its balance, theoretical and practical are harmonised. The principle underlying the All-an All which takes in past, present, and future has again become Wisdom, and is again contemplated with rapture; detailed maxims of practical life have disappeared, except so far as they are items in a universal system. But this final achievement of philosophic reflection has been brought about by drawing within the field of thought something which has not been obtained from philosophy: it is the tacit assumption of a future world that has reversed the conclusions of Ecclesiastes. And when this final stage of Wisdom literature has been reached, the conception of 'Wisdom' itself has become so deep and so many-sided that it would be impossible to discuss it without trenching upon the deepest mysteries of Theology.

XVII. FORMS of Prophetic LITERATURE: The Doom SONG 390

XVIII. FORMS OF PROPHETIC LITERATURE: THE RHAPSODY.

404

XIX. THE RHAPSODY OF ZION REDEEMED' [Isa. xl-lxvi] . 435

XX. THE WORKS OF THE PROPHETS.

457

CHAPTER XVI

FORMS OF PROPHETIC LITERATURE

Prophecy as a

literature

WE commence in this chapter another of the grand departments of Biblical literature; and our first difficulty is its name — Prophecy. By one of those silent changes in the signification of words, which are brought about by department of the wear and tear of ordinary speech, this word 'Prophecy' has narrowed itself, in common parlance, to the sense of prediction'; and there are many readers of the Bible to whom the term suggests nothing more than the foretelling of the future. It is, of course, true that the Hebrew prophets dealt with the future, as they dealt with the present and the past. But the reference to the future time is not the sole, nor even the chief, function of the literature we are about to survey. The pro- in prophecy is not the pro- that means 'before' but rather the prothat means forth': Prophecy is a forth-pouring or out-pouring of discourse. That such out-pouring of discourse belongs, not only to the thing described, but also to the signification of the English word, is powerfully illustrated by the fact that a father of the Anglican Church and great master of English prose, writing in the seventeenth century a work in which he was to plead for the freedom of the English pulpit, gave to it the title: Liberty of Prophesying.' The true distinction of this department of Biblical literature lies in its presenting itself as the channel of an immediate Divine message: "Thus saith the Lord" is con- Forms of Protained explicitly or implicitly in every utterance of phetic Literature the prophets. The prophet' is thus an interpreter' for God:

6

such is the sense of the Greek word which has given us the English word prophet; and that such is the force of the Hebrew word it translates is powerfully suggested by such a passage as Exodus vii. 1: "See I have made thee [Moses] a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron shall be thy prophet." From this it follows that the essential distinction of Prophecy belongs to its spirit and matter: what more of description is needed will be given by distinguishing the various forms in which the prophetic matter can be conveyed.

The simplest form of Prophecy, and the form of most frequent occurrence, is the Prophetic Discourse. If we call this the counThe Prophetic terpart of the modern Sermon, we must remember Discourse at the same time that, in a theocracy, the distinction of religion and politics vanishes, the sermon and the political harangue become one and the same. The Divine message essential to Prophecy is not to be understood as the Discourse itself, but rather, in theory at least, as the subject or text of the Discourse, which all the rest is to explain or enforce. In this connection it is important to note a word which even in the Bible itself seems to be used as a technical term: — the word translated Burden,' in the titles to chapters of Prophecy, and in the text itself. It would appear that this was understood of the actual Divine message, though the term was abused by false prophets as a name under which to clothe their own imaginings.

(The word 'Burden ')

Jeremiah Behold, I am against them that prophesy lying dreams, saith the xxiii. 32 LORD, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, and by their vain boasting: yet I sent them not, nor commanded them; neither shall they profit this people at all, saith the LORD. And when this people, or the prophet, or a priest, shall ask thee, saying, What is the burden of the LORD? then shalt thou say unto them, What burden! I will cast you off, saith the LORD. And as for the prophet, and the priest, and the people, that shall say, The bur

1 The word substituted by R.V. (in titles, but not in the text) is 'Oracles': this explains the usage by a parallel term in secular literatures.