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THE OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRIT

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earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come. And it shall

come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be they that escape, as the Lord hath said, and among the fugitives shall be those whom the Lord shall call.

'Upon all flesh:' the context shows that only Israelites are referred to. Professor Driver has a good note on the divine 'spirit.' The writers of the Hebrew Scriptures mean by it, he says, 'the conscious vital force peculiar to God, which, as proceeding from him, is the power which creates and sustains the life of created beings, and to the operation of which are attributed extraordinary faculties and activities of man, as well as supernatural spiritual gifts.' When Joel says 'your sons shall prophesy' he means, as Professor Driver well says, that they will have insight into divine truth, and will be moved to express it, in the manner which is at present confined to such as specially bear the name of prophets. The term is of course not to be misunderstood as if it referred merely to predictions relating to the future: the reference is in general to inspired instruction in moral and religious truth.'

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§ 6. The doom of Judah's foes.-The final section describes the varying results of the Day of Judgement upon Judah's foes and upon Judah. Desolation and ruin are predicted for the former; glory and prosperity to the latter.

The last sentence in the book means that 'by the desolation of Egypt and Edom (chosen as typical examples of countries hostile to Israel) Jehovah will show openly that the murdered Judahites had suffered innocently. So long, namely, as he permitted their blood to remain unavenged, it might be supposed that they had not been slain unjustly: but by the punishment of the murderers (i.e. here, by the desolation of their country) Jehovah declares (implicitly), what he had not declared before, that their blood was innocent, and had been unjustly shed' (Driver).

For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will contend with them there in judgement for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have

scattered among the nations, and parted my land and cast lots for my people.

And what are ye to me, O Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine? will ye repay a deed of mine or will ye do aught unto me? Swiftly and speedily will I return your deed upon your own head; because ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried into your temples my goodly pleasant things: the children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border. Behold, I will stir them up out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your deed upon your own head: and I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the men of Sheba, to a people far off: for the Lord hath spoken it.

Proclaim ye this among the nations; Consecrate a war, arouse the warriors, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into lances: let the weak say, I am a warrior. Hasten and come, all ye nations round about, and gather yourselves together: thither cause thy warriors to come down, O Lord. Let the nations be stirred up, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the nations round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the vats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the Day of the Lord is near. The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining. And the Lord shall roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall quake: but the Lord will be a refuge unto his people, and a stronghold to the children of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain: and Jerusalem shall be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more.

And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountains shall drop down sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the water-courses of Judah shall flow with waters, and a fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord, and shall water the valley of Shittim. Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall be a desolate wilderness,

FINAL GLEANINGS

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for the violence against the children of Judah, because they have shed innocent blood in their land. But Judah shall be inhabited for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. And I will hold as innocent their blood which I have not held as innocent: for the Lord dwelleth in Zion.

It is pleasant to think that so far from Egypt becoming or remaining a waste, our own people are helping to work out its material and moral regeneration at the present time. The strange and striking prophecy from the Book of Isaiah, quoted in Part I, p. 605, seems happily to be growing more true than the vaticinations of Joel. And the Lord shall smite Egypt: he shall smite and heal it and they shall return even to the Lord, and he shall be intreated of them, and shall heal them.'

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§ 7. Last extracts from the prophets.-The chapters of the present volume which have been devoted to Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Joel, taken together with the extracts from Jeremiah, Micah, Ezekiel, the second Isaiah, Haggai and Zechariah in Part I, have, I think, put before the reader the greatest and most permanently valuable sections of the entire prophetical literature. At the same time it must not be supposed that there are not many fine and striking things in what remains over. From Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Obadiah and Malachi I have made no selections whatever. I have only quoted a single short extract from Micah ; but eight chapters from Ezekiel out of a total of forty-eight; and even from Isaiah and Jeremiah and Zechariah I have omitted a good deal.

In these omissions there are to be found many sentences which are familiar to us.

So, for instance, we have the famous invocation to God in the Book of Habakkuk :

Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord,

My God, mine Holy One? we shall not die.

Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil,
And canst not look upon iniquity:

Wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal ruthlessly,
And holdest thy peace when the wicked swalloweth up
the man that is more righteous than he?

It is in Habakkuk that we also find a passage with two wellknown sayings which runs as follows:

I will stand upon my watch, and take my place upon the tower, and will look forth to see what he will speak unto me, and what he will answer to my plea. And the Lord answered me, and said,

Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables,

That he may run who readeth it.

For the vision waiteth yet for the appointed time,
But it hasteth towards the goal, and will not lie :
Though it tarry, wait for it;

For it will surely come, it will not fail.

Behold the wicked, his soul is not upright within him,
But the righteous shall live through his faithfulness.

In the Authorized Version the last line is less accurately translated: The just shall live by his faith.'

In the anonymous prophetical brochure which goes by the name of Malachi,' and is contemporary with Nehemiah, the author denounces the dissensions then prevalent among the Jews. He employs the memorable words:

Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created us?

It is curious that these words, which in Malachi' refer to the Jews only, are constantly used to-day in a universal sense. Nor is there any reason why we should not give an enlarged meaning to Biblical sayings, if we remember that the historical and literal meaning is one thing, the homiletic and applied meaning another. When we quote the verse, we mean by it that God is the Creator of all men; all races of men are linked together as sons of one Father. Malachi only meant by it that all the Jews are so related; but we may reasonably charge his words with wider and holier significance.

It is Malachi' also who, speaking in a figure of the Messianic glory, says:

Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings.

And it is 'Malachi' who gives the ideal conception of the true Priest and as he ought to be in reality.

My covenant was with him; life and peace I gave unto him, and reverence that he might fear me, and have awe

GOD'S NAME AMONG THE NATIONS

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before my name. True teaching was in his mouth, and fraud was not found in his lips: he walked with me in truth and equity; and he turned away many from iniquity. For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek direction at his mouth; for he is the Messenger of the Lord of hosts.

Lastly, it is 'Malachi,' as it seems, who, in spite of his intense 'nationalism,' which nowhere makes itself more conspicuously apparent than in a fierce hatred of Edom which he is rash enough to put into the mouth of God, yet in one single verse of his short book lays down the remarkable doctrine that the worship of the heathen is in truth an unconscious worship of the true God. For they too make sacrifice to the highest or supreme God, and who is he but Jehovah ?

From the rising of the sun even unto the going down thereof my name is great among the nations; and in every place incense is offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name is great among the nations, saith the Lord.

Of this extraordinary passage Professor Wellhausen says what those who understand German may here read for themselves:

Es wird hier nicht wie sonst von der Zukunft gehofft, dass die Heiden sich zu dem Gott in Jerusalem bekehren werden, sondern es wird von der Gegenwart ausgesagt, dass die Anbetung des einen und wahren Gottes allerorten auf Erden verbreitet sei. Das lässt sich nur so erklären, dass der Verfasser den Monotheismus in den heidnischen Religionen anerkennt. Es war die Zeit, wo bei Phöniziern, Samariern und Juden gleichmässig die Bezeichnung der höchste Gott' aufkam. Merkwürdig nimmt sich diese Weitherzigkeit hier aus, neben der Befriedigung darüber, dass Jahve den Juden zu Gefallen die Edomiter zu Grunde gerichtet habe. Aber so widerspruchsvoll war das Judenthum, in Folge seiner geschichtlichen Belastung.

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Of other Messianic passages in the prophets which I have not quoted, one in the small Book of Zephaniah contains the fine verse:

Then will I turn to the peoples a pure lip, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with

one consent.

And the Book of Micah closes with the well-known verses, of uncertain date.

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