PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of the Twelve Prophets, Vol. 1
Smith, George Adam · 134,148 words · 196 reading sections
8Th And Final Series In 7 Vols.
THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE. Edited by Rev. W. R. NICOLL, D.D., Editor of _London Expositor_. =MACLAREN, Rev. Alex.=--COLOSSIANS--PHILEMON. =DODS, Rev. Marcus.=--GENESIS. =CHADWICK, Rev. Dean.=--ST. MARK. =BLAIKIE, Rev. W. G.=--SAMUEL, 2 VOLS. =EDWARDS, Rev. T. C.=--HEBREWS. =SMITH, Rev. G. A.=--ISAIAH, VOL. I. =ALEX…
317 wordsSECTION 2Preface
_WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND A SKETCH OF PROPHECY IN EARLY ISRAEL_ 3 and 5 West Eighteenth Street London: Hodder and Stoughton 1906 TO HENRY DRUMMOND The Prophets, to whom this and a following volume are dedicated, have, to our loss, been haunted for centuries by a peddling and an ambiguous title. Their Twelve Book…
1,061 wordsSECTION 3Preface
* * * * * All criticism, however, is preliminary to the real work which the immortal prophets demand from scholars and preachers in our age. In a review of a previous volume, I was blamed for applying a prophecy of Isaiah to a problem of our own day. This was called "prostituting prophecy." _The_ prostitution of the p…
604 wordsSECTION 4Xxiii. The Sin Against Love 346
[1] J. J. P. Valeton, jun., _Amos en Hosea_, 1894: quoted by Budde in the _Theologische Literaturzeitung_, September, 1894. 1. FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TILL SAMUEL. 2. FROM SAMUEL TO ELISHA. 1. THE MAN AND HIS DISCIPLINE (i. 1; iii. 3-8; vii. 14, 15). 2. THE WORD AND ITS ORIGINS (i. 2; iii. 3-8; and _passim_). 3.…
258 wordsSECTION 5Index Of Passages And Texts 439
MICAH i. MICAH ii., iii. MICAH iv. 1-7. MICAH iv. 8-v. MICAH vi. 1-8. MICAH vi. 9-vii. 6. MICAH vii. 7-20. CHRONOLOGY OF THE DOUBLE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL, _c._ 940-639 B.C. *** _c._ = _circa_: it refers only to the accession of the kings of Judah and Israel; the years are exact so far as they concern the Assyrian d…
661 wordsSECTION 6_The Book Of The Twelve_
[2] This date is very uncertain. It may have been 690, or according to some 685. Καὶ τῶν ιβ' προφητῶν τὰ ὀστᾶ ἀναθάλοι ἐκ τοῦ τόπου αὐτῶν, Παρεκάλεσαν δὲ τὸν Ἰακώβ καὶ ἐλυτρώσαντο αὐτοὺς ἐυ πίστει ἐλπίδος. _And of the Twelve Prophets may the bones_ _Flourish again from their place,_ _For they comforted Jacob_ _…
816 wordsSECTION 7_The Book Of The Twelve_
"The Book of the Twelve" has not always held the place which it now occupies in the Hebrew Canon, at the end of the Prophets. The rabbis taught that Hosea, but for the comparative smallness of his prophecy, should have stood first of all the writing prophets, of whom they regarded him as the oldest.[12] And doubtless i…
797 wordsSECTION 8_The Book Of The Twelve_
* * * * * Such is the extent and order of the journey which lies before us. If it is not to the very summits of Israel's outlook that we climb--Isaiah, Jeremiah and the great Prophet of the Exile--we are yet to traverse the range of prophecy from beginning to end. We start with its first abrupt elevations in Amos. We …
339 wordsSECTION 9Footnotes:
[3] Including, of course, the historical books, Joshua to 2 Kings, which were known as "the Former Prophets"; while what we call the prophets Isaiah to Malachi were known as "the Latter." [4] עשר תרי ספר, the Aramaic form of the Hebrew עשר שנים, which appears with the other in the colophon to the book. A later contrac…
317 wordsSECTION 10_The Prophet In Early Israel_
Our "Twelve Prophets" will carry us, as we have seen, across the whole extent of the Prophetical period--the period when prophecy became literature, assuming the form and rising to the intensity of an imperishable influence on the world. The earliest of the Twelve, Amos and Hosea, were the inaugurators of this period. …
605 wordsSECTION 111. From The Earliest Times Till Samuel.
There was no ancient people but believed in the power of certain personages to consult the Deity and to reveal His will. Every man could sacrifice; but not every man could render in return the oracle of God. This pertained to select individuals or orders. So the prophet seems to have been an older specialist than the p…
735 wordsSECTION 121. From The Earliest Times Till Samuel.
In an office of such mingled possibilities everything depended--as we shall find it depend to the very end of prophecy--on the moral insight and character of the prophet himself, on his conception of God and whether he was so true to this as to overcome his professional temptations to fraud and avarice, malice towards …
791 wordsSECTION 131. From The Earliest Times Till Samuel.
When we analyse this ethical distinction of early Israel, this indubitable progress which the nation were making while the rest of their world was morally stagnant, we find it to be due to their impressions of the character of their God. This character did not affect them as Righteousness only. At first it was even a m…
257 wordsSECTION 142. From Samuel To Elisha.
Of the oldest order of Hebrew prophecy, Samuel was the last representative. Till his time, we are told, the prophet in Israel was known as the Seer,[32] but now, with other tempers and other habits, a new order appears, whose name--and that means to a certain extent their spirit--is to displace the older name and the o…
722 wordsSECTION 152. From Samuel To Elisha.
There was one very remarkable change effected by this new order of prophets, probably the very greatest relief which prophecy experienced in the course of its evolution. This was separation from the ritual and from the implements of soothsaying. Samuel had been both priest and prophet. But after him the names and the d…
1,162 wordsSECTION 162. From Samuel To Elisha.
The risks of degeneration, to which this order of prophecy was liable, arose both from its ecstatic temper and from its connection with public affairs. Religious ecstasy is always dangerous to the moral and intellectual interests of religion. The largest prophetic figures of the period, though they feel the ecstasy, a…
910 wordsSECTION 17Footnotes:
This brings us to Elisha, and from Elisha there are but forty years to Amos. During those forty years, however, there arose within Israel a new civilisation; beyond her there opened up a new world; and with Assyria there entered the resources of Providence, a new power. It was these three facts--the New Civilisation, t…
678 wordsSECTION 18_The Eighth Century In Israel_
[38] Hosea iii. 4. See next chapter, p. 38. [39] Cf. Deut. xxviii. 34. [40] 2 Sam. xii. 1 ff. [41] 1 Kings xi. 29; xii. 22. [42] 1 Kings xiv. 2, 7-11; xix. 15 f.; 2 Kings ix. 3 ff. [43] 1 Kings xxii. 5 ff.; 2 Kings iii. 11 ff. [44] 1 Kings xxi. 1 ff. [45] 2 Kings vi.-viii., etc. [46] 1 Kings xviii. 46; 2 Kings …
960 wordsSECTION 19_The Eighth Century In Israel_
In short, in the half-century between Elisha and Amos, Israel rose from one to another of the great stages of culture. Till the eighth century they had been but a kingdom of fighting husbandmen. Under Jeroboam and Uzziah city-life was developed, and civilisation, in the proper sense of the word, appeared. Only once bef…
945 wordsSECTION 20_The Eighth Century In Israel_
At all these sanctuaries it was Jehovah and no other who was sought: _thy God, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt_.[82] At Bethel and at Dan He was adored in the form of a calf; probably at Gilgal also, for there is a strong tradition to that effect;[83] and elsewhere men still consulted the other…
692 wordsSECTION 21_The Eighth Century In Israel_
Such a religion had no discipline for the busy, mercenary life of the day. Injustice and fraud were rife in the very precincts of the sanctuary. Magistrates and priests alike were smitten with their generation's love of money, and did everything for reward. Again and again do the prophets speak of bribery. Judges took …
795 wordsSECTION 22Footnotes:
[55] He died in 798 or 797. [56] 2 Kings x. 32, xiii. 20, 22. [57] 2 Kings xiii. 14. [58] vi. 12 ff., etc. [59] viii., etc. [60] xiii. 17 ff. [61] 2 Kings xiii. 22-25. [62] xiv. 28, if not Damascus itself. [63] 2 Kings xv.: cf. 2 Chron. xxvi. [64] xii. 7 (Heb. ver. 8). Trans., _As for Canaan, the balances, etc…
652 wordsSECTION 23_The Influence Of Assyria Upon Prophecy_
By far the greatest event in the eighth century before Christ was the appearance of Assyria in Palestine. To Israel since the Exodus and Conquest, nothing had happened capable of so enormous an influence at once upon their national fortunes and their religious development. But while the Exodus and Conquest had advanced…
967 wordsSECTION 24_The Influence Of Assyria Upon Prophecy_
In following the course of this long tragedy, a man's heart cannot but feel that _all_ the splendour and the glory did not lie with the prophets, in spite of their being the only actors in the drama who perceived its moral issues and predicted its actual end. For who can withhold admiration from those few tribesmen, wh…
846 wordsSECTION 25_The Influence Of Assyria Upon Prophecy_
But all this--the reasonableness of the hope of resisting Assyria, the valour which so stubbornly fought her, the religious faith which sanctioned both valour and hope--only the more vividly illustrates the singular independence of the prophets, who took an opposite view, who so consistently affirmed that Israel must f…
826 wordsSECTION 26_The Influence Of Assyria Upon Prophecy_
Assyria, however, was not only Force: she was also the symbol of a great Idea--the Idea of Unity. We have just ventured on one historical analogy. We may try another and a more exact one. The Empire of Rome, grasping the whole world in its power and reducing all races of men to much the same level of political rights, …
727 wordsSECTION 27_The Influence Of Assyria Upon Prophecy_
But Assyria did not help to develop monotheism in Israel only by contributing to the doctrines of a moral Providence and of the equality of all men beneath it. The influence must have extended to Israel's conception of God in Nature. Here, of course, Israel was already possessed of great beliefs. Jehovah had created ma…
471 wordsSECTION 28Footnotes:
[94] "The house of Omri": so even in Sargon's time, 722-705. [95] The Black Obelisk of Salmanassar in the British Museum, on which the messengers of Jehu are portrayed. [96] 2 Kings x. 32 f.; xiii. 3. [97] 2 Kings xiii. 14 ff. [98] The phrase in 2 Kings xiii. 5, _Jehovah gave Israel a saviour_, is interpreted by ce…
611 wordsSECTION 29_The Book Of Amos_
"Towers in the distance, like an earth-born Atlas ... such a man in such a historical position, standing on the confines of light and darkness, like day on the misty mountain-tops." The genuineness of the bulk of the Book of Amos is not doubted by any critic. The only passages suspected as interpolations are the three…
699 wordsSECTION 30_The Book Of Amos_
6. VI. 1-14. The second _Woe_, on them _that are at ease in Zion_ (1, 2): a satire on the luxuries of the rich and their indifference to the national suffering (3-6): captivity must come, with the desolation of the land (9, 10); and in a peroration the prophet reiterates a general downfall of the nation because of …
1,140 wordsSECTION 31_The Book Of Amos_
Towards the middle of the eighth century--is, therefore, the most definite date to which we are able to assign the Book of Amos. At so great a distance the difference of a few unmarked years is invisible. It is enough that we know the moral dates--the state of national feeling, the personages alive, the great events wh…
838 wordsSECTION 32_The Book Of Amos_
Thus, by a double proof, we see not only that the Divine method in that age was to act first by physical chastisement, and only then by an inevitable, ultimate doom of war and captivity; but that the experience of Amos himself, his own intercourse with the Lord, passed through these two stages. The significance of this…
598 wordsSECTION 33Footnotes:
[112] The full list of suspected passages is this: (1) References to Judah--ii. 4, 5; vi. 1, _in Zion_; ix. 11, 12. (2) The three Outbreaks of Praise--iv. 13; v. 8, 9; ix. 5, 6. (3) The Final Hope--ix. 8-15, including vv. 11, 12, already mentioned. (4) Clauses alleged to reflect a later stage of history--i. 9-12; v. 1,…
513 wordsSECTION 341. The Man And His Discipline.
The Book of Amos opens one of the greatest stages in the religious development of mankind. Its originality is due to a few simple ideas, which it propels into religion with an almost unrelieved abruptness. But, like all ideas which ever broke upon the world, these also have flesh and blood behind them. Like every other…
806 wordsSECTION 351. The Man And His Discipline.
Upon this unmitigated wilderness, where life is reduced to poverty and danger; where nature starves the imagination, but excites the faculties of perception and curiosity; with the mountain tops and the sunrise in his face, but above all with Jerusalem so near,--Amos did the work which made him a man, heard the voice o…
694 wordsSECTION 361. The Man And His Discipline.
As a wool-grower, however, Amos must have had his yearly journeys among the markets of the land; and to such were probably due his opportunities of familiarity with Northern Israel, the originals of his vivid pictures of her town-life, her commerce and the worship at her great sanctuaries. One hour westward from Tekoa …
740 wordsSECTION 371. The Man And His Discipline.
These words are taken from a passage in which Amos illustrates prophecy from other instances of his shepherd life. We have seen what a school of vigilance the desert is. Upon the bare surface all that stirs is ominous. Every shadow, every noise--the shepherd must know what is behind and be warned. Such a vigilance Amos…
862 wordsSECTION 381. The Man And His Discipline.
The influence of the same discipline is still visible when Amos passes from the facts of his own consciousness to the facts of his people's life. His day in Israel sweltered with optimism. The glare of wealth, the fulsome love of country, the rank incense of a religion that was without morality--these thickened all the…
864 wordsSECTION 391. The Man And His Discipline.
Before we pass from the desert discipline of the prophet, we must notice one of its effects, which, while it greatly enhanced the clearness of his vision, undoubtedly disabled Amos for the highest prophetic rank. He who lives in the desert lives without patriotism--detached and aloof. He may see the throng of men more …
305 wordsSECTION 402. The Word And Its Origins.
AMOS i. 2; iii. 3-8; and _passim_. We have seen the preparation of the Man for the Word. We are now to ask, Whence came the Word to the Man?--the Word that made him a prophet. What were its sources and sanctions outside himself? These involve other questions. How much of his message did Amos inherit from the previous …
806 wordsSECTION 412. The Word And Its Origins.
The prophet then is made sure of his message by the agreement between the inward convictions of his soul and the outward events of the day. When these walk together, it proves that they have come of a common purpose. He who causes the events--it is Jehovah Himself, _for shall there be evil in a city and Jehovah not hav…
752 wordsSECTION 422. The Word And Its Origins.
But the panic-born are always the still-born; and it is simply impossible that prophecy, in all her ethical and religious vigour, can have been the daughter of so fatal a birth. If we look again at the evidence which is quoted from Amos in favour of such a theory, we shall see how fully it is contradicted by other feat…
813 wordsSECTION 432. The Word And Its Origins.
Let us see how far this criticism is supported by the facts. To no sane observer can the religious history of Israel appear as anything but a course of gradual development. Even in the moral standards, in respect to which it is confessedly often most difficult to prove growth, the signs of the nation's progress are ve…
828 wordsSECTION 442. The Word And Its Origins.
Nor does Amos go elsewhere for the religious sanctions of his ethics. It is by the ancient mercies of God towards Israel that he shames and convicts his generation--by the deeds of grace which made them a nation, by the organs of doctrine and reproof which have inspired them, unfailing from age to age. _I destroyed the…
1,030 wordsSECTION 452. The Word And Its Origins.
It has just been said that emphasis upon morality as the sum of religion, to the exclusion of sacrifice, is the most original element in the prophecies of Amos. He himself, however, does not regard this as proclaimed for the first time in Israel, and the precedent he quotes is so illustrative of the sources of his insp…
801 wordsSECTION 463. The Prophet And His Ministry.
When we realise this, we feel how inadequate it is to express prophecy in the terms of evolution. No doubt, as we have seen, the ethics and religion of Amos represent a large and measurable advance upon those of earlier Israel. And yet with Amos we do not seem so much to have arrived at a new stage in a Process, as to …
750 wordsSECTION 473. The Prophet And His Ministry.
Amos told the pilgrims at Bethel that the first events of his time in which he felt a purpose of God in harmony with his convictions about Israel's need of punishment were certain calamities of a physical kind. Of these, which in chapter iv. he describes as successively drought, blasting, locusts, pestilence and earthq…
726 wordsSECTION 483. The Prophet And His Ministry.
We have treated these visions, not as the imagination or prospect of possible disasters,[197] but as insight into the meaning of actual plagues. Such a treatment is justified, not only by the invariable habit of Amos to deal with real facts, but also by the occurrence of these same plagues among the series by which, as…
652 wordsSECTION 493. The Prophet And His Ministry.
_Thus He gave me to see: and, behold, the Lord had taken His station_--'tis a more solemn word than the _stood_ of our versions--_upon a city wall_ built to _the plummet,_[200] _and in His hand a plummet. And Jehovah said unto me, What art thou seeing, Amos?_ The question surely betrays some astonishment shown by the p…
802 wordsSECTION 503. The Prophet And His Ministry.
We have here a conception of religion, which is not merely due to the unspiritual character of the priest who utters it, but has its roots in the far back origins of Israel's religion. The Pagan Semite identified absolutely State and Church; and on that identification was based the religious practice of early Israel. I…
706 wordsSECTION 513. The Prophet And His Ministry.
There follows a denunciation of the man who sought to silence this fresh voice of God. _Now therefore hearken to the word of Jehovah thou that sayest, Prophesy not against Israel, nor let drop thy words against the house of Israel; therefore thus saith Jehovah...._ Thou hast presumed to say; _Hear what God will say_. T…
515 wordsSECTION 52Footnotes:
[130] Cornill: _Der Israelitische Prophetismus. Five Lectures for the Educated Laity._ 1894. [131] Amos vii. 14. See further pp. 76 f. [132] Khurbet Taḳûa', Hebrew Teḳôa', תְּקֹוע, from תקע, _to blow a trumpet_ (cf. Jer. vi. 1, _Blow the trumpet in Tekoa_) or _to pitch a tent_. The latter seems the more probable deri…
682 wordsSECTION 53Footnotes:
[156] There is thus no reason to alter the words _who shall not prophesy_ to _who shall not tremble_--as Wellhausen does. To do so is to blunt the point of the argument. [157] See Chap. IV. [158] See pp. 53 ff. [159] See pp. 69 f. [160] viii. 8. [161] viii. 9. [162] v. 14. [163] How far Assyria assisted the deve…
696 wordsSECTION 54_Atrocities And Atrocities_
[197] So for instance, Von Orelli. [198] Chap. iv. [199] See Chap. IV., p. 51. [200] Literally _of the plummet_, an obscure expression. It cannot mean plumb-straight, for the wall is condemned. [201] 2 Kings xxi. 13: _I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the plummet_ or _weight_ (מִשְׁקֹלֶת) _of th…
813 wordsSECTION 55_Atrocities And Atrocities_
In his survey Amos includes all the six states of Palestine that bordered upon Israel, and lay in the way of the advance of Assyria--Aram of Damascus, Philistia, Tyre (for Phœnicia), Edom, Ammon and Moab. They are not arranged in geographical order. The prophet begins with Aram in the north-east, then leaps to Philisti…
914 wordsSECTION 56_Atrocities And Atrocities_
3. TYRE.--_Thus saith Jehovah: Because of three crimes of Tyre and because of four I will not turn It back; for that they gave up a whole captivity to Edom_--the same market as in the previous charge--_and did not remember the covenant of brethren_. We do not know to what this refers. The alternatives are three: that t…
1,036 wordsSECTION 57_Atrocities And Atrocities_
5. AMMON.--_Thus saith Jehovah: Because of three crimes of Ammon and because of four I will not turn It back; for that they ripped up Gilead's women with child--in order to enlarge their borders!_ For such an end they committed such an atrocity! The crime is one that has been more or less frequent in Semitic warfare. W…
709 wordsSECTION 58_Atrocities And Atrocities_
Again, for the moral principles which Amos enforces no originality can be claimed. He condemns neither war as a whole nor slavery as a whole, but limits his curse to wanton and deliberate aggravations of them: to the slave-trade in cold blood, in violation of treaties and for purely commercial ends;[255] to war for tri…
1,176 wordsSECTION 59_Atrocities And Atrocities_
Luxury, then, and a very sensual conception of religion, with all their vicious offspring in the abuse of justice, the oppression of the poor, the corrupting of the innocent, and the intolerance of spiritual forces--these are the sins of an enlightened and civilised people, which Amos describes as worse than all the at…
404 wordsSECTION 60Footnotes:
[209] As is done in chap. vi. 2, ix. 7. [210] So against Israel in chap. iv. [211] So Isa. v. 25: נטויה ידו ועוד אפו שב לא Cf. Ezek. xx. 22: ידי את והשיבותי [212] פשעים [213] Called _lûh_, _i.e._ slab. [214] These Syrian campaigns in Gilead must have taken place between 839 and 806, the long interval during which …
658 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.