736
ESCHATOLOGY
ESCIIATOLOGY
Midian ' (Is 9*), and this may be its primary mean- ing. The day of the Lord to the popular mind would be the day when J" their God would interpose in their "behalf to deliver them. Tlie deliverance would be primarily from external hostile oppression, but internal social miseries might also be included. The idea and the phrase maj' tlius be very ancient, though they appear lirst in Amos. All that the phrase connotes in tlie mouth of the people is the sense of misery and oppression, the belief that only their God can deliver them, faith in His power, and a hope or conviction of His approaching intervention, though on what this conviction was founded does not appear. But to the prophets of this age J" is a purely ethical Being, the moral ruler of Is'ael and the nations, and the sin of Israel and the world demands His intervention. Hence the first aspect of the day of the Lord is always a day of judgment. But judgment is not an end in itself ; it is only in order to redemption, and behind the storm of judgment there always rises clear the day of salvation. The conception of the sin of the world which compels the intervention of the Judge ditters in different prophets. In Amos it is social and civil unrighteousness ; in Hosea, religious un- faithfulness ; m Isaiah, insensibility to the majesty of the great King, who must interpose to bring the sense of Himself home to men's minds.
' The day of the Lord ' is an eschatological idea ; the phrase cannot be rendered ' a day of the Lord,' as if any great calamity or judgment felt to be impending might be so named ; the ' day ' ia that of the final and universal judgment. But, of course, a prophet's presentiment of its nearness might not be realized ; the crisis which he saw impending and deemed the great ' day ' itself, or the beginning of it, niiglit pass over and the ' day ' be deferred. But this fact should not lead us to suppose that the prophets call any great visitation of God by the name of 'the daj' of the Lord.' Again, the terra ' day,' if it originally meant battle day, suggests the presence of some foe whom God uses as His in- strument of judgment. This feature, however, is not always present in descriptions of the day. Sometimes the terrors of the day of the Lord are represented as due to His manifestation of Himself and the convulsions of nature that accompany His appearing, ' when He arises to shake terribly the earth ' (Is i^"'^). But at other times, besides the supernatural gloom and terrors that surround Him when He appears, He is represented as using some fierce, distant nation as the instrument by which He executes His judgment (Is 13, Zeph). The judgment of the day of the Lord is a judgment on the Known world, and the nation that executes the judgment is some wUd people emerging from the dark places of the earth lying beyond tlie confines of the known world.* Once more, when the pro- phets speak of the day of the Lord they always regard it as near (Is 13', Jl 1"> 2'). The coming of the ' day ' itself was a settled belief, but of its time knew no man ; the presentiment of its nearness was awakened in the mind of the prophet by what he saw ot the moral condition of mankind or of the operations of God in the world. To one prophet the insensibility of men to the niiijesty of the Lord the King seems so frightful that He must interpose to cast down everything that is high, so that He alone shall be exalted in that day (Is 2. 3) ; to another He is so visibly operating in the convulsions of the nations that His full manifestation of Him- self seems at hand (Is 13, Zeph) ; while to a third the severe natural calamities with which He is visiting His people seem the tokens and heralds of His final judgment (Jl 1. 2). The prophets' hearts
• Davidson, Nah^ Hob, and Zeph in ' Cambridge Bible,* p. U8 ; Driver, Joei and Amos in same series, p. 185.
were filled with gieat religious issues, with pre- sentiments of the future of the world in God's hand. These presentiments were so vivid in their hearts that they were constantly looking for the fulfilment of them. And thus when the currents of providence, often too sluggish to their eager eyes, received a sudden quickening, when great events were moving and J" visibly interposing in the atl'airs of the world, they felt that He was taking to Ilim His great power. It was but a st«p or two when the kingdom would be the Lord's.
(1) In the pre-exilic prophets the day of the Lord is a judgment primarily on Israel (Am 3'-), though it also embraces the nations. It is Israel's national dissolution, though the dissolution is only in order to a new reconstruction. The sinners of the people shall be destroyed, and a poor and humble people left behind (Zeph 3", Is 2. 3, Hos 4> 2'»«-). (2) With the Exile the judgment on Israel seemed to have been fulfilled, and during the Exile and at the period of the Restoration the judgment of the day of the Lord is represented as falling on the heathen world, and its issue is Israel's redemption (Is 13, Hag, Zee 1-S). And this feeling is often expressed in passages where the dav of the Lord is not formally mentioned (Is 40 ff.," Ps 93-99). (3) Butafter the Restoration, when Israel was again a people, and the old internal antagonisms and wrongs once more manifested themselves, prophets have to threaten it anew with the refiner's fire of the Day of the Lord (Mai Z^). Still, though in the post- exilic literature the judgment is also a sifting of Israel itself (e.g. Ps 50), it is mainly regarded as falling on the heathen world, and issues in Israel's deliverance and the restoration of the Diaspora (Dn 7-"^). This idea largely pervades the later Psalms. Psalms differ from prophecy. Like the hymns of all peoples, they are not creative but representative. They give back, in- thanksgiving, in praise, and often in prayer, the faiths and hopes already contained in the mind of the community and long cherished. And these hopes and faiths are in the main eschatological. When the Psalms speak of the judgment (1° T""" 35'-^ etc.), and of the meek inheriting the earth (37"), of the nearness of the day of the wicked (37''), of seeing God's face in righteousness (17"), of the upright having dominiin speedily over the unrighteous (49"), and much of the same kind, they are not uttering vague hopes never before expressed, but reflecting the certainties of a faith as old at least as the prophets of the 8th cent., the certainty of a judgment of God (Is l-^^- 2. 3), and of the rise behind it of a kingdom of righteousness (Is l"* 9' 1 1-""), and peace (Is 2' 9' 11"), and everlasting joy (Is 9', Hos 2'™-).