cial virtues of the Old Testament poetry. We have seen that the Hebrew language was limited to the solid and concrete realities of life, and that the Hebrew poetry as it is translated in the English of our Bible added to the higher expressiveness of poetry the freedom and the undisturbed naturalness of prose. These virtues are shared by the prophecies; and they in consequence reinforce the high seriousness and the large and noble sense of proportion by a robustness and weighty power which again distinguishes them in our literature. Finally, the inmost essence of their power lies in its spiritual elevation. To these prophets, to Amos and Hosea and Isaiah, to Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Isaiah of the Exile, to Joel and Malachi and Zechariah, with all their unknown contemporaries and coworkers, it was given to touch the realities of the world of this life with the vivifying force of the unseen. Their oracles were phrased in the words of the things which men can see and hear and feel, but they are filled with the palpable breath of the things which lie beyond our present capacities to comprehend. More than the other writings of the Old Testament they spring from what, because it is inexplicable, we call genius.

CHAPTER VII

THE APOCALYPSE

I

THE prophecy did not pass away, however, without sowing the seeds of a type of writing, which in thought was to rise still higher, and finally to bear fruit in one of the books of the New Testament; this was the work of the apocalyptic writers, who gradually succeeded to the place of the prophets in the last centuries of the old era, and who in the first century of the new produced the book of Revelation. The outward form of the apocalypses is sometimes fantastic, almost trivial; but the faith which produced them ennobled this outward form into the vehicle of the most elevated thought yet attained by the Jewish race.

The apocalyptic writing sprang naturally out of the prophecies; for the Jews of the Exile and of the succeeding wretched centuries took literally the many promises of the restoration of power and happiness to Israel and of punishment for their enemies

which they read in the books of the prophets. The Isaiah of the Exile has many such passages of hope as the following:

Thus saith the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship, because of the Lord that is faithful, and the Holy One of Israel, and he shall choose thee.

Thus saith the Lord, in an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee: and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages;

That thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Shew yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in all high places.

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.

And I will make all my mountains a way, and my highways shall be exalted.

Behold, these shall come from far: and, lo, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim.1

With such promises of restoration for Israel go cor

1 Isa. xlix. 7-12.

responding denunciations of the woe to come for the enemies of Israel:

Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captive delivered?

But thus saith the Lord, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children.

And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and all flesh shall know that I the Lord am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.1

From these and similar prophecies had developed the idea of a day of the Lord when the heathen should be brought to judgment and confusion, and the way prepared for the return of Israel.

As time went on and the Jews became hopelessly insignificant as a nation, instead of letting go their hope of the fulfillment of these prophecies they merely postponed it to a vaguer and more distant future. The later prophetic writings show a corresponding largeness and vagueness of outline, of which examples may be found in Joel:

Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.

1 Isa. xlix. 24-26.

Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great.

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.

The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.

The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the Lord will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel.

So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more.1

Scattered through the books of the prophets there is a considerable body of writing of this large and vague character which unveils the destiny of Israel and its enemies in an undetermined future. The considerable passage in Isaiah xxiv-xxvii, which comes probably from the end of the fourth century B.C. or later, is an example. Here are two specimens from it:

And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people 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.

1 Joel iii. 12-17.