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of the Book of Psalms were already grouped at the close of the monarchy. The fact, however, that the early days of the kingdom produced collections of national hymns (see pp. 42-43) makes it highly probable that the preëxilic poems of the Book of Psalms were gathered into books of poems which were carried to Babylon along with the rolls that we can name and describe more precisely.

In addition to songs from the kingdom of Judah ultimately embodied in the Book of Psalms, other poems used by the compilers of the exile were carried to Babylon in some form. One of these is appended to the history of David contained in Samuel. It is styled "the last words of David," but was composed at a much later date than the time of "Israel's sweet singer," perhaps during the reign of Hezekiah or Josiah.1

Says David, son of Jesse,
The man who was exalted,
Of Jacob's God anointed,

And Israel's sweet singer:

"Through me spoke Yahweh's spirit,

His word upon my tongue was;
Thus spoke the God of Jacob,

To me said Israel's rock:

"Who rules mankind in justice,
Who in the fear of God reigns,
Is like the light that breaks forth,
The sun on cloudless morning.'

"Is not my house with God so ?
He made with me a covenant,
His watchcare has preserved me,
What I wished has succeeded.

"Like thorns the bad are cast off,
They are not led by his hand.
Who touches them must armed be,
With spear of wood and iron.” 2

1 Schmidt, Messages of the Poets, p. 370. See also H. P. Smith, Samuel, Int. Crit. Com., p. 381.

2 Translation by Schmidt in The Messages of the Poets.

The "song of Moses" concerning Jehovah's just dealings with Israel very probably dates from Josiah's reign.1 The opening stanzas as translated by Schmidt are:

Give ear, O heavens, I will speak;
Listen, O earth, to my mouth's words!
Let my instruction fall like rain,
And like the dew my words drop down,
Like showers on the tender grass,
Like streams upon the withered herb.

For Jehovah's name I will proclaim.
O give ye honor to our God!

A rock is he, perfect his work,

For all his ways are right and true:

A faithful God, in nothing false,
He ever upright is and just.

When the Most High scattered mankind,
And parted wide the sons of men,
And fixed for nations their abodes,

In number as the sons of God,
On Jehovah's lot fell Israel,
Jacob became his heritage.

He found him in the wilderness,

A desert where no water was;

He watched him, kept him, cared for him,

As for the apple of his eye.

As eagle that stirs up her nest,

Flutters and stirs above her young,

He spread abroad his wings, took him,
And on his pinions held him high;
He let him o'er high places ride,
And let him eat fruit of the field;

Let him suck honey from the cliff,
And oil out of flinty rock.

Whether there were as yet any formal collections of the nation's gnomic wisdom from which the post-exilic books of aphorisms

1 Driver, Deuteronomy, Int. Crit. Com., p. 346 f.; Schmidt, Messages of the Poets, p. 336 f.

drew material is much more doubtful. We have no clear evidence that Israel in the days of the monarchy made elaborate written collections of proverbs as she did of national songs; yet there is adequate reason to believe that aphoristic wisdom of form similar to that which makes up the great body of the post-exilic book of Proverbs is as old as the nation, and there may have been written collections of proverbs carried to Babylon at the beginning of the sixth century. About the time of the end of the kingdom, "the wise" appear as a distinct class, along with priests and prophets.1

The exiles took with them a rich and varied literature on which they meditated deeply and to which we shall find them adding many new elements in far-off Babylonia.

1 Jeremiah 18 18.

CHAPTER XVII

PROPHECY AND ELEGY IN THE EARLY YEARS OF EXILE

(592 to about 570 B.C.)

THE exile could not bring about any such sudden and complete break in the literary history of the nation as in its political life; yet the influence of this great national experience is immediately felt in the form and thought of the literature and ultimately works out changes that are revolutionary. The writings of Ezekiel afford interesting illustrations of the continuity of the literary life of the people and also of the modifying influences of the exile.

Ezekiel was a young priest carried to Babylon among the selected ten thousand deported in 597. Five years later, he began his public ministry as a prophet to the exiles who were settled by the Chebar in central Babylonia. His message was at one with that which Jeremiah was delivering at the same time in Jerusalem. Its aim was to prepare the people for the crushing blow which the coming destruction of the trusted city and temple would inflict. Both in Jerusalem and Babylonia there were prophets who were stoutly maintaining the false faith that Jerusalem could not be captured and that the exile would be a very brief matter.2 As Hananiah in Jerusalem had broken the wooden yoke from Jeremiah's shoulders, so Shemiah in Babylonia was outraged because Jeremiah had sent word to the exiles that the captivity would be long. He wrote to the priest in charge of the Jerusalem temple that such a madman, who made himself a prophet, ought to be

1 The Chebar has often been identified with the Habor of Mesopotamia, but the excavations conducted by the University of Pennsylvania at Nippur, in central Babylonia, have resulted in the identification of the canal Kabaru (the "great canal") which ran down through the heart of Babylonia. Hilprecht argues that the exiles were settled quite near to Nippur, not far from this canal. — Explorations in Bible Lands during the Nineteenth Century, pp. 411 ff. 2 Jeremiah 29 8-9.

3 p. 222.

put in the stocks.1 Ezekiel was forced to make use of all the vivid methods of objective teaching that his fertile genius could devise to impress the futility of the hope of speedy return and the certainty of the coming destruction of Jerusalem. He portrayed the city on a tile and laid mimic siege against it, casting up a mound, setting camps, and planting battering rams round about. Forty days he lay on his side, each day for a year, the period which the iniquity of the house of Judah should be borne. He ate polluted bread because Israel was to eat her bread unclean among the nations; he carefully measured his food and drink, for thus the besieged ones would be forced to do in the famine-stricken city. Cutting off his own hair, burning, smiting, scattering it, he indicated that a third of Jerusalem's inhabitants should perish by famine and pestilence, a third by the sword, and a third should be scattered to the winds, with a sword drawn out after them.2

Besides performing symbolic actions, Ezekiel described concretely actual conditions as he saw them existing, or again, with no less of vividness, the symbolic visions of his own soul. The very temple which Jeremiah found the people trusting as a palladium, Ezekiel pictured as desecrated by the grossest animal worship and nature worship. In vision, he saw Jehovah departing from his polluted house.4

Ezekiel expanded and made more definite Jeremiah's doctrine of individualism. The proverb, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge" was popular in Babylon, as it was also in Judea. To interpret the blow that had fallen in 597 as a national judgment due to the sins of a former generation was a natural application of the doctrine of the prophets, a doctrine inadequate for the exigency of the present situation. The earlier prophets had dealt with the nation; the end of the nation has now begun and the individual must find his relation to the God of justice. The transition to individualism, begun in Jeremiah, is greatly furthered in Ezekiel :

Yet say ye, Wherefore doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live. The soul that 3 Chapter 8. Jeremiah 31 29.

1 Jeremiah 29 24-29.
11 22-23.

2 Ezekiel 4 and 5.
5 18 2.

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