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THE 
 
 STRUCTURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE WITNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 TO CHRIST, being the Boyle Lectures for 
 1868. 8vo, 9s. Rivingtons. 
 
 THE WITNESS OF ST. PAUL TO CHRIST, 
 
 being the Boyle Lectures for 1869; with an 
 
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 A SHORT PRACTICAL HEBREW GRAMMAR ; 
 with the Hebrew Text, and a Grammatical 
 Analysis, of Genesis i. — vi. and Psalms i. — vi. 
 7s. 6d. Murray. 
 
 TRUTH AND LIFE; or. Short Sermons for the 
 Day. Crown 8vo, 5s. Hatchards. 
 
THE STRUCTURE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 ^ ^m% of §rrjular 
 
 Rev. STANLEY 'LEATHES, M.A., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, KING's COLLEGE, LONDON. 
 
 LONDON: 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
 
 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 MDCCCLXXIII. 
 
Watson and Hazell, Printers, London and Aylesbury. 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 The design of the following pages is to set before 
 ordinary English readers, in a concise and popular 
 form, some of those facts concerning the composition 
 of the Old Testament, a knowledge of which is indis- 
 pensable to an intelligent appreciation of its contents, 
 but of which the majority of such persons are more 
 or less ignorant. An attempt has been made, in fact, 
 to exhibit in an interesting manner what may be called 
 the Natural History of the Old Testament. The 
 lengthy and elaborate discussion of many of the points 
 touched upon would therefore have been out of 
 place ; but as great care has been taken to avoid over- 
 statement, and to place the argument in such a light 
 as to make it independent of everything which may 
 
6 Preface. 
 
 not be regarded as reasonably certain, it is hoped 
 that the inferences suggested rather than enforced 
 may be thought reasonable too, and may tend to show 
 the essential difference in kind which distinguishes 
 the elder volume of Revelation from all similar 
 productions. The following chapters were origin- 
 ally intended for oral delivery as lectures, but the 
 occasion for so delivering them accidentally fell 
 through ; and this circumstance may account for 
 traces here and there of a greater directness of 
 address than is usual in writings of the essay kind. 
 
 London^ January^ 1873. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAH. PAGI 
 
 I. Characteristics of the Old Testament - i 
 
 II. The Historic Element ... 42 
 
 III. The Prophetic Element . . . 82 
 
 IV. The Poetic Element - . - - 122 
 V. The Legal Element . - - - 158 
 
 Chronological Table of Important Events - 197 
 
THE STRUCTURE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 CHx\PTER L 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 The unity and orcranic structure of the Old introduc- 
 
 •' ^ tory. 
 
 Testament are features of its composition which 
 many of those who are very famihar with it do 
 not immediately perceive. Some, indeed, have 
 so long been accustomed to regard the earlier 
 volume of the Bible, or in fact the whole Bible, 
 as one book, that they are practically uncon- 
 scious of its highly composite nature, while 
 the impulse lately given to critical methods of 
 studying it has served to reveal so much of 
 its composite structure that others have vir- 
 tually forgotten its true and essential unity. 
 
 B 
 
 /. 
 
2 The Striichtre of the Old Testament. 
 
 And yet this unity is the more remarkable as 
 arising out of and subsisting under its or- 
 ganic structure. It has been thought there- 
 fore that a popular statement of some of the 
 facts connected with these important features 
 of the Old Testament may not be uninterest- 
 ing or unprofitable in days like our own, 
 when the permanent obligation and undying 
 significance of the elder volume of revelation 
 are liable to be forgotten, and the tendency is 
 to magnify the importance of moral teaching 
 to the neglect or depreciation of spiritual life 
 and truth. 
 Meaning of What thcu do wc mcau by ors^anic struc- 
 ture.'" and what is it that constitutes an organic 
 whole } The word * organic ' is a derivative 
 from ' organ/ or op^avov, which is the Greek 
 for * an instrument/ or as used with reference 
 to the body, 'an instrument' or 'organ' of 
 sense, and therefore *a member' of the body. 
 Thus my hand is an organ, or instrument, or 
 member of my body. It is the instrument by 
 which I handle objects, by which I touch and 
 feel, or possess myself of anything ; but it is 
 an organ of my body with special reference 
 to its being a member of my body. It is one 
 
 structure. 
 
Ih Characteristics, 3 
 
 instrument out of many, having its peculiar 
 functions, just as the other members of my 
 body have theirs. Tlie organic structure of 
 my body, then, will be the structure of my 
 body with reference to its organs, and their 
 relation to one another. 
 
 But the use of a phrase like this implies the 
 idea of unity. There can be no organic 
 structure if there is no relation between the 
 parts. It is the fact of their interdependence 
 that enables us to speak of organic structure. 
 We can speak with a certain boldness of 
 speech of the organic structure of a house, 
 but not of the organic structure of a town or 
 collection of houses ; of the organic structure 
 of a ship, not of a fleet or collection of ships. 
 Thus to speak of the organic structure of the 
 Old Testament implies that the Old Testament 
 is a whole, compounded or made up of parts 
 or organs — an organic whole — ^just as my body 
 is a whole, made up of the various organs or 
 instruments of various functions. But when 
 I say that the word organ is equivalent to the 
 term member, I do not say that the word organ 
 means a member. It is literally nothing more 
 than a 'tool' or 'implement;' that is to 
 
4 The Structure of the Old Testame77t. 
 
 say, it indicates the means by which we sup- 
 plement our original powers, A saw is that 
 by which I enable my hand to cut wood 
 or any other substance. An eye is that by 
 which my brain is enabled to see. A saw 
 cannot cut without a hand to move it, an eye 
 cannot see without a brain to receive its sen- 
 sations ; and so no organ fulfils its purpose 
 unless there is a force to put it in operation, it 
 ceases practically to be an organ ; it implies, 
 according to its efficiency, a power or a will. 
 r^s^fnfJrm- ^^ impHes also, in its very constitution and 
 nature, a purpose, an intention, a design ; for 
 there surely can be no question but that 
 every human organ, or tool, or instrument, 
 implies a design as the final cause of its exist- 
 ence. Any tool implies an endeavour to meet a 
 want ; it is a means to an end, which end was 
 distinctly contemplated in devising the means. 
 If therefore we are right in our application of 
 the word organ to other things besides human 
 or material tools, we import into our contem- 
 plation of these things, in spite of ourselves,, 
 the idea of design. As far as the word organ is 
 at all appropriate, we attribute design, though 
 it may be unconsciously or unintentionally. 
 
Its Characteristics. 5 
 
 The very use of the phrase organic struc- 
 ture, then, seems to point us necessarily to 
 mutual relation in the parts, with more or less 
 of unity; to a distinct purpose, for which each 
 part is peculiarly adapted ; to design or in- 
 tention in the adaptation which is thus dis- 
 cernible, which is an evidence of unity of 
 purpose, and results in unity of action ; to the 
 power and the exercise of choice in the selec- 
 tion of the means; and therefore, lastly, to a 
 Person evincing this power of selecting the 
 best means, to a Person choosing, and a 
 Person designing. Possibly we may be wrong 
 in speaking of organic structure as applied to 
 the Old Testament ; but if we do speak of it, 
 we can scarcely use the words in any proper or 
 accurate sense, and not imply something of 
 all this in using them. 
 
 Let us inquire, then, in the first place, 
 what are the tokens or evidences of organic 
 structure, properly so called, in the books 
 of the Old Testament, and in order to 
 ascertain this we must bear in mind some 
 of the special characteristics of it. In 
 the Old Testament, then, we have a national 
 
6 The Structure of the Old Testmnejit, 
 
 TeltSSnt Hterature ; not one book but many, a whole 
 Ae^work of ij|3j.^j.y Qj. collection of books. There are 
 fragments from the works, or the whole works, 
 as the case may be, of certainly not less than 
 twenty or five and twenty writers. There 
 may not improbably be many more, but there 
 manifestly cannot be less. For there are six- 
 teen prophets to begin with, whose writings 
 cannot be confounded with one another. There 
 are writings attributed to Moses, to David, 
 and to Solomon, besides all the historical 
 writings. Now, with every allowance for un- 
 certainty of authorship, and for mistaken 
 authorship, it is plain that this number must 
 be increased rather than diminished. In fact, 
 the wider scope we give to speculation about 
 the authorship of various books, the higher 
 this number is likely to rise. 
 time°covered With regard, however, to the period of time 
 ^^**" covered by this Hebrew literature, there is 
 
 perhaps more uncertainty; but, accepting the 
 ordinary dates, which may be open to modifica- 
 tion, though not to any large extent, we have 
 in the Old Testament a literature extending 
 over a period of at least a thousand years. 
 The criticism which would bring down the 
 
lis Characteristics, 7 
 
 authorship of the Pentateuch to a later 
 date than the one commonly received would 
 compensate in some degree for doing so by 
 ascribing the book of Daniel to the age of 
 Antiochus, and assigning some of the Psalms 
 to the era of the Maccabees. Thus the total 
 extent would not be very greatly lessened ; but 
 in point of fact I believe it is impossible not to 
 assign the Pentateuch, at least in part, to the 
 age of the Exodus; and some portions of it are 
 probably much older still, so that we cannot be 
 far wrong in spreading the literature of the Old 
 Testament over a period of at least a thousand 
 years. 
 
 Here, however, a difficulty confronts us, Littiechange 
 
 of language. 
 
 which I can only allude to now, and must not 
 stay to discuss, and this is the difficulty of 
 language. In so long a space of time we 
 should naturally expect to find a great differ- 
 ence in language. Think of the difference in 
 language between the English of modern 
 London, and that tongue that was spoken 
 here — for we cannot call it English — in the 
 time of Alfred the Great, who came to the 
 throne a thousand years ago. We should 
 most of us have had great difficulty in under- 
 
8 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 standing a speech from the throne then. And 
 in fact the language of Chaucer, which is some- 
 where midway between these two extremes, 
 and rather nearer to our own time than to 
 that of Alfred, is not commonly intelligible 
 now. But it is not too much to say that the 
 language of Moses and the language of 
 Malachi are identical. The one writer would 
 have had no difficulty in understanding the 
 other. There are indeed slight indications of 
 change in the language of the two ; but it is 
 after all the same language. The difference 
 between Chaucer and Shakespeare is far 
 greater than that between Moses and Malachi. 
 The differences that do exist correspond to dia- 
 lectical variations rather than differences of 
 age; and it is a fact which we may endeavour to 
 account for in various ways, that the language 
 of the Old Testament does not present those 
 marked differences of age that we should 
 expect to find in compositions separated by 
 long periods of time, and which are met with 
 in the literature of other languages. The 
 system of inflection, for example, is virtually 
 the same; and if, on the other hand, the voca- 
 bulary is found to differ, this is only what 
 
Its Characteristics. g 
 
 we should naturally expect on account of the 
 very circumscribed limits of the Hebrew 
 literature. The Hebrew Bible does not con- 
 tain probably a tenth part of the vocabulary 
 of the language as it was spoken at any one 
 period, and several books are so short and so 
 various in their subject-matter, that it could 
 hardly be otherwise than that many words 
 should be used by one writer, which would 
 not be found in another. Almost every book 
 of the Old Testament has certain words pecu- 
 liar to itself, and in some cases, such as Job 
 and Canticles, for example, the number of 
 these is very large indeed. 
 
 With regard, however, to this matter of Unchange- 
 able charac- 
 
 language, some allowance must be made, ^^'■^"/^^^^ 
 probably, for the unchangeableness which in 
 a great degree characterises Eastern nations, 
 and certainly far more than it does those of 
 modern Europe. The Arab of the present 
 day has no difficulty in understanding the 
 Kuran, and yet we are now in the 1289th 
 year of the Hejra, or Flight of Muhammed. 
 He speaks virtually the same language as 
 that of the Prophet, the chief difference con- 
 sisting in a systematic omission of the final 
 
 ern 
 nations. 
 
lo TJie Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 The Old 
 Testament 
 written in 
 two 
 languages. 
 
 vowel, which in the Kuran is retained. Now, 
 here we have a difference in age at least as 
 great as, if not greater than, that which 
 separates between the earliest and the latest 
 productions of the Old Testament. And it 
 would be very difficult, not to say absolutely 
 impossible, to find a parallel case in any 
 spoken language of modern Europe. 
 
 Another remarkable feature in the litera- 
 ture of the Old Testament is the fact that 
 it is composed in two cognate but totally 
 distinct languages. By far the greater portion 
 of it is written in Hebrew ; but certain parts 
 of Ezra (iv. 8 — vi. i8, and vii. 12 — 26), one 
 verse of Jeremiah (x. ii), and certain parts of 
 Daniel (ii. 4^ — vii.) are in Chaldee, which is 
 presumed to have been the language acquired 
 and spoken by the Jews during the captivity, 
 and which after their return gradually su- 
 perseded the ancient Biblical Hebrew. This 
 language approximates more nearly to that 
 used on the Assyrian monuments, which are 
 Semitic, and not Persian or Scythic ; to the 
 language of the Targums, or the Chaldee 
 paraphrases of certain portions of the Scrip- 
 tures ; to the Syriac of the oldest translation 
 
Its Characteristics. 1 1 
 
 of the New Testament ; and to, it may be 
 
 assigned, those few Semitic words which are 
 
 found in the Greek of the New Testament. 
 
 On the other hand, the pure Biblical Hebrew 
 
 is more nearly represented by the language of 
 
 the Phoenician inscriptions, and, above all, by 
 
 that of the famous Moabite stone. 
 
 The difference between these two languages Their differ- 
 ence. 
 is far greater than the difference before spoken 
 
 of between any two books of various ages, 
 for example. Genesis and Malachi : it is a 
 difference of grammar, and not merely of 
 vocabulary. There are indeed, in several 
 books, certain peculiarities of form, which are 
 termed Chaldaisms, but these are for the most 
 part trifling variations, consisting frequently 
 of nothing more than a change of letter, and, 
 however they are to be accounted for, are not 
 sufficient to indicate the gradual approxima- 
 tion of the one dialect to the other. The 
 difference between Hebrew and Chaldee 
 is analogous to that between French and 
 Italian, rather than to that between any two 
 dialects of either language, or of our own. 
 We have evidence from Scripture itself that a 
 person speaking in Chaldee would not have 
 
12 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 been understood by an ordinary Jew, and the 
 reverse from the request made by Eliakim 
 and Joah and Shebna unto Rabshakeh, 
 which is recorded in Isaiah xxxvi. ii, and 
 2 Kings xviii. 26 ; cf. 2 Chron. xxxii. 18. 
 Similar in- It is to be obscrved that the occurrence of 
 
 stances. 
 
 these two languages in the Old Testament is 
 the more remarkable from the fact of its 
 appearance in particular books. It is not 
 due to any arbitrary insertion of such books 
 in the canon, but is a feature that is peculiar 
 to the books themselves. A somewhat simi- 
 lar, but much more modern instance is to be 
 found in the Gulistan or Rose-garden of the 
 Persian poet Sadi, a great portion of which is 
 in Arabic, and in the plays of the Hindu 
 dramatists, in "which the gods and heroes 
 speak in Sanskrit, but the women and inferior 
 characters reply in Prakrit, a lower type of 
 language, approximating more nearly to the 
 modern vernaculars. 
 The Semitic Thcrc is oue other point which deserves to 
 
 family. 
 
 be borne in mind in connection with this sub- 
 ject, and that is the family of languages to 
 which the dialects of the Old Testament 
 belong. This is what is called the Semitic 
 
Its Characteristics. 13 
 
 family, comprising, for the most part, the 
 languages spoken by the descendants of Shem. 
 These are chiefly the Hebrew, the Arabic, 
 the Syriac, the Chaldee, and the Ethiopic. 
 Besides the Arabic and Ethiopic, another 
 modern representative of this family exists 
 in the Maltese. The Semitic languages are 
 totally distinct in structure and formation, as 
 well as vocabulary, from the Aryan or Indo- 
 Germanic family, to which Greek, the language 
 of the New Testament, and Latin and Gothic, 
 the parents of our own, all belong. 
 
 In dealing-, then, with the Old Testament, Their sim- 
 
 ^' ' ' phcity. 
 
 we are dealing with by far the oldest and the 
 most important literature of a family of lan- 
 guages having absolutely nothing in common 
 with the great majority of the languages of 
 modern Europe or their progenitors. But, as 
 one of the features of the Semitic family is 
 the extreme simphcity in the construction of 
 sentences which characterises them, a copious- 
 ness of forms springing from the same root 
 being combined with great inflexibility in the 
 articulation of clauses, we may perhaps see in 
 this fact a special qualification in the Hebrew, 
 which, among the Semitic languages, eminently 
 
14 'The Structure of the Old Testame7it. 
 
 possesses it, for being the vehicle of writings 
 destined, far more than any others, to be ren- 
 dered into the various languages of mankind. 
 For this is a feature which has influenced in a 
 high degree even the language of the New 
 Testament, which naturally possesses the 
 exactly opposite characteristic of extreme 
 flexibility of sentences. 
 
 Such, then, is the material, as regards lan- 
 guage, out of which the Old Testament is 
 formed, and such are some of the more pro- 
 minent features of its formation as regards 
 age and authors. 
 '^j^?^ped!gree Let US now procccd to ascertain somethinof 
 
 of the Old ■■• ^ 
 
 Testament. ^ikyoM^. what wc may term the pedigree of this 
 same Old Testament. A picture which has a 
 pedigree is incomparably more valuable than 
 a picture which has none, whatever its intrin«^ic 
 merit may be ; and though the literary merits 
 of this book may be very great, its value will 
 be far greater if we can satisfactorily ascertain 
 its history. Now there is, and can be, no 
 manner of doubt that every page of the Old 
 Testament was in existence before the first 
 book of the New was written ; that is to say, 
 in the first century after Christ. On that evi- 
 
Its Characteristics. 15 
 
 dence, it can have been of no recent growth. 
 But besides this, Josephus speaks of the sacred 
 books of his nation as being * twenty- two,' 
 which corresponds with the Jewish division of 
 them, according to the twenty-two letters of 
 the Hebrew alphabet ; and of these he says, 
 
 * five belong to Moses,' ' thirteen books ' 
 contain the history of the nation * from 
 the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes 
 king of Persia,' comprising Joshua; Judges and 
 Ruth counted as one book ; Samuel, Kings, 
 Chronicles, each regarded as one book ; Ezra 
 andNehemiah; Esther, Job, the fourgreaterpro- 
 phets, and the twelve minor prophets reckoned 
 as one book ; and ' the remaining four books,' 
 Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles, 
 
 * contain hymns to God, and precepts for the 
 conduct of human life.' There may be some 
 difference as to the way in which this number 
 is to be made up, but no reasonable doubt as 
 to the books comprised in it. 
 
 Of these twenty-two books, Josephus says Testimony of 
 that 'during so many ages as have already ^- ^p- '• ^■ 
 passed, no one has been so bold as either to 
 add anything to them, to take anything from 
 them, or to make any change in them ; but it 
 
1 6 TJie Structure of the Old Testamefit, 
 
 becomes natural to all Jews, immediately from 
 their very birth, to esteem those books to 
 contain divine doctrines, and to persist in 
 them, and, if occasion be, willingly to die for 
 them. For it is no new thing,' he continues, 
 'for our captives, many of them in number, 
 and frequently in time, to be seen to endure 
 racks and deaths of all kinds upon the 
 theatres, that they may not be obliged to say 
 one word against our laws, and the records 
 that contain them ; whereas there are none 
 at all among the Greeks who would undergo 
 the least harm on that account, no, not in case 
 all the writings that are among them were to 
 be destroyed ; for they take them to be such 
 discourses as are framed agreeably to the 
 inclinations of those that write them,' etc. It 
 cannot fail to strike any one that this last 
 statement is singularly parallel to that in the 
 Second Epistle of St. Peter i. 21, 'For the 
 prophecy came not in the old time by the will 
 of man, but holy men of God spake as they 
 were moved by the Holy Ghost.' 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that the testimony 
 of the New Testament is confirmed by the 
 partly independent testimony of the great 
 
Its Characteristics, 17 
 
 Jewish historian, and the same may be said of 
 Philo, who everywhere speaks of and regards 
 the Old Testament as a whole. It is also 
 evident, from the same passage of Josephus, 
 that he considered the collection to have been 
 closed in the time of Artaxerxes Longimanus; 
 for he distinctly says, * It is true, our history 
 hath been written since Artaxerxes very par- 
 ticularly, but hath not been esteemed of the 
 like authority with the former by our fore- 
 fathers, because there hath not been an exact 
 succession of prophets since that time ' {Con^ 
 tra Apion, i. 8). It is hardly possible to over- 
 estimate the importance of this testimony. 
 
 The next link in the chain of evidence is ^he testi- 
 mony of 
 
 supplied by the apocryphal writings, which Ecciesiasti- 
 exist in the version of the Seventy, but are 
 not found in the Hebrew. For, independently 
 of the references to the Old Testament in 
 various parts, we can arrive approximately at 
 a particular date from ' The Prologue of the 
 Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach.' The 
 translator of this book mentions having come 
 into Egypt when he was thirty-eight, and 
 when Ptolemy Euergetes was king. Now it is 
 said that this statement is ambiguous, from 
 
 C 
 
1 8 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 the fact of two Ptolemies having borne the 
 nameof Euergetes, Ptolemy III., and Ptolemy 
 VII., also called Physcon : but surely there is 
 nothing to the point here, because a writer 
 who wished to specify a certain king would 
 not have used a title that was itself open to 
 ambiguity. At the time, therefore, when this 
 author wrote there had plainly not been two, 
 but only one Euergetes, and he was Ptolemy 
 III., whose reign lasted from B.C. 247 to B.C. 
 222. The reign of the second Euergetes was 
 about a century later, from B.C. 145 to B.C. 
 116. That the earlier of these two kin^s 
 
 o 
 
 is meant is clear also from the internal evi- 
 dence of the book. In chapter L. there is 
 an elaborate description of the high -priest, 
 Simon the son of Onias, which must have 
 been written by one who had seen him offi- 
 ciate in the Temple. Strange to say, here 
 again ambiguity is alleged from the fact of 
 there having been two high-priests of this 
 name, who were both sons of Onias, and who 
 also lived at an interval of about a century. 
 As, however, the first of these was known by 
 the name of Simon the Just, and was univer- 
 sally esteemed by his nation, which the second 
 
Its Characteristics, 19 
 
 was not, it seems highly improbable that the 
 writer should have spoken of the second, if 
 there could have been any chance of the first 
 being mistaken for him, as there clearly would 
 have been on the supposition of the later date 
 being the right one. Had there at the time 
 when this auther wrote been a second Simon 
 the son of Onias, he would surely have distin- 
 guished him in some other way. The fact 
 that he has not done so certainly points to 
 the inference that there had as yet been but 
 one. Now, the first Simon lived from about 
 B.C. 370 to B.C. 290, the second from B.C. 217 
 to B.C. 195. Supposing, then, that the author 
 of Ecclesiasticus was the younger contem- 
 porary of the first Simon, and that he wrote, 
 as he clearly did, after his death, or about 280 
 B.C., this might well allow of the visit of his 
 grandson to Egypt, at the age of thirty-eight, 
 occurring in the time of Ptolemy III., about 
 B.C. 230, after an interval of say fifty years ; 
 and so the reign of Euergetes I. would fit in 
 with the supposition of the high-priest who is 
 meant being the first Simon. 
 
 It appears, then, from the prologue of the 
 translator, that the threefold division of the 
 
20 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 Jewish Scriptures into * the Law, the Pro- 
 phets, and the other books,' was famiHar to 
 his grandfather, that is to say, at the com- 
 mencement of the third century before Christ, 
 and that in his own time they had been trans- 
 lated into Greek, ' because,' he says, ' they 
 have no small difference when they are spoken 
 in their own language.' 
 
 Now, though it is not absolutely certain, 
 from this prologue, that the canon of the Old 
 Testament was complete at the time referred 
 to, yet I think the most natural inference 
 from the language used clearly leads us to 
 suppose it was ; and if so, we have evidence to 
 the existence of the Old Testament as a 
 whole at least 300 years before Christ. 
 
 If, however, on the other hand, we take the 
 second Euergetes and the second Simon, or 
 the second Euergetes and the first Simon, which 
 perhaps may appear to some more probable 
 still, to be those meant* by the translator in 
 It cannot be his prefacc, this evidence will only carry us to 
 
 later than i r /^i • 
 
 aoo B.C. about 200 years before Christ ; but oh any 
 
 * See art. Ecdesiasticus, in Diet, of Bible, by Dr. 
 Westcott, and in Kitto, by Dr. Ginsburg, also Dr. Pusey 
 on Daniel, 297 — 304. 
 
Its Characteristics, 21 
 
 supposition it must be allowed to carry us so 
 far. 
 
 And then at this time we have clear proof 
 that a composition so highly esteemed as the 
 Wisdom of the Son of Sirach did not even lay 
 claim to equality with the received writings of 
 the Old Testament ; for the translator speaks 
 of them as holding a place altogether distinct 
 from the work of his grandfather. 
 
 The next link in the literary pedigree of Testimony 
 the Old Testament is the Septuagint. Con- Septuagint. 
 siderable obscurity hangs over the origin of 
 this version, but it, in all probability, came 
 into existence in the time of the first or 
 second Ptolemy, perhaps about 280 B.C. If 
 this was the case, it is quite probable, on 
 either of the two latter suppositions just men- 
 tioned, that the writer of Ecclesiasticus had 
 seen the Septuagint : on the former one it is 
 perhaps barely possible, and this is indeed the 
 strongest argument for the later date of that 
 work. Still, at all events, the existence of 
 the Septuagint in the early part of the third 
 century B.C. is proof positive of the existence 
 of those books of which it was a version. 
 Thus everything points us conclusively to the 
 
22 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 Everything existciice of the Old Testament in some form 
 
 points to 
 
 300 B.C. Qj. Qi-j^gj. three hundred years before Christ, 
 and the testimony of Josephus may reason- 
 ably be accepted in proof that this form was 
 virtually the same as it was in his time. 
 
 • It is no part of my present purpose to 
 inquire into the right of particular books to 
 their place in the Old Testament. That 
 question would be more properly discussed 
 in treating of the canon. My object now is 
 rather to deal with the book generally as a 
 whole. And, taking it as such, and assuming 
 that what Josephus says is correct, as we have 
 no reason to doubt, we know with positive 
 certainty that it was in existence three cen- 
 turies before Christ, in substantially the same 
 form as we have it now ; for we must remem- 
 ber that it is not even alleged by any one that 
 any existing book of the Old Testament was 
 added later than the middle of the second 
 century before Christ ; and had any book been 
 added as late as that, Josephus could not have 
 said what he did. 
 
 Which im- From the existence of the Septuagint, 
 
 plies a still 
 
 earlier exist- thcrcforc, from the reference in the preface 
 
 ence. ^ 
 
 to Ecclesiasticus, and from the testimony of 
 
Its Characteristics. 23 
 
 Josephus, we can trace backwards the pedi- 
 gree of the Old Testament for a period of 
 three hundred years from the birth of Christ. 
 It is equally certain that at that time it must 
 have acquired a considerable amount of cele- 
 brity to have been translated at Alexandria, 
 more especially as the strong antipathy of the 
 Greeks to the Jews would have prejudiced 
 them against the Jewish literature, while for 
 the use of the Jews themselves, who were 
 living there, such a translation was not wanted. 
 The fact, therefore, of this Greek version ex- 
 isting when it did is itself an evidence of a 
 certain prior antiquity in the book ; and whether 
 the version was that of a part only, or the 
 whole, for the Law would naturally be trans- 
 lated first, it matters little, because it would 
 have been an absolute impossibility that any 
 books that were translated afterwards should 
 have originated in the interval, or, supposing 
 them to have originated, should have acquired 
 sufficient celebrity to be translated. For it 
 must be borne in mind that though the Sep- 
 tuagint contains books which are not in the 
 Hebrew, there are no books in the Hebrew 
 which the Septuagint does not contain. 
 
24 The Structure of the Old Testame7it. 
 
 J^^^^"^'y°f Having thus so far traced the pedigree of 
 the Old Testament to a period scarcely more 
 than a hundred years after its latest book, let 
 us commence our analysis of its structure and 
 contents. The first thing which strikes us 
 about it, regarding it for the moment as a 
 single book, is the multiplicity of its topics 
 and the variety of its contents. This is, of 
 course, less remarkable when we remember 
 that though conventionally regarded as one 
 book, it is really, as I have said, a national 
 literature ; and almost every species of writ- 
 ing finds its representative in the Old Testa- 
 ment. There are legal documents, sacrificial 
 prescriptions, and ritual ordinances ; there 
 are family records and genealogical tables ; 
 there are complete historical monuments of 
 the nation from its very infancy till the time 
 when it ceased to have the distinct individual 
 existence of the past. These monuments, 
 though indeed much more meagre than we 
 could desire, are none the less complete, inas- 
 much as they form, as it were by accident, a 
 connected whole. The gaps which exist 
 appear to be left almost by design. For 
 example, we have few details given us of the 
 
Its Characteristics. 25 
 
 wanderings, next to none of the captivity, but 
 in either case this was not so much because 
 an historian was lacking, as because, appa- 
 rently from his point of view, the materials 
 were deficient in interest. To us the record 
 of these would have been most precious ; nor 
 can we conceive any period of the national 
 history when it would not have been so to 
 the nation ; but, as a matter of fact, those 
 who were directly interested in it, Moses, 
 Daniel, and the rest, have passed it by in 
 silence. Then, in addition to the history, we 
 have poetry of every kind, elegiac, pastoral, 
 warlike, devotional ; poetry which, in the 
 range of its subjects, and in the scope of its 
 object, need fear comparison with none in any 
 language, and, indeed, in this last respect is 
 incomparably superior to all other poetry. 
 Then there are ethical treatises, collections of 
 moral maxims for the guidance of conduct, 
 and speculations as to the destiny of man, and 
 attempts at the solution of the mystery of his 
 being, which have even now lost none of their 
 interest ; added to which there is in the 
 Hebrew literature a cosmogony which alone, 
 of all the cosmogonies of the ancient world, has 
 
26 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 Variety of 
 character 
 among its 
 writers. 
 
 at the present time, in the midst of the light 
 and discoveries of modern science, any sort 
 of claim to come into competition with it. 
 There is no other which any one would even 
 dream of attempting to reconcile with or 
 oppose to the present condition of scientific 
 knowledge, no other which is entitled to the 
 smalkst consideration as embodying any 
 truth, whether physical or otherwise. 
 
 A similar variety is to be perceived also in 
 the several writers whose works are comprised 
 in the Old Testament. They are of all classes 
 and occupations. There is the king, the 
 priest, the warrior, the sage, the chorister in 
 the temple, the cupbearer in the palace, the 
 chamberlain in the court, and the herdsman 
 in the field ; and if we cannot add to the list, 
 it is only because the scanty information we 
 possess about certain individuals does not 
 enable us to do so. Doubtless, in every 
 literature there is an equal diversity of occu- 
 pation manifest among the authors, but in 
 the Old Testament writers it does not appear 
 that literary merit was the chief cause of their 
 works being included in the collection, and it 
 is not easy to discover on what principle they 
 
Its Characteristics. 27 
 
 were chosen. We find from i Mace. i. 56, 57, 
 that in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes the 
 books of the law were sought out and burnt, 
 and that any one with whom * any book of 
 the testament,' meaning probably the entire 
 collection, was found, was put to death. Per- 
 secution, therefore, must have had the effect 
 of separating the common from the holy. 
 No one would have been willing to die for 
 any book which at the time could be shown 
 to be not of the number of the sacred books, 
 and it is clear that the distinction must then 
 have been sufficiently marked to be easily 
 recognised both by the persecutors and the per- 
 secuted. Here the fact of a distinction exist- 
 ing is evident, but how had it arisen } This 
 is a question that we cannot answer, but one 
 or two points connected with it appear to be 
 certain. 
 
 For instance, it cannot have been of very The rever- 
 ence for them 
 
 recent date. Men do not abruptly throw in a "rJwffj""^""'' 
 broad separation like this, which is not one of 
 degree, but of kind, between writings in their 
 possession. The reputation of sanctity is one 
 of prescription. It is inherited, and not esta- 
 blished suddenly. The books which were then 
 
28 The Structure of the Old Testainent. 
 
 reckoned holy must have been received and 
 handed down as holy. Had they been of 
 recent origin, they would have been known as 
 such, and men would not have died for them ; 
 had they been of recent origin, they could 
 only have been regarded as holy because of 
 the great celebrity of their existing writers, or 
 because they were successfully imposed upon 
 the people as works of higher antiquity. In 
 this latter case we cannot conceive that any 
 persons would have been found willing to die 
 for the maintenance of a forgery, or for belief 
 in a book with which on this supposition they 
 had only just become acquainted. If the 
 works were not genuine, they would have been 
 left alone. The seal of blood would not have 
 been affixed to them. While in the former 
 case we have evidence from this same first book 
 of the Maccabees that the race of writers was 
 extinct who would have been capable of pro- 
 ducing works of valid claims to sanctity. The 
 author speaks of the time since which a prophet 
 had not been seen in Israel (ix. 27 ; cf. iv. 46, xiv. 
 41). Hrs own experience was acquainted with 
 no one who could have added to the number 
 of the sacred books. The halo of the past 
 
Its Characteristics, 2g 
 
 had already glorified these books, and dis- 
 tinguished them, from all others ; but in what 
 the actual elements of distinction consisted it 
 is not easy to determine. We can trans- 
 port ourselves in imagination to the time 
 when the various books of the Old Testa- 
 ment were, so to say, held in solution in the 
 society and literature of the Jews ; but we 
 have no instruments or lenses which will 
 enable us to watch the process of precipitation. 
 
 How far it was the work of individual The coiiec 
 
 tion partly 
 
 will, or the effect of circumstances, or the [Jj^iyj^'^J'^f^ 
 result of the two combined, we cannot tell. ^'*^'- 
 That individual will had something to do 
 with it may be inferred from the fact that 
 we are indebted for a portion of the book 
 of Proverbs to 'the men of Hezekiah,' who Prov. xxv. i. 
 copied it out or transcribed it from some other 
 collection. That the effect of circumstances 
 operated likewise appears to be shown from Partly of dr^ 
 
 , , «,,.-. . cumstances. 
 
 the neglect of order which is apparent in 
 many books of the Old Testament, and also 
 from the fact that the books of other writers other books 
 
 quoted, 
 
 are frequently quoted by way of authority or 
 reference, which it may be presumed were, 
 in the judgment of the writer quoting them, 
 
30 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 of equal value with his own, and yet his 
 book has been preserved, and theirs have 
 not. Whether the book of Jasher, for in- 
 stance, was held by the author of Joshua and 
 2 Samuel of equal value with his own book or 
 not, it is plain that he thought its authority suf- 
 ficient to establish his own veracity. It is plain 
 that he expected his readers to be familiar 
 with it, that he anticipated also that it would 
 survive, and yet, notwithstanding all this, it is 
 hopelessly lost. 
 
 The question, then, naturally arises, Was 
 this book of Jasher, and were the other books 
 similarly mentioned by the sacred writers, ever 
 included in the same category with the exist- 
 ing sacred books } Now, though this is a ques- 
 tion which we cannot decisively answer, yet we 
 may affirm that there is no evidence of any 
 book ever included in that category being lost 
 from it. However the distinction, which is 
 one in kind, originated, it cannot be regarded 
 merely as a matter of chance what writings 
 were comprised in, or excluded from, that 
 category. The subject is one about which we 
 know very little ; but, at the same time, when 
 the canon was closed, there is no reason to 
 
Its Characteristics. 31 
 
 believe that it was co-extensive with the whole 
 existing literature of the nation. 
 
 The closing^ of the canon was in all proba- '^^\ c^'ion 
 
 "--' '■ probably thr 
 
 bility an act of selection, and not merely one of ^"J^tron 
 gathering together everything that could be 
 found. The language of the second book of 
 Maccabees ii. 14, where the writer speaks of 
 the work of Nehemiah and of Judas Maccabaeus, 
 in founding a library, can scarcely be interpre- 
 ted of the books of the Old Testament alone. 
 * The writings and commentaries of Neemias ' 
 seem to mean very much more than either the 
 book bearing his name, or any collection he 
 may have been instrumental in forming with 
 a view to the settlement of the canon. And 
 if so, we have here proof positive of the exist- 
 ence at that time of a more extensive litera- 
 ture than the present Old Testament. 
 
 Indeed, we cannot separate the question of Thestandard 
 
 difficult to 
 
 a difference in kind between the books com- define. 
 prised in or excluded from the canon, from 
 another question no less difficult to answer, 
 which must engage us hereafter ; and that is 
 the method by which the prophet's mission was 
 recognised. We have already seen that the 
 author of the first book of Maccabees deplored 
 
32 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 the cessation of the race of prophets. He had 
 himself known no prophet. He must have had, 
 then, a definite notion of what a prophet was. 
 He may even have been acquainted with the 
 work of which Ecclesiasticus is the translation ; 
 and if so, he must have been able to dis- 
 tinguish between the race of the prophets and 
 Jesus the son of Sirach. Now in what respects 
 did Jesus the son of Sirach, or Simon the 
 high-priest, for example, whom he greatly 
 extolled, differ from, or fall short of, the race 
 Not one of ^f the prophcts ? Clearly, not in the point 
 T^x\U of literary merit or of personal excellence. 
 The literary merit of the son of Sirach is 
 greater than that of Obadiah or of Haggai, 
 The personal excellence of Simon the high- 
 priest was probably not less than that of 
 Malachi ; and yet these were recognised as 
 prophets, and the others not. Now we are 
 bound to attempt some answer to the question, 
 How was this ? And the only possible answer 
 can be, that there was some outward feature 
 in the prophet's credentials, which was recog- 
 nisable by the people, as well as by himself. 
 This is a fact that is observable everywhere 
 throughout the history of the prophetic mission. 
 
lis Characteristics, '^'^ 
 
 Persecuted and rejected as the prophets very 
 often were, they always seem to have been 
 known as prophets. It is not likely that this was 
 in consequence merely of their own assertion 
 to that effect There must have been some 
 outward and indubitable mark by which they 
 were recognised, and their personal claims con- 
 firmed. They stood out as markedly distinct 
 from other men as they could well be. There 
 were those who made a profession of counter- 
 feiting their claims ; but while this fact points 
 us to the inference that there was a reality 
 to counterfeit, it does not appear that there 
 was ever much difficulty in distinguishing 
 between the false prophets and the true. Cer- 
 tain it is, that the works of no prophet in his 
 day acknowledged as false succeeded in finding 
 a place in the canon. There must have been 
 many writings of acknowledged prophets which 
 for some reason or other were not admitted, 
 but none of those that were admitted can have 
 been otherwise. Whatever their credentials The pro> 
 
 1 11 /-I phet's cre- 
 
 were, they must have been manifest to those dentiais 
 
 manifest. 
 
 who had to decide upon them, if such decision 
 was ever the work of any individual mind ; 
 and if it was the result merely of external cir- 
 
 D 
 
34 1^^^^ Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 cumstances, they must have been none the 
 less unmistakable to the community at large. 
 After estimating as accurately as we can all 
 the human circumstances in the life of the 
 prophets, and the natural causes of their writing, 
 there still remains a very appreciable element 
 which it is difficult to define, and concerning 
 which it is by no means easy to decide how 
 far it has or has not any representative in our 
 own times and circumstances. When the ex- 
 isting results are in such strong contrast to 
 what we are otherwise familiar with, it is im- 
 possible to say that the causes operating were 
 simply human or purely natural. We decide 
 contrary to the evidence if we say there was 
 not something more than human, and other 
 than natural. 
 Reference to Another fcaturc which appears to be deserv- 
 
 certain books 
 
 as authorita- jng of noticc is the way in which, in many 
 books of the Old Testament, other writings 
 are referred to as though they already occupied 
 a position of standard authority. We have in 
 the Old Testament itself traces of the same 
 kind of deference paid to certain portions of it 
 as has now become the traditional inheritance 
 of the whole. This is notably the case every - 
 
 live. 
 
Its Characteristics. 55 
 
 where with reference to the Law. The last Especially 
 
 the law. 
 
 chapter of the latest prophet closes with the 
 admonition, ' Remember ye the law of Moses 
 my servant, which I commanded unto him 
 in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and 
 judgments ; ' and in all the later books this is 
 conspicuously the case. The Law of Moses is 
 regarded as a divine legacy at once inviolate 
 and inviolable. It is certain that at that period 
 those who wrote in such a way could have been 
 conscious of no substantial alteration in books 
 which for long ages had been so esteemed. 
 
 The same may be said, however, not only '^."'^hgj^g 
 of the Law. For instance, in Daniel ix. 2, we 
 have an allusion to certain books, which must 
 have been those of the Prophets, and special 
 mention is made of Jeremiah as an authority 
 that was final. Again, Zechariah, in i. 4, vii. 7, 
 12, speaks of the Law and th.^ former prophets, 
 making use of a phrase which is traditionally 
 the technical one among the Jews to denote the 
 books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. 
 It is not possible to affirm that Zechariah 
 used the phrase in this sense, and he probably . 
 did not ; but it is certain from the way in 
 which he speaks that he assigned a very high 
 
36 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 position to the writers spoken of, not, indeed, 
 on account of their literary excellence, but be- 
 cause they had uttered 'words which the 
 Lord of hosts had sent in his spirit.' It 
 is clear, then, that at the time of Daniel and 
 Zechariah the books alluded to had acquired 
 an established reputation, and were recognised 
 as of Divine authority ; and it is impossible 
 to conceive how this could have been the 
 case if there had not been some marked fea- 
 tures in the circumstances of their origin and 
 history which served to differentiate them 
 from those of other and ordinary writers. For 
 Historical example, the way in which they are here spoken 
 
 evidence of c • ' 
 
 this autho- of is m strong- contrast to the mere allusions 
 
 rity. ^ 
 
 to the book of Jasher before mentioned, and 
 those to the chronicles of the kings of Israel 
 and Judah, which are quoted in confirmation 
 of veracity, but are not appealed to for their 
 Divine authority. Once more, there are traces 
 From Isaiah, in Isaiah of the existence in his time of a 
 ' book of the Lord/ which was to be 
 studied for its authoritative teaching,* which 
 
 * Isaiah xxxiv. i6 : 'Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, 
 and read : no one of these shall fail, none shall want her 
 
Its Chm^acteristics, 37 
 
 in a future day* should be understood even 
 better than it was then, which waited there- 
 fore for the fulness of its meaning, which was 
 consequently prophetic in its character. And 
 a like reference is made again to the same 
 book in a previous verse.f It may be a matter 
 of question whether the prophet in either case 
 is speaking of his own book, as he certainly 
 does in xxx. 8, and probably in viii. i, but 
 there is no doubt as to the character he assigns 
 to it, whether it be his own or the book of 
 the Law. There is here an indication of con- 
 sciousness, on the part of the writer; of a work 
 being then in process of formation, if not in 
 a condition of completeness, to which men 
 might appeal as to an ultimate authority, on 
 account of its being somehow endowed with 
 
 mate : for my mouth it hath commanded, and his Spirit it 
 hath gathered them.' 
 
 * Ibid. xxix. 18 : ' And in that day shall the deaf hear 
 the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see 
 out of obscurity, and out of darkness. ' 
 
 t Ibid. xxix. II : 'And the vision of all is become unto 
 you as the words of a book that is sealed (lit. the sealed book), 
 which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, 
 I pray thee : and he saith, I cannot ; for it is sealed : and the 
 book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read 
 this, I pray thee : and he saith, I am not learned. ' 
 
 In all these cases the book is clearly the same. 
 
38 The Stnidm-e of the Old Tesfavient. 
 
 the Divine sanction. To go one step higher : 
 in many of the Psalms, notoriously so in the 
 hundred and nineteenth, but also very strik- 
 ingly in the nineteenth, which is entitled * a 
 Psalm of David,' we have strange references 
 to the * law of the Lord ' as an undefiled law, 
 which must undoubtedly in some cases be 
 made to a written code of precepts, to which 
 ' the greatest deference was due. I think, on 
 the whole, it is impossible to deny this ; and if 
 so, the only code that can have been meant 
 was that of Moses, for there is no trace of any 
 other, and it is impossible that this can have 
 supplanted any other. 
 Early nu- It would be casy, but it is not needful, to 
 
 cleus of a ^ 
 
 sacred htera- p^g}^ ^his inquiry further. We have suffi- 
 cient evidence drawn from the Old Testament 
 itself to show that from the earHest times 
 there was a nucleus of the national literature 
 which claimed to be, and was regarded as, of 
 Divine authority. This literature was the 
 truest symbolic expression and representative 
 of the national existence, although in many 
 respects it bore a striking contrast to the 
 national character. 
 
 It must be our endeavour to analyse to a 
 
Its Characteristics. 39 
 
 certain extent the monuments of this litera- 
 ture with a view to discovering and drawing 
 out its essential unity. And to this end it 
 
 •11 1 • 1 1 111 Method of 
 
 Will be convenient to adopt the method al- inquiry. 
 ready in some degree followed, of pursuing 
 our investigations upwards. Commencing 
 with the latest monuments, we shall be the 
 better able to estimate those which precede 
 them. The study of the later records will 
 tend to throw light upon the earlier ones, and 
 our progress will be the less uncertain. 
 
 Now the existing literature of the Old Fourdistinct 
 
 elements in 
 
 Testament may be arranq-ed conveniently the oia 
 
 ^ ^ ^ Testament. 
 
 round four principal characters, each of whom 
 may be fitty taken as representing a special 
 department of writing. Speaking somewhat 
 generally, the several books of the Old Testa- 
 ment are historical, prophetical, poetical, or 
 legal. Four classes of composition are readily 
 distinguishable, and to one or other of these 
 classes every single book may with more or 
 less propriety be assigned. And from the And four 
 fact that Ezra is traditionally reputed to have tive names 
 
 or eras. 
 
 been, if not the author of the books of Chroni- Ezra. 
 cles, at least a principal agent in the arrange- 
 ment of the canon, he may very properly be 
 
Kezekiah. 
 
 David. 
 
 Moses. 
 
 40 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 taken as representing the historical element. 
 In the same manner, as the greatest of the 
 prophets who committed their works to 
 writing, namely Isaiah, was a contemporary 
 of Hezekiah, and played a very prominent 
 part in his times, the era of Hezekiah may 
 very justly be said to represent the era of 
 prophecy, if it is understood that prophecy 
 was by no means confined to that period, but 
 began long before, and terminated long after- 
 wards. Still, as that was the time of its 
 noblest development, we may well say, for 
 the purposes of division, that the era of Heze- 
 kiah was the special era of prophecy, and his 
 name may be used as the symbol of that era. 
 Again, the right of 'the sweet Psalmist of 
 Israel ' to represent the national poetry and 
 the poetic element of Scripture will at once 
 be obvious and undisputed ; and, lastly, 
 Moses will no less obviously stand to repre- 
 sent the Law, and any examination of the 
 literary monuments of Israel will naturally 
 terminate in him. He is the corner-stone of 
 the national literature, as he is the most pro- 
 minent figure in the national history. The 
 four names, therefore, of Ezra, Hezekiah, 
 
Its Characteristics, 41 
 
 David, and Moses, may severally be taken as 
 very fairly representative of the four chief 
 elements of Old Testament literature, its 
 history, prophecy, poetry, and law. Under 
 this division and in this order I purpose to 
 examine them with a view to forming some 
 idea of their natural method of grov/th, and 
 to ascertaining how far it is right to consider 
 the volume containing them as essentially 
 one. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE HISTORIC ELEMENT. 
 Bulk of the The historical portions of the Old Testament 
 
 historic por- 
 tions, occupy in bulk very nearly one half of the 
 
 entire volume, if, indeed, it is not the larger 
 half Not only are the books of Ezra, Esther, 
 Nehemiah, Chronicles, Kings, Samuel, Ruth, 
 Judges, and Joshua almost exclusively histo- 
 rical, but considerable portions of the pro- 
 phetical writings, and still more of the books 
 which are technically called the Law, are 
 historical likewise. It is impossible, therefore, 
 to regard these various historical writings as 
 the production of any single author. The 
 whole body of the history is the result of 
 continual accretions. They must have begun 
 at a time anterior to the Exodus, and they did 
 not cease till nearly a hundred years after the 
 
The Historic Element. 43 
 
 Captivity. The history, therefore, of the Old 
 Testament embraces a period far more than 
 co-extensive with its entire area. And un- 
 less we accept Moses, Joshua, Ezra, and 
 Nehemiah as severally responsible for the 
 books with which their names are associated, 
 we are wholly ignorant of the persons to 
 whom we are indebted for these records. 
 Indeed, with the exception of Nehemiah, 
 there is no one of the books which bears the 
 name of its author. In the book of Ezra, the 
 first person is sometimes used, as it is in 
 Nehemiah, which might lead us to a pre- 
 sumption that so much, at any rate, was by Their 
 
 anonymous 
 
 him, but all the rest are entirely anonymous, character. 
 and in many cases we have not even a clue to 
 ascertaining who was their author. It must 
 be admitted that this is a very remarkable 
 feature characteristic of these books. There 
 is probably no other nation possessed of a 
 literature that is dependent in a similar way 
 for its history upon anonymous writers. 
 
 In the examination, then, of this history, we The book of 
 
 ,, , , f. 1 -»-ri .,. Nehemiah. 
 
 must turn, m the first place, to Nehemiah, its 
 latest contributor. Nehemiah states that he 
 was cupbearer to King Artaxerxes. This 
 
44 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 was Longimanus, the son and successor of 
 Xerxes, and the time when Nehemiah's nar- 
 rative commences was the twentieth year of 
 his reign, or about 445 B.C. It purports to 
 give an account of his labours in rebuilding 
 the wall of Jerusalem, and of sundry reforms 
 in morals and worship which he was the 
 means of carrying out. It has been ques- 
 tioned whether the eighth, ninth, and tenth 
 chapters of this book were written by Nehe- 
 miah, because in them the writer has discon- 
 tinued the use of the first person, and has 
 adopted the third instead ; but there is no 
 reasonable doubt that these chapters are of 
 about the same date, and that they give an 
 authentic narrative of the incidents they de- 
 scribe. In one of these chapters, the ninth, 
 we have a prayer that was recited by the 
 Levites on the occasion of a solemn fast at the 
 close of the feast of tabernacles, when a covenant 
 was entered into by the leaders of the people 
 to obey the Law of Moses. The first name 
 affixed to this covenant, which was intimately 
 connected with the prayer aforesaid, was that 
 of Nehemiah. We may reasonably assume, 
 therefore, that he had some hand in the com- 
 
The Historic Element. 45 
 
 position of the prayer. And from this prayer 
 we see that the history of the Pentateuch was 
 at that time familiar to the people. They ^f^^ earner 
 were apparently even more familiar with it ^^^'"''y- 
 than with much of their subsequent and more 
 recent history. It is evident that the history 
 recorded in the books of Moses must have 
 been continually in their hands. There is 
 remarkable evidence in the prayer of even a 
 verbal acquaintance with it. The mention of 
 the fact that the foot of the Israelites did not 
 swell in the wanderings, and the word ex- 
 pressing it, are both peculiar to this prayer 
 and to Deuteronomy, ch. viii. 4. It is highly 
 improbable, not to say morally impossible, that 
 there is no allusion here to the passage in 
 Deuteronomy. But, in that case, it is certain 
 that, in the time of Nehemiah, Deuteronomy 
 was accepted as an authoritative record of 
 the wanderings in the wilderness. There is 
 evidence also that the authors of the prayer 
 recognised in the troubles that had befallen 
 their nation a fulfilment of the threatenings 
 which had been pronounced against them in 
 the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy (cf , e.g,, 
 Neh. ix. 35 — '}^J, with Deut. xxviii. n^ 47, 
 
46 The Structure of the Old Testa7nent. 
 
 48, 51) ; and consequently they must have 
 regarded that book as containing-, not only 
 true history, but also a veritable declaration 
 on the part of God, which familiar and painful 
 events had ratified ; and it matters very little 
 whether this portion of Nehemiah was written 
 by him or by Ezra, or by any one else. The 
 only matter of importance is that it should be 
 credible as history, and there is not a shadow 
 of suspicion attaching to it on this ground. 
 There is every reason to believe that this 
 prayer was spoken by the Levites, as it is 
 said to have been, and under the circum- 
 stances alleged, and that it was attested in 
 Value of this the manner described. We may rightly claim 
 
 fact 
 
 it, therefore, as documentary evidence of 
 about the middle of the fifth century before 
 Christ to the way in which the history of the 
 Pentateuch was then regarded, and especially 
 the book of Deuteronomy. It may be per- 
 fectly true that the age of Nehemiah was not 
 a critical age (though of that we have not 
 much evidence one way or the other), but it is 
 absolutely impossible, for example, that the 
 book of Deuteronomy could have been a for- 
 gery of the last two hundred years, and the 
 
The Historic Elevient. 47 
 
 chiefs and leaders of the nation not have 
 known it. If, as a matter of fact, it was not 
 entitled to the position it held, it would not 
 have been quoted as history, nor regarded as 
 a Divine oracle that had been fulfilled. At 
 all events, at this time the book of Deutero- 
 nomy had obtained its position as an integral 
 portion of the Pentateuch. The history em- 
 bodied in the Pentateuch was familiar to the 
 bulk of the people, and that Pentateuch itself 
 was accepted as of Divine authority, and as 
 substantially the work of Moses. 
 
 And with respect to this belief it must be 
 borne in mind that it was national, and of 
 great antiquity. It was not a belief peculiar 
 to one section of the people, as, for instance, 
 the Levitical or the priestly class, but it was 
 shared by the people as a body. Their 
 national unity and their national existence 
 centred in their peculiar estimate of the Law 
 of Moses. And the belief, from its very 
 nature, was one that could not but have been 
 of great antiquity. In all the past there was Moses the 
 no name at all to be compared with that of name in the 
 
 past, 
 
 Moses. There was no character that occupied 
 anything like the same position or had the 
 
position. 
 
 48 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 ' same hold upon the national mind. Elijah, 
 Solomon, and David had all been great, pro- 
 minent, and brilliant actors in the national 
 history, but no one of them commanded the 
 same reverential regard as Moses, 
 Stbli"^"^ Moses was virtually the father of the nation. 
 He was the author of its emancipation from 
 Egypt, and to him was owing its very existence 
 as a nation. The consciousness of this fact is 
 so clear at every period of the history, and on 
 every page of the literature, that it is worthy 
 of the utmost deference, and cannot lightly be 
 set aside. You must sweep away the whole of 
 the existing literature before you can success- 
 fully establish any opposite theory. And as 
 the national reverence for Moses was unrivalled, 
 so was his work regarded with unusual jealousy. 
 It was possible for the whole nation, or the 
 greater part of it, to disobey his precepts, it 
 was not possible for them to acknowledge 
 another as co-ordinate in authority with him. 
 The recognition of Moses excluded the recog- 
 nition of others on the same platform with him. 
 And thus the very idea of supplementing his 
 Law by the later additions of some one else 
 was radically opposed to the national estimate 
 
TJie Historic Element. 49 
 
 of the office which Moses held. The authority 
 of Moses was everywhere supreme, and it was 
 not possible for any other writer to usurp his 
 authority with the people. But however this 
 may have been, it is certain from the evidence 
 of the book of Nehemiah that this unique 
 position of Moses and the Law of Moses, under- 
 standing by that term the Pentateuch, was 
 clearly established and defined in the minds of 
 the people in the middle of the fifth century 
 before Christ. 
 
 There is evidence, moreover, in this same Nehemiahv 
 
 knowledge 
 
 prayer, of the existence of, and acquaintance of other 
 with, the books of Joshua and Judges (ver. 24, 
 27), because of the identity of the language 
 used in speaking of the events therein recorded. 
 The phrase, * Thou gavest them saviours who 
 saved them out of the hand of their enemies,' 
 is too marked, when taken in connexion with 
 Judges ii. 18, iii. 9, not to indicate an acquaint- 
 ance with that book. The existence also and 
 the mission of the prophets as a distinct class, 
 is recognised in this prayer, as likewise the 
 general history of the kings. It has already 
 been observed, however, that the allusions to the 
 later history of the nation are here much less 
 
 E 
 
50 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 prominent than those to the books of Moses. 
 We may not, however, infer from this fact that 
 the later historical books were unknown, because 
 the books of Kings must have been in existence 
 at this time, if not those of Chronicles, but only 
 that the position which all the later writings 
 held in the minds of the people was inferior to 
 that held by the books of Moses. These books 
 were in fact the source from which the others 
 flowed, the foundation upon which they 
 rested, and without which they could not have 
 existed. 
 Language Thcrc is, morcovcr, incidental evidence that 
 
 becoming 
 
 iquated. ^^ ^j-^jg ^jj^g ^hc language of the Pentateuch 
 was becoming in some degree obsolete, as it is 
 said of the Levites, that ' they read in the 
 book of the law of God distinctly, and gave 
 the sense, and caused them to understand the 
 reading.' It is indeed possible that this may 
 refer merely to the expository work of preach- 
 ing and exhortation ; but it has also been 
 thought to show that the common people, 
 through their residence in Babylon and other 
 causes, had lost the purity of their original 
 language, and that it was no longer clearly 
 intellig-ible to them. In this case, there would 
 
 ant 
 
The Historic Eleinent. 5 1 
 
 obviously be a certain proof of antiquity in the 
 book which needed to be so explained ; it was 
 at any rate not of very recent origin, and we 
 must go back earlier to trace its origin. 
 
 It may be observed, however, in passing, J^^fjJg^'J^g 
 that it is quite inconceivable that a national "^"o"^'- 
 reaction, such as that described in Nehemiah, 
 should have taken place in favour of a book 
 which did not rest on a foundation that was 
 wholly unquestionable as far as the persons 
 interested in it were concerned. Here was a 
 whole nation, by its heads and representatives, 
 in the fifth century before Christ, paying as 
 much deference and allegiance to a book as 
 ever has been paid publicly by the English 
 nation to the Bible. The fact is undeniable, 
 and it is not the earliest instance of a similar 
 fact. 
 
 But we go one step back, to the time of|°|;'';^^ 
 Ezra, and here we find another feature of the 
 Jewish national life. As before, whatever criti- 
 cism may have done or not done with the 
 authorship of Ezra, it has not really affected 
 its history. That history, in its main features, 
 is unassailed and unassailable. And one of 
 the most prominent features of it is the work 
 
5- The Structure of the Old Test anmit, 
 
 which first occupied the Jewish nation after 
 the promulgation of the edict of Cyrus. This 
 was the building of the Temple at Jerusalem. 
 
 The second 
 
 Temple As a matter of fact, the foundation of the 
 Temple was laid at Jerusalem in the second 
 half of the sixth century before Christ, or about 
 535, Now this known fact of history proves 
 two other facts — that there had been a Temple 
 there before, and that it had been destroyed. We 
 know also for a certainty, 'both from the state- 
 ment in the book of Ezra (iii. 12, 13), and also 
 from the independent reference to the same, or 
 a similar circumstance, in the prophet Haggai 
 (ii. 3), that persons were present at the founda- 
 tion of this second Temple who had seen the 
 first Temple. The mention of this circumstance 
 in the book of Ezra, occurring as it does in a 
 highly prosaic work, is one of the most natural 
 and touching descriptive stories to be found in 
 any of the historical books of the Old Testament. 
 
 Evidence of I" ^.C. 5 35, thcu, thcrc wcrc those present 
 who had returned from Babylon, and who 
 remembered the former Temple before its 
 destruction. This again carries us back for a 
 period of years before the time of Ezra, or the 
 history recorded by him. We are told, how- 
 
 a former one. 
 
The Historic Element. 53 
 
 ever, in this very book, that it was Nebuchad- 
 nezzar who had taken away the sacred vessels 
 of the Temple which were restored by Cyrus. 
 As there is independent testimony to this 
 fact, there is no reason to doubt it. We are 
 told, moreover, both in 2 Kings and 2 Chro- 
 nicles, that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the 
 Temple, and laid the wall of the city and its 
 palaces desolate. Here, then, we have, about 
 588 B.C., the cause for the restoration which 
 took place about 535 B.C., or fifty-three years 
 afterwards. It is quite conceivable, then, that 
 many who witnessed the foundation of the 
 second Temple had been familiar also with the 
 former one. 
 
 But there is surely something remarkable in why was 
 
 ° the second 
 
 the fact that a people situated as the Jews Tempiebuiu? 
 were at Babylon, should turn all their thoughts 
 and energies, not to the rebuilding of their 
 homesteads, but to the restoration of their 
 Temple. What was the meaning of this .'' 
 and what did it imply } It meant certainly 
 that in some way or other the Temple was 
 the centre of their national existence, and the 
 symbol of their polity. Whatever delays, 
 there may have been in building it, and how- 
 
54 The Structure of the Old Testamejit, 
 
 ever much they may have required the pro- 
 phetic stimukis which we find in Haggai and 
 Zechariah, certain it is that the rebuilding; of 
 the Temple was the prominent idea in the 
 national mind, and regarded by the people as 
 a national necessity. But to understand how 
 this was, we must go further back in the records 
 of their history. The Temple itself was a great 
 fact in their history, but it was a witness like- 
 wise to many other facts. For example, it is 
 certainly not without its bearing upon that 
 other question of the age and authority of 
 the Mosaic law. A national Temple, like that 
 at Jerusalem, implies a history, and implies a 
 ritual, and from the peculiar position which it 
 occupied, it implies identification in some way 
 with the national existence. There must be a 
 reason in the past for this intimate connexion 
 between the nation and the centre of its 
 national worship. We must inquire as we go 
 on what this was. 
 The seventy But bcforc doiug SO, there is another point 
 which must be mentioned. We saw that the 
 period of fifty-three years had elapsed be- 
 tween the destruction of the first Temple and 
 the foundation of the second. But the open- 
 
 years. 
 
The Historic Element. 55 
 
 ing of the book of Ezra has an allusion to 
 ' the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jere- 
 miah,' which requires to be examined. The 
 passages alluded to are Jer. xxv. 12, xxix. 10, 
 in which the prophet mentions the term of 
 seventy years as the duration of the captivity 
 at Babylon. The date given to the former of 
 these predictions is the fourth year of Jehoi- 
 akim, or the first of Nebuchadnezzar, which 
 was about 606 B.C. From this date to that of 
 the edict of Cyrus is a period of seventy 
 years. But though Jehoiakim seems to have 
 been tributary to Nebuchadnezzar, he died in 
 Jerusalem, and only a part of the vessels of 
 the Temple were taken in his reign to Babylon. 
 It was not till the reign of his successor that 
 the actual deportation of the king and the 
 people took place, in 599 B.C. About that 
 time Jeremiah wrote his letter to the captives 
 in Babylon (ch. xxix.), and renewed to them 
 his former promise of release at the expira- 
 tion of seventy years. As therefore there 
 was an interval of at least some years be- 
 tween the two predictions, there may be some 
 doubt from what time they are to be reckoned. 
 But as the prophet takes no notice of this 
 
56 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 Interval we can only suppose that he intends 
 to reiterate his former statement, or it may 
 be that he was himself ignorant, and left 
 the obscurity of the Lord's message to clear 
 itself by time. At all events, we can but 
 mark the complete period of seventy 
 years between the edict of Cyrus and the 
 carrying away of the vessels of the first 
 Temple, another indication of the intimate 
 connexion between the national existence 
 and the Temple worship. The first blow to 
 the integrity of the Temple and its furniture 
 was at least one point from which the seventy 
 years were reckoned. There were other 
 points of departure, that, for example, under 
 Jehoiakim, and that under Zedekiah, just as 
 there were other points of return, and this 
 circumstance has led some to deny altogether 
 the seventy years' captivity as a fanciful and 
 not an accurate computation ; but it does not 
 admit of any denial that such a captivity is 
 found predicted in the writings of Jeremiah, 
 and that it is appealed to by Ezra, or the 
 author of the book that bears his name. 
 The hope And the one point I wish to observe here is, 
 
 Jeremiah, that the writcr of that book considered the 
 
The Historic Element, 57 
 
 return under Cyrus to be a fulfilment of 
 Jeremiah's prophecy, though the discrepancy, 
 such as it is, must have been as apparent to 
 him as it is to us. He may have been wrong 
 in his opinion ; but the fact that he so regarded 
 it is beyond all controversy. It is evident, 
 therefore, from the testimony of the book 
 of Ezra, which in this respect at least there 
 is no reason to doubt, that the writings of 
 Jeremiah had been the consolation of the 
 people during their captivity, that their hopes 
 of return had been kept alive by them, and 
 that when Cyrus published his edict they 
 thankfully hailed it as a realisation of their 
 hopes and a fulfilment of his prophecies. 
 We have thus, by the way, documentary evi- 
 dence of a considerable date to the existence 
 of the writings of Jeremiah during the cap- 
 tivity, and that for a sufficient period for 
 them to have been regarded as prophetic. It 
 is in the highest degree improbable that the 
 nation would have paid any regard to these 
 writings, or built any hope upon them, if 
 their genuineness and authenticity had not 
 been sufficiently well established. This alone 
 is a presumption in their favour which the 
 
58 Tke Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 study of the writings themselves will tend 
 abundantly to confirm. 
 TempfelTts The main feature of the book of Ezra, un- 
 etc. ' derstanding thereby the restoration of the 
 Temple, presents us with an historic fact of a 
 given date, which may serve us as a fresh 
 starting point to trace the history backwards. 
 We have, then, several accounts of the com- 
 pletion of the captivity, and of the destruction 
 of the first Temple ; that in 2 Chronicles, and 
 that in 2 Kings and in Jeremiah. With the 
 exception of minor and verbal differences, 
 the two last are for the most part identical, 
 and from the occurrence of the narrative 
 among the writings of Jeremiah it may seem 
 not improbable that we are indebted to him for 
 the latter chapters of Kings. Jer. Hi., 28 — 30, 
 are not in Kings; and 2 Kings xxv. 22 — 26, are 
 abridged from Jer. xl. 5 — 41. But from all 
 these books we have the clear and uniform 
 testimony to the existence of a temple in 
 Jerusalem at that time, which was regarded 
 with peculiar reverence and affection as the 
 centre of national worship, and was known to 
 have been standing for several hundred years. 
 With respect to this temple there is no reason 
 
The Historic Element. 59 
 
 to believe that it had undergone any impor- 
 tant changes either in structure or in ritual 
 since its foundation. We do indeed hear * of 
 idolatrous worship being carried on for a time 
 in it, and of altars being reared therein, and 
 the like; but these were palpable innovations, 
 and did not permanently interfere with or 
 destroy the original order of things. Indeed, 
 we should not know of them but for their 
 being innovations. On the other hand, we do 
 know a good deal of the furniture of this 
 temple — of the vessels that were taken from 
 it, and consequently the kind of service per- 
 formed in it ; for example, that it was eminently 
 and laboriously sacrificial in its character. 
 Another material fact is also recorded inci- 
 dentally, that Ahaz removed the huge laver 
 that was called the brazen sea from off the 
 oxen that supported it, and put it upon a 
 pavement of stone instead. But if this was 
 a fact, as there is no reason to doubt, then its 
 original state had been otherwise, — in short, 
 what it was described as being at the time of 
 Solomon's dedication of the Temple. If the 
 
 * 2 Kings xxi. 4, etc. 
 
6o The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 condition of the brazen sea, after the time 
 of Ahaz, was such as it is described to have 
 been during his reign, namely, that it was 
 supported on a basement of stone, then it 
 is certain that no historian would have de- 
 scribed it as being otherwise at a former 
 period, unless his readers were familiar with 
 the change. In other words, if its condition 
 in the time of Ahaz had been its original 
 condition, then a writer in that age, or after 
 it, who was forging untrue records of Solo- 
 mon's reign, which he wished to be accepted 
 as genuine, would have made its original con- 
 dition agree with what it was known to be 
 then. It would be equally gratuitous to 
 invent the story of the alteration by Ahaz, to 
 account for the difference between the sup- 
 posed state of the brazen sea in the time of 
 Solomon and its actual state in that of Ahaz, 
 or to invent the story of its being made by 
 Solomon, so that its original form might be 
 supposed to be different from that which all 
 men could then see it to be. If the story 
 about Ahaz is true, then we have in it an 
 additional confirmation of the story about 
 Solomon ; on the other hand, if the story 
 
The Historic Element, 6 1 
 
 about Ahaz is false, the story about Solomon 
 is still not proved to be so, but may very well 
 stand or fall on its own merits. It would be 
 in the highest degree rash and entirely gratui- 
 tous to affirm that the story about Solomon, 
 and that about Ahaz, are both false, either on 
 the ground of internal probability, or on any 
 other ; and this being so, the tendency of the 
 one story is to establish and confirm the other. 
 Thus we see that there is this very marked Thehistori- 
 feature that characterises these historical aJeTnaepS- 
 records : that taking them at any one point, 
 and on any subject of ordinary narrative in 
 which they are not likely to have erred, the 
 later record stands upon and presupposes 
 the former one, and in such a way that it is 
 only on the assumption of entire fabrication 
 from beginning to end, which cannot be ad- 
 vanced, and still less for one moment enter- 
 tained, that we can reject their testimony. If 
 we find that the brass of the vessels in the 
 Temple was broken up by the Chaldees, and 
 carried to Babylon, then we find that such 
 brazen vessels had existed in the reigns of 
 former kings, that they had undergone altera- 
 tion, and that they had originally been cast 
 
And corro- 
 borated by 
 monuments. 
 
 62 TJie Structure 0/ the Old Testament. 
 
 for their various purposes by Solomon, the 
 builder of the Temple. If, on the other hand, 
 we read the various details of Solomon's 
 work, we find these details subsequently, but 
 incidentally, corroborated by the narrative of 
 vicissitudes which happened to particular 
 vessels of the Temple, of which we should 
 have known nothing, but for the previous 
 record. The circumstantial account of the 
 spoliation and destruction of the Temple by 
 the Chaldees, which no Jewish writer surely 
 would have invented, carries us at once back 
 to the time when the Temple was built, and 
 necessarily Implies many of the circumstances 
 of Its erection. The evidence of the destruc- 
 tion of the Temple by the Chaldees may be 
 said to reach even to the time of our Lord, 
 because the Temple then existing was sub- 
 stantially the same as that reared by Zerub- 
 babel, which itself would have no existence 
 and no raison d'etre if the earlier edifice had 
 not been destroyed. But given the existence 
 of the earlier edifice, when and by whom 
 was It erected } We are In total Ignorance if 
 we are not permitted to reply, By Solomon. 
 And thus it Is that at the time of Zedekiah, the 
 
The Historic Element, 63 
 
 latest king of Judah, we have so to say 
 mojmmeiital evidence of the work and charac- 
 ter of Solomon's reign, just as the modern 
 Englishman has in the Abbey and Hall of 
 Westminster visible and substantial evidence 
 of the work of the earliest Norman kings of 
 England, only that whereas in this case the 
 interval is one of nearly 800 years, in the other 
 it was little more than 400. 
 
 But then, moreover, given the existence of 
 Solomon's Temple, as we know it to have ex- 
 isted, and given the main circumstances of its 
 erection by him, which there is not the slight- 
 est reason to doubt, we arrive at other in- 
 ferences no less legitimate and valid. For 
 example, we have minute accounts of the 
 dimensions of the Temple, which, from the 
 very fact of their being minute, it is not pos- 
 sible to question. It exceeds the capacity of 
 the wildest imagination to conceive a writer 
 deliberately setting himself down to fabricate 
 such details as those of the dimensions of the 
 Temple. But if they are not fabrications, 
 then they are of substantial value as authentic 
 measurements. It is actually possible from 
 them to restore the Temple of Solomon, and 
 
64 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 not only so, but the very existence of the 
 first Temple proves also the existence of a yet 
 earlier erection of a different kind. For ex- 
 pobtJtoThe ^J^plSj we know from the 132nd Psalm, and 
 Tabernacle, ^^j^^^. g^urccs, that in the time of David the 
 centre of national worship was not the Tem- 
 ple, but the Tabernacle, and that the 
 Temple was designed by Solomon to super- 
 sede the Tabernacle. Yet more, we know 
 also that the dimensions of the Temple were 
 precisely double those of the Tabernacle, and 
 so thoroughly is this the case, that, in the 
 words of the most competent authority,* we 
 are ' able to check the one by the other, at 
 this distance of time, with perfect certainty.' 
 
 If therefore we know, as we do know, the 
 dimensions of the Temple, we know not only 
 that there was a previous structure, upon the 
 model of which it was built, but likewise the 
 dimensions of that structure. Now these 
 dimensions are found only in the book of 
 Which is Exodus, and therefore it follows as a matter 
 
 only known 
 
 from of certainty, that supposing the foundation of 
 
 Solomon's Temple to have been almost a 
 
 * Mr. Fergusson, Diet, of Bible, vol. iii. 1455 t). 
 
The Historic Element. 65 
 
 thousand years before the present era^ Chis 
 particular book, or at any rate this part of 
 it which gives the dimensions of the Taber- 
 nacle, must have been in existence then. For 
 we cannot doubt that the Tabernacle was 
 erected according to the designs of Exodus, 
 which likewise served for the basis of the con- 
 struction of the Temple. If, on the other hand, 
 any one chooses to suppose that the directions 
 in Exodus were framed after the pattern of 
 the existing Tabernacle, that Tabernacle itself 
 being framed after no known pattern whatso- 
 ever, still it cannot even then be imagined 
 that these directions were later than Solo- 
 mon's Temple, because, with the existence of 
 that edifice, the interest in the details of the 
 other and previous one had passed away. No 
 one, after the record of the Temple dimen- 
 sions had been written, or after they existed 
 in fact, would have taken the trouble to fabri- 
 cate a narrative so minute as that in Exodus, 
 for the purpose of giving the dimensions of an 
 earlier edifice, which was supposed to be half 
 the size of the existing Temple, but was after 
 all purely imaginary. 
 
 There is then this remarkable feature charac- 
 
 F 
 
66 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 terising the Jewish historical records, that side 
 by side with them we have the existence of a 
 material building established to us by irre- 
 fragable evidence, which carries us back to a 
 thousand years before Christ, and by its mere 
 existence at that time presupposes another and 
 an earlier structure, which could not have 
 existed but for certain circumstances in the 
 national history that must have been in the 
 main such as they describe. 
 Value of the Considerable li^^ht is thrown hereby upon 
 
 dry details in ^ J r 
 
 Exodus, etc. what many persons regard as the unprofitable 
 and dry details of Scripture. It requires no 
 little patience to wade through the details 
 given in Exodus for the building of the 
 Tabernacle. They are wearisome in the ex- 
 treme. But their very dryness is an evidence 
 of their reality. They cannot have been 
 invented, except by the rigid requirements of 
 historic occurrence. No one would take the 
 trouble to forge the minutes of a committee. 
 The attempt to do so would involve the 
 necessary and the double hypothesis of collu- 
 sion, and the prospect of personal advantage, 
 either of which, in the case before us, is abso- 
 lutely inconceivable and impossible. And 
 
The Historic Element, 67 
 
 thus it is that such details as these, taken in 
 connexion with the facts that rest upon them, 
 are of real evidential value and significance. 
 Some of the most salient points in the national 
 history are evidenced and illustrated by the 
 independent witness of national monuments 
 whose existence is indisputable. 
 
 But there are other respects in which the 
 highly complex and composite records of the 
 national history hang together and cohere in 
 such a way as to establish and confirm the 
 general and substantial veracity of the whole. 
 We have seen that whenever the book of Nehe- 
 miah was written it is certain that the books 
 of Moses were in existence. We may go back 
 further, to the books of Kings, which probably J/^^in""'^^ 
 existed in their present form or substance 
 before the termination of the captivity. Their 
 silence with regard to the edict of Cyrus is a 
 fair presumption that the author of them 
 wrote before it was published. They may 
 possibly have received touches from a later 
 hand, as, e.g., in 2 Kings xvii. 34, 41, etc., but 
 there is no reasonable doubt of their existence 
 in the main, as we have them now, in the middle 
 of the sixth century before Christ. But from 
 
68 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 these books of Kings there is not only 
 evidence of the existence of the Tabernacle, 
 which was superseded by the Temple, but 
 there is continual implication of a positive 
 and external Law, which the nation and its 
 kings were ever violating. This Law is men- 
 tioned explicitly in 2 Kings xxiii. 24, 25, and is 
 called the Law of Moses. Some critics have 
 attempted to prove that the finding of the 
 book of the Law here mentioned is the earliest 
 indication of its existence, and that this inci- 
 dent does actually disguise its origin. But 
 the theory is really too monstrous and vision- 
 ary to be entertained. It is manifest that the 
 writer of the Kings did not himself regard the 
 discovery of Hilkiah as the origin of the Law, 
 because in 2 Kings xviii. 4, 6, 12, he traces 
 the captivity of the ten tribes to their forget- 
 fulness of the Law of Moses, and mentions the 
 Mention of dcstructlon by Hezekiah of the brazen serpent 
 seJpem^^'' that Moses had made. It is impossible to 
 suppose he invented or inserted the narrative 
 of this incident to give credit to the newly 
 discovered law of Moses, or to the copy of it 
 which was afterwards found in the Temple. 
 There was unquestionably a brazen serpent 
 
The Historic Element. 69 
 
 destroyed by Hezekiah, and, rightly or 
 wrongly, this was believed to be identical 
 with that made by Moses in the wilderness. 
 I say rightly or wrongly, for it matters not. 
 What is really important is the fact that 
 towards the end of the eighth century before 
 Christ there was in the national memory a 
 clear recollection of the incident recorded 
 only at Num. xxi. 6, and a supposed relic of 
 it existing. And this there is no reason to 
 doubt. But, of course, if the brazen serpent 
 destroyed by Hezekiah was the one made by 
 Moses, the historic truth of that part of the 
 Pentateuchal history is established ; but even 
 if it was not, the supposed incident is shown 
 to have been so old in the national memory, 
 that a vicious accretion of superstitious ob- 
 servances had gathered around it ; and yet, as 
 far as we know, there was nothing to keep 
 alive this memory but the record in Numbers, 
 and the existence of this particular brazen 
 serpent. A visitor, in going over the Tower, is 
 shown the block on which Raleigh was be- 
 headed. Its identity may be a matter of 
 question, but of the fact that Raleigh was 
 beheaded there can be no doubt. It is far 
 
70 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 more likely that the block was invented to 
 illustrate the story, than that the story was 
 invented to account for the block. In this 
 case we can, of course, test the veracity of the 
 story, but in any similar case it is certain that 
 the mere existence of the relic is an evidence 
 of a certain antiquity for the legend, long 
 prior to his who relates the connexion of the 
 relic with the legend. 
 Conductor We have, then, in the testimony of the 
 
 Amaziah. "* 
 
 books of Kings, evidence to the existence,' at 
 least in part, of the Mosaic history long before 
 the age of Hezekiah. But even before this 
 time, on the testimony of the same books, we 
 find Amaziah, in the ninth century before 
 Christ, acting in accordance with the written 
 precept of Deut. xxiv. i6, in not slaying the 
 children of those who had slain his father. Of 
 course, it is possible, but it is wholly gratui- 
 tous and unreasonable, to affirm that this 
 passage in Kings is inserted from Chronicles ; 
 but even then, admitting the date of Chroni- 
 cles to be much later, we should still have to 
 prove first that the writer was capable of 
 inventing such an incident to show the 
 antiquity of Deuteronomy, which he knew to 
 
The Historic Element, 7 1 
 
 be modern, and, secondly, that in his age such 
 
 means would have been adequate to the end. 
 
 There are, moreover, several indications in other in- 
 stances. 
 
 the books of Kings of verbal acquaintance on 
 the part of the writer with the Law; e.g. ,2 Kings 
 xvii. 8 — 15 ; comp. Lev. v. 15, 18, vii. 7 ; Num. 
 xviii. 9 ; I Kings xxi. 10; comp. Exod. xxii. 28, 
 and Lev. xxiv. 15, 16; i Kings xix. 10 ; comp. 
 Num. XXV. II, 13. The conduct of Elijah in 
 I Kings xviii. 40, is in literal accordance with 
 Deut. xiii. 5, and xviii. 20. The first establish- 
 ment of the rival kingdom in Israel is marked 
 with a feature that shows a still higher anti- 
 quity in the religious observances of the nation. 
 We are told, i Kings xii. 32, that Jeroboam 
 ordained a feast in the eight J i months on the 
 fifteenth day of the month, like 7mto the feast 
 that is in Judah. But, according to the Law, 
 there was no feast in Judah on the fifteenth, 
 day of the eighth month ; it was on the 
 fifteenth day of the seventh month. It is 
 evident, therefore, that Jeroboam wished to 
 imitate the practice of Judah, and yet to differ 
 from it, and this he did by placing the interval 
 of a month between the already existing feast 
 and that which he established. 
 
72 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 Jeroboam's Now thcrc IS Hot thc slip;htest reason to 
 
 feast. ^ 
 
 doubt this statement about Jeroboam. He is 
 very likely to have appointed such a feast ; but 
 if he did, it was manifestly because even at 
 that time the kingdom of Judah was in the 
 habit of holding a feast either in the seventh 
 or the eighth month. By looking farther 
 back to the account of the dedication of the 
 Temple by Solomon, i Kings viii. 2, we have 
 incidental evidence that it was in the seventh, 
 and not the eighth month. But if so, then 
 the mere existence of the feast as a customary 
 one, forty years before the time of Jeroboam, 
 is a proof that it had an earlier origin. What 
 its origin may have been we do not know, but, 
 as a matter of fact, we find such an observance 
 enjoined both in Lev. xxiii. 33 and in Num. 
 xxix. 12. And, consequently, the conduct of 
 Jeroboam and the practice of Solomon look 
 very much like evidence that at a thousand 
 years before Christ the Law was in existence 
 which enjoined this observance, seeing that 
 the terms of it were so scrupulously complied 
 with. There is nothing more unimpeachable 
 in the witness that they give than national 
 customs : for they cannot be the growth of a 
 
The Historic Eleinent. 73 
 
 day. If there is evidence of a particular 
 custom being in existence a thousand years 
 before Christ, we may be sure that it required 
 some time to grow into a custom. And in any 
 case, if laws were discovered enjoining such a 
 custom, it would be more natural to refer the 
 custom to the laws, than the laws to the 
 custom. Least of all would any one imagine, 
 in a case like this before us, that the incident 
 was invented for the purpose of giving the 
 colour of antiquity to the recently invented 
 laws. Such a supposition would be absolutely 
 untenable. 
 
 We have, however, in the books of Kings, ^^^l °^ 
 not only evidence of a framework of national 
 observance existing in the ninth and tenth 
 centuries before Christ, which was based upon 
 the Law of Moses, and implied the existence of 
 that Law, and is not to be explained without 
 it, but also references to a period of the 
 national history subsequent indeed to the 
 time of Moses, but long anterior to that of 
 the kings. For example, it is stated that in 
 the time of Ahab an attempt was made to 
 rebuild the city of Jericho, which was attended 
 with results that had been predicted by 
 
74 The Strtidure of the Old Testa7nenf, 
 
 Joshua, I Kings xvi. 34 and Josh. vi. 26. 
 Now, whatever the date of this statement is, 
 it is certain that the book of Joshua must have 
 been in existence when it was made ; for it 
 would be unintelligible without it. But the 
 fact, if it actually occurred in the time of 
 Ahab, as there is no reason to doubt, is hardly 
 more intelligible on the supposition that the 
 book of Joshua was not written till some time 
 afterwards ; for it is clear that the incident 
 kttracted attention on its occurrence as a 
 remarkable illustration or fulfilment of an 
 ancient prophecy. If the book was not 
 known, the prophecy had been remembered 
 long before, and apparently for a period of 
 some five hundred years. It seems far more 
 reasonable to suppose that the narrative of 
 Joshua was written and known in the time of 
 Ahab, than that both that narrative and the 
 one in Kings were committed to writing 
 afterwards, and that the one referred to the 
 other, being a fabrication, in order to enhance 
 its value or to give additional confirmation to 
 its own assertions. 
 Which im- So likewise in 2 Kings x. 33, we find the 
 
 phes that in o ^ 
 
 two tribes and a half in actual possession of 
 
 Numbers. 
 
The Historic Element, 75 
 
 the district which they are described as 
 possessing in Joshua xxii., which itself pre- 
 supposes the narrative in Numbers xxxii. It 
 is altogether impossible that these various 
 narratives can have been made to dove-tail 
 into one another with such precision if they 
 were subsequent compositions designed to do 
 so. It is certain that towards the close of the 
 kingdom of Israel the two tribes and a half 
 were in possession of the lands which they had 
 held from the time of Moses, the title-deeds 
 of which were the records in Joshua and the 
 book of Numbers. 
 
 Another remarkable feature of the books of ^^e history 
 
 of Kings 
 
 Kings is that they are unintelligible without '^fZ^i^ 
 the record in Samuel. We know nothing of 
 the origin of the monarchy, and still less of 
 the extraordinary attachment of the people to 
 the house of David, but for the narrative of 
 the earlier events recorded in Samuel. And, 
 what is more, the events themselves in Kings, 
 supposing them to be historically true, pre- 
 suppose a foundation of earlier events which 
 must in some respects have resembled those 
 that are recorded in Samuel. For some 
 reason or other the throne is supposed every- 
 
76 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 where to be vested in the family of David by 
 a Hteral Divine right. Such a notion would 
 not have taken the hold of the national mind 
 which it evidently did take, had there not been 
 some very marked and special circumstances 
 attending the accession of David. These may 
 have differed in some respects from those 
 recorded in Samuel ; but we shall find it dififi- 
 dult to modify them greatly, and yet leave a 
 substratum sufficiently broad and large for the 
 after history of the Kings. 
 Which aphi But then, sroing back to the books of Samuel 
 
 imphes that ' ^ ° 
 
 earUer ^^^ '^^ thcmsclves, wc havc presupposed in them the 
 main features of the history of the Judges. 
 We have the principle of the Theocracy 
 clearly defined, and thrown into sharper con- 
 trast from the strong national desire to have a 
 king. But there is this feature also, that the 
 prominent foes of Israel are no longer those 
 who are commonly named in Judges, but 
 another race who had, it appears, lately become 
 powerful, namely, the Philistines, and who, 
 in the book of Judges, are chiefly mentioned 
 in connexion with Samson, who must have 
 shortly preceded Samuel. Now this fact itself 
 indicates a considerable lapse of time. The 
 
The Historic Element, 77 
 
 Ammonites and the Midianites and the Mo- 
 abites have, comparatively speaking, passed 
 away, and given place to other foes who oppress 
 Israel ; so that the history of Samuel, imply- 
 ing as it does a long duration for the Theocracy, 
 requires to be supplemented by some such 
 history as that recorded in Judges. That his- 
 tory is indeed fragmentary, and disappointing 
 in many ways, yet it serves to fill up a blank 
 which it would otherwise be hopeless to supply. 
 
 But then, once more, the history of the The history 
 
 of Judges 
 
 Judges presupposes that of Joshua. The ''pp'^^^ ^^^^ 
 Theocracy itself must have grown out of some- 
 thing. It may at one time have been exhibited 
 in a more perfect form than we see it in Judges. 
 It was then manifestly in its degeneracy and 
 decadence. What its origin was we know 
 not, and cannot divine, if we reject the origin 
 as described in Joshua and the Pentateuch ; 
 for, lastly, the narrative in Joshua is unin- ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ 
 telligible, and its development impossible, of Moses!''''' 
 without the previous history which the books 
 of the Law enshrine. Whenever Joshua was 
 written, the Pentateuch must have been in 
 existence. There is scarcely a chapter which 
 does not imply the previous existence of the 
 
78 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 books of Moses, and afford independent testi- 
 mony to the substantial framework of their 
 historical narrative. 
 
 Thus we see that in a most remark- 
 able degree the historical element in the 
 Cohesion of literature of the Jews is characterised by the 
 
 the history. . , - , . t • 
 
 principle of cohesion. It is not pretended 
 that these several books, recording the national 
 history for a period of some thousand years, 
 had one author, but many. There was, no 
 doubt, even more than one compiler ; but the 
 actual authors of the records which the com- 
 pilers worked up we cannot compute. There 
 is evidence, however, from the records them- 
 selves, both that the office of annalist was one 
 recognised under the monarchy, and that the 
 chronicles of both kingdoms were diligently 
 kept. That the histories we have were in 
 substantial agreement with these chronicles is 
 manifest from the fact that they are so con- 
 stantly appealed to. This would not have been 
 the case if they were in contradiction to them. 
 But it is evident that the writer of the books 
 of Kings, who was certainly not prejudiced in 
 favour of the kingdom of Israel, was not un- 
 willing to have his statements compared with 
 
The Historic Element. 79 
 
 the chronicles of that kingdom. All this en- itf.cedi- 
 
 =» bility. 
 
 hances the credibility of the history as it is 
 recorded, which in fact we learn to appreciate 
 also on internal grounds, and mainly for two 
 reasons. There is no evidence of individual 
 partiality on the part of the writers. The itsimpar- 
 greatest characters are drawn without regard 
 to the sympathies that may be presumed to 
 be on their side. David's vices are recorded 
 with the stern severity of truth. If the writer 
 seems almost for a moment to be carried away 
 with admiration for the greatness of Solomon, 
 he is not slow to depict his disgraceful fall, 
 and that in such terms that certain critics have 
 rejected the story as altogether incredible. 
 But the same impartiality is observable as 
 regards the nation and the national honour 
 that we see as regards the principal personages 
 of it. The impression left on the reader's 
 mind, after closing the books of Kings, is one 
 certainly not favourable to the nation. Wonder- 
 ful victories have at times been won, but they 
 are attributed less to national prowess than to 
 the Divine protection, and very often it is 
 defeat, and not victory, that is recorded. While 
 from a moral point of view, ingratitude, unfaith- 
 
8o The Structure of the Old Testame?it. 
 
 fulness, apostacy, are the very serious charges 
 
 continually advanced against the nation. On 
 
 both these grounds there is a natural presump- 
 
 And super- tion in favour of the writer's credibility. In 
 
 natural 
 
 claims. fact, this would probably never be questioned 
 if it were not for another feature too prominent 
 to escape observation, and this is the strong 
 under-current of Divine interposition which 
 everywhere runs through the whole narrative. 
 The question of course is how this is to be dealt 
 with. The ordinary historian and philosopher 
 will at once set it aside. But it seems strange 
 to do so hastily, when, as we have seen, there 
 is so much on other grounds to dispose us to 
 trust the narrative — more especially as this 
 under-current of Divine interposition is ever 
 associated with a claim to the possession of 
 Divine knowledge. The writer professes to 
 know how a man's conduct was estimated in 
 the Divine judgment ; he claims to know 
 something of the Divine purposes, as well as to 
 record instances of the Divine interposition. 
 
 mate \h^m!' Thcsc things, howcvcr much they may affect 
 his credibility in ordinary matters, must evi- 
 dently stand or fall together. The question 
 is whether his acknowledged general credi- 
 bility throws more credit on his statements in 
 
The Historic Element, 8 1 
 
 these matters, than his statements on these 
 matters tend to bring discredit upon him in 
 the others. And this is simply a question of 
 preponderating evidence. The only thing to 
 be said is that there are many features in the 
 history as we accept and cannot but accept 
 it, merely in its human aspect, that are certainly 
 more consistent than inconsistent with the 
 tenor of these remarkable statements. The 
 history in its merely natural features is a 
 unique and unparalleled phenomenon in litera- 
 ture. There is nothing which bears any, even a 
 remote, analogy to it in the whole literature 
 of mankind. The obscurity, the cohesion, the 
 consistency which characterises its composi- 
 tion finds nowhere anything correspondent to it. 
 And then the complexion and the form of the 
 history itself, in its broadest and most obvious 
 features, is such as to produce in us the convic- 
 tion that it is marked with the impress of the 
 Divine finger, and overshadowed by the Divine 
 hand, as the incidents of no other history can 
 pretend to be. Perhaps as we proceed to in- 
 vestigate some other portions of the national 
 literature this is a conviction that will be 
 deepened and confirmed rather than be shown 
 to be groundless and unreasonable. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT. 
 
 We have now to consider an element in the 
 composition of the Old Testament which in 
 some respects is more distinctive and im- 
 portant than any other. And in proportion 
 to the distinctness with which it can be 
 discovered will be its importance. This is 
 the prophetic element. But it must be 
 understood that we do not start with precon- 
 ceived notions as to the nature of this element, 
 but shall rather endeavour to ascertain what 
 it is, from a due consideration of the phe- 
 nomena presented. 
 
 According to the arrangement of our 
 English Bibles, sixteen books are regarded as 
 prophetical, which may with certainty be 
 ascribed to as many writers. But according 
 
The Prophetic Eleinent. 83 
 
 to the original arrangement, other books 
 besides were called tJie earlier prophets^ as, 
 for example, the books of Joshua, Judges, 
 Samuel, and Kings. These books were 
 so named with more reference, doubtless, to 
 their supposed authors than to their subject- 
 matter. The fact, therefore, of their name 
 contributes nothing to the estimate we form 
 of the words prophet and prophecy. The 
 first time mention is made of the word 
 prophet is when it is applied to Abraham, in 
 Gen. XX. 7, where it is used by God in speak- 
 ing to Abimelech about him. Its use there 
 implies a degree of personal nearness to and 
 influence with God, as though the person 
 spoken of held an official relation which God 
 sanctioned and authorised, if He did not 
 appoint it. In fact, a moment's thought will 
 show that any such relationship, if real, could 
 not be one of man's acquirement. If Abra- 
 ham was actually qualified to intercede on 
 behalf of Abimelech, it could only be because 
 God had appointed him to that end. A self- 
 constituted intercessor would manifestly be of 
 no avail. The earliest use, therefore, of the ise^^'''"^ 
 word propJiet implies a reality of recognition 
 
84 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 and commission on the part of God. The 
 person holding the office is God's recognised 
 agent and minister for reinstating in physical 
 and spiritual health and safety a person who 
 had unwittingly incurred danger and the 
 Divine displeasure. But the very use of the 
 word prophet in this place implies an earlier 
 existence of the thing meant by it ; for other- 
 wise it could not have been understood when 
 used. And, in fact, the very same record of 
 Genesis furnishes a much earlier instance of 
 the exercise of a similar faculty, when as yet 
 the word, as far as our evidence goes, had not 
 been called into use. The curse pronounced 
 by Noah on his younger son is a case in 
 point. That was a clear instance of genuine 
 prophetic utterance. The speaker was claim- 
 ing to pronounce a denunciation and a 
 blessing, which he was perfectly certain God 
 would ratify, and the way in which it is re- 
 corded shows that the writer believed it was 
 and would be ratified, and that he expected 
 his readers so to regard it. Not merely as 
 an outraged father did Noah pronounce his 
 verdict on the conduct of his sons, but as a 
 supernaturally endowed person he declared 
 
The Prophetic Element, 85 
 
 beforehand their peculiar and characteristic 
 future. And it matters very little whether we 
 understand his words grammatically as preca- 
 tives or futures. If they expressed nothing 
 more than his hopeful wish, it is plain that the 
 writer recorded them because he believed that 
 events had strangely confirmed their truth, 
 and had consequently invested tliem with 
 prophetic significance, a significance which 
 the words of a person standing in the position 
 of Noah, as the sole head and representative 
 of saved humanity and the new order of 
 society, could not fail to have. 
 
 The prophet, therefore, according to the its meaning. 
 earliest examples of the office, was a person 
 who could claim for his enunciations a degree 
 of authority higher than his own, and for the ful- 
 filment of whose words mankind might safely 
 look. Moreover the earliest recorded instance 
 of the exercise of this ofhce seems to indicate 
 that there was a predictive elem.ent in its 
 original conception, or at least such an ele- 
 ment is characteristic of its earUest exercise. 
 
 After Abraham, the next conspicuous in- 
 stance of the prophetic office being ful- 
 filled is in the death-bed blessing of Jacob, o; jacob!^'"^ 
 
86 The StrMcture of the Old Testament. 
 
 which was a more elaborate repetition of a 
 similar incident in the lifetime of his father, 
 Isaac. In both these cases the predictive 
 element is inseparable from the discharge of 
 the prophetic office. It is impossible to 
 affirm that prediction was not intended to 
 have any place in either of these recorded 
 prophecies. Each was a solemn and authori- 
 tative declaration, in a broad and general way, 
 of the manner in which the far-distant future 
 should develop itself. Each was believed to 
 be the recognised expression of the Divine 
 will with regard to special individuals and 
 J^^^^po*"- their remote posterity. Neither is it possible 
 to place these utterances of Jacob or his 
 father on a level with any ordinary death-bed 
 blessings. Solemn as such blessings always 
 must be, I am not aware that literature, not 
 to say history, presents us with any that can 
 for a moment compare in solemnity with 
 these. It is not that our imagination invests 
 them with romantic or marvellous features : 
 we have only to estimate fairly their actual 
 phenomena, fairly to examine their sub- 
 stance and their nature, in order to perceive 
 that there are characteristics altogether pe- 
 
The Prophetic Eleinent. 87 
 
 ciiliar to these blessings, that there are 
 assertions which were intended to be authori- 
 tative, and will bear closely pressing, which 
 were regarded for long ages with unusual 
 veneration, and have the stamp of a higher 
 meaning than mere human aspiration or 
 self-will. The memory, for example, of the 
 blessing of Esau was present long after he 
 had passed away, and the recollection of a 
 promise such as that in Genesis xlix. 10, can 
 be shown to have exercised considerable 
 influence on the subsequent fortunes of the 
 tribe of Judah, however that promise is 
 interpreted * 
 
 It may be said that we have no rigrht to And predic- 
 
 ■^ ^^ tive cha- 
 
 import into these various utterances any ""acter. 
 notion of their being predictive, because to do 
 so is to beg the question we desire to prove. 
 But there can be no doubt as to the light in 
 which they were regarded by the people in 
 whose possession they were, and whom they 
 chiefly concerned ; and whether they were the 
 genuine utterances of Isaac and Jacob, or 
 whether they were the later utterances of 
 
 * Judges i. 2. 
 
88 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 others which were ascribed to them, it is 
 manifest that in either case they were in- 
 tended to pass for predictions, and to be 
 regarded as authoritative, and consequently 
 their ostensible character may so far help us 
 to estimate the nature of that prophetic office, 
 of the exercise of which they were samples. 
 AkJeT^^^^ But however fairly we may discover the 
 germ of the prophetic idea in the case of the 
 patriarchs, it is not till the time of Moses 
 that the conception is developed in all its 
 fulness. Moses fulfilled and realised that 
 conception in all its grandeur. The term 
 prophet is applied to him, and the latter 
 portions of his writings abound in passages 
 which can only be regarded, whatever their 
 date, as highly prophetic and in fact pre- 
 dictive. It is not possible to read certain 
 portions of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and 
 not see that the actual condition of the 
 Jewish people for more than two thousand 
 years is there pourtrayed with singular fidelity. 
 And yet the wildest criticism must be com- 
 pelled to assign to these writings a far higher 
 antiquity, when the national condition was 
 very different. But here, again, the question 
 
The Prophetic Element, 89 
 
 before us is virtually independent of the date 
 
 of these writings, because if a person claims 
 
 to exercise an office we can form a just idea 
 
 of the office to which he lays claim from the 
 
 manner in which he exercises it, whether or 
 
 not his claim is just. If I personate the 
 
 character of a king, I may convey a just 
 
 impression of that character, although I have 
 
 no true claim to royalty. And in like manner 
 
 our estimate of the character of the prophet 
 
 must be formed from the way in which that 
 
 character is presented to us, whether or not 
 
 the claims of the person presenting it are 
 
 just. 
 
 Now in the case of Moses, the feature of ^^^ charac- 
 ter of Media- 
 
 the prophetic character which is most appa- ^°''- 
 rent is that of mediation or a Divine com- 
 mission. This is even more conspicuous 
 than the predictive feature. From first to 
 last Moses claims to have a direct commis- 
 sion from God, and to be His minister or 
 agent. He professes to speak with Him face 
 to face, and to be the bearer of distinct, 
 definite, and direct messages from Him, and 
 to do and to be this in virtue of his office as 
 a prophet. We observe that this fact is 
 
go The Striictu7^e of the Old Testament. 
 
 altogether independent of the truth or false- 
 hood of his claims. He professed to be a 
 prophet, was universally acknowledged as a 
 prophet, and in consequence of being a 
 prophet had immediate intercourse with God. 
 His close intercourse with God constituted 
 him a prophet, so that the notion of an actual 
 Divine commission, a delegated Divine 
 authority, is inseparably bound up with the 
 idea of a prophet. The pretensions of those 
 advancing such claims must be estimated as 
 other pretensions are estimated, but such 
 beyond all question they are. 
 The pro- To thc closc of the Pentateuchal history, 
 
 phet's a two- , , _ . - i > i 
 
 fold function, thctt, thc two leaturcs m the prophet s charac- 
 ter, which are clearly developed and illus- 
 trated, are — (i) a distinct Divine commission, 
 which at times is associated with (2) a Divine 
 foreknowledge of the future ; and manifestly, 
 if the second can be established, no reasonable 
 doubt can be entertained about the first ; still 
 it is the first which is the wider and more 
 general characteristic of the prophet ; and 
 where it is clearly found without the second, 
 it is sufficient to establish his claim. There 
 have been genuine prophets who have uttered 
 
The Prophetic Element. 9 1 
 
 no predictions, and there are none whose 
 writings are alone and exclusively predictive. 
 
 After the time of Moses, we arrive at another The historic 
 era in the development of prophecy, and one ment. 
 in which the predictive element is mainly 
 subordinated to the element of a Divine 
 authority. During the long period of the 
 judges the ofhce may be said to have slum- 
 bered, until the time that all Israel learnt that 
 Samuel was established to be a prophet of the 
 Lord. The field in which he first distin- 
 guished himself in that capacity was the 
 comparatively narrow one of predicting the 
 destruction of Eli's house. Taking this as a 
 literal fact, that the child Samuel foretold to 
 Eli the vengeance that awaited his sons, it is, 
 on the very lowest assumption, a remarkable 
 instance of juvenile sagacity and far sighted- 
 ness. But taken for so much, in connexion 
 with other circumstances that it is difficult 
 altogether to set aside, we find the prophetic 
 office first asserting itself in Samuel by an act in Samuei. 
 of prediction which was not commonly re- 
 peated in his subsequent career. His office 
 afterwards was chiefly manifested in a decla- 
 ration of the will of God at certain crises 
 
92 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 of national history. He selected Saul, and 
 anointed David, in obedience to the Divine 
 command. He enjoined the expedition 
 against Amalek, and rejected Saul upon his 
 defective execution of it. All these acts were 
 in the highest degree arbitrary, if they rested 
 merely on his own will. Indeed, in that case, 
 we should have to inquire how it was that a 
 man in his position was able to exercise an 
 influence so remarkable, and to act as he did. 
 It cannot be ascribed to superstition on the 
 part of the people, because the character of 
 the history is opposed to such an assumption. 
 The very actions of Samuel, as we alone know 
 them, are such as to demand some explana- 
 tion of their character ; and the natural 
 explanation of their resting on an authority 
 which the nation could not but recognise is 
 an adequate explanation of them, which no 
 other is. But however this may be, there 
 can be no question that the most essential 
 characteristic of the office of prophet, as 
 exercised by Samuel, was its claim to rest 
 upon a Divine authority. He professed to 
 stand in such a relation to God, that the 
 actions he performed, and the commands he 
 
TJie Prophetic Element, 93 
 
 issued in God's name, admitted of no dispute, 
 and were binding alike upon king and people. 
 How far this as a fact was so, we may leave 
 undecided : it is certain that no estimate of 
 his office can be a just one which leaves out 
 of it the recognition of its assumed Divine 
 authority. 
 
 The prophet, then, was a person who stood The prophet 
 
 . near to God. 
 
 m a position of exceptional nearness to God, 
 and was the human agent through whom, on 
 special occasions, the Divine will was made 
 known to man. And, from first to last, there 
 is no instance in which the prophetic office 
 may not be thus characterised. All claimed 
 to speak in the word of the Lord, to one and 
 all the ivord of the Lord came^ sometimes 
 coupled with predictive utterances, sometimes 
 without them, but their message always rested 
 on a foundation of TJms saith the Lord. It is 
 manifest that in all such cases there would 
 occur a liability to imposition. Even on the 
 hypothesis of there being true prophets 
 we may be sure there would be many false 
 ones ; but, on the other hand, the very fact of 
 there being false prophets would prove the 
 strength of the popular conviction that pro- 
 
94 The Struclttre of the Old Testameiit. 
 
 phecy was a reality. And as a matter of fact 
 
 we do find that somehow or other there was 
 
 Discrimina- in the nation a power of discriminating be- 
 
 tion of true 
 
 and false. twccH thc falsc prophcts and the true. A very 
 considerable portion of the prophet's work 
 consisted in the establishment of his claim to 
 be a prophet of the Lord, in opposition to 
 those who advanced the claim without autho- 
 rity. It was so with Jeremiah. But in the 
 case of Ezekiel the challenge is given in the 
 name of the Lord to the nation, and in fact 
 to the world at large : And they, whether 
 they will hear, or whether they will forbear, yet 
 shall know that there hath been a prophet among 
 them. And subsequently the human agency 
 is altogether eliminated, and the challenge of 
 the prophet is. Ye shall know that I ajn the 
 Lord. This, therefore, is tantamount to an 
 assertion that prophecy is its own evidence, 
 and carries with it its own credentials. If the 
 prophetic office cannot establish its own claim, 
 nothing we can do, and no argument we can 
 propose, will establish it. 
 
 Their But the fact is, that the very phenomena 
 
 writings. '' ■"■ 
 
 presented by prophecy in its existing remains 
 and records are only to be accounted for on 
 
The Prophetic Element, 95 
 
 the assumption of its reality. We have in the 
 prophets of the Old Testament a series of 
 writings to which there is nothing analogous 
 elsewhere. These writings occupy a far higher 
 level than any similar compositions of a di- 
 dactic or a hortatory character. They (jertainly 
 claim to do so, and in proportion as the claim 
 is made good they do so. For no other 
 writings with which I am acquainted make 
 any pretensions to occupy the same level 
 that these do. The Kuran is too palpably 
 an imitation of the Old Testament prophets 
 to enter into competition with them. 
 
 And these writings differ generically from The claim 
 
 ° ^ advanced 
 
 all others in the actual claim advanced on the ^y ^^^"'• 
 face of them to be and to contain a message 
 from God. This is a characteristic not peculiar 
 to one prophet, but common to all alike. It 
 is this feature of cohesion and unity which 
 warrants us in speaking of the prophetic ele- 
 ment in the Old Testament, and in estimating 
 it as a whole. For though each writer stands 
 independently on his own responsibiHty and 
 individuality, yet all are spontaneously and 
 unconsciously working towards a common 
 end. The moral elevation and spiritual im- 
 
unique. 
 
 96 TJie Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 provement of the people is their object. Each 
 endeavours to quicken and intensify the 
 national sense of dependence upon God, and 
 to recall the nation to the possession and 
 enjoyment of life in God. 
 Their in- There is no instance in all history of a 
 
 fluence "^ 
 
 sphere of influence* at all commensurate with 
 that occupied by the Hebrew prophets in 
 possessing the ear of the nation. Because 
 whether or not their utterances were regarded, 
 they could not be ignored. The only position 
 of influence which bears any analogy to that 
 of the prophets is the position now occupied 
 by some of the more leading organs of popular 
 opinion. The two may be compared with 
 respect to the amount of attention excited ; 
 they can only be contrasted with respect to 
 the amount of authority claimed and acknow- 
 ledged. The utmost that any organ of popular 
 
 * Compare the words of a recent able and thoughtful 
 writer : " History supplies us with no parallel to the influence 
 which these men wielded. They were the leaders of opinion 
 in a kingdom which was neither so large nor so populous as 
 Yorkshire, at an epoch when their country was overshadowed 
 by powerful empires, and was the highway of great contending 
 armies." — /"^w/ ^ 7arj-«i', by a Graduate, p. 127. (Macmillan, 
 1872.) 
 
The Prophetic Element, 97 
 
 opinion can lay claim to novv-a-days is the 
 utterance of truth that will commend itself to 
 the public at large ; but in addition to this 
 element there was in the Hebrew prophets the 
 distinct assertion of a Divine message, in 
 virtue of which they principally claimed to be 
 heard. Whatever moral truth they may have 
 uttered was altogether subordinate to this 
 Divine claim. 
 
 Now we may be quite certain that any such Contrast 
 
 with the pre- 
 
 claim advanced in the present day would be sent day. 
 met with derision, no matter what amount of 
 moral truth might be associated therewith. But 
 it was clearly not so in the case of these Hebrew 
 prophets in their own day, neither is it so 
 witJi them now-a-days. We have to ask our- 
 selves, therefore, why is it that our respect for 
 the truth they utter is not diminished, but 
 rather enhanced by their assumption of 
 Divine authority t Is it only because we read 
 them with a previous bias in their favour .<* or is 
 it also because, in spite of ourselves, there is 
 something in their message which serves to 
 substantiate their claim } If this is not the 
 case, then clearly the feelings with which we 
 read the prophets of the Old Testament 
 
98 The Structure of the Old Testajnent. 
 
 ought to be those of disgust and contempt 
 instead of reverence. But surely it is not too 
 much to say that the words of a Joel or an 
 Isaiah inspire a feeling of involuntary rever- 
 ence, not only notwithstanding and indepen- 
 dently of, but even in consequence of their high 
 pretensions. And if so, is not this itself a 
 proof that, whether their claims be true or 
 false, they alone, of all writers, have been 
 able to rise to the just level of their claims, 
 and have not debased or falsified their pre- 
 Case of tensions by their message .^ Compare, for ex- 
 ample, the feelings with which I fancy the 
 majority of unabiassed persons will read, and 
 cannot help reading, a speech of the Almighty 
 in " Paradise Lost," and words attributed to 
 the Lord of hosts by one of the Old Testa- 
 ment prophets. Is this difference a reality, or 
 is it a matter of prejudice } Is it altogether 
 a mistake, or is it because a promise given 
 to Israel thousands of years ago has been 
 fulfilled to us: They shall know that there hath 
 been a prophet ainojig them ? The thing is 
 patent, it has proved itself a reality ; and dif- 
 ficult as it may be to define the functions of 
 a prophet, or to understand how these func- 
 
 Milton. 
 
The Prophetic Element. 99 
 
 'tions can have been imposed or executed, it 
 is absolutely impossible for us, upon a survey 
 of the phenomena presented, to deny the 
 existence of prophecy, or of a race of pro- 
 phets in Israel as a fact 
 
 We may trace, moreover, a sfradual p-rowth Prophecy 
 
 -' ^ ' <=> o subject to 
 
 in the development of prophecy, a rise, s^wth. 
 climax, and decline in it, as it comes to us in 
 the Old Testament. For instance, great as 
 was the character of Moses, and conspicuous 
 as he stands out among the prophets, he is 
 nevertheless as a prophet not by far so great 
 as Isaiah. The special intellectual endow- 
 ments with which the gift of prophecy was at 
 times associated, and to which it bore some 
 resemblance and affinity, reached their high- 
 est culmination in Isaiah, and the reign of 
 Hezekiah may be justly regarded as the 
 Augustan age of Hebrew prophecy. Isaiah, 
 Micah, Nahum, and Hosea were probably 
 more or less contemporary, and flourished 
 about that period, if not actually in some 
 portion of his reign, and perhaps we may say 
 the same of Obadiah. While we can note no 
 difference in the degree of their authority, we 
 must yet allow that intellectually Isaiah stood 
 
1 00 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 pre-eminent among them. The elevation of 
 his genius and his marvellous eloquence mark 
 him out as the very goodliest in all the goodly 
 fellowship of the prophets. Whatever grace 
 or dignity there may have been before, in 
 Moses, Joel, or Hosea, was more than sur- 
 passed in him. The highest efforts of the 
 Hebrew prophetic literature were achieved in 
 him. In the time of his great successor, Je- 
 remiah, we can scarcely fail to note a decline, 
 corresponding to the political decline from 
 Hezekiah to Jehoiakim. In Ezekiel this is 
 marked more strongly still. With the excep- 
 tion of some magnificent chapters, there is but 
 little poetic eloquence in Ezekiel. Imagina- 
 tion has subsided into plain matter of fact. In 
 Daniel it is most of all so ; and while in some 
 respects he is inferior to none of the prophets, 
 the contrast between him and Isaiah is per- 
 haps greater than with any one else. In the 
 writings of the three prophets who flourished 
 after the return from captivity, Haggai, 
 Zechariah, and Malachi, we have the fitting 
 close of a long and brilliant era of prophecy, 
 and the last words of Malachi seem almost to 
 be written under the consciousness that the 
 
The Prophetic Element, i o i 
 
 function of the prophet has been once for 
 all discharged, unless, indeed, some future 
 Elijah shall restore the order of the prophets, 
 as the hairy man of Mount Carmel had 
 restored the worship of the Lord, and inau- 
 gurate and proclaim anew the everlasting 
 sovereignty of the true kingdom of God. 
 
 And this mention of Elijah leads us to its develop- 
 ment of 
 make some reference to that other develop- activity. 
 
 ment of the prophetic office, which he most 
 fitly represents. Though probably not the 
 founder of the schools of the prophets, which 
 seem to have existed in the days of Samuel, 
 he was at any rate, in his time, their head. As 
 far as we know, no written relic of his pro- 
 phetic office has come down to us, nor of 
 that of his successor, Elisha, and yet these 
 two prophets were in their degree second 
 to none in Israel. They were prophets of 
 action, not of literature, and consequently 
 their characters are more out of the field of 
 our investigation, which is concerned mainly 
 with the relics of prophecy contained in the 
 Old Testament. 
 
 But in them also we discern a unity of a similar 
 
 claim ad- 
 principle common to the rest, since they vanced, 
 
I02 The Structure of the Old Testame^it. 
 
 claimed to act in the name of the Lord, as the 
 others claimed to write or speak. And in 
 them also there was another feature con- 
 spicuous, which was likewise common to all, 
 namely, the opposition which they uniformly 
 SS^^^'' encountered. Though the prophet's mission 
 does not seem to have been often questioned, 
 it was almost always resisted. Occasionally 
 his advice was sought by kings and persons 
 in authority, as in the case of Isaiah and 
 Jeremiah ; but much more frequently his in- 
 fluence was opposed, and his calls rejected. 
 Doubtless, with many of the prophets, mar- 
 tyrdom was the reward of their faithfulness. 
 They were required many times to seal their 
 testimony with their blood. If tradition is 
 accepted, Isaiah may have died a cruel death. 
 Jeremiah's we know was a life of persecution. 
 The loud wail of suffering, of rejection, and 
 contempt is more or less common to all the 
 prophets. However honourable may have 
 been the office, it was not always attended 
 with honour. There was a greal deal of risk 
 and of personal danger combined with the 
 profession. This, which is an undeniable 
 fact, is not without its weight as a test of 
 
The Prophetic Element. 103 
 
 reality. There can be no question that the 
 prophets were sincere. Even allowing the 
 possibility of their being mistaken, they did 
 not act with collusion. Jeremiah did not 
 attempt to enhance the reputation of Isaiah. 
 No one played into the other's hands. Cor- 
 roboration there was, but no collusion. One 
 prophet bore his testimony to the message of 
 the other, but only because he had earnestly 
 accepted it himself. Nay, more, he bowed 
 down before it, and appealed to it as an un- 
 deniable word of the Lord ; but the way he 
 did this bore no resemblance to an effort to 
 impose on others by joining in a successful 
 fraud. 
 We see, then, that the prophets as an order They were 
 
 charged with 
 
 were penetrated with a sense of responsibility a d 
 to a Divine commission. They professedly 
 spoke and acted in obedience to its commands. 
 There is no one of the sixteen prophetical 
 books which does not bear witness to the 
 truth of this assertion. It is quite different 
 with other books which are not prophetical. 
 There is no such claim advanced in the 
 Proverbs of Solomon, in Ecclesiastes, in the 
 Lamentations of Jeremiah, or in the historical 
 
 ivine 
 commission. 
 
I04 The Sfrudnre of the Old Testament. 
 
 books. This claim is peculiar to the writings 
 
 of the prophets, and to the Law of Moses, who 
 
 Which was was himself a prophet. Each writer, moreover, 
 
 personal and . . .,..,, . ^ 
 
 individual, rests upon his own mdividual consciousness of 
 a mission. It is ever, The word of the Lord 
 came unto ME. So far, then, we are dealing, 
 not with an isolated phenomenon, but with a 
 series or collection of phenomena, each of 
 which is to that extent a confirmation of the 
 authority on which the others spoke. Some- 
 times the mysterious commission, however 
 conveyed, was complied with most reluctantly. 
 This is especially manifest in the case of 
 Jeremiah and of Jonah, What was that sense 
 of a Divine commission, from the intolerable 
 burden of which Jonah fled to Tarshish, in 
 obedience to which he afterwards went to 
 Nineveh } Did his conduct indicate its reality 
 or its unreality } What was that word of the 
 Lord which was in the heart of Jeremiah as a 
 burni7ig fire shut tip m his bones, so that he was 
 weary with forbearing, a?id could not stay ?* 
 Was this a self-deception, or was it an impulse 
 for which it was as impossible to account as 
 
 * Jer. XX. 9. 
 
The Prophetic Eleine7it. 105 
 
 it was difficult to resist it ? If he was un- 
 willing to yield to it, and only did so at his 
 own cost and peril, are we to say that there 
 was nothing in it but hallucination and false- 
 hood ? Certainly we must pause before we 
 do so. 
 
 For be it observed also, that very frequently Andaccom- 
 
 ' y 1 ^ panied with 
 
 the advent of the Divine commission was f^^^^^^ 
 accompanied with some special and arbitrary 
 command, which was itself not understood 
 till it was interpreted by the message after- 
 wards conveyed. Unless we read backwards 
 the record of these transactions, we cannot 
 but see that it was so. Note for example, instances. 
 the account in Jer. xiii. First the prophet is 
 bidden to take a linen girdle, and put it on his 
 loins, and not put it in water, evidently not 
 knowing of what that action is intended to 
 be significant, but yet performing a definite 
 action in obedience to a specific command 
 which must have been, therefore, clearly per- 
 ceptible and real. Some time afterwards he 
 is bidden to take this girdle to the river 
 Euphrates, and hide it in a hole in the rock, 
 and it was not till a third time, after many 
 days, that the word of the Lord came unto 
 
io6 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 him, and conveyed the particular message 
 which was to be delivered to the house of 
 Judah. It is plain, therefore, that the spiritual 
 message and the command to wear the girdle 
 rest on exactly the same footing, and that the 
 prophet was conscious of the one, and acted 
 on it, long before he received the other. But 
 no man in his senses could mistake about a 
 command to wear a linen girdle, as to whe- 
 ther it was a caprice of his own mind or 
 an injunction which he was bound to obey. 
 The very fact of its being so commonplace 
 in itself, so insignificant, and yet withal so 
 peremptory, serves to throw some light upon 
 the manner in which the Divine communica- 
 tions were vouchsafed, which was evidently in 
 a way that left no room for doubt or hesitancy, 
 but was plainly distinguishable from the 
 ordinary operations of the mind. The same 
 thing may be observed in its degree with 
 respect to the earthen bottle and the message 
 associated therewith in ch. xix., and the 
 conduct of Isaiah, as dictated to him in 
 chs. viii. and xx. It is so also notably with 
 the visions of Zechariah. A definite and 
 distinct spectacle is presented to him inwardly 
 
The Prophetic Ekfneni. 107 
 
 or outwardly, which we know not, and it is 
 ^ot till after he has clearly apprehended and 
 described it that its meaning is communicated 
 to him. 
 
 From the due observation of all these The message 
 
 conveyed in 
 
 phenomena we are surely warranted in in- exTe^ptTonri"^ 
 ferring that the prophetic message was "'^""^'' 
 conveyed in a manner distinct in itself, which 
 could not be confounded with the ordinary 
 teachings of nature or the normal workings of 
 the human mind. It was not every one who 
 was capable of receiving it, nor were the 
 prophets themselves recipients of it at all 
 times. In some cases, as with Hosea, the 
 prophetic mission lasted for a period of sixty 
 or seventy years ; in others, as with Haggai, 
 for something less than four months. But 
 during those four months the prophet must 
 have been conscious of an influence operating 
 on him which was altogether exceptional in 
 his life, but which was sufficiently manifest to 
 others as well as himself, and was not without 
 its effect upon the highest personages of his 
 time and country. 
 
 And we are surely justified in pointing tOThepowerof 
 
 , , the message. 
 
 the influence which the prophets had, whether 
 
io8 The Structure of the Old Testa7ne7it. 
 
 in the way of compliance or of opposition, 
 upon their nation and its rulers, in proof of a 
 certain power in their mission which it was 
 impossible to deny. A set of infatuated and 
 fanatical visionaries would not have met with 
 the kind of treatment they met with, nor have 
 left behind them the mark they left. They 
 were manifestly so far above the men of their 
 own time in moral authority, as we see from 
 the attitude of kings and princes towards 
 them, that there is no power in the present 
 day, or in modern times, at all analogous to 
 theirs. The early influence, for example, of 
 Voltaire with Frederic the Great, to take a 
 case of strong contrast, was nothing compared 
 with the influence of Jeremiah with Josiah, or 
 even indirectly with Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, 
 to say nothing of its diverse origin. What is 
 the influence of Goethe upon modern Ger- 
 many compared with the influence which it is 
 evident Amos exercised upon ' the king- 
 dom of Israel } The difference is vast in 
 degree, not to mention that the influence 
 is totally distinct in kind. This is a fact, 
 at once patent and undeniable, to which full 
 weight must be allowed in seeking to esti- 
 
The Prophetic Element. 109 
 
 mate the prophetic element in the Old Tes- 
 tament. 
 
 Ag^ain, it is not unfrequently asserted that The morai- 
 
 ° ' n y ityofthe 
 
 the morality of the prophets is higher than prophets, 
 that of the Law. That it exhibits a pro- 
 gression in the development of spiritual truth 
 we need not deny, and most assuredly the 
 general moral elevation of the prophetical 
 writings is not only consistent with their 
 claim to a Divine authority, but would also 
 present a serious impediment to the notion 
 that the authors were acting on principles 
 which they knew to be false, or were not 
 acting on principles which they knew were 
 true. One thing at least is certain, that from 
 the high moral elevation at which the pro- 
 phets one and all wrote, both king and prophet 
 alike fade into absolute insignificance before 
 that majestic and eternal Being, the truth and 
 justice of whose government they uniformly 
 from first to last proclaim. The prophets, as a 
 class, existed solely for the purpose of bringing 
 back the nation to a loftier standard of justice, 
 truth, and right. They are all at one in this, and 
 the essential unanimity of their teaching is no 
 trivial confirmation of the unity of their origin. 
 
1 1 o The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 S'tteLaw^^ Nor is this all, for in two respects the value 
 of the prophetical writings is very great on 
 very different grounds. For example, the 
 prophets, as a body, virtually base their teach- 
 ing upon the recorded monuments of an earlier 
 revelation. While acting in the consciousness 
 and on the authority of an independent mes- 
 sage, and so supplementing the Law of Moses, 
 they never attempt to supersede it. Isaiah's 
 appeal is to the Law and to the testimony ^ 
 while he asserts that if they speak not accordi7ig 
 to this wordy it is becatise there is no light in 
 them* Jeremiah is so imbued with the spirit 
 and tone of Deuteronomy, that some rash critics 
 have supposed he wrote it. Hosea, Joel, and 
 Amos imply f and enforce the spiritual autho- 
 rity of the Mosaic dispensation, while the pro- 
 phetic ofnce is closed with the injunction of 
 Malachi, Remember ye the law of Moses my 
 servant. % The prophets, as a body, feel that 
 the Law is the written standard of the re- 
 vealed will of God, in obedience to which the 
 life of the nation consists. 
 
 * Isa. viii, 20. 
 
 f Hos. V. lo, xii, 9 ; Joel ii. 13 ; Amos v, 21 — 26 ; viii. 5. 
 
 + Mai. iv. 4. 
 
The Prophetic Element. 1 1 1 
 
 But secondly, the prophetical writings are Their bear- 
 ing on the 
 
 of great value as regards the independent history. 
 testimony they bear to the national history.' 
 This testimony is never at variance with, and 
 it frequently illustrates, what we learn by the 
 ordinary historical records. The calves of 
 Bethel and Dan are assured to us as facts by 
 the prophets of Israel, Hosea and Amos.* 
 The divided kingdom cannot be qustioned, 
 when we read the denunciation by Amos of 
 the house of Jeroboam, which itself is inde- 
 pendent confirmation of the promise to Jehu, 
 that his children of the fourth but not the 
 fifth generation should sit upon his throne. f 
 We cannot doubt of the captivity, when we 
 find the prophets so rich in allusions to it; and 
 as some of those allusions were unquestion- 
 ably prior to it, and by no means vague, we 
 cannot reasonably deny to the prophets the 
 
 * Hos. iv. 15, V. 8, viii. 5, 6; Amos vii. 13, viii. 14. 
 
 + Cf. Amos vii, 9, 11. The prophet's words were dis- 
 torted by Amaziah, so that they became untrue. See Diet, of 
 Bible, art. Jeroboam II., where the Dean of Westminster says, 
 misapprehending this distinction, ' The prediction of Amos 
 was not fulfilled as regarded the king himself He was 
 buried with his ancestors in state, 2 Kings xiv. 29 ' ! ! For 
 the family of Jehu, see 2 Kings x. 30, 35 ; xiii. 9; xiv. 16, 29. 
 
1 1 2 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 Their^reia- faculty of prediction.* But before enlarging 
 heathen. upon this latter point, there is one other equally 
 characteristic of the Old Testament prophets 
 which we must by no means disregard, and 
 that is their relation to the heathen. They 
 come before us distinctly as having a mes- 
 sage to other nations besides their own. 
 There is scarcely any contemporary nation of 
 importance to whom they have not a special 
 burden or prophecy to deliver,t and in deli- 
 vering these burdens, they throw down their 
 challenge in a more peculiar manner to futu- 
 rity. It is hardly probable that in those 
 days the message of any prophet would have 
 a very wide circulation among the foreign 
 people whom it might more immediately 
 concern. What Isaiah proclaimed against 
 Egypt would be known, comparatively speak- 
 ing, to few Egyptians, and believed by still 
 fewer. His burden was a treasure committed 
 in trust to posterity to be tried and tested by 
 
 * Amosv. 27; Mic. iii. 12; Hos. viii. 14, xi. 11, xiii, 16; 
 Ezek. i. I. 
 
 f Isa. xiii. — xxiii. ; Jer. xlvi. — li, ; Ezek. xxv. — xxxii., xxxv., 
 xxxviii., xxxix. ; Amos i. — ii. 3. See also especially the Dean 
 of Canterbury's striking Bampton Lecture on the prophet 
 Jonah. 
 
The Prophetic Ekment, 1 13 
 
 long ages of observation and study. But the 
 burden was a fact, and it shewed at least this, 
 that in the prophet's belief his message and 
 mission had a far wider area than his own 
 nation, and that its worth must be determined 
 far more by future than by contemporary 
 time. Moreover, the one feature character- 
 istic of all these prophecies against th-e 
 heathen, was that the God of Israel was their 
 ruler and judge. It was the Lord of hosts 
 who was to do His wonders among them, to 
 overthrow' and to destroy them, and, in many 
 cases, eventually to be acknowledged among 
 them.* 
 
 There is, in short, in the phenomena of Their mes- 
 sage univer 
 
 prophecy, as we see them, a consciousness ^^^f^j^^^f " ''-'' 
 of universality which is startling and unac- 
 countable, when we bear in mind that the 
 nation in whom this gift of prophecy was 
 developed Avas by its very constitution, and 
 yet more by its temperament, the most exclu- 
 sive of all nations. The writings of the pro- 
 phets bear undeniable evidence that they 
 considered themselves commissioned, not to a 
 
 * Ezek. xxxvii. 28 ; xxxviii. 23 ; Isa. xix, 19, 21, 22 ; xiv. 25 ; 
 xiii. 1 1 ; Jer. xlvi. lo ; xlviii. 35 ; xlix. 35 ; ii. 44, 47, 64, etc. 
 
 I 
 
1 1 4 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 nation, but to the world at large."^ Take for 
 example the case of the prophet Jeremiah, 
 whose position in the politics of his time and 
 nation was more prominent and conspicuous 
 than that of any other, and who so far there- 
 fore was strictly a national prophet, and yet, 
 what are the terms in which he receives his 
 first commission ? Before thoti earnest forth out 
 of the womb I sanctified theCy and I ordained tJiee 
 a prophet 7into the nations. See I have this day 
 set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, 
 to 7'oot out, and to pidl down, and to destroy, 
 jer. 1. 5. lo. cind to throw down, to build, and to plant. On 
 the very lowest interpretation, it is impossible 
 to accept these words as other than the con- 
 fession of a very strong and deep conviction 
 in the prophet's mind, that his message con- 
 cerned many more besides Judah and Israel,^ 
 and was addressed in fact to the world at 
 large. It speaks out in no ambiguous terms 
 his consciousness of its universality. And 
 this is a phenomenon peculiar to the Old 
 Testament prophets, which demands of all 
 reasonable minds a rational explanation, but 
 
 * Ezek. xxxix. 7, 21, 23, 27 ; Jer. xvi. 19 ; li. 15, etc- 
 
The Prophetic Eleme7it, 1 1 5 
 
 for which none so rational can be given as that 
 it was not less real in fact, than it was in 
 idea. But if the prophet's commission was a 
 reality in fact, then his function is hereby 
 established, and he was nothing less than he 
 professed to be ; namely, the prophet of the 
 Lord. He bore a supernatural commission, Their com~ 
 
 mission su- 
 
 which was communicated in a supernatural pematurai. 
 
 manner, the existing features of which declare 
 
 it to have been supernatural, inasmuch as 
 
 they transcend the experience and the limits 
 
 of nature. Lastly, with regard to the predic- Thekpredic- 
 
 ^ live power. 
 
 tive power of prophecy ; the prophets claimed 
 to have possessed this power. We see they 
 did by the very form of their writings. It is 
 difficult to say what meaning could have been 
 attached to those early passages in Hosea 
 which are applied by St. Paul to the ingather- 
 ing of the Gentiles, either in the prophet's 
 own time, or for many ages subsequently. 
 And yet they must have had a meaning, they 
 contained a definite assertion, they gave a 
 distinct announcement of the Divine action 
 in the future, and certainly they do on any 
 grounds receive a very remarkable illustration 
 in the subsequent development of those events, 
 
1 1 6 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 to which the Epistle to the Romans is itself a 
 sufficient and a standing witness. The fact that 
 the most enlightened nations of the world do 
 now worship the God whom Hosea proclaimed 
 some eight centuries before Christ, and whom 
 he said they should worship, calling Him their 
 God, is at least in striking harmony with the 
 notion which would recognise in him a prophet 
 who was Divinely illuminated and commis- 
 sioned to predict this fact. The prediction 
 itself is sufficiently patent, but the corres- 
 pondence of the fact therewith is no less plain. 
 Nor can the utterance of any such prediction 
 be referred to chance, if we find the prophets 
 themselves laying claim to the predictive 
 faculty. And there are many indications that 
 they did so. The prophet Isaiah distinctly 
 challenges the gods of the heathen to shew 
 us what shall happen, implying not only that 
 such a thing was beyond their power, but 
 that the' Lord had asserted Himself in doing 
 it. Speaking in the name of the Lord, he 
 isa. xii. 22. says, Behold, the former things are come to 
 pass, and new things do I declare ; before they 
 spring forth I tell you of them. He mentions 
 it as a recognised fact, that the Lord confirmeth 
 
The Prophetic Element. 1 1 7 
 
 the word of His servant, and perfomneth tJie isa. xiu. 9. 
 counsel of His messengers. In conformity, 
 therefore, with such assertions, we might 
 reasonably expect to meet with instances in 
 the prophets that could successfully challenge 
 to themselves the right to be considered as 
 bond fide predictions. Certainly, the unpa- 
 ralleled sublimity of the latter chapters of 
 Isaiah, and the calm confidence with which 
 they claim to be the immediate utterance of 
 the Most High, might well wrest from us the 
 admission of their containing also intentional 
 predictions, if that would by any means 
 enhance their claim to a more than human 
 origin. But it is to be feared that if we shut 
 our eyes to the patent evidences of this, 
 nothing else will convince us of it. 
 
 As an instance, however, that the faculty The instance 
 of clear and definite prediction was exercised 
 by the prophets in the discharge of their ordi- 
 nary functions, we may take the episode of 
 Hananiah's death, in the history of Jeremiah. 
 It is not possible to deal fairly with that 
 episode, and not recognise a real prediction 
 in it. After Jeremiah had declared that the 
 remnant of the sacred vessels in the house of 
 
1 1 8 The Structure of the Old Testame?it, 
 
 the Lord should be carried to Babylon, Hana- 
 niah, the son of Azur, who is called the prophet, 
 as though he exercised a real Divine com- 
 mission, declared in the most solemn manner 
 that within two years all the vessels should 
 be brought again to Jerusalem^ together with 
 the king Jehoiachin and all the captives, and 
 in witness of it he broke the yoke from off 
 the neck of Jeremiah^ which that prophet had 
 been commanded to make. Whereupon we 
 are told the prophet Jeremiah went his way, 
 and some time afterwards was bidden to make 
 yokes of iron instead of wood, and to go with 
 a message to Hananiah, to the effect that, since 
 he had spoken a lie in the name of the Lord, 
 he should die the same year ; and the narrative 
 continues to inform us that he died the same 
 year, in the seventh month, that is, about two 
 months afterwards. Now it is scarcely possible 
 to call in question this narrative, from the 
 publicity that must have been given to it 
 within the lifetime of multitudes who could 
 attest its truth, or who would have been able 
 to impugn it if false. The prophet's honour 
 and veracity were staked upon it, and we 
 doubtless have in it a simple narrative of a 
 
The Prophetic Element. 119 
 
 very striking incident that was witnessed by 
 many prominent and unimpeachable witnesses. 
 But in the narrative there is a definite pre- 
 diction, and the record of its exact fulfilment, 
 and this prediction was uttered in the exercise 
 of the same faculty by which the prophet's 
 office was commonly discharged. It is de- 
 scribed in the usual terms : The word of tJte 
 Lord came tmto Jeremiah the prophet. We 
 have in it, therefore, an instance of the way 
 in which the prophet's mind became the 
 subject of Divine communication, and this 
 time it was a communication entirely beyond 
 the confines of human knowledge, implying a 
 supernatural access to the secrets of the Divine 
 mind. It is impossible, therefore, to accept 
 this narrative literally, and not see in it an 
 index to the general character of those com- 
 munications, of which it does not profess to be 
 an exceptional manifestation. In the majority The pro- 
 
 •»■ ■'J phet s not a 
 
 of cases it may be that we are not competent ^"^^^• 
 judges how far the subject-matter of the 
 communication made was or was not, strictly 
 speaking, supernatural, but in this case there 
 is no room for doubt, and we may rightly 
 infer from the subject-matter of the communi- 
 
1 20 The Structure of the Old Testamefit. 
 
 cation, that the method of making the com- 
 munication was itself Divine ; that is to say, 
 the prophet's judgment of Hananiah was not 
 a fortuitously successful guess, but the utter- 
 ance of a Divine decision of which he was 
 the appointed agent. 
 Other in- ]v^qj. jg this an isolated instance. We mis^ht 
 
 stances, <-> 
 
 point also to the prophecy of Ezekiel,* that 
 Zedekiah should be brought to Babylon, but 
 should not see it, though he should die there. 
 This prophecy was manifestly uttered before 
 the event, both from a comparison of dates in 
 the book itself, and also from the fact that 
 otherwise the pubhcation of it would have 
 been fatal to the reputation of the prophet.-j* 
 But his own words were abundantly confirmed, 
 and his nation knew that there had been a 
 prophet among them. In like manner we find 
 that the day of the commencement of the 
 siege of Jerusalem was supernaturally revealed 
 to EzekielJ when in captivity by the river 
 
 * Ezek. xii. 13. 
 
 t See also the famous prophecy of Isaiah, ch. xxxvii., to 
 which the same remark applies ; cf. Isa. xxxix., Jer. xxxii., 
 Ezek. xxiv. 16, etc. 
 
 + Ezek. xxiv. i, 2 ; cf. 2 Kings xxv. i. 
 
The Prophetic Eleme7it. 121 
 
 Chebar, which shows us the Spirit of prophecy 
 making known events far distant in space, as 
 we ordinarily conceive of Him revealing those 
 far distant in time. So that on the whole it 
 would seem we may safely affirm that the 
 impression left on the mind of an unbiassed 
 observer, in view of the existing phenomena 
 of the Old Testament Scriptures, is that the 
 presence of a supernaturally prophetic element 
 in them is a patent fact. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE POETIC ELEMENT. 
 
 Whatever objection may exist in some 
 minds to recognising a really supernatural 
 prophetic element in the ancient Hebrew 
 Scriptures, almost all persons will readily 
 admit that there is to be found in them a vast 
 and deep mine of genuine poetry. It is this 
 poetical element that we must now consider. 
 
 There is in some respects a natural affinity 
 between these two elements of poetry and 
 prophecy as they exist in the Old Testament, 
 inasmuch as a large portion of the prophecy 
 is expressed poetically, and not a little of the 
 poetry is prophetic ; but, as we have seen, 
 poetry is by no means the exclusive, or even 
 the ordinary, medium of communication for 
 prophecy; and since prophecy differs in kind, 
 and not only in degree, from the spontaneous 
 
The Poetic Element. 123 
 
 operations of the intellect, poetry, which is 
 the natural endowment of genius, may be 
 regarded separately as distinct from it. 
 
 There is, however, almost as much difficulty 
 in defining poetry as prophecy. Each appeals 
 to a special faculty for recognition. Poetry 
 speaks in vain to the matter-of-fact or prosaic 
 man, and prophecy can alone be appreciated 
 — if we decline to say perceived — by the 
 spiritual faculty, whose organ is faith. For 
 even the exact correspondence of prophecy 
 and its fulfilment must fail to bring home 
 conviction to the mind which refuses to be 
 convinced. However startling the phenomena 
 may be, there is always some way of avoiding 
 the legitimate and moral weight of their 
 influence. And with poetry it is neither easy 
 to define its limits nor to compel the appre- 
 ciation of its spirit. Those who have no 
 poetic sense cannot discern poetry any more 
 than those who are colour-blind can perceive 
 the difference between red and green. It has 
 been the fashion, for example, with some 
 persons of late years, to speak of the first 
 chapter of Genesis as poetical. To regard it 
 as such has appeared to ofier a wider and 
 
124 The Structure of the Old TestaiJient. 
 
 more convenient latitude of interpretation 
 than to take it for what it most undoubtedly 
 is, plain and simple prose. 
 Old Testa- fo enter, however, on the task of defining^ 
 
 ment poetry ' ' "^ 
 
 fnDavid^^ poetry is scarcely within the limits of our 
 subject, but only to note the characteristics 
 of Old Testament poetry, and observe its 
 functions. As the Hebrew prophecy gathers 
 chiefly round the age of Hezekiah, not as 
 being himself a prophet, but as representing 
 the period of ils highest development, so does 
 the poetry of Scripture, though scattered over 
 every portion of it, suggest one representative 
 name, which is that of David. Recent criti- 
 cism has indeed attempted to deprive him of 
 much of his traditional glory by denying him 
 the authorship of many of the psalms ascribed 
 to him, but without success, because without 
 adequate reason or sufficient evidence ; and in 
 the absence of more conclusive proof to the 
 contrary, we may still take it for granted 
 that he was the author, if not of the chief 
 portion of the psalms, at least of a much 
 larger portion than any one else. 
 
 ..The era of Thc book of Psalms, however, which from 
 
 the poetry. 
 
 its very nature may be regarded as wholly 
 
The Poetic Element. 125 
 
 poetical, is itself an anthology or poetical 
 collection representing many ages. Believing, 
 as we may with more probability than not, 
 that the nineteenth psalm is the work of 
 Moses, we have in this book compositions 
 extending from the age of the Exodus at least 
 to the era of the second Temple, if not, as 
 some have conjectured without corroborative 
 evidence, to the age of the Maccabees. Here 
 alone is a period probably of at least a thou- 
 sand years. 
 
 The Psalter in Hebrew is divided into five Division of 
 
 the Psalms 
 
 books, perhaps to make it uniform in this 
 respect with the Pentateuch, or for some 
 other reason of which we are ignorant, which 
 end respectively with the 41st, the 72nd, the 
 89th, the io6th, and the 150th psalms. Each 
 of these psalms ends with a doxology, or 
 ascription of praise: the first three with the 
 words Amen and Amcfi, the fourth ^\\kv Amen, 
 Hallelujah, and the last with Hallelujah only, 
 as though praise unceasing were to form the 
 occupation of the world of praise. 
 
 It is impossible not to observe that there is a plan in 
 
 . , 1 , . 1 their order 
 
 a certam prmciple or plan observed m the 
 traditional arrangement of the psalms, though 
 
1 26 The Structure of the Old Testa7nent. 
 
 it may not be very definite or very closely 
 followed : for example, the first psalm is 
 clearly a kind of introduction to the whole 
 book, and the last psalms swell louder and 
 louder the notes of praise, as though they 
 were intended to be the fitting conclusion to 
 a series of hymns and prayers which had so 
 often been fraught with sorrow. Some also 
 have traced with greater or less success and 
 probability, a connecting line of thought be- 
 tween many consecutive psalms ;* but we need 
 not enter into this, as it is not the Psalter 
 itself which is the subject of our inquiry, but 
 the poetry of which it forms a portion. 
 Other trea- ^^^ although somc of thc carHcst and latest 
 
 sunes 01 o 
 
 poetry, poctical compositions of the Hebrew literature 
 are to be found in the book of Psalms, there 
 are many other specimens to be taken into 
 account which exist elsewhere. Various iso- 
 lated fragments are to be found in Genesis ; 
 as, for instance, the address of Lamech to his 
 wives, the curse and blessing of Noah, the 
 blessing of Jacob and Esau, Jacob's dying 
 
 * More especially has this been done in a very interesting 
 manner by Dr. Kay, in his excellent book upon the Psalms. 
 
The Poetic Element. 127 
 
 and prophetic benediction of his children. 
 All these are clearly poetic. In Exodus we 
 have the song of Moses and Miriam. In 
 Numbers sundry quotations from ancient 
 songs, and the splendid prophecies of Balaam. 
 In Deuteronomy the song and blessing of 
 Moses. In the historical books we have 
 occasional brief quotations which appear to 
 be poetical, together with the song of Deborah 
 and Barak, David's lamentation over Saul 
 and Jonathan, David's last words, and a du- 
 plicate version of the eighteenth psalm. 
 These are most of them obviously poetical, 
 from their circumstances and subject-matter 
 no less than from their form. But besides Poetical 
 
 prose. 
 
 this body of poetry and song there is in the 
 Old Testament a large amount of highly 
 elevated and sublime writing which, if not 
 actually poetic, is a lofty kind of modulated 
 and poetic or oratorical prose. Such are the 
 twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus and a large 
 portion of Deuteronomy. The same may be 
 said of much of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and of 
 the minor Prophets generally. There are also 
 the early chapters of the Proverbs of Solomon, 
 which appeal to the imagination as poetical, if 
 
128 The Sirtcdure of the Old Testament. 
 
 they are not in form poetry. Then there is 
 the Song of Songs, the book of Job, and the 
 prophet Isaiah, which may be said to complete 
 the body of Old Testament poetry. 
 Diversity of And in this catalogue there is perhaps as 
 
 subject- , 
 
 matter. large a variety of subject-matter as may be 
 found in any literature. There are love-songs 
 and war-songs and elegies. There is respon- 
 sive argumentative poetry in Job, which some 
 have called dramatic, while the history of that 
 book is itself an epic, with a beginning, middle, 
 and end. There is classic poetry, devotional 
 poetry, didactic poetry. At least, there is all 
 this diversity of subject-matter, although 
 indeed the poetry of the Old Testament does 
 not lend itself readily to those divisions with 
 which we are more familiar in the classical 
 languages, but requires to be viewed in its 
 own character, and judged on its own merits. 
 The poetry of the Hebrews is not metrical, 
 
 The poetry ^ '' 
 
 not metrical. ^^^ rhyme is, properly speaking, not known, 
 to it, but it is chiefly characterised by a system 
 of parallelism, of which Noah's curse or Isaac's 
 blessing furnishes a sufficiently intelligible 
 example to any one. Sometimes the parallel- 
 ism is very simple, at others it is more ela-* 
 
The Poetic Element, i2g 
 
 borately constructed ; but the feature that is its chief 
 
 character- 
 most characteristic about the Hebrew poetry i'^tic 
 
 is the readiness with which the impression of 
 its poetic form is communicated to another 
 language. Write out a few Hnes of Homer 
 or Virgil, of Pindar or Horace, in English, and 
 they will be scarcely distinguishable from 
 simple prose. A hyperbolical expression, or 
 an ornamental epithet is perhaps the most 
 striking and characteristic feature that will 
 remain. But the subhmity of Isaiah it is not 
 possible to disguise. Read the first, the four- 
 teenth, or the forty-first chapter in our 
 English Bible, and you have a noble specimen 
 of poetic oratorical eloquence of which none 
 can fail to be conscious. Take a prose trans- 
 lation of any poet, and one feels at once what 
 loss and detriment the writer has suffered, how 
 greatly he has been indebted to melody or to 
 rhythm ; but read the Hebrew poetry where 
 perhaps it shows to least advantage, in the 
 Greek of the Septuagint, and its essential 
 features are still recognisable, its peculiar 
 beauty still perceptible. 
 
 The German language possesses a very schiegei and 
 admirable translation of Shakespeare in the Shakespeare. 
 
 K 
 
130 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 version of Schlegel and Tieck, which is pro- 
 bably one of the best specimens of translated 
 poetry to be found anywhere ; but, faithful and 
 excellent as this may be, it is itself a triumph 
 of successful rendering, which can rarely 
 be repeated, and it owes much to the skill 
 and genius of the translators who have cast 
 in a poetic form the poetry of Shakespeare ; 
 but write out the best portions of the same 
 poetry in literal prose, and what will they 
 not suffer ? Now with the Hebrew poets it 
 is quite otherwise ; they owe nothing to the 
 accidents of any poetic form. The most exact 
 verbal rendering of their language brings us 
 nearest to the spirit of their poetry. And thus 
 there are no poetic compositions in any 
 language which are so entirely independent 
 of the original language in which they are 
 written as those of the Old Testament. 
 
 And if we inquire into the causes of this, 
 from Isaiah, j^ niay scrvc to reveal to us some of the 
 peculiar characteristics of Old Testament 
 poetry. Take for example the opening verses 
 of Isaiah : Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O 
 earth : for the Lord hath spoken, I have 
 nourished and brought up children, and they 
 
 Instance 
 
The Poetic Element. 131 
 
 have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his 
 owner, aitd the ass his master's crib : but Israel 
 doth not know, my people doth not consider. 
 In these two verses, which in our ordinary- 
 printed Bibles occupy barely more than as 
 many lines, it is scarcely possible to make 
 more than a few verbal alterations, and these 
 would not perceptibly alter the thought of 
 the poet, which is transparently clear. And 
 yet in these few lines how many splendid 
 images are gathered together ! First, there is Anaiysi; 
 
 of it. 
 
 the apostrophe addressed to heaven and earth, 
 which is as majestic as it is brief ; but this 
 apostrophe, brief as it is, (and in Hebrew it 
 is included in four words,) is relieved by a 
 change in the use of the verbs, which is 
 capable of being represented probably in 
 any language. Hear, and give ear. In the 
 original, however, this contrast is still further 
 heightened by the one verb being in the 
 masculine plural, and the other in the femi- 
 nine singular, in consequence of the number 
 and gender of the nouns heavens and earth. 
 The sublimity of the prophet's thought, how- 
 ever, is entirely independent of any such acci- 
 dent of language, and is readily communicable 
 
132 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 by any medium of speech. But secondly, the 
 only adequate reason for the use of any such 
 bold apostrophe is at once supplied by the 
 dignity of the Speaker on the occasion of 
 its being employed : For tJie Lord hatJi spoJzen. 
 When the Creator of heaven and earth speaks, 
 it must be right and needful for them to 
 hearken. Thirdly, the invocation addressed 
 to heaven and earth is an appeal for sympa- 
 thy. The Creator appeals as the parent of 
 ungrateful children, the sustainer of a lot as 
 hard as any that the sons of men are called 
 to endure. He calls upon them to witness 
 the wrongs He has endured : My children have 
 rebelled against me. Fourthly, the conduct of 
 Israel is thrown into yet stronger relief by 
 comparing it with the instinct of the brute 
 creation. Even the ox and the ass know 
 the way to their fodder, and come at their 
 master's call, but Israel doth not know, my 
 people doth not consider. 
 Fertility of Wc may truly say that in these few brief 
 
 thought and . , 
 
 clearness ot words thcrc arc comprised as many images, 
 
 expression. 
 
 and there are as many thoughts suggested, 
 as can well be gathered together in as few 
 lines, and yet they are easy of apprehension 
 
The Poeiic Eltvient. 133 
 
 and simple in expression. Whatever may be 
 
 their original form, whatever may distinguish 
 
 them from prose in their native language, they 
 
 owe none of their essential and intrinsic merits 
 
 to that ; their central meaning is as distinct 
 
 and clear as the pebbles in a mountain stream. 
 
 But there is this great advantage that the union of 
 . noble sub- 
 
 sacred poetry is found to possess above all jects and 
 
 others, that its subject-matter is always com- language. 
 mensurate with its highest efforts, and worthy 
 of its noblest eloquence. Milton was influ- 
 enced by considerations of this nature in 
 selecting the subject for his great poem. The 
 siege of Troy or the wanderings of Ulysses 
 might have been of absorbing interest to those 
 who were emerging from the mythical age. 
 The foundation of Rome by ^neas would 
 command the attention of those who were 
 its citizens and members of an empire whose 
 sway was universal; but no modern poet could 
 hope to kindle a fire out of the ashes of these 
 extinct themes and interests, and therefore 
 Milton, with the predilections of a sincere 
 believer, selected a subject of human and 
 of universal interest. And \\\ like manner, if 
 the Hebrew poets had lent themselves to the 
 
13/] The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 glorification of themselves or their sovereigns 
 and warriors, it is possible that they might 
 have produced poetry of the first order, but 
 it would have been of merely local and 
 national interest. But their subject was other 
 than the disasters of the house of QEdipus 
 or the praise of love or wine. It was for the 
 most part the prolonged remonstrance of 
 God with the rebellions of Israel, an elegy 
 over their backslidings, the prayer for speedy 
 deliverance, or the thanksgiving for timely 
 Of human succour. Thus the poetry of Israel was in 
 
 and universal 
 
 interest. thc trucst and deepest sense human, and in 
 the widest sense of universal interest 
 
 As long as the career of mortal man is 
 what it is in life, chequered by trial, danger, 
 and bereavement; as long as the human heart 
 is what it is, full of want ^nd sin, and ever 
 liable to sorrow, so long will the Psalms of 
 David find their echo there, and not fail of 
 earnest and anxious readers. The songs of 
 Horace or Anacreon will please for a while, 
 and will please an educated many or few, as 
 the case may be; but the time will come when 
 these will lose their sweetness for even their 
 greatest admirers, and there must always be 
 
The Poetic Element. 135 
 
 many whom they will fail to touch ; but with 
 respect to the prayers and hymns of David Endowed 
 
 ■"• ^ with perpe- 
 
 there can be no such thing as old age. They '"^* y^^^^ 
 are the voice of man as man, and they are the 
 truest expression of what must ever be perma- 
 nent and unchanging, man's relation to God. 
 
 Nor is it necessary to look far for a reason, 
 because the Psalms deal more especially with 
 those aspects of human life in which all men And of wide 
 
 sympathy. 
 
 are reduced to a common level, imminent 
 danger, heart-rending grief, and the passionate 
 longing for Divine assistance. It is self-evi- 
 dent that many of the Psalms are the natural 
 spontaneous outpouring of the joy or sorrow 
 of the writer. In this respect they are simply 
 unrivalled, and stand alone among all the 
 poetry of all nations and languages. 
 
 But apart from this characteristic of them, 
 many of the Psalms are perfect specimens of 
 mere literary composition, as, for instance, the 
 first, the twenty-third, the forty-second, the 
 sixty-third, the hundredth, and many others. 
 These are all jewels of the first water, and will 
 bear comparison with the lyrical compositions 
 of any poet or any language. There can be 
 no question but that were it not for the sacred 
 
136 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 And deep and rdigioiis character of these poems, they 
 
 piety. 
 
 would be hailed by all men as the choicest 
 and most admired of lyrical productions. It 
 is only because they are not secular that they 
 do not find universal acknowledgment. But, 
 in spite of the true universaHty of their in- 
 terest, it is this feature of them which limits 
 their appreciation to a class, the class, namely, 
 of those who are not only capable of appre- 
 ciating the writer's poetry, but also of sympa- 
 thising with his faith. 
 Interwoven Morcovcr thc Hcbrcw poetry, as represented 
 
 with the 
 
 history and by thc book of Psalms, is not without its 
 
 prophecy. "^ 
 
 bearing both on the historic and the prophetic 
 elements of the Old Testament, and so forms 
 a link in the integrity and unity of its struc- 
 ture. The historic Psalms, such as the se- 
 venty-eighth, the hundred and fifth, the 
 hundred and sixth, the hundred and thirty- 
 fifth, and hundred and thirty-sixth, whatever 
 may be their date, are of priceless value, 
 because they serve to confirm the substantial 
 truth of the national records. They are an 
 independent witness to the salient points of 
 the national history. It is important to ob- 
 serve the limit at which these historical sum- 
 
The Poetic Element. 137' 
 
 maries respectively end. The first goes no 
 farther than the reign of David, who may 
 have been still king when it was written. 
 The second ends with the occupation of 
 Canaan. The third is doubtful, as it may 
 either embrace the period of the judges, or 
 may be a review of the entire history down 
 to the close of the monarchy, though the 
 former is more likely. The fifth and sixth 
 go no farther than the wars of Joshua, if 
 so far. It is not possible to pronounce with 
 certainty on the date of these Psalms, but 
 there can be no doubt that from their contents 
 a presumption exists in favour of their high 
 antiquity, as it would have been natural in 
 any late writer to carry down his allusions to 
 the history nearer to his own time, which it is 
 manifest has not been done. But in propor- 
 tion to the antiquity of these Psalms is the 
 value of their independent witness to the 
 history of the nation. And the mere fact of 
 their silence as to any events of which we 
 have not the written record, is a strong reason 
 for inferring that this record was in existence 
 at the time when they were written, and a 
 proof that it was deeply imprinted on the 
 
138 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 memory of the people. It is this double 
 stream of historical narration, and of national 
 poetry corroborating it, that is so characteristic 
 of the Hebrew literature, and that is at once 
 unique in the Old Testament, and an evidence 
 of its structural unity. 
 Sms ^^ however some of the Psalms are histo- 
 
 propheticai. j.|^^|^ there are many others which we must 
 call prophetical. The second, the sixteenth, 
 the twenty-second, and the seventy-second are 
 such as cannot be interpreted without violence 
 of merely personal incidents, or only of local 
 and national affairs. Take for instance the 
 second Psalm : Ask of me, and I shall give thee 
 the heathen for thine inheritance, and the titter- 
 most parts of the earth for thy possession, are 
 words which neither David nor Solomon could 
 ever have spoken of himself or supposed would 
 be realised in him. They transcend the limits 
 even of self-adulation or eastern hyperbole. 
 '^^h^^^^ebrew gut whether we are at liberty to take them 
 literally or not, certain it is that the Hebrew 
 prophets and poets are full of the most con- 
 fident expressions that the worship of their 
 God is destined to be the worship of the 
 whole world. It is continually asserted, in 
 
 breadth of 
 view. 
 
The Poetic Element. 139 
 
 language of no ambiguity, that the Lord is 
 King of all the earth, and that He will even- 
 tually establish His kingdom. This is the 
 broad and general way of stating the pro- 
 phetic character of Scripture, and it is one 
 that is incontrovertible, while the character 
 itself is without parallel elsewhere. Exclusive 
 as the Jewish nation was, it was nevertheless 
 profoundly impressed with the consciousness 
 of having a mission to the whole world, and 
 possessing a knowledge of God that would 
 one day be confessed. And it is no insigni- 
 ficant fact that the entire Christian Church 
 has accepted that knowledge as authentic, 
 and so far confessed the mission of Israel to 
 have been Divine. This circumstance alone 
 is a striking commentary on such words as 
 Out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the 
 word of the Lord from Jerusalem.* The Lord 
 thy God, O Ziotiy shall be King for evermore 
 and throughout all generations. ^ The Lord 
 gave the word ; great was the company of 
 them that published it.X Compare especially 
 Ps. Ixvii. and i Kings viii. 43. 
 
 * Isa. ii. 3. f Ps. cxlvi, lO. X Ps. Ixviii. i.i. 
 
1 40 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 TTieirprm- As tlic poctrv of the Old Testament is 
 
 ciples of ■■• -^ 
 
 compositioi. neither rhythmical nor alliterative, but is 
 marked by a peculiarity of structure, which 
 is not easily lost in translation, so it is certain 
 that no poetry is so little indebted to the 
 accidents of its form as this. We are vir- 
 tually ignorant of the principles of its compo- 
 sition, and, in fact, we may reasonably doubt 
 whether it was governed by any other more 
 recondite principles than those of parallelism, 
 which are apparent to every one.* It seems 
 to have been as little fettered in its composi- 
 tion as the more irregular of the Greek 
 choruses were, and it certainly was far more 
 successful than they in conveying to the mind 
 of the unlearned reader the sense of its being 
 poetry. Take for example these four verses 
 • from the eighty-ninth Psalm : — Lord, the 
 very Jieaveiis sJiall praise Thy wondrous works, 
 and Thy trntJi shall be praised in the congre- 
 gatioji of the saints. For zvJio is he aniojig the 
 
 * "Whatever other artifices might have been employed 
 by the poets of ancient Israel, if there were others, it is 
 impossible to ascertain ; the doctrine of parallelism alone has 
 been detected and developed." — Dr. Phillips on the Psalms, 
 1872, vol. i., p. 20. 
 
The Poetic Element, 141 
 
 clouds that shall be compared Jinto the Lord? 
 and what is he among the gods that shall be 
 like unto the Lord? God is very greatly to be 
 feared in the council of the saints, and to be 
 had in reverence of all them that are round 
 about Him. Nothing can be more simple 
 than the structure of these verses, which are 
 not more evidently poetical in Hebrew than 
 they are in English ; and yet, such is the 
 sublimity of the thought expressed, that none 
 can fail to be affected by it, as by the most 
 perfect form of metrical language. Indeed, 
 so successfully and completely is the effect 
 of poetry produced, that a somewhat rude 
 prose translation of the Psalms, either in Latin 
 or in English, is available for the purposes 
 of music in a way that no other human com- 
 positions have ever been, or can be. Certainly, The Psaims 
 
 constitute a 
 
 if a model were wanted which should serve as ^yp^ ^f , 
 
 universal 
 
 a universal type of poetry, we should turn P^'^^'y^ 
 instinctively to the Old Testament ; for there, 
 and there only, the phenomenon presents itself 
 of poetry which again and again has been 
 proved to be so in the languages of the east 
 and west, and north and south. 
 
 But if the form in which the poetry of the 
 
real 
 
 142 The Structure of the Old TestaiJient. 
 
 Old Testament is found, is a proof of its 
 adaptation to a universal field and sphere of 
 influence, so also is the exclusively human 
 character of the sympathy to which it appeals. 
 Stenser ^ ^^^^ large proportion of the Psalms are the 
 outpourings of personal sorrow or joy. And 
 in this sense they are emphatically real. The 
 sorrow or joy which is expressed in the 
 choruses of the Greek drama is far less real 
 than that of the Psalms, and it is difficult to 
 imagine any one seeking to give utterance to 
 his own grief or joy in the language of the Attic 
 poets, or turning to them for sympathy. The 
 more intense and real his grief, the less would 
 be the pleasure he could find in them. 
 But it is far otherwise with the Psalms. When 
 the heart is most full of sorrow, there is a 
 mine of sympathetic feeling there. The enemy 
 hath persecuted my soul, he hath smitten my life 
 down to the ground, he hath laid me in the 
 darkness as the men that have been long dead ; 
 therefore is my spirit vexed within me, and my 
 heart within me is desolate. What music for 
 the sorrowful is in such words! how marvel- 
 lously they lend themselves to the agony of 
 the heart that longs to cry aloud in secret, that 
 
The Poetic Ele7ne7it. 143 
 
 must find some vent, and dares not try to 
 find it in the noisy, heartless, sorrowless 
 world ! The very fact that the form of the 
 poetry is so artless, so unshackled by metre 
 or rhyme, is itself a feature of reality ; for 
 when we are really in sorrow or joy, our 
 thoughts do not spontaneously express them- 
 selves in metre, though it is quite natural that 
 they should flow in some form of measured 
 prose, such as is characteristic of the Psalms. 
 
 The poetry of the Old Testament, as indeed For the 
 
 ^ •' most part 
 
 that of the classical nations of antiquity, is "" ^atuS"^ 
 conspicuously void of appreciation of natural ^^^"*y- 
 beauty. In the mind of the writers the sense 
 of outward nature was entirely subordinated 
 to that of the presence of the God of nature. 
 The sense of the invisible was an over-master- 
 ing passion with them. Nature was but the 
 robe with which the King of kings arrayed 
 Himself, and the thought of His glory over- b^^iq^^j^ 
 powered and swallowed up all other consider- g^^p^^sonai 
 ations that did not centre in Him. There 
 can be no stronger contrast to the Pantheistic 
 tendencies of modern poetry, than that which 
 is furnished by the poets of the Old Testa- 
 ment. From first to last it is the personal 
 
144 '^^^^ Structicre of the Old Testafneiit. 
 
 God, the everlasting, ever-present, but invisible 
 He, before whom the writer bows with reve- 
 rential awe ; but yet with the most unswerving 
 and unbounded confidence. 
 
 There are not wanting evidences that the 
 Hebrew mind was susceptible of the power 
 of nature, and yet its response to it was some- 
 thing very different to our own. The three 
 Psalms which speak most about natural 
 objects are the twenty-ninth, which is descrip- 
 tive of a storm, the hundred and fourth, which 
 is a general survey of the works of nature, 
 and the hundred and forty-eighth, which is 
 an invitation to the powers of nature to join 
 in praising* the Lord. It is not a little 
 remarkable to observe how thoroughly these 
 Psalms are imbued with the teaching of the 
 first chapters of Genesis. Everywhere it is the 
 invisible Lord who is perceived in and through 
 His works. Nowhere do they hide Him from 
 sight ; they are instinct with almost human 
 life, and they are invoked, as though they 
 participated in human consciousness, and were 
 endowed with human reason, but nowhere 
 
 * See also Psalm Ixv. 
 
The Poetic Element. 145 
 
 are they mixed up with God, or identified 
 with Him. They are merely the works of His 
 fingers, and the agents of His will that hasten 
 to do His pleasure. 
 
 From all this, it appears that the intense faith 
 of the Hebrew poets never suffered them to 
 lose sight of the Creator in the works of His 
 creation, or to confound them with Him. If 
 the Old Testament poets did not rise to the 
 modern scientific conception of law, as an 
 inanimate and impersonal force, they at least 
 recognised in nature a Divine order and har- Their senss 
 mony in fulfilment of a Divine word, which, order. 
 it must be confessed, is the noblest idea of 
 the outward world that it is possible for man's 
 mind to cherish or conceive. It is ideally 
 far grander and more poetic than that of an 
 impersonal force which acts without conscious- 
 ness and without design, inasmuch as the idea 
 of life is nobler than that of inanimate exist- 
 ence, and the notion of mind carrying out a 
 purpose is higher than that of blind and 
 necessary impulse. 
 
 The characteristic features, therefore, of Their first 
 Old Testament poetry are : first, the breadth 
 of its intense sympathy, which is as deep as 
 
 L 
 
146 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 human sorrow, and as wide as mental suffer- 
 Second, ing; and secondly, its entire independence 
 of merely verbal accidents, such as metre, 
 rhyme, or the collocation of words, to which 
 the very greatest poets owe so much. The 
 melody of Shakespeare, and the harmony of 
 Milton, are among their chiefest ornaments. 
 Though 
 
 "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin," 
 
 and in this sense Shakespeare is the poet 
 of humanity, yet the empire of his influ- 
 ence must be bounded by the limits of the 
 English language ; where the knowledge of 
 that has not penetrated, the influence of 
 Shakespeare must be, comparatively speak- 
 ing, unfelt ; but it is not too much to say 
 that in spite of the deficiencies of translation, 
 the impossibility of transplanting the exotic 
 peculiarities of Hebrew diction to which, of 
 course, the native poets in common with all 
 others must necessarily owe something, the 
 influence of David as a poet has been felt far 
 more widely among the English-speaking 
 population of the world than ever it was felt 
 in Palestine of old, and this, we repeat, is a . 
 test of true poetic excellence to which no 
 
The Poetic Element, 147 
 
 other poet of ancient or modern days can lay- 
 similar claim. Thirdly, the poets of the Old Third. 
 Testament are wholly independent of the 
 national and local peculiarities of their time 
 and country. It requires small knowledge of 
 the incidents of David's life to be able to 
 appreciate his Psalms. How many have 
 received the message of the thirty-fourth 
 Psalm who are ignorant of the circumstances 
 under which it was penned, to say nothing of 
 the doubt which has been cast upon its origin. 
 The history of the Exodus has a very indirect 
 and far-off influence on the truth and sweet- 
 ness of the ninetieth Psalm, * the prayer of 
 Moses the man of God,' to say nothing of the 
 gratuitous conjecture of Ewald, who refers it to 
 the time of Manasseh.* The tenderness, the 
 beauty, and the power of the Old Testament 
 poetry are totally independent of any such 
 adventitious circumstances connected with 
 their origin or their date. But fourthly, the Fourth 
 most distinctively characteristic feature yet 
 remains, for is not the highest merit of all 
 human poetry of two kinds, either that of 
 
 * Geschichte, iii. 371. 
 
148 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 uttering with incisive accuracy and felicitous 
 ease moral truth, or that of embellishing the 
 outer world with an ideal grace that gives it a 
 charm which for ordinary eyes it does not 
 possess. When Milton says that 
 
 ** The herald lark 
 Left his ground nest, high towering to descry 
 The morn's approach, and greet her with his song, " 
 
 he speaks of a familiar circumstance, always 
 beautiful, in language which brings home that 
 beauty to the imagination through the ear, 
 and enlists the aid of an ideal picture of a 
 watch-tower, which heightens the pleasure 
 conveyed to the ear by the suggestion of vague 
 and undescribed images grateful to the eye ; 
 but he in no way transcends the limits of 
 external nature ; he only culls a garland of 
 her beauties ; and however melodious and 
 grateful his language is in poetry, yet be it 
 observed, when translated into simple prose, 
 it becomes little better than absolute non- 
 sense. But with the Hebrew poets there is 
 not merely the potent enunciation of moral 
 truth which comes home to the conscience, 
 not merely the aggregation of noble images 
 borrowed from the treasury of external nature. 
 
The Poetic Element, 149 
 
 as when Nahum says, The Lord hath His 
 way in the whirlwind and the storm, and the 
 clouds are the dust of His feet ;* but more than 
 all this, the revelation of a new and spiritual Their spiri- 
 
 ' ^ luality. 
 
 world, which owes nothing for its beauty to 
 the fairest images of this material universe, 
 and which, in fact, is as far above it as the 
 heavens are above the earth. This is really 
 the exclusive glory of the Old Testament 
 poets, who stand alone in their knowledge 
 of God, their dependence on God, and their 
 trust in God. It is needless to quote passages, 
 but take the opening of the hundred and 
 eighth Psalm as an instance : O God, my heart 
 is ready, my heart is ready : I will sing and give 
 praise with the best member that I have. A wake, 
 thou lute, and harp : I myself will awake right 
 early. I will give thanks tmto Thee, Lord, 
 among the people : I will sing praises tmto Thee 
 among the nations. For Thy mercy is greater 
 than tJie heavens^ and Thy truth reacJieth unto 
 the clouds. Set up Thyself, O God, above the 
 heavens, and Thy glory above all the eartJi. That 
 Thy beloved may be delivered, let Thy right hand 
 
 * Nahum i. 3. 
 
1 50 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 save thcMy mtd hear Thou me. Here is the 
 revelation of the nature of a Being who can 
 inspire the heart with the liveliest gratitude, 
 to whom the devotion of all the powers is an 
 inadequate offering, who has inspired the 
 mind of the speaker with a sense of unmerited 
 mercy that is as glorious as it is omnipotent, 
 and whose majesty is only equalled by His 
 truth. But without postulating the existence 
 of this Being it is not possible to deduce His 
 existence from the contemplation of nature ; 
 and yet, if that existence is a fact, of what infi- 
 nite insignificance are all other facts and exist- 
 ences compared with it. If the world of the 
 invisible is a reality, and man's relation to it 
 real, as depicted in the Psalms, what a field is 
 opened out for the poetic imagination, and how 
 far more glorious must be its beauties than the 
 fairest and loveliest of the images of earth ! 
 One glimpse of the azure heights of heaven 
 must be incomparably more exquisite than 
 the most successful embellishment of familiar 
 natural sights, one breath laden with the 
 odorous incense of its native airs far more 
 transportingly fragrant than the sweetest and 
 most luscious of Arcadian meadows. 
 
The Poetic Element. 
 
 151 
 
 If, therefore, the greatness and the worth oid Testa 
 
 ment poetry 
 
 of poetry bears any proportion to the dignity unique. 
 and worthiness of its subject-matter, it is ob- 
 vious that the poetry of the Old Testament 
 must stand pre-eminent in this respect, because 
 it is unique. 
 
 But there is one book in the Old Testament The Book of 
 collection that is commonly acknowledged as 
 being of unrivalled sublimity ; this is the 
 book of Job, which treats of the very highest 
 moral problems that can exercise the mind of 
 man. The Greek tragedians were not unac- 
 quainted with the interest attaching to specu- 
 lative questions connected with human destiny ; 
 but no poet, not even Shakspeare, has ever 
 conceived a theme of such vast importance 
 and of such universal interest as that which 
 forms the subject of the book of Job. It is 
 virtually the one problem of life which meets 
 us at every turn, which out of the pale of reve- 
 lation is enveloped in impenetrable obscurity, 
 and which, even with the light shed upon it 
 by the promises of the Gospel, is by no means 
 devoid of profound mystery, namely, the un- 
 equal distribution of suffering in the world, and 
 the blindness with which the righteous rather 
 
152 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 than the wicked appear to be selected as its 
 victims. This verily was a theme well worthy 
 of the noblest composition of the noblest lite- 
 rature in the world to deal with. No literature 
 could lay claim to being really sacred or Divine, 
 to have truly come from God, that did not deal 
 with it. 
 defe^vl '^^^ poetry of the book of Job, however, 
 
 translation, j^g^g sufifcred morc than any poetry of the Old 
 Testament from the deficiencies of the trans- 
 lation. If the authors of the existing author- 
 ised version understood their original, which 
 there is sufficient reason to suppose they did 
 not, they certainly did not succeed in convey- 
 ing its meaning to their readers ; and yet, 
 notwithstanding the rendering, which is often- 
 times so inadequate, how many there are who 
 have been enabled to discover in the book of 
 Job the very noblest of poems ; and, as it is, it 
 is not possible to disguise the sublime beauty 
 of such a passage as the twenty-eighth chapter 
 and others. And, after all, it is the argument 
 rather than the poetry that has suffered in the 
 The gran- authoHscd trauslatlon. The g^randeur of the 
 
 deur of its ° 
 
 p^°^- plot is sufficiently manifest. The spectacle of 
 
 a man of consistent and exceptional righteous- 
 
The Poetic Element. 153 
 
 ness being subjected to altogether exceptional 
 suffering, to the despair of his wife, and the 
 dismay of his nearest friends — of his never- 
 theless holding fast his integrity through the 
 strength of his faith in the righteousness of 
 the unseen, till at last he is vindicated by the 
 voice of God uttered through nature out of 
 the whirlwind and the storm, showing him 
 that if the principles of the moral government 
 of the world are dark, those of its physical 
 government are by no means clear, and till 
 the tide of his prosperity returns in yet greater 
 fulness than before, and he dies in extreme 
 old age, full of riches and honour, — is one 
 of the greatest interest, and fraught with 
 lessons of the profoundest wisdom. The moral 
 teaching of the poem, moreover, is in the 
 highest degree salutary, inasmuch as we 
 learn from it that man is not the plaything 
 of destiny, that the current of his natural 
 life is liable to the influence of spiritual 
 agencies, which, however, are subject to the 
 guidance of an incorruptible Judge, who work- 
 eth all things according to the counsel of His 
 own will, to the ultimate advantage of His 
 creatures, and the confusion of their spiritual 
 
1 54 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 adversaries. So that we may truly say, whether 
 we regard the artistic conception of the form, 
 or the sublimity of its great moral lesson, that 
 it is incomparably the grandest and noblest 
 poem that any language or literature can 
 boast. It is, in fact, an anticipation of the 
 light which the Gospel narrative of the humi- 
 liation and exaltation of Christ has shed upon 
 the problem of man's chequered existence in 
 this life. The moral lesson of Job was the 
 highest achievement of which the human 
 mind was capable before the fuller and more 
 direct revelation of the Gospel ; or, however 
 this might be in the abstract, as a matter of 
 undeniable fact, the literature of the world 
 has enshrined no higher. We may therefore 
 point to it as a triumph of Old Testament 
 genius, a typical sample of Old Testament 
 poetry. 
 Not of It is, however, not a little remarkable, that 
 
 merely 
 
 national jn this rcspcct the book of Job serves to illus- 
 trate another characteristic feature of the 
 Hebrew literature, which is what we should 
 call, in modern language, its cosmopolitan 
 sympathy. The book of Job, though written 
 in Hebrew, and no doubt indigenous to that 
 
 scope. 
 
The Poetic Elemeni. 155 
 
 language, Is nevertheless marked by a total 
 absence of exclusively Hebrew thought. 
 
 The Mosaic history and the Mosaic law are 
 barely, if at all, alluded to in it, and the 
 religion of Job is of the purest, simplest, sub- 
 limest, and most spiritual type. The patri- 
 arch's lot is evidently cast outside the pale 
 of the Divine covenant with Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob, and yet he is as devout a worship- 
 per of the one true God as they were, and no 
 less the object of His fatherly care. In short, 
 the book of Job presents us with a picture of 
 the relation in which the people outside the 
 chosen race stood to the God of the covenant, 
 and it represents Him as a God of righteous- 
 ness and truth, who is no respecter of persons. 
 
 Nor is this a view of the Divine character 
 that is peculiar to the book of Job. A large 
 portion of the prophetic writings, as we have 
 seen, are expressly concerned with nations 
 not of the seed of Israel, and directly addressed 
 to them. And certainly, in the Psalms if 
 anywhere, we find the expression of a faith 
 which is conscious of no limitations of race or 
 family. If we take the sacred literature of 
 any other religion, whether it be the Analects 
 
J 56 The Strtidure of the Old Testament. 
 No similar of Confucius, the Hymns of the Veda,* the 
 
 example ^ 
 
 elsewhere. Gathas of the Zend-Avesta, or the Suras of 
 the Kuran, we shall find it marked with 
 national peculiarities so strong as to be an 
 insuperable barrier to its universal acceptance 
 or even its general circulation among men. 
 But strange to say, the Jewish nation, which 
 was the most exclusive of all, became the 
 parent of a literature which, though mark- 
 
 * Cf. e.g. with the 136th Psalm, of which the chorus or 
 refrain is, "For His mercy endureth for ever," the Vaidik 
 hymn beginning, " Veracious drinker of the Soma juice," of 
 which the chon:s or refrain is, "Do thou, Indra of boundless 
 wealth, enrich us with thousands of excellent cows and horses " 
 (Wilson's Rig-Veda-Sanhita, vol. i., 74) ; or that of which the 
 chorus is, "Come hither (ye gods), from wherever you may 
 be, and drink of the effused libation." (Ibid. p. 280.) In 
 like manner cf. also the following, taken at hazard from the 
 Ya9na : — 
 
 (i) Hymns, reverential adoration, to Ahura-Mazda, and 
 Asha-Vahista, 
 
 (2) We give, we spread abroad, and we make knovra. 
 
 (3) May we attain Thy good kingdom, Ahura-Mazda, for 
 ever. 
 
 (4) Thou art our Ruler, possessed of the good kingdom, for 
 men as well as for women, 
 
 (5) The Wisest among beings in both worlds. 
 
 (6) The good increase we bestow on Thee, the worthy of 
 adoration, the Friend of purity. 
 
 (7) Mayest Thou be to us life and body. 
 
 (8) Thou, the Wisest among the creatures in both worlds, 
 etc., etc. (Bleeck's Avesta, vol. ii., p. 99.) The Analects of 
 Confucius consist for the most part of prudential maxims, and 
 the Kuran abounds with idle and absurd legends. The mere 
 human interest and literary worth of the Old Testament is 
 incomparably superior to any one of these. Next in rank we 
 may place the Veda. 
 
The Poetic Elanent. 157 
 
 edly national, was nevertheless calculated to 
 become the accepted heritage of every lan- 
 guage under heaven, and was fitted to have a 
 world-wide circulation. If the discovery of 
 a universal language would be a boon to 
 mankind, the production of a literature which 
 should be capable of universal adoption, and 
 the invention of a type of poetry which should 
 be at once so lofty and so perfect as to be 
 virtually indestructible, despite the process of 
 transition into any tongue, must be acknow- 
 ledged as a gain of no small advantage, while 
 the bestowal of it would be an honour and 
 glory to any people and to any language; but The giory of 
 this is the honour that is due to the Hebrew literature. 
 nation, and this is the glory of the old Hebrew 
 language. 
 
 In the structure, then, of the Old Testament, its destiny. 
 the poetic element is a conspicuous feature. 
 It lies like grains of gold in the unwashen 
 sand, or a rich vein of silver in the mine. It 
 springs naturally out of the stem of national 
 life like a fruitful bough of graceful and luxu- 
 riant growth. It is the fairest, loftiest, and 
 most fragrant flower in the whole garden of the 
 national literature, and is as inseparable from 
 
158 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 that literature, and as characteristic of it, as 
 the rose is among flowers, or the diamond 
 among gems. And if it is true that it is a far 
 higher privilege to make a nation's songs than 
 to frame its laws, that maxim has received 
 striking illustration in the songs of Zion ; for 
 while the bulk of the nation's legal code has 
 long ago fulfilled its purpose, which was essen- 
 tially national and transient, the area of the 
 moral and spiritual influence of its poetry is 
 destined to expand indefinitely till it is com- 
 mensurate with the family of man, and co- 
 extensive with his speech and thought. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE LEGAL ELEMENT. 
 
 IN a highly composite literature, such as cohesion a 
 that of the Old Testament, which is the th?oid° 
 
 1 • r ' ^ 111 Testament. 
 
 production of many mmds, we should not 
 expect to meet with anything like consistency 
 or cohesion. Individuality of character would 
 necessarily predominate over definite unity of 
 purpose. Among writers stretching over a 
 large space of time, there could indeed be no 
 adherence to a uniform plan. For even if 
 such a plan had been clearly conceived by 
 the earliest writer, those who followed during 
 many centuries would infallibly depart from 
 if they did not fail to appreciate it. If, how- 
 ever, on a survey of the completed whole, 
 any such unity were distinctly visible, it could 
 not but present a remarkable feature to any 
 
1 60 The Structure of the Old Testame?tt. 
 
 thoughtful mind, and one for which it would 
 be difficult to find a parallel. For example, 
 notwithstanding its unity of origin, there is 
 no such unity of principle to be discovered 
 in the Kuran ; still less do the Hymns of the 
 Veda manifest anything corresponding to the 
 unity of the Old Testament, a unity which is 
 the more remarkable inasmuch as it is the 
 result of many opposite and incongruous 
 elements. The unity is like that of the pris- 
 matic colours which blend into one white 
 light. The divergence, for instance, between 
 the book of Esther and the Psalms of David 
 is a very wide one, and yet there are many 
 points common to both. The book of Ruth 
 is very different from the Lamentations of 
 Jeremiah, and yet each in its own way serves 
 to illustrate rather than disprove the unity 
 referred to. For, briefly, the key to this 
 unity is to be found in the underlying con- 
 sciousness which more or less pervades every 
 single book of the Old Testament of an ex- 
 ternal and revealed Law to which the nation 
 was amenable, and by the knowledge of which 
 it was bound together. It must be our en- 
 deavour now to estimate this remaining com- 
 
The Le ml Element, i6i 
 
 ''^> 
 
 ponent element in the structure of the Old 
 Testament, which we may term the legal or 
 forensic element. If we find that the influ- 
 ence of this element is everywhere percep- 
 tible, that it forms virtually the foundation 
 of the whole literature, without which its 
 present phenomena could not have been 
 presented, then we may infer that herein lies 
 a real principle of cohesion, and that some- 
 thing of the nature of an actual originating 
 impulse was communicated by it. 
 
 Take, for example, the Lamentations ofTheLamen- 
 
 ' JT ' tations. 
 
 Jeremiah. Are there evidences in that book 
 of a consciousness of this element as a present 
 and operative influence ? Let us look at the 
 first chapter, by way of seeking for a reply to 
 this question. In the fourth verse we find the 
 prophet lamenting on behalf of Zion that none 
 come to her solemn feasts, but that her ways 
 mourn. Now this word rendered solemn feast 
 is the one used in Exodus and elsewhere of 
 the appointed feasts of the Lord ; it is that 
 after which the Tabernacle of the Congrega- 
 tion, or Tent of Meeting, was named. It is 
 clear, therefore, that the prophet refers to 
 some such kind of gathering as is contem- 
 
 M 
 
1 62 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 plated and provided for in the Law. At the 
 time of the Captivity, when he wrote, the 
 observance of these feasts, which had been a 
 custom of old, had ceased. 
 ^ But besides this he refers to the principle 
 
 of centralisation by which they are charac- 
 terised, and implies that they were held in 
 Zion, and that the people went up to Zion 
 to keep them. Now there must have been 
 some reason for this custom, to the observ- 
 ance of which his language is a witness. 
 But we know that this principle of centralisa- 
 tion was a main feature of the legal system, 
 so much so that on the establishment of the 
 second kingdom, Jeroboam made a point of 
 imitating it. 
 Their witnes Again, thc prophct speaks also, in verses 
 
 to the Law. 
 
 4, 7, and 19, of her priests, and her sabbaths, 
 and her elders, and alludes in verse 8 to legal 
 separation on account of uncleanness ; so that 
 in addition to a recognised priesthood and 
 company of elders we have two main features 
 of the Law implied in the remarkably charac- 
 teristic institution of the Sabbath and in the 
 stringent provisions for ceremonial unclean- 
 ness found in it. In the tenth verse we have 
 
The Legal Ele7nent. 1 63 
 
 express reference to the regulations of Deut. 
 xxiii., and a clear proof that the prophet 
 regarded these regulations as Divine. This 
 is the more remarkable because they are only 
 found in the fifth book of the Law. We may 
 just notice the mention of ^the Nazarites in 
 iv. 7, implying the law in Numb, vi., but other- 
 wise it is not necessary to pursue this examina- 
 tion further. Any one can do so for himself.* 
 This first chapter is taken only as a specimen 
 of a book of the Captivity period, such as the 
 Lamentations are. It affords undeniable tes- 
 timony to the national condition of that 
 period, and to what it must have been for 
 many generations previously. 
 
 But in addition to these detailed instances The 
 
 scioi 
 
 of the presence of the legal influence there ^^ ^' 
 is pervading the writer's complaint a con- 
 sciousness, see especially verse 18, that his 
 own and his nation's sufferings are in conse- 
 quence of the infringement of a Divine com- 
 mand. His whole soul is bowed down by 
 
 * In Lam. ii. 9, the prophet expressly mentions the Law 
 in a connexion where it can only be understood technically : 
 the law is no more ; her prophets also find no vision from the 
 Lord. 
 
 ir ccn- 
 sciousntss 
 sill 
 
1 64 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 the weight of the broken Law; and yet, in 
 spite of this sense of guilt, he still places his 
 hope in the Lord, and looks to Him as his 
 only source of relief. The confession of sin, 
 and the hope of redemption and deliverance 
 out of and in spite of sin, are features of the 
 Hebrew literature common to nearly all its 
 books, and finding adequate expression in the 
 books of the Law, if not owing its origin to 
 them. 
 
 But the question may well suggest itself, 
 whence did the prop^het obtain his notion 
 of a commandment against which he and his 
 nation had rebelled, if not from that very Law 
 which we have seen he acknowledged as 
 Divine, and which certainly contained in it 
 menaces on account of violation, and promises 
 of restoration upon repentance ? 
 The book of Let us turn now to the book of Ruth, which, 
 
 Ruth. * 
 
 whatever its date, represents a condition of 
 society and of national life far earlier than 
 those of the Captivity. The entire plot of 
 this book is based upon the supposed neces- 
 sity of the next of kin marrying the widow 
 of a deceased relative, which was a marked 
 feature of the Mosaic Law, Deut. xxv. 5, and 
 
The Legal Element, 165 
 
 Numb, xxxvi., based as that Law seems to 
 have been on a yet earlier custom, Gen. 
 xxxviii. But further than this, the fourth 
 chapter of Ruth refers to a custom only men- 
 tioned elsewhere in Deut xxv. 7 — 10, which, 
 however, appears to have fallen into desuetude 
 at the time when Ruth was written, and more- 
 over makes allusion to the very chapter of 
 Genesis which contains the earliest notice of 
 the other custom of marrying a brother's 
 widow, as well as to the history of Rachel 
 and Leah, as being one of known familiarity. 
 It is true that we cannot argue that the Law 
 was older than the custom in the one case, 
 without admitting that the custom must have 
 been older than the Law in the other. But it 
 is remarkable that the author of the book of 
 Ruth evidently has knowledge, not only of 
 Deuteronomy, but also of Genesis, while it is 
 impossible to suppose that the Law in Deuter- 
 onomy was of later date than the only other 
 book which mentions a peculiar custom which 
 if not based upon the Law was clearly enforced 
 and sanctioned by it, but was no longer in 
 vogue. It is certain that the custom of mar- 
 rying a brother's widow was not extinct in 
 
1 66 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 our Lord's time ; it is no less certain that the 
 custom of loosing the shoe upon refusing to 
 marry such a relative had ceased to be in 
 vogue soon after if not in the time of David, 
 with whose genealogy Ruth, as we now have 
 it, ends ; but no reasonable person can for a 
 moment doubt that the Law in Deuteronomy 
 must have been older than the book of Ruth, 
 whenever that was written, by many genera- 
 tions, because when that Law was framed the 
 custom referred to must, to say the least, have 
 been still in vogue. The notion of a writer 
 deliberately sitting down to frame an imagin- 
 ary law to account for a custom alluded to in 
 Ruth as long out of date is simply prepos- 
 terous, to say nothing of the impossibility, on 
 that supposition, of accounting for the way in 
 which Deuteronomy was accepted as an inte- 
 gral portion of the primeval Law. Any un- 
 biassed person will find it far easier to believe 
 that whenever the book of Ruth was written, 
 the author must have had before him the story 
 in Genesis and the Law in Deuteronomy sub- 
 stantially as we have them now. 
 
 The point of union, therefore, which subsists 
 between books so dissimilar as Ruth and 
 
The Legal Element, 167 
 
 Lamentations is the regard which each has Ruth and 
 
 Lamenta- 
 
 for a code of laws reco^^nised as bindingr by tionsaiike • 
 
 ^ ta / in this. 
 
 the people at ages widely separated, and the 
 witness which each bears in a very different 
 way to its influence on the national life. Of 
 course, over and beyond this, there is in both 
 the same consciousness of a special and pecu- 
 liar relation subsisting between Israel, as the 
 people of the Lord, and the Lord their God. 
 
 Again, let us turn to what is commonly The book 
 
 ^ ' -^ of Esther. 
 
 regarded as one of the very latest books of 
 the Old Testament, namely, the book of 
 Esther. Whatever else may be said of this 
 book, no one will deny that it is intensely 
 Jewish. It is true that the name of God does 
 not occur in it, but surely the hand of God is 
 recognised virtually in such places as ix. I, 22, 
 X. 3, ii. 17, iv. 14. There may be no direct 
 reference to the Law of Moses, though the 
 conduct of the Jews in chapter ix. 10, 15, 
 16, is singularly in accordance with the pro- 
 visions of the Law in Deut. vii. 26, xiii. 17, 
 more especially when contrasted with the 
 king's permission in chapter viii. 1 1 ; but 
 their national distinctness, and their complete 
 isolation from all the people of other lands, 
 
1 68 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 is markedly set forth and witnessed to as an 
 authentic fact ; and how is this to be ac- 
 counted for but by the peculiar and distinctive 
 character of the Law which explicitly marked 
 them out from all other people, Deut. vii. 6, 
 and provided for their separation partly by 
 the rite of circumcision, but still more by its 
 own statutes and judgments ? Deut. iv. 8, 33, 
 34, etc. No writer, however, would be so 
 rash as to maintain that the Law of Moses as 
 we have it now was not in existence at the 
 time when the book of Esther was written. 
 From its silence, therefore, we can draw no 
 argument adverse to the authority of that 
 Law ; while the book itself, when it speaks of 
 Jews being found throughout the hundred 
 and twenty-seven provinces of the empire of 
 Ahasuerus, viii. 9, is a sufficient and suitable 
 witness to the fulfilment of the threatenings of 
 the Law at Lev. xxvi. 33, Deut. iv. 27, xxviii. 64. 
 Its relation We may consequently hold it for certain 
 
 to the Law. 
 
 that traces of the influence of the Law are 
 not wanting in the book of Esther ; and that 
 by its relation thereto it is seen to possess a 
 substantial unity with other literary monu- 
 ments of the Old Testament. 
 
The Legal Element. 169 
 
 Still more easily may we perceive in it a And to the 
 close connexion with many of the Psalms. 
 The spirit and bias of the book of Esther is 
 identical with that which prays for or pre- 
 dicts vengeance on the enemies of David, 
 or of Israel, or of God — such are the i8th, 
 the 69th, the 79th, the 109th, and the 137th 
 Psalms, with others. However adverse such 
 a spirit may be to the sentimental philan- 
 thropy of the present day, or however oppo- 
 site it may seem to the spirit of the Gospel, 
 it is nevertheless the expression of a Divine 
 verity that Christ Himself was not slow to 
 proclaim, inasmuch as He died to establish 
 it — that, namely, of the irreconcilable opposi- 
 tion between truth and falsehood, right and 
 wrong, and of the ultimate triumph of truth 
 and right, to the utter confusion and discom- 
 fiture of falsehood and wrong. Men may often- 
 times have erred in their application of this 
 principle, but for all that the principle is a 
 just one ; and it was in belief of this prin- 
 ciple that the book of Esther, and such Psalms 
 as then were penned, to say nothing of many 
 portions of Isaiah, such as xli. 11 — 16, xlv. 
 14, Ix. 12, etc., and of the Prophets generally. 
 
170 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 The ultimate triumph of truth and right, 
 however it is brought about, is really ven- 
 geance executed upon falsehood and wrong, 
 and the impassioned longing for such triumph 
 may easily, though unwisely, be confounded 
 with vindictiveness. 
 
 It becomes, however, an interesting and 
 important question to trace the influence of 
 the Law upon the Psalms of David, and to 
 note the indications of acquaintance with it. 
 Foremost in this respect among the Psalms 
 The 119th stands the iigth. Of its date of course 
 
 Psalm. ^ 
 
 nothing is known, and upon it therefore 
 nothing can be built. But surely no one can 
 doubt that whenever it was written the 
 author was acquainted with the books of the 
 Law. In every verse there is mention made 
 of the Law of the Lord, or His testimonies , 
 statutes, commandments, judgments, word, pre- 
 cepts, or the like, except verse 122: Be surety for 
 Thy servant for good ; let not the pj^oud oppress 
 me. Cf. verses 3, 84, 90. So marked a feature 
 as this must be the work of design on the 
 part of the writer, and must have a meaning ; 
 and the only meaning it can have is that he 
 had in his possession a code of precepts, judg- 
 
The Legal Element. 171 
 
 ments, testimonies, and the like, which he 
 regarded as of Divine authority, and as worthy 
 of the utmost reverence, and capable of reward- 
 ing study. It is inconceivable that such a 
 Psalm as this could have been written if there 
 had not been at the time a code of laws in 
 existence which were commonly acknow- 
 ledged as of Divine origin and authority. The 
 Law of Moses was such a code, and there is 
 no trace of any other. At the time then 
 when the 119th Psalm was written this code 
 must have been in existence. The Psalm itself 
 is at once a witness to it and the creation of it. 
 
 Moreover the spiritual character of the Breathes the 
 
 *■ spirtofDeu- 
 
 Psalm shews that the writer was imbued teronomy. 
 with the spirit of Deuteronomy, or the second 
 Law. It is no mere ceremonial rites that 
 he will observe, but the requirements of Him 
 who demanded the circumcision of the heart. 
 Had the first four books of Moses alone 
 existed, it is scarcely too much to say that 
 the 1 19th Psalm could not have been written ; 
 another element must have operated in its 
 production, which was the influence of the 
 latest words of the great Lawgiver. Cer- 
 tainly it is conceivable that the writer may 
 
172 The Structure of the Old Testament, 
 
 also have had before him some of the works 
 of the prophets ; but this does not alter the 
 fact that the Psalm is continually referring 
 to an external legal code as a rule of life, to 
 a level with which other writings may have 
 been raised, but which they could not and 
 did not supersede. 
 The 19th We turn then to another Psalm which is 
 
 ascribed to David, and, for aught we know 
 or can prove to the contrary, was written by 
 him — the nineteenth. In the last eight verses 
 of this brief Psalm we have a similar use of no 
 less than six of the type words of the 119th. 
 We have the Law of the Lord, the testimony of 
 the I^ord, the statutes of the Lord, the com- 
 ma7tdi7ient of the Lord, the fear of the Lord, 
 and the jicdg7nents of the Lord. In short, the 
 latter half of this Psalm is a condensation of 
 the 119th; it breathes the same spirit, and 
 may well have proceeded from the same mind, 
 in which case the 1 19th Psalm must of course 
 have been by David. But be this as it may, 
 assuming the nineteenth Psalm to have been 
 by him, can any one for a moment suppose 
 the writer of it not to refer to a definite legal 
 code } What did he mean by the co^nmand- 
 
The Legal Element. 173 
 
 meiit, the statutes^ the judgments, and the 
 testimo7iy of the Lord, if he did not mean the 
 Law of the Lord ? Whence had he learnt the 
 fear of the Lord, if not from the Law, which 
 inculcated and implanted that fear? It is 
 morally impossible that the nineteenth Psalm 
 can have been written by a man who was 
 ignorant of the Law as an external authorita- 
 tive code. And if it was written by David, as 
 it probably was, then he was acquainted with 
 the Law. And the knowledge of, and the 
 reverence for, the Law, which is implied at 
 least in this Psalm, and it matters not whether 
 or not it is implied elsewhere, at once consti- 
 tutes a bond of union which connects his 
 writings with others of the Old Testament, 
 so widely divergent, both in age and subject- 
 matter, as the Lamentations, Ruth, and 
 Esther. 
 
 Nor is it less evident that a knowledge isaiah. 
 of the Law underlies the writings of the 
 prophets as a body, and is presupposed by 
 their mission and work. The vision of Isaiah 
 opens with an adoption of the first words of 
 the song of Moses. In the ninth verse it 
 alludes to the guilt of Sodom and Gomorrah, 
 
174 The Structure of the Old Testa7ne7it. 
 
 which is recorded in Genesis. In the eleventh 
 and following verses it implies the whole 
 sacrificial system of the Law, as one that had 
 been long outwardly complied with, while the 
 more spiritual obligations of the Law had 
 been forgotten or disregarded. In the eighth 
 chapter, verse 20, the prophet appeals to 
 the Law and the testimony y as to an authority 
 which was at once supreme and final. What 
 was this Law and testimony, if it was not an 
 acknowledged external code which could be 
 bound up and sealed among the Lord's dis- 
 ciples } The moral platform from which the 
 prophets spoke to the men of their own day 
 is abolished, if there was no antecedent Law 
 to which to recal them, and for the violation of 
 which they could be reproved. There must 
 have been a previous education in spiritual 
 truth ere the prophetic enunciations on either 
 side could have been given or received. The 
 entire foundation of their work was laid in 
 the spiritual recognition of a standard from 
 which their own generation had departed. 
 Hosea. One of the earliest of the prophets was 
 Hosea, and his mission was to Israel rather 
 than to Judah, and yet in the brief writings 
 
The Legal Element. 175 
 
 of this prophet we find abundant references 
 to the books of the Law and the earlier his- 
 torical books. We find him speaking of the 
 Law as of a code which existed in writing. 
 He says to Ephraim, in the name of God, viii. 
 12,/ have written to him the great things of 
 my Law, but they were counted as a straiige 
 thing. Eight hundred years before Christ, 
 then, the Law must have been known in the 
 divided kingdom, and reckoned of sufhcient 
 authority to be appealed to as Divine, or for 
 the nation to be charged with contempt of it. 
 Such authority could not have been the 
 growth of a day, and it must have rested on 
 a foundation of some solidity to be acknow- 
 ledged as authoritative at all. But ^independ- 
 ently of this, the fact remains that in the 
 writings of Hosea, as of all the prophets, the 
 Law is recognised as the great condemning 
 instrument in the charge which they brought 
 against the nation. Their writings are unin- 
 telligible, and their mission is inconceivable, 
 but for the fact of a previously existing Law. 
 When Joel, who perhaps is even older than 
 Hosea, says, using the language of the Mosaic 
 Law, ii. I, Blow ye the trumpet in Zion^ and 
 
176 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 sound an alarm in my holy mountam, he 
 witnesses to two facts ; first, that Mount Zion 
 had been so long the centre of Divine wor- 
 ship as to be acknowledged as God's holy 
 mountain; and secondly, that it was the 
 scene of those ceremonial and festive obser- 
 vances which the Law prescribed. When the 
 last book of the Law was written, it was still 
 a matter of uncertainty where the Lord would 
 place His name, and no place was permanently 
 fixed until the time of David ; but from his 
 time onward, for a period of more than two 
 hundred years, Zion was regarded as the 
 holy motmtain, and acquired in the minds of 
 the people that degree of sanctity which in 
 the time of Joel it possessed. But in this 
 respect, we must remember it had competed 
 successfully and successively with Gibeon, 
 Shiloh, and Gilgal. All this was a work of 
 time, but the succession of events not only 
 demands, but supplies the time. 
 beSThJ'^''^ Nor granting the existence, as we are com- 
 w.""^ pelled to grant it, of a recognised code of laws, 
 is there room to suppose that it was substan- 
 tially different from the one which we possess. 
 The prophet Hosea, in mentioning a written 
 
The Legal Element. 177 
 
 Law, gives us fragmentary allusions to the 
 Law which we have, thereby shewing us that 
 our Law was his. Nay, more, he shews his 
 acquaintance with those intermediate books 
 that carry on the history between the occu- 
 pation of Canaan and his own era, and which 
 themselves presuppose the entire fabric of the 
 Law. For example, his constant allusion to 
 the kingdom of Israel as Ephraim is a tacit 
 admission that it was founded by Jeroboam 
 the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, 
 and that Shechem, in Mount Ephraim, was 
 the centre of his 'kingdom, as stated, i Kings 
 xii. 25. If there was no record of this fact 
 then, which we cannot prove, at least, the 
 fact itself was well known, and the record 
 that we have agrees with it. The words, / 
 gave tJiee a king in mine anger, and took Jmn 
 away in my wrath, Hos. xiii. 1 1, are surely an 
 allusion to the choice and subsequent rejec- 
 tion of Saul. The calf-worship of Jeroboam 
 is the subject of frequent reference ; e.g., viii. 5, 
 6 ; X. 5 ; xiii. 2. The words in x. 9, O Is7'ael, 
 thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah: there 
 they stood: the battle in Gibeah against the 
 children of iniquity did not overtake them, are a 
 
 N 
 
178 The Structure oftJie Old Testament, 
 
 clear and circumstantial reference to the record 
 in Judges xix. and xx. ; cf. also Hos. ix. 9, 
 They have deeply corrupted tJiemselves as in the 
 days of Gibcah. The prophet must have had 
 before him the same narrative that we have, 
 and those for whom he wrote must have been 
 acquainted with it too.* Hosea ix. 15, All 
 their zvickedness is as Gilgal, for the7'e I hated 
 them, may possibly be an allusion to the words 
 in Joshua v. 9, This day have I rolled away 
 the reproach of Egypt fj'om off yon, though this 
 maybe open to question; cf. Hos. xii. 11. At 
 any rate, the fact of Gilgal being a great cen- 
 tre of even idolatrous worship is probably due 
 to its connexion with national religious associ- 
 ations, such as the history in Joshua explains, 
 and certainly the allusion to the valley of 
 Achor, Hos. ii. 15, is not to be understood with- 
 out knowledge of, and reference to, the story in 
 Joshua vii. 24, 26, from which the name was 
 derived, which is only once mentioned again in 
 the Old Testament by Isaiah, Ixv. 10. The state- 
 ment in Hosea xii. 10, / have also spoken by the 
 prophets, and I have multiplied visions, a7id 
 
 * In Hosea v. 8, " After thee, O Benjamin," there appears 
 to be a reminiscence of the song of Deborah, Judges v. 14. 
 
The Legal Element, 1 79 
 
 used similitudes^ by the ministry of tJie prophets, 
 implies a state of things such as that of which 
 the writer of i Sam. iii. i, The word of the 
 Lord was precious in those days, thei'e ivas no 
 open vision, must have had a cognisance that 
 enabled him to contrast it with the past ; cf 
 also Hos. vi. 5. Still more is the peculiar 
 mention of David their king, iii. 5, unintelli- 
 gible without a knowledge of the history of 
 the books of Samuel. Hosea may not indeed 
 have known Samuel and the earlier historical 
 books as we have them. But he clearly was 
 acquainted with the history as it is contained 
 in them ; for he refers to the history in a way 
 that these books as we have them explain 
 and corroborate. The testimony of the two, 
 therefore, is independent, and so far as it 
 agrees, each serves to authenticate the other, 
 the prophet the historical books, and the his- 
 torical books the prophet. At that early age, 
 however, the multipHcation of historical docu- 
 ments is not likely, but it is clear that either 
 then or later our own documents existed. It 
 is a question, therefore, of probability whether 
 Hosea was acquainted with the events to 
 which he referred from written documents or 
 
1 80 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 from unwritten tradition. But seeing that 
 the existence of written documents then or 
 later is proved, it is certainly not improba- 
 ble, per se, that referring to events contained 
 in our existing documents, the memory of 
 which would be more easily preserved by 
 documents than by tradition, he referred to 
 those very documents themselves. The thing 
 does not admit of conclusive proof, but pro- 
 bability points to the conclusion. The history, 
 however, in Joshua, Judges, and Samuel is 
 inseparable from that of the Law ; it is abso- 
 lutely meaningless without it. If, therefore, 
 Hosea implies the record of the intermediate 
 history, and that history implies the existence 
 of the Law, then the prophet himself implies 
 the existence of the Law. The twelfth 
 chapter is full of allusions to points in the 
 history of Jacob as recorded in Genesis, and 
 of which we have no knowledge but from that 
 narrative. The mention of Admah and Ze- 
 boim together is only found in Gen. xiv. 2, 
 ^ Deut. xxix. 2/, and Hosea xi. 8. The men- 
 tion of Baal-peor, Hos. ix. 10, implies a know- 
 ledge, both on the part of the prophet and on 
 that of the people, of the history of Numbers. 
 
The Leml Element. 1 8 1 
 
 Nor is this all, for in Hosea we have even a 
 verbal quotation from Gen. iii. i8, as is proved 
 by the fact that here only and in that passage 
 is the word dardar, thistle, found in the whole 
 of the Old Testament. In the Hebrew the 
 phrase is identical in the two cases, but the 
 authorised version of Genesis renders the two 
 words by plurals, and so the connexion is the 
 more disguised. When therefore we remember, 
 in addition to all this, that the moral, cere- 
 monial, and sacrificial system of the Law is 
 implied in Hosea ii. 1 1, v. 6, lo, viii. 13, ix. 4, 5, 
 xii. 9, etc., it seems impossible to doubt for 
 one moment that the books of the Law, sub- 
 stantially as we have them now, were known 
 to the prophet Hosea and to those also to 
 whom he wrote in the middle of the eighth 
 century before Christ. * 
 
 This is a conclusion which, on the testi- 
 mony, spontaneous and undesigned, of the 
 prophet Hosea, not to mention others, we 
 must accept for certain. The evidence to be 
 derived from his fourteen brief chapters is at 
 once incontrovertible and irresistible. He 
 
 * Three times the Law is expressly mentioned by Hosea, 
 iv. 6, viii. i, 12. 
 
1 82 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 doubtless, though exercising a mission chiefly 
 directed to Israel, had in his hands the books 
 of the Law, and referred to them as docu- 
 ments familiar even to the seceded tribes. 
 We can detect allusions to or acquaintance 
 with the contents of each book of the five, 
 and the testimony is the more important be- 
 cause it is so obviously unintentional. 
 
 The case, then, stands thus : we have clear 
 reference to the Law 800 B.C. At that time 
 it must have been acknowledged by Israel as 
 well as Judah, and consequently must have 
 dated prior to the division of the kingdom, 
 some 200 years before. But the same writer 
 makes allusions to the books of Joshua and 
 Judges, which must therefore have been in 
 existence long before his time, and been then 
 accepted as trustworthy history of a much 
 The Law old earlier period. But whenever these books 
 
 in his time. .,, . . 
 
 were written, the Law was still in existence, 
 for it must have preceded them, whatever 
 their date is ; and if their narrative is at all to 
 be trusted, the Law was not only known when 
 they were written, but also known at the times 
 to which they related, long before. In short, 
 we have no record of any period in the history 
 
The Legal Element, 1 83 
 
 of Israel subsequent to the occupation of 
 Canaan, at which the Law was not known ; 
 and as far as the evidence of the records that 
 we have is available, it clearly witnesses to the 
 authority and influence of the Law from the 
 very first. But whether or not this evidence 
 is accepted historically, it is equally certain 
 that there is no one section or era of Hebrew 
 literature, whether it be the Prophets, Psalms, 
 or History, which is free from the traces of an 
 influence which can only be referred to the 
 Law recognised as an authoritative code of 
 Divine obligation and origin. From first to 
 last, throughout the entire literature, we dis- 
 cover unmistakable traces and tokens of the 
 existence and efl"ects of this Law : it is per- 
 meated and pervaded by it. Under any 
 theory of the composition of these books, the 
 inference is still the same, that a knowledge of 
 the Law was prior to them ; and we have seen 
 that it cannot be placed later than a thou- 
 sand years before Christ, because it must have 
 been earlier than the undivided monarchy. 
 
 But it is certain that the reverence attaching The Law 
 to the Law, if it was an energetic influence in with Moses. 
 the nation a thousand years before Christ, 
 
1 84 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 must have taken time to develop itself. It 
 could not have been the growth of a day. And 
 with unvarying consistency, throughout the 
 entire literature, the Law is associated with 
 the name of Moses. He is universally recog- 
 nised as the sole Lawgiver. It is more or less 
 an ideal and arbitrary arrangement to associate 
 the history with Ezra, the prophecy with 
 Isaiah, or with the principal monarch in whose 
 reign Isaiah flourished, the poetry with David ; 
 but to associate the Law with the name of 
 Moses is inevitable. In the other departments 
 there were many labourers, but in the matter 
 of the Law, traditionally, and as far as all 
 evidence goes, he stands alone. At whatever 
 period the Law was first accepted, and this 
 must have been before 1000 B.C., it was only 
 accepted because it was believed to come with 
 the authority of Moses. The existingLaw, there- 
 fore, must either have been the original Law, or 
 one which was successfully palmed off upon 
 the nation in its stead. It cannot have been one 
 which was commonly accepted by the people 
 as an imposture, seeing that the very existence 
 and constitution of the nation was more or 
 less owing to the Law, and dependent upon it, 
 
The Leml Elejuent, 1 8 S 
 
 even when its moral precepts were set at 
 nought and violated. It is possible that in 
 the process of ages the original Law may- 
 have undergone certain modifications. Special 
 injunctions may have fallen into neglect and 
 desuetude from the mere force of circum- 
 stances ; the text at times may have become 
 glossed, and the glosses eventually become 
 incorporated with it ; but there is no room for 
 doubt that fundamentally and substantially 
 the Law as we have it now is what it always 
 was. To suppose that the Law, being origi- 
 nally something very different, was afterwards 
 developed in its present form, is to imagine 
 what could not have taken place without a 
 national revolution such as we have no hint 
 or record of. The establishment of the schools The schools 
 
 or the pro- 
 of the prophets, moreover, as founded by p^^'^- 
 
 Samuel, almost necessitates the existence of a 
 
 literature for the basis of their education, but 
 
 if so, this literature can have been none other 
 
 than the Law, while the very notion of the 
 
 schools of the prophets seems like a suggestion 
 
 growing out of the promise in Deuteronomy 
 
 xviii. 1 8 : / tuill raise them up a prophet from 
 
 among their brethren. Besides, one of the 
 
1 86 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 purposes of their existence would naturally 
 be found in the careful preservation of the 
 Law, and in handing it down as it had been 
 received, more especially as we have no 
 evidence of any original literary work ema- 
 nating from them, though, indeed, certain of 
 the historical books may not improbably be 
 referred to individual members of their body. 
 We must grant, however, in that case, the 
 previous existence of the Law as an indispen- 
 sable condition. 
 
 We see, then, that the entire literature of 
 the Old Testament, unless it is necessary to 
 except such books as Job and Canticles, is 
 penetrated and permeated with the influence 
 of the Law. It is the one foundation under- 
 lying the whole. We come upon traces of it 
 wherever we search. And it is this fact which 
 gives to the several and widely different com- 
 ponent elements of the literature a bond of 
 cohesion and a substantive and substantial 
 unity such as we can discover in no other 
 Appearance literature whatcvcr. It is, moreover, a unity 
 
 of unity •' 
 
 undesigned, -^i^j^h is entirely independent of the individual 
 will of the various writers. They personally 
 and intentionally contributed nothing to this 
 
The Legal Element. 187 
 
 unity. It is a phenomenon which arises out 
 of the fact that each separate writer was a 
 member of a nation of whose existence one of 
 the most marked features was the possession 
 of the Law, and which was created and bound 
 together by nothing so much as by it, and by 
 the traditions enshrined in it. 
 
 And this unity is an indestructible fact, which destroyed by 
 is entirely independent of the age to which '^"'''=''""- 
 critically we may assign particular portions of 
 the literature. There are no very urgent reasons . 
 for believingthat the commonly received periods 
 of composition are very far from wrong ; but 
 however this may be, the fact which has been 
 pointed out remains, because there are no 
 existing monuments of Hebrew literature 
 which do not bear witness to the previous 
 existence of the Law, just as there are none 
 which do not owe allegiance to it, and either 
 make it the basis of their teaching, as the 
 prophets do, or else, like the Psalms, carry on 
 its work in other directions, and develop the 
 spiritual life created by it. Nor can it be said 
 that there is any parallel to such a phenome- 
 non as this, turn where we will. May we not 
 admit, without disparagement, that, compared 
 
1 88 The Structure of the Old Testavient. 
 
 with the Old Testament, the Hterature of 
 Greece or Rome is a heterogeneous medley ? 
 There is no common bond of unity between 
 the philosophers and the poets, the historians 
 and the orators. They speak, indeed, the 
 same language, and, within certain limits, 
 their thoughts are cast more or less in the 
 same mould, but there is no unity of sentiment 
 discoverable in them, and still less any single- 
 ness of purpose. But we may safely affirm 
 that there is no one writer in the Old Testa- 
 ment who has not the object before him of 
 enhancing the glory of God, even though it be 
 at the expense of himself and his nation. 
 Throughout the development of the history, 
 which is necessarily the growth of ages, there 
 is the gradual unfolding of a plan, to which 
 every writer, unconsciously and in spite of 
 himself, contributes something. What can be 
 a more instructive commentary upon the 
 indignation of Samuel at the nation's desire 
 for a king, than the history of the kingdom 
 from first to last 1 What a striking fulfilment 
 of the worst forebodings of Moses do we read 
 in the narrative of the nation's growth and 
 decay ! How fitly might the words of Pharaoh 
 
The Legal Element. 189 
 
 be taken as a motto expressive of the long 
 result of national experience at the close of 
 the history : TJie Lord is righteous, and I aiid 
 my people are wicked. If we turn to the poets, 
 this is the very lesson that they have learnt, 
 and that they desire their fellow-countrymen 
 to learn : We have sinned with our fathers ; 
 we have done amiss, and dealt wickedly ; while 
 the spontaneous confession of one of the latest 
 in order of the Psalms is this : The Lord is right- 
 eous in all His ways, ajid holy in all His works, 
 cxlv. 17. Nor is the complaint of Isaiah different, 
 among the prophets : For our transgressions 
 are multiplied before Thee, and our sins testify 
 against us ; for our transgressiojts are with us, 
 and as for our iniquities, we know them, lix. 12 ; 
 and he also, speaking in the name of the Lord, 
 declares, My salvatioji shall be for ever, and 
 My righteousness shall not be abolished. But 
 this, again, in substance is the special revelation 
 of the Law: And the Lord passed by before 
 him, and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, 
 merciful and gracious, longszifferijig, and abun- 
 da7it in goodness a7id truth, keeping mercy for 
 thousa7ids, forgiving iniquity a?id trajtsgression 
 and sin, and that will by 710 means clear the 
 
I go The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 guilty ; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon 
 the children, and iipon the children s children, 
 unto the thi^^d and to the fourth generatioUy 
 Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7. 
 The writers' 'pj^g most distinctive feature, however, which 
 
 faith m God. ' 
 
 is common to all the writers in the Old Testa- 
 ment, and peculiar to no one age or portion 
 of the literature, while the classical authors of 
 Greece and Rome, as well as the writings of 
 Confucius, and even the Hymns of the Veda, 
 may be said in comparison to be entirely 
 devoid of it, is an unswerving faith in God, 
 and a confident and firm reliance and depend- 
 ence upon His unfailing goodness and mercy. 
 We may truly say that, beyond the limits of 
 the Old Testament, and those writings which 
 have come under its influence and imbibed its 
 spirit, there is nothing that bears any adequate 
 analogy to this feature. Here these ancient 
 writings stand pre-eminent and unique. 
 What is And this fact alone, as characterising the 
 
 proved by it. . r i • i i i 
 
 best Specimens of the nation who produced 
 such a literature, is sufficient to stamp them 
 as the covenant people of God. If the 
 Almighty were to make a covenant with any 
 nation, we might surely pronounce beforehand 
 
The Legal Element. i g i 
 
 that this is how it would manifest itself. But 
 this in the Jewish nation is how it did mani- 
 fest itself, as witnessed by the national litera- 
 ture; and seeing that a like manifestation was 
 made in no other people, the inference is not 
 unnatural, but much rather inevitable — nay, 
 forced upon us — that their poet was warranted 
 in his joyous and grateful outburst. He hath 
 not dealt so with any nation, neither have the 
 heathen knowledge of His laws. 
 
 It can hardly be needful to attempt to shew 
 the intrinsic superiority of the Jewish code 
 over any other le^al system. The decalog-ue The spirUu- 
 
 / . alityofthe 
 
 alone is an unrivalled monument of wisdom Law. 
 and of spiritual insight into the nature of 
 man, and the deepest wants of society; and 
 of all ethical systems, the Mosaic was the 
 only one which anticipated the Christian pre- 
 cept. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, l^^- ^'*- ^^ 
 Whatever might be the faults or deficiencies of 
 any other human ethical system, we may safely 
 affirm that the possession of two such jewels as 
 these, the decalogue and this golden precept, 
 would be held worthy to redeem them all.* 
 
 * The golden precept is inculcated in a negative form in 
 the writings of Confucius. 
 
uniform. 
 
 1 92 The Structure of the Old Testainent, 
 
 For the sake of these men would gladly 
 condone the rest. Nay, we may be sure that 
 if a new literature were to be discovered 
 possessed of such sublime precepts, no limits 
 could be set to the praise that would be 
 lavished upon it. We may fairly claim, then, 
 for the legal element of the Old Testament, if 
 on this ground alone, a higher standard of 
 Conception merit than is due to any other ethical system 
 
 of God -^ ^ 
 
 prior to the Gospel. 
 
 It is often remarked that the religion of 
 the Old Testament is a sublime monotheism, 
 which is perfectly true ; but if so, this is surely 
 a feature that tends to show a very marked 
 principle of unity pervading all the writers. 
 Not only are they at one in holding and in- 
 culcating the unity of God, but also in the 
 prevailing conception of His character. His 
 truth, His righteousness. His faithfulness, 
 His mercy and loving-kindness, are constant 
 themes both with the poets and the prophets, 
 while that this is His nature is abundantly 
 illustrated in the page of the history, and 
 explicitly enunciated by the Law. The He- 
 brew writers, however, have this in common, 
 that they do not hold any such belief about 
 
The Legal Elemefit. 193 
 
 God as an abstract philosophical sentiment. 
 It is no theory with them, but the expression 
 of the form and character that His dealings 
 with them and their fathers have taken. With 
 them God is not an abstraction to be dis- 
 coursed about, but a living and acting Person 
 to be known. He has made Himself known. 
 They do not lay claim to the merit of having 
 discovered Him, but He revealed Himself to 
 their fathers as He did to no other nation. 
 The beginning and end of the Law is this 
 knowledge. / am the Lord thy God, ushers 
 in the decalogue ; / am the Lord, shuts up 
 specific enactments, and clenches so appa- 
 rently trivial a precept as Ye shall not make 
 any cuttings m your flesh for the dead, nor 
 prmt any marks upon you. Lev. xix. 28. It is 
 thus that the Law itself set before its disciples The ultimate 
 
 object o; the 
 
 a higher and further end than itself, and did ^aw. 
 not contemplate the performance of literal 
 precepts otherwise than as a means to an end. 
 Surely nothing less than this is implied in the 
 words, Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and 
 judgments, which if a man do, he shall live in 
 them : I am the Lord. Personal holiness, 
 personal well-being, personal knowledge of 
 
 O 
 
1 94 The Structure of the Old Testament. 
 
 and union with God, were objects expressly 
 contemplated by the Law. Though it too 
 often found its votaries carnal, it yet amply 
 vindicated its own claims to spirituality, and 
 set before the nation a standard that was 
 never attained, and still less surpassed, at any 
 period of the national history. The earliest 
 compositions of the Old Testament bear 
 witness to the influence of the Law, and the 
 latest are conscious of departure from it, but 
 nowhere is its authority undervalued or its 
 Divine origin called in question. It is the 
 backbone of the entire literature, to which 
 every part has more or less organic relation, 
 and upon the framework of which all the rest 
 hangs together so as to form an organic whole^ 
 The very latest injunction of the latest pro- 
 phet is. Remember ye the law of Moses my 
 servant, which 1 commanded unto him in Horeb 
 
 Mai. iv. 6. for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments ; 
 while his book closes with a solemn warning 
 of the curse that shall overtake non-compli- 
 ance with the spirit of one of its most charac- 
 teristic precepts. 
 
 The patriot- It is no marvcl that the literature of a 
 
 ism of the 
 
 writers. nation such as this, whose chief bond of 
 
The Legal Element. 195 
 
 national union was the Law, should have been 
 intensely patriotic ; for the nation possessed 
 the noblest and the truest incentive to pat- 
 riotism ; and in its literature this patriotism 
 found an utterance that is unrivalled else- 
 where in any language. The hill of Zion is a 
 fair place, and the joy of the whole earth, the 
 city of the great King. God is zuell known in 
 her palaces as a sure refuge. The city of the 
 Lord of hosts, the city of our God. Out of 2%^%.^'"' 
 Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined. Ps. 1. 2. 
 Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity in 
 itself O pray for the peace of Jerusalem : they 
 shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within 
 thy walls, and plenteousness witJiin thy palaces. 
 For my brethreji and companions sake I will 
 wish thee prosperity, yea, because of the house 
 of the Lord our God I will seek to do thee good. 3, 6—9. 
 Can anything be more beautiful ? Can any- 
 thing be more eloquent ? The psalmist was 
 the most ardent of patriots, because his 
 country was the chosen of God. Therefore 
 he could say, The Lord loveth the gates of 
 Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. 
 Glorious things are spoken of thee, thou city of ^^ j^^^^. 
 God. But in the choice of Zion was involved ^' 3- 
 
196 The Structure of the Old Testa^nent. 
 
 the history of David, and the revelation made 
 
 to David, The Lord hath chosen Zion to be a 
 
 habitation for Himself : He hath longed for 
 
 her. This is my rest for ever ; here will I 
 
 Ps. cxxxii. clwelL for I have a delis:ht thereifi. And in 
 14, 15. ' -^ ^ 
 
 cf. 2 Sam. ^j^jg revelation was the ultimate fulfilment of the 
 
 vii. 10 — 29. 
 
 vii. 10. 
 
 earlier promise of the Law, There shall be a place 
 which the Lord your God shall choose to cause 
 Deut. xH. II. }{is name to dzvell there. Thus every portion 
 
 Cf. 2 Sam. 
 
 of this ancient literature is intimately bound 
 up with every other. The prophecy with the 
 poetry, and the poetry with the history, and 
 all together with the Law, and the Law of 
 Moses is not only an integral element in the 
 composition of the Old Testament, but is also 
 the corner-stone of its internal structure, and 
 the firm, essential basis of its organic and 
 indestructible unity. 
 
197 
 
 ®|r0n0l0r|[ical ^Mt of Important ©bents. 
 
 EVENTS, ETC. 
 
 Date 
 B.C. 
 
 Century 
 B.C. 
 
 Cicero, Virgil, Horace, &c. 
 
 Death of Ceesar 
 
 Battle of Pharsalia 
 
 44 
 
 48 
 
 I. 
 
 Ptolemy VII. Physcon (Euergetes II.) . . 
 
 Death of Judas Maccabaeus 
 
 Simon II 
 
 116 to 145 
 
 161 
 195 to 217 
 
 II. 
 
 Ptolemy III. (Euergetes I.) 
 
 Grandson of Jesus perhaps arrives in Egypt 
 
 Septuagint Version perhaps made 
 
 Ptolemy II. (Philadelphus) 
 
 Jesus son of Sirach, perhaps 
 
 222 to 247 
 
 230 
 
 270 
 246 to 284 
 270 to 310 
 
 III. 
 
 Ptolemy I 
 
 Simon I. (the Just) 
 
 Alexander the Great 
 
 Aristotle, Demosthenes . . 
 
 Plato, Xenophon 
 
 284 to 323 
 300 to 370 
 323 to 336 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Peloponnesian War . . 
 
 Malachi, perhaps 
 
 Nehemiah . . . . 
 
 Ezra . . . . 
 
 Battle of Marathon 
 
 405 to 43 1 
 420 
 445 
 456 
 490 
 
 V. 
 
 Haggai, Zechariah, Darius 
 
 The Temple rebuilt, after being desolate for 53 
 
 years 
 
 Edict of Cyrus, Zerubbabel 
 
 Jehoiachin released 
 
 Zedekiah taken captive 
 
 Temple destroyed, after having stood 416 years 
 
 Ezekiel begins to prophesy 
 
 Jehoiachin carried captive 
 
 520 
 
 535 
 
 562 
 58S 
 588 
 595 
 599 
 
 VI. 
 
198 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF IMPORTANT EVENTS. 
 
 {Contimied.) 
 
 EVENTS, ETC. 
 
 Date 
 B.C. 
 
 Centur\' 
 B.C. 
 
 Daniel carried captive 
 Josiah slain at Megiddo . . 
 
 Era of Nabopolassar . . 
 
 Capture of Nineveh 
 Zephaniah prophesies 
 Jeremiah begins to prophesy 
 Amon 
 Manasseh . . 
 
 6o6 
 
 6io 
 
 625 
 
 625 
 
 630 
 
 629 
 641 to 643 
 643 to 698 
 
 VII. 
 
 Hezekiah . . 
 
 Samaria destroyed . . 
 
 Ahaz 
 
 Jotham 
 
 Micah prophesies in the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, 
 
 and Hezekiah 
 Isaiah prophesies in the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, 
 
 Ahaz, and Hezekiah 
 Hosea prophesies in the reigns of the same kings, 
 
 and Jeroboam 11. . . 
 
 The first Olympiad 
 
 Amos prophesies in the reigns of Uzziah and 
 
 Jeroboam 11. 
 
 698 to 726 
 
 721 
 
 726 to 742 
 742 to 758 
 
 750 
 
 760 
 
 722 to 785 
 
 776 
 787 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Joel prophesies about 
 
 Uzziah 
 
 Jeroboam II. 
 
 Jonah prophesies about . . 
 
 800 
 
 758 to 810 
 784 to 825 
 
 862 
 
 IX. 
 
 Rehoboam . . 
 Solomon 
 
 958 to 975 
 975 to 1015 
 
 X. 
 
 Temple dedicated . . 
 
 David 
 
 1004 
 1015 to 1055 
 
 XI. 
 
 Samuel 
 
 II50 
 
 XIl. 
 
 Moses. The Law.. 
 
 1451 
 
 XV. 
 
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