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PREVIOUS CHAPTER - NEXT CHAPTER - HELP - GR VIDEOS - GR YOUTUBE - TWITTER - SD1 YOUTUBE  HA HAAHASHTARI HABAIAH; HOBAIAH HABAKKUK I. THE AUTHOR. 1. Name: Habakkuk ([ qWQb”j\ , chabhaqquq ]) means “embrace,” or “ardent embrace.” Some of the ancient rabbis, connecting the name with Kings 4:16, “Thou shalt embrace a son,” imagined that the prophet was the son of the Shunammite woman. The Septuagint form of the name, Hambakoum ; Theodotion Hambakouk , presupposes the Hebrew chabbaquq . A similar word occurs in Assyrian as the name of a garden plant. 2. Life: Practically nothing is known of Habakkuk. The book bearing his name throws little light upon his life, and the rest of the Old Testament is silent concerning him; but numerous legends have grown up around his name. The identification of the prophet with the son of the Shunammite woman is one. Another, connecting Isaiah 21:6 with Habakkuk 2:1, makes Habakkuk the watchman set by Isaiah to watch for the fall of Babylon. One of the recensions of the Septuagint text of Bel and the Dragon declares that the story was taken “from the prophecy of Habakkuk, the son of Jesus of the tribe of Levi.” This must refer to an unknown apocryphal book ascribed to our prophet. What authority there may be for calling his father Jesus we do not know. The claim that he was of the tribe of Levi may be based upon the presence of the musical note at the end of the third chapter. According to the Lives of the Prophets, ascribed, though perhaps erroneously, to Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus during the latter part of the 4th century AD, he belonged to [Bethtsohar], of the tribe of Simeon. A very interesting story is found in Bel and the Dragon (33-39), according to which Habakkuk, while on his way to the field with a bowl of pottage, was taken by an angel, carried to Babylon and placed in the lions den, where Daniel ate the pottage, when Habakkuk was returned to his own place. According to the Lives, Habakkuk died two years before the return of the exiles from Babylon. All these legends have little or no historical value. II. THE BOOK. 1. Interpretation of Habakkuk 1 and 2: It is necessary to consider the interpretation of Habakkuk 1 and 2 before giving the contents of the book, as a statement of the contents of these chapters will be determined by their interpretation. The different interpretations advocated may be grouped under three heads: (1) According to the first view: Habakkuk 1:2-4: The corruption of Judah; the oppression of the righteous Jews by the wicked Jews, which calls for the Divine manifestation in judgment against the oppressors. 1:5- 11: Yahweh announces that He is about to send the Chaldeans to execute judgment. 1:12-17: The prophet is perplexed. He cannot understand how a righteous God can use these barbarians to execute judgment upon a people more righteous than they. He considers even the wicked among the Jews better than the Chaldeans. 2:1-4: Yahweh solves the perplexing problem by announcing that the exaltation of the Chaldeans will be but temporary; in the end they will meet their doom, while the righteous will live. 2:5-20: Woes against the Chaldeans. (2) The second view finds it necessary to change the present arrangement of Habakkuk 1:5-11; in their present position, they will not fit into the interpretation. For this reason Wellhausen and others omit these verses as a later addition; on the other hand, Giesebrecht would place them before 1:2, as the opening verses of the prophecy. The transposition would require a few other minor changes, so as to make the verses a suitable beginning and establish a smooth transition from 1:11 to 1:2. Omitting the troublesome verses, the following outline of the two chapters may be given: 1:2-4: The oppression of the righteous Jews by the wicked Chaldeans. 1:12-17: Appeal to Yahweh on behalf of the Jews against their oppressors. 2:1-4: Yahweh promises deliverance (see above). 2:5-20: Woes against the Chaldeans. (3) The third view also finds it necessary to alter the present order of verses. Again Habakkuk 1:5-11, in the present position, interferes with theory; therefore, these verses are given a more suitable place after 2:4. According to this interpretation the outline is as follows: 1:2-4: Oppression of the righteous Jews by the wicked Assyrians (Budde) or Egyptians (G. A. Smith). 1:12-17: Appeal to Yahweh on behalf of the oppressed against the oppressor. 2:1-4: Yahweh promises deliverance (see above). 1:5-11: The Chaldeans will be the instrument to execute judgment upon the oppressors and to bring deliverance to the Jews. 2:5-20: Woes against the Assyrians or Egyptians. A full discussion of these views is not possible in this article (see Eiselen, Minor Prophets, 466-68). It may be sufficient to say that on the whole the first interpretation, which requires no omission or transposition, seems to satisfy most completely the facts in the case. 2. Contents: The contents of Habakkuk 1 and 2 are indicated in the preceding paragraph. Habakkuk 3 contains a lyrical passage called in the title “Prayer.” The petitioner speaks for himself and the community. He remembers the mighty works of Yahweh for His people; the thought of them causes him to tremble; nevertheless, he calls for a repetition of the ancient manifestations (3:2). In majestic pictures the poet describes the wonderful appearances of Yahweh in the past (3:3-11) for His chosen people (3:12-15). The remembrance of these manifestations fills the Psalmist with fear and trembling, but also with joy and confidence in the God of his salvation (3:16-19). 3. Style: Only the Hebrew student can get an adequate idea of the literary excellence of the Book of Habakkuk. “The literary power of Habakkuk,” says Driver, “is considerable. Though his book is a brief one, it is full of force; his descriptions are graphic and powerful; thought and expression are alike poetic; he is still a master of the old classical style, terse, parallelistic, pregnant; there is no trace of the often prosaic diffusiveness which manifests itself in the writings of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. And if Habakkuk be his, he is, moreover, a lyric poet of high order; the grand imagery and the rhythmic flow of this ode will bear comparison with some of the finest productions of the Hebrew muse.” 4. Integrity: More than half of the book, including Habakkuk 1:5-11; 2:9-20, and chapter 3 entire, has been denied to the prophet Habakkuk. If the prophecy is rightly interpreted (see above), no valid reason for rejecting 1:5-11 can be found. Habakkuk 2:9-20 are denied to Habakkuk chiefly on two grounds: (1) The “woes” are said to be in part, at least, unsuitable, if supposed to be addressed to the Chaldean king. This difficulty vanishes when it is borne in mind that the king is not addressed as an individual, but as representing the policy of the nation, as a personification of the nation. (2) Some parts, especially 2:12-14, “consist largely of citations and reminiscences of other passages, including some late ones” (compare 2:12 with Micah 3:10; Habakkuk 2:13 with Jeremiah 51:58; Habakkuk 2:14 with Isaiah 11:9; Hab. 2:16b with Jeremiah 25:15,16; Habakkuk 2:18-20 with Isaiah 44:9 ff; 46:6,7; Jeremiah 10:1-16). Aside from the fact that the argument from literary parallels is always precarious, in this case the resemblances are few in number and of such general character that they do not necessarily presuppose literary dependence. Habakkuk 3 is denied to the prophet even more persistently, but the arguments are by no means conclusive. The fact that the chapter belongs to the psalm literature does not prove a late date unless it is assumed, without good reasons, that no psalms originated in the preexilic period. Nor do the historical allusions, which are altogether vague, the style, the relation to other writers, and the character of the religious ideas expressed, point necessarily to a late date. The only doubtful verses are 2:16 ff, which seem to allude to a calamity other than the invasion of the Chaldeans; and Driver says, not without reason, “Had the poet been writing under the pressure of a hostile invasion, the invasion itself would naturally have been expected to form a prominent feature in this picture.” Hence, while it may be impossible to prove that Habakkuk is the author of the prayer, it is equally impossible to prove the contrary; and while there are a few indications which seem to point to a situation different from that of Habakkuk, they are by no means definite enough to exclude the possibility of Habakkuk’s authorship. III. THE TIME. 1. Date: The question of date is closely bound up with that of interpretation. Budde, on theory that the oppressors, threatened with destruction, are the Assyrians (see above, 3), dates the prophecy 621 to 615 BC. Granting that the Assyrians are in the mind of the prophet, the date suggested by Betteridge (AJT, 1903, 674 ff), circa 701 BC, is to be preferred; but if the Assyrians are not the oppressors, then with the Assyrians fall the dates proposed by Budde and Betteridge. If the prophecy is directed against Egypt, we are shut up to a very definite period, between 608 and 604 BC, for the Egyptian supremacy in Judah continued during these years only. If the Egyptians are not the oppressors, another date will have to be sought. If the Chaldeans are the oppressors of Judah, the prophecy must be assigned to a date subsequent to the battle of Carchemish in 605-604, for only after the defeat of the Egyptians could the Chaldeans carry out a policy of world conquest; and it was some years after that event that the Chaldeans first came into direct contact with Judah. But on this theory, Habakkuk 1:2-4,12 ff; 2:8 ff, presupposes the lapse of a considerable period of conquest, the subduing of many nations, the cruel oppression of Judah for some length of time; therefore, Nowack is undoubtedly correct, on this theory, in bringing the prophecy down to a period subsequent to the first exile in 597, or, as he says, “in round numbers about 590 BC.” A different date must be sought if Habakkuk 1:2-4 is interpreted as referring to the oppression of Jews by Jews, and 1:5 ff, as a threat that Yahweh will raise up the Chaldeans, already known as a nation thirsting for blood, to punish the wickedness of Judah. These verses would seem to indicate (1) that the Chaldeans had not yet come into direct contact with Judah, and (2) that they had already given exhibitions of the cruel character of their warfare. Nebuchadnezzar advanced against Judah about 600 BC; but the years since the fall of Nineveh, in 607-606, and the battle of Carchemish, in 605-604, had given abundant opportunity to the Chaldeans to reveal their true character, and to the prophet and his contemporaries to become acquainted with this cruel successor of Nineveh. On this theory, therefore, the prophetic activity of Habakkuk must be assigned to shortly before 600 BC. 2. Occasion: If Habakkuk prophesied about 600 BC, he lived under King Jehoiakim. The pious and well-meaning Josiah had been slain in an attempt to stop the advance of Egypt against Assyria. With his death the brief era of reform came to an end. After a reign of three months Jehoahaz was deposed by Pharaoh-necoh, who placed Jehoiakim on the throne. The latter was selfish, tyrannical and godless. In a short time the deplorable conditions of Manasseh’s reign returned. It was this situation that caused the prophet’s first perplexity: “O Yahweh, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear? I cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save” ( Habakkuk 1:2). IV. ITS TEACHING. In the Book of Habakkuk a new type of prophecy appears. The prophets were primarily preachers and teachers of religion and ethics. They addressed themselves to their fellow-countrymen in an attempt to win them back to Yahweh and a righteous life. Not so Habakkuk. He addresses himself to Yahweh, questioning the justice or even the reality of the Divine Providence. He makes complaint to God and expostulates with Him. The prophet Habakkuk, therefore, is a forerunner of the author of the Book of Job. “As a whole, his book is the fruit of religious reflection. It exhibits the communings and questionings of his soul — representative, no doubt, of many other pious spirits of the time — with God; and records the answers which the Spirit of God taught him for his own sake and for the sake of tried souls in every age. Habakkuk has been called the prophet of faith. He possessed a strong, living faith in Yahweh; but he, like many other pious souls, was troubled and perplexed by the apparent inequalities of life. He found it difficult to reconcile these with his lofty conception of Yahweh. Nevertheless, he does not sulk. Boldly he presents his perplexities to Yahweh, who points the way to a solution, and the prophet comes forth from his trouble with a faith stronger and more intense than ever. It is in connection with his attempts to solve the perplexing problems raised by the unpunished sins of his countrymen and the unlimited success of the Chaldeans that Habakkuk gives utterance to two sublime truths: 1. The Universal Supremacy of Yahweh: Yahweh is interested not only in Israel. Though Habakkuk, like the other prophets, believes in a special Divine Providence over Israel, he is equally convinced that Yahweh’s rule embraces the whole earth; the destinies of all the nations are in His hand. The Chaldeans are punished not merely for their sins against Judah, but for the oppression of other nations as well. Being the only God, He cannot permit the worship of other deities. Temporarily the Chaldeans may worship idols, or make might their god, they may “sacrifice unto their net,” and burn incense “unto their drag,” because by them “their portion is fat and their food plenteous”; but Yahweh is from everlasting, the Holy One, and He will attest His supremacy by utterly destroying the boastful conqueror with his idols. 2. Faithfulness the Guarantee of Permanency: The second important truth is expressed in Habakkuk 2:4: “The righteous shall live by his faith” (the American Revised Version, margin “faithfulness”). Faithfulness assures permanency. The thought expressed by the prophet is not identical with that expressed by the apostle who quotes the words ( Galatians 3:11); nevertheless, the former also gives expression to a truth of profound significance. “Faithfulness” is with the prophet an external thing; it signifies integrity, fidelity, steadfastness under all provocations; but this implies, in a real sense, the New Testament conception of faith as an active principle of right conduct. A living faith determines conduct; religion and ethics go hand in hand, and especially in the hour of adversity a belief in Yahweh and unflinching reliance upon Him are the strongest preservers of fidelity and integrity. Faith without works is dead; faith expresses itself in life. Habakkuk places chief emphasis upon the expressions of faith, and he does so rightly; but in doing this he also calls attention, by implication at least, to the motive power behind the external manifestations. As an expression of living faith, 3:17-19 is not surpassed in the Old Testament. LITERATURE. Commentaries on the Minor Prophets by Ewald, Pusey, Keil, Orelli, G. A. Smith (Expositor’s Bible), Driver (New Century Bible), Eiselen; A. B. Davidson, Commentary on “Nah,” “Hab,” “Zeph” (Cambridge Bible); A. F. Kirkpatrick, Doctrine of the Prophets; F. C. Eiselen, Prophecy and the Prophets; F. W. Farrar, Minor Prophets (“Men of the Bible”); Driver, LOT; HDB, article “Habakkuk”; EB, article “Habakkuk.” Frederick Carl Eiselen HABAKKUK, THE PRAYER OF See BETHHORON, BATTLE OF. HABAZINIAH ([ hy;n]Xib”j\ , chabhatstsinyah ]. Thus in the King James Version, but more correctly as in the Revised Version (British and American) HABAZZINIAH , hab-a-zi-ni’-a (Jeremiah 35,3)): The grandfather of Jaazaniah, who was the leader of the Rechabites who were tested by Jeremiah as to their obedience to their ancestor’s command with reference to wine. Their loyalty to the commands of Jonadab was effectively used by Jeremiah in an appeal to the people of Judah to obey the words of Yahweh. HABERGEON HABITATION Conversely, “habitation” appears in the Revised Version (British and American) for the King James Version “dwelling place” in 2 Chronicles 30:27; Psalm 79:7, “house”; Psalm 83:12; 2 Corinthians 5:2, “tabernacle,” Acts 7:46, etc. See HOUSE. James Orr HABOR 1. ITS POSITION AND COURSE: Is described in 2 Kings 17:6; 18:11 (compare 1 Chronicles 5:26) as “the river of Gozan.” It is the Arabic Khabur, and flows in a southerly direction from several sources in the mountains of Karaj Dagh (Mons Masius), which, in the 37th parallel, flanks the valley of the Tigris on the West. The river ultimately joins the Euphrates after receiving its chief tributary, the Jaghjagha Su (Mygdonius), at Circesium (Kirkisiyeh). 2. ETYMOLOGIES OF HABOR: The meaning of its name is doubtful, but Delitzsch has suggested a Sumerian etymology, namely, habur , “the fish-waterway,” or it may be connected with “mother Hubur’ ” a descriptive title of Tiamat (see MERODACH; RAHAB). 3. HISTORICAL REFERENCES: Layard found several interesting Assyrian remains in the district, including man-headed bulls bearing the name of Muses-Ninip, possibly an Assyrian governor. Tiglath-pileser I (circa 1120 BC) boasts of having killed mighty elephants in Haran and on the banks of the Habor; and Assur-nacirapli (circa 880 BC), after conquering Harsit (Harrit, Harmis), subjugated the tract around piate sa nar Habur, “the mouths of the Habor.” According to 2 Kings and 1 Chronicles, Shalmaneser IV and Sargon transported the exiled Israelites thither. Philological considerations exclude the identification of the Chebar of Ezekiel 13, etc., with the Habor. T. G. Pinches HACALIAH HACHILAH, HILL OF HACHMONI; HACHMONITE H. Sayce in HDB under the word “Hadad.” George Rice Hovey HADADEZER Mentioned in connection with David’s wars of conquest ( 2 Samuel 8:3 ff; 2 Samuel 10:1-19; 1 Chronicles 18:3 ff); was king of Zobah in Syria. The exact position and size of this Syrian principality are uncertain, but it seems to have extended in David’s time southward toward Ammon and eastward to the Euphrates. When the Ammonites had put themselves in the wrong with David by the insult done to his ambassadors ( <101001> Samuel 10:1-5) they summoned to their aid against the incensed king of Israel the Syrians of various adjoining principalities, among them the Syrians of Zobah under Hadadezer, the son of Rehob. The strategy of Joab, who set the force under command of Abishai his brother in array against the Ammonites, and himself attacked the Syrian allies, won for Israel a decisive victory. Not content with this result, Hadadezer gathered together another Syrian force, summoning this time also “the Syrians that were beyond the River” ( 2 Samuel 10:16), with Shobach the captain of his host at their head. On this occasion David himself took command of the Israelite forces and again defeated them near Helam, Shobach being left dead on the field. Hadadezer and his Syrian vassals, finding resistance hopeless, “made peace with Israel and served them” ( 2 Samuel 10:19). For the name Hadador Hadarezer, see BENHADAD. LITERATURE. Winckler, Geschichte Israels, I, 137 ff; McCurdy, HPM, 204; Maspero, The Struggle of the Nations, 731. T. Nicol. HADADRIMMON HADAREZER HADASHAH HADASSAH HADATTAH HADES 1. IN OLD TESTAMENT: SHEOL: In the Septuagint Hades is the standing equivalent for Sheol, but also translates other terms associated with death and the state after it. The Greek conception of Hades was that of a locality receiving into itself all the dead, but divided into two regions, one a place of torment, the other of blessedness. This conception should not be rashly transferred to the New Testament, for the latter stands not under the influence of Greek pagan belief, but gives a teaching and reflects a belief which model their idea of Hades upon the Old Testament through the Septuagint. The Old Testament Sheol, while formally resembling the Greek Hades in that it is the common receptacle of all the dead, differs from it, on the one hand, by the absence of a clearly defined division into two parts, and, on the other hand, by the emphasis placed on its association with death and the grave as abnormal facts following in the wake of sin. The Old Testament thus concentrates the partial light it throws on the state after death on the negative, undesirable side of the prospect apart from redemption. When in the progress of Old Testament revelation the state after death begins to assume more definite features, and becomes more sharply differentiated in dependence on the religious and moral issue of the present life this is not accomplished in the canonical writings (otherwise in the apocalyptic literature) by dividing Sheol into two compartments, but by holding forth to the righteous the promise of deliverance from Sheol, so that the latter becomes more definitely outlined as a place of evil and punishment. 2. IN THE NEW TESTAMENT: HADES: The New Testament passages mark a distinct stage in this process, and there is, accordingly, a true basis in Scripture for the identification in a certain aspect of Sheol — Hades — with hell as reflected in the King James Version. The theory according to which Hades is still in the New Testament the undifferentiated provisional abode of all the dead until the day of judgment, with the possibility of ultimate salvation even for those of its inmates who have not been saved in this life, is neither in harmony with the above development nor borne out by the facts of New Testament usage. That dead believers abide in a local Hades cannot be proven from 1 Thessalonians 4:16; 1 Corinthians 15:23, for these passages refer to the grave and the body, not to a gathering-place of the dead. On the other hand Luke 23:43; 2 Corinthians 5:6-8; Philippians 1:23; Revelation 6:9; 7:9 ff; 15:2 ff teach that the abode of believers immediately after death is with Christ and God. 3. ACTS 2:27,31: It is, of course, a different matter, when Hades, as not infrequently already the Old Testament Sheol, designates not the place of the dead but the state of death or disembodied existence. In this sense even the soul of Jesus was in Hades according’ to Peter’s statement ( Acts 2:27,31 — on the basis of Psalm 16:10). Here the abstract sense is determined by the parallel expression, “to see corruption” None the less from a comparatively early date this passage has been quoted in support of the doctrine of a local descent of Christ into Hades. 4. REVELATION 20:13; 6:8; 1:18: The same abstract meaning is indicated for Revelation 20:13. Death and Hades are here represented as delivering up the dead on the eve of the final judgment. If this is more than a poetic duplication of terms, Hades will stand for the personified state of death, Death for the personified cause of this state. The personification appears plainly from 20:14: “Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire.” In the number of these “dead” delivered up by Hades, believers are included, because, even on the chiliastic interpretation of 20:4-6, not all the saints share in the first resurrection, but only those “beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God,” i.e. the martyrs. A similar personifying combination of Death and Hades occurs in Revelation 6:8 (“a pale horse: and he that sat upon him his name was Death; and Hades followed with him”). In Revelation 1:18, on the other hand, Death and Hades are represented as prisons from which Christ, in virtue of His own resurrection, has the power to deliver, a representation which again implies that in some, not necessarily local, sense believers also are kept in Hades. 5. LUKE 16:23: In distinction from these passages when the abstract meaning prevails and the local conception is in abeyance, the remaining references are more or less locally conceived. Of these Luke 16:23 is the only one which might seem to teach that recipients of salvation enter after death into Hades as a place of abode. It has been held that Hades is here the comprehensive designation of the locality where the dead reside, and is divided into two regions, “the bosom of Abraham” and the place of torment, a representation for which Jewish parallels can be quoted, aside from its resemblance to the Greek bisection of Hades. Against this view, however, it may be urged, that if “the bosom of Abraham” were conceived as one of the two divisions of Hades, the other division would have been named with equal concreteness in connection with Dives. In point of fact, the distinction is not between “the bosom of Abraham” and another place, as both included in Hades, but between “the bosom of Abraham” and Hades as antithetical and exclusive. The very form of the description of the experience of Dives: “In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torments,” leads us to associate Hades as such with pain and punishment. The passage, therefore, does not prove that the saved are after death in Hades. In further estimating its bearing upon the problem of the local conditions of the disembodied life after death, the parabolic character of the representation must be taken into account. The parable is certainly not intended to give us topographical information about the realm of the dead, although it presupposes that there is a distinct place of abode for the righteous and wicked respectively. 6. MATTHEW 11:23: The two other passages where Hades occurs in the teaching of our Lord ( Matthew 11:23 parallel Luke 10:15; and Matthew 16:18) make a metaphorical use of the conception, which, however, is based on the local sense. In the former utterance it is predicted of Capernaum that it shall in punishment for its unbelief “go down unto Hades.” As in the Old Testament Sheol is a figure for the greatest depths known ( Deuteronomy 32:22; Isaiah 7:11; 57:9; Job 11:8; 26:6), this seems to be a figure for the extreme of humiliation to which that city was to be reduced in the course of history. It is true, 11:24, with its mention of the day of judgment, might seem to favor an eschatological reference to the ultimate doom of the unbelieving inhabitants, but the usual restriction of Hades to the punishment of the intermediate state (see below) is against this. 7. MATTHEW 16:18: In the other passage, Matthew 16:18, Jesus declares that the gates of Hades shall not katischuein the church He intends to build. The verb katischuein may be rendered, “to overpower” or “to surpass.” If the former be adopted, the figure implied is that of Hades as a stronghold of the power of evil or death from which warriors stream forth to assail the church as the realm of life. On the other rendering there is no reference to any conflict between Hades and the church, the point of comparison being merely the strength of the church, the gates of Hades, i.e. the realm of death, serving in common parlance as a figure of the greatest conceivable strength, because they never allow to escape what has once entered through them. The above survey of the passages tends to show that Hades, where it is locally conceived, is not a provisional receptacle for all the dead, but plainly associated with the punishment of the wicked. Where it comes under consideration for the righteous there is nothing to indicate a local sense. On 1 Peter 3:19; 4:6 (where, however, the word “Hades” does not occur), see articles ESCHATOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT; SPIRITS IN PRISON . 8. NOT A FINAL STATE: The element of truth in theory of the provisional character of Hades lies in this, that the New Testament never employs it in connection with the final state of punishment, as subsequent to the last judgment. For this GEHENNA (which see) and other terms are used. Dives is represented as being in Hades immediately after his death and while his brethren are still in this present life. Whether the implied differentiation between stages of punishment, depending obviously on the difference between the disembodied and reembodied state of the lost, also carries with itself a distinction between two places of punishment, in other words whether Hades and Gehenna are locally distinct, the evidence is scarcely sufficient to determine. The New Testament places the emphasis on the eschatological developments at the end, and leaves many things connected with the intermediate state in darkness. Geerhardus Vos HADID It is represented by the modern el-Chaditheh, about 3 miles Northeast of Lydda. HADLAI HADORAM HAGAB HAGABA HAGABAH HAGAR 1. THE SCORNFUL HANDMAID AND HER FLIGHT: In the first narrative ( Genesis 16) it is related that Sarai, despairing at her age of having children, gave Hagar to Abram as a concubine. As Hagar was not an ordinary household slave but the peculiar property of her mistress (compare Genesis 29:24,29), any offspring which she might bear to Abram would be reckoned as Sarai’s (compare Genesis 30:3-9). In the prospect of becoming a mother, Hagar, forgetting her position, seems to have assumed an insolent bearing toward her childless mistress. Sarai felt keenly the contempt shown her by her handmaid, and in angry tones brought her conduct before Abram. Now that her plan was not working out smoothly, she unfairly blamed her husband for what originated with herself, and appealed to Heaven to redress her grievance. Abram refused to interfere in the domestic quarrel, and renouncing his rights over his concubine, and her claims on him, put her entirely at Sarai’s disposal. Under the harsh treatment of her mistress Hagar’s life became intolerable, and she fled into the wilderness, turning her steps naturally toward Egypt, her native land. 2. HER VISION AND RETURN: But the angel of Yahweh (who is here introduced for the first time as the medium of theophany) appeared to her as she was resting by a spring and commanded her to return and submit herself to her mistress, promising her an innumerable seed through her unborn son, concerning whom he uttered a striking prediction (see ISHMAEL ). To the angel (who is now said to be Yahweh Himself) Hagar gave the name “Thou art a God of seeing” (the Revised Version (British and American) “that seeth”), for she said, “Have I even here (in the desert where God, whose manifestations were supposed to be confined to particular places, might not be expected to reveal Himself) looked after him that seeth me?” — the meaning being that while God saw her, it was only while the all-seeing God in the person of His angel was departing that she became conscious of His presence. The spring where the angel met with her was called in Hebrew tradition Be’er-lachayro’i, “the well of the living one who seeth me” (Revised Version, margin). Obedient to the heavenly vision Hagar returned, as the narrative implies, to her mistress and gave birth to Ishmael, Abram being then eighty-six years old. The idea in 30:13 is not very clearly expressed. The word translated “here” generally means “hither,” and there is no explanation of the “living one” in the name of the well. It has therefore been proposed to emend the Hebrew text and read “Have I even seen God, and lived after my seeing?” — an allusion to the belief that no one could “see God and live” (compare Genesis 32:30; Exodus 33:20). But there are difficulties in the way of accepting this emendation. The name of God, “a God of seeing,” would require to be interpreted in an objective sense as “a God who is seen,” and the consequent name of the well, “He that seeth me liveth,” would make God, not Hagar, as in 30:13, the speaker. 3. HER HARSH EXPULSION AND DIVINE HELP: The other narrative ( Genesis 21:8-21) relates what occurred in connection with the weaning of Isaac. The presence and conduct of Ishmael during the family feast held on the occasion roused the anger and jealousy of Sarah who, fearing that Ishmael would share the inheritance with Isaac, peremptorily demanded the expulsion of the slave-mother and her son. But the instincts of Abraham’s fatherly heart recoiled from such a cruel course, and it was only after the revelation was made to him that the ejection of Hagar and her son would be in the line of the Divine purpose — for Isaac was his real seed, while Ishmael would be made a nation too — that he was led to forego his natural feelings and accede to Sarah’s demand. So next morning the bondwoman and her son were sent forth with the bare provision of bread and a skin of water into the wilderness of Beersheba. When the water was spent, Hagar, unable to bear the sight of her boy dying from thirst, laid him under a shrub and withdrew the distance of a bowshot to weep out her sorrow. But the angel of God, calling to her out of heaven, comforted her with the assurance that God had heard the voice of the lad and that there was a great future before him. Then her eyes were opened to discover a well of water from which she filled the skin and gave her son to drink. With God’s blessing the lad grew up amid the desert’s hardships, distinguished for his skill with the bow. He made his home in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him out of her own country. 4. PRACTICAL LESSONS FROM THE HISTORY: The life and experience of Hagar teach, among other truths, the temptations incident to a new position; the foolishness of hasty action in times of trial and difficulty; the care exercised over the lonely by the allseeing God; the Divine purpose in the life of everyone, however obscure and friendless; how God works out His gracious purposes by seemingly harsh methods; and the strength, comfort and encouragement that ever accompany the hardest experiences of His children. 5. CRITICAL POINTS IN THE DOCUMENTS: Genesis 16 belongs to the Jahwist, J, (except 16:1a,3,15 f which are from P), and 21:8-21 to East. From the nature of the variations in the narratives many critics hold that we have here two different accounts of the same incident. But the narratives as they stand seem to be quite distinct, the one referring to Hagar’s flight before the birth of Ishmael, and the other to her expulsion at the weaning of Isaac. It is said, however, that Elohist (E) represents Ishmael as a child “playing” (The Revised Veersion, margin, Septuagint [pai>zonta, paizonta ]) with Isaac at the weaning festival, and young enough to be carried by his mother and “cast” under a shrub; while according to the Priestly Code, the Priestly Code (P), ( Genesis 16:16; 21:5), as a child was weaned at the age of two or three years, he would be a lad of sixteen at that time. The argument for the double narrative here does not seem conclusive. The word metsacheq (16:9) does not necessarily mean “playing” when used absolutely; it is so used in Genesis 19:14, evidently in the sense of “mocking” or “jesting,” and Delitzsch gives it that meaning there. Then as to 19:14, the Massoretic Text does not state that the child was put on her shoulder, although the Septuagint does; nor does “cast” (19:15) so “clearly imply” that Ishmael was an infant carried by his mother (compare Matthew 15:30). It may be added that the words yeledh and na`ar, translated “child” and “lad” respectively, determine nothing as to age, as they are each used elsewhere in both senses. 6. ALLEGORICAL USE OF THE STORY BY PAUL: In Galatians 4:21 ff Paul makes an allegorical use of this episode in the history of Ishmael and Isaac to support his argument for the transitory character of the Jewish ritual and the final triumph of Christian freedom over all Judaizing tendencies. In elaborating his reference, the apostle institutes a series of contrasts. Hagar, the bondwoman, represents the old covenant which was given from Mt. Sinai; and as Ishmael was Abraham’s son after the flesh, so the Judaizing Christians, who wish to remain in bondage to the law, are Hagar’s children. On the other hand, Sarah, the freewoman, represents the new covenant instituted by Christ; and as Isaac was born to Abraham in virtue of the promise, so the Christians who have freed themselves entirely from the law of carnal ordinances and live by faith are Sarah’s children. Thus Hagar corresponds to “the Jerusalem that now is,” that is, the Jewish state which is in spiritual bondage with her children; while Sarah represents “the Jerusalem that is above,” “our mother” (Revised Version (British and American)), the mother of us Christians, that free spiritual city to which Christians even now belong ( Philippians 3:20). By this allegory the apostle would warn the Galatian Christians of the danger which beset them from their Judaizing brethren, of their subjection to the covenant of works and their ultimate expulsion from the household of faith. To us Paul’s reference does not appeal with the same force as it would do to those to whom he was writing. The incident taken by itself, indeed, does not contain any suggestion of such a hidden meaning. Yet the history of the Hebrew nation is but typical of the history of the church in all ages, and the apostle’s familiarity with rabbinical modes of interpretation may have led him to adopt this method of confirming the truth which he had already proved from the law itself. For a discussion of the text and interpretation of Galatians 4:25a, “Now this Hagar is mount Sinai in Arabia,” and an account of Philo’s allegory of Hagar and Sarah, see Lightfoot’s notes at the end of chapter iv in his Commentary on Gal. James Crichton HAGARENES; HAGARITES HAGERITE HAGGADA HAGGAI 1. NAME: The word “Haggai” may mean “festal,” the prophet having been born perhaps on a festival day; compare the Roman name “Festus.” Hebrew proper names were sometimes formed in this manner, e.g. Barzillai, “a man of iron,” from barzel, “iron.” Haggai may, however, be a shortened form of Haggiah ( 1 Chronicles 6:30), meaning “festival of Yahweh,” as Mattenai is an abbreviation of Mattaniah ( Ezra 10:33,16). In Greek [ JAggai~ov, Haggaios ], in Latin, Aggaeus or Aggeus, sometimes Haggaeus. Haggai is the 10th in the order of the Twelve Prophets. 2. PERSONAL HISTORY: Little is really known of his personal history. But we do know that he lived soon after the captivity, being the first of the prophets of the Restoration. From Haggai 2:3 of his prophecies it is inferred by many that he had seen the first temple, which, as we know, was destroyed in 586 BC. If so, he must have prophesied when a comparatively old man, for we know the exact date of his prophecies, 520 BC. According to Ezra 5:1; 6:14, he was a contemporary of Zechariah, and was associated with him in the work of rebuilding the temple; besides, in the Greek and Latin and Syriac VSS, his name stands with Zechariah’s at the head of certain psalms, e.g. Psalm 111 (112), in the Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) alone; Psalms 125; 126, in the Peshitta alone; Psalm 137, in the Septuagint alone; Psalms 146; 147; 148, in Septuagint and Peshitta; and Psalm 145, in Septuagint, Peshitta and Vulgate; perhaps these psalms were introduced into the temple-service on their recommendation. He was a prophet of great faith (compare 2:1-5); it is possible that he was a priest also (compare 2:10-19). Like Malachi he bears the name of “Yahweh’s messenger” (Heg 1:13; compare Malachi 3:1). According to Jewish tradition, he was a member of the Great Synagogue. 3. WORK: Haggai’s work was intensely practical and important. Yahweh employed him to awaken the conscience and stimulate the enthusiasm of his compatriots in the rebuilding of the temple. “No prophet ever appeared at a more critical juncture in the history of the people, and, it may be added, no prophet was more successful” (Marcus Dods). Zechariah assisted him (compare Haggai 1:1; Zec 1:1). 4. PERIOD AND CIRCUMSTANCES: Haggai’s prophecies, like Ezekiel’s, are dated “in the second year of Darius” ( Haggai 1:1; 2:10), i.e. 520 BC. The Jews, 42,360 strong ( Ezra 2:64), had returned from Babylon 16 years before (536 BC), under the leadership of Zerubbabel, the civil head of the community, and Joshua, the ecclesiastical. The generous edict of Cyrus had made return possible (compare Ezra 1:1-4). The new colonists had settled in Jerusalem and in the neighboring towns of Bethlehem, Bethel, Anathoth, Gibeon, Kiriath-jearim, and others adjacent ( Ezra 2:20 ff). Eager to reestablish the public worship of the sanctuary, they set about at once to erect the altar of burnt offering upon its old site ( Ezra 3:2,3; compare Haggai 2:14). Plans were also made for the immediate rebuilding of the temple, and the foundation stone was actually laid in the 2nd month of the 2nd year of the return ( Ezra 3:8-10), but the work was suddenly interrupted by the jealous, half-caste, semi-pagan Samaritans, descendants of the foreign colonists introduced into Samaria in 722 BC (compare Kings 17:24-41), whose offer to cooperate had been refused ( Ezra 4:1- 5,24). For 16 years thereafter nothing was done toward rearing the superstructure ( Ezra 4:5,24; 5:16); indeed, the Jews became indifferent, and began to build for themselves “ceiled houses” ( Haggai 1:4). (W. H. Kosters has attempted to show that there was no return under Cyrus, and that Haggai and Zechariah, who never allude to any return, but rather look upon the return as still in the future (compare Zec 2:6,7), preached to the Jews who remained in Jerusalem, never having been carried by Nebuchadnezzar into captivity in 586 BC. But this theory is opposed by too many converging lines of Scriptural statement to warrant serious credence.) With the accession of Darius Hystaspes (i.e. Darius, the son of Hystaspes), the tide turned. Darius was a true successor to Cyrus, and favored religious freedom. Through the influence of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, the people were roused from their lethargy, and the work of rebuilding was resumed with energy in 520 BC ( Haggai 1:14,15). The foundations were relaid ( Haggai 2:18). Four years later, in the 6th year of Darius, the whole structure was completed and dedicated ( Ezra 6:15). Meanwhile important events were taking place in the Persian empire. On the death (of Cambyses in 522 BC, the throne had been seized by a usurper, the so-called Pseudo-Smerdis. who held it, however, for some 7 months only. He was murdered by Darius, and the latter was elevated to the throne. But this gave other ambitious pretenders cause to rebel, and many provinces revolted, among them Susiana, Media, Assyria, Armenia, Parthia, and others (compare the famous Behistun inscription). Altogether Darius fought 19 battles in putting down his rivals, and did not succeed in vanquishing all of his foes till the year after Haggai prophesied. This accounts for the prophet’s repeated allusions to Yahweh’s “shaking” the nations (2:6,7,21,22). Haggai seems to regard the “shaking” of the nations as the precursor of the Messianic age. It was, therefore, important from the prophet’s point of view, that Yahweh’s temple should be made ready for the Messiah’s advent, that it might become the religious center of the world (compare Isaiah 2:2-4). The exact date of Haggai’s preaching was from September to December, 520 BC. 5. ANALYSIS: Haggai’s prophecies are dated and therefore easily analyzed. They are composed of four distinct discourses, all four being delivered within months’ time in the year 520 BC: (1) Haggai 1, delivered on the 1st day of the 6th month (September), in which the prophet reproaches the people for their indifference to the work of rebuilding the temple, and warns them to consider their ways; assuring them that their procrastination was not due to want of means (1:4), and that God on account of their apathy was withholding the produce of the field (1:10). The effect of this appeal was that 24 days later, all the people, including Zerubbabel and Joshua, began the work of reconstruction (1:14,15). (2) Haggai 2:1-9, delivered on the 21st day of the 7th month (October), which was about one month after the work had been resumed, and containing a note of encouragement to those who felt that the new structure was destined to be so much inferior to Solomon’s temple. The prophet, on the contrary, assures them that the latter glory of the new house shall eclipse that of Solomon’s magnificent temple, for soon a great “shaking” on Yahweh’s part among the nations will usher in the Messianic age, and the precious things of all nations will flow in to beautify it (compare Hebrews 12:26-28). (3) Haggai 2:10-19, delivered on the 24th day of the 9th month (December) which was exactly 3 months after the building had been resumed, and containing, like the first discourse, a rebuke to the people because of their indifference and inertia. The discourse is couched in the form of a parable (2:11-14), by means of which the prophet explains why the prayers of the people go unanswered. It is because they have so long postponed the completion of the temple; a taint of guilt vitiates everything they do, and blasting and mildew and hail, and consequently unfruitful seasons, are the result. On the other hand, if they will but press forward with the work, Yahweh will again bless them, and fruitful seasons will follow their revived zeal (2:19; compare Zec 8:9-12). (4) Haggai 2:20-23, delivered on the 24th day of the 9th month, the very same day as that on which the discourse in 2:10-19 was delivered. The sequence is immediate. For when Yahweh “shakes” the nations, He will establish Zerubbabel, the representative of the Davidic dynasty and the object of patriotic hopes. When the heathen powers are overthrown, Zerubbabel will stand unshaken as Yahweh’s honored and trusted vicegerent, and as the precious signet on Yahweh’s hand (compare Jeremiah 22:24; Song of Solomon 8:6). 6. MESSAGE: The most striking feature in Haggai’s message is its repeated claim of Divine origin: 5 times in the 38 verses of his prophecies, he tells us that “the word of Yahweh came” unto him ( Haggai 1:1,3; 2:1,10,20); 4 t, also, he used the formula, “Thus saith Yahweh of hosts” (1:2,5,7; 2:11); times “saith Yahweh of hosts” (1:9; 2:6,7,9,23); and 4 times simply “saith Yahweh” (1:13; 2:4,14,17). Altogether he uses the exalted phrase “Yahweh of hosts” 14 t, besides 19 repetitions of the single but ineffable name “Yahweh.” The most striking sentence in all his prophecies is probably that found in 1:13, “Then spake Haggai, Yahweh’s messenger in Yahweh’s message unto the people.” His single purpose, as we have above seen, was to encourage the building of the temple. This he seems to have regarded as essential to the purity of Israel’s religion. His key-exhortation is “Consider your ways” (1:5:7; compare 2:15,18). His prophecies reflect the conditions of his age. He points to judgments as a proof of the Divine displeasure (1:9,10; 2:15-19). Unlike the earlier prophets, he does not denounce idolatry; but like his contemporary, Zechariah, and his successor, Malachi, he does lay stress on the external side of religion. Chief interest centers in the somewhat unusual parable contained in Haggai 2:10-19, which teaches that holiness is not contagious, but that evil is. “The faint aroma of sanctity coming from their altar and sacrifices was too feeble to pervade the secular atmosphere of their life” (A. B. Davidson, Exile and Restoration, 82). Haggai argues that Israel’s sacrifices for 16 years had been unclean in God’s sight, and had brought them no blessing, because they had left the temple in ruins; and, that while a healthy man cannot give his health to another by touching him, a sick man may easily spread contagion among all those about him. The thought is suggestive. Haggai may or may not have been a priest, “but in so short a prophecy this elaborate allusion to ritual is very significant.” Another very striking thought in Haggai’s book is his reference to Zerubbabel as Yahweh’s “servant” and “signet,” whom Yahweh has “chosen” (2:23). Wellhausen regards these words as an equivalent to making Zerubbabel the Messiah; but it is enough to think that the prophet is attempting only to restore him to the honorable position from which his grandfather, Jehoiachin, in Jeremiah 22:24, had been degraded. Thus would the prophet link Zerubbabel, the political hope of the post-exilic congregation, to the royal line of Judah. Isaiah speaks of Cyrus in similar terms without any Messianic implication ( Isaiah 44:28; 45:1). On the other hand, the implicit Messianic import of Haggai 2:7,8 is recognized on all sides. 7. STYLE: Haggai’s style is suited to the contents of his prophecies. While he is less poetical than his predecessors, yet parallelism is not altogether wanting in his sentence ( Haggai 2:8). Compared with the greater books of prophecy, his brief message has been declared “plain and unadorned,” “tame and prosaic”; yet it must be acknowledged that he is not wanting in pathos when he reproves, or in force when he exhorts. Though he labors under a poverty of terms, and frequently repeats the same formulas, yet he was profoundly in earnest, and became the most successful in his purpose of all his class. He was especially fond of interrogation. At best we have only a summary, probably, of what he actually preached. 8. CRITICISM: The critical questions involved in Haggai’s case are not serious: Haggai 2:5a, for example, is wanting in the Septuagint; to 2:14 the Septuagint adds from Amos 5:10; 2:17 is very similar to, and seems dependent on, Amos 4:9; 1:7b and 13, are rejected by some as later interpolations; while Klostermann and Marti hold that the book as a whole was not written by Haggai at all, but rather about his prophetic activity, a perfectly gratuitous assumption without any substantial proof in its favor. LITERATURE. Driver, New Century Bible, “The Minor Prophets,” II, 1906; LOT, 1909; G. A. Smith, Expositor’s Bible, “The Twelve Prophets,” II, 1898; E. B. Pusey, The Minor Prophets, II, 1878; M. Dods, “Handbooks for Bible Classes,” Hag, Zec, Mal; J. Wellhausen, Die kleinen Propheten ubersetzt u. erklart, 1898; W. Nowack, Die kleinen Propheten ubersetzt u. erklart, 1905; K. Marti, Dodekapropheton erklart, 1904; H. G. Mitchell, ICC, 1912. George L. Robinson HAGGERI HAGGI HAGGIAH HAGGITES HAGGITH HAGIA HAGIOGRAPHA HAGRI HAGRITES And they took away their cattle .... they dwelt in their stead until the captivity” ( 1 Chronicles 5:20-22). These along with other Arab tribes are mentioned in the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 BC). Jetur gave his name to the Itureans of Roman times, who were famed soldiers dwelling in Anti-Libanus. Compare Curtis, Commentary on Chronicles; Skinner, “Gen,” ICC, in the place cited. Edward Mack HA-HIROTH HAI HAIL (1) 1. ITS OCCURRENCE: Hail usually falls in the spring or summer during severe thunder storms. Hailstones are made up of alternate layers of ice and snow, and sometimes reach considerable size, causing great damage by their fall. Upward currents of air carry up raindrops already formed to the colder regions above, where they freeze, and as they again pass through layers of cloud, their bulk increases until, too heavy to be carried by the current, they fall to the ground. Hailstorms, like thunder storms, occur in narrow belts a few miles in breadth and are of short duration. Almost without exception they occur in the daytime. If they take place before the time of harvest they do great damage to grain and fruit, and in extreme cases have injured property and endangered life. 2. IN SYRIA: Hailstorms, while by no means common in Syria and Palestine, are not unusual and are of great severity. They occasionally take place in Egypt. Within a few years hailstones of unusual size fell in Port Said, breaking thousands of windows. 3. BIBLICAL INSTANCES: (1) The plague of hail ( Exodus 9:23-24; Psalm 78:47), which was a local storm, as they usually are, falling on the Egyptians and not striking the children of Israel in Goshen. It was of great severity. “There was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as had not been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation” ( Exodus 9:24). It took place in January, for the barley “was in the ear, and the flax was in bloom” ( Exodus 9:31), and caused great damage. (2) After the battle with the Amorites at Gibeon, “Yahweh cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more who died with the hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword” ( Joshua 10:11). 4. AS PUNISHMENT: Hail is often spoken of as a means of punishing the wicked: “As a tempest of hail .... will he cast down” ( Isaiah 28:2); “The hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies” ( Isaiah 28:17); and as symbols of God’s anger: “I will rain .... great hailstones, fire, and brimstone” ( Ezekiel 38:22); “There shall be .... great hailstones in wrath to consume it” ( Ezekiel 13:13; compare Isaiah 30:30; Haggai 2:17; Revelation 8:7; 11:19; 16:21). 5. GOD’S POWER: Yahweh’s power and wisdom are shown in controlling the hail: “Hast thou seen the treasuries of the hail?” ( Job 38:22); “Fire and hail, snow and vapor .... fulfilling his word” ( <19E808> Psalm 148:8). Alfred H. Joy HAIL (2) HAIR 1. HAIR FASHIONS: Hair was worn in different fashions by the Orientals of Biblical times, and not always in the same way among the same people in different epochs. We know this clearly from Egyptian literature and monuments, as well as from the writings of Greek authors (especially Herodotus), that the dwellers on the Nile had their heads shaved in early youth, leaving but a side lock until maturity was attained, when this mark of childhood was taken away. Priests and warriors kept their heads closely shaved; nothing but the exigencies of arduous warfare were allowed to interfere with this custom. On the other hand, the Hebrew people, like their Babylonian neighbors (Herod. i.195), affected long and well-cared-for, bushy curls of hair as emblems of manly beauty. Proofs thereof are not infrequent in the Scriptures and elsewhere. Samson’s ( Judges 16:13,19) and Absalom’s ( 2 Samuel 14:26) long luxuriant hair is specially mentioned, and the Shulammite sings of the locks of her beloved which are “bushy (the Revised Version, margin “curling”), and black as a raven” (Song of Solomon 5:11). Josephus (Ant., VIII, vii, 3 (185)) reports that Solomon’s body-guard was distinguished by youthful beauty and “luxuriant heads of hair.” In the history of Samson we read of “the seven locks of his head” ( Judges 16:19). It is likely that the expression signifies the plaits of hair which are even now often worn by the young Bedouin warrior of the desert. 2. HAIR IN IDOL WORSHIP: It is well known that among the surrounding heathen nations the hair of childhood or youth was often shaved and consecrated at idolatrous shrines (compare Herod. ii.65 for Egypt). Frequently this custom marked an initiatory rite into the service of a divinity (e.g. that of Orotal (Bacchus) in Arabia, Herod. iii.8). It was therefore an abomination of the Gentiles in the eyes of the Jew, which is referred to in Leviticus 19:27; Jeremiah 9:26; 25:23; 49:32. The Syriac version of the latter passage renders, “Ye shall not let your hair grow long” (i.e. in order to cut it as a religious rite in honor of an idol). It is, however, probable that among the Jews, as now among many classes of Mohammedans, the periodical cropping of the hair, when it had become too cumbersome, was connected with some small festivity, when the weight of the hair was ascertained, and its weight in silver was given in charity to the poor. At least, the weighing of Absalom’s hair ( 2 Samuel 14:26) may be referred to some such custom, which is not unparalleled in other countries. The use of balances in connection with the shaving-off of the hair in Ezekiel 5:1 is certainly out of the common. See illustration, “Votive Offering,” on p. 1302. 3. THE NAZIRITE VOW: We may also compare the shaving of the head of the Nazirite to these heathen practices, though the resemblance is merely superficial. The man who made a vow to God was responsible to Him with his whole body and being. Not even a hair was to be injured willfully during the whole period of the vow, for all belonged to God. The conclusion of the Nazirite vow was marked by sacrifices and the shaving of the head at the door of the sanctuary ( Numbers 6:1-21), indicative of a new beginning of life. The long untouched hair was therefore considered as the emblem of personal devotion (or devotedness) to the God of all strength. Thus it was an easy step to the thought that in the hair was the seat of strength of a Samson ( Judges 16:17,20). God has numbered the very hairs of the head ( Matthew 10:30; Luke 12:7), which to human beings conveys the idea of the innumerableness ( Psalm 40:12; 69:4). What God can number, He can also protect, so that not even a hair of the head might “fall to the earth” or “perish.” These phrases express complete safety ( Samuel 14:45; 2 Samuel 14:11; 1 Kings 1:52; Luke 21:18; Acts 27:34). 4. LATER FASHIONS: In New Testament times, especially in the Diaspora, the Jews frequently adopted the fashion of the Romans in cropping the hair closely ( Corinthians 11:14); still the fear of being tainted by the idolatrous practice of the heathen, which is specially forbidden in Leviticus 21:5, was so great that the side locks remained untouched and were permitted to grow ad libitum. This is still the custom among the Jews of Eastern Europe and the Orient. See also HEAD. 5. WOMAN’S HAIR: If Hebrew men paid much attention to their hair, it was even more so among Hebrew women. Long black tresses were the pride of the Jewish maiden and matron (Song of Solomon 7:5; John 11:2; 1 Corinthians 11:5,6,15), but many of the expressions used in connection with the “coiffures” of women do not convey to us more than a vague idea. The “locks” of the King James Version in Song of Solomon 4:1,3; 6:7; Isaiah 47:2 ([ hM;xe , tsemmah ]) probably do not refer to the hair, but should be translated (as does the Revised Version (British and American), which follows the Septuagint) by “veil.” [ hL;D” , dallah ] (Song of Solomon 7:5), signifies the slender threads which represent the unfinished web in the loom (compare Isaiah 38:12), and thence the flowing hair of women (the Revised Version (British and American) “hair”). [ µyfih;r] , rehaTim ] (the Revised Version (British and American) “tresses”), in the same verse of the Song of Songs means literally the “gutters” at which the flocks were watered (compare Genesis 30:38,41), and thus the long plaits of the maiden with which the lover toys and in which he is held captive. The braiding or dressing of woman’s hair is expressed in Kings 9:30 and Judith 10:3. In New Testament times Christian women are warned against following the fashionable world in elaborate hairdressing ( 1 Timothy 2:9; 1 Peter 3:3). 6. BARBERS: The care of the hair, especially the periodical cutting of the same, early necessitated the trade of the barber. The Hebrew word [ bL;G” , gallabh ] is found in Ezekiel 5:1, and the plural form of the same word occurs in an inscription at Citium (Cyprus) (CIS, 1586), where the persons thus described clearly belonged to the priests or servants of a temple. See BARBER. 7. OINTMENTS: Numerous were the cosmetics and ointments applied to the hair ( Ecclesiastes 9:8; Matthew 6:17; perhaps Ruth 3:3), but some, reserved for sacramental purposes, were prohibited for profane use ( Exodus 30:32; <19D302> Psalm 133:2). Such distinction we find also in Egypt, where the walls of temple laboratories were inscribed with extensive recipes of such holy oils, while the medical papyri (see especially Papyrus Ebers, plates 64-67) contain numerous ointments for the hair, the composition of some of which is ascribed to a renowned queen of antiquity. Even Greek and Roman medical authors have transmitted to us the knowledge of some such prescriptions compounded, it is said, by Queen Cleopatra VI of Egypt, the frivolous friend of Caesar and Antony (see my dissertation, Die uber die medicinischen Kenntnisse der alten Aegypter berichtenden Papyri, ere, Leipzig, 1888, 121-32). We know from Josephus (Ant., XVI, viii, 1 (233)), that Herod the Great, in his old age, dyed his hair black, a custom, however, which does not appear to be specifically Jewish, as hair-dyes as well as means for bleaching the hair were well known in Greece and Rome. It is certain that the passage Matthew 5:36 would not have been spoken, had this been a common custom in the days of the Lord. A special luxury is mentioned by Josephus (Ant., VIII, vii, 3 (185)), who states that the young men who formed the body-guard of King Solomon were in the habit, on festive occasions, of sprinkling their long hair with gold-dust ([yh~gma crusou~, psegma chrusou ]). For the Jews the anointing of the head was synonymous with joy and prosperity (compare Psalm 23:5; 92:10; Hebrews 1:9; compare also “oil of joy,” Isaiah 61:3, and “oil of gladness,” Psalm 45:7). It was also, like the washing of feet, a token of hospitality ( Psalm 23:5; Luke 7:46). On the contrary, it was the custom in times of personal or national affliction and mourning to wear the hair unanointed and disheveled, or to cover the head with dust and ashes ( 2 Samuel 14:2; Joshua 7:6; Job 2:12), or to tear the hair or to cut it off ( Ezra 9:3; Nehemiah 13:25; Jeremiah 7:29). 8. SYMBOLICAL USE OF WORD: We have referred to the thickness of hair which supplied the Hebrew with a suitable expression for the conception “innumerable.” Hair is also expressive of minuteness; thus the 700 left-handed men of Benjamin were able to “sling stones at a hairbreadth, and not miss” ( Judges 20:16). Gray hairs and the hoary white of old age were highly honored by the Jews ( Proverbs 16:31; 20:29; 2 Macc 6:23). Besides expressing old age ( Isaiah 46:4), they stand for wisdom (The Wisdom of Solomon 4:9 (10) ). Sometimes white hair is the emblem of a glorious, if not Divine, presence ( Daniel 7:9; 2 Macc 15:13; Revelation 1:14). Calamity befalling the gray-headed was doubly terrible ( Genesis 42:38; 44:29). The “hair of the flesh” is said to “stand up” ( Job 4:15; Sirach 27:14) when sudden terror or fear takes hold of a person. The symbolical language of Isaiah 7:20 uses the “hair of the feet” (see FEET ) and “the beard” as synonymous with “the humble” and the “mighty of the people.” Camel’s hair ( Matthew 3:4; Mark 1:6) is mentioned in connection with the description of John the Baptist’s raiment. It represents, according to Jerome, a rough shirt worn under the coat or wrapper, though a rather soft fabric is produced in Arabia from the finer wool of the camel. Goat’s hair was the material of a cloth used for wearing apparel and for a more or less waterproof covering of tents and bundles. It is the black tentcloth of Kedar’ (Song of Solomon 1:5; Exodus 26:7; 36:14). In New Testament times it was the special product of Paul’s native province, Cilicia, whence its name cilicium, and its manufacture formed the apostle’s own trade ( Acts 18:3). It is also mentioned as a material for stuffing pillows ( 1 Samuel 19:13). See also WEAVING. H. L. E. Luering HAIR, PLUCKING OF THE See PUNISHMENTS. HA-JEHUDIJAH HAKKATAN HAKKOZ HAKUPHA HALAH 1. MANY IDENTIFICATIONS: Mentioned in 2 Kings 17:6; 18:11; 1 Chronicles 5:26, as one of the places to which the kings of Assyria sent the exiled Israelites (see GOZAN; HABOR ). Various identifications have been proposed, all of them except the last more or less improbable for philological reasons: (1) the Assyrian Kalach (Nimrud, the Calah of Genesis 10:11); (2) the Assyrian Hilakku (Cilicia); (3) Chalkitis in Mesopotamia (Ptol. v.18, 4), adjoining Gauzanitis (Gozan) — a good position otherwise; (4) the Calachene of Strabo, in the North of Assyria. Equally unsuitable, also, is (5) the Chalonitis of Pliny and Strabo, Northeast of Assyria, notwithstanding that this was apparently called Halah by the Syrians. An attractive identification was (6) with the river Balikh (by change of “H” into “B”) — compare Septuagint “in Halae and in Habor, rivers of Gozan” — but even this has to be abandoned in favor of (7) the Assyrian Halahhu, which (except the doubling and the caseending) is the same, letter for letter. 2. THE MOST PROBABLE OF THEM: It is mentioned in the W. Asia Inscr, II, plural 53, l. 35, between Arrapha (Arrapachitis) and Racappu (Reseph). According to the tablet K. 123, where it is called mat Halahhi, “the land of Halahhu,” it apparently included the towns Se-bise, Se-irrisi, Lu-ammu(ti?), and Se-Akkulani, apparently four grain-producing centers for the Assyrian government. The first quotation implies that Halah was near or in Gauzanitis, and had a chief town of the same name. Of the 8 personal names in K. 123, 5 are Assyrian, the remainder being Syrian rather than Israelite. T. G. Pinches HALAK, MOUNT To the Southwest opens Wady Maderah, a continuation of Waddy el- Fiqrah, in which there rises a conspicuous hill, Jebel Maderah, composed of limestone, answering well the description of a bare or smooth mountain. It is a striking feature of the landscape viewed from all sides, and may well be the mount here referred to. See also HOR, MOUNT. W. Ewing HALAKHA HALE; HALING HALF HALHUL HALICARNASSUS Alexander the Great destroyed the city only after a long siege, but he was unable to take the acropolis. The city never quite recovered, yet it was later distinguished as the supposed birthplace of Herodotus and Dionysius. That a number of Jews lived there is evident from the fact, according to 1 Macc 15:23, that in the year 139 BC, a letter was written by the Roman Senate in their behalf. In the 1st century BC, a decree was issued granting to the Jews in Halicarnassus liberty to worship “according to the Jewish laws, and to make their proseuche at the sea-side, according to the customs of their forefathers” (Josephus, Ant, XIV, x, 23). The modern town of Budrun, which represents the ancient Halicarnassus and covers a part of its site, stands a little to the West of the castle of Peter. This castle was erected by the Knights of Rhodes in 1404 AD, partly from the ruins of the mausoleum. Lord Redcliffe, who explored the ruins in 1846, sent many of the sculptured slabs from the castle to the British Museum where they may now be seen. Sir C. Newton conducted excavations there in 1857-58, adding other sculptures to the collection in the British Museum. He discovered the foundation of the Ionic temple of Aphrodite, and the greenstone foundation of the mausoleum upon which modern Turkish houses had been built. He also opened several tombs which were outside the ancient city. The city walls, built by Maussollos about 360 BC, and defining the borders of the ancient city, are still preserved; but the ancient harbor which was protected by a mole, has now disappeared. The ruins may best be reached by boat from the island of Cos. E. J. Banks HALL HALL, JUDGMENT See JUDGMENT HALL; PRAETORIUM. HALLEL The Hallelujah Psalms are found in three groups: 104 through 106; through 113; 146 through 150. In the first group, Hallelujah is found at the close of the psalm as a lit. interjection (106:1 is an integral part of the psalm). In the second group, Hallelujah is found at the beginning (113:9 is an integral part of the psalm depending on the adjective “joyful”). In the third group, Hallelujah is found both at the close and at the beginning of the psalms. In all other cases, (Pss 115; 116; 117) Hallelujah seems to be an integral part of the psalms. These three groups were probably taken from an older collection of psalms like the group Psalms 120 through 134. In the New Testament Hallelujah is found as part of the song of the heavenly host ( Revelation 19:1 ff). The word is preserved as a liturgical interjection by the Christian church generally. A. L. Breslich HALLOHESH A post-exilic chief whose son Shallum assisted in repairing the walls of Jerusalem ( Nehemiah 3:12, the King James Version “Halohesh”). He was also one of the leaders who signed the national covenant ( Nehemiah 10:24 (Hebrew 25)). HALLOW; HALLOWED In the New Testament “hallow” occurs only in the “Lord’s Prayer,” there rendering [aJgia>zw, hagiazo ], the Septuagint word for qadhash : Matthew 6:9; Luke 11:2, “Hallowed be thy name.” Hagiazo is quite frequent in the New Testament, and is always (American Standard Revised Version) rendered “sanctify,” except here, and in Revelation 22:11, “He that is holy, let him be made holy still.” To “hallow the name” includes not only the inward attitude and outward action of profound reverence and active praise, but also that personal godliness, loving obedience and aggressive Christlikeness, which reveal the presence of God in the life, which is His true earthly glory. Philip Wendell Crannell HALT HAM (1) 1. THE YOUNGEST SON OF NOAH: The youngest son of Noah, from whom sprang the western and southwestern nations known to the Hebrews. His name first occurs in Genesis 5:32, where, as in 6:10 and elsewhere, it occupies the second place. In Genesis 9:18 Ham is described as “the father of Canaan,” to prepare the reader for 9:25-27, where Noah, cursing Ham for having told Shem and Japheth of his nakedness, refers to him as Canaan. On account of this, it has been suggested that “Canaan” stood originally in all the passages where the three brothers are spoken of, and that this was later changed to “Ham,” except in the verses containing the curse. It seems more likely, however, that the name “Canaan” is inserted prophetically, as Noah would not desire to curse his son, but only one branch of that son’s descendants, who were later the principal adversaries of the Hebrews. 2. HAM AS A NATIONALITY: The name given, in <19A523> Psalm 105:23,17; 106:22 (compare 78:51), to Egypt as a descendant of Ham, son of Noah. As Shem means “dusky,” or the like, and Japheth “fair,” it has been supposed that Ham meant, as is not improbable, “black.” This is supported by the evidence of Hebrew and Arabic, in which the word chamam means “to be hot” and “to be black,” the latter signification being derived from the former. 3. MEANING OF THE WORD: That Ham is connected with the native name of Egypt, Kem, or, in full pa ta’ en Kem, “the land of Egypt,” in Bashmurian Coptic Kheme, is unlikely, as this form is probably of a much later date than the composition of Gen, and, moreover, as the Arabic shows, the guttural is not a true kh, but the hard breathing h, which are both represented by the Hebrew cheth . 4. THE NATIONS DESCENDING FROM HAM: Of the nationalities regarded as descending from Ham, none can be described as really black. First on the list, as being the darkest, is Cush or Ethiopia ( Genesis 10:6), after which comes Mitsrayim , or Egypt, then PuT or Libyia, and Canaan last. The sons or descendants of each of these are then taken in turn, and it is noteworthy that some of them, like the Ethiopians and the Canaanites, spoke Semitic, and not Hamitic, languages — Seba (if connected with the Sabeans), Havilah (Yemen), and Sheba, whose queen visited Solomon. Professor Sayce, moreover, has pointed out that Caphtor is the original home of the Phoenicians, who spoke a Semitic language. The explanation of this probably is that other tongues were forced upon these nationalities in consequence of their migrations, or because they fell under the dominion of nationalities alien to them. The non-Sem Babylonians, described as descendants of Nimrod (Merodach), as is welI known, spoke Sumerian, and adopted Semitic Babylonian only on account of mingling with the Semites whom they found there. Another explanation is that the nationalities described as Hamitic — a parallel to those of the Semitic section — were so called because they fell under Egyptian dominion. This would make the original Hamitic race to have been Egyptian and account for Ham as a (poetical) designation of that nationality. Professor F. L. Griffith has pointed out that the Egyptian Priapic god of Panopolis (Akhmim), sometimes called Menu, but also apparently known as Khem, may have been identified with the ancestor of the Hamitic race — he was worshipped from the coast of the Red Sea to Coptos, and must have been well known to Egypt’s eastern neighbors. He regards the characteristics of Menu as being in accord with the shamelessness of Ham as recorded in Genesis 9:20 ff. See JAPHETH; SHEM; TABLE OF NATIONS. T. G. Pinches HAM (2) ([ µh; , ham ]): (1) A place East of the Jordan named between Ashteroth-karnaim and Shaveh-kiriathaim, in which Chedorlaomer smote the Zu-zim ( Genesis 14:5). No name resembling this has been recovered. Septuagint reads bahem “with them,” instead of beham, “in Ham.” Some have thought that “Ham” may be a corruption from “Ammon”; or that it may be the ancient name of Rabbath-ammon itself. (2) A poetical appellation of Egypt: “the land of Ham” ( <19A523> Psalm 105:23, etc.) is the land of Jacob’s sojourning, i.e. Egypt; “the tents of Ham” ( Psalm 78:51) are the dwellings of the Egyptians. It may be derived from the native name of Egypt, Kemi, or Khemi. See MIZRAIM; SHEM. W. Ewing HAMAN 1. EARLY HISTORY: The Hamathite is mentioned in Genesis 10:18 among the sons of Canaan, but in historic times the population, as the personal names testify, seems to have been for the most part Semitic. The ideal boundary of Israel reached the territory, but not the city of Hamath ( Numbers 34:8; Joshua 13:5; Ezekiel 47:13-21). David entered into friendly relations with Toi, its king ( 2 Samuel 8:9 ff), and Solomon erected store cities in the land of Hamath ( 2 Chronicles 8:4). In the days of Ahab we meet with it on the cuneiform inscriptions, under the name mat hamatti, and its king Irhuleni was a party to the alliance of the Hittites with Ben-hadad of Damascus and Ahab of Israel against Shalmaneser II; but this was broken up by the battle of Qarqar in 854 BC, and Hamath became subject to Assyria. Jeroboam II attacked, partially destroyed, and held it for a short time ( 2 Kings 14:28; Amos 6:2). In 730 BC, its king Eniilu paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser, but he divided its lands among his generals, and transported 1,223 of its inhabitants to Sura on the Tigris. In 720, Sargon “rooted out the land of Hamath and dyed the skin of Ilubi’idi (or Jau-bi’idi) its king, like wool” and colonized the country with 4,300 Assyrians, among whom was Deioces the Mede. A few years later Sennacherib also claims to have taken it ( 2 Kings 18:34; 19:13; 1 Chronicles 36:19; 37:13). In Isaiah 11:11, mention is made of Israelites in captivity at Hamath, and Hamathites were among the colonists settled in Samaria ( 2 Kings 17:24) by Esarhaddon in 675 BC. Their special object of worship was Ashima, which, notwithstanding various conjectures, has not been identified. 2. LATER HISTORY: The Hamathite country is mentioned in 1 Macc 12:25 in connection with the movements of Demetrius and Jonathan. The Seleucids renamed it Epiphaneia (Josephus, Ant, I, vi, 2), and by this name it was known to the Greeks and the Romans, even appearing as Paphunya in Midrash Ber Rab chapter 37. Locally, however, the ancient name never disappeared, and since the Moslem conquest it has been known as Hama. Saladin’s family ruled it for a century and a half, but after the death of Abul-fida in 1331 it sank into decay. 3. MODERN CONDITION: The position of Hama in a fruitful plain to the East of the Nusairiyeh Mountains, on the most frequented highway between Mesopotamia and Egypt, and on the new railway, gives it again, as in ancient times, a singular significance, and it is once more rising in importance. The modern town is built in four quarters around the ancient citadel-mound, and it has a population of at least 80,000. It is now noted for its gigantic irrigating wheels. Here, too, the Hittite inscriptions were first found and designated Hamathite. 4. ENTERING IN OF HAMATH: In connection with the northern boundary of Israel, “the entering in of Hamath” is frequently mentioned ( Numbers 13:21; 1 Kings 8:65, etc., the American Standard Revised Version “entrance”). It has been sought in the Orontes valley, between Antioch and Seleucia, and also at Wady Nahr el-Barid, leading down from Homs to the Mediterranean to the North of Tripoli. But from the point of view of Palestine, it must mean some part of the great valley of Coele-Syria (Biqa’a). It seems that instead of translating, we should read here a place-name — “Libo of Hamath” — and the presence of the ancient site of Libo (modern Leboue) 14 miles North-Northeast of Baalbek, at the head-waters of the Orontes, commanding the strategical point where the plain broadens out to the North and to the South, confirms us in this conjecture. W. M. Christie HAMATH-ZOBAH Parts of the ancient fortification still cling to the mountain side above the baths; and the remains of an aqueduct which brought fresh water from sources in the Southwest may be traced along the face of the slopes. Hammath is identical with Hammon ( 1 Chronicles 6:76); and probably also with Hammoth-dor ( Joshua 21:32). W. Ewing HAMMEAH, THE TOWER OF E. W. G. Masterman HAMMEDATHA HAMMELECH HAMMER James A. Patch HAMMIPHKAD, GATE OF HAMMOLECHETH HAMMON HAMMURABI 1. ETYMOLOGY OF HIS NAME WITH REFERENCE TO AMRAPHEL; HIS DYNASTY: The name of the celebrated warrior, builder, and lawgiver, who ruled over Babylonia about 2000 BC. In accordance with the suggestion of the late Professor Eb. Schrader, he is almost universally identified with the AMRAPHEL of Genesis 14:1, etc. (which see). Hammurabi was apparently not of Babylonian origin, the so-called “Dynasty of Babylon,” to which he belonged, having probably come from the West. The commonest form of the name is as above, but Hamu(m)-rabi (with mimmation) is also found. The reading with initial “b” in the second element is confirmed by the Babylonian rendering of the name as Kimta-rapastum, “my family is widespread,” or the like, showing that rabi was regarded as coming from rabu, “to be great.” A late letter-tablet, however (see PSBA, May, 1901, p. 191), gives the form Ammurapi, showing that the initial is not really “kh”, and that the “b” of the second element had changed to “p” (compare Tiglath-pil-eser for Tukulti-abil-esar, etc.). Amraphel (for Amrapel, Amrabel, Amrabe) would therefore seem to be due to Assyrian influence, but the final “l” is difficult to explain. Professor F. Hommel has pointed out, that the Babylonian rendering, “my family is widespread,” is simply due to the scribes, the first element being the name of the Arabic deity `Am, making ‘Ammu-rabi, “Amos is great.” Admitting this, it would seem to be certain that Hammurabi’s dynasty was that designated Arabian by Berosus. Its founder was apparently Sumu- abi, and Hammurabi was the fifth in descent from him. Hammurabi’s father, Sin- mubalit, and his grandfather, Abil-Sin, are the only rulers of the dynasty which have Babylonian names, all the others being apparently Arabic. 2. THE YEARS FOLLOWING HIS ACCESSION: Concerning Hammurabi’s early life nothing is recorded, but since he reigned at least 43 years, he must have been young when he came to the throne. His accession was apparently marked by some improvement in the administration of the laws, wherein, as the date-list says, he “established righteousness.” After this, the earlier years of his reign were devoted to such peaceful pursuits as constructing the shrines and images of the gods, and in his 6th year he built the wall of the city of Laz. In his 7th year he took Unug (Erech) and Isin — two of the principal cities of Babylonia, implying that the Dynasty of Babylon had not held sway in all the states. 3. MILITARY OPERATIONS AND FURTHER PIOUS WORKS. INAUGURATION OF HIS IMAGE: While interesting himself in the all-important work of digging canals, he found time to turn his attention to the land of Yamutbalu (8th year), and in his 10th he possibly conquered, or received the homage of, the city and people (or the army) of Malgia or Malga. Next year the city Rabiku was taken by a certain Ibik-Iskur, and also, seemingly, a place called Salibu. The inauguration of the throne of Zer-panitum, and the setting up, seemingly, of some kind of royal monument, followed, and was succeeded by other religious duties — indeed, work of this nature would seem to have occupied him every year until his 21st, when he built the fortress or fortification of the city Bazu. His 22nd year is described as that of his own image as king of righteousness; and the question naturally arises, whether this was the date when he erected the great stele found at Susa in Elam, inscribed with his Code of Laws, which is now in the Louvre. Next year he seems to have fortified the city of Sippar, where, it is supposed, this monument was originally erected. 4. THE CAPTURE OF RIM-SIN: Pious works again occupied him until his 30th year, when the army of Elam is referred to, possibly indicating warlike operations, which paved the way for the great campaign of his 31st year, when, “with the help of Anu and Enlil,” he captured Yamut-balu and King Rim-Sin, the well-known ruler of Larsa. In his 32nd year he destroyed the army of Asnunna or Esnunnak. 5. VARIOUS WORKS, AND AN EXPEDITION TO MESOPOTAMIA: After these victories, Hammurabi would seem to have been at peace, and in his 33rd year he dug the canal Hammurabi-nuhus-nisi, “Hammurabi the abundance of the people,” bringing to the fields of his subjects fertility, “according to the wish of Enlila.” The restoration of the great temple at Erech came next, and was followed by the erection of a fortress, “high like a mountain,” on the banks of the Tigris. He also built the fortification of Rabiku on the bank of the Tigris, implying preparations for hostilities, and it was possibly on account of this that the next year he made supplication to Tasmetum, the spouse of Nebo. The year following (his 37th), “by the command of Anu and Enlila,” the fortifications of Maur and Malka were destroyed, after which the country enjoyed a twelve-month of peace. In all probability, however, this was to prepare for the expedition of his 39th year, when he subjugated Turukku, Kagmu and Subartu, a part of Mesopotamia. The length of this year-date implies that the expedition was regarded as being of importance. 6. HIS FINAL YEARS: Untroubled by foreign affairs, the chief work of Hammurabi during his 40th year was the digging of the canal Tisit-Enlila, at Sippar, following this up by the restoration of the temple E-mete-ursag and a splendid temple-tower dedicated to Zagaga and Istar. The defenses of his country were apparently his last thought, for his 43rd year, which seemingly terminated his reign and his life, was devoted to strengthening the fortifications of Sippar, a work recorded at greater length in several cylinder-inscriptions found on the site. 7. NO RECORD OF AN EXPEDITION TO PALESTINE: Unfortunately none of the documents referring to his reign makes mention of his attack, in company with the armies of Chedorlaomer, Tidal and Arioch, upon the rebel-kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. This naturally throws doubt on the identification of Hammurabi with the Amraphel of Genesis 14:1 ff. It must be remembered, however, that we do not possess a complete history either of his life or his rule. That he was a contemporary of Arioch seems undoubted, and if this be the case, Chedorlaomer and Tidal were contemporaries too. Various reasons might be adduced for the absence of references to the campaign in question — his pride may have precluded him from having a year named after an expedition — no matter how satisfactory it may have been — carried out for another power — his suzerain; or the allied armies may have suffered so severely from attacks similar to that delivered by Abraham, that the campaign became an altogether unsuitable one to date by. 8. THE PERIOD WHEN IT MAY HAVE TAKEN PLACE: If Eri-Aku was, as Thureau-Dangin has suggested, the brother of Rim-Sin, king of Larsa (Elassar), he must have preceded him on the throne, and, in that case, the expedition against the kings of the Plain took place before Hammurabi’s 30th year, when he claims to have defeated Rim-Sin. As the date of Rim-Sin’s accession is doubtful, the date of Eri-Aku’s (Arioch’s) death is equally so, but it possibly took place about 5 years before Rim- Sin’s defeat. The expedition in question must therefore have been undertaken during the first 25 years of Hammurabi’s reign. As Amraphel is called king of Shinar (Babylonia), the period preceding Hammurabi’s accession ought probably to be excluded. 9. HAMMURABI’S GREATNESS AS A RULER: Of all the kings of early Babylonia so far known, Hammurabi would seem to have been one of the greatest, and the country made good progress under his rule. His conflicts with Elam suggest that Babylonia had become strong enough to resist that warlike state, and his title of adda or “father” of Martu (= Amurru, the Amorites) and of Yamutbalu on the East implies not only that he maintained the country’s influence, but also that, during his reign, it was no longer subject to Elam. Rim-Sin and the state of Larsa, however, were not conquered until the time of Samsu-iluna, Hammurabi’s son. It is noteworthy that his Code of Laws (see 3, above) not only determined legal rights and responsibilities, but also fixed the rates of wages, thus obviating many difficulties. See AMRAPHEL; ARIOCH; CHEDORLAOMER; TIDAL, etc. T. G. Pinches HAMMURABI, THE CODE OF I. HISTORICAL. 1. Discovery of the Code: When Professor Meissner published, in 1898, some fragments of cuneiform tablets from the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (668-628 BC), he also then suggested that these pieces were parts of a copy of an old Book of Law from the time of the so-called First Babylonian Dynasty, one of the kings of which was Hammurabi (more exactly Hammurapi, circa 2100 BC). A few years later this suggestion was fully established. In December, 1901, and January, 1902, a French expedition under the leadership of M. J. de Morgan, the chief aim of which was the exploration of the old royal city Susa, found there a diorite stone, 2,25 meters high and almost 2 meters in circumference. This stone had a relief (see below) and 44 columns of ancient Babylonian cuneiform writing graven upon it. Professor V. Scheil, O.P., the Assyriological member of the expedition, recognized at once that this stele contains the collection of laws of King Hammurabi, and published this characteristic discovery as early as 1902 in the official report of the expedition: Delegation en Perse (Tome IV, Paris). 2. Editions of the Code: At the same time Scheil gave the first translation of the text. Since then the text has several times been published, translated and commented upon; compare especially: H. Winckler, Die Gesetze Hammurabis (= Der alte Orient, IV, Leipzig; 1st edition, 1903; 4th edition, 1906); H. Winckler, Die Gesetze Hammurabis in Umschrift und Ubersetzung, Leipzig, 1904; D.H. Muller, Die Gesetze Hammurabis und die Mosaische Gesetzgebung, Vienna, 1903; R.F. Harper, The Code of Hammurabi, Chicago, 1904; C.H.W. Johns, Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts, Letters, Edinburgh, 1904, 44 ff; T.G. Pinches, The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia, London, 1908, 487; A. Ungnad, Altorientalische Texte und Bilder zum Alten Testament, Tubingen, 1909, I, 140 ff; A. Ungnad, Keilschrifttexte der Gesetze Hammurapis, Leipzig, 1909; J. Kohler, F. Peiser and A. Ungnad, Hammurabis Gesetz, 5 volumes, Leipzig, 1904-11. 3. Description of the Stone: The stone has the form of a column the cross-section of which is approximately an ellipse. The upper part of the face has a relief (see illustration). We see the king in supplicating attitude standing before the sun-god who sits upon a throne and is characterized by sun rays which stream out from his shoulders. As the king traced back the derivation of the Code to an inspiration of this god, we may suppose that the relief represents the moment when the king received the laws from the mouth of the god. Lower on the face of the stone are 16 columns of text, which read from top to bottom; 7 other columns were erased some time later than Hammurabi in order to make room for a new inscription. The reverse side contains 28 columns of text. 4. History of the Stone: The stone was set up by the king, toward the end of his reign of 43 years, in the temple Esagila at Babylon, the capital of his dominion (circa BC). It was probably stolen from there by the Elamitic king Shutruk- Nakhunte, in the 12th century BC, at the time of the plundering of Babylon, and set up as a trophy of war in the Elamitic capital Susa. The same king had, it would seem, the 7 columns from the face side erased in order to engrave there an account of his own deeds, but through some unknown circumstance this latter was not accomplished. After the discovery of the stele it was brought to Paris where it now forms one of the most important possessions of the Louvre. 5. Origin and Later History of the Code: If, however, Hammurabi was not the first legislator of Babylonia, still he was, as far as we can see, the first one who used the language of the people, i.e. the Semitic idiom. We know that nearly 1,000 years earlier a king, Urukagina, promulgated laws in Babylonia which have been lost; an ancestor of Hammurabi, Sumulael, appears also to have given laws. As we are able to recognize from the actual practice of Babylonian social life, the legislation of Hammurabi signifies nothing essentially new. Even before his time laws after the same principles were administered. His service lies before all in that he gathered together the extant laws and set them up in the Semitic language. The laws were promulgated already in the 2nd year of his reign, but the stele known to us was set up in the temple at Babylon about 30 years later. Moreover, the laws were set up in more than one copy, for in Susa fragments of another copy were found. How long the laws were in actual use it is impossible to determine. In any case, as late as the time of Ashurbanipal (see above), they used to be copied; indeed we even possess copies in neo-Babylonian characters which are later than the 7th century BC. Fortunately the duplicates contain several passages which are destroyed on the large stele in consequence of the erasure of the seven columns. Thus we are able, in spite of the gaps in the large stele, almost completely to determine the contents of the Code. II. THE CONTENTS OF THE CODE. The laws themselves are preceded by an introduction which was added later, after the law had already been published about 30 years. The introduction states in the first place that already in the primeval age, when Marduk the god of Babylon was elected king of the gods, Hammurabi was predestined by the gods “to cause justice to radiate over the land, to surrender sinners and evildoers to destruction, and to take care that the strong should not oppress the weak.” Hammurabi’s Code is, indeed, conceived from this standpoint. Farther on, the king lauds his services to the principal cities of Babylonia, their temples and cults. He appears as a true server of the gods, as a protector of his people and a gracious prince to those who at first would not acknowledge his supremacy. To be sure, this introduction is not entirely free from presumption; for the king describes himself as “god of the kings” and “sun-god of Babylon “! The hopes of a Saviour, which heathen antiquity also knew, he regards as realized in his own person. The Code itself may be divided into 12 divisions. It manifests, in no way, a very definite logical system; the sequence is often interrupted, and one recognizes that it is not so much a systematic and exhaustive work as a collection of the legal standards accumulated in the course of time. Much that we would expect to find in a Code is not even mentioned. 1. The Principles of Legal Process: The first five paragraphs treat of some principles of legal process. In the first place false accusation is considered. The unprovable charge of sorcery is dealt with in an especially interesting manner (section symbol 2). The accused in this case has to submit to an ordeal at the hands of the Rivergod; nevertheless nothing is said concerning the details of this ordeal. If he is convicted by the god as guilty, the accuser receives his house; in the opposite case, the accuser is condemned to death and the accused receives his house. The law also proceeds rigorously against false witnesses: in a process in which life is at stake, conscious perjury is punished with death (section symbol 3). Finally the king strives also for an uncorrupt body of judges; a judge who has not carried out the judgment of the court correctly has not only to pay twelve times the sum at issue, but he is also dismissed with disgrace from his office. 2. Theft, Burglary, Robbery: The next sections (section symbol, section symbol 6-25) occupy themselves with serious theft, burglary, robbery and other crimes of a like nature. Theft from palace or temple, or the receiving and concealing of stolen property, is punished with death or a heavy fine according to the nature of what is stolen (section symbol, section symbol 6, 8). As it was a custom in Babylonia to effect every purchase in the presence of witnesses or with a written deed of sale, one understands the regulation that, in certain cases in which witnesses were not forthcoming, or a deed could not be shown, theft was assumed: the guilty person suffered death (section symbol 7). A careful procedure is prescribed for the case in which lost goods are found in the hands of another: he who, in the investigation, cannot prove his legitimate right, suffers death, just as a deceiver who tries to enrich himself through making a false accusation (section symbol, section symbol 9 ff). Kidnapping of a free child or carrying away and concealing a slave from the palace is punished with death (section symbol, section symbol 14 ff). As slavery had the greatest economic significance in Babylonia, detailed regulations concerning the seizing of runaway slaves and similar matters were given (section symbol, section symbol 17 ff). Burglary, as also robbery, is punished with death (section symbol, section symbol 21 ff). If a robber is not caught, the persons or corporations responsible for the safety of the land had to make compensation (section symbol, section symbol 22 ff). Whoever attempts to enrich himself from a building in conflagration is thrown into the fire (section symbol 25). 3. Laws concerning Vassalage: The next paragraphs (section symbol, section symbol 26-41) control vassalage, particularly in reference to rights and duties of a military kind, concerning which we are not yet quite clear. Here also Hammurabi’s care for those of a meaner position is exhibited, since he issues rigid regulations against misuse of the power of office and punishes certain offenses of this kind even with death (section symbol 34). The crown had, in every case, authority in reference to estates in fee which a vassal could not sell, exchange or transmit to his wife or daughters (section symbol, section symbol 36 ff, 41); as a rule the sons took over the estates after the death of the father together with the accompanying rights and duties. The same was the case if, in the service of the king, the father had been lost sight of (section symbol, section symbol 28 f). The estates in fee of what we may call “lay-priestesses” (concerning whom we shall have to speak later) take a special position (section symbol 40). 4. Immovables: A longer section (section symbol, section symbol 41 ff) is given to immovables (field, garden, house); for the economic life of the ancient Babylonians depended first of all upon the cultivation of grain and datepalms; the legal relations of the land tenants are exactly explained (section symbol, section symbol 42 ff): neglect of his work does not liberate the tenant from his duties to his overlord. On the other hand, in cases of losses through the weather, he is so far released from his duties that of the rent not yet paid he has to pay only an amount corresponding to the quantity of the product of his tenancy (section symbol, section symbol 45 f). Also the landowner with liabilities, who suffers through failure of crops and inundation, enjoys far-reaching protection (section 48), and his business relations generally are adequately regulated (section symbol, section symbol 49 ff). As the regular irrigation of the fields was the chief condition for profitable husbandry in a land lacking rain, strong laws are made in reference to this: damage resulting from neglect has to be compensated for; indeed, whoever had not the means to do this could be sold with his family into slavery (section symbol, section symbol 53 ff). Special regulations protect the landowner from unlicensed grazing on his fields of crops (section symbol, section symbol 57 f). The regulations concerning horticulture (section symbol, section symbol 59-66) are similar; here also the relation of the proprietor to the gardener who had to plant or to cultivate the garden is carefully considered; the same is true with respect to the business liabilities of the owner. These regulations concerning horticulture are not entirely preserved upon the stele, but, through the above-mentioned duplicates, we can restore them completely. Our knowledge concerning the legal relations between house-owners and tenants (section symbol, section symbol 67 ff) is less, because the parts dealing with these on the stele are entirely lost and can only be partially restored from duplicates. Reference is once more made to vassalage (section 71). The relations between neighbors are also regulated, but we cannot ascertain how in detail (section symbol, section symbol 72 ff). Concerning the precise rights of tenants and landlords we are also but slightly informed (section 78). On account of the gaps, we are not able to determine how far the regulations concerning immovables extended. In the gaps there seem to have been still other laws concerning business liabilities. The number of missing paragraphs can only approximately be determined, so that our further enumeration of the paragraphs cannot be regarded as absolutely correct. 5. Trader and Agent: The text begins again with the treatment of the legal relations between the trader and his agents (section symbol, section symbol 100-107); these agents are a kind of officials for the trader whose business they look after. While the Code discusses their responsibilities and duties to their masters, it also protects them from unjust and deceitful ones. 6. Taverns: The taverns of Babylonia (sections 108-11) seem very often to have been the resort of criminals. As a rule they were in the hands of proprietresses who were made responsible for what took place on their premises (section 109). Priestesses were forbidden to visit these houses under penalty of being burned (section 110). 7. Deposits: The next division (sections 112-26) deals especially with deposits, although some of its regulations are only indirectly therewith connected. Deceptive messengers are to be punished (section 112). The debtor is protected from violent encroachments of the creditor (section 113). Detailed regulations are given concerning imprisonment for debt (sections 114 ff). The creditor must guard himself from mistreating a person imprisoned for debt, in his house; if a child of the debtor dies through the fault of the creditor, the jus talionis is resorted to: a child of the creditor is killed (section 116). The members of a family imprisoned for debt have to be released after three years (section 117). If anyone desires to give something to another to be saved for him, he must do it in the presence of witnesses or draw up a statement of the transaction; otherwise later claims cannot be substantiated (sections 122 ff). Whoever accepts the objects is responsible for them (section 125), but is also protected from unjustified claims of his client (section 126). 8. Family: The sections occupied with the rights of the family are very extensive (sections 127-95). Matrimony rests upon a contract (section 128) and presupposes the persistent fidelity of the wife (sections 129 ff), while the husband is not bound, in this respect, by regulations of any kind. An unfaithful wife may be thrown into the water, but the partner of her sin may also, under certain circumstances, suffer the penalty of death. Long unpreventable absence of the husband justifies the wife to marry again only when she lacks the means of support (sections 133 ff). On the part of the husband, there are no hindrances to divorce, so long as he settles any matters with his wife concerning her property, provides for the upbringing of the children and, in certain cases, gives a divorce-sum as compensation (sections 137 ff). Disorderly conduct of the wife is sufficient for the annulling of the marriage; in this case the husband may reduce the wife to the state of a slave (section 141). The wife may only annul the marriage if her husband grossly neglects his duties toward her (section 142). If a wife desires the annulling of the marriage for any other reason, she is drowned (section 143). As a rule, polygamy is not allowed. If a barren wife gives to her husband a slave girl who bears children to him, then he may not marry another wife (section 144); otherwise he might do so (section 145). The slave given to the husband is bound to show due deference to her mistress; if she does not do this she loses her privileged position, but she may not be sold if she has borne a child to the husband (sections 146 f). Incurable disease of the wife is a ground for the marriage of another wife (sections 148 f). Gifts of the husband to the wife may not be touched by the children at the death of the husband, but nevertheless property has to remain in the family (section 150). Debts contracted before the marriage by one side or the other are not binding for the other, if an agreement has been made to that effect (section 151 f). Rigid laws are made against abuses in sexual life. The wife who kills her husband for the sake of a lover is impaled upon a stake (section 153). Incest is punished, according to the circumstances, with exile or death (sections 154 ff). Breach of promise by the man without sufficient reason entails to him the loss of all presents made for the betrothed. If the father of the betrothed annuls the engagement, he must give back to the man twice the value of the presents (sections 159 ff); especially the sum paid for the wife to her father (Bab terhatu). Matters concerning inheritance are carefully dealt with (sections 162 ff). The dowry of a wife belongs, after her death, to her children (section 162). Presents made during the lifetime are not reckoned in the dividing of the inheritance (section 165), apart from the outlay which a father has to make in the case of each of his sons, the chief portion of which is the money for a wife (section 166). Children borne from different mothers share the paternal inheritance equally (section 167). Disinheritance of a child is permitted only in the case of serious offenses after a previous warning (sections 168 f). Illegitimate children borne from slaves have part in the inheritance only if the father has expressly acknowledged them as his children (section 170); otherwise, at the death of the father, they are released (section 171). The chief wife, whose future needs had not been secured during the lifetime of her husband, receives from the property of the deceased husband a portion equal to that received by each child, but she has only the use of it (section 172). A widow may marry again, but then she loses all claim on the property of her first husband, in favor of his children (sections 172, 177); the children of both her marriages share her own property equally (sections 173 f). The children from free women married to slaves are free (section 175). The master of the slave has only a claim to half of the property of the slave which he has acquired during such a marriage (sections 176 f). Unmarried daughters mostly became priestesses or entered a religious foundation (Babylonian, malgu); they also received, very often, a sort of dowry, which, however, remained under the control of their brothers and which, on the death of the former, fell to the brothers and sisters, if their fathers had not expressly given them a free hand in this matter (sections 178 f). In cases where the father did not give such a dowry, the daughter received, from the property left, a share equal to that of the others, but only for use; those dedicated to a goddess obtained only a third of such an amount (section 180 f). The lay-priestesses of the god Marduk of Babylon enjoyed special privileges in that they had full control over any property thus acquired (section 182). As a rule, adopted children could not be dismissed again (sections 185 ff). Parents who had given their child to a master, who had adopted it and taught it handwork, could not claim it again (sections 188 f). Gross insubordination of certain adopted children of a lower class is severely punished by the cutting off of the tongue (section 192) or the tearing out of an eye (section 193). Deceitful wet-nurses are also severely punished (section 194). The last paragraph of this section (section 195) states the punishment for children who strike their father as the cutting off of the hand. 9. Concerning Wounding, etc.: The next division (sections 196-227) occupies itself with wounding of all kinds, in the first place with the jus talionis: an eye for an eye, a bone for a bone, a tooth for a tooth. Persons lower in the social grade usually accepted money instead (sections 196 ff). A box on the ears inflicted by a free man upon a free man cost the former 60 shekels (section 203); in the case of one half-free, 10 shekels (section 204); but if a slave so strikes a free man, his ear is to be cut off (section 205). Unintentional wounding of the body, which proves to be fatal, is covered by a fine (sections 207 f). Anyone who strikes a pregnant free woman, so as to cause a miscarriage and the death of the woman, is punished by having his daughter killed (section 210); in the case of a half-free woman or a slave, a money compensation was sufficient (sections 212 ff). The surgeon is responsible for certain operations; if they succeed, he receives a legally determined high reward; if they fail, under certain circumstances his hand might be cut off (sections 215 ff). Certainly this law was an effective preventive against quacks! Farther on come regulations concerning the fees of surgeons (sections 221 ff) and veterinary surgeons; to a certain degree the latter are responsible for the killing of an animal under their charge (sections 224 f). 10. Building of Houses and Ships: Later, the building of houses and ships is treated of (sections 228-40). The builder is responsible for the stability of the house built by him; if it falls down and kills the master of the house, the builder is killed; if it kills a child of the house, a child of the builder is killed (sections 229 f). For any other damages incurred, the builder is likewise responsible (sections 231 ff). The regulations for the builders of ships are similar (sections 234 ff). The man who hires a ship is answerable to the proprietor (sections 236 ff). With the busy shipping trade on the canals, special attention had to be given to prevent accidents (section 240). 11. Hiring in General, etc.: Already in earlier sections there were regulations concerning hiring (rent) and wages. This eleventh division (sections 241-77) deals with the matter more in detail, but it also brings many things forward which are only slightly related thereto. It states tariffs for working animals (sections f), and in conclusion to this makes equally clear to what extent the hirer of such an animal is responsible for harm to the animal (sections 244 ff). Special attention must be given an ox addicted to goring (sections 250 ff; see below). Care is taken that unfaithful stewards do not escape their punishment: in gross cases of breach of confidence they are punished with the cutting off of the hand or by being torn (in the manner of being tortured on a rack) by oxen (sections 253 ff). The wages for agricultural laborers are determined (sections 257 f), and in connection with this, lesser cases of theft of field-utensils are considered and covered by a money fine (sections 259 f). The wages of a shepherd and his duties form the subject of some other paragraphs (sections 261 ff). Finally, matters having to do with hiring are mentioned: the hiring of animals for threshing (sections 268 if), of carriages (section 271), wages of laborers (section 273) and handworkers (section 274), and the hire of ships (sections 276 f). 12. Slaves: The last division (sections 278-82) treats of slaves in so far as they are not already mentioned. The seller is responsible to the buyer that the slave does not suffer from epilepsy (section 278), and that nobody else has a claim upon him (section 279). Slaves of Babylonian origin, bought in a foreign land, must be released, if they are brought back to Babylonia and recognized by their former master (section 280). If a slave did not acknowledge his master, his ear could be cut off (section 282). Here the laws come to an end. In spite of many regulations which seem to us cruel, they show keen sense of justice and impartiality. Thus the king, in an epilogue, rightly extols himself as a shepherd of salvation, as a helper of the oppressed, as an adviser of widows and orphans, in short, as the father of his people. In conclusion, future rulers are admonished to respect his laws, and the blessings of the gods are promised to those who do so. But upon those who might attempt to abolish the Code he calls down the curse of all the great gods, individually and collectively. With that the stele ends. III. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CODE. The significance of the Code has been recognized ever since its discovery; for, indeed, it is the most ancient collection of laws which we know. For judgment concerning the ancient Babylonian civilization, for the history of slavery, for the position of woman and many other questions the Code offers the most important material. The fact that law and religion are nearly always distinctly separated is worthy of special attention. 1. Hammurabi and Moses: It is not to be wondered at that a monument of such importance demands comparison with similar monuments. In this reference the most important question is as to the relation in which the Code stands to the Law of Moses. Hammurabi was not only king of Babylonia but also of Amurru (= “land of the Amorites”), called later Palestine and Western Syria. As his successors also retained the dominion over Amurru, it is quite possible that, for a considerable time, the laws of Hammurabi were in force here also, even if perhaps in a modified form. In the time of Abraham, for example, one may consider the narratives of Sarah and Hagar ( Genesis 16:1 ff), and Rachel and Bilhah ( Genesis 30:1 ff), which show the same juridical principles as the Code (compare sections 144 ff; see above). Other narratives of the Old Testament indicate the same customs as the Code does for Babylonia; compare Genesis 24:53, where the bridal gifts to Rebekah correspond to the Babylonian terhatu (section 159); similarly Genesis 31:14 f. Between the Code and the Law of Moses, especially in the so-called Book of the Covenant ( Exodus 20:22 through 23:33), there are indeed extraordinary parallels. We might mention here the following examples: Exodus 21:2: “If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.” Similarly, Code of Hammurabi, section 117: “If a man become involved in debt, and give his wife, his son or his daughter for silver or for labor, they shall serve three years in the house of their purchaser or bondmaster: in the fourth year they shall regain their freedom.” Exodus 21:15: “And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.” Compare Code of Hammurabi, section 195: “If a son strike his father, his hand shall be cut off.” Exodus 21:18 f: “And if men contend, and one smite the other with a stone, or with his fist, and he die not, but keep his bed; if he rise again, and walk abroad upon his staff, then shall he that smote him be quit: only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed.” Compare Code of Hammurabi, section 206: “If a man strike another man in a noisy dispute and wound him, that man shall swear, `I did not strike him knowingly’; and he shall pay for the physician.” Exodus 21:22: “If men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart, and yet no harm follow; he shall surely be fined, according as the woman’s husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.” Compare Code of Hammurabi, section 209: “If a man strike a free woman and cause her fruit to depart, he shall pay ten shekels of silver for her fruit.” Exodus 21:24: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” Compare Code of Hammurabi, section 196: “If a man destroy the eye of a free man, his eye shall be destroyed.” section 197: “If he break the bone of a free man, his bone shall be broken.” section 200: “If a man knock out the teeth of a man of the same rank, his teeth shall be knocked out.” Exodus 21:28-32: “If an ox gore a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be surely stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be quit. But if the ox was wont to gore in time past, and it hath been testified to its owner, and he hath not kept it in, but it hath killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death. .... If the ox gore a man-servant or a maid-servant, there shall be given unto their master 30 shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.” Compare Code of Hammurabi, sections 250 ff: “If an ox, while going along the street, gore a man and cause his death, no claims of any kind can be made. If a man’s ox be addicted to goring and have manifested to him his failing, that it is addicted to goring, and, nevertheless, he have neither blunted his horns, nor fastened up his ox; then if his ox gore a free man and cause his death, he shall give 30 shekels of silver. If it be a man’s slave, he shall give 20 shekels of silver.” Exodus 22:7 ff reminds one of Code of Hammurabi, sections 124 ff; Exodus 22:10 ff of Code of Hammurabi, sections 244 ff and 266 f. The resemblances between the other parts of the Pentateuch and the Code are not so striking as those between the Code and the. Book of the Covenant; nevertheless one may compare Leviticus 19:35 f with Code of Hammurabi, section 5; Leviticus 20:10 with Code of Hammurabi, section 129; Leviticus 24:19 f with Code of Hammurabi, sections ff; Leviticus 25:39 ff with Code of Hammurabi, section 117; Deuteronomy 19:16 ff with Code of Hammurabi, sections 3 f; Deuteronomy 22:22 with Code of Hammurabi, section 129; Deuteronomy 24:1 with Code of Hammurabi, sections 137 ff and sections 148 f; Deuteronomy 24:7 with Code of Hammurabi, section 14; especially Deuteronomy 21:15 ff,18 ff, with Code of Hammurabi, sections 167, 168 f, where, in both cases, there is a transition from regulations concerning the property left by a man, married several times, to provisions referring to the punishment of a disobedient son, certainly a remarkable agreement in sequence. One can hardly assert that the parallels quoted are accidental, but just as little could one say that they are directly taken from the Code; for they bear quite a definite impression due to the Israelite culture, and numerous marked divergences also exist. As we have already mentioned, the land Amurru was for a time Babylonian territory, so that Babylonian law must have found entrance there. When the Israelites came into contact with Babylonian culture, on taking possession of the land of Canaan (a part of the old Amurru), it was natural that they should employ the results of that culture as far as they found them of use for themselves. Under no circumstances may one suppose here direct quotation. Single parts of the Laws of Moses, especially the Decalogue (Exodus 20), with its particularly pointed conciseness, have no parallel in Code of Hammurabi. 2. The Code and Other Legal Systems: It has also been attempted to establish relations between the Code and other legal systems. In the Talmud, especially in the fourth order of the Mishna called Neziqin (i.e. “damages”), there are many regulations which remind one of the Code. But one must bear in mind that the Jews during the exile could hardly have known the Code in detail; if there happen to be similarities, these are to be explained by the fact that many of the regulations of the Code were still retained in the later Babylonian law, and the Talmud drew upon this later Babylonian law for many regulations which seemed useful for its purposes. The connection is therefore an indirect one. The similarities with the remains of old Arabian laws and the so-called Syrio-Roman Lawbook (5th century AD) have to be considered in the same way, though some of these agreements may have only come about accidentally. That the similarities between Roman and Greek legal usages and the Code are only of an accidental nature may be taken as assured. This seems all the more probable, in that between the Code and other legal systems there are quite striking similarities in individual points, even though we cannot find any historical connection, e.g. the Salic law, the lawbook of the Salic Franks, compiled about 500 AD, and which is the oldest preserved Germanic legal code. Until a whole number of lost codes, as the Old Amoritish and the neo-Bab, are known to us in detail, one must guard well against hasty conclusions. In any case it is rash to speak of direct borrowings where there may be a whole series of mediating factors. LITERATURE. (Concerning the questions treated of in the last paragraphs refer especially to: S. A. Cook, The Laws of Moses and Code of Hammurabi, London, 1903; J. Jeremias, Moses and Hammurabi, Leipzig, 1903; S. Oettli, Das Gesetz Hammurabis und die Thora Israels, Leipzig, 1903; H. Grimme, Das Gesetz Hammurabis und Moses, Koln, 1903; H. Fehr, Hammurapi und das Salische Recht, Bonn, 1910. Arthur Ungnad HAMONAH HAMON-GOG HAMOR HAMUEL HAMUL HAMUTAL HANAMEL HANAN Possibly the same person is referred to in Nehemiah 10:10 (11). (6) One of the four treasurers put in charge of the tithes by Nehemiah ( Nehemiah 13:13). (7,8) Two who “sealed the covenant” on the eve of the restoration ( Nehemiah 10:22 (23),26 (27)). (9) A son of Igdaliah, “the man of God,” whose sons had a chamber in the temple at Jerusalem ( Jeremiah 35:4). Byron H. Dement HANANEL, THE TOWER OF The company of Levites coming from the West passed “by the fish gate, and the tower of Hananel, and the tower of Hammeah, even unto the sheep gate” ( Nehemiah 12:39). In Jeremiah 31:38 it is foretold “that the city shall be built to Yahweh from the tower of Hananel unto the gate of the corner” — apparently the whole stretch of North wall. In Zec 14:10 it says Jerusalem “shall dwell in her place, from Benjamin’s gate unto the place of the first gate, unto the corner gate, and from the tower of Hananel unto the king’s winepresses.” These last were probably near Siloam, and the distance “from the tower of Hananel unto the king’s winepresses” describes the greatest length of the city from North to South. All the indications point to a tower, close to the tower of Hammeah, near the Northeast corner, a point of the city always requiring special fortification and later the sites successively of the Baris and of the Antonia. See JERUSALEM. E. W. G. Masterman HANANI This was a common name in Israel for many centuries. (1) A Benjamite ( 1 Chronicles 8:24). (2) A captain of Uzziah’s army ( 2 Chronicles 26:11). (3) Father of one of the princes under Jehoiakim ( Jeremiah 36:12). (4) One of the sons of Heman and leader of the 16th division of David’s musicians ( 1 Chronicles 25:4,23). (5) Grandfather of the officer of the guard which apprehended Jeremiah on a charge of desertion ( Jeremiah 37:13). (6) A false prophet of Gibeon, son of Azzur, who opposed Jeremiah, predicting that the yoke of Babylon would be broken in two years, and that the king, the people and the vessels of the temple would be brought back to Jerusalem. Jeremiah would be glad if it should be so, nevertheless it would not be. The question then arose, Which is right, Jeremiah or Hananiah? Jeremiah claimed that he was right because he was in accordance with all the great prophets of the past who prophesied evil and their words came true. Therefore his words are more likely to be true. The prophet of good, however, must wait to have his prophecy fulfilled before he can be accredited. Hananiah took off the yoke from Jeremiah and broke it in pieces, symbolic of the breaking of the power of Babylon. Jeremiah was seemingly beaten, retired and received a message from Yahweh that the bar of wood would become a bar of iron, and that Hananiah would die during the year because he had spoken rebellion against Yahweh (Jeremiah 28 passim). (7) One of Daniel’s companions in Babylon whose name was changed to Shadrach ( Daniel 1:7,11,19). (8) A son of Zerubbabel ( 1 Chronicles 3:19,21). (9) A Levite, one of the sons of Bebai, one of those who married foreign wives ( Ezra 10:28; 1 Esdras 9:29). (10) One of the perfumers (the King James Version “apothecaries”) who wrought in rebuilding the wall under Nehemiah ( Nehemiah 3:8). (11) One who helped to repair the wall above the horse gate ( Nehemiah 3:30). This may be the same person as number 10. (12) A governor of the castle, i.e. the birah or fortress, and by Nehemiah placed in charge of the whole city of Jerusalem, because “he was a faithful man, and feared God above many” ( Nehemiah 7:2). (13) One of those who sealed the covenant under Nehemiah ( Nehemiah 10:23); a Levite. (14) A priest who was present at the dedication of the walls of Jerusalem ( Nehemiah 12:12,41). J. J. Reeve HAND ([ dy; , yadh ], “hand”; [ tK” , kaph ], “the hollow hand,” “palm”; [ ˆymiy; , yamin ], “the right hand”; [ laOmc] , semo’l ], “the left hand”; [cei>r, cheir ], “hand”; [dexia>, dexia ], “the right hand”; [ajristera>, aristera ], “the left hand” (only Luke 23:33; 2 Corinthians 6:7), or euphemistically (for evil omens come from the left hand; compare Latin sinister, German linkisch, etc.); [eujw>umov, euonumos ], literally, “having a good name”): The Hebrew words are used in a large variety of idiomatic expressions, part of which have passed into the Greek (through the Sepuagint) and into modern European languages (through the translations of the Bible; see Oxford Hebrew Lexicon, under the word “yadh”). We group what has to be said about the word under the following heads: 1. THE HUMAN HAND: VARIOUS USES: The human hand (considered physically) and, anthropopathically, the hand of God ( Genesis 3:22; <19E516> Psalm 145:16): The hand included the wrist, as Will be seen from all passages in which bracelets are mentioned as ornaments of the hand, e.g. Genesis 24:22,30,47; Ezekiel 16:11; 23:42, or where the Bible speaks of fetters on the hands ( Judges 15:14, etc.). On the other hand, it cannot seem strange that occasionally the expression “hand” may be used for a part, e.g. the fingers, as in Genesis 41:42, etc.. According to the lexicon talionis, justice demanded “hand for hand” ( Exodus 21:24; Deuteronomy 19:21). We enumerate the following phrases without claiming to present a complete list: “To fill the hand” ( Exodus 32:29 m; 1 Chronicles 29:5 margin) means to consecrate, evidently from the filling of hands with sacrificial portions for the altar. Compare also Leviticus 7:37; 8:22,28,29,31,33, where the sacrifice, the ram, the basket of consecration are mentioned. “To put or set the hand unto” ( Deuteronomy 15:10; 23:20; 28:8,20), to commence to do; “to put forth the hand” ( Genesis 3:22; 8:9); “to stretch out the hand” ( Ezekiel 25:13,16; Zephaniah 2:13); “to shake or wag the hand upon” ( Isaiah 10:32; Zephaniah 2:15; Zec 2:9), to defy. “To lay the hand upon the head” ( 2 Samuel 13:19) is an expression of sadness and mourning, as we see from Egyptian representations of scenes of mourning. Both in joy and in anger hands are “smitten together” ( Numbers 24:10), and people “clap their hands” at a person or over a person in spiteful triumph ( Job 27:23; Lamentations 2:15; Nahum 3:19). “To put one’s life into one’s hand” is to risk one’s life ( 1 Samuel 19:5; 28:21). “To lay hands upon” is used in the sense of blessing ( Matthew 19:13), or is symbolical in the act of miraculous healing ( Matthew 9:18; Mark 8:23; Acts 28:8), or an emblem of the gift of the Holy Spirit and His endowments ( Acts 8:17-19; 13:3; 1 Timothy 4:14; 2 Timothy 1:6); but it also designates the infliction of cruelty and punishment ( Genesis 37:22; Leviticus 24:14), the imposition of responsibility ( Numbers 8:10; Deuteronomy 34:9). Thus also the sins of the people were symbolically transferred upon the goat which was to be sent into the wilderness ( Leviticus 16:21). This act, rabbinical writings declare, was not so much a laying on of hands, as a vigorous pressing. “Lifting up the hand” was a gesture accompanying an oath ( Deuteronomy 32:40) or a blessing pronounced over a multitude ( Leviticus 9:22; Luke 24:50), a prayer ( <19B948> Psalm 119:48). “To put the hands to the mouth” is indicative of (compulsory) silence ( Job 21:5; 40:4; Proverbs 30:32; Micah 7:16). To “slack one’s hand” is synonymous with negligence and neglect ( Joshua 10:6), and “to hide or bury the hand in the dish” is descriptive of the slothful, who is tired even at meals ( Proverbs 19:24; 26:15). 2. THE HAND AS POWER: The hand in the sense of power and authority: (compare Assyrian idu, “strength”); Joshua 8:20 margin, “They had no hands (the Revised Version (British and American) “power”) to flee this way or that way”; Judges 1:35, “The hand of the house of Joseph prevailed”; Psalm 76:5, “None of the men of might have found their hands”; Psalm 89:48 margin, “shall deliver his soul from the hand (the Revised Version (British and American) “power”) of Sheol”; 2 Kings 3:15, “The hand of Yahweh came upon him”; Exodus 14:31 margin, “Israel saw the great hand (the Revised Version (British and American) “work”) which Yahweh did upon the Egyptians”; Deuteronomy 34:12, “in all the mighty hand .... which Moses wrought in the sight of all Israel.” 3. THE HAND FOR THE PERSON: The hand used (pars pro toto) for the person: “His hand shall be against every man” ( Genesis 16:12). “Slay the priests of Yahweh; because their hand also is with David” ( 1 Samuel 22:17). “Jonathan went to David into the wood and strengthened his hand in God” ( 1 Samuel 23:16). In this sense penalty is exacted “from the hand” or “at the hand” of the transgressor ( Genesis 9:5; Ezekiel 33:8). 4. HAND, MEANING SIDE: The hand in the sense of side: “All the side (Hebrew “hand”) of the river Jabbok” ( Deuteronomy 2:37); “by the wayside” (Hebrew “by the hand of the way,” 1 Samuel 4:13). The manuscripts have here the error [ Ëy , yakh ], for [ dy , yadh ]; compare the Hebrew of <19E005> Psalm 140:5 (6) ([ lG;[]m”Ady”l] , leyadh ma`gal ]); “On the side (Hebrew “hand”) of their oppressors there was power” ( Ecclesiastes 4:1); “I was by the side (Hebrew “hand”) of the great river” ( Daniel 10:4). 5. ENGLISH IDIOM: Mention must also be made here of the English idiom, “at hand,” frequently found in our versions of the Scriptures. In Hebrew and Greek there is no reference to the word “hand,” but words designating nearness of time or place are used. The usual word in Hebrew is [ br”q; , qarabh ], “to be near,” and [ bwOrq; , qarobh ], “near”; in Greek [ejggu>v, eggus ], “near,” and the verb [ejggi>zw, eggizo ], “to come near.” Rarely other words are used, as [ejne>sthken, enesteken ], “has come,” the English Revised Version “is now present” ( 2 Thessalonians 2:2), and [ejfe>sthken, ephesteken ], “is come” ( 2 Timothy 4:6). Frequently the words refer to the “day” or “coming of the Lord”; still it must not be forgotten that it may often refer to the nearness of God in a local sense, as in Jeremiah 23:23, “Amos I a God at hand, saith Yahweh, and not a God afar off?” and probably in Philippians 4:5, “The Lord is at hand,” though many, perhaps most, commentators regard the expression as a version of the Aramaic [mara NOTE. — The ancients made a careful distinction of the respective values of the two hands. This is perhaps best seen from Genesis 48:13-19, where the imposition of the hands of aged Israel upon the heads of Joseph’s sons seems unfair to their father, because the left hand is being placed upon the elder, the right hand upon the younger son. The very word euonumos proves the same from the Greek point of view. This word is a euphemistic synonym of aristera, and is used to avoid the unlucky omen the common word may have for the person spoken to. Thus the goats, i.e. the godless, are placed at the left hand of the great Judge, while the righteous appear at His right ( Matthew 25:33). We read in Ecclesiastes 10:2, “A wise man’s heart is at his right hand; but a fool’s heart at his left,” i.e. is inclined to evil. As the Jews orientated themselves by looking toward the rising of the sun (Latin oriens, the east), the left hand represented the north, and the right hand the south ( 1 Samuel 23:19,24; 2 Samuel 24:5). The right hand was considered the more honorable ( 1 Kings 2:19; Psalm 45:9); therefore it was given in attestation of a contract, a federation or fellowship ( Galatians 2:9). It is the more valuable in battle; a friend or protector will therefore take his place at the right to guard it ( Psalm 16:8; 73:23; 109:31; 110:5; 121:5), but the enemy will, for the same reason, try to assail it ( Job 30:12; <19A906> Psalm 109:6; Zec 3:1). It was also the unprotected side, because the shield was carried on the left arm: hence, the point of danger and honor. The right hand is also the side of power and strength ( Psalm 60:5; 63:8; 108:6; 118:15,16; 110:1; Matthew 22:44; Matthew 20:21,23). Both hands are mentioned together in the sense of close proximity, intimate association, in Mark 10:37. H. L. E. Luering HANDBREADTH HANDFUL HANDKERCHIEF HANDLE HANDMAID In the New Testament it occurs 3 t, in a religious sense, as the translation of [dou>lh, doule ], “a female slave” ( Luke 1:38,48; Acts 2:18), and twice ( Galatians 4:22,23) as the translation of [paidi>skh, paidiske ], the King James Version “bondmaid.” William Joseph McGlothlin HANDS; IMPOSITION, LAYING ON OF In the New Testament Jesus laid hands on the little children ( Matthew 19:13,15 parallel Mark 10:16) and on the sick ( Matthew 9:18; Mark 6:5, etc.), and the apostles laid hands on those whom they baptized that they might receive the Holy Spirit ( Acts 8:17,19; 19:6), and in healing ( Acts 12:17). Specially the imposition of hands was used in the setting apart of persons to a particular office or work in the church.
This is noticed as taking place in the appointment of the Seven ( Acts 6:6), in the sending out of Barnabas and Saul ( Acts 13:3), at the ordination of Timothy ( 1 Timothy 4:14; 2 Timothy 1:6), but though not directly mentioned, it seems likely that it accompanied all acts of ordination of presbyters and deacons (compare 1 Timothy 5:22; Hebrews 6:2). The presbyters could hardly convey what they had not themselves received ( 1 Timothy 1:14). Here again the fundamental idea is communication. The act of laying on of hands was accompanied by prayer ( Acts 6:6; 8:15; 13:3), and the blessing sought was imparted by God Himself. No ground is afforded by this symbolical action for a sacrament of “Orders.” See SACRIFICE; MINISTRY; ORDINATION.
James Orr HANDSTAFF HAND WEAPON HANDWRITING HANES The language of Isa, “Their ambassadors came to Hanes,” certainly seems to indicate a place in the direction of Jerusalem from Tanis. This indication is also the sum of all the evidence yet available. There is no real knowledge concerning the exact location of Hanes. Opinions on the subject are little more than clever guesses. They rest almost entirely upon etymological grounds, a very precarious foundation when not supported by historical evidence. The Septuagint has, “For there are in Tanis princes, wicked messengers.” Evidently knowing no such place, they tried to translate the name. The Aramaic version gives “Tahpanhes” for Hanes, which may have been founded upon exact knowledge, as we shall see.
Hanes has been thought by some commentators to be Heracleopolis Magna, Egyptian Hunensurten, abridged to Hunensu, Copt Ahnes, Hebrew Chanec, Arabic Ahneysa, the capital of the XXth Nome, or province, of ancient Egypt. It was a large city on an island between the Nile and the Bahr Yuseph, opposite the modern town of Beni Suef. The Greeks identified the ram-headed god of the place with Heracles, hence, “Heracleopolis.” The most important historical notes in Egypt and the best philological arguments point to this city as Hanes. But the plain meaning of Isaiah 30:4 points more positively to a city somewhere in the delta nearer to Jerusalem than Tanis (compare Naville’s cogent argument, “Ahnas el Medineh,” 3-4). Dumichen considered the hieroglyphic name of Tahpanhes to be Hens. Knowledge of this as a fact may have influenced the Aramaic rendering, but does not warrant the arbitrary altering of the Hebrew text. M. G. Kyle.
HANGING The foregoing Hebrew word is clearly used for “hanging” as a mode of execution in Esther 5:14; 6:4; 7:9 ff; 8:7; 9:13,14,25; but probably the “gallows” or “tree” ([ 6[e , ‘ets ]) was a stake for the purpose of impaling the victim. It could be lowered for this purpose, then raised “fifty cubits high” to arrest the public gaze. The Greek word used in Matthew 27:5 is [ajpa>gcesqai, apagchesthai ], “to strangle oneself.” See HDB, article “Hanging,” for an exhaustive discussion. Frank E. Hirsch HANGINGS It is used of the screen or portiere, embroidered in colors, that closed the entrance of the court ( Exodus 27:16; 35:17; 38:18; 39:40; 40:8,33; Numbers 3:26; 4:26); of the screen of similar workmanship at the entrance of the tabernacle ( Exodus 26:36,37; 35:15; 36:37; 39:38; 40:5,28; Numbers 3:25; 4:25); and once ( Numbers 3:31) of the tapestry veil, adorned with cherubim , at the entrance of the Holy of Holies (elsewhere, parokheth , “veil,” Exodus 26:31-33, etc., or parokheth hamacakh , “veil of the screen,” Exodus 35:12, etc.). In Numbers 3:26, the King James Version renders macakh “curtain,” and in Exodus 35:12; 39:34; 40:21 (compare also Numbers 4:5), “covering.” (3) In 2 Kings 23:7 we read of “hangings” (Hebrew “houses”) which the women wove for the Asherah. If the text is correct we are to think perhaps of tent shrines for the image of the goddess. Lucian’s reading (stolas, “robes”) is preferred by some, which would have reference to the custom of bringing offerings of clothing for the images of the gods. In Kings 7:29 the Revised Version (British and American), “wreaths of hanging work” refers to a kind of ornamentation on the bases of the lavers.
In Esther 1:6, “hangings” is supplied by the translators. Benjamin Reno Downer HANIEL HANNAH Hannah visited Shiloh yearly with her husband to offer sacrifices, for there the tabernacle was located. She was greatly distressed because they had no children. She therefore prayed earnestly for a male child whom she promised to dedicate to the Lord from his birth. The prayer was heard, and she called her son’s name Samuel (“God hears”). When he was weaned he was carried to Shiloh to be trained by Eli, the priest (1 Samuel 1). Hannah became the mother of five other children, three sons and two daughters ( 1 Samuel 2:2). Her devotion in sending Samuel a little robe every year is one of the tenderest recorded instances of maternal love ( 1 Samuel 2:19). She was a prophetess of no ordinary talent, as is evident from her elevated poetic deliverance elicited by God’s answer to her prayer ( <090201> Samuel 2:1-10). Byron H. Dement HANNATHON HANNIEL CHANOCH; HANOCHITES The descendants of Hanoch were known as Hanochites ( Numbers 26:5).
HANUN Hap (a Saxon word for “luck, chance”) is the translation of miqreh , “a fortuitous chance,” “a lot” ( Ruth 2:3, the King James Version “Her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz”); in 1 Samuel 6:9, the same word is translated “chance” (that happened); “event,” in Ecclesiastes 9:2,3, with “happeneth,” in Ecclesiastes 2:14.
Haply (from “hap”) is the translation of lu , “if that” ( 1 Samuel 14:30, “if haply the people had eaten freely”); of ei ara, “if then” ( Mark 11:13, “if haply he might find anything thereon”); of ei arage ( Acts 17:27, “if haply they might feel after him”); of mepote , “lest ever” “lest perhaps” etc. ( Luke 14:29; Acts 5:39); of me pos, “lest in anyway” ( Corinthians 9:4 the King James Version, “lest haply,” the Revised Version (British and American) “lest by any means”).
The Revised Version has “haply” for “at any time” ( Matthew 4:6; 5:25; 13:15; Mark 4:12; Luke 4:11; 21:34; Hebrews 2:1); introduces “haply” ( Matthew 7:6; 13:29; 15:32; 27:64; Mark 14:2; Luke 3:15; 12:58; 14:8,12; Acts 27:29; Hebrews 4:1); has “haply there shall be,” for “lest there be” ( Hebrews 3:12). W. L. Walker HAPHARAIM HAPPEN W. L. Walker HAPPINESS HAPPIZZEZ A priest on whom fell the lot for the 18th of the 24 courses which David appointed for the temple service ( 1 Chronicles 24:15).
HARA HARAN (1) HARAN (2) The name appears in Assyro-Babalonian as Charran, which means “road”; possibly because here the trade route from Damascus joined that from Nineveh to Carchemish. It is mentioned in the prism inscription of Tiglathpileser I. It was a seat of the worship of Sin, the moon-god, from very ancient times. A temple was built by Shalmaneser II. Haran seems to have shared in the rebellion of Assur (763 BC, the year of the solar eclipse, June 15). The privileges then lost were restored by Sargon II. The temple, which had been destroyed, was rebuilt by Ashurbanipal, who was here crowned with the crown of Sin. Haran and the temple suffered much damage in the invasion of the Umman-Manda (the Medes). Nabuna`id restored temple and city, adorning them on a lavish scale. Near Haran the Parthians defeated and slew Crassus (53 BC), and here Caracalla was assassinated (217 AD). In the 4th century it was the seat of a bishopric; but the cult of the moon persisted far into the Christian centuries. The chief temple was the scene of heathen worship until the 11th century, and was destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th.
The ancient city is represented by the modern Charran to the Southeast of Edessa, on the river Belias, an affluent of the Euphrates. The ruins lie on both sides of the stream, and include those of a very ancient castle, built of great basaltic blocks, with square columns, 8 ft. thick, which support an arched roof some 30 ft. in height. Remains of the old cathedral are also conspicuous. No inscriptions have yet been found here, but a fragment of an Assyrian lion has been uncovered. A well nearby is identified as that where Eliezer met Rebekah.
In Acts 7:2,4, the King James Version gives the name as Charran. W. Ewing HARARITE Thus used of two heroes: (1) Shammah, the son of Agee ( 2 Samuel 23:11,33). The parallel passage, 1 Chronicles 11:34, has “Shage” in place of “Shammah.” (2) Ahiam, the son of Sharar the Ararite” ( 2 Samuel 23:33). In Chronicles 11:35, “Sacar” for Sharar as here.
HARBONA; HARBONAH One of the seven eunuchs who served Ahasuerus and to whom was given the command to bring Queen Esther before the king ( Esther 1:10). It was he who suggested that Haman be hanged upon the self-same gallows that he had erected for Mordecai ( Esther 7:9). Jewish tradition has it that Harbona had originally been a confederate of Haman, but, upon noting the failure of the latter’s plans, abandoned him. The Persian equivalent of the name means “donkey-driver.”
HARBOUR HARD; HARDINESS; HARDDINESS; HARDLY <hard> , Hardiness occurs in Judith 16:10 thrasos , the Revised Version (British and American) “boldness.”
Hardness is the translation of mutsaq, “something poured out,” “dust wetted,” “running into clods” ( Job 38:38), the Revised Version (British and American) “runneth into a mass”; “hardness of heart” occurs in the Gospels; in Mark 3:5, it is porosis , “hardness,” “callousness”; Matthew 19:8; Mark 10:5; 16:14, sklerokardia , “dryness,” “stiffness of heart”; compare Ecclesiasticus 16:10; in Romans 2:5, it is sklerotes ; in 2 Timothy 2:3 the King James Version we have, “Endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ,” the Revised Version (British and American) “Suffer hardship with me” (corrected text), margin “Take thy part in suffering hardship” (kakopatheo , “to suffer evil”).
Hardly occurs in the Old Testament ( Exodus 13:15), “Pharaoh would hardly let us go,” qashah , literally, “hardened to let us go,” the Revised Version margin “hardened himself against letting us go”; “hardly bestead” ( Isaiah 8:21) is the translation of qadshah , the American Standard Revised Version “sore distressed.” In the New Testament “hardly” is the translation of duskolos , “hard to please,” “difficult,” meaning not scarcely or barely, but with difficulty ( Matthew 19:23, “A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven,” the Revised Version (British and American) “it is hard for”; Mark 10:23; Luke 18:24, “how hardly” (“with what difficulty”)); of mogis , “with labor,” “pain,” “trouble” ( Luke 9:39, “hardly departeth from him” (“painfully”)); of molis “with toil and fatigue” ( Acts 27:8, the Revised Version (British and American) “with difficulty”; The Wisdom of Solomon 9:16, “Hardly do we guess aright at things that are upon earth”; Ecclesiasticus 26:29, “A merchant shall hardly keep himself from wrong doing”; 29:6, “He shall hardly receive the half,” in each instance the word is molis , but in the last two instances we seem to see the transition to “scarcely”; compare also Exodus 13:15).
The Revised Version has “too hard” for “hidden” ( Deuteronomy 30:11, margin “wonderful”); “hardness” for “boldness” (of face) ( Ecclesiastes 8:1); for “sorrow” ( Lamentations 3:65); “deal hardly with me” for “make yourselves strong to me” ( Job 19:3); omits “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks” ( Acts 9:5, corrected text); “hardship” for “trouble” ( 2 Timothy 2:9). W. L. Walker HARDEN For “harden” the Revised Version (British and American) has “stubborn” ( Exodus 7:14; 9:7, margin “heavy”); “hardenest” ( Isaiah 63:17); “made stiff” ( Jeremiah 7:26; 19:15); for “is hardened” ( Job 39:16, the American Standard Revised Version “dealeth hardly,” and the English Revised Version margin); “at the hardening” instead of “for the hardness” ( Mark 3:5); “hardening” for “blindness” ( Ephesians 4:18). W. L. Walker HARDLY; HARDNESS See HARD.
HARD SAYINGS; HARD SENTENCES HARE It is evident from the above and from the meanings of [dasu>pouv, dasupous ] and [coirogru>lliov, chorogrullios ] as given in Liddell and Scott, that the order of Septuagint in Leviticus 11:5,6 does not follow the Hebrew, but has apparently assimilated the order of that of Deuteronomy 14:7,8. In <19A418> Psalm 104:18, Septuagint has [coirogru>lliov, chorogrullios ] for [ ˆp;v; , shaphan ]; also in Proverbs 30:26.
Since the word “coney,” which properly means “rabbit,” has been applied to the hyrax, so, in America at least, the word “rabbit” is widely used for various species of hare, e.g. the gray rabbit and the jack-rabbit, both of which are hares. Hares have longer legs and ears and are swifter than rabbits. Their young are hairy and have their eyes open, while rabbits are born naked and blind. Hares are widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere, and there is one species in South America. Rabbits are apparently native to the Western Mediterranean countries, although they have been distributed by man all over the world.
Lepus syriacus, the common hare of Syria and Palestine, differs somewhat from the European hare. Lepus judeae is cited by Tristram from Northeastern Palestine, and he also notes three other species from the extreme south. Alfred Ely Day HAREPH HARETH HARHAIAH HARHAS HARHUR HARIM HARLOT The subject takes on even a darker hue when viewed in the light of the hideous conditions that prevailed in ancient Syria affecting this practice.
The harlot represented more than a social peril and problem. She was a qedheshah , one of a consecrated class, and as such was the concrete expression and agent of the most insidious and powerful influence and system menacing the purity and permanence of the religion of Yahweh.
This system deified the reproductive organs and forces of Nature and its devotees worshipped their idol symbols in grossly licentious rites and orgies. The temple prostitute was invested with sanctity as a member of the religious caste, as she is today in India. Men and women thus prostituted themselves in the service of their gods. The Canaanite sanctuaries were gigantic brothels, legalized under the sanctions of religion. For a time, therefore, the supreme religious question was whether such a cult should be established and allowed to naturalize itself in Israel, as it had done in Babylon (Herodotus i.199) and in Greece (Strabo viii.6). That the appeal thus made to the baser passions of the Israelites was all too successful is sadly clear ( Amos 2:7; Hosea 4:13 ff). The prophets give vivid pictures of the syncretizing of the worship of Baal and Astarte with that of Yahweh and the extent to which the local sanctuaries were given over to this form of corruption. They denounced it as the height of impiety and as sure to provoke Divine judgments. Asa and Jehoshaphat undertook to purge the land of such vile abominations ( 1 Kings 14:24; 15:12; 22:46).
The Deuteronomic code required that all such “paramours” be banished, and forbade the use of their unholy gains as temple revenue ( Deuteronomy 23:17,18. Driver’s note). The Levitical law forbade a priest to take a harlot to wife ( Leviticus 21:7). and commanded that the daughter of a priest who played the harlot should be burned ( Leviticus 21:9). See ASHTORETH; IMAGES; IDOLATRY.
It is grimly significant that the prophets denounce spiritual apostasy as “harlotry” (the King James Version “whoredom”). But it would seem that the true ethical attitude toward prostitution was unattainable so long as marriage was in the low, transitional stage mirrored in the Old Testament; though the religion of Yahweh was in a measure delivered from the threatened peril by the fiery discipline of the exile.
In New Testament times, a kindred danger beset the followers of Christ, especially in Greece and Asia Minor ( Acts 15:20,29; Romans 1:24 ff; 1 Corinthians 6:9 ff; Galatians 5:19). That lax views of sexual morality were widely prevalent in the generation in which Christ lived is evident both from His casual references to the subject and from His specific teaching in answer to questions concerning adultery and divorce (compare Josephus, Ant, IV, viii, 23; Vita, section 76; Sirach 7:26; 25:26; 42:9, and the Talm). The ideas of the times were debased by the prevalent polygamous customs, “it being of old permitted to the Jews to marry many wives” (Josephus, BJ, I, xxiv, 2; compare Ant, XVII, i, 2). The teaching of Jesus was in sharp contrast with the low ideals and the rabbinical teaching of the times. The controversy on this question waxed hot between the two famous rival rabbinical schools. Hillel reduced adultery to the level of the minor faults. Shammai opposed his teaching as immoral in tendency. [ Kata< pa~san aijti>an, kata pasan aitian ] ( Matthew 19:3), gives incidental evidence of the nature of the controversy. It was characteristic of the teaching of Jesus that He went to the root of the matter, making this sin to consist in “looking on a woman to lust after her.” Nor did He confine Himself to the case of the married. The general character of the terms in Matthew 5:28, [pa~v oJ ble>pwn, pas ho blepon ], forbids the idea that [gunai~ka, gunaika ], and [ejmoi>ceusen, emoicheusen ], are to be limited to post-nuptial sin with a married woman. On the other hand it is a characteristic part of the work of Jesus to rescue the erring woman from the merciless clutches of the Pharisaic tribunal, and to bring her within the pale of mercy and redemption ( Matthew 21:31,32). He everywhere leaned to the side of mercy in dealing with such cases, as is indicated by the traditional and doubtless true narrative found in the accepted text of the Fourth Gospel ( John 7:53 through 8:11). George B. Eager HARLOTRY HAR-MAGEDON This name is found only in Revelation 16:16. It is described as the rallying-place of the kings of the whole world who, led by the unclean spirits issuing from the mouth of the dragon, the beast and the false prophet, assemble here for “the war of the great day of God, the Almighty.” Various explanations have been suggested; but, as Nestle says (HDB, s.v), “Upon the whole, to find an allusion here to Megiddo is still the most probable explanation.” In the history of Israel it had been the scene of never-to-be-forgotten battles. Here took place the fatal struggle between Josiah and Pharaoh-necoh ( 2 Kings 23:29; 2 Chronicles 35:22). Long before, the hosts of Israel had won glory here, in the splendid victory over Sisera and his host ( Judges 5:19). These low hills around Megiddo, with their outlook over the plain of Esdraelon, have witnessed perhaps a greater number of bloody encounters than have ever stained a like area of the world’s surface. There was, therefore, a peculiar appropriateness in the choice of this as the arena of the last mighty struggle between the powers of good and evil. The choice of the hill as the battlefield has been criticized, as it is less suitable for military operations than the plain. But the thought of Gilboa and Tabor and the uplands beyond Jordan might have reminded the critics that Israel was not unaccustomed to mountain warfare. Megiddo itself was a hill-town, and the district was in part mountainous (compare Mt. Tabor, Judges 4:6,12; “the high places of the field,” 5:18). It will be remembered that this is apocalypse. Har-Magedon may stand for the battlefield without indicating any particular locality. The attempt of certain scholars to connect the name with “the mount of congregation” in Isaiah 14:13 (Hommel, Genkel, etc.), and with Babylonian mythology, cannot be pronounced successful. Ewald (Die Johan. Schrift, II, 204) found that the Hebrew forms of “Har-Magedon” and “the great Rome” have the same numerical value — 304. The historical persons alluded to in the passage do not concern us here. W. Ewing HARNEPHER HARNESS There is no good reason to question the accuracy of the common view which places this spring at `Ain Jalud, on the edge of the vale of Jezreel, about 2 miles East of Zer`in, and just under the northern cliffs of Gilboa. A copious spring of clear cold water rises in a rocky cave and flows out into a large pool, whence it drains off, in Nahr Jalud, down the vale past Beisan to the Jordan. This is probably also to be identified with the spring “which is in Jezreel,” i.e. in the district, near which Saul encamped before the battle of Gilboa ( 1 Samuel 29:1). `Ain el-Meiyiteh, just below Zer`in on the North, is hardly of sufficient size and importance to be a rival to `Ain Jalud. See ESDRAELON.
W. Ewing HARODITE HAROEH HARORITE HAROSHETH, OF THE GENTILES, OF THE NATIONS This is the place whence Sisera led his hosts to the Kishon against Deborah and Barak ( Judges 4:13), to which the discomfited and leaderless army fled after their defeat ( Judges 4:16). No site seems so well to meet the requirements of the narrative as el Charithiyeh. There are still the remains of an ancient stronghold on this great double mound, which rises on the North bank of the Kishon, in the throat of the pass leading by the base of Carmel, from the coast to Esdraelon. It effectually commands the road which here climbs the slope, and winds through the oak forest to the plain; Megiddo being some 16 miles distant. The modern also preserves a reminiscence of the ancient name. By emending the text, Cheyne would here find the name “Kadshon,” to be identified with Kedesh in Galilee (EB, under the word). On any reasonable reading of the narrative this is unnecessary. W. Ewing HARP HARROW Figuratively used of affliction, discipline, etc. ( Isaiah 28:24). James A. Patch HARROWS HARSHA HARSITH HART HARUM HARUMAPH HARUPHITE HARUZ HARVEST The three principal feasts of the Jews corresponded to the three harvest seasons ( Exodus 23:16; 34:21,22); (1) the feast of the Passover in April at the time of the barley harvest (compare Ruth 1:22); (2) the feast of Pentecost (7 weeks later) at the wheat harvest ( Exodus 34:22), and (3) the feast of Tabernacles at the end of the year (October) during the fruit harvest. The seasons have not changed since that time. Between the reaping of the barley in April and the wheat in June, most of the other cereals are reaped. The grapes begin to ripen in August, but the gathering in for making wine and molasses (dibs), and the storing of the dried figs and raisins, is at the end of September. Between the barley harvest in April and the wheat harvest, only a few showers fall, which are welcomed because they increase the yield of wheat (compare Amos 4:7). Samuel made use of the unusual occurrence of rain during the wheat harvest to strike fear into the hearts of the people ( 1 Samuel 12:17). Such an unusual storm of excessive violence visited Syria in 1912, and did much damage to the harvests, bringing fear to the superstitious farmers, who thought some greater disaster awaited them. From the wheat harvest until the fruit harvest no rain falls ( 2 Samuel 21:10; Jeremiah 5:24; compare Proverbs 26:1). The harvesters long for cool weather during the reaping season (compare Proverbs 25:13).
Many definite laws were instituted regarding the harvest. Gleaning was forbidden ( Leviticus 19:9; 23:22; Deuteronomy 24:19) (see GLEANING). The first-fruits were required to be presented to Yahweh ( Leviticus 23:10). In Syria the Christians still celebrate ‘id er-rubb (“feast of the Lord”), at which time the owners of the vineyards bring their first bunches of grapes to the church. The children of Israel were enjoined to reap no harvest for which they had not labored ( Leviticus 25:5). In Proverbs the harvesting of ants is mentioned as a lesson for the sluggard ( Proverbs 6:8; 10:5; 20:4).
Figurative: A destroyed harvest typified devastation or affliction ( Job 5:5; Isaiah 16:9; 17:11; Jeremiah 5:17; 50:16). The “time of harvest,” in the Old Testament frequently meant the day of destruction ( Jeremiah 51:33; Hosea 6:11; Joel 3:13). “Joy in harvest” typified great joy ( Isaiah 9:3); “harvest of the Nile,” an abundant harvest ( Isaiah 23:3). “The harvest is past” meant that the appointed time was gone ( Jeremiah 8:20). Yahweh chose the most promising time to cut off the wicked, namely, “when there is a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest” ( Isaiah 18:4,5). This occurrence of hot misty days just before the ripening of the grapes is still common. They are welcome because they are supposed to hasten the harvest. The Syrian farmers in some districts call it et-tabbakh el’ainib wa tin (“the fireplace of the grapes and figs”).
In the Gospels, Jesus frequently refers to the harvest of souls ( Matthew 9:37,38 bis; 13:30 bis,39; Mark 4:29; John 4:35 bis). In explaining the parable of the Tares he said, “The harvest is the end of the world” ( Matthew 13:39; compare Revelation 14:15). See also AGRICULTURE.
James A. Patch HASADIAH HASENUAH HASHABIAH HASHABNEIAH HASHBADANA; HASHBADNANA HASHEM HASHMONAH HASHUB HASHUBAH HASHUM HASIDAEANS They held perhaps narrow but strict and seriously honest views in religion, and recognized Judas Maccabeus as their leader (2 Macc 14:6). They existed as a party before the days of the Maccabees, standing on the ancient ways, caring little for politics, and having small sympathy with merely national aspirations, except when affecting religion (1 Macc 1:63; 2 Macc 6:18 ff; Judith 12:2; Ant, XIV, iv, 3). Their cooperation with Judas went only to the length of securing the right to follow their own religious practices. When Bacchides came against Jerusalem, they were quite willing to make peace because Alcimus, “a priest of the seed of Aaron,” was in his company. Him they accepted as high priest, though sixty of them soon fell by his treachery (1 Macc 7:13). Their desertion of Judas was largely the cause of his downfall. J. Hutchinson HASMONEANS See ASMONEANS.
HASRAH HASSENAAH HASSENUAH HASSHUB HASSOPHERETH HASTE Hasty also occurs in several instances ( Proverbs 21:5; 29:20, ‘uts , etc.); in Isaiah 28:4, bikkur , “first-fruit,” is translated “hasty fruit,” the Revised Version (British and American) “first-ripe fig.”
The Revised Version (British and American) has “Haste ye” for “assemble yourselves” ( Joel 3:11 margin, as the King James Version); “make haste” for “speedily” ( <19E307> Psalm 143:7); “and hasted to catch whether it were his mind” (for 1 Kings 20:33 the King James Version); “and it hasteth toward the end,” margin (Hebrew) “panteth,” for “but at the end it shall speak” ( Habakkuk 2:3); “hastily” for “suddenly” ( 1 Timothy 5:22); for “and for this I make haste” ( Job 20:2), “even by reason of my haste that is in me,” margin “and by reason of this my haste is within me”; for “hasten after another god” ( Psalm 16:4), the American Standard Revised Version has “that give gifts for another god,” the English Revised Version “exchange the Lord for”; for “hasten hereunto” ( Ecclesiastes 2:25), “have enjoyment”; for “hasten hither” ( 1 Kings 22:9), “fetch quickly”; for “and gather” ( Exodus 9:19), “hasten in”; for “hasteneth that he may” ( Isaiah 51:14), “shall speedily”; for “hasteth to” ( Job 9:26), “swoopeth on”; for “and hasteth” ( Job 40:23), “he trembleth”; for “hasty” ( Daniel 2:15), “urgent.” W. L. Walker HASUPHA HAT The original word ([ al;B]riK” , karbela’ ], Aramaic) rendered “hat” in Daniel 3:21 the King James Version is very rare, appearing only here in the Old Testament. There is acknowledged difficulty in translating it, as well as the other words of the passage. “Hat” of the King James Version certainly fails to give its exact meaning. The hat as we know it, i.e. headgear distinguished from the cap or bonnet by a circular brim, was unknown to the ancient East. The nearest thing to the modern hat among the ancients was the petasus worn by the Romans when on a journey, though something like it was used on like occasions by the early Greeks. In the earlier Hebrew writings there is little concerning the headgear worn by the people. In 1 Kings 20:31 we find mention of “ropes” upon the head in connection with “sackcloth” on the loins. On Egyptian monuments are found pictures of Syrians likewise with cords tied about their flowing hair.
The custom, however, did not survive, or was modified, clearly because the cord alone would afford no protection against the sun, to which peasants and travelers were perilously exposed. It is likely, therefore, that for kindred reasons the later Israelites used a head-covering similar to that of the modern Bedouin. This consists of a rectangular piece of cloth called keffiyeh, which is usually folded into triangular form and placed over the head so as to let the middle part hang down over the back of the neck and protect it from the sun, while the two ends are drawn as needed under the chin and tied, or thrown back over the shoulders. A cord of wool is then used to secure it at the top. It became customary still later for Israelites to use a head-covering more like the “turban” worn by the fella-heen today. It consists in detail of a piece of cotton cloth worked into the form of a cap (takiyeh), and so worn as to protect the other headgear from being soiled by the perspiration. A felt cap, or, as among the Turks, a fez or red tarbush, is worn over this. On the top of these is wound a long piece of cotton cloth with red stripes and fringes, a flowered kerchief, or a striped keffiyeh. This protects the head from the sun, serves as a sort of purse by day, and often as a pillow by night. Some such headgear is probably meant by the “diadem” of Job 29:14 and the “hood” of Isaiah 3:23, Hebrew tsaniph , from tsanaph , “to roll up like a coil” (compare Isaiah 22:18). George B. Eager HATACH HATCHET HATE; HATRED James Orr HATHACH One of the chamberlains of Ahasuerus, appointed to attend on Esther ( Esther 4:5,6,9,10, the King James Version “Hatach”), through whom she learned from Mordecai of Haman’s plot.
HATHATH HATIPHA The ancestral head of a family of Nethinim that returned from Babylon ( Ezra 2:54; Nehemiah 7:56 = “Atipha,” 1 Esdras 5:32).
HATITA HATSI-HAMMENUCHOTH HATTIL Same called “Agia” in 1 Esdras 5:34.
HATTUSH HAURAN 1. EXTENT OF PROVINCE IN ANCIENT TIMES:
A province of Eastern Palestine which, in Ezekiel 47:16,18, stretched from Dan in the North to Gilead in the South, including all that lay between the Jordan and the desert. It thus covered the districts now known as el- Jedur, el-Jaulan, and el-Chauran. It corresponded roughly with the jurisdiction of the modern Turkish governor of Hauran. The Auranites of later times answered more closely to the Hauran of today.
2. MODERN HAURAN:
The name Chauran probably means “hollow land.” Between Jebel ed-Druze (see BASHAN, MOUNT OF ) on the East, and Jedua and Jaulan (see GOLAN ) on the West, runs a broad vale, from Jebel el `Aswad in the North, to the Yarmuk in the Southwest, and the open desert in the Southeast. It is from 1,500 to 2,000 ft. above sea-level, and almost miles in length, by 45 in breadth. Chauran aptly describes it. To the modern Chauran are reckoned 3 districts, clearly distinguished in local speech:
3. EN-NUQRAH: (1) En-Nuqrah, “the cavity.” This district touches the desert in the Southeast, the low range of ez Zumleh on the Southwest, Jaulan on the West, el-Leja’ on the North and, Jebel ed-Druze on the East. The soil, composed of volcanic detritus, is extraordinarily rich. Here and there may be found a bank of vines; but the country is practically treeless: the characteristic product is wheat, and in its cultivation the village population is almost wholly occupied.
4. EL-LEJA’: (2) El-Leja’, “the asylum.” This is a rocky tract lying to the North of en- Nuqrah. It is entirely volcanic, and takes, roughly, the form of a triangle, with apex in the North at el Burak, and a base of almost 20 miles in the South. For the general characteristics of this district see TRACHONITIS .
Its sharply marked border, where the rocky edges fall into the surrounding plain, have suggested to some the thought that here we have chebhel ‘argobh, “the measured lot of Argob.” See, however, ARGOB. There is little land capable of cultivation, and the Arabs who occupy the greater part have an evil reputation. As a refuge for the hunted and for fugitives from justice it well deserves its name.
5. EL-JEBEL: (3) El-Jebel, “the mountain.” This is the great volcanic range which stands on the edge of the desert, protecting the fertile reaches of el-Chauran from encroachment by the sand, known at different times as Mons Asaldamus, Jebel Chauran, and Jebel ed-Druze. This last is the name it bears today in consequence of the settlement of Druzes here, after the massacre in Mt.
Lebanon in 1860. Those free-spirited people have been a thorn in the side of the Turks ever since: and whether or not the recent operations against them (January, 1911) will result in their entire, subjugation, remains to be seen. The western slopes of the mountain are well cultivated, and very fruitful; vineyards abound; and there are large reaches of shady woodlands.
Calkhad, marking the eastern boundary of the land of Israel, stands on the ridge of the mountain to the South Jebel el-Kuleib in which the range culminates, reaches a height of 5,730 ft. Jebel Chauran is named in the Mishna (Rosh ha-shanah, ii.4) as one of the heights from which fire-signals were flashed, announcing the advent of the new year. For its history see BASHAN. The ruins which are so plentiful in the country date for the most part from the early Christian centuries; and probably nothing above ground is older than the Roman period. The substructions, however, and the subterranean dwellings found in different parts, e.g. at Der`ah, may be very ancient. The latest mention of a Christian building is in an inscription found by the present writer at el-Kufr, which tells of the foundation of a church in 720 AD (PEFS, July, 1895, p. 275, Inscr number 150). A good account of Hauran and its cities is given in HGHL, XXIX, 611. W. Ewing HAVE A few of the many changes in the Revised Version (British and American) are, for “a man that hath friends” ( Proverbs 18:24), “maketh many friends,” margin (Hebrew) “a man of friends”; for “all that I have” ( Luke 15:31), “all that is mine”; for “we have peace with God” ( Romans 5:1) the English Revised Version has “let us have,” margin “some authorities read we have,” the American Standard Revised Version as the King James Version margin “many ancient authorities read let us have”; for “what great conflict I have” ( Colossians 2:1), “how greatly I strive”; for “will have” ( Matthew 9:13; 12:7), “desire”; Matthew 27:43, “desireth”; for “would have” ( Mark 6:19; Acts 10:10), “desired”; Acts 16:27, “was about”; 19:30, “was minded to”; 23:28 “desiring”; Hebrews 12:17, “desired to”; for “ye have” ( Hebrews 10:34), the English Revised Version has “ye yourselves have,” margin “ye have your ownselves,” the American Standard Revised Version “ye have for yourselves,” margin “many ancient authorities read, ye have your own selves for a better possession” (compare Luke 9:25; 21:19); “having heard” for “after that ye heard” ( Ephesians 1:13); “having suffered before,” for “even after that we had suffered” ( 1 Thessalonians 2:2); “and thus, having,” for “so after he had” ( Hebrews 6:15). W. L. Walker HAVEN HAVILAH The Revised Version has “made havoc of” (portheo ) for “destroyed” ( Acts 9:21; Galatians 1:23), for “wasted” ( Galatians 1:13).
HAVVAH HAVVOTH-JAIR The word chawwoth occurs only in this combination ( Numbers 32:41; Deuteronomy 3:14; Judges 10:4), and is a legacy from the nomadic stage of Hebrew life. Jair had thirty sons who possessed thirty “cities,” and these are identified with Havvoth-jair in Judges 10:3 ff. The district was in Gilead (10:5; Numbers 32:41). In Deuteronomy 3:13 f, it is identified with Bashan and Argob; but in 1 Kings 4:13, “the towns of Jair” are said to be in Gilead; while to him also “pertained the region of Argob, which is in Bashan, threescore great cities with walls and brazen bars.” There is evident confusion here. If we follow Judges 10:3 ff, we may find a useful clue in 10:5. Kamon is named as the burial place of Jair.
This probably corresponds to Kamun taken by Antiochus III, on his march from Pella to Gephrun (Polyb. v.70, 12). Schumacher (Northern `Ajlun, 137) found two places to the West of Irbid with the names Qamm and Qumeim (the latter a diminutive of the former) with ancient ruins. Qamm probably represents the Hebrew Qamon , so that Havvoth-jair should most likely be sought in this district, i.e. in North Gilead, between the Jordan Valley and Jebel ez-Zumleh. W. Ewing HAWK Gene Stratton-Porter HAY HAZAEL 1. IN BIBLICAL HISTORY:
Comes first into Biblical history as a high officer in the service of Benhadad II, king of Syria ( 2 Kings 8:7 ff; compare 1 Kings 19:15 ff).
He had been sent by his sick sovereign to inquire of the prophet Elisha, who was then in Damascus, whether he should recover of his sickness or not. He took with him a present “even of every good thing of Damascus, forty camels’ burden,” and stood before the man of God with his master’s question of life or death. To it Elisha made the oracular response, “Go, say unto him, Thou shalt surely recover; howbeit Yahweh hath showed me that he shall surely die.” Elisha looked steadfastly at Hazael and wept, explaining to the incredulous officer that he was to be the perpetrator of horrible cruelties against the children of Israel: “Their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash in pieces their little ones, and rip up their women with child” ( Kings 8:12). Hazael protested against the very thought of such things, but Elisha assured him that Yahweh had shown him that he was to be king of Syria. No sooner had Hazael delivered to his master the answer of the man of God than the treacherous purpose took shape in his heart to hasten Benhadad’s end, and “He took the coverlet, and dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that he died: and Hazael reigned in his stead” ( 2 Kings 8:15). The reign which opened under such sinister auspices proved long and successful, and brought the kingdom of Syria to the zenith of its power. Hazael soon found occasion to invade Israel. It was at Ramothgilead, which had already been the scene of a fierce conflict between Israel and Syria when Ahab met his death, that Hazael encountered Joram, the king of Israel, with whom his kinsman, Ahaziah, king of Judah, had joined forces to retain that important fortress which had been recovered from the Syrians ( 2 Kings 9:14,15). The final issue of the battle is not recorded, but Joram received wounds which obliged him to return across the Jordan to Jezreel, leaving the forces of Israel in command of Jehu, whose anointing by Elisha’s deputy at Ramoth-gilead, usurpation of the throne of Israel, slaughter of Joram, Ahaziah and Jezebel, and vengeance upon the whole house of Ahab are told in rapid and tragic succession by the sacred historian (2 Kings 9; 10).
Whatever was the issue of this attack upon Ramoth-gilead, it was not long before Hazael laid waste the whole country East of the Jordan — “all the land of Gilead, the Gadites, and the Reubenites, and the Manassites, from Aroer, which is by the valley of the Arnon, even Gilead and Bashan” ( Kings 10:33; compare Amos 1:3). Nor did Judah escape the heavy hand of the Syrian oppressor. Marching southward through the plain of Esdraelon, and following a route along the maritime plain taken by many conquerors before and since, Hazael fought against Gath and took it, and then “set his face to go up to Jerus” ( 2 Kings 12:17). As other kings of Judah had to do with other conquerors, Jehoash, who was now on the throne, bought off the invader with the gold and the treasures of temple and palace, and Hazael withdrew his forces from Jerusalem.
Israel, however, still suffered at the hands of Hazael and Ben-hadad, his son, and the sacred historian mentions that Hazael oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu. So grievous was the oppression of the Syrians that Hazael “left not to Jehoahaz, of the people save fifty horsemen, and ten chariots, and ten thousand footmen; for the king of Syria destroyed them, and made them like the dust in threshing” ( <121301> Kings 13:1-7). Forty or fifty years later Amos, in the opening of his prophecy, recalled those Syrian campaigns against Israel when he predicted vengeance that was to come upon Damascus. “Thus saith Yahweh .... I will send a fire into the house of Hazael, and it shall devour the palaces of Benhadad” (Amos 1:3,4).
2. IN THE MONUMENTS:
Already, however, the power of Syria had passed its meridian and had begun to decline. Events of which there is no express record in the Biblical narrative were proceeding which, ere long, made it possible for the son of Jehoahaz, Joash or Jehoash, to retrieve the honor of Israel and recover the cities that had been lost ( 2 Kings 13:25). For the full record of these events we must turn to the Assyrian annals preserved in the monuments.
We do read in the sacred history that Yahweh gave Israel “a saviour, so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians” ( 2 Kings 13:5).
The annals of the Assyrian kings give us clearly and distinctly the interpretation of this enigmatic saying. The relief that came to Israel was due to the crippling of the power of Syria by the aggression of Assyria upon the lands of the West. From the Black Obelisk in the British Museum, on which Shalmaneser II (860-825 BC) has inscribed the story of the campaign he carried on during his long reign, there are instructive notices of this period of Israelite history. In the 18th year of his reign (842 BC), Shalmaneser made war against Hazael. On the Obelisk the record is short, but a longer account is given on one of the pavement slabs from Nimroud, the ancient Kalab. It is as follows: “In the 18th year of my reign for the 16th time I crossed the Euphrates. Hazael of Damascus trusted to the strength of his armies and mustered his troops in full force. Senir (Hermon), a mountain summit which is in front of Lebanon, he made his stronghold. I fought with him; his defeat I accomplished; 600 of his soldiers with weapons I laid low; 1,121 of his chariots, 470 of his horses, with his camp I took from him. To save his life, he retreated; I pursued him; in Damascus, his royal city, I shut him up. His plantations I cut down.
As far as the mountains of the Hauran I marched. Cities without number I wrecked, razed, and burnt with fire. Their spoil beyond count I carried away. As far as the mountains of Baal-Rosh, which is a headland of the sea (at the mouth of the Nahr el-Kelb, Dog River), I marched; my royal likeness I there set up. At that time I received the tribute of the Syrians and Sidonians and of Yahua (Jehu) the son of Khumri (Omri)” (Ball, Light from the East, 166; Schrader, COT, 200 f). From this inscription we gather that Shalmaneser did not succeed in the capture of Damascus. But it still remained an object of ambition to Assyria, and Ramman-nirari III, the grandson of Shalmaneser, succeeded in capturing it, and reduced it to subjection. It was this monarch who was “the saviour” whom God raised up to deliver Israel from the hand of Syria. Then it became possible for Israel under Jehoash to recover the cities he had lost, but by this time Hazael had died and Ben-hadad, his son, Ben-hadad III, called Mari on the monuments, had become king in his stead ( 2 Kings 13:24,25).
LITERATURE.
Schrader, COT, 197-208; McCurdy, HPM, I, 282 ff. T. Nicol.
HAZAIAH HAZAR 1. HAZAR-ADDAR:
Hazar-addar (Hebrew chatsar ‘addar ), a place on the southern boundary of Judah ( Numbers 34:4), is probably identical with Hazron ( Joshua 15:3), which, in this case, however, is separated from Addar (the King James Version “Adar”). It seems to have lain somewhere to the Southwest of Kadesh-barnea.
2. HAZAR-ENAN:
Hazar-enan (Hebrew chatsar ‘enan , “village of springs”: enan is Aramaic; Once ( Ezekiel 47:17) it is called Enon), a place, unidentified, at the junction of the northern and eastern frontiers of the land promised to Israel ( Numbers 34:9 f; compare Ezekiel 47:17; 48:1). To identify it with the sources of the Orontes seems to leave too great a gap between this and the places named to the South. Buhl (GAP, 66 f) would draw the northern boundary from Nahr el-Qasimiyeh to the foot of Hermon, and would locate Hazar-enan at Banias. The springs there lend fitness to the name; a condition absent from el-Chadr, farther east, suggested by von Kesteren.
But there is no certainty.
3. HAZAR-GADDAH:
Hazar-gaddah (Hebrew hatsar-gaddah ), a place in the territory of Judah “toward the border of Edom in the South” ( Joshua 15:21,27). Eusebius, Onomasticon (s.v. “Gadda”) places it in the uttermost parts of the Daroma, overlooking the Dead Sea. This might point to the site of Masada, or to the remarkable ruins of Umm Bajjaq farther south (GAP, 185).
4. HAZAR-HATTICON:
Hazar-hatticon (the Revised Version (British and American) HAZERHATTICON; Hebrew chatser ha-tikhon , “the middle village”), a place named on the ideal border of Israel ( Ezekiel 47:16). The context shows that it is identical with Hazar-enan, for which this is apparently another name. Possibly, however, it is due to a scribal error.
5. HAZARMAVETH:
Hazarmaveth (Hebrew chatsarmaweth ), the name of a son of Joktan attached to a clan or district in South Arabia ( Genesis 10:26; Chronicles 1:20). It is represented by the modern Chadramaut , a broad and fruitful valley running nearly parallel with the coast for about 100 miles, north of el-Yemen. The ruins and inscriptions found by Glaser show that it was once the home of a great civilization, the capital being Sabata ( Genesis 10:7) (Glaser, Skizze, II, 20, 423 ff).
6. HAZAR-SHUAL:
Hazar-Shual (Hebrew chatsar shu`al ), a place in the South of Judah ( Joshua 15:28) assigned to Simeon ( Joshua 19:3; 1 Chronicles 4:28). It was reoccupied after the exile ( Nehemiah 11:27). Sa`weh on a hill East of Beersheba has been suggested; but there is no certainty.
7. HAZAR-SUSAH:
Hazar-susah (Hebrew chatsar cucah , Joshua 19:5), Hazar-susim (Hebrew chatsar cucim , 1 Chronicles 4:31). As it stands, the name means “station of a mare” or “of horses,” and it occurs along with Bethmarcaboth, “place of chariots,” which might suggest depots for trade in chariots and horses. The sites have not been identified. W. Ewing HAZAR-ADDAR; HAZAR-ENAN; HAZAR-GADDAH; HAZAR-HATTICON; HAZAR-MAVETH; HAZARSHUAL; HAZAR-SUSA; HAZAR-SUSIM HAZAZON-TAMAR Another suggestion, which certainly meets the needs of the narrative better, is that Hazazon-tamar is the Thamara of Eusebius, Onomasticon (85 3; 210 86), the [ Qamarw, Thamaro ], of Ptol. xvi.3. The ruin Kurnub, 20 miles West-Southwest of the South end of the Dead Sea — on the road from Hebron to Elath — is supposed to mark this site. E. W. G. Masterman HAZEL HAZELELPONI HAZER-HATTICON; HAZARHATTICON HAZERIM HAZEROTH HAZEZON-TAMAR HAZIEL HAZO HAZOR Josephus (Ant., V, v, 1 ) says that Hazor was situated over the lake, Semechonitis, which he evidently identifies with the Waters of Merom ( Joshua 11:13). It must clearly be sought on the heights West of el- Chuleh. Several identifications have been suggested, but no certain conclusion can be reached. Some (Wilson and Guerin) favor Tell Harreh to the Southeast of Qedes, where there are extensive ruins. Robinson thought of Tell Khureibeh, 2 1/2 miles South of Qedes, where, however, there are no ruins. We may take it as certain that the ancient name of Hazor is preserved in Merj el-Chadireh, Southwest of Qedes, and North of Wady `Uba, and in Jebel Chadireh, East of the Merj, although it has evidently drifted from the original site, as names have so often done in Palestine.
Conder suggests a possible identification with Chazzur, farther South, “at the foot of the chain of Upper Galilee .... in position more appropriate to the use of the chariots that belonged to the king of Hazor” (HDB, under the word). (2) A town, unidentified, in the South of Judah ( Joshua 15:23). (3) A town in the South of Judah ( Joshua 15:25). See KERIOTH-HEZRON. (4) A town in Benjamin ( Nehemiah 11:33) now represented by Khirbet Chazzar, not far to the East of Neby Samwil. (5) An unidentified place in Arabia, smitten by Nebuchadnezzar ( Jeremiah 49:28,33). W. Ewing HAZOR-HADATTAH Eusebius and Jerome describe a “New Hazor” to the East of Ascalon, but this is too far North.
HAZZELELPONI HE HEAD 1. USED OF MEN:
By a slight extension of meaning, “head” occasionally stands for the person itself. This is the case in all passages where evil is said to return or to be requited upon the head of a person (see below).
2. USED OF ANIMALS:
The word is also used in connection with the serpent’s head ( Genesis 3:15), the head of the sacrificial ram, bullock and goat ( Exodus 29:10,15,19; Leviticus 4:4,24), the head of leviathan ( Job 41:7 (Hebrew 40:31)).
3. THE HEAD-PIECE:
It is used also as representing the top or summit of a thing, as the capital of column or pillar ( Exodus 36:38; 38:28; 2 Chronicles 3:15); of mountains ( Exodus 19:20; Numbers 21:20; Judges 9:7; Amos 1:2; 9:3); of a scepter ( Esther 5:2); of a ladder ( Genesis 28:12); of a tower ( Genesis 11:4).
4. BEGINNING, SOURCE, ORIGIN:
As a fourth meaning the word occurs ( Proverbs 8:23; Ecclesiastes 3:11; Isaiah 41:4) in the sense of beginning of months ( Exodus 12:2), of rivers ( Genesis 2:10), of streets or roads ( Isaiah 51:20; Ezekiel 16:25; 21:21).
As a leader, prince, chief, chieftain, captain (or as an adjective, with the meaning of foremost, uppermost), originally: “he that stands at the head”; compare “God is with us at our head” ( 2 Chronicles 13:12); “Knowest thou that Yahweh will take away thy master from thy head?” ( 2 Kings 2:3); “head-stone” the Revised Version (British and American) “top stone,” i.e. the upper-most stone (Zec 4:7).
5. LEADER, PRINCE:
Israel is called the head of nations ( Deuteronomy 28:13); “The head (capital) of Syria is Damascus, and the head (prince) of Damascus is Rezin” ( Isaiah 7:8); “heads of their fathers’ houses,” i.e. elders of the clans ( Exodus 6:14); compare “heads of tribes” ( Deuteronomy 1:15), also “captain,” literally, head ( Numbers 14:4; Deuteronomy 1:15; 1 Chronicles 11:42; Nehemiah 9:17). The phrase “head and tail” ( Isaiah 9:14; 19:15) is explained by the rabbis as meaning the nobles and the commons among the people; compare “palm-branch and rush” ( Isaiah 9:14), “hair of the feet .... and beard” ( Isaiah 7:20), but compare also Isaiah 9:15. In the New Testament we find the remarkable statement of Christ being “the head of the church” ( Ephesians 1:22; 5:23), “head of every man” ( 1 Corinthians 11:3), “head of all principality and power” ( Colossians 2:10), “head of the body, the church” ( Colossians 1:18; compare Ephesians 4:15). The context of 1 Corinthians 11:3 is very instructive to a true understanding of this expression: “I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” (compare Ephesians 5:23). Here, clearly, reference is had to the lordship of Christ over His church, not to the oneness of Christ and His church, while in Ephesians 4:16 the dependence of the church upon Christ is spoken of. These passages should not therefore be pressed to include the idea of Christ being the intellectual center, the brain of His people, from whence the members are passively governed, for to the Jewish mind the heart was the seat of the intellect, not the head. See HEART.
6. VARIOUS USES:
As the head is the most essential part of physical man, calamity and blessing are said to come upon the head of a person ( Genesis 49:26; Deuteronomy 33:16; Judges 9:57; 1 Samuel 25:39; Chronicles 6:23; Ezekiel 9:10; 11:21; 16:43; 22:31). For this reason hands are placed upon the head of a person on which blessings are being invoked ( Genesis 48:14,17,18; Matthew 19:15) and upon the sacrificial animal upon which sins are laid ( Exodus 29:15; Leviticus 1:4; 4:29,33). Responsibility for a deed is also said to rest on the head of the doer ( 2 Samuel 1:16; 3:29; 1 Kings 8:32; Psalm 7:16; Acts 18:6). The Bible teaches us to return good for evil ( Matthew 5:44), or in the very idiomatic Hebrew style, to “heap coals of fire upon (the) head” of the adversary ( Proverbs 25:22; Romans 12:20). This phrase is dark as to its origin, but quite clear as to its meaning and application (compare Romans 12:17,19,21). The Jew was inclined to swear by his head ( Matthew 5:36), as the modern Oriental swears by his beard. The head is said to be under a vow ( Numbers 6:18,19; Acts 18:18; 21:23), because the Nazirite vow could readily be recognized by the head.
There are numerous idiomatic expressions connected with the head, of which we enumerate the following: “the hoary head” designates old age (see HAIR ); “to round the corners of the head,” etc. ( Leviticus 19:27; compare also Deuteronomy 14:1; Amos 8:10), probably refers to the shaving of the side locks or the whole scalp among heathen nations, which was often done in idolatrous shrines or in token of initiation into the service of an idol. It was therefore forbidden to Israel, and its rigid observance gave rise to the peculiar Jewish custom of wearing long side locks (see HAIR ). “Anointing the head” ( Psalm 23:5; 92:10; Hebrews 1:9) was a sign of joy and hospitality, while the “covering of the head” ( 2 Samuel 15:30; Esther 6:12; Jeremiah 14:3), “putting the hand upon the head” ( 2 Samuel 13:19) and putting earth, dust or ashes upon it ( Joshua 7:6; 1 Samuel 4:12; 2 Samuel 12; 13:19; Lamentations 2:10; compare Amos 2:7) were expressive of sadness, grief, deep shame and mourning. In Esther 7:8 Haman’s face is covered as a condemned criminal, or as one who has been utterly put to shame, and who has nothing more to say for his life.
In this connection the Pauline injunction as to the veiling of women in the public gatherings of the Christians ( 1 Corinthians 11:5), while men were instructed to appear bareheaded, must be mentioned. This is diametrically opposed to the Jewish custom, according to which men wore the head covered by the [Tallith] or prayer shawl, while women were considered sufficiently covered by their long hair ( 1 Corinthians 11:15). The apostle here simply commends a Greek custom for the congregation residing among Greek populations; in other words, he recommends obedience to local standards of decency and good order. “To bruise the head” ( Genesis 3:15) means to injure gravely; “to smite through the head” ( Psalm 68:21) is synonymous with complete destruction. “To shake or wag the head” ( Psalm 22:7; 44:14; 64:8; Jeremiah 18:16; 48:27; Lamentations 2:15; Matthew 27:39; Mark 15:29) conveys the meaning of open derision and contempt. “To bow down the head” ( Isaiah 58:5) indicates humility, sadness and mourning, but it may also be a mere pretense for piety. (Sirach 19:26). H. L. E. Luering HEADBAND HEADDRESS HEADSTONE HEADSTRONG HEADTIRE HEADY HEAL In the New Testament, therapeuo is used 10 times in describing our Lord’s miracles, and is translated “heal.” Iaomai is used to express spiritual healing ( Matthew 13:15; Luke 5:17; John 12:40), and also of curing bodily disease ( John 4:47). Diasozo , meaning “to heal thoroughly,” is used in Luke 7:3 the King James Version where the Revised Version (British and American) renders it “save.” The act of healing is called iasis twice, in Acts 4:22,30; sozo , to save or deliver, is translated “made whole” by the Revised Version (British and American) in Mark 5:23; Luke 8:36; Acts 14:9, but is “healed” in the King James Version. Conversely “made whole” the King James Version in Matthew 15:28 is replaced by “healed” in the Revised Version (British and American).
Healed is used 33 times in the Old Testament as the rendering of the same Hebrew word, and in the same variety of senses. It is also used of purification for an offense or breach of the ceremonial law ( Chronicles 30:20); and to express the purification of water which had caused disease ( 2 Kings 2:21,22). Figuratively, the expression “healed slightly” (the English Revised Version “lightly”) is used to describe the futile efforts of the false prophets and priests to remedy the backsliding of Israel ( Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11); here the word for “slightly” is the contemptuous term, qalal , which means despicably or insignificantly. In Ezekiel 30:21, the word “healed” is the rendering of the feminine passive participle, rephu’ah and is better translated in the Revised Version (British and American) “apply healing medicines.” In the New Testament “healed” usually occurs in connection with the miracles of our Lord and the apostles. Here it is worthy of note that Luke more frequently uses the verb iaomai than therapeuo , in the proportion of 17 to 4, while in Matthew and Mark the proportion is 4 to 8.
Healer ([ vb”j; , chabhash ]) occurs once in Isaiah 3:7; the word literally means a “wrapper up” or “bandager.” Alexander Macalister HEALING In the New Testament 5 times the verb is therapeuo ; once ( Acts 10:38) iaomai ; in the other passages it is either iama , as in 1 Corinthians 12:9-30, or iasis , as in Acts 4:22, derivatives from this verb HEALING, GIFTS OF ([cari>smata ijama>twn, charismata iamaton ]): Among the “spiritual gifts” enumerated in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11,28 are included “gifts of healings.” See SPIRITUAL GIFTS. The subject has risen into much prominence of recent years, and so calls for separate treatment. The points to be considered are: (1) the New Testament facts, (2) the nature of the gifts, (3) their permanence in the church.
1. THE NEW TESTAMENT FACTS:
The Gospels abundantly show that the ministry of Christ Himself was one of healing no less than of teaching (compare Mark 1:14 f with 1:32-34).
When He sent forth the Twelve ( Mark 6:7,13) and the Seventy ( Luke 10:1,9), it was not only to preach the Kingdom of God but to heal the sick. The inauthentic conclusion of Mark’s Gospel, if it does not preserve words actually used by Christ Himself, bears witness at all events to the traditional belief of the early church that after His departure from the world His disciples would still possess the gift of healing. The Book of Acts furnishes plentiful evidence of the exercise of this gift by apostles and other prominent men in the primitive church ( Acts 3:7 f; 5:12-16; 8:7; 19:12; 28:8 f), and the Epistle of James refers to a ministry of healing carried on by the elders of a local church acting in their collective capacity ( James 5:14 f). But Paul in this passage speaks of “gifts of healings” (the plural “healings” apparently refers to the variety of ailments that were cured) as being distributed along with other spiritual gifts among the ordinary members of the church. There were men, it would seem, who occupied no official position in the community, and who might not otherwise be distinguished among their fellow-members, on whom this special charisma of healing had been bestowed.
2. THE NATURE OF THE GIFTS:
On this subject the New Testament furnishes no direct information, but it supplies evidence from which conclusions may be drawn. We notice that the exercise of the gift is ordinarily conditional on the faith of the recipient of the blessing ( Mark 6:5,6; 10:52; Acts 14:9) — faith not only in God but in the human agent ( Acts 3:4 ff; 5:15; 9:17). The healer himself is a person of great faith ( Matthew 17:19 f), while his power of inspiring the patient with confidence points to the possession of strong, magnetic personality. The diseases cured appear for the most part to have been not organic but functional; and many of them would now be classed as nervous disorders. The conclusion from these data is that the gifts of healing to which Paul alludes were not miraculous endowments, but natural therapeutic faculties raised to their highest power by Christian faith.
Modern psychology, by its revelation of the marvels of the subliminal self or subconscious mind and the power of “suggestion,” shows how it is possible for one man to lay his hand on the very springs of personal life in another, and so discloses the psychical basis of the gift of healing. The medical science of our time, by its recognition of the dependence of the physical upon the spiritual, of the control of the bodily functions by the subconscious self, and of the physician’s ability by means of suggestion, whether waking or hypnotic, to influence the subconscious soul and set free the healing powers of Nature, provides the physiological basis. And may we not add that many incontestable cases of Christian faith-cure (take as a type the well-known instance in which Luther at Weimar “tore Melanchthon,” as the latter put it, “out of the very jaws of death”; see RE, XII, 520) furnish the religious basis, and prove that faith in God, working through the soul upon the body, is the mightiest of all healing influences, and that one who by his own faith and sympathy and force of personality can stir up faith in others may exercise by God’s blessing the power of healing diseases?
3. PERMANENCE OF HEALING GIFTS IN THE CHURCH:
There is abundant evidence that in the early centuries the gifts of healing were still claimed and practiced within the church (Justin, Apol. ii.6; Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. ii. 32, 4; Tertullian, Apol. xxiii; Origen, Contra Celsum, vii.4). The free exercise of these gifts gradually ceased, partly, no doubt, through loss of the early faith and spirituality, but partly through the growth of an ascetic temper which ignored Christ’s gospel for the body and tended to the view that pain and sickness are the indispensable ministers of His gospel for the soul. All down the history of the church, however, there have been notable personalities (e.g. Francis of Assisi, Luther, Wesley) and little societies of earnest Christians (e.g. the Waldenses, the early Moravians and Quakers) who have reasserted Christ’s gospel on its physical side as a gospel for sickness no less than for sin, and claimed for the gift of healing the place Paul assigned to it among the gifts of the Spirit. In recent years the subject of Christian healing has risen into importance outside of the regularly organized churches through the activity of various faith-healing movements. That the leaders of these movements have laid hold of a truth at once Scriptural and scientific there can be little doubt, though they have usually combined it with what we regard as a mistaken hostility to the ordinary practice of medicine. It is worth remembering that with all his faith in the spiritual gift of healing and personal experience of its power, Paul chose Luke the physician as the companion of his later journeys; and worth noticing that Luke shared with the apostle the honors showered upon the missionaries by the people of Melita whom they had cured of their diseases ( Acts 28:10). Upon the modern church there seems to lie the duty of reaffirming the reality and permanence of the primitive gift of healing, while relating it to the scientific practice of medicine as another power ordained of God, and its natural ally in the task of diffusing the Christian gospel of health.
LITERATURE.
Hort, Christian Ecclesia, chapter x; A.T. Schofield, Force of Mind, Unconscious Therapeutics; E. Worcester and others, Religion and Medicine; HJ, IV, 3, p. 606; The Expositor T, XVII, 349, 417. J. C. Lambert HEALTH The word “health” occurs twice in the New Testament: in Paul’s appeal to his shipmates to take food ( Acts 27:34), he says it is for their soteria , literally, “safety”; so the American Standard Revised Version, the King James Version “health.” The verb hugianino is used in 3 John 1:2, in the apostle’s salutation to Gaius. Alexander Macalister HEAP For “heap up words” ( Job 16:4), the Revised Version (British and American) has “join together”; for “shall be a heap” ( Isaiah 17:11), “fleeth away,” margin “shall be a heap”; “heap” for “number” ( Nahum 3:3); the English Revised Version “heap of stones” for “sling,” margin as the King James Version and the American Standard Revised Version ( Proverbs 26:8); “in one heap” for “upon a heap” ( Joshua 3:16); “he heapeth up (dust)” for “they shall heap” ( Habakkuk 1:10). W. L. Walker HEART 1. VARIOUS MEANINGS:
It represents in the first place the bodily organ, and by easy transition those experiences which affect or are affected by the body. Fear, love, courage, anger, Joy, sorrow, hatred are always ascribed to the heart — especially in the Old Testament; thus courage for which usually ruach is used ( Psalm 27:14); joy ( Psalm 4:7); anger ( Deuteronomy 19:6, “while his heart is hot,” lebhabh ); fear ( 1 Samuel 25:37); sorrow ( Psalm 13:2), etc.
Hence, naturally it came to stand for the man himself ( Deuteronomy 7:17; “say in thine heart,” Isaiah 14:13).
2. HEART AND PERSONALITY:
As representing the man himself, it was considered to be the seat of the emotions and passions and appetites ( Genesis 18:5; Leviticus 19:17; <19A415> Psalm 104:15), and embraced likewise the intellectual and moral faculties — though these are necessarily ascribed to the “soul” as well.
This distinction is not always observed.
3. SOUL AND HEART: “Soul” in Hebrew can never be rendered by “heart”; nor can “heart” be considered as a synonym for “soul.” Cremer has well observed: “The Hebrew nephesh (“soul”) is never translated kardia (“heart”). .... The range of the Hebrew nephesh , to which the Greek psuche alone corresponds, differs so widely from the ideas connected with psuche , that utter confusion would have ensued had psuche been employed in an unlimited degree for lebh (“heart”). The Biblical lebh never, like psuche , denotes the personal subject, nor could it do so. That which in classical Greek is ascribed to psuche (a good soul, a just soul, etc.) is in the Bible ascribed to the heart alone and cannot be otherwise” (Cremer, Lexicon, article “Kardia,” 437 ff, German edition).
4. CENTER OF VITAL ACTION:
In the heart vital action is centered ( 1 Kings 21:7). “Heart,” except as a bodily organ, is never ascribed to animals, as is the case sometimes with nephesh and ruach ( Leviticus 17:11, nephesh ; Genesis 2:19; Numbers 16:22; Genesis 7:22, ruach ). “Heart” is thus often used interchangeably with these two ( Genesis 41:8; Psalm 86:4; 119:20); but “it never denotes the personal subject, always the personal organ.”
5. HEART AND MIND:
As the central organ in the body, forming a focus for its vital action, it has come to stand for the center of its moral, spiritual, intellectual life. “In particular the heart is the place in which the process of self-consciousness is carried out, in which the soul is at home with itself, and is conscious of all its doing and suffering as its own” (Oehler). Hence, it is that men of “courage” are called “men of the heart”; that the Lord is said to speak “in his heart” ( Genesis 8:21); that men “know in their own heart” ( Deuteronomy 8:5); that “no one considereth in his heart’ ( Isaiah 44:19 the King James Version). “Heart” in this connection is sometimes rendered “mind,” as in Numbers 16:28 (“of mine own mind,” Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) ex proprio corde, Septuagint ap’ emautou ); the foolish “is void of understanding,” i.e. “heart” ( Proverbs 6:32, where the Septuagint renders phrenon , Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) cordis, Luther “der ist ein Narr”). God is represented as “searching the heart” and “trying the reins” ( Jeremiah 17:10 the King James Version). Thus, “heart” comes to stand for “conscience,” for which there is no word in Hebrew, as in Job 27:6, “My heart shall not reproach me,” or in 1 Samuel 24:5, “David’s heart smote him”; compare 1 Samuel 25:31. From this it appears, in the words of Owen: “The heart in Scripture is variously used, sometimes for the mind and understanding, sometimes for the will, sometimes for the affections, sometimes for the conscience, sometimes for the whole soul. Generally, it denotes the whole soul of man and all the faculties of it, not absolutely, but as they are all one principle of moral operations, as they all concur in our doing of good and evil.”
6. FIGURATIVE SENSES:
The radical corruption of human nature is clearly taught in Scripture and brought into connection with the heart. It is “uncircumcised” ( Jeremiah 9:26; Ezekiel 44:7; compare Acts 7:51); and “hardened” ( Exodus 4:21); “wicked” ( Proverbs 26:23); “perverse” ( Proverbs 11:20); “godless” ( Job 36:13); “deceitful and desperately wicked” ( Jeremiah 17:9 the King James Version). It defiles the whole man ( Matthew 15:19,20); resists, as in the case of Pharaoh, the repeated call of God ( Exodus 7:13). There, however, the law of God is written ( Romans 2:15); there the work of grace is wrought ( Acts 15:9), for the “heart” may be “renewed” by grace ( Ezekiel 36:26), because the “heart” is the seat of sin ( Genesis 6:5; 8:21).
7. PROCESS OF HEART RENEWAL:
This process of heart-renewal is indicated in various ways. It is the removal of a “stony heart” ( Ezekiel 11:19). The heart becomes “clean” ( Psalm 51:10); “fixed” ( <19B207> Psalm 112:7) through “the fear” of the Lord (verse 1); “With the heart man believeth” ( Romans 10:10); on the “heart” the power of God is exercised for renewal ( Jeremiah 31:33). To God the bereaved apostles pray as a knower of the heart ( Acts 1:24 — a word not known to classical writers, found only here in the New Testament and in Acts 15:8, kardiognostes ). In the “heart” God’s Spirit dwells with might ( Ephesians 3:16, eis ton eso anthropon); in the “heart” God’s love is poured forth ( Romans 5:5). The Spirit of His son has been “sent forth into the heart” ( Galatians 4:6); the “earnest of the Spirit” has been given “in the heart” ( 2 Corinthians 1:22). In the work of grace, therefore, the heart occupies a position almost unique.
8. THE HEART FIRST:
We might also refer here to the command, on which both the Old Testament and New Testament revelation of love is based: “Thou shalt love Yahweh thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” ( Deuteronomy 6:5); where “heart” always takes the first place, and is the term which in the New Testament rendering remains unchanged (compare Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30,33; Luke 10:27, where “heart” always takes precedence).
9. A TERM FOR “DEEPEST”:
A bare reference may be made to the employment of the term for that which is innermost, hidden, deepest in anything ( Exodus 15:8; Jonah 2:3), the very center of things. This we find in all languages. Compare Ephesians 3:16,17, “in the inward man,” as above. J. I. Marais HEARTH From this same verb (yaqadh , “be kindled”) are formed the nouns moqedh ( <19A203> Psalm 102:3 (Hebrew 4)) and moqkedhah ( Leviticus 6:9 (Hebrew 2)) which might, according to their formation, mean either the material kindled or the place where a fire is kindled. Hence, the various renderings, “firebrand,” “hearth,” etc. Moreover, in Leviticus 6:9 (2) the termination -ah of moqedhah may be taken as the pronominal suffix, “its”; hence, the Revised Version margin “on its firewood.” (2) Two other terms have reference to heating in the better class of houses.
In Jeremiah 36:22,23 the word (‘ach ) means a “brazier” of burning coals, with which Jehoiakim’s “winter house” was heated. The same purpose was served by the “pan (kiyyor ) of fire” of Zec 12:6 the Revised Version (British and American), apparently a wide, shallow vessel otherwise used for cooking ( 1 Samuel 2:14, English Versions of the Bible “pan”), or as a wash basin (compare Exodus 30:18; 1 Kings 7:38, etc., “laver”). (3) Another class of passages is referred to the signification “altar hearth,” which seems to have been a term applied to the top of the altar of burnt offering. The moqedhah of Leviticus 6:9 (2), though related by derivation to the words discussed under (1) above, belongs here (compare also Ecclesiasticus 50:12, “by the hearth of the altar,” [parj ejsca>ra| bwmou~, par’ eschara bomou ]). Again in Ezekiel’s description of the altar of the restored temple (43:15,16), he designates the top of the altar by a special term (the Revised Version margin, ariel), which is by most understood to mean “altar hearth” (so the Revised Version (British and American)). With this may be compared the symbolical name given to Jerusalem ( Isaiah 29:1), and variously explained as “lion (or lioness) of God,” or “hearth of God.” Benjamin Reno Downer HEARTILY In 2 Macc 4:37, we have “Antiochus was heartily sorry,” psuchikos (“from the soul”).
HEAT 1. DREADED IN PALESTINE:
The heat of the summer is greatly dreaded in Palestine, and as a rule the people rest under cover during the middle of the day, when the sun is hottest. There is no rain from May to October, and scarcely a cloud in the sky to cool the air or to screen off the burning vertical rays of the sun. The first word of advice given to visitors to the country is to protect themselves from the sun. Even on the mountains, where the temperature of the air is lower, the sun is perhaps more fierce, owing to the lesser density of the atmosphere.
2. CAUSES DISEASE:
This continuous summer heat often causes sunstroke, and the glare causes diseases of the eye which affect a large percentage of the people of Palestine and Egypt.
3. RELIEF SOUGHT:
It is to be expected that in these times of heat and drought the ideal pleasure has come to be to sit in the shade by some cool flowing fountain.
In the mountains the village which has the coolest spring of water is the most desired. These considerations give renewed meaning to the passages: “as cold waters to a thirsty soul” ( Proverbs 25:25); “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside still waters” ( Psalm 23:2). What a blessing to be “under the shadow of the Almighty” ( Psalm 91:1), where “the sun shall not strike upon them, nor any heat” ( Revelation 7:16)!
4. MIDDAY HEAT:
The middle of the day is often referred to as the “heat of the day” ( Samuel 11:11). It made a great difference to the army whether it could win the battle before the midday heat. Saladin won the great battle at Hattin by taking advantage of this fact. It was a particular time of the day when it was the custom to rest. “They came about the heat of the day to the house of Ish-bosheth, as he took his rest at noon” ( 2 Samuel 4:5). Yahweh appeared to Abraham as “he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day” ( Genesis 18:1). The hardship of working throughout the day is expressed in Matthew 20:12, “who have borne the burden of the day and scorching heat.” Sometimes just after sunrise the contrast of the cold of night and the heat of the sun is especially noticeable. “The sun ariseth with the scorching wind” ( James 1:11).
5. SUMMER HEAT:
In summer the wind is usually from the Southwest, but in case it is from the South it is sure to be hot. “When ye see a south wind blowing, ye say, There will be a scorching heat” ( Luke 12:55). The heat on a damp, sultry day, when the atmosphere is full of dust haze is especially oppressive, and is referred to in Isaiah 25:5 as “the heat by the shade of a cloud.” The heat of summer melts the snow on the mountains and causes all vegetation to dry up and wither. Ice and snow vanish in the heat thereof ( Job 6:17), “Drought and heat consume the snow waters” ( Job 24:19). But the “tree planted by the waters, that spreadeth out its roots by the river .... shall not fear when heat cometh, but its leaf shall be green” ( Jeremiah 17:8).
6. FIGURATIVE USES:
The word is used often in connection with anger in the Scriptures: “hot anger” ( Exodus 11:8); “hot displeasure” ( Deuteronomy 9:19); “anger of the Lord was hot against Israel” ( Judges 2:14 the King James Version); “thine anger from waxing hot” ( Psalm 85:3 King James Version, margin); “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot” ( Revelation 3:15). Alfred H. Joy HEATH HEATHEN HEAVE OFFERING HEAVEN HEAVEN, HOST OF See ASTRONOMY, I, 1.
HEAVEN, ORDINANCES OF See ASTRONOMY, I, 1; II, 13.
HEAVEN, WINDOWS OF See ASTROMOMY, III, 4.
HEAVENLY Pertaining to heaven or the heavens. See HEAVENS . The phrase ta epourania , translated “heavenly things” in John 3:12; Hebrews 8:5; 9:23, but in Ephesians “heavenly places” ( John 1:3,10; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12), has shades of meaning defined by the context. In John 3:12, in contrast with “earthly things” (i.e. such as can be brought to the test of experience), it denotes truths known only through revelation (God’s love in salvation).
In Hebrews the sense is local. In Ephesians it denotes the sphere of spiritual privilege in Christ, except in 6:12, where it stands for the unseen spiritual world, in which both good and evil forces operate. It is always the sphere of the super-earthly. James Orr HEAVENS HEAVENS, NEW (AND EARTH, NEW)
1. ESCHATOLOGICAL IDEA:
The formal conception of new heavens and a new earth occurs in Isaiah 65:17; 66:22; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1 (where “heaven,” singular). The idea in substance is also found in Isaiah 51:16; Matthew 19:28; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Hebrews 12:26-28. In each case the reference is eschatological, indeed the adjective “new” seems to have acquired in this and other connections a semi-technical eschatological sense. It must be remembered that the Old Testament has no single word for “universe,” and that the phrase “heaven and earth” serves to supply the deficiency. The promise of a new heavens and a new earth is therefore equivalent to a promise of world renewal.
2. EARLIEST CONCEPTIONS:
COSMIC VERSES NATIONAL TYPE:
It is a debated question how old in the history of revelation this promise is.
Isaiah is the prophet with whom the idea first occurs in explicit form, and that in passages which many critics would assign to the post-exilic period (the so-called Trito-Isaiah). In general, until recently, the trend of criticism has been to represent the universalistic-cosmic type of eschatology as developed out of the particularistic-national type by a gradual process of widening of the horizon of prophecy, a view which would put the emergence of the former at a comparatively late date. More recently, however, Gressmann (Der Ursprung der israelitisch-judischen Eschatologie, 1905) and others have endeavored to show that often even prophecies belonging to the latter type embody material and employ means of expression which presuppose acquaintance with the idea of a worldcatastrophe at the end. On this view the world-eschatology would have, from ancient times, existed alongside of the more narrowly confined outlook, and would be even older than the latter. These writers further assume that the cosmic eschatology was not indigenous among the Hebrews, but of oriental (Babylonian) origin, a theory which they apply not only to the more developed system of the later apocalyptic writings, but also to its preformations in the Old Testament. The cosmic eschatology is not believed to have been the distinctive property of the great ethical prophets, but rather a commonly current mythological belief to which the prophets refer without formally endorsing it.
3. DIFFERENT FROM MYTHOLOGICAL THEORY:
Its central thought is said to have been the belief that the end of the worldprocess must correspond to the beginning, that consequently the original condition of things, when heaven and earth were new, must repeat itself at some future point, and the state of paradise with its concomitants return, a belief supposed to have rested on certain astronomical observations.
4. ANTIQUITY OF COSMICAL CONCEPTION While this theory in the form presented is unproven and unacceptable, it deserves credit for having focused attention on certain phenomena in the Old Testament which clearly show that Messianic prophecy, and particularly the world-embracing scope which it assumes in some predictions, is far older than modern criticism had been willing to concede.
The Old Testament from the beginning has an eschatology and puts the eschatological promise on the broadest racial basis (Genesis 3). It does not first ascend from Israel to the new humanity, but at the very outset takes its point of departure in the race and from this descends to the election of Israel, always keeping the Universalistic goal in clear view. Also in the earliest accounts, already elements of a cosmical universalism find their place side by side with those of a racial kind, as when Nature is represented as sharing in the consequences of the fall of man.
5. THE COSMICAL DEPENDENT ON THE ETHICO-RELIGIOUS:
As regards the antiquity of the universalistic and cosmical eschatology, therefore, the conclusions of these writers may be registered as a gain, while on the two other points of the pagan origin and the unethical character of the expectation involved, dissent from them should be expressed. According to the Old Testament, the whole idea of worldrenewal is of strictly super-natural origin, and in it the cosmical follows the ethical hope. The cosmical eschatology is simply the correlate of the fundamental Biblical principle that the issues of the world-process depend on the ethico-religious developments in the history of man (compare Peter 3:13).
6. THE END CORRESPONDENT TO THE BEGINNING:
But the end correspondent to the beginning is likewise a true Scriptural principle, which theory in question has helped to reemphasize, although there is this difference that Scripture does not look forward to a repetition of the same process, but to a restoration of the primeval harmony on a higher plane such as precludes all further disturbance. In the passages above cited, there are clear reminiscences of the account of creation ( Isaiah 51:16, “that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth”; 65:17, “I create new heavens and a new earth”; 2 Peter 3:13 compared with 3:4-6; Revelation 21:1 compared with the imagery of paradise throughout the chapter). Besides this, where the thought of the renewal of earth is met with in older prophecy, this is depicted in colors of the state of paradise ( Isaiah 11:6-9; Hosea 2:18-21). The “regeneration” (palingenesia ) of Matthew 19:28 also points back to the first genesis of the world. The `inhabited earth to come’ (oikoumene mellousa ) of Hebrews 2:5 occurs at the opening of a context throughout which the account of Genesis 1 through 3 evidently stood before the writer’s mind.
7. THE COSMICAL HEAVENS: HEBREWS 12:26-29:
In the combination “new heavens and a new earth,” the term “heavens” must therefore be taken in the sense imposed upon it by the story of creation, where “heavens” designates not the celestial habitation of God, but the cosmical heavens, the region of the supernal waters, sun moon and stars. The Bible nowhere suggests that there is anything abnormal or requiring renewal in God’s dwelling-place ( Hebrews 9:23 is of a different import). In Revelation 21, where “the new heaven and the new earth” appear, it is at the same time stated that the new Jerusalem comes down from God out of heaven (compare 21:1,2,10). In Hebrews 12:26-28 also the implication is that only the lower heavens are subject to renewal. The “shaking” that accompanies the new covenant and corresponds to the shaking of the law-giving at Sinai, is a shaking of “not the earth only, but also the heaven.” This shaking, in its reference to heaven as well as to earth, signifies a removal of the things shaken. But from the things thus shaken and removed (including heaven), the writer distinguishes “those things which are not shaken,” which are destined to remain, and these are identified with the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God, however, according to the general trend of the teaching of the epistle, has its center in the heavenly world. The words “that have been made,” in 12:27, do not assign their created character as the reason why heaven and earth can be shaken, an exegesis which would involve us in the difficulty that among that which remains there is something uncreated besides God; the true construction and correct paraphrase are: “as of things that were made with the thought in the mind of God that those things which cannot be shaken may remain,” i.e. already at creation God contemplated an unchangeable universe as the ultimate, higher state of things.
8. PALINGENESIS: MATTHEW 19:28:
In Matthew 19:28 the term palingenesia marks the world-renewing as the renewal of an abnormal state of things. The Scripture teaching, therefore, is that around the center of God’s heaven, which is not subject to deterioration or renewal, a new cosmical heaven and a new earth will be established to be the dwelling-place of the eschatological humanity. The light in which the promise thus appears reminds us that the renewed kosmos , earth as well as cosmical heavens, is destined to play a permanent (not merely provisional, on the principle of chiliasm) part in the future life of the people of God. This is in entire harmony with the prevailing Biblical representation, not only in the Old Testament but likewise in the New Testament (compare Matthew 5:5; Hebrews 2:5), although in the Fourth Gospel and in the Pauline Epistles the emphasis is to such an extent thrown on the heaven-centered character of the future life that the role to be played in it by the renewed earth recedes into the background.
Revelation, on the other hand, recognizes this element in its imagery of “the new Jerus” coming down from God out of heaven upon earth.
9. A PURIFIED UNIVERSE:
That the new heavens and the new earth are represented as the result of a “creation” does not necessarily involve a production ex nihilo. The terms employed in 2 Peter 3:6-13 seem rather to imply that the renewal will out of the old produce a purified universe, whence also the catastrophe is compared to that of the Deluge. As then the old world perished by water and the present world arose out of the flood, so in the end-crisis “the heavens shall be dissolved by fire and the elements melt with fervent heat,” to give rise to the new heaven and the new earth in which righteousness dwells. The term palingenesia ( Matthew 19:28) points to renewal, not to creation de novo. The Talmud also teaches that the world will pass through a process of purification, although at the same time it seems to break up the continuity between this and the coming world by the fantastic assumption that the new heavens and the new earth of Isaiah 65:17 were created at the close of the Hexemeron of Genesis 1. This was inferred from the occurrence of the article in Isaiah 66:22, “the new heavens and the new earth.” Geerhardus Vos HEAVY; HEAVINESS 1. LITERAL:
Heavy (heave, to lift) is used literally with respect to material things, as the translation of kobhedh , “heaviness” ( Proverbs 27:3, “a stone is heavy”); of kabhedh , “to be weighty” ( 1 Samuel 4:18; 2 Samuel 14:26; Lamentations 3:7); of `amac , “to load” ( Isaiah 46:1 the King James Version; compare Matthew 26:43; Mark 14:40; Luke 9:32, “Their eyes were heavy”); bareomai , “to be weighed down.”
2. FIGURATIVELY:
It is used (1) for what is hard to bear, oppressive, kabhedh ( Exodus 18:18; Numbers 11:14; 1 Samuel 5:6,11; Psalm 38:4; Isaiah 24:20); motah , a “yoke” ( Isaiah 58:6, the Revised Version (British and American) “bands of the yoke”); qasheh , “sharp,” “hard” ( Kings 14:6, “heavy tidings”); barus , “heavy” ( Matthew 23:4); (2) for sad, sorrowful (weighed down), mar, “bitter” ( Proverbs 31:6, the Revised Version (British and American) “bitter”); ra` , “evil” ( Proverbs 25:20); ademoneo , literally, “to be sated,” “wearied,” then, “to be very heavy,” “dejected” ( Matthew 26:37, of our Lord in Gethsemane, “(he) began to be sorrowful and very heavy,” the Revised Version (British and American) “sore troubled”); “ademonein denotes a kind of stupefaction and bewilderment, the intellectual powers reeling and staggering under the pressure of the ideas presented to them” (Mason, The Conditions of our Lord’s Life on Earth); compare Mark 14:33; (3) morose, sulky, as well as sad, car , “sullen,” “sour,” “angry” ( Kings 20:43; 21:4, “heavy and displeased”); (4) dull, kabhedh ( Isaiah 6:10, “make their ears heavy”; 59:1, “neither (is) his ear heavy”); (5) “tired” seems to be the meaning in Exodus 17:12, “Moses’ hands were heavy” (kabhedh ); compare Matthew 26:43 and parallels above.
Heavily is the translation of kebhedhuth , “heaviness” ( Exodus 14:25), meaning “with difficulty”; of qadhar , “to be black,” “to be a mourner” ( Psalm 35:14 the King James Version, the Revised Version (British and American) “I bowed down mourning”); of kabhedh ( Isaiah 47:6).
Heaviness has always the sense of anxiety, sorrow, grief, etc.; de’aghah , “fear,” “dread,” “anxious care” ( Proverbs 12:25, “Heaviness in the heart of a man maketh it stoop,” the Revised Version margin “or care”); kehah , “to be feeble,” “weak” ( Isaiah 61:3, “the spirit of heaviness”); panim , “face,” “aspect” ( Job 9:27 the King James Version, “I will leave off my heaviness,” the Revised Version (British and American) “(sad) countenance”; compare 2 Esdras 5:16; The Wisdom of Solomon 17:4; Ecclesiasticus 25:23); ta’aniyah , from ‘anah , “to groan,” “to sigh” ( Isaiah 29:2, the Revised Version (British and American) “mourning and lamentation”); tughah , “sadness,” “sorrow” ( <19B928> Psalm 119:28; Proverbs 10:1; 14:13); ta`anith , “affliction of one’s self,” “fasting” ( Ezra 9:5, the Revised Version (British and American) “humiliation,” margin “fasting”); katepheia , “dejection,” “sorrow” (literally, “of the eyes”) ( James 4:9, “your joy (turned) to heaviness”); lupe , “grief” ( Romans 9:2, the Revised Version (British and American) “great sorrow”; 2 Corinthians 2:1, the Revised Version (British and American) “sorrow”); lupeomai ( 1 Peter 1:6, the Revised Version (British and American) “put to grief”); for nush , “to be sick,” “feeble” ( Psalm 69:20, the Revised Version margin “sore sick”), and ademoneo ( Philippians 2:26 the Revised Version (British and American) “sore troubled”), the King James Version has “full of heaviness.” “Heaviness,” in the sense of sorrow, sadness, occurs in 2 Esdras 10:7,8,24; Tobit 2:5; lupe (Ecclesiasticus 22:4, the Revised Version (British and American) “grief”; 30:21, “Give not thy soul to heaviness,” the Revised Version (British and American) “sorrow”; 1 Macc 6:4); lupeo (Ecclesiasticus 30:9, the Revised Version (British and American) “will grieve thee”; penthos (1 Macc 3:51, etc.).
The Revised Version has “heavier work” for “more work” ( Exodus 5:9); “heavy upon men” for “common among men” ( Ecclesiastes 6:1); for “were heavy loaden” ( Isaiah 46:1), “are made a load”; for “the burden thereof is heavy” ( Isaiah 30:27), “in thick rising smoke.” W. L. Walker HEBER So, the name “Eber,” [ rb,[e , `ebher ], in 1 Chronicles 5:13; 8:22, is not to be confused with Heber, [ rb,j, , chebher ], as in the foregoing passages. Edward Bagby Pollard HEBERITES HEBREW; HEBREWESS HEBREWS, EPISTLE TO THE: In the King James Version and the English Revised Version the title of this book describes it as “the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews.”
Modern scholarship has disputed the applicability of every word of this title. Neither does it appear in the oldest manuscripts, where we find simply “to Hebrews” (pros Hebraious ). This, too, seems to have been prefixed to the original writing by a collector or copyist. It is too vague and general for the author to have used it. And there is nothing in the body of the book which affirms any part of either title. Even the shorter title was an inference from the general character of the writing. Nowhere is criticism less hampered by problems of authenticity and inspiration. No question arises, at least directly, of pseudonymity either of author or of readers, for both are anonymous. For the purpose of tracing the history and interpreting the meaning of the book, the absence of a title, or of any definite historical data, is a disadvantage. We are left to infer its historical context from a few fragments of uncertain tradition, and from such general references to historical conditions as the document itself contains. Where no date, name or well-known event is fixed, it becomes impossible to decide, among many possibilities, what known historical conditions, if any, are presupposed.
Yet this very fact, of the book’s detachment from personal and historical incidents, renders it more self-contained, and its exegesis less dependent upon understanding the exact historical situation. But its general relation to the thought of its time must be taken into account if we are to understand it at all.
II. LITERARY FORM. 1. The Author’s Culture and Style: The writer was evidently a man of culture, who had a masterly command of the Greek language. The theory of Clement of Alexandria, that the work was a translation from Hebrew, was merely an inference from the supposition that it was first addressed to Hebrew-speaking Christians. It bears none of the marks of a translation. It is written in pure idiomatic Greek. The writer had an intimate knowledge of the Septuagint, and was familiar with Jewish life. He was well-read in Hellenic literally (e.g.
Wisdom), and had probably made a careful study of Philo (see VI below).
His argument proceeds continuously and methodically, in general, though not strict, accord with the rules of Greek rhetoric, and without the interruptions and digressions which render Paul’s arguments so hard to follow. “Where the literary skill of the author comes out is in the deft adjustment of the argumentative to the hortatory sections” (Moffatt, Introduction, 424 f). He has been classed with Luke as the most “cultured” of the early Christian writers. 2. Letter, Epistle or Treatise?: It has been questioned whether Hebrews is rightly called a letter at all.
Unlike all Paul’s letters, it opens without any personal note of address or salutation; and at the outset it sets forth, in rounded periods and in philosophical language, the central theme which is developed throughout.
In this respect it resembles the Johannine writings alone in the New Testament. But as the argument proceeds, the personal note of application, exhortation and expostulation emerges more clearly ( Hebrews 2:1; 3:1- 12; 4:1,14; 5:11; 6:9; 10:9; 13:7); and it ends with greetings and salutations ( Hebrews 13:18 ff). The writer calls it “a word of exhortation.” The verb epesteila (the Revised Version (British and American) “I have written”) is the usual expression for writing a letter ( Hebrews 13:22).
Hebrews begins like an essay, proceeds like a sermon, and ends as a letter.
Deissmann, who distinguishes between a “true letter,” the genuine personal message of one man to another, and an “epistle,” or a treatise written in imitation of the form of a letter, but with an eye on the reading public, puts Hebrews in the latter class; nor would he “consider it anything but a literary oration — hence, not as an epistle at all — if the epesteila , and the greetings at the close, did not permit of the supposition that it had at one time opened with something of the nature of an address as well” (Bible Studies, 49-50). There is no textual or historical evidence of any opening address having ever stood as part of the text; nor does the opening section bear any mark or suggestion of fragmentariness, as if it had once followed such an address.
Yet the supposition that a greeting once stood at the beginning of our document is not so impossible as Zahn thinks (Introduction to the New Testament, II, 313 f), as a comparison with James or 1 Peter will show.
So unusual is the phenomenon of a letter without a greeting, that among the ancients, Pantaenus had offered the explanation that Paul, out of modesty, had refrained from putting his name to a letter addressed to the Hebrews, because the Lord Himself had been apostle to them.
In recent times, Julicher and Harnack have conjectured that the author intentionally suppressed the greeting, either from motives of prudence at a time of persecution, or because it was unnecessary, since the bearer of the letter would communicate the name of the sender to the recipients.
Overbeck advanced the more revolutionary hypothesis that the letter once opened with a greeting, but from someone other than Paul; that in order to satisfy the general conditions of canonization, the non-apostolic greeting was struck out by the Alexandrians, and the personal references in Hebrews 13:22-25 added, in order to represent it as Pauline.
3. A Unity or a Composite Work?: W. Wrede, starting from this theory, rejects the first part of it and adopts the second. He does not base his hypothesis on the conditions of canonization, but on an examination of the writing itself. He adopts Deissmann’s rejected alternative, and argues that the main part of the book was originally not an epistle at all, but a general doctrinal treatise. Then Hebrews 13, and especially 13:18 ff, were added by a later hand, in order to represent the whole as a Pauline letter, and the book in its final form was made, after all, pseudonymous. The latter supposition is based upon an assumed reference to imprisonment in 13:19 (compare Philemon 1:22) and upon the reference to Timothy in Hebrews 13:23 (compare Philippians 2:19); and the proof that these professed Pauline phrases are not really Pauline is found in a supposed contradiction between Hebrews 13:19 and 13:23. But 13:19 does not necessarily refer to imprisonment exclusively or even at all, and therefore it stands in no contradiction with 13:23 (compare Romans 1:9-13). And Timothy must have associated with many Christian leaders besides Paul. But why should anybody who wanted to represent the letter as Pauline and who scrupled not to add to it for that purpose, refrain from the obvious device of prefixing a Pauline greeting? Moreover, it is only by the most forced special pleading that it can be maintained that Hebrews 1 through 12 are a mere doctrinal treatise, devoid of all evidences of a personal relation to a circumscribed circle of readers. The period and manner of the readers’ conversion are defined (2:3 f). Their present spiritual condition is described in terms of such anxiety and hope as betoken a very intimate personal relation (5:11 f; 6:9-11). Their past conflicts, temptations, endurance and triumph are recalled for their encouragement under present trials, and both past and present are defined in particular terms that point to concrete situations well known to writer and readers (10:32-36). There is, it is true, not in Hebrews the same intense and all-pervading personal note as appears in the earlier Pauline letters; the writer often loses sight of his particular audience and develops his argument in detached and abstract form. But it cannot be assumed that nothing is a letter which does not conform to the Pauline model. And the presence of long, abstract arguments does not justify the excision or explaining away of undoubted personal passages.
Neither the language nor the logic of the book either demands or permits the separation of doctrinal and personal passages from one another, so as to leave for residuum a mere doctrinal treatise. Doctrinal statements lead up to personal exhortations, and personal exhortations form the transition to new arguments; they are indissolubly involved in one another; and chapter 13 presents no such exceptional. features as to justify its separation from the whole work. There is really no reason, but the unwarrantable assumption that an ancient writer must have conformed with a certain convention of letter-writing, to forbid the acceptance of Hebrews for what it appears to be — a defense of Christianity written for the benefit of definite readers, growing more intimate and personal as the writer gathers his argument into a practical appeal to the hearts and consciences of his readers, III. THE AUTHOR.
Certain coincidences of language and thought between this epistle and that of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians justify the inference that Hebrews was known in Rome toward the end of the 1st century AD (compare Hebrews 11:7,31 and 1:3 ff with Clement ad Corinthians 9,12,36).
Clement makes no explicit reference to the book or its author: the quotations are unacknowledged. But they show that Hebrews already had some authority in Rome. The same inference is supported by similarities of expression found also in the Shepherd of Hermas. The possible marks of its influence in Polycarp and Justin Martyr are too uncertain and indefinite to justify any inference. Its name does not appear in the list of New Testament writings compiled and acknowledged by Marcion, nor in that of the Muratorian Fragment. The latter definitely assigns letters by Paul to only seven churches, and so inferentially excludes Hebrews.
When the book emerges into the clear light of history toward the end of the 2nd century, the tradition as to its authorship is seen to divide into three different streams. (1) Alexandrian: Paul In Alexandria, it was regarded as in some sense the work of Paul. Clement tells how his teacher, apparently Pantaenus, explained why Paul does not in this letter, as in others, address his readers under his name. Out of reverence for the Lord (II, 2, above) and to avoid suspicion and prejudice, he as apostle of the Gentiles refrains from addressing himself to the Hebrews as their apostle. Clement accepts this explanation, and adds to it that the original Hebrew of Paul’s epistle had been translated into Greek by Luke. That Paul wrote in Hebrew was assumed from the tradition or inference that the letter was addressed to Aramaic-speaking Hebrews.
Clement also had noticed the dissimilarity of its Greek from that of Paul’s epistles, and thought he found a resemblance to that of Acts.
Origen starts with the same tradition, but he knew, moreover, that other churches did not accept the Alexandrian view, and that they even criticized Alexandria for admitting Hebrews into the Canon. And he feels, more than Clement, that not only the language, but the forms of thought are different from those of Paul’s epistles. This he tries to explain by the hypothesis that while the ideas were Paul’s, they had been formulated and written down by some other disciple. He found traditions that named Luke and Clement of Rome, but who the actual writer was, Origen declares that “God alone knows.”
The Pauline tradition persisted in Alexandria, and by the 4th century it was accepted without any of the qualifications made by Clement and Origen. It had also in the same period spread over the other eastern churches, both Greek and Syrian. But the Pauline tradition, where it is nearest the fountain-head of history, in Clement and Origen, only ascribes Hebrews to Paul in a secondary sense. (2) African: Barnabas In the West, the Pauline tradition failed to assert itself till the 4th century, and was not generally accepted till the 5th century. In Africa, another tradition prevailed, namely, that Barnabas was the author. This was the only other definite tradition of authorship that prevailed in antiquity.
Tertullian, introducing a quotation of Hebrews 6:1,4-6, writes: “There is also an Epistle to the Hebrews under the name of Barnabas .... and the Epistle of Barnabas is more generally received among the churches than that apocryphal `Shepherd’ of adulterers” (De Pudicitia, 20). Tertullian is not expressing his mere personal opinion, but quoting a tradition which had so far established itself as to appear in the title of the epistle in the MS, and he betrays no consciousness of the existence of any other tradition. Zahn infers that this view prevailed in Montanist churches and may have originated in Asia. Moffatt thinks that it had also behind it “some Roman tradition” (Introduction, 437). If it was originally, or at any time, the tradition of the African churches, it gave way there to the Alexandrian view in the course of the 4th century. A Council of Hippo in 393 reckons “thirteen epistles of the apostle Paul, and one by the same to the Hebrews.”
A council of Carthage in 419 reckons “fourteen epistles of the apostle Paul.” By such gradual stages did the Pauline tradition establish itself. (3) Rome and the West: Anonymous All the evidence tends to show that in Rome and the remaining churches of the West, the epistle was originally anonymous. No tradition of authorship appears before the 4th century. And Stephen Gobarus, writing in 600, says that both Irenaeus and Hippolytus denied the Pauline authorship. Photius repeats this statement as regards Hippolytus. Neither he nor Gobarus mentions any alternative view (Zahn, Intro, II, 310). The epistle was known in Rome (to Clement) toward the end of the 1st century, and if Paul’s name, or any other, had been associated with it from the beginning, it is impossible that it could have been forgotten by the time of Hippolytus.
The western churches had no reason for refusing to admit Hebrews into the Pauline and canonical list of books, except only that they did not believe it to be the work of Paul, or of any other apostle.
It seems therefore certain that the epistle first became generally known as an anonymous writing. Even the Alexandrian tradition implies as much, for it appears first as an explanation by Pantaenus why Paul concealed his name. The idea that Paul was the author was therefore an Alexandrian inference. The religious value of the epistle was naturally first recognized in Alexandria, and the name of Paul, the chief letter-writer of the church, at once occurred to those in search for its author. Two facts account for the ultimate acceptance of that view by the whole church. The spiritual value and authority of the book were seen to be too great to relegate it into the same class as the Shepherd or the Epistle of Barnabas. And the conception of the Canon developed into the hard-and-fast rule of apostolicity. No writing could be admitted into the Canon unless it had an apostle for its author; and when Hebrews could no longer be excluded, it followed that its apostolic authorship must be affirmed. The tradition already existing in Alexandria supplied the demand, and who but Paul, among the apostles, could have written it?
The Pauline theory prevailed together with the scheme of thought that made it necessary, from the 5th to the 16th century. The Humanists and the Reformers rejected it. But it was again revived in the 17th and 18th centuries, along with the recrudescence of scholastic ideas. It is clear, however, that tradition and history shed no light upon the question of the authorship of Hebrews. They neither prove nor disprove the Pauline, or any other theory. 2. The Witness of the Epistle Itself: We are therefore thrown back, in our search for the author, on such evidence as the epistle itself affords, and that is wholly inferential. It seems probable that the author was a Hellenist, a Greek-speaking Jew. He was familiar with the Scriptures of the Old Testament and with the religious ideas and worship of the Jews. He claims the inheritance of their sacred history, traditions and institutions ( Hebrews 1:1), and dwells on them with an intimate knowledge and enthusiasm that would be improbable, though not impossible, in a proselyte, and still more in a Christian convert from heathenism. But he knew the Old Testament only in the Septuagint translation, which he follows even where it deviates from the Hebrew. He writes Greek with a purity of style and vocabulary to which the writings of Luke alone in the New Testament can be compared. His mind is imbued with that combination of Hebrew and Greek thought which is best known in the writings of Philo. His general typological mode of thinking, his use of the allegorical method, as well as the adoption of many terms that are most familiar in Alexandrian thought, all reveal the Hellenistic mind. Yet his fundamental conceptions are in full accord with the teaching of Paul and of the Johannine writings.
The central position assigned to Christ, the high estimate of His person, the saving significance of His death, the general trend of the ethical teaching, the writer’s opposition to asceticism and his esteem for the rulers and teachers of the church, all bear out the inference that he belonged to a Christian circle dominated by Pauline ideas. The author and his readers alike were not personal disciples of Jesus, but had received the gospel from those who had heard the Lord ( Hebrews 2:3) and who were no longer living ( Hebrews 13:7). He had lived among his readers, and had probably been their teacher and leader; he is now separated from them but he hopes soon to return to them again ( Hebrews 13:18 f).
Is it possible to give a name to this person? (1) Paul not the Author Although the Pauline tradition itself proves nothing, the internal evidence is conclusive against it. We know enough about Paul to be certain that he could not have written Hebrews, and that is all that can be said with confidence on the question of authorship. The style and language, the categories of thought and the method of argument, all differ widely from those of any writings ascribed to Paul. The latter quotes the Old Testament from the Hebrew and Septuagint, but He only from Septuagint. Paul’s formula of quotation is, “It is written” or “The scripture saith”; that of Hebrews, “God,” or “The Holy Spirit,” or “One somewhere saith.” For Paul the Old Testament is law, and stands in antithesis to the New Testament, but in Hebrews the Old Testament is covenant, and is the “shadow” of the New Covenant. Paul’s characteristic terms, “Christ Jesus,” and “Our Lord Jesus Christ,” are never found in Hebrews; and “Jesus Christ” only 3 times (10:10; 13:8), and “the Lord” (for Christ) only twice (2:3; 7:14) — phrases used by Paul over 600 times (Zahn). Paul’s Christology turns around the death, resurrection and living presence of Christ in the church, that of Hebrews around His high-priestly function in heaven. Their conceptions of God differ accordingly. In Hebrews it is Judaistic-Platonistic, or (in later terminology) Deistic. The revelation of the Divine Fatherhood and the consequent immanence of God in history and in the world had not possessed the author s mind as it had Paul’s. Since the present world is conceived in Hebrews as a world of “shadows,” God could only intervene in it by mediators.
The experience and conception of salvation are also different in these two writers. There is no evidence in Hebrews of inward conflict and conversion and of constant personal relation with Christ, which constituted the entire spiritual life of Paul. The apostle’s central doctrine, that of justification by faith, does not appear in Hebrews. Faith is less the personal, mystical relation with Christ, that it is for Paul, than a general hope which lays hold of the future to overcome the present; and salvation is accomplished by cleansing, sanctification and perfection, not by justification. While Paul’s mind was not uninfluenced by Hellenistic thought, as we find it in Alexandria (as, e.g. in Colossians and Eph), it nowhere appears in his epistles so clearly and prominently as it does in Hebrews. Moreover, the author of Hebrews was probably a member of the community to which he writes ( Hebrews 13:18 f), but Paul never stood in quite the relation supposed here to any church. Finally, Paul could not have written Hebrews 2:3, for he emphatically declares that he did not receive his gospel from the older disciples ( Galatians 1:12; 2:6).
The general Christian ideas on which He was in agreement with Paul were part of the heritage which the apostle had left to all the churches. The few more particular affinities of Hebrews with certain Pauline writings (e.g. Hebrews 2:2 parallel Galatians 3:19; Hebrews 12:22; 3:14 parallel Galatians 4:25; Hebrews 2:10 parallel Romans 11:36; also with Ephesians; see yon Soden, Hand-Commentar, 3) are easily explicable either as due to the author’s reading of Paul’s Epistles or as reminiscences of Pauline phrases that were current in the churches. But they are too few and slender to rest upon them any presumption against the arguments which disprove the Pauline tradition. (2) Other Theories The passage that is most conclusive against the Pauline authorship ( Hebrews 2:3) is equally conclusive against any other apostle being the author. But almost every prominent name among the Christians of the second generation has been suggested. The epistle itself excludes Timothy ( Hebrews 13:23), and Titus awaits his turn. Otherwise Luke, Clement of Rome, Barnabas, Silas, Apollos, Priscilla and Aquila, Philip the Deacon, and Aristion have all had their champions. (a) Luke and Clement The first two, Luke and Clement, were brought in through their connection with Paul. Where it was recognized that a direct Pauline authorship could not be maintained, the Pauline tradition might still be retained, if the epistle could be assigned to one of the apostle’s disciples. These two were fixed upon as being well-known writers. But this very fact reveals the improbability of theory. Similar arguments from language and thought to those derived from the comparison of Hebrews with the Pauline writings avail also in the comparison of Hebrews with the writings of Luke and Clement. Both these disciples of the apostle adhere much closer to his system of thought than Hebrews does, and they reveal none of the influences of Alexandrian thought, which is predominant in Hebrews. (b) Barnabas; Priscilla and Aquila; Philip; Aristion; Apollos Of all the other persons suggested, so little is known that it is impossible to establish, with any convincing force, an argument for or against their authorship. (i) Barnabas was a Levite of Cyprus ( Acts 4:36), and once a companion of Paul ( Acts 13:2 ff). Another ancient writing is called “the Epistle of Barnabas,” but it has no affinity with Hebrews. The coincidence of the occurrence of the word “consolation” in Barnabas’ name ( Acts 4:36) and in the writer’s description of Hebrews (13:22) is quite irrelevant. Tertullian’s tradition is the only positive argument in favor of the Barnabas theory. It has been argued against it that Barnabas, being a Levite, could not have shown the opposition to the Levitical system, and the unfamiliarity with it ( Hebrews 7:27; 9:4), which is supposed to mark our epistle. But the author’s Levitical system was derived, not from the Hebrew Old Testament, nor from the Jerusalem temple, but from Jewish tradition; and the supposed inaccuracies as to the daily sin offering (7:27), and the position of the golden altar of incense (9:4) have been traced to Jewish tradition (see Moffatt, Introduction, 438). And the writer’s hostility to the Levitical system is not nearly as intense as that of Paul to Pharisaism. There is nothing that renders it intrinsically impossible that Barnabas was the author, nor is anything known of him that makes it probable; and if he was, it is a mystery why the tradition was confined to Africa. (ii) Harnack has argued the probability of a joint authorship by Priscilla and Aquila. The interchange of “I” and “we” he explains as due to a dual authorship by persons intimately related, but such an interchange of the personal “I” and the epistolary “we” can be paralleled in the Epistles of Paul (e.g. Romans) where no question of joint authorship arises. The probable relation of the author to a church in Rome may suit Priscilla arid Aquila (compare Romans 16:5 with Hebrews 13:22-24), but even if this interpretation of the aforementioned passages were correct, it is possible and probable that Luke, Barnabas, Apollos, and certainly Clement, stood in a similar relation to a Roman church. Harnack, on this theory, explains the disappearance of the author’s name as due to prejudice against women teachers. This is the only novel point in favor of this theory as compared with several others; and it does not explain why Aquila’s name should not have been retained with the address. The evidences adduced of a feminine mind behind the epistle are highly disputable. On the other hand, a female disciple of Paul’s circle would scarcely assume such authority in the church as the author of Hebrews does (13:17 f; compare Corinthians 14:34 f). And nothing that is known of Priscilla and Aquila would suggest the culture and the familiarity with Alexandrian thought possessed by this writer. Acts 18:26 does not prove that they were expert and cultured teachers, but only that they knew and could repeat the salient points of Paul’s early preaching. So unusual a phenomenon as this theory supposes demands more evidence to make it even probable. (But see Rendel Harris, Sidelights on New Testament Research, 148-76.) (iii) Philip the Deacon and Aristion, “a disciple of the Lord” mentioned by Papias, are little more than names to us. No positive knowledge of either survives on which any theory can be built. It is probable that both were personal disciples of the Lord, and they could not therefore have written Hebrews 2:3. (iv) Apollos has found favor with many scholars from Luther downward. No ancient tradition supports this theory, a fact which tells heavily against it, but not conclusively, for someone must have written the letter, and his name was actually lost to early tradition, unless it were Barnabas, and that tradition too was Unknown to the vast majority of the early churches. All that is known of Apollos suits the author of Hebrews. He may have learned the gospel from “them that heard” (2:3); he was a Jew, “an Alexandrian by race, a learned (or eloquent) man,” “mighty in the Scriptures,” “he powerfully confuted the Jews” ( Acts 18:24 ff), and he belonged to the same Pauline circle as Timothy and Titus ( 1 Corinthians 16:10-12; Titus 3:13; compare Hebrews 13:23). The Alexandrian type of thought, the affinities with Philo, the arguments from Jewish tradition and ceremonial, the fluent style, may all have issued from “an eloquent Jew of Alexandria.” But it does not follow that Apollos was the only person of this type. The author may have been a Gentile, as the purity of his Greek language and style suggests; and the combination of Greek and Hebrew thought, which the epistle reflects, and even Philo’s terms, may have had a wide currency outside Alexandria, as for instance in the great cosmopolitan cities of Asia. All that can be said is that the author of Hebrews was someone generally like what is known of Apollos, but who he actually was, we must confess with Origen, “God alone knows.”
IV. DESTINATION.
The identity of the first readers of Hebrews is, if possible, more obscure than that of the author. It was written to Christians, and to a specific body or group of Christians (see I above). The title “to Hebrews” might mean properly Palestinian Jews who spoke the Hebrew language, but the fact that the epistle was written in Greek excludes that supposition. It therefore meant Christians of Jewish origin, and gives no indication of their place of residence. The title represents an early inference drawn from the contents of the document, and the tradition it embodies was unanimously accepted from the 2nd century down to the early part of the last century. Now, however, a considerable body of critics hold that the original readers were Gentiles. The question is entirely one of inference from the contents of the epistle itself. 1. General Character of the Readers: The readers, like the writer, received the gospel first from “them that heard” ( Hebrews 2:3), from the personal disciples of the Lord, but they were not of their number. They had witnessed “signs and wonders” and “manifold powers” and “gifts of the Holy Spirit” ( Hebrews 2:4). Their conversion had been thorough, and their faith and Christian life had been of a high order. They had a sound knowledge of the first principles of Christ ( Hebrews 6:1 ff). They had become “partakers of Christ,” and had need only to “hold fast the beginning of (their) confidence firm unto the end” ( Hebrews 3:14). They had been fruitful in good works, ministering unto the saints ( Hebrews 6:10), enduring suffering and persecution, and sympathizing with whose who were imprisoned ( Hebrews 10:32-34).
All this had been in former days which appeared now remote. Their rulers and ministers of those days are now dead ( Hebrews 13:7). And they themselves have undergone a great change. While they should have been teachers, they have become dull of hearing, and have need again to be taught the rudiments of the first principles of the gospel ( Hebrews 5:12), and they are in danger of a great apostasy from the faith. They need warning against “an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God” ( Hebrews 3:12). They are become sluggish ( Hebrews 6:12), profane like Esau ( Hebrews 12:16), worldly-minded ( Hebrews 13:5). Perhaps their religion was tending toward a false asceticism and outward works ( Hebrews 13:4,9). And now that this moral dulness and spiritual indifference had fallen upon them, they are being subjected to a new test by persecution from outside ( Hebrews 10:36; 12:4), which renders the danger of their falling away from the faith all the more imminent. The author apparently bases his claim to warn them on the fact that he had been a teacher among them, and hoped soon to return to them ( Hebrews 13:18 f). The same might be said perhaps of Timothy ( Hebrews 13:23). Both author and readers had friends in Italy ( Hebrews 13:24) who were with the author when he wrote, either in Italy saluting the readers outside, or outside, saluting the readers in Italy.
In all this there is little or nothing to help to fix the destination of the letter, for it might be true at some time or other of any church. 2. Jews or Gentiles?: The old tradition that the readers were Jews claims some more definite support from the epistle itself. The writer assumes an intimate knowledge of the Old Testament and of Jewish ceremonial on their part. The fathers of the Hebrew race are also their fathers ( Hebrews 1:1; 3:9). The humanity that Christ assumed and redeemed is called “the seed of Abraham” ( Hebrews 2:16). All this, however, might stand in reference to a Gentilechurch, for the early Christians, without distinction of race, regarded themselves as the true Israel and heirs of the Hebrew revelation, and of all that related to it ( 1 Corinthians 10:1; Galatians 3:7 ff; 4:21 ff; Romans 4:11-18). Still there is force in Zahn’s argument that “Hebrews does not contain a single sentence in which it is so much as intimated that the readers became members of God’s people who descended from Abraham, and heirs of the promise given to them and their forefathers, and how they became such” (Intro to New Testament, II, 323).
Zahn further finds a direct proof in Hebrews 13:13 that “both the readers and the author belong to the Jewish people,” which he interprets as “meaning that the readers were to renounce fellowship with the Jewish people who had rejected Jesus, to confess the crucified Jesus, and to take upon themselves all the ignominy that Jesus met at the hands of his countrymen” (ibid., 324-25). But that is too large an inference to draw from a figurative expression which need not, and probably does not, mean more than an exhortation to rely on the sacrifice of Christ, rather than upon any external rules and ceremomes. Nor were the “divers and strange teachings” about marriage and meats (13:4,9) necessarily Jewish doctrines.
They might be the doctrines of an incipient Gnosticism which spread widely throughout the Christian churches, both Jewish and gentile, toward the end of the 1st century. There is otherwise no evidence that the apostasy, of which the readers stood in danger, was into Judaism, but it was rather a general unbelief and “falling away from the living God” (3:12).
It is the whole argument of the epistle, rather than any special references, that produced the tradition, and supports the view, that the readers were Jews. The entire message of the epistle, the dominant claims of Christ and of the Christian faith, rests upon the supposition that the readers held Moses, Aaron, the Jewish priesthood, the old Covenant and the Levitical ritual, in the highest esteem. The author’s argument is: You will grant the Divine authority and greatness of Moses, Aaron and the Jewish institutions: Christ is greater than they; therefore you ought to be faithful to Him. He assumes an exclusively Jewish point of view in the minds of his readers as his major premise. He could scarcely do that, if they had been Gentiles. Paul, when writing to the mixed church at Rome, relates his philosophy of the Christian revelation to both Jewish and Gentilepre- Christian revelation. Gentile Christians adopted the Jewish tradition as their own in consequence of, and secondary to, their attachment to Christianity.
Even Judaizing GentileChristians, such as may be supposed to have belonged to the Galatian and Corinthian churches, adopted some parts of the Jewish law only as a supplement to Christianity, but not as its basis.
Von Soden and others have argued with much reason that these Christians were not in danger of falling back into Judaism from Christianity, but rather of falling away from all faith into unbelief and materialism, like the Israelites in the wilderness ( Hebrews 3:7 ff), or Esau ( Hebrews 12:16). With all its references to Old Testament sacrifice and ceremonial, the letter contains not a single warning against reviving them, nor any indications that the readers were in danger of so doing (Hand-Commentar, 12-16). But it has been too readily assumed that these facts prove that the readers were not Jews. The pressure of Social influence and persecution rendered Jews and Jewish Christians, as well as GentileChristians, liable to apostatize to heathenism or irreligion (The Wisdom of Solomon 2:10,20; Macc 4; 6; 7; Philo, De Migratione Abrahami, XVI; Matthew 24:10,12; Acts 20:30; 1 Corinthians 10:7,14; 2 Thessalonians 2:4; John 2:18; 5:21; Pliny Epistle X, 96). Von Soden’s argument really cuts the other way. If the writer had been dealing with Gentile Christians who were in danger of relapsing into heathenism or of falling into religious indifference, his argument from the shadowy and temporary glories of Judaism to the perfect salvation in Christ would avail nothing, because, for such, his premises would depend upon his conclusion. But if they were Jewish Christians, even though leaning toward heathenism, his argument is well calculated to call up on its side all the dormant force of their early religious training. He is not arguing them out of a “subtle Judaism” quickened by the zeal of a propaganda (Moffatt, Introduction, 449-50), but from “drifting away” in Hebrews (2:1), from “neglect” (2:3), from “an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God” (3:12), from “disobedience” (4:11), from “a dulness of hearing” (5:11), but into “diligence .... that ye be not sluggish” (6:11 f), into “boldness and patience” (10:35 f), and to “lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees” (12:12); and this he might well do by his appeal to their whole religious experience, both Jewish and Christian, and to the whole religious history of their race. 3. The Locality of the Readers: The question of the locality of these “Hebrews” remains a matter for mere conjecture. Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome, Antioch, Colosse, Ephesus, Berea, Ravenna and other places have been suggested. Tradition, since Clement of Alexandria, fixed on Jerusalem, but on the untenable ground that the letter was written to Aramaic-speaking Jews. The undisputed fact that it was written in Greek tells against Jerusalem. So does the absence of all reference to the temple ritual, and the mention of almsgiving as the chief grace of the “Hebrews” (6:10). Jerusalem received rather than gave alms.
Nor is it likely that all the personal disciples of the Lord would have died out in Jerusalem (2:3). And it could not be charged against the mother church that it had produced no teachers (5:12). These points also tell with almost equal force against any Palestinian locality.
Alexandria was suggested as an alternative to Jerusalem, on the supposition that those references to Jewish ritual which did not correspond with the Jerusalem ritual ( Hebrews 7:27; 9:4; 10:11) might refer to the temple at Leontopolis. But the ritual system of the epistle is that of the tabernacle and of tradition, and not of any temple. The Alexandrian character of the letter has bearing on the identity of the author, but not so much on that of his readers. The erroneous idea that Paul was the author arose in Alexandria, but it would have been least likely to arise where the letter was originally sent.
Rome has lately found much favor. We first learn of the existence of the letter at Rome. The phrase “they of Italy salute you” ( Hebrews 13:24) implies that either the writer or his readers were in Italy. It may be more natural to think of the writer, with a small group of Italian friends away from home, sending greetings to Italy, than to suppose that a greeting from Italy generally was sent to a church at a distance. It is probable that a body of Jewish Christians existed in Rome, as in other large cities of the Empire.
But this view does not, as von Soden thinks, explain any coincidences between Hebrews and Romans. A Roman origin might. It could explain the use of Hebrews by Clement. But the letter might also have come to Rome by Clement’s time, even though it was originally sent elsewhere. The slender arguments in favor of Rome find favor chiefly because no arguments can be adduced in favor of any other place.
V. DATE. 1. Terminal Dates: The latest date for the composition of Hebrews is clearly fixed as earlier than 96 AD by reason of its use by Clement of Rome about that time.
There is no justification for the view that Hebrews shows dependence on Josephus. The earliest date cannot be so definitely fixed. The apparent dependence of Hebrews on Paul’s Epistles, Galatians, 1 Corinthians and Romans, brings it beyond 50 AD. 2. Conversion and History of Readers: But we have data in the epistle itself which require a date considerably later. The readers had been converted by personal disciples of the Lord ( Hebrews 2:3). They did not, therefore, belong to the earliest group of Christians. But it is not necessary to suppose a long interval between the Lord’s ascension and their conversion. The disciples were scattered widely from Jerusalem by the persecution that followed the death of Stephen ( Acts 8:1). “We may well believe that the vigorous preaching of Stephen would set a wave in motion which would be felt even at Rome” (Sanday, Romans, xxviii). They are not, therefore, necessarily to be described as Christians of the 2nd generation in the strict chronological sense. But the letter was written a considerable time after their conversion.
They have had time for great development in Hebrews (5:12). They have forgotten the former days after their conversion (10:32). Their early leaders are now dead (13:7). Yet the majority of the church still consists of the first converts (2:3; 10:32). And although no argument can be based upon the mention of 40 years (3:9), for it is only an incidental phrase in a quotation, yet no longer interval could lie between the founding of the church and the writing of the letter. It might be shorter. And the church may have been founded at any time from 32 to 70 AD. 3. Doctrinal Development: The doctrinal development represented in Hebrews stands midway between the system of the later Pauline Epistles (Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians) and that of the Johannine Writings. The divers and strange teachings mentioned include only such ascetic tendencies about meat and marriage ( Hebrews 13:4,9) as are reflected in Paul’s Epistles early and late.
There is no sign of the appearance of the full-blown heresies of the Ebionites, Docetists, and Gnostics, which became prevalent before the end of the 1st century. On the other hand the Logos-doctrine as the interpretation of the person of Christ ( Hebrews 1:1-4) is more fully thought out than in Paul, but less explicit, and less assimilated with the purpose of Christianity, than in the Fourth Gospel. 4. The Fall of Jerusalem: It has been argued that the letter must have been written before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, because in writing to a Jewish community, and especially in dealing with Jewish ritual, the writer would have referred to that event, if it had happened. This point would be relevant, if the letter had been addressed to Jerusalem, which is highly improbable. But, at a distance, an author so utterly unconcerned with contemporary history could easily have omitted mention of even so important a fact. For in fact the author never mentions the temple or its ritual. His system is that of the tabernacle of the Old Testament and of Jewish tradition. The writer’s interest is not in historical Judaism, and his omission to mention the great catastrophe does not prove that it had not occurred. The use of the present tense of the ritual does not imply its present continuance. “The present expresses the fact that so it is enjoined in the law, the past that with the founding of the New Covenant the old had been abolished” (Peake, Hebrews, 39). 5. Timothy: A point of contact with contemporary history is found in the fact that Timothy was still living and active when Hebrews was written (13:23), but it does not carry us far. Timothy was a young man and already a disciple, when Paul visited Galatia on his 2nd journey about 46 AD ( Acts 16:1).
And he may have lived to the end of the century or near to it. It cannot be safely argued from the mere mention of his name alone, that Paul and his other companions were dead. 6. Two Persecutions: Two incidents in the history of the readers are mentioned which afford further ground for a somewhat late date. Immediately after their conversion, they suffered persecution, “a great conflict of sufferings; partly, being made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, becoming partakers with them that were so used” ( Hebrews 10:32 f). And now again, when the letter is written, they are entering upon another time of similar trial, in which they “have need of patience” ( Hebrews 10:36), though they “have not yet resisted unto blood” ( Hebrews 12:4). Their leaders, at least, it would appear, the writer and Timothy, have also been in prison, but one is at liberty and the other expects to be soon ( Hebrews 13:19,23). It has been conjectured that the first persecution was that under Nero in 64 AD, and the second, that in the reign of Domitian, after 81 AD. But when it is remembered that in some part of the Empire Christians were almost always under persecution, and that the locale of these readers is very uncertain, these last criteria do not justify any dogmatizing. It is certain that the letter was written in the second half of the 1st century. Certain general impressions, the probability that the first apostles and leaders of the church were dead, the absence of any mention of Paul, the development of Paul’s theological ideas in a new medium, the disappearance of the early enthusiasm, the many and great changes that had come over the community, point strongly to the last quarter of the century. The opinions of scholars at present seem to converge about the year 80 AD or a little later.
VI. CONTENTS. 1. Summary of Contents: I. THE REVELATION OF GOD IN HIS SON (HEBREWS 1-2). 1. Christ the completion of revelation ( Hebrews 1:1-3). 2. Christ’s superiority over the angels ( Hebrews 1:4 ff). (1) Because He is a Son ( Hebrews 1:4-6). (2) Because His reign is eternal ( Hebrews 1:7 ff). 3. The dangers of neglecting salvation through the Son ( Hebrews 2:1-4). 4. The Son and humanity ( Hebrews 2:5 ff). (1) The lowliness and dignity of man ( Hebrews 2:5-8). (2) Necessity for the Incarnation ( Hebrews 2:9 ff). (a) To fulfill God’s gracious purpose ( Hebrews 2:9 f) . (b) That the Saviour and saved might be one ( Hebrews 2:11-15). (c) That the Saviour may sympathize with the saved ( Hebrews 2:16 ff).
II. THE PRINCE OF SALVATION ( <580301> HEBREWS 3:1 THROUGH 4:13). 1. Christ as Son superior to Moses as servant ( Hebrews 3:1-6). 2. Consequences of Israel’s unbelief ( Hebrews 3:7-11). 3 . Warning the “Hebrews” against similar unbelief ( Hebrews 3:12 ff). 4. Exhortations to faithfulness ( Hebrews 4:1-13). (1) Because a rest remains for the people of God ( Hebrews 4:1-11). (2) Because the omniscient God is judge ( Hebrews 4:12 f).
III. THE GREAT HIGH PRIEST ( HEBREWS 4:14 THROUGH 10:18). 1. Christ’s priesthood the Christian’s confidence ( Hebrews 4:14-16). 2. Christ has the essential qualifications for priesthood ( Hebrews 5:1-10). (1) Sympathy with men ( Hebrews 5:1-3). (2) God’s appointment ( Hebrews 5:4-10). 3. The spiritual dulness of the Hebrews ( Hebrews 5:11 through 6:12). (1) Their lack of growth in knowledge ( Hebrews 5:11 ff). (2) “Press on unto perfection” ( Hebrews 6:1-3). (3) The danger of falling away from Christ ( Hebrews 6:4-8). (4) Their past history ground for hoping better things ( Hebrews 6:9-12). 4. God’s oath the ground of Christ’s priesthood and of the believer’s hope ( Hebrews 6:13 ff). 5. Christ a priest after the order of Melchizedek ( Hebrews 7:1 ff). (1) The history of Melchizedek ( Hebrews 7:1-3). (2) The superiority of his order over that of Aaron ( Hebrews 7:4-10). (3) Supersession of the Aaronic priesthood ( Hebrews 7:11-19). (4) Superiority of Christ’s priesthood ( Hebrews 7:20-24). (5) Christ a priest befitting us ( Hebrews 7:24 ff). 6. Christ the true high priest ( Hebrews 8:1 through 10:18). (1) Because He entered the true sanctuary ( Hebrews 8:1-5). (2) Because He is priest of the New Covenant ( Hebrews 8:6 ff). (3) A description of the old tabernacle and its services ( Hebrews 9:1-7). (4) Ineffectiveness of its sacrifices ( Hebrews 9:8-10). (5) Superiority of Christ’s sacrifice ( Hebrews 9:11-14). (6) The Mediator of the New Covenant through His own blood ( Hebrews 9:15 ff). (7) Weakness of the sacrifices of the law ( Hebrews 10:1-5). (8) Incarnation for the sake of sacrifice ( Hebrews 10:6-9). (9) The one satisfactory sacrifice ( Hebrews 10:10-18).
IV. PRACTICAL EXHORTATIONS ( HEBREWS 10:19 THROUGH 13:25). 1. Draw near to God and hold fast the faith ( Hebrews 10:19-23). 2. The responsibility of Christians and the judgment of God ( Hebrews 10:24-31). 3. Past faithfulness a ground for present confidence ( Hebrews 10:32 ff). 4. The household of faith ( Hebrews 11:1 ff). (1) What is faith? ( Hebrews 11:1-3). (2) The examples of faith ( Hebrews 11:4-32). (3) The triumphs of faith ( Hebrews 11:33 ff). 5. Run the race looking unto Jesus ( Hebrews 12:1-3). 6. Sufferings as discipline from the Father ( Hebrews 12:4-11). 7. The duty of helping and loving the brethren ( Hebrews 12:12-17). 8. Comparison of the trials and privileges of Christians with those of the Israelites ( Hebrews 12:18 ff). 9. Various duties ( Hebrews 13:1-17). (1) Moral and social relations ( Hebrews 13:1-6). (2) Loyalty to leaders ( Hebrews 13:7 f). (3) Beware of Jewish heresies ( Hebrews 13:9-4). (4) Ecclesiastical worship and order ( Hebrews 13:15-17). 10. Personal affairs and greetings ( Hebrews 13:18 ff). (1) A request for the prayers of the church ( Hebrews 13:18 f). (2) A prayer for the church ( Hebrews 13:20 f) . (3) “Bear with the word of exhortation” ( Hebrews 13:22). (4) “Our brother Timothy” ( Hebrews 13:23). (5) Greetings ( Hebrews 13:24). (6) Grace ( Hebrews 13:25). 2. The Main Theme: The theme of the epistle is the absoluteness of the Christian religion, as based-upon the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ, the one and only mediator of salvation. The essence of Christ’s preeminence is that He fully realizes in His own person the principles of revelation and reconciliation. It is made manifest in His superiority over the Jewish system of salvation, which He therefore at once supersedes and fulfils. The author’s working concept is the Logos-doctrine of Philo; and the empirical data to which it is related is the religious history of Israel, as it culminates in Christianity. He makes no attempt to prove either his ideal first principles or his historical premises, and his philosophy of religion takes no account of the heathen world. The inner method of his argument is to fit Judaism and Christianity into the Logos-concept; but his actual is related to the ideal in the way of Plato’s antithesis, of shadow and reality, of pattern and original, rather than in Aristotle’s way of development, although the influence of the latter method may often be traced, as in the history of faith, which is carried back to the beginnings of history, but is made perfect only in the Christian consummation ( Hebrews 11:40). In a number of other ideas the teleological movement may be seen cutting across the categories of shadow and reality ( Hebrews 1:3; 1:10; 4:8 f; 5:8 f; 9:12; 10:12; 12:22). 3. Alexandrian Influences: The form of the argument may be described as either rabbinical or Alexandrian. The writer, after laying down his proposition, proceeds to prove it by quotations from the Old Testament, taken out of their context and historical connection, adapted and even changed to suit his present purpose. This practice was common to Palestinian and Alexandrian writers; as was also the use of allegory which plays a large part in Hebrews (e.g. Hebrews 3:7 through 4:11; 13:11 f). But the writer’s allegorical method differs from that of the rabbis in that it is like Philo’s, part of a conscious philosophy, according to which the whole of the past and present history of the world is only a shadow of the true realities which are laid up in heaven ( Hebrews 8:5; 9:23 f; 10:1). His interest in historical facts, in Old Testament writers, in Jewish institutions and even in the historical life of Jesus, is quite subordinate to his prepossession with the eternal and heavenly realities which they, in more or less shadowy fashion, represent.
That the affinities of Hebrews are Alexandrian rather than Palestinian is further proved by many philological and literary correspondences with The Wisdom of Solomon and Philo. Most of the characteristic terms and phrases of the epistle are also found in these earlier writers. It has been argued that Hebrews and Wisdom came from the same hand, and it seems certain that the author of Hebrews was familiar with both Wisdom and the writings of Philo (Plumptre in The Expositor, I, 329 ff, 409 ff; von Soden in Hand-Commentar, 5-6). In Philo the dualism of appearance and reality finds its ultimate synthesis in his master-conception of the Logos, and although this term does not appear in Hebrews in Philo’s sense, the doctrine is set forth in Philonic phraseology in the opening verses (1:1-4).
As Logos, Christ excels the prophets as revealer of God, is superior to the angels who Were the mediators of the old Covenant, and is more glorious than Moses as the builder of God’s true tabernacle, His eternal house; He is a greater Saviour than Joshua, for He brings his own to final rest; and He supersedes the Aaronic priesthood, for while they ministered in a “holy place made with hands, like in pattern to the true,” under a “law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things” ( Hebrews 9:24; 10:1), He “having come a high priest of the good things to come, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands .... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption” ( Hebrews 9:11 f). 4. The Christian Factor: Yet it is possible to exaggerate the dependence of Hebrews on Alexandrian thought. Deeper than the allegorical interpretation of passages culled from the Septuagint, deeper than the Logos-philosophy which formed the framework of his thought, is the writer’s experience and idea of the personal Christ. His central interest lies, not in the theoretical scheme which he adopts, but in the living person who, while He is the eternal reality behind all shadows, and the very image of God’s essence, is also our brother who lived and suffered on earth, the author of our salvation, our “fore-runner within the veil,” who “is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” ( Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:14 ff; 2:10; 5:7-9; 4:14-15; 6:20; 7:25). As in Paul and John, so in Hebrews, the historical and everliving Christ comes in as an original and creative element, which transforms the abstract philosophy of Hellenistic thought into a living system of salvation. Because of His essential and personal preeminence over the institutions and personalities of the old Covenant, Christ has founded a new Covenant, given a new revelation and proclaimed a new gospel. The writer never loses sight of the present bearing of these eternal realities on the lives of his readers. They are for their warning against apostasy, for their encouragement in the face of persecution, and for their undying hope while they `run the race that is set before (them), looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of .... faith ( Hebrews 2:3; 3:12 ff; 4:1 ff; 10:28 ff; 12:1 f,22 ff).
LITERATURE. (1) Commentary by A. S. Peake, Century Bible; A.B. Davidson, Bible Handbooks; Marcus Dods, Expositor’s Greek Test.; T.C. Edwards, Expositor’s Bible; F. Rendall (London, 1888); Westcott3 (1903); von Soden, Hand-Commentar; Hollmann, Die Schriften des New Testament. (2) Introductions by Moffatt, Introduction to the Lit. of the New Testament; A. B. Bruce in HDB; von Soden in EB; Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament; H.H.B Ayles, Destination, Date, and Authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews; Harnack, “Probabilia, uber die Addresse und den Verfasser des Hebraerbriefes,” ZNTW, I (1900); W. Wrede, Das literarische Ratsel des Hebraerbriefes (1906). (3) Theology: Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews; Milligan, The Theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews; Menegoz, La theologie de l’epitre aux Hebreux. For fuller list, see Moffatt, in the work quoted T. Rees HEBREWS, GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE ([ Eujagge>lion kaqj JEbrai>ouv, Euaggelion kath’ Hebraious ], [to< JEbrai`ko>n, to Hebraikon ], [to< jIoudai`ko>n, to Ioudaikon ]; Evangelium Hebraeorum, Judeorum): “The Gospel according to the Hebrews” was a work of early Christian literature to which reference is frequently made by the church Fathers in the first five centuries, and of which some twenty or more fragments, preserved in their writings, have come down to us. The book itself has long disappeared. It has, however, been the subject of many critical surmises and discussions in the course of the last century. It has been regarded as the original record of the life of Jesus, the Archimedespoint of the whole gospel history. From it Justin Martyr has been represented as deriving his knowledge of the works and words of Christ, and to it have been referred the gospel quotations found in Justin and other early writers when these deviate in any measure from the text of the canonical gospels. Recent discussions have thrown considerable light upon the problems connected with this Gospel, and a large literature has grown up around it of which the most important works will be noted below.
1. REFERENCES IN EARLY CHURCH HISTORY:
Speaking of Papias Eusebius mentions that he has related the story of a woman who was accused of many sins before the Lord, which is contained in the “Gospel according to the Hebrews.” This does not prove that Papias was acquainted with this Gospel, for he might have obtained the story, which cannot any longer be regarded as part of John’s Gospel, from oral tradition. But there is a certain significance in Eusebius’ mentioning it in this connection (Euseb., HE, III, xxxix, 16). Eusebius, speaking of Ignatius and his epp., takes notice of a saying of Jesus which he quotes (Ep. ad Smyrn, iii; compare Luke 24:39), “Take, handle me, and see that I am not an incorporeal spirit.” The saying differs materially from the saying in Luke’s Gospel, and Eusebius says he has no knowledge whence it had been taken by Ignatius. Jerome, however, twice over attributes the saying to the “Gospel according to the Hebrews,” and Origen quotes it from the “Teaching of Peter.” Ignatius may have got the saying from oral tradition, and we cannot, therefore, be sure that he knew this Gospel.
The first early Christian writer who is mentioned as having actually used the “Gospel according to the Hebrews” is Hegesippus, who flourished in the second half of the 2nd century. Eusebius, to whom we owe the reference, tells us that Hegesippus in his Memoirs quotes passages from “the Syriac Gospel according to the Hebrews” (Historia Ecclesiastica, IV, xxii, 7).
Irenaeus, in the last quarter of the 2nd century, says the Ebionites use only the “Gospel according to Matthew” and reject the apostle Paul, calling him an apostate from the law (Adv. Haer., i. 26, 2). There is reason to believe that there is some confusion in this statement of Irenaeus, for we have the testimony of Eusebius, Jerome and Epiphanius that it was the “Gospel according to the Hebrews” that was used by the Ebionites. With this qualification we may accept Irenaeus as a witness to this Gospel.
Clement of Alexandria early in the 3rd century quotes from it an apocryphal saying with the same formula as he employs for quotation of Holy Scripture (Strom., ii.9). Origen, Clement’s successor at Alexandria, has one very striking quotation from the “Gospel according to the Hebrews” (Comm. in Joann, ii), and Jerome says this Gospel is often used by Origen.
Eusebius, in the first half of the 4th century, mentions that the Ebionites use only the “Gospel according to the Hebrews” and take small account of the others (Historia Ecclesiastica, III, xxvii, 4). He has, besides, other references to it, and in his widely known classification of Christian Scriptures into “acknowledged” “disputed,” and “rejected,” he mentions this Gospel which he says some have placed in the last category, although those of the Hebrews who have accepted Christ are delighted with it (Historia Ecclesiastica, III, xxv, 5). Eusebius had himself in all probability seen and handled the book in the library of his friend Pamphilus at Caesarea, where Jerome, half a century later, found it and translated it.
Epiphanius, who lived largely in Palestine, and wrote his treatise on heresies in the latter half of the 4th century, has much to say of the Ebionites, and the Nazarenes. Speaking of the Ebionites, he says they receive the “Gospel according to Matthew” to the exclusion of the others, mentioning that it alone of the New Testament books is in Hebrew speech and Hebrew characters, and is called the “Gospel according to the Hebrews” (Haer., xxx.3). He goes on to say, that their “Gospel according to Matthew,” as it is named, is not complete but falsified and mutilated, “and they call it the Hebrew Gospel” (Haer., xxx. 13). The quotations which Epiphanius proceeds to make show that this Gospel diverges considerably from the canonical Gospel of Matthew and may well be that according to the Hebrews. It is more likely that “the Gospel according to Matthew, very full, in Hebrew,” of which Epiphanius speaks, when telling about the Nazarene, is the Hebrew “Gospel of Matthew” attested by Papias, Irenaeus, and a widespread early tradition. But as Epiphanius confesses he does not know whether it has the genealogies, it is clear he was not himself acquainted with the book.
Jerome, toward the end of the 4th century, is our chief authority for the circulation and use of the “Gospel according to the Hebrews,” although his later statements on the subject do not always agree with the earlier. He was proud of being “trilinguis,” acquainted with Hebrew as well as with Latin and Greek. “There is a Gospel,” he says, “which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use, which I lately translated from the Hebrew tongue into Greek and which is called by many the authentic Gospel of Matthew” (Commentary on Matthew 12:13). The fact here mentioned, that he translated the work, seems to imply that this Gospel was really something different from the canonical Matthew which he had in his hands. In another place, however, he writes: “Matthew .... first of all composed the Gospel of Christ in Hebrew letters and words, in Judea, for behoof of those of the circumcision who had believed, and it is not quite certain who afterward translated it into Greek. But the very Hebrew is preserved to this day in the Caesarean library, which Pamphilus the Martyr, with such care, collected. I myself was allowed the opportunity of copying it by the Nazarenes in Berea who use this volume. In which it is to be observed that the evangelist, when he uses the testimonies of the Old Testament, either in his own person, or in that of the Lord and Saviour, does not follow the authority of the Septuagint translators, but the Hebrew. Of those, the following are two examples: `Out of Egypt have I called my Son’ ( Matthew 2:15 the King James Version); and `He shall be called a Nazarene’ ( Matthew 2:23)” (De Vir. Ill., iii). It certainly looks as if in the former instance Jerome meant the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and in the latter the well-authenticated Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. At a later time, however, Jerome appears to withdraw this and to introduce a confusing or even contradictory note. His words are: “In the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which was written indeed in the Chaldee-Syr (Aramaic) language, but in Hebrew characters, which the Nazarenes use as the `Gospel of the Apostles,’ or as most people think `according to Matthew,’ which also is contained in the library at Caesarea, the narrative says” (Adv. Pelag., iii.2). As he proceeds, he quotes passages which are not in the canonical Mt. He also says: “That Gospel which is called the Gospel of the Hebrews which was latedly translated by me into Greek and Latin, and was used frequently by Origen” (Catal. Script. Eccl., “Jacobus”). Jerome’s notices of the actual Gospel were frequent, detailed and unequivocal.
Nicephorus at the beginning of the 9th century puts the Gospel according to the Hebrews in his list of disputed books of the New Testament along with the Apocalypse of John, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Epistle of Barnabas. This list is believed to rest upon an authority of about the year 500 AD, and, in the stichometry attached, this Gospel is estimated to have occupied 2,200 lines, while the canonical Matthew occupied 2,500.
Codex Lambda of the 9th century, discovered by Tischendorf, and now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, has marginal notes affixed to four passages of Matthew giving the readings of to Ioudaikon , the lost Gospel according to the Hebrews (Scrivener, Textual Criticism, I4, 160; see also Plate XI, 30, p. 131).
2. ITS CHARACTER AND CONTENTS:
All that survives, and all that we are told, of this work, show that it was of the nature of a Gospel, and that it was written in the manner of the Synoptic Gospels. But it seems not to have acquired at any time ecclesiastical standing outside the very limited circles of Jewish Christians who preferred it. And it never attained canonical authority. The Muratorian Fragment has no reference to it. Irenaeus knew that the Ebionites used only the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew, although, as we have seen, this may be really the Gospel according to the Hebrews; but his fourfold Gospel comprises the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which we know. There is no reason to believe that it was the source of the quotations made by Justin from the Apomnemoneumata , or of quotations made anonymously by others of the early Fathers. Like the Synoptic Gospels, however, it contained narratives of events as well as sayings and discourses. It had an account of John the Baptist’s ministry, of the baptism of Jesus, of the call of the apostles, of the woman taken in adultery, of the Last Supper, of the denial of Peter, of appearances of Jesus after the resurrection; and it contained the Lord’s Prayer, and sayings of Jesus, like the forgiveness of injuries seventy times seven, the counsel to the rich young ruler, and others. One or two sayings have a Gnostic tinge, as when Jesus calls the Holy Spirit His mother, and is made to express His unwillingness to eat the flesh of the Passover Lamb. There are apocryphal additions, even where incidents and sayings are narrated belonging to the canonical Gospels, and there are sayings and incidents wholly apocryphal in the fragments of the Gospel which have survived. But these superfluities do not imply any serious deviation from Catholic doctrine; they only prove, as Professor Zahn says, “the earnestness of the redactor of the Gospel according to the Hebrews to enrich the only Gospel which Jewish Christians possessed up to that time from the still unexhausted source of private oral tradition” (GK, II, 717).
The very title of the work suggests that it circulated among Jewish Christians. Those Christians of Palestine to whom Jerusalem was the ecclesiastical center betook themselves, after the troubles which befell the Holy City, to the less frequented regions beyond the Jordan, and were thus cut off from the main stream of catholic Christianity.
3. ITS CIRCULATION AND LANGUAGE:
It was accordingly easier for the spirit of exclusiveness to assert itself among them and also for heretical tendencies to develop. The Ebionites went farthest in this direction. They denied the supernatural birth of our Lord, and insisted upon the binding character of the Law for all Christians.
The Nazarenes, as all Jewish Christians were called at first, observed the ceremonial law themselves, but did not impose it upon GentileChristians.
And they accepted the catholic doctrine of the person of Christ. It was among a community of these Nazarenes at Berea, the modern Aleppo, that Jerome, during a temporary residence at Chalcis in Northern Syria, found the Gospel according to the Hebrews in circulation. No fewer than 9 times does he mention that this Gospel is their one Gospel, and only once does he connect the Ebionites with them in the use of it. Epiphanius draws a clear line of distinction between the Ebionites and the Nazarenes; and we can scarcely suppose that a Gospel which satisfied the one would be wholly acceptable to the other. There is reason to believe that the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew was most to the mind of the Hebrew Christians, and that it took different forms in the hands of the sects into which the Jewish Christian church became divided. Thus the Gospel of the Nazarenes was the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which in all probability had some affinity with the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel of the Ebionites, which seems to have been the same as the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles, was something of a more divergent doctrinal tendency suited to the exclusive and heretical views of that sect. But it is not easy to reconcile the statements of Epiphanius with those of Eusebius and Jerome.
That the Hebrew tongue in which Papins says Matthew composed his Logia was the Aramaic of Palestine is generally accepted. This Aramaic was closely akin to the Syriac spoken between the Mediterranean and the Tigris. It was the same as the Chaldee of the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel, of which examples have so recently been found in the Aramaic papyri from Elephantine at Assouan. Eusebius and Jerome are emphatic and precise in recording the fact that the Gospel according to the Hebrews was not only Hebrew or Aramaic in composition, but written in the square Hebrew characters, so different from the Old Hebrew of the Moabite Stone and the Siloam inscription. That there was a Greek translation before the time of Jerome of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which was used by Origen, Clement of Alexandria, and others, is strenuously affirmed by Professor Harnack (Altchristliche Literatur, I, 6 ff) and as strenuously denied by Professor Zahn (GK, II, 648 ff). One reason why the book never attained to any ecclesiastical authority was no doubt its limited circulation in a tongue familiar, outside the circle of Jewish Christians, to only a learned few. For this reason also it is unlikely that it will ever be found, as the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd, and other works have been.
4. RELATION TO MATTHEW:
It is natural to seek for traces of special relationship between the Gospel according to the Hebrews, circulating among communities of Jewish Christians, and the Gospel according to Matthew which grew up on the soil of Palestine, and which was originally composed in the interest of Jewish Christians, and circulated at a very early period in a Hebrew recension, soon superseded by the canonical Gospel of Matthew and now altogether lost. We have already seen that Irenaeus in all likelihood confused the “Gospel according to the Hebrews” with the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew; and that Jerome says the Gospel used by the Nazarenes was called by many the authentic Gospel of Matthew. Moreover, among the fragments that have survived, there are more which resemble Matthew’s record than either of the other Synoptics. E.B. Nicholson, after a full and scholarly examination of the fragments and of the references, puts forward the hypothesis that “Matthew wrote at different times the canonical Gospel and the Gospel according to the Hebrews, or, at least, that large part of the latter which runs parallel to the former” (The Gospel according to the Hebrews, 104). The possibility of two editions of the same Gospel-writing coming from the same hand has recently received illustration from Professor. Blass’ theory of two recensions of the Acts and of Luke’s Gospel to explain the textual peculiarities of these books in Codex Bezae (D). This theory has received the adhesion of eminent scholars, but Nicholson has more serious differences to explain, and it cannot be said that his able argument and admirably marshaled learning have carried conviction to the minds of New Testament scholars.
5. TIME OF COMPOSITION:
If we could be sure that Ignatius in his Epistle to the Smyrneans derived the striking saying attributed to our Lord, “Take, handle me, and see that I am not an incorporeal spirit,” from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, we should be able to fix its composition as at any rate within the 1st century. The obscurity of its origin, the primitive cast of its contents, and the respect accorded to it down into the 5th century, have disposed some scholars to assign it an origin not later than our Synoptic Gospels, and to regard it as continuing the Aramaic tradition of the earliest preaching and teaching regarding Christ. The manifestly secondary character of some of its contents seems to be against such an early origin. Professor Zahn is rather disposed to place it not earlier than 130, when, during the insurrection of Bar-cochba, the gulf that had grown up between Jews and Jewish Christians was greatly deepened, and with an exclusively Gentilechurch in Jerusalem, the Jewish Christians had lost their center and broken off into sects. The whole situation seems to him to point to a date somewhere between 130-50 AD. The data for any precise determination of the question are wanting.
6. UNCANONICAL SAYINGS AND INCIDENTS:
There is a saying which Clement of Alexandria quotes from it as Scripture: “He that wonders shall reign and he that reigns shall rest” (Strom., ii.9).
Origen quotes from it a saying of Jesus, reminding us somewhat of Ezekiel (8:3): “Just now My Mother the Holy Spirit took me by one of my hairs, and bore me away to the great mountain Thabor” (Orig., In Joann., ii; it is quoted several times both by Origen and Jerome). Jerome more than once quotes from it a saying of the Lord to His disciples: “Never be joyful except when ye look on your brother in love” (Hieron. in Ephesians 5:4; in Ezekiel 18:7). In his commentary on Matthew (6:11) Jerome mentions that he found in the third petition of the Lord’s prayer for the difficult and unique Greek word epiousios , which he translates “supersubstantialis,” the Aramaic word machar , crastinus, so that the sense would be, “Tomorrow’s bread give us today.” Of unrecorded incidents the most notable is that of the appearance of the Risen Lord to James: “And when the Lord had given His linen cloth to the servant of the priest, He went to James and appeared to him. For James had sworn that he would not eat bread from that hour wherein he had drunk the cup of the Lord until he saw Him rising from the dead. Again a little afterward the Lord says, Bring a table and bread. Immediately it is added: He took bread and blessed and brake, and afterward gave it to James the Just and said to him, My brother, eat thy bread for the Son of Man has risen from them that sleep” (Hieron., De Vir. Illustr., “Jacobus”).
Jerome also tells that in the Gospel according to the Hebrews, there is the following passage: “Lo, the mother of the Lord and His brethren said unto Him: John the Baptist is baptizing for the remission of sins; let us go and be baptized by him. But He said to them: What sin have I committed that I should go and be baptized by him? Unless perchance this very word which I have spoken is a sin of ignorance” (Hieron., Adv. Pelag., iii.2).
7. CONCLUSION:
This Gospel is not to be classed with heretical Gospels like that of Marcion, nor with apocryphal Gospels like that of James or Nicodemus. It differed from the former in that it did not deviate from any essential of catholic truth in its representation of our Lord. It differed from the latter in that it narrated particulars mostly relating to our Lord’s public ministry, while they occupy themselves with matters of curiosity left unrecorded in the canonical Gospels. It differs from the canonical Gospels only in that it is more florid in style, more diffuse in the relation of incidents, and more inclined to sectional views of doctrine. Its uncanonical sayings and incidents may have come from oral tradition, and they do lend a certain interest and picturesqueness to the narrative. Its language confined it to a very limited sphere, and its sectional character prevented it from ever professing Scriptural authority or attaining to canonical rank. See also APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS.
LITERATURE.
E.B. Nicholson, The Gospel according to the Hebrews (1879); R.
Handmann, Das Hebrder-Evangelium: Texte u. Untersuchungen, Band V (1889); Zahn, GK, II, 642-723 (1890); Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, I, 6 ff; II, 1, 625-51 (1897); Neutestamentliche Apocryphen (Hennecke), I, 11-21 (1904). T. Nicol HEBREWS, RELIGION OF THE See ISRAEL, RELIGION OF.
HEBRON (1) I. HISTORY OF THE CITY.
Hebron is said to have been rounded before Zoan (i.e. Tanis) in Egypt ( Numbers 13:22); its ancient name was Kiriath-arba, probably meaning the “Four Cities,” perhaps because divided at one time into four quarters, but according to Jewish writers so called because four patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Adam were buried there. According to Joshua 15:13 it was so called after Arba, the father of Anak. 1. Patriarchal Period: Abram came and dwelt by the oaks of MAMRE (which see), “which are in Hebron” Genesis (13:18); from here he went to the rescue of Lot and brought him back after the defeat of Chedorlaomer (14:13 f); here his name was changed to Abraham (17:5); to this place came the three angels with the promise of a son (18:1 f); Sarah died here (23:2), and for her sepulcher Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah (23:17); here Isaac and Jacob spent much of their lives (35:27; 37:14); from here Jacob sent Joseph to seek his brethren (37:14), and hence, Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt (46:1). In the cave of Machpelah all the patriarchs and their wives, except Rachel, were buried (49:30 f; 50:13). 2. Times of Joshua and Judges: The spies visited Hebron and near there cut the cluster of grapes ( Numbers 13:22 f). HOHAM (which see), king of Hebron, was one of the five kings defeated by Joshua at Beth-horon and slain at Makkedah ( Joshua 10:3 f). Caleb drove out from Hebron the “three sons of Anak” ( Joshua 14:12; 15:14); it became one of the cities of Judah ( Joshua 15:54), but was set apart for the Kohathite Levites ( Joshua 21:10 f), and became a city of refuge ( Joshua 20:7). One of Samson’s exploits was the carrying of the gate of Gaza “to the top of the mountain that is before Hebron” ( Judges 16:3). 3. The Days of the Monarchy: David, when a fugitive, received kindness from the people of this city ( Samuel 30:31); here Abner was treacherously slain by Joab at the gate ( 2 Samuel 3:27), and the sons of Rimmon, after their hands and feet had been cut off, were hanged “beside the pool” ( 2 Samuel 4:12). After the death of Saul, David was here anointed king ( 2 Samuel 5:3) and reigned here 7 1/2 years, until he captured Jerusalem and made that his capital ( 2 Samuel 5:5); while here, six sons were born to him ( 2 Samuel 3:2). In this city Absalom found a center for his disaffection, and repairing there under pretense of performing a vow to Yahweh, he raised the standard of revolt ( 2 Samuel 15:7 f). Josephus mistakenly places here the dream of Solomon (Ant., VIII, ii, 1) which occurred at Gibeon ( Kings 3:4). Hebron was fortified by Rehoboam ( 2 Chronicles 11:10). 4. Later History: Probably during the captivity Hebron came into the hands of Edom, though it appears to have been colonized by returning Jews ( Nehemiah 11:25); it was recovered from Edom by Simon Maccabeus (1 Macc 5:65; Josephus, Ant, XII, viii, 6). In the first great revolt against Rome, Simon bar-Gioras captured the city (BJ, IV, ix, 7), but it was retaken, for Vespasian, by his general Cerealis who carried it by storm, slaughtered the inhabitants and burnt it (ibid., 9).
During the Muslim period Hebron has retained its importance on account of veneration to the patriarchs, especially Abraham; for the same reason it was respected by the Crusaders who called it Castellum ad Sanctum Abraham. In 1165 it became the see of a Latin bishop, but 20 years later it fell to the victorious arms of Saladin, and it has ever since remained a fanatic Moslem center, although regarded as a holy city, alike by Moslem, Jew and Christian.
II. THE ANCIENT SITE.
Modern Hebron is a straggling town clustered round the Haram or sacred enclosure built above the traditional cave of MACHPELAH (which see); it is this sacred spot which has determined the present position of the town all through the Christian era, but it is quite evident that an exposed and indefensible situation, running along a valley, like this, could not have been that of earlier and less settled times. From many of the pilgrim narratives, we can gather that for long there had been a tradition that the original site was some distance from the modern town, and, as analogy might suggest, upon a hill. There can be little doubt that the site of the Hebron of Old Testament history is a lofty, olive-covered hill, lying to the West of the present town, known as er Rumeidy. Upon its summit are cyclopian walls and other traces of ancient occupation. In the midst are the ruins of a medieval building known as Der el-Arba`in, the “monastery of the forty” (martyrs) about whom the Hebronites have an interesting folklore tale. In the building are shown the so-called tombs of Jesse and Ruth. Near the foot of the hill are several fine old tombs, while to the North is a large and very ancient Jewish cemetery, the graves of which are each covered with a massive monolith, 5 and 6 ft. long. At the eastern foot of the hill is a perennial spring, `Ain el Judeideh; the water rises in a vault, roofed by masonry and reached by steps. The environs of this hill are full of folklore associations; the summit would well repay a thorough excavation.
A mile or more to the Northwest of Hebron is the famous oak of MAMRE (which see), or “Abraham’s oak,” near which the Russians have erected a hospice. It is a fine specimen of the Holm oak (Quercus coccifera), but is gradually dying. The present site appears to have been pointed out as that of Abraham’s tent since the 12th century; the earlier traditional site was at Ramet el Khalil. See MAMRE.
III. MODERN HEBRON.
Modern Hebron is a city of some 20,000 inhabitants, 85 percent of whom are Moslems and the remainder mostly Jews. The city is divided into seven quarters, one of which is known as that of the “glass blowers” and another as that of the “water-skin makers.” These industries, with the manufacture of pottery, are the main sources of trade. The most conspicuous building is the Haram (see MACHPELAH). In the town are two large open reservoirs the Birket el Qassasin, the “pool of the glass blowers” and Birket es Sultan, “the pool of the Sultan.” This latter, which is the larger, is by tradition the site of the execution of the murderers of Ishbosheth ( 2 Samuel 4:12).
The Moslem inhabitants are noted for their fanatical exclusiveness and conservatism, but this has been greatly modified in recent years through the patient and beneficent work of Dr. Paterson, of the U. F. Ch. of S. Med.
Mission. The Jews, who number about 1,500, are mostly confined to a special ghetto; they have four synagogues, two Sephardic and two Ashkenazic; they are a poor and unprogressive community.
For Hebron ( Joshua 19:28) see EBRON . E. W. G. Masterman HEBRON (2) ([ ˆwOrb]j, , chebhron ], “league,” “association”): (1) The third son of Kohath, son of Levi ( Exodus 6:18; Numbers 3:19,27; 1 Chronicles 6:2,18; 23:12,19). (2) A son of Mareshah and descendant of Caleb ( 1 Chronicles 2:42,43). See also KORAH.
HEBRONITES HEDGE Loose stone walls without mortar are the usual “fences” around fields in Palestine, and this is what gadher and gedherah signify in most passages.
Hedges made of cut thorn branches or thorny bushes are very common in the plains and particularly in the Jordan valley. E. W. G. Masterman HEDGEHOG HEED Figurative: (1) Of the partial victory of the evil power over humanity, “Thou shalt bruise (m “lie in wait for”) his heel” ( Genesis 3:15), through constant, insidious suggestion of the satisfaction of the lower desires.
Or if we regard this statement as a part of the Protevangelium, the earliest proclamation of Christ’s final, and complete victory over sin, the destruction of “the serpent” (“He shall bruise thy head”), then the reference is evidently to Christ’s sufferings and death, even to all that He endured in His human nature. (2) Of the stealthy tactics of the tribe of Dan in war, “An adder in the path, that biteth the horse’s heels” ( Genesis 49:17), by which it triumphed over foes of superior strength. (3) Of violence and brutality, “Who .... hath lifted up his heel against me” ( Psalm 41:9; John 13:18), i.e. lifted up his foot to trample upon me (compare Joshua 10:24). M. O. Evans HEGAI; HEGE HEGEMONIDES HEIFER Indeed, it is commonly supposed that the rite as it now stands is a rededication of one that formerly had been sacrificial. In the sacrifices proper the heifer could be used for a peace offering ( Leviticus 3:1), but was forbidden for the burnt ( Leviticus 1:3) or sin ( Leviticus 4:3,14) offerings. Hence, the sacrifice of 1 Samuel 16:2 was a peace offering. In Genesis 15:9 the ceremony of the ratification of the covenant by God makes use of a heifer and a she-goat, but the reason for the use of the females is altogether obscure. Compare following article.
Figuratively: The heifer appears as representing sleekness combined with helplessness in Jeremiah 46:20 (compare the comparison of the soldiers to `stalled calves’ in the next verse). In Jeremiah 50:11; Hosea 10:11, the heifer is pictured as engaged in threshing. This was particularly light work, coupled with unusually abundant food ( Deuteronomy 25:4), so that the threshing heifer served especially well for a picture of contentment. (“Wanton” in Jeremiah 50:11, however, is an unfortunate translation in the Revised Version (British and American).) Hosea, in contrast, predicts that the “heifers” shall be set to the hard work of plowing and breaking the sods. In Judges 14:18, Samson uses “heifer” in his riddle to refer to his wife. This, however, was not meant to convey the impression of licentiousness that it gives the modern reader. Burton Scott Easton HEIFER, RED In Numbers 19 a rite is described in which the ashes of a “red heifer” and of certain objects are mixed with running water to obtain the so-called “water for impurity.” (Such is the correct translation of the American Standard Revised Version in Numbers 19:9,13,10,21; 31:23. In these passages, the King James Version and the English Revised Version, through a misunderstanding of a rather difficult Hebrew term, have “water of separation”; Septuagint and the Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) have, “water of sprinkling.” the English Revised Version margin, “water of impurity,” is right, but ambiguous.) This water was employed in the removal of the uncleanness of a person or thing that had been in contact with a dead body, and also in removing ritual defilement from booty taken in war.
1. ORIGIN AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RITE:
The general origin of the rite is clear enough, as is the fact that this origin lies back of the official sacrificial system of Israel. For the removal of impurity, ritual as well as physical, water, preferably running water ( Numbers 19:17; compare Leviticus 14:5 ff; 15:13), is the natural means, and is employed universally. But where the impurity was unusually great, mere water was not felt to be adequate, and various substances were mixed with it in order to increase its efficacy. So (among other things) blood is used in Leviticus 14:6,7, and dust in Numbers 5:17 (see WATER OF BITTERNESS ). The use, however, of ashes in Numbers 19:17 is unique in the Old Testament, although parallels from elsewhere can be adduced. So e.g. in Ovid Fasti, iv.639-40, 725, 733, in the last of these references, “The blood of a horse shall be a purification, and the ashes of calves,” is remarkably close to the Old Testament. The ashes were obtained by burning the heifer completely, “her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, with her dung” (the contents of the entrails) ( Numbers 19:5; compare Exodus 29:14). Here only in the Old Testament is blood burned for a ceremonial purpose, and here only is burning a pewliminary; elsewhere it is either a chief act or serves to consume the remnants of a finished sacrifice — Leviticus 4:12 and Numbers 19:3 are altogether different.
The heifer is a female. For the regular sin offering for the congregation, only the male was permitted ( Leviticus 4:14), but the female was used in the purificatory ceremony of Deuteronomy 21:3 (a rite that has several points of similarity to that of Numbers 19). An individual sin offering by one of the common people, however, required a female ( Leviticus 4:28), but probably only in order to give greater prominence to the more solemn sacrifices for which the male was reserved. A female is required again in the cases enumerated in Leviticus 5:1-6, most of which are ritual defilements needing purification; a female was required at the purification of a leper (in addition to two males, Leviticus 14:10), and a female, with one male, was offered when a Nazirite terminated his vows ( Numbers 6:14). Some connection between purification and the sacrifice of a female may be established by this list, for even in the case of the Nazirite the idea may be removal of the state of consecration. But the reason for such a connection is anything but obvious, and the various explanations that have been offered are hardly more than guesses. The most likely is that purificatory rites originated in a very primitive stage when the female was thought to be the more sacred animal on account of its greater usefulness. Of the other requirements for the heifer she must be “red,” i.e. reddish brown ( Numbers 19:2). Likeness in color to blood is at first sight the most natural explanation, but likeness in color to ripe grain is almost equally plausible. It may be noted that certain Egyptian sacrifices also required red cattle as victims (Plutarch, De Isid. 31). The heifer is to be “without spot” (“faultless”), “wherein is no blemish,” the ordinary requirement for sacrifices. (The Jewish exegetes misread this “perfectly red, wherein is no blemish,” with extraordinary results; see below.) But an advance on sacrificial requirements is that she shall be one “upon which never came yoke.” This requirement is found elsewhere only in Deuteronomy 21:3 and in 1 Samuel 6:7 (that the animals in this last case were finally sacrificed is, however, not in point). But in other religions this requirement was very common (compare Iliad x.293; Vergil, Georg. iv.550-51; Ovid, Fasti iv.336).
2. USE OF CEDAR AND HYSSOP:
While the heifer was being burned, “cedar-wood, and hyssop, and scarlet” (i.e. scarlet wool or thread) were cast into the flames. The same combination of objects (although differently employed) is found at the cleansing of a leper ( Leviticus 14:4), but their meaning is entirely unknown. The explanations offered are almost countless. It is quite clear that hyssop was especially prized in purifications ( Psalm 51:7), but the use of hyssop as a sprinkler and the use of ashes of hyssop may be quite unrelated. Hyssop and cedar were supposed to have medicinal properties (see CEDAR; HYSSOP). Or the point may be the use of aromatic woods.
For a mixture of cedar and other substances in water as a purificatory medium compare Fossey, Magie Assyrienne, 285. The scarlet wool offers still greater difficulties, apart from the color, but it may be noted that scarlet wool plays a part in some of the Babylonian conjurations (Assyrian Bibl., XII, 31). But, obviously, none of this leads very far and it may all be in the wrong direction. All that can be said definitely is that Leviticus 14:4 and Numbers 19:6 show that the combination of objects was deemed to have a high purificatory value.
3. APPLICATION AND SACREDNESS OF THE ASHES:
The ashes, when obtained, were used in removing the greatest of impurities. Consequently, they themselves were deemed to have an extraordinarily “consecrated” character, and they were not to be handled carelessly. Their consecration extended to the rite by which they were produced, so that every person engaged in it was rendered unclean ( Numbers 19:7,8,10), an excellent example of how in primitive religious thought the ideas of “holiness” and “uncleanness” blend. It was necessary to perform the whole ceremony “without the camp” ( Numbers 19:3), and the ashes, when prepared, were also kept without the camp ( Numbers 19:9), probably in order to guard against their touch defiling anyone (as well as to keep them from being defiled). When used they were mixed with running water, and the mixture was sprinkled with hyssop on the person or object to be cleansed ( Numbers 19:17-19). The same water was used to purify booty ( Numbers 31:23), and it may also be meant by the “water of expiation” in Numbers 8:7.
4. OF NON-PRIESTLY AND NON-ISRAELITISH ORIGIN:
In addition to the similarities already pointed out between Numbers 19 and Deuteronomy 21:1-9, the rites resemble each other also in the fact that, in both, laymen are the chief functionaries and that the priests have little to do (in Deuteronomy 21:1-9 they are mere passive witnesses). This suggests a non-priestly origin. The title “sin-offering” in Numbers 19:9,17 (unless used in a unique sense) points to an original sacrificial meaning, although in Numbers 19 the heifer is carefully kept away from the altar. Again, the correspondences with rites in other religions indicate a non-Israelitish origin. Such a ceremony may well have passed among the Israelites and have become prized by them. It contained nothing objectionable and seemed to have much of deep worth, and a few slight additions — chiefly the sprinkling ( Numbers 19:4; compare Leviticus 4:6,17) — made it fit for adoption into the highest system.
Some older features may have been eliminated also, but as to this, of course, there is no information. But, in any case, the ceremony is formed of separate rites that are exceedingly old and that are found in a great diversity of religions so that any elaborate symbolic interpretation of the details would seem to be without justification. The same result can be reached by comparing the countless symbolic interpretations that have been attempted in the past, for they differ hopelessly. As a matter of fact, the immense advance that has been gained in the understanding of the meaning of the Old Testament rites through the comparative study of religions has shown the futility of much that has been written on symbolism. That a Certain rite is widely practiced may merely mean that it rests on a true instinct. To be sure, the symbolism of the future will be written on broader lines and will be less pretentious in its claims, but for these very reasons it will rest on a more solid basis. At present, however, the chief task is the collection of material and its correct historical interpretation.
5. OBSCURITY OF LATER HISTORY:
The later history of the rite is altogether obscure. As no provision was made in Numbers 19 for sending the ashes to different points, the purification could have been practiced only by those living near the sanctuary. Rabbinical casuistry still further complicated. matters by providing that two black or white hairs from the same follicle would disqualify the heifer (see above), and that one on whom even a cloth had been laid could not be used. In consequence, it became virtually or altogether impossible to secure a proper animal, and the Mishnic statement that only nine had ever been found (Parah, iii.5) probably means that the rite had been obsolete long before New Testament times. Still, the existence of the tractate, Parah, and the mention in Hebrews 9:13 show that the provisions were well remembered. See also SACRIFICE.
LITERATURE.
Baentsch (1903), Holzinger (1903), and (especially) Grey (1903) on Nu; Kennedy in HDB; Edersheim, Temple and Ministry, chapter xviii (rabbinic traditions. Edersheim gives the best of the “typological” explanations). Burton Scott Easton HEIGHT; HEIGHTS In the New Testament we have hupsoma, prop. of space ( Romans 8:39), and hupsos of measure ( Ephesians 3:18; Revelation 21:16). James Orr HEIR 1. THE WORD “HEIR”:
In the New Testament “heir” is the invariable translation of [klhro>nomov, kleronomos ] (15 times), the technical equivalent in Greek, and of the compound [sunklhro>nomov, sunkleronomos ], “co-heir,” in Romans 8:17; Ephesians 3:6; Hebrews 11:9; 1 Peter 3:7 (in Galatians 4:30; Hebrews 1:14, contrast the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American)). In the Old Testament “heir” and “to be heir” both represent some form of the common verb [ vr”y; , yarash ], “possess,” and the particular rendition of the verb as “to be heir” is given only by the context (compare e.g. the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American) in Jeremiah 49:2; Micah 1:15).
Exactly the same is true of the words translated “inherit,” “inheritance,” which in by far the great majority of cases would have been represented better by “possess,” “possession” (see INHERITANCE and OHL on ljn ).
Consequently, when God is said, for instance, to have given Palestine to Israel as an `inheritance’ ( Leviticus 20:24, etc.), nothing more need be meant than `given as a possession.’ The Septuagint, however, for the sake of variety in its rendition of Hebrew words, used kleronomeo in many such cases (especially Genesis 15:7,8; 22:17), and thereby fixed on `heir’ the sense of `recipient of a gift from God.’ And so the word passed in this sense into New Testament Greek — Romans 4:13,14; Galatians 3:29; Titus 3:7; Hebrews 6:17; 11:7; James 2:5; compare Ephesians 3:6; Hebrews 11:9; 1 Peter 3:7. On the other hand, the literal meaning of the word is found in Mark 12:7 (and parallels and Galatians 4:1 — in the latter case being suggested by the transferred meaning in 3:29 — while in Romans 8:17; Galatians 4:7, the literal and transferred meanings are blended. This blending has produced the phrase “heirs of God,” which, literally, is meaningless and which doubtless was formed without much deliberation, although it is perfectly clear. A similar blending has applied “heir” to Christ in Hebrews 1:2 (compare Romans 8:17 and perhaps Mark 12:7) as the recipient of all things in their totality. But apart from these “blended” passages, it would be a mistake to think that sonship is always consciously thought of where “heir” is mentioned, and hence, too much theological implication should not be assigned the latter word.
2. HEIR IN OLD TESTAMENT LAW:
The heirs of property in the Old Testament were normally the sons and, chief among these, the firstborn. (1) Deuteronomy 21:15-17 provides that the firstborn shall inherit a “double portion,” whence it would appear that all the other sons shared equally. (It should be noted that in this law the firstborn is the eldest son of the father, not of the mother as in Exodus 13:2.) Uncertain, however, is what Deuteronomy 21:15-17 means by “wife,” and the practice must have varied. In Genesis 21:10 the son of the handmaid was not to be heir with Isaac, but in Genesis 30:1-13 the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah are reckoned as legitimate children of Jacob. See MARRIAGE. Nor is it clear that Deuteronomy 21:15-17 forbids setting aside the eldest son because of his own sin — compare the case of Reuben ( Genesis 49:3,1; <130501> Chronicles 5:1), although the son of a regular wife ( Genesis 29:32). The very existence of Deuteronomy 21:15-17, moreover, shows that in spite of the absence of formal wills, a man could control to some extent the disposition of his property after his death and that the right of the firstborn could be set aside by the father ( 1 Chronicles 26:10). That the royal dignity went by primogeniture is asserted only (in a particular case) in Chronicles 21:3, and both David ( 1 Kings 1:11-13) and Rehoboam ( 2 Chronicles 11:21-23) chose younger sons as their successors. A single payment in the father’s lifetime could be given in lieu of heritage ( Genesis 25:6; Luke 15:12), and it was possible for two brothers to make a bargain as to the disposition of the property after the father’s death ( Genesis 25:31-34). (2) When there were sons alive, the daughters had no right of inheritance, and married daughters had no such right in any case. ( Job 42:15 describes an altogether exceptional procedure.) Probably unmarried daughters passed under the charge of the firstborn, as the new head of the family, and he took the responsibility of finding them husbands. Numbers 27:1-11; 36:1-12 treat of the case where there were no sons — the daughters inherited the estate, but they could marry only within the tribe, lest the tribal possessions be confused. This right of the daughters, however, is definitely stated to be a new thing, and in earlier times the property probably passed to the nearest male relatives, to whom it went in later times if there were no daughters. In extreme cases, where no other heirs could be found, the property went to the slaves ( Genesis 15:3; Proverbs 30:23, noting that the meaning of the latter verse is uncertain), but this could have happened only at the rarest intervals. A curious instance is that of 1 Chronicles 2:34,35, where property is preserved in the family by marrying the daughter to an Egyptian slave belonging to the father; perhaps some adoption-idea underlies this. (3) The wife had no claim on the inheritance, though the disposition made of her dowry is not explained, and it may have been returned to her. If she was childless she resorted to the Levirate marriage ( Deuteronomy 25:5-10). If this was impracticable or was without issue she returned to her own family and might marry another husband ( Genesis 38:11; Leviticus 22:13; Ruth 1:8). The inferior wives (concubines) were part of the estate and went to the heir; indeed, possession of the father’s concubines was proof of possession of his dignities ( 2 Samuel 16:21,22; 1 Kings 2:13-25). At least, such was the custom in the time of David and Solomon, but at a later period nothing is heard of the practice. (4) The disposition of land is a very obscure question. Numbers 36:4 states explicitly that each heir had a share, but the continual splittin up of an estate through successive generations would have produced an impossible state of affairs. Possibly the land went to the eldest born as part of his portion, possibly in some cases it was held in common by the members of the family, possibly some member bought the shares of the others, possibly the practice differed at different times. But our ignorance of the facts is complete. NOTE. — The dates assigned by different scholars to the passages cited have an important bearing on the discussion. Burton Scott Easton HELAH HELAM HELBAH HELBON HELDAI HELEB HELED HELEK HELEM HELEPH HELEZ HELI HELIODORUS HELKAI The head of a priestly house in the days of Joiakim.
HELKATH HELKATH-HAZZURIM HELL 1. THE WORD IN THE KING JAMES VERSION:
The English word, from a Teutonic root meaning “to hide” or “cover,” had originally the significance of the world of the dead generally, and in this sense is used by Chaucer, Spenser, etc., and in the Creed (“He descended into hell”); compare the English Revised Version Preface. Now the word has come to mean almost exclusively the place of punishment of the lost or finally impenitent; the place of torment of the wicked. In the King James Version of the Scriptures, it is the rendering adopted in many places in the Old Testament for the Hebrew word she’ol (in 31 out of 65 occurrences of that word it is so translated), and in all places, save one ( 1 Corinthians 15:55) in the New Testament, for the Greek word Hades (this word occurs 11 times; in 10 of these it is translated “hell”; 1 Corinthians 15:55 reads “grave,” with “hell” in the margin). In these cases the word has its older general meaning, though in Luke 16:23 (parable of Rich Man and Lazarus) it is specially connected with a place of “torment,” in contrast with the “Abraham’s bosom” to which Lazarus is taken (16:22).
2. THE WORD IN THE REVISED VERSION:
In the above cases the Revised Version (British and American) has introduced changes, replacing “hell” by “Sheol” in the passages in the Old Testament (the English Revised Version retains “hell” in Isaiah 14:9,15; the American Standard Revised Version makes no exception), and by “Hades” in the passages in the New Testament (see under these words).
3. GEHENNA:
Besides the above uses, and more in accordance with the modern meaning, the word “hell” is used in the New Testament in the King James Version as the equivalent of Gehenna (12 t; Matthew 5:22,29; 10:28, etc.). the Revised Version (British and American) in these cases puts “Gehenna” in the margin. Originally the Valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem, Gehenna became among the Jews the synonym for the place of torment in the future life (the “Gehenna of fire,” Matthew 5:22, etc.; see GEHENNA ).
4. TARTARUS:
In yet one other passage in the New Testament ( 2 Peter 2:4), “to cast down to hell” is used (the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American)) to represent the Greek tartaroo , (“to send into Tartarus”). Here it stands for the place of punishment of the fallen angels: “spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell, and committed them to pits (or chains) of darkness” (compare Jude 1:6; but also Matthew 25:41). Similar ideas are found in certain of the Jewish apocalyptic books (Book of Enoch, Book of Jubilees, Apocrypha Baruch, with apparent reference to Genesis 6:1-4; compare ESCHATOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ).
On theological aspect, see PUNISHMENT, EVERLASTING . For literature, see references in above-named arts., and compare article “Hell” by Dr. D.
S. Salmond in HDB. James Orr HELLENISM; HELLENIST 1. THE EXPANSION OF THE GREEK PEOPLES:
Before the coming of the Hellenic peoples into what we now call Greece, there existed in those lands a flourishing civilization to which we may give the name “Aegean.” The explorations of archaeologists during the last few decades have brought it to light in many places on the continent, as well as on the islands of the Aegean and notably in Crete. When the Hellenic peoples came, it was not as a united nation, nor even as homogeneous tribes of a common race; though without doubt predominantly of kindred origin, it was the common possession of an Aryan speech and of similar customs and religion that marked them off from the peoples among whom they settled. When their southward movemerit from Illyria occurred, and by what causes it was brought about, we do not know; but it can hardly have long antedated the continuance of this migration which led to the settlement of the coast districts of Asia Minor and the islands of the Aegean from about the 13th to the 10th centuries BC. In the colonization of these new territories the Hellenic peoples became conscious of their kinship, partly because the several colonies received contingents from various regions of the motherland, partly because they were in common brought into striking contrast to the alien “Barbarians” who spoke other untintelligible languages. As the older communities on the mainland and on the islands began to flourish, they felt the need, arising from various causes, for further colonization. Among these causes we may mention the poverty of the soil in Greece proper, the restricting pressure of the strong tribes of Asia Minor who prevented expansion inland, a growing disaffection with the aristocratic regime in almost all Greek states and with the operation of the law of primogeniture in land tenure, and lastly the combined lure of adventure and the prospect of trade. Thus, it came about that in the 8th and 7th centuries BC, two great movements of colonial expansion set in, one toward the Hellespont and to the shores of the Pontus, or Black Sea, beyond, the other westward toward Southern Italy, Sicily, and beyond as far as Gades in Spain. To the 7th century belongs also the colonization of Naucratis in Egypt and of Cyrene in Libya. Then followed a period of relative inactivity during the 5th century, which was marked by the desperate conflict of the Greeks with Persia in the East and with Carthage in the West, succeeded by even more disastrous conflicts among themselves. With the enforced internal peace imposed by Macedonia came the resumption of colonial and military expansion in a measure before undreamed of. In a few years the empire of Alexander embraced Thrace, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Asia eastward beyond the Indus.
The easternmost regions soon fell away, but Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt long continued under Greek rule, until Rome in the 1st century BC made good her claims to sovereignty in those lands.
2. THE HELLENIC STATE:
Throughout this course of development and expansion we speak of the people as Greeks, although it is evident that even such racial homogeneity as they may have had on coming into Greece must have been greatly modified by the absorption of conquered peoples. But the strong individuality of the Hellenic population manifested itself everywhere in its civilization. In the evolution from the Homeric kingship (supported by the nobles in council, from which the commonalty was excluded, or where it was supposed at most to express assent or dissent to proposals laid before it) through oligarchic or aristocratic rule and the usurped authority of the tyrants, to the establishement of democratic government, there is nothing surprising to the man of today. That is because Greek civilization has become typical of all western civilization. In the earlier stages of this process, moreover, there is nothing strikingly at variance with the institutions of the Hebrews, at least so far as concerns the outward forms.
But there existed throughout a subtle difference of spirit which made it possible, even inevitable, for the Greeks to attain to democratic institutions, whereas to the Hebrews such a development was impossible, if not unthinkable. It is difficult to define this spirit, but one may say that it was marked from the first by an inclination to permit the free development and expression of individuality subordinated to the common good; by a corresponding recognition of human limitations over against one’s fellowman as over against Deity; by an instinctive dread of excess as inhuman and provoking the just punishment of the gods; and lastly by a sane refusal to take oneself too seriously, displaying itself in a certain good-humored irony even among men who, like Socrates and Epicurus, regarded themselves as charged with a sublime mission, in striking contrast with the Hebrew prophets who voiced the thunders of Sinai, but never by any chance smiled at their own earnestness. Even the Macedonians did not attempt to rule Greece with despotic sway, leaving the states in general in the enjoyment of their liberties; and in the Orient, Alexander and his successors, Roman as well as Greek, secured their power and extended civilization by the foundation and encouragement of Hellenic cities in extraordinary numbers.
The city-state, often confederated with other city-states, displaced the organization of tribe or clan, thus substituting a new unit and a new interest for the old; and the centers thus created radiated Hellenic influence and made for order and good government everywhere. But in accordance with the new conditions the state took on a somewhat different form. While the city preserved local autonomy, the state became monarchical; and the oriental deification of the king reinforced by the Hellenic tendency to deify the benefactors of mankind, eventuated in modes of speech and thought which powerfully influenced the Messianic hopes of the Jews.
3. HELLENIC LIFE:
The life of the Greeks, essentially urban and dominated by political interests fostered in states in which the individual counted for much, was of a type wholly different from the oriental. Although the fiction of consanguinity was cultivated by the Hellenic city-state as by the Semitic tribe, it was more transparent in the former, particularly in the newer communities formed in historical times. There was thus a powerful stimulus to mutual tolerance and concession which, supported as it was by the strong love of personal independence and the cultivation of individuality, led to the development of liberty and the recognition of the rights of man. A healthy social life was the result for those who shared the privileges of citizenship, and also, in hardly less degree, for those resident aliens who received the protection of the state. Women also, though not so free as men, enjoyed, even at Athens where they were most limited, liberties unknown to the Orientals. In the Hellenistic age they attained a position essentially similar to that of modern Europe. There were slaves belonging both to individuals and the state, but their lot was mitigated in general by a steadily growing humanity. The amenities of life were many, and were cultivated no less in the name of religion than of art, literature, and science.
4. HELLENIC ART AND LETTERS:
As in every phase of Greek civilization, the development of art and letters was free. Indeed their supreme excellence must be attributed to the happy circumstances which suffered them to grow spontaneously from the life of the people without artificial constraints imposed from within, or overpowering influences coming from without: a fortune which no other great movement in art or letters can boast. Greek art was largely developed in the service of religion; but owing to the circumstance that both grew side by side, springing from the heart of man, their reactions were mutual, art contributing to religion quite as much as it received. The creative genius of the Hellenic people expressed itself with singular directness and simplicity in forms clearly visualized and subject to the conditions of psychologically effective grouping in space or time. Their art is marked by the observance of a just proportion and by a certain natural restraint due to the preponderance of the intellectual element over the purely sensuous. Its most characteristic product is the ideal type in which only enough individuality enters to give to the typical the concreteness of life. What has been said of art in the narrower sense applies equally to artistic letters. The types thus created, whether in sculpture, architecture, music, drama, history, or oratory, though not regarded with superstitious reverence, commended themselves by the sheer force of inherent truth and beauty to succeeding generations, thus steadying the course of development and restraining the exuberant originality and the tendency to individualism. In the Hellenistic age, individualism gradually preponderated where the lessening power of creative genius did not lead to simple imitation.
5. PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE AND OF CONDUCT:
The traditional views of the Hellenic peoples touching Nature and conduct, which did not differ widely from those of other peoples in a corresponding stage of culture, maintained themselves down to the 7th century BC with comparatively little change. Along with and following the colonial expansion of Hellenism there came the awakening intellectual curiosity, or rather the shock of surprise necessary to convert attention into question.
The mythology of the Greeks had contained a vague theology, without authority indeed, but satisfactory because adequate to express the national thought. Ethics there was none, morality being customary. But the extending horizon of Hellenic thought discovered that customs differed widely in various lands; indeed, it is altogether likely that the collection of strange and shocking customs which filled the quivers of the militant Sophists in the 5th century had its inception in the 6th and possibly the 7th century At any rate it furnished the fiery darts of the adversary until ethics was founded in reason by the quest of Socrates for the universal, not in conduct, but in judgment. As ethics arose out of the irreconcilable contradictions of conduct, so natural philosophy sprung from the contradictions of mythical theology and in opposition to it. There were in fact two strata of conceptions touching supernatural beings; one, growing out of a primitive animism, regarded their operations essentially from the point of view of magic, which refuses to be surprised at any result, be it never so ill-proportioned to the means employed, so long as the mysterious word was spoken or the requisite act performed; the other, sprung from a worship of Nature in her most striking phenomena, recognized an order, akin to the moral order, in her operations. When natural philosophy arose in the 6th century, it instinctively at first, then consciously, divested Nature of personality by stripping off the disguise of myth and substituting a plain and reasoned tale founded on mechanical principles. This is the spirit which pervades pre-Socratic science and philosophy. The quest of Socrates for universally valid judgments on conduct directed thought to the laws of mind, which are teleological, in contradistinction to the laws of matter, which are mechanical; and thus in effect dethroned Nature, regarded as material, by giving primacy to mind. Henceforth, Greek philosophy was destined, with relatively few and unimportant exceptions, to devote itself to the study of human conduct and to be essentially idealistic, even where the foundation, as with the Stoics, was ostensibly materialistic. More and more it became true of the Greek philosophers that they sought God, “if haply they might feel after him and find him,” conscious of the essential unity of the Divine and the human, and defining philosophy as the endeavor to assimilate the soul to God.
6. HELLENIC AND HELLENISTIC RELIGION:
The Homeric poems present a picture of Greek life as seen by a highly cultivated aristocratic society having no sympathy with the commonalty.
Hence, we are not to regard Homeric religion as the religion of the Hellenic peoples in the Homeric age. Our first clear view of the Hellenic commoner is presented by Hesiod in the 8th century. Here we find, alongside of the worship of the Olympians, evidences of chthonian cults and abundant hints of human needs not satisfied by the well-regulated religion of the several city-states. The conventionalized monarchy of Zeus ruling over his fellow-Olympians is known to be a fiction of the poets, having just as much — no more — foundation, in fact, as the mythical overlordship of Agamemnon over the assembled princes of the Achaens; while it caught the imagination of the Greeks and dominated their literature, each city-state possessed its own shrines sacred to its own gods, who might or might not be called by the names of Olympians. Yet the great shrines which attracted Greeks from every state, such as those of Zeus at Dodona (chiefly in the period before the 7th century) and Olympia, of Apollo at Delos and Delphi, and of Hera at Argos, were the favored abodes of Olympians. Only one other should be mentioned: that of Demeter at Eleusis. Her worship was of a different character, and the great repute of her shrine dates from the 5th century. If the Zeus of Olympia was predominantly the benign god of the sky, to whom men came in joyous mood to delight him with pomp and festive gatherings, performing feats of manly prowess in the Olympic games, the Zeus of Dodona, and the Delphian Apollo, as oracular deities, were visited in times of doubt and distress. The 7th and 6th centuries mark the advent — or the coming into prominence — of deities whose appeal was to the deepest human emotions, of ecstatic enthusiasm, of fear, and of hope. Among them we must mention Dionysus, the god of teeming Nature (see DIONYSUS), and Orpheus. With their advent comes an awakening of the individual soul, whose aspiration to commune with Deity found little satisfaction in the general worship of the states. Private organizations and quasi-monastic orders, like those of the Orphics and Pythagoreans, arose and won countless adherents. Their deities found admission into older shrines, chiefly those of chthonian divinities, like that of Demeter at Eleusis, and wrought a change in the spirit and to a certain extent in the ritual of the “mysteries” practiced there. It was in these “mysteries” that the Christian Fathers, according to the mood or the need, polemic or apologetic, of the moment, saw now the propaedeutic type, now the diabolically instituted counterfeit, of the sacraments and ordinances of the church. The spirit and even the details of the observances of the “mysteries” are difficult to determine; but one must beware of accepting the hostile judgments of Christian writers who were in fact retorting upon the Greeks criticisms leveled at the church: both were blinded by partisanship and so misread the symbols.
If we thus find a true praeparatio evangelica in the Hellenistic developments of earlier Hellenic religion, there are parallel developments in the other religions which were adopted in the Hellenistic age. The older national religions of Persia and Egypt underwent a similar change, giving rise respectively to the worship of Mithra and of Isis, both destined, along with the chthonian mysteries of the Greeks, to be dangerous rivals for the conquest of the world of Christianity, itself a younger son in this prolific family of new religions. Space is wanting here for a consideration of these religious movements, the family resemblance of which with Christianity is becoming every day more apparent; but so much at least should be said, that while every candid student must admit the superiority of Christianity in moral content and adaptation to the religious nature of man, the difference in these respects was not at first sight so obvious that the successful rival might at the beginning of the contest have been confidently predicted. See GREECE, RELIGION OF.
As with other manifestations of the Hellenic spirit, so, too, in matters of religion, it was the free development of living institutions that most strikingly distinguishes the Greeks from the Hebrews. They had priests, but were never ruled by them; they possessed a literature regarded with veneration, and in certain shrines treasured sacred writings containing directions for the practice and ritual of the cults, but they were neither intended nor suffered to fix for all time the interpretation of the symbols. In the 5th and 4th centuries the leaders of Greek thought rebuked the activity of certain priests, and it was not before the period of Roman dominion that priests succeeded even in a small measure in usurping power, and sacred writings began to exercise an authority remotely comparable to that recognized among the Jews.
A most interesting question is that concerning the extent to which Greek civilization and thought had penetrated and influenced Judaism. During three centuries before the advent of Jesus, Hellenism had been a power in Syria and Judea. The earliest writings of the Hebrews showing this influence are Daniel and the Old Testament Apocrypha. Several books of the Apocrypha were originally written in Greek, and show strong influence of Greek thought. The Septuagint, made for the Jews of the Dispersion, early won its way to authority even in Palestine, where Aramaic had displaced Hebrew, which thus became a dead language known only to a few. New Testament quotations of the Old Testament are almost without exception taken from the Septuagint. Thus the sacred literature of the Jews was for practical purposes Greek. Though Jesus spoke Aramaic, He unquestionably knew some Greek. Yet there is no clear evidence of specifically Greek influence on this thought, the presuppositions of which are Jewish or generally those of the Hellenistic age. All the writings of the New Testament were originally composed in Greek, though their authors differed widely in the degree of proficiency in the use of the language and in acquaintance with Hellenic thought. Their debt to these sources can be profitably considered only in connection with the individual writers; but one who is acquainted with the Hebrew and Greek literature instinctively feels in reading the New Testament that the national character of the Jews, as reflected in the Old Testament, has all but vanished, remaining only as a subtle tone of moral earnestness and as an imaginative coloring, except in the simple story of the Synoptic Gospels. But for the bitterness aroused by the destruction of Jerusalem, it is probable that the Jews would have yielded completely to Hellenic influences. William Arthur Heidel HELM HELMET HELON HELP With the sense of that which brings aid, support, or deliverance, “help” (noun and vb.) represents a large variety of words in Hebrew and Greek (noun 7, verb 16). A principal Hebrew word is [ rz”[; , `azar ], “to help,” with the corresponding nouns [ rz,[e , `ezer ], [ hr;z][, , `ezrah ]; a chief Greek word is [bohqe>w, boetheo ] ( Matthew 15:25; Mark 9:22,24, etc.).
True help is to be sought for in Yahweh, in whom, in the Old Testament, the believer is constantly exhorted to trust, with the renouncing of all other confidences ( Psalm 20:2; 33:20; 42:5; 46:1; 115:9,10,11; 121:2; Isaiah 41:10,13,14, etc.). In Romans 8:26 it is said, “the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity,” the verb here (sunantilambanetai ) having the striking meaning of to “take hold along with one.” In the story of Eden, Eve is spoken of as “a help meet” for Adam ( Genesis 2:18,20). The idea in “meet” is not so much “suitability,” though that is implied, as likeness, correspondence in nature (Vulgate, similem sibi). One like himself, as taken from him, the woman would be an aid and companion to the man in his tasks. James Orr HELPMEET HELPS (1) ([ajntilh>myeiv, antilempseis ], 1 Corinthians 12:28): In classical Greek the word antilempsis means “remuneration,” the hold one has on something, then perception, apprehension. But in Biblical Greek it has an altruistic meaning. Thus, it is used in the Septuagint, both in the Old Testament Scriptures and in the Apocrypha ( Psalm 22:19; 89:19; Esdras 8:27; 2 Macc 15:7). Thus, we obtain a clue to its meaning in our text, where it has been usually understood as referring to the deacons , the following word kuberneseis , translated “governments,” being explained as referring to the presbyters. Henry E. Dosker HELPS (2) ([boh>qeiai, boetheiai ], Acts 27:17). See SHIPS AND BOATS, III, 2.
HELVE HEM ([kra>spedon, kraspedon ]): The classic instance of the use of “hem” in the New Testament is Matthew 9:20 the King James Version (compare Matthew 14:36), where the woman “touched the hem of his (Christ’s) garment.” The reference is to the fringe or tassel with its traditional blue thread which the faithful Israelite was directed to wear on the corners of the outer garment ( Numbers 15:37 ff; Deuteronomy 22:12). Great importance came to be attached to it, the ostentatious Pharisees making it very broad or large ( Matthew 23:5). Here the woman clearly thought there might be peculiar virtue in touching the tassel or fringe of Jesus’ garment. Elsewhere the word is rendered BORDER (which see). See also DRESS; FRINGE. George B. Eager HEMAM HEMAN Psalm 88 is inscribed to Heman the Ezrahite, who is probably to be identified with the second son of Zerah. Edward Babgy Pollard HEMATH HEMDAN HEMLOCK HEN (1) HEN (2) ([o]rniv, ornis ]): Mentioned in the accounts of the different disciples in describing the work of Jesus ( Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34).
HENA No reasonable identification has been proposed. Cheyne (Encyclopaedia Biblica, under the word) says of the phrase “Hena and Ivah” that “underlying this is a witty editorial suggestion that the existence of cities called [nh and hw[ respectively has passed out of mind (compare Psalm 9:6 (7) ), for [ hW;[iw] [n”he , hena` we`iwwah ], clearly means `he has driven away and overturned’ (so Targum, Symmachus).” He would drop out [nh . Hommel (Expositors Times, IX, 330) thinks that here we have divine names; Hena standing for the Arabic star-name al-han`a , and Ivvah for al-`awwa’u . See IVAH. W. Ewing HENADAD HENNA HENOCH HEPHER; HEPHERITES HEPHER ([ rp,je , chepher ]): (1) Septuagint [ [Ofer, Hopher ] ( Joshua 12:17), a Canaanitish town mentioned between Tappuah and Aphek, unidentified. (2) In 1 Kings 4:10 a district connected with Socoh, and placed by Solomon under the direction of Benhesed of Arubboth, unidentified.
HEPHZIBAH HERAKLES HERALD HERB In 2 Kings 4:39 the Talmud interprets it to mean “colewort,” but it may mean any edible herbs which had survived the drought. In Isaiah 26:19 the expression “dew of herbs” is in the margin translated “dew of light” which is more probable (see DEW), and the translation “heat upon herbs” ( Isaiah 18:4 the King James Version) is in the Revised Version (British and American) translated “clear heat in sunshine.” (6) [bota>nh, botane ] ( Hebrews 6:7). (7) [la>cana, lachana ] = yaraq ( Matthew 13:32). See also BITTER HERBS.
E. W. G. Masterman HERCULES HERDSMAN The herdsman is seldom the owner of the sheep, but a hireling. See SHEEP; SHEEP TENDING.
James A. Patch HERE HEREAFTER HEREBY HEREIN HEREOF HERETOFORE HEREUNTO HEREWITH The Revised Version (British and American) has “herein” for “to do this” ( Ezra 4:22); for “in these things” ( Romans 14:18); “of them that have sinned heretofore” for “which have sinned already” ( 2 Corinthians 12:21); “hereunto” for “thereunto” ( 1 Peter 3:9); “herewith” for “thus” ( Leviticus 16:3). W. L. Walker HEREDITY 1. PHYSIOLOGICAL HEREDITY:
Heredity, in modern language, is the law by which living beings tend to repeat their characteristics, physiological and psychical, in their offspring, a law familiar in some form to even the most uncultured peoples. The references to it in the Bible are of various kinds.
Curiously enough, little mention is made of physiological heredity, even in so simple a form as the resemblance of a son to his father, but there are a few references, such as, e.g., those to giants with giants for sons ( Samuel 21:18-22; 1 Chronicles 20:4-8; compare Genesis 6:4; Numbers 13:33; Deuteronomy 1:28, etc.). Moreover Deuteronomy 28:59-61 may contain a thought of hereditary diseases (compare 2 Kings 5:27). On the psychical side the data are almost equally scanty. That a son and his father may differ entirely is taken for granted and mentioned repeatedly (especially in Ezekiel 18:5-20). Even in the case of the king, the frequent changes of dynasty prevented such a phrase as “the seed royal” ( 2 Kings 11:1; Jeremiah 41:1) from being taken very seriously. Yet, perhaps, the inheritance of mechanical dexterity is hinted at in Genesis 4:20-22, if “father” means anything more than “teacher.” But, in any case, the fact that “father” could have this metaphorical sense, together with the corresponding use of “son” in such phrases as “son of Belial” ( Judges 19:22 the King James Version), “son of wickedness” ( Psalm 89:22), “sons of the prophets” ( Amos 7:14 margin, etc.), “son of the wise, .... of ancient kings” ( Isaiah 19:11; this last phrase may be meant literally), shows that the inheritance of characteristics was a very familiar fact. See SON.
2. HEBREW CONCEPTION OF HEREDITY:
The question, however, is considerably complicated by the intense solidarity that the Hebrews ascribed to the family. The individual was felt to be only a link in the chain, his “personality” (very vaguely conceived) somehow continuing that of his ancestors and being continued in that of his descendants. After death the happiness (or even existence; see DEATH ) of this shade in the other world depended on the preservation of a posterity in this. Hence, slaying the sons of a dead man was thought to affect him directly, and it would be a great mistake to suppose that an act such as that of 2 Samuel 21:1-9, etc., was simply to prevent a blood-feud. Nor was it at all in point that the children might repeat the qualities of the father, however much this may have been realized in other connections.
Consequently, it is impossible to tell in many cases just how much of a modern heredity idea is present.
The most important example is the conception of the position of the nations. These are traced back to single ancestors, and in various cases the qualities of the nation are explained by those of the ancestor ( Genesis 9:22-27; 21:20,21; 49, etc.). The influences that determine national characteristics are evidently thought to be hereditary, and yet not all of them are hereditary in our sense; e.g. in Genesis 27, the condition of the descendants of Jacob and Esau is conceived to have been fixed by the nature of the blessings (mistakenly) pronounced by Isaac. On the other hand, Ezra (9:11,12) thinks of the danger of intermarrying with the children of a degenerate people in an entirely modern style, but in Deuteronomy 23:3-6 the case is not so clear. There a curse pronounced on the nations for their active hostility is more in point than moral degeneracy (however much this may be spoken of elsewhere, Numbers 25:1-3, etc.), and it is on account of the curse that the taint takes ten generations to work itself out, while, in the case of Edomite or Egyptian blood, purity was attained in three. Hence, it is hard to tell just how Exodus 20:5,6 was interpreted. The modern conception of the effect of heredity was surely present in part, but there must have been also ideas of the extension of the curse-bearing individuality that we should find hard to understand.
3. ABRAHAM’S CHILDREN:
The chiefest question is that of the Israelites. Primarily they are viewed as the descendants of Abraham, blessed because he was blessed ( Genesis 22:15-18, etc.). This was taken by many with the utmost literalness, and physical descent from Abraham was thought to be sufficient (especially Matthew 3:9; John 8:31-44; Romans 9:6-13), or at least necessary (especially Ezra 2:59; 9:2; Nehemiah 7:61), for salvation.
Occasionally this descent is stated to give superior qualities in other regards ( Esther 6:13). But a distinction between natural inheritance of Abraham’s qualities and the blessing bestowed by God’s unbounded favor and decree on his descendants must have been thoroughly recognized, otherwise the practice of proselytizing would have been impossible.
4. HEREDITY AND THE NEW TESTAMENT:
In the New Testament the doctrine of original sin, held already by a certain school among the Jews (2 Esdras 7:48), alone raises much question regarding heredity (compare 1 Corinthians 7:14). Otherwise the Old Testament concepts are simply reversed: where likeness of nature appears, there is (spiritual) descent ( Romans 4:12; Galatians 3:7, etc.). None the less, that the Israel “after the flesh” has a real spiritual privilege is stated explicitly ( Romans 3:1,2; 11:26; Revelation 11:13). See BLESSING; CURSE; FAMILY; SALVATION; SIN; TRADITION.
Burton Scott Easton HERES E. W. G. Masterman HERESH HERESY Ellicott, on Galatians 5:20, correctly defines “heresies” (King James Version, the English Revised Version) as “a more aggravated form of dichostasia” (the American Standard Revised Version “parties”) “when the divisions have developed into distinct and organized parties”; so also Corinthians 11:19, translated by the Revised Version (British and American) “factions.” In 2 Peter 2:1, the transition toward the subsequent ecclesiastical sense can be traced. The “destructive heresies” (Revised Version margin, the English Revised Version margin “sects of perdition”) are those guilty of errors both of doctrine and of life very fully described throughout the entire chapter, and who, in such course, separated themselves from the fellowship of the church.
In the fixed ecclesiastical sense that it ultimately attained, it indicated not merely any doctrinal error, but “the open espousal of fundamental error” (Ellicott on Titus 3:10), or, more fully, the persistent, obstinate maintenance of an error with respect to the central doctrines of Christianity in the face of all better instruction, combined with aggressive attack upon the common faith of the church, and its defenders. Roman Catholics, regarding all professed Christians who are not in their communion as heretics, modify their doctrine on this point by distinguishing between Formal and terial Heresy, the former being unconscious and unintentional, and between different degrees of each of these classes (Cath. Encyclopedia, VII, 256 ff). For the development of the ecclesiastical meaning, see Suicer’s Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus, I, 119-23. H. E. Jacobs HERETH The Septuagint has “city” instead of forest; see also Josephus, Ant, VI, xii, 4. The village Kharas, on an ancient high road, 3 miles Southeast of Aid el ma, probably David’s stronghold ADULLAM (which see), may possibly answer to the place (PEF, III, 305, Sh XXI). “Horesh” has been suggested as an alternative reading. E. W. G. Masterman HERETIC; HERETICAL Used in Titus 3:10, must be interpreted according to the sense in which Paul employs the word “heresy” ( 1 Corinthians 11:19; Galatians 5:20) for “parties” or “factions.” According to this, the Scriptural meaning of the word is no more than “a factious man” (American Standard Revised Version), an agitator who creates divisions and makes parties. Weizsacker translates it into German ein Sektierer, “a sectarist.” The nature of the offense is described in other words in 2 Thessalonians 2:6,11.
HERITAGE HERMAS HERMES (1) HERMES (2) ([ JErmh~v, Hermes ]): The name of a Roman Christian, otherwise unknown, to whom Paul sent greetings ( Romans 16:14). “Hermes is among the commonest slave names. In the household alone probably not less than a score of persons might be counted up from the inscriptions, who bore this name at or about the time when Paul wrote” (Lightfoot, Philippians, 176).
HERMOGENES 1. WHERE DID HE “TURN AWAY”?:
Hermogenes was a Christian, mentioned by Paul as having, along with Phygellus and “all that are in Asia,” turned away from him. It is not clear when or where the defection of those Asiatic Christians from the apostle took place, whether it was at Rome at the time of Paul’s second imprisonment there, and especially on the occasion of his being brought before the emperor’s supreme court, to be tried on a charge now involving the death penalty, or whether it was at some previous time in Ephesus.
2. WAS IT IN EPHESUS?:
If it was the latter, then the meaning is that Paul wishes to inform Timothy, or perhaps only to remind him, how in Ephesus, where Timothy was the presiding minister of the church, these persons, Phygellus and Hermogenes with many more, had turned away from him, that is, had refused to submit to his authority, and had rejected the Christian doctrine which he taught.
This latter meaning, referring the “turning away” to some previous occasion in Ephesus, is thought by some expositors to be the probable signification, owing to the fact that the verb “they be turned away” is in the aorist tense, referring to a time long past when the apostle wrote.
3. UNLIKELIHOOD OF IT BEING IN EPHESUS:
On the other hand there is no evidence that there ever was a time when “all they which are in Asia” (the King James Version) turned away from obedience to Paul. Whatever may have been the disloyalty and disobedience of individuals — and this certainly existed; see, e.g., Acts 20:29 f — yet, certainly the New Testament does not show that all that were in Asia, the Christian community as a whole, in Ephesus and Miletus and Laodicea and Hierapolis and Colosse and other places, repudiated his apostolic authority.
4. PROBALILITY OF IT BEING IN ROME:
If the words “all they which are in Asia” refer to all the Christians from the proconsular province of Asia, who happened to be in Rome at the time of Paul’s second imprisonment there, it can easily be understood that they should turn away from him at that testing time. It is impossible to say exactly what form their desertion of the apostle assumed. Their turning away would likely be caused by fear, lest if it were known that they were friends of the prisoner in the Mamertine, they would be involved in the same imprisonment as had overtaken him, and probably also in the same death penalty.
It is altogether in favor of a reference to Rome, that what is said about Phygellus and Hermogenes and their turning away from Paul is immediately followed by a reference to Onesiphorus, and to the great kindness which he showed, when he sought the apostle but very diligently in Rome. On the whole, therefore, a reference to Rome and to the manner in which these persons, named and unnamed, from Asia, had deserted Paul, seems most probable. See PHYGELLUS.
John Rutherfurd HERMON 1. DESCRIPTION:
The name of the majestic mountain in which the Anti-Lebanon range terminates to the South ( Deuteronomy 3:8, etc.). It reaches a height of 9,200 ft. above the sea, and extends some 16 to 20 miles from North to South. It was called Sirion by the Sidonians ( Deuteronomy 3:9; compare Psalm 29:6), and Senir by the Amorites ( Deuteronomy 3:9). It is also identified with Sion ( Deuteronomy 4:48). See SIRION; SENIR; SION . Sometimes it is called “Mt. Hermon” ( Deuteronomy 3:8; Joshua 11:17; 1 Chronicles 5:23, etc.); at other times simply “Hermon” ( Joshua 11:3; Psalm 89:12, etc.).
2. THE HERMONS:
Once it is called “Hermons” ([ µyniwOmr]j, , chermonim ]). the King James Version mistakenly renders this “the Hermonites” ( Psalm 42:6). It must be a reference to the triple summits of the mountain. There are three distinct heads, rising near the middle of the mass, the two higher being toward the East. The eastern declivities are steep and bare; the western slopes are more gradual; and while the upper reaches are barren, the lower are well wooded; and as one descends he passes through fruitful vineyards and orchards, finally entering the rich fields below, in Wady etteim. The Aleppo pine, the oak, and the poplar are plentiful. The wolf and the leopard are still to be found on the mountain; and it is the last resort of the brown, or Syrian, bear. Snow lies long on the summits and shoulders of the mountain; and in some of the deeper hollows, especially to the North, it may be seen through most of the year.
Mt. Hermon is the source of many blessings to the land over which it so proudly lifts its splendid form. Refreshing breezes blow from its cold heights. Its snows are carried to Damascus and to the towns on the seaboard, where, mingled with the sharab, “drink,” they mitigate the heat of the Syrian summer. Great reservoirs in the depths of the mountain, fed by the melting snows, find outlet in the magnificent springs at [Chasbeiyeh], [Tell el-Kady], and Banias, while the dew-clouds of Hermon bring a benediction wherever they are carried ( <19D303> Psalm 133:3).
3. SANCTUARIES:
Hermon marked the northern limit of Joshua’s victorious campaigns ( Joshua 12:1, etc.). It was part, of the dominion of Og ( Joshua 12:5), and with the fall of that monarch, it would naturally come under Israelite influence. Its remote and solitary heights must have attracted worshippers from the earliest times; and we cannot doubt that it was a famous sanctuary in far antiquity. Under the highest peak are the ruins of Kacr `Antar, which may have been an ancient sanctuary of Baal. Eusebius, Onomasticon, speaks of a temple on the summit much frequented by the surrounding peoples; and the remains of many temples of the Roman period have been found on the sides and at the base of the mountain. The sacredness of Hermon may be inferred from the allusion in Psalm 89:12 (compare Enoch 6:6; and see also BAAL HERMON ).
Some have thought that the scene of the Transfiguration should be sought here; see, however, TRANSFIGURATION, MOUNT OF .
The modern name of Hermon is Jebel eth-thilj, “mount of snow,” or Jebel esh-sheikh, “mount of the elder,” or “of the chief.”
Little Hermon, the name now often applied to the hill between Tabor and Gilboa, possibly the Hill of Moreh, on which is the sanctuary of Neby Dahy, has no Biblical authority, and dates only from the Middle Ages. W. Ewing HERMONITES HEROD Some of the Herodian princes were undeniably talented; but these talents, wrongly used, left no marks for the good of the people of Israel. Of nearly all the kings of the house of Herod it may truly be said that at their death “they went without being desired,” unmissed, unmourned. The entire family history is one of incessant brawls, suspicion, intrigue arid shocking immorality. In the baleful and waning light of the rule of the Herodians, Christ lived and died, and under it the foundations of the Christian church were laid.
1. THE FAMILY DESCENT:
The Herodians were not of Jewish stock. Herod the Great encouraged the circulation of the legend of the family descent from an illustrious Babylonian Jew (Ant., XIV, i, 3), but it has no historic basis. It is true the Idumeans were at that time nominal Jews, since they were subdued by John Hyrcanus in 125 BC, and embodied in the Asmonean kingdom through an enforced circumcision, but the old national antagonism remained ( Genesis 27:41). The Herodian family sprang from Antipas (died BC), who was appointed governor of Idumaea by Alexander Janneus. His son Antipater, who succeeded him, possessed al the cunning, resourcefulness and unbridled ambition of his son Herod the Great. He had an open eye for two things — the unconquerable strength of the Roman power and the pitiable weakness of the decadent Asmonean house, and on these two factors he built the house of his hopes. He craftily chose the side of Hyrcanus II in his internecine war with Aristobulus his brother (69 BC), and induced him to seek the aid of the Romans. Together they supported the claims of Pompey and, after the latter’s defeat, they availed themselves of the magnanimity of Caesar to submit to him, after the crushing defeat of Pompey at Pharsalus (48 BC). As a reward, Antipater received the procuratorship of Judea (47 BC), while his innocent dupe Hyrcanus had to satisfy himself with the high-priesthood. Antipater died by the hand of an assassin (43 BC) and left four sons, Phasael, Herod the Great, Joseph, Pheroras, and a daughter Salome. The second of these sons raised the family to its highest pinnacle of power and glory. Pheroras was nominally his co-regent ann, possessed of his father’s cunning, maintained himself to the end, surviving his cruel brother, but he cuts a small figure in the family history. He, as well as his sister Salome, proved an endless source of trouble to Herod by the endless family brawls which they occasioned.
2. HEROD THE GREAT:
With a different environment and with a different character, Herod the Great might have been worthy of the surname which he now bears only as a tribute of inane flattery. What we know of him, we owe, in the main, to the exhaustive treatment of the subject by Josephus in his Antiquities and Jewish War, and from Strabo and Dio Cassius among the classics. We may subsume our little sketch of Herod’s life under the heads of (1) political activity, (2) evidences of talent, and (3) character and domestic life. (1) Political Activity.
Antipater had great ambitions for his son. Herod was only a young man when he began his career as governor of Galilee. Josephus’ statement, however, that he was only “fifteen years old” (Ant., XIV, ix, 2) is evidently the mistake of some transcriber, because we are told (XVII, viii, 1) that “he continued his life till a very old age.” That was 42 years later, so that Herod at this time must have been at least 25 years old. His activity and success in ridding his dominion of dangerous bands of freebooters, and his still greater success in raising the always welcome tribute-money for the Roman government, gained for him additional power at court. His advance became rapid. Antony appointed him “tetrarch” of Judea in 41 BC, and although he was forced by circumstances temporarily to leave his domain in the hands of the Parthians and of Antigonus, this, in the end, proved a blessing in disguise. In this final spasm of the dying Asmonean house, Antigonus took Jerusalem by storm, and Phasael, Herod’s oldest brother, fell into his hands. The latter was governor of the city, and foreseeing his fate, he committed suicide by dashing out his brains against the walls of his prison. Antigonus incapacitated his brother Hyrcanus, who was captured at the same time, from ever holding the holy office again by cropping off his ears (Ant., XIV, xiii, 10). Meanwhile, Herod was at Rome, and through the favor of Antony and Augustus he obtained the crown of Judea in BC. The fond ambition of his heart was now attained, although he had literally to carve out his own empire with the sword. He made quick work of the task, cut his way back into Judea and took Jerusalem by storm in BC.
The first act of his reign was the extermination of the Asmonean house, to which Herod himself was related through his marriage with Mariamne, the grandchild of Hyrcanus. Antigonus was slain and with him 45 of his chief adherents. Hyrcanus was recalled from Babylon, to which he had been banished by Antigonus, but the high-priesthood was bestowed on Aristobulus, Herod’s brother-in-law, who, however, soon fell a victim to the suspicion and fear of the king (Ant., XV, iii, 3). These outrages against the purest blood in Judea turned the love of Mariamne, once cherished for Herod, into a bitter hatred. The Jews, loyal to the dynasty of the Maccabees, accused Herod before the Roman court, but he was summarily acquitted by Antony. Hyrcanus, mutilated and helpless as he was, soon followed Aristobulus in the way of death,31 BC (Ant., XV, vi, 1). When Antony, who had ever befriended Herod, was conquered by Augustus at Actium (31 BC), Herod quickly turned to the powers that were, and, by subtle flattery and timely support, won the imperial favor. The boundaries of his kingdom were now extended by Rome. And Herod proved equal to the greater task. By a decisive victory over the Arabians, he showed, as he had done in his earlier Galilean government, what manner of man he was, when aroused to action. The Arabians were wholly crushed, and submitted themselves unconditionally under the power of Herod (Ant., XV, v, 5).
Afraid to leave a remnant of the Asmonean power alive, he sacrificed Mariamne his wife, the only human being he ever seems to have loved (28 BC), his mother-in-law Alexandra (Ant., XV, vii, 8), and ultimately, shortly before his death, even his own sons by Mariamne, Alexander and Aristobulus 7 BC (Ant., XVI, xi, 7). In his emulation of the habits and views of life of the Romans, he continually offended and defied his Jewish subjects, by the introduction of Roman sports and heathen temples in his dominion. His influence on the younger Jews in this regard was baneful, and slowly a distinct partly arose, partly political, partly religious, which called itself the Herodian party, Jews in outward religious forms but Gentiles in their dress and in their whole view of life. They were a bitter offense to the rest of the nation, but were associated with the Pharisees and Sadducees in their opposition to Christ ( Matthew 22:16; Mark 3:6; 12:13). In vain Herod tried to win over the Jews, by royal charity in time of famine, and by yielding, wherever possible, to their bitter prejudices. They saw in him only a usurper of the throne of David, maintained by the strong arm of the hated Roman oppressor. Innumerable plots were made against his life, but, with almost superhuman cunning, Herod defeated them all (Ant., XV, viii). He robbed his own people that he might give munificent gifts to the Romans; he did not even spare the grave of King David, which was held in almost idolatrous reverence by the people, but robbed it of its treasures (Ant., XVI, vii, 1). The last days of Herod were embittered by endless court intrigues and conspiracies, by an almost insane suspicion on the part of the aged king, and by increasing indications of the restlessness of the nation. Like Augustus himself, Herod was the victim of an incurable and loathsome disease. His temper became more irritable, as the malady made progress, and he made both himself and his court unutterably miserable. The picture drawn by Josephus (Ant., XVII) is lifelike and tragic in its vividness. In his last will and testament, he remained true to his lifelong fawning upon the Roman power (Ant., XVII, vi, 1). So great became his suffering toward the last that he made a fruitless attempt at suicide.
But, true to his character, one of the last acts of his life was an order to execute his son Antipater, who had instigated the murder of his halfbrothers, Alexander and Aristobulus, and another order to slay, after his death, a number of nobles, who were guilty of a small outbreak at Jerusalem and who were confined in the hippodrome (Ant., XVI, vi, 5). He died in the 37th year of his reign,34 years after he had captured Jerusalem and slain Antigonus. Josephus writes this epitaph: “A man he was of great barbarity toward all men equally, and a slave to his passions, but above the consideration of what was right. Yet was he favored by fortune as much as any man ever was, for from a private man he became a king, and though he were encompassed by ten thousand dangers, he got clear of them all and continued his life to a very old age” (Ant., XVII, viii, 1). (2) Evidences of Talent.
The life of Herod the Great was not a fortuitous chain of favorable accidents. He was unquestionably a man of talent. In a family like that of Antipus and Antipater, talent must necessarily be hereditary, and Herod inherited it more largely than any of his brothers. His whole life exhibits in no small degree statecraft, power of organization, shrewdness. He knew men and he knew how to use them. He won the warmest friendship of Roman emperors, and had a faculty of convincing the Romans of the righteousness of his cause, in every contingency. In his own dominions he was like Ishmael, his hand against all, and the hands of all against him, and yet he maintained himself in the government for a whole generation. His Galilean governorship showed what manner of man he was, a man with iron determination and great generalship. His Judean conquest proved the same thing, as did his Arabian war. Herod was a born leader of men. Under a different environment he might have developed into a truly great man, and had his character been coordinate with his gifts, he might have done great things for the Jewish people. But by far the greatest talent of Herod was his singular architectural taste and ability. Here he reminds one of the old Egyptian Pharaohs. Against the laws of Judaism, which he pretended to obey, he built at Jerusalem a magnificent theater and an amphitheater, of which the ruins remain. The one was within the city, the other outside the walls. Thus he introduced into the ascetic sphere of the Jewish life the frivolous spirit of the Greeks and the Romans. To offset this cruel infraction of all the maxims of orthodox Judaism, he tried to placate the nation by rebuilding the temple of Zerubbabel and making it more magnificent than even Solomon’s temple had been. This work was accomplished somewhere between 19 BC and 11 or 9 BC, although the entire work was not finished till the procuratorship of Albinus, 62-64 AD (Ant., XV, xi, 5, 6; XX, ix, 7; John 2:20). It was so transcendently beautiful that it ranked among the world’s wonders, and Josephus does not tire of describing its glories (BJ, V, v). Even Titus sought to spare the building in the final attack on the city (BJ, VI, iv, 3). Besides this, Herod rebuilt and beautified Struto’s Tower, which he called after the emperor, Caesarea. He spent 12 years in this gigantic work, building a theater and amphitheater, and above all in achieving the apparently impossible by creating a harbor where there was none before. This was accomplished by constructing a gigantic mole far out into the sea, and so enduring was the work that the remains of it are seen today. The Romans were so appreciative of the work done by Herod that they made Caesarea the capital of the new regime, after the passing away of the Herodian power.
Besides this, Herod rebuilt Samaria, to the utter disgust of the Jews, calling it Sebaste. In Jerusalem itself he built the three great towers, Antonia, Phasaelus and Mariamne, which survived even the catastrophe of the year 70 AD. All over Herod’s dominion were found the evidences of this constructive passion. Antipatris was built by him, on the site of the ancient Kapharsaba, as well as the stronghold Phasaelus near Jericho, where he was destined to see so much suffering and ultimately to die. He even reached beyond his own domain to satisfy this building mania at Ascalon, Damascus, Tyre and Sidon, Tripoli, Ptolemais, nay even at Athens and Lacedaemon. But the universal character of these operations itself occasioned the bitterest hatred against him on the part of the narrowminded Jews. (3) Characteristics and Domestic Life.
The personality of Herod was impressive, and he was possessed of great physical strength. His intellectual powers were far beyond the ordinary; his will was indomitable; he was possessed of great tact, when he saw fit to employ it; in the great crises of his life he was never at a loss what to do; and no one has ever accused Herod the Great of cowardice. There were in him two distinct individualities, as was the case with Nero. Two powers struggled in him for the mastery, and the lower one at last gained complete control. During the first part of his reign there were evidences of largeheartedness, of great possibilities in the man. But the bitter experiences of his life, the endless whisperings and warnings of his court, the irreconcilable spirit of the Jews, as well as the consciousness of his own wrongdoing, changed him into a Jewish Nero: a tyrant, who bathed his own house and his own people in blood. The demons of Herod’s life were jealousy of power, and suspicion, its necessary companion.
He was the incarnation of brute lust, which in turn became the burden of the lives of his children. History tells of few more immoral families than the house of Herod, which by intermarriage of its members so entangled the genealogical tree as to make it a veritable puzzle. As these marriages were nearly all within the line of forbidden consanguinity, under the Jewish law, they still further embittered the people of Israel against the Herodian family. When Herod came to the throne of Judea, Phasael was dead.
Joseph his younger brother had fallen in battle (Ant., XIV, xv, 10), and only Pheroras and Salome survived. The first, as we have seen, nominally shared the government with Herod, but was of little consequence and only proved a thorn in the king’s flesh by his endless interference and plotting.
To him were allotted the revenues of the East Jordanic territory. Salome, his sister, was ever neck-deep in the intrigues of the Herodian family, but had the cunning of a fox and succeeded in making Herod believe in her unchangeable loyalty, although the king had killed her own son-in-law and her nephew, Aristobulus, his own son. The will of Herod, made shortly before his death, is a convincing proof of his regard for his sister (Ant., XVII, viii, 1).
His domestic relations were very unhappy. Of his marriage with Doris and of her son, Antipater, he reaped only misery, the son, as stated above, ultimately falling a victim to his father’s wrath, when the crown, for which he plotted, was practically within his grasp. Herod appears to have been deeply in love with Mariamne, the grandchild of Hyrcanus, in so far as he was capable of such a feeling, but his attitude toward the entire Asmonean family and his fixed determination to make an end of it changed whatever love Mariamne had for him into hatred. Ultimately she, as well as her two sons, fell victims to Herod’s insane jealousy of power. Like Nero, however, in a similar situation, Herod felt the keenest remorse after her death. As his sons grew up, the family tragedy thickened, and the court of Herod became a veritable hotbed of mutual recriminations, intrigues and catastrophes. The trials and executions of his own conspiring sons were conducted with the acquiescence of the Roman power, for Herod was shrewd enough not to make a move without it. Yet so thoroughly was the condition of the Jewish court understood at Rome, that Augustus, after the death of Mariamne’s sons (7 BC), is said to have exclaimed: “I would rather be Herod’s hog [hus ] than his son [huios ].” At the time of his death, the remaining sons were these: Herod, son of Mariamne, Simon’s daughter; Archelaus and Antipas, sons of Malthace, and Herod Philip, son of Cleopatra of Jerusalem. Alexander and Aristobulus were killed, through the persistent intrigues of Antipater, the oldest son and heir presumptive to the crown, and he himself fell into the grave he had dug for his brothers.
By the final testament of Herod, as ratified by Rome, the kingdom was divided as follows: Archelaus received one-half of the kingdom, with the title of king, really “ethnarch,” governing Judea, Samaria and Idumaea; Antipas was appointed “tetrarch” of Galilee and Peraea; Philip, “tetrarch” of Trachonitis, Gaulonitis and Paneas. To Salome, his intriguing sister, he bequeathed Jamnia, Ashdod and Phasaelus, together with 500,000 drachmas of coined silver. All his kindred were liberally provided for in his will, “so as to leave them all in a wealthy condition” (Ant., XVII, viii, 1).
In his death he had been better to his family than in his life. He died unmourned and unbeloved by his own people, to pass into history as a name soiled by violence and blood. As the waters of Callirhoe were unable to cleanse his corrupting body, those of time were unable to wash away the stains of a tyrant’s name. The only time he is mentioned in the New Testament is in Matthew 2 and Luke 1. In Matthew he is associated with the wise men of the East, who came to investigate the birth of the “king of the Jews.” Learning their secret, Herod found out from the “priests and scribes of the people” where the Christ was to be born and ordered the “massacre of the innocents,” with which his name is perhaps more generally associated than with any other act of his life. As Herod died in BC and some time elapsed between the massacre and his death ( Matthew 2:19), we have here a clue to the approximate fixing of the true date of Christ’s birth. Another, in this same connection, is an eclipse of the moon, the only one mentioned by Josephus (Ant., XVII, vi, 4; text and note), which was seen shortly before Herod’s death. This eclipse occurred on March 13, in the year of the Julian Period, 4710, therefore 4 BC.
3. HEROD ANTIPAS:
Herod Antipas was the son of Herod the Great and Malthace, a Samaritan woman. Half Idumean, half Samaritan, he had therefore not a drop of Jewish blood in his veins, and “Galilee of the Gentiles” seemed a fit dominion for such a prince. He ruled as “tetrarch” of Galilee and Peraea ( Luke 3:1) from 4 BC till 39 AD. The gospel picture we have of him is far from prepossessing. He is superstitious ( Matthew 14:1 f), foxlike in his cunning ( Luke 13:31 f) and wholly immoral. John the Baptist was brought into his life through an open rebuke of his gross immorality and defiance of the laws of Moses ( Leviticus 18:16), and paid for his courage with his life ( Matthew 14:10; Ant, XVIII, v, 2).
On the death of his father, although he was younger than his brother Archelaus (Ant., XVII, ix, 4 f; BJ, II, ii, 3), he contested the will of Herod, who had given to the other the major part of the dominion. Rome, however, sustained the will and assigned to him the “tetrarchy” of Galilee and Peraea, as it had been set apart for him by Herod (Ant., XVII, xi, 4).
Educated at Rome with Archelaus and Philip, his half-brother, son of Mariamne, daughter of Simon, he imbibed many of the tastes and graces and far more of the vices of the Romans. His first wife was a daughter of Aretas, king of Arabia. But he sent her back to her father at Petra, for the sake of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, whom he had met and seduced at Rome. Since the latter was the daughter of Aristobulus, his halfbrother, and therefore his niece, and at the same time the wife of another half-brother, the union between her and Antipas was doubly sinful. Aretas repaid this insult to his daughter by a destructive war (Ant., XVIII, v, 1).
Herodias had a baneful influence over him and wholly dominated his life ( Matthew 14:3-10). He emulated the example of his father in a mania for erecting buildings and beautifying cities. Thus, he built the wall of Sepphoris and made the place his capital. He elevated Bethsaida to the rank of a city and gave it the name “Julia,” after the daughter of Tiberius.
Another example of this inherited or cultivated building-mania was the work he did at Betharamphtha, which he called “Julias” (Ant., XVIII, ii, 1).
His influence on his subjects was morally bad ( Mark 8:15). If his life was less marked by enormities than his father’s, it was only so by reason of its inevitable restrictions. The last glimpse the Gospels afford of him shows him to us in the final tragedy of the life of Christ. He is then at Jerusalem.
Pilate in his perplexity had sent the Saviour bound to Herod, and the utter inefficiency and flippancy of the man is revealed in the account the Gospels give us of the incident ( Luke 23:7-12; Acts 4:27). It served, however, to bridge the chasm of the enmity between Herod and Pilate ( Luke 23:12), both of whom were to be stripped of their power and to die in shameful exile. When Caius Caligula had become emperor and when his scheming favorite Herod Agrippa I, the bitter enemy of Antipas, had been made king in 37 AD, Herodias prevailed on Herod Antipas to accompany her to Rome to demand a similar favor. The machinations of Agrippa and the accusation of high treason preferred against him, however, proved his undoing, and he was banished to Lyons in Gaul, where he died in great misery (Ant., XVIII, vii, 2; BJ, II, ix, 6).
4. HEROD PHILIP:
Herod Philip was the son of Herod the Great and Cleopatra of Jerusalem.
At the death of his father he inherited Gaulonitis, Traehonitis and Paneas (Ant., XVII, viii, 1). He was Philip apparently utterly unlike the rest of the Herodian family, retiring, dignified, moderate and just. He was also wholly free from the intriguing spirit of his brothers, and it is but fair to suppose that he inherited this totally un-Herodian character and disposition from his mother. He died in the year 34 AD, and his territory was given three years later to Agrippa I, his nephew and the son of Aristobulus, together with the tetrarchy of Lysanias (Ant., XVIII, iv, 6; XIX, v, 1).
5. HEROD ARCHELAUS:
Herod Archelaus was the oldest son of Herod the Great by Malthace, the Samaritan. He was a man of violent temper, reminding one a great deal of his father. Educated like all Archelaus the Herodian princes at Rome, he was fully familiar with the life and arbitrariness of the Roman court. In the last days of his father’s life, Antipater, who evidently aimed at the extermination of all the heirs to the throne, accused him and Philip, his half-brother, of treason. Both were acquitted (Ant., XVI, iv, 4; XVII, vii, 1). By the will of his father, the greater part of the Herodian kingdom fell to his share, with the title of “ethnarch.” The will was contested by his brother Antipas before the Roman court. While the matter was in abeyance, Archelaus incurred the hatred of the Jews by the forcible repression of a rebellion, in which some 3,000 people were slain. They therefore opposed his claims at Rome, but Arche1aus, in the face of all this opposition, received the Roman support (Ant., XVII, xi, 4). It is very ingeniously suggested that this episode may be the foundation of the parable of Christ, found in Luke 19:12-27. Archelaus, once invested with the government of Judea, ruled with a hard hand, so that Judea and Samaria were both soon in a chronic state of unrest. The two nations, bitterly as they hated each other, became friends in this common crisis, and sent an embassy to Rome to complain of the conduct of Archelaus, and this time they were successful. Archelaus was warned by a dream of the coming disaster, whereupon he went at once to Rome to defend himself, but wholly in vain. His government was taken from him, his possessions were all confiscated by the Roman power and he himself was banished to Vienna in Gaul (Ant., XVII, xiii, 2, 3). He, too, displayed some of his father’s taste for architecture, in the building of a royal palace at Jericho and of a village, named after himself, Archelais. He was married first to Mariamne, and after his divorce from her to Glaphyra, who had been the wife of his half-brother Alexander (Ant., XVII, xiii). The only mention made of him in the Gospels is found in Matthew 2:22.
Of Herod, son of Herod the Great and Mariamne, Simon’s daughter, we know nothing except that he married Herodias, the daughter of his dead halfbrother Aristobulus. He is called Philip in the New Testament ( Matthew 14:3), and it was from him that Antipas lured Herodias away.
His later history is wholly unknown, as well as that of Herod, the brother of Philip the tetrarch, and the oldest son of Herod the Great and Cleopatra of Jerusalem.
6. HEROD AGRIPPA I:
Two members of the Herodian family are named Agrippa. They are of the line of Aristobulus, who through Mariamne, grand-daughter of Hyrcanus, carried down the line of the Asmonean blood. And it is worthy of note that in this line, nearly extinguished by Herod through his mad jealousy and fear of the Maccabean power, the kingdom of Herod came to its greatest glory again.
Herod Agrippa I, called Agrippa by Josephus, was the son of Aristobulus and Bernice and the grandson of Herod the Great and Mariamne. Educated at Rome with Claudius (Ant., XVIII, vi, 1, 4), he was possessed of great shrewdness and tact. Returning to Judea for a little while, he came back to Rome in 37 AD. He hated his uncle Antipas and left no stone unturned to hurt his cause. His mind was far-seeing, and he cultivated, as his grandfather had done, every means that might lead to his own promotion.
He, therefore, made fast friends with Caius Caligula, heir presumptive to the Roman throne, and his rather outspoken advocacy of the latter’s claims led to his imprisonment by Tiberius. This proved the making of his fortune, for Caligula did not forget him, but immediately on his accession to the throne, liberated Agrippa and bestowed on him, who up to that time had been merely a private citizen, the “tetrarchies” of Philip, his uncle, and of Lysanias, with the title of king, although he did not come into the possession of the latter till two more years had gone by (Ant., XVIII, vi, 10). The foolish ambition of Herod Antipas led to his undoing, and the emperor, who had heeded the accusation of Agrippa against his uncle, bestowed on him the additional territory of Galilee and Peraea in 39 AD.
Agrippa kept in close touch with the imperial government, and when, on the assassination of Caligula, the imperial crown was offered to the indifferent Claudius, it fell to the lot of Agrippa to lead the latter to accept the proffered honor. This led to further imperial favors and further extension of his territory, Judea and Samaria being added to his domain, AD. The fondest dreams of Agrippa had now been realized, his father’s fate was avenged and the old Herodian power had been restored to its original extent. He ruled with great munificence and was very tactful in his contact with the Jews. With this end in view, several years before, he had moved Caligula to recall the command of erecting an imperial statue in the city of Jerusalem; and when he was forced to take sides in the struggle between Judaism and the nascent Christian sect, he did not hesitate a moment, but assumed the role of its bitter persecutor, slaying James the apostle with the sword and harrying the church whenever possible (Acts 12.). He died, in the full flush of his power, of a death, which, in its harrowing details reminds us of the fate of his grandfather ( Acts 12:20-23; Ant, XIX, viii, 2). Of the four children he left (BJ, II, xi, 6), three are known to history — Herod Agrippa II, king of Calchis, Bernice of immoral celebrity, who consorted with her own brother in defiance of human and Divine law, and became a byword even among the heathen (Juv. Sat. vi. 156-60), and Drusilla, the wife of the Roman governor Felix ( Acts 24:24). According to tradition the latter perished in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, together with her son Agrippa. With Herod Agrippa I, the Herodian power had virtually run its course.
7. HEROD AGRIPPA II:
Herod Agrippa II was the son of Herod Agrippa I and Cypros. When his father died in 44 AD he was a youth of only 17 years and considered too young to assume the government of Judea. Claudius therefore placed the country under the care of a procurator. Agrippa had received a royal education in the palace of the emperor himself (Ant., XIX, ix, 2). But he had not wholly forgotten his people, as is proven by his intercession in behalf of the Jews, when they asked to be permitted to have the custody of the official highpriestly robes, till then in the hands of the Romans and to be used only on stated occasions (Ant., XX, i, 1). On the death of his uncle, Herod of Calchis, Claudius made Agrippa II “tetrarch” of the territory, 48 AD (BJ, II, xii, 1; XIV, iv; Ant, XX, v, 2). As Josephus tells us, he espoused the cause of the Jews whenever he could (Ant., XX, vi, 3).
Four years later (52 AD), Claudius extended the dominion of Agrippa by giving him the old “tetrarchies” of Philip and Lysanias. Even at Calchis they had called him king; now it became his official title (Ant., XX, vii, 1).
Still later (55 AD), Nero added some Galilean and Perean cities to his domain. His whole career indicates the predominating influence of the Asmonean blood, which had shown itself in his father’s career also. If the Herodian taste for architecture reveals itself here and there (Ant., XX, viii, 11; IX, iv), there is a total absence of the cold disdain wherewith the Herods in general treated their subjects. The Agrippas are Jews.
Herod Agrippa II figures in the New Testament in Acts 25:13; 26:32.
Paul there calls him “king” and appeals to him as to one knowing the Scriptures. As the brother-in-law of Felix he was a favored guest on this occasion. His relation to Bernice his sister was a scandal among Jews and Gentiles alike (Ant., XX, vii, 3). In the fall of the Jewish nation, Herod Agrippa’s kingdom went down. Knowing the futility of resistance, Agrippa warned the Jews not to rebel against Rome, but in vain (BJ, II, xvi, 2-5; XVII, iv; XVIII, ix; XIX, iii). When the war began he boldly sided with Rome and fought under its banners, getting wounded by a sling-stone in the siege of Gamala (BJ, IV, i, 3). The oration by which he sought to persuade the Jews against the rebellion is a masterpiece of its kind and became historical (BJ, II, xvi). When the inevitable came and when with the Jewish nation also the kingdom of Herod Agrippa II had been destroyed, the Romans remembered his loyalty. With Bernice his sister he removed to Rome, where he became a praetor and died in the year AD, at the age of 70 years, in the beginning of Trajan’s reign.
LITERATURE.
Josephus, Josephus, Antiquities and BJ; Strabo; Dio Cassius. Among all modern works on the subject, Schurer, The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ (5 vols) is perhaps still the best. Henry E. Dosker HERODIANS According to Matthew 14:5 he would even then have put John to death, but “feared the multitude,” which regarded John as a prophet. But Mark 6:19 f relates it was Herodias who especially desired the death of John, but that she was withstood by Herod whose conscience was not altogether dead. This latter explanation is more in harmony with the sequel.
At Herod’s birthday feast, Herodias induced her daughter Salome, whose dancing had so charmed the tetrarch, to ask as her reward the head of John the Baptist on a charger. This was given her and she then brought it to her mother.
Herodias was daughter of Aristobulus, son of Herod the Great, by Mariamne, daughter of Hyrcanus. Her second husband (compare above) was Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea (circa 4-39 AD), son of Herod the Great by Malthace. Herod Antipus was thus the step-brother of Aristobulus, father of Herodias. Regarding the first husband of Herodias, to whom she bore Salome, some hold that the Gospel accounts are at variance with that of Josephus. In Matthew 14:3; Mark 6:17; Luke 3:19, he is called Philip the brother of Herod (Antipus). But in Matthew 14:3 and Luke 3:19 the name Philip is omitted by certain important manuscripts. According to Josephus, he was Herod, son of Herod the Great by Mariamne daughter of Simon the high priest, and was thus a step-brother of Herod Antipas (compare Josephus, Ant, XVIII, v, 4). It is suggested in explanation of the discrepancy (1) that Herod, son of Mariamne, bore a second name Philip, or (2) that there is confusion in the Gospels with Heroal-Philip, tetrarch of Trachonitis, who was the son of Herod the Great and Cleopatra, and who was in reality the husband of Salome, daughter of Herodias (compare also A. B. Bruce, The Expositor Greek Testament., I, 381; A. C. Headlam, article “Herod” in HDB, II, 359, 360). According to Josephus (Ant., VIII, vii, 2; XVIII, vii, 1) the ambition of Herodias proved the ruin of Herod Antipas. Being jealous of the power of Agrippa her brother, she induced Herod to demand of Caligula the title of king. This was refused through the machinations of Agrippa, and Herod was banished. But the pride of Herodias kept her still faithful to her husband in his misfortune. C. M. Kerr HERODION HERON Herons of Southern Africa that summered in the Holy Land loved to nest on the banks of Merom, and raise their young among the bulrushes, papyrus, reeds and water grasses, although it is their usual habit to build in large trees. The white herons were small, the blue, larger, and the brown, close to the same size. The blue were 3 1/2 ft. in length, and had a 5-ft. sweep. The beak, neck and legs constituted two-thirds of the length of the body, which is small, lean and bony, taking its appearance of size from its long loose feathers. Moses no doubt forbade these birds as an article of diet, because they ate fish and in older specimens would be tough, dark and evil smelling. The very poor of our western and southeastern coast states eat them. Gene Stratton-Porter HESED, SON OF HESHBON There is also a large ruined reservoir; while the spring in the valley forms a succession of pools (Song of Solomon 7:4). The city is approached from the valley by a steep path passing through a cutting in the rock, which may have been closed by a gate (Conder, Heth and Moab, 142). On a hill to the West, el-Kurmiyeh, is a collection of dolmens and stone circles (Musil, Arabia Petrea, I, 383 ff). W. Ewing HESHMON HETH (1) HETH (2) HETHLON Much more in harmony with the line of the other border towns given is its identification with Heitala to the Northeast of Tripoli. The “way of Hethlon” would then coincide with the Eleutherus valley, between Homs and the Mediterranean, through which the railway now runs, and to this identification the Septuagint seems to give testimony, indicating some path of “descent” from the Biqa’a. W. M. Christie HEWER 1. EVIDENCE FOR:
This word, formed on the analogy of Pentateuch, Heptateuch, etc., is used by modern writers to denote the first six books of the Bible (i.e. the Law and Joshua) collectively. Many critics hold that these six books were composed out of the sources JEP, etc. (on which see PENTATEUCH ), and only separated very much later into different works. The main grounds for this belief are: (1) the obvious fact that Joshua provides the sequel to the Pentateuch, narrating the conquest and settlement in Canaan to which the latter work looks forward, and (2) certain material and stylistic resemblances. The composition of the respective works is considered in the articles PENTATEUCH and JOSHUA .
2. EVIDENCE AGAINST:
Here we must glance at the evidence against theory of a Hexateuch. It is admitted that there is no trace of any such work as the Hexateuch anywhere in tradition. The Jewish Canon places the Pentateuch in a separate category from Joshua. The Samaritans went farther and adopted the Pentateuch alone. The orthography of the two works differs in certain important particulars (see E. Konig, Einleitung, 151 f, 250). Hence, a different literary history has to be postulated for the two works, even by those who adopt theory of a Hexateuch. But that theory is open to objection on other grounds. There are grave differences of opinion among its supporters as to whether all the supposed Pentateuchal documents are present in Joshua, and in any case it is held that they are quite differently worked up, the redactors having proceeded on one system in the Pentateuch and on quite another in Joshua. Arguments are given in the article PENTATEUCH to show the presence of Mosaic and pre-Mosaic elements in the Pentateuch and the unsoundness of the documentary theory in that work, and if these be correct theory of a Hexateuch necessarily falls to the ground.
For Bibliography see PENTATEUCH; JOSHUA . Harold M. Wiener HEZEKI HEZEKIAH (1) HEZEKIAH (2) ([ hY;qiz ]ji, chizqiyah], “Yahweh has strengthened”; also written [ WhY;qiz ]ji, chizqiyahu], “Yah has strengthened him”; [ JEzeki>av , Hezekias]): One of the greatest of the kings of Judah; reigned (according to the most selfconsistent chronology) from circa 715 to circa 690 BC Old Testament Estimate:
On the Old Testament standard of loyalty to Yahweh he is eulogized by Jesus Sirach as one of the three kings who alone did not “commit trespass” (Sirach 49:4), the other two being David and Josiah. The Chronicler represents him ( 2 Chronicles 32:31) as lapsing from the wisdom of piety only by his vainglory in revealing the resources of his realm to the envoys of Merodach-baladan. In 2 Kings 18:5, the earliest estimate, his special distinction, beyond all other Judean kings, before or after, was that he “trusted in Yahweh, the God of Israel.” It is as the king who “clave to Yahweh” ( 2 Kings 18:6) that the Hebrew mind sums up his royal and personal character.
I. SOURCES FOR HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 1. Scripture Annals: The historical accounts in 2 Kings 18-20 and 2 Chronicles 29-32 are derived in the main from the same state annals, though the latter seems also to have had the Temple archives to draw upon. For “the rest of his acts” Kings refers to a source then still in existence but now lost, “the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah” ( 2 Kings 20:20), and 2 Chronicles to “the vision of Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz, in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel” ( 2 Chronicles 32:32). In this last-named source (if this is the original of our Book of Isa.), besides the warnings and directions called out by the course of the history, there is a narrative section (Isaiah 36-39) recounting the Sennacherib crisis much as do the other histories, but incorporating also a passage of Isaianic prophecy ( Isaiah 37:22-32) and a “writing of Hezekiah king of Judah” ( Isaiah 38:10-20). Lastly, in Sirach 48:17-25, there is a summary of the good and wise deeds of Hezekiah, drawn from the accounts that we already have. 2. View-point and Colouring: Of these sources the account in 2 Kings is most purely historianic, originating at a time when religious and political values, in the Hebrew mind, were inseparable. In 2 Chronicles the religious point and coloring, especially in its later developed ritual and legal aspects, has the decided predominance. Sirach, with the mind of a man of letters, is concerned mainly with eulogizing Hezekiah. in his “praise of famous men” (compare Sirach 44 through 50), of course from the devout Hebrew point of view. In the vision of Isaiah (Isaiah 1 through 39), we have the reflection of the moral and spiritual situation in Jerusalem, as realized in the fervid prophetic consciousness; and in the prophecy of his younger contemporary Micah, the state of things in the outlying country districts nearest the path of invasion, where both the iniquities of the ruling classes and the horrors of war were felt most keenly. Doubtless also many devotional echoes of these times of stress are deducible from the Psalms, so far as we can fairly identify them. 3. Side-Lights: It is in Hezekiah’s times especially that the Assyrian inscriptions become illuminating for the history of Israel; for one important thing they furnish certain fixed dates to which the chronology of the times can be adjusted.
Of Sennacherib’s campaign of 701, for instance, no fewer than six accounts are at present known (see G.A. Smith, Jerusalem, II, 154, note), the most detailed being the “Taylor Cylinder,” now in the British Museum, which in the main agrees, or at least is not inconsistent, with the Scripture history.
II. EVENTS OF HIS REIGN. 1. His Heritage: From his weak and unprincipled father Ahaz (compare 2 Chronicles 28:16-25), Hezekiah inherited not only a disorganized realm but a grievous burden of Assyrian dominance and tribute, and the constant peril and suspense of greater encroachments from that arrogant and arbitrary power: the state of things foretold in Isaiah 7:20; 8:7 f. The situation was aggravated by the fact that not only the nation’s weakness but its spiritual propensities had incurred it: the dominant classes were aping the sentiments, fashions and cult of the East (compare Isaiah 2:6-8), while the neglected common people were exposed to the corruptions of the still surviving heathenism of the land. The realm, in short, was at the spiritual nadir-point from which prophets like Isaiah and Micah were laboring to bring about the birth of a true Hebrew conscience and faith. Their task was a hard one: with a nation smear-eyed, dull-cared, fat-hearted ( Isaiah 6:10), whose religion was a precept of men learned by rote ( Isaiah 29:13). Clearly, from this point of view, a most difficult career was before him. 2. Religious Reform: The sense of this unspiritual state of things furnishes the best keynote of Hezekiah’s reforms in religion, which according to the Chronicler he set about as soon as he came to the throne ( 2 Chronicles 29:3). It is the Chronicler who gives the fullest account of these reforms (2 Chronicles through 31); naturally, from his priestly point of view and access to ecclesiastical archives. Hezekiah began with the most pressing constructive need, the opening and cleansing of the Temple, which his father Ahaz had left closed and desecrated ( 2 Chronicles 28:24), and went on to the reorganization of its liturgical and choral service. In connection with this work he appointed a Passover observance, which, on a scale and spirit unknown since Solomon ( 2 Chronicles 30:26), he designed as a religious reunion of the devout-minded in all Israel, open not only to Jerusalem and Judah, but to all who would accept his invitation from Samaria, Galilee, and beyond the Jordan ( 2 Chronicles 30:5-12,18). The immediate result of the enthusiasm engendered by this Old Home Week was a vigorous popular movement of iconoclasm against the idolatrous high places of the land. That this was no weak fanatical impulse to break something, but a touch of real spiritual quickening, seems evidenced by one incident of it: the breaking up of Moses’ old brazen serpent and calling it what it had come to mean, nechushtan, “a piece of brass” ( 2 Kings 18:4); the movement seems in fact to have had in it the sense, however crude, that old religious forms had become hurtful and effete superstitions, hindering spirituality. Nor could the movement stop with the old fetish.
With it went the demolition of the high places themselves and the breaking down of the pillars (matstsebhoth) and felling of the sacred groves (‘asherah), main symbols these of a debasing naturecult. This reform, on account of later reactions (see under MANASSEH ), has been deemed ineffective; rather, its effects were inward and germinal; nor were they less outwardly than could reasonably be expected, before its meanings were more deepened and centralized. 3. Internal Improvements: All this, on the king’s part, was his response to the spiritual influence of Isaiah, with whose mind his own was sincerely at one. As a devout disciple in the school of prophetic ideas, he earnestly desired to maintain the prophet’s insistent attitude of “quietness and confidence” (compare Isaiah 30:15), that is, of stedfast trust in Yahweh alone, and of abstinence from revolt and entangling alliances with foreign powers. This, however, in the stress and suspense of the times, did not preclude a quiet preparation for emergencies; and doubtless the early years of his reign were notable, not only for mild and just administration throughout his realm, but for measures looking to the fortifying and defense of the capital. His work of repairing and extending the walls and of strengthening the citadel (Millo), as mentioned in 2 Chronicles 32:5, had probably been in progress long before the Assyrian crisis was imminent. Nor was he backward in coming to an understanding with other nations, as to the outlook for revolt against Assyria. He could not learn his lesson of faith all at once, especially with a factious court pulling the other way. He did not escape the suspicion of Sargon (died 705), who for his Egyptian leanings counted him among the “plotters of sedition” (compare COT, 100); while the increasing prosperity and strength of his realm marked him for a leading role in an eventual uprising. He weathered at least one chance of rebellion, however, in 711, probably through the strenuous exertions of Isaiah (see Isaiah 20:1 ff). 4. The Assyrian Crisis: Hezekiah’s opportunity to rise against Assyrian domination seems to have been taken about 704. How so pious a king came to do it in spite of Isaiah’s strenuous warnings, both against opposition to Assyria and alliance with other powers, is not very clear. The present writer ventures to suggest the view that the beginning was forced or perhaps sprung upon him by his princes and nobles. In the year before, Sargon, dying, had left his throne to Sennacherib, and, as at all ancient changes of sovereignty, this was the signal for a general effort for independence on the part of subject provinces. That was also the year of Hezekiah’s deadly illness (2 Kings 20; Isaiah 38), when for a time we know not how long he would be incapacitated for active administration of affairs. Not unlikely on his recovery he found his realm committed beyond withdrawal to an alliance with Egypt and perhaps the leadership of a coalition with Philistia; in which case personally he could only make the best of the situation. There was nothing for it but to confirm this coalition by force, which he did in his Philistine campaign mentioned in 2 Kings 18:8. Meanwhile, in the same general uprising, the Chaldean Merodach-baladan, who had already been expelled from Babylon after an 11-year reign (721-710), again seized that throne; and in due time envoys from him appeared in Jerusalem, ostensibly to congratulate the king on his recovery from his illness, but really to secure his aid and alliance against Assyria ( 2 Kings 20:12-15; Isaiah 39:1-4). Hezekiah, flattered by such distinguished attention from so distant and powerful a source, by revealing his resources committed what the Chronicler calls the one impious indiscretion of his life ( 2 Chronicles 32:31), incurring also Isaiah’s reproof and adverse prediction ( 2 Kings 20:17 f; Isaiah 39:6 f). The conflict with Sennacherib was now inevitable; and Hezekiah, by turning the water supply of Jerusalem from the Gihon spring to a pool within the walls and closing it from without, put the capital in readiness to stand a siege. The faith evoked by this wise work, confirmed by the subsequent deliverance, is reflected in Psalm 46. That this incurring of a hazardous war, however, with its turmoils and treacheries, and the presence of uncouth Arab mercenaries, was little to the king’s desire or disposition, seems indicated in Psalm 120, which with the other Songs of Degrees (Pss 120 through 134) may well reflect the religious faith of this period of Hezekiah’s life. 5. Invasion and Deliverance: The critical moment came in 701, when Sennacherib, who the year before had reconquered Babylon and expelled Merodach-baladan (perhaps Isaiah 21:1-9 refers to and this), was free to invade his rebellious provinces in the West. It was a vigorous and sweeping campaign; in which, beginning with Sidon and advancing down through the coast lands, he speedily subdued the Philistine cities, defeating them and their southern allies (whether these were from Egypt proper or from its extension across the Sinai peninsula and Northern Arabia, Mutsri, is not quite clear) at Eltekeh; in which campaign, according to his inscription, he took 46 walled towns belonging to Judah with their spoil and deported over 200,000 of their inhabitants. This, which left Jerusalem a blockaded town (in fact he says of Hezekiah: “Himself I shut up like a bird in a cage in Jerusalem his royal city”), seems referred to in Isaiah 1:7-9 and predicted in Isaiah 6:11 f. Its immediate effect was to bring Hezekiah to terms and extort an enormous tribute ( 2 Kings 18:14-16).
When later, however, he was treacherous enough to disregard the compact thus implied (perhaps Isaiah 33 refers to this), and demanded the surrender of the city ( 2 Kings 18:17 through 19:7; Isaiah 36:2 through 37:7), Hezekiah besought the counsel of Isaiah, who bade him refuse the demand, and predicted that Sennacherib would “hear tidings” and return to his own land; which prediction actually came to pass, and suddenly Hezekiah found himself free. A deliverance so great, and so signally vindicating the setting forth of faith, could not but produce a momentous revulsion in the nation’s mind, like a new spiritual birth in which the faith of the “remnant” became a vital power in Israel; its immediate effect seems portrayed in Psalm and perhaps Psalm 126, and its deep significance as the birth of a nation in a day seems summarized long afterward in Isaiah 66:7 through 9; compare 37:3; 2 Kings 19:3. 6. The Second Summons: A second summons to surrender, sent from Libnah by letter ( 2 Kings 19:1 ff; Isaiah 37:8 ff), is treated by the Scripture historians as a later feature of the same campaign; but recent researches seem to make it possible, nay probable, that this belonged to another campaign of Sennacherib, when Taharka of Ethiopia (Tirhakah , 2 Kings 19:9; Isaiah 37:9) came to power in Egypt, in 691. If this was so, there is room in Hezekiah’s latter years for a decade of peace and prosperity (compare Chronicles 32:22,23,27-30), and in Isaiah’s old age for a collection and revision of his so wonderfully vindicated prophecies. The historians’ evident union of two stories in one makes the new attitude with which this crisis was met, obscure; but the tone of confirmed confidence and courage seems decidedly higher. The discomfiture of Sennacherib in this case was brought about, not by a rumor of rebellions at home, but by an outbreak of plague ( 2 Kings 19:35 f; Isaiah 37:36 f), which event the Scripture writers interpreted as a miracle. The prophetic sign of deliverance ( 2 Kings 19:29; Isaiah 37:30) may be referred to the recovery of the devastated lands from the ravage inflicted by Sennacherib in his first campaign (compare also <19C605> Psalm 126:5 f).
III. HIS CHARACTER.
Our estimate of Hezekiah’s character is most consistently made by regarding him as a disciple of Isaiah, who was earnestly minded to carry out his prophetic ideas. As, however, these were to begin with only the initial ideas of a spiritual “remnant,” the king’s sympathies must needs be identified at heart, not with his imperious nobles and princes, but with a minority of the common people, whose religious faith did not become a recognizable influence in the state until after 701. In the meantime his zeal for purer worship and more just domestic administration, which made him virtually king of the remnant, made him a wise and sagacious prince over the whole realm. Isaiah’s glowing prophecy (32:1-8) seems to be a Messianic projection of the saner and clearer-seeing era that his domestic policy adumbrated — a time when king and nobles rule in righteousness, when man can lean on man, when things good and evil are seen as they are and called by their right names. When it came to dealing with the foreign situation, however, especially according to the Isaianic program, his task was exceedingly difficult, as it were a pioneer venture in faith. His effort to maintain an attitude of steadfast trust in Yahweh, with the devout quietism which, though really its consistency and strength looked like a supine passivity, would lead his restlessly scheming nobles to regard him as a pious weakling; and not improbably they came to deem him almost a negligible quantity, and forced his hand into diplomacies and coalitions that were not to his mind. Some such insolent attitude of theirs seems to be portrayed in Isaiah 28:14-22. This was rendered all the more feasible, perhaps, by the period of incapacitation that must have attended his illness, in the very midst of the nation’s critical affairs. Isaiah’s words (33:17 ff) may be an allusion at once to his essential kingliness, to the abeyance of its manifestation due to his disease, and to the constricted condition into which, meanwhile, the realm had fallen. This exceedingly critical episode of Hezekiah’s career does not seem to have had its rights with students of the era. Considering the trials that his patient faith must have had, always at cross-purposes with his nobles (compare <19C006> Psalm 120:6 f); that now by reason of his sickness they had the whip hand; that his disease cut him off not only from hope of life, but from association with men and access to the sanctuary (compare Isaiah 38:10,11,12); that, as his son Manasseh was not born till three years within the fifteen now graciously added to his life (compare 2 Kings 21:1), his illness seemed to endanger the very perpetuity of the Davidic dynasty, we have reason for regarding him as well-nigh a martyr to the new spiritual uprising of faith which Isaiah was laboring to bring about. In the Messianic ideal which, in Isaiah’s sublime conception, was rising into personal form, it fell to his lot to adumbrate the first kingly stage, the stage of committal to Yahweh’s word and will and abiding the event. It was a cardinal element in that composite ideal which the Second Isaiah pushes to its ultimate in his portrayal of the servant of Yahweh; another element, the element of sacrifice, has yet to be added.
Meanwhile, as with the king so with his remnant-realm, the venture of faith is like a precipitation of spiritual vitality, or, as the prophet puts it, a new birth (compare Isaiah 26:17 f; 37:3; 66:7 f, for the stages of it). The event of deliverance, not by men’s policies but by Yahweh’s miraculous hand, was the speedy vindication of such trust; and the revulsion of the next decade witnessed a confirming and solidifying of spiritual integrity in the remnant which made it a factor to be reckoned with in the trying times that succeeded (see under MANASSEH ). The date of Hezekiah’s death (probably not long after 690) is not certainly known; nor of the death of his mentor Isaiah (tradition puts this by martyrdom under Manasseh); but if our view of his closing years is correct, the king’s death crowned a consistent character of strength and spiritual steadfastness; while the unapproachable greatness of Isaiah speaks for itself.
IV. REFLECTION OF HIS AGE IN LITERATURE. 1. Complication and Revival: The sublime and mature utterances of Isaiah alone, falling in this time, are sufficient evidence that in Hezekiah’s age, Israel reached its golden literary prime. Among the idealists and thinkers throughout the nation a new spiritual vigor and insight were awake. Of their fellowship was the king himself, who emulated the activity of his predecessor Solomon as patron of piety and letters. The compilation of the later Solomonic section of the Proverbs (Proverbs 25 through 29), attributed to the “men of Hezekiah,” indicates the value attached to the accumulations of the so-called Wisdom literature; and it is fair to assume that these men of Hezekiah did not stop with compiling, but stamped upon the body of Proverbs as a whole that sense of it as a philosophy of life which it henceforth bears, and perhaps added the introductory section, Proverbs 1 through 9. Nor would a king so zealous for the organization and enrichment of the temple-worship (compare Isaiah 38:20) be indifferent to its body of sacred song. It seems certain that his was, in all the nation’s history, the greatest single agency in compiling and adapting the older Davidic Psalms, and in the composition of new ones. Perhaps this union of collecting and creative work in psalmody is referred to in the mention of “the words of David, and of Asaph the seer” ( 2 Chronicles 29:30). To Hezekiah himself is attributed one “writing” which is virtually a psalm, Isaiah 38:20. The custom through all the history of hymnology (in our own day also) of adapting older compositions to new liturgical uses makes uncertain the identification of psalms belonging specifically to this period; still, many psalms of books ii and iii, and especially those ascribed to Asaph and the sons of Korah, seem a close reflection of the spirit of the times. An interesting theory recently advanced (see THIRTLE , Old Testament Problems) that the fifteen Songs of the Steps (“Degrees” or “Ascents,” Psalms 120 through 134) are a memorial of Hezekiah’s fifteen added years, when as a sign the shadow went backward on the steps of Ahaz ( Kings 20:8-11), seems to reveal many remarkable echoes of that eventful time. Nor does it seem unlikely that with this first extensive collection of psalms the titles began to be added. 2. Of More Creative Strain: This literary activity of Hezekiah’s time, though concerned largely with collecting and reviving the treasures of older literature, was pursued not in the cold scribal spirit, but in a fervid creative way. This may be realized in two of the psalms which the present writer ascribes to this period. Psalm 49, a psalm of the sons of Korah, is concerned to make an essential tenet of Wisdom viable in song (compare Psalm 49:3,4), as if one of the “men of Hezekiah” who is busy with the Solomonic counsels would popularize the spirit of his findings. Psalm 78 in like manner, a Maschil of Asaph, is concerned to make the noble histories of old viable in song (78:2), especially the wilderness history when Israel received the law and beheld Yahweh’s wonders, and down to the time when Ephraim was rejected and Judah, in the person of David, was chosen to the leadership in Israel.
Such a didactic poem would not stand solitary in a period so instructed. As in Wisdom and psalmody, so in the domain of law and its attendant history, the literary activity was vigorous. This age of Hezekiah seems the likeliest time for putting into literary idiom that “book of the law” found later in the Temple (2 Kings 22); which book Josiah’s reforms, carried out according to its commands, prove to have been our Book of Deuteronomy. This is not the place to discuss the Deuteronomic problem (see under JOSIAH); it is fair to note here, however, that as compared with the austere statement of the Mosaic statutes elsewhere, this book has a literary art and coloring which seem to stamp its style as that of a later age than Moses’, though its substance is Mosaic; and this age of Hezekiah seems the likeliest time to put its rewriting and adaptation. Nor did the new spirit of literary creation feed itself entirely on the past. The king’s chastening experience of illness and trial, with the steadfast faith that upbore and survived it, must have been fruitful of new ideas, especially of that tremendous conception, now just entering into thought, of the ministry of suffering. Time, of course, must be allowed for the ripening of an idea so full of involvement; and it is long before its sacrificial and atoning values come to light in such utterances as Isaiah 53. But such psalms as Psalm 49 and Psalm 73, not to mention Hezekiah’s own psalm (Isaiah 38), show that the problem was a living one; it was working, moreover, in connection with the growing Wisdom philosophy, toward the composition of the Book of Job, which in a masterly way both subjects the current Wisdom motives to a searching test and vindicates the intrinsic integrity of the patriarch in a discipline of most extreme trial. The life of a king whose experience had some share in clarifying the ideas of such a book was not lived in vain. John Franklin Genung HEZEKIAH’S SICKNESS See DIAL OF AHAZ.
HEZEKIAH, THE MEN OF A body of men of letters to whom is ascribed the compilation of a supplementary collection of Solomonic proverbs ( Proverbs 25:1). See PROVERBS, BOOK OF, II, 5; HEZEKAIH, IV, 2.
HEZION HEZIR HEZRO; HEZRAI HEZRON (1) HEZRON (2) ([ ˆwOrx]j, , chetsron ], “enclosure”): On the South boundary of Judah between “Kadesh-barnea” and “Addar” ( Joshua 15:3); in the parallel passage ( Numbers 34:4) “Hazar-addar.” The two places may have been near together. Conder suggests that the name survives in Jebel Hadhireh, a mountain Northwest of Petra in the Tih.
HEZRONITES HIDDAI HIDDEKEL Among the occurrences of “hidden” in Apocrypha we have (2 Esdras 16:62), “The Spirit of Almighty God .... searcheth out all hidden things in the secrets of the earth,” the Revised Version (British and American) “He who made all things and searcheth out hidden things in hidden places”; Ecclesiasticus 42:19, “revealing the steps (the Revised Version (British and American) “traces”) of hidden things,” apokruphos ; 42:20, “Neither any word is hidden from him,” the Revised Version (British and American) “hid,” ekrube ). W. L. Walker HIEL Numerous instances are brought to light in the excavations of Gezer (Macalister, Bible Side-Lights from the Mound of Gezer, chapter x). At first the very best was claimed as a gift to the deity, e.g. one’s own sons; then some less valuable member of the community. When civilization prevented human sacrifice, animals were offered instead. The story of Abraham offering Isaac may be a trace of this old custom, the tenor of the story implying that at the time of the writing of the record, the custom was coming to be in disrepute. A similar instance is the offering of his eldest son by the king of Edom to appease the deity and win success in battle ( 2 Kings 3:27; compare Micah 6:7). Various conjectures have been made as to the identity of this king. Ewald regarded him as a man of wealth and enterprise (unternehmender reicher Mann); Cheyne following Niebuhr makes it Jehu in disguise, putting 1 Kings 16:34 after 2 Kings 10:33; Winckler explains as folklore. W. N. Stearns HIERAPOLIS Though its history is not well known, it seems to have been of Lydian origin, and once bore the name of Kydrara. The Phrygian god Sabazios was worshipped there under the name Echidma, and represented by the symbol of the serpent. Other local deities were Leto and her son Lairbenos.
Though called the holy city, Hierapolis was peculiarly regarded as the stronghold of Satan, for there was a Plutonium, or a hole reaching far down into the earth, from which there issued a vapor, even poisoning the birds flying above. It is supposed that upon a stool, deep in the Plutonium, a priest or priestess sat, and, when under the influence of the vapor, uttered prophecies valuable to those who sought them. Though a stronghold of Satan, Hierapolis early became a Christian city, for, according to Colossians 4:13, the only place where it is mentioned in the New Testament, a church was founded there through the influence of Paul while he was at Ephesus. Tradition claims that Philip was the first evangelist to preach there, and it also claims that he and his two unmarried daughters were buried there; a third who was married, was buried at Ephesus.
Several of the early Christians suffered martyrdom at Hierapolis, yet Christianity flourished, other churches were built, and during the 4th century the Christians filled the Plutonium with stones, thus giving evidence that the paganism had been entirely supplanted by the church.
During the Roman period, Justinian made the city a metropolis, and it continued to exist into the Middle Ages. In the year 1190 Frederick Barbarossa fought with the Byzantines there.
The modern town is called Pambuk Kalessi, or cotton castle, not because cotton is raised in the vicinity, but because of the white deposit from the water of the calcareous springs. The springs were famous in ancient times because they were supposed to possess Divine powers. The water is tepid, impregnated with alum, but pleasant to the taste. It was used by the ancients for dyeing and medicinal purposes. The deposit of pure white brought up by the water from the springs has heaped itself over the surrounding buildings, nearly burying them, and stalactite formations, resembling icicles, hang from the ruins. The ruins, which are extensive, stand on a terrace, commanding an extensive view, and though they are partly covered by the deposit, one may still trace the city walls, the temple, several churches, the triumphal arch, the gymnasium and baths, and the most perfect theater in Asia Minor. Outside the walls are many tombs. E. J. Banks HIEREEL HIERIELUS HIEREMOTH HIERMAS HIGGAION HIGH DAY Is found in Genesis 29:7 as a rendering of the Hebrew [ lwOdG; µwOy , yom agadhol ], literally, “great day.” The Hebrew means the day at its height, broad daylight as contrasted with the time for getting the cattle to their sheds for the night (compare French grand jour). In John 19:31, “highday” renders [mega>lh hJme>ra , megale hemera ], literally, “great day,” and refers to the Passover Sabbath — and therefore a Sabbath of special sanctity.
HIGHEST Version (British and American) “Most High”; The Wisdom of Solomon American) “Most High”). GOD, NAMES OF.
HIGHMINDED : In modern usage denotes elevation of mind in a good arrogance. It is the translation of , “to be highminded,” <45 Romans 11:20, “Be not highminded, but fear”; 1 Timothy 6:17, “Charge them that are rich .... that they be not conceit, to make proud, etc. ( 2 Timothy 3:4, “Traitors, heady, compare 1 Timothy 3:6; 6:4). “No one can be highminded without (Crabb, English Synonyms).
HIGH, MOST. GOD, NAMES OF.
HIGH PLACE
1. GENERAL: (1) “High place” is the normal translation of [ hm;B; , bamah ], a word that means simply “elevation” ( Jeremiah 26:18; Ezekiel 36:2, etc.; compare the use in Job 9:8 of the waves of the sea. For the plural as a proper noun see BAMOTH ). In the King James Version of Ezekiel 16:24,25,31,39, “high places” is the translation of [ hm;r; , ramah ] (the Revised Version (British and American) “lofty places”), a common word (see RAMAH ) of exactly the same meaning, indistinguishable from bamah in 16:16. In three of these verses of Ezekiel (16:24,31,39) ramah is paralleled by [ bG” , gabh ], which again has precisely the same sense (“eminent place” in the King James Version, the English Revised Version), and the “vaulted place” of the American Standard Revised Version (English Revised Version margin) is in disregard of Hebrew parallelism. In particular, the high places are places of worship, specifically of idolatrous worship. So the title was transferred from the elevation to the sanctuary on the elevation ( 1 Kings 11:7; 14:23; compare the burning of the “high place” in 2 Kings 23:15), and so came to be used of any idolatrous shrine, whether constructed on an elevation or not (note how in 2 Kings 16:4; 2 Chronicles 28:4 the “high places” are distinguished from the “hills”). So the “high places” in the cities ( 2 Kings 17:9; Chronicles 21:11 (Septuagint)) could have stood anywhere, while in Ezekiel 16:16 a portable structure seems to be in point. (2) The use of elevations for purposes of worship is so widespread as to be almost universal, and rests, probably, on motives so primitive as to evade formal analysis. If any reason is to be assigned, the best seems to be that to dwellers in hilly country the heaven appears to rest on the ridges and the sun to go forth from them — but such reasons are certainly insufficient to explain everything. Certain it is that Israel, no less than her neighbors, found special sanctity in the hills. Not only was’ Sinai the “Mount of God,” but a long list can be drawn up of peaks that have a special relation to Yahweh (see MOUNT, MOUNTAIN ; and for the New Testament, compare Mark 9:2; Hebrews 12:18-24, etc.). And the choice of a hilltop for the Temple was based on considerations other than convenience and visibility. (But bamah is not used of the Temple Mount.)
2. DESCRIPTION:
Archaeological research, particularly at Petra and Gezer, aided by the Old Testament notices, enables us to reconstruct these sanctuaries with tolerable fullness. The cult was not limited to the summit of the hill but took place also on the slopes, and the objects of the cult might be scattered over a considerable area. The most sacred objects were the upright stone pillars (matstsebhah ), which seem to have been indispensable. (Probably the simplest “high places” were only a single upright stone.) They were regarded as the habitation of the deity, but, none the less, were usually many in number (a fact that in no way need implicate a plurality of deities).
At one time they were the only altars, and even at a later period, when the altar proper was used, libations were sometimes poured on the pillars directly. The altars were of various shapes, according to their purpose (incense, whole burnt offerings, etc.), but were always accompanied by one or more pillars. Saucer-shaped depressions, into which sacrifices could be poured, are a remnant of very primitive rites (to this day in Samaria the paschal lamb is cooked in a pit). The trees of the high place, especially the “terebinths” (oaks?), were sacred, and their number could be supplemented or their absence supplied by an artificial tree or pole (‘asherah, the “grove” of the King James Version). (Of course the original meaning of the pillar and asherah was not always known to the worshipper.) An amusing feature of the discoveries is that these objects were often of minute size, so that the gods could be gratified at a minimum of expense to the worshipper.
Images (ephods?; the teraphim were household objects, normally) are certain, but in Palestine no remnants exist (the little Bes and Astarte figures were not idols used in worship). Other necessary features of a high place of the larger size were ample provision of water for lustral purposes, kitchens where the sacrifices could be cooked (normally by boiling), and tables for the sacrificial feasts. Normally, also, the service went on in the open air, but slight shelters were provided frequently for some of the objects. If a regular priest was attached to the high place (not always the case), his dwelling must have been a feature, unless he lived in some nearby village.
Huts for those practicing incubation (sleeping in the sanctuary to obtain revelations through dreams) seem not to have been uncommon. But formal temples were very rare and “houses of the high places” in 1 Kings 12:31; 13:32; 2 Kings 17:29,32; 23:19 may refer only to the slighter structures just mentioned (see the comm.). In any case, however, the boundaries of the sanctuary were marked out, generally by a low stone wall, and ablutions and removal of the sandals were necessary before the worshipper could enter.
For the ritual, of course, there was no uniform rule. The gods of the different localities were different, and in Palestine a more or less thorough rededication of the high places to Yahweh had taken place. So the service might be anything from the orderly worship of Yahweh under so thoroughly an accredited leader as Samuel ( 1 Samuel 9:11-24) to the wildest orgiastic rites. That the worship at many high places was intensely licentious is certain (but it must be emphasized against the statements of many writers that there is no evidence for a specific phallic cult, and that the explorations have revealed no unmistakable phallic emblems). The gruesome cemetery for newly born infants at Gezer is only one of the proofs of the prevalence of child-sacrifice, and the evidence for human sacrifice in other forms is unfortunately only too clear. See GEZER, and illustration on p. 1224.
3. HISTORY: (1) The opposition to the high places had many motives. When used for the worship of other gods their objectionable character is obvious, but even the worship of Yahweh in the high places was intermixed with heathen practices ( Hosea 4:14, etc.). In Amos 5:21-24, etc., sacrifice in the high places is denounced because it is regarded as a substitute for righteousness in exactly the same way that sacrifice in the Temple is denounced in Jeremiah 7:21-24. Or, sacrifice in the high places may be denounced under the best of conditions, because in violation of the law of the one sanctuary ( 2 Chronicles 33:17, etc.). (2) In 1 Samuel, sacrifice outside of Jerusalem is treated as an entirely normal thing, and Samuel presides in one such case ( 1 Samuel 9:11-24).
In 1 Kings the practice of using high places is treated as legitimate before the construction of the Temple ( 1 Kings 3:2-4), but after that it is condemned unequivocally. The primal sin of Northern Israel was the establishment of high places ( 1 Kings 12:31-33; 13:2,33 f), and their continuance was a chief cause of the evils that came to pass ( 2 Kings 17:10 f), while worship in them was a characteristic of the mongrel throng that repopulated Samaria ( 2 Kings 17:32). So Judah sinned in building high places ( 1 Kings 14:23), but the editor of Kings notes with obvious regret that even the pious kings (Asa, 1 Kings 15:14; Jehoshaphat, 22:43; Jehoash, 2 Kings 12:3; Amaziah, 14:4; Azariah, 15:4; Jotham, 15:35) did not put them away; i.e. the editor of Kings has about the point of view of Deuteronomy 12:8-11, according to which sacrifice was not to be restricted to Jerusalem until the country should be at peace, but afterward the restriction should be absolute. The practice had been of such long standing that Hezekiah’s destruction of the high places ( 2 Kings 18:4) could be cited by Rabshakeh as an act of apostasy from Yahweh ( 2 Kings 18:22; 2 Chronicles 32:12; Isaiah 36:7). Under Manasseh they were rebuilt, in connection with other idolatrous practices ( 2 Kings 21:3-9). This act determined the final punishment of the nation (21:10-15), and the root-and-branch reformation of Josiah (2 Kings 23) came too late. The attitude of the editor of Chronicles is still more condemnatory. He explains the sacrifice at Gibeon as justified by the presence of the Tabernacle ( 1 Chronicles 16:39; 21:29; 2 Chronicles 1:3,13), states that God-fearing northerners avoided the high places ( Chronicles 11:16; compare 1 Kings 19:10,14), and (against Kings) credits Asa ( 2 Chronicles 14:3,5) and Jehoshaphat ( 2 Chronicles 17:6) with their removal. (This last notice is also in contradiction with Chronicles 20:33, but 16:17a is probably meant to refer to the Northern Kingdom, despite 16:17b.) On the other hand, the construction of high places is added to the sins of Jehoram ( 2 Chronicles 21:11) and of Ahaz ( 2 Chronicles 28:4,5). (3) Among the prophets, Elijah felt the destruction of the many altars of God as a terrible grief ( 1 Kings 19:10,14). Amos and Hosea each mention the high places by name only once ( Amos 7:9; Hosea 10:8), but both prophets have only denunciation for the sacrificial practices of the Northern Kingdom. That, however, these sacrifices were offered in the wrong place is not said. Isaiah has nothing to say about the high places, except in 36:7, while Micah 1:5 equates the sins of Jerusalem with those of the high places (if the text is right), but promises the exaltation of Jerusalem (4:1 f). In the references in Jeremiah 7:31; 19:5; 32:35; Ezekiel 6:3,1; 16:16; 20:29; 43:7, idolatry or abominable practices are in point (so probably in Jeremiah 17:3, while Jeremiah 48:35 and Isaiah 16:12 refer to non-Israelites). (4) The interpretation of the above data and their historical import depend on the critical position taken as to the general history of Israel’s religion. See RELIGION OF ISRAEL; CRITICISM; DEUTERONOMY, etc.
LITERATURE. See, especially, IDOLATRY, and also ALTARS; ASHERAH, etc. For the archaeological literature, see PALESTINE.
Burton Scott Easton HIGH PRIEST See PRIEST, HIGH.
HIGH THINGS:
The translation of hupselos, “high,” “lofty,” “elevated” ( Romans 12:16, “Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate,” the King James Version margin “be contented with mean things,” the Revised Version (British and American) “Set not your mind on high things, but condescend to (margin “Greek: be carried away with”) things (margin “them”) that are lowly”); high things are proud things, things regarded by the world as high.
High thing is hupsoma , “a high place,” “elevation,” etc. ( 2 Corinthians 10:5, “casting down every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God,” “like a lofty tower or fortress built up proudly by the enemy”). In Judith 10:8; 13:4, hupsoma is rendered “exaltation.” W. L. Walker HIGHWAY HILEN HILKIAH The etymology suggests this. Either interpretation of the name expresses the person’s claim on Yahweh or the parents’ recognition of Yahweh’s claim on him. (1) The person mentioned above ( Nehemiah 8:4, etc.). (2) A Levite of the sons of Merari ( 1 Chronicles 6:45). (3) Another Levite of Merari, son of Hosah ( 1 Chronicles 26:11). Is he the “porter,” i.e. “doorkeeper” of 1 Chronicles 16:38? (4) Father of the Gemariah whom Zedekiah of Judah sent to Nebuchadnezzar ( Jeremiah 29:3). (5) The man in 2 Kings 18:18 ff who is evidently more famous as the father of Eliakim, the majordomo of Hezekiah’s palace ( Isaiah 22:20 ff; 36:3 ff). Probably the father’s name is given in this and similar cases to distinguish between two persons of otherwise identical name. (6) A priest of Anathoth, father of Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 1:1). (7) The son of Shallum, and the best known of the name ( 1 Chronicles 6:13). He is great-grandfather of Ezra through his son Azariah (1 Esdras 8:1; compare 1 Chronicles 9:11; Nehemiah 11:11). He discovered the lost Book of the Law during the repairing of the Temple ( 2 Kings 22:4,8 ff); became chief leader in the ensuing reformation in 621 BC ( Kings 23:4; 2 Chronicles 34:9 ff; 35:8). He showed the recovered book to Shaphan the scribe, who, in turn, brought it to the notice of the king. At Josiah’s request he led a deputation to Huldah the prophetess to “inquire of the Lord” concerning the new situation created by the discovery. The book discovered is usually identified with the Book of Deuteronomy. See DEUTERONOMY.
Henry Wallace HILL, HILL COUNTRY E. W. G. Masterman HILL, MOUNT, MOUNTAIN:
1. NAMES: (1) The commonest word is [ rh” , har ] (also [ rr;h; , harar ], and [ rr,h, , herer ]), which is rendered “hill,” “mount” or “mountain.” It occurs several hundreds of times. In a number of places the Revised Version (British and American) changes “hill” to “mountain,” e.g. Genesis 7:19, mountains covered by flood; Exodus 24:4, Horeb; Joshua 18:14, mountain before Beth-horon: Judges 16:3, mountain before Hebron; Psalm 95:4, “The heights of the mountains are his also”; 121:1, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains.” “Hill” remains in Deuteronomy 11:11, “land of hills and valleys”; 1 Kings 20:23, “god of the hills”; Psalm 2:6, “my holy hill of Zion”: 98:8, “hills sing for joy.” “Mount” is changed “hillcountry” in Deuteronomy 1:7, “hill-country of the Amorites”; Judges 12:15, “hill-country of the Amalekites”; Deuteronomy 3:12, “hill-country of Gilead”; but Genesis 3:21, “mountain of Gilead”; and Judges 7:3, “Mount Gilead.” “Hill” or “hills” is changed to “hillcountry” in Deuteronomy 1:7; Joshua 9:1; 10:40; 11:16; 17:16; 21:11. In Deuteronomy 1:41,43, the American Standard Revised Version changes “hill” to “hill-country,” while the English Revised Version has “mountain.” The reasons for these differences of treatment are not in all cases apparent. (2) The Greek [o]rov , oros ], is perhaps etymologically akin to [ rh” , har ].
It occurs often in the New Testament, and is usually translated “mount” or “mountain.” In three places ( Matthew 5:14; Luke 4:29; 9:37) the King James Version has hill, which the Revised Version (British and American) retains, except in Luke 9:37, “when they were come down from the mountain” (of the transfiguration). The derivative [ojreino>v , oreinos ], “hill country,” occurs in Luke 1:39,65. (3) The common Hebrew word for “hill” is [ h[;b]Gi , gibh`ah ] = Gibeah ( Judges 19:12); compare Geba, [ [b”G, , gebha` ] ( 1 Samuel 13:3); Gibeon, [ ˆwO[b]Gi , gib`on ] ( Joshua 9:3), from root [ [b”G; , gabha` ], “to be high”; compare Arabic qubbeh, “dome”; Latin caput; [kefalh> , kephale ]. (4) In 1 Samuel 9:11, the King James Version has “hill” for [ hl,[\m” , ma`aleh ], root [ hl;[; , ‘alah ], “to ascend”; compare Arabic `ala’, “to be high,” and `ali, “high.” Here and elsewhere the Revised Version (British and American) has “ascent.” (5) English Versions of the Bible has “hill” in Isaiah 5 for [ ˆr,q, , qeren ], “horn”; compare Arabic qarn, “horn,” which is also used for a mountain peak. (6) [ rWf , Tur ], is translated “mountain” in Daniel 2:35,45, but the Revised Version margin “rock” in Daniel 2:35. The Arabic tur, “mountain,” is especially used with Sinai, jebel tur sina’. (7) [ bX;mu , mutstsabh ] ( Isaiah 29:3), is translated in the King James Version “mount” in the English Revised Version “fort,” in the American Standard Revised Version “posted troops”; compare [ bX;m” , matstsabh ], “garrison” ( 1 Samuel 14:1, etc.), from root [ bx”n; , natsabh ], “to set”; compare Arabic nacab, “to set.” (8) [ hl;l]so , colelah ], from [ ll”s; , calal ], “to raise,” is in the King James Version and the English Revised Version “mount,” the King James Version margin “engine of shot,” the American Standard Revised Version “mound” ( Jeremiah 32:24; 33:4; Ezekiel 4:2; 17; 21:22; 26:8; Daniel 11:15).
2. FIGURATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE:
The mountains and hills of Palestine are the features of the country, and were much in the thoughts of the Biblical writers. Their general aspect is that of vast expanses of rock. As compared with better-watered regions Descriptive of the earth, the verdure is sparse and incidental. Snow remains throughout the year on Hermon and the two highest peaks of Lebanon, although in the summer it is in great isolated drifts which are not usually visible from below. In Palestine proper, there are no snow mountains. Most of the valleys are dry wadies, and the roads often follow these wadies, which are to the traveler veritable ovens. It is when he reaches a commanding height and sees the peaks and ridges stretching away one after the other, with perhaps, through some opening to the West, a gleam of the sea like molten metal, that he thinks of the vastness and enduring strength of the mountains. At sunset the rosy lights are succeeded by the cool purple shadows that gradually fade into cold gray, and the traveler is glad of the shelter of his tent. The stars come out, and there is no sound outside the camp except perhaps the cries of jackals or the barking of some goat-herd’s dog. These mountains are apt to repel the casual traveler by their bareness. They have no great forests on their slopes. Steep and rugged peaks like those of the Alps are entirely absent. There are no snow peaks or glaciers. There are, it is true, cliffs and crags, but the general outlines are not striking. Nevertheless, these mountains and hills have a great charm for those who have come to know them. To the Biblical writers they are symbols of eternity ( Genesis 49:26; Deuteronomy 33:15; Job 15:7; Habakkuk 3:6). They are strong and steadfast, but they too are the creation of God, and they manifest His power ( Psalm 18:7; 97:5; Isaiah 40:12; 41:15; 54:10; Jeremiah 4:24; Nahum 1:5; Habakkuk 3:6). The hills were places of heathen sacrifice ( Deuteronomy 12:2; 1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 16:4; 17:10; Ezekiel 6:13; Hosea 4:13), and also of sacrifice to Yahweh ( Genesis 22:2; 31:54; Joshua 8:30). Zion is the hill of the Lord ( Psalm 2:6; 135:21; Isaiah 8:18; Joel 3:21; Micah 4:2).
3. PARTICULAR MOUNTAINS:
Many proper names are associated with the mountains and hills: as Abarim, Amalekites, Ammah, Amorites, Ararat, Baalah, Baal-hermon, Bashan, Beth-el, Bether, Carmel, Chesalon, Ebal, Ephraim, Ephron, Esau, Gaash, Gareb, Geba, Gerizim, Gibeah, Gibeon, Gilboa, Gilead, Hachilah, Halak, Hebron, Heres, Hermon, Hor, Horeb, Jearim, Judah, Lebanon, Mizar, Moreh, Moriah, Naphtali, Nebo, Olives, Olivet, Paran, Perazim, Pisgah, Samaria, Seir, Senir, Sephar, Shepher, Sinai, Sion, Sirion, Tabor, Zalmon, Zemaraim, Zion. See also “mountain of the east” ( Genesis 10:30); “mountains of the leopards” (Song of Solomon 4:8); “rocks of the wild goats” ( 1 Samuel 24:2); “hill of the foreskins” (Gibeah-haaraloth) ( Joshua 5:3); “mountains of brass” (Zec 6:1); “hill of God” (Gibeah of God) ( 1 Samuel 10:5); “hill of Yahweh” ( Psalm 24:3); “mount of congregation” ( Isaiah 14:13); see also Matthew 4:8; 5:1; 14:23; 15:29; 17:1; 28:16; Luke 8:32; Galatians 4:25. Alfred Ely Day HILLEL HIN HIND HIND OF THE MORNING, THE The translation of Aijeleth hash-Shahar (‘ayyeleth ha-shachar) in the title of Psalm 22, probably the name of some wellknown song to which the psalm was intended to be sung, which possibly had reference to the early habits of the deer tribe in search of water and food, or to the flight of the hind from the hunters in early dawn; or “morning” may symbolize the deliverance from persecution and sorrow. “The first rays of the morning sun, by which it announces its appearance before being itself visible, are compared to the fork-like antlers of a stag; and this appearance is called, Psalm 22 title. `The hind of the morning,’ because those antler rays preceded the red of dawn, which again forms the transition to sunrise” (Delitzsch, Iris. 107).
According to Hengstenberg, the words indicate the subject-matter of the poem, the character, sufferings, and triumph of the person who is set before us. See PSALMS. For an interesting Messianic interpretation see Hood, Christmas Evans, the Preacher of Wild Wales, 92 ff. M. O. Evans HINGE W. Shaw Caldecott HINNOM, VALLEY OF 1. BIBLE REFERENCES AND HISTORY:
It was near the walls of Jerusalem, “by the entry of the gate Harsith” ( Jeremiah 19:2); the Valley Gate opened into it ( Nehemiah 2:13; 3:13). The boundary between Judah and Benjamin ran along it ( Joshua 15:8; 18:16). It was the scene of idolatrous practices in the days of Ahaz ( 2 Chronicles 28:3) and of Manasseh, who “made his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom” ( 2 Chronicles 33:6), but Josiah in the course of his reforms “defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children (margin “son”) of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech” ( 2 Kings 23:10). It was on account of these evil practices that Jeremiah (7:32; 19:6) announced the change of name. Into this valley dead bodies were probably cast to be consumed by the dogs, as is done in the Wady er-Rababi today, and fires were here kept burning to consume the rubbish of the city. Such associations led to the Ge-Hinnom (New Testament “Gehenna”) becoming the “type of Hell” (Milton, Paradise Lost, i, 405). See GEHENNA.
2. SITUATION:
The Valley of Hinnom has been located by different writers in each of the three great valleys of Jerusalem. In favor of the eastern or Kidron valley we have the facts that Eusebius and Jerome (Onom) place “Gehennom” under the eastern wall of Jerusalem and the Moslem geographical writers, Muqaddasi and Nasir-i-khusran, call the Kidron valley Wady Jahamum.
The Jewish writer Kimchi also identifies the Valley of Jehoshaphat (i.e. the Kidron) with Hinnom. These ideas are probably due to the identification of the eastern valley, on account of its propinquity to the Temple, as the scene of the last judgment — the “Valley of Jehoshaphat” of Joel 3:2 — and the consequent transference there of the scene of the punishment of the wicked, Gehenna, after the ancient geographical position of the Valley of Hinnom, had long been lost. In selecting sacred sites, from the 4th Christian century onward, no critical topographical acumen has been displayed until quite modern times. There are three amply sufficient arguments against this view: (1) the Kidron valley is always called a nachal and not a gay’ (see KIDRON ); (2) the “Gate of the Gai” clearly did not lie to the East of the city; (3) En-rogel, which lay at the beginning of the Valley of Hinnom and to its East ( Joshua 15:8; 18:16) cannot be the “Virgin’s fount,” the ancient Gihon ( 2 Samuel 17:17). See GIHON.
Several distinguished modern writers have sought to identify the Tyropeon Valley (el Wad) with Hinnom, but as the Tyropeon was incorporated within the city walls before the days of Manasseh (see JERUSALEM), it is practically impossible that it could have been the scene of the sacrifice of children — a ritual which must have occurred beyond the city’s limits ( 2 Kings 23:10, etc.).
3. WADY ER-RABABI:
The clearest geographical fact is found in Joshua 15:8; 18:16, where we find that the boundary of Judah and Benjamin passed from En-rogel “by the valley of the son of Hinnom”; if the modern Bir Eyyub is En-rogel, as is certainly most probable, then the Wady er-Rababi, known traditionally as Hinnom, is correctly so called. It is possible that the name extended to the wide open land formed by the junction of the three valleys; indeed, some would place Tophet at this spot, but there is no need to extend the name beyond the actual gorge. The Wady er-Rababi commences in a shallow, open valley due West of the Jaffa Gate, in the center of which lies the Birket Mamilla; near the Jaffa Gate it turns South for about 1/3 of a mile, its course being dammed here to form a large pool, the Birket es Sultan.
Below this it gradually curves to the East and rapidly descends between sides of bare rocky scarps, much steeper in ancient times. A little before the valley joins the wide Kidron valley lies the traditional site of AKELDAMA (which see). E. W. G. Masterman HIP ([ qwOv , shoq ], “leg,” “limb,” “hip,” “shoulder”): Samson smote the Philistines “hip and thigh” (Hebrew “leg upon thigh”), which was indicative of “a great slaughter” ( Judges 15:8), the bodies being hewed in pieces with such violence that they lay in bloody confusion, their limbs piled up on one another in great heaps. See also SINEW.
HIPPOPOTAMUS HIRAH HIRAM Josephus (Apion, I, 17, 18) informs us, on the authority of the historians Dius and Menander, that Hiram was the son of Abibal, that he had a prosperous reign of 34 years, and died at the age of 53. He tells us on the same authority that Hiram and Solomon sent problems to each other to solve; that Hiram could not solve those sent him by Solomon, whereupon he paid to Solomon a large sum of money, as had at first been agreed upon.
Finally, Abdemon, a man of Tyre, did solve the problems, and proposed others which Solomon was unable to explain; consequently Solomon was obliged to pay back to Hiram a vast sum of money. Josephus further states (Ant., VIII, ii, 8) that the correspondence carried on between Solomon and Hiram in regard to the building of the Temple was preserved, not only in the records of the Jews, but also in the public records of Tyre. It is also related by Phoenician historians that Hiram gave his daughter to Solomon in marriage. (2) The name of a skillful worker in brass and other substances, whom Solomon secured from Hiram king of Tyre to do work on the Temple. His father was a brass-worker of Tyre, and his mother was a woman of the tribe of Naphtali ( 1 Kings 7:14), “a woman of the daughters of Dan” ( 2 Chronicles 2:14 (Hebrew 13); 1 Kings 7:13 ff; 2 Chronicles 2:13 f (Hebrew 12,13)). Jesse L. Cotton HIRCANUS HIRE In the English New Testament the word occurs once as a verb and 3 times as a noun as the translation of [misqo>v , misthos ], and its verbal form. In Matthew 20:1,8 and James 5:4 it refers to the hiring of ordinary field laborers for a daily wage. In Luke 10:7 it signifies the stipend which is due the laborer in the spiritual work of the kingdom of God. It is a wage, earned by toil, as that of other laborers. The word is very significant here and absolutely negatives the idea, all too prevalent, that money received by the spiritual toiler is a gift. It is rather a wage, the reward of real toil. William Joseph McGlothlin HIRELING In the New Testament the word “hireling” ([misqwto>v, misthotos]) occurs only in John 10:12 f, where his neglect of the sheep is contrasted unfavorably with the care and courage of the shepherd who owns the sheep, who leads them to pasture and lays down his life for their protection from danger and death. William Joseph McGlothlin HIS HISS One of the seven nations conquered by Israel in Palestine.
I. OLD TESTAMENT NOTICES. 1. Enumeration of Races: The “sons of Heth” are noticed 12 times and the Hittites 48 times in the Old Testament. In 21 cases the name Occurs in the enumeration of races, in Syria and Canaan, which are said ( Genesis 10:6 f) to have been akin to the early inhabitants of Chaldea and Babylon. From at least 2000 BC this population is known, from monumental records, to have been partly Semitic and partly Mongolic; and the same mixed race is represented by the Hittite records recently discovered in Cappadocia and Pontus. Thus, while the Canaanites (“lowlanders”), Amorites (probably “highlanders”), Hivites (“tribesmen”) and Perizzites (“rustics”) bear Semitic titles, the Hittites, Jebusites and Girgashites appear to have non-Sem names. Ezekiel (16:3,15) speaks of the Jebusites as a mixed Hittite-Amorite people. 2. Individuals: The names of Hittites noticed in the Old Testament include several that are Semitic (Ahimelech, Judith, Bashemath, etc.), but others like Uriah and Beeri ( Genesis 26:34) which are probably non-Sem. Uriah appears to have married a Hebrew wife (Bathsheba), and Esau in like manner married Hittite women ( Genesis 26:34; 36:2). In the time of Abraham we read of Hittites as far South as Hebron ( Genesis 23:3 ff; 27:46), but there is no historic improbability in this at a time when the same race appears (see ZOAN ) to have ruled in the Nile Delta (but see Gray in The Expositor, May, 1898, 340 f). 3. Later Mention: In later times the “land of the Hittites” ( Joshua 1:4; Judges 1:26) was in Syria and near the Euphrates (see TAHTIM-HODSHI ); though Uriah (2 Samuel 11) lived in Jerusalem, and Ahimelech ( 1 Samuel 26:6) followed David. In the time of Solomon ( 1 Kings 10:29), the “kings of the Hittites” are mentioned with the “kings of Syria,” and were still powerful a century later ( 2 Kings 7:6). Solomon himself married Hittite wives ( 1 Kings 11:1), and a few Hittites seem still to have been left in the South ( 2 Chronicles 8:7), even in his time, if not after the captivity ( Ezra 9:1; Nehemiah 9:8).
II. HISTORY. 1. Sources: The Hittites were known to the Assyrians as Chatti, and to the Egyptians as Kheta, and their history has been very fully recovered from the records of the XVIIIth and XIXth Egyptian Dynasties, from the Tell el-Amarna Letters, from Assyrian annals and, quite recently, from copies of letters addressed to Babylonian rulers by the Hittite kings, discovered by Dr. H.
Winckler in the ruins of Boghaz-keui (“the town of the pass”), the ancient Pterium in Pontus, East of the river Halys. The earliest known notice (King, Egypt and West Asia, 250) is in the reign of Saamsu-ditana, the last king of the first Babylonian Dynasty, about 2000 BC, when the Hittites marched on the “land of Akkad,” or “highlands” North of Mesopotamia. 2. Chronology: The chronology of the Hittites has been made clear by the notices of contemporary rulers in Babylonia, Matiene, Syria and Egypt, found by Winckler in the Hittite correspondence above noticed, and is of great importance to Bible history, because, taken in conjunction with the Tell el- Amarna Letters, with the Kassite monuments of Nippur, with the Babylonian chronicles and contemporary chronicles of Babylon and Assyria, it serves to fix the dates of the Egyptian kings of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties which were previously uncertain by nearly a century, but which may now be regarded as settled within a few years. From the Tell el- Amarna Letters it is known that Thothmes IV was contemporary with the father of Adad-nirari of Assyria (Berlin number 30), and Amenophis IV with Burna-burias of Babylon (Brit. Mss. number 2); while a letter from Chattu-sil, the Hittite contemporary of Rameses II, was addressed to Kadashman-Turgu of Babylon on the occasion of his accession. These notices serve to show that the approximate dates given by Brugsch for the Pharaohs are more correct than those proposed by Mahler; and the following table will be useful for the understanding of the history — Thothmes III being known to have reigned 54 years, Amenophis III at least 36 years, and Rameses II, 66 years or more. The approximate dates appear to be thus fixed. 3. Egyptian Invasions: XVIIIth Dynasty: The Hyksos race having been expelled from the Delta by Aahmes, the founder of the XVIIIth (Theban) Dynasty, after 1700 BC, the great trade route through Palestine Syria was later conquered by Thothmes I, who set up a monument on the West bank of the Euphrates. The conquests of Aahmes were maintained by his successors Amenophis I and Thothmes I and II; but when Thothmes III attained his majority (about 1580 BC), a great league of Syrian tribes and of Canaanites, from Sharuhen near Gaza and “from the water of Egypt, as far as the land of Naharain” (Aramnaharaim), opposed this Pharaoh in his 22nd year, being led by the king of Kadesh — probably Kadesh on the Orontes (now Qedes, North of Riblah) — but they were defeated near Megiddo in Central Palestine; and in successive campaigns down to his 31st year, Thothmes III reconquered the Palestine plains, and all Syria to Carchemish on the Euphrates. In his 29th year, after the conquest of Tuneb (now Tennnib, West of Arpad), he mentions the tribute of the Hittites including “304 lbs in 8 rings of silver, a great piece of white precious stone, and zagu wood.” They were, however, still powerful, and further wars in Syria were waged by Amenophis II, while Thothmes IV also speaks of his first “campaign against the land of the Kheta.” Adad-nirari I wrote to Egypt to say that Thothmes IV had established his father (Bel-tiglat-Assur) as ruler of the land of Marchasse (probably Mer’ash in the extreme North of Syria), and to ask aid against the “king of the land of the Hittites.” Against the increasing power of this race Thothmes IV and his son Amenophis III strengthened themselves by marriage alliances with the Kassite kings of Babylon, and with the cognate rulers of Matiene, East of the Hittite lands of Syria, and Cappadocia.
Dusratta of Matiene, whose sister Gilukhepa was married by Amenophis III in his 10th year, wrote subsequently to this Pharaoh to announce his own accession (Amos Tab, Brit. Mus. number 9) and his defeat of the Hittites, sending a two-horse chariot and a young man and young woman as “spoils of the land of the Hittites.” 4. “The Great King”: About this time (1480 BC) arose a great Hittite ruler bearing the strange name Subbiliuliuma, similar to that of Sapalulmi, chief the Hattinai, in North Syria, mentioned by Shalmaneser II in the 9th century BC. He seems to have ruled at Pterium, and calls himself “the great king, the noble king of the Hatti.” He allied himself against Dusratta with Artatama, king of the Harri or North Syrians. The Syrian Hittites in Marchassi, North of the land of the Amorites, were led shortly after by Edugamma of Kinza (probably Kittiz, North of Arpad) in alliance with Aziru the Amorite, on a great raid into Phoenicia and to Bashan, South of Damascus. Thus it appears that the Amorites had only reached this region shortly before the Hebrew conquest of Bashan. Amenophis III repelled them in Phoenicia, and Subbiliuliuma descended on Kinza, having made a treaty with Egypt, and captured Edugamma and his father Suttatarra. He also conquered the land of Ikata which apparently lay East of the Euphrates and South of Carehemish.
Some 30 years later, in the reign of Amenophis IV, Dusratta of Matiene was murdered, and his kingdom was attacked by the Assyrians; but Subbiliuliuma, though not a friend of Dusratta with whom he disputed the suzerainty of North Syria, sent aid to Dusratta’s son Mattipiza, whom he set on his throne, giving him his own daughter as a wife. A little later (about 1440 BC) Aziru the Amorite, who had been subject to Amenophis III, submitted to this same great Hittite ruler, and was soon able to conquer the whole of Phoenicia down to Tyre. All the Egyptian conquests were thus lost in the latter part of the reign of Amenophis III, and in that of Amenophis IV. Only Gaza seems to have been retained, and Burna-burias of Babylon, writing to Amenophis IV, speaks of the Canaanite rebellion as beginning in the time of his father Kuri-galzu I (Amos Tab, British Museum number 2), and of subsequent risings in his own time (Berlin number 7) which interrupted communication with Egypt. Assur-yuballidh of Assyria (Berlin number 9), writing to the same Pharaoh, states also that the relations with Assyria, which dated back even to the time of Assurnadin- akhi (about 1550 BC), had ceased. About this earlier period Thothmes III records that he received presents from Assyria. The ruin of Egypt thus left the Hittites independent, in North Syria, about the time when — according to Old Testament chronology — Palestine was conquered by Joshua. They probably acknowledged Arandas, the successor of Subbiliuliuma, as their suzerain. 5. Egyptian Invasions: XIXth Dynasty: The XVIIIth Dynasty was succeeded, about 1400 BC, or a little later, by the XIXth, and Rameses I appears to have been the Pharaoh who made the treaty which Mursilis, brother of Arandas, contracted with Egypt. But on the accession of Seti I, son of Rameses I, the Syrian tribes prepared to “make a stand in the country of the Harri” against the Egyptian resolution to recover the suzerainty of their country. Seti I claims to have conquered “Kadesh (on the Orontes) in the Land of the Amorites,” and it is known that Mutallis, the eldest son of Mursilis, fought against Egypt. According to his younger brother Hattusil, he was tyrant, who was finally driven out by his subjects and died before the accession of Kadashman-Turgu (about 1355 BC) in Babylon. Hattusil, the contemporary of Rameses II, then seized the throne as “great king of the Hittites” and “king of Kus” (“Cush,” Genesis 2:3), a term which in the Akkadian language meant “the West.”
In his 2nd year Rameses II advanced, after the capture of Ashkelon, as far as Beirut, and in his 5th year he advanced on Kadesh where he was opposed by a league of the natives of “the land of the Kheta, the land of Naharain, and of all the Kati” (or inhabitants of Cilicia), among which confederates the “prince of Aleppo” is specially noticed. The famous poem of Pentaur gives an exaggerated account of the victory won by Rameses II at Kadesh, over the allies, who included the people of Carchemish and of many other unknown places; for it admits that the Egyptian advance was not continued, and that peace was concluded. A second war occurred later (when the sons of Rameses II were old enough to take part), and a battle was then fought at Tuneb (Tennib) far North of Kadesh, probably about 1316 BC. The celebrated treaty between Rameses II and Chattusil was then made, in the 21st year of the first named. It was engraved on a silver tablet having on the back the image of Set (or Sutekh), the Hittite god of heaven, and was brought to Egypt by Tar-Tessubas, the Hittite envoy. The two “great kings” treated together as equals, and formed a defensive and offensive alliance, with extradition clauses which show the advanced civilization of the age. In the 34th year of his reign, Rameses II (who was then over 50 years of age) married a daughter of Chattusil, who wrote to a son of Kadashman-Turgu (probably Kadashman-burias) to inform this Kassite ruler of Babylon of the event. He states in another letter that he was allied by marriage to the father of Kadashman-Turgu, but the relations between the Kassite rulers and the Hittites were not very cordial, and complaints were made on both sides. Chattusil died before Rameses II, who ruled to extreme old age; for the latter (and his queen) wrote letters to Pudukhipa, the widow of this successful Hittite overlord. He was succeeded by Dudhalia, who calls himself “the great king” and the “son of Pudukhipa the great queen, queen of the land of the city of the Chatti.” 6. Declension of Power: Aryan Invasion: The Hittite power began now, however, to decline, in consequence of attacks from the West by hostile Aryan invaders. In the 5th year of Seti Merenptah II, son of Rameses II, these fair “peoples of the North” raided the Syrian coasts, and advanced even to Belbeis and Heliopolis in Egypt, in alliance with the Libyans West of the Delta. They were defeated, and Merenptah appears to have pursued them even to Pa-Kan’-ana near Tyre.
A text of his 5th year (found by Dr. Flinders Petrie in 1896) speaks of this campaign, and says that while “Israel is spoiled” the “Hittites are quieted”: for Merenptah appears to have been on good terms with them, and allowed corn to be sent in ships “to preserve the life of this people of the Chatti.”
Dudchalia was succeeded by his son “Arnuanta the great king,” of whom a bilingual seal has been found by Dr. Winckler, in Hittite and cuneiform characters; but the confederacy of Hittite tribes which had so long resisted Egypt seems to have been broken up by these disasters and by the increasing power of Assyria. 7. Second Aryan Invasion: A second invasion by the Aryans occurred in the reign of Rameses III (about 1200 BC) when “agitation seized the peoples of the North,” and “no people stood before their arms, beginning with the people of the Chatti, of the Kati, of Carchemish and Aradus.” The invaders, including Danai (or early Greeks), came by land and sea to Egypt, but were again defeated, and Rameses III — the last of the great Pharaohs — pursued them far north, and is even supposed by Brugsch to have conquered Cyprus. Among the cities which he took he names Carchemish, and among his captives were “the miserable king of the Chatti, a living prisoner,” and the “miserable king of the Amorites.” 8. Assyrian Invasions: Half a century later (1150 BC) the Assyrians began to invade Syria, and Assur-ris-isi reached Beirut; for even as early as about 1270 BC Tukulti- Ninip of Assyria had conquered the Kassites, and had set a Semitic prince on their throne in Babylon. Early in his reign (about 1130 BC) Tiglathpileser I claims to have subdued 42 kings, marching “to the fords of the Euphrates, the land of the Chatti, and the upper sea of the setting sun” — or Mediterranean. Soldiers of the Chatti had seized the cities of Sumasti (probably Samosata), but the Assyrian conqueror made his soldiers swim the Euphrates on skin bags, and so attacked “Carchemish of the land of the Hittites.” The Moschians in Cappadocia were apparently of Hittite race, and were ruled by 5 kings: for 50 years they had exacted tribute in Commagene (Northeastern Syria), and they were defeated, though placing 20,000 men in the field against Tiglath-pileser I. He advanced to Kumani (probably Comana in Cappadocia), and to Arini which was apparently the Hittite capital called Arinas (now Iranes), West of Caesarea in the same region. 9. Invasion by Assur-nacir-pal: The power of the Hittites was thus broken by Assyria, yet they continued the struggle for more than 4 centuries afterward. After the defeat of Tiglath-pileser I by Marduk-nadin-akhi of Babylon (1128-1111 BC), there is a gap in Assyrian records, and we next hear of the Hittites in the reign of Assur-nacir-pal (883-858 BC); he entered Commagene, and took tribute from “the son of Bachian of the land of the Chatti,” and from “Sangara of Carchemish in the land of the Chatti,” so that it appears that the Hittites no longer acknowledged a single “great king.” They were, however, still rich, judging from the spoil taken at Carchemish, which included 20 talents of silver, beads, chains, and sword scabbards of gold, 100 talents of copper, 250 talents of iron, and bronze objects from the palace representing sacred bulls, bowls, cups and censers, couches, seats, thrones, dishes, instruments of ivory and 200 slave girls, besides embroidered robes of linen and of black and purple stuffs, gems, elephants’ tusks, chariots and horses. The Assyrian advance continued to `Azzaz in North Syria, and to the Afrin river, in the country of the Chattinai who were no doubt Hittites, where similar spoils are noticed, with 1,000 oxen and 10,000 sheep: the pagutu, or “maces” which the Syrian kings used as scepters, and which are often represented on Hittite monuments, are specially mentioned in this record.
Assur-nacir-pal reached the Mediterranean at Arvad, and received tribute from “kings of the sea coast” including those of Gebal, Sidon and Tyre. He reaped the corn of the Hittites, and from Mt. Amanus in North Syria he took logs of cedar, pine, box and cypress. 10. Invasions by Shalmaneser II and Rimmonnirari III: His son Shalmaneser II (858-823 BC) also invaded Syria in his 1st year, and again mentions Sangara of Carchemish, with Sapalulmi of the Chattinai. In Commagene the chief of the Gamgums bore the old Hittite name Mutallis. In 856 BC Shalmaneser II attacked Mer’-ash and advanced by Dabigu (now Toipuk) to `Azzaz. He took from the Hattinai 3 talents of gold, 100 of silver, 300 of copper, 1,000 bronze vases and 1,000 embroidered robes. He also accepted as wives a daughter of Mutallis and another Syrian princess. Two years later 120,000 Assyrians raided the same region, but the southward advance was barred by the great Syrian league which came to the aid of Irchulena, king of Hamath, who was not subdued till about 840 BC. In 836 BC the people of Tubal, and the Kati of Cappadocia and Cilicia, were again attacked. In 831 BC Qubarna, the vassal king of the Chattinai in Syria, was murdered by his subjects, and an Assyrian tartanu or general was sent to restore order. The rebels under Sapalulmi had been confederated with Sangara of Carchemish. Adad-nirari III, grandson of Shalmaneser II, was the next Assyrian conqueror: in BC he attacked `Azzaz and Arpad, but the resistance of the Syrians was feeble, and presents were sent from Tyre, Sidon, Damascus and Edom.
This conqueror states that he subdued “the land of the Hittites, the land of the Amorites, to the limits of the land of Sidon,” as well as Damascus, Edom and Philistia. 11. Revolts and Invasions: But the Hittites were not as yet thoroughly subdued, and often revolted. In 738 BC Tiglath-pileser II mentions among his tributaries a chief of the Gamgums bearing the Hittite name Tarku-lara, with Pisiris of Carchemish.
In 702 BC Sennacherib passed peacefully through the “land of the Chatti” on his way to Sidon: for in 717 BC Sargon had destroyed Carchemish, and had taken many of the Hittites prisoners, sending them away far east and replacing them by Babylonians. Two years later he in the same way took the Hamathites as captives to Assyria. Some of the Hittites may have fled to the South, for in 709 BC Sargon states that the king of Ashdod was deposed by “people of the Chatti plotting rebellion who despised his rule,” and who set up Azuri instead. 12. Breakup of Hittite Power: The power of the Hittites was thus entirely broken before Sennacherib’s time, but they were not entirely exterminated, for, in 673 BC, Esar-haddon speaks of “twenty-two kings of the Chatti and near the sea.” Hittite names occur in 712 BC (Tarchu-nazi of Meletene) and in 711 BC (Mutallis of Commagene), but after this they disappear. Yet, even in a recently found text of Nebuchadnezzar (after 600 BC), we read that “chiefs of the land of the Chattim, bordering on the Euphrates to the West, where by command of Nergal my lord I had destroyed their rule, were made to bring strong beams from the mountain of Lebanon to my city Babylon.” A Hittite population seems to have survived even in Roman times in Cilicia and Cappadocia, for (as Dr. Mordtman observed) a king and his son in this region both bore the name Tarkon-dimotos in the time of Augustus, according to Dio Cassius and Tacitus; and this name recalls that of Tarkutimme, the king of Erine in Cappadocia, occurring on a monument which shows him as brought captive before an Assyrian king, while the same name also occurs on the bilingual silver boss which was the head of his scepter, inscribed in Hittite and cuneiform characters. 13. Mongols in Syria: The power of the Mongolic race decayed gradually as that of the Semitic Assyrians increased; but even now in Syria the two races remain mingled, and Turkoman nomads still camp even as far South as the site of Kadesh on the Orontes, while a few tribes of the same stock (which entered Syria in the Middle Ages) still inhabit the plains of Sharon and Esdraelon, just as the southern Hittites dwelt among the Amorites at Jerusalem and Hebron in the days of Abraham, before they were driven north by Thothmes III.
III. LANGUAGE. 1. Mongol Race: The questions of race and language in early times, before the early stocks were mixed or decayed, cannot be dissociated, and we have abundant evidence of the racial type and characteristic dress of the Hittites. The late Dr. Birch of the British Museum pointed out the Mongol character of the Hittite type, and his opinion has been very generally adopted. In 1888 Dr.
Sayce (The Hittites, 15, 101) calls them “Mongoloid,” and says, “They had in fact, according to craniologists, the characteristics of a Mongoloid race.”
This was also the opinion of Sir W. Flower; and, if the Hittites were Mongols, it would appear probable that they spoke a Mongol dialect. It is also apparent that, in this case, they would be related to the old Mongol population of Chaldea (the people of Akkad and Sumir or “of the highlands and river valley”) from whom the Semitic Babylonians derived their earliest civilization. 2. Hittite on Egyptian Monuments: The Hittite type is represented, not only on their own monuments, but on those of the XVIIIth and XIXth Egyptian Dynasties, including a colored picture of the time of Rameses III. The type represented has a short head and receding forehead, a prominent and sometimes rather curved nose, a strong jaw and a hairless face. The complexion is yellow, the eyes slightly slanting, the hair of the head black, and gathered into a long pigtail behind.
The physiognomy is like that of the Sumerians represented on a bas-relief at Tel-loh (Zirgul) in Chaldea, and very like that of some of the Kirghiz Mongols of the present time, and of some of the more purely Mongolic Turks. The head of Gudea at Zirgul in like manner shows (about 2800 BC) the broad cheek bones and hairless face of the Turkish type; and the language of his texts, in both grammar and vocabulary, is closely similar to pure Turkish speech. 3. Hair and Beard: Among Mongolic peoples the beard grows only late in life, and among the Akkadians it is rarely represented — excepting in the case of gods and ancient kings. The great bas-relief found by Koldewey at Babylon, and representing a Hittite thunder-god with a long pigtail and (at the back) a Hittite inscription, is bearded, but the pigtailed heads on other Hittite monuments are usually hairless. At Iasili-Kaia — the rock shrine near Pterium — only the supreme god is bearded, and all the other male figures are beardless. At Ibreez, in Lycaonia, the gigantic god who holds corn and grapes in his hands is bearded, and the worshipper who approaches him also has a beard, and his hair is arranged in the distinctive fashion of the Semitic Babylonians and Assyrians. This type may represent Semitic mixture, for M. Chantre discovered at Kara-eyak, in Cappadocia, tablets in Semitic Babylonian representing traders’ letters perhaps as old as 2000 BC.
The type of the Ibreez figures has been said to resemble that of the Armenian peasantry of today; but, although the Armenians are Aryans of the old Phrygian stock, and their language almost purely Aryan, they have mixed with the Turkish and Semitic races, and have been said even to resemble the Jews. Little reliance can be placed, therefore, on comparison with modern mixed types. The Hittite pigtail is very distinctive of a Mongolic race. It was imposed on the Chinese by the Manchus in the 17th century, but it is unknown among Aryan or Semitic peoples, though it seems to be represented on some Akkadian seals, and on a bas-relief picturing the Mongolic Susians in the 7th century BC. 4. Hittite Dress: The costume of the Hittites on monuments seems also to indicate Mongolic origin. Kings and priests wear long robes, but warriors (and the gods at Ibreez and Babylon) wear short jerkins, and the Turkish shoe or slipper with a curled-up toe, which, however, is also worn by the Hebrew tribute bearers from Jehu on the “black obelisk” (about 840 BC) of Shalmaneser II. Hittite gods and warriors are shown as wearing a high, conical headdress, just like that which (with addition of the Moslem turban) characterized the Turks at least as late as the 18th century. The short jerkin also appears on Akkadian seals and bas-reliefs, and, generally speaking, the Hittites (who were enemies of the Lycians, Danai and other Aryans to their west) may be held to be very clearly Mongolic in physical type and costume, while the art of their monuments is closely similar to that of the most archaic Akkadian and Babylonian sculptures of Mesopotamia. It is natural to suppose that they were a branch of the same remarkable race which civilized Chaldea, but which seems to have had its earliest home in Akkad, or the “highlands” near Ararat and Media, long before the appearance of Aryan tribes either in this region or in Ionia. The conclusion also agrees with the Old Testament statement that the Hittites were akin to the descendants of Ham in Babylonia, and not to the “fair” tribes (Japheth), including Medes, Ionians and other Aryan peoples. 5. Hittite Names: As early as 1866 Chabas remarked that the Hittite names (of which so many have been mentioned above) were clearly not Semitic, and this has been generally allowed. Those of the Amorites, on the other hand, are Semitic, and the type represented, with brown skin, dark eyes and hair, aqui-line features and beards, agrees (as is generally allowed) in indicating a Semitic race. There are now some 60 of these Hittite names known, and they do not suggest any Aryan etymology. They are quite unlike those of the Aryan Medes (such as Baga-datta, etc.) mentioned by the Assyrians, or those of the Vannic kings whose language (as shown by recently published bilinguals in Vannic and Assyrian) seems very clearly to have been Iranian — or similar to Persian and Sanskrit — but which only occurs in the later Assyrian age. Comparisons with Armenian and Georgian (derived from the Phrygian and Scythian) also fail to show any similarity of vocabulary or of syntax, while on the other hand comparisons with the Akkadian, the Kassite and modern Turkish at once suggest a linguistic connection which fully agrees with what has been said above of the racial type. The common element Tarku, or Tarkhan, in Hittite names suggests the Mongol dargo and the Turkish tarkhan, meaning a “tribal chief.” Sil again is an Akkadian word for a “ruler,” and nazi is an element in both Hittite and Kassite names. 6. Vocabulary of Pterium Epistles: It has also been remarked that the vocabulary of the Hittite letters discovered by Chantre at Pterium recalls that of the letter written by Dusratta of Matiene to Amenophis III (Amos Tab number 27, Berlin), and that Dusratta adored the Hittite god Tessupas. A careful study of the language of this letter shows that, in syntax and vocabulary alike, it must be regarded as Mongolic and as a dialect of the Akkadian group. The cases of the noun, for instance, are the same as in Akkadian and in modern Turkish. No less than 50 words and terminations are common to the language of this letter and of those discovered by M. Chantre and attributed to the Hittites whose territory immediately adjoined that of Matiene. The majority of these words occur also in Akkadian. 7. Tell el-Amarna Tablet: But in addition to these indications we have a letter in the Tell el-Amarna Letters (Berlin number 10) written by a Hittite prince, in his own tongue and in the cuneiform script. It is from (and not to, as has been wrongly supposed by Knudtzon) a chief named Tarchun-dara, and is addressed to Amenophis III, whose name stands first. In all the other letters the name of the sender always follows that of the recipient. The general meaning of this letter is clear from the known meanings of the “ideograms” used for many words; and it is also clear that the language is “agglutinative” like the Akkadian. The suffixed possessive pronouns follow the plural termination of the noun as in Akkadian, and prepositions are not used as they are in Semitic and Aryan speech; the precative form of the verb has also been recognized to be the same as used in Akkadian. The pronouns mi, “my,” and ti, “thy,” are to be found in many living Mongolic dialects (e.g. the Zyrianian me and te); in Akkadian also they occur as mi and zi. The letter opens with the usual salutation: “Letter to Amenophis III the great king, king of the land of Egypt (Mizzari-na), from Tarchun-dara (Tarchundarada), king of the land of Arzapi (or Arzaa), thus. To me is prosperity. To my nobles, my hosts, my cavalry, to all that is mine in all my lands, may there be prosperity; (moreover?) may there be prosperity: to thy house, thy wives, thy sons, thy nobles, thy hosts, thy cavalry, to all that is thine in thy lands may there be prosperity.” The letter continues to speak of a daughter of the Pharaoh, and of a sum of gold which is being sent in charge of an envoy named Irsappa. It concludes (as in many other instances) with a list of presents, these being sent by “the Hittite prince (Numbers Chattu) from the land Igait” (perhaps the same as Ikata), and including, besides the gold, various robes, and ten chairs of ebony inlaid with ivory. As far as it can at present be understood, the language of this letter, which bears no indications of either Semitic or Aryan speech, whether in vocabulary or in syntax, strongly favors the conclusion that the native Hittite language was a dialect of that spoken by the Akkadians, the Kassites and the Minyans of Matiene, in the same age.
IV. RELIGION. 1. Polytheism: Names of Deities: The Hittites like their neighbors adored many gods. Besides Set (or Sutekh), the “great ruler of heaven,” and Ishtar (Ashtoreth), we also find mentioned (in Chattusil’s treaty) gods and goddesses of “the hills and rivers of the land of the Chatti,” “the great sea, the winds and the clouds.”
Tessupas was known to the Babylonians as a name of Rimmon, the god of thunder and rain. On a bilingual seal (in Hittite and cuneiform characters), now in the Ashmolean Museum, we find noticed the goddess Ischara, whose name, among the Kassites, was equivalent to Istar. The Hittite gods are represented — like those of the Assyrians — standing erect on lions.
One of them (at Samala in Syria) is lion-headed like Nergal. They also believed in demons, like the Akkadians and others. 2. Religious Symbolism: Their pantheon was thus also Mongolic, and the suggestion (by Dr.
Winckler) that they adored Indian gods (Indra, Varuna), and the Persian Mithra, not only seems improbable, but is also hardly supported by the quotations from Semitic texts on which this idea is based. The sphinx is found as a Hittite emblem at Eyuk, North of Pterium, with the doubleheaded eagle which again, at Iasili-kaia, supports a pair of deities. It also occurs at Tel-loh as an Akkadian emblem, and was adopted by the Seljuk Turks about 1000 AD. At Eyuk we have a representation of a procession bringing goats and rams to an altar. At Iflatun-bunar the winged sun is an emblem as in Babylonia. At Mer’-ash, in Syria, the mother goddess carries her child, while an eagle perches on a harp beside her. At Carchemish the naked Ishtar is represented with wings. The religious symbolism, like the names of deities, thus suggests a close connection with the emblems and beliefs of the Kassites and Akkadians.
V SCRIPT. 1. Cuneiform and Hieroglyphic: In the 16th century BC, and down to the 13th century, the Hittites used the cuneiform characters and the Babylonian language for correspondence abroad. On seals and and mace-heads they used their own hieroglyphics, together with the cuneiform. These emblems, which occur on archaic monuments at Hamath, Carchemish and Aleppo in Syria, as well as very frequently in Cappadocia and Pontus, and less frequently as far West as Ionia, and on the East at Babylon, are now proved to be of Hittite origin, since the discovery of the seal of Arnuanta already noticed. The suggestion that they were Hittite was first made by the late Dr. W. Wright (British and Foreign Evangelical Review, 1874). About 100 such monuments are now known, including seals from Nineveh and Cappadocia, and Hittite gold ornaments in the Ashmolean Museum; and there can be little doubt that, in cases where the texts accompany figures of the gods, they are of a votive character. 2. Description of Signs: The script is quite distinctive, though many of the emblems are similar to those used by the Akkadians. There are some 170 signs in all, arranged one below another in the line — as among Akkadians. The lines read alternately from right to left and from left to right, the profile emblems always facing the beginning of each line.
The interpretation of these texts is still a controversial question, but the most valuable suggestion toward their understanding is that made by the late Canon Isaac Taylor (see ALPHABET, THE , 1883). A syllabary which was afterward used by the Greeks in Cyprus, and which is found extensively spread in Asia Minor, Egypt, Palestine, Crete, and even on later coins in Spain, was recognized by Dr. Taylor as being derived from the Hittite signs. It was deciphered by George Smith from a Cypriote- Phoenician bilingual, and appears to give the sounds applying to some signs. 3. Interpretation of Monuments: These sounds are confirmed by the short bilinguals as yet known, and they appear in some cases at least to be very clearly the monosyllabic words which apply in Akkadian to similar emblems. We have thus the bases of a comparative study, by aid of a known language and script — a method similar to that which enabled Sir H. Rawlinson to recover scientifically the lost cuneiform, or Champollion to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics. See also ARCHAEOLOGY OF ASIA MINOR; RECENT EXPLORATION.
LITERATURE.
The Egyptian notices will be found in Brugsch’s A History of Egypt under the Pharaohs, 1879, and the Assyrian in Schrader’s Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, English Translation, 1885. The discoveries of Chantre are published in his Mission en Cappadoce, 1898, and those of Dr.
H. Winckler in the Mitteilungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, number 35, December, 1907. The researches of Humann and Puchstein, Reisen in Kleinasien und Nordsyrien, 1890, are also valuable for this question; as is also Dr. Robert Koldewey’s discovery of a Hittite monument at Babylon (Die hettische Inschrift, 1900). The recent discovery of sculpture at a site North of Samala by Professor Garstang is published in the Annals of Archaeology, I, number 4, 1908, by the University of Liverpool. These sculptures are supposed to date about 800 BC, but no accompanying inscriptions have as yet been found. The views of the present writer are detailed in his Tell Amarna Tablets, 2nd edition, 1894, and in The Hittites and Their Languages, 1898. Dr. Sayce has given an account of his researches in a small volume, The Hittites, 1888, but many discoveries by Sir C. Wilson, Mr. D.G. Hogarth, Sir W. Ramsay, and other explorers have since been published, and are scattered in various periodicals not easily accessible. The suggestions of Drs. Jensen, Hommel, and Peiser, in Germany, of comparison with Armenian, Georgian and Turkish, have not as yet produced any agreement; nor have those of Dr. Sayce, who looks to Vannic or to Gr; and further light on Hittite decipherment is still awaited.
See, further, Professor Garstang’s Land of the Hittites, 1910. C. R. Conder HIVITE 1. NAME:
A son of Canaan ( Genesis 10:17), i.e. an inhabitant of the land of Canaan along with the Canaanite and other tribes ( Exodus 3:17, etc.).
In the list of Canaanite peoples given in Genesis 15:19-21, the Hivites are omitted in the Hebrew text, though inserted in Septuagint and S.
Gesenius suggests that the name is descriptive, meaning “villagers.” The difficulty of explaining it is increased by the fact that it has been confused with “Horite” in some passages of the Hebrew text. In Joshua 9:7 the Septuagint reads “Horite” as also does Codex A in Genesis 34:2, and in Genesis 36:2 a comparison with 36:24,25 shows that “Horite” must be substituted for “Hivite.”
2. GEOGRAPHICAL SITUATION:
In Judges 3:3 the Hittites are described as dwelling “in Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-hermon unto the entrance of Hamath,” and in accordance with this the Hivite is described in Joshua 11:3 as being “under Hermon in the land of Mizpeh,” and in 2 Samuel 24:7 they are mentioned immediately after “the stronghold of Tyre.” Hence, the Septuagint (Codex Alexandrinus) reading must be right in Genesis 34:2 and Joshua 9:7, which makes the inhabitants of Shechem and Gibeon Horites instead of Hivites; indeed, in Genesis 48:22 the people of Shechem are called Amorite, though this was a general name for the population of Canaan in the patriarchal period. No name resembling Hivite has yet been found in the Egyptian or Babylonian inscriptions. A. H. Sayce HIZKI HIZKIAH HOAR; HOARY HOAR-FROST; HOARY HOBAB This name occurs only twice ( Numbers 10:29; Judges 4:11). It is not certain whether it denotes the father-in-law or the brother-in-law of Moses.
The direct statement of Numbers 10:29 is that Hobab was “the son of Reuel” (the King James Version “Raguel”). This is probably the correct view and finds support in Exodus 18:27, which tells us that some time before the departure of the Israelites from Sinai, Jethro had departed and returned to his own land. The statement of Judges 4:11 is ambiguous, and therefore does not help us out of the difficulty, but is rather itself to be interpreted in the light of the earlier statement in Numbers 10:29.
Mohammedan traditions favor the view that Hobab was only another name for Jethro. But this has little weight against the statements of Scripture.
However, whether father-in-law or brother-in-law to Moses, the service he rendered to the leader of the hosts of Israel was most valuable and beautiful. Hobab was an experienced sheikh of the desert whose counsel and companionship Moses desired in the unfamiliar regions through which he was to journey. His knowledge of the wilderness and of its possible dangers would enable him to be to the Israelites “instead of eyes.”
The facts recorded of this man are too meager to enable us to answer all the questions that arise concerning him. A difficulty that remains unsolved is the fact that in Judges 1:16 and 4:11 he is described as a Kenite, while in Exodus 3:1 and 18:1, the father-in-law of Moses is spoken of as “the priest of Midian.” Jesse L. Cotton HOBAH HOBAIAH HOCK ([ rq”[; , `aqar ], “to root out”): To hamstring, i.e. to render useless by cutting the tendons of the hock (in the King James Version and the English Revised Version “hough”). “In their selfwill they hocked an ox” ( Genesis 49:6, the King James Version “digged down a wall”), in their destructiveness maiming those which they could not carry off: See also Joshua 11:6,9; 2 Samuel 8:4.
HOD HODAIAH HODAVIAH HODESH HODEVAH HODIAH; HODIJAH HOHAM HOISE HOLD HOLDING I. IN THE OLD TESTAMENT MEANING OF THE TERM.
There has been much discussion as to the original meaning of the Semitic root QDSH , by which the notion of holiness is expressed in the Old Testament. Some would connect it with an Assyrian word denoting purity, clearness; most modern scholars incline to the view that the primary idea is that of cutting off or separation. Etymology gives no sure verdict on the point, but the idea of separation lends itself best to the various senses in which the word “holiness” is employed. In primitive Semitic usage “holiness” seems to have expressed nothing more than that ceremonial separation of an object from common use which the modern study of savage religions has rendered familiar under the name of taboo (W.R.
Smith, Religion of the Semites, Lect iv). But within the Biblical sphere, with which alone we are immediately concerned, holiness attaches itself first of all, not to visible objects, but to the invisible Yahweh, and to places, seasons, things and human beings only in so far as they are associated with Him. And while the idea of ceremonial holiness runs through the Old Testament, the ethical significance which Christianity attributes to the term is never wholly absent, and gradually rises in the course of the revelation into more emphatic prominence. 1. The Holiness of God: As applied to God the notion of holiness is used in the Old Testament in two distinct senses: (1) Absoluteness and Majesty First in the more general sense of separation from all that is human and earthly. It thus denotes the absoluteness, majesty, and awfulness of the Creator in His distinction from the creature. In this use of the word, “holiness” is little more than an equivalent general term for “Godhead,” and the adjective “holy” is almost synonymous with “Divine” (compare Daniel 4:8,9,18; 5:11). Yahweh’s “holy arm” ( Isaiah 52:10; Psalm 98:1) is His Divine arm, and His “holy name” ( Leviticus 20:3, etc.) is His Divine name. When Hannah sings “There is none holy as Yahweh” ( 1 Samuel 2:2), the rest of the verse suggests that she is referring, not to His ethical holiness, but simply to His supreme Divinity. (2) Ethical Holiness But, in the next place, holiness of character in the distinct ethical sense is ascribed to God. The injunction, “Be ye holy; for I am holy” ( Leviticus 11:44; 19:2), plainly implies an ethical conception. Men cannot resemble God in His incommunicable attributes. They can reflect His likeness only along the lines of those moral qualities of righteousness and love in which true holiness consists. In the Psalmists and Prophets the Divine holiness becomes, above all, an ethical reality convicting men of sin ( Isaiah 6:3,1) and demanding of those who would stand in His presence clean hands and a pure heart ( Psalm 24:3 f). 2. Holiness of Place, Time and Object: From the holiness of God is derived that ceremonial holiness of things which is characteristic of the Old Testament religion. Whatever is connected with the worship of the holy Yahweh is itself holy. Nothing is holy in itself, but anything becomes holy by its consecration to Him. A place where He manifests His presence is holy ground ( Exodus 3:5).
The tabernacle or temple in which His glory is revealed is a holy building ( Exodus 28:29; 2 Chronicles 35:5); and all its sacrifices ( Exodus 29:33), ceremonial materials (30:25; Numbers 5:17) and utensils ( Kings 8:4) are also holy. The Sabbath is holy because it is the Sabbath of the Lord ( Exodus 20:8-11). “Holiness, in short, expresses a relation, which consists negatively in separation from common use, and positively in dedication to the service of Yahweh” (Skinner in HDB, II, 395). 3. Holiness of Men: The holiness of men is of two kinds: (1) Ceremonial A ceremonial holiness, corresponding to that of impersonal objects and depending upon their relation to the outward service of Yahweh. Priests and Levites are holy because they have been “hallowed” or “sanctified” by acts of consecration ( Exodus 29:1; Leviticus 8:12,30). The Nazirite is holy because he has separated himself unto the Lord ( Numbers 6:5).
Above all, Israel, notwithstanding all its sins and shortcomings, is holy, as a nation separated from other nations for Divine purposes and uses ( Exodus 19:6, etc.; compare Leviticus 20:24). (2) Ethical and Spiritual But out of this merely ceremonial holiness there emerges a higher holiness that is spiritual and ethical. For unlike other creatures man was made in the image of God and capable of reflecting the Divine likeness. And as God reveals Himself as ethically holy, He calls man to a holiness resembling His own ( Leviticus 19:2). In the so-called “Law of Holiness” (Leviticus through 26), God’s demand for moral holiness is made clear; and yet the moral contents of the Law are still intermingled with ceremonial elements ( Leviticus 17:10 ff; 19:19; 21:1 ff). In psalm and prophecy, however, a purely ethical conception comes into view — the conception of a human holiness which rests upon righteousness and truth ( Psalm 15:1 f) and the possession of a contrite and humble spirit ( Isaiah 57:15). This corresponds to the knowledge of a God who, being Himself ethically holy, esteems justice, mercy and lowly piety more highly than sacrifice ( Hosea 6:6; Micah 6:6-8).
II. IN THE NEW TESTAMENT: THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION.
The idea of holiness is expressed here chiefly by the word hagios and its derivatives, which correspond very closely to the words of the QDSH group in Hebrew, and are employed to render them in the Septuagint. The distinctive feature of the New Testament idea of holiness is that the external aspect of it has almost entirely disappeared, and the ethical meaning has become supreme. The ceremonial idea still exists in contemporary Judaism, and is typically represented by the Pharisees ( Mark 7:1-13; Luke 18:11 f). But Jesus proclaimed a new view of religion and morality according to which men are cleansed or defiled, not by anything outward, but by the thoughts of their hearts ( Matthew 15:17-20), and God is to be worshipped neither in Samaria nor Jerusalem, but wherever men seek Him in spirit and in truth ( John 4:21-24). 1. Applied to God: In the New Testament the term “holy” is seldom applied to God, and except in quotations from the Old Testament ( Luke 1:49; 1 Peter 1:15 f), only in the Johannine writings ( John 17:11; Revelation 4:8; 6:10). But it is constantly used of the Spirit of God ( Matthew 1:18; Acts 1:2; Romans 5:5, etc.), who now, in contrast with Old Testament usage, becomes specifically the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost. 2. Applied to Christ: In several passages the term is applied to Christ ( Mark 1:24; Acts 3:14; 4:30, etc.), as being the very type of ethical perfection (compare Hebrews 7:26). 3. Applied to Things: In keeping with the fact that things are holy in a derivative sense through their relationship to God, the word is used of Jerusalem ( Matthew 4:5), the Old Testament covenant ( Luke 1:72), the Scriptures ( Romans 1:2), the Law ( Romans 7:12), the Mount of Transfiguration ( 2 Peter 1:18), etc. 4. Applied to Christians: But it is especially in its application to Christians that the idea of holiness meets us in the New Testament in a sense that is characteristic and distinctive. Christ’s people are regularly called “saints” or holy persons, and holiness in the high ethical and spiritual meaning of the word is used to denote the appropriate quality of their life and conduct. (1) As Separate from the World No doubt, as applied to believers, “saints” conveys in the first place the notion of a separation from the world and a consecration to God. Just as Israel under the old covenant was a chosen race, so the Christian church in succeeding to Israel’s privileges becomes a holy nation ( 1 Peter 2:9), and the Christian individual, as one of the elect people, becomes a holy man or woman ( Colossians 3:12). In Paul’s usage all baptized persons are “saints,” however far they may still be from the saintly character (compare 1 Corinthians 1:2,14 with 5:1 ff). (2) As Bound to the Pursuit of an Ethical Ideal But though the use of the name does not imply high ethical character as a realized fact, it always assumes it as an ideal and an obligation. It is taken for granted that the Holy Spirit has taken up His abode in the heart of every regenerate person, and that a work of positive sanctification is going on there. The New Testament leaves no room for the thought of a holiness divorced from those moral qualities which the holy God demands of those whom He has called to be His people. See SANCTIFICATION.
LITERATURE.
Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, Lects. iii, iv; A. B. Davidson, Theology of the Old Testament, 145 ff; Schultz, Theology of the Old Testament, II, 167 ff; Orr, Sin as a Problem of Today, chapter iii; Sanday- Headlam, Romans, 12 ff; articles “Holiness” in HDB and “Heiligkeit Gottes im AT” in RE. J. C. Lambert HOLLOW The name, from the root meaning (compare Arabic taraza) “to be hard,” implies some very hard wood. Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) has ilex, which is Latin for holm oak, so named from its holly-like leaves (hollen in Old English = “holly”); this translation has now been adopted, but it is doubtful. (2) [pri~nov , prinos ], Susanna verse 58. This is the ilex or holm oak. There is a play on the words prinos and prisai (literally, “saw”) in verses 58 and 59 (see SUSANNA ). The evergreen or holm oak is represented by two species in Palestine, Quercus ilex and Q. coccifera. The leaf of both species is somewhat like a small holly leaf, is glossy green and usually spiny. The Q. ilex is insignificant, but Q. coccifera is a magnificent tree growing to a height of 40 ft. or more, and often found in Palestine flourishing near sacred tombs, and itself not infrequently the object of superstitious veneration. E. W. G. Masterman HOLOFERNES HOLYDAY HOLY GHOST (SPIRIT), SIN AGAINST THE See BLASPHEMY; HOLY SPIRIT, III, 1, (4).
HOLY OF HOLIES 1. IN THE TABERNACLE:
The most holy place of the tabernacle in the wilderness ( Exodus 26:31-33) was a small cube of 10 cubits (15 ft.) every way. It was divided from the holy Ceiled by curtains which bore cherubic figures embroidered in blue and purple and scarlet ( Exodus 26:1), it contained no furniture but the Ark of the Covenant, covered by a slab of gold called the MERCY-SEAT (which see), and having within it only the two stone tables of the Law (see TABERNACLE; ARK OF COVENANT ). Only the high priest, and he but once a year, on the greatDAY OF ATONEMENT (q.v.), was permitted to enter within the veil, clothed in penitential garments, amid a cloud of incense, and with blood of sacrifice (Leviticus 16; compare Hebrews 9:7).
2. IN THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON:
The proportions of the most holy place in the first temple were the same as in the tabernacle, but the dimensions were doubled. The sacred chamber was enlarged to 20 cubits (30 ft.) each way. We now meet with the word debhir , “oracle” ( 1 Kings 6:16, etc.), which with the exception of Psalm 28:2, belonging perhaps to the same age, is met with in Scripture only in the period of Solomon’s reign. This sanctum, like its predecessor, contained but one piece of furniture — the Ark of the Covenant. It had, however, one new conspicuous feature in the two large figures of cherubim of olive wood, covered with gold, with wings stretching from wall to wall, beneath which the ark was now placed ( 1 Kings 6:23-28; Chronicles 3:10-13; see TEMPLE).
3. IN LATER TIMES:
In Ezekiel’s temple plans, which in many things may have been those of the temple of Zerubbabel, the prophet gives 20 cubits as the length and breadth of the most holy place, showing that these figures were regarded as too sacred to undergo change ( Ezekiel 41:4). There was then no Ark of the Covenant, but Jewish tradition relates that the blood of the great Day of Atonement was sprinkled on an unhewn stone that stood in its place. In Herod’s temple, the dimensions of the two holy chambers remained the same — at least in length and breadth (see TEMPLE, HEROD’S). The holiest place continued empty. In the spoils of the temple depicted on the Arch of Titus there is no representation of the Ark of the Covenant; only of the furniture of the outer chamber or holy place.4. Figurative:In the Epistle to the Hebrews we are taught that the true holy of holies is the heaven into which Jesus has now entered to appear in virtue of His own sacrifice in the presence of God for us ( Hebrews 9:11 ff). Restriction is now removed, and the way into the holiest is made open for all His people ( Hebrews 10:19,20). W. Shaw Caldecott HOLY ONE See GOD, NAMES OF. HOLY PLACE ([ vd,Qoh” , ha-qodhesh ], Exodus 26:33, [ lk;heh” , ha-hekhal ], 1 Kings 6:17, etc.; [hJ prw>th skhnh> , he prote skene ], Hebrews 9:6 f):1. The Terms:The tabernacle consisted of two divisions to which a graduated scale of holiness is attached: “The veil shall separate unto you between the holy place and the most holy” ( Exodus 26:33). This distinction was never abrogated. In the Epistle to the Hebrews these divisions are called the “first” and “second” tabernacles ( Hebrews 9:6 f). The term “holy place” is not indeed confined to the outer chamber of the sanctuary; in Leviticus 6:16, it is applied to “the court of the tent of meeting.” But the other is its technical use. In Solomon’s temple we have a different usage. The word hekhal , “temple,” is not at first applied, as after, to the whole building, but is the designation specifically of the holy place, in distinction from the debhir , or “oracle” (compare 1 Kings 6:3,5,16,17,33, etc.; so in Ezekiel 41:1,2,4, etc.). The wider usage is later (compare 2 Kings 11:10,11,13, etc.).
2. SIZE OF THE HOLY PLACE:
The size of the holy place differed at different times. The holy place of the tabernacle was 20 cubits long by 10 broad and 10 high (30 x 15 x 15 ft.); that of Solomon’s temple was twice this in length and breadth — 40 by 20 cubits; but it is contended by many (Bahr, etc.) that in height it was the full internal height of the building — 30 cubits; the Herodian temple has the same dimensions of length and breadth, but Josephus and Middoth give largely increased, though differing, numbers for the height (see TEMPLE, HEROD’S ).
3. CONTENTS OF HOLY PLACE:
The contents of the holy place were from the beginning ordered to be these ( Exodus 25:23 ff; 30:1-10): the altar of incense, a golden candlestick (in Solomon’s temple increased to ten, 1 Kings 7:49), and a table of showbread (likewise increased to ten, 2 Chronicles 4:8). For the construction, position, history and uses of these objects, see TABERNACLE; TEMPLE , and articles under the several headings. This, as shown by Josephus and by the sculptures on the Arch of Titus, continued to be the furniture of the holy place till the end.
4. SYMBOLISM:
As the outer division of the sanctuary, into which, as yet, not the people, but only their representatives in the priesthood, were admitted while yet the symbols of the people’s consecrated life (prayer, light, thanksgiving) were found in it, the holy place may be said to represent the people’s relation to God in the earthly life, as the holy of holies represented God’s relation to the people in a perfected communion. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the holy place is not largely dwelt on as compared with the court in which the perfect sacrifice was offered, and the holiest of all into which Christ has now entered (Christ passes “through” the tabernacle into the holiest, 9:11).
It pertains, however, evidently to the earthly sphere of Christ’s manifestation, even as earth is the present scene of the church’s fellowship.
Through earth, by the way which Christ has opened up, the believer, already in spirit, finally in fact, passes with Him into the holiest ( Hebrews 10:19; compare 9:8; see Westcott, Hebrews, 233 ff). W. Shaw Caldecott HOLY SPIRIT The expression Spirit, or Spirit of God, or Holy Spirit, is found in the great majority of the books of the Bible. In the Old Testament the Hebrew word uniformly employed for the Spirit as referring to God’s Spirit is [ j”Wr , ruach ] meaning “breath,” “wind” or “breeze.” The verb form of the word is [ j”Wr , ruach ], or [ j”yri , riach ] used only in the Hiphil and meaning “to breathe,” “to blow.” A kindred verb is [ jw”r; , rawach ], meaning “to breathe” “having breathing room,” “to be spacious,” etc. The word always used in the New Testament for the Spirit is the Greek neuter noun [pneu~ma , pneuma ], with or without the article, and for Holy Spirit, [pneu~ma a[gion , pneuma hagion ], or [to< pneu~ma to< a[gion , to pneuma to hagion ]. In the New Testament we find also the expressions, “the Spirit of God,” “the Spirit of the Lord,” “the Spirit of the Father,” “the Spirit of Jesus,” “of Christ.” The word for Spirit in the Greek is from the verb [pne>w , pneo ], “to breathe,” “to blow.” The corresponding word in the Latin is spiritus, meaning “spirit.”
I. OLD TESTAMENT TEACHINGS AS TO THE SPIRIT. 1. Meaning of the Word: At the outset we note the significance of the term itself. From the primary meaning of the word which is “wind,” as referring to Nature, arises the idea of breath in man and thence the breath, wind or Spirit of God. We have no way of tracing exactly how the minds of the Biblical writers connected the earlier literal meaning of the word with the Divine Spirit.
Nearly all shades of meaning from the lowest to the highest appear in the Old Testament, and it is not difficult to conceive how the original narrower meaning was gradually expanded into the larger and wider. The following are some of the shades of Old Testament usage. From the notion of wind or breath, ruach came to signify: (1) the principle of life itself; spirit in this sense indicated the degree of vitality: “My spirit is consumed, my days are extinct” ( Job 17:1; also Judges 15:19; 1 Samuel 30:12); (2) human feelings of various kinds, as anger ( Judges 8:3; Proverbs 29:11), desire ( Isaiah 26:9), courage ( Joshua 2:11); (3) intelligence ( Exodus 28:3; Isaiah 29:24); (4) general disposition ( Psalm 34:18; 5l 17; Proverbs 14:29; 16:18; 29:23).
No doubt the Biblical writers thought of man as made in the image of God ( Genesis 1:27 f), and it was easy for them to think of God as being like man. It is remarkable that their anthropomorphism did not go farther. They preserve, however, a highly spiritual conception of God as compared with that of surrounding nations. But as the human breath was an invisible part of man, and as it represented his vitality, his life and energy, it was easy to transfer the conception to God in the effort to represent His energetic and transitive action upon man and Nature. The Spirit of God, therefore, as based upon the idea of the ruach or breath of man, originally stood for the energy or power of God ( Isaiah 31:3; compare A. B. Davidson, Theology of the Old Testament, 117-18), as contrasted with the weakness of the flesh. 2. The Spirit in Relation to the Godhead: We consider next the Spirit of God in relation to God Himself in the Old Testament. Here there are several points to be noted. The first is that there is no indication of a belief that the Spirit of God was a material particle or emanation from God. The point of view of Biblical writers is nearly always practical rather than speculative. They did not philosophize about the Divine nature. Nevertheless, they retained a very clear distinction between spirit and flesh or other material forms. Again we observe in the Old Testament both an identification of God and the Spirit of God, and also a clear distinction between them. The identification is seen in <19D907> Psalm 139:7 where the omni-presence of the Spirit is declared, and in Isaiah 63:10; Jeremiah 31:33; Ezekiel 36:27. In a great number of passages, however, God and the Spirit of God are not thought of as identical, as in Genesis 1:2; 6:3; Nehemiah 9:20; Psalm 51:11; 104:29 f. Of course this does not mean that God and the Spirit of God were two distinct beings in the thought of Old Testament writers, but only that the Spirit had functions of His own in distinction from God. The Spirit was God in action, particularly when the action was specific, with a view to accomplishing some particular end or purpose of God. The Spirit came upon individuals for special purposes. The Spirit was thus God immanent in man and in the world. As the angel of the Lord, or angel of the Covenant in certain passages, represents both Yahweh Himself and one sent by Yahweh, so in like manner the Spirit of Yahweh was both Yahweh within or upon man, and at the same time one sent by Yahweh to man.
Do the Old Testament teachings indicate that in the view of the writers the Spirit of Yahweh was a distinct person in the Divine nature? The passage in Genesis 1:26 is scarcely conclusive. The idea and importance of personality were but slowly developed in Israelite thought. Not until some of the later prophets did it receive great emphasis, and even then scarcely in the fully developed form. The statement in Genesis 1:26 may be taken as the plural of majesty or as referring to the Divine council, and on this account is not conclusive for the Trinitarian view. Indeed, there are no Old Testament passages which compel us to understand the complete New Testament doctrine of the Trinity and the distinct personality of the Spirit in the New Testament sense. There are, however, numerous Old Testament passages which are in harmony with the Trinitarian conception and prepare the way for it, such as <19D907> Psalm 139:7; Isaiah 63:10; 48:16; Haggai 2:5; Zec 4:6. The Spirit is grieved, vexed, etc., and in other ways is conceived of personally, but as He is God in action, God exerting power, this was the natural way for the Old Testament writers to think of the Spirit.
The question has been raised as to how the Biblical writers were able to hold the conception of the Spirit of God without violence to their monotheism. A suggested reply is that the idea of the Spirit came gradually and indirectly from the conception of subordinate gods which prevailed among some of the surrounding nations (I.F. Wood, The Spirit of God in Biblical Literature, 30). But the best Israelite thought developed in opposition to, rather than in analogy with, polytheism. A more natural explanation seems to be that their simple anthropomorphism led them to conceive the Spirit of God as the breath of God parallel with the conception of man’s breath as being part of man and yet going forth from him. 3. The Spirit in External Nature: We consider next the Spirit of God in external Nature. “And the Spirit of God moved (was brooding or hovering) upon the face of the waters” ( Genesis 1:2). The figure is that of a brooding or hovering bird (compare Deuteronomy 32:11). Here the Spirit brings order and beauty out of the primeval chaos and conducts the cosmic forces toward the goal of an ordered universe. Again in <19A428> Psalm 104:28-30, God sends forth His Spirit, and visible things are called into being: “Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground.” In Job 26:13 the beauty of the heavens is ascribed to the Spirit: “By his Spirit the heavens are garnished.” In Isaiah 32:15 the wilderness becomes a fruitful field as the result of the outpouring of the Spirit. The Biblical writers scarcely took into their thinking the idea of second causes, certainly not in the modern scientific sense. They regarded the phenomena of Nature as the result of God’s direct action through His Spirit. At every point their conception of the Spirit saved them from pantheism on the one hand and polytheism on the other. 4. The Spirit of God in Man: The Spirit may next be considered in imparting natural powers both physical and intellectual. In Genesis 2:7 God originates man’s personal and intellectual life by breathing into his nostrils “the breath of life.” In Numbers 16:22 God is “the God of the spirits of all flesh.” In Exodus 28:3; 31:3; 35:31, wisdom for all kinds of workmanship is declared to be the gift of God. So also physical life is due to the presence of the Spirit of God ( Job 27:3);. and Elihu declares ( Job 33:4) that the Spirit of God made him. See also Ezekiel 37:14 and 39:29. Thus man is regarded by the Old Testament writers, in all the parts of his being, body, mind and spirit, as the direct result of the action of the Spirit of God.
In Genesis 6:3 the Spirit of God “strives” with or “rules” in or is “humbled” in man in the antediluvian world. Here reference is not made to the Spirit’s activity over and above, but within the moral nature of man. 5. In Imparting Powers for Service: The greater part of the Old Testament passages which refer to the Spirit of God deal with the subject from the point of view of the covenant relations between Yahweh and Israel. And the greater portion of these, in turn, have to do with gifts and powers conferred by the Spirit for service in the ongoing of the kingdom of God. We fail to grasp the full meaning of very many statements of the Old Testament unless we keep constantly in mind the fundamental assumption of all the Old Testament, namely, the covenant relations between God and Israel. Extraordinary powers exhibited by Israelites of whatever kind were usually attributed to the Spirit. These are so numerous that our limits of space forbid an exhaustive presentation. The chief points we may notice. (1) Judges and Warriors.
The children of Israel cried unto Yahweh and He raised up a savior for them, Othniel, the son of Kenaz: “And the Spirit of Yahweh came upon him, and he judged Israel” ( Judges 3:10). So also Gideon ( Judges 6:34): “The Spirit of Yahweh came upon (literally, clothed itself with) Gideon.” In Judges 11:29 “the spirit of Yahweh came upon Jephthah”; and in 13:25 “the Spirit of Yahweh began to move” Samson. In 14:6 “the Spirit of Yahweh came mightily upon him.” In 1 Samuel 16:14 we read “the Spirit of Yahweh departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from Yahweh troubled him.” In all this class of passages, the Spirit imparts special endowments of power without necessary reference to the moral character of the recipient. The end in view is not personal, merely to the agent, but concerns theocratic kingdom and implies the covenant between God and Israel. In some cases the Spirit exerts physical energy in a more direct way ( 2 Kings 2:16; Ezekiel 2:1 f; 3:12). (2) Wisdom for Various Purposes.
Bezalel is filled with the Spirit of God in wisdom and in understanding to work in gold, and silver and brass, etc., in the building of the tabernacle ( Exodus 31:2-4; 35:31); and the Spirit of wisdom is given to others in making Aaron’s garments ( Exodus 28:3). So also of one of the builders of Solomon’s temple ( 1 Kings 7:14; 2 Chronicles 2:14). In these cases there seems to be a combination of the thought of natural talents and skill to which is superadded a special endowment of the Spirit. Pharaoh refers to Joseph as one in whom the Spirit of God is, as fitting him for administration and government ( Genesis 41:38). Joshua is qualified for leadership by the Spirit ( Numbers 27:18). In this and in Deuteronomy 34:9, Joshua is represented as possessing the Spirit through the laying on of the hands of Moses. This is an interesting Old Testament parallel to the bestowment of the Spirit by laying on of hands in the New Testament ( Acts 8:17; 19:6). Daniel is represented as having wisdom to interpret dreams through the Spirit, and afterward because of the Spirit he is exalted to a position of authority and power ( Daniel 4:8; 5:11-14; 6:3). The Spirit qualifies Zerubbabel to rebuild the temple (Zec 4:6). The Spirit was given to the people for instruction and strengthening during the wilderness wanderings ( Nehemiah 9:20), and to the elders along with Moses ( Numbers 11:17,25). It thus appears how very widespread were the activities of the redemptive Spirit, or the Spirit in the covenant. All these forms of the Spirit’s action bore in some way upon the national life of the people, and were directed in one way or another toward theocratic ends. (3) In Prophecy.
The most distinctive and important manifestation of the Spirit’s activity in the Old Testament was in the sphere of prophecy. In the earlier period the prophet was called seer ([ ha,ro , ro’eh ]), and later he was called prophet ([ aybin; , nabhi’ ]). The word “prophet” ([profh>thv , prophetes ]) means one who speaks for God. The prophets were very early differentiated from the masses of the people into a prophetic class or order, although Abraham himself was called a prophet, as were Moses and other leaders ( Genesis 20:7; Deuteronomy 18:15). The prophet was especially distinguished from others as the man who possessed the Spirit of God ( Hosea 9:7).
The prophets ordinarily began their messages with the phrase, “thus saith Yahweh,” or its equivalent. But they ascribed their messages directly also to the Spirit of God ( Ezekiel 2:2; 8:3; 11:1,24; 13:3). The case of Balaam presents some difficulties ( Numbers 24:2). He does not seem to have been a genuine prophet, but rather a diviner, although it is declared that the Spirit of God came upon him. Balaam serves, however, to illustrate the Old Testament point of view. The chief interest was the national or theocratic or covenant ideal, not that of the individual. The Spirit was bestowed at times upon unworthy men for the achievement of these ends. Saul presents a similar example. The prophet was God’s messenger speaking God’s message by the Spirit. His message was not his own. It came directly from God, and at times overpowered the prophet with its urgency, as in the case of Jeremiah (1:4 ff).
There are quite perceptible stages in the development of the Old Testament prophecy. In the earlier period the prophet was sometimes moved, not so much to intelligible speech, as by a sort of enthusiasm or prophetic ecstasy.
In 1 Samuel 10 we have an example of this earlier form of prophecy, where a company with musical instruments prophesied together. To what extent this form of prophetic enthusiasm was attended by warnings and exhortations, if so attended at all, we do not know. There was more in it than in the excitement of the diviners and devotees of the surrounding nations. For the Spirit of Yahweh was its source.
In the later period we have prophecy in its highest forms in the Old Testament. The differences between earlier and later prophecy are probably due in part to the conditions. The early period required action, the later required teaching. The judges on whom the Spirit came were deliverers in a turbulent age. There was not need for, nor could the people have borne, the higher ethical and spiritual truths which came in later revelations through the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and others. See 2 Samuel 23:2; Ezekiel 2:2; 8:3; 11:24; 13:3;. Micah 3:8; Hosea 9:7.
A difficulty arises from statements such as the following: A lying spirit was sometimes present in the prophet ( 1 Kings 22:21 f); Yahweh puts a spirit in the king of Assyria and turns him back to his destruction ( Isaiah 37:7); because of sin, a lying prophet should serve the people ( Micah 2:11); in Micaiah’s vision Yahweh sends a spirit to entice Ahab through lying prophets ( 1 Kings 22:19 ff); an evil spirit from Yahweh comes upon Saul ( 1 Samuel 16:14; 18:10; 19:9). The following considerations may be of value in explaining these passages. Yahweh was the source of things generally in Old Testament thought. Its pronounced monotheism appears in this as in so many other ways. Besides this, Old Testament writers usually spoke phenomenally. Prophecy was a particular form of manifestation with certain outward marks and signs. Whatever presented these outward marks was called prophecy, whether the message conveyed was true or false. The standard of discrimination here was not the outward signs of the prophet, but the truth or right of the message as shown by the event. As to the evil spirit from Yahweh, it may be explained in either of two ways. First, it may have referred to the evil disposition of the man upon whom God’s Spirit was acting, in which case he would resist the Spirit and his own spirit would be the evil spirit. Or the “evil spirit from Yahweh” may have referred, in the prophet’s mind, to an actual spirit of evil which Yahweh sent or permitted to enter the man. The latter is the more probable explanation, in accordance with which the prophet would conceive that Yahweh’s higher will was accomplished, even through the action of the evil spirit upon man’s spirit. Yahweh’s judicial anger against transgression would, to the prophet’s mind, justify the sending of an evil spirit by Yahweh. 6. Imparting Moral Character: The activity of the Spirit in the Old Testament is not limited to gifts for service. Moral and spiritual character is traced to the Spirit’s operations as well. “Thy holy Spirit” ( Psalm 51:11); “his holy spirit” ( Isaiah 63:10); “thy good Spirit” ( Nehemiah 9:20); “Thy Spirit is good” ( <19E310> Psalm 143:10) are expressions pointing to the ethical quality of the Spirit’s action. “Holy” is from the verb form ([ vd”q; , qadhash ]), whose root meaning is doubtful, but which probably meant “to be separated” from which it comes to mean to be exalted, and this led to the conception to be Divine. And as Yahweh is morally good, the conception of “the holy (= Divine) one” came to signify the holy one in the moral sense. Thence the word was applied to the Spirit of Yahweh. Yahweh gives His good Spirit for instruction ( Nehemiah 9:20); the Spirit is called good because it teaches to do God’s will ( <19E310> Psalm 143:10); the Spirit gives the fear of the Lord ( Isaiah 11:2-5); judgment and righteousness ( Isaiah 32:15 ff); devotion to the Lord ( Isaiah 44:3-5); hearty obedience and a new heart ( Ezekiel 36:26 f); penitence and prayer (Zec 12:10). In Psalm 51:11 there is an intense sense of guilt and sin coupled with the prayer, “Take not thy holy Spirit from me.” Thus, we see that the Old Testament in numerous ways recognizes the Holy Spirit as the source of inward moral purity, although the thought is not so developed as in the New Testament. 7. The Spirit in the Messiah: In both the first and the second sections of Isaiah, there are distinct references to the Spirit in connection with the Messiah, although the Messiah is conceived as the ideal King who springs from the root of David in some instances, and in others as the Suffering Servant of Yahweh. This is not the place to discuss the Messianic import of the latter group of passages which has given rise to much difference of opinion. As in the case of the ideal Davidic King which, in the prophet’s mind, passes from the lower to the higher and Messianic conception, so, under the form of the Suffering Servant, the “remnant” of Israel becomes the basis for an ideal which transcends in the Messianic sense the original nucleus of the conception derived from the historic events in the history of Israel. The prophet rises in the employment of both conceptions to the thought of the Messiah who is the “anointed” of Yahweh as endued especially with the power and wisdom of the Spirit. In Isaiah 11:1-5 a glowing picture is given of the “shoot out of the stock of Jesse.” The Spirit imparts “wisdom and understanding” and endows him with manifold gifts through the exercise of which he shall bring in the kingdom of righteousness and peace.
In Isaiah 42:1 ff, the “servant” is in like manner endowed most richly with the gifts of the Spirit by virtue of which he shall bring forth “justice to the Gentiles.” In Isaiah 61:1 ff occur the notable words cited by Jesus in Luke 4:18 f, beginning, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” etc. In these passages the prophet describes elaborately and minutely the Messiah’s endowment with a wide range of powers, all of which are traced to the action of God’s Spirit. 8. Predictions of Future Outpouring of the Spirit: In the later history of Israel, when the sufferings of the exile pressed heavily, there arose a tendency to idealize a past age as the era of the special blessing of the Spirit, coupled with a very marked optimism as to a future outpouring of the Spirit. In Haggai 2:5 reference is made to the Mosaic period as the age of the Spirit, “when ye came out of Egypt, and my Spirit abode among you.” In Isaiah 44:3 the Spirit is to be poured out on Jacob and his seed; and in Isaiah 59:20 a Redeemer is to come to Zion under the covenant of Yahweh, and the Spirit is to abide upon the people. The passage, however, which especially indicates the transition from Old Testament to New Testament times is that in Joel 2:28,32 which is cited by Peter in Acts 2:17-21. In this prophecy the bestowal of the Spirit is extended to all classes, is attended by marvelous signs and is accompanied by the gift of salvation. Looking back from the later to the earlier period of Old Testament history, we observe a twofold tendency of teaching in relation to the Spirit. The first is from the outward gift of the Spirit for various uses toward a deepening sense of inner need of the Spirit for moral purity, and consequent emphasis upon the ethical energy of the Spirit. The second tendency is toward a sense of the futility of the merely human or theocratic national organization in and of itself to achieve the ends of Yahweh, along with a sense of the need for the Spirit of God upon the people generally, and a prediction of the universal diffusion of the Spirit.
II. THE SPIRIT IN NON-CANONICAL JEWISH LITERATURE.
In the Palestinian and Alexandrian literature of the Jews there are comparatively few references to the Spirit of God. The two books in which the teachings as to the Spirit are most explicit and most fully developed are of Alexandrian origin, namely, The Wisdom of Solomon and the writings of Philo.
In the Old Testament Apocrypha and in Josephus the references to the Spirit are nearly always merely echoes of a long-past age when the Spirit was active among men. In no particular is the contrast between the canonical and noncanonical literature more striking than in the teaching as to the Spirit of God. 1. The Spirit of Josephus: Josephus has a number of references to the Holy Spirit, but nearly always they have to do with the long-past history of Israel. He refers to 22 books of the Old Testament which are of the utmost reliability. There are other books, but none “of like authority,” because there has “not been an exact succession of prophets” (Josephus, Against Apion I, 8). Samuel is described as having a large place in the affairs of the kingdom because he is a prophet (Ant., VI, v, 6). God appears to Solomon in sleep and teaches him wisdom (ibid., VIII, ii); Balaam prophesies through the Spirit’s power (ibid., IV, v, 6); and Moses was such a prophet that his words were God’s words (ibid., IV, viii, 49). In Josephus we have then simply a testimony to the inspiration and power of the prophets and the books written by them, in so far as we have in him teachings regarding the Spirit of God. Even here the action of the Spirit is usually implied rather than expressed. 2. The Spirit in the Pseudepigrapha: In the pseudepigraphic writings the Spirit of God is usually referred to as acting in the long-past history of Israel or in the future Messianic age. In the apocalyptic books, the past age of power, when the Spirit wrought mightily, becomes the ground of the hopes of the future. The past is glorified, and out of it arises the hope of a future kingdom of glory and power. Enoch says to Methuselah: “The word calls me and the Spirit is poured out upon me” (En 91:1). In 49:1-4 the Messiah has the Spirit of wisdom, understanding and might. Enoch is represented as describing his own translation. “He was carried aloft in the chariots of the Spirit” (En 70:2). In Jubilees 31:16 Isaac is represented as prophesying, and in 25:13 it is said of Rebekah that the” Holy Spirit descended into her mouth.”
Sometimes the action of the Spirit is closely connected with the moral life, although this is rare. “The Spirit of God rests” on the man of pure and loving heart (XII the Priestly Code (P), Benj. 8). In Simeon 4 it is declared that Joseph was a good man and that the Spirit of God rested on him.
There appears at times a lament for the departed age of prophecy (1 Macc 9:27; 14:41). The future is depicted in glowing colors. The Spirit is to come in a future judgment (XII the Priestly Code (P), Levi 18); and the spirit of holiness shall rest upon the redeemed in Paradise (Levi 18); and in Levi 2 the spirit of insight is given, and the vision of the sinful world and its salvation follows. Generally speaking, this literature is far below that of the Old Testament, both in moral tone and religious insight. Much of it seems childish, although at times we encounter noble passages. There is lacking in it the prevailing Old Testament mood which is best described as prophetic, in which the writer feels constrained by the power of God’s Spirit to speak or write. The Old Testament literature thus possesses a vitality and power which accounts for the strength of its appeal to our religious consciousness. 3. The Spirit in the Wisdom of Solomon: We note in the next place a few teachings as to the Spirit of God in Wisd.
Here the ethical element in character is a condition of the Spirit’s indwelling. “Into a malicious soul wisdom shall not enter: nor dwell in the body that is subject unto sin. For the holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and will not abide when unrighteousness cometh in” (The Wisdom of Solomon 1:4 f). This “holy spirit of discipline” is evidently God’s Holy Spirit, for in 1:7 the writer proceeds to assert, “For the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world,” and in 1:8,9 there is a return to the conception of unrighteousness as a hindrance to right speaking. In The Wisdom of Solomon 7:7 the Spirit of Wisdom comes in response to prayer. In 7:22-30 is an elaborate and very beautiful description of wisdom: “In her is an understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold, subtle, lively, clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that is good, quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do good, kind to man, steadfast, sure,” etc. “She is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness,” etc. No one can know God’s counsel except by the Holy Spirit (9:17). The writer of The Wisdom of Solomon was deeply possessed of the sense of the omnipresence of the Spirit of God, as seen in 1:7 and in 12:1. In the latter passage we read: “For thine incorruptible spirit is in all things.” 4. The Spirit in Philo: In Philo we have what is almost wholly wanting in other Jewish literature, namely, analytic and reflective thought upon the work of the Spirit of God.
The interest in Philo is primarily philosophic, and his teachings on the Spirit possess special interest on this account in contrast with Biblical and other extra-Biblical literature. In his Questions and Solutions, 27, 28, he explains the expression in Genesis 8:1: “He brought a breath over the earth and the wind ceased.” He argues that water is not diminished by wind, but only agitated and disturbed. Hence, there must be a reference to God’s Spirit or breath by which the whole universe obtains security. He has a similar discussion of the point why the word “Spirit” is not used instead of “breath” in Genesis in the account of man’s creation, and concludes that “to breathe into” here means to “inspire,” and that God by His Spirit imparted to man mental and moral life and capacity for Divine things (Allegories, xiii). In several passages Philo discusses prophecy and the prophetic office. One of the most interesting relates to the prophetic office of Moses (Life of Moses, xxiii ff). He also describes a false prophet who claims to be “inspired and possessed by the Holy Spirit” (On Those Who Offer Sacrifice, xi). In a very notable passage, Philo describes in detail his own subjective experiences under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and his language is that of the intellectual mystic. He says that at times he found himself devoid of impulse or capacity for mental activity, when suddenly by the coming of the Spirit of God, his intellect was rendered very fruitful: “and sometimes when I have come to my work empty I have suddenly become full, ideas being, in an invisible manner, showered upon me and implanted in me from on high; so that through the influence of Divine inspiration I have become greatly excited and have known neither the place in which I was, nor those who were present, nor myself, nor what I was saying, nor what I was writing,” etc. (Migrations of Abraham, vii).
In Philo, as in the non-canonical literature generally, we find little metaphysical teaching as to the Spirit and His relations to the Godhead. On this point there is no material advance over the Old Testament teaching.
The agency of the Holy Spirit in shaping and maintaining the physical universe and as the source of man’s capacities and powers is clearly recognized in Philo. In Philo, as in Josephus, the conception of inspiration as the complete occupation and domination of the prophet’s mind by the Spirit of God, even to the extent of suspending the operation of the natural powers, comes clearly into view. This is rather in contrast with, than in conformity to, the Old Testament and New Testament conception of inspiration, in which the personality of the prophet remains intensely active while under the influence of the Spirit, except possibly in cases of vision and trance.
III. THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
In the New Testament there is unusual symmetry and completeness of teaching as to the work of the Spirit of God in relation to the Messiah Himself, and to the founding of the Messianic kingdom. The simplest mode of presentation will be to trace the course of the progressive activities of the Spirit, or teachings regarding these activities, as these are presented to us in the New Testament literature as we now have it, so far as the nature of the subject will permit. This will, of course, disturb to some extent the chronological order in which the New Testament books were written, since in some cases, as in John’s Gospel, a very late book contains early teachings as to the Spirit. 1. In Relation to the Person and Work of Christ: (1) Birth of Jesus.
In Matthew 1:18 Mary is found with child “of the Holy Spirit” ([ejk pneu>matov aJgi>ou , ek pneumatos hagiou ]); an angel tells Joseph that that “which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit” (1:20), all of which is declared to be in fulfillment of the prophecy that a virgin shall bring forth a son whose name shall be called Immanuel ( Isaiah 7:14). In Luke 1:35 the angel says to Mary that the Holy Spirit (pneuma hagion) shall come upon her, and the power of the Most High ([du>namiv Juyi>stou , dunamis Hupsistou ]) shall overshadow her. Here “Holy Spirit” and “power of the Most High” are parallel expressions meaning the same thing; in the one case emphasizing the Divine source and in the other the holiness of “the holy thing which is begotten” (1:35). In connection with the presentation of the babe in the temple, Simeon is described as one upon whom the Holy Spirit rested, to whom revelation was made through the Spirit and who came into the temple in the Spirit ( Luke 2:25-28). So also Anna the prophetess speaks concerning the babe, evidently in Luke’s thought, under the influence of the Holy Spirit ( Luke 2:36 ff).
It is clear from the foregoing that the passages in Matthew and Luke mean to set forth, first, the supernatural origin, and secondly, the sinlessness of the babe born of Mary. The act of the Holy Spirit is regarded as creative, although the words employed signify “begotten” or “born” ([gennhqe>n , gennethen ], Matthew 1:20; and [gennw>menon , gennomenon ], Luke 1:35). There is no hint in the stories of the nativity concerning the pretemporal existence of Christ. This doctrine was developed later. Nor is there any suggestion of the immaculate conception or sinlessness of Mary, the mother of our Lord. Dr. C.A. Briggs has set forth a theory of the sinlessness of Mary somewhat different from the Roman Catholic view, to the effect that the Old Testament prophecies foretell the purification of the Davidic line, and that Mary was the culminating point in the purifying process, who thereby became sinless (Incarnation of the Lord, 230-34).
This, however, is speculative and without substantial Biblical warrant. The sinlessness of Jesus was not due to the sinlessness of His mother, but to the Divine origin of His human nature, the Spirit of God.
In Hebrews 10:5 ff the writer makes reference to the sinless body of Christ as affording a perfect offering for sins. No direct reference is made to the birth of Jesus, but the origin of His body is ascribed to God ( Hebrews 10:5), though not specifically to the Holy Spirit. (2) Baptism of Jesus.
The New Testament records give us very little information regarding the growth of Jesus to manhood. In Luke 2:40 ff a picture is given of the boyhood, exceedingly brief, but full of significance. The “child grew, and waxed strong, filled with wisdom (m “becoming full of wisdom”): and the grace of God was upon him.” Then follows the account of the visit to the temple. Evidently in all these experiences, the boy is under the influence and guidance of the Spirit. This alone would supply an adequate explanation, although Luke does not expressly name the Spirit as the source of these particular experiences. The Spirit’s action is rather assumed.
Great emphasis, however, is given to the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus at His baptism. Matthew 3:16 declares that after His baptism “the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him.” Mark 1:10 repeats the statement in substantially equivalent terms. Luke 3:22 declares that the Spirit descended in “bodily form, as a dove” ([swmatikw~| ei]dei wJv peristera>n , somatiko eidei hos peristeran ]). In John 1:32,33 the Baptist testifies that he saw the Spirit descending upon Jesus as a dove out of heaven, and that it abode upon Him, and, further, that this descent of the Spirit was the mark by which he was to recognize Jesus as “he that baptizeth in the Holy Spirit.”
We gather from these passages that at the baptism there was a new communication of the Spirit to Jesus in great fullness, as a special anointing for His Messianic vocation. The account declares that the dovelike appearance was seen by Jesus as well as John, which is scarcely compatible with a subjective experience merely. Of course, the dove here is to be taken as a symbol, and not as an assertion that God’s Spirit assumed the form of a dove actually. Various meanings have been assigned to the symbol. One connects it with the creative power, according to a Gentileusage; others with the speculative philosophy of Alexandrian Judaism, according to which the dove symbolized the Divine wisdom or reason. But the most natural explanation connects the symbolism of the dove with the brooding or hovering of the Spirit in Genesis 13. In this new spiritual creation of humanity, as in the first physical creation, the Spirit of God is the energy through which the work is carried on. Possibly the dove, as a living organism, complete in itself, may suggest the totality and fullness of the gift of the Spirit to Jesus. At Pentecost, on the contrary, the Spirit is bestowed distributively and partially at least to individuals as such, as suggested by the cloven tongues as of fire which “sat upon each one of them” ( Acts 2:3). John 3:34 emphasizes the fullness of the bestowal upon Jesus: “For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for he giveth not the Spirit by measure.” In the witness of the Baptist the permanence of the anointing of Jesus is declared: “Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and abiding” (1:33).
It is probable that the connection of the bestowal of the Spirit with water baptism, as seen later in the Book of Acts, is traceable to the reception of the Spirit by Jesus at His own baptism. Baptism in the Spirit did not supersede water baptism.
The gift of the Spirit in fullness to Jesus at His baptism was no doubt His formal and public anointing for His Messianic work ( Acts 10:38). The baptism of Jesus could not have the same significance with that of sinful men. For the symbolic cleansing from sin had no meaning for the sinless one. Yet as an act of formal public consecration it was appropriate to the Messiah. It brought to a close His private life and introduced Him to His public Messianic career. The conception of an anointing for public service was a familiar one in the Old Testament writings and applied to the priest ( Exodus 28:41; 40:13; Leviticus 4:3,5,16; 6:20,22); to kings ( Samuel 9:16; 10:1; 15:1; 16:3,13); sometimes to prophets ( 1 Kings 19:16; compare Isaiah 61:1; Psalm 2:2; 20:6). These anointings were with oil, and the oil came to be regarded as a symbol of the Spirit of God.
The anointing of Jesus with the Holy Spirit qualified Him in two particulars for His Messianic office. (a) It was the source of His own endowments of power for the endurance of temptation, for teaching, for casting out demons, and healing the sick, for His sufferings and death, for His resurrection and ascension. The question is often raised, why Jesus, the Divine one, should have needed the Holy Spirit for His Messianic vocation. The reply is that His human nature, which was real, required the Spirit’s presence. Man, made in God’s image, is constituted in dependence upon the Spirit of God. Apart from God’s Spirit man fails of his true destiny, simply because our nature is constituted as dependent upon the indwelling Spirit of God for the performance of our true functions.
Jesus as human, therefore, required the presence of God’s Spirit, notwithstanding His Divine-human consciousness. (b) The Holy Spirit’s coming upon Jesus in fullness also qualified Him to bestow the Holy Spirit upon His disciples. John the Baptist especially predicts that it is He who shall baptize in the Holy Spirit ( Matthew 3:11; Mark 18; Luke 3:16; see also John 20:22; Acts 15). It was especially true of the king that He was anointed for His office, and the term Messiah ([ j”yvim; , mashiach ], equivalent to the Greek [oJ Cristo>v , ho Christos ]), meaning the Anointed One, points to this fact. (3) Temptation of Jesus.
The facts as to the temptation are as follows: In Matthew 4:1 we are told that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. Mark 1:12 declares in his graphic way that after the baptism “straightway the Spirit driveth ([ejkba>llei , ekballei ]) him forth into the wilderness.” Luke 4:1 more fully declares that Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit,” and that He was “led in the Spirit in the wilderness during days.” The impression which the narratives of the temptation give is of energetic spiritual conflict. As the Messiah confronted His life task He was subject to the ordinary conditions of other men in an evil world. Not by sheer divinity and acting from without as God, but as human also and a part of the world, He must overcome, so that while He was sinless, it was nevertheless true that the righteousness of Jesus was also an achieved righteousness. The temptations were no doubt such as were peculiar to His Messianic vocation, the misuse of power, the presumption of faith and the appeal of temporal splendor. To these He opposes the restraint of power, the poise of faith and the conception of a kingdom wholly spiritual in its origin, means and ends. Jesus is hurled, as it were, by the Spirit into this terrific conflict with the powers of evil, and His conquest, like the temptations themselves, was not final, but typical and representative. It is a mistake to suppose that the temptations of Jesus ended at the close of the forty days. Later in His ministry, He refers to the disciples as those who had been with Him in His temptations ( Luke 22:28). The temptations continued throughout His life, though, of course, the wilderness temptations were the severest test of all, and the victory there contained in principle and by anticipation later victories. Comment has been made upon the absence of reference to the Holy Spirit’s influence upon Jesus in certain remarkable experiences, which in the case of others would ordinarily have been traced directly to the Spirit, as in Luke 11:14 ff, etc. (compare the article by James Denney in DCG, I, 732, 734). Is it not true, however, that the point of view of the writers of the Gospels is that Jesus is always under the power of the Spirit? At His baptism, in the temptation, and at the beginning of His public ministry ( Luke 4:14) very special stress is placed upon the fact. Thenceforward the Spirit’s presence and action are assumed. From time to time, reference is made to the Spirit for special reasons, but the action of the Spirit in and through Jesus is always assumed. (4) Public Ministry of Jesus.
Here we can select only a few points to illustrate a much larger truth. The writers of the Gospels, and especially Luke, conceived of the entire ministry of Jesus as under the power of the Holy Spirit. After declaring that Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit” and that He was led about by the Spirit in the wilderness forty days in 4:1, he declares, in 4:14, that Jesus “returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee.” This is followed in the next verse by a general summary of His activities: “And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.” Then, as if to complete his teaching as to the relation of the Spirit to Jesus, he narrates the visit to Nazareth and the citation by Jesus in the synagogue there of Isaiah’s words beginning, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” with the detailed description of His Messianic activity, namely, preaching to the poor, announcement of release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord ( Isaiah 61:1 f). Jesus proclaims the fulfillment of this prophecy in Himself ( Luke 4:21). In Matthew 12:18 ff a citation from Isaiah 42:1-3 is given in connection with the miraculous healing work of Jesus. It is a passage of exquisite beauty and describes the Messiah as a quiet and unobtrusive and tender minister to human needs, possessed of irresistible power and infinite patience. Thus the highest Old Testament ideals as to the operations of the Spirit of God come to realization, especially in the public ministry of Jesus. The comprehensive terms of the description make it incontestably clear that the New Testament writers thought of the entire public life of Jesus as directed by the Spirit of God. We need only to read the evangelic records in order to fill in the details.
The miracles of Jesus were wrought through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Occasionally He is seized as it were by a sense of the urgency of His work in some such way as to impress beholders with the presence of a strange power working in Him. In one case men think He is beside Himself ( Mark 3:21); in another they are impressed with the authoritativeness of His teaching ( Mark 1:22); in another His intense devotion to His task makes Him forget bodily needs ( John 4:31); again men think He has a demon ( John 8:48); at one time He is seized with a rapturous joy when the 70 return from their successful evangelistic tour, and Luke declares that at that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit ( Luke 10:21; compare Matthew 11:25). This whole passage is a remarkable one, containing elements which point to the Johannine conception of Jesus, on which account Harnack is disposed to discredit it at certain points (Sayings of Jesus, 302). One of the most impressive aspects of this activity of Jesus in the Spirit is its suppressed intensity. Nowhere is there lack of self-control.
Nowhere is there evidence of a coldly didactic attitude, on the one hand, or of a loose rein upon the will, on the other. Jesus is always an intensely human Master wrapped in Divine power. The miracles contrast strikingly with the miracles of the apocryphal gospels. In the latter all sorts of capricious deeds of power are ascribed to Jesus as a boy. In our Gospels, on the contrary, no miracle is wrought until after His anointing with the Spirit at baptism.
A topic of especial interest is that of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
Jesus cast out demons by the power of God’s Spirit. In Matthew 12:31; Mark 3:28 f; Luke 12:10, we have the declaration that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is an unpardonable sin. Mark particularizes the offense of the accusers of Jesus by saying that they said of Jesus, “He hath an unclean spirit.” The blasphemy against the Spirit seems to have been not merely rejection of Jesus and His words, which might be due to various causes. It was rather the sin of ascribing works of Divine mercy and power-works which had all the marks of their origin in the goodness of God — to a diabolic source. The charge was that He cast out devils by Beelzebub the prince of devils. We are not to suppose that the unpardonable nature of the sin against the Holy Spirit was due to anything arbitrary in God’s arrangements regarding sin. The moral and spiritual attitude involved in the charge against Jesus was simply a hopeless one. It presupposed a warping or wrenching of the moral nature from the truth in such degree, a deep-seated malignity and insusceptibility to Divine influences so complete, that no moral nucleus remained on which the forgiving love of God might work. See BLASPHEMY. (5) Death, Resurrection and Pentecostal Gift.
It is not possible to give here a complete outline of the activities of Jesus in the Holy Spirit. We observe one or two additional points as to the relations of the Holy Spirit to Him. In Hebrews 9:14 it is declared that Christ “through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God,” and in Romans 1:4, Paul says He was “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (compare also Romans 8:11).
As already noted, John the Baptist gave as a particular designation of Jesus that it was He who should baptize with the Holy Spirit, in contrast with his own baptism in water. In John 20:22, after the resurrection and before the ascension, Jesus breathed on the disciples and said “Receive ye the Holy Spirit.” There was probably a real communication of the Spirit in this act of Jesus in anticipation of the outpouring in fullness on the day of Pentecost. In Acts 1:2 it is declared that He gave commandment through the Holy Spirit, and in 1:5 it is predicted by Him that the disciples should “be baptized in the Holy Spirit not many days hence”; and in 1:8 it is declared, “Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you.”
It is clear from the preceding that in the thought of the New Testament writers Jesus is completely endued with the power of the. Holy Spirit. It is in large measure the Old Testament view of the Spirit; that is to say, the operation of the Spirit in and through Jesus is chiefly with a view to His official Messianic work, the charismatic Spirit imparting power rather than the Spirit for holy living merely. Yet there is a difference between the Old Testament and New Testament representations here. In the Old Testament the agency of the Spirit is made very prominent when mighty works are performed by His power. In the Gospels the view is concentrated less upon the Spirit than upon Jesus Himself, though it is always assumed that He is acting in the power of the Spirit. In the case of Jesus also, the moral quality of His words and deeds is always assumed. 2. The Holy Spirit in the Kingdom of God: Our next topic in setting forth the New Testament teaching is the Holy Spirit in relation to the kingdom of God. Quite in harmony with the plenary endowment of Jesus, the founder of the kingdom, with the power of the Spirit, is the communication of the Spirit to the agents employed by Providence in the conduct of the affairs of the kingdom. We need, at all points, in considering the subject in the New Testament to keep in view the Old Testament background. The covenant relations between God and Israel were the presupposition of all the blessings of the Old Testament. In the New Testament there is not an identical but an analogous point of view. God is continuing His work among men. Indeed in a real sense He has begun a new work, but this new work is the fulfillment of the old. The new differs from the old in some very important respects, chiefly indeed in this, that now the national and theocratic life is wholly out of sight.
Prophecy no longer deals with political questions. The power of the Spirit no longer anoints kings and judges for their duties. The action of the Spirit upon the cosmos now ceases to receive attention. In short, the kingdom of God is intensely spiritualized, and the relation of the Spirit to the individual or the church is nearly always that which is dealt with. (1) Synoptic Teachings.
We consider briefly the synoptic teachings as to the Holy Spirit in relation to the kingdom of God. The forerunner of Jesus goes before His face in the Spirit and power of Elijah ( Luke 1:17). Of Him it had been predicted that He should be filled with the Holy Spirit from His mother’s womb ( Luke 1:15). The Master expressly predicts that the Holy Spirit will give the needed wisdom when the disciples are delivered up. “It is not ye that speak, but the Holy Spirit” ( Mark 13:11). In Luke 12:12 it is also declared that “The Holy Spirit shall teach you in that very hour what ye ought to say.” Likewise in Matthew 10:20, “It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.” In Luke 11:13 is a beautiful saying: If we who are evil give good gifts to our children, how much more shall the “heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him.” This is a variation from the parallel passage in Matthew (7:11), and illustrates Luke’s marked emphasis upon the operations of the Spirit. In Matthew 28:19, the disciples are commanded to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This passage has been called in question, but there is not sufficient ground for its rejection. Hitherto there has been almost no hint directly of the personality of the Spirit or the Trinitarian implications in the teaching as to the Spirit. Here, however, we have a very suggestive hint toward a doctrine of the Spirit which attains more complete development later. (2) In the Writings of John In the Gospel of John there is a more elaborate presentation of the office and work of the Holy Spirit, particularly in John 14-17. Several earlier passages, however, must be noticed. The passage on the new birth in John 3:5 ff we notice first. The expression, “except one be born of water and the Spirit,” seems to contain a reference to baptism along with the action of the Spirit of God directly on the soul. In the light of other New Testament teachings, however, we are not warranted in ascribing saving efficacy to baptism here. The “birth,” in so far as it relates to baptism, is symbolic simply, not actual. The outward act is the fitting symbolic accompaniment of the spiritual regeneration by the Spirit.
Symbolism and spiritual fact move on parallel lines. The entrance into the kingdom is symbolically effected by means of baptism, just as the “new birth” takes place symbolically by the same means.
In John 6:51 ff we have the very difficult words attributed to Jesus concerning the eating of His flesh and the drinking of His blood. The disciples were greatly distressed by these words, and in 6:63 Jesus insists that “it is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing.” One’s view of the meaning of this much-discussed passage will turn largely on his point of view in interpreting it. If he adopts the view that John is reading back into the record much that came later in the history, the inference will probably follow that Jesus is here referring to the Lord’s Supper. If on the other hand it is held that John is seeking to reproduce substantially what was said, and to convey an impression of the actual situation, the reference to the Supper will not be inferred. Certainly the language fits the later teaching in the establishment of the Supper, although John omits a detailed account of the Supper. But Jesus was meeting a very real situation in the carnal spirit of the multitude which followed Him for the loaves and fishes.
His deeply mystical words seem to have been intended to accomplish the result which followed, namely, the separation of the true from the false disciples. There is no necessary reference to the Lord’s Supper specifically, therefore, in His words. Spiritual meat and drink, not carnal, are the true food of man. He Himself was that food, but only the spiritually susceptible would grasp His meaning. It is difficult to assign any sufficient reason why Jesus should have here referred to the Supper, or why John should have desired to introduce such reference into the story at this stage.
In John 7:37 ff we have a saying of Jesus and its interpretation by John which accords with the synoptic reference to a future baptism in the Holy Spirit to be bestowed by Jesus: “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.” John adds: “But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified.” No doubt John’s Gospel is largely a reproduction of the facts and teachings of Jesus in the evangelist’s own words. This passage indicates, however, that John discriminated between his own constructions of Christ’s teachings and the teachings themselves, and warns us against the custom of many exegetes who broadly assume that John employed his material with slight regard for careful and correct statement, passing it through his own consciousness in such manner as to leave us his own subjective Gospel, rather than a truly historical record. The ethical implications of such a process on John’s part would scarcely harmonize with his general tone and especially the teachings of his Epistles. No doubt John’s Gospel contains much meaning which he could not have put into it prior to the coming of the Spirit. But what John seeks to give is the teaching of Jesus and not his own theory of Jesus.
We give next an outline of the teachings in the great John 14 to 17, the farewell discourse of Jesus. In 14:16 Jesus says, “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter” ([para>klhtov , parakletos ]; see PARACLETE ). Next Jesus describes this Comforter as one whom the world cannot receive. Disciples know Him because He abides in them. The truth of Christianity is spiritually discerned, i.e. it is discerned by the power and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In the name of “reality,” science sometimes repudiates these inner experiences as “mystical.” But Christians cling to them as most real, data of experience as true and reliable as any other forms of human experience. To repudiate them would be for them to repudiate reality itself. The Father and Son shall make their abode in Christians (14:23). This is probably another form of assertion of the Spirit’s presence, and not a distinct line of mystical teaching. (Compare Woods, The Spirit of God in Biblical Literature, 243.) For in 14:26 the promise of the Spirit is repeated. The Father is to send the Spirit in the name of Christ, and He is to teach the disciples all things, quickening also their memories. In the New Testament generally, and especially in John’s and Paul’s writings, there is no sense of conflict between Father, Son and Spirit in their work in the Christian. All proceeds from the Father, through the Son, and is accomplished in the Christian by the Holy Spirit. As will appear, Christ in the believer is represented as being practically all that the Spirit does without identifying Christ with the Spirit. So far there are several notes suggesting the personality of the Holy Spirit. The designation “another Comforter,” taken in connection with the description of his work, is one. The fact that He is sent or given is another. And another is seen in the specific work which the Spirit is to do. Another is the masculine pronoun employed here ([ejkei~nov , ekeinos ]). In John 14:26 the function of the Spirit is indicated. He is to bring to “remembrance all that I said unto you.” In 15:26 this is made even more comprehensive: “He shall bear witness of me,” and yet more emphatically in 16:14, “He shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you.” The sphere of the Spirit’s activity is the heart of the individual believer and of the church.
His chief function is to illumine the teaching and glorify the person of Jesus. John 15:26 is the passage which has been used in support of the doctrine of the procession of the Spirit. Jesus says, “I will send” ([pe>myw , pempso ]), future tense, referring to the “Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father” ([ejkporeu>etai , ekporeuetai ]); present tense. The present tense here suggests timeless action and has been taken to indicate an essential relation of the Spirit to God the Father (compare Godet, Commentary on John, in the place cited.). The hazard of such an interpretation lies chiefly in the absence of other corroborative Scriptures and in the possibility of another and simpler meaning of the word.
However, the language is unusual, and the change of tense in the course of the sentence is suggestive. Perhaps it is one of the many instances where we must admit we do not know the precise import of the language of Scripture.
In John 16:7-15 we have a very important passage. Jesus declares to the anxious disciples that it is expedient for Him to go away, because otherwise the Spirit will not come. “He, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (16:8). The term translated “convict” ([ejle>gxei , elegksei ]) involves a cognitive along with a moral process. The Spirit who deals in truth, and makes His appeal through the truth, shall convict, shall bring the mind on which He is working into a sense of self-condemnation on account of sin. The word means more than reprove, or refute, or convince. It signifies up to a certain point a moral conquest of the mind: “of sin, because they believe not on me” (16:9). Unbelief is the root sin. The revelation of God in Christ is, broadly speaking, His condemnation of all sin. The Spirit may convict of particular sins, but they will all be shown to consist essentially in the rejection of God’s love and righteousness in Christ, i.e. in unbelief. “Of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more” (16:10). What does this mean? Does Jesus mean that His going to the Father will be the proof of His righteousness to those who put Him to death, or that this going to the Father will be the consummating or crowning act of His righteousness which the Spirit is to carry home to the hearts of men? Or does He mean that because He goes away the Spirit will take His place in convicting men of righteousness? The latter meaning seems implied in the words, “and ye behold me no more.” Probably, however, the meanings are not mutually exclusive. “Of judgment because the prince of this world hath been judged” (16:11). In His incarnation and death the prince of this world, the usurper, is conquered and cast out.
We may sum up the teachings as to the Spirit in these four chapters as follows: He is the Spirit of truth; He guides into all truth; He brings to memory Christ’s teachings; He shows things to come; He glorifies Christ; He speaks not of Himself but of Christ; He, like believers, bears witness to Christ; He enables Christians to do greater works than those of Christ; He convicts the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; He comes because Christ goes away; He is “another Comforter”; He is to abide with disciples forever.
These teachings cover a very wide range of needs. The Holy Spirit is the subject of the entire discourse. In a sense it is the counterpart of the Sermon on the Mount. There the laws of the kingdom are expounded.
Here the means of realization of all the ends of that kingdom are presented.
The kingdom now becomes the kingdom of the Spirit. The historical revelation of truth in the life, death, resurrection and glorification of Jesus being completed, the Spirit of truth comes in fullness. The gospel as history is now to become the gospel as experience. The Messiah as a fact is now to become the Messiah as a life through the Spirit’s action. All the elements of the Spirit’s action are embraced: the charismatic for mighty works; the intellectual for guidance into truth; the moral and spiritual for producing holy lives. This discourse transfers the kingdom, so to speak, from the shoulders of the Master to those of the disciples, but the latter are empowered for their tasks by the might of the indwelling and abiding Spirit. The method of the kingdom’s growth and advance is clearly indicated as spiritual, conviction of sin, righteousness and judgment, and obedient and holy lives of Christ’s disciples.
Before passing to the next topic, one remark should be made as to the Trinitarian suggestions of these chapters in John. The personality of the Spirit is clearly implied in much of the language here. It is true we have no formal teaching on the metaphysical side, no ontology in the strict sense of the word. This fact is made much of by writers who are slow to recognize the personality of the Holy Spirit in the light of the teachings of John and Paul. These writers have no difficulty, however, in asserting that the New Testament writers hold that God is a personal being (see I. F. Woods, The Spirit of God in Biblical Literature, 256, 268). It must be insisted, however, that in the New Testament, as in the Old Testament, there is little metaphysics, little ontological teaching as to God. His personality is deduced from the same kind of sayings as those relating to the Spirit. From the ontological point of view, therefore, we should also have to reject the personality of God on the basis of the Biblical teachings. The Trinitarian formulations may not be correct at all points, but the New Testament warrants the Trinitarian doctrine, just as it warrants belief in the personality of God. We are not insisting on finding metaphysics in Scripture where it is absent, but we do insist upon consistency in construing the popular and practical language of Scripture as to the second and third as well as the first Person of the Trinity.
We add a few lines as to John’s teachings in the Epistles and Revelation. In general they are in close harmony with the teachings in his Gospel and do not require extended treatment. The Spirit imparts assurance ( 1 John 3:24); incites to confession of Christ ( 1 John 4:2); bears witness to Christ ( 1 John 5:6 ff). In Revelation 1:4 the “seven Spirits” is an expression for the completeness of the Spirit. The Spirit speaks to the churches ( 1 John 2:7,11; 3:6). The seer is “in the Spirit” ( 1 John 4:2). The Spirit joins the church in the invitation of the gospel (1 John 22:17). (3) In Acts.
The Book of Acts contains the record of the beginning of the Dispensation of the Holy Spirit. There is at the outset the closest connection with the recorded predictions of the Holy Spirit in the Gospels. Particularly does Luke make clear the continuity of his own thought regarding the Spirit in his earlier and later writing. Jesus in the first chapter of Acts gives commandment through the Holy Spirit and predicts the reception of power as the result of the baptism in the Holy Spirit which the disciples are soon to receive.
The form of the Spirit’s activities in Acts is chiefly charismatic, that is, the miraculous endowment of disciples with power or wisdom for their work in extending the Messianic kingdom. As yet the work of the Spirit within disciples as the chief sanctifying agency is not fully developed, and is later described with great fullness in Paul’s writings. Some recent writers have overemphasized the contrast between the earlier and the more developed view of the Spirit with regard to the moral life. In Acts the ethical import of the Spirit’s action appears at several points (see Acts 5:3,9; 7:51; 8:18 f; 13:9; 15:28). The chief interest in Acts is naturally the Spirit’s agency in founding the Messianic kingdom, since here is recorded the early history of the expansion of that kingdom. The phenomenal rather than the inner moral aspects of that great movement naturally come chiefly into view. But everywhere the ethical implications are present. Gunkel is no doubt correct in the statement that Paul’s conception of the Spirit as inward and moral and acting in the daily life of the Christian opens the way for the activity of the Spirit as a historical principle in subsequent ages.
After all, this is the fundamental and universal import of the Spirit (see Gunkel, Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes, etc., 76; compare Pfleiderer, Paulinismus, 200).
We now proceed to give a brief summary of the Holy Spirit’s activities as recorded in Acts, and follow this with a discussion of one or two special points. The great event is of course the outpouring or baptism of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost followed by the completion of the baptism in the Holy Spirit by the baptism of the household of Cornelius (2:1 ff; 10:17-48).
Speaking with tongues, and other striking manifestations attended this baptism, as also witnessing to the gospel with power by the apostles. See BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT . This outpouring is declared to be in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, and the assertion is also made that it is the gift of the exalted Lord Jesus Christ (2:17,33). Following this baptism of the Holy Spirit the disciples are endued with miraculous power for their work. Miracles are wrought ( Acts 2:43 ff), and all necessary gifts of wisdom and Divine guidance are bestowed. A frequent form of expression describing the actors in the history is, “filled with the Holy Spirit.” It is applied to Peter (4:8); to disciples (4:31); to the seven deacons (6:3); to Stephen (6:5; 7:55); to Saul who becomes Paul (13:9).
The presence of the Spirit and His immediate and direct superintendence of affairs are seen in the fact that Ananias and Sapphira are represented as lying to the Holy Spirit ( Acts 5:3,9); the Jews are charged by Stephen with resisting the Holy Spirit ( Acts 7:51); and Simon Magus is rebuked for attempting to purchase the Spirit with money ( Acts 8:18 f).
The Holy Spirit is connected with the act of baptism, but there does not seem to be any fixed order as between the two. In Acts 9:17 the Spirit comes before baptism; and after baptism in 8:17 and 19:6. In these cases the coming of the Spirit was in connection with the laying on of hands also.
But in 10:44 the Holy Spirit falls upon the hearers while Peter is speaking prior to baptism and with no laying on of hands. These instances in which the order of baptism, the laying on of hands and the gift of the Spirit seem to be a matter of indifference, are a striking indication of the nonsacramentarian character of the teaching of the Book of Acts, and indeed in the New Testament generally. Certainly no particular efficacy seems to be attached to the laying on of hands or baptism except as symbolic representations of spiritual facts. Gunkel, in his excellent work on the Holy Spirit, claims Acts 2:38 as an instance when the Spirit is bestowed during baptism (Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes, etc., 7). The words of Peter, however, may refer to a reception of the Spirit subsequent to baptism, although evidently in immediate connection with it. The baptism of the Holy Spirit clearly then was not meant to supplant water baptism.
Moreover, in the strict sense the baptism of the Holy Spirit was a historical event or events completed at the outset when the extension of the kingdom of God, beginning at Pentecost, began to reach out to the Gentile world. See BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
In Acts the entire historical movement is represented by Luke as being under the direction of the Spirit. He guides Philip to the Ethiopian and then “catches away” Philip (8:29,39). He guides Peter at Joppa through the vision and then leads him to Cornelius at Caesarea (10:19 f; 11:12 f). The Spirit commands the church at Antioch to separate Saul and Barnabas for missionary work (13:2 ff). He guides the church at Jerusalem (15:28). He forbids the apostle to go to Asia (16:6 f). The Spirit enables Agabus to prophesy that Paul will be bound by the Jews at Jerusalem (21:11; compare also 20:23). The Spirit appointed the elders at Ephesus (20:28).
One or two points require notice before passing from Acts. The impression we get of the Spirit’s action here very strongly suggests a Divine purpose moving on the stage of history in a large and comprehensive way. In Jesus that purpose was individualized. Here the supplementary thought of a vast historic movement is powerfully suggested. Gunkel asserts that usually the Spirit’s action is not conceived by the subjects of it in terms of means (Mittel) and end (Zweck), but rather as cause (Ursache) and activity (Wirkung) (see Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes, etc., 20). There is an element of truth in this, but the idea of purpose is by no means confined to the historian who later recorded the Spirit’s action. The actors in the spiritual drama were everywhere conscious of the great movement of which they as individuals were a part. In some passages the existence of purpose in the Spirit’s action is clearly recognized, as in His restraining of Paul at certain points and in the appointment of Saul and Barnabas as missionaries. Divine purpose is indeed implied at all points, and while the particular end in view was not always clear in a given instance, the subjects of the Spirit’s working were scarcely so naive in their apprehension of the matter as to think of their experiences merely as so many extraordinary phenomena caused in a particular way.
We note next the [glossolalia ], or speaking with tongues, recorded in Acts 2, as well as in later chapters and in Paul’s Epistles. The prevailing view at present is that “speaking with tongues” does not mean speaking actual intelligible words in a foreign language, but rather the utterance of meaningless sounds, as was customary among the heathen and as is sometimes witnessed today where religious life becomes highly emotional in its manifestation. To support this view the account in Acts 2 is questioned, and Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians 14 are cited. Of course a man’s world-view will be likely to influence his interpretation in this as in other matters. Philosophically an antisupernatural world-view makes it easy to question the glossolalia of the New Testament. Candid exegesis, however, rather requires the recognition of the presence in the apostolic church of a speaking in foreign tongues, even if alongside of it there existed (which is open to serious doubt) the other phenomenon mentioned above. Acts 2:3 ff is absolutely conclusive taken by itself, and no valid critical grounds have been found for rejecting the passage. 1 Corinthians confirms this view when its most natural meaning is sought. Paul is here insisting upon the orderly conduct of worship and upon edification as the important thing. To this end he insists that they who speak with tongues pray that they may also interpret ( 1 Corinthians 14:5; chapter 13). It is difficult to conceive what he means by “interpret” if the speaking with tongues was a meaningless jargon of sounds uttered under emotional excitement, and nothing more. Paul’s whole exposition in this chapter implies that “tongues” may be used for edification. He ranks it below prophecy simply because without an interpreter “tongues” would not edify the hearer. Paul himself spoke with tongues more than they all ( Corinthians 14:18). It seems scarcely in keeping with Paul’s character to suppose that he refers here to a merely emotional volubility in meaningless and disconnected sounds. See TONGUES, GIFT OF. (4) In Paul’s Writings.
The teachings of Paul on the Holy Spirit are so rich and abundant that space forbids an exhaustive presentation. In his writings the Biblical representations reach their climax. Mr. Wood says correctly that Paul grasped the idea of the unity of the Christian life. All the parts exist in a living whole and the Holy Spirit constitutes and maintains it (Wood, The Spirit of God in Biblical Literature, 268). In fact a careful study of Paul’s teachings discloses three parallel lines, one relating to faith, another to Christ, and the third to the Holy Spirit. That is to say, his teachings coalesce, as it were, point by point, in reference to these three subjects.
Faith is the human side of the Divine activity carried on by the Holy Spirit.
Faith is therefore implied in the Spirit’s action and is the result of or response to it in its various forms. But faith is primarily and essentially faith in Jesus Christ. Hence, we find in Paul that Christ is represented as doing substantially everything that the Spirit does. Now we are not to see in this any conflicting conceptions as to Christ and the Spirit, but rather Paul’s intense feeling of the unity of the work of Christ and the Spirit. The “law” of the Spirit’s action is the revelation and glorification of Christ. In his Gospel, which came later, John, as we have seen, defined the Spirit’s function in precisely these terms. Whether or not John was influenced by Paul in the matter we need not here consider. (a) The Spirit and Jesus We begin with a brief reference to the connection in Paul’s thought between the Spirit and Jesus. The Holy Spirit is described as the Spirit of God’s Son ( Romans 8:14 ff; Galatians 4:6), as the Spirit of Christ ( Romans 8:9). He who confesses Jesus does so by the Holy Spirit, and no one can say that Jesus is anathema in the Holy Spirit ( 1 Corinthians 12:3). Christ is called a life-giving Spirit ( 1 Corinthians 15:45); and in 2 Corinthians 3:17 the statement appears, “Now the Lord is the Spirit.”
All of this shows how completely one Paul regarded the work of Christ and the Spirit, not because they were identical in the sense in which Beyschlag has contended, but because their task and aim being identical, there was no sense of discord in Paul’s mind in explaining their activities in similar terms. (b) In Bestowing Charismatic Gifts The Spirit appears in Paul as in Acts imparting all kinds of charismatic gifts for the ends of the Messianic kingdom. He enumerates a long list of spiritual gifts which cannot receive separate treatment here, such as prophecy ( 1 Thessalonians 5:19 f) ; tongues (1 Corinthians 12-14); wisdom ( 1 Corinthians 2:6 ff); knowledge ( 1 Corinthians 12:8); power to work miracles ( 1 Corinthians 12:9 f); discerning of spirits ( 1 Corinthians 12:10); interpretation of tongues ( 1 Corinthians 12:10); faith ( 1 Corinthians 12:9); boldness in Christian testimony ( 2 Corinthians 3:17 f); [charismata ] generally ( 1 Thessalonians 1:5; 4:8, etc.). See SPIRITUAL GIFTS . In addition to the above list, Paul especially emphasizes the Spirit’s action in revealing to himself and to Christians the mind of God ( 1 Corinthians 2:10-12; Ephesians 3:5). He speaks in words taught by the Spirit ( 1 Corinthians 2:13). He preaches in demonstration of the Spirit and of power ( 1 Corinthians 2:4; Thessalonians 1:5).
In the above manifestations of the Spirit, as enumerated in Paul’s writings, we have presented in very large measure what we have already seen in Acts, but with some additions. In 1 Corinthians 14 and elsewhere Paul gives a new view as to the charismatic gifts which was greatly needed in view of the tendency to extravagant and intemperate indulgence in emotional excitement, due to the mighty action of God’s Spirit in the Corinthian church. He insists that all things be done unto edification, that spiritual growth is the true aim of all spiritual endowments. This may be regarded as the connecting link between the earlier and later New Testament teaching as to the Holy Spirit, between the charismatic and moral-religious significance of the Spirit. To the latter we now direct attention. (c) In the Beginnings of the Christian Life We note the Spirit in the beginnings of the Christian life. From beginning to end the Christian life is regarded by Paul as under the power of the Holy Spirit, in its inner moral and religious aspects as well as in its charismatic forms. It is a singular fact that Paul does not anywhere expressly declare that the Holy Spirit originates the Christian life. Gunkel is correct in this so far as specific and direct teaching is concerned. But Wood who asserts the contrary is also right, if regard is had to clear implications and legitimate inferences from Paul’s statements (op. cit., 202). Romans 8:2 does not perhaps refer to the act of regeneration, and yet it is hard to conceive of the Christian life as thus constituted by the “law of the Spirit of life” apart from its origin through the Spirit. There are other passages which seem to imply very clearly, if they do not directly assert, that the Christian life is originated by the Holy Spirit ( 1 Thessalonians 1:6; Romans 5:5; 8:9; 1 Corinthians 2:4; 6:11; Titus 3:5).
The Holy Spirit in the beginnings of the Christian life itself is set forth in many forms of statement. They who have the Spirit belong to Christ ( Romans 8:9). We received not the Spirit of bondage but of adoption, “whereby we cry, Abba, Father” ( Romans 8:15). “The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God” ( Romans 8:16). The Spirit is received by the hearing of faith ( Galatians 3:2). See also Romans 5:5; 8:2; 1 Corinthians 16:11; Galatians 3:3,14; Ephesians 2:18. There are two or three expressions employed by Paul which express some particular aspect of the Spirit’s work in believers. One of these is “first-fruits” ( Romans 8:23, [ajparch> , aparche ]), which means that the present possession of the Spirit by the believer is the guarantee of the full redemption which is to come, as the first-fruits were the guarantee of the full harvest. Another of these words is “earnest” ( Corinthians 1:22; 5:5, [ajrrabw>n , arrabon ]), which also means a pledge or guarantee. Paul also speaks of the “sealing” of the Christians with the Holy Spirit of promise, as in Ephesians 1:13 ([ejsfragi>sqhte , esphragisthete ], “ye were sealed”). This refers to the seal by which a king stamped his mark of authorization or ownership upon a document. (d) In the Religious and Moral Life Paul gives a great variety of expressions indicating the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit in the religious and moral life of the Christian. In fact at every point that life is under the guidance and sustaining energy of the Spirit. If we live after the flesh, we die; if after the Spirit, we live ( Romans 8:6). The Spirit helps the Christian to pray ( Romans 8:26 f). The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit ( Romans 14:17). Christians are to abound in hope through the Holy Spirit ( Romans 15:13). “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control” ( Galatians 5:22). Christians are warned to grieve not the Holy Spirit ( Ephesians 4:30), and are urged to take the sword of the Spirit ( Ephesians 6:17). The flesh is contrasted with the Spirit at a number of points in Paul’s writings (e.g. Romans 8:5 f; Galatians 5:17 ff). The Spirit in these passages probably means either the Spirit of God or man’s spirit as under the influence of the Spirit of God. Flesh is a difficult word to define, as it seems to be used in several somewhat different senses. When the flesh is represented as lusting against the Spirit, however, it seems equivalent to the “carnal mind,” i.e. the mind of the sinful natural man as distinct from the mind of the spiritual man. This carnal or fleshly mind is thus described because the flesh is thought of as the sphere in which the sinful impulses in large part, though not altogether ( Galatians 5:19 ff), take their rise.
Paul contrasts the Spirit with the letter ( 2 Corinthians 3:6) and puts strong emphasis on the Spirit as the source of Christian liberty. As Gunkel points out, spirit and freedom with Paul are correlatives, like spirit and life.
Freedom must needs come of the Spirit’s presence because He is superior to all other authorities and powers (Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes, etc., 95). See also an excellent passage on the freedom of the Christian from statutory religious requirements in DCG, article “Holy Spirit” by Dr.
James Denney, I, 739. (e) In the Church.
Toward the end of his ministry and in his later group of epistles, Paul devoted much thought to the subject of the church, and one of his favorite figures was of the church as the body of Christ. The Holy Spirit is represented as animating this body, as communicating to it life, and directing all its affairs. As in the case of the individual believer, so also in the body of believers the Spirit is the sovereign energy which rules completely. By one Spirit all are baptized into one body and made to drink of one Spirit ( 1 Corinthians 12:13). All the gifts of the church, charismatic and otherwise, are from the Spirit ( 1 Corinthians 12:4,8- 11). All spiritual gifts in the church are for edification ( 1 Corinthians 14:12). Prayer is to be in the Spirit ( 1 Corinthians 14:15). The church is to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace ( Ephesians 4:3).
Love ( Colossians 1:8); fellowship ( Philippians 2:1); worship ( Philippians 3:3) are in the Spirit. The church is the habitation of the Spirit ( Ephesians 2:22). The church is an epistle of Christ written by the Spirit ( 2 Corinthians 3:3). Thus the whole life of the church falls under the operation of the Holy Spirit. (f) In the Resurrection of Believers The Spirit also carries on His work in believers in raising the body from the dead. In Romans 8:11 Paul asserts that the present indwelling in believers of the Spirit that raised up Jesus from the dead is the guarantee of the quickening of their mortal bodies by the power of the same Spirit. See also 1 Corinthians 15:44 f; Galatians 5:5.
We have thus exhibited Paul’s teachings as to the Holy Spirit in some detail in order to make clear their scope and comprehensiveness. And we have not exhausted the material supplied by his writings. It will be observed that Paul nowhere elaborates a doctrine of the Spirit, as he does in a number of instances his doctrine of the person of Christ. The references to the Spirit are in connection with other subjects usually. This, however, only serves to indicate how very fundamental the work of the Spirit was in Paul’s assumptions as to the Christian life. The Spirit is the Christian life, just as Christ is that life.
The personality of the Spirit appears in Paul as in John. The benediction in 2 Corinthians 13:14 distinguishes clearly Father, Son and Spirit (compare also Ephesians 4:4). In many connections the Spirit is distinguished from the Son and Father, and the work of the Spirit is set forth in personal terms. It is true, references are often made to the Holy Spirit by Paul as if the Spirit were an impersonal influence, or at least without clearly personal attributes. This distinguishes his usage as to the Spirit from that as to Christ and God, who are always personal. It is a natural explanation of this fact if we hold that in the case of the impersonal references we have a survival of the current Old Testament conception of the Spirit, while in those which are personal we have the developed conception as found in both Paul and John. Personal attributes are ascribed to the Spirit in so many instances, it would seem unwarranted in us to make the earlier and lower conception determinative of the later and higher.
In Paul’s writings we have the crowning factor in the Biblical doctrine of the Holy Spirit. He gathers up most of the preceding elements, and adds to them his own distinctive teaching or emphasis. Some of the earlier Old Testament elements are lacking, but all those which came earlier in the New Testament are found in Paul. The three points which Paul especially brought into full expression were first, the law of edification in the use of spiritual gifts, second, the Holy Spirit in the moral life of the believer, and third, the Holy Spirit in the church. Thus Paul enables us to make an important distinction as to the work of the Spirit in founding the kingdom of God, namely, the distinction between means and ends. Charismatic gifts of the Spirit were, after all, means to ethical ends. God’s kingdom is moral in its purpose, “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”
Christianity is, according to Paul, inherently and essentially supernatural.
But its permanent and abiding significance is to be found, not in extraordinary phenomena in the form of “mighty works,” “wonders,” “tongues” and other miracles in the ordinary sense, but in the creation of a new moral order in time and eternity. The supernatural is to become normal and “natural” in human history, therefore, in the building up of this ethical kingdom on the basis of a redemption that is in and through Jesus Christ, and wrought out in all its details by the power of the Holy Spirit. (5) The Holy Spirit in Other New Testament Writings.
There is little to add to the New Testament teaching as to the Holy Spirit.
Paul and John practically cover all the aspects of His work which are presented. There are a few passages, however, we may note in concluding Our general survey. In He the Holy Spirit is referred to a number of times as inspiring the Old Testament Scriptures ( Hebrews 3:7; 9:8; 10:15).
We have already referred to the remarkable statement in Hebrews 9:14 to the effect that the blood of Christ was offered through the eternal Spirit.
In 10:29 doing “despite unto the Spirit of grace” seems to be closely akin to the sin against the Holy Spirit in the Gospels. In Hebrews 4:12 there is a very remarkable description of the “word of God” in personal terms, as having all the energy and activity of an actual personal presence of the Spirit, and recalls Paul’s language in Ephesians 6:17. In 1 Peter we need only refer to 1:11 in which Peter declares that the “Spirit of Christ” was in the Old Testament prophets, pointing forward to the sufferings and glories of Christ.
LITERATURE.
I. F. Wood, The Spirit of God in Biblical Literature; article “Spiritual Gifts” in EB; Gunkel, Die Wirkungen des heiligen Gelstea; Gloel, Der heilige Geist in der Heilsverkundigung des Paulus; Wendt, Die Begriffe Fleisch und Geist im biblischen Sprachgebrauch; Weinel, Die Wirkungen des Geistes und der Geister; Dickson, Paul’s Use of the Terms Flesh and Spirit; Smeaton, Doctrine of the Holy Spirit; Walker, The Spirit and the Incarnation; Denio, The Supreme Leader; Moberly, Administration of the Holy Spirit in the Body of Christ; Hutchings, Person and Work of the Holy Spirit; Owen, Pneumatologia; Webb, Person and Office of the Holy Spirit; Hare, The Mission of the Comforter; Candlish, The Work of the Holy Spirit; Wirgman, The Sevenfold Gifts; Heber, Personality and Offices of the Holy Spirit; Swete, The Holy Spirit in the New Testament; Moule, Veni Creator; Johnson, The Holy Spirit Then and Now; Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit; Biblical Theologies of Schultz, Davidson, Weiss, Beyschlag, Stevens; list appended to the article on “Holy Spirit” in HDB and DCG; extensive bibliography in Denio’s The Supreme Leader, 239 ff. E. Y. Mullins HOMAM HOME Home-born in Jeremiah 2:14 is a translation of the phrase [ tyiB” dyliy] , yelidh bayith ], where it means a person free-born as contrasted with a slave.
HOMER It was equal to 10 ephas. See WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.
HOMICIDE Killing is definitely forbidden in the sixth commandment ( Genesis 9:5 f; Exodus 20:13; 21:12; Leviticus 24:17,21; Numbers 35:16-21; Deuteronomy 19:11-13). The penalty of death was not inflicted when the killing was unintentional or unpremeditated ( Exodus 21:13; Numbers 35:22-25; Joshua 20:3-5; compare Mishna, Makkoth, xi. 5). Cities of Refuge were founded to which the manslayer could escape from the “avenger of blood.” There he had to abide till after the death of the officiating high priest. If he left the city before that event, the avenger who should kill him was free from punishment ( Exodus 21:13; Numbers 35:10-15,25-28,32; Deuteronomy 19:1-13; Joshua 20:2 ff). See CITIES OF REFUGE . Killing a thief who broke in during the night was not accounted murder ( Exodus 22:2). Unintentional killing of the pregnant woman in a fray was punished according to the lexicon talionis, i.e. the husband of the woman killed could kill the wife of the man who committed the offense without being punished ( Exodus 21:22 f). This was not usually carried out, but it gave the judge a standard by which to fine the offender. If a man failed to build a battlement to his house, and anyone fell over and was killed, blood-guiltiness came upon that man’s house (Dr 22:8). He who killed a thief in the daytime was guilty in the same way ( Exodus 22:3; compare the King James Version). Where a body was found, but the murderer was unknown, the elders of the city nearest to the place where it was found were ordered by a prescribed ceremony to declare that they were not guilty of neglecting their duties, and were therefore innocent of the man’s blood (Dr 21:1-9). Two witnesses were necessary for a conviction of murder ( Numbers 35:30).
If a slave died under chastisement, the master was to be punished according to the principle that “he that smiteth a man, so that he dieth, shall surely be put to death” ( Exodus 21:20; compare Exodus 21:12). According to the rabbis the master was to be killed by the sword.
Since in this passage the phrase “he shall die” is not used, some have supposed that punishment by death is not indicated. If the slave punished by the master died after one or two days, the master was not liable to punishment ( Exodus 21:21). Because of the words, “for he is his money,” the rabbis held that non-Israelite slaves were meant. In ancient times the avenger of blood was himself to be the executioner of the murderer ( Numbers 35:19,21). According to Sanhedhrin 9:1 the murderer was to be beheaded. Nothing is said in the law about suicide. Paul Levertoff HONEST; HONESTY In Old Testament times, as at present, honey was rare enough to be considered a luxury ( Genesis 43:11; 1 Kings 14:3). Honey was used in baking sweets ( Exodus 16:31). It was forbidden to be offered with the meal offering ( Leviticus 2:11), perhaps because it was fermentable, but was presented with the fruit offering ( 2 Chronicles 31:5). Honey was offered to David’s army ( 2 Samuel 17:29). It was sometimes stored in the fields ( Jeremiah 41:8). It was also exchanged as merchandise ( Ezekiel 27:17). In New Testament times wild honey was an article of food among the lowly ( Matthew 3:4; Mark 1:6).
Figurative: “A land flowing with milk and honey” suggested a land filled with abundance of good things ( Exodus 3:8,17; Leviticus 20:24; Numbers 13:27; Deuteronomy 6:3; Joshua 5:6; Jeremiah 11:5; Ezekiel 20:6,15). “A land of olive trees and honey” had the same meaning ( Deuteronomy 8:8; 2 Kings 18:32), and similarly “streams of honey and butter” ( Job 20:17). Honey was a standard of sweetness (Song of Solomon 4:11; Ezekiel 3:3; Revelation 10:9,10). It typified sumptuous fare (Song of Solomon 5:1; Isaiah 7:15,22; Ezekiel 16:13,19). The ordinances of Yahweh were “sweeter than honey and the droppings of the honeycomb” ( Psalm 19:10; 119:103). “Thou didst eat .... honey” ( Ezekiel 16:13) expressed Yahweh’s goodness to Jerusalem. James A. Patch HONORABLE The Revised Version (British and American) gives for “honorable” ( Samuel 9:6), “held in honor”; for “Yet shall I be glorious” ( Isaiah 49:5), “I am honorable”; “honorable” for “honest” ( Romans 12:17; Corinthians 13:7; Philippians 4:8, margin “reverend”); for “honestly” ( Hebrews 13:18) the American Standard Revised Version has “honorably.”
In Apocrypha we have endoxos translated “honorable” (Tobit 12:7, the Revised Version (British and American) “gloriously”); endoxos (Judith 16:21), timios (The Wisdom of Solomon 4:8), doxazo (Ecclesiasticus 24:12, the Revised Version (British and American) “glorified”), doxa (29:27, the Revised Version (British and American) “honor”), etc. W. L. Walker HOOD <hood> ([ twOpyniz] , zeniphoth ]): The ladies’ “hoods” of Isaiah 3:23 the King James Version appear as “turbans” the Revised Version (British and American); and “mitre” of Zec 3:5 is “turban, or diadem” the English Revised Version, margin. The word is from the verb zanaph , “to wrap round.” It connotes a head-covering, not a permanent article of dress. See DRESS, 5; HAT.
HOOF <hoof> . See CHEW; CLOVEN.
HOOK <hook> : (1) [ hK;j” , chakkah ], is rendered “fishhook” in Job 41:1 the Revised Version (British and American) (the King James Version “hook”). the Revised Version (British and American) is correct here and should have used the same translation for the same word in Isaiah 19:8; Habakkuk 1:15, instead Of retaining AV’s “angle.”
Similarly in Amos 4:2, [ hN;xi , tsinnah ], and [ hg;WD twOrysi , ciroth dughah ], appear to be synonyms for “fishhook,” although the former may mean the barb of a fisher’s spear. In the New Testament “fishhook” occurs in Matthew 17:27 ([a]gkistron , agkistron ]). (2) The “flesh-hook.” ([ glez]m” , mazlegh ], [ hg;l;z]mi , mizlaghah ]) of Exodus 27:3, etc., was probably a small pitchfork, with two or three tines. (3) The “pruning-hook” ([ hr;mez]m” , mazmerah ]), used in the culture of the vine ( Isaiah 18:5), was a sickle-shaped knife, small enough to be made from the metal of a spear-point ( Isaiah 2:4; Joel 3:10; Micah 4:3). (4) [ ww; , waw ], is the name given the supports of certain hangings of the tabernacle ( Exodus 26:32, etc.). Their form is entirely obscure. (5) [ jj” , chach ], is rendered “hook” in 2 Kings 19:28 = Isaiah 37:29; Ezekiel 29:4; 38:4, and Ezekiel 19:4,9 the Revised Version (British and American) (the King James Version “chain”). A ring (compare Exodus 35:22), put in the nose of a tamed beast and through which a rope is passed to lead him, is probably meant. (6) [ ˆwOmg]a” , ‘aghmon ], is rendered “hook” in Job 41:2 the King James Version, but should be “a rope” of rushes or rush-fiber as in the Revised Version (British and American), or, simply, “a rush” (on which small fish are strung). (7) [ j”wOj , choach ], is “hook” in Job 41:2 the Revised Version (British and American) (the King James Version “thorn,” perhaps right) and 2 Chronicles 33:11 the Revised Version margin (text chains,” Ay “thorns,”). On both verses see the commentaries (8) [ µyiT”p”v] , shephattayim ], is “hooks” in Ezekiel 40:43 (the Revised Version margin “ledges”), but the meaning of this word is completely unknown, and “hook” is a mere guess. Burton Scott Easton HOOPOE All ornithologists agree that it is a “nasty, filthy bird” in its feeding and breeding habits. The nest, being paid no attention by the elders, soon becomes soiled and evil smelling. The bird is mentioned only in the lists of abomination ( Leviticus 11:19; and Deuteronomy 14:18). One reason why Moses thought it unfit for food was on account of its habits. Quite as strong a one lay in the fact that it was one of the sacred birds of Egypt.
There the belief was prevalent that it could detect water and indicate where to dig a well; that it could hear secrets and cure diseases. Its head was a part of the charms used by witches. The hoopoe was believed to have wonderful medicinal powers and was called the “Doctor Bird” by the arabs. Because it is almost the size of a hoopoe and somewhat suggestive of it in its golden plumage, the lapwing was used in the early translations of the Bible instead of hoopoe. But when it was remembered that the lapwing is a plover, its flesh and eggs especially dainty food, that it was eaten everywhere it was known, modern commentators rightly decided that the hoopoe was the bird intended by the Mosaic law. It must be put on record, however, that where no superstition attaches to the hoopoe and where its nesting habits are unknown and its feeding propensities little understood, as it passes in migration it is killed, eaten and considered delicious, especially by residents of Southern Europe. Gene Stratton-Porter HOPE 1. IN THE OLD TESTAMENT:
In the Revised Version (British and American) the New Testament “hope” represents the noun [ejlpi>v , elpis ] (52 t), and the verb [ejlpi>zw , elpizo ] (31 t). King James Version, however, renders the noun in Hebrews 10:23 by “faith,” and for the verb gives “trust” in 18 cases (apparently without much system, e.g. in Philippians 2 compare 2:19 and 23; see TRUST ), while in Luke 6:35 it translates [ajpelpi>zw , apelpizo ], by “hoping for nothing again” (the Revised Version (British and American) “never despairing”). But in the Old Testament there is no Hebrew word that has the exact force of “expectation of some good thing,” so that in the King James Version “hope” (noun and vb.) stands for some 15 Hebrew words, nearly all of which in other places are given other translation (e.g. [ jf;b]mi , mibhTach ], is rendered “hope” in Jeremiah 17:17, “trust” in Psalm 40:4, “confidence” in Psalm 65:5). the Revised Version (British and American) has attempted to be more systematic and has, for the most part, kept “hope” for the noun [ jf;b]mi , tiqwah ], and the verb [ lj”y; , yachal ], but complete consistency was not possible (e.g. Proverbs 10:28; 11:23; 23:18). This lack of a specific word for hope has nothing to do with any undervaluation of the virtue among the Hebrews. For the religion of the Old Testament is of all things a religion of hope, centered in God, from whom all deliverance and blessings are confidently expected ( Jeremiah 17:17; Joel 3:16; Psalm 31:24; 33:18,22; 39:7, etc.). The varieties of this hope arc countless (see ISRAEL, RELIGION OF; SALVATION , etc.), but the form most perfected and with fundamental significance for the New Testament is the firm trust that at a time appointed God, in person or through His representative (see MESSIAH ), will establish a kingdom of righteousness.
2. IN THE NEW TESTAMENT: (1) The proclamation of this coming kingdom of God was the central element in the teaching of Jesus, and the message of its near advent ( Mark 1:15, etc.), with the certainty of admission to it for those who accepted His teaching ( Luke 12:32, etc.), is the substance of His teaching as to hope. This teaching, though, is delivered in the language of One to whom the realities of the next world and of the future are perfectly familiar; the tone is not that of prediction so much as it is that of the statement of obvious facts. In other words, “hope” to Christ is “certainty,” and the word “hope” is never on His lips ( Luke 6:34 and John 5:45 are naturally not exceptions). For the details see KINGDOM OF GOD; FAITH; FORGIVENESS , etc. And however far He may have taught that the kingdom was present in His lifetime, none the less the full consummation of that kingdom, with Himself as Messiah, was made by Him a matter of the future (see ESCHATOLOGY OF THE New Testament; PAROUSIA ). (2) Hence, after the ascension the early church was left with an eschatological expectation that was primarily and almost technically the “hope” of the New Testament — “looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” ( Titus 2:13), “unto a living hope ...., unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, .... reserved in heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 13-5; compare Romans 5:2; 8:20-24; 2 Corinthians 3:12; Ephesians 1:18-21; Colossians 1:5,23,17; Titus 1:2; 3:7; John 3:2,3). The foundations of this hope were many: (a) Primarily, of course, the promises of the Old Testament, which were the basis of Christ’s teaching. Such are often quoted at length ( Acts 2:16, etc.), while they underlie countless other passages.
These promises are the “anchor of hope” that holds the soul fast ( Hebrews 6:18-20). In part, then, the earliest Christian expectations coincided with the Jewish, and the “hope of Israel” ( Acts 28:20; compare 26:6,7; Ephesians 2:12, and especially Romans 11:25-32) was a common ground on which Jew and Christian might meet.
Still, through the confidence of forgiveness and purification given in the atonement ( Hebrews 9:14, etc.), the Christian felt himself to have a “better hope” ( Hebrews 7:19), which the Jew could not know. (b) Specifically Christian, however, was the pledge given in the resurrection of Christ. This sealed His Messiahship and proved His lordship ( Romans 1:4; Ephesians 1:18-20; 1 Peter 3:21, etc.), so sending forth His followers with the certainty of victory. In addition, Christ’s resurrection was felt to be the first step in the general resurrection, and hence, a proof that the consummation of all things had begun ( 1 Corinthians 15:23; compare Acts 23:6; 24:15; 26:6,7; 1 Thessalonians 4:13,14, etc.). (c) But more than all, devotion to Christ produced a religious experience that gave certainty to hope. “Hope putteth not to shame; because the love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit which was given unto us” ( Romans 5:5; compare 8:16,17; 2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:14, etc., and see HOLY SPIRIT). Even visible miracles were wrought by the Spirit that were signs of the end ( Acts 2:17) as well as of the individual’s certainty of partaking in the final happiness ( Acts 10:47; 19:6, etc.). (3) Yet, certain though the hope might be, it was not yet attained, and the interim was an opportunity to develop faith, “the substance of the things hoped for” ( Hebrews 11:1). Indeed, hope is simply faith directed toward the future, and no sharp distinction between faith and hope is attainable. It is easy enough to see how the King James Version felt “confession of our faith” clearer than “confession of our hope” in Hebrews 10:23, although the rendition of elpis by “faith” was arbitrary.
So in Romans 8:20-24, “hope” is scarcely more than “faith” in this specialized aspect. In particular, in 8:24 we have as the most natural translation (compare Ephesians 2:5,8), “By hope we were saved” (so the King James Version, the English Revised Version, the American Revised Version margin), only a pedantic insistence on words can find in this any departure from the strictest Pauline theology (compare the essential outlook on the future of the classic example of “saving faith” in Romans 4:18-22, especially verse 18). Still, the combination is unusual, and the Greek may be rendered equally well “For hope we were saved” (“in hope” of the American Standard Revised Version is not so good); i.e. our salvation, in so far as it is past, is but to prepare us for what is to come (compare Ephesians 4:4; 1 Peter 1:3). But this postponement of the full attainment, through developing faith, gives stedfastness ( Romans 8:25; compare 1 Thessalonians 1:3; 5:8; Hebrews 3:6; 6:11), which could be gained in no other way. On the other hand this stedfastness, produced by hope, reacts again on hope and increases it ( Romans 5:4; 15:4). and so on. But no attempt is made in the New Testament to give a catalogue of the “fruits of hope,” and, indeed, such lists are inevitably artificial. (4) One passage that deserves special attention is 1 Corinthians 13:13, “Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three.” “Abideth” is in contrast to “shall be done away” in 13:8,9, and the time of the abiding is consequently after the Parousia; i.e. while many gifts are for the present world only, faith, hope and love are eternal and endure in the next world. 1 Corinthians 13 is evidently a very carefully written section, and the permanence of faith and hope cannot be set down to any mere carelessness on Paul’s part, but the meaning is not very clear. Probably he felt that the triad of virtues was so essentially a part of the Christian’s character that the existence of the individual without them was unthinkable, without trying to define what the object of faith and hope would be in the glorified state. If any answer is to be given, it must be found in the doctrine that even in heaven life will not be static but will have opportunities of unlimited growth. Never will the finite soul be able to dispense entirely with faith, while at each stage the growth into the next can be anticipated through hope.
3. PRACTICAL:
Only adventist bodies can use all the New Testament promises literally, and the translation of the eschatological language into modern practical terms is not always easy. The simplest method is that already well developed in the Fourth Gospel, where the phrase “kingdom of God” is usually replaced by the words “eternal life,” i.e. for a temporal relation between this world and the next is substituted a local, so that the accent is laid on the hope that awaits the individual beyond the grave. On the other hand, the cataclysmic imagery of the New Testament may be interpreted in evolutionary form.
God, by sending into the world the supernatural power seen in the Christian church, is working for the race as well as for the individual, and has for His whole creation, as well as for individual souls, a goal in store.
The individual has for his support the motives of the early church and, in particular, learns through the cross that even his own sins shall not disappoint him of his hope. But both of the above interpretations are needed if religion is fairly to represent the spirit of the New Testament. A pure individualism that looks only beyond the grave for its hope empties the phrase “kingdom of God” of its meaning and tends inevitably to asceticism. And, in contrast, the religion of Jesus cannot be reduced to a mere hope of ethical advance for the present world. A Christianity that loses a transcendent, eschatological hope ceases to be Christianity. Burton Scott Easton HOPHNI AND PHINEHAS Phinehas was father of the posthumous Ichabod, whose name marks the calamity (see ICHABOD ). A remoter sequel to the prophetic warnings is seen in the deposition of Abiathar, of the house of Eli, from the priestly office ( 1 Kings 2:26,27,35). Henry Wallace HOPHRA HOR; MOUNT 1. NOT JEBEL NEBY HARUN: (1) a tradition identifying this mountain with Jebel Neby Harun may be traced from the time of Josephus (Ant., IV, iv, 7) downward. Eusebius, Onomasticon (s.v. [ [Wr , Hor ]) favors this identification, which has been accepted by many travelers and scholars. In HDB, while noting the fact that it has been questioned, Professor Hull devotes all the space at his disposal to a description of Jebel Neby Harun. It is now recognized, however, that this identification is impossible. Niebuhr (Reise nach Arabic, 238), Pocoke (Description of the East, I, 157), Robinson (BR, I, 185), Ewald (Hist. of Israel, II, 201, note), and others had pointed out difficulties in the way, but the careful discussion of Dr. H. Clay Trumbull (Kadesh Barnea, 127 ff) finally disposed of the claims of Jebel Neby Harun.
2. SUGGESTED IDENTIFICATION:
From Numbers 20:22; 33:37 we may perhaps infer that Mt. Hor, “in the edge of the land of Edom,” was about a day’s journey from Kadesh. The name “Hor the mountain” suggests a prominent feature of the landscape.
Aaron was buried there ( Numbers 20:28; Deuteronomy 32:50). It was therefore not in Mt. Seir ( Deuteronomy 2:5), of which not even a foot-breadth was given to Israel. Jebel Neby Harun is certainly a prominent feature of the landscape, towering over the tumbled hills that form the western edges of the Edom plateau to a height of 4,800 ft. But it is much more than a day’s journey from Kadesh, while it is well within the boundary of Mt. Seir. The king of Arad was alarmed at the march to Mt.
Hor. Had Israel marched toward Jebel Neby Harun, away to the Southeast, it could have caused him no anxiety, as he dwelt in the north.
3. JEBEL MADERAH:
This points to some eminence to the North or Northeast of Kadesh. A hill meeting sufficiently all these conditions is Jebel Maderah (see HALAK, MOUNT ), which rises to the Northeast of `Ain qadis (Kadeshbarnea). It stands at the extreme Northwest boundary of the land of Edom, yet not within that boundary. Above the barrenness of the surrounding plain this “large, singular-looking, isolated chalk hill” rises “alone like a lofty citadel,” “steep-sided” and “quite naked.” Here the solemn transactions described in Numbers 20:22 ff could have been carried out literally, “in the sight of all the congregation.” While certainty is impossible, no more likely suggestion has been made. (2) A mountain named only in Numbers 34:7 f as on the North boundary of the land of Israel. No success has attended the various attempts made to identify this particular height. Some would make it Mt.
Hermon (Hull, HDB, under the word); others Jebel Akkar, an outrunner on the Northeast of Lebanon (Furrer, ZDPV, VIII, 27), and others the mountain at the “knee of” Nahr el-Qasimiyeh (van Kasteren, Rev. Biblical, 1895, 30 f). In Ezekiel 47:15 [ Ër,D,h” , ha-derekh ], should certainly be amended to [ Ër;d]j” , chadhrakh ], a proper name, instead of “the way.”
Possibly then Mt. Hor should disappear from Numbers 34:7 f, and we should read, with slight emendation, “From the great sea ye shall draw a line for you as far as Hadrach, and from Hadrach ....” W. Ewing HORAM HOREB HOREM It may possibly be identified with the modern Hurah, which lies on a mound at the South end of Wady el-`Ain, to the West of Qedes.
HORESH HOR-HAGGIDGAD HORI HORITE; HORIM Seir” were among the nations defeated by the army of Chedorlaomer in the age of Abraham ( Genesis 14:6). The Hebrew Horitc, however, is the Khar of the Egyptian inscriptions, a name given to the whole of Southern Palestine and Edom as well as to the adjacent sea. In accordance with this we find in the Old Testament also traces of the existence of the Horites in other parts of the country besides Mt. Seir. In Genesis 34:2; Joshua 9:7, the Septuagint (Cod. A) more correctly reads “Horite” instead of “Hivite” for the inhabitants of Shechem and Gibeon, and Caleb is said to be “the son of Hur, the first-born of Ephratah” or Bethlehem ( 1 Chronicles 2:50; 4:4). Hor or Horite has sometimes been explained to mean “cavedweller”; it more probably, however, denotes the “white” race. The Horites were Semites, and consequently are distinguished in Deuteronomy 2:12 from the tall race of Rephaim. A. H. Sayce HORMAH 1. THE BRAZEN ALTAR:
These projections at the four corners of the altar of burnt offering were of one piece with the altar, and were made of acacia wood overlaid with brass ( Exodus 27:2, “bronze”). In Ezekiel’s altar-specifications their position is described as being on a level with the altar hearth ( Ezekiel 43:15).
Fugitives seeking asylum might cling to the horns of the altar, as did Adonijah ( 1 Kings 1:50), which is one proof among many that worshippers had at all times access to the neighborhood of the altar. On certain occasions, as at the consecration of Aaron and his sons ( Exodus 29:12), and a sin offering for one of the people of the land ( Leviticus 4:30), the horns were touched with sacrificial blood.
2. THE GOLDEN ALTAR The altar of incense, standing in the outer chamber of the sanctuary, had also four horns, which were covered with gold ( Exodus 37:25). These were touched with blood in the case of a sin offering for a high priest, or for the whole congregation, if they had sinned unwittingly ( Leviticus 4:7,18).See ALTAR; HORN . W. Shaw Caldecott HORNS, RAMS’ See MUSIC.
HORNET They sting fiercely, but not unless molested. Alfred Ely Day HORONAIM Isaiah (15:5) and Jeremiah (48:3) speak of “the way to Horanaim”; and Jeremiah (48:5) of the , “descent,” or “going down” of Horonaim. Mesha (MS) says he was bidden by Chemosh to “go down” and fight against Choronem. Probably, therefore, it lay on one of the roads leading down from the Moabite plateau to the Arabah. It is mentioned by Josephus as having been taken by Alexander Janneus (Ant., XIII, xv, 4). Hyrcanus promised to restore it and the rest to Aretas (XIV, i, 4). There is no indication that in early times it was ever possessed by Israel. Buhl (GAP 272 f) thinks it may be represented by some significant ruins near Wady ed- Dera`a (Wady Kerak). W. Ewing HORONITE Horribly is the translation of sa`ar , “to shudder,” “to be whirled away,” in Jeremiah 2:12, and of sa`ar , “fear,” “trembling,” in Ezekiel 32:10; in Ezekiel 27:35 the Revised Version (British and American) has “horribly afraid” (sa`ar ) for “sore afraid.” “Horrible” occurs frequently in Apocrypha (2 Esdras 11:45; 15:28,34; The Wisdom of Solomon 3:19, “For horrible (chalepos) is the end of the unrighteous generation” the Revised Version (British and American) “grievous” etc.). W. L. Walker HORROR HORSE 1. NAMES:
The common names are (1) [ sWs , cuc ], and (2) [i[ppov , hippos ]. (3) The word [ vr;P; , parash ], “horseman,” occurs often, and in several cases is translated “horse” or “warhorse” ( Isaiah 28:28; Ezekiel 27:14; Joel 2:4 the Revised Version, margin); also in 2 Samuel 16, where the “horsemen” of English Versions of the Bible is [ µyvir;P;h” yle[\B” , ba`ale ha-parashim ], “owners of horses”; compare Arabic faris, “horseman,” and faras, “horse”. (4) The feminine form [ hs;Ws , cucah ], occurs in Song of Solomon 1:9, and is rendered as follows: Septuagint [hJ i[ppov , he hippos ]; Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) equitatum; the King James Version “company of horses,” the Revised Version (British and American) “steed.” It is not clear why English Versions of the Bible does not have “mare.” (5) The word [ µyriBia” , ‘abbirim , “strong ones,” is used for horses in Judges 5:22; Jeremiah 8:16; 47:3; 50:11 (the King James Version “bulls”). In Psalm 22:12 the same word is translated “strong bulls” (of Bashan). (6) For [ vk,r, , rekhesh ] (compare Arabic rakad, “to run”), in Kings 4:28; Esther 8:10,14; Micah 1:13, the Revised Version (British and American) has “swift steeds,” while the King James Version gives “dromedaries” in 1 Kings and “mules” in Est. (7) For [ twOrK;r]Ki , kirkaroth ] ( Isaiah 66:20), the King James Version and the English Revised Version have “swift beasts”; the English Revised Version margin and the American Standard Revised Version “dromedaries”; Septuagint [skia>dia , skiddia ], perhaps “covered carriages.” In Esther 8:10,14 we find the doubtful words (8) [ µynir;T]v]j”a\ , ‘achashteranim ], and (9) [ µykiM;r”h; yneB] , bene ha-rammakim ], which have been variously translated. the King James Version has respectively “camels” and “young dromedaries,” the Revised Version (British and American) “used in the king’s service” and “bred of the stud,” the Revised Version margin “mules” and “young dromedaries.” See CAMEL.
2. ORIGIN:
The Hebrew and Egyptian names for the horse are alike akin to the Assyrian. The Jews may have obtained horses from Egypt ( Deuteronomy 17:16), but the Canaanites before them had horses ( Joshua 17:16), and in looking toward the Northeast for the origin of the horse, philologists are in agreement with zoologists who consider that the plains of Central Asia, and also of Europe, were the original home of the horse. At least one species of wild horse is still found in Central Asia.
3. USES:
The horses of the Bible are almost exclusively war-horses, or at least the property of kings and not of the common people. A doubtful reference to the use of horses in threshing grain is found in Isaiah 28:28. Horses are among the property which the Egyptians gave to Joseph in exchange for grain ( Genesis 47:17). In Deuteronomy 17:16 it is enjoined that the king “shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he may multiply horses.” This and other injunctions failed to prevent the Jews from borrowing from the neighboring civilizations their customs, idolatries, and vices. Solomon’s horses are enumerated in 1 Kings 4, and the se`irim and tebhen of 1 Kings 4:28 (5:8) are identical with the sha`ir (“barley”) and tibn (“straw”) with which the arab feeds his horse today. In war, horses were ridden and were driven in chariots ( Exodus 14:9; Joshua 11:4; 2 Samuel 15:1, etc.).
4. FIGURATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE:
The horse is referred to figuratively chiefly in Zechariah and Revelation. A chariot and horses of fire take Elijah up to heaven ( 2 Kings 2:11 f). In Psalm 20:7; 33:17; and 76:6, the great strength of the horse is recalled as a reminder of the greater strength of God. In James 3:3, the small bridle by which the horse can be managed is compared to the tongue (compare Psalm 32:9). In Job 39:19-25 we have a magnificent description of a spirited war-horse. Alfred Ely Day HORSE, BLACK ([ i[ppov me>lav , hippos melas ]): Symbolic of famine (“balance .... measure of wheat for a shilling,” etc., Revelation 6:5,6; compare Zec 6:2,6). See REVELATION, BOOK OF.
HORSE GATE See JERUSALEM.
HORSE, RED ([ i[ppov purro>v , hippos purros ]): Symbolic of war, bloodshed (“slay one another,” etc., Revelation 6:4; compare Zec 18; 6:2). See REVELATION, BOOK OF.
HORSE, WHITE ([ i[ppov leuko>v , hippos leukos ]): Symbolic of victory, conquest (“bow .... conquering and to conquer,” Revelation 6:2; 19:11,14; compare Zec 1:8; 6:3,1). See REVELATION, BOOK OF.
HORSELEACH HORSES OF THE SUN ( 2 Kings 23:11): In connection with the sun-worship practiced by idolatrous kings in the temple at Jerusalem ( 2 Kings 23:5; compare Ezekiel 8:16), horses dedicated to the sun, with chariots, had been placed at the entrance of the sacred edifice. These Josiah, in his great reformation, “took away,” and burned the chariots with fire. Horses sacred to the sun were common among oriental peoples (Bochart, Heiroz., I, 2, 10).
HOSAH Possibly, however, as Sayce (HCM, 429) and Moore (Judges, 51) suggest, Hosah may represent the Assyrian Usu. Some scholars think that Usu was the Assyrian name for Palaetyrus. If “the fenced city of Tyre” were that on the island, while the city on the mainland lay at Ras el-`Ain, 30 stadia to the South (Strabo xvi.758), this identification is not improbable.
HOSANNA Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel.”
Thus in all the evangelists it is an acclamation or ascription of praise. This has raised the question whether the supposed derivation from <19B825> Psalm 118:25, beginning with ‘annah YHWH hoshi`ah nna’, “Save now, pray” (which is followed (118:26) by “Blessed be he that cometh (the Revised Version margin “or entereth”) in the name of Yahweh”) is correct. (See Thayer, HDB; Cheyne, EB; Dalman, Words of Jesus.) Various other explanations have been suggested. Thayer remarks, “It is most natural to regard the word Hosanna, as respects its form, as neither syncopated nor contracted, but the shorter Hiphil imperative with the appended enclitic” (hosha`na’; compare Psalm 86:2; Jeremiah 31:7), for which there is Talmudic warrant. “As respects its force, we must for .... contextual reasons, assume that it had already lost its primary supplicatory sense and become an ejaculation of joy or shout of welcome.” It is said to have been so used in this sense at the joyous Feast of Tabernacles, the 7th day of which came to be called “the Great Hosanna,” or “Hosanna Day.” But, while the word is certainly an ejaculation of praise and not one of supplication, the idea of salvation need not be excluded. As in Revelation 7:10 (compare 19:1), we have the acclamation, “Salvation unto God .... and unto the Lamb,” so we might have the cry, “Salvation to the son of David”; and “Hosanna in the Highest,” might be the equivalent of “Salvation unto our God!” He who was “coming in the name of the Lord” was the king who was bringing salvation from God to the people. W. L. Walker HOSEA I. THE PROPHET. 1. Name: The name ([ [“vewOh , hoshea ] Septuagint [ jWshe> , Osee -]; for other forms see note in DB), probably meaning “help,” seems to have been not uncommon, being derived from the auspicious verb from which we have the frequently recurring word “salvation.” It may be a contraction of a larger form of which the Divine name or its abbreviation formed a part, so as to signify “God is help,” or “Help, God.” according to Numbers 13:8,16 that was the original name of Joshua son of Nun, till Moses gave him the longer name (compounded with the name of Yahweh) which he continued to bear ([ [“vuwOhy] , yehoshua` ]), “Yahweh is salvation.” The last king of the Northern Kingdom was also named Hosea ( 2 Kings 15:30), and we find the same name borne by a chief of the tribe of Ephraim under David ( 1 Chronicles 27:20) and by a chief under Nehemiah ( Nehemiah 10:23). 2. Native Place: Although it is not directly stated in the book, there can be little doubt that he exercised his ministry in the kingdom of the Ten Tribes. Whereas his references to Judah are of a general kind, Ephraim or Samaria being sometimes mentioned in the same connection or more frequently alone, the situation implied throughout and the whole tone of the addresses agree with what we know of the Northern Kingdom at the time, and his references to places and events in that kingdom are so numerous and minute as to lead to the conclusion that he not only prophesied there, but that he was a native of that part of the country. Gilead, e.g. a district little named in the prophets, is twice mentioned in Hosea (6:8; 12:11) and in such a manner as to suggest that he knew it by personal observation; and Mizpah (mentioned in 5:1) is no doubt the Mizpah in Gilead ( Judges 10:17). Then we find Tabor ( Hosea 5:1), Shechem ( Hosea 6:9 the Revised Version (British and American)), Gilgal and Bethel ( Hosea 4:15; 9:15; 10:5,8,15; 12:11). Even Lebanon in the distant North is spoken of with a minuteness of detail which could be expected only from one very familiar with Northern Palestine ( Hosea 14:5-8). In a stricter sense, therefore, than amos who, though a native of Tekoah, had a prophetic mission to the North, Hosea may be called the prophet of Northern Israel, and his book, as Ewald has said, is the prophetic voice wrung from the bosom of the kingdom itself. 3. Date: All that we are told directly as to the time when Hosea prophesied is the statement in the first verse that the word of the Lord came to him “in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.” It is quite evident that his ministry did not extend over the combined reigns of all these kings; for, from the beginning of the reign of Uzziah to the beginning of that of Hezekiah, according to the now usually received chronology (Kautzsch, Literature of the Old Testament, English Translation), there is a period of 52 years, and Jeroboam came to his throne a few years before the accession of Uzziah.
When we examine the book itself for more precise indications of date, we find that the prophet threatens in God’s name that in “a little while” He will “avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu.” Now Jeroboam was the great-grandson of Jehu, and his son Zechariah, who succeeded him, reigned only six months and was the last of the line of Jehu. We may, therefore, place the beginning of Hosea’s ministry a short time before the death of Jeroboam which took place 743 BC. as to the other limit, it is to be observed that, though the downfall of “the kingdom of the house of Israel” is threatened ( Hosea 1:4), the catastrophe had not occurred when the prophet ceased his ministry. The date of that event is fixed in the year 722 BC, and it is said to have happened in the 6th year of King Hezekiah. This does not give too long a time for Hosea’s activity, and it leaves the accuracy of the superscription unchallenged, whoever may have written it. If it is the work of a later editor, it may be that Hosea’s ministry ceased before the reign of Hezekiah, though he may have lived on into that king’s reign. It should be added, however, that there seems to be no reference to another event which might have been expected to find an echo in the book, namely, the conspiracy in the reign of Ahaz (735 BC) by Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Damascus against the kingdom of Judah ( Kings 16:5; Isaiah 7:1).
Briefly we may say that, though there is uncertainty as to the precise dates of the beginning and end of his activity, he began his work before the middle of the 8th century, and that he saw the rise and fall of several kings.
He would thus be a younger contemporary of amos whose activity seems to have been confined to the reign of Jeroboam. 4. Personal History (Marriage): Hosea is described as the son of Beeri, who is otherwise unknown. Of his personal history we are told either absolutely nothing or else a very great deal, according as we interpret chapters 1 and 3 of his book. In ancient and in modern times, opinions have been divided as to whether in these chapters we have a recital of actual facts, or the presentation of prophetic teaching in the form of parable or allegory. (1) Allegorical View.
The Jewish interpreters as a rule took the allegorical view, and Jerome, in the early Christian church, no doubt following Origen the great allegorizer, states it at length, and sees an intimation of the view in the closing words of Hosea’s book: “Who is wise, that he may understand these things? prudent, that he may know them?” ( Hosea 14:9).
It is a mystery, he says; for it is a scandal to think of Hosea being commanded to take an unchaste wife and without any reluctance obeying the command. It is a figure, like that of Jeremiah going to the Euphrates (when Jerusalem was closely besieged) and hiding a girdle in the bed of the river (Jeremiah 13). So Ezekiel is commanded to represent, by means of a tile, the siege of Jerusalem, and to lie 390 days on his side to indicate the years of their iniquity (Ezekiel 4); and there are other symbolical acts.
Jerome then proceeds to apply the allegory first to Israel, which is the Gomer of chapter 1, and then to Judah, the wife in chapter 3, and finally to Christ and the church, the representations being types from beginning to end.
Calvin took the same view. Among modern commentators we find holding the allegorical view not only Hengstenberg, Havernick and Keil, but also Eichhorn, Rosenmuller and Hitzig. Reuss also (Das Altes Testament, II, ff) protests against the literal interpretation as impossible, and that on no moral or reverential considerations, but entirely on exegetical grounds. He thinks it enough to say that, when the prophet calls his children “children of whoredom,” he indicates quite clearly that he uses the words in a figurative sense; and he explains the allegory as follows: The prophet is the representative of Yahweh; Israel is the wife of Yahweh, but faithless to her husband, going after other gods; the children are the Israelites, who are therefore called children of whoredoms because they practice the idolatry of the nation. So they receive names which denote the consequences of their sin. In accordance with the allegory, the children are called the children of the prophet (for israel is God’s own) but this is not the main point; the essential thing is the naming of the children as they are named. In the third chapter, according to this interpretation, allegory again appears, but with a modification and for another purpose. Idolatrous Israel is again the unfaithful wife of the prophet as the representative of Yahweh. This relation can again be understood only as figurative; for, if the prophet stands for Yahweh, the marriage of Israel to the prophet cannot indicate infidelity to Yahweh. The sense is evident: the marriage still subsists; God does not give His people up, but they are for the present divorced “from bed and board”; it is a prophecy of the time when Yahweh will leave the people to their fate, till the day of reconciliation comes. (2) Literal View.
The literal interpretation, adopted by Theodore of Mopsucstia in the ancient church, was followed, after the Reformation, by the chief theologians of the Lutheran church, and has been held, in modern times, by many leading expositors, including Delitzsch, Kurtz, Hofmann, Wellhausen, Cheyne, Robertson Smith, G. A. Smith and others. In this view, as generally held, chapters 1 and 3 go together and refer to the same person. The idea is that Hosea married a woman named Gomer, who had the three children here named. Whether it was that she was known to be a worthless woman before the marriage and that the prophet hoped to reclaim her, or that she proved faithless after the marriage, she finally left him and sank deeper and deeper into sin, until, at some future time, the prophet bought her from her paramour and brought her to his own house, keeping her secluded, however, and deprived of all the privileges of a wife.
In support of this view it is urged that the details are related in so matterof- fact a manner that they must be matters of fact. Though the children receive symbolical names (as Isaiah gave such names to his children), the meanings of these are clear and are explained, whereas the name of the wife cannot thus be explained. Then there are details, such as the weaning of one child before the conception of another ( Hosea 1:8) and the precise price paid for the erring wife ( Hosea 3:2), which are not needed to keep up the allegory, and are not invested with symbolical meaning by the prophet. What is considered a still stronger argument is relied on by modern advocates of this view, the psychological argument that there is always a proportion between a revelation vouchsafed and the mental state of the person receiving it. Hosea dates the beginning of his prophetic work from the time of his marriage; it was the unfaithfulness of his wife that brought home to him the apostasy of Israel; and, as his heart went after his wayward wife, so the Divine love was stronger than Israel’s sin; and thus through his own domestic experience he was prepared to be a prophet to his people.
The great difficulty in the way of accepting the literal interpretation lies, as Reuss has pointed out, in the statement at the beginning, that the prophet was commanded to take a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms.
And the advocates of the view meet the difficulties in some way like this:
The narrative as it stands is manifestly later than the events. On looking back, the prophet describes his wife as she turned out to be, not as she was at the beginning of the history. It is urged with some force that it was necessary to the analogy (even if the story is only a parable) that the wife should have been first of all chaste; for, in Hosea’s representation, Israel at the time of its election in the wilderness was faithful and fell away only afterward ( Hosea 2:15; 9:10; 11:1). The narrative does not require us to assume that Comer was an immoral person or that she was the mother of children before her marriage. The children receive symbolic names, but these names do not reflect upon Gomer but upon Israel. Why, then, is she described as a woman of Whoredoms? It is answered that the expression ‘esheth zenunim is a class-descriptive, and is different from the expression “a woman who is a harlot” (‘ishshdh zonah). A Jewish interpreter quoted by Aben Ezra says: “Hosea was commanded to take a wife of whoredoms because an honest woman was not to be had. The whole people had gone astray — was an `adulterous generation’; and she as one of them was a typical example, and the children were involved in the common declension (see Hosea 4:1 f) .” The comment of Umbreit is worthy of notice: “as the covenant of Yahweh with Israel is viewed as a marriage bond, so is the prophetic bond with Israel a marriage, for he is the messenger and mediator. Therefore, if he feels an irresistible impulse to enter into the marriage-bond with Israel, he is bound to unite himself with a bride of an unchaste character. Yea, his own wife Comer is involved in the universal guilt” (Prak. Commentary uber die Propheten, Hamburg, 1844). It is considered, then, on this view, that Gomer, after her marriage, being in heart addicted to the prevailing idolatry, which we know was often associated with gross immorality (see Hosea 4:13), felt the irksomeness of restraint in the prophet’s house, left him and sank into open profligacy, from which (Hosea 3) the prophet reclaimed her so far as to bring her back and keep her secluded in his own house.
Quite recently this view has been advocated by Riedel (Alttest.
Untersuchungen, Leipzig, 1902), who endeavors to enforce it by giving a symbolic meaning to Gomer’s name, Bath-Diblaim. The word is the dual (or might be pointed as a plural) of a word, debhelah , meaning a fruitcake, i.e. raisins or figs pressed together. It is the word used in the story of Hezekiah’s illness ( 2 Kings 20:7), and is found in the list of things furnished by abigail to David ( 1 Samuel 25:18). See also 1 Samuel 30:12; 1 Chronicles 12:40. Another name for the same thing, ashishah, occurs in Hosea 3:1, rendered in the King James Version “flagons of wine,” but in the Revised Version (British and American) “cakes of raisins.” It seems clear that this word, at least here, denotes fruit-cakes offered to the heathen deities, as was the custom in Jeremiah’s time ( Jeremiah 7:18; 44:17). So Riedel argues that Comer may have been described as a “daughter of fruit-cakes” according to the Hebrew idiom in such expressions as “daughters of song,” etc. ( Ecclesiastes 12:4; Proverbs 31:2; 2 Samuel 7:10; Genesis 37:3, etc.).
It will be perceived that the literal interpretation as thus stated does not involve the supposition that Hosea became aware of his wife’s infidelity before the birth of the second child, as Robertson Smith and G. A. Smith suppose. The names given to the children all refer to the infidelity of Israel as a people; and the renderings of Lo’-ruchamah, “she that never knew a father’s love,” and of Lo-`ammi, “no kin of mine,” are too violent in this connection. Nor does the interpretation demand that it was first through his marriage and subsequent experience that the prophet received his call; although no doubt the experience through which he passed deepened the conviction of Israel’s apostasy in his mind.
II. THE BOOK. 1. Style and Scope: Scarcely any book in the Old Testament is more difficult of exposition than the Book of Hosea. This does not seem to be owing to any exceptional defect in the transmitted text, but rather to the peculiarity of the style; and partly also, no doubt, to the fact that the historical situation of the prophet was one of bewildering and sudden change of a violent kind, which seems to reflect itself in the book. The style here is preeminently the man.
Whatever view we may take of his personal history, it is evident that he is deeply affected by the situation in which he is placed. He is controlled by his subject, instead of controlling it. It is his heart that speaks; he is not careful to concentrate his thoughts or to mark his transitions; the sentences fall from him like the sobs of a broken heart. Mournful as Jeremiah, he does not indulge in the pleasure of melancholy as that prophet seems to do.
Jeremiah broods over his sorrow, nurses it, and tells us he is weeping.
Hosea does not say he is weeping, but we hear it in his broken utterances.
Instead of laying out his plaint in measured form, he ejaculates it in short, sharp sentences, as the stabs of his people’s sin pierce his heart.
The result is the absence of that rhythmic flow and studied parallelism which are such common features of Hebrew oratory, and are often so helpful to the expositor. His imagery, while highly poetical, is not elaborated; his figures are not so much carried out as thrown out; nor does he dwell long on the same figure. His sentences are like utterances of an oracle, and he forgets himself in identifying himself with the God in whose name he speaks — a feature which is not without significance in its bearing on the question of his personal history. The standing expression “Thus saith the Lord” (“It is the utterance of Yahweh” the Revised Version (British and American)), so characteristic of the prophetic style, very rarely occurs (only in Hosea 2:13,16,21; 11:11); whereas the words that he speaks are the very words of the Lord; and without any formal indication of the fact, he passes from speaking in his own name to speaking in the name of Yahweh (see, e.g. Hosea 6:4; 7:12; 8:13; 9:9,10,14-17, etc.).
Never was speaker so absorbed in his theme, or more identified with Him for whom he speaks. He seems to be oblivious of his hearers, if indeed his chapters are the transcript or summary of spoken addresses. They certainly want to a great extent the directness and point which are so marked a feature of prophetic diction, so much so that some (e.g. Reuss and Marti) suppose they are the production of one who had readers and not hearers in view.
But, though the style appears in this abrupt form, there is one clear note on divers strings sounding through the whole. The theme is twofold: the love of Yahweh, and the indifference of Israel to that love; and it would be hard to say which of the two is more vividly conceived and more forcibly expressed. Under the figures of the tenderest affection, sometimes that of the pitying, solicitous care of the parent ( Hosea 11:1,3,1; 14:3), but more prominently as the affection of the husband (Hosea 1; 3), the Divine love is represented as ever enduring in spite of all indifference and opposition; and, on the other hand, the waywardness, unblushing faithlessness of the loved one is painted in colors so repulsive as almost to shock the moral sense, but giving thereby evidence of the painful abhorrence it had produced on the prophet’s mind. Thus early does he take the sacred bond of husband and wife as the type of the Divine electing love — a similitude found elsewhere in prophetic literature, and most fully elaborated by Ezekiel (Ezekiel 16; compare Jeremiah 3). Hosea is the prophet of love, and not without propriety has been called the John of the Old Testament. 2. Historical Background: For the reasons just stated, it is very difficult to give a systematic analysis of the Book of Hos. It may, however, be helpful to that end to recall the situation of the time as furnishing a historical setting for the several sections of the book.
At the commencement of the prophet’s ministry, the Northern Kingdom was enjoying the prosperity and running into the excesses consequent on the victories of Jeroboam II. The glaring social corruptions of the times are exhibited and castigated by Amos, as they would most impress a stranger from the South; but Hosea, a native, as we are led suppose, of the Northern Kingdom, saw more deeply into the malady, and traced all the crime and vice of the nation to the fundamental evil of idolatry and apostasy from the true God. What he describes under the repulsive figure of whoredom was the rampant Worship of the be`alim, which had practically obscured the recognition of the sole claims to worship of the national Yahweh. This worship of the be`alim is to be distinguished from that of which we read at the earlier time of Elijah. Ahab’s Tyrian wife Jezebel had introduced the worship of her native country, that of the Sidonian Baal, which amounted to the setting up of a foreign deity; and Elijah’s contention that it must be a choice between Yahweh and Baal appealed to the sense of patriotism and the sentiment of national existence.
The worship of the ba`als, however, was an older and more insidious form of idolatry. The worship of the Canaanite tribes, among whom the Israelites found themselves on the occupation of Palestine, was a reverence of local divinities, known by the names of the places where each had his shrine or influence. The generic name of ba`al or “lord” was applied naturally as a common word to each of these, with the addition of the name of place or potency to distinguish them. Thus we have Baal-hermon, Baalgad, Baal-berith, etc. The insidiousness of this kind of worship is proved by its wide prevalence, especially among people at a low stage of intelligence, when the untutored mind is brought face to face with the mysterious and unseen forces of Nature. And the tenacity of the feeling is proved by the prevalence of such worship, even among people whose professed religion condemns idolatry of every kind. The veneration of local shrines among Christians of the East and in many parts of Europe is well known; and Mohammedans make pilgrimages to the tombs of saints who, though not formally worshipped as deities, are believed to have the power to confer such benefits as the Canaanites expected from the ba`als. The very name ba`al, originally meaning simply lord and master, as in such expressions as “master of a house,” “lord of a wife,” “owner of an ox,” would be misleading; for the Israelites could quite innocently call Yahweh their ba`al or Lord, as we can see they did in the formation of proper names. We can, without much difficulty, conceive what would happen among a people like the Israelite tribes, of no high grade of religious intelligence, and with the prevailing superstitions in their blood, when they found themselves in Palestine. From a nomad and pastoral people they became, and had to become, agriculturists; the natives of the land would be their instructors, in many or in most cases the actual labor would be done by them. The Book of Judges tells us emphatically that several of the Israelite tribes “did not drive out” the native inhabitants; the northern tribes in particular, where the land was most fertile, tolerated a large native admixture. We are also told ( Judges 2:7) that the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and of the elders who outlived Joshua; and this hint of a gradual declension no doubt points to what actually took place. For a time they remembered and thought of Yahweh as the God who had done for them great things in Egypt and in the wilderness; and then, as time went on, they had to think of Him as the giver of the land in which they found themselves, with all its varied produce. But this was the very thing the Canaanites ascribed to their ba`als. And so, imperceptibly, by naming places as the natives named them, by observing the customs which the natives followed, and celebrating the festivals of the agricultural year, they were gliding into conformity with the religion of their neighbors; for, in such a state of society, custom is more or less based on religion and passes for religion. Almost before they were aware, they were doing homage to the various ba`als in celebrating their festival days and offering to them the produce of the ground.
Such was the condition which Hosea describes as an absence of the knowledge of God ( Hosea 4:1). And the consequence cannot be better described than in the words of Paul: “As they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting” ( Romans 1:28). Both Hosea and Amos tell us in no ambiguous terms how the devotees of the impure worship gave themselves up “to work all uncleanness with greediness” ( Ephesians 4:19; compare Amos 2:7 f; Hosea 4:14); and how deeply the canker had worked into the body politic is proved by the rapid collapse and irretrievable ruin which followed soon after the strong hand of Jeroboam was removed. The 21 years that followed his death in 743 BC saw no fewer than six successive occupants of the throne, and the final disappearance of the kingdom of the ten tribes. Zechariah, his son, had reigned only six months when “Shallum the son of Jabesh conspired against him .... and slew him, and reigned in his stead” ( 2 Kings 15:10).
Shallum himself reigned only a month when he was in the same bloody manner removed by Menahem. After a reign of 10 years, according to Kings 15:17 (although the chronology here is uncertain), he was succeeded by his son Pekahiah ( 2 Kings 15:22), and after two years Pekah “his captain” conspired against him and reigned in his stead ( 2 Kings 15:25).
This king also was assassinated, and was succeeded by Hoshea ( 2 Kings 15:30), the last king of the ten tribes, for the kingdom came to an end in 722 BC. Hosea must have lived during a great part of those troubled times; and we may expect to hear echoes of the events in his book. 3. Contents and Divisions: (1) Hosea 1 through 3.
We should naturally expect that the order of the chapters would correspond in the main with the progress of events; and there is at least a general agreement among expositors that Hosea 1 through 3 refer to an earlier period than those that follow. In favor of this is the reference in 1:2 to the commencement of the prophet’s ministry, as also the threatening of the impending extirpation of the house of Jehu (1:4), implying that it was still in existence; and finally the hints of the abundance amounting to luxury which marked the prosperous time of Jeroboam’s reign. These three chapters are to be regarded as going together; and, however they may be viewed as reflecting the prophet’s personal experience, they leave no room for doubt in regard to the national apostasy that weighed so heavily on his heart. And this, in effect, is what he says: Just as the wife, espoused to a loving husband, enjoys the protection of home and owes all her provision to her husband, so Israel, chosen by Yahweh and brought by Him into a fertile land, has received all she has from Him alone. The giving of recognition to the ba`als for material prosperity was tantamount to a wife’s bestowing her affection on another; the accepting of these blessings as bestowed on condition of homage rendered to the ba`als was tantamount to the receiving of hire by an abandoned woman. This being so, the prophet, speaking in God’s name, declares what He will do, in a series of a thrice repeated “therefore” (2:6,9,14), marking three stages of His discipline. First of all, changing the metaphor to that of a straying heifer, the prophet in God’s name declares (2:6 ff) that He will hedge up her way with thorns, so that she will not be able to reach her lovers — meaning, no doubt, that whether by drought or blight, or some national misfortune, there would be such a disturbance of the processes of Nature that the usual rites of homage to the ba`als would prove ineffectual. The people would fail to find the “law of the god of the land” ( 2 Kings 17:26). In their perplexity they would bethink themselves, begin to doubt the power of the ba`als, and resolve to pay to Yahweh the homage they had been giving to the local gods. But this is still the same low conception of Yahweh that had led them astray. To exchange one God for another simply in the hope of enjoying material prosperity is not the service which He requires. And then comes the second “therefore” ( Hosea 2:9 ff). Instead of allowing them to enjoy their corn and wine and oil on the terms of a mere lip allegiance or ritual service, Yahweh will take these away, will reduce Israel to her original poverty, causing all the mirth of her festival days to cease, and giving garments of mourning for festal attire. Her lovers will no longer own her, her own husband’s hand is heavy upon her, and what remains?
The third “therefore” tells us ( Hosea 2:14 ff). Israel, now bereft of all, helpless, homeless, is at last convinced that, as her God could take away all, so it was from Him she had received all: she is shut up to His love and His mercy alone. And here the prophet’s thoughts clothemselves in language referring to the early betrothal period of national life. A new beginning will be made, she will again lead the wilderness life of daily dependence on God, cheerfully and joyfully she will begin a new journey, out of trouble will come a new hope, and the very recollection of the past will be a pain to her. As all the associations of the name ba`al have been degrading, she shall think of her Lord in a different relation, not as the mere giver of material blessing, but as the husband and desire of her heart, the One Source of all good, as distinguished from one of many benefactors.
In all this Hosea does not make it clear how he expected these changes to be brought about, nor do we detect any references to the political history of the time. He mentions no foreign enemy at this stage, or, at most, hints at war in a vague manner ( Hosea 2:14 f). In the second chapter the thing that is emphasized is the heavy hand of God laid on the things through which Israel had been led astray, the paralyzing of Nature’s operations, so as to cut at the root of Nature-worship; but the closing stage of the Divine discipline (Hosea 3), when Israel, like the wife kept in seclusion, neither enjoying the privileges of the lawful spouse nor able to follow after idols, seems to point to, and certainly was not reached till, the captivity when the people, on a foreign soil, could not exercise their ancestral worship, but yet were finally cured of idolatry.
The references to Judah in these chapters are not to be overlooked. Having said ( Hosea 1:6) that Israel would be utterly taken away (which seems to point to exile), the prophet adds that Judah would be saved from that fate, though not by warlike means. Farther down ( Hosea 1:11) he predicts the union of Israel and Judah under one head, and finally in Hosea 3 it is said that in the latter day the children of Israel would seek the Lord their God and David their king. Many critics suppose that 1:10 f are out of place (though they cannot find a better place for them); and not a few declare that all the references to Judah must be taken as from a later hand, the usual reason for this conclusion being that the words “disturb the connection.” In the case of a writer like Hosea, however, whose transitions are so sharp and sudden, we are not safe in speaking of disturbing the connection: what may to us appear abrupt, because we are not expecting it, may have flashed across the mind of the original writer; and Hosea, in forecasting the future of his people, can scarcely be debarred from having thought of the whole nation. It was Israel as a whole that was the original bride of Yahweh, and surely therefore the united Israel would be the partaker of the final glory. As a matter of fact, Judah was at the time in better case than Israel, and the old promise to the Davidic house ( Samuel 7:16) was deeply cherished to the end. (2) Hosea 4 through 14.
If it is admissible to consider Hosea 1 through 3 as one related piece (though possibly the written deposit of several addresses) it is quite otherwise with Hosea 4 through 14. These are, in a manner, a counterpart of the history. When the strong hand of Jeroboam was relaxed, the kingdom rapidly fell to pieces; a series of military usurpers follows with bewildering rapidity; but who can tell how much political disorder and social disintegration lie behind those brief and grim notices: So and So “conspired against him and slew him and reigned in his stead”? So with these chapters. The wail of grief, the echo of violence and excess, is heard through all, but it is very difficult to assign each lament, each reproof, each denunciation to the primary occasion that called it forth. The chapters seem like the recital of the confused, hideous dream through which the nation passed till its rude awakening by the sharp shock of the Assyrian invasion and the exile that followed. The political condition of the time was one of party strife and national impotence. Sometimes Assyria or Egypt is mentioned alone (5:13; 8:9,13; 9:6; 10:6; 14:3), at other times Assyria and Egypt together (7:11; 9:3; 11:5,11; 12:1); but in such a way as to show too plainly that the spirit of self-reliance — not to speak of reliance on Yahweh — had departed from a race that was worm-eaten with social sins and rendered selfish and callous by the indulgence of every vice. These foreign powers, which figure as false refuges, are also in the view of the prophet destined to be future scourges (see 5:13; 8:9 f; 7:11; 12:1); and we know, from the Book of Kings and also from the Assyrian monuments, how much the kings of Israel at this time were at the mercy of the great conquering empires of the East. Such passages as speak of Assyria and Egypt in the same breath may point to the rival policies which were in vogue in the Northern Kingdom (as they appeared also somewhat later in Judah) of making alliances with one or other of these great rival powers. It was in fact the Egyptianizing policy of Hoshea that finally occasioned the ruin of the kingdom ( 2 Kings 17:4). Thus it is that, in the last chapter, when the prophet indulges in hope no more mixed with boding fear, he puts into the mouth of repentant Ephraim the words: “Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses” ( Hosea 14:3), thus alluding to the two foreign powers between which Israel had lost its independence.
It is not possible to give a satisfactory analysis of the chapters under consideration. They are not marked off, as certain sections of other prophetical books are, by headings or refrains, nor are the references to current events sufficiently clear to enable us to assign different parts to different times, nor, in fine, is the matter so distinctly laid out that we can arrange the book under subjects treated. Most expositors accordingly content themselves with indicating the chief topics or lines of thought, and arranging the chapters according to the tone pervading them.
Keil, e.g., would divide all these chapters into three great sections, each forming a kind of prophetical cycle, in which the three great prophetic tones of reproof, threatening, and promise, are heard in succession. His first section embraces Hosea 4 to 6:3, ending with the gracious promise: “Come, and let us return unto Yahweh,” etc. The second section, 6:4 to 11:11, ends with the promise: “They shall come trembling as a bird .... and I will make them to dwell in their houses, saith Yahweh.” The third section, 11:12 to 14:9, ends: “Take with you words, and return unto Yahweh,” etc. Ewald’s arrangement proceeds on the idea that the whole book consists of one narrative piece (chapters 1 through 3) and one long address (chapters 4 through 14), which, however, is marked off by resting points into smaller sections or addresses. The progress of thought is marked by the three great items of arraignment, punishment, and consolation. Thus: from 4:1 through 6:11 there is arraignment; from 6:11 to 9:9 punishment, and from 9:10 through 14:10 exhortation and comfort.
Driver says of chapters 4 through 14: “These chapters consist of a series of discourses, a summary arranged probably by the prophet himself at the close of his ministry, of the prophecies delivered by him in the years following the death of Jeroboam II. Though the argument is not continuous, or systematically developed, they may be divided into three sections: (a) chapters 4 through 8 in which the thought of Israel’s guilt predominates; (b) chapter 9 through 11:11, in which the prevailing thought is that of Israel’s punishment; (c) 11:12 through Hosea 14 in which these two lines of thought are both continued (chapters 12, 13), but are followed (in chapter 14) by a glance at the brighter future which may ensue provided Israel repents.”
A. B. Davidson, after mentioning the proposed analyses of Ewald and Driver, adds: “But in truth the passage is scarcely divisible; it consists of multitude of variations all executed on one theme, Israel’s apostasy or unfaithfulness to her God. This unfaithfulness is a condition of the mind, a `spirit of whoredoms,’ and is revealed in all the aspects of Israel’s life, though particularly in three things: (1) the cult, which, though ostensibly service of Yahweh, is in truth worship of a being altogether different from Him; (2) the internal political disorders, the changes of dynasty, all of which have been effected with no thought of Yahweh in the people’s minds; and (3) the foreign politics, the making of covenants with Egypt and Assyria, in the hope that they might heal the internal hurt of the people, instead of relying on Yahweh their God. The three things,” he adds, “are not independent; the one leads to the other. The fundamental evil is that there is no knowledge of God in the land, no true conception of Deity. He is thought of as a Nature-god, and His conception exercises no restraint on the passions or life of the people: hence, the social immoralities, and the furious struggles of rival factions, and these again lead to the appeal for foreign intervention.”
Some expositors, however (e.g. Maurer, Hitzig, Delitzsch and Volck), recognizing what they consider as direct references or brief allusions to certain outstanding events in the history, perceive a chronological order in the chapters. Volck, who has tempted a full analysis on this line (PRE2) thinks that chapters 4 through 14 arrange themselves into 6 consecutive sections as follows: (1) chapter 4 constitutes a section by itself, determined by the introductory words “Hear the word of Yahweh” (4:1), and a similar call at the beginning of chapter 5. He assigns this chapter to the reign of Zechariah, as a description of the low condition to which the nation had fallen, the priests, the leaders, being involved in the guilt and reproof ( Hosea 5:6). (2) The second section extends from Hosea 5:1 to 6:3, and is addressed directly to the priests and the royal house, who ought to have been guides but were snares. The prophet in the spirit sees Divine judgment already breaking over the devoted land (5:8). This prophecy, which Hitzig referred to the time of Zechariah, and Maurer to the reign of Pekah, is assigned by Volck to the one month’s reign of Shallum, on the ground of Hosea 5:7: “Now shall a month (the King James Version and the Revised Version margin, but the Revised Version (British and American) “the new moon”) devour them.” It is by inference from this that Volck puts Hosea 4 in the preceding reign of Zechariah. (3) The third section, Hosea 6:4 through 7:16, is marked off by the new beginning made at 8:1: “Set the trumpet to thy mouth.” The passage which determines its date is 7:7: “All their kings are fallen,” which, agreeing with Hitzig, he thinks could not have been said after the fall of one king, Zechariah, and so he assigns it to the beginning of the reign of Menahem who killed Shallum. (4) The next halting place, giving a fourth section, is at Hosea 9:9, at the end of which there is a break in the Massoretic Text, and a new subject begins. Accordingly, the section embraces 8:1 to 9:9, and Volck, agreeing with Hitzig, assigns it to the reign of Menahem, on the ground of 8:4: “They have set up kings, but not by me,” referring to the support given to Menahem by the king of Assyria ( 2 Kings 15:19). (5) The fifth section extends from 9:10 to l1:11, and is marked by the peculiarity that the prophet three times refers to the early history of Israel (9:10; 10:1; 11:1). Identifying Shalman in 10:14 with Shalmaneser, Volck refers the section to the opening years of the reign of Hoshea, against whom (as stated in 2 Kings 17:3) Shalmaneser came up and Hoshea became his servant. (6) Lastly there is a sixth section, extending from Hosea 12:1 to the end, which looks to the future recovery of the people (13:14) and closes with words of gracious promise. This portion also Volck assigns to the reign of Hoshea, just as the ruin of Samaria was impending, and there was no prospect of any earthly hope. In this way Volck thinks that the statement in the superscription of the Book of Hosea is confirmed, and that we have before us, in chronological order if not in precisely their original oral form, the utterances of the prophet during his ministry. Ewald also was strongly of opinion that the book (in its second part at least) has come down to us substantially in the form in which the prophet himself left it.
The impression one receives from this whole section is one of sadness, for the prevailing tone is one of denunciation and doom. And yet Hosea is not a prophet of despair; and, in fact, he bursts forth into hope just at the point where, humanly speaking, there is no ground of hope. But this hope is produced, not by what he sees in the condition of the people: it is enkindled and sustained by his confident faith in the unfailing love of Yahweh. And so he ends on theme on which he began, the love of God prevailing over man’s sin. 4. Testimony to Earlier History: The references in Hosea to the earlier period of history are valuable, seeing that we know his date, and that the dates of the books recording that history are so much in dispute. These references are particularly valuable from the way in which they occur; for it is the manner of the prophet to introduce them indirectly, and allusively, without dwelling on particulars.
Thus every single reference can be understood only by assuming its implications; and, taken together, they do not merely amount to a number of isolated testimonies to single events, but are rather dissevered links of a continuous chain of history. For they do not occur by way of rhetorical illustration of some theme that may be in hand, they are of the very essence of the prophet’s address. The events of the past are, in the prophet’s view, so many elements in the arraignment or threatening, or whatever it may be that is the subject of address for the moment: in a word, the whole history is regarded by him, not as a series of episodes, strung together in a collection of popular stories, but a course of Divine discipline with a moral and religious significance, and recorded or referred to for a high purpose.
There is this also to be remembered: that, in referring briefly and by way of allusion to past events, the prophet is taking for granted that his hearers understand what he is referring to, and will not call in question the facts to which he alludes. This implies that the mass of the people, even in degenerate Israel, were well acquainted with such incidents or episodes as the prophet introduces into his discourses, as well as the links which were necessary to bind them into a connected whole. It is necessary to bear all this in mind in forming an estimate of the historical value of other books. It seems to be taken by many modern writers as certain that those parts of the Pentateuch (JE) which deal with the earlier history were not written till a comparatively short time before Hosea. It is plain, however, that the accounts must be of much earlier date, before they could have become, in an age when books could not have been numerous, the general possession of the national consciousness. Further, the homiletic manner in which Hosea handles these ancient stories makes one suspicious of the modern theory that a number of popular stories were supplied with didactic “frameworks” by later Deuteronomic or other “redactors,” and makes it more probable that these accounts were invested with a moral and religious meaning from the beginning. With these considerations in mind, and particularly in view of the use he makes of his references, it is interesting to note the wide range of the prophet’s historical survey. If we read with the Revised Version (British and American) “Adam” for “men” (the King James Version Hosea 6:7), we have a clear allusion to the Fall, implying in its connection the view which, as all admit, Hosea held of the religious history of his people as a declension and not an upward evolution. This view is more clearly brought out in the reference to the period of the exodus and the desert life (2:15; 9:10; 11:1). Equally suggestive are the allusions to the patriarchal history, as the references to Admah and’ Zeboiim (11:8), and the repeated references to the weak and the strong points in the character of Jacob (12:3,12). Repeatedly he declares that Yahweh is the God of Israel “from the land of Egypt” (12:9; 13:4), alludes to the sin of Achan and the valley of Achor (2:15), asserts that God had in time past “spoken unto the prophets” (12:10), “hewed” His people by prophets (6:5), and by a prophet brought His people out of Egypt (12:13).
There are also references to incidents nearer to the prophet’s time, some of them not very clear (14; 5:1; 9:5:15; 10:9); and if, as seems probable, “the sin of Israel” (10:8) refers to the schism of the ten tribes, the prominence given to the Davidic kingship, which, along with the references to Judah, some critics reject on merely subjective grounds, is quite intelligible (3:5; 4:15). 5. Testimony to the Law: We do not expect to find in a prophetic writing the same frequency of reference to the law as to the history; for it is of the essence of prophecy to appeal to history and to interpret it. Of course, the moral and social aspects of the law are as much the province of the prophet as of the priest; but the ceremonial part of the law, which was under the care of the priests, though it was designed to be the expression of the same ideas that lay at the foundation of prophecy, is mainly touched upon by the prophets when, as was too frequently the case, it ceased to express those ideas and became an offense. The words of the prophets on this subject, when fairly interpreted, are not opposed to law in any of its authorized forms, but only to its abuses; and there are expressions and allusions in Hosea, although he spoke to the Northern Kingdom, where from the time of the schism there had been a wide departure from the authorized law, which recognize its ancient existence and its Divine sanction. The much-debated passage in Hosea (8:12), “Though I write for him my law in ten thousand precepts” (the Revised Version (British and American) or the Revised Version margin “I wrote for him the ten thousand things of my law”), on any understanding of the words or with any reasonable emendation of the text (for which see the comm.), points to written law, and that of considerable compass, and seems hardly consistent with the supposition that in the prophet’s time the whole of the written law was confined to a few chapters in Ex, the so-called Book of the Covenant. And the very next verse ( Hosea 8:13), “As for the sacrifices of mine offerings, they sacrifice flesh and eat it; but Yahweh accepteth them not,” is at once an acknowledgment of the Divine institution of sacrifice, and an illustration of the kind of opposition the prophets entertained to sacrificial service as it was practiced. So when it is said, “I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feasts, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn assemblies” ( Hosea 2:11; compare 9:5), the reference, as the context shows, is to a deprivation of what were national distinctive privileges; and the allusions to transgressions and trespasses against the law ( Hosea 8:1; compare Deuteronomy 17:2) point in the same direction. We have a plain reference to the Feast of Tabernacles ( Hosea 12:9): “I will yet again make thee to dwell in tents, as in the days of the solemn feast” (compare Leviticus 23:39-43); and there are phrases which are either in the express language of the law-books or evident allusions to them, as “Thy people are as they that strive with the priest” ( Hosea 4:4; compare Deuteronomy 17:12); “The princes of Judah are like them that remove the landmark” ( Hosea 5:10; compare Deuteronomy 19:14); “Their sacrifices shall be unto them as the bread of mourners” ( Hosea 9:4; compare Deuteronomy 26:14); “They (the priests) feed on the sin of my people” ( Hosea 4:8; compare Leviticus 6:25 f; 10:17). In one verse the prophet combines the fundamental fact in the nation’s history and the fundamental principle of the law: “I am Yahweh thy God from the land of Egypt; and thou shalt know no god but me” ( Hosea 13:4; compare Exodus 20:3). 6. Affinity with Deuteronomy: It is, however, with the Book of Deuteronomy more than with any other portion of the Pentateuch that the Book of Hosea shows affinity; and the resemblances here are so striking, that the critics who hold to the late date of Deuteronomy speak of the author of that book as “the spiritual heir of Hosea” (Driver, Commentary on Deuteronomy, Intro, xxvii), or of Hosea as “the great spiritual predecessor of the Deuteronomist” (Cheyne, Jeremiah, His Life and Times, 66). The resemblance is seen, not only in the homiletical manner in which historical events are treated, but chiefly in the great underlying principles implied or insisted upon in both books. The choice of Israel to be a peculiar people is the fundamental note in both ( Deuteronomy 4:37; 7:6; 10:15; 14:2; 26:18; Hosea 12:9; 13:4).
God’s tender care and fatherly discipline are central ideas in both ( Deuteronomy 8:2,3,5,16; Hosea 9:15; 11:1-4; 14:4); and, conversely, the supreme duty of love to God, or reproof of the want of it, is everywhere emphasized ( Deuteronomy 6:5; 10:12; 11:1,13,22; 13:3; 19:9; 30:6,16,20; Hosea 4:1; 6:4,6). Now, when points of resemblance are found in two different books, it is not always easy to say on merely literary grounds which has the claim to priority. But it does seem remarkable, on the one hand, that a writer so late as the time of Josiah should take his keynote from one of the very earliest of the writing prophets two centuries before him; and, on the other hand, that these socalled “prophetic ideas,” so suitable to the time of `the kindness of youth and love of espousals’ ( Jeremiah 2:2), should have found no place in the mind of that “prophet” by whom the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt ( Hosea 12:13). The ministry of Moses was to enforce the duty of whole-hearted allegiance to the God who had made special choice of Israel and claimed them as His own. Nor was Hosea the first, as it is sometimes alleged, to represent the religious history of Israel as a defection. Moses had experience of their apostasy under the very shadow of Sinai, and all his life long had to bear with a stiff-necked and rebellious people. Then, again, if these “Deuteronomic” ideas are found so clearly expressed in Hosea, why should it be necessary to postulate a late Deuteronomist going back upon older books, and editing and supplementing them with Deuteronomic matter? If Moses sustained anything like the function which all tradition assigned to him, and if, as all confess, he was the instrument of molding the tribes into one people, those addresses contained in the Book of Deuteronomy are precisely in the tone which would be adopted by a great leader in taking farewell of the people. And, if he did so, it is quite conceivable that his words would be treasured by the God-fearing men among his followers and successors, in that unbroken line of prophetic men to whose existence both Amos and Hosea appealed, and that they should be found coming to expression at the very dawn of written prophecy.
Undoubtedly these two prophets took such a view, and regarded Moses as the first and greatest Deuteronomist.
LITERATURE.
Harper, “Minor Prophets,” in ICC; Keil, “Minor Prophets,” in Clark’s For.
Theol. Library; Huxtable, “Hosea,” in Speaker’s Comm.; Cheyne, “Hosea,” in Cambridge Bible; Pusey, Minor Prophets; Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel; G. A. Smith, “The Book of the Twelve,” in Expositor’s Bible; Horton, “‘Hosea,” in Century Bible; Farrar, “Minor Prophets,” in Men of the Bible; A. B. Davidson, article “Hosea” in HDB; Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, English translation, Chicago, 1897; Valeton, Amos en Hosea; Nowack, “Die kleinen Propheten,” in Hand-Comm. z. Altes Testament; Marti, Dodekapropheton in Kurz. Hand-Comm. James Robertson HOSEN HOSHAIAH HOSHAMA HOSHEA 1. A SATRAP OF ASSYRIA:
Son of Elah, the 19th and last king of Israel. The time was one of social revolution and dynastic change. Of the last five kings of Israel, four had met their deaths by violence. Hoshea himself was one of these assassins ( 2 Kings 15:30), and the nominee of Tiglath-pileser III, whose annals read, “Pekah I slew, Hoshea I appointed over them.” Though called king, Hoshea was thus really a satrap of Assyria and held his appointment only during good behavior. The realm which he administered was but the shadow of its former self. Tiglath-pileser had already carried into captivity the northern tribes of Zebulun, Naphtali, Asher and Dan; as also the two and a half tribes East of the Jordan ( 2 Kings 15:29). Apart from those forming the kingdom of Judah, there remained only Ephraim, Issachar, and the half-tribe of Manasseh.
2. THE REDUCED KINGDOM OF ISRAEL:
Isaiah refers to the fall of Syria in the words, “Damascus is taken away from being a city” ( Isaiah 17:1), and to the foreign occupations of Northern Israel in the words, “He brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali .... by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations” ( Isaiah 9:1).
3. HOSEA AND EPHRAIM:
But Hosea is the prophet in whose writings we see most clearly the reflection of the politics of the day, and the altered condition of things in Israel. In the 2nd division of his and book, chapters 4 through 14, Hosea deals with a state of things which can only be subsequent to the first great deportation of Israelites, and therefore belongs to the reigns of Pekah and Hoshea. The larger part of the nation being removed, he addresses his 413 ing tribes. This name he uses no less than 35 t, though not to the total exclusion of the term “Israel,” as in 11:1, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him,” the whole nation in such cases being meant. Of the 35 uses of “Ephraim,” the first is, “Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone” (4:17), and the last, “Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols?” (14:8), showing that, in the prophet’s estimation, the idolatrous worship of Yahweh, as associated with the golden calves of Dan and Bethel, lay at the root of the nation’s calamities.
4. HOSEA’S DEPENDENT POSITION:
Over this shrunken and weakened kingdom — corresponding generally with the Samaritan district of the New Testament — Hoshea was placed as the viceroy of a foreign power. The first official year of his governorship was 729, though he may have been appointed a few months earlier.
Tiglath-pileser III died in 727, so that three years’ tribute was probably paid to Nineveh. There was, however, a political party in Samaria, which, ground down by cruel exactions, was for making an alliance with Egypt, hoping that, in the jealousy and antipathies of the two world-powers, it might find some relief or even a measure of independence. Hosea, himself a prophet of the north, allows us to see beneath the surface of court life in Samaria. “They call unto Egypt, they go to Assyria” ( Hosea 7:11), and again, “They make a covenant with Assyria, and oil is carried into Egypt” ( Hosea 12:1). This political duplicity from which it was the king’s prime duty to save his people, probably took its origin about the time of Tiglathpileser’s death in 727.
5. HIS TREASONABLE ACTION:
That event either caused or promoted the treasonable action, and the passage of large quantities of oil on the southward road was an objectlesson to be read of all men. On the accession of Shalmaneser IV — who is the Shalmaneser of the Bible ( 2 Kings 17:3; 18:9) — Hoshea would seem to have carried, or sent, the annual tribute for 726 to the treasury at Nineveh ( 2 Kings 17:3). The text is not clear as to who was the bearer of this tribute, but from the statement that Shalmaneser came up against him, and Hoshea became his servant, it may be presumed that the tribute for the first year after Tiglath-pileser’s death was at first refused, then, when a military demonstration took place, was paid, and obedience promised. In such a case Hoshea would be required to attend at his suzerain’s court and do homage to the sovereign.
6. HIS FINAL ARREST:
This is what probably took place, not without inquiry into the past. Grave suspicions were thus aroused as to the loyalty of Hoshea, and on these being confirmed by the confession or discovery that messengers had passed to “So king of Egypt,” and the further withholding of the tribute ( Kings 17:4), Hoshea was arrested and shut up in prison. Here he disappears from history. Such was the ignominious end of a line of kings, not one of whom had, in all the vicissitudes of two and a quarter centuries, been in harmony with theocratic spirit, or realized that the true welfare and dignity of the state lay in the unalloyed worship of Yahweh.
7. BATTLE OF BETH-ARBEL:
With Hoshea in his hands, Shalmaneser’s troops marched, in the spring or summer of 725, to the completion of Assyria’s work in Palestine. Isaiah has much to say in his 10th and 11th chapters on the divinely sanctioned mission of “the Assyrian” and of the ultimate fate that should befall him for his pride and cruelty in carrying out his mission. The campaign was not a bloodless one. At Beth-arbel — at present unidentified — the hostile forces met, with the result that might have been expected. “Shalman spoiled Betharbel in the day of battle” ( Hosea 10:14). The defeated army took refuge behind the walls of Samaria, and the siege began. The city was well placed for purposes of defense, being built on the summit of a lonely hill, which was Omri’s reason for moving the capital from Tirzah ( 1 Kings 16:24). It was probably during the continuance of the siege that Isaiah wrote his prophecy, “Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim,” etc. (Isaiah 28), in which the hill of Samaria with its coronet of walls is compared to a diadem of flowers worn in a scene of revelry, which should fade and die. Micah’s elegy on the fall of Samaria (chapter 1) has the same topographical note, “I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will uncover the foundations thereof” (1:6).
8. FALL OF SAMARIA IN 721:
Shalmaneser’s reign was one of exactly five years, December, 727 to December, 722, and the city fell in the 1st month of his successor’s reign.
The history of its fall is summarized in Sargon’s great Khorsabad inscription in these words, “Samaria I besieged, I captured. 27,290 of her inhabitants I carried away. 50 chariots I collected from their midst. The rest of their property I caused to be taken.”
9. HOSHEA’S CHARACTER:
Hoshea’s character is summed up in the qualified phrase, “He did evil in the sight of the Lord, yet not as the kings of Israel that were before him.”
The meaning may be that, while not a high-principled man or ofirreproachable life, he did not give to the idolatry of Bethel the official sanction and prominence which each of his 18 predecessors had done.
According to Hosea 10:6 the golden calf of Samaria was to be taken to Assyria, to the shame of its erstwhile worshippers. W. Shaw Caldecott HOSPITALITY; HOST 1. AMONG NOMADS:
When the civilization of a people has advanced so far that some traveling has become necessary, but not yet so far that traveling by individuals is a usual thing, then hospitality is a virtue indispensable to the life of the people. This stage of culture was that represented in ancient Palestine and the stage whose customs are still preserved among the present-day Arabs of the desert. Hospitality is regarded as a right by the traveler, to whom it never occurs to thank his host as if for a favor. And hospitality is granted as a duty by the host, who himself may very soon be dependent on some one else’s hospitality. But none the less, both in Old Testament times and today, the granting of that right is surrounded by an etiquette that has made Arabian hospitality so justly celebrated. The traveler is made the literal master of the house during his stay; his host will perform for him the most servile offices, and will not even sit in his presence without express request.
To the use of the guest is given over all that his host possesses, stopping not even short of the honor of wife or daughter. “ `Be we not all,’ say the poor nomads, `guests of Ullah? Has God given unto them, God’s guest shall partake with them thereof: if they will not for God render his own, it should not go well with them’ “ (Doughty, Arabia Deserta, I, 228). The host is in duty bound to defend his guest against all comers and to lay aside any personal hatred — the murderer of father is safe as the guest of the son.
2. IN THE OLD TESTAMENT:
An exquisite example of the etiquette of hospitality is found in Genesis 18:1-8. The very fact that the three strangers have passed by Abraham’s door gives him the privilege of entertaining them. When he sees them approaching he runs to beg the honor of their turning in to him, with oriental courtesy depreciates the feast that he is about to lay before them as “a morsel of bread,” and stands by them while they eat. Manoah ( Judges 13:15) is equally pressing although more matter-of-fact, while Jethro ( Exodus 2:20) sends out that the stranger may be brought in.
And Job (31:32) repels the very thought that he could let the sojourner be unprovided for. The one case where a breach of hospitality receives praise is that of Jael (Judges 4 through 5), perhaps to be referred to degeneration of customs in the conflicts with the Canaanites or (perhaps more plausibly) to literary-critical considerations, according to which in Judges 5 Sisera is not represented as entering Jael’s tent or possibly not as actually tasting the food, a state of affairs misunderstood in Judges 4, written under later circumstances of city life. (For contrasting opinions see “Jael” in Encyclopedia Biblica and HDB.)
3. THE TABLE-BOND:
It is well to understand that to secure the right to hospitality it is not necessary, even in modern times, for the guest to eat with his host, still less to eat salt specifically. Indeed, guests arriving after sunset and departing the next morning do not, as a rule, eat at all in the tent of the host. It is sufficient to enter the tent, to grasp a tent-pin, or even, under certain circumstances, to invoke the name of a man as host. On the other hand, the bond of hospitality is certainly strengthened by eating with one’s host, or the bond may actually be created by eating food belonging to him, even by stealth or in an act of theft. Here a quite different set of motives is at work.
The idea here is that of kinship arising from participation in a common sacrificial meal, and the modern Arab still terms the animal killed for his guest the dhabichah or “sacrifice” (compare HDB, II, 428). This concept finds its rather materialistic expression in theory that after the processes of digestion are completed (a time estimated as two nights and the included day), the bond lapses if it is not renewed. There seem to be various references in the Bible to some such idea of a “table-bond” ( Psalm 41:9, e.g.), but hardly in connection directly with hospitality. For a discussion of them see BREAD; GUEST; SACRIFICE .
4. IN THE CITY:
In the city, naturally, the exercise of hospitality was more restricted. Where travel was great, doubtless commercial provision for the travelers was made from a very early day (compare Luke 10:34 and see INN ), and at all events free hospitality to all comers would have been unbearably abused. Lot in Sodom (Genesis 19) is the nomad who has preserved his old ideas, although settled in the city, and who thinks of the “shadow of his roof” (19:8) as his tent. The same is true of the old man in Gibeah of Judges 19:16 ff. And the sin of Sodom and of Gibeah is not that wanderers cannot find hospitality so much as it is that they are unsafe in the streets at night. Both Lot and “the old man,” however, are firm in their duty and willing to sacrifice their daughters for the safety of their guests. (Later ideas as to the position of woman should not be read back into these narratives.) However, when the city-dweller Rahab refuses to surrender her guests (Joshua 2), her reason is not the breach of hospitality involved but her fear of Yahweh ( Joshua 2:9). When Abraham’s old slave is in Nahor, and begs a night’s lodging for himself and his camels, he accompanies the request with a substantial present, evidently conceived of as pay for the same ( Genesis 24:22 f). Such also are the modern conditions; compare Benzinger-Socin in Baedeker’s Palestine (3) , xxxv, who observe that “inmates” of private houses “are aware that Franks always pay, and therefore receive them gladly.” None the less, in New Testament times, if not earlier, and even at present, a room was set apart in each village for the use of strangers, whose expenses were borne by the entire community. Most interpreters consider that the kataluma of Luke 2:7 was a room of this sort, but this opinion cannot be regarded as quite certain. But many of the wealthier city-dwellers still strive to attain a reputation for hospitality, a zeal that naturally was found in the ancient world as well.
5. CHRIST AND HOSPITALITY:
Christ’s directions to the apostles to “take nothing for their journey” ( Mark 6:8, etc.) presupposes that they were sure of always finding hospitality. Indeed, it is assumed that they may even make their own choice of hosts ( Matthew 10:11) and may stay as long as they choose ( Luke 10:7). In this case, however, the claims of the travelers to hospitality are accentuated by the fact that they are bearers of good tidings for the people, and it is in view of this latter fact that hospitality to them becomes so great a virtue — the “cup of cold water” becomes so highly meritorious because it is given “in the name of a disciple” ( Matthew 10:42; compare 10:41, and Mark 9:41). Rejection of hospitality to one of Christ’s “least brethren” (almost certainly to be understood as disciples) is equivalent to the rejection of Christ Himself ( Matthew 25:43; compare 25:35). It is not quite clear whether in Matthew 10:14 and parallels, simple refusal of hospitality is the sin in point or refusal to hear the message or both.
6. FIRST MISSIONARIES:
In the Dispersion, the Jew who was traveling seemed always to be sure of finding entertainment from the Jews resident in whatever city he might happen to be passing through. The importance of this fact for the spread of early Christianity is incalculable. To be sure, some of the first missionaries may have been men who were able to bear their own traveling expenses or who were merchants that taught the new religion when on business tours.
In the case of soldiers or slaves their opportunity to carry the gospel into new fields came often through the movements of the army or of their masters. And it was by an “infiltration” of this sort, probably, rather than by any specific missionary effort that the church of Rome, at least, was rounded. See ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE . But the ordinary missionary, whether apostle (in any sense of the word ) or evangelist, would have been helpless if it had not been that he could count so confidently on the hospitality everywhere. From this fact comes one reason why Paul, for instance, could plan tours of such magnitude with such assurance: he knew that he would not have to face any problem of sustenance in a strange city ( Romans 16:23).
7. IN THE CHURCHES:
As the first Christian churches were founded, the exercise of hospitality took on a new aspect, especially after the breach with the Jews had begun.
Not only did the traveling Christian look naturally to his brethren for hospitality, but the individual churches looked to the traveler for fostering the sense of the unity of the church throughout the world. Hospitality became a virtue indispensable to the well-being of the church — one reason for the emphasis laid on it ( Romans 12:13; 16:1 f; Hebrews 13:2). As the organization of the churches became more perfected, the exercise of hospitality grew to be an official duty of the ministry and a reputation for hospitality was a prerequisite in some cases ( 1 Timothy 3:2; 5:10; Titus 1:8). The exercise of such hospitality must have become burdensome at times ( 1 Peter 4:9), and as false teachers began to appear in the church a new set of problems was created in discriminating among applicants for hospitality. 2 and 3 John reflect some of the difficulties. For the later history of hospitality in the church interesting matter will be found in the Didache, chapters xi, xii, Apology of Aristides, chapter xv, and Lucian’s Death of Peregrinus, chapter xvi. The church certainly preferred to err by excess of the virtue.
An evaluation of the Biblical directions regarding hospitality for modern times is extremely difficult on account of the utterly changed conditions.
Be it said at once, especially, that certain well-meant criticism of modern missionary methods, with their boards, organized finance, etc., on the basis of Christ’s directions to the Twelve, is a woeful misapplication of Biblical teaching. The hospitality that an apostle could count on in his own day is something that the modern missionary simply cannot expect and something that it would be arrant folly for him to expect (Weinel, Die urchristliche und die heutige Mission, should be read by everyone desiring to compare modern missions with the apostolic). In general, the basis for hospitality has become so altered that the special virtue has become merged in the larger field of charitable enterprise of various sorts. The modern problem nearest related to the old virtue is the question of providing for the necessities of the indigent traveler, a distinctly minor problem, although a very real one, in the general field of social problems that the modern church has to study. In so far as the New Testament exhortations are based on missionary motives there has been again a merging into general appeals for missions, perhaps specialized occasionally as appeals for traveling expense. The “hospitality” of today, by which is meant the entertainment of friends or relatives, hardly comes within the Biblical use of the term as denoting a special virtue.
LITERATURE.
For hospitality in the church, Harnack, Mission and Expansion of Christianity, II, chapter iv (10) . Burton Scott Easton HOSTAGE HOST OF HEAVEN ([ µyim”V;h” ab;x] , tsebha’ hashamayim ]): The expression is employed in the Old Testament to denote (1) the stars, frequently as objects of idolatry ( Deuteronomy 4:19; 17:3; 2 Kings 17:16; 21:3,1; 23:4 f; Jeremiah 8:2; 19:13; Zephaniah 1:5), but also as witnesses in their number, order and splendor, to the majesty and providential rule and care of Yahweh ( Isaiah 34:4; 40:26, “calleth them all by name”; 45:12; Jeremiah 33:22); and (2) the angels ( 1 Kings 22:19; 2 Chronicles 18:18; Nehemiah 9:6; compare <19A321> Psalm 103:21). (1) Star-worship seems to have been an enticement to Israel from the first ( Deuteronomy 4:19; 17:3; Amos 5:26; compare Acts 7:42,43), but attained special prominence in the days of the later kings of Judah. The name of Manasseh is particularly connected with it. This king built altars for “all the host of heaven” in the courts of the temple ( 2 Kings 21:3,5).
Josiah destroyed these altars, and cleansed the temple from the idolatry by putting down the priests and burning the vessels associated with it ( Kings 23:4,5,12). (2) In the other meaning of the expression, the angels are regarded as forming Yahweh’s “host” or army, and He himself is the leader of them — “Yahweh of hosts” ( Isaiah 31:4, etc.) — though this designation has a much wider reference. See ANGELS; ASTRONOMY; LORD OF HOSTS; compare Oehler, Theol of Old Testament, II, 270 ff (ET).
James Orr HOSTS, LORD OF HOTHAM; HOTHAN HOTHIR HOUGH HOUR H. Porter HOURS OF PRAYER The Mosaic law did not regulate the offering of prayer, but fully recognized its spontaneous character. In what manner or how far back in Jewish history the sacrificial prayer, mentioned in Luke 1:10, originated no one knows. In the days of Christ it had evidently become an institution.
But ages before that, stated hours of prayer were known and religiously observed by all devout Jews. It evidently belonged to the evolutionary process of Jewish worship, in connection with the temple-ritual. Devout Jews, living at Jerusalem, went to the temple to pray ( Luke 18:10; Acts 3:1). The pious Jews of the Diaspora opened their windows “toward Jerus” and prayed “toward” the place of God’s presence ( Kings 8:48; Daniel 6:10; Psalm 5:7). The regular hours of prayer, as we may infer from Psalm 55:17 and Daniel 6:10, were three in number. The first coincided with the morning sacrifice, at the 3rd hour of the morning, at 9 AM therefore ( Acts 2:15). The second was at the 6th hour, or at noon, and may have coincided with the thanksgiving for the chief meal of the day, a religious custom apparently universally observed ( Matthew 15:36; Acts 27:35). The 3rd hour of prayer coincided with the evening sacrifice, at the ninth hour ( Acts 3:1; 10:30). Thus every day, as belonging to God, was religiously subdivided, and regular seasons of prayer were assigned to the devout believer. Its influence on the development of the religious spirit must have been incalculable, and it undoubtedly is, at least in part, the solution of the riddle of the preservation of the Jewish faith in the cruel centuries of its bitter persecution.
Mohammedanism borrowed this feature of worship from the Jews and early Christians, and made it one of the chief pillars of its faith. Henry E. Dosker HOUSE I. CAVE DWELLINGS.
The earliest permanent habitations of the prehistoric inhabitants of Palestine were the natural caves which abound throughout the country. As the people increased and grouped themselves into communities, these abodes were supplemented by systems of artificial caves which, in some cases, developed into extensive burrowings of many adjoining compartments, having in each system several entrances. These entrances were usually cut through the roof down a few steps, or simply dropped to the floor from the rock surface. The sinking was shallow and the headroom low but sufficient for the undersized troglodites who were the occupiers.
II. STONE-BUILT AND MUD/BRICK-BUILT HOUSES.
There are many references to the use of caves as dwellings in the Old Testament. Lot dwelt with his two daughters in cave ( Genesis 19:30).
Elijah, fleeing from Jezebel, lodged in a cave ( 1 Kings 19:9). The natural successor to the cave was the stone-built hut, and just as the loose field-bowlders and the stones, quarried from the caves, served their first and most vital uses in the building of defense walls, so did they later become material for the first hut. Caves, during the rainy season, were faulty dwellings, as at the time when protection was most needed, they were being flooded through the surface openings which formed their entrances. The rudest cell built of rough stones in mud and covered a with roof of brushwood and mud was at first sufficient. More elaborate plans of several apartments, entering from what may be called a living-room, followed as a matter of course, and these, huddled together, constituted the homes of the people. Mud-brick buildings ( Job 4:19) of similar plan occur, and to protect this friable material from the weather, the walls were sometimes covered with a casing of stone slabs, as at Lachish. (See Bliss, A Mound of Many Cities.) Generally speaking, this rude type of building prevailed, although, in some of the larger buildings, square dressed and jointed stones were used. There is little or no sign of improvement until the period of the Hellenistic influence, and even then the improvement was slight, so far as the homes of the common people were concerned. 1. Details of Plan and Construction: One should observe an isometric sketch and plan showing construction of a typical small house from Gezer. The house is protected and approached from the street by an open court, on one side of which is a covered way.
The doors enter into a living-room from which the two very small inner private rooms, bedchambers, are reached. Builders varied the plan to suit requirements, but in the main, this plan may be taken as typical. When members of a family married, extra accommodation was required.
Additions were made as well as could be arranged on the cramped site, and in consequence, plans often became such a meaningless jumble that it is impossible to identify the respective limits of adjoining houses. The forecourt was absorbed and crushed out of existence, so that in many of the plans recovered the arrangement is lost. (1) Corner-stone:
Corner-stone ([ hN;Pi , pinnah ], Isaiah 28:16; Jeremiah 51:26; [li>qov ajkrogwniai~ov , lithos akrogoniaios ], 1 Peter 2:6). — In the construction of rude boulder walls, more especially on a sloping site, as can be seen today in the highlands of Scotland and Wales, a large projecting boulder was built into the lower angle-course. It tied together the return angles and was one of the few bond-stones used in the building. This most necessary support claimed chief importance and as such assumed a figurative meaning frequently used ( Isaiah 28:16; 1 Peter 2:6; see CORNER-STONE ). The importance given to the laying of a sure foundation is further emphasized by the dedication rites in common practice, evidence of which has been found on various sites in Palestine (see Excavations of Gezer). The discovery of human remains placed diagonally below the foundations of the returning angle of the house gives proof of the exercise of dedication rites both before and after the Conquest. Hiel sacrificed his firstborn to the foundations of Jericho and his youngest son to the gates thereof ( 1 Kings 16:34). But this was in a great cause compared with a similar sacrifice to a private dwelling. The latter manifests a respect scarcely borne out by the miserable nature of the houses so dedicated. At the same time, it gives proof of the frequent collapse of structures which the winter rains made inevitable and at which superstition trembled. The fear of pending disaster to the man who failed to make his sacrifice is recorded in Deuteronomy 20:5: “What man is there that hath built a new house, and hath not dedicated it? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle.” See illustration, p. 550. (2) Floor:
Floor ([ [q”r]q” , qarqa` ]). — When houses were built on the rock outcrop, the floor was roughly leveled on the rock surface, but it is more common to find floors of beaten clay similar to the native floor of the present day. Stone slabs were sparingly used, and only appear in the houses of the great. It is unlikely that wood was much used as a flooring to houses, although Solomon used it for his temple floor ( 1 Kings 6:15). (3) Gutter:
Gutter ([ rwONxi , tsinnor ]). — The “gutter” in 2 Samuel 5:8 the King James Version is obviously difficult to associate with the gutter of a house, except in so far as it may have a similar meaning to the water duct or “water course” (Revised Version (British and American)) leading to the private cistern, which formed part of the plan. Remains of open channels for this purpose have been found of rough stones set in clay, sometimes leading through a silt pit into the cistern. (4) Door:
Door ([ tl,D, , deleth ], [ jt”P, , pethach ]; [qu>ra , thura ]). — Doorways were simple, square, entering openings in the wall with a stone or wood lintel (mashqoph , Exodus 12:22,23; ‘ayil , 1 Kings 6:31) and a stone threshold raised slightly above the floor. It is easy to imagine the earliest wooden door as a simple movable boarded cover with back bars, fixed vertically by a movable bar slipped into sockets in the stone jambs.
Doorposts (caph , Ezekiel 41:16) appear to have been in use, but, until locks were introduced, it is difficult to imagine a reason for them. Posts, when introduced, were probably let into the stone at top and bottom, and, unlike our present door frame, had no head-piece. When no wood was used, the stone jambs of the opening constituted the doorposts. To the present day the post retains its function as commanded in Deuteronomy 6:9; 11:20, and in it is fitted a small case containing a parchment on which is written the exhortation to obedience. (5) Hinge:
Hinge ([ tPo , poth ], 1 Kings 7:50; [ ryxi , tsir ], Proverbs 26:14). — Specimens of sill and head sockets of stone have been discovered which suggest the use of the pivot hinge, the elongated swinging stile of the door being let into the sockets at top and bottom. A more advanced form of construction was necessary to this type of door than in the previous instance, and some little skill was required to brace it so that it would hold together. The construction of doors and windows is an interesting question, as it is in these two details that the joinery craft first claimed development. There is no indication, however, of anything of the nature of advancement, and it seems probable that there was none. (6) Lock and key:
Lock and key (“lock,” man`ul, Nehemiah 3:3 ff; Song of Solomon 5:5; “key,” maphteach, Judges 3:25; figurative. Isaiah 22:22; [klei>v , kleis ], Matthew 16:19, etc.). — In later Hellenic times a sort of primitive lock and key appeared, similar to the Arabic type. See Excavations of Gezer, I, 197, and illustration in article KEY. (7) Threshold:
Threshold ([ ts” , caph ], 1 Kings 14:17; Ezekiel 40:6 ff; [ ˆT;p]mi , miphtan ], 1 Samuel 5:4,5; Ezekiel 9:3, etc.). — Next to the cornerstone, the threshold was specially sacred, and in many instances foundation-sacrifices have been found buried under the threshold. In later times, when the Hebrews became weaned of this unholy practice, the rite remained with the substitution of a lamp enclosed between two bowls as a symbol of the life. See GEZER. (8) Hearth:
Hearth ([ ja; , ‘ach ], Jeremiah 36:22,23, the Revised Version (British and American) “brazier”; [ rwYKi , kiyyor ]). — The references in the Old Testament and the frequent discovery of hearths make it clear that so much provision for heating had been made. It is unlikely, however, that chimneys were provided. The smoke from the wood or charcoal fuel was allowed to find its way through the door and windows and the many interstices occurring in workmanship of the worst possible description. The “chimney” referred to ( Hosea 13:3) is a doubtful translation. The “fire in the brazier” ( Jeremiah 36:22 the Revised Version (British and American)) which burned before the king of Judah in his “winter house” was probably of charcoal. The modern natives, during the cold season, huddle around and warm their hands at a tiny glow in much the same way as their ancient predecessors. The use of cow and camel dung for bakingoven (tannur) fires appears to have continued from the earliest time to the present day ( Ezekiel 4:15). See also HEARTH. (9) Window:
Window ([quri>v , thuris ], Acts 20:9; 2 Corinthians 11:33). — It would appear that windows were often simple openings in the wall which were furnished with some method of closing, which, it may be conjectured, was somewhat the same as the primitive door previously mentioned. The window of the ark (challon , Genesis 8:6), the references in Genesis 26:8; Joshua 2:15, and the window from which Jezebel looked ( Kings 9:30), were presumably of the casement class. Ahaziah fell through a lattice (cebhakhah ) in the same palace, and the same word is used for the “networks” ( 1 Kings 7:41) “covering the bowls of the capitals,” and in Song of Solomon 2:9, “through the lattice” (charakkim ). It would appear, therefore, that some variety of treatment existed, and that the simple window opening with casement and the opening filled in with a lattice or grill were distinct. Windows were small, and, according to the Mishna, were kept not less than 6 ft. from floor to sill. The lattice was open, without glass filling, and in this connection there is the interesting figurative reference in Isaiah 54:12 the King James Version, “windows of agates,” translated in the Revised Version (British and American) “pinnacles of rubies.” Heaven is spoken of as having “windows” (‘arubbah) for rain ( Genesis 7:11; 8:2; 2 Kings 7:2, etc.). (10) Roof:
Roof ([ gG” , gagh ]; [ste>gh , stege ]). — These were flat. Compare “The beams of our house are cedars, and our rafters are firs” (Song of Solomon 1:17). To get over the difficulty of the larger spans, a common practice was to introduce a main beam (qurah ) carried on the walls and strengthened by one or more intermediate posts let into stone sockets laid on the floor. Smaller timbers as joists (“rafters,” rahiT ) were spaced out and covered in turn with brushwood; the final covering, being of mud mixed with chopped straw, was beaten and rolled. A tiny stone roller is found on every modern native roof, and is used to roll the mud into greater solidity every year on the advent of the first rains. Similar rollers have been found among the ancient remains throughout the country; see Excavations of Gezer, I, 190; PEFS, Warren’s letters, 46. “They let him down through the tiles ([ke>ramov , keramos ]) with his couch into the midst before Jesus” ( Luke 5:19) refers to the breaking through of a roof similar to this. The roof (“housetop,” gagh ; [dw~ma , doma ]) was an important part of every house and was subjected to many uses. It was used for worship ( Kings 23:12; Jeremiah 19:13; 32:29; Zephaniah 1:5; Acts 10:9).
Absalom spread his tent on the “top of the house” ( 2 Samuel 16:22). In the Feast of the Tabernacles temporary booths (cukkah ) were erected on the housetops. The people, as is their habit today, gathered together on the roof as a common meeting-place on high days and holidays ( Judges 16:27). The wild wranglings which can be heard in any modern native village, resulting in vile accusations and exposure of family secrets hurled from the housetops of the conflicting parties, illustrate the passage, “And what ye have spoken in the ear in the inner chambers shall be proclaimed upon the housetops” ( Luke 12:3). 2. Houses of More than One Story: (1) Upper Chambers and Stairs:
It is certain that there were upper chambers (`aliyah ; [uJperw~|on , huperoon ], Acts 9:37, etc.) to some of the houses. Ahaziah was fatally injured by falling from the window of his palace, and a somewhat similar fate befell his mother, Jezebel ( 2 Kings 1:2; 9:33). The escape of the spies from the house on the wall at Jericho ( Joshua 2:15) and that of Paul from Damascus ( 2 Corinthians 11:33) give substantial evidence of window openings at a considerable height. Elijah carried the son of the widow of Zarephath “up into the chamber.” The Last Supper was held in an upper chamber ( Mark 14:15). Some sort of stairs (ma`alah ) of stone or wood must have existed, and the lack of the remains of stone steps suggests that they were wood steps, probably in the form of ladders. (2) Palaces and Castles:
Palaces and castles (‘armon , birah , hekhal ; [aujlh> , aule ], [parembolh> , parembole ]). — These were part of every city and were more elaborate in plan, raised in all probability to some considerable height. The Canaanite castle discovered by Macalister at Gezer shows a building of enormously thick walls and small rooms. Reisner has unearthed Ahab’s palace at Samaria, revealing a plan of considerable area. Solomon’s palace is detailed in 1 Kings 7 (see TEMPLE ). In this class may also be included the megalithic fortified residences with the beehive guard towers of an earlier date, described by Dr. Mackenzie (PEF, I) . 3. International Appearance: Walls were plastered ( Leviticus 14:43,18), and small fragments of painted ( Jeremiah 22:14) plaster discovered from time to time show that some attempt at mural decoration was made, usually in the form of crudely painted line ornament. Walls were recessed here and there into various forms of cupboards (which see) at various levels. The smaller cuttings in the wall were probably for lamps, and in the larger and deeper recesses bedmats may have been kept and garments stored.
III. OTHER MEANINGS.
The word has often the sense of “household,” and this term is frequently substituted in the Revised Version (British and American) for “house” of the King James Version (e.g. Exodus 12:3; 2 Kings 7:11; 10:5; 15:5; Isaiah 36:3; 1 Corinthians 1:11; 1 Timothy 5:14); in certain cases for phrases with “house” the Revised Version (British and American) has “at home”. ( Acts 12:46; 5:42). See HOUSE OF GOD; HOUSEHOLD.
LITERATURE.
Macalister, Excavations at Gezer; PEFS; Sellin, Excavations at Taanach; Schumacher, Excavations at Tell Mutesellim; Bliss, Mound of Many Cities; articles in Dictionaries and Encyclopedias. Arch. C. Dickie HOUSE, FATHER’S See FATHER’S HOUSE.
HOUSE, GARDEN See GARDEN HOUSE.
HOUSE OF GOD In Genesis 28:17,22 = BETHEL (which see). In Judges, 1 and Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Psalm, etc. (beth ha-’elohim ), a designation of the sanctuary = “house of Yahweh” (of the tabernacle, Judges 18:31; 20:18,26 the King James Version; of the temple, 1 Chronicles 9:11; 24:5 the King James Version; 2 Chronicles 5:14; Psalm 42:4; Isaiah 2:3, etc.; of the 2nd temple, Ezra 5:8,15; Nehemiah 6:10; 13:11; compare Matthew 12:4). Spiritually, in the New Testament, the “house of God” (oikos theou ) is the church or community of believers ( 1 Timothy 3:15; Hebrews 10:21; 1 Peter 4:17; compare Corinthians 3:9,16,17; 1 Peter 2:5).
HOUSEHOLD Nor is it different in the New Testament. The curse and the blessing of the apostles are to abide on a house, according to its attitude ( Matthew 10:13). A divided house falls ( Mark 3:25). The household believes with the head thereof ( John 4:53; Acts 16:15,34). Thus the households became the nuclei for the early life of the church, e.g. the house of Prisca and Aquila at Rome ( Romans 16:5), of Stephanas ( 1 Corinthians 16:15), of Onesiphorus ( 2 Timothy 1:16), etc. No wonder that the early church made so much of the family life. And in the midst of all our modern, rampant individualism, the family is still the throbbing heart of the church as well as of the nation. Henry E. Dosker HOUSEHOLD, CAESAR’S See CAESAR’S HOUSEHOLD.
HOUSEHOLDER HOUSETOP HOW Represents various Hebrew and Greek words, interrogative, interjectional and relative. Its different uses refer to (1) the manner or way, e.g. Genesis 44:34, “How shall I go up to my father?” (‘ekh); Matthew 6:28, “how they grow” (pos); Corinthians 15:35, “How are the dead raised?”; (2) degree, extent, frequently, “how great” ( Daniel 4:3, mah; Mark 5:19, hosos, “how much”); “how many” ( Matthew 27:13, posos); “how much” ( Acts 9:13, hosos); “how much more” ( Matthew 7:11, posos; 1 Samuel 14:30, ‘aph ki); “how oft” ( Psalm 78:40, kammah; Matthew 18:21, posakis); “how long” ( Job 7:19, kammah; Matthew 17:17, heos pote), etc.; (3) the reason, wherefore, etc. ( Matthew 18:12; Luke 12:49, tis); (4) means — by what means? ( John 3:4,9, pos); (5) cause ( John 12:34; Acts 2:8; 4:21, pos); (6) condition, in what state, etc. ( Luke 23:55, hos; Acts 15:36, pos; Ephesians 6:21, tis); “how” is sometimes used to emphasize a statement or exclamation ( 2 Samuel 1:19,25,27, “How are the mighty fallen!”); “how” is also used for “that” ( Genesis 30:29, ‘eth ‘asher, frequently “how that”; Exodus 9:29, ki most frequently, in the New Testament, hoti, Matthew 12:5; 16:12,21; Acts 7:25; Romans 7:1, etc., in the King James Version).
The Revised Version (British and American) has “wherefore” for “how” ( Genesis 38:29, margin “how”); has “what” ( Judges 13:12; Kings 12:6; Job 13; 1 Corinthians 14:26), omits ( 2 Corinthians 13:5); has “how that” ( 1 Samuel 2:22); “that” ( 1 Chronicles 18:9; Luke 1:58; Galatians 4:13; James 2:22; Revelation 2:2); has “that even” for “how that” ( Hebrews 12:17);” What is this?” for “How is it that?” ( Luke 16:2); omits” How is it ?” ( Mark 2:16, different text); has “Do ye not yet,” for “How is it that?” ( Mark 8:21); “Have ye not yet” ( Mark 4:40, different text); “what” for “how much” ( Luke 19:15, different text); omits “how that” ( Luke 7:22); “then how” ( James 2:24); has “cannot” for “How can he” ( 1 John 4:20); omits “How hast thou” ( Job 26:3), “how is” ( Jeremiah 51:41); has “how” for “the fashion which” ( Genesis 6:15), for “and” ( Exodus 18:1), for “what” ( Judges 18:24; 1 Samuel 4:16; 1 Corinthians 7:16), for “why” ( Job 19:28; 31:1; Jeremiah 2:33; Galatians 2:14), for “when” ( Job 37:15), for “for” ( Psalm 42:4), for “but God” ( Proverbs 21:12), for “whereunto” ( Mark 4:30); for “by what means” ( Luke 8:36; John 9:21), for “how greatly” ( Philippians 1:8); “how that” for “because” ( Ezekiel 6:9; 1 Thessalonians 1:5), for “and how” ( Acts 20:20); “know how to” for “can” ( Matthew 16:3); “how” for “by whom” ( Amos 7:2,5). “How” in compounds gives us Howbeit (how be it). It is the translation of ‘ulam , “but,” “truly,” “yet” ( Judges 18:29); of ‘akh , “certainly,” “only” ( 1 Samuel 8:9); of ‘ephes , “moreover,” etc. ( 2 Samuel 12:14); of ken, “so,” “thus” ( 2 Chronicles 32:31); of rak , “only,” “surely” “nevertheless” ( 1 Kings 11:13); of alla , “but,” etc. ( John 7:27; Acts 7:48; 1 Corinthians 8:7, etc.); of de , “but,” etc. ( John 6:23); of mentoi ( John 7:13 the King James Version); many other instances.
For “howbeit,” the Revised Version (British and American) has frequently “but” ( 2 Kings 12:13, etc.), “and” ( 2 Chronicles 21:20; Mark 5:19), “surely” (ERV) ( Job 30:24), “now” ( John 11:13), “yet” ( Corinthians 11:21), “nay, did” ( Hebrews 3:16); omits ( Matthew 17:21, different text); it has “howbeit” for “but” ( 2 Kings 12:3; Luke 19:27; John 5:34, etc.), for “also” ( Leviticus 23:27,39), for “nevertheless” ( Numbers 13:28; 1 Kings 22:43; Mark 14:36; Luke 13:33 the English Revised Version; 18:8; 2 Timothy 2:19), for “notwithstanding” ( Joshua 22:19; Luke 10:20 the English Revised Version, “nevertheless” the American Standard Revised Version; Philippians (4:14), for “nay” ( Romans 7:7).
Howsoever (in what manner soever, although, however) is the translation of kol ‘asher , “all that which,” etc. ( Zephaniah 3:7, “howsoever I punished them,” the Revised Version (British and American) “according to all that I have appointed concerning her,” margin “howsoever I have punished her”; the English Revised Version omits “have”); of raq , “only,” “surely,” “nevertheless” ( Judges 19:20); of yehi-mah , “let be what” ( 2 Samuel 18:22,23, the Revised Version (British and American) “but come what may”); in 2 Samuel 24:3 “how” and “soever” are separated (kahem ), “how many soever they may be,” literally, “as they and as they.” W. L. Walker HOZAI Kittel, following Budde, conjectures as the original reading [ wyz;wOj , chozayw ], “his (Manasseh’s) seers”): A historiographer of Manasseh, king of Judah. Thought by many of the Jews, incorrectly, to be the prophet Isaiah, who, as we learn from 2 Chronicles 26:22, was historiographer of a preceding king, Uzziah. This “History of Hozai” has not come down to us. The prayer of Manasseh, mentioned in 33:12 f,18 f and included in this history, suggested the apocryphal book, “The Prayer of Manasses,” written, probably, in the 1st century BC. See APOCRYPHA.
J. Gray McAllister HUCKSTER HUKKOK HUKOK HUL HULDAH HUMILIATION, OF CHRIST HUMILITY For “humble” ( Psalm 9:12; 10:12) the Revised Version (British and American) has “poor”; Psalm 10:17; 34:2; 69:32, “meek”; for “humbled” ( Psalm 35:13), “afflicted” ( Isaiah 2:11; 10:33), “brought low”; for “He humbleth himself” ( Isaiah 2:9) “is brought low,” margin “humbleth himself”; Psalm 10:10, “boweth down”; tapeinophrosune is translated “humility” ( Colossians 2:18,23; 1 Peter 5:5); in several other places it is translated “lowliness” and “lowliness of mind”; tapeinos is translated “humble” ( James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5; elsewhere “lowly,” etc.; 1 Peter 3:8, tapeinophron ), the Revised Version (British and American) “humble-minded”; tapeinoo , “to humble,” occurs frequently ( Matthew 18:4; 23:12, etc.); tapeinosis is “humiliation” ( Acts 8:33); for “vile body” ( Philippians 3:21) the Revised Version (British and American) gives “body of our humiliation.” (2) (a) In the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament, humility is an essential characteristic of true piety, or of the man who is right with God. God humbles men in order to bring them to Himself ( Deuteronomy 8:2,3, etc.), and it is when men humble themselves before Him that they are accepted ( 1 Kings 21:29; 2 Chronicles 7:14, etc.); to “walk humbly with thy God” completes the Divine requirements ( Micah 6:8). In Psalm 18:35 ( 2 Samuel 22:36) the quality is ascribed to God Himself, “Thy gentleness (or condescension) hath made me great.” Of “him that hath his seat on high” it is said, (Hebrew) “humbleth (shaphel ) himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth” ( <19B306> Psalm 113:6). It is in the humble heart that “the high and lofty One, .... whose name is Holy” dwells ( Isaiah 57:15; compare 66:2). (b) The word tapeinophrosune is not found in classical Greek (Lightfoot); in the New Testament (with the exception of 1 Peter 5:5) it is Pauline. In Greek pre-Christian writers [tapeinos ] is, with a few exceptions in Plato and Platonic writers, used in a bad or inferior sense — as denoting something evil or unworthy. The prominence it gained in Christian thought indicates the new conception of man in relation to God, to himself, and to his fellows, which is due to Christianity. It by no means implies slavishness or servility; nor is it inconsistent with a right estimate of oneself, one’s gifts and calling of God, or with proper self-assertion when called for. But the habitual frame of mind of a child of God is that of one who feels not only that he owes all his natural gifts, etc., to God, but that he has been the object of undeserved redeeming love, and who regards himself as being not his own, but God’s in Christ. He cannot exalt himself, for he knows that he has nothing of himself. The humble mind is thus at the root of all other graces and virtues. Self-exaltation spoils everything. There can be no real love without humility. “Love,” said Paul, “vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up” ( 1 Corinthians 13:4). As Augustine said, humility is first, second and third in Christianity. (c) Jesus not only strongly impressed His disciples with the need of humility, but was in Himself its supreme example. He described Himself as “meek and lowly ([tapeinos ]) in heart” ( Matthew 11:29). The first of the Beatitudes was to “the poor in spirit” ( Matthew 5:3), and it was “the meek” who should “inherit the earth. Humility is the way to true greatness: he who should “humble himself as this little child” should be “the greatest in the kingdom of heaven”; “Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled; and whosoever shall humble himself shall be exalted” ( Matthew 18:4; 23:12; Luke 14:11; 18:14). To the humble mind truth is revealed ( Matthew 11:25; Luke 10:21). Jesus set a touching example of humility in His washing His disciples’ feet ( John 13:1-17). (d) Paul, therefore, makes an earnest appeal to Christians ( Philippians 2:1-11) that they should cherish and manifest the Spirit of their Lord’s humility — “in lowliness of mind each counting other better than himself,” and adduces the supreme example of the selfemptying (kenosis) of Christ: “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,” etc. The rendering of heauton ekenosen ( Philippians 2:7 the King James Version) by “he humbled himself” has given rise to the designation of the Incarnation as “the Humiliation of Christ.” (e) There is a false humility which Paul warns against, a self-sought, “voluntary humility” ( Colossians 2:18,23). This still exists in many forms, and has to be guarded against. It is not genuine humility when we humble ourselves with the feeling that we are greater than others, but only when we do not think of self at all. It is not alone the sense of sin that should create the humble spirit: Jesus had no sin. It belongs not merely to the creature, but even to a son in relation to God. There may be much self-satisfaction where sinfulness is confessed. We may be proud of our humility. It is necessary also always to beware of “the pride that apes humility.” W. L. Walker HUMPS HUMTAH HUNDRED HUNGER Metaphorically the passionate striving for moral and spiritual rectitude is called hungering and thirsting after righteousness ( Matthew 5:6); and the satisfaction of the soul which receives Christ is described as a state in which “he shall not hunger” ( John 6:35).
On two occasions it is said of our Lord that He hungered ( Matthew 21:18; Luke 4:2); 9 times the old English expression “an hungred” is used, the “an” being a prefix which indicates that the condition is being continued ( Matthew 12:1,3; 25:35,37,42,44; Mark 2:25; Luke 6:3 the King James Version). In Matthew 4:2 the King James Version, “an hungred” has been changed to “hungered” in the Revised Version (British and American). “Hard bestead and hungry” in Isaiah 8:21 means bested (that is, placed) in a condition of hardship, “sore distressed,” the American Standard Revised Version. The word occurs in Spenser, “Thus ill bestedd and fearful more of shame” (I, i, 24). The reference of the aggravation of the sensation of hunger when one who is starving awakes from a dream of food ( Isaiah 29:8) is graphically illustrated by the experience of the antarctic voyager (Shackleton, Heart of the Antarctic, II, 9). Alexander Macalister HUNTING 1. NIMROD AND HIS LIKE:
The Biblical prototype of these heroes of war and the chase is Nimrod, “a mighty hunter before Yahweh” ( Genesis 10:9), that is perhaps “a hunter who had no equal,” a figure not yet clearly identifiable with any historical or mythical character in the Assyro-Bab monuments, but possibly the Gilgamesh of the great epic, who may be the hero represented on seals and reliefs as victorious over the lion (Skinner, “Gen,” ICC, 208). We are reminded also of Samson’s exploit at Timnah ( Judges 14:5 f), but this, like David’s encounter with the lion and the bear ( 1 Samuel 17:34 f) and Benaiah’s struggle with a lion in a pit on a snowy day ( 2 Samuel 23:20), was an occasional incident and scarcely comes under the category of hunting. There is no evidence that hunting for sport was ever practiced by the kings of Judah and Israel. Not until the time of Herod the Great, who had a hunting establishment and was a great hunter of boars, stags, and wild asses (Josephus, BJ, I, xxi, 13), mastering as many as 40 beasts in one day, do we find a ruler of Palestine indulging in this pastime.
2. HUNTING IN THE OLD TESTAMENT:
Hunting, however, for the two other purposes mentioned above was probably as frequent among the Israelites, even after they had ceased to be nomads, as among their neighbors. We know indeed of only two personal examples, both in the patriarchal period and both outside the direct line of Israelite descent: Esau ( Genesis 25:27 ff) and Ishmael ( Genesis 21:20); but there are several references and many figurative allusions to the pursuit and its methods and instruments. Hunting (inclusive of following) is mentioned in the Pentateuch in the regulation about pouring out the blood and covering it with dust ( Leviticus 17:13); and there is a general reference in the proverb ( Proverbs 12:27): “The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting.” The hunting of the lion is assumed in Ezekiel’s allegory of the lioness and her two whelps ( Ezekiel 19:1-9; compare Job 10:16); of the antelope or oryx ( Deuteronomy 14:5; Isaiah 51:20); of the roe ( Proverbs 6:5); of the partridge in the mountains ( 1 Samuel 26:20), and of birds in general in many passages.
Hunting is probably implied in the statement about the provision of harts, gazelles and roebucks for Solomon’s kitchen ( 1 Kings 4:23), and to some extent in the reference to the den of lions in Babylon ( Daniel 6:7 ff).
3. METHODS OF HUNTERS:
The weapons most frequently employed by hunters seem to have been bows and arrows. Isaac ( Genesis 27:3) commands Esau to take his bow and quiver and procure him venison or game (compare also Isaiah 7:24; Job 41:28). This method is amply illustrated by the monuments. Ashurnazir- pal lII (885-860 BC) and Darius (circa 500 BC), for example, are depicted shooting at lions from the chariot. Use was also made of the sword, the spear, the dart or javelin, the sling and the club ( Job 41:26,28 f, where the application of these weapons to hunting is implied).
The larger animals were sometimes caught in a pit. The classical reference is in Ezekiel’s allegory, “He was taken in their pit” ([shachath], Ezekiel 19:4,8; compare also Isaiah 24:17 f; Jeremiah 48:43 f; Psalm 35:7, etc.). The details of this mode of capture as practiced at the present day, and probably in ancient times, are described by Tristram in his Natural History of the Bible (118 f). A more elaborate method is described by Maspero in Lectures historiques (285). To make the pit-capture more effective, nets were also employed: “They spread their net over him” ( Ezekiel 19:8; compare Psalm 35:7). When caught, the lion was sometimes placed in a large wooden cage ( Ezekiel 19:9, [cughar], the Assyrian shigaru; for the word and the thing compare SBOT, “Ezk,” English, 132; Heb, 71). The lion (or any other large animal) was led about by a ring or hook ([chach]) inserted in the jaws or nose ( 2 Kings 19:28 = Isaiah 37:29; Ezekiel 19:4,9; 29:4; 38:4). From wild animals the brutal Assyrians transferred the custom to their human captives, as the Israelites were well aware ( 2 Chronicles 33:11 the Revised Version margin, Hebrew choach ; for monumental illustrations compare SBOT, “Ezk,” English, 132 f). Nets were also used for other animals such as the oryx or antelope ( Isaiah 51:20). The Egyptian and Assyrian monuments show that dogs were employed in hunting in the ancient East, and it is not improbable that they were put to this service by the Hebrews also, but there is no clear Biblical evidence, as “greyhound” in Proverbs 30:31 is a questionable rendering. Josephus indeed (Ant., IV, viii, 9) mentions the hunting dog in a law ascribed to Moses, but the value of the allusion is uncertain.
4. FOWLERS AND THEIR SNARES:
The hunting of birds or fowling is so often referred or alluded to that it must have been very widely practiced (compare Psalm 91:3; 124:7; Proverbs 1:17; 6:5; Ecclesiastes 9:12; Amos 3:5, etc.). The only bird specifically mentioned is the partridge, said to be hunted on the mountains ( 1 Samuel 26:20). The method of hunting is supposed by Tristram (N H B, 225) to be that still prevalent — continual pursuit until the creature is struck down by sticks thrown along the ground — but the interpretation is uncertain. Birds were generally caught by snares or traps.
Two passages are peculiarly instructive on this point: Job 18:8-10, where six words are used for such contrivances, represented respectively by “net,” “toils,” “gin,” “snare,” “noose,” “trap “; and Amos 3:5, which is important enough to be cited in full: “Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where no gin is set for him? shall a snare spring up from the ground, and have taken nothing at all?” The word for “snare” in this passage (pach ) probably describes a net laid on the ground, perhaps a circular net like the Egyptian bird-trap represented in the Cambridge Bible, “Amos,” 157. The word for “gin,” usually ira in the Revised Version (British and American) “snare” (moqesh , literally, “fowling instrument”) is supposed to refer either to the bait (ibid., 158) or to the catch connected with it which causes the net to collapse (Siegfried). For a full account of Egyptian modes of following which probably illustrate ancient Palestinian methods, compare Wilkinson, Popular Account, II, 178-83. The two words (moqesh and pach ) mentioned above are used figuratively in many Old Testament passages, the former repeatedly of the deadly influence of Canaanitish idolatry on Israel, as in Exodus 23:33, “For if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee” (compare Exodus 34:12; Deuteronomy 7:16; Joshua 23:13). The use of the hawk in fowling, which is at- tested for Northern Syria by a bas-relief found in 1908 at Sakje-Geuzi, is not mentioned in the Old Testament, but there may perhaps be an allusion in Apocrypha (Baruch 3:17, “they that had their pastime with the fowls of the air”). A reference to the use of decoys has been found in Jeremiah 5:27, “a cage .... full of birds,” but that is a doubtful interpretation, and in the Greek of Sirach 11:30, “As a decoy partridge in a cage, so is the heart of a proud man,” but the Hebrew text of the latter is less explicit. See FOWLER.
5. ALLUSIONS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT:
The New Testament has a few figurative allusions to hunting. The words for “catch” in Mark 12:13 and Luke 11:54 (agreuo and thereuo) mean literally, “hunt.” The verb “ensnare” (pagideuo) occurs in the Gospels ( Matthew 22:15), and the noun “snare” (pagis) is met with in passages ( Luke 21:34; Romans 11:9; 1 Timothy 3:7; 6:9; Timothy 2:26). Another word for “snare” (brochos), which means literally, “noose” (Revised Version margin), is used in 1 Corinthians 7:35. The words for “things that cause stumbling” and “stumble” (skandalon and skandalizo) may possibly conceal in some passages an allusion to a hunter’s trap or snare. Skandalon is closely allied to skandalethron, “the stick in a trap on which the bait is placed,” and is used in Septuagint for moqesh.
The abundant use of imagery taken from hunting in the Bible is remarkable, in view of the comparative rarity of literal references.
LITERATURE.
In addition to the works cited in the course of the article, the article “Hunting” in DB2, HDB large and small, EB, Jewish Encyclopedia;and “Jagd” in German Bible Diets. of Guthe, Riehm2, and Wiener, and in RE3. William Taylor Smith HUPHAM HUPPAH HUPPIM HUR <hur> ([ rWj , chur ]): (1) A prominent official in Israel. With Aaron he held up Moses’ hands during the battle against the Amalekites ( Exodus 17:10,12) and assisted him as judicial head of the people during Moses’ stay in the mount ( Exodus 24:14). (2) Grandfather of Bezalel, the head artificer in the construction of the Tabernacle ( Exodus 31:2; 35:30; 38:22; 2 Chronicles 1:5). He is here assigned to the tribe of Judah, and in 1 Chronicles is connected with the same by descent through Caleb (2:19,20,50; 4:1,4). Josephus (Ant., III, ii, 4; vi, 1) makes him identical with (1) and the husband of Miriam. (3) One of the five kings of Midian slain along with Balaam when Israel avenged the “matter of Peor” upon this people ( Numbers 31:8; compare 31:1,2,16). In Joshua 13:21 these kings are spoken of as “chiefs (nesi’im) of Midian” and “princes (necikhim) of Sihon,” king of the Amorites. (4) According to 1 Kings 4:8 the King James Version, the father of one of Solomon’s twelve officers who provided food for the king’s household, and whose district was the hill country of Ephraim. Here the Revised Version (British and American) has “Ben-hur,” taking the Hebrew ben , “son of,” as part of the proper name; and the same is true in reference to the names of four others of these officers (compare 1 Kings 4:9,10,11,13). (5) Father of Rephaiah, who was one of the builders of the wall under Nehemiah, and ruler of half the district of Jerusalem ( Nehemiah 3:9). Benjamin Reno Downer HURAI One of David’s “mighty men” mentioned in 1 Chronicles 11:32 as of the brooks of Gaash, i.e. from Mt. Gash. In the parallel 2 Samuel 23:30, the orthography is Hiddai.
HURAM HURI HURT In Jeremiah (ut supra) the word is used figuratively for moral disease or corruption. James Orr HUSBAND We see this reflected in the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and in the Book of Job. This goes far to explain such records as we have in Genesis 31:53; 32:9, and the exceptional reverence that was paid the paternal sepulchers ( 1 Samuel 20:6). Abraham was regarded as being the father of a nation. It was customary, it would seem, to assign a “father” to every known tribe and nation (Genesis 10). So the family came to play an important and constructive part in Hebrew thought and life, forming the base upon which the social structure was built, merging gradually into the wider organism of the clan or tribe, and vitally affecting at last the political and religious life of the nation itself.
The husband from the first had supreme authority over his wife, or wives, and children. In his own domain his rule was well-nigh absolute. The wife, or wives, looked up to him as their lord ( Genesis 18:12). He was chief (compare Arabic sheik), and to dishonor him was a crime to be punished by death ( Exodus 21:15,17). He was permitted to divorce his wife with little reason, and divorces were all too common ( Deuteronomy 22:13,19,28,29; Isaiah 50:1; Jeremiah 3:8; 5:8; Malachi 2:16, etc.). The wife seems to have had no redress if wronged by him. Absolute faithfulness, though required of the wife, was apparently not expected or exacted of the husband, so long as he did not violate the rights of another husband. In general among Eastern people women were lightly esteemed, as in the Japhetic nations they came to be. Plato counted a state “disorganized” “where slaves are disobedient to their masters, and wives are on equality with their husbands.” “Is there a human being,” asks Socrates, “with whom you talk less than with your wife?” But from the first, among the Hebrews the ideal husband trained his household in the way they should go religiously, as well as instructed them in the traditions of the family, the tribe, and the nation ( Genesis 18:19; Exodus 12:26; 13:8; Deuteronomy 6:7, etc.). It was due to this, in part at least, that, in spite of the discords and evils incident to polygamy, the Hebrew household was nursery of virtue and piety to an unusual degree, and became a genuine anticipation of the ideal realized later in the Christian home ( 1 Corinthians 7:2 ff; Ephesians 5:25; 1 Peter 3:7).
Used figuratively of the relation (1) between Yahweh and His people ( Isaiah 54:5; Jeremiah 3:14; Hosea 2:19 f); (2) between Christ and His church ( Matthew 9:15; 2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:25; Revelation 19:7; 21:2). George B. Eager HUSBANDMAN; HUSBANDRY It is a common practice in Palestine and Syria today for a rich man to own lands in many different parts of the country. He sets farmers over these different tracts who, with the helpers, do the plowing, planting, reaping, etc.; or he lets out his lands to farmers who pay him an annual rental or return to him a certain percentage of the crop. Much of the plain of Esdraelon, for example, was until recently owned by Beirut proprietors and farmed in this way. The writer while riding on the plain near ancient Dan, was surprised to overtake an acquaintance from Beirut (3 days’ journey away), who had just dismounted at one of his farms to inspect it and to receive the annual account of his farmer. The pride with which the husbandman pointed out the abundant harvest will not be forgotten. All the difficulties of the owner with his husbandmen described by Jesus are often repeated today.
Figurative: Jesus said “I am the true vine, and my father is the husbandman” ( John 15:1). He sows, cultivates, prunes and expects fruits from His church. In the parable of the Householder ( Matthew 21:33 ff), the wicked husbandmen were the Jews. The church is referred to as “God’s husbandry” in 1 Corinthians 3:9 (m “tilled land”). James A. Patch HUSBAND’S BROTHER ([ µb;y; , yabham ], “brother-in-law”; [ejpigambreu>w , epigambreuo ]; Late Latin levir): He was required ( Deuteronomy 25:5-10; Matthew 22:24) “to perform the duty of a husband’s brother” (yibbemah); that is, if his brother, living with him on the paternal estate, died without male issue, he should take the widow to wife, and “raise up seed unto his brother,” the firstborn of the new marriage inheriting the deceased brother’s estate.
Refusal of the duty was possible, but entailed public ceremonial disgrace and lasting reproach. This provision for a specific case modified the general law which forbade the marriage of a sister-in-law ( Leviticus 18:16,18).
It was a patriarchal custom (Genesis 38; Judah and Tamar), and is alluded to in Ruth 1:11-13. A related custom is found in Ruth 4:1, Boaz playing; however, the part, not of levir (“brother-in-law”), but of go`el (“redeemer”). It was at least theoretically in force in our Lord’s time ( Matthew 22:23-28; the question of the Sadducees concerning the resurrection). For the origin and object of this custom see FAMILY; MARRIAGE. Philip Wendell Crannell HUSHAH HUSHAI HUSHATHITE HUSHIM HUSHSHATHITE HUSKS HUZZAB According to Gesenius, it is a verb, Hoph. of [ bb”x; , tsabhabh ], “flow,” hence, to be rendered with preceding verse, “The palace is dissolved and made to flow down.” Wordsworth made it Pual of [ bx”n; , natsabh ], “fix”: “The palace is dissolved, though established.” Septuagint renders with the next word, he hupostasis apokaluphthe , “The foundation (or treasure) is uncovered.” the King James Version, the Revised Version margin and the American Standard Revised Version text make it Hoph. of natsabh , “fix,” hence, “It is decreed.” Perhaps more probably, with the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American) text and the American Revised Version margin, it is a name, or noun with the article (or the corruption of such a word), referring either to the Assyrian queen, or personifying Nineveh. No such queen is now known, but Assyriology may throw light. The “name” interpretation accords best with the general trend of the passage, which describes the discomfiture of a royal personage.
BDB calls it “perhaps textual error.” The Massoretic vocalization may be at fault. Philip Wendell Crannell HYACINTH HYADES HYDASPES HYENA The hyena of Palestine is the striped hyena (Hyaena striata) which ranges from India to North Africa. The striped, the spotted, and the brown hyenas constitute a distinct family of the order of Carnivora, having certain peculiarities of dentition and having four toes on each foot, instead of four behind and five in front, as in most of the order. The hyena is a nocturnal animal, rarely seen though fairly abundant, powerful but cowardly, a feeder on carrion and addicted to grave-robbing. The last habit in particular has won it the abhorrence of the natives of the countries which it inhabits. In the passage cited in Ecclus, it is to be noted that it is to the hyena that the rich man is compared. The jaws and teeth of the hyena are exceedingly strong and fitted for crushing bones which have resisted the efforts of dogs and jackals. Its dens are in desolate places and are littered with fragments of skeletons. “Is my heritage unto me as a speckled bird of prey?” ( Jeremiah 12:9) becomes a more striking passage if the Septuagint is followed, “Is my heritage unto me as a hyena’s den?”
Shaqq-ud-Diba`, “Cleft of the hyenas,” is the name of a valley north of Wadi-ul-Qelt, and Wadi-Abu-Diba` (of similar meaning) is the name of an affluent of Wadi-ul-Qelt. Either of these, or possibly Wadi-ul-Qelt itself, may be the valley of Zeboim (valley of hyenas) of 1 Samuel 13:18.
The name of Zibeon the Horite ( Genesis 36:2, etc.) is more doubtfully connected with “hyena.” Alfred Ely Day HYMENAEUS 1. HIS CAREER:
It is worthy of notice that in both passages where these persons are mentioned, the name of Hymeneus occurs first, showing, perhaps, that he was the leader. In the passage in 1 Timothy Hymeneus is included in the “some” who had put away faith and a good conscience and who had made shipwreck concerning faith. The apostle adds that he had delivered Hymeneus and Alexander unto Satan, that they might learn not to blaspheme.
2. HIS DENIAL OF THE RESURRECTION:
In the passage in 2 Tim, Hymeneus and Philetus are included among persons whose profane and vain babblings will increase unto more ungodliness, and whose word “will eat as doth a gangrene.” The apostle declares that Hymeneus and Philetus rection are of the number of such people as those just described, and he adds that those two persons “concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already, and overthrow the faith of some.” Then, for the guidance of Timothy, he goes on to say the seal upon the foundation of God is, “The Lord knoweth them that are his: and, Let every one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness.” The inference intended is, that though Hymeneus and Philetus had named the name of Christ, they did not depart from iniquity. There is no doubt in regard to the identity of this Hymeneus with the person of the same name in 1 Tim. Accordingly, the facts mentioned in the two epistles must be placed together, namely, that though he had made a Christian profession by naming the name of Christ, yet he had not departed from iniquity, but by his profane teaching he proceeded unto more ungodliness, and that he had put away faith and a good conscience and had made shipwreck of faith.
The error, therefore, of Hymeneus and his two companions would amount to this: They taught that “the resurrection is past already,” that there shall be no bodily resurrection at all, but that all that resurrection means is that the soul awakes from sin. This awakening from sin had already taken place with themselves, so they held, and therefore there could be no day in the future when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and shall come forth from the grave ( John 5:28).
3. INCIPIENT GNOSTICISM:
This teaching of Hymeneus had been so far successful: it had “overthrown the faith of some” ( 2 Timothy 2:18). It is impossible to define exactly the full nature of this heresy, but what Paul says regarding it makes evident that it was a form of incipient Gnosticism. This spiritualizing of the resurrection sprang from the idea of the necessarily evil nature of all material substance. This idea immediately led to the conclusion of the essentially evil nature of the human body, and that if man is to rise to his true nature, he must rid himself of the thralldom, not of sin, but of the body. This contempt for the body led to the denial of the resurrection in its literal sense; and all that Christ had taught on the subject was explained only, in an allegorical sense, of the resurrection of the soul from sin.
4. OVERTHROWS FAITH:
Teaching of this kind is described by Paul as having effects similar to the “eating” caused by a gangrene. It is deadly; it overthrows Christian faith. If not destroyed, it would corrupt the community, for if there is no literal resurrection of the dead, then, as Paul shows in 1 Corinthians 15, Christ is not raised; and if the literal resurrection of Christ is denied, Christian believers are yet in their sins, and the Christian religion is false.
5. DELIVERED UNTO SATAN:
The way in which the apostle dealt with these teachers, Hymeneus and his companions, was not merely in the renewed assertion of the truth which they denied, but also by passing sentence upon these teachers — “whom I delivered unto Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme.” In regard to the meaning of this sentence much difficulty of interpretation exists. Some understand it to mean simple excommunication from the church. But this seems quite inadequate to exhaust the meaning of the words employed by Paul. Others take it to signify the infliction of some bodily suffering or disease. This also is quite insufficient as an explanation.
It seems that a person who was delivered unto Satan was cut off from all Christian privileges, he was “put away” from the body of Christian believers, and handed over to “the Satan,” the Evil One in his most distinct personality ( 1 Corinthians 5:2,5,13). Compare the cases of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5), and of Elymas ( Acts 13:11).
It is important that the purpose of this terrible sentence should not be overlooked. The intention of the punishment was distinctly remedial. Both in the case of Hymenacus and Alexander, and in that of the person dealt with in 1 Corinthians 5, the intention was the attaining of an ultimate good.
In 1 Corinthians it is “for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” Similarly, Hymeneus and Alexander are delivered unto Satan, not for their final perdition, but that they may be taught, through this terrible discipline — for such is the signification of the word which is translated “taught” — not to blaspheme. The purpose of this discipline, that they might learn not to blaspheme, shows the dreadful length of impiety and of railing at Christian truth to which Hymeneus had gone.
6. THE “PERVERSE THINGS” AT EPHESUS:
In the history of Hymeneus and his companions, and in their bold and anti- Christian teaching which had overthrown the faith of some, we cannot fail to see the fulfillment of what Paul had said many years previously, in his farewell address to the elders of the church in Ephesus: “I know that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” ( Acts 20:29 f). It was in the Ephesian church that Hymeneus and Alexander and Philetus had arisen.
The gangrene-like nature of their teaching has already been described. John Rutherfurd HYMN It is probable that the hymn mentioned as having been sung by Jesus and the disciples after the Passover ( Matthew 26:30; Mark 14:26) was the second part of the Hallel, i.e. Psalms 115 through 118, and the hymns of Paul and Silas were most likely also taken from the Psalter. But the practice of interpolating and altering Jewish non-canonical books, like the Psalter of Solomon and the recently discovered Odes of Solomon, shows that the early Christians adopted for devotional purposes the rich store of sacred poetry possessed by their nation. For the music to which these psalms, etc., were sung, see MUSIC; SONG. James Millar HYPOCRISY; HYPROCRITE We find hupokrisis in this sense in 2 Macc 6:25, the Revised Version (British and American) “dissimulation,” and hupokrinomai, “to pretend,” “to feign,” etc. Ecclesiasticus 1:29; 32:15; 33:2, translated “hypocrite”; Macc 5:25, “pretending peace,” the Revised Version (British and American) “playing the man of peace”; 6:21, the Revised Version (British and American) “to make as if.” Hupokrites (literally, “an actor”) is the Septuagint for chaneph ( Job 34:30; 36:13), equivalent to bad, wicked, godless, which is perhaps included in some of our Lord’s uses of the words, e.g. Matthew 23:27 f, “full of hypocrisy and iniquity” (compare 23:29 f; 24:51); but, in general, the meaning is acting a part, false, deceptive and deceived, formally and outwardly religious and good, but inwardly insincere and unrighteous; the hypocrite may come to deceive himself as well as others, but “the hypocrite’s hope shall perish” ( Job 8:13 the King James Version). On no class did our Lord pronounce such severe condemnation as on the hypocrites of His day. “Hypocrisy” (hupokrisis ) occurs in Matthew 23:28; Mark 12:15; Luke 12:1; 1 Timothy 4:2; 1 Peter 2:1 (in Galatians 2:13 it is rendered “dissimulation”); “hypocrite” ([hupokrites ]), Matthew 6:2,5,16; 7:5; 15:7; 22:18; 23:13,15,23,25 ff,29; 24:51; Mark 7:6; Luke 12:56; 13:15; in James 3:17, [anupokritos ] is “without hypocrisy,” so the Revised Version (British and American), Romans 12:9 (“unfeigned,” 2 Corinthians 6:6; 1 Timothy 1:5; 2 Timothy 1:5; 1 Peter 1:22). W. L. Walker HYRCANUS HYSSOP The common hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis) of the Natural Order Labiatae, an aromatic plant with stomatic properties, cannot be the hyssop of the Bible as it is unknown in Palestine, but allied aromatic plants of the same Natural Order have by Maimonides (Neg. xiv.6) and other Jewish writers been identified with it. Probably hyssop is identical with the Arabic zat`ar, a name applied to a group of aromatic plants of the genus marjoram and thyme. They would any of them furnish a bunch suitable for sprinkling, and they have the important recommendation that they grow everywhere, being found even in the desert. Post thinks of all varieties the Origanum maru, a special variety of marjoram which favors terrace walls and rocks, is the most probable.
The proposal (Royle, Jour. Royal Asiatic Soc., VII, 193-213) to identify the caper (Capparis spinosa) with hyssop, which has been popularized by the works of Tristram, has not much to recommend it. It is true that the caper is very commonly seen growing out of walls all over Palestine ( Kings 4:33), but in no other respect is it suitable to the requirements of the Biblical references. The supposed similarity between the Arabic ‘acaf (“caper”) and the Hebrew ‘ezobh is fanciful; the caper with its stiff, prickly stems and smooth, flat leaves would not furnish a bunch for sprinkling as serviceable as many species of zat`ar . It has been specially urged that the hyssop suits the conditions of John 19:29, it being maintained that a stem of caper would make a good object on which to raise the “sponge full of vinegar” to the Saviour’s face, the equivalent of the “reed” of Matthew 27:48; Mark 15:36. For such a purpose the flexible, prickly stems of the hyssop would be most unsuitable; indeed, it would be no easy matter to find one of sufficient length. It is necessary to suppose either that a bunch of hyssop accompanied the sponge with the vinegar upon the reed, or, as has been proposed by several writers (for references see article “Hyssop,” EB), that hussopo is a corruption of husso , “javelin,” and that the passage should read “They put a sponge full of vinegar upon a javelin.” E. W. G. Masterman I I, I AM, I AM THAT I AM See GOD, NAMES OF.
I WILL BE See GOD, NAMES OF.
IACIMUS IACUBUS IADINUS IBHAR IBIS IBLEAM IBNIJAH IBRI IBSAM Descendant of Issachar, family of Tolah ( 1 Chronicles 7:2).
IBZAN Figurative: Untrue friends are compared to streams “which are black by reason of the ice” ( Job 6:16). Alfred H. Joy ICHABOD He was thus important as a symbol, though little is recorded of him as an individual. His nephew Ahijah was one of those who tarried with Saul and the six hundred at Gibeah just before Jonathan’s brave attack upon the Philistines ( 1 Samuel 14:2 f). Henry Wallace ICONIUM 1. TOPOGRAPHICAL POSITION:
The topographical position of Iconium is clearly indicated in Acts, and the evidence of Acts has been confirmed by recent research. Was Iconium in Phrygia or in Lycaonia, and in what sense can it be said to have belonged to one ethnical division or the other? The majority of our ancient authorities (e.g. Cicero, Strabo, Pliny), writing from the point of view of Roman provincial administration, give Iconium to Lycaonia, of which geography makes it the natural capital. But Xenophon, who marched with Cyrus’ expedition through Phrygia into Lycaonia, calls Iconium the last city of Phrygia. The writer of Acts 14:6 makes the same statement when he represents Paul and Barnabas as fleeing from Iconium to the cities of Lycaonia — implying that the border of Phrygia and Lycaonia passed between Iconium and Lystra, 18 miles to the South. Other ancient authorities who knew the local conditions well speak of Iconium as Phrygian until far into the Roman imperial period. At the neighboring city of Lystra ( Acts 14:11), the natives used the “speech of Lycaonia.” Two inscriptions in the Phrygian language found at Iconium in 1910 prove that the Phrygian language was in use there for 2 centuries after Paul’s visits, and afford confirmation of the interesting topographical detail in Acts (see Jour. Hell. Stud., 1911, 189).
2. IN APOSTOLIC PERIOD:
In the apostolic period, Iconium was one of the chief cities in the southern part of the Roman province Galatia, and it probably belonged to the “Phrygian region” mentioned in Acts 16:6. The emperor Claudius conferred on it the title Claudiconium, which appears on coins of the city and on inscriptions, and was formerly taken as a proof that Claudius raised the city to the rank of a Roman colonia. It was Hadrian who raised the city to colonial rank; this is proved by its new title, Colonia Aelia Hadriana Iconiensium, and by a recently discovered inscription, which belongs to the reign of Hadrian, and which mentions the first duumvir who was appointed in the new colonia. Iconium was still a Hellenic city, but with a strong pro- Roman bias (as proved by its title “Claudian”) when Paul visited it.
3. LATER HISTORY:
About 295 AD, an enlarged province, Pisidia, was formed, with Antioch as capital, and Iconium as a “sort of secondary metropolis.” The Byzantine arrangement, familiar to us in the Notitiae Episcopatuum, under which Iconium was the capital of a province Lycaonia, dates from about 372 AD.
Iconium, the modern Konia, has always been the main trading center of the Lycaonian Plain. Trade attracted Jews to the ancient Phrygio-Hellenic city ( Acts 14:1), as it attracts Greeks and Armenians to the modern Turkish town.
4. THEKLA:
Paul’s experiences at Iconium form part of theme of the semi-historical legend of Thekla, on which see Professor Ramsay’s Church in the Roman Empire, 380 ff.
LITERATURE.
Ramsay Historical Commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, 214 ff; Cities of Paul, 317 ff. To the literature referred to in the notes to the latter book (pp. 448 ff) add Ath. Mitth., 1905, 324 ff; Revue de Philologie, 1912, 48 ff; Journal Hellenic Studies, 1911, 188 ff. W. M. Calder IDALAH IDBASH IDDO In Luke 24:11 “idle talk” corresponds to one Greek word which means “empty gossip” or “nonsensical talk.” T. Lewis IDOLATRY The neighboring gods of Phoenicia, Canaan, Moab — Baal, Melkart, Astarte, Chemosh, Moloch, etc. — were particularly attractive to Jerusalem, while the old Semitic calf-worship seriously affected the state religion of the Northern Kingdom (see GOLDEN CALF ). As early as the Assyrian and Babylonian periods (8th and 7th centuries BC), various deities from the Tigris and Euphrates had intruded themselves — the worship of Tammuz becoming a little later the most popular and seductive of all ( Ezekiel 8:14) — while the worship of the sun, moon, stars and signs of the Zodiac became so intensely fascinating that these were introduced even into the temple itself ( 2 Kings 17:16; 21:3-7; 23:4,12; Jeremiah 19:13; Ezekiel 8:16; Amos 5:26).
The special enticements to idolatry as offered by these various cults were found in their deification of natural forces and their appeal to primitive human desires, especially the sexual; also through associations produced by intermarriage and through the appeal to patriotism, when the help of some cruel deity was sought in time of war. Baal and Astarte worship, which was especially attractive, was closely associated with fornication and drunkenness ( Amos 2:7,8; compare 1 Kings 14:23 f), and also appealed greatly to magic and soothsaying (e.g. Isaiah 2:6; 3:2; 8:19).
Sacrifices to the idols were offered by fire ( Hosea 4:13); libations were poured out ( Isaiah 57:6; Jeremiah 7:18); the first-fruits of the earth and tithes were presented ( Hosea 2:8); tables of food were set before them ( Isaiah 65:11); the worshippers kissed the idols or threw them kisses ( 1 Kings 19:18; Hosea 13:2; Job 31:27); stretched out their hands in adoration ( Isaiah 44:20); knelt or prostrated themselves before them and sometimes danced about the altar, gashing themselves with knives ( 1 Kings 18:26,28; for a fuller summary see EB).
Even earlier than the Babylonian exile the Hebrew prophets taught that Yahweh was not only superior to all other gods, but reigned alone as God, other deities being nonentities ( Leviticus 19:4; Isaiah 2:8,18,20; 19:1,3; 31:7; 44:9-20). The severe satire of this period proves that the former fear of living demons supposed to inhabit the idols had disappeared.
These prophets also taught that the temple, ark and sacrifices were not essential to true spiritual worship (e.g. Jeremiah 3:16; Amos 5:21-25). These prophecies produced a strong reaction against the previously popular idol-worship, though later indications of this worship are not infrequent ( Ezekiel 14:1-8; Isaiah 42:17). The Maccabean epoch placed national heroism plainly on the side of the one God, Yahweh; and although Greek and Egyptian idols were worshipped in Gaza and Ascalon and other half-heathen communities clear down to the 5th or 6th century of the Christian era, yet in orthodox centers like Jerusalem these were despised and repudiated utterly from the 2nd century BC onward. See also GOLDEN CALF; GODS; IMAGES; TERAPHIM.
LITERATURE.
Wm. Wake, A Discourse concerning the Nature of Idolatry, 1688; W.R.
Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites; E.B. Tylor, Primitive Culture; J.G. Frazer, Golden Bough (3 vols); L.R. Farnell, Evolution of Religion, 1905; Baudissin, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte; Beathgen, Der Gott Israels u. die Gotter der Heiden, 1888. Camden M. Cobern IDUEL IDUMAEA; IDUMAEANS IEDDIAS IEZER; IEZERITES Contracted from ABIEZER ( Joshua 17:2, etc.) (which see).
IGAL In 1 Chronicles 11:38 he is “Joel ([ laewOy , yo’el ]), the brother of Nathan.” (3) Son of Shemaiah of the royal house of David, descendant of Zerubbabel ( 1 Chronicles 3:22, the King James Version “Igeal”).
IGDALIAH IGEAL IGNORANCE In the New Testament the words are agnoia , “absence of knowledge” ( Acts 3:17; 17:30; Ephesians 4:18; 1 Peter 1:14); agneoma , “error” ( Hebrews 9:7, the Revised Version margin “Greek: ignorances”); agnosia , “ignorance” ( 1 Peter 2:15), “no knowledge” ( 1 Corinthians 15:34 the Revised Version (British and American)); agnoeo , “to be without knowledge,” “ignorant” ( Romans 1:13; 10:3; 11:25, etc.), “not knowing” ( Romans 2:4, etc.), “understood not” ( Mark 9:32, etc.), “ignorantly” ( Acts 17:23, the Revised Version (British and American) “in ignorance”; 1 Timothy 1:13); idiotes, translated “ignorant” ( Acts 4:13), “unlearned” ( 1 Corinthians 14:16, the Revised Version margin “him that is without gifts,” and so in 14:23,14), “rude” ( 2 Corinthians 11:6); agrammatos , once only in connection with idiotes ( Acts 4:13, “unlearned and ignorant men”); agrammatos corresponds to modern “illiterate” (compare John 7:15; Acts 26:24); idiotes originally denoted “the private man” as distinguished from those with a knowledge of affairs, and took on the idea of contempt and scorn. In Philo it denoted the whole congregation of Israel as distinguished from the priests (De Vita Mosis, III 29). With Paul ( Corinthians 14:16,23,24) it seems to denote “plain believers as distinguished from those with special spiritual gifts.” In Acts 4:13 it may refer to the want of Jewish learning; certainly it does not mean ignorant in the modern sense.
Paul in Romans 1:18,32 attributes the pre-Christian ignorance of God to “the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hinder the truth in unrighteousness” (but the margin has, with the King James Version, “hold the truth, compare 1 Corinthians 7:30, Gr”); many, however (Alford, De Wette, Meyer and others), translation “hold back the truth.” A willful ignorance is also referred to in Ephesians 4:17 f; 2 Peter 3:5. But there is also a less blameworthy ignorance. Paul at Athens spoke of “times of ignorance” which God had “overlooked” ( Acts 17:30); Paul says of himself that he “obtained mercy, because (he) did it (against Christ) ignorantly in unbelief” ( 1 Timothy 1:13); Peter said to the Jews ( Acts 3:17) that they and their rulers rejected Christ “in ignorance” (compare 1 Corinthians 2:8); and Jesus Himself prayed for those who crucified Him: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”; ( Luke 23:34); in Hebrews 5:2 the necessary qualification of a high priest is that he “can bear gently with the ignorant and erring” — those who sin in ignorance or go astray (compare 9:7, “blood, which he offereth for himself, and for the errors of the people,” margin “(Greek: ignorances”). Growing light, however, brings with it increasing responsibility, and the “ignorance” that may be “overlooked” at one stage of the history of men and nations may be blameworthy and even criminal at another. W. L. Walker IIM IJE-ABARIM IJON ILAI ILIADUN ILL; ILL-FAVORED ILLUMINATION ILLYRICUM 1. FORCE OF “EVEN UNTO”:
In Greek, as in English, the preposition “unto” may either be exclusive or inclusive. In other words, Paul may mean that he has preached throughout Macedonia as far as the Illyrian frontier, or his words may involve a journey within Illyricum itself, extending perhaps to Dyrrhachium (mod.
Durazzo) on the Adriatic seaboard, which, though belonging politically to Macedonia, lay in “Greek, Illyria.” But since no word is said in the Acts of any extension of Paul’s travels beyond the confines of Macedonia, and since the phrase, “I have fully preached,” precludes a reference to a hurried or cursory tour in Illyricum, we should probably take the word “unto” in its exclusive sense, and understand that Paul claims to have evangelized Macedonia as far as the frontier of Illyricum.
2. MEANING OF “ILLYRICUM”:
What, then, does the word “Illyricum” denote? It is sometimes used, like the Greek terms [Illyris ] and [Illyria ], to signify a vast area lying between the Danube on the North and Macedonia and Thrace on the South, extending from the Adriatic and the Alps to the Black Sea, and inhabited by a number of warlike and semi-civilized tribes known to the Greeks under the general title of Illyrians (Appian, Illyr. 1; Suetonius, Tiberius,16); it thus comprised the provinces of Illyricum (in the narrower sense), Pannonia and Moesia, which for certain financial and military purposes formed a single administrative area, together with a strip of coast land between Dalmatia and Epirus and, at a later date, Dacia. Appian (Illyr. 6) even extends the term to include Raetia and Noricum, but in this he appears to be in error. But Illyricum has also a narrower and more precise meaning, denoting a single Roman province, which varied in extent with the advance of the Roman conquest but was finally organized in 10 AD by the emperor Augustus. At first it bore the name superior provincia Illyricum or simply Illyricum; later it came to be known as Dalmatia (Tac.
Annals, iv.5; Josephus, BJ, II, xvi; Dio Cassius, xlix.36, etc.). In accordance with Paul’s habitual usage of such terms, together with the fact that he employs a Greek form which is a transliteration of the Latin Illyricum but does not occur in any other extant Greek writer, and the fact that he is here writing to the church at Rome, we may conclude that in Romans 15:19 Illyricum bears its more restricted meaning.
3. RELATION TO ROME:
The Romans waged two Illyrian wars: in 229-228 BC and in 219 BC, but no province was formed until 167, when, after the fall of the Macedonian power, Illyria received its provincial constitution (Livy, xlv.26). At this time it extended from the Drilo (modern Drin) to Dalmatia, which was gradually subjugated by Roman arms. In 59 BC Julius Caesar received as his province Illyricum and Gaul, and later Octavian and his generals, Asinius Pollio and Statilius Taurus, waged war there with such success that in 27 BC, at the partition of the provinces between Augustus and the Senate, Illyricum was regarded as wholly pacified and was assigned to the latter. Renewed disturbances led, however, to its transference to the emperor in 11 BC. Two years later the province was extended to the Danube, but in 9 AD, at the close of the 2nd Pannonian War, it was divided into two separate provinces, Pannonia and Illyricum (Dalmatia).
The latter remained an imperial province, administered by a consular legatus Augusti pro praetore residing at Salonae (modern Spalato), and two legions were stationed there, at Delminium and at Burnum. One of these was removed by Nero, the other by Vespasian, and thenceforward the province was garrisoned only by auxiliary troops. It fell into three judicial circuits (conventus), that of Scardona comprising Liburnia, the northern portion of the province, while those of Salonae and Narona made up the district of Dalmatia in the narrower sense. The land was rugged and mountainous, and civilization progressed but slowly; the Romans, however, organized 5 Roman colonies within the province and a considerable number of municipia.
4. PAUL’S RELATION TO ILLYRICUM:
The extension of Paul’s preaching to the Illyrian frontier must be assigned to his 3rd missionary journey, i.e. to his 2nd visit to Macedonia. His movements during the 1st visit ( Acts 16:12 through 17:15) are too fully recorded to admit of our attributing it to that period, but the account in Acts 20:2 of his second tour is not only very brief, but the words, “when he had gone through those parts,” suggest an extensive tour through the province, occupying, according to Ramsay, the summer and autumn of 56 AD. See also DALMATIA.
LITERATURE.
A. M. Poinsignon, Quid praecipue apud Romanos adusque Diocletiani tempora Illyricum fuerit (Paris, 1846); Zippe, Die romische Herrschaft in Illyrien bis auf Augustus (Leipzig, 1877); H. Cons, La province romaine de Dalmatie (Paris, 1882); T. Mommsen, CIL, III, pp. 279 ff; T. Mommsen et J. Marquardt, Manuel des antiquites romaines (Fr. T), IX, 171 ff. M. N. Tod IMAGE I. MAN AS MADE IN THE DIVINE IMAGE. 1. In the Old Testament: To define man’s fundamental relation to God, the priestly writer in Genesis uses two words: “image” (tselem ) and “likeness” (demuth); once employing both together ( Genesis 1:26; compare 5:3), but elsewhere one without the other, “image” only in Genesis 1:27; 9:6, and “likeness” only in 5:1. The priestly writer alone in the Old Testament uses this expression to describe the nature of man, though the general meaning of the passage Genesis 1:26 f is echoed in Psalm 8:5-8, and the term itself reappears in Apocrypha (Sirach 17:3; The Wisdom of Solomon 2:23) and in the New Testament (see below).
The idea is important in relation to the Biblical doctrine of man, and has figured prominently in theological discussion. The following are some of the questions that arise: (1) Is there any distinction to be understood between “image” and “likeness”? Most of the Fathers, and some later theologians, attempt to distinguish between them. (a) Some have referred “image” to man’s bodily form, and “likeness” to his spiritual nature (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus). (b) Others, especially the Alexandrian Fathers, understood by the “image” the mental and moral endowments native to man, and by the “likeness” the Divine perfections which man can only gradually acquire by free development and moral conflict (Clement of Alexandria and Origen), or which is conferred on man as a gift of grace. (c) This became the basis of the later Roman Catholic distinction between the natural gifts of rationality and freedom (= the image), and the supernatural endowments of grace which God bestowed on man after He had created him (the likeness = donum superadditum). The former remained after the Fall, though in an enfeebled state; the latter was lost through sin, but restored by Christ. The early Protestants rejected this distinction, maintaining that supernatural righteousness was part of the true nature and idea of man, i.e. was included in the “image,” and not merely externally superadded. Whatever truth these distinctions may or may not contain theologically, they cannot be exegetically inferred from Genesis 1:26, where (as is now generally admitted) no real difference is intended.
We have here simply a “duplication of synonyms” (Driver) for the sake of emphasis. The two terms are elsewhere used interchangeably. (2) What, then, is to be understood by the Divine image? Various answers have been given. (a) Some of the Fathers (influenced by Philo) supposed that the “image” here = the Logos (called “the image of the invisible God” in Colossians 1:15), on the pattern of whom man was created. But to read the Logos doctrine into the creation narrative is to ignore the historic order of doctrinal development. (b) That it connotes physical resemblance to God (see (1) , (a) above; so in the main Skinner, ICC, in the place cited.). It may be admitted that there is a secondary reference to the Divine dignity of the human body; but this does not touch the essence of the matter, inasmuch as God is not represented as having physical form. (c) That it consists of dominion over the creatures (Socinian view; so also Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, etc.). This would involve an unwarranted narrowing of the idea. It is true that such “dominion” is closely associated with the image in Genesis 1:26 (compare Psalm 8:6-8). But the “image of God” must denote primarily man’s relation to his Creator, rather than his relation to the creation. Man’s lordship over Nature is not identical with the image, but is an effect of it. (d) It is best to take the term as referring to the whole dignity of man, in virtue of his fundamental affinity to God. It implies the possession by man of a free, self-conscious, rational and moral personality, like unto that of God — a nature capable of distinguishing right and wrong, of choosing the right and rejecting the wrong, and of ascending to the heights of spiritual attainment and communion with God. This involves a separation of man from the beast, and his supremacy as the culmination of the creative process. (3) Does the term imply man’s original perfection, lost through sin? The old Protestant divines maintained that the first man, before the Fall, possessed original righteousness, not only in germ but in developed form, and that this Divine image was destroyed by the Fall. Exegetically considered, this is certainly not taught by the priestly writer, who makes no mention of the Fall, assumes that the image was transmitted from father to son (compare Genesis 5:1 with 5:3), and naively speaks of post-diluvian men as created in the image of God ( Genesis 9:6; compare Corinthians 11:7; James 3:9). Theologically considered, the idea of the perfect holiness of primitive man is based on an abstract conception of God’s work in creation, which precludes the idea of development, ignores the progressive method of the Divine government and the essential place of effort and growth in human character. It is more in harmony with modern conceptions (a) to regard man as originally endowed with the power of right choice, rather than with a complete character given from the first; and (b) to think of the Divine image (though seriously defaced) as continuing even in the sinful state, as man’s inalienable capacity for goodness and his true destination. If the Divine image in man is a selfconscious, rational and ethical personality, it cannot be a merely accidental or transitory attribute, but is an essential constituent of his being. 2. In the New Testament: Two features may be distinguished in the New Testament doctrine of the Divine image in man: (1) man’s first creation in Adam, (2) his second or new creation in Christ. As to (1) , the doctrine of the Old Testament is assumed in the New Testament.
Paul makes a special application of it to the question of the relation of husband and wife, which is a relation of subordination on the part of the wife, based on the fact that man alone was created immediately after the Divine image ( 1 Corinthians 11:7). Thus Paul, for the special purpose of his argument, confines the meaning of the image to man’s lordly authority, though to infer that he regards this as exhausting its significance would be quite unwarranted. Man’s affinity to God is implied, though the term “image” is not used, in Paul’s sermon to the Athenians ( Acts 17:28 f, man the “offspring” of God). See also James 3:9 (it is wrong to curse men, for they are “made after the likeness of God”). (2) More characteristic of the New Testament is the doctrine of the new creation. (a) The redeemed man is said to be in the image of God (the Father).
He is “renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him” ( Colossians 3:10), i.e. of God the Creator, not here of Christ or the Logos (as some) (compare Ephesians 4:24, “after God”).
Though there is here an evident reference to Genesis 1:26 f, this does not imply that the new creation in Christ is identical with the original creation, but only that the two are analogous. To Paul, the spiritual man in Christ is on a higher level than the natural (“psychical”) man as found in Adam (compare especially 1 Corinthians 15:44-49), in whom the Divine image consisted (as we have seen) in potential goodness, rather than in full perfection. Redemption is infinitely more than the restoration of man’s primitive state. (b) The Christian is further said to be gradually transformed into the image of the Son of God. This progressive metamorphosis involves not only moral and spiritual likeness to Christ, but also ultimately the Christian’s future glory, including the glorified body, the “passing through a gradual assimilation of mind and character to an ultimate assimilation of His [do>xa , doxa ], the absorption of the splendor of His presence” (Sanday and Headlam, Romans, 218; see Romans 8:29; 1 Corinthians 15:49; 2 Corinthians 3:18; and compare Philippians 3:21; 1 John 3:2).
II. CHRIST THE IMAGE OF GOD.
In 3 important passages in English Versions of the Bible, the term “image” defines the relation of Christ to God the Father; twice in Paul: “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” ( Corinthians 4:4); “who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” ( Colossians 1:15); and once in He: “who being the effulgence of his glory, and the very image of his substance” ( Colossians 1:3).
These statements, taken in their contexts, register the highest reach of the Christology of the Epistles. 1. The Terms: In the two Pauline passages, the word used is [eikon ], which was generally the Septuagint rendering of [tselem] (Vulgate: imago); it is derived from [ei]kw , eiko ], [e]oika , eoika ], “to be like,” “resemble,” and means that which resembles an object and represents it, as a copy represents the original. In Hebrews 1:3 the word used is [carakth>r , charakter ], which is found here only in the New Testament, and is translated in Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) figura, the King James Version “express image,” the Revised Version (British and American) “very image,” the Revised Version, margin “impress.” It is derived from [cara>ssw , charasso ], “to engrave,” and has passed through the following meanings: (1) an engraving instrument (active sense); (2) the engraved stamp or mark on the instrument (passive sense); (3) the impress made by the instrument on wax or other object; (4) hence, generally, the exact image or expression of any person or thing as corresponding to the original, the distinguishing feature, or traits by which a person or thing is known (hence, English words “character,” “characteristic”). The word conveys practically the same meaning as [eikon ]; but Westcott distinguishes them by saying that the latter “gives a complete representation, under conditions of earth, of that which it figures,” while [charakter ] “conveys representative traits only” (Westcott on Hebrews 1:3). 2. Meaning as Applied to Christ: The idea here expressed is closely akin to that of the [Logos ] doctrine in John (1:1-18). Like the [Logos ], the Image in Paul and in He is the Son of God, and is the agent of creation as well as the medium of revelation. “What a word ([logos ]) is to the ear, namely a revelation of what is within, an image is to the eye; and thus in the expression there is only a translation, as it were, of the same fact from one sense to another” (Dorner, System of Ch. D., English translation, III, 178). As Image, Christ is the visible representation and manifestation of the invisible God, the objective expression of the Divine nature, the face of God turned as it were toward the world, the exact likeness of the Father in all things except being the Father. Thus we receive “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” ( 2 Corinthians 4:6). He is the facsimile of God. 3. To What State Does It Refer?: Is Christ described as the Image of God in His preincarnate, His incarnate, or else His exalted state? It is best to say that different passages refer to different states, but that if we take the whole trend of New Testament teaching, Christ is seen to be essentially, and in every state, the Image of God. (a) In Hebrews 1:3 the reference seems to be to the eternal, preincarnate Son, who is inherently and essentially the expression of the Divine substance. So Paul declares that He subsisted originally in the form of God ([ejn morfh~| qeou~ uJpa>rcwn , en morphe theou huparchon ], Philippians 2:6). (b) In John 1:18; 12:45; 14:9, though the term image is not used, we have the idea of the historical Jesus as a perfect revelation of the character and glory of God. (c) In the two Pauline passages ( 2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15), the reference is probably to the glorified, exalted Christ; not to His pre-existent Divine nature, nor to His temporal manifestation, but to His “whole Person, in the divine-human state of His present heavenly existence” (Meyer). These passages in their cumulative impressions convey the idea that the Image is an inalienable property of His personality, not to be limited to any stage of His existence. 4. Theological Implications: Does this involve identity of essence of Father and Son, as in the Homoousion formula of the Nicene Creed? Not necessarily, for man also bears the image of God, even in his sinful state (see I above), a fact which the Arians sought to turn to their advantage. Yet in the light of the context, we must affirm of Christ an absolutely unique kinship with God. In the Colossians passage, not only are vast cosmic and redemptive functions assigned to Him, but there is said to dwell in Him “all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (1:19; 2:9). In He not only is the Son the final revelation of God to men, the upholder of the universe, and the very image of the Divine nature, but also the effulgence ([ajpau>gasma , apaugasma ]) of God’s glory, and therefore of one nature with Him as the ray is of one essence with the sun (1:1-3). The superiority of the Son is thus not merely one of function but of nature. On the other hand, the figure of the “image” certainly guards against any Sabellian identification of Father and Son, as if they were but modes of the one Person; for we cannot identify the pattern with its copy, nor speak of anyone as an image of himself. And, finally, we must not overlook the affinity of the [Logos ] with man; both are the image of God, though the former in a unique sense. The Logos is at once the prototype of humanity within the Godhead, and the immanent Divine principle within humanity. 5. Relation to Pre-Christian Thought: Both in Paul and in He we have an echo of the Jewish doctrine of Wisdom, and of Philo’s doctrine of the Logos. In the Alexandrine Book of Wisdom, written probably under Stoic influence, Divine Wisdom is pictorially represented as “an effulgence ([apaugasma ]) from everlasting light, and an unspotted mirror of the working of God, and an image ([eikon ]) of His goodness” (7 26). Philo repeatedly calls the [Logos ] or Divine worldprinciple the image ([eikon ], [charakter ]) of God, and also describes it as an effulgence of God. But this use of current Alexandrian terminology and the superficial resemblance of ideas are no proof of conscious borrowing on the part of the apostles. There is this fundamental distinction, that Philo’s Logos is not a self-conscious personality, still less a historical individual, but an allegorical hypostatizing of an abstract idea; whereas in Paul and He, as in John, the Divine archetype is actually realized in a historical person, Jesus Christ, the Son and Revealer of God. D. Miall Edwards IMAGE OF GOD. See GOD, IMAGE OF.
IMAGERY 1. DEFINITION:
Images, as used here, are visible representations of supposedly supernatural or divine beings or powers. They may be (1) themselves objects of worship, (2) pictures, embodiments or dwelling-places (temple, ark, pillar, priests) of deities worshipped, (3) empowered instruments (amulets, charms, etc.) of object or objects worshipped, (4) pictures or symbols of deities reverenced though not worshipped.
These images may be shapeless blocks, or symmetrically carved figures, or objects of Nature, such as animals, sun, moon, stars, etc.
These visible objects may sometimes be considered, especially by the uninstructed, as deities, while by others in the small community they are thought of as instruments or symbolizations of deity. Even when they are thought of as deities, this does not exclude a sense and apprehension of a spiritual godhead, since visible corporeal beings may have invisible souls and spiritual attributes, and even the stars may be thought of as “seats of celestial spirits.” An idol is usually considered as either the deity itself or his permanent tenement; a fetish is an object which has been given a magical or divine power, either because of its having been the temporary home of the deity, or because it has been formed or handled or otherwise spiritually influenced by such deity. The idol is generally communal, the fetish private; the idol is protective, the fetish is usually not for the common good. (See Jevons, Idea of Cod in Early Religions, 1910.) Relics and symbolic figures do not become “images” in the objectionable sense until reverence changes to worship. Until comparatively recent times, the Hebrews seem to have offered no religious objection to “artistic” images, as is proved not only from the description of Solomon’s temple, but also from the discoveries of the highly decorated temple of Yahweh at Syene dating from the 6th century BC, and from ruins of synagogues dating from the pre-Christian and early Christian periods (PEF, January, 1908; The Expositor, December, 1907; Expository Times, January and February, 1908). The Second Commandment was not an attack upon artists and sculptors but upon idolaters. Decoration by means of graven figures was not in ancient times condemned, though, as Josephus shows, by the time of the Seleucids all plastic art was regarded with suspicion. The brazen serpent was probably destroyed in Hezekiah’s time because it had ceased to be an ancient artistic relic and had become an object of worship (see below). So the destruction of the ark and altar and temple, which for so long a time had been the means of holy worship, became at last a prophetic hope ( Isaiah 6:7; Jeremiah 3:6; Amos 5:25; Hosea 6:6; compare Zec 14:20). While the temple is not naturally thought of as an “image,” it was as truly so as any Bethel. An idol was the temple in miniature — a dwelling-place of the god. When an image became the object of worship or a means by which a false god was worshipped, it became antagonistic to the First and Second Commandments respectively.
2. ORIGIN:
The learned author of the article on “Image Worship” in the Encyclopedia Biblica (11th edition) disposes too easily of this question when he suggests that image-worship is “a continuance by adults of their childish games with dolls. .... Idolatrous cults repose largely on make-believe.”
Compare the similar statement made from a very different standpoint by the author of Great Is Diana of the Ephesians, or the Original of Idolatry (1695): “All Superstitions are to the People but like several sports to children, which varying in their several seasons yield them pretty entertainment,” etc.
No universal institution or custom is founded wholly on superstition. If it does not answer to some real human need, and “if its foundations are not laid broad and deep in the nature of things, it must perish” (J.G. Fraser, Psyche’s Task, 1909, 103; compare Salomon Reinach, Revue des etudes grecques, 1906, 324). Image-worship is too widespread and too natural to humanity, as is proved in modern centuries as well as in the cruder earlier times, to have its basis and source in any mere external and accidental circumstances. All modern research tends to corroborate our belief that this is psychological rather than ecclesiastical in its origin. It is not imposed externally; it comes from within, and naturally accompanies the organic unfoldment of the human animal in his struggle toward self-expression.
This is now generally acknowledged to be true of religious feeling and instinct (see especially Rudolf Eueken, Christianity and the New Idealism, 1909, chapter i; I. King, The Development of Religion, 1910); it ought to be counted equally true of religious expression. Neither can the origin of image-worship or even of magical rites be fully explained, as Fraser thinks, by the ordinary laws of association. These associations only become significant because the devoted worshipper already has a body of beliefs and generalizations which make him attentive to the associations which seem to him religiously or magically important. (Jastrow, Aspects of Rel.
Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria; compare James H. Leuba, Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion, 1909; Study of Religions, 1911). So animism must be regarded as a philosophy rather than as an original religious faith, since it is based on an “explanation of phenomena rather than an attitude of mind toward the cause of these phenomena” (EB, 11th edition, article “Animism,” and compare Hoffding, Philosophy of Religion, 1906, 138). In whatever ways the various image-worshipping cults arose historically — whether from a primitive demonology or from the apotheosis of natural objects, or from symbolism, or a false connection of cause with effect — in any case it had some human need behind it and human nature beneath it. The presence of the image testifies to faith in the supernatural being represented by the image and to a desire to keep the object of worship near. Prayer is easier when the worshipper can see his god or some sacred thing the god has honored (compare M. L’abbe E. Van Drival, De l’origine et des sources de l’idolatrie, Paris, 1860).
3. HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT:
The first man was not born with a totem-pole in his fist, nor did the earliest historic men possess images. They lacked temples and altars and ephods and idols, as they lacked the fire-stick and potter’s wheel. Religion, which showed itself so strong in the next stage of human life, must have had very firm beginnings in the prehistoric period; but what were its external expressions we do not yet certainly know, except in the methods of burying and caring for the dead. It seems probable that primitive historic man saw in everything that moved an active soul, and that he saw in every extraordinary thing in earth or heaven the expression of a supernatural power. Yet reflective thinking began earlier than Tylor and all the older scientific anthropologists supposed. Those earlier investigators were without extended chronological data, and although ingenuity was exercised in systematizing the beliefs and customs of modern savages, it was necessarily impossible always to determine in this way which were the most primitive cults. Excavations in Babylonia, Egypt and elsewhere have enabled us for the first time to trace with some chronological certainty the religious expressions of earliest historic man. That primitive man was so stupid that he could not tell the difference between men and things, and that therefore totemism or fetishism or a low form of animism was necessarily the first expression of religious thought is a theory which can no longer be held very buoyantly in the face of the new and striking knowledge, material and religious, which is now seen to be incorporated in some of the most ancient myths of mankind. (See e.g. Winekler, Die jungsten Kampfe wider den Panbabylonismus, 1907; Jeremias, The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East, 2 volumes, 1911.) The pan- Bab theory, which makes so much use of these texts, is not certain, but the facts upon which theory depends are clear. It is a suggestive fact that among the earliest known deities or symbols of deities mentioned in the most ancient inscriptions are to be found the sun, moon, stars and other great forces of Nature. Out of these conceptions and the mystery of life — which seems to have affected early mankind even more powerfully than ourselves — sprang the earliest known religious language, the myth, which antedated by eons our oldest written texts, since some of these myths appear fully formed in the oldest texts. Rough figures of these solar and stellar deities are found from very early times in Babylonia. So in the earliest Egyptian texts the sun appears as divine and the moon as “the bull among the stars,” and rough figures of the gods were carved in human or animal form, or these are represented pictorially by diadems or horns or ostrich feathers, as far back as the IInd Dynasty, while even earlier than this stakes and pillars and heaps of stones are sacred. (See further, HDB, 5th vol, 176 ff; Erman, A Handbook of Egyptian Rel.; Steindorf, Rel. of the Ancient Egyptians, 1905.) These rude and unshaped objects do not testify, as was once supposed, to a lower form of religious development than when sculptured images are found. The shapeless fetish, which not long ago was generally accepted as the earliest form of image, really represents a more advanced stage and higher form of religious expression than the worship of a beautifully or horribly carved image. It has been generally conceded since the days of Robertson Smith that it takes at least as much imagination and reflection to see an expression of deity in imageless matter as in the carved forms. Rude objects untouched by human hand, even in the most highly developed worships, have been most prized.
The earliest images were probably natural objects which, because of their peculiar shapes or functions, were thought of either as divine or as made sacred by the touch of deity. Multiplied copies of these objects would naturally be made when worshippers increased or migrations occurred.
While images may have been used in the most early cults, yet the highest development of image-worship has occurred among the most civilized peoples. Both deities and idols are less numerous in the early than in the later days of a religion. This is true in India, Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt, as all experts now agree. Idols are not found among uncivilized peoples, such as the Bushmen, Fuegians, Eskimos, etc. (See e.g. Allen Menzies, History of Rel., 1895.) Images of the gods presuppose a power of discrimination that could only be the result of reflection. The earliest idols known among the Semites were rude stone pillars or unshapen blocks.
These, as the fetish, were probably adored, not for themselves, but for the spirit that was supposed to be in them or to have touched them. Deities and idols are multiplied easily, not only by philological, geographical and social causes, but through intertribal and international associations. One thing absolutely proved by recent excavations has been the extent to which the representations of local deities have been modified by the symbolic art of surrounding nations. Babylonia, for example, was influenced by the Syro- Hittite religious art at least as much as by that of Egypt (William Hayes Ward, Cylinders and Other Ancient Oriental Seals, 1909; Clay, Amurru, 1910). Even in adjacent localities the same deity varied greatly in its pictorial representation. See PALESTINE EXPLORATION , and Revue biblique, XIV, 315-48. With the possible exception of one reign in Egypt, during which Ikhnaton refused to allow any deities to be worshipped except the sun discovered and himself, idolatry outside of the Hebrew kingdom was never made a crime against the state until the days of Constantine. Theodosius (392 AD) not only placed sacrifices and divination among the capital crimes, but placed a penalty upon anyone who entered a heathen temple.
4. BIBLE REFERENCES AND PALESTINIAN CUSTOMS:
The dignity of the image in common thought in Bible times may be seen from the fact that man is said to have been made in God’s image ([ µl,x, , tselem ]; compare 1 Samuel 6:5; Numbers 33:52), and Christ is said to be “the image of the invisible God” ([eijkw>n , eikon ]; compare Colossians 1:15 with Romans 1:23). The heathen thought of the sun and stars and idols as being images of the gods, but the Hebrews, though Yahweh’s temple was imageless, thought of normal humanity as in some true sense possessing a sacred resemblance to Deity, though early Christians taught that only Christ was the Father s “image” in unique and absolute perfection. See IMAGE . The ordinary words for “image” by a slight change came to mean vermin, carrion, false gods, no gods, carcasses, dung, etc. Heathen gods were undoubtedly accounted real beings by the early Hebrews, and the images of these enemies of Yahweh were doubtless looked upon as possessing an evil associated (?) power. In the earlier Old Testament era, images, idols, and false gods are synonymous; but as early as the 8th century BC Hebrew prophets begin to reach the lofty conception that heathen gods are non-existent, or at least practically so, when compared with the ever-living Yahweh, while the idols are “worthless things” or “non-entities” ( Isaiah 2:8,18,20; 10:10,11; 19:1; 31:7; compare Jeremiah 14:14; Ezekiel 30:13; note the satiric term ‘elilim, as contrasted with the powerful ‘elohim ). The many ordinary terms used by the Hebrews for an idol or image mean “copy,” simulacrum, “likeness,” “representation.” These are often, however, so compounded as technically to express a particular form, as “graven” or “carved” image (e.g. Exodus 20:4; 2 Chronicles 33:7) of wood or stone, i.e. one cut into shape by a tool; “molten image” (e.g. Exodus 32:4; Leviticus 19:4), i.e. one cast out of melted metal (standing image) ( Leviticus 26:1 the King James Version, and see below), etc. However, a few of the Old Testament terms and modes of worship are unusual, or have a more difficult technical meaning, or have been given a new interest by new discoveries, and such deserve a more extended notice.
5. MOST IMPORTANT TECHNICAL TERMS: (1) Matstsebhah (“pillar”): [ hb;Xem” , matstsebhah ]: These were upright stone pillars, often mentioned in the Old Testament, sometimes as abodes (Bethels) or symbols of deity — especially as used by the heathen — but also as votive offerings, memorial and grave stones ( Genesis 28:18; 31:45; 35:14,20; Joshua 24:26; 1 Samuel 7:12). The reverence for these stones is closely connected with that found among all Semitic peoples for obelisks ( Genesis 33:20; 35:7), cairns ( Genesis 28:18; Joshua 4:6), and circles ( Joshua 4:3,5,20). Rough stone pillars from time immemorial were used in Semitic worship (Kittel, Hist of the Hebrews, II, 84). They were thought of primitively as dwelling-places of deity, and the stones and the spots where they stood were therefore accounted sacred. From very early times the mystery of life pressed itself upon human attention, and these stones were viewed as phallic images. These images were at first rough and undifferentiated, but became later well defined as male organs.
At Tell Zakariyah the end of one is sculptured to represent a human face.
Some sort of phallicism underlies all early Semitic religion, the form of which is determined by the attention paid to the date palm, to the breeding of flocks, to astrology, and to social life. This phallicism did not always represent coarse thought, but sometimes a very profound spiritual conception; compare GOLDEN CALF , and note Wiedemann’s statement, in HDB, V, 180 that in Egypt the gods Hu, “Taste,” and Sa, “Perception,” were created from the blood of the sun-god’s phallus. These images of fertility and reproduction were naturally connected in Canaan with the worship of the Baals or “lords” of each locality, upon whose favor as possessor of the land fertility depended. They were also naturally associated with the cult of Astarte, the female counterpart of all the Baals (see ASTARTE ). In the Old Testament the Baalim and Asherim are almost invariably classed together, although the latter were wooden posts dedicated to a particular goddess, while “Baal” was merely a title which could be given to any male Semitic deity, and sometimes even to his female associate. The matstsebhoth were set up in a “high place” (which see), attracting reverence because of its “elevation, isolation and mystery” (Vincent). Originally these pillars were not considered as idols, but were naturally erected to Yahweh ( Genesis 28:18; 31:45; 35:14; Exodus 24:4), and even Isaiah (19:19) and Hosea (3:4) approve them, though pillars dedicated to idols must of course be destroyed ( Exodus 23:24; 34:13; Jeremiah 43:13; Ezekiel 26:11). Only in late times or by very far-sighted law-givers were the matstsebhoth erected to Yahweh condemned; but after the centralization of the Yahweh-worship in Jerusalem, these pillars were condemned, even when set up in the name of Yahweh, and the older places of worship with their indiscriminate rituals and necessary heathen affiliations were also wisely discarded ( Leviticus 26:1; Deuteronomy 16:22; see also GOLDEN CALF ). (2) ‘Asherah (“grove”): [ hr;vea\ , ‘asherah ]: Perhaps a goddess (see ASHERAH ), but as ordinarily used in the Old Testament, a sacred tree or stump of a tree planted in the earth ( Deuteronomy 16:21) or a pole made of wood and set up near the altar ( Judges 6:26; 1 Kings 16:33; Isaiah 17:8).
It has been supposed that these were primarily symbols of a goddess Asherah or Ashtoreth (Kuenen, Baethgen), and they were certainly in primitive thought connected with the tree cult and the sacred groves so universally honored by the Semites (see especially W.R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 169, 437; Stade, Geschichte, 160 ff; Fraser, Golden Bough, II, 56-117; John O’Neill, Night of the Gods, II, 57); but the tree of life is closely connected in texts and pictures with the human organ of generation, and there can be no doubt that there is a phallic meaning connected with this sacred stake or pole, as with the matstsebhoth described above. See references in HDB under “Asherah,” and compare Transactions of the Victoria Institute, XXXIX, 234; Winckler, Keilinschriftliches Textbuch zum AT. As these wooden posts from earliest times represented the ideas of fertility and were connected with the mystery of life, they naturally became the signs and symbols in many lands of the local gods and goddesses of fertility.
Astarte was by far the most popular deity of ancient Palestine. See ASHTORETH . The figures of Astarte from the 12th to the 9th century BC, as found at Gezer, have large hips, disclosing an exaggerated idea of fecundity. In close connection with the Astarte sanctuaries in Palestine were found numberless bodies of little children, none over a week old, undoubtedly representing the sacrifice of the firstborn by these Canaanites (R.A.S. Macalister, Excavation of Gezer, 3 vols). These Asherim were erected at the most sacred Hebrew sanctuaries, at Samaria ( 2 Kings 13:6), Bethel ( 2 Kings 23:15), and even in the Temple of Jerusalem ( 2 Kings 23:6). The crowning act of King Josiah’s reformation was to break down these images ( 2 Kings 23:14). As the astrological symbol of Baal was the sun, Astarte is often thought of as the moon-goddess, but her symbol was really Venus. She was, however, sometimes called “Queen of Heaven” ( Jeremiah 7:18; 44:17,19; but see Zeitschrift fur alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, VI, 123-30). (3) Chamman (“sun-image”): [ ˆM;j” , chamman ], the King James Version “images,” “idols”; the Revised Version (British and American) “sun-images” ( Leviticus 26:30; Chronicles 14:5; 34:4,7; Isaiah 17:8; 27:9; Ezekiel 6:4,6): This worship may originally have come from Babylonia, but the reverence of the sun under the name Baal-hamman had long been common in Palestine before Joshua and the Israelites entered the country. These sun-images were probably obelisks or pillars connected with the worship of some local Baal. The chariot and horses of the sun, mentioned ( 2 Kings 23:11) as having an honored place at the western entrance of the Jerusalem Temple, represented not a local but a foreign cult. In Babylonian temples, sacrifices were made to the sun-chariot, which seems to have had a special significance in time of war (Pinches, HDB, IV, 629; see also CHARIOTS OF THE SUN).
6. OBSCURE BIBLE REFERENCES: (1) Golden Calf and Jeroboam’s Calves:
See GOLDEN CALF. (2) Brazen Serpent: Brazen Serpent ( Numbers 21:4-9; 2 Kings 4). — The serpent, because of its strange, lightning-like power of poisonous attack, its power to shed its skin, and to paralyze its prey, has been the most universally revered of all creatures. Living serpents were kept in Babylonian temples. So the cobra was the guardian of royalty in Egypt, symbolizing the kingly power of life and death. In mythology, the serpent was not always considered a bad demon, enemy of the Creator, but often appears as the emblem of wisdom, especially in connection with health-giving and life-giving gods, such as Ea, savior of mankind from the flood, and special “god of the physicians” in Babylon; Thoth, the god of wisdom in Egypt, who healed the eye of Horus and brought Osiris to life again; Apollo, the embodiment of physical perfection, and his son, Aeseulapius, most famous giver of physical and moral health and curer of disease among the Greeks. Among the Hebrews also a seal (1500-1000 BC) shows a worshipper before a horned serpent raised on a pole (Wm. Hayes Ward). In Phoenician mythology the serpent is also connected with wisdom and long life, and it is found on the oldest Hebrew seals and on late Jewish talismans (Revue biblique internationale, July, 1908, 382-94); at Gezer, in Palestine, a small “brazen serpent” (a cobra) was found in the “cave of oracles,” and in early Christian art Jesus the Lord of Life is often represented standing triumphantly upon the serpent or holding it in His fist. In the Hebrew narrative found in Numbers 21, the serpent evidently appears as a wellknown symbol representing the Divine ability to cure disease, being erected before the eyes of the Israelites to encourage faith and stop the plague. It was not a totem, for the totem belongs to a single family and is never set up for the veneration of other families (Ramsay, Cities of Paul,39).
Hezekiah destroyed it because it was receiving idolatrous worship ( 2 Kings 18:4), though there is no hint that such worship was ever a part of the official temple cult (Benzinger); for if this had been done, the earlier prophets could hardly have remained silent. The above explanation seems preferable to the one formerly offered that the serpent was merely a copy of the disease-bearer, as the images offered by the Philistines were copies of the ulcers that plagued them ( 1 Samuel 6:4). See further NEHUSHTAN. (3) Teraphim: Teraphim ([ µypir;T] , teraphim ]). — These are usually considered household gods, but this does not necessarily include the idea that they were images of ancestors, though this is not improbable (Nowack, Hebrew Archaeology, II, 23; HDB, II, 190); that they were images of Yahweh is a baseless supposition (see Kautzsch, HDB, V, 643). Sometimes they appear in the house ( 1 Samuel 19:13,16); sometimes in sanctuaries ( Judges 17:5; 18:14); sometimes as carried by travelers and armies ( Genesis 31:30; Ezekiel 21:21). They are never directly spoken of as objects of worship (yet compare Genesis 31:30), but are mentioned in connection with wizardry ( 2 Kings 23:24), and as a means of divination ( Ezekiel 21:21; Zec 10:2), perhaps not necessarily inconsistent with Yahwehworship ( Hosea 3:4). They were sometimes small and could be easily hidden ( Genesis 31:34); at other times larger and in some way resembling a human being ( 1 Samuel 19:13). Jewish commentators thought the [teraphim] were in early times mummified human heads which were represented in later centuries by rude images (Moore, Crit. and Exeg.
Commentary on Jgs, 1895, 382; see especially Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier u. der Ssabismus, II, 19, 150). Customs of divination by means of such heads were not unknown. In Israel the [teraphim] were sometimes certainly used in consulting Yahweh ( Judges 17:5; 18:14 ff), though their use was later officially condemned ( 2 Kings 23:24). The [teraphim] in the home doubtless correspond in use to the EPHOD (which see) in the sanctuary, and therefore these are frequently connected. Certain small rude images have lately been uncovered in Palestine by Bliss, at Tell el-Hesy, and by Sellin, at Tell Ta`annuk, which are supposed to be teraphim. (4) Image of Jealousy: Image of jealousy ([ lm,s, , cemel ]). — It is not certain what this statue was which was set up by the door of the inner gate of the Jerusalem temple ( Ezekiel 8:3). It was no doubt some idol, perhaps the image of the Asherah ( 2 Kings 21:7; 23:6), which certainly. had previously been set up in the temple and may have been there again in this day of apostasy. “Jealousy” is not the name of the idol, but it was probably called “image of jealousy” because in a peculiar manner this particular image seems to have been drawing the people from the worship of Yahweh and therefore provoking Him to jealousy. (5) Chambers of Imagery: Chambers of imagery ([ wOtyKic]m” yred]j” , chadhre maskitho ]). — Does Ezekiel mean that in his heart every man in his chambers of imagery was an idol-worshipper, or does this refer to actual wall decorations in the Jerusalem Temple ( Ezekiel 8:11,12)? Most expositors take it literally.
W.R. Smith has been followed almost if not quite universally in his supposition that a debased form of vermin-worship is described in the “creeping things and abominable beasts” ( Ezekiel 8:10). But while this low and ignorant worship was an ancient cult, it had been banished for centuries from respectable heathen worship, and it seems inconceivable that these Israelites who were of the highest class could have fallen to these depths, or if they had done so that the Tammuz and sun-worship should have been considered so much worse ( Ezekiel 8:13,14). To the writer it seems more probable that the references are to Egyptian or Greek mysteries which would be described by a Hebrew just as Ezekiel describes this secret chamber. It is now known that the Greek mysteries experienced a revival at exactly this era, and it was probably this revival which was making itself felt in Jerusalem, for Greek influence was at this time greatly affecting Palestine (see Duruy, Hist of Greece, II, 126-80, 374; Cobern, Commentary on Ezekiel and Daniel, 80-83, 280-82; and separate articles, CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY; IMAGERY ). (6) Ephod: Ephod ([ dwpae , ‘ephodh ]). — There is no doubt that this was the name of a vestment or ritual loin cloth of linen worn by common priests and temple servants and on special occasions by the king ( 1 Samuel 2:18; 22:18; 2 Samuel 6:14). The ephod of the high priest was an ornamental waist coat on the front of which was fastened the holy breastplate containing the pocket in which were the Urim and Thummim ( Exodus 28:6,30; 29:5; 39:2-5; Leviticus 8:28).
There are several passages, however, which have convinced many scholars that another ephod is mentioned which must be an image of Yahweh (see EPHOD ). The chief passages relied upon are Judges 8:26,27, where Gideon made an ephod with 1,700 shekels of gold and “set” this in Ophrah, where it became an object of worship. So in Judges 17:4; 18:14-20, Micah provides an ephod as well as an image and pillar for his sanctuary; in 1 Samuel 21:9 the sword of Goliath is preserved behind the ephod; while in various places the will of Yahweh is ascertained, not by putting on the ephod, but by “bringing it near” and “bearing” and “carrying” it ( Samuel 23:6,9; 30:7, etc.). On the basis of these passages Kautzsch (HDB, V, 641) concludes most inconsistently that the ephod appears “exclusively as an image of Yahweh.” Driver, after an examination of each text, concludes that just in one passage ( Judges 8:27) the term “ephod” is certainly used of the gold casing of an image, and that therefore it may also have this meaning in other passages (HDB, I, 725). It does not seem quite certain, however, that a ceremonial vestment heavily ornamented with gold might not have been “set” or “erected” in a holy place where later it might become an object of worship. If this had been an idolatrous image, would Hosea have deplored its loss ( Hosea 3:4), and would its use not have been forbidden in some Bible passage?
Kautzsch’s view that the ephod meant primarily the garment used to clothe Divine image, which afterward gave its name to the image itself, is a guess unsustained by the Scriptures quoted or, I think, by any archaeological parallel. We conclude that there is no certain proof that this was an image of Yahweh, though was used ritualistically in receiving the oracles of Yahweh (compare Kuenen, Religion of Israel, I, 100; Kittel, Hist of the Hebrews, II, 42; Konig, Die Hauptprobleme, 59-63). See also IDOLATRY; CALF, GOLDEN.
LITERATURE. See especially W.R. Smith, Religion of the Semites; E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture; J. G. Frazer, Golden Bough (3 vols); Baethgen, Beitrage zur sem. Rel.-Gesch.; Kittel, Hist of the Hebrews; Nowack, Hebrew Arch., II; Baudissin, Studien z. sem. Rel.-Gesch. For recent excavations, L.P.H. Vincent, Canaan d’apres l’expl. recente, 1907; R.A.S. Macalister, The Excavation of Gezer (1912); William Hayes Ward, Cylinders and Other Ancient Oriental Seals, 1909. Camden M. Cobern IMAGINATION The Revised Version (British and American) gives “stubbornness” in each instance where sheriruth is in the King James Version translated “imagination”; in Proverbs 6:18 the American Standard Revised Version has “purposes”; the Revised Version (British and American) has “devices” ( Lamentations 3:60,61) and “reasonings” ( Romans 1:21), “imagination” for “conceit” ( Proverbs 18:11), and (English Revised Version) for “device” ( Lamentations 3:62). “Imagination” is frequent in Apocrypha, e.g. Ecclesiasticus 22:18 ([dianoema ]); 37:3 ([enthumema ], “wicked imagination”); 40:2 ([dialogismos ], the Revised Version (British and American) “expectation”). W. L. Walker IMAGINE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION, THE 1. DEFINITION:
The historic designation of the Roman Catholic dogma promulgated by Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1854, in the Papal Bull entitled “Ineffabilis Deus.” The term is often incorrectly applied, even by those whose intelligence should make such an error impossible, to the VIRGIN BIRTH OF CHRIST (which see).
2. STATEMENT OF THE DOGMA:
The central affirmation of this proclamation, which was read in Peter’s in the presence of over two hundred bishops, is expressed in the following words: It is proclaimed “by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ and the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and in our own authority, that the doctrine which holds the blessed Virgin Mary to have been, from the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, in view of the merits of Christ Jesus the Saviour of Mankind, preserved free from all stain of original sin, was revealed by Cod, and is, therefore, to be firmly and constantly believed by all the faithful” (see Schaff, A History of the Creeds of Christendom, II, 211, 212).
3. OBJECTIONS TO THE DOGMA: (1) Drawn from Specifically Protestant Principles.
Objections to the dogma are mainly two: (a) the claim to authority upon which the proclamation rests. There is every reason to believe that one of the major motives to the entire transaction was the wish, on the part of Pius and his advisers, to make an unmistakable assertion of absolute doctrinal authority by the Roman pontiff. To Protestants of all shades of opinion there would be unbearable offense in the wording of the decree, even if assent could be given to the doctrine itself. The whole vital issue of the Reformation is involved in the use by an ecclesiastic of the words “in our own authority” in addition to the words “by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ and the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.” (b) The tendency to Mariolatry in the entire movement. As we shall see, the ascription of Divine honors to Mary is avoided in the public statement of the dogma and in the defense of it by Roman Catholic writers, but one has but to survey the course of discussion leading up to the publication of 1854, and subsequent to it, to discover a growing tendency to lift Mary out of the realm of human beings and to endow her with Divine attributes and functions. An extended discussion of Mariolatry lies beyond the range of this article (see MARY ); it is only necessary to point out the obvious connections (see Roman Catholic Dictionary and church histories, sub loc.). (2) Drawn from Roman Catholic Principles.
It is far from the truth to suppose that there are no objections to this modern dogma save those which are specifically Protestant. From the viewpoint of the devout Roman Catholic, and for the sake of the prestige of the papacy, this particular dogma seems to have been unfortunately chosen. (a) It Has No Basis in Scripture.
The only attempt made to provide a Scriptural argument is by using a vague and unsatisfactory parallel between Mary and Eve before the Fall, to be found in the writings of certain church Fathers who did not hold the papal dogma but unconsciously provided a slender and most insecure basis for it (see inacanus). Most Roman Catholic writers are intelligent enough to admit that theory of inspired tradition alone can be appealed to in support of the idea. The ordinary and only tenable argument is that the ecclesiastical promulgation and acceptance of the doctrine prove its apostolic origin (see Catholic Dictionary, sub loc.). (b) It Weakens the Authority of the Church.
It would almost seem as if the doctrines of ecclesiastical authority and particularly of papal infallibility had, in this unfortunate proclamation, reached a reductio ad obsurdum for the comfort of their foes. Notice with care the historical standing of this dogma: (i) The acknowledged absence of all positive evidence for apostolic origin and primitive authority (see Catholic Dictionary ut supra). (ii) The abundant positive evidence that the principal Fathers of the early church did not believe in the sinlessness of Mary (see list of names and references given by H.C. Sheldon, History of the Christian Church, sub loc.). (iii) The uncertain and equivocal testimony per contra drawn from the early Fathers. They are practically confined to the following: Ephrem Syrus (Carmina, Hymn 27, strophe 8), where he says “Truly it is Thou and Thy mother only who are fair altogether. For in Thee there is no stain and in Thy mother no spot”; Augustine (De Natura et Gratia, cap. 26), “Two were made simple, innocent, perfectly like each other, Mary and Eve,” etc. To these may be added the words of Irenaeus: “The knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience” (Catholic Dictionary, 422). In regard to these three passages it may reasonably be contended that even if these statements necessarily implied the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which they certainly do not, they would still have to be estimated against the many weighty statements which may be brought forward on the other side. (iv) The prolonged controversy over the doctrine. From the earliest time when the idea of Mary’s miraculous freedom from sin appears, up to the Old Catholic agreement of 1874, devout and faithful Roman Catholics have protested against the addition of this unscriptural dogma to the faith of the church. Bonaventura (Locus Theol., VII, 1) says: “All the saints who have made mention of this matter, with one mouth have asserted that the blessed Virgin was conceived in original sin.”
With the statement of the Old Catholic agreement we may safely sum up the ecclesiastical situation, even from the viewpoint of those who hold to the doctrinal validity of tradition. Art. X reads: “We reject the New Roman doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as being contrary to the tradition of the first 13 centuries, according to which Christ alone is conceived without sin.” (3) Drawn from General Considerations of Christian Doctrine.
The most serious objections to this offensive and gratuitous dogma are not at all specifically Protestant but, rather, broadly Christian. It is necessary at this point to assure ourselves that we understand (as many Protestants evidently do not) just what is meant by the doctrine as a doctrine.
According to the accepted Roman Catholic explanation, Mary, at the supposed stage of her conception when the soul was actually infused into the body waiting for it, received the special grace of God whereby she was delivered from all stain of original sin. The point which Protestants need especially to note is that, according to Roman Catholic ideas, this gracious act of God was performed on the basis of the foreseen merits of Christ’s sacrifice. This tones down the offensiveness of the doctrine in that it does not per se imply the equality of Mary with Christ, but rather the contrary, in so far as the grace bestowed upon her was gained by anticipation from Him. Roman Catholic writers naturally emphasize this fact in recommending the doctrine to Protestant minds. None the less the offense remains. The “Immaculate Conception” necessarily implies the “immaculate life,” and on the same basis of supernatural grace, else would the special miracle have occurred in vain and the fall of Adam been repeated in Mary. Hence, a full account of the doctrine would be that Mary was completely and miraculously redeemed at her conception and completely and miraculously kept from sin throughout her whole life.
Apart from all questions as to the rightful place of Mary in Christian thought, this idea involves utter doctrinal confusion. It means that Mary never became a true human being and never lived a true human life.
Redemption by a miraculous process begun at conception and carried on throughout the life is an utter impossibility, for the Holy Spirit does not work impersonally, and miraculous holiness which is holiness of a purely Divine character, without a free, cooperating human factor, is no human holiness at all. This dogma reads Mary out of the human family, reduces her to an image and makes her life a phantasm. Moreover, the parallels which are adduced in its support are not true parallels at all.
Our Lord’s sinlessness was not mechanically guaranteed by His miraculous conception (see VIRGIN BIRTH ) but was His own achievement through the Holy Spirit granted to Him and personally appropriated. The Hallowing of Children at the Font (see Catholic Dictionary, 470a), the sanctifying of those “separated from the womb” ( Galatians 1:15) to God’s service, does not imply the miraculous guarantee of artificial sinlessness, but such a gracious influence as enables the subject freely cooperating to obtain victory over sin as a controlling principle. Actual sin and need of forgiveness is not pretermitted by such special grace.
We can only say, in conclusion, that every reason, which usually operates in a Christian mind to insure rejection of a false teaching, ought to preclude the possibility of accepting this peculiar dogma which is Scripturally baseless, historically unjustified and doctrinally unsound.
LITERATURE.
The best simple and reasonably fair-minded discussion of this dogma from the Roman Catholic viewpoint is to be found in the Catholic Dictionary already mentioned, where wide references will be found. For the Protestant view consult any authoritative church history, especially that of Professor H.C. Sheldon where copious references to Patristic literature will be found. Louis Matthews Sweet IMMANUEL 1. ISAIAH REBUKES AHAZ:
In 735 BC Ahaz was king of Judah. The kingdom of Israel was already tributary to Assyria ( 2 Kings 15:19,20). Pekah, king of Israel, a bold and ambitious usurper, and Rezin, king of Syria, formed an alliance, the dual object of which was, first, to organize a resistance against Assyria, and second, to force Ahaz to cooperate in their designs against the common tyrant. In the event of Ahaz’ refusal, they planned to depose him, and to set the son of Tabeel, a choice of their own, upon the throne of David. To this end they waged war against Judah, advancing as far as Jerusalem itself, but without complete success ( Isaiah 7:1). Ahaz, a weak king, and now panic-stricken, determined to invoke the aid of Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria ( 2 Kings 16:7). This he actually did at a later stage in the war ( 2 Kings 6:9; 15:29). Such a course would involve the loss of national independence and the payment of a heavy tribute. At this period of crisis, Isaiah, gathering his disciples around him ( Isaiah 8:16), is told to deliver a message to the king. Ahaz, though making a show of resistance against the coalition, is in reality neither depending upon the help of Yahweh nor upon the courage of his people. Isaiah, in an effort to calm his fears and prevent the fatal alliance with Assyria, offers him a sign. This method is specially characteristic of this prophet. Fearing to commit himself to the policy of Divine dependence, but with a pretense at religious scruples, “Neither will I tempt Yahweh,” the king refuses ( Isaiah 7:12). The prophet then chides him bitterly for his lack of faith, which, he says, not only wearies men, but God also ( Isaiah 7:13).
2. THE SIGN OF “IMMANUEL”:
He then proceeds to give him a sign from God Himself, the sign of “Immanuel” ( Isaiah 7:14). The interpretation of this sign is not clear, even apart from its New Testament application to Christ. The Hebrew word translated “virgin” in English Versions of the Bible means, more correctly, “bride,” in the Old English sense of one who is about to become a wife, or is still a young wife. Psalm 68:25 English Versions of the Bible gives “damsels.”
Isaiah predicts that a young bride shall conceive and bear a son. The miracle of virgin-conception, therefore, is not implied. The use of the definite article before “virgin” ([ha -`almah ]) does not of itself indicate that the prophet had any particular young woman in his mind, as the Hebrew idiom often uses the definite article indefinitely. The fact that two other children of the prophet, like Hosea’s, bore prophetic and mysterious names, invites the conjecture that the bride referred to was his own wife.
The hypothesis of some critics that a woman of the harem of Ahaz became the mother of Hezekiah, and that he was the Immanuel of the prophet’s thought is not feasible. Hezekiah was at least 9 years of age when the prophecy was given ( 2 Kings 16:2).
Immanuel, in the prophetic economy, evidently stands on the same level with Shear-jashub ( Isaiah 7:3) as the embodiment of a great idea, to which Isaiah again appeals in Isaiah 8:8 (see ISAIAH , VII).
3. WAS IT A PROMISE OR A THREAT?:
The question as to whether the sign given to Ahaz was favorable or not presents many difficulties. Was it a promise of good or a threat of judgment? It is evident that the prophet had first intended an omen of deliverance and blessing ( Isaiah 7:4,7). Did the king’s lack of faith alter the nature of the sign? Isaiah 7:9, “If ye will not believe,” etc., implies that it might have done so. The omission of 7:16, and especially the words “whose two kings thou abhorrest,” greatly simplifies this theory, as “the land,” singular, would more naturally refer to Judah than to Syria and Ephraim collectively. The omen would then become an easily interpreted threat, referring to the overthrow of Judah rather than that of her enemies.
Immanuel should eat curdled milk and honey (7:15), devastation reducing the land from an agricultural to a pastoral one. The obscure nature of the passage as it stands suggests strongly that it has suffered from interpolation. The contrary theory that the sign was a promise and not a prediction of disaster, has much to commend it, though it necessitates greater freedom with the text. The name “Immanuel” implies the faith of the young mother of the child in the early deliverance of her country, and a rebuke to the lack of that quality in Ahaz. It is certain also that Isaiah looked for the destruction of Syria and Ephraim, and that, subsequent to the Assyrian invasion, salvation should come to Judah through the remnant that had been faithful (11:11). The fact that the prophet later gave the name of Maher-shalal-hash-baz to his new-born son, a name of good omen to his country, further strengthens this position. The omission of 7:15,17 would make the sign a prophecy of the failure of the coalition. It is plain, whichever theory be accepted, that something must be eliminated from the passage to insure a consistent reading.
4. ITS RELATION TO THE MESSIANIC HOPE:
The question now presents itself as to what was the relation of Immanuel to the Messianic prophecies. Should the emphasis be laid upon “a virgin,” the son, or the name itself? For traditional interpretation the sign lay in the virgin birth, but the uncertainty of implied virginity in the Hebrew noun makes this interpretation improbable. The identification of the young mother as Zion personified, and of the “son” as the future generation, is suggested by Whitehouse and other scholars. But there is no evidence that the term `almah was used at that time for personification. The third alternative makes Immanuel a Messiah in the wider use of the term, as anticipated by Isaiah and his contemporaries. There can be little doubt but that there existed in Judah the Messianic hope of a national saviour ( Samuel 7:12). Isaiah is expecting the arrival of one whose character and work shall entitle him to the great names of 9:6. In him should dwell all the fullness of God. He was to be “of the stem of Jesse,” the bringer of the Golden Age. The house of David is now beset by enemies, and its reigning representative is weak in faith. The prophet therefore announces the immediate coming of the deliverer. If he had intended the virgin-conception of Christ in the distant future, the sign of “Immanuel” would have possessed no immediate significance, nor would it have been an omen to Ahaz. With regard to the Messianic idea, Micah 5:3 (“until the time that she who travaileth hath brought forth”) is of importance as indicating the prevalent thought of the time. Recent evidence shows that even in Babylonia and Egypt there existed expectations of a divinely born and wonderful saviour. To this popular tradition the prophet probably appealed, his hearers being easily able to appreciate the force of oracular language that is to us obscure. There is much to confirm the view, therefore, that the prophecy is Messianic.
5. THE VIRGIN BIRTH:
The use of the word as it relates to the virgin birth of Christ and the incarnation cannot be dealt with here (see PERSON OF CHRIST). These facts, however, may be noted. The Septuagint (which has parthenos, “virgin”) and the Alexandrian Jews interpreted the passage as referring to the virgin birth and the Messianic ministry. This interpretation does not seem to have been sufficiently prominent to explain the rise of the idea of miraculous virgin conception and the large place it has occupied in Christological thought. See VIRGIN BIRTH.
Arthur Walwyn Evans IMMER IMMORTAL; IMMORTALITY 1. PRELIMINARY — NEED OF DEFINITION AND DISTINCTION:
In hardly any subject is it more necessary to be careful in the definition of terms and clear distinction of ideas, especially where the Biblical doctrine is concerned, than in this of “immortality.” By “immortality” is frequently meant simply the survival of the soul, or spiritual part of man, after bodily death. It is the assertion of the fact that death does not end all. The soul survives. This is commonly what is meant when we speak of “a future life,” “a future state,” “a hereafter.” Not, however, to dwell on the fact that many peoples have no clear conception of an immaterial “soul” in the modern sense (the Egyptians, e.g. distinguished several parts, the Ka, the Ba, etc., which survived death; often the surviving self is simply a ghostly resemblance of the earthly self, nourished with food, offerings, etc.), there is the more serious consideration that the state into which the surviving part is supposed to enter at death is anything but a state which can be described as “life,” or worthy to be dignified with the name “immortality.”
It is state peculiar to “death” (see DEATH ); in most cases, shadowy, inert, feeble, dependent, joyless; a state to be dreaded and shrunk from, not one to be hoped for. If, on the other hand, as in the hope of immortality among the nobler heathen, it is conceived of, as for some, a state of happiness — the clog of the body being shaken off — this yields the idea, which has passed into so much of our modern thinking, of an “immortality of the soul,” of an imperishableness of the spiritual part, sometimes supposed to extend backward as well as forward; an inherent indestructibility.
2. BIBLICAL CONCEPTION:
It will be seen as we advance, that the Biblical view is different from all of these. The soul, indeed, survives the body; but this disembodied state is never viewed as one of complete “life.” For the Bible “immortality” is not merely the survival of the soul, the passing into “Sheol” or “Hades.” This is not, in itself considered, “life” or happiness. The “immortality” the Bible contemplates is an immortality of the whole person — body and soul together. It implies, therefore, deliverance from the state of death. It is not a condition simply of future existence, however prolonged, but a state of blessedness, due to redemption and the possession of the “eternal life” in the soul; it includes resurrection and perfected life in both soul and body.
The subject must now be considered more particularly in its different aspects. I. The Natural Belief. 1. Its Origin:
In some sort the belief in the survival of the spirit or self at death is a practically universal phenomenon. To what is it traceable? A favorite hypothesis with anthropologists is that it has its origin in dreams or visions suggesting the continued existence of the dead (compare H. Spencer, Eccles. Instit., chapters i, xiv). Before, however, a dream can suggest the survival of the soul, there must be the idea of the soul, and of this there seems a simpler explanation in the consciousness which even the savage possesses of something within him that thinks, feels and wills, in distinction from his bodily organs. At death this thinking, feeling something disappears, while the body remains. What more natural than to suppose that it persists in some other state apart from the body? (Compare Max Muller, Anthrop. Religion, 281.) Dreams, etc., may help this conviction, but need not create it. It is only as we assume such a deeper root for the belief that we can account for its universality and persistence. Even this, however, while an instinctive presumption, can hardly be called a proof of survival after death, and it does not yield an idea of “immortality” in any worthy sense. It is at most, as already said, a ghostly reduplication of the earthly life that is thus far reached. 2. Philosophical Arguments: (1) The Soul Spiritual.
The more philosophical arguments that are adduced for the soul’s immortality. (or survival) are not all of equal weight. The argument based on the metaphysical essence of the soul (see Plato’s Phaedo) is not in these days felt to be satisfying. On the other hand, it can be maintained against the materialist on irrefragable grounds that the soul, or thinking spirit, in man is immaterial in Nature, and, where this is granted, there is, or can be, no proof that death, or physical dissolution, destroys this conscious spirit.
The presumption is powerfully the other way. Cicero of old argued that death need not even be the suspension of its powers (compare Tusc. Disp. i.20); Butler reasons the matter from analogy (Anal., I, chapter i); modern scientists like J.S. Mill (Three Essays, 201) and Professor Huxley (Life and Letters, I, 217 ff; compare William James, Ingersoll Lecture) concede that immortality cannot be disproved. The denial one hears from various sides more frequently than formerly is therefore not warranted. Still possibility is not certainty, and there is nothing as yet to show that even if the soul survives death, its new state of existence has in it anything desirable.
Soul not Inherently Indestructible It was hinted that one use which the Greeks made of the metaphysical argument was to prove the indestructibility of the soul — its immortality in the sense of having no beginning and no end. This is not the Christian doctrine. The soul has no such inherent indestructibility. It is dependent on God, as everything else is, for its continued existence. Did He withdraw His sustaining power, it would cease to exist. That it does continue to exist is not doubted, but this must be argued on other grounds. (2) Capacities of Human Nature.
A much more apprehensible argument for immortality — more strictly, of a future state of existence — is drawn from the rich capacities and possibilities of human nature, for which the earthly life affords so brief and inadequate a sphere of exercise. It is the characteristic of spirit that it has in it an element of infinitude, and aspires to the infinite. The best the world can give can never satisfy it. It has in it the possibility of endless progress, and ever higher satisfaction. It was this consideration which led Kant, with all his theoretical skepticism, to give immortality a place among his “doctrinal beliefs” (see his Critique of Pure Reason, Bohn’s translation, 590-91), and moved J.S. Mill to speak of it as the only hope which gave adequate scope to the human faculties and feelings, “the loftier aspirations being no longer kept down by a sense of the insignificance of human life by the disastrous feeling of `not worth while’ “ (Three Essays, 249). Yet when these arguments are calmly weighed, they amount to no more than a proof that man is constituted for immortality; they do not afford a guarantee that this destiny might not be forfeited, or if they yield such a guarantee for the good, they hardly do so for the wicked. The belief, in their case, must depend on other considerations. (3) The Moral Argument.
It is, as Kant also felt, when we enter the moral sphere that immortality, or the continued existence of the soul, becomes a practical certainty to the earnest mind. With moral personality is bound up the idea of moral law and moral responsibility; this, in turn, necessitates the thought of the world as a moral system, and of God as moral Ruler. The world, as we know it, is certainly a scene of moral administration — of probation, of discipline, of reward and penalty — but as obviously a scene of incomplete moral administration. The tangled condition of things in this life can satisfy no one’s sense of justice. Goodness is left to suffer; wickedness outwardly triumphs. The evil-doer’s own conscience proclaims him answerable, and points to future judgment. There is need for a final rectification of what is wrong here. But while a future state seems thus called for, this does not of itself secure eternal existence for the wicked, nor would such existence be “immortality” in the positive sense. In view of the mystery of sin, the lamp of reason grows dim. For further light we must look to revelation. II. The Biblical Doctrine — the Old Testament. 1. Starting-Point — Man’s Relation to God:
The Biblical view of immortality starts from man’s relation to God. Man, as made in the image of God ( Genesis 1:27), is fitted for the knowledge of God, for fellowship with Him. This implies that man is more than an animal; that he has a life which transcends time. In it already lies the pledge of immortality if man is obedient.
Man’s Nature.
With this corresponds the account given of man’s creation and original state. Man is a being composed of body and soul; both are integral parts of his personality. He was created for life, not for mortality. The warning, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” ( Genesis 2:17), implies that if man continued obedient he would live. But this is not an immortality of the soul only. It is a life in the body (compare Genesis 3:22). Its type is such cases as Enoch and Elijah ( Genesis 5:24; Kings 2:11,12; compare Psalm 49:15; 73:24). 2. Sin and Death:
The frustration of this original destiny of man comes through sin. Sin entails death (see DEATH ). Death in its physical aspect is a separation of soul and body — a breaking up of the unity of man’s personality. In one sense, therefore, it is the destruction of the immortality which was man’s original destiny. It does not, however, imply the extinction of the soul.
That survives, but not in a state that can be called “life.” It passes into Sheol — the sad, gloomy abode of the dead, in which there is no joy, activity, knowledge of the affairs of earth, or (in the view of Nature) remembrance of God, or praise of His goodness (on this subject, and the Hebrew belief in the future state generally, see ESCHATOLOGY OF THE Old Testament; DEATH; SHEOL ). This is not future “life” — not “immortality.”
It is the part of grace and redemption to restore immortality in the true sense. Had the world been left to develop in sin, no further hope could have come to it. The picture of Sheol would have become ever darker as the idea of retribution grew stronger; it could never become brighter. 3. Grace and Redemption — the True Immortality:
But God’s grace intervened: “Deliver him from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom” ( Job 33:24). God’s mercy breaks in on the hopelessness of man’s lot. He gives to man His promises; makes His covenant with man; admits man to His fellowship ( Genesis 3:15; 4:4; 5:24; 6:8,9; 12:1-3; 15, etc.). In this fellowship the soul was raised again to its true life even on earth. But this held in it also a hope for the future. The promises placed in the forefront as tokens of God’s favors were indeed predominatingly temporal — promises for this life — but within these (the kernel within the shell) was the supreme possession of God Himself ( Psalm 4:6 f; 16:2). This held in it the hope of redemption and the principle of every good.
Deliverance from Sheol.
Here we reach the core of the Old Testament hope of immortality. Such fellowship as the believer had with God could not be lost, even in Sheol; beyond that was deliverance from Sheol. In their highest moments it was this hope that sustained patriarchs, psalmists, prophets, in their outlook on the future. Doubt might cloud their minds; there might be seasons of darkness and even despair; but it was impossible in moments of strong faith to believe that God would ever really desert them. The eternal God was their dwelling-place; them were everlasting arms ( Deuteronomy 33:27; compare Psalm 90:1). Their hope of immortality, therefore, was, in principle, the hope not merely of an “immortality of the soul,” but likewise of resurrection — of complete deliverance from Sheol. Thus it is clearly in the impassioned outburst of Job (19:25-27; compare 14:13 ff), and in many of the psalms. The hope always clothes itself in the form of complete deliverance from Sheol. Thus in Psalm 17:14 f, the wicked have their portion “in this life,” but, “As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness” (the American Standard Revised Version “with beholding thy form”); and in Psalm 49:14 f, the wicked are “appointed as a flock for Sheol,” but “God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol; for he will receive me” (same expression as that regarding Enoch, Genesis 5:24; compare Psalm 73:24). It will be remembered that when Jesus expounded the declaration, “I am the God of Abraham,” etc., it was as a pledge of resurrection ( Matthew 22:31 f). The idea comes to final expression in the declaration in Dan of a resurrection of the just and unjust (12:2). For further development and illustration see ESCHATOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT . 4. Later Jewish Thought:
Later Jewish thought carried out these ideas of the Old Testament to further issues. A blessed future for the righteous was now accepted, and was definitely connected with the idea of resurrection. The wicked remained in Sheol, now conceived of as a place of retribution. The Gentiles, too, shared this doom. See ESCHATOLOGY.
III. The Christian Hope. 1. Immortality through Christ:
In full consonance with what is revealed in part in the Old Testament is the hope of immortality discovered in the New Testament. The ring of this joyful hope is heard in every part of the apostolic writings. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” says Peter, “who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” ( Peter 1:3 f). Paul declares, “Our Saviour Christ Jesus, who .... brought life and immortality (incorruption) to light through the gospel” ( 2 Timothy 1:10). In Romans 2:7 he had spoken of those who “by patience in welldoing seek for glory and honor and incorruption, eternal life.” This immortality, it is seen, is part of the eternal life bestowed through Jesus on believers. It is guaranteed by Christ’s own resurrection and life in glory.
The nature of this hope of the gospel may now be further analyzed. (1) Survival of the Soul.
The soul survives the body. A future state for both righteous and wicked is plainly declared by Jesus Himself. “He that believeth on me,” He said to Martha, “though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die” ( John 11:25 f). To His disciples He said, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” ( John 14:3).
Compare His words to the penitent thief: “To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise” ( Luke 23:43). The survival of both righteous and wicked is implied in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus ( Luke 16:19-31).
So in many other places (e.g. Matthew 5:29 f; 10:28; 11:21-24; 12:41, etc.). The same is the teaching of the epistles. The doctrine of a future judgment depends on and presupposes this truth ( Romans 2:5-11; Corinthians 5:10, etc.). (2) Union with Christ in Unseen World.
Death for the redeemed, though a result of sin, does not destroy the soul’s relation to God and to Christ. The eternal life implanted in the soul in time blossoms in its fruition into the life and blessedness of eternity ( Romans 8:10 f; Philippians 1:21; Colossians 1:27). The soul is, indeed, in an incomplete state till the resurrection. It “waits for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” ( Romans 8:23). But its state, though incomplete, is still a happy one. Hades has lost its gloom, and is for it a “Paradise” ( Luke 23:43). It dwells in a chamber of the Father’s house ( John 14:2 f; 17:24). It is to be, even in the unclothed state (“absent from the body”), “at home with the Lord” ( 2 Corinthians 5:8). It is for it an object of desire to be “with Christ” in that state after death ( Philippians 1:21). The pictures in Rev, though highly figurative, indicate a condition of great blessedness ( Revelation 7:9-17). (3) The Resurrection.
The fullness of the blessedness of immortality implies the resurrection. The resurrection is a cardinal article of Christ’s teaching ( Matthew 22:29-32; John 5:25-29; 11:23-26). He Himself is the Lord of life, and lifegiver in the resurrection ( John 5:21,25,26; 11:25, “I am the resurrection, and the life”). The resurrection of believers is secured by His own resurrection. Jesus died; He rose again (see RESURRECTION ). His resurrection carries with it the certainty of the resurrection of all His people. This is the great theme of 1 Corinthians 15. As Christ lives, they shall live also ( John 14:19). The believers who are alive at His Parousia shall be changed ( 1 Corinthians 15:51; 1 Thessalonians 4:17); those who are dead shall be raised first of all ( 1 Thessalonians 4:16). The resurrection body shall be a body like to Christ’s own ( Philippians 3:21) — incorruptible, glorious, powerful, spiritual, immortal ( 1 Corinthians 15:42 ff,53 f). This is not to be confused with sameness of material particles ( 1 Corinthians 15:37 f), yet there is the connection of a vital bond between the old body and the new. This is the hope of the believer, without which his redemption would not be complete. (4) The Wicked Also Raised.
The wicked also are raised, not, however, to glory, but for judgment ( John 5:29; Acts 24:15; Revelation 20:12-15). The same truth is implied in all passages on the last judgment. Excluded from the blessedness of the righteous, their state is described by both Jesus and His apostles as one of uttermost tribulation and anguish (e.g. Matthew 25:46; Mark 9:43-50; Romans 2:8 f). This is not “immortality” or “life,” though the continued existence of the soul is implied in it (see PUNISHMENT, EVERLASTING; HELL; RETRIBUTION ). (5) Eternal Life.
The condition of the blessed in their state of immortality is one of unspeakable felicity of both soul and body forever. There are, indeed, degrees of glory — this is carefully and consistently taught ( Matthew 25:14 ff; Luke 19:12 ff; 1 Corinthians 3:10-15; 15:41; Philippians 3:10-14; 2 Timothy 4:7 f; 1 John 2:28) — but the condition as a whole is one of perfect satisfaction, holiness and blessedness (compare Matthew 13:43; 25:34; Romans 2:7,10; Romans 22:3 ff, etc.). The blessedness of this eternal state includes such elements as the following: (1) restoration to God’s image and likeness to Christ ( 1 Corinthians 15:49; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10; 1 John 3:2); (2) perfect holiness in the possession of God’s Spirit ( 2 Corinthians 7:1; Philippians 1:6; Revelation 21:27; 22:4,11); (3) the unveiled vision of God’s glory ( Revelation 22:4; compare Psalm 17:15); (4) freedom from all sorrow, pain and death ( Revelation 21:3 f); (5) power of unwearied service ( Revelation 22:3). 2. Contrasts:
The contrast between the Biblical view of immortality and that of heathenism and of the schools will now be obvious. It is not mere future existence; not a bare, abstract immortality of the soul; it is the result of redemption and of renewal by God’s spirit; it embraces the whole personality, soul and body; it is not shared by the unholy; it includes the perfection of rational, moral and spiritual blessedness, in an environment suitable to such glorified existence. As such it is the supreme prize after which every believer is called to strive ( Philippians 3:13 f).
LITERATURE.
Ingersoll Lectures on Immortality, by Professor William James, Professor Osler, etc.; Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality; Orr, Christian View of God and the World, Lects iv, v, with App. to v; works specified in the article on ESCHATOLOGY . James Orr IMMUTABILITY; IMMUTABLE IMNA IMNAH IMNITES IMPART IMPEDIMENT IMPLEAD IMPORTABLE IMPORTUNITY IMPOSSIBLE IMPURITY IMPUTATION I. MEANING AND USE OF THE TERM.
The word “imputation,” according to the Scriptural usage, denotes an attributing of something to a person, or a charging of one with anything, or a setting of something to one’s account. This takes place sometimes in a judicial manner, so that the thing imputed becomes a ground of reward or punishment. The word is used in the King James Version a number of times to translate the Hebrew verb [chashabh] and the Greek verb [logizomai ].
These words, both of which occur frequently in Scripture, and which in a number of instances mean simply “to think,” express the above idea. That this is the case is clear also from the other English words used in the King James Version to translate these Hebrew and Greek words, as, for example, “to count,” “to reckon,” “to esteem.” Thus [chashabh] is translated in the King James Version by the verb “to impute” ( Leviticus 7:18; 17:4; 2 Samuel 19:19); by the verb “to reckon” ( 2 Samuel 4:2); by “to count” as something ( Leviticus 25:31 English versions).
The verb in 1 Samuel 22:15 is [sim]. Similarly, [logizomai ] is translated by the verb “to impute” ( Romans 4:6,8,11,22,23,24; 2 Corinthians 5:19; James 2:23); by the verb “to count” ( Romans 2:26; 4:3,5); “to account” ( Galatians 3:6); and by the verb “to reckon” ( Romans 4:4,9,10). In the Revised Version (British and American) the word used to render [logizomai ] is the verb “to reckon.”
These synonyms of the verb “to impute” bring out the idea of reckoning or charging to one’s account. It makes no difference, so far as the meaning of imputation is concerned, who it is that imputes, whether man ( 1 Samuel 22:15) or God ( Psalm 32:2); it makes no difference what is imputed, whether a good deed for reward ( <19A630> Psalm 106:30 f) or a bad deed for punishment ( Leviticus 17:4); and it makes no difference whether that which is imputed is something which is personally one’s own prior to the imputation, as in the case above cited, where his own good deed was imputed to Phinehas ( <19A630> Psalm 106:30 f), or something which is not personally one’s own prior to the imputation, as where Paul asks that a debt not personally his own be charged to him ( Philemon 1:18). In all these cases the act of imputation is simply the charging of one with something. It denotes just what we mean by our ordinary use of the term.
It does not change the inward state or character of the person to whom something is imputed. When, for example, we say that we impute bad motives to anyone, we do not mean that we make such a one bad; and just so in the Scripture the phrase “to impute iniquity” does not mean to make one personally bad, but simply to lay iniquity to his charge. Hence, when God is said “to impute sin” to anyone, the meaning is that God accounts such a one to be a sinner, and consequently guilty and liable to punishment.
Similarly, the non-imputation of sin means simply not to lay it to one’s charge as a ground of punishment ( Psalm 32:2). In the same manner, when God is said “to impute righteousness” to a person, the meaning is that He judicially accounts such a one to be righteous and entitled to all the rewards of a righteous person ( Romans 4:6,11).
II. THE THREEFOLD USE OF THE TERM IN THEOLOGY. Original Sin, Atonement, Justification: Three acts of imputation are given special prominence in the Scripture, and are implicated in the Scriptural doctrines of Original Sin, Atonement and Justification, though not usually expressed by the words [chashabh] and [logizomai ]. Because, however, of its “forensic” or “judicial” meaning, and possibly through its use in the Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) to translate [logizomai ] in Romans 4:8, the term “imputation” has been used in theology in a threefold sense to denote the judicial acts of God by which the guilt of Adam’s sin is imputed to his posterity; by which the sins of Christ’s people are imputed to Him; and by which the righteousness of Christ is imputed to His people. The act of imputation is precisely the same in each case. It is not meant that Adam’s sin was personally the sin of his descendants, but that it was set to their account, so that they share its guilt and penalty. It is not meant that Christ shares personally in the sins of men, but that the guilt of his people’s sin was set to his account, so that He bore its penalty. It is not meant that Christ’s people are made personally holy or inwardly righteous by the imputation of His righteousness to them, but that His righteousness is set to their account, so that they are entitled to all the rewards of that perfect righteousness.
These doctrines have had a place in theology of the Christian church from the earliest Christian centuries, though the doctrine of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ was first fully and clearly stated at the time of and following the Reformation. The first two of these doctrines have been the possession of the entire Christian church, while the third one of them is affirmed by both the Reformed and Lutheran branches of Protestantism.
III. THE SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF THESE DOCTRINES.
These three doctrines have a basis in the Scripture, and underlie the Scripture doctrines of Original Sin, Atonement, and Justification. 1. Imputation of Adam’s Sin to His Posterity: The doctrine of the imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity is implied in the account of the Fall in Genesis 2 and 3, taken in connection with the subsequent history of the human race as recorded in Genesis and in the rest of the Old Testament. Many ancient and modern interpreters regard this narrative as an allegorical, mythical or symbolical representation in historical form, either of a psychological fact, i.e. of something which takes place in every individual, or of certain general truths concerning sin. By some exegetes, following Kant, it has been held to depict an advance of the race in culture or ethical knowledge (Reuss; against which view compare Budde, Clemen); by others it has been regarded as a symbolical representation of certain truths concerning sin (Oehler, Schultz); by others it has been regarded as historical (Delitzsch). This latter view is the one which accords with the narrative itself. It is evidently intended as historical by its author, and is so regarded by the New Testament writers. It is, moreover, introduced to explain, not an advance of the race, but the entrance of sin into the world, and the connection of certain penal evils with sin. It does this by showing how these evils came upon Adam as a punishment for his disobedience, and the subsequent history shows that his posterity were subjected to the same evils. It is true that the threat of punishment to Adam in case of disobedience was made to him alone, and that the penalties threatened are said to have come only upon him and Eve ( Genesis 3:16-19). Nevertheless, it is clear from the account of the subsequent history of the race that it actually shared in the punishments inflicted upon Adam, and that this was in consequence of his sin. This implies that in Genesis 2:16 f are contained the terms of a covenant in which Adam acted as the representative of the race. If, therefore, the race shares in the penalty of Adam’s sin, it must also share in his guilt or the judicial obligation to suffer punishment. And this is precisely what theology of the entire Christian church has meant by saying that the guilt of Adam’s sin was imputed to his posterity. This is in accordance with God’s method of dealing with men in other recorded instances ( Genesis 19:15; Exodus 20:5; Deuteronomy 1:37; 3:26); and the assertion of the principle of personal responsibility by Ezekiel and Jeremiah against an abuse of the principle of representative responsibility implies a recognition of the latter ( Ezekiel 18:2,4; 33:12; Jeremiah 31:29).
The universality of sin and death is not brought into connection with the Fall of Adam by the other Old Testament writers. This is done, however, by Paul. In 1 Corinthians 15:21 f, Paul says that the death of all men has its cause in the man Adam in the same way in which the resurrection from the dead has its cause in the man Christ. The death of all men, accordingly, is not brought about by their personal sins, but has come upon all through the disobedience of Adam. Upon what ground this takes place, Paul states in the passage Romans 5:12-21. He introduces the subject of Adam’s relation to the race to illustrate his doctrine of the justification of sinners on the ground of a righteousness which is not personally their own. In order to do this he takes the truth, well known to his readers, that all men are under condemnation on account of Adam’s sin. The comparison is between Adam and Christ, and the specific point of the comparison is imputed sin and imputed righteousness. Hence, in 5:12 Paul does not mean simply to affirm that as Adam sinned and consequently died, so men sin and die. Nor can he mean to say that just as God established a precedent in Adam’s case that death should follow sin, so He acts upon this precedent in the case of all men because all sin, the real ground of the reign of death being the fact that all sin, and the formal ground being this precedent (B. Weiss); nor that the real ground is this precedent and the subordinate ground the fact that all sin (Hunefeld). Neither can Paul intend to say that all men are subject to death because they derive a corrupt nature from Adam (Fritzsche); nor that men are condemned to die because all have sinned (Pfleiderer). Paul’s purpose is to illustrate his doctrine of the way in which men are delivered from sin and death by the way in which they are brought into condemnation. The main thought of the passage is that, just as men are condemned on account of the imputation to them of the guilt of Adam’s sin, so they are justified on account of the imputation to them of the righteousness of Christ. Paul says that it was by one man that sin and death entered into the world, and it was by one man that death passed to all men, because all were implicated in the guilt of that one man’s Sin (5:12). In proof of this the apostle cites the fact that death as a punishment was reigning during a period in which the only possible judicial ground of this fact must have been the imputation of the guilt of that one man’s sin (5:13,14). Hence, there is a precise parallel between Adam and Christ. Just as men are condemned on account of Adam’s disobedience, so they are justified on account of the obedience of Christ (5:18,19). The thought of the passage is imputed sin and imputed righteousness as the ground of condemnation and of justification respectively. 2. Imputation of the Sins of His People to Christ: That our sins are imputed to Christ is not expressly stated in the Scripture, but is implied in those passages which affirm that Christ “bore our sins,” and that our iniquities were “laid upon him” by Yahweh. To bear inquity or sin, though it may sometimes mean to bear it away or remove it, is an expression often applied in Scripture to persons charged with guilt and subjected to the punishment of their own sin ( Leviticus 5:17; 7:18; 19:8; 22:9). That the Hebrew verb [nasa’] has this meaning is also indicated by its being interchanged with the verb [cabhal], which means “to bear as a burden” and is used to denote the bearing of the punishment of sin ( Isaiah 53:11). In the Old Testament sacrificial system, which according to the New Testament is typical of the sacrifice of Christ, the imposition of hands on the head of the victim signified the substitution of it for the offender and the transfer of his guilt to it. This idea is brought out clearly in the case of the two goats on the great Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16). When, therefore, the Servant of Yahweh in Isaiah 53 is said “to bear iniquity” (53:11), or that “the chastisement of our peace was upon him” (53:5), or that “Yahweh hath laid (literally, “caused to fall”) on him the iniquity of us all” (53:6), the idea expressed is that Christ bore the punishment of our sin vicariously, its guilt having been imputed to Him.
The thought of the prophecy is, as Delitzsch says, that of vicarious punishment, which implies the idea of the imputation of the guilt of our sins to Christ.
The same idea underlies these expressions when they occur in the New Testament. When Peter wishes to hold up Christ as an example of patience in suffering, he takes up the thought of Isa, and adduces the fact that Christ “his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree”. ( 1 Peter 2:24).
The context indicates that Peter had the prophecy of Isaiah 53 in mind, so that his meaning is, not that Christ carried our sins even up to the cross, but that in His death on the cross Christ bore the punishment of our sin, its guilt having been imputed to Him. The same thought is expressed by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the contrast between the first and second advents of Christ is made to hinge upon the fact that in the first He came to be sacrificed as a sin-bearer, burdened with the guilt of the sin of others, whereas in His second coming He will appear without this burden of imputed or vicarious guilt ( Hebrews 9:28). Paul also gives expression to the same thought when he says that Christ was “made. to be sin on our behalf” ( 2 Corinthians 5:21), and that He became “a curse for us” ( Galatians 3:13). In the former passage the idea of substitution, although not expressed by the preposition huper which indicates that Christ’s work was for our benefit, is nevertheless clearly implied in the thought that Christ, whose sinlessness is emphasized in the ver, is made sin, and that we sinners become righteous in Him. Paul means that Christ was made to bear the penalty of our sin and that its guilt was imputed to Him in precisely the same way in which we sinners become the righteousness of God in Him, i.e. by the imputation of His righteousness to us. The same thought is expressed in Galatians 3:13, where the statement that Christ was made a curse for us means that He was made to endure the curse or penalty of the broken law. In all these passages the underlying thought is that the guilt of our sin was imputed to Christ. 3. Imputation of the Righteousness of Christ to His People: The righteousness upon the ground of which God justifies the ungodly is, according to Paul, witnessed to in the Old Testament ( Romans 3:21). In order to obtain the blessedness which comes from a right relation to God, the pardon or non-imputation of sin is necessary, and this takes place through the “covering” of sin ( Psalm 32:1,2). The nature of this covering by the vicarious bearing of the penalty of sin is made clear in Isaiah 53. It is, moreover, the teaching of the Old Testament that the righteousness which God demands is not to be found among men ( <19D003> Psalm 130:3; 143:2; Isaiah 64:6). Accordingly, the prophets speak of a righteousness which is not from man’s works, but which is said to be in Yahweh or to come from Him to His people ( Isaiah 32:16 f; 45:23 ff; 54:17; 58:8; 61:3; Jeremiah 51:10; Hosea 10:12). This idea finds its clearest expression in connection with the work of the Messiah in Jeremiah 33:16, where Jerusalem is called “Yahweh our righteousness” because of the coming of the Messianic king, and in Jeremiah 23:6 where the same name is given to the Messiah to express His significance for Israel. Although the idea of the imputation of righteousness is not explicitly asserted in these passages, the idea is not merely that the righteousness spoken of is recognized by Yahweh (Cremer), but that it comes from Him, so that Yahweh, through the work of the Messiah, is the source of His people’s righteousness.
This idea is taken up by Paul, who makes explicit the way in which this righteousness comes to sinners, and who puts the idea of imputed righteousness at the basis of his doctrine of Justification. By the righteousness of Christ Paul means Christ’s legal status, or the merit acquired by all that He did in satisfying the demands of God’s law, including what has been called His active and passive obedience.
Notwithstanding the fact that most of the modern expositors of Paul’s doctrine have denied that he teaches the imputation of Christ’s obedience, this doctrine has a basis in the apostle’s teaching. Justification leads to life and final glorification ( Romans 5:18; 8:30); and Paul always conceives the obtaining of life as dependent on the fulfillment of the law. If, therefore, Christ secures life for us, it can only be in accordance with this principle.
Accordingly, the apostle emphasizes the element of obedience in the death of Christ, and places this act of obedience at the basis of the sinner’s justification ( Romans 5:18). He also represents the obedience of the cross as the culminating point of a life of obedience on Christ’s part ( Philippians 2:8). Moreover, Paul affirms that our redemption from all the demands of the law is secured by the fact that Christ was born under law ( Galatians 4:4). This cannot be restricted to the fact that Christ was under the curse of the law, for He was born under law and the result of this is that we are free from all of its demands. This doctrine is also implied in the apostle’s teaching that Justification is absolutely gracious, taken in connection with the fact that it leads to a complete salvation.
The importance in Paul’s thought of the doctrine of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to the believer can be seen from the fact that the question how righteousness was to be obtained occupied a central place in his religious consciousness, both before and after his conversion. The apostle’s conversion by the appearance of the risen Christ determined his conception of the true way of obtaining righteousness, since the resurrection of Christ meant for Paul the condemnation of his entire past search for righteousness by works of the law.
That the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to the believer does lie at the basis of Paul’s doctrine of Justification can be further seen from the fact that Justification is absolutely free and unmerited so far as the sinner is concerned ( Romans 3:24; 5:15; Galatians 5:4; Titus 3:7); its object being one who is ungodly ( Romans 4:5); so that it is not by works ( Romans 3:20,28; Galatians 2:16; 3:11; 5:4; Philippians 3:9); and yet that it is not a mere pardon of sin, but is a strictly “forensic” or judicial judgment, freeing the sinner from all the claims of the law, and granting him the right to eternal life. This last truth is plain because God’s retributive righteousness lies at the basis of Paul’s doctrine of Justification (Romans 2); is manifested in it ( Romans 3:25 f); because Christ’s expiatory work is its ground ( Romans 3:25); and because our redemption from the curse of the law rests upon Christ’s having borne it for us, and our redemption from all the demands of the law depends upon their fulfillment by Christ ( Galatians 3:13; 4:4). Hence, the gracious character of Justification, according to Paul, does not consist in its being merely a gracious pardon without any judicial basis (Ritschl); or in God’s acceptance of a subjective righteousness produced by Him in the sinner (Tobac); or in the acceptance of faith instead of a perfect righteousness (Cremer). The gracious character of Justification consists for Paul in the fact that the righteousness on the ground of which God justifies the ungodly is a righteousness which is graciously provided by God, and which Paul contrasts with his own righteousness which comes from law works ( Philippians 3:9). The sinner, therefore, is pardoned and accepted as a righteous person, not on account of anything in himself, but only on account of what Christ has done for him, which means that the merits of Christ’s suffering and obedience are imputed to the sinner as the ground of his justification.
This truth is explicitly affirmed by Paul, who speaks of God’s imputing righteousness without works, and of righteousness being imputed ( Romans 4:6,11). The idea of the imputation of righteousness here is made clear by the context. The one who is declared righteous is said to be “ungodly” ( Romans 4:5). Hence, he is righteous only by God’s imputation of righteousness to him. This is also clear from the contrast between imputation according to grace and according to debt ( Romans 4:4). He who seeks righteousness by works would be justified as a reward for his works, in antithesis to which, imputation according to grace would be the charging one with a righteousness which he does not possess.
Accordingly, at the basis of Justification there is a reckoning to the sinner of an objective righteousness. This same idea is also implied and asserted by Paul in the parallel which he draws between Adam and Christ ( Romans 5:18 f). The apostle says that just as men are condemned on account of a sin not their own, so they are justified on account of a righteousness which is not their own. The idea of imputed sin and imputed righteousness, as was said, is the precise point of the parallelism between condemnation in Adam and justification in Christ. This is also the idea which underlies the apostle’s contrast of the Old and New Covenants ( Corinthians 3:9). The New Covenant is described as a “ministry of righteousness,” and contrasted with the Old Covenant which is described as a “ministry of condemnation.” If, therefore, this last expression does not denote a subjective condition of men under the old dispensation, but their relation to God as objects of His condemnation, righteousness must denote the opposite of this relation to the law, and must depend on God’s judicial acquittal. The same truth is expressed by Paul more concretely by saying that Christ has been “made unto us righteousness from God” ( Corinthians 1:30). Here the concrete mode of expression is chosen because Paul speaks also of Christ being our sanctification and redemption, so that an expression had to be chosen which would cover all of these ideas. One of the clearest statements concerning this objective righteousness is Philippians 3:9. The apostle here affirms that the righteousness which the believer in Christ obtains is directly opposite to his own righteousness.
This latter comes from works of the law, whereas the former comes from God and through faith in Christ. It is, therefore, objective to man, comes to him from God, is connected with the work of Christ, and is mediated by faith in Christ.
The idea clearly stated in this last passage of a righteousness which is objective to the sinner and which comes to him from God, i.e. the idea of a new legal standing given to the believer by God, explains the meaning, in most cases, of the Pauline phrase “righteousness of God.” This phrase is used by Paul 9 t: Romans 1:17; 3:5,21 f,25 f; 10:3 (twice); Corinthians 5:21. It denotes the Divine attribute of righteousness in Romans 3:5,25 f. The customary exegesis was to regard the other instances as denoting the righteousness of a sinner which comes to him from God, in accordance with Philippians 3:9. More recently Haering, following Kolbing in general, has interpreted all these instances as denoting God’s justifying action. But this interpretation is most strained in Corinthians 5:21, where we are said to “become the righteousness of God,” and in Romans 10:3-6, where the righteousness of God is identified with the righteousness which comes from faith, this latter being contrasted with man’s own inward righteousness. That a righteousness of man which he receives from God is here referred to, is confirmed by the fact that the reason given for the error of the Jews in seeking a righteousness from law works is the fact that the work of Christ has made an end of this method of obtaining righteousness ( Romans 10:4). This righteousness, therefore, is one of which man is the possessor. The phrase, however, cannot mean a righteousness which is valid in God’s sight (Luther), although this thought is elsewhere expressed by Paul ( Romans 3:20; Galatians 3:11). It means a righteousness which comes from God and of which He is the author. This is not, however, by making man inwardly righteous, since all the above passages show the purely objective character of this righteousness. It is the righteousness of Philippians 3:9; the righteousness which God imputes to the believer in Christ. Thus we “become the righteousness of God” in precisely the same sense in which Christ was “made to be sin” ( 2 Corinthians 5:21). Since Christ was made sin by having the guilt. of our sin imputed to Him so that He bore its penalty, Paul must mean that we “become the righteousness of God” in this same objective sense through the imputation to us of the righteousness of Christ. In the same way, in Romans 10:3, the contrast between God’s righteousness and the Jew’s righteousness by works of the law shows that in each case righteousness denotes a legal status which comes from God by imputation. It is this same imputed righteousness which makes the gospel the power of God unto salvation ( Romans 1:17), which has been revealed by the law and the prophets, which is received by faith in Christ by whose expiatory death God’s retributive righteousness has been made manifest ( Romans 3:21,22,25,26), and which is represented by Peter as the object of Christian faith ( 2 Peter 1:1).
In two passages Paul affirms that Abraham believed God and “it was imputed to him for righteousness” ( Romans 4:3 the King James Version; Galatians 3:6). The old Arminian theologians, and some modern exegetes (H. Cremer) assert that Paul means that Abraham’s faith was accepted by God instead of a perfect righteousness as the meritorious ground of his justification. This, however, cannot be the apostle’s meaning.
It is diametrically opposed to the context where Paul introduces the case of Abraham for the very purpose of proving that he was justified without any merit on his part; it is opposed to Paul’s idea of the nature of faith which involves the renunciation of all claim to merit, and is a simple resting on Christ from whom all its saving efficacy is derived; and this interpretation is also opposed to Paul’s doctrine of the absolutely gracious character of Justification. The apostle in these passages wishes to illustrate from the case of Abraham the gracious character of Justification, and quotes the untechnical language of Genesis 15:6. His meaning is simply that Abraham was justified as a believer in God, and not as one who sought righteousness by works. See SIN; ATONEMENT; JUSTIFICATION.
LITERATURE.
Besides the Comm., see works on Old Testament Theology by Dillmann, Davidson, Oehler, Schultz; and on New Testament Theology by H.
Holtzmann, B. Weiss, Schmidt; also Chemnitz, De Vocabulo Imputationis, Loc. Theol., 1594, II, 326 ff; J. Martin, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin, 1834, 20-46; Clemen, Die Christliche Lehre yon der Sande, I, 1897, 151- 79; Dietzsch, Adam und Christus, 1871; Hunefeld, Romans 5:12-21, 1895; Crawford, The Doctrine of the Holy Scripture Respecting the Atonements, 1876, 33-45, 188-90. Compare also the appropriate sections in the Works on the Scripture doctrine of Justification, and especially on Paul’s doctrine of Justification, e.g. Owen, Justification, 1st American edition, 185-310; Ritschl, Die Christliche Lehre yon der Rechtfertigung und VersShnung, II2, 1882, 303-31; Bohl, Von der Rechtfertigung durch den Glauben, 1890, 115-23; Nosgen, Schriftbeweis fur die evangel.
Rechfertigungslehre, 1901, 147-96; Pfleiderer, Die Paulinische Rechtfertigung, ZWT (Hilgenfeld herausg.), 1872, 161-200; Paulinism, English translation, I, 171-86; with which compare Pfleiderer’s later view of Paul’s teachings, 2nd edition, 1890, 178-89; G. Schwarz, Justitia Imputata? 1891; H. Cremer, Paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre, 1900, 329- 49; Tobac, Le problame de la justification dans Saint Paul, 1908, 206-25.
On Paul’s doctrine of the righteousness of God, of the many monographs the following may be mentioned: Fricke, Der Paulinische Grundbegriff der erortert auf Grund v. Rom. III, 21-26, 1888; Kolbing, Studien zur Paulinische Theologie, TSK, 1895, 7-51; Haring bei Paulus, 1896. Caspar Wistar Hodge IMRAH IMRI IN A principal thing to notice about this preposition, which in the King James Version represents about 16 Hebrew and as many Greek words and prepositions, is that, in hundreds of cases (especially in the Old Testament, but frequently also in the New Testament) in the Revised Version (British and American) the rendering is changed to more exact forms (“to,” “unto,” “by,” “upon,” “at,” “with,” “among,” “for,” “throughout,” etc.; compare e.g. Genesis 6:16; 13:8; 17:7,9,12; 18:1; Exodus 8:17; Leviticus 1:9, etc.); while, nearly as often, “in” is substituted for divergent forms of the King James Version (e.g. Genesis 2:14; 17:11; 31:54; 40:7; 49:17; Exodus 8:14,24; Leviticus 3:17; 4:2, etc.). The chief Greek preposition [ejn , en ], is frequently adhered to as “in” in the Revised Version (British and American) where the King James Version has other forms (“with,” “among,” etc.; compare “in” for “with” in John’s baptism, Matthew 3:11, and parallel; “in the tombs” for “among the tombs,” Mark 5:3). In 2 Thessalonians 2:2, “shaken in mind” in the King James Version is more correctly rendered in the Revised Version (British and American) “shaken from (apo) your mind.” There are numerous such instructive changes. James Orr IN THE LORD ([ejn Kuri>w| , en Kurio ]): A favorite Pauline expression, denoting that intimate union and fellowship of the Christian with the Lord Jesus Christ which supplies the basis of all Christian relations and conduct, and the distinctive element in which the Christian life has its specific character.
Compare the synonymous Pauline phrases, “in Christ,” “in Christ Jesus,” and the Johannine expressions, “being in Christ,” “abiding in Christ.” “In the Lord” denotes: (1) the motive, quality, or character of a Christian duty or virtue, as based on union with Christ, e.g. “Free to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord” ( 1 Corinthians 7:39), i.e. provided the marriage be consistent with the Christian life. Compare 1 Corinthians 15:58; Philippians 3:1; 4:1,2,4,10; Ephesians 6:1,10; Colossians 3:18, etc.; (2) the ground of Christian unity, fellowship, and brotherly salutation, e.g. Romans 16:2,8,22; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:7; (3) it is often practically synonymous with “Christian” (noun or adjective), “as Christians” or “as a Christian,” e.g. “Salute them of the household of Narcissus, that are in the Lord,” i.e. that are Christians ( Romans 16:11); “I .... the prisoner in the Lord,” i.e. the Christian prisoner ( Ephesians 4:1); compare Romans 16:13; <460901> Corinthians 9:1,2; Ephesians 6:21 (“faithful minister in the Lord” = faithful Christian minister); Colossians 4:17 (see Grimm-Thayer, Lex. of New Testament, [ejn , en ], I, 6). D. Miall Edwards INCANTATION INCARNATION INCENSE Figuratively, incense was symbolical of ascending prayer. The multitude were praying while Zacharias offered incense ( Luke 1:10, [qumi>ama , thumiama ]), and in Revelation 5:8; 8:3 f, the incense in the heavenly temple is connected and even identified (5:8) with “the prayers of the saints.” James Orr INCEST INCONTINENCY INCORRUPTION INCREASE As a noun it is usually used of plant life, or of the herds and flocks, to denote the fruitage or the offspring; more rarely of money, to denote the interest. As examples of the different terms translated by this word, students who read Hebrew or Greek may compare Deuteronomy 7:22; Proverbs 16:21; Job 10:16 the King James Version; Job 12:23; Numbers 18:30; Deuteronomy 7:13; Ezekiel 22:12 in the Old Testament, and John 3:30; 1 Corinthians 3:6; Colossians 2:19; Ephesians 4:16 in the New Testament. Russell Benjamin Miller INDIA INDITE INFANCY, GOSPEL OF THE INFANT, BAPTISM INFANTICIDE INFIDEL 1. SCRIPTURE USE:
The word “infinite” occurs 3 times only in the text of the King James Version ( Job 22:5; <19E705> Psalm 147:5; Nahum 3:9) and once in margin ( Nahum 2:9). In <19E705> Psalm 147:5, “His understanding is infinite” it represents the Hebrew [ rP;s]mi ˆyae , ‘en micpar ], “no number”; in the other passages the Hebrew [ 6qe ˆyae , ‘en qets ] ( Job 22:5, of iniquities) and [ hx,qe ˆyae , ‘en qetseh ] ( Nahum 3:9, of strength of Ethiopia and Egypt; the King James Version margin 2:9, of “spoil”), meaning “no end.” the Revised Version (British and American), therefore, renders in Job 22:5, “Neither is there any end to thine iniquities,” and drops the marginal reference in Nahum 2:9.
2. APPLICATION TO GOD: <19E705> Psalm 147:5 is thus the only passage in which the term is directly applied to God. It there correctly conveys the idea of absence of all limitation. There is nothing beyond the compass of God’s understanding; or, positively, His understanding embraces everything there is to know.
Past, present and future; all things possible and actual; the inmost thoughts and purposes of man, as well as his outward actions, lie bare to God’s knowledge ( Hebrews 4:13; see OMNISCIENCE ).
3. INFINITY UNIVERSALLY IMPLIED:
While, however, the term is not found, the truth that God is infinite, not only in His understanding, but in His being and all His perfections, natural and moral, is one that pervades all Scripture. It could not be otherwise, if God was unoriginated, exalted above all limits of time, space and creaturehood, and dependent only on Himself. The Biblical writers, certainly, are far from thinking in metaphysical categories, or using such terms as “self-existence,” “absoluteness,” “unconditioned” yet the ideas for which these terms stand were all of them attributed in their conceptions to God. They did not, e.g. conceive of God as having been born, or as having a beginning, as the Babylonian and Greek gods had, but thought of Him as the ever-existing One ( Psalm 90:1,2), and free Creator and Disposer of all that exists. This means that God has self-existence, and for the same reason that He is not bound by His own creation. He must be thought of as raised above all creaturely limits, that is, as infinite.
4. ANTHROPOMORPHISMS:
The anthropomorphisms of the Bible, indeed, are often exceedingly naive, as when Yahweh is said to “go down” to see what is being done ( Genesis 11:5,7; 18:21), or to “repent” of His actions ( Genesis 6:6); but these representations stand in contexts which show that the authors knew God to be unlimited in time, space, knowledge and power (compare Genesis 6:7, God, Creator of all; 11:8,9, universal Ruler; 18:25, universal Judge; Numbers 23:19, incapable of repentance, etc.). Like anthropomorphisms are found in Deuteronomy and the Prophets, where it is not doubted that the higher conceptions existed. In this infinity of God is implied His unsearchableness ( Job 11:7; <19E503> Psalm 145:3; Romans 11:33); conversely, the latter attribute implies His infinity.
5. INFINITY A PERFECTION NOT A QUANTITY:
This infinitude of God is displayed in all His attributes — in His eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, etc. — on which see the separate articles. As regards the proper conception of infinity, one has chiefly to guard against figuring it under too quantitative an aspect.
Quantitative boundlessness is the natural symbol we employ to represent infinity, yet reflection will convince us that it is inadequate as applied to a spiritual magnitude. Infinitude in power, e.g. is not an infinite quantity of power, but the potentiality in God of accomplishing without limit everything that is possible to power. It is a perfection, not a quantity. Still more is this apparent in moral attributes like love, righteousness, truth, holiness. These attributes are not quantities (a quantity can never be truly infinite), but perfections; the infinity is qualitative, consisting in the absence of all defect or limitation in degree, not in amount.
6. ERRORS BASED ON QUANTITATIVE CONCEPTIONS:
The recollection of the fact now stated will free the mind from most of the perplexities that have been raised by metaphysical writers as to the abstract possibility of the co-existence of infinite attributes in God (thus e.g.
Mansel); the reconcilability of God’s infinity with His Personality, or with the existence of a finite world; the power of the human mind to conceive infinity, etc. How, it is asked, can the idea of infinity get into our finite minds? It might as well be asked how the mind can take in the idea of the sun’s distance of some 90 million miles from the earth, when the skull that holds the brain is only a few cubic inches in capacity. The idea of a mile is not a mile big, nor is the idea of infinity too large to be thought of by the mind of man. The essence of the power of thought is its capacity for the universal, and it cannot rest till it has apprehended the most universal idea of all the infinite. James Orr INFIRMITY INFLAMMATION INFLUENCES INHABIT; INHABITANT The Pentateuch distinguishes clearly between real and personal property, the fundamental idea regarding the former being the thought that the land is God’s, given by Him to His children, the people of Israel, and hence, cannot be alienated ( Leviticus 25:23,28). In order that there might not be any respecter of persons in the division, the lot was to determine the specific piece to be owned by each family head ( Numbers 26:52-56; 33:54). In case, through necessity of circumstances, a homestead was sold, the title could pass only temporarily; for in the year of Jubilee every homestead must again return to the original owner or heir ( Leviticus 25:25-34). Real estate given to the priesthood must be appraised, and could be redeemed by the payment of the appraised valuation, thus preventing the transfer of real property even in this case ( Leviticus 27:14-25). Inheritance was controlled by the following regulations: (1) The firstborn son inherited a double portion of all the father’s possession ( Deuteronomy 21:15-17); (2) the daughters were entitled to an inheritance, provided there were no sons in the family ( Numbers 27:8); (3) in case there were no direct heirs, the brothers or more distant kinsmen were recognized (27:9-11); in no case should an estate pass from one tribe to another. The above points were made the subject of statutory law at the instance of the daughters of Zelophehad, the entire case being clearly set forth in Numbers 27; 36. Frank E. Hirsch INIQUITY Other words frequently translated “iniquity” are: [ ˆw,a; , ‘awen ], literally, “worthlessness,” “vanity,” hence, “naughtiness,” “mischief” (47 times in the King James Version, especially in the phrase “workers of iniquity,” Job 4:8; Psalm 5:5; 6:8; Proverbs 10:29, etc.); `awel and `awlah , literally, “perverseness” ( Deuteronomy 32:4; Job 6:29 the King James Version, etc.).
In the New Testament “iniquity” stands for anomia = properly, “the condition of one without law,” “lawlessness” (so translated in 1 John 3:4, elsewhere “iniquity,” e.g. Matthew 7:23), a word which frequently stood for `awon in the Septuagint; and adikia , literally, “unrighteousness” (e.g. Luke 13:27). D. Miall Edwards INJOIN INJURIOUS INJURY INK 1. EARLIEST NIGHT RESTING-PLACES:
The Hebrew word malon means literally, a “night resting-place,” and might be applied to any spot where caravans ( Genesis 42:27; 43:21 the King James Version), individuals ( Exodus 4:24; Jeremiah 9:2), or even armies ( Joshua 4:3,8; 2 Kings 19:23; Isaiah 10:29) encamped for the night. In the slightly altered form melunah, the same word is used of a nightwatchman’s lodge in a garden ( Isaiah 1:8; 24:20, the King James Version “cottage”). The word in itself does not imply the presence of any building, and in the case of caravans and travelers was doubtless originally, as very often at the present day, only a convenient level bit of ground near some spring, where baggage might be unloaded, animals watered and tethered, and men rest on the bare ground. Nothing in the Old Testament suggests the occupancy of a house in such cases. The nearest approach to such an idea occurs in Jeremiah 41:17 margin, where geruth kimham is translated “the lodging-place of Chimham,” but the text is very doubtful and probably refers rather to sheepfolds. We cannot say when buildings were first used, but the need of shelter for caravans traveling in winter, and of protection in dangerous times and districts, would lead to their introduction at an early period in the history of trade.
2. PUBLIC INNS:
It is noteworthy that all the indisputable designations of “inn” come in with the Greek period. Josephus (Ant., XV, v, 1; BJ, I, xxi, 7) speaks of “Public inns” under the name of katagogal, while in the Aramaic Jewish writings we meet with ‘ushpiza’, from Latin hospitium, and ‘akhcanya’ from the Greek xenia ; the New Testament designation pandocheion has passed into the Aramaic pundheqa’ and the Arabic funduq. All these are used of public inns, and they all correspond to the modern “khan” or “caravanserai.”
These are to be found on the great trade routes all over the East. In their most elaborate form they have almost the strength of a fortress. They consist of a great quadrangle into which admission is gained through a broad, strong gateway. The quadrangle is enclosed on all sides by a 2-story building, the windows in the case of the lower story opening only to the interior. The upper story is reached by stairways, and has a gangway all around, giving access to the practically bare rooms which are at the disposal of travelers.
3. THEIR EVIL NAME:
There is usually a well of good water in the center of the quadrangle, and travelers as a rule bring their own food and often that of their animals ( Judges 19:19) with them. There are no fixed payments, and on departure, the arranging of haqq el-khan generally means a disagreeable dispute, as the innkeepers are invariably untruthful, dishonest and oppressive. They have ever been regarded as of infamous character. The Roman laws in many places recognize this. In Mishna, Yebhamoth, xvi. the word of an innkeeper was doubted, and Mishna, `Abbodhah Zarah, ii.4 places them in the lowest scale of degradation. The New Testament is quite clear in speaking of “Rahab the harlot” ( Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25). The Targum designates her an “innkeeper,” while Rashi translates zonah as “a seller of kinds of food,” a meaning the word will bear. Chimchi , however, accepts both meanings. This evil repute of public inns, together with the Semitic spirit of hospitality, led the Jews and the early Christians to prefer to recommend the keeping of open house for the entertainment of strangers. In the Jewish Morning Prayers, even in our day, such action is linked with great promises, and the New Testament repeatedly ( Hebrews 13:2; 1 Peter 4:9; 3 John 1:5) commends hospitality. It is remarkable that both the Talmud (Shab 127a) and the New Testament ( Hebrews 13:2) quote the same passage ( Genesis 18:3) in recommending it.
The best-known khans in Palestine are Khan Jubb-Yusuf, North of the Lake of Galilee, Khan et-Tujjar, under the shadow of Tabor, Khan el- Lubban (compare Judges 21:19), and Khan Chadrur, midway between Jerusalem and Jericho. This last certainly occupies the site of the inn referred to in Luke 10:34, and it is not without interest that we read in Mishna, Yebhamoth, xvi.7, of another sick man being left at that same inn.
See illustration, p. 64.
4. GUEST CHAMBERS:
The Greek word [kataluma ], though implying a “loosing” for the night, seems rather to be connected with the idea of hospitality in a private house than in a public inn. Luke with his usual care distinguishes between this and [pandocheion ], and his use of the verb [kataluo ] ( Luke 9:12; 19:7) makes his meaning clear. In the Septuagint, indeed, [malon] is sometimes translated [kataluma ], and it appears in 1 Samuel 9:22 for [lishkah], the King James Version “parlour.” It is the word used of the “upper room” where the Last Supper was held ( Mark 14:14; Luke 22:11, “guestchamber”), and of the place of reception in Bethlehem where Joseph and Mary failed to find quarters ( Luke 2:7). It thus corresponds to the spare or upper room in a private house or in a village, i.e. to the manzil adjoining the house of the sheikh, where travelers received hospitality and where no payment was expected, except a trifle to the caretaker. In Jerusalem such payments were made by leaving behind the earthenware vessels that had been used, and the skins of the animals that had been slaughtered (Yoma’ 12a).
5. BIRTH OF CHRIST:
Judging from the word used, and the conditions implied, we are led to believe that Joseph and Mary had at first expected reception in the upper room or manzil at the house of the sheikh of Bethlehem, probably a friend and member of the house of David; that in this they were disappointed, and had to content themselves with the next best, the elevated platform alongside the interior of the stable, and on which those having the care of the animals generally slept. It being now the season when they were in the fields ( Luke 2:8), the stable would be empty and clean. There then the Lord Jesus was born and laid in the safest and most convenient place, the nearest empty manger alongside of this elevated platform. Humble though the circumstances were, the family were preserved from all the annoyance and evil associations of a public khan, and all the demands of delicacy and privacy were duly met. W. M. Christie INNER MAN See INWARD MAN.
INNOCENCE; INNOCENCY; INNOCENT The conventional, ecclesiastical name given to the slaughter by HEROD I (which see) of children two years old and under in Bethlehem and its environs at the time of the birth of Christ ( Matthew 2:16). The accepted title for this event may be traced through Augustine to Cyprian.
Irenaeus (died 202 AD) calls these children “martyrs,” and in a very beautiful passage interprets the tragedy which ended their brief lives as a gracious and tender “sending before” into His kingdom by the Lord Himself.
Cyprian (died 258 AD) says: “That it might be manifest that they who are slain for Christ’s sake are innocent, innocent infancy was put to death for his name’s sake” (Ep. lv. 6).
Augustine (born 354 AD), following Cyprian, speaks of the children, formally, as “the Innocents” (Commentary on Psalm 43:5).
The ecclesiastical treatment of the incident is remarkable because of the exaggeration which was indulged in as to the extent of the massacre and the number of victims. At an early date the Greek church canonized 14,000, and afterward, by a curious misinterpretation of Revelation 14:1,3, the number was increased to 144,000.
According to Milman the liturgy of the Church of England retains a reminiscence of this ancient error in the use of Revelation 14 on Holy Innocents’ Day (see History of Christianity, I, 107, note e). This exaggeration, of which there is no hint in the New Testament, is worthy of note because the most serious general argument against the historicity of the narrative is drawn from the silence of Josephus. As in all probability there could not have been more than twenty children involved (compare Farrar, Life of Christ, I, 45, note), the incident could not have bulked very largely in the series of horrors perpetrated or planned by Herod in the last months of his life (see Farrar, The Herods, 144 f) .
II. ANALYSIS OF NARRATIVE WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO MOTIVE.
In estimating the value of such a narrative from the viewpoint of historicity, the first and most important step is to gauge the motive. Why was the story told? This question is not always easy to answer, but in the present instance there is a very simple and effective test at hand. 1. Focus of Narrative — Residence at Nazareth: In Matthew’s infancy section (Matthew 1 and 2) there are five quotations from the Old Testament which are set into the narrative of events. These five quotations represent the cardinal and outstanding points of interest.
The quotations are placed thus: (1) at the Virgin Birth ( Matthew 1:23); (2) at the birth at Bethlehem ( Matthew 2:6); (3) at the visit to Egypt ( Matthew 2:15); (4) at the murder of the children ( Matthew 2:18); (5) at the Nazareth residence ( Matthew 2:23).
It will be noticed at once as peculiar and significant that no quotation is attached to the visit of the Magi. This omission is the more noteworthy because in Numbers 24:7; Psalm 72:15; Isaiah 60:6, and numerous references to the ingathering of the Gentiles there are such beautiful and appropriate passages to link with the visit of the strangers from the far East. This peculiar omission, on the part of a writer so deeply interested in prophecy and its fulfillment and so keen to seize upon appropriate and suggestive harmonies, in a section constructed with a view to such harmonies, can be explained only on the ground that the visit of the Magi did not, in the writer’s view of events, occupy a critical point of especial interest. Their visit is told, not for its own sake, but because of its connection with the murder of the children and the journey to Egypt. The murder of the children is of interest because it discloses the character of Herod and the perils surrounding the newborn Messiah. It also explains the visit to Egypt and the subsequent residence at Nazareth. The latter is evidently the objective point, because it is given a place by itself and marked by a quotation. Moreover, the one evidence of overstrain in the narrative is in the ambiguous and obscure statement by which the Old Testament is brought into relationship with the Nazareth residence. The center of interest in the entire section which is concerned with Herod and the Magi is the Nazareth residence. The story is told for the express purpose of explaining why the heir of David, who was born at Bethlehem, lived at Nazareth.
This brings the narrative of Matthew into striking relationship with that of Luke. The latter’s concern is to show how it was that the Messiah who lived at Nazareth was born at Bethlehem. We have here one of the undesigned unities which bind together these two narratives which are seemingly so divergent. That Matthew says nothing about a previous residence at Nazareth and that Luke says nothing about a forced return thither may be explained, in accordance with the balance of probabilities, on the ground, either that each evangelist was ignorant of the fact omitted by himself, or that in his condensed and rapid statement he did not see fit to mention it. In any case the harmony immeasurably outweighs the discrepancy. 2. Corollaries from Above Facts: The fact that the focus of the entire narrative lies in the residence of Jesus at Nazareth effectually disposes of a number of current hypotheses as to its origin. (1) The idea that it is merely legend told for the purpose of literary embellishment. The dovetailing of what would be the main item into the rest of the narrative and its subordination to secondary features cannot be explained on this hypothesis. The absence of adornment by available passages from the Old Testament alone is conclusive on this point (see Allen, “Matthew,” ICC, 14, 15). (2) The idea that the story is told for the purpose of illustrating the scope of the Messiah’s influence beyond Israel. Here, again, the subordinate position assigned to the story of the Magi together with the absence of Old Testament material is conclusive. Moreover, the history of the Magi is abruptly dropped with the statement of their return home. Interest in them flags as soon as their brief connection with the movement of the history through Herod ceases. And the intensely Hebraic character of Matthew’s infancy section as a whole is incidental evidence pointing in the same direction (compare remarks of the writer, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ,70 f). (3) The idea that the story is told to emphasize the wonder-element in connection with the birth of Christ. The facts contradict this. In addition to the primary consideration, the subordinate position, there are others of great value. That the Magi were providentially guided to the feet of the Messiah is evidently the firm conviction of the narrator. The striking feature of the story is that with this belief in his mind he keeps so strictly within the limits of the natural order. In Matthew 2:9 and 12 only is there apparent exception. Of these the statement in 2:9 is the only one peculiar to this part of the narrative. Two things are to be remembered concerning it: It is clear that the verse cannot be interpreted apart from a clear understanding of the whole astronomical occurrence of which it forms a part.
It is also evident that Matthew 2:9 must not be interpreted apart from the context. From the viewpoint of a wonder-tale the writer makes a fatal blunder at the most critical point of his story. The popular notion that the Magi were miraculously led to the Messiah finds no support in the text.
The Magi did not come to Bethlehem, but to Jerusalem, asking: “Where is he that is born King of the Jews?” Matthew 2:9 comes after this statement and after the conclave called by Herod in which Bethlehem was specified. In view of all this it seems clear that the Magi were led, not miraculously, but in accordance with the genius of their own system, and that the Providential element lay in the striking coincidence of their visit and the birth of Jesus. The interest of the writer was not in the wonderelement, else, infallibly, he would have sharpened its outlines and expurgated all ambiguity as to the nature of the occurrence.
We may now glance at the positive evidence for the historicity of the event. 3. Marks of Historicity: (1) The centering of the narrative upon the residence of Jesus at Nazareth.
This not only brings Luke’s Gospel in support of the center, but groups the story around a point of known interest to the first generation of believers.
It is interesting to note that the residence in Egypt has independent backing of a sort. There are in existence two stories, one traced by Origen through Jews of his own day to earlier times, and the other in the Talmud, which connect Jesus with Egypt and attempt to account for His miracles by reference to Egyptian magic (see Plummer, “Matthew,” Ex. Comm., 17,18). (2) The fact that the story of the Magi is told so objectively and with such personal detachment. Both Jews and early Christians had strong views both as to astrology and magic in general (see Plummer, op. cit., 15), but the author of this Gospel tells the story without emphasis and without comment and from the viewpoint of the Magi. His interest is purely historical and matter-of-fact. (3) The portrait of Herod the Great. So far as Herod is concerned the incident is usually discussed with exclusive reference to the savagery involved. By many it is affirmed that we have here a hostile and unfair portrait. This contention could hardly be sustained even if the question turned entirely upon the point of savagery. But there is far more than savagery in the incident. (a) In the first place there is this undeniable element of inherent probability in the story. Practically all of Herod’s murders, including those of his beloved wife and his sons, were perpetrated under the sway of one emotion and in obedience to a single motive. They were in practically every instance for the purpose of consolidating or perpetuating his power. He nearly destroyed his own immediate family in the half-mad jealousy that on occasion drove him to the very limits of ferocity, simply because they were accused of plotting against him.
The accusations were largely false, but the suspicion doomed those accused. The murder of the Innocents was another crime of the same sort. The old king was obsessed by the fear of a claimant to his petty throne; the Messianic hope of the Jews was a perpetual secret torment, and the murder of the children, in the attempt to reach the child whose advent threatened him, was at once so original in method and so characteristic in purpose as to give an inimitable veri-similitude to the whole narrative. There are also other traits of truth. (b) Herod’s prompt discovery of the visit of the Magi and their questions is in harmony with what we know of the old ruler’s watchfulness and his elaborate system of espionage. (c) Characteristic also is the subtlety with which he deals with the whole situation. How striking and vivid, with all its rugged simplicity, is the story of the king’s pretended interest in the quest of the strangers, the solemn conclave of Jewish leaders with himself in the role of earnest inquirer, his urgent request for information that he may worship also, followed by his swift anger (note that [ejqumw>qh , ethumothe ], “was wroth,” verse 16, is not used elsewhere in the New Testament) at being deceived, and the blind but terrible stroke of his questing vengeance.
All these items are so true to the man, to the atmosphere which always surrounded him, and to the historic situation, that we are forced to conclude, either that we have veracious history more or less directly received from one who was an observer of the events described, or the work of an incomparably clever romancer. Louis Matthews Sweet INORDINATE In each case there is no corresponding adjective in the original, but the word was inserted by the translators as being implied in the noun. It disappears in Revised Version: Ezekiel 23:11, “in her inordinate love” (the Revised Version (British and American) “in her doting”); [ hb;g;[\ , aghabhah ], “lust”; Colossians 3:5 “inordinate affection” (the Revised Version (British and American) “passion”); [pa>qov , pathos ], a word which in classical Greek may have either a good or a bad sense (any affection or emotion of the mind), but in the New Testament is used only in a bad sense (passion). D. Miall Edwards INQUIRE In Job 10:6, “to inquire ([ vq”B; , baqash ]) after iniquity” signifies to bring to light and punish for it, and Job asks distractedly if God’s time is so short that He is in a hurry to find him guilty and to punish him as if He had only a man’s few days to live. “To inquire of Yahweh” denotes the consultation of oracle, priest, prophet or Yahweh Himself, as to a certain course of action or as to necessary supplies. ( Judges 20:27 the King James Version, “to ask”; 1 Kings 22:5; 1 Samuel 9:9 ([ vr”D; , darash ]); 10:22 the King James Version; 2 Samuel 2:1; 5:19,23; Ezekiel 36:37). “To inquire ([ rq”B; , baqar ]) in his temple” (palace) means to find out all that constant fellowship or unbroken intercourse with God can teach ( Psalm 27:4). Proverbs 20:25 warns against rashness in making a vow and afterward considering (baqar , “to make inquiry”) as to whether it can be fulfilled or how it may be eluded.
In the King James Version, the translation of several Greek words: diaginosko , “to know thoroughly” ( Acts 23:15); epizeteo , “to seek after” ( Acts 19:39); suzeteo , “to seek together” ( Luke 22:23); exetazo , “to search out” ( Matthew 10:11). M. O. Evans INQUISITION INSCRIPTION INSECTS Hymenoptera, ant, bee, hornet; Lepidoptera, clothes-moth, silk-worm; Siphonaptera, flea; Diptera, fly; Rhynchota, louse, scarletworm; Orthoptera, several kinds of grasshoppers and locusts.
The word “worm” refers not only to the scarletworm, but to various larvae of Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, and Diptera. “Creeping things” refers indefinitely to insects, reptiles, and beasts. In the list of 23 names given above honey and bee refer to one insect, as do crimson and scarlet. Sandfly has no place if “lice” be retained in Exodus 8:16 ff. Bald locust, beetle, canker-worm, cricket, and palmerworm probably all denote various kinds of grasshoppers and locusts. When the translators of English Versions of the Bible had to do with two or more Hebrew words for which there was only one well-recognized English equivalent, they seem to have been content with that alone, if the two Hebrew words occurred in different passages; e.g. zebhubh , “fly” ( Ecclesiastes 10:1; Isaiah 7:18), and `arobh , “fly” ( Exodus 8:21 ff). On the other hand, they were put to it to find equivalents for the insect names in Leviticus 11:22; Joel 1:4, and elsewhere. For cale’am ( Leviticus 11:22) they evidently coined “bald locust,” following a statement of the Talmud that it had a smooth head. For gazam and yeleq they imported “palmer-worm” and “cankerworm,” two old English names of caterpillars, using “caterpillar” for chasil . The King James Version “beetle” for chargol is absolutely inappropriate, and the Revised Version (British and American) “cricket,” while less objectionable, is probably also incorrect. The English language seems to lack appropriate names for different kinds of grasshoppers and locusts, and it is difficult to suggest any names to take the places of those against which these criticisms are directed. See under the names of the respective insects. See also SCORPION and SPIDER, which are not included here because they are not strictly insects. Alfred Ely Day INSPIRATION 1. MEANING OF TERMS:
The word “inspire” and its derivatives seem to have come into Middle English from the French, and have been employed from the first (early in the 14th century) in a considerable number of significations, physical and metaphorical, secular and religious. The derivatives have been multiplied and their applications extended during the procession of the years, until they have acquired a very wide and varied use. Underlying all their use, however, is the constant implication of an influence from without, producing in its object movements and effects beyond its native, or at least its ordinary powers. The noun “inspiration,” although already in use in the 14th century, seems not to occur in any but a theological sense until late in the 16th century. The specifically theological sense of all these terms is governed, of course, by their usage in Latin theology; and this rests ultimately on their employment in the Latin Bible. In the Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) Latin Bible the verb inspiro ( Genesis 2:7; The Wisdom of Solomon 15:11; Ecclesiasticus 4:12; 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21) and the noun inspiratio ( 2 Samuel 22:16; Job 32:8; Psalm 18:15; Acts 17:25) both occur 4 or 5 times in somewhat diverse applications. In the development of a theological nomenclature, however, they have acquired (along with other less frequent applications) a technical sense with reference to the Biblical writers or the Biblical books.
The Biblical books are called inspired as the Divinely determined products of inspired men; the Biblical writers are called inspired as breathed into by the Holy Spirit, so that the product of their activities transcends human powers and becomes Divinely authoritative. Inspiration is, therefore, usually defined as a supernatural influence exerted on the sacred writers by the Spirit of God, by virtue of which their writings are given Divine trustworthiness.
2. OCCURRENCES IN THE BIBLE:
Meanwhile, for English-speaking men, these terms have virtually ceased to be Biblical terms. They naturally passed from the Latin Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) into the English versions made from it (most fully into the Rheims-Douay: Job 32:8; The Wisdom of Solomon 15:11; Ecclesiasticus 4:12; 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21). But in the development of the English Bible they have found ever-decreasing place. In the English Versions of the Bible of the Apocrypha (both the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American)) “inspired” is retained in The Wisdom of Solomon 15:11; but in the canonical books the nominal form alone occurs in the King James Version and that only twice: Job 32:8, “But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding”; and 2 Timothy 3:16, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” the Revised Version (British and American) removes the former of these instances, substituting “breath” for “inspiration”; and alters the latter so as to read: “Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness,” with a marginal alternative in the form of, “Every scripture is inspired of God and profitable,” etc. The word “inspiration” thus disappears from the English Bible, and the word “inspired” is left in it only once, and then, let it be added, by a distinct and even misleading mistranslation.
For the Greek word in this passage — [qeo>pneustov , theopneustos ] — very distinctly does not mean “inspired of God.” This phrase is rather the rendering of the Latin, divinitus inspirata, restored from the Wycliff (“Al Scripture of God ynspyrid is ....”) and Rhemish (“All Scripture inspired of God is ....”) versions of the Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.)
The Greek word does not even mean, as the King James Version translates it, “given by inspiration of God,” although that rendering (inherited from, Tyndale: “All Scripture given by inspiration of God is ....” and its successors; compare Geneva: “The whole Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is ....”) has at least to say for itself that it is a somewhat clumsy, perhaps, but not misleading, paraphrase of the Greek term in theological language of the day. The Greek term has, however, nothing to say of inspiring or of inspiration: it speaks only of a “spiring” or “spiration.” What it says of Scripture is, not that it is “breathed into by God” or is the product of the Divine “inbreathing” into its human authors, but that it is breathed out by God, “God-breathed,” the product of the creative breath of God. In a word, what is declared by this fundamental passage is simply that the Scriptures are a Divine product, without any indication of how God has operated in producing them. No term could have been chosen, however, which would have more emphatically asserted the Divine production of Scripture than that which is here employed. The “breath of God” is in Scripture just the symbol of His almighty power, the bearer of His creative word. “By the word of Yahweh,” we read in the significant parallel of Psalm 33:6 “were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” And it is particularly where the operations of God are energetic that this term (whether [ j”Wr , ruach ], or [ hm;v;n] , neshamah ]) is employed to designate them — God’s breath is the irresistible outflow of His power. When Paul declares, then, that “every scripture” or “all scripture” is the product of the Divine breath, “is Godbreathed,” he asserts with as much energy as he could employ that Scripture is the product of a specifically Divine operation.
3. CONSIDERATION OF IMPORTANT PASSAGES: (1) 2 Timothy 3:16: In the passage in which Paul makes this energetic assertion of the Divine origin of Scripture he is engaged in explaining the greatness of the advantages which Timothy had enjoyed for learning the saving truth of God. He had had good teachers; and from his very infancy he had been, by his knowledge of the Scriptures, made wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. The expression, “sacred writings,” here employed ( Timothy 3:15), is a technical one, not found elsewhere in the New Testament, it is true, but occurring currently in Philo and Josephus to designate that body of authoritative books which constituted the Jewish “Law.” It appears here anarthrously because it is set in contrast with the oral teaching which Timothy had enjoyed, as something still better: he had not only had good instructors, but also always “an open Bible,” as we should say, in his hand. To enhance yet further the great advantage of the possession of these Sacred Scriptures the apostle adds now a sentence throwing their nature strongly up to view. They are of Divine origin and therefore of the highest value for all holy purposes.
There is room for some difference of opinion as to the exact construction of this declaration. Shall we render “Every Scripture” or “All Scripture”?
Shall we render “Every (or all) Scripture is God-breathed and (therefore) profitable,” or “Every (or all) Scripture, being God-breathed, is as well profitable”? No doubt both questions are interesting, but for the main matter now engaging our attention they are both indifferent. Whether Paul, looking back at the Sacred Scriptures he had just mentioned, makes the assertion he is about to add, of them distributively, of all their parts, or collectively, of their entire mass, is of no moment: to say that every part of these Sacred Scriptures is God-breathed and to say that the whole of these Sacred Scriptures is God-breathed, is, for the main matter, all one. Nor is the difference great between saying that they are in all their parts, or in their whole extent, God-breathed and therefore profitable, and saying that they are in all their parts, or in their whole extent, because God-breathed as well profitable. In both cases these Sacred Scriptures are declared to owe their value to their Divine origin; and in both cases this their Divine origin is energetically asserted of their entire fabric. On the whole, the preferable construction would seem to be, “Every Scripture, seeing that it is Godbreathed, is as well profitable.” In that case, what the apostle asserts is that the Sacred Scriptures, in their every several passage — for it is just “passage of Scripture” which “Scripture” in this distributive use of it signifies — is the product of the creative breath of God, and, because of this its Divine origination, is of supreme value for all holy purposes.
It is to be observed that the apostle does not stop here to tell us either what particular books enter into the collection which he calls Sacred Scriptures, or by what precise operations God has produced them. Neither of these subjects entered into the matter he had at the moment in hand. It was the value of the Scriptures, and the source of that value in their Divine origin, which he required at the moment to assert; and these things he asserts, leaving to other occasions any further facts concerning them which it might be well to emphasize. It is also to be observed that the apostle does not tell us here everything for which the Scriptures are made valuable by their Divine origination. He speaks simply to the point immediately in hand, and reminds Timothy of the value which these Scriptures, by virtue of their Divine origin, have for the “man of God.” Their spiritual power, as Godbreathed, is all that he had occasion here to advert to. Whatever other qualities may accrue to them from their Divine origin, he leaves to other occasions to speak of. (2) 2 Peter 1:19-21: What Paul tells us here about the Divine origin of the Scriptures is enforced and extended by a striking passage in 2 Peter (1:19-21). Peter is assuring his readers that what had been made known to them of “the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” did not rest on “cunningly devised fables.” He offers them the testimony of eyewitnesses of Christ’s glory.
And then he intimates that they have better testimony than even that of eyewitnesses. “We have,” says he, “the prophetic word” (English Versions of the Bible, unhappily, “the word of prophecy”): and this, he says, is “more sure,” and therefore should certainly be heeded. He refers, of course, to the Scriptures. Of what other “prophetic word” could he, over against the testimony of the eyewitnesses of Christ’s “excellent glory” (the King James Version) say that “we have” it, that is, it is in our hands? And he proceeds at once to speak of it plainly as “Scriptural prophecy.” You do well, he says, to pay heed to the prophetic word, because we know this first, that “every prophecy of scripture ....” It admits of more question, however, whether by this phrase he means the whole of Scripture, designated according to its character, as prophetic, that is, of Divine origin; or only that portion of Scripture which we discriminate as particularly prophetic, the immediate revelations contained in Scripture. The former is the more likely view, inasmuch as the entirety of Scripture is elsewhere conceived and spoken of as prophetic. In that case, what Peter has to say of this “every prophecy of scripture” — the exact equivalent, it will be observed, in this case of Paul’s “every scripture” ( 2 Timothy 3:16) — applies to the whole of Scripture in all its parts. What he says of it is that it does not come “of private interpretation”; that is, it is not the result of human investigation into the nature of things, the product of its writers’ own thinking. This is as much as to say it is of Divine gift. Accordingly, he proceeds at once to make this plain in a supporting clause which contains both the negative and the positive declaration: “For no prophecy ever came (margin: “was brought”) by the will of man, but it was as borne by the Holy Spirit that men spoke from God.” In this singularly precise and pregnant statement there are several things which require to be carefully observed. There is, first of all, the emphatic denial that prophecy — that is to say, on the hypothesis upon which we are working, Scripture — owes its origin to human initiative: “No prophecy ever was brought — `came’ is the word used in the English Versions of the Bible text, with `was brought’ in the Revised Version margin — by the will of man.” Then, there is the equally emphatic assertion that its source lies in God: it was spoken by men, indeed, but the men who spoke it “spake from God.” And a remarkable clause is here inserted, and thrown forward in the sentence that stress may fall on it, which tells us how it could be that men, in speaking, should speak not from themselves, but from God: it was “as borne” — it is the same word which was rendered “was brought” above, and might possibly be rendered “brought” here — “by the Holy Spirit” that they spoke. Speaking thus under the determining influence of the Holy Spirit, the things they spoke were not from themselves, but from God.
Here is as direct an assertion of the Divine origin of Scripture as that of 2 Timothy 3:16. But there is more here than a simple assertion of the Divine origin of Scripture. We are advanced somewhat in our understanding of how God has produced the Scriptures. It was through the instrumentality of men who “spake from him.” More specifically, it was through an operation of the Holy Ghost on these men which is described as “bearing” them. The term here used is a very specific one. It is not to be confounded with guiding, or directing, or controlling, or even-leading in the full sense of that word. It goes beyond all such terms, in assigning the effect produced specifically to the active agent. What is “borne” is taken up by the “bearer,” and conveyed by the “bearer’s” power, not its own, to the “bearer’s” goal, not its own. The men who spoke from God are here declared, therefore, to have been taken up by the Holy Spirit and brought by His power to the goal of His choosing. The things which they spoke under this operation of the Spirit were therefore His things, not theirs. And that is the reason which is assigned why “the prophetic word” is so sure.
Though spoken through the instrumentality of men, it is, by virtue of the fact that these men spoke “as borne by the Holy Spirit,” an immediately Divine word. It will be observed that the proximate stress is laid here, not on the spiritual value of Scripture (though that, too, is seen in the background), but on the Divine trustworthiness of Scripture. Because this is the way every prophecy of Scripture “has been brought,” it affords a more sure basis of confidence than even the testimony of human eyewitnesses. Of course, if we do not understand by “the prophetic word” here the entirety of Scripture described, according to its character, as revelation, but only that element in Scripture which we call specifically prophecy, then it is directly only of that element in Scripture that these great declarations are made. In any event, however, they are made of the prophetic element in Scripture as written, which was the only form in which the readers of this Epistle possessed it, and which is the thing specifically intimated in the phrase “every prophecy of scripture.” These great declarations are made, therefore, at least of large tracts of Scripture; and if the entirety of Scripture is intended by the phrase “the prophetic word,” they are made of the whole of Scripture. (3) John 10:34 f: How far the supreme trustworthiness of Scripture, thus asserted, extends may be conveyed to us by a passage in one of our Lord’s discourses recorded by John ( John 10:34-35). The Jews, offended by Jesus’ “making himself God,” were in the act to stone Him, when He defended Himself thus: “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), say ye of him, whom the Father sanctified (margin “consecrated”) and sent unto the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?” It may be thought that this defense is inadequate. It certainly is incomplete: Jesus made Himself God ( John 10:33) in a far higher sense than that in which “Ye are gods” was said of those “unto whom the word of God came”: He had just declared in unmistakable terms, “I and the Father are one.” But it was quite sufficient for the immediate end in view — to repel the technical charge of blasphemy based on His making Himself God: it is not blasphemy to call one God in any sense in which he may fitly receive that designation; and certainly if it is not blasphemy to call such men as those spoken of in the passage of Scripture adduced gods, because of their official functions, it cannot be blasphemy to call Him God whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world. The point for us to note, however, is merely that Jesus’ defense takes the form of an appeal to Scripture; and it is important to observe how He makes this appeal. In the first place, He adduces the Scriptures as law: “Is it not written in your law?” He demands. The passage of Scripture which He adduces is not written in that portion of Scripture which was more specifically called “the Law,” that is to say, the Pentateuch; nor in any portion of Scripture of formally legal contents. It is written in the Book of Pss; and in a particular psalm which is as far as possible from presenting the external characteristics of legal enactment ( Psalm 82:6). When Jesus adduces this passage, then, as written in the “law” of the Jews, He does it, not because it stands in this psalm, but because it is a part of Scripture at large.
In other words, He here ascribes legal authority to the entirety of Scripture, in accordance with a conception common enough among the Jews (compare John 12:34), and finding expression in the New Testament occasionally, both on the lips of Jesus Himself, and in the writings of the apostles. Thus, on a later occasion ( John 15:25), Jesus declares that it is written in the “law” of the Jews, “They hated me without a cause,” a clause found in Psalm 35:19. And Paul assigns passages both from the Psalms and from Isaiah to “the Law” ( 1 Corinthians 14:21; Romans 3:19), and can write such a sentence as this ( Galatians 4:21 f) : “Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written ....” quoting from the narrative of Gen.
We have seen that the entirety of Scripture was conceived as “prophecy”; we now see that the entirety of Scripture was also conceived as “law”: these three terms, the law, prophecy, Scripture, were indeed, materially, strict synonyms, as our present passage itself advises us, by varying the formula of adduction in contiguous verses from “law” to “scripture.” And what is thus implied in the manner in which Scripture is adduced, is immediately afterward spoken out in the most explicit language, because it forms an essential element in Our Lord’s defense. It might have been enough to say simply, “Is it not written in your law?” But our Lord, determined to drive His appeal to Scripture home, sharpens the point to the utmost by adding with the highest emphasis: “and the scripture cannot be broken.” This is the reason why it is worth while to appeal to what is “written in the law,” because “the scripture cannot be broken.” The word “broken” here is the common one for breaking the law, or the Sabbath, or the like ( John 5:18; 7:23; Matthew 5:19), and the meaning of the declaration is that it is impossible for the Scripture to be annulled, its authority to be withstood, or denied. The movement of thought is to the effect that, because it is impossible for the Scripture — the term is perfectly general and witnesses to the unitary character of Scripture (it is all, for the purpose in hand, of a piece) — to be withstood, therefore this particular Scripture which is cited must be taken as of irrefragable authority. What we have here is, therefore, the strongest possible assertion of the indefectible authority of Scripture; precisely what is true of Scripture is that it “cannot be broken.” Now, what is the particular thing in Scripture, for the confirmation of which the indefectible authority of Scripture is thus invoked? It is one of its most casual clauses — more than that, the very form of its expression in one of its most casual clauses. This means, of course, that in the Savior’s view the indefectible authority of Scripture attaches to the very form of expression of its most casual clauses. It belongs to Scripture through and through, down to its most minute particulars, that it is of indefectible authority.
It is sometimes suggested, it is true, that our Lord’s argument here is an argumentum ad hominem, and that His words, therefore, express not His own view of the authority of Scripture, but that of His Jewish opponents.
It will scarcely be denied that there is a vein of satire running through our Lord’s defense: that the Jews so readily allowed that corrupt judges might properly be called “gods,” but could not endure that He whom the Father had consecrated and sent into the world should call Himself Son of God, was a somewhat pungent fact to throw up into such a high light. But the argument from Scripture is not ad hominem but e concessu; Scripture was common ground with Jesus and His opponents. If proof were needed for so obvious a fact, it would be supplied by the circumstance that this is not an isolated but a representative passage. The conception of Scripture thrown up into such clear view here supplies the ground of all Jesus’ appeals to Scripture, and of all the appeals of the New Testament writers as well. Everywhere, to Him and to them alike, an appeal to Scripture is an appeal to an indefectible authority whose determination is final; both He and they make their appeal indifferently to every part of Scripture, to every element in Scripture, to its most incidental clauses as well as to its most fundamental principles, and to the very form of its expression. This attitude toward Scripture as an authoritative document is, indeed, already intimated by their constant designation of it by the name of Scripture, the Scriptures, that is “the Document,” by way of eminence; and by their customary citation of it with the simple formula, “It is written.” What is written in this document admits so little of questioning that its authoritativeness required no asserting, but might safely be taken for granted. Both modes of expression belong to the constantly illustrated habitudes of our Lord’s speech. The first words He is recorded as uttering after His manifestation to Israel were an appeal to the unquestionable authority of Scripture; to Satan’s temptations He opposed no other weapon than the final “It is written”! ( Matthew 4:4,7,10; Luke 4:4,8). And among the last words which He spoke to His disciples before He was received up was a rebuke to them for not understanding that all things “which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and psalms” concerning Him — that is ( Luke 24:45) in the entire “Scriptures” — “must needs be” (very emphatic) “fulfilled” ( Luke 24:44). “Thus it is written,” says He ( Luke 24:46), as rendering all doubt absurd. For, as He had explained earlier upon the same day ( Luke 24:25 ff), it argues only that one is “foolish and slow of heart” if he does not “believe in” (if his faith does not rest securely on, as on a firm foundation) “all” (without limit of subjectmatter here) “that the prophets” (explained in Luke 24:27 as equivalent to “all the scriptures”) “have spoken.”
4. CHRIST’S DECLARATION THAT SCRIPTURE MUST BE FULFILLED:
The necessity of the fulfillment of all that is written in Scripture, which is so strongly asserted in these last instructions to His disciples, is frequently adverted to by our Lord. He repeatedly explains of occurrences occasionally happening that they have come to pass “that the scripture might be fulfilled” ( Mark 14:49; John 13:18; 17:12; compare 12:14; Mark 9:12,13). On the basis of Scriptural declarations, therefore, He announces with confidence that given events will certainly occur: “All ye shall be offended (literally, “scandalized”) in me this night: for it is written ....” ( Matthew 26:31; Mark 14:27; compare Luke 20:17).
Although holding at His command ample means of escape, He bows before on-coming calamities, for, He asks, how otherwise “should the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” ( Matthew 26:54). It is not merely the two disciples with whom He talked on the way to Emmaus ( Luke 24:25) whom He rebukes for not trusting themselves more perfectly to the teaching of Scripture. “Ye search the scriptures,” he says to the Jews, in the classical passage ( John 5:39), “because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me; and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life!” These words surely were spoken more in sorrow than in scorn: there is no blame implied either for searching the Scriptures or for thinking that eternal life is to be found in Scripture; approval rather. What the Jews are blamed for is that they read with a veil lying upon their hearts which He would fain take away ( 2 Corinthians 3:15 f). “Ye search the scriptures” — that is right: and “even you” (emphatic) “think to have eternal life in them” — that is right, too. But “it is these very Scriptures” (very emphatic) “which are bearing witness” (continuous process) “of me; and” (here is the marvel!) “ye will not come to me and have life!” — that you may, that is, reach the very end you have so properly in view in searching the Scriptures. Their failure is due, not to the Scriptures but to themselves, who read the Scriptures to such little purpose.
5. HIS TESTIMONY THAT GOD IS AUTHOR OF SCRIPTURE:
Quite similarly our Lord often finds occasion to express wonder at the little effect to which Scripture had been read, not because it had been looked into too curiously, but because it had not been looked into earnestly enough, with sufficiently simple and robust trust in its every declaration. “Have ye not read even this scripture?” He demands, as He adduces Psalm 118 to show that the rejection of the Messiah was already intimated in Scripture ( Mark 12:10; Matthew 21:42 varies the expression to the equivalent: “Did ye never read in the scriptures?”). And when the indignant Jews came to Him complaining of the Hosannas with which the children in the Temple were acclaiming Him, and demanding, “Hearest thou what these are saying?” He met them ( Matthew 21:16) merely with, “Yea: did ye never read, Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou has perfected praise?” The underlying thought of these passages is spoken out when He intimates that the source of all error in Divine things is just ignorance of the Scriptures: “Ye do err,” He declares to His questioners, on an important occasion, “not knowing the scriptures” ( Matthew 22:29); or, as it is put, perhaps more forcibly, in interrogative form, in its parallel in another Gospel: “Is it not for this cause that ye err, that ye know not the scriptures?” ( Mark 12:24). Clearly, he who rightly knows the Scriptures does not err. The confidence with which Jesus rested on Scripture, in its every declaration, is further illustrated in a passage like Matthew 19:4. Certain Pharisees had come to Him with a question on divorce and He met them thus: “Have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh? .... What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” The point to be noted is the explicit reference of Genesis 2:24 to God as its author: “He who made them .... said”; “what therefore God hath joined together.” Yet this passage does not give us a saying of God’s recorded in Scripture, but just the word of Scripture itself, and can be treated as a declaration of God’s only on the hypothesis that all Scripture is a declaration of God’s. The parallel in Mark (10:5 ff) just as truly, though not as explicitly, assigns the passage to God as its author, citing it as authoritative law and speaking of its enactment as an act of God’s. And it is interesting to observe in passing that Paul, having occasion to quote the same passage ( 1 Corinthians 6:16), also explicitly quotes it as a Divine word: “For, The twain, saith he, shall become one flesh” — the “he” here, in accordance with a usage to be noted later, meaning just “God.”
Thus clear is it that Jesus’ occasional adduction of Scripture as an authoritative document rests on an ascription of it to God as its author. His testimony is that whatever stands written in Scripture is a word of God.
Nor can we evacuate this testimony of its force on the plea that it represents Jesus only in the days of His flesh, when He may be supposed to have reflected merely the opinions of His day and generation. The view of Scripture He announces was, no doubt, the view of His day and generation as well as His own view. But there is no reason to doubt that it was held by Him, not because it was the current view, but because, in His Divinehuman knowledge, He knew it to be true; for, even in His humiliation, He is the faithful and true witness. And in any event we should bear in mind that this was the view of the resurrected as well as of the humiliated Christ.
It was after He had suffered and had risen again in the power of His Divine life that He pronounced those foolish and slow of heart who do not believe all that stands written in all the Scriptures ( Luke 24:25); and that He laid down the simple “Thus it is written” as the sufficient ground of confident belief ( Luke 24:46). Nor can we explain away Jesus’ testimony to the Divine trustworthiness of Scripture by interpreting it as not His own, but that of His followers, placed on His lips in their reports of His words. Not only is it too constant, minute, intimate and in part incidental, and therefore, as it were, hidden, to admit of this interpretation; but it so pervades all our channels of information concerning Jesus’ teaching as to make it certain that it comes actually from Him. It belongs not only to the Jesus of our evangelical records but as well to the Jesus of the earlier sources which underlie our evangelical records, as anyone may assure himself by observing the instances in which Jesus adduces the Scriptures as Divinely authoritative that are recorded in more than one of the Gospels (e.g. “It is written,” Matthew 4:4,7,10 ( Luke 4:4,8,10); Matthew 11:10; ( Luke 7:27); Matthew 21:13 ( Luke 19:46; Mark 11:17); Matthew 26:31 ( Mark 14:21); “the scripture” or “the scriptures,” Matthew 19:4 ( Mark 10:9); Matthew 21:42 ( Mark 12:10; Luke 20:17); Matthew 22:29 ( Mark 12:24; Luke 20:37); Matthew 26:56 ( Mark 14:49; Luke 24:44)).
These passages alone would suffice to make clear to us the testimony of Jesus to Scripture as in all its parts and declarations Divinely authoritative.
6. SIMILAR TESTIMONY OF HIS IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS The attempt to attribute the testimony of Jesus to His followers has in its favor only the undeniable fact that the testimony of the writers of the New Testament is to precisely the same effect as His. They, too, cursorily Apostles speak of Scripture by that pregnant name and adduce it with the simple “It is written,” with the implication that whatever stands written in it is Divinely authoritative. As Jesus’ official life begins with this “It is written” ( Matthew 4:4), so the evangelical proclamation begins with an “Even as it is written” ( Mark 1:2); and as Jesus sought the justification of His work in a solemn “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day” ( Luke 24:46 ff), so the apostles solemnly justified the Gospel which they preached, detail after detail, by appeal to the Scriptures, “That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures” and “That he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:3,4; compare Acts 8:35; 17:3; 26:22, and also Romans 1:17; 3:4,10; 4:17; 11:26; 14:11; Corinthians 1:19; 2:9; 3:19; 15:45; Galatians 3:10,13; 4:22,27).
Wherever they carried the gospel it was as a gospel resting on Scripture that they proclaimed it ( Acts 17:2; 18:24,28); and they encouraged themselves to test its truth by the Scriptures ( Acts 17:11). The holiness of life they inculcated, they based on Scriptural requirement ( 1 Peter 1:16), and they commended the royal law of love which they taught by Scriptural sanction ( James 2:8). Every detail of duty was supported by them by an appeal to Scripture ( Acts 23:5; Romans 12:19). The circumstances of their lives and the events occasionally occurring about them are referred to Scripture for their significance ( Romans 2:26; 8:36; 9:33; 11:8; 15:9,21; 2 Corinthians 4:13). As our Lord declared that whatever was written in Scripture must needs be fulfilled ( Matthew 26:54; Luke 22:37; 24:44), so His followers explained one of the most startling facts which had occurred in their experience by pointing out that “it was needful that the scripture should be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spake before by the mouth of David” ( Acts 1:16). Here the ground of this constant appeal to Scripture, so that it is enough that a thing “is contained in scripture” ( 1 Peter 2:6) for it to be of indefectible authority, is plainly enough declared: Scripture must needs be fulfilled, for what is contained in it is the declaration of the Holy Ghost through the human author. What Scripture says, God says; and accordingly we read such remarkable declarations as these: “For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, For this very purpose did I raise thee up” ( Romans 9:17); “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, .... In thee shall all the nations be blessed” ( Galatians 3:8). These are not instances of simple personification of Scripture, which is itself a sufficiently remarkable usage ( Mark 15:28; John 7:38,42; 19:37; Romans 4:3; 10:11; 11:2; Galatians 4:30; 1 Timothy 5:18; James 2:23; 4:5 f), vocal with the conviction expressed by James (4:5) that Scripture cannot speak in vain. They indicate a certain confusion in current speech between “Scripture” and “God,” the outgrowth of a deep-seated conviction that the word of Scripture is the word of God. It was not “Scripture” that spoke to Pharaoh, or gave his great promise to Abraham, but God. But “Scripture” and “God” lay so close together in the minds of the writers of the New Testament that they could naturally speak of “Scripture” doing what Scripture records God as doing. It was, however, even more natural to them to speak casually of God saying what the Scriptures say; and accordingly we meet with forms of speech such as these: “Wherefore, even as the Holy Spirit saith, Today if ye shall hear His voice,” etc. ( Hebrews 3:7, quoting Psalm 95:7); “Thou art God .... who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage,” etc. ( Acts 4:25 the King James Version, quoting Psalm 2:1); “He that raised him from the dead .... hath spoken on this wise, I will give you .... because he saith also in another (place) ....” ( Acts 13:34, quoting Isaiah 55:3 and Psalm 16:10), and the like. The words put into God’s mouth in each case are not words of God recorded in the Scriptures, but just Scripture words in themselves. When we take the two classes of passages together, in the one of which the Scriptures are spoken of as God, while in the other God is spoken of as if He were the Scriptures, we may perceive how close the identification of the two was in the minds of the writers of the New Testament.
7. THEIR IDENTIFICATION OF GOD AND SCRIPTURE:
This identification is strikingly observable in certain catenae of quotations, in which there are brought together a number of passages of Scripture closely connected with one another. The first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews supplies an example. We may begin with Hebrews 1:5:”For unto which of the angels said he” — the subject being necessarily “God” — “at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee?” — the citation being from Psalm 2:7 and very appropriate in the mouth of God — “and again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?” — from 2 Samuel 7:14, again a declaration of God’s own — “And when he again bringeth in the firstborn into the world he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him” — from Deuteronomy 32:43, Septuagint, or Psalm 97:7, in neither of which is God the speaker — “And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire” — from <19A404> Psalm 104:4, where again God is not the speaker but is spoken of in the third person — “but of the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, etc.” — from Psalm 45:6,7 where again God is not the speaker, but is addressed — “And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning,” etc. — from <19A225> Psalm 102:25-27, where again God is not the speaker but is addressed — “But of which of the angels hath he said at any time, Sit thou on my right hand?” etc. — from <19B001> Psalm 110:1, in which God is the speaker.
Here we have passages in which God is the speaker and passages in which God is not the speaker, but is addressed or spoken of, indiscriminately assigned to God, because they all have it in common that they are words of Scripture, and as words of Scripture are words of God. Similarly in Romans 15:9 ff we have a series of citations the first of which is introduced by “as it is written,” and the next two by “again he saith,” and “again,” and the last by “and again, Isaiah saith,” the first being from Psalm 18:49; the second from Deuteronomy 32:43; the third from <19B701> Psalm 117:1; and the last from Isaiah 11:10. Only the last (the only one here assigned to the human author) is a word of God in the text of the Old Testament.
8. THE “ORACLES OF GOD”:
This view of the Scriptures as a compact mass of words of God occasioned the formation of a designation for them by which this their character was explicitly expressed. This designation is “the sacred oracles,” “the oracles of God.” It occurs with extraordinary frequency in Philo, who very commonly refers to Scripture as “the sacred oracles” and cites its several passages as each an “oracle.” Sharing, as they do, Philo’s conception of the Scriptures as, in all their parts, a word of God, the New Testament writers naturally also speak of them under this designation. The classical passage is Romans 3:2 (compare Hebrews 5:12; Acts 7:38). Here Paul begins an enumeration of the advantages which belonged to the chosen people above other nations; and, after declaring these advantages to have been great and numerous, he places first among them all their possession of the Scriptures: “What advantage then hath the Jew? or what is the profit of circumcision? Much every way: first of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God.” That by “the oracles of God” here are meant just the Holy Scriptures in their entirety, conceived as a direct Divine revelation, and not any portions of them, or elements in them more especially thought of as revelatory, is perfectly clear from the wide contemporary use of this designation in this sense by Philo, and is put beyond question by the presence in the New Testament of habitudes of speech which rest on and grow out of the conception of Scripture embodied in this term. From the point of view of this designation, Scripture is thought of as the living voice of God speaking in all its parts directly to the reader; and, accordingly, it is cited by some such formula as “it is said,” and this mode of citing Scripture duly occurs as an alternative to “it is written” ( Luke 4:12 replacing “it is written” in Mt; Hebrews 3:15; compare Romans 4:18). It is due also to this point of view that Scripture is cited, not as what God or the Holy Spirit “said,” but what He “says,” the present tense emphasizing the living voice of God speaking in Scriptures to the individual soul ( Hebrews 3:7; Acts 13:35; Hebrews 17,8,10; Romans 15:10). And especially there is due to it the peculiar usage by which Scripture is cited by the simple “saith, without expressed subject, the subject being too well understood, when Scripture is adduced, to require stating; for who could be the speaker of the words of Scripture but God only ( Romans 15:10; 1 Corinthians 6:16; 2 Corinthians 6:2; Galatians 3:16; Ephesians 4:8; 5:14)? The analogies of this pregnant subjectless “saith” are very widespread. It was with it that the ancient Pythagoreans and Platonists and the medieval Aristotelians adduced each their master’s teaching; it was with it that, in certain circles, the judgments of Hadrian’s great jurist Salvius Julianus were cited; African stylists were even accustomed to refer by it to Sallust, their great model. There is a tendency, cropping out occasionally, in the Old Testament, to omit the name of God as superfluous, when He, as the great logical subject always in mind, would be easily understood (compare Job 20:23; 21:17; <19B402> Psalm 114:2; Lamentations 4:22). So, too, when the New Testament writers quoted Scripture there was no need to say whose word it was: that lay beyond question in every mind. This usage, accordingly, is a specially striking intimation of the vivid sense which the New Testament writers had of the Divine origin of the Scriptures, and means that in citing them they were acutely conscious that they were citing immediate words of God. How completely the Scriptures were to them just the word of God may be illustrated by a passage like Galatians 3:16: “He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.” We have seen our Lord hanging an argument on the very words of Scripture ( John 10:34); elsewhere His reasoning depends on the particular tense ( Matthew 22:32) or word ( Matthew 22:43) used in Scripture. Here Paul’s argument rests similarly on a grammatical form. No doubt. it is the grammatical form of the word which God is recorded as having spoken to Abraham that is in question. But Paul knows what grammatical form God employed in speaking to Abraham only as the Scriptures have transmitted it to him; and, as we have seen, in citing the words of God and the words of Scripture he was not accustomed to make any distinction between them.
It is probably the Scriptural word as a Scriptural word, therefore, which he has here in mind: though, of course, it is possible that what he here witnesses to is rather the detailed trustworthiness of the Scriptural record than its direct divinity — if we can separate two things which apparently were not separated in Paul’s mind. This much we can at least say without straining, that the designation of Scripture as “scripture” and its citation by the formula, “It is written,” attest primarily its indefectible authority; the designation of it as “oracles” and the adduction of it by the formula, “It says,” attest primarily its immediate divinity. Its authority rests on its divinity and its divinity expresses itself in its trustworthiness; and the New Testament writers in all their use of it treat it as what they declare it to be — a God-breathed document, which, because God-breathed, is through and through trustworthy in all its assertions, authoritative in all its declarations, and down to its last particular, the very word of God, His “oracles.”
9. THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN SCRIPTURE:
That the Scriptures are throughout a Divine book, created by the Divine energy and speaking in their every part with Divine authority directly to the heart of the readers, is the fundamental fact concerning Scripture them which is witnessed by Christ and the sacred writers to whom we owe the New Testament. But the strength and constancy with which they bear witness to this primary fact do not prevent their recognizing by the side of it that the Scriptures have come into being by the agency of men. It would be inexact to say that they recognize a human element in Scripture: they do not parcel Scripture out, assigning portions of it, or elements in it, respectively to God and man. In their view the whole of Scripture in all its parts and in all its elements, down to the least minutiae, in form of expression as well as in substance of teaching, is from God; but the whole of it has been given by God through the instrumentality of men. There is, therefore, in their view, not, indeed, a human element or ingredient in Scripture, and much less human divisions or sections of Scripture, but a human side or aspect to Scripture; and they do not fail to give full recognition to this human side or aspect. In one of the primary passages which has already been before us, their conception is given, if somewhat broad and very succinct, yet clear expression. No `prophecy,’ Peter tells us ( 2 Peter 1:21), `ever came by the will of man; but as borne by the Holy Ghost, men spake from God.’ Here the whole initiative is assigned to God, and such complete control of the human agents that the product is truly God’s work. The men who speak in this “prophecy of scripture” speak not of themselves or out of themselves, but from “God”: they speak only as they are “borne by the Holy Ghost.” But it is they, after all, who speak.
Scripture is the product of man, but only of man speaking from God and under such a control of the Holy Spirit as that in their speaking they are “borne” by Him. The conception obviously is that the Scriptures have been given by the instrumentality of men; and this conception finds repeated incidental expression throughout the New Testament.
It is this conception, for example, which is expressed when our Lord, quoting Psalm 110, declares of its words that “David himself said in the Holy Spirit” ( Mark 12:36). There is a certain emphasis here on the words being David’s own words, which is due to the requirements of the argument our Lord was conducting, but which none the less sincerely represents our Lord’s conception of their origin. They are David’s own words which we find in Psalm 110, therefore; but they are David’s own words, spoken not of his own motion merely, but “in the Holy Spirit,” that is to say — we could not better paraphrase it — “as borne by the Holy Spirit.” In other words, they are “God-breathed” words and therefore authoritative in a sense above what any words of David, not spoken in the Holy Spirit, could possibly be. Generalizing the matter, we may say that the words of Scripture are conceived by our Lord and the New Testament writers as the words of their human authors when speaking “in the Holy Spirit,” that is to say, by His initiative and under His controlling direction.
The conception finds even more precise expression, perhaps, in such a statement as we find — it is Peter who is speaking and it is again a psalm which is cited — in Acts 116, “The Holy Spirit spake by the mouth of David.” Here the Holy Spirit is adduced, of course, as the real author of what is said (and hence, Peter’s certainty that what is said will be fulfilled); but David’s mouth is expressly designated as the instrument (it is the instrumental preposition that is used) by means of which the Holy Spirit speaks the Scripture in question. He does not speak save through David’s mouth. Accordingly, in Acts 4:25, `the Lord that made the heaven and earth,’ acting by His Holy Spirit, is declared to have spoken another psalm `through the mouth of .... David,’ His “servant”; and in Matthew 13:35 still another psalm is adduced as “spoken through the prophet” (compare Matthew 2:5). In the very act of energetically asserting the Divine origin of Scripture the human instrumentality through which it is given is constantly recognized. The New Testament writers have, therefore, no difficulty in assigning Scripture to its human authors, or in discovering in Scripture traits due to its human authorship. They freely quote it by such simple formulas as these: “Moses saith” ( Romans 10:19); “Moses said” ( Matthew 22:24; Mark 10; Acts 3:22); “Moses writeth” ( Romans 10:5); “Moses wrote” ( Mark 12:19; Luke 20:28); “Isaiah .... saith” ( Romans 10:20); “Isaiah said” ( John 12:39); “Isaiah crieth” ( Romans 9:27); “Isaiah hath said before” ( Romans 9:29); “said Isaiah the prophet” ( John 1:23); “did Isaiah prophesy” ( Mark 7:6: Matthew 15:7); “David saith” ( Luke 20:42; Acts 2:25; Romans 11:9); “David said” ( Mark 12:36). It is to be noted that when thus Scripture is adduced by the names of its human authors, it is a matter of complete indifference whether the words adduced are comments of these authors or direct words of God recorded by them. As the plainest words of the human authors are assigned to God as their real author, so the most express words of God, repeated by the Scriptural writers, are cited by the names of these human writers ( Matthew 15:7; Mark 7:6; Romans 10:5 19,20; compare Mark 7:10 from the Decalogue). To say that “Moses” or “David says,” is evidently thus only a way of saying that “Scripture says,” which is the same as to say that “God says.” Such modes of citing Scripture, accordingly, carry us little beyond merely connecting the name, or perhaps we may say the individuality, of the several writers with the portions of Scripture given through each. How it was given through them is left meanwhile, if not without suggestion, yet without specific explanation. We seem safe only in inferring this much: that the gift of Scripture through its human authors took place by a process much more intimate than can be expressed by the term “dictation,” and that it took place in a process in which the control of the Holy Spirit was too complete and pervasive to permit the human qualities of the secondary authors in any way to condition the purity of the product as the word of God. The Scriptures, in other words, are conceived by the writers of the New Testament as through and through God’s book, in every part expressive of His mind, given through men after a fashion which does no violence to their nature as men, and constitutes the book also men’s book as well as God’s, in every part expressive of the mind of its human authors.
10. ACTIVITIES OF GOD IN GIVING SCRIPTURE:
If we attempt to get behind this broad statement and to obtain a more detailed conception of the activities by which God has given the Scriptures, we are thrown back upon somewhat general representations, supported by the analogy of the modes Scripture of God’s working in other spheres of His operation. It is very desirable that we should free ourselves at the outset from influences arising from the current employment of the term “inspiration” to designate this process. This term is not a Biblical term and its etymological implications are not perfectly accordant with the Biblical conception of the modes of the Divine operation in giving the Scriptures.
The Biblical writers do not conceive of the Scriptures as a human product breathed into by the Divine Spirit, and thus heightened in its qualities or endowed with new qualities; but as a Divine product produced through the instrumentality of men. They do not conceive of these men, by whose instrumentality Scripture is produced, as working upon their own initiative, though energized by God to greater effort and higher achievement, but as moved by the Divine initiative and borne by the irresistible power of the Spirit of God along ways of His choosing to ends of His appointment. The difference between the two conceptions may not appear great when the mind is fixed exclusively upon the nature of the resulting product. But they are differing conceptions, and look at the production of Scripture from distinct points of view — the human and the Divine; and the involved mental attitudes toward the origin of Scripture are very diverse. The term “inspiration” is too firmly fixed, in both theological and popular usage, as the technical designation of the action of God in giving the Scriptures, to be replaced; and we may be thankful that its native implications lie as close as they do to the Biblical conceptions. Meanwhile, however, it may be justly insisted that it shall receive its definition from the representations of Scripture, and not be permitted to impose upon our thought ideas of the origin of Scripture derived from an analysis of its own implications, etymological or historical. The Scriptural conception of the relation of the Divine Spirit to the human authors in the production of Scripture is better expressed by the figure of “bearing” than by the figure of “inbreathing”; and when our Biblical writers speak of the action of the Spirit of God in this relation as a breathing, they represent it as a “breathing out” of the Scriptures by the Spirit, and not a “breathing into” the Scriptures by Him.
11. GENERAL PROBLEM OF ORIGIN: GOD’S PART:
So soon, however, as we seriously endeavor to form for ourselves a clear conception of the precise nature of the Divine action in this “breathing out” of the Scriptures — this “bearing” of the writers of the Scriptures to their appointed goal of the production of a book of Divine trustworthiness and indefectible authority — we become acutely aware of a more deeply lying and much wider problem, apart from which this one of inspiration, technically so called, cannot be profitably considered. This is the general problem of the origin of the Scriptures and the part of God in all that complex of processes by the interaction of which these books, which we call the sacred Scriptures, with all their peculiarities, and all their qualities of whatever sort, have been brought into being. For, of course, these books were not produced suddenly, by some miraculous act — handed down complete out of heaven, as the phrase goes; but, like all other products of time, are the ultimate effect of many processes cooperating through long periods. There is to be considered, for instance, the preparation of the material which forms the subject-matter of these books: in a sacred history, say, for example, to be narrated; or in a religious experience which may serve as a norm for record; or in a logical elaboration of the contents of revelation which may be placed at the service of God’s people; or in the progressive revelation of Divine truth itself, supplying their culminating contents. And there is the preparation of the men to write these books to be considered, a preparation physical, intellectual, spiritual, which must have attended them throughout their whole lives, and, indeed, must have had its beginning in their remote ancestors, and the effect of which was to bring the right men to the right places at the right times, with the right endowments, impulses, acquirements, to write just the books which were designed for them. When “inspiration,” technically so called, is superinduced on lines of preparation like these, it takes on quite a different aspect from that which it bears when it is thought of as an isolated action of the Divine Spirit operating out of all relation to historical processes.
Representations are sometimes made as if, when God wished to produce sacred books which would incorporate His will — a series of letters like those of Paul, for example — He was reduced to the necessity of going down to earth and painfully scrutinizing the men He found there, seeking anxiously for the one who, on the whole, promised best for His purpose; and then violently forcing the material He wished expressed through him, against his natural bent, and with as little loss from his recalcitrant characteristics as possible. Of course, nothing of the sort took place. If God wished to give His people a series of letters like Paul’s, He prepared a Paul to write them, and the Paul He brought to the task was a Paul who spontaneously would write just such letters.
12. HOW HUMAN QUALITIES AFFECTED SCRIPTURE.
PROVIDENTIAL PREPARATION:
If we bear this in mind, we shall know what estimate to place upon the common representation to the effect that the human characteristics of the writers must, and in point of fact do, condition and qualify the writings produced by them, the implication being that, therefore, we cannot get from mark a pure word of God. As light that passes through the colored glass of a cathedral window, we are told, is light from heaven, but is stained by the tints of the glass through which it passes; so any word of God which is passed through the mind and soul of a man must come out discolored by the personality through which it is given, and just to that degree ceases to be the pure word of God. But what if this personality has itself been formed by God into precisely the personality it is, for the express purpose of communicating to the word given through it just the coloring which it gives it? What if the colors of the stained-glass window have been designed by the architect for the express purpose of giving to the light that floods the cathedral precisely the tone and quality it receives from them? What if the word of God that comes to His people is framed by God into the word of God it is, precisely by means of the qualities of the men formed by Him for the purpose, through which it is given? When we think of God the Lord giving by His Spirit a body of authoritative Scriptures to His people, we must remember that He is the God of providence and of grace as well as of revelation and inspiration, and that He holds all the lines of preparation as fully under His direction as He does the specific operation which we call technically, in the narrow sense, by the name of “inspiration.” The production of the Scriptures is, in point of fact, a long process, in the course of which numerous and very varied Divine activities are involved, providential, gracious, miraculous, all of which must be taken into account in any attempt to explain the relation of God to the production of Scripture. When they are all taken into account we can no longer wonder that the resultant Scriptures are constantly spoken of as the pure word of God. We wonder, rather, that an additional operation of God — what we call specifically “inspiration,” in its technical sense — was thought necessary. Consider, for example, how a piece of sacred history — say the Book of Chronicles, or the great historical work, Gospel and Acts, of Luke — is brought to the writing. There is first of all the preparation of the history to be written: God the Lord leads the sequence of occurrences through the development He has designed for them that they may convey their lessons to His people: a “teleological” or “etiological” character is inherent in the very course of events. Then He prepares a man, by birth, training, experience, gifts of grace, and, if need be, of revelation, capable of appreciating this historical development and eager to search it out, thrilling in all his being with its lessons and bent upon making them clear and effective to others. When, then, by His providence, God sets this man to work on the writing of this history, will there not be spontaneously written by him the history which it was Divinely intended should be written? Or consider how a psalmist would be prepared to put into moving verse a piece of normative religious experience: how he would be born with just the right quality of religious sensibility, of parents through whom he should receive just the right hereditary bent, and from whom he should get precisely the right religious example and training, in circumstances of life in which his religious tendencies should be developed precisely on right lines; how he would be brought through just the right experiences to quicken in him the precise emotions he would be called upon to express, and finally would be placed in precisely the exigencies which would call out their expression. Or consider the providential preparation of a writer of a didactic epistle — by means of which he should be given the intellectual breadth and acuteness, and be trained in habitudes of reasoning, and placed in the situations which would call out precisely the argumentative presentation of Christian truth which was required of him. When we give due place in our thoughts to the universality of the providential government of God, to the minuteness and completeness of its sway, and to its invariable efficacy, we may be inclined to ask what is needed beyond this mere providential government to secure the production of sacred books which should be in every detail absolutely accordant with the Divine will. 13. “INSPIRATION” MORE THAN MERE “PROVIDENCE”:
The answer is, Nothing is needed beyond mere providence to secure such books — provided only that it does not lie in the Divine purpose that these books should possess qualities which rise above the powers of men to produce, even under the most complete Divine guidance. For providence is guidance; and guidance can bring one only so far as his own power can carry him. If heights are to be scaled above man’s native power to achieve, then something more than guidance, however effective, is necessary. This is the reason for the superinduction, at the end of the long process of the production of Scripture, of the additional Divine operation which we call technically “inspiration.” By it, the Spirit of God, flowing confluently in with the providentially and graciously determined work of men, spontaneously producing under the Divine directions the writings appointed to them, gives the product a Divine quality unattainable by human powers alone. Thus, these books become not merely the word of godly men, but the immediate word of God Himself, speaking directly as such to the minds and hearts of every reader. The value of “inspiration” emerges, thus, as twofold. It gives to the books written under its “bearing” a quality which is truly superhuman; a trustworthiness, an authority, a searchingness, a profundity, a profitableness which is altogether Divine.
And it speaks this Divine word immediately to each reader’s heart and conscience; so that he does not require to make his way to God, painfully, perhaps even uncertainly, through the words of His servants, the human instruments in writing the Scriptures, but can listen directly to the Divine voice itself speaking immediately in the Scriptural word to him.
14. WITNESS OF NEW TESTAMENT WRITERS TO DIVINE OPERATION:
That the writers of the New Testament themselves conceive the Scriptures to have been produced thus by Divine operations extending through the increasing ages and involving a multitude of varied activities, can be made clear by simply attending to the occasional references they make to this or that step in the process. It lies, for example, on the face of their expositions, that they of New Testament looked upon the Biblical history as teleological. Not only do they tell us that to “whatsoever things were written afore-time were written for our learning, that through patience and through comfort of the scriptures we might have hope” ( Romans 15:4; compare Romans 4:23,14); they speak also of the course of the historical events themselves as guided for our benefit: “Now these things happened unto them by way of example” — in a typical fashion, in such a way that, as they occurred, a typical character, or predictive reference impressed itself upon them; that is to say, briefly, the history occurred as it did in order to bear a message to us — “and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come” ( 1 Corinthians 10:11; compare 10:6). Accordingly, it has become a commonplace of Biblical exposition that “the history of redemption itself is a typically progressive one” (Kuper), and is “in a manner impregnated with the prophetic element,” so as to form a “part of a great plan which stretches from the fall of man to the first consummation of all things in glory; and, in so far as it reveals the mind of God toward man, carries a respect to the future not less than to the present” (P. Fairbairn). It lies equally on the face of the New Testament allusions to the subject that its writers understood that the preparation of men to become vehicles of God’s message to man was not of yesterday, but had its beginnings in the very origin of their being. The call by which Paul, for example, was made an apostle of Jesus Christ was sudden and apparently without antecedents; but it is precisely this Paul who reckons this call as only one step in a long process, the beginnings of which antedated his own existence: “But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me” ( Galatians 1:15,16; compare Jeremiah 1:5; Isaiah 49:1,5). The recognition by the writers of the New Testament of the experiences of God’s grace, which had been vouchsafed to them as an integral element in their fitting to be the bearers of His gospel to others, finds such pervasive expression that the only difficulty is to select from the mass the most illustrative passages.
Such a statement as Paul gives in the opening verses of 2 Corinthians is thoroughly typical. There he represents that he has been afflicted and comforted to the end that he might “be able to comfort them that are in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith” he had himself been “comforted of God.” For, he explains, Whether we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or whether we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which worketh in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer” ( 2 Corinthians 1:4-6). It is beyond question, therefore, that the New Testament writers, when they declare the Scriptures to be the product of the Divine breath, and explain this as meaning that the writers of these Scriptures wrote them only as borne by the Holy Spirit in such a fashion that they spoke, not out of themselves, but “from God,” are thinking of this operation of the Spirit only as the final act of God in the production of the Scriptures, superinduced upon a long series of processes, providential, gracious, miraculous, by which the matter of Scripture had been prepared for writing, and the men for writing it, and the writing of it had been actually brought to pass. It is this final act in the production of Scripture which is technically called “inspiration”; and inspiration is thus brought before us as, in the minds of the writers of the New Testament, that particular operation of God in the production of Scripture which takes effect at the very point of the writing of Scripture — understanding the term “writing” here as inclusive of all the processes of the actual composition of Scripture, the investigation of documents, the collection of facts, the excogitation of conclusions, the adaptation of exhortations as means to ends and the like — with the effect of giving to the resultant Scripture a specifically supernatural character, and constituting it a Divine, as well as human, book. Obviously the mode of operation of this Divine activity moving to this result is conceived, in full accord with the analogy of the Divine operations in other spheres of its activity, in providence and in grace alike, as confluent with the human activities operative in the case; as, in a word, of the nature of what has come to be known as “immanent action.” 15. “INSPIRATION” AND “REVELATION”:
It will not escape observation that thus “inspiration” is made a mode of “revelation.” We are often exhorted, to be sure, to distinguish sharply between “inspiration” and “revelation”; and the exhortation is just when “revelation” is taken in one of its narrower senses, of, say, an external manifestation of God, or of an immediate communication from God in words. But “inspiration” does not differ from “revelation” in these narrowed senses as genus from genus, but as a species of one genus differs from another. That operation of God which we call “inspiration,” that is to say, that operation of the Spirit of God by which He “bears” men in the process of composing Scripture, so that they write, not of themselves, but “from God,” is one of the modes in which God makes known to men His being, His will, His operations, His purposes. It is as distinctly a mode of revelation as any mode of revelation can be, and therefore it performs the same office which all revelation performs, that is to say, in the express words of Paul, it makes men wise, and makes them wise unto salvation. All “special” or “supernatural” revelation (which is redemptive in its very idea, and occupies a place as a substantial element in God’s redemptive processes) has precisely this for its end; and Scripture, as a mode of the redemptive revelation of God, finds its fundamental purpose just in this: if the “inspiration” by which Scripture is produced renders it trustworthy and authoritative, it renders it trustworthy and authoritative only that it may the better serve to make men wise unto salvation. Scripture is conceived, from the point of view of the writers of the New Testament, not merely as the record of revelations, but as itself a part of the redemptive revelation of God; not merely as the record of the redemptive acts by which God is saving the world, but as itself one of these redemptive acts, having its own part to play in the great work of establishing and building up the kingdom of God. What gives it a place among the redemptive acts of God is its Divine origination, taken in its widest sense, as inclusive of all the Divine operations, providential, gracious and expressly supernatural, by which it has been made just what it is — a body of writings able to make wise unto salvation, and profitable for making the man of God perfect. What gives it its place among the modes of revelation is, however, specifically the culminating one of these Divine operations, which we call “inspiration”; that is to say, the action of the Spirit of God in so “bearing” its human authors in their work of producing Scripture, as that in these Scriptures they speak, not out of themselves, but “from God.” It is this act by virtue of which the Scriptures may properly be called “God-breathed.”
16. SCRIPTURES A DIVINE-HUMAN BOOK?:
It has been customary among a certain school of writers to speak of the Scriptures, because thus “inspired,” as a Divine-human book, and to appeal to the analogy of Our Lord’s Divine-human personality to explain their peculiar qualities as such. The expression calls attention to an important fact, and the analogy holds good a certain distance. There are human and Divine sides to Scripture, and, as we cursorily examine it, we may perceive in it, alternately, traits which suggest now the one, now the other factor in its origin. But the analogy with our Lord’ s Divine-human personality may easily be pressed beyond reason. There is no hypostatic union between the Divine and the human in Scripture; we cannot parallel the “inscripturation” of the Holy Spirit and the incarnation of the Son of God. The Scriptures are merely the product of Divine and human forces working together to produce a product in the production of which the human forces work under the initiation and prevalent direction of the Divine: the person of our Lord unites in itself Divine and human natures, each of which retains its distinctness while operating only in relation to the other. Between such diverse things there can exist only a remote analogy; and, in point of fact, the analogy in the present instance amounts to no more than that in both cases Divine and human factors are involved, though very differently. In the one they unite to constitute a Divine-human person, in the other they cooperate to perform a Divine-human work. Even so distant an analogy may enable us, however, to recognize that as, in the case of our Lord’s person, the human nature remains truly human while yet it can never fall into sin or error because it can never act out of relation with the Divine nature into conjunction with which it has been brought; so in the case of the production of Scripture by the conjoint action of human and Divine factors, the human factors have acted as human factors and have left their mark on the product as such, and yet cannot have fallen into that error which we say it is human to fall into, because they have not acted apart from the Divine factors, by themselves, but only under their unerring guidance.
17. SCRIPTURE OF NEW TESTAMENT WRITERS WAS THE OLD TESTAMENT:
The New Testament testimony is to the Divine origin and qualities of “Scripture”; and “Scripture” to the writers of the New Testament was fundamentally, of course, the Old Testament. In the primary passage, in which we are told that “every” or “all Scripture” is “God breathed,” the direct reference is to the “sacred writings” which Timothy had had in knowledge since his infancy, and these were, of course, just the sacred books of the Jews ( 2 Timothy 3:16). What is explicit here is implicit in all the allusions to inspired Scriptures in the New Testament. Accordingly, it is frequently said that our entire testimony to the inspiration of Scripture concerns the Old Testament alone. In many ways, however, this is overstated. Our present concern is not with the extent of “Scripture” but with the nature of “Scripture”; and we cannot present here the considerations which justify extending to the New Testament the inspiration which the New Testament writers attribute to the Old Testament. It will not be out of place, however, to point out simply that the New Testament writers obviously themselves made this extension.
They do not for an instant imagine themselves, as ministers of a new covenant, less in possession of the Spirit of God than the ministers of the old covenant: they freely recognize, indeed, that they have no sufficiency of themselves, but they know that God has made them sufficient ( Corinthians 3:5,6). They prosecute their work of proclaiming the gospel, therefore, in full confidence that they speak “by the Holy Spirit” ( Peter 1:12), to whom they attribute both the matter and form of their teaching ( 1 Corinthians 2:13). They, therefore, speak with the utmost assurance of their teaching ( Galatians 1:7,8); and they issue commands with the completest authority ( 1 Thessalonians 4:2,14; Thessalonians 3:6,12), making it, indeed, the test of whether one has the Spirit that he should recognize what they demand as commandments of God ( 1 Corinthians 14:37). It would be strange, indeed, if these high claims were made for their oral teaching and commandments exclusively.
In point of fact, they are made explicitly also for their written injunctions.
It was “the things” which Paul was “writing,” the recognition of which as commands of the Lord, he makes the test of a Spirit-led man ( Corinthians 14:37). It is his “word by this epistle,” obedience to which he makes the condition of Christian communion ( 2 Thessalonians 3:14).
There seems involved in such an attitude toward their own teaching, oral and written, a claim on the part of the New Testament writers to something very much like the “inspiration’’ which they attribute to the writers of the Old Testament.
18. INCLUSION OF NEW TESTAMENT:
And all doubt is dispelled when we observe the New Testament writers placing the writings of one another in the same category of “Scripture” with the books of the Old Testament. The same Paul who, in 2 Timothy 3:16, declared that `every’ or `all scripture is God-breathed’ had already written in 1 Timothy 5:18: “For the scripture saith, Thou shall not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn (grain). And, The laborer is worthy of his hire.” The first clause here is derived from Deuteronomy and the second from the Gospel of Luke, though both are cited as together constituting, or better, forming part of the “Scripture” which Paul adduces as so authoritative as by its mere citation to end all strife. Who shall say that, in the declaration of the later epistle that “all” or “every” Scripture is God-breathed, Paul did not have Luke, and, along with Luke, whatever other new books he classed with the old under the name of Scripture, in the back of his mind, along with those old books which Timothy had had in his hands from infancy? And the same Peter who declared that every “prophecy of scripture” was the product of men who spoke “from God,” being `borne’ by the Holy Spirit ( 2 Peter 1:21), in this same epistle ( 2 Peter 3:16), places Paul’s Epistles in the category of Scripture along with whatever other books deserve that name. For Paul, says he, wrote these epistles, not out of his own wisdom, but “according to the wisdom given to him,” and though there are some things in them hard to be understood, yet it is only the ignorant and unsteadfast” who wrest these difficult passages — as what else could be expected of men who wrest “also the other Scriptures” (obviously the Old Testament is meant) — “unto their own destruction”? Is it possible to say that Peter could not have had these epistles of Paul also lurking somewhere in the back of his mind, along with “the other scriptures,” when he told his readers that every “prophecy of scripture” owes its origin to the prevailing operation of the Holy Ghost? What must be understood in estimating the testimony of the New Testament writers to the inspiration of Scripture is that “Scripture” stood in their minds as the title of a unitary body of books, throughout the gift of God through His Spirit to His people; but that this body of writings was at the same time understood to be a growing aggregate, so that what is said of it applies to the new books which were being added to it as the Spirit gave them, as fully as to the old books which had come down to them from their hoary past. It is a mere matter of detail to determine precisely what new books were thus included by them in the category “Scripture.” They tell us some of them themselves. Those who received them from their hands tell us of others. And when we put the two bodies of testimony together we find that they constitute just our New Testament. It is no pressure of the witness of the writers of the New Testament to the inspiration of the Scripture, therefore, to look upon it as covering the entire body of “Scriptures,” the new books which they were themselves adding to this aggregate, as well as the old books which they had received as Scripture from the fathers. Whatever can lay claim by just right to the appellation of “Scripture,” as employed in its eminent sense by those writers, can by the same just right lay claim to the “inspiration” which they ascribe to this “Scripture.”
LITERATURE.
J. Gerhard, Loci Theolog., Locus I; F. Turretin, Instit. Theol., Locus II; B. de Moor, Commentary in J. Marckii Comp., cap. ii; C. Hodge, Syst.
Theol., New York, 1871, I, 151-86; Henry B. Smith, The Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, New York, 1855, new edition, Cincinnati, 1891; A.
Kuyper, Encyclopedia der heilige Godgeleerdheid, 1888-89, II, 347 ff, English translation; Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology, New York, 1898, 341-563; also De Schrift her woord Gods, Tiel, 1870; H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek2, Kampen, 1906, I, 406-527; R. Haldane, The Verbal Inspiration of the Scriptures Established, Edinburgh, 1830; J. T.
Beck, Einleitung in das System der christlichen Lehre, Stuttgart, 1838, 2nd edition, 1870; A. G. Rudelbach, “Die Lehre yon der Inspiration der heil.
Schrift,” Zeitschrift fur die gesammte Lutherische Theologie und Kirche, 1840, 1, 1841, 1, 1842, 1; S. R. L. Gaussen, Theopneustie ou inspiration pleniere des saintes ecritures2, Paris, 1842, English translation by E. N.
Kirk, New York, 1842; also Theopneustia; the Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, David Scott’s translation, reedited and revised by B. W.
Carr, with a preface by C. H. Spurgeon, London, 1888; William Lee, The Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, Donellan Lecture, 1852, New York, 1857; James Bannerman, Inspiration: the Infallible Truth and Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures, Edinburgh, 1865; F. L. Patton, The Inspiration of the Scriptures, Philadelphia, 1869 (reviewing Lee and Bannerman); Charles Elliott, A Treatise on the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, Edinburgh, 1877; A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield, “Inspiration,” Presbyterian Review, April, 1881, also tract, Philadelphia, 1881; R. Watts, The Rule of Faith and the Doctrine of Inspiration, Edinburgh, 1885; A. Cave, The Inspiration of the O T Inductively Considered, London, 1888; B. Manly, The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration, New York, 1888; W. Rohnert, Die Inspiration der heiligen Schrift und ihre Bestreiter, Leipzig, 1889; A. W. Dieckhoff, Die Inspiration und Irrthumlosigkeit der heiligen Schrift, Leipzig, 1891; J. Wichelhaus, Die Lehre der heiligen Schrift, Stuttgart, 1892; J. Macgregor, The Revelation and the Record, Edinburgh, 1893; J. Urquhart, The Inspiration and Accuracy of the Holy Scriptures, London, 1895; C. Pesch, De Inspiratione Sacrae Scripturae, Freiburg, 1906; James Orr, Revelation and Inspiration, London, 1910. Benjamin B. Warfield INSTANT; INSTANTLY Instant is used once in Isaiah 29:5 in the sense of immediate time; elsewhere in the sense of urgent, pressing; Luke 23:23, where “were instant” is the King James Version translation of the verb [ejpe>keinto , epekeinto ]; Romans 12:12, where it is involved in the verb [proskartere>w , proskartereo ]; compare Acts 6:4. In 2 Timothy 4:2 it stands for the expressive verb [ejpi>sthqi , epistethi ], “stand to.”
Instantly (urgently, steadfastly) is the King James Version rendering of two different Greek phrases, [spoudai>wv , spoudaios ], found in Luke 7:4; and [ejn ejktenei>a| , en ekteneia ], in Acts 26:7. In both cases the American Standard Revised Version renders “earnestly.” Russell Benjamin Miller INSTRUCTION INSTRUMENT INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC ([ µyviyliv; , shalishim ]): Thus, the Revised Version (British and American) and the King James Version ( 1 Samuel 18:6), the Revised Version margin “triangles” or “three-stringed instruments.” See MUSIC.
INSURRECTION INTEGRITY The word “integrity” does not occur in the New Testament, but its equivalents may be seen in “sincerity,” “truth,” the “pure heart,” the “single eye,” etc. In the above sense of simplicity of intention it is equivalent to being honest, sincere, genuine, and is fundamental to true character. W. L. Walker INTELLIGENCE INTEND; INTENT Intend is sometimes used in English in the literal sense of Latin intendere, “to stretch,” but in the English Bible it is used only of the direction of the mind toward an object. Sometimes it is used of mere design ([me>llw , mello ]), Acts 5:35 the King James Version; Acts 20:13; or of desired action ([qe>lw , thelo ]), Luke 14:28 the King James Version; again of a fixed purpose ([bou>lomai , boulomai ]), Acts 5:28; 12:4; or, finally, of a declared intention (‘amar ), Joshua 22:33 the King James Version; 2 Chronicles 28:13 the King James Version.
Intent is used only of purpose, and is the translation sometimes of a conjunction (lebha`abhur ), 2 Samuel 17:14; (lema`an), 2 Kings 10:19; ([i[na , hina ]), Ephesians 3:10; sometimes of an infinitive of purpose, 1 Corinthians 10:6; or of a preposition with pronoun ([eijv tou~to , eis touto ]), Acts 9:21, and sometimes of a substantive ([lo>gw| , logo ]), Acts 10:29. This variety of original expressions represented in the English by single terms is an interesting illustration of the extent of interpretation embodied in our English Bible. Russell Benjamin Miller INTERCESSION The English word is derived from Latin intercedo, “to come between,” which strangely has the somewhat opposed meanings of “obstruct” and “to interpose on behalf of” a person, and finally “to intercede.” The growth of meaning in this word in the various languages is highly suggestive. In the Greek New Testament we find the word in 1 Timothy 2:1; 4:5; [ejntugca>nw , entugchano ], is also found in Romans 8:26-34):
ETYMOLOGY AND MEANING OF TERM:
The meaning of the word is determined by its use in 1 Timothy 2:1, “I exhort, therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all and men”; where the different kinds of prayers appear to be distinguished. Considerable discussion has arisen on the exact meaning of these words. Augustine refers them to the liturgy of the Eucharist. This seems to be importing the significance of the various parts of the ceremony as observed at a time much later than the date of the passage in question. “Supplications” and “prayers” refer to general and specific petitions; “intercessions” will then have the meaning of a request concerning others.
Intercession is prayer on behalf of another, and naturally arises from the instinct of the human heart — not merely prompted by affection and interest, but recognizing that God’s relation to man is not merely individual, but social. Religion thus involves man’s relations to his fellowman, just as in man’s social position intercession with one on behalf of another is a common incident, becoming, in the development of society, the function of appointed officials; as in legal and courtly procedure, so in religion, the spontaneous and affectionate prayer to God on behalf of another grows into the regular and orderly service of a duly appointed priesthood. Intercession is thus to be regarded: (1) as the spontaneous act of man for his fellowman; (2) the official act of developed sacerdotalism; (3) the perfecting of the natural movement of humanity, and the typified function of priesthood in the intercession of Christ and the Holy Spirit.
I. MAN’S INTERCESSION FOR HIS FELLOW-MAN. 1. Patriarchal Examples: Many such prayers are recorded in Scripture. The sacrificial act of Noah may have been partly of this nature, for it is followed by a promise of God on behalf of the race and the earth at large ( Genesis 8:20-22). Such also is Abraham’s prayer for Ishmael ( Genesis 17:18); Abraham’s prayer for Sodom ( Genesis 18:23-33); Abraham for Abimelech ( Genesis 20:17). Jacob’s blessing of Joseph’s sons is of the nature of intercession ( Genesis 48:8-23). His dying blessing of his sons is hardly to be regarded as intercessory; it is, rather, declarative, although in the case of Joseph it approaches intercession. The absence of distinct intercessory prayer from Abraham to Moses is to be observed, and shows how intensely personal and individual the religious consciousness was still in its undeveloped quality. In Moses, however, the social element finds a further development, and is interesting as taking up the spirit of the Father of the Faithful. Moses is the creator of the national spirit. He lifts religion from its somewhat selfish character in the patriarchal life to the higher and wider plane of a national and racial fellowship. 2. Intercessions of Moses: The progressive character of the Divine leading of man is found thus in the development of the intercessory spirit, e.g. Moses’ prayer for the removal of plagues ( Exodus 15:25 f); for water at Rephidim ( Exodus 17:4); for victory over Amalek ( Exodus 17:8-16); prayer for the people after the golden calf ( Exodus 32:11-14,21-34; 33:12 f); after the renewal of the tables of stone ( Exodus 34:9); at the setting forth and stopping of the Ark ( Numbers 10:35 f); after the burning at Taberah ( Numbers 11:2); for the healing of Miriam’s leprosy ( Numbers 12:13); after the return of the spies ( Numbers 14:13-19); after the destruction by serpents ( Numbers 21:7); for direction in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad ( Numbers 27:5); for a successor ( Numbers 27:15); recital of his prayer for the people for their entrance into Canaan ( Deuteronomy 3:23 f); recital of his prayer for the people after the worship of the golden calf ( Deuteronomy 9:18 ff); recital of prayers for the rebellious people ( Deuteronomy 9:25-29); a command to him who pays his third-year tithes to offer prayer for the nation ( Deuteronomy 26:15); Moses’ final blessing of the tribes (Deuteronomy 33). 3. The Progress of Religion, Seen in Moses’ Intercessions: This extensive series of the intercessory prayers of Moses forms a striking illustration of the growth of religion, represented by the founder of the national life of Israel. It is the history of an official, but it is also the history of a leader whose heart was filled with the intensest patriotism and regard for his fellows. None of these prayers are perfunctory. They are the vivid and passionate utterances of a man full of Divine enthusiasm and human affection. They are real prayers wrung from a great and devout soul on occasions of deep and critical importance. Apart from their importance in the history of Israel, they are a noble record of a great leader of men and servant of God. 4. Intercessory Prayer in Israel’s Later History: In the history of Joshua we find only the prayer for the people after the sin of Achan ( Joshua 7:6-9), although the communications from God to Joshua are numerous. A faint intercessory note may be heard in Deborah’s song ( Judges 5:31) though it is almost silenced by the stern and warlike tone of the poem. Gideon’s prayer History of seems to reecho something of the words of Moses ( Judges 6:13), and accords with the national and religious spirit of the great leader who helped in the formation of the religious life of his people (see Judges 6:24), notwithstanding the evident lower plane on which he stood ( Judges 8:27), which may account partially for the apostasy after his death ( Judges 8:33 f).
Manoah’s prayers (Judges 13) may be noted. 5. The Rise of Official Intercession: (The satisfaction of Micah at securing a priest for his house, and the subsequent story, belong rather to the history of official intercession (Judges 18; see below), as also the inquiry of the people through Phinehas at Shiloh ( Judges 20:27 f), and the people’s mourning and prayer ( Judges 21:2 f).) 6. Samuel as an Intercessor in His Functions as Judge, Priest and Prophet: Samuel is the real successor of Moses, and in connection with his life intercession again appears more distinct and effective. Hannah’s song, though chiefly of thankfulness, is not without the intercessory spirit ( <090201> Samuel 2:1-11). So also of Samuel’s prayer at Mizpeh ( 1 Samuel 7:5), and the recognition by the people of Samuel’s place ( 1 Samuel 7:8 f; see also 8:6,21; 10:17-25; 12:19) (for the custom of inquiring of the Lord through a seer see 1 Samuel 9:6-10); Samuel’s prayer for Saul ( Samuel 15:11); Saul’s failure to secure inquiry of God, even through intercession ( 1 Samuel 28:6); Saul’s final appeal through the witch of Endor ( 1 Samuel 28:7-20); David’s prayer to God ( 2 Samuel 7:18); David’s Judge, prayer for deliverance of the people from pestilence ( Samuel 24:17); Solomon’s prayer for wisdom to govern the people ( Kings 3:5-15); Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple ( Kings 8:12-61); Jeroboam’s appeal to the man of God to pray for the healing of his hand ( 1 Kings 13:6); Elijah’s prayer for the widow’s son ( 1 Kings 17:20); Elijah’s prayer for rain ( 1 Kings 18:42); Elisha’s prayer for the widow’s son ( 2 Kings 4:33); Elisha’s prayer for the opening of the young man’s eyes ( 2 Kings 6:17); Hezekiah’s appeal to Isaiah ( 2 Kings 19:4); Hezekiah’s prayer ( 2 Kings 19:14-19); Josiah’s command for prayer concerning the “book that is found” ( Kings 22:13). In Chronicles we find David’s prayer for his house ( Chronicles 17:16-27); David’s prayer for deliverance from the plague ( Chronicles 21:17); David’s prayer for the people and for Solomon at the offering of gifts for the temple ( 1 Chronicles 29:10-19); Solomon’s prayer at the consecration of the temple ( 2 Chronicles 6:1-42); Asa’s prayer ( 2 Chronicles 14:11); Jehoshaphat’s prayer ( 2 Chronicles 20:5-13); Hezekiah’s prayer for the people who had not prepared to eat the Passover ( 2 Chronicles 30:18); Josiah’s command for prayer concerning the book ( 2 Chronicles 34:21). In the Prophets we note Ezra’s prayer ( Ezra 9:5-15); Nehemiah’s prayer ( Nehemiah 1:5-11); the prayer of the Levites for the nation ( Nehemiah 9:4-38). 7. Intercession in the Poetic Books: The poetic books furnish a few examples of intercessory prayer: Job’s intercession for his children ( Job 1:5); Job’s regret at the absence of intercession ( Job 16:21); the Lord’s command that Job should pray for his friends ( Job 42:8). It is remarkable that the references to the Poetic intercession in the Psalms are few; but it must not be forgotten that the psalm is generally a lyrical expression of an intense subjective condition.
This does not seem in the consciousness of Israel to have reached an altruistic development. The Psalms express very powerfully the sense of obligation to God, consciousness of sin, indignation against the sin of others. Occasionally the patriotic spirit leads to prayer for Israel; but only rarely does any deep sense of interest in the welfare of others appear to possess the hearts of Israel’s singers. In Psalm 2:12 there is a hint of the intercessory office of the Son, which reflects, perhaps, the growth of the Messianic spirit in the mind of Israel; Psalm 20 is intercessional; it is the prayer of a people for their king. In Psalm 25:22 we find a prayer for the redemption of Israel, as in Psalm 28:9. In Psalm 35:13 the Psalmist refers to his intercession for others. But the “prayer returned into mine own bosom,” and the final issue of the prayer becomes rather denunciatory than intercessional. The penitence of Psalm 51 rises into a note of prayer for the city (51:18). Sometimes (Psalm 60, and perhaps Psalm 67), the prayer is not individual but for the community, though even there it is hardly intercession. A common necessity makes common prayer.
In Psalm 69 there is the recognition of the injury that folly and sin may do to others, and a kind of compensatory note of intercession is heard. Psalm 72 is regarded by some as the royal father’s prayer for his son and successor, but the reading of the title adopted by the Revised Version (British and American) takes even this psalm from the category of intercession. In Asaph’s Masehil (Psalm 74), intercession is more distinct; it is a prayer for the sanctuary and the people in their desolation and calamity. Asaph appears to have caught something of the spirit of Moses, as in Psalm 79 he again prays for the deliverance of Jerusalem; while a faint echo of the intercessory plea for the nation is heard in Ethan’s psalm (Psalm 89). It sounds faintly in Psalm 106. In Psalm 122 we seem to breathe a larger and more liberal spirit. It contains the appeal to pray for the peace of Jerusalem (122:6), as if the later thought of Israel had begun to expand beyond the mere limits of personal penitence, or desire for deliverance, or denunciation of the enemy. In one of the Songs of Degrees (Psalm 125), there is the somewhat severely ethical prayer: “Do good, O Yahweh, unto those that are good.” The yearning for the salvation of man as man has not yet been born. The Christ must come before the fullness of Divine love is shed abroad in the hearts even of the pious. This comparative absence of intercessory prayer from the service-book of Israel, and its collected expressions of spiritual experience, is instructive. We find continued references to those who needed prayer; but for the most part these references are descriptive of their wickedness, or denunciatory of their hostility to the Psalmist. The Book of Psalms is thus a striking commentary on the growth of Israel’s spiritual life. Intense as it is in its perception of God and His claim on human righteousness, it is only when the supreme revelation of Divine love and the regard for universal man has appeared in the person of our Lord that the large and loving spirit which intercession signifies is found in the experience and expressions of the pious. 8. The Books of Wisdom: In the Wisdom books there is little, if any, reference to intercession. But they deal rather with ethical character, and often on a merely providential and utilitarian basis. It is noticeable that the only reference to pleading a cause is said to be by the Lord Himself as against the injustice of man ( Proverbs 22:23): “Yahweh will plead their (the poor’s) cause.” Action on behalf of others does not appear to have been very highly regarded by the current ethics of the Israelite. A kind of negative helpfulness is indicated in Proverbs 24:28: “Be not a witness against thy neighbor without cause”; and it is significant that the office of advocate was not known among the Jews until they had come under the authority of Rome, when, not knowing the forms of Roman law, they were obliged to secure the aid of a Roman lawyer before the courts. Such practitioners were found in the provinces (Cic. pro Coelio c. 30); Tertullus ( Acts 24:1) was such an advocate. 9. The Prophets’ Succession of Moses and Samuel: In the prophetical books the note of intercession reappears. The prophet, though primarily a messenger from God to man, has also something of the character of the intercessor (see Isaiah’s call, Isaiah 6). Isaiah 25; exhibit the intercessory characteristics. The request of Hezekiah for the prayers of Isaiah ( Isaiah 37:4), and the answer of the Lord implied in 37:6, recall the constantly recurring service of Moses to the people.
Hezekiah himself becomes an intercessor (37:14-21). In Jeremiah 4:10 intercession is mingled with the words of the messenger. The sin of the people hinders such prayers as were offered on their behalf ( Jeremiah 7:16; compare 11:14; 14:11). Intercessory prayers are found in Jeremiah 10:23 ff; 14:7 ff,19-22. The message of Zedekiah requesting Jeremiah’s help is perhaps an instance of seer-inquiry as much as intercession ( Jeremiah 21:1 f; compare 1 Samuel 9:19). In Jeremiah 42:4, the prophet consents to the request of Johanan to seek the Lord on behalf of the people. The Book of Lamentations is naturally conceived in a more constantly recurring spirit of intercession. In the prophecies Jeremiah has been the messenger of God to the people. But, after the catastrophe, in his sorrow he appeals to God for mercy upon them ( Lamentations 2:20; 5:1,19). Ezekiel in the same way is rather the seer of visions and the prophetic representative of God. Yet at times he appeals to God for the people ( Ezekiel 9:8; 11:13). In Daniel we find the intercession of his three friends sought for in order to secure the revelation of the king’s dream ( Daniel 2:17); and Daniel’s prayer for Jerusalem and her people ( Daniel 9:16-19).
In the Minor Prophets intercession rarely appears; even in the graphic pictures of Jonah, though the work itself shows the enlarging of the conception of God’s relation to humanity outside of Israel, the prophet himself exhibits no tenderness and utters no pleas for the city against which he had been sent to prophesy, and receives the implied rebuke from the Lord for his want of sympathy, caring more for the perished gourd than for the vast population of Nineveh, whom the Lord, however, pitied and spared (Johah 4). Even the sublime prayer of Habakkuk 3 has only a suggestion of intercession. Zec 6:13 relieves the general severity of the prophetic message, consisting of the threatenings of judgment, by the gleam of the promise of a royal priest whose office was partially that of an intercessor, though the picture is darkened by the character of the priesthood and the people, whose services had been selfish, without mercy and compassion (Zec 7:4,7). Now the spirit of tenderness, the larger nature, the loving heart, are to be restored to Israel (Zec 8:16-23). Other nations than Israel will share in the mercy of God. In Malachi 2:7 we find the priest rebuked for the loss of his intercessory character. 10. The Priest and Intercession: How far intercession was regarded as a special duty of the priesthood it is not very easy to determine. The priestly office itself was undoubtedly intercessory. In the Priest and offering of the sacrifice even for the individual, and certainly in the national functions, both of the regular and the occasional ceremonies, the priest represented the individual or the community. In Joel 2:17 the priests are distinctly bidden to “weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Yahweh.” Malachi 1:9 appeals to them for intercession to God, and the graphic scene in 1 Macc 7:33-38 shows the priests interceding on behalf of the people against Nicanor. 11. Intercession in the Gospels: In the New Testament, all prayer necessarily takes a new form from its relation to our Lord, and in this intercessory prayer shares. At the outset, Christ teaches prayer on behalf of those “which despitefully use you” ( Matthew 5:44 the King James Version). How completely does this change the entire spirit of prayer! We breathe a new atmosphere of the higher revelation of love. The Lord’s Prayer ( Matthew 6:9-13) is of this character. Its initial word is social, domestic; prayer is the address of children to the Father. Even though some of the petitions are not original, yet their place in the prayer, and the general tone of the Master’s teaching, exhibit the social and altruistic spirit, not so pervasive of the older dispensation. “Thy kingdom come” leads the Order of petitions, with its essentially intercessory character. The forgiveness of others, which is the measure and plea of our own forgiveness, brings even those who have wronged us upon the same plane as ourselves, and if the plea be genuine, how can we refuse to pray for them? And if for our enemies, then surely for our friends. In Matthew 7:11 f, the good things sought of the Father are to be interpreted as among those that if we desire from others we should do to them. And from this spirit the intercessory prayer cannot be absent. We find the spirit of intercession in the pleas of those who sought Christ’s help for their friends, which He was always so quick to recognize: the centurion for his servant ( Matthew 8:13); the friends of the paralytic ( Matthew 9:2-6), where the miracle was wrought on the ground of the friends’ faith. Of a similar character are the requests of the woman for her child and the Lord’s response ( Matthew 15:28); of the man for his lunatic son ( Matthew 17:14-21). There is the suggestion of the intercessory spirit in the law of trespass, specifically followed by the promise of the answer to the prayer of the two or three, agreed and in fellowship ( Matthew 18:15-20), with the immediately attached precepts of forgiveness ( Matthew 18:21-35). A remarkable instance of intercession is recorded in Matthew 20:20-23, where the mother of Zebedee’s sons makes a request on behalf of her children; the added expression, “worshipping him,” raises the occasion into one of intercessory prayer. our Lord’s rebuke is not to the prayer, but to its lack of wisdom.
It is needless to review the cases in the other Gospels. But the statement of Mark 6:5 f, that Christ could not perform mighty works because of unbelief, sheds a flood of light upon one of the important conditions of successful intercession, when contrasted with the healing conditioned by the faith of others than the healed. One of the most distinct examples of intercessory prayer is that of the Lord’s intercession for Peter ( Luke 22:31 f), and for those who crucified Him ( Luke 23:34). The place of intercession in the work of Christ is seen clearly in our Lord’s intercessory prayer (see INTERCESSION OF CHRIST), where it is commanded by definite precept and promise of acceptance. The promise of the answer to prayer in the name of Christ is very definite ( John 16:24). Christ’s highpriestly prayer is the sublimest height of prayer to God and is intercessory throughout (John 17); John 16:26 does not, as some have held, deny His intercession for His disciples; it only throws open the approach to God Himself. 12. Intercessory Prayers of the Church: Acts introduces us to the working of the fresh elements which Christ gave to life. Hence, the prayers of the church become Christian prayers, involving the wider outlook on others and on the world at large which Christianity has bestowed on men. The prayer of the assembled believers upon the liberation of the apostles breathes this spirit ( Acts 4:24-30).
The consecrating prayer for the seven was probably intercessory ( Acts 6:6; compare Acts 1:24). How pathetic is the plea of Stephen for his murderers ( Acts 7:60)! How natural is intercession ( Acts 8:24)!
Peter at Joppa ( Acts 9:40); the church making prayer with-out ceasing for Peter ( Acts 12:5,12); the prayer for Barnabas and Saul at Antioch ( Acts 13:3); Paul and Barnabas praying for the churches ( Acts 14:23); the church at Antioch commending Paul and Silas to the grace of God ( Acts 15:40); Paul and the elders of Ephesus ( Acts 20:36), are all examples, more or less defined, of intercessory prayer. 13. Intercession Found in the Epistles: In the Epistles we may expect to find intercession more distinctly filled with the relation of prayer through Christ. Paul gives us many examples in his Epistles: for the Romans ( Romans 1:9); the Spirit’s interceding (8:27); Paul’s prayer for his race (10:1); his request for prayers (15:30); the help that he found from the prayer of his friends ( 2 Corinthians 1:11); prayer for the Corinthian church ( 2 Corinthians 13:7); for the Ephesians ( Ephesians 1:16-23; 3:14-21; see also Ephesians 6:18; Philippians 1:3-11,19; Colossians 1:3,9; 4:3; 1 Thessalonians 1:2; 5:23,15; 2 Thessalonians 1:2); a definite command that intercession be made for all men and for kings and those in authority ( 1 Timothy 2:1,2); his prayer for Timothy ( 2 Timothy 1:3); for Philemon (1:4); and prayer to be offered for the sick by the elders of the church ( James 5:14-18: see also Hebrews 13:18-21; 1 John 5:14 ff).
II. INTERCESSION PERFECTED IN CHRIST’S OFFICE AND IN THE CHURCH.
This review of the intercession of the Scriptures prepares us for the development of a specific office of intercession, perfectly realized in Christ.
We have seen Moses complying with the people’s request to represent them before God. In a large and generous spirit the leader of Israel intercedes with God for his nation. It was natural that this striking example of intercessory prayer should be followed by other leaders, and that the gradually developed system of religious worship should furnish the conception of the priest, and especially the high priest, as the intercessor for those who came to the sacrifice. This was particularly the significance of the great Day of Atonement, when after offering for himself, the high priest offered the sacrifice for the whole people. This official act, however, does not do away with the intercessory character of prayer as offered by men. We have seen how it runs through the whole history of Israel. But it is found much more distinctly in the Christian life and apparently in the practice of the Christian assembly itself. Paul continually refers to his own intercessory prayers, and seeks for a similar service on his own behalf from those to whom he writes. Intercession is thus based upon the natural tendency of the heart filled by love and a deep sympathetic sense of relation to others. Christ’s intercessory prayer is the highest example and pattern of this form of prayer. His intercessions for His disciples, for His crucifiers, are recorded, and the sacred record rises to the supreme height in the prayer of John 17. In this prayer the following characteristics are to be found: (1) It is based upon the intimate relation of Jesus to the Father. This gives to such prayer its justification; may it be said, its right. (2) It follows the completest fulfillment of duty. It is not the mere expression of desire, even for others. It is the crown of effort on their behalf. He has revealed God to His disciples. He has given to them God’s words; therefore He prays for them ( John 17:6,7-9). (3) It recognizes the Divine, unbroken relation to the object of the prayer: “I am no more in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep,” etc. (17:11). (4) The supreme end of the prayer is salvation from the evil of the world (17:15). (5) The wide sweep of the prayer and its chief objects — unity with God, and the presence with Christ, and the indwelling of the Divine love. The prayer is a model for all intercessory prayer. See, further, INTERCESSION OF CHRIST; PRAYERS OF CHRIST; OFFICES OF CHRIST.
III. INTERCESSION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
In connection with the subject of intercession, there arises a most interesting question as to whether the Holy Spirit is not presented in Scriptures as an intercessor. The text in which the doctrine seems to be taught is that of Romans 8:26 f: “In like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered; and he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” By far the larger number of expositors have understood by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. The older commentators, in general, refer to the Holy Spirit. Tholuck, Ewald, Philippi, Meyer, most of the American theologians and English commentators, as Shedd, Alford, Jowett, Wordsworth, interpret it in the same way. Lange and Olshausen refer it to the human spirit. Undoubtedly, the “groanings” have led to the denial of the reference to the Holy Spirit. But the very form of the word translated “helpeth” indicates cooperation, and this must be of something other than the spirit of man himself. The undoubted difficulties of the passage, which are strongly urged by Lange (see Lange’s Commentary on Romans 8:26), must be acknowledged. At the same time the statement seems to be very clear and definite. An explanation has been given that the Holy Spirit is here referred to as dwelling in us, and thus making intercession. The Divine Spirit is said to be a Spirit of supplication (Zec 12:10). The distinction which is made between the intercession of Christ in heaven in His priestly office and that of the Holy Spirit interceding within the souls of believers, referred to by Shedd (see Commentary on Romans), must be carefully used, for if pressed to its extreme it would lead to the materialization and localization of the Divine nature. Moreover, may not the intercession of our Lord be regarded as being partially exemplified in that of the Spirit whom He has declared to be His agent and representative? If Christ dwells in believers by His Spirit, His intercession, especially if subjective in and with their spirits, may properly be described as the intercession of the Holy Ghost. L. D. Bevan INTERCESSION OF CHRIST The general conception of our Lord’s mediatorial office is specially summed up in His intercession in which He appears in His high-priestly office, and also as interceding with the Father on behalf of that humanity whose cause He had espoused.
1. CHRIST’S INTERCESSION VIEWED IN ITS PRIESTLY ASPECT:
The function of priesthood as developed under Judaism involved the position of mediation between man and God. The priest represented man, and on man’s behalf approached God; thus he offered sacrifice, interceded and gave to the offerer whom he represented the benediction and expression of the Divine acceptance. (For the various forms of these offerings, see special articles.) As in sacrifice, so in the work of Christ, we find the proprietary rights of the offerer in the sacrifice. For man, Christ as one with man, and yet in His own personal right, offers Himself (see Romans 5; and compare Galatians 4:5 with Hebrews 2:11). There was also the transfer of guilt and its conditions, typically by laying the hand on the head of the animal, which then bore the sins of the offerer and was presented to God by the priest. The acknowledgment of sin and the surrender to God is completely fulfilled in Christ’s offering of Himself, and His death (compare Leviticus 3:2,8,13; 16:21; with Isaiah 53:6; Corinthians 5:21). our Lord’s intercessory quality in the sacrifice of Himself is not only indicated by the imputation of guilt to Him as representing the sinner, but also in the victory of His life over death, which is then given to man in God’s acceptance of His representative and substitute.
In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the intercessory character of our Lord’s high-priestly office is transferred to the heavenly condition and work of Christ, where the relation of Christ’s work to man’s condition is regarded as being still continued in the heavenly place (see Hebrews 9:11-28).
This entrance into heaven is once for all, and in the person of the high priest the way is open to the very presence of God. From one point of view ( Hebrews 10:12) the priestly service of the Lord was concluded and gathered up into His kingly office ( Hebrews 10:13,14-18). But from another point of view, we ourselves are bidden to enter into the Holiest Place; as if in union with Christ we too become a kingly priesthood ( Hebrews 10:19-22; and compare 1 Peter 2:9).
It must not be forgotten, however, that this right of entrance into the most Holy Place is one that depends entirely upon our vital union with Christ, He appears in heaven for us and we with Him, and in this sense He fulfills the second duty of His high-priestly office as intercessor, with the added conception drawn from the legal advocacy of the Roman court. The term translated “Advocate” in 1 John 2:2 is [para>klhtov , parakletos ], which in John 14:16 is translated “Comforter.” The word is of familiar use in Greek for the legal advocate or patronus who appeared on behalf of his client. Thus, in the double sense of priestly and legal representative, our Lord is our intercessor in Heaven.
Of the modes in which Christ carries out His intercessory office, we can have no knowledge except so far as we may fairly deduce them from the phraseology and suggested ideas of Scripture. As high priest, it may surely be right for us to aid our weak faith by assuring ourselves that our Lord pleads for us, while at the same time we must be careful not to deprave our thought concerning the glorified Lord by the metaphors and analogies of earthly relationship.
The intercessory work of Christ may thus be represented: He represents man before God in His perfect nature, His exalted office and His completed work. The Scripture word for this is ( Hebrews 9:24) “to appear before the face of God for us.” There is also an active intercession. This is the office of our Lord as advocate or [para>klhtov , parakletos ]. That this conveys some relation to the aid which one who has broken the law receives from an advocate cannot be overlooked, and we find Christ’s intercession in this aspect brought into connection with the texts which refer to justification and its allied ideas (see Romans 8:34; 1 John 2:1).
2. CHRIST’S INTERCESSORY WORK FROM THE STANDPOINT OF PRAYER:
In PRAYERS OF CHRIST (which see), the intercessory character of many of our Lord’s prayers, and especially that of John 17, is considered. And it has been impossible for Christian thought to divest itself of the idea that the heavenly intercession of Christ is of the order of prayer. It is impossible for us to know; and even if Christ now prays to the Father, it can be in no way analogous to earthly prayers. The thought of some portion of Christendom distinctly combined prayer in the heavenly work of the Lord. There is danger in extreme views. Scriptural expressions must not be driven too far, and, on the other hand, they must not be emptied of all their contents.
Modern Protestant teaching has, in its protest against a merely physical conception of our Lord’s state and occupation in heaven, almost sublimed reality from His intercessory work. In Lutheran teaching the intercession of our Lord was said to be “vocal,” “verbal” and “oral.” It has been well remarked that such forms of prayer require flesh and blood, and naturally the teachers of the Reformed churches, for the most part, have contented themselves (as for example Hodge, Syst. Theol., II, 593) with the declaration that “the intercession of Christ includes: (1) His appearing before God in our behalf, as the sacrifice for our sins, as our high priest, on the ground of whose work we receive the remission of our sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and all needed good; (2) defense against the sentence of the law and the charges of Satan, who is the great accuser; (3) His offering Himself as our surety, not only that the demands of justice shall be shown to be satisfied, but that His people shall be obedient and faithful; (4) the oblation of the persons of the redeemed, sanctifying their prayers, and all their services, rendering them acceptable to God, through the savor of his own merits.”
Even this expression of the elements which constitute the intercession of the Lord, cautious and spiritual as it is in its application to Christian thought and worship, must be carefully guarded from a too complete and materialistic use. Without this care, worship and devout thought may become degraded and fall into the mechanical forms by which our Lord’s position of intercessor has been reduced to very little more than an imaginative and spectacular process which goes on in some heavenly place.
It must not be forgotten that the metaphorical and symbolic origin of the ideas which constitute Christ’s intercession is always in danger of dominating and materializing the spiritual reality of His intercessional office. L. D. Bevan INTEREST Long before Abraham’s time money had been loaned at a fixed rate of interest in Babylonia and almost certainly in Egypt. The Code of Hammurabi gives regulations regarding the lending and borrowing of money, the usual interest being 20 percent. Sometimes it was only 11 2/3 and 13 1/3, as shown by contract tablets. In one case, if the loan was not paid in two months, 18 per cent interest would be charged. Corn (grain), dates, onions, etc., were loaned at interest. Thus Moses and Israel would be familiar with commercial loans and interest. In Israel there was no system of credit or commercial loans in Moses’ time and after. A poor man borrowed because he was poor. The law of Moses ( Exodus 22:25) forbade loaning at interest. There was to be no creditor and no taker of interest among them ( Leviticus 25:36,37). Deuteronomy permits them to lend on interest to a foreigner ( Deuteronomy 23:19,20), but not to a brother Israelite. That this was considered the proper thing in Israel for centuries is seen in Psalm 15:5, while Proverbs 28:8 implies that it was an unusual thing, interest being generally exacted and profit made.
Ezekiel condemns it as a heinous sin ( Ezekiel 18:8,13,17) and holds up the ideal of righteousness as not taking interest (22:12). Isaiah 24:2 implies that it was a business in that age, the lender and borrower being social types. Jeremiah implies that there was not always the best feeling between lenders and borrowers (15:10). According to Nehemiah 5:7,10, rich Jews were lending to others and exacting heavy interest.
Nehemiah condemns such conduct and forbids its continuance, citing himself as an example of lending without interest. The lenders restored percent of that exacted.
In the New Testament, references to interest occur in the parable of the Pounds ( Luke 19:23) and of the Talents ( Matthew 25:27). Here the men were expected to put their master’s money out at interest, and condemnation followed the failure to do so. Thus the principle of receiving interest is not condemned in the Old Testament, only it was not to be taken from a brother Israelite. In the New Testament it is distinctly encouraged. See also USURY.
J. J. Reeve INTERMEDDLE For “intermeddleth with” ( Proverbs 18:1 the King James Version), the Revised Version (British and American) gives “rageth against” (margin “quarrelleth with”). M. O. Evans INTERMEDIATE, STATE INTERPRETATION 1. GENERAL PRINCIPLES:
Is a generic term and may refer to any work of literature. Referred specifically to the sacred Scriptures, the science of interpretation is generally known as hermeneutics, while the practical application of the principles of this science is exegesis. In nearly all cases, interpretation has in mind the thoughts of another, and then, further, these thoughts expressed in another language than that of the interpreter. In this sense it is used in Biblical research. A person has interpreted the thoughts of another when he has in his own mind a correct reproduction or photograph of the thought as it was conceived in the mind of the original writer or speaker. It is accordingly a purely reproductive process, involving no originality of thought on the part of the interpreter. If the latter adds anything of his own it is eisegesis and not exegesis. The moment the Bible student has in his own mind what was in the mind of the author or authors of the Biblical books when these were written, he has interpreted the thought of the Scriptures.
The interpretation of any specimen of literature will depend on the character of the work under consideration. A piece of poetry and a chapter of history will not be interpreted according to the same principles or rules.
Particular rules that are legitimate in the explanation of a work of fiction would be entirely out of place in dealing with a record of facts.
Accordingly, the rules of the correct interpretation of the Scriptures will depend upon the character of these writings themselves, and the principles which an interpreter will employ in his interpretation of the Scriptures will be in harmony with his ideas of what the Scriptures are as to origin, character, history, etc. In the nature of the case the dogmatical stand of the interpreter will materially influence his hermeneutics and exegesis. In the legitimate sense of the term, every interpreter of the Bible is “prejudiced,” i.e. is guided by certain principles which he holds antecedently to his work of interpretation. If the modern advanced critic is right in maintaining that the Biblical books do not differ in kind or character from the religious books of other ancient peoples, such as the Indians or the Persians, then the same principles that he applies in the case of the Rig Veda or the Zend Avesta he will employ also in his exposition of the Scriptures. If, on the other hand, the Bible is for him a unique collection of writings, Divinely inspired and a revelation from the source of all truth, the Bible student will hesitate long before accepting contradictions, errors, mistakes, etc., in the Scriptures.
2. SPECIAL PRINCIPLES:
The Scriptures are a Divine and human product combined. That the holy men of God wrote as they were moved by the Spirit is the claim of the Scriptures themselves. Just where the line of demarcation is to be drawn between the human and the Divine factors in the production of the sacred Scriptures materially affects the principles of interpreting these writings (see INSPIRATION ). That the human factor was sufficiently potent to shape the form of thought in the Scriptures is evident on all hands. Paul does not write as Peter does, nor John as James; the individuality of the writer of the different books appears not only in the style, choice of words, etc., but in the whole form of thought also. There are such things as a Pauline, a Johannine and a Petrine type of Christian thought, although there is only one body of Christian truth underlying all types. Insofar as the Bible is exactly like other books, it must be interpreted as we do other works of literature. The Scriptures are written in Hebrew and in Greek, and the principles of forms and of syntax that would apply to the explanation of other works written in these languages and under these circumstances must be applied to the Old Testament and New Testament also. Again, the Bible is written for men, and its thoughts are those of mankind and not of angels or creatures of a different or higher spiritual or intellectual character; and accordingly there is no specifically Biblical logic, or rhetoric, or grammar.
The laws of thought and of the interpretation of thought in these matters pertain to the Bible as they do to other writings.
But in regard to the material contents of the Scriptures, matters are different and the principles of interpretation must be different. God is the author of the Scriptures which He has given through human agencies.
Hence, the contents of the Scriptures, to a great extent, must be far above the ordinary concepts of the human mind. When John declares that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to redeem it, the interpreter does not do justice to the writer if he finds in the word “God” only the general philosophical conception of the Deity and not that God who is our Father through Christ; for it was the latter thought that was in the mind of the writer when he penned these words. Thus, too, it is a false interpretation to find in “Our Father” anything but this specifically Biblical conception of God, nor is it possible for anybody but a believing Christian to utter this prayer ( Matthew 6:9) in the sense which Christ, who taught it to His disciples, intended.
Again, the example of Christ and His disciples in their treatment of the Old Testament teaches the principle that the ipse dixit of a Scriptural passage is to be interpreted as decisive as to its meaning. In the about 400 citations from the Old Testament found in the New Testament, there is not one in which the mere “It is written” is not regarded as settling its meaning.
Whatever may be a Bible student’s theory of inspiration, the teachings and the examples of interpretation found in the Scriptures are in perfect. harmony in this matter.
These latter facts, too, show that in the interpretation of the Scriptures principles must be applied that are not applicable in the explanation of other books. As God is the author of the Scriptures He may have had, and, as a matter of fact, in certain cases did have in mind more than the human agents through whom He spoke did themselves understand. The fact that, in the New Testament, persons like Aaron and David, institutions like the law, the sacrificial system, the priesthood and the like, are interpreted as typical of persons and things under the New Covenant shows that the true significance, e.g. of the Levitical system, can be found only when studied in the light of the New Testament fulfillment.
Again, the principle of parallelism, not for illustrative but for argumentative purposes, is a rule that can, in the nature of the case, be applied to the interpretation of the Scriptures alone and not elsewhere. As the Scriptures represent one body of truth, though in a kaleidoscopic variety of forms, a statement on a particular subject in one place can be accepted as in harmony with a statement on the same subject elsewhere. In short, in all of those characteristics in which the Scriptures are unlike other literary productions, the principles of interpretation of the Scriptures must also be unlike those employed in other cases.
3. HISTORICAL DATA:
Owing chiefly to the dogmatical basis of hermeneutics as a science, there has been a great divergence of views in the history of the church as to the proper methods of interpretation. It is one of the characteristic and instructive features of the New Testament writers that they absolutely refrain from the allegorical method of interpretation current in those times, particularly in the writings of Philo. Not even Galatians 4:22, correctly understood, is an exception, since this, if an allegorical interpretation at all, is an argumentum ad hominem. The sober and grammatical method of interpretation in the New Testament writers stands out, too, in bold and creditable contrast to that of the early Christian exegetes, even of Origen.
Only the Syrian fathers seemed to be an exception to the fantasies of the allegorical methods. The Middle Ages produced nothing new in this sphere; but the Reformation, with its formal principle that the Bible and the Bible alone is the rule of faith and life, made the correct grammatical interpretation of the Scriptures practically a matter of necessity. In modern times, not at all prolific in scientific discussions of hermeneutical principles and practices, the exegetical methods of different interpreters are chiefly controlled by their views as to the origin and character of the Scriptural books, particularly in regard to their inspiration.
LITERATURE.
Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics, New York, 1884. Here the literature is fully given, as also in Weidner’s Theological Encyclopedia, I, 266 ff. G. H. Schodde INTERPRETATION OF TONGUES See TONGUES, INTERPRETATION OF.
INTERROGATION INTER-TESTAMENTAL, HISTORY AND LITERATURE INTREAT; INTREATY; (ENTREAT) The Revised Version changes all passages of the King James Version where “intreat” is found to “entreat,” with the exception of those mentioned below. The meaning of “entreat” is “to ask,” “to beseech,” “to supplicate”: Job 19:17 reads “and my supplication to the children” (hannothi , the King James Version “though I entreated for the children,” the Revised Version, margin “I make supplication”). Jeremiah 15:11 reads, “I will cause the enemy to make supplication” (hiphga’ti ), instead, the King James Version “I will cause the enemy to entreat” (the Revised Version margin “I will intercede for thee with the enemy”). 1 Timothy 5:1 changes the King James Version “intreat” to “exhort.” Philippians 4:3 renders the King James Version “entreat” by “beseech.” Russell Benjamin Miller INWARD, MAN INWARD MAN (which see) is identical in meaning. Dwight M. Pratt IOB IPHDEIAH IPHTAH IPHTAH-EL The valley of Iphtah-el lay on the North border of Zebulun ( Joshua 19:14,27). Northwest of the plain of el-Battauf stands a steep hill, connected only by a low saddle with the hills on the North. The name Tell Jefat suggests the Jotapata of Josephus (BJ, III, vi, i; vii, i, etc.), and the place answers well to his description. It probably corresponds to the ancient Iphtah-el. In that case the valley is most probably that which begins at Tell Jefat, passes round the South of Jebel Kaukab, and, as Wady ‘Abellin, opens on the plain of Acre. W. Ewing IR IRA IRAM IR-HA-HERES A city of Egypt referred to in Isaiah 19:18. Jewish quarrels concerning the temple which Onias built in Egypt have most probably been responsible for the altering of the texts of some of the early manuscripts, and it is not now possible to determine absolutely which have been altered and which accord with the original. This difference in manuscripts gives rise to different opinions among authorities here to be noted. Most of the discussion of this name arises from this uncertainty and is hence rather profitless.
The starting-point of any proper discussion of Ir-ha-h is that the words are by Isaiah and that they are prophecy, predictive prophecy. They belong to that portion of the prophecies of Isaiah which by nearly all critics is allowed to the great prophet. Nothing but unfounded speculation or an unwillingness to admit that there is any predictive prophecy can call in question Isaiah’s authorship of these words. Then the sense of the passage in which these words occur imperatively demands that they be accounted predictive prophecy. Isaiah plainly refers to the future, “shall be called”; and makes a definite statement concerning what shall take place in the future (19:18-24). The reality of predictive prophecy may be discussed by those so inclined, but that the intention of the author here was to utter predictive prophecy does not seem to be open to question. For the verification of this prediction by its fulfillment in history we shall inquire concerning: (1) the times intended: “that day”; (2) the “five cities”; (3) “Ir-ha-heres.”
1. THE TIMES INTENDED: “THAT DAY”:
The prophet gives a fairly specific description of “that day.” It was at least to begin when “there shall be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan, and swear to Yahweh of hosts” ( Isaiah 19:18), and “In that day shall there be an altar to Yahweh in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to Yahweh” ( Isaiah 19:19).
There was to be also some inroad made upon the heathenism of Egypt by the message of the Lord ( Isaiah 19:21 f), and about that time a deliverer should arise in Egypt ( Isaiah 19:20), and all this should take place before the power of the land of Assyria should pass away ( Isaiah 19:23 f) .
2. THE “FIVE CITIES”:
The first historical fulfillment of these words is found at the period when Onias built his imitation of the Temple of Jerusalem at the place called by the Greeks Leontopolis (Tell el-Yehudiyeh), and the worship of Yahweh was set up at Elephantine, and the Jews were a great power at Alexandria and at Tahpanhes. While any of these latter three might have contained the “pillar,” the “altar” would thus be either at Leontopolis or the other one of the “five cities” which cannot be named with much probability. The great deliverer would seem to be Alexander. Some think that the conversion of the Egyptians indicated in Isaiah 19:21,22 is furthered, though still not completed, in the Christian invasion of the 1st century, and again in the success of modern Christian missions in Egypt. 3. “IR-HA-HERES”:
It will be seen that it does not follow from what has been said that Leontopolis was Ir-ha-h as some seem to think. It is not said by the prophet that the place where was the “altar” was called Ir-ha-h, even if it were certain that the altar was at Leontopolis. Nevertheless, Leontopolis may be Ir-ha-h. The problem is not in the first place the identification of the name, but the determination of which one of the “five cities” was destroyed. The expression “shall be called the city of destruction” seems clearly to indicate that Ir-ha-h is not a name at all, but merely a descriptive appellation of that city which should “be destroyed.” It still remains to inquire whether or not this was an independent appellation, or whether, more probably, it bore some relation to the name of that city at the time at which the prophet wrote, a play upon the sound, or the significance of the name or both of these, either through resemblance or contrast. If Gesenius is right, as he seems to be, in the opinion that “in the idiom of Isaiah Ir-hah means simply `the city that shall be destroyed,’ “ then the original problem of finding which one of the cities was destroyed seems to be the whole problem. Still, in the highly-wrought language of Isaiah and according to the genius of the Hebrew tongue, there is probably a play upon words. It is here that the consideration of the name itself properly comes in and probably guides us rightly. Speculation, by Gesenius, Duhm, Cheyne and others, has proposed various different readings of this name, some of them requiring two or three changes in the text to bring it to its present state. Speculation can always propose readings. On was sometimes called “Heres” and meant “house of the sun,” which would be both translated and transliterated into Hebrew ha-cherec and might have `ir (“city”) prefixed. Naville, through his study of the great Harris papyrus, believed that the old Egyptian city which later was called Leontopolis (Tell el-Yehudiyeh) was immediately connected with On and called “House of Ra,” also “House of the Sun.” Thus, this name might be both transliterated and translated into the Hebrew ha-cherec and have `ir prefixed. The difference between this expression and “Ir-ha-h” which Isaiah used is only the difference between “h” and “ch.” So that Ir-ha-h is most probably a predictive prophecy concerning the disaster that was to overtake one of the “five cities,” with a play upon the name of the city, and that city is either On, the later Heliopolis, or the ancient sacred city about 4 miles to the North of On, where Onias was to build his temple and which later became Leontopolis (Tellel-Yehudiyeh). No more positive identification of Ir-ha-h is yet possible. M. G. Kyle IRI IRIJAH IR-NAHASH IRON After the discovery of iron, it was evidently a long time in replacing bronze. This was probably due to the difficulties in smelting it. An old mountaineer once described to the writer the process of iron smelting as it was carried on in Mt. Lebanon in past centuries. As a boy he had watched his father, who was a smelter, operate one of the last furnaces to be fired.
For each firing, many cords of wood, especially green oak branches, were used, and several days of strenuous pumping at the eight bellows was necessary to supply the air blast. As a result a small lump of wrought iron was removed from the bottom of the furnace after cooling. The iron thus won was carried to Damascus where it was made into steel by workers who kept their methods secret. This process, which has not been worked now for years, was undoubtedly the same as was used by the ancients. It is not at all unlikely that the Lebanon iron, transformed into steel, was what was referred to as “northern iron” in Jeremiah 15:12 (the King James Version). In many districts the piles of slag from the ancient furnaces are still evident.
Aside from the limited supply of iron ore in Mt. Lebanon (compare Deuteronomy 8:9), probably no iron was found in Syria and Palestine.
It was brought from Tarshish ( Ezekiel 27:12) and Vedan and Jayan ( Ezekiel 27:19), and probably Egypt ( Deuteronomy 4:20).
The first mention of iron made in the Bible is in Genesis 4:22, where Tubal-Cain is mentioned as “the forger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron.” It is likely that the Jews learned the art of metallurgy from the Phoenicians ( 2 Chronicles 2:14) (see CRAFTS ). Iron was used in Biblical times much as it is today. For a description of a smith at work see Ecclesiasticus 38:28. Huge city gates, overlaid with strips of iron ( <19A716> Psalm 107:16; Isaiah 45:2), held in place by crude square-headed nails ( 1 Chronicles 22:3), are still a familiar sight in the larger cities of Palestine and Syria ( Acts 12:10). Threshing instruments were made of iron (Amos 1:3); so also harrows ( 2 Samuel 12:31), axes (ib; Kings 6:6; see Ax), branding irons ( 1 Timothy 4:2), and other tools ( 1 Kings 6:7). There were iron weapons ( Numbers 35:16; Job 20:24), armor ( 2 Samuel 23:7), horns ( 1 Kings 22:11), fetters ( <19A518> Psalm 105:18), chariots ( Joshua 17:16), yokes ( Jeremiah 28:14), breastplates ( Revelation 9:9), pens (chisels) ( Job 19:24; Jeremiah 17:1), sheets or plates ( Ezekiel 4:3), gods ( Daniel 5:4), weights ( 1 Samuel 17:7), bedsteads ( Deuteronomy 3:11). Iron was used extensively in building the temple. See METALS.
Figurative: “The iron furnace” is used metaphorically for affliction, chastisement ( Deuteronomy 4:20; Ezekiel 22:18-22). Iron is also employed figuratively to represent barrenness ( Deuteronomy 28:23), slavery (“yoke of iron,” Deuteronomy 28:48), strength (“bars of iron,” Job 40:18), severity (“rod of iron,” Psalm 2:9), captivity ( <19A710> Psalm 107:10), obstinacy (“iron sinew,” Isaiah 48:4), fortitude (“iron pillar,” Jeremiah 1:18), moral deterioration ( Jeremiah 6:28), political strength ( Daniel 2:33), destructive power (“iron teeth,” Daniel 7:7); the certainty with which a real enemy will ever show his hatred is as the rust returning upon iron (Ecclesiasticus 12:10 the King James Version, the Revised Version (British and American) “brass”); great obstacles (“walls of iron,” 2 Macc 11:9). James A. Patch IRON IRPEEL IRREVERENCE IRRIGATION The remains of the great irrigation works of the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians leave no doubt as to the extent to which they used water to redeem the deserts. In Palestine and Syria there was less need ( Deuteronomy 10:7; 11:11) for irrigation. Here there is an annual fall of from 30 to 40 inches, coming principally during the winter. This is sufficient for the main crops. The summer supply of vegetables, as well as the fruit and mulberry trees, requires irrigation. Hardly a drop of many mountain streams is allowed to reach the sea, but is used to water the gardens of the mountain terraces and plains. This supply is now being supplemented by the introduction of thousands of pumps and oil engines for raising the water of the wells sufficiently to run it through the irrigation canals. Where a spring is small, its supply is gathered into a birket, or cistern, and then drawn off through a large outlet into the trenches, sometimes several days being required to fill the cistern. In Ecclesiastes 2:6, Solomon is made to say, “I made me pools of water, to water therefrom the forest.” This passage helps to explain the uses of the socalled Pools of Solomon, South of Jerusalem. In this same district are traces of the ancient terraces which were probably watered from these pools. See AGRICULTURE; GARDEN.
James A. Patch IR-SHEMESH IRU ISAAC 1. ROOT, FORMS AND ANALOGUES:
This name has the double spelling, [ qj;x]yi , yitschaq], and [ qj;c]yi , yitschaq] ([ jIsaa>k , Isaak]), corresponding to the two forms in which appears the root meaning “to laugh” — a root that runs through nearly all the Semitic languages. In Hebrew both tsachaq and sachaq have their cognate nouns, and signify, in the simple stem, “to laugh,” in the intensive stem, “to jest, play, dance, fondle,” and the like. The noun yitshar, meaning “fresh oil,” from a root tsahar (“to be bright, conspicuous”), proves that nouns can be built on precisely the model of yitschaq, which would in that case signify “the laughing one,” or something similar. Yet Barth (Die Nominalbildung in den semitischen Sprachen, 154, b and c) maintains that all proper names beginning with yodh prefixed to the root are really pure imperfects, i.e. verbal forms with some subject to be understood if not actually present.
Hence, Isaac would mean “laughs”: either indefinite, “one laughs,” or “he laughs,” namely, the one understood as the subject. There are some Hebrew names that have a similar form with no accompanying subject. Of these sometimes the meaning of the root is quite obscure, sometimes it is appropriate to any supposable subject. Each is a problem by itself; for the interpretation of any one of them there is little help to be gained from a comparison with the others. 2. Implication: What subject, then, is to be understood with this imperfect verb yitschaq?
Or is no definite subject to be supplied? (1) ‘El, God, may be supplied: “God laughs.” Such an expression might be understood of the Divine benevolence, or of the fearful laughter of scorn for His enemies ( Psalm 2:4), or, euphemistically, of the Divine wrath, the “terrible glance,” as of Moloch, etc. (so Meyer, Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstdmme, 255). (2) Some human person: “he laughs.” So, for example, he himself, namely, the child who receives the name; or, the father; or, the brother (not the mother, which would require titschaq). In the light now of these possibilities we turn to the narratives of Isaac’s birth and career and find the following subjects suggested: (a) father, Genesis 17:17; (b) indefinite, “one laughs” (not “she laughs,” see above), Genesis 18:12-15; 21:6; (c) brother, Genesis 21:9; (d) himself, Genesis 26:8. Of these passages the last two show the verb in the intensive stem in the signification of (c) “mock” (?), and (d) “dally.” We find this same verb in these senses in Genesis 19:14 and 39:14,17, in the stories of Lot and of Joseph, and it is possible that here also in the story of Isaac it has no more connection with the name Isaac than it has there with the names Lot and Joseph. However, this may be, there is obviously one interpretation of the name Isaac, which, required in two of the passages, is equally appropriate in them all, namely, that with the indefinite subect, “one laughs.” Consideration of the sources to which these passages are respectively assigned by the documentary hypothesis tends only to confirm this result.
II. FAMILY AND KINDRED.
The two things in Isaac’s life that are deemed worthy of extensive treatment in the sacred narrative are his birth and his marriage. His significance, in fact, centers in his transmission of what went before him to what came after him. Hence, his position in his father’s family, his relation to its greatest treasure, the religious birthright, and his marriage with Rebekah are the subjects that require special notice in this connection. 1. Birth and Place in theFamily: The birth of Isaac is represented as peculiar in these respects: the age of his parents, the purity of his lineage, the special Divine promises accompanying. What in Abraham’s life is signalized by the Divine “call” in the from his father’s house, and what in Jacob’s life is brought about by a series of providential interpositions, seems in Isaac’s case to become his by his birth. His mother, who is not merely of the same stock as Abraham but actually his half-sister, is the legal wife. As her issue Isaac is qualified by the laws of inheritance recognized in their native land to become his father’s heir. But Ishmael, according to those laws, has a similarly valid claim (see ABRAHAM , IV, 2), and it is only by express command that Abraham is led to abandon what was apparently both custom and personal preference, to “cast out the bondwoman and her son,” and to acquiesce in the arrangement that “in Isaac shall thy seed be called.” 2. Relation to the Religious Birthright: But the birthright of Isaac was of infinitely more importance than the birthright in the family of any other wealthy man of that day. All that limitless blessing with which Abraham set forth under God’s leadership was promised not only to him but to his “seed”; it was limitless in time as well as in scope. To inherit it was of more consequence to Isaac than to inherit any number of servants, flocks or wells of his father’s acquisition. A sense of these relative values seems to have been a part of Isaac’s spiritual endowment, and this, more than anything else related of him, makes him an attractive figure on the pages of Gen. 3. Significance of Marriage: The raising up of a “seed” to be the bearers of these promises was the prime concern of Isaac’s life. Not by intermarriage with the Canaanites among whom he lived, but by marriage with one of his own people, in whom as much as in himself should be visibly embodied the separateness of the chosen family of God — thus primarily was Isaac to pass on to a generation as pure as his own the heritage of the Divine blessing. Rebekah enters the tent of Isaac as truly the chosen of God as was Abraham himself.
III. STORY OF LIFE.
Previous to his marriage Isaac’s life is a part of the story of Abraham; after his marriage it merges into that of his children. It is convenient, therefore, to make his marriage the dividing-line in the narrative of his career. 1. Previous to Marriage: A child whose coming was heralded by such signal marks of Divine favor as was Isaac’s would be, even apart from other special considerations, a welcome and honored member of the patriarchal household. The covenantsign of circumcision (which Isaac was the first to receive at the prescribed age of 8 days), the great feast at his weaning, and the disinheritance of Ishmael in his favor, are all of them indications of the unique position that this child held, and prepare the reader to appreciate the depth of feeling involved in the sacrifice of Isaac, the story of which follows thereupon. The age of Isaac at the time of this event is not stated, but the fact that he is able to carry the wood of the offering shows that he had probably attained his full growth. The single question he asks his father and his otherwise unbroken silence combine to exhibit him in a favorable light, as thoughtful, docile and trustful. The Divine interposition to save the lad thus devoted to God constitutes him afresh the bearer of the covenant-promise and justifies its explicit renewal on this occasion. From this point onward the biographer of Isaac evidently has his marriage in view, for the two items that preceded the long 24th chaper, in which Rebekah’s choice and coming are rehearsed, are, first, the brief genealogical paragraph that informs the reader of the development of Nahor’s family just as far as to Rebekah, and second, the chapter that tells of Sarah’s death and burial — an event clearly associated in the minds of all with the marriage of Isaac (see Genesis 24:3,16,67). Divine interest in the choice of her who should be the mother of the promised seed is evident in every line of the chapter that dramatizes the betrothal of Isaac and Rebekah. Their first meeting is described at its close with the tender interest in such a scene natural to every descendant of the pair, and Issac is sketched as a man of a meditative turn ( Genesis 24:63) and an affectionate heart ( Genesis 24:67). 2. Subsequent to Marriage: The dismissal of the sons of Abraham’s concubines to the “East-country” is associated with the statement that Isaac inherited all that Abraham had; yet it has been remarked that, besides supplying them with gifts, Abraham was doing them a further kindness in thus emancipating them from continued subjection to Isaac, the future head of the clan. After Abraham’s death we are expressly informed that God “blessed Isaac his son” in fulfillment of previous promise. The section entitled “the [toledhoth] (generations) of Isaac” extends from Genesis 25:19 to 35:29. At the opening of it Isaac is dwelling at Beer-lahai-roi (25:11), then at Gerar (26:1,6) and “the valley of Gerar” (26:17), then at Beer-sheba (26:23; 28:10), all localities in the Negeb or “South-country.” But after the long narrative of the fortunes of Jacob and his family, occupying many years, we find Isaac at its close living where his father Abraham had lived, at Hebron.
For 20 years Isaac and Rebekah remained childless; it was only upon the entreaty of Isaac that God granted them their twin sons. A famine was the usual signal for emigration to Egypt (compare Genesis 12:10; 42:2); and Isaac also appears to have been on his way thither for the same cause, when, at Gerar, he is forbidden by God to proceed, and occasion is found therein to renew to him the covenant-promise of his inheritance: land, posterity, honor and the Divine presence ( Genesis 26:1-4).
But Isaac had also received from his father traditions of another sort; he too did not hesitate to say to the men of Gerar that his wife was his sister, with the same intent to save his own life, but without the same justification in fact, as in the case of Abraham’s earlier stratagem. Yet even the discovery by the king of Gerar of this duplicity, and repeated quarrels about water in that dry country, did not suffice to endanger Isaac’s status with the settled inhabitants, for his large household and great resources made him a valuable friend and a dangerous enemy.
The favoritism which Isaac showed for one son and Rebekah for the other culminated in the painful scene when the paternal blessing was by guile obtained for Jacob, and in the subsequent enforced absence of Jacob from his parental home. Esau, too, afforded no comfort to his father and mother, and ere long he also withdrew from his father’s clan. The subsequent reconciliation of the brothers permitted them to unite at length in paying the last honors to Isaac on his decease. Isaac was buried at Hebron where his parents had been buried ( Genesis 49:31), and where’ his place of sepulture is still honored.
IV. BIBLICAL REFERENCES.
There is a great contrast between Abraham and Jacob on the one hand, and Isaac on the other, with respect to their prominence in the literature of the nation that traced to them its descent. To be sure, when the patriarchs as a group are to be named, Isaac takes his place in the stereotyped formula of “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” or “Israel” (so 23 times in the Old Testament, 7 times in the New Testament). 1. In the Old Testament: But apart from this formula Isaac is referred to in the Old Testament only as follows. During the lifetime of Jacob the names of Abraham and Isaac are repeatedly linked in the same way as are all three subsequently: they form for that age the dynasty of the covenant. But several times Jacob calls Yahweh the God (or, the Fear; see infra) of Isaac, because Isaac is his own immediate predecessor in this chain of the faithful. Isaac is called the “gift” of God to Abraham, in the farewell address of Joshua, just as Jacob and Esau are called God’s “gifts” to Isaac ( Joshua 24:3 f; compare Koran, Sura 6 84). The “house of Isaac” is used by Amos as a parallel expression for “Israel,” and “the high places of Isaac” for “the sanctuaries of Israel” ( Amos 7:16,9), in the same way as “Jacob” is often used elsewhere Septuagint in Amos 7:16 reads “Jacob”). Other references to Isaac are simply as to his father’s son or his children’s father. 2. In the New Testament: He fares better in the New Testament. For, besides the genealogical references, Isaac’s significance as the first to receive circumcision on the 8th day is remembered ( Acts 7:8); his position as first of the elect seed is set forth ( Romans 9:7); his begetting of two sons so unlike in their relation to the promise as were Esau and Jacob is remarked ( Romans 9:10); the facts of his being heir to the promise, a child of old age, and, though but one, the father of an innumerable progeny, are emphasized in Hebrews (11:9-12), which also discovers the deeper significance of his sacrifice and restoration to his father (11:17-19; compare James 2:21); and in the same context is noticed the faith in God implied in Isaac’s blessing of his sons. But Isaac receives more attention than anywhere else in that famous passage in Galatians (4:21-31), in which Paul uses Isaac and his mother as allegorical representations of Christians who are justified by faith in the promise of God, and are the free-born heirs of all the spiritual inheritance implied in that promise. Even Isaac’s persecution by Ishmael has its counterpart in the attitude of the enemies of Paul’s gospel toward him and his doctrines and converts.
V. VIEWS OTHER THAN THE HISTORICAL.
Philo, the chief allegorizer of Scriptural narratives, has little to say of Isaac, whom he calls “the self-instructed nature.” But modern critics have dissolved his personality by representing him as the personification of an ethnic group. “All Israel,” writes Wellhausen (Prol., 6th edition, 316), “is grouped with the people of Edom under the old name Isaac ( Amos 7:9,16) .... the material here is not mythical (as in Genesis 1 through 11) but national.” And just as Israel plus Edom had little or no significance in national customs or political events, when compared on the one hand with Israel alone (= Jacob), and with Israel plus Edom plus Moab and Ammon (= Abraham) on the other hand; so likewise the figure of Isaac is colorless and his story brief, as compared with the striking figures of Jacob on the one hand and of Abraham on the other hand, and the circumstantial stories of their lives.
Other scholars will have none of this national view, because they believe Isaac to be the name of an ancient deity, the local numen of Beersheba.
Stark, whom others have followed, proposes to interpret the phrase translated “the Fear of Isaac” in Genesis 31:42,53 as the name of this god used by his worshippers, the Terror Isaac, Isaac the terrible god. For the sense of Isaac in that case see above under I, 2, (1). Meyer (loc. cit.) defends the transfer of the name from a god to the hero of a myth, by comparing the sacrifice of Isaac (“the only story in which Isaac plays an independent role”!) with the Greek myth of Iphigenia’s sacrifice (Hesiod, Euripides, etc.), in which the by-name of a goddess (Iphigenia) identified with Artemis has passed to the intended victim rescued by Artemis from death.
The most recent critical utterances reject both the foregoing views of Isaac as in conflict with the data of Gen. Thus Gunkel (Schriften des Altes Testament, 5te Lieferung, 1910, 41) writes: “Quite clearly the names of Abraham, Isaac, and all the patriarchal women are not tribal names. .... The interpretation of the figures of Genesis as nations furnishes by no means a general key.” And again: “Against the entire assumption that the principal patriarchal figures are originally gods, is above all to be noted that the names Jacob and Abraham are proved by the Babylonian to be personal names in current use, and at the same time that the sagas about them can in no wise be understood as echoes of original myths. Even Winckler’s more than bold attempt to explain these sagas as original calendar-myths must be pronounced a complete failure.” Yet Gunkel and those who share his position are careful to distinguish their own view from that of the “apologetes,” and to concede no more than the bare fact that there doubtless were once upon a time persons named Abraham Isaac, etc. For these critics Isaac is simply a name about which have crystallized cycles of folk-stories, that have their parallels in other lands and languages, but have received with a Hebrew name also a local coloring and significance on the lips of successive Hebrew story-tellers, saga-builders and finally collectors and editors; “Everyone who knows the history of sagas is sure that the saga is not able to preserve through the course of so many centuries, a true picture” of the patriarchs. See also ABRAHAM , end. J. Oscar Boyd ISAAC, TESTAMENT OF See APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE .
ISAIAH Of all Israel’s celebrated prophets, Isaiah is the king. The writings which bear his name are among the profoundest in all literature. One great theme — salvation by faith — stamps them all. Isaiah is the Paul of the Old Testament.
1. NAME:
In Hebrew [ Why;[]v”y] , yesha`yahu ], and [ hy;[]v”y] , yesha`yah ]; Greek [ jHsai`>av , Esaias ]; Latin Esaias and Isaias. His name was symbolic of his message. Like “Joshua,” it means “Yahweh saves,” or “Yahweh is salvation,” or “salvation of Yahweh.”
2. PERSONAL HISTORY:
Isaiah was the son of Amoz (not Amos). He seems to have belonged to a family of some rank, as may be inferred from his easy access to the king ( Isaiah 7:3), and his close intimacy with the priest ( Isaiah 8:2).
Tradition says he was the cousin of King Uzziah. He lived in Jerusalem and became court preacher. He was married and had two sons: Shear-jashub, his name signifying “a remnant shall return” ( Isaiah 7:3), and Mahershalal- hash-baz, “hasting to the spoil, hurrying to the prey,” symbolic of Assyria’s mad lust of conquest ( Isaiah 8:3). Jewish tradition, based upon a false interpretation of Isaiah 7:14, declares he was twice married.
3. CALL:
In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah, apparently while worshipping in the temple, received a call to the prophetic office (Isaiah 6). He responded with noteworthy alacrity, and accepted his commission, though he knew from the outset that his task was to be one of fruitless warning and exhortation (6:9-13). Having been reared in Jerusalem, he was well fitted to become the political and religious counselor of the nation, but the experience which prepared him most for his important work was the vision of the majestic and thrice-holy God which he saw in the temple in the death-year of King Uzziah. There is no good reason for doubting that this was his inaugural vision, though some regard it as a vision which came to him after years of experience in preaching and as intended to deepen his spirituality. While this is the only explicit “vision” Isaiah saw, yet his entire book, from first to last, is, as the title (11) suggests, a “vision.” His horizon, both political and spiritual, was practically unbounded. In a very true sense, as Delitzsch says, he was “the universal prophet of Israel.”
4. LITERARY GENIUS AND STYLE:
For versatility of expression and brilliancy of imagery Isaiah had no superior, not even a rival. His style marks the climax of Hebrew literary article Both his periods and Genius and descriptions are most finished and sublime. He is a perfect artist in words. Beauty and strength are characteristic of his entire book. Epigrams and metaphors, particularly of flood, storm and sound (1:13; 5:18,22; 8:8; 10:22; 28:17,20; 30:28,30), interrogation and dialogue (6:8; 10:8,9), antithesis and alliteration (1:18; 3:24; 17:10,12), hyperbole and parable (2:7; 5:1-7; 28:23-29), even paranomasia, or play upon words (5:7; 7:9), characterize Isaiah’s book as the great masterpiece of Hebrew literature. He is also famous for his richness of vocabulary and synonyms. For example, Ezekiel uses 1,535 words; Jeremiah, 1,653; the Psalmists 2,170; while Isaiah uses 2,186.
Isaiah was also an orator: Jerome likened him to Demosthenes; and a poet: he frequently elaborates his messages in rhythmic or poetic style (12:1-6; 25:1-5; 26:1-12; 38:10-20; 42:1-4; 49:1-9; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12; 60-62; 66:5-24); and in several instances slips into elegiac rhythm, e.g. in 37:22-29 there is a fine taunting poem on Sennacherib, and in 14:4-23 another on the king of Babylon. As Driver observes, “Isaiah’s poetical genius is superb.”
5. TRADITIONS CONCERNING HIS MARTYRDOM:
Nothing definite or historical is known concerning the prophet’s end.
Toward the close of the 2nd century AD, however, there was a tradition to the effect that he suffered martyrdom in the heathen reaction which occurred under King Manasseh, because of certain speeches concerning God and the Holy City which his contemporaries alleged were contrary to the law. Indeed the Jewish Mishna explicitly states that Manasseh slew him. Justin Martyr also (150 AD), in his controversial dialogue with the Jew Trypho, reproaches the Jews with this accusation, “whom ye sawed asunder with a wooden saw”; this tradition is further confirmed by a Jewish Apocalypse of the 2nd century AD, entitled, The Ascension of Isaiah, and by Epiphanius in his so-called Lives of the Prophets. It is barely possible that there is an allusion to his martyrdom in Hebrews 11:37, which reads, “They were stoned, they were sawn asunder,” but this is by no means certain. In any case Isaiah probably survived the great catastrophe of the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib in 701 BC, and possibly also the death of Hezekiah in 699 BC; for in 2 Chronicles 32:32 it is stated that Isaiah wrote a biography of King Hezekiah. If so, his prophetic activity extended over a period of more than 40 years. Dr. G. A. Smith extends it to “more than 50” (Jerusalem, II, 180; compare Whitehouse, “Isaiah,” New Century Bible, I, 72).
6. PERIOD:
According to the title of his book (11) , Isaiah prophesied during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. He dates his inaugural vision (6:1) in Uzziah’s death-year, which was approximately 740 BC. This marks, therefore, the beginning of his prophetic ministry.
And we know that he was still active as late as the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib in 701 BC. Hence, the minimum period of his activity as a prophet was from 740 to 701 BC. As a young man Isaiah witnessed the rapid development of Judah into a strong commercial and military state; for under Uzziah Judah attained a degree of prosperity and strength never before enjoyed since the days of Solomon. Walls, towers, fortifications, a large standing army, a port for commerce on the Red Sea, increased inland trade, tribute from the Ammonites, success in war with the Philistines and the Arabians — all these became Judah’s during Uzziah’s long and prosperous reign of 52 years. But along with power and wealth came also avarice, oppression, religious formality and corruption. The temple revenues indeed were greatly increased, but religion and life were too frequently dissociated; the nation’s progress was altogether material.
During the reign of Jotham (740-736 BC), who for several years was probably associated with his father as co-regent, a new power began to appear over the eastern horizon. The Assyrians, with whom Ahab had come in contact at the battle of Karkar in 854 BC, and to whom Jehu had paid tribute in 842 BC, began to manifest anew their characteristic lust of conquest. Tiglathpileser III, who is called “Pul” in 2 Kings 15:19 and reigned over Assyria from 745 to 727 BC, turned his attention westward, and in 738 BC reduced Arpad, Calno, Carchemish, Hamath and Damascus, causing them to pay tribute. His presence in the West led Pekah, king of North Israel, and Rezin, king of Damascus, to form an alliance in order to resist further encroachment on the part of Assyria. When Ahaz refused to join their confederacy they resolved to dethrone him and set in his stead the son of Tabeel upon the throne of David ( 2 Kings 16:5; Isaiah 7:6).
The struggle which ensued is commonly known as the Syro-Ephraimitic war (734 BC) — one of the great events in Isaiah’s period. Ahaz in panic sent to Tiglath-pileser for help ( 2 Kings 16:7), who of course responded with alacrity. The result was that the great Assyrian warrior sacked Gaza and carried all of Galilee and Gilead into captivity (734) and finally took Damascus (732 BC). Ahaz was forced to pay dearly for his protection and Judah was brought very low ( 2 Kings 15:29; 16:7-9; 2 Chronicles 28:19; Isaiah 7:1). The religious as well as the political effect of Ahaz’ policy was decidedly baneful. To please Tiglath-pileser, Ahaz went to Damascus to join in the celebration of his victories, and while there saw a Syrian altar, a pattern of which he sent to Jerusalem and had a copy set up in the temple in place of the brazen altar of Solomon. Thus Ahaz, with all the influence of a king, introduced idolatry into Jerusalem, even causing his sons to pass through the fire ( 2 Kings 16:10-16; 2 Chronicles 28:3).
Hezekiah succeeded Ahaz, beginning to rule at the age of 25 and reigning 29 years (727-699 BC). Isaiah was at least 15 years his senior. The young king inherited from his father a heavy burden. The splendor of Uzziah’s and Jotham’s reigns was rapidly fading before the ever-menacing and avaricious Assyrians. Hezekiah began his reign with reformation. “He removed the high places, and brake the pillars, and cut down the Asherah” ( 2 Kings 18:4,22). He even invited the surviving remnant of North Israel to join in celebrating the Passover ( 2 Chronicles 30:1). But Israel’s end was drawing near. Hoshea, the vacillating puppet-king of North Israel (730-722 BC), encouraged by Egypt, refused longer to pay Assyria his annual tribute ( 2 Kings 17:4); whereupon Shalmaneser IV, who had succeeded Tiglath-pileser, promptly appeared before the gates of Samaria in 724 BC, and for 3 weary years besieged the city ( 2 Kings 17:5). Finally, the city was captured by Sargon II, who succeeded Shalmaneser IV in 722 BC, and 27,292 of Israel’s choicest people (according to Sargon’s own description) were deported to Assyria, and colonists were brought from Babylon and other adjacent districts and placed in the cities of Samaria ( 2 Kings 17:6,24). Thus the kingdom of North Israel passed into oblivion, and Judah was left ever after quite exposed to the direct ravages, political and religious, of her Assyrio- Babylonian neighbors. In fact Judah herself barely escaped destruction by promising heavy tribute. This was the second great political crisis during Isaiah’s ministry. Other crises were soon to follow. One was the desperate illness of King Hezekiah, who faced assured death in 714 BC. Being childless, he was seriously concerned for the future of the Davidic dynasty.
He resorted to prayer, however, and God graciously extended his life years (2 Kings 20; Isaiah 38). His illness occurred during the period of Babylon’s independence under Merodach-baladan, the ever-ambitious, irresistible and uncompromising enemy of Assyria, who for 12 years (721- 709 BC) maintained independent supremacy over Babylon. Taking advantage of Hezekiah’s wonderful cure, Merodach seized the opportunity of sending an embassy to Jerusalem to congratulate him on his recovery (712 BC), and at the same time probably sought to form an alliance with Judah to resist Assyrian supremacy ( 2 Kings 20:12 ff; Isaiah 39).
Nothing, however, came of the alliance, for the following year Sargon’s army reappeared in Philistia in order to discipline Ashdod for conspiracy with the king of Egypt (711 BC). The greatest crisis was yet to come. Its story is as follows: Judah and her neighbors groaned more and more under the heavy exactions of Assyria. Accordingly, when Sargon was assassinated and Sennacherib came to the throne in 705 BC, rebellion broke out on all sides. Merodach-baladan, who had been expelled by Sargon in 709 BC, again took Babylon and held it for at least six months in 703 BC. Hezekiah, who was encouraged by Egypt and all Philistia, except Padi of Ekron, the puppet-king of Sargon, refused longer to pay Assyria tribute ( 2 Kings 18:7). Meanwhile a strong pro-Egyptian party had sprung up in Jerusalem. In view of all these circumstances, Sennacherib in 701 BC marched westward with a vast army, sweeping everything before him. Tyre was invested though not taken; on the other hand, Joppa, Eltekeh, Ekron, Ashkelon, Ammon, Moab, and Edom all promptly yielded to his demands. Hezekiah was panic stricken and hastened to bring rich tribute, stripping even the temple and the palace of their treasures to do so ( 2 Kings 18:13-16). But Sennacherib was not satisfied. He overran Judah, capturing, as he tells us in his inscription,46 walled towns and smaller villages without number, carrying 200,150 of Judah’s population into captivity to Assyria, and demanding as tribute 800 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold, in all, over $1,500,000; he took also, he claims, Hezekiah’s daughters and palace women, seized his male and female singers, and carried away enormous spoil. But the end was not yet.
Sennacherib himself, with the bulk of the army, halted in Philistia to reduce Lachish; thence he sent a strong detachment under his commander-in-chief, the Rabshakeh, to besiege Jerusalem ( 2 Kings 18:17 through 19:8; Isaiah 36:2 through 37:8). As he describes this blockade in his own inscription: “I shut up Hezekiah in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage.” The Rabshakeh, however, failed to capture the city and returned to Sennacherib, who meanwhile had completely conquered Lachish, and was now warring against Libnab. A second expedition against Jerusalem was planned, but hearing that Tirhakah (at that time the commander-in-chief of Egypt’s forces and only afterward “king of Ethiopia”) was approaching, Sennacherib was forced to content himself with sending messengers with a letter to Hezekiah, demanding immediate surrender of the city ( 2 Kings 19:9 ff; Isaiah 37:9 ff). Hezekiah, however, through Isaiah’s influence held out; and in due time, though Sennacherib disposed of Tirhakah’s army without difficulty, his immense host in some mysterious way — by plague or otherwise — was suddenly smitten, and the great Assyrian conqueror was forced to return to Nineveh; possibly because Merodach-baladan had again appeared in Babylonia. Sennacherib never again returned to Palestine, so far as we know, during the subsequent 20 years of his reign, though he did make an independent expedition into North Arabia (691-689 BC). This invasion of Judah by Sennacherib in 701 BC was the great political event in Isaiah’s ministry. Had it not been for the prophet’s statesmanship, Jerusalem might have capitulated. As it was, only a small, insignificantly small, remnant of Judah’s population escaped. Isaiah had at this time been preaching 40 years. How much longer he labored is not known.
7. ANALYSIS AND CONTENTS:
There are six general divisions of the book: (1) Isaiah 1 through 12, prophecies concerning Judah and Jerusalem, closing with promises of restoration and a psalm of thanksgiving; (2) Isaiah 13 through 23, oracles of judgment and salvation, for the most part concerning those foreign nations whose fortunes affected Judah and Jerusalem; (3) Isaiah 24 through 27, Yahweh’s world-judgment in the redemption of Israel; (4) Isaiah 28 through 35, a cycle of prophetic warnings against alliance with Egypt, closing with a prophecy concerning Edom and a promise of Israel’s ransom; (5) Isaiah 36 through 39, history, prophecy and song intermingled; serving both as an appendix to Isaiah 1 through 35, and as an introduction to Isaiah 40 through 66; (6) Isaiah 40 through 66, prophecies of comfort and salvation, and also of the future glory awaiting Israel.
By examining in detail these several divisions we can trace better the prophet’s thought. Thus, Isaiah 1 through 12 unfold Judah’s social sins (Isaiah 1 through 6), and her political entanglements (Isaiah 7 through 12); Isaiah 1 is an introduction, in which the prophet strikes the chief notes of his entire book: namely, thoughtlessness (1:2-9), formalism in worship (1:10-17), pardon (1:18-23) and judgment (1:24-31). Isaiah 2 through contain three distinct pictures of Zion: (a) her exaltation (2:2-4), (b) her present idolatry (2:5 through 4:1), and (c) her eventual purification (4:2-6). Isaiah 5 contains an arraignment of Judah and Jerusalem, composed of three parts: (a) a parable of Yahweh’s vineyard (5:1-7); (b) a series of six woes pronounced against insatiable greed (5:8-10), dissipation (5:11-17), daring defiance against Yahweh (5:18,19), confusion of moral distinctions (5:20), political self-conceit (5:21), and misdirected heroism (5:22,23); and (c) an announcement of imminent judgment. The Assyrian is on the way and there will be no escape (5:24-30). Isaiah 6 recounts the prophet’s inaugural vision and commission. It is really an apologetic, standing as it does after the prophet’s denunciations of his contemporaries. When they tacitly object to his message of threatening and disaster, he is able to reply that, having pronounced “woe” upon himself in the year that King Uzziah died, he had the authority to pronounce woe upon them (6:5). Plainly Isaiah tells them that Judah’s sins are well-nigh hopeless. They are becoming spiritually insensible.
They have eyes but they cannot see. Only judgment can, avail: “the righteous judgment of a forgotten God” awaits them. A “holy seed,” however, still existed in Israel’s stock (6:13).
Coming to Isaiah 7 through 12, Isaiah appears in the role of a practical statesman. He warns Ahaz against political entanglements with Assyria.
The section 7:1 through 9:7 is a prophecy of Immanuel, history and prediction being intermingled.
They describe the Syro-Ephraimitic uprising in 736 BC, when Pekah of North Israel and Rezin of Damascus, in attempting to defend themselves against the Assyrians, demanded that Ahaz of Jerusalem should become their ally. But Ahaz preferred the friendship of Assyria, and refused to enter into alliance with them. And in order to defend himself, he applied to Assyria for assistance, sending ambassadors with many precious treasures, both royal and sacred, to bribe Tiglath-pileser. It was at this juncture that Isaiah, at Yahweh’s bidding, expostulates with Ahaz concerning the fatal step he is about to take, and as a practical statesman warns Ahaz, “the king of No-Faith,” that the only path of safety lies in loyalty to Yahweh and keeping clear of foreign alliances; that “God is with us” for salvation; and that no “conspiracy” can possibly be successful unless God too is against us. When, however, the prophet’s message of promise and salvation finds no welcome, he commits it to his disciples, bound up and sealed for future use; assuring his hearers that unto them a child is born and unto them a son is given, in whose day the empire of David will be established upon a basis of justice and righteousness. The Messianic scion is the ground of the prophet’s hope; which hope, though unprecedented, he thus early in his ministry commits, written and sealed, to his inner circle of “disciples.” See, further, IMMANUEL.
The section Isaiah 9:8 through 10:4 contains an announcement to North Israel of accumulated wrath and impending ruin, with a refrain (9:12,17,21; 10:4). Here, in an artistic poem composed of four strophes, the prophet describes the great calamities which Yahweh has sent down upon North Israel but which have gone unheeded: foreign invasion (9:8-12), defeat in battle (9:13-17), anarchy (9:18-21), and impending captivity (10:1-4). Yet Yahweh’s judgments have gone unheeded: “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.” Divine discipline has failed; only judgment remains.
In Isaiah 10:5-34, Assyria is declared to be an instrument of Yahweh, the rod of Yahweh’s anger. Isaiah 11 through 12 predict Israel’s return from exile, including a vision of the Messiah’s reign of ideal peace. For Isaiah’s vision of the nation’s future reached far beyond mere exile. To him the downfall of Assyria was the signal for the commencement of a new era in Israel’s history. Assyria has no future, her downfall is fatal; Judah has a future, her calamities are only disciplinary. An Ideal Prince will be raised up in whose advent all Nature will rejoice, even dumb animals (11:1-10). A second great exodus will take place, for the Lord will set His hand again “the second time” to recover the remnant of His people “from the four corners of the earth” (11:11,12). In that day, “Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim” (11:13). On the contrary, the reunited nation, redeemed and occupying their rightful territory (11:14-16), shall sing a hymn of thanksgiving, proclaiming the salvation of Yahweh to all the earth (Isaiah 12).
Isaiah 13 through 23 contain oracles of judgment and salvation, for the most part concerning those foreign nations whose fortunes affected Judah and Jerusalem. They are grouped together by the editor, as similar foreign oracles are in Jeremiah 46 through 51 and Ezekiel 25 through 32. Isaiah’s horizon was world-wide. First among the foreign prophecies stands the oracle concerning Babylon ( Isaiah 13:1 through 14:23), in which he predicts the utter destruction of the city ( Isaiah 13:2-22), and sings a dirge or taunt-song over her fallen king ( Isaiah 14:4-23). The king alluded to is almost beyond doubt an Assyrian (not a Babylonian) monarch of the 8th century; the brief prophecy immediately following in Isaiah 14:24-27 concerning Assyria tacitly confirms this interpretation. Another brief oracle concerning Babylon (21:1-10) describes the city’s fall as imminent. Both oracles stand or fall together as genuine prophecies of Isaiah. Both seem to have been written in Jerusalem (13:2; 21:9,10). It cannot be said that either is absolutely unrelated in thought and language to Isaiah’s age (14:13; 21:2); each foretells the doom to fall on Babylon (13:19; 21:9) at the hands of the Medes (13:17; 21:2); and each describes the Israelites as already in exile — but not necessarily all Israel.
The section Isaiah 14:24-27 tells of the certain destruction of the Assyrian.
The passage Isaiah 14:28-32 is an oracle concerning Philistia.
Isaiah 15 through 16 are ancient oracles against Moab, whose dirgelike meter resembles that of Isaiah 13 through 14. It is composed of two separate prophecies belonging to two different periods in Isaiah’s ministry (16:13,14). The three points of particular interest in the oracle are: (1) the prophet’s tender sympathy for Moab in her affliction (15:5; 16:11). Isaiah mingles his own tears with those of the Moabites. As Delitzsch says, “There is no prophecy in the Book of Isaiah in which the heart of the prophet is so painfully moved by what his spirit beholds and his mouth must prophecy.” (2) Moab’s pathetic appeal for shelter from her foes; particularly the ground on which she urges it, namely, the Messianic hope that the Davidic dynasty shall always stand and be able to repulse its foes (16:5). The prophecy is an echo of 9:5-7. (3) The promise that a remnant of Moab, though small, shall be saved (16:14). Wearied of prayer to Chemosh in his high places, the prophet predicts that Moab will seek the living God (16:12).
The passage Isaiah 17:1-11 is an oracle concerning Damascus and North Israel, in which Isaiah predicts the fate of the two allies — Syria and Ephraim — in the Syro-Ephraimitic war of 734 BC, with a promise that only a scanty remnant will survive (17:6). In 17:12-14, the prophet boldly announces the complete annihilation of Judah’s unnamed foes — the Assyrians.
Isaiah 18 describes Ethiopia as in great excitement, sending ambassadors hither and thither — possibly all the way to Jerusalem — ostensibly seeking aid in making preparations for war. Assyria had already taken Damascus (732 BC) and Samaria (722 BC), and consequently Egypt and Ethiopia were in fear of invasion. Isaiah bids the ambassadors to return home and quietly watch Yahweh thwart Assyria’s self-confident attempt to subjugate Judah; and he adds that when the Ethiopians have seen God’s hand in the coming deliverance of Judah and Jerusalem (701 BC), they will bring a present to Yahweh to His abode in Mount Zion.
Isaiah 19, which is an oracle concerning Egypt, contains both a threat (19:1-17) and a promise (19:18-25), and is one of Isaiah’s most remarkable foreign messages. Egypt is smitten and thereby led to abandon her idols for the worship of Yahweh (19:19-22). Still more remarkable, it is prophesied that in that day Egypt and Assyria will join with Judah in a triple alliance of common worship to Yahweh and of blessing to others (19:23-25). Isaiah’s missionary outlook here is wonderful!
Isaiah 20 describes Sargon’s march against Egypt and Ethiopia, containing a brief symbolic prediction of Assyria’s victory over Egypt and Ethiopia.
By donning a captive’s garb for three years, Isaiah attempts to teach the citizens of Jerusalem that the siege of Ashdod was but a means to an end in Sargon’s plan of campaign, and that it was sheer folly for the Egyptian party in Jerusalem, who were ever urging reliance upon Egypt, to look in that direction for help. Isaiah 21:11,12 is a brief oracle concerning Seir or Edom, “the only gentle utterance in the Old Testament upon Israel’s hereditary foe.” Edom is in great anxiety. The prophet’s answer is disappointing, though its tone is sympathetic. Isaiah 21:13 ff is a brief oracle concerning Arabia. It contains a sympathetic appeal to the Temanites to give bread and water to the caravans of Dedan, who have been driven by war from their usual route of travel.
Isaiah 22 is concerning the foreign temper within theocracy. It is composed of two parts: (1) an oracle “of the valley of vision,” i.e. Jerusalem (22:1-14); and (2) a philippic against Shebna, the comptroller of the palace. Isaiah pauses, as it were, in his series of warnings to foreign nations to rebuke the foreign temper of the frivolous inhabitants of Jerusalem, and in particular Shebna, a high official in the government. The reckless and God-ignoring citizens of the capital are pictured as indulging themselves in hilarious eating and drinking, when the enemy is at that very moment standing before the gates of the city. Shebna, on the other hand, seems to have been an ostentatious foreigner, perhaps a Syrian by birth, quite possibly one of the Egyptian party, whose policy was antagonistic to that of Isaiah and the king. Isaiah’s prediction of Shebna’s fall was evidently fulfilled (36:3; 37:2).
Isaiah 23 is concerning Tyre. In this oracle Isaiah predicts that Tyre shall be laid waste (23:1), her commercial glory humbled (23:9), her colonies become independent of her (23:10), and she herself forgotten for “seventy years” (23:15); but “after the end of seventy years,” her trade will revive, her business prosperity will return, and she will dedicate her gains in merchandise as holy to Yahweh (23:18).
The third great section of the Book of Isaiah embraces Isaiah 24 through 27, which tell of Yahweh’s world-judgment, issuing in the redemption of Israel. These prophecies stand closely related to Isaiah 13 through 23.
They express the same tender emotion as that already observed in 15:5; 16:11, and sum up as in one grand finale the prophet’s oracles to Israel’s neighbors. For religious importance they stand second to none in the Book of Isaiah, teaching the necessity of Divine discipline and the glorious redemption awaiting the faithful in Israel. They are a spiritual commentary on the great Assyrian crisis of the 8th century; they are messages of salvation intended, not for declamation, but for meditation, and were probably addressed more particularly to the prophet’s inner circle of “disciples” (8:16). These chapters partake of the nature of apocalypse.
Strictly speaking, however, they are prophecy, not apocalypse. No one ascends into heaven or talks with an angel, as in Daniel 7 and Revelation 4.
They are apocalypse only in the sense that certain things are predicted as sure to come to pass. Isaiah was fond of this kind of prophecy. He frequently lifts his reader out of the sphere of mere history to paint pictures of the far-off, distant future (2:2-4; 4:2-6; 11:6-16; 30:27-33).
In Isaiah 24 the prophet announces a general judgment of the earth (i.e. the land of Judah), and of “the city” (collective, for Judah’s towns), after which will dawn a better day (24:1-15). The prophet fancies he hears songs of deliverance, but alas! they are premature; more judgment must follow.
In Isaiah 25 the prophet transports himself to the period after the Assyrian catastrophe and, identifying himself with the redeemed, puts into their mouths songs of praise and thanksgiving for their deliverance. Isaiah 25:6-8 describe Yahweh’s bountiful banquet on Mount Zion to all nations, who, in keeping with 2:2-4, come up to Jerusalem, to celebrate “a feast of fat things,” rich and marrowy. While the people are present at the banquet, Yahweh graciously removes their spiritual blindness so that they behold Him as the true dispenser of life and grace. He also abolishes violent death, that is to say, war (compare 2:4) and its sad accompaniment, “tears,” so that “the earth” (i.e. the land of Judah) is no longer the battlefield of the nations, but the blessed abode of the redeemed, living in peace and happiness. The prophet’s aim is not political but religious.
In Isaiah 26:1-19 Judah sings a song over Jerusalem, the impregnable city of God. The prophet, taking again his stand with the redeemed remnant of the nation, vividly portrays their thankful trust in Yahweh, who has been unto them a veritable “Rock of Ages” (26:4 margin). With hope he joyfully exclaims, Let Yahweh’s dead ones live! Let Israel’s dead bodies arise! Yahweh will bring life from the dead! (26:19). This is the first clear statement of the resurrection in the Old Testament. But it is national and restricted to Israel (compare 26:14), and is merely Isaiah’s method of expressing a hope of the return of Israel’s faithful ones from captivity (compare Hosea 6:2; Ezekiel 37:1-14; Daniel 12:2).
In Isaiah 26:20 through 27:13 the prophet shows that Israel’s chastisements are salutary. He begins by exhorting his own people, his disciples, to continue a little longer in the solitude of prayer, till God’s wrath has shattered the world-powers (26:20 through 27:1). He next predicts that the true vineyard of Yahweh will henceforth be safely guarded against the briars and thorns of foreign invasion (27:2-6). And then, after showing that Yahweh’s chastisements of Israel were light compared with His judgments upon other nations (27:7-11), he promises that if Israel will only repent, Yahweh will spare no pains to gather “one by one” the remnant of His people from Assyria and Egypt (compare 11:11); and together they shall once more worship Yahweh in the holy mountain at Jerusalem (27:12,13).
The prophet’s fundamental standpoint in Isaiah 24 through 27 is the same as that of 2:2-4 and Isaiah 13 through 23. Yet the prophet not infrequently throws himself forward into the remote future, oscillating backward and forward between his own times and those of Israel’s restoration. It is especially noteworthy how he sustains himself in a long and continued transportation of himself to the period of Israel’s redemption. He even studies to identify himself with the new Israel which will emerge out of the present chaos of political events. His visions of Israel’s redemption carry him in ecstasy far away into the remote future, to a time when the nation’s sufferings are all over; so that when he writes down what he saw in vision he describes it as a discipline that is past. For example, in 25:1-8 the prophet, transported to the end of time, celebrates in song what he saw, and describes how the fall of the world-empire is followed by the conversion of the heathen. In 26:8,9 he looks back into the past from the standpoint of the redeemed in the last days, and tells how Israel longingly waited for the manifestation of God’s righteousness which has now taken place, while in 27:7-9 he places himself in the midst of the nation’s sufferings, in full view of their glorious future, and portrays how Yahweh’s dealings with Israel have not been the punishment of wrath, but the discipline of love. This kind of apocalypse, or prophecy, indeed, was to be expected from the very beginning of the group of prophecies, which are introduced with the word “Behold!” Such a manner of introduction is peculiar to Isaiah, and of itself leads us to expect a message which is unique.
The practical religious value of these prophecies to Isaiah’s own age would be very great. In a period of war and repeated foreign invasion, when but few men were left in the land ( Isaiah 24:6,13; 26:18), and Judah’s cities were laid waste and desolate ( Isaiah 24:10,12; 25:2; 26:5; 27:10), and music and gladness were wanting ( Isaiah 24:8), when the nation still clung to their idols ( Isaiah 27:9) and the Assyrians’ work of destruction was still incomplete, other calamities being sure to follow ( Isaiah 24:16), it would certainly be comforting to know that forgiveness was still possible ( Isaiah 27:9), that Yahweh was still the keeper of His vineyard ( Isaiah 27:3,4), that His judgments were to last but for a little moment ( Isaiah 26:20), and that though His people should be scattered, He would soon carefully gather them “one by one” ( Isaiah 27:12,13), and that in company with other nations they would feast together on Mt. Zion as Yahweh’s guests ( Isaiah 25:6,7,10), and that Jerusalem should henceforth become the center of life and religion to all nations ( Isaiah 24:23; 25:6; 27:13). Such faith in Yahweh, such exhortations and such songs and confessions of the redeemed, seen in vision, would be a source of rich spiritual comfort to the few suffering saints in Judah and Jerusalem, and a guiding star to the faithful disciples of the prophet’s most inner circle.
Isaiah 28 through 35 contain a cycle of prophetic warnings against alliance with Egypt, closing with a prophecy concerning Edom and a promise of Israel’s ransom. As in 5:8-23, the prophet indulges in a series of six woes: (1) Woe to drunken, scoffing politicians (Isaiah 28). This is one of the great chapters of Isaiah’s book. In the opening section (28:1-6) the prophet points in warning to the proud drunkards of Ephraim whose crown (Samaria) is rapidly fading. He next turns to the scoffing politicians of Jerusalem, rebuking especially the bibulous priests who stumble in judgment, and the staggering prophets who err in vision (28:7-22); closing with a most instructive parable from agriculture, teaching that God’s judgments are not arbitrary; that as the husbandman does not plow and harrow his fields the whole year round, so God will not punish His people forever; and as the husbandman does not thresh all kinds of grain with equal severity, no more will God discipline His people beyond their deserts (28:23-29). (2) Woe to formalists in religion ( Isaiah 29:1-14). Isaiah’s second woe is pronounced upon Ariel, the altar-hearth of God, i.e. Jerusalem, the sacrificial center of Israel’s worship. David had first inaugurated the true worship of Yahweh in Zion. But now Zion’s worship has become wholly conventional, formal, and therefore insincere; it is learned by rote (29:13; compare 1:10-15; Micah 6:6-8). Therefore, says Isaiah, Yahweh is forced to do an extraordinary work among them, in order to bring them back to a true knowledge of Himself ( Isaiah 29:14). (3) Woe to those who hide their plans from God ( Isaiah 29:15-24).
What their plans are, which they are devising in secret, the prophet does not yet disclose; but he doubtless alludes to their intrigues with the Egyptians and their purpose to break faith with the Assyrians, to whom they were bound by treaty to pay annual tribute. Isaiah bravely remonstrates with them for supposing that any policy will succeed which excludes the counsel and wisdom of the Holy One. They are but clay; He is the potter. At this point, though somewhat abruptly, Isaiah turns his face toward the Messianic future. In a very little while, he says, Lebanon, which is now overrun by Assyria’s army, shall become a fruitful field, and the blind and deaf and spiritually weak shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. (4) Woe to the pro-Egyptian party (Isaiah 30). Isaiah’s fourth woe is directed against the rebellious politicians who stubbornly, and now openly, advocate making a league with Egypt. They have at length succeeded apparently in winning over the king to their side, and an embassy is already on its way to Egypt, bearing across the desert of the exodus rich treasures with which to purchase the friendship of their former oppressors. Isaiah now condemns what he can no longer prevent. Egypt is a Rahab “sitstill,” i.e. a mythological sea-monster, menacing in mien but laggard in action.
When the crisis comes, she will sit still, causing Israel only shame and confusion. (5) Woe to those who trust in horses and chariots (Isaiah 31 through 32).
Isaiah’s fifth woe is a still more vehement denunciation of those who trust in Egypt’s horses and chariots, and disregard the Holy One of Israel. Those who do so forget that the Egyptians are but men and their horses flesh, and that mere flesh cannot avail in a conflict with spirit. Eventually Yahweh means to deliver Jerusalem, if the children of Israel will but turn from their idolatries to Him; and in that day, Assyria will be vanquished. A new era will dawn upon Judah. Society will be regenerated. The renovation will begin at the top. Conscience also will be sharpened, and moral distinctions will no longer be confused (32:1-8). As Delitzsch puts it, “The aristocracy of birth and wealth will be replaced by an aristocracy of character.” The careless and indifferent women, too, in that day will no longer menace the social welfare of the state (32:9-14); with the outpouring of Yahweh’s spirit an ideal commonwealth will emerge, in which social righteousness, peace, plenty and security will abound (32:15-20). (6) Woe to the Assyrian destroyer (Isaiah 33). Isaiah’s last woe is directed against the treacherous spoiler himself, who has already laid waste the cities of Judah, and is now beginning to lay siege to Jerusalem (701 BC).
The prophet prays, and while he prays, behold! the mighty hosts of the Assyrians are routed and the long-besieged but now triumphant inhabitants of Jerusalem rush out like locusts upon the spoil which the vanishing adversary has been forced to leave behind. The destroyer’s plan to reduce Jerusalem has come to naught. The whole earth beholds the spectacle of Assyria’s defeat and is filled with awe and amazement at the mighty work of Yahweh. Only the righteous may henceforth dwell in Jerusalem. their eyes shall behold the Messiah-king in his beauty, reigning no longer like Hezekiah over a limited and restricted territory, but over a land unbounded, whose inhabitants enjoy Yahweh’s peace and protection, and are free from all sin, and therefore from all sickness (33:17-24). With this beautiful picture of the Messianic future, the prophet’s woes find an appropriate conclusion. Isaiah never pronounced a woe without adding a corresponding promise.
In Isaiah 34 through 35, the prophet utters a fierce cry for justice against “all the nations,” but against Edom in particular. His tone is that of judgment. Edom is guilty of high crimes against Zion (34:8 f), therefore she is doomed to destruction. On the other hand, the scattered ones of Israel shall return from exile and “obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isaiah 35).
Isaiah 36 through 39 contain history, prophecy and song intermingled.
These chapters serve both as an appendix to Isaiah 1 through 35 and as an introduction to Isaiah 40 through 66. In them three important historical events are narrated, in which Isaiah was a prominent factor: (1) the double attempt of Sennacherib to obtain possession of Jerusalem (Isaiah 36 through 37); (2) Hezekiah’s sickness and recovery (Isaiah 38); (3) the embassy of Merodach-baladan (Isaiah 39). With certain important omissions and insertions these chapters are duplicated almost verbatim in 2 Kings 18:13 through 20:19. They are introduced with the chronological note, “Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah.” Various attempts have been made to solve the mystery of this date; for, if the author is alluding to the siege of 701 BC, difficulty arises, because that event occurred not in Hezekiah’s “14th” but 26th year, according to the Biblical chronology of his life; or, if with some we date Hezekiah’s accession to the throne of Judah as BC, then the siege of 701 BC occurred, as is evident, in Hezekiah’s 19th year. It is barely possible of course that “the 14th year of king Hezekiah” was the 14th of the “15 years” which were added to his life, but more probably it alludes to the 14th of his reign. On the whole it is better to take the phrase as a general chronological caption for the entire section, with special reference to Isaiah 38, which tells of Hezekiah’s sickness, which actually fell in his 14th year (714 BC), and which, coupled with Sargon’s expected presence at Ashdod, was the great personal crisis of the king’s life.
Sennacherib made two attempts in 701 BC to reduce Jerusalem: one from Lachish with an army headed by the Rabshakeh ( Isaiah 36:2 through 37:8), and another from Libnah with a threat conveyed by messengers ( Isaiah 37:9 ff). The brief section contained in 2 Kings 18:14-16 is omitted from between verses 1 and 2 of Isaiah 36, because it was not the prophet’s aim at this time to recount the nation’s humiliation. Isaiah’s last “word” concerning Assyria ( Isaiah 37:21-35) is one of the prophet’s grandest predictions. It is composed of three parts: (1) a taunt-song, in elegiac rhythm, on the inevitable humiliation of Sennacherib ( Isaiah 37:22-29); (2) a short poem in different rhythm, directed to Hezekiah, in order to encourage his faith ( Isaiah 37:30-32); (3) a definite prediction, in less elevated style, of the sure deliverance of Jerusalem ( Isaiah 37:33-35). Isaiah’s prediction was literally fulfilled.
The section Isaiah 38:9-20 contains Hezekiah’s Song of Thanksgiving, in which he celebrates his recovery from some mortal sickness. It is a beautiful plaintive “writing”; omitted altogether by the author of the Book of Kings (compare 2 Kings 20). Hezekiah was sick in 714 BC. Two years later Merodach-baladan, the veteran arch-enemy of Assyria, having heard of his wonderful recovery, sent letters and a present to congratulate him.
Doubtless, also, political motives prompted the recalcitrant Babylonian.
But be that as it may, Hezekiah was greatly flattered by the visit of Merodach-baladan’s envoys, and, in a moment of weakness, showed them all his royal treasures. This was an inexcusable blunder, as the sight of his many precious possessions would naturally excite Babylonian cupidity to possess Jerusalem. Isaiah not only solemnly condemned the king’s conduct, but he announced with more than ordinary insight that the days were coming when all the accumulated resources of Jerusalem would be carried away to Babylon (39:3-6; compare Micah 4:10). This final prediction of judgment is the most marvelous of all Isaiah’s minatory utterances, because he distinctly asserts that, not the Assyrians, who were then at the height of their power, but the Babylonians, shall be the instruments of the Divine vengeance in consummating the destruction of Jerusalem. There is absolutely no reason for doubting the genuineness of this prediction. In it, indeed, we have a prophetic basis for Isaiah 40 through 66, which follow.
Coming now to Isaiah 40 through 66, we have prophecies of comfort, salvation, and of the future glory awaiting Israel. These chapters naturally fall into three sections: (1) Isaiah 40 through 48, announcing deliverance from captivity through Cyrus; (2) Isaiah 49 through 57, describing the sufferings of the “Servant” of Yahweh, this section ending like the former with the refrain, “There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked” (57:21; compare 48:22); (3) Isaiah 58 through 66, announcing the final abolition of all national distinctions and the future glory of the people of God. Isaiah 60 is the characteristic chapter of this section, as Isaiah 53 is of the second, and Isaiah 40 of the first.
Entering into greater detail, the first section (Isaiah 40 through 48) demonstrates the deity of Yahweh through His unique power to predict.
The basis of the comfort which the prophet announces is Israel’s incomparable God (Isaiah 40). Israel’s all-powerful Yahweh in comparison with other gods is incomparable. In the prologue ( Isaiah 40:1-11) he hears the four voices: (1) of grace ( Isaiah 40:1,2); (2) of prophecy ( Isaiah 40:3-5); (3) of faith ( Isaiah 40:6-8), and (4) of evangelism ( Isaiah 40:9-11). Then, after exalting the unique character of Israel’s all-but-forgotten God ( Isaiah 40:12-26), he exhorts them not to suppose that Yahweh is ignorant of, or indifferent to, Israel’s misery. Israel must wait for salvation. They are clamoring for deliverance prematurely. Only wait, he repeats; for with such a God, Israel has no reason to despond ( Isaiah 40:27-31).
In Isaiah 41 he declares that the supreme proof of Yahweh’s sole deity is His power to predict. He inquires, “Who hath raised up one from the east?” Though the hero is left unnamed, Cyrus is doubtless in the prophet’s mind (compare 44:28; 45:1). He is not, however, already appearing upon the horizon of history as some fancy, but rather predicted as sure to come.
The verb tenses which express completed action are perfects of certainty, and are used in precisely the same manner as those in 3:8; 5:13; 21:9. The answer to the inquiry is, “I, Yahweh, the first, and with the last, I am he” (41:4). Israel is Yahweh’s servant. The dialogue continues; but it is no longer between Yahweh and the nations, as in Isaiah 41:1-7, but between Yahweh and the idols (41:21-29). Addressing the dumb idols, Yahweh is represented as saying, Predict something, if you are real deities.
As for myself, I am going to raise up a hero from the north who will subdue all who oppose him. And I announce my purpose now in advance “from the beginning,” “beforetime,” before there is the slightest ground for thinking that such a hero exists or ever will exist (41:26), in order that the future may verify my prediction, and prove my sole deity. I, Yahweh, alone know the future. In 41:25-29, the prophet even projects himself into the future and speaks from the standpoint of the fulfillment of his prediction.
This, as we saw above, was a characteristic of Isaiah in Isaiah 24 through 27.
In Isaiah 42:1 through 43:13 the prophet announces also a spiritual agent of redemption, namely, Yahweh’s “Servant.” Not only a temporal agent (Cyrus) shall be raised up to mediate Israel’s redemption, which is the first step in the process of the universal salvation contemplated, but a spiritual factor. Yahweh’s “Servant” shall be employed in bringing the good tidings of salvation to the exiles and to the Gentiles also. In 42:1-9 the prophet describes this ideal figure and the work he will execute. The glorious future evokes a brief hymn of thanksgiving for the redemption which the prophet beholds in prospect (42:10-17). Israel has long been blind and deaf to Yahweh’s instructions (41:18,19), but now Yahweh is determined to redeem them even at the cost of the most opulent nations of the world, that they may publish His law to all peoples (42:18 through 43:13).
In Isaiah 13:14 through 44:23 forgiveness is made the pledge of deliverance. Yahweh’s determination to redeem Israel is all of grace.
Salvation is a gift. Yahweh has blotted out their transgressions for His own sake (43:25). “This passage,” Dillmann observes, “marks the highest point of grace in the Old Testament.” Gods of wood and stone are nonentities.
Those who manufacture idols are blind and dull of heart, and are “feeding on ashes.” The section 44:9-20 is a most remorseless exposure of the folly of idolatry.
In Isaiah 44:24 through 45:25 the prophet at length names the hero of Israel’s salvation and describes his mission. He is Cyrus. He shall build Jerusalem and lay the foundations of the temple (44:28); he shall also subdue nations and let the exiles go free (45:1,13). He speaks of Cyrus in the most extraordinary, almost extravagant terms. He is Yahweh’s “shepherd” (44:28), he is also Yahweh’s “anointed,” i.e. Messiah (45:1), “the man of my counsel” (46:11), whom Yahweh has called by name, and surnamed without his ever knowing Him (45:3,1); the one “whom Yahweh loveth” (48:14), whose right hand Yahweh upholdeth (45:1), and who will perform all Yahweh’s pleasure (44:28); though but “a ravenous bird from the east (46: 11). The vividness with which the prophet speaks of Cyrus leads some to suppose that the latter is already upon the horizon. This, however, is a mistake. Scarcely would a contemporary have spoken in such terms of the real Cyrus of 538 BC. The prophet regards him (i.e. the Cyrus of his own prediction, not the Cyrus of history) as the fulfillment of predictions spoken long before. That is to say, in one and the same context, Cyrus is both predicted and treated as a proof that prediction is being fulfilled (44:24-28; 45:21). Such a phenomenon in prophecy can best be explained by supposing that the prophet projected himself into the future from an earlier age. Most extraordinary of all, in 45:14-17, the prophet soars in imagination until he sees, as a result of Cyrus’ victories, the conquered nations renouncing their idols, and attracted to Yahweh as the Saviour of all mankind (45:22). On any theory of origin, the predictive element in these prophecies is written large.
Isaiah 46 through 47 describe further the distinctive work of Cyrus, though Cyrus himself is but once referred to. Particular emphasis is laid on the complete collapse of the Babylonian religion; the prophet being apparently more concerned with the humiliation of Babylon’s idols than with the fall of the city itself. Of course the destruction of the city would imply the defeat of her gods, as also the emancipation of Israel. But here again all is in the future; in fact Yahweh’s incomparable superiority and unique deity are proven by His power to predict “the end from the beginning” and bring His prediction to pass (46:10,11).
Isaiah 47 is a dirge over the downfall of the imperial city, strongly resembling the taunt-song over the king of Babylon in 14:4-21.
Isaiah 48 is a hortatory summary and recapitulation of the argument contained in Isaiah 40 through 47, the prophet again emphasizing the following points: (1) Yahweh’s unique power to predict; (2) that salvation is of grace; (3) that Cyrus’ advent will be the crowning proof of Yahweh’s abiding presence among His people; (4) that God’s chastisements were only disciplinary; and (5) that even now there is hope, if they will but accept of Yahweh’s proffered salvation. Alas! that there is no peace or salvation for the godless (48:20-22). Thus ends the first division of Isaiah’s remarkable “vision” of Israel’s deliverance from captivity through Cyrus.
The second section (Isaiah 49 through 57) deals with the spiritual agent of salvation, Yahweh’s suffering “Servant.” With Isaiah 49 the prophet leaves off attempting further to prove the sole deity of Yahweh by means of prediction, and drops entirely his description of Cyrus’ victories and the overthrow of Babylon, in order to set forth in greater detail the character and mission of the suffering “Servant” of Yahweh. Already, in Isaiah through 48, he had alluded several times to this unique and somewhat enigmatical personage, speaking of him both collectively and as an individual (41:8-10; 42:1-9,18-22; 43:10; 44:1-5,21-28; 45:4; 48:20-22); but now he defines with greater precision both his prophetic and priestly functions, his equipment for his task, his sufferings and humiliation, and also his final exaltation. Altogether in these prophecies he mentions the “Servant” some 20 t. But there are four distinctively so-called “Servant- Songs” in which the prophet seems to rise above the collective masses of all Israel to at least a personification of the pious within Israel, or better, to a unique Person embodying within himself all that is best in the Israel within Israel. They are the following: (1) 42:1-9, a poem descriptive of the Servant’s gentle manner and world-wide mission; (2) 49:1-13, describing the Servant’s mission and spiritual success; (3) 50:4-11, the Servant’s soliloquy concerning His perfection through suffering; and (4) 52:13 through 53:12, the Servant’s vicarious suffering and ultimate exaltation. In this last of the four “Servant-Songs” we reach the climax of the prophet’s inspired symphony, the acme of Hebrew Messianic hope. The profoundest thoughts in the Old Testament revelation are to be found in this section. It is a vindication of the “Servant,” so clear and so true, and wrought out with such pathos and potency, that it holds first place among Messianic predictions. Polycarp called it “the golden passional of the Old Testament.” It has been realized in Jesus Christ.
Isaiah 58 through 66 describe the future glory of the people of God.
Having described in Isaiah 40 through 48 the temporal agent of Israel’s salvation, Cyrus, and in Isaiah 49 through 57 the spiritual agent of their salvation, the “Servant” of Yahweh, the prophet proceeds in this last section to define the conditions on which salvation may be enjoyed. He begins, as before, with a double imperative, “Cry aloud, spare not” (compare 40:1; 49:1).
In Isaiah 58 he discusses true fasting and faithful Sabbath observance.
In Isaiah 59 he beseeches Israel to forsake their sins. It is their sins, he urges, which have hidden Yahweh’s face and retarded the nation’s salvation. In 59:9 ff the prophet identifies himself with the people and leads them in their devotions. Yahweh is grieved over Israel’s forlorn condition, and, seeing their helplessness, He arms himself like a warrior to interfere judicially (59:15-19). Israel shall be redeemed. With them as the nucleus of a new nation, Yahweh will enter anew into covenant relation, and put His Spirit upon them, which will abide with them henceforth and forever (59:20-21).
Isaiah 60 through 61 describe the future blessedness of Zion. The longlooked- for “light” (compare 59:9) begins to dawn: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of Yahweh is risen upon thee” (60:1). The prophet pauses at this point to paint a picture of the redeemed community.
As in 2:3,4, the Gentiles are seen flocking to Zion, which becomes the mistress of the nations. Foreigners build her walls, and her gates are kept open continually without fear of siege. The Gentiles acknowledge that Zion is the spiritual center of the world. Even Israel’s oppressors regard her as “the city of Yahweh,” as “an eternal excellency,” in which Yahweh sits as its everlasting light (60:10-22).
In Isaiah 61, which Drummond has called “the program of Christianity,” the “Servant” of Yahweh is again introduced, though anonymously, as the herald of salvation (61:1-3). The gospel monologue of the “Servant” is followed by a promise of the restoration and blessedness of Jerusalem (61:4-11). Thus the prophecy moves steadily forward toward its goal in Jesus Christ (compare Luke 4:18-21).
In Isaiah 62:1 through 63:6 Zion’s salvation is described as drawing near. The nations will be spectators of the great event. A new name which will better symbolize her true character shall be given to Zion, namely, Hephzibah, “My delight is in her”; for Jerusalem shall no more be called desolate. On the other hand, Zion’s enemies will all be vanquished. In a brief poem of peculiar dramatic beauty (63:1-6), the prophet portrays Yahweh’s vengeance, as a victorious warrior, upon all those who retard Israel’s deliverance. Edom in particular was Israel’s insatiate foe. Hence, the prophet represents Yahweh’s judgment of the nations as taking place on Edom’s unhallowed soil. Yahweh, whose mighty arm has wrought salvation, returns as victor, having slain all of Israel’s foes.
In Isaiah 63:7 through 64:12, Yahweh’s “servants” resort to prayer.
They appeal to Yahweh as the Begetter and Father of the nations (63:16; 64:8). With this thought of the fatherhood of God imbedded in his language, Isaiah had opened his very first oracle to Judah and Jerusalem (compare 1:2). As the prayer proceeds, the language becomes increasingly tumultuous. The people are thrown into despair because Yahweh seems to have abandoned them altogether (63:19). They recognize that the condition of Jerusalem is desperate. “Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned with fire; and all our pleasant places are laid waste” (64:11). Such language, however, is the language of fervent prayer and must not be taken with rigid literalness, as 63:18 and 3:8 plainly show.
Finally, in Isaiah 65 through 66, Yahweh answers His people’s supplications, distinguishing sharply between His own “servants” and Israel’s apostates. Only His chosen “seed” shall be delivered (65:9). Those who have obdurately provoked Yahweh by sacrificing in gardens (65:3; 66:17), offering libations to Fortune and Destiny (65:11), sitting among the graves to obtain oracles from the dead, and, like the Egyptians, eating swine’s flesh and broth of abominable things which were supposed to possess magical properties, lodging in vaults or crypts in which heathen mysteries were celebrated (65:4), and at the same time fancying that by celebrating such heathen mysteries they are holier than others and thereby disqualified to discharge the ordinary duties of life (65:5) — such Yahweh designs to punish, measuring their work into their bosom and destroying them utterly with the sword (65:7,12). On the other hand, the “servants” of Yahweh Shall inherit His holy mountains. They shall rejoice and sing for joy of heart, and bless themselves in the God of Amen, i.e. in the God of Truth (65:9,14,16). Yahweh will create new heavens and a new earth, men will live and grow old like the patriarchs; they will possess houses and vineyards and enjoy them; for an era of idyllic peace will be ushered in with the coming of the Messianic age, in which even the natures of wild animals will be changed and the most rapacious of wild animals will live together in harmony (65:17-25). Religion will become spiritual and decentralized, mystic cults will disappear, incredulous scoffers will be silenced. Zion’s population will be marvelously multiplied, and the people will be comforted and rejoice (66:1-14). Furthermore, all nations will flock to Zion to behold Yahweh’s glory, and from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh will come up to worship in Jerusalem (66:15- 23).
It is evident that the Book of Isaiah closes, practically as it begins, with a polemic against false worship, and the alternate reward of the righteous and punishment of the wicked. The only essential difference between the prophet’s earlier and later oracles is this: Isaiah, in his riper years, on the basis of nearly half a century’s experience as a preacher, paints a much brighter eschatological picture than was possible in his early ministry. His picture of the Messianic age not only transcends those of his contemporaries in the 8th century BC, but he penetrates regions beyond the spiritual horizon of any and all Old Testament seers. Such language as that contained in Isaiah 66:1,2, in particular, anticipates the great principle enunciated by Jesus in John 4:24, namely, that “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” To attempt to date such oracles as these on the basis of internal evidence is an absolute impossibility. Humanly speaking, one age could have produced such revelations quite as easily as another. But no age could have produced them apart from the Divine spirit.
8. ISAIAH’S PROPHECIES CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED:
The editorial arrangement of Isaiah’s prophecies is very suggestive. In the main they stand in chronological order. That is to say, all the dates mentioned are in strict historical sequence; e.g. Isaiah 6:1, “In the year that king Uzziah died” (740 BC); 7:1, “In the days of Ahaz” (736 ff BC); 14:28, “In the year that king Ahaz died” (727 BC); 20:1, “In the year that Tartan came unto Ashdod, when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him” (711 BC); 36:1, “In the 14th year of king Hezekiah” (701 BC). These points are all in strict chronological order. Taken in groups, also, Isaiah’s great individual messages are likewise arranged in true historical sequence; thus, Isaiah 1 through 6 for the most part belong to the last years of Jotham’s reign (740-736 BC); Isaiah 7 through 12 to the period of the Syro- Ephraimitic war (734 BC); Isaiah 20, to the year of Sargon’s siege of Ashdod (711 BC); Isaiah 28 through 32, to the invasion of Judah by Sennacherib (701 BC); while the distinctively promissory portions (Isaiah 40 through 66), as is natural, conclude the collection. In several minor instances, however, there are notable departures from a rigid chronological order. For example, Isaiah 6, which describes the prophet’s initial call to preach, follows the rebukes and denunciations of Isaiah 1 through 5; but this is probably due to its being used by the prophet as an apologetic.
Again, the oracles against foreign nations in Isaiah 13 through 23 belong to various dates, being grouped together, in part, at least, because of their subject-matter. Likewise, Isaiah 38 through 39, which give an account of Hezekiah’s sickness and Merodach-baladan’s embassy to him upon his recovery (714-712 BC), chronologically precede Isaiah 36 through 37, which describe Sennacherib’s investment of Jerusalem (701 BC). This chiastic order, however, in the last instance, is due probably to the desire to make Isaiah 36 through 37 (about Sennacherib, king of Assyria) an appropriate conclusion to Isaiah 1 through 35 (which say much about Assyria), and, on the other hand, to make Isaiah 38 through 39 (about Merodach-baladan of Babylon) a suitable introduction to Isaiah 40 through 66 (which speak of Babylon).
The attempt to date Isaiah’s individual messages on the basis of internal criteria alone, is a well-nigh impossible task; and yet no other kind of evidence is available. Often passages stand side by side which point in opposite directions; in fact, certain sections seem to be composed of various fragments dating from different periods, as though prophecies widely separated from each other in time had been fused together. In such cases much weight should be given to those features which point to an early origin, because of the predominatingly predictive character of Isaiah’s writings.
Isaiah always had an eye upon the future. His semi-historical and biographical prophecies are naturally the easiest to date; on the other hand, the form of his Messianic and eschatological discourses is largely due to his own personal temper and psychology, rather than to the historical circumstances of the time. The following is a table of Isaiah’s prophecies chronologically arranged:
The prophet’s standpoint in Isaiah 40 through 66 is that of Isaiah himself.
For if Isaiah, before 734 BC, in passages confessedly his own, could describe Judah’s cities as already “burned with fire,” Zion as deserted as “a booth in a vineyard” (1:7,8), Jerusalem as “ruined,” Judah as “fallen” (3:8), and Yahweh’s people as already “gone into captivity” (5:13), surely after all the destruction and devastation wrought on Judah by Assyria in the years 722, 720, 711, and 701 BC, the same prophet with the same poetic license could declare that the temple had been “trodden down” (63:18) and “burned with fire,” and all Judah’s pleasant places “laid waste” (64:11); and, in perfect keeping with his former promises, could add that “they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations” (61:4; compare 44:26; 58:12).
Or again, if Isaiah the son of Amoz could comfort Jerusalem with promises of protection when the Assyrian (734 BC) should come like an overflowing river (8:9,10; 10:24,25); and conceive a beautiful parable of comfort like that contained in 28:23-29; and insert among his warnings and exhortations of the gloomy year 702 BC so many precious promises of a brighter future which was sure to follow Sennacherib’s invasion (29:17-24; 30:29-33; 31:8,9); and, in the very midst of the siege of 701 BC, conceive of such marvelous Messianic visions as those in 33:17-24 with which to dispel the dismay of his compatriots, surely the same prophet might be conceived of as seizing the opportunity to comfort those in Zion who survived the great catastrophe of 701 BC. The prophet who had done the one was prepared to do the other.
There was one circumstance of the prophet’s position after 701 BC which was new, and which is too often overlooked, a circumstance which he could not have employed to anything like the same degree as an argument in enforcing his message prior to the Assyrian’s overthrow and the deliverance of Jerusalem. It was this: the fulfillment of former predictions as proof of Yahweh’s deity. From such passages we obtain an idea of the prophet’s true historical position ( Isaiah 42:9; 44:8; 45:21; 46:10; 48:3). Old predictions have already been fulfilled ( Isaiah 6:11-13; 29:8; 30:31; 31:8; 37:7,30), on the basis of which the prophet ventures to predict new and even more astounding things concerning the overthrow of Babylon by Cyrus, and Israel’s deliverance through him from their captors ( Isaiah 43:6). Isaiah’s book is signally full of predictions ( Isaiah 7:8,10 ff; 8:4,8; 9:11,12; 10:26 ff; 14:24-27; 16:14; 17:9,12-14; 20:4-6; 21:16; 22:19 ff; 23:15; 38:5), some of which, written down and sealed, were evidently committed by the prophet to his inner circle of disciples to be used and verified by them in subsequent crises ( Isaiah 8:16). Failure to recognize this element in Isaiah’s book is fatal to a true interpretation of the prophet’s real message.
9. THE CRITICAL PROBLEM: “For about twenty-five centuries” as A. B. Davidson observes (Old Testament Prophecy, 1903, 244), “no one dreamed of doubting that Isaiah the son of Amoz was the author of every part of the book that goes under his name; and those who still maintain the unity of authorship are accustomed to point, with satisfaction, to the unanimity of the Christian church on the matter, till a few German scholars arose, about a century ago, and called in question the unity of this book.” Tradition is unanimous in favor of the unity of the book. (1) The History of Criticism.
The critical disintegration of the book began with Koppe, who in 1780 first doubted the genuineness of Isaiah 50. Nine years later Doederlein suspected the whole of Isaiah 40 through 66. He was followed by Rosenmueller, who was the first to deny to Isaiah the prophecy against Babylon in 13:1 through 14:23. Eichhorn, at the beginning of the last century, further eliminated the oracle against Tyre in Isaiah 23, and he, with Gesenius and Ewald, also denied the Isaianic origin of Isaiah through 27. Gesenius also ascribed to some unknown prophet Isaiah and 16. Rosenmueller then went farther, and pronounced against Isaiah and 35, and not long afterward (1840) Ewald questioned Isaiah 12 and 33.
Thus by the middle of the 19th century some 37 or 38 chapters were rejected as no part of Isaiah’s actual writings. In 1879-80, the celebrated Leipzig professor, Franz Delitzsch, who for years previous had defended the genuineness of the entire book, finally yielded to the modern critical position, and in the new edition of his commentary published in 1889, interpreted Isaiah 40 through 66, though with considerable hesitation, as coming from the close of the period of Babylonian exile. About the same time (1888-90), Drs. Driver and G.A. Smith gave popular impetus to similar views in Great Britain. Since 1890, the criticism of Isaiah has been even more trenchant and microscopic than before. Duhm, Stade, Guthe, Hackmann, Cornill and Marti on the Continent, and Cheyne, Whitehouse, Box, Glazebrook, Kennett, Gray, Peake, and others in Great Britain and America have questioned portions which hitherto were supposed to be genuine. (2) The Disintegration of “Deutero-Isaiah.” Even the unity of Isaiah 40 through 66, which were supposed to be the work of the “Second” or “Deutero-Isaiah,” is now given up. What prior to 1890 was supposed to be the unique product of some celebrated but anonymous seer who lived in Babylonia about 550 BC is today commonly divided and subdivided and in large part distributed among various writers from Cyrus to Simon (538-164 BC). At first it was thought sufficient to separate Isaiah 63 through 66 as a later addition to “Deutero-Isaiah’s” prophecies; but more recently it has become the fashion to distinguish between Isaiah 40 through 55, which are claimed to have been written by “Deutero-Isaiah” in Babylonia about 549-538 BC, and Isaiah 56 through 66, which are now alleged to have been composed by a “Trito-Isaiah” about 460-445 BC. (3) Recent Views.
Among the latest to investigate the problem is Professor R.H. Kennett of Cambridge, English, who, in his Schweich Lectures (The Composition of the Book of Isaiah in the Light of History and Archaeology, 1910, 84 ff), sums up the results of investigations as follows: (a) all of Isaiah 3; 5; 6; 7; 20 and 31, and large portions of Isaiah 1; 2; 4; 8; 9; 10; 14; 17; 22 and 23, may be assigned to Isaiah, the son of Amoz; (b) all of Isaiah 13; 40 and 47, and large portions of Isaiah 14; 21; 41; 43; 44; 45; 46 and 48, may be assigned to the time of Cyrus; (c) all of Isaiah 15; 36; 37 and 39, and portions of Isaiah 16 and 38, may be assigned to the period between Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander the Great, but cannot be dated precisely; (d) the passage 23:1-14 may be assigned to the time of Alexander the Great; (e) all of Isaiah 11; 12; 19; 24 through 27; 29; 30; 32 through 35; 42; 49 through 66; and portions of Isaiah 1; 2; 4; 8; 9; 10; 16; 17; 18; 23; 41; 44; 45; 48 may be assigned to the 2nd century BC (167-140 BC).
Professor C. F. Kent, also (Sermons, Epistles, and Apocalypses of Israel’s Prophets, 1910, 27 ff), makes the following critical observations on Isaiah 40 through 66. He says: “The prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah .... afford by far the best approach for the study of the difficult problems presented by Isaiah 40 through 66. .... Isaiah 56 through 66 are generally recognized as post-exilic. .... In Isaiah 56 and the following chapters there are repeated references to the temple and its service, indicating that it had already been restored. Moreover, these references are not confined to the latter part of the book. .... The fact, on the one hand, that there are few, if any, allusions to contemporary events in these chapters, and on the other hand, that little or nothing is known of the condition and hopes of the Jews during this period (the closing years of the Babylonian exile) makes the dating of these prophecies possible, although far from certain. .... Also, the assumption that the author of these chapters lived in the Babylonian exile is not supported by a close examination of the prophecies themselves.
Possibly their author was one of the few who, like Zerubbabel, had been born in Babylon and later returned to Palestine. He was also dealing with such broad and universal problems that he gives few indications of his date and place of abode; but all the evidence that is found points to Jerusalem as the place where he lived and wrote. .... The prophet’s interest and point of view center throughout in Jerusalem, and he shows himself far more familiar with conditions in Palestine than in distant Babylon. Most of his illustrations are drawn from the agricultural life of Palestine. His vocabulary is also that of a man dwelling in Palestine, and in this respect is in marked contrast with the synonyms employed by Ezekiel, the prophet of the Babylonian exile.”
That is to say, two of the most recent investigators of the Book of Isaiah reach conclusions quite at variance with the opinions advocated in 1890, when Delitzsch so reluctantly allowed that Isaiah 40 through 66 may have sprung from the period of Babylonian exile. Now, it is found that these last 27 chapters were written after the exile, most probably in Palestine, rather than in Babylonia as originally claimed, and are no longer considered addressed primarily to the suffering exiles in captivity as was formerly urged. (4) The Present State of the Question.
The present state of the Isaiah question is, to say the least, confusing.
Those who deny the integrity of the book may be divided into two groups, which we may call moderates and radicals. Among the moderates may be included Drs. Driver, G.A. Smith, Skinner, Kirkpatrick, Koenig, A.B.
Davidson, Barnes and Whitehouse. These all practically agree that the following chapters and verses are not Isaiah’s: 11:10-16; 12; 13:1 through 14:23; 15:1 through 16:12; 21:1-10; 24 through 27; 34 through 35; through 39; 40 through 66. That is to say, some 44 chapters out of the whole number, 66, were not written by Isaiah; or, approximately 800 out of 1,292 verses are not genuine. Among the radicals are Drs. Cheyne, Duhm, Hackmann, Guthe, Marti, Kennett and Gray. These all reject approximately 1,030 verses out of the total 1,292, retaining the following only as the genuine product of Isaiah and his age: 1:2-26;29-31; 2:6-19; 3:1,5,8,9,12-17; 4:1; 5:1-14,17-29; 6; 7:1-8,22; 9:8 through 10:9; 10:13,14,27-32; 17:1-14; 18; 20; 22:1-22; 28:1-4,7-22; 29:1-6,9,10,13-15; 30:1-17; 31:1-4. That is, only about 262 verses out of the total 1,292 are allowed to be genuine. This is, we believe, a fair statement of the Isaiahquestion as it exists in the hands of divisive critics today.
On the other hand there have been those who have defended and who still defend the essential unity of Isaiah’s entire book, e.g. Strachey (1874), Nagelsbach (1877), Bredenkamp (1887), Douglas (1895), W.H. Cobb (1883-1908), W.H. Green (1892), Vos (1898-99), Thirtle (1907), Margoliouth (1910) and O.T. Allis (1912). (5) Reasons for Dissecting the Book.
The fundamental axiom of criticism is the dictum that a prophet always spoke out of a definite historical situation to the present needs of the people among whom he lived, and that a definite historical situation shall be pointed out for each prophecy. This fundamental postulate, which on the whole is reasonable and perfectly legitimate if not overworked, underlies all modern criticism of Old Testament prophecy. It is not possible, however, always to trace a mere snatch of sermonic discourse to a definite historical situation apart from its context. Moreover, the prophets often spoke consciously, not only to their own generation, but also to the generations to come. Isaiah in particular commanded, “Bind thou up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples” (8:16); that is, preserve my teachings for the future. Again in 30:8, he says, “Now go, .... inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever.”
And also in 42:23, “Who is there among you that will give ear to this? that will hearken and hear for the time to come?”
Certain false presuppositions often govern critics in their disintegration of the book. Only a few examples need be given by way of illustration: (a) According to some, “the conversion of the heathen” lay quite beyond the horizon of any 8th-century prophet; consequently, Isaiah 2:2-4 and all similar passages which foretell the conversion of those outside the chosen people are to be relegated to an age subsequent to Isaiah. (b) To others, “the picture of universal peace” in Isaiah 11:1-9 is a symptom of late date, and therefore this section and all kindred ones must be deleted. (c) To others, the thought of “universal judgment” upon “the whole earth” in 14:26 and elsewhere quite transcends Isaiah’s range of thought. (d) To others still, the apocalyptic character of Isaiah 24 through represents a phase of Hebrew thought which prevailed in Israel only after Ezekiel. (e) Even to those who are considered moderates “the poetic character” of a passage like Isaiah 12, and the references to a “return” from captivity, as in 11:11-16, and the promises and consolations such as are found in Isaiah 33 are cited as grounds for assigning these and similar passages to a much later age. Radicals deny in toto the existence of all Messianic passages among Isaiah’s own predictions, relegating all Messianic hope to a much later age.
But to deny to the Isaiah of the 8th century all catholicity of grace, all universalism of salvation or judgment, every highly developed Messianic ideal, every rich note of promise and comfort, all sublime faith in the sacrosanct character of Zion, as some do, is unwarrantably to create a new Isaiah of greatly reduced proportions, a mere preacher of righteousness, a statesman of not very optimistic vein, and the exponent of a cold ethical religion without the warmth and glow of the messages which are actually ascribed to the prophet of the 8th century.
As a last resort, certain critics have appealed to 2 Chronicles 36:22,23 as external evidence that Isaiah 40 through 66 existed as a separate collection in the Chronicler’s age. But the evidence obtained from this source is so doubtful that it is well-nigh valueless. For it is not the prediction of Isaiah concerning Cyrus to which the Chronicler points as Jeremiah’s, but the “70 years” of Babylonian supremacy spoken of in Chronicles 36:21, which Jeremiah actually did predict (compare Jeremiah 25:11; 29:10). On the other hand, Isaiah 40 through 66 were certainly ascribed to Isaiah as early as 180 BC, for Jesus Ben-Sirach, the author of Ecclesiasticus, speaks of Isaiah as the prophet who “saw by an excellent spirit that which should come to pass at the last, and comforted them that mourned in Zion” (Ecclesiasticus 48:20 ff; compare Isaiah 40:1 ff). Furthermore, there is absolutely no proof that Isaiah 1 through 39, or Isaiah 40 through 66, or any other section of Isaiah’s prophecies ever existed by themselves as an independent collection; nor is there any substantial ground for supposing that the promissory and Messianic portions have been systematically interpolated by editors long subsequent to Isaiah’s own time. The earlier prophets presumably did more than merely threaten. (6) Arguments for One Isaiah.
It is as unreasonable to expect to be able to prove the unity of Isaiah as to suppose that it has been disproved. Internal evidence is indecisive in either case. There are arguments, however, which corroborate a belief that there was but one Isaiah. Here are some of those which might be introduced: (a) The Circle of Ideas:
The circle of ideas, which are strikingly the same throughout the entire book: For example, take the characteristic name for God, which is almost peculiar to Isaiah, “the Holy One of Israel.” This title for Yahweh occurs in the Book of Isaiah a total of 25 times, and only 6 times elsewhere in the Old Testament, one of which is a parallel passage in Kings. This unique epithet, “the Holy One of Israel,” interlocks all the various portions with one another and stamps them with the personal imprimatur of him who saw the vision of the majestic God seated upon His throne, high and lifted up, and heard the angelic choirs singing: “Holy, holy, holy, is Yahweh of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory” (6:3). The presence of this Divine title in all the different sections of the book is of more value in identifying Isaiah as the author of all these prophecies than though his name had been inserted at the beginning of every chapter, for the reason that his theology — his conception of God as the Holy One — is woven into the very fiber and texture of the whole book. It occurs 12 times in Isaiah 1 through 39, and 13 times in Isaiah 40 through 66; and it is simply unscientific to say that the various alleged authors of the disputed portions all employed the same title through imitation (compare 1:4; 5:19,24; 10:20; 12:6; 17:7; 29:19; 30:11,12,15; 31:1; 37:23; also 41:14,16,20; 43:3,14; 45:11; 47:4; 48:17; 49:7; 54:5; 55:5; 60:9,14; elsewhere, only in 2 Kings 19:22; Psalm 71:22; 78:41; 89:18; Jeremiah 50:29; 51:5).
Another unique idea which occurs with considerable repetition in the Book of Isaiah is the thought of a “highway” (compare 11:16; 35:8; 40:3; 43:19; 49:11; 57:14; 62:10). Another characteristic idea is that of a “remnant” (compare 1:9; 10:20,21,22; 11:11,16; 14:22,30; 15:9; 16:14; 17:3; 21:17; 28:5; 37:31; 46:3; compare 65:8,9). Another striking trait of the book is the position occupied by “Zion” in the prophet’s thoughts (compare 2:3; 4:5; 18:7; 24:23; 28:16; 29:8; 30:19; 31:9; 33:5,20; 34:8; 46:13; 49:14; 51:3,16; 52:1; 59:20; 60:14; 62:1,11; 66:8). Still another is the oftrepeated expression, “pangs of a woman in travail” (compare 13:8; 21:3; 26:17,18; 42:14; 54:1; 66:7). These, and many others less distinctive, psychologically stamp the book with an individuality which it is difficult to account for, if it be broken up into countless fragments and distributed, as some do, over the centuries. (b) The Literary Style:
As negative evidence, literary style is not a very safe argument; for, as Professor McCurdy says, “In the case of a writer of Isaiah’s environments, style is not a sure criterion of authorship” (History, Prophecy and the Monuments, II, 317, note). Yet it is certainly remarkable that the clause “for the mouth of Yahweh hath spoken it” should be found 3 times in the Book of Isaiah, and nowhere else in the Old Testament (compare 1:20; 40:5; 58:14). And it is noteworthy that the phrase, “streams of water,” should occur twice in Isaiah and nowhere else (compare 30:25; 44:4 in the Hebrew). And very peculiar is the tendency on the prophet’s part to emphatic reduplication (compare 2:7,8; 6:3; 8:9; 24:16,23; 40:1; 43:11,25; 48:15; 51:12; 57:19; 62:10). In fact, it is not extravagant to say that Isaiah’s style differs widely from that of every other Old Testament prophet, and is as far removed as possible from that of Ezekiel and the post-exilic prophets. (c) Historical References:
Take, for example, first, the prophet’s constant reference to Judah and Jerusalem, his country and its capital ( Isaiah 1:7-9; 3:8; 24:19; 25:2; 40:2,9; 62:4); likewise, to the temple and its ritual of worship and sacrifice.
In Isaiah 1:11-15, when all was prosperous, the prophet complained that the people were profuse and formal in their ceremonies and sacrifices; in 43:23,14, on the contrary, when the country had been overrun by the Assyrian and Sennacherib had besieged the city, the prophet reminds them that they had not brought to Yahweh the sheep of their burnt offerings, nor honored Him with their sacrifices; while in 66:1-3,6,20, not only is the existence of the Temple and the observance of the ritual presupposed, but those are sentenced who place their trust in the material temple, and the outward ceremonials of temple-worship. As for the “exile,” the prophet’s attitude to it throughout is that of both anticipation and realization. Thus, in 57:1, judgment is only threatened, not yet inflicted: “The righteous is taken away from the evil to come.” That is to say, the exile is described as still future. On the other hand, in 3:8, “Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen,” which seems to describe the exile as in the past; yet, as everybody admits, these are the words of Isaiah of the 8th century. In 11:11,12, the prophet says, “The Lord will set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people. .... from the four corners of the earth.” To interpret such a statement literally and mechanically without regard to 8thcentury conditions, or to Isaiah’s manifest attitude to the exile, leads to confusion. No prophet realized so keenly or described so vividly the destiny of the Hebrews. (d) The Predictive Element:
This is the strongest proof of the unity of the Book of Isaiah. Prediction is the very essence of prophecy (compare Deuteronomy 18:22); Isaiah was preeminently a prophet of the future. With unparalleled suddenness, he repeatedly leaps from despair to hope, from threat to promise, and from the actual to the ideal. What Professor Kent says of “Deutero-Isaiah” may with equal justice be said of Isaiah himself: “While in touch with his own age, the great unknown prophet lives in the atmosphere of the past and the future” (Sermons, Epistles, and Apocalypses of Israel’s Prophets,28).
Isaiah spoke to his own age, but he also addressed himself to the ages to follow. His verb tenses are characteristically futures and prophetic perfects.
Of his book A.B. Davidson’s words are particularly true: “If any prophetic book be examined .... it will appear that the ethical and religious teaching is always secondary, and that the essential thing in the book or discourse is the prophet’s outlook into the future” (HDB, article “Prophecy and Prophets,” IV, 119).
Isaiah was exceptionally given to predicting: thus (a) before the Syro-Ephraimitic war (734 BC), he predicted that within 65 years Ephraim should be broken to pieces (7:8); and that before the child Maher-shalal-hash-baz should have knowledge to cry, “My father,” or “My mother,” the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria should be carried away (8:4; compare 7:16). These are, however, but two of numerous predictions, as shown above, among his earlier prophecies (compare 1:27,28; 2:2-4; 6:13; 10:20-23; 11:6-16; 17:14). (i) Shortly before the downfall of Samaria in 722 BC, Isaiah predicted that Tyre should be forgotten 70 years, and that after the end of years her merchandise should be holiness to Yahweh (23:15,18). (ii) In like manner prior to the siege of Ashdod in 711 BC, he proclaimed that within 3 years Moab should be brought into contempt (Isaiah 16:l4), and that within a year all the glory of Kedar should fail ( Isaiah 21:16). (iii) And not long prior to the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib in BC, he predicted that in an instant, suddenly, a multitude of Jerusalem’s foes should be as dust ( Isaiah 29:5); that yet a very little while and Lebanon should be turned into a fruitful field ( Isaiah 29:17); and that Assyria should be dismayed and fall by the sword, but not of men ( Isaiah 30:17,31; 31:8). And more, that for days beyond a year, the careless women of Jerusalem should be troubled ( Isaiah 32:10,16-20); and that the righteous in Zion should see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, and return and come with singing ( Isaiah 33:17 ff; 35:4,10); but that Sennacherib, on the contrary, should hear tidings and return without shooting an arrow into the city ( Isaiah 37:7,26- 29,33-35).
In like manner, also, after the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib in 701 BC was over, the prophet seems to have continued to predict; and, in order to demonstrate to the suffering and unbelieving remnant about him the deity of Yahweh and the folly of idolatry, pointed to the predictions which he had already made in the earlier years of his ministry, and to the fact that they had been fulfilled. Thus, he says, “Who hath declared it from the beginning, that we may know? and beforetime, that we may say, He is right?” ( Isaiah 41:21-23,16); “Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them” ( Isaiah 42:9,23); “Who among them can declare this, and show us former things (i.e. things to come in the immediate future)? .... I have declared, and I have saved, and I have showed” ( Isaiah 43:9,12); “Who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it ....? And the things that are coming, and that shall come to pass, let them (the idols) declare. .... Have I not declared unto thee of old, and showed it? And ye are my witnesses. .... That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure, even saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built; and of the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid” ( Isaiah 44:7,8,27,28); “It is I, Yahweh, who call thee by thy name, even the God of Israel. .... I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me. .... Ask me of the things that are to come. .... I have raised him (Cyrus) up in righteousness, and .... he shall build my city, and he shall let my exiles go free” (45:3,4,11,13); “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done; .... calling a ravenous bird (Cyrus) from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country; yea, I have spoken, I will also bring it to pass” ( Isaiah 46:10,11); “I have declared the former things from of old, .... and I showed them: suddenly I did them, and they came to pass. .... I have declared it .... from of old; before it came to pass I showed it thee; lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them” ( Isaiah 48:3,5); “I have showed thee new things from this time, even hidden things. .... Yea, from of old thine ear was not opened. .... Who among them hath declared these things? .... I, even I, have spoken; yea, I have called him; .... from the beginning I have not spoken in secret” ( Isaiah 48:6-8,14-16). Such predictions are explicit and emphatic. (e) Cyrus a Subject of Prediction:
From all the above-mentioned explicit and oft-repeated predictions one thing is obvious, namely, that great emphasis is laid by the prophet on prediction throughout the entire Book of Isaiah. And it must be further allowed that “Cyrus” is represented by the author as predicted, from any point of view. The only question is, Does the prophet emphasize the fact that he himself is predicting the coming of Cyrus? or that former predictions concerning Cyrus are now, as the prophet writes, coming to pass before his readers’ eyes? Canon Cheyne’s remark upon this point is instructive. He says: “The editor, who doubtless held the later Jewish theory of prophecy, may have inferred from a number of passages, especially Isaiah 41:26; 48:3,1.14, that the first appearance of Cyrus had been predicted by an ancient prophet, and observing certain Isaianic elements in the phraseology of these chapters, may have identified the prophet with Isaiah” (Introduction to the Book of Isaiah, 238).
Dr. G.A. Smith likewise allows that Cyrus is the fulfillment of former predictions.
He says: “Nor is it possible to argue, as some have tried to do, that the prophet is predicting these things as if they had already happened. For as part of argument for the unique divinity of the God of Israel, Cyrus, `alive and irresistible,’ and already accredited with success, is pointed out as the unmistakable proof that former prophecies of a deliverance for Israel are already coming to pass. Cyrus, in short, is not presented as a prediction, but as a proof that a prediction is being fulfilled” (HDB, article “Isaiah,” 493). And further he says: “The chief claim, therefore, which Isaiah 40 ff make for the God of Israel is His power to direct the history of the world in conformity to a long-predicted and faithfully followed purpose. This claim starts from the proof that Yahweh has long before predicted events now happening or about to happen, with Cyrus as their center. But this is much more than a proof of isolated predictions, though these imply omniscience. It is a declaration of the unity of history sweeping to the high ends which have been already revealed to Israel — an exposition, in short, of the Omnipotence, Consistence, and Faithfulness of the Providence of the One True God” (ibid., 496).
It is obvious, therefore, in any case, whether these chapters are early or late, that Cyrus is the subject of prediction. It really makes little difference at which end of history one takes his stand, whether in the 8th century BC with Isaiah, or in the 6th century BC with “Deutero-Isaiah.” Cyrus, to the author of these chapters, is the subject of prediction. In other words, whether indeed the author is really predicting Cyrus in advance of all apparent fulfillment, or Cyrus is the fulfillment of some ancient prediction by another, does not alter the fact that Cyrus was the subject of prediction on the part of somebody. Accordingly, as was stated at the outset, the whole question is, which does the prophet emphasize, (a) the fact that he himself is predicting? or, (b) that former predictions by someone else are now before his eyes coming to pass?
The truth is, the prophet seems to live in the atmosphere of the past and the future as well as in the present, all of which are equally vivid to his prophetic mind. This is a peculiar characteristic of Isaiah. It is seen in the account he gives of his inaugural vision (Isaiah 6), of which Delitzsch remarks that it is “like a prediction in the process of being fulfilled.” The same is true of Isaiah 24 through 27. There the prophet repeatedly projects himself into the future, and speaks from the standpoint of the fulfillment of his predictions. It is especially true of Isaiah 40 through 48. At one time the prophet emphasizes the fact that he is predicting, and a little later he describes his predictions as coming to pass. When, accordingly, a decision is made as to when the author predicted Cyrus, it is more natural to suppose that he was doing so long before Cyrus’ actual appearance. This, in fact, is in keeping with the test of true prophecy contained in Deuteronomy 18:22: “When a prophet speaketh in the name of Yahweh, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which Yahweh hath not spoken; the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously, thou shalt not be afraid of him.” Besides, there is a similar explicit prediction in the Old Testament, namely, that of King Josiah, who was foretold by name two centuries before he came ( 1 Kings 13:2; compare 2 Kings 23:15,16).
Dr. W. H. Cobb in the Journal of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, 1901, 79, pleads for a “shrinkage of Cyrus,” because Cyrus figures only in Isaiah 40 through 48, and is then dismissed. Dr. Thirtle, on the other hand, argues that the name “Cyrus” is a mere appellative, being originally not Koresh (Cyrus), but [choresh] (“workman,” “artificer,” “imagebreaker”), and that 44:27,28 is a gloss (compare Old Testament Problems, 244-64). But in opposition to these views the present writer prefers to write Cyrus large, and to allow frankly that he is the subject of extraordinary prediction. For the very point of the author’s argument is, that he is predicting events which Yahweh alone is capable of foretelling or bringing to pass; in other words, that prescience is the proof of Yahweh’s deity. Isaiah lived in an age when Yahweh’s secrets were first revealed privately unto His servants the prophets (compare Amos 3:7). Political conditions were unsettled and kaleidoscopic, and there was every incentive to predict. That Isaiah actually uttered wonderful predictions. is attested, furthermore, both by Jesus Ben-Sirach in Ecclesiasticus 48:20-25 (written circa 180 BC), and by Josephus in his Ant, XI, i, 1, 2 (dating from circa 100 AD); and these are ancient traditions worthy of credence.
Recently, Mr. Oswald T. Allis, after a thorough and exhaustive critical investigation of “the numerico-climactic structure” of the poem in Isaiah 44:24-28, concludes that “the most striking and significant features of the poem favor the view that while the utterance was significant in and of itself, it was chiefly significant in view of the exceptional circumstance under which it was spoken, i.e. in view of its early date. The chronological arrangement of the poem assigns the Restoration and Cyrus to the future. The perspective of the poem, together with the abrupt change of person in the 2nd strophe, argues that the future is a remote future. And finally the carefully constructed double climax attaches a significance to the definiteness of the utterance which is most easily accounted for if this future was so remote that a definite disclosure concerning it would be of extraordinary importance.” And he further alleges that “it is impossible, if justice is done to the plain declarations of Scripture, to limit the prophetic horizon of the prophet Isaiah to the preexilic period and that .... when the form of the poem is recognized, there is every reason to assign it to a pre-exilic prophet, to Isaiah, since the form of the poem is admirably calculated to emphasize the fact that Cyrus and the Restoration belong to a distant future, and to make it clear that it is just because of this fact that the definitehess of the prophecy, the mention of Cyrus by name, is so remarkable and of such unique significance” (Biblical and Theological Studies, by the members of the Faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary, Centennial Volume, 1912, 628-29).
After all, why should men object to prediction on so large a scale? Unless there is definiteness about any given prediction, and unless it transcends ordinary prognostication, there is no especial value in it. Should it be objected, however, that prediction of so minute a character is “abhorrent to reason,” the answer is already at hand; it may be abhorrent to reason, but it is a handmaid to faith. Faith has to do with the future, even as prediction has to do with the future; and the Old Testament is preeminently a book which encourages faith. There is really no valid objection to the prediction of Cyrus. For the one outstanding differentiating characteristic of Israel’s religion is predictive prophecy. The Hebrews certainly predicted the coming of a Messiah. Indeed, the Hebrews were the only people of antiquity whose “Golden Age” lay in the future rather than in the past.
Accordingly, to predict the coming of a Cyrus as the human agent of Israel’s salvation is but the reverse side of the same prophet’s picture of the Divine agent, namely, the obedient, Suffering Servant of Yahweh, who would redeem Israel from its sin. Deny to Isaiah the son of Amoz the prediction concerning Cyrus, and it is but logical to go farther and to deny to him the Messianic hope which is usually associated with his name. Deny to Isaiah the son of Amoz the predictions concerning a return from captivity, and the prophecies of his book are robbed of their essential character and unique perspective. Emasculate those portions of the Book of Isaiah which unveil the future, and they are reduced to a mere vaticinium ex eventu, and their religious value as Divine oracles is largely lost.
LITERATURE.
So much has been written on Isaiah’s prophecies that only a selected list can be given here: I. Commentaries on Isaiah: Owen C. Whitehouse, The New Century Bible,2 volumes, 1905; J.
Skinner, The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, 2 volumes, 1896- 98; W.E. Barnes, The Churchman’s Bible,2 volumes, 1901-3; G.A. Smith, The Expositor’s Bible,2 volumes, 1888-90; Franz Delitzsch, Clark’s Foreign Theological Library, 2 volumes, 1892; (C. von Orelli, Clark’s Foreign Theological Library, 1895; T.K. Cheyne, The Prophecies of Isaiah, 2 volumes, 1892; G.W. Wade, Westminster Commentaries, 1911; G.H.
Box, The Book of Isaiah, 1909; G.B. Gray, International Critical Commentary, I, chapters i-xxvii, 1912; II, chapters xxviii-lxvi, by G.B.
Gray and A.S. Peake; J.E. McFadyen, “Book of the Prophecies of Isaiah” (The Bible for Home and School), 1910; G. Campbell Morgan, The Analyzed Bible,2 volumes, 1910; Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, 2 volumes, 1906; H.G. Mitchell, Isaiah: A Study of chapters 1-12, 1897; Nagelsbach in Lange’s Bibelwerk, English edition, 1878; J.A. Alexander, 1865; H. Ewald, English edition, 1876-81; John Calvin, English edition, 1850; R. Lowth, 1778; Vitringa, 1732; W.
Gesenius, 1820-21; F. Hitzig, 1833; C.J. Bredenkamp, 1887; A. Dillmann, 1890, as revised by Kittel, 1898; B. Duhm, in Nowack’s Handkommentar zum Altes Testament, 1892; K. Marti, 1900; A. Condamin (Roman Catholic), 1905. II. Introduction and Criticism: S.R. Driver, Isaiah, His Life and Times, in “The Men of the Bible Series,” 1888; T.K. Cheyne, Introduction to the Book of Isaiah, 1895; W.R. Smith, The Prophets of Israel, 2nd edition, 1896; A.F. Kirkpatrick, The Doctrine of the Prophets, 1892; J.W. Thirtle, Old Testament Problems, 1907; W.E.
Barnes, An Examination of Isaiah 24-27, 1891; G. Douglas, Isaiah One and His Book One, 1895; J. Kennedy, A Popular Argument for the Unity of Isaiah, 1891; E. Koenig, The Exiles’ Book of Consolation, 1899; G.C.
Workman, The Servant of Yahweh, 1907; M.G. Glazebrook, Studies in the Book of Isaiah, 1910; R.H. Kennett, The Composition of the Book of Isaiah in the Light of History and Archaeology, 1910; R.R. Ottley, Isaiah according to the Septuagint, 1904; Hackmann, Die Zukunftserwartung des Jesaia, 1893; J. Meinhold, Die Jesajaerzahlungen, Jesaja 36-39, 1898; O.T.
Allis, “The Transcendence of Yahweh, God of Israel, Isaiah 44:24-28,” in Biblical and Theological Studies, Princeton’s Centennial Commemoration Volume, 1912, 579634; J. Hastings, The Great Texts of the Bible, 1910; C.S. Robinson, The Gospel in Isaiah, 1895; E. Sievers, Metrische Studien, 1901; G.L. Robinson, The Book of Isaiah, 1910; H.
Guthe, Das Zukunfisbild des Jesaia, 1885; Feldmann, Der Knecht Gottes, 1907; W. Urwick, The Servant of Yahweh, 1877; K. Cramer, The Historical Background of Isaiah 56 through 66, 1905; A.B. Davidson, Old Testament Prophecy, 1903. III. Articles in Journals and Dictionaries: W.H Cobb in Journal of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, 1891, II; 1895, I and II; 1898, I; 1901, I; 1908, I; F. Brown, JBL, 1890, I; W. H. Cobb, in the BS, 1882; G. A. Smith, article “Isaiah” in HDB, 1899; T. K. Cheyne, in the EB, 1901, and in the Encyclopedia Brit, 11th edition, 1910; Jas.
Robertson, in the Illustrated Bible Dict., 1908; E. Koenig, in the Standard Bible Dict., 1909; A. Klostermann and J. A. Kelso, in The New Sch-Herz, 1910; A. Klostermann in the See Hauck-Herzog, Realencyklopadie fur protestantische Theologie und Kirche, 1900; G. Vos, Presbyterian and Reformed Review, 1898; D.S. Margoliouth, in The Temple Dictionary, 1910; C.A. Briggs, article “Analysis of Isaiah 40 through 62” in Harper Memorial Volume. George L. Robinson ISAIAH, ASCENSION OF See APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE.
ISCAH ISCARIOT ISDAEL ISH ([ vyai , ‘ish ]): In the following Hebrew proper names, a prefix meaning “man of,” or, collectively, “men of”: Ish-bosheth, Ishhod, Ish-tob (but the Revised Version (British and American) correctly “the men of Tob”). See also ESHBAAL; ESHBAN; ISCARIOT.
ISHBAAL ISHBAH ISHBAK ISHBI-BENOB ISH-BOSHETH One of the sons of Saul ( 1 Chronicles 8:33; 9:39; 1 Samuel 14:49) who, when his father and brothers were slain in the battle of Gilboa ( <093101> Samuel 31:1 ff), was proclaimed king over Israel by Abner, the captain of Saul’s host, at Mahanaim ( 2 Samuel 2:8 ff). Ishbosheth was 40 years old at this time and reigned over Israel 2 years ( 2 Samuel 2:10). Judah, however, proclaimed David its king. The consequence was war ( Samuel 2:12 ff). The house of David prevailed against the house of Saul ( 2 Samuel 3:1), but the war did not come to a close until Abner, angry on account of the rebuke he suffered from Ish-Bosheth for his unlawful intimacy with Rizpah, Saul’s concubine, joined David ( 2 Samuel 3:6 ff).
David’s condition to return to him Michal, his wife before peace could be made, was fulfilled by Ish-Bosheth ( 2 Samuel 3:14 f), but it was not until after Abner’s death that Ish-Bosheth seems to have given up hopes of retaining his power ( 2 Samuel 4:1 ff). The shameful murder of Ish- Bosheth by his own captains is recorded in 2 Samuel 4:5 ff. David punished the murderers who had expected reward and buried Ish-Bosheth in the grave of Abner at Hebron ( 2 Samuel 4:12 f). Arthur L. Breslich ISHHOD ISHI (1) ISHI (2) ISHIAH ISHMA ISHMAEL (1) The circumstances connected with his birth reveal what seems to us to be a very strange practice. It was customary among ancient peoples to correct the natural defect of barrenness by substituting a slave woman. In our narrative, this is shown to be authorized and brought about by the legitimate wife with the understanding that the offspring of such a union should be regarded as her own: “It may be that I shall obtain children by her,” literally, “that I shall be builded by her” ( Genesis 16:2).
1. BIRTH:
The hopes of Sarah were realized, for Hagar gave birth to a son, and yet the outcome was not fully pleasing to Abraham’s wife; there was one serious drawback. As soon as Hagar “saw that she had conceived,” her behavior toward her mistress underwent a radical change; she was “despised in her eyes.” But for the intervention of the angel of Yahweh, the boy might have been born in Egypt. For, being dealt with hardly (or humbled) by Sarah, the handmaid fled toward that country. On her way she was told by the angel to return to her mistress and submit herself “under her hands.” She obeyed, and the child who was to be as “a wild ass among men” was born when his father was 86 years old ( Genesis 16:7-16).
2. CIRCUMCISION:
At the age of 13 years the boy was circumcised ( Genesis 17:25) in accordance with the Divine command received by Abraham: “Every male among you shall be circumcised” ( Genesis 17:10). Thus young Ishmael was made a party to the covenant into which God had entered with the lad’s father. The fact that both Abraham and his son were circumcised the same day ( Genesis 17:26) undoubtedly adds to the importance of Ishmael’s partaking of the holy rite. He was certainly made to understand how much his father loved him and how deeply he was concerned about his spiritual welfare. We may even assume that there was a time when Abraham looked upon Ishmael as the promised seed. His error was made clear to him when God promised him the birth of a son by Sarah. At first this seemed to be incredible, Abraham being 100 years of age and Sarah 90. And yet, how could he disbelieve the word of God? His cherished, though mistaken, belief about Ishmael, his doubts regarding the possibility of Sarah’s motherhood, and the first faint glimmer of the real meaning of God’s promise, all these thoughts found their expression in the fervid wish: “O that Ishmael might live before thee!” ( Genesis 17:18). Gradually the truth dawned upon the patriarch that God s thoughts are not the thoughts of men, neither their ways His ways. But we have no reason to believe that this entire changing of the mental attitude of Abraham toward Ishmael reacted unfavorably on his future treatment of this son “born of the flesh” (compare Genesis 21:11). If there were troubles in store for the boy likened by the angel of Yahweh to a wild ass, it was, in the main, the youngster’s own fault.3. Banishment:When Isaac was weaned, Ishmael was about 16 years of age. The weaning was made an occasion for great celebration. But it seems the pleasure of the day was marred by the objectionable behavior of Ishmael. “And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian .... mocking” ( Genesis 21:9). Her jealous motherly love had quickened her sense of observation and her faculty of reading the character of children. We do not know exactly what the word used in the Hebrew for “mocking” really means. The Septuagint and the Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) render the passage: “When Sarah saw the son of Hagar .... playing with Isaac,” and Paul followed a later tradition when he says: “He that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit” ( Galatians 4:29). Lightfoot (in his notes to the Epistle to the Galatians) says: “At all events the word seems to mean mocking, jeering.”
At any rate, the fact remains that Sarah objected to the bringing up of the son of promise together with the “mocker,” and so both mother and son were banished from the tents of Abraham.Now there came a most critical time in the life of young Ishmael. Only some bread and a bottle of water were “put on the shoulder” of Hagar by Abraham when he expelled her with her son. Aimlessly, as it seems, the two walked about in the wilderness of Beersheba. The water was soon spent, and with it went all hope and energy. The boy, being faint with thirst and tired out by his constant walking in the fierce heat of the sun, seemed to be dying. So his mother put him rapidly down in the shade of some plant. (We do not share the opinion of some writers that the narrative of Genesis 21:8 ff represented Ishmael as a little boy whom his mother had carried about and finally flung in the shade of some shrub. Even if this passage is taken from a different source, it is certainly not in conflict with the rest as to the age of Ishmael.) After this last act of motherly love — what else could she do to help the boy? — she retired to a place at some distance and resignedly expected the death of her son and perhaps her own.For the 2nd time in her life, she had a marvelous experience. “God heard the voice of the lad” and comforted the unhappy mother most wonderfully. Through His angel He renewed His former promise regarding her son, and then He showed her a well of water. The lad’s life was saved and, growing up, he became in time an archer. He lived in the wilderness of Paran and was married by his mother to an Egyptian wife ( Genesis 21:21).4. His Children:When Abraham died, his exiled son returned to assist his brother to bury their father ( Genesis 25:9). In the same chapter we find the names of Ishmael’s 12 sons (25:12 ff) and a brief report of his death at the age of 137 years (25:17). According to Genesis 28:9 he also had a daughter, Mahalath, whom Esau took for his wife; in Genesis 36:3 her name is given as Basemath.5. Descendants:The character of Ishmael and his descendants (Arabian nomads or Bedouins) is very accurately and vividly depicted by the angel of Yahweh: “He shall be as a wild ass among men; his hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him” ( Genesis 16:12). These nomads are, indeed, roaming the wilds of the desert, jealous of their independence, quarrelsome and adventurous. We may well think of their progenitor as of a proud, undaunted and rugged son of the desert, the very counterpart of the poor boy lying half dead from fatigue and exposure under the shrub in the wilderness of Beersheba.6. In the New Testament:The person and the history of Ishmael, the son of Abraham, “born after the flesh,” is of special interest to the student of the New Testament because Paul uses him, in the Epistle to the Galatians, as a type of those Jews who cling to the paternal religion in such a manner as to be unable to discern the transient character of the Old Testament institutions, and especially those of the Mosaic law. By doing so they could not be made to see the true meaning of the law, and instead of embracing the grace of God as the only means of fulfilling the law, they most bitterly fought the central doctrine of Christianity and even persecuted its advocates. Like Ishmael, they were born of Hagar, the handmaid or slave woman; like him, they were Abraham’s sons only “after the flesh,” and their ultimate fate is foreshadowed in the casting out of Hagar and her son.
They could not expect to maintain the connection with the true Israel, and even in case they should acclaim Christ their Messiah they were not to be the leaders of the church or the expounders of its teachings ( Galatians 4:21-28). (2) The son of Nethaniah ( Jeremiah 40:8 through 41:18; compare Kings 25:23-25). It is a dreary story of jealousy and treachery which Jeremiah has recorded in chapters 40, 41 of his book. After the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of the better class of Jewish citizens, it was necessary to provide for some sort of a government in the depopulated country. Public order had to be restored and maintained; the crops of the fields were endangered and had to be taken care of. It was thus only common political prudence that dictated to the king of Babylon the setting up of a governor for the remnant of Judah. He chose Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, for the difficult position. The new officer selected for his place of residence the city of Mizpah, where he was soon joined by Jeremiah. All the captains of the Jewish country forces came to Mizpah with their men and put themselves under Gedaliah’s orders ( Jeremiah 40:13). Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, the son of Elishama “of the seed royal” ( 2 Kings 25:25) was among their number — all of which must have been rather gratifying to the new governor. But he was destined to be cruelly disappointed. A traitor was among the captains that had gathered around him. Yet the governor might have prevented his dastardly scheme.
Johnnan, the son of Kareah, and other loyal captains warned him of the treachery of Ishmael, telling him he was induced by Baalis, the Ammonite king, to assassinate the governor. But the governor’s faith in Ishmael was not to be shaken; he even looked upon Johanan’s report as false and calumnious ( Jeremiah 40:16).About 2 months after the destruction of Jerusalem, Ishmael was ready to strike the mortal blow. With 10 men he came to Mizpah, and there, at a banquet given in his honor, he killed Gedaliah and all the Jews and Chaldeans that were with him. He succeeded in keeping the matter secret, for, 2 days after the horrible deed, he persuaded a party of 80 pious Jews to enter the city and killed all but 10 of them, throwing their bodies into a pit. These men were coming from the ruins of the Temple with the offerings which they had intended to leave at Jerusalem. Now they had found out, to their great distraction, that the city was laid waste and the Temple destroyed. So they passed by Mizpah, their beards shaven, their clothes rent, and with cuts about their persons ( Jeremiah 41:5). We may, indeed, ask indignantly, Why this new atrocity? The answer may be found in the fact that Ishmael did not kill all of the men. He spared 10 of them because they promised him some hidden treasures. This shows his motive. He was a desperate man and just then carrying out a desperate undertaking. He killed those peaceful citizens because of their money, and money he needed to realize his plans. They were those of a traitor to his country, inasmuch as he intended to deport the inhabitants of Mizpah to the land of his high confederate, the king of the Ammonites. Among the captives were Jeremiah and the daughters of the Jewish king. But his efforts came to naught. When Johnnan and the other captains were told of Ishmael’s unheard-of actions, they immediately pursued the desperate adventurer and overtook him by the “great waters that are in Gibeon.” Unfortunately, they failed to capture Ishmael; for he managed to escape with eight men to the Ammonites. See, further, GEDALIAH. (3) A descendant of Benjamin and the son of Azel ( 1 Chronicles 8:38; compare 9:44). (4) The father of Zebadiah who was “the ruler of the house of Judah, in all the king’s (Jehoshaphat, 2 Chronicles 19:8) matters” ( 2 Chronicles 19:11). (5) The son of Jehohanan, and a “captain of hundreds,” who lived at the time of Jehoiada and Joash ( 2 Chronicles 23:1).(6) One of the sons of Pashhur the priest. He was one of those men who had married foreign women and were compelled to “put away their wives” ( Ezra 10:22). William Baur ISHMAEL (2) ([ jIsmah>l , Ismael ]): (1) the King James Version “Ismael” (Judith 2:23), the son of Abraham by Hagar. (2) 1 Esdras 9:22 (King James Version, the Revised Version (British and American) “Ismael”), corresponding to Ishmael in Ezra 10:22. See preceding article.
ISHMAELITES ISHMEELITES ISHMERAI ISHOD ISHPAH ISHPAN ISH-SECHEL ISH-TOB ISHVAH ISHVI ISLAND; ISLE We find references to Kittim or Chittim, Cyprus ( Genesis 10:4; Numbers 24:24; 1 Chronicles 1:7; Isaiah 23:1,12; Jeremiah 2:10; Ezekiel 27:6; Daniel 11:30); to Elisha, perhaps Carthage ( Genesis 10:4; 1 Chronicles 1:7; Ezekiel 27:7); to “isles of the nations” ( Genesis 10:5; Zephaniah 2:11); to “isles of the sea” ( Esther 10:1; 11:11; 24:15; Ezekiel 26:18); to “Tarshish and the isles” ( Psalm 72:10; compare Isaiah 66:19); to “isle (the Revised Version margin “sea-coast”) of Caphtor” ( Jeremiah 47:4).
Communication with these islands or distant coasts is kept up by the Tyrians ( Ezekiel 27:3,15). The Jews were not a maritime people, and in early times their geographical knowledge was very limited. Of 32 Old Testament passages referring to “island” or “isle,” 25 are in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. In the New Testament, besides the passages noted above, and Patmos ( Revelation 1:9), various islands are mentioned by name in connection with the voyages of Paul, e.g. Cyprus, Crete, Lesbos, Samos, Samothrace, Chios, Melita, Sicily (Syracuse, Acts 28:12). “Jackals” is a perfectly possible translation of ‘iyim (the King James Version “wild beasts of the islands,” the Revised Version (British and American) “wolves,” the Revised Version margin “howling creatures”). See COAST; GEOGRAPHY; JACKAL; WOLF.
Alfred Ely Day ISLES OF THE GENTILES ( Genesis 10:5): the American Standard Revised Version “isles (margin “coast-lands”) of the nations,” said of the territories of the sons of Japheth.
The reference is to the coasts of the Western Mediterranean, with their islands (compare “isles of the sea,” Esther 10:1; Ezekiel 26:18, etc.). See TABLE OF NATIONS.
ISMACHIAH ISMAEL ISMAERUS ISMAIAH ISPAH ISRAEL ISRAEL, HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE INTRODUCTORY. 1. Sources: The chief and best source from which we can learn who this people was and what was its history is the Bible itself, especially the Old Testament, which tells us the story of this people from its earliest beginnings. (1) The Old Testament.
The origins of Israel are narrated in Genesis; the establishment of theocracy, in the other books of the Pentateuch; the entrance into Canaan, in the Book of Joshua; the period preceding the kings, in the Book of Judges; the establishment of the monarchy and its development, in the Books of Samuel, and the opening chapters of the Books of Kings, which latter report also the division into two kingdoms and the history of these down to their overthrow. The Books of Chronicles contain, parallel with the books already mentioned, a survey of the historical development from Adam down to the Babylonian captivity, but confine this account to theocratical center of this history and its sphere. Connected with Chronicles are found the small Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which probably originally constituted a part of Chronicles, but which pass over the Exile and begin at once with the story of the Return. Then, too, these two books contain only certain episodes in the history of the Return, which were of importance for the restoration of the Jewish theocracy, so that the story found in them is anything but complete. With the 5th century BC the Biblical narrative closes entirely. For the succeeding centuries we have nothing but some scattered data; but for the 2nd pre-Christian century we have a new source in the Books of the Maccabees, which give a connected account of the struggles and the rule of the Asmoneans, which reach, however, only from 174 to 135 BC.
The historical value of the Old Testament books is all the greater the nearer the narrator or his sources stand in point of time to the events that are recorded; e.g. the contents of the Books of Kings have in general greater value as historical sources than what is reported in the Books of Chronicles, written at a much later period. Yet it is possible that a later chronicler could have made use of old sources which earlier narrators had failed to employ. This is the actual state of affairs in connection with a considerable number of matters reported by the Biblical chroniclers, which supplement the exceedingly meager extracts furnished by the author of the Books of Kings. Then, further, the books of the prophets possess an extraordinary value as historical sources for the special reason that they furnish illustrations of the historical situation and events from the lips of contemporaries. As an example we can refer to the externally flourishing condition of the kingdom of Judah under King Uzziah, concerning which the Books of Kings report practically nothing, but of which Chronicles give details which are confirmed by the testimony of Isaiah. (2) Josephus.
A connected account of the history of Israel has been furnished by Flavius Josephus. His work entitled Jewish Antiquities, however, as far as trustworthiness is concerned, is again considerably inferior to the Books of Chronicles, since the later traditions of the Jews to a still greater extent influenced his account. Only in those cases in which he could make use of foreign older sources, such as the Egyptian Manetho or Phoenician authors, does he furnish us with valuable material. Then for the last few centuries preceding his age, he fills out a certain want. Especially is he the best authority for the events which he himself passed through and which he reports in his work on the Jewish Wars, even if he is not free from certain personal prejudices (see JOSEPHUS, FLAVIUS ). For the customs and usages of the later Jewish times the traditions deposited in the Talmud are also to be considered. Much less than to Josephus can any historical value be credited to the Alexandrian Jew, Philo. The foreign authors, e.g. the Greek and the Latin historians, contain data only for the story of the nations surrounding Israel, but not for the early history of Israel itself. (3) The Monuments.
On the other hand, the early history of Israel has been wonderfully enriched in recent times through the testimonies of the monuments. In Palestine itself the finds in historical data and monuments have been, up to the present time, rather meager. Yet the excavations on the sites of ancient Taanach, Megiddo, Jericho, Gezer and Samaria have brought important material to light, and we have reasons to look for further archaeological and literary finds, which may throw a clear light on many points that have remained dark and uncertain. Also in lands round about Palestine, important documents (the Moabite Stone; Phoenician inscriptions) have already been found. Especially have the discovery and interpretation of the monuments found in Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia very materially advanced our knowledge of the history of Israel. Not only has the connection of the history of this people with universal history been clearly illuminated by these finds, but the history of Israel itself has gained in tangible reality. In some detail matters, traditional ideas have given way to clearer conceptions; e.g. the chronology of the Old Testament, through Assyriological research, has been set on a safer foundation. But all in all, these archaeological discoveries have confirmed the confidence that has been placed in the Biblical historical sources. 2. Religious Character of the History: It is true that the rules applied to profane history cannot, without modification, be applied to the historical writings of the Hebrews. The Biblical narrators are concerned about something more than the preservation of historical facts and data. Just as little is it their purpose to glorify their people or their rulers, as this is done on the memorial tablets of the Egyptian the Assyrian, and the Babylonian kings. Looked at merely from the standpoint of profane history, there are many omissions in the Old Testament historical books that are found objectionable. Sometimes whole periods are passed over or treated very briefly. Then, too, the political pragmatism, the secular connection in the movements of the nations and historical events, are often scarcely mentioned. The standpoint of the writer is the religious. This appears in the fact that this history begins with the creation of the world and reports primitive traditions concerning the origin of mankind and their earliest history in the light of the revelation of the God of Israel, and that it makes this national history a member in the general historical development of mankind. Nor was this first done by the author of the Pentateuch in its present shape. Already the different documentary sources found combined in the Pentateuch, namely E (Elohist), J (Jahwist) and P (Priestly Code), depict the history of Israel according to the plan which the Creator of the world had with this people.
Also, when they narrate the national vicissitudes of Israel, the writers are concerned chiefly to exhibit clearly the providential guidance of God. They give special prominence to those events in which the hand of God manifests itself, and describe with full detail the lives of those agents of whom Yahweh made use in order to guide His people, such as Moses, Samuel, David, Solomon and others. But it is not the glory of these men themselves that the writers aim to describe, but rather their importance for the spiritual and religious greatness of Israel. Let us note in this connection only the extreme brevity with which the politically successful wars of David are reported in 2 Samuel; and how fragmentary are the notices in which the author of the Books of Kings reports the reigns of the different kings; and how briefly he refers for all the other details of these kings to books that, unfortunately, have been lost for us. But, on the other hand, how full are the details when the Bible gives us its account of the early history of a Samuel or of a David, in which the providential guidance and protection of Yahweh appear in such a tangible form; or when it describes the building of the temple by Solomon, so epoch-making for the religious history of Israel, or the activity of such leading prophets as Elijah and Elisha. Much less the deeds of man than the deeds of God in the midst of His people constitute theme of the narrators. These facts explain, too, the phenomenal impartiality, otherwise unknown in ancient literatures, with which the weaknesses and the faults of the ancestors and kings of Israel are reported by the Biblical writers, even in the case of their most revered kings, or with which even the most disgraceful defeats of the people are narrated.
It cannot indeed be denied that this religious and fundamental characteristic is not found to the same degree in all the books and sources. The oldest narratives concerning Jacob, Joseph, the Judges, David and others reveal a naive and childlike naturalness, while in the Books of Chronicles only those things have been admitted which are in harmony with the regular cult. The stories of a Samson, Jephthah, Abimelech, Barak, and others impress us often as the myths or stories of old heroes, such as we find in the traditions of other nations. But the author of the Book of Judges, who wrote the introduction to the work, describes the whole story from the standpoint of edification. And when closely examined, it is found that the religious element is not lacking, even in the primitive and naive Old Testament narrative. This factor was, from the outset, a unique characteristic of the people and its history. To this factor Israel owed its individuality and existence as a separate people among the nations. But in course of time it became more and more conscious of its mission of being the people of Yahweh on earth, and it learned to understand its entire history from this viewpoint. Accordingly, any account of Israel’s history must pay special attention to its religious development. For the significance of this history lies for us in this, that it constitutes the preparation for the highest revelation in Christ Jesus. In its innermost heart and kernel it is the history of the redemption of mankind. This it is that gives to this history its phenomenal character. The persons and the events that constitute this history must not be measured by the standards of everyday life. If in this history we find the providential activities of the living God operative in a unique way, this need not strike us as strange, since also the full fruit of this historical development, namely the appearance of Jesus Christ, transcends by far the ordinary course of human history. On the other hand, this history of Israel is not to be regarded as a purely isolated factor.
Modern researches have shown how intimately this history was interwoven with that of other nations. Already, between the religious forms of the Old Testament and those of other Semitic peoples, there have been found many relations. Religious expressions and forms of worship among the Israelites often show in language and in cult a similarity to those of the ancient Canaanites, the Phoenicians, the Syrians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians. But it is a mistake to believe that the history and the religion of Israel are merely an offspring of the Babylonian. As the Israelites clung tenaciously to their national life, even when they were surrounded by powerful nations, or were even scattered among these nations, as in the Exile, thus too their religion, at least in its official representatives, has been able at all times to preserve a very high originality and independence under the influence of the Divine Spirit, who had filled it.
I. ORIGINS OF ISRAEL IN PRE-MOSAIC TIMES. 1. Original Home: The Israelites knew at all times that Canaan was not their original home, but that their ancestors had immigrated into this land. What was their earlier and earliest home? Tradition states that they immigrated from Haran in the upper Euphrates valley. But it is claimed that they came to Haran from Ur of the Chaldees, i.e. from a city in Southern Babylonia, now called Mugheir. This city of Ur, now well known from Babylonian inscriptions, was certainly not the original home of the ancestors of Israel. They rather belonged to a purely Semitic tribe, which had found its way from Northern Arabia into these districts. A striking confirmation of this view is found in a mural picture on the rock-tombs of Benihassan in Upper Egypt. The foreigners, of whom pictures are here given (from the time of the XIIth Dynasty), called Amu, namely Bedouins from Northern Arabia or from the Sinai peninsula, show such indisputable Jewish physiognomies that they must have been closely related to the stock of Abraham. Then, too, the leader of the caravan, Ebsha`a (Abishua), has a name formed just like that of Abraham. When, in later times, Moses fled to the country of the Midianites, he doubtless was welcomed by such tribal relatives. 2. Ethnographical Origin: The Israelites at all times laid stress on their ethnographical connection with other nations. They knew that they were intimately related to a group of peoples who have the name of Hebrews. But they traced their origin still farther back to the tribal founder, Shem. Linguistics and ethnology confirm, in general, the closer connection between the Semitic tribes mentioned in Genesis 10:21 ff. Undeniable is this connection in the cases of Assur, Aram, and the different Arabian tribes. A narrower group of Semites is called Hebrews. This term is used in Genesis in a wider sense of the word than is the case in later times, when it was employed as a synonym for Israel. According to its etymology, the word signified “those beyond,” those who live on the other side of the river or have come over from the other side. The river meant is not the Jordan, but the Euphrates.
About the same time that the ancestors of Israel were immigrating into Canaan and Egypt, other tribes also emigrated westward and were called, by the Canaanites and by the Egyptians, `ibhrim. This term is identical with Chabiri, found in the Tell el-Amarna Letters, in which complaint is made about the inroads of such tribes. The Israelites cannot have been meant here, but related tribes are. Possibly the Egyptian Apriu is the same word. 3. Patriarchal Origins and History: The Israelites declared that they were descended from a particular family.
On account of the patriarchal characcter of their old tribal life, it is not a matter of doubt that, as a fact, the tribe did grow out of a single family.
The tribal father, Abraham, was without a doubt the head of the small tribe, which through its large family of children developed into different tribes. Only we must not forget that such a tribe could rapidly be enlarged by receiving into it also serfs and clients (compare Genesis 14:14).
These last-mentioned also regarded the head of the tribe as their father and considered themselves as his “sons,” without really being his descendants.
Possibly the tribe that immigrated first to Haran and from there to Canaan was already more numerous than would seem to be the case according to tradition, which takes into consideration only the leading personalities.
Secondly, we must remember that the Israelites, because of their patriarchal life, had become accustomed to clothe all the relations of nations to nations in the scheme of the family. In this way such genealogies of nations as are found in Genesis 10 and 11 originated. Here peoples, cities and countries have also been placed in the genealogies, without the author himself thinking of individual persons in this connection, who had borne the names, e.g. of Mizraim (Egypt), Gush (Ethiopia), etc., and were actually sons of Ham. The purpose of the genealogy in this form is to express only the closer or more remote relationship or connection to a group of nations. Genesis 25:1 ff also is a telling example, showing how independently these groups are united. A new wife (Keturah) does not at this place fit into the family history of Abraham. But the writer still wants to make mention of an Arabian group, which was also related to Israel by blood, but in fact stood more distant from the Israelites than did the Ishmaelites. Out of this systematic further development of the living tradition, however, one difficulty arises. It is not in all places easy, indeed not always possible, to draw the line between what is reliable tradition and what is a freer continuation. But it is a misinterpretation of the historical situation, when the entire history of the patriarchs is declared to be incredible, and when in such sharply defined personalities as Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and others, only personifications of tribes are found, the later history of which tribes is said to be embodied in the lives of these men; e.g. the name Abraham cannot have been the impersonal name of a tribe or of a god. It is found as the name of a person on old Babylonian tablets (Abu ramu); but originally in the nomadic tribe was doubtless pronounced ‘abhi ram, i.e. “My father (God) is exalted.” The same is true of the name Jacob (really Jakob-el); compare Joseph (Joseph-el), Ishmael, and others, which find their analogies in old Arabian names. (1) Patriarchal Conditions — Genesis 14.
Further, the conditions of life which are presupposed in the history of the Patriarchs are in perfect agreement with those which from the Tell el- Amarna Letters we learn existed in Canaan. While formerly it was maintained that it would have been impossible for a single tribe to force its way into Canaan at that time when the country was thickly populated, it is now known that at that very time when the ancestors of the Israelites entered, similar tribes also found their way into the land, sometimes in a peaceable way, sometimes by force. Egypt for the time being had control of the land, but its supremacy was at no place very strong. And the `ibhrim, as did others who forced their way into the country, caused the inhabitants much trouble. Especially does Genesis 14, the only episode in which a piece of universal history finds its way into the story of the tribal ancestors, turn out to be a document of great value, which reflects beautifully the condition of affairs in Asia. Such expeditions for conquest in the direction of the Mediterranean lands were undertaken at an early period by Babylonian rulers, Sargon I of Akkad and his son Naram Sin. The latter undertook an expedition to the land of Magan along the exact way of the expedition described in Genesis 14, this taking place in the days of Amraphel, i.e. Hammurabi. The fact that the latter was himself under an Elamitic superior is in perfect agreement with the story of the inscriptions, according to which the famous Hammurabi of Babylon had first freed himself from the supremacy of Elam. The fact that Hammurabi, according to accepted chronology, ruled shortly after the year 2000 BC, is also in agreement with Biblical chronology, which places Abraham in this very time. These expeditions into the country Martu, as the Babylonians call Syria, had for their purpose chiefly to secure booty and to levy tribute.
That the allied kings themselves took part in this expedition is not probable. These were punitive expeditions undertaken with a small force.
Genesis 14 seems to be a translation of an old cuneiform tablet. As a rule the stories of the patriarchal age for a long time were handed down orally, and naturally were modified to a certain extent. Then, too, scholars have long since discovered different sources, out of which the story in its present form has been compiled. This fact explains some irregularities in the story: e.g. the chronological data of the document the Priestly Code (P), which arranges its contents systematically, do not always harmonize with the order of events as reported by the other two leading documents, the Elohist (E) and the Jahwist (Jahwist), the first of which is perhaps the Ephraimitic and the second the Judaic version of the story. But, under all circumstances, much greater than the difference are the agreements of the sources. They contain the same picture of this period, which certainly has not been modified to glorify the participants. It is easily seen that the situation of the fathers, when they were strangers in the land, was anything but comfortable. A poetical or perfectly fictitious popular account would have told altogether different deeds of heroism of the founder of the people. The weaknesses and the faults of the fathers and mothers in the patriarchal families are not passed over in silence. But the fact that Yahweh, whom they trusted at all times, helped them through and did not suffer them to be destroyed, but in them laid the foundation for the future of His people, is the golden cord that runs through the whole history. And in this the difference between the individual characters finds a sharp expression; e.g. Abraham’s magnanimity and tender feeling of honor in reference to his advantage in worldly matters find their expression in narratives which are ascribed to altogether different sources, as Genesis 13:8 ff (Jahwist); 14:22 ff (special source); 23:7 ff (P). In what an altogether different way Jacob insists upon his advantage! This consistency in the way in which the different characters are portrayed must awaken confidence in the historical character of the narratives. Then, too, the harmony with Egyptian manners and customs in the story of Joseph, even in its minutest details, as these have been emphasized particularly by the Egyptologist Ebers, speaks for this historical trustworthiness. (2) Ideas of God.
Further, the conception of God as held by these fathers was still of a primitive character, but it contains the elements of the later religious development (see ISRAEL, RELIGION OF ). (3) Descent into Egypt.
During a long period of famine the sons of Jacob, through Divine providence, which made use of Joseph as an instrument, found refuge in Egypt, in the marshes of which country along the lower Nile Semitic tribes had not seldom had their temporary abodes. The land of Coshen in the Northeast part of the Delta, Ed. Naville (The Shrine of Saft-el-Henneh and the Land of Goshen, London, 1887) has shown to be the region about Phakusa (Saft-el-Henneh). These regions had at that time not yet been made a part of the strictly organized and governed country of Egypt, and could accordingly still be left to such nomadic tribes. For the sons of Jacob were still wandering shepherds, even if they did, here and there, after the manner of such tribes, change to agricultural pursuits ( Genesis 26:12).
If, as is probable, at that time a dynasty of Semitic Hyksos was ruling in lower Egypt, it is all the more easily understood that kindred tribes of this character were fond of settling along these border districts. On account of the fertility of the amply watered districts, men and animals could increase rapidly, and the virile tribe could, in the course of a few centuries, grow into a powerful nation. One portion of the tribes pastured their flocks back and forth on the prairies; another builded houses for themselves among the Egyptians and engaged in agricultural pursuits and in gardening ( Numbers 11:5). Egyptian arts and trades also found their way among this people, as also doubtless the art of writing, at least in the case of certain individuals. In this way their sojourning in this country became a fruitful factor in the education of the people. This stay explains in part the fact that the Israelites at all times were more receptive of culture and were more capable than their kinsmen, the Edomites, Ammonites and Moabites, and others in this respect. Moses, like Joseph, had learned all the mysteries of Egyptian wisdom. On the other hand, the sojourn in this old, civilized country was a danger to the religion of the people of Israel. According to the testimony of Joshua 24:14; Ezekiel 20:7 ff; 23:8,19, they adopted many heathen customs from their neighbors. It was salutary for them, that the memory of this sojourn was embittered for them by hard oppression.
II. NATIONALITY UNDER MOSES. 1. Israel in Egypt: It is reported in Exodus 18 that a new Pharaoh ascended the throne, who knew nothing of Joseph. This doubtless means that a new dynasty came into power, which adopted a new policy in the treatment of the Semitic neighbors. The expulsion of the Hyksos had preceded this, and the opposition to the Semitics had become more acute. The new government developed a strong tendency to expansion in the direction of the Northeast.
Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the laws of the empire were vigorously enforced in these border districts and that an end was made to the liberties of the unwelcome shepherd tribes. This led to constantly increasing measures of severity. In this way the people became more and more unhappy and finally were forced to immigrate. (1) Chronology.
It is still the current conviction that the Pharaoh of the oppression was Rameses II, a king who was extraordinarily ambitious of building, whose long reign is by Eduard Meyer placed as late as 1310 to 1244 BC. His son Merenptah would then be the Pharaoh of the Exodus. But on this supposition, Biblical chronology not only becomes involved in serious difficulties, since then the time of the Judges must be cut down to unduly small proportions, but certain definite data also speak in favor of an earlier date for the Exodus of Israel. Merenptah boasts in an inscription that on an expedition to Syria he destroyed the men of Israel (which name occurs here for the first time on an Egyptian monument). And even the father of Rameses II, namely Seti, mentions Asher among those whom he conquered in Northern Palestine, that is, in the district afterward occupied by this tribe. These data justify the view that the Exodus already took place in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty, a thing in itself probable, since the energetic rulers of this dynasty naturally have inaugurated a new method of treating this province. The oppression of Israel would then, perhaps, be the work of Thethroes III (according to Meyer, 1501-1447 BC), and the Exodus would take place under his successor, Amenophis II. In harmony with this is the claim of Manetho, who declares that the “Lepers,” in whom we recognize the Israelites (see below), were expelled by King Amenophis.
The length of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, according to Genesis 15:13 (P), was in round numbers 400 years; more exactly, according to Exodus 12:40 f (P), 430 years. But the last-mentioned passage in Septuagint reads, “the sojourn of the sons of Jacob, when they lived in Egypt and in the land of Canaan.” (The same reading is found in the Samaritan text, only that the land of Canaan precedes that of Egypt.)
Since, according to this source (P), the Patriarchs lived 215 years in Canaan, the sojourn in Egypt would be reduced also 215 years. This is the way in which the synagogue reckons (compare Galatians 3:17), as also Josephus (Ant., II, xv, 2). In favor of this shorter period appeal is made to the genealogical lists, which, however, because they are incomplete, cannot decide the matter. In favor of a longer duration of this sojourn we can appeal, not only to Genesis 15:13 Septuagint has the same!), but also to the large number of those who left Egypt according to Numbers 1 and (P), even if the number of 600,000 men there mentioned, which would presuppose a nation of about two million souls, is based on a later calculation and gives us an impossible conception of the Exodus. (2) Moses.
While no account has been preserved concerning the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, the history of the Exodus itself, which signifies the birth of Israel as a nation, is fully reported. In this crisis Moses is the prophetical mediator through whom the wonderful deed of God is accomplished. All the deeds of God, when interpreted by this prophet, become revelations for the people. Moses himself had no other authority or power than that which was secured for him through his office as the organ of God. He was the human instrument to bring about the synthesis between Israel and Yahweh for all times. He had, in doing this, indeed proclaimed the old God of the fathers, but under the new, or at any rate hitherto to the people unknown, name of Yahweh, which is a characteristic mark of the Mosaic revelations to such an extent, that the more accurate narrators (E and P) begin to make use of this name only from this period of time on. In the name of this absolute sovereign, God, Moses claims liberty for Israel, since this people was Yahweh’s firstborn ( Exodus 4:22). The contest which Moses carries on in the name of this God with Pharaoh becomes more and more a struggle between this God and the gods of Egypt, whose earthly representative Pharaoh is. The plagues which come over Egypt are all founded on the natural conditions of the country, but they occur in such extraordinary strength and rapidity at Moses’ prediction, and even appear at his command, that they convince the people, and finally Pharaoh himself, of the omnipotence of this God on the soil of this country. In the same way the act of deliverance at the Red Sea can be explained as the cooperation of natural causes, namely wind and tide. But the fact that these elementary. forces, just at this critical time, proved so serviceable to the people of God and destructive to their enemies, shows unmistakably the miraculous activity of God. This the Israelites experienced still further on the journey through the desert, when they were entirely dependent on Divine leadership and care. The outcome of these experiences, and at the same time its grandest demonstration, was the conclusion of the covenant at Mt.
Sinai. From this time on Yahweh was Israel’s God and Israel was the people of Yahweh. This God claimed to be the only and absolute ruler over the tribes that were now inwardly united into one nation. From this resulted as a matter of course, that Moses as the recognized organ of this God was not only the authority, who was to decide in all disputes concerning right, but also the one from whom a new and complete order of legal enactments proceeded. Moses became the lawgiver of Israel.
Even if the history of the origin of the Old Testament covenant is unique in character, it is nevertheless profitable to take note of an analogy which is found in a related people and which is adapted to make much in Israel’s history clearer. Mohammed also, after he had at the critical point of his career persuaded his followers to migrate from their homes, soon after, in Medina, concluded a covenant, according to which he, as the recognized speaker of Allah (God), claimed for himself the right to decide in all disputes. He, too, in his capacity as the prophet of God, was consulted as an infallible authority in all questions pertaining to the cult, the civil and the criminal laws, as also in matters pertaining to politics and to war. And his decisions and judgments, uttered in the name of Allah, were written down and afterward collected. This Koran, too, became the basis of sacred law.
And by causing the hitherto divided and antagonistic tribes to subject themselves to Allah, Mohammed united these his followers into a religious communion and in this way, too, into a national body. Mohammed has indeed copied the prophecy of earlier times, but the work of Moses was original in character and truly inspired by God. 2. Historical Character of the Exodus: The historical character of the exodus out of Egypt cannot be a matter of doubt, though some suspect that the entire nation did not take part in the march through the Red Sea, but that certain tribes had before this already migrated toward the East. We must not forget that the song of victory in Exodus 15 does not mention a word about Pharaoh’s being himself destroyed in going through the Sea. It is only the late <19D615> Psalm 136:15 that presupposes this as a certainty. That an entire nation cannot emigrate in a single night cannot be maintained in view of the fact that the inhabitants of the same Wady-Tumilat, through which Israel marched, so late as the last century, emigrated in a single night and for similar reasons (compare Sayce, Monuments, 249). (1) Egyptian Version of the Exodus.
The fact that the Egyptian monuments report nothing of this episode, so disgraceful to that people, is a matter of course, in view of the official character of these accounts and of their policy of passing over in absolute silence all disagreeable facts. And yet in the popular tradition of the people, which Manetho has handed down, there has been preserved some evidence of this event. It is indeed true that what this author reports about the Hyksos (see above) does not belong here, as this people is not, as Josephus thinks, identical with the Israelites. However (Apion, I, xxvi, 5 ff), he narrates a story which may easily be the tradition concerning the exodus of the children of Israel as changed by popular use. King Amenophis, we are told, wanted to see the gods. A seer, who bore the same name, promised that his wish would be gratified under the condition that the country would be cleansed of lepers and all others that were unclean; and it is said that he accordingly drove 80,000 such persons into the stone quarries East of the Nile. As the seer was afraid that these measures would be displeasing to the gods and bring upon the land a subjection of 13 years to the supremacy of foreigners, he gave up to these lepers the former city of the Hyksos, Avaris by name. Here they appointed a priest by the name of Osarsiph, later called Moses, as their chief, who gave them a special body of laws and in these did not spare the sacred animals. He also carried on war against the Egyptians, the Hyksos helping him, and he even governed Egypt for 13 years, after which he and his followers were driven out into Syria. Similar stories are found in Chaeromon, Lysimachus, and others (Apion, I, xxxii, 36; compare Tacitus, History, verses 3-5). When we remember that it is nonsense to permit lepers to work in stone quarries and that the Egyptians also otherwise call the Semites Aatu, i.e. “plague,” then this story must be regarded as referring to such a non-Egyptian nation.
Hecataeus of Abdera has a report of this matter which is much more like the Biblical story, to the effect, namely, that a plague which had broken out in Egypt led the people to believe that the gods were angry at the Egyptians because they had neglected the religious cult; for which reason they expelled all foreigners. A part of these is said to have migrated under the leadership of Moses to Judea and there to have founded the city of Jerusalem (compare Diodorus Siculus xl.3; compare xxxvi.1). (2) Geographical Matters.
The Red Sea, through which the Israelites went under the leadership of Moses, is without a doubt the northern extension of this body of water, which in former times reached farther inland than the present Gulf of Suez; compare Edouard Naville, The Store-City of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus, 1885; and The Route of the Exodus, 1891. This savant is entitled to the credit of having identified the station Sukkoth on the basis of the monuments; it is the modern Tell-Mashuta and identical with Pithom, which was the name of the sanctuary at that place. Later the city was called Heroopoils. The route accordingly went through the modern Wadi-Tumilat to the modern Bitter Sea, North of Suez. It is a more difficult task to trace the route geographically on the other side of the Sea. For it is a question whether “the Mountain of Yahweh,” which formed the goal of the journey, is to be located on the Sinai peninsula, or in the land of the Edomites, or even on the western coast of Arabia. A.H. Sayce and others reject the traditional location of Sinai on the peninsula named after this mountain, and declare that the Israelites marched directly eastward toward the Gulf of Akaba. The reasons for this are found in the work of Sayce, The Verdict of the Monuments, 263 ff. But even if on this supposition a number of difficulties fall away, there nevertheless are many arguments in favor of the traditional location of Sinai, especially the grandeur of the chain itself, for which a rival worth mentioning has not been discovered in the land of the Edomites or in Northwestern Arabia. The Sinai traveler, E. H. Palmer, has also shown how splendidly the surroundings of the Sinai chain, especially the Jebel Musa with the Ras Sufsafeh, is adapted for the purpose of concluding a covenant. (3) The Wilderness Sojourn.
The duration of the sojourn in the “desert” is everywhere (as in Amos 5:25) given as 40 years. In harmony with this is the fact that only a few of those who had come out of Egypt lived to enter Canaan. The greater part of these 40 years the Israelites seem to have spent at Kadesh. At any rate, there was a sanctuary at that place, at which Moses administered justice, while the different tribes probably were scattered over the prairies and over the tillable districts. The central sanctuary, which Moses established, was the Tabernacle, which contained the Ark of the Covenant, the sanctissimum. This sacred ark with the cherubim above it represents the throne of God, who is thought to be enthroned above the cherubim. The ark itself is, as it were, His footstool. As in Egyptian sanctuaries not infrequently the most sacred laws are deposited beneath the feet of the statue of the gods, thus the sacred fundamental laws of God (the Decalogue), on two tablets, were deposited in this ark. This Ark of the Covenant presupposes an invisible God, who cannot be represented by any image. The other laws and ordinances of Moses covered the entire public and private legislation, given whenever the need for these made it necessary to determine such matters. In giving these laws Moses connected his system with the old traditional principles already current among the tribes. This fact is confirmed by the legal Code of Hammurabi, which contains remarkable parallels, especially to Exodus 20 through 23:19. But Moses has elevated the old traditional laws of the tribes and has given them a more humane character. By putting every enactment in the light of the religion of Yahweh, and by eliminating everything not in harmony with this religion, he has raised the people spiritually and morally to a higher plane.
Among the people, the undercurrents of superstition and of immorality were indeed still strong. At the outset Moses had much to contend with in the opposition of the badly mixed mass of the people. And the fact that he was able for the period of 40 years to hold the leadership of this stubborn people without military force is a phenomenal work, which shows at all hands the wonderful cooperation of Yahweh Himself. However, he did not indeed succeed in raising the entire people to the plane of his knowledge of God and of his faith in God. This generation had to die in the wilderness, because it lacked the sanctified courage to take possession of the land of promise. But the foundation had been laid for theocracy, which must not in any way be identified with a hierarchy. (4) Entrance into Canaan.
It was Joshua, the successor of Moses, who was enabled to finish the work and to take possession of the land. Not far from Jericho he led the people over the Jordan and captured this city, which had been considered impregnable. After that, with his national army, he conquered the Canaanitish inhabitants in several decisive battles, near Gibeon and at the waters of Merom, and then went back and encamped at Gilgal on the Jordan. After this he advanced with his tribe of Ephraim into the heart of the land, while the southern tribes on their part forced their way into the districts assigned to them. Without reasons this account has been attacked as unreliable, and critics have thought that originally the different tribes, at their own initiative, either peaceably or by force, had occupied their land.
But it is entirely natural to suppose that the inhabitants of the country who had allied themselves to resist this occupation by Israel, had first to be made submissive through several decisive defeats, before they would permit the entrance of the tribes of Israel, which entrance accordingly often took place without a serious struggle. That the occupation of the land was not complete is shown in detail in Judges 1. Also in those districts in which Israel had gained the upper hand, they generally did not wage the war of annihilation that Moses had commanded, but were content with making the Canaanites, by the side of whom they settled, bondsmen and subjects. This relation could, in later time, easily be reversed, especially in those cases in which the original inhabitants of the country were in the majority. Then, too, it must be remembered that the latter enjoyed a higher state of civilization than the Israelites. It was accordingly an easy matter for the Israelites to adopt the customs and the ideas of the Canaanites. But if this were done, their religion was also endangered. Together with the sacred “holy places” (bamoth) of the original inhabitants, the altars and the sanctuaries there found also came into possession of the Israelites. Among these there were some that had been sacred to the ancestors of Israel, and with which old memories were associated. As a consequence, it readily occurred that Israel appropriated also old symbols and religious ceremonies, and even the Baals and the Astartes themselves, however little this could be united in principle with the service of Yahweh. But if the Israelites lost their unique religion, then their connection with the kindred tribes and their national independence were soon matters of history. They were readily absorbed by the Canaanites.
III. PERIOD OF THE JUDGES. 1. General Character of Period: In such a period of weakened national and religious life, it could easily happen that Israel would again lose the supremacy that it had won by the sword. It was possible that the Canaanites could again bring into their power larger parts of the land. Also energetic and pushing nomadic tribes, such as the Ammonites, the Moabites, or other warlike peoples, such as the Philistines, could bring the country under subjection, as actually did occur in the period of the Judges. The Book of Judges reports a number of such instances of the subjection of Israel, which did not extend over the whole land, and in part occurred in different sections of the country at the same time. Judah and Simeon, the two tribes in the south, as a rule took no part in these contests, and had their own battles to fight; and the same is true of the tribes East of the Jordan, among whom Northern Manasseh and Ephraim were in closest alliance. After a longer or shorter period of oppression, there followed in each case a revival of the national spirit against such oppression. And in all these cases the popular hero who became the liberator appealed to the religious consciousness that formed a bond of union between all the Israelirish tribes and their common God Yahweh. In however wild a manner the youthful vigor of the people may have found its expression on these occasions, they are nevertheless conscious of the fact that they are waging a holy war, which in every case also ended with the victory over the heathen spirit and false worship that had found their way into Israel. The most precious historical monument from these times is the song of Deborah (Judges 5), which, like a mirror, reflects faithfully the conditions of affairs, and the thoughts of that age.
Judges 17 through 21 belong to the beginning of this period. The first of these old stories narrates the emigration of a large portion of the tribe of Dan to the extreme north of the country and the origin of idolatry in that region (Judges 17; 18). But the second story, too, both in form and contents, is, at least in part, very old and its historical value is amply protected against the attacks of modern critics by Hosea 9:9; 10:9. This story reports a holy war of revenge against the tribe of Benjamin, which was unwilling to render satisfaction for a nefarious crime that had been committed at Gibeah in its territory. In the feeling of close solidarity and of high responsibility which appears in connection with the punishment of this crime, we still see the influence of the periods of Moses and Joshua. 2. The Different Judges: First it is narrated of a king of Aram-naharaim that he had oppressed Israel for a period of 8 years ( Judges 3:8). This probably means a king of the Mitanni (Sayce, Monuments, 297, 304), who at that time were trying to force their way through Canaan into Egypt. It was Othniel, the Kenazite, belonging to a tribe that was related to Judah, who delivered Israel. A second liberator was the Benjamite Ehud, who delivered the southeastern portion of the country from the servitude of Eglon, the king of the Moabites, by putting the latter to death ( Judges 3:12 ff). On a greater scale was the decisive battle against the Canaanitish kings in the north, when these had formed an alliance and had subjected Israel for a period of 20 years. At the appeal of Deborah, Barak conquered Sisera, the hostile king and leader of a mighty army of chariots, in the plain of Kishon (Judges 4; 5). In the same region the battle of Gideon was fought with the plundering Bedouin swarms of the Midianites, who had repeatedly oppressed Israel (Judges 6 through 8). Abimelech, an unworthy son of the God-fearing hero, after the death of his father, had established a local kingdom in Shechem, which stood for only a short time and came to a disgraceful end. Little more than the names are known to us of Tola, of the tribe of Issachar, and of Jair, in Gilead ( Judges 10:1 ff). More fully is the story of Jephthah told, who delivered the country from the Ammonites coming from the east (Judges 11), with which was also connected a struggle with the jealous Ephraimites (Judges 12); and still more fully are the details reported of the personal contests of the Nazirite Samson, belonging to the tribe of Dan, against the Philistines making their inroads from the south, and who for many years proved to be the most dangerous enemies of Israel.
All these heroes, and a few others not so well known, are called judges, and it is regularly reported how long each of these “judged” Israel. They were not officials in the usual sense of the term, but were liberators of the people, who, at the inspiration of Yahweh, gave the signal for a holy war.
After the victory they, as men of Yahweh, then enjoyed distinction, at least in their own tribes; and in so far as it was through their doing that the people had been freed, they were the highest authorities in political, legal, and probably, too, in religious questions. They are called judges in conscious contradistinction from the kingly power, which in Israel was recognized as the exclusive prerogative of Yahweh, so that Gideon declined it as improper when the people wanted to make him king ( Judges 8:22 f). The people recognized the Spirit of Yahweh in the fierce energy which came over these men and impelled them to arouse their people out of their disgraceful lethargy. For this reason, too, they could afterward be trusted in making their judicial decisions in harmony with the mind and the Spirit of God, as this had been done already by the prophetess Deborah in the time of oppression. Yet, at least in the case of Samson (notwithstanding Judges 16:31), it is not probable that he ever was engaged in the administration of justice. It is not even reported of him that he fought at the head of the people, but he carried on his contests with the Philistines in behalf of himself individually, even if, as one consecrated of God, he were a witness for the power of God. 3. Chronology of the Period: The chronology of the period of the Judges exhibits some peculiar difficulties. If we add together the data that are given in succession in the Book of Judges, we get from Judges 3:8 through 16:31, 410 years altogether. But this number is too large to make it harmonize with the years mentioned in 1 Kings 6:1. Jewish tradition (e.g. Cedher `Olam ) accordingly does not include the years of oppression in this sum, but makes them a part of the period of the individual judges. In this way about years are eliminated. But evidently the redactor of the Book of Judges did not share this view. Modern critics are of the opinion that the writer has dovetailed two chronological methods, one of which counted on the basis of periods of forty years each, while the other was more exact and contained odd numbers. In this way we can shorten this period as does the Cedher `Olam . At any rate, it is justifiable, and is suggested by Judges 10:7, to regard the oppression by the Ammonites (10:8 ff) and the oppression by the Philistines (13:1 ff) as contemporaneous. And other events, too, which in the course of the narrative are related as following each other, may have taken place at the same time or in a somewhat different sequence, as the author used different sources for the different events. But for this very reason his story deserves to be credited as historical. Such characters as Deborah, Jephthah, Ehud, Gideon, Abimelech and Samson are described as tangible historical realities. Even if, in the case of the last-mentioned, oral tradition has added decorative details to the figure, yet Samson cannot possibly be a mere mythological character, but must have been a national hero characteristic of this period, in whom are represented the abundance of physical and mental peculiarities characteristic of the youthful nation, as also their good-natured indifference and carelessness over against their treacherous enemies. 4. Loose Organization of the People: The lack of a central political power made itself felt all the more in the period of the Judges, since, because of the scattered condition of the people in the country that had been so minutely parceled out, and because of the weakening of the religious enthusiasm of the preceding age, the deeper unity of heart and mind was absent. It is indeed incorrect to imagine that at this time there was a total lack of governmental authority. A patriarchal organization had been in force from the beginning. The father of the family was the lawful head of those belonging to him: and a larger clan was again subject to an “elder,” with far-reaching rights in the administration of law, but also with the duty to protect his subordinates, and in case of want to support them. Unfortunately we are nowhere informed how these elders were chosen or whether their offices were hereditary. Only a very few passages, such as Isaiah 3:6 f, throw a certain light on the subject. This institution of the elders Moses had already found established and had developed farther ( Exodus 18:13 ff). It was retained in all the periods of Israel’s history. When the people began to live together in larger centers, as a natural consequence bodies of such city elders were established. The tribes, too, had “elders” at their head. But for a united action of the whole nation this arrangement did not suffice; and especially in the case of war the people of Israel felt that they were at a disadvantage compared with their enemies, who had kings to lead them.
For this reason the desire for a king steadily grew in Israel. The dictators of the period of the Judges satisfied their needs only for the time being.
IV. THE KINGDOM: ISRAEL-JUDAH.
In the time when the Israelites were oppressed by the Philistines the need of a king was especially felt. As Samson had come to his death in servitude, the people themselves thus, at the close of this period of glorious victories, were under the supremacy of a warlike race, which had only in recent times settled on the western coast of Palestine, and from this base was forcing its conquests into the heart of the country. 1. Samuel: After the most disastrous defeats, during which even the Ark of the Covenant was lost, there arose for the people, indeed, a father and a deliverer in the person of Samuel, who saved them during the most critical period. What his activity meant for the uplift of the people cannot be estimated too highly. He was, above all, during peace the faithful watchman of the most sacred possessions of Israel, a prophet such as the people had not seen since the days of Moses; and he doubtless was the founder of those colonies of prophetical disciples who were in later times so influential in the development of a theocratical spirit in Israel. He guarded the whole nation also with all his power, by giving to them laws and cultivating piety in the land. 2. The Kingdom of Saul: But as Samuel, too, became old and the people concluded for good reasons that his rule would have no worthy successors, their voice could no longer be silenced, and they demanded a king. Samuel tried in vain to persuade the people to desist from their demand, which to him seemed to be an evidence of distrust in the providence of Yahweh, but was himself compelled, by inspiration of God, to submit to their wishes and anoint the new king, whom Yahweh pointed out to him. It is indeed maintained by the critics that there are several accounts extant in Samuel concerning the selection of Saul to the kingdom, and that these accounts differ in this, that the one regards the kingdom as a blessing and the other as a curse. The first view, which is said to be the older, is claimed to be found in 1 Samuel 9:1-10,16, and 11; while the second is said to be in 1 Samuel 8; 10:17-27; 11:12-14. Whatever may be the facts in regard to these sources, this is beyond any doubt, that Samuel, the last real theocratic leader, established the kingdom. But just as little can the fact be doubted, that he took this step with inner reluctance, since in his eyes this innovation meant the discarding of the ideals of the people to which he himself had remained true during his lifetime. The demand of the people was the outgrowth of worldly motives, but Yahweh brought it about, that the “Anointed of Yah” signified an advance in the history of the kingdom of God.
Saul himself, at first, in a vigorous and efficient manner, solved the immediate problems and overcame the enemies of his people. But he soon began to conceive of his kingdom after the manner of heathen kingdoms and did not subject himself to Yahweh and His appointed representative.
There soon arose an open conflict between him and Samuel; and the fact that the Spirit of God had departed from him appears in his melancholy state of mind, which urged him on to constantly increasing deeds of violence. That under these circumstances God’s blessing also departed from him is proved by the collapse of his life’s work in his final failures against the Philistines. 3. David: In contrast with this, David, his successor, the greatest king that Israel ever had, had a correct conception of this royal office, and even in his most brilliant successes did not forget that he was called to rule only as “the servant of Yahweh” (by which name he, next to Moses, is called most often in the Bible). As a gifted ruler, he strengthened his kingdom from within, which, considering the heterogeneous character of the people, was not an easy matter, and extended it without by overpowering jealous neighbors. In this way it was he who became the real founder of a powerful kingdom. The conquest of Jerusalem and its selection as the capital city also are an evidence of his political wisdom. It is indeed true that he, too, had his personal failings and that he made many mistakes, which caused him political troubles, even down to his old age. But his humility at all times made him strong enough again to subject himself to the hand of Yahweh, and this humility was based on the attitude of his spirit toward Yahweh, which shows itself in his Psalms. In this way he really came to be a connecting link between God and his people, and upon this foundation the prophets built further, who prophesied a still closer union of the two under a son of David.
While Saul was a Benjamite, David was of the tribe of Judah, and was for a short time the king of this tribe in Hebron, before the other tribes, becoming tired of the misrule of a descendant of Saul, also voluntarily chose him as their king. He soon after this established as the center of his new kingdom the city of Jerusalem, which really was situated on the territory that had been assigned to Benjamin; and he also set this city apart as the religious center of the people by transferring the Ark of the Covenant to this place. In this way David, through his wisdom and his popular bravery, succeeded in uniting the tribes more firmly under his supremacy, and especially did he bring the tribe of Judah, which down to this time had been more for itself, into closer connection with the others.
Israel under David became a prominent kingdom. This position of power was, as a matter of fact, distasteful to their neighbors round about. The Philistines tried to destroy the ambitious kingdom, but were themselves repeatedly and definitely overpowered. But other neighboring people, too, who, notwithstanding the fact that David did not assume an offensive attitude toward them, assumed a hostile attitude toward him, came to feel his superiority. Particularly severe and tedious was the war against the allied Ammonites and Syrians; and although the Edomites, too, regarded this as a favorable time for attacking Israel, this struggle also ended in a complete triumph for David. The surrounding countries became subject to him from the Mediterranean Sea to Hamath ( 2 Samuel 8:9), and from the territory of the Lebanon, the inhabitants of which assumed a friendly attitude, to the borders of Egypt, which also recognized the new rule. 4. Solomon: Solomon, the son of David, developed inwardly the powerful kingdom which he had inherited. To his father he seemed to be the right man for this because of his peaceful temperament and his high mental abilities. He justified the hopes placed in him. Out of love to Yahweh he built the temple on Mt. Zion, regulated the affairs of state and the administration of justice, and by commercial treaties with the Phoenicians (King Hiram) brought about great prosperity in the land. His was the “golden” period in Israel. The culture and civilization, too, of the people were materially advanced by Solomon as he widened their horizon and introduced the literature of Proverbs, which had up to this time been more extensively cultivated by the neighboring people (Edom, Arabia, Egypt). He even developed this literature into a higher type. On the other hand, the brilliant reign of Solomon brought serious dangers to the new kingdom. His liberalmindedness in the treatment of his foreign wives, in permitting them to retain their heathen worship, probably because he thought that in the end it was the same Divinity which these women worshipped under different form, endangered theocracy with its serious cult and its strict morality.
Through this conduct the king necessarily forfeited the sympathy of the most pious Israelites. At the same time, his love for magnificent structures surpassed the measure which was regarded as correct for the “Anointed of Yahweh.” Then, too, his efforts, in themselves justifiable, to establish a more perfect organization of the monarchy, produced a great deal of dissatisfaction. Solomon did not understand, as did his father, how to respect the inherited liberty-loving tendencies of his people. The heavy services and taxation, to which the people were compelled to submit, were deeply felt, most of all by the Ephraimites, who at times had exhibited a jealous spirit, and could not forget their lost hegemony. 5. Division of the Kingdom: So long, indeed, as the wise Solomon and his advisers were at the helm, the various rebellious tendencies could not make themselves felt. But after his death the catastrophe came. His son, Rehoboam, at the Diet in Shechem, at which the Ephraimites placed before him a kind of capitulation before his coronation, showed that he did not at all understand the situation. His domineering attitude brought things to a head, and he must have been glad that at least the tribe of Judah remained faithful to him. The northern tribes chose for their king Jeroboam (I), who before this had already taken part in rebellious agitations, as the kingdom had been predicted to him by the prophet Ahijah ( 1 Kings 11:2 ff). Israel was torn into two parts. 6. Sources of the History of the Kingdom: With this rupture the powerful kingdom established by David had reached its end. In regard to this flourishing period in Israel’s history we are, on the whole, well informed through the sources. Especially in 2 Samuel through 20 and 1 Kings 2; 3, we have a narrator who must have been a contemporary of the events recorded. Klostermann surmises that this may have been Ahimaaz, the son of Zadok ( 2 Samuel 15:27); while Duhm, Budde, Sellin and others believe it to have been the priest Abiathar. Less unity is in evidence in the first Book of Sam, containing the history of the youth of David, which evidently was often described. The Books of Chronicles have only secondary value for the life of David. These books narrate in full detail the story of the preparations made by David for the erection of the temple and of his organization of the Levites. In regard to the reign of Solomon, the Books of Kings report more fully. Concerning the later kings, they generally give only meager extracts from more complete sources, which excerpts, however, have been shown to be reliable. The interest which the narrator has in telling his story is the religious. Especially does he carefully note the fact as to the relation of the different kings to the cult. Special sources have been used in compiling the detailed stories of the great prophets Elijah and Elisha, which are inserted in the history of the two kingdoms. On the other hand, the Books of Chronicles pass over entirely all reference to the work of the prophets of the Northern Kingdom, as they ignore the entire history of the Ephraimitic kingdom since the interest of these books is centered on the sanctuary in Jerusalem. Also in the case of the Judean history, the much older Books of Kings deserve the precedence. Yet we owe to the writer of Chronicles a number of contributions to this history, especially where he has made a fuller use of the sources than has been done by the author of the Books of Kings. The suspicion that everything which Chronicles contains, beyond what is to be found in Kings, is unhistorical, has turned out to be groundless. Thus, e.g., it would be impossible to understand the earlier prophecies of Isaiah under Jotham at all, if it did not appear from Chronicles to what prosperity and influence the people of Jerusalem had by that time again attained. For it is only Chronicles that give us an account of the flourishing reign of his predecessor Uzziah, who is treated but briefly in Kings. 7. Chronological Matters: The chronology of the earlier portions of the period of the Kings is dependent on the date of the division of the kingdom. This date can be decided on the basis of the careful chronological data of the Books of K, which do not indeed agree in all particulars, but are to be adjusted by the Assyrian chronology. If we, with Kamphausen, Oettli and Kittel, regard the year 937 BC as the time of the division of the kingdom, then Solomon ruled from 977 to 937; David, from 1017 to 977. The length of the reign of Saul is not known, as the text of 1 Samuel 13:1 is defective. It is very probable that we can credit him with about twenty years, according to Josephus (Ant., X, viii, 4), i.e. from about 1037-1017. In this case David transferred the seat of government to Jerusalem about the year 1010, and the completion of the erection of the temple of Solomon took place in 966.
But this basal date of 937 is not accepted as correct by all scholars.
Klostermann places the date of the rupture of the kingdom in the year 978; Koehler, in 973. For later chronological data, Assyrian sources are an important factor. The Assyrians were accustomed to call each year after the name of an official (limu), and eponym lists are extant for 228 years. In these reference is made to an eclipse of the sun, which astronomically has been settled as having taken place on July 15, 763. We have in this list then the period from 893 to 666. On this basis, it is made possible to determine the exact dates of the different military expeditions of the Assyrian rulers and their conflicts with the kings of Judah and Israel, on the presupposition, however, that the Assyrian inscriptions here used really speak of these kings, which in a number of cases is denied. Valuable help for determining the chronology of this period is the fall of Samaria in the year 722 and the expedition of Sennacherib against Jerusalem in 701, and then the fall of Jerusalem in 587 and 586. The distribution of the years between these dates to the individual kings is in places doubtful, as the numbers in the text are possibly corrupt, and in the synchronistic data of the Books of Kings mistakes may have been made.
V. PERIOD OF THE SEPARATED KINGDOMS. 1. Contrasts and Vicissitudes of the Kingdoms: The two separated kingdoms differed materially. The kingdom of Ephraim was the more powerful of the two. It embraced, according to an inaccurate usage of situdes of the words, 10 tribes; and to this the kingdom the vassals, such as Moab, as a rule remained subject, until they emancipated themselves. But, on the other hand, this Northern Kingdom was less firm spiritually. Even the resident city of the king changed frequently, until Omri founded the city of Samaria, which was well adapted for this purpose. The dynasties, too, were only of short duration. It occurred but rarely that one family was able to maintain its supremacy on the throne through several generations. A revolutionary character remained fixed in this kingdom and became its permanent weakness. On the other hand, the smaller and often overpowered kingdom of Judah, which faithfully adhered to the royal line of David, passed through dangerous crises and had many unworthy rulers.
But the legitimate royal house, which had been selected by Yahweh, constituted spiritually a firm bond, which kept the people united, as is seen, e.g., by a glance at the addresses of Isaiah, who is thoroughly filled with the conviction of the importance of the house of David, no matter how unworthy the king who happened to rule might appear to him. In a religious respect, also, the arbitrary break with Zion proved to be fatal for the Northern Kingdom. 2. The Successive Reigns: Jeroboam.
It is true that faithful prophets of Yahweh, such as the Abijah of Shiloh mentioned above, and Shemaiah ( 1 Kings 12:22 ff), proclaimed that the fateful division of the kingdom was a Divinely intended judgment from Yahweh. But they soon were compelled to reach the conclusion that Jeroboam did not regard himself as a servant of Yahweh, but as a sovereign who, through his own power and through the favor of the people, had secured the rule, and hence, could arbitrarily decide all matters in reference to the cult and the sacred sanctuaries of the people. According to his own will, and for political reasons, he established the new national sanctuary at Bethel, and another at Dan. At both shrines he caused Yahweh to be worshipped under the image of a calf, which was to constitute a paganizing opposition to the Ark of the Covenant on Mt. Zion, even if it was the idea that Yahweh, the God of the Covenant, was to be worshipped in these new images. In doing this, the king followed ancient national customs, which had broken with the purity of the Mosaic religion (concerning imageworship in Daniel we have beard before. See GOLDEN CALF ). His sojourn in Egypt, too, where he had lived as a fugitive, had doubtless furnished the king incentives in this direction. He created a priesthood that was submissive to his wishes, and disregarded the opposition of the few prophets who protested against the policy of the king. His successors, too, walked “in the ways of Jeroboam.” The independent prophets, however, did not die out, but, rather, prophecy developed its greatest activity in this very Northern Kingdom. As a rule, in its work it stood in opposition to the government, but at times it succeeded in gaining the recognition of the rulers.
Omri.
The earliest times of the divided kingdoms are, from a political point of view, characterized by the fact that the kingdoms on the Euphrates and the Tigris, namely Assyria and Babylon, still had enough to do with themselves, and did not yet make any inroads into the Mediterranean lands; but, rather, it was the Syrians who first caused a good deal of trouble to the Northern Kingdom. Jeroboam did not succeed in rounding a dynasty.
Already his son Nadab was eliminated by a usurper Baasha. The latter’s son too, Elah, was murdered, after a reign of two years. It was not, however, his murderer Zimri, or Tibni, who strove to secure the kingdom. for himself, but Omri who became king (1 Kings 16), and who also attained to such prominence abroad that the cuneiform inscriptions for a long time after call Israel “the land of Omri.” His ability as a ruler was seen in the fact that the establishment of Samaria as the capital city was his work. The inscription on the Mesha stone reports that he also established the sovereignty of Israel vigorously on the east side of the Jordan.
Ahab.
His son Ahab, too, was an energetic and brave ruler, who succeeded in gaining a number of victories over the Syrians, who were now beginning to assume the offensive in a determined manner. Then, too, he was politic enough to win over to his interests the kingdom of Judah, with which his predecessors had lived in almost constant warfare. In this policy he succeeded, because the noble and large-hearted king Jehoshaphat was more receptive to such fraternal relations than was good for him. An expedition jointly undertaken by these two kings against Syria brought Jehoshaphat into extreme danger and ended with the death of Ahab.
Ahab’s fate was his wife Jezebel, the daughter of the Phoenician king Ethbaal (Ithobal, according to Josephus, Ant, VIII, xiii, 2 and Apion, I, 18), who had been a priest of Astarte. This intermarriage with a fanatical heathen family brought untold and endless misfortune over all Israel. This bold and scheming woman planned nothing less than the overthrow of the religion of Yahweh, and the substitution for it of the Baal and the Astarte cult. As a first step she succeeded in having the king tolerate this religion.
The leading temple in the new resident city, Samaria, was dedicated to the Baal cult. Already this introduction of a strange and lascivious ethnic religion was a great danger to the religion and the morals of the people.
Hosts of Baal priests, ecstatic dervishes, traversed the country. Soon the queen undertook to persecute the faithful worshippers of Yahweh. The fact that these men protested against the tolerance of this foreign false religion was interpreted as disobedience on their part to the king. Many faithful prophets were put to death. At this critical period, when the existence of the religion of Yahweh was at stake, the prophet Elijah, the Tishbite, appeared on the stage, and through a bitter struggle reestablished the worship of Yahweh. However, the fateful influence that this woman exerted was thereby not yet destroyed. It extended to Judah also.
Rehoboam.
In the kingdom of Judah, apart from the apostasy of different tribes, which left him only the vigorous tribe of Judah and portions of Benjamin, Dan, Simeon, and Levi, Rehoboam experienced also other calamities, namely, a destructive invasion and tribute imposition by King Shishak of Egypt (Egyptian Sheshonk, founder of the XXIId Dynasty; 1 Kings 14:25 f; compare 2 Chronicles 12:2 ff). While under Solomon the relations of Israel to the Egyptian court had in the beginning been very friendly, this was changed when a new dynasty came to the throne. After Jeroboam had failed in his first revolutionary project, he had found refuge at the court of Shishak ( 1 Kings 11:40). It is possible that Jeroboam made the Egyptian king lustful for the treasures of Jerusalem. The Egyptians did not, as a matter of fact, stop at the Ephraimitic boundaries, but in part also invaded the territory of Jeroboam; but their chief objective was Jerusalem, from which they carried away the treasures that had been gathered by Solomon. On the temple wall of Karnak this Pharaoh has inscribed the story of this victory and booty. From the names of the cities found in this inscription, we learn that this expedition extended as far as Megiddo and Taanach.
Abijah.
Rehoboam was succeeded by his son Abijah, or Abijahu, according to Chronicles (the Abijam of Kings is hardly correct). He ruled only 3 years.
But even during this short reign he was compelled to engage in a severe struggle with Jeroboam ( 1 Kings 15:6; see details in 2 Chronicles 13).
Asa.
In every respect the reign of the God-fearing Asa, who sought to destroy the heathenism that had found its way into the cult, was more fortunate. He also experienced Yahweh’s wonderful help when the Cushite Zerah made an incursion into his land ( 2 Chronicles 14:8 ff), i.e. probably Osorkon I, who, however, did not belong to an Ethiopian dynasty. Possibly he is called an Ethiopian because he came into the country with Nubian troops.
Less honorable was his conduct in the conflict with Baasha. When he was sorely pressed by the latter he bought, through the payment of a large tribute, the assistance of the Syrian king, Ben-hadad I, who up to this time had been an ally of Baasha. This bribing of foreigners to fight against their own covenant people, which was afterward often repeated, was rebuked by a bold prophet in the presence of the pious king, but the prophet was compelled to suffer abuse for his open testimony ( 2 Chronicles 16:7 ff).
A much more noble conduct characterized the dealings of Jehoshaphat in relation to the Northern Kingdom. His fault was that he entered too fully into the selfish offers of friendship made by Ahab. The worst step was that, in order to confirm his covenant, he took for his son Jehoram as wife, Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel. Jehoshaphat was a chivalrous ally, who also joined Ahab’s son, Jehoram, in a dangerous war against the Moabites; as this people under their king Mesha had made themselves free from Israel and had taken the offensive against them. For the inner affairs of the kingdom his reign was more fortunate. He was a Godfearing and an energetic prince, who did much to elevate the people in a material and a religious way and perfected its political organization. Nor did he fail to secure some noteworthy successes. However, the fact that the warning words of the prophets who rebuked him because of his alliance with the half-heathenish house of Omri were not the fanatical exaggerations of pessimistic seers, appears at once after his death.
His son Jehoram, after the manner of oriental despots, at once caused his brothers to be put to death, of which doubtless his wife Athaliah was the cause. This woman transplanted the policy of Jezebel to Judah, and was scheming for the downfall of the house of David and its sanctuary. Under Jehoram the power of Judah accordingly began to sink rapidly. Edom became independent. The Philistines and the Arabians sacked Jerusalem.
Even the royal princes, with the exception of Ahaziah, the youngest son of Athaliah, were expelled. When the latter ascended the throne she had the absolute power in her hands.
Jehu.
During this time the judgment over the house of Omri was fast approaching. The avenger came in the person of the impetuous Jehu, who had been anointed king by one of the disciples of Elisha in the camp of Ramoth in Gilead. According to 1 Kings 19:16, the order had already been given to Elijah to raise this man to the throne; but the compliance with this command appears to have been delayed. As soon as Jehu became aware that he was entrusted with this mission, he hastened to Jezreel, where Ahaziah, king of Judah, was just paying a visit to Jehoram, and slew them both. With heartless severity he extended this slaughter, not only to all the members of the house of Omri, together with Jezebel, but also to those numerous members of the Davidic royal house who fell into his hands. He likewise destroyed the adherents of Baal, whom he had invited to their death in their sanctuary at Samaria. Deserved as this judgment upon the house of Jeroboam was ( 2 Kings 10:30), which Jehu, according to higher command, carried out, he did this in an unholy mind and with hardness and ambitious purpose. The puritanical Rechabites had sanctioned his action; but as more and more the true character of Jehu began to reveal itself, he lost the sympathies of the pious, and Hosea announced to his house the vengeance for his bloody crimes at Jezreel ( Hosea 1:4).
The Assyrians.
In Jehu’s reign occurred the inroads toward the West on the part of the Assyrians. This people already in the time of Ahab, under their king, Shalmaneser II, had forced their way as far as Karkar on the Orontes, and had there fought a battle in 854 with the Syrians and their allies, among whom Ahab is also mentioned, with 2,000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers. If this is really Ahab, the king of Israel, which is denied by some, then he, at that time, fought against Assyria in conjunction with the Syrians, who otherwise had been so bitterly attacked by him. The Assyrians boast of this victory, but seem to have won it at a heavy price, as they did not press on farther westward. When in 842 Shalmaneser came a second time, Jehu was certainly not among the allies of the Syrians. The Assyrians do not seem, on this occasion, to have been opposed by so powerful a league, and were able to attack the Syrians whom they conquered at Saniru (Hermon, Anti- Lebanon) in a much more determined manner. They laid siege to Damascus and laid waste the surrounding country. The Hauran and Bashan were made a desert. In their march of victory they pressed forward as far as the Mediterranean. Phoenicia and other countries brought tribute. Among these nations Shalmaneser expressly mentions Jahua (“Jehu, the son of Omri” (!)), who was compelled to deliver up gold and silver bars and other valuable possessions. But this expensive homage on the part of Jehu did not help much. Shalmaneser came only once more (839) into this neighborhood. After this the Assyrians did not appear again for a period of 35 years. All the more vigorously did the Syrians and other neighboring people make onslaughts on Israel. How fearfully they devasted Israel appears from Amos 1.
Jehoahaz.
Under his son Jehoahaz the weakness of Israel became still greater. In his helplessness, the Lord finally sent him a deliverer ( 2 Kings 13:3 ff). This deliverer was none other than the Assyrian king, Adad-nirari III (812-783), who, through a military incursion, had secured anew his supremacy over Western Asia, and had besieged the king of Damascus and had forced him to pay an immense tribute. In this way Israel, which had voluntarily rendered submission to him, was relieved of its embarrassment by the weakening of Syria.
Jehoash, the son of Jehoahaz, experienced more favorable conditions. He also conquered Amaziah, the king of Judah; and his son, Jeroboam II, even succeeded in restoring the old boundaries of the kingdom, as the prophet Jonah had predicted ( 2 Kings 14:24 ff). His reign was the last flourishing period of the kingdom of Ephraim. See, further, ISRAEL, KINGDOM OF.
Athaliah.
The kingdom of Judah, in the meanwhile, had passed through severe crises.
The most severe was caused by that Athaliah, who, after the murder of her son Ahaziah by Jehu, had secured absolute control in Jerusalem, and had abused this power in order to root out the family of David. Only one son of the king, Joash, escaped with his life. He, a boy of one year, was hidden in the temple by a relative, where the high priest Jehoiada, who belonged to the party opposed to the heathen-minded queen, concealed him for a period of 6 years. When the boy was 7 years old Jehoiada, at a well-timed moment, proclaimed him king. His elevation to the throne, in connection with which event the terrible Athaliah was put to death, introduced at the same time an energetic reaction against the heathendom that had found its way even into Judah, and which the queen had in every way favored. Joash was predestined to be a theocratic king. And, in reality, in the beginning of his reign of 40 years, he went hand in hand with the priests and the prophets of Yahweh. After Jehoiada’s death, however, he tolerated idolatrous worship among the princes ( 2 Chronicles 24:17 ff), and by doing so came into conflict with the faithful prophet Zechariah, the son of his benefactor Jehoiada, who rebuked him for his wrong, and was even stoned. A just punishment for this guilt was recognized in the misfortune which overtook the king and his country. The Syrian king, Hazael, when he was engaged in an expedition against Gath, also took possession of Jerusalem and made it pay tribute, after having apparently inflicted a severe defeat on the people of Judah, on which occasion many princes fell in the battle and Joash himself was severely wounded. Toward the end of his reign there was also much dissatisfaction among his subjects, and some of his courtiers finally murdered him ( 2 Kings 12:20 f).
However, his son Amaziah, who now ascended the throne, punished the murderers. The king was successful in war against the Edomites. This made him bold. He ventured to meet Joash, the king of Israel, in battle and was defeated and captured. The people of Judah suffered the deepest humiliation. A large portion of the walls of Jerusalem was torn down ( Kings 14:11 ff). Amaziah did not feel himself safe even in his own capital city, because of the dissatisfaction of his own subjects, and he fled to Lachish. Here he was murdered. So deep had Judah fallen, while Jeroboam II succeeded in raising his kingdom to an unthought-of power.
But for Judah a turn for the better soon set in under Uzziah, the same as Azariah in Kings, the son of Amaziah, who enjoyed a long and prosperous reign. 3. The Literary Prophets: Prosperous as Israel outwardly appeared to be during the reigns of these two kings, Jeroboam II and Uzziah, the religious and moral conditions of the people were just as little satisfactory. This is the testimony Prophets of the prophets Amos and Hosea, as also of Isaiah and Micah, who not much later began their active ministry in Judah. It is indeed true that these were not the first prophets to put into written form some of their prophetic utterances. The prophecies of Obadiah and Joel are by many put at an earlier date, namely Obadiah under Jehoram in Judah, and Joel under Joash in Judah. At any rate, the discourses of the prophets from this time on constitute an important contemporaneous historical source. They illustrate especially the spiritual condition of the nation. Throughout these writings complaints are made concerning the heathen superstitions and the godless cult of the people, and especially the corruption in the administration of the laws, oppression of the poor and the helpless by the rich and the powerful, and pride and luxury of all kinds. In all these things the prophets see a terrible apostasy on Israel’s part. But also the foreign policy of the different kings, who sought help, now of the one and then of the other of the worldpowers (Egypt, Assyria), and tried to buy the favor of these nations, the prophets regarded as adultery with foreign nations and as infidelity toward Yahweh. As a punishment they announced, since all other misfortunes sent upon them had been of no avail, an invasion through a conqueror, whom Amos and Hosea always indicate shall be Assyria, and also deportations of the people into a heathen land, and an end of the Jewish state. Improbable as these threats may have seemed to the self-satisfied inhabitants of Samaria, they were speedily realized.
Successors of Jeroboam II After the death of Jeroboam, the strength of the Northern Kingdom collapsed. His son Zechariah was able to maintain the throne for only months, and his murderer Shallum only one month. The general Menahem, who put him out of the way, maintained himself as king for 10 years, but only by paying a heavy tribute to the Assyrian ruler Pul, i.e. Tiglath-pileser III, who ruled from 745-727 (compare 2 Kings 15:19 f).
Pekah.
His son Pekahiah, on the other hand, soon fell by the hands of the murderer Pekah ( 2 Kings 15:25), who allied himself with Syria against Judah. The latter, however, invited the Assyrians to come into the country; and these, entering in the year 734 BC, put an end to the reign of this usurper, although he was actually put to death as late as 730 BC.
The last king of the Northern Kingdom, Hoshea (730-722 BC), had the Assyrians to thank for his throne; but he did not keep his fidelity as a vassal very long. As soon as Tiglath-pileser was dead, he tried to throw off the Assyrian yoke. But his successor Shalmaneser IV (727-723 BC), who already in the first year of his reign had again subdued the rebellious king Elulaios of Syria, soon compelled Hoshea also to submit to his authority.
Two years later Hoshea again joined a conspiracy with the Phoenicians against Assyria, in which they even counted on the help of the Egyptian king, who in the Bible is called So or Seve (Egyptian name is Shabaka).
Now the Assyrians lost all patience. They at once came with their armies.
Hoshea seems to have voluntarily submitted to the power of the Great King, who then made him a captive. The people, however, continued the struggle. Samaria, the capital city, was besieged, but did not fall until the 3rd year (722 BC) into the hands of the enemy. Shalmaneser, in the meanwhile, had died and Sargon II had become his successor. The city was indeed not destroyed, but a large portion of the inhabitants, especially the leaders, were deported and transplanted to Northern Mesopotamia and to Media. Sargon states that the number of deported Israelites was 27,290.
Prominent persons from other cities were also doubtless to be included in those deported. On the other hand, the Assyrian king settled Babylonian and Syrian prisoners of war in Samaria (721 BC), and in the year 715 BC, Arabs also. But the country, to a great extent, continued in a state of desolation, so that Esar-haddon (680-668 BC) and Ashurbanipal (667-626 BC) sent new colonists there, the last-mentioned sending them from Babylonia, Persia and Media (compare 2 Kings 17:24 ff). In these verses the Babylonian city of Cuthah is several times mentioned, on account of which city the Jews afterward called the Samaritans Cuthites.
This report also makes mention of the religious syncretism, which of necessity resulted from the mixture of the people. But we must be careful not to place at too small figures the number of Israelites who remained in the country. It is a great exaggeration when it is claimed, as it is by Friedrich Delitzsch, that the great bulk of the inhabitants of the country of Samaria, or even of Galilee, was from this time on Babylonian.
The kingdom of Judah, however, outlived the danger from Assyria. As King Uzziah later in his life suffered from leprosy, he had Jotham as a coregent during this period. The earliest discourses of Isaiah, which belong to this period (Isaiah 2 through 4; 5), show that in Jerusalem the people were at that time still enjoying the fruits and prosperity of a long period of peace. But immediately after the death of Jotham, when the youthful Ahaz began to rule, the onslaught of the allied Syrians and Ephraimites took place under Rezin, or better Rezon, and Pekah. This alliance purposed to put an end to the Davidic reign in Jerusalem, probably for the purpose of making this people, too, a member of the league against the dangerous Assyrians. The good-sized army of Judah seems to have fallen a victim to the superior power of the allies before the situation described in Isaiah could be realized, in which the siege of the city is described as already imminent. The Edomites also at that time advanced against Judah. Elath, the harbor city on the Red Sea, from which Uzziah, too, as had been done by Solomon long before, sent out trading vessels, at that time came into their power. For 2 Kings 16:6 probably speaks of Edom and not of Aram (compare 2 Chronicles 28:17). In his anxiety, Ahaz, notwithstanding the advice of Isaiah to the contrary, then appealed to the king of Assyria, and the latter actually put in his appearance in 734 BC and overcame the power of Syria and Ephraim, as we have seen above.
However, the intervention of this world-power brought no benefit to Judah. Without this disgraceful appeal to a heathen ruler, Yahweh, according to the promise of Isaiah, would have protected Jerusalem, if Ahaz had only believed. And the Assyrians did not prevent the Philistines and the Edomites from falling upon Judah. The Assyrians themselves soon came to be the greatest danger threatening Judah. Ahaz, however, was an unstable character in religious affairs, and he copied heathen forms of worship, and even sacrificed his son to the angry sun-god, in order to gain his favor. The tribute that the people had to pay to Assyria was already a heavy burden on this little kingdom.
Hezekiah.
His noble and God-fearing son, Hezekiah (724-696 BC), was also compelled to suffer from the consequences of this misgovernment. The temptation was great to enter into an alliance with his neighbors and the Egyptians, so strong in cavalry, for the purpose of ridding Judah of the burdensome yoke of the Assyrians. In vain did Isaiah warn against such unworthy self-help. At the advice of the ministers of Hezekiah, and because of the trust put in Egypt, the tribute was finally refused to the Assyrians.
Hezekiah also sought to establish closer connections with Merodachbaladan, the king of Babylon and the enemy of the Assyrians, when the latter, after a dangerous sickness of the king, had sent messengers to Jerusalem in order to congratulate him on the restoration of his health.
This story, found in 2 Kings 20, belongs chronologically before 2 Kings 18:13 ff, and, more accurately, in the 14th year of Hezekiah mentioned in 18:13. However, the expedition of Sennacherib which is mistakenly placed in that year, took place several years later: according to the Assyrian monuments, in the year 701 BC.
Sennacherib.
In the year 702 BC Sennacherib, with a powerful army, marched over the Lebanon and subdued the rebellious Phoenicians, and marched along the seacoast to Philistia. The inhabitants of Ekron had sent their king, Padi, who sympathized with the Assyrians, to Hezekiah. Sennacherib came to punish Ekron and Ascalon. But he was particularly anxious to overpower Judah, which country his troops devastated and depopulated. Now Hezekiah recognized his danger, and offered to submit to Sennacherib. The latter accepted his submission conditionally on the payment of a burdensome tribute, which Hezekiah delivered faithfully ( 2 Kings 18:14-16). Then Sennacherib was no longer satisfied with the tribute alone, but sent troops who were to despoil Jerusalem. Isaiah, who surely had not sanctioned the falling away from the Assyrian supremacy and had prophesied that the inhabitants of Jerusalem would suffer a severe punishment, from that moment, when the conqueror had maliciously broken his word, spoke words of comfort and advised against giving up the city, no matter how desperate the situation seemed to be ( Isaiah 37:1 ff). The city was then not given up, and Sennacherib, on account of a number of things that occurred, and finally because of a pestilence which broke out in his army, was compelled to retreat. He did not return to Jerusalem, and later met his death by violent hands. This deliverance of Jerusalem through the miraculous providence of God was the greatest triumph of the prophet Isaiah. Within his kingdom Hezekiah ruled successfully. He also purified the cult from the heathen influences that had forced their way into it, and was a predecessor of Josiah in the abolition of the sacrifices on the high places, which had been corrupted by these influences.
Manasseh.
Unfortunately, his son Manasseh was little worthy of succeeding him. He, in every way, favored the idolatry which all along had been growing secretly. He inaugurated bloody persecutions of the faithful prophets of Yahweh. According to a tradition, which it must be confessed is not supported by undoubted testimony, Isaiah also, now an old man, became a victim of these persecutions. Images and altars were openly erected to Baal and Astarte. Even in the temple-house on Mt. Zion, an image of Astarte was standing. As a result of this ethnic cult, immorality and sensuality found their way among the people. At the same time the terrible service of Moloch, in the valley of Hinnom, demanded the sacrifice of children, and even a son of the king was given over to this worship. The Book of Chronicles, indeed, tells the story of a terrible affliction that Manasseh suffered, namely that an Assyrian general dragged him in chains to Babylon for having violated his promises to them, but that he was soon released.
This is not at all incredible. He seems to have taken part in a rebellion, which the brother of the Assyrian king, who was also vice-king in Babylon, had inaugurated. This sad experience may have forced Manasseh to a certain kind of repentance, at least, so that he desisted from his worst sacrileges. But his son Amon continued the old ways of his father, until after a brief reign he was put to death.
Josiah.
Much more promising was his young son Josiah, who now, only 8 years old, came to the throne. It is quite possible that, in view of such frequent changes in the disposition of the successors to the throne, his mother may have had great influence on his character. Concerning Josiah, see <122201> Kings 22:1 ff. With increasing clearness and consistency, he proceeded to the work of religious reformation. A special impetus to this was given by the finding of an old law book in the temple, the publication of which for the first time revealed the fearful apostasy of the times. The finding of this book in the temple, as narrated in 2 Kings 22:3 ff, took place in connection with the restoration of that building on a larger scale, which at that time had been undertaken. And very probably Edouard Naville is right in believing, on the basis of Egyptian analogies, that this document had been imbedded in the foundation walls of the building. Whether this had been done already in the days of Solomon is not determined by this fact.
From the orders of Josiah we can conclude that the book which was found was Deuteronomy, which lays special stress on the fact that there shall be a central place for the cult, and also contains such threats as those must have been which frightened Josiah. But under no circumstances was Deuteronomy a lawbook that had first been written at this time, or a fabrication of the priest Hilkiah and his helpers. It would rather have been possible that the discovered old law was rewritten in changed form after its discovery and had been adapted to the language of the times. The people were obliged to obey the newly-discovered law and were instructed in it.
Jeremiah.
The prophet Jeremiah also, who a few years before this had been called to the prophetic office, according to certain data in the text, participated in this proclamation of the law of the covenant throughout the land. This change for the better did not change the tendency of his prophetic discourses, from what these had been from the beginning. He continued to be the accuser and the prophet of judgment, who declared that the destruction of the city and of the temple was near at hand. He looked too deeply into the inner corruption of his people to be misled by the external transformation that was the result of a command of the ruler. And only too soon did the course of events justify his prediction. With the person of the God-fearing Josiah, the devotion of the people to the law was also buried and the old curse everywhere broke out again.
The Chaldeans.
In a formal way Jeremiah was probably influenced by the incursions of the Scythians, which occurred during his youth, and who about this time marched from the plain of Jezreel toward Egypt (compare Herodotus i.103 ff); which event also made a gloomy impression on his contemporary Ezekiel, as appears from his vision of Gog in the land of Magog. However, we are not to suppose that Jeremiah, when describing the enemy coming from the north, whom he saw from the time of his call to the prophetic office, meant merely this band of freebooters. The prophet had in mind a world-power after the type of the Assyrians, who always came from the north into Canaan. The Assyrians indeed were in process of disintegration, and Nineveh fell under the attacks of the Medes and the Persians in the year 607-606 BC. The heir of the Assyrian power was not Egypt, which was also striving for universal supremacy, but was the Babylonian, or rather, more accurately, the Chaldean dynasty of Nabopolassar, whose son Nebuchadnezzar had overpowered the Egyptians at Carchemish in 605 BC.
From this time on Jeremiah had pointed out the Chaldeans and Nebuchadnezzar, who soon afterward became their king, as the agents to carry out the judgment on Jerusalem.
Already a few years before this Judah’s good star had gone down on the horizon. When Pharaoh-necho II came to Palestine by the sea route, in order to march northeast through the plain of Jezreel, to give the final and fatal blow to the sinking kingdom of the Assyrians, King Josiah opposed him on the plain of Megiddo, probably because of his obligations as a vassal to the king of Assyria. In the battle of Megiddo (609 BC), Josiah was mortally wounded. No greater calamity could have befallen Judah than the death of this king, who was deeply mourned by all well-meaning people, and who was the last of the house of David that was a credit to it.
The Successors of Josiah.
By popular election the choice now fell on Jehoahaz, a younger son of Josiah, called by Jeremiah (22:11) Shallum. But he found no favor with Necho, who took him prisoner in his camp at Riblah and carried him to Egypt ( 2 Kings 23:30 ff). The Egyptian king himself selected Jehoiakim, hitherto called Eliakim, an older son of Josiah, who had been ignored by the people, to be king in Jerusalem, a prince untrue to Yahweh, conceited, luxury-loving and hard-hearted, who, in addition, through his perfidious policy, brought calamity upon the land. He formed a conspiracy against Nebuchadnezzar, to whom he had begun to pay tribute in the 5th year of his reign, and in this way brought it about that the Syrians, the Moabites and the Ammonites, who had taken sides with the Assyrians, devastated the land of Judah, and that finally the king of Babylon himself came to Jerusalem to take revenge. It is not clear what was the end of this king. According to 2 Chronicles 36:6, compared with 2 Kings 24:6, he seems to have died while yet in Jerusalem, and after he had already fallen into the hands of his enemies. His son Jehoiachin did not experience a much better fate. After ruling three months he was taken to Babylon, where he was a prisoner for 37 years, until he was pardoned ( 2 Kings 24:8 ff; 25:27 ff). Together with Jehoiachin, the best portion of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, about 10,000 men, especially the smiths and the builders, were deported.
Zedekiah, the Last King of Judah.
Once more the Babylonians set up a king in Jerusalem in the person of Zedekiah, an uncle of Jehoiachin, and accordingly a son of Josiah, called Mattaniah, who afterward was called Zedekiah. He governed for twelve years (597-586 BC), and by his life, morally and religiously corrupt, sealed the fate of the house and of the kingdom of David. The better class among the leading and prominent people had been banished. As a result, the courtiers of the king urged him to try once again some treacherous schemes against the Babylonian rulers and to join Egypt in a conspiracy against them. However earnestly Jeremiah and Ezekiel warned against this policy, Zedekiah nevertheless constantly yielded to his evil advisers and to the warlike patriotic party, who were determined to win back in battle the independence of the country. While he at first, through an embassy, had assured the Great King of his loyalty ( Jeremiah 29:3), and still in the 4th year of his reign had personally visited in Babylon as a mark of his fidelity ( Jeremiah 51:59), he was induced in the 9th year of his reign to make an alliance with the Egyptians against the Babylonians and to refuse to render obedience to the latter. Nebuchadnezzar soon came and surrounded the city. At the announcement that an Egyptian army was approaching, the siege was again raised for a short time. But the hope placed by Zedekiah on his ally failed him. The Babylonians began again to starve out the city.
After a siege of 18 months, resistance proved futile. The king tried secretly to break through the circle of besiegers, but in doing so was taken prisoner, was blinded by the Babylonian king and taken to Babylon. The majority of the prominent men and state officials, who were taken to the encampment of the conqueror in Riblah, were put to death. The conquered city of Jerusalem, especially its walls and towers, together with the temple, were totally destroyed. Nearly all the inhabitants who could be captured after the slaughter were dragged into captivity, and only people of the lower classes were left behind in order to cultivate the land ( 2 Kings 25:11).
Gedaliah, a noble-minded aristocrat, was appointed governor of the city, and took up his residence in Mizpah. At this place it seemed that a new kernel of the people was being gathered. Jeremiah also went there.
However, after two months this good beginning came to an end. Gedaliah was slain by Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, an anti-Chaldaean, a fanatical and revengeful descendant of the house of David. The murderer acted in cooperation with certain Ammonitish associates and fled to the king of Ammon. The Jews in later times considered the murder of Gedaliah as an especially great national calamity, and fasted on the anniversary of this crime. And as the people also feared the revenge of the Babylonians, many migrated to Egypt, compelling Jeremiah, now an old man, to accompany them, although he prophesied to them that no good would come of this scheme. They first stayed at the border city Tahpanhes, near Pelusium, and then scattered over Upper and Lower Egypt.
VI. TIME OF THE BABYLONIAN EXILE. 1. Influence of the Exile: The inhabitants of Judah, who had been deported by Nebuchadnezzar at different times, were settled by him in Babylonia, e.g. at the river Chebar ( Ezekiel 1:1), near the city of Nippur. From Hilprecht’s excavations of this city, it has been learned that this river, or branch of the Euphrates Influence river, is to be found at this place, and of the is not to be confounded with the river Chaboras. In the same way, the many contracttablets with Jewish names which have been found at Nippur, show that a large Jewish colony lived at that place. Of the fate of these banished Jews for a period of 50 years, we hear almost nothing. But it is possible to learn what their condition was in exile from the Book of Ezekiel and the 2nd part of Isaiah. Land was assigned to them here, and they were permitted to build houses for themselves ( Jeremiah 29:5 ff), and could travel around this district without restraint. They were not prisoners in the narrow sense of the word. They soon, through diligence and skill in trade, attained to considerable wealth, so that most of them, after the lapse of half a century, were perfectly satisfied and felt no desire to return home. For the spiritual development of the people the exile proved to be a period of great importance. In the first place, they were separated from their native soil, and in this way from many temptations of heathenism and idolatry, and the like. The terrible judgment that had come over Jerusalem had proved that the prophets had been right, who had for a long time, but in vain, preached genuine repentance. This did not prove to be without fruit (of Zec 1:6).
While living in the heathen land, they naturally became acquainted with heathendom in a more crass form. But even if many of the Jews were defiled by it, in general the relations of the Israelites toward the idolworshipping Babylonians were antagonistic, and they became all the more zealous in the observance of those religious rites which could be practiced in a foreign land, such as rest on the Sabbath day, the use of meats, circumcision, and others. But with marked zeal the people turned to the spiritual storehouse of their traditions, namely their sacred literature. They collected the laws, the history, the hymns, and treasured them. It was also a noteworthy progress that such prophets as Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Daniel received prophetic visions while on heathen soil. The people also learned that the heathen, in the midst of whom they lived, became receptive of the higher truths of Israel’s religion. Especially does the 2nd part of Isaiah, chapters 40 through 66, show that they began to understand the missionary calling of Israel among the nations of the world. 2. Daniel: The Book of Daniel reports how a God-fearing and law-abiding Jew, through his prophecies, attained to prominent positions of influence at the courts of different rulers. From the Book of Ezekiel we learn that the prophets and the elders cared for the spiritual wants of the people, and that they held meetings, at which indeed it was not permitted to offer sacrifices, but at which the word of Yahweh was proclaimed. Here we find the beginnings of what afterward was the synagogue-system. 3. Elephantine Papyri: A remarkable picture of the Jewish [diaspora ] in Upper Egypt is furnished by recently discovered papyri at Elephantine. From these it appears that in the 6th century BC, not only a large and flourishing Jewish colony was to be found at this place, but also that they had erected here a fine temple to Yahweh where they brought their sacrifices to which they had been accustomed at home. In an Aramaic letter, still preserved and dating from the year 411 BC, and which is addressed to the governor Bagohi, in Judea, these Jews complain that their temple in Yeb (Elephantine, near Syene) had been destroyed in the same year. It also states that this temple had been spared on one occasion by Cambyses, who was in Egypt from 525 to BC. The answer of Bagohi also has been preserved, and he directs that the temple is to be built again and that meal offerings and incense are again to be introduced. Probably intentionally, mention in this letter is made only of the unbloody sacrifices, while in the first letter burnt sacrifices also are named. The sacrifices of animals by the Jews would probably have aroused too much the anger of the devotees of the divine ram, which was worshipped at Syene. Up to the present time we knew only of the much later temple of the high priest Onias IV at Leontopolis (160 BC). Compare Josephus, Ant, XII, iii, 1-3; BJ, VII, x, 2, 3.
VII. RETURN FROM THE EXILE AND THE RESTORATION. 1. Career of Cyrus: In the meanwhile there was a new re-adjustment of political supremacy among the world-powers. The Persian king, Koresh (Cyrus), first made himself free from the supremacy of Media which, after the capture of the city Ecbatana, became a part of his own kingdom (549 BC). At that time Nabonidus was the king in Babylon (555-538 BC), who was not displeased at the collapse of the kingdom of the Medes, but soon learned that the new ruler turned out to be a greater danger to himself, as Cyrus subjugated, one after the other, the smaller kingdoms in the north. But Nabonidus was too unwarlike to meet Cyrus. He confined himself to sending his son with an army to the northern boundaries of his kingdom. On the other hand, the king of the Lydians, Croesus, who was related by marriage to King Astyages, who had been subdued by Cyrus, began a war with Cyrus, after he had formed an alliance with Egypt and Sparta. In the year 546 BC, he crossed the river Halys. Cyrus approached from the Tigris, and in doing so already entered Babylonian territory, conquered Croesus, took his capital city Sardis, and put an end to the kingdom of Lydia. The pious Israelites in captivity, under the tutelage of Deutero-Isaiah, watched these events with the greatest of interest. For the prophet taught them from the beginning to see in this king “the deliverer,” who was the instrument of Yahweh for the return of the Israelites out of captivity, and of whom the prophets had predicted. And this expectation was fulfilled with remarkable rapidity. The victorious and aggressive king of Persia could now no longer be permanently checked, even by the Babylonians. It was in vain that King Nabonidus had caused the images of the gods from many of his cities to be taken to Babylon, in order to make the capital city invincible. This city opened its doors to the Persian commander Ugbaru (Gobryas) in 538 BC, and a few months later Cyrus himself entered the city. This king, however, was mild and conciliatory in his treatment of the people and the city. He did not destroy the city, but commanded only that a portion of the walls should be razed. However, the city gradually, in the course of time, became ruins.
Cyrus also won the good will and favor of the subjugated nations by respecting their religions. He returned to their shrines the idols of Nabonidus, that had been taken away. But he was particularly considerate of the Jews, who doubtless had complained to him of their fate and had made known to him their prophecies regarding him as the coming deliverer. 2. First Return under Zerubbable: In the very first year of his reign over Babylon he issued an edict ( Chronicles 36:22 f; Ezra 1:1 ff) that permitted the Jews to return home, with the command that they should again erect their temple. For this purpose he directed that the temple-vessels, which Nebuchadnezzar had taken away with him, should be returned to them, and commanded that those Israelites who voluntarily remained in Babylon should contribute money for the restoration of the temple. At the head of those to be returned stood Sheshbazzar, who is probably identical with Zerubbabel, although this is denied by some scholars; and also the high priest, Joshua, a grandson of the high priest, Seraiah, who had been put to death by Nebuchadnezzar. They were accompanied by only a small part of those in exile, that is by 42,360 men and women and children, male and female servants, especially from the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi, but of the last-mentioned tribes more priests than other Levites. After several months they safely arrived in Palestine, probably 537 BC. Some of them settled down in Jerusalem, and others in surrounding cities and villages. They erected the altar for burnt sacrifices, so that they were again able in the 7th month to sacrifice on it. (1) Building the temple.
The cornerstone of the temple was also solemnly laid at that time in the 2nd year of the Return ( Ezra 3:8 ff). (2) Haggai and Zechariah.
But the erection of the temple must have been interrupted in a short time, since it was not until the 2nd year of Darius (520 BC), at the urgent appeal of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, that the work of building was energetically prosecuted. For this reason many scholars deny this cornerstone-laying in the year 536 BC. However, it still remains thinkable that several attempts were made at this work, since the young colony had many difficulties to contend with. Then, too, the memoirs of Ezra and Nehemiah, which have been worked over by the author of Chronicles, report the history of these times only in parts. The historical value of these literary sources has been confirmed by those Aramaic papyri found in Upper Egypt. 3. Ezra and Nehemiah: In the year 516 BC, after 4 years of building, the temple was completed and dedicated. After this we have no information for a period of 58 years.
Then we learn that Ezra, the scribe, in the 7th year of Artaxerxes I (458 BC), came with a new caravan of about 1,500 men with women and children from Babylon to the Holy Land. He had secured from the king the command to establish again in the land of the Jews the law, in which he was a prominent expert, and he tried to do this by earnest admonitions and instructive discourses addressed to the people. The acme of the activity of Ezra was the meeting of the people described in Nehemiah 8 through 10 on the Feast of the Tabernacles, on which occasion the entire nation solemnly came under obligation to observe the law. According to the present position of these chapters this act took place in 444 BC; but it is probable that it happened before the arrival of Nehemiah, whose name would accordingly have to be eliminated in 8:9. This pericope would then belong to the memoirs of Ezra and not to those of Nehemiah. After some years there came to help Ezra in his work, Nehemiah, a pious Jew, who was a cupbearer to the king, and at his own request was granted leave of absence in order to help the city of Jerusalem, which he had heard was in dire straits. Its walls were in ruins, as the neighboring nations had been able to hinder their rebuilding, and even those walls of the city that had been hastily restored, had again been pulled down. Nehemiah came in the year 445-444 BC from Shushan to Jerusalem and at once went energetically to work at rebuilding the walls. Notwithstanding all oppositions and intrigues of malicious neighbors, the work was successfully brought to a close.
The hostile agitations, in so far as they were not caused by widespread envy and hatred of the Jews among the neighboring peoples, had a religious ground. Those who returned, as the people of Yahweh, held themselves aloof from the peoples living round about them, especially from the mixed peoples of Samaria. Samaria was the breeding-place for this hostility against Jerusalem. The governor at that place, Sanballat, was the head of this hostile league. The Jews had declined to permit the Samaritans to cooperate in the erection of the temple and would have no religious communion with them. The Samaritans had taken serious offense at this, and they accordingly did all they could to prevent the building of the walls in Jerusalem, which would be a hindrance to their having access to the temple. But Nehemiah’s trust in God and his energy overcame this obstacle. The policy of exclusiveness, which Ezra and Nehemiah on this occasion and at other times followed out, evinces a more narrow mind than the preexilic prophets had shown. In the refusal of intermarriage with the people living around them they went beyond the Mosaic law, for they even demanded that those marriages, which the Israelites had already contracted with foreign women, should be dissolved. But this exclusiveness was the outcome of legal conscientiousness, and at this period it was probably necessary for the selfpreservation of the people of Yahweh. Malachi.
From the prophecies of Malachi, who was almost a contemporary of the two mentioned, it can be seen that the marriages with the foreign women had also brought with them a loosening of even the most sacred family ties ( Malachi 2:14 f). After an absence of 12 years, Nehemiah again returned to Shushan to the court; and when he later returned to Jerusalem he was compelled once more to inaugurate a stringent policy against the lawlessness which was violating the sanctity of the temple and of the Sabbath commandment. He also expelled a certain Manasseh, a grandson of the high priest, who had married a daughter of Sanballat. This Manasseh, according to Josephus (Ant., XI, viii, 2), erected the sanctuary on Mt. Gerizim, and established the priesthood at that place. This is no doubt correct. These accounts of Josephus are often combined without cause with the times of Alexander the Great, although they transpired about 110 years earlier.
The history of the Jews in the last decades of the Persian rule is little known. Under Artaxerxes III (Ochus), they were compelled to suffer much, when they took part in a rebellion of the Phoenicians and Cyprians.
Many Jews were at that time banished to Hyrcania on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. The Persian general, Bagoses, came to Jerusalem and forced his way even into the temple (Josephus, Ant, XI, vii, 1). He undertook to install as high priest, in the place of John (Jochanan), his brother Joshua (Jesus). The latter, however, was slain by the former in the temple. For the first time the office of the high priest appears as more of a political position, something that it never was in the preexilic times, and according to the law was not to be.
VIII. THE JEWS UNDER ALEXANDER AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 1. Spread of Hellenism: As the Jews were then tired of the rule of the priests, they were not dissatisfied with the victorious career of Alexander the Great. He appears to have assumed a friendly attitude toward them, even if the story reported by Josephus (Ant., XI, viii, 4) is scarcely historical. The successors of Alexander were also, as a rule, tolerant in religious matters. But for political and geographical reasons, Palestine suffered severely in these times, as it lay between Syria and Egypt, and was an object of attack on the part of both the leading ruling families in this period, the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in Syria. At the same time Hellenism, which had been so powerfully advanced by Alexander as a factor of civilization and culture, penetrated the land of Israel also. Greek culture and language spread soon in Palestine and in many places was supreme. The more strict adherents of Judaism recognized in this a danger to the Mosaic order of life and religion, and all the more zealously they now adhered to the traditional ordinances. These were called the chacidhim , or the Pious ([ Jasidai~oi , Hasidaioi ], 1 Macc 2:42; 7:13; 2 Macc 14:6). The world-transforming Hellenistic type of thought spread especially among the aristocrats and the politically prominent, and even found adherents among the priests, while the chacidhim belonged to the less conspicuous ranks of the people. 2. The Hasmoneans: A struggle for life and death was caused between these two tendencies by the Syrian king, Antiochus IV (Epiphanes), into whose hands the sovereignty of Palestine had fallen. He undertook nothing less than to root out the hated Jewish religion. In the year 168 BC he commanded that the temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem should be dedicated to the Olympian Jupiter and forbade most stringently the observance of the Sabbath and circumcision. A large portion of the people did not resist his oppression, but adapted themselves to this tyrannical heathendom. Others suffered and died as martyrs. Finally in the year 167 BC a priest, Mattathias, gave the signal for a determined resistance, at the head of which stood his brave sons, the Hasmoneans, or Maccabees. First his son Judas undertook the leadership of the faithful. He succeeded in freeing Jerusalem from the Syriansú He restored the temple on Mt. Zion. The temple was dedicated anew and was given over to the old cult. After a number of victorious campaigns, Judas Maccabeus died the death of a hero in 161 BC. His brother, Jonathan, who took his place at the head of the movement, tried to secure the independence of the land rather through deliberate planning than through military power. He assumed, in addition to his secular power, also the high-priestly dignity. After his death by violence in 143 BC, he was succeeded by his brother Simon as the bearer of this double honor. The Hasmoneans, however, rapidly became worldly minded and lost the sympathies of the chasidhim . The son of Simon, John Hyrcanus (135-106 BC), broke entirely with the Pious, and his family, after his death, came to an end in disgraceful struggles for power. The rule of the land fell into the hands of Herod, a tyrant of Idumean origin, who was supported by the Romans. From 37 BC he was the recognized king of Judah. See ASMONEANS; MACCABEES.
IX. THE ROMANS. 1. Division of Territory: After the death of Herod (4 BC), the kingdom, according to his last will, was to be divided among his three sons. Archelaus received Judea; Antipas, Galilee and Peraea; Philip, the border lands in the north. However, Archelaus was soon deposed by the Romans (6 AD), and Judea was made a part of the province of Syria, but was put under a special Roman procurator, who resided in Caesarea. These procurators (of whom the best known was Pontius Pilate, 26-36 AD), had no other object than to plunder the land and the people. 2. Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans: In this way a conflict was gradually generated between the people and their oppressors, which ended with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD. As early as 40 AD this rupture almost took place, when the Syrian legate Petronius, at the command of Caligula, undertook to place a statue of the emperor in the temple of Jerusalem. On this occasion King Agrippa I, who was again ruling the whole territory of Herod, succeeded in adjusting the conflict. His son Agrippa II was given a much smaller kingdom (40-100 AD). He, too, sought to prevent the people from undertaking a struggle with the Romans, but in vain. By his unscrupulous treatment of the people, the procurator Gessius Florus drove the Jews into an insurrection. The party of the Zealots gained the upper hand. Florus was compelled to leave Jerusalem (66 AD). Even the good-sized army which Cestius Gallus commanded could not get control of the city, but was completely overpowered by the Jews on its retreat at Bethhoron. Now the entire country rose in rebellion. The Romans, under the leadership of Vespasian, advanced with considerable power and first conquered Galilee, then under Josephus (67 AD). In Jerusalem, in the meanwhile, different parties of the Jews were still fighting each other. Titus, the son of Vespasian, took the chief command after Vespasian had already conquered the East Jordan country and the western coast, but had hastened to Rome in order to become emperor. Titus completely surrounded the city a few days before the Passover festival in the year 70. On the northern side the Romans first broke through the first and newest city wall, and after that the second. The third offered a longer resistance, and at the same time famine wrought havoc in Jerusalem. At last the battle raged about the temple, during which this structure went up in flames. According to the full description by Josephus (BJ, VI, iv, 3 ff), Titus tried to prevent the destruction of the temple; according to Sulpicius Severus (Chron. II, 20), however, this destruction was just what he wanted. A few fortified places yet maintained themselves after the fall of Jerusalem, e.g. Macherus in the East Jordan country, but they could not hold out very long.
Later Insurrection of Bar-Cochba.
Once again the natural ambition for independence burst out in the insurrection of Bar-Cochba (132-35 AD). Pious teachers of the law, especially Rabbi Akiba, had enkindled this fire, in order to rid the country of the rule of the Gentiles. However, notwithstanding some temporary successes, this insurrection was hopeless. Both the city and the country were desolated by the enraged Romans still more fearfully, and were depopulated still more than in 70. From that time Jerusalem was lost to the Jews. They lived on without a country of their own, without any political organization, without a sanctuary, in the Diaspora among the nations. 3. Spiritual Life of the Period: The spiritual and religious life of the Jews during the period preceding the dissolution of the state was determined particularly by the legalistic character of their ideals and their opposition to Hellenism. Their religion had become formalistic to a great extent since their return from the exile.
The greatest emphasis was laid on obedience to the traditional ordinances, and these latter were chiefly expositions of ceremonial usurpers.
Appearance of Jesus Christ.
The crown of the history of Israel-Judah was the appearance of Jesus Christ. Looked at superficially, it may indeed appear as though His person and His life had but little affected the development of the national history of Israel. However, more closely viewed, we shall see that this entire history has its goal in Him and finds its realization in Him. After full fruit had developed out of this stock, the latter withered and died. He was to be the bearer of salvation for all mankind.
LITERATURE.
The earliest historian of Israel was the Jew, Flavius Josephus, in the 1st Christian century. His example found few followers in the early church, and we mention only the Chronicle of Sulpicius Severus. The subject is handled theologically by Augustine in his De Civitate Dei. It was only in the 17th century that a keen interest was awakened in this subject. Compare especially James Usher, Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti, London, 1605; J.B. Bousset, Discours sur l’histoire universelie, Paris, 1681; Humphrey Prideaux, The Old and the New Testament Connected in the History of the Jews and Neighboring Nations,2 volumes, London, 1716; S. Shukford, The Sacred and Profane History of the World Connected, London, 1727, this work treating the subject apologetically against the Deists. Compare also J. Saurin, Discours historiques, Amsterdam, 1720.
Cocceius and his school systematized this history on the basis of their theological tenets, e.g. Gurtler, Systema theol. prophetica, Frankfurt, 1724.
More systematic is the work of Vitringa, Hypothesis historiae et chronologiae sacrae, Frankfurt, 1708. The Lutheran church furnished the excellent work of Franz Budde, Historia Eccles. Veteris Testamenti, Jena, 1715. In the 18th century, Bengel’s school furnished some good histories of Israel, such as M.F. Roos’s Einleitung in die bibl. Geschichte, 1700.
More popular is the work of J.J. Hess. The best Catholic work from this time is J. Jahn’s Archaeologie, 1802; while the Rationalistic period furnished Lorenz Bauer’s Geschichte der hebr. Nation, 1800. In the 19th century the rationalistic and the conservative tendencies run parallel, and a new impulse was given to the study of this history by the phenomenal archaeological finds in Egypt and in Assyria and Babylon. Critical reconstruction of Israel’s history characterizes the works of Reuss, Graf, Kuenen, Wellhausen. Other works of prominence are the Geschichte des Volkes Gottes, by Ewald; Kurtz, Geschichte des alten Bundes (these are translated); Hitzig, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, with critical tendency.
The work of August Koehler, Lehrbuch der biblischen Geschichte, Altes Testament, is positive, while Wellhausen’s Geschichte Israels is a classic of the advanced school. Other works mostly critical are the histories of Renan, Kuenen, Stade, Winckler, Piepenbring, Cornill, Guthe, Cheyne, and others. Kittel’s Geschichte der Hebreier (translated) is more moderate in tone. For the New Testament the richest storehouse is Schurer’s Geschichte des judischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi (translated); Hausrath’s Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte is also good. From the Jewish standpoint this history has been treated by S. Friediander, Geschichte des Israel-Volkes; and J.M. Jost, Geschichte der Israelitch; Moritz Raphall, Post-biblical History of the Jews from the Close of the Old Testament till the Destruction of the Second Temple, in the Year 70.
Among English works may be especially mentioned Milman’s History of the Jews and Stanley’s Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, with smaller works by Ottley and others.
American works on the subject from the critical point of view are a History of the Hebrew People, by Kent, and a History of the Jewish People by Kent and Riggs in the “Historical Series for Bible Students,” published by Messrs. Scribner. Compare also McCurdy, History, Prophecy and the Monuments; Toy, Judaism and Christianity; H.P. Smith, Old Testament History. C. von Orelli ISRAEL, KINGDOM OF I. THE FIRST PERIOD. 1. The Two Kingdoms: The circumstances leading up to the foundation of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, or the Kingdom of the Ten Tribes, have been detailed under the heading KINGDOM OF JUDAH . From a secular point of view it would be more natural to regard the latter as an offshoot from the former, rather than the converse. But not only is the kingdom of Judah of paramount importance in respect of both religion and literature, but its government also was in the hands of a single dynasty, whereas that of the Northern Kingdom changed hands no less than 8 times, during the two and a half centuries of its existence. Moreover, the Southern Kingdom lasted about twice as long as the other. 2. The Ist Dynasty: No sooner had Jeroboam I been elected the first ruler of the newly founded state than he set about managing its affairs with the energy for which he was distinguished ( 1 Kings 11:28). To complete the disruption he established a sanctuary in opposition to that of Jerusalem ( Hosea 8:14), with its own order of priests ( 2 Chronicles 11:14; 13:9), and founded two capital cities, Shechem on the West and Penuel on the East of the Jordan ( 1 Kings 12:25). Peace seems to have been maintained between the rival governments during the 17 years’ reign of Rehoboam, but on the accession of his son Abijah war broke out ( 1 Kings 15:6,7; Chronicles 13:3 if). Shortly afterward Jeroboam died and was succeeded by his son Nadab, who was a year later assassinated, and the Ist Dynasty came to an end, after an existence of 23 years, being limited, in fact, to a single reign. 3. The IInd Dynasty: The turn of the tribe of Issachar came next. They had not yet given a ruler to Israel; they could claim none of the judges, but they had taken their part at the assembling of the tribes under Deborah and Barak of Naphtali.
Baasha began his reign of 24 years by extirpating the house of his predecessor ( 1 Kings 15:29), just as the `Abbasids annihilated the Umeiyads. The capital was now Tirzah ( 1 Kings 14:17; Song of Solomon 6:4), a site not yet identified. His Judean contemporary was ASA (which see), who, like his father Abijah, called in the aid of the Syrians against the Northern Kingdom. Baasha was unequal to the double contest and was forced to evacuate the ground he had gained. His son Elah was assassinated after a reign of a year, as he himself had assassinated the son of the founder of the preceding dynasty, and his entire family and adherents were massacred ( 1 Kings 16:11). 4. Civil War: The name of the assassin was Zimri, an officer of the charioteers, of unknown origin and tribe. But the kingship was always elective, and the army chose Omri, the commander-in-chief, who besieged and took Tirzah, Zimri setting the palace on fire by his own hand and perishing in the flames.
A second pretender, Tibni, a name found in Phoenician and Assyrian, of unknown origin, sprang up. He was quickly disposed of, and security of government was reestablished.
II. PERIOD OF THE SYRIAN WARS. 1. The IIId Dynasty: The founder of the new dynasty was Omri. By this time the Northern Kingdom was so much a united whole that the distinctions of tribe were forgotten. We do not know to what tribe Omri and his successors belonged. With Omri the political sphere of action of Israel became wider than it had been before, and its internal affairs more settled. His civil code was in force long after his dynasty was extinct, and was adopted in the Southern Kingdom ( Micah 6:16). The capital city, the site of which he chose, has remained a place of human habitation till the present day. Within the last few years, remains of his building have been recovered, showing a great advance in that art from those believed to go back to Rehoboam and Solomon. He was, however, unfortunate in his relations with Syria, having lost some towns and been forced to grant certain trading concessions to his northern neighbors ( 1 Kings 20:34). But he was so great a king that long after his death the Kingdom of the Ten Tribes was known to the Assyrians as “the house of Omri.” 2. World-Politics: Contemporarily with this dynasty, there occurred a revival of the Phoenician power, which exerted a powerful influence upon the Israelite kings and people, and at the same time the Assyrians once more began to interfere with Syrian politics. The Northern Kingdom now began to play a part in the game of world-politics. There was peace with Judah, and alliance with Phoenicia was cemented by the marriage of Ahab, it seems after his father’s death, with Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal ( 1 Kings 16:31). This led to the erection of a temple in Samaria in which the Tyrian Baal was worshipped, while side by side with it the worship of Yahweh was carried on as before. It seems as if the people had fallen back from the pure monotheism of Moses and David into what is known as henotheism.
Against this relapse Elijah protested with final success. Ahab was a wise and skillful soldier, without rashness, but also without decision. He defeated a Syrian coalition in two campaigns (1 Kings 20) and imposed on Ben-hadad the same conditions which the latter had imposed on Omri.
With the close of the reign of Asa in Judah, war ceased between the two Israelite kingdoms and the two kings for the first time became friends and fought side by side (1 Kings 22). In the reign of Ahab we note the beginning of decay in the state in regard to personal liberty and equal justice. The tragedy of Naboth’s vineyard would not have happened but for the influence of Tyrian ideas, any more than in the case of the famous windmill which stands by the palace of Sans Souci at Potsdam. A further improvement in the art of building took place in this reign. The palace of Ahab, which has recently been recovered by the excavations carded on by the Harvard University Expedition under Dr. G.A. Reisner, shows a marked advance in fineness of workmanship upon that of Omri. 3. Battle of Karkar: The object of Ben-hadad’s attack upon Ahab seems to have been to compel him to join a league founded to resist the encroachments of Assyria upon the countries bordering upon the Mediterranean. The confederates, who were led by Ben-hadad, and of whom Ahab was one, were defeated by Shalmaneser II in the battle of Karkar. The date is known from the inscriptions to have been the year 854-853. It is the first quite certain date in Hebrew history, and from it the earlier dates must be reckoned by working backward. Ahab seems to have seized the moment of Syria’s weakness to exact by force the fulfillment of their agreement on the part of Ben-hadad (1 Kings 22). 4. Losses of Territory: On the other hand, the king of Moab, Mesha, appears to have turned the same disaster to account by throwing off his allegiance to Israel, which dated from the time of David, but had apparently lapsed until it was enforced anew by Omri (MS, ll. 4 ff, but l. 8 makes Omri’s reign plus half Ahabs = 40 years). Ahab’s son and successor Jehoram (omitting Ahaziah, who is chiefly notable as a devotee of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron), with the aid of Jehoshaphat and his vassal, the king of Edom, attempted to recover his rights, but in vain (2 Kings 3). It may have been in consequence of the failure of this expedition that the Syrians again besieged Samaria and reduced it to great straits ( 2 Kings 6:24; 7), but the date is uncertain.
Jehoram replied with a counter-attack upon the East of the Jordan. 5. Reform of Religion: It was no doubt owing to his connection with the king of Judah that Jehoram so far modified the worship and ritual as to remove the worst innovations which had come to prevail in the Northern Kingdom ( <120301> Kings 3:1-3). But these half-measures did not satisfy the demands of the time, and in the revolution which followed both he and his dynasty were swept away. The dynasty had lasted, according to the Biblical account, less than half a century. 6. Revolution: The religious reformation, or rather revolution, which swept away almost entirely both royal houses, bears a good deal of resemblance to the Wahhabi rising in Arabia at the beginning of the 18th century. It took its origin from prophetism ( 1 Kings 19:16), and was supported by the Rechabite Jonadab. The object of the movement headed by Jehu was nominally to revenge the prophets of Yahweh put to death by order of Jezebel, but in reality it was much wider and aimed at nothing less than rooting out the Baal-worship altogether, and enforcing a return to the primitive faith and worship. Just as the Wahhabis went back to Mohammed’s doctrine, as contained in the Koran and the Tradition, and as the Rechabites preserved the simplicity of the early desert life, so Jehu went back to the state of things as they were at the foundation of the Northern Kingdom under Jeroboam I.
7. IVth Dynasty: Jehu’s reforms were carried out to the letter, and the whole dynasty of Omri, which was responsible for the innovations, was annihilated like its predecessors. The religious fervor, however, soon subsided, and Jehu’s reign ended in disaster. Hazael, whose armies had been exterminated by the forces of Assyria, turned his attention to the eastern territory of Israel. In the turbulent land of Gilead, the home of Elijah, disappointed in its hopes of Jehu, he quickly established his supremacy ( 2 Kings 10:32 ff). Jehu also appreciated the significance of the victories of Assyria, and was wise enough to send tribute to Shalmaneser II. This was in the year 842. Under his son and successor Jehoahaz the fortunes of Israel continued to decline, until Hazael imposed upon it the most humiliating conditions (Amos 1:3-5; 2 Kings 13:1 ff). 8. Renewed Prosperity: Toward the end of the reign of Jehoahaz, however, the tide began to turn, under the leadership of a military genius whose name has not been recorded ( 2 Kings 13:5); and the improvement continued, after the death of Hazael, under his son Jehoash (Joash), who even besieged and plundered Jerusalem ( 2 Kings 14:8 ff). But it was not until the long reign of Jeroboam II, son of Jehoash, that the frontiers of Israel, were, for the first time since the beginning of the kingdom, restored to their ideal limits. Even Damascus and Hamath were subdued ( 2 Kings 14:28). But the prosperity was superficial. Jeroboam II stood at the head of a military oligarchy, who crushed the great mass of the people under them. The tribune of the plebs at this time was Amos of Tekoa. His Cassandra-like utterances soon fulfilled themselves. The dynasty, which had been founded in blood and had lasted some 90 years, on the accesssion of Jeroboam’s son Zachariah gave place to 12 years of anarchy. 9. Anarchy: Zachariah was almost immediately assassinated by Shallum, who within a month was in turn assassinated by Menahem, a soldier of the tribe of Gad, stationed in Tirzah, to avenge the death of his master. The low social condition of Israel at this time is depicted in the pages of Hos. The atrocities perpetrated by the soldiers of Menahem are mentioned by Josephus (Ant., IX, xi, 1).
III. DECLINE AND FALL. 1. Loss of Independence: Meantime Pul or Pulu had founded the second Assyrian empire under the name of Tiglath-pileser III. Before conquering Babylonia, he broke the Independ power of the Hittites in the West, and made himself master of the routes leading to the Phoenician seaports. As the eclipse of the Assyrian power had allowed the expansion of Israel under Jeroboam II, so its revival now crushed the independence of the nation forever. Menahem bought stability for his throne by the payment of an immense bribe of 1,000 talents of silver, or $2,000,000, reckoning the silver talent at $2,000. The money was raised by means of an assessment of 50 talents each upon all the men of known wealth. The payment of this tribute is mentioned on the Assyrian monuments, the date being 738. 2. Decline: Menahem reigned 10 years. His son Pekahiah was, soon after his accession, assassinated by one of his own captains, Pekah, son of Remaliah, who established himself, with the help of some Gileadites, as king. He formed an alliance with Rezin of Damascus against Israel, defeating Ahaz in two pitched battles, taking numerous captives, and even reaching the walls of Jerusalem. The result was disastrous to both allies.
Ahaz called in the aid of the Assyrians. Tiglath-pileser put an end to the kingdom of Damascus, and deported the inhabitants of Northern and Eastern Palestine. The kingdom of Israel was reduced to the dimensions of the later province of Samaria. Pekah himself was assassinated by Hoshea, who became king under the tutelage of the Assyrian overlord. The depopulated provinces were filled with colonists from the conquered countries of the East. The year is 734 BC. 3. Extinction: Hoshea was never an independent king, but the mere vassal of Assyria. He was foolish enough to withhold the annual tribute, and to turn to Egypt for succor. Meanwhile, Tiglath-pileser III had been succeeded by Shalmaneser IV. This king laid siege to Samaria, but died during the siege. The city was taken by his successor Sargon, who had seized the throne, toward the end of the year 722. 4. Summary: The Northern Kingdom had lasted 240 years, which fall into three periods of about 80 years each, the middle period being the period of the Syrian wars. As it was fully formed when it broke off from the Southern Kingdom, its history shows no development or evolution, but is made up of undulations of prosperity and of decline. It was at its best immediately after its foundation, and again under Jeroboam II. It was strong under Baasha, Omri and Ahab, but generally weak under the other kings. Every change of dynasty meant a period of anarchy, when the country was at the mercy of every invader. The fortunes of Israel depended entirely on those of Assyria.
When Assyria was weak, Israel was strong. Given the advance of Assyria, the destruction of Israel was certain. This was necessary and was clearly foreseen by Hosea (9:3, etc.). The wonder is that the little state, surrounded by such powerful neighbors, lasted as long as it did. See, further, ISRAEL, HISTORY OF, V.
LITERATURE.
The most important works are Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel (English Translation by Martineau and Glover); Wellhausen, Geschichte Israels; Derenbourg, Essai sur l’histoire .... de la Palestine; and there are many more. Ewald is best known to English readers through the medium of Dean Stanley’s Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church. See further under CHRONOLOGY; ISRAEL , and articles on individual kings. Thomas Hunter Weir ISRAEL, RELIGION OF I. INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL CONSIDERATION OF THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL In former times it was the rule to draw out of the Old Testament its religious contents only for dogmatic purposes, without making any distinction between the different books. These writings were all regarded as the documents of the Divine revelation which had been given to this people alone and not to others. At the present time the first inquiry in the study of these books deals historically with the religious development of the Israelites. This religion was not of a strictly uniform nature, but is characterized by a development and a growth, and in the centuries which are covered by the Old Testament books it has passed through many changes. Then, too, in the different periods of this development there were various religious trends among the people and very different degrees in the extent of their religious knowledge. The common people were at times still entangled in crude heathen ideas, while the bearers of a higher Divine light ranked vastly above them. And even in those times, when these enlightened teachers secured full recognition, there occurred relapses into lower forms of religion on the part of the masses, especially because the influence of the nations surrounding Israel at all times made itself felt in the religious life and thoughts of the latter. And even when the correct teachings were accepted by the people, a malformation of the entire religion could readily occur through a petrifaction of the religious life. It is the business of the science of the history of religion to furnish a correct picture of this development, which in this article can be done only in the form of a sketch.
One of the recent results of the science of the history of religion is the knowledge that the religion of Israel itself, and not merely the corruptions of this religion, stood in a much closer connection with other religions than had in former times been supposed. The wealth of new data from the history of oriental nations lately secured has shown that it is not correct to regard the religion of Israel as an isolated phenomenon, but that considerable light is thrown upon it from analogous facts from surrounding regions. Of especial importance in this respect is the study of Assyrian and Bah antiquities, with their rich and illustrative monuments, and, by the side of these, also those of Egypt; and, further, although these are indeed much smaller in number, the inscriptions and monuments of a number of peoples situated much nearer to Israel and ethnologically more closely connected with them, such as the Moabites, Arameans, Arabians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, and others. For later times, Parsiism is an especially important factor.
These antiquities have shown that between the religion of Israel and the religions of these nations there existed such close connections that a relationship between them cannot be denied. It is indeed true that these similarities are mostly of a formal nature, but they nevertheless point to similar conceptions of the Divine Being and of the relation of man to this Being. We find such connecting links in the cult, in the traditions concerning the creation of the world, concerning the earliest history of man kind, etc.; further, in the conception of what is legally right and of the customs of life; in the ideas concerning death and the world beyond; concerning the souls of men and the supernatural spiritual world, and elsewhere. These analogies and related connections have appeared so pronounced to some savants, especially Assyriologists, that they are willing to find in the religion of the Israelites and Jews only a reflection of the Babylonian, or of what they call the “religion of the ancient Orient.” But over against this claim, a closer and deeper investigation shows that a higher world of thought and ideals at all times permeates the Israelite religion and gives to it a unique character and a Divine truth, which is lacking in all other religions and which made Israel’s religion capable of becoming the basis of that highest Divine revelation which through Christ came forth from it. We will here briefly sketch the progress of the development of this religion, and then formulate a summary of those characteristics which distinguish it from the other religions.
II. HISTORICAL OUTLINE. 1. Pre-Mosaic Religion of the Ancestors of Israel: (1) The Traditional View.
The sources for this period are meager. Yet what has been reported concerning the religion of the period of the Patriarchs is enough to give us a picture of their conception of the Deity. And this picture is more deserving of acceptance than is the representation of the matter by the traditional dogmatics of the church and also that of those modern scholars who are under the spell of the evolutionary idea, and who undertake to prove in the Biblical history of Israel the complete development from the lowest type of fetishism and animism to the heights of ethical monotheism.
The views of the old church teachers were to the effect that the doctrine concerning the one true God had been communicated by God to Adam in its purity and perfection, and by him had been handed through an unbroken chain of true confessors of the faith (Seth, Noah, etc.), down to Abraham.
But this view does not find confirmation in the Biblical record. On the contrary, in Joshua 24:2,15, it is even expressly stated of the ancestors of Abraham that they had worshipped strange gods in Chaldea. And the ancestors of the people, Abraham, Jacob, and others, do not appear on the stage of history with teachable creed, but themselves first learn to know gradually, in the school of life, the God whom they serve, after He has made Himself known to them in extraordinary manifestations. Abraham does not yet know that Yahweh does not demand any human sacrifices.
Jacob still has the narrow view, that the place where he has slept is the entrance portal to heaven ( Genesis 28:16,17). Omnipresence and omniscience are not yet attributes which they associate with their idea of the Divinity. They still stand on a simple-minded and primitive stage, as far as their knowledge of the living God is concerned. (2) The Modern View.
Over against this, modern scholars describe pre-Mosaic Israel as yet entirely entangled in Semitic heathen ideas, and even regard the religion of the people in general, in the post-Mosaic period down to the 8th century BC, as little better than this, since in their opinion the Yahweh-religion had not thoroughly permeated the ranks of the common people, and had practically remained the possession of the men, while the women had continued to cultivate the ancient customs and views. W. R. Smith and Wellhausen have pointed to customs and ideas of the pre-Islamic Arabs, and S.I. Curtiss to such in the modern life of oriental tribes, which are claimed to have been the property of the most ancient Semitic heathen tribes, and these scholars use these as the key for the ancient Israelite rites and customs. But even if much light is thrown from these sources on the forms of life and cult as depicted by the Scriptures, much caution must be exercised in the use made of this material. In the first place, neither those Arabs of the 6th century AD, nor their successors of today, can be regarded as “primitive Semites.” In the second place, it is a question, even if in the earliest period of Israel such customs are actually found, what they really signified for the tribe of Abraham. We are here not speaking of a prehistoric religion, but of the religion of that tribe that came originally from Ur of the Chaldees, and migrated first by way of Haran to Canaan, and then to Egypt. In this tribe such primitive customs, perhaps, had long been spiritualized. For these Hebrews cannot be regarded as being as uncivilized as are the New Zealanders, or the Indians of North America, or those Bedouins who have never left the desert; for they had lived in Babylonia for a long period, even if, while there, they had withdrawn themselves as much as possible from the more cultured life of the cities.
The patriarchs were in touch with the civilization of the Babylonians. We do not, indeed, want to lay special stress on the fact that they lived in Ur and in Haran, two cities of the moon-god, the worship of which divinity shows monotheistic tendencies. But the history of the family of Abraham, e.g. his relation to Sarah and Hagar, shows indisputable influence of Babylonian legal ideas. Probably, too, the traditions concerning the beginnings of history, such as the Creation, the Deluge, and the like, were brought from Babylon to Canaan by the tribe of Abraham. (3) A Higher Conception of the Deity; ‘ilu, ‘el.
But this tribe had come to Babylonia from Northern Arabia. It is a very important fact that the oldest Arabian inscriptions, namely the Minaean and the Sabean, lead us to conclude that these tribes entertained a relatively high conception of the Deity, as has been shown by Professor Fritz Hommel. The oldest Arabian proper names are not found combined with names of all kinds of gods, but with the simple ‘ilu, ‘el, or God, or with ‘ili, “my God.” Then, too, God is often circumscribed by the nouns expressing relationship, such as ‘abhi , “my father,” or ‘achi , “my brother,” or ‘ammi , “my uncle,” and others, which express an intimate relationship between man and his God. Corresponding to these are also the old Semitic proper names in Canaan, as also the name Abraham, i.e. ‘Abhiram, “my father is exalted,” or Ishmael, and many others. We accordingly must believe that the ancestors of Abraham immigrated into Babylon with a comparatively highly developed religion and with a uniform conception of God. Here their faith may have been unfavorably influenced, and it is not impossible that the religious disagreement between the patriarch and his neighbors may have been a reason for his migration. Abraham himself is regarded by the Canaanites as a “friend of God,” who stands in an intimate relationship with his God, and he is accordingly to be regarded, not merely as a secular, but also as a religious tribal head, an Imam, a prophetical personality. (4) Totemism; Animism, etc.
Still less is it correct to ascribe to this tribe the lowest religious stage possible, namely that of fetishism or of totemism (worship of demons or worship of animals) and the like. Some think they find evidences of the worship of animals in Israel. The fact that some Israelites were regarded as descendants of Leah (“wild cow”(?)), others of Rachel (“mother sheep”), is claimed to refer to the fact that these animals were totems of the tribe, i.e. were worshipped as ancestors. But for this claim there is no scintilla of proof. These names of women, especially in the case of a nomadic tribe, can be explained in a much more simple way. The calves that appear in later times as images of Yahweh are just as little a proof for the claim that calves were worshipped by the ancestors of Israel as divinities. We read nothing of such an image before the sojourn in Egypt, and after that time this image was always regarded symbolically. The fact, again, that from the days of Moses, and without a doubt earlier than this, certain animals were not allowed to be eaten, does not justify the conclusion which Professor B.
Stade and others have drawn from it, namely, that these animals were in olden times regarded as divine (tabu), and for that reason were not permitted to be eaten, and only afterward were avoided as “unclean.” The list of unclean animals in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 speaks for an altogether different reason for regarding them as unclean. It is not at all thinkable that these many, and as a rule unclean and low class of animals, were at one time accorded divine honor, while the higher and cleaner class had been excluded from this distinction. We have accordingly no reason for finding animal worship here. On the other hand, it is self-evident, in the case of such an old nomadic tribe, that man stood in a more familiar relationship to his animals, and for this reason the slaughter of these was a more significant matter than was afterward the case. This was done only on extraordinary occasions, and it readily was accorded a religious consecration. See also TOTEMISM.
The idea is also emphatically to be rejected, that in the pre-Mosaic period mere animism prevailed in Israel — the worship of spirits and of demons. It has been tried in vain to show that in the most primitive period of Israel’s religion the worship of ancestors occupied a prominent place. As Professor Emil Kautzsch has emphasized, the arguments which have been drawn from the mourning customs of the Israelites in favor of this claim (as this is done by F. Schwally, Das Leben nach dem Tode, nach den Vorstellungen des alten Israel und des Judentums, Giessen, 1892) are altogether inadequate, as is also the appeal to the marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, as though the purpose of the institution was to secure for the deceased who had died without issue somebody who would attend to his worship. Because of the strongly developed mundane character of the religious life in Israel, it is natural that it was regarded as a calamity if there was no issue who kept alive the memory of the departed in the tribe. But even if the argument from the mourning customs of Israel were more convincing than is actually the case, and that gifts, such as food, oil, and the like, were placed in the tomb of the departed, as was often done by the Canaanites, yet this would be in the ancient Israelite religion a matter of subordinate importance, which could readily be explained on the ground of natural feelings. It could never be made to appear plausible that all religions had grown out of such a cult. If the teraphim are to be regarded as having been originally images of ancestors, which is quite plausible, then they would indeed represent a continuous ancestral cult, as the people evidently kept these images in their houses in order to attract to themselves blessings, to avert misfortunes and to secure oracles. But these dolls, modeled after the form of human beings, already in the period of the Patriarchs were regarded as a foreign element and in contradiction to the more earnest religious sentiments (compare Genesis 31:19; 35:2,4).
That Israel, like all ancient peoples, did at one time pass through an “animistic” stage of religious development could best be proved, if at all, from their conception of the soul. Among the purifications those are especially necessary which are demanded by the presence of a dead body in the same room with the living, as the living are defiled by the soul of the deceased in leaving the body ( Numbers 19:14). Even the uncovered vessels are defiled by his soul-substance ( Numbers 19:15). This, however, is a biological conception, which has nothing to do with the conception of the Deity.
Or are those perhaps right, who think that the primitive Israelites had accepted animism in this sense, that they did not as yet worship any actual divinities, but only a multitude of spirits or demons, be these ghosts of departed human beings or the spirits of Nature, local numina? In favor of this last-mentioned view, appeal is made to this fact, that in the ancient Semitic world local divinities with very circumscribed spheres of power are very often to be met with, especially at springs, trees, oases, at which a demon or divinity is regarded as having his abode, who is described as the ba`al or master in this place; compare such local names as Baal-tamar, Baal-hermon, and others. Such local spirits would then be the ‘elohim, out of which would grow more mighty divinities of whole cities and countries.
To these it would be necessary yet to add those spirits which were worshipped by individual tribes, partly spirits of ancestors, who also could have grown into higher divinities, while the rest of the mass of deities, good and bad, had to content themselves with a lower rank.
As against this, we must above all consider the fact that in ancient Israel the demons played a very subordinate role. The contrast in this regard with Babylonia is phenomenal. It is probably the case that at all periods in Israel there existed a belief in unclean spirits, who perhaps lived in the desert (compare the [ µyriy[ic] , se`irim ]), or in the demoniacs, and could otherwise, too, do much harm. But they are not described as having much influence on man’s life. How few indications of such a view can be found and how little most of these indications prove we can see in the work of H.
Duhm, Die bosch Geister im Altes Testament, Tubingen, 1906. After the Babylonian exile, and still more after the longer sojourn of the Israelites in Babylon, their imagination was to a much greater degree than before saturated by the faith in spirits. Then the closer study of such Semitic be`alim teaches us that they were not originally conceived in such a narrow sense. They are very often of a solar nature, celestial powers who have their abode at a particular place, and there produce fertility, but in this special function represent a general power of Nature. The same is the case with the tribal divinities. These are by no means merely the personifications of the small power of a particular tribe, but claim to be absolute beings, which shows that they are regarded as higher divinities which the tribe has appropriated and adapted to its own political ideas. We accordingly have no right to think that such a divinity was to be regarded as really confined to a particular hill, or even to a certain stone or tree where it was worshipped. The rock or stone or tree divinities of the ancient Arabs are celestial powers, who have only taken their abode at these places, even if popular superstition did actually identify them with such stones or trees.
It is therefore a misconception of the actual state of affairs when the conclusion is drawn that stone-worship is meant when Jacob erects a stone monument, the matstsebhah at Bethel, and anoints it with oil, and when this is understood to be a low type of fetishism. Stones are to the present day, for the wandering tribes, the signs by which important localities, especially sacred places, are designated. The symbolical significance of such stones may be quite different, as also the relation which a divinity is thought to sustain to such a stone monument. For this reason, too, the judgment of the Bible concerning such objects is quite different. Only then, when they are symbols of idolatry, as the chammanim , i.e representations of the sun-god, ba`al chamman , are they everywhere rejected in the Old Testament. In the same way a mighty tree, especially if it is found near a spring of water, is in the Orient, by its very nature, a proof of the lifeproducing God. Such a tree naturally suggests that it is a place where divine life can be felt. Trees that have been made sacred by manifestations of the divinities or have been consecrated by the memory of a great personality, especially the oak, the terebinth, the palm, were regarded as favorite places beneath which the divinity was sought. Only in that case, as was indeed common in Canaan, when the unhallowed powers of Nature were here adored, was this custom reprehensible in the eyes of the prophets. The ‘asherim , too, are of a decidedly heathen character, as these trunks of trees were symbols of the goddess Ashera. Further, it was a favorite custom to worship the divinities on the high places, for the reason that they were regarded as in or attached to the heavens. Only because of the heathen worship which was practiced on these bamoth were they, in later times, so hateful to the prophets. (5) Conception of God.
In answer to the question, what ideas the patriarchs, the pre-Mosaic leaders of the people of Israel, entertained concerning God, attention must first of all be drawn to the fact that God spoke to some of these personally, be this in one form of manifestation or in another. These men heard the word of God with their own ears, and that, too, in the most important moments of their lives. In the case of Abraham, these revelations are fundamental for him and for his people. The prophetic factor, which goes through the entire history of Israel and constitutes the life-principle that fills its religion and causes its further development, is at the very first beginnings the source whence the knowledge of God is taken. This presupposes a personal God; and, as a matter of fact, a fixed personality is demanded by the character of such a God. His “I” impresses itself upon man with absolute power and demands his service entirely. This “I” constantly remains the same, and everywhere evinces the same power, be this in Haran or in Canaan or in Egypt, and whether it manifests itself to Abraham or to Isaac or to Jacob. This oneness is not formulated as a didactic proposition, but as a living reality: only this God existed for His adherents. These appeal to Him at all times with equal success. The manifestations of this God may be of a different kind at different times. He is even entertained, on one occasion, as a personal guest by His friend Abraham, together with two companions ( Genesis 18:1 ff). On another occasion ( Genesis 15:17) Abraham beholds Him in symbolical form as a burning and fiery furnace (probably to be regarded as similar to the movable altar discovered by Sellin in Taanach). But these are to be regarded as special favors shown by God. In general it was the rule that God could not be seen without the beholder suffering death. Then, too, the conviction is very old, that what man sees in the case of such theophanies cannot have been God Himself, but that He had manifested Himself through a subordinate agent, an angel (this is particularly the case in the document E in Genesis). This angel, however, has no significance in himself, but is only the creature-veil, out of which God Himself speaks in the first person. In the most elementary manner this formal limitation of God appears in Genesis 11:5, where He goes to the trouble of descending from heaven in order to look at something on earth; and in 18:21, when He desires to go to Sodom personally, in order to convince Himself that what He has intended to send upon this city is also the right thing. It is indeed possible to find in the first instance some traits of irony, and possibly in the second case the epic details may have added something.
However, God is no longer spoken of in such a human way in the post- Mosaic times. This shows that the document J (Jahwist) at this place contains material that is very old. All the more is it to be noted what exalted conceptions of God prevail already in these narratives. He dwells in heaven (11:5; 19:24), something that has without reason been claimed not to have been the idea entertained in the older period. He is the God of the world, who exercises supremacy over all the nations. He rules with justice, checks pride, avenges injustice, and that, too, not only in a summary manner on whole countries, but also in such a way that He takes into consideration every individual and saves the one just man out of the midst of the mass of sinners (18:25; 19). In short, He is already the true God, although yet incompletely and primitively grasped in His attributes.
This God, ruling with omnipotent power in Nature and history, has entered into a special relationship with the tribe of Abraham. He has become the Covenant-God of the patriarch, according to the testimony of the old document J in Genesis 15. We accordingly find here already the consciousness that that God who rules over the world has entered into a special relationship with one small nation or tribe. This fact appears also in this, that Abram (Genesis 14) acknowledges the highest God of the priestking Melchizedek ( Genesis 14:20 ff) as his God, as the founder of heaven and of earth, and identifies Him with his own Covenant-God Yahweh. (6) Cult.
As far as the cult is concerned, it can be stated that at this period it was still of simple, but solemn and dignified character. The people preferred to worship their God at such places where He had manifested Himself, usually on high place, on which an altar had been erected. There were no images of the Divinity extant. As the word [ jBez]mi , mizbeach ], “altar,” shows, the sacrifices were usually bloody. Human sacrifice had already in the days of Abraham been overcome by the substitution of an animal, although in olden times it may have been practiced, perhaps, as the sacrifice of the firstborn; and in later times, too, through the influence of the example of heathen nations, it may have found its way into Israel now and then. Both larger and smaller animals were sacrificed, as also fowls. The idea that prevailed in this connection was that God, too, enjoyed the food which served man as his sustenance, although God, in a finer way, experienced as a pleasure only the scent of the sacrifices, as this ascended in the flame and the smoke ( Genesis 8:21). But the main thing was the blood as the substratum of the soul. The fruits of the field, especially the first-fruits, were also offered. Of liquid offerings, it is probable that in primitive times water was often brought, as this was often a costly possession; and in Canaan, oil, which the inhabitants of this country employed extensively in their sacrifices ( Judges 9:9, something that is confirmed also by recent excavations); also wine ( Judges 9:13). As the ancient burnt or whole sacrifices ( Genesis 8:20) give expression to reverence, thankfulness, the prayer for protection or the granting of certain favors, the people from the very beginning also instituted sacrificial feasts, which gave expression to the covenant with God, the communion with the Covenant-God. In this act the sacrifice was divided between God and those who sacrificed. The latter ate and drank joyously before God after the parts dedicated to Him had been sacrificed, and especially after the blood had been poured around the altar. The idea that this was the original form of the sacrifice and that giftsacrifices were introduced only at a later period when agriculture had been introduced is not confirmed by historical evidences. That man felt himself impelled, by bringing to his God gifts of the best things he possessed, to express his dependence and gratitude, is too natural not to have been from the beginning a favorite expression of religious feeling. In connection with the sacrifices the name of God was solemnly called upon. J even says that this was the name Yahweh ( Genesis 4:25), while E (Elohist) and P (Priestly Code) tell us that this name came into use only through Moses.
According to P ( Genesis 17:10 ff), circumcision was already introduced by Abraham in his tribe as the sign of the covenant. There are good reasons why the introduction of this custom is not like that of so many other ceremonies attributed to Moses. The custom was without doubt of an older origin. From whatever source it may have been derived in its earlier ethnological stage, for the Israelites circumcision is an act of purification and of consecration for connection with the congregation of Yahweh. A special priesthood, however, did not yet exist in this period, as the head of the family and of the tribe exercised the priestly functions and rights (compare Genesis 35:1 ff), although the peoples inhabiting Canaan at that time had priests ( Genesis 14:18). 2. The Mosaic Covenant with Yahweh: (1) The Covenant-Idea.
Israel claims that its existence as a nation and its special relation to Yahweh begins with its exodus from Egypt and with the conclusion of the covenant at Mt. Sinai (compare Amos 3:2; 9:7). As the preparation for this relation goes back to one individual, namely, Abraham, thus it is Moses through whom God delivered His people from bondage and received them into His covenant (see concerning Moses as a prophet and mediator of the covenant, ISRAEL, HISTORY OF ). It is a matter of the highest significance for the religion of Israel that the relation of this people to Yahweh was not one which existed by the nature of things, as was the case with the other oriental tribal and national religions, but that it was the outgrowth of a historical event, in which their God had united Himself with them. The conception of a covenant, upon which Yahweh entered as a matter of free choice and will, and to which the people voluntarily gave their assent, is not an idea of later date in the religious history of Israel, which grew out of the prophetic thoughts of the 8th and 7th centuries BC, as has been claimed, but is found, as has been made prominent by Professor French Giesebrecht (Die Geschichtlichkeit des Sinaibundes, 1900), already in the oldest accounts of the conclusion of the covenant (E, J), and must be ascribed to the Mosaic age. This includes the fact, too, that this covenant, which unites Yahweh with Israel, could not be of an indissoluble character, but that the covenant was based on certain conditions. The superficial opinion of the people might often cause them to forget this. But the prophets could, in later times, base their proclamations on this fact.
Further, the thought is made very prominent that this covenant imposed ethical duties. While the divinities of other nations, Egyptian Babylonian, Phoenician, demanded primarily that their devotees should erect temples in their honor and should bring them an abundance of sacrifices, in Israel the exalted and ethical commandment is found in the forefront. The covenant relation to the God of Israel can legitimately be found only where the relation to one’s fellow-man is normal and God-pleasing (Decalogue). (2) The Covenant-God, Yahweh.
The special revelation which Moses received is characterized by the word Yahweh (Yahweh) as a name for God. This name, according to the wellauthenticated report of Exodus 6:3 (P), which is supported also by E, had not been “known” to the fathers. This does not necessarily mean that nothing had been known of this name. Babylonian prayers often speak of an “unknown god,” and in doing this refer to a god with whom those who prayed had not stood in personal relation. The God of the fathers appeared to Moses, but under a name which was not familiar to the fathers nor was recognized by them. In agreement with this is the fact that only from the time of Moses proper names compounded with some abbreviation of Yahweh, such as Yah, Yahu, Yeho, are found, but soon after this they became very common. Accordingly, it would be possible that such names were in scattered cases found also before the days of Moses among the tribes of Israel, and it is not impossible that this name was familiar to other nations. The Midianites especially, who lived originally at Mt. Sinai, have been mentioned in this connection, and also the Kenites (Stade, Budde), some scholars appealing for this claim to the influence which, according to Exodus 18, Jethro had on the institutions of Moses. However, the matters mentioned here refer only to legal procedure (compare 18:14 ff). We nowhere hear that Moses took over the Yahweh-worship from this tribe.
On the contrary, Jethro begins only at this time ( Exodus 18:11) to worship Yahweh, the God of Moses, and the common sacrificial meal, according to 18:12, did not take place in the presence of Yahweh, but, accommodating it to the guest, in the presence of Elohim. Then we nowhere hear that the Kenites, who lived together with the Israelites, ever had any special prominence in the service of Yahweh, as was the case, e.g., with the Median Magi, who had charge of the priesthood among the Persians, or with the Etruscans among the Romans, who examined the entrails. Yet the Kenites would necessarily have enjoyed special authority in the Yahweh-cultus, if their tribal God had become the national God of Israel. The only thing that can be cited in favor of an Arabian origin of the name of Yahweh is the Arabic word-form, [ hw;h; , hawah ], for [ hy;h; , hayah ]. On the other hand, a number of facts indicate that Ja or Jau as a name for God was common in Syria, Philistia and Babylonia; compare Joram, son of the king of Hamath ( 2 Samuel 8:10), and Jaubidi, the king of this city, who was removed by Sargon. In these cases, however, Israelite influences may have been felt. Friedrich Delitzsch claims to have discovered the names Jahve-ilu and Jahum-ilu on inscriptions as early as the times of Hammurabi. But his readings are sharply attacked. However this may be, the name God as proclaimed by Moses was not only something new for Israel, but was also announced by him (possibly also with a new pronunciation, Yahweh instead of Yahu) with a new signification. At any rate, the explanation in Exodus 3:14 (E), “I AM THAT I AM,” for doubting which we have no valid reasons, indicates a depth in the conception of God which far surpasses the current conceptions of the Syrian and the Babylonian pantheon. It would, perhaps, be easier to find analogous thoughts in Egyptian speculations. But this absolute God of Moses is not the idea of speculative priests, but is a popular God who claims to control all public as well as private life. (3) Monotheism of Moses.
Attempts have been made to deny the monotheistic character of this God, and some have thought that the term “monolatry” would suffice to express this stage in man’s knowledge of God, since the existence of other gods was not denied, but rather was presupposed (compare passages like Exodus 15:11), and it was only forbidden to worship any god in addition to Yahweh ( Exodus 20:3). However, this distinction is fundamental, and separates, in kind, the religion of Moses from that of the surrounding nations. For among these latter, the worship of more than one divine being at the same time was the rule. The gods of the Phoeniclans, the Arameans, and the Babylonians are, like those of the Egyptians, beings that spontaneously increase in number. They are divided into male and female groups of two, while in Hebrew there is not even a word extant for goddess, and the idea of a female companion-being to Yahweh is an impossibility. Then, too, it is characteristic of the ethnic god that he is multiplied into many be`alim , and does not feel it as a limitation or restriction when kindred divinities are associated with him. However, the Yahweh of Moses does not suffer another being at His side, for the very reason that He claims to be the absolute God. Passages like Exodus 15:11, too, purpose chiefly only to express His unique character; but if He is without any equals among the gods, then He is the only one who can claim to be God; and it is in the end only the logical dogmatic formulation of the faces in the case when we are told in Deuteronomy, “Yahweh he is God; there is none else besides him” (4:35,39; 6:4; compare Psalm 18:32). This does not exclude the fact that also in later times, when monotheism had been intelligently accepted, mention is still made of the gods of the heathen as of real powers (compare, e.g. Jeremiah 49:1).
This was rather the empirical method of expression, which found its objective basis in the fact that the heathen world was still in possession of some real spiritual power. Most of all, the popular faith or the superstition of the people could often regard the gods of the other nations as ruling in the same way as Yahweh did in Israel (compare, e.g. 2 Chronicles 28:23). But the idea that the faithful worshippers of Yahweh after the days of Moses ever recognized as equal and of the same rank with their own God the gods of the heathen must be most emphatically denied, as also the claim that these Israelites assigned to Yahweh only restricted powers over a small territory. This surely would have been in flat contradiction to the well-known history of the Mosaic period, in which Yahweh had demonstrated His superiority over the famous gods of Egypt in so glorious a manner. Compare on this point James Robertson, Early Religion, 4th edition, 297 ff (against Stade). (4) Impossibility of Representing Yahweh by an Image.
The 2nd principle which the Mosaic Decalogue establishes is that Yahweh cannot be represented by any image. In this doctrine, too, there is a conscious contrast to the nations round about Israel (in addition to Exodus 20:4, compare Deuteronomy 5:8; also Exodus 24:17).
That in the last-mentioned passage only molten images are forbidden, while those hewn of stone or made of wood might be permitted, is an arbitrary claim, which is already refuted by the fact that the Mosaic sanctuary did not contain any image of Yahweh. The Ark of the Covenant was indeed a visible symbol of the presence of God, but it is a kind of throne of Him who sits enthroned invisibly above the cherubim, as has been shown above, and accordingly does not admit of any representation of God by means of an image. This continued to be the case in connection with the central sanctuary, with the exception of such aberrations as are already found in Exodus 32 and which are regarded as a violation of the Covenant, also at the time when the sanctuary was stationed at Shiloh. The fact that at certain local cults Yahweh-images were worshipped is to be attributed to the influence of heathen surroundings (compare on this point J. Robertson, loc. cit., 215 ff). (5) Ethical Character of the God of Moses.
A further attribute of the God of Moses, which exalts Him far above the ethnic divinities of the surrounding peoples, is His ethical character. This appears in the fact that His principles inculcate fundamental ethical duties and His agents are chiefly occupied with the administration of legal justice.
Moses himself became the lawgiver of Israel. The spirit of this legislation is deeply ethical. Only we must not forget that Moses cannot have originated these ordinances and laws and created them as something absolutely new, but that he was compelled to build on the basis of the accepted legal customs of the people. But he purified these legal usages, which he found in use among the people, through the spirit of his knowledge of God, protected as much as possible the poor, the weak, the enslaved, and elevated the female sex, as is shown by a comparison with related Babylonian laws (Code of Hammurabi). Then, too, we must not forget that the people were comparatively uneducated, and especially that a number of crude classes had joined themselves to the people at that time, who had to be stringently handled if their corrupt customs were not to infect the whole nation. The humane and philanthropic spirit of the Mosaic legislation appears particularly pronounced in Deuteronomy, which, however, represents a later reproduction of the Mosaic system, but is entirely the outcome of Mosaic principles. Most embarrassing for our Christian feeling is the hardness of the Mosaic ordinances in reference to the heathen Canaanites, who were mercilessly to be rooted out ( Deuteronomy 7:2; 20:16 f). Here there prevails a conception of God, which is found also among the Moabites, whose King Mesha, on his famous monument, boasts that he had slain all the inhabitants of the city of Kiriath-jearim as “a spectacle to Chemosh, the god of Moab.” According to Deuteronomy 7:2 ff, the explanation of this hardness is to be found in the fact that such a treatment was regarded as a Divine judgment upon the worshippers of idols, and served at the same time as a preventive against the infection of idolatry. (6) The Theocracy.
The vital principle of the organization which Moses gave to his people, Josephus (Apion, II, 16) has aptly called a theocracy, because the lawgiver has subordinated all relations of life to the government of his God. It is entirely incorrect when Wellhausen denies that there is a difference between theocracy and hierarchy. Not the priesthood, but Yahweh alone, is to rule all things in Israel, and Yahweh had many other organs or agents besides the priests, especially the prophets, who not rarely, as the representatives of the sovereign God, sharply opposed themselves to the priests. The theocratical principle, however, finds its expression in this, that public and private life, civil and criminal law, military and political matters were all controlled by religious principles. (7) The Mosaic Cult.
As a matter of course, Moses also arranged the cult. He created a holy shrine, the tabernacle, which contained the Ark of the Covenant, and in its general arrangements became the model of the sanctuary or temple built in later times. He appointed sacred seasons, in doing which he connected these with previously customary festival days, but he gave sharper directions concerning the Sabbath and gave to the old festival of spring a new historical significance as the Passover. Moses further appointed for this sanctuary a priestly family, and at the same time ordained that the tribe to which this family belonged should assume the guardianship of the sanctuary. The lines separating the rights of the priests and of the Levites have often been changed since his time, but the fundamental distinctions in this respect go back to Moses. In the same way Moses has also, as a matter of course, put the sacred rites, the celebrations of the sacrifices, the religious institutions and ceremonies, into forms suitable to that God whom he proclaimed. This does not mean that all the priestly laws, as they are now found recorded in the Pentateuch, were word for word dictated by him. The priests were empowered to pronounce Torah, i.e. Divine instruction, on this subject, and did this in accordance with the directions received through Moses. Most of these instructions were at first handed down orally, until they were put into written form in a large collection. But in the priestly ordinances, too, there is no lack of traces to show that these date from the period of Moses and must at an early time have been put into written form. 3. The Religion of Israel before the 8th Century BC: (1) Decay of Religion in Canaan.
Upon the intense religious feeling produced by the exodus from Egypt and the events at Mt. Sinai, there followed a relapse, in connection with which it appears that in this Mosaic generation the cruder tendencies were still too pronounced to endure the great trial of faith demanded by the conquest of the land of Canaan. In the same way, the heroic struggles of Joshua, carried on under the directions of Yahweh and resulting in the conquest of the country, were followed by a reaction. The zeal for battle weakened; the work of conquest was left unfinished; the people arranged to make themselves at home in the land before it had really been won; peace was concluded with the inhabitants. This decay of theocratic zeal and the occupation of the land by the side of and among the Canaanites had a direful influence on the Yahweh-religion as it had been taught the people by Moses. The people adopted the sanctuaries of the country as their own, instead of rooting them out entirely. They took part in the festivals of their neighbors and adopted their customs of worship, including those that were baneful. The local Baals, in whose honor harvest and autumn festivals were celebrated as thanksgiving for their having given the products of the earth, were in many places worshipped by the Israelites. The possibility of interpreting the name Baal in both a good and bad sense favored the excuse that in doing this the people were honoring Yahweh, whom in olden times they also unhesitatingly called their Baal, as their Lord and the master of the land and of the people. By the side of the Yahweh-altars they placed the Asherah, the sacred tree, really as a symbol of the goddess of this name; and the stone pillars (chammanim ), which the original inhabitants had erected near their sanctuaries, were also held in honor, while the heathen ideas associated with them thereby found their way into the religious consciousness of the people. Sorcery, necromancy, and similar superstitions crept in. And since, even as it was, a good deal of superstition had continued to survive among the people, there came into existence, in the period of the Judges, a type of popular religion that was tinged by a pronounced heathenism and had but little in common with theocratical principles of Moses, although the people had no intention of discarding the God of Moses. Characteristic of this religious syncretism during the time of the Judges was the rise of the worship of images dedicated to Yahweh in Dan (Judges 17 and 18) and probably also at Ophrah ( Judges 8:27), as also human sacrifices (Judges 11). (2) The Theocratic Kingdom.
But during this period pronounced reactions to the true worship of Yahweh were not lacking. The heroes who appeared on the arena as liberators from the yoke of the oppressors recalled the people to Yahweh, as was done likewise by the prophets and prophetesses. Samuel, the greatest among this class, was at the same time a prophet and reformer. He again brought the people together and tried to free them from the contamination of heathenism, in accordance with the Mosaic ordinances, and at the same time prepared for a new future by the establishment of colonies of prophets and by the establishment of the kingdom. This latter innovation seemed to be at variance with the principles of a strict theocracy. It is the merit of Samuel that he created theocratic kingdom, by which the anointed of Yahweh himself was to become an important agent of the supreme rule of Yahweh. It is indeed true that the first king, Saul, did not realize this ideal, but his successor, David, appreciated it all the more. And even if David was far from realizing the ideal of a theocratic king, he nevertheless continued to be the model which prophecy tried to attain, namely, a king who was personally and most intimately connected with Yahweh, and who, as the servant of Yahweh, was to realize entirely in his own person the mission of the people to become the servants of Yahweh, and was thus to furnish the guaranty for the harmony between Israel and their God, and bring rich and unalloyed blessings upon the land. (3) Religious Ideals of the Psalms from the Time of David.
In this way the covenant-relation became a personal one through “the anointed one of Yahweh.” In general, religion in Israel became more personal in character in the days of the earlier kings. Before this time the collective relation to God prevailed. Only as a member of the tribe or of the nation was the individual connected with Yahweh, which fact does not exclude the idea that this God, for the very reason that He rules according to ethical principles, also regards the individual and grants him His special protection and requites to him good or evil according to his deeds. The Hebrew hymns or “psalms,” which David originated, give evidence of a more intimate association of the individual with his God.
The very oldest of these psalms, a number of which point to David as their author, are not liturgical congregational hymns, but were originally individual prayer-songs, which emanated from personal experiences, but were, in later times, employed for congregational use. The prejudice, that only in later times such expressions of personal piety could be expected, is refuted by analogous cases among other nations, especially by the much more ancient penitential and petitionary prayers of the Babylonians, in which, as a rule, the wants of the individual and not those of the nation constitute the contents. These Babylonian penitential prayers show that among this people, too, the feeling of guilt as the cause of misfortune was very vivid, and that they regarded repentance and confession as necessary in order to secure the forgiveness of the gods. However, the more exalted character of the Israelite conception of God appears in a most pronounced way in this comparison, since the Babylonian feels his way in an uncertain manner in order to discover what god or goddess he may have offended, and not rarely tries to draw out the sympathy of the one divinity over against the wrath of another. But much more can this difference be seen in this, that the heathen singer is concerned only to get rid of the evil or the misfortune that oppresses him. The communion with his god whose favor he seeks to regain is in itself of no value for him. In David’s case the matter is altogether different, as he knows that he is bound to Yahweh by a covenant of love ( Psalm 18:2), and his heart delights in this communion, more than it does in all earthly possessions ( Psalm 4:8); and this is even more so in the case of the author of Psalm 73:25-26.
Such words would, for good reasons, be unthinkable in the case of a Babylonian psalmist.
In the times of those earliest kings of Israel, which, externally, constituted the most flourishing period in their history, unless tradition is entirely at fault, the spiritual world of thought also was enriched by the Wisdom literature of the Proverbs, the earliest examples of which date back to Solomon. (4) Wisdom Literature from the Time of Solomon.
This chokhmah , or Wisdom literature, is marked by the peculiarity that it ignores the special providential guidance of Israel and their extraordinary relation to their God, and confines itself more to the general revelation of God in Nature and in the history of mankind, but in doing this regards the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom, and at all times has the practical purpose of exhorting to a moral and God-pleasing life. The idea that this cosmopolitan tendency is to be attributed to Greek influences, and accordingly betrays a later period as the time of its origin, is to be rejected, as far as Proverbs and Job are concerned. The many passages in Proverb that speak of conduct over against the king show a pre-exilic origin. The universalistic character of this literature must be explained on other grounds. It resulted from this, that this proverb-wisdom is not the sole, exclusive property of Israel and was not first cultivated among them, but was derived from abroad. The Edomites were especially conspicuous in this respect, as the Book of Job shows, in which the Israelite author introduces as speakers masters of this art from this tribe and others adjoining it. We can also compare the superscriptions in Proverbs 30:1; 31:1, in which groups of proverbs from Arabian principalities are introduced. Accordingly, this wisdom was regarded as a common possession of Israel and of their neighbors. This is probably the reason why the authors of this class of literature refrain from national reference and reminiscences. That the liberal-minded Solomon was the one to introduce this proverb-wisdom, or at any rate cultivated it with special favor, is in itself probable, and is confirmed by the fact that the Queen of Sheba (South Arabia) came to Jerusalem in order to listen to his wisdom. But this also presupposes that in her country a similar class of wisdom was cultivated.
This was also the case in Egypt in very early antiquity, and in Egyptian literature we have collections of proverbs that remind us of the proverbs of Solomon (compare Transactions of the Third International Congress of the History of Religions, Oxford, 1908, I, 284 ff; see WISDOM ). (5) The Sanctuary on Mt. Zion.
The kingdom of David and of Solomon not only externally marks the highest development of the history of Israel, but intellectually, too, prepared the soil out of which henceforth the religious life of the nation drew its sustenance. It was especially under David a significant matter, that at this time the higher spiritual powers were in harmony with the political.
This found its expression in the Divine election of David and his seed, which was confirmed by prophetical testament (2 Samuel 7). Hand in hand with this went the selection of Mt. Zion as the dwelling-place of Yahweh.
David, from the beginning, was desirous of establishing here theocratical center of the people, as he had shown by transferring the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. In the same way Solomon, by the erection of the Temple, sought to strengthen and suitably equip this central seat. As a matter of course, the sacred shrines throughout the land did not thereby at once lose their significance. But the erection of the sanctuary in Jerusalem was not at all intended to establish a “royal chapel” for the king, as Wellhausen has termed this structure, but it claimed the inheritance of the tabernacle in Shiloh, and the prophets sanctioned this claim. (6) The Religion of the Kingdom of Ephraim.
The division of the kingdom after the death of Solomon which, as it was, had not been too large, proved politically disastrous. It also entailed a retrogression in religious matters. The centralizing tendencies of the preceding reigns were thwarted. Jeroboam erected other sacred shrines; especially did he make Bethel a “king’s sanctuary” ( Amos 7:13). At the same time he encouraged religious syncretism. It is true that the gold- covered images of heifers (by the prophets, in derision, called “calves”) were intended only to represent the Covenant-God Yahweh. However, this representation in the form of images, an idea which the king no doubt had brought back with him from his sojourn in Egypt, was a concession to the corrupt religious instincts in the nation, and gave to the Ephraimitic worship an inferior character in comparison with the service in the Temple in Jerusalem, where no images were to be found. But in other respects, too, the arbitrary conduct of the king in the arrangement of the cults proved to be a potent factor in the Northern Kingdom from the beginning.
The opposition of independent prophets was suppressed with all power.
Nevertheless, the prophetic agitation continued to be a potent spiritual factor, which the kings themselves could not afford to ignore.
This proved to be the case particularly when the dynasty of Omri, who established a new capital city, Samaria, openly favored the introduction of Phoenician idolatry. Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, even succeeded in having a magnificent temple erected in the new capital to her native Baal, and in crushing the opposition of the prophets who were faithful to Yahweh. It now became a question of life and death, so far as the religion of Yahweh was concerned. The struggle involved not only certain old heathen customs in the religion of the masses, dating back to the occupation of Canaan, but it was the case of an invasion of a foreign and heathen god, with a clearly defined purpose. His voluptuous worship was not at all in harmony with the serious character of the Mosaic religion, and it seriously menaced, in a people naturally inclined to sensuality, the rule of the stringent and holy God of Mt. Sinai. The tricky and energetic queen was already certain that she had attained her purpose, when an opponent arose in the person of Elijah, who put all her efforts to naught. (7) Elijah and Elisha.
In his struggle with the priests of Baal, who deported themselves after the manner of modern dervishes, we notice particularly the exalted and dignified conception of God in 1 Kings 18. When in this chapter Yahweh and Baal are contrasted, the idea of Elijah is by no means that these gods have in their own territory the same rights as Yahweh in Canaan and Israel.
Elijah mocks this Baal because he is no God at all (18:21), and the whole worship of the priests convinces him that they are not serving a real and true God, but only the product of their imagination (18:27). This is monotheism, and certainly not of a kind that has only recently been acquired and been first set up by Elijah, but one that came down from the days of Moses. Elijah proves himself to be a witness and an advocate of the God of Sinai, who has been betrayed in a treacherous manner. The fact that he inflicts a dire and fateful punishment on the idolatrous priests of Baal is also in perfect agreement with the old, stringent, Mosaic, legal code. Only such severity could atone for the fearful crime against the God of the country and of the covenant, and could save the people from apostasy.
However, theophany at Mt. Sinai ( 1 Kings 19:11 ff) shows clearly that not His external and fearful power, but His calm and deep character was felt by Elijah to be the distinguishing mark of his God. His successor, Elisha, after the storm had cleared the religious atmosphere in the country, in the performance of his prophetic duties was able again to show forth more emphatically the fatherly care and the helpful, healing love of his God.
In general, the political retrogression of the nation and the opposition of those in power, which the prophets and the faithful worshippers of Yahweh in later times were compelled to experience often enough, served greatly to intensify and to spiritualize their religion. The unfortunate situation of the present, and the weaknesses and failures in the actual state of theocracy, directed their eyes to the future. The people began to study the wonderful ways of God in dealing with His people, and they began to look to the end of these dealings. A proof of this is found in the comprehensive accounts contained in the old history of the covenant-people as recorded in the Pentateuchal documents E and J, which were composed during this period.
Whether these extend beyond and later than the period of Joshua or not, can remain an open question. In any case, there existed written accounts also concerning the times of the Judges, and concerning the history of Samuel, David and Solomon, which in part were written down soon after the events they record, and which, because of their phenomenal impartiality, point to an exceptionally high prophetic watchtower from which the ways of God with His people were observed. 4. Development of the Religion of Israel from the 8th Century BC to the Exile: (1) The Writing Prophets.
The spiritual development of the deeper Israelite religion was the business of the prophets. At the latest, from the 8th century BC, and probably from the middle of the 9th, we have in written form their utterances and discourses. Larger collections of such prophecies were certainly left by Amos and Hosea. These prophets stood entirely on the basis of the revelations which by Moses had been made the foundation of Israel’s religion. But in contrast to the superficial and mistaken idea of the covenant of Yahweh entertained by their contemporaries, these prophets make clear the true intentions of this covenant, and at the same time, through their new inspiration, advance the religious knowledge of the people. (2) Their Opposition to the Cult.
This appears particularly in their rejection of the external and unspiritual cult of their age. Over against the false worship of God, which thinks to satisfy God by the offering of sacrifices, they proclaim the true worship, which consists above all things in the fulfillment of the duties of the law and of love toward their fellow-men. They denounce as a violation of the covenant not only idolatry, the worship of strange gods, and the heathen symbols and customs which, in the course of time, had crept into the service of Yahweh, but they declare also that the religion which is based solely on the offering of sacrifices is worthless, since God, who is in no way dependent on any services rendered by men, does not care for such sacrifices, but is concerned about this, that His commands be observed, and that these consist above all things in righteousness, uprightness in the dealings of man with man, and in mercy on the poor, the weak, the defenseless, who cannot secure justice for themselves. (Compare e.g., Samuel 15:22; Hosea 6:6; Isaiah 1:11 ff; Jeremiah 7:21 ff, and other passages equally pointed. See on this subject, J. Robertson, Early Religion, etc., 440 ff.) Such a transfer of the center of religion from the cult to practical ethical life has no analogy whatever in other Semitic and ancient religions. Yet it is not something absolutely new, but is a principle that has developed out of the foundation laid by Moses, while it is in most pronounced contrast to the common religious sentiments of mankind. The prophetic utterances that condemn the unthinking and the unconsecrated cult must not be misunderstood, as though Isaiah, Jeremiah and others had been modern spiritualists, who rejected all external forms of worship. In this case they would have ceased to be members of their own people and children of their own times. What they absolutely reject is only the false trust put in an opus operatum, i.e. a mechanical performance of religious rites, which had been substituted for the real and heartfelt exercise of religion. Then, too, we are not justified in drawing from passages such as Jeremiah 7:22 the conclusion that at this time there did not yet exist in written form a Mosaic sacrificial code. Such a code is found even in the Book of the Covenant, recognized by critics as an older Pentateuch document (Exodus 20 through 23; 34), and the fact that the Sabbath commandment is found in the Decalogue does not prevent Isaiah from writing what he has penned in 1:13,14. That at this period, already, there were extant many written ordinances is demanded by Hosea 8:12, and the connection shows that cult ordinances are meant. We must accordingly take the prophet’s method of expression into consideration, which delights in absolute contrasts in cases where we would speak relatively. But this is not intended to weaken the boldness of the prophetic thoughts, which purpose to express sharp opposition to the religious ideas current at that time. (3) Their Preaching of the Judgment.
The conception of God and Divine things on the part of the prophets was the logical development of the revelations in the days of Moses, and after that time, concerning the nature and the activity of God. The God of the prophets is entirely a personal and living God, i.e. He enters into the life of man. His holiness is exaltation above Nature and the most pronounced antagonism to all things unclean, to sin. Sin is severely dealt with by God, especially, as has already been mentioned, the sin of showing no love and no mercy to one’s neighbor. Because they are saturated with this conviction of the absolute holiness of God, the preexilic prophets proclaim to their people more than anything else the judgment which shall bring with it the dissolution of both kingdoms and the destruction of Samaria and of Jerusalem, together with its temple. First, its destruction is proclaimed to the Northern Kingdom; later on to the Southern. In doing this, these inspired men testify that Yahweh is not inseparably bound to His people.
Rather He Himself calls the destroyer to come, since all the nations of the world are at His command. (4) Their Messianic Promises.
However, the prophets never conclude purely negatively, but they always see on the horizon some rays of hope, which promise to a “remnant” of the people better times. A “day of Yahweh” is coming, when He will make His final settlement with the nations, after they have carried out His judgment on His people. Then, after the destruction of the Gentileworld, He will establish His rule over the world. This fundamental thought, which appears again and again with constantly increasing clearness, often takes the form that a future king out of the house of David, in whom the idea of the “anointed of Yahweh” has been perfectly realized, will first establish in Judah-Israel a pure rule of God, and then also gain the supremacy of the world. Some critics have claimed that all of these Messianic and eschatological predictions date from the postexilic period. In recent years a reaction against this view has set in, based on the belief that in Egypt and Babylonia also similar expectations are found at an early period. These promises, when they are more clearly examined, are found to be so intimately connected with the other prophecies of Isaiah, Hosea, and others, that to separate them would be an act of violence. In their most magnificent character, these pictures of the future are found in Isaiah, while in Jeremiah their realization and spiritualization have progressed farther. (5) Reformations.
While the prophets are characterized by higher religious ideas and ideals, the religion of the masses was still strongly honeycombed with cruder and even heathen elements. Yet there were not totally wanting among the common people those who listened to these prophetic teachers. And especially in Judea there were times when, favored by pious kings, this stricter and purer party obtained the upper hand. This was particularly the case under the kings Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah. During the reigns of these kings the cult was reformed. Hezekiah and Josiah attacked particularly the local sanctuaries and their heathen worship (called bamoth ), and concentrated the sacrificial cult in Jerusalem. In doing this they were guided by the faithful priests and prophets and by the ancient Mosaic directions. Josiah, who, more thoroughly than others, fought against the disintegration of the Yahweh-cultus, found his best help in the newly-discovered Book of the Law (Deuteronomy). That the sacrifices should be made at one place had been, as we saw, an old Mosaic arrangement. However, Moses had foreseen that local altars would be erected at places where special revelations had been received from Yahweh ( Exodus 20:24-25). In this way the numerous altars at Bethel, on Carmel, and elsewhere could claim a certain justification, only they were not entitled to the same rank as the central sanctuary, where the Ark of the Covenant stood and where the sons of Aaron performed their priestly functions. Deuteronomy demands more stringently that all real sacrificial acts shall be transferred to this central point. This rule Josiah carried out strictly. The suppression of the current sacrifices on high places by the fall of the Northern Kingdom aided in effecting the collapse of such shrines, while the sanctuary in Jerusalem, because it was delivered from the attack of the Assyrians, won a still greater recognition. (6) Destruction of Jerusalem.
However, immediately after the death of Josiah, the apostasy from Yahweh again set in. The people thought that they had been deserted by Him, and they now more than before sought refuge in an appeal to a mixture of gods derived from Babylonia, Egypt, Persia and elsewhere. Ezekiel 8 and describe this syncretism which made itself felt even in the temple-house in Jerusalem. The people were incapable of being made better and were ripe for destruction. The temple, too, which it was thought by many could not be taken, was doomed to be destroyed from its very foundations. 5. The Babylonian Exile: (1) Spiritual Purification through the Exile.
A mighty change in the religion of Israel was occasioned by the deportation of the wealthier and better educated Jews to Babylon and their sojourn there for a period of about 50 years, and by the still longer stay of a large portion of the exiles in this country. The nation was thus cut off from the roots of the native heathendom in Palestine and also from the external organization of theocracy. This brought about a purification and a spiritualization, which proved to be a great benefit for later times, when the political manifestation of their religious life had ceased, and the personal element came more into the foreground. Jeremiah and Ezekiel emphasize, each in his own way, the value of this religion for the individual. A spiritual communion came into being during the Exile, which found its bond of union in the word of Yahweh, and which insisted on serving God without a temple and external sacrificial cult (which, however, was still found among the exiles in Egypt). Separated from their homes, they collected all the more diligently the sacred memories and traditions, to which Ezekiel’s plans for the temple belong. Their sacred literature, the Torah or Law, the prophetical books, the historical writings, the Psalms, and other literature were collected, and in this way preparations were made for the following period. (2) Relations to the Gentile World.
The most earnest classes of Jews, at least, absolutely declined to have anything to do with the Babylonian religion and worship. They saw here the worship of images in its most repulsive and sensual form, and they also learned its absolute impotency when the haughty Chaldean empire was overthrown. Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah 40 through 66) shows that the Israelites now become more conscious than ever of the great value of their own religion with its Creator of heaven and earth over against this variegated Pantheon of changeable gods in forms of wood and metal images. From this time on, the glory of the Creator of the universe and His revelation in the works of Nature were lauded and magnified with a new zeal and more emphatically than ever before. This same prophet, however, proclaims also the new fact of the mission-call of Israel among the nations of the world. This people, he declares, is to become the instrument of Yahweh to make the Gentiles His spiritual subjects. But as this people in its present condition is little fit for this great service, he sees with his prophetic eye a perfect “Servant of Yahweh,” who carries out this mission, a personal, visible “Servant of Yahweh,” who establishes the rule of God upon earth, by becoming, in the first place, for Israel a second Moses and Joshua, but who then, too, wins over the heathen nations by this message.
He accordingly takes the place of the prophesied future Son of David.
However, He is not a personal ruler, but carries out His work through mere spiritual power and in lowliness and weakness. Indeed, His suffering and death become the atonement to wipe out the guilt of His people (Isaiah 53). We can see in this further development of the deepening and spiritualization of the eschatological hopes how strongly the unaccustomed misfortunes and surroundings of the exiles had influenced them.
Notwithstanding all their antagonism to the aberrations of the heathen world, the Israelites yet learned that among the Gentiles there was also some receptivity for the higher truths. The worshippers of Yahweh felt themselves more akin to the Persians than to the Babylonians, as the former served without images a god which was conceived as one and as an exalted divine being. Thoughts taken from Parsiism are also found in the later literature of Israel, although it is not the case that the idea of Satan was first taken from this source. The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead for the judgment also can be gained from Old Testament premises.
However, the religion of the Babylonians was not without influence on that of the Jews. It is indeed out of the question that it was only during the Exile that the Jews took over the accounts of the Creation and the Deluge and others similar to the Babylonian, as these are found in Genesis through 11. But the development of the angelology shows the evidences of later Babylonian and Persian influences. And especially does demonology play a more important role in post-exilic times than ever before, particularly about the beginnings of the Christian era. Magic art, too, entered largely into the faith of later Judaism, and it can be shown that both of these came from Babylonian sources. 6. Religion of the Post-exilic Period: (1) Life under the Law.
The people which returned from the Exile was a purified congregation of Yahweh, willing to serve Him. They aimed to re-establish theocracy. This latter had not, indeed, because of the loss of the political independence of the people, the same importance as formerly, but the religious cult and the religious life of the people were all the more stringently observed. The post-exilic period is characterized by religious legalism. The people were exceedingly zealous in observing the old ordinances, and tried to find righteousness in the correctness with which the Mosaic law was observed, as this was now demanded by the teachers of this law. The prophet of the Exile, Ezekiel, had taken the lead in this particular, and had laid great emphasis on the formal ordinances, although in connection with this he also insisted upon real moral earnestness. But it was an easy matter that in the course of time an external work-righteousness and petrifaction of true religion should arise. Yet the later prophets, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, even if they do ascribe a greater importance to external matters than the preexilic prophets did, show that they are the spiritual heirs of these earlier seers. They teach a healthy ethical and sanctifying type of practical religion and continue to proclaim the hopes for an expansion and spiritualization of the Kingdom of God. The leaders of these times, Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah, show a pronouncedly antagonistic attitude toward the neighboring nations and also toward those inhabitants of the country who did not live under the law. However, their intolerance, especially toward the Samaritans, can be readily understood from the principle of the self-preservation of the people of Yahweh. The law came to be the subject of the most careful study, and the teachers of the law collected, even to the minutest details, the oral traditions with reference to its meaning and to the proper observance of the different demands, so that already before the time of Christ they were in possession of an extensive tradition, which was afterward put down in written form in the Mishna.
The writing of history was also carefully cultivated. The Books of Chronicles show from what viewpoint they described the past; the temple and the cult were the center of interest. In the same way the psalm-poetry, especially the temple-song, flourished again. These later hymns are pretty and regular, but no longer show the bold spirit of the older psalms. In many cases, older songs are made use of in these later hymns in a new way. Of the proverb-literature of the later post-exilic times, the The Wisdom of Solomon of Jesus Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus, is an instructive example.
Notwithstanding its great similarity to the old Proverbs, the prevailing and leading points of view have become different in character. The conception of Wisdom has assumed a specifically Jewish and theocratic character. (2) Hellenism.
But the Jewish exclusiveness found a dangerous opponent, especially from the days of Alexander the Great, in the new Hellenism. Hellenistic language, culture, customs and world ideas overwhelmed Palestine also.
While the Pious (chacidhim ) all the more anxiously fortified themselves behind their ordinances, the worldly-minded gave themselves up fully to the influence that came from without. In the first half of the 2nd century BC there arose, as a consequence, a bloody struggle against the inroads of this heathendom, when Antiochus Epiphanes undertook to suppress the religion of the Jews, and when the Asmoneans began their holy war against him. (3) Pharisees and Sadducees.
But within the people of Israel itself there were found two parties, one strict and the other lax in the observance of the law. The leaders of the former were the highly popular Pharisees, who, according to their name, were the “Separatists,” separated from the common and lawless masses.
They tried to surpass each other in their zeal for the traditional ordinances and pious observances. However, among them it was also possible to find real piety, although in the New Testament records, where they are described as taking a hostile attitude toward the higher and the highest form of Divine revelation, they appear at their worst. Their rivals, the Sadducees, were less fanatical in their observance of the demands of the law and more willing to compromise with the spirit of the times. To this party belonged many of the more prominent priests. But this party evinced less real religious life than did the Pharisees. (4) Essenes.
Then, too, in the time of Jesus, there were not lacking indications of the influence of foreign religions, as is apparent in the case of the Essenes. This party advocated dualistic ideas, as these are later found among the Mandeans. (5) Positive Connections between Judaism and Hellenism.
In Alexandria a friendly exchange of ideas between Hellenism and Judaism was brought about. Here the Old Testament was translated into the Greek.
This translation, known as the Septuagint (Septuagint), shows as yet but few signs of the Greek spirit; rather, a pronounced influence of legal and ritualistic Judaism. On the other hand, apologetical opposition to Hellenism appears to a more marked degree, among others, in the apocryphal work known as “Wisdom of Solomon,” in which we find a positive defense of wisdom as the principle of revelation over against the Epicurean world wisdom of Hellenism. In doing this, the book leans on Platonism and Stoicism. The chokhmah , or wisdom of the old Jewish literature, has been Hellenized. Philo goes still farther in adapting Judaism to Greek taste and to humanism. A more liberal conception of inspiration also appears in the reception of contemporaneous literary products into the Old Testament Canon, even of some books which had originally been written in the Greek language. The means observed in adapting national Hebraism to Hellenistic universalism was the allegorical method of interpretation, which Philo practiced extensively and which then passed over to the Christian church Fathers of the Alexandrian school. This school constitutes the opposite extreme to the rabbinical, which clung most tenaciously to the letter of the sacred texts. (6) Apocalyptic Literature.
A unique phenomenon at the close of the Biblical and in the earliest post- Biblical period is, finally, the APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE (which see).
Since the days of the Maccabees we find the custom in certain Jewish circles, by using the old prophecies and adapting them to the events of the times, of drawing up a systematic picture of the future. The authorship of these writings was usually ascribed to one of the ancient saints, e.g. to Enoch, or Abraham, or Moses, or Elijah, or Solomon, or Baruch, or Ezra, or others. The model of these Apocalypses is the Book of Dnl, which, on the basis of older visions, in the times of the oppression by Antiochus Epiphanes, pictures, in grand simplicity, the development of the history of the world down to the final triumph of the Kingdom of God over the kingdoms of the world.
III. CONCLUSION: CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL.
When we consider this whole development, it cannot be denied that the religion of Israel passed through many changes. It grew and purified and spiritualized itself out of its own inherent strength; but it also suffered many relapses, when hindering and corrupting influence gained the upper hand. But it received from without not only degenerating influences, but also much that inspired and developed its growth. Its original and native strength also shows itself in this, that without losing its real character it was able to appropriate to itself elements of truth from without and assimilate these. 1. The Living God: If we ask what the specific and unique character of this religion was, by which it was distinguished from all other religions of antiquity, and by reason of which it alone was capable of producing from itself the highest revelation in Christ, it must be answered that its uniqueness lies, most of all, in its conception of God and of Divine things, and of God’s relation to the world. The term “monotheism” but inadequately expresses this peculiarity; for monotheistic tendencies are found also in other nations, and in Israel monotheism often shows itself in a strongly corrupted form. The advantage of Israel lies in its close contact with the living God. From the beginning of Israel’s history a strictly personal God gave testimony of Himself to different personalities with a decision which demanded absolute submission; and, in addition, this was a holy God, who elevated mankind above Nature and above themselves, a God who stood in the most absolute contrast to all that was impure or sinful, but at the same time was wonderful in His grace and His mercy to the sinner. This direct revelation of God to specially chosen bearers of the Divine truth goes through the entire history of Israel. Through this factor this religion was being constantly purified and unfolded further. The Israelites learned to conceive God in a more spiritual, correct, and universal manner, the more they advanced in experience and culture. But this God did not thereby become a mere abstract being, separated from mankind, as was the case with so many nations. He always continued to be a living God who takes an active part in the lives of men. We need notice only those prophets who describe the greatness of God in the grandest way, such as Hosea, Isaiah, Deutero- Isaiah, who depict also the personal life of God in the boldest way through anthropomorphisms. 2. The Relation of Man to This God: In agreement with this, too, we find that this religion demands the personal subjection of men to God. As was the case with all the religions of antiquity, that of the Old Testament, of Man to too, was originally rather a tribal and a national religion than one of the individual. This brought with it the demand for the external observance of the tribal customs in the name of religion. However, the traditional customs and legal ordinances had already been sifted and purified by Moses. And, as a matter of necessity, in a religion of such a pronounced personal nature, the personal relation of the individual to God must become more and more a matter of importance.
This idea became deeper and more spiritual in the course of time and developed into a pure love for God. It did not prevent this religion from becoming petrified, even during the Exile, when the doctrines and the cult were most correctly observed. But the vital kernels found embedded in the revelation of God constantly proved their power of rejuvenation. And at that very time when the petrified legalism of Pharisaism attained its most pronounced development, the most perfect fruit of this religion came forth from the old stem of the history of Israel, namely Christ, who unfolded Judaism and converted it into the religion of salvation for the entire world.
LITERATURE.
Of the literature on the religion of Israel we may yet make particular mention of the following: The textbooks on Old Testament Theology by Oehler, 1891 (also the English translation), of Dillmann, 1895. The Kuenen-Wellhausen school is represented by Kuenen, De Godsdienst van Israel, 1869 (also the English translation); Stade, Biblische Theologie des A T, 1905; Marti, Theologie des A T, 1903; Smend, Lehrbuch der A T Religionsgeschichte, 1899; compare also the works of Robertson Smith, especially his lectures on The Religion of the Semites. Against this radical school, see, in addition to the work of Dillmann, James Robertson, Early Religion of Israel, 1893. On the subject of Semitism in general, S.I.
Curtiss, Ursemitische Religion im Volksleben des heutigen Orients, (also the English translation); Baethgen, Beltrage zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, 1880; M.J. Lagrange, Etudes sur les religions semitiques, 1905. The relation of Israel to the Assyrian and Babylonian religions is discussed by Hugo Winckler in several works; compare also Fritz Hommel, Alttestamentliche Ueberlieferungen, 1897 (also the English translation); Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, 1895; Alfred Jerermias, Das A Timothy Lichte des alten Orients, 1906; a good brief summary is found in Sellin, Die A T Religion im Rahmen der andern Altorientalischen, 1908. Full details are given in Kautzsch, “Religion of Israel,” in HDB, extra vol, 1904. For the last centuries before Christ see particularly, Schurer, Geschichte des judischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi, 1907 (also English Translation). The modern Jewish standpoint is represented by Montefiore, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the History of the Ancient Hebrews, 1892. C. von Orelli ISRAELITE; ISRAELITISH ISSACHAR 1. THE NAME:
His birth is in this passage connected with the strange story of Reuben and his mandrakes, and the name given him is apparently conceived as derived from ‘ish sakhar , “a hired workman.” There is a play upon the name in this sense in Genesis 49:15, “He bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant under taskwork.” Wellhausen (Textder Buch. Sam., 95) thinks that the second element of the name may denote a deity; and Sokar, an Egyptian god, has been suggested. The name in that case would mean “worshipper of Sokar.” Practically nothing is preserved of the personal history of this patriarch beyond his share in the common actions of the sons of Jacob. Four sons were born to him before Jacob’s family removed to Egypt ( Genesis 46:13). In that land he died and was buried.
2. THE TRIBE:
At Sinai the tribe numbered 54,000 men of war over 20 years of age ( Numbers 1:29). At the end of the wanderings the numbers had grown to 64,300 ( Numbers 26:25). In the days of David, the Chronicler puts the figures at 87,000 ( 1 Chronicles 7:5). See NUMBERS. The place of Issachar in the desert-march was with the standard of the tribe of Judah (along with Zebulun) on the East side of the tabernacle ( Numbers 2:5), this group forming the van of the host ( Numbers 10:14 f). The rabbis say that this standard was of 3 colors, sardine, topaz and carbuncle, on which were inscribed the names of the 3 tribes, bearing the figure of a lion’s whelp (Tg, pseudo. Jon. on Numbers 2:3). The captain of the tribe was Nethanel ben-Zuar ( Numbers 1:8, etc.). Later this place was held by Igal ben-Joseph, the tribal representative among the spies ( Numbers 13:7). The prince chosen from Issachar to assist in the division of the land was Paltiel ben-Azzan ( Numbers 34:26). The position of Issachar at the strange ceremony near Shechem was on Mt.
Gerizim, “to bless the people” ( Deuteronomy 27:12).
3. THE TRIBAL TERRITORY:
Sixteen cities of Issachar are mentioned in Joshua 19:17 ff, but the only indications of boundaries are Tabor in the North and Jordan in the East.
We gather elsewhere that the territory of this tribe marched on the North with Zebulun and Naphtali (19:11,33); on the West with Manasseh and possibly Asher (17:10); and on the South with Manasseh (17:11). It does not seem to have had any point of contact with the sea. The portion of Issachar, therefore, included the plain of Esdraelon, Tabor, the hill of Moreh, and the slopes East to the Jordan. The fortresses along the South edge of the plain were held by Manasseh. Tola, a man of Issachar, held Shamir, a stronghold in Mt. Ephraim ( Judges 10:1). To Manasseh was given Beth-shean with her “towns” ( Joshua 17:11). No reliable line can be drawn for the South border. The district thus indicated was small; but it embraced some of the most fruitful land in Palestine. By the very riches of the soil Issachar was tempted. “He saw a resting-place that it was good, and the land that it was pleasant; and he bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant under taskwork” ( Genesis 49:15). “The mountain” in Deuteronomy 33:19 may possibly be Tabor, on which, most likely, there was an ancient sanctuary and place of pilgrimage. This would certainly be associated with a market, in which Issachar and Zebulun, the adjoining tribes, would be able to enrich themselves by trade with the pilgrims from afar. Issachar took part in the battle with Sisera ( Judges 5:15). To Israel Issachar gave one judge, Tola ( Judges 10:1), and two kings, Baasha and his son ( 1 Kings 15:27, etc.).
4. MEN OF ISSACHAR:
Of the 200 “heads” of the men of Issachar who came to David at Hebron it is said that they were “men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” ( 1 Chronicles 12:32). According to the Targum, this meant that they knew how to ascertain the periods of the sun and moon, the intercalation of months, the dates of solemn feasts, and could interpret the signs of the times. A company from Issachar came to the celebration of the Passover when it was restored by Hezekiah ( Chronicles 30:18). Issachar has a portion assigned to him in Ezekiel’s ideal division of the land ( Ezekiel 48:25); and he appears also in the list in Revelation (7:7). (2) A Korahite doorkeeper, the 7th son of Obededom ( 1 Chronicles 26:5). W. Ewing ISSHIAH ISSHIJAH ISSUE ISSUE (OF BLOOD) ([ bwOz , zobh ], [ bWz , zubh ]; [rJu>siv , rhusis ], [aiJmo>rrJoov , haimorrhoos ]):
When used as a description of a bodily affection the word signifies: (1) A discharge, the consequence of uncleanness and sin ( Leviticus 15:2 ff; Numbers 5:2). As such it was one of the judgments which were to afflict the family of Joab ( 2 Samuel 3:29); (2) a hemorrhage, either natural ( Leviticus 12:7, where the word used is maqor , literally, a “fountain”), or the consequence of disease ( Matthew 9:20; Mark 5:25; Luke 8:43).
ISSUES ISTALCURUS ISUAH ISUI ISVAH ITALA, VERSION ITALIAN BAND ITALY The name Italy occurs 3 times in the New Testament: Acts 18:2, Aquila “lately come from Italy,” because of the expulsion of the Jews from Rome under Claudius; Acts 27:1, the decision that Paul be sent to Italy; Hebrews 13:24, salutation from those “of Italy.” The adjective form is found in the appellation, “Italian band” (cobors Italica, Acts 10:1).
The history of ancient Italy, in so far as it falls within the scope of the present work, is treated under ROME (which see). George H. Allen ITCH ([ sr,j; , charec ]; [yw>ra , psora ]): Only in Deuteronomy 28:27, where it probably refers to the parasitic skin disease of that name which is very common in Palestine. It is due to a small mite, Sarcoptes scabiei, which makes burrows in the skin and sometimes causes extensive crusts or scabs, attended with a severe itching. It is very easily communicated from person to person by contact, and can be cured only by destruction of the parasite.
This disease disqualified its victims for the priesthood ( Leviticus 21:20).
ITHAI ITHAMAR ITHIEL AND UCAL ([ lk;auw] laeytitai , ‘ithi’el we’ukhal ]): Names of the two men to whom Agur the son of Jakeh spoke his words ( Proverbs 30:1). The purport of introducing these persons is strange and obscure; the margin proposes therefore, by the use of a different pointing, to read the verse, “The man said, I have wearied myself, O God, I have wearied myself, O God, and am consumed,” thus doing away with the proper names; a reading which corresponds not inaptly with the tone of the succeeding verses. See AGUR; PROVERBS, BOOK OF, II, 6.
John Franklin Genung ITHLAH ITHMAH ITHNAN ITHRA ITHRAN ITHREAM ITHRITE ITTAH-KAZIN ITTAI 1. THE WORD AN ADJECTIVE:
The term occurs only once in Scripture, in the definition of Philip’s territory: [tes Itouraias kai Trachonitidos choras ], which the King James Version renders: “of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis,” and Revised Version: “the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis” ( Luke 3:1). Sir W.M.
Ramsay has given reasons for the belief that this word was certainly never used as a noun by any writer before the time of Eusebius (Expos, 1894, IX, 51 ff, 143 ff, 288 ff). It must be taken as an adjective indicating the country occupied by the Itureans.
2. THE ITUREANS:
The descent of the Itureans must probably be traced to Jetur, son of Ishmael ( Genesis 25:15), whose progeny were clearly numbered among the Arabian nomads. According to Eupolemus (circa 150 BC), quoted by Eusebius (Praep. Evang. IX, 30), they were associated with the Nabateans, Moabites and Ammonites against whom David warred on the East of the Jordan. They are often mentioned by Latin writers; their skill in archery seems greatly to have impressed the Romans. They were skillful archers (Caesar, Bell. Afr. 20); a lawless (Strabo, xvi.2,10) and predatory people (Cicero, Philipp. ii.112). In the Latin inscriptions Iturean soldiers have Syrian names (HJP, I, ii, 326). They would therefore be the most northerly of the confederates opposed to David (supra), and their country may naturally be sought in the neighborhood of Mt. Hermon.
3. INDICATIONS OF THEIR TERRITORY:
There is nothing to show when they moved from the desert to this district.
Aristobulus made war against the Itureans, compelled many of them to be circumcised, and added a great part of their territory to Judea, 140 BC (Ant., XIII, xi, 3). Dio Cassius calls Lysanias “king of the Itureans” (xlix.32), and from him Zenodorus leased land which included Ulatha and Paneas, 25 BC. The capital of Lysanias was Chalcis, and he ruled over the land from Damascus to the sea. Josephus speaks of Soemus as a tetrarch in Lebanon (Vita, 11); while Tacitus calls him governor of the Itureans (Ann. xii.23). The country of Zenodorus, lying between Trachonitis and Galilee, and including Paneas and Ulatha, Augustus bestowed on Herod,20 BC (Ant., XV, x, 3). In defining the tetrarchy of Philip, Josephus names Batanea, Trachonitis and Auranitis, but says nothing of the Itureans (Ant., XVII, xi, 4; BJ, II, vi, 3). Paneas and Ulatha were doubtless included, and this may have been Iturean territory (HJP, I, ii, 333). It seems probable, therefore, that the Itureans dwelt mainly in the mountains, and in the broad valley of Coele-Syria; but they may also have occupied the district to the Southeast of Hermon, the modern Jedur. It is not possible to define more closely the Iturean country; indeed it is not clear whether Luke intended to indicate two separate parts of the dominion of Philip, or used names which to some extent overlapped.
It has been suggested that the name Jedur may be derived from the Hebrew [yeTur], and so be equivalent to Ituraea. But the derivation is impossible. W. Ewing IVAH IVORY Ivory was probably obtained, as now, mainly from the African elephant. It was rare and expensive. It is mentioned in connection with the magnificence of Solomon ( 1 Kings 10:18,22), being brought by the ships of Tarshish ( 2 Chronicles 9:17,21). An “ivory house” of Ahab is mentioned in 1 Kings 22:39. It is mentioned among the luxuries of Israel in the denunciations of Amos (3:15; 6:4). It occurs in the figurative language of Psalm 45:8; Song of Solomon 5:14; 7:4. It is used for ornamentation of the ships of the Tyrians ( Ezekiel 27:6), who obtain it with ebony through the men of Dedan (27:15). It is among the merchandise of Babylon ( Revelation 18:12).
We do not learn of the use of elephants in war until a few centuries before the Christian era. In 1 Macc 8:6, there is a reference to the defeat of Antiochus the Great, “having an hundred and twenty elephants,” by Scipio Africanus in 190 BC. 1 Macc 1:17 speaks of the invasion of Egypt by Antiochus Epiphanes with an army in which there were elephants. 1 Macc 6:28-47 has a detailed account of a battle between Antiochus Eupator and Judas Maccabeus at Bethsura (Beth-zur). There were 32 elephants. Upon the “beasts” [qhri>a , theria ]) there were “strong towers of wood”; “There were also upon every one two and thirty strong men, that fought upon them, beside the Indian that ruled him.”In Job 40:15, the King James Version margin has for “behemoth,” “the elephant, as some think.”Alfred Ely Day IVORY, TOWER OF ([ ˆVeh” lD”g]mi , mighdal hashen ]): In Song of Solomon 7:4 the neck of the Shulammite is compared in whiteness and stateliness to a (or the) tower of ivory. The definite article may suggest that the comparison is with some actual tower in or near Jerusalem; but more probably the language is simply a figure.
IVVAH The identification of Sepharvaim with the Babylonian Sip(p)ar is now practically abandoned. See SEPHARVAIM. T. G. Pinches IVY IYE-ABARIM IYIM IYYAR IZEHAR IZHAR IZHARITES IZLIAH; JEZLIAH IZRAHIAH IZRAHITE IZRI IZZIAH GOTO NEXT CHAPTER - ANONYMOUS AUTHORS INDEX & SEARCH
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