PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of the Twelve Prophets, Vol. 2
Smith, George Adam · 165,161 words · 239 reading sections
_The Locusts And The Day Of The Lord_
Thus Joel reaches the climax of his argument. Jehovah is near, His Day is about to break. From this it is impossible to escape on the narrow path of disaster by which the prophet has led up to it. But beneath that path the prophet passes the ground of a broad truth, and on that truth, while judgment remains still as re…
712 wordsSECTION 182_The Locusts And The Day Of The Lord_
In this passage the same feeling is attributed to men and to the fruits of the land: _In grief are the priests, the ground is in grief_. And it is repeatedly said that all alike are _abashed_. By this heavy word we have sought to render the effect of the similarly sounding “hôbhîsha,” that our English version renders _…
660 wordsSECTION 183Footnotes:
_But now_ hear _the oracle of Jehovah: Turn ye to Me with all your heart, And with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend ye your hearts and not your garments, And turn to Jehovah your God: For He is gracious and merciful, Long-suffering and plenteous in love, And relents of the evil. Who knows but He will turn…
657 wordsSECTION 184_Prosperity And The Spirit_
[1205] Lit. _press themselves_ in perplexity. [1206] Reading, with Wellhausen and Nowack (“perhaps rightly,” Driver) נשמו for נאשמו, _are guilty_ or _punished_. [1207] מדבר, usually rendered _wilderness_ or _desert_, but literally _place where the sheep are driven_, land not cultivated. See _Hist. Geog._, p. 656. […
815 wordsSECTION 1852. The Outpouring Of The Spirit
_Fear not, O Land! Rejoice and be glad, For Jehovah hath done greatly.[1229] Fear not, O beasts of the field! For the pastures of the steppes are springing with new grass, The trees bear their fruit, Fig-tree and vine yield their substance. O sons of Zion, be glad, And rejoice in Jehovah your God: For He hath g…
890 wordsSECTION 1862. The Outpouring Of The Spirit
Has it been otherwise in the history of Christianity? Our Lord Himself found His first disciples, not in a hungry and ragged community, but amid the prosperity and opulence of Galilee. They left all to follow Him and achieved their ministry in poverty and persecution, but they brought to that ministry the force of mind…
659 wordsSECTION 1872. The Outpouring Of The Spirit
_And it shall be that after such things, I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your old men shall dream dreams, Your young men shall see visions: And even upon all the slaves and the handmaidens in those days will I pour out My Spirit. And I will set signs in he…
674 wordsSECTION 188Footnotes:
That it was the lurid clouds of Apocalypse, which thus hemmed in our prophet’s view, is clear from the next verses. They bring the terrible manifestations of God’s wrath in nature very closely upon the lavish outpouring of the Spirit: _the sun turned to darkness and the moon to blood, the great and terrible Day of the …
846 wordsSECTION 189_The Judgment Of The Heathen_
[1231] Driver, _in loco_. [1232] Heb. also repeats here _early rain_, but redundantly. [1233] בראשון, _in the first_. A.V. adds _month_. But LXX. and Syr. read כראשננה, which is probably the correct reading, _as before_ or _formerly_. [1234] i. 18. [1235] Above, p. 189. [1236] Cf. _Hist. Geog._, Chap. XXI., espec…
709 wordsSECTION 190_The Judgment Of The Heathen_
Another feature worthy of notice is that the Phœnicians are accused of selling Jews to the sons of the Jevanîm, Ionians or Greeks.[1247] The latter lie on the far horizon of the prophet,[1248] and we know from classical writers that from the fifth century onwards numbers of Syrian slaves were brought to Greece. The oth…
619 wordsSECTION 191Footnotes:
[1242] I am unable to feel Driver’s and Nowack’s arguments for a connection conclusive. The only reason Davidson gives is (p. 204) that the judgment of the heathen is an essential element in the Day of Jehovah, a reason which does not make Joel’s authorship of the last chapter certain, but only possible. [1243] The ph…
354 wordsSECTION 192_Israel And The Greeks_
Apart from the author of the tenth chapter of Genesis, who defines Javan or Greece as the father of Elishah and Tarshish, of Kittim or Cyprus and Rodanim or Rhodes,[1263] the first Hebrew writer who mentions the Greeks is Ezekiel,[1264] _c._ 580 B.C. He describes them as engaged in commerce with the Phœnicians, who bou…
929 wordsSECTION 193_Israel And The Greeks_
Therefore, as in the days of their earliest prophets, the people of Israel once more lay between two rival empires. And as Hosea and Isaiah pictured them in the eighth century, the possible prey either of Egypt or Assyria, so now in these last years of the fourth they were tossed between Ptolemy and Antigonus, and in t…
750 wordsSECTION 194Footnotes:
In “Zech.” ix.—xiv. we see prophecy perhaps at its lowest ebb. The clash with the new foes produces a really terrible thirst for the blood of the heathen: there are schisms and intrigues within Israel which in our ignorance of her history during this time it is not possible for us to follow: the brighter gleams, which …
710 wordsSECTION 195_Chapters Ix.—Xiv. Of “Zechariah”_
[1276] XII. _Antt._ i.: cf. _Con. Apion._, I. 22. [1277] See above, p. 442. Eusebius, _Chron. Arm._, II. 225, assigns it to 320. [1278] Cheyne, _Introd. to Book of Isaiah_, p. 105. _Lo, thy King cometh to thee, vindicated and victorious, meek and riding on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass._ _Up, Sword, aga…
721 wordsSECTION 196_Chapters Ix.—Xiv. Of “Zechariah”_
Some critics, however, remained unmoved by the evidence offered for a pre-exilic date. They pointed out in particular that the geographical references were equally suitable to the centuries after the Exile. Damascus, Hadrach and Hamath,[1287] though politically obsolete by 720, entered history again with the campaigns …
822 wordsSECTION 197_Chapters Ix.—Xiv. Of “Zechariah”_
It will be seen from this catalogue of conclusions that the prevailing trend of recent criticism has been to assign “Zech.” ix.—xiv. to post-exilic times, and to a different author from chaps. i.—viii.; and that while a few critics maintain a date soon after the Return, the bulk are divided between the years following …
782 wordsSECTION 198_Chapters Ix.—Xiv. Of “Zechariah”_
More supporters have been found for a division of authorship between chaps. ix.—xi., xiii. 7-9, and chaps. xii.—xiv. (less xiii. 7-9). Chap. xii. opens with a title of its own. A strange element is introduced into the historical relation. Jerusalem is assaulted not by the heathen only, but by Judah, who, however, turns…
673 wordsSECTION 199_Chapters Ix.—Xiv. Of “Zechariah”_
The same impression is sustained by the contrast of the historical circumstances reflected in each of the two sections. Zech. i.—viii. were written during the building of the Temple. There is no echo of the latter in “Zech.” ix.—xiv. Zech. i.—viii. picture the whole earth as at peace, which was true at least of all Syr…
808 wordsSECTION 200Footnotes:
Whiston’s work (p. 450) is _An Essay towards restoring the True Text of the O. T. and for vindicating the Citations made thence in the N. T._, 1722, pp. 93 ff. (not seen). Besides those mentioned on p. 452 (see n. 1293) as supporting the unity of Zechariah there ought to be named De Wette, Umbreit, von Hoffmann, Eb…
532 wordsSECTION 201_The Contents Of “Zechariah” Ix.—Xiv._
From the number of conflicting opinions which prevail upon the subject, we have seen how impossible it is to decide upon a scheme of division for “Zech.” ix.—xiv. These chapters consist of a number of separate oracles, which their language and general conceptions lead us on the whole to believe were put together by one…
690 wordsSECTION 202_The Contents Of “Zechariah” Ix.—Xiv._
2. THE PRINCE OF PEACE (ix. 9-12). This beautiful picture, applied by the Evangelist with such fitness to our Lord upon His entry to Jerusalem, must also be of post-exilic date. It contrasts with the warlike portraits of the Messiah drawn in pre-exilic times, for it clothes Him with humility and with peace. The coming…
756 wordsSECTION 203_The Contents Of “Zechariah” Ix.—Xiv._
4. AGAINST THE TERAPHIM AND SORCERERS (x. 1, 2). This little piece is connected with the previous one only through the latter’s conclusion upon the fertility of the land, while this opens with rain, the requisite of fertility. It is connected with the piece that follows only by its mention of the shepherdless state of…
877 wordsSECTION 204_The Contents Of “Zechariah” Ix.—Xiv._
6. WAR UPON THE SYRIAN TYRANTS (xi. 1-3). This is taken by some with the previous chapter, by others with the passage following. Either connection seems precarious. No conclusion as to date can be drawn from the language. But the localities threatened were on the southward front of the Seleucid kingdom. _Open, Lebānon…
711 wordsSECTION 205_The Contents Of “Zechariah” Ix.—Xiv._
_Thus saith Jehovah my God:[1388] Shepherd the flock of slaughter, whose purchasers slaughter them impenitently, and whose sellers say,[1389] Blessed be Jehovah, for I am rich!—and their shepherds do not spare them. [For I will no more spare the inhabitants of the land—oracle of Jehovah; but lo! I am about to give mank…
786 wordsSECTION 206_The Contents Of “Zechariah” Ix.—Xiv._
The figure of Jerusalem as a boulder, deeply bedded in the soil, which tears the hands that seek to remove it, is a most true and expressive summary of the history of heathen assaults upon her. Till she herself was rent by internal dissensions, and the Romans at last succeeded in tearing her loose, she remained planted…
944 wordsSECTION 207_The Contents Of “Zechariah” Ix.—Xiv._
_And it shall come to pass in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations who have come in upon Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplication, and they shall look to him[1428] whom they have pierced; and they shall lament fo…
687 wordsSECTION 208_The Contents Of “Zechariah” Ix.—Xiv._
_Lo! a day is coming for Jehovah,[1435] when thy spoil will be divided in thy midst. And I will gather all the nations to besiege Jerusalem, and the city will be taken and the houses plundered and the women ravished, and the half of the city shall go into captivity, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from …
742 wordsSECTION 209_The Contents Of “Zechariah” Ix.—Xiv._
The Feast of Booths was specially one of thanksgiving for the harvest; that is why the neglect of it is punished by the withholding of the rain which brings the harvest. But such a punishment for such a neglect shows how completely prophecy has become subject to the Law. One is tempted to think what Amos or Jeremiah or…
363 wordsSECTION 210Footnotes:
[1324] So Staerk, who thinks Amos I. made use of vv. 1-5. [1325] ix. 1, אדם, _mankind_, in contrast to the tribes of Israel; 3, חרוץ, _gold_; 5, ישב as passive, cf. xii. 6; הוביש, Hi. of בּוּשׁ, in passive sense only after Jeremiah (cf. above, p. 412, on Joel); in 2 Sam. xix. 6, Hosea ii. 7, it is active. [1326] See …
667 wordsSECTION 211Footnotes:
[1357] Of these cf. “Mal.” iii. 5; the late Jer. xliv. 8 ff.; Isa. lxv. 3-5; and, in the Priestly Law, Lev. xix. 31, xx. 6. [1358] _Z.A.T.W._, I. 60. He compares this verse with 1 Sam. xv. 23. In Ezek. xxi. 26 they give oracles. [1359] חזיז, _lightning-flash_, only here and in Job xxviii. 26, xxxviii. 25. [1360] LX…
671 wordsSECTION 212Footnotes:
[1396] See above, note 1393, on the same mis-read phrase in ver. 7. [1397] Heb. הַיּוֹצֵר, _the potter_. LXX. χωνευτήριον _smelting furnace_. Read הָאוֹצָר by change of א for י: the two are often confounded; see n. 1399. [1398] Wellhausen and Nowack read _thou hast been valued of them_. But there is no need of this. …
657 wordsSECTION 213Footnotes:
[1417] Heb. _I will find me_; LXX. εὑρήσομεν ἑαυτοῖς. [1418] Hebrew adds a gloss: _in Jerusalem_. [1419] The population in time of war. [1420] xii. 10, שׁפך רוח, not earlier than Ezek. xxxix. 29, Joel iii. 1, 2 (Heb.); תחנונים, only in Job, Proverbs, Psalms and Daniel; המר, an intrans. Hiph.; xiii. 1, מקור, _fountai…
432 wordsSECTION 214[1440] Lxx.
[1441] LXX.; Heb. _thee_. [1442] Heb. Kethibh, יְקָרוֹת יִקְפָּאוּן, _jewels_ (? hardly stars as some have sought to prove from Job xxxi. 26) _grow dead_ or _congealed_. Heb. Ḳerê, _jewels and frost_, וְקִפָּאוֹן. LXX. καὶ ψύχη καὶ πάγος, וְקָרוּת וְקִפָּאוֹן, _and cold and frost_. Founding on this Wellhausen proposes…
301 wordsSECTION 215_The Book Of Jonah_
“And this is the tragedy of the Book of Jonah, that a Book which is made the means of one of the most sublime revelations of truth in the Old Testament should be known to most only for its connection with a whale.” The book of Jonah is cast throughout in the form of narrative—the only one of our Twelve which is so.…
861 wordsSECTION 2161. The Date Of The Book.
Jonah ben-Amittai, from Gath-hepher[1464] in Galilee, came forward in the beginning of the reign of Jeroboam II. to announce that the king would regain the lost territories of Israel from the Pass of Hamath to the Dead Sea.[1465] He flourished, therefore, about 780, and had this book been by himself we should have had …
369 wordsSECTION 2172. The Character Of The Book.
Nor does this book, written so many centuries after Jonah had passed away, claim to be real history. On the contrary, it offers to us all the marks of the parable or allegory. We have, first of all, the residence of Jonah for the conventional period of three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, a story…
364 wordsSECTION 2183. The Purpose Of The Book.
The general purpose of this parable is very clear. It is not, as some have maintained,[1481] to explain why the judgments of God and the predictions of His prophets were not always fulfilled—though this also becomes clear by the way. The purpose of the parable, and it is patent from first to last, is to illustrate the …
793 wordsSECTION 2193. The Purpose Of The Book.
Why, of all prophets, Jonah should have been selected as the type of Israel, is a question hard but perhaps not impossible to answer. In history Jonah appears only as concerned with Israel’s reconquest of her lands from the heathen. Did the author of the book say: I will take such a man, one to whom tradition attribute…
683 wordsSECTION 2204. Our Lord’S Use Of The Book.
We have seen, then, that the Book of Jonah is not actual history, but the enforcement of a profound religious truth nearer to the level of the New Testament than anything else in the Old, and cast in the form of Christ’s own parables. The full proof of this can be made clear only by the detailed exposition of the book.…
646 wordsSECTION 2215. The Unity Of The Book.
The next question is that of the Unity of the Book. Several attempts have been made to prove from discrepancies, some real and some alleged, that the book is a compilation of stories from several different hands. But these essays are too artificial to have obtained any adherence from critics; and the few real discrepan…
673 wordsSECTION 222Footnotes:
[1458] Unless the Psalm were counted as such. See below, p. 511. [1459] _Minus_ Ruth of course. [1460] Cf. with Jonah i. 1, וַיְהִי, Josh. i. 1, 1 Sam. i. 1, 2 Sam. i. 1. The corrupt state of the text of Ezek. i. 1 does not permit us to adduce it also as a parallel. [1461] See below, p. 496. [1462] See above, Vol. …
798 wordsSECTION 223Footnotes:
[1474] See above, Vol. I., p. 5. [1475] Below, pp. 523 ff. [1476] Contrast the treatment of foreign states by Elisha, Amos and Isaiah, etc. [1477] Abridged from pp. 3 and 4 of Kleinert’s Introduction to the Book of Jonah in Lange’s Series of Commentaries. Eng. ed., Vol. XVI. [1478] Köhler, _Theol. Rev._, Vol. XVI.;…
746 wordsSECTION 224Footnotes:
[1486] Isa. xlii. 19-24. [1487] Jer. li. 34, 44 f. [1488] That the Book of Jonah employs mythical elements is an opinion that has prevailed since the beginning of this century. But before Semitic mythology was so well known as it is now, these mythical elements were thought to have been derived from the Greek mytholo…
921 wordsSECTION 225Footnotes:
[1500] _To Thy holy temple_, vv. 5 and 8: cf. Psalm v. 8, etc. _The waters have come round me to my very soul_, ver. 6: cf. Psalm lxix. 2. _And Thou broughtest up my life_, ver. 7: cf. Psalm xxx. 4. _When my soul fainted upon me_, ver. 8: cf. Psalm cxlii. 4, etc. _With the voice of thanksgiving_, ver. 10: cf. Psalm xli…
348 wordsSECTION 226_The Great Refusal_
JONAH i We have now laid clear the lines upon which the Book of Jonah was composed. Its purpose is to illustrate God’s grace to the heathen in face of His people’s refusal to fulfil their mission to them. The author was led to achieve this purpose by a parable, through which the prophet Jonah moves as the symbol of hi…
754 wordsSECTION 227_The Great Refusal_
But to the natural man in Israel the possibility of the heathen’s repentance was still so abhorrent, that he turned his back upon it. _Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the face of Jehovah._ In spite of recent arguments to the contrary, the most probable location of Tarshish is the generally accepted one, that it was…
911 wordsSECTION 228_The Great Refusal_
How very real it is and how very noble! We see the storm, and then we forget the storm in the joy of that generous contest between heathen and Hebrew. But the glory of the passage is the change in Jonah himself. It has been called his punishment and the conversion of the heathen. Rather it is his own conversion. He mee…
716 wordsSECTION 229Footnotes:
“But, oh the labour, O prince, the pain!” Sometimes the neglected duty is at last achieved only at the cost of a man’s breath; and the truth, which might have been the bride of his youth and his comrade through a long life, is recognised by him only in the features of Death. [1511] iv. 2. [1512] For the grace of Go…
261 wordsSECTION 230_The Great Fish And What It Means—The Psalm_
JONAH ii At this point in the tale appears the Great Fish. _And Jehovah prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights._ After the very natural story which we have followed, this verse obtrudes itself with a shock of unreality and grotesqueness. What an anti…
655 wordsSECTION 231_The Great Fish And What It Means—The Psalm_
It has been justly remarked by Canon Cheyne that this passage may be considered as the intervening link between the original form of the myth and the application of it made in the story of Jonah.[1530] To this the objection might be offered that in the story of Jonah the _great fish_ is not actually represented as the …
802 wordsSECTION 232Footnotes:
_And Jehovah spake to the fish, and it threw up Jonah on the dry land._ [1524] For the Babylonian myths see Sayce’s Hibbert Lectures; George Smith’s _Assyrian Discoveries_; and Gunkel, _Schöpfung u. Chaos_. [1525] Passages in which this class of myths are taken in a physical sense are Job iii. 8, vii. 12, xxvi. 12, 1…
257 wordsSECTION 233_The Repentance Of The City_
JONAH iii Having learned, through suffering, his moral kinship with the heathen, and having offered his life for some of them, Jonah receives a second command to go to Niniveh. He obeys, but with his prejudice as strong as though it had never been humbled, nor met by Gentile nobleness. The first part of his story appe…
780 wordsSECTION 234_The Repentance Of The City_
It is, then, with an art most fitted to his high purpose that our author—unlike all other prophets, whose aim was different—presents to us, not the description of a great military power: king, nobles and armed battalions: but the vision of those monotonous millions. He strips his country’s foes of everything foreign, e…
653 wordsSECTION 235Footnotes:
_And the men of Niniveh believed upon God, and cried a fast, and from the greatest of them to the least of them they put on sackcloth. And word came to the king of Niniveh, and he rose off his throne, and cast his mantle from upon him, and dressed in sackcloth and sat in the dust. And he sent criers to say in Niniveh:—…
516 wordsSECTION 236_Israel’S Jealousy Of Jehovah_
JONAH iv Having illustrated the truth, that the Gentiles are capable of repentance unto life, the Book now describes the effect of their escape upon Jonah, and closes by revealing God’s full heart upon the matter. Jonah is very angry that Niniveh has been spared. Is this (as some say) because his own word has not bee…
772 wordsSECTION 237_Israel’S Jealousy Of Jehovah_
It is this subtle story of Israel’s jealousy of Jehovah, and Jehovah’s gentle treatment of it, which we follow in the last chapter of the book. The chapter starts from Jonah’s confession of a fear of the results of God’s lovingkindness and from his persuasion that, as this spread to the heathen, the life of His servant…
663 wordsSECTION 238Footnotes:
God has vindicated His love to the jealousy of those who thought that it was theirs alone. And we are left with this grand vague vision of the immeasurable city, with its multitude of innocent children and cattle, and God’s compassion brooding over all. [1551] Deut. xviii. 21, 22. [1552] The Hebrew may be translated …
283 wordsSECTION 239*** End Of The Project Gutenberg Ebook The Expositor'S Bible: The Book Of The Twelve Prophets, Vol. 2 ***
HABAKKUK, Introduction, 115; Chaps. i.—ii. 4, 129; ii. 5-20, 143; iii., 149. HAGGAI, Introduction, 225; Chap. i., 236; ii. 1-9, 241; ii. 10-19, 244; ii. 20-23, 250. JOEL, Introduction, 375; Chaps. i.—ii. 17, 398; ii. 18-32, 418; iii., 431. JONAH, Introduction, 493; Chap. i., 514; ii., 523; iii., 529; i…
424 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.