Companion to the Bible

by E. P. Barrows

The book has always constituted a part of the Hebrew canon.

The language of this book is pure and elegant, with all the freshness and energy of the best age of Hebrew poetry. Its most striking peculiarity is the uniform use (except once in the title) of the abbreviated form of the relative pronoun as a prefix—shekkullam for asher kullam; shehammelek for asher hammelek, etc.—which is manifestly a dialectic peculiarity of the living Hebrew adopted by Solomon for the purpose of giving to his song a unique costume.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE GREATER PROPHETS.

1. We have already seen (Chap. 15, Nos. 11 and 12) that from Moses to Samuel the appearances of prophets were infrequent; that with Samuel and the prophetical school established by him there began a new era, in which the prophets were recognized as a distinct order of men in the Theocracy; and that the age of written prophecy did not begin till about the reign of Uzziah, some three centuries after Samuel. The Jewish division of the latter prophets—prophets in the more restricted sense of the word—into the greater, including Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, chronologically arranged; and the less, or twelve Minor Prophets, arranged also, in all probability, according to their view of their order in time, has also been explained. Chap. 13, No. 4. Respecting the nature of prophecy and the principles upon which it is to be interpreted, much remains to be said in another place. In the present connection, a brief account will be given of the place which the prophets held in the Theocracy, followed by a notice, in this and the following chapter, of the separate books of prophecy belonging to the Hebrew canon, according to the order in our English version, Daniel being reckoned with the greater prophets, Lamentations considered as an appendix to Jeremiah, and the minor prophets arranged by themselves.

2. The office of the prophets under the Theocracy, which we first notice, was that of bold reprovers. They came to rulers and people with an immediate commission from God to rebuke them for their sins; and as the contents of their messages were received from God himself, they exposed the hypocrisy and wickedness of their times in the pure sunlight of truth, denouncing upon great and small alike the awful judgments of Jehovah if they persisted in their impenitence. If we except the preaching of Christ and his apostles, the history of the world furnishes no such bright examples of faithful dealing with men's consciences. They never spare kings and princes from fear of their power and patronage. They never go round about men's sins, but declare them directly and faithfully. With what majesty of severity did Samuel reprove Saul, and Nathan David, and Elijah Ahab, and Elisha Jehoram, and Jehu Jehoshaphat! And if we open the books of Hebrew prophecy which have come down to us from distant ages and from a very different civil and social order, we find them not in the least antiquated, but fresh as yesterday, instinct with life and power. They are a mirror of terrible brightness in which we may see reflected our pride, self-sufficiency, vain ostentation, and worldliness; our avarice, fraud, overreaching artifices, breaches of trust, bribery, oppression of the weak, and corrupt combinations for the amassing of filthy lucre; our ambition, slander, falsehood, intrigues, hypocrisy, and vain pretensions; our luxury, prodigality, sensuality, and intemperance; our profaneness, Sabbath-breaking, neglect of God's ordinances and contempt of his written word—a mirror too in which we can see in the background dark clouds of judgment, big with awful thunder, such as have already come forth upon our land from the inexhaustible storehouse of divine justice, and are ready to come forth again, but over which hangs the rainbow of mercy for all that will repent and humble themselves before God.

3. We may next consider the office of the Hebrew prophets as expounders of the Mosaic law—the Mosaic law in its substance, as distinguished from its outward form. They never undervalued the letter of the law, since that too was of divine appointment; but they taught men that true obedience must rise above the letter to its spirit. When Saul excused himself to Samuel for disobeying God's command on the ground that the people had spared the best of the sheep and oxen to sacrifice to the Lord, the prophet indignantly answered: "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." 1 Sam. 15:22. "Bring no more vain oblations," says God to the Jews whose hands were full of oppression and blood; "incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them." And his direction is: "Wash you, make you clean: put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." Isaiah 1:13-17. "I hate," says God to the covenant people through Amos, "I despise your feast-days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt-offerings and your meat-offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace-offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream." Amos 5:21-24. "Wherewith," says Micah, "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? He hath showed 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?" Micah 6:6-8. Under the Old Testament, outward forms of divine service were required, and they are necessary, to a certain extent, under the New also. But if any man puts his trust for salvation in these, to the neglect of inward faith, love, and obedience, he stands condemned at the bar of Moses and the prophets, not less than at the bar of Christ and his apostles, Under the Mosaic economy, both the rites of divine service and the succession of the priesthood were definitively prescribed by God himself, and therefore to all of binding authority. But the man who placed his religion in these outward observances, to the neglect of his heart and life, was to God an object of abhorrence, and the severest judgments were denounced against him. It cannot be, then, that under the gospel any system of outward forms, however right and proper in itself, can bring salvation to the soul, where inward faith, love, and obedience are wanting.

4. The last and highest office of the prophets was to direct men's thoughts to the end of the Mosaic economy, which was the salvation of the world through the promised Messiah. The Spirit of Christ that spoke through them, "testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow." 1 Pet. 1:11. It does not appear that they understood the divine purpose to abolish the Mosaic economy, and with it "the middle wall of partition" between Jews and Gentiles—that great mystery, the revelation of which was reserved for the days of the apostles; but they did have glorious visions of the latter days, when the law should go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, to all nations; when the whole world should submit itself to Jehovah under the administration of the Messiah; and the earth should be "filled with the knowledge of the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea." Their glowing descriptions of the future enlargement and glory of Zion have been the stay and solace of God's people in all succeeding ages. The student of the Bible should not fail to notice that these bright visions of the future were vouchsafed to the Hebrew prophets, and through them to the church universal, not when the Theocracy was in the zenith of its outward power and splendor, as in the days of David and Solomon, but in the time of its decline and humiliation. The hopes so ardently cherished by the covenant people of a return of the outward glory of Solomon's reign were destined to utter and final disappointment. It was not to feed their national pride, but to prepare the way for Christ's advent, that God established the Theocracy. Now that its outward glory was departing, it was suitable that the hopes of the pious should be turned from the darkness of the present to the brightness of "the last days" that awaited Zion in the distant future. When Isaiah began his prophecies, the kingdom of Israel was tottering to its fall, and before he had finished them it had suffered an utter overthrow. The invasion of Judah by the allied kings of Israel and Syria, in the reign of Ahaz, and by Sennacherib king of Assyria, in the reign of Hezekiah, furnished an occasion for predicting not only the present deliverance of God's people, but also the future triumph of Zion over all her enemies, and the extension of her dominion over all the earth. In his present interpositions in behalf of Zion, God mirrored forth his purpose to give her a final and universal victory. And so it was with all the other prophets. With their backs towards the gloom and distraction of the present, and their faces steadfastly turned towards the glory of the latter days, they uttered words of promise and comfort that can have their fulfilment only in Christ's kingdom, which is the true heir to all the promises made to the ancient Zion. Out of Christ these promises are vain and delusory. In Christ their fulfilment has been begun, and shall be completed in the appointed time. Out of Christ no amount of learning will enable a man to understand the Hebrew prophets; for the veil is on his face, which can be done away only in Christ. What if more than eighteen centuries have elapsed since our Lord's advent, and the domain of his kingdom is yet very limited? In the divine reckoning, "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." If it took four of these days to prepare the world for Christ's advent, can we not allow two days and more for the complete establishment of his kingdom?

We add a notice of each separate book of the Greater prophets.