CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Professor B. S, Monroe 
 
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 ifLi'e?'t"e, 1874-90; Lecturer" to the American boc.ety lor u.fff 
 Extension of Ui^ivlrsity Teaching (Philadelph.a , '891 1 Ph-D.. ', 
 UnivMsity of Pennsylvania, 1891 ; Lecturer to the London Society 
 
 forTteExtension of University Jf?FW,"#; ■\'r?f^/c"a'ss ca' 
 ■• Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist," ■■.The Ancient ClasSK:al 
 Drama," ■■ Four Years of Novel Reading ; Editor of ine 
 Ute^arV St^dy of the Bible,'-n-heModern Reader's Bible^etc. 
 
 R. G. MOULTON 
 
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 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 3 1924 070 684 877 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
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THE 
 
 Literary Study of the Bible 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF THE 
 
 LEADING FORMS OF LITERATURE REPRESENTED 
 IN THE SACRED WRITINGS 
 
 INTENDED FOR ENGLISH READERS 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD G. MOULTON, M.A. (Cambr.), Ph.D. (Penna.) 
 
 PROFESSOR OF LITERATURE IN ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 
 LATE UNIVERSITY EXTENSION LECTURER (CAMBRIDGE AND LONDON) 
 
 REVISED AND PARTLY REWRITTEN 
 
 BOSTON, U.S.A. : D. C. HEATH & CO. 
 
 LONDON : ISBISTER & CO., Limited 
 
 1899 
 
Copyright, 1895 and 1899, 
 By RICHARD G. MOULTON. 
 
 Enteked at Stationers' Hall. 
 
 
 J. S. CuBhlng & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
 Norwood Masa. U.S.A. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 An author falls naturally into an apologetic tone if he is pro- 
 posing to add yet one more to the number of books on the Bible. 
 Yet I believe the number is few of those to whom the Bible appeals 
 as Uterature. In part, no doubt, this is due to the forbidding 
 form in which we allow the Bible to be presented to us. Let the 
 reader imagine the poems of Wordsworth, the plays of Shake- 
 speare, the essays of Bacon, and the histories of Motley to be 
 bound together in a single volume j let him suppose the titles of 
 the poems and essays cut out and the names of speakers and divi- 
 sions of speeches removed, the whole divided up into sentences 
 of a convenient length for parsing, and again into lessons contain- 
 ing a larger or smaller number of these sentences. If the reader 
 can carry his imagination through these processes he will have 
 before him a fair parallel to the literary form in which the Bible 
 has come to the modem reader ; it is true that the purpose for 
 which it has been split into chapters and verses is something 
 higher than instruction in parsing, but the injury to literary form 
 remains the same. 
 
 Of course earnest students of Scripture get below the surface of 
 isolated verses. Yet even in the case of deep students the literary 
 element is in danger of being overpowered by other interests. 
 The devout reader, following the Bible as the divine authority for 
 his spiritual life, feels it a distraction to notice literary questions. 
 And thereby he often impedes his own purpose : poring over a 
 passage of Job to discover the message it has for him, and for- 
 getting all the while the dramatic form of the book, as a result of 
 which the speaker of the very passage he is studying is in the end 
 
iv PREFACE 
 
 pronounced by God himself to have said the thing that is " not 
 right." Another has been led by his studies to cast off the 
 authority of the Bible, and he will not look for literary pleasure to 
 that which has for him associations with a yoke from which he has 
 been, delivered. A third approaches Scripture with equal rever- 
 ence and scholarship. Yet even for him there is a danger at the 
 present moment, when the very bulk of the discussion tends to 
 crowd out the thing discussed, and but one person is willing to 
 read the Bible for every ten who are ready to read about it. 
 
 Now for all these types of readers the literary study of the 
 Bible is a common meeting-ground. One who recognises that 
 God has been pleased to put his revelation of himself in the form 
 of literature, must surely go on to see that literary form is a thing 
 worthy of study. The agnostic will not deny that, if every particle 
 of authority and supernatural character be taken from the Bible, 
 it will remain one of the world's great literatures, second to none. 
 And the most polemic of all investigators must admit that appre- 
 ciation is the end, and polemics only the means. 
 
 I am desirous that the reader should, from the outset, understand 
 exactly in what sense I use the words I have adopted as the title 
 of this work — The Literary Study of the Bible. Of course, the 
 Bible being a literature, there is a sense in which every careful 
 treatment of Scripture has a claim to be called literary study. 
 Yet, in the sense in which I use the term, the Literary Study of 
 the Bible is a new study. Its newness rests, not upon sudden 
 advance in our knowledge of Semitic peoples and institutions, but 
 upon our changed attitude to the whole field of Uterary investiga- 
 tion. It is not too much to say that the Study of Literature, 
 properly so called, is only just beginning. In the past we have 
 concerned ourselves, not with Literature, but with literatures : the 
 writings of Greek, of Hebrew, of German writers have been 
 reviewed in connection with the Greek, tlie Hebrew, the German 
 language and history, as elements in Greek, Hebrew, German 
 studies. We are now beginning to feel that ther? i§ a separate 
 
Preface v 
 
 entity, Literature, which claims to itself a special type of treat- 
 ment. Such a change is a repetition of what has been seen else- 
 where in the field of education and research. There was a time 
 when Greek and German philosophical works were considered to 
 belong to the special studies of Greek or German ; now everyone 
 will recognise a Study of Philosophy, one and undivided, in rela- 
 tion to which Greek philosophy and German philosophy are con- 
 tributing elements. So the investigation which recognises the 
 unity of literature, and frames its methods solely in application to 
 this literary field, is the newer Study of Literature ; and in the 
 spirit of this study the present work has been undertaken. 
 
 A fundamental change in the scope of literary investigation 
 carries other changes with it. When literature was linked with 
 language and history in one common study, it was inevitable that 
 the historical element in literature should become prominent. In 
 the broader field of independent literary study the historical side 
 of literature falls into the background. In its place another ele- 
 ment comes into prominence — what maybe called morphological 
 treatment : the inquiry into the foundation forms of literature, 
 such as Epic, Lyric, Dramatic, the varieties of these, and the 
 detailed structure by which each form is built up. Nowhere has 
 literary morphology so important a place as in application to the 
 Sacred Scriptures. If the question be of Greek or of English, it 
 is taken for granted that a large variety of literary types are to be 
 expected. On the other hand, it comes to most people as a 
 novelty to hear that the Bible is made up of epics, lyrics, dramas, 
 essays, sonnets, philosophical works, histories, and the like. More 
 than this, centuries of unliterary tradition have so affected the 
 outer surface of Scripture, that the successive literary works appear 
 joined together without distinction, until it becomes the hardest of 
 tasks to determine, in the Bible, exactly where one work of litera- 
 ture ends and another begins. The morphological analysis of 
 Scripture thus urgently required is precisely the purpose to which 
 I have applied myself in the present work : it is ' An Account of 
 the leading Forms of Literature represented in the Sacred Writ- 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 ings.' And its underlying principle is that a clear grasp of the 
 outer literary form is an essential guide to the inner matter and 
 spirit. 
 
 It is the more necessary to insist upon a distinctively literary 
 study of the Bible from the fact that the type of Bible study which 
 at the present moment is most prominent, and which from the 
 magnitude even of its undisputed results has a claim to that prom- 
 inence, is of a different character. The ' Higher Criticism ' — 
 so it is called in popular phraseology — seems to me in the main 
 an historical analysis. Its allegiance is not to literature, but to 
 Semitic Studies, in which literary questions are inextricably inter- 
 woven with questions of language and history. It goes beyond 
 the text of Scripture to a further inquiry into the authority of the 
 existing text, its mode of composition, the dates and surrounding 
 conditions of its authorship. Historic questions of this kind the. 
 Higher Criticism examines by historic methods. In the inquiry 
 here undertaken topics like these will have scarcely any place. 
 Literary investigation stops short at the question what we have in 
 the text of the Bible, without examining how it has come to us. 
 Whoever may be responsible for the Sacred Scriptures as they 
 stand, these are worthy of examination for their own sake ; and 
 the Uterary study of the Bible brings to bear on these writings the 
 light that comes from ascertaining the exact form they are found 
 to present. 
 
 Among the chief dilBculties of what is here attempted must be 
 reckoned the large number of readers permeated with the exclu- 
 sive historic spirit, to such an extent that they can recognise no 
 other element in literary study. They would assume for the whole 
 of literature what is true only for particular works ; seeing how 
 Dryden's Satires are without point for those who are unversed in 
 Restoration politics, they fail to see that Shakespeare's plays may 
 produce their full effect even upon a reader who is unaware that 
 the historical Macbeth was a good king. Such a spirit prevails 
 largely among Bible scholars. Yet their own studies might have 
 taught them differently. What is to be said about the question 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 of Joel? No portion of the Bible is more captivating to the liter- 
 ary instinct : but how is literature to be helped here by history ? 
 A few years ago the historians were in practical agreement that 
 this prophecy was to be referred to the age of Joash ; now our criti- 
 cal orthodoxy depends upon our recognising for it a post-exilic 
 date. Between the two periods is an interval of some five centu- 
 ries, and the variety of surrounding conditions is such that, as a 
 distinguished Hebraist has said, the question oi Joel is like the 
 discussion whether a particular work was produced under William 
 the Conqueror or under Cromwell. No discredit whatever at- 
 taches to historic studies on the ground of this difference of opin- 
 ions, for the simple truth is that the Book of Joel does not contain 
 sufficient evidence for settling its date ; the case is like that of an 
 indeterminate equation, to which there may be half a dozen equally 
 accurate solutions. But in this case what becomes of the conten- 
 tion that Uterature can be appreciated only in the light of its his- 
 toric surroundings? 
 
 If we go outside the polemic atmosphere of Biblical Criticism it 
 is easier to obtain recognition for the distinction between historic 
 and purely literary treatment. Shakespeare has given us certain 
 historical plays : there arise in reference to these just the questions 
 that are agitated in regard to the Sacred Scriptures. One critic 
 thinks the plays the work of William Shakespeare ; another thinks 
 they were written by Bacon ; another laughs at both opinions and 
 believes the author utiknown. ' Yet another discriminates, and 
 by internal evidence discovers that the plays were composed by 
 Shakespeare and certain coadjutors : he is ready, when called 
 upon, to produce a polychrome edition in which the Shakespeare, 
 the Marlowe, and the Fletcher elements will be distinguished to 
 the eye. One commentator, like Coleridge, takes his history of 
 England from the plays ; another contends that they are on this 
 subject utterly misleading, the dramatist having first used untrust- 
 worthy materials, and then altered freely with a view to other than 
 historic effects. Yet it is clear that six persons representing these 
 different historical views might unite amicably in a box at a theatre 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 to witness the performance of one of these plays ; they might, not 
 improbably, find themselves in entire agreement as to the literary 
 force and significance of every passage. It would seem absurd, 
 on the other hand, if one of these critics were to interrupt in order 
 to protest that the passage just commenced by the actor was not 
 Shakespeare's, or that recent discoveries in Spanish state papers 
 had shown the motive assigned in the play to Henry's foreign 
 policy to be incorrect, and if actors and audience, in the interests 
 of accuracy, agreed to suspend the performance until these ques- 
 tions could be settled. To state these obvious facts is, of course, 
 not to depreciate the historic analysis of Shakespeare in the inter- 
 ests of literary appreciation, but merely to claim that the two 
 studies are entirely different. 
 
 Some, indeed, will admit that the historic and the literary 
 studies are theoretically distinct ; but why, they ask, should the two 
 not be united in practice ? They ought to be united, in the sense 
 that the complete student will undertake both. But they must not 
 be undertaken together ; for the whole method and spirit of the 
 two are in opposition. Historic analysis must sceptically question 
 the very details which literary appreciation must rapidly combine 
 into a common impression. The perspective, moreover, of the 
 two studies is different. Deuteronomy is of equal importance in 
 history and in literature. But if a modern critical work treats 
 Deuteronomy it will be found that perhaps nine-tenths of the dis- 
 cussion is concentrated on the ' Book of the Covenant,' and the 
 perplexing questions arising out of it : a paragraph or two is 
 deemed sufficient for the 'hortatory matter' of the rest of the 
 book. In the other treatment it appears that it is just this ' hor- 
 tatory matter ' which raises Deuteronomy to a foremost rank as 
 one of the world's greatest collections of orations ; while the 
 fifteen chapters containing the Book of the Covenant here sink to 
 the subordinate place of a document cited in an oration. It is for 
 the interest of accuracy in both studies that their procedures be 
 kept distinct. 
 
 It i§ necessary, however, to go a step further than this. IJi?- 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 toric and literary study are equal in importance : but for priority 
 in order of time the literary treatment has the first claim. The 
 reason of this is that the starting point of historic analysis must be 
 that very existing text, which is the sole concern of the morpho- 
 logical study. The historic inquirer will no doubt add to his exam- 
 ination of the text light drawn from other sources ; he may be led 
 in his investigation to alter or rearrange the text ; but he will 
 admit that the most important single element on which he has to 
 work is the text as it has come down to us. But, if the foundation 
 principle of literary study be true, this existing text cannot be 
 truly interpreted until it has been read in the light of its exact 
 literary structure. In actual fact, it appears to me, Biblical criti- 
 cism at the present time is, not unfrequently, vitiated in its histor- 
 ical contentions by tacit assumptions as to the form of the text 
 such as literary examination might have corrected. 
 
 I will take a typical example. In the latter part of our Book of 
 Micah a group of verses (vii. 7-10) must strike even a casual 
 reader by their buoyancy of tone, so sharply contrasting with what 
 has gone before. Accordingly Wellhausen sees in this changed 
 tone evidence of a new composition, product of an age different 
 in spirit from the age of the prophet : " between v. 6 and v. 7 
 there yawns a century." What really yawns between the verses is 
 simply a change of speakers. The latter part of Micah is dra- 
 matic, and a reader attentive to literary form cannot fail to note a 
 distinct dramatic composition introduced by the title-verse (vi. 9) : 
 " The voice of the Lord crieth unto the city, and the man of wis- 
 dom will see thy name." The latter part of this title — "and the 
 man of wisdom will see thy name " — prepares us to expect an 
 addition in the ' Man of Wisdom ' to the usual dramatis personce 
 of prophetic dramas, which include such as God, the Prophet, the 
 Guilty Nation. All that follows the title-verse bears out what it 
 suggests. Verses 10-16 are the words of God crying denunciation 
 and threatening. Then the first six verses of chapter seven voice 
 the woe of the Guilty City. At this point the Man of Wisdom 
 speaks, and the disputed verses change the tone to convey th^ 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 happy confidence of one on whose side the divine intervention is 
 to take place : 
 
 But as for me, I will look unto the Lord; I will wait for the God of 
 my salvation : my God will hear me. Rejoice not against me, O 
 mine enemy : when I fall, I shall arise, etc. 
 
 I submit that in this case a mistaken historical judgment has been 
 formed by a distinguished historian for want Of that preliminary 
 literary analysis of the text for which I am contending. 
 
 Historic errors based on the ignoring of literary structure may 
 similarly be instanced from the popular opponents of modern crit- 
 icism. There is hardly any point on which formal criticism is 
 more unanimous than on the late dg-te of Ecclesiastes : here all 
 kinds of internal evidence by which such questions are examined 
 combine in pointing to a date centuries later than that of the his- 
 torical Solomon. Notwithstanding this, inteUigent lay readers are 
 slow to surrender the old tradition, and for a reason which must 
 be received with respect : the book, they say, in unequivocal terms 
 claims the historical Solomon for its author, and it seems to them 
 preferable to suppose that circumstantial evidence may sometimes 
 be misleading, rather than that a work of the solemnity of Ecclesi- 
 astes should put itself forward under false pretences. This critical 
 deadlock rests simply on the circumstance that both parties have 
 neglected the preliminary step of literary analysis, and have tacitly 
 assumed that the true form of the book was that unbroken con- 
 tinuity in which nearly all Hebrew literature has been left by the 
 unliterary tradition through which it has come down to us. When 
 the structure of Ecclesiastes is strictly examined it is found to be a 
 series of five independent Essays, separated (according to a regu- 
 lar practice in Wisdom writings) by strings of disconnected brevi- 
 ties, and further bound into a unity by a prologue and epilogue. 
 The book being before us in its true literary form we are now in a 
 position to ask. Does it claim the authorship of King Solomon? 
 We look at the prologue and epilogue — the most natural places 
 in which to find indications of authorship : and here there is not a 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 mention of Solomon or any suggestion of his personality. The 
 disconnected brevities are examined : there is no trace of Solo- 
 mon, and much that is totally unlike a royal speaker. Four out 
 of the five essays are equally blank as to evidence of this or other 
 authorship. Only one single essay out of the five connects itself 
 with Solomon ; and when the matter of this essay is examined it is 
 seen to take the form of an imaginary experiment, in the investi- 
 gation of wealth, wisdom and power, put into the mouth of Solo- 
 mon as the one character in history for whom such an experiment 
 was possible. When the author — or 'preacher' — has finished 
 with this experimental search for wisdom he drops altogether the 
 personality of Solomon, and speaks for himself. All claim to 
 Solomonic authorship disappears from Ecclesiastes when it is read 
 in its true hterary structure ; and the lay reader may open his 
 mind to the unanimous testimony of critical evidence in favour of 
 a later date. 
 
 Examples such as these illustrate, not merely the immediate 
 point, that structural should precede all other analysis, but also 
 my general contention for the separation and independence of 
 historical and literary investigation. The history of the Sacred 
 Scriptures is a branch of Semitic studies ; the discrimination of 
 their literary forms belongs to the science of Comparative Litera- 
 ture. The confusion between these two distinct spheres has ap- 
 peared at other periods besides the present, and in relation to 
 other departments of the literary field. When the Romantic 
 Drama, that was destined to produce a Shakespeare, was slowly 
 establishing itself, the force which opposed it, and pronounced it 
 a violation of all literary art, came from the scholarship of the 
 age. But it was Classical scholarship, drawing its conceptions and 
 canons exclusively from Greek and Latin authors. Time was 
 necessary before the irresistible power of Shakespeare and his 
 contemporaries widened the field of view, and forced upon criti- 
 cism so much of the comparative method as led them to recognise 
 a new region of literary form, equally worthy of investigation with 
 the older Classical types. Not less important and original will be 
 
xii PREFACS. 
 
 found the varieties of literary form yielded by the Sacred Scrip- 
 tures, when these are investigated in the spirit of Comparative 
 Literature. 
 
 I have spoken so far from the point of view of those who are 
 specially Bible students. But a consideration of a different kind 
 has had weight with me in the production of this book : the place 
 in liberal education of the Bible treated as Uterature. It has come 
 by now to be generally recognised that the Classics of Greece and 
 Rome stand to us in the position of an ancestral literature, — the 
 inspiration of our great masters, and bond of common associations 
 between our poets and their readers. But does not such a posi- 
 tion belong equally to the literature of the Bible ? if our intellect 
 and imagination have been formed by the Greeks, have we not 
 in similar fashion drawn our moral and emotional training from 
 Hebrew thought? Whence then the neglect of the Bible in our 
 higher schools and colleges? It is one of the curiosities of our 
 civiKsation that we are content to go for our Uberal education to 
 literatures which, morally, are at an opposite pole from ourselves : 
 literatures in which the most exalted tone is often an apotheosis 
 of the sensuous, which degrade divinity, not only to the human 
 level, but to the lowest level of humanity. Our hardest social 
 problem being temperance, we study in Greek the glorification of 
 intoxication ; while in mature life we are occupied in tracing law 
 to the remotest corner of the universe, we go at school for literary 
 impulse to the poetry that dramatises the burden of hopeless fate. 
 Our highest politics aim at conserving the arts of peace, our first 
 poetic lessons are in an Iliad that cannot be appreciated without a 
 bloodthirsty joy in killing. We seek to form a character in which 
 delicacy and reserve shall be supreme, and at the same time are 
 training our taste in literatures which, if published as English 
 books, would be seized by the police. I recall these paradoxes, 
 not to make objection, but to suggest the reasonableness of the 
 claim that the one side of our liberal education should have 
 another side to balance it. Prudish fears may be unwise, but 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 there is no need to put an embargo upon decency. It is surely- 
 good that our youth, during the formative period, should have 
 displayed to them, in a literary dress as brilliant as that of Greek 
 literature — in lyrics which Pindar cannot surpass, in rhetoric 
 as forcible as that of Demosthenes, or contemplative prose not 
 inferior to Plato's — a people dominated by an utter passion for 
 righteousness, a people whom ideas of purity, of infinite good, of 
 universal order, of faith in the irresistible downfall of all moral 
 evil, moved to a poetic passion as fervid, and speech as musical, 
 as when Sappho sang of love or ^schylus thundered his deep 
 notes of destiny. When it is added that the familiarity of the 
 English Bible renders all this possible without the demand upon 
 the time-table that would be involved in the learning of another 
 language, it seems clear that our school and college curricula will 
 not have shaken off their mediaeval narrowness and renaissance 
 paganism until Classical and Biblical literatures stand side by side 
 as sources of our highest culture. 
 
 It remains to add that, in the present edition, the work has 
 been revised, and partly re-written. The structural printing of 
 Scripture, for which I contended in the first edition, has since 
 been carried into effect in the volumes of the Modern Reader's 
 Bible.^ This has enabled me to reduce some of my lengthier illus- 
 trations ; and also to be more precise in part of my systematisa- 
 tion. In particular, I have attempted in a new Appendix (III) 
 to reduce to a system Biblical Versification, with all its elabora- 
 tions, so far as it is based upon parallelism of structure. The 
 other Appendices, that which I call a Literary Index to the Bible 
 (I), and another which contains a technical Table of Literary 
 Forms (II), have been considerably revised. The order of the 
 six books has been altered, and the matter of the first two books 
 recast, chiefly in the interest of a more logical plan. As so much 
 recasting might create difficulties in regard to references made in 
 other books to the present work, I have (page 557) given a Refer- 
 1 Published by Macmillan. 
 
xiv PREFACE 
 
 ence Table which connects the paging of the first and the present 
 editions. The citations, as before, are from the Revised Version 
 of the Bible and Apocrypha, for the use of which I am under obli- 
 gation to the University Presses of Oxford and Cambridge. It is 
 with the greatest satisfaction that I have noticed, in the four years 
 which have intervened since the first edition of this work, the rapid 
 advance in public recognition of the specially literary study of the 
 Bible. And the testimony of all who promote it concurs in con- 
 firming what is the foundation axiom of my work — that an 
 increased apprehension of outer literary form is a sure means 
 of deepening spiritual effect. 
 
 RICHARD G. MOULTON. 
 June, 1899. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Book of Job : and the Various Kinds of Literary Interest 
 
 illustrated by it 3 
 
 BOOK FIRST 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. The Fundamental Literary Form of Versification as 
 
 SEEN IN the Bible 45 
 
 II. The Lower Parallelism of Rhythm and the Higher 
 
 Parallelism of Interpretation 64 
 
 III. Classification of the Higher Literary Forms in Uni-*^ 
 
 versal Literature 74 
 
 IV. Application of Literacy Classification to Biblical Lit- 
 
 erature 83 
 
 BOOK SECOND 
 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 V. The Biblical Ode 133 
 
 VI. Songs, Elegies, and Meditations 158 
 
 VII. Monodies, Dramatic Lyrics, and Ritual Psalms . . 181 
 
 VIII. Lyric Idyl: 'Solomon's Song' 207 
 
 BOOK THIRD 
 
 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 IX. Epic Poetry of the Bible 227 
 
 X. Biblical History in its Relation with Biblical Epic . 250 
 
 XV 
 
xvi CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK FOURTH 
 THE BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF RHETORIC 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XI. The Epistles; or Wriiten Rhetoric .... 263 
 XII. Spoken Rhetoric: and the 'Book of Deuteronomy' . 268 
 
 BOOK FIFTH 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BIBLE, OR WISDOM 
 LITERATURE 
 
 XIII. Forms of Wisdom Literature 289 
 
 XIV. The Sacred Books of Wisdom 319 
 
 XV. 'The Wisdom of Solomon' 341 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 XX. 
 
 BOOK SIXTH 
 
 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 Forms of Prophetic Literature 
 Forms of Prophetic Literature: The Doom Song . 
 Forms of Prophetic Literature: The Rhapsody . 
 The Rhapsody of ' Zion Redeemed ' [Isaiah xl-lxvi] 
 The Works of the Prophets 
 
 363 
 390 
 404 
 
 435 
 457 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 I. Literary Index to the Bible 
 
 II. Tables of Literary Forms 
 
 III. A Metrical System of Biblical Verse .... 
 
 IV. A Reference Table to connect the Pages of the First 
 
 AND Second Editions 
 
 479 
 513 
 526 
 
 557 
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 561 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE BOOK OF JOB: AND THE VARIOUS KINDS OF 
 LITERARY INTEREST ILLUSTRATED BY IT 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The story in the Book of Job opens by telling how there was a 
 man in the land of Uz whose name was Job ; how he was perfect 
 and upright, a man that feared God and eschewed _ t f t i,. 
 evil. It tells of his great substance in sheep and The story opens 
 camels and oxen, and how he was the greatest of ^' " 
 all the children of the east. Then it speaks of his seven sons 
 and three daughters, and describes their joyous family life. And so 
 scrupulous was the piety of Job that, when his sons and daughters 
 had concluded a round of feastings at one another's houses. Job 
 rose early and sanctified them, lest perchance in their gaiety they 
 had offended God. 
 
 Then the story passes to a Council in Heaven, at which the 
 sons of God came, each from his several province, to present 
 themselves before the Lord ; and amongst them came the Adver- 
 sary from his sphere of inspection, the Earth. He in his turn 
 was questioned as to his charge, and Job was instanced by the 
 Lord as a type of human perfection. But the Adversary, as his 
 office was, began to raise doubts as to this perfection. God had 
 made a hedge of prosperity about the man : if he were to put 
 forth his hand, and destroy all at a stroke. Job might yet renounce 
 his worship. 
 
 The Lord gave consent for this experiment to be made. So it 
 came about that in the midst of Job's prosperity there came a 
 messenger to him and said : 
 
 3 
 
4 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 The oxen were plowing, 
 
 and the asses feeding beside them ; 
 
 and the Sabeans fell upon them 
 
 and took them away ; 
 
 yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword ; 
 
 and I only am escaped alone to tell thee ! 
 
 While he was yet speaking there came also another, and said : 
 
 The fire of God is fallen from heaven, 
 
 and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, 
 
 and consumed them ; 
 
 and I only am escaped alone to tell thee ! 
 
 While he was yet speaking there came also another, and said : 
 
 The Chaldeans made three bands, 
 
 and fell upon the camels, 
 
 and have taken them away, 
 
 yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword ; 
 
 and I only am escaped alone to tell thee ! 
 
 While he was yet speaking there came also another, and said : 
 
 Thy sons and thy daughters 
 
 were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house ; 
 
 and behold, 
 
 there came a great wind from the wilderness, 
 
 and smote the four corners of the house, 
 
 and it fell upon the young men, 
 
 and they are dead ; 
 
 and I only am escaped alone to tell thee ! 
 
 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and 
 fell down upon the ground, and worshipped ; and he said : 
 
 Naked came I out of my mother's womb, 
 And naked shall I return thither ! 
 
 The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away : 
 Blessed be the Name of the Lord ! 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 So the experiment of the Adversary was over, and Job had not 
 fallen into sin. 
 
 A second Council in Heaven followed, and a second time came 
 the sons of God, and the Adversary among them, and made their 
 reports. When the Lord triumphed in the matter of Job, that he 
 still retained his integrity notwithstanding the destruction done to 
 him, the Adversary did honour to the goodness of the man by 
 suggesting a yet severer test : 
 
 Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But 
 put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he 
 will renounce thee to thy face. 
 
 Even in this case the Almighty had no fear for his servant. So 
 the Adversary went forth, and smote Job with sore boils from the 
 sole of his foot unto his crown. And Job silently passed out, as 
 one unclean, and crept up the ash-mound, and there he sat and 
 suffered ; until his good wife — who had uttered no word of com- 
 plaint when all the substance was swallowed up and her children 
 perished — broke down in the presence of this helpless pain : 
 
 Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? renounce God, and die ! 
 
 But Job rebuked this momentary lapse from her wisdom : 
 
 What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not 
 receive evil? 
 
 So the second experiment was over, and still Job sinned not with 
 his lips. 
 
 But a third trial awaited Job, which needed no Council in 
 Heaven to decree it, — the trial of time. Day followed day, but 
 no relief came ; and Job sat patiently on the ash-mound, an out- 
 cast and unclean. And gradually a reverence grew about the 
 silent sufferer : the children no longer jostled him as they sported 
 to and fro, and groups of sympathising spectators would gather 
 about the mound to gaze for a while on the fallen child of the 
 east. And the travellers as they passed by the way smote on 
 
6 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 their, breasts at the sight ; and they made a token of it, and 
 carried the news into distant countries, until it reached the ears 
 of Job's three Friends, all of them great chieftains like himself : 
 the stately Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the sturdy Shuhite, 
 and Zophar the Naamathite, with his venerable grey hairs. These 
 three made an appointment together to visit Job ; and, when they 
 came in sight of him, with one accord they lifted up their voices 
 and wept. And the crowd of spectators made way for the great 
 men to ascend the mound ; and they sat down upon the ground 
 opposite Job. Day after day they took their station there, yet 
 they could only weep with their friend ; for, though they longed 
 to speak, their utter courtesy forbade them to disturb the majesty 
 of that silent suffering. 
 
 At last it was Job himself who broke the long silence, in order 
 to curse, not God, but his own life. And at this point the intro- 
 ductory story in which the poem is framed begins to give place to 
 dialogue ; but not before the introduction has made its contribu- 
 (Probiemofthe '^'°" '^° ^^^ general argument. The topic of the 
 poem and First whole book is the Mystery of Human Suffering: 
 Solution) ^j^g introduction has suggested a First Solution of 
 
 the Mystery: Suffering presented as Heaven's test of goodness ; 
 the test being made the severer where the goodness is strong 
 enough to stand it. 
 
 Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth. Would 
 that it might be blotted from among the days of the year, that the 
 
 cloud, and the thick darkness, and the shadow of 
 jjj death, and all the degrees of blackness might seize 
 
 it for their own ! If the best of all gifts — never to 
 have existed — must be denied him, why Inight not that day of 
 his birth have also brought to him the Grave, and the long quiet 
 sleep with the stately dead, and with the wicked and the weary, 
 the prisoner and his task-master, the small and the great, all at 
 their ease together? Why should life be forced upon the bitter 
 in soul? 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 In these later thoughts Job seems to reflect upon the order of 
 God's providence : he must be checked, and yet gently ; and 
 Eliphaz takes this task upon himself. He dreads 
 to give pain to his friend, yet how can he refrain Dfaio^ue™**"* 
 from speaking, and laying down to Job the foun- First cycle 
 dations of hope and fear with which Job himself "'"^ 
 has so often comforted the afflicted ? 
 
 Now a thing was secretly brought to me, 
 And mine ear received a whisper thereof: 
 
 In thoughts from the visions of the night. 
 
 When deep sleep falleth on men, 
 
 Fear came upon me, and trembling, 
 
 Which made all my bones to shake. 
 
 Then a spirit passed' before my face; 
 
 The hair of my flesh stood up. 
 
 It stood still, but I could not discern the appearance thereof ; 
 
 A form was before mine eyes : 
 
 There was silence, and I heard a voice, saying, 
 
 " Shall mortal man be more just than God ? 
 Shall a man be more pure than his Maker ? " 
 
 With the awful solemnity of this vision Ehphaz enforces the view 
 which the three Friends maintain throughout the discussion, and 
 which is put forward as a Second Solution of the Problem : The 
 very righteousness of God (they think) is involved in the doctrine 
 that all Suffering is a judgment upon Sin. Affliction, says Eliphaz, 
 does not spring up of itself like the grass, but it is they who have 
 sown trouble that reap the same. But he puts the doctrine gently, 
 as constituting so much hope for Job : when the sinner has once 
 sought unto God he will find what great and unsearchable 
 wonders God doeth. Then happy will have been the chastening 
 of the Almighty, for if he maketh sore he bindeth up. 
 
 He shall deliver thee in six troubles; 
 
 Yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. 
 
 In famine he shall redeem thee from death; 
 
 And in war from the power of the sword. 
 
 Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of the tongue; 
 
8 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh. 
 
 At destruction and dearth thou shalt laugh : 
 
 Neither shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth. 
 
 For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field; 
 
 And the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee. 
 
 And thou shalt know that thy tent is in peace; 
 
 And thou shalt visit thy fold and shalt miss nothing. 
 
 Thou shalt know also that thy seed shall be great, 
 
 And thine offspring as the grass of the earth. 
 
 Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, 
 
 Like as a shock of corn cometh in in its season. 
 Lo this, we have searched it, so it is; 
 Hear it, and know thou it for thy good. 
 
 Job is bitterly disappointed at thus meeting reproof where he 
 had looked for consolation. 
 
 My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook. 
 
 As the channel of brooks that pass away ; 
 
 Which are black by reason of the ice. 
 
 And wherein the snow hideth itself : 
 
 What time they wax warm, they vanish : 
 
 When it is hot, they are consumed out of their place. 
 
 The paths of their way are turned aside. 
 
 They go up into the waste and perish. 
 
 The caravans of Tema looked. 
 
 The companies of Sheba waited for them. 
 
 They were ashamed because they had hoped ; 
 
 They came thither and were confounded. 
 
 The comfort Job longs for is the crushing pain that would cut 
 him off altogether. And has he not a right to look for it ? Is not 
 man's life a warfare for a limited time ? 
 
 As a servant that earnestly desireth the shadow. 
 And as an hireling that looketh for his wages, 
 
 SO Job passes his wearisome nights and months of vanity. 
 
 If I have sinned, what can I do unto thee, 
 O thou watcher of men? 
 Why hast thou set me as a mark for thee. 
 So that I am a burden to myself? 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, 
 
 And take away mine iniquity ? 
 
 For now shall I lie down in the dust ; 
 
 And thou shalt seek me diligently, 
 
 But I shall not be ! 
 
 Job never claims to be sinless, but he knows that no sin of his 
 can be proportionate to the total ruin that has fallen upon him. 
 But this does not satisfy the second speaker. 
 
 Doth God pervert judgement ? 
 
 Or doth the Almighty pervert justice ? 
 
 Will not Job disentangle himself from the transgression which has 
 already found victims in his children ? For so surely as the flag 
 cannot grow without water: though it be green and spreading 
 above, with roots wrapped round and round its solid bed, yet it 
 perishes as if it had never been seen : so surely God will not 
 uphold the evil-doer. But neither will God cast away a perfect 
 man. 
 
 He will yet fill thy mouth with laughter, 
 
 And thy lips with shouting. 
 
 They that hate thee shall be clothed with shame, 
 
 And the tent of the wicked shall be no more. 
 
 Job knows of a truth that it is so. Yet how can a man be just 
 with God : i 
 
 Which removeth the mountains, and they know it not, 
 
 When he overturneth them in his anger.. 
 
 Which shaketh the earth out of her place, 
 
 And the pillars thereof tremble. 
 
 Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not ; 
 
 And sealeth up the stars. 
 
 What answer but supplication is possible before that overpower- 
 ing Strength ? a Strength that can destroy both the perfect and 
 the wicked alike : for if it be not God who does this, who is it ? 
 Certain it is that the earth is given into the hand of the wicked. 
 However innocent the accused may be, before that Strength his 
 own mouth would condemn him. 
 
10 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 If I wash myself with snow water, 
 
 And make my hands never so clean : 
 
 Vet wilt thou plunge me in the ditch, 
 
 And mine own clothes shall abhor me. 
 
 For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, 
 
 That we should come together in judgement ; 
 
 There is no daysman betwixt us. 
 
 That might lay his hand upon us both. 
 
 And Job appeals to God himself against this oppression of his 
 own handiwork. 
 
 Thine hands have framed me 
 
 And fashioned me together round about ; 
 
 Yet thou dost destroy me. 
 Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast fashioned me as clay ; 
 
 And wilt thou bring me into dust again ? 
 Hast thou not poured me out as milk, 
 And curdled me like cheese ? 
 Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh. 
 And knit me together with bones and sinews. 
 
 It is but a small boon that the creature asks of his Creator : that 
 he may be let alone for a brief space — 
 
 Before I go whence I shall not return : 
 
 Even to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death : 
 A land of thick darkness, as darkness itself ; 
 A land of the shadow of death, without any order. 
 And where the light is as darkness. 
 
 Zophar is deeply shocked at a spectacle he has never beheld in 
 all his long life, — a good man questioning a visible judgment of 
 God. 
 
 Canst thou by searching find out God ? 
 
 Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? 
 
 It is high as heaven ; 
 
 What canst thou do ? 
 
 Deeper than Sheol ; 
 
 What canst thou know ? 
 
 The measure thereof is longer than the earth, 
 
 And broader than the sea. 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 There is no course for Job but to set his heart aright, and put 
 iniquity far away ; then shall he again lift up a spotless countenance 
 before God. 
 
 For thou shalt forget thy misery ; 
 
 Thou shalt remember it as waters that are passed away : 
 
 And thy life shall be clearer than the noonday ; 
 
 Though there be darkness, it shall be as the morning. 
 
 Before the persistent dogmatism of the three Friends Job loses 
 more and more the patience which had stood the shocks of the 
 Adversary. 
 
 No doubt but ye are the people, 
 And wisdom shall die with you. 
 
 But I have understanding as well as you ; 
 
 I am not inferior to you : 
 
 Yea, who knoweth not such things as these ? 
 
 The just man is made a laughing-stock, and the tents of robbers 
 prosper : and yet the very beasts of the field can tell the inquirer 
 that the hand of the Lord is responsible for every breath of every 
 living thing. What, do the Friends stand forth as representatives 
 of Wisdom ? Nay, 
 
 With Him is wisdom and might; 
 He hath counsel and understanding.. 
 
 Priests and counsellors spoiled, kings bound and unbound, the 
 mighty overthrown, speech reft from the trusty, and understanding 
 from the elders, contempt poured upon princes, and the belt of 
 the strong loosed : these declare the Wisdom to which alone Job 
 will appeal. Will the Friends lie on God's behalf? Will they be 
 partial advocates in his cause ? 
 
 Though he slay me, yet will I wait for him : 
 Nevertheless I will maintain my ways before him. 
 
 Job appeals to God against God's own dealings, and never doubts 
 the issue of his appeal. And yet he is so feeble to plead his cause : 
 a driven leaf, a fettered prisoner, a moth-eaten rag ! And the 
 time left for his vindication is so short ! 
 
12 LITERARY STUDY OP THE BIBLE 
 
 Man that is born of a woman 
 
 Is of few days, and full of trouble ; 
 
 He Cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down. 
 
 He fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not. 
 
 For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down. 
 
 That it will sprout again, 
 
 And that the tender branch thereof will not cease ; 
 
 Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, 
 And the stock thereof die in the ground, 
 Yet through the scent of water it will bud. 
 And put forth boughs like a plant. 
 
 But man dieth, and wasteth away : 
 
 Yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he ? 
 
 As the waters fail from the sea. 
 
 And the river decayeth and drieth up. 
 
 So man lieth down and riseth not ; 
 
 Till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake. 
 
 Nor be roused out of their sleep. 
 
 A Strange fancy plays for a moment with the emotions of the 
 sufferer, — a fancy that the Grave itself might be sweet, if only 
 there might come the vindication beyond it. 
 
 Oh that thou wouldest hide me in Sheol, 
 
 That thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, 
 
 That thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me ! 
 
 — If a man die, shall he live again ? — 
 
 All the days of my warfare would I wait, till my release should come ; 
 
 Thou shouldest call, and I would answer thee : 
 
 Thou wouldest have a desire to the work of thine hands. 
 
 But Job dismisses the thought as vain. 
 
 Surely the mountain faUing cometh to nought. 
 
 And the rock is removed out of its place. 
 
 The waters wear the stones, 
 
 The overflowings thereof wash away the dust of the earth : 
 
 And thou destroyest the hope of man : 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth ; 
 
 Thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away ; 
 
 His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not ; 
 
 And they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them ; 
 
 Only for himself his flesh hath pain, 
 
 And for himself his soul mourneth. 
 
 It has come to the turn of Eliphaz again to speak : he is 
 shocked that Job should resist the united appeals secona cycle 
 of his Friends. xv-xxi 
 
 Art thou the first man that was born ? 
 
 Or wast thou brought forth before the hills ? 
 Hast thou heard the secret counsel of God ? 
 
 And dost thou restrain wisdom to thyself ? 
 
 On his side, Eliphaz says, and perhaps as he speaks he lays his 
 hand upon the shoulder of Zophar, are the aged and greyheaded, 
 men much older than Job's father. Then he proceeds to formu- 
 late again the doctrine of the unfailing judgment upon sin, a judg- 
 ment never so certain as when it appears for the time to be delayed. 
 
 The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days. 
 
 Even the number of years that are laid up for the oppressor. 
 
 A sound of terrors is in his ears ; 
 
 In prosperity the spoiler shall come upon him : 
 
 He believeth not that he shall return out of darkness. 
 
 And he is waited for of the sword. 
 
 Job cries out against such miserable consolation as this : for his 
 comfort he will go to a very different source. 
 
 O earth, cover not thou my blood, 
 And let my cry have no resting-place. 
 Even now, behold, my Witness is in heaven. 
 And He that voucheth for me is on high. 
 
 But once more the certainty of an ultimate vindication is over- 
 shadowed by th? thought of the rapidly flitting life. 
 
14 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 If I look for Sheol as mine house; 
 
 If I have spread my couch in the darkness; 
 
 If I have said to corruption, Thou art my father; 
 
 To the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister; 
 
 Where then is my hope ? 
 
 Bildad rebukes Job's discomposure of manner. 
 
 Thou that tearest thyself in thine anger, 
 
 Shall the earth be forsaken for thee? 
 
 Or shall the rock be removed out of its place? 
 
 He sternly reiterates the doctrine of judgment, and images of 
 doom flow freely. Nets and toils are under the feet of the sinner, 
 gins and snares are all about him ; his strength is hungerbitten and 
 the firstborn of death devours his members ; brimstone is scattered 
 upon his habitation; he is driven from light into darkness and 
 chased out of the world. 
 
 Such reiteration simply drives Job to stronger and stronger self- 
 assertion : in set terms he declares that God subverteth him in his 
 cause, and denies him the judgment for which he calls. And 
 God has removed all other succour from him : his kinsfolk have 
 failed him, his acquaintance are estranged, his very household 
 look upon him as an alien. 
 
 Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my frien-is, 
 For the hand of God hath touched me ! 
 
 But the weakness of a moment is transformed into a burst of 
 strength, as he proceeds to lay his hopes upon a help from above. 
 
 Oh that my words were now written ! 
 Oh that they were inscribed in a book ! 
 That with an iron pen and lead 
 ' They were graven in the rock for ever ! 
 
 For I know that My Vindicator liveth. 
 
 And that he shall stand up at the last upon the earth ; 
 
 And after my skin hath been thus destroyed. 
 
 Yet without my flesh shall I see God ! 
 
 Whom. I shall see on my side, 
 
 And mine eyes shall behold, and not another ! 
 
IMTRODVCTIOM IS 
 
 With the overpowering emotions called up by this thought Job 
 almost faints : 
 
 — My reins are consumed within me — 
 
 but after a pause he recovers himself, and is able to bring his 
 speech to a conclusion. 
 
 Zophar can scarcely wait his opportunity for speaking; his 
 thoughts anticipate his words on the favourite topic. 
 
 Knowest thou not this of old time, 
 
 Since man was placed upon earth, 
 That the triumphing of the wicked is short, 
 And the joy of the godless but for a moment? 
 
 And many wise saws are poured forth by Zophar, testifying to this 
 mockery of the sinner. 
 
 His children shall seek the favour of the poor, 
 And his hands shall give back his wealth. 
 
 His bones are full of his youth, 
 But it shall lie down with him in the dust. . . . 
 The heavens shall reveal his iniquity 
 And the earth shall rise up against him. 
 
 The doctrine thus thrust upon him again and again Job at last 
 begins to look fairly in the face ; and the more he considers it the 
 more he trembles at the doubts that come crowding into his mind. 
 
 How oft is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out ? 
 
 That their calamity cometh upon them ? 
 
 That God distributeth sorrows in his anger ? 
 
 That they are as stubble before the wind, 
 
 And as chaff that the storm carrieth away ? . . . 
 
 One dieth in his full strength. 
 
 Being wholly at ease and quiet : 
 
 His breasts are full of milk. 
 
 And the marrow of his bones is moistened. 
 
 And another dieth in bitterness of soul, 
 
 And never tasteth of good. 
 
 They lie down alike in the dust, 
 
 And the worm covereth them. 
 
16 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Eliphaz will not notice these doubts of Job ; his righteous 
 indignation with his friend has reached a climax, 
 xxu-xxx'' ° ^'^'^ casting restraint aside he openly accuses Job 
 
 of sin. 
 
 Thou hast taken pledges of thy brother for nought, 
 And stripped the naked of their clothing. 
 Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, 
 And thou hast withholden bread from the hungry. 
 
 Therefore has trouble come upon him : but there is yet a place 
 for repentance. If Job will acquaint himself with God and put 
 unrighteousness away, he may still delight himself again in the 
 Almighty. 
 
 Job makes no reply as yet to the cruel accusations : his thoughts 
 are upon the heavenly Vindicator. 
 
 Oh that I knew where I might find him : 
 That I might come even to his seat ! 
 
 There he would have a judge that would not use his greatness to 
 confound him. 
 
 Behold I go forward. 
 
 But he is not there ; 
 
 And backward, 
 
 But I cannot perceive him ; 
 
 On the left hand, when he doth work. 
 
 But I cannot behold him ; 
 
 He hideth himself on the right hand, 
 
 That I cannot see him. 
 
 But he knoweth the way that I take ; 
 
 When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. 
 
 His spirit purified by this meditation. Job is able with calm delib- 
 erateness to lay before his Friends the new thoughts which are 
 troubling him : the doubt whether his own is after all an excep- 
 tional case, whether it be not rather the truth that in life taken as 
 a whole the times of the Almighty are not plainly to be seen. He 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 speaks of the violence in the world, and the poverty that violence 
 brings in its train : how men remove the ancient landmarks and 
 drive the needy out of the way, until they have to seek precarious 
 subsistence from the inclement wilderness, or labour in the fields 
 of which they may never eat. He tells of violence in the city, 
 and cries rising to a regardless God ; of the thief, the adulterer, 
 the murderer, — men who rebel altogether against the light, and 
 the dawn comes upon them like a shadow of death. Yet all these 
 fare just like the rest of mankind. 
 
 They are exalted; yet a little while, and they are gone; 
 •Yea, they are brought low, they are gathered in, as all other ! 
 
 Bildad cannot meet these questionings of Job : his thoughts 
 are filled with the overpowering greatness of God. He rises on 
 the wave of a great theme, as he pictures the Ruler 
 of the Universe engaged in matters of high celestial 
 policy, or discovering blemishes in the brightness of the stars; 
 before him the Shades beneath the sea tremble ; ^ Destruction 
 and the Abyss reveal their secrets : his work is to hang 
 
 .... XXVI. 5-14 
 
 the earth upon nothing, to support the mighty waters in 
 
 the flimsy clouds, to divide light and darkness by a boundary circle. 
 
 Lo, these are but the outskirts of his ways; 
 And how small a whisper do we hear of him ! 
 But the thunder of his power who can understand? 
 
 The Friends have persisted in ignoring the arguments that Job 
 has offered, and Job can only fall back into self-assertion, xxvi. 1-4 
 
 and 
 As God liveth, xxvii. 1-6 
 
 Who hath taken away my right ; 
 And the Almighty, 
 Who hath vexed my soul ; 
 All the while my breath is in me. 
 And the spirit of God is in my nostrils : 
 
 Surely my lips shall not speak unrighteousness, 
 
 Neither shall my tongue utter deceit. 
 
 1 In reference to the rearrangement of the speeches at this point see Job in 
 Literary Index (Appendix I). 
 
18 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Once more, and for the last time, the doctrine of unfaiUng 
 7- judgment on sin is to be asserted, and Zophar com- 
 mences : 
 
 Z2T11 
 
 zzviii. 38 
 
 Let mine enemy be as the wicked — 
 
 His long experience has filled him with instances of the godless 
 frustrated in their hopes : their children multiplied for the sword, 
 their heaped-up silver divided amongst the innocent, and them- 
 selves swept by the tempest out of their place. To Zophar this 
 confidence in the unerring stroke of doom seems the very founda- 
 tion of Wisdom. There are mines out of which may be dug gold 
 and silver and precious stones, but where is the place of Wisdom ? 
 
 The deep saith, It is not in me : 
 
 And the sea saith, It is not with me : 
 
 It cannot be gotten for gold. 
 
 Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. 
 
 God only is the source of it, and when he laid the foundations of 
 the universe he inwrought this into the structure of his world : 
 that the fear of the Lord and his judgments on evil — this should 
 be Wisdom and Understanding. 
 
 Job is gathering himself together for his final vindication. But 
 first, softly to himself, he meditates upon the contrast between 
 then and now. 
 
 O that I were as in the months of old. 
 
 As in the days when God watched over me ; 
 When his lamp shined upon my head. 
 And by his light I walked through darkness. 
 
 In the rich imagery of the East he paints a prosperity that washed 
 his steps in butter; he describes the hush that fell upon the 
 assembly of the great when he advanced to join them ; how among 
 the people every ear that heard him blessed him, and every eye 
 that saw him was a witness to the deeds of kindness by which he 
 spread happiness around him. But now ! He is derided by 
 those whose fathers were not to be ranked with the dogs of his 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 flock ; the very rabble thrust him aside as he walks. And — worse 
 thau all — 
 
 Thou art turned to be. cruel to me : 
 
 With the might of thy hand thou persecutest me. 
 
 But before friend and foe, and in the presence of God himself. 
 
 Job stands forth to make solemn vindication. Towering above 
 
 the seated accusers, he waves his arm in the full 
 
 ritual of the Oath of Clearing. Article by article Jo*^ vindication 
 
 he repudiates the lust of the eye, oppression of the 
 
 weak, failure in charity to the poor or hospitality to the stranger, 
 
 secret trust in gold or secret worship of the heavenly host ; if there 
 
 be any other transgression — and Job passionately longs to see the 
 
 indictment of an adversary — he makes the very concealment of 
 
 it a fresh sin. Once more he breaks out : 
 
 If my land cry out against me, 
 
 And the furrows thereof weep together ; 
 
 If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money. 
 
 Or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life : 
 Let thistles grow instead of wheat. 
 And cockle instead of barley ! 
 
 Then, with a wave of dismissal — " The words of Job are ended " 
 — he seats himself and covers his face with his robe ; and the 
 Friends understand that the discussion is closed. 
 
 Religious tradition, embodied in the speeches of the three 
 Friends, has spent its energies and failed. But there is youth- 
 ful enthusiasm represented among the crowd of interDosto f 
 spectators round the ash-mound, in the person of Eiihu 
 Elihu, of the great family of Ram. He has stood ''^" 
 listening with indignation in his heart ; indignation against Job 
 because he justified himself and not God, and indignation against 
 the Friends because they had been unable to si- 
 
 zxxii. 6-zz2iii 
 
 lence such presumption. Elihu now breaks through 
 
 the circle and ascends the ash-mound, standing respectful but 
 
20 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 passionate before the seated elders. He had said that days must 
 speak and multitude of years show wisdom : but he has an under- 
 standing as well as they ; yea, his spirit feels like wine that can find 
 no vent but by bursting its bottle. Thus, with juvenile profuse- 
 ness, he pours forth some fifty lines in saying that he is about to 
 speak, before he confronts Job — who had longed to meet God 
 face to face — with the words : 
 
 Behold, I am according to thy wish, in God's stead. 
 
 He thus reaches the point which makes his contribution to the 
 
 discussion, — a facet of the truth which his generation was seeing 
 
 a little more clearly than the generation before him. It may be 
 
 made a Third Solution of the Mystery : Suffering 
 
 (Third Solution) . . , i.- i. r- j °, 
 
 IS one oj the voices by which irod warns and 
 
 restores men. He describes a man chastened with pain upon his 
 
 bed until his Ufe abhorreth bread, and his soul the daintiest meat : 
 
 If there be with him an angel, 
 An interpreter, one among a thousand, 
 To shew unto man what is right for him; 
 Then he is gracious unto him, and saith, 
 " Deliver him from going down to the pit, 
 I have found a ransom." 
 
 An idyllic picture follows of restored purity and happy penitence ; 
 and Elihu urges this view upon Job, and pauses for Job's reply. 
 
 But Job vouchsafes no reply ; and receives the new light with 
 contemptuous indifiference. 
 
 Disappointed at this reception, Elihu turns to the three Friends 
 — as wise men with an ear to try words — and hopes to take 
 them with him, and all men of understanding, in his 
 protest against this Job, who drinketh up scorning like 
 water, who addeth rebellion unto sin, and clappeth his hands 
 against God. He enlarges upon the presumption of mankind 
 and the judgments with which, it is overwhelmed, and looks to 
 the three Friends for assent. 
 
mfRODUcTldN 21 
 
 But the three Friends make no sign ; they meet their youthful 
 champion with chilling silence. 
 
 Slighted on both sides, Elihu, like Job, is driven to look up- 
 wards : as his glance sweeps the sky, another flood 
 of inspiration comes upon him. 
 
 XXXV-XXXVll 
 
 Look unto the Heavens, and see : 
 
 he cries, alike to Job and to his companions. Is the God of those 
 
 heavens, he asks, a God to be harmed by a man's sin, or benefited 
 
 by his righteousness ? Thus, " fetching his knowledge from afar," 
 
 he makes the heavens a starting-point for a fresh vindication of 
 
 the providence thg.t brings low and builds up again mighty kings, 
 
 or cuts off whole peoples in a night. A rumble of 
 
 1 , „ , • , • J , Rise of the Whirl- 
 
 distant thunder recalls him to his text ; and, when wind 
 
 he looks up a second time, the brilliant sky of the xxxvi. vi- 
 land of Uz has begun to show signs of change. 
 Now his whole discussion of providential might is bound up with 
 the manifestations of power that are being exhibited at the moment 
 in the changing heavens. His words bring before us the small 
 drops of water and the spreading clouds, the play of lightning and 
 the noise that tells of God, down to the very cattle standing expect- 
 ant of the coming storm. When a nearer burst of thunder makes 
 his heart tremble and move out of its place, Elihu still keeps his ' 
 eyes fastened upon the sky : he finds fresh texts in the roaring voice 
 of the heavens, and the lightning that lightens to the ends of the 
 earth, in the snow intermingled with mighty rain as the icy breath 
 of the north encounters the storm out of the chambers of the 
 south, in the thick clouds wearied with waterings, and their delicate 
 balancings as they descend, and descend, until they have wrapped 
 in their folds speaker and hearers, and they cannot order their 
 speech by reason of the darkness, and the impetuous eloquence of 
 Elihu has died down into dread : 
 
 If a man speak, surely he shall be swallowed up ! 
 Now the whirlwind is upon them : in marvellous wise its blasts 
 
22 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 seem to cleanse the mirky darkness into order ; flashes of un- 
 earthly bright out of the dark make them cast their eyes down- 
 ward; until the flashes at last grow together into one terrible 
 majesty of golden splendour in the northern heart of the storm, 
 and the whirlwind has become the 
 
 VOICE OF GOD 
 
 Divine Inter- Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? 
 
 vention Gird up now thy loins like a man ; 
 
 xxxviii-xlii. 6 p^^ j ^jjj demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. 
 
 As the Voice comes out of the storm a new aspect of the dis- 
 cussion unfolds itself. The perplexities of Job and his Friends 
 rested upon a one-sided view that confined its survey to Evil, as 
 if it alone were exceptional and unintelligible ; the speech attrib- 
 uted to the Divine Being comes to restore the balance by taking 
 a more comprehensive survey. It may be reckoned as a Fourth 
 
 Solution of the Problem : That the whole universe 
 (Fourth Solution) . , ,^ ^ 7 ■ 7 ^7 7- v • 
 
 IS an unjathomed Mystery, in which the JLvit is not 
 
 more mysterious than the Good and the Great. The idea of the 
 
 whirlwind is maintained throughout : the tone of overmastering 
 
 might — so often mistaken for the meaning of this Theophany — 
 
 is no more than the outward form in which the words of God are 
 
 embodied ; the traditional association of thunder with the voice 
 
 of God leading our poet to convey the speech of Deity in the 
 
 form of short sharp interrogatories, like explosions of thunder, 
 
 each outburst putting some startling mystery of nature. 
 
 Who shut up the sea with doors, 
 
 When it brake forth and issued out of the womb ; 
 
 When I made the cloud the garment thereof. 
 
 And thick darkness a swaddling band for it. 
 
 And prescribed for it my decree. 
 
 And set bars and doors, 
 
 And said, " Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further ; 
 
 And here shall thy proud waves be stayed" ? 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 Have the gates of death been revealed unto thee, 
 Or hast thou seen the gates of the shadov^ of death ? 
 
 Where is the vfay to the dwelling of light, 
 
 And as for darkness, vfhere is the place thereof? 
 
 Hath the rain a father ? 
 
 Or who hath begotten the drops of dew ? 
 
 Out of whose womb came the ice ? 
 
 And the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it ? 
 
 There is no pause in the succession of wonders : the wonder of 
 the lioness hunting her prey ; of the young ravens crying to God 
 for their food ; the wonder of the wild goats bringing forth their 
 young ; the wonder of the wild ass ranging loose in the wilderness, 
 and the ox abiding patiently by his crib; the wonder of the 
 ostrich, foolish over her young because God has deprived her of 
 wisdom, glorious in flight, putting to scorn the horse and his 
 rider; the wonder of the war-horse pawing in the valley and 
 rejoicing in his strength, swallowing the ground in fierceness and 
 rage amid the thunder of the captains and the shouting. There 
 is a momentary lull in the storm, when Job's voice is heard in 
 awe-struck humility : 
 
 Once have I spoken, and I will not answer : 
 Yea twice, but I will proceed no further. 
 
 Then again the swirl of mystery rages around : the Voice tells of 
 Behemoth, with bones of brass and limbs of iron, his larder a 
 mountain and a jungle his bower, watching unconcernedly the 
 swelling of the boisterous waterfloods ; or of Leviathan himself, 
 panoplied against the hook of the fisher or snare of the fowler, 
 and scorning even the hunter's spear and the arrows of the war- 
 rior, flashing light and breathing smoke as he goes, terror dancing 
 before him, and ocean turning hoary in his wake. 
 
 At last the storm begins to abate, and Job is able to make his 
 submission. He knows that God is all-powerful, and that no 
 purpose of his can be restrained. 
 
24 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 — " Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge ? " — 
 
 comes like an echoing rumble of the retiring storm. Job admits 
 the charge : he has uttered that which he understood not, and 
 meddled in things too high for him. 
 
 — "I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me " — 
 
 again sounds forth, like a more distant echo of the tempest. Job 
 comprehends his whole submission in one utterance. 
 
 I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; 
 But now mine eye seeth thee, 
 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent 
 In dust and ashes. 
 
 Then the storm has entirely cleared away. And with it the 
 dramatic poem has given place to the frame of story : which 
 
 resumes to relate how, when Job had thus spoken, 
 zhiT-i7''''"^^ the anger of the Lord was kindled against the 
 
 three Friends, because they had not said of Him 
 the thing that was right as His servant Job had. Thus the Epi- 
 logue furnishes a Fifth Solution . the proper attitude of mind 
 
 towards the Mystery of Human Suffering: that 
 (Fifth Solution) , , . / ^ :: , , . , ,, * 
 
 the strong faith of fob, which could even reproach 
 
 God as a friend reproaches a friend, was more acceptable to Him 
 
 than the servile adoration which sought to twist the truth in order 
 
 to magnify God. It only remains to tell how the Lord turned the 
 
 captivity of Job, and his wealth and prosperity returned in greater 
 
 measure than before ; and he begat sons and daughters, and saw 
 
 his sons' sons to the fourth generation. So Job died, being old 
 
 and full of years. 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 II 
 
 Such is the Book of Job presented as a piece of literature. 
 The questions of Theology or historic criticism that it suggests 
 are outside the scope of the present work. Our Literary interest 
 immediate concern is with the various kinds of in the Book of 
 literary interest which have touched us as we ^"^ 
 have traversed this monument of ancient literature. 
 
 The dominant impression is that of a magnificent drama. No 
 element of dramatic effect is wanting ; and that which we might 
 least have expected, the scenic effect, is especially jjramatic 
 impressive. The great ashrmound outside an an- interest 
 cient village or town makes a stage just suited for °* Background 
 the single scene — and that an open-air scene — to which a Greek 
 tragedy would be confined. And resemblance to a Greek drama 
 is further maintained by the crowd of spectators who stand round 
 this ash-mound like a silent Chorus ; — unless, indeed, we are to 
 consider that their sentiments are conveyed by Elihu as Chorus- 
 Leader. When we reach the crisis of the poem we are able to 
 see what advantage a drama addressed purely to the imagination 
 may have over plays intended for the theatre. No stage machin- 
 ery could possibly realise the changes of sky and atmosphere 
 which in Jab make a dramatic background for the approach of 
 Deity. It is true that the original poem does not describe these 
 changes, as I have done, in straightforward narrative. But every 
 scholar is aware that the ' stage directions ' of modern plays are 
 wanting in the dramas of antiquity : whatever variations of move- 
 ment and surroundings these involve have to be collected from the 
 words of the personages who take part in the dialogue. And in 
 the transformation traced above, from a day of brilliant sunshine 
 to a thunderstorm, and yet further to a supernatural apparition, 
 every detail of change is implied in the words of Elihu. We 
 watch the changing scene through the eyes of those who are in 
 the midst of it. 
 
26 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Interest of character abounds in the poem. I must confess I 
 
 cannot follow the subtle differences which some commentators see 
 
 between the characters of the three Friends. It 
 
 of Character 
 
 is easy to recognise in Eliphaz a stately personage 
 with a wider range of thought than his colleagues. But Bildad 
 and Zophar leave different impressions on different readers. To 
 me Bildad seems a touch more blunt in his manner than the rest. 
 Of Zophar I would only say that the speeches assigned him fit 
 well with the suggestion of his being a generation older than the 
 other personages of the poem ; though of course the 
 words of Eliphaz which claim such a personage as on 
 his side need not necessarily refer to anyone present. But what- 
 ever may be thought about the individualities of the Friends, no 
 one can miss the contrast between the whole group and Job ; 
 between the interest of static character in various modifications 
 of conformity to current ideals, and the interest of a dynamic per- 
 sonality like that of Job, which can look back to a realisation of 
 the perfection his friends describe, and can yet at the call of cir- 
 cumstances fling his former beliefs to the winds, and probe pas- 
 sionately among the mysteries of providence for new conceptions 
 of divine rule. And the welcome addition to the poem of Elihu 
 adds the ever fresh interest of youth in contrast with age. In the 
 impetuous self-confidence of this personage, his flowing yet jejune 
 eloquence, and in the chilling reception it meets alike from Job 
 and Job's adversaries, we have youth presented from the one side. 
 But, on the other hand, youth has dramatic justice done to it 
 when we find Elihu's heart beating responsive to every change 
 of the changing heavens, and eagerly drinking in the accumulat- 
 ing terrors of the storm, until his wild speech stops only before 
 the voice of God. 
 
 But scenery and character might almost be called secondary 
 elements of drama: its essence lies in action. The whole world 
 
 of literature hardly contains a more remai-kable 
 and of Movement . . 
 
 piece of dramatic movement than the changes of 
 
 position taken up by Job in the course of his dialogue with the 
 
INTRODUCTION 27 
 
 Friends. Before it commenced Job had met his ruin with that 
 ideal patience which has forever been associated with his name. 
 At last we find just a shadow of resistance in his plaintive enquiry, 
 why life should be forced upon the miserable. His friends fasten 
 upon this, and make it a starting-point for the discussion in which 
 they urge that the sufferer is a sinner. Almost in an instant the 
 patient Job is transformed into an angry rebel, tearing to shreds 
 optimist views of righteous providence, and, with the passion of a 
 Titan, painting God as an Irresponsible Omnipotence that delights 
 to put righteousness and wickedness on an equality of helplessness 
 to resist Him. The Friends continue their pressure, and Job is 
 driven to appeal to God against their misconstruction ; more and 
 more as the action advances Job is led to rest his hopes of vindi- 
 cation on the Being he began by maligning. At last he is found 
 to have traversed a circle : and the same God whom, in the ninth 
 chapter, he had accused of exercising judgment only to show his 
 omnipotence, he contrasts with the Friends in the twenty-third 
 chapter as a judge who would not contend with him in the great- 
 ness of his power. When the climax of the Theophany comes, 
 this movement of the drama is carried forward into a double sur- 
 prise. Job had felt that if only he could find his way into the 
 presence of God his cause would be secure. His prayer is strangely 
 granted, and with what result ? 
 
 I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; 
 But now mine eye seeth thee, 
 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent 
 In dust and ashes. 
 
 Yet was Job's first thought a mistake ? The answer is a second 
 surprise. While the tempest lasts the Theophany appears wholly 
 directed against Job. But when the storm has cleared it is found 
 to be the adversaries who have incurred the wrath of God, and his 
 servant Job has said of him the thing that is right. The deep 
 moral significance of these various presentations of Deity need 
 not make us overlook the dramatic beauty in the transition from 
 one to another. 
 
28 LITErArV study of TiiE BIBLE 
 
 The dialogue mjob is introduced and concluded by a narrative 
 story, and to dramatic effect must be added epic : I use this word 
 
 without meaning to convey any judgment on the 
 pic n eres question whether the incidents of the book are to 
 
 be regarded as imaginary or as historically true. The narrative is 
 one of grand simpKcity, like the epics of antiquity. A few touches 
 create for us a whole picture of life and scheme of society. The 
 first note struck is that of perfection ; and the life of which Job 
 is declared the perfect type is that of a simple pastoral age. His 
 substance of cattle is given in ideal figures ; and he is called the 
 greatest of all the children of the east. It is an age in which the 
 ' state ' is not yet born, but family life is pictured on the highest 
 scale. The great seasons which break the monotony of such 
 patriarchal existence are rounds of festal gatherings among the 
 seven sons of Job, each receiving on his day with a regularity 
 never broken ; the sons moreover invite their sisters, and so 
 women's society raises a revel into a dignified ceremonial. Such 
 interchange of festivity would represent the highest ordinary ideals 
 of the age. But behind this. Job, who lives in a wider world, has 
 his high day of religious devotion, rising early in the morning to 
 sanctify his children against possible sin. 
 
 In an instant, without any connecting Knk or wordy preparation, 
 after the fashion of the old epics which have the doings of gods 
 and men alike in their grasp, we are transported to the heavenly 
 counterpart of such earthly festivities. Heaven too has its high 
 day on which the sons of God gather together from their several 
 provinces ; in the description of two such assemblies the recur- 
 rence of identical phrases conveys the notion of ritual and cere- 
 monial observance. We reach a point in the story at which the 
 utmost care is needed to guard against a misconception of the 
 
 whole incident. Among the sons of God, it is 
 jlb* ^***° *" ®^''^' comes ' The Satan.' It is best to use the article 
 
 and speak of ' The Satan,' or as the margin gives 
 it, 'The Adversary' : that is, the Adversary of the Saints. Else- 
 where in Scripture the title of this office has become the name of 
 
INTRODUCTION 29 
 
 a personage — the Adversary of God, or 'Satan.' ^ But here (as 
 
 in a similar passage of ZechariaK) the Satan is an official 
 
 of the Court of Heaven. There is nothing in his recep- z*"''*- 
 
 j. . . , , . , rlali ill. I 
 
 tion to distinguish him from the other sons of God ; as 
 they may come from sun or moon or other parts of the Uni- 
 verse, so the Satan is the Inspector of Earth, and describes his 
 occupation as " going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and 
 down in it." When once the associations with the other ' Satan ' 
 are laid aside, it is easy to see that in the deaUngs of this per- 
 sonage with Job there is no malignity ; he simply questions where 
 others accept, and in an inspector such distrust is a virtue. The 
 Roman Church has exactly caught this conception in its 'Advoca- 
 tus Diaboli ' : such an advocate may be in fact a pious and kindly 
 ecclesiastic, but he has the function assigned him of searching out 
 all possible evil that can be alleged against a candidate for canoni- 
 sation, lest the honours of the Church might be given without due 
 enquiry. In the present case the Satan merely points out possible 
 weaknesses in Job, and a means of testing them. The Court of 
 Heaven sanctions the ' experiment ' : — the word ' experiment ' has 
 only to be changed into its equivalent ' probation ' for the whole 
 proceeding to be brought within accepted notions of divine gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 Epic power is again exhibited in the description of the mode in 
 which this experiment is carried out. Slow history brings about 
 results by what means are in its power, with much of makeshift, 
 and accidents which mar the symmetry of events. But epic 
 poetry can make its action harmonious ; and it seems to be a 
 conspiracy of heaven and earth that compasses Job's destruction. 
 The Sabeans take his oxen, the sky rains fire upon the sheep, the 
 
 1 Bishop Bickersteth in his epic poem Yesterday, To-day, and Forever ingeniously 
 harmonises these two conceptions of Satan. He makes his Lucifer Guardian Spirit 
 of Earth and Man ; as part of his office he tempts Adam ; then flies to Heaven to be 
 fallen Man's accuser: gradually the spirit in which he has executed his office 
 intensifies and makes more and more pronounced his own fall, until he at last sinks 
 into an open Adversary of God. See the poem, books iv-vi, and the bishop's de- 
 fence of this view in the St, James's Sermons. 
 
30 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Chaldeans carry away the camels, and the winds of the wilderness 
 overwhelm Job's children: while the separate destructions are 
 worked into a concerto of ruin by the recurrence of the mes- 
 senger's wail — 
 
 I only am escaped alone to tell thee. 
 
 It is an ideally grand shock. But at this stage Job's character is 
 epic, and the shock is met by an ideal grandeur of acceptance. 
 One by one the customary gestures of distress are exhibited, and 
 then slowly succeed the words which have become the world's 
 formulary for the emotion of bereavement. They are sublime 
 words, that first proclaim simply the essential manhood to which 
 the whole of life is but an accessory, and then throw over pious 
 submission a grace of oriental courtesy that would make the 
 resumption of a gift an occasion for remembering the giver. 
 
 Naked came I out of my mother's womb, 
 And naked shall I return thither ! 
 
 The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away : 
 Blessed be the Name of the Lord ! 
 
 Our epic plot intensifies, and when the second assembly in 
 heaven is held, God and the Satan concur in honouring Job's con- 
 stancy by severer tests. In what follows there is no realistic 
 description ; epic poetry can act by reticence, and a word or two 
 are sufficient to convey the picture of Job shrinking away silent 
 and unclean from among his fellows, with a patience terrible to 
 look upon ; until the silence is broken by a second of those 
 utterances of his which are so colossal in their simplicity. The 
 oriental nomad life has two ideals specially its own. One is the 
 solemn giving and receiving of gifts. The other is an instinct of 
 authority that knows no bounds to its submission : an oriental 
 seems to feel a pride in self-prostration before his natural lord. 
 Both ideals are united in Job's answer to his wife's murmur : 
 
 What? shall we receive good at the hands of God and 
 shall we not receive evil? 
 
INTRODUCTION 31 
 
 The simple power of epic poetry has raised us to a high plane 
 
 of thought and feeling : upon that plane the action of the poem is 
 
 to move with a passionateness that is proper to 
 
 drama. But there is a transition stage between The Curse a Lyric 
 
 ° Poem 
 
 the one and the other in that portion of the book 
 
 entitled ' Job's Curse.' This is not narrative, and so cannot be 
 
 epic ; it is clearly distinct from the dramatic poetry to which it is 
 
 a starting-point. Examination of it shows at once the musical 
 
 elaboration and accumulation of musings on a situation or thought 
 
 which we associate with lyric poetry. The Curse is a counterpart 
 
 to such English lyrics as Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality 
 
 or Gray's Bard. I subjoin the whole here, that it may be read 
 
 in this connection as a separate lyric : — an Elegy of a Broken 
 
 Heart. 
 
 Let the day perish wherein I was born; 
 
 And the night which said, There is a man child conceived i 
 
 Let that day be darkness; 
 
 Let not God regard it from above, 
 
 Neither let the light shine upon it ! 
 
 Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own; 
 
 Let a cloud dwell upon it; 
 
 Let all that maketh black the day terrify it ! 
 
 As for that night, let thick darkness seize upon it; 
 
 Let it not rejoice among the days of the year ; 
 
 Let it not come into the number of the months ! 
 
 Lo, let that night be barren ; 
 
 Let no joyful voice come therein ! 
 
 Let them curse it that curse the day, 
 
 Who are ready to rouse up leviathan ! 
 
 Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark ! 
 
 I/Ct it look for light, but have none; 
 
 Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning : 
 
 Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb. 
 Nor hid trouble from mine eyes ! 
 
32 LITERARY STUDY OP THE BIBLE 
 
 Why died I not from the womb ? 
 
 Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly ? 
 Why did the knees receive me ? 
 
 Or why the breasts, that I should suck ? 
 
 For now should I have lien d own and been quiet ; 
 I should have slept ; then had I been at rest, 
 
 With kings and counsellors of the earth, 
 
 Which built solitary piles for themselves ; 
 
 Or with princes that had gold. 
 
 Who filled thejrr houses with silver ; 
 Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been ; 
 As infants which never saw light. 
 
 There the wicked cease from troubling ; 
 
 And there the weary be at rest. 
 
 There the prisoners are at ease together ; 
 
 They hear not the voice of the taskmaster. 
 
 The small and great are there ; 
 
 And the servant is free from his master. 
 
 Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, 
 And life unto the bitter in soul ? 
 
 Which long for death, but it cometh not ; 
 
 And dig for it more than for hid treasures ; 
 
 Which rejoice exceedingly. 
 
 And are glad when they can find the grave. 
 Why is light given to a man whose way is hid. 
 And whom God hath hedged in ? 
 
 For my sighing cometh before I eat. 
 
 And my roarings are poured out like water. 
 
 For the thing which I fear cometh upon me. 
 
 And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me. 
 
 I am not at ease, neither am I quiet. 
 
 Neither have I rest ; but trouble cometh. 
 
 Our result then so far is that the Book of Job contains specimens 
 of epic, lyric, and dramatic composition ; all the three main 
 elements of poetry find a representation in it, and a representation 
 
INTRODUCTION 33 
 
 of the most impressive kind. I pass now to those departments 
 
 of literature which are usually considered to be 
 
 furthest removed from poetry, — philosophy and p"Jiiiosopw 
 
 science : philosophy that seeks to find a meaning 
 
 underlying life as a whole, and science that observes in detail and 
 
 arranges its observations. 
 
 The whole work is a philosophical discussion dramatised. The 
 subject discussed is the mystery of human suffering, various Attitudes 
 and its bearing upon the righteous government of to the problem 
 the world : this is one of the stock questions of '^'"'^^® , 
 
 philosophy. Each section of the book is the representation of a 
 different philosophical attitude to this question. 
 
 The three Friends present a cut and dried theory of suffering — 
 that it is always penal. They are brought before 
 us as behaving in the usual fashion of persons _. ^ "*" ^" 
 finally committed to a theory : they pour out 
 stores of facts that make for their view, they ignore and refuse to 
 examine facts that tell against it, and they hint moral obliquity as 
 the real explanation of refusal to concur in their 
 doctrine. EUhu introduces the same theory modi- modiflea''^'"^ 
 fied and corrected to date ; with him suffering is 
 punishment for sin, but that special kind of punishment which is 
 corrective in character. He accordingly stands for a philosophic 
 school of the second generation ; and we are not surprised to find 
 him maintaining his position with as much inflexibility as the 
 Friends have shown, and at the same time magnifying his slight 
 difference from them, and appearing no less an adversary to the 
 Friends than to Job himself. 
 
 Beware lest ye say, " We have found wisdom ; 
 
 God may vanquish him, not man " : 
 For he hath not directed his words against me ; 
 Neither vpill I answer him with your speeches. 
 
 At the furthest remove from these is found Job, who takes a 
 negative attitude, shattering other theories but providing none of 
 
34 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 his own. Of course no one will understand Job really to accept 
 what some of his words imply, as where he sees in 
 Att't fl*^***^^ God an omnipotence that judges only to display 
 power. But these wild words are not out of place 
 as a poetically strong representation of the perplexities that en- 
 counter one who would explain providential action. Job simply 
 cannot solve these perplexities ; he trusts in a divine vindication 
 at some time, but meanwhile can only pronounce the problem of 
 life insoluble. This is distinctly a philosophic attitude : it is noth- 
 ing but the famous epoche, or suspension of mind, which from the 
 time of Socrates has been recognised as a natural tone of mind 
 for an enquirer. Of course there is a vast difference between 
 the cold brightness of Plato's dialogues and the heated debate in 
 Job; the Hebrew poem is not the discussion in the Porch or 
 Garden, but represents philosophy as it is talked in the school 
 of affliction. Job represents the epoche in a passion. 
 
 Yet another philosophical position is embodied in the Divine 
 Intervention. As I have suggested above, this portion of the 
 
 ^. . , . poem has been often misunderstood. It has been 
 
 Divine Interven- ^ 
 
 tion: Reference to assumed, not unnaturally, that the Divine Inter- 
 a wider category mention — like the Deus ex machind of the Greek 
 drama — must be a final settlement of the questions in dispute. 
 When the speeches attributed to God are examined in this light 
 they are found to be no settlement at all, or, what were worse 
 than any settlement, an indignant denial of man's right to ques- 
 tion. But such interpretations overlook one important considera- 
 tion : that in the epilogue Job is pronounced by the Lord to have 
 said of him the thing that is right, while Job's Friends, who main- 
 tained the wickedness of questioning, are declared to have incurred 
 the Divine anger. The interpretation involves a double mistake. 
 On the one hand the Divine Intervention is not a settlement of 
 the matter in dispute ; at the end of the poem the problem of 
 human suffering remains a mystery. But this section of the work, 
 like others, is a distinct contribution towards a solution. In esti- 
 mating what that contribution is a second mistake must be avoided, 
 
INTRODUCTION 35 
 
 by which form and substance have been confused. The tone of 
 scorn which rings through the sentences of the Divine utterance 
 must, as I have said above, be considered part of the dramatic 
 form thrown over the discussion; the poet has conceived the 
 thunder tone to be the proper embodiment for the Divine voice, 
 and the explosive interrogatories of which the speeches are com- 
 posed are just as much a portion of this dramatic setting as the 
 signs of a rising tempest which are put into the mouth of Elihu. 
 The whole is introduced with the explanation : " The Lord 
 answered Job out of the whirlwind." But when we go below 
 this outer form, and enquire what is the general drift of the 
 Divine utterance as a whole, we find, as I have said before, that 
 its effect is to widen the field of discussion. Job has fastened his 
 attention simply upon Evil, and successfully maintained its inex- 
 pUcableness against his friends. The Divine Intervention brings 
 out that the Good and the Great, all that men instinctively 
 admire in the universe, is just as inexplicable as Evil. Now this 
 is distinctly a contribution towards the solution of the problem ; 
 in philosophic terms, it has included the matter under discussion 
 in a wider category, and this represents a stage of philosophic 
 advance. Moreover, it implies consolation to the human sufferer 
 as well as progress to the discussion. Job had met loss and pain 
 without a murmur ; he broke down when long musing made him 
 realise the isolation his ruin had brought him, and how he was an 
 outcast from intelligible law. He recovers his self-control when 
 he is led to feel that his burden is only part of the world-mystery 
 of Good and Evil, for the solution of which all time is too short. 
 
 Two sections of the work have yet to be considered in the 
 present connection, the prologue and the epilogue. From the 
 side of philosophy no part of Job is more im- Epilogue : Prac- 
 portant than the brief epilogue. Other sections ticai bearings of 
 suggest distinct solutions of the problem under ti^e question 
 discussion. But when a question is so wide as to admit of no 
 final .settlement, but only of tentative treatment, philosophy can 
 have no more important task than to discover a practical attitude 
 
36 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 which we may assume towards it while advancing slowly towards 
 theoretic knowledge. This is what the epilogue does in its pro- 
 nouncement that Job has been right and his friends wrong. As 
 suggested above, this can have no other meaning than to imply 
 that the bold faith of a Job, which could reproach his God as 
 friend reproaches friend where the Divine dealings seemed unjust, 
 was, though founded on ignorance, more acceptable to that God 
 than the servile adoration which sought to twist facts in order to 
 magnify His name. The deep significance of such a pronounce- 
 ment must be welcomed by every school of thought ; it for ever 
 stamps the God of the Bible as a God on the side of enquiry. 
 
 But before this principle has been laid down in the epilogue, 
 before Job and his friends have commenced to discuss the mys- 
 tery of suffering, another explanation of that mys- 
 Prologue: Specu- , , , , , . , 
 
 lationuponaTran- tery has been suggested to our thoughts m the 
 
 scendentai Expia- prologue. When we are made to see the Powers 
 of Heaven discussing the character of Job as if it 
 were an item in which the welfare of the universe was concerned, 
 and contriving visitations of suffering as means of testing whether 
 the character be really all that it seems to be, it is impossible foi 
 our minds not to generalise, and wonder whether large part of the 
 visible suffering in the actual world be not a probationary visita- 
 tion of this nature. Here then there is another solution presented : 
 how is the treatment to be classified from our immediate point of 
 view? The thinker has other weapons besides philosophic dis- 
 cussion. Philosophy deals with that which can be known by its 
 own methods ; but the thinker may recognise a region outside 
 this, which therefore from the philosophic point of view is the 
 unknowable, which may nevertheless have influences operating 
 upon the region of what is known. In reference to such a region 
 he will not employ the method of discussion, but rather the form 
 of philosophic suggestion that has come to be called ' speculation.' 
 The prologue to Job may be regarded as giving the authority of 
 Holy Writ to reverent speculation upon the higher mysteries. 
 No doubt here difference of interpretation comes in. Those who 
 
INTRODUCTION 37 
 
 consider that the first two chapters of Job represent an historic 
 fact — incidents which actually happened — will not use the word 
 ' speculation ' : to them this prologue will be the final settlement 
 of the whole question. But the great majority of readers will 
 take these chapters to be part of the parable into which the his- 
 tory of Job has been worked up ; the incidents in heaven, like the 
 incidents of the Prodigal Son, they will understand to be spirit- 
 ually imagined, not historically narrated. And these will recognise 
 that the prologue gives completeness to the Book of Job viewed 
 from the standpoint of philosophy ; the problem of human suffer- 
 ing, which has in other parts of the book been treated by theory 
 and theory modified, by negative positions and reference to a 
 wider category, and even by pronouncement upon its practical 
 bearings, has a further illumination cast upon it by a speculation 
 which refers the origin of suffering to the mysteries of the super- 
 natural world. 
 
 I have spoken of science as well as philosophy. Science ob- 
 serves nature and fife : observation of nature is the ^ ^ 
 
 ' Interest of 
 
 special work of modern science, antiquity turned science: 
 its reflection chiefly on human Ufe. It is hardly The Land Ques- 
 necessary to point out that proverb-Uke reflec- 
 tions on society and hfe form large part of the material out of 
 which the dialogue in Job is constructed. I will be content with 
 a single one of the more extended illustrations. It is remarkable 
 that the whole course of what the most modern thought calls 
 'the land question' is sketched in a single chapter of 
 Job. The patriarch is describing what seems to him 
 the misgovernment of the world. He commences with the en- 
 croachments of private ownership upon the common land : 
 
 There are that remove the landmarks. ... 3. 4 
 
 They turn the needy out of the way. 
 
 There is consequently the formation of a class of the poor, who 
 are either driven to the barren regions, or become a mere labour- 
 ing class without rights in the land of the community. 
 
38 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 4i 5 The poor of the earth hide themselves together : 
 
 Behold, as wild asses in the desert 
 
 They go forth to their work, seeking diligently for meat ; 
 
 The wilderness yieldeth them food for their children. . . . 
 7. 8 They lie all night naked without clothing, 
 
 And have no covering in the cold. 
 
 They are wet with the showers of the mountains, 
 
 And embrace the rock for want of a shelter. 
 
 Poverty, Job sees, necessitates borrowing, and the fresh distress 
 that is- its natural sequel. 
 
 ■■'. 3 They violently take away flocks and feed them, 
 
 They drive away the ass of the fatherless. 
 They take the widow's ox for a pledge. 
 
 Poverty is seen side by side with wealth, forced into close relation- 
 ship with it that increases the distress of want. 
 
 8 They cut his provender in the field; 
 
 And they glean the vintage of the wicked. . . . 
 10, II And being an-hungered they carry the sheaves ; 
 
 They make oil within the walls of these men ; 
 
 They tread their winepresses, and suffer thirst. 
 
 As a next stage we get the crowding of population in cities, with 
 hints of fresh distress and turbulence. 
 
 12 From out of the populous city men groan, 
 
 And the soul of the wounded crieth out. 
 Yet God imputeth it not for folly. 
 
 The climax comes in the formation of a purely criminal class. 
 
 13-17 These are of them that rebel against the light; 
 
 They know not the ways thereof. 
 
 Nor abide in the paths thereof. 
 The murderer riseth with the light. 
 
 He killeth the poor and needy; 
 
 And in the night he is as a thief. 
 The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight; 
 
 Saying, No eye shall see me; 
 
 And he putteth a covering on his face. 
 
INTRODUCTION 39 
 
 In the dark they dig through houses : 
 
 They shut themselves up in the daytime. 
 
 They know not the light. 
 For the morning is to all of them 
 
 As the shadow of death ; 
 
 For they know the terrors of the shadow of death. 
 
 It is noteworthy that when Job makes his general vindication he 
 finds a climax in disowning sins against the rights 
 and duties of land. 
 
 It appears then that both philosophy and science have their 
 representation in this ancient book of the Bible. Yet every reader 
 will feel that these words are an imperfect descrip- 
 tion of the matter which makes up the poem of p°*",^g*°* 
 Job. Philosophy is based upon reason ; but in the 
 present case there is a section of the poem which represents God 
 himself as entering into the discussion, and holding up a view 
 of the truth from which no one appeals. It is clear that in the 
 Book of Job yet another element of Revelation mingles side by 
 side with Philosophy ; and the new element implies a new divi- 
 sion of literature. The student who comes to the Bible from 
 other literatures must be prepared to recognise a special literary 
 type, that of Prophecy : a department which is distinguished from 
 others not by form — for Prophecy may take any form — but by 
 spirit, its differentia being that it presents itself as an authoritative 
 Divine message. The literary study of the Bible has no more 
 important task than that of describing Prophecy from the literary 
 point of view. 
 
 The varieties of literary form illustrated in the work we are 
 considering are not yet exhausted. We have called the Book of 
 Job a drama and a philosophic discussion; yet 
 neither of these descriptions will account for the Rhetoric 
 strange character of the individual speeches which 
 strikes every reader. Their length, if nothing else, would dis- 
 tinguish them from the speeches of other dramas ; and their tone 
 is equally far removed from the tone of philosophic disquisition 
 
40 LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 They have in them plenty of dramatic force, and also clear and 
 effective strokes of argument. But they do not stop with these ; 
 the dramatic thrust gives place to ornate moralising which, from 
 the dramatic point of view, seems so much waste ; and the point 
 of the argument is again and again lost in an accumulation of 
 beautiful irrelevancy. He would be a very perverse reader who 
 should cry out against these characteristics oijob as literary faults : 
 on the contrary, they are evidence that the character of the work 
 is insufficiently described by the terms drama and discussion. A 
 further element comes in of Rhetoric : not in the debased sense 
 which the word is coming to bear to modern ears, but the Rhetoric 
 of antiquity which was the delight in speech for its own sake. 
 Each delivery of a speaker in the poem of Job is to be looked 
 upon as a work of art hi itself. If Job in the course of the dis- 
 cussion interjects the parenthetic thought, " What is the good of 
 arguing?" this parenthesis is found to be a finished 
 meditation of twenty-eight lines. The speech in which 
 it occurs is answered by Bildad, and he meets Job's eloquence by 
 a tour-de-force of imagery painting the whole universe watch- 
 ing to destroy the sinner, and this piece of word-beauty 
 runs to thirty-four lines. Zophar in the same round of 
 discussion varies the beauty by a string of wise saws on the same 
 topic, and these extend to sixty lines. All this is over and above 
 the portions of the speeches which are strictly argument- 
 ative. It is clear then that the personages of the poem 
 answer one another, not only with argument and dramatic passion, 
 but also with counterpoises of rhetoric weight. The whole be- 
 comes like a controversy carried on in sonnets, a discussion waged 
 in perorations. Once more the many-sidedness of the Bible is 
 apparent ; and the student who would fully appreciate it must 
 train himself in the literary interest of Rhetoric. 
 
 One word more has yet to be said. The literary varieties men- 
 tioned so far are such as appeal chiefly to the mind. But there 
 is one main distinction in literature that appeals to the eye and 
 the ear also ; the distinction between the ' straight-forward ' speech 
 
INTRODUCTION 41 
 
 called ' prose,' and that kind of speech which ' measures ' itself 
 into metres and verses. A glance at the Book of 
 Job in any properly printed version shows that ver^flcaUon 
 this work, like the plays of Shakespeare or the 
 later stories of William Morris, presents an interchange between 
 the two fundamental forms of language, being a dialogue in verse 
 enclosed in a frame of prose story. When however the English 
 reader calls in his ear to supplement his eye, he finds that the 
 verse passages oijob differ essentially from what he is accustomed 
 to find in English verse. There is no rhyme, nor do the lines 
 correspond in meters or syllables. The Book of Job, then, in 
 addition to its other literary suggestiveness, raises the elementary 
 questions of Biblical versification. 
 
 The purpose of this Introduction is now accomplished. I have 
 engaged the reader's attention with a single book of tlie Bible ; 
 we have seen that, over and above what it yields to 
 the theological faculty or the religious sense, the ^^^ e w o e 
 Book of Job is a piece of literature, the analysis of 
 which brings us into contact with, all the leading varieties of 
 literary form. What the Introduction has done in reference to a 
 single book, the work as a whole is to do in reference to the 
 whole Bible, proceeding however by a method more regular than 
 has been necessary so far. The work will be divided into six 
 books. The first book will start with the point last reached — 
 Biblical Versification — ■ and widening from this will search out 
 other distinctions which may serve as a basis for the Classification 
 of Literature under such heads as Lyric, Epic, Philosophic, Pro- 
 phetic, Rhetoric. The subsequent books will take up these depart- 
 ments one by one, illustrating each, with the subdivisions of each, 
 from the most notable examples in the Sacred Writings. The 
 reader who has thus given his attention to the general literary 
 aspects of the Bible will then find, in an Appendix, Tabular 
 arrangements into which the whole of the Bible enters, intended 
 to assist him when he desires to read the Sacred Writings from the 
 literary point of view. 
 
Book First 
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 L The Fundamental Literary Form of Versification 
 
 AS SEEN in the Bible .... -45 
 
 IL The Lower Parallelism of Rhythm and the Higher 
 
 Parallelism of Interpretation . . .64 
 
 III. Classification of the Higher Literary Forms in 
 
 Universal Literature 74 
 
 IV. Application of Literary Classification to Biblical 
 
 Literature 83 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE FUNDAMENTAL LITERARY FORM OF VERSIFICATION AS 
 SEEN IN THE BIBLE 
 
 The Bible is the worst-printed book in the world. No other 
 monument of ancient or modern literature suffers the fate of being 
 put before us in a form that makes it impossible, 
 without strong effort and considerable training, to sciiptoe*o™°* 
 take in elements of literary structure which in all scured by ordi- 
 other books are conveyed directly to the eye in a prf^in^K^^^ °* 
 manner impossible to mistake. 
 
 By universal consent the authors of the Sacred Scriptures 
 included men who, over and above quaUfications of a more 
 sacred nature, possessed literary power of the highest order. But 
 between their time and ours the Bible has passed through what 
 may be called an Age of Commentary, extending over fifteen 
 centuries and more. During this long period form, which should 
 be the handmaid of matter, was more and more overlooked ; 
 reverent, keen, minute analysis and exegesis, with interminable 
 verbal discussion, gradually swallowed up the sense of hterary 
 beauty. When the Bible emerged from this Age of Commentary, 
 its artistic form was lost ; rabbinical commentators had divided 
 it into ' chapters,' and mediaeval translators into ' verses,' which 
 not only did not agree with, but often ran counter to, the origi- 
 nal structure. The force of this unliterary tradition proved too 
 strong even for the literary instincts of King James's translators. 
 Accordingly, one who reads only the ' Authorized Version ' incurs 
 a double danger : if he reads his Bible by chapters he will, with- 
 out knowing it, be often commencing in the middle of one com- 
 
 45 
 
46 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERA TURE 
 
 position and leaving off iri the middle of another ; while, in 
 
 in particular: whatever way he may read it, he will know no dis- 
 
 verse printed as tinction between prose and verse. It is only in 
 
 ^™^* our own day -that a better state of things has 
 
 arisen. The Church of England led the way by issuing its ' New 
 
 Lectionary ' ; the new lessons will be found to differ from the old 
 
 chiefly in the fact that the passages marked out for public reading 
 
 are no longer limited by the beginnings and endings of chapters. 
 
 Later still the ' Revised Version ' of the Bible, whatever it may 
 
 have left undone, has at all events made an attempt to rescue 
 
 Biblical poetry from the reproach of being printed as prose. 
 
 It is to the latter of these two points — the distinction between 
 
 verse and prose — that I address myself in the present chapter. 
 
 No doubt the confusion of the two would have 
 Biblical Versifi- 
 cation based on been impossible, were it not that the versification 
 
 parallelism of of the Bible is of a kind totally unlike that which 
 prevails in English hterature. Biblical verse is 
 made neither by rhyme nor by numbering of syllables ; its long- 
 lost secret was discovered by Bishop Lowth more than a cen- 
 tury after King James's time. Its underlying principle is found 
 to be the symmetry of clauses in a verse, which has come to be 
 called ' Parallehsm.' 
 
 Hast thou given the horse his might? 
 
 Hast thou clothed his neck with the quivering mane ? 
 
 Hast thou made him to leap as a locust? 
 
 The glory of his snorting is terrible. 
 
 He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength : 
 
 He goeth out to meet the armed men. 
 
 He mocketh at fear, and is not dismayed; 
 
 Neither turneth he back from the sword. 
 
 The quiver rattleth against him, 
 
 The flashing spear and the javelin. 
 
 He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage; 
 
 Neither standeth he still at the voice of the trumpet. 
 
 As oft as the trumpet soundeth he sailh. Aha ! 
 
 And he smelleth the battle afar off, 
 
 The thunder of the captains, and the shouting. 
 
VERSIFICATION OF THE BIBLE 47 
 
 It is abundantly clear, first, that this is a passage of the highest 
 rhythmic beauty ; secondly, that the effect depends neither on 
 rhyme nor metre. Like the swing of a pendulum to and fro, like 
 the tramp of an army marching in step, the versification of the 
 Bible moves with a rhythm of parallel lines. 
 
 How closely the effect of this versification is bound up with the 
 parallelism of the clauses, the reader may satisfy himself by a 
 simple experiment. Let him take such a psalm as the one hun- 
 dred and fifth ; and, commencing (say) with the eighth verse, 
 let him read on, omitting the second hne of each couplet : what 
 he reads will then make excellent historic prose. 
 
 He hath remembered his covenant for ever : the covenant which he 
 made with Abraham, and confirmed the same unto Jacob for a 
 statute, saying, " Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan," when 
 they were but a few men in number, and they went about from 
 nation to nation. He suffered no man to do them wrong, saying, 
 " Touch not mine anointed ones." 
 
 Let him now read again, putting in the lines omitted : the prose 
 becomes transformed into verse full of the rhythm and lilt of a 
 march. 
 
 He hath remembered his covenant for ever. 
 
 The word which he commanded to a thousand generations; 
 The covenant which he made with Abraham, 
 
 And his oath unto Isaac; 
 And confirmed the same unto Jacob for a statute, 
 
 To Israel for an everlasting covenant : 
 Saying, " Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, 
 
 The lot of your inheritance " • 
 When they were but a few men in number; 
 
 Yea, very few, and sojourners in it ; 
 And they went about from nation to nation. 
 
 From one kingdom to another people. 
 He suffered no man to do them wrong; 
 
 Yea, he reproved kings for their sakes; 
 Saying, " Touch not mine anointed ones. 
 
 And do my prophets no harm." 
 
48 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 The alphabet, then, of Scriptural versification will be the figures 
 The Couplet and of Parallelism. Of these figures the simplest and 
 Triplet most fundamental are the Couplet and Triplet. A 
 
 Couplet consists of two parallel clauses, a Triplet of three. 
 
 The Lord of Hosts is with us; 
 The God of Jacob is our refuge. 
 
 He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; 
 He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; 
 He burneth the chariots in the fire. 
 
 It is remarkable that the musical" rendering of the psalms by 
 chants, which in some points is carried to such a degree of nicety, 
 entirely ignores this foundation difference of Couplet and Triplet, 
 the same chant being sung to both. To take a typical case. 
 
 r~ 
 
 ± 
 
 The Lord of 
 
 Hosts 
 
 is with us 
 
 t 
 
 ^^=X- 
 
 -'g— i- g^ 
 
 The God of 
 
 Ja cob is our refuge. 
 
 This is correct, because a piece of music which is two-fold in 
 its structure is sung to a couplet verse. But presently the same 
 music will be sung to the triplet verse. 
 
 v~ 
 
 ^ 
 
 He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth : ] 
 He breaketh the bow and CUTTETH the I 
 
 spear in sunder. 
 
 i 
 
 --i^=iz 
 
 i=l 
 
 He BURNeth the 
 
 char iots 
 
 the fire. 
 
VERSIFICATION OF THE BIBLF 
 
 49 
 
 Every ear must detect that this is a clumsy makeshift : it runs 
 counter to a rhythmic distinction as fundamental as the distinction 
 of common time and triple time in music. The remedy is veiy 
 simple. Chants of this nature are made up of two parts. 
 
 I 
 
 1= 
 
 i^i 
 
 :ez 
 
 As such they are only fitted to couplet verses. For the triplet 
 verse a variant is needed to the first part, sufficiently like it to be 
 recognised, yet differing in a note or two. For 
 
 I 
 
 r^ 
 
 is: 
 
 a simple variant would be 
 
 f 
 
 IBZ 
 
 The couplet verse would be sung as before ; for the triplet the 
 variant would be inserted between the first and second parts. 
 
 (first part) 
 
 i 
 
 m 
 
 r 
 
 Z2ZZ 
 
 -.S=X---i3L 
 
 =P 
 
 i 
 
 He maketh wars to CEASE unto the 
 (variant) 
 
 end of the earth. 
 
 r 
 
 1221 
 
 na- 
 
 He breaketh the bow and CUTTETH the spear in sunder, 
 
 (second part) 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 r- 
 
 He BUKNeth the 
 
 char lots in the fire. 
 
so FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 In an Appendix ' I present at full length the system of metric 
 parallelism which underlies Scriptural verse : for readers who are 
 not afraid of technicalities the study of such a system will richly 
 repay itself in increased susceptibility to the rhythmic cadence 
 of Biblical poetry. But even the most general reader may be 
 interested to review at this point the broader effects of Biblical 
 versification. 
 
 Besides the Couplet and Triplet there are other simple figures 
 
 of parallelism, such as the Quatrain, the Sextet, the 
 
 stanzas*" Octet, — terms which explain themselves. Such 
 
 figures are another name for the ' stanzas ' of our 
 
 modern hymn-books. A psalm, like a modern hymn, may often 
 
 be made up of a succession of similar stanzas. 
 
 Psalm cxxi I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains : 
 
 From whence shall my help come? 
 My help cometh from the Lord, 
 Which made heaven and earth. 
 
 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved : 
 He that keepeth thee will not slumber. 
 Behold, he that keepeth Israel 
 Shall neither slumber nor sleep. 
 
 The Lord is thy keeper : 
 The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. 
 The sun shall not smite thee by day, 
 Nor the moon by night. 
 
 The Lord shall keep thee from all evil ; 
 
 He shall keep thy soul. 
 
 The Lord shall keep thy going out and thy coming in, 
 
 From this time forth and for evermore. 
 
 We rise to a higher plane of rhythmic effect in Antistrophic 
 structure. The word is Greek, and the spirit of this beautiful 
 form of structure is best caught from the complete realisation of 
 it in Greek lyrics. A Greek ode was performed by a body of 
 
 1 Appendix III, page 326. 
 
VERSIFICATION OF THE BIBLE 51 
 
 singers whose evolutions as they sang a stanza carried thera from 
 the altar towards the right : then turning round they performed 
 an answering stanza, repeating their movements, 
 until its close brought them to the altar from ftmcture"'" 
 which they had started. Then a stanza would take 
 them to the left of the altar, and its answering stanza would bring 
 them back to the starting-point : and of such pairs of stanzas an 
 ode was normally made up. From a Greek word meaning 'a 
 turning ' the first stanza of a pair was called a strophe, its answering 
 stanza an antistrophe : and the metrical rhythms of the antistrophe 
 reproduced those of the corresponding strophe line by line, though 
 the rhythm might be wholly changed between one pair of stanzas 
 and another. Hebrew lyrics contain numerous examples of this 
 disposition of stanzas in pairs, the two stanzas of a pair agreeing 
 in number of parallel lines. 
 
 Strophe I 
 Psalm XXX I will extol thee, Lord ; for thou hast raised me up, 
 And hast not made my foes to rejoice over me. 
 
 Lord my God, 
 
 1 cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me. 
 
 O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from Sheol : 
 
 Thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. 
 
 Antistrophe 
 Sing praise unto the Lord, O ye saints of his. 
 And give thanks to his holy name. 
 For his anger is but for a moment; 
 In his favour is life : 
 Weeping may tarry for the night. 
 But joy Cometh in the morning. 
 
 Strophe 2 
 As for me, I said in my prosperity, 
 I shall never be moved. 
 Thou, Lord, of thy favour hadst made my mountain to stand strong : 
 
 Antistrophe 
 Thou didst hide thy face; I was troubled. 
 I cried to thee, O Lord ; 
 And unto the Lord I made supplication ; 
 
52 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 Strophe 3 
 
 " What profit is there in my blood when I go down to the pit? 
 Shall the dust praise thee? Shall it declare thy truth? 
 Hear, O Lord, and have mercy upon me : 
 Lord, be thou my helper." 
 
 Aniisira/iAe 
 
 Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing; 
 
 Thou hast loosed my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness : 
 
 To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. 
 
 O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever. 
 
 It is found quite consistent with this antistrophic structure, alike 
 in Hebrew and Greek poetry, that to the balanced stanzas should 
 
 be added an independent stanza of different form, 
 jToncCsio'nT'^"^ by way of Introduction or Conclusion. A good 
 
 example is a poem in the Book of Proverbs which 
 might be entitled The Two Paths. Its strophe and antistrophe 
 consist of ten-line figures, varying similarly between longer and 
 shorter lines ; the conclusion is a quatrain. This form is a reflex 
 of the thought of the poem : the strophe describes the path of the 
 just, the antistrophe the path of the wicked ; the brief conclusion 
 then blends the two ideas in a common image. 
 
 Proverbs iv. 10 THE TWO PATHS 
 
 Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings; 
 
 And the years of thy life shall be many. 
 
 I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; 
 
 I have led thee in paths of uprightness. 
 
 When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; 
 
 And if thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble. 
 
 Take fast hold of instruction; 
 
 Let her not go : 
 
 Keep her; 
 
 For she is thy life. 
 
VERSIPICATION OP THE BIBLE 53 
 
 Enter not into the path of the wicked, 
 And walk not in the way of evil men. 
 
 Avoid it, 
 
 Pass not by it; 
 
 Turn from it. 
 
 And pass on. 
 For they sleep not, except they have done mischief; 
 And their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall. 
 For they eat the bread of wickedness, 
 And drink the wine of violence. 
 
 But the path of the righteous is as the light of dawn, 
 That shineth more and more unto the perfect day. 
 
 The way of the wicked is as darkness : 
 They know not at what they stumble. 
 
 In contrast with this Antistrophic effect is the structure denomi- 
 nated Strophic : where a poem is allowed to fall into well-marked 
 divisions, which have, however, no distinct relations 
 with one another as regards length or parallelism, structure 
 By an awkwardness of nomenclature, such irregular 
 divisions have come to be called ' strophes ' : it is too late to 
 change the usage, but the reader must be on the watch to distin- 
 guish the ' strophic structure,' where the stanzas may be unequal, 
 from the ' antistrophic structure,' in which the two stanzas of a 
 pair are exact counterparts. A simple example of such division 
 by natural cleavage only will be afforded by the twentieth psalm. 
 
 Strophe i — The People 
 
 The Lord answer thee in the day of trouble; Psalm xx 
 
 The name of the God of Jacob set thee up on high; 
 
 Send thee help from the sanctuary. 
 
 And strengthen thee out of Zion; 
 
 Remember all thy offerings, 
 
 And accept thy burnt sacrifice; 
 
 Grant thee thy heart's desire. 
 
 And fulfil all thy counsel. 
 
 We will triumph in thy salvation. 
 
 And in the name of our God we will set up our banners : 
 
 The LoKD fulfil all thy petitions. 
 
54 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 Strophe 2 — The King 
 Now know I that the 1,0 RD saveth his anointed; 
 He will answer him from his holy heaven 
 With the saving strength of his right hand. 
 
 Strophe 3 — The People 
 
 Some trust in chariots, and some in horses : 
 
 But we will make mention of the name of the Lord our God. 
 
 They are bowed down and fallen : 
 
 But we are risen, and stand upright. 
 
 O Lord, save the king; 
 
 And answer us when we call. 
 
 Where parallelism applies to more than two lines or stanzas a 
 
 very interesting modification becomes possible. This is Inversion, 
 
 or Introversion ; with the parallelism is combined an inversion of 
 
 order, thus : 
 
 A 
 B 
 
 BB 
 AA 
 
 An example of antistrophic inversion is found in the hundred 
 and fourteenth psalm, which thought and form combine to 
 . ^. ^ ^. make one of the most striking of Hebrew lyrics. 
 
 Antistrophic ° ^ 
 
 Inversion It is a song inspired, not only by the deliverance 
 
 Psalm cxiv ^om Egypt, but also by the new conception of Deity 
 
 which that deliverance exhibited to the world. In the age of the 
 exodus the prevailing conception of a god was that of a being 
 sacred to a particular territory, out of the bounds of which terri- 
 tory the god's power did not extend. But the Israelites in the 
 wilderness presented to the world the spectacle of a nation moving 
 from country to country and carrying the presence of their God 
 with them ; it was no longer the land of Goshen, but the nation of 
 Israel itself that constituted the sanctuary and dominion of Jeho- 
 vah. The wonder of this conception the psalm expresses by the 
 favourite Hebrew image of nature in convulsion ; and the effect of 
 inversion in giving shape (so to speak) to the whole thought of the 
 poem may be conveyed to the eye by the following scheme : 
 
VERSIFICATION OF THE BIBLE 55 
 
 A new conception of Deity ! 
 
 Nature convulsed ! 
 
 Why Nature convulsed? 
 At the new conception of Deity. 
 
 Those phrases sum up the thought of the successive stanzas, which 
 are so related to one another that the first strophe is followed by 
 a second, and the antistrophe to the second strophe precedes the 
 antistrophe to the first. 
 
 Strophe I 
 
 When Israel went forth out of Egypt, 
 
 The house of Jacob from a people of strange language; 
 
 Judah became his sanctuary, 
 
 Israel his dominion. 
 
 Strophe n 
 
 The sea saw it and fled; 
 Jordan was driven back. 
 The mountains skipped like rams. 
 The little hills like young sheep. 
 
 Antistrophe 2 
 
 What aileth thee, O thou sea, that thou fleest? 
 Thou Jordan, that thou turuest back ? 
 Ye mountains, that ye skip like rams? 
 Ye little hills, like young sheep? 
 
 Antistrophe i 
 
 Tremble, thou earth, at THE presence of the LORD, 
 At the presence of the God of Jacob; 
 Which turned the rock into a pool of water. 
 The flint into a fountain of waters ! 
 
 Such Inversion, it is worth noting, may obtain within the limits 
 
 of a single figure. In one quatrain the lines will , _ , ^. 
 
 ° ° ' Inverted Figures 
 
 run alternately, the third parallel with the first and 
 the fourth with the second ; another will be a Quatrain Inverted, 
 because the opening and closing lines' are parallel, and the middle 
 lines go together. 
 
56 FIRST PIUNCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 Weep for the dead, 
 
 For light hath failed him; 
 And weep for a fool, 
 
 For understanding hath failed him. 
 
 Weep more sweetly for the dead. 
 
 Because he hath found rest; 
 
 But the life of a fool 
 Is worse than death. 
 
 As we have Quatrain and Quatrain Inverted, so we have sextets 
 that may be Double Triplets or Triplets Reversed. 
 
 Ask, and it shall be given you; 
 Seek, and ye shall find; 
 
 Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. 
 For every one that asketh receiveth. 
 And he that seeketh findeth, 
 
 And to him that knocketh it shall be opened. 
 
 The eye catches what the ear confirms in this arrangement : how 
 the first line of the second triplet balances the first line of the 
 first triplet, the second the second, and the third the third. But 
 in what follows the order of the second triplet is reversed, so 
 that the beginning of the whole corresponds with the end, and 
 the middle lines with one another : 
 
 No servant can serve two masters : 
 For either he will hate the one. 
 And love the other; 
 Or else he will hold to one. 
 And despise the other. 
 Ye cannot serve God and mammon. 
 
 Two forms of parallelism are especially attractive to the genius 
 of Hebrew literature. One is the Envelope Figure, The Envelope 
 by which a series of parallel lines running to any figure 
 length are enclosed between an identical (or equivalent) opening 
 and close. 
 
VERSIFICATION OF THE BIBLE 57 
 
 By their fruits ye shall know them. 
 
 Do men gather grapes of thorns ? 
 
 Or figs of thistles ? 
 
 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, 
 
 But the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit : 
 
 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit. 
 
 Neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 
 
 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit 
 
 Is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 
 Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them. 
 
 The figure in its completest form belongs rather to the oratory 
 than the poetry of the Bible.^ An interesting modification of it 
 characterises some of the rriost popular of the psalms ; in these 
 cases the close is not a repetition of the opening, but the opening 
 and close make a unity which the parallel clauses develop. The 
 question with which the fifteenth psalm has commenced is answered 
 in the last verse ; but it is the intervening clauses which give that 
 answer its significance. 
 
 Lord, who shall sojourn in thy tabernacle ? 
 Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? 
 
 He that walketh uprightly. 
 And worketh righteousness. 
 And speaketh truth in his heart. 
 
 He that slandereth not with his tongue, 
 
 Nor doeth evil to his friend. 
 
 Nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour. 
 
 In whose eyes a reprobate is despised; 
 But he honoureth them that fear the Lord. 
 
 He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not. 
 He that putteth not out his money to usury. 
 Nor taketh reward against the innocent. 
 
 He that doeth these things shall never be moved. 
 1 See, however, an exact specimen in Psalm viii (below, page 66). 
 
58 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 It is but a slight variation from this to find in the twenty-third 
 psalm the beautiful images of Divine protection, which make the 
 body of the poem, ' enveloped ' by an opening couplet, simply 
 stating the thought of Jehovah's guardianship, and a closing coup- 
 let, which emphasizes the thought as a possession for all hfe 
 through. 
 
 The Lord is my shepherd; 
 I shall not want. 
 
 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures : 
 
 He leadeth me beside the still waters. 
 
 He restoreth my soul : 
 
 He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. 
 
 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 
 
 I will fear no evil; 
 
 For thou art with me : 
 
 Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. 
 
 Thou preparest a table before me 
 In the presence of mine enemies : 
 Thou hast anointed my head with oil; 
 My cup runneth over. 
 
 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life : 
 And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. 
 
 Even more characteristically Hebrew is the Pendulum Figure. 
 Later on we shall see how this mode of thought penetrates 
 
 through the philosophy and prophecy of the Bible. 
 mgvLie'^ " """ ^^^ ^^^" ^" ^ simple lyric the rhythm may be made 
 
 by a swaying to and fro between two thoughts. 
 Here is a part of Wisdom's Cry of Warning in an early chapter 
 of Proverbs : it will be seen that the lines indented to the right 
 depict the guilty neglect of warning, those indented to the left are 
 occupied with the terrible retribution ; while the alternation of the 
 two makes the unity of the figure. 
 
 Proverbs i. 34 Because I have called, and ye refused; 
 
 I have stretched out my hand, 
 And no man regarded; 
 
VERSIFICATION OF THE BIBLE 59 
 
 But ye have set at nought all my counsel, 
 
 And would none of my reproof: 
 I also will laugh in the day of your calamity; 
 I will mock when your fear cometh; 
 When your fear cometh as a storm, 
 And your calamity cometh on as a whirlwind; 
 When distress and anguish come upon you. 
 
 Then shall they call upon me. 
 But I will not answer; 
 
 They shall seek me diligently. 
 But they shall not find me. 
 
 For that they hated knowledge. 
 
 And did not choose the fear of the Lord : 
 
 They would none of my counsel; 
 
 They despised all my reproof: 
 Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way. 
 And be filled with their own devices. 
 For the backsliding of the sirjiple shall slay them. 
 And the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. 
 
 Whatever may be the particular structure at any point of Bibli- 
 cal poetry the device of the Refrain may be used to emphasize, 
 
 by its recurrence, the rhythmic divisions. In the 
 
 , , ... , ... , The Refrain 
 
 forty-sixth psalm the refrain — a shout of triumph 
 
 — brings each stanza to a climax. It has, however, dropped out 
 
 by accident from the first stanza in the received text, and must be 
 
 restored.' 
 
 God is our refuge and strength. Psalm xlvi 
 
 A very present help in trouble. 
 Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change. 
 
 And though the mountains be moved in the heart of the seas; 
 Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, 
 
 Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. 
 The lord of Hosts is with us; 
 The God of Jacob is our refuge! 
 
 1 On the general subject of textual emendation, I would lay down the principle 
 that, where the sense is affected by a proposed change, it is prudent to be con- 
 servative and chary of admitting it. But where (as with a repetition) it is only a 
 question of form, the long period of tradition mentioned above, during which the 
 literary form of Scripture was overlooked, justifies us in expecting many omissions 
 and misplacements. 
 
60 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERA TURE 
 
 There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God, 
 
 The holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. 
 God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: 
 
 God shall help her, and that right early. 
 The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved : 
 He uttered his voice, the earth melted. 
 The lord of Hosts is with us; 
 The God of Jacob is our refuge! 
 
 Come, behold the works of the Lord, 
 
 What desolations he hath made in the earth. 
 He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; 
 
 He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; 
 
 He burneth the chariots in the fire. 
 " Be still, and know that I am God : 
 
 I will be exalted among the nations, 
 
 I will be exalted in the earth." 
 
 The lord of Hosts is with us; 
 The God of Jacob is our refuge! 
 
 In the strophic structure the refrain has a special value for 
 
 marking out the stanzas which have no other rhythmic distinction. 
 
 A splendid example of such treatment is given by 
 Psalms zlii-xliii , '^ , . , , ,,,,%,, 
 
 the poem which opens the second book of Psalms. 
 
 The poem expresses the feelings of one who is exiled from the 
 
 altar of his God. The spirit of the whole lyric is summed up in 
 
 its refrain, which is a struggle between despair and hope. 
 
 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? 
 And why art thou disquieted within me ? 
 
 Hope thou in God : 
 For I shall yet praise him. 
 Who is the health of my countenance 
 
 And my God! 
 
 This refrain is found to unify into a single poem the psalms num- 
 bered forty-two and forty-three ; and the whole falls into three 
 strophes. Though the refrain does not change, yet its repetition 
 
VERSIFICATION OF THE BIBLE (i\ 
 
 is made to suggest advance. The first strophe has nothing but 
 longing memories : how the poet was wont to mingle with the 
 throng, or perhaps lead them in procession to the house of God, 
 with the voice of joy and praise, a multitude keeping holyday. 
 Its struggle towards hopefulness is so unsuccessful that, after the 
 refrain, the second strophe opens with the deepest note of de- 
 spondency. A single ray of light, however, is cast into the future, 
 and there is just a mention of loving-kindness by day and songs 
 in the night, after which thoughts of mourning and oppression 
 resume their sway. But the third stanza begins with a more 
 resolute appeal to God as the judge, or righter of the oppressed ; 
 the turn has been taken, and we advance through ideas of light 
 and truth to joy and praise of harp, until the third repetition of 
 the refrain makes us feel that its summons to hope has proved 
 successful. 
 
 But the maximum of lyric effect drawn from the combination 
 of the strophic structure and the refrain is found in a portion of 
 
 the hundred and seventh psalm. Here there is a 
 
 '^ Psalm cvii. 4-32 
 
 double refrain : one puts in each stanza a cry for 
 help, the other the outburst of praise after the help has come; 
 each refrain has a sequel verse which appropriately changes with 
 the subject of each stanza. 
 
 Strophe i 
 
 They wandered in the wilderness in a desert way; 
 They found no city of habitation. 
 Hungry and thirsty. 
 Their soul fainted in them. 
 
 Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble. 
 
 And he delivered them out of their distresses. 
 
 He led them also by a straight way, 
 
 That they might go to a city of habitation. 
 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, 
 And for his wonderful works to the children of men! 
 For he satisfieth the longing soul, 
 And the hungry soul he fiUeth with good. 
 
62 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 Strophe 2 
 
 Such as sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, 
 Being bound in affliction and iron; 
 Because they rebelled against the words of God, 
 And contemned the counsel of the Most High : 
 Therefore he brought down their heart with labour. 
 They fell down, and there was none to help. 
 
 Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble. 
 
 And he saved them out of their distresses. 
 
 He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, 
 
 And brake their bands in sunder. 
 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness. 
 And for his wonderful works to the children of men! 
 For he hath broken the gates of brass, 
 And cut the bars of iron in sunder. 
 
 Strophe $ 
 
 Fools because of their transgression, 
 
 And because of their iniquities, are afflicted. 
 
 Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat; 
 
 And they draw near unto the gates of death. 
 
 Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble. 
 And he saveth them out of their distresses. 
 He sendeth his word, and healeth them. 
 And delivereth them from their destructions. 
 
 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness. 
 
 And for his wonderful works to the children of men ! 
 
 And let them offer the sacrifices of thanksgiving, 
 
 And declare his works with singing. 
 
 Strophe 4. 
 
 They that go down to the sea in ships. 
 
 That do business in great waters, 
 
 These see the works of the Lord, 
 
 And his wonders in the deep. 
 
 For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, 
 
 Which lifteth up the waves thereof: 
 
 They mount up to the heaven. 
 
 They go down again to the depths; 
 
 Their soul melteth away because of trouble : 
 
VERSIFICATlOl^ OP THE MBLE 63 
 
 They reel to and fro, 
 
 And stagger like a drunken man; 
 
 And are at their wits' end. 
 
 Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, 
 
 And he bringeth them out of their distresses. 
 
 He maketh the storm a calm, 
 
 So that the waves thereof are still. 
 
 Then are they glad because they be quiet : 
 
 So he bringeth them unto the haven where they would be. 
 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness. 
 And for his wonderful works to the children of men ! 
 Let them exalt him also in the assembly of the people, 
 And praise him in the seat of the elders. 
 
 It is just such structural variations as these that it is the special 
 mission of a musical rendering to express.^ In the psalm just 
 cited the melancholy monotony of men's voices in 
 
 unison might be used to bring out the various Musical expres- 
 ° ° sion of structure 
 
 phases of distress which make the subjects of suc- 
 cessive strophes. Children's voices in harmony and unaccom- 
 panied would fitly express the cry for help (refrain and sequel 
 verse), while full choir and organ would give out the thanksgiving. 
 In the more extended final stanza a monotone of men's voices in 
 unison would leave more scope for organ accompaniment to bring 
 out the changes of the sea. Then as before the whole would 
 resolve into the silvery harmony of children's voices heard alone ; 
 while all that full choir and instrument could do would be needed 
 for the final climax. 
 
 1 Bishop Westcott's Paragraph Psalter (Macmillan) is a step in the direction of 
 such structural chanting. A musical setting oi Psalms Ixxviii and civ in illustration 
 of it has been published by Dr. Naylor, late Organist of York Minster (Novello). 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE LOWER PARALLELISM OF RHYTHM AND THE HIGHER 
 PARALLELISM OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 The preceding chapter has sufficiently exhibited BibUcal Versi- 
 fication in its leading forms and devices of structure. In the 
 Parallelism in present chapter I consider further the general 
 general spirit of parallelism which underlies it. I wish to 
 
 show that the study of such parallelism is not a mere matter of 
 technicalities, but that it connects itself directly with the higher 
 interests of literature. 
 
 In interpreting the meaning of Scripture parallelism plays no 
 Parallelism a unimportant part. I will commence with a very 
 factor in inter- simple example. The Song of the Sword/ which 
 pretation gives expression to the excitement attending the 
 
 first invention of deadly weapons, contains the following couplet : 
 
 I have slain a man to my wounding, 
 And a young man to my hurt. 
 
 Does this passage imply the slaying of one person or two persons ? 
 This question cannot be called a mere matter of technicalities. 
 Commentators of the period when the secret of parallelism was 
 lost understood the words to mean that two men were slain ; and 
 connecting the passage with the succeeding couplet — 
 
 If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, 
 Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold — 
 
 they found an interpretation for the whole by supposing that when 
 
 1 Otherwise called Song of Lamech {Gen. iv. 23-24). 
 64 
 
PARALLELISM OF INTERPRETATION- 6S 
 
 Lamech became advanced in years he carried with him a youth 
 to show him where to point his arrows ; that this youth directing 
 him to shoot into a certain bush Lamech thereby slew Cain, and 
 made himself liable to the curse invoked on the slayer of that out- 
 cast. In his rage Lamech shot a second arrow at his youthful at- 
 tendant ; and thus two slayings are accounted for. But to an ear 
 accustomed to parallelism it is clear enough that no such violence 
 of interpretation is required. The second line of a couplet need 
 not be a separate statement from that of the first line, but may 
 be, in the spirit of parallelism, a saying over again of what has 
 been said. Thus the couplet need only imply the death of a 
 single person, or better, slaying as a general idea. And the sec- 
 ond couplet merely gives expression to the enlarged possibilities 
 of destruction that come with the invention of the sword : even 
 the vengeance for Cain — a thing that had perhaps passed into a 
 proverbial expression^ — becomes a small matter in comparison 
 with the power of vengeance the armed warrior will possess. Thus 
 the whole meaning of the passage has been changed by attention 
 to a detail of versification. 
 
 The intrinsic importance of this first example is not great. But 
 no one will consider the 'Lord's Prayer' unim- The Lord's 
 portant : and yet it would seem that the great Prayer 
 majority of those who repeat the Lord's Prayer in public fail to 
 bring out the full thought that underlies it. This prayer is almost 
 always rendered as a succession of isolated clauses which may be 
 represented thus : 
 
 Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy king- 
 dom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. 
 
 But the true significance of these words is only seen when they 
 are arranged so as to make an envelope figure. 
 
 Our Father which art in heaven : 
 
 Hallowed be thy Name, 
 
 Thy Kingdom come, 
 
 Thy Will be done, 
 In earth as it is in heaven. 
 
^6 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 In the former version the words, " In earth as it is in heaven " are at- 
 tached only to the petition, "Thy will be done." But in the envelope 
 structure all the parallel clauses are to be connected with the com- 
 mon opening and close. The meaning thus becomes : " Hallowed 
 be thy name in earth as it is in heaven, Thy kingdom come in earth 
 as it is in heaven, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." 
 Something more than literary beauty is gained by the change. 
 The eighth psalm affords another illustration of the close connec- 
 
 „ , ... tionbetweenparallelismof structure and interpretation. 
 Psalm vm ... 
 
 This whole poem makes a single envelope figure. 
 
 O Lord, our Lord, 
 
 How excellent is thy name in all the earth ! 
 
 Who hast set thy glory upon the heavens, 
 
 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou established strength, 
 
 Because of thine adversaries. 
 
 That thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. 
 
 When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, 
 The moon and the stars which thou hast ordained ; 
 What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? 
 And the son of man, that thou visitest him? 
 
 For thou hast made him but little lower than God, 
 
 And crownest him with glory and honour. 
 
 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; 
 
 Thou hast put all things under his feet : 
 
 All sheep and oxen. 
 
 Yea, and the beasts of the field ; 
 
 The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea. 
 
 Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. 
 
 O Lord, our Lord, 
 
 How excellent is thy name in all the earth ! 
 
 By neglect of the true structure, three lines instead of two have 
 been taken into the opening verse : 
 
 I. O Lord, our Lord, 
 
 How excellent is thy name in all the earth I 
 Who hast set thy glory upon the heavens. 
 
PARALLELISM OF INTERPRETATION 67 
 
 Accordingly, the verse which follows this, and presumably opens 
 the regular thought of the poem, is made to read : 
 
 2. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou established 
 strength, etc. 
 
 So arranged this verse becomes obscure, and the ingenuity of 
 commentators has been much exercised to determine what is the 
 allusion its words contain. But the envelope structure conveys at 
 once to the eye that the first two lines must be isolated as the 
 enveloping refrain, and then the opening verse becomes this : 
 
 Who hast set thy glory upon the heavens, 
 
 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou established 
 strength, etc. 
 
 That the Artificer of the mighty heavens should have chosen man 
 — a mere babe and suckling in comparison — to be the repre- 
 sentative of his might to the rest of the universe : this is the 
 wonder with which the poem really opens, and the thought of 
 feeble man as God's Viceroy over the creation is precisely the 
 idea which is found to bind the whole psalm into a unity. 
 
 These are particular examples : it is possible to generalise. In 
 Bibhcal interpretation the question will repeatedly arise, whether 
 a particular passage is to be understood as a simple „ „ .. 
 narrative of facts or an idealised description : in criterion for 
 such a case parallelism of clauses will undoubtedly •^^^''^^t'"'' 
 be one factor in the interpretation. I have already suggested that 
 the extreme symmetry of the clauses which describe Job's misfor- 
 tunes descending upon him tells in favour of the view that the 
 narrative is not a history so much as an incident worked up into a 
 parable. In a more important matter the same principle has been 
 
 applied to the opening chapter of Genesis. The 
 
 r , ^ • , ■ f , ■ ■ Genesisi 
 
 account of the Creation which this passage contains 
 
 is found, upon examination, to be arranged with the most minute 
 parallehsm of matter and form. Not only are the six days fur- 
 nished with opening and closing formulae which correspond, but 
 
68 
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 the whole divides into two symmetrical halves of three days and 
 three days, and each day of the first three is exactly parallel with 
 the corresponding day of the second half. A table will illustrate 
 the structure. 
 
 And God said — 
 
 [Creation of Light] 
 And there was evening and there 
 was mornings one day. 
 
 And God said — 
 
 [Creation of the Firmament 
 dividing waters from waters] 
 And there was evening and there 
 was morning, u second day. 
 
 f And God said — 
 
 ■j [Creation of Land] 
 
 ^And God said — 
 
 [Creation of Vegetation, cli- 
 max of inanimate nature] 
 And there was evening and there 
 was morning, a third day. 
 
 And God said — 
 
 [Creation of Lights] 
 And there was evening and there 
 was morning, a fourth day. 
 
 And God said — 
 
 [Creation of Life in the Firma- 
 ment and in the Waters] 
 
 And there was evening and there 
 
 was morning, a fifth day. 
 
 s 
 
 And God said — 
 -< [Creation of Life on Land] 
 
 l And God said — 
 
 [Creation of Man, climax 
 of animate nature] 
 And there was evening and tJure 
 was morning, the sixth day. 
 
 When this structure and the fulness of its parallelism is grasped, it 
 will appear reasonable that it should be urged as one argument in 
 favour of understanding the chapter to be, not a narration of inci- 
 dents in their order of succession, but a logical classification of the 
 elements of the universe, with the emphatic assertion of Divine 
 creation in reference to each. 
 
 The reader will understand that it is not essential to my argu- 
 ment that such interpretations as I have been advancing should 
 Recognition of ^^^™ *° ^™ correct. Parallelism is only one factor 
 Parallelism in amongst many in exegesis. I am merely concerned 
 exegesis ^^ show that those who address themselves to deter- 
 
 mining the matter and meaning of Scripture nevertheless appeal 
 to its form and structure. Indeed, the reader unaccustomed to 
 this subject will be greatly astonished at the extent and minuteness 
 
PARALLELISM OF INTERPRETATION 69 
 
 to which symmetry of form in Scripture is made to obtain in the 
 exegesis of competent theologians ; when, for example, not a 
 paragraph but a long poem, or the whole of an epistolary treatise, 
 is represented as being constructed on a single intricate system. 
 Such elaborations of parallelism must be considered each on its 
 own merits ; but there is in them nothing inherently improbable. 
 When the genius of a language rests the whole system of its versi- 
 fication upon symmetry of clauses, it becomes a safe presumption 
 that parallelism will penetrate very deeply into its logical processes 
 of thought.^ 
 
 We have been led to see then that there are two points of view 
 from which parallelism may be considered : that of Rhythm and 
 that of Interpretation. The musical element of 
 Biblical language rests on parallels and recurrences, leiism of Rhythm 
 and an ear for rhythm is as essential for the ap- ana the Higher 
 
 preciation of Scriptural style as an ear for time is Parallelism of 
 '^ r } Interpretation 
 
 essential for the appreciation of music. But thought 
 
 may be rhythmic as well as language, and the full meaning and 
 
 force of Scripture is not grasped by one who does not feel how 
 
 thoughts can be emphasised by being differently re-stated, as in 
 
 the simplest couplet ; or how a general thought may reiterate itself 
 
 to enclose its particulars, as in the envelope figure, or, in such 
 
 cases as the Lord's Prayer, hold its conclusion in suspense until 
 
 all to which it applies has been set forth ; or again, as in the 
 
 opening of Genesis, how a passage can suggest logical symmetries 
 
 while in form it is only narrating. Accordingly the structural 
 
 analysis of Biblical language must distinguish a Lower Parallelism 
 
 of Rhythm and a Higher Parallelism of Interpretation. The two 
 
 can never clash, since in Hebrew rhythm largely depends on 
 
 recurrence of clauses corresponding in thought ; but one or other 
 
 parallelism will preponderate in accordance with the nature of a 
 
 particular passage or the purpose of a citation. Sometimes the 
 
 musical form will be felt to preponderate, and in this case the 
 
 ^ Dr. Forbes's Symmetrical Structure of Scripture (Clark, Edinburgh) may be 
 regarded as a text-book of the general subject. 
 
70 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATUIiE 
 
 structural arrangement of the passage will be such as will make 
 prominent the recurrence of fixed figures. In other cases the 
 arrangement will bring out how distant sequences of words from 
 all over a lengthy passage co-ordinate together, and this effect will 
 throw into the background the parallelisms of couplets and trip- 
 lets, which nevertheless are to be found when looked for.^ 
 
 The matter is best treated by illustrations ; and I proceed to 
 give two arrangements of the same passage, based respectively on 
 the Lower and the Higher Parallelism. 
 
 Job X. 3-13 ar- Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress, 
 ranged for Lower That thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands, 
 Parallelism ^^^j ^j^jj^g ^^^^ jj^^ counsel of the wicked? 
 
 Hast thou eyes of flesh, 
 
 Or seest thou as man seeth? 
 
 Are thy days as the days of man. 
 Or thy years as man's days, 
 
 That thou inquirest after mine iniquity, 
 And searchest after my sin, 
 
 Although thou knowest that I am not wicked; 
 
 And there is none that can deliver out of thine hand? 
 
 Thine hands have framed me and fashioned me 
 Together round about; yet thou dost destroy me. 
 
 Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast fashioned me as 
 
 clay; 
 And wilt thou bring me into dust again ? 
 
 Hast thou not poured me out as milk, 
 And curdled me like cheese? 
 
 Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh. 
 And knit me together with bones and sinews. 
 
 1 Appendix III formulates a Metrical System in which the two kinds of parallel- 
 ism are blended. 
 
PARALLELISM OF INl'ERPRETATION 71 
 
 Thou hast granted me life and favour, 
 And thy visitation hath preserved my spirit. 
 
 Yet these things thou didst hide in thine heart; 
 I know that this is with thee. 
 
 In the above citation I have followed the Revised Version of 
 the Bible in conveying nothing to the eye beyond the elementary 
 rhythm of couplets and triplets. Such an arrangement involves 
 the minimum of interpretation, and therefore the minimum dif- 
 ference of opinion. Where the higher symmetry is expressed 
 individual interpretations will of course differ. In my second 
 arrangement of the passage figures of mere rhythm are suppressed 
 in order that parallelisms of thought may stand out. 
 
 Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress, Arranged for 
 
 That thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands, Higher 
 
 And shine upon the counsel of the wicked? Parallelism 
 
 Hast thou eyes of flesh. 
 
 Or seest thou as man seeth? 
 
 Are thy days as the days of man. 
 
 Or thy years as man's days, 
 
 That thou inquirest after mine iniquity. 
 
 And searchest after my sin. 
 
 Although thou knowest that I am not wicked; 
 
 And there is none that can deliver out of thine hand? 
 Thine hands have framed me. 
 And fashioned me together round about; 
 
 Yet thou dost destroy me. 
 Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast fashioned me as clay; 
 
 And wilt thou bring me into dust again? 
 Hast thou not poured me out as milk, 
 And curdled me like cheese? 
 Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, 
 And knit me together with bones and sinews; 
 Thou hast granted me life and favour. 
 And thy visitation hath preserved my spirit : 
 
 Yet these things thou didst hide in thine heart; 
 
 I know that this is with thee. 
 
72 FIJiST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 Two distinct trains of thought are interwoven in this passage : in 
 one Job makes appeal to God as being God's own handiwork ; in 
 the other he protests against the righteous Lord following the 
 oppressive ways of unjust judges. In this second arrangement 
 the two elements of the thought are separated : lines belonging 
 to the first are indented to the left, lines belonging to the second 
 are indented to the right. Thus the whole play of thought in the 
 passage is reflected to the eye, or, in other words, the structural 
 arrangement has brought out the Parallelism of Interpretation.^ 
 
 One more observation must be made on Biblical parallelism 
 
 considered as an element in literary style. It is that such sym- 
 
 Paraiieiism im- metry of clauses is closely bound up with a liter- 
 
 piies its opposite ary effect of an opposite kind — that of surprise. 
 
 surprise jj. j^ j^^j. ^^j^gjj jj^g g^^ jg being led by the general 
 
 form of a passage to expect what is coming that the disappoint- 
 ment of this expectation, and the substitution of something new, 
 strikes with most telling force. Here, again, illustrations will 
 make the best exposition. 
 
 There is no passage in the Bible in which paralleHsm is carried 
 further than in the peroration (if the word may be allowed) of 
 J. ... .. the Sermon on the Mount, with its comparison of 
 
 24-27 the two kinds of hearers to the builders on the 
 
 rock and on the sand. The passage is antistrophic, 
 and for every clause in the one picture there is a corresponding 
 clause in the other. Yet here the effect of surprise is produced 
 by a subtle and delicate variation which has been recovered for 
 us by the Revised Version. The word which describes the action 
 of the wind differs in the two strophes ; for the blasts labouring 
 in vain to destroy the one house a word is used which is trans- 
 lated by the English ' beat ' ; for the wind in the other case the 
 Greek word is changed to something which the Revisers render 
 ' smote ' — the very sound of which, as well as the sense, pictures 
 a single blow sufficing to bring the structure down. 
 
 1 Throughout the volumes of the Modern Reader's Bible [Macmillan] the two 
 kinds of parallelism are assumed. 
 
PARALLELISM OF INTERPRETATION 73 
 
 Strophe 
 
 Every one therefore which heareth these words of mine, 
 
 and doeth them, 
 shall be likened unto a Wise Man, 
 which built his house upon the Rock : 
 
 And the rain descended, 
 
 and the floods came, 
 
 and the winds blew 
 
 and beat upon that housej 
 and it fell not : 
 for it was founded upon the Rock. 
 
 Antistrophe 
 
 And every one that heareth these words of mine, 
 
 and doeth them not, 
 shall be likened unto a Foolish Man, 
 which built his house upon the Sand: 
 
 And the rain descended, 
 
 and the floods came, 
 
 and the winds blew, 
 
 and SMOTE upon that house; 
 and it fell : 
 and great was the fall thereof! 
 
 In this last example, as well as in some of the preceding, the 
 reader may have noted that parallelism of structure has applica- 
 tion, not only to verse, but also to such literature as is ordinarily 
 considered prose. This rapprochement of verse and prose is one 
 of the most interesting features of Biblical literature : its full con- 
 sideration is reserved for a later chapter. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF THE HIGHER LITERARY FORMS IN 
 UNIVERSAL LITERATURE 
 
 The object of this First Book is to lay down foundation prin- 
 ciples of literary science, so far as they are involved in the present 
 
 survey of Scripture. This survey is morphological 
 General Plan of . . , . . , . ' 5 . , , 
 
 First Book ^"^ '^^ character : its immediate concern is with the 
 
 form, not the matter, of Biblical literature. Here, 
 however, it may be worth while to anticipate an objection. Many 
 readers of these pages may be inclined to say. Let professed 
 literary students look to technicalities of form : we plain people 
 care only about the matter and spirit of Scripture. There could 
 not be a greater misapprehension : on the contrary, we can never 
 be clear as to the contents of a piece of literature unless we have 
 Close connection '«"^^<^ ""^^ external form. To take a very simple 
 of Form'and illustration. A man sits down to read a chapter in 
 
 Matter ^j^g Bible, endeavouring, in a devotional spirit, to 
 
 bring his soul into harmony with what he regards as God's mes- 
 sage to him. Unfortunately, he has omitted to note that the 
 chapter he is reading is the continuation of another chapter which 
 opened with the words, "Then answered Bildad the Shuhite " : 
 now, in a later chapter God is represented as saying that Bildad 
 and the other friends of Job have not said of him the thing that 
 is right. Thus the simple reader has been trying to accept as 
 God's message the words of a speaker whom God himself repu- 
 diates. How has the mistake arisen? Merely through ignor- 
 ing a point of Uterary form — the dramatic character of the Book 
 of Job. A sentence culled from an essay may safely be taken to 
 
 74 
 
CLASSlPlCATiON OF LITERARV FOkMS >5 
 
 represent the writer's views : a sentence taken from a drama may 
 well mean the opposite of the dramatist's real opinion. 
 
 Conscience is but a word that cowards use, 
 Devised at first to keep the strong in awe. 
 
 These words are found in Shakespeare : no one would dream of 
 supposing they represented Shakespeare's own view of conscience, 
 for he has put the hnes into the mouth of the greatest villain in 
 all literature. If the reply be made that so broad a distinction as 
 that between drama and other literature would not often be over- 
 looked, I would remind the reader of the instances enumerated 
 in the preceding chapter of Interpretations depending upon vari- 
 ations of parallel structure. A later chapter will show how upon 
 a fine technical distinction — between a drama and a lyric idyl — 
 rests a difference of interpretation for Solomon's Song which offers 
 as alternatives two stories underlying the poem, totally different 
 in facts and in moral complexion. It is no exaggeration to say 
 that form is the foremost factor in the interpretation of matter. 
 
 The preceding chapters have dealt with the simplest and most 
 elementary of all literary forms, the distinction of prose and verse. 
 I now pass to the Higher Forms : such distinctions 
 as are expressed by the terms Epic, Lyric, Rhetoric, ^i^gjary Forms 
 and the like. The present chapter will endeavour 
 briefly to arrive at the fundamental conceptions underlying these 
 terms in universal literature The next chapter will deal with the 
 application of the terms to the literature of the Bible. 
 
 Let the reader firmly fix four ideas in his mind, as what majiL. 
 be called the four Cardinal Points of Literature, xhe four Cardinal 
 Two of these are given by the antithesis Descrip- Points of Litera- 
 tion and Presentation. When an incident is de- *"™ 
 scribed to us, the incident itself belongs to the past, the words 
 describing it are throughout the words of the author. 
 When it is presented, the author himself nowhere presentation 
 appears, but he leaves us to hear the words of 
 those personages who actually took part in the incident, perhaps 
 to see their doings ; we become spectators, and the circumstances 
 
16 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 make themselves present before us. Homer and Milton give us 
 literature of description ; for presentation the most complete illus- 
 tration is Shakespeare, in whose pages all varieties of mankind are 
 speaking and moving, but the poet himself is never heard. 
 
 The other two ideas are conveyed by the words Poetry and 
 Prose. It is impossible to use other terms ; and yet about these 
 
 there is an unfortunate ambiguity, owing to the exi- 
 Poetry and Prose , . , , . , , , , 
 
 gences of language which have imposed a double 
 
 duty on the word ' prose ' : it is antithetic to ' poetry ' and it is 
 also antithetic to 'verse.' No doubt there is a good deal in 
 common between these two usages of the word : Poetry is mostly 
 conveyed in verse, and Prose literature in the style called prose. 
 But the terms must be used with a cautious recollection that 
 Poetry is sometimes cast in the form of prose — notably, we shall 
 see, in the Bible ; while in the earlier stages of literary history 
 verse has often been utilised for works of science and philosophy 
 which would later have been thrown into a prose form. The con- 
 ception we are at present seekipg will be best grasped if we 
 translate the Greek word ' poetry ' into its Latin equivalent, ' cre- 
 ative literature ' ; it assists also to remember the old English usage 
 by which a poet was called a ' maker.' The idea underlying these 
 words is that the poet makes something, creates, adds to the sum 
 of existences ; whereas the antithetic hterature of Prose has only 
 to discuss what already exists. When Homer has sung and Eu- 
 ripides exhibited plays the world is richer by an Achilles and an 
 Alcestis. It makes no difference whether, as an historic fact, the 
 Greek warrior and the Queen of Pherse ever existed, or whether 
 they are pure figments of the imagination, or whether they existed 
 but behaved quite differently from what the poem and the play 
 suggest : to our poetic sense the Homeric Achilles and the Euripi- 
 dean Alcestis are as real as the Caesar of history. On the con- 
 trary, the literature of Prose moves only in the region limited 
 by facts; history and philosophy have to deal only with what 
 actually has existence, accurately describing things, or bringing out 
 the relations between one thing and another. 
 

 EPIC 
 Description 
 (Verse prepon- 
 derates) 
 
 c 
 
 f 
 
 o 
 
 ." 
 
 •4— > 
 
 ^ 
 
 u. 
 
 
 1-. 
 
 -y 
 
 o 
 
 O 
 
 tf) 
 
 ^ 
 
 <u 
 
 p 
 
 'ft 
 
 
 ^. 
 
 
 •3 
 
 
 < 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 Description (of 
 
 Nature & Events) 
 
 ^%*s 
 
 LYRIC 
 
 Reflection 
 (Music prepon- 
 derates) 
 
 DRAMA 
 Presentation 
 (Action prepon- 
 derates) 
 
 Ballad Dance 
 Verse 
 Music 
 Action 
 = Primitive liter- 
 ary form 
 
 y 
 
 
 e- 
 
 
 % 
 
 -^ 
 
 
 >-« 
 
 1 
 
 m 
 
 o 
 
 u> 
 
 *= 
 
 CD 
 
 g- 
 
 D 
 
 S 
 
 pj 
 
 ftt 
 
 iJ. 
 
 n 
 
 I) 
 
 ^ 
 
 :3 
 
 a 
 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 Reflection 
 
 RHETORIC 
 Presentation 
 
 ^^^^-TE ,Bq/^ JO uoisstvosve 
 SSOJd 
 
 se'i 
 
 78 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF LITERARY FORMS 79 
 
 These four ideas, Description and Presentation, Poetry and 
 Prose, I have called the four Cardinal Points of Literature : they 
 are to be regarded, not as divisions or classes into p^j^jy^g mgj. 
 which literary works may be divided, but as so aryform: the 
 many different directions in which literary activity ^^"*'* "^°'=* 
 may move. But to understand this movement a fifth conception 
 must be added as a starting-point for such activity. The starting- 
 point of literature is found in what is technically called the Ballad 
 Dance. The study of Comparative Literature reveals that wher- 
 ever literature arises spontaneously its earliest form is a combina- 
 tion of verse, music, and imitative gesture. Whether it be a story, 
 or an uplifting of the heart in worship, or a burst of popular frolic, 
 the expression of these will be in rhythmic words, which are 
 chanted to a tune with or without instrumental accompaniment, 
 and further emphasised by expressive gestures of the whole body 
 such. as have come to be denominated 'dancing.' Hebrew litera- 
 ture was no exception. Of course, the actual contents of our 
 Bibles are far removed from such primitive productions. But 
 some portions of Sacred Scripture are early enough not to have 
 lost the triple form with which poetry started. Thus 
 
 , . ^ 1 , 1 ^ r nr Exodus ZV. 20 
 
 we are expressly mformed that the Song of Moses 
 and Miriam was accompanied with timbrel music and dances ; 
 even when the bringing of the Ark to Jerusalem n. sam. vi. 5, 
 called forth such lofty strains of poetry we have a '4-i6 
 full description of the orchestra with which that poetry was accom- 
 panied, and we know how David himself " danced with all his 
 might " in its performance. 
 
 If then the reader keeps in his mind this starting-point of liter- 
 ature in the Ballad Dance, and also the four directions in which 
 its impulses are likely to carry it, he will be able punaamentoi 
 to lay down as in a chart the great forms which Forms for Liter- 
 literature assumes as it develops. On the side of ature in general 
 Poetry three great types of literature arise, which on examination 
 are found to reflect the three elements — verse, music, dancing — 
 combined by primitive poetry in one. Epic is a branch thrown 
 
80 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 off on the side of Description, for it consists in -the narration of a 
 
 poetic story ; the name ' Epic,' which literally means 
 
 ' speech,' is seen by comparison with the other 
 
 names to imply that in this branch verse is the only one of the 
 
 three original elements which is essential, music and dancing being 
 
 for epic poetry mere accessories that soon disap- 
 
 ■ Drama 
 
 peared. Over against this Epic a second branch 
 
 of creative literature is found pointing in the direction of Presenta- 
 tion ; and its name. Drama, impHes that here the imitative gesture 
 of the ballad dance has predominated over everything else, for 
 ' Drama ' is ' acted poetry.' The remaining constituent of primi- 
 tive literature, music, is suggested by the name of 
 the third great division of poetry — Lyric, and all 
 the devices of musical art find their analogies in the movement 
 of lyric poetry. As Epic was concerned with Description, and 
 Drama with Presentation, so Lyric has a special function which 
 at the same time mediates between the other two. It may be 
 described by the term Reflection or Meditation ; by this medi- 
 tative function lyric poetry can — as its position on our chart 
 would suggest — pass at any moment into epic or dramatic with- 
 out losing its own distinctive character. To illustrate : let us take 
 up (say) the ninth psalm at the eleventh verse. 
 
 Sing praises to the Lord, which dwelleth in Zion : 
 
 Declare among the people his doings. 
 For he that maketh inquisition for blood remembereth them: 
 
 He forgetteth not the cry of the poor. 
 
 We have struck this lyric at.a point where the poet is reflecting ; but 
 in the next verse the meditation has become dramatic, for we are 
 allowed to hear the very cries of the poor who have been spoken of 
 
 " Have mercy upon me, O Lord; 
 Behold my affliction which I suffer of them that hate me, 
 Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death; 
 That I may shew forth all thy praise : 
 In the gates of the daughter of Zion, 
 I will rejoice in thy salvation." 
 
CLASSIFICATTON OF LITERARY FORMS 81 
 
 As the lytic form has thus changed quite naturally into a momen- 
 tary drama, so in the verse that follows it is found to have passed 
 into epic description. 
 
 The nations are sunk down in the pit that they made : 
 In the net which they hid is their own foot taken. 
 
 Biblical lyrics illustrate more fully than any others this essentially 
 central character of lyric poetry and its power of absorbing the 
 other forms. 
 
 Analogous to the three great types of Poetry we have three 
 
 main divisions of literature on its side of Prose. Epic has its 
 
 counterpart in History. The word history has for 
 
 History . , ,,;,,,. .. , 
 
 Its range the whole field of positive description : 
 ' Natural History ' is the description of external nature, and ' His- 
 tory ' without any qualifying adjective is the description of events. 
 
 On the other side the prose analogue of Drama is 
 
 Rhetoric ; for the -orator differs from others who 
 use prose in the prominence he gives to presentation. To the 
 famous orator Demosthenes is attributed the saying that the first 
 element of oratory is action, and the second element action, and 
 the third action : the meaning of this is that an orator must above 
 all things be an actor; he must be able to identify himself with his 
 cause as an actor presents a part. Lastly, as Lyric was reflective 
 
 poetry, the corresponding form of prose literature is 
 
 Philosophy „, ., , , • , • , ■ ■, „ 
 
 Philosophy, which is no more than organised reflec- 
 tion. And as Lyric was found to occupy a central position on the 
 side of poetry, so that it could dip at intervals into Epic and Drama, 
 an analogous power attaches to Philosophy, which can extend in 
 the direction of Description when it takes the form of scientific 
 observation, and on the other side can advance almost to the 
 bounds of Rhetoric in the form of exposition. 
 
 We have thus, starting from first principles, arrived at a concep- 
 tion of the six main distinctions of literary form. But these six 
 forms must be understood as merely general notions, drawn from 
 a comparative survey of literature as a whole. They are the 
 
82 FiJiST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITE/iA TURE 
 
 elements of literature : and just as the ' elements ' into which the 
 chemist analyses matter are seldom found in nature separate and 
 Literary works distinct, but almost always in combination, so in the 
 seldom confined actual literatures of the world it will be an excep • 
 to a single form {imjai ^^^^ jf ^ny particular work is found to exem- 
 plify one of the six forms we have been discussing, without any 
 admixture of the rest. What we call Greek Tragedy is not drama, 
 but a union of drama and lyric ; the modern English novel is a 
 blend of romance and philosophy. For ordinary purposes of 
 classification a nomenclature based on predominant form is sufifi- 
 cient. But when we pass from classification to analysis we must 
 always be prepared for form combinations. And it will appear 
 later that in Biblical literature one leading form is made by the 
 fusion of all the rest. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 APPLICATION OF LITERARY CLASSIFICATION TO BIBLICAL 
 LITERATURE 
 
 In approaching that which is the main purpose of the present 
 work, the recognition in Biblical literature of such forms as Epic, 
 Lyric, Drama, and the like, we are met at the threshold by an 
 obstacle of a very special kind : an obstacle that affects only the 
 sacred Scriptures, and these not through anything in themselves, 
 but as a result of accidental circumstances in the tradition by 
 which they have come down to us. I would describe this obstacle 
 by saying that, in Biblical Kterature, the Lower The Lower unity 
 Unities have obscured the Higher Unity. By and the Higher 
 Lower Unity I mean the bond uniting clauses into ^°'*y 
 a verse and verses into a stanza. The Higher Unity is the Unity 
 of Poem : the bond which unites successive verses and stanzas 
 into a poem complete in itself.^ 
 
 This conflict of lower and higher unity arises from the 
 
 arrangement of our printed bibles and of the manuscripts on 
 
 which they are founded, and still more from the 
 
 habits of reading which these by long tradition unity obscured 
 
 have fostered. In dealing with any other literature •'y reading the 
 , , , , ,,1 r Bible In verses 
 
 the student would naturally, and as a matter of 
 
 course, look for the higher unity in what he reads. He would not 
 
 study Virgil merely to get quotable hexameters, nor Shakespeare 
 
 to find pithy sentences : he would wish to comprehend the drift 
 
 of a scene, or the plot of a whole play ; he would read a whole 
 
 1 For convenience of illustration I speak throughout the chapter of poems : but 
 the argument applies^ mutatis mutandis, to prose compositions. 
 
 83 
 
84 FIRST PRINCIPLES IN BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 eclogue at once, or even sustain his attention through the twelve 
 books of the ^neid. But the vast majority of those who read the 
 Bible have never shaken off the mediaeval tendency to look upon 
 it as a collection of isolated sentences, isolated texts, isolated 
 verses. Their intention is nothing but reverent; but the effect 
 of their imperfect reading is to degrade a sacred literature into a 
 pious scrap-book. 
 
 I have called this tendency mediaeval: it is a relic of the- 
 Middle Ages under the influence of which arose our earUest trans- 
 This tendency a lotions of the Bible into modern tongues. The 
 relic of mediaeval thought of the Middle Ages is distinguished by dis- 
 influence connectedness. The Schoolmen were not remark- 
 
 able for successful investigation or wide reflectiveness, but they 
 surpassed all men m subtlety of discussion ; indeed, it would 
 almost seem that with them the process of discussing was more 
 important than the conclusion attained. Accordingly their age 
 gave special prominence to the isolated proposition. Its thinkers 
 were not confined to books as a medium for expressing thought; 
 it was open to them to issue, like Luther, a series of propositions, 
 and, setting these up on some church door, offer discussion with 
 all comers. To formulate truth into these brief independent sen- 
 tences, adapted for attack and defence, made the characteristic 
 literary activity of the period. In modern thought detail truths 
 are so many bricks to be built into an edifice, each valued accord- 
 ing as it contributes to the common stability ; the independent 
 propositions of the mediaeval thinker were rather footballs to be 
 driven to and fro in an exercise of dialectic strength. Translations 
 of the Bible made amid such surroundings took shape from the 
 minds of the translators. Hebrew and Greek literature — poem, 
 dialogue, discourse — all assumed a monotonous uniformity of 
 numbered sentences, each to be treated as a good saying in itself, 
 rather than a component part of a literary whole. 
 
 The influence of these earliest translations is still felt. There 
 are three versions of the Bible in familiar use amongst us : one 
 is the recent ' Revised Version ' ; a second is the ' Authorised 
 
THE HIGHER UNITY IN LITERATURE 8S 
 
 Version,' executed under King James I ; while for a third the 
 
 earlier translation of Coverdale is represented in the Psalter of 
 
 the Prayer Book. These three versions stand at „^ 
 
 , Three popular 
 
 three different points of the line separating us versions of the 
 
 from the Middle Ages : Coverdale's translation was ^""'^ 
 
 executed wholly amid mediaeval surroundings ; ^ the Authorised 
 
 Version belongs to the borderland between medieval and modern, 
 
 while the Revised Version is entirely modern. When these three 
 
 translations are compared what is the result? If „. ., . 
 
 *^ Similar in what 
 
 the comparison be made in respect of phraseology concerns the 
 and single verses there will be little to choose i-o^er unity 
 between the three : the earhest will strike our sense of beauty 
 quite as much as the latest. But when attention is given to the 
 connection between verse and verse, to the drift of an argument 
 
 and the general unity of a whole poem, only the 
 
 . . i. ' J ^jjg , Revised 
 
 Revised Version will be found reliable ; the reader version ■ stands 
 of the Authorised Version, when he wishes to catch aione as regards 
 the teaching of a whole epistle, or the sequence of ^ '^ ^^ " ^ 
 thought in a minor prophet, must go to the Hebrew and Greek 
 to find out what his English version means. 
 
 It is most important for the Enghsh student of the Bible to 
 remember that these versions are different in kind, and must 
 therefore not be discussed as if they represented different degrees 
 of success in attaining a common object. It will be well to 
 emphasise this matter by examples. 
 
 Let our first example be taken from the translation of Cover- 
 dale. The eighteenth psalm will be specially suit- 
 able for our purpose, because in the case of this Player Book Ver- 
 
 '^ '^ ' sion compared 
 
 poem the Authorised and Revised versions sub- with tht other 
 
 stantially agree ; moreover the impression they *^° 
 
 give of the psalm — that of a thanksgiving for 
 
 recent deliverance — is one not open to dispute, inasmuch as the 
 
 1 Coverdale's version is in actual date (1535) earlier than A.V. by three-quarters 
 of a century ; in spirit it is earlier still, being avowedly not original, but founded 
 upon previous ' interpretations.' See Dr. W. F. Moulton's History of the Rngtish 
 Biile (Cassell), chapters vii and viii. 
 
86 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 poem is cited at full length in the book of Samuel, and is there 
 expressly connected with the escape of David from the persecution 
 of Saul. As we read in the Authorised or Revised versions, every 
 line of the poem carries out this idea. At the commencement 
 epithets of adoration succeed one another with an exuberance of 
 diction that is like a flourish of trumpets opening some set piece 
 of music. With the fourth verse the psalm settles down to its 
 regular movement, and in subdued tones describes the perilous 
 extremity out of which the singer has found dehverance. 
 
 The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men 
 made me afraid. 
 
 The sorrows of hell compassed me about; the snares of death pre- 
 vented me. 
 
 In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God : he 
 heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, 
 even into his ears. 
 
 Then a burst of imagery rushes upon us, sustained through nine 
 verses, presenting all nature agitated to its centre as the Almighty 
 descends to the help of the sufferer who has called upon him. 
 A strain of tenderness comes in with the deliverance itself. 
 
 He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters. 
 He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from them which hated 
 
 me : for they were too strong for me. 
 They prevented me in the day of my calamity : but the Lord was my 
 
 stay. 
 He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because 
 
 he delighted in me. 
 
 With the last clause the conception has widened. The poet con- 
 siders that with his personal deliverance the cause of righteous- 
 ness has triumphed, and so he is led to the generalisation : 
 
 With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful; with an upright 
 
 man thou wilt shew thyself upright. 
 With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure : and with the froward thou 
 
 wilt shew thyself froward. 
 
THE HIGHER UNITY IN LITERATURE 87 
 
 The latter half of the psalm no less clearly carries on the concep- 
 tion of the earlier half; review of past deliverances carries with 
 it confidence for the future, when whole nations will run in sub- 
 mission to the conqueror marked out by Divine favour. Towards 
 the close the rapture of the opening verses reappears : 
 
 The Lord liveth : and blessed be my rock; and let the God of my sal- 
 vation be exalted. 
 
 Then in the very last line, like the signature to a document, comes 
 the name of ' David,' at once the singer and the hero of the song. 
 Let the reader now study this psalm in the Psalter of the 
 Prayer Book. Let him remember what is the exact point of the 
 present argument. If he takes any particular verse, he will find 
 it just as striking in the translation of Coverdale as in the later 
 versions ; it will be when he proceeds to note the linking of verse 
 to verse that the difference will appear. At the third verse (in 
 the numbering of the Prayer Book) the psalm appears, as in 
 the other version, to start upon the description of a perilous 
 extremity. 
 
 The sorrows of death compassed me : and the overflowings of ungod- 
 liness made me afraid. 
 The pains of hell came about me : the snares of death overtook me. 
 
 But when we pass to the next verse, instead of a continuation of 
 the description, we find a general statement. 
 
 In my trouble I will call upon the Lord : and complain unto my God. 
 
 Of course, if a reader has come to his Bible simply as a store- 
 house of good words, he may find as great a spiritual stimulus in 
 the declaration, " I will call upon the Lord," as in the statement, 
 " I did call upon the Lord." But to the reader of a sacred liter- 
 ature this substitution in the Prayer Book Version of future tense 
 for past has destroyed the connection of the verses, and the 
 unity is gone. Again, at the seventh verse Coverdale's translation 
 returns to the tense of description; but at verse i6 — just where 
 
88 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 in the other case we found the actual deliverance come in — we 
 are thrown back upon general expressions : 
 
 He shall send down from on high to fetch me, etc. 
 
 In verse i8 we read, "i:hey prevented me," but in verse 20, "The 
 Lord shall reward me " : and so throughout the poem past, 
 present, future tenses are indiscriminately mingled. What does 
 this mean? That the translator was a bungler? Certainly not : 
 every verse, with its felicity of diction and beauty of rhythm, 
 belies such a suggestion. The meaning is that Coverdale formed 
 a different conception of the literature he was translating from 
 that which both ourselves and the later versions assume. It did 
 not belong to Coverdale's age to look upon a psalm as a poem 
 with a unity running through it ; he understood it simply as a col- 
 lection of pious thoughts, and he used all his skill to make each 
 thought as beautiful as the English language would permit. He 
 has succeeded in his attempt, and given us in the eighteenth psalm 
 a chaplet of very pearls ; but it is a chaplet with the string broken. 
 It is even more important to compare the Authorised and 
 the Revised versions as regards this matter of the connection 
 A V comuared between verse and verse. Let the reader study 
 with R. V. in the older translation the twenty-eighth chapter 
 
 Job xxviii ^£ y^^^ ^^^ ggj himself, without the aid of com- 
 
 mentators who have had the original before them, to think out 
 from the English alone the unity linking successive verses. 
 
 1 . Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they 
 fine it. 
 
 2. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone. 
 
 [Already the clauses fall sweetly upon the ear, though the point of 
 what is being said is hardly yet apparent.J 
 
 3. He setteth an end to darkness, and searcheth out all perfection : 
 the stones of darkness, and the shadow of death. 
 
 [This seems like sorne very general glorification of God : but the 
 drift of the whole is still vague. J 
 
THE HIGHER UNITY IN LITERATURE 89 
 
 4. The flood breaketh out from the inhabitant; even the waters 
 forgotten of the foot : they are dried up, they are gone away from 
 men. 
 
 [Can any clear sense be attached to these words? The only 
 certainty seems to be that they have no connection with the 
 preceding verse, as that had none with what went before. Yet 
 the words which immediately follow seem to announce a new 
 topic .J 
 
 5. As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned up 
 as it were fire. 
 
 6. The stones of it are the place of sapphires : and it hath dust of 
 gold. 
 
 [Various as are the topics presented so far, yet the next words 
 announce one more.J 
 
 7. There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's 
 eye hath not seen : 
 
 8. The lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed 
 by it. 
 
 9. He putteth forth his hand — 
 
 [Apparently we have here returned to the general glorification of 
 God in nature upon which the third verse touched.] 
 
 9. He putteth forth his hand upon the rock; he overturneth the 
 mountains by the roots. 
 
 10. He cutteth out rivers among the rocks; and his eye seeth every 
 precious thing. 
 
 11. He bindeth the floods from overflowing; and the thing that is 
 hid bringeth he forth to light. 
 
 At this point, in place of a string of distinct topics, we suddenly 
 come upon a train of connected reasoning. Where, asks the 
 speaker, shall wisdom be found ? and, after searching all possible 
 sources, and weighing wisdom against every form of wealth, he 
 comes to the conclusion that only God knows the origin of wis- 
 dom, and that he who created the universe interwove righteous- 
 ness into its structure. Is it not strange that within the limits 
 
90 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERA TURE 
 
 of the same chapter should be found, first the wandering from 
 topic to topic, and then the coherent working from question to 
 answer? Yet more strange that the discordant halves of the 
 chapter should be Hnked by the conjunction But? 
 
 Now let the same passage be read in the Revised Version. 
 
 Surely there is a mine — 
 
 [At the very outset has come the key word to the whole.] 
 
 Surely there is a mine for silver, 
 
 And a place for gold which they refine. 
 
 Iron is taken out of the earth. 
 
 And brass is molten out of the stone. 
 
 Man setteth an end to darkness, 
 
 [What we are reading is not a description of God, but of the 
 miner.] 
 
 And searcheth out to the furthest bound 
 
 The stones of thick darkness and of the shadow of death, 
 
 He breaketh open a shaft away from where men sojourn; 
 
 They are forgotten of the foot that passeth by; 
 
 They hang afar from men, they swing to and fro. 
 
 [We can almost see the miner descending in his cage into the 
 depths of the earth, far beneath the heedless passers-by on the 
 surface. And now a relevancy appears for the next verse.] 
 
 As for the earth, out of it Cometh bread : 
 
 And underneath it is turned up as it were by fire. 
 
 The stones thereof are the place of sapphires. 
 
 And it hath dust of gold. 
 
 That path — 
 
 [Of course, the path of the miner in the bowels of the earth.] 
 
 That path no bird of prey knoweth, 
 
 Neither hath the falcon's eye seen it : 
 
 The proud beasts have not trodden it, 
 
 Nor hath the fierce lion passed thereby. 
 
 He putteth forth his hand upon the flinty rock; 
 
 [It is Still the miner that is spoken of.] 
 
THE HIGHER UNITY IN LITERATURE 91 
 
 He overturneth the mountains by the roots; 
 
 He cutteth out channels among the rocks; 
 
 And his eye seeth every precious thing. 
 
 He bindeth the streams that they trickle not; 
 
 And the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light. 
 
 Read in a version which brings the idea of connected hterature to 
 bear upon the Bible, the passage which before seemed a series 
 of disconnected sayings is seen to resolve itself into a simple unity, 
 — a brilliant picture of mining operations. Nay, the whole chap- 
 ter now becomes a unity, for we catch the connection of its two 
 halves : there are mines out of which men dig gold and silver and 
 precious stones, but where is the mine out of which we may bring 
 wisdom ? 
 
 It is impossible to insist too strongly upon this difference be- 
 tween the Revised "Version of the Bible and its predecessors, a 
 
 difference of kind and not of degree, and one which „. „ „ 
 
 ° ' Thus R. V. es- 
 
 is as wide as the distinction between the words sentiai for liter- 
 'text' and 'context.' The English reader need "y study 
 not feel any difficulty on the ground of the disfavour with which 
 the Revised Version has in many quarters been received. Such 
 reception has been the regular fate of revisions from St. Jerome's 
 day downwards. The Authorised Version had itself to encounter 
 the same opposition. It is said to have been a full half century 
 before this work of King James's translators came into general 
 use ; and in the interval we have on record the opinion of a 
 scholar and divine, who, asked by the king, declared he would 
 be torn by wild horses rather than urge so badly executed a ver- 
 sion upon the churches. The whole discussion of the subject 
 seems to me to have been conducted on a wrong footing. The 
 critics will take single verses or expressions, and, as it were, test 
 them with their mental palate to see whether the Uterary flavour 
 of the old or the tiew be superior. But comparisons of this kind 
 are a sheer impossibility. No one, least of all a cultured critic, 
 can separate in his mind between the sense of beauty which comes 
 from association, and the beauty which is intrinsic ; the softening 
 
92 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 effect of time and familiarity is needed before any translation can 
 in word and phrase assume the even harmony of a classic. Mean- 
 while the consideration here contended for — the unique excel- 
 lence of the Revised Version in the matter of connectedness and 
 the Higher Unity — is beyond dispute. The true issue between the 
 Authorised and the Revised versions is the question whether 
 the Bible is to be treated as a collection of sayings, each verse an 
 independent whole, or whether the first duty of an interpreter is 
 to associate a text with its context. What answer the theologian 
 will return to this question it is not the province of this book to 
 determine. But speaking from the literary point of view, I make 
 bold to say that the reader who confines himself to the Authorised 
 Version excludes himself from half the beauty of the Bible. 
 
 To vindicate the importance of the Higher Unity in applica- 
 tion to Biblical literature is our first duty. Our second is to 
 D tv g"^'"'! ourselves from forming too limited a con- 
 assumes variety ception of it. When we try to think out the 
 oi form connectedness of some sacred poem or discourse, 
 
 we must be prepared to find its unity assuming forms other than 
 those with which we are familiar in the literature of the present day. 
 
 The simplest type of unity is where a whole poem is no more 
 
 than the working out of a single idea. I have had occasion in a 
 
 former chapter to cite the hundred and fourteenth 
 
 Simple Unity psalm, and have shown how it connects the deliv- 
 
 Psalm cxiv r ? 
 
 erance from Egypt with the new conception of a 
 Deity accompanying with his presence a journeying nation. 
 Every line of the psalm is filled with this idea ; there is no other 
 thought in the poem. A unity so clear presents no difficulty. 
 
 A variation from this is such a case as the hundred and thirty- 
 ninth psalm. This is a lyric of fifty-two lines ; its opening and 
 Unit of Transi- <^'o^'"g thoughts are antagonistic to one another, 
 tion the Divine Omnipresence being dreaded in the 
 
 Psalm cxxxix ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ jj^ jj^g Other case desired. Yet the 
 
 poem presents no difficulty in regard to the connection of its 
 
THE HIGHER UNITY IN LITERATURE 93 
 
 thought, for we are able to see the exact point where the one 
 train of feehng begins to change into the other. At the outset the 
 reaUsation of omniscience and omnipresence lies like a weight 
 upon the poet's mind. 
 
 O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me ! 
 
 Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, 
 
 Thou understandest my thought afar off. 
 
 Thou searchest out my path and ray lying down, 
 
 And art acquainted with all my ways. 
 
 For there is not a word in my tongue. 
 
 But lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. 
 
 Thou hast beset me behind and before, 
 
 And laid thine hand upon me. 
 
 The burden becomes intolerable, and the poet would fain throw 
 it off. 
 
 Such, knowledge is too wonderful for me; 
 
 It is high, I cannot attain unto it. 
 
 Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? 
 
 Or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? 
 
 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there : 
 
 If 1 make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there. 
 
 If I take the wings of the morning. 
 
 And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; 
 
 Even there shall thy hand lead me. 
 
 And thy right hand shall hold me. 
 
 If I say, Surely the darkness shall overwhelm me. 
 
 And the light about ine shall be night; 
 
 Even the darkness hideth not from thee. 
 
 But the night shineth as the day : 
 
 The darkness and the light are both alike to thee. 
 
 The sense of oppression can intensify yet further, and the next 
 verse extends it backwards in time, as previous verses had made 
 it stretch through all space. 
 
 For thou hast possessed my reins : 
 
 Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. 
 
 It is just here, where the effect is at its height, that the turn comes. 
 The mysteries of the womb suggest to the poet that this Divine 
 
94 FIRST PRINCIPLES IN BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 watchfulness from which he cannot escape is the same watchful 
 care which, in his helplessness, built him up into the being he is. 
 The current of thought begins to flow back — for the structure of 
 the psalm is antistrophic as well as enveloped. 
 
 I will give thanks unto thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made : 
 Wonderful are thy works. 
 And that my soul knoweth right well. 
 My frame was not hidden from thee. 
 When I was made in secret, 
 
 And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. 
 Thine eyes did see mine unperfect substance. 
 And in thy book were all my members written, 
 Which day by day were fashioned, 
 When as yet there was none of them. 
 
 The besetting watchfulness becomes a precious thought to the 
 psalmist ; most precious of all, the incalculableness of its extent. 
 
 How precious also are thy thoughts' unto me, O God! 
 
 How great is the sum of them ! 
 
 If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand : 
 
 When I awake, I am still with thee. 
 
 The new thought gains force, and takes fire in a burst of purity. 
 
 Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God : 
 
 Depart from me therefore, ye bloodthirsty men. 
 
 For they speak against thee wickedly, 
 
 And thine enemies take thy name in vain. 
 
 Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? 
 
 And am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? 
 
 I hate them with perfect hatred : 
 
 I count them mine enemies. 
 
 The new train of thought has reached its goal, and, as the enve- 
 lope figure completes itself, the refrain reappears changed and 
 enlarged, so that the burden has become an aspiration. 
 
 Search me, O God, and know my heart : 
 
 Try me, and know my thoughts : 
 
 And see if there be any way of wickedness in me. 
 
 And lead me in the way everlasting. 
 
 1 That is, the thoughts which God bestows on the psalmist. 
 
THE HIGHER UN/TV IN LITERATURE 95 
 
 The whole movement has been a subtle passage from the one 
 to the other of the opposing trains of thought : the psalm is made 
 one by the Unity of Transition. 
 
 A more difficult case arises where a portion of literature is seen 
 to commence with one topic, to end with a topic entirely different, 
 while no part of it can be indicated as conveying unity of Contrast 
 a transition from the one set of ideas to the other, and Antithesis 
 A notable instance is the much discussed nine- ^'^ain'xix 
 teenth psalm. The first six verses of this psalm are entirely occu- 
 pied with the heavens above our heads. Their starry marvels are 
 conceived as a silent language in which the whole world day by 
 day may read of a Creator ; the extended sky is pictured as the 
 tent of a hero, and this hero is the Sun, who, forever at his best, 
 runs his daily course, scattering the mighty heat which no corner 
 of the earth can escape. Passing to the next verse we find our- 
 selves without any warning in a totally different set of ideas. 
 
 The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul : 
 
 The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple : 
 
 The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart : 
 
 The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. 
 
 The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever : 
 
 The judgements of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. 
 
 With topics so different, and no sign of any links to connect them, 
 what has become of the Higher Unity? The answer is that it is to 
 be looked for in this very absence of transition : we have here a 
 literary effect which may be called the Unity of Contrast or Antith- 
 esis. The point of the poem may be summed up as the equal ado- 
 ration side by side of the physical and the moral law. No literary 
 device could make the equality of the two so forcible as this simple 
 placing of them side by side without a word of explanation. 
 
 No doubt this is a matter in which difference of opinion arises ; 
 and its discussion is of importance as going down 
 to fundamental principles of literary criticism. It is 0/ p'saim xix 
 urged, by those who speak with the highest author- 
 ity, that the disparity between the two parts of this nineteenth 
 
96 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 psalm is too great to be covered by any unity of idea ; that we are 
 therefore driven to the supposition that the connection of these 
 two pieces of literature has been effected by those through 
 whose hands the Hebrew Scriptures have passed on their way 
 to us. The contention is further supported by the plea that these 
 two sections of the nineteenth psalm differ' in more than subject- 
 matter : they represent literary styles that are totally different, 
 styles moreover that are seen upon a wide survey of Biblical 
 literature to distinguish respectively an early and a late literary 
 period. 
 
 I do not dispute these allegations. But in resisting the infer- 
 ence derived from them I would commence by deprecating the 
 
 confusion so commonly made — if not bv the 
 Questions of au- ■' ' 
 
 thorship not an critics themselves, yet by a large proportion of 
 
 essential part of their readers — between two things which should 
 litereiry study , , . , , ,■ ■ , 
 
 be kept entirely separate : the confusion between 
 
 literary unity and unity of authorship. Indeed, if I may widen 
 the discussion for a moment, I should like to express the opinion 
 that the whole study of literature is placed at a disadvantage by 
 the intrusion into it of quite a distinct thing — the study of authors. 
 A piece of literature is apt to be put before us as a performance 
 of some author : we are expected to examine it with a view to 
 applauding or censuring this author ; we are minutely informed as 
 to the circumstances under which he did his work ; one production 
 of his is associated with companion productions, as if the main 
 raison d'etre of them all was to enable us to form an estimate of 
 the man who produced them. All this may be good in itself; but 
 it is not the study of literature. Authors of books may in them- 
 selves be as well worthy our attention as statesmen or commercial 
 magnates ; but no one confuses Constitutional History with biogra- 
 phies of politicians, or Political Economy with the business his- 
 tories of particular firms. And I believe that the study of literature 
 will never reach its proper level until it is realised that literature 
 is an entity in itself, as well as a function of the individuals who 
 contributed to it ; that it has a development and critical principles 
 
THE HIGHER UNITY IN LITRRATVRR 97 
 
 of its own, to be considered independently of any questions affect- 
 ing the performance of particular authors. 
 
 To return to the case immediately before us. It might seem a 
 self-evident contention that the assignment of different ages to 
 different parts of the nineteenth psalm implied diversity of author- 
 ship. I would rather say that we are separated Authorship in 
 from the literature in question by an interval so application to 
 wide as to raise a doubt whether the term 'author- Biblical poetry 
 ship ' in application to the lyric poetry of the Bible be not alto- 
 gether an anachronism. 
 
 We live in the age of books ; not only so, but we have travelled 
 so far into this book age that we have forgotten the times when 
 literature was affected by anything else than our habits of written 
 composition. Yet the study of Comparative Literature reveals 
 everywhere a period of literary activity long preceding the earliest 
 book ; a floating poetry destined to influence periods much later 
 than its own, yet preserved only by oral tradition without any aid 
 from writing, while the processes of its cpmposition have been 
 regulated entirely by the phenomena of spoken literature. How- 
 ever widely apart we may date the different parts of the Bible, yet 
 the whole approaches much more closely the influences of this 
 early spoken poetry than the modern literatures from which we 
 draw our ideas. 
 
 It is precisely in the matter of this relationship between literature 
 and ' authors ' that the difference between early and late poetry is 
 most apparent. The change which the ages have brought about 
 in our conception of authorship is not unlike the change that has 
 come over our conception of land. Our late civilisation takes for 
 granted the idea of individual ownership of land. But we know 
 that to primitive society this idea was unthinkable : land belonged 
 to the community, and all that individuals could have would be 
 rights over the land. Similarly we associate a book with an individ- 
 ual author ; we sacredly guard the written book as his property ; 
 if the author alters it it becomes a new ' edition,' while if the author 
 be dead the form of the book is fixed forever and no one may 
 
98 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 touch it. But for the floating hterature of spoken poetry composi- 
 tion was in the hands of a class of bards and minstrels, or, shall we 
 say, of priests and sacred singers ; what each individual produced 
 was regarded as common property, which his brethren used with- 
 out any sense of indebtedness. In using one another's composi- 
 tions they revised and altered them, until each delivery of a poem 
 might make a fresh ' edition ' ; and thus the composition of any 
 poem was a growth extending through generation after generation, 
 and the united product of many minds. 
 
 Now the psalms of the Bible were the product of individual 
 poets, but of poets living in periods when the influences of floating 
 literature were largely felt in determining habits of composition. 
 And this must be borne in mind in every discussion of the subject. 
 It is common to speak of David's ' writing ' a psalm : the phrase 
 is full of misleading associations. We cannot even assume that 
 writing, though used for many purposes, was in David's time 
 applied to the preservation of poetical productions ; but we may 
 be quite certain that the early psalmists did not, like nineteenth 
 century poets, think with pen in hand. Are we again to suppose 
 that Hebrew poets when they composed a psalm entered it at 
 some Stationers' Hall, with all rights reserved? We know the 
 very opposite : the authors of our psalms would send their poems 
 " to the Chief Musician upon stringed instruments," or to " the 
 Sons of Korah." That is to say, these Biblical psalms when 
 composed were committed to the custody of a body of minstrels 
 or sacred singers, and so may be expected to present the phe- 
 nomena of oral poetry in addition to the features of individual 
 authorship. Thus the psalms of the Bible in their composition 
 unite the advantages that belong to early and to late poetry : the 
 psalm as it leaves the original poet is not a fixed thing, it is only 
 just started on a career of life in the hands of living performers, 
 through whom it can draw to itself the best thoughts of the ages 
 through which it is to pass. These later modifications may be 
 merely matters of phraseology or greater fulness of diction ; they 
 may be distinct additions, like the final verses of the fifty-first 
 
THE HIGHER UNITY IN LITERATURE 99 
 
 psalm, which make a poem of personal penitence serve also as an 
 expression of national humiliation. Or they may even amount to 
 such a transformation as the nineteenth psalm seems to have 
 undergone, when the original song of the heavens, touching an 
 age of enthusiasm for the law, inspired the thought that what the 
 Sun is to the world without, God's law is to the world within. If 
 we assume David to be the ' author ' of the first six verses, then 
 no one has a better right than David to be considered the ' author ' 
 of the fresh thoughts his words have inspired. Or the original 
 song might be considered the ' author ' of the additions it has 
 begotten in the minds of those who have used it. But it would 
 be still better to say that the whole idea of ' authorship ' is a 
 conception proper to modern literature, and can do nothing but 
 mislead when applied to the wider literary phenomena of the 
 Bible. 
 
 But I am comparatively indifferent as to whether the reader 
 does or does not accept this conclusion with reference to the 
 
 authorship of the poem. What I am concerned ^. .^ ^ 
 
 '■ '^ . . Diversity of 
 
 to insist upon is that diversity of . authorship — if authorship not 
 
 such there be — is no bar to the literary unity of inconsistent with 
 
 rr., ■ • , ■ • literary unity 
 
 the nmeteenth psalm. This consideration again 
 demands the wider conception of literature that belongs to 
 antiquity. Let an illustration be permitted. If a man enquires 
 as to the building of some modern dwelling-house, he will proba- 
 bly be able to learn the year in which it was built and the name 
 of the architect. It will be different if he applies his investigation 
 to some great cathedral. The original architect of the cathedral 
 himself completed (we will suppose) the choir and transepts, and 
 built them in the Early Enghsh style. Then the work stood still 
 for several generations ; when the nave was added the whole style 
 of architecture had changed. The west front has been added 
 later still, and reflects details of a later age. But the original 
 architect did not think it necessary to pull down the whole of the 
 church his cathedral was superseding ; and hence we find a beau- 
 tiful Norman doorway in the middle of the Early English portion 
 
100 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 of the building. And the sexton takes the visitor down to the 
 crypt and shows him fragments of a yet earher Saxon church that 
 had stood on the same spot. Here, then, we have a building that 
 displays five different architectural styles, the product of five dif- 
 ferent ages : do we call such a building five cathedrals or one 
 cathedral? The psalms have the artistic range of the cathedral, 
 not of the mere dwelling-house ; they reflect the literary archi- 
 tecture of the many ages down which they have travelled, and are 
 often seen to have absorbed into themselves ' oracles ' yet older 
 than the date of their first composition. But with the psalm, as 
 with the cathedral, none of these circumstances need militate 
 against the artistic unity of the whole. 
 
 The literary unity, theh, of this nineteenth psalm becomes a 
 question of the ideas underlying its two parts, and of the mode 
 in which these ideas are brought together. For the ideas them- 
 selves, the union in one thought of the physical and the moral 
 universe has appealed to many minds. It is as old as Zoroaster : 
 
 He who first planned that these skies should be clothed with lights, 
 He by his wisdom is creator of Righteousness, wherewith to support the best 
 mind.i 
 
 The philosopher Kant, again, was wont to speak of the two per- 
 petual wonders, the starry heavens above and the moral law within. 
 And a still closer association of the two ideas has inspired a line of 
 Wordsworth, who says, addressing Duty : 
 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; 
 
 And the most ancient heavens through Thee are fresh and strong. 
 
 That the two worlds should in the Biblical poem be placed side by 
 
 side without further comment is surely intelligible to our aesthetic 
 
 sense. Art in general recognises the simple con- 
 other examples ... J .^-,1 • -r. 1 ■ , , 
 
 of the Unity of *'^^^* ^"" antithesis. But more than that, the very 
 Antithesis section of art we are considering — the psalms of 
 
 1 Yasria xxxi. 9. I am indebted for this parallel to Rev. J. Hope Moulton, late 
 Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, 
 
THE. HIGHER UNITY IN LITERATURE 101 
 
 the Bible — give us other examples of this same poetic device. 
 A closely analogous case is the thirty-sixth psalm, 
 
 .... - . f. . Psalm xxxvi 
 
 which devotes four verses to a picture of character 
 so utterly corrupt that evil has become a law unto itself; and then 
 abruptly, without connecting links, sets against the dark back- 
 ground of supreme evil a supreme good — a loving-kindness as 
 wide as the heavens, a righteousness as high as the mountains, 
 judgments as profound as the sea, bounty as diffused as the light.' 
 
 Again, among the ' Songs of Ascents ' is found a 
 , I . , , , ^ ,. , ,, , , Psalm crxvii 
 
 short lyric, the thought of which would be obscure 
 
 did we not recognise in it one of these antithetic contrasts between 
 
 two types of life — the life of anxious toil and the quiet home 
 
 life — made effective by the simple juxtaposition of the two 
 
 descriptions. 
 
 Strophe 
 
 Except the Lord build the house, 
 They labour in vain that build it : 
 Except the Lord keep the city, 
 The watchman waketh but in vain. 
 
 It is vain for you that ye rise up early, 
 
 And so late take rest, 
 
 And eat the bread of toil. 
 
 Antistrophe 
 
 So he giveth unto his beloved sleep, 
 
 Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord : 
 
 And the fruit of the womb is his reward. 
 
 As arrows in the hand of a mighty man. 
 
 So are the children of youth. 
 
 Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them : 
 
 They shall not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies 
 in the gate. 
 
 Our examination, then, of this nineteenth psalm, when once dis- 
 turbing questions of authorship are laid aside, reveals a connection 
 
 1 The parallelism of form between this and the nineteenth psalm is close : besides 
 the main point (of antithesis without connecting links) there is in both the culmi- 
 nation of the whole in prayer. 
 
102 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 of thought which is both impressive in itself, and also an addition 
 
 to the types of Higher Unity under which Biblical lyrics can be 
 
 classified. 
 
 In treating this general matter of the Higher Unity it is necessary 
 
 to mention what may be called the Unity of Aggregation. This 
 
 can be brought out best by the aid of illustrations. 
 
 Unity of Aggre- j^ ^.j^ reader examines the Book of Proverbs and, 
 
 gation -^ ' 
 
 discarding the numbering of chapters which has 
 
 no literary significance, seeks to divide it into the literary com- 
 positions of which it is made up, he will be struck 
 
 Proverbs XXV. -^ ^ different relations in which successive 
 
 24-28 
 
 verses stand to one another in different parts of 
 
 the book. Let him, for example, read the last five verses of the 
 
 twenty-fifth chapter. 
 
 It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop, 
 Than with a contentious woman in a wide house. 
 
 As cold waters to a thirsty soul. 
 So is good news from a far country. 
 
 As a troubled fountain, and a corrupted spring, 
 
 So is a righteous man that giveth way before the wicked. 
 
 It is not good to eat much honey : 
 
 So for men to search out their own glory is not glory. 
 
 He whose spirit is without restraint 
 
 Is like a city that is broken down and hath no wall. 
 
 Nothing is plainer than that we have here five entirely distinct 
 compositions ; all that the " men of Hezekiah " have done is to 
 collect them. Next, let the reader take four verses that follow 
 one another in the twenty-sixth chapter. 
 
THE HIGHER UNITY IN LITERATURE 103 
 
 The sluggard saith. There is a lion in the way; Proverbs xxvi. 
 A lion is in the streets. 13-16 
 
 * 
 
 As the door turneth upon its hinges, 
 So doth the sluggard. upon his bed. 
 
 The sluggard burieth his hand in the dish; 
 It wearieth him to bring it again to his mouth. 
 
 The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit 
 Than seven men that can render a reason. 
 
 Here again we have entirely separate sayings, but they are all 
 sayings on the subject of the sluggard. The " men of Hezekiah " 
 have not merely collected, they have in this instance 
 arranged their matter. For completeness let the ' ' ' 
 
 reader turn to an entirely different part of the book, and read 
 (say) the first five verses of chapter six. 
 
 My son, if thou art become surety for thy neighbour, 
 
 If thou hast stricken thy hands for a stranger, 
 
 Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth, 
 
 Thou art taken with the words of thy mouth. 
 
 Do this now, my son, and deliver thyself, 
 
 Seeing thou art come into the hand of thy neighbour; 
 
 Go, humble thyself, and importune thy neighbour. 
 
 Give not sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber to thine eyelids. 
 
 Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of the hunter. 
 
 And as a bird from the hand of the fowler. 
 
 Here it is clear that we have no collection of distinct sayings, but 
 a single composition with an organic unity of its own. The sacred 
 literature is thus found to include both what in modern phraseol- 
 ogy are called original compositions, and also collections of sepa- 
 rate brief compositions put together with or without arrangement. 
 The shorter sayings are obvious in the Book of Proverbs. But at 
 the proper place we shall see that they belong equally to other 
 departments of Biblical literature : that Prophecy includes short 
 
104 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 prophetic utterances collected together as well as longer dis- 
 courses, and that eveh a lyric composition may be constructed of 
 separate lyrics in combination. Many mistakes of interpretation 
 may be avoided by recognising the Unity of Aggregation. 
 
 One more consideration will complete our classification of the 
 different forms that may be assumed by the Higher Unity in the 
 literary compositions of the Bible. It will some- 
 c°rcum°stences™*' times happen that the connection binding the dif- 
 ferent parts of a poem into a unity is to be looked 
 for, not in the poem itself, but in the external use made of it. A 
 notable example is the twenty-fourth psalm. Any one reading this 
 
 psalm with a view to catching its general drift and 
 Psalm xxiv o o 
 
 connection will be struck with a break between its 
 sixth and seventh vefses, at which point there is a change both of 
 form and matter so considerable as inevitably to raise the doubt 
 whether the whole psalm can be a single composition. The diffi- 
 culty is met by identifying the poem with a particular ceremonial, 
 into the different pahs of which the two halves of the psalm fit 
 like a key into the wirds of a lock. 
 
 This ceremonial was the bringing of the Ark to Jerusalem. 
 There is perhaps no single day in the far distance of antiquity 
 which we are able to follow with such minuteness as this central 
 day of King David's career ; and in a later chapter we shall see 
 that all the songs cotnposed for the festival can be recovered. 
 The twenty-fourth psalm represents the words of the processional 
 march from the House of Obed-Edom to the Gates of Jerusalem. 
 There seem to have been two points in this march at which the 
 instruments of fir wood, harps, psalteries, timbrels, castanets and 
 cymbals gave place to vocal celebration. The first was when the 
 procession halted at the foot of the high hill on which the city 
 stood ; and here it is that the first six verses of the psalm have 
 their fitness. After a burst of adoration to the Creator of the 
 world — one of the perfectly general ascriptions of praise with 
 which psalms so often qommence — the special anthem proceeds 
 as follows ; 
 
THE HIGHER UNITY IN LITERATURE lOS 
 
 Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? 
 
 And who shall stand in his holy place ? 
 He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; 
 
 Who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, 
 
 And hath not sworn deceitfully, 
 He shall receive a blessing from the Lord, 
 
 And righteousness from the God of his salvation. 
 This is the generation of them that seek after him, 
 
 That seek thy face, O God of Jacob. 
 
 The identification of these words with the occasion to which I am 
 referring becomes the stronger through something which illustrates 
 what has been said above as to the nature of Hebrew poetry, and 
 how its composition did not fix it in one form, as our writing does, 
 but left it scope to adapt itself in the mouths of the singers who 
 preserved it to changes of thought or circumstances. We have a 
 variant to the anthem just cited : this is the fifteenth psalm, and 
 a comparison of the two poems is highly instructive. 
 
 Lord, who shall sojourn in thy tabernacle? Psalm xv 
 
 Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? 
 
 He that walketh uprightly. 
 And worketh righteousness. 
 And speaketh truth in his heart. 
 
 He that slandereth not with his tongue, 
 
 Nor doeth evil to his friend, 
 
 Nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour. 
 
 In whose eyes a reprobate is despised; 
 But he honoureth them that fear the Lord. 
 
 He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not. 
 He that putteth not out his money to usury. 
 Nor taketh reward against the innocent. 
 
 He that doeth these things shall never be moved. 
 
 That these are varying forms of one poem is obvious ; in both the 
 same character for the worshipper of Jehovah is conveyed in the 
 game form of IVric question and answer. The differences b§tweeii 
 
106 friiST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 ihem are two. The fifteenth psalm is much fuller in its descrip- 
 tion, and yet this fulness is no more than the working out into 
 detail of what the other psalm had suggested. Again, there is a 
 striking variation in the wording of the opening verse. The 
 twenty-fourth psalm asks, " Who shall ascend into the hill of the 
 Lord,'' the fifteenth psalm phrases the question, "Who shall 
 sojourn." This exactly tallies with the view here presented of 
 the two poems. The one is an anthem for a specific occasion, 
 and to the circumstances of that occasion — the procession halt- 
 ing at the foot of the hill — the phrase is exactly relevant, "Who 
 shall ascend." But when this description of the worshipper of 
 Jehovah is divorced from the proceedings of that particular day, 
 and passes into general use, there is no longer any point in the 
 word ascend, and a general term, sojourn, is substituted. And it 
 is equally natural that the brief suggestive sketch should be found 
 where the thought comes as a single detail in a long ceremonial, 
 but that when the fragment passes into use as an independent 
 hymn the thought should expand and gather fulness and devo- 
 tional beauty. 
 
 The other emphatic point in the march was when the proces- 
 sion drew up opposite the gates of the city : this gives us the 
 second part of the twenty-fourth psalm. Two considerations 
 should be carefully remembered by the reader. One of these is 
 the nature of the day's festival. It was not a dedication of a 
 temple, but an inauguration of a city. The tent in which David 
 placed the Ark was clearly regarded by him as a mere temporary 
 convenience; the task' on which his whole heart was bent was to 
 bring the Ark to the city of David. This Jerusalem was an 
 ancient stronghold of the Jebusites ; to capture it had been 
 David's greatest achievement ; he wished to turn it into the 
 metropolis of the mihtary monarchy in which he, as the repre- 
 sentative of Jehovah, was the principal figure : there could then 
 be no fitter form of inauguration than to transfer to the newly cap- 
 tured city the sacred Symbol with the fullest military honours. 
 The psalm realises all this by its formal call upon the city gates to 
 
THE HIGHER UNITY IN LITERATURE 107 
 
 open. But a second point must be noted before the anthem 
 becomes fully intelligible. The historical account 
 of the ceremonial gives striking prominence to a 
 particular title of the Divine Being — the Lord of Hosts : the 
 narrative opens by speaking of " the Ark of God which is called 
 by the Name, even the name of the Lord of hosts " ; it ends by 
 saying that David, in dismissing the people to their homes, blessed 
 them " in the name of the Lord of hosts." It is clear that this 
 title made a sort of watchword to the day's proceedings. With 
 the full circumstances before us let us follow this second section 
 of the psalm. The procession has halted opposite the massive 
 porch of the time-worn fortress, and in full military form sum- 
 mons it to open its gates. 
 
 Lift up your heads, O ye gates; 
 And be ye lift up, ye ancient doors : 
 And the King of glory shall come in. 
 
 Warders answer from within : 
 
 Who is the King of glory? 
 
 By the simplest of poetic devices the anthem keeps back for a 
 time the great Name, and answers with other titles of Jehovah. 
 
 The Lord strong and mighty, 
 The Lord mighty in battle. 
 
 The watchword has not been spoken, and the gates refuse to open. 
 The summons must be repeated. 
 
 Lift up your heads, O ye gates; 
 Yea, lift them up, ye ancient doors : 
 And the King of glory shall come in. 
 
 A second time is heard the challenge from within : 
 Who is this King of glory? 
 
 At last the great Name is spoken : 
 
 The Lord of Hosts, 
 He is the King of glory ! 
 
108 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 At this word the gates roll back, the procession enters, and Jehovah 
 has taken possession of his city. 
 
 It Ippears then that the two sections of the twenty-fourth psalm 
 fit infw-ith two points in the procession of the Ark to Jerusalem : 
 the halt at the foot of the hill, and the climax in front of the 
 gates. The psalm finds its unity in the External Circumstances 
 of its first production. 
 
 Enough has now been said on the subject of this Higher Unity, 
 the bond by which different parts of a composition are woven 
 together into a single whole. We have seen that to look for such 
 unity is a foremost condition of literary appreciation; and that 
 this applies to the literature of the Bible, notwithstanding diffi- 
 culties thrown in our way by mediaeval methods of printing or 
 reading the Sacred Scriptures. We have seen, on the other hand, 
 that in searching for the unity of any particular poem we must not 
 force interpretation through some preconceived idea of poetic 
 connection, but must be prepared to find the Higher Unity assum- 
 ing various forms. We have surveyed some of these forms : Sim- 
 ple Unity, Unity of Transition, Unity of Antithesis, Unity of 
 Aggregation, Unity of External Circumstances. In each case the 
 nature of the unity must be gathered from an examination of 
 the particular composition, and a comparison of it with other 
 compositions of a similar kind. 
 
 So far in this chapter we have been engaged with what is only 
 accidental to Biblical literature in the form in which 
 
 Distinguishing 
 
 features of He- we know it. But certain distinguishing features now 
 
 brew Literature ^,3,11 for discussion which are inherent in Hebrew 
 
 literature itself. 
 
 Two of these, though of fundamental importance, are so obvious 
 
 as to need only the briefest statement. Hebrew literature has not 
 
 developed a separate and distinct Drama ; although. 
 
 Drama but dra- as if to compensate for this, the dramatic impulse 
 
 matic influence jg found in Hebrew to invade other regions of lit- 
 on other forms . , ,. , , . , , 
 
 erature, including such departments as might have 
 
LITERARY FORMS IN SCRIPTURE 109 
 
 seemed most impervious to it. The current finding no channel 
 has spread and diffused itself. The reader of the Bible knows 
 that he will find in it no acted play like the plays of Shakespeare. 
 But on the other hand he will find lyric poems specially dramatic 
 in tone, and in Solomon's Song a lyric idyl that impresses some of 
 its readers as a complete drama. He will find, again, philosophy 
 taking a dramatic shape. In the Book of Job the dramatic form 
 reaches an intensity not exceeded in any literature ; yet even here 
 there is no independent drama, but the dramatised discussion is 
 made to rest on a basis of epic story. What is still more surpris- 
 ing, the discourses of prophecy are found to be leavened by the 
 dramatic spirit, and that most concentrated form of Hebrew 
 prophecy which will in this work be called the Rhapsody is pre- 
 eminent in the closeness with which it approaches to Drama. If 
 such things could be made the subject of measurement, it would 
 be safe to predict that the mass of dramatic material in Biblical 
 literature would be not less than that found in other literatures 
 where Drama is a distinct form. 
 
 A second consideration must be mentioned as separating Hebrew 
 from other literatures. When a reader turns over the pages of the 
 
 Bible, the department which will impress him most 
 
 ' '^ a. Prophecy a 
 
 by its bulk and importance is one that is not special depart- 
 
 founded upon any element of universal literature. ™™* "^ litera- 
 This IS the department of Prophecy. The dis- 
 tinction of Prophecy is not one of form but of spirit : Biblical 
 Prophecy, in a sense that belongs to no other class of literature, 
 presents itself as an actual Divine message. So far as form is 
 concerned Prophecy is not distinctive but comprehensive : all 
 types of literature are attracted towards it, and, as will be seen at 
 the proper place, the various literary forms are fused together into 
 a new form in the Prophetic Rhapsody. 
 
 These two considerations will affect the application to the Bible 
 of that classification of Hterary forms which in the last chapter was 
 obtained for universal literature. Of the six fiindamental forms 
 there distinguished, five will be discussed in the four books which 
 
110 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 immediately follow. The Lyric Poetry of the Bible will be the 
 subject of Book II. Epic and its prose counterpart History are 
 conveniently considered together : to these Book III will be 
 devoted. Book IV will take up the Biblical Literature of Rhet- 
 oric. Book V will be occupied with Scriptural Philosophy under 
 its Biblical name of ' Wisdom.' For the remaining form of Drama 
 the convenient course will be, not to review it in a separate book, 
 but to devote Book VI to the characteristically Biblical Literature 
 of Prophecy : in this connection the more elaborate dramatic 
 compositions of Scripture will naturally find treatment, while the 
 simpler dramatic forms can be considered elsewhere as they arise. 
 
 Before concluding this chapter it is convenient here to consider 
 certain peculiarities of Hebrew literature, not specially connected 
 with divisions of form, but affecting all types of literature alike. 
 
 The first of these special characteristics may amount to no more 
 than a curiosity of literature : yet it is worth stating. When, in 
 
 Prominence of P^^'^^ °^ mechanical chapters and verses, the books 
 sevenfold struc- of the Bible are presented with a structure deter- 
 *"^ mined for each by internal evidence, this structure 
 
 is found to show a strong attraction to the number seven. The 
 Book of Isaiah, in the form in which it has come down to us, falls 
 naturally into seven divisions ; the seventh — the great Rhapsody 
 of Zion Redeemed — takes the form of seven Visions, and the first 
 of these Visions is a sevenfold alternation between addresses to 
 Israel and to the Nations.^ Zechariah also has left a sevenfold 
 Vision ; and the Revelation of St. John is an unfolding of seven 
 Visions, each falling into sevenfold subdivisions, such as the Seven 
 Trumpets or Seven Golden Bowls suggest, while its prologue is an 
 address to Seven Churches, and its epilogue may be considered as 
 made up of seven last words. St. Matthew, the most Hebraic 
 of New Testament writers, has presented the Sermon on the 
 Mount in seven sections of similar structure, with the significant 
 
 1 For this and the other examples the reader is referred to the various volumes 
 of the Modern Reader's Bible, in which the structure is fully presented, with 
 comments. 
 
LITERAR Y FORMS IN SCRIPTURE 111 
 
 exception that the seventh is itself a miscellany of seven sepa- 
 rate sayings ; where other evangelists scatter through various 
 passages words of command to apostles St. Matthew gathers them 
 together into a Sevenfold Commission, just as he introduces the 
 parabolic teaching of Jesus with exactly seven parables ; his de- 
 nunciation of the Pharisees (like a similar denunciation of Isaiah) 
 is a sevenfold Woe ; and his version of Christ's words on the end 
 of all things follows that of the other evangelists to the end of 
 their five paragraphs, and then adds more to bring the number 
 of sections to seven. Two compositions of Jeremiah stand out as 
 specimens of elaborate structure : his Manifesto divides into seven 
 parts, his Doom of Babylon is a sevenfold denunciation of which 
 the central and climax section rests upon a sevenfold image. A 
 pecuharity of Ezekiel's style enables us to speak with positiveness 
 as to the divisions of his discourses : his whole work is found to 
 fall into seven books, and each book (except the brief central 
 book) into seven separate discourses. Seven is found to be the 
 number of divisions in Solomon's Song, in Daniel, Hosea, Joel, 
 Nahum ; the rhapsody of Amos divides' into three, but each of 
 these has a clear sevenfold structure. What at first sight seems 
 an exception comes in reality as a confirmation of the principle. 
 Where the editorship of the ' wise men ' appears, the structural 
 number changes to five : the Psalms are broken by doxologies 
 into five books. Proverbs admits of no other arrangement; the 
 interpositions of the author in Ecclesiasticus again present a five- 
 fold miscellany; internal evidence detects five essays in Ecdesi- 
 astes, five discourses in The Wisdom of Solomon, five dirges in 
 Lamentations. Such fivefold disposition suggests itself as a hall 
 mark of editorship, and is one more testimony to the attraction 
 of specific structural types. Yet this conscious arrangement in 
 fives is not inconsistent with a natural cleavage into sevens : the 
 fifth discourse of Wisdom is a sevenfold illustration of its theme, 
 which is further broken at one point by a sevenfold digression. 
 It must not be supposed that there is anything arbitrary or artifi- 
 cial in this recurrent sevenfold structure. All that it implies is 
 
112 FI/iST PRINCIPLES OP BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 that the writers of the Bible are deeply imbued with the spirit of 
 literary symmetry : and to a Hebrew writer symmetry instinctively 
 takes the form of the perfect number seven. 
 
 Again, the parallelism which underlies Hebrew rhythm also 
 reacts upon its thought. In particular, the pendulum figure, or 
 4. Pendulum swaying between one and another of two themes, 
 
 Movement of usually judgment and mercy, is a highly character- 
 ""^ istic mode of thought in Biblical prophecy and 
 
 philosophy ; so much so, that an interpreter must be constantly on 
 the watch to see whether his author has not given us alternation of 
 thought where we may have been expecting progression. To take 
 
 a single example. A discourse of Jeremiah opens 
 jeremia xxx. ^-^^ sounds of trembling and fear, a picture of 
 
 Jacob in time of trouble : as if men travailed with 
 child, every man bowed down with anguish, and all faces pale. In 
 that day, the next paragraph declares, the yoke of slavery shall 
 be broken from off his neck : as the servant of Jehovah he shall 
 be brought from far-off lands of captivity to quiet and ease in his 
 own land, while full end is made of all the oppressing nations. 
 With the formula, " For thus saith the Lord," the next paragraph 
 goes back to the conception of judgment : Jacob's wound is de- 
 scribed as incurable, Jehovah has wounded him with the wound of 
 an enemy, there is no medicine nor plaister, all the lovers of Jacob 
 have forgotten him in his sore need. With the connective ' there- 
 fore ' the discourse passes to the reverse of the picture : health 
 restored, adversaries devoured, captivity turned, the city builded 
 on its own heap, with glory and thanksgiving sounding out of its 
 palaces. Here it is clear that to the instinct of the Hebrew 
 writer this passing backwards and forwards between opposites pre- 
 sents itself as a continually advancing train of thought. Another 
 illustration will be instructive. 
 
 Nahum i. g-14 
 
 What do ye imagine against the Lord? he will make a full end: 
 affliction shall not rise up the second time. . . . Though they be in 
 full strength, and likewise many, even so shall they be cut down, and- 
 ho shall pass away. 
 
LITERARY FORMS IN SCRIPTURE 113 
 
 Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more. And now 
 will I break his yoke from off thee, and will burst thy bonds in sunder. 
 
 And the Lord hath given commandment concerning thee, that no 
 more of thy name be sown; out of the house of thy gods will I cut off 
 the graven image and the molten image; I will make thy grave; for 
 thou art vile. 
 
 It is abundantly clear that in this passage of Nahum there is alter- 
 nation between judgment and mercy. But what is specially notice- 
 able is that, in the second and third paragraphs, the thee refers to 
 different persons — to Israel and the enemy respectively : there is 
 nothing to mark this distinction except the pendulum form of the 
 thought. I am anticipating what will be developed at full length 
 later on, when I say that, in the great Isaiahan rhapsody, two of 
 its sections are wholly constituted by this pendulum-like swaying 
 between Jehovah's judgment on the nations and his mercy on his 
 own people ; that a drama of Hosea maintains almost to its close 
 a sustained monologue of Deity alternating between righteous 
 indignation and tender yearning; while for another of Isaiah's 
 rhapsodies the sudden changes between destruction and salvation 
 constitute the whole of the movement.^ 
 
 One more characteristic of Hebrew literature has yet to be men- 
 tioned, and one that is more important than all the rest. It has 
 to do with the external form of verse and prose. 
 We saw that Hebrew rests its verse system, not versTandPro^e 
 upon metre or rhyme, but upon parallelism of 
 clauses. But, as a matter of universal literature, parallelism is one 
 
 1 See below, pages 439, 4SS; 387; 416. For the reader who may care to study 
 how widely the pendulum movement obtains in Biblical thought, I suggest the fol- 
 lowing references [to the arrangement of the Modern Reader's Bible : the notes of 
 which should also be consulted]. Song of Moses in Deuteronomy. Psalms Ixxviii 
 and cvi [see below; pages 145, 149] ; Psalms xlvii, xcv-c, cxxxv, cxliv-cl. — Proverbs 
 1. ii, iii, V, xiii : IV. xlix. Mcclesiastlcus I, Ixxix. Ecclesiastes "^^^^.y \\. Wisdom 
 Discourse IV. Especially Job, sections 9, 14, 17, 18, 21, 25, 30; with a variation, 
 sections 37, 44. A triple pendulum in sections 37, 46. — Isaiah II. iii. Hosea i, vii. 
 The chief examples in Prophecy have been cited above. 
 
 The Envelope Figure of parallelism also becomes to a certain extent a mode of 
 thought: compare /fOM/i I. ii ; Psalms ciii-civ [below, page 537 note] . With this 
 may be associated the Parenthetic Preface, which is so characteristic of Isaiah 
 [see page 213 of that volume] and Amos [page 251 of Minor Prophets volume]. 
 
114 FIRST PRINCIPLES OP BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 of the devices of prose : the rhetoric of all nations includes it. 
 If then a particular language bases its verse upon something which 
 is also a property of prose, it is an inevitable consequence that in 
 that language prose and verse will overlap : and such is the case 
 with Biblical literature. I do not of course mean that the verse 
 literature of the Bible taken as a whole could be confused with the 
 Biblical literature of prose. What could be further from prose 
 than the Book of Psalms ? and what could be further from verse 
 than the Book of Chronicles ? But while in their extremes they 
 are totally different, yet there is a middle region of Biblical style 
 in which verse and prose meet : a high parallelism in which transi- 
 tion can rapidly be made from the one to the other, or even the 
 effects of the two can be combined. It is this overlapping of 
 verse and prose that I call the most important distinguishing 
 feature of Hebrew literature. 
 
 I am the more particular upon this point, because it is one 
 which I think has not received sufficient attention, either in theo- 
 retical discussions or in the editing that seeks to present Biblical 
 literature to the eye in its true structure. The combination of 
 verse and prose to which I am alluding is not the fact that, in 
 such a book as Isaiah, some compositions are found to be verse 
 and some prose. Nor am I referring merely to the hterary effect 
 of a transition in the same composition from a passage of prose to 
 a passage of verse ; such transitions belong to many literatures, 
 and are markedly characteristic of Shakespeare in his later plays. 
 The union of verse and prose can in Biblical literature be more 
 intimate still : what in another language we should have to call a 
 system of verse — for example, the analysis of a single stanza — 
 will in the Hebrew be found to combine prose with verse into a 
 common system. 
 
 A clear grasp of this overlapping of verse and prose is neces- 
 This an addition sary for the appreciation of Hebrew literature. To 
 to the resources gain it may require some effort of mind on the 
 " * '' * part of those who have formed their ideas in litera- 
 
 tures of a different kind. The English reader, for example, is 
 
LITERARY FORMS IN SCRIPTURE US 
 
 accustomed to a verse founded on metrical considerations or 
 rhyme — things foreign to prose ; when he hears of verse ap- 
 proaching prose the phrase is likely to suggest to him weakness 
 and inefficiency. Any such suggestion becomes inapplicable in 
 the case of a language where parallelism makes a common ground 
 between the highest poetry and the highest rhetoric. It is clear, 
 on the contrary, that the literary resources of Hebrew are increased 
 by the feature we are discussing. Hebrew has the power pos- 
 sessed by other languages of producing literary effect with changes 
 from the one form of expression to the other. But it has also a 
 power all its own of maintaining (so to speak) a watershed of 
 high parallelism, from which it can dip towards verse or prose 
 with the utmost subtlety, or can combine in one the delight in 
 freedom, which is the spirit of prose, with a sense of rhythm, 
 which is the foundation of verse. 
 
 My first illustration is from the prophecy of 
 
 ,,,.,.,,. , , Amos 1. 3-ii 
 
 Amos, a book which will impress the most casual 
 
 reader with- the prominence in it of structural beauty. 
 
 Thus saith the Lokd : 
 
 For three transgressions of Damascus, 
 
 Yea, for four, 
 I will not turn away the punishment thereof ; 
 
 because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron : 
 
 But I will send a fire into the house of Hazael, 
 And it shall devour the palaces of Ben-hadad. 
 
 And I will break the bar of Damascus, and cut off the inhabitant from 
 the valley of Aven, and him that holdeth the sceptre from the house 
 of Eden : and the people of Syria shall go into captivity unto Kir, saith 
 the Lord. 
 
 2 
 
 Thus saith the Lord : 
 
 For three transgressions of Gaza, 
 
 Yea, for four, 
 I will not turn away the punishment thereof ; 
 
116 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 because they carried away captive the whole people, to deliver them 
 up to Edom : 
 
 But I will send a fire on the wall of Gaza, 
 And it shall devour the palaces thereof : 
 
 and I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod, and him that holdeth 
 the sceptre from Ashkelon ; and I will turn mine hand against Ekron, 
 and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish, saith the Lord GoD. 
 
 3 
 
 Thus saith the Lord : 
 
 For three transgressions of Tyre, 
 
 Yea, for four, 
 I will not turn away the punishment thereof ; 
 
 because they delivered up the whole people to Edom, and remem- 
 bered not the brotherly covenant : 
 
 But I will send a fire on the wall of Tyre, 
 And it shall devour the palaces thereof. 
 
 4 
 
 Thus saith the Lord : 
 
 For three transgressions of Edom, 
 
 Yea, for four, 
 I will not turn away the punishment thereof ; 
 
 because he did pursue his brother with the sword, and did cast off all 
 pity, and his anger did tear perpetually, and he kept his wrath for 
 ever : 
 
 But I will send a fire upon Teman, 
 
 And it shall devour the palaces of Bozrah. 
 
 5 
 Thus saith the LORD : 
 
 For three transgressions of the children of Ammon, 
 
 Yea, for four, 
 I will not turn away the punishment thereof; 
 
 because they have ripped up the women with child of Cikad, that they 
 might enlarge their border : 
 
LITERARY FORMS IN SCRIPTURE 117 
 
 But I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabbah, 
 And it shall devour the palaces thereof, 
 
 with shouting in the day of battle, with a tempest in the day of the 
 whirlwind : and their king shall go into captivity, he and his princes 
 together, saith the Lord. 
 
 6 
 
 Thus saith the Lord : 
 
 For three transgressions of Moab, 
 ' Yea, for four, 
 
 I will not turn away the punishment thereof ; 
 
 because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime : 
 
 But I will send a fire upon Moab, 
 
 And it shall devour the palaces of Kerioth ; 
 
 and Moab shall die with tumult, with shouting, and with the sound of 
 the trumpet ; and I will cut off the judge from the midst thereof, and 
 wiU slay all the princes thereof with him, saith the Lord. 
 
 7 
 Thus saith the Lord : 
 
 For three transgressions of Judah, 
 
 Yea, for four, 
 I will not turn away the punishment thereof; 
 
 because they have rejected the law of the Lord, and have not kept 
 his statutes, and their lies have caused them to err, after the which 
 their fathers did walk : 
 
 But I will, send a fire upon Judah, 
 
 And it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem. 
 
 Thus saith the Lord : 
 
 For three transgressions of Israel, 
 
 Yea, for four, 
 I will not turn away the punishment thereof; 
 
 because they have sold the righteous for silver, and the needy for a 
 pair of shoes : that pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the 
 poor, and turn aside the way of the meek : and a man and his father 
 will go unto the same maid, to profane my holy name : and they lay 
 
118 FIRST PRIMCtPLES OP BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 themselves down beside every altar upon clothes taken in pledge, and 
 in the house of their God they drink the wine of such as have been 
 fined. Yet destroyed I the Amorite before them, whose height was 
 like the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks ; yet I 
 destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots from beneath. Also 
 I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and led you forty years in 
 the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite. And I raised up 
 of your sons for prophets, and of your young men for Nazirites. Is it 
 not even thus, O ye children of Israel ? saith the Lord. But ye gave 
 the Nazirites wine to drink; and commanded the prophets, saying, 
 Prophesy not. 
 
 Behold I will press you in your place. 
 
 As a cart presseth that is full of sheaves. 
 
 And flight shall perish from the swift. 
 
 And the strong shall not strengthen his force, 
 
 Neither shall the mighty deliver himself : 
 
 Neither shall he stand that handleth the bow ; 
 
 And he that is swift of foot shall not deliver himself : 
 
 Neither shall he that rideth the horse deliver himself : 
 
 And he that is courageous among the mighty 
 
 Shall flee away naked in that day, 
 
 Saith the Lord. 
 
 If we examine this portion of Amos in the spirit of the lower 
 parallelism, we must admit that the passages here printed as prose 
 could be broken up into verses, most of them without straining. 
 But the higher parallelism constructs the whole passage on an 
 extremely simple plan : this prophecy against seven peoples is 
 made up of common formulae expressing ideal transgressions and 
 ideal dooms, together with particular descriptions of actual sins 
 and actual sufferings. It is surely in keeping with such a general 
 plan that the formulae and ideal portions should be found to be in 
 verse, and the particular descriptions in prose. Moreover, when 
 we examine the denunciation of Israel, the final climax up to which 
 all the rest leads, we find that it is just here that the description is 
 most difficult to compel into the form of verse : if this goes best 
 as prose then the parts correlated with it should be prose also. 
 Finally, if we look at the whole for a moment simply as a work of 
 art, we must be struck with the superb elasticity of utterance which 
 
LITERARY FORMS IN SCRIPTURE 119 
 
 Hebrew obtains from the power of combining the two styles : the 
 speaker can at any moment suspend rhythm in order to penetrate 
 with unfettered simplicity of prose into every detail of realism, 
 sure of being able to recover when he pleases the rhythmic march, 
 and the strong tone of idealisation. 
 
 It is possible that the exposition of this subject may be preju- 
 diced by the use of the terms ' verse ' and ' prose.' A reader 
 accustomed to associate the idea of Biblical poetry with parallelism 
 of clauses may be unwilling to class as prose passages in which 
 parallelism obtains almost, if not quite, to the same extent as in 
 other passages presented in the form of verse. I admit at once 
 that the words ' verse ' and ' prose ' are used in this connection 
 only from the inability of one language to express fully the ideas 
 of another. In reality neither style is ' prose,' and neither ' verse ' : 
 the two approach one another with a difference that would be 
 more nearly represented by that between recitative and rhythm in 
 music, or blank verse and lyrics in Greek tragedy. What I am 
 concerned to insist upon is the practical consideration, that the 
 conventional forms of prose and verse are the best modes of con- 
 veying to the eye a recitative and a more rhythmic style, the tran- 
 sitions between which in Biblical writings are a constant source of 
 literary effect. At the same time it is well to point out that 
 parallelism of clauses taken by itself is an insufficient criterion of 
 verse. Such parallelism could hardly be carried further than in 
 some passages of Moses' speeches in Deuteronomy : 
 
 For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land : 
 
 A land of brooks of water, 
 
 Of fountains and depths, 
 
 Springing forth in valleys and hills; 
 
 A land of wheat and barley, 
 
 And vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; 
 
 A land of oil olives and honey; 
 
 A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness. 
 
 Thou shalt not lack anything in it; 
 
 A land whose stones are iron. 
 
 And out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. 
 
120 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 The clauses considered by themselves fully admit this mode of 
 presentation ; yet no one would so present the passage, because 
 the general drift and spirit of the whole makes it clear that these 
 sentences constitute not poetry but oratory. So with regard to 
 citations made in the present connection, it is necessary, besides 
 examining the individual clauses, to study the extract as a whole, 
 and the way its different parts hang together ; when this is done 
 it will often appear that a passage, which in itself would make 
 good verse, will in its relation to the whole be better represented 
 to the eye and ear as the recitative style of which prose form is 
 the symbol. 
 
 My second illustration is from the Watchman prophecies of 
 Isaiah. Here the rhythmic passages convey bursts of vision : 
 convulsions of nature, or the Divine voice heard cheering on his 
 hosts to the overthrow of Babylon. The other style, in the inter- 
 vals of vision, gives the prophet's emotions at what he sees, ex- 
 plains how he comes to have the vision, apostrophises the people 
 whose fall he is foreseeing. 
 
 As whirlwinds in the South sweep through, 
 
 It Cometh from the wilderness, 
 From a terrible land ! 
 
 A grievous vision is declared unto me; the treacherous dealer dealeth 
 treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. 
 
 "Go up, O Elam; 
 
 Besiege, O Media; 
 All the sighing thereof will I make to cease." 
 
 Therefore are my loins filled with anguish; pains have taken hold 
 upon me, as the pangs of a woman in travail : I am pained so that I 
 cannot hear, I am dismayed so that I cannot see. My heart panteth, 
 horror hath affrighted me : the twilight that I desired hath been 
 turned into trembling unto me. 
 
 " They prepare the table, 
 They spread the carpets, 
 They eat, they drink : 
 Rise up, ye princes, anoint the shield." 
 
LITERARY FORMS IN SCRIPTURE 121 
 
 For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set => watchman; let him 
 declare what he seeth: and when he seeth a troop, horsemen in 
 pairs, a troop of asses, a troop of camels, he shall hearken diligently 
 with much heed. And he cried as a lion : 
 
 Lord, 
 
 1 stand continually upon the watch-tower in the day-time, 
 
 And am set in my ward whole nights : 
 And, behold, here cometh a troop of men, 
 Horsemen in pairs. 
 
 And He answered and said, 
 
 " Babylon is fallen, 
 Is fallen; 
 And all the graven images of her gods are broken unto the 
 ground. " 
 
 O thou my threshing, and the corn of my floor : that which I have heard 
 from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto you. 
 
 In this passage two trains of thought, objective and subjective, 
 vision and reflection on the vision, distinct yet bearing one upon 
 the other, are differentiated by a subtle difference of rhythmic 
 expression, such as allows the two to move on side by side and 
 alternate, without either being confused with the other.^ 
 
 It must be admitted that a means of conventionally distinguish- 
 ing the two styles to the eye will be an important aid to inter- 
 pretation. I should like to enforce this point by 
 
 , .,, _,, . , Recognition of 
 
 yet another illustration. The passage is one of the compound 
 
 the Songs of Zion in the great Isaiahan rhapsody : style esssentiai 
 
 in the rhythmic passages Zion speaks and addresses 
 
 the nations, the recitative passages which interrupt make God 
 
 the speaker, declaring (as a basis for the song) how He has thus 
 
 constituted Zion a Witness to the nations. 
 
 ' Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, 
 ' And he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat; 
 
 1 In this and the next illustration the reader should read the prose passages 
 by themselves, and note their connectedness apart from the interrupting verse 
 passages. 
 
122 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 ' Yea, come, buy wine and milk, 
 
 ' Without money and without price. 
 
 ' Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? 
 
 ' And your labour for that which satisfieth not ? 
 ' Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, 
 
 ' And let your soul delight itself in fatness. 
 
 ' Incline your ear, and come unto me; 
 
 ' Hear, and your soul shall live ; 
 ' And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, 
 
 ' Even the sure mercies of David.' 
 
 Behold, I have given him for a witness to the peoples, and a leader 
 and commander to the peoples. Behold, thou shalt call a nation that 
 thou knowest not, and a nation that knew not thee shall run unto thee, 
 because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he 
 hath glorified thee. 
 
 ' Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, 
 
 ' Call ye upon him while he is near : 
 ' Let the wicked forsake his way, 
 
 ' And the unrighteous man his thoughts; 
 
 ' And let him return unto the Lord, 
 
 ' And he will have mercy upon him; 
 'And to our God, 
 
 'For he will abundantly pardon.' 
 
 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my 
 ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, 
 so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your 
 thoughts. For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, 
 and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring 
 forth and bud, and givfeth seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so 
 shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth : it shall not return 
 unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall 
 prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. 
 
 ' For ye shall go out with joy, 
 
 'And be led forth with peace; 
 'The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, 
 
 ' And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 
 
LITERARY FORMS Ilf SCRIPTURE l23 
 
 ' Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, 
 
 ' And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree : 
 
 ' And it shall be to the Lord for a name, 
 
 ' For an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.' 
 
 Here, then, the two forms differentiate two speakers. The verse 
 passages, read by themselves, make a complete hymn, in which 
 Zion calls to the nations, exercising her new prerogative of admit- 
 ting them to the covenant of David : not only does the hymn as 
 a whole suggest this interpretation, but in particular, the phrase 
 of the fifth stanza, 'And to our God,' is decisive as to the speaker. 
 On the other hand, the recitative passages connect together as the 
 Divine speech which proclaims Zion God's witness. Even details 
 of exegesis are affected by this treatment of the passage. It is 
 now easy to see how the opening of the last stanza but one, 'For 
 ye shall go out with joy,' connects on to the preceding verse pas- 
 sage, which invited the nations to return. On the other hand, in 
 the sentence 'For vay thoughts are not your thoughts,' t\\efor unites 
 what follows, not to the words immediately preceding, but to the 
 last prose passage ; the thought that God's mysterious work is as 
 sure as the operations of nature emphasizes, not the promise of 
 pardon to the nations, but the mysterious elevation of afflicted Zion 
 to the glorious position of a witness to the peoples of the world.' 
 
 The citation just made from Isaiah is a type of a class — and a 
 very large class — of passages in the Bible. In all of them we 
 have a Divine speech, continuous in thought, interrupted by 
 rhythmic passages not spoken by Deity, but to be understood as 
 impersonal lyrics. From the frequent recurrence of this structure 
 in a particular kind of prophecy, hereafter to be _^ 
 'described, it may be called the 'Doom form. I 
 believe that a clear grasp of this, to us unfamiliar, structure is so 
 important for Biblical interpretation that I feel inclined to let the 
 reader at this point watch it upon a more extended scale. I pro- 
 
 ^For a similar case compare Jeremiah's Doom of Babylon [pages 195-211 in 
 the Modern Reader's Bible] : while in the piose passages the ' I ' is the Divine 
 Being, at one point of the verse the ' me ' is clearly Zion or Jerusalem [page 207]. 
 
124 FIRST PRINCIPLES OP BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 ceed to cite the whole Book of Zephaniah, the structure of which 
 is entirely in the Doom form. If what is here presented as prose 
 be read by itself it will be found to make a continuous denuncia- 
 tion put into the mouth of Deity ; this denunciation is at intervals 
 interrupted by snatches of verse, not words of God, but lyric com- 
 ments upon the Divine word at emphatic points. 
 
 THE WORD OF THE LORD 
 
 which came unto 
 
 ZEPHANIAH 
 
 the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, 
 
 the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah, 
 
 in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, 
 
 king of Judah. 
 
 I will utterly consume all things from off the face of the ground, saith 
 the Lord. I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls 
 of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumbling-blocks with 
 the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the face of the ground, 
 saith the Lord. And I will stretch out mine hand upon Judah, and 
 upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the remnant 
 of Baal from this place, and the name of the Chemarim with the 
 priests; and them that worship the host of heaven upon the house- 
 tops; and them that worship, which swear to the Lord and swear by 
 Malcam; and them that are turned back from following the LORD; 
 and those that have not sought the LoRDj nor inquired after him. 
 
 Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord God : 
 
 For the Day of the Lord is at hand : 
 For the Lord hath prepared a sacrifice. 
 
 He hath sanctified his guests ! 
 
 And it shall come to pass in the day of the Lord's sacrifice, that I will 
 punish the princes, and the king's sons, and all such as are clothed 
 with foreign apparel. And in that day I will punish all those that leap 
 over the threshold, which fill their master's house with violence and 
 deceit. And in that day, saith the Lord, there shall be the noise of 
 a cry from the fish gate, and an howling from the second quarter, and 
 a great crashing from the hills. 
 
LITERARY FORMS IN SCRIPTURE 125 
 
 Howl, ye inhabitants of The Mortar, 
 
 For all the merchant people are undone : 
 
 All they that were laden with silver are cut off. 
 
 And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with 
 candles; and I will punish the men that are settled on their lees, that 
 - say in their heart, The LORD will not do good, neither will he do evil. 
 And their wealth shall become a spoil, and their houses a desolation; 
 yea, they shall build houses, but shall not inhabit them; and they shall 
 plant vineyards, but shall not drink the wine thereof. 
 
 The great Day of the Lord is near : 
 
 It is near and hasteth greatly ! 
 Even the voice of the Day of the LORD ; 
 
 The mighty man crieth there bitterly ! 
 
 That Day is a day of Wrath, 
 
 A day of trouble and distress, 
 A day of wasteness and desolation, 
 
 A day of darkness and gloominess, 
 
 A day of clouds and thick darkness, 
 A day of the trumpet and alarm 
 Against the fenced cities. 
 
 And against the high battlements ! 
 
 And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind 
 men, because they have sinned against the Lord : and their blood 
 shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as dung. Neither their 
 silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the 
 Lord's wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his 
 jealousy : for he shall make an end, yea, a terrible end, of all them 
 that dwell in the land. 
 
 Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, 
 O nation that hath no shame; 
 
 Before the decree bring forth, 
 
 Before the day pass as the chaff, 
 
 Before the fierce anger of the Lord come upon you. 
 
 Before the Day of the Lord's Anger come upon you. 
 
 Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, 
 Which have wrought his judgement; 
 
126 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 Seek righteousness, 
 
 Seek meekness : 
 
 It may be ye shall be hid 
 
 In the Day of the Lord's Anger. 
 
 For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation : they shall drive 
 out Ashdod at the noonday, and Ekron shall be rooted up. 
 
 Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea coast, 
 The nation of the Cherethites ! 
 
 The word of the Lord is against you, O Canaan, the land of the 
 Philistines; I will destroy thee that there shall be no inhabitant. And 
 the sea coast shall be pastures, with cottages for shepherds and folds 
 for flocks. And the coast shall be for the remnant of the house of 
 Judah; they shall feed their flocks thereupon : in the houses of Ashke- 
 lon shall they lie down in the evening; for the Lord their God shall 
 visit Lhem, and bring again their captivity. I have heard the reproach 
 of Moab, and the revilings of the children of Ammon, wherewith they 
 have reproached my people, and magnified themselves against their 
 border. Therefore as I live, saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, 
 Surely Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomor- 
 rah, a. possession of nettles, and saltpits, and a perpetual desolation : 
 the residue of my people shall spoil them, and" the remnant of my 
 nation shall inherit them. This shall they have for their pride, because 
 they have reproached and magnified themselves against the people of 
 the Lord of hosts. The Lord will be terrible unto them : for he vrill 
 famish all the gods of the earth; and men shall worship him, every one 
 from his place, even all the isles of the nations. Ye Ethiopians also, 
 ye shall be slain by my sword. And he will stretch out his hand 
 against the north, and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a 
 desolation, and dry like the wilderness. And herds shall lie down in 
 the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations : both the pelican and 
 the porcupine shall lodge in the chapiters thereof: their voice shall 
 sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds : for he hath 
 laid bare the cedar work. 
 
 This is the joyous city, 
 That dwelt carelessly. 
 That said in her heart, I am. 
 And there is none else beside me : 
 
 How is she become a desolation, 
 
LITERARY FORMS IN SCRIPTURE 127 
 
 A place for beasts to lie down in ! 
 Every one that passeth by her shall hiss, 
 And wag his hand. 
 
 Woe to her that is rebellious and polluted, 
 To the oppressing city ! 
 
 She obeyed not the voice; 
 
 She received not correction; 
 
 She trusted not in the Lord ; 
 
 She drew not near to her God. 
 
 Her princes in the midst of her are roaring lions; 
 
 Her judges are evening wolves; 
 
 They leave nothing till the morrow. 
 
 Her prophets are light and treacherous persons : 
 
 Her priests have profaned the sanctuary, 
 
 They have done violence to the law. 
 The Lord in the midst of her is righteous; 
 He will not do iniquity; 
 
 Every morning doth he bring his judgement to light. 
 He faileth not; 
 But the unjust knoweth no shame. 
 
 I have cut off nations, their battlements are desolate; I have made 
 their streets waste, that none passeth by; their cities are destroyed, 
 so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant. I said, Surely 
 thou wilt fear me, thou wilt receive correction; so her dwelling should 
 not be cut off, according to all that I have appointed concerning her : 
 but they rose early and corrupted all their doings. Therefore wait ye 
 for me, saith the Lord, until the day that I rise up to the prey : for 
 my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the 
 kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce 
 anger; for all the earth shall be devoured wdth the fire of my jealousy. 
 For then will I turn to the peoples a pure language, that they may 
 all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent. 
 From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliants, even the daughter 
 of my dispersed, shall bring mine offering. In that day shalt thou not 
 be ashamed for all thy doings, wherein thou hast transgressed against 
 me : for then I will take away out of the midst of thee thy proudly 
 exulting ones, and thou shalt no more be haughty in my holy mountain. 
 But I will leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and 
 they shall trust in the name of the Lord. The remnant of Israel shall 
 not do iniquity, nor speak has; neither shall a deceitful tongue be 
 
128 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 found in their mouth : for they shall feed and lie down, and none shall 
 make them afraid. 
 
 Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; 
 
 Be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. 
 
 The Lord hath taken away thy judgements. 
 
 He hath cast out thine enemy : 
 
 The king of Israel, even the LXJKD, is in the midst of thee : 
 
 Thou shalt not fear evil any more. 
 
 In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not : 
 O Zion, let not thine hands be slack. 
 
 The Lord thy God is in the midst of thee, 
 
 A mighty one who will save : 
 
 He will rejoice over thee with joy, he will rest in his love. 
 
 He will joy over thee with singing. 
 
 I will gather them that sorrow for the solemn assembly, who were of 
 thee : to whom the burden upon her was a reproach. Behold, at that 
 time I will deal with all them that afflict thee : and I will save her that 
 halteth, and gather her that was driven away; and I will make them 
 a praise and a name, whose shame hath been in all the earth. At that 
 time will I bring you in, and at that time will I gather you : for I will 
 make you a name and a praise among all the peoples of the earth, 
 when I bring again your captivity before your eyes, saith the LoRD.^ 
 
 This overlapping of verse and prose may then be regarded as 
 the foremost of the characteristics that distinguish Hebrew among 
 the great literatures of the world. As we proceed with our survey 
 of Scripture we shall meet this phenomenon at every step. It 
 will make easy to understand the spontaneous effusions of poetry 
 in blessings and curses in the midst of prose narrative ; it will ex- 
 plain how, in Deuteronomy, only a slight step is necessary between 
 
 1 For the reader who may desire to study this compound style, I suggest the 
 following references [to the Modern Reader's Bible]. For the Doom form proper: 
 Isaiah III; IV. i, iii, iv; Zion Redeemed \. Obadiah : Nahum (sections 3, s)l 
 Zephaniah; The Kin^ of Peace [Minor Prophets volume, page 205]. yeremiah 
 II. v; VI. iv, V, vi; X. ii, iv, v, vi, vii, x. For the same form, though 
 
 not in Dooms: Zion Redeemed Prelude; III ; IV; V. Other passages: 
 
 /ram/i I. iii, iv, v; II. i, iv; IV. vii, x, xii, xiii; V. iii, vii. yeremiah 'K.v'm. Ezekiel 
 I. vi ; V. ii, vi ; VI. vii. Joel ii. Micah i. Habakkuh ii. 
 
LITERARY FORMS IN SCRIPTVRE 129 
 
 oratory and song. In light of this it will no longer appear strange 
 that the Bible should not contain verse epics like those of other 
 nations : its stories are simply attracted to the prose form of the 
 history they are used to illustrate. We shall have to see how the 
 proverb couplet is a meeting point for a Wisdom hterature in verse 
 and prose, the respective forms of which exactly correspond each 
 to each. In Ecdesiastes we shall see how a theory can be 
 stated in the form of a sonnet, and discussed in philosophic 
 prose ; how again a prose exhortation can find a climax in the 
 most poetic of sonnets. For what affects the two styles we call 
 verse and prose will also react upon the varied forms of poetry 
 and prose with which those styles are usually allied : hence it need 
 not be surprising that in Job, as we have already seen, all the six 
 main forms of literature are illustrated within a single book ; in the 
 prophetic rhapsody, as we are to see later, all six can be fused 
 together into one. Other languages may surpass Hebrew as vehi- 
 cles for precision of thought. But the harraonisation of recitative 
 and rhythm, on the common ground of high parallelism, has pro- 
 vided for the Bible the most elastic medium of expression which 
 the world's literatures contain. 
 
Book Second 
 
 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 V. The Biblical Ode 133 
 
 VL Songs, Elegies, and Meditations .... 158 
 
 VII. Monodies, Dramatic Lyrics, and Ritual Psalms . 181 
 
 VIII. Lyric Idyl: 'Solomon's Song' 207 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE BIBLICAL ODE 
 
 The Ode cannot be exactly defined. Etymologically the word 
 
 is equivalent to ' song ' ; usage seems to have given it the sense 
 
 of song far excellence : the lyric poetry that is furthest 
 
 , -- , ,■ , / The Ode 
 
 removed from the ordmary speech, and nearest to pure 
 
 music. If ' flight ' be the regular image for the movement of 
 
 lyric poetry, then the Ode is the song that can soar highest and 
 
 remain longest on the wing. Speaking generally, we may say that 
 
 it is distinguished from other lyrics by greater elaboration, and 
 
 (so to speak) structural consciousness. Such a literary form will 
 
 be discussed best by particular examples, and a commentary 
 
 upon the Odes of the Bible will introduce us to lyric modes of 
 
 movement in general. 
 
 It is natural to commence with Deborah's Song. This is the 
 most elaborate of Biblical odes, and it exercised considerable 
 influence upon succeeding poetry. There is an- 
 other circumstance which makes it particularly juagggy^ °°^ 
 valuable to the literary student. It is a narrative 
 poem, and the story it narrates is in the previous chapter of 
 'yudges given in the form of history. A careful comparison of 
 the fourth and fifth chapters of that book will enable us to study 
 the differences between lyric narrative and narrative as it appears 
 in history. 
 
 Few portions of the Old Testament are more familiar, or more 
 frequently discussed, than the incidents that enter into Deborah's 
 Song. Yet I think there are important elements in the story 
 
 133 
 
134 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 which are by no means generally understood. The first point that 
 I will put amounts to no more than a conjecture. The history 
 
 opens by saying that Israel fell under the dominion 
 The Matter oi ^ j^^^j^^ YvciS of Canaan, and that he " mightily 
 Deborah's Song ■' , rr^i , ,, 
 
 oppressed" them for twenty years. Though the 
 
 Book of yudges is full of similar subjugations of Israel, that par- 
 ticular phrase is nowhere else used ; the suggestion is that there 
 was something different in kind between the tyranny of Jabin and 
 Sisera and other tyrannies. May it be that this oppression was of 
 an indescribable nature, affecting person as well as property, — 
 such wanton violence as appears in a later chapter of yudges to 
 have brought all Israel in arms against a city of Ben- 
 
 ap erxx jamin? If this conjecture were adopted, it would 
 
 give significance to the striking phrase used by the song to 
 describe the misery of the oppression, — that " the highways were 
 unoccupied and the travellers walked through byways." It would 
 explain how it was that the tyranny was borne without resistance 
 until " a mother in Israel " roused the people against it. It would 
 further enable us to understand how a prophetess could exult in 
 the strange decree of Providence by which the instrument of a 
 cruel and lustful tyranny met his doom at the hands of a woman. 
 
 My next point is a matter of certainty. It is the relation to 
 
 the story of Heber the Kenite, the husband of Jael. The Kenites 
 
 were a tribe who had joined Israel in the wilderness ; they had 
 
 become a part of the chosen nation in all respects except one, — 
 
 that they still retained their life in tents, when the Israelites had 
 
 settled down in villages and towns. But we are told in one verse 
 
 of the narrative that there was peace between the oppress- 
 ive 17 
 
 ing tyrant and the house of Heber the Kenite ; another 
 
 verse tells us how Heber had separated himself from the other 
 Kenites, and "pitched his tent as far as the oak in 
 Zaanannim, which is by Kedesh," that is, close to the 
 
 muster ground of Barak ; and the verse that follows says, "And they 
 told Sisera that Barak the son of Abinoam was gone up 
 to mount Tabor." Though the phrasing in this last verse 
 
THE BIBLICAL ODE 135 
 
 is general, yet when the three verses are taken together the signifi- 
 cance is clear enough : that Heber the Kenite was a spy in the 
 pay of Jabin and Sisera, and that he had shifted his tent for no 
 reason but to keep a watch upon the movements of Israel, and 
 report them to the enemy. But there would seem to have been 
 one in his tent who had a heart to feel with the mothers of Israel ; 
 as a sheikh's wife Jael may have been unable to hinder her hus- 
 band's plans, but when the turn of events had come, and Sisera 
 approached her as a fugitive, there was a sudden opportunity 
 before her to strike a blow on the side which she had never 
 deserted. Of course her act remains a treacherous violation of 
 hospitality. But it makes some difference to our estimate of her 
 that it was treachery done to redress her husband's treachery on 
 the opposite side. 
 
 It is worth while, again, to make clear the military situation. 
 Jabin's power lay in his " nine hundred chariots of iron " : against 
 such a force the half armed infantry of Israel would be almost 
 useless. Their only hope lay in a surprise ; and Barak's plan 
 seems to have been to arrange a quiet muster of separate tribes 
 moving towards the high ground by Kedesh, from which they 
 might watch for a favourable moment and make a rapid descent. 
 This was frustrated by the treachery of Heber, and Sisera, fore- 
 warned, poured his full forces on to the plain of Esdraelon, which 
 afforded the best possible ground for the evolutions of chariots. 
 Humanly speaking, there was no hope for the Israelites. What 
 changed the situation we learn from a phrase of the song : " the 
 stars in their courses fought against Sisera." In other words, 
 a thunderstorm and its torrents of rain produced the effect often 
 described by travellers in Palestine : in an astonishingly brief 
 period the river Kishon would overflow, and the whole plain be 
 flooded ; in the verses of the song we can almost he^r 
 the horses plunging about in the morass. This made it 
 possible for the whole of the formidable army to be exterminated 
 in a single day. This further explains the bitterness of the 
 curse denounced on Meroz — some city of Israel on the line of 
 
136 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 the enemy's retreat : where everything depended on destroying 
 the army before they could extricate themselves from the raud, 
 even hesitation might amount to the blackest treachery. 
 
 With the incident thus fully before us we are in a position to 
 make our comparison of the two narratives. In the history of 
 the fourth chapter, as we might expect, we find 
 Lyric Narmtive ^^ narrative connected and continuous. It com- 
 mences by describing the oppression ; it proceeds 
 to tell how Deborah arose and called for resistance ; it gives with 
 some minuteness the negotiations by which Deborah secured Barak 
 for her commander-in-chief. We next hear of the muster at Kedesh; 
 the treachery of Heber is then implied rather than directly stated. 
 The battle follows, and the utter rout ; then the history becomes 
 detailed as it deals with the remarkable circumstance of the assas- 
 sination of Sisera by Jael. 
 
 When we turn to the song, we seem to find this connectedness 
 and continuity of narrative avoided, and the story touched only in 
 selected parts. I am tempted to convey the differ- 
 Concentraton dice by an illustration. A man watches some 
 architectural mass, like the Church of St. Mark at 
 Venice, in the changing light of evening. As long as full daylight 
 is in the sky he sees clearly the vivid colouring, and the architec- 
 tural details, and the numerous gilded points and spiracles with 
 which the whole is crowned. With the waning light he loses the 
 colour ; then the carving and relief sinks into a uniform surface. 
 He seems to be losing the whole, until a point is reached when 
 there is just enough light left to catch the gilded crosses and pin- 
 nacles : then instead of being lost the whole edifice has come back 
 to him in an outHne of luminous points. This seems to me to 
 afford an analogue for lyric narrative. The daylight view, in which 
 the whole surface is visible without break, represents the continuity 
 of the history ; we lose that in the song, but there the story comes 
 to us in a selection of points every one of which is luminous. 
 First, the oppression is painted by two picturesque strokes : the 
 deserted highways, the vain search for weapons. All the negotia- 
 
THE BIBLICAL ODE 137 
 
 tions between Deborah and Barak are omitted, and the next point 
 of narrative is the muster, made luminous by the enumeration of 
 the tribes that refused, and the tribes that came zealously, and the 
 tribe that changed its mind. Nothing more follows until we reach 
 the battle and rout, all brought out in a few bold strokes — kings 
 coming to fight, the stars fighting against them ; horses plunging 
 in the flooded plain ; the sudden bitterness when Meroz proves 
 unequal to the crisis. In the matter of the assassination even the 
 history was detailed. But here again there was a logical connect- 
 edness in the details : the warrior arriving, making provision 
 against surprise, and then submitting to sleep and so to murder. 
 But in the lyric we leap from the hospitable matron to the mur- 
 deress taking the nail and hammer ; what remains is so vivid that 
 we can count the blows and watch the writhings, while the purely 
 imaginary detail of the warrior's household waiting his return is 
 drawn out at full length. This concentration of a whole story into 
 a few luminous details gives us our first note of lyric movement. 
 
 A second distinguishing feature of the song is the way in which 
 the narrative is delayed or broken by refrains, or by what are called 
 ' apostrophes,' that is, passages in which the singers 
 'turn aside' from the story to address heaven, or i^eriuption" 
 the bystanders, or one another. Three lines of 
 refrain, four of prelude, and a long apostrophe to God, are inter- 
 posed before the narrative even commences. Then when the 
 desolation of the country under Jabin's oppression has been told, 
 there is a break, filled up by the refrain recurring in an enlarged 
 form. When the mustering of the tribes is reached, after a single 
 line there is an abrupt departure from the narrative, and the singers 
 occupy a quatrain with cheering one another on to their task. It 
 is clear that these digressions are part of the artistic setting to the 
 story. When water flows on smoothly without any check it may 
 be a useful canal or drain ; but the poetic brook must have its 
 course delayed by many a winding, and interrupted by the rocks 
 over which it foams. We may then add interruption to the devices 
 of lyric movement. 
 
138 LYRIC POETRY Of THE BIBLE 
 
 A third feature of the song lies upon the surface : its structure 
 is such as to imply the antiphonal performance in which one 
 singer or set of singers is answered by another. I 
 formance* ^°'" must dissent however from the usual arrangement 
 which divides DeboraKs Song as between solo and 
 chorus. It seems clear that the nature of the antiphony is given 
 by the first verse of the chapter — "Then sang Deborah and 
 Barali " : not that the two individuals sang a duet, but the ode 
 would be performed by a Chorus of Women with Deborah leading 
 them, and a Chorus of Men led by Barak. When the poem is 
 structurally examined in the light of this suggestion, not only do 
 the divisions easily present themselves, but a number of coinci- 
 dences confirm the suggestion. Thus the Men lead off with a 
 description — in the rhythm of elegy — of the oppression ; 
 Deborah and the Women break in (with a return to ordi- 
 nary rhythm) at the words, " I Deborah arose." When the singers 
 bid publish the tidings of victory, the Men call to those 
 that ride or walk by the way, or sit on carpets as public 
 officials, — that is, they call to men ; the answering Chorus of 
 Women would spread the news " in the places of drawing 
 water," the natural spots where women would gather and 
 chat. In another passage, an apostrophe of four hnes, there is 
 one couplet of the Men cheering on Deborah, and another 
 of the Women cheering on Barak. The mustering of the 
 tribes divides itself line by line : if the first Hne be given to the 
 Women, as relating to Ephraim the locality of Deborah, 
 the fourth line falls to the Men and it mentions Zebulun, 
 the tribe of Barak ; the next line (of the Women) connects Issachar 
 with Deborah, and the line that follows (and would fall to the Men) 
 connects the same tribe with Barak. Then, in the climax, 
 the Men elaborately picture the actual murder of Sisera, 
 and the Women add the feminine touch of the mother and her 
 ladies awaiting the dead warrior's return. It is hardly 
 necessary to dilate upon the artistic effect of a narrative 
 thus given to us from one side and another alternately. One 
 
THE BIBLICAL ODB 
 
 139 
 
 15-16 
 
 single antiphonal effect may be instanced. The great pastoral 
 tribe of Reuben was amongst the defaulters. This is brought out 
 by the Men first painting Reuben's ' resolves ' ; then the 
 Women interpose a sarcastic question as to inaction ; then 
 the Men repeat their former couplet with the change of a single 
 word to express Reuben's prudent second thoughts. Finally, the 
 antiphonal effect is varied by the passages in which the two 
 choruses sing together. This is especially powerful at the close, 
 where, after the story itself has been drawn out by the two bodies 
 of singers to its last detail, there is a sudden break, and both 
 choruses unite in the apostrophe, " So perish all thine enemies, 
 O Lord ! " 
 
 DEBORAH'S SONG 
 REFRAIN 
 Men. For that the leaders took the lead in Israel — 
 Women. For that the people offered themselves willingly — 
 Tutli. Bless ye the LORD ! 
 
 Prelude 
 Men. Hear, O ye kings — 
 Women. Give ear, O ye princes — 
 
 Men. I, even I, will sing unto the Lord — 
 
 Women. I will sing praise to the Lord, the God of Israel. 
 
 Apostrophe 
 
 Tutti. Lord, when thou wentest forth out of Seir, 
 
 When thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, 
 
 The earth trembled, the heavens also dropped. 
 Yea, the clouds dropped water. 
 
 The mountains flowed down at the presence of the LORD, 
 
 Even yon Sinai at the presence of the Lord, the God of Israel. 
 
 I. The Desolation 
 
 Men. In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, 
 
 In the days of Jael, 
 The highways were unoccupied, 
 
 And the travellers walked through byways ; 
 The rulers ceased in Israel, 
 
 They ceased — 
 
140 
 
 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Women. Until that I, Deborah, arose, 
 
 That I arose a mother in Israel. 
 They chose new gods ; 
 
 Then was war in the gates : 
 Was there a shield or spear seen 
 
 Among forty thousand in Israel ? 
 
 REFRAm ENLARGED 
 Men. My heart is toward the governors of Israel — 
 
 Women. Ye that offered yourselves willingly among the people — 
 Tutti. Bless ye the LORD ! 
 
 Men. Tell of it, ye that ride on white asses. 
 
 Ye that sit on rich carpets, 
 
 And ye that walk by the way : — 
 Women. Far from the noise of archers, 
 
 In the places of drawing water : — 
 Tutti. There shall they rehearse the righteous acts of the LORD, 
 
 Even the righteous acts of his rule in Israel, 
 
 II. The Muster 
 Tutti. Then the people of 'the Lord went down to the gates — 
 
 {Men. Awake, awake, Deborah, 
 
 Awake, awake, utter a song : — 
 Women. Arise, Barak, 
 
 And lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam.') 
 
 Tutti. Then came down a remnant of the nobles, 
 
 The people of the Lord came down for me against the mighty. 
 
 Women. Out of Ephraim came down they whose root is in Amalek — 
 
 Men. After thee, Benjamin, among thy peoples — 
 
 Women. Out of Machir came down governors — 
 
 Men. And out of Zebulun they that handle the marshal's staff — 
 
 Women. And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah — 
 
 Men. As was Issachar, so was Barak : 
 
 Tutti. Into the valley they rushed forth at his feet. 
 
 Men. By the watercourses of Reuben 
 
 There were great resolves of heart. 
 Women. Why satest thou among the sheepfolds. 
 
 To hear the pipings for the flocks? 
 Men. At the watercourses of Reuben 
 
 There were great searchings of heart ! 
 
THE BIBLICAL ODE 
 
 141 
 
 Women. Gilead abode beyond Jordan — 
 
 Men. And Dan, why did he remain in ships? — 
 
 Women. Asher sat still at the haven of the sea, 
 
 And abode by his creeks. 
 Men. Zebulun was a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death, 
 
 And Naphtali, upon the high places of the field. 
 
 III. The Battle and Rout 
 
 Strophe 
 Men. The kings came and fought ; 
 
 Then fought the kings of Canaan, 
 In Taanach by the waters of Megiddo : — 
 They took no gain of money ! 
 
 Antistrophe 
 
 Women. They fought from heaven, 
 
 The stars in their courses fought against Sisera. 
 The river Kishon swept them away, — 
 That ancient river, the river Kishon ! 
 
 Strophe 
 
 Men. O my soul, march on with strength ! 
 
 Then did the horsehoofs stamp 
 By reason of the pransings, 
 
 The pransings of their strong ones. 
 
 Antistrophe 
 
 Women. Curse ye, Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, 
 Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof ; 
 Because they came not to the help of the Lord, 
 To the help of the Lord against the mighty ! 
 
 IV. The Retribution 
 
 Strophe 
 
 Men. Blessed above women shall Jael be, the wife of Heber the Kenite, 
 
 Blessed shall she be above women in the tent ! 
 He asked water, and she gave him milk ; 
 ghe brought him butter in a lordly dish. 
 
142 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 She put her hand to the nail, 
 
 And her righ't hand to the workman's hammer ; 
 And with the hammer she smote Sisera. 
 
 She smote through his head, 
 
 Yea, she pierced and struck through his temples. 
 At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay : 
 At her feet he bowed, he fell : 
 
 Where he bowed, there he fell down dead ! 
 
 Antistrophe 
 
 Women. Through the window she looked forth, and cried, 
 
 The mother of Sisera, through the lattice, 
 " Why is his chariot so long in coming? 
 
 Why tarry the wheels of his chariots?" 
 Her wise ladies answered her. 
 
 Yea, she returned answer to herself, 
 " Have they not found. 
 Have they not divided the spoil? 
 
 A damsel, two damsels to every man ; 
 To Sisera a spoil of divers colours, 
 A spoil of divers colours of embroidery. 
 
 Of divers colours of embroidery on both sides, on the necks 
 of the spoil?" 
 
 Apostrophe 
 
 Tutti. So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord : 
 
 But let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth 
 forth in his might ! 
 
 The ode most nearly resembling this of Deborah is the Song 
 of Moses and Miriam at the Red Sea. Here again the mode of 
 Song of Moses performance is exactly indicated. The first verse 
 ana Miriam says, " Then sang Mqses and the children of Israel 
 
 this song"; the twentieth verse adds: "And 
 Miriam, the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in 
 her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels 
 and with dances. And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the 
 Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously ; the horse and his rider 
 
THE BIBLICAL ODE 143 
 
 hath he thrown into the sea." The natural interpretation of these 
 verses taken together is that the words last quoted are a refrain, 
 and to be sung by Miriam and the Women ; while the body of the 
 Song was for Moses and the Men. The refrain would be repeated 
 at the close of each stanza. The structure suggests a prelude and 
 three stanzas, each of which commences with an apostrophe to 
 God, and then deals with the subject of the deliverance. A further 
 examination of these strophes reveals augmenting, 
 as a mode of lyric movement ; not only do the ^^ ^e^nyn ^ "* 
 successive strophes increase in the number of their 
 lines, but they bring out the incident with more and more fulness. 
 The first merely refers to the event : the hosts cast into the sea 
 and sinking hke a stone. The second stanza becomes a picture 
 full of powerful details : floods standing on heaps and depths con- 
 gealed, the enemy already counting his spoils, the single blast of 
 wind, and the sinking like lead. But when the incident is touched 
 by the third strophe we have, not details, but consequences. The 
 event is stretched to take in all that will follow from it : the guid- 
 ing through the wilderness thus wonderfully opened to them, the 
 terror faUing upon the inhabitants of Canaan and the kings that 
 lie in the way, the bringing in and planting in the mountain of 
 inheritance — all poetically realised in the moment of this the first 
 step. To describe the movement of the whole ode we may say 
 that the prelude introduces the great deliverance with a shock 
 that is like a plunge, and the augmenting strophes follow like rip- 
 ples widening to the furthest bound that imagination can go. 
 
 SONG OF MOSES AND MIRIAM 
 Prelude 
 
 Men and\ I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously ; 
 Women. > The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. 
 
 The Lord is my strength and song, 
 
 And he is become my salvation : 
 This is my God, and I will praise him; 
 
 My father's God, and I will exalt him. 
 
144 LYJilC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Men. The Lord is a man of war : 
 
 The Lord is his name. 
 Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea : 
 
 And his chosen captains are sunk in the Red Sea. 
 The deeps cover them : 
 
 They went down into the depths like a stone. 
 Women. Sing ye to the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously ; 
 The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. 
 
 Men. Thy right hand, O Lord, is glorious in power, 
 
 Thy right hand, O Lord, dasheth in pieces the enemy. 
 And in the greatness of thine excellency thou overthrowest them 
 that rise up against thee : 
 Thou sendest forth thy wrath, it consumeth them as stubble. 
 And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were piled up, 
 The floods stood upright as an heap ; 
 The deeps were congealed in the heart of the sea. 
 The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the 
 spoil ; 
 My lust shall be satisfied upon them; 
 I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. 
 Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them : 
 They sank as lead in the mighty waters. 
 Women. Sing ye to the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously ; 
 The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. 
 
 Men. Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? 
 
 Who is like thee, glorious in holiness. 
 
 Fearful in praises, doing wonders ? 
 Thou stretchedst out thy right hand, 
 
 The earth swallowed them. 
 Thou in thy mercy hast led the people which thou hast redeemed : 
 
 Thou hast guided them in thy strength to thy holy habitation. 
 The peoples have heard, they tremble : 
 
 Pangs have taken hold on the inhabitants of Philistia. 
 Then were the dukes of Edom amazed; 
 
 The mighty men of Moab, trembling taketh hold upon them : 
 
THE BIBLICAL ODE 14S 
 
 All the inhabitants of Canaan are melted away. 
 Terror and dread falleth upon them ; 
 
 By the greatness of thine arm they are as still as a stone; 
 Till thy people pass over, O Lord, 
 Till the people pass over, which thou hast purchased. 
 
 Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine 
 inheritance, 
 The place, O Lokd, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in. 
 The sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established. 
 
 The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. 
 Women, Sing ye to the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously ; 
 The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. 
 
 The ode next to be considered is amongst the most powerful 
 
 of all sacred lyrics : but totally unlike the two 
 
 , ' . , ... , Psalm Ixxviii 
 
 already reviewed. It is the seventy-eighth psalm. 
 
 As to its subject, it is sufficient at this point to say that it is a sur- 
 vey of the history of Israel, leading up to the call of Judah to be 
 the Lord's people now that Northern Israel has fallen away. The 
 movement of the ode is an expansion of a type of parallelism 
 already mentioned : it is one that is specially characteristic of Bibli- 
 cal poetry, and we shall meet with it again and again. 
 It may be called the pendulum movement: the uf-nt""" 
 course of thought in a poem seems to swing back- 
 wards and forwards between two ideas or two phases of a subject. 
 The psalm has an unusually long prelude. It is a com- 
 mon device in music to prepare the way for some great 
 theme by a succession of trumpet tones, the reiteration of which 
 keeps the mind in a state of expectation that helps to emphasize 
 the theme when it comes. By a similar effect in this prelude the 
 psalmist announces a law, a parable, sayings of old, traditions from 
 fathers to be told to children, that they may tell it to the next 
 generation, that these may set their hopes in God, and not be, as 
 their fathers, a rebellious generation whose spirit was not stedfast 
 with God. The phrase " not stedfast " seems the point leading 
 to the regular movement of the poem and its alternating stanzas. 
 The thought sways throughout the rest of the ode between two 
 
146 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 ideas : on one hand we see bursts of Divine Energy in behalf of 
 Israel; on the other hand we have the dead weight of human 
 
 dulness and frailty by which the Divine purposes 
 9-II, Frailty , , ' , , , ,- 
 
 are frustrated. First, a short stanza puts the defec- 
 tion of Northern Israel under the metaphor of battalions deserting 
 on the field of battle ; " so the children of Ephraim " deserted 
 the covenant and forgat God's wondrous works. At the words 
 
 " wondrous works " the pendulum of movement 
 
 12-16, Divine swings to the other side ; we have an outburst of 
 Energy ° 
 
 Divine Energy, the energy of Deliverance. We 
 
 hear how he piled up the waters of the Red Sea in a heap ; how 
 
 the fire led them by night and the cloud by day ; how the dry rock 
 
 was cloven and poured out streams with the full flow of a river. 
 
 But it is in vain (the movement has swung back) : 
 17-20, Frailty , , ,. , , ^ , . , . 
 
 the delivered people are found intent upon their 
 appetites, and the doubts which a life of appetite engenders. 
 
 Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? 
 
 Behold, he smote the rock, that waters gushed out, 
 
 And streams overflowed; 
 
 Can he give bread also? 
 
 Will he provide flesh for his people? 
 
 We are thus brought to another turn in the movement, and there 
 is a burst of Divine Energy, this time the energy 
 21-31, Divine Qf Judgment. The rush of verses suggests the 
 scornful ease with which the skies are bidden to 
 open and rain down manna, the winds are guided so that they 
 rain flesh as dust and winged fowl as the sand of the seas ; then, 
 before the people have time to be satiated, the Wrath is slaying 
 amongst them, so close comes the punishment upon the lust. But 
 judgment, like mercy, has no permanent hold upon 
 the unstedfast people ; the movement has swung 
 back, as the history settles down to a wearisome iteration of sin- 
 ning, repenting and sinning, of dissembling repentance and com- 
 passionate forgiveness. 
 
THE BIBLICAL ODE 147 
 
 For all this they sinned still, 
 
 And believed not in his wondrous works. 
 
 Therefore their days did he consume in vanity, 
 
 And their years in terror. 
 
 When he slew them, then they inquired after him : 
 
 And they returned and sought God early; 
 
 And they remembered that God was their rock, 
 
 And the Most High God their redeemer. 
 
 But they flattered him with their mouth, 
 
 And lied unto him with their tongue. 
 
 For their heart was not stedfast with him, 
 
 Neither were they faithful in his covenant. 
 
 But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, 
 
 And destroyed them not : 
 
 Yea, many a time turned he his anger away. 
 
 And did not stir up all his wrath. 
 
 And he remembered that they were but flesh; 
 
 A wind that passeth away, and cometh not again. 
 
 How oft did they rebel against him in the wilderness, 
 
 And grieve him in the desert ! 
 
 And they turned again and tempted God, 
 
 And provoked the Holy One of Israel. 
 
 They remembered not his hand, 
 
 Nor the day when he redeemed them from the adversary. 
 
 This phrase is the signal for another turn in the movement, and 
 the following strophe is filled with the Divine Energy of Redemp- 
 tion. It displays before us, as in a finished picture, 
 side by side the judgments falling on the enemy Enerev^"''^ 
 and the tenderness bestowed upon Israel ; how 
 wrath, indignation, and trouble, a band of angels of evil, make a 
 path for God's anger, as plagues strike the land of Egypt and 
 pestilence preys upon its people ; while Israel is guided like a 
 flock of sheep through the wilderness, and brought into the moun- 
 tain land of their inheritance. All this is lost upon them : we 
 have returned to the theme of frailty and unsted- 
 fastness as we see the people in their land of prom- 
 ise settling down to the worship of the high places, until God 
 comes to greatly abhor Israel. And as he silently forsakes them 
 
148 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 gradually their strength and glory depart ; violence cuts off the 
 youth, the maidens have no marriage-song, the very 
 
 Ener' "'""* priests fall by the sword, and their widows make 
 no lamentation. Suddenly the movement of the 
 
 ode swings round for the last time. 
 
 Then the Lord awaked as one out of sleep, 
 
 Like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine. 
 
 With one stroke the enemy is thrust back for ever ; and then the 
 final burst of Divine Energy is seen in a New Call : as before the 
 whole nation of Israel had been called out from the whole world 
 to become a peculiar people to Jehovah, so now he passes over 
 Joseph and Ephraim, and chooses the tribe' of Judah ; he takes 
 David from the sheepfolds to be their shepherd ; and the unsted- 
 fastness which has reigned throughout the ode finds a final 
 contrast in the Sanctuary which he builds like the heights, 
 
 Like the earth which he hath established for ever. 
 
 This seventy-eighth psalm is one of four which I have ventured 
 to group together under the title of ' National Anthems.' True, 
 
 they are very different from what in modem times 
 thems"^ ' ^'^^ called by that name ; but the difference tallies 
 
 with differences of circumstances. With us a 
 National Anthem may well be a simple and brief lyric, for proba- 
 bly the nation is constituted a nation by some elementary con- 
 sideration of race or habitat. But Israel had been called out of 
 its original land, had been led from one part of the world to 
 another, had been constituted the chosen people of God by a 
 long course of Providential discipline. It is natural therefore 
 that the National Hymn of such a people should take the form 
 of a review of their history and relation to God. It is just such 
 a review which makes the common ground between the four 
 psalms ; and when we examine their differences the results both 
 confirm the classification, and explain further how it comes that 
 Israel should have four National Anthems and not one. We have 
 
TitE BIBLICAL dak 149 
 
 seen that the seventy-eighth psalm is characterised by a continu- 
 ous alternation between God's achievements for his _ , , 
 
 Psalm Ixxvm 
 
 people and their persistent ingratitude and sin, and Anthem of South- 
 that it ends with the final rejection of Ephraim and *™ '^"^^'^ 
 the call to Judah. It is thus fitted to be the National Anthem 
 of Southern Israel when the kingdom of the ten tribes has been 
 overthrown and destroyed. The psalm most nearly p^^j^ .^j 
 resembling this is the hundred and sixth : not only Anthem of the 
 general drift, but many of its phases seem echoes ''^P^'^ty 
 of the seventy-eighth psalm. But the pendulum" structure is almost 
 lost by the preponderance of one side of the thought ; from first 
 to last it is sin and rebellion which dominates the poem, and the 
 history is carried on to the final fall. 
 
 He made them also to be pitied 
 
 Of all those that carried them captives. 
 
 Save us, O Lord our God, 
 
 And gather us from among the nations. 
 To give thanks unto thy holy name, 
 
 And to triumph in thy praise. 
 
 Thus this hundred and sixth psalm would seem to be the Hymn 
 of Southern Israel modified so as to make it the Anthem of the 
 Captivity. There is a great difference when we Psaimcv 
 come to the historic survey which makes the hun- unijiviae'awa^- 
 dred and fifth psalm. Here all trace of an alterna- tion in Canaan 
 tion between God's work and Israel's sin is gone. And the history 
 is carried just as far as the conquest of Canaan and no farther. 
 
 And he gave them the lands of the nations ; 
 
 And they took the labour of the peoples in possession. 
 
 This of itself would suggest that we have here the Anthem of the 
 undivided nation in the promised land ; and the suggestion is 
 confirmed by the wording of the reference to the covenant : 
 
 Saying, " Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, 
 
 The lot of your inheritance : " 
 When they were but a few men in number; 
 
 Yea, very few, and sojourners in it. 
 
Nation in the 
 Wilderness 
 
 150 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 It is natural in the moment of conquest to go back to the old 
 sojourn in the land. And similar considerations explain 
 the large amount of space given m this song to Joseph, 
 the individual through whom Israel departed out of Canaan and 
 Psalm cxxxvi ^ent down into Egypt '^ The fourth psalm of the 
 Anthem of the group, the hundred and thirty-sixth, is marked off 
 from all the rest by the primitive character of 
 its structure : the second line of each couplet is 
 the refrain. 
 
 For his mercy endureth for ever. 
 
 The whole poem is of the simplest type. Its history never reaches 
 Canaan, but prominence is given to Sihon king of the Amorites, 
 and Og king of Bashan, and it is their land which is made a heri- 
 tage for Israel. Clearly this is the National Anthem of the people 
 in the wilderness ; and in this light the final theme of praise — 
 
 He giveth food to all flesh — 
 
 becomes more than a commonplace ; it is a reference to the 
 miraculous feeding of the people in the desert. The peculiar 
 circumstances of the people of Israel, then, have sufficiently 
 explained why we should have four National Anthems in these 
 four historic psalms : the simple rhythmic Hymn of the Wilder- 
 ness, the Hymn of the whole nation in Canaan with its unbroken 
 exultation, the Hymn of Southern Judah after the fall of the north, 
 swaying evenly between Divine manifestations and national sin, and 
 the Hymn of the Captivity, in which all is swallowed up in the 
 idea of national unfaithfulness. 
 
 It is natural to pass from this group of poems to the Ode on 
 the Covenant (Psalm eighty-nine). This is transparently clear 
 od n the cov- '" ^'^ language ; it needs mention only because of 
 enant the peculiarity of its structure. It seems strange 
 
 Psalm ixrxix ^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ prelude of which announces 
 
 1 I have argued elsewhere for the existence of other prophetic hymns of Israel's 
 history, identical in type with Psalm cv, which appear by quotation in EcclesiasHcus 
 and in Hosea. See those volumes of the Modern Reader's Bible ; EccUsiasticus, 
 page i8i, Minor Prophets, page 246. 
 
THE BIBLICAL ODE 151 
 
 a song of God's mercies and their eternal faithfulness, ending 
 with a long wail over the anointed of the Lord as rejected and 
 forsaken. At first we are tempted to think of this final section 
 as outside the unity of the poem, the addition of some later age. 
 But a close examination of the structure makes it possible to 
 include the elegy within the ode. We have seen that interruption 
 is amongst the devices of lyric movement. There is an example 
 of this on an extensive scale in the earlier part of this psalm : no 
 sooner has the Divine message of the Covenant been announced 
 in four lines, than a break occurs — 
 
 And the heavens shall praise thy wonders, O Lord — 
 
 The style wholly changes, and an outburst of exultation is carried 
 on for twenty-eight lines, making one of the loftiest strains of ado- 
 ration in the whole psalter. The second strophe returns 
 to the subject of the Covenant in an elaborate vision, to 
 which succeeds the section of sorrow and complaint. The sym- 
 metry then of the whole poem suggests that the change to lamen- 
 tation is an interruption of the second strophe as the burst of 
 exultation was an interruption of the first : the two interruptions, 
 each of seven quatrains, exactly balancing one another. 
 
 The odes already reviewed are sufficient to illustrate three 
 sources from which lyric poetry would naturally originate. The 
 Song of Deborah is a Ballad Dance : that ultimate 
 literary form, in which intricacies of thought are i^terTyririypes 
 reinforced by musical modulations and evolutions of 
 bodily movement, is here represented in its supreme manifestation. 
 Again, a specialised type of Ballad Dance was the primitive Wail 
 or Dirge. It does not seem strange to us to have our devotions led 
 by a professional choir : it did not seem strange to the Jews, even 
 of New Testament times, to call in professional mourners to express 
 their emotions of bereavement. The Wail had a rhythm of its 
 own : with or without this ' elegiac ' rhythm the Elegy established 
 itself as a distinct literary form, and in late literature could travel 
 so far from its origin as we have seen in the Elegiac Ode on the 
 
152 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Covenant. There is yet a third source of lyrics : the close kin- 
 ship in Hebrew of verse and prose smoothed the way for spon- 
 taneous utterance to become poetic. While in all languages exalted 
 speech passes into rhetoric, in Hebrew the prophetic outpourings 
 of a Balaam or Moses can be lyric : three out of the four National 
 Anthems need no origin beyond this to explain the type of poetry 
 they exhibit. Later in the development of a people a distinct 
 literary sense is born : into such conscious literature the earlier 
 lyric forms are absorbed. In this more spiritual region the adven- 
 titious aids of music and bodily movement die away. The dance 
 has been only the scaffolding with which has been built up rhythm. 
 Antiphony with its diversity of performers tends to give way to 
 antistrophic correspondence of stanzas. Increased subtlety of 
 thought demands greater freedom of musical form. Or again, 
 the literary habit invents its own intricacies of form : and acrostic 
 or alphabetical bonds distinguish later Biblical poems. In the 
 case of Hebrew, however, as its lyric poetry passes into the later 
 phase it encounters a force of a conservative nature. The Bible 
 ascribes to historical times and the reign of king David the estab- 
 lishment of an elaborate temple ritual. In such liturgical exer- 
 cises antiphony, and elaborate musical accompaniment, are an 
 essential ; even bodily movement, at least so far as it is proces- 
 sional, has a place in them. Thus throughout the later Biblical 
 poetry the Ritual Psalms are seen as reproducing characteristic 
 features of its earliest form the Dance. 
 
 It is perhaps not fanciful to look for a cKmax of lyric power 
 where the earlier and later influences meet. This might be said 
 
 of the sixty-eighth psalm, which, notwithstanding 
 Processional Ode ^^ obscurity of its details, stirs the enthusiasm of 
 
 every reader. It might be called the Te Deum of 
 the Hebrews : composed perhaps originally for some specific 
 celebration its terms are so general as to make it serve for any 
 high festal occasion. It must thus be classed with ritual poetry : 
 and yet its processionary character reflects the early joyous move- 
 ment of the sacred dance. Its function of processional hymn is 
 
THE BIBLICAL ODE 153 
 
 made to reflect a common imagery upon all the matter it touches, 
 until past, present, and future of Israel's history appear before us 
 as a series of vast processions. The opening note is an echo of 
 the traditional formula of procession, when the Levites in the 
 wilderness journeys started with the ark : 
 
 Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered; 
 
 Let them also that hate him flee before him. 
 
 Then the first elaborate section is a review of the past. The 
 wilderness life of Israel is suggested as a procession of " Him 
 that rideth through the deserts." The oppressed and 
 solitary prisoners of Egypt have been multiplied into 
 prosperous families. The people marched through the wilder- 
 ness, with their God before them, Sinai itself trembling at the 
 presence : a " plentiful rain " of manna was prepared by the good 
 God to strengthen his weary inheritance while they must dwell in 
 the desert. When strophe passes to antistrophe we have the con- 
 quest of Canaan : such is the concentrated sweep of lyric move- 
 ment that the whole period resolves itself into a procession of God 
 from Sinai to Zion — 
 
 Sinai is in the sanctuary. 
 
 But two moments can be discerned in the Divine warfare : 
 
 The Lord giveth the word [of command] : 
 
 The women that publish the tidings [of victory] are a great host. 
 
 The successive victories that are thus published appear only in 
 snatches of triumph-songs (of which we of course know nothing 
 but these snatches) : a vocal procession of war-cries. 
 
 " Kings of armies, they flee, they flee, 
 
 And she that tarrieth at home divideth the spoil " — , 
 
 " Will ye lie among the sheepfolds ? " 
 
 " The wings of a dove covered with silver and her pinions with yellow gold " — 
 
 " When the Almighty scattered kings therein, 
 It was as when it snoweth in Zalmon." — 
 
1S4 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Where in the real history generations intervened between the first 
 occupation of the eastern table-lands and the final conquest of 
 Zion, in the sweep of this ode the two periods are brought to- 
 gether, and the mountain of Bashan looks askance at the moun- 
 tain God has chosen for his abode. As a climax to the history 
 Jehovah ascends into the sanctuary with his thousands of chariots 
 and leads captivity captive. Now, with a modification of rhythm, 
 we change from the past to the present. When God 
 has been celebrated as a God of daily deliverances 
 the ode is found to be picturing the actual procession of the 
 festal day — " the goings of my God, my king, into the sanctu- 
 ary": how singers, dancers, minstrels, and the tribes march all 
 in due order. Then we turn to the future : but this 
 future appears as a procession of kings and peoples, 
 symbolically indicated, coming with tribute to the temple at 
 Jerusalem, until distant Ethiopia in the rear is seen stretching out 
 
 her hands to God. Outbursts of praise make the final 
 
 32-5 
 
 climax : but even this is an echo of the Blessing of 
 Moses, with its processional imagery of God riding upon the 
 heaven of heavens, to spread his protecting excellency over his 
 people Israel. 
 
 In a very different way the earlier and later types of lyric poetry 
 may be conceived to combine their powers in the great Ode of the 
 Ode of the Redeemed. Here there is nothing of the proces- 
 
 Redeemed sion Or the dance ; and the matter belongs to the 
 
 Psalm evil period of reflection on Divine providence. But 
 
 the primitive device of the refrain — which we have seen to be 
 the distinguishihg characteristic of the Song of Miriam, as the 
 dance is the distinction of Deborah's Song — here appears in its 
 most accentuated form. I have in a previous chapter^ pointed 
 out how four strophes are bound together by double refrains, each 
 with its appropriate sequel verse, as they present different types 
 of men who suffer, cry for help, sing their deliverance. But when 
 this has been fully worked out the movement of the poem is not 
 
 I Above, page 61, 
 
THE BIBLICAL ODE ISS 
 
 exhausted. The structure entirely changes ; the primitive device 
 of the refrain gives place to the no less primitive form of pendu- 
 lum movement. A series of alternations, like the diminuendo and 
 crescendo of the musician, present the God of the Redeemed as 
 a God that brings low and builds up again. 
 
 He turneth rivers into a wilderness. 
 
 And watersprings into a thirsty ground, 
 
 A fruitful land into a salt desert. 
 
 For the wickedness of them that dwell therein. 
 
 He turneth a wilderness into a pool of water. 
 
 And a dry land into watersprings. 
 
 And there he maketh the hungry to dwell, 
 
 That they may prepare a city of habitation; 
 
 And sow fields, and plant vineyards, 
 
 And get them fruits of increase. 
 
 He blesseth them also so that they are multiplied greatly; 
 
 And he suffereth not their cattle to decrease. 
 
 Again they are minished and bowed down 
 
 Through oppression, trouble, and sorrow. 
 
 He poureth contempt upon princes. 
 
 And causeth them to wander in the waste, where there is no way. 
 
 Yet setteth he the needy on high from affliction, 
 And maketh him families like a flock. 
 The upright shall see it, and be glad; 
 And all iniquity shall stop her mouth. 
 
 A gnomic couplet makes a final point of rest for this movement, 
 and stamps the whole ode as a contribution of wisdom to lyric 
 poetry. 
 
 I conclude this chapter with a Biblical Ode which reaches the 
 summit of lyric power by means different from any we have yet 
 seen. It is again an Ode of Divine Providence : but its form is 
 that of two companion hymns, which produce their effect by sim- 
 ply standing side by side. The hundred and third and the hun- 
 dred and fourth psalms are so related that neither can be fully 
 appreciated unless it is read in connection with the other. The 
 
iS6 LYRtC POMTJiY OF TttE BIBLE 
 
 subjects which make the two parts of the nineteenth psalm are 
 here again found in association : the World within and the World 
 Companion Odes- without are the themes of these companion poems. 
 Psalm ciii, the In the hundred and third psalm the poet, immedi- 
 worid within ^jgjy ^fjgj ^j^g opening refrain, calls upon all that is 
 within him to offer grateful praise ; and when the benefits which 
 call for this gratitude are enumerated they are found to be such 
 benefits as affect the individual, personal, spiritual life. 
 
 Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; 
 
 Who healeth all thy diseases; 
 Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; 
 
 Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies : 
 Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; 
 
 So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle. 
 
 God's dealings with Israel are referred to only as a revelation of 
 his ways ; and the revelation is of a kind that the individual life 
 needs : compassion for the erring, a mercy as high as heaven is 
 above the earth, a father pitying his children, a God knowing 
 man's frame to be but dust ; the revelation of a righteousness 
 descending to children's children, while individual lives of men 
 are but the grass-seed blown away by the wind. Then for its 
 climax this hymn of the spiritual life rises to spiritual creatures : 
 angels that excel in strength, hosts of the Lord that are ministers 
 of his pleasure in all places of his dominion. 
 
 The hundred and fourth psalm starts at once with the external 
 universe. This is presented as the tabernacle in which God dwells : 
 and Psalm civ ^'■^ tent-pole reaches from the waters that are below 
 the World with- to the waters that are above the firmament; the 
 "" heavens are the stretched curtains of that tent ; 
 
 the winds are his messengers, and light is but the garment in 
 which he veils himself from our gaze. God appears as the 
 Creator of this universe : at a signal from him the curtain of the 
 chaotic deep was withdrawn, and the world resolved itself into 
 an orderly vicissitude of mountain and valley and stream, of fowl 
 singing among branches that overhang the waters where wild asses 
 
THE BIBLICAL ODE 157 
 
 quench their thirst, of earth sending up grass for cattle, and bread 
 that gives man strength, and wine and oil to gladden his spirits. 
 The same Creator has ordained the seasons by which his world 
 is governed, and his sun makes the alternation between night in 
 which the beasts roam after their prey, and day when man can 
 go forth to his work. When the wonders of the sea have been 
 added to the wonders of land, all is ready for the climax thought : 
 The universe is one, and God is its soul. All creatures wait upon 
 
 him. 
 
 Thou openest thine hand, 
 
 They are satisfied with good; 
 Thou hidest thy face. 
 
 They are troubled; 
 Thou gatherest in their breath, 
 
 They die, 
 
 And return to their dust ; 
 Thou sendest forth thy spirit. 
 
 They are created, 
 
 And thou renewest the face of the ground. 
 
 When God has been thus exalted as supreme over the world of 
 spirit within us, and the world of the universe without, even the 
 poetry of the Bible may be said to have reached its climax. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SONGS, ELEGIES, AND MEDITATIONS 
 
 The Ode, which has been the subject of the previous chapter, 
 is not a lyric type, but an elaboration of many types. To analyse 
 the different forms exhibited by Lyric Poetry is the work of this 
 and the following chapter. A table in Appendix II gives a formal 
 classification, together with the examples by which it is supported : 
 to this the reader is referred for minute study, while in these chap- 
 ters the treatment is more general. It will not be expected that, 
 in so elastic a medium as lyric poetry, the various forms will be 
 divided by hard and fast lines ; a particular poem may rightly be 
 designated under a single type, when it approximates to other 
 types in its details. 
 
 Occasional Poetry has been illustrated in its most elaborate 
 
 form by the Song of Deborah and other odes. In 
 pgjjjy the case of the psalms, to connect these with the 
 
 occasions that called them forth usually involves 
 historical discussions such as are outside the scope of the present 
 
 work. But there are three psalms which few will 
 invasion hesitate to attach to the crisis of Sennacherib's 
 
 invasion. The marvellous incident of that critical 
 period is presented in no obscure language. 
 
 Psalm Ixxvi. 5 The stouthearted are spoiled, they have slept their sleep; 
 
 and 9 (margin) And none of the men of might have found their hands. 
 At thy reliulce, O God of Jacob, 
 Both chariot and horse are cast into a dead sleep. 
 
 We see a passionate outburst of renewed love to Zion now that 
 
 158 
 
BIBLICAL SONGS 159 
 
 the oppression of the siege is lifted from the people ; they walk 
 round the city ; they count the towers and bul- 
 warks, as if to make sure that all are really safe. ' ' 
 They hail her as beautiful in elevation, joy of the whole world, 
 lair from which the Lion of Judah darts upon his prey ; the river 
 of peace holds her in its arms unmoved while all around is tossing 
 in tumult. And the abrupt concentration to which 
 Hebrew sentences lend themselves presents the 
 whole crisis in the fewest possible words : 
 
 The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved : xlvi. 6 
 He uttered his voice, the earth melted. 
 
 There is an earlier occasion in Hebrew history with which, as 
 I have before remarked, much of Biblical poetry connects itself. 
 This is the inauguration of Jerusalem by King The inauguration 
 David. It is not difficult to read the historic of Jerusalem 
 account of the day in the Book of Samuel and fit " Samuel vi 
 the songs into their proper places. 
 
 And David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of 
 Obed-Edom into the city of David with joy. And it was so, that 
 when they that bare the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sac- 
 rificed an ox and a fatling. And David danced before the Lord with 
 all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod. [Here comes 
 Psalm XXX.'] So David and all the house of Israel brouj^ht up the ark 
 of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet. 
 [At the foot of the ascent comes Psalm xxiv. i-b ; at the top, the mili- 
 tary piece, Psalm xxiv. 7-10 ] . . And they brought in the ark of 
 the Lord, and set it in its place, in the midst of the tent that David 
 had pitched for it : and David offered burnt offerings and peace offer- 
 ings before the Lord. [Here comes Psalm cxxxii. i-g.] ... So all 
 the people departed every one to his house. Then David returned to 
 bless his household. [Here comes Psalm ci.'\ 
 
 David commenced this festal day with the utmost trepidation, 
 on account of the terrible death of Uzzah, which had interrupted 
 his former attempt to bring the ark to Jerusalem. The first few 
 paces of the present procession are sufficient to show that the 
 
160 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Divine ban is removed ; there is a halt and an offering of thanks- 
 giving, and a lyric hymn of joy. The thirtieth 
 Psalm XXX & 6' , , . ,..,., . , , . 
 
 psalm, connected by its traditional title with this 
 particular day, fits exactly into such a situation. It breathes a 
 sense of escape from death ; it tells how David in his prosperity 
 had felt himself a strong mountain that should never be moved ; 
 how the Divine face was suddenly hidden and he was plunged in 
 trouble ; how he mourned and prayed, and now his mourning is 
 turned into this dance of joy : the weeping has but been a guest 
 lodging for the night, but the favour of God will be a friend for a 
 lifetime. 
 
 The procession continues, and I have in a former chapter ' dealt 
 with the anthem at the foot of the hill, and the summons to the 
 city to receive the Lord of Hosts. The city is entered, and the 
 ark is brought into the tabernacle where it was to remain for a 
 time. Here fresh sacrifices are offered ; and there could be no 
 more suitable anthem to accompany such sacrifices than the earlier 
 Psalm cxxxii. part^ of the hundred and thirty-second psalm. It 
 '"9 recites David's passionate vow to enjoy no rest 
 
 until he had found a tabernacle for the Most High. The verses 
 that follow seem a riddle until they are explained by the search 
 for the ark in its temporary resting-places amid the solitude of 
 the hill country. Then follow the ceremonial words : 
 
 Arise, O Lord, into thy resting place; 
 Thou, and the ark of thy strength. 
 
 The proceedings of the day do not yet terminate. The people 
 are dismissed, but David returns " to bless his household." The 
 Psalm i hundred and first psalm gives us just the blessing 
 
 required : a vow of mercy and judgment for the 
 speaker himself, for his household, and for the administration of 
 his kingdom. The final line which speaks of cutting off the work- 
 
 1 Above, pages 104-108. 
 
 2 Verses 10-18 are the addition made for the Dedication Festival of Solomon's 
 Temple. 
 
BIBLICAL SONGS 161 
 
 ers of iniquity " from the City of the Lord " comes with new 
 force when we recollect that it was only on that day that the old 
 fortress of the Jebusites and stronghold of evil had been trans- 
 ferred to the service of another Deity and formally inaugurated as 
 the City of Jehovah. 
 
 In these occasional poems we have to make the distinction 
 between the simpler Occasional Song, and the Occasional Anthems 
 which, as in the case of the Inauguration of Jerusalem, associate 
 themselves with an elaborate ceremony. These anthems are 
 properly classified among the Ritual Psalms of the 
 next chapter. The ' Song ' is the simplest of lyric 
 types, and the one which is most varied in its application. Next 
 to the songs which celebrate particular occasions 
 we may mention the songs which celebrate particu- p°°f^ "f Themes 
 lar themes. The second psalm is a Song of the 
 Lord's Anointed : while the busy nations plot and rage Jehovah 
 laughs at their schemes, and sets his King on Zion, giving him the 
 uttermost parts of the earth for his possession. The 
 same theme is celebrated in the hundred and tenth 
 psalm : two brief oracles proclaim a King, and a Priest after the 
 order of Melchizedek, and long rolling lyric verses triumph in 
 the glorious conceptions. This universal or Messianic king is 
 very different from the ruler of David's inheritance, mourned for 
 in the elegiac ode which was cited in the last chapter. Perhaps 
 
 we may say that a conception intermediate between 
 
 , , , , 1 , Psalm Ixxii 
 
 the two IS the theme of the seventy-second psalm. 
 
 At its head we may inscribe the promise made to David : 
 
 Thy throne and thy kingdom shall be made sure for ever before thee : 
 thy throne shall be established for ever. 
 
 The song pictures a Dynasty of Righteousness, king and king's 
 son succeeding one another to the end of time, while abundance 
 and peace reigns all around, and remote nations bring their gifts 
 and obeisance. The difference of conception between the national 
 and the universal kingship has a parallel in the different concep- 
 
162 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 tions of Zion. The Sennacherib psalms celebrate Zion as glorious, 
 but with no more than a local glory. Psalm eighty- 
 seven makes Zion address herself as glorious mother 
 of nation after nation spiritually born of her, pictured as moving 
 in procession to the spring of all song and joy ; Professor Cheyne 
 has well summed up the whole effect as " the Church of Israel 
 expanding into the Church Universal." It may even be said that 
 the range of Biblical poetry covers a similar widening in the con- 
 ception of deity itself. The beautiful hundred and fourteenth 
 psalm, noted in a previous chapter, celebrates a God whose sanc- 
 tuary was Judah, and Israel was his dominion. The Festal Hymns, 
 on the other hand, find their chief impulse in the celebration of 
 
 Jehovah as king over all nations and throughout 
 Psalm xciii , ,, , ,.,, ^-ri , 
 
 the whole earth ; a kmdred song of Jehovah s Im- 
 movable Throne seems to be picturing this thought under natural 
 
 imagery : 
 
 The floods have lifted up, O Lord, 
 The floods have lifted up their voice; 
 The floods lift up their waves. 
 
 Above the voices of many waters, 
 The mighty breakers of the sea, 
 The Lord on high is mighty. 
 
 Akin to Occasional Poetry, but more general in their terms, are 
 
 Songs of Deiiv- the Songs of Deliverance : already sufficiently illus- 
 
 ®''*'"'® trated by the brilliant outpouring of praise in the 
 
 eighteenth psalm over the mercies of a lifetime. Still more gen- 
 
 , „ ., eral are the Songs of Providence. We have already 
 
 of Providence ° ■' 
 
 seen these, on the magnified scale of the ode, in 
 
 the Song of the Redeemed, and the companion hymns of the 
 
 World Within and the World Without. Another example is the 
 
 Deuteronomy Song of Moses in Deuterono7ny. The subject is 
 
 =^^^" announced in the prelude as God the immovable 
 
 Rock, in contrast with Israel unfaithful and changeable: the 
 
 movement of the ode alternates between the two ideas. The first 
 
 phase of the poem brings out how the Lord's portion is his 
 
BIBLICAL SONGS 163 
 
 people, lingering on the thought with images, first of tenderness, 
 then of immeasurable bounty. The turning-point comes as Jeshu- 
 run waxes fat and kicks, and this second phase presents Israel 
 as provoking Jehovah with new gods that came up but yesterday, 
 which their fathers had not known. The movement swings back 
 to the unswerving nature of God, now seen in judgments that 
 set all nature on fire, and stop short only of absolute destruction. 
 Another turning-point is made as the poet breaks in to cry out 
 at the folly and blindness of the people, and the loathly gods to 
 which they have given the preference. By a bold transition this 
 last description is made to cause revulsion in the mind of God him- 
 self, who thinks with complacency on the vengeance he has yet 
 in his storehouse ; and the poem reaches its final phase, in exhibit- 
 ing God as using this vengeance on the side of his erring people, 
 when they have sunk to their last extremity. A brief conclusion 
 calls the nations to witness this spectacle of God coming to the 
 rescue of his people. 
 
 Providence extends over external nature as well as over the 
 human realm. The twenty-ninth psalm is the 
 Song of the Thunderstorm. The body of the poem p™^"^^"^ 
 has the ' Voice of Jehovah ' for its refrain ; it is 
 the reahsation of a thunderstorm, rising in the waters to the 
 north, passing overhead with every form of violence, and dying 
 away over the wilderness to the south, until all nature has again 
 become a hymn of praise to its Maker. In the prelude the 
 poet, as if awed by the approaching manifestation of God, calls 
 upon all creatures to worship. In the close he expresses his 
 sense of the protection that has been with him ; his God presided 
 over the flood — not Noah's flood, but the flood from which the 
 tempest arose — and he will be king for ever. By an exquisite 
 touch of detail, the last note in this song of thunder is the word 
 ' peace.' 
 
 Where we speak of ' Providence ' the Biblical word is 'judg- 
 ment.' Songs of Judgment celebrate the interposi- gongs oi judg- 
 tion of God in the controversy with evil. ment 
 
164 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Psalm Ixxv For neither from the east nor from the west nor yet from the south 
 Cometh lifting up : 
 But God is the judge, he putteth down one, and hfteth up another. 
 For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine foameth; 
 It is full of mixture, and he poureth out of the same : 
 Surely the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring 
 them out and drink them. 
 
 Of such Divine judgments the faithful are the exultant spectators : 
 
 Psalm lii The righteous also shall see it, and fear, 
 And shall laugh at him, saying : 
 Lo, this is the man that made not God his strength; 
 But trusted in the abundance of his riches. 
 And strengthened himself in his wickedness. 
 
 The same spirit, transferred from contemplation of the world 
 Sones of Trust without to the inner life of the faithful, finds ex- 
 and Consecration pression in Songs of Trust and Consecration. Of 
 Psalm ixu jj^g |jj.gj ^ beautiful type is the sixty-second psalm, 
 
 with its refrain of the soul waiting upon God, and its gnomic con- 
 clusion : 
 
 God hath spoken once, twice have I heard this; 
 That power belongeth unto God : 
 Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy; 
 For thou renderest to every man according to his work. 
 
 Supreme among the poems of personal consecration is psalm 
 sixteen. 
 
 Psalm xvi I have said unto the Lord, • Thou art my Lord, 
 I have no good beyond thee : ' 
 Unto the saints that are in the earth, 
 
 ' They are the excellent, in whom is all my delight.' 
 
 The consecration begets a confidence that, in mysterious terms, 
 seems to triumph over the grave itself. 
 
 For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol ; 
 
 Neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. 
 Thou wilt shew me the path of life : 
 
 In thy presence is fulness of joy ; 
 
 In thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. 
 
BIBLICAL SONGS 16S 
 
 In the Biblical titles the term Song is used to cover a succes- 
 sion of poems, varied in their character, which .j^g songfi of as- 
 thus constitute a psalter within a psalter. Fifteen cents: Psalms 
 psalms in succession have the common title, ' Songs "^-'=^**>^ 
 of Ascents ' ; the Authorised Version renders it ' Songs of Degrees,' 
 a translation of the word in the Vulgate which has by others been 
 rendered ' Gradual Psalms.' ^ The literal meaning of the expres- 
 sion is ' Songs of the goings up.' What is the significance of this 
 enigmatic phrase? Two theories on this point are worthy of 
 special consideration. One is conveyed by giving the poems the 
 title of ' Pilgrim Songs ' ; that is, songs of the Pilgrims going up to 
 Jerusalem for the great feasts. The other connects them with the 
 Return of the Captives from Babylon to Jerusalem. 
 
 The difficulty of the question is much reduced when we recol- 
 lect that the title, whatever its meaning may be, expresses the 
 purpose of the collection, not of the composition of any particular 
 psalm. If we think of our modern hymn-books, we shall see that 
 a phrase may be apposite as a title for the whole book, and yet 
 might have little significance if applied to the interpretation of 
 single hymns in the collection. Keeping this consideration before 
 us, we may find it not difficult to combine the two theories men- 
 tioned above. 
 
 Some of these Songs of Ascents associate themselves readily 
 with the Captivity and Return. The singer of the one hundred 
 and twentieth psalm speaks from amidst an atmosphere of turbu- 
 lence and treachery, and describes himself, either really or figura- 
 tively, as living in the distant regions of Meshech and Kedar. 
 Psalm one hundred and twenty-three seems to take local colour 
 from some oriental empire : as the eyes of slaves follow their 
 masters to anticipate every wish, so the poet would be observant 
 of his God. The poem that follows presents Israel as just escaped 
 Uke a bird out of the snare of the fowlfer : if Jehovah had not 
 
 1 Armfield's Gradual Psalms (Hayes) contains an interesting theory of the title, 
 connecting it on the authority of the Talmud with the part of the Temple in which 
 these psalms would be performed. 
 
166 LYRIC POETRY Of THE BIBLE 
 
 been on his side the foe would have swallowed him up. The 
 hundred and twenty-sixth psalm is peculiar. It opens 
 with the words : 
 
 czzvl 
 
 When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, 
 We were Uke unto them that dream. 
 
 And yet at the fourth verse comes the prayer : 
 
 Turn again our captivity, O LORD, 
 As the streams in the South. 
 
 They that sow in tears 
 
 Shall reap in joy. 
 
 The simplest explanation of this is to connect it with the Return 
 from Babylon. That return took place in many instalments, sep- 
 arated by long intervals. This psalm would seem to be a hymn 
 of those remaining in exile when the first migration had started : 
 they exult in the change of fortune which has at last visited their 
 nation, and they long for their own share in the happy deliver- 
 ance ; meanwhile they give themselves up to patience and hope. 
 The period of the Exile fits well with the hundred and twenty- 
 ninth psalm, which presents Israel as a martyr, and cries execration 
 upon those that hate Zion. And while the De Profundis of the 
 following psalin gives expression to national penitence in any age, 
 yet it could at no time be so appropriate as during the Captivity. 
 
 On the other hand, the hundred and twenty-first psalm, of which 
 the keynote is " The Lord thy keeper," seems a most appropriate 
 marching hymn for the companies of pilgrims journeying to the 
 yearly feasts ; and its opening words, " I will hft up mine eyes 
 unto the hills," might connect it with the first sight of the environs 
 of the sacred city. The psalm that follows would just fit in with 
 the next stage : " Our feet are standing within thy gates, O 
 Jerusalem.'' The hundred and twenty-fifth psalm is made up of 
 thoughts suggested by the sight of the Holy City : the massive 
 Mount Zion is a symbol of the security of those who trust in its 
 God ; the mountains enclosing Jerusalem are like the Lord's pro- 
 tection thrown around his people ; the territory so safely walled 
 
BIBLICAL ELEGIES AND MEDITATIONS 167 
 
 in is a pledge that the empire of evil shall not invade the lot of 
 the righteous. Moreover, these companies of pilgrims were family 
 parties, as an incident of the New Testament reminds us : hence 
 the hundred and twenty-seventh psalm (cited elsewhere^), con- 
 trasting the life of busy care with the peaceful family life, or the 
 next, which associates family joys with the blessing out of Zion, 
 or the hundred and thirty-first, which draws from child life a con- 
 ception of personal and national humble-mindedness, or again the 
 hundred and thirty-third, which celebrates the unity of brethren. 
 The two poems of the collection that have yet to be mentioned 
 connect themselves directly with the Temple : one (the hundred 
 and thirty-second) is the Dedication hymn of David and Solomon, 
 and the other makes an appropriate close to the collection in the 
 form of a brief exchange of greetings between the retiring worship- 
 pers and the Night Watch remaining on guard. 
 
 The psalms, individually considered, then, suggest a twofold 
 origin ; the combination of both types in a common collection is 
 not difficult to understand. Either the ' Songs of the goings up ' 
 was at first the tide for poems of the Captivity and Return, and 
 this little psalter came to be increased by the songs of pilgrimages 
 to the second Temple ; or, more probably, the old traditionary 
 Pilgrim Songs made the first collection, and its contents were 
 doubled by that great pilgrimage beside which all others were 
 commonplace. In any case the ' Songs of Ascents ' are a series 
 of hymns impressing every reader with their strong resemblance 
 to one another ; and they are the quintessence of all that is most 
 attractive, and most unanalysable, in sacred lyrics. 
 
 We pass to a new division of Lyric Poetry in the Elegy. I have 
 already remarked how the elegy rests upon the professional mourn- 
 ing ; and how it has a rhythm of its own. There 
 is a curious parallelism between the Hebrew rhythm 
 of elegy and that of Greek and Latin poetry. The latter is com- 
 posed of the ordinary hexameter followed by the shorter pentameter. 
 J Above, page loj, 
 
168 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 In Hebrew the elegiac rhythm is the ordinary couplet with the 
 
 second member weakened, by being either short- 
 
 egiac r y m ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ destitute of antithesis or parallelism, so 
 
 much so that the two are usually printed as a single line with a 
 
 He hath fenced me about that I cannot go forth; he hath made my chain 
 heavy. 
 
 The difference of this from the ordinary rhythm is well seen in 
 the transition from one to the other already cited as an effect in 
 the English version of Deborah's Song. 
 
 In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, 
 
 Ih the days of Jael, 
 The highways were unoccupied, 
 
 And the travellers walked through byways; 
 The rulers ceased in Israel, 
 They ceased — 
 Until that I, Deborah, arose, 
 
 That I arose a mother in Israel. 
 They chose new gods; 
 
 Then was war in the gates : 
 Was there a shield or spear seen 
 
 Among forty thousand in Israel ? 
 
 But the widespread use of this elegiac rhythm in Biblical literature 
 is lost to the English reader, since none of the accepted versions 
 
 keep it up in their translation.' The loss is greatest 
 Jeremiah '^ ^^^ elaborate elegy entitled the Lamentations of 
 
 Jeremiah, which is a highly artificial composition 
 built up on the principle of elegiac rhythm and a curious alpha- 
 betical succession of verses. The great blot upon the Revised 
 Version of our Bible is the absence of any attempt to represent 
 the acrostic structure which affects these as so many other 
 Hebrew poems. The pathos of individual passages in the Lam- 
 
 1 For a systematic treatment of the whole subject, see an article by Karl Budde 
 in the Nfiv Review^ March, 1893. 
 
BIBLICAL ELEGIES AND MEDITATIONS 169 
 
 entations is obvious enough ; but the literary form of the whole 
 as it stands in our English Versions is impossible of apprecia- 
 tion.^ 
 
 There are elegies amongst the most familiar poems of the 
 psalter. One is the song of the captives weeping by the rivers of 
 Babylon, hanging their harps upon the willows at the thought 
 
 of singing the songs of.Zion in a strange land; 
 
 . •, , ., , , . . , , . Psalm cxxzvii 
 
 until the wall hardens into an ecstasy of hatred as 
 
 they long for one who will take the little ones of the oppressor 
 
 and dash them against the ground. Another tells 
 
 ii M 1 1 II , Psalm Ixxiv 
 
 the evil done to the sanctuary by the enemy, how 
 
 they behaved as men that lifted up axes upon a thicket of trees, 
 how the carved work is broken down with hatchet and hammers, 
 and fire has converted the sacred pile into a profane ruin. An- 
 other is made distinctive by the sustained image of 
 the Vine brought out of Egypt, with nations cast 
 out to make room for it ; it had taken deep root until mountains 
 were covered by its shadow and its branches reached to the 
 River and the Sea ; but now its fences are thrown down, and the 
 beasts out of the wood can ravage it, nay, it is cut down and 
 burned with fire. And no Biblical elegy is more impressive than 
 the earliest of them all, the lamentation of David 
 over Saul and Jonathan, preserved by its connec- '' ^^""^' •• 
 tion with archery meetings founded in honour of 
 Jonathan. The simple pathos of this song is familiar to all. It is 
 worth while also to note the structural beauty of the augmenting 
 refrain : at the opening of the elegy it is, How are the mighty 
 fallen ; when the stanzas special to Saul are completed it has be- 
 come. How a7-e the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle ; at the 
 end of the final section expressing the poet's tender love for 
 Jonathan the refrain has grown to a full couplet — 
 
 1 In The Psalms by Four Friends, or the abridged edition oi it as the Psalter in 
 the Golden Treasury Series (Macniillan & Co.), the acrostic effect is maintained 
 throughout; -and the Book of Lamentations is given in full {in the second edition of 
 the larger worlc). In the second volume oi Psalms {Modern Reader's Bible) I have 
 more fully discussed this remarkable elegiac masterpiece. 
 
170 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 How are the mighty fallen, 
 
 And the weapons of war perished ! 
 
 Songs celebrate a theme : Meditations reflect upon it. The 
 distinction may seem slight, yet it covers a difference of lyric 
 
 spirit that needs to be represented in a literary 
 tions classification. Under this head of Meditations will 
 
 come, not only the poem which introduces the 
 whole psalter, but also that tour-de-force of meditative ingenuity, 
 
 the hundred and nineteenth psalm. It is made 
 Psalm cxix r i i i i i i 
 
 up of no less than a hundred and seventy-six say- 
 ings disposed on an acrostic arrangement, and bound together by 
 the common feature that each verse contains some synonym for 
 that which is the topic of the whole — the Law of the Lord. I 
 have in previous chapters referred to the eighth psalm as a medi- 
 tation on Man as the Viceroy of God, to the nineteenth, which 
 has for its topic the Heavens above and the Law within ; and to 
 the thirty-sixth, with its contrast of Evil Unbounded and Infinite 
 Psalms XV, Good. Amongst the most popular of all Scriptural 
 
 cxxxi, xxm poems are the meditations on the Consecrated Life, 
 
 the Quiet Soul, the Protection of Jehovah. A pair of companion 
 
 poems seem clearly to be founded on a couplet 
 Psalms xc, xci . , , . 
 
 from the Blessing of Moses m Deuteronomy : the 
 ninetieth psalm breathes throughout the spirit of the line — 
 
 The Eternal God is thy dwelling place — 
 
 while the psalm that follows is no less clearly an expansion of the 
 
 thought — 
 
 Underneath are the everlasting arms. 
 
 This may explain how tradition has come to affix to the first of 
 
 the two the title, A Prayer of Moses the Man of God. Lastly, 
 
 we may note how that which is a leading diffi- 
 Psalms xxxvii, u r • j t^ ■ . , < • , 
 
 xiix, ixxiii '^""3' °' Wisdom literature is also the subject of 
 
 three elaborate lyric meditations. The Prosperity 
 
 of the Wicked is, in the thirty-seventh psalm, treated in a collection 
 
MODBS OF LYRtC DEVELOPMENT 171 
 
 of gnomic sayings, acrostically arranged. The same topic, in the 
 forty-ninth psalm, appears as a ' parable ' or ' dark saying,' which 
 with strophic structure and varying refrain dwells upon the vanity 
 of worldly splendour in the light of inevitable death. In the 
 seventy-third psalm the mystery of prosperous wickedness causes 
 the singer to all but lose his faith : he recovers it only when he 
 goes into the sanctuary of God. 
 
 It may be permissible at this point to digress from the classifi- 
 cation of lyrics, which is the subject of these two chapters, in 
 order briefly to discuss modes by which lyric thought is developed. 
 Notable modes of lyric movement have already been reviewed in 
 connection with the odes. The simpler poems resemble in their 
 development the poetry of modern times : but a few special 
 features may be mentioned. 
 
 Imagery belongs to all kinds of lyric poetry alike. One remark 
 may be made as to the use of it by the poets of the psalter. It 
 is characteristic of them to crowd their images imagery as a 
 together in rapid succession ; and such quick play mode of lyric ae- 
 of imagery sometimes is made to interchange with ™'°P"^°t 
 the development of a single image in full detail. I will give two 
 illustrations of such interchange. 
 
 In the opening verses of the twenty-seventh psalm the images 
 are so crowded together that there is danger of our losing them 
 through their very exuberance. When all the sug- -^^^^ ^^^jj ^^ 
 gestions lurking in word and phrase are pressed, 
 the whole passage seems to call up visions of danger chasing one 
 another as through the changes of a dream. The poet is desper- 
 ately threading his way through pitchy blackness, with pitfalls all 
 around him — when a sudden light shines, and all is clear : the 
 Lord is that light. He is back again in the thick of his perils, 
 he has actually stumbled — when he is suddenly caught up and 
 supported : in that salvation he sees the Lord. Now he is being 
 chased by the foe, and they are gaining upon him — when a 
 stronghold unseen before opens its gates to him and he is safe : 
 
172 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Jehovah is that stronghold of life, and of whom in future need he 
 be afraid ? The scene has changed and the crowd of his adver- 
 saries and foes, with dream-like horror taking the shape of beasts 
 of prey, are rushing upon him ; there is no escape, and already he 
 can see the sharp teeth — when, lo, they stumble over hidden pit- 
 falls and disappear from view : 
 
 When evil-doers came upon me 
 
 To eat up my flesh, 
 Even mine adversaries and my foes, 
 
 They stumbled and fell. 
 
 He is now in a solitary tower and countless hosts beleaguer him 
 on. all sides, yet he feels no doubt or fear ; now an ambush of a 
 whole army suddenly rises out of the ground, but he can only 
 wonder how it comes that no tremor shakes him. 
 
 Though an host should encamp against me, 
 
 My heart shall not fear : 
 Though war should rise against me, 
 
 Even then will I be confident. 
 
 The various images have flitted past us like a succession of dream 
 changes as the waking point is neared. And a transition like that 
 from the fitful visions of sleep to the steady light of waking comes 
 over the psalm as the poet passes on to the "one thing" he has 
 desired of the Lord : this all-sufficing aspiration is for a life-long 
 dwelling in the house of the Lord, in happy round of meditation 
 and service, on a rock of security far above the disturbance of 
 peril and trouble. This psalm then has illustrated the change 
 from a rapid succession of images to a single sustained metaphor. 
 A similar transition, but in reverse order, marks the twenty- 
 third psalm. This opens with the peaceful imagery 
 Psalmxxiii r , it , • r , , -, 
 
 of pastoral life drawn out to its furthest detail. 
 
 The Lord is my shepherd ; 
 I shall not want. 
 
 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures : 
 He leadeth me beside the still waters. 
 
MODES OF LYRIC DEVELOPMENT 173 
 
 He restoreth my soul : 
 
 He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. 
 
 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 
 
 I will fear no evil; 
 
 For thou art with me : 
 
 Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. 
 
 Then the break comes, and a quick succession of varying images 
 passes before us. In one line the image is that of a siege, and 
 the poet is pressed by hunger — when, lo, a mystic table is before 
 him, and the enemy looks on helpless and amazed. In the next 
 line he is a festal guest, the sweet perfume is poured over him, 
 and the wine of abundance is by his side. Again the imagery 
 changes, and he sees goodness and mercy following him in his 
 journeyings through life, as the streams of water followed the 
 Israelites in the wilderness. Once more the thought changes to 
 the Temple : other men may make their occasional pilgrimages, 
 but he will be a dweller in the house of the Lord for ever. 
 
 An important topic for the expository critic is Concealed 
 Imagery. It is possible for a metaphorical idea to be sustained 
 throughout the whole of a poem or lengthy passage, 
 and yet not to be embodied in distinct words ; the i^°g°g^ 
 image must be collected from a variety of indirect 
 references, while to miss it is to lack the key to the whole. The 
 regular prophetic image, the Day of the Lord, is not directly men- 
 tioned in the Vision of Habakkuk : yet it is latent „ ^ , 
 
 -' Habakkuk in 
 
 in the way in which the theophany approaches 
 from the east — God coming from Teman and the Holy One from 
 Mount Paran, with raying beams of dawn breaking all around — 
 and dies away over the western sea : 
 
 Thou dost tread the sea with thine horses, 
 The surge of mighty waters. 
 
 Again, the advance of the mystic foe in Joel has locust imagery 
 underlying every line of it, yet the word locust does 
 not occur. Such Concealed Imagery will explain 
 
174 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 some of the most difificult parts of the Bible. It has been, for ex- 
 ample, well suggested that the idea underlying the 
 eighty-second psalm is that of a hierarchy of world- 
 rulers, such as the ' Sons of God ' mentioned in the prologue to 
 Job. We see in the latter poem how one of them can interfere in 
 the guidance of human events, always of course with the Divine 
 permission; and the suggestion of the plural is that there are 
 many. It is supposed by Professor Cheyne that a scene like the 
 prologue to Job underlies this eighty-second psalm, the 'gods,' 
 ' sons of the Most High,' being such spiritual world-rulers ; that 
 it is these, and not earthly judges, who are the objects of the 
 Divine remonstrance, and they are held responsible for the cor- 
 ruption of mankind which they have failed to prevent. Only 
 upon such a supposition does the conclusion become intelligible. 
 
 I said, Ye are gods, 
 
 And all of you sons of the Most High : 
 Nevertheless ye shall die like men, 
 
 And fall like one of the princes. 
 
 The supernatural Powers who have neglected their office are 
 
 threatened with degradation to the rank of men with the doom 
 
 of mortality.^ 
 
 No doubt the suggestion of Concealed Imagery is an uncertain 
 
 weapon of interpretation, and one which leaves much room for the 
 
 fancy of an individual expositor. It is therefore 
 Psalm xc .,,.„, , ^ , , . • r 
 
 with diffidence that I suggest the application of 
 it to a poem which is amongst the most familiar psalms of the 
 psalter, but which leaves on my own mind an impression differ- 
 ent from that ordinarily associated with it. To many readers 
 the ninetieth psalm is known as part of the Service for the Burial 
 of the Dead ; it comes therefore to be connected with thoughts 
 of gloom and bereavement. But the language justifying that 
 use of it is confined to one part of the psalm ; when the whole 
 
 1 The same image possibly underlies the fifty-eighth psalm (see marginal read- 
 ings of R.V.). 
 
MODES OF LYRIC DEVELOPMENT 17S 
 
 is Studied it is found to take a wider range. If the total play 
 of thought and details of imagery in this poem be put together, 
 the resultant appears to me to fit in with a Hymn of Mountain 
 Sunrise. 
 
 Let the reader fix in his imagination the mountain scenery that 
 would surround one who has made his dwelling-place in the deserts 
 of the Holy Land. He has awoke in the midst of a dreadful soli- 
 tude, with the break of day at hand. Monotony of rocky land- 
 scape stretches in every direction ; here are heaps of shingle and 
 crumbling dust, there deep clefts wrapped in blackest shadow; 
 the scantiest vegetation may be seen in the crannies, or shows 
 greener at the margin of the torrent that rushes down by his 
 side. He watches through the last phase of the night, and feels 
 the solemn mystery attaching to these impalpable changes of time, 
 and the passage of day into day. The sun rises, and the stony 
 desert becomes a mirror to reflect its briUiance; soon the light 
 has penetrated to the lowest depth of every cleft, and the land- 
 scape glows like a furnace ; the grass by the torrent's side, which 
 had bloomed for a moment in the morning freshness, has already 
 begun to droop and wither. But the dominant sensation is still 
 the unbroken solitude of his mountain dwelling, which has thus 
 watched day pass into day without change since the very founda- 
 tion of the world. Suddenly his thoughts rise to a higher plane 
 in the contemplation of a vaster changelessness, which has been 
 a home for Israel, and has endured through a succession, not of 
 day into day nor generation into generation, but of everlasting 
 into everlasting. 
 
 Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place 
 In all generations. 
 
 Before the mountains were brought forth, 
 
 Or, ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, 
 
 Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. 
 
 It is an eternity like this that makes divisions of time and succes- 
 sion of human generations appear so feeble ; the thought of them 
 
176 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 can find vent only in a chain of images drawn from all that is 
 around the poet. God turns man "into crumbling 
 '^^' dust," like the debris he sees before him ; a thou- 
 sand years in his sight are but "as yesterday when it passeth" into 
 
 to-day, as the watch of the night he had felt so 
 verse 4 (margin) . . . , . ^ , ^ vi ^i • 
 
 brief; the generations of men rush past hke this 
 
 torrent flood by his side ; they drop as lightly as sleep fell from 
 
 him when the dawn awoke him ; they are hke the grass beside the 
 
 torrent flood, which he had just seen bloom in the 
 verse ^ 
 
 morning's freshness, and which is already withering 
 
 in the glare of the day. Verily the Divine anger is a scorching 
 
 sun which lays bare all iniquity, which pours light upon the most 
 
 secret sins as this sun's rays are illuminating the 
 verses 7-8 
 
 deep clefts that were so dark in the shadows of 
 
 morning. And under wrath like this the " days of our years " are 
 being brought to an end — "like a tale that is told." This strik- 
 ing phrase has been traditionally understood as comparing human 
 life to a story, — in itself an exquisite idea. But, in the absence 
 of any indication from the original (for the Hebrew word is 
 obscure), surely the context obliges us to understand the other 
 sense of the word ' tale ' : the years pass as swiftly as if they were 
 but being counted — one, two, three, four, ... up to seventy; 
 or if it be eighty, yet the ten years so proudly achieved are ten 
 years of labour and sorrow. But this meditation on swiftly passing 
 years is suddenly brought to a noble climax : 
 
 So teach us to number our days, 
 
 That we may get us an heart of wisdom. 
 
 Now the whole spirit of the psalm changes, and anotlier class of 
 associations come to the front : the freshness of morning, and its 
 irresistible suggestion of repentance and a new start, of casting 
 trouble and affliction behind like the night that is past, and look- 
 ing to the future as a day of glory. 
 
 Return, O Lord; how long? 
 
 And let it repent thee concerning thy servants. 
 
MODES OF LYtilC DEVELOPMENT 177 
 
 O satisfy us in the morning with thy mercy; 
 
 That we may rejoice and be glad all our days. 
 Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, 
 
 And the years wherein we have seen evil. 
 
 The thought is carried forward with the concealed image of sun- 
 rise and day beneath it. The work which God works for his 
 people shall " appear " — like the sun mounting above the hori- 
 zon, and so "the beauty of the Lord their God shall be upon 
 them." And a final association with morning — the zest for work 
 it brings — closes the psalm : 
 
 Establish thou the work of our hands upon us; 
 Yea, the work of our hands, establish thou it. 
 
 The psalm is thus seen to be made up of three sections. The 
 last gives a prominent place to the phrase " in the morning,'' and 
 is filled with morning thoughts of repentance, of change from a 
 dark past to a bright future, of beauty shed upon God's people 
 from above, of security for the work of the hands. The middle 
 section has the one thought of succession — succession of days, 
 of generations ; and this is in one verse expressly associated with 
 the image of yesterday passing into to-day. Through both these 
 sections, then, the idea of morning is present. The first section 
 brings forward mountains and the framework of earth as enduring 
 things to be contrasted with the greater eternity of their Creator ; 
 while all the images used are such as would form part of a moun- 
 tain landscape. When the whole poem is put together, then, it 
 will seem that, while its subject is ' Life as a passing Day,' the 
 setting of the thought is the concealed imagery of a mountain 
 sunrise. 
 
 Among the many varieties of imagery there is one which is 
 
 of special importance in Biblical poetry from its bearing upon 
 
 questions of interpretation. I would term it Meta- „ , ^ „. ' 
 ^ '^ „ , ., , Metaphor Direct 
 
 phor Direct. A metaphor has been well described 
 
 as a condensed simile : whereas a simile uses a distinct symbol 
 
 (like, as) to indicate that there is a comparison of ideas, the 
 
178 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 metaphor insinuates the words containing the image into the 
 framework of the sentence. It is a simile to say — 
 
 Like as a father pitieth his children, 
 So the Lord pitieth them that fear him. 
 
 For the same comparison in the form of a metaphor it is suffi- 
 cient to speak of ' God's fatherly pity for his servants,' or, ' the 
 pity of the Divine father.' It is obvious that this interweaving 
 of an image in the framework of a sentence may be done in many 
 different ways ; and it is not surprising to find that some modifi- 
 cations of an expression may be such that the metaphorical ele- 
 ment may have the appearance of direct speech. This is what 
 I am caUing Metaphor Direct. I believe there are many places 
 in the Book of Psalms where the interpretation of a whole passage 
 turns upon the question whether particular words are to be read 
 literally or as this direct metaphor : I will be content with a single 
 illustration taken from the eighty-fourth psalra.^ 
 
 Psalm Ixxxiv Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house, 
 
 And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, 
 Even thine altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God. 
 
 This has been commonly read as direct statement, and not meta- 
 phor. With the usual tendency to go first to historical surround- 
 ings for interpretation, commentators have seen in these words 
 a temple in ruins, and birds flying about what once was an altar 
 of God ; or other interpreters have thought they could discover 
 in the singer one brought up in temple precincts, accustomed to 
 mark the birds that flit round the sacred edifice. The first sug- 
 gestion is wholly out of keeping with the spirit of the poem, which 
 is one of joyous celebration. The second is a loose explanation, 
 which ignores the great difference between birds flitting about 
 cathedral towers, and the same birds building their nests on the 
 
 1 For a fuller discussion of Direct Metaphor see the first volume of Psalms in 
 the Modern Reader's Bible, page i68. An important illustration outside the Psalms 
 is in Habakkuk ii. The Divine solution of the prophet's mystery is conveyed in tlie 
 comparison of tlie Chaldean's career to the drunkard's reeling (see below, page 406) : 
 this is contained in the direct metaphor : Wine is a treacherous dealer, etc. 
 
MODES OF LYRIC DEVELOPMENT 179 
 
 altar itself. Surely the true explanation is to understand a meta- 
 phor. The psalmist is himself the sparrow who has found a house ; 
 or, to lay out the imagery at full length : Like birds finding in spring 
 their nesting places, so the sacred seasons of the pilgrimages bring 
 me to the altars of God. With this delicate image the whole poem 
 is in tune : it is a cluster of thoughts raised in the mind of a pious 
 Israelite by the sacred pilgrimages to Jerusalem. As the season 
 of the feasts comes round, body and soul seem filled with a yearn- 
 ing after the courts of the Lord ; the mystic force which in spring 
 leads the swallow to seek a nest for her young becomes to the 
 worshipper the attraction that draws him towards his true home 
 beside the altars of his God. Happiest they whose employment, 
 however lowly, keeps them all the year round in the Temple ser- 
 vice. Next happy are those whose one passion in life are the 
 sacred pilgrimages : the road to 2ion runs through their heart. 
 Imagination dwells on the happy journeys ; on the lonely spots 
 of the route converted into gaiety by the throng of travellers, like 
 a desert's momentary flourishing beneath the brief spring showers ; 
 on the climbing of height after height, each a stage nearer the 
 sacred goal ; on Mount Zion itself, and the anointed people bow- 
 ing before its God and Shield, and feeling streams of grace and 
 glory descend. A day in God's courts is better than a thousand 
 days of life's routine. 
 
 One more mode of developing thought in lyric poetry may be 
 mentioned, the simplest of all : that of Contrast, contrast as a 
 Previous chapters have alluded to the contrast mode oi deveiop- 
 of the Heavens above and the Law within which 
 makes the subject of the nineteenth psalm ; and again to the 
 Supreme Evil and the Supreme Good which stand contrasted in 
 the thirty-sixth. But it seems specially appropriate in this work, 
 and at this point of it, to mention the iirst psalm, which stands 
 as preface to the whole lyrical poetry of Scripture. 
 It celebrates the man — 
 
 Whose delight is in the Law of the Lord : 
 
 And in his Law doth he meditate day and night. 
 
180 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 No one will understand the word ' Law ' in its narrow modern 
 sense; when fully weighed, the expression 'the Law of the Lord' 
 will seem not very different from what is conveyed to a modern 
 ear by the term 'Sacred Scriptures.' The first psalm may be 
 said to bestow a blessing on the literary study of the Bible. The 
 thought of this prefatory psalm is worked out by Contrast. The 
 theme is stated in the form of a contrast ; the Meditative Life is 
 made antithetical to another type of life, not necessarily vicious, 
 but one that looks in other directions than the Law of the Lord 
 for the counsels by which it shall walk : — in modern phraseology, 
 the Worldly Life. This double theme is illustrated by an exqui- 
 site piece of contrasted imagery. The Worldly Life is compared 
 to " the Chaff which the wind driveth away " : airy, not ungrace- 
 ful motion of that which is mere outside without substance, carried 
 round by forces from without. Over against this is set the rooted 
 Tree, drawing perpetual sustenance from the water streams, mov- 
 ing harmoniously through its season of leafage and fruit. Then 
 the contrast is carried forward to that which is the dominant 
 thought of Biblical poetry — 'the judgment.' There is no de- 
 nunciation or detailed prophecy ; but the psalmist is assured that 
 the empty life " shall not stand in the judgment." And on the 
 other hand, no particular blessing is invoked upon " the way of 
 the righteous " : it is enough that " the Lord knoweth it." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 MONODIES, DRAMATIC LYRICS, AND RITUAL PSALMS 
 
 Among the psalms thus far reviewed several take the form of 
 monologue. The eighteenth psalm celebrates the deliverances of 
 David, the twenty-third sings the protection of Jehovah, the six- 
 teenth gives expression to the spirit of consecration, all in the first 
 person. But in cases like these the monologue form is only acci- 
 dental ; in the psalms next to be considered it is 
 the essence of the whole poem. They are psalms Experience 
 founded on special experience : sometimes the 
 experience is narrated, sometimes it is even presented with the 
 realistic power that belongs to drama. 
 
 Among the monodies of experience psalms thirty-two and forty- 
 one are found to have a closely similar structure. 
 Both open with a blessing, — on the forgiven soul, Hf^^ ''''"' 
 on the man that has consideration for the poor ; 
 both go on to describe woeful distress into which the speaker was 
 plunged, and how in the one case forgiveness brought healing, in 
 the other case even in his sin and suffering the psalmist was for- 
 given for the general integrity of his life. A large 
 class of psalms is reached where the experience in- 
 spires prayers and supplications. Early in the psalter we have as 
 
 companion poems a morning and evening prayer. 
 
 . , , , , • ,r Psalms IV, V 
 
 The poet at eventide addresses himself to prayer 
 
 in memory of the past ; he takes sides with God against the men 
 of vanity : 
 
 O ye sons of men, how long shall my glory be turned into dishonour? 
 
 How long will ye love vanity, and seek after falsehood? 
 But know that the Lord hath set apart him that is godly for himself: 
 The Lord will hear when I call unto him. 
 i8i 
 
182 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 He would purify his heart with silent devotion, expressed in 
 ordered sacrifice : 
 
 Stand in awe, and sin not ; 
 
 Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. 
 Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, 
 
 And put your trust in the Lord. 
 
 With this the depression of night calms into joyful trust. Morn- 
 ing brings energy for renewing the struggle of life : to the Biblical 
 poet this struggle of Kfe embodies itself in a contest with visible 
 foes, and in this sense devotion takes sides with God and prays 
 for the overthrow of the evil. 
 
 For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness : 
 
 Evil shall not sojourn with thee. 
 The arrogant shall not stand in thy sight : 
 
 Thou hatest all workers of iniquity. 
 Thou shalt destroy them that speak lies : 
 
 The Lord abhorreth the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. 
 But as for me, in the multitude of thy lovingkindness will I come into thy house : 
 
 In thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple. 
 
 Other prayers will be founded on counsels of sorrow, or craving 
 
 Psalms xiii, xvii, for the vindication of the right, or searchings of 
 
 ^"' " heart before worship. And the fifty-first psalm is 
 
 the cry of a sin-stricken conscience. 
 
 Psalins of this type, without the alteration of a single word, 
 
 remain the vehicle of the rnost modern devotion. There are 
 
 however supplicatory poems in which a discordant 
 Imprecatory , ^ ^, . 
 
 Psalms element appears : the imprecatory passages that 
 
 occur in several of the psalms are a difficulty with 
 
 many readers, who feel that such violence of passion is out of 
 
 harmony with the spirit of the psalter as a whole. 
 
 Psalms XXXV, oix Let them be as chaff before the wind, 
 
 And the angel of the Lord driving them on. 
 Let their way be dark and slippery, 
 
 And the angel of the Lord pursuing them. 
 
LYRICAL MONODIES 183 
 
 But for this, and for the much more extended imprecation of the 
 hundred and ninth psalm, an important principle of interpretation 
 is found in the different attitude of ancient and modern literature 
 to abstract and concrete. We in modern times are quite accus- 
 tomed to feel enthusiasm for the abstract thing we call ' a cause ' ; 
 with the ancient world it was necessary for the cause to be em- 
 bodied in a concrete party, if it was to win devotion or the reverse. 
 Though this principle has less application in Biblical than in other 
 literatures of antiquity, yet it obtains there to some extent. When 
 the psalmist's hatred of evil men has once been translated into the 
 form of hatred against evil, it will be felt that the 
 passages cannot be too strongly worded. Another ^'*^^^^ 
 consideration may be mentioned, though it is not to be pressed 
 When the representative poems of this type are examined in 
 their structure, they have a suggestion of liturgical character in 
 the combination of tones they successively exhibit. 
 Psalm thirty-five falls into three lengthy stanzas : 
 in each stanza there is an interchange of prayer, denunciation, and 
 vows. In other cases there will be a combination of humble 
 prayer with fierce execration. Such mixture of moods brings these 
 imprecatory psalms near to the type of liturgy we shall presently 
 have to consider. They are not Archilochian iambs of private 
 hate, but Utanies of public denunciation. 
 
 In this connection there arises an important question of inter- 
 pretation, of wide application in Biblical poetry. Monodies of 
 experience are given us in the first person : who is ^pj^ pgrgonaiitv 
 the ' I ' that speaks ? and whom therefore are we to represented in 
 picture as passing through the experience? Popu- Biblical monodies 
 lar interpretation has undergone a great change on this subject. 
 The earlier commentators, following the uncertain guidance of 
 traditional titles, searched the records of David's life, to find iden- 
 tifications with details of the psalms. Modern interpretation tends 
 to eliminate, not David only, but all personal speakers, and to 
 make the community of Israel the hero of the psalms. Of course, 
 the discussion of each poem must stand on its merits : we have 
 
184 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 already recognised both Davidic and national psalms. But, so far 
 as we can speak generally on this subject, I would — here, as 
 everywhere — deprecate the tendency to swamp literary in his- 
 toric interpretation. Neither David, nor Israel, nor any historical 
 personage, is the hero of the great mass of the psalter, but an 
 ideal sufferer of an idealised experience. Throughout the history 
 of poetry the poet has been at war with the particularising ten- 
 dencies of prosaic interpreters : he creating general conceptions, 
 which multitudes of his readers delight to dwarf into individual 
 allusions. In the psalms under discussion the generalising ten- 
 dency of the poetry is specially prominent. In nearly all of them 
 the imagery combines at one and the same time external trouble 
 of foes and internal distress of sickness and suffering. The mar- 
 tyr of the twenty-second psalm now paints vividly 
 
 JrSAini XXll . 1 • 1 • 
 
 the enemy surroundmg him : 
 
 Many bulls have compassed me : 
 
 Strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. 
 
 They gape upon me with their mouth, 
 As a ravening and a roaring lion. 
 
 No less vivid in the next line comes the picture of bodily collapse : 
 
 I am poured out like vi'ater, 
 
 And all my bones are out of joint ; 
 My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels; 
 
 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; 
 And my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; 
 
 And thou hast brought me into the dust of death. 
 
 Again the trouble becomes external : 
 
 For dogs have compassed me : 
 
 The assembly of evil- doers have inclosed me ; 
 They pierced my hands and my feet. 
 
 External changes to internal : 
 I may tell all my bones. 
 
DRAMATIC LYRICS 18S 
 
 In a single line there comes a reversion to what is external : 
 
 They look and stare upon me ; 
 They part my garments among them, 
 
 And upon my vesture do they cast lots. 
 
 One who seeks to fit into historic circumstances such entangling 
 of external and internal imagery degrades interpretation to the 
 level of puzzle-guessing. It is only rarely that the language of a 
 psalm contains sufficient evidence to identify the occasion of its 
 composition. And the poetry is the richer for this reticence. 
 To tie a verse to an individual experience is usually to destroy its 
 suggestive; association with a hundred experiences of a similar 
 type. It is just by keeping at a distance from a positive incident 
 of life that poetry has the high prerogative of securing the ideal 
 expression in which that and all kindred incidents see themselves 
 reflected. Ideahsm is realism universalised : interpretation of 
 the psalter in this spirit will unite David's experience and Israel's 
 on a common ground, and blend with these the experience of the 
 modern reader and his successors to all time. 
 
 An important division of poetry opens before us as we see 
 these monodies of experience developing into a complete dra- 
 matic form. The simplest way of making clear this 
 development will be to put side by side certain -^y^ '" 
 poems exhibiting different stages of advance from 
 lyric to drama. Let the reader first compare carefully psalms 
 seventy-seven and one hundred and forty-three. The situation in 
 the two is identical : a sufferer seeks to gain fortitude in his trouble 
 by meditating on the wonderful doings of God. And to some 
 extent the matter of one psalm echoes that of the other : in par- 
 ticular, where one poem simply speaks of finding comfort in old 
 memories the other recites these memories at full length. As 
 regards the form, however, in which the thoughts are conveyed to 
 us, the two poems will be found to represent different degrees of 
 proximity to dramatic presentation. 
 
1«6 
 
 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Monody 
 mingling de- 
 scription with 
 presentation 
 
 PSALM LXXVII 
 
 I will cry unto God with my voice; 
 
 Even unto God with my voice, and he will give ear unto me. 
 In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord : 
 
 My hand was stretched out in the night, and slacked not; 
 
 My soul refused to be comforted. 
 I remember God, and am disquieted : 
 
 I complain, and my spirit is overwhelmed. 
 
 Thou boldest mine eyes watching : 
 
 I am so troubled that I cannot speak. 
 I have considered the days of old, 
 
 The years of ancient times. 
 I call to remembrance my song in the night : 
 
 I commune with mine own heart; 
 
 And my spirit made diligent search. 
 
 " Will the Lord cast oft for ever ? 
 
 And will he be favourable no more ? 
 Is his mercy clean gone for ever ? 
 
 Doth his promise fail for evermore? 
 Hath God forgotten to be gracious ? 
 
 Hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? " 
 
 And I said, "This is my infirmity — 
 
 That the right hand of the Most High doth change ! 
 I will make mention of the deeds of the Lord ; 
 
 For I will remember thy wonders of old. 
 I will meditate also upon all thy work, 
 
 And muse on thy doings. 
 
 " Thy way, O God, is in holiness : 
 
 Who is a great god like unto God? 
 Thou art the God that doest wonders : 
 
 Thou hast made known thy strength among the peoples. 
 Thou hast with thine arm redeemed thy people, 
 
 The sons of Jacob and Joseph. 
 
 " The waters saw thee, O God ; 
 
 The waters saw thee, they were afraid : 
 The depths also trembled. 
 
DRAMATIC LYRICS 187 
 
 The clouds poured out water; 
 
 The skies sent out a sound : 
 Thine arrows also went abroad : 
 
 The voice of thy thunder was in the whirlwind; 
 
 " The lightnings lightened the world : 
 
 The earth trembled and shook. 
 Thy way was in the sea, 
 And thy paths in the great waters, 
 
 And thy footsteps were not known. 
 Thou leddest thy people like a flock. 
 
 By the hand of Moses and Aaron." 
 
 This poem so far resembles drama that it is a monody : instead of 
 an author speaking, about some one else, we have the actual sub- 
 ject of the experience speaking in his own person. But with this 
 dramatic element mingles a great deal of the description that 
 belongs to epic; the sufferer narrates how he was troubled, and 
 how he set himself to think ; though the actual words of his think- 
 ing are given, yet they are prefaced by the formula j, ^ 
 "And I said — ." In the next illustration all such ing a single dra- 
 narration disappears, and the situation is brought ™^*''' situation 
 out in the cries and other utterances that made a part of it ; we 
 have a present experience, and not a narration of something that 
 
 is past. 
 
 PSALM CXLIII 
 
 Hear my prayer, O Lord; give ear to my supplications: 
 In thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness. 
 
 And enter not into judgement with thy servant; 
 
 For in thy sight shall no man living be justified. 
 
 For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down 
 
 to the ground: 
 He hath made me to dwell in dark places, as those that have been long dead. 
 
 Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; 
 
 My heart within me is desolate. 
 
 I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy doings: 
 
 I muse on the works of thy hands; I spread forth my hands unto thee: 
 
 My soul thirsteth after thee, as a weary land. 
 
 Make haste to answer me, O Lord ; my spirit faileth. 
 
188 LVStC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Hide not thy face from me ; 
 
 Lest I become like them that go down into the pit. 
 Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; 
 
 For in thee do I trust. 
 
 Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; 
 
 For I lift up my soul unto thee. 
 Deliver me, O Lord, from mine enemies : 
 
 I flee unto thee to hide me. 
 
 Teach me to do thy will; 
 
 For thou art my God : 
 Let thy good spirit lead me in the land of uprightness; 
 
 Quicken me, O Lord, for thy name's sake. 
 
 In thy righteousness bring my soiil out of trouble : 
 And in thy lovingkindness cut off mine enemies. 
 And destroy all them that afflict my soul; 
 
 For I am thy servant. 
 
 Here then we have pure presentation of an experience ; there is 
 
 no element of the poem that is not dramatic. Yet it is not drama 
 
 but only a dramatic situation ; to make it complete drama would 
 
 necessitate a change from one situation to a differ- 
 Complete ° 
 
 Dramatic Lyric ent one, which is the essence of dramatic movement 
 (change of situa- g^^d plot. This requisite is suppUed in the case of 
 the sixth psalm, in which again we hear a sufferer 
 complaining and praying, but before the psalm ends deliverance 
 has come, and complaint is converted into rejoicing. 
 
 PSALM VI 
 
 O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, 
 
 Neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. 
 Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am withered away: 
 
 O Lord, heal me; for my bones are vexed; 
 
 My soul also is sore vexed. 
 And thou, O Lord, how long? 
 
 Return, O Lord, deliver my soul : 
 
 Save me for thy lovingkindness' sake. 
 
DRAMATIC LYRICS 189 
 
 For in death there is no remembrance of thee : 
 
 In Sheol who shall give thee thanks? 
 I am weary with my groaning; 
 
 Every night make I my bed to swim; • 
 
 I water my couch with my tears. 
 Mine eye wasteth away because of grief; 
 
 It waxeth old because of all mine adversaries. 
 
 Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity; 
 
 For the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping. 
 The Lord hath heard my supplication; 
 
 The Lord will receive my prayer. 
 All mine enemies shall be ashamed and sore vexed : 
 
 They shall turn back, they shall be ashamed suddenly. 
 
 In this case we have a monody free from any admixture of descrip- 
 tion, and the monody presents a sufferer undergoing, as he speaks 
 it, the change his words describe : an experience is acted before 
 us, and we thus have a lyric poem that is a complete drama. 
 
 This presentation of trouble passing dramatically into relief 
 belongs to psalm after psalm of the Bible; from the Table of 
 
 Biblical Lyrics in the Appendix they can be studied 
 
 . other examples 
 
 as a literary species in themselves. In a former 
 
 chapter was reviewed a notable example of it, the hundred and 
 thirty-ninth psalm : there the dread of the Divine omniscience 
 with which the poem opens becomes changed into a loving recog- 
 nition of its supporting efficacy, and the transition 
 is made at the very centre and turning-point of the xxii^ivii""^' 
 lyric movement. The dramatic transition can be 
 intensified by its abruptness. The psalm that commences with 
 
 the cry, 
 
 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? 
 
 and carries into detail the self-picturing of a God-forsaken heart, 
 makes its change from despair to rapture in the middle of a 
 sentence. 
 
 Deliver my soul from the sword; 
 
 My darling from the power of the dog; 
 Save me from the lion's mouth — 
 
 Yea, from the horns of the wild-oxen thou hast answered me ! 
 
190 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 A similar abruptness marks the turning-point of the fifty-seventh 
 psalm, which further has a refrain to bind closer its two halves ; 
 the words — 
 
 Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; 
 Let thy glory be above all the earth ! — 
 
 when they occur the first time must be understood as an expres- 
 sion of resignation ; when they come again they catch from the 
 surrounding verses the tone of unfettered exultation. And per- 
 haps the most complete illustration of this literary 
 form is to be found in the third psalm. Here the 
 usual change from distress to happiness appears to coincide with a 
 variation in external surroundings between night and morning ; 
 brief as the poem is, it amounts to a miniature drama in two 
 scenes. 
 
 PSALM III 
 
 LOKD, how are mine adversaries increased ! 
 
 Many are they that rise up against me. 
 Many there be which say of my soul, 
 
 " There is no help for him in God." 
 But thou, O Lord, art a shield about me; 
 
 My glory, and the lifter up of mine head. 
 I cry unto the Lord with my voice, 
 
 And he answereth me out of his holy hill. 
 
 I laid me down and slept; 
 
 I awaked; for the Lord sustaineth me. 
 I will not be afraid of ten thousands of the people. 
 
 That have set themselves against me round about. 
 Arise, Lord; save me, O my God : 
 
 For thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; 
 
 Thou hast broken the teeth of the wicked. 
 Salvation belongeth unto the Lord : 
 
 Thy blessing be upon thy people. 
 
DRAMATIC LYRICS 191 
 
 The term Dramatic Anthems will cover another class of poems, 
 which have a great literary interest, and are specially characteristic 
 of the psalter. These contain two dramatic transi- 
 tions instead of one ; yet they present only a single ^^tjigmj 
 moment. They open with a song of deliverance. 
 Then the action passes backward in time to the trouble from 
 which the speaker has been delivered ; and this is presented 
 dramatically in the actual words it evoked, as if the sufferer were 
 quoting from himself. Then the poem returns to the point at 
 which it started, and the triumph is renewed. The great illus- 
 tration of this type is the twenty-seventh psalm. 
 
 PSALM XXVII 
 
 The Lord is my light and my salvation; opening 
 
 Whom shall I fear? triumph 
 
 The Lord is the strength of my life : 
 
 Of whom shall I be afraid ? 
 When evil-doers came upon me 
 
 To eat up my flesh, 
 Even mine adversaries and my foes, 
 
 They stumbled and fell. 
 Though an host should encamp against me, 
 
 My heart shall not fear : 
 Though war should rise against me. 
 
 Even then will I be confident. 
 
 One thing have I asked of the Lord,, 
 
 That will I seek after; 
 That I may dwell in the house of the Lord 
 
 All the days of my life, 
 To behold the beauty of the Lord, 
 
 And to inquire in his temple. 
 For in the day of trouble he shall keep me secretly in his pavilion : 
 
 In the covert of his tabernacle shall he hide me ; 
 He shall lift me up upon a rock. 
 
 And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies 
 round about me; 
 And I vrill offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; 
 
 I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the LORD. 
 
192 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 retrogres- < Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice : 
 
 sion to the < Have mercy also upon me, and answer me. 
 
 time of 
 
 trouble ,„c i c „ 
 
 ' " Seek ye my face ' — 
 
 ' My heart said unto thee. Thy face, Lord, will I seek. 
 
 ' Hide not thy face from me ; 
 
 ' Put not thy servant away in anger : 
 
 'Thou hast been my help; cast me not off: 
 ' Neither forsake me, O God of my salvation. 
 ' When my father and mother forsake me 
 ' The Lord will take me up.' 
 
 ' Teach me thy way, O Lord, 
 
 ' And lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies. 
 ' Deliver me not over unto the will of mine adversaries : 
 ' For false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe 
 out cruelty ' — 
 
 return to I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the 
 triumph Lord 
 
 In the land of the living. 
 Wait on the Lord : be strong, and let thine heart take courage; 
 Yea, wait thou on the Lord. 
 
 There is no mistaking the sense of deliverance animating the 
 opening section ; this strain is abruptly resumed at the close ; 
 what then is more natural than to connect the intervening verses 
 with the trouble to which the deliverance relates ? No difficulty 
 would have been felt had the middle verses of the poem been 
 prefaced by the formula, " And I said — ." But the omission of 
 such introduction makes the whole more vivid and dramatic : it 
 is like a substitution of direct speech for obhque. Some of those 
 who do not recognise the structure I have described deal with 
 the difficulties of the poem by dividing it, and insist that at verse 
 seven a different psalm commences, the two having been made 
 one by editors or transcribers. But it is difficult to see what there 
 is in favour of such an explanation. No external evidence is sug- 
 gested. No motive appears for thus putting together what, to the 
 
Dramatic lvrics 193 
 
 ordinary reader, seems separated by such a break. Moreover, 
 
 the theory does not really solve the difificulty, since the transition 
 
 from verse twelve to the close is as abrupt as the transition from 
 
 verse six to verse seven. On the other hand, by the explanation 
 
 here suggested, the breaks become part of the dramatic effect of 
 
 the whole ; and the psalm, instead of being treated as something 
 
 accidental and exceptional, becomes one of a class of psalms 
 
 which have as their common structure this double dramatic 
 
 change.^ 
 
 The subject is important enough to justify one more illustration 
 
 of this class of dramatic lyrics. The eighty-iifth psalm celebrates 
 
 the deliverance of the nation from captivity. It 
 
 , , , . . , . ,., , Psalm Ixxxv 
 
 has the usual openmg triumph ; it passes like the 
 
 rest to the prayer in trouble ; then, instead of a sudden return to 
 
 the first tone, it has a transition stage, in which the poet pauses 
 
 to wait for the answer to his nation's prayer ; the answer comes, 
 
 and the final section is a burst of joy in which the recovered 
 
 fatherland is beheld with a glory of transfiguration upon it. It 
 
 will be observed that the opening and close are symmetrical in 
 
 structure, while in the intervening parts the structure is slightly 
 
 changed. 
 
 1 Besides the two described in the text the class includes Psalm cviii : its first 
 five verses express the triumph, verses 6-12 are the prayer of the trouble [compare 
 Psalm Ix, where these very verses make part of the prayer on the occasion of the 
 defeat that seems to have preceded the victory], — Again there is Psalm cxiiv: it 
 starts with ecstatic sense of deliverance ; then verses 3-8 go back to the previous 
 trouble, expressing the sufferer's confidence in God and scorn of the foe ; from 
 verse 9 to the end is the 'new song' inspired by the deliverance, the line of 
 thought being obscured only by verse 11, which is however merely the repetition 
 of the refrain (compare verses 7, 8) parenthetically, a common device in lyric 
 poetry. 
 
 Psalm ix-x [which the acrostic structure shows to be a single poem] represents 
 the same structural form duplicated: ix, 1-12, triumph ; 13, 14, dramatic prayer of 
 trouble; 15-20, return to triumph; x. i-ii, recurrence to dramatic prayer of 
 trouble ; 14-18, final resumption of triumph. Verses 12-13 are transitional : com- 
 pare verse 8 in Psalm Ixxxv. 
 
 Psalm xxxi exhibits a similar duplication applied to the dramatic lyric with 
 single change [r-6 trouble, 7-8 deliverance, 9-18 trouble, 19-24 deliverance]. 
 Compare with both these last examples the pendulum movement (above, page 
 MS)- 
 
194 
 
 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 retrogres- 
 sion to 
 time of 
 trouble 
 
 PSALM LXXXV 
 
 opening Lord, thou hast been favourable unto thy land : 
 triumph jj,q^ j,^gj brought back the captivity of Jacob. 
 
 Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people, 
 
 Thou hast covered all their sin. 
 
 Thou hast taken away all thy wrath, 
 
 Thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger. 
 
 ' Turn us, O God of our salvation, 
 
 ' And cause thine indignation toward us to cease. 
 
 ' Wilt thou be angry with us for ever? 
 
 'Wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations? 
 
 ' Wilt thou not quicken us again, 
 
 ' That thy people may rejoice in thee ? 
 
 ' Shew us thy mercy, O Lord, 
 
 ' And grant us thy salvation. 
 
 ' I will hear what God the Lord will speak : 
 
 ' For he will speak peace unto his people, 
 
 ' And to his saints, 
 
 ' But let them not turn again to folly.' 
 
 return to Surely his salvation is nigh them that fear him, 
 triumph •j'j^g^j ^^^ may dwell in our land. 
 
 Mercy and truth are met together; 
 Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. 
 Truth springeth out of the earth; 
 And righteousness hath looked down from heaven. 
 
 Yea, the Lord shall give that which is good ; 
 And our land shall yield her mcrease. 
 Righteousness shall go before him; 
 And shall make his footsteps a way to walk in. 
 
 A small class of poems may here be mentioned under the name 
 of Visions. They are highly dramatic in effect, but in form are 
 not entirely monologue : with monologue is min- 
 gled the scenic description which later we shall 
 see as a characteristic of the Rhapsody. An example is psalm 
 fifty-three. It opens with the much quoted line : 
 
 The fool hath said in his heart, There is* no God ! 
 
DRAMATIC LYRICS 195 
 
 It is hardly necessary to explain that this line does not predicate 
 folly of the atheist ; it has the converse meaning of ascribing 
 atheism to the fool. It goes on to portray the ' fool,' or man of 
 vicious life, as human nature gone bad and become ' filthy,' like 
 rotten fruit. Then — perhaps with a faint reminiscence of Abra- 
 ham and the destruction of Sodom — it calls up before our mind 
 the picture of a Divine inspection of earth, and suggests the 
 result that ' not one ' righteous man is to be found. Upon this 
 follows the Divine surprise : 
 
 Have the worker's of iniquity no knowledge? 
 Who eat up my people as they eat bread, 
 And call not upon God. 
 
 A very dramatic stroke marks the next verse. It has been said 
 that magnetic disturbances in the sun produce tempests on the 
 earth : this might serve as an illustration for the subtle connection 
 hinted here, whereby the wave of surprise that passes over the 
 bosom of Deity becomes felt upon earth as a mysterious panic, 
 striking the evil without visible cause, while the oppressed people 
 of God catch the spirit of triumph and defiance. 
 
 There were they in great fear, where no fear was : 
 
 For God halh scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee; 
 
 Thou hast put them to shame, because God hath rejected them. 
 
 Here the psalm ends. But a postscript' seems to have been 
 added by some age that looked in vain for the promised inter- 
 position of omnipotence : would that the salvation of Israel were 
 indeed come out of Zion ! The deliverance of the captive people 
 of God would be such a triumph as has been pictured. 
 
 In the fiftieth psalm we have again the combination, but on a 
 
 larger scale, of Divine monologue with scenic intro- 
 
 ° Psalm 1 
 
 duction. The whole world has been summoned 
 
 to the bar of God ; the prelude brings out the scene dramatically, 
 
 1 Compare Psalm li ; and possibly Psalms xxv, cxxx, cxxxi. As to Psalm Ixxxix, 
 see page 150. 
 
196 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 in the words of God's people, who are awaiting, with exultation, 
 the opening of this High Court. 
 
 'Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined forth. 
 
 Our God Cometh, and shall not keep silence. 
 A fire devoureth before hira. 
 
 And it is very tempestuous round about him. 
 
 All are assembled, the ' saints of God ' on one side, and the 
 wicked opposite to them ; only the heavens themselves are left to 
 be spectators of this Act of Justice. From this point the structure 
 becomes antistrophic. First, God addresses his faithful people ; 
 he has not come to exact of them more sacrifices or take more of 
 their bullocks or he-goats ; it is by their cries"to him in trouble, 
 and their thanksgiving when deliverance has come, that they can 
 truly glorify their God. In the antistrophe God turns to the 
 wicked : how have they dared to join in his worship, while they 
 were partakers in evil and crime ? It is he who ordereth his con- 
 versation aright that shall see the salvation of God. 
 
 The term Ritual Psalms explains itself. Under this head we 
 
 may perhaps include the Occasional Anthems, 
 
 Ritual Psalms , . , , , , ■ i ,■ • . , , 
 
 noted in the last chapter, which, as distinguished 
 
 from the simpler Occasional Songs, connect themselves with 
 
 elaborate ceremonial, such as the inauguration of Jerusalem. 
 
 The National Anthems, fully discussed under the head of odes, 
 
 may also be placed in this division of lyric poetry, although only 
 
 one of the four — the Wilderness Hymn — bears on its surface 
 
 the ritual form. The ritual of war has its representation in the 
 
 psalter. Psalm fifty-nine is a War Ballad, vigorous 
 
 and Anthems though obscure. Apparently the foe is some rabble 
 
 Psalms hx, xx- horde : there are hints of heathen, of uncouth iar- 
 xxi, Ix, cviii 
 
 gon, of swarming by night : the ballad spirit is well 
 
 brought out by the verses that recur (with variation) : 
 
 They return at evening, 
 They make a noise like a dog, 
 And go round about the city. 
 
RITUAL PSALMS 197 
 
 Behold, they belch out with their mouth; 
 Swords are in their lips — 
 ' For who doth hear ? ' 
 
 Military anthems are found to meet different exigences. In 
 psalm twenty the king and people, antiphonally, commend them- 
 selves to God before going into battle ; in the psalm that follows 
 they are triumphing together over victory.' Psalms sixty and 
 one hundred and eight are also companion poems : with a similar 
 antiphony of king and people they deplore defeat and triumph in 
 victory.^ 
 
 It is of course to religious worship that the great mass of the 
 ritual psalms belong. I apply the term Festal Hymns to psalms 
 which breathe the general spirit of a high feast day, though they 
 may not fit themselves to any particular ceremonial. One variety 
 of these has been called Hallelujahs : in typical cases they have 
 the ejaculation from which they are named at the opening and 
 close. Scarcely different from these are the Accession Hymns : 
 here the exclamation, " The Lord reigneth " is the keynote of 
 the whole. In Votive Hymns an individual comes to mingle his 
 personal vow with the general thanksgiving ; even such poems as 
 the Song of Hannah, or of Mary, however personal the strain with 
 which they start, yet before the end seem to merge this in praise 
 that is of universal apphcation. Festal and Votive Hymns can be 
 expanded into the elaborateness of Festal and Votive Anthems. 
 This is usually the case where successive poems, as they stand in 
 our Book of Psalms, seem to combine together into 
 one sustained act of praise. Yet even within the lumbers vi' 34 
 limits of a single brief psalm we may find a Festal 
 Anthem, if we understand psalm sixty-seven as a Response to the 
 High Priestly Benediction.' 
 
 1 People, verses 1,7; king, verse 6 : of Psalm xx. In Psalm xxi : king, verses 
 1-7 : people, verses 8-13. 
 
 2 People, verses i, 12; king, verses 5-11 : oi Psalm Ix. In Psalm cviii : people, 
 verses, i, 13 ; king, verses 6-12. 
 
 s Of course, as the psalm stands there is a discrepancy between the Divine 
 names : The Lord in the Blessing, God in the Response. But this is only an acci- 
 
198 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 THE HIGH PRIEST 
 
 The Lord bless thee. 
 
 And keep thee ; 
 The Lord make his face to shine upon thee. 
 
 And be gracious unto thee ; 
 The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, 
 
 And give thee peace ! 
 
 THE PEOPLE 
 
 God be merciful unto us, and bless us, 
 
 And cause his face to shine upon us; 
 
 That thy way may be known upon earth, 
 
 Thy saving health among all nations. 
 
 Let the peoples praise thee, O God, 
 Let all the peoples praise thee. 
 
 O let the nations be glad, 
 
 And sing for joy : 
 For thou shalt judge the peoples with equity, 
 And govern the nations upon earth. 
 
 Let the peoples praise thee, O God, 
 Let all the peoples praise thee. 
 
 The earth hath yielded her increase : 
 
 God, even our own God, shall bless us. 
 God shall bless us : 
 
 And all the ends of the earth shall fear him. 
 Let the peoples praise thee, O God, 
 Let all the peoples praise thee. 
 
 So far we have seen liturgical psalms which have been com- 
 posed wholly in one tone, that of praise. But it belongs to 
 Liturgy, that is, to Divine Service, to unite many 
 Liturgies ^(umty ^q^^^ gf jjjg gQ^i jj, Q^g exercise, to mingle peni- 
 tence with praise, confession of faith with supplica- 
 tion. There are certain psalms which seem to show a similar 
 
 dent due to the position ai Psalm Ixvii in Book 11 of the psalter, where the name 
 Elohim prevails. Psalm liii in the same book is a reproduction of Psalm xiv with 
 God substituted for The Lord. — The refrain has to be supplied for tlie third stanza : 
 compare above, page 59. 
 
RITUAL PSALMS 199 
 
 mingling of moods, — psalms which a close analysis will separate 
 altogether from the personal monologues filled with variations of 
 individual experience, and which must be classified with the poetry 
 of public worship. The explanation is that in such cases we have 
 a complete liturgy within the limits of a single psalm. 
 
 The characteristics I am describing distinguish one of the most 
 impressive psalms in the whole Bible ; and the discussion of this 
 psalm illustrates the important bearing of such considerations upon 
 interpretation. The sixty-fifth psalm will be pronounced by one 
 commentator a harvest thanksgiving ; another will see in it praise 
 for forgiveness of national sin. But such explanations are incom- 
 plete, and leave great part of the poem without significance. Nor 
 is the matter much mended when the two theories are combined. 
 All such interpretation assumes for the psalm a type of unity which 
 it does not contain. In discussing the higher unity I mentioned, 
 among other types, the unity of aggregation. The „ j,^ , ^ 
 sixty-fifth psalm is bound together by this bond ; 
 not that we have in it the aggregation of different compositions, 
 such as we saw in the selections from the Book of Proverbs ; but 
 the parts of this psalm bring up in succession different moods of 
 the soul, disconnected from one another, yet minghng as they do 
 mingle in any elaborate act of worship. 
 
 PSALM LXV 
 
 Praise waiteth for thee, O God, in Zion : praise 
 
 And unto thee shall the vow be performed. 
 
 * 
 O thou that hearest prayer, prayer 
 
 Unto thee shall all flesh come. 
 
 * 
 Iniquities prevail against me : penitence 
 
 As for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away. 
 
 * 
 Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest aspiration 
 to approach unto thee, 
 That he may dwell in thy courts : 
 ' We shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, 
 ' The holy place of thy temple.' 
 
200 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 confession By terrible things tliou wilt answer us in righteousness, O God of 
 "* **"■• our salvation : 
 
 Thou that art the confidence of all the ends of the earth, 
 And of them that are afar off upon the sea : 
 Which by his strength setteth fast the mountains; 
 
 Being girded about with might : 
 Which stilleth the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves. 
 
 And the tumult of the peoples. 
 They also that dwell in the uttermost parts are afraid at thy 
 tokens : 
 Thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to 
 rejoice. 
 
 adoration Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it : 
 
 Thou greatly enrichest it, the river of God is full of water : 
 Thou providest them corn, when thou hast so prepared the 
 earth; 
 Thou waterest her furrows abundantly, thou settlest the ridges 
 thereof. 
 Thou makest it soft with showers, thou blessest the springing 
 thereof, 
 Thou crownest the year with thy goodness : 
 
 And thy paths drop fatness. 
 They drop upon the pastures of the vpilderness. 
 
 And the hills are girded With joy. 
 The pastures are clothed with flocks : 
 The valleys also are covered over with corn : 
 They shout for joy, they also sing. 
 
 When, without any preconceived idea of unity, the psalm is 
 examined with a view to tracing the actual connection of its 
 different parts, it is thus found to bring before us in succession all 
 the elements of public worship. One verse is an ejaculation of 
 praise, the next a simple prayer, the next a simple expression 
 of penitence. Then follow words of aspiration, describing the 
 devout life by the image so regularly used for it in the psalms — 
 the dwelling in God's house. Another theme of worship then 
 finds elaborate expression ; that which in modern phraseology 
 would be called God's Providence, while the Hebrew worshipper 
 
Ritual psalms 201 
 
 would describe it as Judgment, or " the answer in righteousness " : 
 this part of the liturgy is a confession of faith. And the whole 
 terminates with adoration to the God of Nature. This last out- 
 burst does not simply touch the harvest, but passes to and fro 
 between agricultural and pastoral scenery ; between the changing 
 year of agriculture — from the first ploughing to the crowning 
 harvest — and the dropping of 'God's paths,' the rainclouds, 
 upon the pasture lands, until both sides of external nature are 
 united in a shout and hymn of joy. 
 
 The hills are girded with joy, 
 The pastures are clothed with flocks; 
 The valleys also are covered over with corn; 
 
 They shout for joy, they also sing. 
 
 The different sections of the psalm have no connection one with 
 the other, but they are all parts of a whole, just as entirely sepa- 
 rate sentences of confession, of praise, of supplication, are in our 
 modern liturgies bound together into a single office for matins or 
 evensong. 
 
 The ritual psalms seem to reach their most characteristic form 
 when they are antiphonal in structure. Antiphonal performance 
 may be assumed in the case of all ; but there are Ritual psaims 
 some cases in which the whole form and succession with antiphonal 
 of thought imply a designation for more than one ^t™'^*"^ 
 set of performers. I will take a fully developed type in the hun- 
 dred and eighteenth psalm. The reader will appreciate the illus- 
 tration the better if he first reads the hundred and sixteenth 
 psalm. The two poems are almost identical in thought and situ- 
 ation ; in each case an individual is returning thanks for deliver- 
 ance apparently from sickness. But in one case there is nothing 
 to break the flow of individual speech ; in the other psalm the 
 sequence of verses clearly suggests a solo and two distinct 
 choruses. At the beginning the Worshipper is approaching the 
 Temple with an Escort of Friends ; later on a second Chorus of 
 Priests must be added. 
 
202 
 
 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 PSALM CXVIII 
 The Worshipper and his Escort approach the Temple, 
 
 Tutti. O give thanks unto the Lord ; for he is good : 
 
 For his mercy endureth for ever. 
 
 Worshipper. Let Israel novif say — 
 Escort. That his mercy endureth for ever. 
 
 Worshipper. Let the house of Aaron now say — 
 Escort. That his mercy endureth for ever. 
 
 Worshipper. Let them novif that fear the Lord say — 
 Escort. That his mercy endureth for ever. 
 
 Worshipper. Out of my distress I called upon the Lord : 
 
 The Lord ansvi'ered me, and set me in a large place. 
 
 The Lord is on my side; I vifill not fear : 
 What can man do unto me ? 
 
 The Lord is on my side among them that help me : 
 
 Therefore shall I see my desire upon them that hate me. 
 
 It is better to trust in the LORD 
 
 Than to put confidence in man; 
 It is better to trust in the Lord 
 
 Than to put confidence in princes. 
 
 All nations compassed me about : 
 
 In the name of the Lord I will cut them off ! 
 
 They compassed me about ; 
 
 Yea, they compassed me about : 
 
 In the name of the Lord I will cut them off ! 
 
 They compassed me about like bees; 
 
 They are quenched as the fire of thorns : 
 
 In the name of the Lord I will cut them off ! 
 
 Thou didst thrust sore at me that I might fall : 
 
 But the Lord helped me. 
 The Lord is my strength and song; 
 And he is become my salvation. 
 The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tents of the 
 righteous : 
 The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly. 
 Escort. The right hand of the Lord is exalted : 
 
 The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly, 
 
 Escort. 
 
 Worshipper. 
 Escort. 
 Worshipper. 
 
 Escort. 
 Worshipper. 
 
 Escort. 
 Worshipper. 
 
RITUAL PSALMS 
 
 203 
 
 Worshipper, 
 
 Priests. 
 
 I shall not die, but live, 
 
 And declare the works of the Lord. 
 The Lord hath chastened me sore : 
 
 But he hath not given me over unto death. 
 Open to me the gates of righteousness : • 
 
 I will enter into them, I will give thanks unto the Lord. 
 
 The Temple gates open and disclose a Chorus of Priests, 
 
 This is the Gate of the Lord : 
 
 The righteous shall enter into it. 
 
 Worshipper. I will give thanks unto thee, for thou hast answered me. 
 
 And art become my salvation. 
 The stone which the builders rejected 
 
 Is become the head of the corner. 
 Escort. This is the Lord's doing; 
 
 It is marvellous in our eyes. 
 This is the day which the Lord hath made; 
 
 We will rejoice and be glad in it. 
 Save now, we beseech thee, O Lord : 
 
 O Lord, we beseech thee, send now prosperity. 
 
 The Worshipper and Escort enter the Temple, the Priests welcoming them. 
 
 Priests. Blessed be he that entereth in the name of the Lord ! 
 
 We have blessed you out of the house of the Lord ! 
 
 Tutti. The Lord is God, and he hath given us light : 
 
 Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar. 
 
 Worshipper. Thou art my God, and I will give thanks unto thee : 
 Thou art my God, I*will exalt thee. 
 
 Tutti. O give thanks unto the Lord ; for he is good : 
 
 For his mercy endureth for ever. 
 
 In regard to their general literary characteristics the Ritual 
 Psalms for the most part exhibit a simplicity that is beyond analy- 
 sis. The distinctiveness of the Hymn as a literary gg^gj^j 
 form is perhaps most easily described by making characteristics 
 it the converse of Occasional Poetry : in the latter "* "*""*' ^"^^'^ 
 the matter is already provided, and the matter begets the emo- 
 tion ; in the Hymn the set emotion — praise, penitence — is taken 
 
204 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 for granted and looks for matter to sustain it. In the Festal Hymns 
 the literary student can only marvel at the richness of poetic 
 thought, and the height at which the exultation is maintained. 
 Sometimes it is maintained simply by reiteration, or enumeration 
 of details ; sometimes imagery is used, especially the favourite 
 Hebrew image of external nature in excitement : the sea roars, 
 the hills leap, the trees of the wood sing for joy, as Jehovah comes 
 to judgment. And here, as everywhere, the pendulum swing 
 characterises the movement of Biblical thought : the most sus- 
 tained acts of praise in the liturgy of the psalter are made by 
 alternations between exclamations of exultation on the one hand, 
 and on the other hand the detailing of matter on which the exul- 
 tation is founded. Such an alternation, distributed apparently 
 between two antiphonal choruses, brings the psalter as a whole to 
 a musical climax : an abandon of sacred exultation in which distinc- 
 tions are lost. 
 
 First Chorus 
 
 Praise the Lord from the earth, 
 Ye dragons, and all deeps : 
 Fire and hail, snow and vapour; 
 Stormy wind, fulfilling his word : 
 
 Mountains and all hills; 
 Fruitful trees and all cedars : 
 Beasts and all cattle; 
 Creeping things and flying fowl : 
 
 Kings of the earth anfl all peoples; 
 Princes and all judges of the earth : 
 Both young men and maidens; 
 Old men and children : 
 
 Second Chorus 
 
 Let them praise the name of the Lord ; 
 
 For his name alone is exalted : 
 
 His glory is above the earth and heaven. 
 
 And he hath lifted up the horn of his people, 
 
 The praise of all his saints; 
 
 Even of the children of Israel, a. people near unto him. 
 
RITUAL PSALMS 205 
 
 First Chorus 
 
 Sing unto the Lord a new song, 
 
 And his praise in the assembly of the saints. 
 
 Let Israel rejoice in him that made him : 
 
 Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King. 
 
 Let them praise his name in the dance : 
 
 Let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp. 
 
 Second Chorus 
 
 For the Lord taketh pleasure iii his people : 
 He will beautify the meek with salvation. 
 
 First Chorus 
 
 Let the saints exult in glory : 
 
 Let them sing for joy upon their beds. 
 
 Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, 
 
 And a two-edged sword in their hand : 
 
 Second Chorus 
 
 To execute vengeance upon the nations, 
 
 And punishments upon the peoples; 
 
 To bind their kings with chains, 
 
 And their nobles with fetters of iron; 
 
 To execute upon them the judgement written, 
 
 This honour have all his saints. 
 
 First Chorus 
 Praise God in his sanctuary : 
 
 Second Chorus 
 Praise him in the firmament of his power. 
 
 First Chorus 
 Praise him for his mighty acts : 
 
 Second Chorus 
 Praise hiro according to his excellent greatness. 
 
206 LYRIC POETRY OF l^HE BIBLE 
 
 First Chorus 
 Praise him with the sound of the trumpet : 
 
 Second Chorus 
 Praise him with the psaltery and harp. 
 
 First Chorus 
 Praise him with the timbrel and dance : 
 
 Second Chorus 
 Praise him with the stringed instruments and the pipe. 
 
 First Chorus 
 Praise him upon the loud cymbals : 
 
 Second Chorus 
 Praise him upon the high-sounding cymbals. 
 
 Full Chorus 
 Let everything that hath breath praise the LORD. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 LYRIC IDYL : ' Solomon's song ' 
 
 The poem which is the subject of the present chapter affords a 
 good illustration of the principle underlying this work, — that clear 
 Diviaed Opinion knowledge of the outer hterary form is an essential 
 as to the form of for a thorough grasp of the matter and spirit of 
 Solomon's Song literature. That Solomon's Song is dialogue of a 
 dramatic character, with a story underlying it, must be recognised 
 by all ; but when we go beyond this we find commentators divided, 
 one set holding the poem to be a drama, the other an idyl. 
 Those who consider it a drama are in substantial agreement as to 
 its plot : that the Shulammite is wooed by King Solomon with 
 offers of regal splendour, that she remains faithful to her humbler 
 Shepherd lover, that in the end King Solomon gives way and the 
 faithful lovers are united. The other interpretation, as followed in 
 this chapter, identifies Solomon himself with the humble lover. 
 The whole story now becomes this : that King Solomon, visiting 
 his vineyard upon Mount Lebanon, comes by surprise upon the 
 fair Shulammite maiden; she flees from him, and he visits her 
 disguised as a Shepherd and wins her love ; then he comes in 
 state to claim her as his queen ; they are being wedded in the 
 Royal Palace when the poem opens. Now, whichever of these 
 interpretations be correct, it is clear that the technical question as 
 between drama and idyl involves a fundamental difference in the 
 story of the poem. 
 
 I believe that the divergence of interpretation in the present 
 case is largely due to the fact that, while Drama is a thing familiar 
 
 207 
 
208 LYRIC POETRY OP THE BIBLE 
 
 to all, few have considered the extent to which the development 
 of Lyric Idyl can be carried.' It may be admitted Distinction of 
 at once that the traditional masters of the Idyl, Lyric iflyi from 
 such as Theocritus and Virgil, have given us noth- •"'^"^ 
 ing that in dramatic elaborateness approaches Solomon's Song. 
 But the fine arts are all one family, and the development which 
 may stop short in pure poetry may be carried forward in the 
 sister art of music. Speaking roughly, we may say that the differ- 
 ence between Drama and Lyric Idyl is the difference between 
 Opera and Oratorio ; and most of the peculiar structural features 
 of Solomon's Song are such as will be readily intelligible to the 
 student of dramatic music. 
 
 It is necessary to see exactly what is involved in the difference 
 between the dramatic form and the form of lyric idyl. In the 
 first place, it is inevitable in drama that the order djingiaentsmay 
 of incidents should tally with the order of speeches be alluded to in 
 representing them. In narrating a story, it is easy ^^ °^^" 
 to mention a catastrophe and then go back in time to the circum- 
 stances which brought that catastrophe about. But drama is pure 
 presentation, and its action can never go back ; hence the neces- 
 sity in Ancient Tragedy, which dramatised only the end of a story, 
 of lyric choral odes to bring out by narrative important incidents 
 that happened earlier than the opening scene. In a lyric idyl, on 
 the contrary, the story is not acted, but assumed and alluded to ; 
 and allusion can be made to the different parts of the story in any 
 order. A pure dramatisation of a love story would begin (say) 
 with the first meeting of the lovers, would proceed with the cir- 
 
 1 The word ' Idyl ' is diminutive of the Greek eide, the term for the various 
 'forms' or species of poetry. The original literary application of the term has 
 been well explained by Mr. J. W. Machail as depending upon a late usage of the 
 word to express any rare or costly form of merchandise : compare the Latin species 
 and the English spice. The original Idyls of Theocritus were such ' literary 
 spices.' The diminutive expresses the nature of the subject matter, — personal love, 
 domestic life, etc. Thus Wagner's Siegfried is an elaborate and massive musical 
 drama ; but when the composer takes the themes of this opera and interweaves 
 them with an old cradle song to make a birthday serenade to his wife in honour of 
 their infant son, he calls it the Siegfried Idyl. 
 
LYRIC IDYL: 'SOLOMON'S SONG' 209 
 
 cumstances of their growing intimacy, and end with their marriage. 
 But the series of idyls making Solomon's Song commences with 
 the wedding day, goes back to the day of betrothal and remi- 
 niscences of the courtship, and then goes forward to what in mod- 
 ern parlance might be called the close of the honeymoon. 
 
 Again, in a drama every speech must be referred to personal 
 speakers, either an individual or a Chorus. But lyric poetry, in 
 addition to these, can make use of a Reciting 
 Choras^*"'*'"^ Chorus, which is impersonal, and merely the au- 
 thor's device for carrying on the story in the parts 
 not represented dramatically. Thus in Mendelssohn's Elijah, the 
 Chorus is sometimes personal, as where it presents the Priests 
 of Baal crying, " O Baal, hear us " ; in other cases it is imper- 
 sonal, as where it is used to describe the fire falling from heaven, 
 or to point the moral in the chorale, " Cast thy burden upon the 
 Lord." So in the present case, we have both a personal Chorus 
 of Daughters of Jerusalem who escort the Bride, and a merely 
 abstract Chorus used to describe the journey of Solomon in his 
 state chariot. Another consideration is worth mentioning in this 
 connection. Every speech in a drama must be spoken in a definite 
 place or ' scene ' : but this Reciting Chorus is, on the contrary, used 
 as a device for suggesting transition from one scene to another. 
 
 As a third feature of the Lyric Idyl may be mentioned the 
 
 refrains. Refrains in lyric poetry always may be, and usually are, 
 
 parenthetic ; they must not be attached to their 
 
 (3) parenthetic context, but referred to the poem as a whole. A 
 
 refrains ' '^ 
 
 simple modern ballad will narrate a story, — how, 
 
 for example, the spectre of a lover comes to claim his mistress, 
 
 how she responds to his summons, and is borne to a distant land, 
 
 where she is found dead on his tomb. The verses containing this 
 
 narrative will be continually interrupted by the refrain : 
 
 — Sing hey, sing ho, the linden tree — 
 
 These words have no' point in relation to the sentences to which 
 they are attached, but very likely interrupt their grammatical con- 
 
210 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 struction. On the other hand, the idea of the wind singing 
 through the trees makes an effective background to be kept 
 present in the mind through the whole of a story of weird inci- 
 dent. Such refrains may be compared to the musical accompani-" 
 ment heard continuing the strains of a song during the intervals 
 between the spoken verses. In the present case there are three 
 refrains which, wherever they occur, must be separated from the 
 dialogue. In their subject they are just suited to keep before us 
 the general spirit of the whole poem. In one, there is a call upon 
 all to leave the lovers to their repose. 
 
 / adjure VDu, dauehters of Jerusalem, 
 D ,1. ji Jr. I- J j-,L j: ij "• ">'• compare 
 
 By the roes, and by the hinds of me field, yj sanSviii 
 
 That ye stir not up, nor awaken love. 
 
 Until it please. 
 
 The second is, in its various forms, the mutual pledge. 
 
 My beloved is mine, and I am his : ii. i6: compare 
 
 Hefeedeth his flock among the lilies. "• 3 and vii. lo 
 
 The third is the summons to embrace. 
 
 Until the day break, and the shadows flee away. 
 
 Turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart ^ g ^^ ^jy 
 
 Upon the mountains of separation. 
 
 Love strains like these are the essence of the whole poem, and 
 are naturally used to separate the idyls from one another, or mark 
 the natural divisions of each. 
 
 I have yet to mention something specially characteristic of this 
 poem, which is readily intelligible as a feature of a lyric idyl. 
 We find incidents conveyed dramatically by dia- 
 logue which, nevertheless, cannot be part of the (4) dramatised 
 . , *^ reminiscences 
 
 scene in which they occur, but must, at that point, 
 
 be a reminiscence. Such an effect may be called a Dramatised 
 Reminiscence. Thus it is part of the story as here interpreted 
 that Solomon, when the Shulammite damsel had fled from him at 
 
LYRIC IDYL: 'SOLOMON'S SONG' 211 
 
 his first appearance, continued his suit to her in the disguise of 
 a Shepherd. She wonders who this stranger is, so different from 
 the shepherds she knows. 
 
 i. 7 Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, 
 
 Where thou feedest thy flock, 
 Where thou makest it to rest at noon : 
 For why should I be as one that wandereth 
 Beside the flocks of thy companions ? 
 
 He of course seeks to evade her scrutiny by a vague answer. 
 
 i. 8 If thou know not, O thou fairest among women. 
 
 Go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, 
 And feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents. 
 
 Such a detail in itself is natural enough in a love story. But the 
 point of the present suggestion is that the position of the speeches 
 just quoted — in the wedding scene — is perfectly intelligible. 
 It is natural that the Shulammite, when for the first time she be- 
 holds her royal lover in the splendour of his palace, should allude 
 to her former attempt to penetrate his disguise. And it is equally 
 natural that the allusion should take the form of recalling the 
 actual words used by each : they are merely quoting their former 
 selves, a thing which we have already seen as a tendency of the 
 dramatic lyrics in the psalter.-' Or, to take another instance, 
 it is natural for the king in his musings on his bride to recall 
 the moment of their first meeting. The sudden surprise of the 
 courtly escort at the rustic maiden's beauty is conveyed in the 
 form of a speech. 
 
 vi. lo Who is she that looketh forth as the morning. 
 
 Fair as the moon. 
 Pure as the sun, 
 Terrible as an army with banners? 
 
 Her startled feelings as the royal cortege surprised her are 
 expressed as if they had been spoken. 
 
 1 See above, page 191. 
 
212 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 I went down into the garden of nuts, vi. ii 
 
 To see the green plants of the valley, 
 
 To see whether the vine budded, 
 
 And the pomegranates were in flower. 
 
 Or ever I was aware, my soul set me 
 
 Among the chariots of my princely people. 
 
 It is natural to follow up this with the cry to the damsel to stop. 
 
 Return, return, O Shulammite; vi. 13 
 
 Return, return, that we may look upon thee. 
 
 Then will be expressed her uneasiness at the gaze, whether spoken 
 at the time or not. 
 
 Why will ye look upon the Shulammite; 
 As upon the dance of Mahanaim? 
 
 All this is not a dialogue taking place at point of the poem where 
 the words occur, but the form of dialogue thrown over the sensa- 
 tion of an emphatic moment, recalled as a reminiscence by the 
 king in the midst of his meditations on his queen. It belongs 
 naturally to the free movement of lyric poetry between meditation 
 and dramatic presentation ; and resembles the common device in 
 narrative of a sudden change from indirect to direct narration.' 
 
 Keeping these points of literary form before us, we may follow 
 the poem as a Suite of seven Idyls. The first pre- Solomon's Sone 
 sents the Wedding Day, its personages being the as a Suite of 
 King, the Bride, and her escort, the Chorus of seven idyls 
 Daughters of Jerusalem. It opens outside the palace. The 
 bridal procession is approaching : the royal Bride- 
 groom leads the Bride, followed by an Attendant Day I"* ^!"*°^ 
 Chorus of Daughters of Jerusalem. The Bride 
 is softly speaking, half to her Attendants, half to the Bride- 
 groom. 
 
 1 The Dramatised Reminiscence may be conveniently represented to the eye by 
 inverted commas. 
 
LYRIC IDYL: 'SOLOMON'S SONG' 213 
 
 The Bride 
 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth : 
 
 For thy love is better than wine. 
 Thine ointments have a goodly fragrance ; 
 Thy name is as ointment poured forth : 
 
 Therefore do the virgins love thee. — 
 
 A pause is made at the threshold of the palace for the central 
 point of the ceremony. Different races or ages have fastened 
 upon different external forms for the decisive point of a wedding 
 ceremony : with ourselves it is an exchange of rings, with some 
 oriental peoples the breaking of a piece of pottery. In the world 
 of this poem the essential ceremony of the wedding is the lifting 
 of the Bride by the Bridegroom over the threshold of her future 
 home : this ceremonial action gives interpretation to a much dis- 
 puted passage. 
 
 The Bride (Jo the Bridegrooni) 
 Draw me — 
 
 Attendant Chorus 
 We will run after thee. 
 [ The Bridegroom lifts the Bride across the threshold. 
 
 The Bride 
 The king hath brought me into his chambers. 
 
 Attendant Chorus 
 We will be glad and rejoice in thee, 
 We will make mention of thy love more than of wine. 
 
 The Bride 
 In uprightness do they love thee. 
 
 The scene now changes to the inside of the palace. The Bride 
 — a sunburnt country girl raised to a royal position — apologises 
 for her homely beauty to her city Bridesmaids. 
 
 Look not upon me, because I am swarthy. 
 
 Because the sun hath scorched me. 
 My mother's sons were incensed against me. 
 
iU LYRIC Poetry OP tjje Mible 
 
 They made me keeper of the vineyards, 
 
 But mine own vineyard have I not kept Xyp/i-l-^. 
 
 Now the newly wedded pair whisper together those reminiscences 
 to which allusion has already been made : how the Shulammite 
 had sought to pierce her lover's disguise, how he had put her off 
 with meaningless explanation. The idyl then becomes the pro- 
 cession from the Banqueting Chamber, the lovers exchanging en- 
 dearing words. 
 
 The Bridegroom 
 Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; 
 Thine eyes are as doves. 
 
 The Bride 
 Behold, thou art fair, my beloved; yea, pleasant : 
 
 Also our couch is green. 
 The beams of our house are cedars. 
 
 And our rafters are firs. 
 I am a rose of Sharon, 
 
 A lily of the valleys. 
 
 The Bridegroom 
 As a lily among thorns. 
 
 So is my love among the daughters. 
 
 The Bride 
 As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, 
 
 So is my beloved among the sons. 
 I sat down under his shadow with great delight. 
 
 And his fruit was sweet to my taste. 
 He brought me to the banqueting house. 
 
 And his banner over me was love. 
 
 The procession reaches the Bridal Chamber : then the refrain is 
 heard, terminating the first Song, as it calls upon all to leave the 
 lovers to their repose. 
 
 / adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, 
 
 By the roes, and by the hinds of the field. 
 That ye stir not up, nor awaken love. 
 
 Until it please. 
 
LYRIC IDYL: 'SOLOMON'S SONG' 215 
 
 The second Idyl is given up to the Bride's remi- u. The Bride's 
 ^ ., f^ . , • TT t- , . . Reminiscences of 
 
 niscences of the Courtship. Her iirst reminis- the Courtship- 
 
 cence is of a visit from her lover in the springtide, ii. 8-iii. 5 
 
 and the sweetness of his voice in the fair scene. 
 
 ' For, lo, the winter is past, 
 
 'The rain is over and gone; 
 
 'The flowers appear on the earth; 
 
 ' The time of the singing of birds is come, 
 
 ' And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.' 
 
 But the loved tones were rudely interrupted by the harsh voices 
 of her stern brothers, crying that the foxes had broken into the 
 
 vineyard. 
 
 ' Take us the foxes, 
 , 'The little foxes that spoil the vineyards; 
 
 ' For our vineyards are in blossom.' 
 
 The spell is broken : and refrains come to separate one imaginary 
 love scene from another. 
 
 My beloved is mine, and I am his : 
 
 He feedeth his flock among the lilies. 
 Until the day break, and the shadows fiee away, 
 Tur}i, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart 
 
 Upon the mountains of separation. 
 
 The second reminiscence then appears as a happy dream. 
 
 By night, on my bed, I sought him whom my soul loveth : 
 
 I sought him, but I found him not. 
 I said, I will rise now, and go about the city. 
 
 In the streets and in the broad ways, 
 I will seek him whom my soul loveth ; 
 
 I sought him, but I found him not. 
 The watchmen that go about the city found me : 
 
 To whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?, 
 It was but a little that I passed from them. 
 
 When I found him whom my soul loveth ; 
 
 I held him, and would not let him go. 
 Until I had brought him into my mother's house, 
 
 And into the chamber of her that conceived me. 
 
216 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 The third Idyl presents the Day of Betrothal. Here the 
 
 III. The Day of Chorus, as suggested above, is used for narrative 
 
 Betrothal : iii. purposes. 
 6-v. 1 
 
 Who is this that cometh up out of the wilderness 
 
 Like pillars of smoke, 
 Perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, 
 
 With all powders of the merchant ? 
 Behold, it is the litter of Solomon — 
 
 In full detail is pictured the pomp of the royal escort, when the 
 king, crowned with the crown of espousals, comes to claim as 
 royal queen the maiden he has wooed as a shepherd in her native 
 mountains. 
 
 Come with me from Lebanon, my bride ... , 
 
 From the lions' dens. 
 
 From the mountains of the leopards. 
 Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my bride . . . 
 With one look from thine eyes. 
 With one chain of thy neck. 
 
 The specific proposal of marriage is veiled under the oriental 
 symbol of a walled garden. 
 
 A garden shut up is my sister, my bride ; 
 
 A spring shut up, 
 
 A fountain sealed. 
 Thy shoots are an orchard of pomegranates, etc. 
 
 When the floral embellishments have been prolonged sufficiently 
 the acceptance is made by carrying on the same symbolism. 
 
 The Shulammite 
 
 Awake, O north wind, and come, thou south; 
 
 Blow upon my garden, 
 
 That the spices thereof may flow out. 
 Let my beloved come into his garden, 
 
 And eat his precious fruits. 
 
LYRIC IDYL: 'SOLOMON'S SONG' 217 
 
 King Solomon 
 
 I am come into my garden, my sister, my bride; 
 
 I have gathered my myrrh ^yith my spice; 
 I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; 
 
 I have drunk my wine with my milk. 
 
 The narrating Chorus which commenced this third Idyl is revived 
 for a moment to apostrophise the now united pair : 
 
 Eat, O friends, 
 
 Drink, yea, drink abundantly of love ! 
 
 The fourth Idyl gives a Troubled Dream of ttie Bride. 
 
 I was asleep, but my heart waked : iv. The Bride's 
 
 It is the voice of my beloved that knocketh. Troubled Dream : 
 saying, ^- »-"»■ 3 
 
 ' Open to me, 
 
 ' My sister, my love, 
 ' My dove, my undefiled : 
 For my head is filled with dew, 
 
 ' My locks with the drops of the night.' 
 
 While she paused but a moment to array herself, to dip her fingers 
 in the myrrh, he was gone. She follows him out into the night, 
 seeking him in vain : the watchmen (as in the former dream) 
 find her, but this time they smite her and take away her veil. 
 With the beautiful confusion that belongs to dream movement she 
 finds herself accosting her train of bridesmaids. 
 
 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, 
 If ye find my beloved, 
 That ye tell him, that I am sick of love. 
 
 The Bridesmaids (in the dream) make answer : 
 
 What is thy beloved more than another beloved, 
 
 O thou fairest among women ? 
 What is thy beloved more than another beloved, 
 , That thou dost so adjure us? 
 
 This gives her opportunity for dilating on the beauty of her lover, 
 and as the catalogue of charms is prolonged it is evident that 
 
218 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 a change is coming over the spirit of the dream. Accordingly, 
 when the dream chorus inquire further — 
 
 Whither is thy beloved gone, 
 
 O thou fairest among women ? 
 Whither hath thy beloved turned him, 
 
 That we may seek him with thee? — 
 
 the answer is one of glad confidence — 
 
 My beloved is gone down to his garden, 
 
 To the beds of spices, 
 To feed in the gardens. 
 
 And to gather lilies. 
 
 So for concluding note we have a happy refrain : 
 
 / atti my beloved's 
 
 And my beloved is mine : 
 
 He feedeth his flock among the lilies. 
 
 The next Idyl is the King's Meditation on his Bride. The 
 long strain of rapturous musing upon beauty is broken in the 
 
 middle by the dramatised reminiscence which I 
 Meditation on have already discussed, and which gives the foun- 
 ds Bride : dation for the whole story of the poem : how the 
 
 king and his court came by surprise on the Shu- 
 lammite in the vineyard of Lebanon, with mutual astonishment 
 and exclamation. Incidentally, we have harmonised the (to us) 
 incongruous ideas of polygamy and true love. 
 
 There are threescore queens. 
 
 And fourscore concubines. 
 
 And virgins without number : 
 My dove, my unde filed, is but one; 
 
 She is the only one of her mother. 
 
 The royal harem may be peopled with many : the royal heart has 
 but one love, which the fair Shulammite possesses as wholly as 
 a mother's love is possessed by an only child. The Song of Songs 
 is a poem of pure conjugal affection : as such it lends itself to 
 
lYJilC IGVL; ' SOLOMON'' S SONG^ 219 
 
 spiritual interpretation, in the same way that the Isaiahan Rhap- 
 sody makes Jehovah the husband of Zion, or St. John's Revelation 
 sees the Church as the Lamb's Bride. 
 
 The last two songs introduce a beautiful piece of simple human 
 nature. The Bride amid the splendour of the vi. The Bride's 
 palace longs for her home on Lebanon, and in Longing for her 
 the sixth Idyl is persuading her husband to journey Lebanon : 
 to the place where their love was first pledged. vii. n-viii. 4 
 
 Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; 
 
 Let us lodge in the villages, 
 
 Let us get up early to the vineyards . . . 
 There will I give thee my love. 
 
 The mandrakes give forth fragrance, 
 And at our doors are all manner of precious fruits. 
 
 Accordingly the scene of the last song has changed to Lebanon. 
 
 A few words of the Reciting Chorus bring out the „„ „ , ^ 
 
 ° ° VII. Renewal of 
 
 arrival of the pair ; the words sound like a brief Love in the 
 
 echo from their description of the former journey vmeyara of Leb- 
 anon : viii. 5-14 
 
 made in state. 
 
 Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, 
 Leaning upon her beloved ? 
 
 Renewal of love follows in this the Bride's home, the scene of the 
 first shock of meeting. 
 
 King Solomon 
 
 Under the apple tree I awakened thee : 
 
 There thy mother was in travail with thee ; 
 There was she in travail that brought thee forth. 
 
 The Bride KA^ -h^tov^ 
 
 Set me as a seal upon thine heart, , AM-ft'OS, 
 
 As a seal upon thine arm : 
 For love is strong as death ; 
 
 Jealousy is cruel as the grave. 
 
 Riddling speeches are recalled by the Bride, spoken to her in 
 such a spot as this by her brothers when she was too young to 
 
220 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 understand the mysteries of love. She then makes a fresh sur- 
 render of her heart, with a quaint conceit founded on the circum- 
 stance that her husband is (in modern phrase) the ' landlord ' of 
 this home of herself and her brothers. 
 
 Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon ; 
 
 He let out the vineyard unto keepers; 
 
 Everyone for the fruit thereof vpas to bring a thousand pieces of silver. 
 My vineyard, vifhich is mine, is before me : 
 
 Thou, O Solomon, shalt have the thousand, 
 
 And those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred. * 
 
 In other words, Solomon shall be the owner of her heart : the 
 people of this her home have but had the deputed tending. The 
 escort is heard approaching to conduct the royal pair back from 
 Lebanon : with a final embrace the poem closes. 
 
 The consideration of this poem raises a literary question which 
 is of wider application. Many readers of Solomon's Song are sur- 
 Amatory prised, some of them shocked, at the amatory 
 
 language and warmth of its language, and the apparent absence 
 sym ism ^^ ^ delicacy and reserve as each of the lovers 
 
 catalogues the bodily charms of the other. Partly no doubt this 
 is due to the more passionate nature of oriental peoples. But in 
 part such an impression is a false one, caused by the reader's 
 want of familiarity with the poetic medium through which the 
 scenes of the story are coming to him. Where western poetry 
 rests mainly upon imagery, the poetry of the east adds to imagery 
 symbolism.' Imagery paints pictures, appealing directly to the 
 imagination : symbolism is analytical comparison, importing ideas 
 as standards of excellence, which may be incompatible with 
 pictorial effect. 
 
 His head is as the most fine gold — 
 
 This line by itself might raise in our mind a picture of golden 
 beauty, were it not that the next line comes as a contradiction : 
 His locks are bushy, and black as a raven. 
 
 1 The symbolism of the poem is discussed more fully in the Modern Reader's 
 Bible {/iiblical Idyls), pages xix-xxiv. 
 
LYRIC IDYL: •SOLOMON'S SONG' 221 
 
 It is obvious that gold and raven black are cited only as two 
 among many types of beauty, all of which with all their self-con- 
 tradiction may be claimed for the ideal hero. Similarly, a modern 
 love song would be turned into a farce by a comparison of the 
 heroine's nose to the tower of Lebanon, her eyes to 'pools in 
 Heshbon by the gate of Beth-rabbim,' her deUbately braided hair 
 to the harness of Pharaoh's steeds : to the oriental mind there is 
 nothing here for the imagination to work upon, but simply stand- 
 ards of excellence, each supreme of its kind. A reader untrained 
 in symbolism may easily distort by attempting to see pictures 
 where none are intended. In actual fact comments have been 
 made unfavourable to the heaven of Milton's poem, with its pave- 
 ment of gold and gates of pearl, by those who have seen material 
 images in what are only echoes of BibUcal symbols. But when 
 the general principle has been caught, it is easy to recognise the 
 guarded treatment in Solomon's Song of what borders on the sen- 
 suous. Maidenhood becomes a garden shut up ; chastity, in con- 
 trast with too facile disposition, is veiled under symbols of wall 
 and door. The enraptured gaze of the bridegroom bending over 
 his bride at the feast is disguised as a ' banner of love ' waving 
 over her. The sweet surrender of the maiden to her spouse is sym- 
 bolically put : 
 
 They made me keeper of the vineyards; 
 
 But mine own vineyard have I not kept ! _^ -x-pi Tf ^ c 
 
 The Shulammite does not in plain terms clasp her lover to her 
 bosom, but the refrain bids him be as a roe upon ' the mountains 
 of separation.' Symbolism is a form of reserve ; it is this veiled 
 treatment of topics excluded from direct western speech which 
 has enabled the Bible to provide the great Honeymoon Song of 
 the world. 
 
 How greatly the symbolic treatment extends the range of poetic 
 topics may be best seen in an illustration taken 
 from another book of the Bible. A sonnet in ^f," ^.°!f ^ °^ 
 
 Xll. 1-7 
 
 Ecclesiastes, by universal confession one of the gems 
 
 of poetry, is wholly constructed out of the most unpromising 
 
222 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 material : for it is a tour-de-force of enumeration applied to 
 symptoms of senile decay and death. It is highly instructive, in 
 the discussion of imagery and symbolism, to put side by side two 
 treatments of the same theme, one by a great Elizabethan poet, 
 the other in the oriental style of Ecclesiastes. Sackville places in 
 his underworld an image of Old Age : the necessities of the situa- 
 tion lead him to an extreme of imagery and other devices of 
 realistic eiifect. 
 
 And next in order sad Old Age we found. 
 
 His beard all hoar, His eyes hollow and blind; 
 With drooping cheer still poring on the ground, 
 As on the place where nature him assigned 
 To rest, when that the sisters had untwined 
 
 His vital thread, and ended with their knife 
 The fleeting course of fast declining Ufe. 
 
 But who had seen him, sobbing how he stood 
 Unto himself, and how he would bemoan 
 His youth forpast, as though it wrought him good 
 To talk of youth, all were his youth foregone : 
 He would have mused, and marvelled much, whereon 
 This wretched age should life desire so fain. 
 And knows full well life doth but length his pain. 
 
 Crookback'd he was, tooth shaken, and blear-eyed : 
 
 Went on three feet, and sometimes crept on four; ' 
 With old lame bones that rattled by his side, 
 His scalp all pill'd, and he with eld forlore; 
 His wither'd fist still knocking at death's door; 
 
 Tumbling and drivelling as he draws his breath : 
 For brief, the shape and messenger of death.^ 
 
 With this compare the Biblical sonnet. 
 
 Remember also thy Creator in the days of thy youth : 
 
 Or ever the evil days come, 
 And the years draw nigh 
 
 When thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. 
 
 1 From Sackville's Induction to the Mirror for Mag^isirates. 
 
LYRIC IDYL: 'SOLOMON'S SONG' 223 
 
 Or ever the sun, 
 
 And the hght, 
 
 And the moon, 
 
 And the stars, 
 Be darkened, 
 And the clouds return after the rain; 
 
 In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, 
 
 And the strong men shall bow themselves. 
 
 And the grinders cease because they are few, 
 
 And those that look out of the windows be darkened, 
 
 And the doors shall be shut in the street; 
 
 When the sound of the grinding is low. 
 
 And one shall rise up at the voice of a bird. 
 
 And all the daughters of music shall be brought low; 
 
 Yea, they shall be afraid of that which is high. 
 And terrors shall be in the v^ay; 
 And the almond tree shall blossom. 
 And the grasshopper shall be a burden, 
 And the caper-berry shall burst : 
 
 Because man goeth to his long home. 
 And the mourners go about the streets. 
 
 Or ever the silver cord be loosed. 
 
 Or the golden bowl be broken. 
 
 Or the pitcher be broken at the fountain. 
 
 Or the wheel broken at the cistern : 
 
 And the dust return to the earth. 
 
 As it was; 
 And the spirit return unto God 
 
 Who gave it. 
 
 In the powerful vision of Sackville every detail paints a picture ; 
 the sonnet introduces ideas which have no visible resemblance to 
 the spectacle of old age, and yet the comparison they call for stirs 
 a melancholy pleasure. Light fitly symbolises the joy of mere 
 existence : the darkening of sun and moon and stars recalls the 
 gradual loss of pleasure in life for its own sake. Youth with its 
 
224 LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 troubles and quick rallying knows only the summer showers : when 
 the rallying power is gone, " the clouds return after the rain." 
 The "wither'd fist still knocking at death's door" stamps the 
 picture of the infirmity upon tlie imagination : the shaking hands 
 recede into the distance when, with a whole group of like infirmi- 
 ties, they are represented by the elements of panic in a city — 
 trembling keepers, strong men bowed down, grinders ceasing to 
 work and spectators to look out of windows, while every door is 
 made fast. Similar dim symbols just touch the loss of appetite, 
 of sleep, of voice ; the timid and uncertain gait ; the sparse hairs 
 of age, its feeble strength. The sudden bursting of the caper- 
 berry that has been long shrivelling up marks the transition to the 
 reality that is being symbolised : 
 
 Man goeth to his long home, 
 
 And the mourners go about the streets. 
 
 For the actual death that puts a period to the gradual decay other 
 apt symbols follow : the house lamp of gold that has been secretly 
 straining its silver chain now suddenly dropped and extinguished ; 
 the pitcher that has gone daily to the fountain, the cistern wheel 
 that so long has mechanically turned, at last broken and useless. 
 A long string of life's dull infirmities, from all of which realistic 
 imagery must shrink as things unlovely, has been transformed into 
 a thing of enduring beauty by casting over it the softening veil ol 
 symbolism. 
 
Book Third 
 
 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 IX. Epic Poetry of the Bible 227 
 
 X. Biblical History in its Relations with Biblical 
 
 Epic 250 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 EPIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 It has often been said that there is no Epic Poetry in the Bible. 
 This opinion seems to me to be founded on a double mistake. 
 In part it is a relic of a discarded system of criti- _,, .„.gy„ .^ 
 cism that did much to distort the study of literature, Epic Poetry in 
 and at one time went to the extent of pronouncing ^^^ ^'''^^ 
 Shakespeare no dramatist : — the criticism which assumed the 
 masterpieces of Greek and Latin literature to be the only literary 
 standards. Of course, those who have formed their conception 
 of Epic solely on the I/iad and Odyssey will look in vain for poems 
 resembling these in the Bible. Again, in many minds epic poetry 
 is associated with fiction ; and to classify any portion of Sacred 
 Scripture as epic will to such persons appear a mode of saying 
 that it is untrue. But this is an entire misapprehension of the 
 term. It is one thing to say that creative poetry is not, like his- 
 tory and philosophy, tied to reality ; it is quite another thing to 
 say that its matter may not be real. Creative poetry is a treatment 
 which can be applied alike to fact, to idealised fact, and to purely 
 imaginative matter. 
 
 In our examination of fundamental literary forms,^ we found that 
 the term ' Epic ' impKed just two things : narrative, in contrast with 
 dramatic presentation, and creative treatment, in contradistinction 
 to discussion. Now more than half the Bible consists of narrative. 
 The question, then, of Epic Poetry in the Bible narrows itself to 
 this : whether the whole of Biblical narrative is to be classified as 
 
 1 Above, page 80, 
 227 
 
228 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 history, or does auy part of it make just that appeal to our emo- 
 tions and artistic sense which is made by the epic poems of secular 
 literature ? 
 
 Let a reader set himself to read continuously the Book of Gene- 
 sis. He will feel that different parts of what he is reading affect 
 his literary sense in different ways. At one time 
 of'Kpi^anfH^- ^e finds himself traversing long genealogical lists, 
 tory illustrated or noting brief accounts of migrations ; he moves 
 from Genesis through generations or centuries of time in a few 
 verses. He reaches (suppose) the name of Joseph : and at once 
 all is changed. Ten lengthy chapters — in bulk equal to one-fifth 
 of the whole Book of Genesis — centre around this one man and 
 his relations with his brethren. From the beginning a striking 
 personality begins to emerge, which even in childhood divides the 
 household between envy and doting affection, which makes itself 
 felt in captivity and even in prison. In the background we get 
 glimpses of varied life — scattered settlements of shepherds, mer- 
 chant caravans, palace life in the empire of Egypt. Mutation of 
 fortune, which plays so large a part in story, is represented by the 
 change which in a single day takes Joseph from prison to set him 
 next to the throne ; and throughout the movement of events the 
 supernatural interest of dreams and their mystical revelations has 
 been hovering. When among the crowds that come from distant 
 lands to ask corn from this Egyptian potentate Joseph's own 
 brethren stand before him, recognised but not recognising, then 
 we have just one of those ironic situations which make the master- 
 strokes of plot. And no invented plot could draw more out of 
 such a situation than we get in this piece of history, with the long- 
 sustained perplexities in which the Egyptian minister involves his 
 family, not for the purpose of some subtle revenge, but to prolong 
 the strange situation in which he finds himself placed, and the 
 conflict of emotions in his breast between natural affection and 
 sense of wrong. At last Joseph breaks down in the part he is 
 playing, and has to sob out that he is their brother ; and when 
 the excitement has had time to subside, the train of events settles 
 
EPIC POEl'RY OP THE BIBLE 229 
 
 to a sedate conclusion in the picturesque migration of the sons 
 of Israel into Egypt, and the patriarchal blessing bestowed on 
 Pharaoh himself. We continue our reading, and find ourselves 
 tracing, in bare outline, economic changes comprised in a verse 
 or two which needed generations of time to be accomplished in 
 fact. It is impossible for any one, reading with his literary sense 
 awakened, not to feel the difference of kind between the account 
 of Joseph and his Brethren and other portions of the Book of 
 Genesis preceding and following it : this is the difference between 
 Epic and History. Joseph, it is true, is an important historic 
 personage, and it is no novel that we have been reviewing. But a 
 single chapter would have been sufficient to present the 'sons of 
 Jacob as a link in the chain of history ; what more there is in the 
 narrative must be credited to interest of story. The exact classi- 
 fication of this portion of Genesis is expressed by the term ' Epic 
 Incident ' ; it is an Incident because it is a portion of the history ; 
 it is Epic because the treatment of it touches the imagination and 
 emotions in the regular way of creative poetry. 
 
 The historical books of the Bible are full of such Epic Inci- 
 dents. But they are merged in the history of which they are a 
 part, without anything to mark them off from the surrounding 
 matter which is purely historic. I must not be thought to insist 
 upon trifles if I recommend the student — with the aid of the 
 Tables in the Appendix to this work,^ or otherwise — to pencil off 
 in his Revised Version the epic matter, and to write in the margin 
 a title to each portion. I beUeve that an important factor in lit- 
 erary appreciation is the expectant attitude of the reader ; and 
 one who has, in the way I suggest, adjusted his mental focus from 
 the outset, will be in a specially favourable situation for feeling the 
 epic richness of Sacred Scripture. 
 
 When we turn to survey the field of Biblical Epic, one phenom- 
 enon attracts our attention at once, as being unique, jj-g Yeiae Epic in 
 yet not difficult to understand. In secular litera- the Bible 
 ture the most famous epics are in verse. In the Bible there is no 
 
 1 Tables II, III. The distinctions are made in the Modern Reader's Bible. 
 
230 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 verse narrative.' But we have seen that the distinction of prose 
 and verse is not at all coincident with the distinction between 
 poetry and its antithesis. Again, we have seen that it is one of 
 the distinguishing features of Hebrew that its verse and prose sys- 
 tems overlap. When these two considerations are put together, it 
 will appear a natural thing that the epic incidents which are scat- 
 tered through the historical books should gravitate to the literary 
 form of the history in which they constitute a minor part. 
 
 But though the Bible has no Verse Epic, it contains illustrations 
 
 of the interesting literary form that may be called the Mixed 
 
 Epic, in which a story is conveyed in prose, but 
 
 Mixed Epic , , ^ , , . . . , , 
 
 • has the power of breaking into verse at suitable 
 
 points.^ The grand example of this Mixed Epic is the Story of 
 
 Balaam. 
 
 The Old Testament is specially interesting where it lifts the veil 
 
 which separates the Chosen People from the rest of the world, 
 
 and allows us to see worshippers of Tehovah out- 
 Tie story of i-r J 
 
 Balaam Side the ranks of the Israelites. Such was Balaam. 
 
 Numbers xxii- Bqj hg seems to have been a light shining in a 
 dark place : surrounded by those who could not 
 understand the worship of an invisible God, yet felt the atmos- 
 phere of spiritual power that Balaam carried about with him, and 
 came to look upon it with awe, as a thing to be dreaded or to be 
 secured on their own side. Such a conception of Balaam had 
 been formed by Balak, king of Moab : " I know that he whom thou 
 blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed.'' He 
 bethinks him of the prophet when confronted with a new danger 
 threatening his kingdom : danger from a people moving through 
 the desert at once prolific and highly organised, threatening to 
 swallow up the Moabites " as the ox licketh up the grass of the 
 
 1 Of course, in the lyric narratives of Chapter V the narrative is not being told 
 or conveyed, but assumed and meditated on. 
 
 2 In early literature of story this form had a wide range. See a note on the 
 "cantifables ' in Mr. Jacobs's English Fairy Tales, page 240. In modern poetry this 
 form is admirably represented by William Morris's Roots of the Mountains and 
 House of the Wolfings. 
 
EPIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 231 
 
 field." So Balak sends an embassy of princes to Balaam, "with 
 the rewards of divination in their hand." The central interest 
 of this, as of most epics, is the personality of its hero. The char- 
 acter of Balaam seems to be summed up in calling him a man of 
 compromise in spiritual matters. Perfectly sincere in his worship 
 of Jehovah, he nevertheless desires to keep in touch with those 
 who can only translate his spiritual religion into gross and material 
 conceptions. He has laid down for himself a compromise : he 
 will never be unfaithful to a distinct Divine word, — and in fact to 
 this he never is unfaithful, — but where not prohibited he will go as 
 far as he can with the world about him, and make all he can out 
 of them. This is the man to whom the embassy of Balak comes. 
 He lodges the Moabite princes with oriental hospitality ; and in 
 the darkness of the night he gives himself up to the spiritual influ- 
 ences from which he is wont to seek guidance. The revelation 
 comes, apparently in the form of dream ; and on the morrow 
 Balaam dismisses his visitors without hesitation : his God will not 
 suffer him to obey the summons. 
 
 To Balak all this seems no more than a diviner's artifice to 
 increase his consequence. He accordingly sends a second em- 
 bassy, more princes and more honourable, with an urgent message 
 and unbounded offers. Balaam receives this second embassy with 
 noble words, which his subsequent conduct showed to be no idle 
 boast : " If Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, 
 I cannot go beyond the word of the Lord my God, to do less or 
 more." But he lodges the ambassadors for the night. Whether 
 or not his spirit was clouded by the prospects held out to him, 
 the revelation of that night's dream appeared to wear an air of 
 compromise : he would accompany the embassy, but with the 
 distinct understanding that he should speak only as his God 
 should direct him. 
 
 So we have the famous journey of Balaam to Moab. Mystic 
 hindrances stop his way, until he would fain turn back. But from 
 the lips of the angel he receives the words of his own compromise : 
 he must go, but speak only as he is bidden. At a border city the 
 
232 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 king of Moab meets the prophet, and chides him for his delay. 
 But Balaam is strong in the line of action he has laid down for 
 himself: " Lo, I am come unto thee: have I now any power at 
 all to speak anything? the word that God putteth in ray mouth 
 that shall I speak." Nevertheless he will go as far as he can : 
 by his direction the preliminary ritual is commenced, the seven 
 altars erected, and the seven bullocks and rams offered in due 
 form by the princes of Moab. Balaam himself ascends " a bare 
 height " to be alone in communion with his God, while the king 
 and princes stand by the altars ; and from the high ground where 
 all this is taking place the whole length and breadth of the Israeli- 
 tish encampment is visible in the desert below. Amid the inflti- 
 ences of the solitude and the spectacle beneath him Balaam feels 
 the rush of inspiration coming upon him ; in the simple phrase 
 of Scripture, God " put a word in his mouth." He returns to 
 confront the king and princes; and at this point the prose of 
 narrative gives place to the rhythmic verse which is to convey the 
 Divine message. 
 
 From Aram hath Balak brought me, 
 
 The king of Moab from the mountains of the East : 
 " Come, curse me Jacob, 
 
 And come, defy Israel." 
 
 How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed ? 
 
 And how shall I defy, whom the LORD hath not defied? 
 For from the top of the rocks I see him. 
 
 And from the hills I behold him : 
 Lo, it is a people that dwell alone. 
 
 And shall not be reckoned among the nations. 
 Who can count the dust of Jacob, 
 
 Or number the fourth part of Israel? 
 Let me die the death of the righteous. 
 
 And let my last end be like his ! 
 
 The king and princes are overwhelmed with confusion : the 
 prophet summoned to curse has altogether blessed the enemy ! 
 But Balaam calmly answers, " Must I not take heed to speak that 
 which the Lord putteth in my mouth ? " 
 
EPIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 233 
 
 To Balak only one explanation seems possible : the prophet in 
 his ecstatic state has been overawed by the vastness of the enemy's 
 forces. The desired end must be secured by cunning. Balaam 
 shall be taken to a point from which only a corner of the Israeli- 
 tish camp is visible ; enough, according to magic lore, to lodge 
 a curse upon, but too small to affect the beholder's nerves. The 
 man of compromise goes as far as he can with popular supersti- 
 tion; he accompanies the king and his suite to the heights of 
 Pisgah, he gives orders for the renewal of the sacrifices, and him- 
 self goes apart, with some faint idea of persuading Jehovah into 
 returning an oracle in conformity with his prophet's material 
 interests. But no sooner is Balaam alone with his God than the 
 unreality of the whole proceeding makes itself felt by him ; his 
 soul is strung up to its true level as he returns to face the Moa- 
 bites. A second time the poem breaks from prose into verse. 
 
 Rise up, Balak, and hear; 
 
 Hearken unlo me, thou son of Zippor : 
 
 God is not a man, that he should lie; 
 
 Neither the son of man, that he should repent : 
 Hath he said, and shall he not do it ? 
 
 Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? 
 Behold, I have received commandment to bless : 
 
 And he hath blessed, and I cannot reverse it. 
 He hath nbt beheld iniquity in Jacob, 
 
 Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: 
 The Lord his God is with him. 
 
 And the shout of a king is among them. 
 God bringeth them forth out of Egypt; 
 
 He hath as it vrere the strength of the wild-ox. 
 Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, 
 
 Neither is there any divination against Israel : 
 
 Now shall it be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought ! 
 Behold, the people riseth up as a lioness, 
 
 And as a lion doth he lift himself up : 
 He shall not lie down until he eat of the prey, 
 
 And drink the blood of the slain. 
 
23+ BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 '" Neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all ! " But Balaam 
 has only one answer : all that the Lord speaketh he must do. 
 
 At all hazards another attempt must be made. Even Balak has 
 begun to understand that there is some real power restraining 
 Balaam ; but if the prophet will accompany him to a third point 
 of view, " peradventure it will please God " that the enemy shall 
 be cursed from thence. The instinct of compromise carries 
 Balaam to this third ceremony, but he has no heart to play his 
 ignoble part to its conclusion. He does not, as before, go aside 
 to meditate his answer, but listlessly turns his face towards the 
 wilderness. It happens that from where he is standing his eye 
 just catches the long lines of tents stretching, row after row, with 
 the regularity that distinguished the highly organised Israelites 
 from the tumultuous hordes of desert nomads. The divine prin- 
 ciple of order sinks deep in Balaam's soul, and inspires his song 
 as he turns to face for a third time the king and princes of Moab. 
 
 Balaam the son of Beor saith, 
 
 And the man whose eye is opened saith : 
 
 He saith, which heareth the words of God, 
 
 Which seeth the vision of the Almighty, 
 
 FaUing down, and having his eyes open : 
 
 How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, 
 
 Thy tabernacles, O Israel ! 
 As valleys are they spread forth, 
 
 As gardens by the river side, 
 As lign-aloes which the Lord hath planted, 
 
 As cedar trees beside the waters. 
 Water shall flow from his buckets, 
 
 And his seed shall be in many waters. 
 And his king shall be higher than Agag, 
 
 And his kingdom shall be exalted. 
 God bringeth him forth out of Egypt; 
 
 He hath as it were the strength of the wild-ox : 
 He shall eat up the nations his adversaries, 
 
 And shall break their bones in pieces. 
 
 And smite them through with his arrows. 
 He couched, he lay down as a lion, 
 
EPIC POETRY OF TPIE BIBLE 23S 
 
 And as a lioness ; who shall rouse him up ? 
 Blessed be every one that blesseth thee, 
 
 And cursed be every one that curseth thee. 
 
 The Moabite king storms with rage and disappointment, and dis- 
 misses the prophet with a sneer : " The Lord hath kept thee back 
 from honour." But instead of quailing before the royal indigna- 
 tion, Balaam forces Balak to endure another outpouring of pro- 
 phetic inspiration, as he beholds a star arising out of Jacob, before 
 which Moab shall be smitten, and the sons of tumult shall be 
 broken down ; his eye traverses the horizon and sees one people 
 after another involved in the coming destruction ; not the Kenites 
 in their rocks, nor Amalek first of nations, shall be able to resist. 
 
 Alas, who shall live when God doeth this? 
 
 Then Balaam returns to his country, and the Epic of Balaam is 
 
 concluded. But Balaam does not disappear from the history ; and 
 
 we learn how the man of compromise was caught in the meshes 
 
 of his own compromising spirit.^ At some time when the spiritual 
 
 enlightenment was not upon him he brought himself to give the 
 
 counsel that the people, who were too strong to be conquered by 
 
 force, might yet be undermined by lust. Lustful intercourse led 
 
 in its turn to war ; and the name of Balaam the son of Beor 
 
 appears in the list of the slain. 
 
 Apart from the question of prose or verse as its medium of 
 
 expression, Epic Poetry may be classified accord- 
 
 . J r 1 , 2 T Classification of 
 
 mg to degrees of organic completeness.'' In secu- j, ^^ poetry 
 lar literature there are, from this point of view, 
 three forms of epic. There is the simple, isolated story, usually 
 called a ' Ballad.' Then there is the ' Cycle ' or aggregation of 
 separate stories attributed to the same hero : an Achilles cycle, or 
 Ulysses cycle. Finally there is the weaving of a multiplicity of 
 incident into one organic plot, as when the genius of an individual 
 poet makes out of the Achilles cycle an Iliad, or out of the cycle 
 
 1 Compare Numbers xxxi. 8, Revelation ii. 14. 
 
 2 Compare throughout Table III in Appendix II. 
 
236 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPtC 
 
 of Ulysses an Odyssey. It is to the last only that the term ' Epic' 
 
 is usually applied. Biblical Epic exhibits analogies to all three 
 
 types. The simple independent Story is exempli- 
 
 (1) Epic stories ^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ incident as that of Cain and Abel 
 
 in primitive history, or in later history by the Story of Gideon or 
 Jephthah. Again, great part of Genesis is occupied 
 
 (2) Epic Cycles ^.^^^ Cycles of Stories attaching to the names of the 
 great patriarchs, — an Abraham cycle, a cycle of Jacob, and others. 
 
 And the Story of Joseph and his Brethren has 
 
 (3) Epic Histories ^jj.g^^y ^^^^ ygg^ jg illustrate the complete Epic 
 
 History, with its wide reach of incidents bound together into one 
 organic whole. 
 
 The most elaborate of these Epic Histories is the Book of 
 
 Esther. This, in addition to every other element 
 Esther ""^ "' °^ interest, has what may be called a double plot : 
 
 two distinct trains of events, centring around 
 Esther herself and Mordecai respectively, are woven together into 
 a complex story. The opening of the book plunges us into the 
 life and manners of an oriental empire, with its hundred and twenty- 
 seven provinces of varying races and speech, its government by 
 irresponsible despotism, and its court etiquette, the violation of 
 which is punishable with death. We have a picture of festivities 
 on a scale proportionate to the empire itself — pageantry lasting 
 half a year, and for climax a continuous feast of seven days. The 
 king's drunken impulse to send for Queen Vashti to appear before 
 his lords, her refusal and solemn deposition from the throne, and 
 the elaborate preparations for choosing a successor which end in 
 the elevation to the crown of a Jewish maiden Esther, are detailed 
 with minuteness. The general effect of this introductory part is 
 to make an oriental atmosphere for the reader's mind, by which he 
 is the better able to appreciate all that follows. 
 
 The movement of the story begins with the mention of Haman. 
 Despotism is never so despotic as when it takes a private subject 
 and ele,vates him to its own rank, demanding for him, by no title 
 but that of royal favour, the homage which is paid to the king by 
 
EPIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 237 
 
 prescriptive right. Such elevation was accorded by Ahasuerus to 
 Haman : and the whole empire obediently bowed down. A single 
 individual was found to resist : the Jew Mordecai, who had made 
 his kinswoman and adopted daughter a queen, but for himself was 
 content to watch over her from a distance, as one of those who 
 sat in the king's gate. Officials of the court sought in vain to 
 move Mordecai, and at last had to make his stubborn resistance 
 known to Haman. The oifended favourite " thought scorn to lay 
 hands on Mordecai himself": nothing less would satisfy his 
 oriental spirit of vengeance than to destroy the whole people to 
 which Mordecai belonged throughout the empire of Ahasuerus. 
 To make the destruction more dramatic, a day is chosen by lot for 
 simultaneous slaughter. To the king Haman uses two arguments : 
 the diversity of the Jews in laws and customs from all other peo- 
 ples, and the treasure of silver he will himself pay into the king's 
 treasury if his petition be granted. But Haman is at the height 
 of favour with the king, who bids him take the people and the 
 silver too. The complex machinery of the empire is set in motion, 
 and despatches sent in every direction. Then, we are told, " the 
 king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Shushan was 
 perplexed." 
 
 We have been following one side of the story ; but the other 
 centre of interest. Queen Esther, is involved in the conspiracy 
 thus set on foot ; and the mourning of Mordecai and the city soon 
 makes the Queen aware of the peril hanging over her people, for 
 whom there seems to be no help but through herself. There is 
 something very attractive to the imagination in the situation in 
 which Esther is thus placed. The strongest and most mature 
 of men will feel his nature tasked to its depths by a summons to 
 rest his life and all upon a single crisis. But such a summons 
 comes in this case to a girl, in beauty found fairest after an empire 
 has been searched, in the first flush of her youth, with hfe just 
 opening before her as a vista of softness and luxury. Her mo- 
 mentary hesitation only makes her seem more human. But when 
 the extremity of the crisis is urged upon her, with the suggestion 
 
238 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 that she may have come to the kingdom for such a time as this, 
 she nerves herself to her task. First she gives herself up to fast- 
 ing and prayer ; then, with all signs of fear suppressed, she pre- 
 sents herself in full splendour of beauty and royal state before the 
 king, well knowing that she may incur thereby the penalty of 
 death. For a moment the fate of her nation and herself trembles 
 in the balance : then the sceptre is held out to her and the peril- 
 ous moment is past. Here it is that the character of Esther 
 begins to come out. It might well have been expected that, in 
 the reaction from personal danger, Esther might have at once 
 cast herself before the king, and with sobs and cries told the afflic- 
 tion of her people. This is probably what Mordecai meant her 
 to do. But a girl has been raised up to save her people, and she 
 must do it in her own girlish way ; and accordingly, when she is 
 asked her petition and request unto the half of the kingdom, the 
 answer reveals no court intrigue, but a simple childlike invitation 
 that the king and Haman may come to a banquet that she will 
 prepare. Ahasuerus is delighted : he had deposed Vashti for 
 refusing his summons to an orgie, her successor is one to risk her 
 life on an invitation to a banquet. The enemy is disarmed from 
 suspicion. But, more than all this, Esther knows well that she 
 has to fight against the whole power of Haman and the king with 
 no weapon but that of her own beauty : instinct makes her realise 
 that she must give that beauty full opportunity to make itself felt. 
 The banquet takes place, with the king and Haman as the sole 
 guests. Though she had been crowned as the fairest in the king- 
 dom, yet for thirty days before this the charms of Esther had 
 been entirely forgotten by the royal voluptuary amid other dis- 
 tractions of pleasure. Now the dominion of beauty can make its 
 sway prevail over Ahasuerus, and at the end of the feast he again 
 asks his Queen what is her petition and request. But Esther is 
 strong enough to wait, and make surety yet more sure. She begs 
 therefore for a second banquet on the morrow with the same two 
 guests, and by that time she will have a boon to ask. Haman 
 leaves the palace at the height of blind security. In the gate his 
 
EPIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 239 
 
 spirits feel a rebufif at the sight of the unbending Mordecai : a first 
 speck of shadow upon his horizon of fortune. He hurries home, 
 and in family council details his accumulated honours and his one 
 drop of bitterness. They bid him build a gallows fifty cubits high, 
 and ask Mordecai's life at once without waiting for the slower fate 
 of his nation. 
 
 Two days and the night that separates them make up the period 
 of crisis for this story of Esther. The turning-point of the whole 
 is found in the words : " On that night could not the king sleep." 
 They read to the restless king the chronicles of his kingdom ; and 
 the particular passage details how a conspiracy against his life was 
 revealed by one Mordecai, a Jew. Ahasuerus enquires what honour 
 has been done to this Mordecai in recompense ; and hearing that 
 nothing has been done, the king will take up the matter at once. 
 Haman is entering in the early morning to beg the life of the Jew, 
 who refuses to bow down before him, when the king shouts to 
 him from his bed the question, "What shall be done unto the 
 man whom the king delighteth to honour?" It is impossible for 
 Haman to understand this otherwise than as a salutation to him- 
 self; and in reply advises a royal progress with a chief prince to 
 proclaim before the fortunate man the king's purpose to honour 
 him. He is bidden to carry out his advice without omission of 
 a single article upon Mordecai. So bitterly has nemesis swung 
 round upon him that Haman is forced with his own lips to pro- 
 claim the honours of his hated foe. And when, after the ordeal 
 is over, he rushes home to his family council for comfort, here, 
 where he feels most secure, he is forced to see the shadow of 
 doom deepening over him ; for his wife and councillors make 
 
 If Mordecai, before whom thou hast begun to fall, be of the seed 
 of the Jews, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shalt surely fall 
 before him. 
 
 But before he has time to ponder these words the royal escort 
 summons him to Esther's banquet. 
 
240 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 The second banquet intensifies the effect of the first, and 
 Ahasuerus is completely under the spell of Esther's beauty when, 
 for the third time, he asks her to name her petition and request. 
 The youthful queen has been all this time holding a crisis of his- 
 tory in her dehcate fingers. Now she lets the thunderbolt fall. 
 Her petition is her own fife, and the life of her people, sold, to 
 the king's damage, by " this wicked Haman." The stricken 
 favourite grovels before the king's burst of fury, and is seeking 
 the injured Jewess as an intercessor, when he is hurried away to 
 the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai. The crisis is past, 
 and Mordecai is elevated to the dignity from which his foe had 
 fallen. But there is still the decree against the Jews throughout 
 the empire, enrolled among the laws of the Medes and Persians 
 that cannot be altered, and the date of their doom is steadily 
 advancing. Mordecai's plan is to send another decree after the 
 first, to the effect that the Jews on the day appointed shall have 
 full power to defend themselves. So when the day of fate arrives, 
 this is the situation throughout the hundred and twenty-seven 
 provinces of the empire : on one side are the enemies of the Jews 
 armed with the king's irreversible decree to massacre them ; on 
 the other side are the Jews armed with the king's irreversible 
 decree to defend themselves ; and the satraps and princes of the 
 provinces will know which side to take in the fray now that a Jew 
 is minister of the empire. It becomes a day of slaughter for the 
 enemies of the Jews throughout the provinces and the royal city ; 
 and our last sight of Esther reveals her as a beautiful incarnation 
 of vengeance, petitioning for another day of slaughter. But this 
 is the passing excitement of the crisis, the passionate justice of 
 one trained in the law of retaliation. When the ordinary current 
 of events is resumed, a feast is instituted throughout the villages 
 and towns of the Jews, in which they are to send portions one to 
 another and gifts to the poor, as they commemorate their nation 
 saved from destruction by the wisdom of Mordecai and the beauty 
 of Esther. 
 
EPIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 241 
 
 So -far the literature we have treated has been Epic Poetry in 
 the strictest sense. There are, however, two other types to be 
 noted. The Idyl is not a distinct literary form, • 
 but a modification of other forms : and the Bible Modifications of 
 
 ' Epic 
 
 contains an Epic Idyl as well as a Lyric Idyl.' 
 
 Again, the great department of Prophecy has one branch which is 
 
 specially connected with Epic Poetry. 
 
 If the chief distinction of the Idyl be its subject matter of love 
 and domestic life, then in all literature there is no more typical 
 Idyl than the Book of Ruth. Following the Book 
 of Judges, which has been filled with bloodshed Book'oTRutl"^ 
 and violence and the heroism of the sterner virtues, 
 it comes upon us like a benediction of peace. It contains no 
 trace of war or high politics ; the disasters of its story are the 
 troubles of family life — exile, bereavement, poverty; while its 
 grand incidents are no more than the yearly festivities of country 
 life, and the formal transfers of property that must go on although 
 kingdoms rise and fall. 
 
 The thread running through the whole, and binding the parts 
 together, is found in a magnetic personality such as may exist in 
 the quietest life, leaving no achievements behind it, yet in its time 
 swaying all who approach it. Elimelech the husband, and his two 
 sons, are no more than names to us ; it is Naomi who is remem- 
 bered in Bethlehem when the family have been long in exile ; and 
 when she returns, the whole of the rural city is moved at the 
 thought of the ' Pleasant One ' — the famous beauty of former 
 years — come back again. Naomi herself feels the bitter irony of 
 a name that speaks of attractiveness : " Call me not Naomi, call 
 me Mara, for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me." 
 Three waves of trouble had passed over her since she had wedded 
 the husband of her youth. First came famine : EKmelech's land 
 would yield no living, and husband, wife, and two youthful sons 
 had to migrate into the land of Moab, where exile meant not only 
 change of climate and people, but isolation in religion, with wor- 
 1 See above, note on page 208. 
 
242 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 shippers of strange gods all around. There they continued to 
 live until Elimelech died, and Naomi was left alone to watch over 
 her growing sons. She must, moreover, in this land of strangers 
 find wives for these youths ; for to live over again in posterity was 
 the only immortality to which in their daily thoughts the families 
 of Israel would give much heed. Ten years of such life was 
 allowed to Naomi, and then the third blow came with the loss of 
 her two sons, one after another, while no children had yet been 
 born to continue their line. Broken by misfortunes, and with no 
 link now to bind her to her Moabitish home, Naomi sets out to 
 return to the land of Judah. Her daughters-in-law, though of 
 foreign race, yet have felt the spell of her attraction, and would 
 fain accompany her ; but she will not involve their young lives in 
 the dark fate which heaven seems to have marked out for herself : 
 " It grieveth me much for your sakes, for the hand of the Lord is 
 gone forth against me." Situations like this make the dividing 
 points of character ; and a contrast of character is fully depicted 
 to us in the simple verse : " And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law ; 
 but Ruth clave unto her." The strong and sweet Naomi has 
 bound to herself another character like her own, with a bond no 
 trouble can break ; and the musical speech of Ruth has descended 
 to us as the formula of personal devotion for all time. 
 
 Intreat me not to leave thee, and to return from following after 
 thee : for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will 
 lodge : thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God : where 
 thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried : the Lord do so to 
 me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me. 
 
 So the ageing Naomi and her Moabite daughter-in-law return to 
 Bethlehem, and, after creating a momentary flutter of excitement, 
 settle down to a life of obscure poverty, with the added bitterness 
 to Naomi of seeing the family estate in the hands of others. 
 
 Now the interest of the idyl changes to the picturing of popular 
 manners and customs. We have before us all the bustle and 
 excitement of wheat and barley harvest in an agricultural commu- 
 
EPIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 243 
 
 nity : the progress of the reapers, and the maidens gleaning be- 
 hind them, the common meal in the heat of the day, the master 
 coming down to look on and exchanging greetings with his people. 
 We see the stranger shyly joining the gleaners, the story of her 
 faithfulness known to all from the humblest reaper to Boaz him- 
 self. With a strange charm there come to us across the gulf of 
 centuries the delicate attentions shown to Ruth by all, the little 
 contrivances by which she is made to glean plentifully without 
 knowing who has befriended her, the place of honour accorded 
 her at the meal. No detail of social life is too petty for the idyl, 
 not even the way in which Ruth eats her portion of food till she is 
 sufficed, and what she leaves she brings to her lonely mother-in- 
 law at home. The gloomy day of Naomi's life is to have light at 
 eventide, and the first gleam of that light is the name of the 
 master who has been so hospitable : Boaz is recognised as one 
 near of kin, and Naomi rallies herself to the task of seeking a 
 resting-place for the loving Ruth. 
 
 More manners and customs follow, and those of the quaintest. 
 Ruth follows exactly the instructions of Naomi in going through 
 the strange ritual by which she must claim the wealthy and pow- 
 erful landowner as next of kin. The story is not too short to pre- 
 vent our catching the tenderness with which Boaz shields the 
 stranger from the breath of gossip, nor the refined courtesy by 
 which he treats the great service asked of him as a favour done 
 to himself : " Blessed be thou of the Lord, my daughter : thou 
 hast showed more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning, 
 inasmuch as thou foUowedst not young men, whether poor or 
 rich." The scene changes to give us the minutiae of legal pro- 
 cedure in the gate of the city ; and here again contrast of charac- 
 ter appears, between the nameless kinsman who is ready to do 
 everything that is just, and Boaz, who will go further and be gen- 
 erous. So, with all formalities, the land of Elimelech is redeemed, 
 and Boaz takes Ruth to wife, in order that, according to the inter- 
 esting Hebrew law, the child born to them may be considered to 
 have revived the line of his grandfather. The long delayed hap- 
 
244 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 piness of Naomi becomes full as the women of the city move in 
 procession to lay the new-born babe in her bosom, and sing to her 
 how his name shall be famous in Israel : " and he shall be unto 
 thee a restorer of life, and a nourisher of thine old age : for thy 
 daughter-in-law, which loveth thee, which is better to thee than 
 seven sons, hath borne him." And the simple Idyl in its last 
 words joins itself on to the main stream of history by telUng that 
 this new-born Obed was the father of Jesse, and Jesse was the 
 father of King David himself. 
 
 It remains to point out that Biblical Prophecy, including as it 
 does all literary forms, has one branch which is in character epic. 
 The Greater and Minor Prophets, whose books of 
 prophecy occupy so large a proportion of the Old 
 Testament, all date from a period not earlier than the reign of 
 Jeroboam the Second. Yet before that period, from the time 
 of Samuel if not earlier, prophets played a great part in the his- 
 tory of Israel and Judah. No name in the roll of prophets will 
 seem higher than that of Elijah : yet the Bible contains no ' Book 
 of the Prophet Elijah.' These earlier prophets did not write their 
 prophecy ; they lived it. It was conveyed in action, and its only 
 representation in literature is the narrative of that action. A fit 
 name then for such literature is ' Epic Prophecy.' 
 (i) Prophetic This Epic Prophecy exhibits all the three types 
 
 stories of Epjc. Of the isolated Prophetic Story there 
 
 can be no better illustration than the Story of Balaam, already 
 (2) Prophetic treated in full. Prophetic Cycles are connected 
 Cycles with the names of Elisha and of Daniel. The for- 
 
 mer is particularly well marked, occupying seven successive chap- 
 Cycie of Biisha ters with fourteen stories, disconnected from one 
 II Kings ii-viii another, but all having Elisha for hero. The ele- 
 ment of miracle is common to them all. Some seem to have no 
 point beyond this interest of miracle : such are the Story of the 
 Mocking Children, of the Feeding of a hundred men, of the Axe- 
 head that swam. Others are deeply interesting pictures of life. 
 
EPIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 24S 
 
 like the Story of Naaman and Gehazi, or the Siege of Samaria. 
 One of these is so impressive in the suggestiveness of its miracu- 
 lous details, and the lofty plane of morality to which its conclu- 
 sion rises, that I cannot forbear from citing it in full as the very 
 ideal of Prophetic Story. 
 
 The Expedition to arrest Elisha 
 
 Now the king of Syria warred against Israel; and he took counsel 
 with his servants, saying, In such and such a place shall be my camp. 
 And the man of God sent unto the king of Israel, saying. Beware that 
 thou pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians are coming down. 
 And the king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God had 
 told him and warned him of; and he saved himself there, not once nor 
 twice. And the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this 
 thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them. Will ye not 
 show me which of us is for the king of Israel? And one of his ser- 
 vants said, Nay, my lord, O king: but Elisha, the prophet that is in 
 Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy 
 bedchamber. And he said. Go and see where he is, that I may send 
 and fetch him. And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothan. 
 Therefore sent he thither horses, and chariots, and a great host : and 
 they came by night, and compassed the city about. And when the ser- 
 vant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an 
 host with horses and chariots was round about the city. And his 
 servant said unto him, Alas! my master, how shall we do? And he 
 answered. Fear not : for they that be with us are more than they that 
 be with them. And Elisha prayed, and said. Lord, I pray thee, open 
 his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the 
 young man; and he saw : and, behold, the mountain was full of horses 
 and chariots of fire round about Elisha. And when they came down 
 to him, Elisha' prayed unto the Lord, and said. Smite this people, 
 I pray thee, with blindness. And he smote them with blindness 
 according to the word of Elisha. And Elisha said unto them, This is 
 not the way, neither is this the city ; follow me, and I will bring you to 
 the man whom ye seek. And he led them to Samaria. And it came 
 to pass, when they were come into Samaria, that Elisha said. Lord, 
 open the eyes of these men, that they may see. And the Lord opened 
 their eyes, and they saw; and, behold, they were in the midst of 
 Samaria. And the king of Israel said unto Elisha, when he saw them. 
 
246 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 My father, shall I smite them? shall I smite them? And he answered, 
 Thou shalt not smite them : wouldest thou smite those whom thou hast 
 taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow? set bread and water 
 before them, that they may eat and drink, and go to their master. And 
 he prepared great provision for them : and when they had eaten and 
 drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master. And the 
 bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel. 
 
 There is a third type of Epic Prophecy, analogous to the Epic 
 
 Histories which combine a multiplicity of incidents 
 Epics"""^*'" ""'^o ^" organic whole. The Bible contains two 
 
 such Prophetic Epics, connected with the two 
 names of Elijah the Tishbite and Jonah. 
 
 The Book of Jonah is contained amongst the books of the 
 Minor Prophets, yet every reader feels how different it is from all 
 
 the rest. Nahum and Jonah alike received a com- 
 . ® . "^ ° mission to denounce Nineveh : Nahum gives us 
 
 the usual prophetic discourse ; the other book 
 contains no discourse, but describes the actions of Jonah precisely 
 as certain chapters in the Book of Kings describe the actions 
 of Elijah. There is another peculiarity of Jonah. With other 
 prophets to hear is to obey. But the Book of Jonah narrates 
 the rebellion of the prophet against the Divine mandate even 
 more fully than it describes his obedience. If such a narrative is 
 correctly described as Epic Prophecy it will follow that the resist- 
 ance of Jonah, no less than his obedience, will contain the revela- 
 tion which it is the province of Prophecy to impart. This seems 
 to be the key to the interpretation of the book. 
 
 The prophecy opens with the command to go to Nineveh and 
 denounce it. " But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the 
 presence of the Lord." In picturesque detail we have the em- 
 barking at Joppa, the " great wind hurled into the sea," the terror 
 of the mariners, each calling on his god. Jonah, waked from 
 sleep, recognises the power of Jehovah pursuing him, and humbly 
 bows to his fate. However reluctantly, the mariners are at last 
 driven to cast him overboard. While for them the storm ceases, 
 
EPIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 247 
 
 Jonah is miraculously swallowed up — the detail of the miracle is 
 of no significance — and in no less miraculous manner restored. 
 The first part of the book ends with his song of thanlisgiving. 
 
 This series of incidents contains a revelation that may seem 
 elementary to us, but was unquestionably needed. by the times of 
 the prophet. I have before had occasion to speak of the primi- 
 tive conception of Deity by which a god was regarded as a terri- 
 torial being, whose power was limited by the region in which he 
 was worshipped. That this conception extended to the age of 
 Jonah is clear from a verse in the Book of Kings, 
 which tells how the servants of the king of Syria 
 said of the Israelites, " Their god is a god of the hills ; therefore 
 they were stronger than we : but let us fight against them in the 
 plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they." In this prophecy 
 the same notion appears in the way the mariners — no doubt vary- 
 ing in race and country — call each upon his god ; it appears still 
 more strikingly in the accession of terror brought to them amid 
 the tossing of the waves by Jonah's saying that his God was the 
 creator of land and sea. Nay, the same idea is seen to have 
 affected the prophet himself. No doubt Jonah was blessed with 
 a higher revelation of God. But the history of all religions makes 
 it plain that the acceptance of a higher conception does not so 
 far obliterate older conceptions but that they can influence con- 
 duct at times. And it is clear that the old notion of God as the 
 God of a particular land was moving Jonah's purposes when he 
 set out for the far west "from the presence of Jehovah." Waking 
 to the tempest, he recognised Jehovah's power as extending through 
 heaven, and the sea, and the dry land ; and the double miracle 
 wrought upon himself of judgment and deliverance brought this 
 revelation to its climax. 
 
 The narrative continues. A second commission is immediately 
 obeyed, and Jonah journeys through the vast city, crying, "Yet 
 forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." Like an account 
 of some infection spreading through a great centre of population 
 reads the description of the city of Nineveh repenting in sackcloth 
 
248 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 and with " mighty cries." The repentance is genuine, is accepted 
 by God, and the destruction does not come. Jonah is " dis- 
 pleased exceedingly." It is to be noted that this displeasure of 
 Jonah is no mere ebullition of temper. With the impulsive sin- 
 cerity of his character he lays his complaint before God ; and it 
 seems to be with some hope of having moved Jehovah from his 
 purpose of mercy that Jonah makes his booth, and sits watching 
 " till he might see what would become of the city." Burned by 
 the sun without and prophetic anger within, Jonah is suddenly 
 aware of a ' gourd-plant ' which with swift growth has shot up to 
 screen him, and he comes to love it for its beauty and grateful 
 shadow. In a single night a worm gnaws the gourd, and by morn- 
 ing it is withered and fallen. Soon sultiy wind and direct blaze 
 of sun drive Jonah to physical exhaustion ; more than that, " he 
 does well to be angry " : the lovely gourd smitten by the foul 
 worm seems to him a blot on God's providence. Then comes 
 the Divine message. 
 
 Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, 
 neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a 
 night : and should not I have pity on Nineveh, that great city; wherein 
 are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between 
 their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle? 
 
 What is the prophetic revelation underlying this latter part of 
 
 the book? Not, as some would have it, the lovingkindness of 
 
 Jehovah and his forgiveness of the repentant : for this Jonah 
 
 expressly declares he has known from the first. But this 
 
 IV. 2 
 
 glorious mercy of Jehovah the prophet had conceived as 
 the heritage of the Hebrew people ; he watches with indignation 
 its extension to the heathen. As in the earlier part of the proph- 
 ecy he was led to see that Divine power was not confined to the 
 land of Israel, but that the dominion of Jehovah extended over 
 the universe, so now he is to be taught that the supremacy of 
 mercy over judgment is an attribute of God in which all races 
 may feel that they have an interest. There is more than this. 
 
EPIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 249 
 
 Even Jonah would not have challenged the authority of God to 
 forgive Nineveh ; only he claimed for himself the right to disso- 
 ciate himself from such mercy : he did well to be angry. To 
 entwine his affections about the simplest work of creation — a 
 plant, and then to wound those affections by roughly destroying it : 
 this was the object lesson by means of which the prophet was to 
 be admitted into the commencement of communion with the world- 
 wide sympathy of Deity. To raise men's thoughts from the nar- 
 row conception of a local god to the vision of an Omnipotence 
 exercising dominion over the universe ; then to extend to the 
 whole human race the supremacy of mercy over judgment, alike 
 in the attributes of God and the sympathy of man : these are 
 the points of prophetic revelation conveyed in the Epic of Jonah. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 BIBLICAL HISTORY IN ITS RELATIONS WITH BIBLICAL EPIC 
 
 In the wider treatment of literature, which includes questions 
 of authorship and discussion of subject matter, the historical books 
 of the Bible present many and great difficulties. 
 ffistoyr^?e- "* A small space only need be allotted to them in the 
 sented in the present work, the field of which is limited to the 
 ^'■^^^ characteristics of Scriptural literature as it stands, 
 
 apart from any further enquiry as to how it has grown into what 
 we find it. If we except the BooA of Deuteronomy, which is best 
 classified otherwise, narrative extends without break from Genesis 
 to Esther in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament from 
 St. Matthew to Acts. The sole question for the present chapter 
 is. How many of the various forms that History may assume are 
 represented in this succession of historical works? 
 
 What the sacred books give us is the History of the People of 
 Israel as understood by themselves. The spirit underlying the 
 whole is the national consciousness of Israel as the pecuhar people 
 of Jehovah, with a mission to represent him to other nations. 
 „.-„... . From this idea as a standpoint the whole is a clear 
 
 The History of '^ 
 
 Israel as pre- and symmetrical history : a history broken, as we 
 sented by itself ]^ave seen in the preceding chapter, by epic stories 
 used as means of illustration or emphasis. Accordingly it is from 
 this point of view that we may expect to see the logical divisions 
 of Biblical history. 
 
 The name Genesis is suggestive of the character of the book to 
 
 Primitive History ^''i'''^ ^^ ^^ ^ '^^'1^= i* '« Primitive History. It 
 Book of Genesis covers the ages preceding the appearance of the 
 
 250 
 
BIBLICAL HISTORY 251 
 
 Chosen People as a nation. Eleven of its chapters deal with the 
 first beginnings of the world ; the rest is occupied with the suc- 
 cession of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. At the 
 close of Genesis the seed of Abraham is still treated as a large 
 family; when the history is resumed in the following book the 
 Egyptians pronounce the Children of Israel a peo- 
 ple more and mightier than themselves. The ^ '' ' 
 character of this Primitive History may be described as an his- 
 toric framework enclosing epic incidents. The epic element has 
 been dealt with in the last chapter : Genesis contains single epic 
 stories, such as the flood, cycles of stories attaching to the suc- 
 cessive patriarchs, "and a single complete epic history in the Story 
 of Joseph and his Brethren. The framework of history is made 
 up of genealogies, annals, and connective matter of various kinds. 
 As part of this connective matter we have certain incidents which 
 are clearly introduced for some historic purpose. Thus incidents 
 connecting Abimelech and Abraham, and again 
 Abimelech and Isaac, are related with a view to ' ^^ ^''' ^^^^ 
 explain the naming of Beersheba and other ancient wells. Simi- 
 larly the story of Canaan's father, and the story of 
 Lot's daughters are designed to account for the -'"-S'^'^-s 
 mutual relations of great world families. Such Historic Incidents 
 are easily distinguishable from the Epic Incidents of which the 
 interest lies in the story itself 
 
 Following this Primitive History of Genesis, three books de- 
 scribe the Migration of the Nation up to the arrival at the Land 
 of Promise. These three books may be classified 
 together as Constitutional History. They are in H°°t*^"*'™^' 
 the nature of things different in kind from what Books of Exodus, 
 that term generally suggests. Other peoples have ^*^i*"="^' 
 gradually elaborated their constitution out of origi- 
 nal popular customs and modifications by specific enactment. 
 But the Chosen Nation of Israel is governed directly by God, and 
 its only Constitutional History is the successive revelations of the 
 Law. Such history will of course include certain incidents, lead- 
 
252 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 ing up to these revelations or intimately associated with them ; 
 as where the visit of Jethro leads to the institution of subordinate 
 judges, or factions and rebellions issue in fresh confirmation of 
 the authority wielded by Moses or the priesthood as Jehovah's 
 representatives. Twice this section of the history assumes creative 
 form : at the beginning the Story of the Ten Plagues presents 
 Israel as a horde of slaves ; near the close the Story of Balaam 
 exhibits the unwilling praise their final condition extorts from an 
 enemy. The natural divisions of this Constitutional History are 
 two : Exodus, Leviticus and part of Numbers cover the period 
 of slavery in Egypt, deliverance, and general constitution of the 
 nation at Sinai. The rest of the Book of Numbers traces the 
 march from Sinai and the thirty-eight years wandering in the wil- 
 derness. 
 
 We pass to another period, which is represented in the litera- 
 ture by yet another type of history. The Chosen Nation in its 
 . various efforts towards secular government is pic- 
 joshua, Judges tured in the Books of Joshua and Judges and the 
 I Samuel p^^^f jgggj^ ^y Samuel} The Book of Joshua nar- 
 
 rates the conquest of Canaan and division of the conquered 
 country. The book that follows indicates an age of sporadic 
 attempts at government by ' Judges,' who from time to time rise 
 up and succeed in commanding a more or less wide obedience ; 
 in the intervals between such Judges there is nothing but local 
 government, or, in the language of Scripture, every man does that 
 which is right in his own eyes. In this book, however, is to be 
 found the first idea of that monarchical rule which was eventually 
 to assimilate Israel to other nations. After the great deliverance 
 wrought by Gideon he is invited to become king, 
 
 viii. 22 , 
 
 but refuses : " I will not rule over you, neither 
 
 shall my son rule over you : the Lord shall rule over you." After 
 
 Gideon's death another and less worthy son allowed himself to be 
 
 crowned king by the men of Shechem : feud and 
 
 viii. 33— ix "-J ■> ' 
 
 civil war followed until this king and his party had 
 
 1 The exact division should come at the end of the first chapter oi II Samuel. 
 
BIBLICAL HISTORY _ 2S3 
 
 exterminated one another. The general spirit of the sacred history 
 is well illustrated by the concentrated scorn with which, at this 
 juncture, Jotham's fable treats the whole conception of kingship. 
 
 The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and 
 they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us. But the olive tree 
 said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, vyherewith by me they 
 honour God and man, and go to wave to and fro over the trees ? And 
 the trees said to the fig tree. Come thou, and reign over us. But the 
 fig tree said unto them. Should I leave my sweetness, and my good 
 fruit, and go to wave to and fro over the trees ? And the trees said 
 unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us. And the vine said unto 
 them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go 
 to wave to and fro over the trees? Then said all the trees unto the 
 bramble, Come thou, and reign over us. And the bramble said unto 
 the trees. If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put 
 your trust in my shadow : and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, 
 and devour the cedars of Lebanon. 
 
 The demand for a secular king does not reappear until the move- 
 ment which ended in the appointment by Divine permission of 
 Saul. But before this took place another power had emerged 
 for the control of the Israelite people : in Samuel the ' Judge ' 
 gradually grew into the ' Prophet,' and all through the subsequent 
 age of secular kings there were never wanting prophets to repre- 
 sent the old theocracy of the Chosen People. All these considera- 
 tions confirm the description of this epoch as a period of transition 
 and tentative rule. 
 
 The history in the three books is properly described as Inci- 
 dental History. Nearly the whole of it consists in Epic Incidents : 
 whether the separate Stories of the Judges, or Cycles of Stories 
 relating to Joshua, to Samson, to Samuel and Saul. In the latter 
 part the Feud of Saul and David appears as one of the most 
 extended of Epics. The historic framework binding these epic 
 portions together is often of the slightest description, no more 
 than a linking of one incident to another. The 
 most considerable parts of such connective matter 
 are the summary with which the Book of Judges opens, and the 
 
254 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 eeoKraphical chapters vol Joshua which make a sort 
 xiii-xxii ^ . ,^ i t. i 
 
 of Caiiaamte Doomsday Book. 
 
 The accession of King David marks the settlement of the 
 
 monarchy ; the period extending from this point to the Captivity 
 
 „ , „. ^ is narrated in the second book of Samuel and the 
 Regular History 
 
 II Samuel, two books of Kings. First we have the reigns of 
 
 I and II Kings David and Solomon over a united people; then 
 comes the schism of the nation and the continuance of the king- 
 doms of Judah and Israel side by side ; finally, after the fall of 
 the northern kingdom, the history of Judah by itself is carried on 
 to its close. The narrative in these three books may be described 
 as Regular History. It is a systematic account of successive 
 reigns. There is formal arrangement of the matter : in the earlier 
 part public policy is to a large extent separated from court life,' 
 while later on the respective kings of Judah and Israel are kept as 
 nearly parallel as the nature of the case permits. Lists of officials 
 from time to time add an element of documentary history ; and 
 there is constant reference to authorities, the Chronicles of the 
 Kings of Israel and Judah, and others. Incidents are narrated 
 historically, that is, in proportion to the bearing of each on the 
 general course of events. There is, however, in the early part one 
 considerable Epic, the Feud between David's Sons and the Revolt 
 of Absalom ; and to this may be added the Book of Esther, which, 
 however, falls outside the period, and is a story of the Captivity. 
 The place occupied in the other sections of history by Epic Inci- 
 dents is in this last section mainly represented by Epic Prophecy : 
 in the stories of individual prophets like Nathan and Abijah, and 
 the more extended narratives connected with Elijah and Elisha, the 
 theocratic side of Israel's government finds representation. The 
 whole period may be described, in modern phraseology, as a 
 Government of Kings and an Opposition of Prophets. 
 
 There remain in the Old Testament the books of Chronicles, 
 Ezra, and Nehemiah. These make a series that covers the period 
 treated in the last section, and carries it forward as far as the 
 
 ' Chapters ix-xx of // Samuel centre around court life. 
 
BIBLICAL HISTORY 
 
 255 
 
 return of the Exiles to Jerusalem. But the history in this series 
 is entirely changed in character : it is distinguished by the promi- 
 nence of documents, genealogies, statistics : the 
 
 GcclesiRStiCcil 
 narrative appears to consist in excerpts from the History 
 
 other books of the Bible and from authorities dis- Chronicles, Ezra, 
 
 ^ , „,, . . , Nehemiali 
 
 tmct from these. What is more important, the 
 
 whole is dominated by a definite purpose : the matter is abridged, 
 
 amplified, arranged, with reference to its bearing on the Jewish 
 
 Church, as that Church was restored after the exile. It is thus 
 
 Ecclesiastical History. 
 
 The distinctness of this Ecclesiastical History from the Regular 
 
 History which appeals generally to our sense of record is best 
 
 illustrated by taking a particular incident for comparison. I have 
 
 before had occasion to refer to the inauguration of Jerusalem by 
 
 King David ; it will be instructive to note how this is treated in 
 
 Chronicles and in Samuel. 
 
 II Samuel 
 
 vi. I-I2 (ffi) The Assembly, and first 
 attempt to bring up the Ark, ending 
 in the death of Uzzah, the leaving of 
 the Ark in the house of Obed-Edom, 
 and the blessing on the house of 
 Obed-Edom. 
 
 vi. 12 (^)-i9 («) The procession of the 
 Ark — David's part in it — Michal's 
 displeasure — the inauguration carried 
 to the point of a dole to the assembly. 
 
 I Chronicles 
 
 xiii. 1-4 David's proposal to the 
 Assembly in the matter of the Ark : 
 vfith the special mention of priests 
 and Levites. 
 
 5-14 The same matter as in the cor- 
 responding section of Samuel : con- 
 siderable verbal agreement, with some 
 difference of names, etc. 
 
 XV. 1-24 David's recognition that 
 none but the Levites should bear the 
 Ark— long lists of appointments both 
 for the bearing and the musical per- 
 formance. 
 
 XV. 25-xvi. 3 Substantial agreement 
 with the corresponding section of 
 Samuel — but fuller musical details. 
 
2S6 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 xvi. 4—42 Appointment, apparently 
 dating from this festival, of a regular 
 ministry before the Ark : names of 
 officials and citation of (leading) 
 songs used. 
 
 vi. 19 (i)-20 (a) Return home of xvi. 43 Exactly as in Samuel. 
 
 the people and of David. 
 
 vi. 20 (ii)-23 Sequel of Michal's 
 
 displeasure. 
 
 Thus, the substance of the nairative is common to both accounts, 
 with variation in unimportant details, and an amount of verbal 
 agreement sufficient to show that the author of the later work had 
 the earlier before him, or else that both used a common authority. 
 But the account in Chronicles has additions which bring out the 
 ecclesiastical purpose of its history : there is the explanation of 
 Uzzah's death as owing to the neglect of the Levitical privileges, 
 the appointments made in consequence of this, and the full detail 
 of musical arrangements. Again, when the common narrative has 
 been brought down to all but its last detail, it is, in Chronicles, 
 interrupted by a lengthy account of a general ministry dating from 
 this day of inauguration; then the final detail of the common 
 narrative is added. On the other hand, the only section of the 
 story of Samuel which has no counterpart in Chronicles is the 
 domestic incident of Michal's remonstrance with the king, in 
 which Ecclesiastical History would have no concern. 
 
 The Ecclesiastical History of the Jewish Church in the Old 
 Testament has in the New Testament a counterpart in the his- 
 „^ „ „ , torical works connected with the foundation of 
 
 The Four Gospels „, . . . 
 
 Christianity. In a literary classification what is the 
 
 position to be assigned to the Four Gospels ? Though they are a 
 part of Ecclesiastical History, yet they are not histories. How far 
 they are from being biographies is seen by the difficulty which 
 modern writers, with the Gospels before them, find in construct- 
 ing a satisfactory biography of Jesus Christ. It might seem more 
 plausible to associate them with the department of Prophecy, 
 since we have seen that prophetic literature is concerned both 
 
BIBLICAL HISTORY 257 
 
 with the discourses of the prophets and with their actions. But 
 the difference between the Gospels and Prophecy is greater than 
 the resemblance. The personal position of Jesus in the history 
 of the Gospels is not that of a prophet. Though the function of 
 prophets is to convey a Divine message, yet prophetic literature 
 is made not so much by the message as by the discourse which 
 enforces it : Jesus Christ, on the contrary, speaks throughout the 
 Gospels with the authority that commands and enacts, not with 
 the appeal inviting to a doctrine other than his own. The conclu- 
 sion we are led to is that the Gospels must be classified by them- 
 selves, as a specific literary form. The description of this form 
 is that they are Authoritative Statements of the Acts and Words 
 of Christ. As in the machinery of public life we h3.v^ protocols 
 reciting with authority facts or documents upon which political 
 action is to be founded, so the authors of the Gospels drew up, 
 and the early Church accepted, what were, not in themselves books 
 of law, but the best authorities for the Acts and Words of their 
 Founder, to which the Church looked for its supreme law. And 
 this technical description is borne out by the language of the 
 Preface to St. Luke. 
 
 Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative con- 
 cerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they 
 delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses 
 and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having traced 
 the course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in 
 order, most excellent Theophilus ; that thou mightest know the cer- 
 tainty concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed. 
 
 No doubt the Gospel of St. John differs widely in spirit from 
 the other three. Its prologue elaborates a theological position, 
 which the body of the work supports. But this necessitates only 
 a slight modification of the formula I have used: the 'Acts' of 
 Jesus become, in St. John's writing, 'Signs'; his 'Words' are 
 brought forward as ' Witness ' of his Divine essence and mission. 
 Thus the fourth Gospel may be placed in the same category with 
 the other three. 
 
258 BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC 
 
 If this be a correct description from the literary standpoint of 
 
 the Four Gospels, then it will be seen that the remaining book of 
 
 Acts must be referred to the same classification. 
 
 T''l«!!° "' ^^^ It is indeed announced as a continuation of St. 
 Apostles 
 
 Luke's Gospel; and in character it is an Authori- 
 tative Statement of the Proceedings of the Apostles, in the early 
 stages of founding the Church, and opening it to the whole Gen- 
 tile world. This characterisation of the book will appear in its 
 title, if the wording of the title be translated out of technical into 
 familiar language. The ' Apostles ' are so called because they 
 have received a certain ' commission ' from their Master ; the 
 'Acts of the Apostles' are the 'Proceedings of the Commission- 
 ers.' This description again exactly tallies with the plan and 
 arrangement of the book. \{ Acts be regarded as ordinary his- 
 tory, it will seem strange that the personages and places which 
 dominate the earUer part are in the latter part almost forgotten ; 
 moreover, the history seems to end abruptly just where it might be 
 expected to become specially full. But the terms of the ' com- 
 mission' are that the Apostles are to make disciples of all nations, 
 beginning at Jerusalem. The book that is to narrate the execution 
 of this commission deals in full detail with the start made at Jeru- 
 salem. The rest of it has for its purpose to bring out the suc- 
 cessive enlargements of the area in which the Church is at work. 
 The chief of these enlargements is the admission of Gentiles : 
 this is voluminously treated in the account of St. Peter's Vision, of 
 the Council settling difficulties between the Jews and the Gentile 
 converts, above all, in the rise of the Apostle who is to devote 
 himself specially to this work. It is natural that from this point 
 
 the history should mainly concern itself with St. 
 
 Paul. Another miraculous Vision marks a further 
 
 enlargement, where the Gospel is carried from Asia to Europe. 
 
 And a series of providential circumstances, not less wonderful 
 
 than a vision, are narrated at length from their 
 xxi. 17-xxviu . .... 
 
 importance in bringing the Apostle of the Gentiles 
 to Rome. When the work of making disciples has thus been 
 
BIBLICAL HISTORY 259 
 
 carried from Jerusalem to the city which is the metropolis of all 
 nations, the terms of the commission have been fully executed : 
 what remains may be left to the history which is not authoritative. 
 These are the various types of history represented in Scripture. 
 In conclusion I would say that those who desire to appreciate 
 these narrative books as literature, apart from the historical prob- 
 lems they raise, will do well to see that they read, not in ' chapters,' 
 but in portions that are fixed by literary considerations ; taking in 
 a book at a sitting, or if not, something which makes a natural 
 division of a book. I am persuaded that Biblical history in all 
 its parts will have for the ordinary reader a new interest when the 
 printer has been allowed to do for the text of Scripture what he is 
 expected to do for every other historical work. 
 
Book Fourth 
 
 THE BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF RHETORIC 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 XL The Epistles: or Written Rhetoric . . . 263 
 
 XIL Spoken Rhetoric : ano the ' Book of Deuteron- 
 omy' 268 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE KPISTLES : OR WRITTEN RHETORIC 
 
 The word ' rhetoric ' has several meanings. In the sense that 
 belongs to its most common usage it has little connection with 
 the purpose of the present work. Questions of jjj,gt„jig . ^^^ 
 style seem to me to belong to the study of Ian- Literature of 
 guage rather than to the study of literature ; unless ^^^'^^^^ 
 in such cases as the £ook of Wisdom, where we see a peculiarity 
 of style of sufficient magnitude to make the composition a literary 
 class by itself, the morphological distinctness of which must be 
 kept in mind by one who would appreciate the argument. At 
 present I am using the word ' rhetoric ' in a different sense, — 
 as the literature of address. The Biblical literature of address 
 falls into two main divisions : the Epistle, or Written Address, 
 and Oratory, the Spokeri Address. 
 
 The Epistolary literature of the Bible constitutes a department 
 of the highest importance as regards its subject-matter. But its 
 treatment need occupy only a small space in a „ . ^ , ,.» 
 work of which the purpose is to note distinctions erature : the 
 of literary form. All that is necessary is to point ''^""eii Address 
 out that the generic term ' epistle ' covers three classes of com- 
 position worth distinguishing, without reckoning the Epistle of 
 St. yames, and the First Epistle of St. jFohn, which will be 
 treated as a part of Wisdom literature. 
 
 The first and largest class is made up of epistles in the strictest 
 sense, — the Epistles of Pastoral Intercourse. These have the full 
 form of epistolary correspondence : commencing with a salutation 
 
 263 
 
264 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF RHETORIC 
 
 from the Apostle,^ with whom other names are joined in some 
 cases, to a distinct church or fellow-worker ; ending 
 torauntercourse *'*'^ further salutations and sometimes an auto- 
 graph message, and with greetings, general or by 
 name. Sometimes messages to individuals, or about the treat- 
 ment of individuals, appear in the body of the letter ; information 
 is given as to the writer's condition, or his prospective movements 
 and the possibility of personal visits to his correspondents ; refer- 
 ence is made to affairs of the church or person addressed, and 
 even to financial questions or to the disposal of articles of luggage 
 left behind. The matter of the epistle, moreover, is called forth by 
 particular circumstances ; though in treating the particular the 
 writer can rise or digress to the deepest principles touched in the 
 
 highest forms of expression. The First Epistle to 
 I Corinthians , ^ . , • . ■ i i i r i • ^ t^ 
 
 the Corinthians is an ideal example of this type. Its 
 
 earlier paragraphs are drawn from St. Paul by tidings he has heard 
 
 of the Church at Corinth : tidings of factions, of moral laxity, of 
 
 proceedings against brethren in secular courts. Then he turns to 
 
 answer questions of principle, or of ecclesiastical poUcy, which 
 
 have been conveyed to him on behalf of the Corinthian church ; 
 
 he thus treats of celibacy, of the idol feasts which constituted a 
 
 burning question in the early days of Christianity, of the relation 
 
 of the sexes in places of worship ; the question of diverse spiritual 
 
 gifts seems also to be among those put to him, and in treating it 
 
 he is led to the famous outpourihg on ' charity,' or ' love.' He 
 
 concludes with a summary of the 'gospel' he has preached, but a 
 
 summary really designed for a single purpose, to meet doubts that 
 
 had arisen concerning the resurrection doctrine of the Apostles. 
 
 The other pastoral epistles are, in their general character as a 
 
 branch of literature, covered by this typical example. The Second 
 
 Epistle to the Corinthians is a later stage in the 
 Ep^stto ^*"*' correspondence to which the first belongs. That 
 
 to the Galatians is a personal remonstrance from 
 St. Paul to churches with which he conceived himself to have a 
 1 In the case of //, /// John the writer appears only as ' the Elder.' 
 
THE EPISTLES: OR WRITTEN RHETORIC 265 
 
 special bond of intimacy, and which had been disturbed by Juda- 
 ising tendencies such as it was the mission of this Apostle to resist. 
 The epistle to the Philippians was perhaps originated by a desire 
 to heal local differences, if we may judge from an appeal 
 to that effect addressed to individuals by name ; but its 
 matter as a whole is general. Those to the Thessalonians have 
 an individual colour given to them by the prominence of discus- 
 sions touching the expected near 'coming of Christ.' The epistles 
 to Timothy are appeals to a ' child in the faith ' and fellow-worker, 
 touching his personal character as a teacher; but St. Paul also 
 pronounces through him upon questions Ukely to be disputed by 
 those amongst whom Timothy would labour. The epistle to Titus 
 is a general summary of instruction to one left in charge of a dis- 
 trict where much organising was to be done. The epistle to 
 Philemon was a persohal appeal sent by St. Paul with a runaway 
 slave, now Christianised, and desiring to return to his master, a 
 convert and friend of the Apostle. Of a similar personal char- 
 acter are the epistles (numbered second and third) of St. John, 
 addressed to an unnamed lady and to Gaius. 
 
 There is a clear distinction between such epistles of Pastoral 
 Intercourse and two others, which may be designated Epistolary 
 Treatises. The Epistle to the Romans is addressed, 
 it is true, to a particular church : but it is the Treatise?' 
 church of the world's metropolis, and one which 
 the writer has never visited. The formalities of salutation quickly 
 
 lead the writer to that which is his text : the new con- 
 
 ■ 1 1 <■ • 1 > 1 • 1 ■ 1 • Romans 
 
 ception of a ' righteousness by faith, which is salvation 
 
 ' to the Jew first and also to the Greek.' What follows is a for- 
 mal and ordered exposition of this conception, the writer through- 
 out keeping before hitti the two parties of Jews and non-Jews, 
 whose attitudes to the new doctrine would be so different. Com- 
 mencing with first principles he gradually reaches a climax in the 
 idea of a world redemption ; if then he passes from argument to 
 exhortation, yet his exhortations are only another form of his argu- 
 ment, and represent the gospel realised in practical life. The con- 
 
266 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF RHETORIC 
 
 elusion has the greetings, and references to the writer's movements, 
 
 which belong to the pastoral epistles. The Epistle to the Hebrews 
 
 lacks all epistolary form of opening, even the name of its 
 Hebrews ^ ■' , , , ,., 
 
 author ; at the close there is only a reference to the hbera- 
 
 tion of Timothy, and a salutation from ' them of Italy.' The whole is 
 an elaborate and symmetrical argument, brilliant in style, addressed 
 by a Hebrew to Hebrews, the purport of which is that the Law 
 must give place to the Gospel as to a higher and fuller dispensation. 
 A third class of epistles is to be distinguished, which will include 
 those to the Colossians and the Ephesians, the two epistles of 
 Epistolary Mani- P^ter, and the epistle oijude. Of these only the 
 *6stos epistle to the Colossians has the regular epistolary 
 
 salutations and greetings. That named after the Ephesians is really 
 a circular letter to churches, of which the church at Ephesus was 
 only the chief, and in place of final greetings we here find a recom- 
 mendation of the bearer of the epistle. The others have in our 
 Bibles the title of ' general,' and the superscription explains the 
 term : St. Peter's are addressed " To the elect who are sojourners 
 of the Dispersion in Pontus, &c.," and "To them that have ob- 
 tained a like precious faith with us " ; that of Jude, " To them 
 that are called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus 
 Christ." I think this group would be correctly designated Epis- 
 tolary Manifestos. The writer's whole conception of the truth 
 and the life of which he is a minister is concentrated in a single 
 deliverance, not for purposes of general argument or exposition 
 (though both are found), but drawn out by some special situation 
 of the church, and making appeal to the whole nature of those who 
 read, intellectual and spiritual, whether in their private or corporate 
 Colossians and Capacity. In the case of the Colossians and Ephe- 
 Ephesians sians the inspiring situation seems to be the rivalry 
 
 of some other well-ordered systems of truth, and the purpose of 
 the epistles is to put forward the Christian faith and life as satis- 
 fying every capacity of the fullest nature. St. Peter's ad- 
 dress to the Dispersion is clearly called out by an era of 
 cruel persecution, which has naturally driven the Church to test 
 
THE EPISTLES: Ok WRITTEN JiffETORiC 261 
 
 the foundations of the faith for which it is suffering. The Epistle 
 
 of 'Ifude, and the Second Epistle of Peter which has 
 
 , . . , . -r Jude and II Peter 
 
 so much in common with it, are manifestos neces- 
 sitated by evil attacking the Church from within : the perversion 
 of the doctrine of ' liberty ' into a bold antinomianism that set at 
 defiance elementary morality as well as ecclesiastical order. 
 
 Reviewing all three classes I may add one remark. The Epis- 
 tles occupy in the New Testament the place occupied by Prophecy 
 in the Old Testament. The prophets ministered qj^ Testament 
 to a nation, and could move amongst their fellow- counterparts of 
 countrymen and bring to bear on them the power **" Epistles 
 of vocal address. The Apostles addressed those who were scat- 
 tered through distant cities, and could communicate with the 
 Church as a whole only by letter. The Pastoral Epistles corre- 
 spond to the Occasional Discourses and Prophetic Incidents which 
 make up so large a proportion of prophetic literature. In our 
 analysis of Prophecy we have also noticed the Prophetic Mani- 
 festo, embodying, like the Epistolary Manifestos, the preacher's 
 general conception of his ministry. For the Epistolary Treatises 
 there is no counterpart in prophetic hterature ; for the prophet 
 speaks with authority, not by argument, as a representative of the 
 God his hearers acknowledge. The analogous Old Testament 
 form is rather to be sought in Wisdom literature. But if so, the 
 conception of Wisdom is found to have altered ; with a new world 
 in which the Greek takes the intellectual lead Wisdom can no 
 longer be mere reflection, but must arm itself with argument. In 
 the passage from the Essays of Old Testament Wisdom to the 
 Epistles named after Romans and Hebrews we have passed from 
 Oriental to Western philosophy. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 SPOKEN RHETORIC : AND THE ' BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY ' 
 
 The department of Oratory, or Spoken Rhetoric, is represented 
 in the Bible partly by the elaborate speeches already noted in the 
 
 Drama of yob, attractive by their flowing elo- 
 spoke^Rhetoric quence and their pointed gnomic sayings. There 
 
 are again numerous speeches scattered through the 
 Old and New Testament, which, however, cannot well be appre- 
 ciated from the literary standpoint, owing to the condensed form 
 in which they are reported. Perhaps here also should be reck- 
 oned, in a class by themselves, the formal Prayers, or Addresses 
 to God, of which Solomon's Dedicatory Prayer, and the apocr)fphal 
 Prayer of Manasses are the chief examples. But the department 
 includes one work of the highest literary importance in the fifth 
 book of the Pentateuch, called by its Greek name of Deuteronomy. 
 This book of Deuteronomy might have for its second title ' The 
 Orations and Songs of Moses before his ascent of Pisgah? The 
 
 vast historic importance of the book, from its in- 
 
 Deuteronomyas fl^g^ce on later Biblical writers, and the difficult 
 a literary work ' 
 
 questions surrounding its origin, have tended to 
 
 divert attention from the literary interest attaching to its contents.' 
 
 There is, perhaps, no other work in which so much is gained by 
 
 attempting to read the whole at a sitting. For this exercise some 
 
 preparation should be made, in the way of separating the substance 
 
 from accessories. To begin with, there are some long parenthetic 
 
 1 It may be well to remind the reader that questions of literary history are ex- 
 cluded from the present work. The analysis of Deuteronomy is analysis of the book 
 as it stands, apart from any question how it has reached its present form, 
 
 268 
 
SPOKEN RHETORIC: DEUTERONOMY 269 
 
 explanations, which are obviously not to be understood as part of 
 the speeches in which they occur : in modern phraseology they 
 are foot-notes, and they should be marked off.^ Other verses 
 should be separated as prefaces, titles, colophons, and the like.^ 
 But in addition to these brief passages there is a lengthy section 
 of fifteen chapters which may be understood as the ' Book 
 
 zii-zxvi 
 
 of the Covenant ' that is being mentioned continually in 
 the speeches ; however important in itself, this section should, in 
 such an exercise as I am describing, be taken as read, and not 
 allowed to disturb the succession of orations. When, with these 
 preparations, the whole book is reviewed at a sitting, an intense 
 interest is thrown upon the orations from the pathetic situation in 
 which they are delivered : the leader of the Hebrews in their wan- 
 derings alone realising that promised land from which he alone 
 is excluded. This thought from time to time breaks out in the 
 cry — "The Lord was angry with me for your sakes " ; and when 
 not spoken in words it is none the less present as inspiration of 
 the passionate appeals and denunciations with which Moses seeks 
 to make the Covenant, of which he has been the interpreter, a 
 power with the people when he is no longer present to uphold it. 
 There is also a crescendo of interest throughout the book : narra- 
 tive review, appeal, ceremonial and terrible denunciation, farewell 
 and personal tenderness, a climax of song, simple story of the 
 solemn and pathetic end. Read in any way, Deuteronomy reveals 
 its rhetoric richness ; read at a single sitting, -it is seen to be ora- 
 tory arranged to produce all the effect of Drama. 
 
 First Oration i. e-iv. 40 
 
 Moses' Announcement of his Deposition 
 
 The people are indicated as gathered together in the deep hol- 
 low that makes the bed of the Jordan, on its eastern side. Moses, 
 standing before them, commences in the calm tone of historic sur- 
 
 1 They are : ii. 10-12 ; ii. 20-3; iii. 9 and 11 and again 14 ; x. 6-9. 
 ? 3?e throughout analysis in the Literary Index. 
 
270 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF RHETORIC 
 
 vey. He goes to the central incident of the people's history — 
 the giving of the law on Horeb — and tells how the first move- 
 ment forward revealed the growing numbers of the people, so 
 that he could no longer support the cumbrance and burden and 
 strife of so vast a nation. 
 
 The Lord, the God of your fathers, make you a thousand times so 
 many more as ye are, and bless you, as he hath promised you ! 
 
 It thus became necessary to appoint captains of hundreds and 
 fifties and tens ; and in such organised form the people passed 
 through the great and terrible wilderness, and reached Kadesh- 
 Barnea. There the order came to advance on the foe. But 
 though the spies sent on to explore brought back word of a good 
 land, yet they made the heart to melt with their tale of cities great 
 and fenced up to heaven, and children of the Anakim : until the 
 people forgot the Lord their leader in the wilderness. Moses 
 reviews how the Lord's wrath brake forth at the murmuring, and 
 he sware that none save the faithful spies should enter the land : 
 the children and little ones should alone inherit. Here for the 
 first time comes the sad plaint that the Lord was angry with Moses 
 for the people's sake, and he, too, must not pass over Jordan. The 
 history continues to tell of the presumptuous courage that went up 
 to the battle without the Lord, and was visited with defeat and 
 rout. Then there is the turning back to the wilderness, and the 
 eight and thirty years wandering while all the men of war of that 
 generation were being gradually consumed : a wandering, never- 
 theless, that lacked not the Lord's watchfulness. 
 
 The Lord thy God hath blessed thee in all the work of thy hand : 
 he hath known thy walking through this great wilderness: these 
 forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee, thou hast lacked 
 nothing. 
 
 With the crossing of the brook Zered the new era begins : the 
 dread and the fear of Israel falls upon the peoples. In vain Sihon 
 king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan resist : their cities are 
 taken, their people smitten and extirpated, their land divided 
 
SPOKEN KHETORIC: DEUTERONOMY 271 
 
 among the tribes that had much cattle. It now appears how these 
 signs of Jehovah's favour to his people stirred the personal hopes 
 of Moses. 
 
 And I besought the Lord at that time, saying, O Lord God, thou 
 hast begun to show thy servant thy greatness, and thy strong hand : 
 for what god is there in heaven or in earth that can do according to 
 thy works, and according to thy mighty acts? Let me go over, I 
 pray thee, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly 
 mountain, and Lebanon. But the Lord was wroth with me for your 
 sakes, and hearkened not unto me : and the Lord said unto me. 
 Let it suffice thee ; speak no more unto me of this matter. Get thee 
 up into the top of Pisgah, and lift up thine eyes westward, and north- 
 ward, and southward, and eastward, and behold with thine eyes : for 
 thou shalt not go over this Jordan. But charge Joshua, and encour- 
 age him, and strengthen him : for he shall go over before this people. 
 
 So, then, the office of Moses is to be ended : the words he has 
 commanded are not to be added to, nor diminished from : it re- 
 mains that the people shall keep them, and this shall be their 
 wisdom and their understanding in the sight of the peoples, for 
 no people can have a god so nigh or statutes so wise as theirs. 
 But they must remember the occasion of the lawgiving, and how 
 the mountain burned with fire unto the heart of heaven, and they 
 heard the voice but saw no form ; they must take heed lest they 
 make the form of anything in heaven or earth, to worship it ; and 
 lest when they behold the sun and moon and all the host of 
 heaven their hearts be lifted up and they worship these — these 
 which the Lord has divided unto all the peoples under the whole 
 heaven, whereas Israel he has chosen for his own inheritance. 
 And he will be jealous over the people with whom he has made 
 his covenant. 
 
 For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, 
 since the day that God created man upon the earth, and from the 
 one end of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such 
 thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? Did ever 
 people hear the voice qf God speaking out of the midst of the fire, 
 as thou hast heard, and live? Or hath God assayed to go and take 
 
272 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF RHETORIC 
 
 him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by 
 signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a 
 stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the 
 Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? Unto thee 
 it was shewed that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God; 
 there is none else beside him. Out of heaven he made thee to hear 
 his voice, that he might instruct thee : and upon earth he made thee 
 to see his great fire; and thou heardest his words out of the midst 
 of the fire. And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose 
 their seed after them, and brought thee out with his presence, with 
 his great power, out of Egypt; to drive out nations from before thee 
 greater and mightier than thou, to bring thee in, to give thee their 
 land for an inheritance, as at this day. Know therefore this day, 
 and lay it to thine heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above 
 and upon the earth beneath: there is none else. And thou shalt 
 keep his statutes, and his commandments which I command thee 
 this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after 
 thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the land, which 
 the Lord thy God giveth thee, for ever. 
 
 ^- '-^ Second Oration 
 
 The Delivery of the Covenant to the Levites and Elders 
 
 The second oration of Moses is connected with a public cere- 
 mony : the handing over the Book of the Covenant into the 
 custody of the Levites and Elders. The scene of the preceding 
 oration is repeated, and Moses appears, with officials grouped 
 round him representing the Levites and Elders, holding in his 
 hands the Covenant of the Lord, now for the first time reduced 
 to writing. As in the former speech, he goes for a starting-point 
 to the scene at Horeb ; he recites the commandments one by 
 one as delivered by the great Voice amid fire and darkness ; and 
 he reminds the people how they came to him with words of panic : 
 
 We have seen this day that God doth speak with man, and he liveth. 
 Now therefore why should we die? 
 
 Their petition was that Moses might stand in their stead before the 
 Lord, and all that the Lord commands by him they will do. Now 
 
SPOKEN RHETORIC: DEUTERONOMY 273 
 
 therefore all the separate commandments and statutes and judg- 
 ments of which Moses has thus been the interpreter have been 
 gathered into one Covenant, the book Moses holds in his hands. 
 His task is to commend it to their obedience before they hear it 
 read. He commences with the great Name. 
 
 Hear, O Israel : the Lord our God is one Lord : and thou shall 
 love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, 
 and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee 
 this day, shall be upon thine heart : and thou shalt teach them dili- 
 gently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in 
 thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest 
 down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a 
 sign upon thine hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine 
 eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thy house, 
 and upon thy gates. And it shall be, that when the Lord thy God 
 shall bring thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to 
 Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee; great and goodly 
 cities, which thou buildedst not, and houses full of all good things, 
 which thou fiUedst not, and cisterns hewn out, which thou hewedst 
 not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not, and thou 
 shalt eat and be full; then beware lest thou forget the Lord. 
 
 On the contrary, when their children ask them in the days to 
 come, what mean these statutes and judgments, they shall tell how 
 they were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt, and how Jehovah brought 
 them out with wonders great and sore, and gave them these com- 
 mandments to keep : and it shall be their righteousness if they 
 observe the commandments of their God. 
 
 This Covenant shall be their distinction among the nations. 
 The Lord will cast out the nations before them : — not suddenly, 
 lest the beasts of the field increase upon them ; but by little and 
 by little will he cast them out. They shall make no covenant with 
 them, nor give them sons and daughters in marriage. 
 
 For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord 
 thy God hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above 
 all peoples that are upon the face of the' earth. The Lord did not set 
 his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number 
 
274 BIBLICAL UTEJiATURE OF RHETORIC 
 
 than any people'; for ye were the fewest of all peoples : but because 
 the Lord loveth you, and because he would keep the oath which he 
 sware unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a 
 mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage. 
 
 The orator turns to the past to find ground for emphasising 
 the keeping of the Covenant. 
 
 Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God hath led 
 thee these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble thee, 
 to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou would- 
 est keep his commandments, or no. And he humbled thee, and suf- 
 fered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest 
 not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know 
 that man doth not live by bread only, but by everything that pro- 
 ceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. Thy raiment 
 waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years. 
 And thou shalt consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his 
 son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee. And thou shalt keep 
 the commandments of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and 
 to fear him. For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, 
 a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths, springing forth 
 in valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig 
 trees and pomegranates; a land of oil olives and honey; a land 
 wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack 
 anything in it; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills 
 thou mayest dig brass. And thou shalt eat and be full, and thou 
 shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given 
 thee. Beware lest thou forget the Lord thy God, in not keeping his 
 commandments, and his judgements, and his statutes, which I com- 
 mand thee this day : lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast 
 built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy 
 flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that 
 thou hast is multiplied ; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou for- 
 get the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of 
 Egypt, out of the house of bondage; who led thee through the great 
 and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents and scorpions, 
 and thirsty ground where was no water; who brought thee forth 
 water out of the rock of flint; who fed thee in the wilderness with 
 manna, which thy fathers knew not; that he might humble thee 
 and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end : 
 
SPOKEN RHETORIC: DEUTERONOMY 275 
 
 and thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand 
 hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shall remember the Lord thy 
 God, for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth; that he may 
 establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as at this day. 
 
 Moses turns to the future. They are this day to pass over Jor- 
 dan, and soon they will see the nations, even the tall sons of Anak, 
 going down before them. But let them beware lest they say in 
 their heart : " For my righteousness hath the Lord brought me 
 into the land." Not for their righteousness, but for the wicked- 
 ness of them that dwell in the land. Not for their righteousness, 
 for they have been ever a stiff-necked generation : and the orator 
 gathers into one single view all the outbreaks of rebellion and sin 
 which had marred the history of the people in the wilderness. 
 Yet why this rebellious spirit ? 
 
 What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord 
 thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the 
 Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the 
 commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command 
 thee this day for thy good? Behold, unto the Lord thy God be- 
 longeth the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, the earth, with all 
 that therein is. Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love 
 them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all peo- 
 ples, as at this day. 
 
 Moses speaks, not to children which have not known, but to those 
 who have seen all the works of the Lord done upon Egypt, and 
 how the Lord their God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, the 
 great God, the mighty, the terrible. Let them therefore circum- 
 cise their hearts, and so go over and possess the good land. 
 
 For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of 
 Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and 
 wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs; but the land, 
 whither ye go over to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and 
 drinketh water of the rain of heaven : a land which the Lord thy 
 God careth for; the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, 
 from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year. 
 
276 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF RHETORIC 
 
 If, then, the people keep faithfully the Covenant of the Lord, he 
 will give them the rain in its season, the former rain and the latter 
 rain, and the land shall yield her increase ; but if they turn aside 
 and serve other gods, the heavens shall be shut up, and the land 
 shall not yield her fruit, and they shall perish quickly from off the 
 good land their God has given them. 
 
 Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your 
 soul ; and ye shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they 
 shall be for frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them 
 your children, talking of them, when thou sittest in thine house, and 
 when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when 
 thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of 
 thine house, and upon thy gates; that your days may be multiplied, 
 and the days of your children, upon the land which the Lord sware 
 unto your fathers to give them, as the days of the heavens above 
 the earth. 
 
 Fresh promises follow of rewards for faithfulness : nations greater 
 and mightier than themselves driven out before them, a border 
 from the wilderness to Lebanon, from the hinder sea to the river 
 Euphrates, — every place where the sole of their foot shall tread 
 shall be theirs. In conclusion Moses refers to the blessing and 
 the curse, which are to be the sanctions of the Covenant ; and 
 then must have come the time when he would hand over the Book 
 of the Covenant in the eyes of the whole nation, to the Levites 
 and Elders around him, to be read by them before the people on 
 that day and many a day afterwards. 
 
 xxTiii Third Oration 
 
 At the Rehearsal of the Blessing and the Curse 
 
 When the fifteen chapters containing the Book of the Covenant 
 are concluded, a succession of paragraphs follow which need close 
 xxvii 1-8 ^"^'^ti°'^- F'''st we have an ordinance formally appoint- 
 ing the Ceremonial of the Blessing and Curse ; and this 
 is a provision for the future, since the places designated — Mounts 
 
SPOKEN RHETORIC: DEUTERONOMY 277 
 
 Ebal and Gerizim — are on the other side of Jordan. Next fol- 
 low two verses in which it is said that Moses and the 
 priests the Levites spake unto all Israel, to the effect that 
 they had that day become the Lord's people, and must keep 
 his commandments. Then verses describe how Moses 
 
 XI-X4 
 
 " charged the people the same day," the point of the 
 charge being the division of the tribes — six for the mountain of 
 the Curse, and six for the mountain of the Blessing ; the descrip- 
 tion brings out the antiphonal character of the ceremony, the 
 Levites speaking, and the people responding with an 
 Amen. Then follow the Curses in this full ritual form. 
 But, instead of a similar series of Blessings, we find the matter of 
 the Blessings put in oratorical language, which oratorical 
 language continues into the matter of the Curses. The 
 only way of satisfactorily interpreting such a succession of para- 
 graphs is to suppose a Rehearsal of the Ceremony, the tribes 
 being stationed upon opposite slopes in some spot resembling the 
 mountains of Ebal and Gerizim ; and, when the ceremony has 
 proceeded as far as the conclusion of the Curses, Moses — since it 
 is only a rehearsal — interrupts it, and takes the whole into his 
 own hands. This gives us the third oration. 
 
 Moses describes how, if the people observe the commandments 
 of their God, they shall be blessed in city and in field, in the fruit 
 of their body and the fruit of their ground and their catde, in 
 basket, in kneading-trough, when they come in and when they go 
 out, and in all that they do. 
 
 The Lord shall open unto thee his good treasury the heaven to 
 give the rain of thy land in its season, and to bless all the work of 
 thine hand : and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shall 
 not borrow. And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the 
 tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; 
 if thou shalt hearken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God. 
 
 But if the people shall not hearken unto the voice of the Lord 
 their God, then curses shall come upon them and overtake them : 
 curses in city and field, in basket and kneading-trough, in the fruit 
 
278 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF RHETORIC 
 
 of body and of cattle and of field, curses when they come in and 
 when they go out. Discomfiture and rebuke, consumption, fever, 
 inflammation, fiery heat, the sword, blasting mildew, shall pursue 
 them until they perish. 
 
 And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth 
 that is under thee shall be iron. The Lord shall make the rain of 
 thy land povi'der and dust : from heaven shall it come dovfn upon 
 thee, until thou be destroyed. The Lord shall cause thee to be 
 smitten before thine enemies : thou shall go out one way against 
 them, and shalt flee seven ways before them : and thou shalt be 
 tossed to and fro among the kingdoms of the earth. 
 
 There shall be madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart ; 
 groping at noontide as the blind gropeth in darkness ; sons and 
 daughters shall be borne into captivity, and the eyes of parents 
 shall look and fail with longing for them all the day ; but there 
 shall be nought in the power of their hand ; for they shall be only 
 oppressed, and crushed alway, and they shall be mad for the sight 
 of their eyes which they shall see. 
 
 Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field, and shalt gather little 
 in; for the locust shall consume it. Thou shalt plant vineyards and 
 dress them, but thou shalt neither drink of the wine nor gather the 
 grapes; for the worm shall eat them. Thou shalt have olive trees 
 throughout all thy borders, but thou shalt not anoint thyself with 
 the oil; for thine olive shall cast its fruit. Thou shalt beget sons 
 and daughters, but they shall not be thine; for they shall go into 
 captivity. 
 
 The Stranger in their midst shall mount higher and higher as they 
 go down lower and lower : and all because they have not heark- 
 ened unto the voice of their God. 
 
 Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and 
 with gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things: 
 therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send 
 against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want 
 of all things : and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until 
 he have destroyed thee. The Lord shall bring a nation against 
 thee from far, from the end of the earth, as the eagle flieth; a nation 
 
SPOKEN RHETORIC: DEUTERONOMY 279 
 
 whose tongue thou shall not understand; a nation of fierce coun- 
 tenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor shew 
 favour to the young: and he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the 
 fruit of thy ground, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not 
 leave thee corn, wine, or oil, the increase of thy kine, or the young 
 of thy flock, until he have caused thee to perish. And he shall be- 
 siege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come 
 down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land : and he shall 
 besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the LoKD 
 thy God hath given thee. And thou shall eat the fruit of thine own 
 body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters which the Lokd thy 
 God hath given thee; in the siege and in the straitness, wherewith 
 thine enemies shall straiten thee. The man that is lender among 
 you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and 
 toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his chil- 
 dren which he hath remaining : so that he will not give to any of 
 them of the flesh of his children whom he shall eat, because he hath 
 nothing left him; in the siege and in the straitness, wherewith thine 
 enemy shall straiten thee in all thy gates. The tender and delicate 
 woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her 
 foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall 
 be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and 
 toward her daughter; and toward her young one that cometh out 
 from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall 
 bear; for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly: in the 
 siege and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall straiten thee 
 in thy gates. 
 
 If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are 
 written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful 
 name. The Lord Thy God; then the Lord will make thy plagues 
 wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of 
 long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance. 
 And he will bring upon thee again all the diseases of Egypt, which 
 thou wast afraid of; and they shall cleave unto thee. Also every 
 sickness, and every plague, which is not written in the book of this 
 law, them will the Lord bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed. 
 And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of 
 heaven for multitude; because thou didst not hearken unto the voice 
 of the Lord thy God. And it shall come to pass, that as the Lord 
 rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the Lord 
 will rejoice over you to cause you to perish, and to destroy you; and 
 
280 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF RHETORIC 
 
 ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest in to pos- 
 sess it. And the Lord shall scatter thee among all peoples, from 
 the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth ; and 
 there thou shalt serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou 
 nor thy fathers, even wood and stone. And among these nations 
 shalt thou find no ease, and there shall be no rest for the sole of thy 
 foot : but the Lord shall give thee there a trembhng heart, and fail- 
 ing of eyes, and pining of soul: and thy life shall hang in doubt 
 before thee; and thou shalt fear night and day, and shalt have none 
 assurance of thy life : in the morning thou shalt say. Would God it 
 were even ! and at even thou shalt say. Would God it were morning ! 
 for the fear of thine heart which thou shalt fear, and for the sight of 
 thine eyes which thou shalt see. And the Lord shall bring thee 
 into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I said unto thee, 
 Thou shalt see it no more again : and there ye shall sell yourselves 
 unto your enemies for bondmen and for bondwomen, and no man 
 shall buy you. 
 
 xxix-xxxi. 8 Fourth Oration 
 
 The Covenant dt the Land of Moab 
 
 The fourth oration has this title in the text, although the scene 
 appears to be the same. After a brief historic survey, Moses 
 seems to review the different classes of people standing before him. 
 
 Ye stand this day all of you before the Lord your God; your heads, 
 your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the men of Israel, 
 your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that is in the midst of 
 thy camps, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water : 
 that thou shouldest enter into the covenant of the Lord thy God. 
 
 We are thus led to the special point of this day's speech. It is 
 personal, as distinct from national religion. Moses fears lest there 
 may be some man or woman, or some family or tribe, who may 
 nourish idolatry in their hearts, and think to escape in the general 
 righteousness ; — 
 
 lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and worm- 
 wood; and it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, 
 that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though 
 I walk in the stubbornness of mine heaft. 
 
SPOKEN RHETORIC: DEUTERONOMY 281 
 
 Moses declares that God will separate that man or that woman 
 unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, to bring upon him all the 
 curses of the Covenant. As for such a tribe or family: the 
 stranger from a far land, the children of the days to come, shall 
 wonder to see the plagues of its land, and how it is brimstone, 
 and salt, and a burning, like the ruin of Sodom, and they shall 
 ask. Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? And 
 they shall say, Because they forsook the covenant of the Lord, the 
 God of their fathers. The secret things of the sin belong unto 
 the Lord our God ; but the judgment when it is revealed will 
 belong to us and to our children for ever.^ 
 
 But Moses has additional words of mercy to speak, as well as of 
 judgment. When all these things are come upon them, the bless- 
 ing and the curse, and they call them to mind among all the 
 nations whither they have been driven, then if they turn with all 
 their heart unto the Lord he will turn their captivity, and gather 
 their outcasts from the uttermost parts of heaveti, and bring them 
 again into the land of their fathers, and do them good, and put 
 these curses upon their enemies : if only they turn unto the Lord 
 with all their heart and with all their soul. 
 
 For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not too 
 hard for thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou 
 shouldest say. Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto 
 us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it? Neither is it beyond 
 the sea, that thou shouldest say. Who shall go over the sea for us, 
 and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it? 
 But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, 
 that thou mayest do it. 
 
 The Leader of the people thus reaches the point of his final 
 appeal. He calls heaven and earth to witness against them this 
 day, that he has set before them life and death, the blessing and 
 the curse. Therefore, he cries to them, 
 
 1 This is the only point where the argument of the orations is at all difficult. 
 The line of thought is given by verse i8 (of chapter xxix) : the distinction of 
 (a) man or woman, (i) family or tribe; then verses 20-21 follow the judgment on 
 (a), verses 32-28 the judgment on iji). 
 
282 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF RHETORIC 
 
 Choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed : to love the 
 Lord thy God, to obey his voice, and to cleave unto him : for he is 
 thy life, and the length of thy days : that thou mayest dwell in the 
 land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, 
 and to Jacob, to give them. 
 
 There remains the personal farewell. Moses tells how he is that 
 day an hundred and twenty years old ; and the mystic strength 
 that had supported the people in the wilderness, so that their feet 
 swelled not these forty years, is no longer vouchsafed to their 
 leader : " I can no more go out and come in." And the Lord has 
 said to him that he shall not go over Jordan. But while physical 
 strength is failing, the words on the old man's lips are of strength 
 and courage : a worn-out leader puts courage into the nation 
 before him, and into Joshua, whom he installs as leader in his 
 place. Thus with his cry of " Be strong, and of good courage," 
 and " The Lord shall go before you," Moses retires from his ofiSce 
 of leader, and leaves Joshua in his place. 
 
 The orations of Moses are concluded : but not yet his words. 
 That very day, as he is presenting himself with Joshua his suc- 
 cessor in the Tent of Meeting, the call comes to 
 xxxh '1-°°^ put his message to the people in the form of Song. 
 
 His doctrine shall drop as the rain, his speech distil 
 as the dew, while he sings of Jehovah the Rock, the God of faith- 
 fulness. When the nations were divided, Israel was retained by 
 the Creator for himself. 
 
 For the Lord's portion is his people : 
 
 Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. 
 
 He found him in a desert land, 
 
 And in the waste howling wilderness . 
 
 He compassed him about, he cared for him, 
 
 He kept him as the apple of his eye : 
 
 As an eagle that stirreth up her nest. 
 
 That fluttereth over her young, 
 
 He spread abroad his wings, he took them, 
 
 He bare them on his pinions : 
 
SPOKEN RHETORIC: DEUTERONOMY 283 
 
 The Lord alone did lead him, 
 
 And there was no strange god with him. 
 
 He made him ride on the high places of the earth, 
 
 And he did eat the increase of the field ; 
 
 And he made him to suck honey out of the rock, 
 
 And oil out of the flinty rock; 
 
 Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, 
 
 With fat of lambs, 
 
 And rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, 
 
 With the fat of kidneys of wheat; 
 
 And of the blood of the grape thou drankest wine. 
 
 The joyousness of the song clouds over, as it tells how Jeshurun 
 waxed fat and kicked, and moved the Lord to jealousy with new 
 gods, that came up but yesterday, whom their fathers did not 
 know. The fire of Divine anger burns as from the lowest pit, 
 devouring the increase of the earth. Visions of mischiefs heaped 
 upon the faithless people pass before us, of arrows spent upon 
 them, wasting hunger, burning heat, teeth of beasts, poison of 
 crawhng things, without the Sword bereaving and terrors within : 
 only short of entire destruction does the judgment stop, lest the 
 adversary should misdeem, and think that their hand, and not 
 Jehovah's wrath, had done all. And how blind and void of wis- 
 dom must the nation be not to see the meaning of it all, and that 
 their Rock has forsaken them ! 
 
 For their rock is not as our Rock, 
 
 Even our enemies themselves being judges. 
 
 And the imagery flows forth to paint the loathly gods to which 
 Israel has given preference — things of rottenness like grapes of 
 Sodom, bitter as clusters of gall, poisonous as wine of dragons : — 
 until, by a bold transition, the description is made to produce 
 revulsion in the mind of God himself He thinks with compla- 
 cency of vengeance yet stored among his treasures, that he may 
 use once more on his people's side : waiting till their strength is 
 exhausted, and their last hope gone, and then raising himself in 
 wrath to scorn their helpless idols, and recompense vengeance to 
 
284 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF RHETORIC 
 
 their adversaries. And so with the joy of Jehovah returned to his 
 fallen people, this Song of the Rock of Israel concludes. 
 
 Then the end comes. The whole people understand it, and all 
 are waiting to see their Leader set out on the mystic journey on 
 ThePassinzof which none may accompany him. Heads of the 
 Moses, xxxii.48- tribes stand out from the masses of the people and 
 ""^ line the route by which Moses must pass. The 
 
 first sight of the \yhole nation, which he has ruled so long, seems 
 to kindle in Moses a vision, which reaches us only dimly, in his 
 words of Jehovah coming forth from amidst his holy ones, a fiery 
 law at his right hand, the holy ones of the peoples sitting at his 
 feet. Then, passing along the leaders of the tribes, he speaks last 
 words to each : stirring words of past battle cries, or pregnant 
 sayings destined to be watchwords in the future. Reuben, his 
 men never few. Judah, sufficient of his hands. Levi — 
 
 Who said of his father, and of his mother, 
 
 I have not seen him; 
 Neither did he acknowledge his brethren, 
 Nor linew his own children, 
 
 when he took sides with Jehovah at the waters of strife. Benjamin, 
 beloved of the Lord, who dwelleth between his shoulders. Bless- 
 ings on the princely Joseph. 
 
 Blessed of the Lord be his land : 
 
 For the precious things of heaven, for the dew. 
 
 And for the deep that coucheth beneath, 
 
 And for the precious things of the fruits of the sun, 
 
 And for the precious things of the growth of the moons. 
 
 And for the chief things of the ancient mountains, 
 
 And for the precious things of the everlasting hills, 
 
 And for the precious things of the earth and the fulness thereof, 
 
 And the good will of him that dwelt in the bush. 
 
 Zebulun, blessed in his going out over the seas, and Issachar in 
 his tent life at home. Naphtali, with the blessings of the western 
 sea and the sunny south ; Asher, dipping his foot in the oil of his 
 
SPOKEN RHETORIC: DEUTERONOMY 285 
 
 own vineyards, shod with the iron and brass of his mines. The 
 whole line of the tribes past, Moses lifts hands and voice in the 
 final blessing. 
 
 There is none like unto God, O Jeshurun, 
 Who rideth upon the heaven for thy help, 
 And in his excellency on the skies. 
 The eternal God is thy dwelling-place. 
 And underneath are the everlasting arms. 
 
 From the height of lyric song we drop to simple, bare prose : 
 fittest of forms to convey the solitary journey from which there is 
 to be no return ; the going up to the top of Pisgah, the long 
 gaze over the land of promise ; the lonely death ; the burial in 
 the sepulchre that no man knoweth. So the days of weeping in the 
 mourning for Moses were ended. 
 
Book Fifth 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BIBLE, OR WISDOM 
 LITERATURE 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 XIII. Forms of Wisdom Literature 289 
 
 XIV. The Sacred Books of Wisdom 319 
 
 XV. 'The Wisdom of Solomon' 341 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE 
 
 This fifth book is reserved for the Philosophy of the Bible; 
 that is to say, for the wide range of Scriptural literature which is 
 the counterpart of our modern Philosophy and 
 Science. These two names, however, are scarcely gjature" ' ' 
 to be found in the sacred writings ; the literature 
 we are to consider is, in the Bible itself, uniformly designated 
 'Wisdom.' The word is suggestive of one, if not both, the main 
 distinctions which separate Biblical Philosophy from modern 
 thought. If it be not pressing the word too far, there is a pictur- 
 esqueness in the name ' Wisdom ' that harmonises with the pictur- 
 esqueness of form never absent from Scriptural literature of thought. 
 Modern works of science confine themselves strictly to severe 
 prose style. But the Uterature of Wisdom borrows often the form 
 of lyric, and sometimes even of dramatic poetry, and where it is 
 furthest removed from these, it still leaves the impression of attach- 
 ing as much consequence to the artistic form as to the thought. 
 More important than this is the suggestion in the name ' Wisdom ' 
 that its litefature will have a practical bearing on human conduct. 
 A great part of such writings is made up of specific observations or 
 precepts in matters of social and family life, of business manage- 
 ment, public policy, and general self-government. And where such 
 works as Ecdesiastes or the Wisdom of Solomon'^ are occupied in 
 
 1 1 assume throughout this part of my subject the Apocryphal books of Wisdom 
 of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus. The distinction implied in the word ' Apocryphal ' is 
 one of theology : according to the Anglican formula, " the Church doth read [them] 
 
 280 
 
290 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 interpreting history, or reading the riddle of life, they make it 
 clear that the argument is followed with a constant reference to 
 the bearing of the whole on conduct. It is only when comparison 
 is made with the kindred department of Prophecy that we see the 
 right of Wisdom literature to be classified under the head of Phi- 
 losophy, the organ of reflection. Prophecy also is concerned with 
 conduct ; but it starts always with a Divine message, on which all 
 that it contains is based. Of course Wisdom is in harmony with 
 the revelation contained in Law and Prophecy, but it never appeals 
 to it. The sayings of the Wise come to us only as the result of 
 their own reflections, in combination with the general tradition of 
 Wisdom. 
 
 The present chapter is occupied with the various literary forms 
 
 in which this Wisdom literature of the Bible and 
 I^m Literature'^' Apocrypha is conveyed to us. The two chapters 
 
 that follow will treat the separate Books of Wis- 
 dom as they stand. 
 
 The starting-point for this whole class of literature is the Proverb. 
 There were two sources of Hebrew proverbs : Folk-lore, and the 
 
 sayings of the Wise Men. The popular proverbs 
 
 The Proverb •' ° r r r 
 
 that float from mouth to mouth appear only by acci- 
 dent in the Bible. " Out of the wicked cometh forth wickedness " 
 is an ancient saying hurled by David at Saul, in the wilderness of 
 
 Engedi, when Saul's groundless suspicions of him 
 Popular Proverbs o ' => r 
 
 had just been exposed. " Is Saul also among the 
 
 prophets?" is a proverb that has descended from those days to 
 our own. 
 
 One form of popular proverb was the Riddle ; aftd, just as 
 great part of the intercourse between the Wise — between Solo- 
 mon and Hiram, or Solomon and the Queen of 
 Sheba — consisted in hard questions to be inter- 
 preted, so popular festivities made opportunities for the guessing 
 
 for example of life and instruction of manners ; but yet doth it not apply them to 
 establish any doctrine." As doctrinal questions are excluded from this work, the 
 distinction does not here apply. The two books are of the highest literary interest. 
 
FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE 291 
 
 of riddles. One cycle or ' game of riddles ' has been preserved 
 
 complete in the Book of Judges. It connects itself naturally with 
 
 Samson, whose magnificent frame and redundant 
 ..... , , . , 1.1 Judges XT 
 
 high spirits make him the nearest approach in the 
 
 Bible to a humorous personage. Samson, it will be recollected, 
 
 loved a woman of the Philistines, and after asking her hand through 
 
 his father went down to Timnah to the wedding feast. The feast 
 
 lasted a week, during which the hero had to endure the company 
 
 of thirty guests from the Philistine people he hated and despised. 
 
 Denied the vent of physical violence, his irritation took the form 
 
 of a wager : the amount, thirty linen garments and thirty changes 
 
 of raiment ; the subject of contention, that the PhiUstines would 
 
 not guess his riddle. The wager was accepted and the riddle put 
 
 forth. ^ , , 
 
 Out of the eater came forth meat, 
 
 And out of the strong came forth sweetness. 
 
 According to modern notions of riddles, Samson was not playing 
 fairly, for his question involved information exclusively his own. 
 On his walks to and fro between his home and the home of the 
 bride he had one day met a young lion ; the Hon roared at him, 
 and Samson, by a sudden impulse, was led to seize the brute with 
 his bare hands and tear it in pieces ; the next time he passed he 
 foui\d a cluster of bees settled in the torn carcase of the Hon, and 
 actually tasted their honey : this strange conjunction was the 
 foundation of his riddle. But the Philistine guests, in their turn, 
 could violate fair play; they brought pressure upon the bride, 
 and she coaxed the secret out of her lover. At the end of the 
 seven days the Philistines came to answer the riddle ; and their 
 answer, like the original question, makes a single couplet : 
 
 What is sweeter than honey? 
 And what is stronger than a lion? 
 
 Samson turns upon them with a repartee couched in the same 
 
 If ye had not ploughed with my heifer, 
 Ye had not found out my riddle. 
 
292 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPIIY OR WISDOM 
 
 Samson, with his usual grim humour, slew thirty Philistines, and sent 
 their raiment in payment of the wager ; then went home in dudgeon, 
 and left the bride, who was soon appropriated by another husband. 
 
 But it is with the second type of proverbs that we are mainly 
 
 concerned. The single couplet, which we have just 
 The Unit Proverb , . ... , .,,, . '. 
 
 noted m connection with popular riddles, is the 
 
 root of the forms taken by the sayings of the Wise Men.^ Such 
 a proverb may be defined as a unit of thought in a unit of form. 
 These Unit Proverbs exhibit two varieties. In one type the 
 thought is conveyed in a single line, and the other line of the 
 couplet is supplementary. The single line contains all that philo- 
 sophic reflection requires ; but the sense of form, even in the 
 simplest Wisdom literature, is so strong that the thought must be 
 filled out to the dimensions of the received pattern before it can 
 obtain currency as a proverb. 
 
 He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty. 
 And he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. 
 
 *** 
 The heart knoweth its own bitterness; 
 And a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy. 
 
 The supplement in these two examples is a parallel to the main 
 thought, or its converse. Where the essence of the proverb is 
 deep or obscure, the supplementary line comes to interpret it. 
 
 The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; 
 And he that is wise winneth souls. 
 
 How can fruit be a tree ? The supplement interprets of the wise 
 life which is the fruit of righteous endeavour, and which has an 
 attractive force on all around, bringing forth in them lives of Hke 
 righteousness. The supplement may precede the thought : — 
 
 1 The triplet is not entirely absent even from such elementary anthologies as 
 that constituting the second book of our Biblical Froverbs (e.g. xix. 7, 23 ; com- 
 pare xxiv. 27). There is an interesting form of unit proverb that can be read 
 either as a couplet or triplet : examples are Proverbs x. 26 ; and especially xxv. 3, 
 12, 20; xxvi. 1, 3, etc. 
 
PORMS OP WISDOM LITERATURE 293 
 
 The Lord hath made everything for its own end : 
 Yea, even the wiclced for the day of evil. 
 
 The point of this proverb is clearly that the wicked exist for the 
 purpose of being destroyed : the statement is made the fuller by 
 the reminder that everything has its purpose. Two proverbs may 
 be made out of the same thought with different supplements. 
 
 Though hand join in hand, the evil man shall not be unpunished: 
 But the seed of the righteous shall be delivered. 
 
 * 
 Everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord. 
 Though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished. 
 
 In the other variety of Unit Proverb there is no room for 
 supplementary matter : the thought, which is the essence of the 
 saying, requires the whole of the proverb for its expression, and 
 is distributed through the two lines of the couplet. 
 
 It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer : 
 But when he is gone his way, then he boasteth. 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
 He kisseth the lips 
 
 That giveth a right answer. 
 
 To this variety belong the large class of proverbs which are 
 founded on a comparison. 
 
 As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes. 
 So is the sluggard to them that send him. 
 
 * 
 A rebuke entereth deeper into one that hath understanding 
 Than an hundred stripes into a fool. 
 
 * * 
 ■It 
 
 Seven days are the days of mourning for the dead; 
 
 But for a fool and an ungodly man, all the days of his life. 
 
 * * 
 
 The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold. 
 And a man is tried by his praise. 
 
294 
 
 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 It appears, then, that the parallel couplet, which we have seen 
 as the most elementary type of Hebrew verse, is also the fixed form 
 
 for the Unit Proverb of Philosophy, a department 
 as the germ of that naturally belongs to prose. The Unit Proverb 
 Wisdom Litera- thus makes a meeting-point for prose and verse. 
 
 The Wisdom literature, developing from this as germ, 
 takes two directions, and for every poetic form which it throws off 
 a corresponding form of prose is to be found. This will be best 
 conveyed by a table. 
 
 Unit Proverb 
 
 germ 
 tending Verse-wards tending Prose-wards 
 
 Epigram 
 
 germ with Verse 
 expansion 
 
 Maxim 
 
 germ with Prose 
 comment 
 
 Sonnet 
 
 theme with high paral- 
 lelism 
 
 Essay 
 
 theme with miscellaneous 
 thoughts gathered round it 
 
 Fixed Sonnet Free Sonnet Proverb Cluster 
 
 fixed to one 
 
 particular 
 number form 
 
 free to assume 
 
 high parallelism 
 
 of any kind 
 
 the details 
 
 fixed to gnomic 
 
 form 
 
 Essay Proper 
 
 gnomic details 
 
 freely 
 
 worked up 
 
 Dramatic Monologue 
 
 by attraction to Drama 
 
 Rhetoric Encomium 
 
 by attraction to Rhetoric 
 
 The Epigram 
 
 On the side of verse, we have first the Epigram. It will be 
 remembered that the epigrams of antiquity did not necessarily 
 exhibit the pointedness of expression and flash of 
 wit which modern literature associates with the 
 name. A Greek epigram needed nothing more than the concise 
 expression of a complete thought within the limits of a few coup- 
 lets. The Hebrew epigrams may be said to be more pointed 
 than the Greek, since each has buried in it one of these ' gnomes ' 
 
FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE 295 
 
 or unit proverbs. The distinction of the Epigram is that two of 
 its lines (not necessarily consecutive) will be found to constitute 
 a gnomic germ, of which the rest is the expansion. In the exam- 
 ples to be quoted these lines will be distinguished by italics.^ 
 
 A Chaplet of Instruction 
 My son, hear the instruction of thy father. 
 
 And forsake 7iot the law of thy mother : 
 For they shall be a chaplet of grace unto thy head, 
 And chains about thy neck. 
 
 * 
 
 The Fall of the Righteous and the Wicked 
 
 Lay not wait, O wicked man, against the habitation of the righteous ; 
 
 Spoil not his resting place : 
 
 For a righteous man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: 
 
 But the wicked are overthrown by calamity. 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
 The Fool's Friends 
 
 The fool will say, " I have no friend. 
 
 And I have no thanks for my good deeds ; 
 And they that eat my bread are of evil tongue" 
 
 How oft, and of how many, shall he be laughed to scorn ! 
 
 In each case the lines italicised would stand alone as a unit prov- 
 erb. In the first example a second proverb is added to support 
 the first. In the other two cases, each line of the germ saying is 
 followed by another line enforcing or interpreting it. It will be 
 seen that the germ proverb need not be at the commencement ; 
 in the example that follows it comes at the end. 
 
 Gluttony 
 
 Hear thou, my son, and be wise. 
 
 And guard thy heart in the way. 
 
 Be not among winebibbers; 
 
 Among gluttonous eaters of flesh : 
 
 For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty. 
 And drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags. 
 
 1 References to the examples in this chapter are omitted, as the Epigrams, Essays, 
 etc. are cited by their titles in the table of Appendix II, 
 
296 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 To make longer epigrams, we find the first line of a unit prov- 
 erb buttressed by a parallel line, while to the second a full 
 explanation is appended. 
 
 Hospitality of the Evil Eye 
 
 Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye. 
 Neither desire thou his dainties : 
 
 For as one that reckoneth within himself, so is he : 
 
 Eat and drink, saith he to thee, 
 
 But his heart is not with thee. 
 
 The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, 
 
 And lose thy sweet words. 
 
 Wisdom and Honey 
 
 My son, eat thou honey, for it is good ; 
 
 And the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy tastej 
 
 So shalt thou know wisdom to be unto thy soul : 
 If thou hast found it, then shall there be a reward. 
 And thy hope shall not be cut off. 
 
 More elaborate in structure is the epigram of Lemuel's mother : 
 first, each line of the germ proverb is supported by a parallel line, 
 then each has a whole quatrain antithetical to it. 
 
 Kings and Wine 
 
 It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine. 
 
 Nor for princes to say, Where is strong drink? 
 Lest they drink, and forget the law. 
 And pervert the judgement of any that is afflicted. 
 
 Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, 
 
 And wine unto the bitter in soul : 
 
 Let him drink, and forget his poverty, 
 
 And remember his misery no more. 
 Open thy mouth for the dumb, 
 In the cause of all such as are left desolate. 
 Open thy mouth, jurlf;e righteously, 
 And minister judgement to the poor and needy. 
 
FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE 297 
 
 Exactly corresponding to these Epigrams in verse we find, on 
 the prose side, compositions that will here be _. . 
 called Maxims.^ Their form is that of a text with 
 a comment ; a germ proverb (or the essential words of it) is 
 merged in what is a prose expansion of the same. 
 
 Wisdom is as good as an inheritance : yea, more excellent is it for 
 them that see the sun. For wisdom is a defence, even as money is 
 a defence : but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom preserveth 
 the life of him that hath it. 
 
 Make not merry in much luxury ; neither be tied to the expense 
 thereof. Be not made a beggar by banqueting upon borrowing when 
 thou hast nothing in thy purse. A workman that is a drunkard 
 shall not become rich. 
 
 The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious ; but the lips of a 
 fool will swallow up himself The beginning of the words of his 
 mouth is foolishness : and the end of his talk is mischievous madness. 
 A fool also multiplieth words : yet man knoweth not what shall be ; 
 and that which shall be after him, who can tell him? 
 
 These are among the shorter maxims ; longer examples are to 
 be found in the book of Ecdesiastes. 
 
 Two are better than one ; because they have a good reward for 
 their labour. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow : but woe to 
 him that is alone when he falleth, and hath not another to lift him 
 up. Again, if two lie together, then they have warmth : but how 
 can one be warm alone ? And if a man prevail against him that is 
 alone, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly 
 broken. 
 
 1 I am not aware of any English term that exactly describes the class of compo- 
 sitions here brought forward. The word ' maxim ' in English is used loosely. Mr. 
 Joseph Jacobs in his (Golden Treasury) edition of Gracian contends, not without 
 reason, that the term has a special application to sayings which are practical and 
 not meditative. At the same time the ' maxims ' he is editing have a closer resem- 
 blance to this form of text and comment than anything outside Biblical Wisdom. 
 
298 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 As with the epigram, the text is not necessarily at the commence- 
 ment, but may be absorbed into the body of the maxim. 
 
 Speak not one against another, brethren. He that speaketh against 
 a brother^ or judgeth his brother, speaketh against the law, and judgeth 
 the law : but if thou judgest the law, thou art not a doer of the law, 
 but a judge. One only is the lawgiver and judge, even he who is able 
 to save and to destroy : but who art thou that judgest thy neighbour ? 
 
 The germ of this maxim is the paradox, " He that speaketh against 
 a brother speaketh against the law" ; and it illustrates how much 
 thought can be packed into one of these gnomic sentences. The 
 Apostle is writing to those whose reverence for ' the law ' had 
 amounted to a superstition ; and it is one of the underlying ideas 
 of the whole epistle that the Christian's ' liberty ' is, not a laxer, 
 but a higher law. In this saying the writer lays down that one 
 who is censorious against another is impugning his brother's 
 liberty of action, is therefore impugning that which the new dis- 
 pensation has made the highest law. 
 
 Continuing to follow the prose side of our table, we are brought 
 
 to that which may be considered the most important of the forms 
 
 assumed by Wisdom literature — the Essay. The 
 The Essay 
 
 word has been used somewhat loosely in modern 
 
 speech, but it essentially implies two things : first, a composition 
 professing only a fragmentary treatment of a subject ; and sec- 
 ondly, that the details of this composition need have no mutual 
 bond except their relevancy to the topic which stands as title of 
 the Essay. If more than this goes to any composition — if, for 
 example, there is methodical arrangement or formal investigation 
 — then the name ' treatise ' would be more proper ; the Essay is 
 bound to nothing beyond miscellaneous thoughts collected around 
 a common theme. This description applies to the Essays of the 
 Bible and Apocrypha ; but upon these a further characteristic is 
 stamped by their gnomic origin. Indeed, it becomes necessary 
 to recognise a type of composition which makes a half-way .stage 
 
PORMS OP WISDOM LITERATURE 299 
 
 between the Proverb and the Essay. This we shall call the 
 
 ' Proverb Cluster ' : a number of proverbs (includ- 
 
 , „ , , Proverb Clusters 
 
 ing maxims and epigrams) are collected together 
 
 around a common theme, each retaining its independence and 
 fixed gnomic form. To make an Essay, the component parts are 
 freely worked together into a new style ; though the Wisdom 
 Essays continually suggest their gnomic origin, and often a con- 
 siderable number of their sentences will stand as independent 
 proverbs. 
 
 We are able, in the literature which has come down to us, to 
 watch the process by which Essays have been evolved out of 
 Proverbs. I propose to bring this out by placing Development of 
 side by side three compositions '; the matter of the Essays out ot 
 three is largely the same, and it is clear that the P™^^''''^ 
 later authors have borrowed from the earlier ; in form, they repre- 
 sent three stages in the development of the Essay. 
 
 On tbe Government of the Tongue 
 
 Winnow not with every wind, and walk not in every path : thus 
 doeth the sinner that hath a double tongue. 
 
 Be stedfast in thy understanding; and let thy word be one. 
 
 Be swift to hear; and with patience make thine answer. 
 
 If thou hast understanding, answer thy neighbour; and if not, 
 let thy hand be upon thy mouth. 
 
 Glory and dishonour is in talk : and the tongue of a man is his 
 fall. 
 
 Be not called a whisperer; and lie not in wait with thy tongue: 
 for upon the thief there is shame, and an evil condemnation upon 
 him that hath a double tongue. 
 
 In a great matter and in a small, be not ignorant; and instead of 
 a friend become not an enemy; for an evil name shall inherit shame 
 and reproach : even so shall the sinner that hath a double tongue. 
 
 The above is plainly a Proverb Cluster: each paragraph is an 
 independent saying, which has a bearing upon the general subject, 
 but no bond with the other paragraphs ; any one of these could 
 be removed without the unity of the whole being affected. In 
 
300 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 the extract which next follows, consecutive sentences have fused 
 together into connectedness of thought ; but there still remain a 
 considerable number of them which make complete proverbs, and 
 some of these could be cut out without damage to the rest. 
 
 On the Tongue 
 If thou blow a spark, it shall burn; if thou spit upon it, it shall 
 be quenched: and both these shall come out of thy mouth. 
 Curse the whisperer and double-tongued: for he hath destroyed 
 many that were at peace. A third person's tongue hath shaken 
 many, and dispersed them from nation to nation; and it hath 
 pulled down strong cities, and overthrown the houses of great 
 men. A third person's tongue hath cast out brave women and 
 deprived them of their labours. He that hearkeneth unto it shall 
 not find rest, nor shall he dwell quietly. The stroke of a whip 
 maketh a mark in the flesh; but the stroke of a tongue will break 
 bones. Many have fallen by the edge of the sword: yet not so 
 many as they that have fallen because of the tongue. Happy is be 
 that is sheltered from it, that hath not passed through the wrath 
 thereof; that hath not drawn its yoke, and hath not been bound 
 with its bands. For the yoke thereof is a yoke of iron, and the 
 bands thereof are bands of brass. The death thereof is an evil 
 death; and Hades were better than it. It shall not have rule over 
 godly men; and they shall not be burned in its flame. They that 
 forsake the Lord shall fall into it, and it shall burn among them, 
 and shall not be quenched : it shall be sent forth upon them as a 
 lion; and as a leopard it shall destroy them. Look that thou hedge 
 thy possession about with thorns; bind up thy silver and thy gold; 
 and make a weight and a balance for thy words; and make a door 
 and a bar for thy mouth. Take heed lest thou slip therein; lest 
 thou fall before one that lieth in wait. 
 
 The difference between this passage and that which follows is 
 only one of degree. When the same topic is presented by St. 
 James, we find connectedness of thought reigning throughout, and 
 the free flow of Essay style has prevailed completely over the 
 independence of sentences that belong to proverbs ; only here and 
 there the turn of a sentence reminds us of the gnomic origin of 
 this class of Essay. 
 
FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE 301 
 
 The Responsibility of Speech 
 
 Be not many teachers, my brethren, knowing that we shall receive 
 heavier judgement. For in many things we all stumble. If any stum- 
 bleth not in word, the same is -^ perfect man, able to bridle the 
 whole body also. Now if. we put the horses' bridles into their 
 mouths, that they may obey us, we turn about their whole body 
 also. Behold, the ships also, though they are so great, and are driven 
 by rough winds, are yet turned about by a very small rudder, whither 
 the impulse of the steersman willeth. So the tongue also is a little 
 member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how much wood is 
 kindled by how small a fire ! And the tongue is a fire : the world of 
 iniquity among our members is the tongue, which defileth the whole 
 body, and setteth on fire the wheel of nature, and is set on fire by 
 hell. For every kind of beasts and birds, of creeping things and 
 things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed by mankind : but 
 the tongue can no man tame; it is a restless evil, it is full of deadly 
 poison. Therewith bless we the Lord and Father; and therewith 
 curse we men, which are made after the likeness of God : out of the 
 same mouth cometh forth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these 
 things ought not so to be. Doth the fountain send forth from the 
 same opening sweet water and bitter? can a fig tree, my brethren, 
 yield olives, or a vine figs? Neither can salt water yield sweet. 
 
 There is a whole literature of essays in the Wisdom books of 
 
 the Bible and the Apocrypha. They are not essays in the more 
 
 modern sense which the English reader associates 
 
 .,, ,TiT., 1 1 , , Wisdom Essays 
 
 with the name of Lord Macaulay : but they rather 
 
 represent the oldest type of such compositions, to which contribu- 
 tions were made by Bacon and by Montaigne, by Feltham and by the 
 author of the Microcosmography. Indeed, there can be no doubt 
 that these writers (Montaigne excepted) owed largely to the influ- 
 ence of Ecclesiasticus and kindred books the sententiousness of 
 their style and the asyndeton of their sentences. But in the case 
 of these essays the same difficulty confronts the literary reader 
 which has been pointed out in reference to other departments. In 
 the form in which our Bibles are presented to us the separate 
 essays are allowed to run together without break, and the titles so 
 essential to this kind of writing are wholly wanting. I have endeav- 
 
302 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 oured to meet this difficulty by indicating in the Appendix ^ to this 
 work the separate essays, and suggesting appropriate titles. And 
 here, as elsewhere, I would advise the reader to mark such divi- 
 sions and titles in his Bible and Apocrypha, before he attempts to 
 appreciate the literary character of these compositions. 
 
 At this point I can do nothing but illustrate. Of the shorter 
 essays a good specimen is that of Ecdesiasticus on Gossip. 
 
 On Gossip 
 He that is hasty to trust is lightminded; and he that sinneth shall 
 offend against his own soul. He that maketh merry in his heart 
 shall be condemned; and he that hateth talli hath the less wicked- 
 ness. Never repeat what is told thee, and thou shalt fare never the 
 worse. Whether it be of friend or foe, tell it not; and if thou canst 
 without sin, reveal not the matter; for he hath heard thee and 
 observed thee, and when the time cometh he will hate thee. Hast 
 thou heard a word ? let it die with thee : be of good courage, it will 
 not burst thee. A fool will travail in pain with a word, as a woman 
 in labour with a child. As an arrow that sticketh in the flesh of the 
 thigh, so is a word in a fool's belly. Reprove a friend; it may be 
 he did it not; and if he did it, that he may do it no more. Reprove 
 thy neighbour; it may be he said it not; and if he hath said it, that 
 he may not say it again. Reprove a friend, for many times there is 
 slander : and trust not every word. There is one that slippeth, and 
 not from the heart: and who is he that hath not sinned with his 
 tongue ? Reprove thy neighbour before thou threaten him ; and give 
 place to the law of the Most High. 
 
 This essay is one of those in which gnomic verses abound. In 
 the next they are rare, and the whole essay strikes a higher key. 
 
 Prosperity and Adversity are from the Lord 
 
 There is one that toileth, and laboureth, and maketh haste, and 
 is so much the more behind. There is one that is sluggish, and 
 hath need of help, lacking in strength, and that aboundeth in 
 poverty; and the eyes of the Lord looked upon him for good, 
 and he set him up from his low estate, and lifted up his head; 
 and many marvelled at him. Good things and evil, life and death, 
 
 1 See Ecclesiastes, Ecdesiasticus, Wisdom, St. James, First Epistle of St, yohn, 
 in Appendix I ; or the Table of Wisdom Literature in Appendix IL 
 
FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE 303 
 
 poverty and riches, are from the Lord. The gift of the Lord reinain- 
 eth with the godly, and his good pleasure shall prosper for ever. 
 There is that waxeth rich by his wariness and pinching, and this is 
 the portion of his reward : when he saith, I have found rest, and 
 now will I eat of my goods; yet he knoweth not what time shall 
 pass, and he shall leave them to others, and die. Be stedfast in thy 
 covenant, and be conversant therein, and wax old in thy work. Mar- 
 vel not at the works of a sinner; but trust the Lord, and abide in 
 thy labour : for it is an easy thing in the sight of the Lord swiftly on 
 the sudden to make a poor man rich. The blessing of the Lord is in 
 the reward of the godly; and in an hour that cometh swiftly he mak- 
 eth his blessing to flourish. Say not, what use is there of me ? and 
 what from henceforth shall my good things be? Say not, I have 
 sufficient, and from henceforth what harm shall happen unto me? 
 In the day of good things there is a forgetfulness of evil things; and 
 in the day of evil things » man will not remember things that are 
 good. For it is an easy thing in the sight of the Lord to reward a 
 man in the day of death according to his ways. The afiliction of an 
 hour causeth forgetfulness of delight; and in the last end of a man 
 is the revelation of his deeds. Call no man blessed before his death; 
 and a man shall be known in his children. 
 
 I follow this with one of the longer essays, one marked also by 
 a greater variety of style. 
 
 On Counsel and Counsellors 
 
 Every counsellor extoUeth counsel ; but there is that counselleth 
 for himself. Let thy soul beware of a counsellor, and know thou be- 
 fore what is his interest (for he will counsel for himself); lest he 
 cast the lot upon thee, and say unto thee, Thy way is good : and he 
 will stand over against thee, to see what shall befall thee. Take 
 not counsel with one that looketh askance at thee; and hide thy 
 counsel from such as are jealous of thee. Take not counsel with a 
 woman about her rival; neither with a coward about war; nor with 
 n merchant about exchange; nor with a buyer about selling; nor 
 with ah envious man about thankfulness; nor with an unmerciful 
 man about kindliness; nor with a sluggard about any kind of work; 
 nor with a hireling in thy house about finishing his work; nor with 
 an idle servant about much business : give not heed to these in any 
 matter of counsel. But rather be continually with a godly man, 
 whom thou shalt have known to be a keeper of the commandments, 
 
304 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 who in his soul is as thine own soul, and who will grieve with thee, 
 if thou shall miscarry. And make the counsel of thy heart to stand; 
 for there is none more faithful unto thee than it. For a man's soul 
 is sometime wont to bring him tidings, more than seven watchmen 
 that sit on high on a watch-tower. And above all this entreat the 
 Most High, that he may direct thy way in truth. Let reason be the 
 beginning of every work, and let counsel go before every action. 
 
 As a token of the changing of the heart, four manner of things do 
 rise up, good and evil, life and death; and that which ruleth over 
 them continually is the tongue. There is one that is shrewd and the 
 instructor of many, and yet is unprofitable to his own soul. There 
 is one that is subtle in words, and is hated; he shall be destitute of 
 all food: for grace was not given him from the Lord; because he is 
 deprived of all wisdom. There is one that is wise to his own soul; 
 and the fruits of his understanding are trustworthy in the mouth. A 
 wise man will instruct his own people; and the fruits of his under- 
 standing are trustworthy. A wise man shall be filled with blessing; 
 and all they that see him shall call him happy. The life of man is 
 numbered by days; and the days of Israel are innumerable : the wise 
 man shall inherit confidence among his people, and his name shall 
 live for ever. 
 
 The second paragraph of this essay has an obscurity which is rare 
 in Wisdom literature. The line of thought seems to be as follows. 
 Man's whole experience for good or evil depends upon the direc- 
 tion of his purposes ; and a force continually influencing these 
 purposes is the speech of his fellowmen. Hence the importance 
 of marking the character of those who counsel. One type has the 
 power of imparting instruction, but no morale to make the in- 
 struction worth having : for all his wisdom he is unprofitable to 
 his own soul. One is false in speech, and so wholly hateful. A 
 third has his wisdom bounded by selfishness ; but what he is willing 
 to speak will be worth marking. The truly wise will have not only 
 wisdom but also the desire to impart it to his fellow-countrymen ; 
 his blessedness will be as much beyond that of the other as a 
 nation is wider and more lasting than an individual. 
 
 As a final example, I cite an essay of St. Jaiues, to show how wide- 
 reaching a treatment of how profound a subject can be compressed 
 within the narrow limits of this fragmentary form of composition. 
 
FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE 305 
 
 On the Sources of the Evil and the Good in Man 
 
 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation : for when he hath 
 been approved, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord 
 promised to them that love him. Let no man say when he is 
 tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with 
 evil, and he himself tempteth no man : but each man is tempted, 
 when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. Then the 
 lust when it hath conceived, beareth sin; and the sin, when it is 
 full-grown, bringeth forth death. Be not deceived, my beloved 
 brethren. 
 
 Every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, coming 
 down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, 
 neither shadow that is cast by turning. Of his own will he brought 
 us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits 
 of his creatures. Know ye this, my beloved brethren; but let every 
 man be swift to hear, slow to speak ; slow to wrath, — for the wrath 
 of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore putting 
 away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with meek- 
 ness the inborn word, which is able to save your souls. But be ye 
 doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves. 
 For if any one is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto 
 a man beholding his natural face in a mirror ; for he beholdeth him- 
 self, and goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man 
 he was. But he that looketh into the perfect law, the law of liberty, 
 and so conlinueth, being not a hearer that forgetteth, but a doer that 
 worketh, this man shall be blessed in his doing. If any man thinketh 
 himself to be religious, while he bridleth not his tongue but deceiveth 
 his heart, this man's religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled 
 before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows 
 in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. 
 
 It would be difficult to find elsewhere so complete and harmo- 
 nious a theory stated in so brief a space. The question is of the 
 origin of the Evil and Good within us. The author strikes the 
 keynote of Temptation — the struggle in us between Evil and 
 Good. Echoing a saying of Ecclesiasticus, he warns 
 
 ° -^ ° ' Ecclus. XV. II 
 
 us agamst the delusion that temptation to evil could 
 come from God. The true origin of evil he illustrates by the im- 
 age of childbirth : it is the fruit of a union between the individual 
 
306 BIBLICAL pmLOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 man — that is, man's WilP — and his Lust ; only when these have 
 consented together is evil born, and such a union is not a marriage, 
 but a seduction. The germ of evil thus accounted for, the Apostle 
 proceeds to its further development ; and this he explains by the 
 same image of childbirth, carried on to a second generation. 
 Turning, then, to the question of Good, St. James continues the 
 imagery of childbirth ; a union is hinted at between " The Will of 
 God" and "The Word of Truth," as a result of which there exists 
 in each individual an " inborn word " as the germ of Good. As 
 with Evil, so here the writer proceeds to the development of such 
 a germ, and this occupies the larger part of the essay. The 
 imagery changes to that of listening : laying aside obstacles such 
 as wrath, malice, filthiness, we are with patience and acuteness of 
 attention, to hsten for the word within us. But one more condi- 
 tion is essential : that the truth in proportion as it is caught must 
 be carried into action. To enforce this principle, the remarkable 
 illustration of a mirror is used : truth that is seen without being 
 acted upon is compared to a reflection in a glass that vanishes as 
 soon as the face is turned away. But how is this image to be 
 carried on to express the man who lives the truth he sees? Such 
 a man will behold his action reflected in the mirror of the law : 
 only, in accordance with one of the main ideas of his epistle, 
 St. James puts it, not as the mirror of the law, but as the mirror 
 of Christian liberty, which is the highest form of law. With prac- 
 tical examples the essay concludes. 
 
 I now turn back to the verse side of Wisdom literature. Here 
 
 we find a class of compositions, which, hke the Essay, are made 
 
 up of miscellaneous thoughts gathered around a 
 The Sonnet ^ , ^, . ° . °. . . , 
 
 common theme. Their poetic form is evidenced 
 
 in the fact that, not only are they composed of rhythmic lines, but 
 
 also their parts are bound together by high parallelism — the 
 
 parallelism, that is, which links not single verses only but masses 
 
 1 The wording of the corresponding section in the second paragraph (verse i8 
 of St. James i) justifies this interpretation. 
 
FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE 307 
 
 of lines, or again, not adjacent lines, but portions of a composition 
 widely separated. This characteristic can be best conveyed by 
 illustration. 
 
 On Evil Company 
 
 My son, if sinners entice thee, 
 Consent thou not. 
 
 If they say, " Come with us, 
 
 Let us lay wait for blood. 
 
 Let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause; 
 
 Let us swallow them up alive as Sheol, 
 
 And whole, as those that go down into the pit ; 
 
 We shall find all precious substance, 
 
 We shall fill our houses with spoil; 
 
 Thou shall cast thy lot among us; 
 
 We will all have one purse : " 
 
 My son, walk not thou in the way with them; 
 
 Refrain thy foot from their path : 
 
 For their feet run to evil, 
 
 And they make haste to shed blood. 
 
 For in vain is the net spread, 
 
 In the eyes of any bird; 
 
 And these lay wait for their own blood. 
 
 They lurk privily for their own lives. 
 
 So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; 
 
 It taketh away the life of the owners thereof. 
 
 The eye catches that the whole of this poem, after the opening 
 couplet, falls into two blocks of hnes ; upon examination it will be 
 found that the block of lines indented to the left are all of them 
 expansions of the first line of the opening couplet, " My son, if 
 sinners entice thee," and the block of lines indented to the right 
 are expansions of the second hne of the couplet, " Consent thou 
 not." Thus it appears that precisely the same parallelism which 
 unites the two opening lines into a couplet of verse is found to bind 
 the divisions of the poem itself into a whole. This is a simple 
 instance of the higher parallelism. 
 
 What is the proper name for this class of compositions ? To 
 
308 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 me it appears that their position in relation to universal literature 
 
 is expressed by calling them ' Sonnets.' No doubt they present 
 
 one palpable difference from the poems we are 
 Difference be- , , . , ^i ^ 4.1. 
 
 tween Hebrew accustomed to designate by that name : they are 
 
 and English not, like ItaUan and English sonnets, constructed of 
 
 Sonnets exactly fourteen lines each. But is this limitation 
 
 to fourteen lines the essential of the Sonnet, or is it only a matter 
 of prescriptive usage ? I would contend that if the Sonnet is to 
 rank as a leading poetic type in universal literature its principle 
 must be deeper. The true distinction of the Sonnet, like that of 
 the Fugue in music, is that it reverses the usual order of things, 
 and presents us with matter adapting itself to external form. The 
 form that obtains in our modern poetry is the arrangement in 
 fourteen lines ; accordingly, the thought of our sonnets must be 
 sufficient to fill out the fourteen lines, it must not be too wide to 
 be compressed into that space ; further (in the Italian sonnet) the 
 logical connection of the thoughts must be such as will fit in with 
 the division of the fourteen lines into a set of eight and a set of 
 six. Now it is impossible to read the Biblical poems under dis- 
 cussion without feeling that here too we have thought adapting 
 itself to form ; not, of course, to any particular number of lines, 
 but to elaboration of parallelism of some kind. To generalise, we 
 may say that wherever thought runs into poetic moulds we have 
 the spirit of the Sonnet ; it belongs to the individuality of different 
 literatures to decide whether only one mould shall be used, or 
 more than one. Already we have seen a difference of type be- 
 tween the strict Italian sonnet with its division into eight and six, 
 and the English sonnets which may observe or ignore that division. 
 Hebrew poetry multiplies that difference by allowing free variety 
 of forms, yet still leaving in its sonnets the literary impression of 
 matter fitting itself to form. 
 These Wisdom poems fall into two distinct types. The first may 
 be called the Fixed or Number Sonnet : it is fixed, 
 
 The Fixed Sonnet . , , . ,. 
 
 not to one particular number of lines, but to the 
 
 working out of a number form indicated in the opening verses. 
 
FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE 309 
 
 Little and Wise 
 
 There be four things which are little upon the earth, 
 
 But they are exceeding wise : 
 The ants are a people not strong, 
 
 Yet they provide their meat in the summer; 
 The conies are but a feeble folk. 
 
 Yet make they their houses in the rocks; 
 The locusts have no king, 
 
 Yet go they forth all of them by bands; 
 The lizard thou canst seize with thy hands. 
 
 Yet is she in kings' palaces. 
 
 What Wisdom loves and hates 
 
 In three things I was beautified. 
 And stood up beautiful before the Lord and men : 
 The concord of brethren, 
 And friendship of neighbours, 
 And a woman and her husband that walk together in agree- 
 ment. 
 
 But three sorts of men my soul hateth. 
 And I am greatly offended at their life : 
 A poor man that is haughty, 
 A rich man that is a liar. 
 And an old man that is an adulterer lacking understanding. 
 
 The number form is usually reached by a progression. 
 
 The Unsatisfied 
 
 The horseleach hath two daughters, called Give, Give; 
 There are three things that are never satisfied. 
 Yea, four that say not. Enough : 
 The grave; 
 
 And the barren womb; 
 The earth that is not satisfied with water; 
 And the fire that saith not, Enough. 
 
310 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 There be three things which are too wonderful for me, 
 Yea, four which I know not : 
 
 The way of an eagle in the air; 
 
 The way of a serpent upon a rock ; 
 
 The way of a ship in the midst of the sea; 
 And the way of a man with a maid. 
 
 * 
 The Golden Mean 
 
 Two things have I asked of thee; 
 Deny me not three i before I die : 
 Remove far from me vanity and lies; 
 Give me neither poverty nor riches; 
 
 Feed me with the food that is needful for me : 
 Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say. Who is the Lord? 
 Or lest I be poor and steal. 
 And use profanely the name of my God. 
 
 The Love of the Lord 
 
 There be nine things that I have thought of. 
 
 And in mine heart counted happy; 
 
 And the tenth I will utter with my tongue : 
 
 A man that hath joy of his children; 
 
 A man that liveth and looketh upon the fall of his enemies; 
 Happy is he that dwelleth with a wife of understanding; 
 And he that hath not slipped with his tongue; 
 
 And he that hath not served a man that is unworthy of him; 
 Happy is he that hath found prudence; 
 And he that discourseth in the ears of them that listen; 
 How great is he that hath found Wisdom ! 
 
 Yet is there none above him that feareth the Lord. 
 
 The Love ^ of the Lord passeth all things : 
 
 He that holdeth it, to whom shall he be likened? 
 
 IThis has obviously slipped out of the line [A. V. and R. V. of Proverbs xxx. 7 
 read 'them '], otherwise the sonnet would name ' two ' things and enumerate ' three." 
 
 2 This is the reading of A. V. to Ecchis. xxv. n : the R. V., no doubt on better 
 textual authority, reads ' fear,' which destroys the form of the Sonnet. The emen- 
 dation comes under the principle laid down above, page 59, note. 
 
FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE 311 
 
 The other type of Sonnet is free to adopt high parallelism of 
 
 any kind. A simple example was cited above, in which the lines 
 
 fell into two blocks, one block of lines parallel with 
 
 '■ The Free Sonnet 
 
 the first, the other of lines parallel with the second 
 
 line of the couplet text. In the Sonnet that follows the lines 
 
 seem to alternate irregularly : but upon examination it will appear 
 
 that all on the left deal with the commandment, and those on the 
 
 right with its reward. 
 
 The Commandment and its Reward 
 
 My son, forget not my law; 
 
 But let thine heart keep my commandments : 
 
 For length of days, and years of life. 
 
 And peace, shall they add to thee. 
 Let not mercy and truth forsake thee; 
 Bind them about thy neck : 
 Write them upon the table of thine heart : 
 
 So shalt thou find favour and good understanding 
 
 In the sight of God and man. 
 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, 
 And lean not upon thine own understanding : 
 In all thy ways acknowledge him, 
 
 And he shall direct thy paths. 
 Be not wise in thine own eyes : 
 Fear the Lord and depart from evil : 
 
 It shall be health to thy navel. 
 
 And marrow to thy bones. 
 Honour the Lord with thy substance, 
 And with the first fruits of all thine increase : 
 
 So shall thy barns be filled with plenty. 
 
 And thy fats shall overflow with new wine. 
 
 More elaborate in structure is the Sonnet on Intoxication. It 
 has the general form of an enigma : six short lines contain six 
 questions, the common answer to which makes a single couplet of 
 longer lines. Then these two parts are doubled, and their order 
 reversed : the couplet is expanded into a quatrain, after which the 
 ideas of the six opening lines are emphasised in six couplets. 
 
312 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 On Intoxication 
 
 Who hath woe? 
 
 Who hath sorrow? 
 
 Who hath contentions? 
 
 Who hath complaining? 
 
 Who hath wounds without cause? 
 
 Who hath redness of eyes? 
 They that tarry long at the wine; 
 They that go to seek out mixed wine. 
 
 Look not thou upon the wine 
 When it is red, 
 
 When it giveth its colour in the cup, 
 When it goeth down smoothly : 
 
 At the last it biteth like a serpent, 
 
 And stingeth like an adder. 
 Thine eyes shall behold strange things, 
 
 And thine heart shall utter froward things. 
 Yea, thou shall be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, 
 
 Or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. 
 "They have stricken me, 
 And I was not hurt; 
 They have beaten me, 
 And I felt it not; 
 When shall I awake? 
 
 I will seek it yet again.'' 
 
 This single sonnet has illustrated two leading devices of sonnet 
 form — reversing the order of parts, and augmenting. I add 
 two more poems, illustrating each of these devices respectively, 
 and further interesting from their thought and tone. 
 
 On the nnsearchableness of God 
 
 I have wearied myself, O God, 
 
 I have wearied myself, O God, 
 
 And am consumed : 
 For I am more brutish than any man. 
 And have not the understanding of a man : 
 And I have not learned wisdom, 
 Neither have I the knowledge of the Holy One. 
 
FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE 313 
 
 Who hath ascended up into heaven, and descended? 
 Who hath gathered the wind in his fists? 
 Who hath bound the waters in his garment? 
 Who hath estabhshed all the ends of the earth? 
 
 What is his name, 
 
 And what is his son's name, 
 
 If thou kriowest ? 
 
 If we may intrude upon the spiritual beauty of this poem by 
 technical analysis, it is to point out how three short lines grow 
 into four long, and then, by reverse process, four long sink into 
 three short. In the example that follows a quatrain of appre- 
 hension answered by a couplet' of prayer augments into a double 
 quatrain of apprehension answered by a double couplet of prayer. 
 Such structural augmenting means spiritual intensification. 
 
 Watchfulness of Lips and Heart 
 
 Who shall set a watch over my mouth, 
 And a seal of shrewdness upbn my lips, 
 That I fall not from it. 
 And that my tongue destroy me not? 
 
 O Lord, Father and master of my life, 
 Abandon me not to their counsel : 
 Suffer me not to fall by them.- 
 
 Who will set scourges over my thought, 
 
 And a discipline of wisdom over my heart; 
 That they spare me not for mine ignorances. 
 
 And my heart pass not by their sins : 
 That my ignorances be not multiplied, 
 
 And my sins abound not; 
 And I shall fall before mine adversaries, 
 
 And mine enemy rejoice over me ? 
 
 O Lord, Father and God of my life, 
 Give me not a proud look. 
 
 And turn away concupiscence from me. 
 Let not greediness and chambering overtake me. 
 
 And give me not over to a shameless mind. 
 
 1 The line of invocation is not reckoned. 
 
314 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 Before passing away from this class of composition, we may 
 
 Development of ^°^^ ^^^^' ^^ ^^ ^^^ ™ ^^^ "^^^^ °'^ *'^^ Essay, so 
 Sonnets out of the development of the Sonnet out of the Proverb 
 Proverbs ^^^ ^^ illustrated in all its parts. One example is 
 
 singularly complete. We are able to go back to an original germ 
 preserved in another poem. 
 
 For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty, 
 And drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags. 
 
 The thought of this unit proverb, namely, the second line which 
 connects together drowsiness and rags, has grown into an epigram. 
 
 Kpigram on the Sluggard 
 
 " Yet a little sleep, a httle slumber, 
 A little folding of the hands to sleep " ■- 
 
 So shall thy poverty come as a robber; 
 
 And thy want as an armed man. 
 
 We may judge that this epigram belonged to the floating literature 
 of proverbs, from the fact of its appearing in two sonnets. 
 
 Sonnet on the Field of the Slothful 
 
 I went by the field of the slothful, 
 
 And by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; 
 And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns. 
 The face thereof was covered with nettles, 
 And the stone wall thereof was broken down. 
 
 Then I beheld, 
 
 And considered well : 
 
 I saw, 
 
 And received instruction. 
 
 " Yet a little sleep, 
 
 A little slumber, 
 
 A little folding of the hands to sleep " : 
 So shall thy poverty come as a robber; 
 And thy want as an armed man. 
 
FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE 315 
 
 Sonnet on the Sluggard 
 
 Go to the ant, thou sluggard; 
 Consider her ways, and be wise : 
 
 Which having no chief. 
 
 Overseer, 
 
 Or ruler, 
 Provideth her meat in the summer. 
 And gathereth her food in the harvest. 
 
 How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? 
 When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? 
 
 " Yet a little sleep, 
 
 A little slumber, 
 
 A little folding of the hands to sleep " : 
 So shall thy poverty come as a robber, 
 And thy want as an armed man. 
 
 It remains to note, in conclusion, that Wisdom literature, on 
 both its sides of verse and prose, is attracted by other literary 
 departments, and compound forms arise. Prose Philosophy feels 
 the attraction of Rhetoric, and we get as a result the Rhetoric 
 Encomium. The name conveys the character of 
 the composition : a writer sets himself formally to P^ Rhetono 
 
 r ' J Encomium 
 
 the task of praising Wisdom, or the works of the 
 Lord, and the style has rhetorical flow rather than gnomic senten- 
 tiousness. Indeed, these compositions are usually considered 
 poems. But I have pointed out more than once, in connection 
 with the general discussion of the subject, that parallelism by itself 
 is an insufficient criterion of verse and prose, belonging as it does 
 to Rhetoric equally with Hebrew verse. And when the matter of 
 these encomia is considered, it seems to me nearer to the matter 
 of prose essays than to that of sonnets. Even as regards structure, 
 the parallelism is sometimes broken by what will make excellent 
 prose, but feeble verse. 
 
 Good things are created from the beginning for the good : so are 
 evil things for sinners. The chief of all things Egdus xxxix 
 necessary for the life of man are water, and fire, 25 
 
316 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 and iron, and salt, and flour of wheat, and honey, and milk, 
 the blood of the grape, and oil, and clothing. All these things are 
 for good to the godly; so to the sinners they shall be turned into 
 evil. 
 
 If this enumeration of necessary things be placed side by side 
 with a not dissimilar enumeration taken from a lyric ode, the 
 rhythmic gulf which separates the two will be apparent. 
 
 Deut. zzzii. And he made him to suck honey out of the rock, 
 13 And oil out of the flinty rock; 
 
 Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs. 
 
 And rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats. 
 With the fat of kidneys of wheat; 
 
 And of the blood of the grape thou drankest wine. 
 
 In any case, the Rhetoric Encomium makes one more point at 
 which Hebrew verse and prose approach one another. 
 
 On the other hand, Wisdom is attracted by Drama, and conveys 
 its thoughts in the form of Dramatic Monologues. Wisdom is 
 
 personified : she is made to build her house, to 
 Monoioeue'*''' spread her table, to speak in warning or invitation. 
 
 The most elaborate poem of this type in the Book 
 of Proverbs prepares the way for the monologue itself by a vivid 
 picture of the ' Strange Woman,' laying her snares, and speaking 
 her wiles, till the simple victim follows, like an ox going to the 
 slaughter, to the house that is the way to the Abyss. Immediately, 
 without a word of connection, comes the contrast. 
 
 Doth not Wisdom cry. 
 And Understanding put forth her voice? 
 In the top of high places by the way. 
 Where the paths meet. 
 
 She standeth; 
 Beside the gates, at the entry of the city, 
 At the coming in at the doors. 
 
 She crieth aloud. 
 
FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE 317 
 
 Wisdom tells of her excellent things : of her instruction that is 
 worth more than silver, her knowledge and subtlety more valuable 
 than rubies and gold. 
 
 Counsel is mine, 
 
 And sound knowledge; 
 I am understanding, 
 I have might. 
 
 By me kings reign; 
 
 And princes decree justice. 
 
 By me princes rule. 
 
 And nobles, even all the judges of the earth. 
 
 The climax comes with creative wisdom. The scientific state- 
 ment of the thought would be that the structure of the universe 
 is such as to suggest design in its Author : but here the design 
 itself is personified, and claims to have been with the Creator 
 from the first. 
 
 When there were no depths I was brought forth; 
 When there were no fountains abounding with water. 
 
 Before the mountains were settled. 
 
 Before the hills was I brought forth : 
 While as yet he had not made the earth. 
 Nor the fields. 
 Nor the beginning of the dust of the world. 
 
 When he established the heavens, I was there : 
 
 When he set a circle upon the face of the deep : 
 
 When he made firm the skies above : 
 
 When the fountains of the deep became strong : 
 
 When he gave to the sea its bound. 
 
 That the waters should not transgress his commandment : 
 
 When he marked out the foundations of the earth : 
 Then I was by him. 
 As a master workman : 
 And I was daily his delight, 
 Sporting always before him; 
 Sporting in his habitable earth. 
 
318 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 In personifications like this the form of Drama is borrowed to 
 clothe the meditations of the wise. But there are dramatic 
 monologues which go further than personification, and put certain 
 phases of philosophic reflection into the mouth of historical or 
 iniiaginary personages. These, however, will be best dealt with 
 in the chapters describing the Books of Wisdom in which they 
 are found. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE SACRED BOOKS OF WISDOM 
 
 The various literary forms in which the philosophical thought of 
 Scripture may be cast have been reviewed : it remains to consider 
 the Books of Wisdom as they stand. 
 
 The first of these is entitled The Proverbs. In technical form 
 it may be described as a Miscellany in Five Books : the five-fold 
 TheProverts: a division of this work (and of Ecdesiasticus) being 
 miscellany in as well marked as in the Book of Psalms. The first 
 ve books book is made up of nine chapters. This is a por- 
 
 tion of Scripture dear to every reader : for literary charm no part 
 of the Bible is more impressive. I must, however, express dissent 
 from the received view that the nine chapters make one continuous 
 poem. The view seems to rest upon such considerations as these : 
 the uniqueness in character of this section ; the 
 First Book ^^^^ j^^ ^]^i£.[j j). gerves as prologue to what follows ; 
 
 the fact of its being cast in the form of a father's 
 counsels to a son ; while some have claimed to trace in it a regu- 
 lar progression of thought. The unique character of these chap- 
 ters is sufficiently explained by the preponderance in them of one 
 type of poem : out of twenty-two free sonnets and dramatic mono- 
 logues eighteen are to be found in this section of Proverbs, and 
 only four outside it.^ Again : the chapters cannot be called a pro- 
 logue in the sense of an introduction making reference to the rest 
 of the work ; on the other hand, it would be quite natural for the 
 
 1 Throughout the chapter compare Proverbs, etc., in the Literary Index (Ap- 
 pendix I). 
 
 319 
 
320 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 editor of the collection to place first poems treating Wisdom as a 
 whole, and after these the proverbs that deal with more particular 
 themes. As to the formula ' My Son,' it may be remarked that in 
 considerable portions of the nine chapters it is absent,^ portions 
 apparently containing independent poems, one of which is ad- 
 dressed to a sluggard ; where such a formula does occur it varies 
 between ' My Son ' and ' My Sons,' which suggests its general char- 
 acter. When it is further seen that elsewhere the formula is found, 
 rarely in unit proverbs, but commonly in the longer compositions of 
 this kind,^ there will be no difficulty in understanding why it should 
 appear so often in this part of the book which is made up of long 
 poems. In any case, the recurrence of the expression ' My Son ' 
 is no more an evidence of connectedness, than would the recur- 
 rence from a modern pulpit Sunday after Sunday of the expression 
 ' My Brethren ' prove that the preacher's successive sermons made 
 a unity. The supposed progression of thought is rejected by many 
 of those who accept the unity of the chapters ; it can be traced 
 only by supposing passages to be interpolations that do not fit in 
 with it. But the idea must be pronounced impossible, if for no 
 other reason, on the ground of repetitions and redundancies. 
 That the theme of Wisdom and the Strange Woman, after being 
 brought to a magnificent climax in the seventh and eighth chap- 
 ters, should be treated again in brief studies in the ninth chapter, 
 is entirely inconsistent with a continuous poem, though natural 
 enough in that which is a collection of similar compositions. 
 
 This first section of Proverbs then, like the other sections, is 
 miscellaneous in character. It is a series of poems that would 
 be fairly described by the title, 'Sonnets on Wisdom.' In some" 
 the name does not occur, but Wisdom is set off by kindred or by 
 contrasting ideas. One sonnet exhibits the company of the evil 
 
 1 i. 20-33; "• 6-n, 12-19 ; 'f- 1-6, 7-9, 10-12, 13-18. 
 
 2 In unit proverbs I have only observed it once {Prov. xxvii. 11). It occurs in 
 epigrams {Prov. xxiii. 15; xxiv. 13; Ecclus. vii. 3), and often in the essays and 
 proverb clusters ai Ecclus. (iv. i; vi. 18; x. 28; xiv. 11; etc.). Compare the use 
 of ' My Children ' (Ecclus. xli. 14) and ' Young Man" {Eccles. xi. 9). 
 
 ' Compare the titles of the sonnets, etc., in the Appendix. 
 
THE SACRED BOOKS OF WISDOM 321 
 
 as laying snares for their own lives ; another contrasts the path 
 of the wicked with the path of the righteous shining on from 
 dawn to perfect day; others denounce the vices that Wisdom 
 would hate. In the greater part «f the poems Wisdom is cele- 
 brated directly : appearing as a gracious personality speaking her 
 winning invitations, in contrast with the ' strange woman ' that 
 lures fools to their death ; or as the great prize in view the sight 
 of which is to make even chastening endurable \ or as the ' prin- 
 cipal thing ' coming down from venerable tradition. In some 
 places this Wisdom narrows to the prudence that takes alarm at 
 the idea of suretiship for another, or the diligence that hates the 
 sluggard. But elsewhere it gradually widens its scope, from the 
 caution checking a personal impulse to sin, till it gathers into 
 itself all subtlety and discretion, the knowledge of the counsellor 
 and the justice of the greait, and appears at last as the universal 
 principle that has made the strength and beauty of the whole 
 universe, playmate of the Creator from the earliest birth of time. 
 
 The second book has for its title : ' The Proverbs of Solomon,' 
 and is by far the largest of the sections. Except that a few triplets^ 
 
 have somehow crept into it, this whole book is a 
 x-xxii. i6 mass of unit proverbs. No attempt has been made 
 
 to arrange them ; in the fullest sense of the word 
 the second book is a miscellany. The third book is a Gnomic 
 
 Epistle. Its introduction makes clear that it is 
 xxu. i7-xxiv delivered in writing, and on the application of a 
 
 delegate who represents others beside himself: the 
 suggestion is of the intercourse that prevailed between Wise Men 
 at a distance, such as Solomon and Hiram of Tyre. 
 
 Incline thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thine 
 heart unto my knowledge; for it is a pleasant thing if thou keep 
 them within thee, if they be established together upon thy lips. 
 That thy trust may be in the Lord, I have made them known to thee 
 this day, even to thee. Have not I written unto thee excellent things 
 of counsels and knowledge; to make thee know the certainty of the 
 words of truth, that thou mayest carry back words of truth to them 
 that send thee? i xix. 7 and 23, etc. 
 
322 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 At the end of it there is a postscript commencing, " These also 
 are sayings of the wise " — an addition, presumably, by an editor, 
 not by the writer of the epistle. The epistle and postscript are 
 mainly made up of epigrams ; though there are two sonnets, and 
 a few unit proverbs.^ 
 
 The next book is described by its title as ' Proverbs of Solo- 
 mon ' copied out by the ' Men of Hezekiah.' When this is com- 
 pared with the second book there is a noticeable 
 
 -TT . ,1, J 1. FourtliBook 
 
 difference. Unit proverbs still preponderate, but xxv-xxix 
 with these mingle epigrams ; and the occurrence 
 of a few proverb clusters shows that between the dates of the 
 two collections the idea of arrangement, as well as expansion, has 
 come in. One item in this fourth book should be noted as dis- 
 tinct from anything else preserved in Wisdom literature : it seems 
 to be a Folk Song of Good Husbandry. 
 
 Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, xxvii. 33-7 
 
 And look well to thy herds : 
 
 For riches are not for ever; 
 
 And doth the crown endure unto all generations? 
 The hay is carried. 
 And the tender grass sheweth itself. 
 And the herbs of the mountains are gathered in. 
 
 The lambs are for thy clothing. 
 
 And the goats are the price of the field : 
 
 And there will be goat's milk enough for thy food. 
 
 For the food of thy household; 
 
 And maintenance for thy maidens. 
 
 The last book is made up of shorter collections : the sayings of 
 Agur, chiefly fixed or number sonnets ; the epi- Fifth Book 
 grams of Lemuel's mother ; and the famous poem xxi-xxxi 
 on the Virtuous Woman, which in the original is an acrostic. 
 
 To the whole collection is prefixed what, in modern phrase- 
 ology, might be called an elaborate title-page. 
 
 1 Compare througliout the chapter the analysis of the books in the Appendix. 
 
THE SACRED BOOKS OF WISDOM 323 
 
 THE PROVERBS OF SOLOMON 
 
 The Son of David, King of Israel 
 
 To know wisdom and instruction ; 
 
 To discern the words of understanding; 
 
 To receive instruction in wise dealing, 
 
 In righteousness and judgement and equity : 
 
 To give subtilty to the simple, 
 
 To the young man Icnowledge and discretion : 
 
 That the wise man may hear, and increase in learning; 
 
 And that the man of understanding may attain unto sound counsels : 
 
 To understand a proverb, and a figure; 
 
 The words of the wise, and their dark sayings. 
 
 This title-page is not meant to describe the whole contents of the 
 collection as proverbs of Solomon; else, why should the title 
 ' Proverbs of Solomon ' be repeated at the head of 
 Titie-Page particular sections ? The prominence of this expres- 
 
 sion in the general title may be explained in one 
 of two ways. The longest section may have given its name to the 
 whole : a thing quite familiar to us in modern literature. But 
 when we observe the contents of the sections specifically designated 
 ' Proverbs of Solomon,' and see the preponderance in them of one 
 kind of saying, the suggestion must occur that the phrase is the 
 description of a type : and this Solomonian Proverb would seem 
 to include the unit proverb and the brief epigrams. 
 
 If, then, we survey the Book of Proverbs as a whole, we find it a 
 miscellany comprising various literary types, from the germ prov- 
 The Book of ^"''^ *-° ^^ elaborate sonnet or dramatic monologue ; 
 
 Proverbs as a what arrangement there is, is based on the kind of 
 '^ "^ composition, or has reference to author or compiler. 
 
 The philosophic attitude reflected in the book is that of discon- 
 nected observations ; there is no attempt to combine observations 
 into a system. The correlation of all things, which is the instinc- 
 tive aim of modem philosophy, has not at this period come to be 
 treated with analytic reflection ; it is on the other hand passion- 
 ately adored under the name of ' Wisdom.' 
 
324 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 The next work for our consideration is The Wisdom of Jesus 
 the son of Sirach, which has curiously come to be known famiharly 
 Ecciesiasticus : ^^ '^"^ ^'^'^^' Ecclesiasticus : that is, a book to be 
 a miscellany in read in churches, as distinguished from a book of 
 five books canonical authority. Like Proverbs, this work is a 
 
 miscellany, and all forms of Wisdom literature are represented in 
 it. The difference of the two might fairly be described by saying 
 that they represent, in general impression, the poetic side of 
 Wisdom and its rhetoric side respectively ; what sonnets and 
 dramatic monologues are to Proverbs, that essays and rhetoric 
 
 encomia are to Ecclesiasticus. The work falls 
 Prefaces to the naturally into five books ; the dividing points being 
 
 made by the emergence of the author's personality, 
 
 and his celebration, not of particular themes, but of Wisdom and 
 
 the works of God as a whole. The first book starts from an 
 
 account of the author by his grandson, followed by a sonnet on 
 
 Wisdom. At the opening of the second book the author's 
 
 xxiv. 1 _ . . . . ,_r- 1 
 
 preface is interwoven into an encomium on Wisdom. 
 " Wisdom," cries the author, " shall praise herself." 
 
 I came from the mouth of the Most High, 
 
 And covered the earth as a mist. 
 I dwelt in high places, 
 
 And my throne is in the pillar of the cloud. 
 Alone I compassed the circuit of heaven, 
 
 And walked in the depth of the abyss. 
 In the waves of the sea, and in all the earth. 
 
 And in every people and nation, I got a possession. 
 With all these I sought rest; 
 
 And in whose inheritance shall I lodge ? 
 So the Creator of all things gave me a commandment ; 
 
 And he that created me made my tabernacle to rest, 
 And said. Let thy tabernacle be in Jacob, 
 
 And thine inheritance in Israel. 
 
 Wisdom dwells upon her exaltation and beauty, and on her riches ; 
 then the author speaks to identify these riches with the law of the 
 Lord, from whom came the abundance of Wisdom. 
 
THE SACRED BOOKS OF WISDOM 325 
 
 The first man knew her not perfectly; and in like manner the last 
 hath not traced her out. For her thoughts are filled from the sea, 
 and her counsels from the great deep. And I came out as a stream 
 from a river, and as a conduit into a garden. I said, I will water my 
 garden, and will water abundantly my garden bed; and lo, my stream 
 became a river, and my river became a sea. I will yet bring instruc- 
 tion to light as the morning, and will make them to shine forth 
 afar off. 
 
 In this quaint and beautiful figure does the author express to 
 the reader how his materials have grown upon him, and he must 
 add a second book to the first. The third book is 
 
 2xziii. 16-18 
 
 opened only by a brief preface in which the author 
 describes himself as one gleaning after grape gatherers; but in 
 the case of the remaining two books the author 
 appears at the commencement inviting to the praise ^^\ " ^°* 
 of God's works, and so introducing what are rhet- 
 oric encomia closely bordering on hymns. 
 
 In this fifth book occurs that which is the most extended of all 
 the compositions so far noted in this department, — the Encomium 
 on Famous Men. In the prologue the author pro- Encomium on 
 poses to praise those who have manifested the Famous Men 
 Lord's mighty power, whether as rulers, or coun- ^'''"■'- '^ 
 sellors, or men of learning ; inventors of music and verse ; or rich 
 men living peaceably in their habitations. 
 
 There be of them, that have left a name behind them, to declare 
 their praises. And some there be which have no memorial; who are 
 perished as though they had not been, and are become as though 
 they had not been born; and their children after them. But these 
 were men of mercy whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten. 
 With their seed shall remain continually a good inheritance; their 
 children are within the covenants. 
 
 In a tone of dignified panegyric he goes through the roll of Israel's 
 great men : Enoch, Noah, the patriarchs ; Moses, the man of 
 mercy, with Aaron and the third in glory the zealous Phinehas ; 
 
326 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 Nathan, David, Solomon, Josiah of fragrant memory, until he ends 
 with Simon whom, in all the pomp of his priestly function, he 
 describes with the vividness of an eye-witness. 
 
 Immediately after the close of this Encomium the work ends 
 with something that reads like the colophon of a medi- (joiophon 
 seval book, made out of a number sonnet and a beatitude, i. 35-9 
 
 With two nations is my soul vexed, 
 And the third is no nation : 
 
 They that sit upon the mountain of Samaria, 
 
 And the Philistines, 
 And the foolish people that dwelleth in Sichem. 
 
 I have written in this book the instruction of understanding and 
 knowledge, I Jesus, the son of Sirach, of Jerusalem, who out of his heart 
 poured forth wisdom. 
 
 Blessed is he that shall be exercised in these things ; 
 
 And he that layeth them up in his heart shall become wise. 
 For if he do them, he shall be strong to all things : 
 
 For the light of the Lord is his guide. 
 
 There is still added after this a ' Prayer of Jesus the son of Si- 
 rach,' with a confession of faith in Wisdom ; from their position 
 they may be assumed to be either the insertion of the j. 
 grandson, or other editor, or (more probably) the preface 
 to the whole book as left by its author. 
 
 It is instructive to compare Ecclesiasticus and Proverbs as types 
 of Wisdom literature. If the comparison be made p„yefi,s and 
 of individual compositions in the two works, those of Ecclesiasticus 
 Ecclesiasticus will be found to show a marked ad- ™™p"* 
 vance as regards the combination of shorter into longer, which 
 implies the extension of more limited into wider observations of 
 life. The proverb cluster, so slenderly represented in the Book 
 of Proverbs, has a considerable place in the later work ; and a 
 still larger space in it is occupied by the essay, which, we have 
 seen, carries the aggregation of unit proverbs to a higher degree 
 
THE SACRED BOOKS OF WISDOM 327 
 
 of fusion. But when we look at Ecclesiasiicus as a whole, its con- 
 tents appear as miscellaneous as those of Proverbs ; the work 
 clearly appeals to a discursive taste, unhampered by any thought 
 of system or arrangement ; and, however elaborate the essays or 
 sonnets may become, these have not been thought by the author 
 inconsistent with considerable spaces left for entirely disconnected 
 proverbs. This is the more striking from the fact that the later 
 work is not, like Proverbs, a combination of different collections ; 
 it is entirely the work of a single author, who has spoken in his 
 own person to mark the beginnings and endings of the five books : 
 making it clear that the miscellaneous character of the work be- 
 longs to the author's conception of Philosophy, and is not the re- 
 sult of chance or want of care. We have thus reached a phase of 
 thought in which systematisation begins to work upon the more 
 fragmentary observations of hfe, without approaching the concep- 
 tion of life and the universe as a whole. Wisdom and the works 
 of God in general are still celebrated with poetic or rhetoric fer- 
 vour. The last composition, the Praise of Famous Men, shows 
 that the conception of Wisdom has now enlarged to take in his- 
 tory. But this history is touched only with the tone of panegyric ; 
 and Ecclesiasiicus thus contrasts with a later work of this depart- 
 ment, in which we shall see history subjected to philosophic 
 reflection and analysis. 
 
 What Ecclesiasiicus is to the Old Testament, that the Episile of 
 Si. James is to the New. We have already seen in a portion of 
 
 the Book of Proverbs a precedent for a Wisdom 
 of'swames"^ Epistle ; and with this conception fits the diifer- 
 
 ence of tone which every reader perceives between 
 this portion of the New Testament and all the rest. The Apostle, 
 moreover, shows himself a deep student of Ecclesiasiicus, the 
 thoughts of which he frequently echoes.^ Of course, the matter of 
 
 1 For the Essay on the " Origin of the Evil," etc. {St. James i. 12-27), compare 
 Ecclus. Essay on Free Will (xv. 11-20) ; and also Ecclus. v. 11 and iv. 10. — For 
 the Essay on the " ResponsibiUty of Speech " {St. James iii. 1-12) compare Ecclus. 
 
328 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 the epistle has enlarged to take in Christian thought, and 'My 
 Son' has changed into 'My Brethren.' But the form is that of 
 Proverbs and Eccksiasticus — a miscellany : the epistle will not 
 yield a connected line of thought such as is traced in the writings 
 of St. Paul, but must be read as a series of independent essays. 
 Two of these essays have been cited in the last chapter — that on 
 the Sources of the Evil and the Good in Man, and another on the 
 Responsibility of Speech. Others are On Faith and Works ; On 
 Respect of Persons ; On the Earthly Wisdom and the Wisdom 
 from above ; A Discourse on Judgment. And here, as in other 
 Books of Wisdom, we find interspersed between these longer 
 essays maxims and paradoxes entirely disconnected. 
 
 To the same category must be referred what appears in our 
 versions as The First Epistle of St. John. This lacks even the 
 superscription which St. James has, as well as all other marks of 
 an epistle. On the other hand, it opens with a peculiarly formal 
 preface. 
 
 That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, 
 that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and 
 our hands handled, concerning the Word of life : . . . that which 
 we have seen and heard declare we unto you also, that ye also may 
 have fellowship with us : yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, 
 and with his Son Jesus Christ : and these things we write that our 
 joy may be fulfilled. 
 
 Of the same spirit is the epilogue, in the form of a threefold 
 creed. 
 
 We know that whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not; but he 
 that was begotten of God keepeth him, and the evil one toucheth 
 him not. 
 
 We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the 
 evil one. 
 
 Essay on Gossip (xix. 5-17), on the Tongue (xxviii. 12-26). — Other parallels are 
 Ecclus. i. 26 and St. James i. 5; Ecclus. ii. 1-6 and St. James i. 12; Ecclus. ii. i 
 and 14 and St. James i. 2-4 ; Ecclus. iv. 1-6, xxi. 5 with St. James v. 4 ; Ecclus. 
 X. 22-24 ^"d St. James ii. 1-6. — Possibly the somewhat obscure paradox in S(, 
 James i. 9 may be an echo of Ecclus. iii. 18-19. 
 
THE SACRED BOOKS OF WISl>OM 329 
 
 And WE KNOW that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an 
 understanding, that we know him that is true, and we are in him 
 that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. 
 
 This is the true God, and eternal life. Little children, guard your- 
 selves from idols. 
 
 The inclusion of this work in the literature of address is probably 
 due to the recurrence of such terms as Little children, Beloved : 
 these, however, are only variations of the My Sons, which is a 
 formula of introduction for Old Testament wisdom. As in wisdom 
 literature, we find a series of independent sayings, like the Thoughts 
 of Pascal : such topics appear as Love, Faith, Love of the World, 
 Love of the Brethren, Cleansing from Sin, Antichrist, Sons of God, 
 The Three Ages, The Three who bear witness. If, however, the 
 structure is assimilated to Old Testament wisdom literature, the 
 matter is the highly specialised form of Christian thought and 
 sentiment which belongs to the fourth Gospel. 
 
 We now approach Ecclesiastes : most fascinating of all Wisdom 
 literature to those who desire only to read, while it is the stumbling- 
 block of all who have the responsibility of inter- 
 preting. Yet the difficulties and obscurities which Ecclesiastes : 
 ■^ ° its form 
 
 undoubtedly attach to this work have been much 
 
 aggravated by the neglect of the axiom on which I have so 
 frequently insisted : that it is vain to search into the meaning of a 
 work until its outer literary form has been determined. Our first 
 duty then is to enquire into the form of Ecclesiastes, basing our 
 enquiry upon the book itself, and also upon what may be expected 
 from the analogy of other Wisdom literature. 
 
 In the first place, Ecclesiastes, like the other Books of Wisdom we 
 have surveyed, contains a series of essays : the attempt to trace a 
 continuous argument from beginning to end must be dismissed. 
 On the other hand, the most cursory examination shows a new 
 purpose in the thinkings of the preacher such as is sure to affect 
 the form of the book. We find in Ecclesiastes, what was so 
 markedly absent from Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus, that reflection 
 
330 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 has now been turned upon life as a whole, and particular obser- 
 vations have a reference to the general problem of reading the 
 meaning of existence. Accordingly, the individual essays in this 
 book must be expected to unite in some common drift ; their 
 mutual relation can best be expressed by borrowing — as literature 
 so often must — a term from music, and Ecdesiastes may be 
 described as a suite of essays. One more point needs to be 
 insisted upon. In each collection of Wisdom literature we have 
 found that, whatever else there might be, there was always a place 
 for series of disconnected proverbs interspersed amongst more 
 extended compositions. This feature is not wanting to the work 
 under consideration : of the ten sections (to include prologue and 
 epilogue) into which I have divided the whole,^ three are not 
 essays, but strings of disconnected sayings and paradoxes, more 
 or less tinged with the tone of the author, but outside the drift of 
 thought in the essays. The recognition of such gaps in the unity 
 is clearly of importance to the interpretation of the whole ; yet it 
 is no more than we are bound to expect from the analogy of other 
 Wisdom literature. 
 
 We find, then, Ecdesiastes to be in form a suite of independent 
 essays, regularly disposed between a formal prologue and epilogue, 
 concurring to present some enquiry into life as a whole, and 
 separated at intervals by collections of the isolated sayings which 
 had constituted the older conception of Wisdom. Our business 
 must be to follow the thought of the separate essays, and then put 
 our results together in order to understand the Preacher's general 
 view of life and the universe. 
 
 The Prologue breathes the spirit of the whole in its reiteration, 
 " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Philosophy has turned itself 
 from mere observation of the details to contemplation 
 1 "-if"* °^ ^^ whole, and in this contemplation can see no solid 
 result ; its enquiry, to use a phrase of a later essay, is a 
 striving after wind — continuous pursuit of that which continu- 
 ally eludes. 
 
 I Compare the Literary Index in Appendix I, 
 
THE SACRED BOOKS OF WISDOM 331 
 
 One generation goeth, and another generation cometh ; and the 
 earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth 
 down, and hasteth to his place where he ariseth. The wind goeth 
 toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it turneth about 
 continually in its course, and the wind returneth again to its circuits. 
 All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place 
 whither the rivers go, thither they go again. All things are full of 
 weariness; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, 
 nor the ear filled with hearing. That which hath been is that which 
 shall be ; and that which hath been done is that which shall be done : 
 and there is no new thing under the sun. 
 
 The writer's imagination has been overpowered by the vast "wheel 
 of nature " : the first glimpse from the outside of that interde- 
 pendence of things which modern science has tracked up to the 
 conservation of energy. In contemplation of this, life seems not 
 a progress but a treadmill, and the human world is drawn within 
 the tyranny of Law. The impressiveness of this prologue appears 
 the greater when it is realised that the ' All,' which is thus pro- 
 nounced ' vanity,' is precisely that which previous books would 
 joyously celebrate under the name of 'Wisdom.' Philosophic 
 reflection has been turned on to the sum of things, and adoration 
 has changed to elegy. 
 
 We proceed to the first essay, and at the outset are met by an 
 obstacle : the unfortunate misinterpretation of a single verse — a 
 double misinterpretation — has had the effect of 
 
 ^ , , , 1 , , rr.1 'Bixs.t Essay 
 
 throwmg a false colour over the whole work. 1 he i.ij.ij 
 essay opens with the words : " I the Preacher was 
 king over Israel in Jerusalem " : and what follows identifies the 
 king referred to with King Solomon. Hence readers have jumped 
 to the conclusion that Solomon was the author of Ecclesiastes. 
 The mistake is not unnatural in a modern reader, whose leading 
 interest in a literary work is apt to be the author ; jjj^^^^^ ^^ ^^ 
 but a student of Comparative Literature will see at Solomon's au- 
 once that these words make Solomon, not the Worship of the 
 
 book 
 
 author, but the hero of the narrative that follows. 
 
 Several schools of ancient philosophy instinctively attributed to 
 
332 Biblical pHiLOSofitv or wisdom 
 
 the first founder all that each follower produced. In this way 
 the whole of Plato's philosophy is given to the world, not in the 
 form of abstract arguments by Plato himself, but in highly dra- 
 matic dialogues, in which Socrates, as main speaker, is represented 
 in discussion with other prominent men of the age, the discussion 
 abounding in touches of wit, scenery, and action, as artistically 
 disposed as in the scenes of Shakespeare. No reader ever sup- 
 posed that Socrates said what Plato represents him to say ; but 
 Socrates had started the impulse of thought which produced Plato, 
 and the scholar pays reverence to his master by making him the 
 hero of his dialogues. Another striking instance has been pointed 
 out by a recent writer on this book : -^ that the school of Pythag- 
 oras considered the drowning of one of their number a judg- 
 ment upon him because he had put forward his discovery in his 
 own name, instead of making it part of the philosophy of Pythag- 
 oras. But there is no need to go so far for illustrations : a com- 
 panion production to this Ecdesiastes is the Wisdom of Solomon, 
 which, at a date little removed from the Christian era, makes 
 King Solomon the speaker of all the philosophic stores of that 
 late age. It belongs to Hebrew philosophy, we have seen, to 
 clothe itself in poetic and dramatic form : to put into the mouth 
 of Solomon reflections a later writer thinks fitted to his personality 
 is no more than an extension of the dramatising treatment by 
 which, in Proverbs, Wisdom was personified as the inviter to all 
 good things. On the other hand, authorship is a question of 
 dates ; and, apart from this verse, all the indications of language, 
 style, and matter, are found by experts to indicate a date for the 
 book centuries later than that of Solomon. Dr. Ginsburg has 
 pronounced it as impossible for Solomon to be the author of 
 Ecclesiastes, as for Chaucer to be the writer of Rasselas. 
 
 The old interpretation involves a double mistake. Not only is 
 Solomon the hero instead of the author, but he is the hero for 
 only a fraction of the whole book. The narrative that commences 
 with the verse under discussion extends no further than the close 
 
 1 Article Ecclesiastes in Sir William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. 
 
THE SACRED BOOKS OF WISDOM 333 
 
 of the second chapter.^ From that point onward there is not 
 to be found a sentence that associates itself with Solomon. 
 And in the prologue and epilogue, where we naturally look for 
 personal touches, there is no trace of this wise king, either in 
 direct mention, or in circumstances into which his personality can 
 be fitted. 
 
 The connection of Solomon, then, with the book as a whole 
 must be abandoned ; and with it must be given up the idea of 
 finding in the unwholesome life of that monarch an explanation 
 for the tone of Ecclesiastes. Solomon's place in the book is 
 limited to a single essay, which may be entitled : Solomon's Great 
 Experiment. The author identifies himself for the moment 
 with this famous king, as the one individual in whom wealth, 
 wisdom, and power met in their highest forms, and in his person 
 the Preacher supposes himself to go through an experience de- 
 signed to test all the forms of positive good in which men 
 beheve. First, he will use' his resources to accumulate 
 all kinds of pleasure, including such pleasures as wise men call 
 follies, but he will keep all the time his reflective powers un- 
 impaired for the purpose of testing what he enjoys. 
 
 I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me 
 vineyards; I made me gardens and parks, and I planted trees in 
 them of all kinds of fruit : I made me pools of water, to water 
 therefrom the forest where trees were reared : I bought men-servants 
 and maidens, and had servants born in ray house; also I had great 
 possessions of herds and flocks, above all that were before me in 
 Jerusalem : I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar 
 treasure of kings and of the provinces : I gat me men singers and 
 women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, concubines very 
 many. So I was great, and increased more than all that were before 
 me in Jerusalem : also my wisdom remained with me. And whatso- 
 ever mine eyes desired I kept not from them : I withheld not my 
 heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced because of all my labour; 
 
 1 Even less far than that if we assume the marginal readings of R. V. (to ii. 5, 
 and the first of those to ii. 12) ; it would then extend no further than ii. 11. This 
 would ascribe to Solomon just that part of the whole experiment which none but 
 Solomon could have fully carried oiit. 
 
334 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 and this was my portion from all my labour. Then I looked on all 
 the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had 
 laboured to do : and, behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, 
 and there was no profit under the sun. 
 
 From pleasure he turns to experiment in the field of wisdom 
 itself and its opposite. He finds indeed that wisdom excels folly 
 
 as far as light excels darkness : but he finds also that " one 
 "■ '^ event " happeneth to both. There is yet a third region 
 to be tried — labour, or as we should call it, enterprise : not the 
 enjoyment of wealth, but its production. But this also seems to 
 
 fail in the end, when the labourer must die and leave his 
 
 ii i8 
 
 labour to another, not knowing whether this other will 
 
 prove a wise man or a fool. So the result of all this experimenting 
 
 is that there is no criterion for ranking anything as higher than 
 
 mere enjoyment. Is, then, this enjoyment the one reality that has 
 
 stood the test of his long enquiry? Not at all : for the thought soon 
 
 follows that this enjoyment is not a thing in man's power, 
 
 but is itself the gift of God. The great experiment has 
 
 yielded only negative results : " vanity and a striving after wind." 
 
 The second essay may be entitled : The Philosophy of Times 
 
 and Seasons. A certain theory of the universe 
 
 m-iv^^^^^'' seems to be suggested, as something to satisfy the 
 
 craving for an explanation of things, for which the 
 
 great experiment had failed to provide. The theory is stated, 
 
 examined, and rejected. 
 
 To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under 
 the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, 
 and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a 
 time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time 
 to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 
 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a 
 time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to 
 seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 
 a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time 
 to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a 
 time for peace. 
 
THE SACRED BOOKS OF WISDOM 335 
 
 Hebrew philosophy affects artistic, and especially gnomic forms, 
 and in the guise of this tour de force of enumeration is clothed a 
 very intelligible philosophy ; — indeed, that which was the uncon- 
 scious theory underlying the old Wisdom, with its tendency to 
 observe the parts, but turn no reflection upon the whole. It is a 
 sort of practical eclecticism ; a disposition to recognise differences 
 of kind in good things without comparing them. The previous 
 essay has sought a summuin bonum . this suggests the idea, not 
 summum bonum, but multa bona. Against this theory the Preacher 
 seems to make four distinct objections. First : it is true 
 that separate things have an interest of their own. But it 
 is also true that God has implanted in men's hearts a conception 
 of the universal underlying these particulars ; so that it is no 
 longer possible to enjoy these without thinking of their bearing 
 on the whole ; while to discover this last all man's powers are 
 insufiScient. 
 
 He hath made everything beautiful in its time : also he hath set the 
 world in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that 
 God hath done from the beginning even to the end. 
 
 Again : it is true that there is nothing better than to enjoy. 
 
 But it is also true that this enjoyment is the gift of God, 
 
 and in granting it God will act upon principles as fixed 
 
 as fate, and no effort will change him. Yet again : the ' seasons ' 
 
 of things are not observed ; wickedness is seen in the 
 
 iii z6~23 
 
 place of judgment. A flash of thought suggests to the 
 Preacher that hereafter there may be a righting of these wrongs. 
 A second flash rejects the idea : what guarantee of an hereafter 
 has man more than the beasts ? 
 
 I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked : 
 for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work. I 
 said in mine heart, It is because of the sons of men, that God may 
 prove them, and that they may see that they themselves are but as 
 beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; 
 even one thing befalleth them : as the one dieth, so dieth the other. 
 
. lO-Vl. 12 
 
 336 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 As a final objection the Preacher thinks of the things that no 
 season can make beautiful : the oppression that is worse than 
 death; the skill that exists at the cost of bitter com- 
 petition; the isolated life that has no pleasure in its 
 own achievements. The essay ends, hke the last, in ' vanity.' 
 
 Then follows one of the sections we have been led to expect, 
 that are occupied with isolated proverbs having no relation to the 
 unity of the whole book. The sayings are miscellaneous, with 
 nothing in common except that they are positive, not negative, in 
 form. It is a section of Maxims of Life. 
 
 The fourth section is an Essay on the Vanity of Desire. It is 
 easy to instance possession without enjoyment : a man loving 
 silver yet never satisfied with silver ; seeing goods in- 
 crease, but seeing also increased those who consume 
 them; or even riches kept by the owner of them to his own hurt. 
 But the essay is mainly occupied with two companion pictures. 
 One is that of a man to whom God grants riches and wealth, 
 and at the same time the power to enjoy them : so much so that 
 he may give little thought to his life as one happy day 
 
 V. 20 
 
 follows another, joy of heart coming as answer to his 
 prayers almost before they are uttered. The other picture is of 
 a man on whom God has bestowed without stint the same gifts, 
 but has denied him the power to enjoy : 
 
 I say, that an untimely birth is better than he : for it cometh in 
 vanity, and departeth in darkness, and the name thereof is covered 
 with darkness; moreover it hath not seen the sun nor known it; 
 this hath rest rather than the other. 
 
 The sight of the eyes is better than the vain wandering of desire, 
 vi. IO-I2 Why should man enlarge his desires ? 
 
 Whatsoever he be, his name was given him long ago, and it is 
 known that he is Man. 
 
 The force of these words will be abundantly evident when we 
 recollect the tendency of ancient thought to look upon the Name 
 
The sacred books oP Wisdom 337 
 
 of a thing as its formula of definition. Human activity is pre- 
 sented as energy striving against inherent Umitation. Man is Fate 
 to hinnself. 
 
 After another of the relief sections, occupied with miscellaneous 
 Paradoxes of Life, we come to an important essay, Fourth Essay 
 which puts the thought of the opening section from ™- ^3-ix. i6 
 a somewhat different point of view. 
 
 I said, I will be wise; but it was far from me. That which is is 
 far off, and exceeding deep; who can find it out? I turned about, 
 and my heart was set to know and to search out, and to seek wisdom 
 and the reason of things, and to know the wickedness of folly, and 
 foolishness which is madness. 
 
 In other words : Perhaps the problem of life is too vast to be 
 solved, but is an approach to the solution possible ? Accordingly, 
 the enquirer sets himself to take what steps he can in this direction. 
 Hence the essay may be entitled : " The Search for Wisdom with 
 Notes by the way." The section is a long one, and in the course 
 of it the formula, " I find," or, "All this have I seen," ushers in 
 some particular observation presented as an instalment of the solu- 
 tion of life. There is no need to dwell upon the details ; most of 
 his notes are notes of disappointment. But beside these one 
 stands out in strong contrast. 
 
 Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a 
 merry heart; for God hath already accepted thy works. Let thy 
 garments be always white; and let not thy head lack 
 ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest 
 all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under 
 the sun, all the days of thy vanity : for that is thy portion in life, and 
 in thy labour wherein thou labourest under the sun. 
 
 There is another miscellaneous section, and then we reach 
 the two final sections. These consist of an essay pift^Essay 
 followed by a sonnet. The essay presents Life as and sonnet 
 a Joy shadowed by the Judgment. The sonnet ^'" '''^^' '' 
 is one of the most familiar and beautiful of all Biblical poems, with 
 its symbolic picture of old age. 
 
338 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 Rejoice, O yduhg man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer 
 thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, 
 and in the sight of thine eyes : but know thou, that for all these 
 things God will bring thee into judgement. 
 
 It is most important to avoid reading into this Old Testament 
 Wisdom associations drawn from the New Testament. ' The 
 judgment ' is one of the dominant ideas of Hebrew hterature : but 
 it is by no means what modern Christianity understands by that 
 term. That evil and good are inherently antagonistic, that evil is 
 doomed to fail in the struggle with good, — this is the thought 
 underlying the word ' judgment ' in Old Testament poetry : but 
 there is in the conception no note of time and place, no distinc- 
 tion even of this world and an hereafter. Thus the effect of the 
 passage quoted is to recommend happiness, but happiness accom- 
 panied with a sense of responsibility. The very shortness of life 
 is made by this essay a reason for putting sorrow away, and reap- 
 ing to the full the bliss of living. But with this joyous youth must 
 be united the remembrance of Him who has created it, and the 
 familiar sonnet follows to paint the coming of the evil days, the 
 decrepitude unfavourable alike to the realisation of happiness 
 and to the search after God. 
 
 The Epilogue starts, like the Prologue, with the cry, " Vanity 
 of vanities, all is vanity!" It goes on to say that the Preacher 
 
 continued to pour out his stores of Wisdom, that he ' pon- 
 xa^'s-i"* dered and sought out ' and ' set in order ' many proverbs : 
 
 the latter term would just describe the elaborated essays 
 of the book, as the former expression would fit the miscellaneous 
 sections. After a warning against multiplication of books, a con- 
 clusion is made by pronouncing the whole duty of man to be the 
 fear of God and the keeping of his commandments, in view of the 
 judgment into which every work will be brought. 
 
 The separate parts have been surveyed : what is the significance 
 of the whole? The Prologue cries, " All is vanity " ; the Epilogue, 
 " Fear God " ; the Essays have the function of linking the two 
 ideas. A twofold spirit, negative and positive, prevails through 
 
THE SACRED BOOKS OF WISDOM 339 
 
 the book ; it is a work of destructive Criticism, with one posi- 
 tive thought emerging and becoming continually 
 stronger. The supposed experiment of Solomon ^"^^g'*°*^^ *° * 
 reduced all things to the level of enjoyment : but 
 this enjoyment, it was added, comes from God. In the attack on 
 eclecticism, the thought was repeated more strongly : enjoyment 
 depends, not on the man who is to enjoy, but on God, and there- 
 fore on inexorable law. The next essay elaborately contrasted 
 one to whom God had given wealth and the power to enjoy it, 
 with another who had the possession without the enjoy mentv In 
 the description of the search after Wisdom, the gloomy failures 
 were interrupted by a single picture of bright simple happiness, 
 with the important addition that such happiness was a token that 
 God had accepted the man's works. And the final essay occupies 
 its whole field with the idea of joy tempered by a sense of respon- 
 sibility. Devout scepticism as a background for natural happi- 
 ness : this seems to sum up the whole thought of the book. 
 Interpreters who have seen Ecclesiastes clouded by its supposed 
 connection with the life of the historic Solomon have pronounced 
 it scepticism, or hedonism, or cynicism. Cynicism it certainly 
 is not : for its one positive conclusion is the supremacy of happi- 
 ness. If it be hedonism, it is hedonism by Divine right. The 
 Preacher cannot mention enjoyment without adding that it is 
 God's gift ; the happiness he celebrates must be ' natural,' that is, 
 tempered by sense of responsibility and the thought of God's 
 judgment ; the means of pleasure, such as wealth and position, 
 may be possessed by the wicked, but the power to enjoy them is 
 God's own hall mark on the man he has accepted. Scepticism 
 this book of Ecclesiastes certainly is, but it is scepticism with 
 constant reference to God. God is recognised as the author of 
 all things, the sole judge whose authority determines right and 
 wrong. Nay, God is represented as himself the author of the 
 intellectual despair that is the essence of scepticism, since he has 
 placed the world in man's heart, yet so that man cannot find out 
 the work that God doeth from the beginning even unto the end. 
 
340 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 The Bible, in the universality of its literary field, finds a place for 
 scepticism ; but it presents a scepticism that is not impious but 
 devout, not gloomy but a ground for sober happiness and a full life. 
 Yet there is a point of view from which Eccksiastes may be 
 Attitude of the described as pessimist: at all events in compari- 
 book to a Future son with another work of Wisdom literature. The 
 ^"® Preacher surveys life as a whole : but it is life 
 
 bounded by this world. Once indeed the thought of a judgment 
 hereafter occurs for a moment ; but it is dismissed 
 with a despair that sees man as only one of the beasts. 
 
 iii, 16-21 
 
 That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one 
 thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they 
 all have one breath; and man hath no pre-eminence above the 
 beasts : for all is vanity. All go unto one place ; all are of the dust, 
 and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man whether 
 it goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast whether it goeth down- 
 ward to the earth? 
 
 This attitude to the future recurs again and again : every vista 
 along which the Preacher looks for hght appears bounded by death. 
 Like the answer to a challenge, then, comes the remaining ' Book 
 of Wisdom,' which borrows once more the dramatic form of the 
 historic Solomon, and in his name puts forward the startling truths 
 that God made not death, that righteousness is immortal ; while it 
 proceeds, with wonderful picturesqueness of imagination, to pre- 
 sent the scene of the judgment hereafter, of which the Preacher 
 had despaired. But the Wisdom of Solomon is so important in 
 matter aiad so unique in form that it needs a chapter to itself. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 ' THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON ' 
 
 The Wisdom of Solomon resembles the early Books of Wisdom 
 in clothing deep reflection with artistic and even dramatic form. 
 It goes far beyond these in the demands it makes , -v^isaom of 
 upon the imagination. The dramatic monologue, Solomon': its 
 applied to the idea of a judgment hereafter, pre- *'"™ 
 sents an elaborate and moving picture of the wicked triumphant 
 on earth and their terrible awakening beyond the grave. Indeed, 
 Wisdom has an artistic weapon peculiarly its own, which may be 
 called Analytic Imagination. With reverent curiosity it reads into 
 the cautious reticence of some sacred narrative an array of imagi- 
 nary details. Exodus speaks of a " darkness which might be felt " : 
 Wisdom boldly sketches all that the imprisoned Egyptians might 
 be conceived to feel in that darkness, and the result is one of the 
 marvels of creative literature. 
 
 The form of the book is distinguished by another character- 
 istic, — a product of different influences. The Apocrypha stands 
 between our Old and New Testaments. When the writings which 
 make the Old Testament came to a close, Hebrew literature still 
 continued in an oral form : the vast literature of commentary 
 which, from the time of Ezra, maintained itself and gathered vol- 
 ume, until, in the Christian era, it took shape in the Talmud. It 
 would have been strange if that which made so large a part of 
 Jewish religious life had left no trace in the written literature of 
 the times. A slight trace may be seen in what we have called 
 maxims, the brief compositions which take the form of texts with 
 
 341 
 
342 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 comments. But in the Wisdom of Solomon the discourses are 
 
 entirely in this form of text and comment.^ The 
 
 Comments'* discourses are (so to speak) dovetailed together, 
 
 the final thought of one being akin to the text of 
 
 the next. And the whole book is made up of such discourses : 
 
 the strings of disconnected proverbs which in previous collections 
 
 separated the longer compositions have now disappeared. 
 
 In this last of the books of Wisdom there is a curious feature 
 
 of style, which may be just mentioned here : its complete analysis 
 
 belongs to commentaries on the individual work.^ This is the 
 
 use of Digression, not as an accidental device, but 
 
 Special use of as an end in itself. What at first gives the im- 
 Digressions ° 
 
 pression of obscurity is soon recognised as an 
 
 elaborate series of digressions, and digressions from those digres- 
 sions, carrying the argument further and further from the original 
 thought ; in one case the dropped threads are regularly gathered 
 up, and the argument brought back to its starting-point. When 
 this peculiarity is combined with characteristics previously men- 
 tioned, it will be easy to understand the following as the structural 
 form of the Wisdom of Solomon : A suite of five Discourses on 
 texts, the last of which has a sevenfold illustration, at one point 
 of which occurs a sevenfold digression. 
 
 Passing from form to matter, we may say that this book resembles 
 Ecclesiastes in the fact that it turns reflection upon the sum of 
 . things, and not merely upon details. But any such 
 
 larged conception resemblance is thrown into the shade by the wide 
 of Wisdom difference of Wisdom, both from Ecclesiastes and 
 
 from the earlier books, in its conception of the sum of things 
 which is to be surveyed. 
 
 1 The sentences which make the texts are easily distinguishable. Whereas the 
 other sentences are closely locked together by argumentative particles, the text 
 sentences are, in the first two discourses, independent and hortatory (i. i, i. 12) ; 
 the text of the third (vi, 12) is an independent gnomic sentence. In the last two 
 sections the texts are the final sentences of the preceding discourses (last line 
 of ix. 18, xi. 5), which are gnomic, and unmistakably make new departures in the 
 argument. 
 
 2 See pages xxiv, 171, in Modern Reader's Bible volume. 
 
'THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON' 343 
 
 In the first place, it is remarkable that in the earlier philosopiiy 
 of the Bible the examination of external nature has no place. 
 The mass of unit proverbs, and the essays arising out of these, 
 turn upon topics of human life. If there is mention of the dili- 
 gent ant, of the creatures little and wise, of the stately marchers, 
 it is to point from them a human moral ; even the Preacher 
 describes the rain clouds pouring their fulness on the earth, or the 
 perpetual drift of rivers to the sea, only to find in these images of 
 fatalism. The exquisite observation which, in Job, speaks of the 
 dayspring taking hold of the ends of the earth until the dull land- 
 scape has changed as clay under the seal, is the observation of the 
 poet ; and from a similar source comes the sympathy with the 
 wild ass in its desert freedom and the war horse chafing under 
 restraint, and the wealth of detail which builds up the pictures of 
 behemoth and leviathan. The first book of Proverbs and the 
 prefatory sections of Ecclesiasticus deal largely with external 
 nature : but only as the works of the Lord which are to be ma:g- 
 nified. Thus the son of Sirach celebrates the clear firmament, 
 the sun bringing tidings as he goes, and the rainbow glory, only to 
 assist the thought that the Lord made all these things ; he enu- 
 merates the material things chiefly necessary for man, and pro- 
 claims that these are for good to the godly, but for sinners they 
 shall be turned into evil ; he makes a climax by the thought that 
 this Wisdom, of which these glories are a part, has 
 
 ' , ^ , , , . T , , Ecclus. xxiv. 8 
 
 been commanded to find a tabernacle in Jacob and 
 an inheritance in Israel. It is only in the last of the Wisdom 
 Books that we find the analytic examination of nature for its own 
 sake which makes the substance of modern science ; and the pas- 
 sage which sets forth knowledge of this kind ends by claiming it 
 as part of the universal Wisdom. 
 
 For himself gave me an unerring knowledge of the things that 
 are, to know the constitution of the world, and the operation of 
 the elements, the beginning and end and middle of times, 
 the alternations of the solstices and the changes of sea- 
 sons, the circuits of years and the positions of stars; the natures of 
 
344 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 living creatures and the ragings of wild beasts, the violences of winds 
 and the thoughts of men, the diversities of plants and the virtues of 
 roots : all things that are either secret or manifest I learned, for she 
 that is the artificer of all things taught me, even Wisdom. 
 
 History, no less than nature, is conspicuous by its absence from 
 the early Books of Wisdom. In the whole of Proverbs and Eccle- 
 siastes^ and in four out of the five books of Eccksiasticus , there 
 is not a single allusion to an historic event. The fifth book of 
 Eccksiasticus is largely occupied with history ; but here the intro- 
 ductory words — 
 
 Let us now praise famous men — 
 
 prepare us to expect, what the subsequent chapters confirm, that 
 the writer treats history, as he treats nature, for purposes of rhetoric 
 encomium, not of scientific reflection. On the other hand, more 
 than half of the Wisdom of Solomon consists in analytic examina- 
 tion of history ; and its conception of ' Wisdom ' is enlarged to 
 include the emergence of providential design from beneath the 
 succession of events. 
 
 But there is a still more important widening of the field of view 
 in the last of the Books of Wisdom. The early books, ignoring 
 nature and history, confined their reflection to human life : but the 
 life they surveyed was a life bounded by the grave. In Proverbs 
 and Eccksiasticus there is nowhere a suggestion of anything but 
 this. In the case of Eccksiastes I have drawn attention" to the 
 passage in which the Preacher for a single moment entertains the 
 thought of a judgment after death, only to fling it away and 
 pfunge into a pessimist doubt whether human life can have any 
 ending different from that of the brutes. But in the Wisdom of 
 Solomon the starting-point and foundation of the whole argument 
 is the extension of life beyond the grave ; an immortality bound 
 up with righteousness and the redress of wrong is assumed with 
 
 1 I have argued above (page 333) that Solomon's experiment in i. 2 must be 
 understood as an imaginary incident ; and similarly iv. 13-16 and ix. 13-16 are, like 
 all the context, general statements. 
 
 2 See above, pages 335, 340. 
 
'THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON' 345 
 
 such certainty that it is the ' ungodly ' who are presented as ignor- 
 ing it. 
 
 This fact inevitably raises the question : Is the Wisdom of 
 Solomon an answer to Eccksiastes ? In parts of Relation of Wis- 
 Wisdom particular phrases and turns of expression dom to Ecciesias- 
 seem to echo thoughts of the earlier book. The *°° 
 Preacher has cried that " the sons of men are a chance, and 
 the beasts are a chance, and one thing befalleth 
 
 ° iii. 19; viu. 8 
 
 them " ; that man hath no " power over the day 
 
 of death, and there is no discharge in that war." The ungodly 
 
 of the later book reflect that by mere chance they 
 
 were born, and hereafter they will be as though "•'■" 
 
 they had never been, and none was ever known that gave release 
 
 from Hades. In Eccksiastes : 
 
 The dead know not anything, neither have they any more Ix. 5,6 
 a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. As well 
 their love as their hatred and their envy is now perished; 
 neither have they any more a portion for ever in anything 
 that is done under the sun. 
 
 The same strain is heard in Wisdom : 
 
 And our name shall be forgotten in time, and no man ii. 4 
 shall remember our works; and our life shall pass away 
 as the traces of a cloud, and shall be scattered as is a mist. 
 
 One of the few positive thoughts of the Preacher is that Wisdom 
 excelleth folly as far as light excelleth darkness : and 
 the later book iinds a climax for its panegyric on Wisdom 
 in the reflection — 
 
 u. 13 
 
 Being compared with light she is found to be before it; vil. 39 
 for to the light of day succeedeth night, but against 
 wisdom evil doth not prevail. 
 
 Above all, the pessimism oi Eccksiastes reflects that " the righteous, 
 and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God " : ix. •■ 
 that they know not what fortune he will bestow upon them and 
 
346 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 are powerless to influence it. The phrase seems to be caught up 
 by the optimist thinker — 
 
 ill. I The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment 
 
 shall touch them — 
 
 and this is his foundation for a picture of goodness triumphant. 
 Such parallelisms are insufficient to prove anything as to the inten- 
 tion of the writer ; but they certainly serve as an enhancement 
 to the literary interest of the reader. 
 
 When we consider the matter and general argument of Wisdom 
 there is more ground for considering it a veiled answer to Ecdesi- 
 astes. This will appear as I proceed to review the several dis- 
 courses. I may here, however, premise, that the suggestion is not 
 of any such antagonism between the two books as would imply 
 that one was right and the other wrong. The exact attitude of 
 Wisdom to Ecclesiastes seems to me to be that of St. Peter to 
 St. Paul when the former says : 
 
 II Peter In all his epistles . . . are some things hard to be understood, which 
 iii. i6 the ignorant and unstedfast wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, 
 unto their own destruction. 
 
 No argument of Ecclesiastes is in Wisdom cited and attacked ; but 
 the second discourse undoubtedly-presents the ignorant and unsted- 
 fast ' wresting ' the Preacher's theory of hfe to their own destruction. 
 
 The first discourse is on Singleness of Heart. The text is made 
 by the opening words of the book. 
 
 Love righteousness, ye that be judges oftlie earth. 
 Think ye of the Lord with a good mind. 
 And in singleness of heart seek ye him. 
 
 The comment on this text is brief and simple. But its simplicity 
 
 becomes charged with keen interest if we look upon the discourse 
 
 as glancing indirectly at the opening essay of Eccle- 
 First Discourse • j ix'i i. • • j 
 
 i. i.„ siastes. Ihat essay imagmed a great experiment 
 
 of Solomon : how he would lay hold on folly, his 
 
 heart yet guiding him with wisdom j how he would heap together 
 
' 'THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON' 347 
 
 every form of pleasure, and withhold nothing that his eyes should 
 desire, yet at the same time his wisdom should remain with him. 
 The present discourse seems boldly to pronounce such an experi- 
 ment impossible. 
 
 Wisdom will not enter into a soul that deviseth evil, nor dwell in a 
 body that is held in pledge by sin. For a holy spirit of discipline 
 will flee deceit, and will start away from thoughts that are without 
 understanding, and will be put to confusion when unrighteousness 
 hath come in. 
 
 And this thought is enforced by enlarging upon the spirit of the 
 Lord filling the world, while an ear of jealousy listens to every 
 secret utterance. 
 
 The second is the main discourse of the whole series. It might 
 well have for its title : Immortality and the Covenant with Death. 
 Here is the point at which the opposition between * 
 
 the two Books of Wisdom is most acute. The Second Discourse 
 
 1. 12-VI. XI 
 
 Preacher, whichever way he turned^ found death 
 as an inevitable destiny mocking human effort. In startling con- 
 tradiction to this the very text of the present discourse assumes 
 death to be a thing of human origin. 
 
 Court not death in the error of your life ; 
 
 Neither draw upon yourselves destruction by the works of your hands. 
 
 All doubt about the doctrine is removed by the first words of 
 comment : " God made not death." Ecclesiastes, with melancholy 
 iteration, had insisted on joining man with the beasts in regard to 
 his end. But the present discourse declares that all the races of 
 creatures in the world are healthsome by creation, and that Hades 
 has no royal dominion on earth : " for righteousness is immortal." 
 Whence, then, has come death into the world ? By invitation of the 
 ungodly. The invitation is described as being " by their hands 
 and their words." The ungodly life is interpreted as a covenant 
 with death. The discourse proceeds to voice this ungodly life in a 
 monologue which starts from the point of view of Ecclesiastes. 
 
348 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 Short and sorrowful is our life; and there is no healing when a 
 man cometh to his end, and none was ever known that gave release 
 from Hades; because by mere chance were we born, and hereafter 
 we shall be as though we had never been : because the breath in our 
 nostrils is smoke,' and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of 
 our heart, which being extinguished the body shall be turned into 
 ashes, and thp spirit shall be dispersed as thin air; and our name 
 shall be forgotten in time, and no man shall remember our works; 
 and our life shall pass away as the traces of a cloud, and shall be 
 scattered as is a mist, when it is chased by the beams of the sun, and 
 overcome by the heat thereof. For our allotted time is the passing of 
 a shadow, an4 our end retreateth not; because it is fast sealed, and 
 none turneth jt back. 
 
 Come therefore and let us enjoy the good things that are; and 
 let us use the creation with all our soul as youth's possession. Let 
 us fill ourselves with costly wine and perfumes; and let no flower 
 of spring pass us by : let us crown ourselves with rosebuds, before 
 they be withered : let none of us go without his share in our proud 
 revelry : everywhere let us leave tokens of our mirth : because this 
 is our portion, and our lot is this. 
 
 So far the train of reasoning has corresponded with the theory of 
 life laid down in Ecclesiastes. But now comes an unexpected 
 trend of thought. It will be recollected that the Preacher's 
 momentary conception of a judgment beyond the grave, and 
 subsequent lapse into hopelessness, came upon him when he con- 
 templated wickedness seated in the place of judgment. As the 
 present monologue continues, we find this wicked oppression 
 springing naturally out of the Preacher's own conception of life. 
 
 Let us oppress the righteous poor; let us not spare the widow, nor 
 reverence the hairs of the old man gray for length of years. But let 
 our strength be to us a law of righteousness; for that which is weak 
 is found to be of no service. But let us lie in wait for the righteous 
 man, because he is of disservice to us, and is contrary to our works, 
 and upbraideth us with sins against the law, and layeth to our 
 charge sins against our discipline. He professeth to have knowl- 
 edge of God, and nameth himself servant of the Lord. He became 
 to us a reproof of our thoughts. He is grievous to us even to 
 behold, because his life is unlike other men's, and his paths are 
 
'THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON' 349 
 
 of strange fashion. We were accounted of him as base metal, 
 and he abstaineth from our ways as from uncleannesses. The 
 latter end of the righteous he calleth happy; and he vaunteth that 
 God is his father. Let us see if his words be true, and let us try 
 what shall befall in the ending of his life. For if the righteous man 
 is God's son, he will uphold him, and he will deliver him out of the 
 hand of his adversaries. With outrage and torture let us put him to 
 the test, that we may learn his gentleness, and may prove his patience 
 under wrong. Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for he 
 shall be visited according to his words. 
 
 The author breaks in to say how these reasoners are blinded by 
 wickedness to the mysteries of God ; and (as already pointed out) 
 he catches at a phrase of the Preacher to turn it to an opposite use. 
 
 The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no tor- 
 ment shall touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed 
 to have died; and their departure was accounted to be their hurt, 
 and their journeying away from us to be their ruin : but they are in 
 peace. For even if in the sight of men they be punished, their hope 
 is full of immortality; and having borne a little chastening, they shall 
 receive great good . . . and in the time of their visitation they shall 
 shine forth, and as sparks among stubble they shall run to and fro. 
 They shall judge nations, and have dominion over peoples; and the 
 Lord shall reign over them for evermore. 
 
 The picture of the ungodly reasoners is to be completed by a 
 companion picture of the same reasoners beyond the grave. But 
 first, with his tendency to digression, the author turns aside to 
 glance at the rival hopes to this his hope of immortality. The 
 substitutes for our modern conception of immortality in the minds 
 of Old Testament worthies were two : length of days in this world, 
 and the living over again in posterity. The author of Wisdom 
 strikes at both these ideas. The multiplying brood of the ungodly 
 is profitless : better is childlessness with virtue. As for length of 
 days : it may well be that the life cut short is the life crowned. 
 
 For honourable old age is not that which standeth in length of time, 
 nor is its measure given by number of years : but understanding is 
 gray hairs unto men, and an unspotted life is ripe old age. . . . Being 
 
350 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 made perfect in a little while he fulfilled long years; for his soul was 
 pleasing unto the Lord : therefore he hastened him away out of the 
 midst of wickedness. 
 
 And now the dramatic monologue is again called into requisition 
 to paint the amazement of the ungodly, risen from a dishonoured 
 sojourn among the dead, tc5 behold the righteous standing in great 
 boldness before those who afflicted him. 
 
 This was he whom aforetime we had in derision, and made a 
 parable of reproach : we fools accounted his life madness, and his 
 end without honour: how was he numbered among sons of God? 
 and how is his lot among saints? Verily we went astray from the 
 way of truth, and the light of righteousness shined not for us, and 
 the sun rose not for us. We took our fill of the paths of lawlessness 
 and destruction, and we journeyed through trackless deserts, but the 
 way of the Lord we knew not. What did our arrogancy profit us? 
 And what good have riches and vaunting brought us? Those things 
 all passed away as a shadow, and as a message that runneth by : as 
 a ship passing through the billowy water, whereof, when it is gone 
 by, there is no trace to be found, neither pathway of its keel in the 
 billows : or as when a bird flieth through the air, no token of her 
 passage is found, but the light wind, lashed with the stroke of 
 her pinions, and rent asunder with the violent rush of the moving 
 wings, is passed through, and afterwards no sign of her coming is 
 found therein : or as when an arrow is shot at a mark, the air dis- 
 parted closeth up again immediately, so that men know not where 
 it passed through : so we also, as soon as we were born, ceased to 
 be; and of virtue we had no sign to shew, but in our wickedness we 
 were utterly consumed. 
 
 The author speaks in person to second this despair : the hope of 
 the ungodly is as smoke and vanishing foam, while the righteous 
 live for ever. Then the discourse reaches a peroration in a picture 
 of the universe united to war against the enemies of good. 
 
 He shall take his jealousy as complete armour, and shall make the 
 whole creation his weapons for vengeance on his enemies : he shall 
 put on righteousness as a breastplate, and shall array himself with 
 judgement unfeigned as with a helmet; he shall take holiness as an 
 invincible shield, and he shall sharpen stern wrath for a sword. And 
 
'THE WISDOM OP SOLOMON' 351 
 
 the world shall go forth with him to fight against his insensate foes. 
 Shafts of hghtning shall fly with true aim, and from the clouds, as 
 from a well drawn bow, shall they leap to the mark. And as from 
 an engine of war shall be hurled hailstones full of wrath ; the water 
 of the sea shall be angered against them, and rivers shall sternly over- 
 whelm them; a mighty blast shall encounter them, and as a tem- 
 pest shall it winnow them away : and so shall lawlessness make 
 all the land desolate, and their evil doing shall overturn the thrones 
 of princes. 
 
 An appeal to Kings, as those whose responsibility is greater 
 than that of lowly men, closes the second discourse, and prepares 
 for the text of the third, that Wisdom is found of 
 her seekers, nay, forestalleth them by making her- ^f^'^.J^''""""^ 
 self first known. This discourse is devoted to the 
 personality of King Solomon : a personality which, as in Ecdesi- 
 astes, is dropped when its purpose has been served. Here in full 
 distinctness we have a king addressing his brother kings ; and a very 
 different character is painted from that of the Preacher's Solomon. 
 The wisest of men tells how he was mortal, like all others ; moulded, 
 like all others, in the womb ; how he was born, and drew in the 
 common air, and fell upon the kindred earth, his first voice a wail : 
 for all men have one entrance into life, and a like departure. For 
 this cause he had to pray for the understanding that has been 
 given to him. And this understanding he preferred before sceptres 
 and thrones, and riches, and health, and comeliness, and all other 
 good things : but with this Wisdom came to him all other good 
 things, for she is the mother and artificer of them all. 'Ihen fol- 
 lows the famous panegyric. 
 
 For there is in her a spirit quick of understanding, holy, alone in 
 kind, manifold, subtil, freely moving, clear in utterance, unpolluted, 
 distinct, unharmed, loving what is good, keen, unhindered, beneficent, 
 loving toward man, stedfast, sure, free from care, all-powerful, all- 
 surveying, and penetrating through all spirits that are quick of under- 
 standing, pure, most subtil : for wisdom is more mobile than any 
 motion; yea, she pervadeth and penetrateth all things by reason of 
 her pureness. For she is a breath of the power of God, and a clear 
 
352 msLiCAL patLosopiiY ok WISDOM 
 
 effluence of the glory of the Almighty; therefore can nothing defiled 
 find entrance into her. For she is an effulgence from everlasting 
 light, and an unspotted mirror of the working of God, and an image 
 of his goodness. And she, being one, hath power to do all things; 
 and, remaining in herself, reneweth all things : and from generation 
 to generation passing into holy souls she maketh men friends of God 
 and prophets. For nothing doth God love save him that dwelleth 
 with wisdom. For she is fairer than the sun, and above all the con- 
 stellations of the stars : being compared with light, she is found to be 
 before it; for to the light of day succeedeth night, but against wis- 
 dom evil doth not prevail; but she reacheth from one end of the 
 world to the other with full strength, and ordereth all things gra- 
 ciously. 
 
 Such Wisdom Solomon tells how he loved from his youth, and 
 sought to take her for his bride ; with her as his spouse he would 
 gain glory among the multitudes and honour in the sight of the 
 elders ; because of her he would have immortality, and leave 
 behind an eternal n\emory; he will govern people and be 
 courageous in war. 
 
 When I am come into my house, I shall find rest with her; for 
 converse with her hath no bitterness, and to live with her hath no 
 pain, but gladness and joy. 
 
 Accordingly he pleaded with the Lord, that he would send down 
 
 Wisdom out of the holy heavens and from the throne of his glory : 
 and thus the historic prayer of Gibeon is expanded 
 into an elaborate appeal. The concluding part of 
 
 this prayer makes the transition to the important discourses which 
 
 are to follow. 
 
 For a corruptible body weigheth down the soul, and the earthly 
 frame lieth heavy on a mind that is full of cares. And hardly do we 
 divine the things that are on earth, and the things that are close at 
 hand we find with labour; but the things that are in the heavens who 
 ever yet traced out? And who ever gained knowledge of thy counsel, 
 except thou gavest wisdom, and sentest thy holy spirit from on high? 
 And it was thus that the ways of them which are on earth were 
 corrected, and men were taught the things that are pleasing unto 
 thee : and through wisdom were they saved. 
 
'THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON' 353 
 
 These last words become the text on which the discourse that 
 is to follow is founded. 
 
 Through wisdom were they saved. 
 
 This fourth discourse occupies a transitional position in the train 
 
 of thought which connects the last three sections of the book. 
 
 Without attempting to analyse all the shades of 
 
 1 , ■ ii ,. ii 1 1. i.u A Fourth Discourse 
 
 meamng and mystic senses that attach to the word j^_^j ^ 
 
 ' wisdom,' it "may be said that they centre around 
 two main usages, which may be broadly distinguished as subjective 
 and objective : the wisdom which an individual, from whatever 
 source, receives into himself, and by which he guides his actions, 
 and again the wisdom which underlies the sum of things. Of 
 course the two senses are closely related : an individual is wise in 
 personal wisdom when he brings himself into conformity with the 
 Divine order and harmony. The final discourse will, without 
 using the word,^ expound wisdom in the objective sense as seen in 
 history. The third discourse has ended with Solomon's prayer for 
 personal wisdom. This section which intervenes deals with his- 
 tory, but mainly with its prominent individuals ; and its use of the 
 term ' wisdom ' in an interesting manner hovers between the two 
 senses of the word. In the opening reference to Adam — 
 
 Wisdom guarded to the end the first formed father of the world, 
 that was created alone, and delivered him out of his mvn transgres- 
 sion, and gave him strength to get dominion over all things — 
 
 the first clause seems to speak of external guidance, the rest of 
 self-discipUne. It is from wisdom in the latter sense that Cain 
 ' fell away ' in his anger ; but it must be wisdom as providential 
 guidance that saved the world from the flood, guiding the right- 
 eous man's course by a poor piece of wood. Providence must be 
 the wisdom that " knew the righteous man," Abraham : but wis- 
 dom in the other sense " preserved him blameless " unto God, and 
 kept him strong when his heart yearned toward his child. Exter- 
 
 1 It occurs only once (xiv. 5) in a subordinate phrase. 
 
354 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 nal wisdom saved Lot, but it must be the wisdom within that Lot's 
 wife ' passed by,' and became a monument of folly. It is provi- 
 dential wisdom that guided the fugitive Jacob, and still more 
 clearly the same wisfiom which went down into the dungeon with 
 Joseph, and left him not till she brought him the sceptre of a king- 
 dom. When Moses is reached, the two senses seem again to 
 interlace : 
 
 Wisdom delivered a holy people and a blameless seed from a nation 
 of oppressors. She entered into the soul of a servant of the Lord, 
 and withstood terrible kings in wonders and signs. 
 
 But as the details of the deliverance are reviewed the thought is 
 more and more of providential guidance, until we find ourselves 
 in the analysis of history that constitutes the final discourse. 
 
 The fifth and last section, in bulk equal to one half the book, 
 branches off at the words : 
 
 For by what things their foes were punished, 
 By these they in their need were benefited. 
 
 This text conveys clearly the argument of the whole discourse ; 
 though (as remarked above') at one part of it there occurs a 
 Fifth Dis- chain of digressions, carrying our thoughts from 
 
 course one to another of kindred topics, until the original 
 
 XI. 5-xuc argument is recovered and maintained to the close. 
 
 The text embodies a principle of providential government, and 
 the discourse elaborately supports it with seven illustrations con- 
 nected with the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt. 
 
 The first of the 'things' illustrating the principle is thirst. 
 For the Egyptians the inexhaustible Nile turned to blood — meet 
 judgment on those who had shed the blood of infants : while for 
 Israel the desert rock poured out abundant streams, Israel having 
 suffered thirst just enough to understand the torment of their 
 enemies, and see the difference between fatherly admonition and 
 the wrath of a stern king. 
 
 1 Page 342. 
 
XI. 31 -ZU 
 
 'THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON' 355 
 
 It is as the writer is commencing a second illustration that the 
 series of digressions begins. One of these digressions puts the 
 principle of providential government which in sec- „. nhan of 
 ular literature is called nemesis : by what things a Digressions 
 man sinneth by these he is punished. The example "" ''"^■"- ' 
 that suggests it is the plague of vermin sent upon the Egyptians, 
 who are vermin worshippers. This leads to a further argument 
 on the forbearance of God in his judgments — 
 making the judgment assume a form that is equiv- 
 alent to admonition, and convicting little by little so as to give a 
 place for repentance : this is the forbearance of strength, and of 
 one who loves everything that he has made. Another digression 
 is on the folly of idolatry. There are degrees in 
 
 that folly : least blamable are those who mistake ^'"- '■^''' " 
 ^ and XV 
 
 the beautiful works of nature for God ; next mis- 
 erable are those who rest their hopes in dead things like gold or 
 silver ; but the furthest gone in folly are the Egyptians in their 
 deif)dng creatures hateful and void of beauty. The scorn of the 
 wise man closely follows t*he scorn of the prophet, in fancying a 
 woodcutter cutting down a tree and carefully fashioning the best 
 wood into useful vessels, then warming food with the refuse, and 
 then taking the very refuse that is good for nothing and carving it 
 in an idle hour into a god. 
 
 For health he calleth upon that which is weak, and for life he 
 beseecheth that which is dead, and for aid he supplicateth that 
 which hath least experience, and for a good journey that which can- 
 not so much as move a step, and for gaining and getting and good 
 success of his hands he asketh ability of that which with its hands 
 is most unable. Again, one preparing to sail, and about to journey 
 over raging waves, calleth upon a piece of wood more rotten than 
 the vessel that carrieth him. 
 
 The folly of idolatry leads naturally to the question of its origin. 
 The writer insists that idolatry is a corruption, and not 
 
 XIV 13— "^X 
 
 one of the things that have been from the beginning. It 
 
 may have begun in the image of a lost child, or an absent king, 
 
3S6 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 coming in time to be honoured with rites and worship, until stocks 
 and stones have become invested with the incommunicable Name. 
 With such corruption of worship has crept in corruption of 
 morals — frantic revels, tumult, perjury, defiling of souls, confu- 
 sion of sex, adultery, and wantonness : they live in a great war of 
 ignorance, and that multitude of evils they call peace. 
 
 The digressions have occupied half of the whole discourse ; the 
 original argument is resumed with a second illustration of things 
 which were judgments on the wicked turning to mercies 
 on God's people. This is connected with appetite : the 
 plague of vermin caused the Egyptians to loathe their necessary 
 food, but to the Israelites were sent quails of dainty flavour when 
 their appetite had become keen in the desert. A third illustration 
 is founded on noxious bites : the bites of locusts and flies destroyed 
 without healing the men of Egypt ; whereas the rage of crooked 
 serpents did but admonish God's people to heed his oracles, and 
 then salvation was found for them, not indeed from that which 
 they gazed upon, but from the Healer of all, who has authority 
 over life and death. Once more, there is a contrast between the 
 rain of hail and showers inexorable mingling with fire which 
 destroyed the fruits of Egypt, and the rain of angels' bread from 
 heaven on God's people in the wilderness. The contrast is worked 
 out with minute subtlety. The elements strained their force 
 against the unrighteous, the fire of destruction burning in the 
 rain and flashing in the hail; while the same fire slackened in 
 behalf of the Israelites, and, like the fire of a domestic hearth, 
 tempered the food to every taste. Yet the manna which the " 
 fire had thus not marred melted in the first faint sunbeam, teach- 
 ing men to rise early to give thanks. 
 
 The fifth example gives great scope for the feature of style 
 which I have called analytic imagination. It is the plague of 
 darkness. 
 
 When lawless men had supposed that they held a holy nation in 
 their power, they themselves, prisoners of darkness, and bound in 
 the fetters of a long night, close kept beneath their roofs, lay exiled 
 
'THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON' 357 
 
 from the eternal providence. For while they thought that they were 
 unseen in their secret sins, they were sundered one from another by 
 a dark curtain of forgetfulness, stricken with terrible awe, and sore 
 troubled by spectral forms. For neither did the dark recesses that 
 held them guard them from fears, but sounds rushing down rang 
 around them, and phantoms appeared, cheerless with unsmiling 
 faces. And no force of fire prevailed to give them light, neither were 
 the brightest flames of the stars strong enough to illumine that 
 gloomy night : but only there appeared to them the glimmering of a. 
 fire self-kindled, full of fear; and in terror they deemed the things 
 which they saw to be worse than that sight, on which they could not 
 gaze. And they lay helpless, made the sport of magic art, and a 
 shameful rebuke of their vaunts of understanding: for they that 
 promised to drive away terrors and troublings from a sick soul, these 
 were themselves sick with a ludicrous fearfulness : for even if no 
 troublous thing affrighted them, yet, scared with the creepings of 
 vermin and hissings of serpents, they perished for very trem- 
 bling, refusing even to look on the air, which could on no side be 
 escaped. . . . All through the night which was powerless indeed, 
 and which came upon them out of the recesses of powerless Hades, 
 all sleeping the same sleep, now were haunted with monstrous appa- 
 ritions, and now were paralysed by their souls' surrendering; for 
 fear sudden and unlooked for came upon them. So then every man, 
 whosoever it might be, sinking down in his place, was kept in ward 
 shut up in that prison which was barred not with iron : for whether 
 he were a husbandman, or a shepherd, or a labourer whose toils 
 were in the wilderness, he was overtaken, and endured that inevitable 
 necessity, for with one chain of darkness were they all bound. 
 Whether there were a whistling wind, or a melodious noise of birds 
 among the spreading branches, or a measured fall of water running 
 violently, or a harsh crashing of rocks hurled down, or the swift 
 course of animals bounding along unseen, or the voice of wild beasts 
 harshly roaring, or an echo rebounding from the hollows of the 
 mountains, all these things paralysed them with terror. For the 
 whole world beside was enlightened with clear light, and was occu- 
 pied with unhindered works; while over them alone was spread a 
 heavy night, an image of the darkness that should afterward receive 
 them; but yet heavier than darkness were they unto themselves. 
 
 With such supernatural darkness is contrasted the great light 
 enjoyed all the while by the holy ones ; and further, the burning 
 
358 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 pillar of fire sent as convoy of their unknown journey, and kindly 
 sun for their proud exile. 
 
 The sixth illustration reverses the order of the contrast. First 
 is mentioned the night of deliverance to the chosen people, when 
 sacrifice was being offered in secret, and with one consent they 
 took upon themselves the covenant of Divine law. The fathers 
 were already leading the sacred songs of praise when there sounded 
 back in discord the cry of the stricken enemy. 
 
 For while peaceful silence enwrapped all things, and night in her 
 own swiftness was in mid course, thine all-powerful word leaped 
 from heaven out of the royal throne, a stern warrior, into the midst 
 of the doomed land, bearing as a sharp sword thine unfeigned com- 
 mandment; and standing it filled all things with death; and while 
 it touched the heaven it trod upon the earth. 
 
 And a picture fojlows of the dead thrown here and there in the 
 tossings of troubled dreams which showed to each his doom ere 
 the death fell on him. 
 
 Finally, death itself is amongst the things which are judgments 
 alike and benefits. It befell the righteous to make trial of death, 
 but only as a brief calamity ; for the blameless Phinehas, bringing 
 the weapons of his ministry, confronted the advancing wrath, and 
 cut off the way to the living. But upon the ungodly came wrath 
 without mercy, who by a counsel of folly pursued the fugitives, 
 and themselves met with strange death, creation fashioning itself 
 anew, and land rising out of the sea for the salvation of the fugi- 
 tives. In the deliverance Israel thus celebrated, and the plagues 
 of Egypt fresh in their memory, and the gifts of ambrosial food 
 they were soon to receive, might they see all the elements, inter- 
 changing like the notes of a psaltery, conspire to magnify the 
 people of God. 
 
 So ends the last of the Scriptural Books of Wisdom. Through- 
 out its whole course it has returned to the tone of serene contem- 
 plation, broken only by adoration, which had distinguished all 
 Wisdom literature except Ecclesiastes. The middle discourse of 
 
'THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON' 359 
 
 the series has vindicated Solomon from the morbid experiment 
 imagined for him by the Preacher, and portrayed in his personality 
 individual wisdom in its most kingly form. The earher discourses 
 have set over against the pessimist conception of a life bounded 
 by death the optimism that is made by extending the vision into 
 a future beyond the grave ; while, in place of the Preacher's con- 
 cluding strain of clinging to happiness, the opening note of the 
 present book is. Love righteousness. And as these discourses 
 have dealt with the future, so the concluding discourses extend 
 the field of Wisdom to include the past, and the history of God's 
 people has been presented as an ordered scheme of providence. 
 
 We have seen that the Philosophy of the Bible takes its rise 
 from a floating literature of proverbs. The form of these germ 
 proverbs is fixed to that of a single couplet ; accordingly . 
 the couplet is the meeting point of verse and prose. 
 Proverb literature develops on the one side into the poetic forms 
 of the epigram and the sonnet, on the other side it travels prose- 
 wards in maxims and essays ; but in either case Biblical Phi- 
 losophy always seeks artistic form, and it is just where the thought 
 is most elaborate that the most extended dramatic monologues 
 are found, or the most brilliant rhetorical encomia and pictures. 
 In matter and spirit this Biblical Philosophy is ' Wisdom ' : reflec- 
 tion associates itself with practical life. In the earlier works 
 reflection has been directed upon life in its separate parts, and 
 miscellanies of practical wisdom are the result : the totality of 
 things is not a subject for theorising upon, but is approached with 
 awe, and worshipped as a personified Wisdom. With Ecclesiastes 
 we reach the point at which analysis has turned itself upon the 
 sum of things, and there ensues a strange divorce between theory 
 and practice : while the old miscellaneous maxims still appear, we 
 now hear of a whole duty of man, and this is presented as a rev- 
 erent happiness ; but on the other hand the theory of Ufe has 
 started only to break down in negations, and in despair of all but 
 God, But in the Wisdom of Solomon Philosophy has recovered 
 
360 BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OR WISDOM 
 
 its balance, theoretical and practical are harmonised. The prin- 
 ciple underlying the All — an All which takes in past, present, and 
 future — has again become Wisdom, and is again contemplated 
 with rapture ; detailed maxims of practical life have disappeared, 
 except so far as they are items in a universal system. But this 
 final achievement of philosophic reflection has been brought about 
 by drawing within the field of thought something which has not 
 been obtained from philosophy : it is the tacit assumption of a 
 future world that has reversed the conclusions of Ecdesiastes. 
 And when this final stage of Wisdom Hterature has been reached, 
 the conception of ' Wisdom ' itself has become so deep and so 
 many-sided that it -would be impossible to discuss it without 
 trenching upon the deepest mysteries of Theology. 
 
Book Sixth 
 
 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 XVL Forms of Prophetic Literature .... 363 
 
 XVn. Forms of Prophetic Literature: The Doom Song 390 
 
 XVin. Forms of Prophetic Literature: The Rhapsody . 404 
 
 XIX. The Rhapsody of 'Zion Redeemed' [Isa. xl-lxvi] . 435 
 
 XX. The Works of the Prophets .... 457 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 FORMS OF PROPHETIC LITERATURE 
 
 We commence in this chapter another of the grand depart- 
 ments of Biblical literature ; and our first difficulty is its name — 
 Prophecy. By one of those silent changes in the p„„i,g™ ^s a 
 signification of words, which are brought about by department of 
 the wear and tear of ordinary speech, this word I't"^*'"^^ 
 ' Prophecy ' has narrowed itself, in common parlance, to the sense 
 of ' prediction ' ; and there are many readers of the Bible to 
 whom the term suggests nothing more than the foretelling of the 
 future. It is, of course, true that the Hebrew prophets dealt with 
 the future, as they dealt with the present and the past. But the 
 reference to the future time is not the sole, nor even the chief, 
 function of the literature we are about to survey. The pro- in 
 prophecy is not the pro- that means ' before ' but rather the pro- 
 that means ' forth ' : Prophecy is a forth-pouring or out-pouring 
 of discourse. That such out-pouring of discourse belongs, not 
 only to the thing described, but also to the signification of the 
 English word, is powerfully illustrated by the fact that a father 
 of the Anglican Church and great master of English prose, writing 
 in the seventeenth century a work in which he was to plead for 
 the freedom of the EngUsh pulpit, gave to it the title : ' Liberty of 
 Prophesying.' The true distinction of this department of Biblical 
 literature lies in its presenting itself as the channel of an immediate 
 Divine message: "Thus saith the Lord" is con- Forms of Pro- 
 tained explicitly or implicitly in every utterance of Poetic Literature 
 the prophets. The ' prophet ' is thus an ' interpreter ' for God : 
 
 363 
 
364 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 such is the sense of the Greek word which has given us the 
 English vioxA. prophet ; and that such is the force of the Hebrew 
 word it translates is powerfully suggested by such a passage as 
 Exodus vii. i : " See I have made thee [Moses] a god to Pharaoh, 
 and Aaron shall be thy prophet." From this it follows that the 
 essential distinction of Prophecy belongs to its spirit and matter : 
 what more of description is needed will be given by distinguish- 
 ing the various forms in which the prophetic matter can be 
 conveyed. 
 
 The simplest form of Prophecy, and the form of most frequent 
 occurrence, is the Prophetic Discourse. If we call this the coun- 
 The Prophetic terpart of the modern Sermon, we must remember 
 Discourse at the same time that, in a theocracy, the distinc- 
 
 tion of religion and politics vanishes, the sermon and the political 
 harangue become one and the same. The Divine message essen- 
 tial to Prophecy is not to be understood as the Discourse itself, 
 but rather, in theory at least, as the subject or text of the Dis- 
 course, which all the rest is to explain or enforce. In this con- 
 nection it is important to note a word which even in the Bible 
 (The word itself seems to be used as a technical term : — the 
 
 ' Burden ') word translated ' Burden,' in the titles to chapters 
 
 of Prophecy, and in the text itself.' It would appear that this 
 was understood of the actual Divine message, though the term was 
 abused by false prophets as a name under which to clothe their 
 own imaginings. 
 
 Jeremiah Behold, I am against them that prophesy lying dreams, saith the 
 xim. 3J Lord, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, 
 and by their vain boasting: yet I sent them not, nor commanded 
 them ; neither shall they profit this people at all, saith the Lord. 
 And when this people, or the prophet, or a priest, shall ask thee, 
 saying, What is the burden of the Lord ? then shalt thou say unto 
 them. What burden ! I will cast you off, saith the Lord. And as for 
 the prophet, and the priest, and the people, that shall say, The bur- 
 
 1 The word substituted by R.V. (in titles, but not in the text) is ' Oracles ' : this 
 explains the usage by a parallel term in secular literatures. 
 
THE PROPHETIC DISCOURSE 365 
 
 den of the Lord, I will even punish that man and his house. Thus 
 shall ye say every one to his neighbour, and every one to his brother. 
 What hath the Lord answered? and, What hath the Lord spoken? 
 And the burden of the Lord shall ye mention no more : for every 
 man's own word is his burden, and ye pervert the words of the living 
 God, of the Lord of hosts our God. 
 
 In the Prophetic Discourses as they have reached us, however, 
 the text and recommendatory matter seem fused together without 
 distinction. Such merging of a Divine message in the exhortations 
 enforcing it may be illustrated from that which is the prototype 
 of all Prophetic Discourses, — the Ten Commandments. The 
 versions of the Ten Commandments in Exodus and in Deuter- 
 onomy, though each is introduced with the formula, " The Lord 
 spake . . . saying," yet differ, not verbally only, but in substance ; 
 in particular, the reason assigned for the observance of the Sabbath 
 is entirely different in the two books. The natural explanation of 
 this is to understand that the actual commandment inscribed on 
 tables of stone would be limited to the imperative clause, " Thou 
 shalt not make unto thee any graven image," " Remember the 
 Sabbath day, to keep it holy " ; in the simple commandments 
 directed against murder or theft nothing more would be needed, 
 but in the more spiritual commandments comment would be added 
 by Moses, based on his general intercourse with God, and not 
 upon the Divine words of any particular occasion. A similar 
 intermingling of message and exhortation extends throughout the 
 whole literature of Prophecy. And a passage in Ezekiel shows us 
 that, even in the times of the prophets themselves, the rhetorical 
 element in their discourses was coming to be regarded as a sepa- 
 rate interest. 
 
 Son of man, the children of thy people talk of thee by the walls 
 
 and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one 
 
 to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is 
 
 the word that cometh forth from the Lord. . . . And, '^'^^^^'^ 
 
 xxziii. 30 
 lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that 
 
 hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument : for they 
 
 hear thy words, but they do them not. 
 
366 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 When the discourses of Prophecy are analysed as pieces of 
 
 literature, we find, as we should expect, that they do not as a rule 
 
 exhibit any clear structural plan, but rather contain warning, 
 
 description, reflection, intermingling in a fervour of appeal. A 
 
 typical discourse is that which makes the opening 
 
 Tea jili \ ■' ■'■ 
 
 chapter of Isaiah; where the idea of children 
 rebelling against a Divine parent, of the abject condition of the 
 people leading them to fresh sin, of their intentness on sacrifices 
 and neglect of righteousness, the golden hopes held out to them, 
 the picture of universal corruption with the threat of terrible 
 purging that shall leave no more than a small remnant, — all com- 
 bine in a rush of passionate thought that has no need of logical 
 arrangement. 
 
 There are, however, some discourses which have structural as 
 well as other interest. The elaborate manifesto of Isaiah which 
 follows the opening chapter commences with an 
 ideal picture of the mountain of the Lord's house 
 established at the head of the mountains, and all nations flowing 
 to it to learn His ways, beating their swords into ploughshares for 
 an era of universal peace. In the light of such a picture the 
 prophet invites the house of Jacob to walk : and so plunges into 
 denunciatory portrayal of corruption and idolatry, against which 
 he places in contrast the terror of the majesty of the Lord. The 
 general upsetting of natural relations he makes the beginning 
 of judgment on oppression ; the luxury of women he scornfully 
 details, and threatens the nemesis that is coming upon it. From 
 such ideas of judgment the prophet passes, by the image of a 
 young shoot from an old tree, to the remnant of Israel that shall 
 be again beautiful, cleansed from pollution, and blest again with 
 the nightly fire and daily cloud of Divine guidance. So to frame 
 a denunciation between pictures of a golden age at the begin- 
 ning and end, gives an individuality of plan to this deliverance of 
 Isaiah. 
 
 A discourse of Ezekiel, again, has distinctiveness of form given 
 Ezekiei xxxiY to it by its being cast wholly in the mould of 
 
THE PROPHETIC DISCOURSE 367 
 
 pastoral ideas and scenery. God declares Himself against the 
 Shepherds of Israel, that feed themselves and not the sheep. 
 
 Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill the fatlings ; 
 but ye feed not the sheep. The diseased have ye not strengthened, 
 neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound 
 up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which 
 was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost ; but 
 with force and with rigour have ye ruled over them. 
 
 Still under the name of sheep is described the loss of God's people, 
 wandering without rescue until He shall seek them out Himself. 
 
 As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his 
 sheep that are scattered abroad, so will I seek out my sheep; and I 
 will deliver them out of all places whither they have been scattered 
 in the cloudy and dark day. And I will bring them out from the 
 peoples, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into 
 their own land; and I will feed them upon the mountains of Israel, 
 by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited places of the country. 
 
 Among His other gifts, God will feed them with the 'judgment' 
 that makes distinction between oppression and meekness. 
 
 Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have fed upon the good past- 
 ure, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your 
 pasture? and to have drunk of the clear waters, but ye must foul 
 the residue with your feet? And as for my sheep, they eat that 
 which ye have trodden with your feet, and they drink that which ye 
 have fouled with your feet. Therefore thus saith the Lord God 
 unto them : Behold, I, even I, will judge between the fat cattle and 
 the lean cattle. 
 
 As usual, the prophecy works towards the thought of restoration, 
 and a purified people amid ideal surroundings. 
 
 And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, 
 even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their 
 shepherd. And I the Lord will be their God, and my servant 
 David prince among them; I the Lord have spoken it. And I will 
 make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause evil beasts to 
 cease out of the land : and they shall dwell securely in the wilder- 
 
368 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 ness, and sleep in the woods. And I will make them and the places 
 round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come 
 down in its season; there shall be showers of blessing. And the 
 tree of the field shall yield its fruit, and the earth shall yield her 
 increase, and they shall be secure in their land; and they shall know 
 that I am the Lord, when I have broken the bars of their yoke, and 
 have delivered them out of the hand of those that served themselves 
 of them. 
 
 With exquisite tenderness the pastoral imagery has been maintained 
 without a break ; only in the last verse is the image dropped. 
 
 And ye my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, are men, and I am 
 your God, saith the Lord GoD. 
 
 I have said that prediction is only a secondary element of 
 Scriptural prophecy. Still, it has its place, and occasionally a 
 whole discourse is given up to a picture of the future. An inter- 
 esting example is the last of the discourses ascribed to the prophet 
 
 Zechariah. It describes a ' Day of the Lord ' which 
 Zechariah xiv . • „ . ■„ , , , • 
 
 IS to come. All nations will be gathered against 
 
 Jerusalem to battle ; the city will be taken, and suffer the horrors 
 of war, and half its people will go away into captivity, before the 
 Lord appears to save. This salvation seems to echo the deliv- 
 erances of past history. As the Red Sea divided to afford escape 
 from the pursuing Egyptians, so now the Mount of Olives is 
 cloven,- and the fugitives escape through the valley. With a 
 reminiscence of the sun and moon standing still for Joshua, we 
 read of the succession of day and night being interrupted : at the 
 time for evening there is still light, and the delivered people have, 
 not day and not night, but "one day which is known unto the 
 Lord." The nations that warred against Jerusalem are smitten 
 with consuming plagues, the description of which recalls the curse 
 in Deuteronomy. The very land shall change its surface, until 
 Jerusalem alone stands out on high, and from its height healing 
 waters flow on either side to the boundary sea. In Jerusalem the 
 Lord shall reign as king over all the earth : the nations that had 
 
LYRIC PROPHECV 369 
 
 fought against the holy City shall go thither to worship, distant 
 Egypt not excepted, while drought of heaven and plagues of earth 
 shall unite to punish those who fail. A new age of holiness is thus 
 introduced ; when there is no need for traffic ; when all life resolves 
 itself into journeys to the sacred feasts j when holiness is inscribed 
 on the bells of the horses, and the meanest pot in the Lord's house 
 is as holy as the bowls before the altar. 
 
 From the general Prophetic Discourse a small variation brings 
 
 us to Lyric Prophecy. High-strung oratory easily passes into 
 
 lyric verse : the more easily in a language in which 
 
 A ■ 1 T 1- ■ r IT * ^y"= Prophecy 
 
 prose and verse overlap. In prophecies of all types 
 
 lyrics may be interspersed. Thus we have seen in a previous 
 chapter^ how \}a& Book of Zephaniah resolves itself into a single 
 continuous discourse of the Divine weaker, interrupted at inter- 
 vals by lyric strains of comment and application. In the course 
 of other prophecies we come upon bursts of lyric thanksgiving, 
 
 songs of triumph, or 'taunt- songs,' such as that in 
 
 Isaiab xlvii 
 Isaiah over fallen Babylon; these taunt-songs would 
 
 be seen to play a great part in prophetic literature, were it not 
 
 that (as before remarked^) the dirge rhythm on which they are 
 
 founded is missed in our current translations. 
 
 But the term ' Lyric Prophecy ' is most fully applicable where a 
 
 complete discourse is in this form. A striking example is found 
 
 in the early chapters of Isaiah. Its structure is 
 
 antistrophic stanzas of recitative and rhythm : each ^^^'^ 
 
 ^ •' IX. 8-x. 4 
 
 of the four stanzas has an opening couplet, a closing 
 refrain, and in the. centre a quatrain that is gnomic in character, 
 while the intervening portions of prose are exegetical of the rest. 
 Besides this antistrophic effect, the reiteration of the refrain pro- 
 duces an effect of crescendo and advance from the way in which 
 two words in it — 'this' and 'still' — gather increase of meaning 
 with each succeeding stanza. 
 
 1 Above, page 124. 2 Above, page 168. 
 
370 BIBLICAL LlTEliATURE OF fiHOPHECY 
 
 DOOM OF THE NORTH 
 
 The Lord sent a word into Jacob, 
 And it hath lighted upon Israel. 
 
 And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitant of 
 Samaria, that say in pride and in stoutness of heart. 
 
 The bricks are fallen. 
 
 But we will build with hewn stone; 
 The sycomores are cut down, 
 
 But we will change them into cedars. 
 
 Therefore the Lord shall set up on high against him the adversaries 
 of Rezin, and shall stir up his enemies ; the Syrians before, and the 
 Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. 
 
 For all this his anger is not turned away. 
 But his hand is stretched out still ! 
 
 Yet the people hath not turned unto him that smote them. 
 Neither have they sought the Lord of hosts. 
 
 Therefore the Lord will cut off from Israel head and tail, palm- 
 branch and rush, in one day. 
 
 The ancient and the honourable man, 
 
 He is the head; 
 And the prophet that teacheth lies. 
 
 He is the tail. 
 
 For they that lead this people cause them to err; and they that are 
 led of them are destroyed. Therefore the Lord shall not rejoice over 
 their young men, neither shall he have compassion on their father- 
 less and widows : for every one is profane and an evil-doer, and 
 every mouth speaketh folly. 
 
 For all this his anger is not turned away. 
 But his hand is stretched out still ! 
 
LYRIC PROPHECY 371 
 
 For wickedness burneth as the fire; 
 It devoureth the briers and thorns : 
 
 yea, it kindleth in the thickets of the forest, and they roll upward in 
 thick clouds of smoke. Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts is 
 the land burnt up : the people also are as the fuel of fire; no man 
 spareth his brother. 
 
 And one shall snatch on the right hand. 
 
 And be hungry; 
 And he shall eat on the left hand, 
 
 And they shall not be satisfied : 
 
 they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm: Manasseh, 
 Ephraim ; and Ephraim, Manasseh : and they together shall be 
 against Judah. 
 
 For all this his anger is not turned away. 
 But his hand is stretched out stjll! 
 
 Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, 
 And to the writers that write perverseness : 
 
 to turn aside the needy from judgement, and to take away the right 
 of the poor of my people, that widows may be their spoil, and that 
 they may make the fatherless their prey ! 
 
 And what will ye do in the day of visitation. 
 
 And in the desolation which shall come from far? 
 
 To whom will ye flee for help ! 
 
 And where will ye leave your glory? 
 
 They shall only bow down under the prisoners, and shall fall under 
 the slain. 
 
 For all this his anger is not turned away, 
 Put his hand is stretched out STILL! 
 
372 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 An important division of prophetic literature is Symbolic Proph- 
 ecy. If Prophecy in general is in the form of discourses, Sym- 
 bolic prophecies are discourses with texts ; but 
 pfo^hM "^ ^'"'^ '^'^'^^ ^^^^'^ ^y ''^^ prophets are not, like the texts 
 
 of modern sermons, quotations from the sacred writ- 
 ings, but object-texts, that is, external things treated symbolically. 
 Perhaps modern life has approached nearest to such Symbolic 
 Prophecy in the ' Emblem Literature,' now forgotten, but for a 
 century or two the chief reading of the religious world. This 
 Emblem Literature was made up of sermons in verse with hiero- 
 glyphic texts. To take a typical case. One of Quarles's emblems- 
 represents a balance ; in one scale of this balance worlds (rep- 
 resented conventionally by balls with cross handles) are being 
 heaped up ; the other scale contains nothing, but a mouth is seen 
 blowing into it, and this empty scale weighs down the heaped-up 
 worlds on the other side. This hieroglyph is the text : on the 
 Symbolic opposite page a poetic sermon works out with vigour 
 
 Prophecy: The the thought that worldly goods are less than empty 
 Em em breath. In the same way there is an Emblem 
 
 Prophecy which has for its texts, not exactly pictures, but visible 
 things or actions. Jeremiah is commanded to wear a linen girdle 
 in the eyes of the people ; when they have become 
 Jeremiah xiii; accustomed to it he is to take the girdle off and 
 
 xviii. 1-17; XZIV ° 
 
 hide it in a hole of the rock ; several days after he 
 is to show it again, marred and profitable for nothing. This is to 
 be a text, from which he will preach how Judah, that ought to 
 cleave to the Lord as the girdle cleaveth to the figure, shall for 
 their sins be seen to be marred and useless. Or, again, the same 
 prophet is led to watch the potter at work, aiming at one kind of 
 vessel, but if the clay is marred making it at his pleasure into a 
 vessel of a different kind : from this text he will proclaim that 
 Israel in the hands of Jehovah is but the clay in the hands of the 
 potter. Or, attention is called to baskets of figs standing before 
 the Temple, figs of the best quality and figs uneatable : then is 
 spoken the paradox that it is the captives carrie4 ^way to BabyloQ 
 
SYMBOLIC PROPtJECV 373 
 
 who resemble the good figs, and the bad are those who think they 
 have escaped by remaining in the land. 
 
 I have called the emblems texts, but they do not necessarily 
 come at the beginning. A discourse would be specially impres- 
 sive when its close was accompanied with some symboHc action. 
 We find Jeremiah delivering a strain of unmeasured 
 threatening and denunciation, holding all the while jj ^ ' ' 
 
 an earthen bottle in his hand : at the end he dashes 
 the bottle to pieces in token of the irremediable destruction that 
 is to come. On another occasion he sends to the captives in 
 Babylon a written discourse foretelling the total overthrow of the 
 oppressing city : he instructs his deputy, when he has read to 
 the end, to bind the book to a stone and cast it into the 
 Euphrates, emblem of the future when Babylon shall sink to rise 
 no more. 
 
 Sometimes the symbolic text may be no more than a gesture. 
 
 Ezekiel is to set his face towards the mountains of Israel, when he 
 
 proceeds to denounce the idolatries committed on 
 , , . . ■ , 1 ■ 1 1 1 Ezekiel vi. i, ii 
 
 them ; he is to smite with his hands and stamp 
 
 with his foot as a starting-point to a picture of utter ruin. If such 
 
 things as these seem too slight to constitute an emblem, it must 
 
 be recollected that in all prophecy reiteration played a large part. 
 
 In the case of Jonah, so far as we can tell, no discourse is given 
 
 him to speak, but only the cry, "Yet forty days, and (Prophetic 
 
 Nineveh shall be overthrown," to be repeated over Reiteration) 
 
 and over again for a day together. And elsewhere there are 
 
 suggestions of similar reiteration. 
 
 Therefore thou shalt speak unto them this word : Thus saith the 
 Lord, the God of Israel, Every bottle shall be filled 
 with wine : and they shall say unto thee, Do we not 
 know that every bottle shall be filled with wine ? Then shalt thou 
 say unto them, Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will fill all the inhabi- 
 tants of this land, even the kings that sit upon David's throne, and 
 the priests, and the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem 
 with drunkenness. 
 
374 BIBLICAL LtTEkATUR^ OF PROPHECV 
 
 The natural interpretation of this passage is that the apparent 
 
 truism would be repeated by the prophet, as he moved about 
 
 the city, with a persistency designedly irritating, until public 
 
 impatience breaking out in questioning made a state of mind 
 
 favourable for being impressed with the mystic sense of the truism. 
 
 Similar reiteration may be understood in certain discourses of 
 
 Ezekiel, who would ejaculate " An end, an end," or 
 Ezekiel vii. a, 5 • • , , , 
 
 "An evil, an only evil," until curiosity had been 
 
 excited, as by a riddle ; such curiosity would serve to emphasise 
 
 the discourse which answered to those riddling ejaculations. It is 
 
 clear that words so delivered have as much objective force as a 
 
 visible emblem. 
 
 In other cases the symbolic action from which discourses would 
 
 take their departure seems to have been sustained dumb show : 
 
 the sermon would be acted first, and preached afterwards. A 
 
 notable example of this is the mimic siege which formed the basis 
 
 of so much of Ezekiel's prophesying. 
 
 Ezekiel Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and 
 IV. i-v. 4 pourtray upon it a city, even Jerusalem : and lay siege against it, and 
 build forts against it, and cast up a mount against it ; set camps also 
 against it, and plant battering rams against it round about. And 
 take thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between 
 thee and the city : and set thy face toward it, and it shall be besieged, 
 and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house 
 of Israel. 
 
 Moreover lie thou upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the 
 house of Israel upon it : according to the number of the days that 
 thou shalt lie upon it, thou shalt bear their iniquity. For I have 
 appointed the years of their iniquity to be unto thee a number of 
 days, even three hundred and ninety days : so shalt thou bear the 
 iniquity of the house of Israel. And again, when thou hast accom- 
 plished these, thou shalt lie on thy right side, and shalt bear the 
 iniquity of the house of Judah : forty days, each day for a year, have 
 I appointed it unto thee. And thou shalt set thy face toward the 
 siege of Jerusalem, with thine arm uncovered ; and tliou shalt prophesy 
 against it. And, behold, I lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not 
 turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast accomplished the 
 
SYMBOLIC PROPHECY 375 
 
 days of thy siege. Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and 
 beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, 
 and make thee bread thereof; according to the number of the days 
 that thou shall lie upon thy side, even three hundred and ninety days, 
 shalt thou eat thereof. And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be 
 by weight, twenty shekels a day : from time to time shalt thou eat it. 
 And thou shalt drink water by measure, the sixth part of an hin : 
 from time to time shalt thou drink. 
 
 From various passages in the Book of Ezekiel we are able to 
 
 form an idea of the mode in which such a commission would be 
 
 executed. It was the custom for companies of the elders of Israel 
 
 to wait upon the prophet at his house, and sit before 
 
 him until " the hand of the Lord should fall upon 
 
 him." From the historical books we know that such visits to the 
 
 prophets were periodical, belonging especially to new moons and 
 
 Sabbaths ; but a passage of Ezekiel suggests that 
 
 among the exiles they took place daily. We may 
 
 suppose then that at the period in question the prophet would, for 
 
 the whole time indicated in the above passage, receive the daily 
 
 deputation with the same mimic siege, now taking the part of the 
 
 besiegers and now of the besieged ; and from this constant text 
 
 he would enlarge upon the various topics of sin and judgment that 
 
 each day's inspiration brought to his mind. The matter contained 
 
 in the chapter that follows is no more than the general substance 
 
 of the long series of discourses. 
 
 We even find a change of demeanour and manner of life, in so 
 
 marked an individual as a prophet, made an emblem under which 
 
 a Divine message could be conveyed. The Lord 
 
 „ , . , , , . ... . , Ezekiel xxiv. 15 
 
 takes from Ezekiel the desire of his eyes with a 
 
 stroke : yet he is neither to mourn nor weep. This loss of a 
 
 beloved wife borne without signs of grief is to be a symbol of 
 
 sorrows coming upon Israel that are too deep for tears. A still 
 
 more painful experience is laid (in reality or in a 
 
 , , ^^ , . Hosea i-iii 
 
 parable) upon the prophet Hosea, who is com- 
 manded to take a wife from the ranks of fallen women : his family 
 
376 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 life, and the efforts of the prophet to reclaim his charge, are a 
 living text for ministry to a people unfaithful to their God. 
 
 I have represented the emblem as standing to the rest of the 
 prophetic discourse in the relation which a modern text holds to 
 its sermon : and this I believe to be an important principle of 
 interpretation. At the same time we must recognise that, in 
 Ezekiel, there are cases in which the symbolism extends far 
 beyond the limits of a text. There are discourses of this prophet 
 which seem to constitute a distinct species of literature in them- 
 selves, a species distinguished by the mingling of oratory and 
 sustained dumb show in nearly equal proportions. One of these 
 „ , . ,, „. may be entitled The Sword of the Lord. Here a 
 
 Ezekiel's Dis- ' 
 
 course of the drawn sword may serve as emblem text. But as 
 Sword: xxi jj^g theme is pursued a popular Song of the Sword 
 
 mingles with the discourse, and its augmenting lines reflect the 
 gathering spirit of combat. 
 
 A sword, 
 
 A sword, 
 It is sharpened, 
 
 And also furbished : 
 It is sharpened that it may make a slaughter; 
 
 It is furbished that it may be as lightning ! 
 And it is given to be furbished that it may be handled ; 
 
 The sword, it is sharpened, yea it is furbished, to give it into 
 the hand of the slayer. 
 
 Combined with this we have, now mystery of rumour acted so 
 vividly that the prophet's audience cry out, What is it? now the 
 careless scorn of the foe, and anon his wild panic when the sword 
 falls. Still the Song of the Sword goes on with augmenting fer- 
 vour to a climax. 
 
 Ah ! it is made as lightning ! 
 It is pointed for slaughter — 
 
 Gather thee together, go to the right ; 
 
 Set thyself in array, go to the left — . 
 ■yVhithersoever thy face is set. 
 
SYMBOLIC PROPHECY 377 
 
 Next, we see the sword-point tracing a map on the earth, a 
 meeting of ways, at which the Babylonian conqueror stays to 
 choose between Ammon on the left and Jerusalem on the right : 
 another vividly acted scene of panic brings out the result of his 
 choice. Yet again we have the sword and the song, this time 
 connected mockingly with Israel's foe the Ammonites, who exult 
 in their opportunity : the sudden plunging of the sword in its 
 sheath accompanies the declaration that Ammon shall perish in 
 the country that gave it birth.^ So permeated is the mind of this 
 prophet with symbolism that, in cases where visible emblems are 
 impossible, we find often the place supplied by literary imagery, 
 a single image being sustained throughout the whole of a discourse. 
 It is" this which has given us the beautiful discourse, already noted,^ 
 dominated throughout by pastoral ideas and scenery; and we 
 shall see in a later chapter how Ezekiel denounces the Venice of 
 his age under the sustained image of the Wreck of the goodly 
 Ship Tyre. 
 
 When we consider the number and variety in prophetic litera- 
 ture of these object- texts — symbolic articles, symbolic gestures 
 and ejaculations, symbolic demeanour and manner of life — we 
 are able to see how this Emblem Prophecy has its prototype in 
 the grand Ceremonial Worship of the Tabernacle and Temple. 
 The Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant, the Shewbread, 
 the rites of sacrifice or of the Scapegoat, all these are perennial 
 emblems of those ideas in Hebrew religion which are eternal and 
 of constant application. In the same spirit Prophecy uses symbols 
 to fulfil its function of bringing the principles of the religion to 
 bear upon the detailed exigencies and occasional problems of 
 public and social life. And in the light of this analogy we cease 
 to be surprised at the minuteness with which, in such a case as 
 Ezekiel's siege, the emblematic action is prescribed; the ceremonial 
 
 1 For other examples, compare (in Appendix I) the discourses on the Caldron, 
 on StuiT for removing; and the Modern Reader'? Bible volume, ol Ezekiel, page? 
 xiv-xix, 191-2. 
 
 8 Above, page j66. 
 
378 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 teaching of the prophet is carried out with a reverent fidelity to 
 detail as great as in the elaborated worship of the Temple itself. 
 The conception of a prophetic emblem develops readily into 
 another conception of considerable importance, 
 ecy and the'' " When a prophecy had reference to future time, 
 ' Sign of the and was illustrated with some symbol that was not 
 transitory but durable, the emblem would remain 
 to be confronted with the fulfilled prophecy, and so would vindi- 
 cate the authority of the prophet. A prophetic emblem would 
 then become a ' sign of the prophet.' Jeremiah, carried by force 
 into Egypt, consoles his fellow-captives with pre- 
 jeremiah xUii. Mictions of the conquest of Egypt by Nebuchad- 
 rezzar ; he takes great stones and hides them in 
 the mortar at the entrance of Pharaoh's palace in Tahpanhes, 
 declaring that the conqueror " will set his throne upon these 
 stones." Though the word is not used, yet it is clear that this 
 emblematic action would become a ' sign ' of Jeremiah's prophetic 
 function, when the event should take place. Such 'signs' are 
 part of the recognised machinery of prophecy. Isaiah bids Ahaz, 
 
 in a certain political crisis, "Ask thee a sign of the 
 Isaiah vii. lo 1^1 , ■ ■ , . 
 
 Lord thy God ; ask it either in the depth, or in the 
 height above." When Ahaz in his panic holds back, the prophet 
 himself volunteers the sign of a virgin conceiving and bearing a 
 son and calling his name Immanuel : that child shall not be old 
 enough to know good from evil before the prophet's prediction 
 concerning the war shall be seen to be fulfilled.' It is to be 
 
 1 In regard to the meaning of this much disputed passage, it is to be observed 
 that the difficulties disappear if the words of the prophet be understood to apply, 
 not to any virgin of Judah (real or idealised), but to a woman of the enemy's land. 
 The expression 'Immanuel' occurs three times, (i) First, in the passage vii. 10- 
 16. The situation here is that the junction of Israel with Syria has thrown the 
 princes of Judah into a panic, and the prophet strengthens them by pouring con- 
 tempt upon the enemy. So elated and confident at this moment (he says) is the 
 enemy that a woman of their land gives her new-born child the proud name, 'God 
 with us ' : but that child will soon be feeding on famine fare [that ' butter and 
 honey' is a name for famine fare is shown by verse 22] : for before the child is old 
 enough to distinguish good food from evil the enemy's land whose allied kings 
 cause this panic to Judah shall be forsaken by these kings. (2) The phrase occurs 
 
SYMBOLIC PROPHECY 379 
 
 observed, however, that the word ' sign ' is also, in prophetic liter- 
 ature, applied to what we have here called the emblem ; thus 
 Ezekiel carrying on his siege, or refraining from 
 tears at his wife's death, is pronounced by the Lord xxiv'aV ^' 
 to be a 'sign' to the people. The variation between 
 the two meanings of the word — between the ' sign ' which is a 
 symbolic illustration of the prophecy, and the. ' sign ' which is a 
 miraculous vindication of the prophet — is the index of an impor- 
 tant tendency in the attitude of the public mind towards prophecy, 
 by which the spiritual force of prophetic utterances came to be 
 more and more ignored, and the element of prediction and miracle 
 grew into emphasis. So far has this tendency prevailed in the age 
 of the New Testament that the constant and indignant complaint 
 of Jesus Christ is against a "generation that seeketh a sign.'' 
 
 The Prophecy of Vision is, in its elementary form, hardly dis- 
 tinguished from Emblem Prophecy : the emblem 
 texts are merely presented in supernatural vision, g^ TjJe vis^n 
 instead of being seen by the ordinary eyesight. 
 The books of Amos and Zechariah are full of such vision emblems. 
 But the supreme example of them is Ezekiel's Vision of the Valley 
 of Dry Bones. He is carried out in the spirit of 
 
 ., ., rill Ezekiel xxxvii 
 
 the Lord and set down in the midst of the valley ; 
 the valley is full of bones, and lo, they are very dry. He is com- 
 manded to prophesy : and as he pours forth his speech there is 
 thundering and earthquake ; bone comes to his bone, flesh and 
 
 a second time in viii. 5-8. This whole paragraph is addressed to the enemy, Israel ; 
 and the Assyrian, under the image of a flood, is described as overflowing the land 
 of Israel [there is no reference to Judah except the single clause, " he shall sweep 
 onward into Judah "] ; the climax is, the flood shall fill thy land, O boaster of " God 
 with us." (3) The third recurrence of the phrase is in viii. 10, where the fsilse boast 
 of Israel is claimed for Judah as a truth ; lay your schemes (the prophet cries to 
 the allied enemies') and they shall come to nought, for " God is with us," Of course 
 this explanation relates to the primary interpretation of the piece of historic proph- 
 ecy; it need not interfere with any theological use of the term 'Immanuel' as a 
 secondary interpretation ; indeed, the third passage, which claims the true ' Imman- 
 uel ' for Judah, is basis enough for such interpretation. — This has been discussed 
 at lengih in the Modern Reader's Bible (^Isaiah, pages 223-230). 
 
380 BIBLICAL LITJERATURE OF PROPHECV 
 
 skin cover them ; from the four winds comes breath, and breathes 
 upon the slain, and they live, and stand upon their feet, an exceed- 
 ing great array. Thus impressively is elaborated, in the region 
 of the supernatural, a symbolic text, from which Ezekiel preaches 
 that Israel with its dead hopes shall come out of its graves, and 
 feel the life-giving breath of the Lord. 
 
 But this elementary conception of Vision Prophecy undergoes 
 The Vision Em- ^ development similar to that traced in the last 
 biem and section. As the prophetic emblem, when applied 
 
 'Revelation' ^^ futurity, tended to change into the 'sign of the 
 prophet,' so the vision emblem develops into the ' Revelation,' as 
 that word is generally understood, namely, the supernatural revela- 
 tion of the future. It is worth while to distinguish 
 thJ Future " three types among such Visions of Revelation. 
 First, we have the case in which the vision is sym- 
 bolic and supernatural, whereas the interpretation comes by natural 
 means. The fingers of a hand writing on the wall startle Belshaz- 
 zar's feast with mystic words : Daniel by his wisdom discovers 
 the meaning, and the destruction that is about to come. In the 
 second type an interpreter is provided by supernatural means, 
 and the vision is given by him in direct speech. Thus Daniel, 
 troubling over the mysteries of times and seasons, feels himself 
 'touched' by an angel at the time of the evening oblation, and 
 Gabriel foretells what shall come to pass in terms that are direct, 
 however difficult. To this second category may be referred the 
 Calls of the Prophets : visionary scenes in which God himself 
 appears under symbolic forms, but the commission is given to the 
 prophet in plain language. In the third type both the vision and 
 the interpretation are symbolic and supernatural; as where the 
 future interchange of dynasties is conveyed to Daniel in the vision 
 of the Four Beasts, or the vision of the Ram and the He-goat, 
 while the significance of what he sees is explained by a personage 
 of the vision itself. 
 
 But it is important to distinguish from this another meaning of 
 the word 'Revelation'; we find visions that are revelations, not 
 
SYMBOLIC PROPHECY 381 
 
 of the future, but of the law and pattern of things. As the one 
 kind of vision is an extension of the prophetic dream, 
 so the other has for its prototype the original reve- Law'and Heal 
 lation to Moses on the mount of the ceremonial 
 law and the pattern of the Tabernacle. Important examples of the 
 two types of Revelation are Ezekiel's companion visions of Jeru- 
 salem under Judgment and Jerusalem Restored, 
 which cover no less than thirteen chapters of his ^^° xi-x™hi" 
 book. The two are separated, in conformity with 
 the general arrangement of Ezekiel's writings, and their division 
 between prophecies of judgment and of restoration : 
 but that the two are parts of one whole is expressly 
 said in the vision itself. In the first case Ezekiel is carried " in 
 the visions of God " to Jerusalem, and beholds the Glory of 
 the God of Israel as on the occasion of his own call. He is made 
 to dig through the Temple wall and see idolatrous practices car- 
 ried on in its chambers and precincts ; agents of destruction do 
 their work before his eyes, and he sees the city sprinkled with 
 ashes taken from between the cherubim ; he is himself called to 
 bear a part in the work of judgment, and as he prophesies he sees 
 one of the leaders of iniquity fall dead. All the scene so described 
 makes up the symbol of this vision. We are not to understand 
 that the weeping for Tammuz, or the creeping abominations, were 
 necessarily to be seen in just the spot where Ezekiel beholds them, 
 any more than we are to understand that Pelatiah actually died at 
 the time when Ezekiel was under the prophetic spell. The whole 
 is a symbolic representation of the general idolatry and desecration 
 of the sacred city. The companion vision shows a great change 
 from this symbolism. The same supernatural agency transports 
 the prophet to the same spot. But what he sees is a city and 
 temple gradually taking shape, and measured with exactness of 
 proportions which he is commanded to store in his memory. The 
 Glory of the God of Israel proclaims this the place of his throne 
 for ever, and, in phrases which seem to echo Exodus, calls upon 
 the house of Israel tg "measure the pattern," or to receive this as 
 
382 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 "the law of the house." Then is continued the ordering of city, 
 temple, ritual, and even division of the land of Palestine, with a 
 minuteness which seems like the former revelation on Sinai adapted 
 to a new dispensation. Throughout the whole nine chapters there 
 is scarcely anything that can be called symbolic, except the con- 
 ception of the living waters issuing from the Temple and flowing 
 to fertiUse the Dead Sea, on the banks of which are the never- 
 withering trees, with their fruits renewed month by month and 
 their leaves for healing. In the course, then, of this extended 
 vision we are able to watch the transition from one type of revela- 
 tion to another ; while the symbolic is the distinction of the one, 
 in the other the symbolic passes into the ideal. In the interpreta- 
 tion of Prophecy it is of the utmost importance to distinguish to 
 which of these two types of revelation any particular vision belongs. 
 
 SymboUc Prophecy has detained us a long time ; it remains to 
 point out .that, in addition to Emblem Prophecy 
 ec'"°'The Parable ^^^ ^'^^^oxi Prophecy, it includes a third branch,— 
 the Prophetic Parable. This is again a sermon 
 with a symbolic text : the only difference is that the emblem is 
 here narrated instead of being visibly presented. Such a para- 
 bolic text has its ultimate basis in the Fable of 
 Isaiah v 
 
 primitive literature."^ Isaiah's Parable of the Vine- 
 yard, so favourably placed and carefully tended, yet bringing forth 
 wild grapes, is amongst the most familiar portions of prophetic 
 literature. The same symbol is differently used in 
 xvfi 'xxm' ^"' ^ parable of Ezekiel, who treats the vine as the 
 one wood that is profitable for no use. This latter 
 prophet is specially fond of parabolic discourse, and his favourite 
 
 1 The Fable as a literary form is defined by its conveying human interest under 
 the disguise of inferior beings. It is observable that the two specimens of the 
 primitive Fable in Scripture {Judges ix. 8-15 and II Kings xiv. 9) are of the kind 
 that ascribe human thoughts to things of the vegetable world. The other great 
 division of Fables, that which puts human speech into the mouth of brutes, is not 
 represented in the Bible, unless, as some commentators suppose, the incident of 
 Balaam and his ass be such a Fable incorporated in the narrative. 
 
PHOPhMtIc intercourse 383 
 
 symbol seems to be that of an unfaithful spouse ; in a way peculiar 
 to himself he works out this theme with a wonderful combination 
 of tenderness and unsparing plainness of speech. It is hardly 
 necessary to remark upon the prominence assumed in a later age 
 by this particular type of discourse : of the supreme Prophet of the 
 New Testament it is said that "without a parable spake he not." 
 
 Prophetic Intercourse makes a literary division that does not 
 need lengthy discussion. The intercourse of the prophet with 
 God constitutes legitimate matter of prophecy. 
 Besides the visions of their call to the ofiEce of Prophetic inter- 
 prophet, both Jeremiah and Ezekiel have set forth q^^^ 
 in their books communings which do not seem 
 intended for publication to the people. We find also Dialogues of 
 Intercession (either standing alone, or merged in other prophe- 
 cies), of which the great prototype is Abraham's intercession for 
 Sodom. 
 
 Again, there is the intercourse of the prophet with enquirers. 
 From the earliest history we read of persons ' enquiring of the 
 Lord,' and receiving oracles in reply. Thus Re- 
 bekah heard before their birth the destiny of her (^) '^"•' ^nquir- 
 twin children ; Saul enquiring found no answer, 
 " by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.'' We find, as a 
 regular custom, that deputations visit the prophet, and wait till 
 inspiration falls upon him, and so receive his Response. With 
 this is connected what may be called an artificial 
 form of prophecy, in which there is no actual (^''^1^'=*^^ 
 interview between the prophet and another inter- 
 locutor, but the discourse takes the form of a reply to an imagi- 
 nary objection or interruption. The whole of Malachi seems 
 constructed in this form of Dialectic Prophecy. Its paragraphs 
 uniformly take a shape that may be thus represented : 
 
 A Complaint 
 
 An interposed Objection 
 The answering Discourse 
 
384 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 In some cases the objection is duplicated, as may be illustrated 
 by the following brief condensation : 
 
 Instead of honouring, the priests despise God's name. 
 
 Wherein despise it? 
 In offering polluted bread upon his altar. 
 
 Wherein polluted? 
 The Answering Discourse puts the cheapening of offerings made to 
 . the Lord, and how the ideal of the priesthood is reversed. 
 
 Once more, Prophecy includes the intercourse of the prophet 
 with the world in general. The books narrate Incidents, like the 
 conspiracy of his native Anathoth against Jeremiah, 
 World' * °'' ^^ burning of his roll by the king, or the cast- 
 ing of Daniel into a den of lions ; or Controversies, 
 like that stirred up by Jeremiah's wearing the emblem of the yoke. 
 These Incidents (illustrations of which are given in the Table of 
 Prophecy) make an approach to the Epic Prophecy discussed 
 in a former book. More than this, the department of Prophecy 
 overlaps with that of History, as whole sections of the prophetic 
 books show. What Nathan was to David, that the whole suc- 
 cession of greater and minor prophets were to later history. 
 The secular kingship had its orders of officials ; the order of 
 prophets were the representatives of the higher theocracy, and 
 their action in each crisis makes a part at once of Prophecy 
 and History. 
 
 We find ourselves on a different literary plane when we come 
 to Dramatic Prophecy. To constitute this a scene or situation 
 
 must be presented entirely by dialogue, without 
 Prophecy ^"^^ description or comment from the prophet, 
 
 except so far as he may be a party to the scene. 
 These dramatic scenes are highly interesting ; but the absence 
 in ancient literatures of any attempt to indicate the speakers 
 in passages of dialogue has led to much obscurity and misinter- 
 pretation. 
 
DRAMATIC PROPHECY 385 
 
 A simple illustration occurs in the Book of Micah, and may 
 be entitled, 'The Lord's Controversy before the Mountains!' 
 Jehovah calls upon the Mountains to hear his 
 
 .... , , , . ,. , Micah vi. i-8 
 
 controversy with his people ; and himself proceeds 
 
 to arraign Israel, rehearsing his long-continued kindnesses, and 
 
 citing Balaam as his witness to the blessings bestowed on Jacob. 
 
 Then the other party to the controversy is afraid to p.ut in an 
 
 appearance. 
 
 Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before 
 the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with 
 calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of 
 rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall I give my first- 
 born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 
 
 The Mountains may then be understood to pronounce judgment. 
 
 He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good ; and what doth the 
 Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to 
 walk humbly with thy God ? 
 
 This dramatic scene is immediately followed by another some- 
 what more extended in form. The passage is headed : " The 
 voice of the Lord crieth unto the city, and the 
 
 /• • 1 -11 1 , mi • . , Micah vi. g-vii 
 
 man of wisdom will, see thy name. ' This title 
 
 suggests that we have in ' the Man of Wisdom ' an addition to 
 what may be called the natural dramatis personcB, namely, God, 
 the Prophet, and the offending People, which last may in this 
 case be termed the Men of Folly. The voice of God is heard 
 denouncing injustice, violence, and the " statutes of Omri " ; 
 wounding, humiliation, famine, are threatened, until the people 
 of the wicked city shall become a desolation and a hissing. This 
 interposition of Jehovah throws the wicked of the city into con- 
 fusion, while the wise see in it their salvation. 
 
 The Men of Folly. — Woe is me! for I am as when they have 
 gathered the summer fruits, as the grape gleanings of the vintage : 
 there is no cluster to eat; nor first-ripe fig which my soul desired. 
 
386 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 The godly man is perished out of the earth, and there is none upright 
 among men : they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his 
 brother with a net. Both hands are put forth for evil to do it; 
 the prince asketh, and the judge is ready for a reward; and the 
 great man, he uttereth the mischief of his soul : thus they weave it 
 together. The best of them is as a brier : the straightest is as it 
 were taken from a thorn hedge : the day of thy watchmen, even thy 
 visitation, is come; now shall be their perplexity. Trust ye not in a 
 friend, put ye not confidence in a guide: keep the doors of thy 
 mouth from her that Ueth in thy bosom. For the son dishonoureth 
 the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter- 
 in-law against her mother-in-law; a man's enemies are the men of 
 his own house. 
 
 The Man of Wisdom. — But as for me, I will look unto the LORD; 
 I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me. 
 Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, 1 shall arise; 
 when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me. I will 
 bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against 
 him; until he plead my cause, and execute judgement for me: he 
 will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness. 
 Then mine enemy shall see it, and shame shall cover her; which 
 said unto me. Where is the Lord thy God? Mine eyes shall behold 
 her ; now shall she be trodden down as the mire of the streets. 
 
 The voice of God is now heard in tones of comfort : it pro- 
 claims the rebuilding of the city's walls, and (after an echoing cry 
 from the Man of Wisdom) describes marvels of restoration to 
 equal the old wonders done in Egypt : the oppressing nations 
 shall come creeping out of their hiding-places, trembling with 
 fear of the Deliverer. Then the Man of Wisdom brings the scene 
 to a conclusion. 
 
 The Man of Wisdom. — Who is a God like unto thee, that par- 
 doneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of 
 his heritage? he retaineth not his anger forever, because he delighteth 
 in mercy. He will turn again and have compassion upon us; he will 
 tread our iniquities under foot : and thou wilt cast all their sins into 
 the depths of the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and 
 the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our fathers 
 from the days of old. 
 
DRAMATIC PROPHECY 387 
 
 A slight variation from this simple dramatic type is afforded by 
 those prophecies in which only a single speaker is presented, — 
 God : but the alternations in the Divine mind between judgment 
 and compassion produce all the effect of dialogue. The Divine 
 Yearning is pictured in this way by Hosea. 
 
 God. — When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my 
 son out of Egypt. — 
 
 As they called them, so they went from them : they Hosea 
 sacrificed unto the Baalim, and burned incense to graven ^J- '"'' 
 images. — 
 
 Yet I taught Ephraim to go ; I took them on my arms ; but they 
 knew not that I healed them. I drew them with cords of a man, 
 with bands of love; and I was to them as they that take off the 
 yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat before them. — 
 
 He shall not return into the land of Egypt; but the Assyrian shall 
 be his king, because they refused to return. And the sword shall 
 fall upon his cities, and shall consume his bars, and devour them, 
 because of their own counsels. And my people are bent to back- 
 sliding from me : though they call them to him that is on high, none 
 at all will lift himself up. — 
 
 How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, 
 Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as 
 Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my compassions are kin- 
 dled together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will 
 not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the 
 Holy One in the midst of thee : and I will not come in wrath. 
 They shall walk after the Lord, who shall roar like a lion : for he 
 shall roar, and the children shall come trembling from the west. 
 They shall come trembling as a bird out of Egypt, and as a dove out 
 of the land of Assyria: and I will make them to dwell in their 
 houses, saith the Lord. 
 
 Later on the introduction of another speaker extends mono- 
 logue into dialogue. 
 
 God, — When Ephraim spake with trembling, he exalted Hosea 
 himself in Israel : but when he offended in Baal, he died, xiil-ziv 
 And now they sin more and more, and have made them molten 
 images of their silver, even idols according to their own understand- 
 ing, all of them the work of the craftsmen : they say of them. Let 
 
388 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 the men that sacrifice kiss the calves. Therefore they shall be as the 
 morning cloud, and as the dew that passeth early away, as the chaff 
 that is driven with the whirlwind out of the threshing-floor, and as 
 the smoke out of the chimney. — 
 
 Yet I am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt; and thou 
 knowest no god but me, and beside me there is no saviour. I did 
 know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. Accord- 
 ing to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their 
 heart was exalted : therefore have they forgotten me. — 
 
 Therefore am I unto them as a Uon : as a leopard will I watch by 
 the way : I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, 
 and will rend the caul of their heart : and there will I devour them 
 hke a lion; the wild beast shall tear them. It is thy destruction, 
 O Israel, that thou art against me, against thy help. Where now is 
 thy king, that he may save thee in all thy cities ? and thy judges, of 
 whom thou saidst. Give me a king and princes? I have given thee 
 a king in mine anger, and have taken him away in my wrath. The 
 iniquity of Ephraim is bound up; his sin is laid up in store. The 
 sorrows of a travailing woman shall come upon him : he is an unwise 
 son; for it is time he should not tarry in the place of the breaking 
 forth of children. — 
 
 I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem 
 them from death : O death, where are thy plagues? O grave, where 
 is thy destruction ? — 
 
 Repentance shall be hid from mine eyes. Though he be fruitful 
 among his brethren, an east wind shall come, the breath of the Lord 
 coming up from the wilderness, and his spring shall become dry, and 
 his fountain shall be dried up : it shall spoil the treasure of all 
 pleasant vessels. Samaria shall bear her guilt ; for she hath rebelled 
 against her God: they shall fall by the sword; their infants shall be 
 dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up. 
 
 Repentant Israel. — O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for 
 thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words, and return 
 unto the Lord : say unto him, " Take away all iniquity, and receive 
 us graciously : so will we render as bullocks the offering of our lijps. 
 Asshur shall not save us ; we will not ride upon horses : neither will 
 we say any more to the work of our hands. Ye are our gods: for in 
 thee the fatherless findeth mercy." 
 
 God. — I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely : for 
 mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew unto 
 Israel : he shall blossom as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Leba- 
 
DRAMATIC PROPHECY 389 
 
 non. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive 
 tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They that dwell under his shadow 
 shall return; they shall revive as the corn, and blossom as the vine: 
 the scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon. 
 
 p,phraim, — What have I to do any more with idols? 
 
 God. — I have answered, and will regard him. 
 
 Ephraim. — I am like a green fir tree — 
 
 God. — From me is thy fruit found. 
 
 We have thus seen the prophetic literature of the Bible assum- 
 ing very various forms. Besides the simple record of intercourse 
 with God or with the people, the prophet's message may be an 
 elaborate discourse ; the discourse may have a symbolic text, and 
 so present the varieties of emblem, vision, and parable ; the 
 prophecy may clothe itself in lyric poetry, or it may be presented 
 in a dramatic scene. There still remain to be mentioned two 
 kinds of prophecy of such importance from the literary standpoint 
 that they must be discussed in separate chapters. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 FORMS OF PROPHETIC LITERATURE : THE DOOM SONG 
 
 Among forms of Prophecy there is one which has a distinctive- 
 ness and prominence in the Bible, and from the literary point of 
 view so special an interest, that it seems proper in ^j^^ ^^^^ ^ 
 this work to treat it in a chapter by itself. This is as a form of 
 the Doom Song : a prophetic utterance directed ^"P'^^'^y 
 against some particular city, nation, or country. The kingdoms 
 of Israel, however unique their position in the history of mankind, 
 yet in their own age formed part of a network of states. There 
 were neighbour peoples, like the Philistines or Syrians, kindred 
 races, such as Moabites, Edomites, Ammonifes, the maritime 
 powers of Tyre and Sidon, and others : all stretching like a chain 
 between the two world empires of Egypt on the south and Assyria 
 on the northeast. Deliverance from one of these empires formed 
 the starting-point of Israel's history, and into the other she was 
 destined to be absorbed ; meanwhile the ceaseless fluctuations of 
 power and of mutual relations between all these nations and em- 
 pires imposed a continual foreign policy on the kingdoms of Israel 
 and Judah. The prophets exercised influence in this foreign 
 policy, as well as in domestic questions. And, over and above 
 questions of temporary policy, there was the perpetual function of 
 Israel as a nation to uphold the worship of the true God amidst 
 nations of idolaters ; and the constant witnesses to this were the 
 prophets. One product of such prophetic ministry was this 
 denunciatory discourse or Doom Song. 
 
 39° 
 
THE DOOM SONG ^391 
 
 There is a remarkable passage in Jeremiah which may well 
 serve as preface to a discussion of the whole subject. 
 
 XXV. 15 For thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, unto me : Take the 
 cup of the wine of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to 
 whom I send thee, to drink it. And they shall drink, and reel to and 
 fro, and be mad, because of the sword that I will send among them. 
 Then took I the cup at the Lord's hand, and made all the nations 
 to drink, unto whom the Lord had sent me : to wit, Jerusalem, and 
 the cities of Judah, and the kings thereof, and the princes thereof, to 
 make them a desolation, an astonishment, an hissing, and a curse; 
 as it is this day; Pharaoh king of Egypt, and his servants, and his 
 princes, and all his people ; and all the mingled people, and all the 
 kings of the land of Uz, and all the kings of the land of the Philis- 
 tines, and Ashkelon, and Gaza, and Ekron, and the remnant of 
 Ashdod; Edom, and Moab, and the children of Ammon; and all 
 the kings of Tyre, and all the kings of Sidon, and the kings of the 
 isle which is beyond the sea; Dedan, and Tema, and Buz, and all 
 that have the corners of their hair polled; and all the kings of Ara- 
 bia, and all the kings of the mingled people that dwell in the wilder- 
 ness; and all the kings of Zimri, and all the kings of Elam, and all 
 the kings of the Medes ; and all the kings of the north, far and near, 
 one with another; and all the kingdoms of the world, which are 
 upon the face of the earth: and the king of Sheshach shall drink 
 after them. And thou shalt say unto them. Thus saith the Lord of 
 hosts, the God of Israel : Drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and 
 fall, and rise no more, because of the sword which I will send among 
 you. And it shall be, if they refuse to take the cup at thine hand 
 to drink, then shalt thou say unto them. Thus saith the Lord of 
 hosts : Ye shall surely drink. For, lo, I begin to work evil at the 
 city which is called by my name, and should ye be utterly unpun- 
 ished? Ye shall not be unpunished : for I will call for a sword upon 
 all the inhabitants of the earth, saith the Lord of hosts. Therefore 
 prophesy thou against them all these words, and say unto them, The 
 Lord shall roar from on high, and utter his voice from his holy habi- 
 tation; he shall mightily roar against his fold; he shall give a shout, 
 as they that tread the grapes, against all the inhabitants of the 
 earth. A noise shall come even to the end of the earth; for the 
 Lord hath a controversy with the nations, he will plead with all 
 flesh; as for the wicked, he will give them to the sword, saith the 
 Lord. 
 
392 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 The Doom Songs then are the pourings out of " the cup of the 
 Lor(J's Fury" against particular kingdoms, such as the words 
 of Jeremiah suggest. Their prototype is the primitive Curse on 
 
 Canaan : 
 
 . . Cursed be Canaan : 
 
 A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. 
 
 They are indignant denunciations of idolatry and vice ; prophetic 
 pictures of doom to come in spite of all appearances to the 
 contrary ; realistic pictures of overthrow and desolation ; wails as 
 over the dead, soon changing to taunts from victims to a fallen 
 oppressor. They have been compared to the Satires and Philip- 
 pics of other literatures : and it is true t^at they give scope to the 
 literary impulses which in other cases have produced these forms. 
 But there is a wide difference of tone between the Biblical denun- 
 ciation and its secular counterparts. I would rather say that the 
 Doom Song is to the Satire what Tragedy is to Comedy; the 
 Doom Song is to the Philippic what Poetry is to Prose. 
 
 Coming to particulars, we may note the difference between 
 the brief, oracular, almost enigmatic utterances which seem to be 
 the earlier forms of doom, and the elaborate invectives of later 
 times, upon which all the resources of literature are concentrated. 
 
 Of the earlier type there can be no better illustration than a 
 series of four ' Oracles ' in Isaiah, which, however 
 
 e ear ler or obscure their historic references may be, seem by 
 
 their internal resemblances to constitute a unity. 
 
 Their interest lies, not so much in the events they foreshadow, as 
 
 The Watchman: '" ^^ ^^y ^^^ S'^^ poetic realisation to the 
 Isaiah xxi- prophetic attitude. They are bound together by 
 
 ^''"" '"• underlying imagery of a prophet keeping vigil on 
 
 the eastern boundary of the holy land, with his watchman still 
 further in advance, both peering through the darkness of future 
 history to catch the first signs of the Lord's dealing with his foes. 
 The first oracle has its title from the " wilderness of the sea," that 
 is, the region of Tigris and Euphrates, and brings out the fall of 
 the empire that is the eastern boundary of the prophet's world. 
 
THE DOOM SONG 393 
 
 It has the usual mingling of prose and lyric verse : the prose puts 
 the prophet's position of vigil, and the agitation which his vision 
 produces in his own heart, while snatches of verse convey gleams 
 of vision, or words of the watchman, or even the call of the Lord 
 to the destroying foe. 
 
 THE ORACLE OF THE WILDERNESS OF THE SEA 
 
 As whirlwinds in the South sweep through, 
 
 It Cometh from the wilderness. 
 From a terrible land ! 
 
 A grievous vision is declared unto npe; the treacherous dealer dealeth 
 treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. 
 
 " Go up, O Elam ; 
 
 Besiege, O Media; 
 All the sighing thereof will I make to cease." 
 
 Therefore are my loins filled with anguish ; pangs have taken hold 
 upon me, as the pangs of a woman in travail : I am pained so that I 
 cannot hear, I am dismayed so that I cannot see. My heart panteth, 
 horror hath affrighted me ; the twilight that I desired hath been 
 turned into trembling unto me. 
 
 " They prepare the table, 
 They spread the carpets, 
 They eat, they drink : 
 Rise up, ye princes, anoint the shield." 
 
 For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman ; let him 
 declare what he seeth : and when he seeth a troop, horsemen in 
 pairs, a troop of asses, a troop of camels, he shall hearken dihgently 
 with much heed. And he cried as a lion : 
 
 The Watchman 
 
 O Lord, I stand continually upon the watch-tower in the day-time, 
 
 And am set in my ward whole nights : 
 And, behold, here cometh a troop of men. 
 
 Horsemen in pairs. 
 
394 BIBLICAL LITERA TURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 Thk Lord 
 Babylon is fallen, 
 
 Is fallen; 
 And all the graven images of her gods are broken upon the ground. 
 * 
 O thou my threshing, and the corn of my floor : that which I have 
 heard from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared 
 unto you. 
 
 The second oracle is not associated with any incident, but 
 seems entirely devoted to bringing out the prophetic attitude of 
 vigil. A voice out of the lower region of Mount Seir calls to the 
 watchman in his wilderness station for tidings : the sentinel, as if 
 repeating the formula of the watch, replies that the regular suc- 
 cession of day and night is broken by no tidings as yet, the 
 enquirer must ask again. 
 
 THE ORACLE OF SILENCE 
 
 Voice out of Seir 
 
 Watchman, vphat of the night? 
 Watchman, vifhat of the night ? 
 
 The Watchman 
 
 The morning cometh. 
 
 And also the night : 
 If ye will enquire, enquire ye; 
 
 Come ye again. 
 
 The third oracle sees another storm-cloud about to break from 
 the north ; and bids nomad peoples get ready food for the fugi- 
 tives of Kedar, whom they will find before the night just beginning 
 is over. 
 
 3 
 
 THE ORACLE AT EVENING 
 
 In the thickets at evening shall ye lodge, 
 O ye travelling companies of Dedanites, 
 
THE DOOM SONG 395 
 
 Unto him that is thirsty bring ye water; 
 
 Ye inhabitants of the land of Tema, 
 
 Meet the fugitives with your bread. 
 
 For they fled away from the swords, 
 
 From the drawn sword, and from the bent bow. 
 
 And from the grievousness of war. 
 
 For thus hath the Lord said unto me. Within a year, according to 
 the years of an hireUng, and all the glory of Kedar shall fail : and 
 the residue of the number of the archers, the mighty men of the 
 children of Kedar, shall be few : for the Lord, the God of Israel, 
 hath spoken it.' 
 
 But the larger proportion of the Doom Songs are more elaborate 
 outpourings. They have contributed a distinct form to literature : 
 at least, it is more in prophecy of this type than 
 in any other kind of literature that we find what I J^te DoomSM''"s 
 have already called the ' Doom form.' ^ This com- 
 bines a Divine monologue, denouncing doom, with lyric inter- 
 ruptions which celebrate, realise, or otherwise dwell upon the 
 word which Deity is speaking. It has in a former chapter' been 
 illustrated at full length in the Book of Zephaniah ; and I have 
 explained how the two elements of such a prophecy are differen- 
 tiated by a rhythmic difference, such as in my own editing I 
 suggest to the eye by the conventional forms of verse and prose. 
 The interrupting passages are for the most part impersonal lyrics : 
 they break in upon the speech of God much in the way that, in 
 an oratorio of Bach, meditative chorales, not assigned to the 
 personages of the story, break in upon the dramatic action. 
 Occasionally, however, personal speakers are found for the lyric 
 
 passages. Thus, in Jeremiah's Doom of Babylon, 
 
 V ° , . , • ■ , Jeremiah l-li 
 
 after various lyric outbursts tnumphnig over stricken 
 
 Babylon, or scorning the idols of the heathen, we find one passage 
 
 in which Babylon's former victims are heard bemoaning their 
 
 oppression in dialogue. 
 
 1 The fourth is an obscure and much-disputed passage. See haiah (in Modern 
 Reader's Bible), pages 72, 235. 
 
 2 See above, page 123. ' Chapter IV, page 124. 
 
396 SISLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 ZiON 
 
 Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured me ! 
 Jerusalem 
 He hath crushed me ! 
 
 ZlON 
 
 He hath made me an empty vessel ! 
 Jerdsalem 
 He hath swallowed me up like a dragon ! 
 
 ZiON 
 He hath filled his mavf with my delicates ! 
 Jerusalem 
 He hath cast me out ! 
 
 ZiON 
 The violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon ! 
 Jerusalem 
 My blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea ! 
 
 Therefore thus saith the Lord: Behold I will plead thy cause, 
 and take vengeance for thee; and I will dry up her sea, and make 
 her fountain dry. 
 
 The work of Jeremiah which is here quoted is in form the most 
 elaborate of all prophetic compositions of this kind : a sevenfold 
 denimciation, of which the central section is itself a sevenfold 
 image of doom. And not less striking than the prophecy itself 
 must have been the circumstances of its first promulgation, as 
 detailed in the epilogue. 
 
 And Jeremiah wrote in u book all Ike evil that should come upon 
 Babylon, even all these words that are writteti concerning Babylon. 
 And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, When thou comest to Babylon, see that 
 thou read all these words, , . . And it shall be, when thou hast made 
 an end of reading this book, that thou shall bind a stone to it, and cast 
 it into the midst of Euphrates : and thou shall say, Thus shall Baby- 
 lon sink, and shall not rise again because of the evil that I will bring 
 upon her : and they shall be weary. 
 
THE DOOM SONG 397 
 
 The matter of the various Doom prophecies is denunciation, 
 
 strongly leavened with imagery. The destroying enemy appears 
 
 as strangers come to fan, or waters out of the north, or smoke out 
 
 of the north ; the country is swept with the besom of destruction, 
 
 it is scattered to the four winds. In the panic 
 
 fathers look not back to their children for feeble- ifaee^yo^he 
 
 Doom Prophecies 
 ness of hands, fortresses go down before the invader 
 
 as ripe figs are shaken from a tree. Babylon has been a golden 
 
 cup in the Lord's hand to make the nations drunken and mad ; 
 
 and when the work is done Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed. 
 
 She has been a destroying mountain, destroying all the earth : but 
 
 the Lord will stretch his hand upon her, and roll her down from 
 
 the rocks, and make her a burnt mountain : men shall not take of 
 
 her a stone for a corner, but she shall be desolate forever. Babylon 
 
 is Jehovah's ' battle-axe,' with which he will break in pieces the 
 
 nations : but the ' hammer of the whole earth ' is cut asunder and 
 
 broken. " Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath 
 
 settled gn his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to 
 
 vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity : therefore his taste 
 
 remaineth in him, and his scent is not changed." Therefore shall 
 
 be sent to him those that pour off, and they shall empty his 
 
 vessels, and break the bottles in pieces. The Assyrian was a 
 
 cedar in Lebanon, with fair branches and a shadowing shroud ; 
 
 his top amid the clouds, till the cedars in the garden of God 
 
 could not hide him ; the waters nourished him, the deep made 
 
 him to grow ; the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, 
 
 and all great nations dwelt under his shadow. But he is delivered 
 
 into the hands of the mighty, the terrible have cut him off and left 
 
 him ; his branches are fallen over mountains and valleys, and his 
 
 broken boughs along the watercourses ; all the fowls of heaven 
 
 dwell upon his ruin. When Babylon goes down hell from beneath 
 
 is moved to meet him ; the shades of the kings of the nations rise 
 
 from their thrones to gaze at the mighty oppressor become 
 
 weak like themselves. The glorious seat of empire turns to utter 
 
 desolation, 
 
398 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 It shall never be inhabited, 
 
 Neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation : 
 
 Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; 
 
 Neither shall shepherds make their flocks to lie down there. 
 
 But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; 
 
 And their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; 
 And ostriches shall dwell there, 
 And satyrs shall dance there. 
 
 And wolves shall cry in their castles. 
 
 And jackals in the pleasant palaces : 
 
 And her time is near to come. 
 
 And her days shall not be prolonged. 
 
 Perhaps the most wide-reaching and many-sided of the Doom 
 
 Songs is Ezekiel's burden, or rather succession of burdens, against 
 
 the maritime metropoHs of the ancient world, — the 
 
 Doom of Tyre ^ j , . 
 
 Ezekiei xxvi- city of Tyre. God is against Tyre, and the nations 
 "™* shall overwhelm her like the waves of a rising sea : 
 
 they shall wash down walls and towers, and even her very dust, 
 until Tyre has become a bare rock, a place for the spreading of 
 nets in the midst of the sea. From imagery the Song changes to 
 picture : and in successive sentences we see Nebuchadrezzar's 
 advance: the daughter fortresses on the confines are destroyed, 
 mounts and battering engines are before the mother city, the very 
 dust of his march smothers the beautiful site, at the mere sound 
 of his horsemen and chariots the gates are shaken down ; horse- 
 hoofs deface the streets, the sword slays, the obelisks of strength 
 are thrown down, riches spoiled, pleasant houses made rubbish 
 heaps : Tyre becomes a silent and bare rock, a place for the 
 spreading of nets. Then all the princes of the sea come down 
 from their thrones, and lay aside their robes, and strip off their 
 broidered garments : they clothe themselves with tremblings, as 
 they raise the wail over the renowned city, won from the sea, and 
 the terror of all that haunt it. For God shall bring up the deep 
 upon her, and the great waters shall cover her, and he will bring 
 her down with them that descend into the pit, and will make her 
 
THE DOOM SONG 399 
 
 to dweir in the nether parts of the earth, in the places that are 
 desolate of old ; though she be sought for, yet shall she never be 
 found again. Then another strain of denunciation commences, 
 and with prolonged enumeration brings out poetically the world- 
 wide enterprise of the wealthy port. Tyre is represented in the 
 form of a ship, and the various races with which she has dealings 
 make their contributions to its perfection. 
 
 Thou, O Tyre, hast said, I am perfect in beauty. Thy borders are 
 in the heart of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty. 
 They have made all thy planks of fir trees from Senir : they have 
 taken cedars from Lebanon to make a mast for thee. Of the oaks 
 of Bashan have they made thine oars; they have made thy benches 
 of ivory inlaid in boxwood, from the isles of Kittim. Of fine linen 
 with broidered work from Egypt was thy sail, that it might be to 
 thee for an ensign; blue and purple from the isles of Elishah was 
 thine awning. The inhabitants of Zidon and Arvad were thy rowers : 
 thy wise men, O Tyre, were in thee, they were thy pilots. The 
 ancients of Gebal and the wise men thereof were in thee thy calkers : 
 all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to occupy 
 thy merchandise. Persia and Lud and Put were in thine army, thy 
 men of war : they hanged the shield and helmet in thee ; they set 
 forth thy comeliness. The men of Arvad with thine army were upon 
 thy walls round about, and the Gammadim were in thy towers ; they 
 hanged their shields upon thy walls round about ; they have per- 
 fected thy beauty. 
 
 This is only a fragment of the long-sustained enumeration : for 
 when mention is made of the merchants who traffic with this Ship 
 of Tyre all nations of the civilised world appear, and every kind 
 of merchandise and riches is detailed, until the successive sen- 
 tences have accumulated a conception of inexhaustible wealth. 
 Then comes the shock of change. The Ship that makes such a 
 thing of glory in the heart of the seas suffers wreck. 
 
 Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters : the east wind 
 hath broken thee in the heart of the seas. Thy riches, and thy 
 wares, thy merchandise, thy mariners, and thy, pilots, thy calkers, and 
 the occupiers of thy merchandise, and all thy men of war, that are 
 
400 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 in thee, with all thy company which is in the midst of thee, shall fall 
 into the heart of the seas in the day of thy ruin. At the sound of 
 the cry of thy pilots the suburbs shall shake. 
 
 After fresh lamentations of the sea-faring world over their chief, 
 the tempest of denunciation glances upon the prince of Tyre, who 
 says " he is a god, he sits in the seat of God in the heart of the 
 seas " : but he is a man, and not God, in the hand of him that 
 woundeth him ; and he shall die the death of the uncircumcised. 
 Then the strain of denunciation gathers to a cUmax. Tyre sealeth 
 up the sura, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. Tyre was in 
 Eden the garden of God ; every precious stone was her covering ; 
 she was the cherub overshadowing the mercy seat : till unright- 
 eousness was found in her. Multitude of traffic filled her with 
 violence ; she has been cast out as profane ; fire from the midst 
 of her has devoured her ; she has been turned to ashes in the sight 
 of all beholders ; she shall exist no more. 
 
 If the burden of Ezekiel against Tyre be a typical example of 
 this department of literature, we may take from the same prophet 
 Doom of Eevpt another Doom Song which is unique. The idea 
 Ezekiel xxxii. underlying it is the same thought we have already 
 ""^' cited from Isaiah, — that of the kingdoms among 
 
 the dead receiving the newly fallen empire in the gloomy under- 
 world. The form of this burden is a Wail or Dirge. It is an 
 extreme example of the overlapping of verse and prose which I have 
 illustrated in so many branches of Hebrew literature : monotonous 
 prose recitative carries on the thread of description, and is broken 
 by strongly rhythmic lines, that l^ave the impression at once of 
 varying and of recurring with the regularity of a refrain. I cite 
 this Song in full, and then our notice of the literature of Doom 
 will have been carried sufficiently far. 
 
 DOOM OF EGYPT 
 
 Son of man, wail for the multitude of Egypt, and cast them down, 
 even her, and the daughters of the famous nations. 
 
THE DOOM SONG 401 
 
 Unto the nether parts of the earth, 
 With them that go down into the pit. 
 
 Whom dost thou pass in beauty? go down, and be thou laid with 
 the uncircumcised. They shall fall in the midst 
 
 Of them that are slain by the sword : 
 
 She is delivered to the sword : 
 
 Draw her away and all her multitudes. 
 
 The strong among the mighty shall speak to him out of the midst of 
 hell with them that help him : 
 
 They are gone down, 
 They lie still, 
 Even the uncircumcised, 
 Slain by the sword. 
 
 Asshur is there and all her company : 
 
 His graves are round about him : 
 All of them slain. 
 Fallen by the sword : 
 
 Whose graves are set in the uttermost parts of the pit, and her com- 
 pany is round about her grave : 
 
 All of them slain, 
 
 Fallen by the sword. 
 
 Which caused terror in the land of the living. 
 
 There is Elam and all her multitude round about her grave : 
 
 All of them slain. 
 
 Fallen by the sword, 
 
 Which are gone down uncircumcised 
 
 Into the nether parts of the earth, 
 
 which caused their terror in the land of the living, and have borne 
 their shame — 
 
 With them that go down to the pit. 
 
 They have set her a bed in the midst of the slain with all her 
 multitude; 
 
402 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 Her graves are round about her; 
 All of them uncircumcised, 
 Slain by the sword; 
 
 for their terror was caused in the land of the living, and they have 
 borne their shame — 
 
 With them that go down to the pit; 
 
 He is put in the midst of them that be slain. 
 
 There is Meshech, Tubal and all her multitude : 
 
 Her graves are round about her : 
 All of them uncircumcised, 
 Slain by the sword; 
 
 for they caused their terror in the land of the living; and shall they 
 not he with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised? 
 
 Which are gone down to hell. 
 
 With their weapons of war. 
 
 And have laid their swords under their heads, 
 
 And their iniquities are upon their bones : 
 
 for they were the terror of the mighty in the land of the living; but 
 
 thou shalt be broken in the midst of the uncircumcised, and shalt 
 
 lie — 
 
 With them that are slain by the sword. 
 
 There is Edom, her kings and all her princes, which for all their 
 might are laid — 
 
 With them that are slain by the sword : 
 They shall lie with the uncircumcised. 
 And with them that go down to the pit. 
 
 There be the princes of the north, all of them, and all the Zidonians, 
 
 Which are gone down with the slain; 
 
 for all the terror which they caused by their might they are ashamed; 
 
 And they lie uncircumcised 
 
 With them that are slain by the sword. 
 
 And bear their shame 
 
 With them that go down to the pit. 
 
THE DOOM SONG 403 
 
 Pharaoh shall see them, and shall be comforted over all his multi- 
 tude : even Pharaoh and all his army, 
 
 Slain by the sword (saith the Lord God), 
 For I have put his terror in the land of the living : 
 And he shall be laid in the midst of the uncircumcised. 
 With them that are slain by the sword : 
 
 even Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the Lord GOD. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 FORMS OF PROPHETIC LITERATURE : THE RHAPSODY 
 
 Prophecy in one of its aspects may be described as the phi- 
 losophy of history erected into a drama. But both the terms of 
 this description must be understood in a special 
 The Prophetic sense. Philosophy acts through its instrument of 
 erai exception reflection when it interprets history into intelligible 
 theory, or catches the drift of a passing crisis. 
 But the prophets carry their scheme of faith with them into the 
 events they observe. It is faith in that which the Old Testament 
 expresses by the word ' Judgment ' : the eternal controversy be- 
 tween Good and Evil, between God's people and idolatrous nations, 
 between the ' remnant ' and the godless mass of Israelites ; and 
 this carries with it the correlative idea of a golden age, placed in 
 the future and not the past, when the controversy should culminate 
 in a Messianic reign of peace. To harmonise with this principle 
 of Judgment the working of events is great part of the prophetic 
 function. And, as one mode of conveying their conceptions, the 
 prophets display the incidents themselves before our imagination 
 working towards their goal with the realistic clearness of drama. 
 But upon examination such prophetic compositions are found to 
 go far beyond the machinery of dramatic literature, and to borrow 
 from all other literary departments special modes of treatment, to 
 be blended together into that most highly wrought and spiritual of 
 literary forms which is here called the Rhapsody. 
 
 I desire to explain this in detail : but first it may be well to take 
 an illustration. The simplest example of the form of prophecy 
 
 404 
 
Tlt& RliAPSOM 40S 
 
 under consideration is Habakkuk's Rhapsody of the Chaldeans. 
 Its exact date is a question for historical experts ; 
 for literary interpretation it is sufficient to say that Rhapsody of the 
 it belongs to the period when the Chaldean power Habakkuk 
 first looms as a terror on the political horizon. 
 Under such terror the first instinct of the devout would be to 
 think of national corruption unpunished at home. But prophetic 
 insight must go further. If the Chaldeans — a cruel, godless 
 embodiment of might without right — were to be God's instrument 
 of judgment, would not the instrument be far worse than that 
 against which it was used ? It is this perplexity which is presented 
 before us by Habakkuk in dramatic dialogue. 
 
 The Prophet. — O Lord, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not 
 hear? I cry unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save. Why 
 dost thou shew me iniquity, and cause me to look upon perverseness ? 
 for spoiling and violence are before me : and there is strife, and 
 contention riseth up. Therefore the law is slacked, and judgement 
 doth never go forth : for the wicked doth compass about the right- 
 eous; therefore judgement goeth forth perverted. 
 
 God. — Behold ye among the nations, and regard, and wonder 
 marvellously : for I work a work in your days, which ye will not 
 believe though it be told you. For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, 
 that bitter and hasty nation; which march through the breadth of 
 the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. They are 
 terrible and dreadful : • their judgement and their dignity proceed 
 from themselves. Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and 
 are more fierce than the evening wolves; and their horsemen bear 
 themselves proudly : yea, their horsemen come from far; they fly as 
 an eagle that hasteth to devour. They come all of them for violence; 
 their faces are set eagerly as the east wind; and they gather captives 
 as the sand. Yea, he scoffeth at kings, and princes are a derision 
 unto him: he derideth every stronghold; for he heapeth up dust, 
 and taketh it. Then shall he sweep by as >• wind, and shall pass 
 over, and be guilty; even he whose might is his God. 
 
 The Prophet. — Art not thou from everlasting, O Lord my God, 
 mine Holy One? thou diest not. O Lord, thou hast ordained him 
 for judgement; and thou, O Rock, hast established him for correc- 
 tion. Thou that art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and that 
 
466 Mbucal UterAturb of PROPHMCV 
 
 canst not look upon perverseness, wherefore lookest thou upon them 
 that deal treacherously, and boldest thy peace when the wicked 
 swalloweth up the man that is more righteous than he; and makest 
 men as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things, that have no 
 ruler over them? He taketh up all of them with the angle, he 
 catcheth them in his net, and gathereth them in his drag : therefore 
 he rejoiceth and is glad. Therefore he sacrificeth unto his net, and 
 burneth incense unto his drag; because by them his portion is fat, 
 and his meat plenteous. Shall he therefore empty his net, and not 
 spare to slay the nations continually? 
 
 The perplexity has been fully opened : the point has been reached 
 where a solution may be looked for. Additional literary force is 
 given to this solution by delay ; there is a pause, and 
 the prophet will retire to his watch-tower to wait the 
 answer of God. The answer, when it comes, is ushered in by 
 many phrases of emphasis, — it is to be written, to be 
 made plain, the ' vision,' though it seem to tarry, is really 
 hasting to its appointed time. What then is the Divine solution 
 to the prophet's trouble? As so often happens in literature of 
 this type, the central point of the whole prophecy is conveyed 
 under the form of imagery, — in this case the imagery of intoxica- 
 tion. The haughty irresistibility of the Chaldean is no more than 
 the vinous elation that goes before the tottering and 
 falling ; he is ' puffed up,' he cannot go straight, the 
 treacherous dealing of wine has given him the haughtiness that 
 will not abide, and the insatiable appetite of hell. Then the fall 
 that is to come is made present to our imaginations by a sudden 
 breaking out of the Taunt-Song of the oppressed nations over 
 their fallen tyrant. In lyric sequence four woes are denounced, 
 all celebrating the same theme — the pride and fall of the Chal- 
 dean, but celebrating it under four different images. The 
 first woe puts the image of usury : Chaldean aggrandise- 
 ment has been a mounting up of borrowed property, and there 
 shall rise up suddenly those who will exact usury. In the 
 second woe the image is of house-building : the tyrant 
 has been building his own shame into the house he thought to 
 
THE RHAPSODY 407 
 
 make so high above all evil ; now it is finished the stone cries out 
 
 of the wall and the beam out of the timber answers it. In the 
 
 third woe the image changes to fortification : the deep 
 
 purposes of Jehovah suffer a city to be built with blood 
 
 and ramparted with iniquity, just that its burning may fill earth 
 
 and sea with the light of his judgment. The fourth woe 
 
 rests on the regular prophetic, metaphor — the cup of 
 
 the Lord's fury, handed by the Chaldean to the other nations, and 
 
 drunk by the Chaldean in his turn. Then a final woe 
 
 ii. 18-20 
 goes to the root of the whole evil : the Chaldean has 
 
 been led astray by his lying idols, all covered with gold and silver, 
 
 but with no breath in them. But Jehovah in his holy temple is 
 
 the true teacher of the nations : let all the earth sit in silence at 
 
 his feet. 
 
 The third section of this rhapsody is the most magnificent of 
 
 Biblical odes : the promised intervention of Deity is no 
 
 longer contemplated as a future event, but is realised 
 
 as immediately present. After a Prelude of trembUng anxiety — 
 
 O Lord, I have heard the report of thee, and am afraid : 
 O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, 
 In the midst of the years make it known : 
 In wrath remember mercy ! — 
 
 the Vision bursts upon the prophet. Its antistrophic form is an 
 exact reflex of the thought. The strophe presents all nature 
 convulsed with the approach of Deity. 
 
 God Cometh from Teman, 
 
 And the Holy One from Mount Paran. 
 
 His glory covereth the heavens, 
 
 And the earth is full of his praise. 
 
 And his brightness is as the light; 
 
 He hath rays coming forth £rom his hand; 
 
 And there is the hiding of his power. 
 
 Before him goeth the pestilence, 
 
 And fiery bolts go forth at his feet. 
 
 He standeth and shaketh the earth; 
 
408 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 He beholdeth, and driveth asunder the nations : 
 
 And the eternal mountains are scattered, 
 
 The everlasting hills do bow; 
 
 His ways are everlasting. 
 
 I see the tents of Cushan in affliction; 
 
 The curtains of the land of Midian do tremble. 
 
 Then the antistrophe puts the question: Is it merely against 
 inanimate nature that this power is being manifested? 
 
 Is the LOKD displeased against the rivers? 
 
 Is thine anger against the rivers, or thy wrath against the sea, 
 
 That thou dost ride upon thine horses. 
 
 Upon thy chariots, of salvation ? 
 
 Thy bow is made quite bare. 
 
 Sworn are the chastisements of thy word. 
 
 Thou dost cleave the earth with rivers; 
 
 The mountains see thee and are afraid; 
 
 The tempest of waters passeth by; 
 
 The deep uttereth his voice. 
 
 And lifteth up his hands on high ; 
 
 The sun and moon stand still in their habitation 
 
 At the light of thine arrows as they go. 
 
 At the shining of thy glittering spear. 
 
 Thou dost march through the land in indignation. 
 
 Thou dost thresh the nations in anger. 
 
 At length the epode may answer the question with the true 
 meaning of the judgment that is descending. 
 
 Thou art come for the salvation of thy people, 
 
 For the salvation of thine anointed : 
 
 Thou dost smite off the head from the house of the wicked. 
 
 Laying bare the foundation even unto the neck. 
 
 Thou dost pierce with his own staves the head of his warriors : 
 
 (They came as a whirlwind to scatter me, 
 
 Their rejoicing was as to devour the poor secretly :) 
 
 Thou didst tread the sea with thine horses, the surge of mighty waters. 
 
 The theophany is completed : there remains a postlude in which 
 the seer trembles through terror into confidence. 
 
THE RHAPSODY 409 
 
 I heard, and my belly trembled, 
 
 My lips quivered at the voice ; 
 
 Rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in my place : 
 
 That I should rest vi'aiting for the day of trouble. 
 
 When he that shall invade them in troops cometh up against the people. 
 
 For though the fig tree shall not blossom, 
 
 Neither shall fruit be in the vines; 
 
 The labour of the olive shall fail. 
 
 And the fields shall yield no meat; 
 
 The flock shall be cut off from the fold. 
 
 And there shall be no herd in the stalls : 
 
 Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, 
 
 I will joy in the God of my salvation. 
 
 Jehovah, the Lord, is my strength. 
 
 And he maketh my feet like hind's feet. 
 
 And will make me to walk upon mine high places. 
 
 Simple as this prophecy is, it has exhibited all that is essential 
 
 in rhapsodic literature : a problem of current history has been 
 
 stated in the form of dramatic dialogue, solved in 
 
 ° The Rhapsody as 
 
 the mingled recitative and rhythm of the Doom an enlargement 
 
 form, and then the solution is realised in the full of dramatic 
 
 treatment 
 splendour of a lyric ode. This department of 
 
 prophecy includes some of the most intricate and obscure litera- 
 ture in the whole Bible. But in all cases there is an enlargement 
 of dramatic machinery by the fusion with it of other kinds of 
 literary treatment. A similar fusion has taken place in the com- 
 panion art of music ; and those who are familiar with the Oratorio 
 and the Cantata will understand how a dramatic action may be 
 maintained, though particular movements in it are in lyric or 
 meditative form. 
 
 What exactly is the mental experience of a spectator watching 
 a drama? He has a movement of events brought home to him, 
 not by any narrative or explanation, but by the dialogue of the 
 personages taking part in the incidents, assisted by changes in the 
 scene before his eyes. The reader of prophetic drama has history 
 presented to him as moving in the direction of Divine judgment. 
 
410 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 But the stage on which such movement takes place is nothing less 
 than the whole universe. Its changing scenery must be conveyed 
 to him, rarely in vision, mainly by description. It is not the 
 description that belongs to Epic poetry and deals with incidents 
 in the past. It is what may be called Scenic Description, such as 
 speaks in the present tense with the vividness of one who beholds 
 what he tells, and yet the personality of no spectator is interposed 
 between the reader and the scene. Or it is Prophetic Descrip- 
 tion, that uses present or future indifferently : for what God, or 
 his prophetic mouthpiece, foretells is as objectively real to the 
 imagination as if it Were visibly present. Similarly, the machinery 
 of dialogue needs enlargement to meet the requirements of the 
 prophetic drama. Besides actual dialogue we have the Soliloquy 
 or Monologue, whether of the Divine Being or others ; in par- 
 ticular, alternating monologues — say, of the righteous and wicked 
 from opposite regions — produce a literary effect closely akin to 
 dialogue. Another element of dialogue is the Divine Address : 
 the omnipresence of Deity extends to those with whom he speaks, 
 and his call to them makes them at once part of the scene. This 
 consideration is more important than might at first be thought; 
 we shall find the longest scene in prophecy to have no speaker 
 but the Divine Being, whose alternate addresses to the nations 
 and to Israel keep both present before us to the end. And in a 
 less degree the same effect attaches to other addresses : at the 
 opening oi Joel the cries of Husbandmen, Revellers, Priests, to 
 one another to come and weep serve to bring these classes into 
 the scene of the poem. Again, the prophet, besides being the 
 mouthpiece of God, remains a spectator of his own drama, and 
 his comments, spoken to earth or heaven, form a part of the 
 scenes. ' Voices,' again, may join in the dialogue, yet not in such 
 a way as to make the personality of those who speak continuously 
 present : or yet more impersonal ' Cries ' may serve a temporary 
 purpose in the drama. As an element of dialogue more abstract 
 still we have Lyric Songs or Responses : not such Choral songs 
 as in Habakkuk's prophecy were spoken by the oppressed nations, 
 
Tttt RMAPSODV 411 
 
 but linpefsdHal lyrics, like those used in Zephanidh tO answer or 
 second the ailnotincements of Deity, or to interrupt the continuity 
 of movement by bursts of praise or lament. 
 
 In all these ways the machinery of drama is enlarged and spir- 
 itualised to make it the vehicle of prophecy. It borrows lyric 
 treatment and oratorical discourse ; it does the work of philoso- 
 phy ; even that which is the antithesis of drama, description, ap- 
 pears in a modified form to serve a scenic purpose. And, while 
 the constant object is dramatic realisation, the transitions in this 
 prophetic literature from dramatic to other literary forms are so 
 frequent and rapid that they seem, not so much to be blended, 
 as to be fused together. If the various types of literary treatment 
 might be supposed to be so many different colours of thought, 
 then this prophetic drama would be the white light made by the 
 merging of all these colours in one. The term ' drama,' then, 
 seems to me altogether inadequate for such a speciahsed form 
 of literature. A more appropriate name would be found in the 
 ' Rhapsody,' which poetry and music alike reserve as something 
 specially exalted and free from limitations of form. 
 
 The Prophecy of Joel makes a single Rhapsody of the Locust 
 Plague. The idea of locusts, singly so insignificant, so terribly 
 destructive in the mass, lends itself readily to poetic . ,, . 
 treatment ; and the prophet, starting perhaps from of the Locust 
 some contemporary visitation of this kind, idealises ^'^S"^ 
 it into mystic and awful forces of destruction, under the descrip- 
 tion of which the original idea can be dimly traced. On this as 
 basis he works up a conception of advancing judgment : first an 
 immediate crisis, and then the final judgment in which all nations 
 are involved. And, like the leit-motif of a musical work, " the 
 great and terrible Day of the Lord" runs through „. jj „ 
 the whole as a refrain. Those who are accustomed a continuous 
 to literary technicalities will be struck with the •**''*""=« 
 beautiful movement of this work : the seven stages into which its 
 action falls advance regularly to a crisis, and then, as with the 
 
412 
 
 BIBLICAL LiTBRATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 figure of an arch, turn round, the later corresponding to the 
 earlier, until the final stage is seen as a reversal of the first. The 
 accompanying figure may convey this to the eye.^ [Commence 
 to read at the bottom.J 
 
 4. Relief and Restoration 
 ii. 18-27 
 
 3. At the last moment 5. Afterward: Israel spiritualised — 
 
 Repentance the Nations summoned 
 
 ii. 12-17 ^° Judgment 
 
 ii. 28-iii. 8 
 
 2. Judgment visibly Ad- 
 vancing: Crisis 
 ii. i-n 
 
 . The Land of Israel des- 
 olate and mourning 
 
 6. Advance to the Valley 
 
 of Decision : Crisis 
 
 iii. 9-16 
 
 7. The Holy Mountain 
 
 and eternal Peace 
 
 iii. 17-21 
 
 The prophecy opens with distress and wailing. Calls to lament 
 
 bring before us old men witnessing to children and children's 
 
 mv T :, t children of devastation such as their fathers never 
 I . The Land 01 
 
 Israel desolate knew ; drinkers of wine awaking from their stupor 
 and mourning j^ j^q^j f^j, ^j^g desolating. Strong- toothed foe that 
 has wasted the vine and blanched the fig tree ; husbandmen 
 howling under the shame and languishing that sits upon the crops 
 and the trees of the field, and upon the helpless sons of men ; 
 the ministers of the altar clothing themselves with sackcloth as the 
 meal-offering and drink-offering fails from the house of God. The 
 different groups of mourners draw together into a solemn assembly 
 of the whole land, crying with one voice, "Alas for the day of 
 the Lord at hand ! " and chaunting of seeds shrivelled under the 
 clods, garners broken down, corn bowed with shame, cattle per- 
 plexed and flocks panting beside the dry watercourses and burnt 
 pastures. 
 
 1 I have argued for an exactly similar figure as underlying St. John's Revelation 
 [Modern Reader's Bible, pages xxi, 193]. Compare also the Jeremiah volume, 
 page 230. 
 
THE RHAPSODY 413 
 
 But there is no relief : the action intensifies. A trumpet blast 
 
 of alarm from the mountains darts into every trembling heart the 
 
 consciousness that the Day of the Lord has come 
 
 ■' 3. Judgment 
 
 nigh ! The day seems to have broken with clouds visibly aavanc- 
 and thick darkness for the colours of its dawn; "'^' ''"^'^ 
 and they know that the destroying foe will be great and strong, 
 such as has never been known before, neither shall there be any 
 like them. The advancing doom can just be discerned by the 
 destruction it works : fires spreading from it in all directions : as 
 it were the garden of Eden before it, and behind it a desolate 
 wilderness. Straining eye and ear can dimly make out now the 
 appearance of horses, now rattUngs Hke chariots crossing the moun- 
 tain ridges, now cracklings as of iire in stubble, now the array as 
 of an ordered army. A nearer vision reveals pale anguish on the 
 one side, on the other mighty warriors and an irresistible march ; 
 there is mystery in the way no ranks are broken with the inequali- 
 ties of the ground, none swerves for a moment out of his place ; 
 the encountering weapons actually meet them, but the onward 
 course has not stopped. Now the city is reached with a bound, is 
 filled ; the earth begins to quake, the heavens are all dark : — and 
 the long-expected Voice of Jehovah brings the certainty that this is 
 the Day of the Lord, a great and terrible day ; who can abide it? 
 Then a surprise : for the Voice of Jehovah before his army 
 speaks of a time yet for turning to the Lord, with weeping and 
 fasting, with rending of the heart and not the gar- ^^ ^^^ j^^,. 
 ment, to a God who is gracious and full of compas- moment Repent- 
 sion, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, one *°'^* 
 who repenteth him of the evil. And a response begins to stir 
 among the doomed people : " Who knoweth whether he will not 
 turn and repent, and leave a blessing behind him ? " And once 
 more, with sound of trumpet, there is a solemn assembly : all are 
 gathered together, from the elder to the child at the breast, the 
 bridegroom out of his chamber and the bride out of her closet : 
 weeping priests and ministers of the altar leading the cry of 
 " Spare thy people, O Lord." 
 
414 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 The turning-point of the prophecy has been reached : " Then 
 was the Lord jealous for his land, and had pity on his people." 
 
 4. Relief and In the words of Him with whom future and present 
 Restoration are the same we have pictured a relief from the 
 impending judgment : the northern army passing on to its own 
 destruction in a desert between the seas, the land awakening to 
 joy after fear, as pastures spring out of wilderness and the trees 
 again yield their strength. Relief grows to restoration : the former 
 and latter rain comes down each in its season, floors and fats 
 overflow till the loss of locust and caterpillar has been repaired. 
 Plenty and peace abound, with praise to the Lord for his won- 
 drous dealings, and confidence that Israel shall be ashamed no 
 more. 
 
 But instead of this being an end, the action of the rhapsody 
 continues to advance. We have presented before us an ' after- 
 
 5. Afterward: ^^^'^ ' • ™ which there shall be a pouring out of 
 Israel the spirit upon the sons and daughters of Israel, 
 spmtuahsed ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ young, servant and handmaid, are all 
 alike endowed with prophecy and vision. But for the nations, 
 darkened sun and blood-stained moon, with pillars of smoke, with 
 fire and blood, give warning in the heavens of another great and 
 terrible Day of the Lord : a day of pleading with the nations, in 
 the Nations ^^ valley called after the name of judgment, for 
 summoned to the wrongs they have done to the captives of the 
 Judgment Lord's people. And, at the mention of living 
 beings bartered and sold for goods. Divine description bursts into 
 Divine remonstrance with the men of Tyre and Zidon and Philistia, 
 for their pillage of the holy things, and their cruelty to the chil- 
 dren of Judah and Jerusalem. And what recompense have they 
 to make to the adversary, who shall swiftly return their recom- 
 pense upon their own head? 
 
 6. Advance to "^^^ action intensifies : like the former judg- 
 the Valley of ment On Israel this final doom of the nations 
 
 eoision: Cnsis quickens its advance, and already the cries of the 
 coming contest are heard. 
 
7'HE RHAPSODY 415 
 
 God. — Proclaim ye this among the nations; prepare war: stir up 
 the mighty men; let all the men of war draw near, let them come 
 up. Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into 
 spears : let the weak say, I am strong. 
 
 Voices. — Haste ye, and come, all ye nations round about, and 
 gather yourselves together : thither cause thy mighty ones to come 
 down, O Lord. 
 
 God. — Let the nations bestir themselves, and come up to the 
 valley of Jehoshaphat : for there will I sit to judge all the nations 
 round about. 
 
 God (to the Celestial Hosts). — Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest 
 is ripe: come, tread ye; for the winepress is full, the fats overflow; 
 for their wickedness is great. 
 
 The scene is before us of multitudes after multitudes in the 
 valley of decision : the Day of the Lord is near, and this is the 
 place of the contest. The awful crisis is veiled from us : sun and 
 moon are dark, and the stars withdraw their shining. But irom 
 Jerusalem and Mount Zion Jehovah roars, and utters a voice under 
 which the heavens and earth rock to and fro, all save the strong- 
 hold in which the Lord's people are held in safe refuge. The 
 darkness clears away to reveal a final scene of Je- ^ ^j^^ g^y 
 hovah comforting his people from his holy dweUing- Mountain and 
 place in Zion. The mountains drop down sweet ^'^™^' Viisi 
 wine, and the hills flow with milk, and all the brooks are full of 
 waters, while fountains from the house of the Lord carry fertility 
 to the valleys around. Over the ruins of guilty Egypt and Edom 
 Judah towers, an abiding habitation ; and its people are washed with 
 innocence meet for the people of the Lord that dwelleth in Zion. 
 
 In this rhapsody of Joel the movement is a continuous advance, 
 and its seven parts are seven successive stages like Acts of a drama. 
 But I have several times had to remark upon an- ^^^ Penauium 
 other type of movement to which Hebrew literature Movement in 
 shows attraction, — the pendulum movement, which ''•'^P^''*'^^ 
 alternates to and fro between two topics or scenes. This pendu- 
 lum movement is specially characteristic of Prophecy. It will be 
 
•vl6 Biblical literatvke of prophecy 
 
 illustrated in the next example I bring forward, the Rhapsody of 
 
 Tvdement and Salvation, which covers four chap- 
 Rhapsody at •' ° ' . , . , 
 Judgment and ters of Isaiah. The three sections into which I 
 
 Salvation have divided this composition do not make a suc- 
 
 Isaiah xxiv-vii ... ... 
 
 cession in time, but rather an advance in intensity : 
 
 in the first section destruction covers the earth, in the second 
 heaven and earth are involved, while the third section presents the 
 same destruction in its moment of very crisis. But the real 
 movement of this rhapsody is the pendulum movement of alterna- 
 tion : — an alternation between successive pictures of Doom and 
 Salvation. From the prominence of this alternation, and also 
 because of the rapidity and obscurity of the transitions in this 
 composition, I have thought it desirable to print it in full, with 
 proper arrangement of parts. The sections of Judgment are dis- 
 tinguished by Roman, those of Salvation by Italic type. I quote 
 the Revised Version (text or margin) exactly, except that for the 
 formulae commencing speeches (such as, " In that day shall be 
 said," etc.) I substitute the names of the speakers at the head of 
 the speeches. 
 
 ISAIAH'S 
 
 RHAPSODY OF JUDGMENT AND SALVATION 
 I 
 
 Voice of Prophecy 
 
 Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, 
 and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants 
 thereof. And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest ; as 
 with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her 
 mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, 
 so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver 
 of usury to him. The earth shall be utterly emptied, and utterly 
 spoiled : for the Lord hath spoken the word. 
 
 Vision 
 
 The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and 
 fadeth away, the lofty people of the earth do languish. 
 
THE RHAPSODY 417 
 
 Voice of Prophecy 
 
 The earth also is polluted under the inhabitants thereof; because 
 they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the 
 everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, 
 and they that dwell therein are found guilty : therefore the inhabit- 
 ants of the earth are burned, and few men left. 
 
 Vision continued 
 
 The new wine mourneth, the vine languisheth, all the merry- 
 hearted do sigh. The mirth of tabrets ceaseth, the noise of them 
 that rejoice endeth, the joy of the harp ceaseth. 
 
 Voice of Prophecy 
 
 They shall not drink wine with a song; strong drink shall be bitter 
 to them that drink it. 
 
 Vision continued 
 
 The city of confusion is broken down : every house is shut up, 
 that no man may come in. There is a crying in the streets because 
 of the wine ; all joy is darkened, the mirth of the land is gone. In 
 the city is left desolation, and the gate is smitten with destruction. 
 
 VOICE OF PROPHECY 
 
 For thus shall it be in the midst of the earth avians: the peoples, as 
 the shaking of an olive tree, as the grape gleanings L^'lien the vintage 
 is done. These shall lift up their voice, they shall shout. 
 
 VOICES FROM THE WEST 
 For the Majesty of the LORD ! 
 
 VOICES FROM THE EAST 
 Wherefore glorify ye the LORD in the east ! 
 
 VOICES FROM THE WEST 
 Even the name of the LORD, the God of Israel, in the isles 
 of the sea I 
 
418 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 Voices of the Doomed 
 
 From the uttermost part of the earth have we heard songs, glory 
 to the righteous. But I said, I pine away, I pine away, woe is me ! 
 the treacherous dealers have dealt treacherously; yea, the treacher- 
 ous dealers have dealt very treacherously. 
 
 Voice of Prophecy 
 
 Fear, and the pit, and the snare are upon thee, O inhabitant of 
 earth. And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise 
 of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the 
 midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare. 
 
 II 
 
 Vision 
 
 For the windows on high are opened, and the foundations of the 
 earth do shake. The earth is utterly broken, the earth is clean dis- 
 solved, the earth is moved exceedingly. 
 
 Voice of Prophecy 
 
 The earth shall stagger like a drunken man, and shall be moved 
 to and fro like a hut; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy 
 upon it, and it shall fall, and not rise again. And it shall come to 
 pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high 
 ones on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they 
 shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and 
 shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be 
 visited. Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed. 
 
 VOICE OF PROPHECY 
 
 For the LORD of hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and in "Jerusa- 
 lem, and before his elders shall be glory. 
 
 SONG OF THE ELDERS 
 
 Lord, thou art my God ; I will exalt thee; 
 
 1 will praise thy name ; 
 
 For thou hast done luonderful things. 
 
 Even counsels of old, in faithfulness and truth. 
 
THE RHAPSODY 419 
 
 For thou hast made of a city an heap ; 
 
 Of a defenced city a ruin : 
 
 A palace of strangers to be no city ; 
 
 It shall never be built. 
 
 Therefore shall the strong people glorify thee. 
 
 The city of the terrible nations shall fear thee. 
 
 For thou hast been a strong hold to the poor, 
 A strong hold to the needy in his distress, 
 A refuge from the storm, 
 A shadow from the heat. 
 When the blast of the terrible ones 
 Is as a storm against the wall. 
 
 As the heat in a dry place 
 
 Shalt thou bring down the noise of strangers ; 
 
 As the heat by the shadow of a cloud. 
 
 The song of the terrible ones shall be brought low, 
 
 VOICE OF PROPHECY 
 
 And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all peo- 
 ples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full 
 of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in 
 this mountain the face of the covering that is cast over all peoples, and 
 the veil that is spread over all nations, 
 
 VOICES OF THE SAVED 
 
 He hath swallowed up death for e^er ; and the Lord GOD will 
 wipe away tears from off all faces ; and the reproach of his people 
 shall he take away from off all the earth : for the LORD hath spoken 
 it, 
 
 SONG IN THAT DAY 
 
 Lo, this is our Cod; 
 
 We have waited for him. 
 And he will save us : 
 
 This is the LORD ; 
 
 We have waited for him, we will be glad 
 And rejoice in his salvation. 
 
420 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 Voice of Prophecy 
 
 For in this mountain shall the hand of the LORD rest, and Moab 
 shall be trodden down in his place, even as straw is trodden down in 
 the water of the dunghill. And he shall spread forth his hands in 
 the midst thereof, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to 
 swim : and he shall lay low his pride together with the craft of his 
 hands. And the fortress of the high fort of thy walls hath he brought 
 down, laid low, and brought to the ground, even to the dust. 
 
 SONG IN THE LAND OF JUDAH 
 
 We have a strong city ; 
 
 Salvation will he appoint for walls and bulwarks. 
 
 Open ye the gates. 
 
 That the righteous nation which keepeth truth may enter in. 
 
 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace. 
 
 Whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee. 
 
 Trust ye in the LORD for ever : 
 
 For in the LORD JEHOVAH is a Rock of Ages. 
 
 For he hath brought down them that dwell on high, the lofty city : 
 
 He layeth it low, he layeth it low, even to the ground ; 
 
 He bringeth it even to the dust. 
 
 The foot shall tread it down ; 
 
 Even the feet of the poor. 
 
 And the steps of the needy. 
 
 The way of the just is uprightness : 
 Thou that art upright dost direct the path of the just. 
 Yea, in the way of thy judgements, LORD, 
 Have we waited for thee ; 
 To thy name and to thy memorial 
 Is the desire of our soul. 
 
 With my soul have I desired thee in the night ; 
 
 Yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early : 
 
 For when thy judgements are in the earth. 
 
 The inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. 
 
 Let favour be shewed to the wicked. 
 
 Yet will he not learn righteousness ; 
 
 In the land of uprightness will he deal wrongfully. 
 
 And will not behold the majesty of the LORD. 
 
THE RHapSOdV 421 
 
 m 
 
 Prophetic Spectator 
 
 Lord, thy hand is lifted up, yet they see not; but they shall see 
 thy zeal for the people, and be ashamed; yea, fire shall devour thine 
 adversaries. 
 
 VOICES OF THE SAVED 
 
 Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us : for thou hast also wrought 
 all our works for us. LORD our God, other lords beside thee have 
 had dominion over tis ; but by thee only will we make mention of 
 thy name. 
 
 Prophetic Spectator 
 
 The dead live not, the deceased rise not: therefore hast thou 
 visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish. 
 
 « 
 
 VOICES OF THE SAVED 
 
 Thou hast increased the nation, O LORD, thou hast increased the 
 nation ; thou art glorified : thou hast enlarged all the borders of the 
 land. 
 
 Prophetic Spectator 
 
 Lord, in trouble have they visited thee, they poured out a prayer 
 when thy chastening was upon them. 
 
 Voices of the Doomed 
 
 Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her 
 delivery, is in pain and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been 
 before thee, O Lord. We have been with child, we have been in 
 pain, we have as it were brought forth wind ; we have not wrought 
 any deliverance in the earth; neither have inhabitants of the world 
 been born. 
 
 GOD (TO THE SAVED) 
 
 Thy dead shall live : my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and 
 sing, ye that dwell in the dust : for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, 
 and the earth shall cast forth the dead. Come, my people, enter thou 
 into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee : hide thyself for a 
 little moment, until the indignation be overpast. For, behold, the 
 LORD Cometh forth out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the 
 
422 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 earth for their iniquity : the earth also shall disclose her blood, and 
 shall no more cover her slain. 
 
 Voice of Prophecy 
 
 In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword 
 shall punish leviathan the swift serpent, and leviathan the crooked 
 serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. 
 
 SONG IN THAT DAY 
 
 A Vineyard of wine, (sing ye of it^ 
 
 I the Lord do keep it ; I will water it every moment: 
 Lest a7iy hurt it, I will water it night and day. 
 
 Fury is not in me : 
 
 Would that the briers and thorni were against vie in battle, 
 I would march upon them, I would burn them together. 
 
 Or else let him take hold of tny strength. 
 That he may make peace with me : 
 Yea, let him make peace with me. 
 
 In days to come shall Jacob take root; 
 Israel shall blossom and bud : 
 And they shall fill the face of the world with fruit. 
 
 PROPHETIC SPECTATOR 
 
 Hath he smitten him as he smote them that smote him ? or is he 
 slain according to the slaughter of them that were slain by him ? 
 In measure, when thou sendest her away, thou dost contend toith her; 
 he hath removed her with his rough blast in the day of the east wind. 
 Therefore by this shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and this is all 
 the fruit to take away his sin ; when he maketh all the stones of the 
 altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, so that the Asherim 
 and the sun-images shall rise no more. 
 
 Vision 
 
 For the defenced city is solitary, an habitation deserted and for- 
 saken, like the wilderness : there shall the calf feed, and there shall 
 he lie down, and consume the branches thereof. 
 
THE RHAPSODY 423 
 
 Voice of Prophecy 
 
 When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off ; 
 the women shall come and set them on fire : for it is a people of no 
 understanding; therefore he that made them will not have compas- 
 sion upon them, and he that formed them will show them no favour. 
 
 VOICE OF PROPHECY 
 
 And it shall come to pass hi that day, that the LORD shall beat out 
 his corn, from the flood of the River unto the brook of Egypt, and ye 
 shall be gathered, one by one, O ye children of Israel. 
 
 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great trumpet shall be 
 blown ; and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land 
 of Assyria, and they that were outcasts in the land of Egypt; and 
 they shall worship the Lord in the Holy Mountain of Jerusalem. 
 
 Such is the Prophetic Rhapsody in its full development. Its 
 effect is that of a World Drama ; to attain this effect all literary 
 forms concur in one, and even description has a subordinate place 
 in representation. As the Rhapsody is a form of literature special 
 to Hebrew Prophecy, it may be interesting to 
 enquire into its origin as a distinct literary form, poetic Rharfsod" 
 On the one side it may be regarded as an extension 
 of Drama. In a previous chapter we have noted prophecies which 
 were equivalent to brief dramatic dialogues, presenting the Divine 
 yearning and the repentance of the rebellious people. Such dia- 
 logues were, however, abstract and general, with no note of par- 
 ticular time or place. The Hebrew people have strong dramatic 
 feelings, but no theatre in which to give them vent ; accordingly, 
 when dialogue becomes determined by indications of time and 
 place, such as in other literatures would be transferred to a theatric 
 scene, these in Hebrew literature can be conveyed only by descrip- 
 tion. The addition of this scenic description to dialogue converts 
 drama into rhapsody. 
 
 An illustration of a composition differing from dramatic dialogue 
 by no more than this addition of description is afforded by one of 
 the most beautiful of the compositions of Jeremiah, that on the 
 Drought. Its speakers are God, the Prophet, and Repentant 
 
424 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 Israel.' Its dramatic action consists in the gradual moving of God 
 from judgment to mercy; and dramatic effect is carried to the 
 extent of representing Jehovah as a jusdy incensed God, who for 
 a long time will not so much as look at the sinful nation, but 
 addresses them only through the Prophet : at last he speaks his 
 reproofs, and finally his mercy, to his people directly. To all this 
 dialogue is prefixed a prelude picturing the drought which is the 
 scene and occasion of the whole. 
 
 Jeremiah xiv-iv RHAPSODY OF THE DROUGHT 
 
 SCENIC 
 
 Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof langifish ; they sit in black 
 upon the ground; and the cry ofyerusalem is gone up. 
 
 And their Hobles send their little ones to the waters : they come to 
 the pits and find no water ; they return with their vessels empty : 
 they are ashamed and confounded, and cover their heads. 
 
 Because of the gi'ound which is chapt,for that no rain hath been in 
 the land, the plowmen are ashamed, they cover their heads. 
 
 Yea, the hind also in the field calveth, and forsaketh her young, 
 because there is no grass. And the wild asses stand on the bare 
 heights, they pant for air like jackals ; their eyes fail, because there is 
 no herbage. 
 
 1 It is usually interpreted as a Dialogue of Intercession, with no speakers except 
 God and the Prophet. No explanation of it is entirely free from difficulty, but the 
 one given in the text seems to me the least difficult, (i) A great objection to other 
 views is the conclusion : it seems impossible, without straining, to make the Prophet 
 guilty of any fault (mistrust, etc., is suggested) for which he should be invited to 
 repent. Nor is it easy to see why the Prophet should speak xv. 15-18 after the full 
 assurance given him in xv. 11. On the other hand the Divine reply (xv. 19) seems 
 a natural reference to the ' purged remnant' which in all prophecy appears as the 
 only portion of the nation to be saved. No doubt verses 20, 21 refer to Jeremiah : 
 but they are outside the rhapsody, being an epilogue added to this as to other 
 important prophecies (compare i. 18 and vi. 27) . (2) In two speeches which I 
 assign to the Repentant People (xiv. 7-9, 19-22) the plural is uniformly used: and 
 the brief prologue has prepared us to hear Judah mourning. It is true that the 
 third speech (xv. 15-18) uses the singular : but that immediately follows the speech 
 of God (12-14) in which the singular is used, and which is undoubtedly addressed 
 to the People and not to the Prophet. (3) The ordinary view ignores the marked 
 distinction between *'The Lord said unto me" in xiv. 11 (contrast 10), xiv. 14 
 (compare 17), xv. i, as compared with the usual formula, " The Lord said," in xv. 
 II (and 19) and the beautiful dramatic eiTect which this suggests. 
 
THE RHAPSODY 425 
 
 Repentant Israel 
 
 Though our iniquities testify against us, work thou for thy name's 
 sake, O Lord: for our backslidings are many; we have sinned 
 against thee. O thou hope of Israel, the saviour thereof in the time 
 of trouble, why shouldest thou be as a sojourner in the land, and 
 as a wayfaring man that turneth aside to tarry for a night? Why 
 shouldest thou be as a man astonied, as a mighty man that cannot 
 save ? yet thou, O Lord, art in the midst of us, and we are called by 
 thy name; leave us not. 
 
 The Prophet 
 
 Thus saith the Lord unto this people, Even so have they loved to 
 wander; they have not refrained their feet : therefore the Lord doth 
 not accept them; now wUl he remember their iniquity, and visit 
 their sins. 
 
 The Lord (Jo the Prophe^ 
 
 Pray not for this people for their good. When they fast, I will 
 not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and oblation, 
 I will not accept them : but I will consume them by the sword, and 
 by the famine, and by the pestilence. 
 
 The Prophet 
 
 Ah, Lord God ! behold, the prophets say unto them. Ye shall not 
 see the sword, neither shall ye have famine; but I will give you 
 assured peace in this place. 
 
 The Lord (to the Prophet") 
 
 The prophets prophesy lies in my name : I sent them not, neither 
 have I commanded them, neither spake I unto them : they prophesy 
 unto you a lying vision, and divination, and a thing of nought, and 
 the deceit of their own heart. Therefore thus saith the Lord con- 
 cerning the prophets that prophesy in my name, and I sent them not, 
 yet they say. Sword and famine shall not be in this land : By sword 
 and famine shall those prophets be consumed. And the people to 
 whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem 
 because of the famine and the sword; and they shall have none 
 to bury them, their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters: for 
 I will pour their wickedness upon them. And thou shalt say this 
 word unto them, Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, 
 
426 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 and let them not cease; for the virgin daughter of my people is 
 broken with a great breach, with a very grievous wound. If I go 
 forth into the field, then behold the slain with the sword ! and if I 
 enter into the city, then behold them that are sick with famine ! for 
 both the prophet and the priest go about in the land and have no 
 knowledge. 
 
 Repentant Israel 
 
 Hast thou utterly rejected Judah ? hath thy soul loathed Zion ? 
 Why hast thou smitten us, and there is no healing for us ? We 
 looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of healing, and 
 behold dismay ! We acknowledge, O Lord, our wickedness, and 
 the iniquity of our fathers : for we have sinned against thee. Do 
 not abhor us, for thy name's sake; do not disgrace the throne of 
 thy glory: remember, break not thy covenant with us. Are there 
 any among the vanities of the heathen that can cause rain ? or can 
 the heavens give showers ? art not thou he, O Lord out God ? 
 therefore we will wait upon thee; for thou hast done all these things. 
 
 The Lord {to the Prophet) 
 
 Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could 
 not be toward this people : cast them out of my sight, and lei them 
 go forth. And it shall come to pass, when they say unto thee, 
 Whither shall we go forth ? then thou shalt tell them. Thus saith the 
 Lord: Such as are for death, to death; and such as are for the 
 sword, to the sword; and such as are for the famine, to the famine; 
 and such as are for captivity, to captivity. And I will appoint over 
 them four kinds, saith the Lord : the sword to slay, and the dogs to 
 tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to 
 devour and to destroy. And I vrill cause them to be tossed to and 
 fro among all the kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh the 
 son of Hezekiah king of Judah, for that which he did in Jerusalem. 
 For who shall have pity upon thee, O Jerusalem ? or who shall 
 bemoan thee ? or who shall turn aside to ask of thy welfare ? Thou 
 hast rejected me, saith the Lord, thou art gone backward : therefore 
 have I stretched out my hand against thee, and destroyed thee : I 
 am weary with repenting. And I have fanned them with a fan in 
 the gates of the land; I have bereaved them of children, I have 
 destroyed my people; they have not returned from their ways. Their 
 widows are increased to me above the sand of the seas : I have 
 
THE RHAPSODY 421 
 
 brought upon them against the mother of the young men a spoiler 
 at noonday : I have caused anguish and terrors to fall upon her sud- 
 denly. She that hath borne seven languisheth; she hath given up 
 the ghost; her sun is gone down -while it was yet day; she hath been 
 ashamed and confounded : and the residue of them will I deliver to 
 the sword before their enemies, saith the Lord. 
 
 The Prophet 
 
 Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife 
 and a man of contention to the whole earth ! I have not lent on 
 usury, neither have men lent to me on usury; yet every one of 
 them doth curse me. 
 
 The Lord (to the Prophet") 
 
 Verily I will strengthen thee for good; verily I will intercede for 
 thee with the enemy in the time of evil and in the time of affliction. 
 — ( 7o Israel^ — Can one break iron, even iron from the north and 
 brass ? Thy substance and thy treasures will I give for a spoil with- 
 out price, and that for all thy sins, even in all thy borders. And I 
 will make thee to serve thine enemies in a land which thou knowest 
 not: for a fire is kindled in mine anger, which shall burn upon 
 you. 
 
 Repentant Israel 
 
 O Lord, thou knowest : remember me, and visit me, and avenge 
 me of my persecutors; take me not away in thy longsuffering. 
 Know that for thy sake I have suffered reproach. Thy words were 
 found, and I did eat them ; and thy words were unto me a joy and 
 the rejoicing of mine heart : for I am called by thy name, O Lord 
 God of hosts. I sat not in the assembly of them that make merry, 
 nor rejoiced : I sat alone because of thy hand ; for thou hast filled 
 me with indignation. Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound 
 incurable, which refuseth to be healed ? wilt thou indeed be unto me 
 as a deceitful brook, as waters that fail ? 
 
 The Lord 
 
 Therefore, if thou return, then will I bring thee again, that thou 
 mayest stand before me; and if thou take forth the precious from 
 the vile, thou shall be as my mouth : they shall return unto thee, but 
 thou shall not return unto them. 
 
428 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 Epilogue. — To the Prophet 
 
 And I will make thee unto this people a fenced brasen wall; and 
 they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee : 
 for I am with thee to save thee, and to deliver thee, saith the Lord. 
 And I will deliver thee out of the hand of the vpicked, and I will 
 redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible. 
 
 If, on the one hand, we thus see dramatic prophecy passing 
 into rhapsody by the addition of an element of description, we 
 can, looking to the other side, observe how discourse can sway 
 in the direction of dramatic machinery, and so become rhapsodic. 
 I have before' drawn attention to such a prophecy as that of 
 Zephaniah, in which the continuity of Divine speech is broken 
 by outbursts of impersonal lyrics, exulting in delivered Zion, or 
 triumphing over the threatened foe. Again, it is easy to under- 
 stand how the fervour of prophetic oratory can suddenly change to 
 realising the predicted future as if immediately present. The 
 lengthy discourse in which Isaiah describes the Assyrian as the 
 rod of God's anger, and pictures the reign of peace that would 
 follow the Assyrian's overthrow, is throughout couched in the 
 future tense : at just a single point the future tense gives place to 
 the realistic present. 
 
 He is come to Aiath, he is passed through Migron ; at Michmash 
 he layeth up his baggage: they are gone over the pass; " Geba is 
 our lodging," they cry; Ramah trembleth; Gibeah of Saul is fled. 
 Cry aloud with thy voice, O daughter of Gallim ! hearken, O Laishah ! 
 O thou poor Anathoth ! Madmenah is a fugitive; the inhabitants 
 of Gebim gather themselves to flee. This very day shall he halt at 
 Nob; he shaketh his hand at the mount of the daughter of Zion, 
 the hill, of Jerusalem. , 
 
 Behold the Lord, the Lord of hosts, shall lop the boughs with 
 terror : and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the 
 lofty shall be brought low. And he shall cut down the. thickets of 
 the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one. And 
 there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch 
 out of his roots shall bear fruit. 
 
THE RHAPSODY 429 
 
 In the same way most of the Doom Songs (except those of 
 Ezekiel) are rhapsodic : the denunciations and predictions alter- 
 nate with various modes of presenting the fulfilment of the 
 
 The Rhapsodic Discourse, as distinguished from the Rhapsody, 
 is illustrated on the largest scale in a portion ai Jeremiah which 
 I would describe as his Prophetic Manifesto. It is Rhapsoa from 
 a long composition of five chapters, following the Jeremiah's Mani- 
 account of the prophetic call, and embodying the **^*° '"""^ 
 general spirit of Jeremiah's ministry. Large part of it is dis- 
 course, marked by the mingling of imagery and pathetic appeal 
 which distinguishes this prophet; I illustrate some of the rhap- 
 sodic passages.' 
 
 A Cry to Judah and Jerusalem 
 
 A hot wind from the bare heights in the wilderness toward the 
 daughter of my people, not to fan, nor to cleanse. 
 
 The Lord 
 
 A full wind from these shall come for me : now will I also utter 
 judgements against them. Behold, he shall come up as clouds, and 
 his chariots shall be as the whirlwind: his horses are swifter than 
 eagles. 
 
 The People 
 
 Woe unto us ! for we are spoiled. 
 
 The Prophet 
 
 O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest 
 be saved. How long shall thine evil thoughts lodge within thee ? 
 
 A Voice from Dan and the Hnxs of Ephraim 
 
 Make ye mention to the nations; behold, publish against Jerusa- 
 lem, that watchers come from a far country, and give out their voice 
 against the cities of Judah. 
 
 1 For the whole, see Jeremiah volume of Modern Reader's Bible, pages 9, 219. 
 
430 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 The Lord 
 
 As keepers of a field are they against her round about; because 
 she hath been rebelhous against me, saith the LORD. Thy way and 
 thy doings have procured these things unto thee; this is thy wicked- 
 ness ; for it is bitter, for it reacheth unto thine heart. 
 
 The People " 
 
 My bowels, my bowels ! I am pained at my very heart; my heart 
 is disquieted in me; I cannot hold my peace; because thou hast 
 heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. De- 
 struction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled: 
 suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtams in a moment. How 
 long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet ? 
 
 The Lord 
 
 For my people is foolish, they know me not; they are sottish chil- 
 dren, and they have none understanding : they are wise to do evil, 
 but to do good they have no knowledge. 
 
 Vision 
 
 I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was waste and void; and the 
 heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, 
 they trembled, and all the hills moved to and fro. I beheld, and, 
 lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. I 
 beheld, and, lo, the fruitful field was a wilderness, and all the cities 
 thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and before 
 his fierce anger. 
 
 The Lord 
 
 The whole land shall be a desolation; yet will I not make a full 
 end. For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be 
 black : because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and I have not 
 repented, neither will I turn back from it. 
 
 Vision continued 
 
 The whole city fleeth for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen; 
 they go into the thickets, and climb up upon the rocks : every city 
 is forsaken, and not a man dwelleth therein. 
 
THE RHAPSODY 431 
 
 The Lord 
 
 And thou, when thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? Though thou 
 clothest thyself with scarlet, though thou deckest thee with orna- 
 ments of gold, though thou enlargest thine eyes with paint, in vain 
 dost thou make thyself fair ; thy lovers despise thee, they seek thy life. 
 
 Vision continued 
 
 For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, the anguish as 
 of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of 
 Zion, that gaspeth for breath, that spreadeth her hands, saying. Woe 
 is me now ! for my soul fainteth before the murderers. 
 
 A Cry out of the North 
 
 Flee for safety, ye children of Benjamin, out of the midst of Jeru- 
 salem, and blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and raise up a signal on 
 Beth-haccherem : for evil looketh forth from the north, and a great 
 destruction. 
 
 The Lord 
 
 The comely and delicate one, the daughter of Zion, will I cut off. 
 Shepherds with their flocks shall come unto her; they shall pitch 
 their tents against her round about; they shall feed every one in his 
 place. 
 
 The Enemy 
 
 Prepare ye war against her; arise, and let us go up at noon. 
 
 The People 
 
 Woe unto us ! for the day declineth, for the shadows of the even- 
 ing are stretched out. 
 
 The Enemy 
 
 Arise, and let us go up by night, and let us destroy her palaces. 
 For thus hath the Lord of hosts said, Hew ye down trees, and cast 
 up a mount against Jerusalem : this is the city to be visited. She is 
 wholly oppression in the midst of her. 
 
432 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 The Lord 
 
 As a well casteth forth her waters, so she casteth forth her wicked- 
 ness: violence and spoil is heard in her; before me continually is 
 sickness and wounds. 
 
 In the rhapsodies so far reviewed we have seen the movement 
 
 that consists in a continuous advance, and the movement that 
 
 advances only by alternations. There is a third 
 
 Movement by ^j. niovement in which the distinctness of the 
 
 Visions ^ * 
 
 parts is more prominent than the progress from 
 
 one part to another. Such divisions in the movement of a literary 
 composition are felt to correspond to the ' Acts ' of a drama, but, 
 differing from these Acts by the absence of continuous succession, 
 they should be indicated by some different name, such as ' Vis- 
 ions.'^ A prophecy of Amos is an illustration, his 
 sodyof the Rhapsody of the Judgment to come. The first of the 
 
 Judgment to three divisions or ' Visions ' into which it falls 
 brings out Israel's part in a general judgment, and 
 it is a piece of Lyric Prophecy. The second section is a series of 
 appeals to Israel, and is in the form of Discourse. The third 
 presents the coming of the judgment in the form of Dramatic 
 Vision. 
 
 The portion constituting the first Vision has been cited at length 
 in a previous chapter.^ It is a chain of lyric woes denounced 
 
 against various peoples : free recitative of prose detailing 
 Vision I special features of each, while rhythmic refrains speak 
 
 tTie common doom. It is clear that the various denun- 
 ciations are so arranged as to lead up to that on Israel as a 
 climax. A note of this prophet's treatment Is his power of em- 
 phasising by holding back. What the judgment on Israel is to 
 be is kept a mystery ; the formula used for the other nations — 
 devouring fire — does not appear in the last case, but the judg- 
 ment is described only by its effects, — flight perishing from the 
 swift, and the mighty unable to deliver himself. 
 
 1 Compare the use of this word in the title page of Isaiah. 
 
 2 Above, page iij. 
 
THE RHAPSODY 433 
 
 The second Vision is a series of appeals increasing in intensity. 
 First, we have four general appeals, each ushered in by the cry, 
 "Hear ye," or "Publish ye." The effect is to picture 
 Corruption ripe for Judgment. Then follows a pleading ^^^]^^ 
 in which discourse becomes lyrical. The successive warn- 
 ings sent by God are enumerated — cleanness of teeth, the guilty 
 city isolated by drought with abundance all around, blasting and 
 mildew, pestilence after the manner of Egypt, and burning like 
 that of Sodom and Gomorrah — and after each comes the refrain, 
 "Yet have ye not returned to me, saith the LORD." The pleading 
 turns to a threat : 
 
 Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel : and because I will do 
 THIS unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. 
 
 The coming judgment still remains veiled under the mysterious 
 thus. Then follows a Wail ; a fourth and fifth appeal are denun- 
 ciations of ' Woe.' "^ The limit of appeal seems now to be 
 reached : God swears by Himself that Jacob and his sins 
 have become a thing of abhorrence. Only at the very end does 
 the mystic judgment begin to take substance, as we hear 
 of captivity in the east and the nation that is to afflict the 
 whole land. 
 
 With the third part of the rhapsody the judgment appears sen- 
 sibly to advance, as the series of visions pass before us. A vision- 
 ary appearance of locusts at their work of destruction is 
 seen : but when the destruction has proceeded a certain ^jj j^ ^ 
 way the prophet interposes his intercession, and the Lord 
 repents and says it shall not be. Another vision, and fire is seen 
 devouring the great deep; but when it reaches the land the 
 prophet again makes intercession, and the judgment is stayed. 
 The next vision displays a plumbline : the exact limit has been 
 reached, beyond which there can be no passing by of the iniqui- 
 
 1 Throughout these and other parts of Amos we find parenthetic interruptions, 
 in which the prophet maltes appeal to the opponents of all prophecy. See Minor 
 Prophets volume of Modern Reader's Bible, page 251. 
 
ix. 1-6 
 
 434 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OE PROpMECY 
 
 ties of Israel. The emphasis of this as a turning-point is further 
 seen by the way in which the prophet introduces here one of his 
 characteristic digressions, describing the efforts of those 
 vii. 10-17 .^ authority to restrain him from prophesying evil to Is- 
 rael. We are thus prepared for the next vision of summer fruit : 
 Israel is ripe for her fall. With the final vision the judgment 
 has begun. The Lord, standing on the altar of his 
 house, bids smite the chapiters, that the thresholds may 
 shake, and the universal destruction of house and people may 
 follow. 
 
 Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; and 
 though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down. 
 And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search 
 and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight 
 in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he 
 shall bite them. 
 
 The next section, if not a vision, may almost be regarded as em- 
 blem prophecy : the Ethiopians are used as an image, to suggest 
 how Israel is now regarded as on a par with the most 
 remote heathen. But just before its close, the prophecy 
 takes a turn in its movement : " I will not utterly destroy." Thus 
 the last strain of this, as of other rhapsodies, can be the song of 
 a golden age, when " the plowman shall overtake the 
 reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed " ; 
 and the people shall be planted upon their land, to be plucked up 
 no more. 
 
 I have felt it less necessary to dwell in detail upon this beauti- 
 ful prophecy of Amos, because this movement in which logical 
 takes the place of temporal succession, will be found again in an- 
 other composition, a colossal and wonderful example of the rhap- 
 sodic form, which needs a separate chapter for its consideration. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE RHAPSODY OF ' ZION REDEEMED ' \Isaiah XL-LXVl] 
 
 The last twenty-seven chapters of our Book of Isaiah form a 
 single composition : no less stupendous as a literary monument 
 than supreme in importance as inspiration of 
 Hebrew and Christian religion. To expound it Isaiah's Rhap- 
 would require a volume ; all that I can attempt is Redeemed ' 
 to elucidate its outer literary form, well assured 
 that here, as always, this must be an important factor in the inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 Every reader feels a difficulty in catching the unity of the 
 whole, however strongly he may feel the attraction of the parts. 
 No narrative is carried on from beginning to end, though there is 
 much to suggest progress of story ; though reasoning abounds, 
 there is no sign of a logical plan ; if the reader seeks to take 
 refuge in supposing a collection of many compositions, he is con- 
 tinually confronted with evidences of unity. The full force of 
 this part of the Bible is brought out by considering it a Rhapsody, 
 — the prophetic form made by the fusion of all literary forms in 
 one ; which can thus give the realistic emphasis of dramatic 
 presentation to its ideas, while free at any point to abandon 
 drama for discourse or lyric meditation. This Rhapsody of Zion 
 Redeemed has a movement which, like that of 
 
 other rhapsodies, is best compared to the succes- "* general 
 
 r- ■ ^ ■ ^ 1 1 1 1 • movement and 
 
 sion of parts m an Oratorio. On the whole, this matter 
 
 movement is so far an advance that, like many 
 
 pther prophecies, it workg forward from an immediate judgment 
 
 43S 
 
436 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 and deliverance, on to the final judgment of the nations and resto- 
 ration of the remnant in a Messianic kingdom. But the seven 
 divisions into which the whole falls are not seven stages in this 
 advance, but (like those in the prophecy of Amos) seven indepen- 
 dent 'Visions,' side by side in part and partly successive, each 
 complete in itself and drawing matter from all parts of the national 
 history, and all necessary to be exhibited before the action is con- 
 summated. The seven Visions may be described as follows : — 
 
 I 
 The Servant of Jehovah delivered from Bondage 
 
 The Servant of Jehovah Awakened 
 
 3 
 
 Zion Awakened 
 
 4 
 
 The Servant of Jehovah Exalted 
 
 5 
 
 Zion Exalted 
 
 6 
 
 Redemption at work in Zion 
 
 7 
 The Day of Judgment 
 
 The mere reading of these titles suggests advance in the move- 
 ment as a whole. Yet it is impossible to say that (for example) 
 the sixth section either follows or precedes those standing before 
 it : it embraces the whole action looked at from a particular point 
 
THE RHAPSODY OF ' ZiOiV RBdREMED' 43? 
 
 of view, and is placed where it is because of the relation of that 
 point of view to the whole. Further, as the rhapsodic form can 
 mingle dramatic realisation with the most spiritual meditation or 
 imaginative idealising, so the matter of the whole prophecy ex- 
 tends from an immediate deliverafice of Babylonian Captives, by 
 the instrumentality of Cyrus, to a spiritual redemption of Zion, 
 and final judgment of the nations b'y Jehovah. And similarly the 
 ' Servant of Jehovah ' appears at some points as Israel the nation, 
 charged with a mission to itself and to the Gentiles; in other 
 places it seems to individualise into a humanity that can suffer 
 martyrdom, and, in the memorable central act of the rhapsody, 
 has become a mystic personahty, whose sufferings are at last 
 recognised by the nations as vicarious. 
 
 Prelude 
 
 The Prelude embodies the spirit of the whole rhapsody in brief 
 lyric and dramatic form. The Voice of God is heard command- 
 ing to speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry to her that 
 her warfare is accomplished, and her iniquity pardoned. 
 At once voices appear to take up the message and carry it on to 
 its destination. A Voice cries to prepare in the wilderness a high- 
 way for God ; every valley is to be exalted and every mountain 
 and hill made low, the crooked is to be made straight and the 
 rough places plain : the glory of the Lord is about to be re- 
 vealed, and all flesh shall see it together. Another 
 Voice in succession passes on the word ; but here the 
 Voice of the Tidings is checked by the Voice of Despondency. 
 
 What shall I cry? 
 All flesh is grass, 
 And all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field : 
 
 The grass withereth, 
 
 The flower fadeth ; 
 
 Because the breath of the LORD bloweth upon it : 
 Surely the people is grass. 
 
43§ BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 But the Voice of the Tidings makes reply : 
 
 The grass withereth, 
 The flower fadeth : 
 But the word of our God shall stand for ever. 
 
 Another Voice seems to sound from far on the road to Jerusalem : 
 bidding to get up into the high mountain to tell the good 
 ' tidings to Zion, to lift up the voice with strength, to say 
 to the cities of Judah, Behold your God ! 
 
 Vision I 
 
 The first Vision elaborately presents the deliverance of Jehovah's 
 Servant from bondage in Babylon. An Introduction celebrates, in 
 the form of meditation, the supremacy of Jehovah : who 
 measureth the waters in the hollow of his hand, and 
 meteth out heaven with a span, weighing the mountains in scales 
 and the hills in a balance ; before whom the nations are as a drop 
 in a bucket; he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. To 
 what, then, shall this God be likened? to a graven image, gilded 
 by a goldsmith, with silver chains cast for it lest the god fall down? 
 or wrought for the impoverished worshipper by a cunning work- 
 man out of a tree, chosen carefully lest the god might rot ? Mean- 
 while He sitteth above the circle of thfe earth, and all the inhabitants 
 thereof are but as grasshoppers ; He calleth all the host of heaven 
 by number and by name, and for that He is strong not one of 
 them is lacking. Appeal is then made to the desponding of Israel, 
 who cry that their way is hid from God, and their judgment a 
 thing passed away for ever. Have they not heard and known 
 that the Creator of the ends of the earth fainteth not, neither is 
 weary, but giveth power to the faint? Even the youths shall be 
 weary and fail ; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew 
 their strength ; they shall mount up with wings as eagles ; they 
 shall run, and not be weary ; they shall walk, and not faint. 
 
THE RHAPSODY OF ' ZION REDEEMED' 439 
 
 At this point the rhapsody becomes dramatic : a single scenic 
 action is sustained for eight chapters, broken only by qccasional 
 outbursts of lyric song. The Nations are summoned to 
 the bar of God to hear his will concerning the deliverance 
 of his people ; and the idea of the assembled Nations, once raised, 
 is by little touches of allusion kept before us to the end.^ There 
 is no speaker in this scene except Jehovah : yet, by the pendulum- 
 like alternation so common in prophecy,^ and here seven times re- 
 peated, God is presented as addressing alternately the Nations and 
 Israel, each in the presence of the other, pronouncing his fore- 
 ordained counsel to the one, and proclaiming redemption to the 
 other. Thus the assunled presence of the Nations on the one side 
 and Israel on the other completes the dramatic reality of the scene. 
 
 I. The Nations, away to the furthest islands of the west, are 
 summoned to judgment : to hear of ' one from the east ' raised up 
 as an instrument of righteousness,^ crushing the peoples 
 in his path ; and none but Jehovah hath wrought this 
 from the beginning. -^^/"^w verses present the panic of the assem- 
 blivg Nations : how the idolaters encourage one another : 
 the carpenter cheering the goldsmith, and he that smooth- 
 eth with the hammer him that smiteth the anvil ; they look to the 
 soldering of the idols, and strengthen them with chains for the 
 coming shock. 
 
 As if in contrast with such panic, Israel is summoned with words 
 of comfort. He is the chosen Servant of Jehovah, who will be 
 his Redeemer : causing mountains to be threshed .and 
 scattered out of his path, opening for him rivers on bare 
 heights and fountains in the midst of valleys, while the wilderness 
 
 1 Such allusions are xli. i, 21, 28-9: xliii. 9-10; xliv. 8-9; xlv. 20; xlviii. 6, 14. 
 The fact that occasionally (xliii. 12; xliv, 8; xlv. 17) in addresses to the Nations 
 the pronoun You or Your is casually used in reference to Israel adds to the general 
 effect of the scene: each party is addressed in the presence of the other. 
 
 2 Compare above, pages 112, 113 (note). 
 
 8 It is specially important in this prophecy to remember the twofold meaning in 
 the Old Testament of the word 'righteousness': not only right doing, but also 
 settin^^ riffht, vindication, almost the equivalent of salvation. Compare xli. 2; xlii. 
 6 ; xlv. 8, 13 ; especially li. 5 ; and Ivi. i. 
 
440 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 blooming with myrtle and acacia shall signify what the Holy One 
 of Israel hath done for his people. 
 
 2. The idolatrous Nations are challenged to dispute, to pro- 
 duce their cause and their strong reasons ; let their idols declare 
 
 things to come that their godhead may be known ; 
 xli. 2i-xliii. 8 , ., , , 
 
 let them do good or do evil that the two parties 
 
 may look one upon the other. — A single verse conveys the silence 
 
 of the Nations : the gods of their workmanship are things 
 
 of nought. — Then Jehovah produces his case: he has 
 
 raised up ' one from the north,' ' from the rising of the sun,' to 
 
 tread the Nations like clay, and make glad tidings for Zion. Who 
 
 but Jehovah hath declared such counsel from the beginning? — 
 
 Again the verses present God as looking for an answer 
 
 from the Nations and meeting only silence : he pronounces 
 
 the molten images vanity and confusion. 
 
 The Divine Speaker now turns to Israel, and proclaims him to 
 the Nations as his Servant : ^ and the service is to bring forth judg- 
 ment to the Gentiles. Not by force, but by gentleness : 
 he shall not cry nor shout; the bruised reed he- shall not 
 break, nor quench smoking fiax ; but he shall be sustained until 
 he has become light and help to the peoples of the earth. — A 
 Lyric Outburst of Praise to Jehovah from the whole 
 '°"'^ earth : let them that go down to the sea sing, let Sela 
 
 and the villages of Kedar lift up the voice, let them shout from 
 the top of the mountains. Jehovah hath long kept silence, but 
 now will he. cry like a travailing woman ; he will waste moun- 
 tains and make rivers islands, he will make darkness light and 
 the crooked straight : and Israel shall never be forsaken. — 
 The proclamation goes on to describe this Servant 
 of Jehovah as blind, as deaf, as hid in prison houses, 
 and only now perceiving that it is He against whom the 
 
 1 It seems to me impossible to understand the 'Servant' of these verses (xlii. 
 1-9) otherwise than as the nation of Israel. No one doubts that the ' Servant ' of 
 verses 18-25 is Israel : but these verses are a continuation of the beginning of the 
 chapter, verses 10-13 being one of the lyric interruptions that occur at intervals 
 and are outride the argument, 
 
THE RHAPSODY OF ' ZION REDEEMED' 441 
 
 people has sinned that has given Israel for a spoil. Yet now his 
 Maker has become his Redeemer. " When thou passest through 
 the waters I will be with thee ; and through the rivers, they shall 
 not overflow thee." The Holy One of Israel is his saviour : he 
 has given Egypt for ransom, and Ethiopia and Seba ; he will say 
 to the north, Give up, and to the south. Keep not back ; and the 
 imprisoning nations shall bring them forth, a blind people that 
 hath eyes, a deaf people that hath ears. 
 
 3. The alternation of pleading continues. The assembled 
 Nations are again challenged to bring witnesses, to show the fore- 
 seeing of counsel from of old. Their silence makes 
 
 ° . , zliii. g-xliv. 5 
 
 them witnesses for Jehovah, and Israel too is wit- 
 ness. There is no god but Jehovah, and he is the only saviour. 
 
 Then to Israel their Creator and King tells how for their sake 
 Babylon has been visited. The former deliverance from Egypt 
 shall no more be remembered : a new thing shall be 
 done, a way opened in the wilderness, and rivers m the 
 desert. Yet Israel hath not called upon the Lord ; hath wearied 
 him with sins and not with sacrifices. Jehovah will blot out his 
 transgressions for his own sake. Water shall be poured upon the 
 thirsty, and streams upon the dry ground ; the seed of Jacob shall 
 spring up among the grass, as willows by the watercourses. " One 
 shall say, I am the Lord's ; and another shall call himself by the 
 name of Jacob ; and another shall subscribe with his hand unto 
 the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel." 
 
 4. Again Jehovah asserts his godhead, and pours scorn on the 
 
 gods of the Nations. He is the first, and he is the last, and 
 
 beside him there is no God, there is no Rock. 
 
 , , . xliv. 6-28 
 
 The fashioners of graven images are plunged m 
 
 confusion : the delectable things their work has created cannot 
 
 witness for them to save them from shame. 
 
 The smith maketh an axe, and worketh in the coals, and fashioneth 
 it with hammers, and worketh it with his strong arm : yea, he is 
 hungry, and his strength faileth; he drinketh no water, and is faint. 
 The carpenter stretcheth out a line; he marketh it out with a pencil; 
 
442 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 he shapeth it with planes, and he marketh it out with the compasses, 
 and shapeth it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of 
 a man, to dwell in the house. He heweth him down cedars, and 
 taketh the holm tree and the oak, and slrengtheneth for himself one 
 among the trees of the forest : he planteth a fir tree, and the rain 
 doth nourish it. Then shall it be for a man to burn; and he taketh 
 thereof, and warmeth himself; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread : 
 yea, he maketh a god, and worshippeth it : he maketh it a graven 
 image, and falleth down thereto. He burneth part thereof in the 
 fire; with part thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is sat- 
 isfied : yea, he warmeth himself, and saith. Aha, I am warm, I have 
 seen the fire: and the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his 
 graven image : he falleth down unto it and worshippeth, and prayeth 
 unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god. 
 
 So the worshipper of idols feeds upon ashes, with none to show 
 him how his deceived heart has led him astray, till he cannot see 
 the lie in his right hand. 
 
 But not so with Israel : theirs is not a made God, but the 
 Maker of his people. And he has now redeemed them, 
 
 XllV. 21 ^ ' 
 
 blotting out as a thick cloud their transgressions, and 
 as a cloud their sins. 
 
 Sing, O ye heavens. 
 
 For the LORD hath done it ; 
 
 Shout, ye lower parts of the earth; 
 
 Break forth into singing, ye ynountains, 
 
 O forest, and every tree therein: 
 
 For the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, 
 And will glorify himself in Israel. 
 
 Then thus saith to Israel his Redeemer, he who stretcheth out 
 the heavens, he who frustrateth the tokens of liars, and maketh 
 diviners mad : Cyrus is his Shepherd, and shall perform all his 
 pleasure, even saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built. 
 
 5. To the Nations Jehovah proclaims Cyrus as his anointed, 
 commissioned to do his work, for which the way 
 
 xlv-xlvi 
 
 shall be smoothed before him. Jehovah hath sur- 
 named Cyrus, though Cyrus hath not known him. The authority 
 
TME RHAPSODY OP ' ZlON REDEEMED' 443 
 
 of the proclamation is maintained : Jehovah is he who is the 
 creator of light and of darkness, peace and evil are alike his 
 instruments. 
 
 Drop down, ye heavens, from above. 
 
 And let the skies pour down righteousness : 
 Let the earth open, that they may be fruitful in salvation. 
 
 And let her cause righteousness to spring up together. 
 
 Shall not the work of the hands be used by him that has wrought 
 it? Therefore the Creator of man has raised up Cyrus as an 
 instrument of righteousness. For this shall the labour of Egypt, 
 and the merchandise of Ethiopia, and the Sabeans, men of stature, 
 come over unto him, accepting his bonds because of the God that 
 is hidden in him : " Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O 
 God of Israel, the Saviour." And let the assembled Nations know 
 that there is no saviour but Jehovah : to Him must the ends of the 
 earth look, and to Him every knee bow. His enemies shall be 
 covered with confusion : and a few words of the Divine Speaker 
 call up a picture of the idols of Babylon borne away into captivity, 
 Bel bowing down over one beast, and another beast groaning under 
 • the weight of Nebo laid flat across him. 
 
 Then, with a sudden turn, the Speaker addresses Israel : their 
 God is not a god to be borne in his people's arras, but in his 
 arms has their God carried his people, frora the womb he has 
 borne them, and even to hoar hairs shall they be carried. The 
 one God, whom no helpless idols can equal, whose is the counsel 
 that is seen from the beginning to the end, will do his pleasure : 
 he calls a ravenous bird from the east to execute his counsel, and 
 his salvation shall no longer tarry. 
 
 6. The sixth section opens with Israel's triumph over fallen 
 Babylon. — A lyric outburst calls tauntingly to the virgin daughter 
 of Babylon to come down and sit in the dust, to sit on the 
 
 •^ -^ xlvil. 1-5 
 
 ground without a throne; to cover herself with shame; 
 
 to sit silent, to -get her into darkness, for she shall no more be 
 
 called the lady of kingdoms. — The Divine Speaker reminds 
 
444 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 Babylon of her cruelty to the captives of the Lord, and her 
 
 careless confidence. Now all her losses shall come upon 
 
 her at once, the day of evil breaking without any dawn to 
 
 go before it ; and all her astrologers, and star-gazers, and monthly 
 
 prognosticators shall be as stubble ; there shall be none to save. 
 
 Upon Israel too the Divine rebuke falls : upon those who swear 
 
 by the name of Jehovah, and make mention of the God of Israel, 
 
 but not in truth nor in righteousness. Because of the 
 
 iron sinew in their neck, and their brow of brass, has 
 
 Jehovah told them the thing before it come to pass, lest they 
 
 should say their idol had done it. From the womb they have 
 
 been a transgressor, but for his name's sake God will defer his 
 
 anger. He has refined Israel, but not as silver ; He has tried him 
 
 in the furnace of affliction, — He, the first and last, whose glory 
 
 shall not be given to another. 
 
 7. For the seventh and. last time in this High Court of Heaven 
 
 and Earth God turns to the assembled Nations.^ He whom 
 
 Jehovah loveth shall perform his pleasure on Baby- 
 xlviii. 14-32 , ,, , , —, 
 
 Ion, and his way shall be made prosperous. The 
 
 Nations are bidden to listen, and already the voice of Jehovah's 
 
 agent is heard : " From the time that it was, there am I : and now 
 
 the Lord God hath sent me, and his spirit." 
 
 It remains to turn for the last time to Israel, that they may 
 
 know their redeemer, who leads them by the way they should go. 
 
 "Oh that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments ! 
 
 xlvlii. 17 
 
 then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness 
 as the waves of the sea." The scene of judgment ends with a cry 
 to go forth out of Babylon, that the whole earth may ring with a 
 cry of Jacob, the Lord's Servant, redeemed, and a second time 
 led through the desert, while waters gush from the rock to quench 
 his thirst." 
 
 1 For these sevenfold divisions compare above, page 110. 
 
 2 The concluding words, " There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked," 
 I understand as a prolonged Amen, or pious ejaculation of a scribe, at the conclu- 
 sion of a section, without a place in the immediate context. Compare the doxolo- 
 gies ending the first four boolcs of Psalms. 
 
THE RHAPSODY OF ' ZION REDEEMED' 445 
 
 Vision II 
 
 The second Vision presents the Servant of Jehovah commencing 
 the ministry proclaimed folr him in the previous scenes. 
 This Servant is distinctly called the nation Israel : but it 
 is Israel reforming Israel, a nation with a mission to itself as well 
 as to those outside. 
 
 Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye peoples, from far: the 
 Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother 
 hath he made mention of my name : and he hath made my mouth 
 like a. sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me; and 
 he hath made me a polished shaft, in his quiver hath he kept me 
 close : and he said unto me. Thou art my servant; Israel, in whom 
 I will be glorified. But I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent 
 my strength for nought and vanity. 
 
 Then he speaks of the new commission which has roused him from 
 such despondency. 
 
 He saith, It is too light a thing that thou shouldest be my servant to 
 raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel : 
 I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be 
 my salvation unto the end of the earth. 
 
 As an opening of his commission he proclaims the salvation that 
 is to bring Israel — the despised, the servant of rulers — and make 
 him inherit desolate heritages. The captives shall feed in the 
 ways, and on all bare heights shall be their pasture ; they shall 
 not hunger nor thirst, neither shall the heat nor sun smite them : 
 for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the 
 springs of water shall he guide them. 
 
 Sing, heavens ; 
 
 And be joyful, O earth; 
 
 And break forth into singing, O mountains : 
 For the Lord hath comforted his people. 
 And will have compassion upon his afflicted. 
 
446 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 The voice of Desponding Zion is heard : this with the responses 
 of the Servant of Jehovah makes a change to dialogue. She 
 cries that Jehovah has forsaken her. — Can a woman 
 ^ ^^' "* forget her sucking child ? Behold, she is graven on the 
 palms of the Lord's hands : her waste places shall be built, and 
 the children of her bereavement shall yet throng until the place is 
 too strait for its inhabitants. — But how shall the barren and the 
 exile bring forth new inhabitants? — Kings shall be her nursing- 
 fathers, and queens her nursing-mothers : they shall bring her 
 children in their bosoms. — Zion is still incredulous : shall the 
 prey be taken from the mighty ? — Mighty is He that contendeth 
 for her : is Jehovah's hand shortened ? have the children of God 
 been disinherited ? 
 
 The discourse passes back into a soliloquy of Jehovah's Servant : 
 and here the Servant appears to take more individual form. The 
 Lord hath given him the tongue of the taught that he 
 might know how to sustain with words him that is weary ; 
 morning by morning his ear is wakened to the Divine word. And 
 he has not been rebellious ; he has given his back to the smiters, 
 and his cheeks to them that pulled off the hair ; he hid not his 
 face from shame and spitting : for He that justifieth him is near. 
 And already he is become a judgment to those about him, to 
 separate between those who obey his voice, even though they walk 
 in darkness, and those who kindle a fire, and gird themselves 
 about with firebrands : these he leaves to walk in the flame of 
 their fire, and among the brands they have kindled; this only 
 they have from him, that they shall lie down in sorrow. 
 
 Vision III 
 
 The third Vision, in a mystical dramatic mode of realisation only 
 possible in so spiritual a literary form as the rhapsody, 
 presents the gradual Awakening of Zion under reiterated 
 calls from God and the Celestial Hosts. 
 
TtiE RHAPSODY OF ' ZION REDEEMED' 447 
 
 Jehovah crieth to his people that seek him to look to their 
 past and take comfort : to look unto the rock whence they were 
 hewn,- and to the hole of the pit whence they were digged. For 
 the waste places of Zion shall again be as Eden : joy and gladness 
 shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody. — 
 No response. 
 
 Jehovah crieth comfort to his people from their glorious 
 future : his righteousness is near, his salvation is gone forth. The 
 heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth wax old 
 like a garment, but his salvation shall stand fast for ever. — 
 No response. 
 
 Jehovah comforteth his people against the reproach of men. 
 For these the moth shall eat like a garment, the worm shall eat 
 them like wool : but Jehovah's righteousness shall be for ever. 
 
 The Celestial Chorus encourage Jehovah : calling to the Arm 
 of the Lord to awake as in the days of old, when Egypt was cut 
 in pieces, and the sea became a pathway for the redeemed. And 
 the ransomed of the Lord shall again come with singing to Zion, 
 everlasting joy upon their heads. 
 
 Jehovah yet again comforteth his people : will they fear man 
 that shall die, and the son of man which shall be as grass, when 
 the Maker of heaven and earth has said that the captive exiles 
 shall speedily be loosed? For it is he who ruleth the sea that 
 hath put his words in their mouth and covered them with the 
 shadow of his hand. — No response. 
 
 The Celestial Chorus join in the cry to Jerusalem to awake, to 
 stand up : she has drunk of the cup of staggering, and there has 
 been none among all her sons to guide her. Therefore has Jeho- 
 vah taken out of her hand the cup of staggering, and put it into 
 the hands of them that afflict her. — No response. 
 
 The Celestial Chorus reiterate the cry to Zion to awake, to put 
 on her strength, to put on her garments of beauty, shaking herself 
 from the dust. For Jehovah hath said, she was sold for nought, 
 and without money shall she be redeemed, and shall know that it 
 is he, even Jehovah, who hath done it. 
 
448 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 At last the awakening of Zion seems to begin. Beautiful upon 
 the distant mountains are seen the feet of messengers bringing 
 good tidings of good, publishers of salvation. — Now the 
 watchmen of Zion have caught the word ; they lift up the 
 voice : no discordant notes, they see eye to eye how Jehovah is 
 returning to Zion. — Now the waste places of Jerusalem break 
 forth into joy, they sing together that the Lord hath redeemed 
 Jerusalem. — Now the Lord's arm is made bare that all the nations 
 of the earth can behold his salvation : and awakened Zion can see, 
 as if present, the bearers of the sacred vessels departing out of 
 Babylon, careful that no unclean thing mar their sacred office, and 
 passing on with the God of Israel for their rearward. 
 
 Vision IV 
 
 We have reached the fourth and central Vision of the Rhap- 
 sody : the brief section which seems to stand out from the rest 
 like the keystone of an arch, and presents the Servant 
 of Jehovah prosperous and highly exalted, to the aston- 
 ishment of the nations that had despised his marred visage, 
 his form marred more than the sons of men. The Chorus of 
 Nations, in a lyric song of gradually augmenting stanzas, 
 express their astonishment at that which they can hardly 
 believe ; and bring out the mystery of a personality whose suffer- 
 ings have been a bearing of the sufferings of others. Which of us 
 (they ask) believed that which we heard, or recognised the Lord's 
 hand, when we saw him grow up as a root out of a dry ground, 
 without form or comeliness, despised and rejected of men? 
 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and been wounded for our trans- 
 gressions, when we esteemed him smitten of God and afflicted ; 
 we were the sheep that had gone astray, and the Lord laid on 
 him the iniquity of us all. In oppression he humbled himself; 
 led as a lamb to slaughter he opened not his mouth ; who of his 
 generation considered that he was cut off from the land of the 
 living, stricken for the people's transgression? Yet it pleased 
 
THE RHAPSODY OP ' ZION REDEEMED' 449 
 
 Jehovah to put him to grief: but he shall see of the travail of his 
 soul and be satisfied, and by knowledge of him shall the righteous 
 Servant make many righteous. 
 
 Vision V 
 
 From the Servant of Jehovah in his glory we pass to Zion ex- 
 alted. The fifth section of the Rhapsody is a series of 
 Songs for Zion in her Exaltation. The first Song cele- 
 brates Zion as Jehovah's Bride : " Thy maker is thine husband, 
 the Lord of hosts is his name." 
 
 For a small moment have I forsaken thee; 
 
 But with great mercies will I gather thee. 
 In overflowing wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment ; 
 
 But with everlasting kindness will I have mercy upon thee. 
 
 Like the rainbow pledge of old to Noah is this new covenant. 
 
 For the mountains shall depart, 
 
 And the hills be removed; 
 But my kindness shall not depart from thee, 
 
 Neither shall my covenant of peace be removed. 
 
 The second Song depicts Zion as a City of Beauty and Peace : 
 her foundations of sapphires and pinnacles of rubies, her gates of 
 carbuncles, and all her border of pleasant stones. Zion is impreg- 
 nable as she is beautiful : terror shall not come nigh her ; no 
 weapon formed against her shall prosper. 
 
 The third Song, already cited' in full, presents Zion calling to 
 the nations with offers of a free covenant. With the usual pro- 
 phetic intermingUng of recitative and rhythmic verse the musical 
 invitation of Zion to the Nations is interrupted at intervals with 
 comfortable words of the Divine Voice, reciting how Zion is ap- 
 pointed to be a leader of the peoples, how high are the Divine 
 thoughts above the human ambitions of Zion. The end is a 
 glorious climax : 
 
 1 Above, pages 121-3, 
 
450 biSlical literature of prophecy 
 
 Ye shall go out with joy, 
 
 And be led forth with peace : 
 The mountains and hills shall break forth before you into singing, 
 
 And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 
 Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree. 
 
 And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree : 
 And it shall be to the Lord for a name, 
 
 For an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. 
 
 Vision VI 
 
 The sixth section is long, and in parts obscure. As a whole it 
 presents the work of redemption exercised upon Zion. It there- 
 fore stands appropriately before the final judgment that is 
 to exalt a purified Zion amid the overthrow of the nations. 
 But the redeeming work is an ideal picture that belongs to all 
 periods of the nation's history, and it must not be limited to the 
 restored exiles any more than it must be referred to the sin pre- 
 ceding exile ; sin and redemption from sin have belonged to every 
 period of Israel's history, and the return of sons and daughters to 
 the City of Salvation is but a main incident used as a universal 
 image. The relation of this sixth Vision to the section that fol- 
 lows and the sections that precede is reflected in the introductory 
 sentences. Playing upon the two meanings of the word they 
 enjoin righteousness — that is, doing right — because of 
 the near approach of God's righteousness — that is, set- 
 ting right, judgment and salvation. Then, with references back 
 to the Babylonian exile which has inspired so much in the pre- 
 ceding sections, invitations are spoken to the stranger, and to the 
 physically maimed, to join the Lord's people : the Lord's house 
 shall be called an house of prayer for all peoples. 
 
 Then the Vision seems to resolve itself into a series of pictures, 
 
 in which is seen a work of redemption. The first picture is one 
 
 of unmeasured national corruption : all the beasts 
 
 Ivi. 9-lvil. 13 <■ 1 <- 1 1 
 
 of the field coming to devour, and the watchmen 
 blind — dumb dogs that cannot bark, dreaming, lying down, loving 
 
THE RHAPSODY OF ' ZION REDEEMED' 451 
 
 to slumber J meanwhile the righteous are perishing unheeded, 
 with none to mark the lesson of their death. Suddenly is heard 
 the Voice of Prophecy : denouncing the sons of the sorceress, 
 unmasking the abominations of the grove and murderous sacri- 
 fices of the rock valleys, exposing the apostasy of the adulterous 
 nation, and the depths of debasement to which they will descend 
 in seeking any protector rather than their God. The Voice of 
 Jehovah speaks encouragement, and the Voice of Prophecy con- 
 tinues its interpretation of the Divine thoughts. 
 
 Jehovah 
 
 Cast ye up, cast ye up, iTii- i4-ai 
 
 Prepare the way, 
 Take up the stumblingblock 
 
 Out of the way of my people. 
 
 Voice of Prophecy 
 
 For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, 
 whose name is Holy : I dwell in the high and holy place, with him 
 also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the 
 humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. For I will not 
 contend forever, neither will I be always wroth : for the spirit should 
 fail before me, and the souls which I have made. For the iniquity 
 of his covetousness was I wroth : . . . and he went on frowardly in 
 the way of his heart. I have seen his ways and will heal him. 
 
 Fresh words of Divine encouragement are heard, and then a 
 third picture displays those who love righteous ordinances and 
 deUght to draw near unto God ; but they ask, Wherefore have we 
 fasted, and God seeth not? The answer of Prophecy is , ... 
 that they fast for contention and for their own pleasure. 
 Is this the fast that the Lord has chosen, that a man should afflict 
 his soul, and bow down his head like a rush, and spread sackcloth 
 and ashes under his feet? Is not this the fast acceptable to the 
 Lord, to loose the bonds of wickedness, and let the oppressed go 
 free, to deal bread to the hungry, and cover the naked, and that 
 thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh ? Then shall thy light 
 
452 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 break forth as the morning ; thy righteousness shall go before thee 
 and the glory of Jehovah be thy rearward. 
 
 Then, all the several pictures growing together into one, we 
 
 have Israel rousing itself to repentance. The Voice of Prophecy 
 
 preaches that the Lord's hand is not shortened that it 
 
 lix 
 
 cannot save, but iniquities have come between the people 
 and its God. Repentant Israel accepts this truth, and deplores 
 how they grope like the blind, and stumble at noonday; until 
 judgment is turned away backward, and truth fallen in the streets. 
 Then, with a change from dramatic presentation to direct state- 
 ment only possible in a Rhapsody, it is said that the Lord saw it, 
 and it displeased him that there was no judgment, and none to 
 interpose ; wherefore his own arm wrought salvation. He put on 
 righteousness as a breast-plate, and a helmet of salvation on his 
 head ; he clothed himself with garments of vengeance, and was 
 clad with zeal as a cloak : and he shall come like a rushing stream, 
 which the breath of the Lord driveth. Thus a Redeemer shall 
 
 COME TO ZiON. 
 
 At once the lyric songs break out bidding Zion arise, shine, for 
 her light is come. Darkness shall cover the earth, and gross dark- 
 ness the peoples : but Jehovah shall arise upon Zion, and 
 nations shall be drawn to her light, and kings to the bright- 
 ness of her sunrise. Her heart shall be enlarged and tremble as 
 she beholds the multitudes of camels, the ships flying as doves to the 
 windows, all bringing her sons and daughters from afar. Her 
 gates shall be open day and night as the wealth of nations flows 
 into her. Violence shall not be heard in her land; her officers 
 shall be peace, and her exactors righteousness ; her walls shall be 
 called Salvation, and her gates. Praise : and her sun shall no more 
 go down, for it shall be Jehovah, an everlasting light. 
 
 The lyric outburst subsides into a soliloquy of the Redeemer 
 
 that has thus come to Zion : he meditates upon his glorious task 
 
 of preaching good tidings to the meek, binding up the 
 
 broken-hearted, opening the prison to them that are 
 
 bound, proclaiming the day of God's vengeance, and appointing 
 
THE RHAPSODY OF ' ZION REDEEMED' 453 
 
 to the mourners of Zion the garment of praise for the spirit of 
 heaviness. He turns even then to speak words of promise 
 to Zion, and Zion, no longer desponding, rejoices in 
 the Lord who has covered her with the robe of righteousness as a 
 bride is adorned with jewels. The Redeemer, in response, 
 will for Zion's sake know no peace until her righteousness 
 shine before all kings. She shall be named no longer Desolate, 
 Forsaken : her land shall be Beulah, for her sons shall marry it, 
 and her God shall rejoice over her as a bridegroom rejoices over 
 his bride. Then the Redeemer cries to the Watchmen he has set 
 upon the walls to give the Lord no rest until he fulfil his word to 
 Zion. The section ends with a Chorus of Watchmen, 
 who cry to go through the gates, to clear the way, to lift 
 up the ensign that all nations can see : for the Lord's proclama- 
 tion of salvation has been made to the end of the earth, and soon 
 the name of Jerusalem will be the City Sought out. 
 
 Who is this ' Redeemer ' who has thus come to Zion? May we 
 identify the hero of this sixth section of the Rhapsody with the 
 hero of the sections that preceded? Is the 'Servant of Jehovah,' 
 who appeared first as a nation, and an unfaithful nation, then was 
 purified into a martyr, then into a personality whose vicarious 
 sufferings healed the nations, to be still farther idealised into the 
 Redeemer sent to purify Zion in the sixth vision, and the Power 
 that descends in judgment in the seventh? Theology, which can 
 link one book of Scripture with another, may answer this question. 
 But literary criticism, to which each work is an independent 
 whole, must be content to leave this great problem unsolved. The 
 phrase, 'Servant of Jehovah,' that has represented the central 
 thought of the first four sections of the rhapsody, never appears 
 •afterwards. So far as literary expression indicates, the final sec- 
 tions group themselves about a new conception. 
 
 Vision VII 
 The seventh section is to bring the final Judgment, to which so 
 
454 niBLtCAL LtTERATVRE OF PROPHECY 
 
 much of what precedes has been pointing. Its keynote is struck 
 ixiii-ixvi by a Dramatic Vision of Judgment. 
 
 Chorus of Watchmen 
 
 Who is this that cometh from Edom, 
 
 With crimsoned garments from Bozrah ? 
 This that is glorious in his apparel, 
 
 Marching in the greatness of his strength ? 
 
 He who COMETH 
 
 I that speak in righteousness, 
 Mighty to save. 
 
 Chorus of Watchmen 
 
 Wherefore art thou red 
 
 In thine apparel, 
 
 And thy garments 
 Like him that treadeth in the winefat ? 
 
 He who COMETH 
 
 I have trodden the veinepress alone; 
 
 And of the peoples there was no man with me : 
 
 Yea, I trod them in mine anger. 
 
 And trampled them in my fury; 
 
 And their lifeblood is sprinkled upon my garments, 
 
 And I have stained all my raiment. 
 
 For the day of vengeance was in mine heart. 
 And the year of my redeemed is come. 
 And I looked, and there was none to help; 
 And I wondered that there was none to uphold : 
 
 Therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me; 
 
 And my fury, it upheld me. 
 
 And I trod down the peoples in mine anger. 
 
 And made them drunk in my fury. 
 
 And I poured out their lifeblood on the eavlh. 
 
THE RHAPSODY OF ' ZION REDEEMED' 4S5 
 
 Repentant Israel speaks, and gathers the whole national history 
 into a liturgy of thanksgiving, confession, and supplication for 
 judgment. Beginning is made with the loving- 
 kindnesses of the Lord : he was the saviour of his 
 people, in all their afflictions he was afflicted, and the angel of 
 his presence saved them. But they were rebellious, and grieved 
 his holy spirit ; until he was turned to be their enemy and him- 
 self fought against them. Under his wrath have they become as 
 the heathen ; they have been delivered into the power of their 
 iniquities ; they have faded like a leaf which the wind of their 
 iniquities driveth about. The holy cities have become a wilder- 
 ness, Jerusalem a desolation ; the holy and beautiful house where 
 the fathers worshipped God is burned with fire. Yet is Jehovah 
 their father, though Abraham know them not, and Israel refuse 
 to acknowledge them. Oh that God would rend the heavens, 
 and come down, that the mountains might flow down at his 
 presence ! 
 
 The response comes in the judgment, that finally separates 
 between the holy and the evil : and the concluding phase 
 
 , . , , , . . Ixv-lxvi 
 
 of the rhapsody is the pendulum movement swmgmg to 
 and fro between vengeance and glad salvation. 
 
 The rebellious, walking in their own way, and provoking God 
 with their abominations — their works shall be recompensed into 
 their own bosoms. But there shall be a seed out of 
 Jacob; the Lord's chosen shall inherit his mountains; 
 Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, and the valley of Achor a place 
 for herds to lie down in. But those that prepare a table to 
 Fortune and pour libations to Destiny, destined shall 
 they be to the fortune of the sword : they shall perish, 
 and leave only a name to curse by. But he that blesseth himself 
 shall bless himself by the God of Truth, for joy of the new heaven 
 and the new earth, and the Holy Mountain in which the seed of 
 the blessed shall forget their troubles. For the Lord's dwelling 
 is not in a builded house, but in the poor and contrite spirit. 
 But they that choose their own ways, and delight in their own 
 
456 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 abominations, shall find Jehovah also choosing their delusions, 
 ixvi 3-5 ^^^ bringing their fears upon them. For a moment the 
 section becomes lyrical. 
 
 Confused Cries 
 
 A voice of tumult from the city ! 
 A voice from the temple ! 
 A voice of the Lord that rendereth recompense to his enemies. 
 
 VOICES OF THE SAVED 
 
 Before she travailed she brought forth ; 
 
 Before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child! 
 Who hath heard such a thing? 
 Who hath seen such things ? 
 
 Shall a land be born in one day ? 
 
 Shall a nation be brought forth at once ? 
 For as soon as Zion travailed 
 
 She brought forth her children. 
 
 And Jerusalem, the Divine Voice continues, and her lovers rejoice 
 together, her peace flowing like a river. While Jehovah 
 shall come in fire and chariots of whirlwind to rebuke his 
 
 enemies in the midst of their abominations : and a standard shall 
 
 be set up, that all nations and tongues can see the Lord's glory, 
 
 even to the isles afar off that have not heard his fame. And out 
 of all nations shall they bring the brethren of Zion as an 
 offering unto the Lord, and the seed of Lsrael shall be 
 
 before the Lord as long as the new heavens and new earth shall 
 remain. And all flesh shall come up to worship at the 
 holy feasts : and they shall go forth and look upon the 
 
 carcasses of the transgressors, for their worm shall not die, neither 
 
 shall their fire be quenched. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE WORKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 We have now passed in review all the various literary forms 
 assumed by Prophecy. It remains to consider the contents of 
 the prophetic books that have come down to us. 
 
 At the outset two important points call for notice. One is 
 the recognition of what I will call Prophetic Sentences. In 
 our examination of Wisdom literature we saw ^ that 
 it partly consisted in isolated sayings, — the unit sentences 
 proverbs and the short maxims and epigrams en- 
 larged from these ; a considerable proportion of the books of 
 wisdom was seen to be occupied with such independent literary 
 brevities, and works that were specially consecutive in argument, 
 such as Ecclesiastes, nevertheless exhibited portions of their 
 whole contents given up to such miscellaneous matter. To a 
 much smaller extent we saw in Lyric Poetry "" a similar aggre- 
 gation of brief poetic sayings or ejaculations to make longer 
 poems. It is not surprising then that in Prophecy also we should 
 find, besides formal discourses, isolated and independent Sen- 
 tences, each a unit of prophetic thought on some single topic. 
 Perhaps an ideal example of such Prophetic Sentences is given by 
 a well-known passage of Jeremiah. This passage stands between 
 an elegy of the mourning women describing a devastated land 
 covered with carcasses, and another prophecy denouncing uncir- 
 cumcised nations by name, and with them the uncircumcised 
 
 1 Above, pages 102, 327, 330. 
 
 2 Above, page 199. 
 
 457 
 
458 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 in heart. Its distinctiveness from the context must be felt by 
 every reader. 
 
 Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, 
 neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich 
 . man glory in his riches : but let him that glorieth glory 
 
 in this, that he understandeth, and knoweth me, that I 
 am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgement, and right- 
 eousness, in the earth : for in these things I delight, saith the 
 Lord. 
 
 Not only do such Prophetic Sentences exist, but from the 
 way in which they appear in more than one place, they would 
 seem to have somewhat of the floating character 
 Ter^viii'ia-d' °^ proverbs. The cry of ' fear, and the pit, and 
 the snare,' already seen in a work of Isaiah, 
 occurs almost without a change in Jeremiah. "We have heard 
 of the pride of Moab, that he is very proud," is a gnome- 
 like sentence found both in Isaiah's and Jeremiah's Doom 
 Songs on Moab j and the two have many other sentences in 
 common. The three first sayings in Obadiah's Vision of Edom 
 — those putting the ideas of an ambassador among the nations 
 proclaiming the humiliation of Edom, of an eagle brought 
 down from a mountain cleft, of grape-gatherers and robbers 
 leaving gleanings — all occur in various parts of Jeremiah's 
 Doom Song against the same nation. And a Prophetic Sen- 
 tence made by negation of the proverb about 
 Ez'.xvHi ''' fathers eating sour grapes and children's teeth 
 being set on edge is found as an independent 
 saying in Jeremiah, while it is expanded into an elaborate dis- 
 course by Ezekiel. 
 
 It is to be observed that such Prophetic Sentences are found in 
 groups, chiefly at the close of a series of longer prophecies. One 
 such group follows the words of encouragement given by Isaiah to 
 Ahaz in the crisis made by the unnatural alliance of Israel with 
 Syria against Judah. 
 
THE WORJiS OP Tttk PROPHETS 4S9 
 
 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall hiss for 
 the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of 
 Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of °"* "'' ' "*' 
 Assyria. And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the 
 desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns 
 and upon all pastures. 
 
 In that day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, which 
 is in the parts beyond the River, even with the king of Assyria, the 
 head and the hair of the feet : and it shall also consume the beard. 
 
 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a 
 young cow, and two sheep; and it shall come to pass, for the abun- 
 dance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter : for butter and 
 honey shall every one eat that is left in the midst of the land. 
 
 And it shall come to pass in that day, that every place, where there 
 were a thousand vines at a thousand silverlings, shall even be for 
 briers and thorns. With arrows and with bow shall one come 
 thither; because all the land shall be briers and thorns. And all 
 the hills that were digged with the mattock, thou shalt not come 
 thither for fear of briers and thorns, but it shall be for the sending 
 forth of oxen, and for the treading of sheep. 
 
 The isolation of the first passage is the clearer from the fact that 
 in this portion of Isaiah there is no mention of Egypt : Assyria 
 is the avenging force foreseen in that crisis. On the other hand, 
 there is an individuality about each of the four passages, such 
 as would readily give them currency as prophetic epigrams (so 
 to speak) : the prophecy of the fly and the bee, of the hired 
 razor, of butter and honey, of briers and thorns. We have seen 
 that repetition and reiteration play a great part in a prophet's 
 
 1 In my own judgment the preceding verse (17) also is an independent 
 ' Sentence,' and addressed, not to the king of Judah, but to the king of Israel. 
 This, however, is so contrary to the usual view of the passage, that I can only 
 refer the reader to my full discussion in the Modern Reader's Bible {Isaiah^ pages 
 223-30). 
 
460 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 ministry ; such epigrammatic sayings would be repeated by the 
 prophet on occasion after occasion of his preaching, until the text 
 could pass into popular use, while the prophet's discourse on it 
 would adapt itself to circumstances. Nor is it any objection 
 against the separation of these four passages that they are all 
 referred to a time expressed by the words " in that day : " on the 
 contrary, we find a few phrases — "in that day," "in those days,'' 
 "the days come" — that seem to be used as regular formulae for 
 introducing a prophecy. 
 
 Another series of such Sentences is found following Isaiah's 
 Doom Song against Egypt. It differs from the last in the fact 
 that all have a common thought, — the future conversion of Egypt ; 
 if the other Sentences were like proverbs, this series corresponds 
 to the proverb cluster. 
 
 Isaiah In that day there shall be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak 
 
 xix. i8- fhg language of Canaan, and swear to the Lord of hosts; one shall 
 be called The City of Destruction. 
 
 In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the 
 land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord. And 
 it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the 
 land of Egypt; for they shall cry unto the Lord because of the 
 oppressors, and he shall send them a saviour, and a defender, and 
 he shall deliver them. 
 
 And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall 
 know the Lord in that day; yea, they shall worship with sacrifice 
 and oblation, and shall vow a vow unto the Lord, and shall perform 
 it. 
 
 And the Lord shall smite Egypt, smiting and healing; and they 
 shall return unto the Lord, and he shall be intreated of them, and 
 shall heal therti. 
 
THE WORKS OF THE PROPHETS 461 
 
 In that day shall there be a high way out of Egypt into Assyria, 
 and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into 
 Assyria; and the Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians. 
 
 In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, 
 a blessing in the midst of the earth : for that the Lord of hosts hath 
 blessed them, saying. Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the 
 work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance. 
 
 The prominence of such independent ' Sentences ' in Hosea 
 has been noted from the time of St. Jerome downwards. An in- 
 teresting example of their occurrence is found in the 
 Book of Zechariah, where the prophet reads a collection yy^^"^ 
 of the Sayings of a former age, before he proceeds to add 
 prophetic Sayings of his own. A formal inquiry has been made 
 to Zechariah, whether the old fasts, established during the humili- 
 ation of the sacred city, are binding now she is restored. In his 
 response he says : 
 
 Should ye not hear the words which the Lord hath cried by the 
 former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, 
 and the cities thereof round about her, and the South and the low- 
 lands were inhabited? 
 
 (He proceeds to quote some of these 'words' :) 
 
 "Thus hath the Lord of hosts spoken, saying. Execute true 
 judgement, and shew mercy and compassion every man to his 
 brother : and oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, 
 nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother 
 in your heart." 
 
 (Zechariah comments on this : that it was the breach of com- 
 mands like these, and not failure in the observance of fasts, that 
 brought destruction on the land. He now proceeds to read other 
 oracles.) 
 
462 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 viii 1-8 "And the word of the Lord of hosts came to me saying, Thus 
 saith the Lord of hosts : I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, 
 and I am jealous for her with great fury." 
 
 " Thus saith the Lord : I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell 
 in the midst of Jerusalem : and Jerusalem shall be called. The City 
 of Truth; and the mountain of the Lord of hosts, The Holy Moun- 
 tain." 
 
 * 
 
 " Thus saith the Lord of hosts : There shall yet old men and old 
 women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, every man with his staff in 
 his hand for very age. And the streets of the city shall be full of 
 boys and girls playing in the streets thereof." 
 
 "Thus saith the Lord of hosts : If it be marvellous in the eyes of 
 the remnant of this people in those days, should it also be marvellous 
 in mine eyes? saith the Lord of hosts." 
 
 "Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Behold I will save my people 
 from the east country, and from the west country : and I will bring 
 them, and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; and they 
 shall be my people, and I will be their God, in truth and in 
 righteousness." 
 
 So far Zechariah has' been reading entirely from former prophets : 
 he proceeds to comment on these ' Sentences.' 
 
 Thus saith the Lord of hosts : Let your hands be strong, ye that 
 hear in these days, these words from the mouth of the prophets, which 
 were in the day that the foundation of the house of the Lord of 
 hosts was laid. . . . 
 
 He proceeds to connect together the Sentences of the prophets 
 of Israel's prosperous days, and those of the prophets who in her 
 obscurity promised restoration, and argues that now the happy 
 
THE WORKS OF THE PROPHETS 463 
 
 restoration is effected the old command of justice and mercy is 
 appropriate, and not the fear wliich found expression in fasting. 
 His argument concluded, he embodies his truth in the formal 
 commands of inspired prophecy : and this prophecy again falls 
 into the form of independent Sentences. 
 
 And the word of the LORD of hosts came unto me, saying, Thus 
 saith the Lord of hosts : The fast of the fourth month, and 
 the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the 
 fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, 
 and cheerful feasts; therefore love truth and peace. 
 
 Thus saith the Lord of hosts : It shall yet come to pass, that there 
 shall come peoples, and the inhabitants of many cities : and the 
 inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, Let us go speedily 
 to intreat the favour of the Lord, and to seek the Lord of hosts : I 
 vfill go also. Yea, many peoples and strong nations shall come to 
 seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to intreat the favour of 
 the Lord. 
 
 Thus saith the Lord of hosts: In those days it shall come to 
 pass, that ten men shall take hold, out of all the languages of 
 the nations, shall even take hold of the skirt of him that is a 
 Jew, saying. We will go with you, for we have heard that God is 
 with you. 
 
 It is clear that the recognition of such Sentences, not as an 
 accident, but as a regular feature of prophetic literature, makes 
 a great difference to the exegesis of particular pas- Recognition oi 
 sages. The documents which preserve the litera- sentences in 
 ture of antiquity have not the clear separation of *"s^='s 
 parts, and even of whole compositions, that modern printing has 
 made for us a matter of course ; and there is no element in exe- 
 gesis more important, or more difficult, than the determination 
 exactly where a literary section of Scripture begins and ends. Of 
 course, in all interpretation difference of opinion will arise. I am 
 
464 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 merely contending for the arrangement in isolated Sentences as a 
 legitimate resource of exegesis. And with regard to any particular 
 passage the question must be, not whether it is possible by inge- 
 nuity or by straining to weave it into a continuous whole, but 
 whether, all things considered, any succession of words may be 
 better regarded as a portion of a whole or as an independent 
 aphorism. 
 
 The second of our preliminary considerations is the Prophetic 
 Cycle. Considerable part of our prophetic literature is found to 
 
 consist in series of discourses, or incidents, or rhap- 
 ^yc es rop - gQ^jjgg^ succeeding one another just as the contents 
 
 of a modern volume of sermons. But sometimes 
 separate prophecies are united together by some essential bond, 
 whether of structural connection or of related subject-matter. In 
 this second case the word Cycle seems appropriate. It has been 
 remarked in a former chapter that all the discourses of Malachi 
 have the same structural plan : the discourse near its commence- 
 ment is interrupted by an imaginary objection, or more than one 
 objection, and these become the real starting-point of what fol- 
 lows. The recurrence of this scholastic device makes the whole 
 Book of Malachi a single Dialectic Cycle. Again, we have seen 
 how the denunciations against Israel and seven other nations at 
 the opening of Amos are in structure exactly parallel : they con- 
 stitute a Cycle of Dooms. The last section of this prophecy is a 
 series of emblems (presented in vision), ascending one above 
 another in nearness to the crisis and issue : this is an Emblem 
 Cycle. Such illustrations of the term are easy ; one or two usages 
 need more discussion. 
 
 The portion oi Isaiah that extends from chapter twenty-eight to 
 chapter thirty-five is best considered as a Cycle and not merely a 
 
 series of discourses. The bond of connection is 
 xxxT ^^'"" very definite : all the discourses are animadversions 
 
 on a political situation, chronic rather than special, 
 but this is made a background for pictures of the restoration of 
 Israel, or a remnant of Israel, in a golden age or Messianic king- 
 
THE WORKS OB THE PROPHETS 465 
 
 dom. In the first discourse Isaiah denounces the dissoluteness 
 of Judah's priestly and prophetic rulers as on a par 
 
 xxviii 
 
 with that of Israel's kingdom, and exposes the secret 
 
 ground of their lightheartedness amid national apprehensions — 
 
 the 'covenant with death and agreement with hell' they have 
 
 made for themselves, so that the overflowing scourge will pass 
 
 them by. This secret confidence he calls a refuge of lies, and in 
 
 contrast upholds Jehovah's foundation-stone laid in Zion, by the 
 
 strength of which he will be a diadem of beauty to the residue 
 
 that believe in him. The spirit of the second discourse 
 
 is similar ; and here we read of " the multitude of all the 
 
 nations that fight against Ariel." In the third and fourth, when 
 
 an embassy has been openly sent to Egypt, the 
 
 , 1 11- 11 xxx-xxxii. a 
 
 prophet pours contempt on the alliance with the 
 
 " Boaster that sitteth still," which shall become to Israel like a 
 breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall. But after fore- 
 telling ruin he springs to a glad future, gradually ascending from a 
 state of external affliction relieved only by the blessing of spiritual 
 guidance, to a golden tide in a plenteous land, when the light of 
 the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun 
 shall be sevenfold, and idols shall be utterly cast out. The same 
 combination of elements marks all the discourses. The conclu- 
 sion of the series is made by companion pictures of ideal destruc- 
 tion and ideal restoration. Edom is named as the foe, but the 
 details show that this is used only as a type of hostile forces : for 
 so universal is the destruction that all the host of heaven are seen 
 to moulder away, and the heavens roll together as a scroll; 
 streams of earth become pitch and its dust brimstone, 
 
 . xxxiv 
 
 the smoke of it going up for ever ; palaces are over- 
 grown with thorns and thistles, fit habitation for jackals, where the 
 wild beasts meet with the wolves, and the satyr cries to his fellow. 
 The contrasting picture ^ is of the wilderness and the soli- xxxv 
 
 1 It will be understood of course that the date of this prophecy, whether of its 
 composition or of that to which it may refer, does not affect the argument: we are 
 here concerned with the order of prophecies as they stand, whoever may be 
 responsible for the arrangement. 
 
466 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 tary place being glad, and the desert blossoming as the rose; 
 the glowing sand becomes a pool, the habitation of jackals 
 green with reeds and rushes : and a way of holiness stretches 
 across, over which the ransomed of the Lord return to Zion, with 
 everlasting joy upon their heads. Discourses with such commu- 
 nity of treatment, brought to such a common chmax, make what 
 may be called a Cycle of Judgment and Restoration. 
 
 Again, there is a Vision Cycle of much literary interest in our 
 
 Book of Zechariah. The hopes of the Temple-builders are 
 
 strengthened by a series of visions ; not only do 
 
 Vision Cycle: these visions belong to the same dream and have a 
 
 Zechariah i. 7- 
 
 vi. 8 common reference, but further, by a beautiful touch 
 
 of vision effect, they are enclosed in another ' En- 
 veloping Vision,' which remains constant while the others come 
 and go, dreams within a dream. The prophet relates how " in 
 the night" he beheld horses, red, sorrel, and white, among the 
 myrtle trees, and these are interpreted to him as spirits of minis- 
 tration that go to and fro in the earth. This is the Enveloping 
 Vision, — as it were the machinery for carrying out whatever by 
 special vision may be made known : and it seems to remain in 
 the background during all that follows. At present the report is 
 that the earth sitteth still and is at rest ; the angel of the Lord 
 appeals for mercy on Jerusalem to tarry no longer, and is answered 
 with comfortable words. The Lord will return to Jerusalem with 
 mercies : and each of these mercies is symbolised in a vision, the 
 prophet feeling himself, as it were, wakened from sleep to behold 
 
 each. The first vision is of Horns and Smiths : the for- 
 i. 18 
 
 mer are interpreted of the nations that have lifted them- 
 selves up against Jerusalem, the latter of the forces that shall fray 
 these and cast them down. A second vision shows a man with a 
 measuring line, going to measure Jerusalem : for its inhabitants 
 shall increase till it must needs be inhabited as villages without 
 walls. The third vision presents the hierarchy of heaven, and 
 the High Priest Joshua (representative of the Temple-builders) 
 assailed by the Adversary; but the Adversary is rebuked, and 
 
THE WORKS OF THE PROPHETS 467 
 
 Joshua is clad in rich apparel, with a mitre set on his head. The 
 next appearance is of the Golden Candlestick : this final piece of 
 Temple furniture symbolises how Zerubbabel shall complete as well 
 as begin his good work. While the prophet watches this he is 
 aware of the two olive trees on either side of it : this is a separate 
 emblem, giving authority for associating the two ' sons of oil,' — 
 the prince Zerubbabel and the priesthood. Two more visions 
 foreshadow the moral purification of the land : the Flying Roll of 
 the Curse indicating crime purged out of the country, and Wicked- 
 ness in the ephah pressed down by the weight of a talent showing 
 how the wickedness of the land shall be banished, as the visionary 
 figure is banished, into the wilderness. The succession of indi- 
 vidual mercies concluded, the Enveloping Vision resumes : chariots 
 are now added to the horses, from between the two mountains of 
 brass : and they are to depart to the four winds of heaven to exe- 
 cute the will of the Lord. The unity that is implied in all Cycles 
 reaches a climax in such enveloping of symbolic details in the 
 symbol of that which is to provide for their execution. 
 
 These preliminary considerations disposed of, the remaining 
 task of this chapter becomes easy. In the Appendix to this work 
 I attempt to analyse the contents of each book of prophecy, sepa- 
 rating discourses and sentences, indicating the nature of each, 
 and, where convenient, adding titles. Here it is only necessary 
 to sum up. 
 
 In several cases the contents of a prophetic work consist of a 
 single composition. Obadiah, Nahum, and Zephaniah have left 
 onlv a single Discourse ; the same may be said of 
 
 ■^ " , , ,. ,_ Contents of Pro- 
 
 Amos, unless mdeed the first two verses are to be poetic Books 
 
 isolated as an Oracle of the Earthquake.^ The 
 
 Book of Jonah we have in a former chapter seen to be a single 
 
 prophetic Epic. We have also seen that the books 
 
 ^ ^ ^ Shorter books 
 
 oijoel and Habakkuk resolve themselves each mto 
 
 1 1 have so arranged in the Modern Reader's Bible : see Minor Prophets volume, 
 page- 249. 
 
468 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 a single Rhapsody. In Haggai we find four Occasional Discourses, 
 regularly dated. And we have seen that the prophecy oiMalachi 
 may be regarded as a Dialectic Cycle. 
 
 The rest of prophetic literature shows more complexity. It 
 may be pointed out that when we speak of 'The Book of the 
 prophet Jeremiah,' we are using an ambiguous term. The whole 
 works of this prophet, as of others, fall into several ' books ' ; just 
 as what in ordinary parlance is called 'The Book of Psalms' 
 appears in the Revised Version as five books, clearly separated by 
 doxologies. 
 
 Our Book of Isaiah falls naturally into seven books.^ The first 
 is made up of general prophecies, ending with the Vision 
 of the Call. Six chapters contain Occasional prophecies, 
 one set relating to the Unholy Alliance of Israel with Syria, 
 another inspired by Assyrian Invasion. The fourth book contains 
 the Doom Songs collected together: these may be considered 
 to make a Cycle of Doom, as they are followed by the general 
 Rhapsody of Judgment upon the whole earth. I have already in 
 discussing the word ' cycle ' described the next section of Isaiah 
 as a Cycle of Judgment and Restoration. As a sixth book we 
 have a brief historical excerpt, bringing out Isaiah's action in the 
 great crisis of Sennacherib's invasion. The last book is the 
 Rhapsody of Zion Redeemed? 
 
 The discourses of Jeremiah seem to be grouped in more numer- 
 ous divisions, making ten books in all. After a section occupied 
 by the prophet's Call, and general Manifesto of his 
 
 Jeremiah \ . , , . . . „ 
 
 mmistry, we have a second contammg miscellaneous 
 discourses and sentences. Then follow several clear groups, 
 founded on a Missionary journey, on the Drought, on Pottery, 
 on Messages to Rulers. The seventh book is largely occupied 
 with Controversies ; the eighth contains the prophecies of the 
 Restoration. A book follows of Incidental discourses and pro- 
 
 1 Compare the Literary Index throughout. 
 
 2 It will be understood that the question whether this section is from the same 
 author as preceding parts of Isaiah is outside the scope of the present work. 
 
THE WORKS OP THE PROPHETS 469 
 
 phetic history ; and the collection of Doom Songs concludes the 
 series. 
 
 It is usual to divide our Book of Ezekiel into three parts, owing 
 to the fact that the Doom prophecies appear in the centre, between 
 prophecies mainly of judgment and prophecies of restor- 
 ation. But if regard be had to the most distinctive 
 peculiarity of this prophet, which consists in his founding his dis- 
 courses on symbolism and imagery, another arrangement becomes 
 possible. The writings of Ezekiel now fall into seven books. The 
 central book is a single unbroken discourse, in which is laid before 
 the Inquiring Elders the whole scope of the prophet's message : 
 this corresponds to the Prophet's Manifesto in other parts of 
 Scripture. The other six books of Ezekiel contain each seven 
 discourses, with a tendency for the last discourse of a book to be 
 itself sevenfold in structure. The Call of this prophet is threefold : 
 four more discourses complete the Opening of his Message and 
 the first book. The second book may be entitled The Sevenfold 
 Token; that which follows. The Sevenfold Parable. The fifth 
 book offers Seven Last Words, immediately before the Fall of 
 Jerusalem. Then follow the Doom prophecies, seven in number. 
 The final' book starts from the Fall of Jerusalem, and in a series 
 of seven discourses holds out hopes of a glorious Restoration. 
 The first and last books are bound together by the companion 
 visions of Jerusalem in her Pollution and Jerusalem in her Glory. 
 
 The Book of Daniel may be considered to have a twofold or a 
 sevenfold division. It contains six Prophetic Incidents and Inter- 
 pretations of Visions, arranged in chronological order ; jjaniei 
 then a Cycle of Visions seen by the prophet himself. Micah 
 Micah is made up of an elaborate Discourse of Judgment '^"^^^ 
 and Salvation and, what in a literary sense is most dissimilar, two 
 striking and brief dramatic prophecies. The arrangement oiHosea 
 is interesting. It falls naturally into seven divisions. The middle 
 sections are brief discourses, or collections of prophetic Sentences. 
 The opening and closing sections are elaborate presentations of 
 this prophet's most distinctive teaching — God's passionate love 
 
470 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 for Israel : the first is the Emblem of Gomer, the last is the 
 Drama of the Divine Yearning. 
 
 The Biblical Book of Zechariah makes a special case. It falls 
 into two parts, altogether dissimilar. The first eight chapters are 
 miscellaneous prophecies, expressly associated with the _ . . . 
 personality of the historical Zechariah. But the remain- 
 der of the book is of so very different a character that nothing 
 but respect for tradition would have associated it with Zechariah's 
 name. I have so far followed custom as to arrange, in the Index 
 to this work, Zechariah in two ' books.' But it is well to point 
 out that the ascription of what appears as the second book to 
 Zechariah may well be no more than an accident. Nothing can 
 be more natural than to suppose that, in the Roll of Prophets, the 
 works of known authors should come first, up to Zechariah (our 
 Zechariah i-viii), and that then should follow anonymous prophe- 
 cies cited under subject-titles. One of these subject-titles would 
 be Malachi, or ' My Messenger ' : for the word is quite unlike a 
 personal name, and the Septuagint treats it as a subject- title, 
 while the Targum makes Ezra the author of the book so entitled. 
 When, however, ' Malachi ' came to be read as a personal name, 
 like the names of the prophets from Isaiah to Zechariah, it was 
 natural that the intervening prophecies, with no author's name to 
 cover them, should attach themselves to the preceding book of 
 Zechariah. A slight confirmation of this suggestion, in itself so 
 probable, appears from the citations of the New Testament. Four 
 times the disputed portion oi Zechariah is quoted by New Testa- 
 ment writers^ : three of the citations are given without author's 
 name, the fourth is ascribed to Jeremiah. This last would have 
 to be regarded as a misquotation, except by the theory here sug- 
 gested, in which case the whole Roll of Prophets is cited by the 
 longest prophecy, that of Jeremiah, as the whole Book of Psalms 
 is cited by the name of a chief contributor, David. 
 
 1 Matthew xxvii. g-io (compare Zechariah xi. 12-13) \ Zechariah ix. 9 (in 
 Matthew xxi. 5 and John xii. 15); chapter xii. 10 (in John xix. 37); xiii. 7 (in 
 Matthew xxvi. 31 and Mark xiv. 27). 
 
THE WORKS OF THE PROPHETS 471 
 
 This completes the list of Old Testament prophets. But the 
 New Testament furnishes a book which must be considered in this 
 connection. The Revelation of St. jFohn is too 
 closely involved with modern theological questions leviuttln 
 to admit of its being discussed in a work from 
 which distinctively religious matter is excluded. On the other 
 hand, in the literary study of Scripture it is impossible to ignore a 
 composition of such transcendent literary interest. If a reader 
 will apply to this book of Revelation a method which ought to be 
 appUed to all parts of Scripture, and set himself to take in the 
 whole at a sitting, reading with his imagination on the stretch in 
 the way in which he would read Dante's Hell, Purgatory, and 
 Paradise, he will find, whatever his theological principles may be, 
 that this Vision Cycle is one of the literary wonders of the world. 
 I will be content with making two remarks on the subject, and 
 with these my treatment of Biblical Prophecy may be brought to 
 a conclusion. 
 
 The title contains the word ' revelation.' But in our discussion 
 of prophetic forms we saw that this word had two distinct mean- 
 ings : revelation of the future, as in the visions of 
 Daniel, and revelation of the ideal, as in Ezekiel's m^j^^°*°s «* ">« 
 Visions of Jerusalem, or the original revelation to 
 Moses in the mount. Which of these meanings applies, or do 
 they both apply, to the work of St. John ? The popular mind has 
 seized upon the first of these, and looks upon St. John's Revela- 
 tion as a prophetic riddle, the ingenious reading of which will give 
 a clue to events of past or future history, or will even enable the 
 present to be exactly located in some scheme of all time. But if 
 the words of the prologue, " the things which must shortly come 
 to pass,'' and the parallels with Daniel's visions, favour the view 
 that the revelation is a foreshowing, yet on the other hand the 
 equally close parallels with Ezekiel's visions, and the building up 
 of the whole structure upon symbolic symmetries, counterparts, 
 and antitheses, make it certain that the idealising of the world- 
 contest between good and evil is of the very essence of the 
 
472 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 work.^ Moreover, if both kinds of revelation belong to this book, 
 they will mutually modify one another. Suppose that some specially 
 distinctive detail of the symbolism suggests connection with some 
 historic power or institution : then, by the influence of the other 
 type of revelation, we must expect that historic reality to be ideal- 
 ised in the movement of the vision, so that it would still be 
 hazardous exegesis to interrogate other details of the symbolism 
 for further historic details. I have before remarked upon the way 
 in which prophetic literature as a whole has suffered from the 
 unfortunate narrowing of the word ' prophecy ' in ordinary con- 
 versation to the single sense of prediction. No part of prophetic 
 literature has suffered so much in this respect as St. John's Reve- 
 lation ; and the literary student, at all events, should address him- 
 self to those permanent spiritual interests of the book which are 
 independent of times and seasons. 
 
 But the Book of Revelation presents another feature of the 
 
 highest interest and significance. It may be expressed in a phrase 
 
 of the vision itself : " The testimony of Jesus is the 
 
 Association of its spirit of prophecy." Underlying the whole book 
 
 details with . ^ , . , , , , . ^ 
 
 other prophecy IS the idea that the "revelation of Jesus Christ" 
 
 is a bringing together and enhancing of all pre- 
 vious revelations; and accordingly in the symbolic scenery of the 
 visions, and the phrases by which they are described, the concep- 
 tions of Old Testament prophecy are continually appearing in new 
 forms and combinations. At the outset, when the Apostle speaks 
 of being 'in the Spirit,' we think of Ezekiel borne by the spirit to 
 Jerusalem. The prefatory messages to the seven churches of 
 Asia, with their individual details and rhythmic promises and 
 threats, remind us of the chain of denunciations in similar form 
 on seven nations with which Amos opens his prophecy, before he 
 deals with his church of Israel. In the vision itself we begin at 
 once to get details from Old Testament prophets. The personal 
 
 1 Among the many commentaries on this book I may mention (the late) Professor 
 Milligan's Revelation (in the Expositor's Bible), and Canon T. L. Scott's Visions of 
 the Apocalypse (London : Slveffington&Son),as specially helpful to literary students. 
 
THB WORKS OF THE PROPHETS 473 
 
 description of one coming with the clouds, of hair white as wool, 
 
 a golden girdle, feet like burnished brass, eyes of fire, is entirely 
 
 from Daniel ; from Ezekiel come the rainbow round about the 
 
 throne and the four living creatures. The naming of Him who 
 
 is worthy to open the book as the ' Root of David ' brings up 
 
 the ' Branch ' and ' Shoot ' which have figured in the Messianic 
 
 pictures of Isaiah; and the other appellative, 'the Lion of the 
 
 tribe of Judah,' takes us back to Primitive Prophecy and the 
 
 Blessings of Jacob on the tribes. It is the same with the symbols 
 
 that make up the succession of scenes. The book written within 
 
 and without, the little book to be eaten and found sweet in the 
 
 mouth and bitter in the belly, have both become familiar from 
 
 the prophecy of Ezekiel; the golden candlestick of Zechariah's 
 
 vision is multiplied sevenfold for this supreme revelation, and its 
 
 appendage of the two olive trees now becomes the centre of a 
 
 separate chapter of allegory ; the incense symbolising the prayers 
 
 of the saints realises the imagery of the psalms ; if 
 
 ,,. , ... .,, ^j Psalmcxli. a 
 
 agam the dehvered psalmist has cried that God 
 
 has put a ' new song ' in his mouth, the thought finds here a real- 
 isation in the mystic new song which none but the sealed of the 
 Lord can learn. The prophetic conceptions undergo alteration 
 and enlargement as they reappear. Zechariah's vision had pre- 
 sented spirits of ministration on the earth in the form of horses, 
 white, red, black, grisled, — the colours being a picturesque 
 detail : but the horses of Revelation — the white, the red, the 
 black, the pale — have each a hue mystically connected with its 
 office of judgment. Prophecy had frequently couched its mys- 
 teries under the image of a book sealed up : this consummation 
 of all things presents the unsealing. Among the instruments of 
 woe the trumpets represent the trumpet sound which in the rhap- 
 sodies had marked the commencement of panic, the bowls poured 
 out repeat the regular image of the Doom Songs, — the cup of 
 Jehovah's fury. The woes thus hurled upon the world are the 
 ' plagues ' of Egypt magnified : when locusts are mentioned, the 
 mystic imagery of Joel is worked into the description ; when hail 
 
474 BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY 
 
 is pictured, the expression " every stone about the weight of a 
 talent " reads like a momentary finger-pointing to Zechariah's vis- 
 ion of Wickedness pressed down with the talent of lead. Where 
 the form of woes goes outside the Egyptian plagues prophecy has 
 other symbols to contribute, and the ' burning mountain ' recalls 
 Jeremiah's Doom of Babylon, as the star Wormwood the Doom of 
 Babylon in Isaiah. Again, the recital of the number of the saved, 
 tribe by tribe, recalls in its rhythm a similar recital of the portions 
 of the tribes of Ezekiel. Of course a new chord has been struck 
 in the vision that immediately follows : the " great multitude, 
 which no man could number, out of every nation, and of all tribes 
 and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne." But as the 
 description is continued hallowed associations from old prophecy 
 come in. That they have " washed their robes and made them 
 white in the blood of the Lamb," combines Isaiah's promise that 
 sins red as crimson should be as wool with Zechariah's vision of 
 the filthy garments taken in the heavenly court from Joshua that 
 he might be clothed in rich vestments ; while the sweetly sounding 
 promise — 
 
 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the 
 sun strike upon them, nor any heat, for the Lamb which is in the 
 midst of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall guide them 
 unto fountains of waters of life — 
 
 has been spoken before by the Servant of Jehovah in the Isaiahan 
 Rhapsody. Sometimes St. John's symbols or descriptive touches 
 would fail to produce their effect if separated from the associa- 
 tions they recall. It would seem harsh in so mystic a scene to 
 speak of exact numbers : but the phrase of the old processional 
 
 psalm — 
 
 The chariots of God are twenty thousand. 
 Even thousands upon thousands — 
 
 renders it possible for Revelation to make the armies of the horse- 
 men " twice ten thousand times ten thousand." Again we might 
 see no point in the symbol of the balance held by the rider on the 
 
THE WORKS OF THE PROPHETS 475 
 
 black horse, were it not that Ezekiel's mimic siege has accustomed 
 us to associate famine with eating bread by weight and drinking 
 water by measure. And when we reach the tumult of winds and 
 sea and the beasts coming up out of the sea, the vision becomes 
 pointless unless the prophecies of Daniel are assumed throughout. 
 It will be understood that the use in Revelation of the Old 
 Testament prophecy is no borrowing or travelling backward ; on 
 the contrary, the conceptions of the prophets become intensified 
 by being massed together, and ideas from diverse sources unite in 
 a single new conception. The horror of nature that attends the 
 opening of the sixth seal is given in a single description. Its first 
 clause, as to the sun becoming black as sackcloth and the moon as 
 blood, gives a phenomenon of change three times used by Joel. 
 Then the stars falling from heaven, " as a shaken fig tree casts 
 her unripe figs,'' unites Isaiah's expression of stars faUing " as a 
 fading leaf from the fig tree " with Nahura's application of the 
 image of a shaken fig tree to the succession of fortresses yielded 
 in a panic. Then the detail of the heavens being rolled up as a 
 scroll recalls Isaiah's ideal ruin of Edom ; that of the mountains 
 and islands moving and fleeing has been a stock prophetic image ; 
 the idea of men's hiding in the caves and rocks has been used in 
 Isaiah's opening manifesto, their crying to the rocks and moun- 
 tains to fall on them and cover them has been pictured by Hosea. 
 The final cUmax of the description — that the great day of wrath 
 is come, and who is able to abide it? — borrows the refrain of 
 Joel's rhapsody. Or again : when the angel casts his sickle to 
 the earth, we at once recognise the consummation foreshadowed 
 by Joel ; but when the vintage so gathered is cast into the wine- 
 press of the wrath of God, the association is with the vision dl 
 judgment in the Isaiahan Rhapsody ; when again blood comes 
 out of the winepress and reaches even to the bridles of the 
 horses, the image of that rhapsody has become united with an 
 early picture of Isaiah, which represented the Assyrian flood 
 deluging the land and reaching to the horses' necks. The song 
 over Fallen Babylon recalls many such songs of old prophecy; 
 
476 BIBLICAL UtERATUHE OF PROPUECY 
 
 but before it has gone far the details have entirely changed, and 
 identified the fallen power also with Tyre whose ruin is wept over 
 by the merchant and the shipman : the suggestion is that all the 
 bulwarks of evil are included in the Babylon of Revelation. To 
 take a final example. The New Jerusalem seen with the measured 
 symmetries of its walls and gates is the Jerusalem of Ezekiel. Its 
 coming down as a bride adorned for her husband is the thought 
 of one of the songs to Zion Exalted in the rhapsody of Isaiah ; 
 from another of these songs come the foundations of precious 
 stones and pearly gates ; yet another has foreshadowed the gates 
 open day and night, the Divine Sun in the glory of which nations 
 walk. And the additional picture of the river of water of life — 
 with the trees of life, yielding their monthly fruits, and leaves for 
 the healing of the nations — has brought us back to the visions 
 of Ezekiel. 
 
 Even as a literary effect this building up of new conceptions out 
 of details that come to us hallowed with the associations of past 
 literature is eminently impressive. It is another form of that 
 which in secular literature is the chain of ' classic ' succession, by 
 which Miltonic poetry will in its every detail echo some classic 
 image or expression of Italian and Roman hterature, as these in 
 their turn had made their details suggest their origin in the classic 
 poetry of Greece. The emblematic ideas of prophecy, however, 
 go far beyond literary imagery ; and, whether we consider matter 
 or form, it is highly significant that the final outpouring of Scrip- 
 tural Prophecy should be a Procession of symbolic visions in 
 which the visionary symbols of all preceding prophecy have grown 
 together into their consummation. 
 
APPENDICES 
 
 Page 
 
 I. Literary Index to the Bible 479 
 
 II. Tables of Literary Forms 513 
 
 III. A Metrical System of Biblical Verse . . . 526 
 
 IV. A Reference Table ■ • 557 
 
 General Index 561 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 In this first Appendix the ivhole Bible, and the more important parts 
 of the Apocrypha, are divided up into the separate literary compositions of 
 which they are composed. The form of each composition is indicated, and, 
 in cases that admit of it, a suitable title is suggested. The arrangement 
 follows the order in 'which the books of the Bible stand ; the Appendix will 
 therefore serve as a guide to Bible reading where it is desired to read from 
 the literary point of mew. 
 
 Reference figures {in brackets) are added to previous pages in which 
 particular compositions have been discussed. The Appendix will therefore 
 serve' also as an Index to the present work. 
 
 It is suggested to the student to mark with pencil in his copy of the 
 Revised Version the divisions and titles here suggested, or to make divisions 
 and titles of his own. It is an immense help to literary appreciation to 
 have the form of « piece of literature conveyed directly to the eye {as is 
 done by the printer in all books except the Bible), instead of having to 
 collect the form by inference while reading. 
 
 479 
 
480 LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 GENESIS 
 
 History Part I: Formation of the Chosen Nation — Primitive History 
 
 Deals with the period preceding the appearance of the Chosen People as 
 a Nation. An Historic Frameworli enclosing Epic Incidents (250). 
 
 i-xi I ^^rst Beginnings of the World 
 
 xii-1 I The Patriarchal Succession 
 
 Merged in this History, yet separable for literary purposes, are various 
 forms of Epicy 
 
 EPIC STORIES 
 The Creation 
 
 The Temptation in the Garden of Eden 
 Cain and Abel 
 The Flood 
 
 EPIC CYCLES 
 
 OF ABRAHAM. — Call of Abraham (xii. i-g) — Sarai and Pharaoh 
 (jxii. 10-30) — The Parting of Abraham and Lot, and the Raid on Sodom 
 (xiii-xiv) — Sarai, Hagar, and the Promised Seed (xv-xvii) — The judg- 
 ment on Sodom (xviii-xix. 28) — Abimelech and Sarah {xx") — Birth of Isaac 
 and casting off of Ishmael {xxi. i-2x) — Offering of Isaac (^xxii. i-ig) — 
 Burial of Sarah {xxiii) — Wooing of Rebekah {xxiv) 
 
 OF ISAAC- — Birth of Isaac and casting off of Ishmael (^xxi. 1-21) — 
 Offering of Isaac {xxii. J—ig) — Burial of Sarah {xxiii) — Wooing of 
 Rebekah {xxiv) 
 
 OF yACOB. — Guileful obtaining of Isaac's blessing (^xxvii. 1-40) — 
 Flight of Jacob {xxvii. 41-xxviii) — How Jacob served under Laban {xxix- 
 xxxii. 2) — Meeting of Jacob and Esau {xxxii. ^-xxxiii) — Blessing and 
 Death of Jacob {xlvii. 28-I) 
 
 EPIC HISTORY 
 xxxvii. ^-36 
 
 i- 
 
 'i-3 
 
 
 ii. 
 
 4-iii 
 
 
 iv 
 
 i-iS 
 
 
 vi 
 
 g-ix. 
 
 ^7 
 
 continued 
 xxxix. i-xlvi. 
 7 andxlvi. 28- 
 xlvii. 12 
 
 Joseph and his Brethren (228') 
 
 1 The reader is warned against the common mistake of confusing Epic with 
 Fiction, (Above, page 227.) 
 
EXODUS — DEUTERONOMY 
 
 481 
 
 EXODUS, LEVITICUS, NUMBERS 
 
 History Part II: Migration of the Chosen Nation to the Land of 
 Promise. — Constitutional History 
 
 Deals with the Chosen Nation up to their arrival at the Land of Promise. 
 Successive Revelations of Law, and Incidents associated with these (251). 
 
 Exodus and 
 
 Leviticus and 
 
 Numbers 
 
 i-ix. 14 
 
 I 
 
 Numbers from 
 
 ix. 15 
 
 Deliverance from Egypt and Migration to Sinai 
 
 The Thirty-eight Years' Wandering in the Wilderness 
 
 Moses and the Plagues of Egypt 
 
 Merged in this History, hut separable for literary purposes, are various 
 forms of Epic. 
 
 EPIC HISTORY 
 Exodus i. 8-vi. 13 
 
 continued 
 
 vi. 28-xi and 
 
 xii. 2i-3<) and 
 
 xiii. ly-xv. 21 
 
 MIXED EPIC 
 
 Numb, xxii-xxiv \ The Story of Balaam (-230 and 382 note) 
 
 DEUTERONOMY 
 
 The Orations and Songs of Moses 
 
 An Historic Framework enclosing the Farewell Orations and Songs of 
 Moses. (Fully analysed above, Chapter XII.) 'Portions described in italics 
 may be omitted in the exercise of taking in Deuteronomy at a single sitting?- 
 
 i. J— 2 Title page to the whole book 
 
 SS Preface to the First Oration 
 
 i. 6-iv. 40 First Oration : Moses' Announcement of his Deposition 
 
 1 Several passages (i. 2; ii. 10-12; ii. 20-3; iii. 9, ii, 14; x. 6-9) should be 
 marked off from the orations as ' explanatory footnotes.' 
 
+82 
 
 LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 IV 
 
 4'-3 
 
 
 44-9 
 
 V. 
 
 i-xi. 32 
 
 xii-xxvi 
 
 xxvii. 1-8 
 
 g-26 
 
 XXtX. 1 
 
 xxix. 2-xxxi. 8 
 xxxi. g-13 
 
 xxxi. 14-30 
 xxxii. 1-43 
 xxxii. 44— J 
 
 xxxii. 48-xxxiii. 1 
 xxxiii. 2-29 
 
 Editorial Note connecting the first and second Orations 
 Preface to the Second Oration 
 
 Second Oration : The Delivery of the Covenant to the 
 Levites and Elders 
 
 The Book of the Covenant 
 
 Ordinance appointing the Ceremony of the Blessing and 
 
 the Curse 
 Rehearsal of the Ceremony (see page 2^6') interrupted by 
 Third Oration : At the Rehearsal of the Blessing and the 
 
 Curse 
 
 Preface to the Fourth Oration 
 
 Fourth Oration : The Covenant in the Land of Moab 
 Editorial Note : Arrangements for the regular reading 
 of the Covenant 
 
 Preface to the Song of Moses 
 
 The Song of Moses : Jehovah our Rock 
 
 Colophon to the Song of Moses 
 
 Preiface to the Last Words of Moses 
 
 The Last Words of Moses [2-3 and 26-9 General; 
 4—25 Blessings on particular tribes, a Document in- 
 corporated, of which 4—5 is the title] 
 
 Editorial Conclusion ; The Passing of Moses 
 
 JOSHUA, JUDGES, RUTH, I SAMUEL 
 
 History Part III: The Chosen Nation in its Efforts towards Secular 
 Government. — Incidental History 
 
 Deals with the Conquest of the Promised Land and Tentative Approach to 
 Secular Government. Epic matter with connecting Historic Framework (252). 
 
 Joshua 
 Judges 
 I Samuel 
 
 Conquest of Canaan, including [xiii-xxii] Division of the 
 
 Land 
 Sporadic attempts at secular government : including 
 
 [viii. 22 and ix] first idea of secular kingship 
 Gradual establishment of secular kingship and rise of 
 
 Prophets to represent the Theocracy 
 
JOSHUA — I SAMUEL 
 
 483 
 
 The main interest in this group of books is the Epic element, to which the 
 rest serves as connecting matter. 
 
 Judges Hi. 12-30 
 
 iv-v 
 
 vi-viii. 28 
 via. 2Q-ix 
 ^. 6-xii. 6 
 xvii—xviii 
 
 EPIC STORIES 
 
 Ehud's Assassination of Eglon 
 War of Deborah and Barak against Sisera ■ 
 Gideon and the Midianites 
 Crowning of Abimelech by the Men of Shechem 
 Jephthah and the Ammonites 
 Micah's Images and the Danish Migration 
 The Benjamite War 
 
 EPIC CYCLES 
 
 OF JOSHUA.— The Spies and the Woman of Jericho {it)— The Pas- 
 sage of the Jordan (iii-iv") — The Siege of Jericho (v. ij-vi) — Siege ofAi and 
 Sin of Achan {yii-viii. 2g) — Embassy of the Gibeonites {ix) — League of the 
 Five Kings {x. 1-2"/) — Joshua's Farewell {xxiii-xxiv) 
 
 OF SAMSON. ■ — Birth of Samson (^Judges xiii. 2-25) — Samson and the 
 Woman of Timnah {xiv-xv. S) — The Jawbone of an Ass (xv. g-2o) — 
 The Gates of Gaza {xvi. 1—3) — Samson and Delilah {xvi. 4-22) — Death 
 of Samson (xvi. 23-31) 
 
 OF SAMUEL. — Birth of Samuel (/ Sam. i-ii. 11) — Call of Samuel 
 and Dooming of Eli {ii. 12-iv) — The Ark and the Philistines (v-vii. /) — 
 The Anointing of Saul and the Retirement of Samuel (viii-xii) — The Anoint- 
 ing of David (xvi. 1-13') — The Witch of Endor (xxviii. 3-2^') 
 
 OF SA UL. — The Anointing of Saul and the Retirement of Samuel 
 (I Sam. viii-xii') — The Raid on Michmash (xiii. i^-xiv. 46) — War with 
 the Amalekites and Breach between Samuel and Saul (xv) — The Witch of 
 Endor (xxviii. 3-2^) 
 
 EPIC HISTORIES 
 
 Ruth 
 
 I Samuel xvi. 14 
 to xxviii. 2 con- 
 tinued xxix to 
 JJ Samuel i 
 
 The Story of Ruth ■■ An Idyl (241-4) 
 The Feud of Saul and David 
 
484 
 
 LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 II SAMUEL, I AND II KINGS 
 
 History Part IV : The Chosen Nation under a Secular Government and 
 a Theocracy side by side. — Regular History 
 
 Deals with the period from the Settlement of the Monarchy to the Captiv- 
 ity. Systematic account of successive reigns (254). 
 
 II Samuel ii to 
 
 I Kings xi 
 
 I Kings xii to 
 
 II Kings xvii 
 
 II Kings 
 from xviii 
 
 Reigns of David and Solomon 
 
 Kingdoms of Judah and Israel side by side 
 
 Kingdom of Judah and its Captivity 
 
 Merged in this History, yet separable for literary purposes, are various 
 forms of Epic, especially Epic Prophecy. 
 
 EPIC HISTORY 
 
 The Feud between David's Sons and the Revolt of 
 
 Absalom 
 
 PROPHETIC STORIES 
 Nathan, David, and Bathsheba 
 
 Gad and the Numbering of the People 
 
 The Man of God and the Old Prophet of Bethel 
 
 Ahijah and the Wife of Jeroboam 
 
 Benhadad, Ahab and the Prophets 
 
 Micaiah and the Battle of Ramoth-gilead 
 
 PROPHETIC CYCLE 
 
 OF ELISHA. — Elisha's Parting from Elijah {II Kings ii. 1-/8) — 
 The Healing of the Waters {ii. i<)-22) — The Mocking Children {ii. 23-j) 
 — The Water Trenches {Hi. 4-27) — The Vessels of Oil {iv. 1-7) — The 
 Shunammite Woman {iv. 8-37) —Death in the Pot {iv. 38-41^ — The Feed- 
 ing of the Hundred Men {iv. 42-4) — The Healing of Naaman and Leprosy of 
 Gehazi {v) — The Axe-head that swam {vi. i-f) — The Expedition to arrest 
 Elisha {vi. 8-23) — The Siege of Samaria {vi. 24-vii. 26) — The Shunam- 
 mite Woman's Estate {viii. r-6) —Hazael's Visit to Elisha {viii. 7-75) — 
 Death of Elisha {xiii. 14-21) 
 
 II Sam. xiii-xx 
 
 II Samuel xi. 2 
 
 to xii. 2^ 
 
 xxiv 
 I Kings xiii. 1—32 
 
 xiv. 1-18 
 
 XX 
 
 xxii. 1-38 
 
CHR ONI CLE S —JOB 
 
 48S 
 
 I Kings xvii-xix 
 continued xxi 
 and II Kings 
 i-ii. iS 
 
 PROPHETIC EPIC 
 
 The History of Elijah the Tishbite 
 
 CHRONICLES, EZRA, NEHEMIAH 
 
 History Part V : The Chosen Nation as a Church. — Ecclesiastical 
 
 History 
 
 A compilation of Historical Excerpts, Memoirs, Documents, etc., all bear- 
 ing upon the Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Nation as restored after the 
 Exile (254). 
 
 I Chr. i-ix. 34 Genealogy of the Families of Israel before and after the 
 
 Captivity 
 The Kingdom of David and Solomon 
 
 I Chr. from ix. 
 
 3S-II Chr. ix 
 
 II Chr. from x 
 Ezra i-vi 
 
 Ezra vii-x 
 Neh. i-vii. 73 (a) 
 Neh. vii. 73 (^)-x 
 Neh. xi-xii. 26 
 Neh. from xii. 27 
 
 The Kingdom of Judah to the Captivity 
 
 The Return under Zerubbabel and the Building of the 
 
 Temple 
 The Return of Ezra 
 
 The Return of Nehemiah and the Building of the Walls 
 The Covenant under Ezra and Nehemiah 
 Statistics of the Return 
 Divers Acts of Nehemiah 
 
 ESTHER 
 An Epic History (236) 
 
 IV-XIV 
 
 xv-xxi 
 
 JOB 
 A Dramatic Parable in a Frame of Epic Story 
 
 Fully analysed in the Introduction, above, pages 3-41 
 
 The Story Opens 
 
 The Dramatic Parable 
 Act I : Job's Curse (547) 
 Act II : First Cycle of Speeches 
 Act III : Second Cycle of Speeches 
 
486 LITERARV INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 XXll-XXX 
 
 xxxi 
 
 xxxii-xxxvii 
 xxxviii-xlii. 6 
 
 xlii from 7 
 
 Act IV: Third Cycle of Speeches 1 
 Act V : Job's Vindication (554) 
 Act VI: Interposition of Elihu (552-4) 
 Act VII : The Divine Intervention 
 
 The Story Closes 
 
 1 In the third cycle the speeches need re-arrangement, by the transference of 
 three verses (2-4 of Chapter xxvi) to the commencement of the next chapter, and 
 the consequent alteratiqns of headings to speeches. 
 
 Then answered Elifhaz the Temanlte, and said — 
 Chapter xxli 
 
 Then. Job answered and said — 
 Chapters xxiii, xxlv 
 
 Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said — 
 Chapter xxv^ continued in xxvi. 5-14 
 
 Then Job answered and said — 
 
 Chapter xxvi, 2-4, continued in xxvii. 2-6 
 
 Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said — 
 Chapter xxvii, 7 to end of Chapter xxviii 
 
 Then Job answered and said — 
 Chapters xxix, xxx 
 
 This conjectural re-arrangement of the speeches is based on the following con- 
 sideration : 
 
 1. The utmost caution should be exercised in accepting conjectural emenda- 
 tions affecting the sense of a passage ; but the same principle does not apply to 
 changes in the arrangement of speeches, especially as the sacred books have 
 passed through centuries in which the principles of parallelism were lost. 
 
 2. All critics recognise the difficulty of the text as it stands between Chapters 
 xxvi and xxviii (inclusive), which has the effect of making Job take up a position 
 antagonistic to his former contention and to his subsequent words : and some com- 
 mentators resort to violent explanations, such as prolonged irony, etc. 
 
 3. The most marked feature of literary style in the book is its extreme parallel- 
 ism ; this makes it most improbable that the third colloquy should be imperfect, 
 by the omission of a speech from Zophar, and a reply to him from fob. Moreover 
 the change in the introductory formulae when Chapters xxvii and xxix are reached 
 — viz. And Job again took up his parable and said instead of the usual Job 
 answered and said — is very suspicious. 
 
 4. The conjecture here adopted is substantially that of Gratz. which is to a 
 large extent the same a? Cheyne's. Some eminent critics (e,g. Davidson, Driver) 
 are deterred from seeking a third speech for Zophar by the shortness of Bildad's 
 third speech (xxv), which they take as an indication that the controversy is becom- 
 ing exhausted. But thp present conjecture lengthens Bildad's speech and removes 
 this objection. 
 
PSALMS 
 
 487 
 
 THE PSALMS 
 A Collection of Lyrics in Five Books 
 
 Compare above, Chapters V-VII generally 
 Book I 
 
 VI 
 
 vii 
 viii 
 ix-x 
 xi 
 
 xin 
 
 xiv=liii 
 
 xv=xxiv. 1-6 
 
 xvi 
 
 xvii 
 
 xviii 
 
 xix 
 
 xx-xxi 
 
 xxii 
 
 xxiii 
 
 xxiv 
 
 XXV 
 
 •xxvi 
 xxvii 
 xxviii 
 xxix 
 
 XXX 
 
 xxxi 
 xxxii , 
 
 Prefatory : The Tree and the Chaff {171)) 
 
 Song of the Lord's Anointed (161) 
 
 The Drama of Night and Morning (190) 
 
 An Evening Prayer (l8i) 
 
 A Morning Prayer (181) 
 
 Dramatic: An Answer to Prayer (188) 
 
 A Vision of Judgment 
 
 Man the Viceroy of God (66) 
 
 An Acrostic Anthem of Judgment (193 note) 
 
 A Song of Trust (549) 
 
 Dramatic : The Words of the Lord and the Lip of 
 
 Vanity 
 Counsels of Sorrow 
 
 Vision: Judgment of a Corrupt World (194, 533) 
 The Consecrated Life (57, 105) 
 A Song of Personal Consecration (164) 
 A Prayer for the Vindication of the Righteous (182) 
 A Song of Victory (86) 
 
 The Heavens above and the Law within (95—102) 
 A War Anthem (53, 197) 
 Dramatic: Salvation in Extremity (184, 189) 
 Under the Protection of Jehovah (58, 172) 
 Anthems for the Inauguration of Jerusalem (104, 160) 
 An Acrostic Liturgy 
 
 Searchings of Heart before Worship (543) 
 A Dramatic Anthem of Deliverance (171, 191) 
 Dramatic : Help for the Trusting Heart 
 Song of the Thunderstorm (163) 
 Anthem for the Inauguration of Jerusalem (51, 160) 
 Dramatic: A Twice-told Deliverance (193 note). 
 Blessedness of the Forgiven Soul (iSi) 
 
488 
 
 LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 XXXUl 
 
 xxxiv 
 
 XXXV 
 
 xxxvi 
 xxxvii 
 xxxviii 
 xxxix 
 
 xl (including Ixx) 
 xli 
 
 A Festal Hymn 
 
 A Festal Anthem 
 
 A Litany of Judgment (183) 
 
 Evil Unbounded and Infinite Good (loi) 
 
 The Prosperity of the Wicked (170). — Acrostic 
 
 Corruption Within and Foes Without 
 
 A Struggle with Despair 
 
 A Liturgy (549) 
 
 Integrity Succoured in the Day of Evil (181) 
 
 Book II 
 
 xlii-xliii 
 xliv 
 xlv 
 xlvi 
 
 xlvii 
 
 xlviii 
 
 xlix 
 
 1 
 
 li 
 
 lii 
 
 liii 
 
 liv 
 
 Iv 
 
 Ivi 
 
 Ivii 
 
 Iviii 
 
 lix 
 
 Ix (with cviii) 
 
 Ixi 
 
 Ixii 
 
 Ixiii 
 
 Ixiv 
 
 Ixv 
 
 Ixvi 
 
 Ixvii 
 
 Ixviii 
 
 Ixix 
 
 Exiled from the House of God. — With refrain (60) 
 
 An Elegy : Our Fathers' Days and Ours (550) 
 
 A Royal Marriage Hymn 
 
 Occasional: Deliverance from Sennacherib (158, 59). — 
 
 With refrain 
 A Festal Hymn 
 
 Occasional: Victory over Sennacherib (159) 
 Man that is in Honour : A Parable (171). — With refrain 
 A Vision of Judgment (195, 538-40) 
 Prayer of a Sin-stricken Conscience (182, 195 note) 
 The Mighty Man of Mischief (164) 
 See xiv 
 
 Dramatic : God mine Helper 
 Litany of the Oppressed. 
 A Dramatic Monologue. — With refrain 
 A Dramatic Monologue (190). — With refrain 
 A Song of Judgment (174 note, 527) 
 A War Ballad (196). — With refrain 
 War Anthems : Hymn of Defeat and Victory (197 note) 
 A Royal Prayer 
 
 A Song of Trust. — With refrain 
 God of My Life 
 
 The Secret Counsel of the Wicked 
 A Liturgy (199) 
 A Votive Hymn 
 
 A testal Response (197-8). — With refrain 
 Processional Ode (152) 
 A Dramatic Monologue 
 
PSALMS 
 
 489 
 
 Ixx (see xl) Litany of the Poor and Needy 
 
 Ixxi A Dramatic Monologue 
 
 Ixxii A Dynasty of Righteousness (l6i) 
 
 Book III 
 
 bcxiii 
 
 Ixxiv 
 
 Ixxv 
 
 Ixxvi 
 
 bcxvii 
 
 Ixxviii 
 
 Ixxix 
 
 Ixxx 
 
 Ltxxi 
 
 bcxxii 
 
 Ixxxiii 
 
 bcxxiv 
 
 Ixxxv 
 
 Ixxxvi 
 
 Ixxxvii 
 
 Ixxxviii 
 
 Ixxxix 
 
 The Mystery of Prosperous Wickedness (171) 
 
 Elegy of the Ruined Sanctuary (169) 
 
 A Song of Judgment 
 
 Occasional: Deliverance from Sennacherib (158) 
 
 The Right Hand of the Most High changeth not (186) 
 
 National Anthem: Of the Kingdom of Judah (145, 149) 
 
 Jerusalem in Heaps : An Elegy 
 
 The Broken Vine: An Elegy (169). — With refrain 
 
 A Festal Hymn and Testimony 
 
 God in Judgment on the gods (174) 
 
 Judgment on the Foes of Israel 
 
 A Song of God's House (178, 548) 
 
 Dramatic Anthem of the Captivity Brought Back (193) 
 
 A Liturgy 
 
 Zion Mother of Nations (162) 
 
 An Elegy 
 
 Ode: On the Covenant (150) 
 
 Book IV 
 
 xcu 
 
 xciii 
 
 xciv 
 
 xcv— c 
 
 ci 
 
 cii 
 f ciii 
 I civ 
 
 Thoughts ( 1 70) from the Song of Moses [xc : The Eternal 
 God is Thy Dvcelling Place C 1 74-7) — xci: Under- 
 neath are the Everlasting Arms] 
 
 Votive Hymn 
 
 Jehovah's Immovable Throne (162) 
 
 Lord, How Long? 
 
 A P'estal Anthem. — (For xcix see page 546) 
 
 Anthem for the Inauguration of Jerusalem (160) 
 
 The Declining Life and the Abiding Lord 
 
 The World Within and 
 
 The World Without (156-7, 535-8) 
 
 National Anthem : Of the Undivided Nation in Canaan 
 (148-9) 
 
 National Anthem: For the Captivity (148-9) 
 
490 
 
 LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 Book V 
 
 cvu 
 
 cviii (with Ix) 
 
 cix 
 
 ex 
 
 cxi-cxii 
 
 cxiii-cxviii 
 
 cxix 
 cxx-cxxxiv 
 
 ■ cxx 
 cxxi 
 cxxii 
 cxxiii 
 cxxiv 
 cxxv 
 cxxvi 
 cxxvii 
 cxxviii 
 cxxix 
 cxxx 
 cxxxi 
 cxxxii 
 cxxxiii 
 cxxxiv 
 
 cxxxv 
 
 cxxxvi 
 
 cxxxvii 
 cxxxviii 
 cxxxix 
 cxl 
 
 cxli 
 
 cxlii 
 
 cxliii 
 
 cxliv 
 
 cxlv 
 
 cxlvi-cl 
 
 Ode: Of the Redeemed (6i, 154). — With double refrain 
 
 War Anthems : Hymn of Defeat and Victory (197 npte) 
 
 A Curse on Him that Curseth (183) 
 
 King and Priest (161, 540-1) 
 
 Acrostic Preface to the following Hallelujah 
 
 The Hallel : a series of Hallelujah Psalms sung as one 
 
 at the great feasts. — (For cxiv see page 55, and for 
 
 cxvi and cxviii pages 201, 202) 
 The Law of the Lord : An Acrostic Meditation ( 1 70) 
 The Songs of Ascents or Hymn-Book of the Pilgrims 
 
 ('65-7) 
 The Exile's Cry (165) 
 The Lord thy Keeper (166, 50) 
 Salutation to Jerusalem (166) 
 A Prayer of the Despised (165) 
 The Exile's Song of Deliverance (165) 
 Thoughts on Mount Zion (i65) 
 
 Seedtime and Harvest : A Song of Deliverance (166) 
 Toil and Home: A Family Song (167, loi) 
 Home Life: A Family Song (167) 
 Litany of Afflicted Israel (166) 
 A Cry out of the Depths (166) 
 The Quiet Soul (167) 
 Temple Hymn (167, 160) 
 Song of Unity (167) 
 
 Temple Song: Benediction of the Night Watch (167) 
 A Festal Hallelujah 
 National Anthem: Of the Nation in the Wilderness 
 
 (148-50) 
 Babylon and Jerusalem : An Elegy (169) 
 A Song of Thanksgiving ['89) 
 
 Dramatic : The Searcher of Hearts is thy Maker (92-4, 
 A Cry for Deliverance from the Wicked 
 Consecration to the Cause of the Righteous 
 Presence of God in Trouble 
 
 A Prayer of Distress (187) [refrain 
 
 A Dramatic Anthem of Deliverance (193 note). — With 
 Acrostic Preface to the following 
 Series of Hallelujah Psalms that can be sung as one (204-6) 
 
PROVERBS 
 
 491 
 
 i. 1-6 
 
 7 
 
 THE PROVERBS 
 A Miscellany of Wisdom in Five Books 
 
 Above, pages 319-23. 326, 359-6o 
 
 i Title to the whole collection 
 Motto to the whole collection 
 
 Book I 
 Sonnets on Wisdom {jiq-21') 
 
 i. 
 
 8-9 
 
 
 10-19 
 
 
 20-33 
 
 ii 
 
 
 iii 
 
 I-IO 
 
 
 11-20 
 
 
 21-6 
 
 
 27-35 
 
 iv 
 
 1-9 
 
 
 10-19 
 
 
 20-7 
 
 V 
 
 
 vi 
 
 '-S 
 
 
 6-1 1 
 
 
 12-19 
 
 
 20-3S 
 
 vi 
 
 -viii 
 
 16 
 
 Epigram 
 
 Sonnet : The Company of Sinners (307) 
 
 Monologue: Wisdom's Cry ofWarning (58, 554) 
 
 Sonnet : Wisdom the Deliverer from Evil 
 
 Sonnet:. The Commandment and the Reward (311) 
 
 Sonnet : The Creator has madeWisdom the Supreme Prize 
 
 Sonnet : Wisdom and Security 
 
 Sonnet : Wisdom and Perversity 
 
 Sonnet : The Tradition of Wisdom 
 
 Sonnet : The Two Paths (52-3) 
 
 Sonnet : Wisdom and Health 
 
 Sonnet : The Strange Woman (550-1) 
 
 Sonnet : Suretiship 
 
 Sonnet: The Sluggard (315) 
 
 A Pair of Sonnets : The Sower of Discord 
 
 Sonnet : Adultery the Supreme Folly 
 
 Monologue : Wisdom and the Strange Woman (316) 
 
 Sonnet of Sonnets : The House of Wisdom and the 
 House of Polly [1-6 (Sonnet) is strophe to which 
 13-18 is antistrophe; 7-9 (Epigram) is strophe to 
 which 10-12 is antistrophe] 
 
 Book II 
 
 The Proverbs of Solomon 
 
 x~xxii. 16 
 
 Collection of isolated Unit Proverbs : no appearance of 
 arrangement (^2/) 
 
492 
 
 LITERARY INDEX TO. THE BIBLE 
 
 Book III 
 A Wisdom Epistle {321) 
 
 xxit, if-zi 
 
 xxiii. 1-3 
 
 4-5 
 6-8 
 g-t8 
 19-21 
 
 22— J 
 
 26-8 
 
 29-35 
 
 xxiv. i~io 
 
 11-12 
 
 13-14 
 
 IS-2Z 
 
 Postscript 
 
 xxiv. 23-5 
 2b-() 
 30-4 
 
 xxii. jy~xxiv 
 
 Superscription to the Epistle 
 
 Disconnected Sayings {SAort Epigrams and Unit Prov- 
 erbs^ 
 Epigram : Awe before Appetite 
 Epigram : Transitoriness of Riches 
 Epigram : Hospitality of the Evil Eye (296) 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 Epigram : Gluttony 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 Epigram : The Pit of Whoredom 
 Sonnet : Wine and Woe (31 1-2) 
 Disconjiected Sayings 
 Epigram : The Duty of Rescue 
 Epigram : Wisdom and Honey (296) 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 
 Epigram : Respect of Persons 
 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 
 Sonnet: The Field of the Slothful (314) 
 
 Book IV 
 Solotnonic Proverbs collected under Hezekiah (j22^ 
 
 XXV. r 
 
 2-7 
 XXV. 8-xxvi. 2 
 xxvi. 3— I a 
 
 13-16 
 
 17-26 
 xxvi. 2y-xxvii. 22 
 xxvii. 23-7 
 xxviii-xxix 
 
 xxv-xxtx 
 
 Title to Book IV 
 
 Proverb Cluster ; On Kings 
 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 
 Proverb Cluster : On Fools 
 
 Proverb Cluster : On Sluggards 
 
 Proverb Cluster : On Social Pests 
 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 
 Folk Song of Good Husbandry (322) 
 
 Disconnected Proverbs 
 
PROVERBS— ECCLESIASTES 
 
 493 
 
 XXXI. 1-9 
 
 10-31 
 
 Book V 
 
 Shorter Collection (j22) 
 xxx-xxxi 
 
 Proverbs of Agur. [xxx. 1-4 Sonnet : The Unsearchable- 
 ness of God (312). 5-6 Epigram. 7-9 Number 
 Sonnet : The Golden Mean. 10 Unit Proverb. 1 1- 
 14 Sonnet: An Evil Generation. 15-16 Number 
 Sonnet : Things never satisfied (309) . 1 7 Epigram. 
 18-19 Number Sonnet : Things not to be knovifn. 
 20 Epigram. 21-3 Number Sonnet: Things not to 
 be borne. 24-8 Number Sonnet: Little and Wise. 
 29-31 Number Sonnet : Things stately in their 
 going. 32-3 Epigram : The Restraining of Wrath] 
 
 The Oracle of Lemuel's Mother (296) 
 
 Anonymous Acrostic Sonnet : The Virtuous Woman 
 
 ECCLESIASTES, OR THE PREACHER 
 A Suite of Five Essays, broken by Miscellaneous Sayings 
 Fully analysed, pages 329-40. Compare also 344-6, 359-60 
 Title to the whole f founded uton the Arst essav\ 
 
 I. I 
 i. 2-n 
 i. i2-ii 
 
 iii. i-iv. 8 
 iv. g-v. 9. 
 v. lo-vi. 12 
 vii. 1-22. 
 vii. 23-ix. 16 
 
 ix. 17-xi. 6 
 xi. 7-xii. 7 
 
 xii. 8-14 
 
 Title to the whole \_ founded upon the first essay"] 
 Prologue : All is Vanity 
 
 Essay I: in the form of a Dramatic Monologue: 
 
 Solomon's Search for Wisdom 
 Essay II : The Philosophy of Times and Seasons 
 Miscellaneous Maxims of Life 
 Essay III : The Vanity of Desire 
 Miscellaneous Paradoxes of Life 
 Essay IV: The Search for Wisdom, with Notes by 
 
 the Way 
 Miscellaneous Proverbs of Life 
 Essay V : Life as a Joy shadowed by the Judgment 
 
 [including Sonnet (xii. 1-7) : The Coming of the 
 
 Evil Days] 
 Epilogue : All is Vanity : Fear God 
 
494 
 
 LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 THE SONG OF SONGS 
 
 A Suite of Seven Lyric Idyls 
 
 Fully discussed above, Chapter VIII : compare page 540 
 
 i. 2-ii. 7 
 
 Idyl 
 
 ii. 8-iii. 5 
 
 Idyl 
 
 iii. 6-v. I 
 
 Idyl 
 
 V. 2-vi. 3 
 
 Idyl 
 
 vi. 4-vii. 9 
 
 Idyl 
 
 vii. lo-viii. 4 
 
 Idyl 
 
 viii. 5-14 
 
 Idyl 
 
 I : The Wedding-Day 
 
 II : The Bride's Reminiscences of the Courtship 
 III : The Day of Betrothal 
 IV : The Bride's Troubled Dream 
 V : The King's Meditation on his Bride 
 VI : The Bride's Longing for her Home on Lebanon 
 VII : The Renewal of Love in the Vineyard of Leb- 
 anon 
 
 ISAIAH 
 A Prophetic Collection in Seven Books 
 
 Book I 
 General Prophecies 
 
 I. I 
 
 i. 2-31 
 ii-iv 
 v. 1-7 
 V. 8-30 
 
 Title page 
 
 Discourse : The Great Arraignment (366) 
 
 Discourse : Through Judgment to Glory (366) 
 
 Parable of the Vineyard 
 
 Lyric Prophecy : A Sevenfold Woe 
 
 The Prophet's Call 
 
 vii. 1-16 
 
 Book II 
 
 Prophecies of the Unholy Alliance and the Sign Immanuel 
 vii-x. 4 
 I Prophecy of the sign ' Immanuel ' (378 and note) 
 
ISAIAH 
 
 495 
 
 ■uii. ly^^iii. 8 A Cluster of Prophetic Sentences against Israel : Assyria 
 
 to come against Israel (vii. 77) — T/ie Fly and the 
 Bee (vii. iS-ig) — J'ke Razor {so) — Butter and 
 Honey {zi-s) — Briers and Thorns {23— S) — 
 Maher-shalal-hash-baz (viii. 1-4) — The River {j- 
 5) . — Above, pages 4^8-g 
 viii. 9-ix, 7 Rhapsodic Discourse : Judah and her Enemies 
 
 ix. 8-x. 4 Lyric Prophecy: Doom of the North (369-71) 
 
 X. s-xii 
 
 Book III 
 
 Prophecy of Assyrian Invasion 
 
 X, ^-xii 
 
 Rhapsodic Discourse : The Rod of the Lord and the 
 Reign of Peace (428) 
 
 Book IV 
 
 xni-xiv. 23 
 xiv. 24-7 
 
 28-32 
 xv-xvi 
 xvii. i-ii 
 
 12-14 
 xviii 
 xix 
 
 XX 
 
 xxi-xxii. 14 
 xxii. 15-25 
 xxiii 
 xxiv-xxvii 
 
 A Cycle of Dooms 
 xiii-xxvii 
 
 Doom of Babylon 
 
 Doom of Assyria 
 
 Doom of Philistia 
 
 Doom of Moab 
 
 Doom of Syria and Israel 
 
 A Doom Song 
 
 Doom of Ethiopia (with refrain) 
 
 Prophecy Cluster: Doom Song on Egypt {i-if) — followed 
 by a series of Sentences on the Conversion of Egypt 
 {18, ig-20, 21, 22, 23, 34-s) ■ — Above, pages 4.60-1 , 
 
 Emblem Prophecy against Ashdod 
 
 Visions of Doom: The Prophetic Watchman (392, 120) 
 
 A Personal Denunciation 
 
 Doom Song on Tyre 
 
 Climax of Book IV: A Rhapsody of Judgment (416-23) 
 
496 
 
 LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 xxvm-xxxii 
 
 xxvm 
 xxjx 
 
 XXX 
 
 xxxi-xxxii. 5 
 xxxii. 9-20 
 
 Book V 
 
 A Cycle of Judgment and Restoration (464) 
 
 XXVlll-XXXV 
 
 Animadversions upon the Political Situation of Judah as 
 a background for picturing the Redemption and the 
 Golden Age (464) 
 The Covenant with Death (465) 
 The Nightmare of Judgment upon Ariel 
 The Boaster that sitteth still (465) 
 The Horses of Egypt and the Holy One of Israel 
 The Women that are at ease 
 
 Rhapsody of Salvation [l The Prophet (beholding in 
 Vision), 2 Israel, 3 Prophetic Spectator, 7 Scenic, 
 8-9 Israel's Ambassadors, 10 God, 14 («) Scenic, 
 14 {b) Sinners in Zion, 15-24 The Godly in Zion] 
 
 Finale to Book V : The Utter Destruction and the Great 
 Restoration (465-6) 
 
 Book VI 
 Historical Excerpt : Ministry of Isaiah under Hezekiah 
 
 xxxvi-vn 
 
 xxxviii 
 
 xxxix 
 
 xxxvi-xxxix 
 
 The Invasion of Sennacherib 
 The Sickness of Hezekiah 
 Hezekiah's Folly 
 
 xl. I-II 
 xl. i2-xlviii 
 xlix-1 
 li-lii. 12 
 lii. 13-liii 
 liv-lv 
 Ivi-lxii 
 Ixiii-lxvi 
 
 Book VJI 
 
 Rhapsody of Zion Redeemed 
 xl-lxvi 
 Fully analysed above. Chapter XIX 
 Prelude 
 Vision 
 Vision 
 Vision 
 Vision 
 Vision 
 Vision 
 
 I : The Servant of Jehovah Delivered 
 II : The Servant of Jehovah Awakened 
 III : The Awakening of Zion 
 IV : The Servant of Jehovah Exalted 
 V: Songs of Zion Exalted (121-3) 
 VI : Redemption at Work in Zion 
 
 Vision VII : The Day of Judgment 
 
JEREMIAH 
 
 497 
 
 JEREMIAH 
 A Prophetic Collection in Ten Books 
 
 I. 1-3 
 i. 4-19 
 ii-vi 
 
 Book I 
 The Prophet's Call and Manifesto 
 
 i-vi 
 
 Title page 
 
 The Prophet's Call 
 
 Jeremiah's Manifesto : Discourse culminating in Rhap- 
 sody of Doom and Panic (429-32) [iii. 21 Scenic, 
 22 (o) The Lord, 22 (*)-5 The People; iv. i The 
 Lord, 8 The People, 9 The Lord, 10 The Prophet, 
 II A Cry, 12 The Lord, 13 (J)) The People, 14 The 
 Prophet, 15 A Voice, 17 The Lord, 19 The People, 
 22 The Lord, 23 Vision, 27 The Lord, 29 Vision con- 
 tinued, 30 The Lord, 31 Vision continued; v. I The 
 Lord, 3 The Prophet, 6 The Lord; vi. i A Cry, 
 2 The Lord, 4 (3) The Enemy, 4 (Ji) The People, 
 5 The Enemy, 7 The Lord, 24 The People. — 27 Epi- 
 logue (to the Prophet)] 
 
 Book II 
 
 Miscellaneous Discourses and Sentences 
 
 vii. 1-28 
 vii. 29-viii. 3 
 viii. 4-ix. 9 
 
 ix. 10-16 
 
 17-22 
 23-6 
 X. 1-16 
 17-25 
 
 Discourse : The Temple of the Lord are these 
 
 Discourse : TopBeth 
 
 Rhapsodic Discourse : The Hurt of the Daughter of my 
 People [viii. 14 People, 17 God, 18 Prophet, 19 Peo- 
 ple, 19 (Ji) God, 20 People, 21 Prophet; ix. 3 {b) God] 
 
 Rhapsodic Discourse: A Lamentation for the Land [10 
 The Prophet, II God, 12 The Prophet, 13 God] 
 
 Discourse : The Mourning Women 
 
 Prophetic {457—8') Sentences {23—4, 25— 61 
 
 Sentences on Idolatry [1-5, 6-8 (o), 8 (i5)-io, 11, i2-l6] 
 
 Scene of Panic [17 God, 19 People, 21 God, 22 A Voice, 
 23 People] 
 
498 
 
 LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 Book III 
 Prophecies of the Missionary Journey 
 
 xi. 
 
 1-8 
 9-17 
 
 
 xi. 
 
 i8-xii. 
 
 6 
 
 xii. 7-13 
 
 
 
 14-7 
 
 
 xiii 
 
 
 The Commission to Preach the Covenant 
 Prophetic Intercourse: Judah's Rejection of the Covenant 
 Prophetic Incident : The Conspiracy of Anathoth 
 Prophetic Sentences [7, 8, 9 (a), 9 {b)-ii, 12, /j] 
 The Lord and his Evil Neighbours 
 
 Emblem Prophecy: The Girdle and the Bottle (373-4)^ 
 
 Book IV 
 
 The Drought and other Prophecies 
 
 xiv-xv 
 
 XVI 
 
 xvir. 1-13 
 
 14-18 
 19-27 
 
 Rhapsody of the Drought (423-7) 
 
 Prophetic Intercourse: The Doom of the Land [l The 
 
 Lord, 19 The Prophet, 21 The Lord] 
 Prophetic Sentences \_1-2, 3-4, jS, g-io, 11, 12-13 («), 
 
 ^S (*)] 
 Prophetic Intercourse : A Prayer under Persecution 
 Discourse : On the Sabbath 
 
 Book V 
 
 Discourses Founded on Pottery 
 
 xix-xx. 6 
 XX. 7-18 
 
 xvm-xx 
 
 Emblem Prophecy and Prophetic Incident : Clay in the 
 
 Hands of the Potter (372) 
 Prophetic Incident : The Potter's Bottle (373) 
 Meditations under Persecution 
 
 1 Found attached to the prophecies of the Missionary Journey, though with no 
 necessary connection. 
 
JEREMIAH 
 
 499 
 
 Book VI 
 
 Messages to Rulers 
 
 11-14 
 
 xxii. 1-9 
 
 10-12 
 
 13-19 
 
 20-30 
 
 xxiii. 1-8 
 
 9-40 
 
 xxt-xxnt 
 
 Prophetic Response: On the Approach of Nebuchad- 
 rezzar's Army 
 A Warning to the Royal House 
 An Appeal to the Royal House 
 Discourse : On Shallum 
 Discourse : On Jehoiakim 
 Discourse : On Coniah 
 
 Sentences : The Shepherds of Israel \_1-4, $-(>, 7-5] 
 Discourse : On False Prophets 
 
 Book VIJ 
 
 Occasional and Controversial Prophecies 
 
 XXIV 
 XXV 
 
 xxvi 
 
 xxvii-xxviii 
 
 xxix 
 
 XXIV-XXIX 
 
 Emblem Prophecy : The Figs (372) 
 
 The Cup of the Lord's Fury (391) 
 
 Prophetic Controversy : Destruction of the Temple 
 
 Prophetic Controversy : The Yoke 
 
 Epistle : To the Elders of the Captivity 
 
 Book VIII 
 
 Prophecies of the Restoration 
 
 XXX. 1—3 
 
 4-22 
 
 XXX. 23-xxxi. 20 
 xxxi. 21-4.0 
 
 Preface to the Eighth Book 
 
 Discourse (with Pendulum Structure) : The Restoration 
 
 of Judah (112) 
 Rhapsodic Discourse : The Restoration of Israel 
 Prophetic Sentences {21-2, 23-6, 2y-8, 2^-30, 31-4 ( The 
 NfTiD Covenant), 3^-7, 38-40] 
 
soo 
 
 LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 Book IX 
 
 Incidental and Historical Prophecies 
 
 xxxiv. 1-7 
 8-22 
 
 XXXV 
 
 xxxvi 
 
 xxxvii-ix 
 
 xl-xliii 
 
 xliv 
 xlv 
 
 xxxii-xlv 
 
 Incident : The Anathoth Estate 
 
 Incident : A Prophecy during the Siege 
 
 Incident : The Hebrew Servants 
 
 Incident : The Rechabites 
 
 Incident : The Burning of the Roll 
 
 Prophecy merged in History : Crisis of the Siege 
 
 Abduction of Jeremiah to Egypt (378) 
 
 Prophecy to the Jews in Egypt 
 
 Prophetic Intercourse : Jeremiah and Baruch 
 
 Book X 
 
 xlvi. 1 
 
 xlvi 
 
 xlvii 
 
 xlviii 
 
 xlix. 1-6 
 
 7-22 
 
 23-7 
 
 28-33 
 
 34-9 
 
 1-li 
 
 Hi 
 
 Dooms of the Nations 
 xlvi—li 
 
 Title page to Book X 
 
 Doom of Egypt [3-12 Lyric Prophecy: The Battle of 
 
 Carchemish — 14-28 Doom of Egypt] 
 Doom of the Philistines 
 Doom of Moab 
 
 Doom of the Children of Ammon 
 Doom of Edom 
 Doom of Damascus 
 Doom of Kedar and Hazor 
 Doom of Elam 
 Doom of Babylon (373, 395-6) 
 
 Historical Appendix to the Works of Jeremiah 
 
 LAMENTATIONS 
 A Suite of Acrostic Elegies (168) 
 
EZEKIEL 
 
 SOI 
 
 1-111. 9 
 iii. IO-2I 
 
 22-7 
 iv-v 
 vi 
 vii 
 viii-xi 
 
 EZEKIEL 
 
 A Prophetic Collection in Seven Books (469) 
 
 Book I 
 
 The Opening of the Message 
 
 i-xi 
 
 The Prophet's Commission to Rebellious Israel 
 
 The Prophet the Watchman of the Captivity 
 
 The Opening of the Mouth 
 
 The Mimic Siege of Jerusalem (374) 
 
 The Doom of the Land 
 
 Behold it cometh ! 
 
 Vision: Jerusalem under Judgment (381-2) 
 
 Book II 
 
 The Sevenfold Token 
 
 xii. 1-16 
 17-20 
 
 21-5 
 26-8 
 
 xiii 
 
 xiv. I-II 
 12-23 
 
 Stuff for Removing 
 
 Bread of Trembling 
 
 A Proverb of Vision Failing 
 
 A Proverb of Vision Afar Off 
 
 Trust in False Prophets 
 
 Trust in Vain Inquiry 
 
 Trust in Vicarious Righteousness 
 
 Book III 
 
 The Sevenfold Parable 
 
 XVI. 1-43 
 
 44-63 
 xvii 
 xviii 
 xix. 1-9 
 
 10-14 
 
 Parable of the Vine 
 Parable of the Foundling 
 Parable of Mother and Daughter 
 Parable of the Eagles and the Cedar 
 The Proverb of Soiir Grapes 
 A Wail for a Young Lion 
 A Wail for a Broken Vine 
 
502 
 
 LiTEkARV JNBM TO THE BIBLE 
 
 Book IV 
 
 yudgment of the Inquiring Elders 
 XX. 1-44 
 
 XX. 45-9 
 
 xxi 
 
 xxii 
 
 xxiii. 1-35 
 
 36-49 
 xxiv. 1-14 
 15-27 
 
 Book V 
 
 ' Seven Last tVords 
 
 XX. 4^— xxiv 
 
 A Word against the South 
 The Sword of the Lord (376-7) 
 Judgment of the Bloody City 
 Parable of Oholah and Oholibah 
 Judgment of Oholah and Oholibah 
 Parable of the Rusty Caldron 
 Woe beyond Mourning 
 
 XXV 
 
 xxvi 
 xxvii 
 xxviii. 1-19 
 
 20-24 
 
 25-6 
 xxix-xxxii 
 
 Book VI 
 
 Dooms of the Nations 
 xxv-xxxii 
 
 A Cluster of Dooms 
 
 Doom of Tyre (398) 
 
 Wreck of the Goodly Ship Tyre (399) 
 
 Doom of the Prince of Tyre 
 
 Doom of Zidon 
 
 Triumph of Israel amid the Doomed Nations 
 
 Sevenfold Doom of Egypt [xxix. i The Crocodile of Egypt 
 — xxix. X 7 Wages for Nebuchadrezzar — xxx. i The 
 Day of the Lord — xxx. 20 Pharaoh's Arm Broken — 
 xxxi. I The Fallen Cedar — xxxii. i The Dragon of 
 the Seas — xxxii. 1 7 A Wail for Egypt (400) ] 
 
 xxxni 
 xxxiv 
 
 Book VII 
 
 The Fall and the Restoration to come 
 
 xxxiii—xlviii 
 
 The Fall of Jerusalem 
 
 The Shepherds of Israel and the Divine Shepherd 
 
DANIEL — HO SEA 
 
 503 
 
 XXXV-Vl 
 
 xxxvii. 1-14 
 
 15-28 
 xxxviii-ix 
 xl-xlviii 
 
 Mount Seir and the Mountains of Israel 
 
 The Dry Bones and the Breath of the LORP 
 
 The Joining of the Sticks 
 
 The Invasion of Gog 
 
 Vision: Jerusalem in Her Glory (381-2) 
 
 DANIEL 
 A Prophetic Collection (469, 380) 
 
 Prophetic Incident : Daniel and the King's Meat 
 Vision Interpretation : The Image and the Stone 
 Prophetic Incident : The Burning Fiery Furnace 
 Vision Interpretation; Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the 
 
 Tree cut down 
 Vision Interpretation : The Writing on the Wall 
 Prophetic Incident : The Den of Lions 
 
 The Revelation of Daniel [vii The Vision of the 
 Four Beasts — viii The Vision of the Ram and the 
 He-Goat — ix Vision of the Time of Restoration — 
 X Vision of the Time of the End] 
 
 i-iii 
 
 
 iv- 
 
 -vi. 1 1 (a) 
 
 
 vi. 
 
 1 1 (*)-viii. 7 
 
 (a) 
 
 mii. 7 (J>)-i4 
 
 
 ix. 
 
 1-6 
 
 
 ix 
 
 l-« 
 
 
 xi-xiv. 8 
 
 xtv. g 
 
 HOSEA 
 A Prophetic Collection (469) 
 
 Emblem Prophecy of Gomer (375) 
 Rhapsodic Discourse : Heavy Corruption and Light 
 Repentance [v. 8 Panic, 9 God; vi. i People, 4 God] 
 Discourse : Reaping the Whirlwind 
 Prophetic Sentences [7 {l>), S, 9 (a), 9 (b)—io, 11, 12, 13, 
 
 Discourse : A Harvest Prophecy 
 
 Prophetic Sentences [ix. 7, 8, 9, 10, ii-i2, 13, 14, IS, 
 
 16-17; ^- '-2<3' 4<S-(>> 7-^. 9. ">' -f-f' ^^> ^S-^S"] 
 Dramatic Prophecy : The Yearning of God (387) [xi. I 
 
 God (in alternating monologue) ; xiv. i Repentant 
 
 Israel, 4 God, 8 (a) Ephraim, 8 {b) God, 8 (c) 
 
 Ephraim, 8 {d) God] 
 Epilogue Sentence to the whole collection 
 
S04 
 
 LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 JOEL 
 A Rhapsody of the Locust Plague (41 1-5) 
 
 1. 1-2 
 i. 3-ix 
 
 AMOS 
 A Prophetic Collection (432-4, 115-8) 
 
 I An Oracle of the Earthquake 
 
 I Rhapsody of the Judgment to Come 
 
 OBADIAH 
 A Doom Prophecy upon Edom 
 
 JONAH 
 A Prophetic Epic (246, 373) 
 
 I. I 
 
 i. 2-V 
 
 vi. 1-8 
 
 vi. 9-vii 
 
 MICAH 
 A Prophetic Collection 
 
 Title page 
 
 Rhapsodic Discourse of Judgment and Salvation 
 
 Dramatic Prophecy : The Lord's Controversy before the 
 
 Mountains (385) 
 Dramatic Prophecy : The Lord's Cry and the Man of 
 
 Wisdom (385-9) 
 
 NAHUM 
 A Rhapsodic Doom Prophecy upon Nineveh 
 
 HABAKKUK 
 Rhapsody of the Chaldeans (405-9) 
 
ZEPHANIAH— MALA CHI 
 
 505 
 
 ZEPHANIAH 
 A Rhapsodic Discourse (124) 
 
 HAGGAI 
 Four Occasional Discourses, dated 
 
 ZECHARIAH 
 A Prophetic Collection in Two Books (470) 
 
 Book I 
 
 Miscellaneous Discourses of Zechariah 
 
 i. 1-6 
 1. 7-vi 
 vii-viii 
 
 The Prophet's Manifesto 
 The Sevenfold Vision (466-7) 
 
 An Inquiry and Response on Fasting [including (461-3) 
 several Prophetic Sentences] 
 
 Book II 
 Discourses attributed to Zechariah (^470) 
 
 ix-xi. 3 
 
 xi. 4-17 
 xii-xiii. 6 
 xiii. 7-9 
 
 Rhapsodic Discourse : The King of Peace 
 Emblem Prophecy : Withdrawal of the Divine Shepherd 
 Discourse : The Fountain for the House of David 
 Discourse : The Smiting of the Shepherd and the Scat- 
 tering of the Sheep 
 Discourse : The Judgment and the Age of Holiness (36S) 
 
 MALACHI 
 
 A Dialectic Cycle of Seven Discourses (383) 
 
 [i. 2-5 ; i. 6-ii. 9; ii. 10-16; ii. 17-iii. 6; iii. 7-12; iii. 13-iv. 3; (con- 
 clusion) iv. 4-6] 
 
506 
 
 LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 WISDOM OF SOLOMON 
 A Suite of Five Discourses in the Form of Text and Comment 
 
 Above, Chapter XV : compare pages 359-60, 289 note 
 
 Text [i. l] and Discourse I : Singleness of Heart (346) 
 
 Text [i. 12] and Discourse II : Immortality and the Cov- 
 enant ■wK'Ca. Death (347-51) 
 
 Text [vi. 12] and Discourse III : Solomon's Winning of 
 Wisdom (351-2) 
 
 Text ^ [ix. 1 8, last clause] and Discourse IV : The World 
 saved through Wisdom (353-4) 
 
 Text^ [xi. 5] and Discourse V: Judgments on the 
 Wicked turning to Blessings on God's People (354-9) 
 
 i. 
 
 I- 
 
 II 
 
 
 i. 
 
 12 
 
 -vi. 
 
 II 
 
 vi 
 
 I2-ix 
 
 
 X- 
 
 -xi. 
 
 5 
 
 
 xi 
 
 5- 
 
 -xix 
 
 
 ECCLESIASTICUS 
 
 OR 
 
 THE WISDOM OF JESUS THE SON OF SIRACH 
 
 A Hiscellany of Wisdom in Five Books 
 
 Above, pages 324-7, 289 note, 359-60 
 
 Preface by the Author's Grandson 
 
 Book I 
 
 i. 1-20 
 
 22-4 
 
 25-7 
 28-30 
 
 ii. 1-6 
 7-18 
 
 iii. 1-16 
 17-28 
 2g-3i 
 
 Sonnet : Wisdom and Fear of the Lord 
 
 Maxim : Unjust Wrath 
 
 A Maxim 
 
 A Maxim 
 
 A Maxim 
 
 Sonnet : True and False Fear 
 
 Essay : Honour to Parents 
 
 Essay: Meekness 
 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 
 1 In these two Discourses the text is made by the concluding words of the pre- 
 ceding Discourse. 
 
ECCLEStASTICtfS 
 
 SO? 
 
 IV. I-IO 
 II-19 
 20-8 
 
 iv. 2g~v. 3 
 
 V. 4-8 
 
 V. 9-vi. I 
 vi. 2-4 
 
 S-17 
 
 18-37 
 vii. 1-3 
 
 4-6 
 vii. 7-1S 
 
 19-36 
 viii. l-ix. 16 
 ix. 17-X. 5 
 X. 6— xi. 6 
 xi. 7-10 
 
 11-28 
 xi. 29-xiii. 24 
 xiii. 2^-xiv. 2 
 xiv. 3-19 
 xiv. 20-xv. 10 
 XV. 11-20 
 xvi. 1-23 
 xvi. 24— xviii. 14 
 xviii. 15-18 
 
 19-27 
 xviii. 28-g 
 xviii. 30~xix. 3 
 xix. 4-17 
 xix. 20-xx. 13 
 XX. 14-31 
 xxi. i-io 
 
 11-26 
 xxi. 27— xxii. 5 
 xxii. 6-15 
 
 16-26 
 xxii. 27-xxiii. 6 
 xxiii. 7-15 
 
 16-27 
 
 Essay : Consideration for High and Low 
 Essay : Wisdom's Way with her Children 
 Essay : True and False Shame 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 A Maxim 
 
 Proverb Cluster : Government of the Tongue (299) 
 Maxim: Self- Will 
 Essay : On Friendship 
 Essay : On Pursuit of Wisdom 
 Epigram : Sowing and Reaping 
 A Maxim 
 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 Essay : Household Precepts 
 
 Essay : Adaptation of Behaviour to Various Sorts of Men 
 Essay : Wisdom and Government 
 Essay : Pride and True Greatness 
 Proverb Cluster : Meddlesomeness 
 
 Essay : Prosperity and Adversity are from the Lord (302) 
 Essay : Choice of Company 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 Essay : On Niggardliness 
 
 Essay : The Pursuer of Wisdom and his Reward 
 Essay : On Free Will 
 Essay : No Safety for Sinners 
 Essay : God's Work of Creation and Restoration 
 Proverb Cluster ; On Graciousness 
 Essay : On Taking Heed in Time 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 
 Three Temperance Maxims [30-31; 32-1 («); I (*)-3] 
 Essay: Against Gossip (302) 
 Essay : Wisdom and its Counterfeits 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 Proverb Cluster : Sin and its Judgment 
 Proverb Cluster : Wise Men and Pools 
 Proverb Cluster : The Hatefulness of Evil 
 Proverb Cluster : Commerce with Fools Intolerable [in- 
 cluding a Sonnet : 1 1- 1 2] 
 Essay : The Steadfast Friend and the Uncertain 
 Sonnet: Watchfulness of Lips and Heart (313) 
 Essay : The Discipline of the Mouth 
 Essay : The Horror of Adultery 
 
508 
 
 LITEkARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 Book II 
 
 XXV. 1-2 
 
 3-6 
 7-1 1 
 
 13-IS 
 XXV. l6-xxvi. 18 
 
 xxvi. 28 
 
 xxvi. 2g-xxvii, 3 
 xxvii. 4-7 
 xxvii. 8-JO 
 
 n-iS 
 
 16-21 
 
 22-4 
 xxvii. 25-xxviii. II 
 xxviii. 12-26 
 xxix. 1-20 
 
 21-8 
 XXX. I-13 
 
 14-25 
 
 xxxi. I-II 
 
 xxxi. 1 2-xxxii. 1 3 
 
 xxxii. 14- 
 
 xxxiii, 6 
 xxxiii. 7-15 
 
 xxiv-xxxiit. IS 
 
 Preface to Book II, into which is interwoven (3-22) a 
 Dramatic Monologue : Wisdom's Praise of Herself 
 
 (324-5) 
 Number Sonnet : What Wisdom loves and hates (309) 
 A Maxim 
 
 Number Sonnet : The Love of the Lord (310) 
 Epigram : The Wrath of an Enemy 
 Wisdom Cluster: Women Bad and Good [xxv. l5-xxvi. 4 
 
 Essay; 5-6 Number Sonnet ; 7-18 Sonnet] 
 Number Sonnet : The Backslider 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 Epigram : Reasoning the Test of Men 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 
 Proverb Cluster : Discourse of Wise and Fools 
 A Maxim 
 A Maxim 
 
 Essay : Retribution and Vengeance 
 Essay : On the Tongue (300) 
 Essay : On Lending and Suretiship 
 Essay : The Blessing of a House of One's Own 
 Essay : On the Chastisement of Children 
 Essay; On Health 
 Essay : On Riches 
 Essay : On Feasting 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 
 Essay : An Analogy 
 
 Book III 
 
 xxxiii. i6-xxxix. 11 
 
 xxxiii. 16-18 
 19-23 
 
 24-31 
 xxxiv. 1-8 
 9-12 
 13-17 
 
 Preface to Book III (j2S) 
 
 Essay : On Giving and Bequeathing 
 
 Essay: On Servants 
 
 Essay ; On Dreams 
 
 A Maxim 
 
 Sonnet : The Fearers of the Lord 
 
ECCLESIASTICUS 
 
 509 
 
 xxxiv. 18-XXXV 
 xxxvi. I- 1 7 
 
 18-20 
 
 21-6 
 xxxvii. 1—6 
 
 7-26 
 xxxvii. 27— 
 
 xxxviii. 15 
 xxxviii. 16-23 
 xxxviii. 24- 
 
 xxxix. II 
 
 Essay : On Sacrifices, Evil and Acceptable 
 
 A Prayer for Mercy upon Israel 
 
 Disconnected Sayings 
 
 Essay : On Wives 
 
 Essay : On False Friends 
 
 Essay : On Counsel and Counsellors (303-4) 
 
 Essay : On Disease and Physicians 
 
 Essay : On Mourning for the Dead 
 Essay: The Wisdom of Business and the Wisdom of 
 Leisure 
 
 xxxix. 12—35 
 
 xl. i-io 
 
 11-27 
 
 28-30 
 xli. 1-4 
 
 xli. 14-xlii. 8 
 xhi. 9-14 
 
 Book IV 
 xxxix. i2-xlii. J4 
 
 Preface into vrhich is interwoven (16-31) 
 
 Encomium of God's Works (325) 
 Essay : The Burden of Life 
 A Pair of Sonnets : A Garden of Blessing 
 A Maxim 
 
 Sonnet : On Death 
 Essay : The Posterity of Sinners 
 Essay : Things to be ashamed of 
 Essay : Women as a Source of Trouble 
 
 Rhetoric 
 
 xlii. l5-xUii 
 xliv-1. 24 
 
 Book V 
 
 Longer Works 
 
 xlii. IS— I. 24 
 
 Rhetoric Encomium : The Works of the Lord 
 Rhetoric Encomium : The Praise of Famous Men (325) 
 
 Epilogue to the Whole : Number Sonnet of the Hated Nations (1. 25-6) — 
 
 Colophon with Beatitude (27-9) 
 Author's Preface to the Whole (li) 
 
510 LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 ST. MATTHEW, ST. MARK, ST. LUKE, ST. JOHN 
 
 Each of these constitutes a single Gospel, which must be understood as 
 a specific literary form (256) 
 
 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 
 
 A continuation of one of the Gospels, and of the same literary form (258) 
 
 EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS 
 An Epistolary Treatise (265) 
 
 I, n CORINTHIANS 
 Epistles of Pastoral Intercourse (264) 
 
 GALATIANS 
 An Epistle of Pastoral Intercourse (264) 
 
 EPHESIANS 
 An Epistolary Manifesto (266) 
 
 PHILIPPIANS 
 An Epistle of Pastoral Intercourse (265) 
 
 COLOSSIANS 
 An Epistolary Manifesto (266) 
 
 I, II THESSALONIANS 
 Epistles of Pastoral Intercourse (265) 
 
TIMO THV—PE TER 
 
 511 
 
 I, II TIMOTHY 
 Epistles of Pastoral Intercourse (265) 
 
 TITUS, PHILEMON 
 Epistles of Pastoral Intercourse (265) 
 
 HEBREWS 
 An Epistolary Treatise (266) 
 
 1. 1 
 
 i. 2-4 
 S-8 
 9-1 1 
 12-27 
 
 ii. 1-13 
 
 14-26 
 iii. 1-12 
 
 13-18 
 iv. i-io 
 
 11-12 
 iv. 13-V. iS 
 
 19-20 
 
 JAMES 
 
 A Wisdom Epistle (327) 
 
 Superscription to the Epistle 
 
 A Maxim 
 
 A Maxim 
 
 A Maxim 
 
 Essay : On the Sources of the Evil and tlie Good in us 
 
 (304-6) 
 Essay : On Respect of Persons 
 Essay : Faith and Works 
 Essay: On the Kesponsibility of Speech (301) 
 Essay : The Earthly Wisdom and the Wisdom from above 
 Discourse : On Worldly Pleasures 
 A Maxim (298) 
 
 Discourse : The Judgment to come 
 A Maxim 
 
 I, II PETER 
 Epistolary Manifestos (266) 
 
512 
 
 LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 
 
 I JOHN 
 A Wisdom Epistle (328-9) 
 
 i. 1-4 
 
 Prologue • 
 
 5-7 
 
 God is Light 
 
 i. 8-ii. 2 
 
 Cleansing from Sin 
 
 ii. 3-6 
 
 The Commandments our Surety 
 
 7-1 1 
 
 The Old Commandment and the New 
 
 12-14 
 
 The Three Ages 
 
 15-17 
 
 Love of the World 
 
 18-28 
 
 Antichrist 
 
 ii. 29-iii. 12 
 
 Sons of God 
 
 iii. 13-23 
 
 Love of the Brethren 
 
 iii. 24-iv. 6 
 
 The Spirit our Surety 
 
 iv. 7-21 
 
 Love 
 
 V. 1-5 
 
 Faith 
 
 ^13 
 
 The Three who bear Witness 
 
 14-17 
 
 Boldness in Asking 
 
 l8-2I 
 
 Epilogue 
 
 II, III JOHN 
 Epistles of Pastoral Intercourse (265) 
 
 JUDE 
 An Epistolary Manifesto (267) 
 
 THE REVELATION 
 A Vision Cycle (471-6) 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 TABLES OF LITERARY FORMS 
 
 This second Appendix is intended for the technical student of Literary 
 Morphology. It arranges in Tables all the literary forms found in Scripture, 
 with the examples of them, so that each form can be studied by itself. In the 
 case of very common forms, such as the simple Discourse, it has not been 
 thought necessary to give, the examples. The reference figures are to preced- 
 ing pages of this book. 
 
 513 
 
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APPENDIX III 
 
 A METRICAL SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 The Metrical System here described has reference to the parallelism of 
 clauses in Biblical verse. [See above, page 46.] Whatever else there is of 
 metre in Biblical poetry belongs to the original language, and is not imitated 
 in the ordinary versions. Parallelism is a rhythmic movement of the thought, 
 and is independent of particular versions. Such paralleUsm may be reduced 
 to a regular system. 
 
 General Ideas of Parallelism 
 
 I. It has been shown above (chapter I) hove the versification of the Bible 
 Parallelism '^^'^ mainly, not on such things as rhyme, or number and 
 
 Similar and quantity of syllables in a line, but in parallelism of clauses. 
 
 Dissimilar . jj jg necessary to distinguish Similar and Dissimilar Parallel- 
 
 ism. The first obtains where, in a given sequence, all the lines are equally 
 parallel with one another. 
 
 Yet he commanded the skies above. 
 
 And opened the doors of heaven; 
 
 And he rained down manna upon them to eat, 
 
 And gave them of the corn of heaven. 
 
 Man did eat the bread of the mighty : 
 
 He sent them meat to the full. 
 
 With this compare Dissimilar Parallelism, where particular lines adhere to- 
 gether with a bond that is closer than the bond which unites them all into a 
 sequence. 
 
 If thou hast sinned. 
 
 What doest thou against him? 
 And if thy transgressions be multiplied. 
 What doest thou unto him ? 
 526 
 
General ideas of parallelism 527 
 
 The indenting of these lines shows to the eye, what the sense confirms, that 
 the first and third lines go together in this passage, and equally the second and 
 fourth. Again : 
 
 Is the righteousness ye should speak dumb? 
 Do ye judge uprightly the sons of men? 
 
 Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; 
 
 Ye weigh out the violence of your hands in the earth. 
 
 The wicked are estranged from the womb; 
 
 They go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. 
 
 Their poison is like the poison of a serpent : 
 
 They are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; 
 
 Which hearkeneth not to the voice of the charmers, charming 
 never so wisely. 
 
 It is obvious that in this passage the first two lines are bound together, and 
 again the last seven; yet that the whole makes a single sequence is clear from 
 the fact that the same dissimilar parallelism of 2 and 7 is reproduced in the 
 passage which immediately follows (psalm Iviii). 
 
 Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth : 
 
 Break out the great teeth of the young lions, O Lord. 
 
 Let them melt away as water that runneth apace : 
 
 When he aimeth his arrows, let them be as though they were 
 cut off. 
 
 Let them be as a snail which melteth and passeth away; 
 
 Like the untimely birth of a woman that hath not seen the sun. 
 
 Before your pots can feel the thorns. 
 
 He shall take them away with a whirlwind, 
 
 The green and the burning alike. 
 
 2. In all discussions of parallelism it is important to remember — what has 
 
 repeatedly been emphasised in this work^ — that the term covers a wide 
 
 variety of structure, from the fainter parallelism which is 
 
 , . , ,.,,,,. , - , Semi-parallehsm 
 
 natural in prose style, to a highly rhythmic structure, which 
 
 is a fit medium for the most musical verse. In particular, such a case may be 
 
 noted as the opening of Job, where, in the midst of prose narrative, the excited 
 
 words of successive messengers make a transitional stage on the way to the 
 
 full verse of the dramatic speeches. 
 
 1 See especially pages 113-29. 
 
S2S A METRICAL SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 And it fell on a day when his sons and his daughters were eating 
 and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house, that there came a 
 messenger unto Job, and said : 
 
 The oxen were ploughing, 
 
 and the asses feeding beside them ; 
 
 and the Sabeans fell upon them, 
 
 and took them away; 
 
 Yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; 
 
 and 1 only am escaped alone to tell thee ! 
 
 While he was yet speaking, there came also another and said ; 
 
 The fire of God is fallen from heaven, 
 
 and hath burned up the sheep and the servants, 
 
 and consumed them; 
 
 and I only am escaped alone to tell thee ! 
 
 This may be called Semi-parallelism: the clauses of the messengers' 
 speeches seem to the ear to break up and separate, without becoming regularly 
 parallel one to another.^ 
 
 Units of Parallelism 
 
 3. In regard to particular figures of parallelism we may note three different 
 
 sources of metrical rhythm in Biblical poetry, which have 
 contributed three different metrical units. 
 
 4. The Traditional Poetry preserved in the historical books is for the most 
 
 part based upon a unit which may be called a strain. This 
 ' strain consists of a couplet, either line of which may be 
 
 strengthened by an additional line, but not both. 
 
 Assemble yourselves and hear, ye sons of Jacob, 
 And hearken unto Israel your father. 
 
 Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea, 
 And he shall be for an haven of ships ; 
 And his border shall be upon Zidon. 
 
 1 It appears to me convenient to represent this Semi-parallelism by Centric 
 Printing (the centre of each line coinciding with the centre of the page). This 
 device is attributed to the poet Soutliey, and he has used it in the elaborate verse 
 system of his Thaiaba and Kekama, Dr. Samuel Cox uses it throughout his 
 admirable version of Job. 
 
UNITS OF PARALLELISM S29 
 
 Benjamin is a wolf that ravineth : 
 
 In the morning he shall devour the prey, 
 And at even he shall divide the spoil. 
 
 These are three ' strains ' from different parts of the Blessing of Jacob ; the 
 first is simply a couplet, the second is a couplet with its first line strengthened, 
 the third is a couplet with its second line strengthened. It is of great impor- 
 tance for the general appreciation of Biblical verse to accustom the mind to 
 the idea of this elastic unit, of which a portion may or may not be strengthened 
 by an additional line. When this idea is grasped it becomes easy to see how, 
 for example, the two halves of psalm iii (see above, page 190) are strictly 
 symmetrical, although one contains eight lines, the other nine: the true 
 analysis is (as the indenting of the lines shows) that each part is made up of 
 four strains. 
 
 5. Although found extensively in such a lyric collection as the Book of 
 Psalms, yet this unit of the strain may be considered as the special contribu- 
 tion of Traditional Poetry. The power of occasionally strengthening either 
 line of a couplet by an additional line gives such poetry a flexibility which 
 would be suitable to spontaneous composition, and a great deal of the poetry 
 in the historical books is of this nature (e.g. the speeches of Balaam, or Isaac's 
 Blessings on Jacob and on Esau). A similar device is found in connection 
 with the oral ballad poetry of England, of which such collections as the Percy 
 Reliques are accidentally preserved specimens. Compare the following pas- 
 sages (from the Ballad of Sir Cauline), which, in the general run of the poem, 
 stand parallel with one another. 
 
 Then answered him a courteous knight, 
 
 (And fast his hands gan wring:) 
 Sir Cauline is sick, and like to die. 
 
 Without a good leeching. 
 
 Fetche me down my daughter dear. 
 
 She is a leech full fine ; 
 Go, take him dough and the baken bread. 
 And serve him with the wine so red; 
 
 Loth were I him to tine. 
 
 6. A second source of metrical rhythm in the Bible is Wisdom literature. 
 As shown above (chapter XIII), the elemental proverb is a 
 couplet of verse, and this couplet is a second unit for Bibli- ' 
 
 cal metre. 
 
 7. With the earliest verse dancing is intimately associated ; indeed, dance 
 motions may be considered the scaffolding by which verse rhythm has been 
 
530 A METRICAL SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 built up. (Above, page 152.) Performance by dancers readily admits 
 antiphony, as in Deborah's Song (above, page 139) : such a passage as this — 
 
 Women. Out of Ephraim came dovfn they whose root is in Amalek — 
 Men. After thee, Benjamin, among thy peoples — 
 
 Women. Out of Machir came down governors — 
 Men. And out of Zebulun they that handle the marshal's 
 
 staff — 
 
 Women. And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah — 
 Men. As was Issachar, so was Barak : 
 
 Tutti. Into the valley they rushed forth at his feet. — 
 
 illustrates how naturally such antiphony will carry division even further than 
 the couplet. Hence dancing has given the single line, or 
 half-couplet, as yet another unit of Biblical verse. 
 
 Metrical Structures 
 
 8. Coming to the various structures built up on the foundation of these 
 
 three units, we note first the Antique Rhythm of Traditional Poetry. This is 
 
 made by the aggregation of strains. Tendencies may seem 
 Antique Rhythm , , 00 » , , , ^ , 
 
 to show themselves towards the clustermg of strams together 
 
 to make stanzas : but no wide correspondence will be found extending over a 
 
 whole poem, or uniting one division of a poem with another. Sometimes, of 
 
 course, the cleavage of such Traditional Poetry will be determined by other 
 
 than rhythmic considerations: an example is the Blessing of Jacob on the 
 
 Twelve Tribes. 
 
 Assemble yourselves, and hear, ye sons of Jacob; 
 And hearken unto Israel your Father. 
 
 Reuben, thou art my firstborn, 
 
 My might, and the beginning of my strength ; 
 
 The excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power. 
 
 Unstable as water, thou shalt not have the excellency ; 
 Because thou wentest up to thy father's bed : 
 Then defiledst thou it : he went up to my couch. 
 
 Simeon and Levi are brethren ; 
 
 Weapons of violence are their swords. 
 O my soul, come not thou into their council; 
 
 Unto their assembly, my glory, be not thou united; 
 
METRICAL STRUCTURES 531 
 
 For in their anger they slew men, 
 
 And in their selfwill they houghed oxen. 
 Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; 
 
 And their wrath, for it was cruel : 
 I will divide them in Jacob, 
 
 And scatter them in Israel. 
 
 Judah, thee shall thy brethren praise : 
 
 Thy hand shall be on the neck of thine enemies; 
 
 Thy father's sons shall bow down before thee. 
 Judah is a lion's whelp; 
 
 From the prey, my son, thou art gone up : 
 He stooped down, he couched as a lion. 
 
 And as a lioness; who shall rouse him up? 
 The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, 
 
 Nor the ruler's staff from between his feet. 
 Till he come to Shiloh, 
 
 Having the obedience of the peoples. 
 Binding his foal unto the vine. 
 
 And his ass's colt unto the choice vine; 
 He hath washed his garments in wine. 
 
 And his vesture in the blood of grapes : 
 His eyes shall be red with wine. 
 
 And his teeth white with milk. 
 
 Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea, 
 And he shall be for an haven of ships; 
 And his border shall be upon Zidon. 
 
 Issachar is a strong ass 
 
 Couching down between the sheepfolds : 
 And he saw a resting place that it was good, 
 
 And the land that it was pleasant; 
 And he bovved his shoulder to bear, 
 
 ' And became a servant under taskwork. 
 
 Dari shall judge his people. 
 
 As one of the tribes of Israel. 
 Dan shall be a serpent in the way, 
 
 An adder in the path 
 That biteth the horse's heels. 
 
 So that his rider falleth ba'ckward. 
 
532 A METRICAL SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord. 
 
 Gad, a troop shall press upon him : 
 
 But he shall press upon their heel. 
 
 Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, 
 And he shall yield royal dainties. 
 
 Naphtali is a hind let loose : 
 He giveth goodly words. 
 
 Joseph is a fruitful bough, 
 
 A fruitful bough by a fountain ; 
 
 His branches run over the wall. 
 The archers have sorely grieved him, 
 
 And shot at him, and persecuted him : 
 But his bow abode in strength. 
 
 And the arms of his hands were made strong. 
 By the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob, 
 
 (From thence is the Shepherd, the stone of Israel,) 
 Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee. 
 
 And by the Almighty, who shall bless thee. 
 With blessings of heaven above. 
 Blessings of the deep that coucheth beneath, 
 
 Blessings of the breasts, and of the womb. 
 The blessings of thy father have prevailed 
 Above the blessings of my progenitors 
 
 Unto the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills : 
 They shall be on the head of Joseph, 
 
 And on the crown of the head of him that was separate 
 from his brethren. 
 
 Benjamin is a wolf that ravineth : 
 
 In the morning he shall devour the prey. 
 And at even he shall divide the spoil. 
 
 This Blessing, one of the most considerable examples of Traditional Poetry 
 that have come down to us, illustrates to what degree in such poetry the 
 aggregation of strains travels in the direction of more elaborate structure. 
 By natural cleavage, flowing directly from the subject of the poem, we get 
 twelve divisions (or rather eleven, Simeon and Levi being taken together). 
 These divisions are found to be very unequal, consisting of one, two, three, 
 
METRICAL STRUCTURES 533 
 
 five, or eight strains. There is more of form than is usual in such Traditional 
 Poetry : besides an introduction there is an exclamation of the speaker divid- 
 ing the whole into two parts : 
 
 I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord. 
 
 Yet so little does the sense of balance rule that we find seven tribes dealt with 
 before the dividing line, and only five after. On the other hand, there is a 
 suggestion of a sense of balance when we find that the long blessings on 
 Judah and on Joseph, which respectively make the pieces de resistance of the 
 two parts, consist each of eight strains. So far as this natural cleavage deter- 
 mines the divisions of such poems the form is akin to what is described below 
 as Strophic Structure. 
 
 9. A second type of structure is exhibited when a whole poem, or section 
 of a poem, falls into similar figures of parallelism, such as quatrains, sextets, 
 
 etc. This is familiar in the stanzas of a modern hymnbook. 
 
 „ . ., . . .. ^ j.„ T>-i_,- , / Stanza Structure, 
 
 But there is one important difference : Biblical stanzas may 
 
 be founded, not only on the unit of the couplet, or of the single line, but also 
 on the elastic unit of the strain, and in this last case the stanzas may differ in 
 the number of lines contained in each. Thus psalm vi (printed in full on 
 pages 188-9) contains three stanzas of three strains each : it will be seen by 
 counting that the number of lines differs in the different sections. [Similarly, 
 psalm xxii has three stanzas of eleven strains each; psalm Ixxvii, seven stanzas 
 of three strains each.] For stanzas founded on couplets : psalm cxxi may 
 serve as an example of quatrains (see page 50) : in all arrangements of Bib- 
 lical lyrics this is a common figure. [E.g. psalms xii, xiii, xxviii, xxxii, etc.'] 
 For sextets, psalm Ixxxvii is a simple example ; others are psalms xlviii, Ixxvi, 
 cxlii. The stanza of the (acrostic) psalm cxix is an octet, in this case, a figure 
 of eight couplets. Stanzas founded on the unit of the single line are less 
 common : psalm liii is one example. 
 
 The fool hath said in his heart : There is no God. 
 Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity; 
 There is none that doeth good. 
 
 God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, 
 To see if there were any that did understand, 
 That did seek after God. 
 
 1 Unless stated otherwise, references are to the Modern Reader's Bible [here- 
 after referred to as M. R. B.] , where the present metrical system is followed 
 throughout. 
 
534 A METRICAL SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 Every one of them is gone back; they are together become filthy; 
 There is none that doeth good, 
 No, not one. 
 
 " Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge, 
 " Who eat up my people as they eat bread, 
 "And call not upon God? " 
 
 There were they in great fear, where no fear was : 
 For God hath scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee ; 
 Thou hast put them to shame, because God hath rejected them. 
 
 O that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion ! 
 When God bringeth back the captivity of his people. 
 Then shall Jacob rejoice, and Israel shall be glad. 
 
 lo. A great rhythmic effect is produced in Biblical poetry by Mixed 
 Stanzas : stanzas of more than one figure are found in the same poem, and 
 
 the transition from one figure to another reflects transitions 
 ana Mixed ^f thought. It is difficult to do full justice to this without 
 
 Stanzas . . , , ^ ^ , ■ , 
 
 pnntmg lengthy poems. One of the simpler examples is in 
 
 yob [section 1 6, of the M. R. B. arrangement: other examples are sections 
 II, 24, 42]. Eliphaz is shocked that Job should resist alike the visitation of 
 God and the unanimous advice of the three Friends : as he gives vent to this 
 feehng, quatrains are found to express the resistance to the Friends, stanzas 
 of 2, 4 the resistance to God. The two types are not separated, but inter- 
 mingle in successive stanzas, with three stanzas of each type : yet the appro- 
 priation of each form to its thought is in all cases clear. 
 
 .Should a wise man make answer with vain knowledge. 
 
 And fill his belly with the east wind? 
 Should he reason with unprofitable talk. 
 
 Or with speeches wherewith he can do no good? 
 
 Yea, thou doest away with fear, 
 And restrainest devotion before God. 
 
 For thine iniquity teacheth thy mouth. 
 
 And thou choosest the tongue of the crafty. 
 
 Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I; 
 
 Yea, thine own lips testify against thee. 
 
METRICAL STRUCTURES 535 
 
 Art thou the first man that was born ? 
 
 Or wast thou brought forth before the hills? 
 Hast thou heard the secret counsel of God? 
 
 And dost thou, restrain wisdom to thyself? 
 
 What knowest thou, that we know not? 
 
 What understandest thou, which is not in us? 
 With us are both the grayheaded and the very aged men, 
 
 Much elder than thy father. 
 
 Are the consolations of God too small for thee, 
 And the word that dealeth gently with thee ? 
 
 Why doth thine heart carry thee away? 
 
 And why do thine eyes wink ? 
 
 That thou turnest thy spirit against God, 
 
 And lettest such words go out of thy mouth. 
 
 What is man that he should be clean? 
 
 And he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous ? 
 
 Behold, he putteth no trust in his holy ones; 
 
 Yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. 
 
 How much less one that is abominable and corrupt, 
 
 A man that drinketh iniquity like water. 
 
 Another example of Mixed Stanzas is given by the companion psalms ciii, civ, 
 which are cast in a common mould of stanzas of five and of four (couplets 
 or strains). The first has stanzas of five, as long as it is celebrating the 
 goodness of God. 
 
 Bless the Lord, O my soul; 
 
 And all that is within me, bless his holy name. 
 Bless the Lord, O my soul, 
 
 And forget not all his benefits : 
 Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; 
 
 Who healeth all thy diseases; 
 Who redeemeth thy life from destruction. 
 
 Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender 
 mercies; 
 Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; 
 
 So that thy youth is renewed Uke the eagle. 
 
S36 A METRICAL SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 The. Lord executeth righteous acts, 
 
 And judgements for all that are oppressed. 
 He made known his ways unto Moses, 
 
 His doings unto the children of Israel. 
 The Lord is full of compassion and gracious, 
 
 Slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. 
 He will not always chide ; 
 
 Neither will he keep his anger for ever. 
 He hath not dealt with us after our sins. 
 
 Nor rewarded us after our iniquities. 
 
 The celebration of God's goodness has reached the point of his attitude to 
 human frailty : at once the form sinks to stanzas of four. 
 
 For as the heaven is high above the earth. 
 
 So great is his mercy toward them that fear him. 
 As far as the east is from the west. 
 
 So far hath he removed our transgressions from us. 
 Like as a father pitieth his children. 
 
 So the Lord pitieth them that fear him. 
 For he knoweth our frame ; 
 
 He remembereth that we are dust. 
 
 As for man, his days are as grass ; 
 
 As the flower of the field, so he flourisheth. 
 For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone ; 
 
 And the place thereof shall know it no more. 
 But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting 
 upon them that fear him, 
 
 And his righteousness unto children's children; 
 To such as keep his covenant. 
 
 And to those that remember his precepts to do them. 
 
 From the topic of God's ways with feeble man the psalm springs to the Divine 
 rule over the glorious angels, and the rhythm similarly springs back to the 
 stanza of five. 
 
 The Lord hath established his throne in the heavens, 
 
 And his kingdom ruleth over all. 
 Bless the Lord, ye angels of his. 
 
 Ye mighty in strength; 
 
METRICAL STRUCTURES 537 
 
 That fulfil his word, 
 
 Hearkening unto the voice of his word. 
 Bless the Lord, all ye his hosts ; 
 
 Ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure. 
 Bless the Lord, all ye his works. 
 
 In all places of his dominion.^ 
 
 The same rhythmic interchange (with a slight variation) rules the companion 
 psalm. Five stanzas of five couplets each paint the glory of God in external 
 nature, until the topic is reached of the dependence of all these living things 
 on God : here stanzas of four appear, (with the variation of a change from 
 couplet units to strains). 
 
 O Lord, how manifold are thy works ! 
 In wisdom hast thou made them all, 
 
 The earth is full of thy riches. 
 Yonder is the sea, great and wide. 
 Wherein are things creeping, innumerable, 
 
 Both small and great beasts. 
 There go the ships; 
 
 There is leviathan whom thou hast formed to take 
 his pastime therein. 
 These wait all upon thee, 
 That thou mayest give them their meat in due season; 
 
 That thou givest unto them they gather : 
 
 Thou openest thine hand. 
 
 They are satisfied with good : 
 Thou hidest thy face, 
 
 They are troubled; 
 Thou takest away their breath, 
 
 They die. 
 
 And return to their dust • 
 Thou sendest forth thy spirit. 
 
 They are created; 
 
 And thou renewest the face of the ground. 
 
 As in the other case, there is a spring back to the first theme and the first 
 form of stanza. 
 
 1 The exclamation that follows, Bless the LORD, O my soul, is the enveloping 
 refrain, whiclj comes at the end of both psalms, and in both is outside the rhythm. 
 
538 A METRICAL SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 Let the glory of the Lord endure for ever; 
 
 Let the Lord rejoice in his works : 
 Who looketh on the earth, and it trembleth; 
 
 He toucheth the mountains, and they smoke. 
 I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live : 
 
 I will sing praise to my God while I have any being. 
 Let my meditation be sweet unto him : 
 
 I will rejoice in the Lord. 
 Let sinners be consumed out of the earth, 
 
 And let the wicked be no more. 
 
 [For other examples, see M. R. B. Psalms, page 159 of volume one. Compare 
 (below) the similar dfevice of Interruption.] 
 
 II. A third structure, Antistrophic, has been fully described in the body 
 of this work (pages 50-3). Here the stanzas run in pairs, strophe and anti- 
 strophe, and the rhythm of the strophe is exactly repro- 
 Antistrophic duced in its antistrophe. The form is very familiar in Greek 
 
 Structure, poetry. There, however, it is mainly metrical in its effect, 
 
 the change from a strophe to its antistrophe reflecting no change of thought. 
 In Scripture, especially in Wisdom literature, the change from strophe to anti- 
 strophe is rhetorical as well as metrical. Thus {Proverbs, chapter ii) : 
 
 My son, if thou wilt receive my words. 
 And lay up my commandments with thee ; 
 So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom. 
 And apply thine heart to understanding; 
 Yea, if thou cry after discernment. 
 And Uft up thy voice for understanding; 
 If thou seek her as silver. 
 And search for her as for hid treasures : 
 
 Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, 
 
 And find the knowledge of God. 
 
 For the Lord giveth wisdom; 
 
 Out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding : 
 
 He layeth up sound wisdom for the upright, 
 
 He is a shield to them that walk in integrity; 
 
 That he may guard the paths of judgement, 
 
 And preserve the way of his saints. 
 
 Here the strophe and antistrophe, each of eight lines, are the protasis and 
 apodosis of the same conditional sentence. The union of metrical and rhetor- 
 ical in antistrophic correspondence is well illustrated by the fiftieth psalm. 
 
METRICAL STRUCTURES 539 
 
 After an introduction, presenting a scene of judgment, we find a strophe con- 
 veying God's address to his people, the antislrophe the Divine address to the 
 wicked. Each contains nineteen lines: but further, when the dissimilar 
 parallelism is examined, it is found that in each three lines make an invoca- 
 tion, twelve a remonstrance, and four a solemn decree. 
 
 Strophe 
 
 Hear, O my people, and I will speak; 
 
 Israel, and I will testify unto thee : 
 
 1 am God, even thy God. 
 
 I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices; 
 
 And thy burnt offerings are continually before me. 
 
 I will take no bullock out of thy house. 
 
 Nor he-goats out of thy folds. 
 
 For every beast of the forest is mine. 
 
 And the cattle upon a thousand hills. 
 
 I know all the fowls of the mountains; 
 
 And the wild beasts of the field are mine. 
 
 If I were hungry, I would not tell thee : 
 
 For the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. 
 
 Will I eat the flesh of bulls. 
 
 Or drink the blood of goats ? 
 Offer unto God the sacrifice of thanksgiving; 
 And pay thy vows unto the Most High : 
 And call upon me in the day of trouble ; 
 I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. 
 
 Antistrophe 
 
 But unto the wicked God sakh. 
 
 What hast thou to do to declare my statutes. 
 
 And that thou hast taken my covenant in thy mouth ? 
 
 Seeing thou hatest instruction. 
 
 And castest my words behind thee. 
 
 When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst with him, 
 
 And hast been partaker with adulterers. 
 
 Thou givest thy mouth to evil. 
 
 And thy tongue frameth deceit. 
 
 Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; 
 
 Thou slanderest thine own mother's son. 
 
 These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; 
 
 Thou thougttest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: 
 
S40 A METRICAL SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 But I will reprove thee, 
 
 And set them in order before thine eyes. 
 Now consider this, ye that forget God, 
 Lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver. 
 Whoso offereth the sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifieth me ; 
 And to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the 
 salvation of God. 
 
 12. The Antistrophic Structure may be upon a basis of the single line unit 
 [psalms xxxvi, 1, Iviii], or the couplet unit [psalms xxi, Ivii, Ixii, Ixxxi, xcii, 
 
 cxiii, cxxvi], or the unit of the strain [psalms iii, xvi, xxiv, 
 combined with xxxviii, xlv, etc.] . The most important example of the last 
 Antique Rhythm j^ ^j^^ ^^^^ ^^ Solomon's Song, which exhibits an interesting 
 g combination of Antique Rhythm and Antistrophic Structure. 
 
 As arranged in the Modern Reader's Bible [Biblical Idyls : 
 see page 119] it presents a complete antistrophic system, broken only by 
 exceptions which confirm the general principle of arrangement. Thus, the 
 refrains which are used to separate the seven idyls, or to break the longer 
 idyls into parts, are found to be outside the antistrophic plan, which is a con- 
 firmation of the parenthetic character claimed for them. Again, there is a 
 break in the antistrophic completeness in Idyl V [see page 123] : the passage 
 which there falls outside the rhythmic system is equally outside the continuity 
 of thought, being (according to the theory of the poem I have advocated in 
 chapter VIII of this work) a dramatised reminiscence of a former incident, 
 breaking the king's present meditation. Such an effect belongs to the 
 ' Interruption ' described below. 
 
 13. When the antistrophic structure extends beyond a single pair of 
 
 strophes three varieties appear, which may be represented by the three 
 
 formulae : 
 
 aa\ bb^ 
 
 ab, a'b' 
 
 ab, b'a' 
 
 The first and simplest is Antistrophic Alternation, in which each strophe is 
 immediately followed by its antistrophe : its formula is thus 
 Antistrophic ^^1^ ^^/^ ^^/^ gj^ Psalm xxx (printed above, page 51) 
 
 Alternation and . r ..x.- . v .. /; /. ri->..u 
 
 Interlacing '^ °^ '"'' ^^P^- '*^ stanzas run 6,6; 3,3; 4,4. [Others 
 
 are psalms ii, xxxiv, xxxix, etc.] Antistrophic Interlacing 
 is represented by the formula ab, a'b' : it implies that the first strophe is 
 followed by a second of different rhythm, then comes the antistrophe to the 
 first, and then the antistrophe to the second. Psalm ex will illustrate. Two 
 oracles, in condensed speech and triplet form, make one strophe and anti- 
 
METRICAL STRUCTURES 541 
 
 strophe; the fulfilment of each oracle, in long rolling quatrains, make the 
 other pair. 
 
 Strophe i 
 
 The Lord saith unto my lord, 
 
 " Sit thou at my right hand, 
 
 Until I make thine enemies thy footstool." 
 
 Strophe 2 
 
 The Lord shall stretch forth the rod of thy strength out of Zion: 
 Rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. 
 
 Thy people offer themselves willingly in the day of thy power : 
 On the mountains of holiness, from the womb of the morning, thy 
 youth are to thee as the dew. 
 
 Antistrophe i 
 
 The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, 
 " Thou art a priest for ever. 
 After the order of Melchizedek.'' 
 
 Antistrophe 2 
 
 The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day 
 
 of his wrath. 
 He shall judge among the nations — the places are full of dead 
 
 bodies — 
 He shall strike through the head over a wide land : 
 He shall drink of the brook in the way, therefore shall he lift up his 
 
 head. 
 
 [Compare also in M. R. B. arrangement psalms v, xix, lix, xcix.] 
 
 14. The third and most important of the three varieties is Antistrophic 
 Inversion,! where the antistrophe to the second strophe precedes the anti- 
 strophe to the first. The formula is thus ab, b'a'. This has 
 been illustrated in the body of this work (pages 54-5). inversion 
 Other illustrations are psalms Ixxix (in strains 4,3; 3,4), 
 cxxvii (in lines 4, 3 ; 3, 4) . In the elaborate metrical system of Job it is 
 noticeable that, while other types of the structure are common, antistrophic 
 inversion is confined to the speeches of Job himself. The most pronounced 
 example is where we get the form 2,3; 3,2 ; 3,2; 2,3: this is a sort of 
 inverted inversion. 
 
 1 Sometimes called Introversion. 
 
542 A METRICAL SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 No doubt but ye are the people, 
 And wisdom shall die with you. 
 
 But I have understanding as well as you; 
 
 I am not inferior to you : 
 
 Yea, who knoweth not such things as these ? 
 
 I am as one that is a laughing-stock to his neighbour, 
 A man that called upon God, and he answered him, 
 The just, the perfect man is a laughing-stock. 
 
 In the thought of him that is at ease there is contempt for 
 
 misfortune, 
 It is ready for them whose foot slippeth. 
 
 The tents of robbers prosper, 
 
 And they that provoke God are secure, 
 
 That bring their god in their hand. 
 
 But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; 
 And the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee; 
 
 Or, speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee; 
 And the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee : 
 
 AAfho knoweth not in all these that " the hand of the Lord hath 
 
 wrought this?" 
 In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, 
 And the breath of all mankind. 
 
 15. From Antistrophic we must distinguish Strophic Structure : here the 
 
 strophes have no correspondence of rhythmic form, but are merely divisions 
 
 resting upon the thought of the poem, like the paragraphs 
 
 _. . ' of prose. This structure is natural where the divisions of a 
 
 Structure "^ 
 
 poem are made by speakers, as in psalm xx (printed above, 
 
 P^gs 53); °' i° tlifi liturgies which combine separate moods of worship (see 
 
 psalm Ixv, printed on page 199). Its occurrence in the longer poems of 
 
 Antique Rhythm has been pointed out above (page 533). It is noticeable 
 
 that this Strophic Structure does not occur in Wisdom literature. [Other 
 
 examples in the psalms- are i, iv, xviii, xli, etc.] 
 
STRUCTURAL ELABORATIONS 543 
 
 16. The Envelope Structure has been mentioned in the body of this work 
 (page 56) : the opening hne or lines of a sequence are repeated at the close, 
 all that intervenes being read in the light of this envelop- 
 ment. Psalm viii (printed on page 66) is a perfect example, ^"^^lope 
 
 „ 1 1 - • \i, n .. ,. . Structure 
 
 Compare also pssums cm-iv. More usually the figure is 
 
 modified: the opening and close unite in a single thought of which the 
 
 intermediate parts are an expansion. This has been illustrated in application 
 
 to the Lord's Prayer (page 65), and to psalms xv, cxxxix (pages 57, 94). It 
 
 may be observed that the type of lyric structure called in this work the 
 
 Dramatic Anthem (pages 191-4) is closely akin to the Envelope figure : the 
 
 opening and closing tones are the same, and in what intervenes there has 
 
 been a change to an earlier mood of the speaker. 
 
 17. Number Structure has been described in connection with the Fixed 
 
 Sonnet, and examples have been given (page 108). The 
 
 ^ , . ^ , r ^u • r E. , ■ .■ Number Structure 
 
 most elaborate examples of this form are EccUsiasticus, 
 
 chapter xxv. 7, and Job, chapter v. 19 : the former is founded on the number 
 
 ten; the latter has the number seven, and is worked out in couplets. 
 
 18. The Doom Form is a type of structure combining recitative and more 
 rhythmical verse in a way which may be conveniently repre- 
 sented to the eye by the conventional forms of modern prose 
 
 and verse. It has been fully described and illustrated (page 123). 
 
 Structural Elaborations 
 
 19. The regularity of the Antistrophic structure is not inconsistent with 
 
 single stanzas of independent rhythm at the beginning and 
 
 end : compare the mesodes and etodes of Greek poetry. ° ™ "^ ions. 
 
 Conclusions, 
 Such Introductions and Conclusions apply in Biblical poetry 
 
 also to the Stanza structure. Thus psalm xxvi has an introduction : 
 
 Judge me, O Lord, for I have walked in mine integrity : 
 I have trusted also in the Lord without wavering. 
 Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; 
 Try my reins and my heart. 
 
 Then follows a claim of innocency as a result of that self-examination, disposed 
 in three sextet stanzas; after which a brief conclusion recognises the result. 
 
 My foot standeth in an even place : 
 
 In the congregations will I bless the Lord. 
 
544 A METRICAL SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 A conclusion, without an introduction, has been illustrated in a Wisdom poem 
 
 on pages 52-3. Sometimes the conclusions may be postscripts adapting the 
 
 song to other uses f psalms xlv, li, cxxviii, cxxx, cxxxi). Akin 
 and Leads , . , , , , . , 
 
 to such introductions are the Leads: a couplet or triplet 
 
 leads off with a theme, which is then developed in one or more stanzas, as 
 
 where, in modern ritual, a priest leads off and the choir follow. A clear 
 
 example is a portion of the dramatic monologue in Proverbs, chapters vii-viii. 
 
 I Wisdom have made subtilty my dwelling. 
 And find out knowlege and discretion. 
 
 The fear of the Lord is to hate evil ; 
 Pride and arrogancy, 
 And the evil way. 
 And the froward mouth, do I hate. 
 
 Counsel is min^. 
 
 And sound knowledge; 
 I am understanding, 
 1 have might. 
 
 By me kings reign, 
 
 And princes decuee justice; 
 
 By me princes rule, 
 
 And nobles, even all the judges of the earth. 
 
 I love them that love me; 
 
 And those that seek me diligently shall find me. 
 
 Riches and honour are with me; 
 
 Durable riches and righteousness; 
 
 My fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold; 
 
 And my revenue than choice silver. 
 
 I walk in the way of righteousness. 
 
 In the midst of the paths of judgement: 
 
 That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance. 
 
 And that I may fill their treasuries. 
 
 The Lord formed me in the beginning of his way. 
 Before his works of old. 
 
STRUCTURAL ELABORATIONS 545 
 
 I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, 
 Or ever the earth was. 
 
 When there were no depths, I was brought forth, 
 When there were no fountains abounding with water. 
 
 Before the mountains were settled. 
 
 Before the hills, was 1 brought forth : 
 While as yet he had not made the earth, 
 Nor the fields. 
 Nor the beginning of the dust of the world. 
 
 When he established the heavens, I was there : 
 
 When he set a circle upon the face of the deep : 
 
 When he made firm the skies above. 
 
 When the foundations of the deep became strong : 
 
 When he gave to the sea its bound, 
 
 That the waters should not transgress his commandment : 
 
 When he marked out the foundations of the earth. 
 Then I was by him, 
 As a master workman, 
 And I was daily his delight. 
 Sporting always before him ; 
 Sporting in his habitable earth ; 
 And my delight was with the sons of men. 
 
 The three topics, the identification of Wisdom with all forms of excellency, 
 with all forms of prosperity, and again with creative power, are successively 
 opened in couplet leads, and then supported in stanzas: in the ihird case the 
 stanzas exhibit the augmentation which will be discussed below. [For other 
 examples compare psalms xc and xciv in the M. R. B. arrangement. J In Job, 
 besides the couplet or triplet leads, there is a copious use of alternating paral- 
 lelism for transitional passages between passages of more formal rhythm. 
 [IM. R. B. page 136.] 
 
 20. The Refrain is a verse, or portion of a verse, which recurs (exactly or 
 with variations) in two or more successive stanzas or strophes. Examples 
 
 have been given in the body of this work: the Song of 
 
 , T,. ■ / \ , 1 • / N , The Refrain 
 
 Moses and Miriam (page 143), psalm xlvi (page 59), and 
 
 especially psalms xlii-iii (page 60). The refrain in antistrophic structure is 
 
 illustrated by psalms Ivii and xl. Psalm cxxxvi has a continuous refrain — 
 
 For his mercy endureth for ever — 
 
546 A METRICAL SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 after every line. The refrain may come at the beginning of stanzas (e.g. 
 psalms Ixii, cxl : compare in Proverbs volume of M. R. B. page 151). The 
 effect of a double refrain has been fully described in connection with psalm 
 cvii (above, page 61). Another example is psalm xcix, which should be thus 
 arranged : each stanza is a sextet ; the first and third stanzas have five lines 
 with a refrain of one, the second and fourth three lines with a refrain of three. 
 [One of the short refrains has dropped out in the received text.] 
 
 The Lord reigneth; let the peoples tremble : 
 He dwelleth between the cherubim : let the earth be moved. 
 The Lord is great in Zion; 
 And he is high above all the peoples. 
 Let them praise thy great and terrible name : 
 Holy is He. 
 
 The King's strength also loveth judgement ; 
 
 Thou dost establish equity, 
 
 Thou executest judgement and righteousness in Jacob. 
 
 Exalt ye the LORD our God, 
 
 And worship at his footstool: 
 
 Holy is He. 
 
 Moses and Aaron among his priests. 
 And Samuel among them that call upon his name ; 
 They called upon the Lord and he answered them. 
 He spake unto them in the pillar of cloud; 
 They kept his testimonies, and the statute that he gave them. 
 Holy is He. 
 
 Thou answeredst them, O Lord our God : 
 Thou wast a God that forgavest them, 
 Though thou tookest vengeance of their doings. 
 
 Exalt ye the LORD our God, 
 
 And worship at his holy hill, 
 
 For the LORD our God is holy. 
 
 [For the Augmenting Refrain in David's Lament, see page 169.] 
 
 21. An important structural device is Interruption. In its simplest form it 
 is seen in this well-known passage of yob. 
 
STRUCTURAL ELABORATIONS 547 
 
 Let the day perish wherein I was born ; 
 
 And the night which said, There is a man child conceived ! 
 
 Let that day be darkness; 
 
 Let not God regard it from above, 
 
 Neither let the light shine upon it ! 
 
 Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own; 
 
 Let a cloud dwell upon it; 
 
 Let all that maketh black the day terrify it ! 
 
 As for that night, let thick darkness seize upon it; 
 
 Let it not rejoice among the days of the year; 
 
 Let it not come into the number of the months ! 
 
 Lo, let that night be barren; 
 
 Let no joyful voice come therein ! 
 
 Let them curse it that curse the day. 
 
 Who are ready to rouse up leviathan ! 
 
 Let the stars of the tvnlight thereof be dark ! 
 
 Let it look for light, but have none; 
 
 Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning : 
 
 Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, 
 Nor hid trouble from mine eyes ! 
 
 The simple thought of the passage is contained in the opening and concluding 
 
 couplets, which may be regarded as a strophe and antistrophe, and equally as 
 
 the apodosis and protaSis of a causal sentence. But the 
 
 .,,,,.,.,,, Interruption, 
 sequence, at once grammatical and rhythmical, is broken by 
 
 a tour-de-force of execration, falling into two unequal masses, the one an 
 execration upon the day, the other upon the night. Here, as always in Bibli- 
 cal poetry, the interruption is not an imperfection, but an additional artistic 
 effect, in which rhythm reflects thought. [Compare Proverbs volume of 
 M. R. B. page 29 : the horror of the Strange Woman'.s deadly words is reflected 
 m a shapeless mass of lines entirely outside the (stanza) rhythm of the rest of 
 the poem. Similarly in Biblical Idyls, page 36, the incident of the first meet- 
 ing with the Shulammite, which at that point is only a reminiscence, breaks 
 the antistrophic rhythm of the whole meditation. Compare also Job volume, 
 page 140.] 
 
 22. There is Interruption in a somewhat different sense where stanza 
 structure is interrupted by antistrophic, or vice versa. A simple example is 
 psalm Ixxxiv, 
 
548 A METRICAL SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 How lovely are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts ! 
 
 My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord ; 
 
 My heart and my flesh cry out unto the living God. 
 
 Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house, 
 
 And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, 
 
 Even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. 
 
 Blessed are they that dwell in thy house : 
 
 They will be still praising thee. 
 Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; 
 
 In whose heart are the high ways to Zion. 
 Passing through the valley of Weeping, they make it a place of 
 springs; 
 
 Yea, the early rain covereth it with blessings. 
 They go from strength to strength. 
 
 Every one of them appeareth before God in Zion. 
 
 ' O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; 
 
 ' Give ear, O God of Jacob. 
 ' Behold, O God our shield, 
 
 ' And look upon the face of thine anointed.' — 
 
 (For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand : 
 I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, 
 Than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.) — 
 
 ' For the Lord God is a sun and a shield : 
 
 ' The Lord will give grace and glory : 
 ' No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. 
 
 ' O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.' 
 
 The metrical plan of this. poem is clear. Two trains of thought are reflected 
 in two different rhythms : the subjective longing for God's house is expressed 
 in triplet stanzas, the objective picture of the pilgrimages to God's house, and 
 the pilgrim's song, in a strophe and antistrophe of four couplets each. But 
 in the very middle of the triumphant pilgrim's song the psalmist's longing 
 breaks in parenthetically, and so the antistrophic effect is interrupted by a 
 triplet stanza. This interruption of one structure by another is a leading effect 
 in the poetry of the psalms : important examples are analysed in the M, R. B. 
 Psalms (volume one, pages 166-7). 
 
STRUCTURAL ELABORATIONS S-19 
 
 23. Closely akin to Interruption is the device of Suspension. An example 
 is psalm xi. 
 
 In the Lord put I my trust, — 
 
 How say ye to my soul, 
 
 ' Flee as a bird to your mountain ? 
 ' For, lo, the wicked bend the bow, 
 ' They make ready their arrow upon the string, 
 ' That they may shoot in darkness at the upright in heart.' 
 ' If the foundations be destroyed, 
 ' What can the righteous do ? ' 
 
 The Lord is in his holy temple. 
 The Lord, his throne is in heaven ; 
 
 His eyes- behold, his eyelids try the children of men. 
 
 The Lord trieth the righteous : 
 
 But the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth. 
 
 Upon the wicked he shall rain snares ; 
 
 Fire and brimstone and burning wind shall be the portion 
 of their cup. — 
 
 For the Lord is righteous ; 
 
 He loveth righteousness : 
 
 The upright shall behold his face. 
 
 Here a strophe {2, 5) reciting hostile threats, with its antistrophe of answer- 
 ing faith, breaks in upon a single stanza of trust in Jehovah. But from the 
 place at which the interruption occurs, it is better to regard 
 the single stanza as ' suspended ' until the antistrophic effect ' 
 
 has been elaborated. [For other examples see M. R. B. Psalms volume one, 
 page 168, and the Job volume, page 141.] 
 
 24. A form of Interruption is the parenthetic enlargement of stanzas or 
 strophes. This becomes important for interpretation in psalm xl. The whole 
 is a liturgy of three sections : thanksgiving, confession of 
 
 faith, supplication. Antistrophic structure obtains through- *°* Parenthetic 
 
 T , ^ .,,,., , , ,. Enlargement 
 
 out. In the nrst section (6, 6) the strophe puts a deliver- 
 ance, the antistrophe the 'new song ' which it has inspired. The confession 
 of faith changes to ^, .^ : here it is that the strict rhythm puts the actual faith 
 confessed, while parenthetic lines outside the rhythm convey the feelings of 
 the psalmist in proclaiming this new revelation. 
 
5S0 A METRICAL SYSTEM OE BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 Sacrifice and offering thou hast no delight in; 
 
 (^Minc ears hast thou opened :") 
 Burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. 
 Then said I, Lo, 1 am come ; 
 
 (/« the roll of the book it is prescribed to me /) 
 I delight to do thy will, O my God. 
 
 ( Yea, thy law is within my heart.) 
 
 I have published righteousness in the great congregation; 
 
 {Lo, I will not refrain my lips, 
 
 O Lord, thou knowestJ) 
 I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart ; 
 I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation. 
 I have not concealed thy lovingkindness and thy truth from the 
 
 great congregation. 
 
 The parenthetic lines are outside the rhythm, and express, not the doctrine 
 itself, but how (by the affliction described in the beginning of the psalm) the 
 speaker's ears were opened to a new conception, how he finds it in the law 
 itself, how it has passed as a law into his very heart, how, finally, he cannot 
 refrain his lips from this meed of praise. — Another important example is 
 Hezekiah's Song : Isaiah volume of M. R. B. pages 123 and 242. 
 
 25. Augmenting as a structural elaboration has been illustrated in the 
 monologue quoted above (page 545) ; in the last section, after the couplet 
 
 introduction, the stanzas augment, with the advance of the 
 Augmenting and thought, from 4 lines to 5, 6, 7. Another example has been 
 Diminution . , .,,,'',. , , '^ . 
 
 pointed out in the body of this work (page 143). [bee 
 
 also M. R. B. arrangement of psalm cxxxvi and Ecclesiasticus I. i.] The 
 converse device of Diminution I have only observed once : in the national 
 elegy of psalm xliv the depression is conveyed by the diminution of successive 
 pairs of strophes through the forms ^, 5 / 4,4 ; j, j ; 2, a. 
 
 26. A more pronounced form of Augmenting is Duplication. The simplest 
 
 example is where, in a sonnet of couplet stanzas, the last is duplicated into a 
 
 quatrain. \ Proverbs volume I. xi.l The term may imply 
 
 Duplication ^ , , . , , ^ „ ,. ^ ' , 
 
 more than this : that the dissimilar parallelism of the other 
 
 stanzas is duplicated, as well as the number of lines. Thus, in the following- 
 arrangement of Proverbs, chapter v. 3-21, while the other stanzas have the 
 form 3, 6, the second has the form 4, 12, the sense emphatically confirming 
 this division. 
 
 For the lips of a Strange Woman drop honey, 
 And her mouth is smoother than oil; 
 
STRUCTURAL ELABORATIONS 551 
 
 But her latter end is bitter as wormwood, 
 
 Sharp as a two-edged sword. 
 
 Her feet go down to death ; 
 
 Her steps take hold on Sheol; 
 
 So that she findeth not the level path of life : 
 
 Her ways are unstable and she knoweth it not. 
 
 Now therefore, my sons, hearken unto me. 
 And depart not from the words of my mouth. 
 Remove thy way far from her, 
 And come not nigh the door of her house : 
 
 Lest thou give thine honour unto others, 
 
 And thy years unto the cruel : 
 
 Lest strangers be filled with thy strength ; 
 
 And thy labours be in the house of an alien; 
 
 And thou mourn at thy latter end, 
 
 When thy flesh and thy body are consumed, 
 
 And say, ' How have I hated instruction, 
 
 And my heart despised reproof; 
 
 Neither have I obeyed the voice of my teachers. 
 
 Nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me ! 
 
 I was well nigh in all evil 
 
 In the midst of the congregation and assembly.' 
 
 Drink waters out of thine own cistern. 
 And running waters out of thine own well. 
 
 Should thy springs be dispersed abroad. 
 
 And rivers of water in the streets ? 
 
 Let them be for thyself alone. 
 
 And not for strangers with thee. 
 
 Let thy fouptain be blessed; 
 
 And -rejoice in the wife of thy youth. 
 
 As a loving hind, 
 And a pleasant doe. 
 
 Let her breasts satisfy thee at all tirfies ; 
 
 And be thou ravished always with hfer. love. 
 
 For why shouldst thou, my son, be ravished with a strange 
 woman. 
 
 And embrace the bosom of a strangfer ? 
 
 For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, 
 
 And be maketh level all his paths. 
 
552 A METRICAL SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 Duplication is common in the metrical system of Job. An extreme example 
 
 is section 5 [of M. R. B. arrangement]. In this answer of Job to Eliphaz 
 
 the stanzas take the forms /, b ; 2, 12 ; 3, 18. The eiifect is increased by the 
 
 order of the stanzas : Job, having three times used the form 2, 12, in an 
 
 accession of bitterness tises to the form j, /<?, and then subsides into despair 
 
 in a stanza of the form /, 6. [Compare also sections 3, 28, 43.] 
 
 27. In the elaborate metrical system of Job (and occasionally elsewhere) 
 
 both Augmenting and Duplication combine with antistrophi : 
 
 Augmenting structure in very interesting metrical effects. In Job, sec- 
 
 Duplication . , ' * ■' 
 
 tion 40, we have : 
 
 Strophe of 3 lines : A vision 
 
 AntiStrophe of 6 lines : The warning it conveys 
 Strophe of 8 lines : Affliction 
 
 Antistrophe of 16 Imes: The purpose of affliction to warn 
 
 This may be called Aiitistrophic Duplication : instead of each antistrophe 
 exactly balancing its strophe it exactly duplicates it. [Compare Ecclesiasticus 
 volume I. Ixxix, where the strophes run: 4,2; 8,4: the lines of invocation 
 being outside the rhythm.] Still more interesting is the Augmenting Dupli- 
 cation in the speech of Elihu. The first note of his speech is the effort to 
 overcome nervousness on the part of a young man interposing in an assembly 
 of elders : here the rhythm takes the highly suggestive forms /, i ; 1,1 ; 
 2, 2 ; ^,2 ; 4, 4; 4,4. ; 6, 6 ; 6, 6. Sense and rhythm are thus in perfect 
 conformity : Elihu wavers between a feeling of his own importance and awe 
 of his elders, but his impetuosity grows until he reaches the poiat of direct 
 appeal. 
 
 I am young, 
 
 And ye are very old : 
 Wherefore I held back. 
 
 And durst not shew you mine opinion. 
 
 I said. Days should speak, 
 
 And multitude of years should teach wisdom. 
 
 But there is a spirit in man, 
 
 .^nd the breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding. 
 It is not the great that are wise, 
 Nor the aged that understand judgment. 
 
 Therefore I say. Hearken to me; 
 
 I also will shew mine opinion. 
 
STRUCTURAL ELABORATIONS 553 
 
 Behold, I waited for your words, 
 I listened for your reasons, 
 Whilst ye searched out what to say; 
 Yea, I attended unto you ; 
 
 And, behold, there was none that convinced Job, 
 
 Or that answered his words, among you. 
 
 Beware lest ye say, ' We have found wisdom ; 
 
 God may vanquish him, not man ' •- 
 For he hath not directed his words against me; 
 Neither will I answer him with your speeches. 
 They are amazed, they answer no more : 
 They have not a word to say. 
 
 And shall I wait because they speak not, 
 
 Because they stand still, and answer no more? 
 
 I also will answer my part, 
 
 I also will shew my opinion. 
 
 For I am full of words ; 
 
 The spirit within me constraineth me ; 
 
 Behold, my belly is as wine which hath no vent; 
 
 Like new bottles which are ready to burst. 
 
 I will speak that I may find relief; 
 
 I will open my lips and answer. 
 
 Let me not, I pray you, respect any man's person ; 
 
 Neither will I give flattering titles unto any man. 
 
 For I know not to give flattering titles; 
 
 Else would my Maker soon take me away. 
 
 Howbeit, Job, I pray thee, hear my speech. 
 
 And hearken to all my words. 
 Behold now, I have opened my mouth. 
 My tongue hath spoken in my mouth. 
 My words shall utter the uprightness of my heart : 
 And that which my lips know they shall speak sincerely. 
 The spirit of God hath made me. 
 And the breath of the Almighty giveth me life. 
 
 If thou canst, answer thou me ; 
 
 Set thy words in order before me, stand forth. 
 
 Behold, I am according to thy wish in God's stead. 
 
 I also am formed out of the claji : 
 
 Behold, my terror shall not make thee afraid, 
 
 Neither shall my pressure be heavy upon thes, 
 
SS4 A METRICAL SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL VERSE 
 
 From this point Elihu settles down to his argument, and other rhythmic 
 forms obtain. But later on he is stirred from philosophic calm by the on- 
 coming of the tempest : and in the growing excitement of its advance a 
 similar rhythm of augmenting duplication appears that is even more pro- 
 nounced, the strophes taking the form /, 3 ; 1,3 ; 2, 6; 2,6 ; 4, 12 ; 4, J2. 
 [See section 44 of the M, R. B. arrangement.] 
 
 28. I have remarked in the body of this work on the Pendulum form as 
 eminently characteristic of Hebrew thought. In the example cited on pages 
 
 58-9 the alternation is between guilty neglect and terrible 
 
 u uni retribution: here the pendulum form is an elaboration of 
 
 movement 
 
 antistrophic structure, and the formula for the passage would 
 
 be j',j/ /, /,' /, // 4,4. It obtains equally in strophic structure, as illustrated 
 
 in psalms Ixxviii and cvi (pages 145-9), and in the latter part of psalm evil 
 
 (page 155). In Job we find a triple pendulum. The Oath of Clearing is a 
 
 song constructed on three notes: one describes the sins to be disavowed; 
 
 a second invokes penalties if the speaker has been guilty of these sins; a third 
 
 is made by a recoil from the very thought of entertaining such sins against 
 
 God. 
 
 If I have walked with vanity. 
 
 And my foot hath hasted to deceit; 
 
 (Let me be weighed in an even balance, 
 
 That God may. know mine integrity;) 
 
 If my step hath turned out of the way. 
 
 And mine heart walked after mine eyes, 
 
 And if any spot hath cleaved to mine hands : 
 
 Then let me sow and let another eat ; 
 
 Yea, let the produce of my field be rooted out. 
 
 This triple alternation is maintained for more than 80 lines. A triple pen- 
 dulum characterises again the first part of the Divine Intervention \_Job 
 volume, page 137.] 
 
 29. Variation obtains where, in a series of sequences otherwise parallel, 
 Variation ^^ dissimilar parallelism is differently distributed. 
 
 Strophe 
 
 Withhold not good from them to whom it is due. 
 When it is in the power of thine hand to do it. 
 
 Say not unto thy neighbour, 
 
 Go, and come again, 
 
 And tomorrow I will give thee, 
 When thou hast it by thee. 
 
CONCLUSION III 
 
 Antistrophe 
 
 Devise not evil against thy neighbour, 
 Seeing he dwelleth securely by thee. 
 
 Strive not with a man without cause. 
 If he have done thee no harm. 
 
 Envy thou not the man of violence, 
 
 And choose none of his ways. 
 
 In this simple example each strophe consists of six lines with the same dis- 
 similar parallelism 4 a -\- zb: but in the first the lines run abaaab, in the 
 second ababaa. Similarly, the stanzas of psalm cxhii (printed above, page 
 187) are all quatrains, but three different arrangements of the lines are to be 
 traced in the several stanzas, viz. aabb, abab, abba. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 30. Two remarks may be made in conclusion. It may be observed that 
 the arrangement of lines in passages here cited, or in the Modern Reader's 
 Bible to which references are made, is very different from that in other 
 editions of the Bible, and the question may be asked, What principle regu- 
 lates such arrangements? In answer, I would draw attention to the funda- 
 mental difference between metrical systems in other languages, resting upon 
 rhyme and syllabic quantity, and the Hebrew parallelism of clauses. The 
 mechanical divisions in the former case approach the rigidity of material 
 things : parallelism belongs to the world of thought, and in the nature of 
 things admits great variability of analysis. Hence, in the systemalisation of 
 parallelism there is no right and wrong, but only better and worse ; and the 
 test will be the amount of symmetry and beauty that a proposed arrangement 
 brings out. Too httle attention has been given to the principle of universal 
 literature by which metre is a reflection of thought. The chief point to grasp 
 is, not that any particular metre has a particular significance (though this may 
 occasionally be true), but that, as a regular thing, metrical changes reflect 
 changes of spirit and thought. I have endeavoured to illustrate this in all 
 parts of the above exposition.^ 
 
 Again, the question is often raised, where elaborate systematisation is 
 suggested in connection with literature. Are we to understand that the authors 
 really intended this elaborate scheme ? The question is caused by a confusion 
 
 1 In application to other literatures I have discussed this principle in my 
 Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (3d ed., pages 349-55) , and my Ancient Classical 
 Drama (Jiassim: see Metre in Index). 
 
556 A METRICAL SVSTEM OF BIBLICAL VMXSE 
 
 between the two meanings of the word ' purpose ' • the conscious ' purpose ' 
 of an individual who produces, and the ' purpose ' served by the thing pro- 
 duced as a part of a scientific scheme. Analytic purpose is not to be assumed 
 on the part of a poet, though of course individual poets may be analytic as 
 well as poetic. All that is assumed, in the matter of metre, is a highly devel- 
 oped sense of rhythmic beauty on the poet's part ; this leads him to produce 
 what satisfies his keen sense of form. It is then for analysis to take the 
 intricate product to pieces, and to see in what its intricacy has consisted. The 
 test of accuracy in such analytic examination is ' system,' that is, the recurrence 
 of the same results in numerous and diverse poetic productions. 
 
APPENDIX IV 
 
 A REFERENCE TABLE 
 
 TO CONNECT THE PAGING OF THE FIRST AND THE PRESENT EDITIONS 
 
 *^* Where sloping figures are used, the correspondence is only approximate 
 
 First 
 
 Present 
 
 First 
 
 Present 
 
 First 
 
 Present 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 i-49 
 
 1-49 
 
 
 86 
 
 88 
 
 112 beg. 
 
 109 
 
 SO-' 
 
 55-6 
 
 
 87 
 
 89 
 
 II 2-3 
 
 "3-4 
 
 53-4 
 
 56-5/ 
 
 543 
 
 88 
 
 90 
 
 Ii3end 
 
 "4-5 
 
 54-5 
 
 50.- 533 
 
 89 
 
 91 
 
 "4-7 
 
 1 15-8 
 
 57 
 
 Sg-60 
 
 
 90 
 
 92 
 
 120-4 
 
 124-8 
 
 58-9 
 
 50-2 
 
 
 91 
 
 95 
 
 125 
 
 131 
 
 59-60 
 
 54-S 
 
 
 92 
 
 96 
 
 127 
 
 133 
 
 bi 
 
 540: 546 
 
 93 
 
 97 
 
 128 
 
 •34 
 
 62 
 
 53-4; 
 
 542 
 
 94 
 
 98 
 
 129 
 
 135 
 
 63-7 
 
 59-63 
 
 ■ 545-6 
 
 95 
 
 99 
 
 130 
 
 136 
 
 67 end 
 
 63 
 
 
 96 
 
 100 
 
 131 
 
 137 
 
 68 
 
 64 
 
 
 97 
 
 lOI 
 
 132 
 
 138 
 
 69 
 
 65 
 
 
 98 
 
 102 
 
 133 
 
 139 
 
 70 
 
 66 
 
 
 99 
 
 103 
 
 134 
 
 140 
 
 7' 
 
 67 
 
 
 100 
 
 104 
 
 •35 
 
 141 
 
 72 
 
 68 
 
 
 lOI 
 
 105 
 
 136 
 
 142 
 
 73 
 
 69 
 
 
 102 
 
 106 
 
 137 
 
 143 
 
 74 
 
 70 
 
 
 103 
 
 107 
 
 138 
 
 144 
 
 75 
 
 71 
 
 
 104 
 
 108 
 
 139 
 
 145 
 
 76 
 
 72 
 
 
 '05 
 
 75 
 
 140 
 
 146 
 
 77 beg. 
 
 73 
 
 
 106 
 
 76 
 
 141 
 
 147 
 
 77-80 
 
 ()2-4 
 
 
 107 
 
 79 
 
 142 
 
 148 
 
 Si 
 
 83 
 
 
 108 
 
 78 
 
 143 
 
 149 
 
 82 
 
 84 
 
 
 109 
 
 80 
 
 144 
 
 •5° 
 
 83 
 
 85 
 
 
 no 
 
 81 
 
 144-6 
 
 152-4 
 
 84 
 
 86 
 
 
 1 1 1 beg. 
 
 82 
 
 146-7 
 
 113 note 
 
 8S 
 
 87 
 
 
 Ill end 
 
 108-9 
 
 147-8 
 
 163; 407-9 
 
 557 
 
S58 
 
 A REFERENCE TABLE 
 
 First 
 
 Present 
 
 First 
 
 Present 
 
 First 
 
 Present 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 .48-9 
 
 154-5 
 
 189 
 
 174-5 
 
 249 
 
 256 
 
 149 end 
 
 150-I 
 
 190 
 
 175-6 
 
 250 
 
 256-7 
 
 1^0 mid. 
 
 i<)S-6 
 
 191 
 
 176-7 
 
 251 
 
 258 
 
 150-1 
 
 155-6 
 
 192 beg. 
 
 177 
 
 252 
 
 259 
 
 151-2 
 
 156-7 
 
 192-3 
 
 179-80 
 
 253 
 
 287 
 
 153 
 
 ,58 
 
 194 
 
 207 
 
 , 255 
 
 289 
 
 154 
 
 159 
 
 •95 
 
 208 
 
 256 
 
 290 
 
 155 
 
 160 
 
 196 
 
 209 
 
 257 
 
 291 
 
 i5(>-7 
 
 ibyS 
 
 197 
 
 210 
 
 258 
 
 292 
 
 158 
 
 169 
 
 198 
 
 211 
 
 259 
 
 293 
 
 'SS-9 
 
 182-3 
 
 199 
 
 212 
 
 260 
 
 294 
 
 iSg end 
 
 162 
 
 ig<)-2T7 
 
 2I2-20 
 
 261 
 
 29s 
 
 160 
 
 i<)7 
 
 221 
 
 227 
 
 262 
 
 296 
 
 160-1 
 
 203-4 
 
 222 
 
 228 
 
 263 
 
 297 
 
 161-3 
 
 201-3 
 
 223 
 
 229 
 
 264 
 
 298 
 
 164 
 
 198-9 
 
 224 
 
 230 
 
 265 
 
 299 
 
 165 
 
 199-200 
 
 225 
 
 231 
 
 266 
 
 300 
 
 165-6 
 
 200-1 
 
 226 
 
 232 
 
 267 
 
 301 
 
 170 end 
 
 165 
 
 227 
 
 233 
 
 268 
 
 302 
 
 171 
 
 165-6 
 
 228 
 
 234 
 
 269 
 
 303 
 
 172 
 
 166-7 
 
 229 
 
 235 
 
 270 
 
 304 
 
 173 
 
 167 
 
 230 
 
 236 
 
 271 
 
 30s 
 
 '74 
 
 185 
 
 231 
 
 237 
 
 272 
 
 306 
 
 175 
 
 186 
 
 232 
 
 238 
 
 273 
 
 307 
 
 176 
 
 187 
 
 233 
 
 239 
 
 274 
 
 308 
 
 177 
 
 188 
 
 234 
 
 240 
 
 275 
 
 309 
 
 178 
 
 189 
 
 235 
 
 241 
 
 276 
 
 310 
 
 179 
 
 190 
 
 236 
 
 242 
 
 277 
 
 3" 
 
 180 
 
 191 
 
 237 
 
 243 
 
 278 
 
 312 
 
 181 
 
 192 
 
 238 
 
 244 
 
 279 
 
 313 
 
 182 
 
 193 
 
 239 
 
 245 
 
 280 
 
 314 
 
 183 beg. 
 
 194 
 
 240 
 
 246 
 
 281 
 
 315 
 
 i8j end 
 
 170, 181 
 
 241 
 
 247 
 
 282 
 
 316 
 
 184 
 
 194-5 
 
 242 
 
 248 
 
 283 
 
 317-8 
 
 18 J beg. 
 
 170, S14 
 
 243 
 
 249 
 
 284 
 
 3'9 
 
 'S5 
 
 204 
 
 244 
 
 250-1 
 
 285 
 
 320 
 
 185-6 
 
 178-9 
 
 24s 
 
 251-2 
 
 286 
 
 321 
 
 186 
 
 171 
 
 246 
 
 252-3 
 
 287 
 
 322 
 
 187 
 
 172 
 
 247 
 
 253-4 
 
 288 
 
 323 
 
 188 
 
 173-4 
 
 248 
 
 ^ii 
 
 289 
 
 324 
 
A REFERENCE TABLE 
 
 SS9 
 
 First 
 
 Present 
 
 First 
 
 Present 
 
 First 
 
 Present 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 290 
 
 325 
 
 331 
 
 367-8 
 
 382-5 
 
 424-8 
 
 291 
 
 326 
 
 332 %• 
 
 112 
 
 385-6 
 
 428-9 
 
 292-3 
 
 327-8 
 
 332-3 
 
 368-9 
 
 3Sb-9i 
 
 429-32 
 
 293 end 
 
 329 end 
 
 333-4 
 
 369-70 
 
 391-4 
 
 432-4 
 
 294 
 
 330 
 
 334-5 
 
 370-1 
 
 395 
 
 435 
 
 295 
 
 331 
 
 336 
 
 372 
 
 396 
 
 436 
 
 296 
 
 332 
 
 337 i'g- 
 
 377 
 
 397 
 
 437 
 
 297 
 
 333 
 
 337 end 
 
 373 
 
 398 
 
 438 
 
 298 
 
 334 
 
 338-40 
 
 373-5 
 
 399 
 
 439 
 
 299 
 
 335 
 
 340 end 
 
 377-8 
 
 400 
 
 440 
 
 300 
 
 336 
 
 340-2 
 
 378-9 
 
 401 
 
 441 
 
 301 
 
 337 
 
 342 end 
 
 379-80 
 
 402 
 
 442 
 
 302 
 
 338 
 
 343 
 
 380-1 
 
 403 
 
 443 
 
 303 
 
 339 
 
 344-5 
 
 381-2 
 
 404-S 
 
 444 
 
 304 
 
 340 
 
 345 mid. 
 
 382-3 
 
 405 
 
 445 
 
 305 
 
 341 
 
 345-7 
 
 383-4 
 
 406 
 
 445-6 
 
 306 
 
 342 
 
 347-8 
 
 384-5 
 
 407 
 
 446-7 
 
 307 
 
 343 
 
 348-51 
 
 385-9 
 
 408- 
 
 447-8 
 
 308 
 
 344 
 
 35 '-2 
 
 389 
 
 4og-io 
 
 1 2 1-3; 449-30 
 
 309 
 
 345 
 
 353 
 
 390 
 
 4.10-3 
 
 4SO-3 
 
 310 
 
 346 
 
 354 
 
 391 
 
 413-6 
 
 453-6 
 
 3" 
 
 347 
 
 355 
 
 392 
 
 417 
 
 457 
 
 312 
 
 348 
 
 356 
 
 393 
 
 418 
 
 458 
 
 313 
 
 349 
 
 357 
 
 394-5 
 
 419 
 
 459-60 
 
 314 
 
 350 
 
 3SS 
 
 395 
 
 420 
 
 460-1 
 
 315 
 
 351 
 
 358-9 
 
 397-8 
 
 420 end 
 
 463-4 
 
 316 
 
 352 
 
 359-61 
 
 398-400 
 
 420-s 
 
 461-4 
 
 3«7 
 
 353 
 
 361-3 
 
 400-3 
 
 425 end 
 
 464 
 
 318 
 
 354 
 
 364 
 
 404 
 
 426-7 
 
 464-6 
 
 3'9 
 
 355 
 
 365 
 
 405 
 
 427-8 
 
 466-7 
 
 320 
 
 356 
 
 366-7 
 
 406-7 
 
 429 
 
 467-8 
 
 321 
 
 357 
 
 367 end 
 
 409 
 
 430 
 
 468-70 
 
 322 
 
 358 
 
 368 
 
 410 
 
 431 
 
 471 
 
 323 
 
 359 
 
 369 
 
 411 
 
 432 
 
 472 
 
 324 
 
 360 
 
 370 
 
 412 
 
 433 
 
 473 
 
 325 
 
 361 
 
 37» 
 
 413 
 
 434 
 
 474 
 
 327 
 
 363 
 
 372 
 
 414 
 
 435 
 
 475 
 
 328 
 
 364 
 
 373 
 
 415 
 
 436 
 
 476 
 
 329 
 
 365-6 
 
 374-80 
 
 416-23 
 
 437 
 
 261 
 
 330 
 
 366-7 
 
 380-1 
 
 423-4 
 
 439 
 
 263 
 
560 
 
 A REFERENCE TABLE 
 
 First 
 Edition 
 
 440 
 441 
 442 
 443 
 444 
 44S 
 446 
 
 447 
 448 
 449 
 450 
 451 
 452 
 453 
 454 
 455 
 456 
 457 
 458 
 459 
 460 
 461 
 
 Present 
 Edition 
 
 264 
 265 
 266 
 267 
 268 
 269 
 270 
 271 
 272 
 273 
 274 
 27s 
 276 
 277 
 278 
 
 279 
 280 
 281 
 282 
 283 
 284 
 2S5 
 
 First 
 
 Present 
 
 First 
 
 Present 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 Edition 
 
 .463 
 
 477 
 
 486-7 
 
 Soo-3 
 
 465 
 
 479 
 
 487 end 
 
 S°3 
 
 466 
 
 480 
 
 488 
 
 503 
 
 467 
 
 481 
 
 489 
 
 504 
 
 468 
 
 482 
 
 490 
 
 504-5 
 
 469 
 
 483 
 
 491 
 
 505-6 
 
 470 
 
 484 
 
 492-S 
 
 506-9 
 
 471 
 
 485 
 
 496 
 
 510 
 
 472 
 
 486 
 
 497 
 
 5" 
 
 473 
 
 487 
 
 498 
 
 512 
 
 474 
 
 488 
 
 499 
 
 513 
 
 475 
 
 489 
 
 500-1 
 
 5H-S 
 
 ■ 476 
 
 490 
 
 502 
 
 516 
 
 477 
 
 491 
 
 503 
 
 S17 
 
 478 
 
 492 
 
 504 
 
 S18 
 
 479 
 
 493 
 
 505 
 
 519 
 
 480 
 
 494 
 
 506 
 
 520 
 
 481 
 
 495-6 
 
 507 
 
 521 
 
 482 
 
 496-7 
 
 508 
 
 522 
 
 483 
 
 497-8 
 
 509 
 
 523 
 
 484 
 
 498-9 
 
 510 
 
 524 
 
 485 
 
 499-500 
 
 5" 
 
 525 
 
GENERAL INDEX 
 
 *^ For Books of the Bible ^ or any portions of them ^ see above. Literary Index to the 
 
 Bible. 
 *if* For Literary Forms i^ Prophecy ^ 'Epic, ^ Lyric,' &^c.), or subdivisions of these 
 
 {suck as ' Emblem Prophecy,' * Dramatic Lyrics,' dnc), see above. Appendix II. 
 
 Accession Hymns : 197. 
 
 Acrostic devices: 168 and note — 
 Acrostic Elegies, 168 — Meditations, 
 1 70 — Various examples, 193 (note), 
 322, and (Table) 514-5- 
 
 Acts (or advancing Stages) as a mode 
 of movement in Prophetic litera- 
 ture: 41 1-5. 
 
 Address, Literature of: 263 and Book 
 IV — Divine Address as element of 
 Rhapsodic dialogue : 410. 
 
 Alternation as a mode of Lyric move- 
 ment (Pendulum Movement): 145—8, 
 149, 1 12-3 and note, 154-5, 193 
 note. — Antistrophic : 540. 
 
 Amatory language and Symbolism: 
 220-4. 
 
 Analytic Imagination in Wisdom: 
 341- 
 
 Anthems, Dramatic: 19 1-4 and 
 (Table) 515 — National : 148 and 
 (Table) 514 — Occasional: 196 and 
 (Table) 515 — Festal: 197 and 
 
 (Table) 515 — War : 196-7 and 
 (Table) 515 — Votive : 197 and 
 (Table) 515. 
 
 Antiphonal structure of 'Deborah's 
 Song': 138 — of Ritual Psalms: 
 201. 
 
 Antiphony as a mode of Lyric move- 
 ment: 107, 138,201,437-8,453-4. 
 
 561 
 
 Antique Rhythm : 530-3, 540. 
 Antistrophic structure : 50-3, 538-42 
 
 — combined with Antique Rhythm 
 in Solomon's Song : 540. — Other 
 examples: 72-3, 94, 141-2, 196. — 
 Antistrophic Alternation and Inter- 
 lacing, 540-1 — Antistrophic Inver- 
 sion, 54-5, 541-2 — Antistrophic 
 DupUcation, 552. — Antistrophic as 
 a mode of Lyric movement, 369. 
 
 Antithesis (or Contrast) as mode of 
 Lyric development: 179, 95, lor, 
 
 iSS-7- 
 Apostrophe: 137, compare 139-42. 
 Ascents, Songs of: 165-7 and (Table) 
 
 514. 
 Association as an effect in Prophetic 
 
 literature : 472-6. 
 Augmenting as a mode of Lyric 
 
 movement : 143, compare 169, 448 
 
 — as a metrical elaboration : 550 — 
 Augmenting Duplication : 552-4. 
 
 ' Authorised Version ' of the Bible : 
 45, 46, 84-92. 
 
 Authorship not an element in literary 
 study : 96-7 — in application to Bib- 
 lical poetry : 97-100. 
 
 Ballad Dance as a primitive literary 
 form: 79-82. — War Ballads: (Ta- 
 ble) 515. 
 
S62 
 
 GENMRAL Index 
 
 Benedictions: 197. 
 Blessing as a form of Prophetic litera- 
 ture: 284-5 ^"i^ (Table) 522. 
 Burden : 364 and (Table) 522. 
 
 Call (Prophetic) : 380 and (Table) 523. 
 
 Cardinal Points, The Four, of Litera- 
 ture : 75-6. 
 
 Centric Printing: 528 (note). 
 
 Ceremonial Worship a prototype of 
 Emblem Prophecy : 377. 
 
 Chorus, Characterised: Of Nations, 
 406, 448 — Of Elders, 418-9 — Ce- 
 lestial, 446-48 — Of Watchmen, 448, 
 453 — as an element of Rhapsodic 
 dialogue: 410. 
 
 Chorus, Impersonal, as an element in 
 Rhapsodic dialogue : 410 — illustra- 
 tions: 124-8, 419, 422, 440, 442, 
 443.445.449.452. 
 
 Chorus, Reciting, in Solomon's Song: 
 209. 
 
 Climax and Crescendo as devices of 
 Lyric movement: 72, 154, 155, 157, 
 169 — as an effect in Lyric Prophecy : 
 
 369- 
 Cluster of Prophetic Sentences : 460. 
 Cluster of Proverbs : 299 and (Table) 
 
 519- 
 
 Colophon in Ecclesiasticus : 326 — in 
 Deuteronomy : 482. 
 
 Commandments, The Ten, as proto- 
 type of the Prophetic Discourse : 
 
 355- 
 Comment, Text and, as a literary 
 
 form : 297 — applied to Wisdom, 
 
 341-2. 
 Concentration as a. mode of Lyric 
 
 movement: 136, 153. 
 Conclusions in antistrophic and stanza 
 
 structure: 52, 543. 
 Constitutional ?listory : 251-2. 
 Contrast (or Antithesis) as a mode of 
 
 Lyric development: 179, 95, 101, 
 
 IS5-7- 
 
 Controversy, Prophetic: 384 and 
 (Table) 524. 
 
 Couplet and Triplet as figures of Par- 
 allelism : 48-9. — Couplet as a met- 
 rical unit : 529. 
 
 Creation, Account of, in Genesis as 
 example of Parallelism : 67-8. 
 
 Crescendo and Climax as devices of ' 
 Lyric movement: 72, 154, 155, 
 157, 169 — as an effect in Lyric 
 Prophecy: 369. 
 
 Cries as an element of Rhapsodic dia- 
 logue: 410,412,429-31. 
 
 Curse, The, in Job: 6, 31 — the 
 Primitive Curse a prototype of the 
 Doom Song: 392. 
 
 Cycle in Prophecy : 464-7 and (Table) 
 522. [Of Discourses, 464-6 — Dia- 
 lectic Cycle, 464 (compare 383-4) 
 
 — of Dooms, 464 (compare 115-8) 
 
 — Emblem Cycle, 464 (compare 
 433-4) —Vision Cycle, 466-7, 469, 
 
 47I-] 
 Cycle or Game of Riddles: 291 and 
 
 (Table) 5x9. 
 Cycle, Prophetic [of Stories] : 244 
 
 and (Table) 518. 
 
 Dancing, its connection with metre: 
 
 138, 152, 529-30- 
 
 Description as a Cardinal Point of 
 Literature : 75, 78-82. 
 
 Description, Scenic (in the Rhap- 
 sody) : 410; compare 416-23, 428, 
 439,440,450-2. — Prophetic: 410, 
 416-7, (Vision) 430-1. 
 
 Development, Lyric: 171. (See 
 Movement.) 
 
 Dialogue, Elements of, in Rhapsody: 
 409-11. 
 
 Digression in Wisdom : 342 — Chain 
 of Digressions and Digressive Sub- 
 ordination, 355. 
 
 Diminution as a metrical elaboration : 
 55°- 
 
GE^rkkAt tkbEk 
 
 %(A 
 
 I>irge as prototype of Elegy: 151, 
 167 — Dirge Rhythm : 1 68, 369, 400. 
 
 Discourse : Wisdom Discourses, 506, 
 341 and Chapter XV — Prophetic, 
 364 and (Table) 522 — Rhapsodic, 
 429 and (Table) 524. 
 
 Divine Intervention in Job: 22-4, 
 
 34-5- 
 
 Doom Form : 123 and Chapter XVII; 
 compare 543. 
 
 Doom Songs : Chapter XVII and 
 (Table) 522. 
 
 Doxologies: III, 444 (note 2). 
 
 Drama as one of the six fundamental 
 literary forms : 78, 80. — Hebrew lit- 
 erature shows dramatic influences 
 rather than drama, 108-9; compare 
 423 and Chapter XVIII. — Dramatic 
 Interest in fob, 25-7. 
 
 Dramatic Lyrics: 185 and (Table) 515. 
 
 Dramatic monologue: 316 and (Table) 
 
 521- 
 
 Dramatic Transition as. a mode of 
 Lyric movement: 92-4, 188-90 
 (compare 194-5) — ^^ ^" effect in 
 Prophetic literature : 423-8, 406. 
 
 Dumb Show in Prophecy : 374. 
 
 Duplication as a metrical elaboration : 
 550-4 — Augmenting Duplication: 
 552-4 — Antistrophic Duplication : 
 552. 
 
 Ecclesiastical History : 255-9. 
 
 Elaboration, Structural: 543-55. [See 
 under Metrical System.] 
 
 Elegies : 167 and (Table) 514. 
 
 Emblem Literature : 372 — Quarles's 
 emblems, 372. 
 
 Emendation, Textual : 59 (note) — 
 compare 17-8, 486 (note), 310 
 (notes). 
 
 Encomium Rhetoric: 315-6 and 
 (Table) 520. 
 
 Enlargement, Parenthetic, as a met- 
 rical elaboration : 549-50. 
 
 Enumeration as a mode of Lyric de- 
 velopment: 204. (See Reitera- 
 tion.) — In Rhetoric style: 335, 
 
 351. 399- 
 
 Envelope Figure (or Structure): 56-8, 
 543 — compare 65, 66,92-4 — En- 
 veloping Vision: 466-7. 
 
 Epic as one of the six fundamental 
 literary forms : 79-81 — ■ question of 
 Epic Poetry in the Bible, 227 — 
 Epic and History, 227 — Epic In- 
 terest in Job, 28-30. 
 
 Epic, Various forms of: 229-49 and 
 (Table) 518. 
 
 Epic. Idyl: 241 and (Table) 525,518. 
 
 Epic Prophecy : 244 and (Table) 518. 
 
 Epigram: 294 and (Table) 521. 
 
 Epilogue: 338,428. 
 
 Epistle : Gnomic, 321-2, 327-9 — 
 Epistolary Manifesto, 266-7 — Pas- 
 toral Epistle, 263-5 — Epistolary 
 Treatise, 265-6 — Table of Episto- 
 lary Literature, 525. 
 
 Essay : 298-306 and (Table) 520. 
 
 Exile Songs : 60, 168, 165-7. 
 
 Fable : Table on page 519 — compare 
 382 and note. 
 
 Festal Hymns: 197 and (Table) 515. 
 
 Floating Poetry : 97-100. 
 
 Folk Songs: Table on page 514 — 
 compare 64-5, 322. 
 
 Footnotes in Deuteronomy : 269. 
 
 Form and Matter, close connection of, 
 in literary study : 74-5 — The High- 
 er Literary Forms, 75 and Chapter 
 III — The Lower or Fundamental 
 Literary Form of Versification, 45 
 and Chapter I — Doom Form, 1 23 
 and Chapter XVII ; compare 543. 
 
 Gnomic Epistles: 321-2, 327-9, and 
 
 (Table) 525. 
 Gospels as a literary form : 256-7 and 
 
 (Table) 517. 
 
&(A 
 
 dEMEkAL INDEX 
 
 Gradual Psalms : 165 (note). 
 
 Hallelujahs : 197. 
 
 Hebrew Literature, Distinguishing 
 Features of: 108-29. [No Stage 
 Drama, but wide dramatic influ- 
 ences, 108 — Special department 
 of Prophecy, 109 — Prominence of 
 Sevenfold Structure, no — Pendu- 
 lum Movement of Thought, 112 — 
 Overlapping of Verse and Prose, 
 113-29.] 
 
 History as one of the six fundamental 
 literary forms : 81. 
 
 History, Various forms of: 250 and 
 Chapter X, and (Table) 516-7 — 
 Primitive History, 250 — Consti- 
 tutional History, 25 1 — Incidental 
 History, 252 — Regular History, 254 
 — Ecclesiastical History, 255 — The 
 Gospels, 256 — The Acts of the 
 Apostles, 258. 
 
 Idyl as a literary form: 208 (note), 
 and (Table) 525 — Solomon's Song, 
 207 and Chapter VIII — Kuth, 241. 
 
 Imagery as a mode of Lyric develop- 
 ment : 17 1-9, 86, 204 — massing of 
 imagery, 171-3 (compare 475-6) — 
 Concealed Imagery, 1 73-7 — Meta- 
 phor Direct, 177-9. 
 
 Imprecatory Psalms : 182. 
 
 Inauguration of Jerusalem, Anthems 
 for: 104-8, 159-61. 
 
 Incident: in History, 229 — in Proph- 
 ecy, 384 and (Table) 524. 
 
 Incidental History : 252-4. 
 
 Inquiry, Prophetic: 383, 375, and 
 (Table) 524. 
 
 Intercession as Prophetic prototype : 
 383- 
 
 Intercourse, Prophetic: 383 and 
 (Table) 524. 
 
 Interlacing (or Interweaving) Paral- 
 lelism: 540-1. 
 
 Interruption as mode of Lyric move- 
 ment: 137, 150-1 — in Prophetic 
 literature, 124-8 (compare 428) — 
 as a metrical elaboration : 546-8. 
 
 Interweaving (or Interlacing) Paral- 
 lelism: 540-1. 
 
 Introductions in antistrophic or stanza 
 structure : 52, 543. 
 
 Inversion or Introversion : in Coup- 
 lets and Triplets, 55-6 — Anti- 
 strophic, 50-3, 541-2. 
 
 Judgment : force of the word in O. 
 T. : 338 — as a motive in Lyric 
 poetry: see Table on page 514 — 
 in Prophetic literature: Book VI 
 generally — especially 404and Chap- 
 ter XVIII, 438, 453-6. 
 
 Lamech, Song of: 64. 
 
 Lamentations of Jeremiah : 168. 
 
 Leads in antistrophic or stanza struc- 
 ture: 544-5- 
 
 Lectionary, Revised: 46. 
 
 Line, The, as a metrical unit : 530. 
 
 Litanies: 183. 
 
 Liturgies: 198-201 and (Table) 515. 
 
 Lord's Prayer, The, as an envelope 
 figure : 65-6. 
 
 Lyric as one of the six fundamental 
 literary forms: 78-81 — Lyric Poe- 
 try of the Bible: Book II — Lyric 
 movement or development: see 
 Movement. — Lyric elements in 
 Rhapsodic dialogue, 410 — Lyric 
 Outbursts in Prophecy, 124-8, 406, 
 418-22, 440-5, 452 — Lyric Interest 
 in Job, 31-2. 
 
 Lyric Prophecy : 369 and (Table) 522. 
 
 Lyrics, Prophetic : 369 and (Table) 
 522. 
 
 Lyric types, earlier and later: 151-2 
 — three sources of Lyric poetry, 
 151-2 — Meditation, 170 and 
 (Table) 514. 
 
GENERAL INDEX 
 
 565 
 
 llanifesto, Epistolary: 266, 267 and 
 (Table) 525 — Prophetic : 429, 468- 
 70, 497, 505. 
 
 Matter and Form, close connection 
 of, in literary study : 74-5. 
 
 Maxims : 297 and (Table) 519. 
 
 Meditations, Lyric : 170 and (Table) 
 514- 
 
 Metaphor Direct : 177-9. 
 
 Metre : as a reflection of thought, 555 
 ■ — of Biblical Verse, Appendix III. 
 See following sections. 
 
 Metrical System of Biblical Verse : 
 Appendix III. — Founded on par- 
 allelism of clauses, 526. — General 
 ideas of parallelism: 526-8, 555-6, 
 compare Chapters I and II. [Paral- 
 lelism Similar and Dissimilar, 526-7; 
 
 Semi-parallelism, 527.] Units 
 
 of Parallelism : 528-30 [Metrical 
 Units, 528; the Strain, 528-9; the 
 Couplet, 529; the Line, 529-30]. 
 
 Metrical System continued: Metri- 
 cal Structures : 530-43. — Antique 
 Rhythm, 530-3 — Stanza Struc- 
 ture, 533-8 [Stanzas, 533; Mixed 
 Stanzas, 534-8] — Antistrophic 
 Structure, 538-42 and compare 
 50-3 [General idea of Antistrophic, 
 538 and 50-3; combined with An- 
 tique Rhythm in Solomon's Song, 
 540; Antistrophic Alternation and 
 Interlacing, 540-1 ; Antistrophic In- 
 version, 541-2 and 54] — Strophic 
 Structure, 542 and 53 — Envelope 
 Structure, 543 (compare 56, 57, 
 65,66, 94, 1 9 1-4) — Number Struc- 
 ture, 543 (compare 308) — Doom 
 Form, 543 (compare 123). 
 
 Metrical System continued: Struc- 
 tural Elaborations : 543-55. — In- 
 troductions, Conclusions and 
 Leads, 543-5 — Refrains, 545-6 
 (compare 59, 60, 61, 143, 169) — 
 Interruption, 546-8 — Suspension, 
 
 549 — Parenthetic Enlargement, 
 549-50 — Augmenting and Dimi- 
 nution, 550-2 — Duplication, 550-2 
 
 — Augmenting Duplication, 552-4 
 
 — Pendulum Movement, 554(com- 
 pare 58-9, 11 2-3, 145-9, 154-5, 387, 
 415-23, 439-44. 455-6)— Varia- 
 tion, 554-5. 
 
 Miscellanies of Wisdom: 319, 324; 
 
 compare 330. 
 Mixed Stanzas : 534-8. 
 Modern Reader's Bible : see xiii, and 
 
 533 (note). 
 Monodies, Lyric: 181 and Chapter 
 
 VII, and (Table) 515. 
 Monologues, in Lyric Poetry: 515 — 
 
 (in Wisdom Literature) Dramatic 
 
 Monologues, 316-8 and (Table) 521 
 
 — Prophetic Monologue or Solilo- 
 quy, 445, 446, 452. — Alternating 
 Monologue as an element of Rhap- 
 sodic dialogue: 410, compare 387 
 and 439-44- 
 
 Movement, Modes of, in Lyric Poe- 
 try: Alternation (or Pendulum 
 Movement), 145-8,149, 113 (note), 
 154-5 — Antiphony, 138, 107,204- 
 6 — Augmenting, 143,169,448 — 
 Concentration, 136, 153 — Con- 
 trast or Antithesis, 179, 95, loi, 
 155-7 — Crescendo and Climax, 
 72. 154, 155. 157. 169, 369 — Dra- 
 matic Transition, 92-4, 188-90 
 (compare 195) — ^ Imagery, 171-9, 
 86 — Interruption, 137, 151 — Re- 
 iteration, Enumeration, Repeti- 
 tion, and Refrain, 204, 59-60, 150, 
 153. 154 (compare 61-3), 198 — 
 Retrogression, 191-4. 
 
 Movement, Modes of, in Prophetic 
 Literature : Advancing Stages or 
 'Acts,' 411-5 — Distinct Stages or 
 ' Visions,' 432-4, 435-7 and Chap- 
 ter XIX — Alternation or Pendu- 
 lum Movement, 112, 387, 415-23, 
 
S66 
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 439-44. 455-6— Antistrophic, 370- 
 I — Crescendo and Climax, 369 — 
 Dramatic Transition, 406, 423-8 
 —^Interruption, 124-8 (compare 
 428) — Sudden Realisation, 428-9 
 (compare 195) — Reiteration, Enu- 
 meration, Repetition, and Refrain, 
 
 369-71. 399. 401-3. 433. 115-8- 
 Music : Confusion of figures in chant- 
 ing, 48-9 — Musical Expression of 
 Structure, 63. 
 
 Narrative, Historic and Lyric: 136. 
 National Anthems : 148 and (Table) 
 
 514. 
 Number Sonnet : 308-10. 
 Number Structure : 543. 
 
 Occasional Anthems : 196 and (Table) 
 515 — Songs : 158 and (Table) 514. 
 
 Ode: Greek, 51 — Biblical, 133 and 
 (Table) 514. 
 
 Oracle as a form of Prophecy : 364 
 (note) and (Table) 522; compare 
 
 383. 392-5. 
 
 Oral tradition in relation to Biblical 
 poetry: 97-100. 
 
 Oratory as a branch of the Literature 
 of Address : 263, 268, and Chapter 
 XII; compare Table on page 525. 
 
 Overlapping of Verse and Prose in 
 Biblical literature: 113-29 — exam- 
 ples, 370, 393-5, 400-3. 
 
 Parable: Table on page 519 — Pro- 
 phetic : 382 and (Table) 523 — Dra- 
 matised: Table on page 519. 
 
 Paradox: 330. 
 
 Parallelism : the basis of Biblical Ver- 
 sification, 46-7, 526, and Appendix 
 III. — Figures of Parallelism, 48-50, 
 56, 58, 528, and Appendix HI gen- 
 erally. — Lower or Rhythmic Paral- 
 lelism, 45 and Chapter I, 69-72 — 
 Musical Expression of Parallel Struc- 
 
 ture, 48-9, 63 — Parallelism a factor 
 in Interpretation, 64-9 — Higher 
 Parallelism or Parallelism of Inter- 
 pretation, 64 and Chapter II — Paral- 
 lelism and its antithesis Surprise, 
 72-3 — the Higher and Lower Par- 
 allelism applied to the same passage, 
 69-72. — Parallelism Similar and 
 Dissimilar, 526-7 — Semi-parallel- 
 ism, 527 — Units of Parallelism, 
 528-30. 
 
 Parenthetic Enlargement, as a met- 
 rical elaboration : 549-50. 
 
 Pause, as a literary device : 193, 406. 
 
 Pendulum Movement (or Alterna- 
 tion), a distinguishing feature of 
 Hebrew Literature: 58-9, 11 2-3 — 
 in Lyric Poetry, 145-8, 149, 113 
 (note), 154-5 — in Prophetic Lit- 
 erature, 112, 387, 415-23. 439-44. 
 455-6 — ^ ^ metrical elaboration, 
 554- 
 
 Personality in Biblical Monodies: 
 
 183-5; 
 Philippic in relation to Doom Song : 
 
 392. 
 
 Philosophy as one of the six funda- 
 mental literary forms: 8 1 — Bibli- 
 cal Philosophy or Wisdom, 289 and 
 Book V — Interest of Philosophy in 
 Job, 33- 
 
 Philosophy or Wisdom, Various 
 forms of: Chapter XIII and (Table) 
 519-21. 
 
 Poetry as one of the four Cardinal 
 Points of Literature : 76, 79-82. 
 
 Postscript : 195. 
 
 Prayer as part of the Literature of 
 Address : 268 and (Table) 525 — 
 in Lyric poetry: i8l. 
 
 Prayer-Book Version of Psalms : 85. 
 
 Prefaces: 324-5, and see 506-9. 
 
 Prelude : in Lyric Poetry, 139, 143, 
 145. 153. 195. 407 — in Prophecy, 
 424. 437- 
 
GENERAL INDEX 
 
 S67 
 
 Presentation as one of the four Car- 
 dinal Points of Literature : 75, 79- 
 82. 
 
 Primitive History: 250-1. 
 
 Printing of Bible obscures its form: 
 
 45- 
 
 Prologtie of £«/isjz«jto." 330. 
 
 Prophecy, one of the three distin- 
 guishing features of Hebrew litera- 
 ture: 109 — the word 'prophecy,' 
 363, compare 379 — as a department 
 ofliterature,363 — Interest of Proph- 
 ecy in Job, 39. 
 
 Prophecy, Various Forms of: Chap- 
 ters XVI-XVIII, and (Table) 522- 
 4. [Discourse, 364-9, 522 — Lyric 
 Prophecy, 369-71, 522 — Symbolic 
 Prophecy, 372-83, 523 — Prophetic 
 Intercourse, 383-4, 524 — Dramatic 
 Prophecy, 384-9, 524 — The Doom 
 Song, 390 and Chapter XVII (com- 
 pare 123), 522 — The Rhapsody, 
 404 and Chapters XVIII and XIX, 
 524.] — Prophetic Sentences : 457- 
 64, 522 — Prophetic Cycles: 464-7, 
 522. 
 
 Prophet, Call of the : 380 and (Table) 
 
 523- 
 Prophet, Sign of the : 378 and (Table) 
 
 523- 
 Prophetic Call, 380 and (Table) 523 
 — Controversies, 384 and (Table) 
 524 — Cycle, 464-7 and (Table) 
 522 — Description, 410 (compare 
 416-23, 430-1) — Discourse, 364 
 and (Table) 522 — Epics, 246 and 
 (Table) 518 — Incidents, 384 and 
 (Table) 524 — Intercourse, 383 
 and (Table) 524 — Lyrics, 369 and 
 (Table) 522 — Parable, 382 and 
 (Table) 523 — Response, 383 and 
 (Table) 524 — Rhapsody, Chapters 
 XVIII and XIX and (Table) 524 — 
 Sentences, 457-64 and (Table) 
 522. 
 
 Prose as one of the four Cardinal 
 Points of Literature : 76, 79-82 — 
 double usage of the word, 76 — 
 Overlapping of Prose and Verse a 
 distinguishing feature of Hebrew 
 literature, 113-29 (compare 370, 
 393-5. 400-3). 
 
 Proverb : 290 and (Table) 519-21. 
 
 Proverb Cluster: 299 and (Table) 
 
 519- 
 Psalms, Varieties of: see Table on 
 pages 514-5. 
 
 Quarles's Emblems : 372. 
 Quatrain: 50-51. 
 
 Question and Answer as a figure of 
 Parallelism: 57. 
 
 Realisation as a mode of movement 
 in Prophetic literature : 428-9 (com- 
 pare 195). 
 
 Refrains as a structural elaboration and 
 mode of movement in Lyric poetry 
 (see Reiteration): 59-63, 115-8, 
 144-5, 209-10, 433, 545-6— in Lyric 
 Prophecy, 369 — as a kit motif va. 
 jfoe 1,^11. 
 
 Refrain augmenting : 1 69 — paren- 
 thetic: 209. 
 
 Regular History : 254. 
 
 Reiteration in Prophecy: 373 — in 
 Prophetic Sentences : 459. 
 
 Reiteration (Enumeration, Repeti- 
 tion, Refrain) as a mode of Lyric 
 movement: 204, 59-63, 150, 153, 
 198 — in Prophetic literature : 370-1, 
 399,400-3,433,115-8. 
 
 Reminiscences, Dramatised: 210-1. 
 
 Repetition as a mode of Lyric move- 
 ment: 204. (See Reiteration.) 
 
 Response, Festal : 197-8 and (Table) 
 515 — Prophetic: 383 and (Table) 
 524. 
 
 Retrogression as a mode of Lyric 
 movement: 1 9 1-4. 
 
568 
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 Revelation as a form of Prophecy: 
 
 379-82 and (Table) 523. 
 Rhapsody as a form of Prophetic 
 
 literature : 404, and Chapter XVIII 
 
 — Rhapsodic Discourse : 429 and 
 (Table) 524. 
 
 Rhetoric as one of the six fundamen- 
 tal literary forms: 8 1 — as a divi- 
 sion of Biblical literature : 263 and 
 Book IV, and (Table) 525 — Inter- 
 est of Rhetoric in Job, 39*. 
 
 Rhetoric Encomium: 315-6 and 
 (Table) 520. 
 
 Rhythmic Parallelism : 69 and Chap- 
 ter I. 
 
 Riddle as a form of Wisdom literature : 
 290 and (Table) 519. 
 
 Righteousness, meaning of the word 
 in the Old Testament : 439 (note). 
 
 Ritual Psalms : 196-206 and (Table) 
 515- 
 
 Satan in Job : 3, 28-9. 
 
 Satire in relation to Doom Song : 392. 
 
 Scenic Description as an element of 
 Rhapsodic dialogue : 410 (compare 
 416-23, 430-1, 439-40, 448, 412-3). 
 
 Science, Interest of, in Job : 37-9. 
 
 Sennacherib's Invasion, Occasional 
 Poetry connected with : 158-9. 
 
 Sentences (or Sayings) of the Wise : 
 292 and (Table) 519 — Prophetic 
 Sentences: 457-64 and (Table) 522. 
 
 Servant of Jehovah in Isaiahan Rhap- 
 sody : 436, 438-46, 448, 453. 
 
 Sevenfold Structure a distinguishing 
 feature of Hebrew literature: 110-2. 
 
 Sign of the Prophet : 378 and (Table) 
 523- 
 
 Soliloquy: 445, 446, 452. (See 
 Monologue.) 
 
 Songs as a form of Lyric Poetry : 158 
 and Chapter VI, compare (Table) 514 
 
 — Occasional Songs, 161 — Songs 
 on Themes, 161 — of Deliverance, 
 
 162 — of Providence, 162 — of Na- 
 ture, 163 — of Judgment, 163-4 — 
 of Trust and Consecration, 164 — 
 The Songs of Ascents, 165—7. — 
 Song of Deborah, 133-42; of 
 Moses and Miriam, 143-5, '54; °f 
 Moses, 113 (note). — Choral Songs 
 in Prophecy : 406, 410, 418, 419, 
 420, 447-8, 448, 453, 454. — Im- 
 personal Songs in Prophecy: 410 
 (compare 124-8), 422, 440, 442, 
 443. 445. 449. 452- — Doom Songs: 
 Chapter XVII and (Table) 522. 
 
 Sonnet: 306-15 and (Table) 521. 
 
 Spectator, Prophetic, in Rhapsodic 
 dialogue : 410, 421-2. 
 
 Speeches : in Jab, 39-40, 268 — Va- 
 rious: 268 and (Table) 525 — in 
 Deuteronomy: 268 and Chapter 
 XII. 
 
 Stages as a mode of movement in 
 Prophetic literature : 411-5. 
 
 Stanzas: 50, 533 — Stanza structure: 
 533-8 — Mixed Stanzas : 534-8. 
 
 Story, Prophetic : 244 and (Table) 
 518. 
 
 Strain, The, as a metrical unit: 528. 
 
 Strophic structure : 53, 542 (compare 
 
 533)- 
 Structure, Antiphonal: 138, 201-6. 
 Structure, Metrical : 45, and Chapters 
 
 I and II, and Appendix III. [See 
 
 under Metrical System.] 
 Structure, Sevenfold, prominent in 
 
 Hebrew literature : 110-2. 
 Suspension as a metrical elaboration : 
 
 549- 
 Sword, Song of the : 64 and (Table) 
 
 514 — Ezekiel's Discourse of the 
 
 Sword : 376-7. 
 Symbolism in Lyric Poetry: 220-4 — 
 
 in Prophecy : 372-83. 
 
 Taunt-Song : connected with Proph- 
 ecy, 369 — compare 406, 443. 
 
GENERAL INDEX 
 
 569 
 
 Text and Comment as a form of 
 Wisdom literature : 297 and (Table) 
 519 — applied to Wisdom, ^^1-2. 
 
 Title Pages : 323, 481, 491, 493. 
 
 Traditional Poetry : 528-9, 530-3. 
 
 Transitional Stage (or Pause) in 
 Lyric Poetry: 193 — in Prophecy: 
 406. 
 
 Transition, Dramatic : as a mode of 
 Lyric movement, 92-4, 188-90 
 (compare 195) — in Prophetic lit- 
 erature : 424-8, 406. 
 
 Treatise : 298 — Epistolary : 265-6, 
 267 and (Table) 525. 
 
 Triplet and Couplet : 48-9 — Double 
 Triplet, 56 — Triplet Reversed, 56. 
 
 Unit Proverb : 290 and (Table) 519. 
 
 Units of Parallelism : 528-30 [the 
 Strain, 528; the Couplet, 529; the 
 Line, 530]. 
 
 Unity, Higher: distinguished firom 
 Lower Unities, 83-5 — obscured by 
 modes of reading and printing 
 Scripture, 83-92 — relation of High- 
 er Unity to literary classification, 75 
 
 — literary unity distinguished from 
 unity of authorship, 99. 
 
 Unity, Higher, Various forms of: 
 Simple, 92 — of Transition, 92-5 — 
 of Contrast and Antithesis, 95-102 
 
 — of Aggregation, 102-4 — of Ex- 
 ternal Circumstances, 104-8. 
 
 Variation as a. metrical elaboration: 
 
 554-5- 
 Verse and Prose Overlapping, a dis- 
 tinguishing feature of Hebrew litera- 
 ture: 113-29 (compare 370, 393-5, 
 400-3), 
 
 Versification, Interest of, in Job: 
 41 — Versification and Rhythmic 
 Parallelism, 45 and Chapter I; and 
 Appendix III. [Obscured by Print- 
 ing, 45 — based on parallelism, 46 
 — figures and structures, 50-63.] — 
 System of: Appendix III. 
 
 Version : 'Authorized,' 45, 46, 84, 88- 
 92 — Prayer-Book Version (of the 
 Psalms), 85 — Revised Version of 
 the Bible, 46, 84-92. 
 
 Vision as a form of Lyrics : 194-6 
 and (Table) 515 — of Prophecy : 379 
 and (Table) 523 — as a structural 
 division ; 432-4 (compare 438-56). 
 
 Voices as an element in Rhapsodic 
 dialogue: 410 (compare 416-23, 
 429, 431, 437-8). 
 
 Votive Hymns: 197 and (Table) 515. 
 
 Wail as a prototype of the Elegy: 
 151, 167-8 — Wail over Egypt: 
 400-3. 
 
 War Ballad : see Table on page 515. 
 
 Watchman, Prophetic : 392, 453, 454. 
 
 Whirlwind in yob : 21-4, 25. 
 
 Wisdom: Biblical term for Philoso- 
 phy, 289 — conception of Wisdom 
 in Proverbs, 323 — in Ecclesiasticus, 
 326-7 — in St. y antes and St. yohn, 
 327-9 — in Ecclesiastes, 338-40 — 
 in Wisdom of Solomon, 342-5 — 
 summary, 359-60. 
 
 Wisdom, Sacred Books of: 319 and 
 Chapters XIV, XV, and Table on 
 pages 519-21 — analogies to these 
 of N. T. works, 267. 
 
 Wisdom, Various Forms of: 290 and 
 Chapter XIII, with Table on pages 
 519-21. 
 
ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
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''To keep the memory of so wortiy a Priend, 6f fellow alive, as vias our ShaiSb- 
 SPEARE, by humble offer of his playes, to your most noble patronage^** 
 
 — Dedication of First Fotio. 
 
 The Arden Shakespeare. 
 
 RICHARD THE SECOND. —Edited by C. H. HerPOrD, Litt. D., 
 Trinity College, Cambridge ; Professor of English at University 
 College, Aberystwyth ; Examiner to the University of London. 
 
 MACBETH. — Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B.A., formerly 
 scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; Chancellor's English 
 Essayist, 1 89 1. 
 
 JULIUS C-ffiSAR. — Edited by Arthur D. Innes, M.A., formerly 
 scholar of Oriel College, Oxford. 
 
 HAMLET. — Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B.A., formerly 
 scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. 
 
 AS YOU LIKE IT. —Edited by J. C. Smith, B.A., formerly exhi- 
 bitioner of Trinity College, Oxford ; Lecturer in Owens College, 
 Victoria University. 
 
 TWELFTH NIGHT. — Edited by Arthur D. Innes, M.A., 
 formerly scholar of Oriel College, Oxford. 
 
 RICHARD THE THIRD. — Edited by George Macdonald, 
 M.A., Balliol College, Oxford; formerly classical examiner in the 
 University of Edinburgh. 
 
 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. —Edite' by H. L. W^ithers, 
 B.A., Principal of the Borough Road Training College ; formerly 
 scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, and assistant master at Clifton 
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 THE TEMPEST. —Edited by F. S. Boas, M.A., Balliol College, 
 Oxford. 
 
 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.— Edited by E. K. Cham- 
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 CORIOLANUS.— Edited by E. K. Chambers, B.A., Oxford. 
 
 CYMBELINE. — Edited by A. J. W^yatt, M.A., Cantab, et Lond. 
 
 HENRY THE FIFTH.— Edited by G. C. Moore Smith, M.A., 
 formerly scholar of St. John's College, Cambridge. 
 
 KING LEAR. — Edited by Martha Foote Crowe, M. A., Professor 
 in the University of Chicago. 
 
 KING JOHN.— Edited by G. C. Moore Smith, M.A. 
 
 •THE REMAINING VOLUMES ARE IN PREPARATION. 
 
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 D. C. HEATH & CO., Publishers, 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 
'%(:■ 
 
Literary Study of the Bible. 
 
 Prof. B. G. Monlton, of Ohioago Uni- 
 yeiBity, dellTeied a leotnte of wonderfnl 
 interest on "The Literary Stndy of the 
 Bible." He made the following state* 
 ments : 
 
 "The revised versioD is one of the 
 greatest steps in the history of liter- 
 ature, " said the professor. "It is the 
 first move made to get the book in the 
 right form. For the first time the Bible 
 was translated by men who realized that 
 the Bible is literature. 
 
 "The reason that the Bible is not 
 reoognized in oar sohools and oolleges 
 is that it is not rightly recognized as 
 literature. It is not in literary form. Our 
 literature comes from two sources, 
 from the Greeks and Komans and from 
 the Bible. 
 
 "A man is not liberally educated un- 
 til he is familiar with the olassioB. 
 Some of those classics are such that if 
 they were printed in plain English they 
 would be seized by the police. 
 
 ' ' The schools and oolleges are proud 
 '.at the father of our literature, the clas- 
 sics, but they disown the mother, the 
 iBible. The literary study of the Bible 
 jis distinguished on the one hand from 
 the devotional and theological use of 
 'Scripture and on the other hand from 
 the 'higher criticism,' which is an en- 
 |qniry into the history of the sacred 
 [writings. 
 
 I ' 'It takes the matter of ibe Bible as it 
 stands, but endeavors to rescue it from 
 the form in which it is ordinarily ex- 
 hibited as a succession of pious texts, 
 monotonously numbered 1, 3, 3, and to 
 represent it in its true literary form as 
 distinct poems, sonnets, dramas, his- 
 itories, essays, letters, proverbs, speeches, 
 ^etc. 
 
 I "A good specimen of the different 
 spirit of the two versions of the Bible 
 is the twenty-eighth chapter of Job, In 
 |the authorized version this is half- 
 isolated sayings, barely intelligible, and 
 half an elaborate question and answer. 
 In the revised version we have a con- 
 nected picture of mining operations, a 
 gem of description of its bind, and the 
 application of this to the search for 
 wisdom." iM:OISrf=l.OE].