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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



of the Psalter a later hand has systematically 

 substituted Elohim for Jehovah, and an imper- 

 fect acrostic, like Psalms is., x., cannot have pro- 

 ceeded in its present form from the first author. 

 Still more remarkable is the case of the book of 

 Job, in which the speeches of Elihu quite break 

 the connection, and are almost universally as- 

 signed to a later hand. 



Prophetical Books. — "We have already seen 

 that the earliest prophecies of certain date are 

 of the eighth century, though there is- a proba- 

 bility that Joel flourished in the ninth century, in 

 the reign of Joash of Judah, and that the open- 

 ing verses of Amos are cited from his book. On 

 the other hand, the old school of prophecy, whose 

 members, from Samuel to Elisha, were men of ac- 

 tion rather than of letters, was not likely to leave 

 behind it any written oracles. The prophets 

 generally spoke under the immediate influence of 

 the spirit or " hand of Jehovah." What they 

 wrote was secondary, and was, no doubt, greatly 

 abridged. The most instructive account of the 

 literary activity of a prophet is given in Jeremiah 

 xxxvi. Jeremiah did not begin to write till he 

 had been more than twenty years a prophet. 

 Some prophetic books, like that of Amos, seem 

 to have been composed at one time and with 

 unity of plan. Other prophets, like Isaiah, pub- 

 lished several books summing up portions of their 

 ministry. In one or two cases, especially in that 

 of Ezekiel, the prophet writes oracles which were 

 apparently never spoken. Before the Exile there 

 was circulation of individual prophetic books, 

 and earlier prophets quote from their predeces- 

 sors. But the task of collecting and editing the 

 remains of the prophets was hardly undertaken 

 till the commencement of the second canon ; and 

 by this time, no doubt, many writings had been 

 lost, others were more or less fragmentary, and 

 the tradition of authorship was not always com- 

 plete. It was, indeed, more important to have 

 an oracle authenticated by the name of its au- 

 thor than to know the writer of a history or a 

 psalm, and many prophets seem to have prefixed 

 their names to their works. But other prophe- 

 cies are quite anonymous, and prophets who quote 

 earlier oracles never give the author's name. 

 (A famous case occurs, Isaiah xv., xvi, where in 

 xvi. 13, for since that time, read long ago.) Now, 

 all the remains of prophecy, whether provided 

 with titles or not, were ultimately arranged in 

 four books, the fourth of which names, in sepa- 

 rate titles, twelve authors ; while the first three 

 books are named after Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 

 and actually mention no other names in the ti- 



tles of the several prophecies of which they are 

 made up. But is it safe to assume that every 

 anonymous prophecy in these books must be by 

 the author of the next preceding prophecy which 

 has a title ? Certainly any such assumption can 

 only be provisional, and may be overthrown by 

 internal evidence. But internal evidence of date, 

 it is said, cannot apply to prophetic books in 

 which the author looks in a supernatural way 

 into the future. The value of this argument 

 must be tested by looking more closely at the 

 actual contents of the prophetic books. The 

 prophecies contain : 1. Reproof of present sin ; 

 2. Exhortation to present duty ; 3. Encourage- 

 ment to the godly and threatening to the wicked, 

 based on the certainty of God's righteous pur- 

 pose. In this last connection prophecy is pre- 

 dictive. It lays hold of the ideal elements of the 

 theocratic conception, and depicts the way in 

 which, by God's grace, they shall be actually real- 

 ized in a Messianic age, and in a nation purified by 

 judgment and mercy. But in all this the prophet 

 starts from present sin, present needs, present 

 historical situations. There is no reason to think 

 that a prophet ever received a revelation which 

 i was not spoken directly and pointedly to his own 

 time. If we find, then, that, after the prophecy 

 of Zechariah i.-viii., which is complete in itself, 

 there begins at chapter ix. a new oracle, quite 

 distinct in subject and style, which speaks of an 

 alliance between Judah and Israel as a thing sub- 

 sisting in the prophet's own time, which knows 

 no oppressor later than Assyria and Egypt, and 

 rebukes forms of idolatry that do not appear af- 

 ter the Exile ; if, in short, the whole prophecy be- 

 comes luminous when it is placed a little after 

 the time of Hosea, and remains absolutely dark 

 if it is ascribed to Zechariah — we are surely enti- 

 tled to let it speak for itself. When the princi- 

 ple is admitted, other applications follow, mainly 

 in the book of Isaiah, where the anonymous chap- 

 ters xl.-lxvi. cannot be understood in a natural 

 and living way except by looking at them from 

 the historical standpoint of the Exile. Then 

 arises a further question whether all titles are 

 certainly authentic and conclusive; and here, 

 too, it is difficult to answer by an absolute af- 

 firmative. For example, in Isaiah xxx. 6 the ti- 

 tle, " The burden of the beasts of the south," 

 interrupts the connection in a most violent way. 

 This is not a solitary instance, but, on the whole, 

 the titles are far more trustworthy in the prophe- 

 cies than in the Psalms, and partly on this ac- 

 count, but mainly from the direct historical bear- 

 ing of prophetic teaching, we can frame a com- 



