An analysis of religious belief

by viscount John Russell Amberley

It is a singularly fortunate circumstance that the Song of Songs, a little work of an altogether secular nature and wholly unlike any other portion of the Hebrew Scriptures, should have been admitted into the Canon. Whatever may have been the delusion, whether its reputed Solomonian authorship or some other theory about it, under which it obtained this privilege, we owe it to this mistake that the solitary example of the Jewish drama in existence should have been preserved for the instruction of modern readers. I say modern readers, because it is not until quite recently that the dramatic character of this piece has been ascertained and established beyond reasonable doubt. Thanks to the scholarship of Germany and France, we are now able to read the Song in the light of common sense. The stern theology of Judaism is for once laid aside, and we have before us a common love-story such as might happen among any Gentile and unbelieving race. A young girl, called a Sulamite, who is attached to a young man of her own rank in life, has been carried off to the harem of Solomon against her will. She is indifferent to the splendor of the royal palace, and resists the amorous advances of the king. Thus she succeeds in "keeping her vineyard;" and is rewarded by rejoining her shepherd lover in her native village. The play is not without beauty, although it evinces a somewhat primitive condition of the drama at the time of its composition.

Subdivision 4.—The Prophets.

We have in the prophetical books a class of writings altogether peculiar to the Hebrew Scriptures. The prophets were men who during the whole course of the Hebrew monarchy, and even long after its close, acted as the inspired organs of the Almighty; admonishing, reproving, warning, or counseling in his name. At first the method by which the revelations they received were made known by them, was oral communication. Writing was not employed by them as an instrument of prophetic discourse until after the earliest and most flourishing stage of the monarchy was past. Perhaps they were the most powerful of the prophets who addressed their exhortations directly to those for whom they were intended in eloquent discourse or timely parable. Such prophets were Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, and Elisha, at the courts of the several kings in whose days they lived. Prophecy had declined a little in its influence on the people when its representatives betook themselves to the calmer method of written composition. Nevertheless, some of the prophets who have left us their works in writing continued at the same time to employ the older instrument of spoken addresses. Isaiah and Jeremiah are conspicuous instances of this employment of the two organs of communication downwards. During this same period there were many prophets who trusted exclusively to writing; while in the latest stage of prophetical inspiration, oral instruction was altogether dropped, and literary means alone were employed to make known the mind of Jehovah to his chosen people.

The constant theme of all the prophets whose works have come down to us is the future greatness of the Hebrew race; their complete triumph over all their enemies; the glory of their ultimate condition, and the confusion or destruction of those who have opposed their march to this final victory. The human agent by whom this great revolution is to be effected is the Messiah. He is the destined weapon in the hand of God by whom Jewish religion, Jewish institutions, and Jewish rulers are to attain that supremacy over heathen religion, heathen institutions, and heathen rulers which is their natural birthright. Continual disappointment had no effect upon these sanguine expectations. The Messiah must come, Israel must be victorious over every other nation that came in the way: this was the word of God, and it could not fail to be fulfilled. Troubles of many kinds might beset the people in the meantime; but of the attainment of the goal at last there could be no doubt.

Of course this ever-recurring burden of the prophetic song is varied by many strains on subordinate or outlying topics. The prophets constantly refer to the events of the day, and use them for their own purposes. They reprove the sins of kings and people, endeavoring to show that these bring upon them the misfortunes from which they suffer and which postpone the day of their triumph over the Gentiles. They connect special calamities with special offenses. They indicate the conduct which under existing circumstances ought to be pursued. They draw eloquent and beautiful pictures of the state of their own and of foreign countries. And they endeavor to raise the popular conceptions of the majesty of God, of his character, and his requirements, to the level they have themselves attained.

Turning now to the individual books which have come down to us in the Canon, and which must by no means be taken as comprehending all the works of the prophets who wrote their prophecies, we find that the oldest of these is that of Joel, the son of Pethuel.[96] Joel is supposed by the highest authority to have lived in the time of King Jehoash, or Joash, who is praised for his devout obedience to Jehoiada, the priest (2 Kings, xii). His prophecy was occasioned by a devastation of locusts. Locusts had wasted the land for some years, and there had been drought at the same time. On the occasion of a long drought Joel feared a fresh invasion of locusts, and therefore summoned his people to a festival of repentance at the temple. This festival occurred, and rain soon followed (P. A. B., vol. i. p. 87 ff.). Here the old notion of a direct connection between the attention paid by the people to Jehovah and his care for them is almost grotesquely manifested. Locusts are to be averted by fasting; rain obtained by rather more than usual devotion to God. On the other hand, the more spiritual view of religion to which the prophets generally tend, is shown in the order to the people to rend their hearts and not their garments. After thus attending to immediate necessities, Joel in stirring language exhorts the people to war, hoping that they would thus get rid of the foreign oppressors who had broken into the sunken kingdom of David. He bids them beat their plough-shares into swords, and their pruning-hooks into spears, and desires the weak to say that they are strong. He promises his people revenge over their enemies, and holds out the cheering prospect of a time when, instead of their sons and daughters being sold as slaves to strangers, they will themselves make slaves of the sons and daughters of the heathen.

Some short passages subsequently embodied by Isaiah in his works are considered by Ewald to belong to the same early age as Joel. The next complete prophet, however, in order of time, was Amos, whose revelations applied to the northern kingdom and threatened it with invasion by the Assyrians. Amos in fact utters a series of threatening predictions against various peoples, and his tone is mainly that of reproof. While, however, he foretells the captivity of Israel, and holds out nothing but the most depressing prospects of ruin and misery throughout the bulk of his book, he falls at the end into the accustomed strain of hopeful exultation. "The tabernacle of David" is to be raised up; Israel is to be supreme over the heathen; and the Israelites are not to be disturbed again from the land which God has given them, where exuberant prosperity is to be their lot. Incidentally, Amos tells us a little of his personal history, which is not without interest. He attributes his consecration to the prophetic office to the direct intervention of Jehovah. He had originally no connection with other prophets, but was a simple herdsman, and was employed to gather sycamore fruit. But Jehovah took him while he was following the flock, and said, "Go, prophecy unto my people Israel." His is thus a typical case of the belief in immediate inspiration, and he is an example of the kind of character which led to the existence among the Israelites of the peculiar and powerful class who were holy, but not consecrated. Amos also tells us of a quarrel he had had with Amaziah, a priest at the court of Jeroboam. This priest had complained of his dismal predictions to the king, and had bidden him go to Judah and prophecy there. In return for this evidence of hostility Amos informs the priest that his wife is to become a prostitute in the town, that his sons and his daughters are to fall by the sword, that his land is to be divided by lot, and that he himself is to die on polluted soil (Amos vii. 10-17). Such were the courtesies that passed between rival teachers of religion at the court of Jeroboam.

Hosea also tells us something of his personal affairs, more especially of his matrimonial relations, in which he was far from fortunate. We feel, in his opening chapters, the soreness of a husband whose wife has contemned his company and sought the amusement of a troop of lovers. Gomer, in fact, was shockingly unfaithful, and Hosea uses her as a type of the infidelity of Israel to Jehovah. At length she deserted him altogether, and went to another house, but he brought her back as a slave and put her under strict conjugal discipline. In like manner is Israel to return to her God, whom she has deserted for a time, and under the influence of God's love, freely bestowed after his anger has passed away, is to enjoy a period of great prosperity. Hosea, it will be observed, belonged to the northern kingdom, and his book is preëminently the Ephraimitic book of prophecy. But he wrote it in Judah. He worked in the north at two distinct epochs, first towards the close of Jeroboam II.'s reign, afterwards in the time of Zachariah, Shallum, and Menahem (P. A. B., vol. i. p. 171 ff.).

An anonymous prophet, contemporary with Isaiah, stands next in order of time. He is the author of Zechariah ix.-xi. inclusive, and of Zechariah chap. xiii. ver. 7-9 (P. A. B., vol i. p. 247 ff.). These chapters contain the first distinct announcement of the advent of the Messiah, who is described in the famous prediction of a King coming to Jerusalem on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass. Here too we find the curious allegory of the two staves, Beauty and Bands, whereof one was broken by the prophet in token of the breach of his covenant with all the nations; the other, in token of the rupture of fraternal relations between Israel and Judah. In the course of this allegory, the prophet demands his price, thirty pieces of silver, and throws it into the temple treasure; a passage which, by an accidental obscurity in the Hebrew, has been mistranslated as referring, not to the treasure, but to "the potter in the house of Lord," and then misapplied to the betrayal of Christ and the purchase of the potter's field.

In the concluding words of this prophet it is announced that two-thirds of the people will perish, but that the remaining third will, after refining and trial, be accepted by God as his own people.