the front; and, according to a characteristic tendency of the Hebrew mind, we find a disposition to individualize the nation, and to bring to a focus the characteristic thought of the age in 'the conception of an individual righteous man who as the accepted representative of his nation must needs make atonement by suffering for its sins, and so become a prevailing intercessor with God. In this ideal servant of Jehovah are concentrated the scattered characteristics of God's faithful: their spirit of dependence, their patient devotion, their unswerving faithfulness in the fulfilment of vocation, their brave constancy under trial, their meek acceptance of death'.' In the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah prophecy seems to rise to this culminating point. It delineates the figure of one who by pouring out his soul unto death can indeed make atonement for the transgressions of his people, and who passes through the gate of death to a new and glorious life of fruitfulness and power. 'This wonderful figure combines in itself,' says Schultz, 'the figure of the Priest who offers Himself up as a sacrifice for the world, the figure of the Prophet who by His knowledge of God brings justification, and the figure of the King who, transfigured and blessed, enjoys the fruits of His sufferings 2. During the exile, then, the hope of Israel was finally transferred from the theocratic king to the servant of Jehovah, the faithful remnant which still represented the people of God. Conscious as they were of possessing the true knowledge of God, and of vocation to His service, the faithful patiently awaited the issue of the conflict between the true religion and the idolatries of heathenism. The sublime prophet of the exile in fact developes the thought of the mediatorial functions of God's people which the very circumstances of the exile suggested. In his pages the universalist ideas of earlier 1 Repeated from The Doctrine of the Incarnation, vol. i. p. 55. The prophecy become deepened and spiritualized. Israel which he represents recognizes its prophetic and priestly function, its vocation to be a light to the Gentiles. It learns that the purpose of grace manifested in Israel's election embraces the entire family of mankind. And in accordance with these ideas, prophecy henceforth displays a new sense of the dignity of priesthood and its functions. Already in his ideal sketch of the age of restoration, Ezekiel assigns special prominence to the Aaronic priesthood. The priests are to be the teachers and judges of the future, and are to represent in their own persons the entire consecration of Israel to Jehovah 2. In the prophecy of Zechariah, Joshua the high-priest stands on a level with Zerubbabel the theocratic prince. There is a juxtaposition of the offices of priest and king implied in the coronation of Joshua . The high-priest is not as yet identified with the prince; what Zechariah's prophecy signifies is the perfect harmony and unity of two elements indispensable in the newly-established settlement. The counsel of peace, he says, shall be between them both. Only at a more advanced stage, it would seem, did prophecy rise to the thought of a monarch who as representative of the priestly nation should himself hold the dignity of the priesthood, being made by the oath of Jehovah a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. In Psalm cx is to be found the combination of two separate lines of prediction. 5. Corresponding to the conception of a people of God charged with a spiritual mission to mankind is that of a new covenant-a covenant of which grace, not law, is the outstanding characteristic. It was a hope to which Jeremiah had already given touching expression. In his days it must have seemed the only hope that remained for an apostate Israel. In effect Jeremiah appears to have abandoned the expectation of any response to his warnings and denunciations. He renounces the nation which is hastening headlong to its ruin, and apparently devotes himself to preparing the way for a new people that should emerge from the ashes of the old. The hope of a new covenant was indeed the stay of the faithful under continual disillusionment. The experience of ages is embodied in the pregnant verdict of Jeremiah on the final result of the Mosaic dispensation: which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord. Jehovah had purposed to make Israel a kingdom of priests and an holy nation, but the only hope of the ideal being realized lay in the free action of Jehovah's grace. The old covenant was marked by inherent deficiency: it was powerless to secure the obedience it enjoined, it was burdensome as a law of positive precepts and ordinances; in relation to the removal of sin it was hopelessly ineffective. Prophecy therefore recognized that the old covenant was waxing old and ready to vanish away3. It looked to the future for a new covenant of grace, under which not merely the outward life, but the heart of Israel, should be renewed unto holiness. In the Messianic age the law of Jehovah. should be written in the heart; each soul should have immediate knowledge of God and unrestricted access to Him; above all, the clinging burden of sin and defilement should be finally removed. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more. Thus it was at length realized that the Messiah was not destined to fulfil the aspirations of national ambition, but to satisfy the yearnings of spiritual need to preach good tidings unto the meek, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the 1 Darmesteter, p. 67. Jer. xxxi. 32. Cp. Heb. viii. 9. Heb. viii. 13. captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound1. In the prophecies of Ezekiel we find a continuation of Jeremiah's teaching. One effect of the exile on the faithful was doubtless a deeper consciousness of sin, and a sense that the mere collective and national access to God provided for in the institutions of preexilic worship was incapable of satisfying the thirst of the individual soul for salvation. Ezekiel repeats and emphasizes Jeremiah's doctrine concerning individual responsibility; but he goes further and points to the prospect of an inward renewal wrought by the power of Jehovah's spirit. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh3. Thus the prophets who had been, to quote Wellhausen's striking expression, 'the spiritual destroyers of old Israel,' became the pioneers of a new era. They hold out the prospect of a nationality which has renewed its youth; they look for a new creation. Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create; for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy 5. 6. The post-exilic prophets gather up the substance of former predictions, their aim being to deepen those conceptions respecting the Messiah and his work which were already current. In Haggai and Zechariah the idea of Israel's spiritual mission to the world reappears, but in a form moulded by the special circumstances of their time-the rebuilding of the temple and the reorganization of worship on the levitical pattern. The interest of prophecy centres 1 Isa. lxi. I. Ezek. xxxvi. 25 foll. 2 Riehm, ATI. Theologie, p. 36. Isa. lxv. 17, 18. Sketch, &c. p. 122. in the temple as at no previous period in history. Haggai, for example, points to a new glory of the national sanctuary as the appointed centre of divine self-manifestation in the future. The sudden coming of Jehovah to His temple will usher in the age of Messianic blessings'. Thither the desirable things of all nations shall be brought; there the deepest yearnings of man's heart shall be finally satisfied: In this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts. Nearly a century later the same thought reappears in Malachi in a somewhat modified shape characteristic of his time. Jehovah will manifest Himself through the mediation of an angel, the messenger of His covenant, and instrument of His righteous judgment. To Malachi, as to Haggai, the temple is the destined scene of the future theophany; and the main object of the divine judgment is to purify the sons of Levi, that there may once more be a faithful priesthood in Israel, and a pure offering acceptable to God 2. On the other hand, the moral and ethical tone of prophecy, and its insistence on the divine requirement as a condition of covenant communion, is still dominant in the prophets of the restoration. In Zechariah especially we find the two correlative aspects of spiritual reformation' enforced: as 'the bounden duty of man, and as the promised gift of God.' It is difficult to trace the process by which it came about, but there can be no doubt that the hopes of later Judaism are of a narrower and more nationalistic cast than those of the exilic period. In fact, as Professor Pfleiderer remarks, in some respects the legal religion of the synagogue shows a retrogression from the lofty idealism of the prophets.' The universalist 1 Hag. ii. 7-9; Zech. ix. 9 foll. It is noticeable that for a brief space the prince of David's house, which in the person of Zerubbabel emerged from its obscurity, figures once more in the pages of prophecy. See Zech. iii. 8; cp. Jer. xxiii. 5. 2 Mal. iii. 1-5, 16 foll. 3 See Zech. iii. 4; v. 5-11; viii. 16, 17. Cp. Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures, vol. ii. p. 300. Gifford Lectures, vol. ii. p. 51. |