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 fortunate that one of the longest, most important, and
impressive sections of the book--the Elijah and Elisha narratives (1
Kings xvii.-2 Kings viii., xiii. l4-2l)--has not been touched by the
Deuteronomic redaction. The Elijah narratives not only recognize the
existence of altars all over the land, 1 Kings xix. 10, but the
great contest between Jehovah and Baal is actually decided at the
sanctuary on Carmel, xviii. 20, a sanctuary which, by the
Deuteronomic law, was illegal. Again, the advice given by Elisha to
cut down the fruit trees in time of war, 2 Kings iii. 19, is in
direct contravention of the Deuteronomic law (Deut. xx. 19). These
narratives must precede the redaction of the book by a century and a
half or more, and we have them pretty much as they left the hand of
the original writers. A post-exilic hand, however, is evident in 1
Kings xviii. 31, 32_a_. To a later age, which believed in the
exclusive rights of Jerusalem, the altar on Carmel, which was said
to be repaired by Elijah, _v._ 30, was naturally an offence; so
the repairing of this old altar is represented as the erection of a
new and special one, typical of the unity of Israel. The lateness of
the insertion is further proved by its containing a quotation from P
(Gen. xxxv. 10).

As the book was redacted by Judean writers, it is not unnatural that
the summary notices of the kings of Judah are more elaborate than
those of Israel. In the former case, but not in the latter, the age
of the king at his accession and the name of his mother are
mentioned. One curious feature of these notices is that the
statement of a king's accession, whether in Israel or Judah, is
always accompanied by a statement of the corresponding year in the
contemporary reign of the sister kingdom. The notices conform to
this type: "In the twenty and seventh year of Jeroboam, king of
Israel, began Azariah, son of Amaziah, king of Judah, to reign," 2
Kings xv. 1. It is practically certain that these synchronisms, as
they are called, are not contemporary but the work of the redactors.
There is no reason to suppose that the kings of either country would
have dated their own reigns with reference to the other; besides,
the synchronisms do not strictly agree with the other chronological
notices of the reigns. The period between the division of the
kingdoms and the fall of Samaria is estimated as 260 years in the
story of the kings of Judah, but only as 242 in the case of Israel.
Probably the original documents contained the number of years in the
reign, and the dates of the more important events; but the
synchronisms represent an artificial scheme created by the redactor.
Traces of such a system are present in 1 Kings vi. 1, according to
which 480 years, i.e. twelve generations of forty years each,
elapsed between the exodus and the building of the temple.

So much for the redaction; what, then, were the sources of the
redaction? Three are expressly mentioned--the book of the acts of
Solomon, 1 Kings xi. 41, the book of the chronicles of the kings of
Israel, and the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah. The
nature of these books may be inferred, partly from the facts
recorded in our book of Kings, and especially from the facts in
support of which they are cited. They seem to have contained, e.g.,
accounts of wars, conquests, conspiracies, buildings, 1 Kings xiv.
19, xv. 23, xvi. 20, but it is not probable that they were official
annals. There was indeed a court official whose name is sometimes
translated "the recorder," 2 Sam. viii. 16, 1 Kings iv. 3. But
besides the probable inaccuracy of this translation,[1] it is very
unlikely that, in the northern kingdom at any rate, with its
frequent revolutions, court annals were continuously kept; the
annalist could hardly have recorded the questionable steps by which
his monarch often succeeded to the throne, though doubtless official
documents were extant, capable of forming material for the
subsequent historian. But in any case, the chronicles to which the
book of Kings refers cannot have been official annals; it is assumed
that they are accessible to everybody, as they would not have been
had they been official chronicles. They were in all probability
finished political histories, something like the elaborate section
devoted to Solomon in our present book of Kings. The chronicles of
the kings of Israel and Judah probably formed, not one book, as has
been supposed, but two; the same event, e.g., the campaign of
Hazael, is sometimes mentioned in two distinct and independent
connections, 2 Kings x. 32, xiii. 3, cf. xii. 18f.--a fact which
further suggests that the redactor treated his sources with at least
comparative fidelity.
[Footnote 1: The word strictly means "one who calls to mind," and
would appropriately designate an official who brought the affairs of
the kingdom before the king.]

The book of Kings, as we have seen, concentrates attention almost
exclusively on the religious elements in the history, and these were
determined largely by the prophets. It is not surprising, therefore,
that many of the longer sections deal with the utterances or
activities of prophets at critical junctures of the history. The
part played by Ahijah at the time of the disruption of the kingdom,
by Elijah in the great struggle between Baal and Jehovah worship, by
Elisha during the Aramean assaults upon Israel, by Isaiah at the
invasion of Sennacherib--these and similar episodes are dealt with
so fully as to suggest that biographies of the prophets, written
possibly by literary members of the prophetic order, were at the
disposal of the redactors of the book of Kings. Temple affairs are
also discussed, from the days of Solomon to Josiah (I Kings vi.
vii., 2 Kings xi., xii., xvi., xxii., xxiii.), with a sympathy and a
minuteness which almost suggest the inference that a regular temple
history was kept; but occasional statements which are anything but
flattering to the priests (2 Kings xii. 7, 15) render the inference
somewhat precarious.

Besides the chronicles and biographies, there are hints that the
redactors had access to other sources. The words in which Solomon
dedicated the temple, only partially preserved in the Hebrew, are,
by a very probable emendation of the Greek text, taken from the book
of Jashar:--

The sun hath Jehovah set in the heavens,
He himself hath determined to dwell in the darkness.
And so I have built Thee an house to dwell in,
Even a place to abide in for ever and ever.
(1 Kings viii. 12, 13; Septuagint, _v._ 53).

Again, 1 Kings xx., xxii. appears to come from a different source
from the Elijah narratives in 1 Kings xvii.-xix., xxi. The former
section takes a distinctly more favourable view of Ahab than the
Elijah stories do, and, unlike them, it alludes to Ahab seldom by
name, but usually as "the king of Israel"; further, in it the great
prophet of the period is Micah rather than Elijah. Both these groups
of narrative belong no doubt to the northern kingdom.[1]
[Footnote 1: Chs. xx., xxii. obviously so; but no less xvii.-xix.,
xxi., for in 1 Kings xix. 3 Beersheba is described as belonging to
Judah. A Judean writer would not have appended such a note.]

It is important to consider the value of the sources of the book of
Kings. We have already seen that the redactor occasionally deals
with them in a spirit of praiseworthy scrupulousness, repeating the
same fact from different sources, and making no attempt to dovetail
the one narrative into the other. Sometimes the sources have been
demonstrably followed word for word, phrases like _to this day_
being used of situations which had passed away by the time the book
was redacted.[1] The facts, though lamentably meagre, have usually
the appearance of being thoroughly trustworthy; the quotation from
the book of Jashar is no doubt as genuine as it is interesting, and
the brief account of the submission of Hezekiah to the tribute
imposed by Sennacherib, 2 Kings xviii. 14-16, is supported by the
Assyrian records. But it is evident that the history does not always
rest upon contemporary sources, and that early events and
personalities are touched with the colours of legend or romance.
Much of the story of Solomon, e.g., is unmistakably historical--his
luxury, his effeminacy, his commerce, his unscrupulousness. But
there are stories of another sort which, on the face of them, must
be decades, if not centuries, later than Solomon's reign. "There
came no more," we are informed, "such abundance of spices as those
which the queen of Sheba gave to king Solomon" (1 Kings x. 10). The
age of Solomon is clearly long past, and his glory has been enhanced
by the lapse of time; for "silver was nothing accounted of in the
days of Solomon," x. 21. Tales are told of his almost fabulous
revenue, x. 14, which can hardly be reconciled with the story of his
loan from Hiram, ix. 14. The story of Solomon is really a
compilation, and its various elements are by no means all of the
same historical value.
[Footnote 1: E.g., 1 Kings xii. 19 implies the existence of Israel,
and 2 Kings viii. 22 (Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah
unto this day) ignores the later conquest of Edom by Amaziah, xiv.
7.]

The career of Elisha is also seen through the colours of a rich and
reverent imagination. It is, in the main, intended to be a replica
of Elijah's, and many of his miracles are obviously suggested by
his. The story of Elisha's resuscitation of the dead child is an
expansion of the similar story told of Elijah (2 Kings iv., 1 Kings
xvii.), and his miracle wrought in behalf of the widow, 2 Kings iv.
1-7, is modelled on a similar miracle wrought by Elijah, 1 Kings
xvii. 8-16. There is further an element of magic in his miracles
which differentiates them from Elijah's, and throws them more upon
the level of mediaeval hagiography; such, e.g., as the floating of
the iron upon the water, or the raising of a dead man by contact
with the prophet's bones. The Elijah narratives, on the other hand,
represent a higher type of religious thought. The figure of that
great prophet may also have been glorified by tradition, but in any
case his was a personality of the most commanding power. He was
indeed fortunate in his biographer; his story is told with great
dramatic and literary art. In its account of the struggle with the
greed of Ahab and the licentiousness of Baalism, it sheds a
brilliant light upon one of the most crucial epochs of Hebrew
history. Even this story, however, is not all of a piece. There is
linguistic and other evidence that the chapter (2 Kings i.), in
which two companies of fifty men are consumed by fire from heaven at
the word of Elijah, is very late. In the story, which is rather
mechanical and lacks the splendid dramatic power of the other Elijah
stories, the prophet is only a wonder-worker, and his action is not
determined by any moral consideration. It was not so much the spirit
of Elijah himself, but rather that of the late redactor, that Jesus
rebuked, when He said to His disciples, who quoted the prophet's
conduct for a precedent, "Ye know not what spirit ye are of."

Perhaps the chapter of least historical value in the book of Kings
is that in which Jeroboam I is condemned and denounced for his
idolatry at Bethel (1 Kings xiii.). It contains an unparelleled
instance of predictive prophecy: Josiah is foretold by name three
centuries before he appears, _v._ 2. The difficulty of this
prediction is so keenly felt that one orthodox commentator feels
constrained to dispose of it by assuming that the name is to be
taken, not as a proper name, but in its etymological sense as one
whom "Jehovah supports," The sudden withering of the hand and its
equally sudden restoration to health are hardly more surprising than
the definite prediction of the fate of the idolatrous priests,
_v._ 2,--a prediction which appears to be fulfilled to the
letter, 2 Kings xxiii. 16-18. But when we examine the account of the
fulfilment, we find that the passage is later than its context[1]
and inconsistent with it. The conduct of the "old prophet," whose
lying counsel is attributed to an angel, is, morally considered,
disreputable, and it is surely no accident that the man of God,
whose message and fate are thus strangely told, is anonymous,
though, as the opponent of the famous Jeroboam I, the leader of the
disruption, he ought to have been well known. The vagueness and
improbabilities of the story can only be accounted for by its very
late date. Fortunately we are able to show that the story is, at the
earliest, post-exilic. As we have already seen, there is an allusion
in _v_. 32 to the cities of Samaria, which implies that Samaria
was a province, and stamps the passage at once as post-exilic. Even
within the post-exilic period, it probably falls quite late--a
precursor of the book of Chronicles. The historical spirit is in
abeyance, and edification is the only consideration. The story is a
late attempt to illustrate the great truth that God's word is
immutable and must be uncompromisingly obeyed.
[Footnote 1: Verse 16, in which the bones are burned on the altar,
contradicts _v._ 15, in which the altar is already destroyed.]

The religious value of the book of Kings is general rather than
particular. There are individual sections of great religious power
and value--most of all the great group of Elijah narratives; but the
book has been shorn, by the thoroughness of the redaction, of much
that would have been of the deepest interest to the modern student
of Israel's religious no less than political development. Taken as a
whole, it has a certain melancholy grandeur. Beginning in the
splendid glitter of Solomon's reign, the monarchy passed with
unsteady gait across the centuries, menaced by foes without and
within, and ended at last in the irretrievable disaster of exile.
But through the sombre march of history, a divine purpose was being
accomplished. The disaster which swallowed up the nation renewed and
spiritualized the religion, and thus the seeming loss proved great
gain.




ISAIAH


CHAPTERS I-XXXIX

Isaiah is the most regal of the prophets. His words and thoughts are
those of a man whose eyes had seen the King, vi. 5. The times in
which he lived were big with political problems, which he met as a
statesman who saw the large meaning of events, and as a prophet who
read a divine purpose in history. Unlike his younger contemporary
Micah, he was, in all probability, an aristocrat; and during his
long ministry (740-701 B.C., possibly, but not probably later) he
bore testimony, as unremitting as it was brilliant, to the
indefeasible supremacy of the unseen forces that shape history, and
to the quiet strength that comes from confidence in God.

During this period three events stand out as of unique importance:
the coalition--due to fear of Assyria--formed by Aram and Israel
against Judah in 735 B.C. (vii. 1-ix. 6), the capture of Samaria by
the Assyrians in 721 B.C., and the deliverance of Jerusalem in 701
B.C. from the menace of Sennacherib. In these and in all crises,
Isaiah's message was a religious one, but instinct, as the sequel
showed, with political wisdom. It rested ultimately upon the vision
with which his ministry had been inaugurated--the vision of the
King, the Lord of hosts, upon a throne high and lifted up, whose
glory filled the whole earth.

The King was "holy," partly, no doubt, in the ethical sense--for the
man of unclean lips is afraid in His presence--but also partly in
the older sense of being separated, elevated, lifted above the
chances and changes of humanity. Holiness here is almost equivalent
to majesty, it is the other side of the divine glory; and it is this
thought that inspires the message of Isaiah with such serene
confidence. His God is on the throne of the universe: He is the Lord
of hosts. His purposes concern not only Judah, but the whole world,
xiv. 26, and His kingdom must eventually come. Therefore it is that
when, at the news of the confederacy of Aram and Israel against
Judah, "the heart of Ahaz and his people shook as shake the forest
trees before the wind," vii. 2, Isaiah remains firm as a rock; for,
to paraphrase his own great alliterative words, "Faith brings
fixity," vii. 9b. This word of his early ministry is also one of his
latest (701): "he who believeth shall not give way," xxviii. 16.
That is the precious foundation stone that abides unshaken amid the
shock of circumstance, and can bear any weight that may be thrown
upon it. This, then, is Isaiah's great contribution to religion: he
is before all things, the prophet of faith. "In quietness and
confidence your strength shall be," xxx. 15.

It is easy from this point of view to understand the scorn which
Isaiah heaps upon the common objects of men's trust, whether ships,
walls or towers (ii.), lip-worship, xxix. 13f., or the gorgeous
services of the sanctuary, cunning diplomacy or the projected
alliance with Egypt or Assyria (xxx.). Isaiah is the sworn foe of
materialism: the contrast between human and divine resource is to
him nothing less than infinite. "The Egyptians are men, and not God;
and their horses flesh, and not spirit," (xxxi. 3). It is in harmony
with this insistence upon the supremacy of the spiritual that Isaiah
regarded religion as separable not only from political form, but
even from ecclesiastical organization; for (if the text of viii.
16_b_ can be trusted) he committed his message not to the
contemporary church, but to a few disciples, transforming thereby
the existing conception of the church, and taking a step of
immeasurable significance for the development of true religion.

The majesty and originality of Isaiah's thought have their
counterpart in his language. Very powerful, e.g., is his description
of the Assyrian army--

See! hastily, swiftly he comes,
None weary, none stumbling among them,
The band of his loins never loosed,
The thong of his shoes never torn.
His arrows are sharpened,
His bows are all bent.
The hoofs of his horses are counted as flint,
And his wheels as the whirlwind.
His roar is like that of the lioness.
And like the young lions he roars,
Thundering, seizing the prey,
And bearing it off to a place of security.
v. 26-29.

The book is full of poetry as fine as this. Whether describing the
mighty roar of the sea, xvii. 12-14, or Jehovah's power to defend
Israel, xxxi. 4, or singing a tender vineyard song (v.); Isaiah is
equally at home. He effects his transitions with consummate skill:
note, e.g., the swift application he makes of the parable of the
vineyard, v. 5-7, or the scathing retort he makes to those who
complain of the monotony and repetition of his message (xxviii.
11).[1]
[Footnote 1: The real irony of this passage, xxviii. 10-13, can only
be appreciated in the Hebrew.]

The prophecies that fall within the first thirty-nine chapters are
practically all on a very high religious and literary level; yet it
is all but universally conceded that they are not entirely from the
hand of Isaiah. Some prophecies, e.g. xiii., xiv., may be nearly two
centuries later than his time, others, e.g. xxiv.-xxvii, four or six;
indeed large sections or fragments of the book are relegated by the
more radical critics to the second century B.C. and connected with the
Maccabean times. But even the more conservative scholars admit that
several oracles of Isaiah have been worked over by later hands,
possibly by pupils, and that isolated sections, e.g. xxiv.-xxvii.,
have to be relegated to the post-exilic age, and even to a comparatively
late period within that age. These questions can only be settled, if at
all, by exegetical, theological and historical considerations, for which
this is not the place; but in sketching the contents of the various
prophecies, the more probable alternatives will be indicated, where a
solution is important.

It is plain that the present order of the book is not strictly
chronological; otherwise it would have begun with the inaugural
vision which now appears in ch. vi. Generally speaking, there are six
more or less sharply articulated divisions in the first thirty-nine
chapters, i.-xii., xiii.-xxiii., xxiv.-xxvii., xxviii.-xxxiii.,
xxxiv.-xxxv., xxxvi.-xxxix.


Chs, i.-xii. _Prophecies concerning Judah, Jerusalem (and
Israel_)

The first division, like the fourth, deals in the main with Judah
and Jerusalem. As the next division, xiii.-xxiii., deals with
foreign peoples, i.1 can serve as a preface only to the first
division and not to the whole book. The prophecy opens with an
arraignment of Judah, intensely ethical in spirit. It was placed
here, not because it was first in point of time, but as a sort of
frontispiece; for, though the different sections of the ch., e.g.
_vv_. 2-9, 10-20, may come from different times, the first at
any rate implies the ravaging of Judah, i. 7, and appears to point
to the invasion of Sennacherib in 701 B.C.: it would thus be one of
the latest in the book. The land is wasted, the body politic
diseased, i. 1-9; the people seek the favour of their God by
assiduous and costly ceremony, which the prophet answers by an
appeal for a moral instead of a ritual service, _vv_. 10-20.
But, as injustice and idolatry are rampant, they will be surely
punished, _vv_. 21-31.

As a foil to this picture of the depravity of Zion, a foil also to
the immediately succeeding description of her pride and idolatry, is
the beautiful vision of Zion in the issue of the days, ii. 2-5, as
the city to which all nations shall resort for religious
instruction, and their obedience to the expressed will of the God of
Zion will usher in a reign of universal peace. The passage appears,
with an additional verse, in Micah iv. 1-5, where it seems to be
preserved in a more original form; yet Isaiah can hardly have
borrowed it from Micah, who was younger than he. It used to be
supposed that both adopted it from an older poet. But the contents
of the oracle, assigning as it does a world-wide significance to
Zion, its temple, and its _torah_, while not absolutely
incompatible with Isaianic authorship, rather point to a post-exilic
date. We are the more at liberty to assume that the passage was
later inserted as a foil to the preceding description of Zion as
Sodom, as neither in Isaiah nor in Micah does it fit the context.

The general theme of ii.-iv. is the divine judgment which will fall
on all the foolish pride of Judah. How it will come, Isaiah does not
say--the prophecy is one of the earliest (735?)--but the storm that
will sweep across the land will reveal the impotence of superstition
and idolatry and material resources of every kind, ii. 6-22. All the
supports of Judah's political life will be taken away: indeed, the
leaders are either so weak or rapacious that the country is already
as good as ruined, iii. 1-15; and the women, who are as guilty as
the men, will also be involved in their doom, iii. 16-iv. 1.
Strangely enough, this eloquent threat of judgment ends in a vision
of comfort and peace, iv. 2-6. The land is one day to be wondrously
fruitful, her people to be cleansed and holy, and the glory of
Jehovah will be over Zion as a shelter and shade. The theological
implications of this last passage seem late, and it was probably
appended by another hand than Isaiah's as a contrast and
consolation.

Then follows a lament, in the form of a vineyard song, which
skilfully ends in a denunciation of Judah, the vineyard of Jehovah,
v. 1-7, merging thereafter into a sixfold woe, pronounced upon her
rapacious land-holders, drunkards, sceptics, enemies of the moral
order, worldly wise men, besotted and unjust judges, v. 8-24. This
is fittingly followed by the announcement that Jehovah will summon
against Judah the swift, unwearied and invincible hosts of Assyria,
v. 25-30.

In the noble vision (740 B.C.) which inaugurated his prophetic
ministry (vi.), Isaiah saw the glorious Jehovah attended by seraphim
and received from Him the call to go forth and deliver his message
to an unbelieving people. This vision appropriately introduces the
prophecies proper in vii.-xii.; but it is practically certain that
though the vision itself was early, the account of it is later. The
hopelessness of his prospective ministry looks rather like the
retrospect of a disappointing experience. Though Isaiah elsewhere
expresses his faith in the salvation of a remnant, this chapter
asserts the utter annihilation of the people, _vv_. 11-13_ab_.
An attempt has been made to relieve the gloom in the last clause of
the chapter, _v_. 13 _c_, by a comparison of the stump of
the tree that remained, after felling, to the holy seed; but this
clause, which is wanting in the Septuagint, and utterly blunts the
keen edge of the prophecy, is no part of the original chapter.

The next section, vii. i-ix. 6, plunges us into the war which the
allied arms of Aram and Israel waged against Judah in 735, doubtless
in the desire to force her to join a coalition against Assyria.
Isaiah, vii. 1-17, seeks to reassure the faith of the trembling king
Ahaz; and when Ahaz refuses to put the prophetic word to the test,
Isaiah boldly declares that the land will be delivered from the
menace before two or three years are over; and many a child--or it
may be some particular child--soon to be born, will be given the
name Immanuel, and will thereby bear witness to the faith that,
despite the stress of invasion, God will not forget His people, but
that He "is with us."[1] To the same period, but probably not the
same occasion, belongs the prophecy of the devastation of Judah by
Assyria, vii. 18-25. But the blow is to fall first, and within two
or three years, on Aram and Israel, with their respective capitals.
It did not fall so quickly as Isaiah had expected: Damascus was
indeed taken in 732, but Samaria not till 721: in spirit, however,
if not in the letter, the prophecy was fulfilled, viii. 1-4. The
unbelief of Judah will also be punished by the hosts of Assyria, but
the ultimate purpose of Jehovah will not be frustrated, viii. 5-10.
He alone is to be feared, and no combination of confederate kings
need alarm, viii. 11-15. The prophet commits his message to his
disciples, and with patience and confidence looks for vindication to
the future, viii. 16-18. Desperate days would come, viii. 19-91, but
they would be followed by a brilliant day of redemption when Jehovah
would remove the yoke from the shoulder of His burdened people by
sending them a glorious prince with the fourfold name.
[Footnote 1: vii. 8_b_]

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