(5) Jer 23°%.—Jn view of all that has been said,
* Dt 327 shows that this isthe meaning of obdiy ‘1D? (not ‘days of
eternity,’ as if what were spoken of were the eternal pre-existence of the Messiah).
it might not be an impossible supposition that the real starting-point of the expectation of a personal Messiah is to be found in Jer 23°%-, the prophecy of the ‘righteous shoot’ of David.* He is called the ‘righteous shoot’ because, unlike David’s descend- ants in the time of Jeremiah, He will correspond to the ideal of a Davidiec ruler. But the little that Jeremiah says about Him (that He will rule wisely and justly, that under Him Judah and Israel shall be saved and dwell secure) implies no very extra- ordinary fortunes or attributes of the subject of the prophecy ; so that the question might almost be asked whether the concept of ‘Messiah’ is applicable at all to Jeremiah’s ‘righteous shoot.’ Nor are we carried any further by the name given Him in v.° ‘Jahweh is our righteousness,’ especi- ally as it is exegetically uncertain whether this name is intended for the Messiah and not rather for the land and the people : in the late imitation of our passage in 33! the same name is bestowed upon Jerusalem. But, even if Jeremiah means by the ‘righteous shoot’ the Messiah in the narrower sense, he by no means thinks of @ single descendant of David who lives and reigns for ever. For already in v.4 he promises shepherds to feed the people when they are collected again, that is to say, he expects a succession of righteous descendants of David, as the author of Jer 33" already understood him to do. This would not indeed exclude the supposition that the shoot of David who first arises and inaugurates the great revolution was thought of as the Messiah in the narrower sense; but a closer examination of the passage shows that the idea of the personal Messiah does not come so pro- minently forward as to be capable of being re- garded as a landmark in the history of Messianic prophecy.
(c) The Messianic prophecies in the wider sense which are attributed to pre-exilic prophets, stand in urgent need of careful sifting. Many of them are encumbered with serious difficulties as to their authenticity, and hence had better be reserved for treatment at a later stage. Others are based upon the expectation of a natural course of things, and hence lack the marks of true Messianic prophecy mentioned above (p. 694°). To this category belong
(a) Is 7%,—A certain expectation is here embodied in the name given by Isaiah to his son, Sh@ar- jdshib, ‘a remnant? shall return.’ The under- lying notion is that the impenitent mass of the people shall be involved in destruction on Jahweh’s day of judgment, but that a small number of godly ones shall survive the judgment, and, under a regenerated political constitution, lead a life well- pleasing to God. So also the closing words of 6% “and a holy seed shall be the stump [of the tenth that survives at the end of the first Judgment],’ + may be understood to mean simply that the sur- vivors are to form the stock of a population of Judah ‘consecrated’ to Jahweh, 7.e. truly belone- ing to Him. The additional idea that their con- version and deliverance as well as the forming of the new political constitution are to be brought about by a miraculous interposition and extra- ordinary measures on the part of Jahweh, could be supplied from the above-noticed prophecies of a personal Messiah, only if the latter certainly emanated from Isaiah.
(8) Hos 2°° (8). 23 (21)! Along with the promise of
*The authenticity of this prophecy appears to us (against Duhm in his Commentary on Jeremiah) to be absolutely proved by Zee 38 and 612, where ‘Shoot’ (EV ‘ Branch’) has already become (no doubt, on the authority of Jeremiah) a nomen pro- prium of the Messiah.
t On the ‘holy remnant’ see the above-cited studies of Mein- hold (p. 695» note *).
{ We do not forget that these words also [they are wanting in the LXX] are denied by many to Isaiah,
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a community purified from sin and introduced into the closest fellowship with God we meet here with the promise of extraordinary outward blessings : protection from all harm from animals (as in Is 11°"), and the so-called ‘ Messianic fertility ’— a theme which, in the later eschatological pro- po is treated with special predilection and in anguace of the strongest hyperbole.
(y) Zeph 34-.—From the period prior to Jere- miah, at most Zeph 3" can be assigned to our present category. But even this passage speaks only of taking away the consciousness of guilt and preventing fresh guilt on the part of ‘the humble and small people,’ which, after the removal of the haughty ones, is to be left on the holy mountain, where henceforward it shall dwell in peace.
(5) Jer 12"%-.—_In Jeremiah we encounter, per- haps for the first time,* the notion—still indeed expressed in a very limited fashion—that the Gentiles are to be partakers of the blessings of the theocracy. In 12™*- there is a promise that the heathen neighbours of Judah who have been carried captive shall be planted again, and shall flourish in the midst of Judah, provided they confess the name of Jahweh ; otherwise, they are to be plucked up once more and completely destroyed. Beyond doubt, we must see in this oracle an approximation to the theologumenon, so important in after-times, of the conversion of the heathen and their recep- tion into the kingdom of God—an expectation which witnesses to a profound insight into the Divine plan of salvation, and deserves more than any other the name of a truly Messianic hope of the future.