BOOKS.

THE BOOB OF THE TWELVE PROPHETS.* IN his work on the minor Prophets, Professor Smith has attempted one of the most difficult feats in authorship. He writes in the same volume for two classes of readers,—and for readers habitually intolerant of each others' tastes and needs.

The introductions and notes are intended for scholars, the expository chapters for the general public. As his views regarding prophecy differ from those common among English Christians, it would have been wiser, in our judgment, had the author addressed himself in the first instance to scholars, before taking the general public into his confidence. Little has been written, by scholars and for scholars, on the minor Prophets, and such a commentary from the pen of Professor Smith would have been welcome. This criticism on the plan of the volume will perhaps appear a counsel of perfection at a time when the general public shows itself so little disposed to accept the verdict of scholars on Biblical questions, and insists on using its own untrained judgment on the largest as

well as on the smallest matters. The force of our objection is likewise weakened by the skilful manner in which the author

has acquitted himself of his double task. The notes can be understood by Hebrew scholars only; but the introductions are so pleasantly and lucidly written that the layman will gather from them without difficulty the general principles of the New Criticism. They will also give him a glimpse into the workshop of a Biblical critic of the modern school which may abate certain prejudices; for there are still those who look upon the Biblical critic with the same feelings of suspicion and dread, as the wizard in his darkened chamber was once regarded. The daylight comes in freely into Professor Smith's workshop. He frankly avows his method, which is to apply to the history of Israel those principles of historical criticism which have yielded such satisfactory results when applied to the records of Greece and Rome and of medimval Europe. His historical study of the minor Prophets has led him to the conclusion that wrong dates have been assigned to certain prophecies, and that others are made up of frag- ments composed at different periods and by different authors.

For some of these conclusions the reasons given are so forcible, and the agreement of competent scholars is so general, that people who are open to conviction in such matters will accept them. For others the arguments are much weaker, and as scholars still are much divided, the traditional view may be allowed in the meantime to retain its place. To this Professor Smith would, we imagine, offer no objection—in some cases be suspends his judgment—but he emphatically claims that the long travail of Old Testament criticism has brought us nearer to the truth of history than we were, when a blind trust was placed on Jewish tradition of dates and authorship.

The indispensable gift of the Prophet, according to Professor Smith, was to speak to the situation of the moment.

The interpreter must, therefore, endeavour to discover when and under what circumstances the theocratic publicist uttered his Burden of Jehovah. The charm of the present volume lies largely in its vivid pictures of the times of the Prophets, and of the scenes amid which they moved. The author's familiarity with the land enables him to lend local colour to the historical narratives. The volume opens with the Prophets of the seventh century before Christ, when Nineveh was the giant oppressor of the nations. The burden of the prophetic message in those days was, Nineve Delenda. The character of Nahum's prophecy against Nineveh is thus described

The first chapter is theological, affirming those general prin- c. tples of Divine Providence by which the overthrow of the tyrant is certain, and God's own people are assured of deliverance. Let us place ourselves among the people who for so long a time had been thwarted, crushed, and demoralised by the most brutal Empire which was ever suffered to roll its force across the world, • The Book of the Twelve Prophets, commonly called the Minor. By George Adam Smith, 1).D., LL.D., Professor of Hebrew and Old Testatment Haegeiis, Free Church College, Glasgow. In 2 vols. Vol. IL With Historical and Critical Introductions. London: Hodder and Stoughton. (7a. 8d.1

and we shall sympathise with the author, who for the moment will feel nothing about his God, save that He is a God of vengeance. Like the grief of a bereaved man, the vengeance of an enslaved people has hours sacred to itself. And this people had such a tied ! Jehovah must punish the tyrant, else were He untrue. He had been patient, and patient, as a verse seems to hint, just because He was omnipotent; but in the end He must rise to judgment. He was God of heaven and earth, and it is the old physical proofs of His power, so often appealed to by the peoples of the East, for they feel them as we cannot, which this hymn calls up as Jehovah sweeps to the overthrow of the oppressor. The God who works with such ruthless, absolute force in Nature will not relax in the fate He is preparing for Nineveh. Such is the sheer religion of the Proem to the Book of Nahum—thoroughly Oriental in its sense of God's methods and resources of destruc- tion, very Jewish and very natural to that age of Jewish history, in the bursting of its long-pent hopes of revenge. We of the West might express these hopes differently. We should not attribute so much personal passion to the Avenger. With our keener sense of law, we should emphasise the slowness of the process, and select for its illustration the forces of decay rather than those of sudden ruin. But we must remember the crashing times in which the Jews lived. The world was breaking up. The elements were loose, and all that God's people could hope for was the bursting of their yoke, with a little shelter in the day of trouble. The elements were loose, but amidst the blind crash the little people knew that Jehovah knew them."

The Book of Habakkuk has long been a battle-ground for critics. There is at present a growing opinion among scholars that the last portion of the Book is not the genuine work of Habakkuk, but a poem from a period after the Exile.

But there is still much difference of opinion regarding the

nationality of the oppressors complained of in the earlier por- tion. Cruel Jews injuring their fellow-countrymen, the

Assyrians, the Chaldwans, and the Egyptians, have all been selected by one or more critics as the designated oppressors. There is much to be said in favour of the view that the Prophet is speaking of the wrongs inflicted by Chalda3an raids. This is not the opinion to which Professor Smith inclines, but it agrees admirably with his description of the character of Habakkuk's prophecy. Not very happily, as we think, he terms Habakkuk a sceptic Prophet. A sceptic in

our sense he was not, but a perplexed questioner, who brought his difficulties to God, which is exactly what the

modern sceptic declines to do. Habakkuk, writes Professor Smith, differed from former Prophets in this, that while they addressed Israel, he addresses God, complaining, questioning, and expostulating; for it seems to him that God is suffering wrong to triumph, and that the prophetic justice or judgment is like to come to nought. If the Chaldwans, whom the Prophets had hoped were raised up to be Israel's deliverers, were themselves oppressing Israel, one can easily understand his perplexity.

During the Persian period two great changes—an outward and an inward—passed over Israel. It became part of an Empire dominated by an Aryan race, with humaner customs and a purer faith than their former oppressors. After the Exile Israel was no longer a nation in the full sense of

the word, but something between a colony and a church,— an ecclesiastical State ruled by priests and guided by priestly ideas. This altered, Professor Smith would say it weakened and impoverished, prophecy. We miss in this period, he writes, the civic atmosphere, the great spaces of public life, and the large ethical issues of the former period. The lurid air of Apocalypse envelops the future, and in their weakness to grapple either politically or philosophically with the problems which history offers, the Prophets resort to the expectation of physical catastrophes and of the intervention of supernatural armies. Professor Smith regards revealing

or Apocalyptic prophecy as a debased form of the gift. It must not be forgotten, however, that it was not the political, or even moral, insight of Prophets, but their real or supposed possession of knowledge gained by Apocalypse, that has given to the Prophets of Israel a different position in the estimation of mankind to that which is assigned to the publicists of Greece and Rome.

The Book of Malachi disappears from its familiar place at the end of the Old Testament, and is placed immediately after Zechariah, having been written during the reign of Ar Taxerxes Long - hand. The Prophet loses, too, his personal name ; for the name Malachi is an artificial name derived from chap. iii. 1. An interpretation is given of a well- known passage in Malachi (chap. i. 2) which we cannot accept, although it has the support of some distinguished scholars. According to the Authorised Version, the Prophet predicts that in future times God's name shall be great among the Gentiles, and a pure offering shall be everywhere offered to him. The prediction is quite in harmony with the general prophetic expectation of a future conversion of the Gentiles. But the tenses in the original are not future, but present, and Professor Smith insists that the words refer to a worship which was going on in the days of the Prophet. He would apply them to the prayers of the heathen to their own gods, which were pure and acceptable to God as uncon- scious tributes paid to himself. "Never," writes Professor Smith, "have we had in prophecy, even the most farseeing and evangelical, a statement so generous and so catholic as this." The sentiment is naturally attractive to a modern Broad Churchman. But can the historical interpreter admit that a Prophet who regarded marriage with the heathen as defilement, could have thus retracted the entire prophetic testimony against heathen worship, and could have spoken of it in the spirit of Pope's "Universal Prayer ? " We may fall back upon Dr. Pusey's "vivid present," or we may accept the suggestion that the Prophet is rebuking the selfish and careless worship of the Jews of Palestine, by contrasting it with more self-denying and reverent worship of the Jews who lived in foreign countries ; but in any case, some way must be found out of an interpretation which is a flagrant violation of historical probability.

The influence of the Persians upon Israel has often been exaggerated. It is hardly possible to overestimate the influence of Greek culture upon them during the periods they were ruled in. turns by the Selencids and the Ptolemies. The Greeks, writes Professor Smith, brought Greece to Pales- tine; and Israel was encompassed and penetrated by influences as subtle and penetrating as the atmosphere. This influence asserted itself, not so much on the books of the Old Testa- ment, as on those books written after the close of the Canon, which have left their mark upon the language and thought of the New Testament. Some Prophets, however, lived in the Greek period. Of the minor Prophets, the author of the latter portion of Zechariah is supposed to have flourished in the Greek period, and the author of the Book of Jonah. To the grandeur and power of the last prophecy of Israel, Professor Smith does ample justice. It was designed to illustrate the mission of prophecy to the Gentiles, and God's care for those whom so many Jews placed outside the pale of His mercy. "Thus," in the words of Cornill, "the prophecy of Israel nits the scene of battle as victor, and as victor in the severest struggle, — that against self." Professor Smith does not regard the book as an actual history, but as a parable. This interpretation gets rid of the difficulties which the incident of a great fish has occasioned alike to the learned and to the unlearned. Even Luther's robust faith was tried, not by the fish, but by the "orderly Psalm" which the Prophet composed, or rather compiled, in the belly of the fish. Of the counter difficulty which the para- bolic interpretation creates in connection with our Lord's use of the narrative, Professor Smith writes in a reverent and discriminating spirit. Christ, he says, only used an illustra- tion, and it matters not whether an illustration is drawn from the realms of fact or poetry. "Suppose we tell slothful people that theirs will be the fate of the man who buried his talent, is this to commit us to the belief that the personages of Christ's parables actually existed ? Or take the homiletic use of Shakespeare's dramas—as Macbeth did' or as 'Hamlet said.' Does it commit us to the historic reality of Macbeth or Hamlet P" We cannot part with Professor Smith's volume without commending it to the student of the minor Prophets. The plan of the book may not be the best, and some of the inter- pretations may be open to criticism; but the student will find Professor Smith not only an intelligent, but an alluring guide through the intricacies of prophetic language. He writes as a scholar, but as a scholar who is also a. man of letters.