PAGE

282. Death of David. Elements and Effects of his Character and Life Work. 1 Kings 2 : 10, 11. 1 Chron. 29 : 26-30. 500

283. Solomon’s Choice of Wisdom. Discernment of the True Mother. 1 Chron. 29 : 23-25. 2 Chron. 1 : 1-13. 1 Kings 3 : 4-28. 510

284. Punishment of Adonijah, Joab, Abiathar, and Shimei. 1 Kings 2 : 12-46. 519

285. Solomon’s Preparation for Building the Temple. 1 Kings 5 : 1-18. 2 Chron. 2 : 1-18. 525

286. Construction of the Temple, its Courts, and the Entire Furniture Connected with its Ritual and Worship. 1 Kings 6 : 1-38 ; 7 : 13-51. 2 Chron. 3 : 1-17 ; 4 : 1-22 ; 5 : 1. 532

287. The Great Assembly Convoked. The Ark Placed in the Holy of Holies. Consecration of the Temple by the Glory Cloud. Its Dedication by Solomon. His Address to the People. 1 Kings 8 : 1-21. 2 Chron. 5 : 2-14 ; 6 : 1-11. 546

288. Solomon’s Prayer at the Dedication of the Temple. 1 Kings 8 : 22-53. 2 Chron. 6 : 12-42. 552

289. Fire Consumes the Sacrifices. Israel Worships and the Levite Choirs Praise. Solomon’s Prayer of Blessing. Days of Festal Gladness Following Days of Dedication. 1 Kings 8 : 54-66. 2 Chron. 7 : 1-10. 559

290. Uses and Significance of the Temple Structure, its Courts, and their Furniture; with Suggestions Touching the Priestly Ritual and Service. 564

291. Jehovah’s Answer to Solomon’s Prayer. 1 Kings 9 : 1-9. 2 Chron. 7 : 11-22. 574

292. Building of Solomon’s Palace; Various Structures included in it. Solomon’s Regard to the Ordinances of Worship. 1 Kings 3 : 1-3 ; 7 : 1-12 ; 9 : 24, 25. 2 Chron. 8 : 11-16. 579

293. Cities Built by Solomon. His Administrative Officials, Ecclesiastical, Military, and Civil. His Chariots, Horsemen, and Horses. 1 Kings 4 : 1-19, 22, 23, 26-28 ; 9 : 10-23 ; 10 : 26, 28, 29. 2 Chron. 1 : 14, 16, 17 ; 8 : 1-10 ; 9 : 25, 28. 583

294. Immense Revenue of Gold from his Commerce with Ophir and Tarshish, from Merchants, and from Tributary Kings and Governors. The Magnificence of Solomon’s Court. 1 Kings 9 : 26-28 ; 10 : 11, 12, 14-25, 27. 2 Chron. 1 : 15 ; 8 : 17, 18 ; 9 : 10, 11, 13-24, 27. 590

295. Solomon’s Surpassing Wisdom. Visit of the Queen of Sheba. 1 Kings 4 : 29-34 ; 10 : 1-10, 13. 2 Chron. 9 : 1-9, 12. 596

296. Summary of Solomon’s Reign. Its Wide Extent and Prosperity of the People. 1 Kings 4 : 20, 21, 24, 25. 2 Chron. 9 : 26. 605

297. Apostasy of Solomon, and the Announced Judgment of Jehovah. 1 Kings 11 : 1-13. 609

298. Adversaries to Solomon Raised up by JEHOVAH : Hadad the Edomite, Rezon of Damascus, and Jeroboam an Ephraimite. 1 Kings 11 : 14-40. 617

299. Death and Burial of Solomon. Points of his Character and Life, and Effects of his Reign. 1 Kings 11 : 41-43. 2 Chron. 9 : 29-31. 623

| Frontispiece: MAP OF HOLY LAND. | PAGE | | — | — | | HIGH RIDGE OF CENTRAL PALESTINE. Map. | 84 | | SHECHEM, MOUNTS ERAL AND GERIZIM. Illustration. | 86 | | NABLUS CAMP (SHECHEM). Sketch-map of English Survey. | 88 | | MAP PREPARED FOR THIS VOLUME. | 90 | | GIBSON, OR EL JIB. Illustration. | 92 | | HULEH PLAIN, SCENE OF JOSHUA’S BATTLE. Illustration. | 104 | | REFERENCE-MAP PREPARED FOR THIS VOLUME. | 110 | | PROFILE SECTIONS OF HOLY LAND. Diagrams. | 112 | | KURN SUBTABEH: SITE OF WITNESS ALTAR. Illustration. | 114 | | ESDRAELON AND LOWER GALILEE. Map. | 184 | | MOUNT TABOR. Illustration. | 187 | | BETHLEHEM. Illustration. | 196 | | PLAIN OF ESDRAELON AND JEZREEL. Map. | 211 | | FOUNTAIN OF JEZREEL. Illustration. | 213 | | PLAIN OF ESDRAELON. Map. | 218 | | JOTHAM’S SPEAKING-PLACE ON GERIZIM. Illustration. | 224 | | SHILOH, OR SEILUN. Illustration. | 248 | | BETHEL. Illustration. | 268 | | GIBEAH, SAUL’S HOME. Illustration. | 278 | | VALE OF MICHMASH, OR WADY SUWEINIT. Illustration. | 289 | | RAMAH, SAMUEL’S HOME. Illustration. | 312 | | MAP AND LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF DEAD SEA. Outline. | 325 | | ENGEDI, AND WEST SHORE OF DEAD SEA. Illustration. | 326 | | CLIFFS ABOVE ENGEDI. Illustration. | 328 | | PLAIN OF ESDRAELON. Map. | 351 | | ESDRAELON AND ITS NOTED PLACES. Illustration. | 353 | | FOUNTAIN OF JEZREEL. Illustration. | 355 | | REFERENCE-MAP PREPARED FOR THIS VOLUME. | 445 | | ROCK PLAN OF JERUSALEM. Outline. | 535 | | PROFILE SECTION THROUGH ZION, MORIAH, AND THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. | 536 | | EAST ANGLE OF SOUTH WALL OF JERUSALEM. Illustration. | 537 | | VICINITY OF JERUSALEM. Sketch Map. | 538 | | SACRED ENCLOSURE OF THE TEMPLE. Diagram. | 541 |

NOTE.—The considerable amount of text included in the scope of this volume constrains an occasional omission of chapters or parts of chapters; such, for example, as the minute detail of the subdivisions of the land, the protracted account of the Benjamite war, the catalogue of David’s “mighty men,” and the particulars of his ecclesiastical, military, and revenue “courses,” and official lists. But in every case the substance of the omitted text is clearly indicated, and every point worthy of note has its appropriate comment.

PRELIMINARY: POINTS OF REMINDER AND OF CONNECTION WITH PREVIOUS HISTORY, AND OF SUGGESTION AND EXPLANATION TOUCHING THE HISTORY COVERED BY THIS VOLUME.

Truth is learned only at the pure fountains of evidence. Authority does not create it; dogmatism recommends it not; neither does violence impose it: from such task-masters conscience retreats, that she may hear in the still silence of her musings the voice of God. E. T. Fitch.

Familiarize the Scripture to thyself by constant and methodical exercise therein. Order, as it is the mother of memory, so is it a singular friend to a clear understanding. The generality of the Scripture hath such a contexture and coherence, one part with another, that small insight into it will be gained by reading it confusedly, disorderly; therefore read the whole in Order. Dr. Francis Roberts (1665).

We call the Scriptures a revelation; in other words, an unveiling. The Bible records were given to us to take away the veil which hung between heaven and earth, between man and God. Their purpose is to reveal God. The actual revelation which has been made to us is of God in His relation to the soul of man. We are not to demand, we are not to expect, any further revelation. Of the secrets of God’s power and origin we are told not a word. Such knowledge is not for us. But it does concern us to know of God’s moral nature—to know that He is all-powerful, all-good, all-loving; and of God’s power, goodness, and love, the Bible is one long and continuous revelation. The self-declared object of the Scriptures is that men should know God and know themselves. Ainger.

Two things distinguish the Bible from every other book: the view it gives us of man, and the view it gives us of God. The one is so human, the other so Divine; the one so exactly consistent with what we ourselves see of man, the other so exactly consistent with what we ourselves should expect in God,—in other words, with what our own conscience, which is God’s voice within, recognizes as worthy of God, and ratifies where it could not have originated. Vaughan.

Grandly the old text harmonizes with the new—the old is illuminated by the new and the new is connected with the old as part of one sublime system, animated by one spirit, originated by one mind, and unitedly filling up the circle of truth for the salvation of men. Reading the Old Testament in the light of the New, we are not passing into another atmosphere or another region of thought; it is the same; the same God, the same Saviour in prophecy, the same Christian life and experience. Reading the New, we see in it only a fulfilment of the Old; the same system more fully developed; the same truth set forth in clear light. Thus this whole Bible comes to the heart as the living Word of God, all of it profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for instruction, for edification in righteousness. S. W. F.

The Old and the New Testament are one. They have one aim; they treat of one revelation; they disclose one way of salvation. They fit in together as perfectly as two sundered fragments of a branch would fit together, with an undesigned exactness that no human art could imitate. The Old Testament must be read in the light of the New, and the New Testament cannot be understood except in the light of the Old. As our Lord himself said, the Old Testament testifies of him all the way through. Christ is its main underlying thought, and no one knows how to read the Old Testament who does not look for Christ everywhere in it. Crosby.

Jesus Christ would not have accepted a homage which would have exalted Him at the expense of the God of the Old Covenant, a homage which would have placed His words in contradiction of spirit and tendency with those of Moses and the prophets, or which would relegate miracles far back into the dimness of the ancient ages, to eliminate them from His own life and work. All the lines of the Old Testament, law, prophecy, history, converge toward Jesus Christ. Jesus fulfils it in every respect. To break with the one, therefore, is to break of necessity with the other. And if the Old Testament should be banished from the shelves of our libraries, and from the hands of our children, the New would not fail soon to follow it. And by what would it be replaced? Are the literary geniuses of modern times likely to stand the future generations in lieu of psalter and prophets? They do not, perhaps, express themselves as crudely as the Bible does. But this is what they do. They skilfully excite the imagination by half-veiled pictures, which inspire a taste for guilty pleasures. And what society is that which they labor at forming? A society of which some one has said that “its ears alone are chaste.” No doubt the hand of the Bible is rude; it rends all manner of veils, it calls things by their name. It is disgusting, men say. True, and that is precisely the reason why the Bible disgusts us with evil. Compare the populations that possess the Bible with those that are deprived of it. See England,—see America. The holiness of God has found its way into the conscience of those nations. The Bible is in every hand. The pure, frank, energetic glance of the maiden herself would be sufficient to attest that if she does know evil this knowledge has left in her heart no trace whatever of sympathy, for she has learned to consider it in the light of holiness. That is what the Bible does.

Goethe thus expresses his opinion of the Bible:—“It is to its intrinsic value that the Bible owes the extraordinary veneration in which it is held by so many nations and generations. It is not only a popular book, it is the book of the people. The greater the intellectual progress of ages, the more fully possible will it also become to employ the Bible both as the foundation and as the instrument of education—of that education by which not pedants, but truly wise men are formed. Take the Bible, book after book, and you will find that this Book of books has been given us in order that, in contact with it, as with a new world, we may study, enlighten, and develop ourselves.” “When,” says he, in speaking of his youth, “my imagination, ever active, bore me away, now hither, now thither, and when all this blending of history and fable, of mythology and religion, threatened to unsettle my mind, gladly then did I flee toward those Eastern countries; I buried myself in the first books of Moses, and there, amidst those wandering tribes, I found myself at once in the grandest of solitudes and in the grandest of societies.” Such is the judgment of one of the most eminent of modern writers, of a man whom no particular religious sympathy led to the Bible. This appreciation was the result of his moral conscience, of his literary taste, and of his common sense. Godet.

The history of the Israelitish people, as recorded in the Old Testament, needs now more than ever to be made familiar, not only as exhibiting the divine guidance of a chosen race, with the constant revelation of the character and will of God which it involves, and also as containing the setting in which prophecy is put and exhibiting the relations in which it was uttered, but as furnishing the means of judging of the validity of many objections which have been recently urged. The best refutation of not a few of the strange and distorted representations of sacred history now persistently made, is the history itself. Day.

The historic books of the Old Testament are a part of revealed religion, but it is because they are the record of that revelation of the mind and the will of God which is unfolded to us in the life of nations and the course of history. The Spirit of God is instructing us in the sacred narrative concerning the principles of the Divine government, the inherent might of right, the irresistible prevalence in the long run of good over evil, the tendency of selfishness and wrong to sap the vitality and undermine the fair prosperity and strength of nations and the like; but these are principles which are not simply contained and taught for the first time in the pages of a book, they are interwoven into the life of humanity. Caird.

The leading purpose of the Old Testament Records is to recount the origin of God’s covenant with men, and the gradual development of a kingdom among men upon the basis of that covenant. These Records impressively disclose the principles of the Divine administration, i.e., the laws governing the subjects of this kingdom, and the methods of Divine acceptance and favor, as conveyed through specific moral commandments, through the temporary aid of ceremonial and type, through prophecy, and, not least, through national and personal history. In this view of the Old Testament histories we find their inestimable value. Covering a wide reach of time, and including a vast range of circumstance and incident, they furnish abundant opportunity to illustrate God’s method of acting; they unfold fully the great principles of His law and grace, by their minute application of these principles to varying events, and to differing human characters and conduct. In this view, as replete with suggested counsel, encouragement, and warning, for the practical questions of life, a thoughtful pulpit teacher recently characterized these inspired Histories as “the Gospel of Providence;” and justly, since Providence is an integral and vital part of God’s gracious administration. And in this view, let it be remembered, the worth and usefulness of this Old Testament Gospel are scarcely second to that of the New, of which it is the needful complement. B.

One marked feature pervades the Hebrew Scriptures. It is not that history is made the medium of religious instruction. That would be a most narrow and mistaken view of the matter. It is that religion is shown as the soul of history; the supreme reality and central power in human affairs; the deepest foundation of human life. E. R. Conder.—The Old Testament histories do not contain history as such, but a selection of historical facts made in accordance with a determinate philosophy of history. It was the privilege of the chosen people to be conscious from the first of the purport of their national vicissitudes, and to believe in a Providence who not only held all the threads which made up the patterns of their life, but who had also revealed to them the general features of that pattern. The words of the original covenant made amid flame and trumpet and lightning, had been frequently reiterated. They knew that national misfortune indicated national wrong-doing, and national prosperity a national obedience to the divine commands. Cave.

The Old Testament differs from ordinary histories in its subject, because it is the history of the special training and discipline of God’s chosen people: in its method, because it is “a history of facts as God sees them referred to their true centre in Him, explained by His dealings with men, and His workings within them;” or, in other words, its writers were inspired by God the Holy Ghost to discern the true significance of events, and to relate such parts of the national history as should truly set forth the gradual evolution of God’s purpose toward His people. The Old Testament is the history of a dispensation which was partial, progressive, preparatory. It can only be rightly understood in view of the great fact to which it looked forward. It must be studied as the record of the Divine Preparation for the Incarnation of the Son of God, which is the central event of the world’s history, the hope of all humanity, the final revelation of God to the world. “It does not simply contain prophecies of Christ: it is from first to last a prophecy of Him.” This preparation included three main elements which must be carefully traced in each successive epoch of Jewish history: (1) the discipline and training of the chosen nation of Israel that it might be “the home” to which in “the fulness of the times” God might send His Son; and the instrument by which the knowledge of God might be communicated to the world at large: (2) the gradual development under the various types of Priest, Prophet, and King, of the expectation of a Deliverer who should unite in himself all these offices, and be at once a Mediator, a Teacher, a Monarch: (3) God’s progressive revelation of Himself, “in many parts and in many fashions,” that men might at length be enabled to recognize “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” A. F. K.

The Hebrew historians wrote straight to the heart and conscience. Remember God and righteousness, is the moral of their every page. They never wrote history for mere history’s sake, nor biography for biography’s sake. They wrote national history, for they had a great mission to the national mind and heart; but they wrote their national history largely in biographical guise, for they had at least as great a mission to the individual heart, and sought their effects through the wide gate of personal sympathies. They wrote to the whole nation; and at the same time they wrote to each individual soul. Cable.

The God of the Hebrew Scriptures is a being who loves, with an infinite and divine love, truth and righteousness, and who hates with the intensity of a being who is holy, all iniquity. And it is this personality of God, which is so vividly revealed to us in the Old Testament, that imparts to that book its peculiar charm and interest. We feel silenced and awed in the presence of the existence and personality of such a God. The history of Israel becomes in our sight profoundly interesting. It becomes a wonderfully real history. The scenes which the Old Testament present to us for our study and profit are all aglow with the vividness, picturesqueness, and brilliancy of great events wherein we see, as though portrayed in massive outlines, and in splendor and richness and strength of coloring, the tumultuous warring, disloyal, and sinning life of nations and individuals. We see, in these narratives in the Old Testament, the flashing armor of hosts tramping to battle, the gleam of swords and spears on crimson fields and mountains, the stately and splendid procession of kings and armies,—scenes of war and peace, sorrow and joy, glorious reward and terrible punishment. And from amid these scenes, so intensely graphic in their nature, there rises in majesty, limitless power, mercy and holiness, Jehovah of hosts, the God of heaven and earth, the rewarder of those who love and diligently seek him, and the punisher of those who disobey him. If there is one single truth which these striking scenes impress upon our minds, it is the great and solemn truth that there is a personal God in the heavens, and that his eyelids try the children of men. S. A. Harlow.

Moses taught his countrymen that God had conferred upon them the highest prize which man can conceive, freely and without any merit on their part. When they were bondsmen of Pharaoh, He claimed them as His servants; when they trembled before the powers of the visible world, He showed them that these powers were His instruments, and that He used them for their good; when they fancied that the Euler of the world was indifferent to them or hated them, He proved that He was watching over them and caring for them, even in their meanest condition, though they were not thinking at all of Him; when they supposed that He was capricious, He proved to them the evenness, regularity, equity of His government; when they fancied that He was unmerciful, He declared Himself as the Lord God, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin. This knowledge of the living and unseen God, Moses told his countrymen, was everything. This knowledge was the good thing which they had received from the Source of all Good. To hold it fast, was to be a nation; to lose it, was to sink back into the condition out of which they had been raised—not by their own might,—and which if they trusted in their own might, would assuredly overtake them again. Maurice.

And so all through, this history places in bold contrast God’s much love and Israel’s little love, his faithfulness and their “little faith,” his constancy and their fickleness, his holiness and their vileness, their provocations and his long-suffering. And yet he upbraids not. He speaks in righteousness, which is as necessary to their blessedness as is the love itself. Such is the God with whom we have to do. He will maintain equally and always righteousness that cannot be tainted, faithfulness that cannot fail, and love which cannot be quenched. Happy are we, who, knowing that our salvation through the blood is an accomplished fact, and that our acceptance “in the Beloved” is eternally secured, can welcome the living and powerful word, in its dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and its discernment of the thoughts and intents of the heart. An.

Thus we learn the value of the Old Testament histories in illustrating God’s method of acting, in unfolding the great principles of His law and grace by minute applications to persons and events; that is, their value as revealing the character and heart of God, through these particulars of His working. But not less valuable are these Old Testament histories in the superior means they afford for the calm study and accurate comprehension of human character and conduct. Our own observation, or even experience, is necessarily imperfect and partial, so that we cannot certainly discern motive as acting in others or ourselves. Our inferences respecting men are therefore defective. But these Bible narratives reveal motive, and open men’s hearts to our view; we can study men dispassionately, and with less liability to mistake. Above all, we can better understand the force and the depth of man’s corruptness. So it is that the Old Testament histories not only disclose God’s nature, but, better than any other histories, reveal man’s mixed character. On the one side they unveil his natural selfishness in all its deformity and enormity; and on the other, his received spiritual temper in its beauty and excellence, even though imperfect. And this twofold revelation, of God and man, they make in connection with the wide range of varied circumstance and incident, in which God and man act together. B.

Paul, 1 Cor. 10 : 1-14, shows us the proper use of this history. It teaches us the corruption, perverseness, and folly of man, and the goodness and severity of God. It shows us the evil of unbelief and of rebellion; the excellence of submission to the divine will; and the truth, power, and unchangeableness of Jehovah. This part of Scripture discloses a true picture of human life: of our dangers and difficulties in the world. What lessons ought we to learn here of vigilance and caution; of patience, fidelity, and courage! and what warnings against unbelief and disobedience! Jos. Jones.

We can use the Bible with deeper interest because of the intensely human character of its narratives. We see human life in its pages, and trace human idiosyncrasies in the varieties of representation, and as “one touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” so this human element in the Bible lays hold of men, and excites in them a greater interest in its narratives. The careful reader also, by means of these variations, sees in stronger light the one spiritual purpose running through the whole. The great revelation of God in Christ is more conspicuous in its oneness and continuity by reason of the very diversities and sometimes irreconcilable differences of the narrative. Our appreciation of the spiritual is the higher because we see that not one great truth is in the slightest degree affected by any verbal, chronological, or historical difficulties. Admit them all, if need be, and the real saving truth is as clear as the sun at noonday. The difficulties in question are a means of wholesome discipline. All historic studies furnish scope for the exercise of caution, discrimination, patience, reticence, and suspended judgment because of the necessary incompleteness of all historic records. This is especially true of the Bible, the more so as we do not always know the particular reason of the selection or omission of items, while we do know that we have not a thousandth part of the actual events associated with the unfolding in the long line of human history of the great purpose of God in Christ. The light thrown on obscure passages by advancing discoveries is an additional reason for the exercise of patience and cautious reserve. God is educating us in the peculiar manner in which he has been pleased to allow his revelation to man to be incorporated by human hands with narratives of events. C. Chapman.

The Old Testament Scripture combines two forms of history—annals, and dramatic story. Annals are short, and necessarily somewhat dry; but they have the advantage of embracing much in comparatively short compass. The dramatic story is necessarily diffuse; it occupies a large amount of space; but it has the advantage of presenting a living picture—of bringing past events before the reader as they happened at the time. If the whole history of the Bible had been in the form of annals, it would have been very useful, but it would have wanted human interest. If it had been all in the dramatic form, it would have occupied too much space.

By the combination of the two methods, we secure the compact precision of the one, and the living interest of the other. W. G. B.

The prominent characteristics of the biblical style in the historical books, are simplicity and dignity. We often find repetition: but yet the sacred narratives are rapid and concise: they are chiefly outlines or sketches of character, of interesting incidents, abounding with noble expressions, deep thoughts, and exquisite touches. “The whole of Scripture history” (says Gerard) “is carried on in a dramatic manner, introducing persons as speaking and conferring; which has great simplicity, and a great effect in expressing sentiments, suited to particular characters, whether good or bad.” The biblical style, as compared with the classic, may be called sententious. The Scripture history is, in fact, a peculiar sort of writing, partly biography, partly annals. It presents us with a series of historical pictures, both domestic and national. Events are recorded; but they always stand connected with moral elements and attributes. Here, in short, we see the ways of God in his providence and moral government; and here we see the ways of man. Almost every page leads us to examine a moral picture—a human being. The language is simple, natural, terse, select: the sentences are generally short. Jos. Jones.

Literary Study Auxiliary to the Religious Use of the Bible.

The purpose of the Bible is practical and religious. Its great central thoughts relate to God and man—the nature, love, and purposes of God, and the duty and true destiny of man. The Bible, which treats chiefly of the relations of man to God, is therefore pre-eminently the book of duty. It teaches men what God requires of them and makes possible for them. It opens to mankind the meaning of their own life. Disclosing God’s thoughts for man, it teaches the dignity of human life, and enables men to discover and receive as their own the divine conception of what they should do and be. The Bible is the book of life. It is comparatively oblivious of all subjects except salvation, character, goodness. Its great lessons and truths relate to what God has done and is ever doing to save men to their best possible selves. Its chief emphasis, therefore, is always upon righteousness, an inner life of harmony with God and of growing likeness in all that is God-like. But all these great truths are set in a historic frame-work. They are, in the main, not in abstract but in concrete form. They are woven into the warp and woof of history, illustrated and enforced in the lives of individuals, communities, and nations. They run as pervading lessons through the careers of men and peoples; they are bound up in images and similitudes, in types and symbols; they are found in letters and sermons; some of their tenderest tones breathe through poems and prayers. Thus the Bible presents to the student of it all the chief types of literary form. It must, to some extent, be studied as literature, with literary appreciation and with reference to its literary phenomena and peculiarities, if it is to be intelligently as well as devoutly studied.

The religious use and the literary study of the Bible are in no way inconsistent; each should be and may be made very helpful to the other. The religious character and value of the Bible should make its literary study more earnest and reverent, while an appreciation of the Bible as history and literature will more fully disclose its meaning and emphasize its value. As religion must be both intelligent and devout if it will produce the best results in character; so biblical study, which is so vitally related to religion, should both appreciate and reverently receive the spiritual truth of the Bible, and also seek to understand the forms in which it is presented, and the providential conditions and circumstances under which those truths have been revealed and the historic agencies which have been employed to this end. If these two methods of Bible study do not react helpfully upon one another, it can only be because, on the one hand, reverence for the Bible is blind and superstitious, or because, on the other, the literary study of it is cold and unappreciative. It will be a great gain to the cause of theology and religion when the Bible is more studied and understood as literature. In this way, truer conceptions of what the Bible is will come to prevail. When the historical relations and literary forms with which its truths and teachings are inseparably connected are better appreciated, its true meaning and value will be more apparent, interpretations which defy philology and history alike will be less frequent and persistent, and the possibility of a far better agreement among Christians respecting the essentials of faith will be attained. Stevens.

Doctrinal Teaching of the Old Testament.

In the Bible, doctrine simply means teaching, whether of abstract truths, or of the practical obligations of life. It is delivered by the sacred writers variously and informally by means of narrative, poetry, and exhortation. An excellent way of studying and connecting together religious doctrines is that of a Biblical Theology, conducted on the true historico-critical method which must approve itself to an age so intent as ours on the accurate exegesis of Scripture, and so deeply interested in tracing the historical developments of thought and faith among the nations of the world. A really Biblical Theology, while far from despising the ancient creeds or the modern logical systems, endeavors to follow the path of actual revelation, and to trace the advancing development of truth along the lines of dispensational progress. It is the way which brings out most fully to view the manifold wisdom of God, and in the end gives the most satisfaction to our intelligence, and the most firmness to our belief. The lines of study must of course begin in the Scriptures of the Old Covenant. We refuse to regard these as a mere literature of Judaism. In fact, Judaism, properly so called, began only in the days of Ezra, and as the canon of the Old Testament was about to close. That venerable canon is no special production or property of Judaism, but a record, through the prophets and historians of Israel, of divine revelation in all pre-Christian times. Therefore, an insight into its teachings and forecastings of things to come is indispensable to an intelligent apprehension of the later revelation enshrined in the Scriptures of the New Covenant.

The teaching of the Old Testament is the historical foundation of the New Testament doctrine. The Old Testament, as a whole, underlies and supports the New. It not only gives the historical antecedents, but it trains and leads up to the New Testament, and determines the mould of thought. It does not follow from this that sentences and clauses may be extracted from the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, and strung together in any order, as proof-texts of Christian tenets; for this would be to ignore that progress in revelation which the Bible itself clearly and candidly avows. It is enough to find the rich germs of Christian truth in the Old Testament. If one asks for more, and insists on reading mature doctrine in the earliest books of the Bible, either he must have recourse to incessant allegorical interpretation, or he insensibly limits New Testament thought by Old Testament conditions. It is most true that through all Scripture there is one God, one purpose of mercy to mankind, one and the same principle of salvation by grace; but it by no means follows that all who have been saved, from the most remote ages, had a knowledge of the personal Saviour. It was a good saying of the late Dr. John Duncan, “We must not unsaint the Old Testament saints, but we must not make Pentecostal Christians of them.” Hanna. —Nothing could be more fatal to the proper understanding of Holy Scripture, or of the purposes of God in His dealings with His ancient people, than to transport into olden times the full spiritual privileges, the knowledge of Divine truth, or even that of right and duty, which we now enjoy. It is not to do honor, but dishonor, to the Spirit of God to overlook the educational process of gradual development, which is not only a necessity of our nature, but explains our history. A miracle of might could, indeed, have placed the age of Samuel on the same spiritual level with that of the New Testament, at least so far as regards the communication of the same measure of truth. But such an exhibition of power would have eliminated the moral element in the educational progress of Israel, with the discipline of wisdom, mercy, and truth which it implied, and, indeed, have rendered the whole Old Testament history needless. A. E.

Four Characteristics of Old Testament Teaching.

1. It res’s always on facts and events. Nothing is argued or deduced from abstract principles. God moves toward men, deals with them, governs them; and all the teaching centres in and issues from transactions of God with men, and of men with God. The question, whether the accounts given of meetings and communications between God and man are historically true, or in some cases at all events devout legends, is a separate question to be discussed on its own grounds of evidence. But this at least is indisputable and reveals a profound wisdom, that the religious teaching grows upon a stem of narrative; the doctrine is not delivered in formulated propositions, but is involved in a record of what were, or profess to have been, actual doings and events.

2. It is so conducted as to be strongly suggestive of better things to come. The large scope given to prediction; the copious use of analogies and symbols evidently charged with a higher meaning than could be plainly stated at the time; the encouragement of hopes greater than the best periods of ancient history ever realized—all look toward a New Testament, and a time when things may be known and enjoyed, which prophets and righteous men desired to see, but were not permitted.

3. While this is the aspect of the Old Testament as a whole, its doctrine has within its own tumi’s continual amplification and progress. Some momentous truths are there from the outset; but the materials of knowledge, the grounds of faith, and the indications of divine character and will multiply and strengthen as we advance. The theology is developed as the purposes of God are unfolded, and the order of His providence is revealed. The simplicity of the Patriarchal time grows into the minutely preceptive period of the Law. New elements of thought and hope come in with the Kingdom. Then there is an enlargement of the devout conceptions, as well as an intensifying of devout feelings, by help of the Psalter. And still further there is a powerful inculcation of the mind and will of Jehovah through the prophets of Judah and Israel. In fact, it is almost as necessary to observe the progress from the earlier to the later books of the Old Testament, as to recognize the advance from these last to the earlier books of the New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ.

4. The teaching of the Old Testament is not superseded in the New, but crowned and perfected. Standing in New Testament light, with the help of the Holy Ghost, we are to look along the whole track of Old Testament history, prophecy, and song, and mark the footsteps of the coming Christ all along the way. The Scriptures of the old time are “able to make us wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus;” not otherwise. For lack of such faith, Jews reading those Scriptures of their own nation are blind and spiritually unwise. But the New Testament key opens to us the Old Testament casket of truth. With faith in Christ Jesus we acquire wisdom in the garden of innocence, in the ark of deliverance, in the tents of patriarchs, in the wilderness with Moses and the tribes, in the camp with Joshua, in the court of David, in the temple of Solomon, in the society of the poets and prophets in whom God breathed. “For all Scripture theopneustic is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and discipline in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, fully furnished for every good work.” D. F.

First, the difference between the subjective and objective aspects of its theology.

However low, comparatively speaking, may have been the stage occupied by Israel in their conceptions of, and dealings with God, yet the manifestations of the Divine Being are always so sublime that we could not conceive them higher at any later period. As we read their account we are still as much overawed and solemnized as they who had witnessed them. In fact, their sublimeness increases in proportion as the human element, and consequently the Divine accommodation to it, recedes. Secondly, even as regards man’s bearing toward the Lord, the Old Testament never presents what seems the fundamental character of all ancient heathen religions. The object of Israel’s worship and services was never to deprecate, but to pray. There was no malignant deity or fate to be averted, but a Father who claimed love and a King who required allegiance. Lastly, there is never an exhibition of mere power on the part of the Deity, but always a moral purpose conveyed by it, which in turn is intended to serve as germ of further spiritual development to the people. We are too prone to miss this moral purpose, because it is often conveyed in a form adapted to the standpoint of the men of that time, and hence differs from that suited to our own.

Certain special difficulties in this part of the history concern the substance more than the form or letter of the text, and raise doctrinal, philosophical, and moral, rather than critical and exegetical questions. . . . I can at least say, that my own reverent belief in the authority of the Word of God has not in any one case been the least shaken. It sounds almost presumptuous to write down such a confession. Yet it seems called for in days when the enumeration of difficulties, easily raised, owing to the distance of these events, the great difference of circumstances, and the necessary scantiness of our materials of knowledge—whether critical, historical, or theological—so often takes the place of sober inquiry; and high-sounding phrases which, logically tested, yield no real meaning, are substituted for solid reasoning. A. E.

Neither in doctrine nor in morals did the ancients reach what we call the Christian standard. We do not admit that a divine sanction ever was given to immorality or cruelty; but, apart from this, we deny that Christianity is bound to answer for the standard of conduct recognized even by God-fearing men before the day of Christ. The Old Testament conducts to Christianity; but the greater part of it is pre-Christian and immature. Its ethical teaching is all conducted on the principle of delineating the steps of progress by which the holy God has been pleased to guide and elevate the moral as well as theological education of mankind. Hanna.

In the age of the world, and among those people when and to whom the commandments were delivered, false worship, or the worship of false gods, was the sin which lay at the root and foundation of every other. The worship of the one true God, in opposition to the vain, and false, and wicked religions which then obtained among mankind, was the grand point to be inculcated. History testifies, experience testifies, that there cannot be true morality, or true virtue, where there is false religion, false worship, false gods. Nay more; from the whole strain and tenor of the Old Testament there is good reason to believe, that to maintain in the world the knowledge and worship of the one true God, holy, just, and good, in contradistinction to the idolatrous worship which prevailed, was the great and principal scheme and end of the Jewish polity and most singular constitution. The Jewish nation was to be the depository of, and the means of preserving in the world the knowledge and worship of the one true God, when it was lost and darkened in other countries. Paley.

The great problem was how to stop the race from going any further wrong, into stark savagery and idolatry, and how to turn it about, and get it ready for the setting up of a Divine order upon it, and for the reconciling and renovating of it with the heavenly communion it had lost. This was the thing to be done. And it was to be done, suppose, not by the thrusting in of an arbitrary revolution, a stupendous miracle of mechanism which would simply set the outward works all right, but would leave the springs of spiritual life—love, choice, energy, faith—all untouched and unchanged. The very thing wanted was to bring in and set up these grand interior holy forces in the soul. “The world by wisdom knew not God.” God only could make it know Him; and, being what He is, He could do it only by preserving man’s freedom, and respecting every law wrought into his nature. He took, therefore, what we call the practical way; He used the principles of selection, concentration, and adaptation. He did it gradually. He did it by human instruments. He limited the scene and the numbers. He took the child Moses out of the rush-basket, bearing in his veins the finer blood of that Hebrew pastoral people that God had led with His own hand and voice before, over the hills and pastures of Mesopotamia and Canaan,—the most reverent and conscientious on the earth. He trained that child in the best scientific school of the time,—“in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” and then He set him at the head of a commonwealth. He selected a priesthood. He made elders. He organized a State. He arranged a ritual. He chose a limited territory in the right spot. And then He put this crude and childish nation down,—not in liberty yet,—they were not ripe for that,—but under discipline and regulation; not in the Gospel yet—for they would abuse and waste it if they had it,—but in the Law. This was the school and the scholar. In a word God did,—only better and more gloriously, and with some sublime signals of miraculous justice and mercy breaking through all along to turn to it the eyes of mankind and the reverent memory of the generations forever,—just what wisdom must do. He chose out one nation, and sent it to school to learn the prophetic rudiments of Christianity and to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. The Old Testament is simply the narrative of that training school for Christ and for men. Some parts are more obscure than others; for the time was a great way back, and the materials of knowledge were scanty, and, above all, the Infinite and Inscrutable One, whose ways are often past our finding out, was the Master. But this is the key to the scheme. Was not the plan magnificent? Can the best critic or the shrewdest objector suggest a wiser way to save and lift to heavenly places enervated, sensual, vulgar, wretched humanity? And when we take a view of the whole Old Testament history wide and deep and rational as this,—with all its strange incidents, its erring heroes, and faulty saints, intermingled with its splendid virtues, its sublime loyalty, its eloquence and poetry unequalled in all the literature of the world, and its supernatural prophecies,—all intense and bright with hallowed fire, because it is the school of God,—is it not a very poor thing indeed to carp at an unexplained passage here and there, or to sneer and cavil at some half-veiled feature in the majestic working out of the design? F. D. H.

To intrust the forthcoming revelation to the world at large would have been to lose it; to secure its conservation the Most High prepared a place and a people. That revelation should be guarded with religious care by a race who knew that their national existence was bound up with its integrity, and who, instead of courting foreign alliances or aspiring to imperial dominion, felt that they had a mission still more august, that, as custodiers of God’s oracles and guardians of His temple, they had a distinction above all the peoples that dwell on the face of the earth. Hence everything was done to keep them at home, and to keep them separate. Hence was it that a dietary was prescribed which made the Hebrew a troublesome guest and an uneasy traveller in the land of the Gentiles. Hence was it that a few days’ radius from the Temple became the necessary limit of Hebrew homes. Hence was it that the heart of the Jew was taught to cling with a tremendous tenacity to his Holy Land, till exile became the sorest of judgments, and a grave in the sacred soil was deemed almost essential to a joyful resurrection. Hamilton.

The lesson of the history as a whole should not be overlooked. What conceivable explanation is there of the history of the Jews, with their inextinguishable vitality, and the fulfilment again and again of their unquenchable hopes, except the truth that God had chosen them, and that God was with them? They had no righteousness, but were a stiff-necked people. They had no splendid territory, but a strip of barren, narrow, ill-watered land. They had no grand genealogy—a Syrian ready to perish was their father. They were not powerful enough of themselves even to conquer their own small land. They were not united; Ephraim envied Judah, and Judah vexed Ephraim. They were not free, but became the prey of nation after nation. They were not a maritime people, for their strip of seacoast was mostly harborless, and not their own. They had no commercial industry like Venice or Holland; no art like Greece; no arms like Rome; no colonies like England; no philosophy like Germany. They were constantly starting aside like a broken bow. Yet no power has ever been able to crush, no persecution to destroy them. They have influenced, taught, pervaded mankind. Their sacred book is the sacred book of humanity, their religious ideas are becoming more and more the religious ideas of the race. What explains it all, and alone explains it? Nothing but the truth that “God showed his word unto Jacob, his statutes and ordinances with Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation, neither have the heathen knowledge of his law.” Farrar.

Prophetic Character of Old Testament History.

We must carefully bear in mind, in reading the Old Testament, that the whole of the history of God’s chosen people had a distinctly prophetic character, looking onward and leading up to the grand consummation of God’s purposes for mankind in the establishment of the kingdom of Christ, and the foundation of his Church—the true spiritual Israel. We are not to look in them for a continuous history, such as we are accustomed to in the annals of the kingdoms of this world. Long periods are dispatched summarily or passed over in complete silence, while others are narrated at considerable length. This varied mode of treatment is not to be explained by the comparative wealth or poverty of the materials at the writer’s command, but depends on their value and importance for the great end in view—the development of the Divine plan as set forth in the national life of the chosen people. The events described are not selected capriciously. Critical epochs are chosen—turning-points in the history of the people, on which their future fortunes depended for weal or for woe, according as they obeyed or resisted God’s revealed will. Thus the narrative illustrates the Divine law of retribution, in the variation of the fortunes of Israel, in exact correspondence with their changing relations to their theocratic King; while we watch how certainly national disaster follows apostacy, and prosperity attends faithful adherence to the covenant of God. This, which is the leading principle of these historic-prophetical writings, and which gives them their chief value for us, and for all future time, is nowhere more plainly to be traced than in the Books of Samuel. “They are not,” in the words of Bishop Wordsworth, “a congeries of ill digested materials, or of fruitless repetitions, but a prophetic history of real events preparing the way for the priesthood and kingdom and prophetic office of Christ, and foreshadowing them. They hold a place of their own, and perform a peculiar work, not only in relation to the Hebrew nation, but in a higher function, as preparing the way for Christ. The Apostle Peter marks their character in this respect when he says, ‘All the prophets from Samuel . . . have foretold of these days’—the days of Christ and the Gospel” (Acts 3:24). The eye does not rest on the persons and events recorded, and stop there; but seeing in them illustrations, as striking as they are unmistakable, of the principles of God’s moral government of mankind, and the great ends of all his dealings with them, is led onward to Him of whom every righteous king, true prophet, and holy priest was a type, in whom God’s will has been fully declared, and His purposes summed up—“the Lord’s Anointed,” “the Son of David,” “Christ, the King.” E. V.

The history of Israel has four main heroes—Moses, Samuel, David, Ezra. Moses gave them their freedom and their law; Samuel their order and unity; David their poetry and their power; Ezra gave them a collected literature and a religious education. If David was the founder of Israel as a monarchy, Ezra is the founder of Israel as a church. But the lesson of the Old Testament history is mainly this—that, whether as a Kingdom or as a Church, the true Israel had but two sources of power and permanence—the law of a Divine holiness, the grasp of a Messianic hope. Farrar.

The civil code introduced by Moses, and the ordinances of worship appointed by him, furnish the needed starting-point in the study of the institutions and life of Israel. There is just the same authority for referring these to Moses as there is for believing that he acted as judge and leader of Israel in their coming forth from Egypt. The whole subsequent history unfolds from this fixed point, is determined by it, and cannot be properly understood without it. The Pentateuchal Law claims in the most unambiguous manner to have been given and recorded by Moses. The general character of the legislation, and the terms in which it is couched, accord with this claim. Its truth is further vouched for in the most direct and positive manner in the history of his trusted attendant and successor Joshua (1:7, 8; 8:31-34; 22:5; 23:6); further by Ju. 3:4; 1 K. 2:3; 2 K. 10:31; 14:6; 17:37; 18:6, 12; 21:8; 22:8; 23:24, 25, not to speak of numerous testimonies of later date. The history and legislation of the Pentateuch lies at the basis of all the subsequent history of the Old Testament. It is presupposed in the Psalms. It is presupposed in the Prophets. Moses’ authorship has the explicit sanction of our blessed Lord Himself. The prior existence of the Pentateuch is shown by its being so interwoven with all subsequent portions of the history and literature of Israel that it cannot be torn from it without the destruction of the whole. It is upon this immovable foundation that the traditional view securely reposes. W. H. G.

The two stone tables of the Law are, according to all evidences and arguments, to be ascribed to Moses, and those essential truths and social arrangements which constitute the motive power of the whole history must certainly have been there promulgated and firmly ordained at Sinai. Ewald.—The roll of the law (Ex. 19, 24), written down by Moses himself, and inserted into the general historical account of the giving of the law, must be regarded as the central part, as having formed the primary basis of the Pentateuch. The other laws promulgated during the stay in the wilderness of Sinai and up to the time when Israel occupied the plains of Moab were orally given by Moses, but written down by those around him, either at his command or of their own accord. On the soil of the holy land and at the close of an era in the history of Israel was the sacred chronicle commenced. But any account of the history of the Mosaic period necessarily implied that the whole Mosaic legislation should be engrossed, and hence written down. A man, such as the priest Eleazar, the son of Aaron, may have written the large work commencing with “In the beginning God created,” etc., into which he also inserted the roll of the law, dwelling perhaps the more briefly on the last addresses of Moses that the latter had himself written them down. Then a second historian, such as Joshua, or one of those Elders on whom rested the spirit of Moses, supplemented the work and incorporated with it the book of Deuteronomy, the spirit of which had moulded that of the compiler himself. Thus probably was the Thorah (or Law) formed, the two authors having certainly consulted many written documents. Both of them—the priestly Elohist and the prophetical Jehovah—are each in his own way the echo and the copy of their teacher and prototype, the great Lawgiver. Just as the Evangelists wrote the Gospel after the ascension of Christ in His Spirit, so did these two after removal of Moses write his law and the history of which it forms part. Delitsch.

The compass of the people’s obligations, the revelation of God’s commanding will, is the law, the fundamental principle of which is expressed in the words, “Be ye holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11 : 44 f., 19 : 2) ; or more completely (20 : 7), “Sanctify yourselves and be holy, for I am Jehovah your God.” The impress of consecration to the holy God is to be stamped on the life of the Israelites in ordinances extending to all important relations and conditions ; in every important affair of life the Israelite has to accomplish something which God demands. Therefore in all things he must realize to himself the voice of the commanding God. The traditional division of the law of Moses into moral, ceremonial, and juristic laws may serve to facilitate a general view of theocratic ordinances ; but it is incorrect if it seeks to express a distinction within the law, and to claim a difference of dignity for the various parts. For in the law, the most inward commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” stands beside “Thou shalt not sow thy field with two kinds of seed.” That Israel must be holy, like God, is the ground alike of the command not to be defiled by eating the flesh of certain animals, and of the command to honor father and mother. The whole law, in all its parts, has the same form of absolute, unconditional command. Because of this character of the law, human judgment cannot be allowed to make distinctions between the different precepts. But, so far as man is concerned, the most inconsiderable precept is viewed under the aspect of the obedience demanded for the whole law : “Cursed is he that fulfils not the words of this law to do them” (De. 27 : 26).

It is not true that the law of Moses demands only external conformity to the law, not a frame of mind ; that, in short, it demands legality, not morality. On the contrary, the law insists on the disposition of the heart when it says, “Thou shalt not covet ;” when it binds men to love God with the whole heart and soul, to be placable toward their fellow men, and the like, when it demands the circumcision of the heart—that is, the purification and devotion of it to God. But undoubtedly it demands the external as co-ordinate with the internal. And precisely in this lies an important educating element. When all the relations of life, even those merely external, are placed under a direct command of God—when man in all he does or may not do has to render obedience to God, he is thereby led to the truth that what he ought to be is not to be sought in rules of life arbitrarily formed and shaped by conventionality, but in an absolutely perfect will, which conditions and determines all things.

For a right estimate of the law of Moses, the following points have further to be noticed :— (1) The whole ritual ordinances to which the Israelite is subject, from his circumcision onward, have a symbolic character, mirroring the inner process of sanctification, and so forming the instrument of a tuition advancing from the outer to the inner. The prophets and the Psalms, when they speak of the true sacrifice, the true lustration which man needs, are simply expressing the thoughts that underlie the symbolical ritual. (2) The precepts of the law are given in detail mainly on the negative side ; what the Israelite may not do is told with great particularity. The scholastic subtlety of the Rabbins, indeed, has made out the considerable number of 248 positive commands, against 365 prohibitions. But it is easy to see that with regard to positive duties the law often states only general rules ; that, in fact, many positive points that lie in its intention are not expressly enjoined, but that only the facts, patterns, and institutions are set forth which serve to guide a free development of positive virtues. It was only Jewish tradition which at a later period extended its leading-strings over the space which the law had left open for the free development of piety. (3) Finally,—and this is the main point,—we have to look at the motives for fulfilling the law which the law presents. All righteousness required by the law presupposes faith in the divine election, gracious guidance, and promise. The legislation opens with the words, “Ye have seen how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to myself;” and so the Decalogue puts at the head of its demands what God has done for Israel. But it is Deuteronomy in particular which, by showing how God has loved His people, seeks to excite responsive love as the deepest motive for obedience, and especially to make the law acceptable to the people by awakening a sense of its excellency and fitness (De. 4 : 6-8, 30 : 11-14); though, at the same time, Deuteronomy leaves no doubt that the people neither can nor will attain such willingness to obey. O.

No Law-making by the Kings.

One remarkable fact in Hebrew history seems to have been overlooked. At no time during the five centuries covered by the monarchy (1100-588 B.C.) is a word said of a body of laws enacted or codified by any of the kings. That silence of the writers who have recorded the rise and fall of the kingdom is made more impressive by the one law, and the only one, which is ascribed to a king—David’s regulation for dividing the spoils of battle between the army in the field and its baggage guard. A thing so small in itself brings into bolder relief the fact of no prince either introducing new laws into the country, or reducing old customs to writing and giving them the force of law. Evidently a law code existed before a king filled the throne of Israel. At the choice of a king for the first time, Samuel the prophet acts the part of a lawgiver; but never, except in the one instance referred to, are Hebrew princes represented as exercising this office. They make no show in history save as administrators or breakers of a code of laws already in existence. A position so singular is filled by the kings of no other nation whose annals have come down to our time. Of the power of law among the Hebrews too much cannot be said. Their proverbs, their popular speech, their songs, and the events of their daily life are full of its praises. Everywhere is seen the reign of law. But the rulers never pride themselves on making new or codifying old laws. They build and endow a magnificent temple, they restore a neglected worship, they repair a temple that has been burned or has fallen into ruins. They rearrange the recognized ministers of religion according to their ideas of what is fitting and honorable; they fortify cities and equip armies at their will, or according to their ability. But we never see them ordaining new laws, or altering old laws to meet the changing needs of society. Always do they appear as if their hands, quite as much as those of their subjects, were tied by an existing code. A law of the land, given before kings began to rule, seems to have stood high above both throne and people. Unquestionably, a relation so unusual, subsisting for five centuries, is a peculiarity which distinguishes Hebrew history from the history of every other people. No romance could have invented the idea of laws, once given, remaining unchanged, without addition and without subtraction. Still less could a series of historians have imagined the idea of subjection to these ancient laws in a race of princes, some of whom were conquerors, some tyrants, and some obstinate to their own and to their people’s ruin. To call this the result of a designed concealment of facts is an incredible explanation of the silence. The writers had nothing to conceal. They knew that these kings dared not add to or alter the people’s law-book. Part of it might be set at defiance for a time, but their pages showed the ruinous consequences of this course, and the power of the law to vindicate its majesty. These writers recognized certain well-marked boundaries, within which the national code confined both king and people. Fullest freedom of action was allowed to them if they did not overstep these limits; no freedom whatever was given to either prince or people to travel beyond. We must therefore go to the history itself to ascertain the beginning and completion of the law code which attained to this paramount rule in the nation. A law-book, once given and remaining unchanged for centuries, is pronounced an impossibility. But theoretical views of the possible or the impossible have no place in the matter. We are dealing only with facts, and these carry us back for the beginning of a law-book to the sojourn of the people in Egypt. Sime.

Beneficent Effects of Hebrew Institutions.

All our notions of the Jewish commonwealth are received under a disadvantage, from the circumstance of their reaching us through the channel of inspired history. The inflexible integrity of the record, and its comminative intention, throws a dark color over the general scene. In reading the history of other nations, we see the things of the world in the world’s light; but Jewish affairs we look at in the light of heaven; and what otherwise might appear fair, stands forward only as reprehensible. Not one of the Jewish writers, whether historian or prophet, is the eulogist of his nation, or speaks of Israel as the Greeks of Greece, or the Romans of Rome. How different would be our impressions of the ancient people of Palestine, if some candid Herodotus had left us a description of them, such as they must have appeared to a stranger in the bright era of their history, and when compared with their immediate neighbors. There is good reason to believe that, for diffused enjoyment and personal liberty, for elevation of sentiment, and purity of manners, no contemporary nation could offer any such spectacle of popular felicity. The extreme brevity of the inspired historians, and the prominence given by them to single incidents, operate to deprive us of what might be called our chronological consciousness; and we forget that, while running over a few chapters, we have traversed ages, and have leaped periods exceeding the duration of some mighty empires. Certain seasons of calamity excepted, the Jewish commonwealth rested on the soil, and diffused among a numerous people a large measure of such felicity as earth admits of, during a much longer track of time than can be claimed for the splendor of Grecian liberties and arts; and longer than was allowed to the foreign power of Rome. During at least seven hundred years, Palestine was probably richer in human happiness than any other spot upon earth has ever been.

Considered in their secular aspect, the characteristic principle of the Mosaic Institutions was the private good of the people. Whatever the form of the polity might be, the spirit of it was, in the best sense, popular; since the security, the competence, the personal dignity, and the enjoyments of every son of Abraham were the ruling intention of every enactment. Redeemed from the furnaces of Egypt, and led into a land flowing with milk and honey, the economy of social life was so constructed, as to yield the greatest possible amount of plenty and pleasure to every citizen. Every man who had sprung from the loins of Abraham was noble; and the forfeiture of that patrimony which enabled him to support the simple honors of his birth was a desperate calamity, guarded against by extraordinary provisions. The motto of the commonwealth was—“Every man under his vine, and under his fig tree; none daring to make him afraid.” To eat the fat of the land, to make his heart merry with the wine, and to render praise to God, duty to the priest, and a generous portion to the fatherless, the widow, and the stranger, was the precept and privilege of all. Neither national aggrandizement, nor conquest and foreign empire, nor the accumulation of wealth by trade, nor the cultivation of arts and philosophy, was aimed at in the Jewish code; but rather the tranquil happiness and the domestic integrity of every Israelitish home. The Law was a blessing for the basket and the store, for the bed and the table. God’s polity was like God’s world, in the constitution of which the greatest possible enjoyment of the greatest possible number is the sovereign rule. . . . Rising to view at frequent intervals in these Historical Books, and always in a manner incidental and inartificial, there are evidences irresistible of the existence of deep and vivid domestic affections among the Hebrew people; of individual and family piety, of humane sentiments and usages, of a high and chivalrous sense of honor and patriotism, of a stern justice and of the rights and claims of the destitute and defenceless. I. T.

The bone and marrow, the blood and tissue of American liberty are, in the main, derived from the Jew. The Hebrew Decalogue was the preamble of the American Constitution; the Puritan was the successor to the Hebrew Theocracy. In English history and literature the predilection of the Anglo-Saxon for Old Testament history, with its stern patriarchal figures, its rigorous laws and statutes, its Hebrew names and features is strongly marked. To no other nation did the Hebrew literature become so endeared as a household book and treasury of comfort and inspiration, and permeate the spirit and style, nay, the very sinew of the people, serving as food for the child and as substance for the ripe lawyer and statesman. As the Hebrew spirit of liberty fired the soul of the Puritan into patriotic devotion and loyalty to home and country, so did the Hebrew law mould his piety, his worship, his religious and social life. The Sabbath laws, the poor laws, the Thanksgiving Day, all were constructed after the Hebrew fathers without regard to the altered time and surroundings. The reverential awe of a Holy God of justice pervading Hebrew Scriptures set his heart aglow. The inner law of conscience, the voice of duty, the Hebrew spelled out first, and it found its grandest expression in the glorious declaration of human rights on American soil. Dr. Kohler.

Testimony of Geography, Discovery and Custom.

The geography of Palestine, as we find it today, is the strongest testimony of the truth of that history which purports to emanate thence. The natural scenery of Palestine speaks with but one voice in favor of the Bible; every word of the sacred narrative receives its best interpretation by being studied in connection with the place where it was recorded. No one can trace, without joy and wonder, the verification which geography pays to the history of the Holy Land. So strong is the argument drawn thence, that the most subtle dialectician is baffled by it, and is entrapped in the net which his own sophistry has spun. Ritter.

The same spirit of scepticism which had rejected the early legends of Greece and Rome had laid its hands on the Old Testament and had determined that the sacred histories themselves were but a collection of myths and fables. But suddenly, as with the wand of a magician, the ancient eastern world has been reawakened to life by the spade of the explorer and the patient skill of the decipherer, and now we find ourselves in the presence of monuments which bear the names or recount the deeds of the heroes of Scripture. One by one these “stones crying out” have been examined or more perfectly explained, while others of equal importance are being continually added to them. Sayce.

Notwithstanding the numerous races and religions which have for centuries swept in turn across these ruined regions, there remains a stereotyped agreement in almost all the common affairs of life. From the south of Egypt to the far north of Syria, on every farm the plough is of precisely the same make. In every house you visit, the handleless cup out of which you sip your coffee is of the same size and pattern, and so are the basin and ewer with which the servant of your host, when he has girded himself and taken a towel, washes your hands. In each class of life both men and women respectively dress alike, and the material color and style of apparel in the rural districts have in the memory of man continued in all respects precisely the same. No changing fashions, no progress in arts or science varies, or ever appears to have varied, the simple appliances of Palestine. The language, too, which is now in use retains in all respects the very phrases of Scripture. A farmer coming into his fields to this day will greet his laborers in the very words of Boaz, “The Lord be with you,” and will receive for answer, “The Lord bless thee.” Indeed there is scarcely a devout expression to be found in the pages of Holy Writ that does not now flow, alas! but too insincerely from the tongue of modern dwellers in Palestine. In a word, to this day, in things sacred and secular, the speech of all Syria is unchanged, and listening to it one catches everywhere distinct and startling echoes of Scripture story.

The coarseness of certain expressions which the Bible contains, and the handling of subjects the very mention of which we should account impure, have been an honest difficulty to many earnest and sensitive minds. Yet a comparatively short residence in Palestine serves to remove it altogether; and indeed no Eastern could possibly see any objection on this score. They still, as in ancient times, use the greatest plainness of speech throughout the Holy Land. Things, the very mention of which decency forbids among us, are there spoken of freely before women and children by people of the highest class, and of the greatest respectability and refinement. I will go further and boldly say, that seeing the Bible purports to be an Eastern book, written in the East, first, and for long ages only, addressed to Easterns, it could not possibly be genuine if these very matters, which have given rise to such blasphemous cavils, were absent from its pages! Neil.

In no one of all the innumerable communications contained in Scripture, is there ever any regard paid to the gratification of mere curiosity. Facts and events are exhibited no farther than they bear on the point which appears to be in view; and in many instances we are left without satisfaction where our curiosity is most ardently awake. The information which commentators in such cases are so ready to supply, by probability or conjecture, proves that the original was not the composition of human wisdom. Haldane.—The Bible deals but very sparingly in the startling, the terrifying, the horrible. It does not exclude this element: but its place is carefully limited, and other elements abound on every side of it. And this may show us that, neither in preaching, nor in religious literature, nor in common literature, is it wholesome or desirable that this element should often predominate. That is one lesson as to wholesome and useful literature that the Word of God may supply. W. G. B.

When it is proposed to “treat the Bible like any other book,” it is lawful to inquire, not only how other books are to be treated, but whether the Bible is, according to its own claims, and in fact, like any other book. Let it be assumed that there is a definite and ascertained law of human progress under natural influences, and that the grade of moral and intellectual attainment so reached at any period may be confidently determined; this will be irrelevant in Bible analysis unless we are prepared in advance to admit that Israel and the Bible came to be what they were and are wholly through natural agencies. This is, in fact, assumed by those who dismember and redistribute the sacred record according to what, as they conclude, must have been the stages of progress reached by Israel in the natural order of growth and enlightenment. Revelation and miracle are, ex hypothesi, excluded and prophecy made retrospective or contemporary. The Bible is not like any other book—in its products, in its insight and foresight, in complex unity of doctrine, in its central and informing Christ, whose testimonies and life features thrust themselves back, like the genealogic records that introduce His biography, through all the strata of the old record, touching and holding them in place. Israel is as unique as the Old Testament, to which it lingers as custodian, in a kind of posthumous life; the prophecies of that Old Testament being as curiously fulfilled in its dethronement and scattering, because of the repudiation of the Messiah foretold therein, as in the exaltation of the Gentiles who accepted that Messiah and the New Testament régime which He brought. Biblical criticism has its function, and is serviceable in its proper and modest sphere. But “the bumble-bee’s theory of the universe” is not likely to reverse Copernicus, and a vagrant and fantastic pencil-point is not likely to puncture hopelessly the faith of men in a supernatural Bible. J. B. Thomas.

THE BOOKS INCLUDED IN THIS VOLUME: COLLECTIVELY; JOSHUA; JUDGES; FIRST AND SECOND SAMUEL; KINGS; CHRONICLES. THE CHRONOLOGY.

In these books is given the history of the conquest and occupation of Palestine by the Hebrews, from their entrance into the land of Canaan under Joshua, to the close of the reign of Solomon. B.

It may be well, at this point, to trace, in review, the unity of design pervading these sacred writings. They reveal, in the Book of Genesis, God’s relation to the universe as its creator, and its rightful proprietor and sovereign. They then record the early history and the universal corruption of mankind, and the manifestation of God’s righteous abhorrence of evil in the destruction of the guilty race. They relate the history of the new race of man, till it becomes manifest that this signal lesson is without effect; that the tendency to evil is innate and universal, with no power of self-renovation. They then record the initiatory steps for the renovation of man, and for perpetuating the knowledge and worship of the true God. Thenceforward they are occupied with the history of the individual race, through which this Divine purpose was to be effected. In the fullness of time, and after a protracted period of probation, in which its necessity was fully shown, this purpose was accomplished in the coming of the DIVINE DELIVERER. This singleness of purpose, and continuity of plan, are seen running through all these sacred Scriptures,

All else is incidental, and subsidiary to the main design. Without this prolonged test of man’s inability for self-renovation, the history of the Divine government would have been fragmentary, incomplete, and unsatisfying. Conant.

With forethoughtful wisdom, God made provision in the Hebrew constitution for a continuous Hebrew history and for its preservation. The tribe of Levi and the family of Aaron were the learned class of the nation. Exempted largely from engrossing, exhaustive toil, it was one of their official duties to care for the religious instruction of the people. It was made both their interest and their duty to guard the archives of the nation; to keep the Books of Moses and the later historical books as they were prepared. That the original plan assigned to them also the function of national historian is perhaps possible, but it is not definitely indicated. If such were the plan it was soon modified. Whether because of negligence on their part, or because their Levitical duties were all they could perform well, or because some special qualifications were naturally requisite for this service, it came to pass that very early after Moses the Lord raised up a series of prophets to write the history each of his own times. The sacred books show plainly that Samuel, Nathan, Gad, and other men of this class, became national historians. Their succession and their services were by far the more reliable from the fact that God himself filled their ranks; that they did not hold office by hereditary right or by any public appointment from men, but directly and immediately from God himself. What better guaranty than this can be rationally demanded? H. C

The authority of a writing, claimed to be Divine, does not in any case rest on the particular writer or human instrumentality, but on the Divine attestation given to it; and this attestation can be given, as in many cases it has been, to writings which have come to us anonymously, and of which the particular writer cannot be determined with certainty. The credibility of a writing, as an historical narrative, is determined by those tests which historical criticism applies to such compositions. These writings have borne, unshaken, the most searching application of these tests. The narration is a simple statement of facts, everywhere consistent with itself, without exaggeration or repression, free from partiality or prejudice in dealing with persons and their acts, recording the frailties alike of the high and the low, the monarch and the subject, the most honored and those of least account, with the same freedom and impartiality. These books have always formed a part of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, called in the New Testament “the Oracles of God” (Rom. 3 : 2), “the Scriptures” (Matt. 21 : 42), “the holy Scriptures” (Rom. 1 : 2 ; 2 Tim. 3 : 15). That they were familiar to writers of the New Testament is shown by frequent references to incidents which they record.

The leading object of all these historical books is kept steadily in view. The religious aspects of the history are never lost sight of. Whatever tends to the advancement of the true religion, to establish and perpetuate the knowledge and worship of the true God, is made matter of permanent record, as well as all that is of a contrary tendency. The great conflict of the ages, between the one true religion and all false ones, between the recognition of the One God, the Self-existent and Eternal, and countless gods of human devising, is here brought to the direct issue, “choose ye whom ye will serve.” Under no circumstances more favorable to a fair decision could this alternative be offered. Its failure showed clearly the inefficacy of law, under the most favoring conditions, to restrain or properly direct the evil tendencies of man’s nature; and it points forward to the ultimate end and purpose of all Revelation, the coming of the great Deliverer. Conant. present the appearance of one work, giving a continuous history of Israel from the times of Joshua to the death of Jehoiachin, while it may be added the Book of Judges is not a continuation of Joshua, but opens with a repetition of the same events with which Joshua closes. In like manner the Book of Ruth is no less clearly connected with the Book of Judges by its opening verse and the epoch to which the whole book relates. And generally the style of the narrative, ordinarily quiet and simple, but rising to great vigor and spirit when stirring deeds are described, and the introduction of poetry or poetic style in the midst of the narrative, constitute such strong features of resemblance, as lead to the conclusion that these several books form but one work. P. S.

These histories approach much more nearly to the character of records contemporaneous with the events recorded, than they would if they had been compiled according to modern methods. The inspiration to which these books owe their place in the canon is primarily that of the men who wrote the books in their present form, and is entirely independent of all questions concerning the inspiration of the men who originally wrote the writings from which our present books were compiled, and of all questions touching the inspiration of any actual or supposed men of later times, who edited or collected the scriptural books. W. S. B.

Historic Connection of all these Books.

We have in the Books of Kings, not only evidence of a framework of national observance existing in the ninth and tenth centuries before Christ, which was based upon the Law of Moses and implied the existence of that Law and is not to be explained without it, but also references to a period of the national history subsequent indeed to the time of Moses, but long anterior to that of the kings. It is certain that toward the close of the kingdom of Israel the two tribes and a half were in possession of the lands which they had held from the time of Moses, the title-deeds of which were the records in Joshua and the Book of Numbers.

Again, the Books of Kings are unintelligible without the record in Samuel. We know nothing of the origin of the monarchy, and still less of the extraordinary attachment of the people to the house of David, but for the narrative of the earlier events recorded in Samuel. And, what is more, the events themselves in Kings, supposing them to be historically true, presuppose a foundation of earlier events which must in some respects have resembled those that are recorded in Samuel. For some reason or other the throne is supposed everywhere to be vested in the family of David by a literal Divine right. Such a notion would not have taken the hold of the national mind which it evidently did take, had there not been some very marked and special circumstances attending the accession of David.

Going back to the Books of Samuel themselves, we have presupposed in them the main features of the history of the Judges. We have the principle of the Theocracy clearly defined, and thrown into sharper contrast from the strong national desire to have a king. But there is this feature also, that the prominent foes of Israel are no longer those who are commonly named in Judges, but another race who had, it appears, lately become powerful, namely, the Philistines, and who in the Book of Judges are chiefly mentioned in connection with Samson, who must have shortly preceded Samuel. Now this fact itself indicates a considerable lapse of time. The history of Samuel, therefore, requires to be supplemented by some such history as that recorded in Judges. That history is indeed fragmentary, and disappointing in many ways, yet it serves to fill up a blank which it would otherwise be hopeless to supply.

But then, once more, the history of the Judges presupposes that of Joshua. The Theocracy itself must have grown out of something. It may at one time have been exhibited in a more perfect form than we see it in Judges. It was then manifestly in its degeneracy and decadence. What its origin was we know not, and cannot divine, if we reject the origin as described in Joshua and the Pentateuch; for, lastly, the narrative in Joshua is unintelligible, and its development impossible, without the previous history which the books of the Law enshrine. Whenever Joshua was written, the Pentateuch must have been in existence. There is scarcely a chapter which does not imply the previous existence of the Books of Moses, and afford independent testimony to the substantial framework of their historical narrative. Thus we see that in a most remarkable degree the historical element in the literature of the Jews is characterized by the principle of cohesion. S. L.

These books abound with striking and various developments of human nature: and if in reading them we rightly reflect on the conduct of God and on the conduct of man, we cannot fail to derive important instruction from every paragraph. But if we would gain advantage from these books, we must not confine ourselves to the mere history, but exercise the closest meditation; for the instruction which they are intended to convey to us is not stated, but is to be deduced by us from the sacred narratives. Unless we attend to this, we shall at the most only make ourselves familiar with historical facts. Jos. Jones.

The Book of Joshua takes up the narrative where it was left near the close of Deuteronomy. The new era in the sacred history, commencing with the call of Abraham, is here resumed; and the development of the Divine purpose, in connection with the history of his posterity, is thenceforward the great theme of the Hebrew Scriptures. Conant.

The Book of Joshua bears the same relation to the Pentateuch as the Acts of the Apostles bears to the four Gospels. A useful comparison may be made between the several parts of the Old Testament and those of the New. The Pentateuch in the former answers to the Gospels in the latter: the Book of Joshua answers to the Acts: the writings of the prophets, considered as teachers of religious and moral truth, answer to the Epistles; and parts of Ezekiel and Daniel answer to the Revelation. Here we see the provision that was made in the goodness of God for the instruction and edification of the Jewish and of the Christian Churches. We see it in its analogy: in its substantial identity, and in its circumstantial difference. We compare Moses and Christ, as Paul (Heb. 3: 1-6) teaches us to do. We compare the establishment of the Jewish and Christian Churches, and we see the same power displayed, but in a different manner. We compare the instructions of the prophets and those of the Apostles. We see both Churches looking to the Messiah,—the one to his first, and the other to his second advent. Jos. Jones.

The Book of Joshua stands in an intimate relation to the Books of Moses on the one hand, and at the same time presents the opening page of the subsequent history on the other. We find here the fulfilment of the expectations of the patriarchs and of the promises made to them. The work that had been begun by Moses, but was not completed by him, is here brought to a fitting termination. The march out of Egypt, the leadings and the discipline of the wilderness, look to the occupation of Canaan. It has hence become customary, in recent times, to attach this book to the five preceding books as forming with them a Hexateuch, or one work in six parts; this may be admitted without assuming that all has proceeded from one pen. The Mosaic record may have been completed by another hand, just as Moses transferred the leadership of Israel to another before the purpose of their march was accomplished. The design of this book is to point out the fulfilment of God’s promise made to them and to their fathers from the beginning, and the exactness with which Joshua carried into effect the directions given him by Moses. W. H. G.

There is strong internal evidence that the original writer was contemporary with the events. In a few passages he writes in the first person, definitely including himself among the actors. “Until we were passed over” (5 : 1) “The land which the Lord swore that he would give us” (5 : 6). Note also what he writes of Rahab: “She dwelleth in Israel even unto this day” (6 : 25), showing that the record was written while Rahab yet lived. Many passages give us the definite words of conversation had or directions given, as might be expected in a narrative made at the time and on the spot. The geographical allotments of Canaan among the tribes were matters of contemporary record—wisely, if not even necessarily. The narrative itself notes the fact: “The men went and passed through the land and described it by cities into seven parts in a book” (18 : 9). These are points of strong internal proof of a record made very near the time of the events. That Joshua was himself the writer, or at least that it was done under his eye and at his instance, is eminently probable. Trained under Moses—his first and most prominent servant, associate, assistant, and after the death of Moses, his successor, it is almost certain that he was competent to write this history—and that he did. H. C.

There is no dispute that the Book of Joshua in its present form substantially presupposes the Pentateuch in its present form. The term law occurs nine times in Joshua, always denoting written divine requirement or revelation. But it denotes this with three different degrees of comprehension. In 1 : 7, 8 ; 8 : 31 ; 22 : 5 ; 23 : 6, it describes the whole of a certain body of legislation given by Moses, large enough for the government of the nation. Probably “the book of the law” (8 : 34, 35), read at a national gathering after the solemnities of the altar at Ebal, was the same (cf. De. 31 : 10-12). But “the copy of the law” (8 : 32), written (not on polished stone but) on the plaster of the altar, and therefore not very finely written, and “all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse,” apparently read as a part of the service of the occasion (8 : 34), can hardly have been more than a short section (or short sections) of the whole body of legislation elsewhere in Joshua called the law. Further, in 24 : 26, “the book of the law of God” is said to have additions made to it by Joshua; the law is not here regarded as a closed canon from the death of Moses, but as a canon begun by Moses and to be continued by his successors.

This is analogous to what we find in the New Testament and later. No proof need be cited that by the law the New Testament men often mean the Pentateuch as distinguished from the rest of the Old Testament, but they also apply the term to a wider range of writings, presumptively to the whole Old Testament (John 10 : 34 ; 15 : 25 ; 12 : 34 ; 1 Cor. 14 : 21 ; Rom. 3 : 10-19), and sometimes, possibly, to short sections of the writings they held to be sacred, e.g. Rom. 7 : 2, 3. This difference of use is important and has not been sufficiently noticed. It is not true that the writers of the Old or the New Testament apply the term the law exclusively to a large body of writings attributed to Moses, but it is true that they never apply the term to any large body of writings except such as may include the sacred writings attributed to Moses. Turning to the direct testimony given by the Book of Joshua, we find this very explicit, not only to the effect that the written law of Moses was in existence before the Book of Joshua was written, but to the effect that it was in existence before the death of Moses; that it was formally handed over by Moses to Joshua; that Joshua received and used it; that it was present when the Ebal altar was built, and was afterward read to the people. W. J. B.

The numerous references to the foregoing history of the Books of Moses render it morally certain that whenever the Book of Joshua was written the Books of Moses were already in existence. The whole framework of Pentateuchal history is presupposed by that of Joshua, which, while it serves to corroborate that history, is itself corroborated by the testimony of subsequent books. It is this peculiar feature of interdependence among the Books of the Old Testament, unlike anything to be found elsewhere, that it is wholly impossible to counterfeit, and that therefore stamps the entire narrative with the impress of substantial truth.

The Book of Joshua is quoted or referred to, and therefore its existence is implied, in Jn. 18 : 31 ; 1 S. 1 : 24 ; 3 : 21 ; Is. 28 : 21, and often in the Psalms. It is referred to in the New Testament, in the defence of Stephen (Acts 7 : 45), and it is directly quoted in Heb. 13 : 5 ; and this endorsement of the Book of

Joshua by the writers of the New Testament is our guarantee for its position in the canon. S. L.

The Book of Judges takes its name, like the other historical books, from its contents, viz., the history of certain transactions which took place in Israel under the judges. The judges were those extraordinary civil and military rulers who governed Israel in the interval between the death of Joshua and the foundation of the kingdom of Israel; except only that the judgeship of Samuel was a kind of connecting link between the two—Samuel himself being a judge, though of a different character from those that preceded him, and his government merging in the latter part of it into the kingdom of Saul; so that the times of Samuel occupy a middle place between the Judges and the Kings, belonging partly to both, but wholly to neither. Bp. Hervey.

The book is irregular in its structure. It is not a consecutive narration of events, in their order and mutual relations. It is rather a series of leading occurrences of the time, characteristic of that unsettled and turbulent period. It bears throughout the stamp of genuine and authentic history. It was evidently drawn from contemporaneous records of the events narrated, and is mainly composed of them. They have the glow and animation, and the minuteness of detail, that mark an actor in the scenes described, or an interested and diligent observer. The compiler selected from them those which were most adapted to the purpose of these books, to show God’s truthfulness and fidelity to his promises, his forbearance, and his readiness to forgive and restore the repentant. Conant.

The distinguishing feature in the functions of the Judges, from whom this book takes its name, is that these were not the ordinary rulers of the people, but were raised up by the special providence of God, not only to administer justice in Israel, but to be the “saviours” of his people from the oppression of their enemies (marg. ch. 2: 16-19; 3: 9, 15; Obad. 21). These extraordinary Judges, in delivering the chosen people from their oppressors, were not arbitrarily sent forth to their work, but were chosen to vindicate Jehovah’s righteousness, that is, his faithfulness to his covenant, in behalf of Israel. His eternal principle is, when his people return to him in penitence, he returns to them in mercy. His salvation and his righteousness go hand in hand. The Lord raised them up to save Israel, at intervals, as need required. They were the vicegerents of Him who was at one and the same time the civil, as well as the spiritual, King of Israel. A. R. F.

From its contents we can only say that it must have been composed about Samuel’s time; that is, after the death of Samson, and before the capture of Jerusalem by David. As the events related in it certainly cover a space of some hundreds of years, the writer, whoever he be, stands in the position of Moses with respect to the greater part of Genesis, being the recorder of his country’s traditions during a space generally estimated as about equal to that which intervened between the call of Abraham and the birth of Moses. There is every reason to believe that national records, which (as we have seen) existed in the days of Moses and Joshua, were continued by their successors, and that these formed the materials from which the Book of Judges was composed by its author. Of such records we have a specimen in the Song of Deborah and Barak, an historical poem embodying the chief facts of Deborah’s judgeship. It is reasonable to suppose that there may have been many such compositions, belonging to the actual time of the events, of which the historian could make use; and it is also most probable that chronicles were kept even at this early date, like those to which the writers of the later historical books refer so constantly. G. R.

The method of the Hebrew historical writers seems to have been to incorporate into their work large portions of the ancient materials without altering them, only adding occasional remarks of their own. This method is very apparent in the Book of Judges. It seems scarcely open to doubt that the mass of the book consists of the original contemporary annals of the different tribes. The minute and graphic details of the narratives, Deborah’s song, Jotham’s fable, Jephthah’s message to the king of Ammon, the exact description of the great Parliament at Mizpeh, and many other like portions of the book, must be contemporary documents. Then, again, the history of Samson the Danite, and that of the Danite expedition to Laish, indicate strongly the annals of the tribe of Dan as their common source; while the importance attached to Gilead in chs. 10, 11, and 12 points to annals of Gilead. But at the same time the presence of a compiler and editor of these various documents is distinctly visible in those prefatory remarks contained in ch. 2: 10-19; 3: 1-7, which review the whole subsequent narrative, as well as in casual observations thrown in from time to time, as at ch. 17: 6; 18: 1, etc., and in the general arrangement of the materials. There are in this book many direct references to the law and the books of Moses, A. C. H.

As the history of Judges claims to have occurred after the time of Joshua, so the composition of the work presupposes that of Joshua. It is not possible to conceive that the Book of Judges being written, the Book of Joshua was compiled subsequently. Several of the statements in Judges are confirmed in other books. The New Testament alludes to it in several passages, and this recognition is our warrant for its position in the canon. The internal proofs of its veracity are also numerous. S. L.

The style of the Book of Judges is, like that of all the historical books of the Bible, characterized by a matchless simplicity, gravity, straightforwardness of manner, carrying with it, irresistibly, the impression of the most utter impartiality and honesty of statement. The faults and crimes, alike of individuals and of the nation collectively, with all the humiliations and sufferings consequent upon their guilt, are set down with exactly the same evident historic truthfulness as their most heroic deeds and happiest prosperity. The style is also peculiarly graphic, dramatic, picturesque. While its narratives fascinate the attention of children, they are equally suited to engage and interest the theologian or the philosophical student of human history. What the historian omits to say is almost as significant as the things which he does say. How concise the narrative, and yet how completely it does manage to characterize the period, and at the same time teach the true philosophy of its strangely chequered history! Hence, the everlasting interest of it, and its inexhaustible instructiveness. An.

Of all the Old Testament books, the Judges, if read superficially, seems to reveal the least of the scheme of redemption, the progress in its development being so dubious as to appear like retrogression. Nevertheless, here also, as in all Scripture, this precious truth is discoverable in the office of the judges and the deliverances which, under God, they wrought for the people. As the reader is led from Moses to Joshua, from Joshua to the Judges, from Samuel to David, and from David to David’s Son, he cannot fail to recognize one divine plan which constantly draws nearer to the great disclosure. At times the progress of this plan may be scarcely perceptible by reason of the failures of God’s people; still, it exists; there is veritable movement. The doctrine grows, the mighty secret of the ages and of the worlds gradually approaches a full revelation; and faith discerns it as certainly in Judges as in Exodus or Joshua. Moorehead.

The two Books of Samuel, like the two Books of Kings, originally formed an undivided whole. The Septuagint translators, regarding the Book of Samuel and the Book of Kings as a complete History of the Kingdom from its foundation to its fall, divided the work into four books, which they styled Books of the Kingdoms. Jerome followed this division in the Vulgate, altering the name to Books of the Kings, which is retained as an alternative title in the English Bible.

The title Samuel does not denote authorship, but like the titles Joshua, Ruth, and Esther, commemorates the prominent actor in the events recorded in the book. Its adoption shows a true insight into the connection of the history it contains. It stands as a monument of the greatness of the Prophet who was Jehovah’s instrument for establishing the Kingdom of Israel, and guiding the chosen people through a crisis in its history second in importance only to the Exodus. A. F. K.

The Books of Samuel are so called because they describe his work for Israel; and it is not too much to say of him, that as Moses was the founder, so it was Samuel who reorganized and developed the political constitution of the Jewish nation, and enriched it with institutions which made it capable of taking the high place among the families of mankind to which the providence of God was calling it. R. P. S.—In these books Samuel stands out as the great central figure, guiding and controlling all the events of the earlier part of the history by his personal influence during his life, and whose power and spirit survived, even after his death, in that monarchy which he was God’s chosen instrument of calling into existence, and moulding into shape by his counsels and commands. To adopt the words of Keil, “the title, ’the Book of Samuel,’ was intended to indicate that the spirit of Samuel formed the soul of the true kingdom in Israel, and that the earthly throne of the Israelitish kingdom of God derived its strength and perpetuity from the Spirit of the Lord which lived in the prophet.” E. V.

Two great institutions were now to be prominently brought forward and established, both marking a distinct advance in the history of Israel, and showing forth more fully than before its typical character. These two institutions were: the Prophetic Order and the Monarchy. Both are connected with the history of Samuel. And this explains alike why the books which record this part of sacred history bear the name of Samuel, and why they close not with the death of David, as might have been expected in a biography or in a history of his reign, but with the final establishment of his kingdom. At the close of 2 S. four chapters are added as a sort of appendix, in which various events are ranged, not chronologically, but in accordance with the general plan and scope of the work, which is: to present Israel as the kingdom of God, and as under the guidance of the spirit of prophecy. This also explains two other peculiarities. In a work compiled with such an object constantly in view, we do not expect nor do we find in it a strictly chronological arrangement of events. Again, we notice large gaps in the history of Samuel, Saul, and David, long periods and important facts being omitted, with which the author must have been acquainted,—and to which, indeed, in some instances, he afterward expressly refers,—while other periods and events are detailed at great length. All these peculiarities are not accidental but designed, and in accordance with the general plan of the work. For we must bear in mind that as in the case of other parts of Holy Scripture, so in the Books of Samuel, we must not look for biographies, as of Samuel, Saul, and David, nor yet expect merely an account of their administration, but a history of the kingdom of God during a new period in its development and in a fresh stage of its onward movement toward the end. That end was the establishment of the kingdom of God in him to whom alike the Aaronic priesthood, the prophetic order, and Israel’s royalty were intended to point. These three institutions were prominently brought forward in the new period which opens in the Books of Samuel. A. E.

That these books were a part of the original Canon of Scripture has never been questioned. They are authentic history, drawn from original and contemporaneous records. Such records are frequently mentioned by name. Among them are “the book of Samuel the seer,” “the book of Nathan the prophet,” “the book of Gad the seer,” mentioned in 1 Chron. 29 : 29, and 2 Chron. 9 : 29 ; “the Chronicles of King David,” mentioned in 1 Chron. 27 : 24 ; “the book of Shemaiah the prophet,” “of Iddo the seer concerning genealogies,” mentioned in 2 Chron. 12 : 15. To these were added two special officers of the king ; namely, the recorder (2 S. 8 : 16), the king’s annalist, whose business it was to record the events of his reign, and the king’s scribe (2 S. 8 : 17 ; 2 K. 12 : 10), the royal secretary, to write the king’s commands and edicts, and do other services of the pen as the second reference shows. Conant.

If then the Book of Samuel was compiled largely from the chronicles of Samuel, Nathan, and Gad, supplemented by other records preserved in the Schools of the Prophets, it follows that it rests upon the best possible authority. Samuel is the historian of his own life-time, which included the greater part of Saul’s reign : Nathan and Gad together give the history of David’s reign. A. F. K.

Each of the three prophets, with whom David lived in the closest intimacy, Samuel, Gad, and Nathan, wrote a memoir of that part of his life which came respectively under their notice. The close relation maintained between David and Samuel is shown by the former taking refuge with the latter when he fled from the court of Saul. Gad joined him in his wanderings, and lived at his court, and Nathan was the faithful mentor of his later years. Though these books have not come down to us in their original form, we cannot doubt that we have their substance, and generally their actual contents, in the First and Second Books of Samuel, with 1 K. 1 : 2.

Another contemporary authority was the “Chronicles (or State Papers) of King David,” a record which David undertook with his characteristic love of truth and order. That the substance of this work is preserved in the “First Book of Chronicles” is clear from its very form. Beginning from Adam, with the genealogies, which the Jews justly regarded as the basis of all history, and in them giving the most minute account of the tribe of Judah and the line of David, it dismisses Saul with the genealogy of his family, and only breaks out into the form of a consecutive narrative with the battle in which he died and from which the reign of David began. The rest of the book is occupied entirely with the history of David. P. S.

Its acceptance in the Christian Church rests upon the fact that it formed an integral part of those Jewish Scriptures, which were received by our Lord and His Apostles as “given by inspiration of God, and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Our Lord appealed to one of the narratives contained in it as teaching the great principle that the ceremonial law must give way to the law of mercy : the Magnificat shows evident familiarity with the Song of Hannah : Peter, Stephen, and Paul refer to the history contained in it.

The historical accuracy of the book is remarkably borne out by the internal evidence. It is not to be denied that difficulties and discrepancies exist, which it is hard, perhaps impossible, to explain or reconcile. But the forcible simplicity and grace of the narrative ; the vividness with which the actors in the various events stand out before us; the minuteness of detail with regard to time and circumstance: the accurate descriptions of places; all agree to confirm the conclusion that the greater part of the work is derived from the testimony of eyewitnesses and contemporaries, and in many cases handed down to us in their actual words. A. F. K.

Contents of Books of Samuel. 1 S. 1-15 contains a history of Israel from the time of the birth of the prophet Samuel, to the time when David appears. The remaining sixteen chapters are made up of incidents from the life of David, including an account of the latter part of the reign of Saul. 2 S. is a history of the reign of David. The last four chapters contain six short pieces which are evidently appendices to the connected part of the book. In mentioning that David reigned forty years and six months, the Books of Samuel presuppose the death of David. W. J. B.

The history in the Book of Samuel is written on the same plan as that of the exodus from Egypt. Two actors or speakers, and a suffering or a rejoicing chorus, appear on earth; an umpire looks down from heaven, awarding praise or blame, reward or punishment. Although the scenes are continually shifting, the general plan remains the same throughout. Israel is the chorus, which passes its comments on the deeds done, which suffers or rejoices as events fall out. Jehovah is the unseen umpire, whose goings it is sometimes hard to follow in the darkness, but whose doings always reveal a power making for righteousness among men. At the opening of the history Eli and Samuel are the speakers named. As the action proceeds, Samuel and Saul stand forth before the world. When the scene next changes, David is the upholder of the right; Saul is the doer of the wrong. While one befriends, the other troubles the people. But again the scene is changed. David is the troubler and wrong-doer; Absalom, himself most unworthy, is the avenger of the wrong. The story in Samuel ends without punishment befalling the guilty captain, who had heaped up unrighteousness against himself for a generation, the great soldier, Joab. The same plan of writing history pervades the first eleven chapters in the Book of the Kings. Solomon at first maintains and represents the cause of right; Joab meets his doom by Solomon’s command. A history, so singularly written, carries proof of unity of authorship on its face. While it differs largely from the history and the legislation in the Pentateuch, the plan leaves no doubt of the writer’s indebtedness to that book. His words and ideas echo its words and ideas with unmistakable clearness. Sime.

That these books were a part of the original Canon of Scripture has never been questioned. As was said of the Books of Samuel, they are authentic history, drawn from the original and contemporaneous records there referred to. To these are to be added, “the book of the acts of Solomon,” mentioned in 1 K. 11 : 41; “the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel,” mentioned in 1 K. 14 : 19; “the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah,” mentioned in 1 K. 14 : 29. From these original records the compiler has drawn the materials of a consecutive and well-digested narrative. The arrangement is chronological; at the same time exhibiting the mutual relations of simultaneous events, wherever such occur. Conant.

Many histories are books of kings and their reigns, to which the affairs of their kingdoms are reduced. The Holy Scripture is the history of the kingdom of God among men, under the several administrations of it. The particular history now before us accounts for the affairs of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, yet with special regard to the kingdom of God among them; still it is a sacred history, much more illustrative and not less entertaining than any of the histories of the kings of the earth. H.

The two Books of Chronicles, which originally formed one, stand last of all in the Hebrew Canon. They appear to be, in a great measure, compilations from official records kept in Jerusalem, and from historical or biographical works, by Nathan, Iddo the seer, and other writings. D. F.

The writer of the First Book of Kings derives his account of Solomon from a document which he calls “the Book of the Acts of Solomon;” while the author of the Second Book of Chronicles cites three works as furnishing him with materials for this part of his history—“the book of Nathan the prophet, the prophecy of Abijah the Shilonite, and the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam the son of Nebat.” These last were certainly the works of contemporaries; and the same may be presumed of the other; since the latter compiler is not likely to have possessed better materials than the earlier. We may therefore conclude that we have in Kings and Chronicles the history of Solomon’s reign

—not perhaps exactly in the words of contemporary writers, but substantially as they delivered it. And the writers were persons who held the same high position under Solomon which the composers of the Books of Samuel had held under Saul and David. G. R.

The Books of Chronicles were obviously designed to furnish the Jewish people a record of their national history from its beginning to the time of their return from the Babylonian exile. They are prefaced by a collection of genealogies, but the more detailed narrative begins with the reign of David, under whom Jerusalem became the chosen seat of the national government and worship. The author refers to seventeen documentary sources, consisting of historical annals, prophetical monographs and commentaries on the same, and dwells at length on those acts of David and Solomon which tended to centralize the worship of Israel. He lived some time after the Babylonian exile, was probably a priest, and aimed to enhance in the minds of his readers the theocratic calling of the Jewish people and the sacred character of their institutions. A work of this kind would have been naturally prompted by the circumstances of the Jews after the rebuilding of the temple and the organization of the returned exiles at Jerusalem. Terry.

There is a marked difference between the object regarded by the author of the Kings in writing his history, and that regarded by the Chronicler. While the latter is a writer of church history, the former is a politician, recording the fortunes of the people generally. Whoever puts the Books of Kings and the Maccabees on one side, with Chronicles on the other, will feel, on passing from the former to the latter, the same change of atmosphere which we feel on passing from the civil to the church history of a country. Everything wears another look, because we are regarding the world from a new point of view and through a different medium. Events, which seemed fully detailed in the civil history of a country, appear only half recorded when we turn to its church history. But this change of handling is a change which many writers forget to recognize as imparting a justifiably different color to the story of Israel in the pages of the Chronicler when we compare his book with that of the Kings. Sime.

The First Book of the Chronicles contains another history of David’s reign. Many passages are word for word the same as the corresponding passages in the Book of Samuel; and many passages agree in substance, though differing more or less in detail. But much that is contained in Samuel is omitted in Chronicles, and much of the information in Chronicles is supplementary to the narrative of Samuel. Neither book is a complete history of David’s reign, each compiler selected from the materials before him such portions as suited his purpose. In general the compiler of the Book of Samuel gives a history of David’s reign with special reference (a) to the vicissitudes through which he was raised by the care and guidance of Jehovah to be the head of a mighty kingdom: (b) to matters of, comparatively speaking, private interest in his life: (c) to the chastisements by which he was punished for his sin. He thus portrays David the man as well as David the King. The compiler of Chronicles gives prominence (a) to all matters of religious ceremonial, calling special attention to the agency of the Priests and Levites: (b) to the chief steps in the rise and progress of David’s kingdom, omitting the reverses which from time to time checked its growth. These differences correspond remarkably to the age and object of the two historians. The unknown compiler of Samuel was undoubtedly a prophet, and his narrative is penetrated by a prophetic spirit. He drew up, no long time after the events, a narrative of the foundation of the Theocratic Monarchy, selecting such matter as illustrated God’s providential dealings with the king He had chosen.

The Book of Chronicles was written after the Return from the Captivity. Its author was most probably Ezra, who was a priest, and his main objects in compiling it were (a) to publish trustworthy genealogical records with a view to the resettlement of the land, and the re-establishment of regular services in the restored temple; (b) to rekindle something of national life and spirit, and make the people feel that they were still the representatives of the Kingdom of God, and that national prosperity depended upon faithfulness to Jehovah. With this design he drew up a compendious history, tracing the fortunes of the kingdom of David from its foundation, and selecting especially such passages of the history as present the best kings engaged in promoting the cause of religion, and regulating the services of the house of God; and moreover laying particular stress upon the direct intervention of God for the reward of righteousness and the punishment of evil-doing. Its purpose is didactic rather than historical, and its tone, in accordance with the profession of its author, priestly rather than prophetic. Hence the prominence given to religious ceremonial and Levitical and priestly work in the history of David’s reign : hence the silence with which the darker episodes of that reign are passed over. The historian must not be accused of unfaithfulness, or inaccuracy, or prejudice, for adopting such a method of treatment ; his history does not profess to be complete, and his selection of facts is justified by the special purpose which he has in view. Such a review of its past history was well calculated to quicken the energies of the nation for the new era of its existence upon which it was entering ; and to us the preservation of the work is most valuable, presenting as it does another side of the national life, and adding in no small degree (so far as concerns the period covered by the Second Book of Samuel) to the completeness and truthfulness of the picture which we can draw of David’s reign, and the lessons which we can derive from it. A. F. K.

The historical books both of the Old and New Testament are all alike in this, that they are histories not of individuals but of the Kingdom of God. Hence, among other characteristics, the comparative neglect of chronology. Plummer.

Chronology of the Judges. Current opinions may be arranged in three classes : (1) Those who in a general way defend the numeral 480 (Amer. Ed. Lange). (2) Those who hold that the period was at least a century or two longer than that (McClintock and Strong Cyc.). (3) Those who regard the numeral 480 as a century and a half too long (Pul. Com. Judges). Back to about 800 n.c. the differences of opinion in regard to biblical chronology concern matters of detail ; the differences in regard to dates earlier than about 800 n.c. are radical, and, at present, irreconcilable. In dealing with the dates previous to David, it is very common to reject the 480 found in 1 K. 6 : 1, the 300 found in Ju. 11 : 26, the 450 and the 40 found in Acts 13 : 20, 21, and other biblical numerals. But notwithstanding this confusion of current opinion, it seems to me that the problem of the biblical numerals for the times of the Judges is really not difficult of solution, provided one attends, at the outset, to certain rudimentary facts and principles. First, we need, here as elsewhere, to keep steadily in mind the familiar fact that biblical time-statements do not ordinarily give us the measurement of time from one point to another, but simply the number of successive periods that were wholly or partly included in the time described ; for example, the three days that Jesus lay in the grave were not a period of seventy-two hours, but a period of unknown length, extending over the whole or parts of the three successive days—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Again, of especial importance to the understanding of the chronology of the period of the Judges is the paying of due attention to the mode of speaking employed, for example, in Ju. 14 : 17, where it is said that Samson’s wife wept upon him “the seven days while their feast lasted.” This does not mean that she began weeping when the seven days began, but only that, after she began weeping, either the fourth day or the seventh (see verses 14, 15), she kept it up till some time on the closing day of that period of seven days. Parallel instances are 1 S. 7 : 15 ; 14 : 52 ; Nu. 14 : 33, 34 ; cf. De. 2 : 14. It is evidently supposable that the phrase “the land had rest forty years,” as used in Judges, may be a phrase of the same sort, and may simply mean that the land had rest to the close of the forty year period then current, not indicating at all when the condition of rest began.

With these points in mind, note that in Gideon’s time a change of constitution took place in Israel. The people proposed to make him king. He refused, but from that time on the judges followed one another in a continuous succession, whereas before that time the judges seem to have been raised up only on particular occasions. Add to this that with the change of constitution the Book of Judges changes its method of giving chronological data. Before this change, we have the forty year periods of rest ; after it we have none of them ; we have periods of forty years and we have times of rest, but we have no periods of which it is said that the land had rest forty years. Again, after the change, we are told how long the administration of each judge lasted, while no such item is given in regard to Gideon or any judge before him. The suggestion is very strong that for the time before the death of Gideon the forty year rest-periods include the other dates that are given. Taking this as a basis on which to work out the biblical numbers, we find that they at once fall into a consistent and complete scheme, which includes all the numbers given for the period, in the New and Old Testaments, with no need to reject or change any of them. Then if we work out the history on the basis of the chronology thus ascertained, we shall find that it at once assumes continuity, and that most of its supposed difficulties vanish. These facts, to one who actually works them through, are sufficient proof of the correctness of the scheme. It may be compactly stated as follows :

Five forty year periods, beginning with the close of the 40 years of the exodus, the other numerals given for these periods being included in the five forties (Ju. 3:11, 30; 5:31; 8:28). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 years.

Administrations of Abimelech, Tola, Jair, Samson (Ju. 9:22; 10:2, 3; 15:20, compared with 10:7), in years, 3+23+22+20= . . . . 68 "

Ammonite oppression (Ju. 10:8). . . . . . 18 " 286 "

(This is the round number 300, Ju. 11:26.) Administration of Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, Eli, and interregnum (Ju. 12:7, 9, 11, 14; 1 S. 4:18; 7:2), in years, 6+7+10+8+40+20 = . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 "

Samuel’s administration, computed, . . . . 18 " 295 "

(Perhaps this, with the 40 years of the exodus added, making 435, is the round number 450 of Acts 13:20.)

Religns of Saul, David, and 4 years of Solomon (Acts 13:21; 2 S. 5:4, 5; 1 K. 6:1), 40+ 41+4 = . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 "

(The “long number,” 1 K. 6:1), . . . 480 "

Other views shorten or lengthen the period by from 100 to 300 years. See articles in current commentaries and encyclopedias. It is quite common to regard Samson and Eli as contemporaries, and to count some of the judges as only petty officials. The scheme just given counts Samson as the hero of the Philistine oppression mentioned in Ju. 10:7, which was distinct both from the earlier oppression mentioned in Ju. 4:31; 10:11, and from the later oppressions of the times of Eli and of Saul. It also counts every judge as actually chief magistrate of Israel. The 40 in J. 13:1 is the same with that in 1 S. 4:18. By the usual mode of counting,

David’s reign of forty and one half years would be called forty-one years, as above. W. J. B.

Table of Principal Events and Years of Duration.

The Exodus, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Giving of the Law on Mount Sinai, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . in the 40th year

Conquest of Canaan by Joshua, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Division of Canaan to the Invasion of Chushan Rishathaim, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Death of Joshua, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Wars of Israel against the Canaanites, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Expedition against Benjamin (Ju. 20), . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Oppression by Chushan Rishathaim, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Othniel, and rest of Israel, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Oppression by the Moabites, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ehud, and rest of Israel, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Victory of Shamgar over the Philistines, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Oppression by Jabin, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Deborah and Barak, and rest of Israel, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Oppression by the Midianites, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Gideon, and rest, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Abimelech, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Tola, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jair, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Eli for forty years, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Then: In the East. In the West.

Oppression by the Ammon- } By the Philistines, 40 ites, 18 years: 1134-1116, } Loss of the Ark, . .

Jephthah, 6 years: 1116- } Samson’s deeds, . .

1110, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Samuel as a prophet, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ibzan, 7 years: 1110-1103, Samuel judge, . . 19

Elon, 10 years: 1103-1093, Saul king, . . . 20

Abdon, 8 years: 1093-1085, David at Hebron, 7

David at Jerusalem, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Solomon to the building of Temple, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Total, . . . 480 years. —Keil.

(See O. T., Vol. 1, pp. 61-66.)

2. S. 23 : 1 Now these be the last words of David.

David the son of Jesse saith, And the man who was raised on high saith, The anointed of the God of Jacob, And the sweet psalmist of Israel :

2. The spirit of the LORD spake by me, And his word was upon my tongue.

3. The God of Israel said, The Rock of Israel spake to me : One that ruleth over men righteously, That ruleth in the fear of God,

4. He shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, A morning without clouds ; When the tender grass springeth out of the earth,

There are no Psalms which can be pointed to with certainty as embodying the thoughts of David’s later years. These “last words of David” seem to stand alone, and have no companion in the Psalter. A. F. K.—This, his last song or psalm, his latest vision, embodied the subject that was most in his mind in the last period of his life. The Psalm recorded in the twenty-second chapter (Sec. 265) was an earlier song, and its main drift was of the past. Of this latest Psalm the main drift is of the future. The colors of this vision are brighter than those of any other. Aged though the seer was, there is a glory in this his latest vision unsurpassed in any that went before. The setting sun spreads a lustre around as he sinks under the horizon unequalled by any he diffused even when he rode in the height of the heavens. W. G. B.

This prophecy is the companion and complement of the prophecy in ch. 7. There the promise of an eternal dominion is given to the house of David, finding a partial fulfilment in his descendants, and a complete fulfilment only in Christ : here David himself is taught by inspiration to draw the portrait of a ruler, some features of which were partially realized in Solomon and the better kings of Judah, but which finds its perfect realization only in Christ. The features of the portrait are developed and the outlines filled in by subsequent prophets, with ever

Through clear shining after rain.

5. Verily my house is not so with God ; Yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, Ordered in all things, and sure : For it is all my salvation, and all my desire, Although he maketh it not to grow.

6. But the ungodly shall be all of them as thorns to be thrust away, For they cannot be taken with the hand :

7. But the man that toucheth them Must be armed with iron and the staff of a spear ; And they shall be utterly burned with fire in their place.

increasing clearness pointing forward to Him who was to fulfil and more than fulfil all the anticipations of prophecy. A. F. K.—These his “last words” are the Divine attestation of all that he had sung and prophesied in the Psalms concerning the spiritual import of the kingdom which he was to found, in accordance with the Divine message that Nathan had been commissioned to bring to him. Hence these “last words” must be regarded as an inspired prophetic utterance by David, before his death, about the King and the Kingdom of God in their full and real meaning. A. E.

That which distinguishes David not only from all earthly kings, but even from all the other pious kings of Judah, is the fact that he was not only a sovereign but a prophet. His prophetic character is so much blended with his royalty, that believers may call him a prophet-king, just as Melchisedec is called a priest-king. David “not only uttered prophecies, but did and lived prophecies ; his person and position in history, his whole life and labors, were prophetic.” Of all the living types of Christ in the Old Testament, he was one of the most perfect. His adversities foreshadowed the sufferings, his prosperity the triumph, of the spiritual King of Israel. While describing his own experiences, he could not help picturing, though less clearly, the experiences of Christ, who was to be born of him. The Holy Spirit so guided his pen, that David’s individuality was often completely identified with that of his Divine Son; for his hallowed fancy, breaking through the limits of his own personal experiences, stepped over into those which were to be exclusively peculiar to Christ, and he described these with as great intensity of perception and power of utterance as if he had really experienced them himself. The light of Messianic prophecy, which hitherto had been more or less dim and diffuse, was in him concentrated and made so definite as to be reflected with even increasing lustre through all the revelations of later prophets. De Liefde.

The opening words point back to an antique prophecy, the prophecy of Balaam on the fate and glory of Israel. His oracle corresponds with Balaam’s, but it also contrasts with it. David’s vision is no cloudy and imperfect glimpse of a star and sceptre; he sees the King, the true King of men, and the new day which the King will make for men. He sees in the future the ideal Ruler, the true Divine King who was to arise on the earth. In sweet, pure figures the kingdom of Christ passed before the mind of David. When the true King came, the darkness in which men sat would be over and gone; the rain of tears, falling because of the tyranny of man to man, would cease. His hope was based on the “everlasting covenant” which God had made with him. On His word, His promise, His covenant, the dying king bases his hope for his house and for the world. An.

The song falls into four parts. First, there is an elaborate introduction, descriptive of the singer and the inspiration which gave birth to his song; secondly, the main subject of the prophecy, a Ruler among men, of wonderful brightness and glory; thirdly, a reference to the Psalmist’s own house and the covenant God had made with him; and finally, in the way of contrast to the preceding, a prediction of the doom of the ungodly. W. G. B.

The passage has the distinctive features of Hebrew poetry—the repetitious parallelism and the exuberant imagery. It is also very terse; consequently elliptical, and sometimes in a measure obscure. To give the greater force to the few special points he has to make, he states in the outset who he is and under what authority he speaks. “The man raised up on high”—taken from following the flock of Jesse and exalted to be the Lord’s Anointed over his chosen people. “The sweet Psalmist of Israel”—literally, he who is sweet, delightful as to the songs of Israel; i.e., whose sacred songs are charming, mellifluous, precious to the ear and to the soul. In fourfold phrase; in four diverse forms of expression he affirms that he spake under inspiration of God. “The Spirit spake by me;” it was his word that fell from my tongue; “the God of Israel said;” “the Rock of Israel spake to me,” thus:—and this is the first and main sentiment of this song: “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.” Inasmuch as he is set to act for God and under God, let him be true to God’s high behest; let him fairly represent his own Infinite King and Lord. God ordains human government only for the ends of justice and righteousness. Men who rule for other ends and unto other intended results are an utter abomination before him. Verse 4 makes prominent the blessings which attend just and upright ruling. Such a ruler is to his people as the light of morning when the sun rises, even a cloudless morning; and as the grass which springs up under clear light (sunshine) after rain. Verse 5 is difficult, the choice of constructions lying between the interrogative and the affirmative; the former thus: For is not my house so with God (i.e., like these figurative representations)? For he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all respects and sure (faithfully kept); for this is all my salvation and all my desire; shall it not therefore prosper? With this construction the sense is unexceptionable. Over against the prosperity of the just and honest ruler, the sons of Belial—wicked, unjust men—shall be as thorns all thrust away; not to be touched by the hand; but the man who has occasion to touch them must be armed with iron and wood like the shaft of a spear. Then let them all be burned where they lie, or (as some take the last word)—for their utter end, destruction. Wicked rulers come to an end of unmitigated ruin. Thorns they are, torn out by their roots; handled with instruments of wood and iron and without mercy; then fired and burned till they are no more. The fruits of good and just ruling are cheering as the light of the new day; grateful and welcome as the fresh vegetation of grass and flower under sunshine after rain. Extreme and utter is the contrast under the reign of the sons of Belial. This sentiment is worthy to be the last thought of King David—worthy to be embalmed in the poetic strains of his latest inspired song. H. C.

1. The sweet psalmist of Israel. This title seems most eminently to belong to David, as he was the person who had brought to perfection the music of the Jewish service, having not only composed the psalms, but the music also, and having prescribed to the performers their sev- eral parts. Gray.

Singing of psalms is a sweet ordinance, very agreeable to those that delight in praising God. It is reckoned among the honors to which David was raised up, that he was a psalmist: in that he was as truly great, as in his being the anointed of the God of Jacob. Note, It is true preferment to be serviceable to the church in acts of devotion, and instrumental to promote the blessed work of prayer and praise. Observe, Was David a prince? He was so for Jacob. Was he a psalm- ist? He was so for Israel. H.

2, 3. “The Spirit of the Lord spake by him, and his word was in his tongue;” thus sealing the truth and certainty of his Divine inspira- tion, and, in consequence of that, the sacred authority of his writings to endless generations. Delaney.—Here are three that spake: The Spirit of the Lord; the God of Israel, and the Rock of Israel; which some think is an intima- tion of the Trinity of persons in the Godhead; the Father, The God of Israel, the Son, the Rock of Israel, and the Spirit, proceeding from the Fa- ther and the Son, who spake by the prophets, and particularly by David, and whose word was not only in his heart, but in his tongue, for the benefit of others. David here avows his Divine inspiration, that in his psalms and in this com- position here, the Spirit of God spake by him. He and other holy men spake and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. This puts an honor upon the Book of Psalms and recommends them to our use in our devotions, that they are words which the Holy Ghost teaches. H.

3,4. The second half of verse 3 draws, with a few strong strokes—there are but six words in the original—an outline portrait of an ideal king, ruling with perfect justice, controlled and guided by the fear of God. Verse 4 depicts in figurative language the blessings of his reign. His appearance will be like the life-giving sun- shine of a cloudless morning; blessings will follow him as verdure clothes the earth from the united influences of sunshine and rain. A. F. K.

The second part of the introduction (verses 2, 3) stamps the prophecy with a fourfold mark of inspiration: “The Spirit of the Lord spake by me” “His word was in my tongue.” “The God of Israel said.” “The Rock of Is- rael spake to me,” the faithful One, whose words are stable as a rock, and who provides for Israel a foundation-stone, elect and precious, immovable as the everlasting hills. So remark- able an introduction must be followed by no or- dinary prophecy. If the prophecy should bear on nothing more remarkable than some earthly successor of David, all these sublime prelimi- nary utterances would be singularly out of place. The great subject of the prophecy is a Ruler over men. The Revised Version is at once more literal and more expressive than the Authorized Version.

“One that ruleth over men righteously, Ruling in the fear of God, He shall be as the light of the morning.”

It is a vision of a remarkable Ruler, not a Ruler over the kingdom of Israel merely, but a Ruler “over men.” The Ruler seen is One whose government knows no earthly limits, but prevails wherever there are men. Solomon could not be the ruler seen, for, wide though his em- pire was, he was king of Israel only, not king of men. Every other human application is out of the question. The “Ruler over men” of this vision must have been identified by David with Him “in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed.” It is worthy of very special re- mark that the first characteristic of this Ruler is “righteousness.” There is no grander or more majestic word in the language of men. Not even love or mercy can be preferred to right- eousness. And this expression is common to the whole class of prophecies that predict the Messiah. “Behold, a King shall reign in right- eousness, and princes shall rule in judgment.” “There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and the spirit of the fear of the Lord shall rest on Him, and righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins.” There is no lack in the New Testament of passages to magnify the love and mercy of the Lord Jesus, yet it is made very plain that righteousness was the founda- tion of all His work. “Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness,” were the words with which He removed the objections of John to His baptism, and they were words that described the business of His whole life: to fulfil all right- eousness for His people and in His people—for them, to satisfy the demands of the righteous law and bear the righteous penalty of transgres- sion; in them to infuse His own righteous spirit and mould them into the likeness of His right- eous example, to sum up the whole law of right- eousness in the law of love, and by His grace instil that law into their hearts. Such essen- tially was the work of Christ. And Christ’s work was constantly done “in the ear of God,” with the highest possible regard for His will and reverence for His law. “I must be about my Father’s business,” is his first word, and among the last is, “Not my will, but thine be done.” W. G. B.

David foresees that in due time the ideal Ruler, the true Divine King, will arise on the earth, who will be of a perfect justice, because he rules in the fear of God. It is the King for whose advent the earth groans and travails; the King whom men have been trying to find in all their political schemes and revolutions; a King of a perfect equity, meting out to men of every condition the due reward of their deeds, attempting his justice with mercy because He fears God. It is the King of whom in after ages the prophets prophesied—

“Behold the days come, saith the Lord, That I will raise up unto David a righteous Branch; A King shall reign and prosper, And shall execute judgment and justice in the earth; And this is the Name by which He shall be called, Jehovah our Righteousness.”

It is the King of whose advent seers and sages dreamed in hope, believing that men, so miserable under the unjust rulers who consumed them, would be lifted by his coming into ecstasies of joy and praise; that they would “rejoice greatly and shout for joy,” because their true King had come to them at last, “righteous and having salvation.” It is the King who in his lowliness rode into Jerusalem on an ass, welcomed by the hosannahs of little children; who went meekly to the Cross, and tasted death for every man, that He might redeem us unto life eternal; who will come again, in the glory of his Father, to repeat in power all that He once wrought in meekness, to establish his kingdom on the earth, and to gather into it the nations. This is the King whom King David saw when death lifted the crown from his weary head,—Christ, the ideal Ruler, the sole, true, and perfect King of men.

As he looked steadfastly into the future, this tender yet august Figure rose before him; and as he contemplated it he saw—ch, with what thankful wonder and surprise!—a kingdom which surpassed all earthly kingdoms by as much as “the Just One,” the ideal Ruler, is fairer than the sons of men. One cannot but be touched by the sweet pure figures in which the kingdom of Christ passed before the mind of David. Think what the kings he knew were like—the kings of Egypt, Assyria, Philistia; what Saul was like; nay, even what David’s own reign had been like. What tyranny and mutiny, what wars, famines, exactions, revolts had he known in these rulers and their realms! With what surprise and delight, then, must he have beheld a King whose reign was to be the reign of gentleness and fostering love; a just King, and yet a King whose influence should be “as the light of the morning when the sun rises,” of “a morning without clouds,” of a morning that, coming and “shining after rain,” would bring a fervent gracious heat, beneath which the earth would clothe itself in robes of fresh and “tender green” (verse 4). David had often seen the fields smitten into barrenness by the fierce heat of an Oriental sun; he had heard the rushing showers of the heavy Eastern rains, and when the morning broke without clouds and the sun shone on the saturated earth, he had seen the barren plains turn green in a day, the tender grass springing up as at the touch of an enchanter’s wand, and the lilies of the field clothing the grass as with the robes of a king and loading the air with fragrance. And it was under this figure that he conceived the Messianic reign. When the true King came, the darkness in which men sat would be over and gone; the rain of tears, falling forever because of the tyranny of man to man, would cease. The Sun would rise with healing on his wings. A new happy day would be born out of the eternity of God. All that was pure, and lovely, and sweet in human character and life would spring to meet it, and rise into new, fairer, and more fruitful forms. Alas! that the King should have come, and that the kingdom should even yet be so far off! Alas! that David’s hope should still be a hope to us, and little more! Yet let us cherish this hope. It will be fulfilled. When our hearts are sad and weary, let us patiently look forward to the day yet to dawn, the morning without clouds, whose sun, shining after our tears, will draw forth all the peaceable fruits of righteousness. Cox.

As in a clear mirror, the words of David bring before us the King, the blessing, and the final triumph of God’s sovereignty. Yea, verily, this King is ruler in the full force of the word, and the old legend does not thus amaze us, that on His entering the judgment-hall of Pilate the eagles on the Roman banner bowed before Him in humble reverence. Wherever He comes, He reigns over the hearts and minds of His people, through His word and Spirit; and no sooner has He taken up His abode in any soul, than there arises to it in the heavens the friendly sun. The blessing which He brings is as great as the brightness which the king of day continually sheds forth in this wide circle. No light without heat, no heat without fruitfulness, but light and life, growth and fertility, truth and clearness, courage in life and comfort in death, the rising of this Sun brings from on high to all who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. The darkness may indeed endure for a time, but the final triumph of God’s kingdom is as little doubtful as that of the mid-day sun over the clouds which would obscure his glory. Van O.

Indirectly, the passage suggests two essential requirements of human rulers among men. B. — They must be just, both to those over whom they rule, in allowing them their rights and properties; and between those over whom they rule, using their power to right the injured against the injurious. It is not enough that they do no wrong, but they must not suffer wrong to be done. They must rule in the fear of God; that is, they must themselves be possessed with a fear of God, by which they will be effectually restrained from all acts of injustice and oppression: Nehemiah was so (ch. 5 : 15), So did not I, because of the fear of God; and Joseph (Gen. 42 : 18). They must also endeavor to promote the fear of God—that is, the practice of religion, among those over whom they rule. The magistrate is to be the keeper of both tables, and to protect both godliness and honesty. H.

5. For is not my house thus with God? for an eternal covenant hath he made for me, ordered in all and secured: for all my salvation and all good pleasure shall he not cause it to spring forth?** This seems the most probable rendering of an obscure passage. The meaning then will be: Is not my house in such relation to God, because He has made an eternal covenant with me, that I may look for the righteous ruler to arise out of it, bringing with him all these attendant blessings? “The eternal covenant” is the promise in ch. 7 : 12 ff., to which David refers as the ground of his confidence in the fulfilment of this prophecy in and through his house. The epithets “ordered in all and secured” compare the covenant to a carefully drawn and properly attested legal document. Finally he expresses his confidence that God will in due time cause the salvation promised to him and his house, and all His own good pleasure, to grow and prosper. A. F. K.

The key to the passage will be found in the expression “my house.” When David speaks of his house, he means his dynasty. In this sense his “house” had been made the subject of the most gracious promise. “Moreover, the Lord telleth thee that He will make thee an house. . . . And thine house and thy kingdom shall be made sure forever before thee. . . . Then David said, . . . What is my house, that Thou hast brought me thus far? . . . Thou hast spoken also of Thy servant’s house for a great while to come.” The king felt profoundly on that occasion that his house was even more prominently the subject of Divine promise than himself. What roused his gratitude to its utmost height was the gracious provision for his house. Surely the covenant referred to in the passage now before us, “ordered in all things and sure,” was this very covenant announced to him by the prophet Nathan, the covenant that made this provision for his house. It is impossible to think of him recalling this covenant and yet saying, “Verily my house is not so with God” (Revised Version). But, take the marginal reading—“Is not my house so with God?” Is not my dynasty embraced in the scope of this promise? Hath He not made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure? And will He not make this promise, which is all my salvation and all my desire, to grow, to fructify? It is infinitely more natural to represent David on this joyous occasion congratulating himself on the promise of long continuance and prosperity made to his dynasty, than dwelling on the unhappy condition of the members of his family circle. And the facts of the future correspond to this explanation. Was not the government of David’s house or dynasty in the main righteous, at least for many a reign, conducted in the fear of God, and followed by great prosperity and blessing? David himself, Solomon, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah—what other nation had ever so many Christlike kings? What a contrast was presented to this in the main by the apostate kingdom of the ten tribes, idolatrous, God-dishonoring, throughout! And as to the growth or continued vitality of his house, its “clear shining after rain,” had not God promised that He would bless it, and that it would continue forever before Him? He knew that, spiritually dormant at times, his house would survive, till a living root came from the stem of Jesse, till the Prince of life should be born from it, and once that plant of renown was raised up, there was no fear but the house would be preserved forever. From this point it would start on a new career of glory; nay, this was the very Ruler of whom he had been prophesying, at once David’s Son and David’s Lord; this was the root and the offspring of David, the bright and the morning star. Conducted to this stage in the future experience of his house, he needed no further assurance, he cherished no further desire. The covenant that rested on Him and that promised Him was ordered in all things and sure. The glorious prospect exhausted his every wish. “This is all my salvation and all my desire.” W. G. B.

He hath made with me an everlasting covenant. Whatever trouble a child of God may have the prospect of, still he has some comfort or other to balance it with, and none like this. It may be understood of the covenant of royalty (in the type), which God made with David and his seed, touching the kingdom (Ps. 132 : 11, 12). But it must look further, to the covenant of grace made with all believers, that God will be, in Christ, to them a God, which was signified by the covenant of royalty, and therefore the promises of the covenant are called the sure mercies of David (Is. 55 : 3). It is this only that is the everlasting covenant, and it cannot be imagined that David, who, in so many of his psalms, speaks so clearly concerning Christ, and the grace of the Gospel, should forget it in his last words. God has made a covenant of grace with us in Jesus Christ, and we are here told, First, That it is an everlasting covenant, from everlasting, in the contrivance and counsel of it, and to everlasting, in the continuance and consequences of it. Secondly, That it is ordered, well ordered in all things, admirably well, to advance the glory of God, and the honor of the Mediator, together with the highest well-being of the trusting believer. H.

David could rely on his covenant because it was “equipped with all things,” because it provided for all events, even for “the falling away” of his seed : because God had assured him that, even if his seed should commit iniquity, though He would chasten them, He would not take away his mercy from them. The covenant was “attested,” made sure, by this gracious provision ; for if even the faithlessness of men could not annul the covenant, what could annul it ? God would never be faithless ; and therefore David was certain that God would cause “all the salvation” promised to his children to spring forth, that all the “good pleasure” of the Lord, as expressed in the covenant, would be accomplished. Is not our covenant, then, an everlasting covenant ? Has not God pledged Himself that the world shall be redeemed, that all flesh shall see his salvation ? Has He not assured us that the unfaithfulness of men shall not make his redeeming purpose of none effect ? that if the seed of Christ commit iniquity, though He will chasten them for their sins, He will never remove his mercy from them ? We too, then, have a covenant on which we may rely. It is equipped at all points, makes provision for all events. If our unfaithfulness cannot annul it, nothing can annul it ; for God is faithful who hath promised : He cannot change nor lie. It is on God’s redeeming purpose and intention, on his eternal will for the salvation of all who can and will be saved, that we must stay our hearts when they are weak and sad. We cannot build our hopes on ourselves, on our fidelity, our loyalty, for we veer and change before every breath ; nor on our neighbors, for they are variable as we. But God sits on high, above all reach of change, carrying out the steadfast purpose of his love through the very vicissitudes which obscure Him from our sight and set us doubting whether for ourselves or others. Let us trust in Him. Let us rest in the love from which “neither death, nor even life,” neither time, nor even change can in anywise separate us. Cox.

6,7. The last part of the prophecy, in the way of contrast to the leading vision, is a prediction of the doom of the ungodly. The revised translation is much the clearer :

“But the ungodly shall be all of them as thorns to be thrust away, For they cannot be taken with the hand, But the man that toucheth them Must be armed with iron and the staff and spear, And they shall be utterly burned with fire in their place.”

While some would fain think of Christ’s sceptre as one of mercy only, the uniform representation of the Bible is different. In this, as in most predictions of Christ’s kingly office, there is an instructive combination of mercy and judgment. In the bosom of one of Isaiah’s sweetest predictions, he introduces the Messiah as anointed by the Spirit of God to proclaim “the day of vengeance of our God.” In a subsequent vision, Messiah appears marching triumphantly “with dyed garments from Bozrah, after treading the people in His anger and trampling them in His fury.” Malachi proclaimed Him “the Sun of righteousness, with healing under His wings,” while His day was to burn as an oven and consume the proud and the wicked like stubble. Expressions equally clear and strong are found in his own utterances, and in the Apocalypse. Nor could it be otherwise. The union of mercy and judgment is the inevitable result of the righteousness which is the foundation of His government. Sin is the abominable thing which He hates. To separate men from sin is the grand purpose of His government. For this end, He draws His people into union with Himself, thereby forever removing their guilt, and providing for the ultimate removal of all sin from their hearts and the complete assimilation of their natures to His holy nature. Blessed are they who enter into this relation ; but alas for those who, for all that He has done, prefer their sins to Him ! “The ungodly shall be all of them as thorns to be thrust away.” W. G. B.

These, then, are the scenes which passed before David, as at the last his eyes grow large and clear with the inspiration of the Almighty; these the scenes which pass before us as we listen to the “oracle” of the son of Jesse. First of all, there rose before him an image of the perfect Man, the ideal Ruler, with no iron sceptre in his hand, ruling over men not by force, but by justice, not for his own aggrandizement, but for their good; blending mercy with justice because He is animated by the fear of God. As the lines of that august yet gracious Form grow dim, there rises before him a vision of the earth drenched with fertilizing showers, rejoicing in the clear shining of a morning without clouds, and greeting the benignant rays with springing verdure and fragrant incense. Then, he remembers the day when he first sat in peace on the throne of Israel, resolving in his grateful heart that he would build a house for the God who had “highly exalted” him. What a humbling and bewildering pain it was to him to learn that this honor was denied him! that the blood on his hands, though its stains had been contracted in the service of God, unfitted him to build a temple for Jehovah! And God, how tenderly He had turned sorrow into joy by choosing that moment to assure him that his own house should never fail, that the true King of men should be a branch from his stem, that the renovated earth and new heavenly day should be possessed by his seed! And, last of all, there rises up before him a field overrun with thorns, which the Divine ministers pluck up with gauntleted hands, and beat down with their burnished spears, and commit to the consuming flames.

What a grand vision it is! How wide its scope! How much it suggests! What a magnificent consummation of David’s magnificent career! What a Divine close to that most human life! The psalmist rises into the seer, the king into the father of the King of kings; and David passes from us radiant with an excellent and surpassing glory, at his highest moment, in his loftiest mood, the heavenly and eternal splendor dawning on him as his eyes close on the vanities of earth. Cox.

One psalm there is attributed to David, which is, at any rate, the work of an old man—a sweet song into which mellow wisdom has condensed its final lessons—and a snatch of it may stand instead of any summing-up of the life by us:

“Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and enjoy security; Delight thyself also in the Lord,

And He shall give thee the desires of thy heart.

Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him.

Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken.

I have seen the wicked in great power, And spreading himself like a green tree. . . Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not.”

May we not apply the next words to the psalmist himself, and hear him calling us to look on him as he lies on his dying bed—disturbed though it were by ignoble intrigues of hungry heirs—after so many storms nearing the port; after so many vicissitudes, close to the unchanging home; after so many struggles, resting quietly on the breast of God: “Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace.” Into this opal calmness, as of the liquid light of sunset, all the flaming splendors of the hot day have melted. The music of his songs die away into “peace;” as when some master holds our ears captive with tones so faint that we scarce can tell sound from silence, until the jar of common noises, which that low sweetness had deadened, rushes in.

One strain of a higher mood is preserved for us in the historical books; that prophecy of the true King, whom his own failures and sins, no less than his consecration and victories, had taught him to expect. The dying eyes see on the horizon of the far off future the form of Him who is to be a just and perfect ruler; before the brightness of whose presence, and the refreshing of whose influence, verdure and beauty shall clothe the world. As the shades gather, that radiant glory to come brightens. He departs in peace, having seen the salvation from afar. It was fitting that this fullest of his prophecies should be the last of his strains, as if the rapture which thrilled the trembling strings had snapped them in twain. And then, for earth, the richest voice which God ever tuned for his praise was hushed, and the harp of Jesse’s son hangs untouched above his grave. But for him death was God’s last, best answer to his prayer, “O Lord, open Thou my lips;” and as that cold but most loving hand unclothes him from the weakness of flesh, and leads him in among the choirs of heaven, we can almost hear again his former thanksgiving breaking from his immortal lips, “Thou hast put a new song into my mouth,” whose melodies, unsaddened by plaintive minors of penitence and pain, are yet nobler and sweeter than the psalms which he sang here, and left to be the solace and treasure of all generations! A. M.