6 6 His decrees as recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures may breathe a more didactic spirit than they actually bore; but they are not unlike in tone to those which are preserved on the monuments. And the story of his insanity, even if the momentary light thrown upon it by the alleged 'interpretation of the inscriptions be withdrawn, may remain as the Hebrew version of the sickness described by Berosus and the sudden disappearance described by Abydenus,' and also as the profound Biblical expression of the Vanity of Human 'Wishes '3—the punishment of the vaulting ambition that 'overleaps itself' the eclipse and the return of reason, which when witnessed even in modern times in the highest places of the State have moved the heart of a whole nation to sympathy or to thanksgiving. He was to the Israelite captives, not merely a gigantic tyrant but with something like 'the pro'phetic soul of the wide world, dreaming on things to come '4 -himself the devoted worshipper of his own Merodach, yet bowing before the King of Heaven, whose works are 'truth, and whose ways judgment.'" 5 II. Into this golden city,' underneath this magnificent The Capoppressor, the little band of Israelites were transported tivity. for the period which is known by the name of the Babylonian Captivity. It might at first sight seem that it was a period of which the records are few, and of which the results were scanty. It lasted for little more than a single generation.7 But it sowed the seeds of a change deeper than any that had 1 The interpretation of the negative clauses of the Inscription, as given in Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. ii., p. 586. 2 Jos. c. Ap. i. 20; Ens. Præp. Ev. ix. 41. The possibility of such a malady as that described in Dan. iv. 33-36 is established with interesting illustrations in Dr. Pusey's Daniel the Prophet, p. 426-433. Dan. ii. 31, iv. 5; and see Abydenus, in Eus. Præp. Ev. ix. 41. • Rawlinson, Monarchies, iii. 459. 7 The 70 years foretold by Jere- Literary occurred since the destruction of the sanctuary at Shiloh, almost than any that had occurred since the Exodus. The number of exiles was comparatively small. A large part of the lower classes were left in Palestine, and those who were transported consisted chiefly of the princes, nobles, and priests, with the addition of artisans in wood and iron. But still it was the kernel -the flower-what the older Prophets would have called 'the remnant,' the sufficient remnant of the nation. We have already spoken of the other fragments of the Captivity-the colony of the Ten Tribes in the remote provinces of the Assyrian Empire; the first beginnings of the colony in Egypt, ultimately destined to attain such significance. 2 3 The two remaining groups of exiles from the kingdom of Judah, those under Jehoiachin, and those under Zedekiah, must have soon blended together; and containing as they did within themselves all the various elements of society, they enable us, partly through the writings and partly through the actions of the little community, to form an idea, fragmentary, indeed, but still sufficient, of the effects of the Captivity. As before we saw the main results of Israel in Egypt,' so now we enter on the characteristics of Israel in Babylon. 6 With the fall of Jerusalem the public life of the people character. had disappeared. The Prophets could no longer stand in the Temple courts or on the cliffs of Carmel to warn by word of mouth or parabolical gesture. The law was no The Prophets found no vision from the Eternal.' There is one common feature, however, which runs through all the writings of this period, which served as a 'more. 5 For this whole question of the Lecture XL., XLVII. 4 Lecture IV. Lam. ii. 9; Ezek. vii. 26. compensation for the loss of the living faces and living words of the ancient seers. Now began the practice of committing to writing, of compiling, of epistolary correspondence, which (with two or three great exceptions) continued during the five coming centuries of Jewish History. 'Never 'before' had literature possessed so profound a significance 'for Israel or rendered such convenient service as at this 'juncture.' The aged Jeremiah still lived on in Egypt, far away Jeremiah. from the mass of his people. But already his prophecies had begun to take the form of a book; already he had thrown his warnings and meditations into the form of a letter to the exiles of the first stage of the Captivity, which was the first example of religious instruction so conveyed, which was followed up, we know not when, by the apocryphal letter bearing his name, and which ultimately issued in the Apostolic Epistles of the New Testament. The same tendency is seen in the rigidly artificial and elaborate framework3 in which even the passionate elegy of the Lamentations is composed, in contrast with the free rhythm of the earlier songs of the Davidic age. Already the Prophecies of Ezekiel Ezekiel. had been arranged in the permanent chronological form which they have since worn. 'Baruch the scribe' had inaugurated Baruch. this new era, the first of his class, by transcribing and arranging the works of Jeremiah; had already, according to Jewish tradition, read to the exiles in Babylon itself, to the captive king, and princes, and nobles, and elders, and ‘all the people from the highest to the lowest,' of those that dwelt by one of the branches of the Euphrates," the book of his warnings and consolations. Are we to conjecture that something of this famous Ewald, v. 10. 2 See Lecture XL. See Lecture XL. • Each part is arranged alphabeti- Euphrates. Baruch i. 4. name for cally. Isaiah. 36 The Second scribe1 may be traced in the Prophet who poured forth during this period of expectation the noblest of all the prophetic strains of Israel-noblest and freest in spirit, but in form following that regular flow and continuous unity which in his age, as has been said, superseded the disjointed and successive utterances of the older seers? 2 Or is it possible that in the author of that strain of which the burden is the suffering and the exaltation of the Servant of the Lord we have that mysterious prophet registered in ancient catalogues as Abdadonai, the Servant of the Lord,' himself the personification of the subject of his book? Whether Baruch or Abdadonai-whether in Chaldæa, Palestine, or Egyptwhether another Isaiah, in more than the power and spirit of the old Isaiah-or whether, as some would prefer to think, that older Isaiah, transported by a magical influence into a generation not his own-the Great Unnamed, the Evangelical Prophet, is our chief guide through this dark period of transition, illuminating it with flashes of light, not the less bright because we know not whence they come. In his glorious roll of consolations, warnings, aspirations, we have, it is not too much to say, the very highest flight of Hebrew prophecy. Nothing finer had been heard even from the lips of the son of Amos. No other strain is so constantly taken up again in the last and greatest days of Hebrew teaching. For the splendour of its imagery and the nerve of its poetry, nothing, even in those last days of Evangelist or Apostle, exceeds or equals it. 4 Yet once more, in the enforced leisure of captivity and exile, like many a one in later days-Thucydides, Raleigh, Bunsen's God in History (i. 131). Hitzig (Geschichte, 264) conjectures the High Priest Joshua. 2 For the whole question of the position of the second Isaiah, see Lecture XL. Compare Ewald's Prophets, ii. 404-487, Matthew Arnold, The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration, Cheyne's Book of Isaiah. 3 Clem. Alex. (Strom. i. 21). (See Note to Lecture XX.) 4 There are 21 quotations in the New Testament from Isaiah xl-lxvi. against 13 from the earlier chapters. Clarendon-now in the agony of the dispersion, in the natural fear lest the relics of their ancient literature should be lost through the confusion of the time, began those laborious compilations of the Annals of the past which issued at last in the Canon of the Old Testament,' of which perhaps several might be traced to this epoch, but of which it will be sufficient to specify the most undoubted instance -the Book of the Kings. It is touching to observe from its The Book of Kings. abrupt conclusion how this nameless student continued his work to the precise moment 2 when he was delighted to leave his readers in the midst of his sorrows with that one gleam which was shed over the darkness of their nation by the kindly treatment of the last royal descendant of David in the Court of Babylon. 4 There were also the company of minstrels and musicians, The minmale and female,3 who kept up the traditions of the music strels. of David and Asaph. Their resort, as we have seen, was by the long canals, where they still wandered with their native harps; and though they refused to gratify the demands of their conquerors, they poured forth, we cannot doubt, some of those plaintive strains which can be placed at no date so suitable as this, or else worked up into accord with the circumstances of their time some of those which had been handed down from earlier and happier days. From the writers we turn to the actors in the scenes. The social condition The Greek word by which the Captivity is called-μETOIKEσía, of the migration or transportation-aptly expresses the milder Exiles. aspect of the condition of the great mass of the exiles. Just as the Greeks, transported in like manner by Darius Hystaspis into the heart of Asia, remained long afterwards peaceable settlers under the Persian rule, so at the time and for cen Ewald, v. 18. 2 2 Kings XXV. 27–30. 3 Ezra ii. 65. 4 Ps. cxxxvii. 1, 2. |