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Introduction to the Old Testament

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




What we regretfully miss in the book is a truly religious note. It
is national to the core; but, for once in the Old Testament,
nationality is not wedded to a worthy conception of God. Too much
stress need not be laid on the absence of His name--this may have
been due to the somewhat secular character of the festival with its
giving and receiving of presents--and the presence of God, as the
guardian of the fortunes of Israel, is presupposed throughout the
whole story, notably in Mordecai's confident hope that enlargement
and deliverance would arise to the Jews from one place, if not from
another, iv. 14. But the religion of the book--for religion it is
entitled to be called--is absolutely destitute of ethical elements.
It is with a shudder that we read of Esther's request for a second
butchery, ix. 13; and all the romantic glamour of the story cannot
blind us to its religious emptiness and moral depravity. In a
generation which had smarted under the persecution of Antiochus and
shed its blood in defence of its liberty and ancestral traditions,
such bitter fanaticism is not unintelligible. But the popularity of
the book shows how little the prophetic elements in Israel's
religion had touched the people's heart, and how stubborn a
resistance was sure to be offered to the generous and emancipating
word of Jesus.




DANIEL


Daniel is called a prophet in the New Testament (Matt. xxiv. 15). In
the Hebrew Bible, however, the book called by his name appears not
among the prophets, but among "the writings," between Esther and
Ezra. The Greek version placed it between the major and the minor
prophets, and this has determined its position in modern versions.
The book is both like and unlike the prophetic books. It is like
them in its passionate belief in the overruling Providence of God
and in the sure consummation of His kingdom; but in its peculiar
symbolism, imagery, and pervading sense of mystery it stands without
a parallel in the Old Testament. The impulse to the type of prophecy
represented by Daniel was given by Ezekiel and Zechariah. The book
is indeed rather apocalyptic than prophetic. The difference has been
well characterized by Behrmann. "The essential distinction," he
remarks, "between prophecy and apocalyptic lies in this: the
prophets teach that the present is to be interpreted by the past and
future, while the apocalyptic writers derive the future from the
past and present, and make it an object of consolatory hope. With
the prophets the future is the servant and even the continuation of
the present; with the apocalyptic writers the future is the
brilliant counterpart of the sorrowful present, over which it is to
lift them." This will be made most plain by a summary of the book
itself.

Chs. i.-vi. are narrative in form; chs. vii.-xii. are prophetic or
apocalyptic--they deal with visions. Curiously enough ii. 4-vii. 28,
for no apparent reason, are written in Aramaic. In ch. i. Daniel and
his three friends, Jewish captives at the court of Babylon, prove
their fidelity to their religion by refusing to defile themselves
with the king's food. At the end of three years they show themselves
superior to the "wise" men of the empire. Then (ii.) follows a dream
of Nebuchadrezzar, in which a great image was shivered to pieces by
a little stone, which grew till it filled the whole world. Daniel
alone could retell and interpret the dream: it denoted a succession
of kingdoms, which would all be ultimately overthrown and succeeded
by the everlasting kingdom of God. Ch. iii. deals not with Daniel
but with his friends. It tells the story of their refusal to bow
before Nebuchadrezzar's colossal image of gold, and how their
fidelity was rewarded by a miraculous deliverance, when they were
thrown into the furnace of fire. The supernatural wisdom of Daniel
is again illustrated in ch. iv., where he interprets a curious dream
of Nebuchadrezzar as a token that he would be humbled for a time and
bereft of his reason. Ch. v. affords another illustration of the
wisdom of Daniel, and of the humiliation of impiety and pride, this
time in the person of Belshazzar, who is regarded as
Nebuchadrezzar's son. Daniel interprets the enigmatic words written
by the mysterious hand on the wall as a prediction of the overthrow
of Belshazzar's kingdom, which dramatically happens that very night.
Ch. vi. is intended to teach how precious to God are those who trust
Him and scrupulously conform to the practices of true religion
without regard to consequences. Daniel is preserved in the den of
lions into which he had been thrown by the cruel jealousy of the
officials of Darius' empire.

With ch. vii. Daniel's visions begin. Four great beasts are seen
coming up out of the sea, which, according to Babylonian mythology,
is the element opposed to the divine. The last of the beasts,
especially cruel and terrible, had ten horns, and among them a
little horn with human eyes and presumptuous lips. Then is seen the
divine Judge upon His throne, and the presumptuous beast is judged
and slain. Before this same Judge is brought one like a son of man,
who comes with the clouds of heaven--this human and heavenly figure
being in striking contrast to the beasts that rise out of the sea.
Daniel is informed that the beasts represent four kingdoms, whose
dominion is to be superseded by the dominion of the saints of the
most High, i.e. by the kingdom of God, which will be everlasting. In
a second vision (viii.) a powerful ram is furiously attacked and
overthrown by a goat. The angel Gabriel explains that the ram is the
Medo-Persian empire, and the goat is the king of Greece, clearly
Alexander the Great. From one of the four divisions of Alexander's
empire, a cunning, impudent and impious king would arise who would
abolish the daily sacrifice and lay the temple in ruins, but by a
miraculous visitation he would be destroyed. In ch. ix. Daniel,
after a fervent penitential prayer offered in behalf of his sinful
people, is enlightened by Gabriel as to the true meaning of
Jeremiah's prophecy (xxv. 11f., xxix. 10f.) touching the desolation
of Jerusalem. The seventy years are not literal years, but weeks of
years, i.e. 490 years. During the last week (i.e. seven years) there
would be much sorrow and persecution, especially during the last
half of that period, but it would end in the utter destruction of
the oppressor.

In another vision (x.-xii.) Daniel is informed by a shining one of a
struggle he had had, supported by Michael, with the tutelary angel
of Persia; and he makes a revelation of the future. The Persian
empire will be followed by a Greek empire, which will be divided
into four. In particular, alliances will be formed and wars made
between the kings of the north (no doubt Syria) and the south
(Egypt). With great elaboration and detail the fortunes of the king
of the north, who is called contemptible, xi. 21, are described: how
he desecrates the sanctuary, abolishes the sacrifice, cruelly
persecutes the holy people, and prescribes idolatrous worship. At
last, however, he too perishes, and his death is the signal that the
Messianic days are very soon to dawn. Israel's dead--especially
perhaps her martyred dead--are to rise to everlasting life, and her
enemies are also to be raised to everlasting shame. Well is it for
him who can possess his soul in patience, for the end is sure.

Two facts are obvious even to a cursory inspection of the contents
of Daniel (1), that certain statements about the exilic period,
during which, according to the book, Daniel lived, are inaccurate;
and (2) towards the close of the book and especially in ch. xi.,
which represents a period long subsequent to Daniel, the visions are
crowded with minute detail which corresponds, point for point, with
the history of the third and second centuries B.C., and in
particular with the career of Antiochus Epiphanes (xi. 21-45).

(1) Among the unhistorical statements the following may be noted.
There was no siege and capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar in 605
B.C., as is implied by i. 1 (cf. Jer. xxv. 1, 9-11), nor indeed
could there have been any till after the decisive battle of
Carchemish, which brought Western Asia under the power of Babylon.
Again, Belshazzar is regarded as the son of Nebuchadrezzar (v.),
though he was in reality the son of Nabunaid, between whom and
Nebuchadrezzar three monarchs lay. Nor is there any room in this
period of the history (538 B.C.) for "Darius the Mede," v. 31; the
conquest of Babylon threw the Babylonian empire immediately into the
hands of Cyrus, and the impossible figure of Darius the Mede appears
to arise through a confusion with the Darius who recaptured Babylon
after a revolt in 521, and perhaps to have been suggested by
prophecies (cf. Isa. xiii. 17) that the Medes would conquer Babylon.
Again, though in certain passages the Chaldeans represent the people
of that name, v. 30, ix. 1, in others (cf. ii. 2, v. 7) the word is
used to denote the wise men of Babylon--a use demonstrably much
later than the Babylonian empire and impossible to any contemporary
of Daniel. Such a seven years' insanity of Nebuchadrezzar as is
described in Daniel iv. is extremely improbable; equally improbable
is the attitude that Nebuchadrezzar in his decree (iii.) and
confession (iv.) and Darius in his decree (vi.) are represented as
having adopted towards the God of the Jews.

(2) Concerning the immediately succeeding period--from Cyrus to
Alexander--the author is apparently not well informed. He knows of
only four Persian kings, xi. 2 (cf. vii. 6). Ch. xi. 5-20 gives a
brief _résumé_ of the relations between the kings of the north
and the kings of the south--which, in this context, after a plain
allusion in _vv_. 3, 4 to Alexander the Great and the divisions
of his empire, can only be interpreted of Syria and Egypt. From
_v_. 21, however, to the end of ch. xi. interest is
concentrated upon one particular person, who must, in the context,
be a king of the north, i.e. Syria. The direct reference in
_v_. 31 to the pollution of the sanctuary, the temporary
abolition of sacrifice, and the erection of a heathen altar, put it
beyond all doubt that the impious and "contemptible" monarch is none
other than Antiochus Epiphanes. This conclusion is confirmed by the
details of the section, with their unmistakable references to his
Egyptian campaigns, _vv_. 25-28, and to the check imposed upon
him by the Romans, _v_. 30, in 168 B.C.

The phenomenon then with which we have to deal is this. A book
supposed to come from the exile, and to announce beforehand the
persecutions and ultimate triumph of the Jewish people in the second
century B.C. is occasionally inaccurate in dealing with the exilic
and early post-exilic period, but minute and reliable as soon as it
touches the later period. Only one conclusion is possible--that the
book was written in the later period, not in the earlier. _It is a
product of the period which it so minutely reflects_, 168-165
B.C. The precise date of the book depends upon whether we regard
viii. 14 as implying that the dedication of the temple by Judas
Maccabaeus in 165 B.C. is a thing of the past or still an object of
contemplation. In any case it must have been written before the
death of Antiochus in 164 (xi. 45). Like all the prophets, the
author of Daniel addresses his own age. The brilliant Messianic days
are always the issue of the existing or impending catastrophe; and
so it is in Daniel. The redemption which is to involve the
resurrection is to follow on the death of Antiochus and the
cessation of the horrors of persecution--horrors of which the author
knew only too well.[1]
[Footnote 1: Daniel is fittingly chosen as the hero of the book and
the recipient of the visions, as he appears to have enjoyed a
reputation for piety and wisdom (Ezek. xiv. 14, 20, xxviii. 3).
Ezekiel's references to him, however, would lead us to suppose that
he is a figure belonging to the gray patriarchial times, rather than
a younger contemporary of his own.]

Thus the belief in the late date of the book is reached by a study
of the book itself, and is not due to any prejudice against the
possibility of miracle or predictive prophecy. But the late date is
confirmed by evidence of other kinds, especially (1) linguistic, and
(2) theological. (1) There are over a dozen Persian words in the
book, some even in the Babylonian part of the story. These words
would place the book, at the earliest, within the period of the
Persian empire (538-331 B.C.). Further, within two verses, iii. 4,
5, occur no less than five Greek words (herald, harp, trigon,
psaltery and bagpipe), one of which, _psanterîn_, by its change
of l (psa_l_terion) into n, betrays the influence of the
Macedonian dialect and must therefore be later than the conquests of
Alexander, and another, _symphonia_, is first found in Plato.
Though it is not impossible that the names of the other musical
instruments may have been taken over by the Semites from the Greeks
at an early time, these words at any rate practically compel us to
put the book, at the earliest, within the Greek period (i.e. after
331 B.C.). Further, the Hebrew of the book has a strongly Aramaic
flavour. It is not classical Hebrew at all, but has marked
affinities, both in vocabulary and syntax, with some of the latest
books in the Old Testament, such as Chronicles and Esther.

(2) The theology of Daniel undoubtedly represents one of the latest
developments within the Old Testament. The transcendence of God is
emphasized. He is frequently called "the God of Heaven," ii. 18, 19,
and once "heaven" is used, as in the later manner (cf. Luke xv. 18)
almost as a synonym for "God," iv. 26. As God becomes more
transcendent, angels become more prominent: they constitute a very
striking feature in the book of Daniel--two of them are even named,
Gabriel and Michael. Very singular, too, and undoubtedly late is the
conception that the fortunes of each nation are represented and
guarded in heaven by a tutelary angel, x. 13ff. 20.

The view of the future life in xii. 2, 3 is the most advanced in the
Old Testament: not only the nation but the individuals shall be
raised, and of the individuals not only the good (cf. Isa. xxvi. 14,
19) but the bad, to receive the destiny which is their due. These
facts so conclusively suggest a late date for the book that it is
unnecessary to emphasize Daniel's prayer three times a day with his
face towards Jerusalem, vi. 10, though this is not without its
significance.[1]
[Footnote 1: It is worthy of notice that the reference to "the
books" from which the prophecy of Jeremiah is quoted in ix. 2 seems
to imply that the prophetic canon of Scripture was already closed;
and this was hardly the case before 200 B.C.]

The interpretation of this difficult book loses much of its
difficulty as soon as we recognize it to be a product of the time of
Antiochus Epiphanes. It is best to begin with ch. xi, for there the
allusions are, in the main, unmistakable and undeniable. Antiochus
is the last of the kings of the north, i.e. Syria, regarded as one
of the divisions of the Greek empire of Alexander the Great. Without
enigma or symbolism of any kind, the Persian empire is mentioned in
xi. 2 as preceding the Greek, and in _v_. 1 as being preceded
by the Median, which in its turn had been preceded by the
Babylonian. Here, then, in the plainest possible terms, is a
succession of four empires--Babylonian, Median, Persian, Greek--the
last to be succeeded by the kingdom of God (ch. xii.); and with this
key in our hand we can unlock the secret of chs. vii. and ii.

In ch. vii. the four kingdoms, represented by the four beasts and
contrasted with the humane kingdom which is to follow them, are no
doubt these very same kingdoms, as are also the four kingdoms of ch.
ii., symbolized by the different parts of the colossal image of
Nebuchadrezzar's dream: the little stone which destroys the image is
again the kingdom of God. In ch. viii. the ram with the two unequal
horns is the Medo-Persian empire, and the goat which overthrows the
ram is symbolic of the Greek empire, founded by Alexander.

These great features of the book are practically certain. It is
further extremely probable that, in spite of a noticeable difference
in the context, the "little horn" of viii. 9 is the same as the
little horn of vii. 8, 20: the detail of both descriptions--the war
with the saints, the destruction of the temple, the abolition of the
sacrifice--is an undisguised allusion to Antiochus Epiphanes in his
persecution of the faithful Jews and his efforts to extirpate their
religion. The one like a son of man in vii. 13 is almost certainly
not the Messiah: coming as he does with the clouds of heaven, he is
the symbol of the kingdom of God, in contrast to the beasts, which
emerge from the ungodly sea and symbolize the empires of this world.
Again, his being "like a man"--for this is probably all that the
phrase means--is meant to suggest that the kingdom of God is
essentially human and humane, in contrast to the four preceding
kingdoms, which are essentially brutal and cruel. This
interpretation, which the contrasts practically necessitate, is made
as certain as may be by _vv_. 18, 22, 27, where the kingdom and
dominion, which in _v_. 13 are assigned to one like a son of
man, are assigned in similar terms to "the people of the saints of
the most High," i.e. the faithful Jews.

The passages whose interpretation is least certain occur in ch. ix.
In each of two consecutive verses, _vv_ 25f., is a reference to
an "anointed one"--a different person being intended in each case.
The question of their identity involves the further question of the
precise interpretation of the prophecy of the seventy weeks. In ix.
2 Daniel is reminded by a study of Jeremiah (xxv. 11f., xxix. 10) of
the prophecy that the desolation of Jerusalem would last for seventy
years. But it is not over yet.[1] Gabriel then explains, _v_.
24, that the years are in reality weeks of years, i.e. by the
seventy years prophesied by Jeremiah are really meant 490 years. The
period of seventy weeks, thus interpreted, is further subdivided in
_vv_. 25, 26 (a passage almost unintelligible in the Authorized
Version) into three periods, viz. seven weeks (=forty-nine years),
sixty-two weeks, and one week (=seven years).
[Footnote 1: Another incidental proof that the book is late. In the
time presupposed by it for the activity of Daniel, the seventy years
had not yet expired, and so there could have been no problem.]

With the first and last periods there is no difficulty. Starting
from 586 B.C., the date of the exile, forty-nine years would bring
us to 537, just about the time assigned to the edict of Cyrus, which
permitted the Jews to return and rebuild their city. Cyrus would
thus be "the anointed, the prince," and it is an interesting
corroboration of this view that Cyrus is actually called the
anointed in Isaiah xlv. 1. Now, as the book ends with the
anticipated death of Antiochus in 164 B.C., the last week would
represent the years 171 to 164; and in 171 the high priest, who, as
such, would naturally be an anointed one, was assassinated.
Attention is specially called to the sorrows of the last half of the
last week, when the sacrifice would be taken away. This corresponds
almost exactly with the suspension of the temple services from 168
to 165; and this period, again, is that which is elsewhere
characterized as "a time, and times, and half a time," i.e. three
and a half years (vii. 25, xii. 7), or "2,300 evenings-mornings,"
i.e. 1,150 days (viii. 14) or 1,290 or 1,335 days (xii. 11, 12).
These varying estimates of the period, not differing widely,
probably suggest that the book was written at intervals, and not all
at once. The beginning and the close of the seventy weeks or 490
years are thus satisfactorily explained; but the period between 537
and 171 represents 366 instead of 434 years, as the sixty-two weeks
demand. Probably the simplest explanation of the difficulty is that
during much of this long period the Jews had no fixed method of
computing time. Also it ought not to be forgotten that the numbers
are, in any case, partly symbolical, and ought not to be too
strictly pressed. For the purposes of the author, the first and last
periods are more important than the middle.

The precise interpretation of the enigmatic writing on the wall
(_mene_, _tekel_, _peres_, v. 28) is uncertain. It
has been cleverly explained as equivalent to "a mina (=60 shekels),
a shekel and a part" (i.e. about sixty-two) and regarded as a
cryptogram for Darius, who, according to _v_. 31, was on the
eve of destroying Belshazzar's kingdom. More probably it simply
means "number, weigh, divide"--the ambiguity being caused by the
different possibilities of pointing and therefore of precisely
interpreting these words, which were of course unpointed in the
original. Further, in the word _peres_ (divide), there is a
veiled allusion to the Persians.

It is difficult to account for the fact that part of the book, ii.
4-vii., is written in Aramaic. It has been supposed that the author
began to use that language in ii. 4, either because he regarded that
as the language spoken by the wise men, or because they, being
aliens, must not be represented as speaking in the sacred tongue;
and that, having once begun to use it, and being equally familiar
with both languages, he kept it up till he came to the more purely
prophetic part of the book, in which he would naturally recur to the
more appropriate Hebrew. Ch. vii., on this view, is difficult to
account for, as it, no less than viii.-xii., is prophetic; and we
should then have to assume, rather unnaturally, that the vision in
ch. vii. was written in Aramaic because it so strongly resembled the
dream of ch. ii. Besides it is not certain that the word "in
Aramaic" in ii. 4 is meant to suggest that the wise men spoke in
that language: it may have originally been only a marginal note to
indicate that the Aramaic section begins here, just as vii.
28_a_ may indicate the end of the section. Some have supposed
that part of a book originally Hebrew was translated into the more
popular Aramaic, or that part of a book originally Aramaic was
translated into the sacred Hebrew tongue. The difficulty in either
case is to account reasonably for the presence of Aramaic in that
particular section which does not coincide with either of the main
divisions of the book (narrative or apocalyptic), but appears in
both (i.-vi., vii.-xii.). Probably, as Peters has suggested, the
Aramaic portion represents old and popular folk-stories about Daniel
and his friends, that language being retained because in it the
stories were familiarly told, while for the more prophetic or
apocalyptic message the sacred language was naturally used. Ch.
vii., however, presents a stumbling-block on any view of the Aramaic
section. The Aramaic of the book is that spoken when the book was
written: it was certainly not the language spoken by the Babylonian
wise men. It is most improbable that they would have used Aramaic at
all; and if they had, it would not have been the dialect of the book
of Daniel, which is a branch of western Aramaic, spoken in and
around Palestine.

In spite of its somewhat legendary and apocalyptic form, the
religious value of Daniel is very high. It is written at white heat
amid the fires of persecution, and it is inspired by a passionate
faith in God and in the triumph of His kingdom over the cruel and
powerful kingdoms of the world. Its object was to sustain the tried
and tempted faith of the loyal Jews under the fierce assaults made
upon it by Antiochus Epiphanes. Never before had there been so awful
a crisis in Jewish history. In 586 the temple had been destroyed,
but that was practically only an incident in or the consequence of
the destruction of the city; but Antiochus had made a deliberate
attempt to exterminate the Jewish religion. It was to console and
strengthen the faithful in this crisis that the book was written.
The author reminds his readers that there is a God in heaven, and
that He reigns, iv. 26. He bids them lift their eyes to the past and
shows them how the fidelity of men like Daniel and his friends was
rewarded by deliverance from the lions and the flames. He bids them
lift their eyes to the future, the very near future: let them only
be patient a little longer, xii. 12, and their enemies will be
crushed, and the kingdom of God will come--that kingdom which shall
know no end.

It is of especial interest that Antiochus died at the time when our
author predicted he would, in 164 B.C., though not, as he had
anticipated, in Palestine, xi. 45. In the kingdom that was so
swiftly coming, the lives that had been lost on its behalf would be
found again: the martyrs would rise to everlasting life. The
narrative parts have an application to the times not much less
immediate than the apocalyptic. The proud and mighty, like
Nebuchadrezzar, are humbled: the impious, like Belshazzar, who drank
wine out of the temple vessels, are slain. Any contemporary, reading
these tales, would be bound to think of Antiochus, who had
demolished the temple and suspended the sacrifices. So Daniel's
refusal to partake of the king's food was well calculated to
encourage men who had been put to the torture for declining to eat
swine's flesh.

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