The Pulpit Commentary — Genesis — Section 13

mencement of a renl decndence, It produced the revolt in the reign of RP,hobo~m. Isrnel and Judah split asunder for ever. The ten tribes apostatised into calf worRhip and Boal worship, and for 250 years, through a list of six unhappy dynasties and nineteen unhappy kings, of whom not one was good, their story dragged itself on, through re- volts and assassinations, through foreign defeats and civil tumults, with little beyon,l the grand missions of Elijah, Elisha, and other prophets to shed a. gleam on that long ngony. 1 Then Assyria cnrried them away captive, and they disappear among the nations. Judah had twenty-one kings, but they were all of David's house, and some of them, like Hezekiah and Josinh, were conspicuously faithful. But their refo1mation came too late. The Jews murdered the prophets, and slew those that were sent unto them, and were carried captive to Babylon. Then came the Exile. In Chaldrea th"y were cured for ever of the temptation to e.postasy, and nothing but their hopes, their promises, and their religion could have preserved them from final obliteration. Babylon fell; Persia prevailed. The Jews returned to a land desolated by war, famine, and disease ; but they returned settled in the faith, and so "with the unresist- ible might of weakness they shook the world." 2 The history of Israel has four main heroes--Moses, Samuel, David, Ezra. Moses gave them their freedom and their law. Samuel their order and unity; David their poetry and their power; Ezra gave them a collected literature and a religious education. If David was the founder of Israel as a monarchy, Ezra is the founder of Israel as a Church. But the lesson of the Old Testament history is mainly this-that, whether as a Kingdom or as a Church, the true farael had but two sources of power and permanence-the law of a Divine holiness, the grasp of a Messianic hope. 3. Poetry is found throughout the Bible, from the song of Lamecb in Gen. iv. to the Apocalypse. All who wish really to understand it must of course make them- selves acquainted with the general features of that parallelism or "balance,"-the rapid stro':e as of alternate wings, "the beaving and sinking as of the human heart," J -of which there are three main forms-cognate, contrasted, or synthetic.• It is the rhythm both of thoughts and words. Thought corresponds to thought in repetition, amplification, contrast, or response; like wave answering to wave, each wave dif- ferent, yet each swayed by the same setting tide of emotion. It is not easy to define the epochs of Hebrew poetry, because of the still unsettled date of certain books, like the Book of Job and the Song of Solomon. We can see that there was a great poetic outburst both at the Exodus and during the period of the Judges, which pro- duced in the song of Deborah one of the most splendid and impassioned poems in the world. But David was pre-eminently the sweet psalmist of Israel. He founl Hebrew poetry a wild flower, but "be planted it on Mount Zion, and nurtured it with kingly care." It never quite died away, and even the Exile and return produced some psalms of remarkable sweetness. The Bible contains poems of nearly all kinds. In the Book of Job we have its single drama of unequalled sublimity; in the songs of Moses and of Deborah the grandest paians to liberty which were ever Bung; in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes uidactic and philosophic poems of great beauty and wisdom ; in the Song of Solomon an exquisite pastoral ; in the Lamentations a most pathetic elegy. Epic indeed there is none; but Ilebrew history is itself a Divine epic, and in the intense utterances of the prophets nnd the sweet songs of the 1 Hosea ii. 4-17; Amos ix. 7. 2 Milton. 3 Ewa.Id, • Oll this subject sea Lowth 'De Sacri poasi Hebrreorum,' Bnd Kerdu, ' Geist der Hebr. Poosie.' A good skotch of Hebrew poet1y by Mr. Wright may be found in Smith's 'Bible D1_-t,'  Hi GEXE[UL INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD 1'ES'rAMEN'r,