God in the history, not only of Israel, but of the world. Surely the old idea of a Divine revelation on Mount Sinai, and the gradual development of it in after-ages comes quite as near, if not much nearer, a solution of the problem. The chapters treating of the influence of the Exile and the Restoration on Jewish life and thought, and of the gradual transformation of Judaism into the legalism of the time of Christ, are extremely interesting and suggestive, but crowded with controversial matter.. Not a single psalm is admitted to date from before the Exile. The Book of Isaiah is analyzed into three portions. All the books of the Old Testament, except the Book of Ezekiel, are said to have been adapted by redactors or editors to the taste of ages differing widely from those for which they were in the first instance designed. The most notable chapter is the twenty-third, with the simple expressive heading, "The Gospel." It is splendidly written, but painfully incomplete. What Jesus had in common with earlier teachers, and wherein He differed from them, is clearly shown; but the question who He was is to all intents and purposes left unanswered. Sometimes Divinity seems to be recognized, at other times nothing more than humanity. It is not certain that the fact of the Resurrection is admitted. To earnest seekers after truth, Wellhausen's treatment of the rise of Christianity will be disappointing. Theories, however, which have made some noise in the world meet with little favour. The Gospels are not considered myths, for they are held to furnish materials for a faithful portrait. Jesus was obviously not an Essene, as some recent writers have affirmed. The book as a whole will be of great use to the discriminating student, as it is a storehouse of information, clever comments, and sagacious hints; but it must be used with the greatest caution. It conducts into, but not through, the history with which it undertakes to deal. We are led all round the outer court by an unusually accomplished guide, but we do not even catch a distant glimpse of the Holy of Holies.

THE BOOK OF TOBIT.-Few books have occasioned more difference of opinion as to their date and purpose than the quaint old Jewish tale known as the Book of Tobit. Roman Catholics have dated it as early as the seventh century B.C. Ewald ascribed it to the close of the Persian period. Hitzig, Rosenthal, and Grätz put it in the former half of the second Christian century. So also Neubauer, in the preface to his edition of the Aramaic text of Tobit in the Bodleian Library, and of other Rabbinic texts. Kohut has come down as late as the time of the Sassanian ruler of Persia, Ardeschir I., about the middle of the third century. The extreme views, therefore, about the date of Tobit differ by about nine hundred years. A little book just published in Germany, Studies on Tobit, by Dr. Rosenmann, gives some good reasons for placing the composition of the tale in the time of the second temple, before its restoration by Herod. The thought and life which it implies are postBiblical and pre-Talmudic. A Rabbinic Jew would have modified some

of the details considerably. Dr. Rosenmann goes as far back as the second century B.C. If he is right (or approximately right), the value of the book is much greater than on the assumption of a post-Christian date. It is in the former case an extremely interesting picture of Jewish family life at a period not very far removed from the days of our Lord, and before Jewish feelings had been embittered and Jewish ideas had been warped by the fall of Jerusalem and its sequel. It is, nevertheless, a work of fiction, for its unhistorical character is beyond dispute; but its usefulness as a source of illustration for the Gospels is in no way affected thereby. The purpose of the book, too, has been diversely apprehended. It has been regarded as a sort of commentary on the famous saying of Rabbi Akiba, "Everything which God does is well done." Its main lesson has been supposed to be the duty of interring dead Jews who had no relations to care for them. It was intended, according to another explanation, to encourage the Jews of the Dispersion to keep the Law. The last is substantially the conclusion arrived at by Dr. Rosen"The book is nothing but an encomium on λenuoσúvn and

mann.

δικαιοσύνη.”

DID ISAIAH PREACH FORGIVENESS?-For two thousand years the words rendered in our English Bible, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isa. i. 18), have been understood as a declaration of the Divine readiness to pardon the penitent sinner. Some recent critics find the opposite. According to them, Isaiah is here, at any rate, a prophet of judgment rather than mercy. Duhm maintains that the words are either indignant questions, or an ironical challenge, and decides, although rather hesitatingly, for the latter interpretation. He renders, "Come now, and let us litigate. If your sins are as scarlet, make them white as snow. If they are red like purple, make them as wool." Wellhausen (in his latest work) prefers the other alternative, translating thus: "Do you think yourselves unjustly treated by Me? If your sins are as scarlet, shall they pass for white as snow? If they are red like purple, shall they be as wool?" This programme, he adds, referring to vers. 10-20, announces, not forgiveness of sin, but simply and solely righteous retribution. So, if we are to believe these learned guides who are in the forefront of modern criticism, the tender and sublime words which have comforted so many thousands of stricken penitents, are due to misunderstanding on the part of translators. Isaiah never wrote them. He would have disowned the thought they express as dishonouring to God. Stern, inflexible righteousness was for him the central attribute in the Divine nature as revealed to sinful man. It is not likely that the Church as a whole will follow these audacious leaders, and meekly surrender one of the most precious assurances of God's forgiving love in the whole Bible. Whilst it may be admitted that there is a little difficulty as to the

rendering of

?, the general meaning of the passage and its context is beyond dispute. Israel is challenged to a trial. It is assumed that the decision will go against them. Nevertheless, the injured Jehovah will blot out the stained past, and bestow prosperity in the future on condition of practical repentance. The rendering with which we are familiar is the natural rendering, and has been current among the Jews in all ages. It is found substantially in the Septuagint; it was sanctioned by the great mediæval expositor Ibn Ezra, and was endorsed by the lately deceased scholar and historian Grätz. It is repeatedly assumed in the Talmud, and is said to have found expression in the ritual of the second temple. The bit of red wool attached to the head of the scapegoat when it symbolically bore away the sin of Israel was justified by this passage. They also said that another bit of red wool, which was fastened to the door of the sanctuary, turned white when the goat reached the desert, thus representing to the eye the fulfilment of the promise made through the prophet.

CANON DRIVER'S EDITION OF LEVITICUS IN HEBREW.-The interest of this new part of the international edition of the Hebrew Bible, which is very slowly coming out under the general editorship of Professor Haupt of Baltimore, lies chiefly in the representation, by means of colours, of the supposed origin of the component parts. The body of the work, which is printed on a white ground, is believed to have been written about B.C. 500, as part of the document usually known as the Priestly Code, or P. Three passages-namely, chs. iv. ; vi. 23; and x. 16-20-which are regarded as later additions to P, are printed on brown. A few redactional notes, found chiefly in ch. xxiii., are indicated by lines above the text. The remaining portions, printed on yellow, are assigned to the document which is now generally designated as the Law of Holiness, or H. These portions, which are earlier than the bulk of P, having been composed not very far from the time of the Prophet Ezekiel (B.C. 570), are, of course, found principally in chs. xvii.-xxvi. The greater part of these ten chapters is ascribed to H, but with considerable exceptions in chs. xxiii., xxiv., and xxv. In fact, most of ch. xxiv. is assigned to P. Several traces of H are found outside of these chapters-chs. x. 10, 11; xi. 2–23, 42–47. The results arrived at by the English editors (for Canon Driver has been assisted by the Rev. H. A. White, M.A.) agree in no small measure with those of Professor Strack of Berlin, so far as the extent of H is concerned. The discussion of the arrangement must in fairness be deferred until the appearance of the English translation of this revised text, in the notes to which the reasons for the allocation of the different parts are to be given. The revision of the text has yielded no startling results, as this most legal of the Hebrew Scriptures has come down to us in a far less corrupt state than some other portions.

6

BIBLICAL THOUGHT.

THE KINGDOM OF THE TEN TRIBES: ITS HISTORICAL
AND RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE.

BY REV. ARCHIBALD ROBERTSON, D.D., PRINCIPAL OF BISHOP
HATFIELD'S HALL, DURHAM.

THE object of the following pages is to discuss a result of Old Testament criticism which has been the subject of violently opposed obiter dicta 1 from different quarters, but which has received, so far as the present writer knows, no special discussion in a purely judicial spirit, namely, the modern rehabilitation of the Northern Kingdom.

Is this rehabilitation a mere critical paradox, or does it correspond to some neglected elements in the Biblical material? What was the prophetic estimate of the kingdom of the ten tribes?

The Old Testament, not read as material for history, but regarded from the standpoint of results, seems able to dispense with Northern Israel from its first revolt downwards. The great Messianic conceptionsProphet, Priest, King-centre round the house of David, round the House of Jehovah, and round Isaiah the evangelical prophet of Jerusalem. The selective process which narrows down the religious history of mankind from Adam to Seth, from Noah to Shem, from Abraham to Jacob, seems to have concentrated itself from the first upon the house of David, as though God, who "loved Jacob and hated Esau," had also loved Judah and hated Israel.

And it may be allowed that this conception of the history is a very old one. We trace it-somewhat faintly, it is true-in the comments of the editor of the Books. of Kings, who, applying the standard of the Deuteronomic Law, emphasizes from the first the religious schism inaugurated by Jeroboam the son of Nebat (cf. also 1 Kings xiii.); while the Chronicler, looking back from the standpoint of later Judaism, expurgates the history of nearly all references to the story of the Northern Kingdom, notably of its establishment by prophetic direction (1 Kings xi. 31), records a universal exodus of Priests and Levites to Judah (2 Chron. xi. 13) from all Israel, and introduces most emphatic protests against the schismatic and illegitimate character of the kingdom of Ephraim (2 Chron. xiii.).

On the other hand, many critics maintain that if we turn from the result to the historical process which led to it, we shall find that Northern Israel played, not only an indispensable, but the main part in the evolution of the history; that its numbers and power were incomparably greater, its civilization higher, than those of Judah; and more than this.

1 See W. Robertson Smith, Prophets, pp. 48, 93-95, 115, seq., 191-195; Wellhausen, History of Israel, pp. 24, 188, 477; J. Robertson, Early Religion of Israel, pp. 111, 412, 514.

that its superiority was equally marked in spiritual as in material things, that it was the cradle of prophecy, and, during nearly the whole of its existence, the exclusive scene of the work of the greatest prophets-of Elijah and Elisha the greatest prophets of action, of Amos and Hosea the first1 prophets of the pen.

The problem before us, then, is to endeavour to sift this question in a more impartial spirit than has sometimes been shown with regard to it. We have to decide whether we ought to hold, with Wellhausen, that the northern kingdom was in the olden times the proper Israel, and Judah merely an appendage to it; " or, with Dr. J. Robertson, to maintain that "the schism of the ten tribes was a breaking away from the national unity and from the national God."

I.

The question may be formulated thus-What is the Biblical view of the Northern Kingdom? Have the critics referred to unwarrantably set it aside? or have they rediscovered a true Biblical and contemporary estimate of the facts which later tradition has overlooked?

We must not too readily assume that there is one Biblical view of the matter, and one only. It is not without example for the Bible to hand down two alternative traditions of the same occurrence, two strictly alternative estimates of the same action, simply because, as a matter of fact, both prevailed. This might be shown to be the case with regard to the Tabernacle, the origin of the high-priestly family, the "temple" or "tent" of Shiloh. It is to some extent true of the estimate of the Jewish monarchy as a whole (the king enters indispensably into the Messianic idea from the first; but see 1 Sam. viii. 7). An interesting, and for us most relevant, example is the estimate of Jehu's massacre of the house of Omri in 2 Kings ix. 6-8, and especially in ch. x. 30, "Because thou hast done well in executing right in mine eyes," etc. But now turn to Hos. i. 4, "Call his name Jezreel, for yet a little, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu." A deed done by Divine command, and stamped after its completion with Divine approval, is singled out by a later prophet as meriting the direst retribution, and as involving Israel in ruin.

Something like this may be said of the Northern Kingdom. It was instituted by Divine authority. In the reign of Solomon, Jeroboam the governor of Mount Ephraim was stopped near Jerusalem by the Prophet Ahijah of Shiloh, and solemnly invested with the kingdom of the ten tribes, with the promise, conditional on his conduct, of a sure house like David's. "And this was the cause" (1 Kings xi. 27)" that he lifted up his hand against the king." Solomon heard of the prophecy, and sought to

Joel must apparently be assigned a much later date than has been sometimes assumed (see Dr. A. B. Davidson, in Expositor, March, 1888).