for Israel: the first is the Emblem of Gomer, the last is the Drama of the Divine Yearning. Zechariah The Biblical Book of Zechariah makes a special case. It falls into two parts, altogether dissimilar. The first eight chapters are miscellaneous prophecies, expressly associated with the personality of the historical Zechariah. But the remainder of the book is of so very different a character that nothing but respect for tradition would have associated it with Zechariah's name. I have so far followed custom as to arrange, in the Index to this work, Zechariah in two books.' But it is well to point out that the ascription of what appears as the second book to Zechariah may well be no more than an accident. Nothing can be more natural than to suppose that, in the Roll of Prophets, the works of known authors should come first, up to Zechariah (our Zechariah i-viii), and that then should follow anonymous prophecies cited under subject-titles. One of these subject-titles would be Malachi, or 'My Messenger': for the word is quite unlike a personal name, and the Septuagint treats it as a subject-title, while the Targum makes Ezra the author of the book so entitled. When, however, ‘Malachi' came to be read as a personal name, like the names of the prophets from Isaiah to Zechariah, it was natural that the intervening prophecies, with no author's name to cover them, should attach themselves to the preceding book of Zechariah. A slight confirmation of this suggestion, in itself so probable, appears from the citations of the New Testament. Four times the disputed portion of Zechariah is quoted by New Testament writers': three of the citations are given without author's name, the fourth is ascribed to Jeremiah. This last would have to be regarded as a misquotation, except by the theory here suggested, in which case the whole Roll of Prophets is cited by the longest prophecy, that of Jeremiah, as the whole Book of Psalms is cited by the name of a chief contributor, David. 1 Matthew xxvii. 9-10 (compare Zechariah xi. 12-13); Zechariah ix. 9 (in Matthew xxi. and John xii. 15); chapter xii. 10 (in John xix. 37); xiii. 7 (in Matthew xxvi. 31 and Mark xiv. 27). St. John's This completes the list of Old Testament prophets. But the New Testament furnishes a book which must be considered in this connection. The Revelation of St. John is too closely involved with modern theological questions Revelation to admit of its being discussed in a work from which distinctively religious matter is excluded. On the other hand, in the literary study of Scripture it is impossible to ignore a composition of such transcendent literary interest. If a reader will apply to this book of Revelation a method which ought to be applied to all parts of Scripture, and set himself to take in the whole at a sitting, reading with his imagination on the stretch in the way in which he would read Dante's Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, he will find, whatever his theological principles may be, that this Vision Cycle is one of the literary wonders of the world. I will be content with making two remarks on the subject, and with these my treatment of Biblical Prophecy may be brought to a conclusion. Meaning of the title The title contains the word 'revelation.' But in our discussion of prophetic forms we saw that this word had two distinct meanings revelation of the future, as in the visions of Daniel, and revelation of the ideal, as in Ezekiel's Visions of Jerusalem, or the original revelation to Moses in the mount. Which of these meanings applies, or do they both apply, to the work of St. John? The popular mind has seized upon the first of these, and looks upon St. John's Revelation as a prophetic riddle, the ingenious reading of which will give a clue to events of past or future history, or will even enable the present to be exactly located in some scheme of all time. But if the words of the prologue, "the things which must shortly come to pass," and the parallels with Daniel's visions, favour the view that the revelation is a foreshowing, yet on the other hand the equally close parallels with Ezekiel's visions, and the building up of the whole structure upon symbolic symmetries, counterparts, and antitheses, make it certain that the idealising of the worldcontest between good and evil is of the very essence of the work. Moreover, if both kinds of revelation belong to this book, they will mutually modify one another. Suppose that some specially distinctive detail of the symbolism suggests connection with some historic power or institution: then, by the influence of the other type of revelation, we must expect that historic reality to be idealised in the movement of the vision, so that it would still be hazardous exegesis to interrogate other details of the symbolism for further historic details. I have before remarked upon the way in which prophetic literature as a whole has suffered from the unfortunate narrowing of the word 'prophecy' in ordinary conversation to the single sense of prediction. No part of prophetic literature has suffered so much in this respect as St. John's Revelation; and the literary student, at all events, should address himself to those permanent spiritual interests of the book which are independent of times and seasons. details with other prophecy But the Book of Revelation presents another feature of the highest interest and significance. It may be expressed in a phrase of the vision itself: "The testimony of Jesus is the Association of its spirit of prophecy." Underlying the whole book is the idea that the "revelation of Jesus Christ" is a bringing together and enhancing of all previous revelations; and accordingly in the symbolic scenery of the visions, and the phrases by which they are described, the conceptions of Old Testament prophecy are continually appearing in new forms and combinations. At the outset, when the Apostle speaks of being 'in the Spirit,' we think of Ezekiel borne by the spirit to Jerusalem. The prefatory messages to the seven churches of Asia, with their individual details and rhythmic promises and threats, remind us of the chain of denunciations in similar form on seven nations with which Amos opens his prophecy, before he deals with his church of Israel. In the vision itself we begin at once to get details from Old Testament prophets. The personal 1 Among the many commentaries on this book I may mention (the late) Professor Milligan's Revelation (in the Expositor's Bible), and Canon T. L. Scott's Visions of the Apocalypse (London: Skeffington & Son), as specially helpful to literary students. Psalm cxli. 2 description of one coming with the clouds, of hair white as wool, a golden girdle, feet like burnished brass, eyes of fire, is entirely from Daniel; from Ezekiel come the rainbow round about the throne and the four living creatures. The naming of Him who is worthy to open the book as the Root of David' brings up the 'Branch' and 'Shoot' which have figured in the Messianic pictures of Isaiah; and the other appellative, 'the Lion of the tribe of Judah,' takes us back to Primitive Prophecy and the Blessings of Jacob on the tribes. It is the same with the symbols that make up the succession of scenes. The book written within and without, the little book to be eaten and found sweet in the mouth and bitter in the belly, have both become familiar from the prophecy of Ezekiel; the golden candlestick of Zechariah's vision is multiplied sevenfold for this supreme revelation, and its appendage of the two olive trees now becomes the centre of a separate chapter of allegory; the incense symbolising the prayers of the saints realises the imagery of the psalms; if again the delivered psalmist has cried that God has put a 'new song' in his mouth, the thought finds here a realisation in the mystic new song which none but the sealed of the Lord can learn. The prophetic conceptions undergo alteration and enlargement as they reappear. Zechariah's vision had presented spirits of ministration on the earth in the form of horses, white, red, black, grisled, the colours being a picturesque detail: but the horses of Revelation the white, the red, the black, the pale have each a hue mystically connected with its office of judgment. Prophecy had frequently couched its mysteries under the image of a book sealed up: this consummation of all things presents the unsealing. Among the instruments of woe the trumpets represent the trumpet sound which in the rhapsodies had marked the commencement of panic, the bowls poured out repeat the regular image of the Doom Songs, - the cup of Jehovah's fury. The woes thus hurled upon the world are the 'plagues' of Egypt magnified: when locusts are mentioned, the mystic imagery of Joel is worked into the description; when hail 66 is pictured, the expression every stone about the weight of a talent" reads like a momentary finger-pointing to Zechariah's vision of Wickedness pressed down with the talent of lead. Where the form of woes goes outside the Egyptian plagues prophecy has other symbols to contribute, and the burning mountain' recalls Jeremiah's Doom of Babylon, as the star Wormwood the Doom of Babylon in Isaiah. Again, the recital of the number of the saved, tribe by tribe, recalls in its rhythm a similar recital of the portions of the tribes of Ezekiel. Of course a new chord has been struck in the vision that immediately follows: the "great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation, and of all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne." But as the description is continued hallowed associations from old prophecy come in. That they have "washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb," combines Isaiah's promise that sins red as crimson should be as wool with Zechariah's vision of the filthy garments taken in the heavenly court from Joshua that he might be clothed in rich vestments; while the sweetly sounding promise They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun strike upon them, nor any heat, for the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life has been spoken before by the Servant of Jehovah in the Isaiahan Rhapsody. Sometimes St. John's symbols or descriptive touches would fail to produce their effect if separated from the associations they recall. It would seem harsh in so mystic a scene to speak of exact numbers: but the phrase of the old processional psalm The chariots of God are twenty thousand, renders it possible for Revelation to make the armies of the horsemen "twice ten thousand times ten thousand." Again we might see no point in the symbol of the balance held by the rider on the |