slumbered for centuries, they were kindled anew with the most marvellous glow,' and in not adducing the utterances of similar expectation at an earlier date, these songs do but testify to the greater purity and force which mark the inwardness and warmth of the resurrection of these hopes as they are presented here. The most beautiful feature, however, which characterises them is that these expectations do not, in the least degree, diminish the deep earnestness of genuine repentance. They encounter every form of hypocrisy with great decision, even when it was displayed by those who wished to pass in the community as teachers and pious,2 and they insist on the severe truth that it was only through its own grave transgressions that Israel could fall into such painful sufferings.3 On the whole, the songs are certainly in many passages only an echo of various pieces in the Old Testament, and their beauty simply consists in their great simplicity and sincerity; but they afford the most striking evidence of the vigour with which much that was finest and most lasting in the contents of the Old Testament was striving now to reappear in outward life. 2) The second production, no more significant in its scope, but much more remarkable for its peculiar art and instantaneous influence, is the book of Daniel, which found its way into the Canon of the Old Testament. In this work everything combined to secure for it in the briefest time the most extraordinary effect and the highest authority,-the moment of its appearance, the new style of its composition, the keenness and severity of its language, veiled in secrecy yet easy to divine, and the rapid disentanglement of the coil of circumstances for the divine solution of which it strove with marvellous energy and clearness. For, on general considerations, it cannot escape the notice of any exact and careful reader of the book that it was not written till this period; while on careful examination we can recognise quite clearly what was the special stage in the 1 See especially vii. 9. xi. 8 sq., xv. 14, xvii. 4, 23 sqq., and how these hopes proceed from David and the Messiah, xvii. 5, 8, 9, 23 sq., 35 sqq., xviii. 6, 8. From xvii. 36, cf. xviii. 8, it might be conjectured that this poet, who was certainly no Christian, had called the Messiah Xplords Kúρios; it is, however, a question whether this is not simply an erroneous translation of n; just as in Ecclus. li. 10 it would be possible to find a regular Christian expression, if the common reading were really original. 2 See in particular Ps. iv. Ps. i. 3 sqq., and many other pas sages. The opinions of Hengstenberg and Hävernick, and of their followers, Delitzsch, Auberlen, &c., are too baseless to deserve explicit refutation; but it is equally perverse to place the book still later than the date given in the text. I have already discussed many questions relating to this book in the Berliner Jahrbb. für wiss. Kritik, 1832, and in the Propheten des A. Bs. iii. p. 298 sqq.; on other points see the Jahrbb. der Bibl. Wiss. iii. p. 229 sqq., vi. p. 192 sqq., ix. p. 270 sq., x. p. 211 sqq.; Gött. Gel. Anz., 1861, p. 1092 sqq. rapid development of events at which it must have been composed. Antiochus Epiphanes had carried out his intention of a fourth and last war against Egypt. On his march thither he had made the pious in Judah feel the whole weight of his anger, and was now returning, victorious indeed, yet without having gained any advantages. He was encamped on his march back on the sea-shore, induced to return, it was said, by unfavourable reports from the east and north; it was not exactly known how disgracefully he had retired from Egypt before a mere threat of the Roman ambassador, Pompilius Lænas.2 These events took place in the years 168-7. The complete suppression of the temple sacrifices might then have lasted a twelvemonth, and everything had reached that state of extreme tension when the ancient religion upon its sacred soil must either disappear from view completely for long ages, or must rise in fresh strength and outward power against enemies thus immoderately embittered. The author of the book was certainly not a resident in Jerusalem, like the singer of the so-called songs of Solomon; he wrote, after Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of the apostates exclusively, in some corner of the country,3 under the dominion of the utmost terrors. It was at this crisis, in the sultry heat of an age thus frightfully oppressive, that this book appeared with its sword-edged utterance, its piercing exhortation to endure in face of the despot, and its promise, full of divine joy, of near and sure salvation. No dew of heaven could fall with more refreshing coolness on the parched ground; no spark from above alight with a more kindling power on the surface so long heated with a hidden glow. With winged brevity the book gives a complete survey of the history of the kingdom of God upon earth, showing the relations which it had hitherto sustained in Israel to the successive great heathen empires of the Chaldeans, Medo-Persians and Greeks, in a 1 On the rising of the Armenian king in the North, see also the passage of Diodorus in Müller's Fragm. Hist. Gr. ii. p. 10. The reports from the East are about the Parthians. 2 These particulars may be inferred with confidence from the words with which the long description of the king concludes, Dan. xi. 40-45, compared with the remarks on p. 297 sq. The names Edom and Moab and the flower of the children of Ammon,' ver. 41, as of those who suffered nothing from the wrath of the king, simply denote in the old prophetic language the party in favour of heathenism. word, towards the heathenism which ruled the world; and with the finest perception it describes the nature and individual career of Antiochus Epiphanes and his immediate predecessors so far as was possible in view of the great events which had just occurred. But of the higher necessity that the imperial kingdoms thus differently constituted by the different heathen sovereignties, and yet founded on false principles, and growing worse and worse as time went on, should be at last succeeded by the perfected kingdom of God, of this necessity an important sign seemed to be found in the existing state of the Greek kingdom. The Syrian kingdom, which wished to be regarded as the proper continuation of the kingdom of Alexander, had had seven princes from Alexander and Seleucus to the death of Antiochus the Great. The ruler then on the throne had only made his way, as it appeared, to power through the extermination of not less than three kings. With the close of the series of ten of these kings and the sudden fall of the three last, the kingdom seemed to be near its end, and this last king was only like a spurious and contemptible little shoot. And in the midst of its struggle the yearning for the termination of all these gloomy events seized upon even this sign as affording a mysterious opening to the eye of the seer who would look into the future. In the case of a book, however, which was to be instantly diffused in spite of despots and spies, the entirely open description of the situation was hazardous. The prophetically-minded author accordingly adopted the device of writing in the name of an ancient prophet, and apparently in his era. This was rendered all the easier as the practice had long been commonly employed. Moreover, as the corruption of the age proceeded from those in power and from courtiers, the writer's choice, in selecting one of the numerous prophetic sages of antiquity, was guided to Daniel, one of the less famous amongst them, by the fact that nothing more was known of him than that several centuries before, in the midst of the pomp and the seductions of heathen court life, he had never denied the true religion,2 so empire in the passage quoted in vol. ii. p. 91 note 2. Namely, Seleucus IV., Heliodorus, and Demetrius, p. 292 sq. On this point compare further the explanations in the Jahrbb. der Bibl. Wiss. xi. p. 222 sq. The only objection that could be brought against the fact itself is that in Dan. xi. there is no allusion whatever to these three between vv. 20 and 21; but this is quite consistent with the general design of the description in cap. xi., which throughout its whole length is nowhere so definite as to adduce in order the ten rulers (horns) before the vile little horn, and designate them individually. 2 Almost everything which we now know of Daniel is based on the book named after him. In the Propheten des A. Bs., however, I have already shown that he must that his life and example might become the type of all who were then placed in similar temptations, and his prophetic word could not fail to strike with all the more force in the like circumstances of the present. Rarely does it happen that a book appears as this did, in the very crisis of the times, and in a form most suited to such an age, artificially reserved, close, and severe, and yet shedding so clear a light through obscurity, and so marvellously captivating. It was natural that it should soon achieve a success entirely corresponding to its inner truth and glory. And so for the last time in the literature of the Old Testament we have in this book an example of a work which, having sprung from the deepest necessities of the noblest impulses of the age, can render to that age the purest service, and which, by the development of events immediately after, receives with such power the stamp of divine witness that it subsequently attains imperishable sanctity. The book fixed four years and a half as the period of extreme affliction,' of which perhaps a year may have elapsed when it was written and circulated. Circumstances of themselves, as well as the general style and plan of the book, prove that this was nothing but a round sacred number. Its purport was simply to indicate the tolerable proximity of divine deliverance and salvation, and hence, in particular, also, of fresh purification and consecration of the temple. But when, as we shall soon see, on the expiration of this period, with some exactness, the first great sign of new deliverance and of a grand turn of events had been fulfilled in the conquest of the temple-mountain and the purification of the temple, the book received, as though from heaven itself, the clearest proof of the truth of its anticipations. Thus the light of the age fell especially upon it, and the possibility was realised that even in this late period a sacred book might arise not inferior in value to the prophetic works of old. Thus, then, at this time of the utmost tension of circumstances among the faithful, who were deeply oppressed, driven from Jerusalem, and scattered in all directions, the innermost impulse of all true religion rose with growing strength. Of this the best proof lies in the fact that the bright hopes of immortality and resurrection received a firmer and clearer development and power than they had ever done before. It is have originally lived in the Assyrian exile, and that what the present book narrates of him contains only scanty traditions of his history. That he was a real person and lived at a heathen court is not to be doubted; see the Jahrbb. der VOL. V. X Bibl. Wiss. iii. p. 233 sq., and the remarks above, p. 95. On this point see further the Propheten des A. Bs. ii. p. 571 sq. 13. 2 Psalms of Sol. iii. 16, Dan. xii. 2 sq., The far more extravagant and true, that in the transfigured form in which they correspond to the true religion, these hopes had, as we have observed above, long been established in Israel as one of the brightest and most enduring fruits which its thousand years' experience had brought forth upon this sacred soil. Not till now, however, can it be said that this fruit was so matured that it would never again disappear from the community of the true religion; and if the immovable hope of immortality and resurrection is the true and only weapon that cannot be wrested from us, by which in the spiritual struggles of humanity all the sufferings of the time can be victoriously endured, all the tyranny of the earth broken, and all imperishable blessings attained, it must be admitted that through the deep surging storm of the age there was sent from above, in this faith which nothing could take away, the only sword of salvation on whose edge the most fatal terrors would strike in vain. II. THE ELEVATION UNDER THE MACCABEES, 167-135 B.C.THE ASMONEANS, MATTATHIAS AND HIS SONS. 1. Judas Maccabæus. In a position of affairs such as we have described, it was a matter of comparative indifference to what point the resistance against the royal decrees procured and carried out by a Menelaus and his accomplices should in the first place be seriously directed. But as at this stage of its history Israel rises once more, even though but for a brief period, to the pure elevation of its noblest days, it was fitting that the first beginning of a serious resistance should come about involuntarily, as it were by a higher necessity, almost without the co-operation of human self-will and human passion; still less with any aid of human calculation. It was to serve as an example of irresistibly divine power and heavenly summons to the struggle, and yet, like all such examples, it was not of a kind that could be outwardly imitated and artificially repeated. Among the refugees from Jerusalem was a priest of the illustrious family of Joarib,' named Mattathias. From his exaggerated representations which are first expressed in the second book of Maccabees and in other books of the following period cannot be placed in the age before the great Maccabean victory. Not till these hopes had immeasurably contributed to the final victory did they easily open the way to any extravagance. |