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A ROYAL PRAYER

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'And with thee is wisdom, which knoweth thy works, and was present when thou wast making the world, and which understandeth what is pleasing in thine eyes, and what is right according to thy commandments. Send her forth out of the holy heavens, and from the throne of thy glory bid her come, that being present with me she may toil with me, and that I may learn what is well-pleasing before thee. For she knoweth all things and hath understanding thereof, and in my doings she shall guide me in ways of soberness, and she shall guard me in her glory. And so shall my works be acceptable, and I shall judge thy people righteously, and I shall be worthy of my father's throne.

"For what man shall know the counsel of God? or who shall conceive what the Lord willeth? For the thoughts of mortals are timorous, and our devices are prone to fail. For a corruptible body weigheth down the soul, and the earthy frame lieth heavy on a mind that is full of cares. And hardly do we divine the things that are on earth, and the things that are close at hand we find with labour; but the things that are in the heavens who ever yet traced out? And who ever gained knowledge of thy counsel, except thou gavest wisdom, and sentest thy holy spirit from on high? And it was thus that the ways of them which are on earth were corrected, and men were taught the things that are pleasing unto thee; and through wisdom were they saved.'

In this fine concluding section of the first division we may note, as illustrating the Greek influence to which our author owes much of his poetry and depth of thought, the mention of the four cardinal virtues: soberness (in Greek Sophrosunê, usually translated by temperance'), understanding (in Greek Phronêsis, to avoid the use of Sophia, wisdom, which is here regarded as the source and origin of every excellence), righteousness (in Greek Dikaiosune, usually translated by justice,'), and courage (in Greek Andreia).

'A good soul fell to my lot. Here in rather veiled and uncertain language the author adopts the Platonic view of pre-existence. As the soul is indestructible, it not only continues to live after death, but it has already lived before birth. Those who would like to read more about this and kindred theories can make up the subject' in easily accessible books. The tendency to ascribe to the body moral as well as physical corruption ('the body weighs down the

soul) is again Platonic, and illustrative proofs of it can be found in Plato's dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul called the Phaedo.

Note how, to our author, wisdom and God's spirit are one and the same. Sometimes he speaks of God's incorruptible spirit,' sometimes of a 'spirit of wisdom,' sometimes of wisdom itself, sometimes of wisdom as a spirit, sometimes of a holy spirit in wisdom, sometimes of the spirit of the Lord,' sometimes of the 'holy spirit of discipline,' and finally, as in the last passage, of the holy spirit of God.' In all these various forms the same idea is variously expressed. He means by them that aspect of God which seems to him the creative cause of all existence, the living condition and active source of truth, of beauty and of goodness. God as the sustainer of nature, God as the inspirer of man, these divine functions are attributed by our author to Wisdom or the Holy Spirit. God in his own divine life-who can fathom it or him? But God is near as well as far. And it is in his quality as giver, helper and inspirer that our Alexandrian sage, combining Greek and Hebrew strands of thought, attempts to bring him more closely home to us by the conception of him as holy and all-pervading Spirit.

For this conception, helpful and quickening as it is, we have reason to be grateful; nor must we forget its close connexion, in our author's mind at any rate, with his second claim to honour and renown, the doctrine of the soul's immortality. Man's soul is akin to the world's soul, and therefore, like that, imperishable. Not till that doctrine is fully reached is it easy to distinguish clearly between the things of sense and the things of spirit, and to mark with adequate difference the cleavage between the perishable outward 'goods' of 'matter' and the inward and incorruptible 'goods' of 'soul.' Not till then is it possible to realize fully that the essential gifts of Spirit are essentially spiritual-beauty, wisdom and goodness; and that those things are the supremest bestowals of God's grace, which, being states or powers of the mind, are presumably indestructible by death. The bidding of Shakespeare to his soul in his 146th sonnet is dependent upon the hope of its closing couplet :

'Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

Fool'd by those rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

THE DEATH OF DEATH

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?
Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.'

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SECTION II

PROPHETICAL LITERATURE

CHAPTER I

THE BOOK OF AMOS

§ 1. A leap backward through the ages.-According to the plan sketched out in the last paragraph of the Introductory Chapter, the present section will consist of certain select extracts and specimens from the Prophetical Literature. The order adopted may seem strangely and very unnecessarily unchronological, and indeed it is a far backward cry through the ages from the Wisdom of Solomon to the Book of Amos. But this present volume is specially intended to contain the products of literary activity among the Jews in the post-exilic period, and therefore it seemed desirable to begin with a kind of literature which, in my opinion, was typical of the period. Selections from the prophetical literature are included in this volume because almost every prophetical book, as we now possess it, was at least edited in the post-exilic age, and contains in all probability interpolated additions written by post-exilic Jews. Originally indeed I had intended to confine my specimens of this prophetical literature to the Book of Joel and to select chapters from the Book of Isaiah. But on further consideration it has seemed advisable to include also the work of those two great inaugurators of written prophecy, Amos and Hosea.

It is true that some short selections from Amos and Hosea were given in Part I; but it seems a great pity to limit the knowledge of them, even so far as my own Bible for Home Reading is concerned, to these fragments. These two prophetical books are great and short enough to be given in their entirety.

Moreover, although their date is pre-exilic, yet there are perhaps in them sufficient post-exilic 'interpolations' and 'additions' to justify their inclusion in a volume dedicated predominantly to

THE AGE OF AMOS

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the post-exilic and even post-Nehemian period. These possible later additions, concerning which the great scholars are by no means agreed, I shall indicate by brackets.

§ 2. Amos and his time.—The date of Amos is tolerably certain. It was the middle of the eighth century B. C., towards the close of the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel (790-749 B. C.). The circumstances of his age are thus described by Professor Driver in his admirable Commentary on Joel and Amos in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. I append references to the respective pages of Part I, in which the passages from the Books of Kings alluded to by Professor Driver are to be found.

'The reign of Jeroboam II, though passed by briefly in the historical books (p. 351), was one of singular external prosperity for the northern kingdom. Jeroboam II was the fourth ruler of the dynasty founded (B. C. 842) by Jehu (pp. 344-348). Under both Jehu and his successor, Jehoahaz, Israel had suffered severely at the hands of the Syrians. Already under Jehu (p. 349) Hazael had succeeded in wresting from Israel all its territory east of Jordan; under Jehoahaz (B. C. 815-802) Israel was if possible still more humiliated; throughout his whole reign Hazael continued its vexatious oppressor, inflicting upon its armies defeats, in which (to use the expressive metaphor of the historian) he "made them like dust in threshing" (p. 349), and gaining possession of various cities (p. 355). The details given in the Book of Kings are meagre; but the terms in which the narrator speaks make it evident how seriously by these losses the strength of Israel was impaired (pp. 355-357). Under Jehoash (B. C. 802-790) the tide turned. Ben-hadad succeeded Hazael on the throne of Damascus; and from him Jehoash, encouraged by Elisha's dying charge, recovered the cities which his father had lost (pp. 356, 357). Jeroboam II (B. C. 790-749) was yet more successful. "He restored the coast of Israel from the entering in of Hamath unto the sea of the Arábah” (p. 357), i. e. from the far north to the Dead Sea, besides gaining other successes. The old limits of its territory were thus regained, and Israel could again breathe freely, and devote itself to the arts and enjoyments of peace. The Book of Amos exhibits to us the nation reposing in the ease which had thus been won for it. But some years would obviously be required ere the full fruits of Jeroboam's successes could be reaped; and hence we are justified in assigning the prophecy of Amos to the later years of his reign.

'The Book of Amos presents a vivid picture of the social condition of Israel at the time. On the one hand, we see the material prosperity which Israel now enjoyed. Wealth abounded;

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