Daniel 12

12:1 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

3. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn 4 many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. 5 Then I Daniel looked, and, behold, there stood other two, the one on the brink of the river 6 on this side, and the other on the brink of the river on that side. And one said to the man clothed in linen, which was above the waters of the river, How long shall it be to the end of 7 these wonders? And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was above the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and swore by him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times, and an half; and when they have made an end of breaking in pieces the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished. 8 And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my lord, what shall be the issue of these 9 things? And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are shut up and sealed till the 10 time of the end. Many shall purify themselves, and make themselves white, and be refined; but the wicked shall do wickedly; and none of the wicked shall understand: but 11 they that be wise shall understand. And from the time that the continual burnt offering shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand 12 two hundred and ninety days. Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three 13 hundred and five and thirty days. But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and shalt stand in thy lot, at the end of the days.

Chap. 12. This chapter speaks of a time of extraordinary trouble, from which, however, the people “written in the book of life” shall be delivered (verse 1); alludes to the resurrection and to the eternal retribution of the righteous and the wicked (verses 2, 3); directs Daniel to seal up the vision against the time of the end (verses 4, 9); gives designations of time (verses 5-12), and finally assures Daniel that he shall have his lot with the righteous (verse 13).

1-11. The first verse begins with saying that these events occur “at that time”-i.e., at the same time of which the previous chapter speaks, especially the time when those scenes of violent persecution of the Jews took place, noticed specially verses 31-35. A time of great trouble had been already indicated; it is resumed and reaffirmed here for the sake of further remark upon it. “Shall Michael stand up?” This Michael has been already introduced to us and in precisely the same relations, “standing up for thy people”-the Jewish nation, considered as the Lord’s chosen ones, and also as being somewhat under Daniel’s care also. (See chap. 10:13, 21.) In verse 4 the direction to “shut up the words and to seal the book, reminds us that the same direction was given for the third vision (chap. 8:26), and that “the time of the end” has been repeatedly before us (in chaps. 8:17, 19; 11:27, 35, 40), and practically in chap. 11:26 also, plainly showing that these events and those, being brought within the same limitations of time, are substantially identical. In verse 6 “these wonders” can be none other than those which have been presented in the preceding parallel visions. There are no other to which the phrase can refer. Chap. 8:24 says, “He shall destroy wonderfully”-the same Hebrew word as here. In verse 7 “the holy people” must be the same as before in chap. 11:32-35; the same as “the host and the stars” of chap. 8:10-13, and “the mighty and the holy people” whom he “shall destroy” (chap. 8:24). In verses 8, 9 Daniel says he does not yet understand all he would of these things, just as he had said before (chap. 8:27). The revealing angel speaks here also of “the time of the end”-a phrase with which we are already entirely familiar, and which connects these disclosures most perfectly with those of the previous part of this vision and with those of the other visions parallel to this. The allusions in verse 10 to “the wise” carry us to chap. 11:35, while the case of the wicked corresponds with the view given of the apostates in chap. 11:30, 32. In verse 11 “the taking away of the daily sacrifice and the setting up of the abomination that maketh desolate,” cannot possibly be separated from the same thing put in the same words (chaps. 11:31; 8:11). There is therefore the most abundant evidence of the closest connection between this chapter, on the one hand, and the eleventh, and also the parallel vision of chap. 8, on the other. The events referred to are the very same; the time of their occurrence is the same. The bonds of philological connection are of the very strongest kind.

1. To the first verse we have only to give the obvious sense, already made plain by its manifest allusion to things previously introduced. “At that time” must be near the time of the death of Antiochus, with which the previous chapter closed. “Michael” we know already as the great archangel-protector of the Jewish people. “The children of thy people” have been sufficiently identified as the Jews—thought of in their peculiar relations to Daniel. This “time of trouble” is the same terrible persecution which Antiochus waged against the pious Jews—as we saw in the vision of chap. 8, and in that of the eleventh. But “at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one found written in the book”—i.e., of life. H. C.

1-3. To whom and to what do these verses refer? The primary application seems clear. The phrases “at that time,” “a time of trouble,” “the wise” or “understanding ones,” closely connect these verses with the previous chapter (11 : 40). Therefore if the latter portion of chap. 11 refers primarily to events connected with the last days of Antiochus Epiphanes, the opening verses of chap. 12 may be taken to refer to the same period.

But it is felt that this application is true in general outlines only. It is inadequate to illustrate the details, and insufficient to exhaust the spirituality of the verses. Hence it is rightly conceived that the Divine communication here made to Daniel was intended to be applicable for all times of persecution; and the passage—read by the light which our Lord has thrown upon it (cf. Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21)—is replete to the Christian mind with thoughts of resurrection and judgment. B. C.

2. This second verse I understand to allude to the literal resurrection. But the manner and purpose of this allusion should be closely studied. Negatively, the revealing angel does not allude to it because his prophetic narrative has reached the literal resurrection in its chronological order—i.e., has brought down the world’s history to that point. This is simply impossible in view of the manifest connection of this entire chapter with the previous parallel visions, and especially with chap. 11. Nor does he allude to it for the sake of teaching the doctrine of the general resurrection as a new truth. For he does not here affirm or even imply a general universal resurrection. He does not say “all that are in their graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth.” It remained for the great Author of the resurrection to make the first full announcement of the universal resurrection. All that is said here is that many, not all, but “many out of those that sleep in the dust shall wake to a new life.” Yet again, the angel does not affirm that then, at that time, many shall arise. He might have said this; probably would if he had meant so. But he did not say this. Positively, in my view, the resurrection is suggested here because of its relations to eternal retribution. So the last clause of this verse and also verse 3 would indicate. This eternal retribution is suggested by his thought of the noble Maccabean heroes, on the one hand, and of the vile apostates from their Jewish faith and of the cruel Syrian persecutors, on the other. To see holiness and sin in such intensive forms; to see some men so nobly good and others so meanly and malignantly wicked, naturally leads the mind to eternal retribution. Remember (the revealing angel would say), remember for your consolation and for the relief of your burdened heart, that God is surely just, and that His justice will not sleep forever. There will be a glorious reward for the righteous; and prominent among these will be the righteous dead who “fell by the sword, by flame, by captivity, and by spoil for many days” (chap. 11 : 33). There will also be a fearful doom of shame and everlasting contempt for those guilty apostates and their cruel Syrian associates who inflict these sufferings on the faithful servants of God. That this is the very thought of the revealing angel is made yet more sure by verse 3, where he refers explicitly to those noble Jewish martyrs: “They that be wise” (in Hebrew “the maschilim”); the very name given them in chap. 11 : 33, 35. Those who suffered so heroically and labored so earnestly to turn their Jewish brethren from idolatry to righteousness “shall shine as the brightness of the firmament and as the stars forever and ever.” They stood and fell as “stars”—distinguished servants of God. (See chap. 8 : 10.) Now their joyous reward shall be to shine as the stars in the glorious firmament of heaven forever and ever. This explanation of a passage, usually accounted very difficult, seems to me to be entirely satisfactory. The thought of final eternal retribution is certainly altogether in place here in view of the circumstances. It was legitimately reached through the resurrection. This great fact of our being was neither new nor strange to the people of God in that age. The allusion in Isa. 26 and Ezek. 37 to the resurrection shows that the idea was even familiar. Hence his casual allusion to it, with no effort to state the doctrine of a universal resurrection in its full rounded form. H. C.

Even the body, as we now find it, is the crown of all material objects, the most admirable instance of the Divine workmanship—fearfully and wonderfully made—the perfection of beauty, the theme of the poet, the model of the artist, the prize of the warrior—“the human face and form divine”—our language is blamed with a want of words to speak its praise, while it is yet “of the earth, earthy.” Conceive, then, if you can, what it shall be in the resurrection, putting on incorruption, and bidding farewell to hunger, thirst, disease, deformity and decay; a stranger to distress; proof against the undermining progress of years; like gold tried in the fire, bright and indestructible—and that not for a brief period. For, look again, you see the mortal put on immortality, ever fresh as the morning, while ages after ages roll their mighty rounds. R. T.

2. 3. When our Lord, referring to what was plainly set down in the Book of Daniel, said that all judgment was committed into His hands because He was the Son of Man, He referred to the description of the dominion of the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, seen in the night visions of Daniel. And when He spoke of the resurrection of life and the resurrection of damnation, what was it but a Divine illumination and paraphrase of the great resurrection text in Daniel, that they who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt; when they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars forever and ever? Christ it was and His Spirit that spake through all the prophets; but when Christ came on earth as the Word made flesh, then the Divine predictions in Daniel and all others became incarnate in Him, and the truth was seen and felt, no more in the difficulty or dimness of prophetic hieroglyphics, but living, moving, acting. The words that Christ uttered came as tongues of flame from the eternal world, touching men’s souls as with fire; and all His revelations concerning the future retribution for the wicked assumed an awful distinctness, whether investing selected persons standing for classes of men, as Lazarus and Dives, and couched beneath the coloring and imagery of heaven and hell, personifying realities, or pealed forth in decisive language, as sharp and startling as the archangel’s trumpet, These shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal! Was it any pleasure to our blessed Redeemer to unveil the secrets of the world of woe? Is it not all in mercy, all in love, that He puts for us, in such vivid light, the resurrection of life on one side and the resurrection of damnation on the other, and bids us choose? G. B. C.

Whenever the Gospel is preached, this alternative is set before you; the alternative of “shining like the sun forever; or of awakening to shame and everlasting contempt.” If there were no judgment seat at which we must appear, we might have our election between peace of conscience and the gratification of our desires. But our course here is a preparation for our course hereafter. Never dissever in your thoughts a life of piety and a life of honor; there is no glory, no happiness, but in the love and service of God. R. Hall.

The Gospel alone has brought immortality to light. In the place of annihilation, or the transmigration of souls, or the dim place of shadows and of ghosts, or a paradise of sensual gratification, it reveals to us an eternity of moral pleasure or of moral pain, the eternal weight of glory or the wrath of God without mixture. Everything else makes this world substance, and the other world shadow. The Bible alone makes this world shadow, and the other world substance. While it makes this world merely the vestibule of our being, it alone renders it truly valuable, by making every moment and every purpose take strong hold of eternity. F. W. Wayland.—This subject of an eternal life is so vast and momentous that it will bear to be looked at in every aspect, and under every incidence of light. It is whether God is building out of the materials of His universe a gigantic tomb, or a glorious temple for living worshippers—whether we are inseriwhen, to make it heir of His own life, He gave Himself. Ker.

3. And they that be wise shall shine. The words allude to chap. 11 : 33, 35, and import that they who have been the great “lights” of the world, and have instructed others by their doctrine, and confirmed them in the truth by their sufferings and example, shall have an eminently glorious reward at the day of judgment. So the martyrs are described as having a share in “the first resurrection” (Rev. 20 : 5). Our Saviour’s words plainly allude to this text (Matt. 13 : 43). W. Lowth.—There is a glory reserved for all the saints in the future state, for all that are wise, wise for their souls and eternity. A man’s wisdom now makes his face to shine (Eccles. 1 : 8) ; but much more will it do so in that state where its power shall be perfected and its services rewarded. The more good any do in this world, especially to the souls of men, the greater will be their glory and reward in the other world. They that turn men to righteousness, that turn sinners from the errors of their ways, and help to save their souls from death (James 5 : 20) will share in the glory of those they have helped to heaven, which will be a great addition to their own glory. Ministers of Christ, who have obtained mercy of Him to be faithful and successful, and so are made burning and shining lights in this world, shall shine very bright in the other world, shall shine as the stars. Christ is the Sun, the Fountain of the lights both of grace and glory ; ministers, as stars, shine in both, with a light derived from Him, and a diminutive light in comparison of Him ; yet to them that are earthen vessels it will be a glory infinitely transcending their deserts. They shall shine as the stars of different magnitudes, some in less, others in greater lustre ; but whereas the day is coming when the stars shall fall from heaven as leaves in autumn, these stars shall shine forever and ever, shall never set, never be eclipsed. H.

There are those whose lives are precious—Time’s richest jewels. They are gold, silver, precious stones. In attempting to express the value of a truly faithful Christian life, words fail. I know of no expressions worthy of those that are gems in the Redeemer’s crown, and having turned many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever. Take some humble private individual noiselessly pursuing his career of unostentatious Christian action—full of faith and prayer—ever studious of saving souls—dropping a word here or there like a harvest seed—studying opportunities—sparing no effort—tasking every energy for his Master—and when his last work on earth is done, when his last word is spoken, and his last prayer uttered, in the ripeness and symmetry of a perfected Christian character going home to the reward of his Master’s smile—and tell me if gold or silver or any of the precious things of earth are fit symbols of its unspeakable worth, of its untold blessings ! Gillett.

The enthusiasm of Christian love is a mighty power. The enthusiasm of hearts arrested by the mighty love of Christ, drawn into sympathy with Him, reflecting on their fellow-sinners the compassion that has embraced themselves, seeing in this disordered world a blessed sphere of service to God and man, and throwing their energies into the work of blessing it—that is a wonder-working power ! It goes on unweariedly in the work of faith and labor of love ; never deeming that it has done enough, or that it can ever do enough for Him whose love has fallen on it so richly, and is so well fitted to bless the whole family of man. W. G. B.

What stars, what jewelled honors flash on the world’s swelling breast, to be for one moment compared with those which they win on earth and wear in heaven who have turned souls from darkness to light—from the cursed power of Satan to the living God ? Each soul a gem in their crown, they that have turned many to righteousness shall shine with the brightness of the firmament forever and ever. How has the hope of this touched, as with fire, the preacher’s lips, sustained his heart, held up prayer’s weary hands, and proved an ample recompense for those scanty rewards which God’s servants too often receive at the hands of men—for the penury which has embittered and the hardships which have pressed on their lot ! Despised as the teacher of the Gospel may be, the apostle raises him to an eminence from which he may contemplate this world, with all its grandeur and glory, rolling away into dark oblivion. To him belongs the high pre-eminence of being able to say, “I am a fellow-laborer with God ;” and with such an associate—in such lofty company, devoting his life to such a cause—no wonder that Paul confronted a sceptical, scoffing world, and bravely said, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.” Guthrie.

Safety and firm footing in active life will be ours if we walk in Wisdom’s ways. He who follows Christ’s footsteps will tread surely and not fear foes. Quiet repose in hours of rest will be his. A day filled with happy service will be followed by a night full of calm slumber. “Whether we sleep or wake, we live” with Him; and, if we do, both will be blessed, and our lives will move on gently to the time when days and nights shall melt into one, and there will be no need for repose; for there will be no work that wearies and no hands that droop. The last lying down in the grave will be attended with no terrors. The last sleep there shall be sweet; for it will really be awakening to the full possession of the personal Wisdom, who is our Christ, our life in death, our heaven in heaven. A. M.

If we go after fame, the Scriptures tell us that the name of the wicked shall rot. If we go after riches and cover ourselves with the outward splendors of fortune, they tell us that we must go out of life as poor as any; for, that having brought nothing material into the world, we can carry nothing material out. And then they add, do the works of love and truth, and these shall go with you. He that winneth souls is wise. They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever. Be fishers of men. Watch for souls. If thy brother sin against thee, gain, if possible, thy brother. Be all things to all men, if by any means you may gain some. And then, when you have worn out all your powers in benefactions put upon souls, and believe that you have many who will be your crown of rejoicing in the day of the Lord Jesus—then, I say, when the last hour is come, and the scenes of your mortal labor are retiring from your sight, have it for your song of triumph, and leave it to be chanted over your rest: “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord; for they rest from their labors, and their works do follow them.” All material properties are left behind; these cannot follow; but all the properties of duty and love must follow, and be gathered in after you to bless your fidelity, and crown your peace, and be your sacred wealth forever. Then it shall be seen what is meant by the value of one soul to another. Bushnell.

Men are to be redeemed by love; love is power, personal power working toward another winningly, operating in him actuatingly, resting on him as a benediction. And men grow surprisingly interesting as soon as we begin to be interested in them. And we shall find in people just as much heart as we have the heart to find in them. As soon as we begin in a Christ-like way to love people we shall discover that they like to be loved. They are in our power if our power is heart-power. It is an easy thing to make a friend. It is like God to make a friend, and a friend is a permanent possession, treasure in heaven, imperishable jewel, star in our crown of rejoicing, out of which the light never fades. C. H. P.

4. But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words. To “shut up” a book and to “seal” it is the same with concealing the sense of it from common understandings. (See chap. 8:26.) The same reason is assigned for this command in both places—viz., because there would be a long interval of time between the date and the final accomplishment of the prophecy. (Cf. chap. 10:1.) But the nearer that time approached, the more light should men have for understanding the prophecy itself: as is implied in the following words, “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased;” many shall be inquisitive after truth, and keep correspondence with others for their better information; and the gradual completion of some prophecies shall direct observing readers to form a judgment concerning those particulars which are yet to be fulfilled. W. Lowth.

The advances of human knowledge in this world show the forecast of an overruling Mind in the fact that knowledges come to the front when they are needed. Timeliness is a grand factor in the history of inventions and discoveries. A similar law of timeliness governs the higher advances of knowledge which arch over the two worlds of sense and spirit. Some knowledges are timely to this world, and others to that. Some discoveries fit a state of probation, others a state of moral repose. Some are congenial with a world of sense, others not even intelligible but to disembodied mind. Some are pertinent to the infancy and some to the maturity of an endless life. Reserve of knowledge till the ripening of conditions is one of the signal features of God’s wisdom. The future ages of our immortality may have great epochs of discovery. Then we may learn the secret blessing of our profoundest ignorance here of things for which the time has not yet come.

The analogies of this world lead us to believe that through the unending succession of discoveries of God which lie before us we shall find, as we do here, the constant recurrence of the critical “nick of time.” We shall be told what, and when, and where, it will be safe for us to know. The thoughtful kindness of God hides us from revelations which would be untimely to our conditions. But for this our growth in character might be convulsive and catastrophic in its working. We exult in the dignity of knowledge; we make it the synonym of power. But in moral surroundings, which make knowledge unseasonable, the blessing of ignorance is incalculably greater. Phelps.

7. The general sense is clear: the time of the end shall be when the “scattering” (cf. Isa. 11: 12; 27: 9; Jer. 13: 14; 51: 20, 23) or the dispersion of the holy people is finished. As regards the application, it is natural to find in the words a reference to an end to the troubles which in Daniel’s vision had gathered so thickly about the holy people. Hence such passages as 1 Mac. 5: 23, 45, 53 seq.; 2 Mac. 8 seq., which tell how the Maccabee brothers, Simon and Judas, brought back again (n.c. 169) to the land of Judea their captive fellow-countrymen (“part” of the holy people), supply a partial accomplishment of the verse. But what came true in the Maccabean period has yet to receive its last and highest verification in the day when the scattering of God’s people and their “tribulation in the world” shall be forever “accomplished.” B. C.

8. Daniel does not yet understand so definitely as he would, and therefore asks again what shall be the end of these things. The form of his question and his choice of words (What rather than When) seem to indicate a somewhat wider range than simply the idea of duration. That is, he asks not merely how long, but what shall be the issues; including, however, the length of time. Consequently the answer teaches both points; first indicating that the words are closed and sealed up till the time of the end, and therefore will not be much known till near that time; next, that active agencies of moral discipline will surely do their work, some being made better and some made worse by these events of God’s providence; also that “the wise,” the studious, humble and docile shall readily understand, but none of the wicked, for their sin darkens their intellect while it sears their conscience and hardens their heart. H. C.

9. The angel’s reply is not to be understood as discouraging. “Go thy way” is a phrase said kindly, and intended to comfort the prophet. Daniel had been already charged (verse 4) to shut up the words, etc.; he is now told—in answer to his question (verse 8)—that God had done this; the opening and unsealing would be in God’s time; and in that assurance he was to rest (verse 13). B. C.—When the proper season comes, possibly in some cases not before the event hath interpreted them, the prophecies will prove their own reality by their clearness; and strengthen, perhaps in an hour of much need, “the patience and the faith of the saints” (Rev. 13: 10). Thus it happened to the apostles. They understood not beforehand our Saviour’s prediction, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” But “when He was risen from the dead, they remembered that He had said this unto them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said” (John 2: 19, 22). Abp. Secker.

10. Many shall be purified. The persecutions of the faithful are designed for the trial of their faith and the purification of their lives. W. Lowth.—A verse which has been freely reproduced in Rev. 22: 11. “Many,” from Daniel’s time, would pass through “purification,” and “being made white,” meet with “trial” beyond; “many” are doing so this day; it will be the lot of “many” so long as the present order of things continues. But if they are “wise,” “understanding ones” (cf. 5: 3; 11: 35), “they shall understand,” a promise which was also the answer to Daniel’s remark, “I cannot understand” (verse 8). B. C.

None of the wicked shall understand. Because they are wicked and will continue in their sins, the eyes of their understanding shall be closed and their hearts hardened; so that they shall not see the light of the glorious Gospel. But the wise. Those who open their hearts to God that He may pour in His light; they shall understand the things that make for their peace. A. C.

There are three remarkable points of contrast exhibited in this passage. 1. A contrast of character. The term “wise” describes the righteous, who possess that religion which is emphatically “wisdom from above;” the epithet “wicked” expresses both blindness of mind and depravity of heart. 2. A contrast of moral progress. The wise are “purified and made white” by their trials; the wicked continue to “do wickedly.” The same discipline, the very same dispensations, produce opposite effects; and the determination of their career respectively will exhibit a remarkable and eternal contrast. 3. A contrast of mental and spiritual perception. It is affirmed that “none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand.” Wickedness contracts the mind, debases the understanding, and renders man so selfish and carnal that he becomes incapacitated for taking any comprehensive view of the Divine administration, and indisposed to these sacred inquiries. One important point, especially, which the one, through the teachings of that Spirit who is humbly but incessantly sought by Christians, does understand, and which the other, through wilful blindness and perverseness of heart, does not understand, is the connection of the operations of Providence in the general affairs of the world, with the establishment, extension and ultimate triumph of the cause of our Lord Jesus Christ. F. A. Cox.

The afflictions of good people are designed for their trial; but by these trials they are purified and made white; their corruptions are purged out, their graces are brightened and made both more vigorous and more conspicuous, and are found to praise, and honor, and glory (1 Pet. 1:7). To those who are themselves sanctified and good, every event is sanctified and works for good, and helps to make them better. H.

Afflictions, in order to produce any permanent impression of a spiritual kind, must powerfully excite the natural sensibilities. A slight impression upon the feelings will be followed only by a slight religious effect, or rather by no effect at all. An affliction must be an affliction. The soul must be torn in sunder before the balm of Gilead can be applied. In all ordinary cases, instead of checking the current of tears, and drying the sources of sorrow, tears ought to flow, and the fountains of grief ought to be broken up. The gay world will soon enough suggest consolatory topics. The cares of business will soon enough engross the mind. Time will not be too backward to close the wound which death has made. Sanctified sorrow is deeply seated sorrow. There may be, indeed, a desperate grief which is of the world, and which worketh death. Nevertheless, when the spirit of God blesses the soul by means of affliction, He first casts that soul into the furnace perhaps seven times heated. There is a stain of sin on our hearts which nothing but the “fuller’s soap” can wash out. There is a “chamber of abominations” within us, which nothing but the torch of the refiner can enlighten, and the fire of the refiner purify. The great purpose of affliction is to take away sin. B. B. Edwards.

It is not only that in point of fact tribulation happens to lie between Christians and their rest; it has been placed there of deliberate design by a wise and loving Father, in order that, by passing through it, they may be prepared for a rest beyond. In some of the most delicate manufactures the web, in a rude and unsightly state, enters a vessel filled with a certain liquid, passes slowly through, and emerges continuously at the opposite side. As it enters, the cloth seems all of one color, and that one dim and unattractive; as it emerges, it glitters in a variety of brilliant hues arranged in eunning figures, like a robe of needle-work for the adornment of a queen. The liquid through which the fabric passes is composed of certain fiery, biting acids; and the reason why it is strained through such a bath is, that in the passage all the deforming and defiling things that have adhered to its surface in preceding processes may be discharged, and the figures, already secretly imprinted, may shine out in their beauty. So the disciples of Christ are in this life drawn through great tribulation, although the Lord who loves them has all power in heaven and in earth: nay, precisely because the Lord who loves them has all power in heaven and in earth, they are bathed in this sea of sorrows. In wisdom and love, both infinite, the Lord has mingled the ingredients, and determined the duration of the baptism; so that, on the one hand, none of His should be lost, and, on the other, every grace of the Spirit should be brought out in its beauty upon all His own. Thus, there is a “need be” for the great tribulation; but we shall miss more than half the meaning of the word here if we think of this necessity as applicable only to the suffering. Another thing is necessary—a better and a brighter. True, it is said of all Christ’s people, that they must pass through much tribulation; but it is also said of them that they must enter the kingdom. As certainly as He came out to seek, those whom He finds shall go in. The Captain of our salvation will bring many sons into glory. Arnot.

Trial is man’s only and compulsory teacher in the knowledge of himself. Shutting him up to self-communion, it confronts him with the grand questions of his immortal being and compels him to reflection upon the issues he is working out for himself, upon the character he is forming, the relations he sustains, the ground of hope for the future he is cherishing, the destiny to which he is hasting. No one who has been prostrated by the strong hand of disease but in the long days and wearisome nights of loneliness and pain has experienced this effect of the trial: thoughtfulness upon the aims and ends of life, leading to personal heart questioning, to painful thoughtfulness about his soul’s condition and prospects. No one who has long anxiously watched beside beloved ones, or whose heart has been sorely stricken by actual bereavement, but has been constrained to reflect deeply upon the same great questions, to learn much and make personal application of the realities of sickness and death so affectingly taught. And no one who has met any other REAL trial, who has encountered disappointment in any of its severe forms, but, through the impression it has wrought of the frailty and insufficiency of human ties and earthly hopes, has had the heart thrown back upon itself to ponder the same momentous questions of the soul’s true character, life and destiny.

Nor is knowledge of self the only blessed effect designed and produced by trial. In every soul its discipline alone has wrought out the invigoration, the knitting into compactness and hardness, and the mightiest exertion of all the intellectual and moral forces. Through its ordeal alone men have been trained to do and to endure. Through its self-crucifying process some ungodly men indeed, in their bitterness, have been nerved to persistence in a hardening course of bold, defiant ungodliness. But others, whose hearts have been subdued and broken before God, have been strengthened to struggle with and break away from the tremendous forces of inbred and outwardly exerted corruption. And chiefly by the same self-struggle and crucifixion, wrought under God through trial, believing souls have had the Divine forces and graces of piety exercised and maintained, invigorated and developed, have had increased their trust, their hope, their Christ-like endeavor, have made their chief progress in holiness and toward heaven. No words can express how much of gain and blessing man owes to trial, how many its uses, how vast its extent of good to the spiritual universe. No wonder that Nature in all her processes multiplies analogies to instruct our souls upon a point so sublimely important. No wonder that the giant trees of the mountain have wrestled with the mighty tempests of centuries; no wonder that the clouds obscure and the night shuts out the day; no wonder that a seeming death overspreads the wintry face of the earth, that the life of tree and plant descends to their hidden roots. For in all these processes she declares plainly the necessary uses, the life-invigorating fruits of trial and suffering wrought in the invisible depths of the soul. More plainly still, Revelation confirms the same great truth, discloses on almost every page the necessity, the wisdom and kindness of God’s trying dispensations. “It is good for me that I have been afflicted” is the substance of the inspired testimonies of psalmist, patriarch, prophet and apostle. There is a “need be” for every trial; it is administered of God “for our profit, that we may be made partakers of His holiness,” is the one uniform assertion of the mouth of God. B.

13. But go thou thy way till the end be. Here is proper advice for every man. Thou hast a way, a walk in life, which God has assigned thee; walk in that way. There will be an end to thee of all earthly things. Death is at the door, and eternity is at hand; go on to the end, be faithful unto death. There is a rest provided for the people of God. Thou shalt rest; thy body in the grave, thy soul in the Divine favor here, and, finally, in Paradise. As in the promised land, there was a lot for each of God’s people, so in heaven there is a lot for thee. Do not lose it, do not sell it, do not let thy enemy rob thee of it. Be determined to stand in thy own lot at the end of the days. See that thou keep the faith; die in the Lord Jesus, that thou may rise and reign with Him to all eternity. A. C.

Thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot—i.e., thou shalt rest in the grave (Isa. 57: 2) when the end of thy life has come, and shalt have part in the kingdom of the saints of the Most High. (Cf. 7: 18, 27; Rev. 20: 6.) That the words contain a reference to and a belief in the resurrection is self-evident; his “lot” would fall to him in the heavenly Canaan. “Blessed are they that” work and “wait” like Daniel; they shall “enter into the joy” of their Lord and “rest and stand” in His presence “at the end of the days.” B. C.

The promises of God cannot fail; all that He has spoken concerning the triumphs of the Gospel must come to pass; and it is for us to labor on in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ. It is only in this thought—faithfulness, not fruitfulness, the criterion of reward—that we seem to get any light on the sorrowful mystery of premature missionary graves. The young and gifted and consecrated servant, who has sacrificed everything to obey the great commission, falling almost as soon as he has reached his field! How can we justify the ways of God in permitting it? Does the Lord really choose His workmen, assign them to the work that is dearest to His heart, and then have no care that they fall ere the work is hardly begun? What if we answer that the obscurest missionary tomb is just as precious in the sight of God as the most illustrious missionary triumph? There it stands, before the eye of the Master, as a certificate of obedience to His great commission—a testimony of faithfulness unto death for Christ’s sake. “Thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.” It is everything that the fallen missionary shall be able to stand up in the heathen country where he laid down his life, and at the sound of the resurrection trumpet to say to his Lord: “Here I am, just where Thou didst send me, ready for any further service or reward which may be assigned me.” A. J. Gordon.

Ere we close, let us again revert to Daniel, at once the great historian and the great prophet of his time; who more than any other man wrote contemporary history along with his prophecies and future history in his prophecies; who wonderfully blended his own present life with that future in which the Lord suffered him to live so intensely; who did so much for his people while he lived, so much for the age in which he lived, and who yet, through his wonderful prophecies, projected himself down into that most terrible age of Jewish persecution, more terrible by far than any other through which the Jewish Church as such was ever called to pass; raised up of God for these special ends—to help the nation first through the Babylonish captivity, and next, through the yet more fierce and fiery ordeal of torture and blood to which they were subjected in the age of the Maccabees; a wonderful man, endowed with wisdom almost superhuman, of marvellous capacities for public business, for bearing great responsibilities, and for winning the confidence of men who never loved his religion and never worshipped his God, but who yet felt the presence of his piety and the power of his intrinsic greatness and worth; such a man was justly held in the highest esteem by his countrymen; nay, more; such a man impresses us with a new sense of the wealth of resources at God’s command for making great men for His own use on great occasions. The beauty of his character shines in his pure simplicity; in his modesty and humility; in the fact that he filled a sphere of thought and purpose high above the seductions of human ambition; that he dwelt in communion with God and drew his mighty impulses to goodness and even to greatness from the very sanctuary of Jehovah’s presence; that hence his heart was full to overflowing with the tenderest sympathies for his people, so that he truly lived in their life, and felt borne down and crushed in utter prostration by the views God gave him prophetically of their future afflictions and perils. What did not the grace of God do for this great and good man! Verily, God raised him up and made him what he was for use among his own people! This same God is never short of fit instruments for great emergencies. Let him be joyfully trusted to raise up other men no less great and good, what time new and great emergencies shall occur to call them forth! H. C.

THE minor prophets are often treated as if by minor was meant that they were of less importance, whereas it really means that their writings are of smaller bulk. We scarcely realize that five of these prophets were the predecessors of Isaiah, and that they lead up to him in a very remarkable way. We note the fact that they are more frequently quoted by the apostles in the Acts, when speaking to the Jews, than the greater prophets. The text of the first Christian sermon is taken by Peter from Joel; Stephen gives emphasis to his argument by a quotation from Amos (7:42, 43); and by a quotation from the same prophet James decides the question discussed at the first Christian council (15:16, 17). So, too, if we look at the doctrines first revealed by their instrumentality, we shall find that they hold a very foremost place in our belief. It is Joel who teaches us the momentous facts of a future resurrection and a general judgment, and of that outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh, without which these doctrines would be a terror to us. It is Micah who reveals to men the place of our Lord’s birth, Zechariah His crucifixion, Jonah His resurrection, though veiled beneath a sign. And as they were the earliest of the prophets who left written memorials of their work, so were they the last. The Old Testament closes with the trumpet sounds of Malachi, telling us of the near approach of the Forerunner, of the separation of the Jewish nation into those who accepted Christ and those who rejected Him, and of the coming of days when, from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same, no victim should bleed upon an altar, but the meat offering, the type of Christian worship, he offered everywhere unto Jehovah’s name.

At the head of this goodly twelve stands Hosea, not because he was foremost in order of time, but because his writings are the longest of those who lived in the Assyrian period.

Really the twelve prophets are arranged in three series—those of the Assyrian period, Hosea to Nahum, first; those of the Chaldean age, Habakkuk and Zephaniah, next; and those who lived after the Exile last. Of the first series it was Hosea who held the prophetic office for the longest time, and this may probably have also had its weight in causing him to be placed at the head, especially as the title runs parallel with that of Isaiah, the foremost of the greater prophets. As regards the rest, Delitzsch has shown with much beauty that they are arranged with a view to the grouping of the ideas which they present in common. “Because Hosea, at the end of his prophetic writings, foretold to penitent Israel, watered with the dew of Divine grace, a rich harvest of corn, and a fresh verdure and blossoming like the rose, the olive, and the vine; while Joel begins his prophetic writings at a time when harvest and vintage had failed, and therefore calls the people to repentance—on this account the collector has joined the two prophets together. With fine taste, again, he has made Amos follow Joel, because Amos begins his predictions with the striking words found near the end of the writings of Joel (chap. 3:16), ‘The Lord shall roar out of Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem.’ Upon Amos follow Obadiah, because his whole prophecy seems, as it were, an unfolding of the remarkable prediction of Amos (chap. 9:12), ’that they may possess the remnant of Edom.’ But why does Jonah come after Obadiah? Because Obadiah says, ‘We have heard a rumor from Jehovah, and an ambassador is sent among the heathen’ (Obad. 1), and such an ambassador Jonah seemed to be. Next in this group comes Nahum, not merely because he belongs to the Assyrian period, but because he has a common interest with Jonah and Micah in that celebrated utterance of the law (Ex. 34:6, 7), that God is merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth.” R. P. S.

The prophets are the most conspicuous teachers of spiritual religion. The priests failed to apprehend that the one end and aim of religion is righteousness; that a religion consisting exclusively of ceremonies, a religion divorced from morality, is no religion at all. It is the protest against this idolatry of the outward function which marks the theology of the prophets. “Behold, obedience is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams,” said Samuel. “I despise your feast days, and will not smell in your solemn assemblies,” was the message of the Lord by Amos. “I desired mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of the Lord more than burnt offerings,” said Hosea, in words which our Lord loved to quote. “What doth the Lord require of thee,” asks Micah, “but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” “Bring no more vain oblations,” says Isaiah; “but wash you—make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes.” “The just,” says Habakkuk, in words which were the keynote of the theology of Paul, “shall live by faith.” Thus did the prophets, one after another, make light of the pompous religionism of offerings and ceremonial, and anticipate the teaching of the Son of God: “Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.”

Another and most precious characteristic of the mission of the prophets is the steady, inextinguishable spirit of hope which animated them amid the direst catastrophes of their people, and which gleams out amid their stormiest predictions of retribution and woe. And this hope spreads outward in ever-widening circles. Even when the prophecies of Israel’s destruction seem to be most sweeping, it is always intimated that Israel shall not utterly be destroyed. And this hope, which sometimes seems to fill their pages with Divine contradictions, centres more and more brightly, more and more definitely, in a Divine person, an Anointed Deliverer, a coming Saviour for all mankind. And this prophecy is the pervading and central element of the whole sacred canon. “As we watch the weaving of the web of Hebrew life, we endeavor to trace through it the more conspicuous threads. Long time the eye follows the crimson; it disappears at length; but the golden thread of sacred prophecy stretches to the end.” So true is the great saying of the apostle, that “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” The Messianic hope, and the trust in

God by which it was inspired and continued, is the richest legacy of the prophets to all after ages.

The apostles evidently attached a high value to the minor prophets. In the New Testament they are more frequently quoted than the greater prophets (by which we merely mean larger prophets). Farrar.

Of the person of the prophet we know nothing more than that he was the son of Beeri, of the tribe of Ephraim. Thus, he is one of the two—Jonah being the other—who alone of all the prophets certainly belonged to the Ten Tribes. Yet these tribes had produced Elijah and Elisha, and under the latter the schools of the prophets had flourished to an unprecedented extent. With Jonah written prophecy had also its first commencement in the northern kingdom, but it was in Judah that it attained to its full majesty and strength.

Hosea could not have been long subsequent to Jonah, for both flourished in the palmy days of Jeroboam II., Israel’s last great king, who reigned forty and one years, and by whose hand God saved the people, as Jonah had foretold in a prophecy no longer extant, but referred to in 2 K. 14: 25. Jehu’s had been a warlike line, and Jehoash, Jeroboam’s father, the conqueror of Jerusalem (2 K. 14: 13), had probably laid the foundation of Jeroboam’s conquests, which extended from Hamath, on the northern border of Syria, to the Dead Sea. This period of empire, under the strong hand of a powerful sovereign, was Israel’s final opportunity for a national repentance. And before it passed away God sent the people a prophet, powerful in deed and word, to press upon them this their last hope. They refused; and Hosea lived to see Samaria’s fall. In the fourth year of Hezekiah, n.c. 721, Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, took Samaria, and carried the Ten Tribes away captive and placed them in scattered colonies throughout his vast realm.

It was probably, however, only toward the close of Jeroboam’s reign that Hosea entered upon his office; for we read that he prophesied also during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. It is remarkable that the book does cover the whole of the sixty-two years and more which was the duration of Hosea’s ministry. In chap. 1: 4 he foretells the speedy ruin of Jehu’s race. Now, of all the kings of Israel after Jeroboam, Jehu was the only one who had a right to the throne. All the rest were successful soldiers; but Jehu was called by God’s prophet. Yet he almost immediately proved unworthy of the trust, and while he extirpated with unrelenting cruelty the family of Ahab and the worshippers of Baal as being certain enemies to his own dynasty, he regarded with indifference the worship of the golden calves. But this cruelty was looked upon by God with abhorrence, and Hosea predicts that “yet a little while, and Jehovah will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel.” Now, Jeroboam’s death was followed by an anarchy of eleven years, and then his son Zachariah reigned for six months; at the end of which time he was murdered by Shallum. Hosea thus began to prophesy before the limited reward given to Jehu for partial services was completed; at the end of chap. 13 Samaria’s fall is close at hand. The Assyrian armies are closing upon her, and the horrible cruelties which those inhuman conquerors used to inflict upon the cities which fell into their hands are clearly set forth. It is plain that this prediction of Samaria’s fate was written in Hoshea’s reign, because in an earlier chapter (10 : 14) the prophet gives us some particulars of the first invasion of Shalmaneser, referred to in 2 K. 17 : 3. R. P. S.

His message was mainly to the kingdom of Israel, the Ten Tribes who had revolted from Judah; and this period, during which he carried God’s messages to them, was the most frightful in their history. It was a period of change and confusion, of anarchy, murder, and usurpation. After Jeroboam’s death there was an interregnum of ten years, and then Zechariah seized the sceptre. In six months he was slain by Shallum. In four weeks this man was murdered by Menahem; and the murderer, while his hands reeked with blood, took the reins of government, and managed to hold them for ten years, while the chariot of the State rolled over a horrible path, enveloped in storms. Pekahiah succeeded him, and after wearing the crown two years, was put to death by Pekah; and then Pekah, twenty years after, was put to death by Hoshea. Hoshea brings up the rear of these usurpers, and with him closes the history of the Israelitish kingdom. “The Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of His sight. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day.” A tragical period truly. What events—not particularly recorded, but which are implied in the general narrative—must have transpired! How would the soul of the good prophet be shocked by the things which he heard! How would his old age be darkened and distressed by the troubles of his nation! How would tears trickle down his time-furrowed cheeks because of the hurt of the daughter of his people! Stoughton.

The basis of the prophet’s teaching. The characteristic feature of Hosea’s book is his representation of the relation between God and the chosen people in terms of the marriage tie. Jehovah is the nation’s husband, and Israel His unfaithful spouse. The choice of the figure is remarkable, and still more startling the use that is made of it. The idea of a conjugal union between a god and the land or people belonging to him was, indeed, a commonplace of Semitic religions. And it had its natural sequel in the encouragement of gross sexual abuses as a regular accompaniment of the established worship. The very evil that was blighting Ephraim in Hosea’s age was the introduction of this physical conception, with its vile abuses, into the cult of Jehovah. Yet it is precisely this notion that the prophet takes and makes the basis of his entire polemic against the prevalent ills of the time, and the keynote of his teaching concerning God and His purposes with His people.

How came Hosea to a thought of such bold and original creativeness? He tells us that it grew out of a personal experience of a very remarkable character. By Divine direction he formed relations either of marriage or concubinage with one or possibly two women of dissolute life, had children, assigned to these significant names, and was taught thus to discern the meaning and drift of Jehovah’s ways with His faithless people. Taken in this bare and probably inexact reading, the story is so repulsive that a majority of interpreters have always refused to count it an actual transaction, and have relegated it to the category of symbolical action, allegory or objective vision—whatever that may mean. But what would be foul in fact does not become clean in symbol, vision, or fancy, and so in neither case would the supposed transaction have been possessed of much edifying efficacy. Moreover, if acted in dumb show, or simply told as a parable, it would not have had any specially impressive power on the minds of spectators or hearers, while as an actual experience in the prophet’s home, its movement would be too slow and its scenes too removed from public view to tell on the conscience of the community. Evidently its purpose was not the instruction of the people, but the making of the prophet. What the painful tragedy could accomplish as nothing else could, was to penetrate the prophet’s own life and thought and spirit with an analogical but intensely vivid realization of the heart and mind of God in His dealing with wayward Israel. And for that, we cannot but conclude, it must have been an experience actually lived through—not, however, in relations of baseness, but necessarily in a sphere of pure and honorable love, hope and aspiration. That it was an actual episode in the prophet’s fortunes is confirmed by the fact that while the children’s names are manifestly symbolical, the wife’s name is as certainly real and not imaginative. While we have but to bring to the story an intelligent knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of Hebrew narration and the methods of Divine revelation to get rid of a number of unhappy assumptions, and to find, in place of a history that, whether allegory or actuality, was alike repellent and spiritless, a pure and pathetic tale of suffering and loyal love, which might well make a high-tuned heart sensitive to the Divine tenderness, and stir a brave-souled patriot to the career of a prophet.

Hosea was a citizen of northern Israel, in whom burned the zeal of Elijah for Jehovah. The persistent sinning of his people pained him and perplexed him with questions concerning God and providence in the past, present and future. At last light broke on him from a strange quarter, and yet certainly from heaven. It was “the beginning of God’s word” to him, and through him to Israel. By Divine guidance, under the impulse of a warm attachment, he married, counting on a pure and happy domestic life. But his wife, contaminated by the religious taint of the time, proved unfaithful. He forbore with her, and hoped for amendment. Children were born, and, by Divine direction, called by names significant of Israel’s disloyalty to her God. The truth was penetrating Hosea’s whole being, that in him and his faithless spouse God was exhibiting types of Himself and wayward Israel. At length, by Hosea’s act or her own, the unhappy wife ceased to be an inmate of his home, a partaker of his care and shelter. She fell into a condition of slavery and misery. The old love was not gone from Hosea’s heart. The thing was almost beyond the humanly possible, but a voice within him said, “Go, love her still, and by firm and tender handling win her back to purity.”

It was the voice of God. Nay, it was the spirit of Jehovah in Hosea reproducing the feeling, thought and action of God in His treatment of Israel. The prophet’s first ardent attachment, his pain and grief under his wrongs, his loathing of the sin, his jealous indignation, his relenting, and patience, and forbearance, the loving sternness of discipline, the clinging affection that followed the unhappy outcast, the compassion for her in her degradation, the more than human loyalty of love and strength of goodness that recovered and redeemed her—these emotions, and conflicts, and experiences in Hosea are echoes and expressions of the very heart of God. This is the secret of Jehovah and of His providential leading of His people. Eimskie.

The words of upbraiding, of judgment, of woe, burst out, as it were, one by one, slowly, heavily, condensed, abrupt, from the prophet’s heavy and shrinking soul, as God commanded and constrained him, and put His words, like fire, in the prophet’s mouth. He delivers his message as though each sentence burst with a groan from his soul, and he had anew to take breath before he uttered each renewed woe. Each verse forms a whole for itself like one heavy toll in a funeral knell. Pusey.

His sorrowful expostulations, his terrible warnings, are illumined by hope. They terminate in hope. He has hope for his country and hope for the Church. “The prophet’s mind was intensely interested in the destinies of his own people. The nations around him are unheeded; his prophetic eye beholds the crisis approaching his country, and sees its cantons ravaged, its tribes murdered or enslaved. No wonder that his rebukes are so terrible, his menaces so “alarming that his soul poured forth its strength in an ecstasy of grief and affection. Invitations replete with tenderness and pathos are interspersed with his warnings and expostulations. Now we are startled with a vision of the throne, at first shrouded in darkness, and sending forth lightnings, thunders, and voices; but while we gaze it becomes encircled with a rainbow, which gradually expands till it is lost in that brilliancy which itself had originated.” Yes, amid the storm the prophet shows us the rainbow. Cloud after cloud comes, and there is thunder, but the rainbow is painted on the cloud. The prophet hopes and teaches the nation and the Church to hope. Stoughton.

What the prophet had grace to see was the certainty that God is amid all confusions a God of order, amid all contradictions a God of verity, amid all judgments a God of love. It is this element of hope which gives to the writings of the prophets their highest value, for it is a recognition of the eternal principle of the government of the world. And this golden close of the denunciations, this opening even in the valley of Achor a door of hope, this pointing to the resplendent arc of the rainbow of mercy amid the darkest bursts of storm, is the most marked characteristic not of Hosea only, but of Joel, Amos, Isaiah, Micah, and all the greatest of the true prophets. Farrar.

The characteristic of Hosea’s book is that the burden of Israel’s guilt lies weighty on his soul; he wails and mourns and laments and repents with that sinful people. He almost expresses a sense of his vicarious involvement in their guilt and carrying of their sorrows. That is the note which gives its exquisite music of pathos and beauty to Hosea’s prophecy of the coming downfall of his own land and of his own people.

It is of little use to try to divide the Book of Hosea into minute paragraphs and divisions, and to trace a line of thought through it, because, if there is any book in the Bible which is one long musical burst of emotional life and harmonious unity from beginning to end, it is the Book of Hosea. The man was not so much an intellect; he was a great, overflowing heart. He cannot think out things and reason out things. He sways, like a pendulum, from one extreme to another, now blazing indignation against the people’s wickedness and blindness and madness, and the next moment lamenting over them like a mother over her only son.

Emotion is the characteristic of Hosea’s writing. Thought, again, is the characteristic of the writing of Amos. And so far as thought goes, the key-doctrine of Amos is this: God is righteous sovereignty. The key-doctrine of Hosea is this: God is holy love. The key-conception of Hosea’s doctrine, Hosea’s gospel, Hosea’s prophecy, is that the actual, real relation between God and Israel is best represented for his purpose by the tie between husband and wife. It is true that he varies that image near the end of his prophecy. There he pictures God as his Father, and Israel as his child, his son. But still the great, moulding, explaining thought throughout the whole book is the marriage tie as a picture of the covenant between Jehovah and His people. Elmslie.

Hosea contains much of a Christian import cited by our Lord, by Matthew and by Paul. (Cf. Matt. 2:15 with Hos. 11:1; Matt. 9:13 and 12:7 with Hos. 6:6; Rom. 9:25, 26 with Hos. 2:23; and 1 Cor. 15:55 with Hos. 13:14.) These passages may not be considered directly Messianic in the strict sense of that word; but they contain promises relating to Messianic times, in which they receive their fulfilment. Their peculiarity, according to Hengstenberg, “as compared with those of the time of David and Solomon, consists in the connection of the promise with threatenings of judgments, and in the Messiah’s appearing as the light of those who walk in the deepest darkness of the Divine judgments.” These promises supported God’s people in the midst of the gloom and darkness of the times. “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely; for mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew unto Israel; he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon” (Hos. 14:5, 6, sq.). Elliott.

Perhaps none of the prophets has within the same compass included such a multitude of short, memorable and figurative sentences. His coin is minute in size, but at once precious and abundant. What texts for texts are the following: “My people are destroyed or cut off for lack of knowledge.” “Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone.” “O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? your goodness is as the morning cloud and as the early dew.” “Ephraim is a cake not turned.” “Gray hairs are sprinkled or dispersed upon him, and he knoweth it not.” “They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” “They shall say to the mountains, Cover us, and to the hills, Fall on us.” “I drew them with the cords of a man, with the bands of love.” “I gave them a king in mine anger, and I will take him away in my wrath.” “O death, where is thy triumph? O grave, where thy destruction?” “I will be as the dew unto Israel.” “What hath Ephraim any more to do with idols?” If the beginning of his prediction somewhat repel, the close of it should enchain every reader. It is the sweetest, roundest, most unexpected of the prophetic perorations. All his woes, warnings, struggles, hard obscurities, and harsh ellipses and transitions are melted down in a strain of music, partly pensive and partly joyous, fresh as if it rose from earth, and aerial as if it descended from heaven. The controversies of the book are now ended; its contradictions reconciled—the balance sleeps in still light; God and His people are at length made one through the gracious medium of pardoning love. Gilfillan.

No serious attempt has ever been made to throw doubt upon the genuineness and integrity of the Book of Hosea. It remains only to add that, owing to the prophets of the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel forming one closely connected body, Hosea’s writings were