DURATION OF THE SOUL. 



337 



tradition was common to the Jews, and runs through almost all their poetry. 

 It is thus Isaiah, who was nearly contemporary with Homer, satirizes the fall 

 of Belshazzar, eh. xiv. 9. 



The lowermost Hell is in motion for thee, 

 To congratulate thy arrival : 

 For thee arouseth he the mighty dead, 

 All the chieftains of the earth. 



The term mighty dead is peculiarly emphatic. The Hebrew word is CD''X3*7 ^ 

 (Rephaim), the " gigantic spectres," "the magnified and mighty ghost ex- 

 hibiting, as I have already observed, a form larger than life, or, as Juvenal 

 has admirably expressed it upon a similar occasion, xiii. 221, 



Major imago 



Humana 



A more than mortal make : 



whence the term Rephaim is rendered in the Septuagint, Tnyrivet s, and by Theo- 



dotion, TiyavTCS. 



To the same effect, Ezekiel, about a century afterward, in his sublime pro- 

 phecy of the destruction of Egypt, a piece of poetry that has never been sur- 

 passed in any age or country, ch. xxxii. 18—26. I can only quote a few verses, 

 and I do it to prove that the tradition common to other nations, that the ghosts 

 of heroes were surrounded in hades, or the invisible world, with a shadowy 

 semblance of their former dress and instruments of war, was equally com- 

 mon to Judea. 



V. 2. W^ail ! Son of Man, for multitudinous Egypt, 

 Yea, down let her be cast, 

 Like the daughters of the renowned nations, 

 ■Into the nether parts of the earth, 

 Among those that have descended into the pit. 

 Thou ! that surpassest in beauty ! 

 Get thee down. — 

 To the sword is she surrendered : 

 Draw him forth, and all his forces. 

 The chieftains of the mighty dead (CD^Xfll) 

 Call to him and his auxiliaries 

 From the lowest depths of hell, — 

 V. 27. To the grave who have descended 

 With their instruments of war; 

 With their swords placed under their heads. 



From what quarter this popular and almost universal tradition was derived^ 

 or in what age it originated, we know not. I have said that it appears to be 

 more ancient than any of the traditions of the philosophers; and in support 

 of this opinion, I chiefly allude to one or two hints at it that are scattered 

 throughout the book of Job, which I must again take leave to regard as the 

 oldest composition that has descended to us. I do not refer to the fearful and 

 unrivalled description of the spectre that appeared to Eliphaz, because the 

 narrator himself does not seem to have regarded this as a human image, but, 

 among other passages,* to the following part of the afflicted patriarch's severe 

 invective against his friend Bildad : 



Yea the mighty dead are laid open from below, 



The floods and their inhabitants. 



Hell is naked before him ; 



And Destruction hath no covering. 



Bildad had been taunting Job with ready-made and proverbial speeches > 

 and there can be no doubt that this of Job's, in reply, is of the same sort ; 

 imbued with popular tradition, but a tradition not entering into the philoso- 

 phical creed either of himself or of any of his friends ; for throughout the 

 whole scope of the argument upon the important question of a future being, 



Cb. XX. 11. 

 Y 



