BiblicalTheologyOldandNewGeerhardusVos

BiblicalTheologyOldandNewGeerhardusVos

Isaiah. The term does not appear in Micah. Of a berith between Jehovah and Israel we learn only in Hosea and Isaiah.

Of etymologies proposed for berith the chief ones are as follows. It has been derived from bara, 'to cut'. The reference to 'cutting' is then explained from the ceremony spoken of in Gen. 15:17 and Jer. 34:18, 19. The phrase karath berith, 'to cut a cutting', for making a berith, has been thought to favour this etymology. Usually, however, in such phrases, when verb and noun repeat the same idea, the identical root is employed for both, so that we should on this view expect bara berith. Others go back for their derivation to the same verb 'to cut', but give a different turn to the signification, cutting being interpreted as determining, defining, from which would result as the primary sense 'law', 'ordinance'. Still others go back to the Assyrian beritu, 'to bind', birtu, 'bond'. The etymology is not of overmuch importance, although it may sometimes do harm by unduly tying the conception down to one hard and fast meaning. The only common idea, always present, is that of a solemn religious sanction. Where this is present, a promise, law, agreement, may all be called berith. The main question is, how does it occur in Hosea and Isaiah?

As regards Isaiah, the emphasis and reason for introducing the idea lie largely in the association of the absolute sureness of the divine promise. The berith with Noah and the berith of Israel's coming redemption are put on a line with this as the point of comparison [54:9, 10]. Similarly, 55:3; 59:21; 61:8. In 24:5, on the other hand, the idea of law, ordinance prevails. There may be an allusion here to the Noachian berith. It will be noticed, however, that even so the emphasis rests on the perpetual obligation of the ordinances, constituting an 'everlasting' berith. Only in 56:4, 6, berith seems to signify in Isaiah the general legal relation between Jehovah and His servants, for here observance of the sabbath and other ordinances is specified as pertaining to the 'holding fast' of God's berith.

Difficult of interpretation are 42:6, and 49:8. In both the Servant of Jehovah is designated as berith 'am, a 'covenant of people'. The two most plausible views about this phrase are either that in the future through the Servant the berith will be realized anew or restored, or, laying emphasis on the word 'people', that through the Servant the berith will once more assume the form of a relationship into which Israel enters as a people, in contrast with its present scattered, disorganized state of existence. On both interpretations the berith here also appears as the comprehensive, fundamental name for Israel's religious organization. It will be seen from this that the idea of the berith in this sense, while by no means absent, is neither particularly conspicuous nor pervasive in the prophecy.

As to Hosea we have the explicit statement [8:1]: 'They have transgressed my berith, and trespassed against my law'; here berith is legal organization of the ancient religion as a whole. For the rest all depends for this prophet on the question, whether the marriage-idea is at all to be equated with the berith-idea. The prophet works out everything belonging to the union of Jehovah with Israel on the basis of the marriage between the two. It is incapable of proof that in his day every marriage was per se a species of berith. Still, this does not exclude the possibility of Hosea's having made the equation.

The marriage-idea as a form of religious expression is old in Shemitic religion. For this reason Wellhausen's theory that Hosea, under the influence of his sad marital experience, had by brooding over it come upon the possibility of utilizing the figure for depicting the course of Israel's religion in past, present and future, is untenable. The whole setting of the figure from the very beginning proves its familiar nature. We have learned from the Decalogue about the conjugal jealousy of Jehovah. The figure is not even characteristic of revealed religion. Like that of fatherhood and kingship, it was current in paganism in Israel's neighbourhood. The name 'Baal' for the Canaanitish deity is based upon it, for this name means the husbandlord, through whose union with the land fruitfulness is obtained, or who from another point of view has the people for wife so that the individual members of the people become his sons and daughters [Num. 25:2–9; Jer. 2:27; Mal. 2:11]. On one of the Phoenician inscriptions the phrase Bresyeth Baal, the 'Spouse of Baal', has been found, but this is individual, the name of a woman.

Isa. 54:1; 62:5; Jer. 31:32, may further be compared, but in all this there is so far no explicit combination of the berith-idea and the marriage-idea. Moreover, these last-cited passages are younger than Hosea and would not be conclusive with regard to him. It is first in Ezek. 16:8, that entering into berith with Israel is called a marrying her. Jeremiah also almost certainly associated the two conceptions, although not doing so explicitly anywhere. Prov. 2:17 calls marriage a berith, and so does Mal. 2:14. With the exception of Proverbs, we know that these writings are later than Hosea, and might have borrowed from him the combination. But this in itself would put it beyond question that Hosea was understood by them to have long ago made it. The critics can doubt this only because they have cut out from Hosea the passage 8:1. If this passage is genuine, and there is no reason for doubting it except that furnished by the critical desire to remove from Hosea all traces of acquaintance with a legitimate statutory religion, then it becomes almost impossible to deny that the prophet identified the berith-idea and his favourite idea of marriage between Jehovah and Israel. Only the expurgated Hosea could have lived in such naïve unconsciousness that the marriage meant a berith-union between the two.

Still in the pre-Jeremianic period we must acknowledge, always leaving Hosea to one side, that there is a scarcity of references to the berith-form of the religion, and the critics find support in this for their contention that the origin of the idea is as late as the latter part of the seventh century. We have already looked into this contention under the head of the Sinaitic berith-making. How, without impugning the latter as a historical fact, can the phenomenon of relative scarcity be explained? We have on that occasion already noted that in the subsequent prophets, excepting Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the conception again suffers eclipse. This shows that there must have been something in the prophetic teaching that temporarily forced it into the background.

The cause for this need not have been the same in each individual prophet. We shall presently see why the berith-thought was peculiarly adapted to the trend of Hosea's teaching, and that particularly in its specific form of a marriage-union. But with Isaiah it is different. His whole point of view is theocentric, emphasizing that Israel lives for the sake of Jehovah, and possibly the berith-idea with its strongly stressed mutualness did not appear to him peculiarly adapted for bringing this God-centred characteristic of religion to the front. In Amos and Micah again the rupture of the union between Jehovah and Israel appears so certain and inevitable, and so much in need of emphasizing, that perhaps a steady reference to the berith, with its inevitable reminder of the unbreakableness of the bond, may have been found to be less in line with their teaching.

But, apart from all such individual considerations, we must remember the general character of the prophetic revelation. The law institutes and commands, prophecy explains the reasons and motives on which institutions and obedience are based. Behind the berith lies something deeper and more fundamental, the nature and will of Jehovah. For the berith is after all an institution, which can be temporarily kept in the background, for sufficient reasons. Such a procedure does not convict the prophets of ignoring or opposing the berith-idea. It only shows that their teaching moves on deeper lines.

HOSEA'S TEACHING ON THE MARRIAGE-BOND

Hosea, on the supposition that marriage and berith with Jehovah are to him identical, is the chief source of our information in regard to the nature of the union. We learn from him:

[1] The union originated on the part of Jehovah

Not Israel offered herself to Him, He sought out Israel. Theologically speaking, we would say that the berith had its source in the divine election. Election is spoken of by Isaiah [14:1; 43:20; 49:7]. With Amos and Hosea, however, a more characteristic and intimate term is chosen to convey somewhat of the religious depths and value of this idea. This term is yada', 'to know', not in the intellectual sense of 'to be informed about', but in the pregnant, affectional sense of 'to take loving knowledge of' [Hos. 13:5; Amos 3:2]. This act is not yet represented as an eternal act on the part of Jehovah; in keeping with their standpoint in the midst of history, the prophets think of it as something emerging in time. The New Testament makes out of this 'knowing' a 'fore-knowing'. But this is simply putting the act back into eternity. To cut it loose from its Old Testament antecedents and to intellectualize it in the interest of a Pelagianizing theology is an utterly unhistorical proceeding. The 'pro' in the Greek rendering does not serve to give God His standpoint in time, from which He then is able to look forward and base His decision on what the creature is foreseen to be about to do at a certain point in time; it serves the precisely opposite purpose of giving God His standpoint before, that is to say, in Old Testament language, above time.

[2] The relation had a definite historical beginning

Israel had not been always thus united to Jehovah. The berithconception as here conceived does not belong to General but to Special Revelation. Israel entered into this special union with Jehovah at the time of the Exodus [Hos. 13:4; cp. 11:1, and Amos 2:10]. It is characteristic of the prophetic point of view, that the origin is sought, not so much in a concrete act of ratification, although that is presupposed, but in the events of the Exodus with all their rich implications. It was not a blind transaction, but one full of intelligence. The idea of marriage was eminently fitted to emphasize the historical birth of the union, better than that of fatherhood and sonship. Father and son never exist apart from each other. Husband and wife do so exist at first, and then are brought together at a definite point of time.

[3] Though the union originated effectually on Jehovah's part, yet Israel was led freely to enter upon it

The marriage-berith is to Hosea's mind a spiritualized union. We should, however, realize that this feature was not necessarily given with the idea of marriage as such. In Hosea's time marriage did not partake of the same spiritual character it has acquired in the course of time, chiefly through the regenerating influence of the subsequent Biblical religion. There was less of equality between the sexes, and less freedom of choice on the woman's part. It is all the more remarkable that Hosea, while utilizing the conception, has not allowed it to remain upon the level of the common custom of his day. If we adopt the realistic view of chapters 1–3, we shall have to assume that the prophet was by special grace enabled to live on a higher plane of love towards his wife than the average Israelite of that time [cp. Jer. 3:1]. If on the contrary we choose the allegorical interpretation, we must say that, at least in his understanding and vision of the matter, he was led by the Spirit to frame a conception of the divine-marriage-love towards Israel, far transcending, not only his own, but every ordinary experience known to him. The dispute between allegorists and realists is interesting, but doctrinally the points of arrival on each view coincide.

We can only rapidly sketch the features in which this spiritualized character of the union reveals itself. Jehovah is represented as having wooed Israel, sued for her affection [2:14]; as having drawn her with the cords of man [11:4]; here the figure of sonship comes in to supplement and enrich that of marriage. Jehovah strengthened Israel's arms and taught her to walk [7:15]; although the Giver of all nature-blessings, of corn, wine, oil, silver, gold, wool, and flax, Jehovah is distinguished from the Baals, in that He has something more and finer to give than these: loving-kindness, mercy and faithfulness [2:19]; in reality He gives, in and through all these things, Himself after a sacramental fashion [2:23]; He is personally present in all His favours, and in them surrenders Himself to His people for never-failing enjoyment. Even after Israel becomes unfaithful, He continues to appeal to her heart by proofs of his love; 6:4 is the language of divine disappointment at the failure of these efforts.

To these divine approaches corresponds the attitude expected from the people. The state of mind which the people ought to cultivate, by reason of their union with Jehovah, is described by Amos, Isaiah and Micah on the whole from an ethical, by Hosea from an affectional point of view. When Amos, Isaiah and Micah say: not sacrifices but righteousness, Hosea says: not sacrifices but the knowledge of Jehovah. All the demands made of the people are summed up in this one thing, that there should be the knowledge of God among them, and that not as a theoretical perception of what is Jehovah's nature, but as a practical acquaintance, the intimacy of love. It is that which corresponds on Israel's part to the knowledge of Jehovah from which the whole marriage sprang [13:4, 5]; this knowledge is intended to make Israel like unto Jehovah, it has a character-forming influence. This is so fundamental a law that it holds true even in idolatry [9:10].

[4] Although the berith is thus traced back to its highest ideal source in the nature and choice of Jehovah, it nevertheless established a legally defined relationship

The marriage exists under a marriage-law. Israel is charged not merely with having been deficient in love and affection, but with having violated distinct promises. She is legally guilty. Jehovah has a ribh, 'controversy at law' with Israel [4:1]. This presupposes a law giving the right to sue. In fact the prophet proceeds to enumerate the points in which the people are indictable. Amos likewise speaks of the torah and the chuqqim which the Judaeans have rejected [2:4] and this cannot be understood of prophetic instruction, as is possible in Isa. 5:24. In the second part of Isaiah there are indisputable references to the law as the norm under which Israel lives [42:21, 24; 51:7; 56:2, 4, 6]. Hosea puts the berith and the torah together [8:1]. Since this is a marriage-law, it must have been imposed at the time of the Exodus. Hosea, therefore, bears witness to the existence of an ancient berith-law among Israel, and in so far refutes the contention of the critics, that no law was recognized as in force by the prophets.

Of course, nothing can be determined from this passage alone as to the extent and nature of this law. From 8:12, however, we learn that it was of considerable compass, and had been given in written form: 'Though I write for him my law in ten thousand precepts, they are counted as a strange thing.' Certain statutes of the Mosaic torah are clearly presupposed in the early prophets [4:2]. Hosea considers it a calamity for Israel, that in the coming exile she will be debarred from fulfilling her ceremonial duties [9:3–5). Isaiah also had a high regard for the temple-service, and was on a friendly footing with Uriah, the priest [8:2]. To mark Egypt as belonging to Jehovah he predicts that an altar shall be in the midst of the land and a matstsebhah at its border [19:19]. The Egyptians shall in that day worship with sacrifice and oblation [vs. 21]. Zion is the city of 'our solemnities and appointed feasts' [33:20]. For the second part of Isaiah cp. 56:2, 4, 7; 60:6, 7; 63:18; 66:20–24. About the passages alleged to condemn the sacrificial cult on principle, see the next chapter of the discussion.

[5] The covenant is, according to Hosea, as it is to all New Testament writers, a national 'berith'

It was made when the descendants of Abraham had come to form a nation [11:1]. Nevertheless Hosea has become instrumental in imparting an individualizing direction to the teaching about it. His emotional temperament was a potent factor to this effect. From its emotional side, more than in any other aspect, religion is a personal, individual matter. Even where Hosea speaks of the people collectively, the impulse towards this is so strong as to make him personify and individualize Israel. Several of such passages the individual believer may appropriate even now almost without change [2:7, 16, 23; 6:1–3; 8:2; 14:2, 4, 8]. This will be the less surprising if we remember that, at the basis of such impersonations lay, at least on the realistic view, the intensely personal experiences with his wife, which were to him a mirror of the intercourse between Jehovah and the pious. Jeremiah, who in this poetic, emotional temperament so strongly resembles Hosea, has subsequently taken up this line of thought, and consequently consciously developed further what to Hosea bore the nature of an intuition.

The marriage-idea worked towards individualism in still another manner. If Jehovah is the husband and Israel the wife, then individual Israelites will appear as Jehovah's children [2:1; 11:3, 4]. Very strongly the trend towards individualism asserts itself in the closing words of the book [14:9].

Finally, it should not be forgotten, that the prophetic doctrine of the coming judgment bore in it a fertile seed of individualism. In the approaching catastrophe the majority will perish. Those that inherit the promise are only a small remnant, and the differentiation rests on a spiritual basis. Isaiah has carried this doctrine of the saved remnant to its ultimate root in the divine election [4:3]; those that escape of Israel are every one that is written (in the book of life).

[C] THE RUPTURE OF THE BOND: THE SIN OF ISRAEL

The early prophets predict clearly that the bond of the berith will be suspended. It will not, to be sure, be irreparably broken off. Were the critical contention correct, that all connection between Jehovah and Israel is based by the prophets on inexorable justice, excluding every exercise of grace, then plainly the thought of restoration must have been intolerable to them, since it involved nothing less than the abandonment of the supreme principle in the divine nature, a principle moreover that they had learned to uphold only after a long struggle with the opposing forces of grace and favouritism. On that view the prophets would have gone back on themselves, and what is worse, have made Jehovah go back on Himself. That they nevertheless proclaim with obvious delight the idea of grace proves that the critical construction must be, to say the least, one-sided.

The judgment comes on account of the sin of the people. Itself it belongs, as we shall see, to the eschatological perspective. But the sins leading up to it belong to the present stage. The prophets nowhere deal with sin in the abstract. It is always the concrete sin of Israel with which they are concerned. This, however, they most strictly relate to Jehovah. Strictly speaking, there is no sin except against God. The prophets deal with certain large aspects of the sinful conduct of the people. This, however, is a division on the external side, which does not contribute much to the psychology of sin. In fact the material for this is more largely to be gathered from such writings as the Psalter. Still, as compared with the law, there is more of reflection on the inner nature of sin in the prophets. From the groups of sin that the prophets single out for attack something can be learned concerning the motives of condemnation, and this opens the possibility of drawing inferences as to the real sinfulness of what they protest against. We further can distinguish in the individual prophets a peculiar view-point from which each regards the sin inveighed against. We shall therefore first have to look into the large groups of sin dealt with, and then, in the second place, examine the two prophets who reveal an individual way of judging sin.

COLLECTIVE NATIONAL SIN

The sin which the prophets condemn is largely collective national sin [Amos 2:6–8; 3:1; 7:15; 8:2]. And where not the whole nation in its solidarity is rebuked, certain classes are attacked. Still this is not collectivism pure and simple, as some writers assert, for the distinction between class and class, which accompanies this masstreatment, proves that the judgment is a qualitative one, and qualitativeness bears in itself the beginning of individualism. We find distinctions drawn between the profligates, the rich oppressors, the voluptuaries, the corruptors of justice, the externalists in the worship of Jehovah. And, on the other hand, we learn of the righteous, the needy, the poor, the meek [Amos 2:6, 7; 5:11, 12; 8:4]. [While this is a collective treatment of sin, it is generically collective. The collectivism of the Old Testament is enforced, however, in this, that when the catastrophe comes, the pious are made to suffer with the wicked. But this is a problem that afterwards staggered Jeremiah and

Ezekiel. All we can do is to recognize that there is solidarity in punishment, and that, following the principles of revelation, we must posit, behind solidarity of judgment, a solidarity of guilt, though we may not be able to reckon this out in detail. It is at bottom the question whether ethical laws or physical laws are supreme in the government of the universe.

The problem is apt to be realized more keenly to the extent that the organic structure of a community falls into pieces. At the time of Amos such a process was not as yet visible on the surface. At the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel it had become different. The critical judgment on this point has been warped by the assumption that the prophets stood absolutely alone against the whole nation. But this is merely theory. The prophets recognize gradations in the moral and religious condition of the people. Amos knows of a sifting that will take place, although he refers to this not so much in order to console, as rather to frighten: it will be as bad as sifting, the saving of two legs or the piece of an ear out of the mouth of the lion [3:12; 9:9, 10]. For Isaiah compare 3:10. In Micah there is not the same clear distinction of classes, but this is due not so much to an excess of nationalism as to the perception that there are no good individuals left [7:2]. The beginning of the individualized treatment of sin is most clearly perceptible in Hosea, just as the individualization of the berith received from him a powerful impulse [14:9].

THE CORRUPTION OF RITUAL WORSHIP

One great source of sin unanimously attacked by the prophets is the cult, the ritual worship of Jehovah. As stated above, in connection with the sacrificial system of the Mosaic law, the Wellhausen school takes the ground that the prophets opposed sacrifices and similar rites on principle, and that consequently they cannot have looked upon these as ordained by Jehovah, which again amounts to saying that the Pentateuch did not exist in their time. It is admitted, of course, that some passages speak of specific features of the cult, and cannot be quoted in support of such a generalizing theory. Thus images and other paraphernalia of idolatry are denounced [Mic. 1:7; 5:13, 14]. The corruptness of the priests is rebuked [Mic. 3:11]. According to Amos 2:7, religious prostitution of a particularly aggravated kind occurred, probably in connection with the cult of Jehovah. Amos 2:8, may be compared with Ex. 22:26, 27. These denunciations, as referring to special forms of misconduct, must be kept separated from the passages in which the critics find an unqualified condemnation of the cult expressed. The main passages thus interpreted are: Amos 4:4; 5:5, 21–26; 8:14; Hos. 6:6; Isa. 1:11ff.; Mic. 6:6–8. In the later prophets the passage most frequently appealed to is Jer. 7:21–23.

In endeavouring to estimate the purport of these passages it is necessary at the outset to warn against the attempt to break their force made from the apologetic side, namely, that all these condemnations are turned against a wrong technique with which the sacrifices were handled. This is a highly implausible exegesis, for the prophets are not as a rule concerned with forms, or the correct observance of forms, as such. They deal with principles of spiritual significance only. Thus Amos 4:4–5 discloses a ritual flaw in the offering of leavened things. This is against the law [Lev. 2:11]. But what the prophet censures is not this; he makes use of it only to ridicule the excessive ritual impulse, unable to satisfy itself with the ordinary requirements. Similarly, the advertising of sacrifices brought is condemned, not because any law existed forbidding this, but because of the perversion of the principle of true sacrifice observable in it. Again in the second half of vs. 4, not the bringing of tithes every third day, instead of every third year, is made an object of serious criticism by the prophet. It was, of course, impossible to bring tithes every third day. The prophet on purpose exaggerates, in order to mock the perverted zeal of the offerers. Hos. 10:1 is another example of the same kind of polemic; disapproval of the multiplication of altars has the support of the law, but the prophet has in mind the sinful tendency behind it: multiplying o altars is a piece of religious adultery, which spreads itself over a number of degrading liaisons [cp. vs. 2: 'their heart is divided'].

This conservative apologetic is therefore not in accord with the facts. What the prophet ridicules is sometimes in harmony with the Mosaic law, sometimes not: hence the point must have lain in something else, as suggested above. Still the critical exegesis is not thereby justified. In carefully examining the passages under debate we shall find that the disapproval of the cult on the part of the prophets is not based on principle, but due to one of the three following considerations: Either, the cult is conducted in a materialistic, mercantile spirit, in order that by giving so much value for returnfavour to be obtained, certain benefits may be purchased from the deity after a semi-magical fashion; or, the cult is conducted, jointly with gross immoral practices, so as to divorce Jehovah's religious interest from his ethical requirements; or, finally, the cult is employed in order to secure escape from the approaching judgment or to avert the latter entirely.

If we now look into the passages it will become clear that the presence of one or other of these three thoughts is sufficient to account for the phenomena.

AMOS 5:25

Amos 5:25 is of uncertain interpretation as to the meaning of the question proposed by God: 'Did ye bring unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?' Some take this as a protestation on Jehovah's part that the wilderness-journey proves sacrifices unnecessary for securing or obtaining the divine favour. This would imply that Amos regarded the wildernessjourney, in contradiction to the Pentateuch, a period of divine favour for Israel. The critics profess to find this view in Hosea and Jeremiah, and so take for granted that it must be likewise the view of Amos. But this by no means follows. Amos' words must be interpreted by themselves. If so taken, the situation immediately takes on another aspect. Its natural meaning becomes: Did you endeavour in the wilderness, after having been rejected by me, to propitiate me by sacrifices and offerings? If at that time ye were not foolish enough to attempt this, why do ye act on this principle now? Such an exegesis makes the question only negate the effiaccy of the cult as a means for regaining the favour of Jehovah, once forfeited by sin. The law itself precludes this delusion, when it allows no sacrificial covering for sin committed with a high hand, and that was precisely the sin which both the generation of the wilderness-journey and the contemporaries of Amos had committed. The words of vs. 26 also favour this exegesis, when, passing from question to affirmation, God proceeds: 'Yea, ye have borne Sakkuth, your king [R.V. "the tabernacle of your king"], and Kaiwan, your images, your star-god, which you made unto yourselves.' This rendering of the verb as a perfect tense, 'ye have borne', simply excludes that Amos should have regarded the period of such idolatry as a period of high favour with Jehovah. It is true, some exegetes render vs. 26 as relating to the future: 'so ye shall take up Sakkuth, your king', etc., that is, you will have to take all your idolatrous paraphernalia into exile (cp. R.V. in the margin).

While this interpretation is possible grammatically, the perfect being taken as a perfect consecutive, it is by no means necessary, and it would involve an unusually harsh transition to make the statement as a whole mean: the wilderness-journey proved that sacrifices are not essential to right standing with God, therefore ye shall go into captivity with all your idols. This is certainly a strange way of speaking, that might be perhaps tolerated in Hosea; but in Amos, with his closely consequential thought, it seems oddly out of place. What a harsh sentence for such a mere mistaken opinion! And the mild description of the state in the wilderness, as one proving no sacrifices to be necessary, sounds oddly tame for Amos with all his vehemence of expostulation in the context. If our exegesis, on the other hand, be adopted, the preceding context can also be interpreted to the same effect: God hates, despises their feasts, because these things cannot avail to stem the judgment, as the foolish people believe they are able to do. Not sacrifices but retribution will satisfy Jehovah: 'Let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.'

ISAIAH 1:10–17

Isa. 1:10–17, sounds even stronger than the language of Amos just considered. But in this case likewise there is nothing to indicate that the statement is meant as a pronouncement on the value or worthlessness of sacrifices in the abstract. The words 'who has required this at your hand?' in vs. 12 might, at first sight, seem to imply a divine declamation, 'I have never required it', and that would rule out the revelation-origin of the sacrificial laws. But the added qualification, 'to trample my courts', clearly shows what is meant. Ordinary frequentation of the temple Isaiah would hardly have stigmatized as a trampling of the temple-courts. Isaiah himself visited the temple, as chapter 6 proves. And how absurd it is to impute to the prophet a sweeping condemnation of all the acts enumerated here! Prayer is one of the things that God refuses to receive! This alone suffices to prove, that not these acts in the abstract, but some peculiar accompaniment of them, rendered them unacceptable in Jehovah's sight. What this attending feature is the prophet clearly enough indicates. It is the joining together of all these things with flagrant iniquity. Vs. 13 should be rendered: 'I cannot away with iniquity joined to a solemn meeting.' When they pray God will not hear. This is not because prayer is wrong as such, but because the hands lifted up in prayer are 'full of blood'.

It should never be forgotten that in the prophets God speaks the language of burning indignation. If all sorts of qualifications and safeguarding of the words had been added, the entire force of the denunciation would have been broken. What the critics demand, as necessary for our exegesis to stand, is that the prophet should have made Jehovah speak on this wise: 'Although in the abstract I do not disapprove of ritual worship, and even demand it, yet in the way you offer it to me I cannot accept it.' What the critics have failed to appreciate psychologically is the rhetorical absoluteness of the condemnation. They have made a precisely-formulated theological deliverance out of it. What we have in such passages is the anthropomorphic speech of one whose indignation has been aroused to the point of refusal to consider the question in the abstract or with nicety of distinctions. No man, no preacher, truly capable of resentment against sin, would have stopped to add qualifications under such circumstances.

HOSEA 6:6

In Hos. 6:6, the difference between the two members of the sentence is a difference in form but not in reality. The meaning is not that when mercy comes under consideration, God absolutely rejects all sacrifice ('mercy and not sacrifice'), whilst, when it is a matter of the knowledge of Himself, He has only a relative preference, which does not absolutely reject the sacrifice ('knowledge of God more than burnt offerings'). There is here simply an idiomatic variation of the same thought in both clauses. The second clause is a way of speaking such as anyone might employ: I want acts rather than mere promises. It therefore should not be regarded as weaker than the 'not' makes the first, but be interpreted in harmony with it: Jehovah desires knowledge of God and not burnt offering. The rejection is absolute in both cases. But the point at issue is on what this double rejection is based. The context furnishes the answer. What God here scorns is sacrifice as a means for appeasing His righteous displeasure, sacrifice moreover offered without true repentance. When their goodness is as a morning cloud and the dew that goes early away, offerings cannot avail to avert the judgment. Therefore God hewed them by the prophets, and slew them by the word of His mouth. It is to this train of thought that, by means of 'for' the sixth verse is joined. The chesed here points back to the false chesed of vs. 4, and the knowledge of God to the pretended knowledge of vs. 3. When the words are thus interpreted in the light of the context, they no longer prove the contention of the critical theory.

MICAH 6:6–9

In Mic. 6:6–9 likewise everything depends on a correct apprehension of the context. The question, 'Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah', etc. is not asked by the prophet himself, but by someone representing the people. It is not permissible at the outset to put into it the expectation of a negative answer, and to make this negative answer the opinion of the prophet; I will not come before Jehovah with any of these things. If it is a question asked by the people, we must understand it as meant in all seriousness; the speaker wants to know what would be the proper way of approaching Jehovah under the circumstances, and to what limit of exertion and expense he ought to go. The structure of the discourse is dramatic. The offer of the speaker in vs. 6 is induced by the expostulation of Jehovah voiced in vss. 1–5. Jehovah has a controversy with Israel, the point of which is that they have been ungrateful for ancient favours received. In response to this charge of ingratitude the prophet introduces the representative of the people, who asks how he can make amends for an acknowledged delinquency. He offers to reimburse Jehovah by ritual service of a most excessive kind, and to conciliate Him by means of a pagan form of expiation, the sacrifice of the first-born.

The prophet is the third speaker. He opposes to the twofold offer of vss. 6, 7, the declaration, 'He has showed thee, O man, what is good, and what does Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?' Does such an answer imply disapproval of sacrifice on principle? The law itself nowhere represents sacrifice as a sufficient return for the favour of God. Besides this, the idea of lavishness in ritual to make up for past neglect and ingratitude is offensive on every right interpretation of sacrifice. The words, 'He has showed thee, O man, what is good', etc. do not refer to the time of the Exodus, so as to carry the implication that these things were the only things taught Israel at that time, to the exclusion of sacrifice. They refer to prophetic instruction of later date.

It has been suggested that in the three things named the characteristic burden of each of the three great prophets, Amos,

Hosea, Isaiah, can be recognized. To do justly would then sum up the message of Amos, to love kindness that of Hosea, and to walk humbly with one's God, that of Isaiah.

AMOS 4:4

It is far from certain that in Amos 4:4, sacrifice is called 'transgression'. The form of statement, 'Come to Bethel and transgress, to Gilgal and multiply transgression' does, it is true, permit of this exegesis. But it does not require it. The words lose nothing of their point, when the transgression is found, not in the act of sacrificing per se, but in the character which this act had habitually come to bear at Bethel and Gilgal. To sacrifice there was, under the circumstances, to transgress, to do so lavishly involved the multiplying of transgression. To be sure, the transgression cannot in this case, as in Isa. 1:13, have consisted in some sinful manner of life added to the sacrifice. The context in Amos shows that the sin must have been something entering into the sacrificial act itself. We cannot render: 'Come to Bethel, sacrifice there, and then lead a dissolute life.' But the sin that increased at the same ratio with the sacrifice need not, for all that, have lain in the sacrifice as such. Apart from the wrong ritual spirit prevailing at the sanctuaries named, we must not forget that precisely at Bethel and Gilgal Jehovah was notoriously served under the form of an image, and that may well have vitiated every sacrifice brought there from the prophet's point of view. This also would not amount to a denial of the legitimacy of sacrifice in the abstract.

The last-named consideration will have to be remembered likewise in interpreting Amos 5:4, 5. A pointed contrast is here drawn between seeking Jehovah, and seeking Bethel or entering into Gilgal or passing over to Beersheba. In the sanctuaries named Jehovah is not to be found. Why? Not necessarily because sacrifices are brought there, for that happened at many another place in Amos' time, but because through their officially legitimatized idolatry and the frequency of visits paid to them, they had become the special exponents of what the prophets regarded as the wrong type of religion.

Even less reason is there to infer from Amos 8:14, and 9:1, that the prophet regards all sacrificial worship as per se sinful. On the contrary, the former passage confirms the suggestion just made, that the image-worship practised at Samaria, Dan and Beersheba, provoked his irony. 'To swear by the sin of Samaria' cannot mean to swear by the cult of Samaria. Swearing is usually done by the name of a god, and less frequently in the name of a custom or practice. Probably the 'sin' is here the image of the Samaritans, though it may have stood at Bethel, for that was the official sanctuary of the capital. In the formula, 'as thy God, O Dan, liveth', we may find a confirmation of this view as to 'the sin of Samaria.' Only in the third clause we read of swearing by something that is not directly a god. The exact formula here also is given: 'As the way of Beersheba liveth.' It is not easy to tell what 'the way' means here. The use of the verb 'liveth' makes us expect a reference to something personal. But there is no evidence, so far as we know, of a god or idol having been designated as 'a way'. There are writers who think that 'the way' can mean the type of religion practised at a certain place; here: 'the cultway of Beersheba'. This use of derek for religion (cp. the Greek hodos in a similar sense) cannot be proven to have been familiar at the time of Amos. Probably 'the way of Beersheba' means the pilgrimage to Beersheba. One could swear by that, even as the Moslem of the present day swears by the pilgrimage to Mecca. But, however interpreted, the phrase gives no countenance to the idea that the prophet meant any condemnation of sacrifice on principle.

JEREMIAH 7:21–23

We find, therefore, that in no passage of the four early prophets is the cult of sacrifice denounced as in itself and under all circumstances sinful. The most convincing passage, however, from their point of view, the critics find in Jeremiah, a prophet of the seventh century [Jer. 7:21–23]. Here Jehovah first declares, 'Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat ye flesh', and then explains, that in the day of His bringing up Israel out of Egypt He did not speak unto them, nor command them aught about sacrifices. On the contrary, these were the things He had required: 'Hearken unto my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people, and walk ye in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.' And yet a moment's reflection will show how difficult it is from the critical standpoint itself to attribute to Jeremiah the opinion that the Mosaic legislation imposed no ritual demands upon Israel.

These critics generally assume that Jeremiah had a hand in the Deuteronomic reform-movement, which laid the Deuteronomic code upon the people. Now Deuteronomy does contain considerable ritual material. The code is said to have been a compromise. We ask: how could the prophet compromise on a matter that was to his view a matter of principle, beyond the reach of all compromise, namely, that sacrifices were sinful as such? Wellhausen believes that Jeremiah had cut himself loose from this reform movement, and he finds in 7:8 a characterization of its reprehensible methods from the prophet's later standpoint. 'The false pen of the scribes has wrought falsely' would then be a very bitter word spoken by the prophet against his own past. But there would be more than culpable inconsistency here; it would be a case of unparalleled audacity to dare to speak after such a volte face about anything commanded or not commanded at the time of Moses.

Further, in 17:26 the prophet foretells that in case of obedience to the sabbath law, Jehovah's favour will be shown in this, that men shall come from all quarters of the land to bring Jehovah burnt offerings and sacrifices and meal offerings and frankincense and thankofferings. Similarly in 33:11 it is foretold that in the future there will be again heard in Jerusalem the voice of joy and gladness … the voice of them that bring sacrifices of thanksgiving unto the house of Jehovah. It will be necessary to declare these passages spurious, if Jeremiah on principle rejected every form of sacrifice. For these reasons we shall either have to let the passage in chapter 7 stand as an unsolvable enigma, or put another interpretation upon it.

The reference to the situation in Ex. 19 points the way to its understanding. It was at the very first approach of Jehovah to Israel with the offer of the berith, even before the Decalogue had been promulgated; it was at this earliest coming together of Jehovah and Israel that God refrained from saying anything about sacrifices, and simply staked the entire agreement between Himself and the people on their loyalty and obedience to Him [cp. Ex. 19:5]. Thus understood, the prophet means to affirm that the berith does not ultimately rest on sacrifice, but the sacrifices on the berith.

The fact that no explicit evidence for the prophetic condemnation of sacrifice can be adduced from their writings, gains in significance by observing that there are indubitable statements in which certain particular features connected with the cult are condemned. In Hos. 10:8 the high places of Samaria are called 'the sin of Israel'. In Hos. 10:10 it is said that the Israelites are bound to their two transgressions, that is to say, to the two calves at Dan and Bethel. In Mic. 1:5 we read in parallelism: 'What is the transgression of Jacob, and what are the high places of Judah?' But all this concerns cultinstruments; the cult as such is never declared sin.

Finally, by way of caution against drawing rash inferences from the prophetic passages discussed, reference may be made to analogous statements in the Psalter, and that in Psalms which the modern school itself regards as of post-exilic date, in which, therefore, the Psalmists cannot, on the critical view, have possibly meant to deny the existence or Mosaic provenience or divine authority of the laws of sacrifice (cp. Psa. 40:6; 50:7–15; 51:16–19]. If such statements could coexist with belief in the divine approbation and the religious value of sacrifice, when performed in the proper spirit, there is no reason to deny the possibility of the same mental attitude in the case of the prophets.

SOCIAL SIN

Side by side with the ritual sin of Israel, its social sin falls under the prophetic condemnation. Owing to the present-day sociological trend of religion, this side of the prophetic message has attracted considerable attention. At the outset the caution is necessary, that we may not expect overmuch light from this quarter on specific modern social and economic problems. The situation in the two cases is too widely different for that. The grave economic problems of modern society arise largely from commercial and industrial causes. The people of Israel were not a commercial nor an industrial community. Such a problem as that of the relation of capital to labour did not exist for them. A striking illustration of this is found in the rule that, while no interest may be taken from Israelite by Israelite, this is not forbidden in dealing with foreigners. What is allowed on economic grounds is forbidden on theocratic grounds: a higher rule exists for the people of God than that of economic rightness [Ex. 22:25; Lev. 25:36; Deut. 23:20; Ezek. 18:8]. Thus the cases where analogies can be drawn and applications made from ancient to modern conditions are few.

An exceptional case is, perhaps, what may be called 'the problem of the city'. Amos, and especially Micah, recognize that the city, while an accumulator of the energies of culture, is also an accumulator of potencies of evil [Amos 3:9; Mic. 1:5]. In the capital all evil is concentrated. Hence in the future all cities will have to cease to exist [Mic. 2:10; 3:8–12; 4:9, 13; 5:10, 13]. Men shall then sit in rural simplicity and security, each under his own vine and fig-tree, and none shall make them afraid [4:4]. The Messianic King will not proceed from the city of Jerusalem, but from the country-town of Bethlehem, as David did originally.

But even in this relative approximation to one of our modern problems, there are points of difference. The prophet has not in mind as one of the chief causes of evil in city-life the congestion of population of which modern sociologists make so much. It is moral evil that is congested there, and no attempt is made to reduce it, even in part, to physical causes. The cities are condemned for the specific reason of their being instruments of warfare, fortified places, perhaps also on account of their being exponents of a spirit of rebellious self-dependence over against God [Mic. 5:11; cp. Gen. 4:17]. The prophetic polemic against war has only in a subordinate sense the modern humanitarian and economic motive. The motive is largely religious: Israel must trust in Jehovah, not in its own strength. Of course, peace is better than war. In the great eschatological pictures, such as Isa. 2 and Mic. 5 the peace-ideal has its place. Swords will be beaten into ploughshares and spears into hoes, but this has nothing to do with the wickedness of war as such, except in so far as it is cruelly conducted. It stands on a line with the idea that devouring animals will cease.

The prophetic condemnation of the social sin of Israel does not have its deepest root in humanitarian motives. The humanitarian element is not, of course, absent. Nor could it be absent, for it is as old as the theocracy. The law takes the poor and defenceless under its special protection. It is in keeping with this, that the chief institutions of the theocracy, for example, that of the kingdom, bear a conspicuously humane, beneficent character. And we find this preserved and further developed in the prophets. Their rebuke of social sin attaches itself to the distinction between rich and poor, powerful and weak, a distinction that has been at all times the symptom and occasion, though not the cause, of social disease [Amos 2:7; 4:1; 5:11; 6:4–6; 8:4; Mic. 6:12]. The note of divine compassion makes itself distinctly heard in these passages. But against the fact that rich and poor exist together the prophet does not raise his voice; all the prophets would have subscribed to Prov. 22:2. The institution of slavery is not condemned.

Oversounding this note of humanitarianism is the note of resentment of social injustice, and with this the whole problem is raised to the religious sphere. For injustice is sin against God, and no consequences, however deplorable from the manward point of view, could equal the terrible significance of the religious fact to the prophetic consciousness. In short, it is not the circumstance that the rich injure the poor from which the prophetic mind in the first instance revolts, but what shocks and excites the prophets' resentment is the bearing of the wicked conduct upon Jehovah and His rights. Hence the phenomenon that the conduct of the rich is condemned in equally strong terms even where it does not directly affect the lot of the poor and the weak.

Amos denounces not merely violence and robbery in the palaces, not only tumults and oppressions in Samaria, worse than what Philistines and Egyptians are accustomed to [3:9, 10], but equally the vain luxury of the rich, lying upon their beds of ivory, feasting at their banquets, engaging in drunken revels, anointing themselves with the finest ointments, trying to imitate David as musicians, keeping up winter-houses and summer-residences, but—and this is the main point—who are through all their pride of life and luxury rendered oblivious of the deplorable state of the people of God, and do not grieve for the affliction of Joseph.

Not wealth and luxury in themselves the prophets attack. Of social burdens, such as heavy taxation, and cruel exactions they do not even speak, but of the reflex indignity offered through social maltreatment to Jehovah in the persons of His people. Amos himself was a man of frugal antecedents, yet there is no note of social jealousy in his denunciation of the opposite. His charge is that wealth and luxury such as were observable in his day render their possessors blind to all higher religious interests. Isaiah, who sprang from quite a different stratum of society, and whose regal mind was keenly sensitive to all æsthetic impressions, none the less renders on this point the same verdict as Amos. Not that to be rich and powerful in itself is a sin. The sin lies in the inordinate, irreligious desire to be so, which in its eagerness brushes aside all other considerations [Amos. 8:4, 5].

All this is of importance, because it marks a great difference between the social message of the prophets, and much that passes as social preaching nowadays. To the prophet it is the sinfulness of the wrong social conduct, to the modern social preacher it is too often the injuriousness to the social organism, that stands in the foreground. The prophets view the facts in their relation to God, as measured by the standards of absolute ethics and religion; the modern sociological enthusiast views them mainly, if not exclusively, in their bearing upon the welfare of man. What the prophets feature is the religious in the social; what many at the present time proclaim is the social devoid of or indifferent to the religious.

The features so far dwelt upon are the common property of all the prophets in the period we are dealing with. There are two of these, however, who have so strongly put the stamp of their religious individuality upon the conception and treatment of it as to place in the strongest possible relief the inner character of sin. These are Hosea and Isaiah. Of their doctrine of sin we shall, therefore, speak separately.

HOSEA'S DOCTRINE OF SIN

First, of Hosea's. With him it is the conception of Jehovah as the marriage-Lord of Israel that has at nearly every point shaped his presentation of the subject. Hosea dwells upon the sin which Israel as a unit has committed against Jehovah. Sin is to Hosea want of conformity to the ideal of marriage-affection and loyalty. His indictment of Israel reads: 'There is no truth (i.e. faithfulness), no lovingkindness, no knowledge of God in the land' [4:1]. And correspondingly Israel's sin is positively described as treachery [5:7; 6:7], the speaking of lies against Jehovah [7:13], the compassing Him about with falsehood and deceit [11:12; cp. further 7:16; 10:2]. Not merely that the people transgress the laws of Jehovah, but their considering them 'a strange thing' constitutes the wickedness of their conduct; they disavow that special claim on their obedience which God has as their marriage-Lord [8:12]. Their sin is a failure to regard, to fear, to know Jehovah; they have left off to take heed to Jehovah [4:10].

The same idea is expressed by the figure in which Hosea describes the sin of serving other gods. He calls this 'whoredom'. Sometimes the term is to be understood in the literal sense, for example, 4:11, 'Whoredom and wine must take away the understanding'. Here the reference undoubtedly is to prostitution as practised in the idolatrous sanctuaries [cp. Amos 2:7]. But in Hos. 4:12 'the spirit of whoredom' is a figurative description of the idolatrous bent of the people: whoredom coincides with adultery. The principal cause of this adultery lies in sensual selfishness. Israel has withdrawn her affection from Jehovah. As He called them (the more He called them), so (the more) they went from Him; they sacrificed unto the Baals, they burned incense to graven images [11:2]. They knew no longer that Jehovah had healed them [11:3]. Their heart was exalted, they had forgotten Him [13:6]. To what Jehovah had given her: 'I will go after my lovers that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink' [2:5].

Israel ought to love Jehovah supremely for His own sake, and should seek the external blessings only because in them His love expresses itself. As it is, the very opposite takes place, the people care only for the gifts and are indifferent to the Giver. 'They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and terebinths, because their shadow is good' [4:13]. The sweet cakes of raisins, of which 3:1 says that they love them, are the figure for this sensual cult. Because inspired by this motive, it flourishes in times of plenty: 'Israel is a luxuriant vine which putteth forth his fruit; according to the multitude of his fruit he has multiplied his altars; according to the prosperity of his land he has made goodly pillars' [10:1]. When plenty and prosperity cease, the allegiance is lightly shifted from one god to another; 'I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better with me than now' [2:7].

As to the cult Hosea condemns the selfish spirit in which it is conducted, and this for the sole reason, that it vitiates the relation between Israel and Jehovah at the very root. This type of polemic is peculiar to Hosea. What Ephraim brings is only a fleeting affection. Their chesed is like the morning-cloud and like the dew that goes early away [6:4]. Jehovah will not accept such service; it belongs to paganism. Hence the prophet says that she has loved the wages of religious prostitution upon every corn floor. She has sold herself to the strange gods for the produce of the land [9:1].

But the same principle determines Hosea's opinion with regard to the social and political sin of Israel. The prophet traces a connection between the faithlessness of the people to Jehovah and the dissolution of all social ties. This is the sequence of thought in 4:1, 2. Because faithfulness, lovingkindness (towards God) and knowledge of God fail in the land, therefore in the intercourse between man and man also, there is nothing but swearing and breaking faith and killing and stealing and committing adultery; they exceed and blood touches blood. Where the religious union with Jehovah is not kept sacred, there no human marriage can be secure. Sensuality produces religious whoredom, and religious whoredom again issues into physical whoredom [4:11, 14].

The sin of striving after riches and luxury, which Amos condemns for more obvious reasons, Hosea regards as an alienation of love from Jehovah. So we must understand 12:7–9, where Jehovah charges Israel with this sin, and then, by way of explanation, declares: 'I am Jehovah thy God from the land of Egypt', that is to say, I have remained faithful; ye have become faithless. They have become like the Canaanites, that is, like the Phoenicians, the traffickers of the ancient world. They have missed their theocratic vocation by striving to engage in trade. And their trading was dishonest; balances of deceit were in their hand [12:7].

Finally, in what Hosea says about the political sin of Israel it is not difficult to trace the influence of the same principle. A characteristic sin is in his view 'the pride of Israel' [5:5; 7:10]. This is the haughtiness born of self-reliance, the opposite to that spirit of dependence which ought to characterize behaviour towards Jehovah. Before all else, it is an act of disloyalty, when Ephraim seeks help with Assyria, whereas God ought to be her Saviour [5:13]. And, having once forsaken Jehovah, her heart has become so void of all constant attachment, that, while intriguing with Assyria, she at the same time seeks the favour of Egypt [8:9; 12:1]. Like a silly dove Ephraim is fluttering around; they call unto Egypt, they go to Assyria [7:11]. Hosea does not speak of faith positively, as Isaiah does, but this rebuke of the pride of Israel shows that the essence of the grace is familiar to him.

Among the political sins of Israel, the prophet further gives a prominent place to the manner in which they dealt with the institution of the kingdom. Not that he rejected the kingdom on principle, as some expositors claim. This can be maintained only by exscinding 3:5. If these words are genuine, then Hosea must have regarded the Davidic dynasty as the only legitimate one for Israel. But it is just as incorrect to assume that he condemned certain individual rulers of the northern kingdom for individual reasons alone. The terms in which he speaks are too general for that. It is not so much what the kings did, but rather what Israel did with the kingship and the kings, that meets with the prophet's disapproval. And he disapproves of it, because it was based on a wrong attitude towards Jehovah [8:4; 13:10]. The kingship was founded on the pride of Israel. This applies not merely to the later kings, rapidly succeeding one another; it applies to all the successive dynasties that the northern kingdom had seen. Hosea speaks in equally condemnatory terms of the kingship of Saul, for it had its origin in the same spirit [9:9; 10:9]. Only the kingdom of David escapes, because it was distinctly initiated by Jehovah, an instrument of the salvation He desired to give to His people.

Because thus viewing sin from the one principle of unfaithfulness to Jehovah, Hosea reaches a profound conception of its character as a disposition, an enslaving power, as something deeper and more serious than single acts of transgression. It is a bent, rendering its victims unable to reform [5:4; 7:2]. The 'spirit of whoredom' is within them, they are bent to backsliding [11:7]. 'Ephraim is a cake not turned'; he remains unconcernedly on the wrong, already burnt, side, however disastrous the consequences may be.

ISAIAH'S DOCTRINE OF SIN

We now turn to Isaiah and his conception of sin. It likewise reveals a point of view clearly his own. On the whole it is the deepest that the revelation of the Old Testament has to teach about sin. What the idea of the berith-marriage is to Hosea, that the thought of Jehovah's glory is to Isaiah. Sin appears to him as, first of all, an infringement upon the honour of God. The idolatrous practices of the people are denounced for this reason. God has forsaken Israel, because they are filled from the east (perhaps the emendation 'with divination', qesem for qedem, is to be preferred), and soothsayers like the Philistines [2:6; 8:19]. Note carefully what is to Isaiah the offensive feature in sin of this kind. Such practices are a slight put upon Jehovah's divinity. It is His right to supply all teaching and information of this sort to His people. They are to walk in His light, to be open always to the influx of divine truth [2:5]. The ideal in the prophet's mind is, that Israel as a whole shall live in such unbroken communication with Jehovah, as he was aware of possessing for himself (note the plural 'let us walk'). What they possess, or imagine themselves to possess, is a caricature of revelation.

In the same way idolatry is a caricature of religion in general, highly dishonouring to God. 'Their land is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made' [2:8]. That God's people are capable of exchanging the living God for something lifeless, manufactured by themselves, appears to the prophet the height of irreverence and irreligion. Subjectively the offensive feature of this kind of sin consists in its humiliating, degrading influence upon man [2:9]. The true greatness of man consists in the service of Jehovah; this being abandoned for idolatry, a universal abasement takes place. The idols are to the prophet's view the opposite of all Jehovah stands for. As Jehovah is the Holy One, so the idols contract, as it were, a sort of positive unholiness; they are to be defiled, to be dishonoured [30:22].

It is, however, not through paganistic forms of divination and the cult of idols alone that Israel has dishonoured Jehovah. In 2:7 luxury, wealth and military pride stand between divination and idolatry, and the combination is very significant. Luxurious and riotous living are condemned from the point of view that these produce carelessness and forgetfulness of God. Those Judaeans who rise up early in the morning to follow strong drink, and tarry late in the night till wine inflame them, whose feasts are harp and lute and tabret and pipe, they are the ones who do not regard the work of Jehovah, neither have considered the operation of His hands. The work of Jehovah here is His work in history, the momentous issues that He is working out in regard to the lot of His people. Every truly religious man ought to have his eyes and ears open to what the course of history portends. Isaiah has here distinctly formulated the thought that history is a revelation of Jehovah, in which there is no place for accident or confusion. Primarily it is, of course, the task of the prophet to watch what is developing. But the specific task of the prophet is destined to be universalized. Had Israel complied with this requirement, they might have adjusted themselves to the coming events and have escaped. As it is, they go into captivity for lack of knowledge [5:13].

Isaiah speaks once and again of the sin of intoxication [5:11, 12, 22; 22:2, 13; 28:1, 3, 7]. Especially the last of these passages is extremely realistic in its picture of the drunken revels of the priests and prophets. The prophet does not, of course, condemn the use of wine as such. On the contrary, some of his noblest figures are derived from it [1:22; 5; 16:8–10; 18:5; 25:6]. But intoxication is irreligious and degrading, because it darkens the perception of the divine spiritual realities in man, and so renders him brutish. The drunkards at Jerusalem 'err through wine and through strong drink go astray; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment' [28:7].

An equally prominent form of sin with this prophet is pride. Isaiah speaks of the lofty looks of man, the haughtiness of men [2:11, 17], and of things in general in the land that are haughty and proud and lifted up, vss. 12–15. The daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes. The glory and pomp of the Israelites are to be humbled [5:14]. 'Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria say in pride and in stoutness of heart: 'the bricks are fallen, but we will build with hewn stone; the sycamores are cut down, but we will replace them by cedars' [9:9, 10]. Of the pride of intellect 5:21 speaks. Pride based on wealth and aesthetic pretence likewise comes in for rebuke. Isaiah himself was responsive to all things of beauty and grandeur that the world presented to his sight. And yet he condemns the silver and the gold, the pleasant pictures, the fine apparel of the daughters of Zion, so elaborately described in 3:16–24. Beauty, irreligiously esteemed, infringes upon the glory of Jehovah. To take any natural object or product of art, intended to reflect the divine beauty, so as to make it serve the magnifying of the creature is a species of godlessness. Pride and vanity are closely connected with each other. Pride is vanity, in so far as there is no real worth and greatness behind it.

Pride, however, is not found among Israel alone. To Isaiah it made no difference whether the boasters were the petty grandees of Judaea, or the mighty monarchs of the East. Because the Assyrian claims that by the strength of his hand he has done things, and by his wisdom removed the bounds of the peoples, Jehovah will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks [10:12]. The highest embodiment that this sin of pride had found, to the far-reaching vision of Isaiah, was in that King of Babel, who said in his heart: 'I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit upon the mount of congregation (the mythical mountain, where the gods assembled), in the uttermost parts of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.'

[14:13, 14]. Pride is in its essence a form of self-deification. Satanic sin, a type of Satan, has been found in the King of Babel thus described [cp. 14:12; Rev. 9:1], and because the King is here addressed as morning star, the name Lucifer has been transferred from him to Satan.

Still other forms of sin castigated by Isaiah are avarice and oppression [3:12, 15; 5:7, 8, 23]. With this we are familiar from Amos and Hosea. The commercial prosperity of the earlier part of Isaiah's ministry fostered this evil. During the first centuries of their settlement in Canaan the Israelites were a purely agricultural people. Later on, however, a trading class sprang up among them. As the structure of society still continued to be based on agriculture, the increase of wealth meant the acquisition of vast landed properties. The rich made the poor their debtors, and then drove them from their ancient estates. Now the use of the soil had among Israel a religious significance. Jehovah is Lord of the entire land. He gives the people only the usufruct of the soil. The massing of lands in the hands of a few, therefore, was not only an ethical evil because accomplished through foul means, nor merely a social evil because productive of great disparity, but it was likewise a religious evil because it deprived the poor man of the very basis of his religious existence. Deprived of his land, he could no longer bring his tithes, nor his firstlings, nor his sacrifices; he could no longer participate in the celebration of the feasts. Hence Isaiah calls a woe upon those that join house to house, that they may dwell alone in the midst of the land [5:8]. That Isaiah's motive is at least partly religious, may be seen from 3:13–15. Jehovah here enters into judgment with the elders of his people, because they have eaten up the vineyard. Chap. 5 throws light on this; it is called the vineyard, because in reality the property of Jehovah. The poor are called Jehovah's people. We can here already observe the religious colouring which the word gradually acquires [10:2; 11:4; 14:30–32].

ISRAEL'S SIN AS VIEWED BY THE PROPHETS HISTORICALLY

In conclusion we must look at the prophetic statements concerning the sin of Israel from a historical point of view. What light do they throw on the state and course of Israel's religion in the pre-prophetic period? Do these sins and errors appear to the prophets as a lower stage of development, quite natural and unavoidable at the time before the purer prophetic religion arose? This is the critical view.

It is admitted on all sides that the historical writings of the Old Testament contradict it on almost every page. Their testimony is that there was:

(a) a relatively perfect and pure beginning of Israel's religion in revelation;

(b) an almost immediate falling away from this;

(c) an effort on the part of the prophets to reclaim the nation.

What the adherents of the critical hypothesis claim, is that the writers or redactors of these historical books, under the influence of unhistoric views, so manipulated the sources, that these books no longer reflect the actual course of events, but instead a totally different, imaginary course of events, construed from the subsequent orthodox legalistic standpoint.

Now what we are interested in is, whether the prophets give an account of the history of Israel before their own times which agrees with the critical representation, or one which agrees with this testimony of the historical books.

The point at issue should be sharply formulated. The question is not whether the popular religion did or did not actually constitute a lower form of belief and practice than what the prophets stood for. That it did admits of no denial. The mass of the people lived on a low plane religiously. We may go further than this. This was not confined to the particular period or juncture at which the prophets arose; such had been the condition of the mass for a long time previously. Their actual religion may well have borne many of the features which the critics ascribe to it. We may even say that, through the critical controversy with the Wellhausenians, our eyes have been first opened to this in its full extent. We apprehend better now that during the entire course of Old Testament history the supernatural element introduced by revelation had to wage war with the paganistic tendencies of the people. And, since no false practice can in the long run exist without reacting on beliefs and conceptions, a paganistic cult must have had for its correlate a paganistic creed. In so far we and the critics need not widely disagree as to the state of affairs depicted in the prophetic writings.

But the difference between them and us concerns the question whether, over against this popular religion, there did, or did not exist a better historical tradition, going back to ancient times, to which the prophets could appeal, and on the ground of which they could charge the mass with apostasy. Do the prophets oppose to the degraded practices and belief of their time another type of religion, simply because it is better and their own, or because it is the only legitimate religion in Israel? Do they appeal to their own convictions, as to intuitive verities, in the judgments pronounced and in the ideals set up, or do they call back to a standard fixed before?

But even this does not quite suffice to formulate the point at issue. In a certain sense even our opponents admit that the popular religion in the days of the prophets represented a decline from a previous better state. It is believed that the Hebrews in their nomadic period, before they entered upon the life in Canaan, had had a much simpler form of religion than afterwards. Through adopting many of the customs of the Canaanites they deteriorated. There had been a downward process. For the simple, austere religion of the desert had been substituted the sensual, luxurious religion of the inhabitants of the land. But what the prophets preached was, according to the critics, not identical with this primitive nomadic religion. It differed from it as the ethical differs from the sub-ethical, the spiritual from the naturalistic. So that, while in one sense, the popular religion was a degenerated religion, in another sense, as compared with the prophetic religion, it was also a lower stage of evolution. There had never been something like those views of the prophets before. Consequently the question must be put as follows: Do the prophets teach that the people had fallen away from a relatively better faith, or do they claim that they had fallen away from an absolute norm, imposed upon them in the past by Jehovah and in substance identical with their own prophetic teaching?

In endeavouring to answer this question, we observe, in the first place, that the prophets charge the people with apostasy from a legitimate religion revealed to them at the time of the Exodus. This is the testimony of Amos 2:10; 3:1; 5:25; 9:7. It is implied also, as we have seen, in what Hosea teaches about the origin of the marriageunion, and the marriage-law resulting from it, in the same period. Israel's sin goes back, not merely to the time of the secession of the ten tribes, nor merely to the time of Saul ('the days of Gibeah' 10:9), but to the time before their entering Canaan [9:10]. Isaiah has numerous references to a better past, when the religious conditions were nearer to the ideal. This refers proximately to the time of David [1:21, 26]. But it reaches further back to the time of the Exodus and the wilderness-journey [4:5; 10:24; 10:26; 11:16]. Israel's first father already sinned, and her interpreters transgressed against Jehovah [43:27]. God knew from the beginning that Israel was very treacherous, called a transgressor from the womb [48:1–8, especially vs. 8]. Immediately after the redemption from Egypt they rebelled and grieved God's Holy Spirit, so that He turned into their enemy and fought against them [63:10]. Micah likewise appeals to the saving acts of Jehovah at the time of the Exodus, and appeals to them in order to call Israel back to obedience. Jehovah sent Moses, Aaron and Miriam before them and made known to them what is good [6:3–8].

The prophets view the people's religious condition, not merely as degraded and deplorable, but as a guilty condition. It is not necessary to point this out in detail; the threat of judgment against it is inconceivable on any other supposition. The moral indignation which so strongly colours their discourses can only have flowed from the knowledge that wilful transgression was involved.

The prophets identify this old ideal from which Israel has departed with their own teaching. Nowhere do they make a distinction between what Jehovah once demanded and what He now demands. None of the prophets ever betrays that his teaching appears to him in the light of an innovation. Though they were aware that their teaching marked an advance upon what lay before, yet they never indicate that there was an advance in the principles upheld. By these constant principles they judge the conduct of Israel. But not only this, explicitly and positively also they make the identification between their own message and the older one. Hosea says that in former times Jehovah has hewn Israel by the prophets, and slain them by the words of his mouth, because He desired lovingkindness and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God and not burnt-offerings [6:5, 6]. By a prophet Jehovah brought Israel up out of Egypt and by a prophet was he preserved, [12:13]. Israel made answer to Jehovah's approach unto her in the days of her youth [2:15].

It is the same in Amos. When Jehovah knew Israel among all the families of the earth, it was in order that among them righteousness should be cultivated [3:2]. Israel was originally a wall made by a plumbline; when Jehovah afterwards finds it otherwise, this is due to departure from the erstwhile rectitude [7:7]. Amos even declares that the same unresponsiveness and impenitence that met the prophetic teaching of his day, characterized the Israel of past generations [2:9– 12]. The earlier prophets had preached along the same lines as he himself followed in his preaching. It is because Israel has rejected them, that he is now sent to announce the judgment. The earlier Israel had said to its prophets, 'Prophesy not'. Amos strongly feels his continuity with them as to the substance of the message. These prophets of old must have proclaimed unpleasant truths, otherwise there could not have been the same unpleasant reaction. And this could only mean that they, in the same manner as Amos, insisted upon the righteous nature of Jehovah, and foretold a judgment.

This carries back the knowledge of the ethical demands of Jehovah to a much earlier time than that of Amos. Isaiah in a similar way represents everything Jehovah has done to his vineyard as done for the purpose of reaping good fruit, namely, the fruit of righteousness [5:7].

The attitude assumed by the prophets towards the people precludes the idea of their having been conscious of innovation in the traditional faith of Israel. They boldly appeal to the popular conscience, while at the same time attacking the popular religion. Amos, in describing what had taken place in connection with the Exodus, including the raising up of unpopular prophets, asks: 'Is it not even thus, O ye children of Israel?' [2:11]. This means something more than that the people are asked to acknowledge the historicity of the facts; the appeal is to their consciousness of favours despised. This interrogative way of reasoning with the people is characteristic of Amos; 5:25; 6:2; 9:7. The last of these passages takes for granted that the people believe in Jehovah's control over the history of other nations than Israel.

But not only did the prophets expect the popular conscience to give at least a theoretical consent to their position; to some extent this assent must have been actually given; in other words, the people must have felt themselves in the wrong historically. There is no trace whatsoever of any defensive attitude assumed by the people, which nevertheless would have been unavoidable, had the prophets preached a new doctrine. There are not a few passages which give us glimpses of the struggle between prophets and people, but in none of these are the prophets charged with being innovators or iconoclasts in regard to the traditional faith of Israel [Amos 7:11–17; Hos. 9:8, 9; Isa. 28:1–13; 30:10, 11; Mic. 2:6–11]. How could Amos ever have adopted the interrogative form of speaking commented upon, had he been confronting a sceptical and gainsaying audience?

It might be said that the prophets whose writings we possess were not historians, that their aim was not to draw a faithful picture of the times with their conflicting forces and tendencies, but rather to present their own side in the controversy, and that in receiving their testimony without cross-questioning we do the people injustice. But this answer can not invalidate the above argument. For, unless the prophets have on purpose eliminated or obliterated every trace of this historical aspect of the controversy, we must expect to find traces of it in their record.

[D] THE JUDGMENT AND THE RESTORATION: PROPHETIC ESCHATOLOGY

THE VIEWS OF THE WELLHAUSEN SCHOOL OF CRITICISM

According to the Wellhausen school of criticism, eschatology resembles the ethical monotheism of the Old Testament in this respect, that it is a specifically prophetic creation. This implies that, as there was no ethical monotheism before the prophetic period, so there was no eschatology. And as an explanatory hypothesis has been devised to explain the origin of the former out of historical and psychological factors, so one has been constructed to explain on a basis of similar causes the rise of an eschatology among Israel. The difference, say the critics, is that in the construction of their ethical monotheism the prophets were more thoroughly ethical and spiritual than in their upbuilding of the eschatological scheme. While the ethical teaching, as to its substance, has perpetual validity and everlasting significance, the framework of eschatology has in it much that is perishable. In the minds of the prophets it was, to be sure, largely a matter of fantastic expectations. In the sequel, however, it proved highly potential. In fact it has become the source of the supernaturalistic, theological, metaphysical world-view to which the Biblical religion has become wedded. Whatever there is in Christianity beyond ethical idealism and sentimental spirituality, all that transcends the present life and the evolutionary development of things, all that reckons from a definite beginning of creation and looks forward to a definite winding up of things, and, finally all that cleaves to the Messianic interpretation of Jesus, and has made of historic Christianity a realistic, concrete, factual religion, placing itself at the centre of the development of the world, all this in its last analysis springs from this one source. Hence eschatology, as the prophets preached it, has become in critical quarters not merely a problem for explanation, but likewise an object of criticism.

Since the ethical monotheism and the eschatology are two more or less incompatible things, the natural inclination, from the critical point of view, was to magnify the former and to minimize the latter, at least so far as the earlier prophets, the great heroes of the ethicizing of religion, are concerned. Much material of an eschatological complexion is eliminated by divisive methods from the writings of Isaiah and Micah especially, to a lesser extent also from the prophecies of Amos and Hosea. In the opinion of the critical school these books are not, as books, derived from the men whose names they bear, but are later crystallizations around nuclei of original, authentic material. In the long process of redaction they have undergone much of the accretion that is supposed to have come through the eschatological impulse. The original prophecies may have had a moderate admixture of this kind of material, but the rank growth of it that luxuriates in the present collections is of later origin. This principle finds especial application to the promissory pieces that lie scattered through the denunciatory, pessimistic material. If we distinguish in the full-grown eschatology between the two strands of threat and of hope, then the strand of threat is assumed to have been far more indigenous in prophecy than that of hope. In later times the element of threat was, however, also strongly elaborated as was the element of hope. In the original preaching of men like Amos and Hosea it was, if not less intense, at least more sober and kept subject to the ethical motive.

A distinction is made by the critics between the two strands of 'woeeschatology' and 'weal-eschatology' as to their precedence of origin in the prophetic mind. The eschatology of woe always came first, and remained first in order, even after the other had taken its place by the side of it. The eschatology of woe was the natural product of the prophets' ethical indignation at the corrupt moral and religious conditions they found prevailing. It all deserved to be swept aside in one great overwhelming catastrophe. From this, to the conviction that it would be, was not a great distance. The historical conjunction of forces favoured the expectation. Such a catastrophe was, of course, apt to be measured both in terms of intensity and in terms of compass by the urge of resentment in the prophet's heart.

Still, it is believed that the terms in which the early prophets described the coming woe were always derived from the nationalpolitical sphere. Their eschatology was a military one. Some earthly power would be the instrument of executing the judgment of Jehovah, and what it did would consist in national convulsions and overthrows. Later on, owing to the influx of all sorts of ideas of mythological origin from the Orient, this military picture was mixed with cosmical elements, and much more complicated schemes resulted. When, and in the measure that, this came about, the change from eschatology to what is called apocalyptic was made. Ezekiel marks the incision in this respect. Afterwards this mythological, cosmical element was retroactively introduced into the earlier prophets, so that the difference is now no longer clearly perceptible.

But the prophets were not entirely heralds of woe. They could not help remaining patriots, and had more of the traditional attachment to the old religion of Israel in them, than they themselves knew. Hence their own predictions of woe caused in them a reaction, and they began to soften these through holding in prospect a future of restoration to the favour of Jehovah and blessedness. Into this likewise crept later on the same mythological elements that had become mixed with the eschatology of woe. There was, however, a time at the beginning when the woe occupied the field alone. The earliest prophets were prophets of calamity pure and simple, and even found the distinction between themselves and the false prophets in this feature, that the false prophets prophesied of pleasant things to come.

Such is the Wellhausenian construction of the origin of prophetic eschatology. Of late it has lost its monopoly in critical circles through the influence of Babylonian archaeology upon the interpretation of the Old Testament. The views of men like Gunkel and Gressman have begun to supplant it. These men claim that there existed from ancient times an eschatology in the Orient, and that Hebrew belief, as it was influenced from this quarter in many other things, can not have escaped being so in the matter of eschatology. The Hebrews knew about these things long before the great prophets arose. And the prophets themselves knew about them and incorporated them into their message. These elements were from the outset mythological and cosmical.

The difference between the Wellhausen view and this modified view is that the streaming in of the ideas from the Orient is now put at a much earlier date, so early indeed, that it is believed that, before the prophets handled them, the ideas had become quite assimilated by the Hebrews. At first the prophets put them to an ethical and religious use. At a later stage the rank material outgrew their power of adaptation and the ideas were cherished and studied for their own inherent interest.

It will be felt that this shifting of critical opinion immediately made an important difference in the appraisal of the eschatological teaching of the early prophets. In two respects the method of treatment was changed. First, the mere fact of a prophecy being promissory and consolatory was no longer considered as prejudicial to its authenticity. Amos could promise and console, and so could Isaiah, for the material lay ready to hand, and it had acquired a sort of traditionalness and independence, which facilitated its introduction everywhere. There was no special motive required. It belonged to the general spirit of prophesying. Much of the material recently cast out as unworthy of the onesided ethicized prophets was thus reclaimed. And the same applies to the so-called mythological, realistic strand in the prophetic writings. There was now no longer any occasion to ascribe its introduction to a later vogue of apocalyptic.

THE ESCHATOLOGICAL TEACHING OF THE PROPHETS

After this brief orientation we may now study with equal brevity the eschatological teaching of two prophets, Hosea and Isaiah. It is sufficient to deal with Amos and Micah by way of side-reference only, because the material found in these is largely found in the other two likewise. The two topics with which we have to deal may be called the doctrine of the judgment and that of the restoration. In order to justify the characterization of these as eschatology, we should sharply mark what is the specific difference of eschatology from the Biblical standpoint. In the abstract it might seem more appropriate to fit in the crises described by the prophets with the general up-anddownward movement of history, each one being co-ordinated with preceding and following events. But this would miss the very point of the eschatological peculiarity. This consists in that the crises described are not ordinary upheavals, but such as lead to an abiding order of things, in which the prophetic vision comes to rest. Finality and consummation form the specific difference of prophetic, as of all other Biblical eschatology. The judgment predicted is the judgment, and the restoration is the restoration, of the end.

One other peculiarity to be noted is really a consequence of the one just stated. Whenever the prophets speak in terms of judgment, immediately the vision of the state of glory obtrudes itself upon their view, and they concatenate the two in a way altogether regardless of chronological interludes. Isaiah couples with the defeat of the Assyrians under Sennacherib the unequalled pictures of the glory of the end, and the impression might be created that the latter was just waiting for the former, to make its immediate appearance. The vision 'hastens' under their eye. The philosophy of this foreshortening of the beyond-prospect is one of the most difficult things in the interpretation of prophecy in Old Testament and New Testament alike. We cannot here further dwell upon it.

HOSEA

The manner of the description of the judgment varies according to the individual manner and style of the prophet. In Hosea the idea is more fully elaborated than with the others, precisely because there is more of the individual in it. Hosea, indeed, agrees with the others in declaring it 'punishment' inspired by wrath [9:15; 11:8, 9]. But on the other hand the same judgment also serves the opposite purpose. It serves as a chastisement imposed by love to discipline Israel, Jehovah's son. With reference to the former, notice that national death is specified as the wages of national sin [5:2; 7:9; 13:14]. The last passage should be rendered interrogatively: 'Shall I ransom them from the power of the grave, redeem them from death?' The answer required is negative, and Jehovah Himself proceeds to give it by summoning the plagues of death to overwhelm them: 'O death, where are thy plagues; O grave, where is thy destruction? Repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.' (Observe the magnificent manner in which Paul has turned this question into its triumphant opposite in 1 Cor. 15:55.)

Chap. 13:13 is the passage in which these two aspects of the judgment, the destructive and the disciplinary one, are most clearly distinguished. Here the new Israel is the son to be born, the old sinful Israel the mother, who dies in giving birth to the child. In dependence on the marriage-idea, all calamities of the judgment result from this, that Jehovah personally withdraws from Israel [5:6, 15; 9:12]. The judgment leads to conversion in more than one way. It enlightens as to the causes which have provoked Jehovah's wrath; it does this by striking the instruments of sinning involved in each, and thus prepares the way for conviction of sin [8:6; 10:2–8, 14, 15; 11:6]. Forcibly it separates Israel from the objects of her adulterous love [2:9, 12; 3:3–5]. Symbolically this is expressed by the feature that there is no intercourse between Hosea and his wife. But the prophet also keeps his wife isolated from himself after having received her back [3:3]: 'so will I also be toward thee.'Jehovah in like manner will keep Himself separated from the people during the exile, to enable them to obtain a truer conception of His character, for otherwise they would only have turned from the other gods to their own caricature of Jehovah. After these preparations Israel is won back by an unparalleled new revelation of Jehovah's love [2:14, 15].

The conscious results of these experiences are described in chap. 14. Here is the picture of Israel's conversion. It involves the profound recognition, not merely of sin, but sinfulness. In vs. 2 the word 'all' is to be stressed. The two principal forms of sin, pride and sensual idolatry, are specified [vs. 3]. The conviction is voiced that no external worship can buy back Jehovah's favour [vs. 2]. God's free forgiving love is the sole source of salvation. The profound humility suffusing the experience strikingly appears in this, that Israel does not call herself Jehovah's wife, nor even His son, but an orphan [vs. 3]; compare also 3:5 and 11:6, passages in which the same peculiar state of mind, penitence mingled with newly-awakened trust and fear, is finely depicted.

ISAIAH

In Isaiah the pictures of the judgment are, no less than with Hosea, in keeping with the general tone and temper of the prophet. His mode of thinking and seeing things is theocentric. The vision of the judgment in chap. 2 of itself turns into a theophany. The theophany comes in storm and earthquake. Here the political-military feature is absent. For the theophanic display of the majesty of Jehovah the prophet even loses sight of the destruction that overtakes the sinners, which in reality he had planned to describe. The judgment as to its intent is with Isaiah (and Micah) mainly a judgment of purification. But the purification is obtained through extirpation of the evil elements. It is the process by which the remnant is, as it were, distilled [4:3, 4; 6:11–13; 10:20–23; 17:6, 7; 24:13, 14; 28:5, 6, 23–29].

The comprehensive phrase for all this is 'the day of Jehovah' [2:12]. This phrase occurs also in Amos. It furnishes one of the proofs for the existence of an ancient pre-prophetic eschatology. It has become very important for New Testament revelation as 'the day of the Lord'. Some give it a general theocentric explanation for Isaiah [2:11]. It is quite possible that Isaiah gave the idea this turn, but the original sense can hardly have been such. A martial explanation has been suggested: the day monopolized by Jehovah as his day of victory; compare 'the day of Midian' [9:4]. A more plausible derivation, in dependence on Amos 5:20, is that it rests upon the contrast between darkness and light. These would be its two diverse manifestations, the one immediately preceding the other. An objection is that on this view it would have been denominated from its better side exclusively, whereas in Old Testament and New Testament alike the emphasis seems differently distributed. In Amos the doing away with all that is evil stands in the foreground, but with Isaiah it is rather the sweeping away of all that is a caricature of divinity. In the later pieces, chaps. 28–38. a more positive connection between the judgment and the conversion is traceable. The experiences of the Sennacherib-crisis will not only destroy the wicked and unbelieving; they will also teach the others how great is the sin of Israel and how great the grace of Jehovah.

In the second part of the book the captivity is represented as an atonement (in the Old Testament sense) for the sin of Israel, and this idea of expiation reaches its highest expression in the figure of the 'Servant of Jehovah' of chapter 53. The captivity is also represented as leading the true Israel to repentance [59:12–15]. The idea of 'the remnant' thus obtains for Isaiah a more positive aspect than it had for Amos. For Amos it means: 'nothing more than a remnant', for Isaiah 'only, but still a remnant'. In Micah, chap. 7:7–20 corresponds to the second part of the prophecies of Isaiah. Here a confession is put into the mouth of Israel, implying that the experience of the exile has produced a deep consciousness of sin.

Amos and Hosea do not reflect upon the consequences of either a favourable or unfavourable kind, which the judgment will entail for the foreign nations. Their negative and positive eschatology lack the universalistic element. Isaiah and Micah dwell upon both the adverse and the beneficent way in which the world at large will be affected by the crisis approaching for Israel.

Another difference is that the judgment-eschatology of Amos and Hosea is simple, that of Isaiah and Micah complex. The simple eschatology divides itself into two acts, the judgment and the restoration, both considered as units. With Isaiah and Micah this simple scheme becomes complicated. First of all a distinction is made between the judgment upon the Northern and that upon the Southern kingdom. These two are seen to fall apart in time. The complexity, however, arises from still another distinction. Both Isaiah and Micah expect a preliminary judgment of Assyria, which they do not identify with the final collapse of the world-power, and which, therefore, does not interfere with the continued hostile attitude of the latter toward Israel in the future.

From our standpoint we would say that this proximate deliverance stood in a typical relation to the final one. Isaiah and Micah begin to view the judgment after the manner of a process completing itself in successive acts. Assyria will not be the only, nor the last instrument wielded by God in judgment of Israel. After Assyria comes Babylon, mentioned by both prophets [Isa. 13 and 14; Mic. 4:10]. And, besides this specific mention made of Babylon, there still looms in the farther distance an ominous conglomeration of many nations preparing to come up for the attack, and to be destroyed in an even more mysterious, spectacular manner than the proximate foe [Isa. 17:12; 24–27, frequently called the Apocalypse of Isaiah; Mic. 4:11–13].

Finally, the most important difference arises from the appearance and activity of the Messiah in the judgment-drama of Isaiah and Micah, and his absence as a judgment-figure in the other two

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