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deliverance. When we turn to the Old Testament, however, we find large differences in the way in which this hope is held. There is to be a judgment on evil, but who is to suffer? Is it Israel's enemies or evil wherever found? What shall the new day bring and how shall it come? And to whom shall its blessings extend? Is Jehovah's purpose for Israel alone or for the nations too? The answers to these questions show no uniform doctrine of the kingdom into which all parts of the Old Testament can be fitted.

So far as these differences are important, they can be traced back mainly to two sources. Of these the more important is the difference in the conception of God, for what men expect from God always depends upon what they think of God. This is seen very clearly in the contrast between the teaching of Amos and the popular faith of his time. For the people Jehovah was first and last Israel's God, with no higher interest or obligation than the care of his people. There were, of course, duties on their part, the bringing of tithes and sacrifices and other offerings, but the bond that joined them was a natural and necessary one. The day of Jehovah, therefore, meant the destruction of Israel's enemies and her own triumph and prosperity. For Amos the day of Jehovah had a very different meaning; "It is darkness and not light," he declares. Its punishment was to fall upon Syria and Philistia and Moab and Edom, but upon Judah and Israel as well. It was not that Jehovah was not Israel's God, and in a special manner. "You only have I known of all the families of the earth," he declares. The whole difference lies in the prophet's view of God. It is not merely that Amos has

a larger vision of Jehovah's power, that he is for him God of all nature and all history. More important is it that he is, first of all, for Amos the God of righteousness. He has not been without regard for other peoples, even Israel's enemies, the Syrians and Philistines (9.7). But toward Israel, as toward them, the first rule of his action is righteousness. No natural and necessary tie binds him to Israel, no sacrifices can determine his attitude. If he has known them above other peoples, that simply means that their sins will be the more surely punished. Amos' doctrine of the future is fixed by his idea of God: the day of Jehovah is to be a day of punishment for all nations for their evil, and not least for Israel.

Changed conditions are the second source of differences in the form in which the kingdom hope is expressed in the Old Testament. The prophets were not men who framed abstract doctrines or programs for a remote future. They were preachers to their day. Naturally, they dealt with the future, alike in the matter of threat as of promise, but the future always was viewed in relation to the day in which they lived. Their thought of deliverance was related to the evils from which they suffered; the idea of punishment was similarly connected with iniquity which they observed. It is for this reason that the exile marks a turning point. In the earlier period the blow of overwhelming national defeat had not fallen. Israel was careless, sinful, unrepentant, and so the note of an Amos, for example, is that of an almost unrelieved doom. Contrast with this the message of Isaiah 40; the punishment has fallen, and now it is a word of comfort and encouragement that comes. For the same reason, at least in part, the earlier prophets

speak more of the judgment on Israel, the later of the judgment on the nations.

To these two sources of difference a third consideration must be joined, and that is the distinction between the moral and spiritual content of the prophet's message and the form in which it is expressed. Literalism and intellectualism shut the door effectually to a true understanding of these men. These writings bring us neither hard-and-fast dogma nor the authority of the latter. What is essential in them is the great faith which they express, the assurance that evil will be judged and destroyed, that Jehovah will rule, and that his kingdom will bring every blessing. The form in which this hope is expressed is secondary. Further, the form in which the faith is set forth is that of picture and poetry. Religious thought at its highest has more of poetry than of logic to it. It does not reason and expound; it sees, and its vision is clothed in concrete imagery. That is peculiarly true of the Oriental mind. Many of the prophetic writings should be printed in poetic form, as are the Psalms in the Revised Version. Yet even the Psalms have not been safe from those who "fashion a creed out of poetic imagery," and see in the Bible a textbook of theology each word of which is to be weighed for doctrine. These men, for example, had a vision of coming blessing and they exhausted every image to express its splendor. They expected too that nature itself would be changed in that day, but a peddling literalism or a concern for logical consistency was last in their thought. In one place we read, for example, that in the coming reign of Jehovah "the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the

sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days" (Isa. 30. 26). And then we are told, in a picture of wonderful suggestiveness which we find again in Revelation, that in that day there shall be neither sun nor moon, "but Jehovah will be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory" (Isa. 60. 19). What the prophet seeks to express is perfectly clear, and the discerning reader is as little troubled by the surface contradiction as by the realization of the terrible fate of the human race if the former statement should be literally fulfilled.

SOME ASPECTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT HOPE

Only the more important aspects of the Old Testament thought can be considered here, and the matter is rendered the more difficult because of the divergent views. The broader differences must be brought out in our study.

1. The Judgment. An essential part in every expression of this hope was the idea of judgment. It is the presence of evil that contradicts the rule of Jehovah. This evil must be destroyed and the evildoers punished. But what is to be overthrown and who is to be punished? The answer to this shows two broadly different tendencies in Israel's religion, the nationalistic and the ethical. The book of Amos shows the contrast most sharply. There is a place for the nation in Amos' faith, but the decisive fact is ethical and not national. Jehovah is, first of all, the God of righteousness. His judgment will therefore fall upon evil wherever it is found, in Israel as well as Edom, in Judah as truly as in Philistia. That, in general, is the Old Testament teaching, the judgment will be upon evil as such. "For, behold, the day cometh,

it burneth as a furnace; and all the proud, and all that work wickedness, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith Jehovah of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings" (Mal. 4. I, 2; see Isa. 2. 12). Commonly, however, the position is not so clearly put as with Amos, and after the exile it is almost wholly the judgment upon Israel's enemies of which we hear (Ezek. 38; Isa. 63. 1-6; Joel 3. 9-17; Zech. 1. 18-21; 14. I-4; 12).

As to the manner in which the judgment shall come, the earlier prophets are more specific, at least in relation to Israel. They have historic conditions and historic means in mind. God will punish Israel through the nations, through the Assyrian, through "men of strange lips," by peoples from the north (Isa. 10. 5; 23. 11; Jer. 1. 13-16). But from the first there are references also to a punishment that will come through nature, by fire and famine and pestilence and earthquake. Nature and history are in sympathy and the disturbances of the one are reflected in the other. The later writers move farther toward apocalyptic ideas. There is less of the thought of a God moving in history, the events are more of the sheer supernatural order, and more catastrophic in their character.

2. The Hope. The hope is always the obverse of the judgment. The idea of judgment, indeed, is never merely negative. "Judgment" and "justice" are translations of the same Hebrew term, and it means quite as much the establishment of a righteous order as the punishment of the evildoer. The judgment is the means

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