Introduction to the Old Testament

confirmation of an incident in Joshua's southern campaign. Doubtless the whole battle was described in one of the war-ballads in this famous collection (cf. Jud. v.), and it is...

Maccabaeus in 165 B.C. is a thing of the past or still an object of contemplation. In any case it must have been written before the death of Antiochus in 164 (xi. 45). Like all...

gleam of religion, iv. 26. After the lapse of ten generations (v.) the world had grown so corrupt that God determined to destroy it by a flood; but because Noah was a good man,...

ii. 18-22. The third poem, probably the latest in the book, represents the city, after a bitter lament, iii. 1-21, as being inspired, by the thought of the love of God, to submi...

altogether different from what we know it to have been, judging by other authentic oracles of this period (xxvii.-xxix.). There he counsels patience--it is the false prophets wh...

supplementary passover, the case of the daughters of Zelophehad serves as a historical basis for the law governing the property of heiresses (xxxvi.). In other words, P is not a...

larger experience of international relationships, which could hardly be placed before the exile, and was not truly developed till long after it, say, in the Persian or Greek per...

the true religion's sake, xliv. 24-xlv. 8. Those who are surprised at Jehovah's call of the foreign Cyrus are sternly reminded that Jehovah is sovereign and can call whom He wil...

situation of their time. There the immediate problem was the building of the temple; here, more than once, Jerusalem is represented as in a state of siege. A sketch of the conte...

rapacious land-holders, drunkards, sceptics, enemies of the moral order, worldly wise men, besotted and unjust judges, v. 8-24. This is fittingly followed by the announcement th...

to decide whether any particular psalm is David's or not. Some have ventured to ascribe a dozen psalms or so to him on the strength of their peculiar vigour and originality, but...

appellative--he is "the Satan.". Where the evidence is so slender certainty is impossible; but there is a probability that the book may be safely placed somewhere between 450 an...

the righteous is Judah, and we shall have to interpret the confusion pictured in i. 2-4 as due to the Chaldean suzerainty, and perhaps to assign the section to a period after th...

of the fifth century. We are probably not far from the truth in dating Obadiah 1-14 about 500 B.C. The memory of Edom's cruelty would still rankle a generation after the return.

chapters--at any rate vi. i-vii. 6--come from the reign of Manasseh. The situation is that of i.-iii., only aggravated: the reference to Ahab, vi. 16, with whom Manasseh is comp...

unfaithfulness, v. 11-31, and the obligations of the Nazirite vow, vi. 1-21. This legal section ends with the priestly benediction, vi. 22-27. Then, closely connected with the n...

If Amos is the St. James of the Old Testament, Hosea is the St. John. It is indeed possible to draw the contrast too sharply between Amos and Hosea, as is done when it is assert...

judgment--a section more akin to iii.-vi. than to vii.-ix. The book concludes with an outlook on the redemption and prosperity which will follow in the Messianic age, ix. 8-15....

twice expressly named as Cyrus, xliv. 28, xlv. 1, and occasionally alluded to as a figure almost too familiar to need naming, xli. 25, xlv. 13. He it is who is to overthrow Baby...

upon his soul. He is familiar with lions and bears, iii. 8, v. 19, and the terrors of the wilderness hover over all his message. He had observed with acuteness and sympathy the...

Zerubbabel (or for him and Joshua)[1] out of the gold and silver brought by emissaries of the Babylonian Jews, and the hope is expressed that peace will prevail between the lead...

Much more than in Genesis, and even more than in Exodus have J and E been welded together in Numbers--so closely, indeed, that it is usually all but impossible to distinguish th...

ascription of the Psalms to David or the legislation to Moses. He was the "wise man" of Hebrew antiquity, and he is expressly said in 1 Kings iv. 32 to have spoken 3,000 proverb...

by the ruin of Edom (Mal. i. 2-5). If, however, xxxiv. 16 implies, as we are not bound to believe, a fixed prophetic canon, the chapters would be very late, falling somewhere wi...

connected in some way with Moab, as the book of Ruth represents him to have been; whereas a later age would hardly have dared to invent a Moabite ancestress for him, had there b...

Carchemish, xxv. 1. Ch. xlvi. contains two oracles against Egypt, the first of which, at least vv. 1-12, is graphic and powerful, and the second, _vv._ 13-26, announces the conq...

tell about him than our book of Kings (2 Kings xv. 32-38). Clearly, then, the book so frequently cited is not the canonical book of Kings. What sort of production it was may be...

and He will be the strength of those who put their trust in Him (xl. 12-3l).[1] For He has raised up a great warrior from the north-east (cf. xli. 2, 25), i.e. Cyrus, through wh...

his source it points naturally enough back to 2 Sam. iii. 2-5. There can be no doubt, then, that the canonical books of Samuel and Kings constituted one of his sources.

Whether Hosea ever alludes to Judah in his genuine prophecies is very doubtful. Some of the references are obvious interpolations (cf. i. 7), and for one reason or another, near...