Nations shall come to thy light,
And kings to the brightness of thy radiance.
And kings to the brightness of thy radiance.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v18 - Mom to Old
And the king of Israel said, Take Micaiah, and
carry him back unto Amon the governor of the city, and to Joash
the king's son, and say, Thus saith the king, Put this fellow in
the prison, and feed him with bread and water of the worst sort,
until I come in peace. And Micaiah said, If thou return at all in
peace, Jehovah has not spoken by me.
A peculiar interest attaches to the three short books Ruth, Jonah,
and Esther. These differ from the works above named in the fact
that they describe each a single event. Each is a unity with defi-
nitely marked characters and incidents, leading to a culmination. In
a word, so far as the literary form is concerned, these are short
stories; and they seem to be the first productions of this sort in all
the ancient world. Their predecessors in Hebrew literature are the
incidents described in the Pentateuch and the historical books, in
the lives of the Patriarchs, Judges, and Kings, and Prophets; as for
example the story of Jephthah, the campaign of Gideon, the rebel-
lion of Absalom, and the challenge of Elijah to the priests of Baal.
These also are succinct and vivid narratives of particular incidents,
but the three books here referred to have the quality of finish and
plot,- elaborate arrangement of incident leading up to a dénoue-
ment,—in a still higher degree. The Moabitess Ruth, left a widow,
departs with her mother-in-law to a strange land; and here, by her
charm, conquers a place, and becomes the honored head of a great
household. Jonah, anxious to avoid a disagreeable mission, is never-
theless forced to go to Nineveh, and there becomes the occasion of
the announcement of a religious truth of primary significance,-
namely, that God cares no less for Nineveh than for Jerusalem. The
skill with which the narrative in Esther is constructed has always
excited admiration. The splendid royal banquet-the refusal of
Queen Vashti to make herself a spectacle to the drunken guests—
her deposition by the offended despot, and his determination to choose
another queen
- the appearance of the Jewess Esther, whose nation-
ality has been carefully concealed by her guardian Mordecai - the
successive trials of the inmates of the harem, and the selection of
Esther to be Queen-all this is an astounding whirligig of fortune.
But this is only preparatory to the main event. The sturdy Morde-
cai refuses to do reverence to the King's haughty favorite Haman,
who, exasperated by his persistent contempt, resolves to extirpate the
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10781
Jewish population of Persia, and procures a royal decree to that
effect. The Jews are in despair. Mordecai sends word to Esther
that she must go to the King (which to do unbidden is a crime) and
intercede; he adds that otherwise she herself will not escape the
general fate. She finally plucks courage from despair, goes, is gra-
ciously received, and invites the King and Haman to a banquet that
day. At that banquet she invites them to another next day, when
she will make her request. Haman, elated, listens to the advice of
his wife and his friends, and prepares a lofty post on which Mordecai
is to be impaled. That night the King, unable to sleep, listens to an
account, in the court record, of a good deed of Mordecai, hitherto
unrewarded. Who is without? he asks. The answer is: Haman (who
had come to arrange the impalement of his enemy).
He is sum-
moned, enters, is asked what should be done to the man whom the
King delights to honor. Thinking it could be only himself, he sug-
gests that the man, clothed in royal apparel, ride through the streets
on the King's own horse. So be it: Haman is ordered to conduct
Mordecai. It is a terrible blow, and is taken by his wife and his
friends as an omen of disaster. Next day, however, he comes to the
Queen's banquet, and here the King asks her to state her request-he
would grant it if it cost half his kingdom. The narrative continues:
QUEEN ESTHER answered: If I have found favor in thy sight,
O king, and if it please the king, let my life be granted me
at my petition, and my people at my request; for we are sold, I
and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, to perish. If we
had been sold as slaves, I had held my peace.
And King
Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther: Who is he and where is he
who dares so to do? Esther answered: The adversary and enemy
is this wicked Haman. Haman was afraid before the king and
the queen. The king rose up in wrath from the banquet of wine,
and went into the palace garden, and Haman remained standing
to plead for his life with Queen Esther; for he saw that there
was evil determined against him by the king. Then the king
returned from the garden to the banqueting-hall, and Haman had
sunk down on the couch on which Esther was. And the king
said: Will he do violence to the queen here in my presence?
As the words went out of the king's mouth, they covered Ha-
man's face.
•
The clear portraiture of persons, the succession of interesting sit-
uations, the rapidity and inevitableness of the movement, the splen-
did reversal of fortunes, combine to make the book a work of art of
a high order.
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
THE PROPHETS
The most distinctly characteristic part of Old Testament literature
is the prophetical. The position of the Israelitish prophet is unique.
No other people has produced a line of moral and religious patriots,
who followed the fortunes of the nation from generation to gen-
eration, and amid all changes of political situation remained true to
their cardinal principle,- that no conditions of power and wealth
would avail a nation which did not pay strict obedience to the moral
law and place its reliance in God. The prophetic writing belongs, in
general, to the class of oratory. The prophets are political-religious
watchmen, who appear at every crisis to announce the will of God.
They denounce current sins, religious and moral. They plead, exhort,
threaten, lament. They differ from other orators in that their audi-
ence is not a court of law, nor an assembly of the people, but the
whole nation; and the question which they discuss is not the inter-
pretation of a statute, or a particular point of political policy, but the
universal principle of obedience to God.
The language of the prophetical discourses is for the most part
rhythmical and measured, and the discourses themselves naturally
fall into strophes and paragraphs. There is no metre, no fixed suc-
cession or number of syllables in a line, and no regular strophic
arrangement; -on the contrary, the greatest freedom prevails in
respect to length of clauses and of strophes. The elaborate strophic
structure of the odes of the Greek drama does not exist in the pro-
phetic discourses; and as divisions into verses and strophes were
not given in the original Hebrew text, we are left to determine the
arrangement in every case from the contents. The writings of the
prophets vary greatly in style and in charm and power; but they
are almost without exception vigorous and striking. Whether they
denounce social evils, or inveigh against idolatry, whether they pro-
claim the wrath of God, or his mercy,- whether they threaten or
implore, they are almost always strong and picturesque.
The paragraphs, the logical divisions of simple prose discourse,
are generally marked in the English Revised Version. Strophic
divisions, marked by headings or refrains in rhythmical elevated
prose, are sometimes but not always indicated. Examples of stro-
phes are Amos i. , ii. ; Isa. v. 8–24 (woes); ix. 8-x. 4 (refrain), to which
should be attached v. 25; Ezek. xviii. , xx. , xxxii. 19-32 (not indicated
in R. V. ).
Among the prophets none is more eloquent than Amos in the
denunciation of social evils; take, for example, the passage on the
following page (Am. v. 11–24).
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10783
FORASMUCH as ye trample on the poor,
And take from him exactions of wheat,
Though ye have built houses of hewn stone.
Ye shall not dwell in them,
Though ye have planted pleasant vineyards
Ye shall not drink the wine thereof.
For I know how manifold are your transgressions
And how mighty are your sins,
Ye who afflict the just, who take bribes,
Who deprive the poor of their rights in courts of justice.
Therefore he that is prudent keeps silence in such a time, for
it is an evil time. Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live:
and then Jehovah, the God of hosts, may be with you, as ye say.
Hate the evil, and love the good, and maintain justice in the
courts: then it may be that Jehovah, the God of hosts, will be
gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
There shall be wailing in all the broad ways,
In all the streets they shall say, Alas!
They shall call the husbandman to mourning,
And such as are skillful in lamentation to wailing.
In all vineyards shall be wailing,
For I will pass through the midst of thee, saith Jehovah.
Woe unto you who desire the day of Jehovah: why would ye
have the day of Jehovah? it is darkness and not light—as if a
man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him, and when he got
into his house and leaned his hand on the wall, a serpent bit
him. Shall not the day of Jehovah be darkness and not light?
very dark, and no brightness in it?
I hate, I despise your feasts,
I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Though you offer me your burnt-offerings and cereal
I will not accept them;
[offerings,
The peace-offerings of your fat beasts I will not regard.
Take away from me the noise of thy songs;
The clang of thy viols I will not hear.
But let equity roll down as waters,
And justice as a perennial stream.
## p. 10784 (#664) ##########################################
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
Amos, Isaiah, and Ezekiel display no tenderness toward their peo-
ple; Hosea is an intensely loving nature; Jeremiah's prevailing atti-
tude is one of sorrow, as in these extracts from chapters viii. and
ix. of his book:-
ОH FOR Comfort in my sorrow! My heart is sick! Hark! the
cry of the Daughter of my People from a far-off land: Is not
Jehovah in Zion? is not her King in her? -[Jehovah speaks:]
Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images
and with foreign gods? -[The people:] The harvest is past,
the autumn ingathering is ended, and we are not saved. — [The
prophet:] By the ruin of the Daughter of my People my spirit
is crushed; I mourn; dismay seizes me. Is there no balm in
Gilead? is there no physician there? why then is the wound of
the Daughter of my People not healed? -Oh that my head were.
water, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day
and night for the slain of the Daughter of my People! Oh that
I could find in the wilderness a lodging-place for travelers, that
I might leave my people, and from them go far away! .
For the mountains will I break forth into weeping and wailing,
and for the pastures of the wilderness utter a lament, because
they are burned, so that none passes through; voices of cattle
are not heard; birds of the heaven and beasts of the field are
all fled and gone.
. Call for the mourning women, that
they may come; send for women skilled in lament, that they may
come and utter wailing for us, that tears may stream from our
eyes and water from our eyelids.
•
Ezekiel's tremendous power of denunciation and of description
appears throughout his book; see for example Chapters vi. , xi. , xvi. ,
xx. , xxiii. , xxvi. -xxviii. , xxix. -xxxii. , xxxviii. , xxxix. He thus addresses
the land of Israel (vi. ):-
I WILL bring the sword on you, and destroy your high places;
Your altars shall be desolate, your sun-images shall be broken,
I will cast down your slain before your idols,
And scatter your bones about your altars.
And the remnant that escape the sword, scattered through the
lands,
Shall remember me among the nations whither they are car-
ried captive.
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10785
I will crush their faithless hearts and their apostate eyes,
And they shall loathe themselves for their abominable
deeds.
Smite with the hand, stamp with the foot!
Say, alas! because of the sins of the House of Israel,
For they shall fall by sword, famine, and plague.
He who is far off shall die of the plague,
He who is near shall fall by the sword,
He who is besieged shall perish by famine:
Thus will I accomplish my fury on them.
And they shall know that I am Jehovah
When their slain lie by their idols about their altars,
On every high hill, on the mountain-tops,
Under every green tree and leafy terebinth,
Where they offered sweet savor to all their idols.
The section devoted to Tyre (xxvi. -xxviii. ) is of special interest
for the picture it gives of the magnificence of that city. The King
of Tyre is thus described (xxviii. 12-17):—
THOU wert full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
In Eden, the garden of God, thou wast,
All precious stones were thine adornment,
Ruby, topaz, diamond, beryl, and onyx,
Jasper, sapphire, carbuncle, emerald.
In the day when thou wast created
I placed thee with the Cherub in the sacred Mount of
God,
Amid the stones of fire thou didst walk.
Perfect thou wast in thy life
From the day of thy creation till sin appeared in thee.
The vastness of thy traffic filled thee with sin,
From the Mount of God I did expel thee as profane,
The Cherub cast thee forth from amid the stones of
fire.
Thou didst swell with pride in thy beauty,
Thy splendor vitiated thy wisdom.
Down to the ground I cast thee,
To kings I made thee a spectacle,
That they might feast their eyes on thee.
XVIII-675
## p. 10786 (#666) ##########################################
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
Alongside of this (the resemblance between which and the pict
ure in Gen. ii. -iii. is obvious) we may put the address to Pharaoh
(xxxi. ), who is portrayed as a mighty tree (the cedar of Lebanon is
chosen as the noblest of trees), watered by a great river (the Nile)
and its canals:-
WHOм art thou like in thy greatness?
Lo, there stood in Lebanon a mighty cedar,
With stately boughs, lofty of stature,
Its top reached the clouds.
Water had made it great, the Deep had made it high,
Streams ran through its soil, rivers over its field.
All trees of the forest it excelled in height,
Abundant water gave it many boughs.
In its branches all birds had their nests,
Under its boughs were the lairs of all beasts,
In its shadow dwelt many nations.
It was stately in height, in the mass of its branches,
For its roots were richly watered.
Cedars in the garden of God were not its equals,
Cypresses were not like its boughs, nor plane-trees like
its branches;
No tree in the garden of God was like it
In beauty and in mass of branches,
And the trees of Eden, in the garden of God, did envy it.
The prophet's imagination, reveling in its picture, does not always
keep figure and original sharply apart; as in the description of Pha-
raoh's fall (xxxi. 15-17), in which the tree and the king are skillfully
blended without loss of unity:—
Thus says the Lord Jehovah: On the day when it was hurled
down to Sheol, I made the River mourn for it, the streams were
held back and ceased to flow; for it I caused Lebanon to lament,
for it all the trees of the field fainted with sorrow. At its re-
sounding fall I made the nations tremble, when I hurled it down
to Sheol, with those who descend into the pit; and all the trees
of Eden, the choicest of Lebanon, all trees nourished by water,
were consoled [that is, by the ruin of their rival]. They too had
to go down with it to Sheol, to those who were slain with the
sword [who had an inferior position in Sheol]; so perished its
allies and they who dwelt in its shadow.
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10787
The powerful effect which Ezekiel produces by cumulation and
iteration may be seen in his review (Chapter xx. ) of the history of
Israel, which is noteworthy also for treating the national career as
one long catalogue of acts of disobedience and apostasy.
Among the Prophetical works the Book of Isaiah presents the
greatest variety in literary form. The pictures of the physical and
moral ruin of Judah (i. , iii. , v. ) and of Israel (xxviii. ), the descriptions.
of the haughty bearing and the overthrow of the King of Assyria
(x. , xxxvii. ), the lament over Moab (xv. , xvi. ), the siege of Jerusalem
(xxix. ), the prediction of the return of the exiles (xxxv. ),—these and
other pieces are classic. As an example of its descriptive power we
may take the picture of Jehovah's coming vengeance on Edom
(xxxiv. ):-
APPROACH, O nations, and hear,
And hearken, O ye peoples.
Let the earth hear, and all that it contains,
The world, and all that it produces.
Jehovah is wrathful against all the nations,
Furious against the whole host of them,
He has laid them under a ban,
Given them over to slaughter.
Their slain shall be cast forth,
The stench of their corpses shall ascend,
The mountains shall melt with their blood;
All the host of heaven shall decay,
The heavens shall be rolled up as a scroll,
All their host shall wither,
As withers foliage from vine, leaf from fig-tree.
My sword has drunk its fill in heaven,
Now it descends for vengeance on Edom, the banned
people.
Jehovah has a sword, reeking with blood, anointed
with fat,
Blood of lambs and goats, fat of kidneys of rams,
For Jehovah holds a sacrifice in Bozrah,
A mighty slaughter in the land of Edom:
With these beasts wild oxen shall fall,
And bullocks along with bulls.
I
E
## p. 10788 (#668) ##########################################
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
Jehovah's day of vengeance comes,
The year of requital in Zion's quarrel.
Edom's stream shall turn to pitch,
And its soil to brimstone-
-
Burning pitch its land shall become.
It shall not be quenched night nor day,
Its smoke shall ascend for ever,
From generation to generation it shall lie waste,
None shall pass through it for ever and ever.
Pelican and bittern shall possess it,
Owl and raven shall dwell therein,
Jehovah shall stretch over it the measuring-line of des-
olation,
And the plummet of emptiness.
Its nobles shall vanish,
All its princes shall perish,
Thorns shall spring up in its palaces,
Nettles and thistles in its fortresses.
It shall be the habitation of jackals,
The dwelling-place of ostriches.
There beasts of the desert shall meet,
The wilderness-demon shall cry to its fellow,
The demoness of night there shall repose,
And find in it her lair;
The arrow-snake shall make its nest,
In its shadow lay and hatch and brood,
And hawks shall be gathered together.
Search Jehovah's scroll and read;
Not one of these shall be missing,
Not one shall want its mate.
For his mouth it is has commanded,
His spirit it is that has gathered them.
For them he has cast the lot,
And his hand has measured the land.
For ever and ever they shall possess it,
Dwell therein from generation to generation.
The most splendid of Prophetic rhapsodies are found in Isaiah,
xl. -lxvi. We may cite from these, as an example of vivid imagination
## p. 10789 (#669) ##########################################
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10789
and gorgeous coloring, the famous description of Israel's coming glory,
in Chapter 1x. :-
ARISE, shine; for thy light is come,
And the glory of Jehovah shines upon thee.
Darkness shall cover the earth,
And gross darkness the peoples,
But Jehovah shall shine upon thee,
And his glory shall appear upon thee.
Nations shall come to thy light,
And kings to the brightness of thy radiance.
Lift up thine eyes round about, and see:
They gather themselves together, they come to thee;
Thy sons shall come from far,
And thy daughters shall be carried in the arms.
Then shalt thou clearly see,
Thy heart shall expand with joy.
For the abundance of the sea shall be given thee,
The wealth of the nations shall come unto thee.
A multitude of camels shall cover thee,
The dromedaries of Midian and Ephah;
Men shall come from Sheba, bringing gold and frank-
incense,
They shall proclaim the praises of Jehovah.
All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to thee,
The rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee:
They shall be offered as acceptable sacrifices on mine
altar,
And I will glorify the house of my glory.
Who are these that fly as a cloud,
As the doves to their windows?
Surely the isles shall wait for me,
And the ships of Tarshish first,
To bring thy sons from far,
Their silver and their gold with them,
For the name of Jehovah thy God,
For the Holy One of Israel,
Because he hath glorified thee.
Strangers shall build thy walls,
Their kings shall minister unto thee,
For in my wrath I smote thee,
## p. 10790 (#670) ##########################################
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
But in my love I have mercy on thee.
Thy gates shall be open continually,
Shall not be shut by day or night;
That men may bring thee the wealth of the nations,
And their kings be led with them.
Nation and kingdom shall perish that serves thee
not:
Yea, blasted shall those nations be.
The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee,
The cypress, the elm, and the cedar.
I will beautify the place of my sanctuary,
And make the place of my feet glorious.
The sons of thine oppressors shall bend before
thee;
They that despised thee shall bow down at thy
feet;
Thou shalt be called the City of Jehovah,
Zion of the Holy One of Israel.
I will make thee an eternal excellency,
A joy of endless generations.
For bronze I will bring gold, and for iron silver,
For wood bronze, and for stones iron.
I will make thine officers peace,
And thy taskmasters justice.
Violence shall no more be heard in thy land,
Desolation nor destruction within thy borders,
But thou shalt call thy walls Salvation,
And thy gates Praise.
The sun shall no more be thy light by day,
Nor the brightness of the moon give thee light
by night,
But Jehovah shall be thine everlasting light,
And thy God thy glory.
Thy sun shall no more go down,
Neither shall thy moon withdraw itself:
For Jehovah shall be thine everlasting light,
And the days of thy mourning shall be ended.
Thy people shall be all righteous,
They shall possess the land forever.
The little one shall become a thousand,
And the small one a strong nation.
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10791
Similarly:-
Hebrew poetry, it is generally admitted, is characterized as to its
form by rhythm and parallelism. Rhythm is the melodious flow of
syllables. Parallelism-a form characteristic of, and almost peculiar
to, old Semitic poetry-is the balancing of phrases; the second line
in a couplet being a repetition of the first in varied phrase, or pre-
senting some sort of expansion of or contrast to the first. These two
general classes of parallelism may be called the identical and the
antithetical. An example of the first sort is:-
or, with one slight variation:
Rebuke me not in thy wrath,
Chasten me not in thine anger (Ps. xxxviii. 1);
POETRY
-
The heavens declare the glory of God,
The firmament showeth his handiwork (Ps. xix. 1).
Question and answer:-
Jehovah reigns-let the nations tremble;
He is enthroned on the cherubs - let the earth be moved (Ps. xcix. 1).
Examples of the second are:-
The arms of the wicked shall be broken,
But Jehovah upholds the righteous (Ps. xxxvii. 17).
The plans of the mind belong to man,
The answer of the tongue is from Jehovah (Prov. xvi. 1).
I lift up mine eyes to the mountains!
Whence comes my help?
or, with fuller expansion:-
My help comes from Jehovah,
Who made heaven and earth (Ps. cxxi. 1, 2);
Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
Whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend to Heaven, thou art there;
If I couch me in Sheol, lo, thou art there;
If I take the wings of the Dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest West,
There shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me (Ps. cxxxix. 7-10).
Between the extremes of complete identity and complete antithe-
sis there are many sub-varieties, the combinations and interchanges
of which, in the hands of a gifted poet, give exquisite delicacy and
charm to the form of the verse.
## p. 10792 (#672) ##########################################
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
Various efforts have been made to discover metre in Hebrew poetry,
-a regular succession of feet after the manner of the Greek; but
without success, and such attempts are now discountenanced by the
majority of critics. Elaborate schemes of dimeter, trimeter, tetram-
eter, and pentameter, which one still finds defended in certain mod-
ern books, may be rejected as having no basis in fact. There might
be more to say in favor of a system of ictus or beats of the voice.
It is true that all poetry is marked by a certain succession of rhyth-
mic beats. But the succession does not occur in Hebrew according
to any fixed rule. It appears to be determined by the feeling of the
poet, and its appreciation may safely be left to the feeling of the
reader. This much is true, that, in a series of couplets, the same
number of accented syllables may be employed in each couplet, and
we may thus have a guide in fixing the limits of the stanzas; but
even these limits we must leave to the free choice of the poet,
without attempting to impose our rules on him. To such norms,
characterized by the number of beats, we may give the names binary
(when the line has two beats), ternary (of three beats), quaternary,
and so on. In the Book of Proverbs many of the lines or verses are
ternary; elsewhere we find other forms. These can rarely be repro-
duced exactly in English.
Naturally also, these groups of couplets arrange themselves in
strophes or stanzas; but here again, no fixed rule prevails. A stanza
may consist of two, three, four, or more couplets; and adjoining
stanzas may differ in their number of couplets. As the original text
does not indicate any such division, we are left to the rhythm of the
couplets and to the connection of the sense to determine the order of
the strophes. An example of a symmetrical division in the stanzas
is found in the second Psalm, which consists of four stanzas of three
couplets each. In the first, the hostile nations are introduced as
speaking; in the second the speaker is Jehovah; in the third the
speaker is the royal Son, whose coronation has just been announced;
and in the fourth, the poet exhorts the nation to obedience.
Hebrew poetry is either emotional or gnomic. It either enounces
rules of life, in the form of apophthegms or proverbs, or it describes
the poet's own feeling in the presence of any phenomenon of joy or
suffering. It thus, in general, belongs to the class which we call
lyric. It does not present any example of what we call epic and
dramatic. There has been a natural desire to discover, in the Old
Testament poetry, examples of the poetic forms familiar to us in
Greek literature; and so it has been said that the Book of Job is a
drama or an epic, and that the Song of Songs is a lyric drama. But
a little reflection suffices to show that the Book of Job lacks the
essential element of epic and drama; that is to, say, action. It is, in
## p. 10793 (#673) ##########################################
OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
10793
fact, nothing but an argument consisting of elaborate speeches, with
a conclusion attached. There is no catastrophe toward which all the
acts of the personages tend. The interest lies in the discussion of a
religious theme; Jehovah permits the debate to go on to a certain
point, and then intervenes, the human actors having nothing to do
with bringing about the result. The Song of Songs is a series of love
songs, so delicately conceived, so undefined in shape, so lacking in
indications of place and time, that no two critics have as yet agreed
in their conclusions as to who are the actors in the supposed drama,
or where the action takes place, or what is its culmination. It is
obviously necessary to take it, not as a drama, but as a group of
songs. And in general, we do nothing but harm to the old Hebrew
literature in trying to force it into the forms of a foreign people.
The mistake is similar to that which has been made by Hebrew
grammarians, who have tried to construct Hebrew grammar in the
forms of Greek or Latin grammar; a procedure which, as scholars
are now coming to recognize, can result only in misapprehension and
misrepresentation. It is no less fatal to the poetic form of a people
to force it into the categories of another people. Justice will be
done to the Old Testament on its literary side only when we take it
for what it is, and try to apprehend its form and enjoy its beauties
according to its own rules.
So far as regards the higher characteristics of poetry, these are
the same in the Old Testament as elsewhere. There is eloquence,
pathos, charm, sublimity,-qualities which are confined to no one
race or people. And that the poetry is subjective-that it contains.
only the expression of the poet's feeling or reflection-will be evi-
dent from a brief review of the books themselves.
Let us begin with the Book of Psalms, the longest and most varied
of the poetic books of the Old Testament. It contains simple lucid
bits of description, agonizing cries to God for help, exultation for vic-
tory, rejoicing in time of peace, expression of consciousness of sin,
and odes of praise to the God of Israel. As an example of a gentle,
calm confidence and joy, we may take the 23d Psalm:—
THE Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want;-
He makes me recline in green pastures,
He leads me to still waters.
-
He restores my soul,
He guides me in safe paths for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of gloom,
I fear no evil,
For thou art with me,
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
Thou preparest me a table in the presence of mine enemies:
Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runs over.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life,
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Here the imagery, derived from the shepherd's life, is of the most
restful sort; and the whole picture is one of perfect repose under
the protection of God. In contrast with this, the 24th Psalm is an
exulting ode of praise; and the first part, verses 1-6, which states
the moral qualities demanded of those who are to serve Jehovah in
his temple, begins with a declaration of the Divine might:-
The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof,
The world, and they that dwell therein;
For he has founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the floods.
The second part is the hymn of a solemn procession, in which
Jehovah is spoken of as entering the temple, and it is conceived in
the finest vein of stirring song:-
-
Lift up your heads, O ye gates!
Be ye lift up, ye ancient doors!
And the King of Glory shall come in!
Here a member of the choir sings:
Who is the King of Glory?
And the answer comes from the whole choir:-
The Lord strong and mighty!
The Lord mighty in battle!
The chorus is then repeated:-
Lift up your heads, O ye gates!
Yea, lift them up, ye ancient doors!
And the King of Glory shall come in!
Again the question and answer:-
Who is this King of Glory?
The Lord of Hosts,
He is the King of Glory!
Among the most beautiful of the odes of the Psalter are the so-
called Pilgrim songs (Pss. cxx. -cxxxiv. ); each bears the title Song of
Ascents, the meaning of which is doubtful; they differ greatly from
one another in sentiment and length. One of them, Ps. cxxvii. , is a
song of the household, speaking of house and children. Another,
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Ps. cxxxii. , describes the choosing of the site of the temple. We shall
not find a more beautiful expression of trust in God than that which
is given by the 121st Psalm:
:-
I LIFT up mine eyes to the mountains!
Whence comes my help?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made Heaven and Earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved;
He who keeps thee does not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
Slumbers not nor sleeps.
The Lord is thy keeper,
The Lord is a shade on thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep thee from all evil,
He will preserve thy life.
The Lord will keep thy going out and thy coming in
From this time forth and for evermore.
The longer psalms are either odes written on the occasion of
some national festivity, or narrations of national history, or, in a few
cases, the expression of national experiences. Of these perhaps the
most striking are the 18th and the 68th. The former is a description
of struggle and victory. It contains one of the most magnificent of
poetical passages: –
IN MY distress I called upon the Lord,
I cried unto my God.
He heard my voice from his palace,
And my cry came to his ears.
Then the earth shook and trembled,
The foundations of the mountains were shaken.
Smoke ascended in his nostrils,
Fire out of his mouth devoured,
Coals were kindled by it!
He bowed the heavens and descended;
Thick darkness was under his feet.
He rode upon a cherub and did fly;
He flew on the wings of the wind!
He made darkness his habitation,
And darkest clouds his pavilion.
In brightness passed his thick clouds,
With hail and coals of fire.
The Lord thundered in heaven,
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The Most High uttered his voice.
He sent out his arrows and scattered them,
Shot forth his lightnings and appalled them.
Then the bed of the Deep appeared;
The foundations of the world were laid bare,
At thy rebuke, O Lord,
At the blast of the breath of thy nostrils!
It was from this passage that Sternhold and Hopkins elicited the
only bit of poetry in their metrical version of the Psalms:-
The Lord descended from above,
And bowed the heavens most high,
And underneath his feet he cast
The darkness of the sky.
On cherub and on cherubim
Full royally he rode,
And on the wings of mighty winds
Came flying all abroad!
The 68th Psalm is a procession-ode, consisting of a series of stanzas
of singular majesty and force. Psalms 1xxvii. and 1xxxix. , cv. and
cvi. are historical reviews. Psalms ciii. and civ. are odes in celebra-
tion of the glorious and beneficent deeds of Jehovah.
A peculiarity of the Psalter is the presence of alphabetical psalms,
in which each verse or stanza begins with a letter of the alphabet in
order. There are a number of these: the alphabetical arrangement
is, however, not always perfect; and it is, of course, not recognizable
in the English translation. The most noteworthy example is the 119th
Psalm, a collection of couplets in praise of the Law. It is divided
into twenty-two stanzas (according to the number of letters in the
Hebrew alphabet) of eight couplets each. Such psalms, however, are
naturally the least attractive in poetic form.
The Psalter is divided in the Hebrew Bible, and in the English
Revised Version, into five books (in imitation of the division of the
Pentateuch): and these are supposed to indicate collections which
were made at different times; the whole having been finally combined
into our present Psalm-book. The Psalter grew with the temple
services, and many-perhaps the most-of its hymns were intended
for recitation in the sacred place.
A peculiar and very effective form of Hebrew poetry is the elegy.
The discovery of the form of the Hebrew elegy or lament (the
recognition of which adds not a little to the reader's pleasure) is
due to Professor Karl Budde, now of Strassburg. The elegiac verse
is characterized by a short clause, followed by a still shorter clause,
giving to the phrase a peculiar restrained movement. The most
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10797
noted example of this poetic form is found in our Book of Lamenta-
tions a collection of laments over the sorrows of Israel. Thus, in
the beginning of the second chapter:-
―
THE Lord in his anger has smitten
The daughter of Zion,
And cast down from heaven to earth
The beauty of Israel;
He has not remembered his footstool
In the day of his wrath!
The Lord has destroyed without mercy
The dwellings of Jacob;
Has thrown down in anger the stronghold
Of the daughter of Judah;
Has cast to the ground, desecrated,
The realm and its princes.
One feels here how the emotion of the poet drives him into this
sad brief appendage at the end of each line. Elegies are not con-
fined to the Book of Lamentations, but are found elsewhere in the
Old Testament. In Ezekiel xix. are two laments, one for the princes
and the other for the nation. The first reads as follows:-
THY mother was like a lioness | among lions.
Amid young lions she couched, | she reared her whelps.
One of her whelps she brought up, | he became a young lion.
He learned to seize his prey, | men he devoured.
Against him the nations raised a cry, | in their pit he was taken.
They brought him with hooks away | to the land of Egypt.
She saw that she had failed, | her hope had perished.
Another of her whelps she took, | a young lion she made him.
(Etc. )
So the magnificent ode, written in elegiac form, in Isaiah xiv. , in
which the fall of the King of Babylon is celebrated:-
How is the tyrant quelled, | quelled his havoc!
The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, | the ruler's sceptre!
Who, in his wrath, smote the nations | with blows unceasing!
At rest is the world, and at peace- | breaks forth into song!
Over thee exult the spruce-trees, | the cedars of Lebanon:
"Since thou art laid low there comes no longer | the woodman
against us. "
The realm of Shades beneath is stirred | to meet thine arrival.
―――――
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
―
It rouses the Shades for thee -
| the heroes of earth,
Rouses from their thrones | the kings of the nations.
To thee they all speak, and say:-
"Thou too art become weak as we, | art become like us;
Thy pomp is brought down to the Shades, | the clang of thy
harps;
Mold is the bed beneath thee | and worms thy covering.
How art thou fallen from heaven, | bright star of dawn!
How art thou hurled to the ground, | thou conqueror of nations!
Thou hadst thought in thy heart, 'To heaven I'll mount,
High above the stars of God | exalt my throne;
I will sit on the mount of God | in farthest north;
To the heights of the clouds I'll ascend- | be like the Most High! '
And now thou art hurled to the realm of death,
To the deepest abyss. "
A still better conception of the power of the elegiac verse is
given by the fine alphabetic ode in triplets contained in Lamenta-
tions i.
How sitteth the city solitary, | once full of people.
She who was great among the nations | is become as a widow.
The princess among the provinces | is become tributary.
She weepeth sore in the night, | her cheeks are wet with tears;
She hath none to comfort her | among all her lovers;
All her friends are traitors, | are become her enemies.
carry him back unto Amon the governor of the city, and to Joash
the king's son, and say, Thus saith the king, Put this fellow in
the prison, and feed him with bread and water of the worst sort,
until I come in peace. And Micaiah said, If thou return at all in
peace, Jehovah has not spoken by me.
A peculiar interest attaches to the three short books Ruth, Jonah,
and Esther. These differ from the works above named in the fact
that they describe each a single event. Each is a unity with defi-
nitely marked characters and incidents, leading to a culmination. In
a word, so far as the literary form is concerned, these are short
stories; and they seem to be the first productions of this sort in all
the ancient world. Their predecessors in Hebrew literature are the
incidents described in the Pentateuch and the historical books, in
the lives of the Patriarchs, Judges, and Kings, and Prophets; as for
example the story of Jephthah, the campaign of Gideon, the rebel-
lion of Absalom, and the challenge of Elijah to the priests of Baal.
These also are succinct and vivid narratives of particular incidents,
but the three books here referred to have the quality of finish and
plot,- elaborate arrangement of incident leading up to a dénoue-
ment,—in a still higher degree. The Moabitess Ruth, left a widow,
departs with her mother-in-law to a strange land; and here, by her
charm, conquers a place, and becomes the honored head of a great
household. Jonah, anxious to avoid a disagreeable mission, is never-
theless forced to go to Nineveh, and there becomes the occasion of
the announcement of a religious truth of primary significance,-
namely, that God cares no less for Nineveh than for Jerusalem. The
skill with which the narrative in Esther is constructed has always
excited admiration. The splendid royal banquet-the refusal of
Queen Vashti to make herself a spectacle to the drunken guests—
her deposition by the offended despot, and his determination to choose
another queen
- the appearance of the Jewess Esther, whose nation-
ality has been carefully concealed by her guardian Mordecai - the
successive trials of the inmates of the harem, and the selection of
Esther to be Queen-all this is an astounding whirligig of fortune.
But this is only preparatory to the main event. The sturdy Morde-
cai refuses to do reverence to the King's haughty favorite Haman,
who, exasperated by his persistent contempt, resolves to extirpate the
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Jewish population of Persia, and procures a royal decree to that
effect. The Jews are in despair. Mordecai sends word to Esther
that she must go to the King (which to do unbidden is a crime) and
intercede; he adds that otherwise she herself will not escape the
general fate. She finally plucks courage from despair, goes, is gra-
ciously received, and invites the King and Haman to a banquet that
day. At that banquet she invites them to another next day, when
she will make her request. Haman, elated, listens to the advice of
his wife and his friends, and prepares a lofty post on which Mordecai
is to be impaled. That night the King, unable to sleep, listens to an
account, in the court record, of a good deed of Mordecai, hitherto
unrewarded. Who is without? he asks. The answer is: Haman (who
had come to arrange the impalement of his enemy).
He is sum-
moned, enters, is asked what should be done to the man whom the
King delights to honor. Thinking it could be only himself, he sug-
gests that the man, clothed in royal apparel, ride through the streets
on the King's own horse. So be it: Haman is ordered to conduct
Mordecai. It is a terrible blow, and is taken by his wife and his
friends as an omen of disaster. Next day, however, he comes to the
Queen's banquet, and here the King asks her to state her request-he
would grant it if it cost half his kingdom. The narrative continues:
QUEEN ESTHER answered: If I have found favor in thy sight,
O king, and if it please the king, let my life be granted me
at my petition, and my people at my request; for we are sold, I
and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, to perish. If we
had been sold as slaves, I had held my peace.
And King
Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther: Who is he and where is he
who dares so to do? Esther answered: The adversary and enemy
is this wicked Haman. Haman was afraid before the king and
the queen. The king rose up in wrath from the banquet of wine,
and went into the palace garden, and Haman remained standing
to plead for his life with Queen Esther; for he saw that there
was evil determined against him by the king. Then the king
returned from the garden to the banqueting-hall, and Haman had
sunk down on the couch on which Esther was. And the king
said: Will he do violence to the queen here in my presence?
As the words went out of the king's mouth, they covered Ha-
man's face.
•
The clear portraiture of persons, the succession of interesting sit-
uations, the rapidity and inevitableness of the movement, the splen-
did reversal of fortunes, combine to make the book a work of art of
a high order.
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
THE PROPHETS
The most distinctly characteristic part of Old Testament literature
is the prophetical. The position of the Israelitish prophet is unique.
No other people has produced a line of moral and religious patriots,
who followed the fortunes of the nation from generation to gen-
eration, and amid all changes of political situation remained true to
their cardinal principle,- that no conditions of power and wealth
would avail a nation which did not pay strict obedience to the moral
law and place its reliance in God. The prophetic writing belongs, in
general, to the class of oratory. The prophets are political-religious
watchmen, who appear at every crisis to announce the will of God.
They denounce current sins, religious and moral. They plead, exhort,
threaten, lament. They differ from other orators in that their audi-
ence is not a court of law, nor an assembly of the people, but the
whole nation; and the question which they discuss is not the inter-
pretation of a statute, or a particular point of political policy, but the
universal principle of obedience to God.
The language of the prophetical discourses is for the most part
rhythmical and measured, and the discourses themselves naturally
fall into strophes and paragraphs. There is no metre, no fixed suc-
cession or number of syllables in a line, and no regular strophic
arrangement; -on the contrary, the greatest freedom prevails in
respect to length of clauses and of strophes. The elaborate strophic
structure of the odes of the Greek drama does not exist in the pro-
phetic discourses; and as divisions into verses and strophes were
not given in the original Hebrew text, we are left to determine the
arrangement in every case from the contents. The writings of the
prophets vary greatly in style and in charm and power; but they
are almost without exception vigorous and striking. Whether they
denounce social evils, or inveigh against idolatry, whether they pro-
claim the wrath of God, or his mercy,- whether they threaten or
implore, they are almost always strong and picturesque.
The paragraphs, the logical divisions of simple prose discourse,
are generally marked in the English Revised Version. Strophic
divisions, marked by headings or refrains in rhythmical elevated
prose, are sometimes but not always indicated. Examples of stro-
phes are Amos i. , ii. ; Isa. v. 8–24 (woes); ix. 8-x. 4 (refrain), to which
should be attached v. 25; Ezek. xviii. , xx. , xxxii. 19-32 (not indicated
in R. V. ).
Among the prophets none is more eloquent than Amos in the
denunciation of social evils; take, for example, the passage on the
following page (Am. v. 11–24).
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10783
FORASMUCH as ye trample on the poor,
And take from him exactions of wheat,
Though ye have built houses of hewn stone.
Ye shall not dwell in them,
Though ye have planted pleasant vineyards
Ye shall not drink the wine thereof.
For I know how manifold are your transgressions
And how mighty are your sins,
Ye who afflict the just, who take bribes,
Who deprive the poor of their rights in courts of justice.
Therefore he that is prudent keeps silence in such a time, for
it is an evil time. Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live:
and then Jehovah, the God of hosts, may be with you, as ye say.
Hate the evil, and love the good, and maintain justice in the
courts: then it may be that Jehovah, the God of hosts, will be
gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
There shall be wailing in all the broad ways,
In all the streets they shall say, Alas!
They shall call the husbandman to mourning,
And such as are skillful in lamentation to wailing.
In all vineyards shall be wailing,
For I will pass through the midst of thee, saith Jehovah.
Woe unto you who desire the day of Jehovah: why would ye
have the day of Jehovah? it is darkness and not light—as if a
man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him, and when he got
into his house and leaned his hand on the wall, a serpent bit
him. Shall not the day of Jehovah be darkness and not light?
very dark, and no brightness in it?
I hate, I despise your feasts,
I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Though you offer me your burnt-offerings and cereal
I will not accept them;
[offerings,
The peace-offerings of your fat beasts I will not regard.
Take away from me the noise of thy songs;
The clang of thy viols I will not hear.
But let equity roll down as waters,
And justice as a perennial stream.
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
Amos, Isaiah, and Ezekiel display no tenderness toward their peo-
ple; Hosea is an intensely loving nature; Jeremiah's prevailing atti-
tude is one of sorrow, as in these extracts from chapters viii. and
ix. of his book:-
ОH FOR Comfort in my sorrow! My heart is sick! Hark! the
cry of the Daughter of my People from a far-off land: Is not
Jehovah in Zion? is not her King in her? -[Jehovah speaks:]
Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images
and with foreign gods? -[The people:] The harvest is past,
the autumn ingathering is ended, and we are not saved. — [The
prophet:] By the ruin of the Daughter of my People my spirit
is crushed; I mourn; dismay seizes me. Is there no balm in
Gilead? is there no physician there? why then is the wound of
the Daughter of my People not healed? -Oh that my head were.
water, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day
and night for the slain of the Daughter of my People! Oh that
I could find in the wilderness a lodging-place for travelers, that
I might leave my people, and from them go far away! .
For the mountains will I break forth into weeping and wailing,
and for the pastures of the wilderness utter a lament, because
they are burned, so that none passes through; voices of cattle
are not heard; birds of the heaven and beasts of the field are
all fled and gone.
. Call for the mourning women, that
they may come; send for women skilled in lament, that they may
come and utter wailing for us, that tears may stream from our
eyes and water from our eyelids.
•
Ezekiel's tremendous power of denunciation and of description
appears throughout his book; see for example Chapters vi. , xi. , xvi. ,
xx. , xxiii. , xxvi. -xxviii. , xxix. -xxxii. , xxxviii. , xxxix. He thus addresses
the land of Israel (vi. ):-
I WILL bring the sword on you, and destroy your high places;
Your altars shall be desolate, your sun-images shall be broken,
I will cast down your slain before your idols,
And scatter your bones about your altars.
And the remnant that escape the sword, scattered through the
lands,
Shall remember me among the nations whither they are car-
ried captive.
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10785
I will crush their faithless hearts and their apostate eyes,
And they shall loathe themselves for their abominable
deeds.
Smite with the hand, stamp with the foot!
Say, alas! because of the sins of the House of Israel,
For they shall fall by sword, famine, and plague.
He who is far off shall die of the plague,
He who is near shall fall by the sword,
He who is besieged shall perish by famine:
Thus will I accomplish my fury on them.
And they shall know that I am Jehovah
When their slain lie by their idols about their altars,
On every high hill, on the mountain-tops,
Under every green tree and leafy terebinth,
Where they offered sweet savor to all their idols.
The section devoted to Tyre (xxvi. -xxviii. ) is of special interest
for the picture it gives of the magnificence of that city. The King
of Tyre is thus described (xxviii. 12-17):—
THOU wert full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
In Eden, the garden of God, thou wast,
All precious stones were thine adornment,
Ruby, topaz, diamond, beryl, and onyx,
Jasper, sapphire, carbuncle, emerald.
In the day when thou wast created
I placed thee with the Cherub in the sacred Mount of
God,
Amid the stones of fire thou didst walk.
Perfect thou wast in thy life
From the day of thy creation till sin appeared in thee.
The vastness of thy traffic filled thee with sin,
From the Mount of God I did expel thee as profane,
The Cherub cast thee forth from amid the stones of
fire.
Thou didst swell with pride in thy beauty,
Thy splendor vitiated thy wisdom.
Down to the ground I cast thee,
To kings I made thee a spectacle,
That they might feast their eyes on thee.
XVIII-675
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Alongside of this (the resemblance between which and the pict
ure in Gen. ii. -iii. is obvious) we may put the address to Pharaoh
(xxxi. ), who is portrayed as a mighty tree (the cedar of Lebanon is
chosen as the noblest of trees), watered by a great river (the Nile)
and its canals:-
WHOм art thou like in thy greatness?
Lo, there stood in Lebanon a mighty cedar,
With stately boughs, lofty of stature,
Its top reached the clouds.
Water had made it great, the Deep had made it high,
Streams ran through its soil, rivers over its field.
All trees of the forest it excelled in height,
Abundant water gave it many boughs.
In its branches all birds had their nests,
Under its boughs were the lairs of all beasts,
In its shadow dwelt many nations.
It was stately in height, in the mass of its branches,
For its roots were richly watered.
Cedars in the garden of God were not its equals,
Cypresses were not like its boughs, nor plane-trees like
its branches;
No tree in the garden of God was like it
In beauty and in mass of branches,
And the trees of Eden, in the garden of God, did envy it.
The prophet's imagination, reveling in its picture, does not always
keep figure and original sharply apart; as in the description of Pha-
raoh's fall (xxxi. 15-17), in which the tree and the king are skillfully
blended without loss of unity:—
Thus says the Lord Jehovah: On the day when it was hurled
down to Sheol, I made the River mourn for it, the streams were
held back and ceased to flow; for it I caused Lebanon to lament,
for it all the trees of the field fainted with sorrow. At its re-
sounding fall I made the nations tremble, when I hurled it down
to Sheol, with those who descend into the pit; and all the trees
of Eden, the choicest of Lebanon, all trees nourished by water,
were consoled [that is, by the ruin of their rival]. They too had
to go down with it to Sheol, to those who were slain with the
sword [who had an inferior position in Sheol]; so perished its
allies and they who dwelt in its shadow.
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10787
The powerful effect which Ezekiel produces by cumulation and
iteration may be seen in his review (Chapter xx. ) of the history of
Israel, which is noteworthy also for treating the national career as
one long catalogue of acts of disobedience and apostasy.
Among the Prophetical works the Book of Isaiah presents the
greatest variety in literary form. The pictures of the physical and
moral ruin of Judah (i. , iii. , v. ) and of Israel (xxviii. ), the descriptions.
of the haughty bearing and the overthrow of the King of Assyria
(x. , xxxvii. ), the lament over Moab (xv. , xvi. ), the siege of Jerusalem
(xxix. ), the prediction of the return of the exiles (xxxv. ),—these and
other pieces are classic. As an example of its descriptive power we
may take the picture of Jehovah's coming vengeance on Edom
(xxxiv. ):-
APPROACH, O nations, and hear,
And hearken, O ye peoples.
Let the earth hear, and all that it contains,
The world, and all that it produces.
Jehovah is wrathful against all the nations,
Furious against the whole host of them,
He has laid them under a ban,
Given them over to slaughter.
Their slain shall be cast forth,
The stench of their corpses shall ascend,
The mountains shall melt with their blood;
All the host of heaven shall decay,
The heavens shall be rolled up as a scroll,
All their host shall wither,
As withers foliage from vine, leaf from fig-tree.
My sword has drunk its fill in heaven,
Now it descends for vengeance on Edom, the banned
people.
Jehovah has a sword, reeking with blood, anointed
with fat,
Blood of lambs and goats, fat of kidneys of rams,
For Jehovah holds a sacrifice in Bozrah,
A mighty slaughter in the land of Edom:
With these beasts wild oxen shall fall,
And bullocks along with bulls.
I
E
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Jehovah's day of vengeance comes,
The year of requital in Zion's quarrel.
Edom's stream shall turn to pitch,
And its soil to brimstone-
-
Burning pitch its land shall become.
It shall not be quenched night nor day,
Its smoke shall ascend for ever,
From generation to generation it shall lie waste,
None shall pass through it for ever and ever.
Pelican and bittern shall possess it,
Owl and raven shall dwell therein,
Jehovah shall stretch over it the measuring-line of des-
olation,
And the plummet of emptiness.
Its nobles shall vanish,
All its princes shall perish,
Thorns shall spring up in its palaces,
Nettles and thistles in its fortresses.
It shall be the habitation of jackals,
The dwelling-place of ostriches.
There beasts of the desert shall meet,
The wilderness-demon shall cry to its fellow,
The demoness of night there shall repose,
And find in it her lair;
The arrow-snake shall make its nest,
In its shadow lay and hatch and brood,
And hawks shall be gathered together.
Search Jehovah's scroll and read;
Not one of these shall be missing,
Not one shall want its mate.
For his mouth it is has commanded,
His spirit it is that has gathered them.
For them he has cast the lot,
And his hand has measured the land.
For ever and ever they shall possess it,
Dwell therein from generation to generation.
The most splendid of Prophetic rhapsodies are found in Isaiah,
xl. -lxvi. We may cite from these, as an example of vivid imagination
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and gorgeous coloring, the famous description of Israel's coming glory,
in Chapter 1x. :-
ARISE, shine; for thy light is come,
And the glory of Jehovah shines upon thee.
Darkness shall cover the earth,
And gross darkness the peoples,
But Jehovah shall shine upon thee,
And his glory shall appear upon thee.
Nations shall come to thy light,
And kings to the brightness of thy radiance.
Lift up thine eyes round about, and see:
They gather themselves together, they come to thee;
Thy sons shall come from far,
And thy daughters shall be carried in the arms.
Then shalt thou clearly see,
Thy heart shall expand with joy.
For the abundance of the sea shall be given thee,
The wealth of the nations shall come unto thee.
A multitude of camels shall cover thee,
The dromedaries of Midian and Ephah;
Men shall come from Sheba, bringing gold and frank-
incense,
They shall proclaim the praises of Jehovah.
All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to thee,
The rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee:
They shall be offered as acceptable sacrifices on mine
altar,
And I will glorify the house of my glory.
Who are these that fly as a cloud,
As the doves to their windows?
Surely the isles shall wait for me,
And the ships of Tarshish first,
To bring thy sons from far,
Their silver and their gold with them,
For the name of Jehovah thy God,
For the Holy One of Israel,
Because he hath glorified thee.
Strangers shall build thy walls,
Their kings shall minister unto thee,
For in my wrath I smote thee,
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But in my love I have mercy on thee.
Thy gates shall be open continually,
Shall not be shut by day or night;
That men may bring thee the wealth of the nations,
And their kings be led with them.
Nation and kingdom shall perish that serves thee
not:
Yea, blasted shall those nations be.
The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee,
The cypress, the elm, and the cedar.
I will beautify the place of my sanctuary,
And make the place of my feet glorious.
The sons of thine oppressors shall bend before
thee;
They that despised thee shall bow down at thy
feet;
Thou shalt be called the City of Jehovah,
Zion of the Holy One of Israel.
I will make thee an eternal excellency,
A joy of endless generations.
For bronze I will bring gold, and for iron silver,
For wood bronze, and for stones iron.
I will make thine officers peace,
And thy taskmasters justice.
Violence shall no more be heard in thy land,
Desolation nor destruction within thy borders,
But thou shalt call thy walls Salvation,
And thy gates Praise.
The sun shall no more be thy light by day,
Nor the brightness of the moon give thee light
by night,
But Jehovah shall be thine everlasting light,
And thy God thy glory.
Thy sun shall no more go down,
Neither shall thy moon withdraw itself:
For Jehovah shall be thine everlasting light,
And the days of thy mourning shall be ended.
Thy people shall be all righteous,
They shall possess the land forever.
The little one shall become a thousand,
And the small one a strong nation.
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Similarly:-
Hebrew poetry, it is generally admitted, is characterized as to its
form by rhythm and parallelism. Rhythm is the melodious flow of
syllables. Parallelism-a form characteristic of, and almost peculiar
to, old Semitic poetry-is the balancing of phrases; the second line
in a couplet being a repetition of the first in varied phrase, or pre-
senting some sort of expansion of or contrast to the first. These two
general classes of parallelism may be called the identical and the
antithetical. An example of the first sort is:-
or, with one slight variation:
Rebuke me not in thy wrath,
Chasten me not in thine anger (Ps. xxxviii. 1);
POETRY
-
The heavens declare the glory of God,
The firmament showeth his handiwork (Ps. xix. 1).
Question and answer:-
Jehovah reigns-let the nations tremble;
He is enthroned on the cherubs - let the earth be moved (Ps. xcix. 1).
Examples of the second are:-
The arms of the wicked shall be broken,
But Jehovah upholds the righteous (Ps. xxxvii. 17).
The plans of the mind belong to man,
The answer of the tongue is from Jehovah (Prov. xvi. 1).
I lift up mine eyes to the mountains!
Whence comes my help?
or, with fuller expansion:-
My help comes from Jehovah,
Who made heaven and earth (Ps. cxxi. 1, 2);
Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
Whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend to Heaven, thou art there;
If I couch me in Sheol, lo, thou art there;
If I take the wings of the Dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest West,
There shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me (Ps. cxxxix. 7-10).
Between the extremes of complete identity and complete antithe-
sis there are many sub-varieties, the combinations and interchanges
of which, in the hands of a gifted poet, give exquisite delicacy and
charm to the form of the verse.
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Various efforts have been made to discover metre in Hebrew poetry,
-a regular succession of feet after the manner of the Greek; but
without success, and such attempts are now discountenanced by the
majority of critics. Elaborate schemes of dimeter, trimeter, tetram-
eter, and pentameter, which one still finds defended in certain mod-
ern books, may be rejected as having no basis in fact. There might
be more to say in favor of a system of ictus or beats of the voice.
It is true that all poetry is marked by a certain succession of rhyth-
mic beats. But the succession does not occur in Hebrew according
to any fixed rule. It appears to be determined by the feeling of the
poet, and its appreciation may safely be left to the feeling of the
reader. This much is true, that, in a series of couplets, the same
number of accented syllables may be employed in each couplet, and
we may thus have a guide in fixing the limits of the stanzas; but
even these limits we must leave to the free choice of the poet,
without attempting to impose our rules on him. To such norms,
characterized by the number of beats, we may give the names binary
(when the line has two beats), ternary (of three beats), quaternary,
and so on. In the Book of Proverbs many of the lines or verses are
ternary; elsewhere we find other forms. These can rarely be repro-
duced exactly in English.
Naturally also, these groups of couplets arrange themselves in
strophes or stanzas; but here again, no fixed rule prevails. A stanza
may consist of two, three, four, or more couplets; and adjoining
stanzas may differ in their number of couplets. As the original text
does not indicate any such division, we are left to the rhythm of the
couplets and to the connection of the sense to determine the order of
the strophes. An example of a symmetrical division in the stanzas
is found in the second Psalm, which consists of four stanzas of three
couplets each. In the first, the hostile nations are introduced as
speaking; in the second the speaker is Jehovah; in the third the
speaker is the royal Son, whose coronation has just been announced;
and in the fourth, the poet exhorts the nation to obedience.
Hebrew poetry is either emotional or gnomic. It either enounces
rules of life, in the form of apophthegms or proverbs, or it describes
the poet's own feeling in the presence of any phenomenon of joy or
suffering. It thus, in general, belongs to the class which we call
lyric. It does not present any example of what we call epic and
dramatic. There has been a natural desire to discover, in the Old
Testament poetry, examples of the poetic forms familiar to us in
Greek literature; and so it has been said that the Book of Job is a
drama or an epic, and that the Song of Songs is a lyric drama. But
a little reflection suffices to show that the Book of Job lacks the
essential element of epic and drama; that is to, say, action. It is, in
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fact, nothing but an argument consisting of elaborate speeches, with
a conclusion attached. There is no catastrophe toward which all the
acts of the personages tend. The interest lies in the discussion of a
religious theme; Jehovah permits the debate to go on to a certain
point, and then intervenes, the human actors having nothing to do
with bringing about the result. The Song of Songs is a series of love
songs, so delicately conceived, so undefined in shape, so lacking in
indications of place and time, that no two critics have as yet agreed
in their conclusions as to who are the actors in the supposed drama,
or where the action takes place, or what is its culmination. It is
obviously necessary to take it, not as a drama, but as a group of
songs. And in general, we do nothing but harm to the old Hebrew
literature in trying to force it into the forms of a foreign people.
The mistake is similar to that which has been made by Hebrew
grammarians, who have tried to construct Hebrew grammar in the
forms of Greek or Latin grammar; a procedure which, as scholars
are now coming to recognize, can result only in misapprehension and
misrepresentation. It is no less fatal to the poetic form of a people
to force it into the categories of another people. Justice will be
done to the Old Testament on its literary side only when we take it
for what it is, and try to apprehend its form and enjoy its beauties
according to its own rules.
So far as regards the higher characteristics of poetry, these are
the same in the Old Testament as elsewhere. There is eloquence,
pathos, charm, sublimity,-qualities which are confined to no one
race or people. And that the poetry is subjective-that it contains.
only the expression of the poet's feeling or reflection-will be evi-
dent from a brief review of the books themselves.
Let us begin with the Book of Psalms, the longest and most varied
of the poetic books of the Old Testament. It contains simple lucid
bits of description, agonizing cries to God for help, exultation for vic-
tory, rejoicing in time of peace, expression of consciousness of sin,
and odes of praise to the God of Israel. As an example of a gentle,
calm confidence and joy, we may take the 23d Psalm:—
THE Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want;-
He makes me recline in green pastures,
He leads me to still waters.
-
He restores my soul,
He guides me in safe paths for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of gloom,
I fear no evil,
For thou art with me,
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
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Thou preparest me a table in the presence of mine enemies:
Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runs over.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life,
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Here the imagery, derived from the shepherd's life, is of the most
restful sort; and the whole picture is one of perfect repose under
the protection of God. In contrast with this, the 24th Psalm is an
exulting ode of praise; and the first part, verses 1-6, which states
the moral qualities demanded of those who are to serve Jehovah in
his temple, begins with a declaration of the Divine might:-
The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof,
The world, and they that dwell therein;
For he has founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the floods.
The second part is the hymn of a solemn procession, in which
Jehovah is spoken of as entering the temple, and it is conceived in
the finest vein of stirring song:-
-
Lift up your heads, O ye gates!
Be ye lift up, ye ancient doors!
And the King of Glory shall come in!
Here a member of the choir sings:
Who is the King of Glory?
And the answer comes from the whole choir:-
The Lord strong and mighty!
The Lord mighty in battle!
The chorus is then repeated:-
Lift up your heads, O ye gates!
Yea, lift them up, ye ancient doors!
And the King of Glory shall come in!
Again the question and answer:-
Who is this King of Glory?
The Lord of Hosts,
He is the King of Glory!
Among the most beautiful of the odes of the Psalter are the so-
called Pilgrim songs (Pss. cxx. -cxxxiv. ); each bears the title Song of
Ascents, the meaning of which is doubtful; they differ greatly from
one another in sentiment and length. One of them, Ps. cxxvii. , is a
song of the household, speaking of house and children. Another,
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Ps. cxxxii. , describes the choosing of the site of the temple. We shall
not find a more beautiful expression of trust in God than that which
is given by the 121st Psalm:
:-
I LIFT up mine eyes to the mountains!
Whence comes my help?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made Heaven and Earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved;
He who keeps thee does not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
Slumbers not nor sleeps.
The Lord is thy keeper,
The Lord is a shade on thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep thee from all evil,
He will preserve thy life.
The Lord will keep thy going out and thy coming in
From this time forth and for evermore.
The longer psalms are either odes written on the occasion of
some national festivity, or narrations of national history, or, in a few
cases, the expression of national experiences. Of these perhaps the
most striking are the 18th and the 68th. The former is a description
of struggle and victory. It contains one of the most magnificent of
poetical passages: –
IN MY distress I called upon the Lord,
I cried unto my God.
He heard my voice from his palace,
And my cry came to his ears.
Then the earth shook and trembled,
The foundations of the mountains were shaken.
Smoke ascended in his nostrils,
Fire out of his mouth devoured,
Coals were kindled by it!
He bowed the heavens and descended;
Thick darkness was under his feet.
He rode upon a cherub and did fly;
He flew on the wings of the wind!
He made darkness his habitation,
And darkest clouds his pavilion.
In brightness passed his thick clouds,
With hail and coals of fire.
The Lord thundered in heaven,
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The Most High uttered his voice.
He sent out his arrows and scattered them,
Shot forth his lightnings and appalled them.
Then the bed of the Deep appeared;
The foundations of the world were laid bare,
At thy rebuke, O Lord,
At the blast of the breath of thy nostrils!
It was from this passage that Sternhold and Hopkins elicited the
only bit of poetry in their metrical version of the Psalms:-
The Lord descended from above,
And bowed the heavens most high,
And underneath his feet he cast
The darkness of the sky.
On cherub and on cherubim
Full royally he rode,
And on the wings of mighty winds
Came flying all abroad!
The 68th Psalm is a procession-ode, consisting of a series of stanzas
of singular majesty and force. Psalms 1xxvii. and 1xxxix. , cv. and
cvi. are historical reviews. Psalms ciii. and civ. are odes in celebra-
tion of the glorious and beneficent deeds of Jehovah.
A peculiarity of the Psalter is the presence of alphabetical psalms,
in which each verse or stanza begins with a letter of the alphabet in
order. There are a number of these: the alphabetical arrangement
is, however, not always perfect; and it is, of course, not recognizable
in the English translation. The most noteworthy example is the 119th
Psalm, a collection of couplets in praise of the Law. It is divided
into twenty-two stanzas (according to the number of letters in the
Hebrew alphabet) of eight couplets each. Such psalms, however, are
naturally the least attractive in poetic form.
The Psalter is divided in the Hebrew Bible, and in the English
Revised Version, into five books (in imitation of the division of the
Pentateuch): and these are supposed to indicate collections which
were made at different times; the whole having been finally combined
into our present Psalm-book. The Psalter grew with the temple
services, and many-perhaps the most-of its hymns were intended
for recitation in the sacred place.
A peculiar and very effective form of Hebrew poetry is the elegy.
The discovery of the form of the Hebrew elegy or lament (the
recognition of which adds not a little to the reader's pleasure) is
due to Professor Karl Budde, now of Strassburg. The elegiac verse
is characterized by a short clause, followed by a still shorter clause,
giving to the phrase a peculiar restrained movement. The most
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noted example of this poetic form is found in our Book of Lamenta-
tions a collection of laments over the sorrows of Israel. Thus, in
the beginning of the second chapter:-
―
THE Lord in his anger has smitten
The daughter of Zion,
And cast down from heaven to earth
The beauty of Israel;
He has not remembered his footstool
In the day of his wrath!
The Lord has destroyed without mercy
The dwellings of Jacob;
Has thrown down in anger the stronghold
Of the daughter of Judah;
Has cast to the ground, desecrated,
The realm and its princes.
One feels here how the emotion of the poet drives him into this
sad brief appendage at the end of each line. Elegies are not con-
fined to the Book of Lamentations, but are found elsewhere in the
Old Testament. In Ezekiel xix. are two laments, one for the princes
and the other for the nation. The first reads as follows:-
THY mother was like a lioness | among lions.
Amid young lions she couched, | she reared her whelps.
One of her whelps she brought up, | he became a young lion.
He learned to seize his prey, | men he devoured.
Against him the nations raised a cry, | in their pit he was taken.
They brought him with hooks away | to the land of Egypt.
She saw that she had failed, | her hope had perished.
Another of her whelps she took, | a young lion she made him.
(Etc. )
So the magnificent ode, written in elegiac form, in Isaiah xiv. , in
which the fall of the King of Babylon is celebrated:-
How is the tyrant quelled, | quelled his havoc!
The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, | the ruler's sceptre!
Who, in his wrath, smote the nations | with blows unceasing!
At rest is the world, and at peace- | breaks forth into song!
Over thee exult the spruce-trees, | the cedars of Lebanon:
"Since thou art laid low there comes no longer | the woodman
against us. "
The realm of Shades beneath is stirred | to meet thine arrival.
―――――
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―
It rouses the Shades for thee -
| the heroes of earth,
Rouses from their thrones | the kings of the nations.
To thee they all speak, and say:-
"Thou too art become weak as we, | art become like us;
Thy pomp is brought down to the Shades, | the clang of thy
harps;
Mold is the bed beneath thee | and worms thy covering.
How art thou fallen from heaven, | bright star of dawn!
How art thou hurled to the ground, | thou conqueror of nations!
Thou hadst thought in thy heart, 'To heaven I'll mount,
High above the stars of God | exalt my throne;
I will sit on the mount of God | in farthest north;
To the heights of the clouds I'll ascend- | be like the Most High! '
And now thou art hurled to the realm of death,
To the deepest abyss. "
A still better conception of the power of the elegiac verse is
given by the fine alphabetic ode in triplets contained in Lamenta-
tions i.
How sitteth the city solitary, | once full of people.
She who was great among the nations | is become as a widow.
The princess among the provinces | is become tributary.
She weepeth sore in the night, | her cheeks are wet with tears;
She hath none to comfort her | among all her lovers;
All her friends are traitors, | are become her enemies.
