arranged in later times. Some fragments, however, still shine forth brightly enough. Among the literary remains of this period are some of the finest songs. To this age belong the twenty-seventh and twenty-third Psalms,' which were composed by a king detained by the turmoils of war at a distance from Jerusalem, and thinking far away with infinite yearning of the holy calm of the temple. They are poems such as we might imagine the knightly but pious Asa to have composed in the sufferings and struggles in which he was so often plunged. The twentieth Psalm, again, dates from this period. Sung by priests and people at the solemn sacrifice of a king marching forth to war, it still bears one clear mark that the king can be no other than Asa.2 On the other hand, the song in 1 Sam. ii. 1-10, in which a king pours forth his feelings after gaining a great victory, proceeds probably not from Asa or Jehoshaphat,3 but from some contemporary prince of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes. All these songs still breathe the true spirit of the ancient religion, strong unshaken trust in Jahveh. This is principally shown in the greater matters of national interest, and the wars against the heathen; nor was it merely the rare flame of extraordinary exaltation, such as was sometimes swiftly kindled even in after days; it was rather the uniform temper of the whole life. As yet, the conflict of ideas and purposes in Judah had scarcely attacked its own deepest life; and the then living Anointed of Jahveh was still universally regarded as the surest shield of the national well-being. As far as their contents are concerned, these songs are the direct and vigorous off-shoots of the Davidic stem; their art raises them for the most part above those of David, and in smoothness and elegance they bear more resemblance to that of Solomon already alluded to.* Of purely prophetic writings produced in this century, there 1 Only a closer consideration shows that Ps. xxvii. 7-12 is a separate song and belongs to a later age; the distance between vv. 1-6, 13 sq. and vv. 7-12 in language, style, thought, and date, is very great, while vv. 7-12 belong to Ps. v. and its connected songs, when the whole struggle of the people was turned inwards, and the faithful had to suffer most frightfully at the hands of their own brethren. Leaving out vv. 7-12, Ps. xxvii. like Ps. xxiii., which is in every respect similar to it, falls into two strophes of three long verses each, with the addition in this case of a concluding strophe; while Ps. xxvii. 7-12 is divided into two strophes of three ordinary verses each. Ps. xxvii. 1-6, 13 sq. and Ps. xxiii. are in every way as similar as Ps. xxvii. 7-12 is far apart from both; in such cases it is always best to desist from attempting to restore a forced connexion. Cf. further the 3rd ed. of the Dichter des A. B., Psalmen, p. 98 sq. 2 Ps. xx. supposes a king without war chariots and horses, which Jehoshaphat, however, according to 1 Kings xxii. 4, 2 Kings iii. 7, possessed.-Further, such songs as Pss. vi., xiii., xxx., xli., are probably of no later origin, as has been explained in the new edition of my work on the Psalms. Pp. 33 note 4, 43. 4 Vol. iii. p. 281. are now no extant remains; although Judah also was then the scene of the active labours of some great prophets, and Joel, who flourished soon after, was certainly not the first author of works of this kind. The splendid development, however, of historical composition, and the growing intensity with which it was pervaded by the prophetic spirit which exerted so powerful an influence upon the age, appear both in other forms and in the grand design of the work which we have designated the older or prophetic book of Kings, which is the basis of our present book of Kings. It was not, it is true, written till some time later, after the violent changes introduced by Jehu ;' and it is consequently partly devoted to showing how all the dynasties of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes up to Jehu necessarily fell one after another, because, after attaining power, they all misused it. In its spirit, however, it belongs entirely to this century, and gives us the most vivid representation both of the strong feeling of the dignity and power of true royalty, and of the old prophetic spirit as it still lived in Elijah and Elisha. And at the same time it glows with the purity and strength of that artistic feeling which characterised the age, and which discloses its influence in narrative no less than in poetic style. III. FORMATION OF THE MESSIANIC HOPE. THE NEW 1. The deeper sins, however, from which the kingdom suffered, could not be removed even by such kings as Asa and Jehoshaphat. While under Asa the kingdom, quite in the spirit of its ancient religion, made the strongest and most patient efforts to regain its former greatness, it never again became what it had been. By its side the kingdom of the Ten Tribes increased in strength under the guidance of the house of Omri. Of a supremacy over the foreign nations around the mountains of Judah but few fragments were left; of an imperial power like David's only the memory remained. Thus diminished, it was obviously only by great exertions that the whole kingdom could maintain itself erect, surrounded as it was by so many hostile nations who, after the fall of the Davidic power, looked upon it as an easy prey, and who hated either all true religion in general as it was established in Israel, or the particular form which it assumed in this remnant of a Davidic kingdom. In addition to this, there was a constant ferment Vol. i. p. 141 sqq.; that the author belonged to Judah, follows from indications such as 1 Kings xii. 19, 2 Kings iii. 14. going on, at times more or less suppressed by wise sovereigns, yet radically impossible to extinguish, of that conflict between two opposite tendencies which might become either a vital stimulus or a deadly poison,' but which only revealed the more plainly the emptiness and helplessness of the present. And yet this kingdom, though sunk so low, could neither forget its former glory under Moses and David, nor ever wholly lose the consciousness of its unique higher destiny. On the other hand, this feeling could not but be intensified and excited to greater ardour with every blow to its human pride which followed the disruption of the Davidic kingdom, and drove at least all the deeper minds to grasp with a firmer hold its eternal elements alone. The result was that in this confined and narrow atmosphere there germinated unobserved an expectation and a hope, the absolute truth and necessity of which prevented it, when it had once been clearly conceived and uttered, from ever being lost until it was fulfilled, and rendered it to an increasing extent the better life latent in the whole subsequent history. This was the hope that the Theocracy, which had long existed in Israel and had once reigned on earth under Moses and David with no little power, should yet assuredly be perfected, whatever disturbances and hindrances might then impede its course. So far as the Theocracy can only be conceived of as the rule of the true religion, the consummation of the former is identical with the perfection of the latter, and implies also that of its fruit, viz. divine salvation through the complete sovereignty of justice; and the violence now exercised by hindrances and disturbances only produced the corresponding hope of the certain advent of one great all-decisive judgment day. Springing from such a soil for the first time, its form is exceedingly simple, and is directed solely to its great object. It does not yet ask how man or what man shall best realise it; it is not, therefore, as yet that definite Messianic hope which it subsequently becomes; it simply perceives that in their present condition men are incapable of realising it, and it consequently represents Jahveh who first founded the Theocracy as the sole and sure author of its future consummation, the means of which will be a new and unprecedented revival of the divine spirit in Israel. Starting, however, from the actual wants and sufferings of the present, it demands that in the first place the house of David shall be restored, foresees that this cannot be done without war, but, following the prompting of true religion, regards divine peace 1 P. 15 sq.. alone as final and abiding, and then beholds all nations of the earth in peaceful emulation approaching Jerusalem, to learn there the sway and the blessing of true religion in its perfect form. The imperishable blessing of the rule of real monarchy, and its seat in the house of David, to which the government when perfected must, therefore, return, formed the second and equally deep foundation for this hope. Only in Judah could it arise; for there alone had the gradual development of the deepest and eternal elements in Israel escaped being broken up as it had been in the kingdom of the Ten Tribes; and it was in the continuance of that noblest and immortal life of Israel that it had its root. In Judah, however, it necessarily sprang up from the trembling soil of this age, as soon as the disruption of the Davidic kingdom (as has been already shown) threatened the inmost life of Israel as the nation of the true religion, for which there were but two alternatives open. Either it must pass away from the earth altogether, or with fresh power and resolve it must rise to perfection, even though it could at first only do so in hope and thought and longing. It is, therefore, a matter of comparative indifference by whom this hope was first definitely expressed in Judah. In the time of Joel, who flourished towards the close of this period, it had been already long enunciated by great prophets; and it was certainly in the beginning of this age that it made itself most forcibly felt. 2 In the first place there was one subject of immediate interest which would gather round it with increasing strength the Messianic hope. The foreign nations which David and Solomon had united with the monarchy, all revolted in this first century; and in spite of all the subsequent victories which the princes of both kingdoms from time to time achieved over them, they were never again permanently subdued. But this further destroyed that foundation of an imperial dominion which the two great kings had not only apparently but actually laid. An imperial dominion on the part of Israel, however, could not be anything else than the dominion of the true religion and of the community which embodied it over the world. If it be asked what was the ultimate motive which drove those nations so persistently and unanimously to revolt, it does not seem that it was the desire to escape from any special severity or injustice in the supremacy of Israel. We have no proof of such an assumption, and all the evidence leads to the opposite conclusion. 1 According to Joel iii. 5, and the general style of the language which we still possess of his; the oldest Messianic prophecy besides Joel's occurs in 1 Kings xi. 39. 2 Vol. iii. p. 202 sq. Israel had certainly not then learned that method of converting the heathen which it first began to practise towards the end of its history; and it was to be expected that what David had subdued by the sword should be lost in the same manner. The most powerful incentive, however, to the heathen nations to revolt was evidently their love for that wild freedom of life and absence of restraint which are more compatible with heathenism than with the true religion, and which they were not willing to lose by a permanent connexion with Israel. Two causes, therefore, especially contributed early to develope the Messianic hope in this direction-the fact that the growing struggle between foreign nations and Israel was really a struggle between heathenism and true religion, and the vivid memory which every state of the better kind retains of the dignity and destiny which it has once enjoyed. Even the prophets of the northern kingdom very early pursue with the utmost anxiety the destinies of foreign nations revolted or otherwise, ever intent to discern how the true God whom they reject may reveal himself to them also; while those of Judah look to the restoration of the victorious empire of David as the first stage of the general Messianic consummation." 2. Real life, however, can never subsist on hope alone, especially where it is still so completely in its infancy as the Messianic hope was at that time in Judah. Acutely conscious of the pressing evils of the time, Jehoshaphat formed the resolution of terminating the useless wars between the sister states by an alliance advantageous to both, and thus stopping one source of urgent danger. He accordingly kept up a most sincere and active friendship with the kings of the house of Omri, and often joined them in military expeditions. Now that each kingdom recognised its inability to overpower the other, the old hostilities seemed at length to give way for ever to a far more beneficial peace. But the deep-seated antagonism between the two could not be removed by the mere will of the rulers, even though they had always been as good as Jehoshaphat, which was by no means the case. The alliance involuntarily afforded the very divergent heathen tendencies of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes an entrance into Judah also, where there was always a party favourable to them,3 although it had been latterly kept down. While Jehoshaphat even availed himself of a marriage to unite his son and successor Jehoram still The oldest expressions of this sort are preserved in Is. xv. 1-9, xvi. 7-12, xxi. 11-14. 2 Amos ix. 11 sq.; Zech. ix. 13-16; Is. xi. 13-16; Mic. v. 4-8. 3 P. 15 sq. |