The curious contrast between Jacob and Moses at the close is noteworthy but obscure. Jacob, as a servant, guarded' sheep to win his wife; Moses, the 'prophet,' 'guarded' Israel, and by God's help delivered him from the bondage of Egypt. What is intended by this juxtaposition? What lesson is implied in the contrast? It is difficult to decide.

§ 16. The doom upon unrepentant Israel.-The doom is irrevocable, and Hosea's language becomes sterner and yet more stern. The same charges are repeated again and again, and the same punishment is again and again foretold. Death and Sheol must carry away these idolatrous and immoral apostates. God is even represented as summoning them to seize their prey.

When Ephraim spake trembling (?), he was the prince in Israel; but he became guilty through the Baal and died. And now they sin more and more; they make them molten images of their silver, and idols after their own likeness-craftsmen's work all of it: these they call God! sacrificing men kiss calves! Therefore they shall be as the morning cloud, and as the dew that early passeth away, as the chaff that is whirled by the wind up from the floor, and as smoke out of the window.

Yet I am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou knowest no god but me: and there is no saviour beside me. I knew thee in the wilderness, I fed thee in the land of drought. As they fed, they waxed full; they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me. Therefore I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by the way of Assyria. I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the caul of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lioness the wild beast shall tear them. I am thy destruction, O Israel; who can help thee? Where is thy king that he may save thee, and thy princes, that they may rule thee? Of whom thou saidst, Give me a king and princes! I gave thee kings in mine anger, and take them away in my wrath.

Ephraim's iniquity is bound up; his sin is stored! Shall I deliver them from the grasp of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from Death? Where are thy plagues, O Sheol? Where is thy pestilence, O Death? Pity is hid from mine

eyes.

Though Ephraim be fruitful as sedge between waters (?),

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an east wind of the Lord shall come, rising from the wilderness, and his spring shall become dry, and his fountain shall be dried up: he shall spoil the treasury of all its precious vessels (?). Samaria shall bear her guilt, for she hath rebelled against her God.

I cannot attempt to explain the many difficulties and allusions in this or in any other section of Hosea. It would take too long, and this book does not profess to supply the place of a commentary.

'An east wind of the Lord,' i. e. the Assyrian. The metaphor is dropped in the clause about the spoiling of the treasury.

§ 17. Last words of promise.-The concluding section of Hosea is filled with human penitence and divine promise. Professor Cheyne thinks it was added on to Hosea's book by a later writer, but Dr. George Adam Smith vigorously defends its Hosean authorship. It does not, of course, follow because this fragment (for it is little more) is placed last now that it was written last by Hosea. That we cannot tell. We have to remember that the prophet, though touched by divine power, remains a man, and is subject to human moods and changes. It is only God who is changeless. The different operations of God are humanly represented to man as results now of the divine anger, now of the divine mercy, whereas in reality all God does is done by the entire God, for God is One. If then the exile and punishment of Israel are to be regarded as the direct will and work of God, and if the restoration and forgiveness of Israel are also to be so regarded, the second is no more really due to any one divine attribute than the first. Such separations are purely arbitrary and human. God's justice and God's pity are wholly one and the same. That is implied in the great dogma of Judaism: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

Hosea, then, if this chapter be his, realized that the punishment of Israel could not be final and complete. Such a punishment would defeat its own end, and would therefore be inconsistent with the divine nature and rule. At some point or other, Israel would truly repent; at some moment of time, Israel would hear the divine voice, which in truth had never ceased to call, and would respond to the love which was ever ready to receive and welcome the penitent. Israel would realize the difference between the false gods and the true Saviour, and when, with this 'knowledge of God' growing and blossoming in its heart, it should sincerely ask for forgiveness, its backsliding would be healed.

The new heart would be partly the result of human effort and partly of divine grace. This double source and aspect of the regenerate life we have often had occasion to dwell upon before.

O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast stumbled by thine iniquity. Take with you words, and return unto the Lord: say unto him, 'Altogether forgive our iniquity, and accept the good; so will we render the fruit of our lips (?). Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more our god' to the work of our hands: for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy.'

6

I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from them. I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall blossom as the lily, and send forth his roots deep as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon.

They shall return and dwell in his shadow. They shall live well watered as a garden (?), they shall flourish like a vine, and be fragrant like the wine of Lebanon (?).

Ephraim, what has he to do any more with idols (?) I am like a green fir tree (?); from me is thy fruit found (?).

[Whoso is wise, let him understand these things; whoso is prudent, let him realize them. For straight are the ways of the Lord, and the righteous walk therein, but transgressors shall stumble upon them.]

Several phrases in this beautiful passage must unfortunately remain obscure, as the text is frequently uncertain: some of the renderings, here as elsewhere, rest on critical emendations of the Hebrew. Constant marks of interrogation are necessary to remind the reader how doubtful any translation must always be. The strange comparison of God to a tree is a special stumbling-block. Some commentators suppose that Ephraim is here the speaker, and not the Deity; but this interpretation labours under even greater difficulties.

The final epilogue-the moral to the tragedy, as Wellhausen calls it is clearly the work of a later editor. Compare what I have said about it in Part I, p. 365. Its sternness is medicinal. It represents one mysterious tendency or aspect of the divine order. Circumstance and opportunity are often so many steppingstones for the 'righteous' (for him whose heart is on the whole in the right place, and whose will is set towards goodness) that he

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may become more righteous still. He uses them for good. But these very circumstances and opportunities are to the 'wicked' (to him whose will is set rather sinwards than Godwards) so many 'stumbling-blocks,' steps downwards instead of steps upwards, by which he sins the more. He uses them for evil. It is false and foolish to neglect or overlook the power and fascination of sin. We recall the saying: Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin. On the other hand, these truths are rather tendencies than fixed laws which admit of no exception. It is never too late to mend' is probably no less true than the statement about the bondage of sin. The divine rulings under which our moral nature works are stern-and it is salutary for us that they are so-but they are not calculated to cause despair. They are stern, but not hopeless.

CHAPTER III

ISAIAH I-XII

§ 1. A pledge redeemed.-A few passages from the prophecies of the great Judaean seer and teacher, Isaiah, were given in Part I. For various reasons it was necessary to keep those passages within very narrow limits, but I pointed out that at a later stage I intended 'to print several chapters of the "Book of Isaiah" (as it is commonly called), both for the sake of the great thoughts and noble poetry contained in them, as well as to give a good example of written Hebrew prophecy in the composite and sometimes even confused form, wherein we now, for the greater part, possess it' (p. 373). The intention thus indicated is now to be fulfilled.

§2. The original prophecies of Isaiah and the later additions. -Isaiah, it will be remembered, was a great prophet of the kingdom of Judah, whose public career, extending through the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, occupied the last thirty-five years of the eighth century B.C.

But the Book of Isaiah, as we now possess it, is a composite collection containing writings of many men of many ages. Of its sixty-six chapters the last twenty-seven can be at once separated off from the first thirty-nine. For these last twenty-seven chapters open with the prophecies of the 'Great Unknown' of the days of Cyrus, and all that follows upon these is later and not earlier than they. These twenty-seven chapters therefore have nothing whatever to do with the Isaiah of Jotham's and Hezekiah's reigns. How they came and why they came into their present place no one can tell. The first thirty-nine chapters do, however, contain undoubted passages from Isaiah's pen. Why then, it may be asked, can we not still believe, as people up till not very long ago