CHAPTER VI.

The Prophets.

PREVIOUS to an examination of those passages in the prophetic writings which relate more immediately to the subject under consideration, a brief view of the scope and tendency of those writings may not be unacceptable to such persons as have not been much conversant with biblical criticism.

The sixteen prophets whose prophecies are received into the canon of the English Church, reckoning from Isaiah to Malachi, flourished over a period of about 400 years. Their works, for the most part, consist of

1. An enumeration of the transgressions of the Israelites of both kingdoms, reproaches to them for their ingratitude to Jehovah, and consequent threats of his vengeance, with,

2dly. A distinct intimation of the nations by whose instrumentality they would be punished, and of the nature of their punishment, viz. famine, the sword, pestilence, and bondage.

3dly. Of predictions of the fate of the surrounding nations.

4thly. Of the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, the rebuilding of the Temple there, the restoration of the worship of God, according to the law of Moses, and the general re-establishment of the nation in their own country as a distinct people. Intermingled with these predictions, many of which are typical, are,

5thly. Numerous prophecies relating to the Messiah, the time of his appearance, his character, offices, ministry, and death.

Of the completion of by far the greater and most important portions of these prophecies, unquestionable evidence remains, and warrants the conclusion, that not only was the accomplishment of the others, of which we have no record remaining, equally exact, but that those which remain in course of fulfilment, and to be hereafter fulfilled, viz.

6thly. The prophecies relating to the nature and extent of Christ's kingdom, and (as is commonly thought) to a general conversion of the Jews, and a temporal restoration of that nation to the land of their fathers, will be as surely accomplished.

Although the same divine inspiration dictated the matter of all the prophecies, yet each individual to whom they were imparted seems to have been left to use his own mode of clothing them in words. Hence the work of each prophet is stamped with its own proper style, plainly dis

cernible, even in our translation, and illustrated by imagery, derived, most probably, from the habits and situation of its author. Thus Amos (ch. i. 1; vii. 14) who was a herdsman at Tekoa, abounds with allusions to flocks, and herds, and wild beasts, and the various objects with which a pastoral life must have familiarized him. Ezekiel, among the captives in Chaldea, to whom many of his prophecies were uttered, has several passages derived from the notions of the natives of that country; and Daniel introduces the ministration of angels, whom he names in a way entirely unknown to the Jews before the captivity, though no doubt he was then perfectly understood by those whom he addressed, since it is plain that the Jews, or at least the greater part of them, the mass, quickly adopted not only the customs and notions, but even the language of their Chaldean conquerors. Vide Neh. viii. 2, 8. Indeed, from this era, viz. the Babylonian captivity, may be dated those notions of a host of invisible spirits interfering in human concerns; of the existence of the soul as a distinct principle, independent of the body; of an evil and powerful being, with numberless subordinate spirits, hostile to man ; and of many others, no trace of which is to be found in the inspired writers of an earlier period, but which, from thenceforth, the Jewish Rabbins continued so to heap up and engraft on their creed, that, added to their corrupt interpreta

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tion of the law, they had, at the coming of our Saviour, "made the commandment of God of none effect through their traditions........teaching for doctrines the commandments of men."Matt. xv. 6, 9.

As the senses in which the word soul is used in the preceding books of the Old Testament, have been fully, perhaps some will think too fully, discussed, a few quotations only, to shew the agreement of the prophetic with the other sacred writers, will be given.

Isaiah i. 14. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.

iii. 9. The skew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.

x. 17. And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame and it shall burn and devour his* thorns and his briers in one day;

18. And shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field, both soul and body: and they shall be as when a standard-bearer fainteth.

xxvi. 9. With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.

xxix. 8. It shall even be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth: but he awaketh, and his soul his empty : or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite; so shall the multitude of all the nations be, that fight against mount Zion.

xliv. 20. He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned

* The Assyrians: ch. x. 17, 18.

him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?

lviii. 10. And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day;

11. And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.

In most of these last quoted verses, the word soul cannot be understood as applying to the immaterial soul of man, and in the rest, some of the senses mentioned in Ch. III. are as fitting to them as any which can be supplied.

xiv. 9. Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.

15. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

These verses, which form a portion of the magnificent prophecy of the utter destruction of the Babylonian empire, are quoted for the purpose of correcting an error into which many persons have fallen, who reading the Scriptures only in English, and understanding the word hell to mean a place of punishment after death, have from this and other passages in Scripture where the term occurs, raised an argument for the separate existence of the soul. The word, however, which in the Septuagint is rendered "Adns (Hades) means, as every one at all acquainted with Greek knows, merely the state of man after death,