HISTORY OF ISRAEL LIBRARY

The History of Ezra and of the Hagiocracy in Israel To the time of Christ.

BOOK 1
THE HAGIOCRACY

INTRODUCTION. 

II.

ISRAEL AMONG THE HEATHEN.

1.

The Inward Transformation.

Since the glorified hope of Israel was cherished so sedulously and so universally among the scattered masses of the people from the very first years of this heavy time of trial, and the recognition with which it was greeted darted rays of such brilliance through the life of this long period of gloom, it is clear that any favourable opportunity would fan into a flame of light the fire which still glowed beneath the ashes. Thus in the long run the years of exile, instead of turning out a curse to the community of the true God, which no longer survived except in ruins, would prove, contrary to human expectation, a real and great blessing to it.

Repulsed by the world, and thrown back upon itself, the peculiar genius of Israel, in so far as it was still uncorrupted and unexhausted and yet strove with all its might to secure the continuance of its own life and development, took advantage of this compulsory pause to collect its powers round their abiding centre, as a preliminary measure, and there condense them into the germ of a new life with greater tranquillity and less disturbance. The ruinous errors and perversities of earlier centuries were over now; and all the storm was past of that wild passion into which even the essentially noble efforts of Israel had so often degenerated in the time of the nation's independent life. Only the Immortal and Eternal in Israel could maintain itself, and the sole method by which it was enabled to hold out against the trials of the time was by severing itself more sternly than ever from all that was foreign to it, and returning more quietly and firmly upon itself. As we look upon the great stream of history, therefore, we may say with justice, Now or never must the noble and immortal in Israel learn simply by its own intrinsic might to hold its own against the ignoble efforts and degrading tendencies which still enter into its own fibre on the one hand, and against the whole of the great heathen world in the midst of which it is placed on the other; and the period we are considering is the only one in which both these difficulties were surmounted. Against the degrading tendencies of Israel itself there was now no Josiah or other champion to contend; against heathenism there was not the smallest power, not even a visible sanctuary of Israel, left. Even the hereditary priest could now derive no temporal advantage from the established Jahveism, since the offerings and other gifts had ceased of themselves, and indeed were demanded by no one; whereas the heathenism which was everywhere supreme appealed to each individual with all the force of its seductive charms.

If, then, in this altered state of things Jahveism was still to maintain itself, it could only be by its own intrinsic energy and essential truth; and although, in the course of the centuries immediately preceding, Jahveism had already felt in many ways the beginning of an inner purification and strengthening against heathenism, yet all this had now to be consolidated a thousand­fold, for the time had come when Jahveism must either entirely drop out of existence everywhere, or else increase its inner power and gather strength for a fresh life, as it had never done before.

Thus, towards the end of this most heavy time of trial, we observe a nation, already completely transformed within, and marvellously purified and invigorated, rising once more under the disadvantages of dispersion and external powerlessness. Moreover, this process takes place on the grandest scale, as the sequel of the history will more fully show; but we feel it with peculiar power as soon as we turn to the numerous songs of the period, the language of which soars on the wings of a courage and enthusiasm arising from the deepest source, combined with a sincerity of heart open as the day, which is always the sign of a nature deeply stirred and renovated. The great prophets had often foretold a thorough sifting in the last days, and the higher deliverance of a very small portion of the people only, when it had been thoroughly tested by sufferings; and much of this was now realised more powerfully and generally than ever before; for although many individuals partially or entirely sank into heathenism, yet others rose with all the more decision and energy against every perversion in that quarter or in Israel; and the few who were accustomed to watch diligently for God's hidden will and government, followed the silent or express development of things all the more intently during the period of compulsory inaction.

Indeed, this active observation was at this time exceedingly necessary. The simple conditions under which Israel had formerly moved had for a long time been absent; and although the great destruction itself had now broken away many of the surroundings which by their excessive complication had entangled the national life more and more inextricably, yet their remoter effects continued to exercise a powerful influence enough. Meanwhile, however, the deficiencies of the old order of things were deeply felt by more earnest minds, and a new order sought to establish itself so as to supply them, and carry out the uncompleted efforts to attain what the old still lacked.

1) The first and at the same time the most powerful effort of the time was simply an attempt to return to the ancient but eternal truths and forces which the community had established of old. It was these alone which in every age had brought to the people of God the salvation which it had enjoyed; and now, though they had so often before been neglected and despised, they were at last recognised most fully as the only truths capable of effecting its genuine deliverance again, and they still supported Israel even in this long and heavy trial. Repentance, and a return to the ancient, the everlasting, and the true God, from the delirium, the charms, and the seductions of the world, had indeed been for centuries the cry of the best prophets, ever growing in intensity. In the decline of the kingdom Josiah had striven with all his might to carry out this change through the whole life of the people; but it seemed as if Israel needed to be violently torn away from all the beloved habits and the security of its original fatherland, before it could wrest its heart from the corruptions which had there sunk so deep into it. What all the better kings and prophets had failed to accomplish in sufficient fulness in their own country was now, however, rapidly achieved by the inexorable severity of the time, on a foreign soil, and almost without the cooperation of man.

The many stern threats of the Prophets were now realised before their eyes in the most rigorous manner; they ceased to mock these anticipations as they so often used to do, and believed more seriously than ever before in the words of the great Prophets who had passed away. They saw and felt most keenly the consequences of those errors in the life of the ruined kingdom, against which the long line of Prophets had uttered their warnings for the most part in vain, and the spirit of many a survivor was rendered sensitive enough to look for the guilt in his own heart. Thus the heaviest blows which could fall upon a people were met, in accordance with the long-felt necessity, with deep grief and sincere repentance. The clearest proof of this is found in the four fast-days which were now celebrated every year in four different months, and continued into the times of the new Jerusalem, as a memorial of the four chief national disasters. And so, as far as we can judge, the contrition and repentance were as genuine and deep as possible; and at the same time most fundamental and far­reaching as regards the past. Not to err again as the "fathers", i.e. their ancestors, erred and were destroyed in their errors, is now the great cry to the new generation; but "even thy first father (Jacob) erred, and thy Prophets were (so often) treacherous to me", cries the divine voice to the scattered people. Thus no other than Abraham himself is to be the true and best example offered by the past to the nation,—so stringent is the demand now put forth, and so far back does it go, passing over everything in the least imperfect, and only resting where it can find perfection in its historic quest. But when the claim of religion thus goes back to the very origin, it must comprise the most enduring and universally needful conditions, and demand these with the most vigorous determination; just as we now see the great Unnamed (of whom we shall have more to say presently) refer all true religion back to the few 'principles of its supreme claim, but insist on these with the utmost emphasis. In all periods of difficulty like these, when the very foundations are shaken, the contest can be sustained only by the deepest forces of religion, and none but her purest truths, few in number, can be insisted on. Since the time of Moses, Israel had never again had to contend for the truths of its religion so strenuously as now, but these truths were such that in the severest conflicts they could not fail to be more and more fully and deeply recognised. Thus the conversion which was now demanded in deep repentance for former sins, was nothing but the grasping anew, in these first birth-pangs of a new age, of the loftiest truths, in spite of all obstacles, and therefore with a determination and power never realised before.

As to the means by which this return to firm faith and hope and a complete renovation of spirit were to be secured, but one way remained open to the community, individually and collectively, after the overthrow of the external sanctuary and the sacrifices. It was the simplest and last, but the most inalienable and efficacious—viz. the power of prayer. Prayer had never before had the significance and power in Israel which it wins and keeps henceforth in its history; and the long prayers which are so often inserted in books from this time forward are only a reflection of the earnestness, power, and constancy with which this most simple and wonderful instrument for strengthening the spirit laid firmer and firmer hold of every branch of life. During the preceding centuries, it is true, the practice had already become increasingly dear to many pious hearts; and it was specially at the hour of the daily temple-offering, morning and evening, when the 'incense' rose to heaven, that the faithful far and near delighted to put up their prayers, so that the prayer of the holy and the pious itself came gradually to be considered the best incense of God; but it had never before appeared in such power as that with which it henceforth seized hold of the nation. If several individuals assembled for common prayer and edification, they now selected some suitable place near running water, on account of the associated ablutions; just as in later times also they always established the Proseuchoe in heathen countries in the neighbourhood of a stream. But wherever a prayer was offered throughout the whole extent of the dispersion, the face was still turned to the site of the ancient sanctuary in Jerusalem, where the presence of the Holy One upon earth was always felt more powerfully.

This usage was already established among the exiles long before the destruction of Jerusalem, and was perpetuated in later times after the rebuilding of the Temple, when it gained even for greater strength. It subsequently became customary to connect prayer with a fixed order of specified hours of the day, and in the age of the Pharisees the abuse of frequent prayer with its apparent sanctity was great; but we ought not to shut our eyes to the fact that henceforth, and from the midst of this people, prayer became a power whose wonderful influence rose higher and higher, down to the days of Christianity and even of Islam, acquiring in the latter a momentary position of the highest significance to the history of the world, though so caricatured as ultimately to do irreparable injury to the cause of true religion.

Now this return to the deeper and more permanent life in God necessarily assumed the shape at the same time of a more thorough revolt from every form of heathenism than had ever been achieved before. With this every individual member of the nation was now brought into the closest and most constant contact; and scarcely in the time of Moses had the question been so universally and so definitely put to them, whether they would submit to the religion of the heathen who were their sole masters, or not. But the very closeness of this contact, and the accuracy of the knowledge thus obtained, must have created a profound repulsion in all the deeper minds; and the fact that the genius of heathenism had been developed by the Babylonians of this very period to the highest point of art and science of which it was susceptible, but had become utterly corrupt as a rule of life, necessarily increased the horror with which it was regarded. Thus the rejection, in the most contemptuous manner conceivable, of every feature of heathenism kept pace with the deepening consciousness of the eternal truth of Jahveism; and never before had all the senseless and therefore intrinsically ridiculous notions involved in idol-worship been pursued and exposed in detail as they were now. Entirely new expressions, moreover, embodying this horror of everything heathenish, and specially of idol-worship, which now sunk deep into the people's heart for the first time, are gradually coined in their language. The mocking play on the words Elohim God, and Elilim "Nothings", i.e. idols, was certainly frequent in Israel from the time of Moses; but the designation of the heathen gods collectively or individually, even in simple narrative style, by such terms as abomination, and the like, occurs for the first time about the end of the eighth century, and does not come into general use until the Babylonian exile.

2.

The Approach of the Crisis.

As soon as the union which had hitherto subsisted between the Chaldee and the Median empires was dissolved, and the Perso-Median empire, moulded by Cyrus into a fresh great power, stepped victoriously forth in Asia, an event which nearly coincided with the death of Nabuchadrezzar, a new crisis necessarily became imminent for all the more western countries; and a general presentiment of it may soon have been stirring through the majority of the nations hitherto held in stern subjection by the Chaldeans. But scarcely any one of the subjugated nations could have been so powerfully seized by the idea as Israel, for no other had lost so much and yet still bore within itself the elements of so great a future. No other nation of the time, assuredly, counted in its ranks minds so noble and so completely possessed by the certainty and truth of God, understanding so clearly and expressing so unequivocally the divine signs of so exceptional an age, as the prophets of Israel.

In every period such as this, when a suffering people which has long been pining for redemption and salvation, sees in the distance the first glimmer of a new and brighter day, its glance opens out into a future which from that moment is free to receive the stamp of the purest and loftiest ideal which hovers before it. Even the most exalted type, which has never yet been actually realised, seems now to be brought into close proximity. What has hitherto only been yearned for in silence can be more directly pursued, and the hardest task may be undertaken in the boldest spirit and with purest zeal; and never yet in the world's history had there been a more exalted object, or one worthier and more difficult of attainment than that which we may suppose to have hovered at this time before the eyes of Israel. Not only its redemption, but also the fulfilment of all its higher destiny in the world, now seemed to be brought near to the penetrating and inspired eye; and if even such a glance as this, in spite of the most longing search, could not discover among the living members of the ancient community any single instrument suitable for God to employ for the immediate accomplishment of his plans for Israel, yet outside this sacred circle it easily found the divine hero whom the Lord of all the earth might have selected for the purpose.

Obscure as the primitive history of the Medes and Persians and their religion still is to us, we yet see this much with certainty, that the Persians at any rate were at that time a people very free from corruption, and that their Zarathustrian religion, with Ahura-Mazda as its supreme god, was still very serious and austere. Indeed, the extraordinary distinctness with which it grasps the principle of evil in imagination, and in the myths of the gods, as well as in life, makes it essentially the most strict and lofty of all heathen religions. With all the vividness and variety of its imaginative conceptions, it yet preserves itself from the adoration of actual images, and exhibits in many respects an antithesis to every other form of heathenism. It is a kind of reformed heathenism, and boasts with reason of Zarathustra as its law-giver; for he was the first to give it its most characteristic shape, and so to separate it entirely from the Vedic or oldest Indian religion with which it had originally been almost identical. As far as its origin is concerned, it has nothing whatever in common with Jahveism; but of all heathen religions it comes nearest to it in its austerity, and it resembles it in the rejection of the adoration of images. This horror of image-worship seems to have been the very first feature with which the Babylonian exiles became acquainted; for when the relation of the Persians to the Medes was as yet but little understood in Babylon, where people only spoke of the more familiar Medes, it was nevertheless already known that the Persians were not worshippers of images. Moreover, there are many indications of the Zarathustrian religion having been already known and honoured in various parts of western Asia before the Persians made it the religion of a great conquering nation. The great hero Cyrus, who professed this faith, and to whom again the Persians and Medes were attached with the most enthusiastic veneration, quite unlike his son Cambyses in later times, was full of gentleness and love of justice, and delighted in rescuing the oppressed. The prophets had all the more reason, therefore, to recognise in him and in his hosts the warriors called forth and consecrated by Jahveh himself for the restoration of the rights of so many nations of the earth, and especially of Israel, which had been crushed by the Chaldeans; and the certainty and unshaken confidence with which they foresaw and foretold this great change so long before it was accomplished, afford no small proof of the internal truth and strength which the prophetic power in Israel still retained in these later times. Before Cyrus finally advanced to the conquest of Babylon more than twenty years were spent for the most part in very distant military operations; but long before he drew near to Babylon these prophets foretold his victory and the deliverance of Israel, which was no longer to be delayed.

We are, indeed, unacquainted with the individual names of these prophets. They certainly belonged for the most part to the second generation of the exiles; and when the stillness of the grave gradually threatened to reign in Israel, it was only as they approached the great turning-point that they were seized with fresh inspiration. The time was one of such oppression that for the most part they contented themselves with sending into the world fly-leaves, so to speak, to which they did not think it worth while to put their names, and thus they soon called into existence once more a branch of composition which was shortly afterwards to die out altogether. We certainly possess none but the most important of these leaves; but by means of the few which have been preserved, we can still recognise clearly enough the progress of this new species of prophetic literature, and the wide extension which it rapidly attained. We seem to hear in them the deep breath and the beating heart of a mighty age when a great crisis was drawing near.

First of all, a prophet announces to his people the fall of Babylon as a lofty certainty revealed by God in a distinct though distant vision, in the first instance to him alone. No one on earth knows anything more of how it will come to pass. This prophet alone has beheld it with certainty from his heavenly height, and foretold it to his down-trodden country­men in words of almost uncontrollable enthusiasm and impetuosity, through which the short enumeration of the sins of Babylon, which render its downfall inevitable, hardly makes itself heard. A second prophet next declares this divine necessity in far calmer language, and he even concludes with a long dirge on the fall of the proud Chaldean king. But since his actual fall must still have been in the future, it can hardly be seriously intended for an elegy. On the other hand, it involuntarily becomes a legitimate satire on the king who still presumptuously imagined himself safe and was yet so weak, who boasted that he would abide in strength like a god, and was yet as good as thrust down into hell by God already. Both these prophets certainly lived in Babylon itself or the neighbourhood, under Chaldean supremacy; and the same spirit, boldly and even contemptuously foretelling the approaching collapse of this supremacy, no doubt often manifested itself in this region in simple songs. Of this we have a telling example in Ps. XIV. But the deepest meaning involved in this extraordinary period, with all its ramifications, is finally proclaimed by a prophet who, from all the traces we can discover, seems to have lived not immediately under Chaldean supremacy, but somewhere in Egypt, and to whom we can now give no suitable designation except that of the great Unnamed. With the creative glance of the purest and divinest inspiration, he recognises Israel's true and necessary destiny in the course of the ages, and for the first time declares that this people, as the servant of Jahveh, must now at length, by fully grasping and faithfully clinging to its ancient true religion itself, become the divine instrument among the heathen for drawing them to it also, and so by establishing the divine truth and salvation for all nations fulfil its own divine destiny. This sunbeam breaks upon his view through the gloom of all the ages. In its light he sees the loftier certainty of the approaching redemption of Israel, and offers it true comfort for its long sufferings; nay, he can already point, full of triumph, to the marvellous glory which now, for the first time, awaits it. But the same light enabled him to recognise most clearly those errors and sins, which had hitherto prevented the realisation of its fairer destiny, and made him the severest censor of all the defects which still remained, as well as the noblest vehicle of the admonition to obey at last without reserve, when the hour was conic, the clear and mighty voice of God. Thus, while he covers with the inexhaustible stream of his inspired discourse a great number and variety of objects, he still proclaims in every case nothing but the glad tidings of the divine salvation, which now opened out with an entirely new power. It was the gospel of God to that age. The breath of the gospel blows for the first time through this period, as though the inmost impulse of Christianity were already endeavouring to make itself felt, and the grand truths and forces which now for the first time endeavoured to penetrate through Israel to the great world were never again completely blown away or dried up. On the other hand, Christianity on its side had to take up and continue the thread at the place where it had first been spun. But, apart from a number of pregnant minor songs of this date, this evangelical spirit, which now animated the world for the first time, nowhere found so adequate a mouthpiece as in the great Unnamed. In him the noblest spirit of the great prophets of old, elevated and glorified by the aspiration of this new crisis, rose once more into the most amazing vitality, and on this ground he may with justice be called the last great prophet. In a spiritual sense he may be said to have completed the whole prophetic work of the Old Covenant, for no other great prophet of the same kind could follow him as the immediate precursor of Christ himself. But the full measure of this prophet's greatness is also displayed by the fact that though he so clearly recognised the final destiny of Israel as the only qualified instrument for the declaration of the truth and salvation of Jahveh amongst all peoples, and though he points out with such confidence the future glory which would accrue to it, yet he no less distinctly grasps the fact that the most immediate necessities of the time also required as a preliminary a fresh reunion of the people of God amongst themselves, and therefore a return to the ancient holy land. The best proof of the preponderant power of true religion in this prophet's inmost soul is found in the perfect transparency, like that of the open heaven, with which he ultimately refers everything back to the eternal rule of the true God alone, as a power before which even Israel might sink into nothingness again.

History had taught most clearly during the last two centuries, and would teach again still more clearly, how transient was even that external power which appeared the most abiding, and that human empire which held the widest sway; how eternity and eternal salvation were to be found only in the true God and in that Word of his which had now been revealed so long, but ever proved afresh its truth and power. Thus, in contrast with the heathen nations, among whom no germ of the eternal progress of indestructible salvation existed, Israel itself may be called an eternal people; but its eternity rests only on that of the divine word and salvation, so far as it supplies a base for these upon earth. In contrast with the same heathen, Israel is also the chosen people, which God himself has moulded for his special instrument, and has destined to be his servant, just as a great lord or monarch might select any one of his servants or dependents to do his work or extend his realm; but the work to be so done, and the kingdom to be so extended, are ultimately the work and the kingdom of God himself and of no other. It is only his free grace which selected this solitary nation for such a high destiny, without any merit of its own, and without its having any right to claim it. On this ground it would indeed be delivered from the depth of its present misery, and would even be glorified to a corresponding degree; but only in order that it might be stirred all the more deeply with gratitude to God for this last and greatest mark of the divine grace and saving power, and that all its members, as living monuments and inspired witnesses of the salvation of the true God, might with the more force draw all the heathen towards him. The actual fulfilment of all the new dispensation which now approaches and is introduced for the first time into the promise, with its glory such as eye had never seen, is guaranteed by the very fact of the fulfilment, now certain, of the old dispensation—the predictions, namely, of the earlier prophets concerning the downfall of all the enemies of the true community, and its own duration for ever. Nevertheless, in spite of this confidence, and in spite of his glowing zeal for the honour and the calling of Israel, this prophet knows well enough that the majority of the members of Israel then living answered but very imperfectly to the idea of the servant of Jahveh, and so he makes a further distinction between the servant of Jahveh in the strict, that is, the narrower sense, and the servant of Jahveh in the wider sense. The former, he hopes, will, in accordance with the will of God now openly revealed, co-operate in the redemption of the latter also; and he himself, at the same time, enters at once upon his share of this labour as far as his powers allow, at least encouraging and summoning himself to the work, and not in vain, with divine ideas. When, however, many of his contemporaries murmur because the physical deliverance of Israel from exile was not to proceed from the promised Messiah, but from a king who did not belong to it, he points out that Jahveh, who can make any man the instrument of his power, has chosen Cyrus as his true Anointed, that he may restore justice upon earth and set Israel free. On this account, too, the hopes of the Messiah from the midst of Israel itself are provisionally dormant with this writer, as with all his contemporaries; not as if they were discarded, but simply from a correct perception that they could for the present have no significance. The place which is thus left vacant, however, is only the more easily occupied in the prophet's view, by the summons to Israel to become, side by side with this Cyrus, the other instrument of God, in the long run far more glorious and eternal, for the establishment of a better world; so that thus far what seemed to be untoward in the destiny of Israel might rather turn out a loftier advantage.

In such wise does this prophet link together in marvellous discourse the old and the new: the fate of the Chaldeans and of all other nations, the calling of the mighty ones of the time, and the apparently insignificant but eternal destiny of Israel, still bowed so low, and pining in gloom and misery. But meanwhile, long seasons passed before the new great power of the world drew near to the conquest of Babylon, or indeed, of Egypt either (for the prophet had distinctly foretold that she, too, would have to submit). The fulfilment seemed to be delayed, and the sufferings on the one hand, and discontented dejection on the other, increased in Israel. On this the same great Unnamed felt himself impelled once more to lift up his voice, and in another great work to hold up before Israel its ideal type and its actual perversions far more clearly and impressively than before. As everything presses on to the final crisis, the deepest tones become audible,nor is there in the whole range of the Old Testament another piece which speaks of Israel with more heartfelt earnestness, and strives with greater power to raise it from its material depths to its purest spiritual height.

Meanwhile, in all the countries in which members of the ancient people dwelt at all near together, the tension must constantly have risen higher and higher amongst them also; and no wonder that even the predictions of the earlier prophets were now sought out and read with an intensity of interest never felt before, or were even employed and worked up afresh. In his second work, the great Unnamed himself inserts long passages from older prophetic books, just as they seemed appropriate to his subject. A second unnamed writer, who lived somewhere in the holy land itself, published the book of Jeremiah, enlarged by the addition of a new section, and worked up afresh in some passages. This publication took place when Cyrus had already advanced to the siege of the outworks of Babylon; and he must, as we know, have spent several years in bringing this formidable siege to a conclusion. At that time the most various reports and counter-reports, anticipations and apprehensions, were flying about, and doubts were still entertained in many quarters whether the Chaldean empire would really collapse, and the walls and other defences of Babylon, the strength of which had even become proverbial, fall before the hosts of Cyrus. All the more emphatically, therefore, does this prophet promise their immediate fall, and the final and well-merited punishment of the superstition and cruelty of the Chaldeans. On the other hand, he urges the members of Jahveh's people who still dwelt there boldly to flee from a city in which the exiles and captives of many conquered nations had already been sighing for deliverance only too long; and he clothes the whole in the form of an oracle of Jeremiah himself, because many of the exiles in Babylon may have endeavoured to shield their faint-heartedness under the words in which Jeremiah had once exhorted them to submit quietly to the supremacy of the Chaldeans. Later on, when no obstacle stood any longer in the way of the return of Israel, this same disciple of the prophets, it seems, re-issued a very considerable section of the book of Isaiah, with the addition by himself of an appendix of joyous promises, in which many of the thoughts of the great Unnamed recur, as if meanwhile the writings of the latter had already become known in wider circles.

3.

The Liberation by Cyrus.

In the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia (for in reference to all the Syrian countries the first year of his reign could only begin with the destruction of the Babylonian empire), that his word spoken by Jeremiah might be fulfilled, Jahveh stirred up the spirit of this king, so that he caused a royal proclamation to be published throughout all his kingdom, that "Jahveh the God of Heaven had given him dominion over the world, and had charged him to build up his sanctuary in Jerusalem again; all the members of his people, therefore, who still remained, might return thither in order thus to build the Temple, assisted in every mariner by those amongst whom they had hitherto lived." Such is the account of the Chronicler. This method of representation is followed out still further by a later writer, of whom we shall see more hereafter as a Hellenistic narrator of the Perso-Hebrew history, and whose words have been preserved by Fl. Josephus. He relates that Cyrus had read the oracles of Isaiah concerning himself, delivered two hundred and ten years previously, in which it was foretold that he would rebuild the sanctuary in Jerusalem, and was led in consequence to form this determination, actually assigning it in his public proclamation as the principal ground of his relations with Israel. This Hellenist then transferred to his historical narrative what was read in his time in the book of Isaiah as we now have it, with the interpretation which was then put upon it, although a more accurate investigations has shown us that the passages in the book of Isaiah here referred to originated no earlier than with the great Unnamed.

The edict of the great king concerning the liberation of Israel, the permission given to restore the ancient sanctuary, and the royal support to be granted for the purpose, have certainly not been preserved in a sufficiently full and original form even in the more simple representation of the Chronicles. The Persian cuneiform inscriptions, which have been deciphered with sufficient certainty in this respect at least, show us clearly, it is true, that the great kings of Persia delighted in beginning their official proclamations with the name of the Creator, and distinctly acknowledged that he had given them their power and dominion over the world, but whether Cyrus ever called this creator Jahveh, is another question. In other respects, too, the decree, as we now have it, is clothed in the language and style peculiar to the Chronicler alone. Again, any such decree, if it dealt with the help which was to be given to the people in their return, and in the building of their Temple, certainly contained a number of more detailed specifications on the subject.

But if we turn our eyes away from the colouring of the language in which the determination of Cyrus has been handed down to us, from no earlier source than the Chronicler, we can entertain no manner of doubt as to the correctness of the fact itself. Many, it would seem, had already reassembled among the ruins of Jerusalem during the years immediately preceding the fall of Babylon, in some cases fleeing from the great city before it was too closely invested, and in some instances returning from foreign lands as the fall of the Babylonian power gradually became quite certain. Without permission from the new Persian ruler, however, the city could never be rebuilt even on a modest scale. We have no longer, it is true, any accurate knowledge of the way in which the movement fell into shape, nor of those who most exerted themselves with the conqueror of Babylon in order to obtain a favourable decree for the restoration of Jerusalem and the return of the exiles. But when, in the light of the facts which we have already established with certainty, we consider what intense spiritual activity reigned amongst the members of the ancient people during the years immediately preceding the fall of Babylon, and what kind of men, guided by the purest and the warmest zeal for the honour and the historic rights of Israel, still rose up from among the great masses of the dispersion and the exile, we cannot be surprised that the right moment for their liberation, when sent by heaven, was not suffered to pass them by unused. As the mighty destroyer of the Babylonian empire, Cyrus was already called, without being stimulated by others, to bring freedom and restoration to all the peoples it had oppressed, and all the cities it had overthrown. In Israel he gave back to freedom a people which, in spite of its seeming insignificance at the time, nevertheless bore with it a more momentous future than that of any of the nations subjugated and crushed by the Chaldeans, and in which he really only restored free movement to an eternal community; in its liberation, therefore, he consciously or unconsciously served a purely divine purpose, which stood infinitely higher than himself. In the bosom of the community the belief was cherished from the first, as we saw from the Chronicles, that Cyrus had been moved by the spirit of the true God himself in setting Israel free; and, even before the liberation, the great Unnamed had declared, only still more distinctly than the other prophets of Israel, that the question of the fall of Babylon, and of the advancing power of Cyrus, was ultimately a simple question of the destinies of the true religion, and that Cyrus had been raised by the only true God to irresistible sovereignty for the primary purpose of delivering the people of God. Such thoughts may well appear too lofty, but yet they were supported by the strength of an inner truth, which the great course of history has fully confirmed. When that community which vividly realised that the true religion rested and sought to complete itself within it, had been set free, its liberation could ultimately be a source of thankfulness only to the power of the true God, which worked in Cyrus also, without its being ungrateful to Cyrus on that account; and amongst all the events produced by the victories of Cyrus, and especially by his overthrow of the Chaldean empire, no single one was in the long run, and with reference to the whole history of the world, so momentous as the restoration of Israel, insignificant as it might appear at the time. Of this the conclusion of this very history will supply the proof. That great prophet, then, did but form a true estimate of the work, purely divine in its ultimate significance and power, which must be completed in Israel, were the time short or long, and of the higher necessity which this immediately involved of the restoration of Israel as a nation; so that the most profound designs of Providence seemed to hinge on this unique and tremendous crisis in the history of the world.

But among all the later reminiscences of the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus, one never to be forgotten feature always rises above the rest, viz. the amazing rapidity with which the victory was gained, and the way in which the whole Chaldean supremacy was shattered by it as at a single blow. It is true that no very ancient account of this has been preserved in the Old Testament; and what the Greeks tell us about it, like everything else they have to say on the marvellous character and exploits of Cyrus, simply reflects those scattered, half-obscure traditions which Xenophon finally endeavoured to unite together and to bring into a clearer light in his Cyropedia; task which he accomplished indeed, but with little regard to history. Even in the later book of Daniel this reminiscence forms the most brilliant point in the whole Chaldean history; and if from the whole scope and aim of the work its author could only sketch the picture in the merest outline, yet this outline stands out all the more boldly from the dark background, and casts a fiery glow upon the whole narrative. The capture of Babylon by Cyrus in a single night, while the Babylonians were celebrating in careless ease a luxurious feast, is the fixed kernel of the tradition in all its forms. The later Hebrew narrator, however, in retaining the equally old tradition of the sacred vessels of the Temple, which had been brought as it were by robbery to Babylon, and further vindicating the genuine truth of the eternal sentence inflicted by God on the pride of human sovereignty, sketches the wonderfully striking picture of the fall of the last Babylonian king. It was on that very night on which in insolent caprice he ordered these most sacred vessels to be brought to his luxurious feast. He falls, not indeed without warning from the clear voice of heaven; but the hand of God, whose brief and oracular writing not one of the Babylonian sages, but only a Daniel, could read and interpret, had nothing to write for him on the walls of his stately hall, in the midst of his wanton banquet, but the doom impending on his empire and himself. The walls of the royal halls of Nineveh and Babylon were covered with significant representations, as we know once more from the researches among the ruined heaps of those bygone capitals of the civilised world; but among the forms which art has traced, as they now issue again into light, who will search for the letters of that writing of God and find them? Who will not see, after a moment's thought, that the whole narration, insomuch as it endeavours to set before our eyes the purely divine purport of the events, can only be reinterpreted and grasped in the spirit from which it originally flowed?—But this does not prevent us from adequately recognising the grounds in external history on which it is also based; and if on the one hand it is impossible to deny that in this later representation a great deal of the narrative is simply drawn from popular sources, on the other hand we have no reason to doubt that the designation Belshazzar here given to the last king of Babylon, elsewhere known by his ordinary name Nabunid, was his proper royal appellation.

III.

THE SPECIAL CHARACTER OF THE NEW PERIOD.