Verse 9. The darkness about us is deserved, yet it
will be righteousness with Him to give us light.
(c) Verse 10. All who laugh at us shall be surprised.
(3) Verses 1 1-13. The day is sure to come for liberation
even from the fear of Assyria or of Egypt.
(4) Verses 14-17. The coming bliss shall be plenty for
all, wondrous ways of sending this to us, our establishment
in control of all men.
(5) Verses 18-20. Tribute of adoration
For Jehovah s forgiveness ;
For His gracious character ;
For His faithfulness to all men of faith.
CHAPTER III.
THE RELIGION OF MICAH AND HIS TIMES.
I . Its general characteristics.
(i) THE book and its writer, or writers, and readers utter
the voice and speak the thoughts of followers of Isaiah
of Jerusalem. They make those advances from the ways of
the master which are inevitable amongst all pupils, because
each pupil has his own individuality. Moreover, the in
dividuality of a soul has in it something creative ; each man
must add some utterly new living thing to the world. And
yet most pupils have a more limited grasp than the master
had ; they are likely to stand on a lower level.
() So the Zion faith of Micah is but a derivative com
pared with the great discovery of Isaiah. The faith is
received and held and upheld with no wrestling and convul
sion like Isaiah s. Zioii s exaltation is sure. There are diffi
culties before her, but they are now less real and deep, and
the preacher faces them less really. Like a child he sings
his exuberant assurance, "All is well with Zion." He is not
anxious, and need not be ; some one else takes the father s
care of the children and the home.
(I) So the old David-faith is gently implied rather than
distinctly prophesied. The name of the hero-king is not
mentioned ; only the old home of the dynasty is named, un
certainly indeed, in place of any particular king. Apparently
the living king was not a beloved personality ; possibly also
he was jealous, even cruel, and hence the cautious preacher
praised only an unborn child of the line. Herein he was
305
306 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. m.
following 1 in part a style Isaiah had often chosen, choosing
it however in strong faith with no fear of naming or facing
a worthless ruler.
(c) The highest faith Isaiah ever proclaimed is caught by
the follower, and made his own soul s best jewel, the centre
of his thought, the hearthlight where he sits calm and most
restful. Forgiveness he knows as no new discovery, but a
precious heritage. His sins can be blotted out, as Isaiah
declared ; all the sins of the Hebrews shall be blotted out,
and the remnant shall return. So the beautiful spirit of
this follower repeats simply the credo of his master. He
only adds, as a pupil would, his reflections on this great gift
of forgiveness, and his definition of it as he sits gazing upon
it in calm joy.
(d~) It is evident at once that the arguments of the book
are less steady and the course of thought less continuous ;
the sections are less easy to mark, and the whole style far
less masterly than that of Isaiah.
(e) No wonder, we think, after we have read, that people
preserved far more of Isaiah s oracles than of these. Even
if they be all of one hand, Micah s words cannot have held
men as the master s did. Their great value to us lies in
their evidence that Isaiah s words won the people to his faith,
and wrote upon many hearts a humble faith in Jehovah s
forgiveness.
(2) Yet Micah and his co-workers were men of strong
mind. They may not be great men, but they who follow
master souls are not weaklings
(a) In evidence we look on the very first passages of the
book, for there is that grand picture of the descent of the
God Jehovah upon the mountain-tops, that melt as hot wax
beneath His tread. Finely dramatic too is the story of the
fugitives hurrying in misery from the Assyrian invaders,
and pausing among brother Hebrews near Micah s home in
Gath only to be plundered and hounded further. These
CHAP, m.] RELIGION OF MICAH AND HIS TIMES. 307
literary gems may indeed have been inspired by the training
influence of the master who wrote Isaiah ii., x., and xxviii. ;
none the less had the pupil a powerful pencil. So might
we single out other scenes. It is enough to think again
of Jehovah s appeal to justice described in chap, vii., where
the gods sit as judges in their sacred seats on hoary
mountain-tops, and hear the alternate pleadings of Jehovah
and the Hebrews, until quickly the scene shifts as by a
lightning flash, and Jehovah is on the throne thundering
His dread sentence. On flows the same graphic power
through every paragraph. The literary student finds rich
treasure here.
(b) Brave too the prophet was, and that in moments of
real danger. No fancied sketch of an attack is that in
chapter ii. When he protected the fugitives the thieving
Gittites turned on him with gnashing wolves teeth. It is
far too realistic and too probable to be a fiction ; such
blows as he brings down in chap. iii. on princes, prophets,
traders must have been resented. We feel this before we
turn to Jeremiah s book and read how they seized this
Micah to destroy him in their rage. The story of his fear
lessness, his danger, and deliverance lived on for a hundred
years, a beacon-light to check the vicious and to cheer the
brave. Later on we shall see that this bravery sprang from
real spiritual insight and vision of the Invisible.
(c) So here we must record the intense vigour of con
viction that fills all the utterances of faith and opinion in
the book. We need not single out more than three. First
stands that assertion of authority, " But truly, as for me, I
am full of power by the Spirit of Jehovah, and of justice and
of strength, to set before Jacob his transgression, and before
Israel his failing." This man claims power to speak the very
mind of God. And for this claim he gives not, and feels no
need to give, external signs in evidence ; he simply feels his
sense of God s presence in him, and God s utterance in him
308 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
of that conscience which no man can silence, and which his
soul clearly hears and eagerly obeys. Here is conviction
of such strength that it holds a strong man.
The same intense vigour is in the conviction that all shall
be well with Zion. It is the faith of Isaiah grasped by his
follower. It does not suggest the keen scrutiny that marks
a master s decision and opinion, but has rather the exuber
ance of the pupil s profession of faith ; and yet the profession
is perfect in its vigour.
Finally, feel the thrill of strength in the faith of chap,
vii. 7-9 :
But as for me, it is on Jehovah I have all my outlook ;
Let me look towards my saving God.
My God will hear me.
Let not then mine enemy rejoice over me.
For have I fallen 1 I have risen.
Yea, am I to sit in darkness 1
Jehovah is light for me.
These terse words utter surely a strong faith ; scarcely
ever has more vigorous conviction uttered its few quiet but
sufficient words.
(d) Another mark of this writer s strength is his generous
depth of feeling. How bountiful his sympathy with those
fugitives, women, children, terror-stricken men. And it is
a fine patriotism that knows the old classic song of Zion,
and quotes it all in full with the correctness that marks
a simple but refined man s quotations. Take, however,
also as a higher illustration of his feeling, the outburst
of amazed hurt of soul, when some think to stop his
prophesying :
" Not another word of your prophecy,"
So do they prophesy.
Say they :
" None shall prophesy of these things,
That this prophet fellow may stop his calumny."
CHAP, in.] RELIGION OF MICAH AND HIS TIMES. 309
The prophet breaks out upon this
What a saying is this, house of Jacob !
Has Jehovah s spirit ceased 1
Surely not His deeds are these of yours !
Will not His words give always pleasure ?
How fine the sense of indignity done to the generosity of
Jehovah, His generosity in speaking with men, and in benefi
cent results of all that speech. So on the other hand we
have the writer s beauty of heart poured out in his positive
utterance of his sense of the graciousness of God (chap,
vii. 18-20) :
O where is a deity like Thee ?
(.) Bearer of the wayward ! O Forgetter of wrong !
He has not kept aflame the fire of His displeasure,
For One who delights in grace is He.
While many a Hebrew psalm preserved till now does not
find use in our devotions, these words of Micah abide among
the ritual of our tenderest hours. And there they will
abide.
(e) Another strong feature of the book is the move
ment evident in it towards meditation, and its deeper re
flection upon the facts of life, the possessions of the soul,
inherited or universal, and the right path for the future.
In the little tract are the beginnings of a philosophy of
religion. Of course the strongest of all men is the religious
leader, arid he is but the second who questions and crucially
tests the leader s steps. But he would be no leader whose
religious work could not stand the questioner s test. That
is not religious life which cannot bear philosophical scrutiny
and philosophical expression, for philosophy or pure think
ing is the clear eye of the soul where all things must be
visible if they exist. The eyes of men in Micah s day were
beginning to gaze calmly into the depths of life and of God,
and this growing hold on truth was growing strength.
310 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
Illustration of this reflection we have in the very first
verses, where the question stands, "What is Israel s sin?"
A fair question indeed, and not merely curious. Further on
a page or so begins that great question of all time since,
"And what then is inspiration?" This questioner was
certainly a father of theology, although Hosea in the more
cultured kingdom of the north had led the march a couple of
generations earlier. No wonder that Micah was soon followed
by that Nestor of religious thought, Jeremiah. Our book
moves on to even deeper question and profounder reflection
when in chap. vi. we read, " What does our Divine Lord
require of men ? What is duty ? " and the wonderfully
analytical answer comes which we must presently consider
closely. Then finally (chap. vii. 18) stands the sublime
question, "Who is a god like to this God? What are the
characters of the gods ? What is God ? " There is the
legend to be written across all philosophy of religion. And
the answer speaks out the substance of perfect religion
" He delighteth in grace."
2. The mind of these times concerning religious forms.
As we seek now closer knowledge of the religion of the
book, let us observe first that particular attitude which it
bears toward external observances. Here two features will
be observed.
( i) Thought concerning forms of worship is coming to bulk
more largely than hitherto. Amos had been satisfied with
brushing sanctuaries aside, as of no importance to the poor
seeker after life. Hosea had lamented the danger of losing
kings and sacrifices, sacred obelisks, robes, and teraphim,
but had scouted the reverence paid to deities that were not
gods. Isaiah had followed the way of Amos at first, and
then had learned to prize and to preach Zion and the David-
dynasty as the place and token of Jehovah s gracious, healing
CHAP, m.] RELIGION OF MICAH AND HIS TIMES. 311
revelation. Micah s words show, as we have said, that Isaiah s
influence has been moulding all minds.
(a) The growing importance of forms appears at once in
the answer given in the very first verses to the question,
" What is the sin of Jacob ? " Micah s answer, " Is it not
Samaria ? " points partly indeed to the great fault of the
division into two kingdoms ; but the very naming of the city,
the place, the external thing as "sin," and then the mention
also at once of sanctuaries, " What are the sanctuaries of
Judah ? " seem to intimate that it is altars outside of Jerusa
lem which Micah condemns. W r e may not lay much stress,
however, on this passage, for the text of the second query
seems uncertain. We are certain, however, that Micah
regards a town, Samaria, i.e., a form, as a sin.
(7>) Again, in the end of his quotation of the old prophecy
(iv. 1-5) he sets words which are evidently his own conclu
sion from the old oracle, and which give an insight into
Micah s own mind towards forms. He writes :
For all the nations march, each under the banner of his own
god;
We too, then, shall march under the banner of our Divine
Jehovah, even through the ages and evermore.
The writer is beginning to compare and contrast the
characters of the gods, and the different modes of worship
and degrees of trust due to each.
(c) More distinct still is the evidence of the lament in chap.
v. 10-15 over the apprehended loss of symbols of worship.
The words are indeed surprising to -us in our day :
] will cut off thy horses from thy midst, and destroy thy
chariots ;
1 will cut off thy land s watch-cities, and all thy sacred obelisks;
Yea, divinations from thy hands :
And there shall be no oracle places for thee.
Yea, I will cut off thy carvings and obelisks from thy midst,
312 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
And tliou shalt bow no more before thy handiwork.
Yea, I will uproot thy sacred trees from thy midst,
And destroy thy watch- cities.
The loss of obelisks and sacred trees is classed with loss of
watch-cities ; as the latter were precious, so must have been
the former in that day. The prophet has them all in that
equal estimate which is essential to fairness of outlook for
the future. He can fairly judge them; and he does judge
them. All are to go. He laments it ; but he believes good
is to come of it. He is thinking deeply of the value of forms,
and the generation must have been thinking much of them
also.
(d) We reach now the plainest expression of this mind of
the age. The prophet asks for the people, chap. vi. 6 ff. :
In what form am I to make my approach unto Jehovah ?
To bend me, shrinking, to the God whose home is so exalted 1
Am I to approach amid ascending smoke, amid tribute of many
yearling calves ?
Is Jehovah to delight in thousand rams, in myriad oil-streams ?
Isaiah did not write such questionings ; his soul was filled
with the overwhelming fact of Jehovah s revelation of Him
self all round the prophets in the beloved city. He found no
place for questions of man s fit ritual. But he ensured the
speedy rising of such questions so soon as the reaction of
calmness should return, and when men with troubled hearts
even in Zion should cry unsatisfied still, " But what must
\ve do to be saved ? " Isaiah s work ensured this. When
a mail of great insight utters a high faith, many cling to
him and rest because they have hold on what is secure.
But when he passes out of sight the timid souls try to
stand, for safety, in the spot where the leader would have
stood, and in their anxiety they cry, "What is the exact
spot where he would stand were he here ? " This is the
cry for ritual. And when the leader has had his faith
CHAP, in.] RELIGION OF MICAH AND HIS TIMES. 313
all bound up with one loved form, as Isaiah had his, then in
later days the deep insight, the vision of the Invisible which
the leader had, having faded, the followers see the form
chiefly, and try hard to define it exactly, that by such exact
ness they may ensure their Tightness and their safety. Forms
there must be if there is to be life, for life lives in forms.
Every living thing can live only when in its own form, and
to put on the form of something else is to die. Isaiah s life
was strong and had its own form, therefore it brought forth
new life ; and that new life in Micah and his times revealed
itself by its construction of forms for itself. The difference
between these times and the times of the great master was
that the earlier day was less self-conscious, the later day had
more consciousness of its own special peculiarity.
(e) The most startling fact for us in this questioning is
the willingness of the good men of the time to consider the
question, "Should they sacrifice their children as sin-offer
ings ? " We do not ask such questions to-day ; it is im
possible to ask them. We can scarcely understand how
they did so then ; we are inclined to think the record has
been misunderstood, and that surely good men never thought
of such a thing. But there the words stand ; they did ask
the question. Of course the story of Jephthah s sacrifice
about the year iioo B.C. seems natural as we read this
question of Micah, written 700650 B.C.; and that story
of Jephthah does not stand quite alone. The conclusion is,
that in Micah s day a better thoughtfulness awoke, faced the
unhappy popular superstition, and calmly reasoned it away
out of respectability. We can trace the outcome of this
reasoning. Less than a century later, in 592 B.C., Ezekiel
discusses human sacrifice as a form of Jehovah-worship
(Ezek. xx. 2 5 /.). He speaks of it as a thing of the past, yet
not very far away ; he counts it a very bad thing certainly,
and yet a practice actually appointed by Jehovah. The
314 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
appointment was, of course, for the hardness of their hearts,
as Jesus said the divorce law was.
Such then is the story of Micah s attainment to know
ledge of duty in respect of forms ; that is to say, this is
the record of the operation of that great Spirit who caused
Micah to know these things. In other words still, which
are more popular, this is a record of supernatural inspira
tion of this prophet touching the way of communion with
God. If we should say that it was mere human discovery,
and not the supernatural work of God, then we should be
atheistic. If we should say that God s supernatural in
spiration comes only along lines where the mind is not
conscious of working out the results, and the mind cannot
work out the ways of the Supernatural, then we should be
agnostic. If we should go on to say, that when God acts
in His distinctively Divine, supernatural way, He does not
act through the spirit of man, then we should be materialistic,
denying that God is a spirit. From such mistakes we shall
be delivered only if we read earnestly the facts that God has
set about us in the story of life.
(2) The growing interest in forms which is evident in
Micah s exaltation of Zion resulted in a succession of
phases in the Zion faith. After Isaiah s eloquence had
passed into silence, leaving only the written record of it,
a reaction was sure to follow. Later on the counter-
reaction was as sure to come. So in Micah we read the
careful quotation in chap. v. of the old prophecy which
Isaiah too had quoted, but quoted in bitter sorrow only to
lay it aside as virtually void for the sin of the nation. He
spoke it in quick haste, almost dislike, heeding not if he
was sometimes inexact; but by-and-by he found new faith
in Zion, and he declared it. That declaration moved all
men till Micah lifted up again the old, almost dishonoured
prophecy, and quoted it now with utmost care of words
CHAP, in.] RELIGION OF MICAH AND HIS TIMES. 315
and with happy fulness of contents. So Micah s use of it
illustrates the early influence of Isaiah.
But we read of reaction in the days of King Manasseh,
Hezekiah s son. Quite sufficient is the record in 2 Kings
xxi. 3, " He built again the high places which Hezekiah
his father had destroyed."
Again, part of Micah, chaps, iv., v., vi., vii., were very
probably written in Manasseh s later days, or in the days of
Amon, about the middle of the century. The reaction is
passing away; Zion is becoming the best loved sanctuary. So
breaks out the paean-song of the fourth chapter. Zion shall
be more than conqueror. By the time chaps, vi. and vii.
were penned hope was calmer, less material, but not less
firm. The prophet speaks in the name of the hard-pressed
city. She sees only danger, hurt on every side ; nay, she
sees naught, she sits in darkness. Outward eyes see no
help for her, yet faith says " She shall be helped." And
so the prophet mounts to the higher flight ; she shall be
helped of Him whom we see not, in ways we know not.
" When I, Zion, sit in darkness, then the Lord of hosts,
the Invisible, Almighty Jehovah, shall be a light unto me."
So the days were drawing near when the great Deutero-
nomic law of one sanctuary should be applied to the exclu
sive exaltation of Zion. Soon Zion was to be established
by national law as the one only place for worship of Jehovah
and enjoyment of His grace and forgiveness.
3. Their estimate of the soul.
Let us pass from these records of care for forms to watch
the records of his estimate of souls, especially of his own,
and of the character of men about him.
(i) And first we ask, What was his idea of the prophet s
nature and prerogative ? What were Micah s credentials ?
310 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
We saw Isaiah conscious of the worth of his life-work ; but
even he did not discuss its nature as Micah does. In our
later prophet is manifest the growing reflective character of
the advancing age.
(a) Regard Micah s picture of the power of the prophet
as we read it in chap. iii. You get a conception of it from
the story of its effect. Men s actions are moved by it ; it
holds them, and they never say it is naught. It holds with
iron bands, which do not break. Men know the prophetic
power helps them, they feel that it sways the currents of
life or of death without them and within. So they seek for
prophets, and they tremble with satisfaction or with fear
when they find them.
(1) The prophetic possession, Micah thinks, is similar to
the possession of a man by alcohol. It sways him bodily,
it carries him on paths peculiar to itself. His utterance is
all exalted in tone, in force, in pathos, until the hearers also
are excited and swayed in their words and deeds. The two
possessions are similar, but just therefore not the same. A
man may, and men do take the one for the other, but then
they make a sad mistake.
(c) Therefore Micah sets up an unfailing test for dis
criminating the two. The inspiration of the prophet always
blesses the needy. It always condemns him who does
a hurt to another life for his own sake. It discovers
most swiftly those in high places who hurt others, and
launches sentence straight at them. Let us put this defini
tion and test into the exact language of to-day. The pro
phetic afflatus, says Micah, is to be known by its ministra
tion to life. If a man s exalted utterance agrees with and
helps what is good, then it is true prophetic inspiration.
Such must be the evidence of prophecy, says this old Hebrew
record.
(d) Micah tells us exactly what he means by the sense
CHAP, m.] RELIGION OF MICAH AND HIS TIMES. 317
of control which such prophets produce. Such an effect,
he says, marks the presence of God. " I am full of such
power, therefore truly it must be the Spirit of Jehovah that
works in me." He argues from Divine results to the Divine
pi esence. This is of God, because it does God s work.
(c) And this conclusion is by no means a scholastic
speculation, interesting enough, but without practical signi
ficance. On the contrary, Micah s conviction of the presence
of God with him turns at once into an assertion of his own
right to speak out all his mind, and his rejection of any
popular or governmental limitation of this right. Of course
we are ready to say here is the inlet for all self-assertion,
for mad indvidualism, and for strife to very bitterness.
But we must not forget that Micah established the test that
was to check this very selfishness. His aim was indeed
high and godlike.
It is interesting to note here that the Hebrew mind
was characteristically egoistic and self-sufficing. They did
indeed for long ages count the nation or clan as the direct
personage with which Jehovah had to do, and only in later
days did they learn that God has to do with individual
souls rather than with organic masses. Only slowly did
they become individualistic ; but always, both early and
late, were they characteristically self-sufficient. The Greek,
and we Westerns all, can inhabit the wide world, and make
it all fit to be our home by taking on and into our very
frame and features something of the nature of our abode.
But the Hebrew wanders and sojourns, yet remains unlike
his new countrymen, only like to the old, old fathers
in the far Eastern home. He asserts for ever the change
less value of his own old distinctive self. And the Hebrew
was very religious, and less philosophical ; or rather was
he very conscious of God, and less interested in men.
He needed companionship with the Supreme, as .all men
318 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
do, but lie could not think of the Supreme as visible
with a frame like his own, yet so divinely valuable as to
make his own frame all unworthy in comparison. The
Greek could see God visibly ; the Hebrew could only com
mune with God in soul. He could listen to the rise of
thought and word in the soul, where only thought and
word can rise ; then he would arise to utter the new revela
tion in the profound faith which he expressed by the great
prophetic formula, " Thus hath God said." Here then was
danger close beside highest blessedness, danger of pro
ceeding even to terrible cruelty in the name of the great
Divine Friend. Islam fell into the danger, and has become
almost the very incarnation of cruelty. On the other hand,
the godly prophet before us, like so many others, spoke out
without wavering and without minimising his grand faith
in Jehovah s personal companionship and communication ;
but he exalted that faith to the even loftier height by
submitting what he believed God had given him to the test
of a law which he knew to be Divine the law of good.
(2) But what is good? What did these writers include
in good character ? Their reflective habit does not disap
point us here ; they lay hold of this question carefully, and
their definition has become famous. It forms the second
plea of Jehovah in the finely dramatic trial-scene of chap,
v., where Jehovah and the Hebrews are plaintiffs and de
fendants before the high court of heaven, the seats of the
invisible judges being the mountain-top sanctuaries of the
gods. When the defendants have asked, What then is
duty ? " the answer comes
He hath set before thee, O mankind, what is pleasant,
And what Jehovah seeks from thee.
Would you know it ? It is
"To do justice,
To love grace ever,
To walk to bow humbly in thy walk, with thy God."
CHAP, in.] RELIGION OF MICAH AND HIS TIMES. 319
Here is an analytic definition, whose points show us well
how the thoughtful minds of those days worked. Observe
these points.
(a) The generic words and expressions translated by our
words " good " and the like are important. Our ordinary
versions say, " He hath showed thee, O man, what is good.
This is correct, but the word here used is " good " in the
sense of " pleasant," the Latin amcenus rather than bo?ius.
Those people were eudaemonists. They could indeed think
of the "good" in the sense of the "straight" and the
" firm," but very generally they thought of what was truly
" pleasing " as what was good. They were not so austere
as we sometimes fancv them, in our fondness for finding
tt
contrasts between them and the Greeks. Are we not
tempted to look down on them sometimes as we read their
pictures of the ideal age to come, and find it full of vines
and fig-trees shade, cornfields and comely herds ? All the
more valuable is this definition in Micah that tells us what
the reflective thinker counted really " pleasant."
But before we pass to these specific details we must
observe that the generic idea "good" is with these men more
than the " pleasant ; " it is also, " What the Controller re-
quireth." Their ethics were not simple assthetics ; they
felt also a control over the soul. They had a sense of obli
gation. They were aware of a voice within them that meant
a Person over against and without their own persons ; and
that voice held them inevitably. What this voice required,
and that which was pleasant or good, were one and the same.
Now let us see what this requirement was.
(6) The first command is " Do justice " {B3#O /THWf).
God requires thee to do justice, and this is the pleasing,
good thing. The terms used signify civil justice. It is
godly and good to execute the decisions of the courts and
of wise, trained, skilled men, who are set to declare equity.
320 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
Here is indeed a very high estimate of the ability of true
men on the judgment seat to see the true good. It is high
faith in God to believe that He makes men of true -( char
acter sure to speak justice. These men believed that true
manliness is the true godliness. Christian faith is that
The Son of Man is the Son of God : their faith was not
far behind. To their mind the path of duty was as plain as
the decision of the judges who sat by the city gate.
(c) But this was not enough for them, for many of the
affairs and relations of life would never come before the
judges in those days as they do not now. Therefore there
is the second requirement, commonly read, " Love mercy."
The terms ~N?n J"nntf express more than that. The verb
is a frequentative, and so commands a frequent love, an
ever-repeated habit, a constant character of love. And the
word "f?0 is not that mere mercy which the elder theo
logians defined as " favour to the undeserving," but that
grace which those theologians called " favour to the ill-
deserving." We have already referred to Prof. W. Robert
son Smith s "Prophets of Israel," pp. 160 /. and 406 /.,
where he says of Hosea s use of chcscdh that it is not mercy,
but the Latin pietas, or dutiful love, as it shows itself in
acts of kindness and loyal affection. It is that affection
which Jehovah had towards the Hebrews, which they ought
to have toward Him and likewise toward one another. It
is the character that delights in unconditioned blessing
given to all. It is the ideal higher than is conceived by
laws of meum and tuum. It gives to gladden, saying, It
is life to me to give life to thee, so I clasp thee to my
heart, O fellow heart. Jesus summed its law and life, its
beauty and bliss, in the beatitude, " Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy." The prophet had commanded
in God s name, " Do justice ; " he adds another command,
" Be ever gracious."
CHAP, in.] RELIGION OF MICAH AND HIS TIMES. 321
(d) He adds one command more. For men bidden to
be like God may easily put on pride. Therefore he says,
" Walk Immblv with thy God." The words he uses, TOn
/ / - .. j -
T^ *f" QJ? J" 1 -?!?, are not so common as the former words of
command, but they are not obscure. The omission of
Jehovah s name is notable. The duty, he says, is a simple
duty towards God, whatever we may hold concerning His
nature. And he directs that men walk with their God.
High fancy this, fancy that was fact to him who could con
ceive it. The thought arose evidently from the suggestion
of the former command. It is the next word that is un
common. It bids men bow as they walk with God, but the
bowing is not in modesty alone, but in the diligence of the
workman who bows earnestly to his task. Finally, the very
form of the word means that a man await no impulse from
without, but himself render the worthy submission of his
soul. Here then was a demand for reverent regard for
that ever-present, unseen power that controls. Men are bid
to watch for every whisper of the voice beside them, bowing
in solemn gladness to obey. First stood the command to
be a true member in the ordered fellowship of men ; next
followed the law of godlike regard for all needs, although
society know them not ; and highest of all is this law, Live
in fellowship with God as His devoted child.
(3) These may be called the positive laws of Micah ;
they speak in the form " Thou shalt." But he has in mind
deeds of which he says " Thou shalt not." We could not
be sure we knew all the prophet s mind regarding duty if
we had only his analytical meditation ; that needs to be
supplemented by the outbursts of indignation forced from
him by wrongs he saw done. Such quick recoil of his soul
tells best what his moral nature was. We recall, then
(a) His condemnation of the unkindness of men in his
own district about Moresheth to the fugitives from the
X
322 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
calamity in the north. As they came, suffering and feeble
and all heart-broken, fleeing to the south, Micah s country
men robbed them, and then ordered them to move on out
of the district with their weariness and wounds.
(b) He denounces slave-trade, where a brother sells his
brother. We denounce it too, of course, but it is easy for
us to make too little of Micah s condemnation. For we are
habitually heedless of the history and the actual condition
of those times, and we refuse to believe that some wrongs
were common then. But Hebrews between Isaiah s day
and Jeremiah s did entrap and sell their own brothers and
sisters into slavery. Micah detested this conduct. He saw
the duty to regard a brother s or a sister s freedom as equally
sacred with one s own.
(c) Micah counted it disastrous and wicked to keep men
from possession of land. Personal freedom was not enough ;
possession of land was necessary to life. There is an expres
sion in chap, ii., I ff. : which shows this, and which has also
much importance for other reasons. He says
Ho ! vain plotters, who plot evil on their beds,
When morning dawns they ll off to carry it out,
Because it is within their hands reach.
So they covet fields and seize them.
These words, " within their hands reach " (3"P
\ TT
might as well be paraphrased thus, " They take the lands
because it belongs to their divine hand," or, " It belongs to
their hand as to a deity." ] Therefore Micah means that
the land monopoliser has indeed the power as a god has
power, and none can stay his hand. The law may seem
1 El ( N), the general expression for "deity," means "outreaching one,"
"He whose touch reaches to us." The conception is like that of the Greeks
when they called Apollo or the sun, the Far-shooting One (cf. "HXtor, and
Homer s adjectives with Apollo). See Prof, de Lagarde, " Orientalia II.,"
Gottingen, 1880, pp. 3 /., especially p. 9.
CHAP. IIL] RELIGION OF MICAH AND HIS TIMES. 323
to be on his side ; wealth and power may make the man
irresistible. Yet lie is wrong to take the land, as he
would be wrong to take a life were it in his power.
Men must not use such power as the gods may use.
The verse rings with the cry, fierce and firm, which is the
very mind of God, " Legal right may be immoral."
Of course, so long as the people were tribal, their land
belonged to the whole people, and to alienate a man from
the land was to alienate him from the people. That meant
something else, an awful alienation further ; it meant cast
ing a man out from the nation s God. Woe to the man
who destroyed such ties then ! Aye, woe falls where they
are cut at any time.
(d) Micah condemns the prince s use of his power, or the
teacher s or trader s use of any power and prerogative he
possesses for any end other than their true use. With
this we may link his condemnation of false excitement to
action, as such could be worked by alcohol. And we link
here also his stern condemnation of the restraint of any
Irue excitement of the soul to speak. The test of truth
was to be rigidly applied ; we have seen that the test of
such true inspiration was, " Does the word minister to life ? "
When that was the result, then the word was to be counted
the word of the Spirit of Jehovah. And woe be to him
who restrained God ! Such then were the ethics, general
and specific, positive and negative, of the book of Micah.
4. His fundamental faith.
What now were the foundations upon which the whole
edifice of his religious life rested ? Let us ask what were
his clear opinions of the sources of his spiritual being.
(i) He had definite conceptions of God. The concep
tion was a growing vision no doubt, but we can watch its
324 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
definite lines of growth. What were then Micah s ideas
of God s nature and His character ?
(a) Jehovah was to him a God among many gods, and
was not yet the absolutely lone Deity. He hopes for the
fulfilment by-and-by of the old prophecy that the throne
where Jehovah has the right to sit shall be chief and highest
among all the Divine thrones (chap. iv. I jf.). It is true
that this is only a quotation of an earlier faith, and we may
not impute to Micah all the opinions of an earlier writer
simply because he quotes a passage from that writer.
Moreover, Micah never uses in any other passage the Divine
title, " Lord of hosts," which is used in this quoted passage,
and which Amos and Isaiah had used so often. Probably,
however, this shows that by Micah s time the common
people of Judah were beginning to believe less in the
divine power of other gods. But they were only beginning.
The magnificent trial scene of chap. vi. implies a belief in
the existence and dignity of other gods when it summons
the mountains which were the seats of the gods to judge
in Jehovah s controversy with His people. And finally,
the high question of chap. vii. 1 8, "Who is a God like
unto Thee ? " speaks to those who may remember tho other
gods and their character. But the question also exalts
Jehovah so utterly far away above all others that we say
the dark days of divided fears are passing away, and the
wonderful hand of God is lifting men up to a new age of
peace by giving them the thought that there is but one
great Spirit around them with whom they have to do.
Here we can see the process of disclosure of God to men in
the ages. This is the act of Divine revelation.
(&) Again, the same utterances show us that Micah
thinks of the Divine processes and aims as sensuous rather
than spiritual. Of course, it may be said, we can hardly
think such a distinction now. Whatever seems to be a
CHAP, in.] RELIGION OF MICAH AND HIS TIMES. 325
material process is in reality worked by a spiritual cause.
But Micah did think of Jehovah as finding His supreme
satisfaction in material events, and as giving to His friends
or enemies material rewards and punishments. Thus His
own exaltation is to consist in the exaltation of His throne
above those of all other gods. So His people are to be
comforted by the fruit and the shade of the vine and fig,
and by their political emancipation from Assyria. On the
other hand, the death the evildoer deserves and brings is to
have his loved Zion ploughed like a field, his arsenals plun
dered, and his sanctuaries ruined. And yet this is not all.
Micah yearns to work good character in men, although he
does not rise to see or say that such character is the whole
of real life. Although he laments outward suffering as the
very stroke of God s anger, yet there is in chap. vii. the
most keen lament for the lack of good men as the lack of
all that is good.
(c) That the prophet is certainly rising to more spiritual
apprehension is most evident from his conception of his
own inspiration. Micah is convinced of Jehovah s spiritual
presence with him, and perfectly happy in the faith that
his own opinions are the very mind of God, and have
arisen in his soul by God s spiritual operation in him. He
founds his spiritual life on direct oneness of his spirit and
power and activity with the Spirit of God. His power to
speak, to think aloud, to win or to condemn by eloquent
speech, his whole personal beneficent activity, is one with
the Spirit Jehovah. Alas that a degenerate later Judaism
should have ever become our teacher in euch fields rather
than this Micah.
(d) Micah believed also in the grace of Jehovah that
brings forgiveness. Was it any wonder he had so high a
conception of Jehovah s gift of His own thought to the pro
phet ? He had learned from Isaiah the faith that their God
326 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
was utterly devoted to this Hebrew people, giving forgiveness
to all men in Zion. Micah does not advance beyond the
limitation Isaiah conceived and set. Jehovah would pardon
His heritage ; for sinners in Zion only there was forgiveness.
But limited though the election was, the gift was gracious.
It filled the prophet s heart, thought, lips, with a very heaven-
like grace, and his words have become the litany of all sin-
sick and helpless, or trusting, glad souls
Who is a God like unto Thee !
That pardoneth iniquity !
(e) The highest point reached by the faith recorded in
his little book is marked in the words (chap. vii. 7, 8)
"As for me, I will look unto Jehovah ;
I will wait for my saving God.
My God will hear me.
llejoice not against me, O mine enemy.
When I fall I shall arise :
When I sit in darkness, Jehovah shall be a light unto me."
The man who trusts in God expects not what he knows,
and can declare, or has imaged within his soul he expects
what God only has as yet conceived. It shall come. That
is his faith. What it shall be God only can describe. This
height of faith is simply true faith. It has been always in
all trusting children of God. Hosea spoke it distinctly
(chap. xi. 9), " I will not destroy," as ye expect. " I am
God and not man." It was the oracle written over the
Cross on Calvary nay, upon the sacred brow so wounded
there. It was written there, although it awaited Paul s
expression long afterwards in the great formulas of our
faith
"Now is Christ risen from the dead."
and
" Eye hath not seen what God hath prepared for them that
love Him."
CHAP. HI.] RELIGION OF MIUAH AND HIS TIMES. 327
It is the Divine faith of Man through the ages. Here is
the essence of our belief in the supernatural. God knows
all His thoughts toward us, but ere they are fully revealed
to us they seem beyond our possible belief. When once
they have clearly come then we understand them and know
their exact fitness. For God reveals Himself to men in
men s ways ; and no man s soul may say, I cannot have this
possession. The light of God that was hidden from eternity
is made flesh, and dwells among us full of grace and truth ;
and although it seemed beyond us, it proves to be all ours,
perfectly revealed to us. This is God s way, and such is
God s word. Micah and his brethren saw God thus by
faith, and said
When I fall, I shall arise ;
When I sit in darkness, the Lord,
The Lord shall be light unto me.
Truly this man saw God. Such was his vision.
(2) And these faiths came to the prophet in human
ways. If they had not, then they would indeed have con
tradicted their own meaning. But the evidence is plentiful.
The prophet was a child of his race. Perhaps his father
and mother had Philistine blood in them, for they lived in
an old Philistine town and district ; yet, if they had, the fact
would only set in stronger relief Micah s own nature as that
of an inheritor of the traditions of the Hebrews. What
love he had for Zion, and for Samaria too ! What love for
the words of the past prophets, and what draughts of their
faith he drank ! The later chapters of this book are almost
the first of the prophets words that tell us about Abraham.
Isaiah had indeed said in one of his finest passages these
words, "Jehovah redeemed Abraham" (Isa. xxix. 22); but
here in Micah, chap. vii. 20, the forgiving grace of God is
called the grace bound up with Abraham, which by all His
S28 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
revelations to the fathers from the days of old, Jehovah
pledged Himself to give to His people. The story of trials
and mercies in those past days is known, and called to the
people s mind in chap. vi. 4 /., as they sit in the high court
of judgment opposite the Divine plaintiff. He declares lie
brought them from Egypt under three leaders, Moses, Aaron,
and Miriam. He reminds them that a Moabite prince,
Balak, had taken counsel with Balaam concerning them,
but that Jehovah s unchanging love had wrought safety for
them in spite of that conspiracy, and had saved them again
in times of need that arose at Shittim and at Gil gal.
Micah s o\vn knowledge of God had been taught him by
the story of life past and present, his people s and his own.
He had seen God s providence, and so he had learned to
love Jehovah. Even so would he kindle love for God in
his fellows. To him the Divine faiths come by human rela
tions. Micah s theory of life is somewhat parallel to the
philosophic faith, "I think, therefore I am." Micah would
have said, " I love, therefore I live."
S 5. His relation to the Pentateuch.
It would be of course of much interest to discuss what
were Micah s sources of knowledge of the past, with its
patriarchs, its Exodus, and its Davidic age. This is not the
place for minute examination of the matter. Be it only
noted first that the sources of Micah s knowledge must have
been the same as the sources of the Pentateuch records, for
both come from the same people. And secondly, had the
Pentateuch itself been in Micah s hands, he and other
prophets would certainly have made far more use of it as
a storehouse of religious argument than they did. And
finally, if it had existed, and possessed anything like the
religious authority which the post-Christian Jews gave
CHAP, in.] RELIGION OF MICAH AND HIS TIMES. 329
it, the prophets, including Micah, would surely have
invoked directly its powerful aid. Their failure to do this
is evident. If these prophets whom we have studied, in
their often hard task of persuasion, could have called in the
words and authority and help of " the Look of Moses," why
did they not do it ? Since they do not, is it not certain
that that Book must be subsequent to such prophets ? On
the other hand, we shall have to ask latter on, when we
analyse the Pentateuch, whether it is not clear that since
the Book of Moses says so many prophetic things, and sets
forth so many prophetic ideas, it must be a product and
reflection of the prophetic age, written by later prophets,
pupils of the earlier prophets schools and spirit.
CHAPTER IV.
CONCLUSION.
THESE final words may be few. For it is not necessary to
construct here our estimate of ]\Jicah s place in the history.
We have been estimating that place all through our study
of the book bearing his name. This was imperative because
of the uncertainty whether the treatise were not a collection
of oracles from successive men rather than the utterance of
one man. It was best to look on it as a moving series of
visions of what God was and what men could comprehend
of Him. In these visions one earthly voice followed another,
while the great Giver of all the visions unfolded the con
tinuous revelation, giving to each speaker his power, his
insight, his faith, and his utterance. Our study of Micah
has thus been a study of a movement rather than of a man.
We have watched a procession of inspired men to trace in
all the presence and speech of the great Inspirer.
The story of external events in those years between Isaiah
and Josiah is comparatively of little account, viewed in the
light of the spiritual movement, quiet but momentous as it
was, through all that time. We saw the chronological
outline above in our study of Isaiah ; and occasional notes
as we have proceeded have supplemented this. The sum
in brief is that the Hebrews became more than ever the
vassals of the now brilliant and most powerful Assyrian
emperors. The prince Manasseh resisted, but in vain ;
and he was punished by imprisonment in Assyria for a time.
330
CHAP, iv.] CONCLUSION. 331
Zion proved not to be endowed with that immunity from
harm which Isaiah had proclaimed. While his noble faith
grasped and declared the great fact of God s love for men,
he was not gifted with exact foresight of external events.
It is not surprising that students of political events count
the history of Israel a little thing and barren and un
interesting.
But the religious story of that half century, 700 to 650
B.C., is like the story of a silent night, wherein earth s forces
work their secret creations. All living things that had
lain down weary, or folded their leaves before the darkness,
seem in the light of morn to have been all night long in
close and ceaseless contact with vital currents. Sleep,
quiet, rest, have made all things ready for the new day
with its new joys, and tasks, and conflicts. So it was in
Manasseh s times. Beyond the records that we have read
in the book of Micah we know almost nothing of the period,
save that Manasseh led a reaction against the Zion-doctrine
of Isaiah. The king cared for the older sanctuaries. His
action was, perhaps, that hesitation to advance which
ensures wisest advance after all. His was a quietly thought
ful time ; the prince was perhaps a truer servant of Jehovah
than has been supposed. The length of his reign, and the
fact of his restoration by Assyria from prison to govern
ment help us to believe that he and his people did not a
little valuable work. Thev fill the closing ranks in the line
/ O
of march which we have watched for a hundred and fifty
years from the time of Amos and Hosea, through the
brilliant age of Isaiah, and the period of quiet beauty and
reflection mirrored in the book of Micah.
And now we have reached the eve of events of great
moment. As we enter a second period we shall have to
chronicle a political and external story more momentous
than any that has been recorded above. These outer ex-
332 OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. [CHAP. in.
periences, again, will be found to be the occasion of notable
spiritual advance, enlargement of interest, deepening of
character, great sharpening of insight into the realities of
God and of life. Thus it will be found that we are now
about to enter on days of rich self-revelation of God in men
and to mankind.
The experiences which we have already traced will bo
found to have grown more powerful in moulding the people
as the generations travelled onward. The knowledge of
God and of good, of man s nature and duty and happiness
which the Hebrews received ever more and more through
the ages which we have studied, was a thing of great beauty
in itself. It was a gracious gift to the men who received
it step by step along their own career. Bnt God blest more
than these men in illuminating them, and He blest more
than the generations wherein they lived. He was all along
making ready a people who should give birth by His creative
power to souls able to face times and needs such as their
fathers had never known. The political developments of
national life just ahead of the point we have reached were
about to demand deeper thought and greater power than
those of Isaiah even. And the way has been prepared for
these. As the hour arrives, and the need unfolds, we shall
find the " vision " and the men ready, the minds and the
truths there together. For not only is it true that the
vision grows fuller with the growing years, but it is the
fact here as elsewhere that "God fulfils Himself" through
many minds " in many ways."
I N D E X.
(A.) NAMES AND SUBJECTS.
AARON, 328.
Abraham, 327.
Abyssinia, 224.
Accad, 184.
Advance in Amos, 70, 76.
Hosea s, 144 jf.
- Isaiah s, i68/., 261 /., 286 /.
in Micah, 309 /., 323 /., 330.
^Esthetic marks, 164.
idea of Jehovah, Isaiah s, 269.
Africa, 209, 211, 224.
Age of rapid growth of conscience,
145.
Agriculture, 205, 218.
Ahab, 185.
Ahaz, 51, 166, 169, 193, 196, 199 /.,
225.
death of, 194, 238.
dirge over, 202.
Aim of prophets, 54.
Alexander, 21.
Alliteration, 202.
Altar, 167, 271.
Alva, 212.
Amaziah, 39, 487., 68 /.
Ammon, 187.
Arnon, 189, 298.
Amos, 19 /., 27, 35 /., 57, 144, 156,
221.
the period of, 49.
the antecedents of, 56.
his argumentation, 70.
his conception of man, 76.
his idea of conscience, 70.
his estimate of himself, 69, 83.
his fellowship with God, 67.
Amos, the man, 41.
his revelation, 66 /
his idea of righteousness, 71.
scene of his preaching, 44.
very human, 67.
view of Divine control, 85.
wrestling with God, 6S.
Amosian judgment, 79.
- penalty, 31.
Amoz, 156.
Analysis of the Pentateuch, 3.
of Amos, 35 ff.
of Hosea, 105 jf.
of Isaiah, 181 /.
of Micah, 299 ff.
Anathoth, 155, 176.
Angels, 157.
Antecedents of Amos, 56.
Anthropology of Amos, "6.
of Hosea, 129.
of Isaiah, 233, 272.
Isaiah s advance in, 272.
Anthropomorphism of Amos, 85.
of Hosea, 137.
of Isaiah, 267 /.
in Micah, 306, 324 /.
Antiochus, 21.
Apocalypse, 210.
Arabia, 194, 210.
Aramaic, 164, 210.
Ararat, 186.
Area of Judaea, 286.
Ariel, 177, 213.
Aristotle, 59.
Arnold, M., 150, 160, 190.
Arpad, i83.
334
INDEX.
Art, history of, 8.
Ashdod, 188, 211 /, 219.
Asia, 209.
Asshur, 178.
Assurbanipal, 189.
Assurdaan III., 186.
Assurhaddon, 189, 297.
Assyria, 59, 115, 126, 129, 135, 170,
176.
Assyrian canon, 182 JT.
empire, 50.
march, 208.
suzerainty, 211.
Assyro-Babylonian language, 184.
Atonement, 80.
Amos s view of, 80, 83.
Hosea s view of, 141 /.
Isaiah s view of, 170, 254 ff.
Authority of Jesus, 14.
Autograph records, i6/.
Azariah, 186.
BAAL, 75, 134.
Babylon, 183, 223 /.
Babylonian empire, 50.
exile, 223.
Bacchanalians, 175, 209.
Balaam, 328.
Balak, 328.
Bashan, 221.
Beauty in Micah, 309.
Beersheba, 38, 153.
Benhadad, 185.
Bethel, 38, 109, 125.
Beth-ephrath, 301.
Beth-haccarem, 46.
Bethlehem, 46, 301.
Bissell, Professor, 36.
Bloodthirst among Hebrews, 248.
Book of Moses, 329.
Briggs, Professor, 36.
CAESAR, 59.
Cairo, 1 12.
Calf-god, 107.
Call of Amos, 39, 48.
of Hosea, 1 16.
of Isaiah, 158, 162.
of Micah. 3 o, 307.
Calvary, 49, 326.
Calvin, Institutes of, 25.
Cnrchemish, 188.
Carelessness towards God s honour,
243-
Carmel, 46, 221, 234.
Carpenter, Professor, 36.
Casdim. 18}.
Cave, Professor, 36.
Ceremonial holiness, 162.
Chaldaja, 218.
Chaldaeans, 184.
Change in animal nature, 276.
Cheyne, Professor, vii. /., 36, 196,
206, 258.
Child-oracle, 200.
Christ, 101, 131, 183, 267, 320, 326.
Christian teacher, a guide for, xi.
Christological questions, x.
Chronicles, 22, 64.
Chronology, 90, 184.
Classification of inspirations, 31.
Cleansing of earth, must be, 242.
Coliseum, 8.
Commission of Amos, 69.
of Isaiah, 158.
of Micah, 315.
Compilers, 160.
Confirmation of historical study by
analysis of Pentateuch, 9.
Conjugal love, 127, 129.
Consciousness of duty, 145.
Conservative faith, 15.
Constructive account of Hebrew
religion, vii.
Controversy, 1 7.
Controverted book, Micah, 296.
Counsels for analysis, 23.
Court of justice, scene in Micah,
307, 3i8-
Covenant, 102-130.
Creation, Isaiah s theory of the
coming of the golden age, 291.
Credentials of a prophet, 48, 315.
Cromwell, 46.
Crucifixion, 163.
Cruelty among Hebrews, 72, 248, 307.
Cuneiform inscriptions, 182, 185
297.
Curtiss, Professor, 36.
Cush, 211.
Cyprus, 219.
Cyrus, 223.
INDEX.
335
DAMASCUS, 112, 169. 185, iSS.
Daphne, 214.
Date of Deuteronomy, 27.
David, 58, 62, 213, 224. 234.
David-age, 47, 56, 144.
David-faith, 567., 305.
David-heir, 200, 203.
David-revelation, 58, 6o/., 64 /.
Day of Jehovah, 39, 87, 242.
Debauchees, 167, 204.
Delitzsch, Professor, 27, 36.
Deliverer-Torah, 24 ff.
Deuteronomy, 25, 27, 29, 109, 298.
Devoted One, 141 /., 147. 173
Devotees, 164.
Dialogue in Amos, 37.
Dirge in Isaiah, 198.
Divine character, 147.
control in Amos, 62 ff., 85 ff.
control in Hosea, 94.
control in Isaiah, 234 ff.
control in Micah, 319, 324.
guidance in critical work, 14.
Division of kingdoms, in I.-aiali, 235.
Dramatic scene, 204, 208, 306.
Driver, Professor, vii. /., 36, 181,
206, 211.
Drunkenness, 127 /., 204, 246.
Duhm, Professor, ix., 36, 163 /., 189,
202, 237, 262.
Duiacker, Professor, 189.
EARTHQUAKE, 197, 199.
Eclipses, i83/., 186.
Eden, 109.
Editors of Pentateuch, 31.
Edom, i86jf., 194, 210.
Egoism among Hebrews, 317.
Egypt, 115, 126, 129, 141, I94/., 211,
213, 234, 238, 271. 328.
Eighth century B.C., 21.
Elam, 184.
Elect, 25.
Eliakim, 210.
Elijah, 20, 55, 113, 144. 151. 185.
234. 259.
Elohist, 27, 29.
Enthusiasm of Isaiuh, 249.
Ephod, 103, 148.
Ephraim, in, 133, I54/.
Eponym canon, 91, 185 /.
Era, Victorian, 183.
Eschatology, 89, 209, 275.
Esdu-Sarabe, 186.
Ethiopia, 189, 224, 234.
Euphrates, 50, 59, 155, 182, 185, 234.
Ewald, 196.
Exile, 19, 28, 61, 162.
Exodus, 28, 97, 109, 132, 135.
Eyes of God, 261.
Ezekiel, 19, 57, 63, 155, 313.
Ezra, 21.
FAITH of prophets, 53.
Fanaticism, 241.
Fate watchword, 205, 208.
Fatherhood of God, 132.
Feebleness of Hebrews, 248.
First Christian century, 12.
Flux in conceptions of Amos, 76.
Follower of Isaiah, Micah, 305.
Forgery supposed, 23.
Forgiveness, 149, 162. 220, 222, 232,
28 1/., 325 /
Formal observances in Hosea, 148.
observances in I.-aiah, 271.
observances in Micah, 3io/.
Fotheringham, Rev. J., xii.
GENESIS, 3, 29.
Geological controversies, 8.
Gilgal, 38, 109, 153, 328.
Gittites, 307.
Glory of Jehovah, 236, 270.
God, Hebrew consciousness of, 317.
Amos s idea of, 85.
Hosea s idea of, 134.
Isaiah s idea of, 265.
Micah s idea of, 323.
Gods besides Jehovah, 324.
Golden age, 40, 95, 109, 209, 217, 263.
Good, definition of, 88, 318.
Gozan, 186.
Grace, Isaiah himself a symbol of,
256.
of Jehovah, 139, 149, 233, 254,
256, 270, 325.
in Zion, 165, 172 ff., 256, 326.
Greece, 50, 59, 179.
Green, Rev. J. R., 45.
Growth in Amos, 76 ff.
- in Isaiah s anthropology, 288.
336
INDEX.
Growth in Isaiah s new faith, 173.
in Isaiah s conception of God,
286.
Guthe, Professor. 36, 102, 122, 175,
187 /., 193, 202, 206 /.
HABAKKUK, 63.
Haggai, 63.
Hamath, 185, 1 88, 211.
Handel, 20.
Harein-rule, 169.
Haupt, Professor, x.
Hazael, 185.
Heart, the organ of knowledge, 125.
Hebrew language, 113.
Hebron, 153.
Hermann, Professor, x., 227.
Herodotus, 182, 223.
Hezekiah, 28, 51, 174, 176 /., 187,
195, 201, 210.
Hiddeqel, 186.
Historical books of the Bible, 7.
History of prophets is history of the
people, 20.
Holiness, 75, 161, 164, 237.
Holy days, 201.
Holy hill, 164,
Home of Amos, 46.
Hosea s, in.
Isaiah s, 229.
Isaiah s own picture of, 277.
Micah s, 327.
sanctuary, 198.
Homiletic method, 121.
Hosea, 19, 57, 63, 90 /.
his advance, 146.
central characteristic of, 122.
his doctrine of knowledge, 138.
his knowledge of history, 1 18.
his home and sorrow, 92,111,118.
his rank, 114.
his reasoning, 117.
his sympathy, 124.
the text of the book, 91.
Hoshea, 1 16, 187.
Human sacrifice, 313.
Husbands, Hosea s ideal, 148.
"IMITATION of Christ," So.
Immanuel, 165, 172 /.
Immanuel-faith, 243.
Improvement in character about
Isaiah, 288.
Individuals, Amos s estimate of, 78.
Hosea s estimate of, 130 jf.
Isaiah s estimate of, 273.
Infallible authority, 11,43.
Infallible person, 12.
Inspiration, 31.
of Amos, 42, 66.
of Micah, 307.
Intoxication, 127 /., 246.
Introduction to Old Testament,
Driver, 181, 206.
Isaiah, 19, 57, 60, 144, 150 ./f.
a token of grace himself, 256.
his anthropology, 233, 272.
his disciples, 229.
his experience in Zion. 155.
genetic view of his faiths, 227^".
- his idea of the golden age, 276.
growth of his new faith, 173.
his home. 229.
material blessing, his desire for,
278.
the hour of his change, 168.
the prophet, essentially, 228.
the religion of, 1 50 ff.
scheme of his ideas, 233.
his theology, 233, 265.
universal need interpreted by
him, 241.
view of Israel as a whole, 272.
Islam, 318.
JACHIN and Boaz, 103.
Jahweh, 36.
Jebusites, i ^3.
Jehoahaz, 187.
Jehovah, covenant name and its
meaning, 125
Jehovah s glory, 236 /., 270.
grace, 215.
of hosts, 62 /.
more than man, 140.
Jehovah-plants, 261.
Jehovah supreme lord, 64.
Jehovist, 27, 29.
Jehu, 185.
Jephthah, 313.
Jeremiah, 19, 57, 6o/., 102, 146, 153,
155, 162.
INDEX.
337
Jeroboam II., 51, I45/., 186, 202.
Jerusalem, 46 f., 59, 152.
Jesus, 12 ff., 85, 125, 133, 163.
Jezreel, 112.
Jonah, 202.
Joshua, 25, 60, 63.
Josiah, 28/., 162, 177, 297.
Josian reformation, 27.
Jotham, 166.
Judsea, 59, 285.
Judaism, 26.
Judges, 60, 63.
KAUTZSCH, Professor, 36.
Kernel of Hosea s being, 122.
of Isaiah s character, 227.
Kings, 60.
Knowledge, Hosea s view of, 147.
Kuenen, Professor, 36.
LAGAUDE, Professor, x., 36, 92, 261,
266, 322.
Land tenure in Isaiah, 249, 280.
in Micah, 322.
Last things, Isaiah s doctrine of
276.
Law, meaning of, 23, 149.
Law of Moses, 23 /.
Leavened bread, 27.
Lebanon, 145, 176, 185, 221.
Levant, the, 50, 113, 145, 212.
Leviticus, 27, 29.
Limit of God s presence, Isaiah s
view of, 292.
Linguistic features of Pentateuch,
10.
Lion, the figure, &c., 178, 209, 214,
217.
Literary criticism in first century,
13-
Literary questions concerning Amos,
35-
Lord of hosts, 125, 144.
Love of Jehovah, 270.
MALACHI, 61, 63.
Man, Amos s conception of, 76 jf.
Hosea s estimate of, 99, 123 jf.
Isaiah s estimate of, 272 ff.
Manasseh, 189, 225, 297, 315, 331.
Manifestations of God, 149.
Marriage, 147.
Material prosperity, Amos s view, 40,
77-
, Hosea s view, 137.
, Isaiah s view, 292.
Meade, Professor, 36.
Mediterranean, 59.
Menahem, i86/.
Men of the Spirit, 128.
Merodach-Baladan, 188, 195, 212,
218, 223.
Method of study, 3, 5.
Micah, 19, 57, 63, 295 /.
analysis of, 299 jf.
a controverted book, 296.
a follower of Isaiah, 305.
his place in history, 330.
religion of, its ethics, psycho
logy, theology, 295 /.
his relation to the Pentateuch,
328 /.
Military skill of David, 153.
Mind, its seat the heart, Hosea
thought, 125.
Ministers, demand of, viii.
Miriam, 209, 328.
Missionary outlook of prophets,
21.
Mizpeh, 38, 153.
Moab, 28, 73, 187 /., 246.
fall of, 194, 202 /.
lament for, 202.
Moloch, 216.
Monastic garment, 164.
Monasticism, 80.
Monogamist, Hosea a, 134.
Monotheism, advance towards, 236.
Moral character of Jehovah in
Isaiah, 271.
Moral height of Amos, 75.
of Hosea, 1 36 /.
of Isaiah, 247.
Moresheth-Gath, 299.
Moses, 25, 132, 328.
Moses-Torah, i, 24, 132.
Mottoes of Isaiah, 191 ff.
NAHASH-DAVID, 31, 202, 225.
N ahuni, 63.
Napoleon, 212.
Narrative books of Old Testament, i.
338
INDEX.
Nation, not individuals, dealt with
by Amos, 77.
by Hosea, 129.
National God, Hosea s, 94.
Need of Amos now, 41.
New Testament, 13, 25.
Nile, 145, 209, 238.
Nineteenth century, 13.
OBELISKS, 103, 148, 312.
Olympiads, 155, 183.
Omnipotence of Jehovah, 237.
Omniscience, 210.
Omri, 1 8s/.
Oracles of grace, Isaiah s, 199.
of judgment, Isaiah s, 196.
Overlordship of Jehovah in Amos,
36, 62 /.,6s, 70.
in Hosea, 95, 135.
in Isaiah, 233 /.
in Micah, 324.
expansion of idea of, 237.
PAIN, Isaiah s estimate of, 283.
Paraphrases of Isaiah s oracles,
196 /
Parent birds, 178.
Park, Professor, x.
Patriarchs, 132.
Paul, 26, 109.
Pekah, i86/.
Pekahiah, 186.
Pentateuch, iff. , 23, 29, 63.
analysis of, 22, 27.
counsels for analyst of, 23.
Micah s relation to, 328.
narrative in, 30 /.
not its own standard, 7.
People of God, 131.
Perfection, Isaiah s doctrine of, 233,
277 /
Persian Gulf, 184.
Persian empire, 50.
Persons, Amos s estimate of, 78 ff.
Hosea s estimate of, izgff.
Isaiah s estimate of, 210, 257,
272 ff.
Perspective in study of Hebrew
religion, 150.
Pestilence in Assyrian army, 222.
Phases of Zion faith, 314.
Phelps, Professor, x.
Philistine blood, 327.
coast, 112.
Philistines, 145, 174, i86/., 211.
Philological tests in analysis of
Pentateuch, 10.
Philosophy, beginning in Hosea, 149.
Phul, 1 86.
Pillar of fire, 261.
Pillars, Divine symbols, 103, 148,312.
Plato, 59.
Pleasure, Isaiah s view of, 245.
Plottings with Egypt, 213.
Poetry in Pentateuch, 30.
Political knowledge of Amos, 62 /.
of Hosea, 96.
of Isaiah, 170, 175, 225.
Polygamy, 134.
Power of Jehovah, 269.
of prophets, 52, 316.
Practical ministry, 121.
Pre-Davidic faith, 151.
Present Christ, 13.
Prince, Isaiah s ideal, 257, 274, 293.
Problems left unsolved, 87/., 148, 29 1.
Process of inspiration, 56.
Progress of thought, Amos, 69, 76 jf!
Hosea, 131.
Isaiah, 151 /., 199, 237,
253 /-, 256 /.
Micah, 330.
Prophetess, Isaiah s wife the, 230.
Prophets before Amos, 1 56.
Prophets theme, method, and aim,
52 ffi.
Proverbs, 92.
Providence, Isaiah s theory of, 243.
Psalms, 64.
Ptolemaic canon, 184.
Purity of Hosea, 133.
RAIN-GIVER, 216.
Raphia, 188, 212.
Reflecting spirit in Micah, 309.
Regeneration in Amos, 78.
in Hosea, 148.
in Isaiah, 233, 238, 259, 276,
278, 283.
in Micah, 328.
Rehoboam, 95.
Religious aim, 3.
INDEX.
339
Religious test in analysis of Pen
tateuch, ii.
Rembrandt, 250.
Renan, Professor, 36, 59.
ezin, iS6/.
Results of analysis, 23 ff.
Revelation, 10.
- in Amos, 70, 81.
in Hosea, 119, 128.
in Isaiah, 230, 267.
in Micah, 314.
Rhetoric, Isaiah s, 212.
Riehm, Professor, 36.
Righteousness, Amos s demand for,
71-
Hosea s demand for, 98.
Isaiah s ideal of. 242 ff.
Micah s ideal of, 3i8/.
Ritual, 30, 149, 250, 271.
Rock-caves, 197.
Rome, so/., 59, 183.
Russia, 145.
SACRED trees, 312.
Sacrifice, 149, 167, 198, 251, 312.
Sacrilege, 73.
Salman-assur, 174, 185 jf., 201, 211.
Salvation by faith, and by works, 25.
Amos s way of, 78.
Hosea s way of, 100, 147.
Isaiah s way of, i68/., 254 /.
Micah s way of, 325 /.
Samaria, 44, 47, in, 169, 174, I93/.,
201, 311.
Samuel, 60, 82, 153.
Sanctuaries, Amos s theory, 82.
Hosea s theory, 149.
Isaiah s theory, 150 jf., 270.
Sargon, 174, 187, 194, 2io/., 218, 297.
Schrader, Professor, 182, 185, 223,
297.
Scientific accuracy in analysis, n.
Scythians, 145, 169.
Self-estimate of Amos, 69.
of Hosea, 139.
of Isaiah, 256 /.
of Micah, 3I5/.
Sennacherib, 177, 188, 195, 206,
211, f., 222, 225, 297.
Sensuality, 74.
Seveh, 188.
Seventh century B.C., 21.
Sharon, 221.
Shear-Jacob, 208.
Shear- jashubh, 160, 166, 170, 200,
208, 229.
Shebna, 210.
Sheol, 40, 87, 175, 198, 205.
Shiloh, 153.
Shittim, 328.
Sicily, 1 86.
Sidon, 186.
Sieges of Jerusalem, 209, 220.
Signs from God, 170.
Sin, Amos s estimate of, 80.
Hosea s estimate of, 103, 147.
Isaiah s estimate of, 253.
Micah s estimate of, 32 if.
Sistine Madonna, 8.
Sivan, the month, 186.
Sixth century B.C., 21.
Slave-trade among Hebrews, 72.
Smend, Professor, 36.
Smith, G., 91, 182, 185.
Smith, Rev. G. A., 170.
Smith, Professor W. R., 36, 90, 122,
133, 144, 163, 187, 320.
S my the, Professor, x.
So, king of Egypt, 188.
Socin, Professor, 286.
Soil of Palestine sacred, 8l, 129.
Solomon, 103, 154, 156.
Son of God, I32/.
Spirit of Christ, 12.
Spiritual process in regeneration,
Isaiah, 278.
Stade, Professor, 36.
Story of the past in Hosea, 101.
in Isaiah, 156.
in Micah, 327^.
Strong drink, 198.
Students, work and results of,
viii.jf., xii.
Suez, 59.
Sumir, 184.
Supernatural, 314, 327.
Symbols, 103, 126, 148, 256, 311.
Syria, 145, 169, 186, I99/, 210.
Systematic theology, 120.
TALISMAN* of fate, 175, 205, 208.
Tanis, 214.
340
INDEX.
Tartary, 145,
Tekoa, 46.
Temple, 154, 157.
Teraphim, 148.
Test of analysis, 6 /., 16 /.
Test of prophetic authority, 316.
Theological problem, 3.
Theology, Amos s, 85 ff.
Hosea s, 99, 134.
Isaiah s, 233, 265 ff.
Micah s, 323 ff.
Theophany, 159, 161.
Tiglath-pil-assur, 169, 186, 201.
Tigris, 50, 155, 179, 185, 209.
Tirhakah, 189.
Tithes, 27.
Tophet, 216.
Torah, 24, 132,
Torah-givers, 135, 279.
Traders, 145.
Tribal conscience, 70.
Tryst, 1 80, 221.
Turanian, 184.
Twistedness, 281 ff.
Tyre, 154, 186, 195 /., 2i8/.
UNCHASTITY among Hebrews, 92,
248.
Uncleanness of non-Hebrew lands,
95, 129.
Unification of Hebrews, 59, 209.
Universal rule, Isaiah s hope of,
236.
Unsatisfactory methods, 7.
Uzziah, 28, 51, 145, 156 /., [166,
1 86.
VANITY, sin of, 244 /.
Vineyard, song of, &c., 167, 198.
Vintage-feasting, 203.
WARWICK, Sir Philip, 45.
Watchwords of Isaiah, 191 ff.
Water- tanks, 209.
Wellhausen, Professor, 36.
Whitehouse, Professor, 36, 182.
Wife of Isaiah, 230.
Wine, 125, 246, 316.
Witch of Endor, 58.
Woman, estimate of, in Amos, 74 /.
, in Hosea, 118, 127, 134.
, in Isaiah, 245, 277.
, in Micah, 322.
Word becoming flesh, 171.
Word of God, 13.
World-monarchies, 61.
Wrestling of Amos, 66, 68 f.
Writing prophet, the first, 71.
Wrongs around Amos, 72 jf.
around Hosea, 124, 126 /., I35/.
around Isaiah, 243 ff.
around Micah, 321 ff.
ZADOKITES, 155.
Zeal of Jehovah, 239.
Zechariah, 63.
Zephaniah, 63.
Zion, 19, isojf., 196.
Zion-doctrine, 222.
Zion-faith, Micah, 305.
Zion in Isaiah s early discourses,
166.
Zion s disappointments, 293.
INDEX.
341
(B.) HEBREW AND GREEK WORDS,
(i) HEBREW WORDS.
255 ny?? *"3?
1 06 *n""13
124 D^S
205 nviroi nSs
99 yt/ in
124. noiN
i T T ~;
203 ppsp
203 t^^n^ N? ppspn
120 ion nsriN
J ... .. - -; -
24, 132 n^D
321 yjyn
1 06 K*K
321 Tn ^x cy ri?S
U2 D^D3n
T -;
94, 130, 135 W
281 flU Kb>3
191, 193 ^3BB
IO6, 122, 125"!
PPD
139, 320]
322 ?K
319 BS2 ; p rriby.
86, 1 06 3to
i5 T ; ~ "
63 nwav
63, 190 njn
133 "Ii53"|3
161, 255 BH p
275 N-inn DV
i33 ".IP il 1
: 9 Q vmv
34 m 1 *
133 DN33-}3
190, 192 2-1^ "1XK>
203 Bnj
133 J1r\^
24, 132, 251 rnw
i 9 o ^7f:
134 %
107 rn in
-i->-> DT 1 ^xi? ^ ^3
J TT : v
93, 94 D ^V?
106, 130 21^3
122 rv~)3
(2) HEBREW WORDS TRANS- Qaddishin, 164.
L1TERATED. Qadhosll, 75, 163.
-ALAH, 265. Qudhsh, 164.
Allon, 266. Rehoboth, 45, 156.
Baal, 134. Shechinah, 148.
Chesedh, 125, 139, 320.
El, 191, 265.
Elah, 265.
Elleh, 266.
Eloah, 265.
Elohim, 74, 85, 191, 265.
Hithqaddesh, 164.
K Ad ham, 130.
Mag^eboth, 103, 148.
Mi9raim, 211, 271.
Moreh, 135.
Mosheh, 25.
Q-D-Sh, 161, 163, 164.
Qadhesh, 164.
Qaddesh, 164.
(3) GREEK WORDS.
"HXtos, 322.
Kav&v fta<n\^u}v, 184.
Nemos, 25.
Kal TroXirpoTrws, viii.
(4) OTHER FOREIGN WORDS.
Foedus, <kc., 102.
Odium theolorjicum, 48.
Offenbaruny, 227.
Pietas, 320.
Theolo jie dcr Propheten, ix. , 122, 237.
Zukunftsbild des Jcsaias, 175, 187.
342
INDEX.
(C.) SCKIPTURE REFERENCES.
OLD TESTAMENT.
P*GK
PAOR
ix.
8-x, 4 . . 192, 196, 199
GENESIS
5
X.
. 194, 2o6/, 231, 238, 307
xi.
194, 206 /., 225, 231, 238,
EXODUS.
262, 271
xv. ..... 209
xii.
176
DEUTERONOMY.
xiv.
XV.
28-32 . 174, 194, 202, 231
194, 2O2
i. i
26
xvi.
. 194, 2O2/.
iv. 46
26
xvii.
I-II . . 193, 200
v. .....
26
xvii.
12-14 -195
xii. ...
18
xviii.
. 195, 240
xviii
26
xix.
. 195, 2 4
xxxii
209
xix.
21 .... 271
xxxiii. .....
209
XX.
. 194, 202
JUDGES.
xxi.
194- 195
xxii.
194
xvni. 30 ....
187
xxiii.
. 195, 240
XXV.
IO9
2 KINGS.
xxviii.
174, 194, 203 /., 207, 231,
XV
146
238, 274, 307
2 CHRONICLES.
xxix. . 177 ff., 194, 232, 238, 264
xxix.-xxxii. . . .194, 279
xxiii. ii
297
XXX.
177 /-, 194
xxix./. ....
177
xxxi
177/., 194
PSALMS.
xxxii.
. 195, 232, 238 /., 264,
271, 274
209
xxxiii.
. 18, 177 /., 195, 232, 239,
cvii. 43 ....
IIO
258, 271, 281
ISAIAH.
xxxvii.
xl.
189, 225, 239
-Ixvi. ... 26, 28
i i93,
201
liii.
18, 61
ii 273,
37
ii. 2-5 . 167, 196 f.,
296
JEREMIAH.
ii.-v. . . i66/., 192,
228
vii 18
iii. 8-iv. i .
197
ix
12 IIO
263
1 68
xxvi. 17 /. . . . . 295
iv. 2-6 ....
198
xlviii. ..... 202
v. ... 198 /.,
274
EZEKIEL.
v. 16, 19 .
1 68
XX
2 5 .... 313
v. 25-30 . . i66ff.,
196
vi. . . 144, 191, 193
199
HOSEA.
vii. . . . 193, 200
231
i
i. - iii
. . . .105
91
viii. . . . 193, 200
271
ii
s
.2-23 . . . .105
viii. 10, &c.
256
iii
105
viii. 18 ....
229
iv
91, 105
ix. . 166 ff.. IQI, 200
T.Q2
v.-viii
106
INDEX.
343
PAGE
PAGE
ix. .
. 107
v. 10-15 ....
3"
s.-xiii. . . ,
. 108
vi.
3O3
- IQ
xiii., xiv.
IOQ
vi. 6 ff.
;
vii.
-204.
AMOS.
vii. 7-9
....
J ~T
308
i. i-ii. 5 .
- . 36
vii. 18-20 . . . 309,
310
ii. 6/.
37
iii., iv.
v. ...
37
18, 37
NEW TESTAMENT.
v. 1-14 .
. 69
MATTHEW.
vi., vii.
39
xi. 28
....
81
viii. i-ix. 10
. 40
ix. i iff. .
. 40
JOHN.
MlCAH.
iv. .
152
i. i .
295, 299
2
CORINTHIANS.
i.-iii.
299
iii. 6 .
ix
ii.
307, 308
ii.-iv.
iii.
. 300
^07
HEBREWS.
iii. 12
295
i. i
V11I
iv.-v.
. 301
JAMES.
iv. 1-5
296, 311
iii. 13
...
no
iv. 6-v. i .
v.-vii.
298, 302
REVELATION.
v. 2-9
. 297
iii. 7-8
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