xii. This prophecy is remarkable, even in this eloquent book, for

the marvelous eloquence with which, in his visions of future glory, the inspired seer depicts the government of the "rod out of the stem of Jesse," the "Branch" that is to "grow out of his roots," in whose reign the wild beasts will no longer persecute their prey, nor Ephraim and Judah keep up the memory of their ancient feud; who will cause his beloved people to put the Philistines to flight, to conquer Edom and Moab, and reduce the children of Ammon to submission. Prophecies directed against Ethiopia and Egypt (chap. xvii. 12-xviii. 7, and chap. xx.) belong to the same portion of Isaiah's collected works. Threats against the Assyrians are contained in additional chapters, namely, chap. xxxiii. and chap. xxxvii. 22-35. Lastly, a seventh portion of Isaiah consists of chap. xix., which, after holding out the prospect of great misfortunes to Egypt, ends in a somewhat unusual strain by admitting both Egyptians and Assyrians to be equal sharers with the Israelites in the ultimate prosperity of the earth, and declaring that the Lord himself will bless them all, saying, "Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance."

It should be noted that, if Ewald's supposition be correct, the first four sections of the work, thus decomposed into its several constituents, were edited by Isaiah himself, while the fifth, sixth, and seventh were added by subsequent compilers to the collection he had left behind (P. A. B., vol. i. p. 488).

A very short prophecy called by Obadiah's name follows upon the genuine writings of Isaiah in chronological order. It is in fact anonymous. In its present form it belongs to the time of the Captivity. The object of the unknown prophet was to reprove the Idumeans for rejoicing in and profiting by the destruction of Jerusalem. In his writing he embodied an older prophecy by the actual Obadiah, referring to a calamity that had befallen Edom, when a part of its territory had been surprised and completely plundered by a people with whom it had just been in alliance. The same old piece was used by Jeremiah (chap. xlix. 7) in his prophecy upon Edom (Ib., vol. i. p. 489 ff.).

Micah, the next prophet, was a younger contemporary of Isaiah, but lived in the country. When he wrote the northern kingdom was approaching its end, and he threatens Judah with chastisement and destruction. He foresaw the fulfillment of Messianic hopes as arising only from the ruin of the existing order of things. No more than the first five chapters are by Micah himself (Ib., vol. i. p. 498 ff.). His book is remarkable for the extremely warlike description he gives of Messianic happiness. Many other prophets conceive it as an important element in that happiness that the Israelites shall be victorious over their enemies; but few, if any, have come up to Micah in the fervor with which he foretells the desolation, the carnage, the utter suppression of rival nations, which will accompany that age. The author of the scenes of blood will be the ruler who is to come from Bethlehem-Ephratah. The prophet who has added the last two chapters also looks forward to an age when Jehovah will at length perform his promises to Abraham and Jacob, to the terror of the unbelieving nations.

Next after Micah stands Nahum. The occasion of his prophecy was a hostile attack directed against Nineveh. He must have seen the danger with his own eyes, and he was therefore a descendant of one of the Israelites who had been carried off to Assyria. He evidently lived far from Palestine, and was familiar with Assyrian affairs. Elkosh, where the inscription places his residence, was a little town on the Tigris. His book may refer to the siege of Nineveh by the Median king Phraortes about six hundred and thirty-six (P. A. B., vol. ii. p. 1). The interest of Nahum's prophecy is merely local; he does not rise beyond the politics of the hour, and we need not therefore stop to examine his utterances in detail. It may be noted, however, that an expression which has become famous through its adoption by a much later prophet, "Behold, upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace," is first found in Nahum.

Zephaniah's prophecy arose out of a great movement of nations. He lived in the reign of Josiah, but wrote before the reformation effected by that monarch. The movement alluded to by him must have been the great irruption of the Scythians mentioned by Herodotus as having interrupted the siege of Nineveh by Kyaxares, King of the Medes (Herod., i. 103). These last days of the Assyrian kingdom gave rise to long disturbances in which the Chaldeans became conquerors (P. A. B., vol. ii. p. 14). After various threatenings against divers people, the prophecy of Zephaniah ends with a beautiful vision of the age to come, when the suppliants of Jehovah will come from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia; and when a virtuous and happy remnant will be left in Israel.

When Habakkuk, the next prophet, wrote his thoughts, and composed the public prayer or psalm which forms his concluding chapter, the Chaldeans were already in the land. This "bitter and hasty nation" was quite a new phenomenon there. Habakkuk lived after the reformation of Josiah, and therefore in the reign of Jehoiakim (Ib., vol. ii. p. 29). He seems to have written to plead with the Almighty for deliverance, and to express unabated confidence in him; and he hoped that his words, set to music and sung in public worship, would induce him to abate his anger as manifested in the Chaldean scourge.

An anonymous prophet (Ib., vol. ii. p. 52) (Zechariah xiii. 1-xiii. 6, and xiv.) predicts the siege and capture of Jerusalem, with all the miserable incidents of conquest: the rifling of her houses, the ravishing of her women, the condemnation to captivity of half her inhabitants. Like other prophets, however, he looks forward in sanguine anticipation to a day when the heathen nations who now make war upon Jerusalem will regularly go up there every year to worship Jehovah, and keep the feast of tabernacles. At least if any of them do not, they will have no rain. In that glorious age the very pots in the Lord's house will be like the bowls for offerings; nay, every pot in Judah and Jerusalem will be holy to the Lord of hosts.

We pass now to the consideration of a prophet who stands second in eminence only to Isaiah, and to the unknown author of the later work which in the Canon is included in the Book of Isaiah. Jeremiah began to prophesy in the thirteenth year of Josiah, and continued to do so during the reigns of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah. His active life, like that of Isaiah, extended over a period of half a century (P. A. B., vol. ii. p. 63 ff.). It is noteworthy that Jeremiah was a priest, and therefore combined in his person the double qualification of consecration and of exceptional holiness: that is, he was consecrated to Jehovah, and also appointed expressly by Jehovah. The manner of his appointment to be a holy person resembles the manner of the appointment of Isaiah. The word of the Lord came to him, saying, that before God had formed him in the belly he had known him, and before he had come forth from the womb he had sanctified him, and ordained him a prophet unto the nations. Jeremiah objected that he was but a child. But Jehovah told him not to say he was a child, for that he was to go where he was sent, and speak what he was commanded. He was not to be afraid of men's faces, for he, the Lord, would deliver him. Then he touched Jeremiah's mouth with his hand, and said: "Behold, I put my words in thy mouth. See, I appoint thee this day over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build and to plant." After this solemn dedication to his duties Jeremiah was certainly endowed with the fullest qualifications for the prophetic office. He immediately began to see images; namely, a rod of an almond-tree and a seething pot, and it continued afterwards to be one of his characteristics to employ material imagery of this nature for the purpose of illustrating the truths he had to communicate.

After this introduction, we have a long section of the work, namely, from the second chapter to the twenty-fourth, beginning with the prophecies of the thirteenth year of Josiah. Among other things this portion includes Jeremiah's bitter imprecation upon his personal enemies, the "men of Anathoth," on whom he begs to be permitted to witness the vengeance of God, and concerning whom he receives the consoling assurance that their young men will die by the sword, and their sons and daughters by famine, and that there will not be a remnant left. This section contains also the terrible prayer against those who "devised devices" against Jeremiah, in other words, did not believe in his predictions. In its intense intolerance, in its unblushing disclosure of private malignity, in its unscrupulous enumeration of the ills desired for these opponents of the prophet, it is perhaps unrivaled in theological literature. To do Jeremiah justice it ought to be quoted at length:—

"Give heed to me, O Jehovah, and listen to the voice of my opponents. Shall evil be recompensed for good, that they dig a pit for my life? Remember how I stood before thee, to speak a good word for them, to turn away thy wrath from them. Therefore give their sons to famine, and deliver them into the power of the sword; and let their wives be bereaved of their children and widowed, and let their men be put to death; let their young men be slain by the sword in battle. Let a cry be heard from their houses, when thou suddenly bringest troops upon them; for they have digged a pit to take me, and hid snares for my feet. Yet thou, Jehovah, knowest all their counsel against me to slay me; and blot not out their sin from thy sight, and let them be overthrown before thee; deal with them in the time of thine anger" (Jer. xviii. 19-23).

In another chapter there is a curious account of an incident with Pashur, superintendent of the Temple, who had caused Jeremiah to be put in stocks for a day. Jeremiah complains bitterly of the treatment he meets with on account of his prophesying, and wishes to resign the office, but the impulse proves too strong for him. He consoles himself with a pious hope that Jehovah will let him see his vengeance on his enemies (Jer. xx. 1-12). He continues to predict misfortunes, but intermingles with his gloomier forebodings a fine vision of the time when God shall gather together the remnant of his flock from the countries to which he has driven them, and raise up "a righteous Branch" of the house of David, who will reign and prosper, who will execute justice and equity, in whose days Judah will be saved, and Israel dwell secure (Jer. xxiii. 2-6).

In a third section of his work (chap. xlvi. 1-12, and chap. xlvii. 49) Jeremiah deals with foreign nations, and then (in chap. xxv.) declares that he has been prophesying a long time without being able to get the Jews to listen to him, foretells their subjugation by Nebuchadnezzar, and (rather unfortunately for his own and Jehovah's reputation for correct foresight) commits himself to the definite term of seventy years as the duration of the coming captivity. A wise prophet would have kept within the safe region of vagueness, where he could not come into collision with awkward dates nor drive orthodox interpreters into such pitiable straits as those in which Ewald, for example, finds himself, when he is compelled to say that seventy years is a perfectly general indication of a future that cannot be more precisely fixed, and that it merely refers to the third generation from the writer (P. A. B., vol. ii. p. 230). The remainder of this section (chap. xxvi.-xxix.) relates certain encounters with other prophets whose predictions had turned out false, and one of whom, as Jeremiah exultingly relates, died during the year, exactly as Jeremiah had declared he would. Interesting evidence is supplied by these chapters of the existence of numerous prophets who differed from each other, and between whose claims only the event could decide.

In the fourth section (chap. xxx.-xxxv.) Jeremiah prophesies the restoration of Israel, and tells his readers how he bought a field from his cousin on the strength of his hopes that the captivity would have an end. A fifth part (chaps. xxxvi., xlv.) relates to Baruch, Jeremiah's secretary; and an appendix (chap. xxxvii.-xliv., and chap.