A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Introduction to the Old Testament

J >> John Edgar McFadyen >> Introduction to the Old Testament




It is quite impossible even to attempt a summary of iv.-xiv., partly
because of the hopeless corruption of the text in very many
passages, partly from the brevity and apparently disjointed nature
of the individual sections. Possibly this is due, in large measure,
to later redactors of the book, or to the fragmentary reports of the
prophet's addresses; perhaps, however, it also expresses something
of the abrupt passion of his speeches, which, as Kautzsch says, were
"more sob than speech." The general theme of this division appears
in its opening words, "There is no fidelity or love or knowledge of
God in the land," iv. 1.

That knowledge of God is in part innate and universal: it is
knowledge of _God_, and not specifically of Jehovah--not
knowledge of a code, but fidelity to the demands of conscience. It
was, however, the peculiar business of the priests to proclaim and
develop that knowledge; and for the deplorable perversity of Israel,
they are largely held responsible, iv. 6. The worship of Jehovah,
which ought to be a moral service, vi. 6, is indistinguishable from
Baal worship (ii.) and idolatry. Upon the calf, the symbol under
which Jehovah was worshipped, and upon those who worship Him thus,
Hosea pours indignant and sarcastic scorn, viii. 5, 6, x. 5, xiii.
2. Ignorance of the true nature of God is at the root of the moral
and political confusion. It is this that leads the one party to
coquet with Egypt and the other with Assyria, vii. II, viii, 9, xi.
5, xii. 1, and the price paid for Assyrian intervention was a heavy
one (2 Kings xv. 19, 20, cf. Hosea v. 13). The native kings, too,
are as impotent to heal Israel's wounds as the foreigners, vii. 7,
x. 7; and though it might be too much to say that Hosea condemns the
monarchy as an institution, viii. 4, the impotence of the kings to
stem the tide of disaster is too painfully clear to him, x, 7, 15.

Whether Hosea ever alludes to Judah in his genuine prophecies is
very doubtful. Some of the references are obvious interpolations
(cf. i. 7), and for one reason or another, nearly all of them are
suspicious: in vi. 4, e.g., the parallelism (cf. _v_. 10)
suggests that _Israel_ should be read instead of _Judah_.
But there can be no doubt that the message of Hosea is addressed in
the main, if not exclusively, to northern Israel. It is her land
that is _the_ land, i. 2, cf. 4, her king that is "our king,"
vii. 5, the worship of her sanctuaries that he exposes, and her
politics that he deplores.

If Amos is the St. James of the Old Testament, Hosea is the St.
John. It is indeed possible to draw the contrast too sharply between
Amos and Hosea, as is done when it is asserted that Amos is the
champion of morality and Hosea of religion. Amos is not, however, a
mere moralist; he no less than Hosea demands a return to Jehovah,
iv. 6, 8, v. 6, but he undoubtedly lays the emphasis on the moral
expression of the religious impulse, while Hosea is more concerned
with religion at its roots and in its essence. Thus Hosea's work,
besides being supplementary to that of Amos, emphasizing the love of
God where Amos had emphasised His righteousness, is also more
fundamental than his. There is something of the mystic, too, in
Hosea: in all experience he finds something typical. The character
of the patriarch Jacob is an adumbration of that of his descendants
(xii.), and his own love for his unfaithful wife is a shadow of
Jehovah's love for Israel (i.-iii.).

His message to Israel was a stern one, probably even sterner than it
now reads in the received text of many passages, e.g., xi. 8, 9. He
represents Jehovah as saying to Israel: "Shall I set thee free from
the hand of Sheol? Shall I redeem thee from death? Hither with thy
plagues, O death! Hither with thy pestilence, O Sheol! Repentance is
hidden from mine eyes," xiii. 14. But it is too much to say with
some scholars that the sternness is unqualified and to deny to the
prophet the hope so beautifully expressed in the last chapter. There
were elements in Hosea's experience of his own heart which suggested
that the love of Jehovah was a love which would not let His people
go, and ch. xiv. (except _v_. 9) may well be retained, almost
in its entirety, for Hosea. His passion, though not robust, like
that of Amos, is tender and intense, xi. 3, 4: as Amos pleads for
righteousness, he pleads for love (Hos. vi. 6), _hesed_, a word
strangely enough never used by Amos; and it is no accident that the
great utterance of Hosea--"I will have love and not sacrifice," vi.
6--had a special attraction for Jesus (Matt. ix. 13, xii. 7).




JOEL


The book of Joel admirably illustrates the intimate connection which
subsisted for the prophetic mind between the sorrows and disasters
of the present and the coming day of Jehovah: the one is the
immediate harbinger of the other. In an unusually devastating plague
of locusts, which, like an army of the Lord,[1] has stripped the
land bare and brought misery alike upon city and country, man and
beast--"for the beasts of the field look up sighing unto Thee," i.
20--the prophet sees the forerunner of such an impending day of
Jehovah, bids the priests summon a solemn assembly, and calls upon
the people to fast and mourn and turn in penitence to God. Their
penitence is met by the divine pity and rewarded by the promise not
only of material restoration but of an outpouring of the spirit upon
all Judah,[2] which is to be accompanied by marvellous signs in the
natural world. The restoration of Judah has as its correlative the
destruction of Judah's enemies, who are represented as gathered
together in the valley of Jehoshaphat--i.e. the valley where
"Jehovah judges"--and there the divine judgment is to be executed
upon them.
[Footnote 1: Some regard the locusts as an allegorical designation
for an invading army. But without reason: in ii. 7 they are
_compared_ to warriors, and the effect of their devastations is
described in terms inapplicable to an army.]
[Footnote 2: The sequel, in which the nations are the objects of
divine wrath, shows that the "all flesh," ii. 28, must be confined
to Judah.]

The theological value of the book of Joel lies chiefly in its clear
contribution to the conception of the day of Jehovah. As Marti says,
"The book does not present one side of the picture only, but
combines all the chief traits of the eschatological hope in an
instructive compendium"--the effusion of the spirit, the salvation
of Jerusalem, the judgment of the heathen, the fruitfulness of the
land, the permanent abode of Jehovah upon Zion. These features of
the Messianic hope are, in the main, characteristic of post-exilic
prophecy; and now, with very great unanimity, the book is assigned,
in spite of its position near the beginning of the minor prophets,
to post-exilic times.

A variety of considerations appears to support this date. Judah is
the exclusive object of interest. Israel has no independent
existence, and, where the name is mentioned, it is synonymous with
Judah, ii. 27, iii. 2, 16. Further, the people are scattered among
the nations, iii. 2, and strangers are not to pass through the
"holy" Jerusalem any more, iii. 17. The exile and the destruction of
Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar in 586 B.C. appear therefore to be
presupposed. But the temple has been rebuilt; there are numerous
allusions to priests and to meal and drink offerings, i. 9, 13, ii.
14,17, and an assembly is summoned to "the house of Jehovah your
God," i. 14: the reference to the city wall, ii. 9, would bring the
date as late as Nehemiah in the fifth century. Other arguments,
though more precarious, are not without weight, e.g., the ease and
smoothness of the language, the allusion to the Greeks, in. 6, the
absence of any reference to the sin of Judah,[1] the apparent
citations from or allusions to other prophetic books.[2]
[Footnote 1: Though it may be implied in ii. 12f ]
[Footnote 2: Obad. _v_. 17, Jo. ii. 32; Amos i. 2, Jo. iii. 16;
Amos ix. 13, Jo. iii. 18; Ezek. xlvii. 1ff., Jo. iii. 18.]

The effect of this cumulative argument has been supposed to be
overwhelming in favour of a post-exilic date. Recently, however,
Baudissin, in a very careful discussion, has ably argued for at
least the possibility of a pre-exilic date. Precisely in the manner
of Joel, Amos iv. 6-9 links together locusts and drought as already
experienced calamities. Both alike complain of the Philistine and
Phoenician slave-trade. The enemies--Edom, Phoenicia, Philistia,
iii. 4, l9--fit the earlier period better than the Persian or Greek.
In the ninth century, Judah was invaded by the Philistines and
Arabians according to the Chronicler (2 Chron. xxi. 16ff.), whose
statements in such a matter there is no reason for doubting, and
Jerusalem may then have suffered: in any case, we know that the
treasures of temple and palace were plundered as early as Rehoboam's
time (1 Kings xiv. 25ff.), and this might be enough to satisfy the
allusion in Joel iii. 17. Again, if Joel is smooth, Amos is not much
less so; and linguistic peculiarities that seem to be late might be
due to dialect or personal idiosyncrasy. With regard to the argument
from citations, it would be possible to maintain that Joel's simple
and natural picture of the stream from the temple watering the
acacia valley, iii. 18, was not borrowed from, but rather suggested
the more elaborate imagery of Ezekiel, xlvii. For these and other
reasons Baudissin suggests with hesitation that a date slightly
before Amos is by no means impossible.[1]
[Footnote 1: It is interesting to note that Vernes, Rothstein and
Strack have independently reached the conclusion that chs. i., ii.
have a different origin from iii., iv. In the former, the state
still exists, and the calamity is a plague of locusts; in the
latter, no account is taken of the locusts--it is a time of national
disaster. The reasons, however, are hardly adequate for denying the
unity of the book.]


The question is much more than an academic one, for on the answer to it
will depend our whole conception of the development of Hebrew prophecy.
Sacerdotal interests, e.g., here receive a prominence in prophecy which
we are accustomed to associate only with the period after the exile.
Here again, the promises are for Judah, the threats for her enemies--an
attitude also characteristic of post-exilic prophecy: it is customary
to deny to the pre-exilic prophets any word of promise or consolation
to their own people. Obviously if the priest and the element of promise
have already so assured a place in the earliest of the prophets, the
ordinary view of the course of prophecy will have to be seriously
modified. The lack of emphasis displayed by Joel on the ethical aspect
of religion, which has been made to tell in favour of a late date,
might tell equally well in favour of a very early one. Indeed, the
book is either very early or very late; and, if early, it represents
what we might call the pre-prophetic type of Israel's religion, and
especially the non-moral aspirations of those who, in Amos's time,
longed for the day of Jehovah, and did not know that for them it meant
thick darkness, without a streak of light across it (Amos v. 18). On
the whole, however, the balance leans to a post-exilic date. The Jewish
dispersion seems to be implied, iii. 2. The strange visitation of
locusts suggests to the prophet the mysterious army from the north,
ii. 20, which had haunted the pages of Ezekiel (xxxviii., xxxix.);
and in this book, prophecy (i., ii.) merges into apocalyptic (iii.,
iv.).




AMOS


Amos, the first of the literary prophets, is also one of the
greatest. Hosea may be more tender, Isaiah more serenely majestic,
Jeremiah more passionately human; but Amos has a certain Titanic
strength and rugged grandeur all his own. He was a shepherd, i. 1,
vii. 15, and the simplicity and sternness of nature are written deep
upon his soul. He is familiar with lions and bears, iii. 8, v. 19,
and the terrors of the wilderness hover over all his message. He had
observed with acuteness and sympathy the great natural laws which
the experiences of his shepherd life so amply illustrated, iii. 15.,
and his simple moral sense is provoked by the cities, with the
immoral civilization for which they stand. With a lofty scorn this
desert man looks upon the palaces, i. 4, etc., the winter and the
summer houses, iii. 15, in which the luxurious and rapacious
grandees of the time indulged, and contemplates their ruin with
stern satisfaction.

Those were the days of Jeroboam II, i. 1, and, as the period is
marked by an easy self-assurance, and the ancient boundaries of
Israel are restored, vi. 14 (cf. 2 Kings xiv. 25, 28), Amos belongs,
no doubt, to the latter half of his reign, probably as late as 750
B.C., for he knows, though he does not name, the Assyrians, vi. 14,
and he finds in their irresistible progress westwards an answer to
the moral demands of his heart, Israel's exhausting wars with the
Arameans were now over. Aram herself had been weakened by the
repeated assaults of Assyria, and Israel was enjoying the dangerous
fruits of peace. Extravagance was common, and drunkenness, no less
among the women than the men, iv. 1. The grossest immorality is
associated even with public worship, ii. 7, and religion is being
eaten away by the canker of commercialism, viii. 5. The poor are
driven to the wall, and justice is set at defiance by those
appointed to administer it, ii. 6, v. 7. Such was the society,
brilliant without and corrupt within, into which Amos hurled his
startling message that the God who had chosen them, iii. 2, guided
their history, ii. 9, and sent them prophets to interpret His will,
ii. 11, would punish them for their iniquities, iii. 2.

It is not certain whether the unusually skilful disposition of the
book of Amos is due to himself or to a much later hand.[1] It has
three great divisions: (_a_) the judgment (i., ii.), (_b_)
the grounds of the judgment (iii.-vi.), (_c_) visions of judgment,
with an outlook on the Messianic days (vii.-ix.). In chs. i., ii., with
his sense of an impartial and universal moral law, Amos sees the
judgment sweep across seven countries in the west--Aram, Philistia,
Phoenicia, Edom, Ammon, Moab and Israel.[2] The sins denounced are,
e.g., the barbarities of warfare and the cruelties of the slave trade;
but Amos dwells with special emphasis and detail on the sins of Israel,
as that is the country to which, though a Judean, he has been specially
sent, vii. 10, 15.
[Footnote 1: Note the refrains in i., ii., cf. i. 3, 6; iii.-vi. are
held together by three "hears," iii. 1, iv. 1, v. 1, and apparently
by three "woes," v. 7 (emended text), v. 18, vi. 1; so the visions
in vii.-ix. are introduced by "Thus hath (the Lord Jehovah) shown
me."]
[Footnote 2: It is difficult to believe that the colourless oracle
against Judah, ii. 4, 5, couched in perfectly general terms, is
original. Doubts that are not unreasonable have also been raised
regarding the oracle against Edom, i. 11, 12.]

In the next section (_b_) he begins by asserting that Israel's
religious prerogative will only the more certainly ensure her
destruction, and justifies his threat of doom by his irrepressible
assurance of having heard the divine voice, iii. 1-8. The doom is
deserved because of the rapacity, luxury, iii. 9-15, and
drunkenness, iv. 1-3, nor will their sumptuous worship save them,
iv. 4, 5. Warnings enough they have had already, but as they have
all been disregarded, God will come in some more terrible way, iv.
6-13. Then follows a lament, v. 1-3, and an appeal to hate the evil
and seek God and the good, v. 4-15; otherwise He will come in
judgment and the "day of Jehovah," for which the people long, will
be a day of storm and utter darkness, v. 16-20. To-day, as in the
time of the Exodus, Jehovah's demands are not ritual but moral, and
the neglect of them will end in captivity, v. 21-27. The luxury and
self-assurance of the people are again scornfully denounced, and the
doom of exile foretold (vi.).

(_c_) Then follow visions of destruction from locusts and
drought, vii. 1-6, the vision of the plumbline, symbolical of the
straightness to which Israel has failed to conform, vii. 7-9, the
vision of the summer fruit, which, by a play upon words, portended
the end, viii. 1-3, and the vision of the ruined temple, ix. 1-7.
These visions are interrupted by the exceedingly interesting and
instructive story of the encounter of the prophet with the
supercilious courtier-priest of Bethel, and Amos's fearless
reiteration of his message, vii. 10-17; and also by the section
viii. 4-14, with its exposition of the evils and its threats of
judgment--a section more akin to iii.-vi. than to vii.-ix. The book
concludes with an outlook on the redemption and prosperity which
will follow in the Messianic age, ix. 8-15. It is hardly possible
that this outlook can be Amos's own. In one whose interest in
morality was so overwhelming, it would be strange, though perhaps
not impossible, that the golden age should be described in terms so
exclusively material; but the historical implications of the passage
are not those of Amos's time. It is further an express contradiction
of the immediately preceding words, ix. 2-5, in which, with dreadful
earnestness, the prophet has expressed the thought of an inexorable
and inevitable judgment from which there is no escape. Besides,
while Amos addresses Israel, this passage deals with Judah,
presupposes the fall[1] of the dynasty (cf. _v_. 11) and the
advent of the exile (ix. 14, 15).[2]
[Footnote 1: Even if only the decay were pre-supposed, the words
would be quite inapplicable to the long and prosperous reign of
Uzziah, i. 1.]
[Footnote: The authenticity of a few other passages, cf. viii. 11,
12, has been doubted for reasons that are not always convincing.
Most doubt attaches to the great doxologies, iv. 13, v. 8, 9, ix. 5,
6. The utmost that can be said with safety is that these passages
are in no case necessary to the context, while v. 8, 9 is a distinct
interruption, but that the conception of God suggested by them, as
omnipotent and omnipresent, is not at all beyond the theological
reach of Amos.]

Amos must have had predecessors, ii. 11; but even so the range and
boldness of his thought are astonishing. History, reflection and
revelation have convinced him that Israel has had unique religious
privileges, iii. 2; nevertheless she stands under the moral laws by
which all the world is bound, and which even the heathen
acknowledge, iii. 9--Amos has nothing to say of any written law
specially given to Israel--and by these laws she will be condemned
to destruction, if she is unfaithful, just as surely as the
Philistines and Phoenicians (i.). Indeed, so sternly impartial is
Amos that he at times even seems to challenge the prerogative of
Israel. The Philistines and Arameans had their God-guided exodus no
less than Israel, and she is no more to Jehovah than the swarthy
peoples of Africa, ix. 7. The universal and inexorable claims of the
moral law have never had a more relentless exponent than Amos; and,
though there is in him a soul of pity, vii. 2, 5, it was his
peculiar task, not to proclaim the divine love, but to plead for
social justice. God is just and man must be so too. Perhaps Amos's
message is all the more daring and refreshing that he was not a
professional prophet, vii. 14. His culture, though not formal, is of
the profoundest. He is familiar with distant peoples, ix. 7, he has
thought long and deeply about the past, he knows the influences that
are moulding the present. The religion for which he pleaded was not
a thing of rites and ceremonies, but an ideal of social justice--a
justice which would not be checked at every step by avarice and
cruelty, but would flow on and on like the waves of the sea, v. 24.




OBADIAH


The book of Obadiah--shortest of all the prophetic books--is
occupied, in the main, as the superscription suggests, with the fate
of Edom. Her people have been humbled, the high and rocky fastnesses
in which they trusted have not been able to save them. Neighbouring
Arab tribes have successfully attacked them and driven them from
their home (_vv_, 1-7).[1] This is the divine penalty for their
cruel and unbrotherly treatment of the Jews after the siege of
Jerusalem, _vv_. 10-14, 15_b_. Nay, a day of divine
vengeance is coming upon all the heathen, when Judah will utterly
destroy Edom, and once again possess all the land, north, south,
east and west, that was formerly theirs, and the kingdom shall be
Jehovah's, _vv_. 15_a_, 16-21.
[Footnote 1: Verses 8, 9, which imply that the catastrophe is yet to
come, and speak of Edom in the third person, appear to be later than
the context. For "thy mighty men, O Teman," in _v_. 9_a_,
probably we should read, "the mighty men of Teman."]


The date of the prophecy seems to be fixed by the unmistakable
allusion in _vv_. 11-14 to the capture of Jerusalem by
Nebuchadrezzar in 586 B.C.--an occasion on which the Edomites
abetted the Babylonians (Ezek. xxxv.; Lam. iv. 21 ff.; Ps. cxxxvii.
7). But the case is gravely complicated by the similarity, which is
much too close to be accidental, between Obadiah 1-9 and the oracle
against Edom in Jeremiah, xlix. 7-22 (especially _vv_. 14-16,
9, 10, 7, 22); and, though in one or two places the text of Obadiah
is superior (cf. Ob. 2, 3; Jer. xlix. 15, 16), the resemblance is
such that the passage in Jeremiah must be dependent on Obadiah. Now
the date assigned to Jeremiah's oracle is 605 B.C. (xlvi. 2); but
obviously Jeremiah could not adopt in 605 a prophecy which was not
written till 586. A way out of this difficulty has usually been
sought in the assumption that both prophets have made use, in
different ways, of an older oracle against Edom, _vv_. 1-9 or
10. But there is no adequate reason for separating _vv_. 11-14,
which must refer to the capture of Jerusalem in 586, from _vv_.
1-7. The assumption just mentioned becomes quite unnecessary when we
remember that Jeremiah xlix. 7-22, as we have already seen, is
probably, at least in its present form, from a period very much
later than Jeremiah. The priority therefore rests with Obadiah,
whose prophecy has been utilized in Jeremiah xlix.

In _vv_. 1-7 the catastrophe is not predicted for Edom, it has
already fallen: it was probably an earlier stage of the Bedawin
assaults, whose desolating effect upon Edom is described in Malachi
i. 1-5, and must therefore be relegated to a period about the middle
of the fifth century. We are probably not far from the truth in
dating Obadiah 1-14 about 500 B.C. The memory of Edom's cruelty
would still rankle a generation after the return.

But in _vv_. 15_a_, 16-21 the literary and religious
colouring is different; _vv_. 1-14 is marked by a certain
graphic vigour, _vv_. 15-21 is diffuse. The judgment of Edom in
_vv_. 1-14 is in _vv_. 15-21 made only an episode in a
great world-judgment. Above all, in _v_. 1 the nations are to
execute this judgment, in _v_. 15 they are to be the victims of
it. Further, _vv_. 19, 20 seem to imply an extensive dispersion
of the Jews. Probably, therefore, this passage expresses the bold
eschatological hopes of a later time, when Judah was to be finally
redeemed and the heathen annihilated. The section may be later than
the oracle in Jeremiah xlix, as no use is made of it there.




JONAH


The book of Jonah is, in some ways, the greatest in the Old
Testament: there is no other which so bravely claims the whole world
for the love of God, or presents its noble lessons with so winning
or subtle an art. Jonah, a Hebrew prophet, is divinely commanded to
preach to Nineveh, the capital of the great Assyrian empire of his
day. To escape the unwelcome task of preaching to a heathen people,
he takes ship for the distant west, only to be overtaken by a storm,
and thrown into the sea, when, by the lot, it is discovered that he
is the cause of the storm. He is immediately swallowed by a fish, in
the belly of which he remains three days and nights (i.). Then
follows a prayer: after which the prophet is thrown up by the fish
upon the land (ii.). This time he obeys the divine command, and his
preaching is followed by a general repentance, which causes God to
spare the wicked city (iii.), whereat Jonah is greatly displeased;
but, by a new and miraculous experience, he is taught the shame and
folly of his anger, and the infinite greatness of the divine love
(iv.).

On the face of it, the narrative is not meant to be strictly
historical. Its place among the prophetic books shows that its
importance lies, not in its facts, but in the truths for which it
pleads. Much detail is wanting which we should expect to find were
the narrative pure history, e.g. the name of the Assyrian king, the
results of Jonah's mission, etc. Other circumstances stamp it as
unhistorical: considering the poor success the Hebrew prophets had
in their own land, such a wholesale conversion of a foreign city,
even if such a visit as Jonah's were likely, must be regarded as
extremely improbable, to say nothing of the impossibility of the
animals fasting and wearing sackcloth, iii. 7, 8. The miraculous
fish and the miraculous tree which grew up in a single night forbid
us to look for history in the book. Nineveh's fame is a thing of the
past, iii. 3; the book is written after, probably long after, its
fall in 606 B.C. The lateness of the book and its remoteness from
the events it records, are proved in other ways. Its language has
the Aramaic flavour of the later books, and such a phrase as "the
God of heaven," i. 9, only occurs in post-exilic literature. It
contains several reminiscences of late books[1] (e.g. Joel?), and
its ideas are most intelligible as the product of post-exilic times,
especially if it be regarded as a protest against a loveless and
narrow-hearted type of Judaism. All the conditions point to a date
not much, if at all, earlier than 300 B.C.
[Footnote 1: There are many points of contact between the prayer in
Jonah ii. and the Psalter; but the prayer must be later than the
original book of Jonah. It is in reality not a prayer but a psalm of
gratitude, and is quite inappropriate to Jonah's horrible situation
in the belly of the fish. Even if the metaphors from the sea were
interpreted literally, they would not be applicable to Jonah's case;
e.g., "the weeds were wrapped about my head," _v_. 5. The
Psalm, which is partly, but not altogether, a compilation, must have
been inserted here by a later hand, hardly by the author of the
book, who would have noticed the impropriety of it.]

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.