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THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL





THE GREAT EPIC
OF ISRAEL
THE WEB OF MYTH, LEGEND, HISTORY, LAW,
ORACLE, WISDOM AND POETRY OF
THE ANCIENT HEBREWS
BY
AMOS KIDDER FISKE, A.M.
AUTHOR OF “THE MYTHs of IsrAEL,” “MIDNIGHT TALKs AT THE
CLUB,” “BEYonD THE Bourn,” Etc., ETC.
Thew pork
STURGIS & WALTON
COMPANY
191 I
All rights reserved


Harvard C. 1 , , , , ºy
º, ºr .
Fre a the tº ºry of
Jo —n riºs G ra...ier
Copyright 1911
By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1911


To HIS DEVOTED WIFE
CAROLINE CHILD FISKE
THE AUTHOR DEDICATES THIS VOLUME





PREFACE
IT is the purpose of this volume to encourage
a revival of the reading or study of the ancient
Scriptures of the Jews, not by scholars or those
who make a professional use of them, but by the
people at large. To this generation they have
as a whole become unattractive and fallen into
neglect, except for a conventional and enforced
respect, on account of the false light in which they
have been left for so many centuries. The pres-
ent object is to put them in their true light and
give them a new interest for the modern man.
The common intelligence will no longer accept
the dogma that they are divine revelation, except
as divine revelation is to be traced in all human
development; or that they are the specially in-
spired word of God and contain in all parts infal-
lible truth, to be unquestioningly accepted, for
the common intelligence has come to know better.
It has been taught to discriminate and to apply
reason, and its liberty is not to be excluded from
this one field. All truth may be accounted di-
vine, all great thoughts and noble sentiments may
be regarded as inspired, but no more in this liter-
ature than in others, ancient and modern. The
V11


viii PREFACE
voice of God did not vociferate in one small coun-
try for a few centuries and then fall into silence.
The spirit of God did not inform men in that one
place and time and then withdraw itself to the re-
mote bounds of the universe. It was and is and
will be from everlasting to everlasting and forever
the same, in all time and place, and it pervades
all life.
The author pretends to no new discovery.
What he has to say is derived from the researches
of many scholars who have wrought with growing
assiduity and with increasing light during the
greater part of the past century. The results are
known to teachers and preachers, who still shrink
from teaching and preaching the truth freely and
candidly, as some at least of them know it to be.
Current theology and divinity are too much under
the duress of old dogma to speak out. The lore
of scholars is open to those who choose to study
it, but for the most part it is too detailed, too ar-
gumentative, too heavy or too dry, for the com-
mon reader, and it works slowly through a reluc-
tant clergy and an unlearned laity.
The present writer is under no bonds. He has
no fear or shrinking. He loves the truth and de-
sires to spread it abroad, knowing that only good
can come of the light, while darkness harbors
much that is evil. It is not originality that he
professes, but independence, not special ability,
but the dower of common sense and a capacity


PREFACE ix
for setting forth clearly what he learns and thinks,
to be “understanded of the people.” It is from
interest that he has studied this subject, and he
writes in the hope of exciting interest in others and
contributing to the spread of knowledge of the
truth as it is revealed through human experience.
He does not encumber his pages by citing authori-
ties or dealing with controversy, having only room
to give results as sifted and judged by himself.
But the fruits of long and varied research and all
the references that may be desired, to a recent
date, are stored in the “Encyclopaedia Biblica,”
to which all are directed for details, reasons and
conclusions. Comparatively little has been added
since its publication.
Nothing could be farther from the writer's wish
than to impair or undermine the foundations of
religious faith. To be abiding these must be of
truth and they must rest upon knowledge and rea-
son, as they are revealed to man in his progress
onward and upward. Unlike material piling
they must be kept sound not by being buried
in darkness and dampness, but by being exposed
to light and air. Judaism, like other religions,
consecrated its Scriptures. Christianity borrowed
from both Judaism and heathenism in framing its
dogmas, and it accepted the consecration of the
Jewish Scriptures for the sake of these. But Ju-
daism has advanced, and Christianity has ad-
vanced, in spite of clinging to outworn dogmas


X PREFACE
and the consecration of councils in dark ages. The
church still needs to advance and to preserve all
that is sacred in its literature; but illumination is
the test of sanctity. No mass bound up in past
ages is all sacred nor can it contain all that is sa-
cred. It should be tried and that which is good
should be held fast.
The consecrated writings of the Jews are here
treated as an epic of the people of Israel in their
great days. Such in effect they really are, and
they are so presented in the order of their develop-
ment for better understanding and greater interest.
The chief claim to originality in this work lies in
so presenting them. The author hopes it will
serve its desired end of making them more read,
better understood and more profitable to the soul
of man.
,


CONTENTS
PAGE
THE PECULIAR PEOPLE . . . . . . . . . . . 3
II
LITERARY DEVELOPMENT OF ISRAEL . . . . . . . . 16
III
THE MAKING OF THE EPIC . . . . . . . . . . 29
IV
THE MYTHS of ISRAEL . . . . . . . . . . . 44 -
V
HEROIC AND HISTORIC LEGENDs . . . . . . . . . 74
VI
DAVID AND SOLOMON . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
VII
THEOCRATIC Account OF THE Two KINGDOMs . . . . . I2O
VIII
PROPHEts of THE KINGDOMs . . . . . . . . . . I58
IX
PROPHETS OF THE EXILE AND AFTER . . . . . . . 192


CONTENTS
PAGE
X
THE JEWISH LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
XI
THE PRIESTLY HISTORY . . . . . . . . . . . 253
XII
ILLUSTRATIVE TALEs, RUTH, JonAH, FSTHER . . . . 278
XIII
LYRICS, SONGS AND HYMNs . . . . . . . . . . 287
XIV
WISDOM AND PHILOSOPHY . . . . . . . . . . .305
XV
THE BOOK OF JOB . . . . . . . . . . . . . .319
XVI
THE BOOK OF DANIEL . . . . . . . . . . . 339
XVII
THE GREAT EPIC IN REVIEW . . . . . . . . . .356


THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL





THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
I
THE PECULIAR PEOPLE
THE most remarkable thing in what we call
ancient history is the peculiar intellectual, moral
and religious development of a small people who
occupied a narrow territory, shut in from the Med-
iterranean Sea, on the pathway between the great
empire of the Tigris and the Euphrates and that
of the Nile. Compared with those empires the
nation formed by this people was not ancient, and
in national resources and power it was utterly in-
significant. The land which it acquired by con-
quest and held with difficulty had long before been
overrun by the armies of Babylonia and Egypt,
and held in possession by one or the other of those
great powers, whose civilisation was old before
Israel was born. Records and inscriptions dis-
covered within the last twenty-five years show that
Palestine was subject to Egypt and ruled by its
governors as late as 14oo B. C., when the Nile
region had been a seat of power, learning and re-
ligion for more than two thousand years, and the
3


4 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
land of the Euphrates had been its rival for many
centuries.
In a fortunate interval of quiescence between
these great “world powers,” a part of the people
who became known as Israel escaped from a con-
dition of servitude and oppression within the
borders of Egypt, and made their way through
the deserts of Arabia, with only petty tribes native
to the region to contend with, and with ac-
cretions from others got possession of a strip
of territory east of the Jordan. Lingering there
until they gained cohesion and strength, they finally
crossed the river and after bloody conflicts with
the tribes occupying the land known as Canaan,
and in later times as Palestine, succeeded in estab-
lishing themselves in possession. For a long time
their hold was precarious. Broken into tribes or
clans, they had no regularly organized government,
and when attacked by hostile neighbours, as they
frequently were, they depended upon leaders, or
“heroes,” who rose to command them in battles
of defence or vengeance. Finally, when they had
grown sufficiently in numbers and in strength, and
experience had taught them the necessity of na-
tional power, with civil and military organisation,
if they were to survive and flourish, they estab-
lished a kingdom, a little more than 1,000 years
before the Christian era. In the meantime they
had learned much from their strongest neighbours,
the Philistines and the Phoenicians, especially the


THE PECULIAR PEOPLE 5
latter, with whom they maintained relations of
amity while the former were their bitter enemies.
Coming from beyond the river they were called
Hebrews or those “from beyond.” They adopted
and modified the language of the conquered Ca-
naanites, borrowed writing from the Phoenicians
and some time after the establishment of the king-
dom developed a literature.
Where these people originally came from is not
certainly known. We have little more than their
own traditions, preserved in their own peculiar
way, to guide us in seeking for their origin. They
were probably nomadic tribes of Arabians, akin
to the Edomites, Moabites and Ammonites, which
had wandered with flocks and herds, perhaps to
the borders of the Euphrates Valley and to the
confines of Egypt, and some of which in a time of
fam’ne had been kept in the latter country until
they fell into a state of servitude, or forced labor,
under its rulers. They certainly had traditions
of escape or deliverance from this servitude and
of the struggle through the deserts to freedom,
and for centuries they cherished fear and hatred
for Egypt, while their earliest writers took pride
in giving them a mythical ancestry in the Chal-
dean Empire.
It was a century and more after the kingdom
was established and some time after it had been
divided by the tearing away of the larger and
more flourishing part by revolt on the death of Sol-


6 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
omon, that the remarkable literary development
of this people began. Just when the Hebrew lan-
guage took form in writing cannot be ascertained,
but like all primitive peoples Israel preserved its
first traditions by oral transmission. Like others
it had its myths and legends, its tales of deliverers
from bondage or peril and of heroes in warfare,
and these were chanted in songs or narrated in
stories from generation to generation until they
became a common stock of material for coming
writers. Like all ancient people also, it had its
religion, its conception of deity and his relation
to man, and in regard to this its most striking
peculiarity appears.
In spite of successive versions during several
centuries, the mass of literature which constitutes
the great epic of its national life still contains
traces of a time when it shared with other early
races a belief in many gods representing the pow-
ers of nature. Its designation for the deity, Elo-
him, is a plural and a relic of that time. One of
the most ancient fragments embedded in its liter-
ature speaks of the “Sons of God” who had con-
verse with the daughters of men and begat giants
and men of renown, after the manner of other old
mythologies. The use of the word “Sons of
God” here is equivalent to “Gods,” as “Sons of
prophets” was used to designate members of
schools or coteries of prophets, “Children of Is-
rael” or of Moab was used for Israelites or Mo-


THE PECULIAR PEOPLE 7
abites, and “Sons of men " had the same mean-
ing as men. Another ancient fragment, properly
translated, speaks of wine as cheering gods and
men, and there is also a relic of the old polythe-
istic faith in the myth of the Garden of Eden
where “the Lord God” is represented as saying
of Adam, “the man is become as one of us to
know good and evil.”
In the early patriarchal stories and the legends
of heroes the deity, originally a tribal god called by
the name of Yahweh, (“Jehovah”), was some-
times represented as appearing on the earth in the
form of a man. He was evidently conceived of
in this guise in the Eden myth when he “walked
in the garden in the cool of the day” and talked
with Adam. In this guise he appeared and talked
with Abram under the Oaks of Mamre while on
his way to Sodom to ascertain if its iniquity was as
bad as it had been reported to be. Sometimes he
is represented as sending an “angel,” or mes-
senger, who was a kind of similitude of his own per-
sonality, as in the case of the “angel of God”
who appeared to the mother of Samson and prom-
ised the child's birth. Again in the Jacob myth
he is described as testing that personage by wrest-
ling with him all night and giving him a new name.
There are other instances of his appearing in the
guise of a human being, but in later conceptions
he became invisible, and the sight of him was sup-
posed to be dangerous, if not fatal. Moses is


8 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
represented as being vouchsafed a look at his back
after he had passed by while the hand of the god
covered the man as he stood in a cleft of the rock-
Often he is described as speaking to man while
he remained himself invisible, and often as man-
ifesting his presence in fire, or light or darkness
or some natural phenomenon.
In the mixture of tradition, legend and myth
connected with the escape or deliverance from
Egypt, this deity is represented as peculiarly the
God of Israel and as having his abode on Mount
Sinai, or Horeb, where he awaited his time for
rescuing the people from their bondage. He had
no relation to the rest of mankind except as a
mighty enemy to those who were enemies of his
people. They had their own gods, whose reality
and whose rights in their own domain were not
disputed. It was as the God only of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob and of their descendants that he
appeared to Moses and through him and Aaron
inflicted the plagues upon Egypt and brought his
people out with a “mighty hand and an out-
stretched arm,” divided the waters of the Red
Sea and guided them in cloud and flame, while the
Egyptian armies were overwhelmed. Here he
was a god of craft and not of justice, so far as
any but his own people were concerned, a god of
severity and anger with his own people when they
disobeyed his commands given through their
leader, a god of battles and vengeance in conflict


THE PECULIAR PEOPLE 9
with their enemies. He appears in clouds and
thunder and lightning on Mount Sinai to fulmin-
ate his laws through Moses. In the Song of
Deborah in the time of the “Judges,” which is
older than these myths and legends of the “Ex-
odus,” his dwelling place is supposed to be on
Mount Sinai, and he comes from there careering
over the mountains in storm clouds to rescue his
people from the army of Sisera.
Such a conception of deity is as mythical as that
of other ancient peoples. The tribal god Yahweh
had dwelt in the mountain fastnesses and guarded
and guided his people, inspiring them with fear
and communicating his commands through those
who assumed to be his servants or his spokesmen,
and who doubtless believed themselves to be such.
He had the characteristics of an unseen despot and
was the ideal of a mighty ruler in a barbarous age.
He was placated not only by humble submission,
but by offerings and sacrifices, the more precious
the more acceptable and prevailing. There are
traces of evidence that in the earliest days these
extended to the sacrifice of children in the wor-
ship of Yahweh as in that of Baal and of Che-
mosh. There is a vestige of this in the story
of Jephthah and his daughter, and the myth of the
offering of Isaac on Mount Moriah was symbol-
ical of the substitution of the choicest animals for
the highest pledge of devotion. Until late in the
history of the two Kingdoms there was little dif-


Io THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
ference between the common worship of the peo-
ple of Israel, at their various shrines away from
the temple of Jerusalem, and that of the heathen
around them, and sometimes the very sanctuary
of “the Lord ” on Mount Zion was invaded by
pagan abominations. They had images of Yah-
weh, and their priests practised divination, and
there were times when there was such a relapse
that children again “passed through fire" in the
Valley of the Sons of Hinnom.
Midway in the history of the Kingdoms a re-
markable evolution took place in the religious and
ethical conceptions of this people. Their seers
and diviners developed into a class of teachers
which through translation acquired the title of
“prophets,” though the original had not the mean-
ing commonly implied by that term. The transi-
tion was not so abrupt as it appears in their epic
literature, for the latter was modified by revision
to conform to later ideas. The influence of the
prophet appears to have first become potent in set-
ting up and guiding the earliest King, Saul; but
Samuel seems to have retained much of the char-
acter of the ancient priest and diviner, and to have
been transformed in the later accounts of the
period. Nathan, the mentor and monitor of
David, spoke to the King in the name of Yah-
weh, but disguised his reproaches in the form of
parable. At that time the deity was still repre-
sented by images and consulted by mechanical de-


THE PECULIAR PEOPLE II
vices. Solomon, notwithstanding his worldliness
and his yielding to heathen enticement, was as-
sumed by the chroniclers of a later time to be so
endowed with wisdom that he needed no prophet.
It is probable that no one had the temerity to
act in that capacity with so mighty a potentate in
his little realm; but one appeared to encourage a
revolt against him and to represent by symbolical
action the tearing away of the better part of the
kingdom and the setting up of a rival monarchy
under the leader of the revolt, Jeroboam the Son
of Nebat.
It was well along in the turbulent history of the
new Kingdom of Israel, when an alliance of its
King, Ahab, with the royal house of Phoenicia
threatened a lapse from the worship of Yahweh
to that of Baal and Ashtoreth, or Astarté, that
the spirit of prophetism was aroused to an ardent
defence of the national God and his worship, the
loss of which would mean the abandonment and
destruction of the nation. There is little evidence
that the character of the worship in the northern
Kingdom then differed materially from that of
the neighbouring peoples of Phoenicia and Syria
or the Canaanite tribes, or that the ethical standard
had greatly improved, when the legendary figure
of Elijah appeared in the conflict against a relapse
to heathenism. The reality behind that misty fig-
ure was a fiery champion of the national religion
and of the mighty god to whom the people owed


I2 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
their deliverance from Egypt, the possession of the
land which they had inherited from mythical an-
cestors with whom that god had made a compact
of mutual fidelity. Elisha, who carried on the
contest when the house of Ahab was slaughtered
and the kingdom was in dangerous conflict with
Syria, is scarcely less legendary and obscured in
the mists of history; and there is still little sign
of the higher ethical and religious spirit that was
about to develop.
This first appeared, so far as its authentic ut-
terance has been preserved, in Amos, a herdsman
of Judah, who went to the chief shrine of the
Northern Kingdom at Bethel to utter his solemn
rebukes and impressive warnings. The shadows
of conflict with hostile powers of the north and
east were then impending, and in the prophet's
mind the only hope of escape was in renewed
fidelity and devotion to the God of Israel and
obedience to his commands. Now the national
offence took on a moral character. It consisted in
the wickedness and injustice of the time, the in-
iquities of the people and their rulers. The com-
mands of God were not for sacrifices and burnt
offerings, or vain oblations and feast days, but
for justice and mercy and purity of life. Therein
was that obedience and devotion in which alone was
safety and salvation from powerful enemies.
That became the keynote of prophecy from that


THE PECULIAR PEOPLE I3
time, the fundamental principle in the constitution
of theocracy.
And the doctrine of theocracy, or the rule of
God, became the loftiest article of political faith
of the “peculiar people,” the constant and impres-
sive burden of their great epic, which has rolled
down the centuries from that day to this. Other
nations believed that their gods ruled in the af-
fairs of men, but their conceptions were rude and
barbaric in comparison with those of the prophets
of Israel, in whom the highest genius of the nation
found expression. In them the conception of
Israel's God was exalted and purified. He was
the God of justice, of righteousness, of mercy, of
love for those who obeyed him and severity for
those who were disobedient and rebellious. While
Israel was still his peculiar care, he was above all
Gods and all nations and peoples. They were
subject to his will and were used to serve his pur-
poses. He was the creator of heaven and earth
and of all mankind, but he had chosen this one
people for his own and would preserve it for-
ever. He would use others to chastise it when it
went wrong and to correct its evil tendencies; he
might even destroy it as a nation, but he would
surely redeem a purified and righteous remnant
and restore the Kingdom of Zion with a reunited
Israel, which should grow in power and finally
bring all the earth under its sway.


THE PECULIAR PEOPLE I5
a special love for the race with which he made an
everlasting covenant. And the wonder of human
history is the power their superior pretension has
had for so many centuries in guarding their
“sacred ” literature, as a holy heritage of man-
kind, from the calm analysis to which all other
ancient literature has been subjected, and sealing it
against the judgment of human reason.


II
LITERARY DEVELOPMENT OF ISRAEL
WHAT may properly be called literary develop-
ment did not begin among the people of Israel
until after the victories of David had established
the kingdom, and it made little progress before
the prosperous reign of Solomon was over. It
gained its first real impetus in the Northern King-
dom after the division into two rival realms, of
which that was at first the more powerful and
flourishing, and the more progressive. Though
Solomon had established a relation of amity with
Egypt and taken a daughter of the reigning
Pharaoh as one of his many wives, when Jeroboam
headed a revolt against the King's oppressive treat-
ment of the people of the proud tribe of Ephraim
he fled to that country and was evidently treated
with consideration by its ruler. It is probable that
he brought back much of the tradition and the
lore which were afterwards used in the early lit-
erature of his kingdom. He or some companion
of his may have been the real person most versed
in the “learning of the Egyptians '' at that time.
Long before, no doubt, there had been an oral
literature in the customary form of songs and
I6


LITERARY DEVELOPMENT 17
chants, of legends and mythical tales, and many of
these were first reduced to writing in the time of
David and Solomon. Two collections are re-
ferred to by the titles, the “Book of the Wars
of Yahweh’” and the “Book of the Upright,”
and some scraps from each were preserved, with
indications that they furnished the groundwork of
later narratives. David's lament over the death
of Saul and Jonathan is said to have been taught
to the people and afterwards enbalmed in the
“Book of the Upright,” which indicates that the
written form was later than David's time. Solo-
mon's speech at the dedication of the temple is
believed by some to have found a place in the
same repository. Hebrew poetry, of which the
chief rhythmical characteristic was a repetition or
variation of expression called “parallelism,” had
evidently a considerable development before it was
ever reduced to writing. The “Song of De-
borah " at the victory over Sisera is the earliest
example preserved and though sadly mutilated in
the process it is a veritable antique gem. What
is called the “Blessing of Jacob '' near the end of
the Book of Genesis, which sets forth the char-
acteristics of the tribes under personal names, in
the semblance of what is not altogether a “bless-
ing,” had its origin before the division of the
Kingdom, but not earlier than the peaceful reign
of Solomon. The discourses of Balaam in the
Book of Numbers, which have a similar char-


I8 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
acter, must have originated at about the same
time. Whatever the occasion or the original
authorship of these productions, they were quite
independent of the setting in which they are now
found.
The first writers had not only the advantage of
a rich heritage of oral literature, but they un-
doubtedly had considerable knowledge of the
learning of Egypt, the art of Phoenicia and the
wisdom of the East. Communication by caravan
between the Euphrates region and that of the Nile
through Syria, Israel and Philistia was much more
common than we have been accustomed to suppose,
and in the long interval of peace in which Israel
and Judah were left untroubled, except by the petty
nations close about them, there was ample oppor-
tunity for an interchange of influences. The
earliest Hebrew writings which were preserved in
something of their original form in the final Scrip-
ture of the Jews, were the stories of the heroes
of the period between the partial conquest of
Canaan and the founding of the kingdom, famil-
iar to us by the title of “Judges.” These tales
were freely handled by the later writers who made
use of them and set them in a framework of their
own, but they retain much of the pristine flavour.
Appended to these in the last chapters of the
Book of Judges are some later narratives re-
lating to the same period which afford a vivid
picture of life in the primitive days when the


2O THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
had come into Egypt and what their previous his-
tory had been was probably unknown even then,
though there may have been traditions and tales,
extending far back to pastoral days before the
dark period of servitude. Of the origin of the
world and of the human race there could be only
mythical accounts, which had to be either borrowed
or invented. Of knowledge there was certainly
none, and of revelation the only source was the
human imagination unguided by science.
What material existed in the form of stories
of the patriarchs and myths of the creation and
primitive man, and what legends of Moses and
Joshua may have been already written down is
only a matter of conjecture, but it is well estab-
lished that a narrative appeared not earlier than
the middle of the Ninth Century B. C., which con-
stituted one of the main sources of the books of
the Pentateuch and Joshua, and is known to
scholars as the Yahwistic source, on account of its
common use of the name Yahweh for the deity.
This was afterwards retrenched and modified and
blended with another document of like character
which appeared about a century later, known as
the “Elohistic” source, because of its general
use of Elohim to designate the deity. The record
of which these form the main material underwent
expansion and modification afterward, and one of
the latest of its parts is the impressive chapter


LITERARY DEVELOPMENT 2 I
with which it begins giving an account of the crea-
tion.
The earlier of the two main documents referred
to above contained the first nucleus of the written
law of Israel, which was afterwards developed to
constitute one of the main elements of the great
epic that was to be completed centuries later.
It was a brief codification of what had apparently
become the customary requirements and prohibi-
tions of a primitive state of society. It was called
the “Book of the Covenant,” and was said to have
been read by Moses “in the audience of the peo-
ple '' at Mount Sinai, and to have been commu-
nicated to him by Yahweh himself on the top of
the mountain. More than two centuries after this
was embodied in the “Yahwistic source,” in the
time of the prophet Jeremiah and the reign of
Josiah of Judah, nearly a century after the de-
struction of the Northern Kingdom by Assyria, an
event occurred which not only gave a new develop-
ment to the law, but a new color to all the quasi-
historical material in the great epic. That was the
discovery in the temple at Jerusalem of a “book
of the law,” which aimed at a suppression of
heathen practices in the worship of Yahweh and
the concentration of that worship at the temple in
Jerusalem, to counteract the tendency to lapse into
“heathenism " which beset the people. It was in-
tended to support the doctrine of the theocracy as


22 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
that had already been developed by the prophets.
The substance of this with later additions is con-
tained in the book known as Deuteronomy.
The highest development of the genius of Israel
was reached in the prophets, under the stimulus of
events which preceded and followed the destruc-
tion of Samaria by the Assyrians, B. C. 722, and
those which similarly attended the destruction of
Jerusalem, 586, B. C., by the Babylonians under
Nebuchadrezzar, and the exile of the leading
spirits of the Kingdom of Judah to the land of the
conquerors. These prophets were the great
champions and orators of the theocracy. Some
of their productions were undoubtedly delivered
orally and addressed to the kings and rulers or to
assemblies of the people, and afterwards written
down and elaborated by themselves or others.
Some were labored compositions, containing
highly wrought rhythmical passages and poetical
imagery. In their final collection some of them
were ill-arranged and sadly marred by excision and
interpolation. They contained predictions and
warnings, such as other political orators of an-
tiquity were wont to utter, some of which were
justified by events while others were not. They
are not wholly free from evidence of having been
made by copyists and editors to conform to events
after these had happened.
The earliest of the Hebrew prophets whose im-
pressive oracles are preserved in the Great Epic


LITERARY DEVELOPMENT 23
was Amos, that Judahite herdsman who was im-
pelled to go into the Northern Kingdom in the
time of Jeroboam II, about 760 B.C., to denounce
the iniquities which threatened to bring the wrath
of Yahweh upon that land, doomed to destruction
less than forty years later. The greatest was
Isaiah, who rose at Jerusalem when Samaria was
undergoing its final agony and Zion itself was
menaced by an Assyrian army under Sennacherib.
Other voices were raised during the same period,
but under the long reign of Manasseh there was
a reaction against the stern theocracy of the
prophets, and comparative silence. Then, under
Josiah and his successors, when Judah's life was
again threatened from the East, appeared Jere-
miah to revive with fierce ardour the preaching of
submission to the God of Israel and reliance upon
his power for the salvation of the nation. But
the doom of Judah was not averted. In the exile
itself the voice of prophecy was raised by the rivers
of Babylon in the oracles of Ezekiel. He spoke
in the name of Yahweh but used much imagery
and symbolism borrowed from the heathen land.
Finally, when Cyrus of Persia vanquished Baby-
lon and permitted the captive Jews to return to
their beloved Zion there was an outburst of jubi-
lation from an unknown prophet whose utterances
with others of equally unknown origin, became at-
tached to those of Isaiah in the book bearing his
name.


24 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
-
r
There were “minor prophets” contemporary
with these and others of a later date, but this pe-
culiar development of the literary genius of Israel
reached its height in these, and overshadowed
every other form of expression for more than two
centuries. The epic owes more of its greatness
to this than to any of its other elements. But
other elements were in the making at the same
time. The ancient documents relating to the myth-
ical and legendary period before the Kingdom was
established were worked over with some infusion
of the spirit of the prophets and of the law as
it found expression in the Deuteronomic Code.
This was the spirit of theocracy, which taught that
all trouble or disaster of the nation or the tribes
was due to the sins of the people or their rulers
in worshipping false gods, or to their neglect of
the worship of Yahweh and failure to obey his
commands. It is evident that the chief literary
treasures of the Northern Kingdom were trans-
ferred to Jerusalem on the destruction of Samaria
and were there blended with those of Judah in
the revision of ancient narratives, including those
relating to the period of the Judges and of the
first Kings Saul and David.
The first kingdom was established about Io2O
B. C. David became King of Judah at Hebron
about 1ooo B. C., probably as a vassal of the
Philistines, and a few years later established him-
self as the monarch of all Israel at the old Jebu-


LITERARY DEVELOPMENT 25
site stronghold on Mount Zion, emancipated him-
self from Philistine subjection and extended the
borders of his kingdom by subduing the hostile
forces that surrounded it, maintaining amicable re-
lations all the while with Phoenicia. He was suc-
ceeded by Solomon about 970 B.C., at the end of
whose reign, in 933, the division of the kingdom
came. An independent account of Solomon and
his reign appeared not long after his death, which
became the groundwork of the chapters of the
first Book of Kings relating to him. There were
annals or “chronicles " of the other kings of
both kingdoms, which some believe to have been
combined into one great book after the destruction
of Samaria and not long before the siege and cap-
ture of Jerusalem. This, with the end of the
David stories, the account of Solomon's reign and
some legends of the prophets Elijah and Elisha,
constituted the chief material of the two books
of Kings as they were embalmed in the Epic.
These were compiled in their earliest form be-
fore the fall of Jerusalem and revised during the
exile. There was much literary activity among
the Jews in that fifty years of expatriation at
Babylon, which was regarded as the penalty for
recreancy to their God.
Literary activity continued after the return from
exile especially in elaborating and putting in final
form what had been produced before. This con-
cerned itself largely with what was called “the


26 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
law,” which was still attributed to the direct com-
mands of Israel's God through Moses in the wild-
erness of Sinai. Ezekiel, who was originally a
priest, had in his latest oracles, written after the
return to Jerusalem was assured, outlined the fu-
ture state to be established, with Mount Zion
and a new temple as its centre, and within this out-
line was wrought what is designated by scholars
as the Law of Holiness. Ezra, another priest,
who conducted one of the bodies of returning exiles
and took part in re-establishing the worship and
settling the ecclesiastical polity at Jerusalem, also
drew up a book of the “Law of Moses" which
was read to the people. Afterwards, in the
priestly circles remaining at Babylon, the body of
Levitical law was fully developed, with a quasi-
historical framework of its own, and was finally
blended with other material in the redaction of the
Pentateuch, or five “books of Moses,” and the
Book of Joshua. This latest code furnished the
impressive first chapter of all and supplied modify-
ing traces in Genesis, considerable passages in Ex-
odus, practically all of Leviticus and passages in
Numbers. There is little of it in Deuteronomy,
but it reappears in material passages in Joshua.
Another example of post-exilic literary activity is
the entire recasting of past history in the priestly
spirit as it appears in the book of Chronicles,
divided in modern times, like the Book of Kings,
into two.


LITERARY DEVELOPMENT 27
What may be called the framework of the great
epic was wrought out in progressive fashion dur-
ing a period of five centuries. It presents more
clearly than any formal and systematic history the
experience and the polity of the peculiar people
during a thousand years, escaping as a horde of
fugitives from the confines of Egypt, struggling
with privation and manifold difficulty through long
stretches of desert under a religious leader, fight-
ing or eluding hostile tribes on the way, gaining
a foothold on one side of the Jordan and gradually
conquering a goodly realm on the other, establish-
ing a kingdom which split asunder, falling under
the crushing power of the empires of the east, but
clinging to its faith and its traditions until a rem-
nant of exiles restored the ancient fane and built
on the ruins of their “sacred nation ” a priestly
community which imposed its authority and its
system of faith upon a large part of the world
for many centuries.
Welded upon this framework were varied prod-
ucts of the genius of this people, illustrating its
life, illuminating its experience and perpetuating
its thought and sentiment. There were proverbs
and wise sayings, collected from time to time in
the later days and massed in a “book” of such,
which has no parallel of its kind. There were
hymns and sacred songs, produced at different
periods and under varied circumstances of which
there is no record, but finally developed and ap-


28 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
plied in the ritual and ceremonial of the temple
of Zion. These, gathered in a “book of psalms,”
are without rival in human literature. There were
products of deep meditation upon problems of
existence in the sublime poetry of Job and
the sombre brooding of Ecclesiastes, or the
preacher. There were idyls and stories impressing
some lesson of Jewish experience and faith, and
when at last the hope of material greatness faded,
there were apocalyptic visions of its revival in
God's own time, for had he not made a covenant
with Israel, the breaking of which was inconceive-
able to the devout mind of Hebrew seers? With
these the massive epic was bound up and sealed as
divine by all the authority that could be invoked
for it by men who assumed to speak for the dread
ruler of the universe, and who persuaded them-
selves and the world that their voice was his.


III
THE MAKING OF THE EPIC
As already stated, it was after the middle of
the ninth century B. C., in the Northern Kingdom,
that the narrative appeared known to scholars as
the Yahwist Source of the Pentateuch and Joshua,
and it had a truly Homeric character. The Elo-
hist source of perhaps a century later used much of
the same traditional material; but, so far as pre-
served, it appears to have begun with the story of
Abraham and not of the creation. When the two
were blended into one at Jerusalem after the de-
struction of Samaria, parts of both were sacrificed
to the union, but here and there we find parallel
and somewhat inconsistent accounts of the same
circumstances; and in many places seams and su-
tures of mixed material are apparent. In the copy-
ing and editing that took place after the promulga-
tion, in the latter half of the seventh century B. C.,
of the law which constituted the original substance
of the book that came to be known as Deuteron-
omy, some touches of the theocratic doctrine then
developed by the prophets were impressed upon
the narratives.
Still later, in the time of the exile and after the
29


30 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
return of the priests to the new temple at Jerusa-
lem, where these narratives were made the frame-
work of the fully developed law, further changes
were made, chiefly by excision and interpolation,
but here and there by modified statement to suit
the final purpose of redaction. The original nar-
ratives ran through the conquest of Canaan, and
passages from them appear in the Book of Joshua
and the first chapter of Judges, with traces in the
second chapter of the latter book; but the five
books associated with the name of Moses and mak-
ing the framework of the law were first consecrated
as the true “word of God,” the Canon, or rule of
life, for surviving Israel. It was that introductory
section of the epic which was first translated into
Greek at Alexandria in the Third Century, B. C.,
as the “Book of the Law,” and formed the basis
of what is called the Septuagint version of the
Jewish Scriptures.
In the first of the five books and the first half
of the second there is a rich vein of the work of
the “Yahwist.” It begins with the Adam and
Eve and Garden of Eden myth in the second chap-
ter of Genesis, which, with the story of the flood,
was derived from Babylonian lore; and it puts in
idyllic form stories of the “patriarchs,” the puta-
tive ancestors of the tribes of Israel. In these we
find the source of the doctrine that the possession
of the land was derived from a compact between
Yahweh and Abraham, and a promise renewed to


THE MAKING OF THE EPIC 31
Jacob. The stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
of Ishmael as the ancestor of the kindred tribes
of Arabia, of Esau as the progenitor of the nearer
kin of Edom, and of the daughters of Laban rep-
resenting the kinship of Syria, are told with a
fascinating realism that makes them seem like mat-
ters of fact. The pride and glory of the North-
ern Kingdom to which the original authors of the
material belonged, are celebrated in the story of
Joseph, while the character of Judah is degraded
in the account of his offspring.
Traces of the work of the Elohist do not ap-
pear until the fifteenth chapter of Genesis where the
account is given of the covenant with Abraham, but
from there on it mingles more or less freely with
the earlier material and sometimes slightly con-
fuses it. When the priests revised the work to
suit their purpose after the exile, they supplied the
opening Chapter which contains the impressive
description of the creation in six days and the ad-
vanced conception of the creator. They inter-
posed the genealogies before and after the flood,
confused the account of the flood itself with their
amendments, interpolated the covenant with Noah,
made circumcision the seal of the covenant with
Abraham, gave the ages of most of the charac-
ters and introduced numerous modifying passages.
The whole first book and part of the second are a
treasure house of ancient Hebrew myth, somewhat
marred by writers who strove to make them serve


THE MAKING OF THE EPIC 33
that first accompanied it, which were welded into
the Pentateuch in its final form.
After “The Law,” or the “Books of Moses,”
had been canonized and put beyond further change,
another collection was consecrated and made the
second great section of the epic under the name of
the “prophets.” This included Joshua and
Judges and the so-called historical books of
Samuel and Kings, as well as the oracles
known as prophecies which have personal names
attached to them. This also was wrought over
during the exile and put in final form after the re-
turn of the priests and scribes to Jerusalem. The
material of Joshua was similar to that of the
Pentateuch and it contains some of the oldest and
some of the latest of its elements. The basis of
the Book of Judges, after the first two chap-
ters, was the old hero stories, beginning with that
of Ehud the Benjamite, who assassinated the fat
king of Moab, and ending with Samson who
brought the temple of Dagon down upon his own
head in revenge upon the Philistines, with a later
appendix on the migration of the Danites and the
war of the other tribes upon Benjamin.
Here we have the very oldest of the written
literature of Israel that was preserved, with the
exception of some fragments referred to in the
previous chapter. It has the crude simplicity and
naturalism of other primitive writings and gives


THE MAKING OF THE EPIC 35
The material of the book, or books, of Sam-
uel is of various dates and is irregularly pieced
together and not made to harmonise completely.
The earliest and least sophisticated is that relating
to David's reign in the second book, and next to
that come the stories of David in his relation to
Saul and his life as a freebooter in the mountains
of Judah and a vassal of one of the Philistine
kings. Next comes the more friendly account of
Saul, and latest the stories of Samuel and Saul
which show the prophet and king at enmity with
each other and represent the setting up of the king-
dom as reluctantly assented to by “the Lord ” and
his prophet. These latter originated two or three
centuries after the events to which they relate and
cannot be considered at all as historical. The
element of theocratic pragmatism is introduced in
all the late material.
The two books of Kings do not constitute
a history of the kingdoms, but after the account
of Solomon's reign, derived from a pre-existing
“book of the Acts of Solomon,” it is largely an
argument in support of the theocratic doctrine.
That makes it more fitting as part of the great
national epic than any dry chronicle of events
would be. It had purpose and colour and was
compiled with a view to edification for the future
rather than information of the past. The first
compiler was deeply imbued with the doctrine of
the Deuteronomic Code, that all worship was to


36 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
be centralised at Jerusalem in strict observance of
the law, that the unpardonable sin of Jeroboam,
in which he “caused Israel to sin” and brought
calamity on the nation, was the setting up of places
of worship at Bethel and Dan, and that all use of
shrines and images on the hilltops, or “high
places,” after the ancient manner, as well as wan-
dering after other gods, was infidelity to Yahweh,
which would bring punishment upon the nation.
He was also imbued with the theocratic spirit of
the prophets, which taught that the nation was
the special care of “the Lord,” Yahweh, who pun-
ished it by permitting its enemies to harry and
plunder it, and would destroy it by bringing power-
ful foes upon it from the East if it persisted in
disobedience and unfaithfulness; but who would
rescue and save it whenever it repented and re-
turned to its true allegiance. But he would in
any case bring a purified remnant out of its trib-
ulation to restore the Kingdom of David, which
should abide forever and bring all the earth under
its sway.
The compilation was made from material drawn
from the chronicles or annals of the kingdoms,
Ephraimite legends of prophets and sketches of
wars with Syria, and was directed in a way to serve
the dominant purpose of the compiler. It seems
to have been completed in its earliest form before
the “captivity,” but it was extended and revised
during the exile and received touches from a


THE MAKING OF THE EPIC 37
final redactor before it was embalmed in the
epic.
The oracles of the great prophets before Ezek-
iel and of those “minor prophets” who preceded
the destruction of Jerusalem appear to have been
carried to Babylon by devout exiles with consider-
able confusion of manuscripts, partly arranged and
edited there, and completed after the return.
They were put together in considerable disorder,
and later oracles were added to them or interpo-
lated in them before the second section of the epic
designated as “the prophets” was canonised,
sealed against further change and attached to “the
Law " in the Greek version of the Scriptures.
Isaiah suffered most from the rude editing. The
genuine material, whether written by the prophet
or recorded by faithful scribes, was ill-arranged,
and both older and later oracles were interpolated
between its parts or attached to its close. The
last twenty-seven chapters, as they stand in modern
versions, are much later than the rest, part belong-
ing to the time of release from captivity and part
to a still later day. Jeremiah was less marred in
the make-up and Ezekiel scarcely at all, but there
is some mixing of material of minor prophets after
the exile. Notwithstanding the unskilful handling
of this material, in consequence of the lack of sys-
tematic records and of the historical or critical
sense, it forms the loftiest part of the great epic.
To the Scriptures as thus constituted, after the


38 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
restoration of the temple and the establishment of
the priestly commonwealth of the Jews, was added
a third section before the epic was closed. This
fluctuated for a time and the Christian era opened
before it was finally determined by the canon of
Jewish authorities what books were sacred and
what were secular. It was too late to destroy
literature that was not to be deemed sacred, and
it was only rejected and stamped as “apocrypha.”
Some of this was not inferior to some that was
accepted, but it was not so essential to the complete-
ness of the work that was to illustrate the life and
character of ancient Israel and carry its influence
to future generations.
This third and last section to be welded into
the epic was called simply “the writings,” or in
Greek the “sacred writings,” and in modern
versions of the Jewish Scriptures it is interpolated
in the middle of that originally called “the
prophets,” between the legendary and quasi-his-
torical books and those deemed genuine
prophetic oracles. One of these “writings,”
however, the Book of Daniel, came to be
classed among the prophets, and another, that
of Lamentations, was mistakenly attached to
Jeremiah, as utterances of the prophet, and
though afterwards detached from the book it holds
its place next to it in the arrangement. One of
those always classed among the “minor prophets”
is not a “prophecy,” but an illustrative story in


THE MAKING OF THE EPIC 39
which one of the old prophets, Jonah, the son of
Amittai, figures. Another of “the writings,” the
beautiful idyl of Ruth, which originated after
the restoration of the temple as an appeal against
the cruel edict of the priests separating the faith-
ful from their alien wives, was attached to the
Book of Judges, merely because it related back to
the same heroic age; and, though again detached,
it still holds its place after that book.
For the rest, this section of the epic now begins
with the quasi-historical books of Chronicles
and Ezra and Nehemiah which follow the
books of Kings. Ezra and Nehemiah, once
treated as a single book, relate to the return
from exile, the restoration of the temple and its
worship, the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem,
and the promulgation of the law in the form in
which it was brought back from the priestly
circles at Babylon before the completion of the
Levitical system. The book was compiled a
century or two after the events to which it relates
from material that consisted in part of veritable
memoirs of Ezra, who had brought back a de-
tachment of the exiles, and of Nehemiah, who had
been commissioned by the Persian King Artaxerxes
to rebuild the walls of Zion. It exhibits the lack
of orderly arrangement and of literary skill char-
acteristic of the editing of the time, but is one of
the most truly historical parts of the epic. The
compiler was no doubt the author of the book of


40 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
Chronicles, now divided into two books, and a
priest ardently devoted to the new modes of wor-
ship at the temple. His own book is made up of
genealogies from the time of Adam to David;
and from the establishment of the monarchy it
is a recasting of the history of Judah, with in-
cidental reference to Israel, covering the same
period as the books of Kings. It transforms
this history in the spirit of the priestly system of
the author's day, which he zealously attributes to
David, the founder of the dynasty now considered
a sacred memory and the basis of a hope of great-
ness yet to be realised.
The other books are not arranged on any prin-
ciple; but, as each is an independent element of
the epic, it has no strictly logical place. One of
these was the collection of proverbs and wise say-
ings variously gathered together during the cen-
turies, but commonly attributed to Solomon, who
was represented as a paragon of knowledge and
wisdom by the chroniclers of Judah. Several col-
lections of psalms and sacred songs had been made
and these were massed together and labeled with
the revered name of David. A few of these were
old, but the greater part originated after the exile
and were connected with the temple service. No
element of the great epic reaches a loftier height
of grandeur and sublimity than the dramatic poem
of Job, and nothing in human literature surpasses
it in those qualities.


THE MAKING OF THE EPIC 41
Three more “books" came within the canon
after much questioning and hesitation in the cen-
turies of doubt, when others were being gradually
relegated to the limbo of apocrypha. Esther,
which powerfully embodies the pride and arro-
gance of the Jewish race, in spite of adversity and
humiliation, probably owed its admission to its sup-
posed explanation of the origin of the feast
of Purim. The gloomy and sceptical philosophy
of the greater part of Ecclesiastes, which was
a late post-exilic production, long excluded it, and
it was finally saved by association with the name
of Solomon and by its “conclusion of the whole
matter,” appended by a later hand than that of
the original author, that fear of God and keeping
his commandments was the “whole duty of man,”
and that God would “bring every work into
judgment with every secret thing, whether it be
good or whether it be evil.” “The Song of Songs,
which is Solomon's,” was rescued from oblivion
and stuck as a glittering jewel upon the completed
work, upon an unfounded assumption that it really
was Solomon's, and by an interpretation that made
it symbolise the love of God for his people, which
had as much ground as the later interpretation
which twisted it into a symbol of “Christ's love
for the Church.” It is a charming idyl of purely
human and earthly love, probably wrought from
the wedding songs of the Judean days after the
exile, and gives a glimpse of the side of life in


42 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
those days that relieves the gloom and solemnity
with which it is apt to be too closely associated in
the modern mind.
Properly considered the Book of Daniel closes
the epic. It relates to the desperate struggle of
the Jewish nation for renewed life against the op-
pression of Syria, and prefigures its short-lived
triumph. Though its visions of that triumph,
which was to result in an “everlasting kingdom ''
and the subjection of all other “dominions,” were
doomed to sink under the eclipse of the Roman
power, it was interpreted anew when the dark-
ness fell, as foreshadowing the Messianic time,
when God's Anointed would surely reign in glory,
and all the nations of the earth would be brought
under his sway or be destroyed. Then would all
his saints be redeemed from tribulation and their
enemies brought to shame and everlasting con-
tempt, even to “many of them that sleep in the
dust of the earth.”
Thus we have the early myths and legends of
Israel, the outlines of its history for a thousand
years, the development of its laws and its ethical
ideas, its conceptions of deity and its religious
faith, its wisdom and philosophy, its highest
poetry and its exalted prophecy, wrought by the
concurrent and consecutive efforts of its own
genius during the latter half of that eventful
millenium into one great work of literature, which
has been regarded as a sacred heritage by a large


THE MAKING OF THE EPIC 43
part of mankind ever since. It is a human work
in the sense that all the history and literature of
mankind are human work, and divine only as all
that is wrought through man for the elevation and
progress of the race may be regarded as divine.
It is open to the study of man as all the work
of God and man is open to his study, with the free-
dom of thought and reason with which man is
endowed by his maker. It is only by breaking
the seal of peculiar sanctity and exclusiveness which
Jewish priests and rabbis imposed upon it two
thousand years ago, that the interest of men at
this day can be revived in its contents, and a living
benefit can be again derived from its lessons.
With this in mind we will now try to get a fuller
and clearer view of what it contains.


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 45.
the presence of nature, vivid imagination and un-
curbed credulity. Hence their speculations on the
origin of things took the form of myths, created
by a poetic imagination, but accepted for truth as
readily as are the results of research in these
modern days.
The epic opens, as we have seen, with an ac-
count of the creation, prefixed to it at a late day
and derived from Babylon in the time of the
exile. It is much loftier in conception than what
follows it, which is five centuries older. The old
myth of the creation was of Chaldean origin and
appears to have been curtailed when this prelude
was prefixed to it, but enough of it remains to
show that it did not represent the earth as emerg-
ing from a waste of waters, but as being itself an
arid waste, waiting for the mist to rise and the
rain to fall. The story of the creation of man
and woman and their environment in the garden
also had its germ in Chaldean lore, but it bears
the true impress of Hebrew genius in its doctrine
of human life as a fall from the favour of God
and a struggle for the grace of an alienated and
resentful deity, who had been disobeyed in the
very infancy of mankind. The God of these
early myths is created in the image of man, a high
ideal for the time of its conception, but it is crude
according to any rational estimate of modern times.
He fashions man from clay and woman from his
rib, and breathes life into them; he walks in the


46 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
garden, asks questions and gives commands, and
he drives the disobedient pair from paradise into
a lonely world, which speedily appears neverthe-
less to be old and occupied, and he soon decides
his first experiment to have been a failure and
destroys all but one family with a flood of waters
and starts anew with the human race, but with
little greater success. The story of the deluge,
as well as that of the Garden of Eden found its
suggestion in Chaldean mythology.
Incongruity soon appears in this story of the
beginning of the race on account of the diversity
of material of which it is composed. The ancient
fragment which gives the descent of Lamech from
Cain came from an author who knew nothing of
the cutting off of the race by a flood of waters,
for Lamech, who in other material is made the
father of Noah, begets children who are the pro-
genitors of those who invented the arts and crafts
of the writer's time. The genealogy which makes
Lamech descend from Seth in seven generations,
instead of from Cain in five, and makes him the
father of Noah, is one of the interpolations from
the post-exilic priestly writing, by which also the
Yahwist's account of the flood is somewhat con-
fused in the final redaction. It is the same priestly
writer of a late day that devised the covenant with
Noah of which the rainbow was to be the token.
There is an ancient fragment which makes Canaan,
instead of Ham, the son of Noah upon whom the


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 47
curse of subjection is pronounced, and another
that accounts for the dispersion of mankind by
the confusion of tongues when the audacious at-
tempt was made to reach heaven with a tower,
instead of by the division of the family of Noah,
whose descendants had the names of places and
tribes known in the time of the writer who
described the “generations" of the Sons of Noah.
The formal genealogy of the line of Shem, like
that of the line of Seth to Noah, is an interpola-
tion from the priest's writing after the exile.
These preliminary myths, leading to the ap-
pearance of Abram, or Abraham, as the ancestor
of Israel, are crude, but they are intended to exalt
the Hebrew race above the rest of mankind and
they serve that purpose effectively. There is more
skill displayed in the series of ethnic myths em-
bodied in the stories of the patriarchs, and they
are less marred by mixture of material and the
meddling of late scribes. Here the peculiar genius
of the writer known as the Yahwist appears at its
best.
The earliest time to which these myths can be
traced was four or five centuries after the sup-
posed deliverance from Egyptian bondage under
Moses and the struggles through the deserts to
the “promised land.” It was nearly a century
and a half after the setting up of the Kingdom of
Saul, and many years after its division on the death
of Solomon into two, the stronger of which ar-


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 49
and it was claimed as an ancestral name by all the
Semitic tribes of the West, though Israel made it
peculiarly its own. Israel's early writers took
pride in deriving its ancestry from the ancient
empire of Babylonia, or Chaldea, and brought
their “Abram ” from one of its chief capitals,
Uru, or “Ur of the Chaldees,” with kinsmen
who became progenitors of other nations akin to
Israel. Canaan had been won by bloody conquest
and trampling upon its original inhabitants, but
possession was to be justified and sanctified by a
promise to Abram, whose name was then changed
to Abraham, and to his descendants, and by a
solemn covenant between him and his god, who
was to be the god of all his posterity.
This posterity the deity would multiply and
make his peculiar care until in it all the nations of
the earth should be blessed. Intermediate be-
tween the Chaldean progenitor and the supplanter,
whose sons were to be the fathers of all the twelve
tribes, a link was interposed with a name of cheer-
ful omen, “Isaac’’ or “laughter,” associated
with the ancient fane nearest to Egypt, that of
Beersheba. He was sanctified as a special gift of
God by being made the offspring of his parents
when they were old and when the mother had
been previously barren all her life. Precedence
in point of time, in accordance with historic fact,
was given to kindred tribes of Arabia, but they
were made the offspring of an Egyptian slave in


5o THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
the service of Abram and Sarai, not yet trans-
formed to Abraham and Sarah, in the person
of Ishmael, in whom was personified the char-
acter of a people whose hand was against all
others. Other tribes of inferior rank were cred-
ited to Abraham by a second marriage.
The personality of Isaac is not clearly defined,
but it is different with that of Rebekah through
whom the relation of Israel to Syria and to Edom
is portrayed. Nahor, the name of a place in
Mesopotamia, is made the brother of Abram; and
to his granddaughter, Rebekah, Isaac is married,
Abraham sending a servant of Damascene origin
to bring her. Haran was also the name of a
place, but it was made a brother of Abram who
had died in the land of the “Chaldees,” but
through whose son, Lot, the Ammonites and
Moabites were to be accounted for.
Edom was older than Israel and closely allied
in blood, and there had been rivalry between them
in the early days of the kingdom, which, before the
time of the Yahwist writer, had resulted in Israel
gaining the upper hand in its own territory. In
the myth of Isaac and Rebekah, Esau represent-
ing Edom, and Israel, under the name of Jacob,
were twins. Esau was the first-born, but was sup-
planted by his brother. The story, as we have it,
is of mixed material and has two different accounts
of the manner in which Jacob secured the prece-
dence over Esau. His name is explained by his


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 5 I
grasping his brother by the heel at birth and ac-
cording to one account he craftily buys the birth-
right with a mess of pottage, and according to the
other secures his ascendancy by the wily trick, to
which his Syrian mother incites him, of obtain-
ing the blessing of his blind father which was in-
tended for the first-born.
Israel's supremacy by divine favour and human
duplicity being thus established, the kinship with
Syria is made more prominent by Jacob being sent
thither to marry a daughter of Laban, his mother's
brother. Syria's duplicity appears in the trick by
which Laban imposes upon Jacob first the elder
and less attractive daughter, whom he did not de-
sire, and making him serve a second seven years
for Rachel, the younger; but Jacob shows his
superiority in craft by contriving to get into his
own possession the bulk of Laban's property. The
relative position of the tribes is most skilfully
illustrated in the birth of Jacob's children by the
two wives and their two handmaidens, and there
is nothing in all literature that surpasses in com-
pactness and vividness the manner in which
national characteristics are embodied in Esau,
Laban and Jacob. The traits personified in the
last named by the genius of the authors of these
myths persisted throughout the history of Israel
and are a heritage of the Jews to this day.
The point of view of the writers to whom we
owe these graphic pictures of Israel's mythical


52 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
origin was that of the Northern Kingdom, to which
they belonged and which they magnified over
Judah. This accounts for the character of the
stories of the Sons of Jacob. The Judahite
writer who after the destruction of Samaria
blended their narratives into one, and the subse-
quent scribes who copied and revised the work, did
not efface or seriously mar this character, which
so glorified Joseph at the expense of his brethren.
The name Joseph implied separation and was given
to all that territory which had broken away from
Judah after the death of Solomon. Its dominant
domain was Ephraim, which Judahite writers were
wont to use as a designation of the whole kingdom
called by its own subjects “Israel,” and the next
in rank was Manasseh, mainly on account of its
territorial extent. Those two were regarded as
the sons of Joseph, whose name loomed above all
others in the family of Jacob.
According to tradition the oldest of the tribes
was Reuben, which settled permanently on the
East side of the Jordan and in some unexplained
way had committed outrage upon the family and
had disappeared as a distinct territorial designa-
tion. It is referred to disparagingly in that oldest
of Israel's heroic ballads, the “Song of Deborah,”
and there is a poetical allusion to its national
offence in the so-called “Blessing of Jacob.” By
the same figure of speech it is embodied in a brief
statement in the Yahwist narrative. Reuben is


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 53
made the first-born of Leah. There was another
tribe that had been associated in tradition with
Judah in the far south under the name of Simeon
but had faded out. It was made the second son
of Leah. There had been a class of wandering
priests or ministers of worship in the primitive
times known as Levites, and though they had no
territory or inheritance of their own in the king-
dom, they were exalted into a tribe as the Sons of
Levi, the third son of Leah. Judah, which was a
kingdom by itself, was given the place of fourth
son of Jacob and Leah.
Meantime no offspring was vouchsafed to
Rachel. Four of the tribes or districts of minor
rank were assigned to Jacob's paternity by hand-
maids of his two wives, the names being explained
by circumstances of their birth, or rather of their
conception. First, the handmaid of Rachel gave
birth to Dan and Naphtali and then that of Leah
to Gad and Asher. Two other tribes were
granted the maternity of Leah, Issachar and
Zebulun. Leah also had a daughter, Dinah,
who served the sole purpose of accounting for an
apparently unprovoked attack which, according to
tradition, Simeon and Levi had made upon She-
chem. Shechem, as well as the Israelite clans,
was personified in the story. At last the beloved
Rachel was blessed with a son, that Joseph who
was so glorified as the saviour of the family. After
that, Jacob left Laban with his wives and children


54 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
and the flocks and herds he had acquired in “serv-
ing ” his father-in-law. In the brief account of
the parting the political relation of Israel and Syria
is symbolised and incidentally that of Israel with
the brother nation of Edom. The craft of Jacob
appears in contrast with the relative obtuseness and
gullibility of Laban, and his cringing timidity com-
pares unfavourably with the frankness and courage
of Esau; but national characteristics are exhibited
with unshrinking candour. Finally, on the journey
through the heritage of Israel Rachel dies in giving
birth to Jacob's youngest son, the little but warlike
tribe of Benjamin, which furnished the first king
of Israel.
This manner of accounting for the nation and
the different tribes or divisions of which it had at
one time or another been composed, is in the true
spirit and manner of old mythologies, but it has
a vivid realism peculiar to the Hebrew genius. It
is followed, after a genealogy of the family of
Esau, or the “generations" of Edom, mainly
a late interpolation,- by the remarkable glorifi-
cation of the Northern Kingdom at the expense of
Judah embodied in the story of Joseph and his
brethren, which also serves to account, in a man-
ner to cover the humiliation, for the falling into
servitude in Egypt. That this should have been
preserved with so little defacement by the Judean
writers who blended the original material and
afterwards revised and completed the narratives,


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 55
seems strange, and still more so that they should
have interposed between the account of selling
Joseph into Egypt and his rise to greatness there,
the old story about Judah and his children which
was obviously intended to cast obloquy on the
royal line of that kingdom.
In any other literature the mythical character of
what we have been considering would be taken for
granted. There were attempts by various peoples
in ancient times both before and after the age of
Israel's literary development to account for the
origin of the world and the human race, and
various mythical accounts of the birth and growth
of nations. There were personifications of places
and of tribes and nations with names of imaginary
ancestors and founders, and the chief peculiarity
of those of the Hebrews is their close connection
with the development of a religious system of a
high order, which took a hold upon mankind and
maintained it for centuries, moulding human faith
upon enduring lines.
The ancient poem introduced into one of the
old narratives which were blended in the Book of
Genesis, known as “Jacob's Blessing ” of his sons,
affords a striking illustration of the use of these
personal names as applied to the so-called tribes
of Israel. This antedates the Yahwist narrative
and must have been written before the division of
the kingdom on the death of Solomon. In spite
of its strong personifications, its reference to


56 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
divisions of the people rather than to individual
persons is quite obvious. It is inconceivable as
the utterance of a dying patriarch speaking of his
living sons, and comprehensible only as a poetical
description of the characteristics of the several
tribes or sections, when the sceptre was held by
Judah after a conflict with enemies, while Joseph
was a flourishing region. The historic degrada-
tion of the oldest tribe for its obscure dereliction
is referred to. The next two are condemned for
violence, in apparent allusion to the attack upon
Shechem, mythically figured in the story of Dinah.
They were to be scattered in Israel, as Simeon and
Levi had disappeared as separate tribes, and Levi
was evidently not then regarded as the father
of the priesthood. There is no reference to
Ephraim and Manasseh, but in the narrative just
preceding the poem they had received a blessing
which gave Ephraim precedence, though Manas-
seh was the elder. Benjamin, who in the story is
depicted as a beloved child, is likened in the poem
to a ravening wolf, in allusion to predatory ex-
ploits of the tribe.
There is a much later poem personifying the
tribes, known as the “Blessing of Moses" for
the children of Israel, which was introduced into
the Book of Deuteronomy. This distinctly orig-
inated in the Northern Kingdom some time after
the division, when it was strongly conscious of its
own pre-eminence. It has a prayer that Reuben


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 57
may yet survive, but it ignores the existence of
Simeon. By this time Levi is recognised as the
father of the priesthood and without tribal re-
lation. Judah is referred to slightingly as the one
that is separated from his people. Benjamin is
the beloved of the Lord, but a lavish wealth of
blessing is bestowed upon Joseph, and his divi-
sion into Ephraim and Manasseh is recognised.
As in the other poem the reference to the other
Sons of Jacob imply tribal or territorial charac-
teristics.
There is another significant use of these per-
sonal names for tribes or clans in a fragment of
the Yahwist narrative which is included in the be-
ginning of the Book of Judges, where “the Lord,”
that is, the God Yahweh, is represented as saying
that Judah should go up first to fight against the
Canaanites, and Judah says to Simeon his brother
“Come up with me into my lot that we may fight
against the Canaanites and I likewise will go with
thee into thy lot. So Simeon went with him.”
This throws an unmistakable light upon the man-
ner of personifying the clans of Israel and the
process of evolving from their names and relation-
ship the stories of the patriarch and his ancestors
and his sons.
Having thus considered the character and pur-
pose of these ethnic myths, we are better prepared
to bestow a glance upon the manner in which they
are used in the composite narratives, from the ap-


58 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
pearance of Abram, or Abraham, to the death
of Jacob, whose sons were kept in Egypt. Abram
is called by “the Lord ”— this phrase is com-
monly used in our English version for the name
Yahweh — out of “Ur of the Chaldees,” with
his brother and the son of a deceased brother, and,
after sojourning for a time in Haran for the propa-
gation of the Syrian branch of the family by his
brother, he is made to traverse the land to be con-
secrated as the heritage of his descendants, and to
go down into Egypt in a time of famine to
demonstrate the care of “the Lord ” over him and
over his wife's chastity. Then is presented the
episode of the separation from him of his nephew
Lot, who was to become the progenitor of the
Ammonites and Moabites, these being degraded
as the offspring of drunkenness and incest. Lot
dwelt in the cities of the plain of Jordan, while
Abram remained in the land of Canaan, with his
tent at the Oak of Mamre.
It was one of the latest revisers of those old
tales who took occasion here to introduce the ac-
count of the invasion of the Jordan plain from
the east, in which Abram appears as a warrior
chieftain to rescue Lot from his captors and do
homage to the King of Salem (peace) and priest of
God Most High. There may have been some old
tradition to found it upon, but it is plainly a work
of the imagination, and is quite incongruous with
what precedes and follows it.


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 59
Although the description of the destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah, the escape of Lot and the
birth of Moab and Ammon in the mountain, might
naturally be expected to come in here, it is pre-
ceded by a somewhat lurid account of the solemn
promise of God to Abram, in which the hand of
the Elohist writer is discerned for the first time,
and which was elaborated by a late redactor.
Here also appears the Yahwist version, somewhat
modified by later hands, of the birth of Ishmael,
child of the Egyptian handmaid Hagar, and their
expulsion from the family by the jealousy of Sarai.
What follows that, as a formal account of the
covenant between God and Abram of which cir-
cumcision is made the token, and of the change of
names to Abraham and Sarah, with the first ver-
sion of the promise of the birth of Isaac, is from
the pen of the post-exilic writer who made these
narratives the prelude and framework of the
elaborate system known as the Priests' Code.
In the story of the iniquity of Sodom and
Gomorrah, the destruction of the cities and the
escape of Lot, which follows after this interrup-
tion, there is an interesting view of the Yahwist's
conception of deity, in harmony with that which
appears in the story of the Garden of Eden. Yah-
weh appears in the guise of a man with two at-
tendants, and holds familiar converse with Abra-
ham, has a mild controversy with him, and makes
the promise of the birth of a son, which causes


60 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
the amusement that explains the name of Isaac.
The whole episode, is in the alluring manner of
this greatest of primitive writers and was not
marred by later editing.
The Elohist writer, whose work was woven
more or less closely with that of the Yahwist from
here on, had an account of an experience of Abra-
ham and Sarah with Abimelech, King of Gerar,
which was a variant of the Yahwist's account of
the experience of Abram and Sarai in Egypt.
Notwithstanding the similarity, this is also pre-
served in the narrative, while, later on, a similar
experience of Isaac and Rebekah with this King of
Gerar is drawn from the Yahwist source, revealing
the confusion caused by making from variants of
the same mythical story different experiences of
characters represented to be real. After the state-
ments regarding the birth of Isaac the Elohist's
version of the ejection of Hagar and Ishmael is
introduced, which is not made wholly consistent
with that of the earlier writer. From the same
source is the account of the “Offering of Isaac,”
which may be taken not only as exhibiting the
obedience and faith of Abraham, but as symbolis-
ing the substitution of animal for human sacrifice.
The prosaic account of the death and burial of
Sarah is an interpolation of the priestly writers
after the exile.
The story of the wooing of Rebekah by proxy
and the marriage of Isaac is a charming passage


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 61
from the epic genius known as the Yahwist. That
of the birth of Esau and Jacob and the supplant-
ing of the first-born by the second-born twin is
somewhat confused by a mixture of material from
the two sources, and imperfect efforts to blend it
harmoniously. Close analysis has been made, but
it is not necessary to our purpose. It was the
Elohist who made Esau a red and hairy man, and
the Yahwist who made the father blind. The lat-
ter never attempts to disguise the craft or duplicity
of his characters. There is a similar mingling of
material in the account of Jacob's migration to
Syria, his relations with Laban, the birth of his
children, and his encounter with his brother of
Edom on his return to Canaan. Upon the myth-
ical character and significance of these incidents
there is no further occasion to enlarge. Consider-
ing the time and manner of their production, cen-
turies after the supposed events, to argue for their
reality as history is to indulge in nonsense.
The same is true of the delightful story of
Joseph and his brethren, which is also somewhat
marred by an imperfect blending of material. The
most picturesque, pathetic and lifelike touches are
always those of that unknown Homer of the
Hebrews called the Yahwist or Jehovist. That
writer lived at the time when the Kingdom of that
part of Israel known as Joseph, or as Ephraim
and Manasseh, was at its highest estate, while
Judah, after the death of Solomon and before the


62 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
time of Hezekiah, was in eclipse. The pride and
sense of superiority of the northern kingdom crops
out at many points in spite of the privilege which
Judean writers exercised so freely of editing its
literature after the kingdom wºº destroyed. This
sense of superiority was exemplified at a much later
time in the reply of King Jehoash to Amaziah of
Judah when he proposed an alliance. “The
thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that
was in Lebanon saying, ‘Give thy daughter to
my son to wife’; and there passed a wild beast
that was in Lebanon and trod down the thistle.”
The Yahwist writer appeared but two genera-
tions or so after the return of Jeroboam from his
sojourn in Egypt, to become the first king of Israel
and to lord it over Judah. It was in that interval
that the myths arose regarding the title to the land
of Canaan, the origin of the tribes of Israel in
the Sons of Jacob, and the reasons for going down
to Egypt to fall into galling servitude. What
companions Jeroboam had in Egypt, what lore he
may have brought from there, we do not know,
but there is evidence, even in the unfriendly
record, that he was a man of great ability and
was treated with consideration by the reigning
Pharaoh. It is probable that out of that sojourn
grew the first accounts of the deliverance and sug-
gestions for the story of Joseph's glory and great-
ness and the humiliation of his brethren. It is
certain that there could be nothing historical in the


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 63
accounts of what preceded the servitude, and even
those of the escape, so long before they appeared,
could be nothing else than legendary, with mythical
elaboration. When for ages there are no written
records, tradition may carry through memory
from generation to generation the main outline of
events and the chief features of great characters,
but only imagination can supply details and furnish
thought and language to the departed actors; and
whatever is above the range of common human
experience comes necessarily from invention.
The account of the exodus from Egypt is hardly
less mythical than that of the origin of the tribes
and their title to the land which they wrested by
barbarous warfare from the Canaanites. How
could it be otherwise after the lapse of nearly five
centuries between the event and the earliest writ-
ten material of the narratives which were after-
wards woven together and elaborated to form the
framework of the latest development of the law,
in the time of the priests who restored the worship
at Jerusalem after the exile? During that event-
ful period there had been a change of language
and the adoption of writing from Phoenicia, and
no inscriptions or authentic memorials reaching
back of the kings have ever been discovered. Con-
sidering that the name Moses virtually meant de-
liverer, or one that draws out, even the personality
for which it stands recedes into the realm of myth,
though there must have been a potent and resolute


64 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
leader to take the “mixed multitude" from the
borders of Egypt through the perils and trials of
the wilderness to the Jordan Valley, an achieve-
ment which according to tradition had occupied
forty years. If there was such a period, the actual
incidents of the prolonged experience are unre-
corded and the character of the condensed story
marks it as in the main fictitious.
This is necessarily so of such happenings as the
birth of Moses, his meeting with the God Yahweh
at Mount Horeb, when the deity was revealed in
fire in a bush that was not consumed, and his
personal converse with that divinity, who had dis-
covered the oppression of his people in Egypt and
determined to bring them out with a mighty hand
and an outstretched arm, of the miraculous but
cruel afflictions visited upon the Egyptians, to
humiliate their stubborn ruler and demonstrate the
might and implacable vengeance of Israel's God,
of the crossing of the Red Sea and the fulmination
of divine commands from Mount Sinai, the later
name for Horeb, and of the incidents of the long
journey with their supernatural accompaniments.
To argue for the reality of these things is to re-
nounce the benefit of all modern knowledge and
discard the function of reason which men have
been training in these later centuries.
It is sufficient to consider the reality of the
deity as conceived of by the earliest writers of
Israel, when it came to a struggle or a conflict


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 65
with the enemies of their people. This God, who
had promised to his own peculiar people a land
occupied by others, to be seized by the ruthless
extermination of its inhabitants, was pictured as
lying in wait in his mountain fastness until the cry
of his oppressed people reached him, and then
rescuing them by an exhibition of terror and
cruelty which would be universally denounced as
barbarous if it came within the compass of any
human despot and was exercised by him to ac-
complish his purpose. To say nothing of the
other plagues, the slaughter of the first-born of .
all the families of Egypt is a horror compared
with which the equally mythical massacre by
Herod of the children of Bethlehem sinks into in-
significance. Was it a real deity who counselled
the spoiling of the Egyptians, who broke out in
fiery wrath when his people complained and had
to be remonstrated with by his servant to prevent
him from killing them, who did kill thousands of
them by sending fiery serpents and famine and
pestilence among them as a penalty for disobedi-
ence, and who descended upon a mountain top in
clouds and darkness and revealed his presence in
lightning and thunder, declaring that he would
break through all bounds and destroy the people
if they attempted to “gaze upon the Lord?”
Was it not rather the conception of a rude age
and the creation of a vivid imagination, to impress
the people with awe and give a tremendous sanc-


66 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
tion to the rules of conduct and the worship de-
manded of them by their leaders and teachers?
It does not follow that there was deliberate or
conscious invention or intent to deceive, any more
than in the case of the mythology of Egypt or
Chaldea, of Greece and Rome or of Mediaeval
Europe. The writers may have thought their
imagination to be the inspiration of their God and
believed what they wrote or said to be true, for
they did not distinguish thought from knowledge
where real knowledge was unattainable. There
may have been traces of tradition upon which to
string the narratives that run through the books
of Exodus and of Numbers but in the main they
are mythical, the imagining of poetic genius.
Their vivid realism and the insistent claim of a
divine origin have long imposed upon a credulous
world.
These narratives are of a composite character
throughout. Passages have been identified by the
learned as from the Yahwist document, others
from the Elohist and more from the blend pro-
duced from these by later writers. There are
interpolations by the priestly writers of the exile
and after, including most of the elaboration of
the law in the later chapters of Exodus, practi-
cally all of Leviticus and a considerable part
of Numbers. Deuteronomy is to be consid-
ered as a separate production. The mythical
element runs into the account of the conquest in


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 67
the Book of Joshua, and the legends that follow
are not wholly free from it. The Book of Exodus,
as far as the lurid description of Mount Sinai and
the fulmination of the law, is for the most part
from the composite production of the so-called
Yahwist and Elohist as combined or blended at a
later time and finally edited after the exile. The
scraps of genealogy and the instructions for the
observance of the passover are interpolations from
the late priestly writings, and the account of the
feeding upon manna before the mountain is
reached is elaborated from the same source. The
triumphal song after crossing the Red Sea is gen-
erally believed by scholars to have been included
in one of the ancient documents; but some, in view
of the reference immediately afterwards to the
Song of Miriam, of which only a fragment is pre-
served, regard it as a later interpolation. The
battle with Amalek at the end of chapter xvii,
the wise counsel of Moses's father-in-law in chap-
ter xxviii, and the description of the scene on
Mount Sinai in chapter xix, are ascribed to the
Elohist. The version of the passage generally
known as the Ten Commandments, introduced im-
mediately after the description, is probably a late
recension. The real purpose of the scene was ap-
parently to introduce what is designated as the
“Book of the Covenant,” beginning at xx, 22,
and extending to xxiii, 19. This was incorpo-
rated in one of the older documents, but was sub-


68 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
sequently modified to some extent. The narrative
is resumed after that, where it contains the state-
ment that Moses went up on the mountain with
Aaron and Abihu and came down to tell the people
“all the words of the Lord ” and to write them
down. This is interrupted by a diverse and much
later account of Moses going up with Joshua and
waiting six days for an interview with “the Lord ”
and remaining on the mountain forty days and
forty nights.
The next six chapters, containing the directions
for constructing the tabernacle, the tent of meeting,
&c., are unquestionably post-exilic, belonging to
what the scholars call the “Priests' Code,” as are
the subsequent chapters telling how the instruc-
tions were executed. The absurdity of supposing
that anything like this was actually done in the
Wilderness of Sinai is sufficiently obvious, but the
purpose was to give an ancient and divine sanc-
tion to the ceremonial devices of the second temple.
Between these two descriptions of the trappings of
the temple prototype there is another composite
passage of peculiar interest. It begins with the
account of the making of the golden calf, which
was intended at the time of its production by the
Elohist writer as a lesson and a warning to those
of the Northern Kingdom who were enticed to
heathenism by the symbols set up by Jeroboam I
for the worship at Bethel and Dan. It had been
previously represented in the narrative that “the


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 69
Lord ” promised to give Moses two tables of
stone upon which he had written “the law and the
commandment.” Now it is said that Moses after
dissuading “the Lord ” from destroying the
people in the heat of passion came down with the
two tables of stone written on both sides by God
himself, broke all the commandments in anger
at what met his view by throwing them down,
and burnt and ground to powder an image made
of gold, or perhaps of gilded wood. After the
wrath of “the Lord ” has been appeased by the
slaughter of about three thousand men and he
had renewed his promise and his threat, Moses
was directed to hew two new tables of stone and
take them up the mountain for the Lord to write
upon. This he did, and, after a parley with the
Lord, certain distinct covenants were uttered and
Moses was directed to write them down; and
after again being with the Lord forty days and
forty nights he “wrote upon the tables the
words of the covenant, the ten commandments,”
manifestly meaning the words that had then been
given him. This is what the ancient writers
meant by the ten commandments, and what we
call the decalogue was a later production, of which
there was more than one version. The descrip-
tion of Moses coming down from the mountain
with a shining face and having to put on a veil
when speaking to the “congregation ” is from the
late material of the post-exilic priests.


7o THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
From the same source is all the elaboration of
the law, the commands, the observances of sacri-
fice and worship that follow in Leviticus and
Numbers. The more or less mythical narra-
tives of the irregular march through “the wilder-
ness,” that is, the deserts of Arabia, are resumed
near the end of chapter x of the latter book, and
we get the mixture of ancient material again,
with here and there intimations of still older po-
etic sources. Here is the original account of the
feeding on manna and the miraculous supply of
quails with which the people were sickened of
their complaining by being smitten with a “very
great plague.” Here also we find the story of
Miriam stricken with leprosy because she and
Aaron remonstrated with Moses for marrying a
Cushite woman. There is the same conception
of deity as a jealous being, quickly provoked to
wrath, fierce in anger, vengeful toward those who
disobeyed him and toward the enemies of his peo-
ple, but easily mollified by evidences of repentance
and submission,- surely not a real divinity ac-
cording to any rational conception now possible,
but the product of the imagination in a primitive
time, like other ancient gods.
The descriptions of the experience on that mem-
orable but unremembered journey must in all
reason and conscience be regarded as mythical or
as fictitious. There are evidences here and there
of inventions for a specific purpose, as in the latest


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 71
material of the mixed account of the insurrection
against the authority of Moses and Aaron under
the leadership of Korah, Dathan and Abiram.
Tradition of some such incident appears in the
older narrative, but it was turned to account by
the latest revisers to establish the authority of the
priesthood in the family of Aaron and consecrate
the distinction between priests and Levites, which
never existed before the exile. In connection
with this also there is an exhibition of that ruthless
wrath which characterised the God Yahweh in
those troublous times.
There is relief in the more truly mythical epi-
sodes, like that of the attempt of the King of
Moab to repel the horde that was invading his
kingdom by getting the prophet Balaam to curse
it. There are two accounts of this, one from the
Yahwist and the other from the Elohist, which are
imperfectly harmonised by the compiler who
adopted both. The turning of the intended curse
to a blessing seems in the two accounts to be a
variation of poetic material from a common
source, much older than either of them. The
picture of Israel that it presents could hardly have
been drawn after the division of the first kingdom
and could not be earlier than the triumph of Da-
vid and the preparation for the glory of Solomon.
The enumeration of the people, the establish-
ment of the law of inheritance and the various
ordinances regarding sacrifices and offerings, to-


72 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
gether with the allotment of tribes in the promised
land and the review of the various stages of the
journey, in short, practically all of the Book of
Numbers after the Balaam episode came from
the late material of the priestly writers. The
main substance of the Book of Deuteronomy is
a version of the law discovered in the time of Jo-
siah of Judah, with introductory discourses of
later origin attributed to Moses, and some addi-
tions and variations. Near to its close is the po-
etical production known as the “Song of Moses"
which probably had its origin in the time of the
exile, and the so-called “Blessing of Moses,”
which is much older and has been already suffi-
ciently considered. The book ends with the ac-
count of the death of Moses before the invasion
of Canaan. This is a comparatively late addi-
tion to the older narratives. The leadership
passed to Joshua with the necessary divine sanc-
tion, and his name was connected with the book
which gives an account of the conquest, as that of
Moses was associated with all that preceded it,
when the mass of Epic literature was finally com-
pacted.
The mythical element strongly asserts itself in
the material of Joshua derived from the Yah-
wist and the Elohist sources, as a considerable
part of it was. This appears as clearly in the
story of crossing the Jordan as in that of crossing
the Red Sea, and is plain enough in that of the


THE MYTHS OF ISRAEL 73
siege and capture of Jericho. It is unmistakable
in the account of Joshua's battles, the first failure
at Ai on account of the sin of Achan, and the tri-
umph after the offender had been stoned to death;
the wily proceeding of the emissaries of Gibeon
whereby certain cities were saved from destruc-
tion, and, according to later revisers of the ma-
terial, the subjection of Canaanites to menial serv-
ice was justified; the league of the five kings of the
Amorites and their fate, and the subjection of
King Jabin of Hazor and his allies.
The systematic account of the extermination
of the inhabitants and devastation of the towns
of various sections of the land, and the al-
lotment to the different tribes of Israel, is
of later production and fictitious rather than
mythical. It was intended to prefigure the
restoration of the inheritance after the return
from exile. Most of this material was de-
rived from the framework of the “Priests’
Code " in post-exilic days. The account of
Joshua's farewell address in chapter xxiii is,
however, older, and his rehearsing of past
events before the tribes gathered at Shechem,
and his urgent warning against idolatry, is ascribed
by the learned to the Elohist writer, who lived
and wrote in the anxious days of Jeroboam II,
when the warning was most needed. The last
trace of these distinctly mythological productions
is found at the beginning of the Book of Judges.


V
HEROIC AND HISTORIC LEGENDS
ONE of the most interesting portions of the
Hebrew epic is that which covers the legendary
period between the conquest of Canaan and the
establishment of the monarchy. Much that is
legendary is mingled with the mythical and with a
later fictitious element, in the account of the con-
quest itself, and the character of Joshua is hardly
more real than that of Moses or Aaron. But tra-
ditions of the time when there was no King in Is-
rael and heroes arose to lead the people to bat-
tle when beset by enemies, came nearer to the
light of history, and the original form of the
stories of these champions and their exploits were
probably written down earlier than any of the
other narratives or perhaps anything in the whole
composite work, except a few ancient fragments.
The pristine flavour was preserved through all the
processes of compilation, revision and redaction.
But the period was a long one, of two centuries
or more, and one of obscure transition, with scat-
tered and unorganised tribes slowly gaining their
ascendancy and imperfectly coalescing. Few were
the events preserved in memory to furnish mate-
74


HEROIC AND HISTORIC LEGENDS 75
rial for the first writers, more than a century after
the latest of these events were passed. It was an
age of relative barbarism, of low conceptions of
deity and humanity and of the relations of men
to each other and to their gods. The champions
who arose in time of trouble became rulers only
locally and temporarily, when they became such
at all, and the title by which they were known is
imperfectly rendered in English by the word
“Judges.” In what is called the Book of
Judges we must distinguish that which covers
these legends of heroes, contained in the chapters
from the third to the sixteenth, and the later ap-
pendix of five chapters relating to the migration
of the Danites and to the war upon Benjamin.
These legends first appeared in written form
sometime after the division into two kingdoms
and in that known as Israel, or Ephraim, which
held that of Judah almost in contempt, notwith-
standing the achievements of David and Solomon.
When they were afterwards compiled into a con-
tinuous narrative there was an attempt to fill the
gaps with the names of other “judges " than the
heroes of these tales, but there were scarcely any
exploits remembered with which to credit them.
We are told of a Shamgar who saved Israel by
smiting six hundred Philistines with an ox goad,
and of others who had thirty sons that rode on
asses' colts or thirty sons and thirty daughters,
these apparently being symbolical expressions


76 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
for the domain they ruled. Still later, when
this literature passed into the possession of Ju-
dah, after the destruction of Samaria, and when
the theocratic doctrine was developed, which at-
tributed all trouble or calamity to the anger of
“the Lord” when his people sinned or provoked
his jealousy by wandering after other gods, and
credited every deliverance or triumph to his favour
| after the people repented or had been duly chas-
tised, there was a revision which introduced this
doctrine as an explanation of the events. In this
| process there was some mutilation of the narra-
tives, and in some cases there is evidence of inter-
polation or the blending of more than one version
of the same episode.
In the final redaction of the “book" after the
exile a summary account of the conquest was pre-
fixed to it, which is believed to have come from
the Yahwist document, of which so much use had
been made in the preceding books, and the occupa-
tion of the land of Canaan was made to follow the
death of Joshua instead of being achieved by him,
and to be an imperfect conquest instead of a
complete one. This prefix with the exception of
the opening clause, which places the conquest after
the death of Joshua had evidently, been adopted
by the theocratic compiler, for the latter part of it
is interlarded with his general explanation of how
the Lord delivered the people into the hands of
spoilers when they went “lusting” after other


HEROIC AND HISTORIC LEGENDS 77
gods, and raised up “judges" to rescue them when
his compassion was excited by their groaning
under oppression. He also explains that the other
tribes, or “nations,” were left among them for
the purpose of testing, or “proving,” them and
finding out whether they could be made to obey
the commandments of the Lord, “which he com-
manded their fathers by the hand of Moses.” It
is he who gives the first example of oppression by
the King of Mesopotamia and of the rescue by
Othniel, and preludes the story of Ehud and the
fat King of Moab with his customary explanation
of the occasion for it; but it is a late editor, or
redactor, who supplies the chronological scheme
of forty year or twenty year or eighty year peri-
ods. This was based upon an artificial manner
of reckoning by generations and making twelve
generations from the exodus to the completion of
the temple.
It is with Ehud that the genuine legends begin.
His barbaric act of duplicity and assassination is
related with a certain gusto, and the summoning
of the men of Ephraim to take the fords of the
Jordan against the Moabites sums up in a few
words the whole conflict. The statement of the
slaughter of ten thousand and the subduing of
Moab so that Israel had rest for eighty years is
one of the characteristic additions of the later ed-
itors. Brief and graphic also is the account of the
conflict of the northern tribes with Sisera, under


78 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
the clarion call of Deborah the prophetess and
with the aid of Jael, the wife of the peaceful
Kenite. The preservation of the antique and mu-
tilated song of victory suggests the source of the
prose narrative. There is a glimpse of the ter-
ror of those early days of Shamgar, the son of
Anath, and of the awe excited by the coming of
storms which were the war chariot of the God of
Israel as he swept over the mountains of Seir to
the rescue of his people. “And the land had rest
forty years.”
The mythical element is conspicuous in the
story of the choosing of Gideon of the clan of Ab-
iezer in Manasseh to repel an invasion of Mid-
ianites, who were eating up the land like a swarm
of locusts. Back of it are the relics of a tale of
blood-avenging in which Gideon's clan alone was
concerned, on account of the killing of his brothers
by two Midianite Chiefs, whom he captured and
slew with his three hundred men; but these relics
are overlaid with an account of a general slaugh-
ter of a multitude of Midianites, with the forces
summoned from all Manasseh and the neighbour-
ing tribes, reduced to these three hundred chosen
warriors of Abiezer. The appearance of the
God Yahweh in the guise of his “messenger,”
or “the angel of the Lord,” is in the manner of
similar appearances to Abram at the oaks of
Mamre and to other “patriarchs of the infant
world.” The incidents attending this apparition,


HEROIC AND HISTORIC LEGENDS 79
the mode of reducing the fighting force to three
hundred and the manner of the battle with the
Midianite horde which threw it into panic and self-
slaughter by a demonstration of torches and bro-
ken pitchers, are distinctly mythical in character.
Like the fall of the walls of Jericho at the blow-
ing of rams' horns, they are intended to enforce
the idea that when Israel triumphs it is the act
of his God and not of his men. Still, there is
no reason to doubt that there was behind the
elaborate story a genuine tradition of a Midian-
ite invasion and the rising of Gideon to lead the
battle against it.
It was a natural impulse of the people to de-
sire to make a permanent ruler of Gideon, who
had not only repelled their enemies but destroyed
the altar of Baal and set up the worship of Yah-
weh-Shalom at Ophrah, with such an image
as was later forbidden in “the law.” It was a
late editor of the account that made this a
“snare" to him and his house. The original
writer saw no offence in it. The pristine account
of the manner in which the son of Gideon and a
concubine undertook to set up a kingdom for him-
self at Shechem and was brought to grief, is but
slightly marred by subsequent editing and is a
vivid picture of the time.
The tale of Jephthah, the outlaw of Gilead,
who was called upon to repel the Ammonites on
the other side of the Jordan has a prelude from a


8O THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
later hand than that of the original writer, and
is broken by the interpolation of a long message
from Jephthah to the King of Ammon, resenting
the claim of that potentate to the land which he
had invaded, and defining the jurisdiction of Yah-
weh and Chemosh. It need not be said that no
such message could have been conveyed and pre-
served for several centuries, but it could easily be
injected into the story of a later time, as it un-
doubtedly was. In the touching episode of Jeph-
thah's daughter there is a reminder of days when a
vow to Yahweh might mean a human sacrifice.
The compiler who put Shamger after Ehud and
Tola and Jair after Abimelech as “judges" of
Israel, interposed three successive rulers of whom
nothing seems to have been known except the num-
ber of their sons and daughters or grandsons,
between Jephthah and Samson. There is myth
again in the account of the birth of the Danite
hero, similar to that in the story of the birth of
Isaac, and later of that of Samuel, and there is
myth in his exploits, derived rather from Phoe-
nician or Philistine than Hebrew sources, for it is
related to Hercules and to sun worship, however
remotely. But it is told in such a simple matter-
of-fact and diverting way that it seems like an
impertinence to subject it to critical analysis. It
is neither matter of fact nor matter of history,
but what actuality may have been back of it we
can never find out. We may be sure, however,


82 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
mythical, but the accounts reflect a time which
history could not depict with the same truthful
colouring. Two accounts of the actual battles
at Gibeah are so blended as to confuse the effect
at some points, and two explanations of the man-
ner of providing the surviving sons of Benjamin
with Israelite wives are imperfectly reconciled;
but this is of little moment compared with the
calm assumption that the ruthless slaughter of
women and children in such contests was an ac-
cepted thing.
Legendary episodes in the life of Israel are not
confined to the period of the so-called judges nor
is the story of them limited to the book that bears
that title. The Book of Samuel, divided into two
in the Greek version and in all modern versions,
was compiled from a variety of material and more
than once revised before its character was fixed
beyond further change. Some of the learned crit-
ics find in this and in the stories of the Judges
traces of both of those old documents, the Yah-
wist and Elohist narratives, as an underlying
stratum; but in the main that to which the name
of Samuel is attached was made up from sepa-
rate accounts of the “seer,” or prophet, and his
relation to the first king, of Saul in his relation
to David, and of the exploits of David before he
became a king. The varied material underwent
several processes of compilation and recension, and
the story of the birth and childhood of Samuel


HEROIC AND HISTORIC LEGENDS 83
which forms a prelude to the book was one of its
latest parts. Much older is the account which fol-
lows it of a calamitous conflict with the Philistines
in which “the ark of God” was captured. This
represents Israel as being at that time subject to
the Philistines and as fighting against its subjec-
tion, and the compiler of the book interjects the
statement on the death of Eli that he had “judged
Israel forty years,” implying that he had been
the ruler of the people at Shiloh, as other
“judges " had been at other places. The proba-
bility is that he had only been looked up to and
consulted as a priest, exercising such rule as ex-
isted in that region at the time.
There is something hardly short of grotesque
in the account of the use of the “ark of the cove-
nant of the Lord ” as a help in battle and an ob-
ject of terror to the enemy, its capture by the
Philistines, its malignity in afflicting its captors,
their relief by sending it back to Israel with placa-
tory offerings, and its deadly spite when some of
its own devotees ventured to look into it. It need
not be said that such accounts, wherever found,
are not history but myth or perverted legend, in-
tended to convey a lesson. Doubtless this story
was introduced here by the compiler as an expla-
nation of the end of the rule of the priests of Shi-
loh and an introduction to the part taken by Sam-
uel in setting up the first king; and it was to lead
up to it that the later matter was prefixed, relating


84 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
to the birth of Samuel, the sins of the sons of Eli
and the doom of his house, and the revealing of
“the word of the Lord ” to Samuel at Shiloh,
after which he was “established to be a prophet
of the Lord.”
It was the theocratic compiler of these legends
in the latter days of the kingdom, probably the
same who had put together those of the “Judges,”
who introduced the warning of Samuel to the
people gathered at Mizpah against the entice-
ments of alien gods, and made offerings to “the
Lord ” for them, which resulted in their deliver-
ance from the Philistines. Though this writer
says that the latter were “subdued ” and “came
no more within the border of Israel,” and that
Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life,
this interlude is followed by a series of narratives
drawn from different sources and inconsistent with
each other, which represent Samuel's function as
quite other than that of a “Judge of Israel” all
his life, and the Philistines as persistent and trou-
blesome enemies of Israel all through the reign
of Saul and into that of David.
The main purpose of the first Book of Samuel
was to give an account of the setting up of the
kingdom under Saul of Benjamin and its “estab-
lishment” under David of Judah. In its com-
pilation three main sources were used and imper-
fectly blended, with fragments here and there
from others and interjections by the compilers and


HEROIC AND HISTORIC LEGENDS 85
later editors in the effort to harmonise the incon-
gruous material and to impress the lesson of Yah-
weh’s supremacy in the rule of Israel. Two of
these sources were relatively ancient, probably
originating soon after the time of Solomon and
less than a century after the time when Saul was
made king, one of them devoted to an account of
Saul and his exploits and the other to David and
his relation to Saul while the latter was king.
Some learned authorities regard these as one, but
they have diversities that distinguish them, as re-
garding character and events from different points
of view. The other main source is much later,
originating in the troublous times of Jeroboam II
of Israel and Azariah, or Uzziah, of Judah, and
being devoted chiefly to the relations of Samuel
and Saul. After such an interval of time this was
almost of necessity a work of the imagination mak-
ing free use of older material and adapting it to
the writer's pragmatic purpose. Imagination, or
the mythical element, must necessarily enter into
such narratives, treating of events long past which
survive only in the memory of successive genera-
tions. Sufficient evidence of this is to be found in
the detailed reports of familiar talk, not only be-
tween men, but between men and the deity, which
could not have been literally transmitted even if
they had been real.
There are three diverse accounts of how Saul
came to be made king. According to the oldest


86 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
of these this goodly young man, the son of a
mighty man of valour, Kish of Gibeah in Benjamin,
was searching for stray asses what time “the
Lord ” had confided to Samuel,-" told Samuel in
his ear” is the homely phrase of the “authorised
version ”— that he was sending this young man
to him to be anointed as captain over his people
to save them “out of the hand of the Philistines,”
for he had “looked upon " them because their
cry was come unto him. It was the Lord who
determined to set up a king for Israel out of the
goodness of his heart and who picked out Saul
for the place. Samuel anointed him and gave him
benign instructions which caused the spirit of the
Lord to come upon him and led to an episode
which gave rise to the proverbial query “Is Saul
also among the prophets?” Meantime the stray
asses were miraculously brought home. This ac-
count is in the simple manner of primitive story.
There is another of doubtful origin and uncer-
tain date which represents Saul as having been
“raised up " after the manner of the “judges"
when King Nahash of the Ammonites made an at-
tack upon Jabesh-Gilead where Jephthah had be-
fore been the champion against the same enemies.
When the men of Jabesh-Gilead got a respite from
Nahash and sent word throughout Israel for help
and the message reached Saul while he was fol-
lowing the oxen in Gibeah, the spirit of the Lord
came mightily upon him as it had come upon Jeph-


HEROIC AND HISTORIC LEGENDS 87
thah and Gideon and Samson, and he became the
rescuer of the people. In gratitude they insisted
upon making him king at the ancient sanctuary
of Gilgal.
The beginning of the third account of making
Saul ruler over Israel, drawn from the latest of
the sources, is placed before that in which the Lord
had singled him out and sent him to Samuel to
be anointed. It represents the Elders of Israel
as going to Samuel at Ramah, when he was old
and had made his sons “judges over Israel ” and
they had turned from his ways and perverted
judgment, and demanded that he set a king over
them that they might be ruled like other nations.
This not only displeased Samuel but displeased
the Lord; and, although he yielded to the im-
portunity, he instructed the prophet to warn the
people of the consequences. This account is con-
tinued after that which represents Samuel as
anointing Saul at Ramah and sending him to join
a band of prophets going up to Bethel. It says
that Samuel called the people together at Mizpah
and after rebuking them for rejecting their God,
selected a king for them by a process of elimina-
tion in the old manner of consulting the Lord.
Saul was expecting no such honor and when it
came upon him “hid himself among the stuff.”
Then follows the account of the war against Na-
hash and Saul's appearance as a hero acclaimed by
the people.


88 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
f
The later writers who had a hand in this com-
posite narrative were intent upon explaining how
it happened that Saul's reign was a failure and he
had to be set aside in favour of David. This
had necessarily to be attributed to the displeasure
of the deity, and the latest of the accounts in the
hands of the compiler and subsequent revisers of
his work began by making the demand for a King
an offence to the Lord. Further on it imputes to
Saul a serious fault in failing to obey literally a
command of “the Lord of hosts" utterly to ex-
terminate the Amalekites and destroy all they had.
Although there appears to have been plenty of
Amalekites in the time of David, Saul is said to
have utterly destroyed them with the edge of the
sword, except their King Agag, whom he brought
away as a captive. He also saved some of the
best of the cattle as spoils of war. For his of-
fence Samuel fiercely condemned him as rejecting
the Lord, and declared that the Lord rejected him
and would rend the kingdom away from him and
give it to a better man. Thereupon the aged
prophet in his wrath slew Agag, the last surviving
Amalekite, with his own hand and went home to
Ramah, while Saul “went up to his house to Gib-
eah of Saul.”
The final editor in his effort to reconcile these
accounts interpolated in the oldest a direction by
Samuel to Saul to go down to Gilgal and wait
seven days for him to come and offer sacrifices.


HEROIC AND HISTORIC LEGENDS 89
Then at the end of the Nahash episode he made
Samuel lead the people down to Gilgal to “renew
the Kingdom " and there they “made Saul King
before the Lord,” offered sacrifices and “rejoiced
greatly.” By still another interpolation further on
he represents Saul as still waiting the seven days
for Samuel at Gilgal and, when the time was up,
making the sacrifices himself, thereby incurring the
anger of the prophet and forfeiting the favour of
“the Lord.” This is made the cause of the
breach between the prophet and the king and the
occasion for declaring that the Lord had “sought
him a man after his own heart” and “appointed
him to be prince over his people" because, in the
language of Samuel, “thou hast not kept that
which the Lord commanded thee,” and thereupon
“Samuel arose and gat him up from Gilgal to
Gibeah of Benjamin.”
It is evident that the effort to reconcile these
accounts was not successful, and that the explana-
tion of the loss of the kingdom by the Benjamite
hero was duplicated in an inconsistent manner.
But there is much disorder in the use of the ma-
terial in the whole narrative. Immediately after
the account of the defeat of the Ammonites there
is a passage which begins with a plea of Samuel
to the people that he has grown old and has given
them a king, and that he has never oppressed
or defrauded them. This agrees with the idea
that appears once or twice elsewhere that Samuel


90 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
after the death of Eli had acted as a “judge" in
the old manner. He recalls to them the past deal-
ings of the Lord with his people and warns them
and their king not to rebel against him. Finally
he calls upon the Lord to make a demonstration
of his power in thunder and rain, which immedi-
ately follows. The prophet takes leave with a
promise to pray for them and instruct them in the
right way, and a warning that if they did wickedly
both they and their king would be consumed.
Parts of this passage savour of that theocratic com-
piler who put together the stories of the judges
in a manner to illustrate the ways of Israel's God.
While the language is all put in the mouth of
Samuel it refers to him in one place in the third
person as among those whom the Lord in the past
had sent to deliver them from their enemies “on
every hand.”
Following this is an account, in the manner of
the oldest source of the material, broken by one
of the redactor's interpolations, of a contest of Saul
and his son Jonathan, who appears suddenly as a
full grown warrior, against the Philistines. It is
followed by a summary statement of his victories
over these and other enemies, in which he “did
valiantly.” Among other he “smote the Amale-
kites and delivered Israel out of the hands of them
that spoiled them.” After a slight genealogical
statement it is said that there was sore war against
the Philistines all the days of Saul, and when he


HEROIC AND HISTORIC LEGENDS 91
saw any mighty man he took him. This would
seem like a winding up of his career, but it is
immediately after that the late story of the loss
of the kingdom by failing to destroy the last of
the Amalekites and all they had is interposed.
After that David makes his first appearance on
the scene, but Saul does not leave the stage. A
new source of the original material appears here,
that which is mainly devoted to David's relation
to Saul and Jonathan, but the other continues to
mingle with it.
By way of introducing the series of events in
which Saul and David both appear, the later writer
who strove to get the narratives into a continuous
and consistent form, gives his own account of the
first anointing of David at his father's home in
Bethlehem by Samuel, who has two or three times
already appeared to be vanishing. It was then
considered necessary to have the prophet anoint
the future king and founder of a great dynasty,
under the direction of the Lord. With the new
material we are told of the evil spirit that came
upon Saul when the spirit of the Lord had departed
from him, and of the coming of David to soothe
him by playing upon the harp. The shepherd lad /
is here spoken of as already a mighty man of valour
and a man of war, as well as cunning in playing
the harp, prudent in speech and comely in person.
But the account of the war with the Philistines
in which Goliath of Gath appears as a champion


92 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
and is slain by David with a sling is mostly from
the later source. It is marred and confused in the
editing and a number of verses, as it is divided
in English versions, are not in the Greek text.
It is purely legendary matter. It may be noted
that, notwithstanding the previous statement that
David was brought to Saul as a skilful player of
the harp and was made his armour-bearer, this
Goliath story is made the occasion of his first
meeting with the king. Even in that an incon-
sistency appears, for he is called to Saul and has
a colloquy with him before entering upon his ex-
ploit with the sling, and yet after it is over the
king inquires who he is and has him brought to
him as a stranger. In spite of its defects of com-
position the story is one of the classic episodes of
the great epic.
In the account of Saul's growing jealousy of
David, the affectionate relation of the latter with
the king's son, the peril of the youth of Bethle-
hem, his fleeing to Samuel at Ramah and being har-
boured by the priests of Nob, there is a perplex-
ing mixture of material and occasional inconsist-
encies of detail, but this does not prevent its hav-
ing a sustained interest, while the stories of David's
adventures as an outlaw in the mountains of Judah
are vivid and picturesque. These are partly from
that older source which deals chiefly with the rela-
tion of David and Saul and partly from the later
one that treats of the relation of Saul and Samuel.


HEROIC AND HISTORIC LEGENDS 93
There is an instructive duplication which well il-
lustrates the form in which different versions of the
same incident appear and are treated as if relating
to separate events. It was the later source that
told of David's taking refuge in the cave of Adul-
lam and drawing lawless men to him. It was the
older that told of his going with his men to the
rescue of Keilah from the Philistines and of the
betrayal to Saul of his subsequent whereabouts by
the Ziphites. According to this latter, while Saul
is hunting him in the mountains he has the king's
life in his hands but spares it out of magnanimity
or regard for “the Lord's Anointed.” He lets
the king know of this, remonstrates with him and
gets his avowal of repentance and promise of im-
munity in return for assurance that when David
becomes king he will spare the house of Saul
from destruction. From the same source is the
picturesque and diverting account of marauding
in the South, with the death of the foolish Nabal
and the captivating of his wife, and then from
the later source is the duplicate version of the
incident of sparing the king's life in the wilder-
ness of Ziph. The details as related are quite
different but the event is the same.
Finally David, still distrusting the purpose of
Saul toward him, boldly takes refuge with the
chief enemies of his country, the Philistines, and
makes friends with one of their five princes,
Achish of Gath, who allowed him the city of


94 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
Ziklag for his own. This, which was no doubt
a historic fact, led to a previous reference to his
having fled alone to the same potentate and, not be-
ing kindly received, playing the madman to escape
harm. There is no reason for accepting that as
authentic. From here on to the death of Saul
and Jonathan the material is practically all from
the earlier source and may be taken as substantially
historical, at least so far as concerns the battle
with the Philistines and its result. It is not un-
likely that David set out, with the favour of Ach-
ish, to accompany the Philistine prince to the bat-
tle and was turned back by the objection of the
others, taking the opportunity for freebooting
raids in the opposite direction. But the details of
what passed, including the visit of the king to the
woman of Endor who had a familiar spirit, are
necessarily of a legendary character as there could
have been no record or exact memory of them.
The woman of Endor story is out of its proper
place and should come after the account of the
gathering of the Philistines at Aphek and David's
revenge upon the Amalekites for burning his town
of Ziklag in his absence, and just before that of
the disastrous battle on Mount Gilboa. It is in-
teresting as a picture of the superstition of the
time when “the Lord ” was supposed to reveal
his will by dreams or by Urim or by inspiration of
prophets, and wizards and “familiar spirits"
were believed in. It also gives a glimpse of the


HEROIC AND HISTORIC LEGENDS 95
notion that the dead dwelt in a state of inanition
in the underworld, from which they might be
aroused by the summons of wandering spirits.
The last intrusion of the late writer of what
is sometimes called the “Saul and Samuel source ’’
appears in connection with David's receiving the
news of the death of Saul and Jonathan in the
battle with the Philistines, when the men of Jab-
esh-Gilead remembered their gratitude for the de-
liverance from Nahash, King of the Ammonites.
The older writer had said that when Saul's
armour-bearer refused to kill him to save him from
the dishonour of death by the uncircumcised, he
had fallen upon his own sword. The later writer
makes an Amalekite fleeing from the field of battle
report to David that he had slain the king and
brought his crown and bracelet to “my Lord,”
whereupon the Lord's anointed caused one of his
young men to kill the messenger of evil. It may
be noted here that at a later time, after David
had been made King of Judah at Hebron and two
officers of Ish-bosheth, the Son of Saul, thought
to win his favour by bringing him the head of
the heir of the former King of Israel, he is rep-
resented as saying, “when one told me saying,
‘Behold, Saul is dead,’ thinking to have brought
good tidings, I took hold of him and slew him
in Ziklag, which was the reward I gave him for
his tidings.” Whereupon he administered the
same reward to them.


96 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
That the lament of David at the death of Saul
and Jonathan, one of the finest specimens of an-
tique poesy, is a genuine production, there is no
sufficient reason to doubt, though it is doubted by
some critics, but when it was written or where it was
written we have no means of knowing. We are
told that “he bade them ’’ to teach it to the children
of Judah, but that it was written in the Book
of Jasher, which was probably compiled late in
the reign of Solomon.
The material of these narratives which relates
especially to David and Saul often represents
David as “inquiring of the Lord ” in the old man-
ner of using the ephod and urim and thummim,
a rude mechanism for obtaining aleatory answers
to direct questions. By this means he is said now
to have obtained sanction for his purpose of going
up to Hebron, where the “men of Judah” came
and “anointed him King over the house of Judah.”
The narrator knew nothing of the mythical anoint-
ing by Samuel at Bethlehem long before. His
account is older than that story and nearer to
historical truth.
One needs only to read the accounts of the
reign of Saul and the adventures of David be-
fore he becomes king, with care and with freedom
from prepossessions, to see that they are largely
legendary and partly mythical, which thorough
investigation proves them to be, but they may
nevertheless represent with substantial truth the


HEROIC AND HISTORIC LEGENDS 97
main historical facts. In days of little writing
and of reading confined to those who possessed
the sparse copies of manuscript scrolls, oral tradi-
tion was carried through successive generations
and words were remembered and repeated in a
way which would seem marvellous in modern times.
Yet it was even then far easier to imagine details
than to remember them, and there was no scruple
in setting down as fact what was assumed but not
known to be so. In legendary and mythical his-
tory the incredible is no more to be accepted as
fact in the language of the Hebrews and the lit-
erature that they deemed sacred than in that of
other ancient peoples. Still, the mythical and the
legendary in their great epic picture their life and
character in the early days in vivid colours more
truthful perhaps than colourless history.


VI
DAVID AND SOLOMON
WHILe Saul was nominally the first king of all
Israel, it is evident from the disordered and un-
systematic, but picturesque, accounts of his reign
that he had no organised government, and his rule
differed little from that of the old sofetim, or
“judges,” except in its continuity, which may have
been due to an almost continuous conflict with sur-
rounding enemies. He had no palace or capital,
but seems to have dwelt at his old home in Gibeah
when not engaged in the field of war. He is rep-
resented in one of the later accounts, when he
charged his son with being in league with the
Son of Jesse to depose him, and accused his fol-
lowers of conspiring against him, and when he
passed sentence of death upon the priests of Nob
for harbouring David, as “sitting in Gibeah
under a tamarisk tree in Ramah with his spear
in his hand,” while all his servants were standing
about him. This appears to have been his royal
state when he had occasion to hold council or pass
judgment. Heroic as he may have been, his rule
came in a time of great difficulty, when it is doubt-
ful if any man could have succeeded in establishing
98


DAVID AND SOLOMON 99
the kingdom on a firm basis. He was beset with
enemies, suspicious of his surroundings, “per-
plexed in the extreme,” and he proved unequal to
the task set for him. Writers of a later time
were bound to explain his failure on the ground
that he had offended the God of Israel and dis-
obeyed his commands. Otherwise, in their view,
he could not have failed.
Saul established no dynasty, and dying on the
battle field with his heroic son, the beloved friend
of David, left but a feeble heir in Ish-bosheth, or
Is-baal, who had little loyal support. The way
was prepared for David, and he had the qualities
necessary to take full advantage of the situation
and make his way to triumph. The writers who
could see nothing but divine disappointment and
anger in the failure of Saul attributed the success
of David to divine favour. He had been taken
from the sheepcote by Yahweh himself to be a
prince over his people Israel, and a prophet had
been specially sent to anoint him at the home of
his father, the shepherd of Bethlehem, before he
was known as a warrior and a mighty man of
valour, which he afterwards became. The passage
in the seventh chapter of Second Samuel, which
contains the promise by the mouth of Nathan,
the prophet, that the throne of his kingdom should
be established forever, was from the pen of that
compiler of the ancient material who was imbued
with the theocratic doctrine of the prophets, and


I oo THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
of the law as promulgated in the days of Josiah,
when the perpetuity of the house of David was
an article of faith in the divine rule at Jerusalem.
The invocation to the “Lord God'' when David
“went in and sat before him " is from the same
SOurce.
David, like many another in human history,
was the man for the time, fitted by natural en-
dowment and training for his task, and he estab-
lished a nation, and with his son and successor
organised a government that endured for several
centuries, until overwhelmed by the irresistible
empire of the East. His dynasty continued un-
broken throughout the history of the Kingdom
of Judah, and was regarded as so divine that it
must surely be revived and restored, bring all the
scattered tribes of Israel together again, destroy
their enemies and establish an everlasting reign
of righteousness and peace on Mount Zion. This
belief was the root of the doctrine of the Messiah,
or anointed one of the house of David, which
played such a part in human history at a later day.
But what we have to do with now is not the
actual history of David or his dynasty, but the
story of his reign as it appears in the great epic
of his people. Largely legendary as the accounts
of his previous life may be, it is plain that he
had gone through a training that was essential to
his task. He had experience as a warrior in
Saul's battles with the Philistines more disciplinary


DAVID AND SOLOMON IOI
than killing giants with pebble stones and with
divine aid. The jealousy of the king, which his
success and popularity inflamed into wrath and
a determination to compass his death, the shifts
to which he was put to save himself and win sup-
port from his tribe, his adventures as an outlaw
in the fastnesses of the mountains of Judah, his
winning the favour and protection of a Philistine
prince, even his ruthless exploits in raiding the
traditional enemies of Israel in the South while
pretending to prey upon his own people, were
part of his preparation for the kingdom. When
he distributed the spoils of his brigandage among
the elders of Judah from Bethel to Ramoth of
the South, he was paving the way to the throne
at Hebron, which was the stepping stone to the
stronghold of the Jebusites on Mount Zion,
where the monarchy of all Israel was established
seven years later.
That David had the qualities of a great leader
his success sufficiently demonstrates, and the qual-
ities were those necessary for the leadership of his
people in that day and generation. He was
clearly a man of unusual personal attraction, that
subtle influence known as magnetism in men, of
craft and duplicity, even ruthless cruelty when oc-
casion required, and yet capable of lofty sentiment
and deep emotion. Religious after the manner of
his time, devout in his belief in Israel's God, he
was subject to the moral weakness of an ardent


IO2 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
nature and capable of meanness in the satisfaction
of his desires, as exemplified in the dastardly
treatment of his heroic and faithful Hittite of-
ficer, Uriah, and ready to sacrifice the interests
* of his kingdom to his yearning love for his repro-
bate son Absalom, from which he was saved only
by the brutal fidelity of that harsh and cruel but
shrewd and far-seeing soldier, Joab, who, accord-
ing to the genealogies of the Book of Chronicles,
was the son of his father's sister Zeruiah.
The account of David's reign, like those which
precede it, is of a composite character, but a long
section of it is from a source nearer to the time
and more harmonious and truly historical than
those relating to his earlier exploits. The narra-
tive of the conflict with the house of Saul and
the winning of the other tribes to the throne of
Judah, of which the craft and valour of Joab
were the chief instrument, is derived, with some
late interpolations and amendments, from the same
source that dealt mainly with David's previous
adventures in his relations with Saul. This is in-
terrupted where it is said that all the tribes of
Israel came to David at Hebron and reminded
him that the Lord had said in the time of Saul
that he was to be “prince over Israel.” The
earlier and more historical source first appears in
the statement, immediately following, that “all
the elders of Israel came to the king to Hebron
and King David made a covenant with them in


DAVID AND SOLOMON IO3
Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David
King over Israel.” The late reviser and editor
of the narratives interposed here the statement
that David was thirty years old when he began
to reign and that he reigned seven years and six
months over Judah at Hebron and thirty years
over all Israel and Judah at Jerusalem; but the
other continues with the capture of Jerusalem
from the Jebusites and the building of David's
stronghold there with the aid of Hiram of Tyre.
For several chapters of the second book of
Samuel, from the beginning of the sixth to the
twenty-second verse of the twentieth, omitting the
seventh and eighth, the story of the reign is con-
tinuous and little marred by subsequent revision
or editing. The seventh chapter is that which
contains the promise of the perpetuity of the King-
dom of David, by the word of the Lord that came
to Nathan in the night, and the King's invocation
of gratitude, as conceived by the theocratic writer
more than three centuries after the time. The
eighth is an interpolated recapitulation of vic-
tories over hostile nations on all sides, when the
Lord gave victory to David wherever he went,
and a summary statement of his government and
his chief officers.
Leaving out these, we have first in chapter vi
the account of the transporting of the “ark of
God” from the house of Aminadab in the hill
to a tabernacle, or tent, at Jerusalem, which is much


Ioa THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
in the same spirit as that of its capture and re-
turn by the Philistines in the days of Eli the
priest of Shiloh. This depository of divinity ex-
hibits the same malignant spite as before in slay-
ing the well-meaning Uzziah for presuming to
touch it when it appeared to be in danger of fall-
ing from the cart as the oxen stumbled. This so
frightened David that he left it to bless the house
of Obed-Edom, a Philistine, for three months be-
fore completing the journey with a form of re-
joicing that disgusted that wife of his who was a
daughter of Saul. For her derision she was made
childless the rest of her days. There was doubt-
less a historical incident behind this strange tale,
but in form and substance it must be regarded as
mythical.
The passage that begins with chapter ix has
every appearance of historical truth, at least in
substance, and is marvellous in its graphic simplicity
and absolute candour of portrayal. It reveals a
barbaric time and in many ways a barbarous spirit,
and shows David to be a rare embodiment of the
spirit of his time. There is no concealment or
glossing over or extenuation of his faults, but in
spite of them he was beloved of God and man
and was the glory of his time and race, so potent is
success due to personal qualities and favouring cir-
cumstances to exalt a human being in the esteem
of his fellow men. He showed his magnanimity
in care for the crippled son of Jonathan. He


DAVID AND SOLOMON IO5
sought to show kindness to the young King of
Ammon and when his overtures were rebuffed with
insult he waged relentless war upon the Ammonites
and upon the Syrians allied with them. The
doughty Joab was the real commander in these
wars of David, though ever ready to yield the
glory of victory to his King.
It was during this conflict on the other side of
the Jordan that the outrage upon the faithful
Hittite officer Uriah was perpetrated, and the
prophet Nathan with his parable of the little ewe
lamb brought the King to a “realising sense" of
his sin, the fruit of which was a child doomed to
death. This gave occasion for one of those
graphic touches for which the Hebrew genius was
so remarkable. The peril of the sick child was
made a bitter punishment for the offending mon-
arch, but, when it was dead, he comforted him-
self: “While the child was yet alive, I fasted
and wept, for I said, who knoweth whether the
Lord will not be gracious to me, that the child
may live? But now he is dead, why should I
fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go
to him but he shall not return to me,” and so he
proceeded to comfort Bath-Sheba and became the
father of Solomon, and “the Lord loved him.”
This episode over, we have the conclusion of
the war upon Ammon under David's own com-
mand, but it is to be hoped that the statement
that he put the people of its cities “under saws


IO6 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron
and made them pass through the brick kiln '' is
not to be taken literally. The more pleasing in-
terpretation is that he put them to labour and serv-
ice with these instruments.
There is a series of vivid pictures of the royal
life and the manners of the time in David's
promiscuous family. He is said to have had six
sons by as many wives at Hebron when he was
King of Judah only. When he made his compact
with Abner for bringing under his sway the other
tribes which had made the son of Saul their King,
he made it a prime condition that his first wife,
Michal, the daughter of Saul, should be torn from
her weeping husband and children and restored
to him. When he became king of all Israel at
Jerusalem he is said to have taken more concubines
and wives there, and “there were yet sons and
daughters born to David.” It was not a harmon-
ious royal family. The evil passion of the son
Amnon for Tamar, a sister of Absalom, brought
as many woes as the fated iniquities of a Greek
tragedy. Though David was very “wroth,” he
left the penalty to the blood-avenging Absalom,
who was thus estranged, and who afterwards led
a revolt most humiliating to the king, whose life
and throne were probably saved by the stern and
ruthless Joab.
What David and his kingdom owed to this un-
sparing warrior, who commanded his motley


DAVID AND SOLOMON Io?
army of mercenaries, was requited by his violent
death clinging to the horns of the altar when Solo-
mon became king. It was he and his two brothers
that led the forces against the adherents of the
house of Saul to win the kingdom of all Israel.
Though David lamented the death of Abner when
he was killed by Joab, out of revenge for his own
brother's death, and condemned the sons of
Zeruiah as “too hard for him,” Joab distrusted
Abner and probably saved the king as well as
himself from serious trouble. It was Joab that
reconciled the king with the son for whom he
visibly yearned, but when Absalom won the hearts
of the people by his wiles and headed the revolt
of Israel at Hebron, the grizzled warrior faith-
fully followed the king in his mournful retreat
to the refuge across the Jordan Valley and was
chief of the three who led the forces that faced
the host of rebels under Amasa. He outraged the
heart of the king by killing Absalom, but he re-
garded it as a stern necessity, and when the king
gave way to grief and mourning he boldly rebuked
his weakness and forced him to a royal attitude
before the people. He was chiefly instrumental in
restoring the kingdom and quenching the new re-
volt that would again have stripped the other tribes
from Judah. The killing of Amasa, who had led
the rebellious host of Absalom and been chosen
by David to take Joab's place in confronting the
new revolt, may have had a motive of jealousy and


IOS THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
selfishness, but it was a stroke of policy in behalf
of the king as well. David feared and hated
Joab, but he owed him much and dared not dis-
pense with him.
It was a barbarous time and these pristine nar-
ratives show little of the religious spirit which
the later material sought to reflect back upon it.
Recognition of the mighty God of Israel is not
wholly lacking, but there is not that familiarity
with him so common in later narratives. After
the suppression of the revolts which followed the
conquest of external enemies not much remains
to the reign of David. We are thrown back by
some disjointed material relating to different epi-
sodes. There appears to have been a drought,
described as a famine, during some part of the
reign, and a relatively late writer considered it
necessary to account for this. It is said to have
lasted “three years, year after year,” and David
asked the Lord about it and was told that it was
due to Saul having “put to death the Gibeonites,”
with whom Israel had a sworn covenant from the
time of Joshua, and atonement must be made for
that. So the Gibeonites were permitted to hang
in Gibeah the two sons of Rizpah, Saul's concu-
bine, and five sons of Michal born to her and
another husband after David's flight from Saul.
After that the bones of Saul and Jonathan were
gathered from Jabesh-Gilead and buried in the
sepulchre of Kish in Benjamin. Thus was God


DAVID AND SOLOMON Io9
“entreated for the land.” This is not in any
modern view a satisfactory way of accounting for
famine and recovery therefrom.
Another fragment follows this relating to the
gigantic warriors of the Philistines, which serves
to introduce what is called David's song of victory
or of thanksgiving, when he was delivered out
of the hands of all his enemies. This composi-
tion is not of his time and is a repetition of the
eighteenth psalm. The verses called the “last
words" of David are certainly not authentic and
are framed in imitation of the utterances attributed
to Balaam. Another disconnected passage, giv-
ing an account of the “mighty men whom David
had,” is believed to have been taken from that
source of material relating to David's exploits
which, so far as it was preserved, treated mainly
of his relation with Saul and Jonathan before he
came to the throne.
An event which one of the later writers felt
bound to account for was the choice of the site
of the future temple. Perhaps, also, there had
been an epidemic which must be attributed to the
“Anger of the Lord.” At all events, it was said
that the anger of the Lord was kindled against
Israel, and we are not told why. He moved
David to have a census of the people taken, against
the remonstrance of Joab, and when it was done
the king suddenly concluded that he had committed
a great sin. It appears for the first time that he


IO8 THE GREAT EPIC
selfishness, but it was a stroke
of the king as well. David -
Joab, but he owed him much
pense with him.
It was a barbarous time and -
ratives show little of the rel -
the later material sought to rº
Recognition of the mighty Gº -
wholly lacking, but there is n -
with him so common in later
the suppression of the revolts
conquest of external enemies -
to the reign of David. We a -
some disjointed material relati
sodes. There appears to hav
described as a famine, during
reign, and a relatively late v
necessary to account for this.
lasted “three years, year after
asked the Lord about it and
due to Saul having “put to de
with whom Israel had a swor
time of Joshua, and atoneme.
that. So the Gibeonites well
in Gibeah the two sons of
bine, and five sons of Mic
another husband after Dav
After that the bones of Sa - -
gathered from Jabesh-Gil
sepulchre of Kish in Ben


D SOLOMON 113
s,” a law which was not
centuries after the time of
also evident traces of the
o put the finishing touches
the exile. The contrast
d style of the account of
of his son is as striking as
*aracters and that between
igns.
| widely the borders of his
ºrnal enemies and quelled
all revolt, for which the
and the fierce community
ays so ready. The great
d South were quiescent and
-
-
-
.
-
-
been a long period of peace
w king to organise an ef-
and enter upon great en-
glory and that of the God
by making “affinity” with
s one of his wives a daughter
raoh. He sought the co-op-
of Tyre, who had been on
ºth his father, to secure for
ls and workmanship and the
ercial skill for which Phoenicia
the ancient world. His first
was that of building at Jeru-
temple to “the Lord,” which his
ed to have promised, and an im-
º


IIo THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
had a “seer" named Gad, and through him the
Lord proposed as a penalty a choice of three evils,
seven years of famine, discomfiture by his enemies
for three months, or a three days' pestilence in the
land. He chose the last, and seventy thousand
men had to die to appease the wrath of the Lord
because the people were numbered at his own in-
stigation; but on David's plea the hand of the
destroying angel was stayed at Jerusalem, and
where he stood on the threshing floor of Araunah
an altar was built and offerings were made. “So
the Lord was entreated for the land and the
plague was stayed from Israel.” This account is
no doubt just as historical as that of the pestilence
inflicted upon the camp of the Greeks at Troy in
answer to the prayer of the priest Chryses, and
the angel that “stretched out his hand upon Jeru-
salem to destroy it,” was just as real as the aveng-
ing god to whom the priest appealed as “Smin-
theus.”
The conclusion of that most authentic account
of David's reign which was interrupted with these
interpolations by the late compilers is to be found
included in the first two chapters of the first Book
of Kings. The division of what are now four
books, effected in the early versions, was quite
arbitrary. In the first Greek version Samuel was
one and Kings was one and later there were four
books of Kings. The original compilation be-
fore the exile and its recension afterwards, though


DAVID AND SOLOMON I I I
sufficiently disconnected at many points, was con-
tinuous and devoid of titles. A proper point of
division is between the reign of David and that
of Solomon.
Probably it is historically true that, when David
was “old and stricken in years ” and his blood
had to be cherished into warmth by the fair damsel
of Shunam, his son Adonijah set out, with the
concurrence of Joab, Abiathar the priest, and of
his brothers with the exception of Solomon, to
take possession of the throne on his father's death,
and that he got up a most unseemly feast with
that end in view. It is doubtless equally true that
Bath-Sheba at the instigation, or with the con-
nivance, of Nathan the prophet and Zadok the
priest, determined to thwart that scheme by plac-
ing Solomon on the throne, with the old king's
sanction, even before he was dead. The account
of this in the first chapter of the first Book of
Kings is most dramatic, but in its language it is
necessarily a work of the imagination. It was
written at least a generation after the events and
the words of the actors in the little drama could
hardly have been preserved, if they had ever been
known. But in no drama or epic passage are
the actual words of the characters supposed to be
recorded. The Hebrew writer had the same lib-
erty as the Greek writer to imagine the language
of his kings and priests and heroes.
It was the late compiler of the theocratic his-


II 2 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
tory of Israel who conceived the dying charge of
David to his royal son in the spirit of the Deu-
teronomic law, and made him counsel the doom
of Joab and that Benjamite who railed at the king
when he was fleeing from Absalom; but the orig-
inal narrative is reverted to in the account of the
execution of the supposed dying injunction. Sol-
omon had his own motive and manner for getting
rid of the brother who sought to forestall him
and of the grim warrior who had abetted the at-
tempt, though David may indeed have enjoined
upon him the vengeful duty of disposing of Joab
and Shimei, the Benjamite. It was sufficient to
seclude the offending priest Abiathar at Anathoth,
which at a later day was to furnish Jerusalem with
the prophet Jeremiah. Solomon evidently had no
compunction about clearing his court of those
whom he feared or distrusted, even to violating
his word to his mother and having Joab slain
as he clung to the sacred altar, and he had a ready
instrument in Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, whom
he placed in command of the “host.”
The account of the reign of Solomon is, like
the rest of the Books of Kings, of composite ma-
terial, but it was probably derived largely from the
source referred to at its close as the “Book of
the Acts of Solomon,” though it is liberally inter-
larded with passages from the hand of the com-
piler who was imbued with the theocratic doctrine
and familiar with the law that condemned all wor-


114 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
posing palace for himself and his retinue. It was
his ambition to shine among the potentates of the
earth, and to bring wealth and power to the sup-
port of his kingdom, with the help of an alliance
with the greatest commercial nation of the time.
With Hiram he is said to have devised and carried
out expeditions for bringing gold and silver, pre-
cious stones and other riches from distant lands, ap-
parently out of the dark continent of Africa. We
are vouchsafed no information as to the means
by which these were obtained, but they may have
been similar to those used by Spain to enrich her-
self from newly discovered countries in later cen-
turies.
The material success achieved by Solomon led
the panegyrists of his reign to magnify and glorify
his knowledge and wisdom, which was to be ac-
counted for after the manner of his time. It was
said that the Lord appeared to him in a dream,
when he went to Gibeon to sacrifice, and offered
him whatever he should ask for, and was so grat-
ified that he asked for “an understanding heart”
to enable him to “judge this thy great people,”
that he promised to add to this “both riches and
honour,” insomuch that there should not be any
among kings like unto him. His kingdom was
neither extensive nor populous, but, in the hyper-
bole characteristic of the writers, the people are
referred to as beyond computation in number, “as
the sand which is by the sea for multitude.” The


DAVID AND SOLOMON 115
latest editor of the narrative took occasion to qual-
ify Solomon's devotion to the Lord with the state-
ment that he sacrificed and offered incense in the
high places, and to make the Lord warn him in
his dream that he must walk in his ways and keep
his statutes and commandments as his father
David had done, if he would lengthen his days.
After this dream and the promise of wisdom
and greatness, the story of the two harlots who
quarrelled over the possession of the surviving
child was introduced as an example of wonderful
wisdom. Then to illustrate the monarch's wealth
and power there is a statement regarding his chief
officers and the means by which the royal house-
hold was provided with subsistence, which must
have been a heavy charge upon the country. The
glory and greatness, the wealth and security of
the kingdom and the marvellous knowledge and
wisdom of the king being duly magnified by state-
ments which cannot be verified and can only be
refuted by the rules of probability or credibility,
such as would be applied elsewhere, much space
is given to the building and equipping of the tem-
ple, the details of which are hardly more inter-
esting than Homer's catalogue of the Greek ships
before Troy. The account of the dedication of
the temple, with the King's blessing of the “con-
gregation of Israel ” and his prolonged invocation
to the “Lord, the God of Israel,” is demonstrably
of late production and is pervaded with the spirit


II.6 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
of the Deuteronomic law. It contains unmistak-
able allusions to the later experience of the na-
tion, and, in the latter part of the invocation, to
the “captivity” and promise of restoration
through repentance and supplication. There is
the same tone of retrospect in the second appear-
ance of the Lord to Solomon in a dream, “as he
had appeared unto him at Gibeon,” for a repeti-
tion of warning and promise.
After all this edification we are permitted to
resort to the primitive story of material greatness,
and the expedition to Ophir is made the prelude
to the visit of the Queen of Sheba, which is so like
a tale out of the Thousand and One Nights. The
statistics of wealth with which this is garnished
are doubtless as exact as those that tell of the in-
numerable population and the multitude of the
enemies of Israel who were wont to fall in battle
when the wrath of the Lord was aroused.
But it was necessary to account for the fact that
Solomon's Kingdom was doomed to fall from its
greatness at his death, notwithstanding all the pres-
tige of his wisdom and wealth as a ruler and the
glories of David as a warlike monarch, and in
spite of the peculiar affection of “the Lord ”
for these two successful kings. The fact is that
the nation was weakened and the hegemony of
Judah was undermined by the prosperity and lux-
ury of Solomon's reign, while his son and heir,
Rehoboam, was a vain and arrogant weakling.
- **
*
~ -
*-


DAVID AND SOLOMON 117
Had it not been for the stronghold of Mount
Zion and the establishment there of a great centre
of worship with a splended temple and palace, it
is probable that the revolt of the “ten tribes” un-
der Jeroboam would have resulted in the com-
plete subjugation if not the obliteration of Judah.
As it was, the ancient name of Israel was assumed
as the undisputed title of the new Kingdom of the
North, which for a long time flaunted its su-
periority over that from which it had been torn
away by successful insurrection, and raised the
name of Joseph to a glory that was finally accepted
as the common heritage.
But the “theocratic pragmatism " demanded a
different explanation. Not only had Solomon
married an Egyptian wife at the start and sacri-
ficed in the high places before the temple was
built, but he “loved many strange women,” which
means simply foreign women, and took wives and
concubines from the neighbouring nations, and
these are said to have “turned away his heart
after other gods” when he was old. This in the
eyes of the Deuteronomist compiler of this
history made the Lord “angry with Solomon,”
and he was plainly told that inasmuch as he had
gone back on his word and failed to keep his
“covenant,” the Lord would surely rend the king-
dom away from him and give it to his servant.
But for David's sake he would wait till Solomon
was dead and rend it from his son; and, still for


I 18 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
W
David's sake and for the sake of Jerusalem, he
would leave him one tribe. This was to conform
with what had happened long before the writer's
time. But the real fact was that Jeroboam, the
son of Nebat, a capable and industrious young
man and a “mighty man of valour,” son of an
Ephraimite widow, whom Solomon had placed in
charge of “the labour of the house of Joseph "
in his building operations at Jerusalem, had re-
belled against the king's authority and been com-
pelled to flee to Egypt to save his life. When
the king died, all Ephraim and the other North-
ern tribes were ready to rise and declare their in-
dependence, and Jeroboam came back to head the
insurrection and was made ruler of the new king-
dom, which was far more powerful than what was
left of the old one.
This prosaic fact not only had to be accounted
for by the recreancy of Solomon, and threatened
beforehand by “the Lord ” himself, but a prophet
must be made instrumental in bringing it about.
So, according to that same Deuteronomist writer
of a later century, the prophet Ahijah of Shiloh
met Jeroboam outside of Jerusalem, clad in a
new garment which he tore into twelve pieces,
giving ten to the rebellious Ephraimite as a token
that the Lord would make him king of the ten
tribes, still reserving Judah, for David's sake.
This prophet repeats the words of the Lord, as
prophets were wont to do, and promised Jeroboam


DAVID AND SOLOMON II9
that if he would walk in the way of the Lord and
obey his commands after the manner of David
he would build him a “sure house,” while he
would “afflict the house of David, but not for-
ever.” So the way was prepared for what hap-
pened when Solomon “slept with his fathers and
was buried in the City of David his father, and
Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead.”


*
VII
THEOCRATIC ACCOUNT OF THE TWO KINGDOMS
THE account of the two kingdoms, which be-
gins with the Twelfth Chapter of the first book
of Kings, is not a history. It was compiled in
the latter days of the Kingdom of Judah, revised
and added to in the exile, and retouched after the
return, and its purpose was not to record facts
but to inculcate a doctrine, the doctrine that events
were ordered by “the Lord,” that is, Yahweh,
the God of Israel; that all calamities to either na-
tion were inflicted by him as a punishment for
sin in disobeying his commands, neglecting his
worship and going after other gods, and that his
people must depend wholly upon him for rescue
from peril, success against their enemies and pros-
perity in the land which he had given them. If
other nations attacked them, it was because he
put them up to it and used them as his scourge;
and if his people repented and obeyed and wor-
shipped him in humility and faithfulness, he would
turn their enemies back, and even destroy them
for their presumption if they persisted. This was
the teaching of the prophets and was the belief of
'I 20


THE TWO KINGDOMS I2 I
those who had a hand in the final account of the
vicissitudes of the kingdoms.
This account was made up from a variety of
material, part of it drawn from the annals of the
two kingdoms, previously brought together, much
of it from legendary and mythical sources, and
some of it from the imagination of the compilers,
as they conceived of that which they could not
know. There was no effort at accuracy of state-
ment and little at consistency. The generally ac-
cepted date of the death of Solomon is 933 B.C.,
and the known date of the capture of Samaria and
the destruction of the Northern Kingdom is 722,
making the duration of that kingdom 2 II years.
According to the chronological scheme of the com-
piler, who adopted no fixed era but dated the
reign of each king of either kingdom from the
regnal year of the king of the other, and gave
the length of the reign in every case, this period
covered 241 years, 7 months and 7 days in Israel
and 260 years in Judah, which indicates consider-
able inaccuracy in the reckoning.
The compiler or redactor who connected the
various reigns in this loose manner and briefly
characterised the different kings as he dismissed
them from the scene, is usually designated by, -
scholars as a “Deuteronomist,” or a writer im-
bued with the doctrine of the law which taught
that worship anywhere but at Jerusalem was sin
and made obedience to the commands of Yahweh


122 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
the test of all merit. This law was unknown
before the reign of Josiah, a century after the fall
of Samaria, but that did not prevent condemna-
tion of Jeroboam and all his successors for de-
parting from it, or make it other than sin for the
earlier kings of Judah to tolerate worship “in
the high places,” which became an enticement to
heathenism. That was the chief fault imputed
even to Solomon, which caused the rending of
most of the kingdom from the House of David.
Until the attacks came from the powerful em-
pire of the East, in the Eighth Century B. C., the
kingdom of Israel, or Ephraim, was much the
stronger and more flourishing, and for a consider-
able part of the time Judah was in a state of
vassalage to it, or to some ally as a protection
against it. Its greater extent, the survival of
many of the Canaanites in its territory, and its
contact with Phoenicia and Syria, made its people
and its rulers more prone to the enticement of
other cults than that of Yahweh, or more toler-
ant of them, while Judah had the advantage of
comparative isolation, an almost impregnable
stronghold at Jerusalem, the possession of a
splendid temple as a centre of worship, and a
stable dynasty to which the achievements of David
and Solomon gave a lasting prestige. While the
direct line of David continued on the throne of
Judah until the destruction of Jerusalem by Neb-
uchadrezzar in 586 B. C., twelve reigns covering


THE TWO KINGDOMS I23
the period from Solomon to the destruction of
Samaria in 722, there were nine dynasties and
seventeen kings in Israel, from Jeroboam to
Hoshea. Seven of the kings were murdered by
their successors and one burned himself in the
palace after holding it only seven days. The
situation of Judah in these respects and the rising
of such mighty advocates of Yahweh’s right and
power as Isaiah and Jeremiah in times of crisis,
gave the “peculiar people’” their wonderful
solidarity and saved their religion as a heritage
to after times. It also gave to the Jews as dis-
tinguished from the Israelites the opportunity to
determine the final character of the literature that
was to be sanctified as the epic of the race of
Jacob.
The revolt of the Northern tribes under the
lead of Ephraim at the death of Solomon was
easily accomplished, and the daring youth who
had started the rebellion in the face of that
monarch returned from Egypt to be made the
first King of Israel, as a separate realm, at
Shechem. As a civil ruler he was probably the
ablest man that ever sat on a throne in either
kingdom and the debt of the literature of both to
his sojourn in Egypt cannot be estimated. His
great offence in the eyes of the later Judean
writers was setting up the worship of Yahweh at
the two extremes of his kingdom, Bethel and
Dan, and centring it there by golden images of
→
º


124 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
calves, or bulls; but those symbols had been in
common use, and it was not until long afterward
that they were regarded as sinful representations
of the deity. The contest against the use of
images in Yahweh’s worship continued even in
Judah until after the promulgation of the Deu-
teronomic law in the reign of Josiah, and was not
altogether successful even then. In Jeroboam's
time it was not even condemned, though at
Jerusalem the old “ark of the Lord,” with its
later adornment of Cherubim, took the place of
the ephod and the teraphim in the central place of
worship.
In the scanty account of Jeroboam's reign the
hand of the theocratic compiler of the record is
conspicuous, and his leading motive is to attribute
all the calamities which befel the Northern King-
dom to the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat
and the example he had set, and always to credit
predictions of what happened to prophets or
“men of God.” Even the failure of Rehoboam
to make a hopeless fight for his entire royal heri-
tage was said to have been due to a warning from
a “man of God’’ named Shemaiah, for had not
Yahweh himself rent the realm asunder on ac-
count of the recreancy of Solomon and given the
larger part to Jeroboam through the agency of
the prophet Ahijah? When the king had set
up his altar at Bethel, a “man of God” appears
out of Judah to predict what was to happen to


I 26 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
the “Chronicles of the Kings of Israel,” which
fortunately for that purpose and unfortunately for
our knowledge, were not preserved.
The slight account of the reign of Rehoboam
and his son Abijam in Judah indicates that mat-
ters were no better in that realm than in the other,
so far as the manner of worship and religious
conduct were concerned; but when the long reign
of the other son, Asa, came in, there was a change
for the better. There seem to have been not
only idols, but Sodomites to be “removed,” and
even the king's mother had an “abominable
image,” that was burnt. But though it is said
that “the heart of Asa was perfect with the Lord
all his days" he had to strip “the house of the
Lord ” of its most precious treasures to buy an
alliance with the king of Syria and save himself
from Baasha, who had with Israelite vigour and
ruthlessness exterminated the house of Jeroboam.
There is little more said of Asa, except that he
was at war with Baasha “all their days" and
that in his old age he was “diseased in his feet,”
but as Baasha walked in the way of Jeroboam
and did evil in the sight of the Lord, a prophet
must needs appear to convey to him “the word
of the Lord ” to the effect that it was the latter
who had raised him from the dust and made him
prince over his people, (by assassination,) and
who would sweep away his house as he had swept
away that of Jeroboam, in like bloody fashion.


THE TWO KINGDOMS 127
'Accordingly, after his son Elah had reigned two
years one of his captains, Zimri by name, killed
him while he was “drinking himself drunk" at
his capital, Tirzah, and then slaughtered all his
household; but it was this same Zimri that set
fire to the palace and perished in it after “reign-
ing ” seven days, when he was beset by a rival
“captain of the host,” Omri by name.
Omri had a conspiracy to overcome at the start,
but he established a dynasty that lasted for four
reigns before wholesale assassination, duly pre-
dicted and prepared for, made another change;
and he built a new capital on the hill of Samaria.
Of course, he did evil and dealt wickedly. No
king of Israel could do otherwise; but his deeds
were only recorded in the lost chronicles of his
kingdom. No prophet figures in his reign, but
the deficiency is made up in that of his son Ahab,
who, not content with walking in the sins of
Jeroboam, married the Phoenician, or Sidonian,
princess Jezebel, and tolerated the worship of
Baal at Samaria. Thereby did he “yet more )
provoke the Lord (Yahweh), the God of ,
Israel, to anger than all the Kings of Israel that
were before him.” It is the conflict between the
worship of Yahweh and of Baal, in which the
mysterious prophet Elijah figures, that chiefly
made his reign interesting to the theocratic writer
and makes it so to us. Doubtless this name of
a “Tishbite ” who was of the sojourners of


I 28 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
Gilead stands for a real person in those stormy
days, but he is so enveloped in mists of myth and
legend that the tangible facts of his career are
hardly traceable.
The material relating to Elijah and that re-
lating to his successor Elisha is taken bodily from
old Ephraimite writings and has a highly pictur-
esque and epic quality; but it has almost wholly
the character of myth, with traces of historic
legend, and it is nearly as ancient as that relating
to the patriarchs and the ante-diluvian world.
Associated with it is other material of Ephraimite
origin pertaining to the conflicts between Israel
and Syria, which has much of the same mythical
or legendary quality. The passages made up
from this material, slightly modified here and
there in the compiling and editing, contain the
substance of what we are told of the Northern
kingdom, but it is more than we are told about
Judah for the same period, and far more inter-
esting from a literary point of view, though less
didactic and edifying.
Apparently there were three years of drought
culminating in famine in the time of Ahab, and
Elijah the Tishbite is introduced suddenly as hav-
ing predicted it in the name of “the Lord, the
God of Israel,” and as being then sent to a brook
that was “before Jordan " and fed by ravens.
With equal suddenness “the Lord ” sends him
back across the country to Zidon to sustain life
•
-


THE TWO KINGDOMS I29
by making the widow's barrel of meal and cruse
of oil inexhaustible, and to reward her for her
care by bringing her dead child to life. Ac-
cording to tradition Ahab's Phoenician wife had
not only introduced the worship of Baal at
Samaria, but had persecuted and nearly ex-
terminated the prophets of Yahweh. It is im-
plied that the famine was a consequence of this,
and there was to be an expiation by a sacrifice of
the prophets of Baal.
So, “after many days,” Elijah was sent to
Ahab to bring this about. He meets the faithful
Obadiah of the king's household, who claims to
have saved a hundred of the prophets by hiding
them in caves, and through him reaches the
monarch who greets him as the “troubler of
Israel.” The king consents to the test at Mount
Carmel as to whether Baal or Yahweh is God.
The four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and
four hundred prophets of the Asherah call in
vain upon Baal to send fire to light the sacrifice
on the altar while Elijah derides them, but in
answer to his simple prayer to the God of
Abraham, of Isaac and of Israel, after the altar
and the sacrifice have been drenched with water,
“the Lord ” lets fall the fire that consumes the
sacrifice and the very stones of the altar. There-
upon the sole prophet of Israel slays all those of
Baal at the brook Kishon, and the rain long
waited for comes in floods while Ahab drives in


130 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
haste to Jezreel in his chariot and the prophet
outruns him on foot. The enraged Jezebel
threatens his life and “the Lord ” sends him to
the wilderness beyond Beersheba in the distant
part of Judah, where he is fed by an angel with
food that sustains him forty days while he goes to
Mount Horeb, the scene of the revelation to
Moses. Here the Lord appears unto him, not in
the wind that rends the rocks of the mountain,
nor in the earthquake that shakes its foundations,
nor yet in the fire that blasts its surface, but in
a “still small voice" that commissions him to
go to Damascus and anoint Hazael king over
Syria and to anoint Jehu king over Israel, that
there may be more slaughter of those who have
slain the prophets, forsaken the covenant and
overthrown the altars. Thus is prefigured the
fate that overtook Benhadad of Syria and the
successors of Ahab. The prophet was also to
anoint Elisha as his own successor.
All this is as vivid and dramatic as anything
in Homer, and we have the very words of “the
Lord ” and of his prophets as well as of the other
characters in the varied story. It is also in all
detail as mythical as the wrath of Achilles, the
prayer of Chryses and the pestilence inflicted upon
the Greeks by Apollo, and would be readily
recognised as such in any literature but that of
the Hebrews, who were no more wedded to fact
or devoid of imagination than the Greeks.


'THE TWO KINGDOMS 131
The story of Elijah is interrupted after the
scene on Mount Horeb and after he has cast his
mantle upon Elisha, who thenceforth follows
him, in order to bring in from the other Ephra-
imite source the beginning of the conflict between
Ahab and Benhadad of Syria, which was to re-
sult in a change of dynasty for both realms.
The King of Israel met the arrogant demands
and boastful threats of Benhadad with the spirited
defiance: “Let not him that girdeth on his
harness boast himself as he that putteth it off";
and, notwithstanding the sins imputed to him by
the Judean writers of a later day, the Ephraimite
tale makes him victorious by the favour of the
Lord, and shows that there were still prophets in
Israel besides Elijah. The Syrian king is advised
that his discomfiture was due to the fact that
Israel's God was a god of the hills, and in the next
campaign he makes his attack in the plain. But
though the “children of Israel,” encamped at
Aphek, were “like two little flocks of kids” and
the Syrians “filled the country,” the Lord dem-
onstrated that he was a god of the valleys as well
as of the hills by delivering the Syrians into the
hands of his little army and enabling it to slay
“a hundred thousand footmen in one day,” while
27,ooo more were crushed by a falling wall, surely
a terrible slaughter for such a puny war. The
humiliation of Benhadad and the triumph of
Ahab were complete, but by one of those curious


132 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
subterfuges that are related of prophets and sons
of prophets, “the Lord ” let the King of Israel
know that he had offended in showing magnanim-
ity to the Syrian king, whom the vindictive deity
wished him to destroy. -
Another passage from the story of Elijah is
then introduced by the compiler to set forth yet
more the iniquity of Ahab and Jezebel and to ac-
count for the bloody fate that awaited them.
Their sin consisted in taking the vineyard of
Naboth to add to the royal domain at Jezreel,
which led Elijah to convey to Ahab the threat of
the Lord that the dogs should lick his blood in
the place where they licked the blood of Naboth,
and that the dogs should eat Jezebel by the ram-
part of Jezreel. This is figuratively, if not liter-
ally, what had happened long before the story was
written; but the prophecy was not explicit enough
for the purpose of the theocratic narrator, and
he injected the threat of the Lord that the house
of Ahab should be destroyed like the house
of Jeroboam the son of Nebat and the house of
Baasha the son of Ahijah, for the provocation
wherewith he had provoked the Lord to anger.
This was meant to credit more emphatically to
the proper source what happened when the
anointed Jehu came to his own. But the older
writer lets us know that Ahab humbled himself
in repentance and that was why the evil day did
not befall his house in his own time, but in that


THE TWO KINGDOMS I33
of his son. In any modern view his offence was
less than that of David in the matter of Uriah
the Hittite. t tº
The story of the battle of Ramoth-Gilead, which
resulted in the king's death, is drawn from the old
Ephraimite source and illustrates the chronolog-
ical incongruity of the disjointed compilation, in
that Jehoshaphat of Judah appears as the ally of
Ahab in the effort to recover that place from
Syria, though he had not previously been men-
tioned, and his accession to the throne of Judah is
spoken of farther on. According to the chrono-
logical scheme of the compiler, he had been King
of Judah seventeen years when he joined Ahab
in this unlucky enterprise. An interesting feature
of this episode is the revelation of the manner
in which the ordinary prophet of the time took
part in the doings of kings. Ahab gathered four
hundred prophets for a consultation, whether of
Baal or of Yahweh is not stated, but their counsel
was to go up to the battle against Ramoth-Gilead,
“for the Lord shall deliver it unto the hand of
the king.” But Jehoshaphat wished to know if
there was not “here beside a prophet of the
Lord,” which brought out Micaiah, whom Ahab
hated because he only prophesied evil for him.
When Zedekiah in symbolical fashion made him’
horns of iron and declared that the Lord said that
with these the king shall “push the Syrians till
they be consumed,” and all the prophets bade him


134 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
“go up and prosper,” Micaiah echoed their ad-
vice in apparent derision, for, after the king had
rebuked him, he “saw all Israel scattered upon
the mountains as sheep that have no shepherd,”
and advised that every man “return to his house
in peace,” whereupon he was again rebuked for
prophesying only evil. Then he declared that he
“saw the Lord sitting on his throne and all the
host of heaven standing by him on his right hand
and on his left,” and sending forth a “ lying
spirit” to entice Ahab through the other prophets
to go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead. This
brought a blow from Zedekiah upon the cheek of
Micaiah and the imprisoning of the latter, to be
fed upon the bread of affliction and the water of
affliction. Nevertheless, the battle went against
the king and he was killed in his chariot and
brought to Samaria to be buried; and the editor
of the narrative takes pains to note that when his
chariot was washed the dogs licked up the blood.
After some of the dry notes of the Judean com-
piler of the accession of the son of Ahab to the
throne of Israel, and of the accession of Jehosha-
phat to the throne of Judah, with a brief sum-
mary of the reign of the latter, and a statement
of his death and burial, there is another instalment
of the doings of Elijah, who always appears in an
atmosphere of mystery. Ahab's son Ahaziah,
who reigned only two years, fell through a lattice
in his upper chamber and was “sick.” Instead


THE TWO KINGDOMS I35
of appealing to “the Lord ” on that occasion he
sent messengers to Baal-zebub of Ekron to in-
quire whether he would get well. This offended
“the Lord,” and his “angel” sent Elijah to meet
the messengers of the ruler of Samaria and turn
them back to ask the king if there is no god in
Israel that he sends to inquire of the god of Ekron.
When the king learns that his messengers were
turned back by a “hairy man and girt with a girdle
of leather,” he recognises the Tishbite, whom he
probably did not know where to find before, inas-
much as he was left in the heathen darkness of
his father's palace where Jezebel still survived.
Learning of his coming he sends a captain with
fifty men to him as he sits on the top of a hill,
to bring the “man of God” to the king quickly.
It seems rather harsh that fire should be invoked
from heaven to destroy two captains with their
fifties before a third by humble petition prevails
upon the angel of the Lord to send the prophet
to tell the king that inasmuch as he had sent to
Baal-zebub the god of Ekron “because there is
no god in Israel to inquire of his word,” he shall
not “come down from his bed,” but will “surely
die.” An awkward note is injected here by the
compiler saying that Jehoram his brother began to
reign in his stead in the second year of Jehoram
the son of Jehoshaphat King of Judah, though a
little further on it is said that this same Jehoram
the son of Ahab began to reign at Samaria in the


136 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
w
eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat, who had still
seven years to reign at Jerusalem before he was
succeeded by his son Jehoram.
Between these two notes there is the curious tale
of the manner in which Elisha succeeded to the
prophetic mantle of Elijah and the latter was car-
ried off by a whirlwind. It is made to appear
as though the older prophet were trying to get
away from the younger, and that the latter pur-
sued him back and forth as the Lord sent him first
to Gilgal, then to Bethel, then to Jericho, and
finally across the Jordan, where they were parted
by a chariot of fire and horses of fire, while Elijah
disappeared in the whirlwind. Elisha's course in
this pursuit and his objection to the proposal of
the “sons of the prophets” to seek for the prophet
who had disappeared, might almost raise the sus-
picion that the other had made way with his pred-
ecessor after the manner of the kings at Samaria,
and that his taking-off was covered with this cloud
of obvious myth.
Elisha now comes more into the light of prosaic
fable with his miracles. He begins by purifying
the springs of water at Jericho with a cruse of
salt, after re-crossing the Jordan by smiting the
river with the mantle of Elijah to make a way
for himself. Then he goes up to Bethel to inflict
the penalty of death upon forty-two heedless chil-
dren who greeted him as bald head. This seems
like a severe chastisement to teach respect for a


THE TWO KINGDOMS 137
2prophet of the Lord. He figures next in an expe-
dition of the kings of Israel and Judah and of
Edom against Moab, the account of which seems
to have been drawn from an Ephraimite source
similar to that describing the conflicts with Syria.
From this it appears that the sheep raising King
of Moab was a vassal of Israel, and that Jehosha-
phat of Judah and the King of Edom were also
subject to the commands of Jehoram. Again we
have a curious illustration of the ways of prophets.
Elisha appears as accompanying the expedition,
and when Jehoshaphat asks if there is not a
prophet of the Lord to inquire of regarding a
dearth of water, he is called upon, and while
scorning to comply with the request of a son of
Ahab and Jezebel consents on account of the King
of Judah; but it requires the playing of a minstrel
to bring on the ecstasy and the vision of the prophet.
What really happened, who can tell? But the
story is that the Lord bade them fill the valley
with trenches, and without wind or rain these were
filled over night with water rushing in from the
way of Edom. It appeared like blood to the
Moabites in the morning light and lured them to
slaughter. When the King of Moab was dis-
comfited and his land was devastated, he offered
his son as a burnt offering upon the wall, but why
should that have brought great indignation or
wrath upon Israel?
After this episode of legendary history we are


138 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
brought back abruptly to a series of Elisha's mir-
acles, some of which are not of a dignified order,
like that of relieving a widow of one of the “sons
of prophets” of debt by making her pot of oil
inexhaustible, that of the antidote to “death in the
pot,” that of feeding a hundred men with twenty
barley loaves and some ears of corn and having
some “left thereof,” and causing the axe that flew
from its helve into the river to float to the top
by casting in a stick. More dignified, but not
more credible, are those of bringing to life the
son of the “great woman" of Shunam and curing
the Syrian Captain Naaman of leprosy by a bath
in the Jordan. These are crude and primitive
ways of illustrating the powers of a prophet of
the Lord, but characteristic of the beliefs of the
time.
There is more of epic dignity in the passage
that tells of Elisha's revealing the secrets of Ben-
hadad to the King of Israel, conjuring up a host
with horses and chariots when the Syrian monarch
seeks to entrap him at Dothan, getting the Lord
to smite the Syrians with blindness, leading them
to Samaria, opening their eyes to their peril and
forcing them to submission. But why had it been
an offence on a former occasion to let Benhadad
go after a voluntary submission, if now his men
were to be fed and sent home in peace after being
taken captive with the sword and the bow? Be-


140 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
/
that a “man of God” may be an accomplice in
the subtle assassination that makes Hazael King
/of Syria. Why a prophet should practise duplic-
ity in such a service to the Lord we need not in-
quire. It illustrates the manner of the time.
Had not Elijah long ago been commissioned at
Mount Horeb to anoint Hazael king of Syria and
to anoint Jehu king over Israel? There was no
anointing of the Syrian by a prophet of Israel but
Jehu's time was now at hand.
In all this graphic material “the Lord ” seems
to have been on the side of Israel as against
Syria, and in the meantime little attention has
been given to Judah, though Jehoshaphat is dead
and the eight year reign of his son Jehoram must
also be over. Here the unskilful compiler, before
introducing the account of Jehu's exploits, lets us
know that Jehoram or Joram has reigned contem-
poraneously with the monarch of the same name
at Samaria, that he married a daughter of Ahab
of Israel and did evil in the sight of the Lord,
though he was permitted to suppress a revolt at
Edom, and that he was succeeded by his son
Ahaziah whose reign was only for one year, and
he also did evil. This new King of Judah was
brother-in-law of Joram of Israel and joined him
in war against the new King of Syria at the great
battleground of Ramoth-Gilead. The defeat and
mortal wounding of Joram is made the preliminary
to the anointing under the direction of Elisha of


THE Two KINGDOMS I4 I
Jehu, the wholesale assassin who was commissioned
by the Lord from the time of Elijah to avenge
upon the house of Ahab the blood of the prophets.
He makes thorough work of it. Jezebel is thrown
to the dogs, the seventy sons of Ahab and “all
his great men, all his familiar friends and his
priests,” are slaughtered, and there is general mas-
sacre of the prophets and worshippers of Baal.
“Thus,” quoth the devout Deuteronomist, “Jehu
destroyed Baal out of Israel,” and the Lord com-
mended him for doing unto the house of Ahab
“according to all that is in mine heart,” and prom-
ised him the iniquitous throne at Samaria unto the
fourth generation of his sons. It just so happened
that the dynasty of Jehu had lasted that long when
this promise was put in the mouth of the Lord
as spoken directly to the bloody instrument of his
vengeance.
It is only of this slaughterous service at the
beginning of his reign that we are told, though
Jehu was king at Samaria twenty-eight years.
Things were hardly better at Jerusalem in those
days, either in matters of worship or of politics.
Jehu had dispatched Ahaziah of Judah along with
Joram of Israel, and his mother Athaliah, the
daughter of Ahab, had destroyed all the rest of
the family and seized the reins of Government,
showing that she had inherited the spirit of Jeze-
bel. The sister of Ahaziah, presumably a daugh-
ter of the queen mother, had, however, stolen


142 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
and hidden in the house of “the Lord ” one from
among the king's sons—how many he had at the
age of twenty-three does not appear—and six years
later the throne of David was transferred by assas-
sination, but not out of his family. The priest
Jehoiada and his confederates placed the child
Joash on that royal seat, and made a covenant
between the Lord and him and his people, that
they should be the Lord's people. So the rule and
worship of Baal was destroyed at Jerusalem and
incidentally his priest was put to death. Joash
ruled forty years under the guidance of Jehoiada
and did that which was right in the eyes of the
Lord, but those pestilent “high places” remained.
Notwithstanding his virtuous reign and the fatt
that, in spite of his priestly “graft,” he succeeded
in raising money for the repair of the temple, he
was forced to strip it of its treasures and its “hal-
lowed things" to buy off the King of Syria from
attacking his capital, and was himself a victim of
assassination. That zealous theocratic compiler
who passed judgment upon the successive kings of
both realms did not eliminate from his material
these facts, though they seemed to contradict his
doctrine.
Events were moving toward the doom of Israel,
for though it prevailed in its conflicts with Syria
and with Judah, it was destined to encounter the
onslaught of the irresistible empire of the East.
The effort to run the accounts of the two king-


144 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
of Azariah of Judah. He held it twenty years,
but was assassinated by his successor the last of
the Kings of Israel. It was in the time of
Menahem that Assyria first laid its hand upon
Samaria. “Pul,” who became King of Assyria
as Tiglath-Pileser, came and made a vassal of
Menahem and exacted a heavy tribute, which
continued until Hoshea, the last King of Israel,
revolted and sought support from Egypt, which
brought the destined destruction upon Israel. In
the reign of Pekah the same Assyrian king had
occasion to exhibit his power in those parts, but
when Hoshea attempted his revolt it was Shal-
maneser that came to besiege Samaria and destroy
the kingdom, on account of that original sin of
Jeroboam the son of Nebat and the multiplied
sins of his successors. It was Sargon, however,
who completed the work.
There is a characteristic note of the death of
Elisha in the course of the narrative, in which
he is made to predict the victories of Joash of
Israel over Syria, and the failure utterly to sub-
jugate that nation, and his miraculous power is
displayed even after his death by the revival, as
soon as it touched his “bones,” of a corpse that
was thrown into his sepulchre.
But in this interval before the destruction of
Samaria occurs an episode in the relation of Israel
and Judah which is of special interest as the first
occasion for the appearance of the greatest of


THE TWO KINGDOMS I45
Hebrew prophets. After the death of Jotham the
son of Azariah, his son Ahaz became king, while
Pekah was king at Samaria. Now Ahaz is said
not to have done that which was right in the eyes
of the Lord, like David, but to have indulged
in the abominations of the heathen. It was hardly
for that reason that Rezin of Syria and Pekah of
Israel made their attack upon Jerusalem, which
was defeated only because Ahaz appealed to Tig-
lath-Pileser and induced him with treasures of gold
and silver in the house of the Lord and in the
king's house, to capture Damascus. This made
Judah a vassal of Assyria, but it saved Jerusalem
for the time being. We shall find this salvation
credited to the Lord through a prophecy of Isaiah
when we consider more fully the oracles attributed
to that theocratic champion, but the Assyrian king
must be made the instrument.
The destruction of Samaria and the dispersion
of Israel came afterwards, in the reign of Heze-
kiah of Judah, and it gave occasion for the com- \
piler of these narratives,—who wrote before l
Jerusalem suffered the same fate as Samaria, at |
the hands of the King of Babylon, and who
still hoped for the salvation of Judah, and
for the final redactor, who wrote in the time of
the exile and knew the fate that had over-
taken Judah, as well as Israel, to descant upon the
causes of this calamity in their several ways.
Their reflections are interwoven and added to,


146 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
)
but it is easy to distinguish those which preceded
the fall of Jerusalem from those which followed it.
The fate of the northern kingdom had for a
time a potent influence upon the course of the one
that remained, and furnished much inspiration for
the prophets whose utterances have come down to
us. Hezekiah, the son of the sinful Ahaz, was
submissive to the influence of Isaiah, the prophet,
and he “did that which was right in the eyes of
the Lord according to all that David his father
had done"; and again the symbols of heathen
worship were broken up, not only at Jerusalem,
but in the “high places.” Among other things
the king is said to have broken up the brazen ser-
pent that Moses made, to which the children of
Israel had burnt incense until that time. He ven-
tured to revolt against the sovereignty of Assyria,
to which his father had submitted as a means of
rescue from Israel and Syria, and this brought
Sennacherib, who was ravaging the neighbouring
country, down upon his capital.
There are two parallel accounts, or fragments
of such, from different sources, awkwardly joined
together by the compiler of the narrative, of the
threat which Sennacherib sent to Hezekiah when
he rashly sought the aid of Egypt, the chief enemy
of Assyria, in his revolt against the empire of which
he was a vassal. It is in strict accordance with
the manner of the writer who wrought the narra-
tive from the material under his hand and modified


THE TWO KINGDOMS I47
it to suit his purpose, that the result of this menace
was foretold by a prophet of “the Lord,” who
happens in this case to be one of those whose pro-
ductions in mutilated and disordered shape have
come down to us. The emissaries of Sennacherib
had defied the God of Judah and reminded his
followers of the fate of other places that had
relied upon their gods. They even declared in the
name of their master that it was at the command
of “the Lord ” that he came up against this land
to destroy it.
According to one of the two accounts which are
blended in the composition, Hezekiah in his alarm
at the menace from the King of Assyria sent to
Isaiah, appealing to him to lift up his prayer “for
the remnant that is left.” The prophet sent back
a message to the king in the name of the Lord,
not to be afraid of the words, “wherewith the
servants of the King of Assyria have blasphemed
me,” saying also, “Behold I will put a spirit in
him, and he shall hear a rumour and shall return
to his own land, and I will cause him to fall by
the sword in his own land.” According to the
other account Hezekiah went up to the house of
the Lord and lifted up a prayer on his own account,
the words of which are duly set down, and the
prophet being instinctively aware of this, sent to
him saying, “Thus saith the Lord, whereas thou
hast prayed to me against Sennacherib, King of
Assyria, I have heard thee.” Then is introduced


148 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
from some source, genuine or otherwise, one of
the eloquent and poetical oracles of Isaiah against
the King of Assyria, and appended thereto is the
promise of the Lord that he will defend and save
Jerusalem for his own sake and for the sake of
David his servant. “And it came to pass in the
night that the angel of the Lord went forth and
smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred
and four score and five thousand; and when men
arose early in the morning, behold, they were all
dead corpses.” And it is added from a different
source that Sennacherib departed and dwelt in
Nineveh; and, as he was worshipping in the house
of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer
smote him with the sword and his son Esar-haddon
reigned in his stead.
All this, including the prophecies, was written
down long after the event. The historical fact is
that Sennacherib's army was not destroyed near
Jerusalem, but while it was laying waste the coun-
try around and preparing to attack the city, an
army of Egyptians and Ethiopians was on its trail
under Tirhaka, and it was drawn away and badly
cut up near the borders of Egypt. The Assyrian
monarch did then return to his capital, but he after-
wards suppressed the rebellion of Babylon, and it
was twenty years after he was diverted from de-
stroying Jerusalem that he was murdered by his
sons, one of whom succeeded him.
It is probably a fact that Hezekiah had a serious


THE TWO KINGDOMS I49
illness from which he recovered, living some years
afterwards, no uncommon experience. The writer )
who was so zealous in attributing everything to /
“the Lord ” and communicating the Lord's pur- \
poses through his prophets, makes Isaiah first tell
the king to set his house in order for he would |
die and not live; and then, after the king had /
implored the Lord to remember how he had walked
before him in truth and with a perfect heart and
had done that which was good in his sight, the
word of the Lord came to the prophet to assure
the prince of his people that he had heard his
prayer and would heal him. The king was anx- |
ious to be assured by a sign, and the shadow was
made miraculously to turn back ten steps on the
dial of Ahaz.
The only other incident told of Hezekiah and
the prophet is the coming of messengers from
“Berodach-Baladan,” properly Merodach-Bala-
dan, King of Babylon, with presents for the King
of Judah, who showed them all the treasures of
the temple and the palace, for which the prophet
rebuked him and told him that the day would
come when all that he and his fathers had laid up
in store would be carried away to Babylon, and
his descendants would be made captives in the pal-
ace of its king. Hezekiah was content, as it was
not to come in his day. Undoubtedly this was
written by the reviser of these narratives after
the event had happened.


150 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
Though Hezekiah was said to have done “that
which was right in the eyes of the Lord, according
to all that David his father had done,” he had a
, troublous reign and remained a vassal of Assyria,
while his wicked son Manasseh, who came to the
throne at the age of twelve, reigned fifty-five years
in peace, so far as this account tells anything about
him. All that it does tell is of his iniquities and
abominations, in restoring all forms of heathen
worship and practice, even in the temple of the
Lord as well as in the restored “high places,” and
shedding innocent blood until he “filled Jerusalem
from one end to another.” It is a dismal picture
and represents a state of things on Mount Zion as
dark and bloody as ever prevailed on the hill of
Samaria. The final redactor, writing in the midst
of the exile, makes this the occasion of a threat of
the Lord, by “his servants the prophets,” none
of whom are named in the reign of Manasseh
if any were allowed to live, that he would “bring
such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah that whoso-
ever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle.” He
would “wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish,
wiping it and turning it upside down "; and he
would cast off his “inheritance,” deliver them into
the hands of their enemies and make them “a prey
and a spoil of their enemies.” No hope of restora-
tion or a saving remnant is held out.
The dreadful state of things at Jerusalem con-
tinued for two years under Manasseh's son Amon,


THE TWO KINGDOMS ISI
when his servants conspired against him and put
him to death in his own house; but “the people"
slew those who conspired against him and made
his son Josiah king. He was only eight years old,
but his father is said to have been only twenty-
four at his death. Josiah, we are told, did that
which was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked
in all the way of David, turning aside neither to
the right nor to the left; but we are informed of
nothing that he did until, in the eighteenth year
of his reign, the priest Hilkiah found the book of
the law in the house of the Lord when preparations
were making to repair its “breaches.” It was in
this interval that the voice of Jeremiah was first
lifted up, lamenting the recreancy, backsliding and
wickedness of Judah and Jerusalem, and calling
them to repentance and obedience to the Lord, as
their only hope of salvation.
This discovery of the “book of the law " and
the reforms in worship to which it led, were the
great event of Josiah's reign, the last before the
fate of Judah and Jerusalem was sealed, as that
of Israel and Samaria had been sealed just a hun-
dred years before the discovery was made. There
is no doubt that this “book of the law "was that
which was afterwards extended, with a prelude of
discourses by Moses and additions to the com-
mands and ordinances, to form the Book of
Deuteronomy. When it was read to Josiah he
was filled with alarm and sent to “inquire of the


152 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
Lord ” from the prophetess Huldah, apparently
the only recognised survivor of the prophets in
Jerusalem. The zealous redactor of the exile, who
knew what had happened, put in her mouth a dire-
ful prediction of what was then to come, with the
promise that because the king's heart was tender
and he had humbled himself and rent his clothes
and wept, he should be gathered to his fathers in
peace and should not see all the evil that the Lord
would “bring upon this place.” Perhaps the
writer overlooked the fact that in the account un-
der his hand Josiah was killed at Megiddo when
he had the presumption to try to intercept the
Egyptian army on its way to attack Assyria.
But, after the consulting of the oracle in the
person of Huldah, the king is represented as mak-
ing a clean sweep of the iniquitous worship and its
symbols and of various “abominations " that had
invaded Mount Zion in the time of his grand-
father, even to the “houses of the Sodomites in
the house of the Lord.” It seems, according to
this account, that there had even been sacrifices of
children in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, which
was turned into “Tophet” for the burning of
idols and asherim and other refuse, and that some
of the heathenish high places of Solomon had still
remained before Jerusalem. A late addition was
made to the story to verify the prophecy of the
man of God in the time of Jeroboam, that upon
the altar which he had raised at Bethel a child of


THE TWO KINGDOMS I53
the house of David, Josiah by name, should sacri-
fice the priests of the high places and should burn
men's bones. The king is also made to save the
sepulchre in which the “man of God" from Judah
and the old prophet of Bethel were buried to-
gether. Then such a passover was kept in Jerusa-
lem as was never known before, but the redactor,
whose mind was overwhelmed with the subsequent
disasters, could not refrain from interjecting that,
“notwithstanding, the Lord turned not from the
fierceness of his great wrath, wherewith his anger-
was kindled against Judah, because of all the prov-
ocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal,”
but declared that he would remove Judah out of
his sight as he had removed Israel, and cast off
the city which he had chosen to put his name
there. Neither did he omit the authentic state-
ment that Josiah was slain by Pharaoh-Necoh on
his way “up against " the King of Assyria and
was carried dead in his chariot to be buried in
his own sepulchre. p
His son Jehoahaz did not have much time for
the evil that he did in the sight of the Lord, for
this same “Pharaoh-Necoh’’ captured him within
three months and sent him to Egypt to die, putting
his brother Eliakim in his place, but with the name
of Jehoiakim, and exacting a heavy tribute from
the land. Thus Judah and Jerusalem became an
unfortunate football between the great powers of
the Euphrates and the Nile, which were engaged


154 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
/
in a gigantic struggle for supremacy. Babylon
under Nabopolassar, with the aid of Cyaxares of
, Media, subjugated the kingdom of Assyria, and
his son Nebuchadrezzar overwhelmingly defeated
Necho at Carchemish, thus transferring the vas-
salage of Jehoiakim from Egypt to Babylon.
Against the protests of the prophet Jeremiah this
king rebelled and brought the wrath of Babylon
upon Jerusalem, and Judah was devastated by the
army of Nebuchadrezzar. The King of Egypt
“came no more into the land ” for the King of
Babylon “had taken, from the brook of Egypt
unto the river Euphrates, all that pertained to
the King of Egypt.”
Jehoiakim “slept with his fathers ” and his son
Jehoiachin began to reign, but the latter had also
only three months in which to do evil in the sight
of the Lord, for Nebuchadrezzar was now besieg-
ing Jerusalem and the hapless king with his mother
and his servants “went out" to him and they were
carried away to Babylon with “all the princes and
all the mighty men of valour, even ten thousand
captives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths,”
leaving only “the poorest sort of the people of the
land.” This was in the year 597 B. C., but eleven
years remained yet before the final “captivity”
and the destruction of Jerusalem. Nebuchadrez-
zar set another of Josiah's sons on the throne, Mat-
taniah, to whom he gave the name Zedekiah. We
have passed the period of the first compiler of


THE TWO KINGDOMS I55
the Books of Kings and what remains is from the
hand of the redactor in the exile. Zedekiah was
not obedient to the voice of the great prophet
Jeremiah and he had the presumption to rebel
against the King of Babylon, of which the imme-
diate result was to bring back the army of Nebu-
chadrezzar, and there was a siege that reduced
Jerusalem to sore famine and to final destruction.
The king was captured in an attempt to escape to
Jericho, his sons were slain, his eyes were put out,
and he was carried captive to Babylon. The walls
of Zion were broken down, the temple was stripped
of everything of value and left in ruins, and there
was another wholesale deportation after the man-
ner of Chaldaean conquests. There was little of
such colonising from the East as was made by the
Assyrians in the more attractive territory of the
North, but Judah and Jerusalem were left to deso-
lation and “astonishment,” with a governor who
was speedily assassinated, the conspirators and
their followers then fleeing to Egypt and taking
the prophet Jeremiah with them by force. The
result was that while the “ten tribes of Israel”
were dispersed and lost, the remnant of Judah re-
turned in half a century, when Cyrus of Persia
destroyed Babylon, and in a feeble attempt to re-
build Jerusalem built up Judaism.
The purpose of this long chapter has not been
to rehearse the events of the two kingdoms, but
to show that this writing is not and was not in-


156 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
tended to be history, or a record of facts. In the
hands of those who composed it from rude material
of diverse origin, and put it in its final form, its
purpose was to inculcate and impress a theory, or
a doctrine, which is the burden of the whole epic
as finally rounded out. In its higher development
this was the doctrine that the God of Israel, orig-
inally a tribal deity with his abode in the dismal
region of Mount Sinai, was the divine power over
all the nations, but Israel was his own peculiar
people and Judah became his special care when
the other tribes broke away and formed a separate
kingdom, and proved recreant to his worship and
his law. It was for this that he brought calamities
upon them and finally destroyed their kingdom
and removed them from his sight. Whatever
Judah suffered was due to disobedience and infidel-
ity to him, and trust in him would have saved it.
Syria or Egypt, Assyria or Babylon, were only
instruments in his hands for punishing his people
when they would not listen to his voice, as con-
veyed by the prophets who spoke in his name and
by his inspiration.
This was the belief of the prophets themselves,
and this was the belief of those who preserved
their words, either in their original form or in a
modified form, or wrote down what this belief
induced them to think must have been said. It
was the belief of all those who during the exile
and after the return wrought over the mass of


THE TWO KINGDOMS I 57
writings that had been saved from the time of
the kingdoms, first in the form of “the law,” then
in the “prophets,” which included the legendary
and theocratic records from the conquest of Canaan
to the “carrying away into captivity,” and finally
in the addition of various “writings" deemed to
be “holy.” The one dominating idea at last was
that there was no god but Israel's God, and he
would yet save a purified remnant of his own be-
loved people, and bring all other nations, which
he had used for their affliction and their discipline,
into subjection to them, and would build up a
glorified kingdom in the future with the house of
David restored. This was a faith that survived
the destruction of the two kingdoms and even the
failure to rebuild that of Judah after the second
great deliverance.


VIII
PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS
THE literary prophets of Israel, or those whose
utterances, oral or written, have come down to us
as part of the great epic of their race, may be
said to have developed out of a class of diviners
or soothsayers, such as all primitive nations and
religions have had. In the earliest writings we
have glimpses of those priests, or levis, who con-
sulted Yahweh by means of a mechanism called
the ephod, adorned with a symbolical image in the
form of a calf or bull, and who received answers
by urim and thummim. These implements are
represented as being used not only in the days of
the “Judges,” but in the time of Saul and David.
More directly the “word of God” was said to
have been imparted by an angel of the Lord, a
sort of minor deity acting as a messenger or spokes-
man. Later this place seems to have been taken
by a human being spoken of as a “man of God,”
supposed to be inspired for his mission. The spirit
of the Lord was also said to come upon those
who were acting in his behalf, as well as those
who spoke for him, even such rough agents of
his will as Gideon, Jephthah and Samson.
.
158


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS 159
There were those who were consulted as oracles
or seers to whom clairvoyant powers appear to
have been imputed, like Deborah under her palm
tree between Ramah and Bethel, and Samuel at
his dwelling place in Ramah, to whom it was said
that the Lord revealed the fact that Saul was
coming to inquire after stray asses. A late editor
of the account takes occasion to note that he that
was called a prophet in his day had been before-
time called a seer. There were also said to be in
the time of Samuel schools or conventicles in
which the neophytes were called “sons of
prophets,” and the verb used for their “prophe-
sying ” signified crying out in ecstatic fashion,
something like the “speaking with tongues" of a
much later time. It is evident that they were
wont to work themselves into a religious frenzy,
which sometimes infected the bystanders. It was
this that led to the proverbial query “Is Saul also
among the prophets?”
“Prophet” came to mean one who spoke or
acted in the name of “the Lord ” (Yahweh), and
Samuel in anointing and guiding the first king of
Israel is the earliest who appears distinctly in that
role. Writers of a time long after applied the
term to Abraham and Moses, but its significance
is plainly brought out where it is said that the
Lord told Moses, when he pleaded that he was not
eloquent, that Aaron should be to him instead of
a mouth and should be his “prophet.” After


I6O THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
David became king, Nathan appears as a prophet
to reveal to him the purposes of the Lord and to
rebuke him in the case of the wrong done to
Uriah the Hittite. We hear of no prophet in the
time of Solomon until the Ephraimite rebellion,
which, according to the doctrine developed later,
must be accounted for as a retribution for the sins
of that king in setting up the worship of heathen
gods in his latter days, and must have been an-
nounced beforehand in the name of God. For
that purpose Ahijah appears, whose abode was
said to be at the old sanctuary of Shiloh.
The symbolical action of this prophet in rending
his new garment into twelve pieces and giving ten
of them to Jeroboam was a kind of performance
sometimes credited to later prophets, as a means
of giving emphasis or illustration to their mes-
sages. These things may not have been actually
done, for there was much use of figurative lan-
guage and poetical imagery, not only by those who
told of the words and deeds of prophets, but in
what purport to be their own statements. Their
symbolism like their visions, was usually assumed
for effect. It may be that at the time of the dis-
astrous expedition of Ahab and Jehoshaphat
against the Syrians at Ramoth-Gilead, Zedekiah
made him horns of iron to show how the kings
would punish the enemy until he was “consumed,”
but it is hardly more likely than that Micaiah saw
the visions that he described. It is not to be sup-


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS I6 I
posed that Amos actually saw the basket of summer
fruit which he said the Lord God showed him, or
that he really saw the Lord standing upon the
altar telling him to smite the lintel of the door
that the posts may shake. When Isaiah tells how
his lips were purged by a live coal taken from the
altar by a seraph he is not relating a matter of
fact, and it may be doubted whether he walked
naked and barefoot three years “for a sign and
a wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia.” When
he spoke of a young woman having a child to be
named “God with us” to illustrate the time within
which Judah would be relieved from the attack of
Israel and Syria, or of naming a child of his own
to symbolise the approaching destruction of
Damascus by Assyria, he was not telling family
history or prefiguring remote events.
A number of symbolical acts were imputed to
Jeremiah, such as putting on a yoke to represent
the coming subjugation of his people and shatter-
ing a potter's earthen vessel to illustrate how the
Lord would smash Jerusalem, but it does not fol-
low that he literally did these things. Certainly,
when he said that in obedience to the word of
the Lord he got a linen girdle and took it to
Euphrates and hid it in a hole of the rock, and
after many days went again and found it marred
and “profitable for nothing,” to show how the
pride of Judah was to be marred and its people to
be carried away captive to the Euphrates, the


I62 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
statement ascribed to him was not meant to be
understood as relating a fact. Very likely the
narrative of buying a field from his uncle at
Anathoth as a refuge in anticipation of the de-
struction of Jerusalem was a bit of illustrative
fiction to impress the belief that, while the land
would be made desolate, there would be a rescue
of the purified people after many days and that
houses and fields and vineyards would “yet again
be bought in this land.”
We need to make allowance for ancient and
Oriental modes of expression. There is another
thing for which we must make allowance in judg-
ing of this prophetic literature. Much of that
which was preserved in the great epic was no doubt
written down by the prophets themselves before or
after its oral utterance, where it was uttered at all
under the circumstances related, but some of it was
undoubtedly written out by others from hearsay
or tradition, in some cases invented by these writers.
During a period of nearly two centuries between
the earliest of these and the devastation of Judah
by Nebuchadrezzar these utterances must have
been collected at Jerusalem, including those that
had their origin in the Northern Kingdom before
the destruction of Samaria. Then they were car-
ried away to Babylon in more or less confusion and
cherished by devout scribes, who had fifty years
in which to work over and to arrange and tran-


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS 163
scribe the mass of precious material. In this work
they had the light of events now past to guide
them, and there is much evidence that they felt
no scruple in modifying and adapting what they
had, to support their beliefs and their religious
faith.
The material of the prophecies was evidently
in disorder and the means of identifying the time
and place of production and the authorship of
various parts of it, were imperfect. The redac-
tors and copyists were not skilful and the final
arrangement was defective. In most cases no log-
ical or chronological order was observed, and pas-
sages were credited to certain prophets, even the
greatest of them, which could not have been their
work. Take as a conspicuous example the Book
of Isaiah. Nothing after the thirty-ninth chapter,
in the modern division into chapter and verse, could
have come from the prophet of the time of Ahaz
and Hezekiah. That section belongs to the end
of the exile and after. The last four chapters
of that which precedes chapter forty, relating to
Sennacherib's invasion, the sickness of Hezekiah
and the mission from Merodach-Baladan of Baby-
lon, are taken bodily from the Book of Kings.
What precedes these is badly arranged and con-
tains at least one passage that is older than Isaiah's
time and several that are later, later even than
the exile, the final redaction having been made long


164 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
after the return, when many stray fragments of
prophecy were misplaced or purposely interpolated
in the ancient setting.
Perhaps the oldest of the oracles preserved in
writing, unless we regard as such the vaticinations
put in the mouth of Balaam in the Book of Num-
bers, is the poetical tirade against Moab in the
fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of Isaiah, which
is there designated as the word spoken by the Lord
concerning Moab in time past. It is a pleasing
conjecture that this may have come from the an-
cient prophet Jonah, who is referred to in the
Book of Kings, where Jeroboam II is said to have
restored the border of Israel, probably including
the suppression of Moab, “according to the word
of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spake by
the hand of Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet
which was of Gath-hepher.”
But the earliest complete “prophecy” labelled
with the name of its author, is that of Amos the
herdsman of Tekoa in Judah, who went to Beth-el
in Israel in the time of Jeroboam II, to denounce
the iniquities that were flagrant in that kingdom,
and to utter warnings of the punishment that
awaited the guilty realm. The time of this was
about 760 B. C., after the Assyrians had begun
their campaigns of conquest in the West and there
were many premonitions of the fate that impended
over the puny nations which were on the track of
the armies that passed between the empires of the


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS 165
Euphrates and the Nile. Amos avowed that he
was not by profession a prophet but a herdsman
and a dresser of Sycamore trees, but the Lord had
taken him from following the flock and sent him
to “prophesy unto Israel.” His work is highly
poetical and full of burning ardour. He regarded
the moving of the armies of Assyria as a menace
of the Lord to the sinful nations and especially to
Israel, for its recreancy to the covenant with Jacob
and the worship of the God who had brought his
people out of Egypt and given them their goodly
land.
The prophet begins with rhapsodical visions of
the retribution that is coming upon Damascus of
Syria, upon Gaza of the Philistines, upon Tyre,
upon Ammon and Moab, and even upon Judah,
which had rejected the law of the Lord; but his
fiercest denunciations were reserved for Israel,
which had sold the righteous for silver and the
needy for a pair of shoes, and had been guilty of
injustice, fraud, oppression of the poor and all
iniquity. The Lord had borne with their sins and
tried them with penalties until his patience was
exhausted, and now he threatened them with de-
struction and captivity. The prophet used much
figurative language and indulged in visions, but it
was evidently the Assyrian army that he regarded
as the coming scourge, and he knew what such an
army of conquest from the mighty East must
mean, unless the angry God that was bringing it


I66 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
on was placated by repentance and submission.
The whole doctrine of the prophets was summed
up in these words: “Shall evil befall a city and the
Lord hath not done it? Surely the Lord God will
do nothing but he revealeth his secret unto his
servants the prophets.”
But never did the prophets of Israel fail in their
faith in the ultimate rescue and salvation of the
Lord's people. A purified remnant would surely
be restored to build up his kingdom, and their
enemies would be destroyed or brought into sub-
jection to their rule. So, after the denunciation
and threats, said to have been delivered at Bethel
and to have resulted in a charge of conspiracy and
a warning to flee into the land of Judah, this mes-
sage was concluded with a promise that the taber-
nacle of David should be raised up again and
repaired, the people should be brought from their
captivity, rebuild their waste cities, plant vine-
yards and make gardens, and they “shall no more
be plucked out of their land which I have given
them, said the Lord God.” This was undoubt-
edly added after the exile.
The next prophet in order of time was Hosea,
who was of the kingdom of Israel over which the
shadow of doom was darkening, for already the
army of Tiglath-Pileser was ravaging the sur-
rounding country. Damascus and Tyre had been
brought into subjection to him and Samaria was
menaced. The first three chapters of the Book


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS 167
of Hosea, as it is now divided, must have been
written before the end of the dynasty of Jehu,
which ceased with the assassination of the son of
Jeroboam II, within six months of that king's
death. The others relate to the time of Mena-
hem, who succeeded to the throne by speedily
assassinating the assassin, and who reigned ten
years. No events are referred to so late as the
league between Israel and Syria against Judah,
about 736 B. C. There is no reason to assume
that there was personal experience in the symbol-
ism of the first chapters, which rather coarsely
represents the relation of Israel and her Lord as
that of an unfaithful wife and her husband, with
threats of exposure and disgrace and promise of
renewed union and love after repentance. Im-
agery of that kind is common in the prophetic
utterances, heathen worship and infidelity to the
law of the Lord being characterised as “whore-
dom.”
This prophecy is made up of alternations
of rebuke and pleading and promise, in which
the author puts his words into the mouth of the
Lord, while assuming that the Lord puts the words
into his mouth. He is deeply depressed by the
idolatry and the iniquity of the people, and the
dreadful peril, which he believed to be due to
the resentment and anger of their God, who was
bringing destruction upon them as a punishment
which there seemed to be no hope of averting.


I68 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
There proved to be no way of averting the calam-
ity, for the Assyrian conquests went on, and it was
not many years before they swept over Israel, and
Samaria was destroyed. This part of the herit-
age of Jacob was never restored, though its resto-
ration was often promised.
The menace to Judah was less direct and it was
nearly a hundred and forty years before a like
devastation came to that kingdom, but similar use
was made of the danger by the prophets in their
desperate efforts to induce the people and their
rulers to abandon their evil ways and obey the
Lord, whose threats and promises the prophets
uttered. That and that alone, they devoutly be-
lieved, would save the nation and make it great
and glorious, in spite of all its enemies could do,
however seemingly powerful. These were only
instruments in the hands of Israel's God, who was
the source of all power. The greatest of the
prophets of Judah, as the inevitable crisis made
its slow way from the East, was Isaiah, who be-
ginning in the time of Jotham, about 740 B. C.,
was a mentor of the kings until the death of
Hezekiah, more than forty years later, a period
covering the Assyrian conquests of Syria and
Samaria and the attack of Sennacherib upon
Judah, when Jerusalem narrowly escaped the fate
that afterwards came from Babylon.
The book which contains such utterances of
this great prophet as were preserved is a com-


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS 169
posite work, even more difficult to analyse than
the Pentateuch; and, after all the erudition and
research that have been lavished upon it, there is
much uncertainty as to the source and the appli-
cation of many passages. The last twenty-seven
chapters, as it stands in our versions, is to be
relegated to the close of the exile and later. The
historical passage relating to the invasion of Sen-
nacherib, the sickness of Hezekiah and the visit
of the emissaries of Merodach-Baladan, as has
been already stated, is conveyed bodily from the
Book of Kings, with the interpolation of a kind of
psalm designated as “the writing of Hezekiah
when he had been sick and had recovered of his
sickness.” The apocalyptic passage contained in
chapters twenty-four to twenty-seven, inclusive,
belong to the time at the end of the exile when
Assyria and Babylon had been destroyed and high
hopes were cherished of a restoration of the king-
dom, which should extend from “the flood of the
River unto the brook of Egypt,” into which the
exiles and outcasts should be gathered, with their
place of worship in the holy mountain at Jerusa-
lem.
The succession of compilers, revisers and editors
of this material made use of such authentic utter-
ances of Isaiah as they had that suited their pur-
pose, but they did not observe the order of events
or verify the occasions for their use, and they did
not hesitate to modify and adapt them, or to in-


170 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
troduce extraneous matter of later origin. Most
of this, however, has the impress of that prophetic
doctrine of which Isaiah and Jeremiah were the
greatest exemplars. It was intended to show how
their warnings had been justified and their predic-
tions verified, and it reiterated with new emphasis
the promise of a restoration that had begun and
a glory and power that were hoped for.
The first chapter of Isaiah which forms an im-
pressive exordium to the collection is a late pro-
duction of the prophet, perhaps of the time of the
relapse after the death of Hezekiah, touched by
a still later hand, for it speaks of revolt, estrange-
ment and backsliding from the Holy One of
Israel, and refers to a retribution that has already
come and a redemption that shall yet make of
Zion “the city of righteousness, the faithful city,”
when all that forsake the Lord shall be consumed.
It is followed by four chapters which are regarded
as genuine beyond doubt and among the earlier
utterances of the prophet, though they contain
evidences of late revision, when it could be said
that “Jerusalem is ruined and Judah is fallen.”
It implies idolatry and heathen practices in the
land, as well as pride and folly and wickedness,
which the Lord is to purge away in his wrath
with the “blast of judgment,” until those that are
left among the living in Jerusalem shall be called
holy. The fifth chapter contains the beautiful
allegory of the vineyard which brought forth only
*


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS 171
wild grapes and further denunciation of woes and
penalties for the recreancy of the Lord's people,
whom he had smitten and against whom his hand
is “stretched out still.”
Some later oracles are prefaced by the state-
ment of the prophet's first call to his mission by
a vision in the temple “in the year that King
Uzziah died.” This collection begins with the
first that is clearly associated with a definite his-
torical event, the alliance of Israel under Pekah
and Syria under Rezin against Judah in the time
of Ahaz. At that time the Assyrians under
Tiglath-Pileser were threatening Syria and Ahaz
hired that monarch with the treasures of the tem-
ple to save him “out of the hand of the King of
Syria and out of the hand of the King of Israel.”
As Tiglath-Pileser was already in possession of
Damascus there is no doubt that this was what
averted the danger from Jerusalem.
Isaiah is represented as flouting the danger from
these “two tails of smoking firebrands" and pre-
dicting that before a child yet to be born should
come to the age of knowing “to refuse the evil and
choose the good,” the land of the two kings whom
Ahaz abhorred would be forsaken. This is fol-
lowed by further prophesying that the Lord would
call the fly from Egypt and the bee from Assyria
to desolate the offending land. But mingled with
this are later poetical fragments, in which the bur-
den of prophecy is the promise of restoration after


172 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
completed penalties, when the throne of David
should be restored under an ideal prince of peace.
While the most is made of the menace of As-
syria against Damascus and Samaria as a warning
to Jerusalem, it is the doctrine of the prophet that
the Assyrian is only a “rod of anger” and a
“staff of indignation ” in the hand of the Lord,
and that he will be punished in his turn for arro-
gating to himself the power of which he is only
the instrument. It is as if the axe should boast
itself against him that heweth therewith, the saw
magnify itself against him that shaketh it, or the
rod shake them that lift it up. The Lord would
chastise Assyria and restore a remnant of his peo-
ple. The passage following the graphic picture
of the coming on of the host and the devastation
the Lord would bring about, which tells of a
time when an ideal king from the stock of Jesse
should reign in righteousness and peace, and the
remnant of the scattered people would be recalled
from the four corners of the earth to subjugate
their enemies, might be regarded as a prophetic
vision of Isaiah, but it is far more likely to be
the offspring of the dreams of the post-exilic time.
It is certain that that which follows, relating to
the doom of Babylon, was not written before the
time of the attack of Cyrus. How much of the
various denunciations of doom upon the nations
hostile to “the people of God’’ came from Isaiah,
and how much from those who intermingled his


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS 173
writings with their own, it is impossible to deter-
mine. That relating to Egypt certainly refers to
events later than his time, and it ends with the
strange prediction of an alliance between Egypt,
Assyria and Israel, who were to have the com-
mon blessing of the Lord in the midst of the earth:
“Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the
work of my hands and Israel mine inheritance.”
This is far from the manner and spirit of the
prophet who denounced all alliance with other na-
tions or dependence upon their help, and urged
complete reliance upon the God who made Israel
his own peculiar care and would make it the one
great nation of the earth if it obeyed him and kept
his law.
A definite relation to history in the oracles of
Isaiah appears again in the later chapters, begin-
ning with the twenty-eighth, sometimes designated
as the “Assyrian cycle.” Though this passage is
introduced by an older fragment pronouncing woe
upon Samaria as “the crown of the drunkards of
Ephraim,” it relates in general to the time of the
“overflowing scourge" of Sennacherib's army,
which was to be used to chastise and correct Judah,
but would not be permitted to destroy Jerusalem.
Here the turning of Hezekiah to Egypt for help
against the overpowering army from the East is
distinctly condemned. We hear again that ter-
rible voice denouncing the covenant with Sheol
and the agreement with death which the rulers


174 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
of Jerusalem seemed to have made, portraying the
might and anger of an outraged God, and depict-
ing the retribution that he was bringing upon an
offending people. The language flows like a tor-
rent and roars like a cataract, but sometimes it
sinks into a tone of pleading, and again rises into
exultation over a final restoration when the venge-
ance of the Lord should be complete and “the
wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad and
the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.”
There is always reason for regarding these ex-
ultant passages as late interpolations, belonging
to the time when there was a prospect that “the
ransomed of the Lord ” were about to return and
“come with singing unto Zion,” and when there
was hope that everlasting joy was to be upon their
heads in the restored kingdom. There is a pro-
saic ending, in the redactor's transcript from the
Book of Kings of the account of Sennacherib's
sudden diversion from his attack upon Jerusalem.
Of the fate of the prophet when this great crisis
was over and the land relapsed into quietness and
peace we know nothing; but it may be that his
blood was mingled with that with which Manasseh
filled Jerusalem after the death of his father.
There was a “minor prophet” in the time of
Isaiah some of whose utterances were preserved.
This was Micah of Morasheth on the border of
Philistia, who was also aroused to righteous indig-
nation by the iniquities of Samaria and Jerusalem,


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS 175
and regarded the Assyrian menace as a portent of
punishment. The first three chapters of the book
bearing this name are of unquestioned authenticity
and their contents must have preceded the destruc-
tion of Samaria, but the rest is a dubious mixture.
The consolatory verses at the beginning of
Chapter four are a late interpolation and almost a
paraphrase of the beginning of the second Chap-
ter of Isaiah. The rest of Chapter four and all
of Chapter five is a blending of inharmonious
elements, and if originally from the same source
was mangled by late editing. Chapter six and
the beginning of seven appear to reflect the dismal
time of Manasseh and may be from the same hand
as the first chapters, but it is certain that the last
chapter from verse seven to the end was not earlier
than the time of anticipated restoration at the end
of the exile.
During the long reign of Manasseh, which was
characterised by relapse to the grosser form of
the worship of Yahweh, akin to that of Baal,
and perhaps mingled with it, and by reaction
against the exacting ethical standard taught in
Hezekiah's time, there was no voice of admonition
and warning that has been transmitted, unless it
be that of Micah. One oracle of that period
there is, labelled with the name of Nahum the
Elkoshite. Some authorities place Elkosh in Gal-
ilee, but it does not matter. Nahum’s “vision ”
was a fierce threat of the destruction of Nineveh


176 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
by the Lord, whose people Assyria had so out-
raged, and it begins with a fervid portrayal of
the might of that avenging deity when his wrath
was excited. It is mainly poetical in structure
and abounds in graphic imagery of the forces of
destruction with which “the Lord ” would lash
the “bloody city.” It was written after the con-
quest of Egypt and the destruction of Thebes, or
“No-amon,” by the Assyrians, and at a time when
Nineveh was threatened from the East; but the
city was not destroyed until long after, by Nabo-
polassar of Babylon.
After the short reign of Manasseh's son Amon,
and while the child Josiah occupied the throne of
Judah, perhaps under the guidance of the temple
priests, there was a revival of prophecy. We
| hear nothing of it until the boy king had reigned
a dozen years or more and was about twenty years
of age. It was then that the great champion of
theocracy, Jeremiah, appeared, and from that
time he attended the agonies of the kingdom until
it expired under the punitive assaults of Nebu-
chadrezzar of Babylon; but there were two
“minor prophets,” contemporary with the earlier
and middle part of his career, some of whose
utterances were considered worthy of preservation
through the subsequent vicissitudes of this remark-
able literature.
Josiah's reign began in 640 B. C., and it was
not until 622 that the book of the law was said to


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS 177
have been found in the temple, the discovery of
which was followed by a drastic reform in the
worship of Yahweh. This was now centered at
Jerusalem, and that in the “high places " was
wiped out. Zephaniah is represented as being a
descendant in the fourth generation from Heze-
kiah, presumably the king, the great grandfather
of Josiah. It must have been before the reforms
of Josiah that the word of the Lord is said to have
come to Zephaniah proclaiming destruction of all
the earth on a great and terrible “day of the
Lord's wrath,” on account of the sinfulness even
of Jerusalem. It is intimated that the “fierce an-
ger” may be averted from that city if its people
will “gather themselves” and seek righteousness
and meekness. Some regard this intimation as a
later addition, and the threats against the nations
hostile to Judah as from a different source. At
all events, the promise of restoration of a dis-
persed people and the song of rejoicing with which
this prophecy ends are an addition of the time
of the exile or later. It is probable that the gen-
uine oracle of Zephaniah with its menace of de-
struction, intended to terrify the people into turn-
ing to the Lord for escape, was incited by the
invasion of Scythians in Western Asia about 628
B. C.
It was after Babylon had gained the ascendancy
in the East and was starting westward on its career
of conquest, in which Egypt was defeated at
--~


I80 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
deemed themselves inspired by the deity to utter
his own words, was developed and cherished
through the long exile and after the restoration,
and became the chief article of faith and hope
while the humiliated people struggled in galling
subjection successively to Persia and Greece. It
was under its influence that all the old writings
were painfully wrought over and welded into a
sacred epic to sustain the indomitable spirit of
Judaism. One of the chief pillars of this great
fabric is this book of Jeremiah. It was the prod-
uct of a succession of compilations and revisions
finally moulded into one as late as the third cen-
tury B. C.
How much of it consists of the actual utter-
ances or writings of the prophet cannot be
determined with certainty, but allusions to events,
circumstances and conditions in the exile and long
after, are easily traced, and the general character
of the collection is well established. Those who
gave it the final impress could look back upon the
trials and calamities of the nation through the
preceding centuries, realise the devastation and
desolation of the land and the resistless power
that had trodden it down, and could only comfort
themselves with the conviction that it was due to
the sin and disobedience of the people and their
rulers, and that it was only necessary to profit by
the chastisement and rely upon the unseen poten-
tate that must still be their God and theirs only,


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS I 81
to receive the benefit of the promises they believed
him to have made to their fathers and repeated
from age to age through his prophets.
When Jeremiah first appeared at Jerusalem the
conditions left after the reign of Manasseh and
Amon had not materially changed, and his ear-
lier utterances, scattered in disorder through the
first twenty chapters of the book, have the famil-
iar tone of reproach, remonstrance and threat,
of lamentation and mourning, heated to burning
intensity. Rumours of the Scythian invasion from
the North gave point to the menace of destruc-
tion, to be averted only by submission to the
Lord. What part the prophet may have taken
in the promulgation of the newly found version
of the law and the reforms that followed through ſ
the action of Josiah, instigated by the priests, is
left in profound obscurity. It is significant that
neither he nor his prophesying is mentioned in the
Book of Kings and that none of the oracles at-
tributed to him relate to this part of Josiah's reign
or make any direct reference to it. It is only
after the untimely death of that king that the
prophet's voice is again heard in warning and
menace, and then appalling danger is gathering
in the East. The kings of Judah had continued
to be tributary to Assyria, though apparently free
from direct oppression, but after Josiah lost his
life in the rash attempt to intercept the Egyptian
army under Necho at Megiddo, that monarch'


I 82 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
seized his son Jehoahaz, after he had nominally
reigned three months, and carried him away to
Egypt, making his brother king under the name
of Jehoiakim.
There is but one reference to Jehoahaz in Jere-
miah, and there he is contemptuously called Shal-
lum, and a prediction is interjected that he should
die “in the place whither they have led him
captive.” There are several references to
Jehoiakim, who had first paid tribute to Egypt
for the safety of his kingdom, but after the bat-
tle of Carchemish had become a vassal of Babylon
and three years later revolted and brought the
wrath of Nebuchadrezzar upon his country.
This led to the ravaging of Judah and the siege
of Jerusalem, and three months after the death
of Jehoiakim his son Jehoiachin surrendered.
There was a deportation to Babylon of princes
and priests and men of war. Among these the
name of Mattaniah, a son of Josiah, appears, but
according to the record he was made King of
Judah by Nebuchadrezzar, with the name of
º Zedekiah, and was destined to be the last of the
line. It was his presumption in revolting and
relying upon the help of Egypt that led to the
return of the Chaldean army, the devastation of
the country, the destruction of Jerusalem after a
long siege, and the final deportation in 586 B. C.
During all the stirring and critical events of
the last twenty years of the Kingdom of Judah,


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS 183
Jeremiah was unwearied in his denunciation of
the wickedness of the people and the presumption
of the rulers, and brought persecution and abuse
upon himself by advocating submission to Baby-
lon and condemning trust in Egypt or any other
earthly power.
The most surely authentic collection of the
prophet's utterances, as written out probably in
his own time, but somewhat revised afterwards,
contain few distinct allusions to historical events,
but they come down to his threats of the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem and the desolation of Judah
by Nebuchadrezzar's army and the “carrying
away” to Babylon, which would be its inevitable
sequel. This collection closes with what purports
to be an account of his seizure by one of the
king's officers and his confinement in the stocks
for prophesying such a calamity. He is repre-
sented as fiercely repeating the threat and de-
nouncing captivity and death upon his persecutor
in the name of the Lord, and then complaining
in his despair that the Lord had deceived him
and brought him into humiliation, and as cursing
the day wherein he was born.
But immediately following this collection is an-
other and later one which begins with the state-
ment that this same officer, Pashur, and another
were sent by King Zedekiah to implore the
prophet to inquire of the Lord regarding the
attack of Nebuchadrezzar upon Jerusalem.


184 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
This was at the time of the final siege, though
earlier events are afterwards referred to. The
reply is that the Lord will fight on the side of
the Chaldeans, destroy the city, and deliver the
people into the hand of the King of Babylon.
Those who resisted he would smite without pity
and without mercy, and only those who yielded
would have a chance of life. This is out of its
proper order and is followed by some discon-
nected fragments relating to the previous kings
since Josiah. After a brief exordium threaten-
ing the kings of Judah generally if they would
not hear the words of the Lord, it is said
that “Shallum ” (Jehoahaz) shall die in the land
to which he has been carried, but is not to be
wept for. Neither was there to be lamentation
for Jehoiakim, who would have the “burial of
an ass” and be cast forth beyond the gates of
Jerusalem. Jehoiachin, or Jeconiah, referred to
as “Coniah,” the Lord would “pluck hence and
deliver to the King of Babylon " and no man of
his seed should prosper sitting upon the throne
of David.
No doubt these were retrospective proph-
ecies written after the event, and not the words
of Jeremiah. What follows them is certainly
of late origin, as are all the passages tell-
ing of the days to come when the Lord would
gather his people from the countries into which
he had driven them and would establish over


I86 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
the days of Josiah, and to have re-written them
with additions when the roll was burnt by the
king, and who was carried away to Egypt with
the prophet after the siege, was the latest com-
piler of the annals of the Kings and the author
in their original form of these historical passages
relating to the last days of the kingdom and giv-
ing an account of Jeremiah's utterances, his treat-
ment by the household of Zedekiah and by the
king himself. Baruch is supposed to have es-
caped from Egypt and made his way to Baby-
lon, where he was active in putting these writ-
ings into form.
The closing chapter of the Book of Jeremiah
is taken bodily from the end of the second
Book of Kings, but before that there is a
further account of the sequel to the siege, the
tumult which followed, the assassination of the
governor appointed by Nebuchadrezzar's officer,
the choice given to the prophet to go with the
captives or to stay behind, his failure to induce
those who stayed to remain in the deserted land,
and his forcible abduction from Bethehem, where
they had gathered, to Egypt. It would seem that
Baruch or some one else, either preserved the
fierce tirades of the prophet against the conduct
of the refugees in the borders of Egypt or im-
puted to him those which he was presumed to
have uttered. At last his uncompromising voice
was silenced and tradition said that he was


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS 187
stoned to death by the people whose practices he
persisted in denouncing.
There is no doubt that the passages relating
to the restoration of Israel and the destruction
of its enemies in the days to come, contained in
chapters xxx to xxxiii and xlvi to li, with the
passage interpolated as chapter xxv, in the book
as divided in modern versions, were in the main
of late production, in the exile and after, and
were retrospective in their prophecy of events
that were then past. But they were elabora-
tions of a central idea of Jeremiah's utterances,
which served as a pattern and inspiration for
writers of the time when the hope was dominant
that the Lord would restore the kingdom,
gather all the scattered children of the house-
hold of Israel from among the nations, and
set up a righteous king of the line of David on
Mount Zion who would rule in submission to
Yahweh’s guidance. This mingling of Jere-
miah's genuine utterances with those imputed to
him long after serves as a bridge from the calam-
ity, humiliation and despair of Judah's devas-
tation and Jerusalem's desolation, over the gulf
of exile by the streams of Babylon, to the time
of restoration and hope, when the walls of Jeru-
salem were rebuilt, the temple was renewed and
the “laws of Moses" were developed into a
system of ritual worship unknown before.
There is nowhere else in human history any


188 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
production of man's genius more intense in ex-
pression than the so-called prophecies of Jere-
miah, and that intensity was inspired by the cir-
cumstances of the time and the ardent nature of
the man. He was a fervent believer in the doc-
trine he preached, and an intense lover of his
country, which he saw in the agonies of disso-
lution from the attack of a powerful enemy. His
judgment and foresight taught him that resistance
to the armies of Babylon was useless, that a league
of the petty nations for defence was futile, and
that reliance upon Egypt for rescue was folly.
But with all his soul he believed that this situa-
tion was brought about by Israel's God as a
punishment of his recreant and stiff-necked peo-
ple, who persisted in worshipping other gods, in
bowing down to idols and neglecting the princi-
ples of conduct inculcated by the prophets, whose
words were put in their mouth by God himself.
He believed that if the people would repent and
return to their allegiance to the power that had
made a covenant with their fathers and given
them all they had, his anger would be placated,
his mercy would be excited, his love would be
regained and he would turn back their enemies
and restore them to safety and happiness as a
nation. But he was convinced after years of ap-
peal, of warning and of threats and promises,
that the case was hopeless. They must undergo
a terrible retribution which would chastise the
!
l
!


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMs 189
guilt out of them and destroy the incorrigible,
but a purified remnant would be saved and re-
stored, for Israel's God could not be utterly de-
feated and his purposes could not finally fail.
Israel had been his care for a thousand years,
and wayward as it was, it would be chastened
and made triumphant in the end.
It was the prophet's conception of deity and
of his relation to mankind, especially his relation
to his own peculiar people, that gave such in-
tensity to his utterances. Israel's God was lov-
ing and merciful when obeyed and submissively
worshipped, but he was fiercely jealous of other
gods and excited to wrath and indignation when
his own beloved people fell away to them.
When his anger was aroused he was vengeful and
ruthless, and he controlled all the powers of
nature and of nations and would use them in his
fury for punishment and destruction. The lan-
guage of warning and of menace was filled with
the most graphic use of figure and imagery. The
Lord would sweep over the land in whirlwind and
fire; he would waste with famine and destroy
with pestilence; he would slay with the sword and
cover the land with men's bones; he would bring
armies from afar like devouring locusts and birds
of prey; he would raven like wolves and lions;
he would roar and howl and bring tempest and
darkness and fill the world with terror and dis-
may, because of the iniquities, the disobedience
l


190 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
and the wilfulness of his people, who showed
such base ingratitude.
No doubt the prophet imputed his own feel-
ings to his God, but he believed that they came
from that source and that he was uttering the
words that Jehovah (Yahweh) inspired within
him. He could not separate himself from “the
Lord.” There were other prophets who pre-
sumed to speak in the same name in giving dif-
ferent counsel, and he did not hesitate to de-
nounce them as deceivers and liars and threaten
them with disaster and death, still imputing his
own words to the outraged deity. Naturally, the
words of these other prophets were seldom pre-
served and then only to vindicate the utterances
of those who were regarded as the true prophets
of God.
The most remarkable thing about these He-
brew seers, with their conceptions, in many re-
spects crude and barbarous, of the deity and of
the worldly destiny of their own nation, is the
lofty ethical principles which they taught as the
word of God, the principles of truth and justice,
of kindness and mercy, the doctrine of everlasting
righteousness, which was far above the standard
of any other ancient people and of a validity that
no lapse of time can impair. That is the pe-
culiar contribution that the Hebrew genius made
to mankind, and it imparted a kind of sanctity to
the whole body of the literature which was bound


PROPHETS OF THE KINGDOMS 191
up together as the full expression of that genius.
Its knowledge of the world was small, its con-
ception of deity was rude, its idea of worship was
far from enlightened, but it grasped the moral
law of the universe with a firmness that has never
been relaxed.


IX
PROPHETS OF THE EXILE AND AFTER
IN those strange times when even enlightened
people accepted the ancient Jewish doctrine that
the scriptures of the Hebrews contained nothing
but divine truth, to be implicitly believed as
such, and that the writers thereof were inspired
by the deity and therefore incapable of error,
it was assumed that the long period of exile by
the rivers of Babylon was one of literary dark-
ness, illumined only by the visions and prophetic
discourses of Ezekiel. Intelligent study has re-
vealed the fact that it was a busy time for the
Hebrew genius, for the brains of Judah had been
deported from Jerusalem. The compiler of the
Book of Kings said that when Jehoiachin was
carried away all the chief men of the land went
with him and “all the men of might even seven
thousand, and the craftsmen and smiths a thou-
sand.” A late reviser raised the number of cap-
tives to ten thousand and said that “none re-
mained save the poorest sort of the people of the
land.” Eleven years later, when Nebuchad-
rezzar's army destroyed Jerusalem and Zedekiah
was carried away, it is said that “the residue of
I92


LATER PROPHETS I93
the multitude did Nebuzaradan the Captain of
the Guard carry away captive,” and only the poor-
est of the land were left “to be vinedressers and
husbandmen.”
This is an exaggerated statement, but there is
no doubt that the priests and scribes were deported
and they took the literary treasures of the temple
with them and had plenty of time to work them
over in their exile. These were evidently in dis-
order and confusion and were not duly labelled;
there was lack of skill in arranging and editing
them, and the process was not completed until
long after. It was then that the tales of the
Judges were connected together with links of
theocratic doctrine, and the books of Samuel and
Kings were revised in the light of what had hap-
pened in the eventful period since David and
Solomon. The utterances of the great prophets
Isaiah and Jeremiah, which were so indissolubly
associated with the events of the most critical part
of that history, were unskilfully arranged, inter-
larded with other material and so adapted as to
be justified by the consequences that they fore-
shadowed; but they were left open to later en-
largement and recension, when there was hope
that the promise of redemption for the nation
and the establishment of an everlasting kingdom
under a scion of the house of David was to be
fulfilled.
There was more literary activity in the time of


194 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
the exile than ever before, but it was concentrated
in the community of captives and wrought largely
from material of the past. But one great work
there was to link the past with the future in the
epic progress of the peculiar people. Among
those carried away with Jehoiachin was a priest
named Ezekiel, who became a prophet among the
exiles. He appears to have done his own writing
with systematic care, and it was preserved with
little mutilation or revision until securely em-
balmed in the literature that was finally conse-
crated against further change. It is peculiarly
interesting, not only for its reflection of the past
and its foreshadowing of the future, and its own
isolation in both time and place from the cur-
rent of Jewish life, but as an example of the
prophetic method in its extreme development.
It requires only a reasonable freedom from tradi-
tional prepossessions and a moderate exercise of
common sense to see in the “Book of the Prophet
Ezekiel ” a very human and artfully wrought
literary production. It contains the germs of the
apocalyptic style of a later time and of the ful-
ler development of the Jewish law. In its vi-
sions and symbolism and its reproductions of the
words of “the Lord,” it is no more to be taken
in a literal sense than the scenes of Greek tragedy
or the imaginings of Dante or Bunyan.
Just when this book was written and how long
it occupied the author are matters of mere con-


LATER PROPHETS I95
jecture, but its character indicates a continuous
work undertaken after the events which are viewed
in retrospect with a prophetic eye. Now and
again the writer gives an impression of actuality
by fixing specific dates for his vision or the com-
ing to him of the “word of the Lord,” but that
was part of his art. In one place, when speaking
of the siege of Jerusalem as a coming event, he
makes a distinct allusion to the blindness of Zede-
kiah after he was carried to Babylon. These
dates are reckoned from the first deportation,
when the prophet himself was carried away with
Jehoiachin, and it may be that the “thirtieth
year ” referred to in the first verse, which has been
a puzzle to students, was that in which the writing
was completed, for it is detached from what im-
mediately follows, where Ezekiel the priest is
spoken of in the third person. It was apparently
prefixed when the work was finished.
The vision of God which is so elaborately de-
scribed, as a prelude to prophecy, is so obviously
imaginary as not to be seriously discussed as any-
thing else. Never was there such a deity
mounted in such a chariot, designed after the
manner of Babylonian art, and there never was
such a vision except in the waking dreams of an
imaginative writer; but it was an effective device
for introducing the commission of the prophet, as
he conceived it to be, as the Lord's watchman
unto the house of Israel in its days of exile. He


196 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
was to remind that “house" of the evil record
which had brought it to desolation and ruin and
left it in humiliation and despair, and then to
cheer it with hopes of restoration and greatness
yet to come, if it returned to its allegiance to the
God of Jacob, submitted to his authority and
obeyed his law. That God was their ruler,
against whom they had basely rebelled, and he
sought to be their ruler again and would joyfully
gather them from among the nations and es-
tablish a righteous and benign kingdom with a
prince after his own heart on Mount Zion, when
they had been purified by chastisement.
So the prophet goes back in imagination to the
siege, when Jerusalem was beset by the army of
Nebuchadrezzar and reduced to famine and dire
distress. The puerile symbolism with which that
dreadful time was recalled was not a spiritual or
divine suggestion, nor is it at all likely that it was
a reality to the writer. It was simply a means
of impressing simpler minds, like the exaggerated
language in which slaughter by famine, pestilence
and sword as the weapons of a wrathful deity, is
depicted. No more likely is it that the denuncia-
tion of the mountains and valleys of Israel and
the threats of ruin and desolation for the idolatry
of which they had been the scene, or the picture
of terror and dismay when the anger of the Lord
was vented upon the sinful land, was accompanied
by the instructions and the symbolical actions de-
*


LATER PROPHETS I97
scribed. Like the visions, these are features of
the literary art of this graphic composition.
Having placed these preliminary sketches of
the siege, its causes, its incidents and its conse-
quences on the fifth day of the fourth (?) month
of the “fifth year of King Jehoiachin's captiv-
ity,” the writer sets the fifth day of the sixth
month of the sixth year for a vision of Jerusalem
in her “great abominations '' which had brought
such a fate upon her. Again there is the ap-
pearance of that flaming deity of the river Chebar,
which put forth a hand and lifted the prophet by
a lock of his hair between earth and heaven and
brought him in visions of God to Jerusalem.
There he showed him what was going on, and ex-
posed the wicked counsel of the princes of the
people and its consequences. The author betrays
his own point of view as he closes this scene with
a promise of the Lord that he would be a sanc-
tuary for his people for a little while “in the
countries where they are come,” and would gather
them out of the lands in which they had been
scattered, take away their detestable things and
make them walk in his statutes.
Transported again “in the vision by the spirit
of God into Chaldea to them of the captivity,”
the prophet symbolises the flight from the be-
leaguered city as a moving in haste from one's
habitation, the captivity as a taking in of a net
spread by the Lord, and the assurances of the


198 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
false prophets as a worthless wall of protection
daubed with “untempered mortar.” There are
some reflections upon the follies of the daughters
of the people, some rebuke of the elders of Is-
rael for cherishing idols in the heart, and a solemn
assurance that a place could not be saved by the
righteousness of the few, even though they were
Noah, Daniel and Job; and then Jerusalem is
likened to a vine that is cast into the fire.
There is an extreme case of that gross sym-
bolism which represented infidelity to the God of
Israel as “whoredom.” Jerusalem was the
bastard offspring of the Amorite and the Hittite,
cast out in an open field to welter in its blood.
The Lord had taken it up and cherished it into
beauty, fed it upon dainties and decked it with
ornaments, and after he had lavished upon it
divine love and affection it had played the harlot.
The picture of its lewdness and of the penalty of
its shameless behaviour is graphic but not delicate.
Jerusalem is made even worse than her wanton
sister Samaria and the equal of the despised sister
Sodom, and yet the Lord's convenant with her in
her youth would be remembered and would be
established as an everlasting covenant, when she
had become duly ashamed and confounded; and
those reclaimed sisters would be given to her as
daughters.
Here is a picture of the King of Babylon and
the King of Egypt as two great eagles between


LATER PROPHETS I99
which grew a spreading vine of low stature, and
as it bent its roots and shot its branches towards
the eagle of Egypt it was plucked up and carried
away. This symbolised the revolt of Zedekiah)
and the attempt to get support from Egypt, which /
led to the destruction of Jerusalem. Of course
it was the Lord that did it, and he would take
a tender twig from the topmost ones of the great
cedar, which the eagle had cropped off and car-
ried away, and would plant it in the mountain of
the height of Israel and make it a goodly cedar
under which should dwell “all fowl of every
wing.”
After this follows a didactic chapter which
is not significant so much for the contradiction
of the popular proverb “The fathers have
eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are
set on edge,” as for its subversion of the more
solemn assertion of the old law that Israel's
jealous God would visit the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children unto the third and
fourth generation. Following this is another
symbolic picture of the last kings of Judah as
young lions, one of which was caught and car-
ried away to Egypt and another was put in a
cage and brought to Babylon. The mother, who
had been called a lioness, is then likened to a vine
that had been planted by the waters and became
fruitful with many branches, but was plucked up
in fury, cast to the ground, her fruit dried up


200 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
by the east wind, her rods that were for sceptres
broken and consumed with fire, and finally the
vine was planted in a dry and thirsty land. “This
is a lamentation and shall be for a lamentation.”
Again there is a date, the tenth day of the
fifth month of the seventh year, and the coming
of the elders to inquire of the prophet is made
the occasion of a discourse of judgment upon these
elders. The character of this shows that it was
not an actual discourse addressed as the words
of the Lord to a real gathering of elders. It is
a composition representing the writer as being
made a judge of the elders of Israel in general,
and recalling again with a “Thus saith the Lord,”
the derelictions of the past, even from the time
when the Lord chose Israel and made himself
known to them in the land of Egypt, throughout
their history. They are represented as having
been given to idolatry until the Lord would no
longer be inquired of by them; but after being
purged of their transgressions they would again
be brought into “the bond of the covenant.”
All the house of Israel would yet serve the Lord
in his holy mountain, and he would be sanctified
in them in the sight of the nations.
There is some question whether this promise
of restoration is not an interpolation of a later
time than the original composition. At all events,
it is immediately followed by another passage of
fierce menace and another picture of the crush-


LATER PROPHETS 20 I
ing blow from the “sword of the King of Baby-
lon.” Again the prophet is bidden to denounce
judgment upon the bloody city. The house of
Israel has become dross which was to be purged
from the pure silver by the fires of affliction and
calamity. There was a conspiracy of prophets
and profanation by priests; the princes were
ravening wolves of prey and the people used op-
pression and exercised robbery; therefore the
Lord had poured forth his indignation upon
them and consumed them with the fire of his
wrath. /
The symbol of harlotry is used again in gross /
but vivid form and applied to Samaria and Jeru-y
salem under the names of Oholah and Oholibah.
Their lives are made the instruments of their
humiliation and shame, and they should be made
to know that “I am the Lord God.” Again
there is a reversion to the siege of Jerusalem,
and the ninth year, the tenth month and the
tenth day of the month, is set down as the self-
same day in which the king of Babylon drew
close to the city, which is symbolised as a caldron.
In it was to boil the fury of the Lord to purge
it of its filthiness. It may be that the prophet
lost his wife by death, and it may be that he
made use of this as a symbol of the bereave-
ment of Jerusalem for which there was to be no
mourning, but we are not called upon to believe
that the Lord told him that he would take away


2O2 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
“the desire of his eyes" and forbade him to
mourn in order to furnish the symbol.
The part of the Book of Ezekiel, up to this
point, constituting just one-half of its chapters, as
it is now divided, is in the nature of a prepara-
tion for the rest. There is no reason to suppose
that it was written consecutively. Its parts are
somewhat disconnected and there were probably
separate visions, symbolical representations, de-
scriptions and discourses, which were finally ar-
ranged, but not closely welded together, as a back-
ground for what was to relate to the future. Sins
of Israel and the culminating offences of Jeru-
salem having been fully portrayed and denounced,
and the retribution brought upon them having
been depicted, all in the name of the Lord, as
was the way with prophets, doom was pro-
nounced upon the tempters and enemies who had
brought woe upon God's people or who rejoiced
in their downfall.
This begins in a brief way with their immediate
neighbours, Ammon, Moab, Edom and Philistia,
upon whom the Lord would execute vengeance
with furious rebukes. It is elaborated in pictur-
esque fashion against Tyre, the great trafficker
among the nations. The Lord would bring
Nebuchadrezzar, the instrument of his wrath,
with horses and chariots, and the isles would
shake with the sound of its fall. The prince of
Tyre is denounced in words addressed directly


LATER PROPHETS 2O3
to him at the bidding of the Lord, and there is
lamentation over the fate of that proud potentate,
brought upon him in his “beauty” and his
“brightness" for the multitude of his iniquities
and the unrighteousness of his traffic. There is
a brief pendant of doom for Zidon, upon which
pestilence and blood in her streets were to be sent,
that she might no more be a “pricking brier unto
the house of Israel.”
Then the voice of wrath is turned “in the
tenth year, in the tenth month, in the twelfth day
of the month,” upon the chief offender against the
Lord and his people, Egypt, the “great dragon
that lieth in the midst of his rivers.” It is to
be given as a spoil and a reward to Nebuchad-
rezzar, king of Babylon. It would be made an
“utter waste and desolation ” and would be un-
inhabited for forty years, after which its people
would be gathered “from the peoples whither
they were scattered,” and the Lord would “bring
again the captivity of Egypt.” Many resounding
reverberations are played upon this theme, ending
with dithyrambic wails for the multitude sent
down to the underworld to lie with other multi-
tudes of the uncircumcised. Nobody can deny
the epic grandeur of these scenes of woe for those
who had scorned Israel and defied her God, but
nobody can reasonably claim for them a historical
character or any approach to a fulfilment of the
dire predictions. As they were never revised or


204 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
adapted to events by a later hand, they accord
with nothing in subsequent history. They were
utterances of the prophet attributed to the God
whom he imagined and in whom he devoutly be-
lieved. Perhaps he thought he was inspired by
that God to give utterance to his purposes, for
that has been the belief of many a prophet and
preacher before and since.
Having thus unburdened himself against the
foreign enemies of Israel, the prophet turns his
face to the future of his own people and the
Lord's purpose of restoring them after due re-
pentance and amendment. The Lord makes
him his watchman with a trumpet to warn his peo-
ple, and tells him of his responsibility as such
and the individual responsibility for their deeds
of the righteous and the wicked. He is to de-
nounce the false shepherds of Israel who were the
cause of their going astray and being scattered,
who instead of feeding and caring for them had
fed upon their substance. But the Lord would
gather his flock and would judge between them.
He would destroy the fat and strong and would
set one shepherd over the rescued ones, “even my
servant David.” He would make with them a
covenant of peace and cause evil hearts to cease
out of the land. Here perhaps, is the first fore-
shadowing of that Messianic hope which so long
lured the sons of Israel through afflictions yet to
come, and which looked to a restoration of the
f


206 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
Judah shall be gathered from among the nations
and they shall become one people in the land of
Jacob, where “David my servant shall be their
prince forever.”
One more symbolical vision completes the prep-
aration for the restored kingdom and the reign
of the law of the Lord. The enemies of Israel
are figured as Gog of the land of Magog.
There is neither history nor geography in this,
and efforts to give it reality are as puerile as an
attempt to make reality of the scenes and charac-
ters in the poetic visions of Milton, or the stories
of Gulliver. It is the enemies of Israel that
menace the kingdom that is to come, who are to
come up against the mountains of Israel and en-
counter the wrath of the Lord, whose fury would
come into his nostrils. He would plead against
Gog “with pestilence and with blood,” and rain
upon him and his hordes an “overflowing shower,
and great hailstones, fire and brimstone.” Gog
should have a place for burial in Israel, “the val-
ley of them that pass through on the East of the
sea.” The house of Israel would be seven months
in burying him and his multitude, “that they may
cleanse the land.” There would be a great sacri-
fice upon the mountains of Israel and birds of
prey would be sated with flesh and blood. The
Lord would set his glory among the nations and
they should see the judgment that he executed.
Then would the house of Israel know that the


LATER PROPHETS 2O7
Lord was their God, that he caused them to go
into captivity and gathered them again into their
own land. He would leave none of them any
more among the nations; neither would he hide
his face from them, “for I have poured out my
spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord.”
How far was this fervent hope of the exiled
prophet, which he transformed into a promise of
the Lord the God of Israel, ever realised?
Now he was prepared for a vision of the Jeru-
salem that was to be, and he says that “in the
five and twentieth year of our captivity, in the
beginning of the year, in the tenth day of the
month, in the fourteenth year after that City was
smitten,” the hand of the Lord was upon him
and that it transported him thither and set him
on a very high mountain. Then he sets forth an
idealistic plan of the restored temple and its
courts, and the restored city and its sanctified en-
vironment, with formal measurements and ar-
rangements. He is brought to the gate which
looketh toward the East and beholds the glory
of the Lord coming from that direction, like the
vision that he saw by the river Chebar. It en-
ters into the house by the Eastern gate and the
prophet is brought into the court and sees the
glory of the Lord that fills the place. He hears
a voice speaking to him out of the house, as a man
stands by him, saying: “This is the place of my
throne, and the place of the soles of my feet


LATER PROPHETS 209
passed from the yoke of Babylon to that of Persia
and then to that of Greece, and after a tumultuous
insurrection and a short-lived dynasty outside of
the line of David, to the firm grasp of the Roman
power.
Apparently Ezekiel had no intimation of the
release that was to come from the conquests of
Cyrus of Persia, who followed the subjugation
of Media and Lydia with an attack upon Baby-
lonia which resulted in the fall of the proud
capital of that realm in 539 B. C. But as soon
as that release was assured an exultant voice arose
from among the exiles, or, to put it more literally,
a rhapsody was composed and doubtless circu-
lated among them, to find its place afterwards in
the epic literature and to be wrongly attached to
the collection of oracles bearing the name of
Isaiah. The last twenty-seven chapters of the
book to which that name is attached constitute a
collection, partly exilic and partly post-exilic, com-
posed of three distinct sections. The first of
these, consisting of nine chapters (xl to xlviii of
the present Book of Isaiah), emanated from a
poetical genius of great power, whose name was
left in oblivion, though his work was destined
to live as long as mankind had memory for past
achievements and love of ancient literature.
The author of this sublime passage seems to
have had his hopes aroused, through his confidence
in the watchfulness of Israel's God over his cap-


2 IO THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
º
tive people and in the certainty of their rescue,
even before Cyrus had possession of Babylon and
the edict of release for the Jews was issued. He
begins with a message of comfort to Jerusalem
because the Lord is coming to her again from the
East, with double recompense for all that she has
suffered for her sins. A voice in the wilderness
cries out for preparing the way for him, and the
tidings of his coming are passed on from the
mountain tops to Zion, with promise that he will
feed his flock again like a shepherd. There is no
reference to any prophet or to the coming of the
word of the Lord to any one, but the writer in
imagination utters the voice, sometimes in his own
person as the oracle of God, sometimes in the first
person as the voice of God himself, sometimes
in the character of Zion's waiting people or of
the city of their longing. The conception of the
deity has changed to conform with the changed
conditions of the time, the subdued temper of the
people and the hopeful attitude of the writer.
He does not forget the sins of his people, but
they have been chastened and purified, their war-
fare is accomplished, their iniquity is pardoned;
his love for them has returned, and he will fulfil
his ancient promise with added glory. It is he
that has made Cyrus his anointed servant to re-
lease the captives and send them home in triumph,
º, not their own but that of the Lord, that the
nations may acknowledge his greatness.


LATER PROPHETS 2 II
His might is set forth with a splendour of
diction equalled only by that of the Book of Job,
and his greatness is described in his own words
in a grandiose manner that would only befit a
deity in comparison with whom all other gods
were senseless idols. It was the Almighty God
of Israel who was using Cyrus as his unconscious
instrument, and he would redeem his own blind
and helpless servant, the “worm Jacob,” and
make him a power to beat down the nations. In
himself this servant was feeble. He would not
lift up his voice, he would not break a bruised
reed or quench smoking flax, and yet he would
become a covenant of the people and a light to
the Gentiles for which the Lord would have the
praise and glory. He had given Jacob for a
spoil and Israel to the robbers in the fury of
his anger, but he had redeemed him and given
nations for his ransom. For his sake he had
brought down the nobles of Babylon, and for his
chosen people he would make rivers in the desert.
There is reiteration and variation in the glorious
theme of Israel's rescue and coming restoration
to Zion, through which the voice of Yahweh is
made to roll in resounding accents of self-glori-
fication. In reality it is the reawakened voice of
Israel's pride of race, its sense of superiority and
its faith in the God which it had conceived from
the depths of a genius that had no rival in the
early time. After promise of reward to Cyrus,


212 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
a picture of humiliation for the “virgin daugh-
ter,” Babylon, a further magnifying of the great
and only God, the Holy One of Israel, a reminder
of what his people might have been if they had
hearkened to his commandments, this prophetic
voice which rose from among the exiles with such
splendid, incoherent rapture, bids them flee from
the Chaldeans and declare to the end of the earth
“the Lord hath redeemed his servant Jacob.”
But they did not flee at once and the way was
not made easy for them. Very earthly obstacles
and difficulties beset the efforts of those who
strove to organise for the return. The next seven
chapters of this collection were undoubtedly from
a different source and of later production, but
scholars seem to be agreed that the main sub-
stance of them proceeded from the community at
Babylon before the departure began under Zerub-
babel, the survivor of the line of David, and the
priest Jeshua, after the decree of Cyrus, in 538
B. C. This passage as a whole is pitched in a
lower tone than what precedes, but it breaks out
here and there with a similar fervid eloquence.
It has the appearance of a composite structure
made up of varied material, much of it poetical in
form. Its leading characteristic is a rather ob-
scure personification of redeemed Israel as the
“servant of Yahweh,” who has been through trial
and affliction for transgressions of those who owe
their redemption to him. This kind of personi-


LATER PROPHETS 2 I3
fication of the people is characteristic of the an-
cient Hebrew writing throughout. All mankind
was personified in Adam. The whole Semitic
people of Western Asia were personified in Abra-
ham. The people of Israel were personified in
Jacob, and all their divisions, tribal or territorial,
were personified in his sons. There seems to be
no reason to suppose that the writer had any in-
dividual in mind in describing the suffering
servant of Yahweh. If, as some have thought,
this was so, it is impossible to identify the person,
and it is certain that there was no foreshadowing
of any being that was to come in future genera-
tions.
The passage begins with this servant, in whom
the Lord is to be glorified, speaking in the first
person and calling the peoples to witness. He is
then made to utter the promise of the Lord to
afflicted and mourning Zion, telling her that he
had never been divorced from her mother nor
had he sold her as a slave to his creditors. The
servant had meekly borne his chastisement and
the Lord would justify him and destroy his ad-
versary. The voice of Yahweh (the Lord)
himself is invoked to declare his promise and as-
sert his power to fulfil. The earth might wax
old as a garment but his salvation would be for-
ever. Other voices are made to invoke his might
and to call upon Jerusalem to awake to a new
destiny, for the cup of the Lord's fury is taken


214 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
away. She may shake off the dust of her hu-
miliation, loosen the bands of captivity from her
neck, and put on her beautiful garments. Mes-
sengers with feet of beauty on the mountains
bring tidings of joy; watchmen hail them with
songs of comfort and triumph, and bid the cap-
tives to go forth, with the God of Israel in the
van and in the rear to guard them.
That servant that has suffered so much and
has been so afflicted shall prosper and be exalted,
though his visage is so marred by what he has
been through. The poetical description of him
as one who grew up as a tender plant from dry
ground, as having been deprived of all comeli-
ness, despised and rejected, a man of sorrows,
who has borne the griefs of the whole people
and been wounded for their transgressions, etc., is
believed to be a later interpolation, but it surely
refers to that righteous part of Israel which had
lived through all the trials, and caused the re-
demption of the remnant, and to whom the Lord
would yet divide a portion with the great and a
spoil with the strong. That song, over which so
much puzzled learning has been expended, inter-
rupts the course of the songs of joy and comfort
and of promise of triumph yet to come for Zion,
when it should become the refuge of the right-
eous from all nations and the Lord should be its
ruler. In all this was expressed the ardent hope
of the captive people at the prospect of release


LATER PROPHETS 2I 5.
and that invincible reliance of their leading minds
upon the God who embodied all that was great-
est and highest in their religious conceptions, and
who was peculiarly theirs and would ultimately
bring all the world into subjection to them.
There is a drop from this height in the last
eleven chapters, which in the redaction and ar-
rangement of this material became attached with
the rest to the book to which the name of the
prophet Isaiah had been given, and it is a drop
into another century and a different time. The
captives that were led back by Zerubbabel and
Jeshua had been through their struggle for re-
building the temple and rehabilitating Jerusalem,
with much discouragement after the high hopes
of the return. Many years later the priest Ezra,
who had remained with other priests and scribes
working up a new system of laws for restored
Judaism, had brought over an important con-
tingent, and after much delay had promulgated
the code and had the people swear fealty to it.
Nehemiah had come from the Persian capital
with the authority of the sovereign whose cup-
bearer he had been, to complete the walls that
were still half in ruins, and had afterwards been
made a delegate of the Persian power, and al-
lowed to reform the administration of the Jewish
community in accordance with its own religious
polity. There had been much disappointment
and the tendency to relapse was sometimes de-
|


LATER PROPHETS 217
which Zion is figured as the bride of its redeemer,
who would rejoice over it as a bridegroom. It
should be called “sought out” and not “the city
forsaken.”
There is interjected once more a picture of the
Lord in his garb of war and with his sword of
fury, but it is as an avenger of his people against
their enemies. It is followed, as if for contrast,
by a humble prayer of his people for his loving
kindness and praise for his great goodness to the
people of Israel, in which past benefits are recalled
and past sins and punishment are mourned over.
After this is a further judgment upon those that
forsake the Lord and blessing upon those who are
his servants in righteousness and truth, and there
is ever the burden of salvation for Jerusalem, the
time when it should be purified from evil and
freed from all enemies. All nations should
come to see its glory and send home its sons,
“and it shall come to pass that from one new
moon to another and from one Sabbath to an-
other shall all flesh come to worship before me,
saith the Lord.” It was thus that “prophets”
whose names are unknown uttered promises and
sustained struggling hopes in the name of the
Lord, while foreign powers one after another held
his people in subjection, from which they were to
escape only to be scattered over the earth, instead
of being gathered from among the nations to
make his holy city the centre of a world's desire.

|


218 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
These last chapters attached to the Book of
Isaiah have carried us far beyond the days of the
exile and we have left on the way other prophetic
writings, which should not be passed without
notice. “The burden of Babylon" attributed to
the real Isaiah in chapter thirteen, and fourteen
to the twenty-third verse, of the same book, be-
long to the period of chapters forty to forty-
eight, and may be from the same hand. The first
ten verses of chapter twenty-one, whatever their
origin, are also of that period, and the same is
true of the threats and promises of chapters
thirty-four and thirty-five, telling that the ran-
somed of the Lord are to return to Zion “with
songs and everlasting joy.” But closely asso-
ciated with events following the return of the
first released exiles after the edict of Cyrus were
( the discourses of Haggai and the visions of Zech-
ſ ariah, the latter contained in the first eight chap-
| ters of the book that bears that name.
It is said in the Book of Ezra, which was
compiled by the Chronicler at least two centuries
after these events from material more than a cen-
tury old when the compilation was made, that
these two prophesied unto the Jews in the name
of the God of Israel, and that “then rose up
Zerubbabel the son of Sheatiel and Jeshua the son
of Jozadak and began to build the house of God
which is in Jerusalem.” This was in the second
year of Darius of Persia, 502 B.C., and eighteen


LATER PROPHETS 219
years after the return and the beginning of the
effort to rebuild the temple. Difficulties had been
encountered and the work lagged sadly. There
had apparently been a drought, a lack of harvests
and “hard times" for the forlorn community of
exiles who had come back with such high hopes.
Haggai, who was evidently an old man, took
occasion to represent this as a penalty because of
the house of the Lord that “lieth waste,” and to
rouse up the prince and the priest to renewed ef-
forts. It is said to have had the desired effect
and the old prophet encouraged those who were
depressed by the humble beginning with the as-
surance that the Lord was with them and would
bring abundance of aid, so that “the glory of this
house shall be greater than the former,” and
peace should be given in it. The priests are re-
rebuked for scanting the sacrifices, which was also
a cause of the poor harvests. The style of the
oracle is commonplace and rather feeble, but at
the end it rises into a glowing promise of power
when the Lord would make “Zerubbabel as a
signet, for I have chosen thee saith the Lord.”
The visions of Zechariah are contemporaneous
with the exhortations of Haggai and have a like
purpose. Though they are visions of the night,
they lack both the glow of poetry and the elo-
quence of prophecy. There is a prelude remind-
ing the people that in the past the Lord had
treated their fathers according to their evil ways,


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one with a measuring lize prefigures the coming
greatness of Jerusalem, as the Lord had “walked
up out of his holy habitation " and had come to
choose it as his own. Next is a vision of
Jeshua, the high priest, who was to be cleansed
of the filthy garments of iniquity and clothed with
rich apparel, a “fair diadem’’ on his head, while
the Lord would bring forth his servant “the
ºranch.” It is not made clear that Zerubbabel


LATER PROPHETS 22 I
is to be this “ Branch,” or shoot, presumably of
the house of David, but the next vision, of the
golden candlestick and the two olive trees, seems
to imply that he is to rule, “not by might, nor by
power but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts”;
and it is promised that he shall finish “this
house.” These two “sons of oil" were to stand
by the Lord of the whole earth. Then a curse is
seen to go forth over the land as a “flying roll"
for those who steal and swear falsely, and wicked-
ness is sent in an “ephah " to build her house in
the land of Shinar. Finally, the four winds of
heaven, as chariots with vari-coloured horses, are
sent to the four quarters of the earth, apparently
to quiet the spirit of hostility; and the high priest
and “the Branch " are crowned with the promise
that “the man whose name is the Branch " shall
build the temple of the Lord and bear the glory,
and shall rule upon his throne, while the other
shall be a priest upon his throne, and “the coun-
sel of peace shall be between them both.”
This may have been encouraging to the temple-
builders, but Zerubbabel disappeared from history
without sitting upon a throne and the priests be-
came dominant at Jerusalem. Two years later
Zechariah is heard from again, replying to priests
who wish to know whether they shall keep up the
fasts that commemorated the destruction of Jeru-
salem and the murder of Gedaliah, who had been
appointed the first governor by the King of Baby-


LATER PROPHETS 22 I
is to be this “ Branch,” or shoot, presumably of
the house of David, but the next vision, of the
golden candlestick and the two olive trees, seems
to imply that he is to rule, “not by might, nor by
power but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts”;
and it is promised that he shall finish “this
house.” These two “sons of oil" were to stand
by the Lord of the whole earth. Then a curse is
seen to go forth over the land as a “flying roll"
for those who steal and swear falsely, and wicked-
ness is sent in an “ephah " to build her house in
the land of Shinar. Finally, the four winds of
heaven, as chariots with vari-coloured horses, are
sent to the four quarters of the earth, apparently
to quiet the spirit of hostility; and the high priest
and “the Branch " are crowned with the promise
that “the man whose name is the Branch " shall
build the temple of the Lord and bear the glory,
and shall rule upon his throne, while the other
shall be a priest upon his throne, and “the coun-
sel of peace shall be between them both.”
This may have been encouraging to the temple-
builders, but Zerubbabel disappeared from history
without sitting upon a throne and the priests be-
came dominant at Jerusalem. Two years later
Zechariah is heard from again, replying to priests
who wish to know whether they shall keep up the
fasts that commemorated the destruction of Jeru-
salem and the murder of Gedaliah, who had been
appointed the first governor by the King of Baby-
\


2 IO THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
tive people and in the certainty of their rescue,
even before Cyrus had possession of Babylon and
the edict of release for the Jews was issued. He
begins with a message of comfort to Jerusalem
because the Lord is coming to her again from the
East, with double recompense for all that she has
suffered for her sins. A voice in the wilderness
cries out for preparing the way for him, and the
tidings of his coming are passed on from the
mountain tops to Zion, with promise that he will
feed his flock again like a shepherd. There is no
reference to any prophet or to the coming of the
word of the Lord to any one, but the writer in
imagination utters the voice, sometimes in his own
person as the oracle of God, sometimes in the first
person as the voice of God himself, sometimes
in the character of Zion's waiting people or of
the city of their longing. The conception of the
deity has changed to conform with the changed
conditions of the time, the subdued temper of the
people and the hopeful attitude of the writer.
He does not forget the sins of his people, but
they have been chastened and purified, their war-
fare is accomplished, their iniquity is pardoned;
his love for them has returned, and he will fulfil
his ancient promise with added glory. It is he
that has made Cyrus his anointed servant to re-
lease the captives and send them home in triumph,
not their own but that of the Lord, that the
nations may acknowledge his greatness.


LATER PROPHETS 2 II
His might is set forth with a splendour of
diction equalled only by that of the Book of Job,
and his greatness is described in his own words
in a grandiose manner that would only befit a
deity in comparison with whom all other gods
were senseless idols. It was the Almighty God
of Israel who was using Cyrus as his unconscious
instrument, and he would redeem his own blind
and helpless servant, the “worm Jacob,” and
make him a power to beat down the nations. In
himself this servant was feeble. He would not
lift up his voice, he would not break a bruised
reed or quench smoking flax, and yet he would
become a covenant of the people and a light to
the Gentiles for which the Lord would have the
praise and glory. He had given Jacob for a
spoil and Israel to the robbers in the fury of
his anger, but he had redeemed him and given
nations for his ransom. For his sake he had
brought down the nobles of Babylon, and for his
chosen people he would make rivers in the desert.
There is reiteration and variation in the glorious
theme of Israel's rescue and coming restoration
to Zion, through which the voice of Yahweh is
made to roll in resounding accents of self-glori-
fication. In reality it is the reawakened voice of
Israel's pride of race, its sense of superiority and
its faith in the God which it had conceived from
the depths of a genius that had no rival in the
early time. After promise of reward to Cyrus,


212 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
a picture of humiliation for the “virgin daugh-
ter,” Babylon, a further magnifying of the great
and only God, the Holy One of Israel, a reminder
of what his people might have been if they had
hearkened to his commandments, this prophetic
voice which rose from among the exiles with such
splendid, incoherent rapture, bids them flee from
the Chaldeans and declare to the end of the earth
“the Lord hath redeemed his servant Jacob.”
But they did not flee at once and the way was
not made easy for them. Very earthly obstacles
and difficulties beset the efforts of those who
strove to organise for the return. The next seven
chapters of this collection were undoubtedly from
a different source and of later production, but
scholars seem to be agreed that the main sub-
stance of them proceeded from the community at
Babylon before the departure began under Zerub-
babel, the survivor of the line of David, and the
priest Jeshua, after the decree of Cyrus, in 538
B. C. This passage as a whole is pitched in a
lower tone than what precedes, but it breaks out
here and there with a similar fervid eloquence.
It has the appearance of a composite structure
made up of varied material, much of it poetical in
form. Its leading characteristic is a rather ob-
scure personification of redeemed Israel as the
“servant of Yahweh,” who has been through trial
and affliction for transgressions of those who owe
their redemption to him. This kind of personi-


LATER PROPHETS 2 I 3
fication of the people is characteristic of the an-
cient Hebrew writing throughout. All mankind
was personified in Adam. The whole Semitic
people of Western Asia were personified in Abra-
ham. The people of Israel were personified in
Jacob, and all their divisions, tribal or territorial,
were personified in his sons. There seems to be
no reason to suppose that the writer had any in-
dividual in mind in describing the suffering
servant of Yahweh. If, as some have thought,
this was so, it is impossible to identify the person,
and it is certain that there was no foreshadowing
of any being that was to come in future genera-
tions.
The passage begins with this servant, in whom
the Lord is to be glorified, speaking in the first
person and calling the peoples to witness. He is
then made to utter the promise of the Lord to
afflicted and mourning Zion, telling her that he
had never been divorced from her mother nor
had he sold her as a slave to his creditors. The
servant had meekly borne his chastisement and
the Lord would justify him and destroy his ad-
versary. The voice of Yahweh (the Lord)
himself is invoked to declare his promise and as-
sert his power to fulfil. The earth might wax
old as a garment but his salvation would be for-
ever. Other voices are made to invoke his might
and to call upon Jerusalem to awake to a new
destiny, for the cup of the Lord's fury is taken


214 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
away. She may shake off the dust of her hu-
miliation, loosen the bands of captivity from her
neck, and put on her beautiful garments. Mes-
sengers with feet of beauty on the mountains
bring tidings of joy; watchmen hail them with
songs of comfort and triumph, and bid the cap-
tives to go forth, with the God of Israel in the
van and in the rear to guard them.
That servant that has suffered so much and
has been so afflicted shall prosper and be exalted,
though his visage is so marred by what he has
been through. The poetical description of him
as one who grew up as a tender plant from dry
ground, as having been deprived of all comeli-
ness, despised and rejected, a man of sorrows,
who has borne the griefs of the whole people
and been wounded for their transgressions, etc., is
believed to be a later interpolation, but it surely
refers to that righteous part of Israel which had
lived through all the trials, and caused the re-
demption of the remnant, and to whom the Lord
would yet divide a portion with the great and a
spoil with the strong. That song, over which so
much puzzled learning has been expended, inter-
rupts the course of the songs of joy and comfort
and of promise of triumph yet to come for Zion,
when it should become the refuge of the right-
eous from all nations and the Lord should be its
ruler. In all this was expressed the ardent hope
of the captive people at the prospect of release


LATER PROPHETS 2I 5.
and that invincible reliance of their leading minds
upon the God who embodied all that was great-
est and highest in their religious conceptions, and
who was peculiarly theirs and would ultimately
bring all the world into subjection to them.
There is a drop from this height in the last
eleven chapters, which in the redaction and ar-
rangement of this material became attached with
the rest to the book to which the name of the
prophet Isaiah had been given, and it is a drop
into another century and a different time. The
captives that were led back by Zerubbabel and
Jeshua had been through their struggle for re-
building the temple and rehabilitating Jerusalem,
with much discouragement after the high hopes
of the return. Many years later the priest Ezra,
who had remained with other priests and scribes
working up a new system of laws for restored
Judaism, had brought over an important con-
tingent, and after much delay had promulgated
the code and had the people swear fealty to it.
Nehemiah had come from the Persian capital
with the authority of the sovereign whose cup-
bearer he had been, to complete the walls that
were still half in ruins, and had afterwards been
made a delegate of the Persian power, and al-
lowed to reform the administration of the Jewish
community in accordance with its own religious
polity. There had been much disappointment
and the tendency to relapse was sometimes de-


216 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
pressing. It is this period under the Persian
sovereignty that is reflected in these chapters,
which are made up of material that is by no means
homogeneous and was either from different sources
or substantially modified in editing.
There are appeals for observance of the com-
mands of the law and rebukes for neglect.
There are references to lapses into idolatry and
iniquity, which will be punished, and pleas for
righteous conduct, which will have its reward.
It is no longer the nation as distinguished from
other nations that is the object of divine care, but
the righteous as distinguished from the wicked.
But the righteous would prevail. The Lord's
covenant would be with them and his word would
not depart from them. A song is introduced
which tells again of the glory and greatness yet
to come to Zion, when the nations should be at-
tracted by its light and come with their gifts to
minister unto it. It should be called the City of
the Lord and draw sustenance from all nations,
and its officers should be peace and its “exactors ”
righteousness. With the familiar hyperbole of
this kind of prophecy, verging upon the glowing
apocalyptic style that developed later, it is said
that it should not need the light of the sun and
moon, but the Lord would be its everlasting
light. All its people should be righteous and
should inherit the land forever. There is a re-
iteration of this promise in a different style in


LATER PROPHETS 217
which Zion is figured as the bride of its redeemer,
who would rejoice over it as a bridegroom. It
should be called “sought out" and not “the city
forsaken.”
There is interjected once more a picture of the
Lord in his garb of war and with his sword of
fury, but it is as an avenger of his people against
their enemies. It is followed, as if for contrast,
by a humble prayer of his people for his loving
kindness and praise for his great goodness to the
people of Israel, in which past benefits are recalled
and past sins and punishment are mourned over.
After this is a further judgment upon those that
forsake the Lord and blessing upon those who are
his servants in righteousness and truth, and there
is ever the burden of salvation for Jerusalem, the
time when it should be purified from evil and
freed from all enemies. All nations should
come to see its glory and send home its sons,
“and it shall come to pass that from one new
moon to another and from one Sabbath to an-
other shall all flesh come to worship before me,
saith the Lord.” It was thus that “prophets”
whose names are unknown uttered promises and
sustained struggling hopes in the name of the
Lord, while foreign powers one after another held
his people in subjection, from which they were to
escape only to be scattered over the earth, instead
of being gathered from among the nations to
make his holy city the centre of a world's desire.


218 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
(
& ariah, the latter contained in the first eight chap-
ters of the book that bears that name.
These last chapters attached to the Book of
Isaiah have carried us far beyond the days of the
exile and we have left on the way other prophetic
writings, which should not be passed without
notice. “The burden of Babylon" attributed to
the real Isaiah in chapter thirteen, and fourteen
to the twenty-third verse, of the same book, be-
long to the period of chapters forty to forty-
eight, and may be from the same hand. The first
ten verses of chapter twenty-one, whatever their
origin, are also of that period, and the same is
true of the threats and promises of chapters
thirty-four and thirty-five, telling that the ran-
somed of the Lord are to return to Zion “with
songs and everlasting joy.” But closely asso-
ciated with events following the return of the
first released exiles after the edict of Cyrus were
the discourses of Haggai and the visions of Zech-
It is said in the Book of Ezra, which was
compiled by the Chronicler at least two centuries
after these events from material more than a cen-
tury old when the compilation was made, that
these two prophesied unto the Jews in the name
of the God of Israel, and that “then rose up
Zerubbabel the son of Sheatiel and Jeshua the son
of Jozadak and began to build the house of God
which is in Jerusalem.” This was in the second
year of Darius of Persia, 502 B.C., and eighteen
t


LATER PROPHETS 219
years after the return and the beginning of the
effort to rebuild the temple. Difficulties had been
encountered and the work lagged sadly. There
had apparently been a drought, a lack of harvests
and “hard times" for the forlorn community of
exiles who had come back with such high hopes.
Haggai, who was evidently an old man, took
occasion to represent this as a penalty because of
the house of the Lord that “lieth waste,” and to
rouse up the prince and the priest to renewed ef-
forts. It is said to have had the desired effect
and the old prophet encouraged those who were
depressed by the humble beginning with the as-
surance that the Lord was with them and would
bring abundance of aid, so that “the glory of this
house shall be greater than the former,” and
peace should be given in it. The priests are re-
rebuked for scanting the sacrifices, which was also
a cause of the poor harvests. The style of the
oracle is commonplace and rather feeble, but at
the end it rises into a glowing promise of power
when the Lord would make “Zerubbabel as a
signet, for I have chosen thee saith the Lord.”
The visions of Zechariah are contemporaneous
with the exhortations of Haggai and have a like
purpose. Though they are visions of the night,
they lack both the glow of poetry and the elo-
quence of prophecy. There is a prelude remind-
ing the people that in the past the Lord had
treated their fathers according to their evil ways,


22O THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
and a warning to them that his threats and prom-
ises were always fulfilled. In the visions an
“angel ” speaks for the Lord. The conception
of the angel as it appears here was derived from
Persian mythology, as was that of Satan as the
adversary, a character which had never before ap-
peared in Hebrew literature. Of course the
visions are as imaginary as those of Dante or
Milton, or Bunyan, and they are much less poet-
ical or impressive. In the first vision the angel
calls upon the Lord to know how long he will
“not have mercy on Jerusalem,” and elicits the
response that he is “jealous for Jerusalem and
for Zion with a great jealousy,” and is sore dis-
pleased with the nations, which his mounted
emissaries found so much “at ease.” He was,
therefore, returned to Jerusalem with mercies and
determined that his house should be built.
The next vision was of the “four horns,” or
nations that had scattered Israel, and of the smiths
who would fray them and cut them down. Then,
one with a measuring line prefigures the coming
greatness of Jerusalem, as the Lord had “walked
up out of his holy habitation ” and had come to
choose it as his own. Next is a vision of
Jeshua, the high priest, who was to be cleansed
of the filthy garments of iniquity and clothed with
rich apparel, a “fair diadem’’ on his head, while
the Lord would bring forth his servant “the
Branch.” It is not made clear that Zerubbabel
* /~
4


LATER PROPHETS 22 I
is to be this “Branch,” or shoot, presumably of
the house of David, but the next vision, of the
golden candlestick and the two olive trees, seems
to imply that he is to rule, “not by might, nor by
power but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts”;
and it is promised that he shall finish “this
house.” These two “sons of oil" were to stand
by the Lord of the whole earth. Then a curse is
seen to go forth over the land as a “flying roll”
for those who steal and swear falsely, and wicked-
ness is sent in an “ephah " to build her house in
the land of Shinar. Finally, the four winds of
heaven, as chariots with vari-coloured horses, are
sent to the four quarters of the earth, apparently
to quiet the spirit of hostility; and the high priest
and “the Branch " are crowned with the promise
that “the man whose name is the Branch " shall
build the temple of the Lord and bear the glory,
and shall rule upon his throne, while the other
shall be a priest upon his throne, and “the coun-
sel of peace shall be between them both.”
This may have been encouraging to the temple-
builders, but Zerubbabel disappeared from history
without sitting upon a throne and the priests be-
came dominant at Jerusalem. Two years later
Zechariah is heard from again, replying to priests
who wish to know whether they shall keep up the
fasts that commemorated the destruction of Jeru-
salem and the murder of Gedaliah, who had been
appointed the first governor by the King of Baby-


222 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
lon. Speaking in the name of the Lord he re-
peats the familiar promise of restoration and
greatness, and advises, or rather commands, that
the fasts be converted into cheerful feasts. The
last six chapters of the book entitled “Zech-
ariah '' are of much later origin and became at-
tached to the rest when all these writings were in
manuscript, most of them without titles and in
disorder.
Probably the next prediction in order of time
known as a “prophecy,” is that labelled “Mal-
achi,” which is not a proper name, but means
“my messenger’’ and was doubtless attached to
it as a title by some editor, on account of the
promise at the beginning of chapter three: “I
will send my messenger and he shall prepare the
way before me.” Its date is not easy to fix, but
it is generally assumed by the learned to be be-
fore the time of Ezra, who brought his law book
from Babylon in 458 B. C. It was a time when
priests held sway and the secular power, which
was subject to Persia, was hardly recognised.
Part of it is in the form of a sort of colloquy put
in the mouth of Yahweh, and sometimes the ut-
terances appear as those of the Lord and some-
times as those of the writer or of the Lord's peo-
ple. It begins with a brief prelude contrasting
the Lord's love of Jacob with his enmity for the
brother nation of Esau. Then there is a rough
rebuke of the priests for the inferior quality of


LATER PROPHETS 223
their sacrifices and a vulgar threat of punish-
ment.
The ordinances of the priesthood are repre-
sented as a covenant between the Lord and Levi,
the common personification of the priestly order.
The priests of the writer's time are condemned
for corrupting “the covenant of Levi.” An-
other purpose of this production was to condemn
the repudiation by some of the Jews of the wives
of their youth and the taking of wives outside of
their community, figured as the marriage of
Judah with “the daughter of a strange god.”
The priests are also censured for wearying the
Lord with words, and are told that he will send
his messenger and will himself suddenly come to
his temple to purge and purify the sons of Levi
and to be a witness against those who violate his
commandments. Those who fail in presenting
their tithes are accused of robbing God and are
visited with a curse, while the promise is made
that, when the whole tithe is brought, a blessing
will be poured out so abundant that there will not
be room to receive it.
This well illustrates the use to which the name
of Yahweh, or “the Lord,” came to be put by
the censors of the time, but it differed only in
quality and degree from its customary use by
prophets and law-makers, who always attributed
their teaching, their warnings and commands,
their threats and promises, to the deity as they


224 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
conceived him, doubtless believing that they spoke
by his inspiration. The most significant part of
this little anonymous production, and that which
probably caused its preservation, is its close. In
those days of humility and subjection to foreign
authority there was ever the dream of sudden
rescue by the Lord, who would summon the na-
tions to judgment, destroy the enemies of his peo-
ple and purge the wicked from among them, and
would establish a kingdom of righteousness and
peace, under his own sway, with a prince of his
choosing from the stock of David. Here it is
said that Elijah the prophet, who according to the
legend had been carried alive to heaven in a whirl-
wind, would be sent before the great and terrible
day to turn the hearts of the people and avert
the curse with which the Lord would otherwise
smite the earth.
( There is a highly poetical oracle of a still later
| time, the burden of which is this same “great and
terrible day of the Lord.” It is introduced as
“the word of the Lord that came to Joel the son
of Pethuel,” though it is mostly descriptive, and
the direct word of the Lord appears only as he is
referred to here and there as speaking in his own
person. Perhaps the destruction of the harvest
of a year by drought and a pest of locusts is an
allusion to actual experience, and it is surely not
to be interpreted as a figurative portrayal of in-
vasion and devastation by a real army. The de-


226 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
apocalyptic writing which became so common in
later centuries. It is a product of the imagina-
tion embodying the aspirations and hopes of the
ardent prophets of Israel, but those hopes were
doomed to continued disappointment. It neither
prefigured historic events that were destined to
come to pass, nor embodied theological concep-
tions of enduring validity; but it is interesting as
reflecting the spirit that dwelt in Israel in a time
of depression and gloom. Of the same period,
but probably somewhat later, and in a similar
spirit of hopeful prophecy, is the passage inter-
polated in the midst of the Book of Isaiah as
chapters twenty-four to twenty-seven according to
the modern division. Of this period also, though
showing evidence of being grafted upon a more
ancient oracle, is the “vision of Obadiah.” It is
directed especially against the kindred nation of
Edom, for which Israel cherished such bitter re-
sentment for being less than kind in the early
struggles; but the punishment of Edom is dwelt
upon in view of the day of the Lord that was
“near upon all the nations,” when all should be
judged and the kingdom should be the Lord's.
After much study and research by the learned,
no doubt seems to remain that the latest of all the
“prophecies,” save for fragments interpolated or
affixed here and there upon the older “books,”
is to be found in the six chapters that now con-
stitute the latter part of the Book of Zechariah.


228 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
means of finding out; but they were surely persons
of the writer's own time, which seems to have
been one of change and uncertainty at Jerusalem.
The one certain thing is that the “burden " was
still the destruction of the enemies of Israel and
the coming time, when no family of the earth
should prosper or even live that “goeth not up
unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of
Hosts.” That time lives only in the imagination
of the wandering Jew who believes that the cov-
enant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is still to
be kept.


THE JEWISH LAW 23 I
to the sojourn of Moses on the cloud-covered
mountain, first waiting six days for the Lord to
speak and then remaining forty days and forty
nights, has been already considered. The narra-
tive is again interrupted by a long passage of six
chapters of much later origin, followed by the
account of the making and worshipping of the
golden calf, which aroused the fierce wrath of the
Lord and caused Moses in his anger to break the
two tables of stone which he was bringing down
from the mountain, written on both sides with
“the writing of God.” It is well to remember
that this narrative was written long after Jero-
boam had set up his golden calf as a symbol of
Yahweh at Bethel, and it was no doubt intended
as a condemnation of such devices though they
were then no new thing in Israel. Such symbols
had been in use without condemnation in the days
of the “Judges" and the first kings.
Moses succeeded by his intercession in so far
averting the fierce anger of the outraged deity
that he refrained from destroying the people who
gave him so much trouble, and promised to write
upon two new tables of stone the words that were
upon the first. We need not pursue the narrative,
the character of which is so plain, but what were
the words graven upon the tables of stone? The
Lord is represented as saying to Moses “I make
a covenant,” and as warning against any “cov-
enant with the inhabitants of the land to which


THE JEWISH LAW 233
There is nothing in the older writings relating
to the time of the judges or the kings, or in the
utterances of prophets before the exile, implying a
knowledge of this consecrated decalogue, whether
written on tables of stone by Moses or by the
“finger of God.” The oldest form in which it
was preserved is undoubtedly that in the fifth
chapter of Deuteronomy, but the oldest part of
that book first appeared in the reign of Josiah,
about 622 B. C., and it was considerably enlarged
at a later time and put into its final form after
the exile. These ten commandments may have
been included in the “Book of the Law " said to
have been found in the temple by the priest Hil-
kiah, which formed the nucleus of what became
the Book of Deuteronomy; but it was probably
incorporated later. In the connecting narrative
there Moses is represented as saying “These
words the Lord spake unto all your assembly in
the Mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud
and of the thick darkness, with a great voice and
he added no more. And he wrote them in two
tables of stone and delivered them unto me.”
This was no doubt derived by the writer from
the old accounts, which must have been in the tem-
ple at the time, but it corresponds with them very
imperfectly, and is not to be regarded as in any
sense historical fact. Considered as pure imagi-
nation, it is quite consistent with the manner of
priests and prophets, not only in Israel but among


234 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
all ancient people. It is difficult for us to realise
how little they thought of fact in such matters,
and how readily they believed what they imagined
to be the truth.
This version of the decalogue differs in sig-
nificant points from that interpolated in the nar-
rative of the theophany on Mount Sinai in the
twentieth chapter of Exodus. Though much
learned question has been made of it, that form
was surely a post-exilic modification of the other,
included in the constituent of the Pentateuch
known as the “Priests' Code" or the “priests’
writing.” To that without doubt belonged the
opening chapter of Genesis, with its lofty concep-
tion of the deity and its scheme of creation in
six days, after which God rested on the seventh
day from all his work. The Sabbath as a day
of rest, whenever it was first observed in Israel,
of which there is no certain evidence in pre-exilic
writing, was derived from Babylonia. The
author of the Deuteronomic decalogue makes its
observance a memorial of the deliverance from
Egyptian bondage. That of the version in Ex-
odus gives it the sanction of the Lord's example,
in keeping with the story of the creation, and this
may be safely taken as conclusive evidence of the
late origin of this version of the decalogue. That
production in itself, apart from the commands
against the worship of any other god, the use of
idols or images, and the use of Yahweh’s name


THE JEWISH LAW 235
in false oaths, and for the observance of every
seventh day for rest from labour, is simply an
admirable condensation of injunctions that might
be culled from almost any ancient literature. It
needed no higher inspiration than has been com-
mon in “men of light and leading ” in all his-
toric time.
Next to the ancient form of the “Book of the
Covenant ’’ and the briefer statement of commands
as a “covenant" in the narrative of Chapter
thirty-four of the Book of Exodus, the oldest part
of the written law is that to be found in Deuter-
onomy. In the account of the reign of Josiah in
the Second Book of Kings, it is said that this was
found in “the house of the Lord ” by the priest
Hilkiah and taken to the king by Shaphan the
scribe in the eighteenth year of the reign of that
Monarch, when he was twenty-six years of age.
The king was so alarmed at its contents that he
rent his clothes and immediately began the reforms
in worship and in observances which are then de-
scribed.
The precise origin of this “book of the
law'” and how much it constitutes of the present
book of Deuteronomy has been the subject of
much learned discussion. It is now generally
agreed that the introductory discourses of Moses,
“addressed to all Israel on this side Jordan in
the wilderness,” which would be “this side '' to-
ward the exiles at Babylon, as far at least as the


236 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
end of Chapter four, are considerably later and
not entirely homogeneous. Most of the closing
chapters after XXVI, 15, are of extraneous ma-
terial of a mixed character, but the blessing and
cursing of Chapter XXVIII are generally cred-
ited to the original document. Opinions differ as
to whether this document includes all from Chap-
ter five to XXVI, 15, or begins with Chapter
twelve, but for our purpose this does not greatly
matter. In any case the whole was subject to
revision by the later scribes, though there is little
evidence of material change.
As to the origin of the book of the law as it was
“found" in the temple, there are some pertinent
observations suggested by independent criticism,
which are not altogether consistent with the con-
clusions of those learned persons who are anxious
to preserve the sacred character of what they ad-
mit to be the work of men some 2,500 years ago
in an Asiatic country. For considerably more
than a hundred years before the time of Josiah
the prophets, first in the kingdom of Israel and
then in Judah, had been contending strenuously
against the tendency of the people to be enticed
into the worship of “other gods” than Yahweh,
and into the practices of the surrounding people
and of the survivors of the Canaanite tribes.
They had striven to magnify the God of Israel
in the eyes of his people, to impress upon them
the principles of righteous conduct and purity of


THE JEWISH LAW 237
life, as his commands and as necessary to his
favour and protection. They recalled promises
attributed to him by the earliest writers, reminded
the people of what he had done for them, and
uttered direful threats of what he would do if
they did not obey him and worship him only.
In spite of all, they and most of their rulers
persisted in going astray in the most vexatious
manner, and this was the cause of all the calamity
that befel them. It made their God jealous and
wrathful, and he would utterly destroy them if
they did not mend their ways, though he would
surely save a faithful remnant with which to fulfil
his promise to Abraham in the covenant made with
him in the olden time. Already his patience had
been exhausted by Ephraim, or the kingdom of
Israel, and he had brought the Assyrians upon
it and destroyed it. Judah had narrowly escaped
the same power in the time of Hezekiah, but in
spite of the warning there had been a terrible
relapse under his son Manasseh, which continued
under the short reign of Amon. Josiah came to
the throne when he was eight years old, and ac-
cording to the statements made in connection with
the “reforms ” instituted after the discovery of
“the book of the law,” the like of which was not
known before, the evil practices had continued up
to that time. Jeremiah had appeared on the
scene as a prophet five years before that, and his
earlier utterances as preserved are of the most


238 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
doleful and menacing kind, on account of the pre-
vailing idolatry and iniquity. It is significant
that nothing after these utterances can be iden-
tified as his during the reign of Josiah, and it may
be equally significant that the prophet is not men-
tioned in the Book of Kings in connection with that
ruler or his successors, all account of his activity
being transferred to the Book of Jeremiah, where
no mention is made of the “book of the law.”
The obvious purpose of this book was to battle
against the very condition of things that then ex-
isted in Judah, and to induce the destruction of
all the old fanes and altars of the “high places,”-
with their heathenish symbols, and to concentrate
all worship and sacrifices at Jerusalem, the place
which the Lord had chosen “to cause his name
to dwell there.” Was this book, so effectively
designed and so opportunely brought to light,
merely “found" by accident in the temple, or
was it deliberately produced by priest or prophet,
under the keen guidance of Jeremiah, for the
very purpose of accomplishing the results that
followed? The inference implied in this question,
which is not merely plausible but almost irresist-
ible, has been generally discarded by learned
scholars, mostly doctors of divinity, on account of
their aversion to what has been characterised as
a “pious fraud.”
But why “fraud,” any more than the fulmina-
tions on Mount Sinai, which must be acknowl-
*
*


THE JEWISH LAW 239
edged to be mythical? Why fraud any more
than proclaiming the whole Levitical system as
the voice of God “out of the tabernacle of the
congregation ” to Moses, to be repeated by him
to the people in the wilderness of Sinai, when that
is demonstrably the work of priests and scribes
after the exile? Why fraud any more than
attributing to Moses this very book of the law,
when it is admitted that as a historic fact he was
not and could not have been the author of it?
It would be altogether in keeping with the man-
ner of the time, constantly pursued by priests and
prophets for impressing the people, to bring forth
this volume in a mysterious way, as “found in
the house of the Lord ” and presumably left there
by the Lord himself to be found. There was
no consciousness of fraud in such devices, and it
is absurd to apply modern ethical principles to
such a performance in those days and in that part
of the ancient world. We have only to get rid
of certain obsessions regarding the difference be-
tween Hebrews and other human beings to accept
with equanimity the most probable theory regard-
ing the origin of this particular production.
Its interest is mainly antiquarian, or historical
and ethnological, and we need not linger long over
the contents. The commands, delivered in the
most impressive way as coming down from the
time of Moses and uttered by him as the direct
mouthpiece of Israel's God, just as he was about


240 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
to bring his people into the promised land, and
as their great leader was to take leave of them
without entering it on account of their sins, are
directed first of all to the extermination of the
tribes in that land and the utter destruction of
their places and devices of heathen worship. This
is to be done in the most complete and pitiless
way, that no enticement be left to alienate the
Lord's people from him after all that he has done
and will do for them. These exhortations are
mingled with reminders of the past, with prom-
ises for the future in case of obedience, and with
threats in case of disobedience, and are reiterated
in various forms. Whatever the difference of
origin in the two sections of the book, the real
code of “statutes and judgments" begins with
chapter twelve, and there the first place is given
to the destruction of the places and forms and
symbols of worship in the land which the Lord
was about to give to his people. There also the
design of concentrating his own worship at one
place first appears.
Directions are given about the manner of wor-
ship and the preservation of fidelity to its obliga-
tions. Death by stoning is to be the penalty of
infidelity, and all heretics to the faith are to be
ruthlessly destroyed. There are prescriptions
regarding food, regarding offerings and sacrifices,
the keeping of the passover and other feasts, the
punishment of offences, the duties and allowances


THE JEWISH LAW 24. I
of “the priests the Levites,” etc. Much of it is
crude and barbarous, in keeping with the spirit
of the time, with overmuch of death penalty and
cruelty; but there is humanity for those of the
tribe and the family, kindness to the poor, the
bereaved, and the stranger, and mercy for
the penitent and submissive. Here and there are
flashes of the ethical spirit of the prophets, the
demand for righteous conduct and the doing of
justice, but above all there must be love and fear
for Israel's God and submission to his behests or
the punishment will be without mercy.
The chapter about setting up great stones on
Mount Ebal upon which the commandments are to
be written, and uttering blessings from Mount
Gerizim and curses from Mount Ebal, is generally
regarded as a later interpolation; but the elab-
orate and extravagant promise of blessing for
obedience and threat of cursing for disobedience
of Chapter twenty-eight are believed to form the
close of the original production, to which is to be
added the statement in a later chapter that Moses
“wrote this law" and delivered it to the priests
that had charge of the ark of the covenant, who
were enjoined to read it at the end of every seven
years at the feast of tabernacles before all Israel.
With this exception, the last six chapters of the
book are additions not germane to our present
subject.
A graphic account of the effect produced by


242 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
the reading of this book of the law in its original
form appears in the twenty-third chapter of the
Second Book of Kings. It was probably in the
exile that this code was inserted between the pre-
liminary discourses of Moses and the final chap-
ters of mixed material, ending with death of the
“prophet” the like of whom had not risen since
in Israel. But the completion and revision of
the book which afterwards received the title of
“Deuteronomy” was a small part of the work
done in that period in developing the Jewish law
as it was finally enshrined in what was canonised
as the “Torah.” The prophet Ezekiel, as we
have seen, drew the outlines of a system for the
new religious commonwealth that was to be estab-
lished at Jerusalem. Partly upon those lines the
fuller code was elaborated by the priests and
scribes at Babylon and completed in later days at
Jerusalem, when it was framed in a new account
of the creation which became the impressive pre-
lude of the whole collection, and a meagre sketch
of the ante-diluvian and post-diluvian generations,
the covenant with Abraham, and other mythical
material, down to the theophany on Mount Sinai.
This was finally interlaced with the older material,
with much trimming down and fitting together.
The material of this later law, known as the
“Priests' Code,” is far from homogeneous; and,
as it runs through the later chapters of Exodus,
constitutes the bulk of Leviticus and the earlier


THE JEWISH LAW 243
chapters of Numbers, and protrudes here and
there in the rest of the latter book, it contains
some inconsistencies and many repetitions and
variations. Scholars find in chapters seventeen
to twenty-six of Leviticus, with traces elsewhere,
what they designate as the “Law of Holiness,”
of earlier origin than the rest. The final process
of blending and revision was imperfectly done and
has provoked much laborious study. It was
eighty years after the first return of exiles under
the prince Zerubbabel and the priest Jeshua, in
pursuance of the edict of release by Cyrus, that
another priest, Ezra, led back a contingent of
those who had remained in exile, to the number of
seventeen hundred and more, by authority of
Artaxerxes. This was in 458 B. C. He is said
to have brought with him “the book of the law
of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to
Israel ”; but it was fourteen years later, under the
administration of Nehemiah as the Persian gov-
ernor, by the grace of Artaxerxes, that it was pro-
claimed and read “in the sight of all the people,”
who were pledged to obedience to it.
How much this contained of what is called the
“Priests' Code,” or of the older versions of
“law,” it is impossible to ascertain, nor does it
greatly matter; but it was many years later, about
4oo B. C., that the “books of Moses,” in which
the “Torah '' was enshrined and closed against
further manipulation, were finally completed and


244 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
canonised as sacred, to be known in the Greek
version as the Pentateuch. Of the character of
the final Mosaic legislation there is no occasion
for saying much to place it in the light which it
is our purpose to diffuse upon it in order to have
it seen as it is, without the glamour of divinity
which superstition and misguided devotion have
so long preserved in spite of reason and common
SenSe.
One main purpose which the priests of the re-
stored temple and the new Judaism had, was to
carry back all the appointments of the sacrificial,
ceremonial and ritual worship which they had in-
stituted and developed, in all their details, to the
specific commands of the deity through Moses in
the deserts of Sinai, and thereby to give them an
authority and sanction that could not be disputed.
Nothing like this form and manner of worship
had been known before the exile, but it was as-
sumed that it was because the commands of God
had not been obeyed. Now a prototype of the
temple with all its appliances and observances was
to be created in the wilderness of Sinai, back in
the remote age of the great deliverance. Accord-
ingly it is represented that in the forty days and
forty nights that Moses was in the cloud-covered
Mount, whither God had called him to give him
“the tables of stone, and the law and the com-
mandments,” he received the detailed instructions
for the “tabernacle” and all its equipment, which


246 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
of their own day. With similar particularity the
consecration of the priests is prescribed. Occa-
sionally in these books an incident is introduced,
possibly suggested by some experience or difficulty,
but imagined as occurring in the ancient time,
when this law was supposed to have been given,
which is intended to impress some point deemed
of great importance. Such is that of the Lord
breaking out with ferocity and devouring two
sons of Aaron for offering “strange fire,” or
burning incense without strictly observing the
technical requirements. There are prescriptions
regarding the animals that may be eaten and a
strict prohibition of eating blood, because it con-
tains the life. There are rules for purification
from uncleanness of various kinds, loathsome de-
tails about the diagnosis and treatment of leprosy,
and the forms of impurity from which men and
women must be cleansed. There is a curious
illustration of the conception of atonement, as it
prevailed after the exile, probably borrowed, like
much of the rest relating to the cultus, from the
practices of the East, in the sacrifice for the sins
of the whole people and their transfer to the head
of a goat to be dismissed into the desert.
When it comes to the so-called law, or “cov-
enant,” of holiness, there is more about sacrifices,
the slaughter of victims and purification, but this
section is mainly taken up with detailed commands
and prohibitions that concern personal and social
(


THE JEWISH LAW 247
conduct. Some of these savour of the ethical
principles long inculcated by those great teachers,
the pre-exilic prophets, but for the most part they
are prescriptions adapted to a semi-barbarous time
and reflecting the conditions that were supposed
to make them necessary. In this older material
there are several matters which were elaborated
in preceding chapters, such as those relating to
leprosy, uncleanness and purification. The death
penalty is freely prescribed for many offences
which are of moral and social turpitude rather
than of a criminal character, and some which are
mere neglect of religious observances. There is
a great deal of unsavoury grossness and little edi-
fication for the modern mind in this mass, though
it may have been fitted for restraint and the sup-
pression of evil tendencies in the time for which
it was devised, when it was easy to fall into idol-
atry or be lured away by wizards and those having
familiar spirits. Death was made the penalty of
witchcraft, as well as profaning the sabbath,
blaspheming the name of the Lord and cursing
one's father or mother. There is an occasional
gem glittering in the heap, like that great com-
mandment “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself,” but this is applied only to “the children
of thy people.”
The various Jewish feasts are instituted or
newly consecrated with rules for their observance,
and the sabbatical year and the year of jubilee are


248 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
prescribed with a form of observance that never
proved practicable. This collection of “stat-
utes" ends with the familiar promise of health,
peace and prosperity as a reward for their ob-
servance, and threats of dire calamity if they are
not obeyed. In this there is an evident retro-
spect of what had happened to the nation in its
days of disobedience. “These,” it is said, “are
the statutes and judgments and laws which the
Lord made between him and the children of
Israel in Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses.”
That formula seems to have closed what is called
the “law of holiness,” but a later chapter is added
relating to the cost of redeeming various vows,
and nearly the same formula is repeated.
The alleged enumeration of tribes in the wil-
derness with which the Book of Numbers opens
and from which it takes its title, is part of the
same “priests' writing ” in which these latest
codes are embodied. In connection with the
census of Levi the distinction between priests and
Levites, which was unknown before the exile, is
established, and their several functions are de-
fined. The priests are made descendants of
Aaron and his sons, while the Levites were other
offspring of the tribe, whose duties were those of
ministers of worship subordinate to the priests.
The fact seems to be that the class of Levites con-
sisted originally of the priests of the places of
worship away from Jerusalem before the aboli-


250 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
been, in the migration from Egypt, had some re-
lation to that mythical defilement of his father's
bed by Reuben, referred to in the ancient poem.
There may have been in the establishment of the
Levitical system some trouble which suggested the
mixing of Korah of the tribe of Levi with this re.
volt against divine authority, and having him and
his fellow conspirators swallowed up by the earth,
as an example to those who take too much upon
themselves, and to show that “the man whom the
Lord doth choose, he shall be holy,” and not the
man who sets himself up.
These Jewish laws were a human development
during a period of five centuries of Israel's history.
They were freely elaborated in the exile by priests
and scribes, who had in mind the experience
through which the nation had passed after the
time of David and Solomon, when it was divided
into two kingdoms, both of which had been de-
stroyed by powerful enemies, with deportation of
the ruling class, as was the practice of conquering
nations at that time. It was devoutly believed
that all the calamities that befel Ephraim and
Judah had been brought upon them by the God
of Israel as punishment for their sins, especially
in falling away from his worship and lusting after
other gods and the practices of their cults.
While this was believed, there was an invin-
cible faith in the goodness of Israel's God and his
love for the people of his choice, in his sacred


THE JEWISH LAW 25 I
covenant with the ancestor of the tribes, and in
the fulfilment of his promises. This faith had
been deeply and powerfully impressed by the
prophets before and during the exile, and was
excited into new fervour on the release from cap-
tivity by the Persian conquest of Babylon. Then
the devout souls of priests and scribes, in the new
hope of greatness and glory for the kingdom of
Zion, were intent upon establishing a system of
worship which should hold the people in allegiance
to the Lord and keep them from contamination
by association with worshippers of inferior dei-
ties. Hence the elaborate system of sacrifices,
observances and ceremonies which they devised,
based upon the doctrine that the people and all
they had belonged to their God and must be de-
voted to his service in order to save them from
such calamities as their fathers had passed
through, and to make of them a great and pros-
perous people who should ultimately rule the na-
tions by the power of that God, to whom they
were to devote their lives, their persons and their
property.
While the ethical principles inherited from the
prophets were not lost, their vitality was impaired
in the stress laid upon formal observances and
ceremonies. As a whole this law, as finally ac-
cumulated and consecrated in those days of sub-
mission to Persian authority and of deferred
hopes, is an unattractive and uninspiring mass of


XI
THE PRIESTLY HISTORY
AFTER the priestly commonwealth of the Jews
and the new sacrificial and ritual system of the
restored temple had been established for some
time, and the law had long been closed against
further change, except that wrought in its spirit
and application by the endless interpretation and
comment of rabbis, the need appears to have been
felt of recasting the history of the people to make
it conform more closely and consistently with the
doctrine of God's sovereignty over his chosen peo-
ple. What was especially sought was support for
the theory that the existing development had not
only a divine origin in the laws of Moses, but
divine direction throughout the history of the
kingdoms. Judea, Syria and Asia Minor had
passed under the rule of Greece after the con-
quests of Alexander, and the hope of secular
power for the Jewish state had grown dim, though
it did not perish. It must have been about the
end of the fourth century B. C., not far from the
year 300, that a temple priest or Levite, evidently
associated with the ritual worship, undertook the
task of recasting the history.
253


254 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
First there was the period of the return from
exile which was the prelude to the establishment
of the ecclesiastical regime which had not been
covered in any existing record. For this there
appears to have been some imperfect and dis-
jointed material, part of it a fragmentary memoir
by Ezra, the priest who had brought back the con-
tingent that returned in 458 B. C. by permission
of Artaxerxes, and another part a more complete
memoir of Nehemiah, the Jewish cup-bearer of
that monarch, who some twelve years later had
been permitted to go to Jerusalem to assist in re-
building the walls and restoring the worship, and
was made governor of the Persian province.
There were older documents, partly in the Ara-
maic tongue, relating chiefly to the events of the
first return under Zerubbabel and the priest
Jeshua, or Joshua. Much doubt has been cast
upon the authenticity of this older material, but
all was freely used by the compiler of the present
books with variations of his own.
It is the conclusion of the learned in such mat-
ters that the books known as “Ezra " and
“Nehemiah,” originally one and without title,
forming a kind of pendant to the Book of
“Chronicles,” were compiled by the author of
that book before his main work was undertaken.
It will be observed that the two works are clum-
sily linked together by a repetition at the end of
Chronicles of the opening verses of Ezra, which


256 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
The account of the plots, the charges of rebellion
against Persian authority, and the appeal to
Darius and its result, is drawn from the old
Aramaic document and is not to be trusted as
history, though it may reflect actual events in
vague outline. It mixes occurrences in the time
of Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes in a confused
way, and leaves the result in doubt, but the chron-
icler interjects after a statement that the elders
of the Jews finally “builded and prospered ”
through the prophesying of Haggai and Zecha-
riah, the alleged fact that “they builded and fin-
ished it (the temple), according to the command-
ment of God, and according to the decree of
Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes.” Such a decree
might span about a hundred years and it would
be a still longer time before such a celebration
of the passover as is described could have taken
place. The description is not more anachronistic
than the reference to the “King of Assyria whose
heart the Lord had turned to his people to
strengthen their hands in the work of the house of
God, the God of Israel.”
These disjointed and uncertain statements serve
to bring us down to the time of Ezra. The in-
troductory statement regarding his permission to
go up to Jerusalem seems to have been drawn in
substance from his own memoir, but the alleged
copy of a letter of Artaxerxes, said to have been
given to him, is from the doubtful Aramaic docu-


THE PRIESTLY HISTORY 257
ment. The rest of the book is made up, with
some modification by the Chronicler, from the
authentic memoir of the priest himself. It re-
lates chiefly to the journey to Jerusalem; the mor-
tification of the good man on finding that Jews
had intermarried with “the peoples of the land,”
so that the “holy seed had mingled themselves"
with the unholy, his confession and prayer in be-
half of the people on account of this transgression,
the solemn pledge and covenant against its contin-
uance, and a register of the chief offenders who
had taken “strange wives.”
With an abrupt break from Ezra the memoir
of Nehemiah is introduced, which gives a simple
and straightforward account of his mission to
Jerusalem through the favour of Artaxerxes, and
the trouble he had in accomplishing his purpose
on account of the plots and intrigues of adver-
saries who sought to thwart his efforts. Nehe-
miah appears in his own account in a pleasing
light, as a devout but shrewd and capable man,
who trusted in the Lord but omitted no precau-
tion or effort on his own part to make the Lord's
help effective. He had a naive way of discerning
the purpose of the Lord and circumventing his
enemies, invoking at times blessings upon him-
self, and curses upon them. The genealogy of
“them which came up at the first " Nehemiah
appears to have found at Jerusalem and attached
to his account of building up the walls of the city,


258 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
and the compiler of the varied material did not
omit it, though he had already introduced it in
the Book of Ezra.
The account of the reading of the book of the
law and the ceremonies attending it is regarded
as having been drawn in substance from the mem-
oir of Ezra, while the reference to the distribu-
tion of families and similar statistical material is
from uncertain sources. The chronicler describes
the dedication of the walls and the ceremony of
purification in his own way, by a free use of the
materials in his hands, but in the last chapter of
the Book of Nehemiah, after the first three verses,
we have again the unadulterated memoir of the
energetic representative of Persian authority and
the faithful guide of his own struggling people.
He had returned from Persia after an absence
and found things going wrong. He took them
in hand with characteristic zeal, giving special at-
tention to enforcing a strict observance of the
Sabbath and putting a stop to that nefarious prac-
tice of marrying “strange women’’ on the part of
the priests and Levites. We would gladly know
more of Nehemiah and his reforms, but in this
fragmentary and incoherent work we only get
vivid glimpses of a transition period in the life of
Jerusalem, sadly at variance with what the proph-
ets and poets had hoped and prayed for and pre-
liminary to something very different from what
had been promised of national power and glory.


THE PRIESTLY HISTORY 259
Turning now to the Book of Chronicles, orig-
inally one but in modern versions divided into
two, we find that it covers the period anterior to
the reign of David with genealogies, beginning
with Adam, with occasional reference to legendary
incidents. There is little more than a string of
names, drawn from the Pentateuch, before the
families of Israel are taken up, and no reference
is made to the deluge or to the Chaldean origin
of Abraham. The names in all these genealogies
are mainly those of places and clans, which were
commonly personified in the early writings.
Numerous instances might be cited. Precedence
is given to the family of Judah, who is said to
have had five sons, three of them the offspring
of a Canaanitess, and two of his daughter-in-law
Tamar. David is made to descend from one of
the latter, and the genealogy of his “house" is
apparently carried down to the writer's own time
through Zerubbabel and several succeeding gen-
erations. There is much confusion in the bald
way of stating the names, originally without punc-
tuation, but nowhere else is there any record of
descendants of Zerubbabel, the prince who led
from Babylon the first contingent of returning
exiles.
After the tracing of David's line to the end,
there is a repetition of the genealogy of Judah
with five sons, but those of Canaaanite maternity
are omitted. It should be noticed that while in


262 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
of the Book of Samuel. There is no reference to
his early freebooting days or his relations with
Saul or the Philistines. The quasi historical ac-
count begins with the death of Saul, which is con-
strued as a penalty for his trespass in not keeping
the word of the Lord and in asking counsel of
one that had a familiar spirit, followed by the
accession of David to the throne, first at Hebron
and then at Jerusalem. Such account as is given
of these events and of the “mighty men’’ of
David is drawn from that of the Book of Samuel,
with such variation as suited the purpose of the
writer.
A few later incidents of a historical char-
acter are drawn from the same source, but every-
thing which might throw discredit upon the king
is omitted, though the mutilating of conquered and
captive enemies with saws and harrows and axes
seems not to have been regarded as of that kind.
There is nothing of the brutal doings of Joab, the
wrong done to Uriah the Hittite or scandals in
the royal family; nothing of Absalom's rebellion
and the king's humiliation; nothing of David's
physical or mental condition before his death or
the incidents attending the succession as related
in the first two chapters of Kings. The only
case of offending God that is referred to is that
seemingly innocent one of numbering the people,
and the reason for not omitting that is that it led
to the purchase of the threshing floor of the Jebu-


THE PRIESTLY HISTORY 263
site, which was to become the site of “the house
of God.” But it was Satan, or the adversary,
and not God himself, that put the king up to that
sin. In the original version that incident may
have been intended as the explanation either of
an epidemic or of the acquisition of the temple
site.
The leading feature of the bleached and re-
coloured story of David's reign is the attribution
to him, not only of the founding of the temple and
the preparation of all the plans and materials of
its construction and equipment as a place of wor-
ship, but of the organisation of its service in ac-
cordance with the methods developed after the
exile. On every ceremonial occasion throughout
the Book of Chronicles the priests and Levites are
brought in with the music and singing and ritual
exercises which had never been dreamed of in con-
nection with the sacrifices of the first temple.
They even accompany the bringing of the ark of
the covenant, first from the house of Abinadab
and then from that of Obed-Edom, the incidents
of which are taken from the Book of Samuel.
The king is said to have ordained a regular serv-
ice of priests and Levites with musical instruments
and singing before the ark “continually,” and to
have dedicated that shrine with a hymn of thanks,
which is made up of parts of three different psalms
written long after David's time. The first in-
structions of the Lord by the prophet Nathan re-


264 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
garding the building of his “house,” and the
king's prayer of gratitude, are repeated with little
variation from Samuel; but the account of the
preparation, the collecting of material and the
elaborate system providing for the services of the
temple and the administration of the kingdom,
are original with the Chronicler, though he may
have drawn from previously written sources that
we know not of. -
The unhistorical character of all this is plain,
not only from its inconsistency with the older ac-
counts and with the circumstances and conditions
of David's time, but from the obvious exaggera-
tion of what is stated as fact. For instance, the
gold and silver said to have been collected for
use in building and decorating the temple and pro-
viding it with the appliances of worship, estimated
according to the value of the “talent" in the
writer's time, would have exceeded the sum of
$7,000,000,000, which is many times the wealth
of all the East in that form in those days. Ex-
aggeration of a similar kind characterises other
parts of this chronicle of the kings of Judah, such
as statements about their armed forces. David
was said to have more than 1,500,000 of warriors
and Jehoshaphat an army of over 1,100,000.
These preposterous statistics are little more def-
inite in significance than the favourite simile that
likened multitudes to the sand which is upon the
seashore.


THE PRIESTLY HISTORY 265
David needed no Abishag to cherish an anaemic
body in his last days, but died, not only “full of
days, riches and honour,” but in full possession of
his wonderful faculties and devoted piety, depart-
ing with a prayer of blessing and gratitude and
an edifying farewell to “all the congregation ”
of the princes of Israel, the princes of the tribes,
the captains and rulers and mighty men of his
peaceful realm. Solomon succeeded without any
such commotion as is described in the Book of
Kings and with no occasion for avenging past
wrongs or guarding against future trouble. The
story of his going up to the “high place " of
Gibeon to sacrifice is repeated, but the “Tent of
Meeting,” of which the compiler of Kings
knew nothing, was there, and it was not in a dream
that the Lord appeared to him and rewarded him
with “riches, wealth and honour,” as well as the
wisdom and knowledge for which he asked.
Solomon is not magnified in this account as much
as he is in the older one, but he is relieved of
some of the grievous faults imputed to him there.
He is placed distinctly lower than the exalted and
revered figure of his father, and in all that per-
tained to the building and dedicating of the tem-
ple he only carried out his father's explicit direc-
tions. The account of the dedication in Kings
is a relatively late production, but it is modified,
elaborated and extended in Chronicles, and the
Levitical ceremony of music and song is freely in-


266 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
troduced. There is a mere statement of Solo-
mon's joint enterprise with Hiram, or Huram, of
Tyre for obtaining gold from Ophir, but the
Phoenician only furnished him with vessels and
seamen. The story of the visit of the Queen of
Sheba is repeated and the King's wisdom, wealth
and power are descanted upon, but we are not told
of any marvellous knowledge of animals and plants
or production of proverbs and songs. There is a
bare allusion to his having married a daughter
of Pharaoh, but nothing of his loving many
strange women or having seven hundred wives
and three hundred concubines, or of his having
been led away from the worship of the Lord to
the idolatry of other gods. Neither is there any-
thing of the revolt of Jeroboam, or of the greater
part of the kingdom being rent away on account
of his sins, though in connection with the revolt
from his son it is mentioned that Jeroboam the
son of Nebat returned from Egypt when he heard
of it, whither he had “fled from the presence of
King Solomon.” Of the King's death it is only
said that he “slept with his fathers” and was
“buried in the City of David his father.”
Throughout the account of the kings of Judah,
from Rehoboam to Zedekiah and the destruction
of Jerusalem, there is the distinct purpose of em-
phasising the theocratic doctrine that prosperity
and victory always followed obedience and fidel-
ity to the God of Israel, and that reverse or calam-


THE PRIESTLY HISTORY 267
ity was invariably the result of incurring his
displeasure by some offence against his law or dis-
obedience to “his word.” Rehoboam is not so
unqualifiedly condemned for doing evil in the
sight of the Lord as in Kings, and there is a
fuller account of his reign. His prudent failure
to attempt to suppress the Ephraimite rebellion
was due to the warning of a prophet, and during
the years that he was successfully strengthening
and establishing the Kingdom of Judah his people
walked “in the way of David and Solomon,” but
after that the king forsook the law of the Lord,
which accounts for Shishak of Egypt having in-
vaded the country and plundered the temple and
the palace. The only reason why the king and
the city of Jerusalem were not destroyed alto-
gether at that time was that Rehoboam “humbled
himself" and “the wrath of the Lord was turned
from him.”
His son Abijah, or Abijam, received scant
notice in the Book of Kings, as he “walked
in all the sins of his father,” but the chroni-
cler credits him with a notable victory over Jero-
boam of Israel, or rather he credits the vic-
tory to the Lord, as the result of the king's con-
demnation of the recreancy of Jeroboam's people
and his admission of his own dependence upon the
God of his fathers. Abijah is said to have had
an army of 400,000 against 800,000 on the side
of his enemy, but the Lord saw to it that 500,000


268 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
of the latter were slain and that several towns
were captured. This victory is represented as
having been fatal to Jeroboam and nothing is said
to the discredit of Abijah, who waxed mighty and
took unto himself fourteen wives and begat twen-
ty-two sons and sixteen daughters, though he
reigned only three years.
Abijah's victories seem to have resulted in ten
years of peace for his son Asa, but in doing that
which was “good and right in the eyes of the
Lord his God,” Asa had occasion to clean out
idolatrous practices that had grown up under his
father, even to destroying an “abominable im-
age" which his mother had “for an Asherah.”
Notwithstanding his period of peace and prosper-
ity, he had an army of no less than 580,000, but
when an Ethiopian army of a million came up
against him he had to call upon the Lord for
help, which did not fail him. The whole Ethi-
opian horde was destroyed “before the Lord and
before his host,” and cities were taken with much
spoil. The incident of purchasing the alliance
of Benhadad of Syria against Baasha of Israel,
related in the Book of Kings, is repeated. Not-
withstanding its successful result the king was re-
buked by Hanani, the Seer, for not relying wholly
upon the Lord, implying that if he had done so
he might have conquered both Baasha and Ben-
hadad. Perhaps it was for this fault that Asa
was afflicted with gout, at least, was “diseased


THE PRIESTLY HISTORY 269
in the feet,” and “yet in his disease he sought not
to the Lord but to the physicians.”
These things are stated here as illustrating the
obviously unhistorical character of these accounts
and their purpose of impressing the people for
whom the chronicler wrote with the doctrine of
entire dependence upon God and obedience to his
commands as the sole means of attaining success
or escaping calamity. This appears still more
strikingly in the account of the reign of Jehosha-
phat, which is disjointed and confused in the Book
of Kings, but is presented quite systematically
here. This king is magnified above all others
that reigned in Judah after David and Solomon.
The Lord is said to have been with him “because
he walked in the first ways of his father David.”
He is not only credited with removing the high
places and the Asherim but with sending out
princes and Levites and priests throughout the
kingdom to teach the book of the law to the peo-
ple, a book which did not exist within the mean-
ing of the chronicler at that time any more than
did the orders of priests and Levites. But the
result was that the fear of the Lord fell upon
the kingdoms round about and they incontinently
sent rich gifts unto King Jehoshaphat. The
story of his joining Ahab of Israel in a campaign
against Syria is repeated from Kings without
substantial variation and with no more serious
consequence than a rebuke from Jehu the son of


270 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
Hanani the Seer for helping the wicked and loving
them that hate the Lord. The “good things"
found in him saved him from the wrath that was
upon him “before the Lord.” As if to make
amends for this fault, the king is represented as
setting judges in the land from the Levites and
priests and heads of families and enjoining upon
them righteous judgment “not for men but for
the Lord.”
After that a great multitude of the children of
Moab and the children of Ammon were reported
to be coming up against him “from beyond the
sea from Syria,” wherever that could have been;
and though he had an army of 1,160,000
“mighty men of valour,” he “feared and set
himself to seek unto the Lord.” He proclaimed
a fast and gathered the people together and
prayed the Lord to save them in their affliction
as they had “no might against this great com-
pany ” that came up against them, and knew not
what to do. As a result of this reliance upon
the Lord instead of his huge army, the spirit of
the Lord came upon a son of a Levite to assure
him that he need not fight, but only had to stand
still and “see the salvation of the Lord, O Judah
and Jerusalem.” So they only worshipped “with
an exceeding loud voice,” and the next day with
the ever present Levites they sang unto the Lord
and praised the beauty of holiness. The Lord
saw to the destruction of the children of Moab,


THE PRIESTLY HISTORY 271
the children of Ammon and the inhabitants of
Mount Seir, and Jehoshaphat and his army had
only to gather the spoil, which took three days,
and return to Jerusalem in triumph to the music
of psalteries and harps and trumpets.
This may be taken as an extreme example of
the chronicler's manner of writing history. He
made no use of the story in Kings of Jehoshaphat's
joining with Jehoram of Israel in an expedition
against Moab, which did not result so trium-
phantly. Mention is made from that source of his
joining with Ahaziah to build ships for the trade
to Tarshish, which resulted in the ships being
broken up because he “did very wickedly" in
joining with the King of Israel in the enterprise,
as a prophet did not fail to inform him.
The older account of Jehoshaphat's sinful son,
Jehoram who married a daughter of Ahab is
somewhat improved upon, and he is made to die
of a dreadful disease of the bowels in consequence
of his sins. A novel feature of this version of
his reign is a written message from the prophet
Elijah warning him of his fate for following the
example of Ahab and for slaying his brethren
who were better than himself. The account of
the brief reign of Ahaziah, the usurpation of
Athaliah, the queen mother, the hiding of Joash
and his being raised to the throne at the age of
seven by a plot led by the priest Jehoiada, is re-
peated with variations from the Book of Kings.


272 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
The chief variation consists in bringing in the
Levites to take the place of the military men of
the older version, as more appropriate to a scene
occurring in the house of the Lord.
The account of the repairs to this sacred
edifice and collecting funds for the purpose
in the reign of Joash is materially modified
in order to give the priests and Levites their
proper place in it. The fact that Joash came
to a violent end had to be more satisfactorily
accounted for. So it is made to appear that
after the death of the aged priest Jehoiada,
the king went sadly wrong in forsaking the house
of the Lord and serving the Asherim and idols,
and, when remonstrated with by the son of the
dead priest, having that rash mentor stoned to
death. As a result a Syrian army came to Judah
and Jerusalem and were permitted by the Lord
to play havoc and carry off spoil to Damascus.
Moreover, the king was afflicted with “great dis-
eases " and was killed in his bed by his own serv-
ants and was not buried in the sepulchres of the
kings. All the Book of Kings has about this
calamitous end of the reign of Joash is a statement
that Hazael of Syria came up against Jerusalem
and the king hired him with the treasures of the
temple and palace to go away, after which his
servants made a conspiracy and slew him in the
house of Millo, but he was nevertheless “buried
with his fathers in the city of David.”


THE PRIESTLY HISTORY 273
Amaziah the son of Joash seems to have taken
his father's fate to heart, at least for a time. The
compiler of Kings says that he did that which
was right in the eyes of the Lord, “yet not like
his father David,” but “according to all things
as Joash his father did.” The chronicler says
that he “did that which was right in the eyes of
the Lord, but not with a perfect heart.” Both
accounts of his reign are brief and do not vary in
any significant way; but in that of his son,
Azariah in Kings and Uzziah in Chron-
icles, the author of the latter book gives an-
other striking illustration of his manner of revis-
ing history with a purpose. Although it is said
that Azariah reigned fifty-two years and did that
which was right in the sight of the Lord, except
that the “high places” were not removed, against
which there was no condemnation until the pro-
mulgation of the Deuteronomic law more than a
hundred years later, the only fact alleged about
him by the compiler of the Book of Kings is that
the Lord smote him “so that he was a leper unto
the day of his death and dwelt in a several house,”
while his son Jotham judged the people.
Why should he be smitten with leprosy if he
did that which was right? The chronicler under-
takes to explain that in accordance with the doc-
trine of the theocratic rule in Judah. As long
as Uzziah sought the Lord, God made him to
prosper, and evidence is given of his success in


274 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
war with a “mighty power” of 307,500 men
under 2,600 “mighty men of valour,” heads of
father's houses, and of his building of towers and
battlements and engines of war. He also had
cattle and vineyards and fruitful fields, but when
he was strong, his heart was lifted up and he tres-
passed against the Lord by going into the temple
to burn incense upon the altar. This served at
once to explain his leprosy and to give warning
that the priest's office in the temple was not to
be usurped with impunity by the secular authority,
however high.
The reign of Jotham is dismissed almost as
briefly as in Kings and with no material varia-
tion, but characteristic changes are made by the
chronicler in the older account of those of Ahaz
and Hezekiah. It is agreed that Ahaz was alto-
gether a bad king, but it will be remembered that
the alliance of the kings of Israel and Syria against
Judah was regarded with contempt by the prophet
Isaiah, and that it was really defeated by Ahaz
hiring the Assyrian Tiglath-Pileser to attack
Damascus. But the chronicler declares that the
Lord delivered Ahaz into the hand of the king of
Syria, who carried away a great multitude of cap-
tives to Damascus, and into the hand of the king
of Israel, who “slew in Judah a hundred and
twenty thousand in one day ” and carried away
two hundred thousand captives with much spoil.
There is an edifying story of the release of these


THE PRIESTLY HISTORY 275
captives, but Ahaz continued to be pestered with
enemies, and Tiglath-Pileser, instead of helping
him, “distressed him,” and had to be hired with
treasures of the house of the Lord to leave him
in peace.
Hezekiah, as we know, set out to reform the
worship and followed closely in the footsteps of
the great exemplar David; but with the chronicler
the purifying of the temple and the re-establish-
ment of the sacrifices and offerings had to be
assigned to the priests and Levites, with all the
ritual accompaniment of his own time. He also
has the passover and the feasts celebrated in a
manner unknown in the time of Hezekiah, and
not at all in keeping with the spirit of Isaiah,
who according to the older book was the chief
adviser of that king. In this book the prophet
is pushed out of sight by the priests and Levites
and is only mentioned in connection with the in-
vasion of Sennacherib, the account of which is
abridged from the Book of Kings, and as the
author of a “vision ” in which the acts of Heze-
kiah were written, meaning no doubt the narrative
parts of the “prophecy” which relate to this
reign. The version of Sennacherib's discom-
fiture, in answer to the prayers of the king and the
prophet, is that “the Lord sent an angel, which
cut off all the mighty men of valour, and the lead-
ers and captains in the camp of the king of As-
syria,” so that he “returned with shame of face


276 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
to his own land.” The sickness of Hezekiah is
attributed to his heart being “lifted up,” which
brought wrath upon him, but he humbled himself
and got well, and the more serious consequences
of wrath did not come in his day.
The compiler of the Book of Kings, champion
of theocracy as he was, had nothing but threats
of disaster and retribution for the long and evil
reign of Manasseh. He tells of nothing befalling
the wicked monarch himself or the nation in his
time, and has no explanation of his being per-
mitted to reign fifty-five years. This was ob-
viously a serious lack from the point of view
of the author of Chronicles. So he brings “ the
captains of the host of the King of Assyria " upon
Manasseh and has him carried away to Babylon
in chains and fetters. There in his distress he
“humbled himself greatly before the God of his
fathers ” and prayed unto him. As a result of his
entreaty he was brought back to Jerusalem, where
he “took away the strange gods, and the idol out
of the house of the Lord,” and built up the altar
of the Lord and offered thereon sacrifices of peace
offerings and of thanksgiving, and “commanded
Judah to serve the Lord, the God of Israel.”
This is not history, but it was necessary to vindi-
cate the doctrine of theocracy as it was understood
in the time of the writer, three centuries and more
after Manasseh's day. As Amon reverted to the
evil part of his father's example and did not


THE PRIESTLY HISTORY 277
humble himself he was assassinated in two years.
According to the older records the reform in
the worship at Jerusalem was instituted by Josiah
as the result of the discovery of the “book of the
law,” but as the chronicler attributes everything re-
lating to the temple worship, in its origin and in
its perfection, to the prevision and instruction of
David, he repeats the story of Josiah from
Kings with considerable curtailment and makes
use of it chiefly to inject his priests and Levites
into all the proceedings and especially into the
celebration of the passover. He makes no at-
tempt to account for the unhappy fate of Josiah,
but says that Jeremiah lamented him and that
“all the singing men and singing women spake
of Josiah in their lamentations unto this day.”
The remaining events to the destruction of Jeru-
salem and the “carrying away” to Babylon are
disposed of in the most summary way, and the
exile is spoken of as the fulfilment of the word of
the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah “until the
land had enjoyed her Sabbaths, for as long as she
lay desolate she kept Sabbath, to fulfil three score
years and ten.” The extent of the exile before
the decree of Cyrus was less than fifty years, but
that it was a long Sabbath for the land was an at-
tractive idea. The interest of this Book of
Chronicles lies chiefly in its exhibition of the spirit
of the post-exilic community and the use it made
of past history for admonition and correction.


ILLUSTRATIVE TALES 279
ple. It does not greatly matter to us, so long as
it was preserved as a picture in that great work.
The most plausible explanation is that it was pro-
duced not long after the time of Ezra and Nehe-
miah, as a gentle protest against the harsh
measures taken regarding those who had married
“strange wives,” that is, women who were not of
the “holy seed ” of Israel. It tells in the most
enticing way of one foreign damsel in the olden
time who had married a child of one of Israel's
noblest families, when his parents were driven into
exile by famine, a favourite mode of explaining
expatriation; and who returned to Bethlehem-
Judah with the mother-in-law, after she had been
bereft of her own family, to be taken as a wife by
the noblest kinsman of her deceased husband, in
accordance with the law of Israel. To give
special force to the tale as a lesson on the subject
of such marriages, this new husband is represented
to have been the direct ancestor of Israel's greatest
king and most revered character.
Neither this representation nor the scrap of
genealogy appended to the story by a later hand,
probably drawn from the genealogy of Judah in
Chronicles, affords the slightest evidence of
historical fact, and all the learned discussion on
that point is to little purpose. The only tangible
basis upon which even a “Midrasch" could found
a claim that David really descended from Boaz
and Ruth is the statement in the Book of Samuel


ILLUSTRATIVE TALES 28 I
reality of his experience in trying to escape the
Lord when commanded to go to Nineveh and cry
out against the wickedness of that great city, and
living three days in the belly of a fish whence he
utters a prayer made up of scraps from psalms
wholly irrelevant to his situation. But to accept
that as fact is but little more of a strain upon
common sense than to believe that the great As-
syrian capital repented in sack cloth and ashes and
turned away the wrath of God because a Hebrew
prophet walked a day's journey into the city and
declared that it would be overthrown in forty days.
We see no reason why the prophet should be so
petulant with the Lord because his direful pre-
diction did not come true at once, in spite of the
universal repentance and humiliation in Nineveh.
He had more reason to be grieved when the
gourd that grew up in a night to shield his head
from the sun while he waited to see the city's de-
struction withered, leaving his head unprotected;
but it does not seem to be pity for the gourd that
made him grieve when he felt no pity for the pop-
ulation that he had doomed to destruction. Now
this story is not ridiculous, because it was not in-
tended to be taken as a narrative of fact. It is
not skilful as a work of literary art, but it has
that marvellous brevity of graphic realism in which
Semitic and Arabian story tellers have been adept
“even unto this day,” however improbable or im-
possible their statements.


282 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
It also impresses the lesson that Israel's
God was not so implacable that when he ut-
tered a threat of destruction he was bound to
execute it, even though the people against whom
it was directed repented of their iniquity and turned
to him. It may likewise have been intended
to convey the lesson that those who are commis-
sioned to speak for the Lord cannot evade the duty
with impunity. Perhaps it was intended to allay
the bitterness of those in later Israel who resented
the failure of the Lord to destroy the nations that
had been its oppressors, for those Jews cherished
an intense hatred of their enemies. As it was in-
cluded in a “sacred ” collection, these various
motives may be reasonably inferred, and modern
interpretation may make it apply to the mercy and
forgiveness of the Almighty for individual sinners
who repent and humble themselves, though that
was no part of the original intent. This little
“book” of Jonah has from the first been classed
among the “minor prophets,” for no reason
except that it bears the name of a prophet men-
tioned in the Book of Kings, who is the chief char-
acter in the story. It is not the work of a prophet
and is not a prophecy in any sense of the word.
There is another story of still later origin, the
motive of which is quite different from that of
Jonah. It illustrates, even glorifies, the pride and
arrogance of the Jews under their oppressors,
when they were ruled by Syrian kings, and makes


284 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
work of fiction, highly suggestive, in its realistic
quality, of the Arabian Tales. The fact that
Ahasuerus was a historical king of Persia, the
Xerxes of the Greeks, is no more reason for accept-
ing the story as true than the fact that Haroun
al Raschid was a real person is ground for believ-
ing all the tales in which he figures. The entire
picture of the Persian Court and its manners in
the time of Xerxes is surely fanciful, and Shushan,
or Susa, was not a palace or a castle, but the cap-
ital of the Persian empire. Though that empire
was great at the time, it did not have the extent
attributed to it in the story and did not consist of
a hundred and twenty-seven provinces.
Mordecai is said to have been one of the exiles
carried to Babylon with Jeconiah, or Jehoiachin.
That was in 597 B.C. and the reign of Xerxes did
not begin until 485, a hundred and twelve years
later. This crafty and implacable Jew, who con-
trived to make his cousin the queen of Persia and
to get himself exalted to the highest place in the
kingdom, is represented to be a descendant of
Kish of Benjamin, father of Saul, the first King
of Israel, while his arch-enemy, Haman, was of
the traditional enemies of Israel, the Amalekites,
perhaps a descendant of that King Agag said to
have been slain by the prophet Samuel, as he is
called the Agagite. What is the probability that
the king of Persia in its proudest days would have
made an Amalekite his chief minister, to be suc-


ILLUSTRATIVE TALES 285
ceeded by a Jewish exile as the man whom the king
most delighted to honour, or that he would have
taken a Jewess as his favourite queen without
knowing her origin? That he would have put
away his first queen for the reason alleged, or that
he would have commanded her to exhibit her
beauty before the revellers at a feast, is sufficiently
incredible, and if the queen refused to appear it
would be greatly to her credit.
The fact that the names of the chief actors in
the story are drawn from Babylonian or Elamite
mythology, is another evidence of its purely ficti-
tious character. Mordecai was derived from Mor-
duk and Esther from Ishtar, and Vashti and
Haman were names from the mythology of Elam,
the most ancient part of Persia. But there is
nothing in the whole story that conforms to human
probability. The refusal of Mordecai to do rev-
erence, at least in form, to Haman as the king's
chief minister, was not like a Jew of any date; and
if Haman had been a real Persian minister in the
king's favour, and if he chose to take note of the
incident at all, he would have made short work of
the show of arrogance, instead of casting lots for
all the months of the year to fix a date upon which
to exterminate all the Jews in the empire. Mak-
ing this use of the lot explain the name Purim
would seem trivial even if Pur meant lot, which
it did not in any known language. That the king
should be bribed with ten thousand talents of silver,


286 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
to be plundered from the Jews, to consent to this
wholesale slaughter throughout the provinces and
in “Shushan the palace,” it is ridiculous to suppose.
The story of Mordecai, through his cousin and
former ward the queen, averting this slaughter
and turning Haman's scheme upon his own head, is
cleverly and effectively told; but when it comes to
inducing the Persian potentate to permit the Jews
in the provinces to slay “of them that hated them
seventy-five thousand,” to kill five hundred in
Shushan on two successive days, and to have the
ten sons of Haman hanged on the second day after
having slain them on the first, credulity is put to
a pretty severe strain. In all this the fair Esther
appears in anything but a pleasing light; and
Mordecai in his exaltation is simply loathsome.
But then, this is a story, no more to be taken as
matter of fact than those of the “Calendars ” of
Bagdad. It is interesting, not as accounting for
the Purim or illustrating the care of Israel's God
over his oppressed people, but as illustrating the
character and spirit of the Jews in Judea in the
last centuries before the Christian era, the spirit
of the Maccabees and of those who crucified the
gentle teacher of Nazareth. The marvel is that
Christian preachers and teachers should so long
strive to make it a part of “divine truth.”


XIII
LYRICS, SONGS, AND HYMNS
IsRAEL did not differ from other primitive peo-
ples in the order of its literary development. At
the beginning of its history as a nation, or as a
congeries of affiliated tribes and clans, it is uncer-
tain what language it had, and it was some time
before it adopted writing from the Phoenicians.
All transmitted expression was oral, and it naturally
took the shape of myths and stories which varied
in form and substance. To aid memory and pre-
serve the form, metrical or lyrical expression was
an early development, and after writing came into
use this attained variety and symmetry and became
more and more artistic with the advancement of
the people. Reference has been made in the early
part of this volume to collections of ancient songs
and chants, in which the deeds of heroes and war-
riors and the utterances of leaders of men were
embalmed in memory, to be written down at a later
time and to become the basis of more enduring
literature. Glittering fragments of these are
found imbedded in the early narratives, and there
is evidence of more underlying the surface. The
oldest that seems fairly complete, though sadly
287


288 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
mutilated like so much other exhumed treasure of
the past, is the “Song of Deborah " in the Book
of Judges. Next in antiquity of those preserved
is David's elegy on the death in battle of Saul
and Jonathan, which is said to have been written
afterwards in the “Book of Jasher.” There is
also a strophe attributed to the same royal poet on
the death of Abner at the hand of Joab. What
more of his may have been taught or written is
not recorded.
The “Blessing of Jacob,” setting forth charac-
teristics of the personified tribes, and the vaticina-
tions about Israel imputed to Balaam of Peor,
antedate the division of the kingdom and are older
than the narratives in which they are embodied;
but the so-called “Blessing of Moses” is a prod-
uct of the northern kingdom in a time of its pros-
perity, perhaps after the victories of Joash over
Benhadad II of Syria. What is commonly called
the “Song of Moses” in the preceding chapter
of Deuteronomy is a much later production. It
looks back upon the history of the people from the
time after the exile, rehearsing their conduct and
its consequences in the form of prediction. It is
plainly a retrospect, ending with a promise of
vengeance upon the adversaries of the Lord and
expiation for what his people have suffered for
their own wrongdoing. It is represented as a song
dictated to Moses by God himself, to be a witness
when evils and troubles should have befallen the


LYRICS, SONGS, AND HYMNS 289
people, as it was foreseen that they would. Moses
himself is made to say that he knows that after
his death they would corrupt themselves and turn
aside from the way that he had commanded, and
that evil would befall them “in the latter days.”
The song was written after the event as a
justification of the ways of God in dealing with
his people.
There are many lyrical passages in the writings
of the prophets, some of them of a highly wrought
and artistic character. The greater part of these
appear to be of post-exilic origin, but some of them
are found in the oldest oracles. In the course of
time a variety of metrical forms, appropriate to
the sentiment to be expressed was developed, over
which there has been much learned discussion; but
the characteristics of Hebrew prosody, little of
which appears in modern translation, do not greatly
concern us. Much of the rhythm is in idea rather
than form, and in sentences and phrases rather
than syllables, and a conspicuous peculiarity is
what is called the parallelism of Hebrew verse,
the repetition of the idea in different words or the
expression of contrasted ideas. This is readily re-
produced, but most imitations of the original
versification are not reproductions. There was
much of the flow, the swing, the roll or mur-
mur, and the ring of poetical language in these
passages, and not a little of the effect has been
reproduced by skilful translation in English. In


292 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
has left them, and of their subjection to strangers,
with “servants" ruling over them. While there
is a fervent plea that the Lord turn them again
to himself, it ends with a despairing cry that he
has “utterly rejected ” them and is still “very
wroth '' against them. This may have arisen in
that troublous time before the coming of Ezra
and Nehemiah, or it may have been in a later day
of humiliation, of which there were many.
The third chapter of Lamentations is a lament,
but not a dirge. The verses are arranged alpha-
betically in threes. It undoubtedly belongs to a
period of depression after the Greek conquest and
before the Maccabean uprising, but not in the
comparatively comfortable time when Palestine
was under the rule of the Ptolemies. It is partic-
ularly interesting for the personification of the
suffering community as a man who has seen afflic-
tion and makes his appeal to the Lord. It is
the kind of personification that appears in the
“suffering servant” of the Lord in the chapters
attached to Isaiah. It is full of confession and
submission rather than of complaint, and is a
humble plea to the Lord, who has redeemed the
life of his people but has still to judge their cause
and save them from their enemies. He is asked
to curse these enemies, to give them sorrow of
heart and destroy them from under heaven, which
savours more of vengeance than of assurance of
relief.


LYRICS, SONGS, AND HYMNS 293
Contrasted with this in tone and in colour is that
cheerful string of lyric gems to which some editor
prefixed the title “The Song of Songs, which is
Solomon’s.” It was not Solomon's and had no
relation to Solomon, and it is believed to have
had its origin in the earlier part of the Greek
period. It owes its preservation in the Jewish
canon possibly to the attribution to Solomon, or
that may have been given to it to justify its admis-
sion, but only after it had been interpreted as sym-
bolising the love of Israel's God for his people.
This far-fetched symbolism was carried farther by
the early Christians and made to signify Christ's
love for his church. This was at a time when a
devout faith would accept almost anything with-
out qualms of reason.
It symbolises nothing, but depicts in glowing
terms a purely human love of man and woman,
and it has no religious significance whatever; but
we are entitled to be grateful to the religious spirit
that preserved it as a jewelled ornament to gleam
forever upon the great epic of Israel. Since its
secular character has been acknowledged much
learning has been expended upon it as a fascinating
riddle. The failure of ancient scribes to distin-
guish its divisions and its characters, and the lack
of care in copyists who transcribed it in uncertain
manuscript, has given much trouble to the learned
pundits. First, they tried to make a little musical
drama of it, as if it were enacted on a stage, with


290 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
some of the lyrics, even of the most serious kind,
there is a good deal of artificiality of structure.
This is especially true of the “Book of Lam-
entations,” which is the oldest of the complete
collections in the body of Jewish scripture that are
in verse. While it is the oldest it is a question
whether any part of it was written until after the
exile was over, though a part is believed by some
authorities to have been produced in the early days
of the “captivity,” when the siege and destruc-
tion of Jerusalem were fresh in memory. All are
agreed that the five separate poems do not belong
to the same period and did not emanate from the
same author, and that there never was any ground
for attributing any part of them to the prophet
Jeremiah. Some regard the second and fourth,
which are akin and probably from the same hand,
as the oldest and as belonging to the early years
of the exile, and the first and fifth as considerably
later. Others make the fifth the oldest, though
placing it after the Persian conquest, but all agree
that the third is the latest of all, belonging to the
period after the Greek or Macedonian conquest.
This is a kind of dispute with which we do not
concern ourselves, accepting only general conclu-
sions that affect the proper understanding of what
we are considering.
The Hebrew title and the Greek equivalent
have the meaning of “dirges,” or threnodies, but
only the first, second and fourth have that char-


292 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
has left them, and of their subjection to strangers,
with “servants" ruling over them. While there
is a fervent plea that the Lord turn them again
to himself, it ends with a despairing cry that he
has “utterly rejected ” them and is still “very
wroth '' against them. This may have arisen in
that troublous time before the coming of Ezra
and Nehemiah, or it may have been in a later day
of humiliation, of which there were many.
The third chapter of Lamentations is a lament,
but not a dirge. The verses are arranged alpha-
betically in threes. It undoubtedly belongs to a
period of depression after the Greek conquest and
before the Maccabean uprising, but not in the
comparatively comfortable time when Palestine
was under the rule of the Ptolemies. It is partic-
ularly interesting for the personification of the
suffering community as a man who has seen afflic-
tion and makes his appeal to the Lord. It is
the kind of personification that appears in the
“suffering servant" of the Lord in the chapters
attached to Isaiah. It is full of confession and
submission rather than of complaint, and is a
humble plea to the Lord, who has redeemed the
life of his people but has still to judge their cause
and save them from their enemies. He is asked
to curse these enemies, to give them sorrow of
heart and destroy them from under heaven, which
savours more of vengeance than of assurance of
relief.


LYRICS, SONGS, AND HYMNS 293
Contrasted with this in tone and in colour is that
cheerful string of lyric gems to which some editor
prefixed the title “The Song of Songs, which is
Solomon’s.” It was not Solomon's and had no
relation to Solomon, and it is believed to have
had its origin in the earlier part of the Greek
period. It owes its preservation in the Jewish
canon possibly to the attribution to Solomon, or
that may have been given to it to justify its admis-
sion, but only after it had been interpreted as sym-
bolising the love of Israel's God for his people.
This far-fetched symbolism was carried farther by
the early Christians and made to signify Christ's
love for his church. This was at a time when a
devout faith would accept almost anything with-
out qualms of reason.
It symbolises nothing, but depicts in glowing
terms a purely human love of man and woman,
and it has no religious significance whatever; but
we are entitled to be grateful to the religious spirit
that preserved it as a jewelled ornament to gleam
forever upon the great epic of Israel. Since its
secular character has been acknowledged much
learning has been expended upon it as a fascinating
riddle. The failure of ancient scribes to distin-
guish its divisions and its characters, and the lack
of care in copyists who transcribed it in uncertain
manuscript, has given much trouble to the learned
pundits. First, they tried to make a little musical
drama of it, as if it were enacted on a stage, with


LYRICS, SONGS, AND HYMNS 295
relation to the flesh, of which the ancients were not
so chary as the moderns. A feature of the Syrian
wedding celebration was a sword dance with which
the description of chapter seven may have been
associated. Apart from its pictorial merit this
little production gives us a glimpse of the lighter
and brighter aspect of life in the Jewish days long
after the exile, and shows that it was not wholly
overshadowed by the priestly law and its observ-
ancCS.
But the great repository of Hebrew lyrics is
that volume of poetry, mainly religious or devo-
tional, which has been known as the Book of
Psalms ever since it was first rendered into the
Greek language, when the tongue of Israel was
ceasing to speak in its ancient accents. The word
rendered ſaxºs in Greek meant a piece sung to
a musical accompaniment, but the Hebrew title
for the collection meant “Songs of Praise.” Just
when this collection was completed and divided
into five books, like the Torah, or law, cannot be
determined, but it is believed to have been in the
last half of the Second Century, B. C. The divi-
sion into books was partly arbitrary, but there
were several collections, made at different times
and finally combined, to form the psalterium, or
psalter, of the temple and the synagogues in the
centuries before the Christian era, and to become
the priceless heritage of the Christian Church in
after times.


296 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
The five books evidently do not correspond to
the original collections. The first comprises
Psalms one to forty-one and is made up mostly of
what appears to be the earliest collection. All
but the first two pieces, which form a general pre-
lude to the entire volume, and the tenth and thirty-
third, are labelled with the name of David. The
second book, which extends from forty-two to
seventy-two, includes another and probably later
collection attributed to David. This latter con-
sists of the series from fifty-one to seventy-one,
with the exception of sixty-six, sixty-seven and
seventy-one, which are anonymous. Seventy-two
is credited to Solomon. Forty-two to forty-nine
are inscribed as “for the sons of Korah,” and
fifty is marked as “a psalm of Asaph.”
The third book includes Psalms seventy-three
to eighty-nine, and all but the last six are
called psalms of Asaph, probably forming a
collection by themselves and perhaps originally
including number fifty. The last six form a
kind of appendix to this collection. Three of
them, eighty-four, eighty-five and eighty-seven
are “for the sons of Korah,” eighty-six is “a
prayer of David " and the last two are called
“maschils,” of Heman the Ezrahite and Ethan
the Ezrahite respectively. Book four ends with
Psalm one hundred and six and book five covers
the rest of the hundred and fifty. There is no
distinct division between these two “books,” and


298 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
tions that were highly cherished was common, es-
pecially when their origin was unknown and they
were on some account associated with the char-
acters or quality for which the names stood.
The chronicler, as we have seen, attributed the
organisation of the temple service, as it was after
the exile, to David, and it may have been for that
reason that some of the earliest psalms in use were
labelled with his name. The musical service was
said to have been assigned by him to the sons of
Asaph and of Heman and of Jeduthun. This
would seem to imply that in the chronicler's time
there were three choirs or guilds of temple singers
and musicians bearing these titles; but, in the slight
references in Ezra and Nehemiah, only one is
mentioned, known as the “sons of Asaph,” who
were singers. The use of the phrase “sons of "
was common for members of any organisation or
community or class or nation which had a name,
whether personal or otherwise.
Asaph was one of the old clan names and
may or may not have been borne by a per-
son in the exile, but it was evidently applied
to a company of singers then, and in the
temple service later. Hence many of the
psalms used by this company bear the name
of Asaph. That Asaph was used as the name of
a person in David's time by the writer of the
Chronicles signifies nothing historical. It was
the same writer who as compiler of the Book of


LYRICS, SONGS, AND HYMNS 299
Nehemiah spoke of “the days of David and
Asaph of old,” when there were “chiefs of the
singers, and songs of praise and thanksgiving to
God.” The sons of Korah were evidently a sec-
ond choir or guild of temple singers when these
collections were formed, unknown in the time of
Ezra; but the psalms afford no evidence of a third,
which might be implied by the chronicler's refer-
ence to David's assignment of duties, unless it be
in the single psalms attributed to Heman and
Ethan. But in Chronicles the sons of Heman
appear to be musicians to “lift up the horn.”
These titles are matters of little living interest,
as they give no clue to the authorship of psalms,
the time in which they were written, or to circum-
stances which might explain their meaning or their
allusions. While most of those in the first book
are probably older and most of those in the last
two books later than the rest, no chronological
order is observed, and stray pieces, old and new,
were apparently gathered in from time to time
wherever they would fit or wherever it happened
to be convenient to put them. The lack of classi-
fication and arrangement has given large oppor-
tunity for learned research and close study by many
learned men desirous of telling us all about the
origin and meaning of the psalms, and it would
take a large volume to sum up their various con-
clusions and to point out their reasons for not
agreeing. We will be satisfied with a few very


3oo THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
general conclusions and contented with the mean-
ing the psalms have for the modern man.
Though a few may have been old when they
were collected together and some may have been
expressions of personal experience and feeling, as
a whole they reflect the moods and sentiments, the
hopes and fears, the aspirations and the devotion,
of the Jewish community when it was under the
Persian power and later under that of Greece or
Syria. Some of them were written and sung after
the revolt of Simon the priest, and under the rule
of his descendants at Jerusalem, when they were
lauded as if they were offspring of the house of
David. In fact, they were so considered in some
figurative or metaphorical sense. During most of
the period in which this anthology was produced
the Jews at Jerusalem had little autonomy of
worldly rule. They were subject to alien author-
ity which was sometimes oppressive and always
hated. They were beset with enemies at times
who annoyed and humiliated them. Their an-
cient pride had been subdued but not extinguished,
and they keenly felt their position as subjects of
those whose god was not the Lord. Many among
them were faithless to their ancient traditions.
Their “sacred nation ” was dead and the hope
of earthly power seemed to be gone, but the old
promises were still cherished and belief in the des-
tiny of Israel's race was invincible. Their God
had punished them for their sins, he seemed at


LYRICS, SONGS, AND HYMNS 301
times to have rejected and abandoned them, but
they would cling to him as the rock of their salva-
tion and their redeemer in his own good time. It
was not the Jewish community as a whole, but the
community of the pious and devout, many of them
poor, meek and humble, but conscious of superior-
ity over the worldly and the wicked, and proud
of their race and their religion compared with
those of the mighty nations, which found expres-
sion in many of these intense lyrics that have
such a marvellous adaptation to individual
moods.
Fully to appreciate them we must keep in mind
that they are rarely the expression of the personal
moods and feelings of the writers, except as they
were in full sympathy with the community of the
Lord's “Saints.” The “I” and “me,” so much
used, are pronouns of that personified community,
which raised its united voice in the temple or the
synagogue, or of the race or people of which this
was a sanctified part. When beset with enemies
and in peril, as it was from time to time in those
centuries after the exile, its voice was raised from
deep dejection in imprecations and calls for venge-
ance and in pleas for help. Sometimes it felt that
it had been cast off and abandoned, forsaken of
its God, who had withdrawn afar off or hidden
his face, and it cried out almost in despair. It
bewailed the sins of the past and acknowledged
that the punishment inflicted upon the nation had


302 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
been deserved, but besought the Lord to forgive
and to save. It often magnified the power and
glory of the Lord and called upon all the earth
to utter his praise. When victorious or prosper-
ous it exulted in songs of triumph and praised the
Lord for his loving kindness and tender mercy
and his ever present help in time of need.
The experience through which the people of
Israel had passed wrought a change in the con-
ception of deity. He was no longer the human-
like being who walked in the Garden of Eden, and
talked with Abraham and Moses; he was not the
mightier Chemosh or Baal who fought the battles
of his people and destroyed the hosts of other
gods; he was not even the fierce and wrathful and
jealous potentate of the prophets, and no longer
uttered threats and promises. He was remote,
unseen and unheard. He was still the embodi-
ment of stern justice, but he had pity upon his
people, now anxiously submissive and pleading to
be forgiven and to be sustained. He was right-
eous altogether, but good and merciful to those
who humbly called upon him. The voice is that
of a people which has been through affliction,
which has gone astray and been punished, but is
repentant and subdued, and still hopeful that after
its purification it will be exalted and made happy.
It still trusts in its God, calls upon him in time
of trouble, rejoices in him in days of triumph,
pleads for his forgiveness and help, utters thanks


LYRICS, SONGS, AND HYMNS 303
for every favour and is deeply devoted to his wor-
ship or striving to be so.
The wonderful thing about all these varied
utterances that sprang from the devoted com-
munity of which the temple at Jerusalem was
the centre and the synagogues were scattered
branches, is their adaptation to human moods
and needs and aspirations in the individual
man, which has made of them an anthology of
religious devotion and worship for all time. As
part of Israel's epic this is a revelation of the
experience and the character of the people and
a varied reflection of Judaism in its religious
aspect, when political power was gone forever,
the voice of prophecy was hushed, the oracle
and the vision had departed, and even the sacri-
fices and oblations of the sanctuary seem almost
forgotten in the chants of priests and the singing
of choirs. Save for one long, artificial and mo-
notonous panegyric, a complex alphabetical acros-
tic, there is little reference to the “law " and the
“statutes " and the “testimonies" of the Lord;
and the formal sacrifices and observances are
slightingly referred to as of little moment com-
pared with a contrite heart, a submissive spirit,
upright conduct, and devotion to purity and good-
nCSS.
This is what gives the psalms their uni-
versal and everlasting sanction, as expressions of
the yearnings of the human soul. They were prod-


3o4 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
ucts of the Hebrew genius, which like most that
preceded them, owe their peculiar vitality to the
fact that they were not creations of individual
minds intent upon giving expression to themselves,
but emanations from the life and experience of
a people, with an intense consciousness of a com-
mon lot and a common fate in the midst of an
alien world.


XIV,
WISDOM AND PHILOSOPHY
It was long after the exile that the Hebrew
genius, under the influence of Persian and Greek
philosophy, turned to the production of what have
been designated as “wisdom books.” The ear-
liest of these in its material, if not in its final form,
was a collection of discourses and sayings of the
wise, which was admitted later than the beginning
of the Christian era to the third canon, or that
of “sacred writings,” as distinguished from “the
Law" and “the Prophets.” It is known to us
as the Book of Proverbs. Just how early it was
finally made up is one of the many questions upon
which the most learned differ, but probably in the
later part of what is called the Greek period, and
before the insurrection led by the “Maccabees.”
It consists of different components finally thrown
together, and labeled in the first versions from the
original tongue “The proverbs of Solomon, son
of David, King of Israel.” The oldest of the
subsidiary collections of which it is composed, ex-
tending from Chapter ten of the book as we have
it to Chapter twenty-two, verse sixteen, is headed
“The proverbs of Solomon.” This seems to be
305


WISDOM AND PHILOSOPHY 307
common practice at a time when writings, except
the oracles of prophets, were rarely associated with
the names of the authors. The names used did
not indicate authorship but character. Neither is
there any reason to suppose that any of these were
“copied out" by men of Hezekiah, notwithstand-
ing the statement. His reign was in the troublous
time of Assyrian invasion and was closely associ-
ated with the activity of the prophet Isaiah; but
there is nothing in the account of it to indicate
that he had men about him engaged in the peace-
ful pursuit of collecting or uttering proverbs. But
the strongest argument for the late authorship of
most, if not all, of these sayings is their character,
which is not in keeping with the conceptions or
modes of thought of the pre-exilic time.
There was one fundamental conception, upon
which the prophets laid constant stress, if they did
not originate it, and it was never lost. “The
Lord ” of Israel was a God of righteousness and
justice, the source of all wisdom and power. Fear
of him and obedience to his mandates, as uttered
by those who truly spoke in his name, was the only
safety. All wrong-doing was disobedience and
folly and would bring inevitable penalties. The
application of this conception to human life and
conduct took a different form after the experience
of the nation's destruction, the captivity of its peo-
ple, and their subjection to foreign powers. This
appears strikingly in the Book of Proverbs.


308 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
The deity no longer seems to be “the Lord,”
Yahweh, the god of Israel, and there is no allusion
to the existence of other gods. He is not the pas-
sionate potentate of the heavens as in the former
time, jealous of the worship of other deities, watch-
ful of his own peculiar people, given to wrath at
their offences, yet loving them and repenting of his
anger when they turned to him in humble submis-
sion; punishing them with famine, pestilence and
war, and yet hating their enemies and oppressors,
threatening their destruction and promising glory
and greatness to a purified remnant of his own peo-
ple. That stage of development had passed with
the destruction of the nation and the humiliation
of the people, and the God of the “wise men''
was remote, unheard and unseen, no longer in in-
timate association with prophets and priests, seers
and dreamers. He is the divine power of the
universe, the source of all good and the embodi-
ment of the moral law. His relation is not that
of a ruler of the nation or the father of a people,
and he is not given to human impulses and emo-
tions. He is a serene deity, whose laws are inex-
orable and work out their own penalties on the
earth, and his relation is to the individual man.
There is reason to believe, though there is no
clear evidence, that after the exile there developed
schools of wise teachers, as there had been schools
of prophets in the olden time in which the disciples
were called “sons of prophets.” These wise men


WISDOM AND PHILOSOPHY 309
also addressed their pupils as “sons.” They ap-
pear to have led lives of study and meditation,
and while they drew their fundamental religious
conception from the old prophets, much of their
inspiration came from the philosophy of the con-
querors of Israel. There is little reference to the
law or to sacrifices and none to prayer and praise.
Nothing is said of loving God, and of his love it
is only said that “whom the Lord loveth he re-
proveth, even as a father the son in whom he
delighteth.” It is wisdom that is said to love
those who love her. Virtually no distinction is
made between righteousness, or right-doing, and
wisdom, or between wickedness and folly. Fear
of the Lord is said to be the essence of wisdom,
but fear of the Lord is synonymous with obedience
to the moral law of which he is the personification.
In this there is a profound philosophy that can
never grow old. It is everlastingly true that the
highest wisdom lies in doing right. The best man
is the wisest and happiest, and wrong-doing,
whether as vice and crime or as falsehood and
dishonesty, is foolish and injurious to the perpe-
trator. The basic philosophy of the proverbs is
sound, but it pervaded other literature of its time
besides that of Judaism. Here and there is a
glimpse of a higher ethical principle than that of
the law. “To do justice and judgment is more
acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.” “Rejoice
not when thine enemy falleth and let not thine


310 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
heart be glad when he stumbleth.” “If thy
enemy be hungry give him water to drink.”
The introductory nine chapters of Proverbs,
which are later in origin, are different in
form from the collections that follow. Whether
the product of one writer or not, they form a series
of connected discourses, and the rhythmical forms
are varied. This section is in parts poetical as
well as rhythmical, especially in those in which
wisdom is personified. The elaborate personifica-
tion in chapter eight, where wisdom speaks in the
first person and makes itself the first offspring of
the Lord and his companion in his creative work,
contains the germ of the logos doctrine of Philo,
wherein was the seed of the “word ” dogma of
the fourth gospel. The burden of these chapters
is the warning of the young against the enticements
of the wicked and especially those of the “strange
woman,” whose feet go down to death and “her
steps take hold on sheol.” This term for the un-
derworld of Hebrew mythology, where the dead
remained in a state of torpor, forever at rest, is a
common synonym for death or the grave. Mingled
with the magnifying of wisdom and knowledge,
the scorn of wickedness and folly and warn-
ings against temptation, are many sage maxims
and aphorisms touching the conduct of life. While
the versification is more varied than in other parts
of the book there is much of the familiar parallel-
ism of idea.


WISDOM AND PHILOSOPHY 311
The long section which follows these discourses
is made up of couplets occasionally extended to
triplets, in which antithetical parallelism is the
prevalent form, as “A wise son maketh a glad
father, But a foolish son is the heaviness of his
mother; ” “Treasures of wickedness profit noth-
ing, But righteousness delivereth from death,” and
so on. In the second part of this section, begin-
ning with Chapter XVI, 3, there is a predominance
of couplets in which the two members are synony-
mous, or form a continuous expression, as:
“By mercy and truth iniquity is purged,
And by fear of the Lord men depart from evil.”
“Better is a little with righteousness
Than great revenues with injustice.”
While in this collection there is still much con-
trasting of wisdom and folly and of righteousness
and wickedness, there is also much of mere worldly
good sense and prudent counsel. Still more does
this quality appear in the collection of apothegms
which the men of Hezekiah are said to have
“copied out.”
Between these collections, introduced with an
admonition to listen to the words of the wise and
apply the heart to acquiring knowledge, are two
groups of epigrams and wise sayings separated by
the line: “These also are sayings of the wise"
or “these things also belong to the wise,” which
may apply to what goes before or what follows,


312 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
as in the original there was no punctuation, and
divisions of manuscript were uncertain. These
are partly in quatrains and strophes of irregular
length, and, while different in manner from the
other collection, have much the same tone of high
morality and worldly wisdom. It can hardly be
said that the world has advanced in that respect
in all these centuries beyond the standard of the
wise men of Judea, although religious conceptions
have reached a greater height, the field of knowl-
edge has vastly widened, the human understanding
has more to work upon and to support it, and
ethical motives are more exalted among the wisest
and best. But the marvel of this book, doubtless
the work of many hands extending over a, consid-
erable period, is the enduring validity of its wis-
dom and its constant appeal to the moral sense and
the common sense of humanity. The writers used
the knowledge, the understanding and the reason
of their time to the utmost, and without hope of
reward or fear of retribution in another life,
reached the sound conclusion that in this life,
“here on this bank and shoal of time,” righteous-
ness and truth, justice and mercy, are the part of
wisdom and safety.
The two supplementary chapters of the book
have a merit of their own, but no literary relation
to the rest. Who Agur was, whether the name
was meant for a real person or was a proper name
at all, it is hardly worth while to consider. It


314 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
y
astes” in the Greek and the “preacher ” in Eng-
lish, is a little dubious, but the writer used it to
represent the speaker in the monologue which fol-
lows.
He introduces his discourse with a gloomy
prologue upon the vanity and emptiness of all
things in this world, because life is one monotonous
round and there is nothing new to be looked for
and no remembrance of things from one genera-
tion to another. Then for the purpose of illus-
tration he assumes the greatest character he can
conceive of, “King over Israel in Jerusalem,” in
order to say that all that he was and all that he
achieved, his test of wisdom and wealth and of
pleasure and enjoyment, only led to the conclu-
sion that all is vanity and striving after the wind,
and that nothing is better for man than that he
should eat and drink and make his soul enjoy good
in his labour. He does not use the name of Sol-
omon or assume to be the son of David, though
doubtless he had that exemplar in mind. When
the character had served his purpose he dropped
the mask.
Ecclesiastes was one of the latest productions
added to their sacred canon by the Jews. Some
have regarded it as the latest to be produced, but
it was doubtless earlier than the Book of Daniel.
Like the latest of the proverbs it was written when
Israel's hope of ever again being an independent
nation was at the lowest and its submission to a


WISDOM AND PHILOSOPHY 315
foreign power was most complete. That power
was probably the Syrian princes who had come in
after the conquests of Alexander, and when the
process of Hellenisation had pervaded Palestine.
“Koheleth "carried farther than any of the more
cheerful wise men who had a hand in the contents
of the Book of Proverbs the doctrine that no mat-
ter what you may think of this life and the destiny
of man, there is nothing better for you than wis-
dom and understanding, and what they dictate is
righteous conduct in “fear of the Lord,” even
though the righteous may sometimes suffer and the
wicked may flourish, while the same fate awaits
them both, which is the fate of the beasts that
perish. Of that he has no doubt and yet he would
make the best of life while it lasts. Notwith-
standing “the travail which God hath given to
the sons of men to be exercised therewith,” “I
know that there is nothing better for them than
to rejoice and to get good so long as they live;
and also that every man should eat, and drink
and enjoy good in all his labour; it is the gift of
God.”
The work is not altogether coherent or entirely
consistent, which may be in part due to imperfec-
tions in transcribing and to emendations and inter-
polations by copyists. Most of these ancient texts
are corrupt beyond the power of man to restore
to their pristine form. But the writer had vary-
ing moods and he introduced maxims and wise


316 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
sayings some of which may not have been his own.
Still, his doctrine is not obscure. He regarded
everything in this world, good and bad, as or-
dained of God and unchangeable by man. It was
inscrutable and it was vain to contend against it.
It could not be reformed and it did not tend to
cure itself. There were oppressions under the
sun and its victims had no comforter. It were
better for them to be dead than living and best
of all never to have lived, and yet he says else-
where that where there is life there is hope and a
living dog is better than a dead lion.
He has seen one born poor come out of prison
to be a king and be acclaimed by all, but those
who come after will not rejoice in him, and that
also is vanity. One man heaps up riches and may
rejoice in the fruits of his labour. It is the gift
of God. Another may have riches and honour
and be unable to enjoy them, and an untimely
birth is better than he. A wise man seems to have
no advantage over a fool. A righteous man per-
ishes in his righteousness and a wicked man pro-
longeth his life in evil doing; and it seems better
not to be righteous overmuch or to be overwise.
All the striving is not worth while. It comes to
nothing. There is one event to all and there is no
help for it. Hence, again, eat thy bread with joy
and drink thy wine with a merry heart, and live
joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest. Do
what thy hand finds to do with thy might, though


WISDOM AND PHILOSOPHY 317
the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the
strong. The wise get no reward. A poor wise
man may save a besieged city and be immediately
forgotten. It is all a matter of inexorable fate or
the will of God which cannot be fathomed.
And yet through these gloomy and vacillating
musings runs a philosophy of cheerful acceptance
of what is ordained because it is of God. There
is the refrain that, after all, wisdom is better than
folly and righteousness is more to be desired than
wickedness. There is no memory of the dead, no
reward or retribution beyond the grave, no dis-
criminating justice in this life, and yet “surely I
know that it shall be well with them that fear
God,” and “it shall not be well with the wicked.”
With the tinge of melancholy meditation, lighted
with an occasional gleam of cheerful resignation,
it is the philosophy of the proverbs, that in this
life with all its vicissitudes and iniquities, right-
eousness and obedience to the moral law is wis-
dom, which is the most precious possession.
Wrongdoing is folly and brings its own reward.
That was the doctrine of Hebrew faith, whether
for the nation or the individual, the product of
invincible belief in a just God, itself the fruit of
a moral insight that has never been excelled.
The poetical picture of old age with which the
original book closes is a contrast to impress the
preceding advice to youth to enjoy the blessings
of life while they last, and learned authorities re-


318 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
gard “remember thy Creator” as the pious inter-
polation of an editor, who after the final “vanity
of vanities, all is vanity,” also attributed to Ko-
heleth, or the preacher, in the third person, many
proverbs and the conclusion that the whole duty
of man is to fear God and keep his command-
ments. It is such interjections and additions that
turned the sceptical philosopher into a sacred
writer after he had gone.


XV
THE BOOK of Job
THE poetical genius of the ancient Hebrews
reached its loftiest expression after the exile in
the Book of Job, which is not properly one of
the “wisdom books,” though commonly classed
as such. It is a unique production and deserves
to stand alone, but it is not without a close relation
to the rest of the great epic, which pictures the
moral and religious development of the people of
Israel. Like so much else within the broad lines
of that grand production, it is a composite work,
and no name of those who had a hand in making
it was preserved in memory to be transmitted to
later generations, so careless was the Hebrew
genius of individual authorship, so careful of the
substance which it held sacred.
It has been difficult even for the most learned
of modern scholars who treat this literature as a
production of human minds, like that of other an-
cient peoples, to emancipate themselves wholly
from this prepossession of peculiar sanctity and
treat it with entire freedom. They are apt to re-
gard the Book of Job, if entirely human, as the
greatest of all productions of the human mind,
319


THE BOOK OF JOB 32 I
applied to the nation and its rulers, and to the
people as a whole, rather than to the individual.
The prophets taught that if the kingdom was ruled
in righteousness and its subjects were loyally de-
voted to the worship of their God and obedient
to his law, he would protect them from their ene-
mies, fight their battles and destroy those who
assailed them; but if they failed in this kind of
loyalty he would punish them with defeat, and
even allow their powerful enemies to destroy all
but a purified remnant, which he would restore
and establish in accordance with his bargain with
their great progenitor, his friend on the earth,
Abraham.
Those who wrought the annals of the past from
ancient songs and legends and from drifting rec-
ords of tradition, shaped their account of events
and facts to conform to this doctrine. They
found that every period of prosperity was due to
the favour of Israel's God on account of the vir-
tue of its rulers and the fidelity of the people, and
every calamity was caused by neglect of his worship
and failure to observe his commands. When the
two kingdoms one after the other were menaced
by the great powers of the East, the pleadings of
the prophets were against any dependence upon
arms or alliance with other nations, great or small,
and for absolute reliance upon Yahweh’s might
and Yahweh’s care. When destruction came and
the people were scattered or carried into captivity,


THE BOOK OF JOB 323
scepticism arose as to its validity. There was a
struggle with doubts of the justice of God; and
not all could reconcile themselves with the sad
philosophy of cheerful acquiescence proclaimed by
him who spoke as “Koheleth.” In the Book of
Job the mental struggle with this problem of the
suffering of the righteous and the justice of God
is vividly set forth, but the problem is left un-
solved.
We have said the book is a composite produc-
tion. We shall not weary the reader with any
reference to the vast volume of controversy over
its analysis, but accept what seem to be the most
valid conclusions, and only seek to see clearly just
what the work is in the light of what has been
learned of its origin and its bearings. It is the
substance that interests us. The “story” is con-
tained in the brief prologue and epilogue in prose,
and this is believed to be older than the colloquies
in verse between Job and his friends and the final
speeches attributed to Yahweh, the Lord, the
original material in the body of the work having
been displaced by later writers without any
attempt to adapt the framework of story to the
change in its content.
The original is believed to have been written
early in the Persian period. The conception of
Satan, as the “adversary" and as a kind of agent
of the Almighty, could not have been earlier.
The only other appearance of the character in


THE BOOK OF JOB 325
poet of the earlier colloquies is apparent in some
of Job's complaints of his own sufferings, as in
chapters nine and sixteen, where they are almost
as impersonal as in the case of the “suffering
servant.” The contention that the story may have
had a legendary basis does not seem reasonable,
in view of the utter unreality of the circumstances
described. The name Job appears for some rea-
son to be among those revered in the past, as it
is used in Ezekiel, with Noah and Daniel, as rep-
resentative of a type of the righteous, but that does
not necessarily imply a real person in history.
The problem to which the poetry of this book
is devoted is to be traced in the speeches of Job
and of the three friends, who are said in the intro-
ductory story to have come by appointment be-
tween themselves from different quarters “to
mourn with him and to comfort him.” There
does not appear in their utterances in their pres-
ent form much mourning in his behalf or much
comforting. There is far more of reproach.
Almost invariably the speeches, which begin in a
personal way, soon lapse into the speaker's general
view of the experience of the righteous or the
wicked, or of the supernal wisdom and justice of
God, and the individual case is lost sight of.
The first speech put in the mouth of the char-
acter that is set up as a model of the righteous
man in extreme and undeserved affliction, is a pro-
longed and reiterated curse upon the day in which


THE BOOK OF JOB 327
that is directly personal in this or that is really
addressed to auditors.
Bildad is less considerate than Eliphaz and re-
bukes Job for implying that God is not just, and
declares that if he were pure and upright he would
only have to make his supplication to the Al-
mighty and the habitation of his righteousness
would be made prosperous. He appeals to the
traditional doctrine of the fathers that those who
forget God shall come to grief and the lips of
the perfect man will be filled with rejoicing. Job
admits that “this is so of a truth,” but pleads his
helplessness in conflict with such a mighty being,
whom he would not answer though he were per-
fect, but to whom he would address his suppli-
cation as to a judge, if he would deign to hear
him. Here we have the poet, rather than the
hero of the story, descanting upon the helpless-
ness of suffering humanity, with a touch of the
philosophy of Koheleth, that no distinction is
made between the righteous and the wicked in
their treatment in this life. But he makes his
embodiment of the suffering righteous plead piti-
fully that God knows he is not wicked, that God
is responsible for his existence and yet heaps suf-
fering upon him and will not allow him a little
comfort before he goes to the land of darkness
whence there is no return.
This gives Zophar, the third of the mourners
and comforters, the youngest and most confident


328 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
in his orthodoxy, an opportunity for the sternest
rebuke of this questioner of God's justice, who
dares maintain his own purity in the face of what
can only be a punishment for some hidden wrong-
doing. His words are a variation upon the famil-
iar theme, the unsearchable wisdom and justice
of God and the certainty that one has only to
put away wickedness to be without fear. To this
Job makes a scornful reply and then proceeds him-
self to magnify the greatness and wisdom of God,
which he never questions. He understands all
this as well as these presumptuous friends, who
assume to speak for God and to contend in his
person. He will face God himself. “Though
he slay me, yet will I trust in him; but I will
mention mine own ways before him.”
There is throughout this, as in other similar
writings, a frequent turning from a reference to
the deity in the third person to a direct address to
him in the second person, and Job is made to chal-
lenge God for a fair hearing on his case. He asks
to know what his offence is and why he is treated
in this manner. He pleads on his own behalf the
weakness and insignificance of man, who is of
few days and full of trouble, who must soon lie
down and sleep never to awake, and yet before
his change come he would have an appointed time
for the vindication of his character. But his
transgression is “sealed up in a bag” and he is
not permitted to know what it is.


THE BOOK OF JOB 329
This desperate appeal brings severe rebuke
from Eliphaz for the presumption of one who
would make such a claim to righteousness and
turn his spirit against God. No living man
is entitled to such a claim, and God's standard
is so exalted that he puts no trust in his own
“holy ones.” Man is at best “abominable and
filthy.” Then the poet portrays again, as told
by wise men from their fathers, the consequences
which invariably pursue the footsteps of the
wicked. All this the impatient victim of re-
proach has heard before and needs not to be told,
and after expressing his resentment at such
“miserable comforters ” and telling them that if
they were in his case he would endeavour to
strengthen them and assuage their grief, he re-
news his complaint with increased vehemence be-
cause God has made himself his enemy, delivered
him to the ungodly and turned him over to the
wicked.
Here the poet in the bitterness of the complaint
and the violence of the language seems to lose
sight of the personal case and to plead the cause
of the community of the pious who are persecuted.
It is a case of that vivid personification which was
the chief characteristic of the imaginative writing
of the ancient Hebrews, and then he makes Job
plead again for a hearing with God, “as a man
pleadeth with his neighbour.” Again he magni-
fies his suffering and cries out in despair that his


330 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
hope will go down to the grave with him and they
will rest together in the dust.
Then Bildad sets out with an impatient rebuke
at such an exhibition of impious anger, but falls
at once into a further reiteration of the fate of
the wicked, as if Job's experience were a case in
point, which it obviously is not. This shows how
impersonal on the whole these poetical discourses
are, the afflictions of an imaginary character be-
ing used merely as the occasion for their general
application.
The culmination of the great controversy really
comes in Job's answer to these reproaches in
chapter nineteen, and the learned critics are quite
generally agreed that what follows for several
chapters is from a different hand and much
marred by disarrangement and interpolation.
But in this chapter nineteen is concentrated anew
and in tense language Job's complaint at the in-
fliction of such suffering by the Almighty, although
he has done nothing to deserve it. He cries out
in anguish. “Have pity upon me, have pity
upon me, O ye my friends, for the hand of God
has touched me.” But he still not only protests
his innocence but his faith that his vindication
will come even in his death. There has been
much corruption of the original text and per-
version of the real meaning of this declaration
of faith. There is not in all this sublime contro-
versy a gleam of relief coming from a possible


THE BOOK OF JOB 333
earth, and his inability to find the dwelling place
of wisdom, for God alone “understandeth the
way thereof and he knoweth the place thereof.”
Of the magnificence of the poetry there is no
question, and in the description of wisdom there is
a reminder of its personification in the eighth
chapter of Proverbs.
But there is genuine Job again in the three
chapters interposed between this and the interpo-
lated discourses imputed to Elihu, and these are
apparently from the same hand as the colloquies
of chapters three to nineteen, though the passage
is somewhat marred by interpolations, the most
noticeable of which consists of verses 2 to 8 of
chapter thirty, which are of a similar character to
those of chapter twenty-four. In the first of these
three chapters Job is made plaintively to recall
the days of his prosperity and high repute, and in
the second to contrast his present condition of suf-
fering and humiliation. In the third he again
protests his freedom from iniquity and invokes the
most searching scrutiny. Some authorities con-
sider the verses as misplaced in which Job boldly
expresses the wish that the Almighty would an-
swer his plea, but though they break in abruptly
between verses 34 and 38 of chapter thirty-one,
they serve the purpose of preparing the way for
the answer of the Almighty which would follow
here but for the interruption of Elihu, the son of
Barachel the Buzite, of the kindred of Ram.


338 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
tempted. None was possible so long as man's
view of his destiny and of retribution or compen-
sation was confined to his life on earth. The
Book of Job, apart from its great literary merit,
is of special interest as reflecting the state of the
Hebrew mind, after the hope of national great-
ness had departed and religious faith had to ap-
ply to the conduct and the fate of individual men,
and before it had accepted belief in a continued
existence beyond the grave.


XVI
THE BOOK OF DANIEL
WHILE it took a long and learned controversy
to settle the time and place and the real character
of the production called the “Book of Daniel,”
nothing has been more clearly established than the
fact that it is one of the latest, if not the very
latest, of the writings included in the scriptures
which the Jews held sacred. There is no other
the date of which is so surely determined. It was
certainly written in the distressful period of the
oppression of the Jews by Antiochus IV (Epi-
phanes), the Syrian monarch and their sovereign,
who strove to extinguish the cult of Judaism in
his dominion and replace it with that of Greece.
It was after the altar of burnt offering had been
desecrated with sacrifices to Zeus Olympius, whose
image was erected in the temple, the incident char-
acterised as the “abomination that maketh deso-
late,” and before the insurrection started by the
father of the “Maccabees" had led to the res-
toration of the Jewish worship. The year 165,
B. C., is reasonably calculated as the time of the
appearance of the book, the purpose of which was
not to recount or record or to predict history, but
339


34o THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
to stimulate the faith, to encourage the resistance
and sustain the hopes of the struggling people.
This is not one of the prophetic books, and it
was not originally admitted to the second Canon,
the Nebiim, or Prophets, but to the third, or
Haggada (holy writings). Its subsequent trans-
fer and classification among the works of the
“Greater prophets,” was due to the false notion
that it was the production of a prophet named
Daniel, who foresaw and prefigured future events.
There is no evidence of a prophet of that name
in the history of Israel, but it appears to have
been a revered name, as it is used by Ezekiel, with
those of Noah and Job, as a type of the righteous
of the past, unless, indeed, as some scholars have
contended, the name in “Ezekiel ” should be
Enoch. At all events, the name is used in this
book, not because Daniel was the author of it or
the character bearing the name was a real person,
but because it was a revered name or appropriate
for its significance.
That the book is in no sense historical in its
reference to events or its portrayal of the time to
which it purports to relate is sufficiently evident
from the character of the contents; but the author
displays an imperfect knowledge of the past his-
tory which he attempts to project upon the screen
as future, from the standing place of his hero,
and he shows a complete unconcern about histor-
ical accuracy. He starts off with a statement


THE BOOK OF DANIEL 34. I
that Nebuchadrezzar, King of Babylon, besieged
Jerusalem in the third year of King Jehoiakim of
Judah, and carried away a part of the vessels of
the house of God and some captives, “ of the
king's seed, and of the princes,” and young men
who were to be of service in his palace, “well-
favoured and skilful in all knowledge, and cun-
ning in knowledge and understanding science.”
This was to prepare the way for stories of cer-
tain of these captives and for the use of the temple
vessels at Belshazzar's feast; but, as a matter of
fact, there was no siege and capture at Jerusalem
in the reign of Jehoiakim, and the third year of
that reign came before the accession of Nebu-
chadrezzar to the throne of Babylon.
But the purpose was to make heroes of Daniel
and three other of these imaginary captives in
stories illustrating the superior character and
ability of the Jews and the care which their God
exercised over them among the powerful heathen
and would exercise over his devout worshippers
in their trials at all times and in all places. The
impression made upon the King of Babylon by
these young Jews, the manner in which he trusted
and promoted them to high places, and the way
in which the power of their God was displayed
and acknowledged by the greatest potentate of the
time, reminds the attentive reader of the exalta-
tion of Esther and Mordecai and the favour
shown the Jews at a later time by the great


330 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
hope will go down to the grave with him and they
will rest together in the dust.
Then Bildad sets out with an impatient rebuke
at such an exhibition of impious anger, but falls
at once into a further reiteration of the fate of
the wicked, as if Job's experience were a case in
point, which it obviously is not. This shows how
impersonal on the whole these poetical discourses
are, the afflictions of an imaginary character be-
ing used merely as the occasion for their general
application.
The culmination of the great controversy really
comes in Job's answer to these reproaches in
chapter nineteen, and the learned critics are quite
generally agreed that what follows for several
chapters is from a different hand and much
marred by disarrangement and interpolation.
But in this chapter nineteen is concentrated anew
and in tense language Job's complaint at the in-
fliction of such suffering by the Almighty, although
he has done nothing to deserve it. He cries out
in anguish. “Have pity upon me, have pity
upon me, O ye my friends, for the hand of God
has touched me.” But he still not only protests
his innocence but his faith that his vindication
will come even in his death. There has been
much corruption of the original text and per-
version of the real meaning of this declaration
of faith. There is not in all this sublime contro-
versy a gleam of relief coming from a possible


THE BOOK OF JOB 331
retribution in another life, for the Hebrew mind
was not open to a belief in that until later. If it
had been accepted, this book would have been
without reason. What Job is made to say is that
even if satisfaction is denied him until his flesh is
destroyed, yet before departing to the realm of
darkness he will be permitted to see God as his
vindicator and have assurance that his life has
really been upright. In this the writer probably
had in mind that analogy which haunted poet and
prophet in his day, between the suffering righteous
man and the afflicted people whose life as an or-
ganised community was continually harried and
menaced.
In glancing over the next nine chapters we will
accept the conclusions of the learned that they
make a breach in the composition of the author
of the preceding colloquies, and displace their
original continuation, if there was one. Perhaps
there was not, and it may be that chapters twenty-
nine, thirty and thirty-one were the real sequel
to chapter nineteen. At all events there is a dif-
ference of tone and style revealed in the interven-
ing discourses. That of Zophar is another vari-
ation upon the theme of the inevitable penalties of
wickedness, and has no pertinency to what pre-
cedes it and no real pertinency to Job's case at all.
That of Job which follows descants upon the
seeming prosperity of the wicked and defers the
penalty of their sins to their children. The three


332 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
verses 16–18, which break in with a contradiction,
are believed to be an interpolation of some writer
who disapproved of the doctrine of visiting the
iniquity of fathers upon the children. The third
speech of Eliphaz is hardly more pertinent than
the second of Zophar and treats of the greatness
and sure justice of God in a general way, as if
there were no Job in the case. The proverbial
philosophy of the last ten verses of chapter
twenty-two are regarded as a later addition. The
next speech put in the mouth of Job is a weaker
repetition of his demand for a chance to plead
his cause, but it does not include chapter twenty-
four, which, with the exception of the last verse,
is made up of a series of irrelevant passages
loosely strung together and interpolated here.
If there was a third speech of Bildad, it was re-
placed in chapters twenty-five and twenty-six by a
poem on the greatness and power of God which
has no relation to the genuine colloquies. Only
the first four verses of the second of these two
chapters belong to the person of Job and their
continuation is in the first six verses and verse 12
of the next chapter. The rest of the latter is re-
garded by a leading critical authority on this
book as parts of a lost speech of Zophar. Of
one thing there can be no doubt. Chapter twenty-
eight is no part of the speech of Job, but is an
independent poem, probably of later origin, on
the power of man to hunt out the treasures of the


334 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
Elihu was a late comer, but his intrusion was
tolerated in the final editing of the book and the
putting upon it of the seal of sanctity in the Jew-
ish canon. He was not one of the friends who
came to mourn with Job and to comfort him.
He was unknown to the original story, and the
characters in it, who are so boldly faced, pay no
heed to his words, and he is not referred to in the
epilogue. Evidently the author of his speeches
had the original colloquies in his hands, and
found the opportunity of adding to them, of
which he took advantage because he was not sat-
isfied with the way Job had been answered.
Therefore he undertook the task himself. He
makes his spokesman admit that he is young, but
he claims to have a special inspiration from the
Almighty.
With much prolixity and assumption of supe-
rior wisdom he derides the older men for the
feebleness of their answers and condemns Job
for his presumption and for adding rebellion to
the iniquity which had brought calamity upon him
by maintaining his own innocence and charging
God with injustice. Having acquitted himself of
this duty, he informs them that God is always
gracious and will deliver those who give up their
wickedness and appeal to him. Iniquity is no in-
jury to him and righteousness is no profit to him,
but his eyes are on the ways of men and they can-
not escape him. He strikes the wicked and


THE BOOK OF JOB 335
humbles the proud and cares for the poor and the
afflicted. He chastises the offender to reclaim
him, and never fails to recompense all men accord-
ing to their deeds. Elihu enlarges upon this
theme and ends with magnifying the greatness and
power of God in the familiar strain and with con-
siderable poetical skill.
But there is really little added to the argument
in support of the orthodox doctrine. It would
appear that the writer of this passage did not
have the closing speech attributed to “the Lord,”
or he would hardly have presumed to describe his
attributes in so much weaker language than that
which came from his own mouth; and he could
hardly have been familiar with the epilogue, in
which the Lord is said to have condemned
Eliphaz and his two friends and commended Job
for speaking the thing that was right. If he
knew of it he treated it as part of a fable which
he was under no obligation to heed.
It is Yahweh, “the Lord,” who is said to have
answered Job out of the whirlwind, as it is Yah-
weh that figures in the story contained in the pro-
logue; but in the poems, including the final speech,
that term is nowhere used and the word translated
“God” is usually Shaddai, Elohim, or Adonai,
several Semitic expressions for the deity. This
speech is the grandest example of Hebrew poetry
that was preserved to us, and probably the grand-
est ever produced; and the author could hardly


338 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
tempted. None was possible so long as man's
view of his destiny and of retribution or compen-
sation was confined to his life on earth. The
Book of Job, apart from its great literary merit,
is of special interest as reflecting the state of the
Hebrew mind, after the hope of national great-
ness had departed and religious faith had to ap-
ply to the conduct and the fate of individual men,
and before it had accepted belief in a continued
existence beyond the grave.


XVI
THE BOOK OF DANIEL
WHILE it took a long and learned controversy
to settle the time and place and the real character
of the production called the “Book of Daniel,”
nothing has been more clearly established than the
fact that it is one of the latest, if not the very
latest, of the writings included in the scriptures
which the Jews held sacred. There is no other
the date of which is so surely determined. It was
certainly written in the distressful period of the
oppression of the Jews by Antiochus IV (Epi-
phanes), the Syrian monarch and their sovereign,
who strove to extinguish the cult of Judaism in
his dominion and replace it with that of Greece.
It was after the altar of burnt offering had been
desecrated with sacrifices to Zeus Olympius, whose
image was erected in the temple, the incident char-
acterised as the “abomination that maketh deso-
late,” and before the insurrection started by the
father of the “Maccabees" had led to the res-
toration of the Jewish worship. The year 165,
B. C., is reasonably calculated as the time of the
appearance of the book, the purpose of which was
not to recount or record or to predict history, but
339


THE BOOK OF DANIEL 34 I
that Nebuchadrezzar, King of Babylon, besieged
Jerusalem in the third year of King Jehoiakim of
Judah, and carried away a part of the vessels of
the house of God and some captives, “ of the
king's seed, and of the princes,” and young men
who were to be of service in his palace, “well-
favoured and skilful in all knowledge, and cun-
ning in knowledge and understanding science.”
This was to prepare the way for stories of cer-
tain of these captives and for the use of the temple
vessels at Belshazzar's feast; but, as a matter of
fact, there was no siege and capture at Jerusalem
in the reign of Jehoiakim, and the third year of
that reign came before the accession of Nebu-
chadrezzar to the throne of Babylon.
But the purpose was to make heroes of Daniel
and three other of these imaginary captives in
stories illustrating the superior character and
ability of the Jews and the care which their God
exercised over them among the powerful heathen
and would exercise over his devout worshippers
in their trials at all times and in all places. The
impression made upon the King of Babylon by
these young Jews, the manner in which he trusted
and promoted them to high places, and the way
in which the power of their God was displayed
and acknowledged by the greatest potentate of the
time, reminds the attentive reader of the exalta-
tion of Esther and Mordecai and the favour
shown the Jews at a later time by the great


346 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
historical accuracy. He was still making Daniel
the medium of a wisdom higher than man's in de-
ciphering the cryptic inscription of the phantom
hand and announcing the doom of the kingdom;
and even Belshazzar is made to heap honour upon
him for that dubious service, in return for which
he was slain that night and “Darius the Mede
took the kingdom, being about three score and
two years old.” This latter detail gave an extra
touch of realism to an imaginary person.
It was this imaginary Median king of Babylon,
with the familiar name of a Persian of a later
time, who set a hundred and twenty princes and
three presidents over his vast kingdom and placed
Daniel at the head of them all, as Pharaoh placed
Joseph over all Egypt and as Ahasuerus raised
Mordecai to the most exalted place in the Persian
empire, to the everlasting glory of the Jew and
his race. Having done this he was induced by
the jealous presidents and princes to make a fool-
ish decree, which was to be as unchangeable as
the laws of the Medes and Persians, that anyone
who should “ask a petition of any man or God
for thirty days,” except himself, should be cast
into the den of lions. We all know that story and
its result, and again the greatest potentate on
earth is made to acknowledge the “living God,”
whose dominion was to be “unto the end,” and to
address a decree to “all people, nations and lan-
guages that dwell in all the earth,” commanding


THE BOOK OF DANIEL 347
them to “tremble and fear before the God of
Daniel.” “So this Daniel prospered in the reign
of Darius and in the reign of Cyrus.” The first
real Darius who reigned in that kingdom was the
successor of Cambyses the son of Cyrus, and came
to the throne more than a hundred and eighty
years after that mythical siege of Jerusalem which
resulted in carrying Daniel and his companions to
Babylon.
After these tales for the glorification of Israel's
God and the encouragement of his people in their
dire struggle against the Syrian oppressor Anti-
ochus Epiphanes (the illustrious), we have the
first of the apocalyptic visions attributed to Daniel.
It occurred in the first year of the mythical king
Belshazzar. After the statement that Daniel had
“a dream and visions of his head upon his bed,”
and that he wrote it down and “told the sum of
the matters,” the account proceeds in the first per-
son as the spoken words of the dreamer. The
four beasts grotesquely described as coming up out
of the sea represent, like the image of Nebuchad-
rezzar's dream, the four kingdoms which had suc-
cessively ruled Babylon and its subject nations, the
second, or that of the Medes, having really never
existed. The fourth beast with his terrible teeth
of iron and his trampling upon the nations is Alex-
ander of Macedon, whose eastern conquests were
divided up after his death. There is nothing
exact about the number ten of the horns which


THE BOOK OF DANIEL 349
horns” came up in its place and the arrogant little
horn sprang up and waxed great “toward the
south and toward the east and toward the pleasant
land.” Here again we have the tyrant Antiochus
dragging down some of the host of heaven and of
the stars, and stamping upon them. Unquestion-
ably the description refers to the ruthless persecu-
tion by which the Syrian king tried to crush out
the Jewish worship, when he suppressed the daily
sacrifice in the temple and set up the altar of
Olympian Zeus in place of that of the burnt offer-
ing. The horror of this desecration to the devout
of Israel it is easy to imagine; but it could not
last. Its end is predicted in the vision as to come
in two thousand and three hundred days, when
the sanctuary would be cleansed.
The imagery of these visions, like that of
Ezekiel, is borrowed from Chaldean art; and the
angel Gabriel, notwithstanding his Hebrew appel-
lation (man of God), is a creature of heathen
mythology, unknown to earlier priests and prophets.
He is made to explain the appearance of the ram
with two unequal horns and the he-goat with one
great horn between his eyes, and to tell of the
king of fierce countenance who was to destroy the
mighty and the holy people. This king would
stand up against the prince of princes, meaning
the mighty ruler of these people, and he “shall be
broken without hand.” This again is the hated
Antiochus who, the faithful among the “saints."


350 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
must believe, would be destroyed for his presump-
tion by their “King of heaven.”
After presenting these visions of hope the writer
undertakes, before a final vision of triumphant
promise, to calculate in a Delphic manner the time
that must elapse before the great deliverance. He
now places his hero in the first year of Darius,
whom he calls the son of Ahasuerus of the seed of
the Medes. This is the same Ahasuerus that
figures in the story of Esther and stands for the
Xerxes of the Greeks. He was a Persian and not
of the seed of the Medes, and his reign began
more than fifty years after Cyrus had conquered
Babylon. Moreover, he was the son and not the
father of the real Darius. This is another of
those historical incongruities which do not matter
in a work of this character. There was no first
year of Darius in the period from which the
writer projects his calculations, but that fact has
no relation to his figures.
He takes the seventy years which Jeremiah
is represented as predicting for the servitude
of the nations to the king of Babylon, as
seventy “weeks” (of years), or seventy times
seven years. Reckoning from the supposed
first year of Darius, he makes that the period
for the “accomplishment,” or completion, of the
“ desolation of Jerusalem ’’ in the destruction of
the oppressor against whom his people were strug-
gling as he wrote. Preliminary to an explanation


THE BOOK OF DANIEL 351
by the angel Gabriel of this period of weeks, he
makes Daniel set his face “unto the Lord ” and
utter a prayer, which is patterned upon that of the
priest Ezra when he discovered that the Jews at
Jerusalem had been intermarrying with the people
of the land, and that of the Levites at the fast
and the confession of the people when the law
book was read, as related in “Nehemiah.”
According to Gabriel's explanations seven of the
weeks of years cover the actual exile down to the
release by Cyrus, and sixty-two more come down
to the cutting off of the “anointed one,” which
refers to the slaying of the high priest Onias in
171 B. C. This brings us to the last week of
seven years, in which the people of the detested
“prince " would destroy the city and the sanctu-
ary. But his end would “come with a flood, and
even unto the end shall be war.” For half the
week he would cause the sacrifice and the oblation
to cease, but wrath would be poured upon the
desolator. The chronology is altogether imper-
fect, but that did not signify then and signifies
less to us. It was at the beginning of this last
seven years that Antiochus plundered the temple,
and it was about the middle of that period, in
168 B. C., that the worship was suppressed, the
law book was burnt, and sacrifices to Zeus and
the Olympian gods were forced upon the Jews,
which led to the rash deed of Mattathias at
Modein and the insurrection which was kept up


THE BOOK OF DANIEL 353
ochus is again unmistakable in the king that was
to exalt and magnify himself, speak marvellous
things against the God of gods, and prosper “till
the indignation be accomplished.” His exploits
are alluded to in ambiguous terms, but it is said
“he shall come to his end and none shall help
him.”
In that direful time of trouble such as never
was since there was a nation, Michael “the Great
prince that standeth for the children of thy peo-
ple,” would stand up, and everyone that was
“found written in the book" would be delivered.
Even many of those who had fallen or perished in
the struggle and slept in the dust of the earth, would
awake, “some to everlasting life and some to
shame and everlasting contempt, and they that be
wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament
and they that turn many to righteousness as the
stars forever and ever.” This was to come in
that distant future prefigured from the time of
Cyrus, but the writer forgets or disregards the
point of view of his Daniel's vision in enigmatically
figuring out that it would be a “time, times and a
half,” meaning apparently three years and a half,
when “all these things shall be finished.” Again
it is said, looking forward as to a far future, that
from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken
away and the abomination that maketh desolate
set up there shall be “twelve hundred and ninety
days,” but he was to be blessed that “waiteth and


354 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
cometh to the thousand, three hundred and thirty-
five days.” And Daniel was to “rest,” but would
stand in his lot “at the end of the days.”
All this is sufficiently vague as prophecy of com-
ing events, but the events which came were quite
different from those anticipated by the pious vision-
ary who wrote the book. The temple service was
indeed restored. Antiochus Epiphanes perished
the next year, and there was a radical turn in
events. But what the enthusiast of the tales of
wonder and the visions of promise looked for was
not the triumphs of arms of Judas and the long
struggle that resulted in the priestly kingdom of
the Maccabees, which finally succumbed to the
Roman power when Pompey carried his conquests
over the East. These were human events such as
were continually overwhelming the undying hopes
of Israel. He looked for that long deferred in-
terposition of Israel's God in behalf of his people
which was to destroy their enemies and set up the
kingdom that would be everlasting and would draw
all the nations of the earth under its sway.
The great epic finds a fitting close in these
visions, which predicted not only an end of the
persecutions and afflictions that beset the people of
God at that time of tribulation, but a realisation
of all the hopes of the past in that glorious and
everlasting kingdom, promised to the people of
Abraham and the house of David by the Lord
himself, and cherished in all the dreams of proph-


THE GREAT EPIC IN REVIEW 357
leaders of the people in their primitive days.
These were embodied at first in stories and songs
and chants, a form most readily transmitted from
generation to generation before writing came into
use. When reflection succeeded to mere memory
and imagination, the creative minds sought for the
origin of their people and of other peoples, and
for the origin of the world itself. Having no
science and little knowledge except that which came
to them from their surroundings and from con-
tact with other peoples, they wrought from imagi-
nation and reflection the myths of ancestry and
of the creation of the world and its inhabitants,
using such material and such ideas as came to
them. The religious instinct is one of the earliest
gifts of humanity, and out of the mysterious pow-
ers of nature it wrought the deities.
In this respect the Hebrews did not differ from
other ancient peoples. When they were settled
in the land which they had conquered, and through
struggle and discipline had become a nation, they
had legends and traditions which they began to
reduce to writing, and they produced myths to
account for the origin of their tribes, the origin
of their race and of all mankind, and the origin
of the earth and the heavens. They had their
conception of deity, rude at first, with a god of
their own, different from other gods and an em-
bodiment of their own ideals of power and char-
acter. At first it was not without the accompani-


THE GREAT EPIC IN REVIEW 359
had nourished this pride to the full, that work
upon the epic, or the material that was to com-
pose it, began.
The kingdom had been divided and myths and
legends floated among the clans of both realms,
Joseph, or Ephraim, and Judah. Some time, prob-
ably, in the eighth or ninth century, B. C., these
were first wrought into a continuous narrative of
the creation of the earth and the human race, the
generations that followed, the fatal tendency of
man to evil, the destruction of all but one family,
the new start with a divergence upon the racial
lines then known, and the consecrated ancestry of
the people of Israel and their several branches.
In this free use was made of suggestions from
Babylonian, Egyptian and Phoenician lore. Tra-
ditions of a sojourn within the borders of Egypt,
of oppressive servitude there, and of revolt and
deliverance under a great leader, were woven into
the story, which was brought down to the invasion
and conquest of the lands on either side of the
Jordan valley. There were various versions of
some of the stories and they became blended into
one continuous but not altogether harmonious ac-
count in the course of time. That was subject to
revision by a succession of writers, copying, re-
trenching, expanding and modifying to suit their
own conceptions.
The conception of deity developed with the in-
tellectual and moral growth of the people. The


THE GREAT EPIC IN REVIEW 361
no clear distinction between what they knew and
what they thought, and they believed the one as
implicitly as the other. It is the way with the
primitive mind and is largely so with the Oriental
mind even now.
The first great uplift in moral and religious
conceptions came with the prophets who rose when
the nations of Jacob were in peril from powerful
enemies, which was not long after the development
of the myths and legends of Israel's antiquity.
The prophets exalted the conception of deity into
a being not only of infinite power but of infinite
justice and goodness, but he was still the special
God of Israel, and was given to wrath when he
was not obeyed and to mercy when penitently ap-
pealed to. He would use his power over other
nations to punish or reward his own people accord-
ing to their behaviour towards him. Under the
influence of the earlier prophets, the literature that
was copied, expanded and joined together from
time to time, took on the colour of their teaching.
This was deepened and made more pervasive after
the Northern Kingdom had been destroyed by
Assyria and the other was menaced by Babylonia.
In the period from Amos to Jeremiah the material
of the epic was wrought upon in the spirit of the
prophet, but it was far from completed.
After the powers of the East had destroyed
Jerusalem and trampled upon the “holy moun-
tain" of Zion, and the brains of Judah had been


362 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
carried to Babylon, this material underwent a
notable transformation and expansion. The fact
that Israel's God had failed to save his people
from their enemies did not shake their faith in his
power or his goodness. It was due entirely to
disobedience to his commands and infidelity to his
worship. It was what had been threatened
through his prophets and was a deserved punish-
ment for the nation's sins. All that was neces-
sary now for restoration to favour and the ful-
filment of promise of greatness in the time to come
was repentance and amendment. In the fifty years
of exile, prolonged indefinitely for some, there was
much preparation for a new life and character for
Israel. It was not to become a mighty nation
with a glorious king of the house of David, as it
vainly hoped, but it was to become a closely organ-
ised religious community that would exercise a
powerful influence over other nations for many
centuries, and through them over all mankind for
all time.
In the development and solidification of that
community there was an elaborate expansion of
laws, of ceremonies and observances, which were
deemed necessary to bind it together and keep
it from contamination by evil influences within and
without. Such laws and regulations as custom and
necessity had established in early days had been
associated by the first writers with commands of
the God Yahweh in the wilderness of Sinai after


THE GREAT EPIC IN REVIEW 363
the deliverance from Egypt. This was to give
them a solemn sanction and impose obedience, and
from that time Moses was made the law-giver as
well as deliverer. Whatever was promulgated
was represented as having come down from the
sojourn in the wilderness as commands of the
Almighty through the leader of the Exodus. Not
only was this the case with the terms of the “cov-
enant" embodied in the early narratives and the
code inspired by the prophets and made known in
the time of Josiah, but with the whole Levitical
system developed after the exile. A new frame-
work of primitive history was made for this, but
it was afterwards interlaced with the old narra-
tives, in an unskilful effort at a homogeneous struc-
ture.
In the process of recension of what was to pass
for history that which is now known as the his-
torical and critical spirit was entirely absent.
There was no effort to ascertain facts and narrate
them with fulness and accuracy. In the use of
existing material there was no scruple about modi-
fying and adapting it to suit the views and pur-
poses of the later writers. In this there was no
consciousness of misrepresentation or desire to de-
ceive, but each compiler wrought with a sad sin-
cerity to set forth what to him was truth. The
result was not history, so far as facts and events
are concerned, but after all it afforded a picture
of the life and growth of the people more vivid


THE GREAT EPIC IN REVIEW 365
equal freedom. Among the treasured rolls of
manuscript cherished through the exile were many
passages of what they wrote or what had been
written by others from their remembered speeches.
These were in much disorder and difficult to iden-
tify. When they were transcribed many mistakes
were made in arrangement and in ascription to
different sources; but there was no solicitude on
that score. This or that would be freely attrib-
uted to a great prophet of whom it was deemed
worthy, without serious thought upon the question
of genuineness or authenticity. Additions, inter-
polations and modifications would be made, the
better to fit the material to the purpose of the latest
scribe, without the least consciousness of literary
or ethical wrong-doing. Hence it comes that the
great “books '' of Isaiah and Jeremiah are com-
posite productions, made up of imperfectly
arranged, roughly connected or crudely blended
material, ranging from their own time to the clos-
ing of the canon of the prophets. But the dom-
inating genius of the prophets whose names they
bear shaped the composition of these volumes,
which have challenged the keenest powers of criti-
cal analysis in modern learning.
What stands under the names of other prophets
may not be wholly theirs and even the names may
not be those of actual men. It is the substance
not the authorship that made them sacred in the
estimation of scribes. Some marvellous stories,


366 THE GREAT EPIC OF ISRAEL
obviously fictitious and to the modern mind incred-
ible, were preserved for the lessons or instruction
they were assumed to convey; and some precious
fragments, not in entire keeping with the “doc-
trine" of the time, were preserved by association
with names that gave them sanctity. So the epic
was wrought to completion, massive, conglomerate,
amorphous, inartistic, but imposing, with much
that is precious to mankind mingled in its great
bulk with much of grosser quality, the deposit of
centuries in which the treasures were stored. Los-
ing the cement of sanctity it may disintegrate, but
that which is precious can never be lost. The
worst that can befal it is to yield to the test of
modern knowledge and reason and submit to the
judgment of common sense, which discriminates
values and holds to that which is good. Thereby
it will gain and not lose as a source of edification
and inspiration in man's religion. It closes with
visions of the future, but vision is enlarged since
the time of Daniel.
THE END


INDEX
369
David, beginning of his King-
dom, 24; relation to Saul,
91 et seq.; lament at death
of Saul and Jonathan, 96;
accounts of early life leg-
endary, 97; character, 99 et
seq.; candid accounts of his
reign, IO4; barbarism of his
time, IOS; plot of his son
to succeed him, IIo; death,
III; account of reign in
Chronicles, 261 ; represent-
ed as originator of temple
service, 263; his elegy on
Saul and Jonathan, 288;
psalms attributed to him,
200.
Deborah, prophetess, leads in
war against Sisera, 78;
oracular character, 169;
song of, 288.
Decalogue, mythical account
of origin, 69; real origin,
233; two versions, 233,234.
Deity, early conceptions, 64,
65; later conceptions, 157,
189; in time of prophets,
237; in exile, 2Io; in
psalms, 3O2; in proverbs,
308; in Job, 319 et seq.;
progressive development,
358 et seq.
Deuteronomist writer, com-
piler of Book of Kings, 121.
Deuteronomy, Book of, first
form, 22; discovery in tem-
ple, I51; origin, 235; char-
acter and purpose, 238; in-
terpolations and additions,
24I.
- Dinah, daughter of Jacob and
Leah, 53.
Ecclesiastes, Book of, late
production, 313; character
and composition, 315.
Edom, as brother of Israel
through Esau, 50.
Egypt, ancient rule over Pal-
estine, 3; Israel's legendary
servitude in, 4; learning de-
rived from, 18; Hezekiah
sought aid of, I46; alliance
with, predicted in Isaiah,
I73; Judah tributary to,
182; refugees from Judah
in, I86.
Ehud, legendary hero, 77.
Elah, King of Israel, 127.
Elihu, character interpolated
in Book of Job, 334.
Elijah, time of appearance,
II, I27; source of stories
about, 128; acts attributed
to, I29 et seq.; mythical
element in accounts, 130;
carried away in whirlwind,
I36; as messenger before
the “great and terrible
day,” 224.
Eliphaz, character in Book of
Job, 324 et seq.
Elisha, legendary figure, 12;
succeeds to mantle of
Elijah, 130 et seq.; miracles
attributed to him, 136, 138;
in expedition against Moab,
I37; part in war with
Syria, 138, 140; death, 144.
Elgin, designation of deity,
Elohist “document,” time of
production, 20, 29; extent
of, 30; beginning in Penta-
teuch, 31; variations from
Yahwist, 57; elements of in
several books, 66
Endor, women of, story in
connection with Saul, 94.
Ephraim, part of Kingdom,
revolt on death of Solo-
mon, II8.
Epic, The, material of, 20–28;
process of production, 29–
43; review of composition,
356–366.
Esau, brother of Jacob and
mythical ancestor of Edom,
50, 54; story of birth, 61.


370
INDEX
Esther, story of, date and
character, 283; no histor-
ical quality, 284; mythical
element, 285; not an ex-
planation of Purim, 286.
Exodus, Book of, composite
character, 66, 68.
Exodus from Egypt, account
mainly mythical, 63, 70.
Ezekiel, prophet of the exile,
23, 194; character of his
work, 195; visions, symbol-
isms, etc., 196–201; denun-
ciation of enemies of Is-
rael, 202; promise of res-
toration, 204–206; vision of
new Jerusalem, 207; outline
of future law, 208.
Ezekiel, Book of, time, char-
acter and content, 194 et
seq.
Ezra, leader in return from
exile, 215, 222.
Ezra, Book of, date and com-
position, 254.
Flood, story of, 30; Chaldean
origin, 46; different ver-
sions, 46.
Gabriel, angel in the visions
of Daniel, 351.
Gad, son of Jacob, mythical
ancestor of tribe, 53.
Garden of Eden, myth of, 30;
Chaldean source, 46.
Genealogies, antediluvian, de-
scendants of Adam, 46; de-
scendants of Noah, 47; in
Book of Chronicles, 259.
Gideon, legend of, in battle
against Midianites, 78.
Golden Calf, motive of story,
23I.
Goliath, Philistine champion,
9I.
Habakkuk, prophet, vision of,
178.
Hagar, as mother of Ishmael,
representing Arabian peo-
ple, 59, 60.
Haggai, prophet, vision of,
2I7.
Haman, character in story of
Esther, 285.
Hazael, King of Syria, 14o;
wars with Israel and Judah,
I43.
Hezekiah, King of Judah, re-
forms worship, 146; at-
tacked by Sennacherib of
Assyria, 146; illness and
recovery, I49; receives
messengers from Babylon,
149; death, 150; account of
his reign in Chronicles, 275.
Hiram, or Huram, of Tyre,
assistance to Solomon, 113,
II4; reference to in Chron-
icles, -
Hosea, prophet of Israel,
time and oracles, 166; char-
acter of work, 167.
Hoshea, last King of Israel,
I44.
Huldah, prophetess, advice on
“book of the law,” 152.
Human Sacrifice, evidence
of, 9.
Isaac, significance of name,
49; story of offering as sac-
rifice, 60.
Isaiah, prophet, time of ap-
pearance, 23, 168; guide to
King Hezekiah, 146; al-
leged prediction of destruc-
tion of Assyrian army, 147;
character of work, 169;
later oracles, 171; treat-
ment of Assyrian menace,
I72; fate, 174.
Isaiah, Book of, material
mixed and in disorder, 163;
ill arranged, 169; analysis,
170; post-exilic additions,
209.
Ishmael, mythical ancestor of
Arabian peoples, 50.
Israel, invasion of Canaan, 4;
origin of people, 5; servi-


INDEX
37 I
tude in Egypt, 5; language
and first writing, 6; early
conceptions of deity, 7, 8;
literary development, 16 et
seq.; supposed significance
of name, 48; pride of race,
358.
Israel, Kingdom of, first es-
tablished, 61, 121 ; changes
of dynasty, 123; destroyed,
I44. -
Issachar, son of Jacob, myth-
ical ancestor of tribe, 53.
Jacob, meaning of, 48; per-
sonification of Israel, 50;
union with Syria through
Laban's daughters, 51 ; craft
of, 51, 54; mythical sons,
53; account of birth as
twin of Esau, 61.
Jehoahaz, King of Judah, car-
ried captive to Egypt, I53.
Jehoiachim, King of Judah,
carried to Babylon, 154.
Jehoiada, priest, made boy
Joash King of Judah, 142.
Jehoiakim, placed on throne
of Judah by King of Egypt,
I53.
Jehoram, King of Israel, 140.
Jehoram, or Joram, King of
Judah, 14o; account of
reign in Chronicles, 271.
Jehoshaphat, King of Judah,
ally of Ahab of Israel
against Syria, 133; ally of
Jehoram of Israel against
Moab, 137; death and suc-
cessor, 14o; account of his
reign in Chronicles, 269.
Jehoshaphat, Valley of, in
vision of Joel, 225.
Jehu, King of Israel, 140;
slaughters priests of Baal,
141; length of reign, I41.
Jephthah, hero in war against
Ammon, 79.
Jeremiah, prophet, time, 23;
against resistance to Baby-
lon, 155; character of his
work, 179; early utterances,
181; relation to historical
events, 182; carried to
Egypt, 186; intense theo-
cratic champion, 188.
Jeremiah, Book of, composite
character, 179; varied ma-
terial, 183; late accretions
and interpolations, 187.
Jeroboam, son of Nebat, so-
journ in Egypt and possible
relation to Joseph story,
62; leads revolt against
Solomon, 117; qualities as
first King of Israel as dis-
tinguished from Judah,
123; motive in establishing
places of worship, 124.
Jerusalem, David takes pos-
session of, Io9; corrupt
worship at, 146, 152; de-
stroyed by Nebuchadrezzar
of Babylon, 154; rebuilding
of walls after exile, 215;
rebuilding of temple, 218.
Jezebel, Phoenician wife of
Ahab, 127; threatens life of
Elijah, 130; prophet pre-
dicts her fate, 132; thrown
to the dogs, 141.
Joab, David's chief warrior,
Io2; the King's debt to
him, Ioy; kills Abner, Ab-
salom and Amasa, Ioz;
slain by command of Solo-
mon, II2.
Joash, made King by priest
Jehoiada, 142; different ac-
count of reign in Chron-
icles, 272.
Job, leading character in
Book of Job, no historical
prototype, 325; possible
personification of suffering
people, 324; speeches, 325,
326, 327.
Job, Book of, a composite
work, 319; not without de-


372 INDEX
fects, 320; voice of revolt
against theocratic doctrine
in past, 321 ; time of pro-
duction, 323; character of
prologue and epilogue, 324;
problem of colloquies, 325;
disordered passages and in-
terpolations, 332, 333; Eli-
hu's part later than rest,
334; Yahweh’s answer, 335;
problem left unsolved, 337.
Joel, prophet, practical oracle
of, 224.
Jonah, possible oracle of the
prophet, 164; story of, 280;
. character and purpose,
I.
Jonathan, son of Saul and
friend of David, 90, 91 ;
death in battle, 95.
Joseph, as ancestor of North-
ern Kingdom, 52; son of
Jacob and Rachel, 53; as
savior of family of Israel,
54; story of, 61.
Joshua, Book of, material of,
33; mythical elements, 67,
72.
Joshua or Jeshua, priest on
return from exile, 212, 215,
218.
Josiah, King of Judah at age
of eight, 151; reforms wor-
ship at Jerusalem and
“high places,” 152; killed
in conflict with King of
Egypt, 153; account of re-
forms in Chronicles, 277.
Judah, son of Jacob, myth-
ical ancestor of tribe, 53.
Judah, Kingdom of, after di-
vision of first Kingdom,
advantage over Israel, 122;
destroyed by Nebuchadrez-
zar of Babylon, 155.
Judges, Book of, composition,
33; general contents, 75;
when produced, 76.
Kingdom, first established,
24; divided into two, 123.
See Israel and Judah.
Kings, first accounts of, 19;
Saul, 85 et seq.; David and
Solomon, 98 et seq.; of two
Kingdoms, 124 et seq.
Kings, Book of, material, 25,
35; theocratic character and
sources, 36; general char-
acter and composition, I2O,
I2I.
Koheleth, or Ecclesiastes, the
preacher, 313.
Korah, legendary
against Moses, 250.
Korah, sons of, in temple
choirs, -
Laban, Syrian father of
Jacob's wives, 51.
Lamech, descendant of Cain
and Seth, 46.
Lamentations, Book of, com-
position and character, 290.
Law, Jewish, beginnings of,
21, 22, 26, 68; fulmination
on Mount Sinai, 69, 230;
material and development
229–252; Book of the Cove-
nant and tables of stone,
230; Deuteronomic version,
235; outline by Ezekiel,
241; contributions of Ezra,
243; development in priests’
code, 242 et seq.; ethical
principles, 251.
Leah, mythical mother of
tribes, 53.
Legends, of time of Judges,
18, 20, 75.
Legends, heroic and historic,
general account, 74–97.
Levi, son of Jacob, mythical
ancestor of tribe, 53.
Levite of Bethlehem-Judah,
story of, 81.
Levites, ministers of worship,
utative descendants of
evi, 248.
revolt


INDEX
373
Leviticus, Book of, character
and contents, 245 et seq.
Literature, of Israel, begin-
ning of, 16; development,
17 et seq.; active produc-
tion in exile, 192.
Lot, nephew of Abraham,
mythical ancestor of Am-
mon and Moab, 50.
Lyrics, songs and hymns, 287–
3O4; general character, 287;
Song of Deborah, Blessing
of Jacob, Song of Moses,
288; passages in prophecies,
289; Lamentations, 290;
Song of Songs, 293;
Psalms, 295.
Maccabees, relation to Book
of Daniel, 339, 351, 354.
Malachi, prophecy, date and
character, 222.
Manasseh, King of Judah,
long and wicked reign, 150;
different account in Chron-
icles, 276.
Menahem,
I43.
Merodach-Baladan, of Baby-
lon, sends messengers to
Hezekiah, 149.
King of Israel,
Messiah, suggestion of in
Zechariah, 228; doctrine
foreshadowed in Daniel,
355.
Micah, prophet, time and ora-
cles, 174.
Micah, Book of, composition,
I75.
Michael, angel in vision of
Daniel, 353.
Midianites, slaughtered by
Gideon, 78.
Miriam, sister of Moses,
story of leprosy, 70.
Moab, putative offspring of
Lot, 50.
Moab, King of, sacrifices son
when defeated in battle,
I37.
Mordecai, character in story
of Esther, 284.
Moses, as putative author of
Jewish law, 32, 69; in re-
lation to Deuteronomy,
151; in relation to later
law, 230; as legendary de-
liverer, 63.
Mount Sinai, theophany on,
229.
Myths, as basis of early nar-
ratives, 20, 66; general ac-
count of, 44–73; those pre-
liminary to Abraham, 47;
of tribal ancestry, 48.
Naaman, story of cure of
leprosy, 138.
Naboth, story of vineyard
taken by Ahab, I32.
Nahash, King of Ammon, de-
feated by Saul, 86.
Nahum, prophet, visions of
vengeance upon Assyria,
I75.
Naphtali, son of Jacob, myth-
ical ancestor of tribe, 53.
Nathan, prophet and mentor
of David, Io; promise of
permanent Kingdom, 99,
Io3; rebuke for wrong done
to Uriah, IoS, 160
Nebuchadrezzar, King of
Babylon, makes vassal of
King of Judah, 154; de-
stroys Jerusalem, 155; as
he appears in Book of Dan-
iel, 341, 344.
Nehemiah, cup bearer of Ar-
taxerxes, represents Per-
sian authority at Jerusa-
lem, 215; work in rebuild-
ing walls, etc., 257.
Nehemiah, Book of, compo-
sition and character, 257.
Noah, Yahweh’s covenant
with after flood, 46; as fa-
ther of Canaan, 46; gene-
alogy of descendants, 47.


374 INDEX
Numbers, Book of, character
and contents, 248, 249.
Obadiah, vision of, 226.
Omri, King of Israel, builds
Samaria, 127.
Othniel, first of heroic de-
liverers of Israel, 77.
Passover, celebration by Jo-
siah at Jerusalem, 153; ac-
count in Chronicles, 277.
Patriarchs, stories of, 30.
Pekah, King of Israel, assas-
sinated, 144.
Pekahiah, King of Israel, as-
sassinated, I43.
Pentateuch, origin and com-
position, 30–32.
Pharaoh-necho, of Egypt, ex-
acts tribute from Judah,
I53.
Philistines, capture the “Ark
of God,” 83; Saul's battles
with, 90, 94; David's rela-
tion with, 93.
Phoenicia, early Hebrew writ-
er's acquaintance with, 18.
Priestly History, of Judah
and antecedents, 255–277;
its date and purpose, 253;
memoirs of Ezra and Ne-
hemiah, 254, 257; Book of
Chronicles, 259.
Priests’ Code, as element in
Pentateuch, 32, 66, 68, 70;
element in Book of Joshua,
73; completion of, 243;
character of work, 244.
Prophets, early character, Io;
time of Ahab, II; highest
development of work, 22;
minor, 24; collection of
oracles, 37.
—, of two Kingdoms, 158–
191; original character,
158; Deborah, Samuel, 159;
Nathan, Ahijah, 160; use
of symbolism, 160; utter-
ances disarranged as col-
lected, 162; Amos, 164;
their theocratic faith, 166;
Hosea, 166; Isaiah, 168;
Jeremiah, 178; theocratic
doctrine, 179, 189; ethical
conceptions, 190.
— of exile and after, 192–
228; Ezekiel and his work,
194–208; supplementary
chapters of Isaiah, 209;
Haggai and Zechariah, 218;
Malachi, 222; last chapters
of Zechariah, 226.
Proverbs, collection of, 40.
Proverbs, Book of, when col-
lected, 305; several collec-
tions, 306; relation to Solo-
mon, 306; general charac-
ter, 307; conception of
deity, 308; philosophy, 308;
analysis of book, 3Io; sup-
plementary chapters, 312.
Psalms, Book of, repository
of Sacred Songs, 28, 40;
how constituted and when,
295; several collections, 296;
meaning of titles, 297, 299;
used in temple service, 300;
real character, 301; concep-
tion of deity, 302; univer-
sal significance, 303.
Pul, Assyrian general, same
as King Tiglath-Pileser,
I44.
Rachel, as mother of tribes,
53.
Ramoth-Gilead, scene of bat-
tles between Israel and
Syria, 133, 140.
Rebekah, personification of
Israel's relation to Syria,
50; Yahwist account of
wooing for Isaac, 60.
Rehoboam, weak successor of
Solomon, 116; slight ac-
count of his reign in
Kings, 126; fuller account
in Chronicles,
Reuben, oldest of Israelite
tribes, 52.


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