Fear and the pit and the snare are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth.

And he who fleeth from the fear shall fall into the pit;

And he that cometh out of the pit shall be taken in the

snare:

For the windows on high are opened,

And the foundations of the earth tremble. The earth is utterly broken;

The earth is shivered into splinters;

The earth staggereth exceedingly.

The earth will reel to and fro like a drunkard,
And shall sway to and fro like a hammock:
Its transgression shall be heavy upon it,
And it shall fall, and not rise again.

And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall visit the host of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the dungeon, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days they shall be visited. Then the moon shall blush and the sun shall pale, for the Lord of hosts shall be king on mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before his elders shall be glory.

The second paragraph is noteworthy for its conception of a general and fundamental covenant of God with the human race as a whole. We may compare the covenant of Noah in the later story of the Deluge (Part I, p. 580). The sin committed is doubtless murder. The desolate city is Jerusalem: at what period is uncertain: perhaps the events during the reign of Artaxerxes Ochus are referred to. Before the new birth of the world, its inhabitants must be decimated by divine stroke. This is a standing feature in these late writers; the least inspired, the most conventional feature. The night is darkest just before the dawn.' Hence if you prophesy the dawn, you must intensify the darkness of the night. Some of the writer's contemporaries are rejoicing. Whereat? We can but guess; the writer holds these rejoicings to be premature.

§ 2. A song of praise.-The Revelation or Apocalypse, which the present group may appropriately be called, is here interrupted by an outburst of song. The song is apparently an interpolation; written perhaps on the margin, it has been brought by later

'HE DESTROYETH DEATH FOR EVER' 365

copyists into the text. It celebrates the fall of a hostile city; whether in close connexion with the incidents alluded to in the apocalyptic prophecy, it is impossible to say.

O Lord, thou art my God;

I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name;

For thou hast done wonderful things,

Purposes planned long ago in faithfulness and fidelity. For thou hast made the fortress a heap,

The defenced city to be a ruin,

The palace of the proud to be desolate;
It shall never be built again.

Therefore the strong people, the city of nations, shall honour thee;

The tyrants shall tremble before thee.

For thou hast been a stronghold to the poor,

A stronghold to the needy in his distress, A refuge from the storm,

A shadow from the heat.

Thou bringest low the glory of the proud;

As the heat by the shadow of clouds, the chant of the tyrants is humbled. (?)

§ 3. The annihilation of death-Now the original prophecy is resumed. The following words are both noble and famous. The writer represents the admission of all surviving peoples to 'communion with the one true God' under the figure of 'a coronation festival which inaugurates the reign of Jehovah on Mount Zion.' Sorrow and death are abolished for ever, and the 'nations' share with the Jews in the beatitudes of the Golden Age.

And on this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy on this mountain the veil that veileth all the peoples, and the covering that covereth all the nations. He destroyeth death for ever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the reproach of his people shall he remove from all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it.

I quote some of Dr. Skinner's admirable notes. The fat parts of the animal, which in ordinary sacrifice were reserved for the

Deity, were regarded in the East as the choicest delicacy. The same image is used in Ps. xxxvi. 8, lxiii. 5, of the highest spiritual enjoyment in fellowship with God.'

'Wine on the lees,' 'i. e. wine that has been left to stand long on its sediment, in order that its strength, flavour, bouquet, &c., might be enhanced by repeated fermentation. Such old wines had to be strained before being used; hence the expression "wellrefined."'

'The veil is not, as might be supposed, a symbol of spiritual blindness, but of sorrow; the figure being taken from the practice of covering the head in token of mourning.'

The annihilation of death does not apparently refer to a life after death. It means that those who live on to the Messianic' age shall never die. What the life after death is to us, that life on earth during the everlasting Golden Age of the future was to the writer and to many of the later Jews. But as it seemed hard that the just who were dead should not share in the glory of the New Age, the idea grew up that God would devise for them a special resurrection. This idea is expressed in a later

section of our present group. As Professor Duhm points out, when God removes the veil, he sees the tears, and wipes them away. 'Perhaps no words,' says Dr. Skinner, 'that ever were uttered have sunk deeper into the aching heart of humanity than this exquisite image of the divine tenderness.'

§ 4. The ruin of Moab.-In violent contrast to the generous universalism of the preceding passage, we now have another interpolated song celebrating the humiliation of Moab-whether of the actual Moab or of Israel's enemies typified under that name. The song is vigorous, but its imagery is coarse.

And it shall be said in that day: Behold our God for whom we waited that he would save us; we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For on this mountain shall the hand of the Lord rest; but Moab shall be trodden down in his place, as straw is trodden down in the water of the dunghill. And if he spread forth his hands in it, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim, his striving shall be pressed down, despite the wiles of his hands (?).

§ 5. A and prayer a retrospect. There now follows yet another interruption of the original Apocalypse, in the shape of a long and very artificial liturgical poem. The great day is coming surely, but it is not yet come. Therefore the heading for the song is inaccurate it is a song for the present, not for the future.

'THY DEAD SHALL ARISE'

367

(In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah.)

We have a strong city: for our salvation God will set up walls and moat. Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth faithfulness may enter in. A steadfast mind thou keepest in constant peace, for he trusteth in thee (??). Trust in the Lord for ever; for in the Lord Jehovah is an everlasting rock. For he hath brought down them that dwell on high, the lofty city; he laid it low even to the ground, he brought it even to the dust. The foot of the poor trode it down, the steps of the needy.

The way of the righteous is straightness; the path of the righteous thou makest plain. Yea, in the way of thy judgements, O Lord, we wait for thee; the desire of our soul is to thy name and thy memorial. With my soul I desire thee; yea, with my spirit within me I yearn for thee. When thy judgements are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. Let favour be shewn to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness; even in the land of uprightness he will deal unjustly, and he doth not behold the majesty of the Lord.

O Lord, thy hand was lifted up, yet they see not; let them see and be ashamed. Thy zeal for thy people and the fire for thine enemies--may these devour them! Lord, do thou ordain peace for us; for even our whole work thou hast wrought for us. O Lord, our God, other lords besides thee have had dominion over us, but through thee only do we celebrate thy name (?). The dead shall not live, the Shades shall not rise; therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish.

Thou hast increased the nation, O Lord, thou hast glorified thyself; thou hast extended far all the borders of the land. In their trouble, O Lord, they sought thee; they poured out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them (??). have not wrought deliverance in the land, neither have inhabitants of the world been born. Thy dead shall arise; they that dwell in the dust shall awake and sing; for thy dew is a dew of lights, and the land shall bring to life the Shades.

The historical allusions are again doubtful. Some victories or advantages have been won, but distress is still predominant;

while even for what has been achieved the community as a whole is not sufficiently grateful to God.

The unfortunate combination of religion and politics in the minds of these later writers is clearly seen in the statement that the cause of righteousness is only to be advanced by the sword and by severity. Judgements': this is the only way. The religious sense is vitiated by the lower nationalism. Judgements and violence are not the true methods of the Servant: not only is the effect of righteousness peace, but the effect of peace is righteousness. Like many other nations, ancient and modern, the Jews desired the annihilation of their foes. But to desire the annihilation of foes is not religion, and their foes were not God's foes. Herein consisted their mistake.

There is no inconsistency in the denial and the affirmation of the Resurrection. The denial concerns certain enemies, whom the writer declares to be dead for good and all; the affirmation concerns the Jews, or more especially the pious among them. The passage is of very great interest and importance in the history and growth of the idea of immortality. For here, albeit in a limited and material form, we do find, for the first time perhaps in the chronological order, a distinct conviction that the shadowy and valueless life of Sheol is not all to which we may trustingly look forward.

§ 6. The divine indignation.—Once more for a short interval the original prophecy or Apocalypse seems to speak to us again. There is a very fair connexion with what we last heard from it in paragraph three. The Judgement Day is still being described.

Go, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors behind thee: hide thyself for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast. For, behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to visit the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; and the earth shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain. In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword shall visit Leviathan the fleet serpent, and Leviathan the coiled serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.

'The judgement on the ungodly powers of this world is represented symbolically as the destruction of these living monsters by the sword of Jehovah.' To which empires the three monsters refer is uncertain, and depends on the date of the prophecy.