Chapter 12

Thus saith the LORD: Shall men fall, and not rise up again? shall one turn away, and not return? Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a perpetual backsliding? they hold fast deceit, they refuse to return. I hearkened and heard, but they spake not aright: no man repenteth him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? every one turneth to his course, as a horse that rusheth headlong in the battle. Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the swallow and the crane observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the ordinance of the LORD. How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us? But, behold, the false pen of the scribes hath wrought falsely. The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the LORD; and what manner of wisdom is in them? Therefore will I give their wives unto others, and their fields to them that shall possess them: for every one from the least even unto the greatest is given to covetousness, from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely. And they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people lightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall they fall among them that fall: in the time of their visitation they shall be cast down, saith the LORD. I will utterly consume them, saith the LORD: there shall be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them.

THE PEOPLE

Why do we sit still? assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the defenced cities, and let us be silent there: for the LORD our God hath put us to silence, and given us water of gall to drink, because we have sinned against the LORD. We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of healing, and behold dismay! The snorting of his horses is heard from Dan: at the sound of the neighing of his strong ones the whole land trembleth; for they are come, and have devoured the land and all that is in it; the city and those that dwell therein.

THE LORD

For, behold, I will send serpents, basilisks, among you, which will not be charmed; and they shall bite you, saith the LORD.

THE PROPHET

Oh that I could comfort myself against sorrow! my heart is faint within me. Behold, the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people from a land that is very far off--

THE PEOPLE

Is not the LORD in Zion? is not her King in her?

THE LORD

Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images, and with strange vanities?

THE PEOPLE

The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved!

THE PROPHET

For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt: I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me. Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people and go from them! for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men. And they bend their tongue as it were their bow for falsehood; and they are grown strong in the land, but not for truth.

THE LORD

For they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the LORD. Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour will go about with slanders. And they will deceive every one his neighbour, and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they weary themselves to commit iniquity. Thine habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know me, saith the LORD. Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, I will melt them, and try them; for how else should I do, because of the daughter of my people? Their tongue is a deadly arrow; it speaketh deceit: one speaketh peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in his heart he layeth wait for him. Shall I not visit them for these things? saith the LORD: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?

THE LORD'S CONTROVERSY BEFORE THE MOUNTAINS

A Dramatic Morceau of Micah

THE LORD

Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear, O ye mountains, the LORD'S controversy, and ye enduring foundations of the earth: for the LORD hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel.

O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me. For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of bondage; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember now what Balak king of Moab consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him; remember from Shittim unto Gilgal, that ye may know the righteous acts of the LORD.

THE PEOPLE

Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

THE MOUNTAINS

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

A CRY OF COMFORT FOR JERUSALEM

Prelude to the Rhapsody of 'Zion Redeemed'

JEHOVAH

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; that she hath received of the LORD'S hand double for all her sins.

[Voices carry on the tidings across the desert to Jerusalem

A VOICE OF ONE CRYING

Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the LORD, Make straight in the desert a high way for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, And every mountain and hill shall be made low: And the crooked shall be made straight, And the rough places plain: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, And all flesh shall see it together: For the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.

A SECOND VOICE (in the distance)

Cry!

A DESPAIRING VOICE

What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, And all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, The flower fadeth, Because the breath of the LORD bloweth upon it: Surely the people is grass!

THE SECOND VOICE

The grass withereth, The flower fadeth: But the word of our God shall stand for ever.

FOURTH VOICE (still more distant)

O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, Get thee up into the high mountain; O thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusalem, Lift up thy voice with strength; Lift it up, be not afraid; Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!

FIFTH VOICE

Behold, the Lord GOD will come as a mighty one, And his arm shall rule for him: Behold, his reward is with him, And his recompence before him. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd, He shall gather the lambs in his arm, And carry them in his bosom, And shall gently lead those that give suck.

ZION AWAKENED

(Being Vision III of the Rhapsody of 'Zion Redeemed')

Appeals to Zion

JEHOVAH

Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye were digged. Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for when he was but one I called him, and I blessed him, and made him many.

For the LORD hath comforted Zion: he hath comforted all her waste places, and hath made her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.

(No response)

JEHOVAH

Attend unto me, O my people; and give ear unto me, O my nation; for a law shall go forth from me, and I will make my judgement to rest for a light of the peoples. My righteousness is near, my salvation is gone forth, and mine arms shall judge the peoples; the isles shall wait for me, and on mine arm shall they trust.

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.

(No response)

JEHOVAH

Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye dismayed at their revilings.

For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation unto all generations.

(No response)

THE CELESTIAL HOSTS

Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; Awake, as in the days of old, The generations of ancient times! Art thou not it that cut Rahab in pieces, That pierced the dragon? Art thou not it which dried up the sea, The waters of the great deep; That made the depths of the sea A way for the redeemed to pass over?

And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, And come with singing unto Zion; And everlasting joy shall be upon their heads: They shall obtain gladness and joy, And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

JEHOVAH

I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou art afraid of man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass; and hast forgotten the LORD thy Maker, that stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth; and fearest continually all the day because of the fury of the oppressor, when he maketh ready to destroy? And where is the fury of the oppressor? The captive exile shall speedily be loosed; and he shall not die and go down into the pit, neither shall his bread fail.

For I am the LORD thy God, which stilleth the sea, when the waves thereof roar: the LORD of hosts is his name. And I have put my words in thy mouth, and have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people.

(No response)

THE CELESTIAL HOSTS

Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, Which hast drunk at the hand of the LORD the cup of his fury; Thou hast drunken the bowl of the cup of staggering, and drained it.

There is none to guide her Among all the sons whom she hath brought forth; Neither is there any that taketh her by the hand Of all the sons that she hath brought up.

These two things are befallen thee; Who shall bemoan thee? Desolation and destruction, And the famine, and the sword, How shall I comfort thee?

Thy sons have fainted, They lie at the top of all the streets, As an antelope in a net; They are full of the fury of the LORD, The rebuke of thy God.

JEHOVAH

Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted, and drunken, but not with wine: Thus saith thy Lord, the LORD, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people: Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of staggering, even the bowl of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again: and I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee; which have said to thy soul, Bow down, that we may go over: and thou hast laid thy back as the ground, and as the street, to them that go over.

(No response)

THE CELESTIAL HOSTS

Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; Put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: For henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean.

Shake thyself from the dust; Arise, sit thee down, O Jerusalem: Loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion.

JEHOVAH

For thus saith the LORD, Ye were sold for nought, and ye shall be redeemed without money. For thus saith the Lord GOD, My people went down at the first into Egypt to sojourn there: and the Assyrian oppressed them without cause. Now therefore, what do I here, saith the LORD, seeing that my people is taken away for nought? They that rule over them do howl, saith the LORD, and my name continually all the day is blasphemed. Therefore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak: Behold it is I!

ii

The Awakening

CHORUS OF WATCHMEN

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him That bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, That bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation: That saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!

The voice of thy Watchmen! they lift up the voice, Together do they sing, For they shall see, eye to eye, How the LORD returneth to Zion.

Break forth into joy, sing together, Ye waste places of Jerusalem: For the LORD hath comforted his people, He hath redeemed Jerusalem.

The LORD hath made bare his holy arm In the eyes of all the nations; And all the ends of the earth Shall see the salvation of our God.

Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, Touch no unclean thing; Go ye out of the midst of her; Be ye clean, ye that bear the vessels of the LORD.

For ye shall not go out in haste, Neither shall ye go by flight; For the LORD will go before you, And the God of Israel will be your rearward.

NOTES

The Metrical System of Biblical Verse

In the strictest sense the term 'metrical' is not applicable to Biblical verse, since this is constituted, not by any numbering of syllables, but by the parallelism of whole clauses.

The LORD of Hosts is with us, The God of Jacob is our refuge.

This is verse, not in virtue of any particular number of syllables in the lines, but because the second line is felt to run parallel with the first. This principle of parallelism of clauses underlies the whole of versification in Scriptural literature. As however the different modes of combination and variation of these parallel lines in Biblical poetry correspond, to a large extent, with those of metrical lines in other languages, it is convenient to speak of the principles governing them as a 'metrical system.'

One consequence however of the difference between Biblical and other verse should always be borne in mind. The parallelism of clauses, which makes the foundation of Hebrew verse, is also a thing proper to oratorical prose in all languages. Accordingly in Hebrew prose and verse overlap: the extremes of either (e.g. Psalms and Chronicles) are strongly contrasted, but there is a middle style which can be presented in either form. Hence there is nothing strange in the fact that the same passage of Scripture may be presented by one editor as prose and by another as verse, according to the purpose of each arrangement. [For example: the Oration on Immortality (page 75), which for a specimen of oratory is here arranged as prose, is printed as verse in the Revised Version of the Apocrypha.]

1. The simplest type of parallelism in Biblical literature may be called 'Antique Rhythm.' It is the metre of most of the traditional poetry preserved in the historic books of Scripture. Its unit consists in a couplet, of which either member may be strengthened by a parallel line, but not both.

Let me die the death of the righteous. And let my last end be like his!

He saith, which heareth the words of God, Which seeth the vision of the Almighty, Falling down, and having his eyes open.

He shall eat up the nations his adversaries, And shall break their bones in pieces, And smite them through with his arrows.

Such a unit may be called a 'strain.' It will be seen in the examples that the first strain is a simple couplet, the second has its first line strengthened, the last has its second line strengthened. This power of occasionally strengthening either line of a couplet by an additional line gives the Antique Rhythm a flexibility suited to spontaneous composition. A similar device is found in connection with the traditional ballad poetry of England, of which such collections as The Percy Reliques are accidentally preserved specimens. While the regular metre of such ballads is a four-line stanza, yet a few poems, such as the Ballad of Sir Cauline, show some stanzas with individual lines strengthened:

Fair Christabel, that lady mild, Was had forth of her tower; But ever she droopeth in her mind, As nipt by an ungentle wind Doth some pale lily flower.

The poetry of the historic books mostly takes the form of aggregations of such 'strains' of Antique Rhythm, with no further structure. Occasionally such a poem will fall into verse paragraphs or 'strophes' [to be distinguished from the antistrophic system presently to be described]: an example is David's Song of Victory (see note on page 266). [For a combination of Antique Rhythm and the Antistrophic system, see note to vii on page 267.]

2. The metre of Wisdom verse is highly elaborate: we find here, not only the parallelism of successive clauses, but the 'high parallelism' which correlates all parts of a whole poem with one another. Two types may be distinguished: the Stanza structure and the Antistrophic structure.

Stanzas are familiar to the English reader: in Biblical poetry groups of three lines, or four lines, etc., recur in succession: a simple example is the Chorus of Watchmen (on page 236).

The Antistrophic system is familiar to students of Greek, as the metrical form of tragic choral odes. In this case the stanzas run in pairs, strophe and antistrophe, the theory being that the antistrophe exactly repeats the metrical form of its strophe; if another strophe follows the form may altogether change, but the changed form will be repeated in the corresponding antistrophe. [This may be expressed by the formula a a', b b', c c', etc.] Besides the pair of strophes there may be an introduction, or conclusion, or both. No. i of the Sonnets (on page 125) is an example of a poem consisting simply of strophe and antistrophe; No. iii (page 126) has also a conclusion.[7]

[Footnote 7: The term strophe is the Greek for 'turning': the system is derived from the dance performance of Greek odes, according to which the chorus danced from the altar to the end of the orchestra in one stanza, then 'turned,' and _retraced their steps_ for the antistrophe or 'answering' stanza. The term strophe has come to be used also for verse paragraphs where there is no antistrophic arrangement. (See page 266, note on vi.)]

Both in the case of the Stanza structure and the Antistrophic structure there are various modifications and elaborations--duplication, inversion, interruption, etc.: these it will be sufficient to explain in connection with the examples in which they are found.

3. The metre of Lyrics is in the main the same as that of Wisdom poetry. But in the strictest kinds of lyrics the structure is further determined by the musical performance. A lyric may be a solo, or the matter may be arranged for 'antiphonal' performance between different performers, e.g. choruses of Men and of Women. Antiphonal and antistrophic structure go easily together: see Deborah's Song, page 152. The musical performance also introduces the 'refrain,' a passage recurring (with or without changes for musical effect): for example see The Song of Moses and Miriam (page 149).

4. A characteristic metrical system in Biblical verse is the 'Doom form.' Here the thread of the poem is in what, for form and spirit, may be called prose; but this prose is interrupted at intervals by lyric verse, celebrating or realising what the prose brings forward. This is chiefly found in prophecies of 'doom,' or denunciation of the foes of Israel (hence the name): the prose is a Divine word of denunciation, the lyrics are mostly impersonal celebrations of what the Divine speaker says. The form is easily collected from examples; see pages 175-181.

STORY

Story as a form of literature differs from History by its appeal to the imagination and emotions, whereas History addresses itself to our sense of record and scientific explanation. It is of no consequence whether the matter of the story be historic fact or invention; in the one case the writer selects, in the other case he frames, such details as will have the desired effect in presenting the story to the mind of the reader. The stories of the Bible are scattered through the history, of which they form a part; thus a reader of the Bible in its ordinary versions may be required at any moment to alter the character of his attention without anything to warn him of the change. In the Modern Reader's Bible (volumes Genesis, The Exodus, The Judges, The Kings) the stories are separated from the surrounding matter by titles. Selections of these stories enter into the present volume.

/i. Joseph and his Brethren./ This is one of the most elaborate and artistically beautiful stories in all literature. It emphasises an important place in the Biblical history, Joseph being a link between the Children of Israel and the world empire of Egypt. Among elements of story beauty note the personality of Joseph, its attractiveness wherever he goes and its gradual maturing. Note also the sketches of varied life which make a background to the story as it moves along--glimpses of shepherd life, of caravan trading, of palace life in Egypt. But the main interest will be the 'plot'--the technical term for the harmony that binds the different parts of a story into one whole. In the present case there are three 'motives' underlying the plot. (1) What has been called the 'oracular action': the interest of mystic dream oracles gradually becoming clear as the oracles are fulfilled. (2) The development of an ironic situation--Joseph recognising his brethren but not recognised by them: once developed this situation is prolonged to the utmost by the hero's conflict of feelings, between resentment and family affection. (3) Beneath all other motives is the providential overruling of human events for high purposes (compare page 27).